Nathan felt the Grandir’s handclasp, strong and sure. His father’s handclasp. Warmth flowed into him, yet he was cold.
Cold as death.
“I don’t… want to … share anything with you.” It was a struggle to get the words out. “I am … my mother’s son. Not yours. My mother…”
He couldn’t pull his hand away.
“She served her purpose,” the Grandir said. “As I told you, she had an extraordinary capacity for love, amazing in a creature of such fragile mortality.”
Love … Annie’s love for him—for Daniel… And he remembered the Grandir saying something about the Ozmosees— engineered an opportunity …
“You killed Daniel,” Nathan said.
“Of course. It was necessary. The spells indicated your mother would have the strength to open the Gate, but she needed motivation. Your race live so briefly and die so easily. Even you, my son, would barely have made it to a hundred. As it is, your life, though short, will be special—your legacy will change two worlds. What more could you wish for?”
Another seventy years?
“I don’t want to die,” Nathan said.
“I know,” said the Grandir. “But this is the pattern Lugair made, when he slew Romandos with the Traitor’s Sword. It can be modified but not changed—”
“You modified it,” Nathan said. “You—fathered me, so I could die in your place. Like—cannon fodder …”
“I thought you understood.” The Grandir’s tone was tinged with disappointment. There was something in his manner Nathan recognized, a sort of lofty compassion. Like when he killed the gnomons …
What had Hazel said? Compassion’s cheap. It’s what you do that counts.
“This is painful for me,” the Grandir said. “I had hoped you would not make it harder.”
“Painful for you?” Nathan cried, and somehow he wrenched his hand free of his father’s grasp. “I’m the one who’s going to die! You’re going to kill me—and it’s painful to you? You say you care, but it’s all just words. Caring doesn’t mean anything unless it changes your actions. You use people—creatures—We’re all creatures to you—you use them and kill them, and then say you’re sorry, as if that makes it all right.” The gnomons … the white xaurian … “You and Osskva talked about lesser races, but to you everyone’s lesser. I don’t believe you even care about your own people. They’re just an excuse for you to take over my universe. You only care about yourself—yourself—yourself—”
“Enough,” said the Grandir, raising his hand. Nathan’s voice froze in his throat; his tongue felt like a lump of clay. “I don’t need to listen to this. Your spirit is weak, your mind limited. Halmé and I have to prepare, to initiate the magics. It will be best if you sleep until the time comes …”
Sleep—dream … dream …
Nathan’s thought flew. He had a millisecond in which to do something, come up with something, reach for the portal …
But he knew already where he wished to go.
“Sleep now,” said the Grandir, and the darkness came, and Nathan felt himself pitching forward into oblivion.
POBJOY SAT UP, slowly. The blast had flung him and Annie backward— he’d tried to shield her but there was no time—his head hurt where it had struck against the furniture. He touched his hair, gingerly, but couldn’t feel any blood. It was pitch black—the explosion must have blown the fire out—but he could hear movement beside him, soft breathing, a murmur of discomfort.
He said: “Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
She stood up, found her way to the light switch. The sudden brightness made him blink. Then he saw the wreck of the room, the toppled furniture and tumbled books, the charring of the floorboards, the burn marks radiating out from where the circle had been. The blast seemed to have been concentrated into a very small area; beyond it, there was more mess than damage. Bartlemy, nearest to the perimeter, lay still, his eyes closed. Hoover was licking his face. Beside him, Hazel staggered to her feet, blood trickling from a cut on her temple. She must have hit the corner of the table, Pobjoy guessed.
He bent over Bartlemy, feeling for a pulse in his neck.
Hazel said: “Is he alive?”
“Yeah.” Bartlemy’s clothes were singed, and there were what looked like second-degree burns on his hands, his chest, his face. They all had skin blotched gray with smoke stains.
“Can you call an ambulance?” Annie said. “I have to go. Now.”
“You can’t—”
“Take care of him. Please. Hazel—”
“I’m coming.”
“No—you should stay—” I’m coming.
Pobjoy got out his cell phone and called emergency services. He had seen the look on Annie’s face. Even a policeman hesitates to get between that look and wherever it’s pointing.
He said: “Give me a moment.”
“Take care of him,” Annie repeated. Then she was out the door. Hazel flung a quick glance at Bartlemy and ran after her.
In the Beetle they took off at speed. Annie had always been a sensible driver, conscientious and prudent, staying within the limits, but not that night. Trees lurched through the headlights as she swerved onto the road—her foot went down on the accelerator. Hazel fancied she heard tires—or brakes—or something—squeaking in protest on every bend. It wasn’t a long drive, but the road was narrow and winding; once, they bumped onto the shoulder to avoid an oncoming car. Halfway along the Chizzledown lane the pavement ran out, and they were bouncing along a cart track toward the church. Annie pulled up, and they both tumbled out.
“We should’ve brought a flashlight,” Hazel said.
“We just have to head uphill,” Annie responded. “Uphill all the way.”
There was a chalky path that showed up in the darkness, the same route Nathan had followed earlier that evening. They stumbled frequently on the uneven ground. Every so often they heard a whistling like a strange bird, sometimes to their left, sometimes the right. Hazel thought she distinguished the green glimmer of a glowworm, but there were no glowworms in March. When she glanced back, she saw a mist gathering behind them, crawling up the slope.
The fairies are coming …
She said: “There’s too much magic in the night.”
Annie said: “Good.”
Hazel had a feeling if she had told her all hell was on the march, Annie would have said: Good.
Ahead, the hill crest was a dark curve against a sky dim with cloud. In a ragged gap a ragged moon gleamed briefly, a moon fraying at the edges as if torn in half. As they drew nearer, the rim of the chalk symbol came into view, glowing as though daubed with phosphorescent paint. Hazel thought: The Grandir doesn’t need to draw a circle. It’s already there. In the center, at the point where the sword line crossed the arc, stood the figure they had glimpsed at Thornyhill—a giant of a man even from a distance, all white save for the darkness of his hands and face. His arms were outstretched in the stance of a spellcaster; his black hair streamed in a sudden wind. The intrusion of Bartlemy’s summons had been nothing more to him than a minor irritant, an insect buzz to be swatted with barely a thought. Close to his feet, the huddle on the ground obscured part of the sigil. And a little way behind him was a second figure, also in white. A woman. Halmé, Hazel deduced after a moment’s reflection. Halmé the beautiful, queen of a whole world.
Strange how you could hate someone you’d never even met.
Hazel said: “What do we do now?”
But Annie had already started to run toward the circle …
NATHAN DREAMED. Across time and space, reaching back through the dark, into the light, before the stars began to die. The millennia spun past him like great Catherine wheels of time—hours, days, weeks whirled away into the spirals of history, lost in the flicker and dazzle of passing years, the contrail of flying centuries. He was aiming for one day, one hour—one moment among all the moments—narrowing his vision onto a pinpoint in eternity.
What he needed was to be totally focused…
The ages peeled away like onion skins, exposing the core. The beginning of it all. A child struggling into the world, daubed in blood and mucus, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open. He heard it cry—the first of all cries—saw tiny fists punching the air. He didn’t think a newborn baby could make a fist, but this one did. Otherwise, it was a baby like any other, round golden arms, scrunched-up face, a tuft of hair, its only power in its lungs and its hold on a mother’s heart. Hands placed the infant in her arms—he saw her profile as she gazed down at it, the faint, magical smile that curved her lips.
Very softly, she spoke its name.
So that’s it…
He let go of the moment, and the dream receded, crowded out by the busyness of the past. The world was lost in a maze of other worlds— stars flared and died, galaxies imploded, nebulae did whatever it is nebulae do. And then everything was gone into the dark.
When Nathan woke, he was lying on an altar of stone, looking up into his father’s face.
ANNIE NEVER made it past the rim. A ring of pale flame shot skyward with a noise like the hiss of white-hot snakes, enclosing the ritual in a cocoon of fire. For the second time that evening, she was hurled backward—the Grandir, screened by a force field of intensive magic, noticed her no more than a gnat. Hazel reached her as she picked herself up, beating at the barrier as at an invisible wall.
“I can’t get through!” she screamed, the snake-hiss of the flames almost drowning out her voice.
“Look,” Hazel said. “Look …”
She had seen it before, in the smoke-pictures, only this time it was far clearer. The Grandir moved his hand, and a hunk of rock shouldered its way out of the ground. It was roughly oval, flat and smooth on top, shaped in the remote past with primitive tools for a purpose long defunct. Another gesture and the huddle at the Grandir’s feet floated upward, coming to rest on the flat of the stone, its limbs uncurling until it lay at full stretch. It was Nathan; she could see him plainly now in the glare of the magic. His eyes were closed but he appeared to be unhurt. The Grandir leaned over him, touching his face very gently, as if it was something fragile and precious. Then he straightened up and resumed the incantation.
They couldn’t hear the words, but they didn’t need to. Above them the clouds thickened, swirled into a bubbling brew like celestial porridge, spiraling inward toward a focal point directly overhead—a hole in the sky where the moon’s husk drifted in a strange watery shimmer. They saw liquid moonlight fall to earth as tears—or maybe it was rain, a few thin shafts, glitter-bright, streaming down from the witch’s brew of cloud. And all around the hill the mist was rising, fraying into wisps that danced away on their own. Shapes formed or half formed, diffusing into other shapes before you could be sure of them—filmy wings and pointy faces, bodies insect-thin, fingers long as claws. And here and there were gyrating fragments of skeletons, spun from air and vapor, things with cloven hooves and goaty horns, goblin feet and gargoyle masks. Spectral lights gleamed and vanished, held in unseen hands. Hazel peered behind her from time to time but never saw anything clearly; Annie seemed oblivious to everything outside the circle. The phantom horde wound its way around the hilltop, and the not-quite-birdcalls became the skirl of distant pipes, and there was a soft drumming like raindrops or dancing feet.
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 h
owl 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 …”
The Poisoned Crown Page 40