The Fiery Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “One more,” I said, and led him to a wide pond. Beneath the crystal surface, instead of fish, jewel-bright birds flew through a depthless sky. Ambrose gasped at the sight, turning astonished eyes to me. “It’s slippery, but this one you can walk on,” I encouraged him.

  “Or dance!” he declared, passing off his staff and Merle to Orvyki, who hastened up with a charming blush. He held out a hand to me. “Your Highness?”

  Surprised—and in truth, pleased by the offer of whimsy when my mood had been so very dark—I laid my hand, the one with orchid ring, in his, and curtsied in response to his flamboyant bow. We stepped onto the bright surface, chilled water splashing around us, and music swelled from nowhere. Ambrose whirled me into a gliding dance with the tempestuous music, grinning when I laughed. Beneath our feet, the magic birds flocked to follow our movements, swirling in patterns that mimicked the rise and fall of the music Ambrose had evoked.

  The music came to a crashing crescendo as we swept to a halt, out of breath and laughing. I stepped back and tested that my crown and wig had stayed in place, while Ambrose walked in a circle, showing no more sign of lameness now than he had while dancing. Experimentally he kicked at the water with his bare foot, watching the spray of droplets hover in the air before they floated down, light as downy feathers. The droplets continued to descend, sinking through the crystalline surface, and the birds surged to snap them up, feeding greedily.

  Ambrose raised his gaze to me, canny wisdom in it. “Elemental magic, yes? Somehow the essential natures of these creatures are inverted, and turned in a different direction. Water becomes air. Crystal is wet, but dampens nothing. The butterfly…”

  “Made of color,” I supplied. “The ancient wizard artists of Calanthe made these as entertainments, but also as student exercises, to perfect the craft of creating one thing from something unlike.”

  He gazed about, still rapt, but something of sorrow in it. “Then the skills have been lost?”

  “Unfortunately so. We have the artifacts, but since the departure of all the wizards, no one to explain them. Or to repair the ones that have broken, like the rock garden.”

  “I wonder if I could fix that?” he mused. He held out a hand, and water formed in a small spout beneath it, flowing up to meet his palm. “I know something of magic that works this way, but not a lot.”

  “Just as you know a wall is different from a door,” I replied, recalling how he’d magically locked the door to my chambers but hadn’t been able to ward the wall. Con hadn’t understood why the wizard couldn’t treat them as the same thing, but I’d wondered if intention lay under the wizard’s use of magic, too. A doorway can be made to reverse itself to refuse passage, but a wall built for other reasons—such as for privacy or to hold up a ceiling—couldn’t be made to admit passage.

  Ambrose nodded absently, digging a toe into the pond surface. “This is how You did it,” he commented.

  “Excuse Me?”

  He laughed at my arch reply and wagged a finger. “I told Con that the way You’d broken my invisibility spell on the sailing ship was as if You’d picked up a river and set it down again so it ran in the opposite direction.”

  Ah, that. “Some things are within My nature,” I conceded. “Others are artifacts created by those long gone that are more difficult for Me to understand. Man’s magic—wizardry—is not the same as what comes from the elements of life.” I held out my hand with the orchid ring, which of course fluttered and silently cooed at the wizard.

  “The flower that cannot die,” he said somberly. “The Abiding Ring that clings to the hand of the true ruler of Calanthe, and only releases them upon their death, when it goes on to the next true heir.”

  “If there is one.” There must be one, the ring insisted, pricking my skin so that I dug at it with my thumbnail.

  “What happens if there isn’t a true heir?”

  I returned his serious gaze. “I don’t know. It’s never happened. Maybe … with the right magic, someone could take it and coax the orchid into bonding with them. It likes wizards.”

  Ambrose held out his palms. “May I?”

  I laid my hand in his and he turned it over, examining not the gorgeous bloom as everyone else did, but the band that encircled my finger. Made of neither metal nor living wood, but something that flowed between the two elements, in much the way the rose and the butterfly did, the band hugged my skin tightly. Ambrose poked at it, digging a fingernail beneath the band—or trying to—and then using a delicate probe of magic. Both prickled uncomfortably.

  “Is it grown into your skin?” he asked. “Oh no—I see. It’s another of these elemental mergings. Interesting. You and it are one and the same at the intersection.” He muttered to himself, Merle flying over to land on his shoulder and peer at the ring also, making his own soft raven mutters.

  It amused me the way the two conferred, and I waited patiently as they analyzed the ring’s properties. So interesting that Ambrose focused on the band, not the blossom, as everyone else did. Of course everyone else who’d looked at the ring had been looking at the top of my hand, likely distracted by the orchid’s extravagant loveliness. I’d never really had an objective assessment of my own impressions of how the ring functioned. The scholars I’d collected could advise me on all manner of inventions and our growing scientific understanding of the world. Magic, however, defied that rational analysis. In many ways, it embodied the reversal of scientific process, just as we’d been discussing. I would have to consider that further.

  Ambrose looked up at me from his bent position, the forest green of his eyes deep, ancient, and full of quiet power, and I saw him more clearly than ever. Not bent over, but far shorter than he normally appeared. “Shall we trade answer for answer?” he asked, his voice clear and resonant as a deep bell ringing. “Three for three, as is the old way. Truth for truth.”

  Feeling slightly out of body, I nodded. It could be a treacherous bargain, but I’d been waiting all these years for a true wizard to consult, and I needed his help. I’d best choose and phrase my questions wisely, in case the price was one I couldn’t afford again. Though if the dreams were to be believed—and I did believe them—I wouldn’t live much longer, regardless.

  “I’ll ask two, to give you time to think,” Ambrose said with a canny smile, “and save my third for last.” He’d stopped using my title, I realized, and it signified that we spoke as equals for the moment. Or, rather, as our most essential selves, without the rank and trappings of the outer world we occupied. Standing in the midst of that frozen pond that was neither of those things, we were not Queen and Wizard, but two creatures of magic, washed ashore on the beach of a world we no longer quite belonged to.

  “I’m first asking for the story of the ring’s transference, from your father to you.” Ambrose still held my hand, part of his focus on the band of the ring. Both it and his magical attention tickled, the vague itch spreading through my hand to my heart. He’d know if I lied to him. Not that I intended to, but he’d without a doubt sense it. “I could ask this as a series of questions,” he added, “but I don’t think you’d want to owe me so many in return.”

  A fair point. I closed my eyes, recalling that day. My father had sickened, so quickly the court murmured of poison. It had been an ugly, humiliating death, as painful as it was relentless, and it had resisted the efforts of all the healers. The day he died, however, he found enough peace and clarity to ask to be transferred to a ship and carried out to sea. He’d become a wraith of himself, skin nearly translucent, and with no fluids left in his papery body, he’d been spared the endless diarrhea and vomiting that had consumed his last days.

  When he asked me to come with him, I’d known what was coming.

  Clean, purged in every way, he took my hand as he lay on the bier of orchids, the deck of the ship swaying softly beneath us. “This is sooner than I hoped, Euthalia,” he said, “but you are a true queen of Calanthe. Your mother accepted me and made me king, but you are true-born.
Trust in that, in what you know without knowing.”

  The orchid ring on his left hand looked wilted, the colors oddly muted. I’d have known that this heralded the king’s death, regardless of all the other signs. My father interlaced the fingers of my left hand with his, then gazed at the sky and let out a long, rattling breath—but his hand tightened on mine. Though our people ringed us in somber observance, he and I were alone in the circle.

  Except for the song of Calanthe, which filled my very blood, chiming in the air. Seabirds and land birds flew in dense swirls in the sky, and the water around the ship teemed with porpoises, fish, and whales, making more circles. My father smiled, radiant with joy. “My love,” he murmured.

  I felt Her embrace, too, one that had been around me every day of my life, but stronger in that moment. So very present. My father’s eyes blurred, the blue fading into mist, and the orchid ring crawled from his hand to mine. It felt like a spider, the sticky hairs of its tendrils viscerally alarming, and I might have yanked my hand away if he hadn’t held it so tightly.

  The blossom settled itself on my hand, the vines twining around my finger and sinking into my flesh, my bones. They continued, digging deeper, into the marrow of my bones, crawling up my arm and throughout my skeleton, finding root in the soil of my body. I sank to my knees and wept from the deep pain and for my father’s ignominious, too-sudden death.

  On my finger, the orchid blossom unfurled, taking on greater life and color, drawing nourishment from me.

  My father’s hand slipped from mine, and the solemn circle of his closest advisers closed on us. Lord Dearsley helped me to my feet, and held me in a firm grip as the others tipped my father’s bier into the sea. The water boiled, swirled, and he sank into Calanthe’s final embrace.

  “The king is dead,” they intoned. And all the beings on Calanthe echoed the mourning, sending up howls and scents, the land shivering in mourning. “Long live the queen.” The sounds turned to celebration, even as I tasted the salt on my lips from the tears.

  Long live the queen. I heard the orchid ring’s voice for the first time.

  “Thank you,” Ambrose said. I realized I’d forgotten to speak aloud, I’d been so rapt in the memory. He smiled cheerfully, however. “No worries. I got it all. I understand now, why the ring cannot be removed while you live, and how you must have a true heir to pass it to.”

  I felt my wits sharpen as the haze of memory departed, and I focused on him, certain he’d used magic to coerce all the details of that from me. Willing or not, I hadn’t planned to give him so much. He smiled angelically.

  “You promised me that if I married Conrí, I could bear a true heir of his seed. Were you lying to—”

  “Ah ah.” He gave me a piercing look. “I’m going to stop you because our bargain is still in effect and I don’t think you want to waste one of your three questions on something we already discussed.” He raised one brow until I nodded. “My second question is simpler. How did your father impregnate your mother?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” I replied in all honesty. “I know a ritual was involved. The previous queen was aged and had no true heir, so young men traveled to the temple to answer the call. They presented themselves to the island, and Gul was selected by Her. He lay with many virgins, island maidens—as many as wished to offer their bodies as surrogates—and I was born, the only true daughter of Calanthe born in that year.” And although he had sired countless babes after me, none of my myriad half siblings were true heirs. Calanthe would’ve told me.

  “Ah. I still have questions, but I’ll bide on my third. Ask your three.”

  More than anything I wanted to ask him about the orchid ring, how its magic worked and if I should be using it, but from comments he’d dropped and the questions he’d asked me just now, I thought he didn’t know the answers I sought. I wouldn’t want to waste this opportunity to get honest answers only to find out he knew little more than I did. Instead I asked what I’d been pondering for some time, deliberating on how to pose it in such a way that it would give me the widest array of the information I needed.

  “Why did you seek out Conrí to act in your schemes?”

  Ambrose laughed gaily and shook a finger at me. “Aha. Clever girl, combining several assumptions into one question so I have to either correct your misapprehensions or risk telling an untruth. I understand why your mother chose your father for her champion, if you get your wily intelligence from him.”

  I kept my counsel, thinking it best not to tell him more about Calanthe’s intelligence than necessary. Though as far as human politics went, then I likely did inherit those skills from my father. Certainly he’s the one who taught me. Calanthe doesn’t concern Herself much with words.

  “So,” Ambrose said, tapping a finger on his chin, “you’re speculating that I sought out our Conrí, rather than the reverse—or maybe he told you as much—and you further suppose that I have a scheme we follow, and that I have a reason to have recruited him to act in service of some deep agenda of my own.”

  I assumed my best politely interested expression. If the wizard hoped to feel his way through by assessing my reactions, he’d have little luck. His smile widened at my placid mask, and he cocked his head, Merle doing the same.

  “I’m going to answer your question honestly, though it may not sound like it. Being a wizard is like having a special sailing ship that can navigate the stormiest of seas. I cannot be drowned, and I can harness the power of the ocean to my own ends, to some extent, but I do not control the ocean I sail upon. I bring skills and tools to charting my course, but ultimately where the currents take me is the ocean’s decision. The prophecy I follow is like constellations that guide us. Why Conrí, you ask? Because he’s the island where I ran aground.”

  Hmm. I believed in the truth of that answer, especially given what I suspected might end up being critically important about Con’s blood ties to Oriel. If Ambrose’s ocean of magic was akin to the power of the lands craving their true caretakers, then that particular running aground might have been inevitable.

  At least, as inevitable as such capricious things as fate can be.

  “Since you stuck to the letter of My question, what is your scheme then—what do you seek to achieve by guiding Con, and Myself, via this prophecy?”

  He became very serious. “Anure is a false ruler, as I believe you understand. He is not at the root of all that’s gone wrong in our world. Magic had been thinned and soured by sloth and greed. Rulers forgot that they served the land and treated the land and its children as theirs to use and exploit. Anure is, however, a parasitic blossom that flowered on that diseased body. My scheme, my agenda, my heart’s desire and self-determined destiny is to change that. I have an old debt to repay, restitution to make for unforgivable crimes, and labor of deepest love before me.”

  “You want Anure dead more than any of us,” I replied to that astounding speech with some awe.

  “Is that your third question?” he asked, eyes flashing gimlet green.

  “No—no more than that was your third question. That was a statement.”

  “In the spirit of generosity then, I’ll confirm that I certainly want Anure removed from his self-bestowed office, but he is only one blossom among many. I mean to kill the parasite and revive the body.”

  I eyed him with considerable interest, plagued with curiosity and a desire to know much more. Did Con know that Ambrose was thinking about a much larger-scale mission than simply defeating Anure? Simply defeating. Who would’ve ever guessed I’d have such a thought? I would have to wait to find out more, however, because my last question would be not for myself, but in service to Calanthe.

  “What is your third question?” Ambrose asked, almost gently, as if aware of my intense longing to know more of what he planned. How much of my destiny he’d foreseen.

  “We’re two for two,” I replied. “It’s your turn.” If he asked what I expected he would, then that would lead neatly into what I would ask of him. />
  “Your Highness, Queen Euthalia,” he asked quite solemnly. “What happens when blood is shed in violence on the soil or waters of Calanthe?”

  I had my answer ready, as that was exactly what I’d expected. I folded my hands together, the orchid ring chortling softly to itself. “I’m going to answer your question honestly, though it may not sound like it.”

  He bowed with a wry smile, acknowledging the point.

  “She will wake,” I said. “Blood spilled in violence is like blood given in sacrifice, as in the old ways. How much or how little it will take, I don’t know. But we on Calanthe have erred on the side of none at all, because we’ve been taught that Her waking would mean the end of our piece of paradise. She would come to life, fully and completely, which has not happened since the time of monsters. What that means for us, precisely, we can only suppose. Suffice to say that humans and monsters don’t coexist well.”

  He eyed me speculatively. “I want to ask if you would be able to control Her.”

  Not exactly a question. “I don’t know. I’ve never had to do it. No one in memory has.” I looked at the orchid ring, the Abiding Ring, the symbol of eternal life and endurance through every storm. “If I’m here on Calanthe, if and when She wakes, I’ll do my utmost. Which leads to what I will ask of you, wizard.”

  He straightened, Merle giving me his utmost attention. Yes, they’d both caught my phrasing, and Ambrose had wit enough to be concerned about what I would ask. I was changing up the rules, but a queen makes the rules. She doesn’t blindly follow them. “If, for some reason, I am not here and Calanthe wakes, will you do your utmost to control Her in my stead?”

  I’d surprised him, to the core, I suspected. He hadn’t seen that eventuality. Merle leaned in, seeming to whisper in his ear, and the wizard nodded. “Cleverly done. I could simply say no and leave the question as asked and answered. Your Highness, however, has seen clearly to my heart and You will know I cannot refuse—both as Your court wizard, and as myself.” Merle spread his wings and chatted several soft caws. “Merle agrees for himself also. We accept Your challenge—with the caveat that neither of us has experience in such an effort.”