The Hidden Coronet
Read The Hidden Coronet Online
Authors: Catherine Fisher
Table of Contents
DIAL BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Published by The Penguin Group
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First published in the United States 2011
by Dial Books
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head Children’s Books 2000
Copyright © 2000 by Catherine Fisher
All rights reserved
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fisher, Catherine, date.
The hidden Coronet / by Catherine Fisher.
p. cm.—(Relic Master ; 3)
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Raffi and Master Galen continue to evade the
Watch as they seek the Coronet, a potent ancient relic that could be their only hope for defeating the power that is destroying Anara.
ISBN : 978-1-101-51702-4
[1. Fantasy. 2. Apprentices—Fiction. 3. Antiquities—Fiction.] I.Title.
PZ7.F4995Hid 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010039315
To Colin
Frost Fair
1
In rumor and strange sayings the truth
will hide.
Snow will fall, the heart freeze over.
We will come when no one expects us.
Apocalypse of Tamar
T
WO MEN SAT ON A BENCH ON THE ICE.
Between them a brazier glowed with hot coals, its metal feet sinking into a pool of meltwater.
They sat silent, in the heart of the Frost Fair; in its racket of bleating sheep, barking dogs, innumerable traders calling their wares and, above all, the ominous hammering. Meats sizzled on spits, babies screamed, jugglers threw jingling bells, fiddlers played for coins, and in cushioned booths Sekoi of all colors told spellbinding stories, their voices unnaturally sharp and ringing in the bitter cold.
Finally the older man stirred. “Are you sure?” he muttered.
“I heard it in Tarkos. Then again last week in Lariminier Market. It’s certain.” The cobbler, still in his leather apron, stared bleakly out at the black Watchtower in the center of the frozen lake, as if afraid its sentinels could hear him from there.
“He’s been seen?”
“So they say.” The cobbler’s dirty heel scratched at a fish skeleton frozen in the ice; its wide eye stared up at him. “There’s been a lot of talk. Prophecies and odd rumors. What I heard was, that on Flainsnight last year there was an enormous explosion. The House of Trees split wide and out of it, on black wings, a vision rose up into the sky, huge over Tasceron.” He glanced around, making the sign of honor furtively with his hand. “It was him. The Crow.”
The old man spat. “Incredible! What did it look like?”
“Huge. Black. A bird and not a bird. You know, like it said in the old Book.”
“I might. And it spoke?”
“So the woman who told me said.”
A scar-bull clattered by pulled by two men, its hooves slipping on the glassy lake. When they had gone the old man shrugged. “Could be just rumor.”
The cobbler glanced around, worried. Behind them a peddler was hawking ribbons and pins and fancy lace, a crowd was watching two men come to blows over the price of geese, and a boy was turning cartwheels among the stalls, a few coppers in his cap on the ice. The cobbler drew up closer and dropped his voice. “No. Why do you think the Watch have doubled their patrols? They’ve heard; they have spies everywhere.”
“So what did it say, this vision?”
“It said, ‘
Listen Anara, your Makers are coming back to you; through the darkness and emptiness I call them. Flain and Tamar and Soren, even Kest will come. They will dispel the darkness. They will scatter the power of the Watch.’
”
The words, barely whispered, seemed dangerous, charged with power, as if they sparked in the freezing air. In the silence that followed, the racket of the fair seemed louder; both men were glad of it. The peddler had spilled his tray and was kneeling on the ice, picking up pins awkwardly with numb fingers. The wind scuttered a few closer to the brazier, like silver slivers.
The old man held gloved hands to the heat. “Well, if it’s true . . .”
“It is.”
“. . . Then it will change the world. I pray I live to see it.” He looked ruefully over the tents and stalls to the Watchtower, glinting with frost. “But unless the Makers come tomorrow, it’ll be too late for those poor souls.”
From here the hammering was louder. The half-constructed gallows were black, a rickety structure of high timbers built directly onto the ice, one man up there now on a ladder, hauling up the deadly swinging nooses of rope. Above him the sky was iron-gray, full of unfallen sleet. Smoke from the fair’s fires rose into it, a hundred straight columns.
“Another black frost tonight,” the cobbler muttered.
The old man didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “I hear one of the prisoners is a keeper.”
The cobbler almost sat upright. Then he relapsed onto the rough bench, biting his thumbnail. “Dear God,” he whispered. “To hang?”
“To hang. Tomorrow, like all the rest.”
Over the lake the hammering ended abruptly. The nooses swung, empty, frost already glinting on them.
The peddler picked up the last needle. He straightened with a groan, then limped over. “Goods, gentlemen?” he whined. “Samples of ribbon. Beads. Bright scarves. Something for the wife?”
The cobbler shook his head sourly; the old man smiled. “Dead, my friend. Long dead.”
“Ah, well.” The peddler was gray-haired; he eased the crutch wearily under his arm. “Not even a brooch to put on your coat?”
“Nothing. Not today.”
Indifferently, as if he was used to it, the peddler shrugged. “It’s a raw day to walk down a long road,” he said quietly.
They looked at him, bemused.
“Fellow’s drunk,” the cobbler muttered.
THE PEDDLER HOBBLED AWAY between tents and around a pen of bleating sheep, their small hooves scratching the frozen lake, down to the stall of a pastry-seller, where he bought a hot pie and ate half of it, crouched by the heat of an open oven. Grease scorched his fingers through the torn gloves. He bent forward, his long gray hair swinging out of his hood, but as he pulled himself slightly upright on the crutch a close watcher might have glimpsed, just for an instant, that he was a tall man, and not as old or as crippled as he seemed.
