Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  —Selwyn Gheldron, The Second of Wheat, 894

  Neuvia looked out into the midnight forest. Another world, she thought, wistfully. If only it were true. And at last she fell asleep.

  Trevin’s dry quill paused over a fresh page of the Cirilinicon.

  In a jar of seawater before him the gyre devoured a fish.

  Trevin had begun the shorthand descriptions of his subject in Old Sarkish, each complex character specifying a certain category of color, shape, movement, senses, habits, and strength. He used the Scepter to measure each quality with Elwyn’s key to the properties of each facet on its bezel as it corresponded to Sarkish measures, which had been calculated, in many cases, using this very diamond ages ago.

  Over Neuvia’s wide desk he had unrolled the chart that Nil Ramesis had drawn for him.

  He surveyed the most treacherous reefs between the Dimrok and the port of Gwylor 200 miles away. He must work the figures backwards toward his desired goal. He must employ a myriad of levers at once in appropriate proportion. It would take at least three months to find the exact place and moment and words, and the perfect position of the moons and stars.

  Chapter 9

  The First Defense

  Eighty-seven days passed, and Trevin left the tower only three times to return to the tide pool to take some sort of measurements with the Cronus Star. He did not need to retrieve seawater for the gyre in person, because twice a day he hurled a jar from the window and it would return minutes later to the windowsill full of fresh seawater scooped from the bay.

  She watched him descend only four times during his seclusion. Each time he returned with sacks of food that followed him in train up the stairs from the larders beneath the tower. Every night he worked, always outlasting her as she fell asleep fearing for his troubled soul.

  During this time she developed a helpful routine with the denizens of the forest. She learned that in a peculiar way she could summon items she needed from the animals. After taking a hot shower in the bathroom of the treehouse, she had placed her last bar of soap on the windowsill. Two days later a new cake of nearly the same kind appeared beside it.

  So now she set out a sample of what she needed on her windowsills, and no matter what the item, something like it would arrive after various teams of animals managed to locate and deliver it.

  Though they brightened her days, she sensed a great fear was compelling the animals of Cintairn Gheldron. It seemed as though the forest itself were frightened and had called its creatures to her service.

  Summer strung a golden necklace of days, with only one day that was cold. That was the day she came across the river beaver, once again.

  The beast had often left her pieces of wood chiseled into the shapes of rotten moldings, gutters, and beams she had thrown out of the treehouse. Though Neuvia used the gifts left for her by the beaver, she shuddered in fear at the memory of the one they called Kaicim.

  A beaver dam had bordered her family’s farm for nearly 30 years when a rabid beaver killed the one they called Bren, the patriarch. Kaicim, with his swollen head and close-set eyes, took over the dam and let it deteriorate. According to witnesses, he used to spy on Neuvia when she was a child, to the exclusion of all his other chores in maintaining the dam, which everyone paid close attention to. Some said that he was trying to become human by wearing ill-fitting hats that he had stolen, and even took to eating meat. One day, Kaicim tried to catch the five-year-old Neuvia while she filled a white basket with blueberries, but she had smelled his bloody scent from behind a tree and screamed. Neuvia pulled out the small hunting knife that her father always put in her basket and, as Kaicim jumped in front of her and clapped his flat tail against the tree to frighten her, Neuvia stabbed his paw clean through.

  Kaicim had yelped and pulled back, the knife stuck in his hand. He ran, snarling, through the trees, cursing Neuvia as her father, armed with a pitchfork, ran after him to the dilapidated dam. And Kaicim gnawed through a central beam of the dam even as her father reached it, and it broke, killing them both.

  Neuvia still had nightmares of a beaver gnawing through the trunk of the treehouse as she slept. So, when she was bathing in the brook one morning and the beaver appeared as tall as a man on the pink-clovered bank, she had been horrorstruck.

  The beast sniffled as it looked at her and she dived down to snatch a stone from the streambed. She emerged and flung it at the beaver, swimming to the other bank, running naked and riding the rope ladder all the way to the top.

  Shivering on her bed that night under a blanket, she finally lifted her head and searched through Selwyn’s book of prophecies. But its pages were blank.

  Neuvia had learned much from her small library, however, in the months of her seclusion. She had read about the halcyon days of the greatest island in the world, Sentad, the mighty kingdom of antiquity on the far side of Hala that was as vast as ten thousand islands. She had learned how the fearsome Khalwairn, the mighty rivals of the Cirilen, had conquered majestic Sentad, and how the Cirilen had united in the great Wynder War to destroy them. And she had found how, centuries later, Drewgor, the last Khalwairn, had enchanted his hibernal servants, the fearsome Wintegs, to slaughter 47 of the 48 Cirilen Houses in his catastrophic retribution.

  Only the House of Gheldron had escaped his wrath, and Trevin was one of the last of their descendants. His grandfather, the great Elwyn Gheldron, had fled west from Sentad to found the enchanted island of Damay as a safe haven for his family after the Cirilen were decimated. And then, in 698, he sailed north from Damay and came upon the kingdom of Ameulis.

  And Elwyn wedded the Ameulintian princess Apricia, King Gustomeer’s daughter, whom he truly loved, and they were crowned the same day they were married, just as Trevin and Neuvia had been. Apricia would bear Elwyn one child, Selwyn.

  Elwyn had then journeyed still farther north and west, uniting his kingdom with two new lands, the ancient civilization of Norlania and the virgin land of Ghenten. But the new union, which was named the “Tintilisair,” or necklace in the Ardeyon tongue, had been short-lived.

  Neuvia discovered in Selwyn’s books that Drewgor had returned to exact his revenge on Elwyn in 839, quite soon after the Tintilisair had been formed. To spare Ameulis, Elwyn had fled to the still wild land of Ghenten, and it was there he staged a final with Drewgor.

  Though the last incantation of Elwyn Gheldron banished Drewgor from both Hala and Wynder worlds, it also laid waste to the fledgling land of Ghenten. Elwyn’s curse had drawn upon the power of the invincible Gairanor, who dwelled beyond both worlds, and Drewgor had not the strength nor guile to escape that force. After invoking that fearsome force of his ancestors from a rocky gorge in Ghenten’s coast, Elwyn fell fighting Drewgor in the year 840.

  His son Selwyn later sailed to Ghenten to find his father’s bones and release his spirit to join the Gairanor. His pearl and gold avatar, a white bull with golden horns, charged over the sea and crossed the horizon into the heavens. Selwyn brought Elwyn’s scepter home to Ameulis and carried it from his own coronation, at the age of 140 until he died at 365 years old, still young by Cirilen standards. And now, at the age of eighteen, Trevin was King and wielded that weapon of the ages.

  Neuvia discovered more about the strange Wyndernal World, too, which set her mind to daydreams of despair. It seemed that only by delving into the high arts could the Cirilen and their adversaries, the Khalwairn, open the door to the Wyndernal World.

  And there the Cirilen had soon discovered that what was wonderful in that world might be monstrous in this one. As the keeper of the Cronus Star, one of the gates between the worlds, Trevin bore a grave responsibility. So did she, with Gieron’s scepter in her possession now.

  Neuvia made special note of the powers that she, as wife of a Cirilen, might call to her aid. Since she was not a Cirilen by birth, she knew such powers were unpredictable. If she ever tried to use Gieron’s scepter, Trevin would detect it. A Cirilen could easily discover the existence of such a stone, e
ven if it were not used. Neuvia had to keep the diamond submerged in water inside the treehouse, which her charm helped obscure from Trevin’s eyes.

  As the wife of a Cirilen, she could use the scepter only once, and only to protect what she loved. Selwyn had taught his wife Conilair how to cast the Spell of Protection. He had cautioned her that she should withhold doing so for a time of great crisis when it would have the most fortunate effect. Alas, Conilair was too weak to use the Cronus Star to save herself on her deathbed, to Selwyn’s unfathomable grief. Neuvia had memorized the incantation, which Selwyn had inscribed in his book a few pages before his eulogy to his wife.

  Trevin finally emerged from the tower today, and he marched straight through the forest toward the northern cliff.

  Neuvia sensed the commotion in the forest as he passed, and she descended the treehouse to follow, defying the warnings of the eagle and the owl, who followed her above the woods in distress.

  When she reached the northern edge of the forest, she crouched and focused her spyglass over the field of tall rushes. Trevin walked in his red robe toward the cliff facing Ameulis, which was hidden over the horizon.

  She crouched down and followed the trail his long strides had parted.

  “Don’t let him see you!” Toy whispered. “Cast off your cloak—your dress is green!”

  Neuvia threw off her cloak and crept and crawled as fast as she could behind him for an hour before he reached the cliff’s edge and faced the sea. She rubbed her battered knees, the sun tilting past noon.

  Trevin leaned into the wind that whipped back his crimson robe and jet-black hair. Holding the Cronus Star high, he watched the sky as if waiting for some imperceptible thing to happen there. Both the First and Second Moon were visible in the blue above. At last, he turned and paced blindly toward her, stopping only a few feet away. He looked right in her direction as his eyes flashed like red coals.

  “He can’t see you!” Toy whispered, licking her ear.

  Trevin wheeled and looked back at the ocean, standing only ten feet from her. He whispered a few words she couldn’t distinguish.

  A sound screeched from the diamond in his scepter like a cry of pain or demented pleasure, and a single red spark shot from the diamond into the sky.

  Black wisps of cloud twisted together between Trevin and the sun, casting a chill over the field. He spoke softly, rapidly, as the he chimes of the forest jangled like an army riding in the distance behind them and the ground began to rumble.

  Sparks of white light streaked from the Cronus Star in all directions like arrows and did not burn out or fall but changed color through the spectrum as they spread straight through the sky. The ground lurched, and Neuvia dropped her spyglass.

  “The animals were right!” Toy hissed in her ear.

  Neuvia held onto fistfuls of rushes as the ground banged and rumbled under her knees. “What can I do, Toy?”

  “Toy doesn’t know!”

  Slivers of rock fell from the palisades around the Dimrok and sliced into the waves.

  A cloud of birds rose above the forest as the great bell clanged.

  The statue of Trevin’s mother toppled from its base and a fault shot through the wall of the square courtyard around the Lightstone Tower as a corner of the gate crumbled onto the marble stairs.

  “Trevin!” Neuvia staggered to her feet and shouted.

  But he did not hear her: he could not now.

  He was saying strange words and pointing the Scepter at the swirling cloud above, which suddenly parted and let a sunray strike the blazing jewel.

  Neuvia took a step toward him but with a peal of thunder the ground between them split. A wall of steam shot up, and she fell back as the scalding vapor subsided. The ground on which Trevin stood thrust away from the Dimrok. A span three feet wide gaped between them, the fault cutting 400 feet down to the sea. As if unlocked from jaws sealed since creation, the earth’s voice roared.

  Trevin convulsed in ecstasy, laughing in the dripping fire of the Cronus Star as the ledge where he stood moved away from the Dimrok and another wall of steam blasted up. When it dissipated, she saw that he had collapsed. She reared back and leaped across the crack even as it roared wider.

  She grasped handfuls of grass on the far side and pulled herself onto the ledge.

  Hooking her arms under his, she heaved Trevin to his feet and pushed him forward over the chasm in a last act of desperation as she shouted “Kair Talo Ga!”— the very spell Trevin used to push Knot from the White Shark, and she added, “Too-oh-nair!”

  To her awe, Trevin seemed to be propelled forward just slightly, and she leaped behind him onto the Dimrok. She caught his arms as the edge crumbled under his chest. She avoided touching the Scepter, which his right hand still clutched tightly even as she dragged him over the smoldering edge. Even Toy helped, pulling on his red robe with his tiny jaws.

  She sat embracing him some distance from the new precipice as she watched the great chunk of the island slide away with a gravelly roar that made the flowers quiver and drop petals around her. The Dimrok finally seemed to settle as the fragment moved north. The field on top of the fragment caught fire in orange sheets that sent brown smoke over the sea.

  Neuvia pulled Trevin farther away from the edge of the cliff. Weeping, she stroked his brow, his head lying heavy on her lap in a cold sleep. His knuckles were white around the tarnished handle of the Scepter, whose gem was dull and gray. She touched the Scepter’s handle and its stone flashed red, singeing her finger badly. She cursed it, looking back at the new island moving across the ocean.

  She watched as the cliffs of the new island blushed red like coals in a furnace. The waves hissed steam as they crashed on its walls. White clouds rolled over the sea from its shores as molten rock rose now around the island, swallowing it in a red mass.

  The glowing island grew wide in the thickening fog, stretching into a ridge that made a mile-wide wake of boiling water as it moved north. Its points bent like a horseshoe in a forge as rock continued rising from the sea.

  She watched for hours until the new island began to cool, its red glow fading in the twilit distance. A balmy wind gusted and fat warm raindrops raised the spicy scents of the field. Clouds moved over the Dimrok from the west.

  “Leave before he wakes,” Toy whispered.

  “Yes.” She kissed Trevin, but his lips were like ice. “Will he be all right?”

  “Yes,” Toy said. “Elwyn did this. He’ll wake soon. The Queen must leave!”

  She picked a wildflower and slid the stem in his hair over his ear. Then she left him lying on the grass as warm rain fell.

  Trevin woke and rose on one elbow. He could smell the pungent scents rising from the field as he peered from the moonlit cliff at the distant horizon.

  As he expected, he saw that a small portion of the Dimrok, when chiseled straight down into the island’s roots, had yielded vast material with which to shape his purpose. His new island had come to rest where he had intended: on top of a dangerous reef on Nil Ramesis’s map. He could see it glow faintly on the horizon.

  The sky was clear and yet he could smell that it must have rained while he slept. He passed his hand through his hair and found a flower there. He twisted its stem under his nose, smelling its tangy perfume. Despite himself he thought of her and dread crossed over his heart.

  He rose to his feet. He found the gyre’s jar and he brought it to the new edge of the island. He pulled the starfish out of the water and held it up with his left hand.

  Gathering the Second Moon’s light into the Cronus Star over his head, Trevin turned the gem with a precision that gradually linked each focal point, connecting distant rays and gravities like ropes and pulleys. He hurled the orange starfish then like a discus, and a cat’s cradle of twisting red beams followed it from five stars, a moon and the Cronus Star. A beam of greenish light gushed from the gemstone into the gyre.

  The creature seemed to spin in the air without falling, and yet the sea exploded s
uddenly around it. For it had grown into a giant as it fell. It was now the size of five whales joined together.

  The Gyre began swimming like a man then, arm over arm, kicking as one arm looked at the northern horizon. Trevin watched as the creature rotated a different arm to the head position every ten strokes.

  He touched the Scepter to his forehead and fell to one knee. “Now guard the Dimrok,” he whispered.

  He staggered wearily from the cliff, and the Cronus Star barely illuminated his path as he crossed the field and passed into the forest.

  Neuvia watched from very far away through her spyglass and followed him from a distance in the forest. Then she watched him climb over the rubble of the wall that had collapsed over the stairs to the Lightstone Tower, and she saw the dim red glow of his scepter spiral up the tower to the top, where the red radiance finally dimmed.

  As he sank into his bed, he thought of the flower he had found entwined in his hair: it was blue and pure and sweet, like her eyes. Never again the caress of her presence? Never again his young wife by his side?

  The Scepter smoldered on his chest as he retreated into the fortress of sleep, consoling himself that a monster now guarded them both from him.

  Chapter 10

  There

  Trevin woke, sitting on his throne. The Scepter was not in his hand—yet he felt no urge to find it.

  The throne room was dappled by an undersea palette of turquoise and chartreuse light lapping over the lightstone walls. His skin felt like it was wet under a hot sun. If this was a dream it was more tangible than truth! He noticed the silhouette of a woman kneeling perfectly still before the dais.

  “May I approach, lord?” Her voice was like smoke and red wine.

  “Please.”

  The woman emerged from cobalt shadow and he could see her clearly. Her hair was gold as wheat and shining like pearls and her skin was tawny as copper. She wore nothing but a palla of gossamer, a mere pearlescence, and Trevin admired her body. She smiled and purred, “My lord, do you like what you see?”