An Incomparable Pearl Read online

  The king glanced proudly at the child lying alongside him beneath the bed sheets. When he looked up once more, the beautiful fay was already exiting through the bedroom’s large double doors, elegantly swirling past the gawping guards and patiently waiting attendants and couriers.

  The doors swung to behind her, but not before those outside had had the opportunity to see the freshly born babe lying alongside the king.

  ‘I initiate a new beginning,’ the fay cried out over her shoulder, ‘one I hope won’t finish as I fear the old one will.’

  The king’s elated gaze fell on his child, his heir, once more.

  His kingdom was saved, its future security assured.

  Reaching out, he picked up the child, pulling it out from beneath the bed sheets.

  And he gasped in horror.

  His ‘prince’ was missing ‘his’ own precious little jewel.

  *

  Chapter 5

  ‘A prince – my heir – is born!’ the king proudly cried out as he emerged from his bedroom, draped within a bed sheet as if it were a Roman toga.

  He held his child up high, a child similarly regally draped in a toga-like torn strip of bed sheet.

  The waiting crowd, already excited after their initial sighting of the babe, the flouncing departure of the gorgeous fay, erupted into relieved, grateful cheers.

  A pair of female attendants, those who were most likely to have been chosen as nursemaids for any new babe born within the court, reached up to take the prince off the king’s hands. Subtly, however, the king managed to continually keep the child out of their reach, moving aside as they drew closer, their arms extended upwards towards the surprisingly calm child.

  The king acted as if he were too proud, too relieved, too protective, to let his precious child out of his hands. And who amongst those thronging around him could blame or criticise him for such actions?

  On his earlier discovery that his ‘prince’ wasn’t really the heir he had sought, the king had naturally been on the brink of yelling out the command to restrain and arrest the fleeing, devious fay. But – he had immediately stilled the cry.

  The fleeing woman was a fay, capable of magic, of charms and spells.

  She must have known she would be in danger of arrest after fooling the king in such a way. And so, surely, she must have also known that she would – somehow – be able to avoid capture.

  Besides, whether she were held or managed to escape, the end result would be the same; his warning cry would alert everyone to the fact that something had gone amiss.

  The king would be humiliated. Everyone would know he had been tricked by the fay.

  He would be deposed. His kingdom would fall.

  And yet – why should that be the case, when his entire court had witnessed this magical fay promising an heir? Many had seen the babe in his bed, after he and the fay had lain together.

  They had also been witness to the fay’s magical powers, for she had transformed overnight from hag to great beauty.

  (And in any future tales told of this remarkable event, the king decided, the transformation would take place before they had come together in his bed.)

  Only he was aware that his heir wasn’t quite the heir the fay had promised.

  If only he could ensure that no one – bar, perhaps, a carefully chosen few sworn to secrecy, on pain of death – ever saw the child naked, then she could be raised as a prince, as the promised heir.

  Would it be possible? How long could he maintain such subterfuge?

  He had no real idea.

  And yet he knew he had to try.

  *

  Chapter 6

  Thankfully, the king’s problem wasn’t as great as he had initially feared.

  The queen, of course, wanted nothing to do with the child, this ‘spawn of magic’.

  Would-be nursemaids were kept at bay when it soon became obvious to anyone allowed access to the child that ‘he’ suffered no hunger pangs. Neither did he require bathing, nor the expected changing of soiled clothes.

  He did, however, require a contestant updating of his wardrobe of clothes. For in little more than three days, he transformed from babe to a child of around twelve.

  Only then did he at last ask for food. And yes, he asked, for he was capable of speaking, as if he had gained his twelve years quite normally. He was also skilled at riding, at wielding the sword, at moving effortlessly in the heaviest and most secure of armour.

  His training, under the tuition of the kingdom’s most respected warriors, only added to his already remarkable capabilities. He now also grew and developed at the same pace as any regular boy, his brief spurt of rapid growth having come to an end.

  Like any regular boy, too, he took part in mischievous escapades that outraged the court, but amused his doting father.

  He released the stabled horse of the knights, allowing them to roam free until they were all carefully rounded up once more.

  He clambered through the trees of the nearby woods, ambushing anyone passing along its winding path with hails of apples and soft berries.

  He played tricks on the sorely suffering servants, not least when he replaced the dead hog prepared by the kitchen staff with a live one that ran through the royal hall.

  The king only drew the line when he heard of the prince’s plan to swim the castle’s great moat.

  As a royal prince, the king warned his son, it would be very unbecoming for him to be seen naked by anyone.

 

  *

  The queen and her daughter the princess fumed at this usurpation of their power.

  ‘You told me I was to be queen, Mother!’ the princess wailed at the queen.

  The queen understood her daughter’s frustration at the king’s attitude to his son.

  Whenever the opportunity had arisen, she had whispered into the king’s ear everything she could think of that would create doubt and foreboding in his mind.

  ‘How can we trust this fairy child? A child not of our blood?’

  ‘Of mine; he is a child of my blood!’ the king had confidently retorted.

  ‘How can we allow what could be a viper into our home, so close to our chests?’ the queen had said on another occasion.

  ‘If he’s the viper that strikes at our enemies, how wonderful would that be?’ the king had responded.

  ‘He’s not wholly human!’ the queen had insisted.

  ‘If fairy magic can be used, better that it works for us rather than our enemies,’ the king had replied.

  There was other fairy magic to be utilised, of course, the king realised.

  The quest for the heavenly stones: at the very least, sending his knights out on such a task would help remove the worst of them from his court, cutting them off from anyone else they had intended to draw into their many plots to oust him from his throne.

  He had the breastplate, with its twelve empty settings for the jewels, placed on display within the main hall, an especially constructed stand of crossed beams raising it high above and behind what were now four thrones.

  And one day, a sparkling red jewel abruptly and magically appeared within the very first of the settings.

  *

  Chapter 7

  The appearance of the jewel was accompanied by the most mournful playing of a harp that anyone within the court had ever heard, a discordant melody that struck deeply within each and every one of them.

  They felt more sorrowful than they had ever felt, even when in the throes of the deepest despondency.

  Within seconds of the jewel appearing within its setting on the breastplate, a bedraggled knight also appeared out of nowhere before the four empty thrones.

  ‘Sir Heduin!’ the king exclaimed, spinning in surprise on his heels, turning away from the courtier he’d been in conversation with farther down the hall.

  Sir Heduin briefly appeared even more surprised than the king and the handful of clerics from the exchequer, called to attend a discussion of the king
dom’s finances.

  ‘My lord, I’ve recovered–’

  He stepped towards the king, holding up a golden harp so large he had to hold it using both hands. Even though he wasn’t the one plucking the harps strings, they wavered, vibrated, the obvious source of the fearfully affecting music.

  The knight got no farther than two strides.

  He was abruptly lifted off his feet and pushed back as if by an extremely powerful yet completely invisible surge of wind. The harp flew from his grasp, only to rise up into the air rather than fall towards and shatter upon the stone floor.

  The knight was brutally pummelled as he was swept back through the hall, only stopping when viciously flung against what could have been a wall, yet one that was once again unseen, invisible.

  The violent impact knocked the wind from him. His eyes bulged; he was fruitlessly fighting for more air, his arms flailing uselessly as he bizarrely hovered above the floor as if weightless. He was trying to rise higher, but was obstructed by a ceiling that, like the wall, remained invisible to the horrified watchers.

  Sir Heduin was drowning, drowning in an air-filled hall.

  Those near to him reached up towards him, hoping to grab at his ankles, to pull him down to safety. But he was, bizarrely, too buoyant. He struggled, too, against their efforts to help him, as if he feared he were about to be dragged even deeper into the unseen waters by devious water sprites.

  As the invisible waters swelled around the harp, they didn’t prevent it playing but, rather, made the already intensely melancholy tune more thundering hollow and dark.

  It was a tune of death, of dying. One so affecting that everyone there who heard it that day would forever swear that they themselves sensed they were dying along with Sir Heduin: life itself was being remorselessly sucked from them, dragged screaming from their helpless bodies towards a patiently waiting darkness, where it was absorbed, devoured.

  They were being torn between two worlds, each realm laying claim to their body, their soul, neither wishing to fully relinquish its prize.

  Gradually, the knight’s floundering struggles ceased.

  His body went limp. Like the harp he’d released, his body rose up, floating at the top of the invisible waters, bumping against the invisible ceiling. They both swirled, both bumped against each other, and began to sink lower as the unseen waters appeared to be rapidly draining away.

  As Sir Heduin’s lifeless body sank silently to the floor, the king and a few of the clerics gathered around it, at first hoping that they had been mistaken that he had appeared to drown before them. Yet, despite him being quite dry, he was indeed dead.

  Another cleric retrieved the harp, bringing it towards the king for him to inspect.

  It was lighter than it looked, obviously constructed of gold-leaf covered wood rather than pure gold. It seemed to have no special qualities to it, apart from an empty depression in the forehead of the angel that the body of the harp had been carved into, the obvious setting for the jewel that was now embedded within the breastplate.

  The king strode towards the breastplate, touching the jewel in the hope that it possessed some magical quality that would have made Sir Heduin’s sacrifice worthwhile.

  Nothing happened.

  There was nothing magical about the jewel at all.

  The king looked back towards the limp, lifeless form of Sir Heduin with an irate frown

  It seemed a high price to pay: a jewel, for the life of one of his bravest knights.

  *

  Chapter 8

  A number of months later, another jewel appeared within the breastplate, along with another dead knight strewn across the hall’s floor.

  This time the knight had been killed by the object he had attempted to retrieve, a sword whose blade had been deeply embedded within his chest, whose pommel featured the empty setting where the jewel had once glistened.

  His death was accompanied by the awed wailing of a vast crowd, yet it was a crowd that remained invisible to everyone within the court.

  The jewel was a translucent greenish yellow, a peridot, that sat in the second of the prepared depressions on the breastplate. When inspected by those who were recognised as being specialists in such matters, they each declared that the jewel, like the first, appeared to be nothing more than a regular precious stone; it possessed no special qualities whatsoever, let alone any magical or otherwise wondrous abilities.

  ‘Is this what our bravest, most accomplished knight has sacrificed his life for?’ the king fumed.

  Attempts were made to prise the jewels from their settings within the breastplate, with the intention of placing them once more within the hollows provided for them on the harp and sword pommel. But no matter which implements – from the delicate probes of jewellers to the usually more brutally efficient chisels of blacksmiths – were used in the numerous attempts to remove the gems, they remained firmly and immovably in place.

  ‘Can’t you put a stop to this farce?’ the queen raged at the king in private one day. ‘Can’t you admit you’ve been tricked? Your best knights are being killed one by one!’

  The king was morose, and in a mind to agree with the queen. What could be the point in collecting jewels that seemed incapable of granting him the otherworldly powers he had hoped for?

  ‘How was such a renowned knight so easily bested in a fair fight?’ the king complained, recalling that an inspection of the poor knight’s corpse had revealed an earlier deep wound that would have easily felled any lesser man, a wound that would nevertheless have weakened him greatly. ‘It can’t have been a just fight; there’s your answer! Treachery must have been involved in Sir Dradfur’s death!’

  ‘And this prince,’ the queen snorted disparagingly, ‘don’t you think that he’s a part of this trick being played on us all? Didn’t he spring from the very same witch who’s the cause of all your troubles?’

  The king glared warningly at the queen, a stare unmistakably informing her that he believed he had already allowed her more leeway than he should have done. Even a queen could be accused of insulting and betraying her king.

  Noticing this, Princess Episteme pulled aggressively and irately on the strand of gold she was snaking through the embroidery she was diligently working upon.

  The king liked this prince too much. He didn’t seem to understand or care that his daughter felt betrayed by his actions, this endorsement of this usurper to the throne whose blood was only half royal. Were it not for this half, however, the prince would be denounced for what he truly was: the issue of a witch.

  ‘A wise king always puts his kingdom first, Father.’ The princess spoke as calmly as she was able, under the infuriating circumstances. ‘Your enemies are bound to see it as a weakness that you’re prepared to sacrifice your best knights for a handful of useless gems.’

  She plunged the needle home into the crown she was forming as part of her embroidery, working it wormlike through the head of the king portrayed wearing it. She pulled once more on the thread, expertly drawing it taut, slightly lifting the king’s head with it, making the already completed face frown in thought.

  The king frowned in thought.

  ‘I can’t afford to show weakness.’

  ‘Yes, Father; you have to be strong…’

  ‘Even to the extent of completing necessary tasks you yourself disagree with…’ the queen added, her voice, like her daughters, little more than a whisper, a suggestion.

  The princess pulled on another strand, one threaded earlier through the heart.

  ‘Some things are so difficult…’

  ‘Things we don’t always want to do…’

  ‘This spawn of a fay…’

  ‘This offspring of a witch…’

  ‘Suckled at the witch’s teat…’

  ‘A witch’s brood…’

  ‘Her litter…’

  ‘Shouldn’t we kill this seed of–’

  The door to the room crashed open. The prince ran into the room.

/>   ‘Father, Fath–’

  ‘Have you no manners, boy!’ the queen spat furiously.

  ‘How dare you burst in wh–’

  ‘Sorry, I’m sorry,’ the prince stammered nervously, wondering if he was doing the right thing interrupting a sister who, yet again, was already livid with him, ‘but it’s Sir Grandhan: he’s returned with a jewel. And he’s alive!’

  *

  Chapter 9

  The Haven’s Eye

  We had travelled through a number of kingdoms, and yet this was easily the worst part of our journey so far: ascending the Mount of Curses was arduous and cold, the going difficult even for our sorely suffering mounts.

  The wind ate at and tore away our already torn and shredded cloaks. The snow swirled around us, like angry wasps, stinging us with their freezing cold barbs. The ground was hard, rocky and treacherous, with every stone and pebble ready to shift at the slightest touch of an exhaustedly placed hoof.

  And after all that, when we reached the peak, we found our way blocked by a towering, insurmountable wall. Each stone was huge and perfectly set, with not even a hair’s breadth between them. And yet this remarkable wall stretched off across the hills to either side, apparently endlessly, and with no sign of towers, steps or gates.

  We had no choice, we decided, but to split our band up into two halves, with two of us heading one way, two of us the other. In this way, we would double our chances of finding a way through or over this seemingly impregnable wall.

  Sir Roshaban and I travelled for mile after mile, our mounts almost dead on their feet, becoming little more than wasted flesh on walking skeletons. We ourselves were hardly better, our supplies running increasingly low, with no hamlets or even the hovels of shepherds’ to provide us with sustenance. We were too exhausted to hunt game, living only off the roots of the few shrubs we found on our journey.

  It was only as we rose over what seemed to us to be the hundredth hill that we at last saw a change in the surrounding landscape; lying before us was a great sea, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Better still, there were signs of habitation along the coast, where a large sea port lay.