The Emerald Crown

by L J Chappell

  ‘I take it that your brother is the leader of this expedition …’

  Pireon didn’t answer him, but it hadn’t really been a question. Given the authority and the status that Dach carried among the other Neophytes, no-one else could really have organised such a large group. No-one wanted to look small in Dach’s eyes, and everyone believed that if Dach did something then it must be fine.

  ‘… and yet he didn’t ask you to go with them?’ Ykerios continued.

  Pireon could have chosen not to answer that either, but he felt he had to say: ‘He still thinks that I’m very young.’

  ‘You are very young, Pireon of Kiritas. Perhaps your brother is trying to protect you …’ Pireon didn’t say anything. ‘… or maybe not.’ Ykerios seemed to think that was funny. He smiled and added: ‘Well, then: you can come with me instead. As long as you promise not to walk too fast.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I often go out in the evenings here to look around, talk to people and mingle with the crowds. You seem like a smart young fellow, full of initiative and probably questions as well, so I thought you might like to come with me.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well?’ the Hierarch prompted.

  ‘Yes,’ Pireon said, though until that moment he hadn’t realised that he wanted to. ‘Yes, of course, Father. Should we dress up? Disguise ourselves?’

  ‘Why would we disguise ourselves? We are not trying to hide who we are. I shall be going dressed as I am, but you might wish to put warmer clothes on: there is some snow falling, and it will be cold outside.’

  Pireon looked at the Hierarch’s gold and white robes, shot through with shining purple and bright aquamarine: he was also wearing his red and gold cap. If Father Ykerios was dressing like that, then it didn’t really matter what Pireon wore, so he fetched his Initiate’s overshirt and put it over his cowl. He had taken to wearing thick socks on his feet at night in Darkfall, and he pulled his travelling boots over them. He took his gloves as well.

  Despite his expectations, hardly anyone outside gave them a second look. The streets were quieter than he had seen before from the windows, no doubt because of the weather and the hour, but there was still a sufficient range of exotic, bright and bizarre clothing that the Hierarch wasn’t the most unusual sight. As they walked, Pireon was struck not so much by any one person or group, but rather by the variety: not only in the clothes, but in the accents and the faces and even in the ways that people moved and spoke.

  ‘There are not many places you’ll see such a mix, from so many lands,’ Father Ykerios echoed his thought. ‘Half of these people are probably at war with each other when they’re at home.’

  ‘Is there a truce, then? For the Festival?’ Everyone they saw was polite and good-natured – friendly.

  ‘No, there are no special truces, but this is a safe space. Even if wars are fought elsewhere, they do not spill over to here. This is a holy place, at a holy time.’

  ‘So it’s like a sanctuary?’

  ‘Yes, but only briefly. Darkfall is a curious and unique place during the Festival – a place unlike any other. Do not draw any conclusions about the outside world from it. We will see more typical places on the road back.’ Although they had come by sea, they would be returning to Corvak overland.

  ‘Why do so many of them come?’ From what Pireon had seen, Darkfall was not an appealing place.

  ‘The pilgrims? They come for the normal reasons that people undertake pilgrimages – perhaps as penitence to discharge some obligation, or as a sabbatical from their normal lives. And they come to celebrate the Crown, of course; and some come because everyone else comes. They come to make sacrifices as well, either in their own temples or to the Daggerfish in the bay. There’s an island beyond the cliff where the faithful can watch the sacrifices die – those of the faithful who enjoy watching that kind of thing, at least. They cheer so loudly that you can hear them from the Temple.’

  ‘Yes, I heard them. Who are they sacrificing to?’

  The Gods of the Heavens, to ensure the sun will rise again: that summer will come and winter will end. Heklash of the Storms, High Balluhar; perhaps Dark Aoshay and Lord Sephraim.

  ‘Do these Gods ask for such sacrifices from us as well?’ Pireon hadn’t seen anything like that in the scriptures or the calendars.

  ‘No, I do not believe they do. Perhaps the Gods ask different things from different peoples, the same way parents might have different expectations of their children based on their ages and abilities. We have sacrifices, of course: mostly the sacrifice of worldly goods – wealth and possessions, but also food and drink. That food will surely include the flesh of animals, albeit not dead by our hands.’

  ‘We have instructions for killing animals, though, so at some point we must have done it.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘In Messages Of Yllir, around Chapter Thirty. And in some of the Auguries. And there are animal sacrifices in The Anteichi as well.’

  ‘When the author writes about animals captured in war?’

  ‘Yes, Father. They should be given to the Gods and the Temples, rather than being put to the fields or taken as food. Surely that means they’re meant to be killed in the Temples, as sacrifice.’

  ‘Indeed it does say that,’ Ykerios nodded. ‘Who is your Scripture Master?’

  ‘Father Keiron.’

  ‘And Father Keiron took you through those texts?’

  ‘No, Father,’ Pireon wondered if he’d said something wrong.

  ‘No, I didn’t think he would have done. But you’re right. The real lesson of those verses is that we should not profit from evil deeds – from violence or from war – but the literal words tell us that the Temples used to accept live animal sacrifices. So perhaps those religions that still deal in live sacrifices are not so different from us after all.’ Pireon must have looked unconvinced, since the Hierarch suggested: ‘Let us visit a few of the Temples here and see how similar or how strange they are. That will also get us out of this snow.’

  Pireon didn’t know what he expected from other Temples, but there was nothing that seemed surprising or out of place. Some of the interiors were almost completely bare, while others were garish and used different combinations of colours than he was used to; some of the icons and the images and the inscribed names were unfamiliar. But they saw people praying, lighting candles and placing offerings on the altars and in front of the icons, the same as in their Temples; and there were no blood sacrifices.

  In each temple, Father Ykerios deferred to the local priest, which initially surprised Pireon: Ykerios was High Priest, after all – Hierarch of Corvak. But, of course, each order and each faith no doubt had its own Hierarchy. Even those that recognised the Mother Temple in Corvak would surely have no official status for its High Priest.

  After visiting five Temples, Ykerios suggested: ‘These are all rather dull. Let’s go and see the Emerald Crown instead, shall we? Perhaps you would like to try taking it from the Statue? You might be destined to command the Undead Army – that is one of the powers it is supposed to bestow.’

  Pireon agreed and, as they walked, he asked the Hierarch, ‘When they say the “Undead Army”, do they mean the Ghost Army?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the same.’

  ‘But isn’t the Ghost Army waiting for the return of the Dead God?’

  ‘Yes,’ Father Ykerios agreed. ‘Perhaps these younger faiths have slightly misunderstood. Perhaps they believe that the Army awaits the return of the Dead God’s Implements – the “Trophies” – rather than the Dead God Himself. They believe a sort of echo of the truth.’

  ‘Or perhaps it is we who have misunderstood,’ Pireon suggested. ‘Especially if everyone else believes something different from us.’

  ‘Our records show that we are the oldest faith in the Three Lands: perhaps not the original, but the oldest that still survives.’

  ‘Well, our records would show that, wouldn’t they?’

  The old prie
st laughed. ‘The oldest attested writings anywhere, including Imperial records, all concur on that point. I know that a multitude of sources do not prove anything, but they make the truth of the thing more likely. And there is nothing of any equivalent age that contradicts them.’

  ‘Is there anything in our writings about the Trophies?’ Pireon asked. He had been trying to think of any texts where he had seen them mentioned: their nature, where they came from, and how they fitted in with what he had already learned.

  ‘No, there is nothing at all. And in all our library of images, the Dead God never wears an Emerald Crown, or a Ruby Hand and he has no Glass Sword.’

  ‘And the fourth Trophy?’

  ‘No-one agrees on what the fourth Trophy is. But He carries none of the more popular choices, except perhaps the Crystal Ring.’ Ykerios chuckled and explained: ‘I’m guessing that a Crystal Ring might be difficult to see in pictures.’

  ‘So, do the Trophies come from the stories in other religions?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe they do. There must be a hundred cults and sects across the Three Lands but from what I know the Trophies appear in almost none of their texts or beliefs. Perhaps only in a few of the more obscure revelations and the fringe orders.’

  ‘But everyone who comes to Darkfall believes in them.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you find that interesting?’

  Pireon didn’t answer: it was a puzzle, certainly, but Father Ykerios had said “interesting” as if he thought the matter was something they should know about and understand, even though it clearly lay outside their scriptures and beliefs.

  ‘Do the other Trophies have Festivals as well?’

  ‘The other Trophies are lost: they have legendary resting places, but no-one knows exactly where those resting places are. So even if they once had Festivals, those have long ceased and even the memory of them has been forgotten, except for the Crown. Perhaps only the Crown was ever real and all the other stories and legends are embellishments, invented to explain it. To give it context.’

  As he was speaking they reached a large public space, paved in the ubiquitous black stone of Tremark.

  ‘And here we are,’ Father Ykerios told him.

  Along one side was a steep rock face, with a shallow cave hacked irregularly into the rock half-way along. A low wall separated the paved area from the little cliff, except at the centre, at the cave, which Pireon assumed was the Grotto of the Crown. The Statue presumably stood inside the Grotto, but his immediate view was obscured by a raised platform supported by scaffolding. A semi-circle of facades, punctuated by radiating streets, stared back at the Grotto: most of these hosted eateries and the stores of merchants, now all closed. A handful of traders with temporary stalls, braziers and barrows still ringed the area, optimistically peddling souvenirs and refreshments.

  A few small groups of people sat on the ground, praying, singing quietly or chanting. Someone was banging a drum nearby, a dull rhythm. A dozen bored-looking guards stood at intervals around the square, mostly talking among themselves, and five or six people were collecting the litter that had been dumped in the square through the day. A small queue waited politely and patiently in front of the gantry, outnumbered by the vendors and the guards.

  ‘They only erect that platform during the Festival,’ Ykerios told him. ‘It takes people right up to the Emerald Crown, so they can just reach out and touch it. The rest of the year, you have to climb up yourself if you want to try your luck, or your skill, or your bloodline – whatever it is that you think might free it.’

  Every time someone tried and failed to remove the Crown, the queue shuffled forwards.

  ‘There are less people than I expected,’ Pireon admitted.

  ‘The Festival is almost over, the weather is not pleasant and it’s the middle of the night,’ the Hierarch reminded him. ‘And by now most people will have tried their luck, some more than once. Tens of thousands of them. If you want to join the queue, I can wait for you back here. I will find something to eat.’

  ‘You’re not going to try, Father?’

  ‘I’ve already tried,’ the High Priest admitted. ‘I tried when I was a little older than you, a Junior Priest: that must have been sixty years ago or more. If I was going to succeed it would have been then, when I was young and filled with energetic idealism, rather than now, at the end of my days.’

  ‘This isn’t the end of your days, Father,’ Pireon protested.

  ‘Perhaps not, but even if I am granted many more years of life, this may be my last Festival: the journey is too difficult for an old man.’

  ‘All the more reason to try again now, Father. Perhaps you weren’t ready back then – maybe the Gods were waiting until you had gained sufficient wisdom.’

  ‘If anything, I am even more ignorant now than I was then.’

  ‘“Only when we understand how little we know is there space for new learning”,’ Pireon told him. ‘That’s what the Fathers keep saying. And who has a better chance of lifting the Emerald Crown than the Hierarch of Corvak? It’s perfect – no-one will even be surprised if you succeed.’

  ‘Very well,’ Ykerios laughed. ‘I shall try again, in case the Dead God has reconsidered.’

  They joined the back of the queue together and shuffled forwards with the others for about ten minutes, perhaps a little longer, before reaching the scaffolding. The steps, and the walkway above, were really only wide enough for one at a time.

  ‘You go first, Father.’

  Ykerios climbed up and Pireon followed him. There was enough space for two or three in single file along the top, and from the walkway there was a proper view of the Statue, barely visible from below.

  The figure was surprisingly small – life-sized, and carved with realistic proportions. Looking down at the head and the face felt like looking at a real person, albeit a real person carved from stone. He seemed Terevarna – a Light Elf – and Pireon wondered who it was supposed to be. Had someone modelled for it? Or was it a remembered image? Or an imagined ideal? Was it supposed to be the Dead God himself?

  Its expression was difficult to read – neither sad nor happy, neither triumphant nor dejected. It simply stood there and stared straight ahead, across the square … or, during the few days of the Festival, straight ahead at whoever had just climbed the steps.

  Pireon rested his hand on the Statue’s rough stone face. Without thinking, he blessed it: granted it patience and humour.

  ‘Come on,’ a voice prompted from behind him.

  Pireon realised that he’d been standing there for a few seconds and hadn’t even tried to lift the Crown. For form’s sake, he reached forward with this other hand, and grasped the Crown on both sides. The Emerald Crown felt cold to the touch, colder than the stone, and looked as if it was carved from one single, huge piece of green glass – faceted all the way round in irregular triangles and diamonds. In his hands, it didn’t move at all. He grasped it more firmly and lifted, and then he tried to twist it a little before lifting, but there was clearly no movement. He hadn’t expected there to be.

  It might as well have been carved from the same stone as the Statue.

  He climbed back down to the open square.

  Father Ykerios was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. ‘No Crown?’

  ‘No Crown,’ Pireon confirmed.

  ‘Then let’s have something to eat before we go back, so that our trip here has not been completely wasted.’ He nodded to the clutch of stalls around the edge of the square, each with a handful of stools and tables beside it. ‘The ingredients may not be fresh, but at least they will be freshly cooked and they will be hot. And they will be a change from the limited options at the Temple, which are even more bland than we eat on Elagion.’

  On Ykerios’ recommendation, Pireon ordered “Pitu Darshak” – small wrapped parcels of spiced vegetables, served on a hot clay plate that warmed up his hands even through the gloves. A few souvenir sellers gathered around them when they sat down to eat, b
ut soon lost interest.

  After a few minutes, the Hierarch nodded over to the right: ‘Have you noticed those three?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Pireon said. He was already watching the unusual group of Elves who had entered the plaza on that side: a Terevarna girl, young and slight, and two Madarinn – one poised and aristocratic and carrying a grey bag over one shoulder, the other massive, muscle-bound and armed.

  ‘They come with a plan and a purpose.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pireon agreed. It was obvious from the way they walked, the way they moved. They had something to do.

  The two Dark Elves joined the small queue at the statue, while the girl walked around the square, checking the stalls, and waiting. Pireon watched her move, light and careful: she was Crow, perhaps, or Sparrow. She could hardly have been much older than he was.

  Finally, as her friends neared the front of the queue, she purchased two drinks, and made her way across to the guard standing nearest the Grotto – the guard seemingly charged with staring up at the gantry and the Statue itself. She exchanged some words with him; Pireon imagined something like “Here, I bought two. You looked so cold.” The way she stood meant that, as they drank together, he turned his back on the Statue.

  Meanwhile her colleagues reached the foot of the steps and, from what Pireon could see, it seemed that the large man had stopped the queue, so that his friend could go up alone and in private. He had a wide friendly grin, and no-one seemed to mind particularly: after all, no-one had been waiting very long and this wasn’t going to delay them by much. Of course, by now, no-one could do anything about it anyway: the giant warrior was physically blocking their way up.

  His friend came back down a few moments later, shrugging and shaking his head. Sympathy was expressed, backs were slapped, and everything was convivial among the pilgrims. The two Madarinn left the square and, perhaps a minute later, the girl finished her drink and followed them.

  The guard turned back round, and returned to his duty of managing the queue and keeping an eye on the hopeful devotees and the Statue.

  ‘That was unusual,’ Father Ykerios observed.