Jan Siegel - The Poisoned Crown - The Sangreal Trilogy Three

‘They’re out of control,’ Bartlemy concluded. And he repeated, more to himself than his companion: ‘The old spells are unravelling. Things are beginning to fall apart …’

‘Aye,’ said the dwarf, ‘and there’s little ye can be doing aboot it, or so I’m thinking.’

‘Maybe,’ said Bartlemy. ‘But we can try.’

Above Nathan’s house a single star shone. The night was misty and the sky obscured, but that one star shone brightly, a steady pinpoint of light looking down on the bookshop, while Nathan sat on the edge of the rooflight, looking up. When the dreams were most intense – when half his life seemed to happen in worlds whose reality was still unproven – he would climb up to the roof and gaze at the star, and that kept him sane. Winter and summer, its position never altered. It had been there now for two years and more, a star that did not twinkle or move along the set pathways of the heavens – a star that could not be seen beyond the borders of Ede – fixed in its place like a lamp to guide him home. His star.

He went to bed, reaching in his mind for the portal that would once more let him through, and dreamed of the star.

It hung in a chamber of darkness at the top of a tower a mile high. Light streamed outwards from its heart but seemed to go nowhere and illuminate nothing, absorbed into the gloom around it. Other stars were suspended round the periphery of the room, pale globes emitting a similar radiance, but it was his star at the centre, turning slowly on its own axis, a crystalline eye of intercosmic space. A lens on another world. Here, his world was the otherworld, the alien country. This was Arkatron on Eos, a city at the end of Time. In this room with no visible walls or floor a ruler thousands of years old – a ruler who had held a whole universe under his sway – gazed beyond the Gate to find a refuge for the last of his people, a way of escape from the Contamination that had eaten the numberless galaxies of his realm. By day, his subjects went robed and masked against the poisonous sun; by night, they slept uneasily, anticipating the End. But in this chamber it was always night. Nathan’s thought floated in the darkness, waiting. Presently, the Grandir came.

If he had a name, no one knew it. Other Grandirs had come and gone, leaving their names behind them, but he was last, and nameless. In a universe with a high level of magic, to know someone’s name is to have power over him: the power of summons, even of Command, if the summoner is strong enough. Like knowing the Prime Minister’s mobile number , Nathan reflected, smiling to himself in thought. I bet he doesn’t give that to just anybody. But the Grandir didn’t tell his name even to his nearest and dearest – if he had them – not even to his bridesister Halmé, Halmé the childless, whose beauty was a legend among her people, though few had ever looked on her face. She went unmasked only in private chambers, for the eyes of a privileged few. As for the Grandir, Nathan had seen his face naked just once, in a dream that plucked him from danger, and the memory of it still made him shiver, though he wasn’t sure why.

The Grandir wore a mask now, a white mask with perfect sculpted features, lips slightly parted to allow for speech, eye-slots covered with bulbs of black glass. He was tall even for a tall race, and his protective clothing either padded or emphasised the great width of his shoulders and the mass of what must be a muscular torso. A cowl concealed both head and hair; gauntlets were on his hands. In the gloom of the chamber Nathan could distinguish few details, but he knew the costume from many times before. He watched with the eyes of his dream as the Grandir moved among the star-globes, not touching them yet somehow controlling their rotation. It was strange to be intangible where he had once been solid, invisible where he had once been seen. He wanted to say something, but knew he would have no voice.

Every so often, a picture was projected onto the ceiling from one of the globes, a glimpse into another world. Nathan saw a castle which looked familiar – not really a castle, more a house with castle trimmings – and with a sudden shock he recognised Carboneck, where he had found the Traitor’s Sword. There were people crowding outside, in a city which had once been empty, people with bright happy faces, and a girl came out onto the steps, arm-in-arm with a young man, a girl with a lot of hair falling in many waves almost to her waist. She wore a crown of white flowers like tiny stars and a white dress which glittered with gems or embroidery. Nell , Nathan thought with a sudden stab in his heart. Nell in her wedding gown … Princess Nellwyn, who had been his friend and ally in the alien kingdom of Wilderslee, when he’d drawn the sword it was forbidden to touch, the sword possessed by a malevolent spirit and endorsed by legend … He’d kissed her in the Deepwoods under the many-coloured trees – but that was ages ago, more than a year, in a dream long faded. And in her time many years must have passed, and her face was lit with love, and Carboneck of the shadows had put out all the flags and was garlanded for a party …

Another picture, another place. A world of sea – the world of Nathan’s latest dream – a world he had visited, though only briefly, once or twice before. ‘Widewater,’ said the Grandir as if to himself, and though he spoke softly his voice was a shock, breaking the silence of that high chamber. A voice like the rasp of iron on velvet, like the whisper of thunder, like the caress of fire. ‘The realm of Nefanu the mer-goddess, who hates all things that breathe the air. But there is always land under the sea, under the blue deeps and the green shallows. One day the mountains will lift up their heads, and touch the clouds once more.’

The star-globe could not see beneath the waves, but the image showed several marine animals leaping and diving in a glitter of spray – seals? No: dolphins or porpoises. But there was one among them who looked different, a mercreature with arms which glowed like pearl and a purple tail, flying higher than the others, almost as if she would take wing. And when the school had moved on she remained, head above water, dark hair uncoiling like smoke in the wave-pattern, gazing up into the sunlight, up at a star she could not see. Denaero ? Nathan wondered, but the vision was too far off to tell.

Then Widewater vanished, and now it was his star upside down on the ceiling. His world. The patchwork of roofs and gardens that was Ede, little streets and twittens and paths, the meadows stretching down to the river. The mooring at Riverside House, with an inflatable tied up there, and children jumping on and off – presumably the Rayburns – under the casual supervision of their mother. One little girl – a brown-skinned elf with nubbly plaits – slithered down the bank and fell in, disappearing immediately under the water. No one noticed. Nathan wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t be heard in the dream, let alone beyond. For what seemed like an age the river-surface remained unbroken. Then her head bobbed up again, mouth open in a wail, as though she had been thrust up from below, and her family were snatching at her, too many rescuers tangling with each other in their haste, and she was plucked out of the water, onto the bank, and hugged and fussed over and dried.

The picture blinked out, and Nathan was just a thought in the dark. The Grandir was standing close to him, a huge physical presence where he had none – Nathan could hear the murmur of his breath through the mask, sense the steady motor of his pulse which seemed to make the air vibrate. And suddenly Nathan felt the Grandir was aware of him, listening for his thought, reaching out with more-than-human senses for the ghost that hovered somewhere near, unseen but not unknown. An inexplicable panic flooded his spirit, violent as nausea, and the dream spun away, and he was pitched back into wakefulness on the heaving mattress of his own bed.