Jan Siegel - The Poisoned Crown - The Sangreal Trilogy Three

His thought floated up, passing between them, emerging into a world of sky and sea. A golden void of sunlight hung all around him. The backs of the whales arched out of the water, rising and falling like slow waves on their way to the horizon. Below him he heard a strange echoing boom, like the music of sea-trumpets blown in the deeps, and knew they were singing. He thought, on a note of revelation: This is their world. Nothing here can hurt them. All of Widewater was their kingdom.

Around the rim of the sky, clouds were piling up, great thunderheads swelling visibly, rank on rank of them, like mountain ranges marching across the sea. The sun was swallowed up; a wind came scurrying before the storm, whipping the waves into restless peaks. But the whales did not vary their pace, heaving and sinking to the same steady beat. A dark rain came slanting down; thunder-drums drowned out the whalesong. Purple lightning stabbed at the wave-caps, foiled by the salt water. A stem of cloud came writhing downward, sucking the sea into its vortex, until sea and sky were joined by a whirling cord as thick as a giant’s arm. The water seemed to be flowing up it, feeding the storm-heart.

Then Nathan saw the Goddess.

He could not tell if she were solid or phantom, vapour or water, but it made no difference: she was terrible. Her upper body seemed to spout from the wavering column of the tornado, filling the sky, a pale cloudy shape with billowing hair that mingled with the thunderheads and lightning eyes. Her arms were stretched wide as if to draw the whole ocean into her embrace; the storm flowed from her fingertips. This was the Goddess who had eaten the islands, destroying all human life, who had made Widewater into a sea without a shore – the Queen of the Deep, ruler of maelstrom and tempest, an elemental with no soul and no heart, made of rage, and power, and greed. Even as he was, without form or substance, Nathan feared her.

Not just because she was a goddess. Because he knew her …

She bent down over the whale-pod; he seemed to hear her voice like a giant whisper on the wind. Lungbreathers! The whales dived, eluding her cold grasp – all save one, the larger of the two calves, who hung back from curiosity, or because his reflexes were too slow. Her long fingers spanned his back, and the sea plucked him away from the others – away and away – sucking him into the storm, rolling him in the waves, spinning him into the tumult of the tornado. Nathan followed, drawn in his wake, closing his mind against the nightmare of engulfing water …

Long after, or so it seemed, the sea was calm again. The morning sun shone down through the water onto a coral reef flickering with smallfish. The young whale was coasting along its border, now far from family and friends, seeking the currents that would lead him back to the north. Then Nathan saw the fin cutting the water, just one at first, then another, and another. Following him. Circling. Nathan didn’t want to watch any more, but the dream would not let him go, not till the sea exploded into a froth of lashing bodies, and the red came, pluming up through the foam. Then at last it was all over, and the sea was quiet, and the finned shadows flicked and circled, flicked and circled, while the stain thinned like smoke on the surface of the water, vanishing into a vastness of blue.

Nathan sank out of the dream, and once again he thought he was drowning, plunging into a darkness without air or breath. He struggled in a growing panic, fighting against the familiar asphyxiation – and then he was in bed, breathing normally, and there was a hand on his forehead. A hand that felt unnatural, cold and leathern-smooth. A hand in a glove.

The hand was withdrawn, and when it returned it felt like skin. Nathan’s eyes were shut, but a picture formed in his head: the Grandir in his protective clothing, with his white mask and black gauntlets. It was an oddly comforting image. He found himself thinking about skin, human skin, the softness of it, its coolness and its warmth, the intimacy of its touch. Only a flimsy layer between hand and brow, between sense and senses, between heart and heartbeat. Animals had hide and scales and fur, feathers and down, protection and insulation. But humans wrapped themselves in a tissue-thin covering so transparent the blood-vessels showed through, so fragile it might puncture on a leaf-edge or a blade of grass, so sensitive it could feel the lightest pressure, from the footstep of a fly to the breath of a zephyr. Yet humans in their vulnerable skin were the most deadly predators in all the worlds …

It occurred to him that these thoughts didn’t come from him – they were unfamiliar, alien thoughts, which seemed to stretch his mind into strange dimensions. The Grandir’s thoughts, flowing from the touch of his fingers into Nathan’s head …

He opened his eyes.

A face was bending over him, a face that he had seen only once before, yet he seemed to know it well. A dark curving face with a metallic sheen on the hooked cheekbones and the blade of the nose. Hooded eyes, and beneath the hoods the glimmer of hidden fires, like glints of light in a black opal. Behind the eyes, deeps of power and thought, a force of personality that could re-shape the cosmos. But for now, it was all focused on Nathan. There was a tiny frown between the eyebrows that seemed to convey both anger and gentleness. The Grandir’s spirit was larger than that of other men; he could do many emotions at once.

He said: ‘You fear the water, don’t you? It is waiting for you in your dreams, but you fear to go there, to be overwhelmed by it – smashed against the rocks, crushed into the seabed. I have read the fear in your heart where there was none before. You must face it, and face it down. There are things you have to do, even in the dark of the sea.’

‘What happens if I become solid?’ Nathan said. ‘I won’t be able to do it. Whatever it is. I won’t be able to breathe.’

‘You must find a way. Your folly has made your fear – the risk you took, when no risk was necessary – and for what? For what?’ The frown intensified; for a moment, anger supervened. ‘To impress your peers! To vindicate the one you call friend! They are nothing – less than nothing – but you matter. You have no idea how much you matter. And you might have been killed – for a gesture! An instant of bravado!’

The hand had left Nathan’s forehead to stroke his hair. For all the Grandir’s fury and frustration, his touch was soft as a caress.

Nathan said: ‘Everyone matters.’ He was trying to hang onto that.

‘You don’t understand. One day – but not yet, not yet. You must take care. No more folly. No more rashness.’ Voice and face changed. The hard curve of his mouth appeared to soften. Almost, he smiled. ‘You are just a boy – so young, so very young. It is long and long since I had contact with youth. I had forgotten how it shines – how valiant it is, and how defenceless. You have tasks to do but your youth will find a way. You will go back to Widewater. I will care for you – when I can. But I cannot always save you. Remember that …’

Nathan said sharply: ‘Did you show me the whales? And the Goddess?’

‘These are things you needed to see—’

‘Who is she? I thought – I knew her.’

‘She is Nefanu, Thalasse, Queen of the Sea. You know her double, the witch from the river. But the spirit in your world is far less in power, though not in hunger. She would make Earth her kingdom, a desert like Widewater, landless and bare. She seeks to open the Gate and draw power from her sister-spirit, her other self – but that is unimportant. She has no part in my plans. It is Nefanu who dominates your task.’

‘But how can I face a goddess? ’ Nathan demanded, trying to sit up.