Epiphany - THE CRYSTALLING
By Sonya Deanna Terry
CHAPTER SAMPLE
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Dear Reader,
If you are a first-time reader of the Epiphany series—welcome! While Book-1 is naturally the best introduction, this second book is also a great place to start.
The Character List provides you with a background on those who emerged in Book 1. A Glossary is included as well, to help familiarise you with terms used in the Our True Ancient History sections and is located via the clickable Contents page.
<> <> Our True Ancient History <><>
<><> XXXV <><>
Once at the door of Princess Eidred’s chamber, Pieter smiled. After months of hiding within the Grudellan Palace, he was about to depart. He stood at the top of the Grand Hall stairway, feet twitching nervously.
The princess nodded to him. ‘You will look the same as any man of the royal court,’ she said, ‘with your skin turned golden from dragon blood. Lower your chin, now, Pieter. And remember to bow to all who might pass you.’
The hooded cloaks of grey wool that he and Eidred now wore had arrived amongst many other garments in the basketful of cloth the princess was expected to scrub. Servants who wore these cloaks delivered and collected laundry.
Holding a basket of fresh linen on either side, he and Eidred made their slow descent to the Grand Hall. To Pieter, reaching the pyramid home of Zemelda in the royal grounds as lilac dusk crept into a gilded sky was the longest walk he’d ever made, for it was fraught with the knowledge that if his disguise failed to convince, he would be slaughtered at sunrise.
An end to his life was not the worry. The effect of this on Eidred and Fripso posed greater concerns. The princess and Pieter’s animal friend were vulnerable. He must protect them. He would learn to exercise pretence—as Eidred had advised—and become deceptive, although it would grate on his elfin desire to remain perennially sincere.
And why were they taking this precarious journey from Eidred’s chamber to Zemelda’s dwelling in the Grudellan Palace grounds? Because a cushion had told them they should! Eidred had been seated at her loom earlier, by the window, having paused to watch the peaceful rain, and she’d happened to look across at one of the square pillows adorning her canopied bed. She’d run to him and said, ‘Pieter, look! Zemelda is heralding us.’ There on the cushion had magically appeared the words:
Adahmos due upon the morrow!
From clothiers you must now borrow
Two hooded cloaks for you and he
Then hasten—both of you—to me
Pieter had observed the rhyme only a moment before it dissolved and made way for another:
The elf must don what you have sewn
And once to me the elf has flown
I shall ensure the Solen hears
His guest has come—go now, my dears
They arrived unnoticed at a pyramidal structure, the soothsayer’s quarters. Zemelda, a black-hooded woman with hair of white and skin as gnarled as birch bark, ushered them into a chilly dampness. Hanging upon every wall was a picture. Upon a small copper table, a paintbrush balanced atop a flat board daubed with various shades of green.
‘Zemelda is an artist,’ Eidred whispered, ‘and a very skilled one too.’ At Zemelda’s stern warning to waste no time, Pieter flung off his woollen cloak and donned the headdress that Eidred had so cleverly constructed for him from flaxen cloth and gold twine. He did not pause to wonder whether he and the maiden he adored were the targets of trickery. He could not. He had to tell himself continually that Zemelda’s intentions were good.
‘Highness and Pieter,’ Zemelda said in a voice that rasped growlingly like ocean waves in a storm, ‘I wish to introduce you both to a friend.’ She flitted to one corner of her strange, sloping-walled home and drew a rug from its place on the floor. Within the wooden beams lay a trapdoor.
Pieter eyed the steps leading into darkness. Could they be sure of Zemelda’s loyalty? He offered his hand to Eidred and led her down. His faith in the former faerie invited danger—he knew this for sure—but presenting himself as a prince from afar to Eidred’s imperial father was a prospect riddled with risk, and any gesture of hope must be swiftly embraced.
Beneath Zemelda’s floor was a cavern. ‘When did you discover a tunnel existed beneath this pyramid?’ Eidred asked.
‘I did not discover it,’ Zemelda said. ‘I created it. With this.’ She held up what appeared to be a crystal on a staff.
‘But Zemelda,’ said Eidred aghast. ‘Wands are only issued for the crystallings, our infant-naming ceremonies! And they’re only ever given to the faerie concubines. You’re no longer a bewitcher and yet you retain a wand. Why didn’t a Crystal Keeper collect it from you?’
‘I have an ally within the court,’ said the soothsayer with a secretive smile. ‘He allowed me to retain one.’ She directed them to an arched door in the cavern. It swung open at their approach.
They found themselves within a sanctuary. Its walls were the colour of dawn, its floor a carpet of moss that sank spongily beneath their feet. Beyond was a winding stream, jewel-like in its radiance. On rocks edging the water sat tiny undines, chattering quietly to each other.
Zemelda’s voice rose. ‘Sluken,’ she called. ‘I implore you to make yourself visible! I wish you to meet my guests.’
The air shimmered then, and rippled into expansive light. The whirls subsided. In their place stood a dragon, elegantly humble, beaming shyly at the princess and the elf. This dragon was not a wraith. Sluken was as physically solid as the soothsayer. The dazzle of the dragon’s scales ignited a memory for Pieter, but whether he’d recalled a Dream-Sphere occurrence or a distant childhood event was a question yet to be answered.
‘Sluken was hunted down in the forest when young,’ Zemelda told them, ‘and imprisoned in a dungeon for many season-cycles until he grew large enough to be slain for his golden blood. If they’d succeeded in killing him, they would have trapped his spirit in the Cave of Decay.’ Zemelda ran a comforting hand over Sluken’s neck. ‘Moments before the Backwards-Winding, the eagle guards tied Sluken up in one of the courtyards. They were preparing to end his life. The quakes caused by the Backwards-Winding distracted the guards, and we seized the opportunity to rescue him.’
‘We?’ said Eidred. ‘Who helped you, Zemelda?’
* * * *
Pieter watched the soothsayer, awaiting the answer to Eidred’s question.
‘A companion,’ Zemelda said. ‘I was helped by my ally within the court.’
The dragon addressed Pieter. ‘You would not remember me, but when you were an infant, I played in the forest with your cousin.’
Pieter dashed across to Sluken and threw both arms around him. ‘This explains my recognition of your scales! I remember a story Croydee told me once, about his dragon friend. I am deeply thankful, Sluken, that you’ve been saved.’
‘The silver and the gold unite,’ Sluken said to Eidred. ‘Orahney has told me much.’
‘Orahney?’ Pieter spun round to Zemelda and said, ‘The faerie Orahney is a friend of the Brumlynds. She is an autumn Clan Watcher and Dream Sphere dweller. Where would she be, good woman?’
The soothsayer bowed her head. As she did so, the hood casting shadows across her face fell away. The eyes that met Pieter’s were dark and gentle. Could it be true? And yet it was. Right before Pieter, in the form of a bewitcher withered with age, was Orahney.
Eidred’s voice was faint. ‘I once heard the name Orahney. It is supposed to be the name of my faerie godmother…’
‘Orahney is my own godmother, beloved.’ Pieter gazed at the soothsayer in disbelief. ‘How could…’
The former faerie held her wand high in the air. A silver glow, not unlike moonlight, flowed from the wand’s crystal and engulfed her in dazzling beams.
The princess grasped Pieter’s arm. ‘’Tis all right, my beauty,’ Pieter said to her. ‘Silvery light is only ever benevolent.’
The wand returned Orahney to her true form. In place of her cloak was a flame-bright gown made from leaves tinged with colours of the autumn: deep, dark red, clear orange and glowing amber. In place of her whitened and crinkling skin was a luminous complexion of deepest brown. Orahney’s tresses, with their flecks of crimson and mulberry, fell about her shoulders like ropes of braided silk.
‘Orahney,’ said Pieter. ‘It is really you!’
‘Surely you do not know me.’
‘You are my godmother,’ said Pieter. ‘You prophesied my birth! I’ve spoken to you many a time in the Dream Sphere. How did you ever maintain solidity in this world? And for so long? I have never seen this in a Dream Sphere dweller.’
‘I am not a Dream Sphere dweller,’ said Orahney. She appeared perplexed by Pieter’s questions. ‘I am from Earth. Elysium Glades. And I regret you’ve mistaken me for another faerie, for I am the godmother of no-one.’
Remembering then that Orahney in the Dream Sphere had once mentioned a life lived as a Clan Watcher in the Pre-Destruction Century, Pieter said no more. His godmother was the future Orahney, after she’d passed. He had to remind himself that he’d travelled back in time with the Grudellan Palace. Imagining the implications of telling Orahney he had met her ghost made Pieter blush. ‘Perhaps I am mistaken,’ he mumbled.
‘You are Storlem’s beloved,’ cried Eidred. ‘He is the companion you speak of.’
Pieter thought back to Eidred’s account of the forbidden lovers and Orahney’s disturbing capture. During one of her walks in the forest of Elysium, the princess had overheard an affectionate conversation between an eagle-winged royal guard and the guard’s true love who dwelt in the glades, a faerie woman clad in autumn tones. Courtiers in sprite-seeing cloaks had slashed through forest vines and stolen the faerie away. Eidred had explained at the time that she dreaded the poor faerie’s fate. She was to be cruelly robbed of her magical powers in a ceremony, which altered faeries into bewitchers, and forced to live in the royal concubine quarters. The heartbroken guard had mutated into his eagle form and hovered helplessly above the sword-wielders. I shall watch over you within the Grudellan Palace, he’d told his lady. I will always be there to protect you.
Eidred was now telling Orahney that the memory had haunted her ever since. ‘I was there in Elysium.’
‘Indeed you were,’ said Orahney, eyes downcast. ‘What a terrifying evening. I was so afraid you might endanger yourself and try to defend me. Thank goodness you thought better of it.’
‘Thank goodness you aren’t a vacant-eyed slave.’
The faerie nodded serenely. ‘And my ageing, as you see, is a ruse. The rapid onset of maturity made me undesirable as a concubine.’
‘A disguise achieved by magic.’ Eidred was confused. ‘But when they turn faeries into bewitchers, the ceremony attendants confiscate all enchantments!’
Orahney held her wand aloft. ‘With the aid of this crystal I continue to wield mine.’
‘Those powers might not be very obedient.’ Eidred’s words quivered with anxiety. ‘Heart elixir belonging to another faerie seldom complies with its user’s will. My family’s Crystal Keepers are careful to ensure they loan their bewitchers heart-crystals that are not the wand-wielder’s own. If faeries at crystallings come into contact with their own beauty-creation, their strength is restored.’
‘And what makes you think, my dear, that this crystal is not of my own heart? Our dragon friend has grown restless. He is eager to go.’
Sluken’s wings unfurled into great, angular half-stars. ‘I remain at your service,’ he told Pieter and Eidred. ‘Seek me out if ever you need assistance.’ The scales upon the crest of his head flashed frenetically. He then vanished inside a fine wisp of smoke.
They left the cavern, and Orahney led them up the stairs, telling Eidred that Storlem would escort her back to her chamber.
‘Storlem has kept his promise in protecting Orahney,’ said a buoyant Eidred. ‘He is watching over her, and he has given her back her magical stolen heart.’
Upon returning through the trapdoor, the faerie addressed Pieter urgently. ‘We must ready you for your introduction to the Solen. If it were safe, I would help both you and the princess escape. The time is not right, but you will extricate yourself from the Grudellan Palace one day. The dragon blood has altered your skin enough to emulate Prince Adahmos.’
‘And yet I cannot mask my devic eyes.’
‘The absence of genetically royal blue has already been explained to the Solen. He believes the reason for your defective brown eyes is a wicked spell cast upon you by a sprite.’
Pieter laughed at that, as did brown-eyed Orahney.
Blue-eyed royal Eidred, hastening towards the pyramid’s exit where Storlem awaited her, turned and regarded them quizzically.
‘Sprites do not cast spells,’ Pieter explained. ‘And our beauty-creation never works in ways that are wicked.’
‘My family,’ said Eidred frowning, ‘are woefully misinformed.’
Storlem, Orahney’s eagle-winged love, a wholesome warrior who looked upon the faerie with the romantic dreaminess of a besotted poet, was to march alongside Eidred. He assured Eidred he would create a distraction if they were stopped. ‘Highness,’ he said, ‘would you allow me to hold your elbow as we walk?’
Eidred redonned the hood of her launderer’s cloak, carefully concealing her sun-bright hair, and set off across the grounds with Storlem. The sight of Eidred, a slight figure with head bowed, robed in unregal grey and locked in the firm clasp of one of the troopers, discomforted Pieter. He reminded himself that the guard had to appear as though he were taking a clothier away for punishment. Because of his constant work as Crystal Collector at ceremonies, Storlem resonated with kindness.
‘My beloved possesses a sprite’s temperament,’ Orahney said, watching the trooper with eyes of pride. ‘After he was silvered, he could no longer abide by the unfeeling ways of Gold’s Kin.’
‘This same marvel has occurred with my beautiful princess,’ Pieter told Orahney. ‘Eidred was silvered long before I met her. She has been in possession of a crystal since her naming ceremony. I’m still disbelieving of her wish to wed.’
‘And yet it is true, for you are a good young man with a heart as pure as hers.’ Orahney hesitated before adding, ‘Gold-heritage infants are especially impressionable to heart-elixir crystals. As well as becoming silvered, they often reflect the traits of the faerie from whom the elixir is stolen.’
Eidred, Pieter thought, appeared to resemble Orahney in character. The faerie’s voice, sweetly lilting now that she had shed her soothsayer form, was as soothing as sylvan bells and not unlike Eidred’s dulcet tones. Pieter knew that the crystal Eidred owned was a small chunk from a wand. Eighteen-season cycles ago, when Eidred was but an infant, a bitter bewitcher stormed her crystalling and broke one of the crystal wands, a fragment of which young Eidred’s nursery maid kept for her. Could the wand have been Orahney’s?
Mulling over this, Pieter shook his head. Orahney’s presence at a crystalling seventeen season-cycles ago wasn’t possible. The faerie’s capture and heart-elixir theft had occurred only within the last season-cycle. The silvering capacity of Eidred’s crystal had probably been taken from a faerie with similar graces.
Orahney handed Pieter a goblet. The liquid that bubbled within emanated curling blue steam. ‘Drink this,’ she said, ‘and all will be well.’
‘What will it do?’
‘It will make you restful in readiness for your introduction. It will help you to evade the truth. I fear your kind-hearted elfin nature is too good for your own good.’
The potion tasted of forest fruits and bitter fern. When he drank the last drop, Pieter promptly became weary. ‘My legs are almost unmovable,’ he said, puzzled at the potion’s effect. It hadn’t differed much from the berry cider he drank with his clan, and yet the cider had never exhausted him.
He sank to the floor. He could neither open his eyes nor close them. His lids fluttered listlessly.
And then Orahney’s hands, rough against his clothing, tore at his sleeves...scratched at the collar and headdress that Eidred had created for him.
Someone grasped his arms and dragged him towards the trapdoor. Any attempt to fight was in vain. Orahney’s potion had rendered him motionless.
Water was flung over him, water from the cavern’s stream. Beyond the haze he was locked in was the smell of salt as the water chilled his skin. ‘I have been tricked,’ he murmured. ‘This must not have been Orahney at all.’
Shortly after, he felt the brisk sweep of feathered wings on his shoulder. An eagle-winged trooper was lifting him from the cavern floor. Pieter tried to speak but failed. His senses were blurred and nightmarishly skewed, and his voice had become a pained croak. Again he attempted speech. ‘Harm me if you have to,’ he said in an opiated mumble, ‘but you must never go near the princess or the rabbit.’
Then everything was swallowed by a deep, unforgiving silence.
CHAPTER TWO
After her teenaged daughter had retired to bed, Rosetta Melki curled up on a lounge chair to re-read the letter from a solicitor in New Zealand. A smooth sweep of her dark-brown hair obscured the page. She pushed the wayward strand behind her shoulder and pored over the subject line, half-listening to the rhythm of the rain as it pelted against the bungalow’s lead-lit windows amidst flickers of playful lightning.
Robert Mark Bentley, a newly discovered half-brother. What would Robert be like? Would he be musical, like she was and have the same olive-toned skin? Maybe he’d be artistic like Izzie, and a snowy-skinned redhead as well, although Rosetta had always attributed Izzie’s colouring to her ex. A typical Scot in appearance was Angus. Whether the titian was peppered with grey these days wasn’t of much interest to Rosetta. Anyone capable of deserting a daughter and shirking the costs of child-raising was…but why think of Angus at a time like this? The letter had said she had a brother, a blood relative of her own.
She glided a hand over the crisp ivory page. The letter had provided her with another gift. The name of her mother.
According to our records, you are the biological half-sibling of our client and biological daughter of the late Mrs Daniela Sophia Bentley.
Daniela, the mother she’d never known, benevolent but not quite real, the smiling and receptive half of imagined conversations. Tonight those conjured talks ended in the words ‘I’m sorry.’ Rosetta was sorry she’d not made greater efforts to find her, sorry her mother’s life had ended so early, sorry that she couldn’t mend the past.
The buzzy anticipation of making an international call and speaking to Robert for the first time had meant she’d absent-mindedly made tea without boiling the kettle, only noticing the coldness of it after a deep-in-thought sip. By some miracle she might find a cheap flight to New Zealand. Affording accommodation during her stay was the greater concern. And what if she travelled there only to discover her half-brother to be hostile, or distantly civil at best?
The word family was no longer an emotive word. ‘Sibling’ was a pseudonym for ‘bully.’ Sticking up for herself and others was never too much of a problem, but finding Robert Bentley to be just as aggressive as her foster brothers and sister would be a terrible disappointment. Rosetta took another sip of cold tea and smiled at the melodramatic mood she’d slipped into. The guy didn’t have to match her jaundiced expectations.
‘Another parent,’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘I’ve lost another.’ A different feeling, of course, to losing Mama and Baba. The Greek couple’s passing had caused her to selfishly resent their desertion, but she’d been angry more with herself than with anyone else for not being a big enough reason to keep them here. Her Baba had been her one-man support team, and Mama...well, Mama had been a grump. Good-hearted, though, beneath all those crotchety words, and an ace with babies and toddlers, her love of them a major motivator for adopting newly born Rosetta so willingly. She’d imparted a lot of valuable knowledge when Izzie arrived in the world. The doting grandmother. A picture of practical nurturance.
Rosetta was pleased to settle down to sleep. She put to rest her desire for tomorrow to hurry up and arrive, along with worries concerning the house, the big-bellied cat and the prospect of phoning Wall Street Golden Boy aspirant Adam Harrow to cancel Saturday’s date, then submitted to an unusually restless slumber.
She dreamed she was diving through coral; frolicking with seals, delighting in the weightlessness of a world free of frenzy. She floated past a school of seahorses that bobbed through the water’s turquoise haze like dewy-eyed kindergarten kids locked in an obedient march. She curled into a languid somersault and was stunned to find that her legs were no longer visible. In their place was a dolphin’s tail, dappled with the fragments of a muted sunbeam.
And then she was back on land, running through the same magnificent forest that she and book-club buddy Royston had dreamt of previously, the forest described in Lillibridge’s Our True Ancient History. The colours of the trees were fiery. Russet and yellow and crimson-red leaves fluttered about her. As well as the fiery tones were startling colours normally never seen in foliage. Electric blue. Lime. A deep hot-pink. A majestic night sky the colour of plums. The air was made Christmassy with the fragrance of pine needles. Added to that was the comforting aroma of smoke and hazelnuts.
She was running towards the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He had the rippling physique of an athlete, skin that was golden, and calm eyes that were greenly blue. And feathered angel wings, which, rather than white, were a deep, dark brown. She went to throw her arms around the man, but he dissolved into the atmosphere as though he’d never been there at all. In his place was an eagle. The eagle blinked. To the sound of Rosetta’s screams, the eagle turned to stone.
All that remained was a gold wedding band looped like a bangle around the stone eagle’s leg. There came the sound of singers. Their voices were peculiar; screeching yet powerfully mesmeric. They chanted the words We end your joy.
The wedding band lit up as though struck by lightning and a foreboding voice shouted, ‘All things golden!’
The dream tumbled into a memory of Matthew Weissler—at the bar Adam had taken her to—as he nodded across at his wife on the purple lounge. Again she felt the sudden intake of breath at discovering Matthew wasn’t single as imagined. Looked down at his left hand where a golden ring glinted and wondered why she hadn’t taken note of it earlier. And then Dette Weissler’s voice, from her phone call delivering Rosetta’s interview result, replayed repeatedly in echoes. You weren’t successful.
A car by the beach refusing to start.
The laundry intruder's taloned fingers clawing at the windscreen.
Icy, helpless terror.
Rosetta woke up shivering. She wasn’t the only one to awaken with chills that morning. At the breakfast table, Izzie said, ‘I was freezing when I woke up. Shivering all over.’ The sixteen-year-old’s face was damp with perspiration and an unhealthy shade of scarlet. ‘But now it’s boiling. Like summer.’ By the time she was buttering her toast, she said, ‘I’m freezing! Climate change sucks.’
‘Honey, I think you might have a fever.’ Rosetta retrieved from their first aid box a thermometer and packet of painkillers. Izzie’s temperature was sky-high. She would not be attending school. Rosetta gave her two aspirins—the last in the packet—and a hot lemon drink, then sent her to bed before sprinting down the hallway to answer the meeping phone.
‘Hey, Fornighter.’ Craig. Friday Fortnight book-club regular and the friend whose career inspired Rosetta to take on the law degree she was yet to finish. He was calling from Alice Springs on a mobile that kept cutting out. All Rosetta could hear was, ‘Incredible...These crystals we discovered are...’
‘Crystals? I didn’t know you were into crystals all that much.’
‘...Really amazing. We’ve started mining them. We’ve been...’
‘A mine? A crystals mine? Sounds bizarre. Ooh, is this to do with that “secret project” of yours?’
Several bouts of soft, staccato chuckling emanated from the receiver. ‘Yup. I didn’t want to tell...and...off to Alice Springs again...drop my car across to you in the morn...A guy was...and his doc couldn’t believe it either! How many people get to be cured of emphysema? Mining’s now in progress. Company’s nearly up-and-run...Can you hear me? Think my phone’s out-of-range.’
‘I can hear you okay, Craig, but you’re breaking up.’
‘That better?
‘Slightly. Looking forward to the loan of that gorgeous car of yours.’
‘Rosetta, can you hear me?’ The call cut out.
Rosetta tried calling Craig back, but his phone had switched itself off.
CHAPTER THREE
Izzie Redding woke from a fevered sleep. She wanted to be at school. Instead she was confined to her room with nothing to listen to but the syrupy chip-chip-chireeee of a bird in the magnolia tree and nothing to look at but the bungalow’s whirly ceiling cornices.
Dozing some more would have eased the aches, but an edgy restlessness kept Izzie conscious. It didn’t help that her mind was circling around Glorion. She’d already known he lived in Brighton-Le-Sands but could never have imagined his home would be a narrow beachside shed or that he’d cook her a zesty birthday dinner, and without the need for electricity or gas.
Izzie checked her phone for texts. Apart from Jandy, Marla, Sara, Andrine and Rella, no-one from school had replied. She assessed the picture on the corkboard she’d sketched not so long ago, of the sun and moon locked in a kiss. She would re-do it one of these days, with brighter colours. Glorion’s art was more vibrant than hers. His golden girl, silver boy painting was awash with the boldest of hues, both primary and pearlescent. Adahmos and Eid he called it, his very own portrayal of book characters he believed had existed in real life. It made sense, Izzie supposed. Why would the author name his book Our True Ancient History if it wasn’t true? And how bizarre was it that Glorion voiced an interest in that particular book? He even knew of Rosetta’s Lillibridge site. ‘Rosetta Melki is your mother?’ he’d said. ‘But your surname’s Redding!’ and she’d had to explain that her mother returned to her maiden name after divorce.
Propping herself up against the pillow, Izzie eyed the dark-blue book-club novel on her bedside table, the edition her mother had borrowed from Royston. She’d loved Glorion’s account of the book. She didn’t doubt Adahmos and Eid were real people once, but Glorion’s belief in the existence of sprites and a power-hungry race obsessed with gold had seemed way too way out. By the time she’d left for home, though, Izzie had wondered more about the theory. Even wondered why Glorion knew so much about that apparent timeframe. Modern science deemed time-travel impossible, and yet…
Guess I’m not too giddy with this cold-virus to read, she thought.
She was eager to look over a few pages, if only to check that Glorion’s retelling of the story was right.
A thin streak of light shone on the corkboard, setting aglow her sketch of a pink gem encased in lunar-gilt metal. She paused to remember the silver-pink crystal Glorion carried around, which appeared to have powers she couldn’t explain. Izzie had never seen anything like that at the crystals shop her mother had worked at. None were known to generate the effects of electricity and gas. When she’d ribbed Glorion about it, he’d cosied-up on the couch and kissed her.
Izzie floated for a while in the memory of Glorion’s kiss. It’s only you, Izzie, he’d said. I only like you.
She grasped the cloth-covered novel with its tarnished title and pressed it open. Its yellow-edged pages held the familiar woodsy fragrance of antique books. Her eyes skimmed over the first page.
<><> <><><> <><>
Our True Ancient History
<><> A tale from the People of the Sea <><>
Retold by Reverend Edward Lillibridge
In the Year of Our Lord, Seventeen-Seventy-one
<><> <><><> <><>
Izzie turned to a random chapter, Chapter XXXVI, which began with the nocturnal Norwegian elf named Pieter dazzled by sunbeams streaming into a gilded room.
Realising she needed some sun herself to sharpen the faded words, Izzie opened the curtains behind her aching head, settled comfortably against the pillows and began to read…
<><> XLII <><>
‘Quite handsome, if it weren’t for his brown irises.’ The words hung ponderously in the stillness.
Piercing daylight stabbed at Pieter’s half-closed eyes. He glimpsed the gleam of a gold ceiling etched with rose garlands and sun-faces.
‘Ah, you are conscious now, Your Highness.’ A servant woman curtsied, then exited the room.
Swimming through Pieter’s bleared vision was a sallow face with cold eyes and the thinnest of smiles. A man of Gold’s Kin, cloaked in fabric embellished with emeralds and amethysts, was towering imperiously over him. Rings on his nobbled fingers flashed in silver-white and azure bursts. From his neck hung a grotesque medallion representing the pterodactyl god, Grudas, a pendant Eidred had told him was only ever worn by the empire’s solens. ‘Highness,’ he said. ‘it is fortunate you survived the shipwreck. My men have salvaged some of the treasures you brought ashore in your ship’s life boat.’
Vague memories filtered back to Pieter…a potion tasting of forest fruits and bitter fern…the clank of the goblet as he fell, and the creak of a trapdoor…his sodden body lifted from the cavern beneath the soothsayer’s home and lowered onto a cart lined with straw. He struggled for further clarity, but the recollections appeared only in flashes. Dozing drunkenly on damp sand, his ankles nudged by waves...callous hands dragging him along a beach...cries of ‘Enemy! Shipwrecked invader! Kill him!’
Another voice, deep and commanding, returned to Pieter. ‘Release him at once. Do you wish to be clapped in irons? This is the Solen’s most honoured guest: Prince Adahmos of Ehypte.’
He’d felt a feathered wing brush against his face...heard the gallop of hooves...and then he’d been overcome by a stifling blackness.
The Solen’s sharp voice snapped Pieter out of the mysterious series of events. ‘My vizier will explain what has happened. I expect to see you at the midday banquet tomorrow. It is to be held in your honour.’
‘Er...Sire, I thank you. I …’
The Solen swept out of the room.
Another man of Gold’s Kin was soon before Pieter, explaining in a hurried, disinterested way that he had been discovered crazed with fever in the shallows of the Grudellan Sea. ‘You will meet the Solen’s daughter at the banquet tomorrow. Eidred of Grudella has all the qualities of a humble and obedient wife and is renowned throughout the land for her delicate beauty.’
Grateful now that Storlem’s courage and Orahney’s magic had protected him, that the eagle-winged guard and autumn faerie hadn’t betrayed him as previously thought, Pieter waved a careless hand in the air. ‘I will judge Princess Eidred’s worthiness and decide for myself. You are dismissed.’ The unfamiliar words had burst mechanically from Pieter’s mouth. Orahney’s potion had caused him to be arrogant!
The vizier bowed three times and backed out of the chamber.
A fanfare celebrating the princely visit preceded Pieter’s first royal dinner: one hundred trumpeters upon a scarlet carpet, and a procession of fire-eaters, acrobatic jesters and pastel-hued forest unicorns, which, tragically, were kept imprisoned, locked into gilded cages beyond the pyramids.
And Eidred’s body-king father, a man who subscribed to the illusion that he, as Solen of Grudella, was more important than anyone of lesser riches, a man who thought nothing of having his former wives murdered upon giving birth to daughters and not sons, greeted Pieter magnanimously, as he would a favourite nephew. Adahmos of Ehypte was known throughout the empire to be exceedingly affluent, in possession of a great deal more land than the Solen. The prince’s fondness for Eidred of Grudella was to be encouraged. Like wheat basking in the benign rays of Sol, Adahmos was to be rewarded warmly by the Solen when interest was shown in the princess.
Their restriction in proximity was maddening in the extreme for Pieter. He and Eidred were not permitted to touch while courting, not even to clasp hands in greeting. Where once Eidred graced him with her presence on returning from schooling each day, now it was only at banquets that he’d got to speak with and look upon her. On the Sun’s Days he was granted a walk around the grounds with his cherished lady, only to return to a cold, gold-filled room, aching for when next they would meet, and on those all-too-seldom saunters they were never completely alone. Two servants trailed behind them. Behind the servants, two of the Solen’s eagle-winged guards.
Once Pieter officially proposed marriage, the Solen requested he visit Soothsayer Zemelda to hear how he might amass greater amounts of gold. Orahney certainly shared secrets with Pieter, but of quite a different nature. When Pieter discovered how deftly the autumn faerie had toiled in ensuring he and his beloved remained together safely, he was humbled with gratitude.
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Feeling sleepy once more, Izzie set Our True Ancient History aside, wondering where Glorion was now. She could easily relate to Lillibridge’s reference in that chapter to a restriction in proximity causing madness.
The bird in the magnolia tree began on another round of its chip-chip-chiree song, the shadow of its open-beak and scallop-edged feathers flickering gracefully across Izzie’s quilt cover. Reminded of the feathery she-oaks she’d seen when emerging from the cavern beneath Glorion’s boatshed, Izzie shrugged. Who had tried to break in? Who was Glorion escaping? She shook her head. What he’d told her just didn’t add up. How could a respectable high-school student become a target for SAPO, the Swedish secret police? And Glorion wasn’t a Swede. Or was he? The rumour sweeping the school that he faked his Dutch accent mightn’t have been so crazy after all.
Something was not as it seemed. Izzie nestled back into the bed, fatigued by the woozy, prickly, clammy effect of her cold. How could she be sure that the guy she was head-over-heels for was actually who he said he was? Maybe Glorion was just a dreamy product of her imagination, someone too good to be true.
To:............Isobel Redding
From:..........Sara Belfield
Sent:..........5 May 2008
Subject:.......urgent info
Izzie!
Please reply as soon as you get this email. Today at school was mad. Two men, a reporter and a cameraman from The Sydney Telegraph hung around outside the gates and called out to some of the Year Tens that they needed to speak to friends of Glorion Osterhoudt.
Tyson told them he’d last seen him yesterday afternoon. Glorion was at his place watching the soccer, and he told Tyson he was going to your birthday picnic. (Tyson couldn’t go cos he got a respiratory virus—he wasn’t ignoring us or anything). Around 5 p.m. Glorion said he’d join your party if it was still going and mumbled something about visiting the supermarket first to get you chocolates and flowers. Tyson warned him that you might have gone home, that this wasn’t Europe where people partied hard. You’re so lucky no buses were at the depot when you went to leave. You and Glorion would never have met up!
It was so exciting talking to everyone at school today about the group text you sent us last night. We all reckon you’re a legend! Like I said in my reply, you just happened to choose the hottest guy in Year Ten.
What’s with you dodging school on the most important day of your life? If you haven’t seen the latest reports on Internet News, do it now. Since you haven’t answered any of my calls or texts, I’m thinking it’s possible you’re in bed sick, totally unaware of the notoriety you’re gaining throughout Australia and probably the world! If this is the case, I’ll give you a rundown, just so you don’t totally freak out when you see/hear the news. There’s so much I want to talk to you about, but here’s the more important stuff, and, I think, the most mindblowing information either of us will ever receive in our whole lives.
Glorion Osterhoudt is...