The Skull of the World (11 page)

The Cave of a Thousand Kings arched high overhead, ripples of reflected light wavering all over the smooth gleaming walls. Light struck down from an aperture high overhead, penetrating deep into the sea-green water that surged and swayed against the rocks. At the far end of the great cavern a waterfall fell down in silvery cascades which flung up a haze of steam and spray. Rising from this mist was a tall, sparkling throne, built on the pinnacle of a rock that thrust up through the tumult of foam at the waterfall's foot. Carved from crystal, the throne caught the wide ray of light and refracted it into sparks of icy color that dazzled the eye.

Reclining on the crystal throne was the Fairgean king. As sleek and muscular as a tiger shark, his skin had the same opalescent shimmer as the sheets of mother-of-pearl shining in the rock. He wore nothing but a cloak of white seal fur and a jeweled skirt of seaweed, the waistband hung with daggers of both steel and fretted coral. Around his burly neck hung a great many necklaces of dried seaweed hung with coral and jewels, and he wore a coronet of pearls and diamonds. Set in the center of the crown was a black pearl the size of a storm petrel's egg, which gleamed with mysterious and subtle color. His hair flowed down from beneath the coronet like a curtain of black silk, and two thick, notched tusks curved out from either side of his lipless mouth. It was a cruel face, contemptuous and unforgiving.

At his feet sat his three favorite wives, all with eyes as silvery-pale as moonlight on sea foam, and blue-black hair tied back with pearls and white coral. A human concubine was chained to the very base of the rock, her matt skin almost as blue as theirs with cold, her fair hair as elaborately arranged. There was nothing but hopeless despair in her eyes, though, and she cringed down whenever the King's voice rose in a roar, which it often did. She was not chained to prevent her from trying to escape but to stop her from trying to drown herself.

The King's seventeen sons rested on rocks on either side or wrestled together in the icy-cold water. Although the waterfall which cascaded down from the higher caves was steaming hot, the depths of the pool in the Cave of a Thousand Kings had never been plumbed. It was as cold as the sea outside where icebergs drifted.

The many tiers of the cavern were crowded with Fairgean warriors, talking, gambling, listening to the songs of the concubines and the eerie wail of the conch choir. There were three hundred in all, the elite of the Fairgean martial force, resting safe and warm from the ice storms that howled outside.

Nila, the seventeenth son, sat as far away from the throne as he could get. Unlike his brothers he did not wear a great number of necklaces and bracelets twisted with coral, turquoise, amethyst or sea-diamonds. He wore only the black pearl he had found in the summer seas, hanging from a fine sealskin cord.

Fand came and knelt beside turn, offering him a tray of delicacies. He accepted a slither of raw fish heaped with fish eggs without looking up from his game of sea-stirk knuckles. Another slave refilled his goblet with sea squill wine. Fand waited for her to move away before saying, very softly, her hair hanging over her face: "Beware. I feel cold currents of evil intent. Watch yourself."

Nila bent back his head to toss the morsel of food into his mouth. As he swallowed he glanced around the cavern. At least three of his brothers were watching him, their lipless mouths stretched in pleased anticipation. As his eyes moved over their faces, they glanced away, trying without success to subdue their smiles. Nila felt all his muscles tighten. It took an effort of will to turn back to his game without letting his expression change. He cast his sea-stirk knuckles, then lifted the goblet of wine to his lips. If all his senses had not been strained to the limit he may never have noticed the faint tingle in his lips as he drank. He did notice, though, and every nerve and sinew in his body jangled. Involuntarily he spat his mouthful out, causing those about him to glance at him in surprise.

"That sea squill must have been past its prime," he managed to say. His tongue felt stiff.

He got to his feet with a bow and a quick word of excuse and made his way to the back of the Cave of a Thousand Kings. Steps led up past the cascades and into the dark labyrinth of tunnels behind called the Fathomless Caves. Stumbling a little, he climbed out of sight then bent and washed his mouth out again and again. The inside of his mouth and throat were completely numb. Once or twice he retched, though he managed not to succumb to the waves of hot sickness beating through him. At last Nila stopped, his head hanging, trembling with delayed shock. If he had swallowed that mouthful of wine, he would have died an agonizing death. He would be dead now, and all his brothers smiling to themselves.

At last he got up and found his stumbling way to his cave. Although it opened out onto the side of the cliff, the cave entrance was sealed over with ice now and inside all was dark and silent. He carefully shook out his seal furs, then curled up inside their warmth. Inside he was still shaking.

It was many hours before the numbness in his cheeks faded to a burning tingle that almost drove him mad. He was parched and dry, his limbs weak, his stomach uneasy. Even though he had not swallowed the poisoned wine, enough had seeped through the pores of his skin for him to be made exceedingly uncomfortable. At one point he became aware of a cool hand on his brow, then Fand was lifting his head and feeding him slivers of ice. He slept then, though he was much troubled with fevered nightmares. He woke with a jerk much later, to find her still there with a goblet of icy water to soothe his inflamed throat.

"You should not be here," he managed to say. "They will suspect . . ."

"I have been and gone," she whispered. "Lie still, sleep. I will watch over you."

He woke sometime during the night to see his father standing over him, a priestess holding a nightglobe high so its greenish, luminous light cast peculiar shadows over the fur heaped bed. His father was frowning heavily.

"What ails you, boy?" he asked.

"Must have been something I ate," Nila managed to reply.

The King looked at the priestess and she grinned. Her teeth shone oddly in the luminescent green.

"Loreli poisoning, my blessed liege," she said in the sibilant tones of the Priestesses of Jor.

The King roared with rage. "My stupid, weak-willed, cowardly sons!" he shouted, striking his palm with his fist. "Do we not have enemies enough without the sons of my loins quarreling like boxerfish? Do they not see we need all of our strength if we are to grind those Jor-cursed humans to sand? What have I done to be worthy of such blind, ignorant, jelly-spined children?"

"Your seventeenth son, the least of all the princes, has been foolish enough to flaunt a black pearl upon his breast," the priestess hissed.

The King smiled thinly. "So I had observed. Pride and ambition have always been the defining characteristics of Those Anointed By Jor. Yet if my seventeenth son thinks to sit upon the Crystal Throne, it is his brothers and I who should be giving our wirie to the Cupbearer to taste. Yet somehow I do not fear. This tuskless boy is too feeble and soft to dare squeeze the loreli fish into my wine or hide a sea urchin in the beds of his brothers. He is nothing but a bawling babe, weak as sea anemones' piss."

Nila lay stiff and silent, pricked with humiliation that the King should speak of him so before a woman, even if that woman was a Priestess of Jor. The King laughed contemptuously, prodded Nila with one wide-webbed foot, and said, "Do not sleep too deeply, my son." He turned and left, his necklaces and bracelets rattling.

The priestess hung over him for a while longer. The viperfish in the glass orb swam about lazily so the light shed by its luminescent organs flowed over his face in soul-troubling rhythms. Although he could not meet her eyes, he saw her grin and then she too was gone in a swirl of sealskin.

When Nila was sure they had really left, he lifted his bedcovers so Fand could crawl out. It was too dark in the cave to see her face but he could feel how she was trembling. He held her close but she resisted him. "What if they had caught me, Nila?" she said in a scared little voice. "I could feel her eyes on me through the furs like hot suns. I know she knew I was there."

"What of it?" Nila asked. "She would just have thought you my concubine. Even the lowest of the King's sons may take a woman to his bed if he so desires." There was a trace of bitterness in his voice.

Fand shuddered. "I do not know why, but my skin is crawling. When I saw the glow of the nightglobe and heard their footsteps down the hall, I knew I had to hide. My heart was hammering the whole time and I could hardly breathe . . ."

"The priestesses make us all feel like that," Nila comforted. "There is no need for you to fear them, though. You are one of the King's slaves. They will leave you alone." He pulled her down to rest within the circle of his arm, and she nestled her head into his shoulder. "I should not stay," she whispered. "Someone will notice . . ."

"Let them," he replied tersely and felt her warm breath against his skin as she sighed.

When Nila appeared in the Cave of a Thousand Kings the next morning, he was immediately aware of the undercurrents of malice flowing around him. He allowed the slaves to serve him with little crustaceans still wriggling with life and ate with every sign of enjoyment, washing his repast down with sea-grape juice. A few of his brothers asked him how he was with spurious concern in their voices. To all of them he answered blandly, "Very well, thank you."

It was over a week before he at last felt safe enough to meet with Fand. It was difficult to sneak away from the cave with so many eyes watching his every move but at last he managed it, knowing Fand would sense his intent and meet him in the ruins aboveground. There they would be safe from prying eyes, for none dared make their way through the darkness of the Fathomless Caves. The steps to the old witches' tower were far beyond the usual passages and caverns used by the royal family and their retainers, and only kelp ropes marked the passages where natural light did not fall.

Although the Fairgean royalty had occupied the Isle of the Gods for many thousands of years, the labyrinthine cave system that riddled the old volcano had never been fully explored. Most of the caverns were hidden far away from the surface, where no light could penetrate. Since only the Priestesses of Jor carried nightglobes, this meant the Fairgean went only where rifts in the cave walls let in natural light or where bygone explorers had left kelp ropes to show the way. In the lower caves lurked many terrible monsters whose appetite for warm blood was never satiated. There were holes in the floor where jets of hissing steam exploded without warning and many caverns were flooded at high tide, the dark angry sea rushing in at breakneck speeds. Jor himself, the God of the Shoreless Seas, was said to have been born in the Fiery Womb, deep within the island.

When the human invaders had come, they had driven the Fairgean out of their hallowed caves with swords of steel and flaming torches. These burning brands had illuminated caverns where no light had ever before fallen. Aghast at such sacrilege, the Fairgean had defended the sacred mystery of the Fathomless Caves with all their strength, but they had had no recourse against fire and metal. Many hundreds had died.

The tailless intruders had moored their ships in the Cave of a Thousand Kings, used the royal bedchambers to store their barrels and sacks, and had carved a staircase to the sky out of living rock. On the pinnacle of the Isle of the Gods they had built a great fortress, where their witches had lived and studied new and terrible ways to kill the faeries of the sea. This fortress lay in ruins now, open to the icy winds and occupied only by seabirds and ghosts. It was to this haunted pile of stones that Nila now climbed, his eyes wide open and anxiously searching, though all he could see was impenetrable blackness. Although he and Fand had first discovered the way to the old tower some years ago, the young prince was never able to shake the terror that he would wander from the path and be lost forever in the Fathomless Caves.

At last, with a little gasp of relief, he saw a glimmer of gray light. He climbed the steps quickly, the rough stone scraping his webbed feet. Snow whirled against his face, stinging his skin with cold, and he drew his sealskin cloak closer about him.

He emerged in the midst of a heap of gray stones, all blanketed with snow. Here and there a broken arch rose in a graceful curve against the leaden sky. Most of the building lay in great piles, however, smashed beyond repair. Fand waited for him in the meager shelter of one crazily leaning wall, shivering with cold. She was dressed only in the tattered skins of a slave and her skin was mottled blue and purple. He wrapped his arms and cloak about her, and they coupled quickly against the wall. There was desperation in their haste, a recklessness that took no heed of the bitter cold. When they were done, they leaned their heads into each other's necks, panting and close to tears.

"I cannot go on like this," Nila said. "I want to have you for my wife, without fear."

He felt her take a shuddering breath and then she said, without scorn, "Do not be a fool. You know that can never be."

He pressed his mouth against her soft, unsealed skin and said nothing. For a long time they stood together, leaning against the cold stone, then at last she pushed him away, saying miserably, "I must get back. There is work to be done."

"Next summer we shall flee the winter seas," he whispered. "We shall find ourselves an island in the sun and be together forever and happy." She nodded. "We shall make a beautiful little baby together and you shall sing to him and I shall spear fish for you both and we shall make love in the warm ocean and I shall make you a crown of pearls . . ."