The Immortal Crown

by Kieth Merrill

  Meesha swallowed the lump in her throat and recited the terse homily, memorized and well-rehearsed in case she and her band of kitchen maids were caught by the keepers of the prison or worse, a kings­rider. “I am Meesha, daughter of Tolak, the master of Stókenhold Fortress and most gracious host of travelers on the King’s Road. We are come to insure the comfort of our guests.” She remembered it perfectly and spoke with confidence. “With whom do I converse, good sir?” She lifted the lantern to light the face of the man who could jeopardize her ambition and maybe her life. She stopped breathing.

  “M’lady Meesha?” Shadows fled as the man stepped closer to the light. “I did not recognize you . . .” He slipped the sword into his belt with some chagrin.

  “Horsemaster Raahud!” she gasped, recognizing him at once. He was among the men of the royal entourage who sat at Tolak’s table. One of the men who’d been sent to the chambers with an empty belly . . . and he looked very hungry. She swallowed hard. Was it his growling stomach she heard and not the croaking of the night frogs?

  “Did you not find the bed to your liking?” She regretted the trifling question as soon as the words left her tongue.

  “I prefer the company of horsemen to princelings,” he said. “I was honored by the invitation of Prince Kadesh-Cor to share the feast with him and his royal companions, but . . .” His serious expression broke into a broad grin and he laughed. “It would seem a sour potato with the likes of us is better than the empty pewter of the prince.”

  Meesha exhaled with a chortling sigh. “The men of your expedition have eaten?”

  “Very little and poorly.”

  Meesha waved one of the girls forward and lifted the loosely woven cotton from the platter of roasted goose baked with onions, garlic, and herbs. “Better a leg of a goose than a sour potato or empty pewter. There is enough for all, but eating the prince’s feast without him must be kept a secret.”

  “My wranglers first, if you please,” he said, and Meesha liked him more than she ever could her royal half brother or the spoiled Sargon.

  A fire was built for heat and light in the open yard of the stables. Raahud roused his wranglers and bid them spread the word. Before the fire was fully ablaze, all but a few had gathered. Drovers, teamsters, coachmen, gillies, cooks, servants of the camp, and reinsman of the chariots.

  All but one, Meesha noticed.

  The men rubbed sleep from their bleary, unbelieving eyes as the girls served the sumptuous feast. Only a few men seemed to notice Meesha’s face, or perhaps it was not so easily seen by the light of fire. Flagons of wine were passed about and quickly drained. Meesha kept one aside. She crossed to where Raahud had settled with the horsemen. “Where are the kings­riders?” she asked.

  “Looking after the wagons and coaches in the upper court.” He nodded toward a ramp of cobblestones that swept upward at the far end of the stable. “And watching out for the girls, I suspect,” he added.

  The girls? Meesha flinched, and, seeing her reaction, Raahud offered a rueful shrug of regret that it had slipped from his tongue.

  “Hmm, ‘companions’ of the prince.”

  Meesha had heard rumors of such arrangements in the taverns and from the chatter of blushing village girls. “Were they given something to eat?” she asked. He didn’t know. Meesha waved Selmaas to her. “There are others in the upper court,” she said. “Gather what remains and prepare a platter for them. We will go to them.”

  “The kings­riders will not likely keep your secret,” Raahud warned.

  “Perhaps, but they travel the King’s Road and shall have my father’s hospitality.”

  “Even if he doesn’t know,” Selmaas added.

  “Why are there none like you and your father at Blackthorn?” Raahud asked with a smile.

  Meesha wondered if it was possible Raahud did not know her family’s history. “Oh, and I meant to ask,” she said with nonchalance. “The reinsman in the last of the chariots? I have not seen him here.”

  Raahud bit into the knuckle of a leg bone, sucked the marrow, and raised his eyebrows.

  “I was high on the wall, a good distance away, but it looked as if . . .” She unconsciously put her hand around her throat as if it were an iron collar. “As if he wore . . .”

  “The collar of a slave.” Raahud nodded. “And you wonder why we’ve a slave who drives a royal chariot?”

  Meesha nodded and hoped her blush was hidden by the darkness.

  “There’s only one, but he is the best. He drives by my request, to the great displeasure of Princeling Sargon I might add,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  She smiled at him.

  Raahud put an onion in his mouth and laughed as he licked his fingers. “The driver is also above.” His wry smile let Meesha know he suspected her thoughts. “They demanded I keep him with the chariots rather than with the men.”

  Meesha nodded a quick thanks and slung the flagon of wine over her shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll be hungry,” she said.

  “He will.” Raahud smiled.

  Meesha motioned to Selmaas to follow her with her kitchen maids and the food.

  “His name is Qhuin,” Raahud called after her. “A’quilum Ereon Qhuin.” The way he said it gave the otherwise lowly title a tenor of dignity. When Meesha turned back to look at him, he shrugged as if he had said nothing, but his smile betrayed his affection for the slave who drove a chariot.

  The upper court was a clutter of unhitched wagons and coaches arranged in no particular order. The chariots were parked in a row along the low wall that opened to the fjord below. There were two kings­riders on night guard. Both asleep, or drunk, perhaps.

  The ripe plum paint of the common coach was the color of a dried prune by the light of the lantern. The reflection of the flame danced across the burnished brass trim. The curtains remained closed. Meesha could see the richness of the fabric and floral patterns of gold brocade as she drew near. She knocked on the door. The coach shivered as someone stirred within. She knocked again. Delicate fingers moved the curtain aside.

  The girl who opened the door was younger than Meesha. She blinked sleep from her eyes and squinted at the strangers. She was confused and frightened.

  “I pray, forgive our intrusion,” Meesha said kindly. “We’ve brought you food and something to drink, if you desire it.”

  “Oh,” the girl gasped and touched her fingers to her full lips still smudged with a reddish stain. Her eyes darted to the dark side of Meesha’s face, but only for a heartbeat. “Oh, yes, yes, you are most kind.” Her hair was a tousle of honey-colored curls. “Effy, Effy, wake up,” she said to someone else in the carriage and pushed the door open all the way. “They’ve brought us something to eat.”

  The other girl was older and not quite so pretty. She gathered herself from the velvet plush of the seat and let her woolen blanket slide away. She put both hands across her stomach. “May you be blessed by the spirits above and below,” she said in a hoarse whisper as the kitchen maids gave them half a goose in a basket filled with bread, cheese, fruit, and utensils.

  The girl reached into the basket. “Ouch!”

  Meesha turned.

  The younger girl had cut her hand on the knife in the basket and her blood spilled in a rush. She gripped the wound and started to cry.

  Meesha tugged a handkerchief from her pocket and reached for the girl’s bleeding hand. “Here! Give me your hand.”

  “No, no, m’lady, you mustn’t,” the girl said in tears. “It will soil your beautiful handkerchief.”

  “It will wash,” she smiled and wrapped the girl’s hand tightly to stop the bleeding. The delicate handkerchief had been a gift from her governess to celebrate her eighteenth day of blessing. It was silk and fine linen, embroidered with tiny symbols in a swirl of graceful lines: She Who Lives—the meaning of her name in the ancient language.

&n
bsp; “Thank you, m’lady, but how shall I ever return it?”

  “No need.” Meesha smiled. “Keep it.”

  “Perhaps someday I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again.”

  “Perhaps.” She leaned forward and embraced the girl with genuine affection. Drawing back, she asked, “Where are the kings­riders?”

  “There, through the portal,” the girl said.

  Meesha slung the flagon of wine across Selmaas’s shoulder. “Give the rest to the kings­riders,” she said.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Begin with the wine and perhaps they will keep our secret,” Meesha said.

  Selmaas took the lantern from Meesha and hurried for the portal on the far side of the court. The kitchen girls followed.

  Meesha gathered a small basket of leftovers for herself. There was one man yet to feed, if only she could find him.

  CHAPTER 36

  The chariot rode above the billowing dust like a bird with giant wings floating on the wind with wheels carving graceful lines in the clouds with nine white horses running side by side in teams of three and flying with the rippling of reins and cords of light glimmering across their flanks igniting an explosion of white and a whirling wind with flowing hair surrounding the face of a woman calling to him in a voice singing with the exaltation larks, Master Qhuin?

  “Master Qhuin?”

  Qhuin erupted from his dream and bounded to his feet. The chain attached to the shackle on his ankle dragged over the iron edge of the footboard. The piercing clatter of it fractured the night. Drowsiness fled in the rush of adrenaline that prepared him to run or fight. His fingers flew to the leather pouch next to his hip, checking to make sure his precious treasure had not been stolen while he was dreaming.

  The woman standing before him stumbled back at his violent reaction. She clasped a hand across her chest and tried to regain her composure. “Pray, pardon me for awakening you in such a manner,” she said.

  Qhuin had been curled up on a deerskin hide on the footboard of the chariot. The hide was poorly tanned and brittle in spots but softer than the flat stones of the court. The loosely woven afghan that covered him fell away when he jumped up. It was old and frayed around the edges.

  “Pray, pardon,” she said again, “but I have brought you food. My father is lord of Stókenhold Fortress. The others of the company have been fed. We had only a little left.” She offered him a basket. “It’s for you,” she said.

  Meesha studied Qhuin as he considered the basket of food. He stood rigid against the chariot, his eyes curious, if not suspicious. He was tall and, given the added height of the footboard, towered above her. When she looked up at him, he averted his eyes, but then slowly raised them until they rested on her face.

  My face! She felt an unexpected heartache. She had come to Qhuin thinking only of the strange connection she’d felt when she had seen him from the wall.

  When Qhuin didn’t look away, she smothered the ache in her heart as she always did. Even a slave cannot stay his curious eyes from the blemish of my face.

  She suffered the thought but returned his gaze with a confidence she did not completely feel. She was suddenly aware how striking Qhuin’s appearance was. His features were chiseled by the shadows of the stark light falling on his face. His eyes were dark beneath strong brows, and hard shadows defined his cheekbones, his nose, and the full lips of his wide mouth.

  He studied her face too, but not with the morbid curiosity she had experienced so often. He looked at her as if he was seeing something hidden in her very soul.

  Qhuin knew he should not hold the gaze of a woman of noble blood, but he could not pull his eyes away. With the moon behind her, she was a silhouette, rimmed in a halo of honey-gold where the soft light kissed her hair. It was not the wine-red stain on her face he saw, it was the deep pools of her eyes that glistened as if with a spark of starlight. There was a tinge of her scent in the damp night air. It was not the sickening sweetness of the perfumes worn by the ladies of Blackthorn but a fresh and subtle fragrance like a flower in the morning dew or a meadow after the rain. He flushed and wondered who she was, feeling shy that she had come.

  He offered an awkward smile but held his gaze.

  Meesha flushed and looked away when he smiled at her. Her eyes darted to the shackle around his ankle and the iron collar hanging from the cowling. At least they were kind enough to grant him slumber without the collar, she thought, and in the same instant, The lessening of abuse is better than not, but hardly a kindness.

  “How do you know my name?” Qhuin asked.

  “The horsemaster told me where to find you.”

  “Raahud knows you are here?”

  “He does.”

  Qhuin looked toward the lower court as if his eyes could see through stone. He stepped from the footboard and accepted the basket. “Thank you, m’lady.” He nodded graciously but made no move to eat.

  “Are you not hungry?”

  Qhuin nodded.

  “Well, eat. Go on.”

  Qhuin picked up a dark red fruit and examined it with curiosity.

  “It’s a pomegranate. Have you never eaten one?” By his expression she knew the answer immediately. “It’s the fruit of the gods, I’m rather sure of it.” She smiled and took it from him. She sliced open the leathery skin using the sharp edge of the shackle.

  He smiled as he watched.

  She peeled the pomegranate open, lifted a cluster of seeds, and handed it back to him. He put half a dozen seeds in his mouth, puckering slightly at the tart sweetness. She laughed gently at his expression, and he rewarded her with a broad, embarrassed smile.

  Meesha knew she should return to the manse before she was discovered, but asked instead, “Wouldn’t you rather sit down to eat?”

  “Only after you, m’lady—if you wish to stay,” Qhuin said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, of course.” Meesha sat on the wall with her back to the fjord. There was a perpetual breeze blowing inland from the sea—sometimes with a raging fury, sometimes gentle as the fluttering of fairies’ wings. Like tonight. The wind swirled Meesha’s hair softly across the dark side of her face. She made no effort to brush it aside.

  Qhuin sat on the footboard with the basket and continued his feast.

  Meesha watched in silence, taking pleasure in the way he savored each morsel whether the red pomegranate seeds, the soft bread with hard crust, the dark cheese, or the succulent flesh and crisped skin of roasted goose. He ate with his fingers as was the custom, but with a refined manner she had not expected from a slave.

  She inhaled the cool damp air and listened for the whispering of the wind. She knew the stillness of the night was never an empty silence but a melodic symphony of tiny creatures chirping, calling, crying, and croaking. In the midst of the music of the night, the mournful hooting of an owl came from the darkness somewhere above.

  Meesha wondered why she felt such calm. Because he is a slave to the prince, and I am slave to my face. It was a curious thought. She felt the heat of her face and wondered why he hadn’t seemed to notice it at all.

  Laughter floated through the portal on the far side of the court. Kitchen maids and kings­riders, she smiled to herself. Blessed wine.

  “I regret I had no wine to bring,” she said.

  “I am beholden tenfold for your generosity and kindness.”

  “It is the way of the King’s Road.”

  “Indeed, m’lady, but . . .” Qhuin lifted the chain, then let it slide through his fingers and rattle to the ground. “A slave is without privilege on the King’s Road, and yet you have shown me such kindness.”

  The nighttime symphony suddenly faded with nothing remaining but the hush of the wind. Meesha’s eyes followed the tumbling chain, and the nonsensical verse of her childhood bounced into her head.

  With fingers crossed And eyes sh
ut tight I ask the fairies of the night To hear my wish And come to stay And make my wish come true today

  The fairies of the night had never come to take away the wine-red stain of her face, so it was unlikely they would hear her wish and cut these chains and set him free.

  “Why does the daughter of the lord of Stókenhold Fortress treat a slave with such kindness?” Qhuin’s question brought her back from her private thoughts.

  “To me you are not a slave.” Even as she said it, she realized it was more than a patronizing token of conversation. “Prince Kadesh-Cor or my vulgar nephew might only see the chain, but Master Raahud told me who you really are. You are not just like any other man, but the best of them, he said.”

  Qhuin wrinkled his forehead and lifted his chin to the sky. The shadows fled from his face. His azure eyes were luminous in the cold blue light of the moon.

  Meesha took a short breath. Raahud was right. He was not like any other man.

  “There are no slaves at Stókenhold Fortress,” she explained. Only as thinking makes it so. It made such sense. It made no sense. “My father does not believe a man should be privileged or condemned by birth or blood but by his deeds.”

  “Who is your father?”

  “He is Tolak.”

  “Of what house?”

  Meesha was reluctant to declare her father’s blood and kinship to the king, but she could not withstand the urgency in Qhuin’s voice. “Of House Kublan,” she said, “but he claims no royal blood and no privilege.”

  “You are the granddaughter of the king.”

  Meesha tightened her jaw and waited for a chasm of contempt to open wide between them.

  Qhuin stood slowly and pushed his fingers through his thick hair. “Your father is Tolak?” He spoke the name with intensity. “Tolak, Baron Magnus of Blackthorn and prince of the North?”