The Poisoned Crown (41 page)

“Nokosha!” Ezroc shrieked.
“No-ko-sha!”

The spotted selkie emerged from the water, gazing upward with eyes glinting like the Great Ice. There was a long cut on his cheekbone; blood curled around him. A body heaved to the surface close by.

“I’m busy.”

“Nefanu’s dead!” Ezroc cried. “The Queen of the Sea is gone! There’s no more need to fight—”

“Tell that to the merfolk!” Nokosha snarled. “When they stop trying to kill me, I’ll stop killing them.”

He disappeared, and the albatross wheeled low over the water, calling and calling in vain. For the first time Nathan could see something of the battle below—a phalanx of sharkriders with a leader who might have been Uraki on the great white, and around them selkies darting and diving, zooming in, falling back, more agile but less well armed, less strong than their mounted opponents. Manta rays surged up from the deep; walruses charged to cut them off—battle cruisers blocking submarine planes. Thin lines of javelins streaked the blue; blades gleamed in a searching sunray. Around the edge of the conflict, a scouting icthauryon snapped its jaws on a corpse, snatching an easy meal. Nathan saw Nokosha, spots visible even underwater, rallying a band of selkies to ambush the sharkriders, and suddenly the future was very clear. He and Uraki would fight—would fight and kill each other—out of some warped mutual respect—when they might have been allies, they might have been friends …

“We must stop them,” Nathan reiterated, but there was nothing he could do.

They were too human to turn aside from war …

It was a moment before he noticed that the cry of the birds had changed. He looked around, uncomprehending, and thought for an instant the Leviathan had returned, because the approaching shapes were so big—as big as the biggest ships in our world. Blue-black bodies rising and falling in an inexorable advance, shattering the waves into foam clouds; vast tails lifting and thumping down on the water; blowholes spurting geysers of spray. There were twenty—fifty—a hundred of them, not a pod but a fleet, shouldering aside the scavenging icthauryon as if they were minnows. The horn had called them with their own music, and their song rolled beneath the sea like the boom of giant tubas and bassoons, and the battle parted before them, and warriors released their weapons to cover their ears from the din of it.

Nathan took up the birds’ cry, calling till his voice was hoarse: “The whales are coming! The whales are coming!” and there were tears in his eyes though he couldn’t spare the moisture, because he knew now they could stop the war after all…

T
HERE IS
a sort of tradition that it always rains after battles, as if the heavens themselves are weeping for the dead. In a world of sea this has very little effect on anyone, since its inhabitants neither drink nor cry, but Nathan stretched out his hands to the squall and sucked the fresh water thirstily from fingers and palm. They were talking above water, a concession on the part of the merfolk—and an acknowledgment that their world was changing. The Dragon’s Reef had always been near the surface, but now Nathan could stand on the rock with his head and shoulders exposed.

“These
were the islands,” he explained to Ezroc. “The islands you and Keerye searched for.”

“The coral will die,” Denaero said, remembering Nefanu’s words in the cave.

“Yes, but more will grow as the lower rock stratum is brought nearer the sun. I think your father’s halls should still be deep enough to
remain covered. And the level will change gradually, over several seasons. The smallfish and other reef dwellers will have plenty of time to move. It won’t be easy but when it’s over there will be land again. You can learn to walk.”

“Merfolk were not
meant
to walk,” Rhadamu said. The shock of finding his daughter alive, while clearly pleasant, had shaken his regal authority; he was making an effort to reassert himself.

“Then why do you change?”

“For mating.”

“Well,” Nathan said, “the islands here will be yours. It would be a waste not to make use of them. But it’s up to you. You’ve worshipped a psychotic goddess for centuries. Now that she’s gone, you can make up your own minds.”

“We will have no more war,” Rhadamu declared heavily. “If the king of the selkies agrees—”

“I am not the king,” Nokosha interrupted. “We don’t have kings. I became the leader when my people needed one, but now …”

“Folk still need a spokesman,” Burgoss grunted, wallowing in the water nearby. Like many of the northerners, he was uncomfortably warm. “Easy to lead us into a fight, harder to lead us out of it.”

“We will make a treaty,” Rhadamu ordained, seizing the initiative. “You will stay in your seas, we in ours. We will call it the Dragon’s Accord.”

“Perhaps we could fight sometimes without killing,” Uraki suggested, plainly missing his aborted combat with Nokosha. “For practice.”

He was sitting on Raagu, who regularly lashed from side to side, clashing his jaws on the rusted metal bit. It was not conducive to a climate of negotiation.

“In my world,” Nathan said, “we call that
sport.
We have these games we play, one country against another, like soccer and cricket.”

Nokosha sneered: “Games!”

“There’s a lot of skill involved,” Nathan said. “Of course, if you feel it’s beyond you …”

“Don’t try to manipulate me!”

“Describe this
sport,”
said Uraki.

Nathan did his best to explain the principles of soccer—cricket, he felt, would be too complicated—and indeed, a few seasons later, a game of waterball developed in that world that became so popular, it was almost responsible for starting another war instead of becoming a substitute for one.

Meanwhile …

“What will happen to the shamans?” Denaero asked.

“Without the Goddess,” Rhadamu said, “they have no voice, no basis for their authority. We will dispense with their services. Where they go, and what they do, is a matter for them.”

“Won’t they be punished?” Denaero said wistfully.

“For what?” her father said. “They served Nefanu, as did we all. Anyhow, there has been enough punishment. I do not punish you for surviving, nor will I punish them for losing the whole reason for their existence. Let them be. You have life; they, a living death. It will suffice.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Denaero allowed herself to be persuaded.

“How will we cement this accord of yours?” Nokosha asked the king.

“We will engrave it on the first rock to emerge from the sea,” Rhadamu decided. “We will cut the letters deep with ancient tools, and we will see to it that no weather erodes them, nor any weed grows over them, so they will last for a thousand years.”

“We do not have this skill,” said Nokosha, evidently intrigued. “What will you engrave?”

“A merman and a selkie, hands linked in a gesture of peace. Furthermore … among my people it is customary to seal an alliance or detente with a marriage. Of course, between hotbloods and coldkin this is not possible—a selkie and a mermaid could not breed—but it might be desirable for them to bond. Some kind of official arrangement. I have many daughters. I would be prepared to offer you one, in token of our trust.”

“Th-thank you,” said Nokosha, for once at a loss.

“Miyara might perhaps be suitable. She was promised to a fellow king, but that allegiance is no longer necessary. She is considered the loveliest of her sisters.”

Somewhere below the water there was a screech of vexation and fury.

“We don’t do things that way in the north,” Nokosha said, recovering himself. “However, were I interested in such a connection, I would not aspire to too much beauty. I am hardly a pearl among my kind. I would prefer the boldest of your children, rather than the fairest. Your daughter Denaero—”

“What?”
It was Denaero’s turn to shriek. “Marry
you?
I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—”

“You will do as you are told,” snapped Rhadamu.

“In my world,” Nathan said—words the others were already beginning to consider ominous—“we treat women as equals. We don’t tell them who to marry, or what to do.”

“I
like
your world”—from Denaero.

“You cannot do such a thing,” Uraki said, appalled. “The female of the species is always weaker. It is the part of the strong male to protect and guide her.”

“We think intelligence is more important than brute strength,” Nathan said.

He drew back, leaving them to their arguing; there’s nothing like a peace treaty for causing a really good argument. Now, he knew, it was time to go home—if he could find the way. It wasn’t going to happen anymore by some magical stroke of good—or bad—timing; he had taken control, and that meant he had to open the portal himself. At Bartlemy’s suggestion he had always kept the mark of Agares, the Rune of Finding, written on his arm in indelible ink. It might help a little. He wanted to say proper goodbyes, especially to Denaero: they had been through so much together. But she was taking the first steps—or swimming the first strokes—toward sexual equality, and he thought it was best to let her get on with it. He found the albatross beside him, and
although the bird had no obvious expression he knew Ezroc understood.

“I have to go,” Nathan said. “If I can. I’ve been here too long …”

“You won’t be coming back?”

“I don’t think so.”

He had shared Ezroc’s mind: it was a bond like no other.

“Get on,” the albatross said.

And then they were flying, circling the group in the water. Denaero looked up and waved, sudden comprehension in her face. Nokosha made a gesture of acknowledgment; Burgoss raised a flipper; Uraki and Rhadamu offered a brief salute.

He heard Denaero call what she believed to be the traditional farewell of his people.

“Live long—and prosper!”

He thought:
Maybe, from now on, they’ll always say that…

There are worse ways to say goodbye.

They rode the air, ascending in giant spirals toward the clouds. Below, the water was shadow blue, still unbroken by a single rock, but soon the islands would be there, the islands Keerye had dreamed of, the Jeweled Archipelago, the Giant’s Knucklebones, the islands of story and legend that he and Ezroc had sought for long ago. The subterranean caverns were filling and would never again be emptied. Whether the deed was good or bad Nathan didn’t know, but it was done, and he couldn’t change it now. Far off he saw the sun’s rays parting the clouds, streaming down toward the sea. And in the other direction the rainbow appeared, arching across the horizon—he fancied they could fly through it to all the worlds that ever were, and beyond, to a better place, a world without war or hatred, Avalon, Nirvana, the kingdom of Faerie. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, though he remained solid, he was the bird, and the bird was him, at one in the magic of the flight and the hope that somewhere there was a place where they would see Keerye again, and tell him all their tale—somewhere there was a place where it all came right…

And then Nathan found the portal in his mind, and it opened, not
onto sleep but a spinning, reeling, dazzling rush through the borders of the cosmos, hurling him back into his own bed with a jolt that left him dizzy and star-blind.

He tried to sit up but sank back until the vertigo subsided. The Crown was in his hands. He was soaking wet.

Bartlemy was there—his mother—Hazel—all staring at him. For some reason, Annie seemed to be crying …

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m back.”

I
T WAS
Christmas. Annie and Nathan were having dinner at Thorny-hill, joined this year by Hazel, who, having spent the day dutifully with her mother and an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins, had now left Lily tête-à-tête with Franco and come to dine off Bartlemy’s cooking.

“I didn’t eat
anything
at lunch,” she revealed. “They all said I had anorexia—it’s idiotic, I’m not even
thin
—but Mum said I was eating here, and Uncle Len said at my age, he’d have grabbed the chance to have
two
Christmas dinners, which is probably why he’s as fat as a hog, and Aunty Christine looked all offended, so I took a mince pie and pretended. It was disgusting—Aunty Christine’s the world’s worst cook—I gave it to the cat, and she spat it out. It’s awful when you have Christmas with bad cooking. I mean, the whole point of Christmas is the food.”

“It’s supposed to be the season of peace and goodwill,” Annie murmured with the hint of a smile.

“Not in my family,” Hazel said. “It’s better since Dad left, but Uncle Kevin always gets drunk and starts to squabble with Aunt Lizzy, and Aunty Christine disapproves of Mum and Franco—”

“So do you,” Nathan pointed out.

“That’s different. She’s
my
mum. It’s nobody else’s business.”

“You’ll get a good dinner here,” Annie promised. “And no squabbling, especially between you and Nathan.”

They had a wonderful dinner—roast goose with gooseberry sauce, potatoes done in the fat, sprouts and chestnuts, cabbage with leeks and
bacon, then Christmas pudding with cream or ice cream, and Stilton if anybody had any room. Afterward, there was port, and presents. They had opened most of their presents earlier, before Hazel arrived, but they still had to exchange gifts with her, and Annie always made special crackers with gold paper and silver lace containing little extras for everybody. Even Hoover had a cracker, a very large one with a bone inside.

Hazel, to Nathan’s surprise and satisfaction, was rendered nearly speechless by his present.

“I’m afraid I sort of stole it,” he admitted. “Only it was probably stolen originally from somebody who died long before. I put it on in the cave and didn’t take it off. It’s way too small for me but it should fit you.”

Hazel put the serpent ring on her third finger and said in her lowest mumble: “’s beautiful.”

She thought:
I have a ring from another world.

It seemed to her that in putting it on her whole personality changed, becoming glamorous and mysterious.

Nathan added: “I’m pretty sure it’s gold.”

Hazel smiled. “I know how to check.”