The Poisoned Crown (36 page)

“Sea monster,” Annie said. “A very large one. I think it’s meant to wake at the end of the world—or maybe that’s the Kraken. I’ve a feeling it might be biblical, but I don’t know the Bible as well as I should. Could be in Revelation. Are you planning to get up one morning covered
in Leviathan-spit? Only I don’t want the washing machine blocked up again.”

“I’m not sure it can have spit if it’s underwater,” Nathan said. “D’you know what it looks like?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve always thought of sea monsters as pretty standard—big marine dragons with lots of spiky fins, or finny spikes— but I imagine it could be a sort of giant squid. Or something with lots of heads, like the Lernean Hydra.”

“What’s that?”

“The one Heracles met: remember? Every time he cut one head off, it grew two more. Keep that in mind if you’re thinking of confronting one. You don’t want to start cutting off heads.”

“Mm.”

“How much danger are you in?” Annie asked, dropping the flippancy for a moment.

“Well,” Nathan said candidly, “I’m in the middle of a war, but I think I
might
be able to stop it. I’ve got a plan—a diversion—but I have to get back there. It’s been two nights now …”

“You will,” Annie said, not certain whether she was glad or sorry, or just chronically terrified for him. “You always do. Am I allowed to ask what’s going on? Where does the Leviathan come in?”

“Someone referred to it, and the priestesses were afraid. That means the Goddess is afraid. She’s the Queen of the Sea—like Nenufar, only worse—so if there’s a sea monster she’s scared of, it might be a good thing. Or it might mean the Leviathan is so horrifying even the bad guys are afraid of it.”

“Call Uncle Barty,” Annie said. “Or Google.”

After supper Nathan tried both. Googling elicited reams of information, including biblical sources—Job, not Revelation—several conflicting physical descriptions based largely on fiction, and random accounts of how the Leviathan would wake at the last trumpet and swallow whole continents, armies of seraphim and demons, and anyone else who got in the way.

Bartlemy was more specific. “We don’t know what it looks like,” he
said, “but it’s meant to be the largest monster in history or legend, even bigger than the Midgard Serpent, which is twined around the world with its tail in its mouth. God told Job, in one of those anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better conversations between mortal and immortal, that he could catch Leviathan on a hook. There are scholars who take that to imply that this was a challenge even for a deity, and Leviathan must therefore be a creature big enough to devour the gods themselves. According to others, it has slept since the beginning of Time and will not wake till the end, when the forces of Good and Evil come face-to-face in the final great battle. Or not, as the case may be. The last-battle idea is a little out of fashion now. We favor a slow death for the universe, or possibly a reversal of the Big Bang. Whatever option you go for, hopefully it’s a long way off. However, things will be different in otherworlds.”

“There’s a battle brewing,” Nathan said, “but it isn’t exactly Good versus Evil. Sort of a mix on both sides.”

“It always is,” Bartlemy said. “Were you planning to raise the Leviathan in order to put them off?”

“Something like that. But I’ve got other ideas as well—probably just as useless. D’you know what would happen if I did?”

“That’s rather the problem,” said Bartlemy. “You see, no one ever
has
raised the Leviathan, or at least not in this universe. Any description of what might follow falls into the realm of story or prophecy, and prophecy is a very uncertain guide to the future. Look at all those Greek kings who consulted the oracle at Delphi, adjusted their actions accordingly, and thus brought about the very fate they were trying to avoid. Besides, prophecy is often wrong. You just don’t get to hear about the inaccurate ones. If I were you, I’d let sleeping monsters lie. For one thing, it would probably take a whole orchestra to wake a Leviathan. With nuclear weapons. The bigger they are, the deeper they sleep.”

Nathan went to bed with that thought, hanging Hazel’s vial around his neck, but he couldn’t sleep and for the third night running he felt he was going nowhere. In spite of previous experience he was always worried he’d be unable to get back to his dreamworld adventure and finish
what he’d started. He got up in the middle of the night and climbed up to the Den, out through the skylight onto the roof. The star was there— the Grandir’s star—looking down at him, a fixed pinpoint of light. He found himself thinking of the shamans.

The verse had been in the language of the merfolk, but in his head it slipped easily into English, sounding like something from a children’s fairy tale. He began making up his own verse:

This rhyming stuff is easy
, he decided, huddling himself into his jacket against the chill of the winter night.
You, too, can be a priestess
—
or priest
—
of the dark; all it takes is a flair for poetry.
Not the Shakespearean kind, more the birthday-greeting-card variety.

And now he remembered that it wasn’t just the countdown to war, it was the countdown to Christmas, and he hadn’t done his Christmas shopping yet, and why was it girls were so difficult to buy presents for? He found himself thinking about another star—one that didn’t belong in the sky—the star the three kings had followed, till it came to rest above a stable where a newborn baby lay in the straw. Was it blasphemy to wonder if that star, too, had come from another cosmos, and in a high tower beyond the Gate another Grandir had looked up at pictures on the ceiling—pictures of a sleeping infant who might be part of some ineffable plan to save a world? For no reason that he could explain the thought made Nathan’s blood run cold. Supposing the whole of Christianity had mushroomed from that plan, just as the Grail legend had wrapped itself around the Cup of the Thorns and spread throughout the multiverse. Supposing Jesus himself had simply been a boy with a
job to do, who had listened to a voice from an alternative universe and called it God. It was too terrifying to contemplate.

Nathan found he was trembling, though not from the cold.
I’m not the son of a god
, he told himself.
I’m not the savior of anything, I’m not special, I have no powers
—
all I can do is dream myself between worlds. I’m not going to die prematurely as a sort of sacrifice believing the sins of the world are on my shoulders.

The thought steadied him. Of course, there were a lot of other ways he could die prematurely, particularly on Widewater, but there was no point in thinking about that. He scrambled down from the skylight and made himself a cup of hot chocolate to calm his nerves. Just for a minute, it was as if his whole view of things had flipped over into madness, and everything safe, everything normal, had been exposed as false and treacherous and insecure. He was walking on a thin skin of solid ground above quicksand, and for an instant his foot had gone through …

He pulled his imagination up short and told himself that any parallels between the story of Christ and his own were delusions of grandeur. Whether truth or legend, Jesus had been a good man who got hold of a good idea—Love thine enemy—and bequeathed it to the world in an attempt to make things better, and it was only human nature, not some diabolical scheme, if far too often it had made things worse. Bartlemy had always said that everything was part of a Great Pattern, and Destiny would give events a tweak, once in a while, to make them fall into place, but he, Nathan, was too small, too ordinary, to merit the attention of Destiny, and his part of the Pattern was surely only a careless squiggle out on the edge, nothing to do with the unknown mantra at its heart.

The chocolate soothed him, pumping serotonins into his brain, and he went back to thinking about Christmas presents, and once in bed he slept normally, without any dreams.

T
HE NEXT
night Nathan was back on Widewater. There was a moment of the usual panic when he found himself solid, alone in the midst of the
open sea, paddling to keep his head above water. Then Denaero was with him, and the panic subsided.

“Ezroc was meant to meet me here,” she said. “I didn’t know if you’d make it. I’m so glad you’ve come. The selkies haven’t waited for our attack—they’re attacking first—”

“A preemptive strike,” Nathan said, and spluttered as a wavelet splashed into his face. “I … know.”

“We
must
do something—try your plan—but the caverns are far below the reef, you won’t be able to—”

“I’ve got a kind of charm here,” Nathan said. “A magic potion. It might help. When we’re ready, I’ll try it. Can you—?”

Denaero was already supporting him, her webbed hands gripping him underarm.

“Is that it?” she asked, as he lifted the vial.

“Yes …”

“You must have powerful witches in your world.”

“Not very,” he said. “That’s why I’m not sure if it’ll work.”

“Try it now!”

Ah well
, he thought.
Here’s to Hazel.
He pulled out the cork and drank it down in one go.

He expected it to taste awful, like medicine, since potions and medicines were vaguely connected in his mind, and all medicine was unpleasant. Instead it tasted mostly like water—water with an edge, the kind you get in advertisements, water that has trickled down from mountain springs and done various exciting things on its way to the bottle. It had a flavor of summer, and a flavor of shadows, and a tang of something familiar that Nathan couldn’t quite place, something to do with childhood. He almost swallowed the pearl by accident. Then he recorked the vial and left it dangling against his chest.

He knew at once it had worked. He wasn’t treading water anymore, merely floating, as much at ease as a jellyfish. He slipped from Denaero’s grasp and turned to face her. “My God!”

“Which god?” Denaero asked with interest.

“Any old god! It
works
—it really works. Look!” He dived, somersaulted, came up for air that he didn’t need. He couldn’t decide if he
was breathing underwater or if breathing was no longer a requirement. This was magic the way it ought to be, the storybook kind, the fairy tale—he was like Kay Harker in
The Midnight Folk
, who had flown with a bat, dived with an otter, swum with a mermaid. This was
enchantment.
He kicked and his body leapt from the water like a dolphin, crashing down in a cloud of spray. When he came up again, Denaero was seizing his arms, shaking him.

“What are you
doing?
D’you want every fish on the reef to come after us?”

“Sorry. Sorry …”

“I’ve been hiding here for a week—I’ve been so quiet, so careful— and now you come along and start splashing about like a baby whale—”

“Sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry.”

“Sorry.” His chances of impressing Denaero, Nathan reflected, had always been practically nil. Evidently they still were.

“How long will the magic last?” she went on.

“Maybe twelve hours, maybe more. My friend—the witch—wasn’t certain.”

“She doesn’t sound like much of a witch to me,” Denaero said, flatly contradicting her earlier statement about the efficacy of his native witches.

They lapsed into a largely pointless quarrel that ended with Denaero apologizing for impugning Hazel’s sorcerous skills and then glancing up, with one of her swift mood changes, her face lightening as Ezroc came winging down from the sky.

“I couldn’t bring a selkie,” he said. “There was no one I trusted, and Nokosha wouldn’t listen. He’s set on war. I’m glad Nathan’s here, but—”

“He’s taken a magic potion, which means he can swim like one of us,” Denaero said. Having established his otherworldly credentials, Nathan realized there was little he could do that would surprise them. “We don’t need anyone else.”

“I’ve been wondering how we’re going to move the boulder sealing
the main entrance,” Nathan said. “Considering it was put there by the Goddess—I mean, is it very big?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Denaero. “This is your plan. You sort it out. First we have to get in through the secret door—that’ll be difficult enough—then we’ll deal with the rest, opening the caves and—”

“I thought you knew the way,” Nathan interrupted.

“Yes, but I’ve never been inside. Only the High King and the shamans are allowed to do that, and they don’t talk about it. It’s forbidden to everyone else. There’s a guardian on the door—”

“What kind of a guardian?” Nathan said with foreboding.

“I don’t know exactly. Something nasty. I saw it once, but I was very young. I just remember lots of teeth.”

“It wouldn’t be—a dragon? I mean, this is the Dragon’s Reef…” He had known all along there would be a dragon.

Unexpectedly, Denaero gave a peal of laughter. “We have dragons here,” she said. “I’ll show you one. They’re very frightening … Ezroc, can you wait for us?” And, in words of familiar ill omen: “We may be some time.”

“I’ll wait, but not too long. Nokosha plans to attack with the dawn. I should be with him. The northfolk are my people—I have to stand by them. It’s a question of loyalty—you understand?”

“Oh yes,” said Denaero. “Men’s stupid honor, and their stupid loyalties, and their stupid stupid wars. I understand.”

“I’m not like that,” Nathan said.

“You’re from another world.”

Nathan was silent, not certain his world was deserving of a separate category. The whole muddle of honor and loyalty and war and general stupidity was, he suspected, more or less commonplace throughout the multiverse.

Ezroc said: “It’s not long till sunset. You shouldn’t delay.”

Nathan thought, too late, that they should have been better prepared—Denaero had her dagger but he needed a weapon of some kind, and explosives for moving the boulder, and all sorts of things he didn’t have and couldn’t get.