THE COVENANT OF THE CROWN

by Howard Weinstein

  When the young Kinarri reached a narrowing of the trail with a stone arch across the path, they stopped, and Shirn stepped to the front. He exchanged a few words with his nephews and took the lead himself. They passed through the arch, which Spock stopped to examine briefly as McCoy looked over his shoulder.

  “Fascinating. This is not manmade.”

  “It looks almost like a doorway.”

  And indeed it was, for the trail, which had risen only gently for the last hour, suddenly turned steeply upward. What had been a hike became a genuine climb, and McCoy grunted as he tried to keep up. Safety ropes had been looped around everyone’s waist, and Spock helped the doctor in a number of places where finger- and toe-holds were next to nonexistent.

  Finally, they reached a flat overlook, and Shirn signaled a halt. Thankfully, McCoy flopped to the ground and doubled himself over, trying to catch his breath.

  “From here,” said Shirn, “I must take Kailyn alone.”

  “Wait a minute,” McCoy wheezed. A coughing fit enveloped him, and Spock leaned over to offer a steadying hand.

  “Why are we not able to accompany Kailyn?” Spock asked.

  “Because that is what her father requested.”

  “But we came all this way—” McCoy began.

  Kailyn cut him off. “This is our way. My father told me I’d have you with me until the last moments. It’s something I have to do on my own.” While she spoke, she avoided McCoys eyes.

  He watched helplessly as the safety ropes were detached. Kailyn and Shirn remained linked, and they climbed a steep precipice, disappearing over the top. McCoy staggered to his feet and Poder placed a powerful hand on his arm. To help me or stop me? McCoy wondered.

  Spock came over to relieve the young guide and eased McCoy down on a flat boulder.

  “We just can’t let her go like that, Spock.”

  “We have very little choice.”

  “Never mind that she needs our support. It’s got to be dangerous. Shirn’s not exactly a spring chicken. What if something happens to him, or to her? I—”

  “I know you are worried, Doctor. I, too, am concerned. Logically, this is not the best method.”

  McCoy looked searchingly at the Vulcan. Of course, the face revealed nothing; but McCoy believed what he sensed—a texture in the voice he’d only rarely heard, a real warmth. He wanted to thank Spock—but there was nothing worse than an embarrassed Vulcan, so he kept quiet.

  This was no easy trail. Kailyn wondered if humanoid footprints had been made here since the Crown was hidden all those years ago. Her fingers and toes ached from gripping cracks and ledges that seemed too small and weak to hold the weight of a person.

  “Don’t look down,” Shirn warned, from above her.

  “Should I look up?”

  “Only as far as my feet. I’ll worry about what’s ahead.”

  “But I—”

  Her words were swallowed in a breathless scream as the outcropping under her feet broke away with a sickening crack. Pebbles clattered down the cliff face and Kailyn dangled by the safety rope. The scream stopped as soon as she gulped a mouthful of cold air, and Shirn calmed her quickly.

  “I’ve got you. Don’t struggle. Be still, Kailyn.”

  She felt the rope tighten around her middle. It squeezed tight enough to cause pain, but she remained quiet.

  “Reach up with your hands, child. Don’t try to pull—just steady yourself. Press gently on that sharp rock. That’s the one.”

  Without extra motion, she did as she was told. The sharp rock was solid.

  “All right. Now, put your foot in that crevice.”

  The foot obeyed, as if by itself. The left foot followed. The rope made her feel secure now, and a moment later, she leaned close to Shirn at the top of what she now realized was a sheer stone face at the very peak of the mountain. And suddenly, the land around them was nearly flat.

  Virgin snow carpeted this eerie white world above the clouds. Harsh sunlight flooded straight down, and it was hard to judge distances. She gave her hand to Shirn, and the old man seemed to walk aimlessly. Tagging along like a lost child, Kailyn glanced all around the alien landscape. The rest of this planet had been rugged and dangerous, but not totally unlike Orand or Shad. But the mountaintop was blank, featureless, as if the creators of this world had run out of things to put here. Perhaps they suspected no one would ever come to a place so high and desolate. Or had it been intentional, a respite from the turmoil of nature’s children—the wind and rain, the land, the water, the people and animals all jealously fighting for predominance.

  But on this summit, there was no sound, no voice, no fang or spear, no footfall save those of Shirn and herself. There was only light, the purest force, the beginning of Creation . . .

  . . . And Iyan, God among Gods, lit the stars, one by one, the Book of Shad recorded. And when they were lit, Iyan was happy. For now in the light of glory, He could make the places and the creatures that would live among them. “I have made the light, given unto the stars. They will burn and die, but in living will create new stars. When one dies, I will light another, and never again will there be darkness unto the Universe.” Iyan saw the light and it was good . . .

  Light, thought Kailyn, recalling the legend of the holy book

  “We’re here,” said Shirn.

  Kailyn blinked, realizing where she was. Before them was a hump of snow-covered rock, with an opening that angled underground.

  “Are you ready?”

  Kailyn nodded, and Shirn entered first. She lifted her eyes and gazed at the sun for a last look. Even stars died, but while they lived, they gave life. While Kailyn lived, what would she give to the universe, to her world, her people? It was time to find out.

  The tunnel wound into the great mountain. Shirn lit the way with one of the lanterns salvaged from the Galileo.

  “It’s warm in here,” Kailyn said after a few minutes. “Not what I expected being inside a mountain like this.”

  “This is a volcano—but don’t worry. It hasn’t erupted in recorded history. Perhaps it will someday. For now, it just produces heat and hot springs.”

  A bead of perspiration coursed down Kailyn’s brow, and they took their parkas off.

  “How far have we gone?” she asked.

  “Not very. It seems longer because of the darkness.”

  A moment later, they came to the tunnel’s end—a dome-shaped grotto with moisture dripping from the ceiling and a carpet of moss covering the floor and creeping up the walls. Shirn rested the electro-lantern on a large rock and went directly to a nook in the wall. He withdrew something wrapped in a shimmering metallic cloth and brought it over to Kailyn. She looked at him questioningly.

  “Open it, Kailyn.”

  Mesmerized, she carefully spread the corners of the wrapping and beheld the Crown of Shad.

  It was not spectacularly jewel-encrusted or garish. In its simplicity, it was a classic work of art, and would have been even if it were not a sacred Crown. A simple silver headband, still shiny after all these years waiting at the top of the mountain. It had four crests, one on each side, signifying the four directions and the four gods of Shaddan lore. At the base of the front crest, symbolic of Iyan, God among Gods, were the two crystals of the Covenant. Five hundreds years of order, peace, and prosperity had rested on the meaning and belief behind those crystals, as the future did now.

  The crystals were multifaceted, and each polished surface was pentagonal. Though they were only an inch or so in diameter, the depth of the foggy interiors seemed great, as if each was a window upon some unnamed elsewhere and otherwhen. Kailyn tipped the Crown and the fog swirled, like the snowy confetti inside a liquid-filled children’s toy. The fog roiled within the crystals, a smoky mixture of browns and grays.

  Kailyn seemed paralyzed, as she stared at the silvery object in her small hands. Everything that had transpired since the departure from Orand raced through her mind, a jumble of events unfolding and meshing together
like the shapes in a kaleidoscope. Somehow, the pieces fit, through sweep and drift, to finally lead her to this spot and moment.

  “Say your prayer, and put on the Crown, my child.”

  Kailyn nodded obediently. Then she knelt on the soft green moss and faced—which direction? She’d lost track and she blushed.

  “Which way is south?” she asked, for south was where the sun of Shad rose, and the direction of Iyan.

  Shirn smiled and turned her to face south. She murmured the prayer her father had taught her many years before, in preparation for this day.

  “I pray for guidance, that I may follow the path of the gods, and of my fathers and mothers, that I may be a true daughter of the Covenant, that I may lead our people always in light and never darkness. Thanks be to Iyan, and my father and mother.”

  Her lips were dry and her throat felt like cotton as she swallowed. Her heart began to pound and her hands trembled ever so slightly as they clutched the Crown at her breast. She wanted Shirn to tell her what to do, but the old herdsman had stepped back into the shadows behind her.

  Slowly, she lifted the Crown over her head, her melancholy eyes rising to follow it. Then she lowered it, closer and closer to her hair.

  “Dammit, Spock,” McCoy railed, “I knew we should’ve gone with them.”

  He had long since regained his strength and he paced round and round the overlook. The sun, which had been straight overhead when Kailyn and Shirn left for the last leg of the journey, was on the downhill slide toward its evening horizon. Spock sat impassively on the flat rock, while Frin and Poder alternately chatted quietly to each other and stared in boredom out over the adjacent mountains.

  “Doctor, we had no choice in the matter. Meanwhile, you have been walking so continuously up here that you will be too exhausted to make the descent.”

  “Oh I’ll make it all right. This is just training. God knows I’ve gotten more exercise on this trip than I’ve had in the last twenty years of my life. But that’s not going to get my mind off how mad I am. If I hadn’t been at death’s door when Shirn took her away, I’d have fought those young bucks myself if I had to—”

  Spock abruptly swiveled and looked past McCoy, but the doctor was too busy to notice. He continued berating himself, Shirn, Spock, and the young guides for the whole situation.

  “Doctor . . .” said the first officer emphatically.

  McCoy finally looked at the Vulcan, then spun around to see Kailyn and Shirn climbing back down the last rocks. He rushed over to greet them, to hug Kailyn—but he stopped short and his ear-to-ear grin faded when the Crown Princess reached bottom. Her face was blank, her eyes red-rimmed. He hadn’t seen her like that since her father’s medical crisis back aboard the Enterprise. Not even his rejection of her love had drained her so thoroughly. He felt chilled, far more than the weather warranted.

  “What happened?”

  Kailyn looked up at him. New tears filled her eyes. “I failed.” She threw herself against McCoy and cried into the soft fur of his parka.

  The doctor kept his face close alongside hers. He didn’t want anyone to see that he was crying, too.

  Chapter Twenty

  Spock and Shirn huddled at the edge of the overlook, and it was clear that the old chieftain was deeply distraught; but at the same time, he was adamant—the Crown of Shad would not be going down the mountain with them.

  “I am sorrier than you can ever know, Mr. Spock. I wanted her to succeed, as if she were my own child. But the Power seems beyond her.”

  “Seems?”

  “She was able to clear the crystals slightly, but not completely. I gave her three chances—that’s why we were gone so long. I tried to calm her, allay her fears as best I could . . .”

  “I am sure you did, but her failure does not then appear to be a conclusive one.”

  “There is no room for degree in this,” Shirn stated sadly. “I swore to King Stevvin eighteen years ago that I would uphold his law.”

  The trip back down to the herders’ plateau was much easier than the ascent, and it was made in a hurry before night could settle and bring out the prowling zanigrets. But it seemed twice as long to McCoy, in his funereal mood. He’d wanted to walk with Kailyn, but she’d asked to be left alone, an outcast—so he followed a few steps behind.

  Once they reached the caves, he overruled her protests and ordered her to rest—with a sedative to back him up. He and Spock left her in seclusion and repaired to the scroll room.

  “It was all my fault,” McCoy said, is face buried in his hands. He sat crumpled on a corner rug, all elbows and knees, like a broken marionette haphazardly discarded by an uncaring puppeteer. “I’m the worst thing that ever happened to that girl, Spock. I should be courtmartialed for interfering with the mission.”

  “Doctor, you are being unnecessarily punitive in your self-appraisal.”

  “Dammit, call a spade a spade,” McCoy said harshly. “I was sent along to help, to care for Kailyn’s choriocytosis—”

  “Which you did admirably. Or have you forgotten that you saved her life once.”

  “Saved it for what? So I could mess up her psyche so much that she couldn’t handle the test of the Crown?”

  “We have no proof that she would have been able to perform any more effectively in any case. We all expressed doubts about her maturity and motivation when we first met her and evaluated her.”

  “But I thought she’d gotten over all that.”

  “Perhaps it was only wishful thinking. You humans are prone to it,” Spock said gently.

  But McCoy was too deep in his own misery to even muster a smile. All he could do was shake his head. “I’m supposed to be a psychiatric specialist. I saw what was coming, and I didn’t do anything to stop it. I was warned. Christine saw it, Jim saw it, even you did—and I yelled at everybody to stay the hell out of my life, that I was a big boy and could take care of myself.”

  “The mind is not an exact device. It is susceptible to errors in action and perception—”

  “And I made every error in the book.” He closed his eyes. “All because I was feelin’ so damn sorry for myself, because I felt old. Well, everyone gets old. Why am I so pigheaded that I can’t deal with it?”

  “Kailyn was not in love with you because you felt, as you phrase it, old—she loved you because of what she saw in you.”

  “Yeah—a damned fool.”

  “No . . . a caring individual who took a deep interest in her, far beyond the needs of a military mission.”

  “And look at the price she paid because of me.”

  “Did she not also gain things of great value?”

  “Like what?”

  “The respect and affection of people who she had never before met . . . the ability to overcome great obstacles in striving toward a goal—”

  “Don’t you understand?” McCoy cried. “She didn’t reach that goal, all because of me. I destroyed not only a young girl’s life, but the future of a whole planet. Shad is doomed to more civil war because I had to satisfy my own stupid vanity. If that doesn’t deserve a court-martial, I don’t know what does. I want you to report that.”

  Spock fixed McCoy with piercing eyes, forcing the surgeon to look at him. “Star Fleet employs living beings, flesh-and-blood creatures with—”

  “All the weaknesses that flesh is heir to,” McCoy quoted bitterly.

  “Yes. Command expects the best possible performance from its officers—no more, no less. As far as my report is concerned, Doctor, that is what you contributed to this mission.”

  “Then if this is the best I can do, I don’t even deserve to be a doctor.”

  Spock was beginning to understand the human emotion of exasperation. McCoy was so bent on picturing himself as a despicable worm, there seemed no way to fish him from his pool of self-pity.

  “I had not decided whether to inform you of this, but since you seem determined to belittle yourself far out of proportion to your—”

  “Inform m
e of what?”

  “What Shirn told me on the mountaintop.”

  Finally, McCoy’s attention turned away from his self-directed character assassination.

  “What are you talking about, Spock?”

  “When Kailyn put the crown on, she did manage to clear the crystals slightly.”

  “She deserves that Crown,” McCoy hissed.

  Shirn sat on the steps of the main altar, trying to remain calm and steady.

  “She did not do what she had to do. Why should she be rewarded for that?”

  “Because this is not a normal situation! She’s not succeeding to the throne in an orderly way like her father did and the Kings and Queens before him.”

  “I know that, Dr. McCoy—”

  “Then why won’t you take into consideration?”

  “Because I can’t. This matter isn’t up to me.”

  “It is now. If you let her take the Crown, no one would ever know what happened up on that mountain.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Shirn thundered. “Listen to the foolish thing you’ve said. No one would know? She would know. What if I let her take the Crown and she went back to Shad? What if they asked her to demonstrate that she has the Power—when she doesn’t? Even worse, what if she became Queen and had neither the wisdom nor maturity to lead, nor whatever mystical aid the Power can offer? Think about these thing before you ask me to break an oath to Kailyn’s father, an oath I swore on this very altar, before his gods and mine.”

  The Kinarri chieftain was seething, and McCoy knew he had pushed him too far—but it was also too far to apologize. Not now. He turned and left the main cave as quickly as he could, the clicking of his boots on the rocky floor the only sound. It echoed off the ceiling and walls and lingered after McCoy was gone.

  The hours crawled by. It would be another day before the Enterprise might—might—reach Sigma 1212. Meanwhile, another sleepless night lay ahead. That McCoy could not face. For now, he seemed to be running out of refuge. Kailyn was still sleeping in the smaller chamber, and Shirn was not likely to desire his company after their confrontation at the altar. Frankly, McCoy didn’t want his own company. The only companion he hadn’t alienated—lately—was Spock.