Read The Poisoned Crown Online
Authors: Amanda Hemingway
The Poisoned Crown (53 page)
The incantation grew stronger. Now they could hear the Grandir’s voice, a deeper note behind the weremurmur and the silver hiss of the flame. Beside him, Halmé held the Sword, not by the hilt but with her hand around the sheath; in her other hand she carried the Cup. The Crown rested on the slab next to Nathan. The cloud-porridge churned faster; violet lightning stabbed from sky to earth. Hazel, glancing at Annie, thought she was almost unrecognizable, her face transformed by some huge emotion—fury, frustration, fear …
She said to herself:
We’re going to watch Nathan die
—
and we can’t do a thing.
Her own fury was a black gall rising inside her, a bile in her gut. Her clumsy witchcraft was no use against the Grandir’s power; her rage was no use. The spell rolled on. The night had turned to nightmare around them, shadow beings from the other side of darkness thronging the hillside, capering, twirling—a carnival of specters. Somewhere, Hazel heard the voice of the Child, remote but very clear:
“Here comes a spindle to spin out your doom
Here comes a candle to light up your tomb
Here comes an angel to put you to bed
Here comes a sword blade to cut off your head!”
But she paid little attention anymore.
The spell rolled on, unstoppable as a tidal wave, mounting to a crescendo. The hole in the sky opened onto other stars, and a different moon sailed in the gap, a Red Moon of Madness. The Grandir bent over Nathan, opening his eyes with a word. A beckoning motion lifted his head; the Crown was placed on his brow. The spikes seemed to puncture his skin so the blood ran down his face. Halmé moved forward: the Grandir drew the Sword from its sheath—the Traitor’s Sword, with a deadly spirit imprisoned in its blade, the Sword only his kindred might touch. Halmé laid down the sheath and stood there holding the Grail, bathed in the radiance of the spellfire—lovelier than
Blanchefleur, the cup bearer of legend, fairer than Helen who was the downfall of Troy. She did not look at Nathan, the son she might have born; only at the Grandir.
He pressed the Sword to his lips, kissed the cold metal. Then he raised it for the death blow.
Hazel screamed, or Annie screamed: neither knew which.
“Nooooo
—”
No one heard.
Nathan’s tongue was weighted; his body could move only at his father’s Command. But he spoke the name in his mind, and his voice creaked into action—spoke it aloud, the name of names, the secret of secrets. And for an eyeblink, a heartbeat, the spell broke. The Sword flew from his father’s grip and stuck quivering in the turf. The summit was plunged into night. Above, the cloud-brew boiled over, streaming in every direction at once—the Red Moon was blotted out. Nathan rolled off the slab and tried to get up, his muscles stiff from prolonged stasis, the Crown fallen from his head. The Grandir reached out with hands hooked into claws, grappling the magic back together, crying out new words of power, harsh with urgency, edged with fear. The circle blazed up again—
But the intruders had already crossed the barrier.
Hazel threw herself at Halmé, knocking the Cup from her hands, punching and scratching. The woman was far taller than her, far stronger, but in all her endless years of life nobody had ever raised a hand against her—she had been cherished, coddled, isolated, adored—and she reeled backward, unable to defend herself, paralyzed with shock. In her terror, she saw her attacker not as human but some evil goblin-creature who had leapt through the crack in the spell to seize on her. Hazel’s nails raked Halmé’s throat, tore the binding from her hair. She screamed for her brother—
The Grandir did not answer. Too late, he recognized the woman in front of him—the lesser mortal with her incredible capacity for love. The woman he had singled out, honored with his brief attention, used, all but forgotten. To him, the expression on her face was in an unknown language. He could have stopped her with a word, the twitch of a
finger—but he needed all his words, all his grip, to hold the spell together. She reached for the Sword.
“No!” Nathan croaked. “Mum—you can’t—”
But her blood was his blood, her touch was his touch, and the spirit in the blade felt her, knew her, sprang to meet the rage of her heart. Rage at the being who had used her without a thought—who would have slain the son he had given her. The Sword leapt in her grasp, knowing where it had to go. The blade sheered through flesh and bone, through sinew and spirit. The Grandir stared down at it, blank with amazement—he had lived so long, he had forgotten he could die like other men. He opened his mouth for the Command that would heal him, but the blood bubbled out, choking his words, and he fell back onto the grass. Even before he hit the ground, he was dead.
The spellfire went out in a howl of wind. Darkness poured over the hilltop—a darkness rustling with wings, pattering with flying feet. Faint lights bobbed and danced; faint images imprinted themselves on sight and mind, fading too slowly for comfort. There was the creeling of phantom pipes, the whistling that was not a bird. A pure choirboy voice was chanting snatches of song.
“Are you going to Scarbarrow Fayr?
Hemlock, hemp, tormentil, and rue …
Remember me to one who died there
—
Tell my love this grave is for you
…”
“The Crown!” Nathan cried. “Mum—Hazel—hold on to the Crown! It’s
iron …”
Somehow they found each other in the whirling dark—clung together, clutching the circlet of thorns. Halmé was shrieking in her own tongue “Help me! Help—” but shadowy hands plucked her, spinning her this way and that—Nathan glimpsed her loosened hair blowing in elflocks over the wild terror of her face.
She is beautiful
—
beautiful
—
her flashing eyes! her floating hair!
—
We will dance with her till the end of time
… For an instant sheet lightning blinked over the world—the shadows turned white, and they
saw
—
Then the night returned, and thunder rolled, and the piled-up clouds dissolved into a solid curtain of water, pounding the grass to mud.
It always rains at the end of the world. After battle, apocalypse, debacle, and death, the heavens weep for the folly of it all…
The three of them sat in the mud, wet and cold beyond bearing, empty at last of all horrors, holding hands against the dark.
he following morning Annie, Nathan, and Hazel went to see Bartlemy in the hospital, but he had gone. “He should never have discharged himself,” the senior nurse complained. “He was severely injured. We couldn’t stop him …”
They drove to Thornyhill, but there was nobody there. The stock-pot that had been simmering on the stove since the night Annie first arrived had vanished; many of the rarer herbs, the bottles and jars of mysterious spices, the handwritten cookbooks sallow with age—all had been removed. There was no sign of Hoover.
Pobjoy said he would make inquiries, but his time was fully taken up with the discovery of a corpse on the top of Chizzledown, a John Doe with no papers or ID, stabbed through the heart apparently with a sword. The body was over seven feet tall, of unspecified racial origin, estimated to be in his forties or fifties though in superb physical condition. Pobjoy told the assistant chief constable, in confidence, that he had information from an illicit source that the man had been a people trafficker, operating mainly abroad, killed here because it was neutral territory, probably by Oriental gangsters—hence the sword—who had
already left the country. In short, the investigation was going to go nowhere and wouldn’t merit the expenditure of time and manpower.
“The path lab says the sword could be a samurai weapon,” the ACC said knowledgeably. “Might have been one of those ritual killings. He looked a pretty distinctive character. Someone’s bound to identify him soon.”
“I don’t think so,” Pobjoy said.
A few days later Annie received a communication from a firm of lawyers in London, telling her Bartlemy had deeded Thornyhill to her, and enclosing a letter from him, and an accompanying parcel. He wrote:
I suggest you sell the house. I doubt if you would want to live in such an isolated location, but the proceeds from the sale will ensure you and Nathan financial security for some time to come. The bookshop with its adjoining property is already in your name, and I have arranged a fund that will continue to pay your salary for another two years. Without wishing to be premature, perhaps this may be considered a wedding present.
“
Very
premature,” Annie muttered.
I shall miss you very much. However, the death of the Grandir and the defeat of his plans
How did he know about that?
she wondered.
makes it clear you can look after yourselves far better than I ever could. You do not need me anymore, and I have injuries that require treatment
—
treatment I cannot obtain in Eade. It seems the right moment to move on. I would ask you to take the Grail, the Sword, and the Crown and bury them in the woods, well away from any paths. They have no purpose anymore but there may still be a vestige of power left in them, so dig deep, too deep for fox or badger to unearth them again.
Tell Hazel I expect her to pass all her exams and have sent her some books and other materials so she may continue her study of magic, and learn, as I know she will, how not to use her Gift.
For Nathan and yourself, I include a few recipes; make use of the spices and seasonings I left behind, and enjoy the wine. Think of me whenever you bake a coffee cake or prepare a stew!
I will think of you always.
Meanwhile, let us say not adieu, but au revoir.
Barty
Annie cried a little when she finished the letter, though Pobjoy said, “I’m sure he’ll be back,” and Hazel suggested he might return looking completely different, like Dr. Who.
“I can’t imagine Bartlemy looking like anyone but himself,” Annie said.
They buried the relics the week after. It was an exhausting job, for the ground was hard, but Nathan and Pobjoy managed it between them. Hazel considered putting a spell of concealment on the place but decided it would only draw attention to it.
Afterward, Nathan told his mother: “If you
do
want to marry James, I suppose it’s okay with me. Any father’s better than the Grandir, after all.”
“Premature,” Annie reiterated.
The Grandir was eventually interred in the abandoned churchyard, after a special dispensation from the ecclesiastical authorities. It seemed appropriate. His murder was put in the cold-case file, where no one ever bothered to resurrect it. Nathan would visit the grave from time to time, more because he felt he should than because he wished to, and lay bunches of herbs on the ground: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Nothing was ever heard of Halmé.
T
HE NIGHT
before his sixteenth birthday, he climbed up to the roof to think things over. The star had vanished, and he knew in his heart that
the world of Eos was ended—ended long ago—a dead universe suspended forever in a void of Time. Only Eric survived, growing slightly older, as people do, drinking lots of coffee, reading poetry, and still half believing every film he watched, especially those with the most dramatic special effects. Nathan searched for the portal in his mind, but it was no longer there—he had chosen his world, the world in which he would grow up, grow old, and although the multiverse was only a dream away, those dreams would not come again. Wilderslee and Widewater had disappeared into the cosmic labyrinth, never to return. Already they seemed dim and distant as the fantasies of childhood, visions that would remain with him as things more imagined than actually seen. The sun on the many-colored leaves in the Deepwoods, orange and gold and scarlet and pink—sharing wild strawberries with Nell beside the chatter of a stream—stroking the tiny dragonet under the Dragon’s Reef—flying with Ezroc over the endless curve of the sea … the green of Denaero’s eyes … the tangle of Nellwyn’s hair … Hazel had taken to putting her hair up, though some of it still fell over her face. She was looking different now, more a woman than a child; it didn’t occur to him that she had grown an inch or two. She even appeared quite pretty sometimes, which was worrying: it would attract all the wrong boys.
He was glad they would be together in the sixth form—he felt he owed it to Bartlemy, as well as Hazel, to make sure she got there. That way, he would be able to keep her clear of Damian Wicks and others like him.
He went to bed thinking not of the past but the future—an ordinary future, comfortable in its smallness …
On the evening of his birthday, they had a party at the Happy Huntsman. Everyone considered Annie was being very extravagant holding it there, but the only people who minded were those who weren’t invited. Hazel came as a matter of course, and James, George Fawn, all the Rayburns, Ned Gable from Ffylde, Eric and Rowena Thorn, Lily and Franco, other teenagers from the village with dependent parents. They had champagne, and George was sick—it was practically a reflex with him—and Nathan and Hazel went out on the
terrace together, shivering under the stars, for a moment of quality time on the way to adulthood.
“My star’s gone,” Nathan said, and: “Do you think anything magical will ever happen to us again?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted it to, after the events on Chizzledown.
“Of course it will,” Hazel replied, glancing at her ring. “Like Uncle Barty always said, we have infinity and eternity. That gives us space and time for
anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
On an impulse, he kissed her. “That kind of anything?”
“That wasn’t magical,” Hazel said matter-of-factly. She wasn’t going to tell him it
felt
magical, not for a long time yet. Maybe not for years and years …
The next day, against all the odds, it was spring.