Jan Siegel - The Poisoned Crown - The Sangreal Trilogy Three

SANGREAL TRILOGY

Amanda Hemingway

Cover

Title Page SANGREAL TRILOGY

Tarot TAROT Fimble famble sift the boards pentacles and cups and swords fingers fleet as beetles’ wings fiddlefeet and twiddlestrings sift and shuffle, spiel and deal, Hand of Fortune spin the Wheel weave together strands of fate Ace of Wands opens the Gate – turn the card to learn your doom Death’s a portal not a tomb. Double-deal and deal them double, eggs and bacon, toil and trouble, kings and queens and knights and knaves cups and coins and swords and staves lay them crooked, lay them straight, splay the pattern of your fate. Earth and water, fire and air, Strength the maiden waiting there bold to part the lion’s jaws someone’s friend, but is she yours? Sift and shift and wrap and weft the Emperor stands on your left authority, conviction, power – above your head the Falling Tower – see through the cobwebs of the Moon the silver lies unravel soon. Fimble famble fi-fo-fum there we go and here we come. Mist and magic, truth and lies Moon’s a card to fool the wise strangely lie with truth accords – now we turn the Three of Swords: alone, forsaken and betrayed another card must yet be played; veil the future while you can beyond the veil – the Hanged Man! Double-deal and deal them double earth and water, toil and trouble, cups and coins and swords and wands fate is never set in bronze, eggsand bacon, blood and bone, betrayed forsaken and alone sift the cards and let them fall fate is never set at all Humpty Dumpty runs through town knights and knaves will all fall down best-laid plans gang aft agely words on water flow away – when the cards are scattered far still you may turn up the Star. Fimble famble fi-fo-fum therewego, and here we come …

Prologue The Albatross

Chapter One Ripples

Chapter Two Terror Firma

Chapter Three A Touch of Death

Chapter Four Eye of Newt

Chapter Five The Visitor

Chapter Six Pooping the Party

Chapter Seven How to Stop a War

Chapter Eight The Dragon’s Reef

Chapter Nine The Horn of Last Resort

Chapter Ten How to Stop a War

Chapter Eleven Father and Son

Chapter Twelve Scarbarrow Fayr

Epilogue Spring

About the Author

Other Works

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Fimble famble sift the boards pentacles and cups and swords fingers fleet as beetles’ wings fiddlefeet and twiddlestrings sift and shuffle, spiel and deal, Hand of Fortune spin the Wheelweave together strands of fate Ace of Wandsopens the Gate – turn the card to learn your doom Death’sa portal not a tomb.

Double-deal and deal them double, eggs and bacon, toil and trouble, kings and queens and knights and knaves cups and coins and swords and staves lay them crooked, lay them straight, splay the pattern of your fate.

Earth and water, fire and air, Strengththe maiden waiting there bold to part the lion’s jaws someone’s friend, but is she yours?

Sift and shift and wrap and weft the Emperorstands on your left authority, conviction, power – above your head the Falling Tower –see through the cobwebs of the Moonthe silver lies unravel soon.

Fimble famble fi-fo-fum there we go and here we come.

Mist and magic, truth and lies Moon’sa card to fool the wise strangely lie with truth accords – now we turn the Three of Swords:alone, forsaken and betrayed another card must yet be played; veil the future while you can beyond the veil – the Hanged Man!

Double-deal and deal them double earth and water, toil and trouble, cups and coins and swords and wands fate is never set in bronze, eggsand bacon, blood and bone, betrayed forsaken and alone sift the cards and let them fall fate is never set at all

Humpty Dumpty runs through town knights and knaves will all fall down best-laid plans gang aft agely words on water flow away – when the cards are scattered far still you may turn up the Star.

Fimble famble fi-fo-fum therewego, and here we come …

He was the bird, and the bird was him. He was Ezroc, son of Tilarc, fifteenth grandson in a direct line from Ezroc Stormrider, the greatest albatross who ever lived. He had flown the Four Oceans and the Ten Seas, and had seen the South Pole rising like a spire of emerald from the violet hills of the Land-Beyond-Night, and the white foam of the combers on the pink coral beaches, and had smelt the perfume of the last flowers that ever were, before the hungry waters took it all away. He had lived to a hundred and two, and had died in the season his fifteenth-generation grandson was born, so the name had been passed on, but young Ezroc knew he could only dream of touching the legend.

They had set out from the Ice Cliffs more than two moons past, the albatross flying on wings still short of three spans from tip to tip – three spans would mark him for an adult – leaving the cold clean seas of the north far behind, heading south, always south. Keerye could not match his speed, for all his seal-swiftness, and from time to time the bird would descend onto the rocking waters, waiting for his friend to catch up. Some nights they would rest together, sea-cradled, Keerye half-human, steadying himself on the swell with his tail-flippers, while they gazed up at the unfamiliar stars.

‘Do you think we’ve reached the Fourth Ocean yet?’ Ezroc said once.

‘There are no Four Oceans any more,’ said Keerye, who was older and wiser, or at least more knowledgeable. ‘No Ten Seas. When people speak of them, it’s just words. Now, it’s all one big ocean, without any land in between to divide it up.’

‘But we’re looking for land,’ Ezroc pointed out. ‘We’re looking for the islands in the stories – the Jewelled Archipelago, and the Giant’s Knucklebones, and the Floating Islands of the utter south. There must be land somewhere.’

‘Islands are different,’ Keerye said sagely. ‘Islands grow, like plants. They come out of the sea sprouting fire and when they cool down there are great weeds on them with stems as thick as a monster eel, poking up into the sky all by themselves.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Ezroc said. He had dismissed such tales before. ‘Without water to support them, they’d fall down.’

‘I heard it from Shifka,’ said Keerye, naming the most venerable of the selkies, ‘and he heard it from the great whales, so it must be true. Whales don’t lie.’

Ezroc duly tried to picture weeds growing on dry land, standing up by themselves, and failed. But it was something to search for.

The seas were growing warmer now, and more dangerous. They were coming to the realms of the seakings, where they worship the Goddess, who hates all creatures of land and air. Ezroc was anxious, since it was said the merpeople would kill a selkie, if they found one in their territory, but Keerye was scornful. ‘They are fish ,’ he scoffed. ‘I can outswim any fish. Let them catch me if they can.’ Ezroc wanted to know why the Goddess should hate them, but Keerye said there was no why. The Goddess was an elemental, who felt but could not reason, as strong as the currents which circle the world, in fury like the tempest, with a heart as black as the uttermost deeps where nothing can live. She was supposed to have a crown of iron that never rusted, but was kept in a mysterious cavern of air under the Dragon’s Reef. Had anyone seen her? Ezroc asked. What did she look like? In their rest-times, they speculated about it, visualising her as a huge ray, a hundred spans wide, whose creeping shadow brought death to the sea bed, or a squid as big as an iceberg, belching poisoned ink, or a merwoman tall as a tidal wave with coiling sea-snakes for hair and fins that crackled blue with electricity. Once, they met a great purple grouper which Ezroc thought might be her, but Keerye tickled it under its prognathous jaw and it mooched along with them for a while with no sign of hostility.