An Incomparable Pearl Read online

  The knight was surprised to see that it was the prince, not the princess, who looked with horror towards the piece of antler he held in his hands.

  ‘This plinth isn’t made from the hart’s antlers, however,’ he hurriedly explained, briefly holding up the carving. ‘Rather, the hart began to slowly move away, glancing back at me strangely, as if unsure just what sort of creature I was; even as if he was hoping that I would follow him. I did, of course, as I thought this hart is so trusting, he will be easily captured – and it was a long time since I had eaten well. On following him, however, I was led to a point where a full sized rainbow arched down from the sky to touch a section of the wall. It was here that I found a small doorway leading down into an elaborate yet minute chapel buried beneath the wall: and there, lying on this triangular plinth, I found Hiram’s jewel.’

  ‘The jewel that controls this stone-eating Great Wyrm?’ the princess asked somewhat doubtfully. ‘This…Chimera?’

  ‘Shamir, my lady,’ Sir Grandhan politely corrected.

  With a regretful narrowing of his eyes, the king looked back towards the resplendent gems embedded in the breastplate.

  ‘Unfortunately, these gems seem to relinquish their magical powers once they have been retrieved,’ he stated morosely.

  ‘Hence why we should put an immediate halt to this foolish quest!’ the queen snorted dismissively.

  ‘Far from it!’ the king snapped back. ‘Haven’t you been listening, my dear? If we find this ship, then we have a way through to this other land lying beyond the wall!’

  ‘And that of course, my lord,’ the queen nonchalantly replied, ‘is only possible if this ship miraculously survived the great storm caused by Sir Grandhan’s removal of the protective gem!’

  *

  Chapter 11

  With neither shield nor sword to aid him in either his defence or attack, the prince was tempted to deliberately throw himself aside to avoid the slashing sword accurately aimed towards his throat.

  As he had been relentlessly taught, however, he kept on his feet: even if he swiftly recovered from an athletic roll, as he could easily do when only lightly clad, he would rise up only to find the other man-at-arms already waiting there to hack him to pieces.

  Instead, as part of a well-practised side step, he deftly curved his heavily armoured arm upwards, coming up from beneath the swinging sword then pushing it outward, letting the flat of the blade uselessly slide aside along the smoothly surfaced iron.

  As he did this, he reached out with his own hand towards the assailant’s hand, once again using the heavy metal of his gauntlets to crush bared fingers and loosen the grip on the sword’s handle.

  With a swift backward wrench of his arm, matched with a forward thrust of his other arm towards his opponent’s face, he’d made the attacker’s sword his.

  The second man-at-arms held off from his own attack to enthusiastically applaud the prince’s expertise.

  ‘Well done, well done my lord!’ Sir Roshaban proclaimed as he thankfully removed his sweat-drenched helmet.

  Sir Grandhan, however, was grimacing in pain, rubbing his bruised fingers.

  ‘I tried to hold onto the sword, my lord: but you’ve obviously learnt how to make the most of a hand’s weak spots!’

  The prince removed his own, far heavier helmet, breathing in fresher, cooler air with a gasp of relief.

  ‘If it’s true that you weren’t restraining yourselves too much,’ he replied a little doubtfully as his squires began to expertly remove the rest of his heavy armour, ‘then I owe a great deal of thanks to Sir Trent’s training regime.’

  Lifting his own helmet clear of his head, Sir Grandhan hung his head a little sadly.

  ‘If only Sir Dradfur were still alive to teach you the tricks he’d learnt out in the field…’

  Sir Roshaban chuckled bitterly.

  ‘I still find it hard to believe someone bested him in a fair fight!’

  They had both reacted as much with surprise as dismay when they had learnt how their fellow knight had appeared in the hall already dead, the magical sword deeply embedded within his chest.

  ‘We know it can’t have been a fair fight,’ Sir Grandhan pronounced assuredly. ‘The sword’s jewelled pommel must have given it powers we can only guess at! That’s how poor Sir Dradur was defeated!’

  The even stranger manner of Sir Heduin’s death had also shocked the two knights. Even so, they had determined that they would set out on the quest for more jewels as soon as they had equipped themselves with new armour and horses.

  With the prince’s own armour now fully removed, he announced he needed to bathe after such an arduous training session, exchanging the expected polite bows and goodbyes with the two knights and dismissing his squires and attendants.

  It had become a custom amongst the royal family that no one should ever see them naked, a habit adopted on the marriage of the king and queen, when the latter had insisted that she was never to be disturbed when bathing, not even by the king himself.

  The prince set off towards one of the pools that lay within the private garden set aside for both himself and his sister, an area that he fully expected to be deserted at this time of day, for the princess had informed everyone that she intended to obtain a certain ring she had long coveted.

  On his way there, however, he heard singing coming from behind one of the garden’s walls. It was his sister who was singing, he was sure, and yet he had never heard her singing so beautifully, so entrancingly.

  ‘I arise today,

  ‘Through thy strength to pilot me,

  ‘Thy might to uphold me,

  ‘Thy wisdom to guide me…’

  Yet when he peered curiously around the edge of the wall, there was no sign of his sister. Or, rather, there was a sign that she had been there recently, and perhaps might even be somewhere quite close, for she had set up her stool and embroidery stand as if she had been working on it out in the fresh air.

  Stranger still, it might have been some odd trick of the light, the way it filtered through the massed leaves of the surrounding trees, but the prince could have sworn he could see a slender stem of ivy threading its way through the embroidery.

  Before he had a chance to confirm this, however, he was distracted by what at first seemed to be an even more amazing trick of the light; a coruscating play of brightly flickering, multi-coloured rays coming off one of the nearby tree trunks. It was as if a million minute gems had all been simultaneously brought together within a rapid whirling of air.

  It was the furious beating of translucent wings, transforming light into a resplendent universe of overlapping, conflicting rainbows.

  It was a fairy, a creature Prince Argaret had always presumed was nothing but a mythical figure.

  *

  The prince had to hold himself back from crying out in surprise. He didn’t want to risk disturbing or frightening off the resplendently fluttering fairy.

  He – or was it a she? – was, just like the prince a moment earlier, staring wide eye at the empty seat, the magically weaving embroidery. He appeared to be entranced by the gorgeous singing of the princess, which was itself almost increasingly angelically magical in its beauty.

  ‘Thy eye to look before me,

  ‘Thy ear to hear me,

  ‘Thy word to speak for me,

  ‘Thy hand to guard me…’

  The fluidly rhythmic flow of the music never stopped even as a dagger abruptly thudded into the tree truck just a thread’s thickness above the hovering fairy.

  The fairy didn’t seem in any way aware, however, that he had literally been a hair’s breadth away from being exiled from this world: he remained completely charmed by the singing.

  He didn’t even seem to notice that the split tree had released a thick globule of sap that, erupting from beneath the tree bark as if it were a long imprisoned bubble, swiftly drooped over and enveloped him.

  The fairy struggled only half-heartedly, as if
not sure what was happening, perhaps even uncaring, the magical music still falsely reassuring him that there was nothing to fear.

  ‘Thy way to lie before me,

  ‘Thy shield to protect me–’

  The prince, realising that the fairy was in danger of being entrapped with the swiftly setting amber forever, rushed forward to help, his sudden appearance at last bringing the glorious music to an abrupt halt. Wrenching the deeply embedded knife from the tree trunk, he began to use its blade to prise the sticky sap from the bark, where it was beginning to set hard much swifter than he believed possible.

  ‘Argaret! What are you doing?’

  Suddenly, the princess was alongside him, glaring at him sternly.

  ‘It’s this poor fairy,’ he quickly explained as he cupped the entrapped creature in one hand, plunging the knife blade back into the bark. ‘She’s been entrapped in this tree sap!’

  ‘Of course she’s been entrapped, silly!’ The princess sounded exasperated by his foolishness. ‘I want her for my ring!’

  Ignoring his sister’s protests, the prince was striding off towards the pool, hoping he would be able to wash away the sap from the fairy before she either drowned or suffocated in the rapidly hardening amber.

  ‘She’s a living thing! You can’t just go using her as a piece of jewellery!’

  ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous! All sorts of insects get entrapped within amber! Besides, if the only thing worrying you is that she’s alive–’

  Without any warning, the princess suddenly plunged the dagger she’d retrieved from the tree trunk towards the defenceless and virtually stilled fairy.

  Argaret reacted quickly, moving his hand aside enough to save the fairy’s life, yet not enough to prevent the blade from slashing through the setting amber and painfully piercing his palm.

  He grimaced, but otherwise gave no sign that he was flinching from the pain. The blood rose from his hand, swirling around inside the golden sap.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done!’ the princess complained, stamping her foot irately as she swung around and stormed off still holding the bloodied knife. ‘It’s ruined! Useless!’

  Ignoring his sister once again, the prince continued his urgent rush towards the pool. Reaching the sun dappled waters, kneeling by them, he immediately dipped his bleeding hand and entrapped fairy within its surprisingly cold embrace.

  With a careful, deft use of his fingers, the prince began to wash the thickening sap from around the fairy, some of it falling away in clumps, other parts of it drifting away like a particularly viscous honey.

  Freed of the golden covering, the fairy iridescently glowed once more, rising up from the green waters with a splutter.

  The prince had no chance to see if the fairy was grateful for her rescue or not. The golden sap appeared to be spreading throughout the pool, expanding endlessly, transforming the cool waters into a brightly glistening syrup. It clung at his hands, sucked hard on them, refusing to let him withdraw them from its fierce clutch.

  As the fairy rose into the air, glittering like so many entrapped rainbows, the bewildered prince lost his balance, tipping forward from his knees and plunging into the waiting pool.

  He sank into its golden glare. Thick, glutinous, it was no longer like water at all, but pulling on him as if with the grip and urgency of countless hands.

  He felt himself dropping, dropping, as if down into an endlessly deep pit, the darkness lying ahead of him seemingly solid, the golden glow he was leaving behind him gradually dimming like a dying sun.

  Was he, like so many insects and small creatures from the Earth’s past, going to find himself entrapped forever within a massive slab of amber?

  *

  Chapter 12

  Within the darkness, the prince saw a few, odd flashes of white.

  They were angular, regimented, as if a camp of tents.

  But no, they moved, in rows of two. They were helmets, the shining helmets of uniformly black-clad troops.

  ‘You’re obviously lost,’ the nearest of the darkly robed soldiers said to him. ‘Come with us: we’ll help you back.’

  It wasn’t a man’s voice, however. It was a woman’s.

  They weren’t men-at-arms after all. They were nuns, dressed purely in sheerest black and purest white.

  The prince was surprised that he could walk normally, freed of the sticky clutches of the amber pool. They walked to a nearby, high-walled nunnery, the buildings soaring against a deeply blue sky.

  Passing through a gate, the wood of its doors so polished they shone as if also made of amber, they came first into a courtyard and then a cloister, its covered walkways surrounding a garden dominated by a soaring pine tree. From here, they entered the nunnery’s great church, its interior awash with the golden glow of sunlit windows.

  In some ways, however, it differed from any other church the prince had previously seen. In the place of stone sculptures, the alcoves and plinths were decorated with carvings of amber, many of which contained entrapped creatures or flowers of various sizes. The vast waterfalls of glass, too, were replaced here with seemingly ever-rising sheets of amber, the effect being one of a constant flow of honey.

  This wondrously illuminated church wasn’t their intended final destination, however.

  The small column of nuns continued their unhurried progression, passing through a door into an even more magnificent room, one filled with pieces of amber of unimaginable size, the plants held within them being as tall as trees, the creatures being elephants with elaborately curling tusks, tigers with gigantic teeth, and even dragons, some with wings as the legends told. The prince couldn’t be entirely sure, as he wasn’t given time to linger and study these amazing stones, but he caught a glimpse of what could be a giant, even a man with wings, as if an angel.

  From each stone, small forks of lightning crackled, arching across to other stones, making them glow as if miniature suns.

  ‘This is the lyngurium of the Sisters of Gad,’ the prioress announced to the prince with no sense of pride, no sense of wishing to display this fabulous treasure trove to him. Rather, she led him away from these more magnificent pieces, taking him instead towards a low plinth standing within the middle of the great hall. Here there lay yet another piece of amber, yet one that could have adorned any fortunate lady’s ring.

  ‘Here traces of the past linger,’ the prioress continued, as she and the other nuns moved aside to allow the prince closer access to the small yet strangely resplendent oval of amber. ‘Remembrances of a past that may aid you in your quest.’

  ‘My quest?’ The prince was puzzled: he knew of no quest, other than the one his father’s knights had been sent out upon.

  ‘Yes, of course; ultimately, the quest is yours, though no one, not even yourself, has realised this until now.’

  The prince stared into the glistening amber, restraining a gasp of surprise and joy as the glittering light seemingly caught inside the stone took on a more globular, pearl-like form.

  Had he found the pearl everyone sought?

  The glistening white blaze of the pearl continued to rise up through the golden glow of the amber, drawing ever closer to the eagerly waiting prince.

  The closer this glittering white light drew towards him, however, the more he realised he had been wrong to mistake it as a pearl; rather, it was a flower in bloom, the most gorgeous lily he had ever seen, and of the very purest white.

  He frowned in bewilderment: why was he been shown this lily?

  Recognising his confusion, the prioress said, ‘It’s told of the jewels you seek that one struck Cain, son of Adam and Eve, on his forehead, forever staining him with the reddened mark of the serpent. Like many stories, however, this is not entirely true, yet is simply a means to try and help us realise the truth.’

  As she spoke, the lily within the glowing amber was dissolving, transforming into the innumerable bright sparkles of the stars in the heavens. One was brighter than all these, for it was the bright
and shining Morning Star, tumbling ever closer towards earth.

  It plummeted through soaring trees of the most beautiful and perfect kind.

  It hurtled through the most wondrously coloured bushes and blooms.

  It passed by creatures who stared in wide eyed innocence at this remarkable sight, this result of a rift in heaven.

  Yet, of course, it wasn’t a gift from heaven.

  It buried itself within the fresh soil of this most perfect of gardens, as an insect buries its young in its prey, such that later they have food to eat when they hatch.

  But this was worse than any insect brood; it grew from the nourishing soil, like a bulb drawing whatever it required from the goodness around it, and transforming it into its own materials, its own forms. And here, he decided, his form should be other than his own, more natural form.

  Yes, she thought: that makes perfect sense within this new world.

  From this bulb, a shoot snaked up from the darkness of the earth, reaching for the light above. It burst forth, sprouting through the green grass serpent-like in its eagerness to taste this world, to make it its own, as she desired, as she felt righteous and fair. For hadn’t this world sprung as much from her designs as his? Wasn’t it formed as much in her image as his?

  And so she writhed upwards, her body strong, needing no support of grasses or tree.

  She needed another name, of course. Not Samael, as he had previously been called. No, she would be as the lily: she would be Lilith.

  The irresistibly perfumed lily. The softly curvaceous lily. The sensuously yielding lily.

  The lily that freely and completely and alluring opened herself up, that unashamedly revealed her inner gorgeousness.

  The lily of the purest white. Of untouched, unblemished flesh.

  The lily bloomed, like full, enticing lips. Hungry lips, seeking pleasure equal to that which they promised.

  From between these lips there came – gradually, and not wholly at first – the very first woman.

  First there came her upper half, burgeoning from this glorious flower, sharing the perfume, the captivating curvaceousness, the compliant softness, the tender, responsive flesh.