The Hidden Coronet #3

by Catherine Fisher

  “They did. I’m always happy to let them in. Though they have strange ideas.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Since they brought me.”

  “One day, six hours, twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Flainsteeth,” Carys hissed. But it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought.

  The palace laughed. “Left here. Watch the whirlpool.”

  Dark water gurgled down a channel deep in the floor. Carys sidled past it. “Did the Makers live here?”

  “Not as such. It was their pleasure palace. Mostly they were based in Tasceron, though Kest . . . Well, never mind Kest. How is the dear old city?”

  “Black,” Carys said grimly. “Haunted. Soaked in eternal darkness. No one goes there.”

  There was silence. When the palace spoke again its voice was oddly subdued. “The Sekoi told me that. I had hoped it was one of their tales.”

  “Well, it’s not. Where now?”

  “This way.” Hurriedly, lights rippled on. Doors slid back. Carys saw a series of rooms opening in front of her.

  “Your Maker-power,” she asked, curious. “Is it running out?”

  Above her something sparked. One of the lights snapped off. “No,” the voice said tightly.

  “But you don’t want to waste it, do you?” Carys looked up. “If it did all go, would you die?”

  The voice laughed, mirthless. “There you go again.” For a moment she thought it sounded terrified. “I really couldn’t say. And Flain told me they’d be back; he insisted they’d be back, so that’s all right, isn’t it? Don’t you think?”

  “They told us that too,” Carys said, wanting to comfort it.

  “They did?” The relief was clear. “Well, there you are then.”

  She walked through the rooms. “Listen. Do you know anything about a relic called Flain’s Coronet?”

  “A relic.” The voice sounded annoyed. “Now there’s a term I detest. Redolent of death, something left over. Left behind. I suppose you consider me to be a relic too?”

  “I suppose so.” Carys grinned, wondering what Galen would say. “But what about the Coronet?

  “Flain wore it. Only when he needed to. It’s a highly sophisticated neural integrator.”

  “A what?” Carys demanded.

  The voice sounded superior. “Obviously it’s a waste of time my explaining. It was used for a number of operations. May I ask why you want to know?”

  “We’re looking for it.”

  “Ah. Because of Agramon.”

  Carys stopped again. She looked around at the wavepainted walls. “You know about that?”

  “I have certain viewpoints to the outside. Agramon is out of alignment. The Coronet is the only solution, if it still exists. Someone will need to put it on and enter the awen-field, but I don’t think it should be you. You don’t strike me as having the necessary—”

  “Save it,” Carys snapped. “It won’t be me.”

  A door slid open.

  To her astonishment she saw the beach, the smooth sand with the waves beating on it. It was late afternoon, and raining torrents.

  “This what you wanted?” the voice asked, smug.

  “Yes,” Carys turned hastily, trying to think what else to ask. “The Sekoi. How much do you know about them?”

  “Not a great deal. They keep their little secrets. Though one of them once drank too much and blurted out all about the Great Hoard.” The voice was scathing. “All that gold! It will do them no good at all. Do they really believe that Flain would . . .” It stopped.

  “What?” Carys asked eagerly.

  There was silence. Then the voice said testily, “It’s so crazy I’d love to tell you. But I can’t. Promised them I’d never mention it. As if there’s ever anyone to mention it to! Well, good luck then.”

  “Yes,” Carys said hurriedly, “but wait . . .”

  “Pity about Tasceron,” the palace muttered. “Perhaps I’d better run a full systems check.”

  “Wait! I want to ask you . . .”

  “Another time. Have to keep the power down.”

  And the door in the rock snicked shut.

  21

  Flain wears the moons as a crown

  And the stars for a coat.

  In a dream once, I saw him frown.

  He said, “You have betrayed me, poet.”

  Poems of Anjar Kar

  RAFFI ROLLED OVER AND YAWNED.

  The fire had burned low. Galen was leaning against the observatory wall, wrapped in his dark coat, gazing up at the sky. For a while Raffi lay still watching him. The keeper looked worn, as they all did. He rarely slept enough, and the horror of the Vortex had scarred him; Raffi felt it deeply in this moment of quiet, the terrible anger, the shame of having to leave those who needed him. All the power of the Crow seemed to have rolled up small and gone away; in the shadows of the evening Galen seemed as withdrawn as when the relic explosion had devastated him, over a year ago now.

  “Something’s wrong,” the keeper muttered. He didn’t look over.

  Raffi sat up, alarmed. “What?”

  “I don’t know.” Galen didn’t move. “They know about us. And I can feel, sometimes, something wrong. Among us. A shadow among us. Then it’s gone.” He glanced over. “Have you felt this?”

  Raffi nodded, thinking uneasily of Marco.

  “I thought so.” Galen looked back at the sky.

  “Perhaps it’s the weather . . .”

  “They know about us.” Galen stared through the gloomy plantation of firs. “Say nothing to the others. Here she is, at last.”

  Behind the dark branches Agramon was rising. The moon was always the largest, a smooth featureless disc tonight, but it should have been visible an hour ago. Galen climbed stiffly to his feet.

  “Let’s go up. Wake Solon.”

  They had slept all afternoon, but it wasn’t enough. Solon groaned and rolled over, rubbing his stubbly chin. His pale eyes looked wan but he managed a smile. “Already?”

  Raffi nodded and moved to Marco, but Galen said, “No. We don’t need him.”

  He had opened the great wooden door. From inside, the smell of damp oozed out.

  They climbed the stairs without a light, readying their eyes for the dark. As the tight turns made his legs ache Raffi wondered what material the Makers used that could keep this place intact after so long. The vortex had missed it, but earlier another storm had raged here. They would be lucky if the sky stayed clear.

  The tower was empty. Sense-lines told him that. Animals had been here, but no people, not for years. There was a faint stir of something that might have been a Sekoi-trace, but though he groped after it with all his skill Raffi couldn’t catch it and gave up.

  At the top Galen stopped, one hand on the wall, head down, silent with the pain of his leg. Far behind, Solon toiled up patiently.

  The room they wanted was the first one. Pushing the door open, Galen limped in.

  It was made of glass.

  A glass cube in the sky, and the windows looked so thick, Raffi thought, reaching up to touch one. Instantly he jumped back.

  “Carys! I saw her!”

  She had been reflected, where his own shape should have been. “Reaching up, just like that!”

  Solon had come through the door and was staring around. Galen frowned. “She may be thinking of us.”

  “This is intriguing!” the Archkeeper said, turning. “But Galen, there are no relics here! In fact, there’s nothing here at all.”

  His disappointment chilled them, and he was right. The room seemed stripped bare. In the cold moonlight it looked abandoned. Agramon shone through the glass, throwing its light on Galen’s face. He turned to look at it.

  “We weren’t sent here for nothing,” he growled. He put both hands on the window.

  Instantly, to their shock, it transformed. Something in the glass seemed to ripple; the image of Agramon shot closer, as if it plunged toward them.

&n
bsp; Raffi gave a yell of terror; Galen snatched his hands back.

  An enormous moon hung before them.

  Then Galen laughed sourly. “I see.”

  “Has it fallen?”

  “No, it hasn’t, boy, and if you can’t say anything sensible don’t bother. It just looks closer. Like our tube, this glass has that property.”

  Solon winked at Raffi. “That’s a relief. I wonder if I look as white as you.”

  Galen touched the glass again. He was concentrating, and Raffi knew he had linked his mind with the relic and was learning its ways, the image of the moon slowly receding to a pinprick, and then looming again, growing until it filled the window and he and Solon stood transfixed in fear and wonder.

  It seemed so close!

  Now Galen narrowed down the focus, and they seemed to be barely above the surface, traveling over it, seeing the stark smoothness of the globe, without hills or valleys or features, dry and dazzling with reflected light.

  “It’s not real!” Solon breathed.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see,” the Archkeeper said in excitement. “The moon is not a natural thing! The Makers created it from their material; it is artificial, Raffi!”

  Amazed, they stared at it. Then Galen nodded. “The Sekoi have tales that say there were no moons before the Makers came. I’ve always scorned them, but maybe they were right. Maybe the Makers formed all the moons and put them in the sky for a reason.”

  The thought of such power chilled Raffi to the core. When Solon spoke again his voice too seemed smaller. “Incredible.”

  “To us. Not to Flain.”

  Solon came forward. He stood beside Galen and gazed up, the ghostly light silvering his hair and coat. “I feel strange things,” he said quietly. “As if there was a great field of power all around the world, finely adjusted, delicate as hoar-frost.”

  “The weather-net.” Galen’s hooked profile was dark against the moon. “And the movement of Agramon has disrupted it.”

  “Or the other way around.”

  “Look.” Raffi pointed between them.

  On the moon’s surface broken domes were coming into view, made of the same pale stuff as the land, bubbling out of it like boils. Beside one a vast antenna stood.

  The moon’s drift slowed. Galen held the image, and closed in.

  “The Coronet,” he hissed.

  “My son?” Solon glanced at him.

  “There! Look at that!”

  It was a pattern, marked out in great globes on the surface, some strange enormous sculpture. Seven globes, some small, some larger. Red and gold and pearl. Familiar.

  “Where have I seen that before?” Solon murmured.

  “It’s the Ring! The circle of the moons. At least we’ve always called it that, but maybe it had another name once, an older name.” Galen’s voice was tense with joy; Raffi felt it surge in him. Instantly the screen blacked, and then as the keeper spread his hands wide over it, it crackled into bewildering life; rows of figures rippled over it, hundreds of numbers that shot upward in columns. Diagrams flickered, patterns and formulae gone in seconds, as if Galen had broken into some deep file of knowledge and was racing recklessly through it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The Coronet!” Galen’s voice was choked; he jerked his hands back, but still the screen convulsed with symbols until one appeared that stayed and they all recognized it.

  The seven moons in the formation of the Ring.

  Galen turned, the power of the Crow rustling in his shadow. “That’s it. Kar says it in a poem somewhere. The moons are Flain’s Coronet.”

  He caught the Archkeeper’s arm. “Think of it! The moons control the weather, the tides, everything on Anara. It’s deep in them that the Makers’ power is concentrated! There may be a relic that links with them—that’s what we need to find—but the real Coronet is there in the sky. All the time, Solon, it’s been in front of our eyes!”

  Raffi swallowed, his mouth dry. Something snagged behind his eye. He blinked, but Solon was reaching for the screen in fascination.

  “You must be right. And think what else this machine might tell us, Galen. How far can we see with it? Out beyond the stars, maybe, even to the home of the Makers themselves!”

  Galen turned, impatient. “There’s no time for that! We need to find the crown Flain wore!”

  Solon stared at him. The older man’s face was lit with a strange hardness of longing; for a second he almost looked angry. Then he rubbed his scarred hands over his face. “You’re right. Forgive me. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted. I confess I . . .” He stopped. “There’s someone here.” He glanced at Raffi. “Isn’t there?”

  But Galen was already through the door. They ran after him, sensing the man in the other room, the door crashing open. Racing in, Raffi glimpsed Marco’s swift turn, his yell of fear as the keeper grabbed him, broken pieces of Maker-work falling from his hands.

  “Galen!”

  The keeper slammed him against the wall, eyes black with rage. “I should kill you now,” he snarled.

  Marco slew his head sideways. “But you won’t,” he gasped, trying to grin.

  “Since the beginning you’ve been an evil weight on us!”

  “Don’t blame me that you had to leave those people,” Marco spat. “Blame the Watch. Or shouldn’t the Crow be able to make it all better with one magic word?”

  Galen hissed. He hauled the man up and struck him hard in the face.

  Marco staggered, pulled back and whipped a long knife from his belt.

  “No!” Solon cried. “Stop this!”

  “Stay out of it, Holiness. It’s been coming a long time.”

  “Galen! I insist!”

  The keeper was silent, breathing hard. There was a terrible wrath in him; it churned like a black pain. Even though he knew Galen’s temper, Raffi was appalled at the depths of this; it was an abyss, like the dark between stars, like the pits of Maar.

  Marco crouched, his hand waving the knife. “You may have your own weapons, keeper, but that’s never stopped me. I’m waiting.”

  In the charged room no one moved.

  Then a cool voice spoke from the doorway. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. Galen, it’s not him you have to worry about.”

  Raffi whirled around.

  The Sekoi stood there, looking travel-worn.

  Galen didn’t move. “Isn’t it?” he said, his voice hard.

  “No, it isn’t. And we don’t have time to waste.” It walked right up to them, took the knife swiftly from Marco’s hand, and tossed it down.

  Confused, Raffi looked at the door. “Where’s Carys?”

  “Not here, small keeper. I’ve got things to tell you that you won’t like, Galen, but first we have to leave this place. At once. The Watch know we’re here.”

  Galen turned and looked at it. He seemed barely to understand, his eyes still black with anger. “How?” he asked.

  “Later. We need to go. I’ve sent messages on—they’ll be waiting for us.”

  “Who will?” Solon asked.

  The Sekoi scratched its fur, yellow eyes sly.

  “My people. At the Circling.”

  CARYS MOVED QUICKLY. A few miles inland she found a village and stole a horse, riding it relentlessly north all night. In the rain it was hard to tell direction; she used her old Watch lodestone and grinned as she thought of Jeltok’s boring lessons.

  For hours she pushed on, through mud and rutted tracks, climbing into the hills. The horse was a poor beast; by early the next morning it was too winded to do more than stagger, so she sold it heartlessly at a roadside farm for food and directions, then set off on foot, half running, in the Watch pursuit pace.

  The Sekoi had a day’s start, but it must have gone on foot. She had to catch up with it. Fury drove her, fury at herself and it. Of course the creature didn’t trust her. Why should it? Why should any of them, after all the tricks she’d pulled? And who had told the Watch
about Sarres? Because the Sekoi was right. That could finish them.

  Scrambling wearily through wind-blasted woods and flooded fields she brooded on that, their one safe place lost. It drove her on through exhaustion and mud and swarms of bloodflies and the aching stitch in her side. She had to find Raffi. She had to tell him it wasn’t her.

  At midday she limped past a cave, low on Mount Burna. A man came out of it and stared at her. She gripped the crossbow tight.

  He looked like a hermit, gray and starved, his hair clotted and uncut. A wildness about his eyes warned her. A string of small bones rattled around his neck.

  “Has a Sekoi passed this way?” she gasped. “Gray, striped?”

  The man clutched his ragged sleeves. He seemed witless, so she strode on toward the trees, but after a second his voice drifted after her, hoarse and strained.

  “There are none left, not anymore.”

  She turned, wary. “What?”

  “There are none anymore.”

  For a moment she looked at him. His skin was crusted with dirt. The bones chinked. From the cave a pregnant skeat wandered out, yelping.

  “None of what? Tell me what you mean.”

  He shook his head, his eyes filling. To her horror he clawed at his face with one hand, leaving long scratches of blood. “They’re gone,” he whispered. “All of them. All lost, all dead. There are none anymore.”

  Carys stood rigid.

  Then she turned and raced into the trees.

  All afternoon she climbed, not looking back, desperate to get the madness and despair out of her mind. By sundown she knew she had to be close, but the fog had come down, yellow and rancid-smelling. It closed around her, blurring the gloomy plantation of firs to complete darkness, so that all she could do was keep climbing, breathless and sore and ready to scream with frustration.

  Until she saw the light.

  Nebulous and vague, it hung above the treetops, fog wisping over it in drifts.

  It had to be the observatory.

  She struggled through sharp branches, tripped over humps and anthills, then slammed suddenly against something hard.

  A wall.

  Groping around, she found a great door ajar, and slid inside. Fog filled the damp stairwell; she raced up, hearing the murmuring of voices, an argument, a thump high above.