The Hidden Coronet

20

Alas, who speaks in the silence now?

Who lights up the dark?

The Lament for Tasceron

AT FIRST SHE THOUGHT it was another story.

She was lying on her back, and all she could see was blue. After a moment she realized it was the sky. A mew-bird soared across, opening its mouth as if it squawked, though Carys heard no sound. In fact, all she could hear was a faint hum.

She sat up, and stared around.

She was on a wooden slab in an empty room, and she was cold, but the amazing strangeness of the room made her forget that.

It was a bubble. An enormous clear dome of glass, coming right down to the floor all around, and as she stared out of it in wonder she saw that it rose up in the middle of the ocean, and all she could see out there on every side was water, a vast swell that slapped and surged against the glass, leaving swathes of foam that slithered silently down.

It was astonishing. She swung her feet off the table and stood up, finding her body stiff and aching. She was ravenously hungry.

But the dome! Walking up close she saw her own reflection, and putting a hand up she touched the glass. It was smooth and perfectly transparent, though it had to be incredibly thick. Not a whisper of sound came through it. Maker-work, obviously.

There was a small step up to a gallery that ran around it; and she climbed up, so that her eye-level was above the water. She was standing in the sea; it was all around her and yet she couldn’t smell it or taste its salt. Miles of empty water stretched to the horizon, and the small moon, Lar, was just setting, a chalky smudge.

It looked to be about midday. But which day? And where was the land?

She shook her head. So much for boasting to the Sekoi.

Her pack lay under the slab and she hurried down to it, rummaging inside. She pulled out another shirt and dragged it on, hurrying her coat back over it, then unwrapped a few strips of salted meat and dried fruit and gobbled them down. There was a jug of cold water and a cup. She drank thirstily. Obviously she wasn’t meant to starve.

There was no way to tell how long she’d been here. Days maybe. The Sekoi might even have reached Galen by now. Chewing raisins, she looked around the room carefully and saw the door, outlined in the smooth wall under the gallery.

She poured the rest of the water into her own flask, then swung the pack on fiercely. As she did the straps up, her hands shook with a fury that almost made her laugh. So she was a traitor, was she? She grabbed the crossbow, checked it, and loaded a bolt grimly.

At the door she glanced back. Spray slid down the perfect arc of the dome. For a second she imagined how it might be to stand here at night, in a storm maybe, the great swell crashing high, flinging spray over the tiny room lit only by Maker-lamps. Who had looked out from here all those years ago?

Not the Sekoi, that was sure.

“Thanks, Flain,” she said. Turning to the door she touched the discreet handle. The door slid aside, soundlessly, just as the doors in the House of Trees had done. Cautiously, Carys stepped out.

She was in a corridor. It ran into darkness in both directions. A low, barely heard hum filled it.

There were no windows. Light came from tiny studs in the floor; as she walked over them they lit up, and those behind her went off again. Amused, she stood still. The lights stayed with her, lighting again as she walked, a ripple underfoot of pale glimmers. She had no idea if this was the right way. But it sloped down, and after a while the chill deepened and the walls became rock.

She was under the seabed.

At the end were some stairs. They were wide and the balustrade had been carved into ornate festoons of fish and shells. As she crept silently down, small lamps lit for her passing, held in the rigid tentacles of stone octopuses, slithering around the handrail.

At the bottom was a hall. It was enormous, smelled salty, and the floor was covered with water. At first she thought this was some Maker-trick, but when she touched it with her foot it rippled; a shallow flood, right across the tiles. Under it eels seemed to slither, long watersnakes with raised fins, their colors blurring from green to turquoise in the gloomy light.

Carys splashed across. Was it supposed to be wet, or was there a leak in the roof? She quashed that thought and looked at the doors. There were at least eight. Choosing one at random she slipped through and stared.

She was in a gallery, and the whole roof and sides were made of the thick glass so she could see out, up through green depths of water. Terrified it might crack, and the vast implosion of ocean sweep her away, she stared up, shadowed by the creatures out there, great billowing rays, shoals of vivid fish, darting and flickering. Huge crabs scraped their shells soundlessly over the glass, and in places spiny coral had colonized it forming fantastic sacks and bizarre brittle structures that ribbon-snakes slithered through.

She wandered the gloom of the gallery in fascination, barely noticing the door at the end until it slid open with a hiss that made her whip up the crossbow, stepping into the darkness warily.

No lights came on. It felt like an enclosed space. She stepped forward and into something. A barrier. Gripping the cold tubing, she peered over, and bit her lip in awe.

A great pit opened in the floor. It plunged endlessly down, dizzyingly deep, as if for miles below. At intervals a ring of small purple lights glowed, so close to each other down there, they seemed continuous.

Giddy, Carys jerked back. She scratched her hair with cold fingers and laughed shakily. “The Sekoi certainly have secrets.”

Perhaps her voice activated something. Because the lights instantly changed color. Far down in the depths a dim whine started up.

Carys ran. She panicked, racing back through a door that slid open into another corridor, then down it, her heart thudding.

When she stopped herself she gripped both fists and tried to think. The Sekoi had gone. So there must be a way out. It would just be a matter of finding it.

Half an hour later, she knew the place was a maze. It must run for miles under the sea, surfacing here and there in strange atolls and domes. Weary and dispirited, she wandered rooms with vast lakes where mer-fish swam, and past a whole series of waterfalls that cascaded down walls. An entire chamber was built of mother-of-pearl, another of white bone like a whale’s great belly. She stared up at it. It was as if she had been swallowed. And Galen was in trouble.

“Flain!” she yelled in sudden fury. “Were you only part of a story after all? How do I get out of here!”

She hadn’t expected an answer. But as she swung away, to her horror, the air spoke.

“I thought you’d never ask,” it said.

Carys whipped around. She jerked the bow up, taut.

“Come out,” she snarled. “Slowly!”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” The voice sounded amused. “I can’t come out. I’m not physically focused in quite the way you mean.”

It was a cool voice, oddly difficult to identify. Not a man’s. Or a woman’s.

Carys backed to the wall. The room was empty. She could see that.

“Who are you?” she breathed.

“I am the palace.”

“The palace?”

“Of Theriss. The Drowned Palace, the Sekoi call it, though that is something of a romantic fallacy. They’re a childlike race. But better company than none.”

Carys lowered the bow. “How can you be the whole palace?”

“In theory,” the voice mused, “you are, of course, right. It is a misconception. However, that is how I’m referred to. Specifically I am the intelligence of the palace. Its systems. Is this clear?”

“No.” Carys rubbed her hair and found it soaked. “Are you alive?”

“You do ask some interesting questions.” For a moment the voice sounded sardonic. “That one could take some time to answer. Let’s say I’m not a person as you’d define one.”

“Not . . . one of the Makers?”

Then it did laugh, an echoing sound. “I love it when you call them that. Tamar would have roared.”

Behind Carys a door swished open. She jumped and whipped the bow around but the voice said silkily, “Shall we chat as we go? You did ask for the way out.”

For a moment Carys hesitated. Then she propped the bow under one arm and marched out, head high, feeling very small and grubby.

“This is ridiculous,” she hissed. “They couldn’t have made the air talk!”

“They didn’t, of course. This way. And hurry. I have to keep the power down.”

The corridor lit up, a glimmer of pale light. Carys stalked down it in silence.

After a while the voice said acidly, “I appear to have annoyed you.”

“It’s just,” Carys snarled, “that I’ve been wandering around here for hours . . .”

“Yes, I was aware of you. I thought . . .”

“You can see me?” Carys stopped dead.

The palace laughed. “You are a philosopher. I can’t tell you what a change this makes. The Sekoi, bless them, tell everything in narrative. It takes so long! Their minds are not good at the abstract in any sense, though Flain told me once they’d be the real survivors. He’d be amused that they . . .”

“They brought me here.” Carys walked on quickly. She felt totally at a loss; this was another situation the Watch had never foreseen. But she had to get as much information from this patronizing creature as she could.

“They did. I’m always happy to let them in. Though they have strange ideas.”

“How long ago?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Since they brought me.”

“One day, six hours, twenty-seven minutes.”

“Flainsteeth,” Carys hissed. But it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought.

The palace laughed. “Left here. Watch the whirlpool.”

Dark water gurgled down a channel deep in the floor. Carys sidled past it. “Did the Makers live here?”

“Not as such. It was their pleasure palace. Mostly they were based in Tasceron, though Kest . . . Well, never mind Kest. How is the dear old city?”

“Black,” Carys said grimly. “Haunted. Soaked in eternal darkness. No one goes there.”

There was silence. When the palace spoke again its voice was oddly subdued. “The Sekoi told me that. I had hoped it was one of their tales.”

“Well, it’s not. Where now?”

“This way.” Hurriedly, lights rippled on. Doors slid back. Carys saw a series of rooms opening in front of her.

“Your Maker-power,” she asked, curious. “Is it running out?”

Above her something sparked. One of the lights snapped off. “No,” the voice said tightly.

“But you don’t want to waste it, do you?” Carys looked up. “If it did all go, would you die?”

The voice laughed, mirthless. “There you go again.” For a moment she thought it sounded terrified. “I really couldn’t say. And Flain told me they’d be back; he insisted they’d be back, so that’s all right, isn’t it? Don’t you think?”

“They told us that too,” Carys said, wanting to comfort it.

“They did?” The relief was clear. “Well, there you are then.”

She walked through the rooms. “Listen. Do you know anything about a relic called Flain’s Coronet?”

“A relic.” The voice sounded annoyed. “Now there’s a term I detest. Redolent of death, something left over. Left behind. I suppose you consider me to be a relic too?”

“I suppose so.” Carys grinned, wondering what Galen would say. “But what about the Coronet?

“Flain wore it. Only when he needed to. It’s a highly sophisticated neural integrator.”

“A what?” Carys demanded.

The voice sounded superior. “Obviously it’s a waste of time my explaining. It was used for a number of operations. May I ask why you want to know?”

“We’re looking for it.”

“Ah. Because of Agramon.”

Carys stopped again. She looked around at the wavepainted walls. “You know about that?”

“I have certain viewpoints to the outside. Agramon is out of alignment. The Coronet is the only solution, if it still exists. Someone will need to put it on and enter the awen-field, but I don’t think it should be you. You don’t strike me as having the necessary—”

“Save it,” Carys snapped. “It won’t be me.”

A door slid open.

To her astonishment she saw the beach, the smooth sand with the waves beating on it. It was late afternoon, and raining torrents.

“This what you wanted?” the voice asked, smug.

“Yes,” Carys turned hastily, trying to think what else to ask. “The Sekoi. How much do you know about them?”

“Not a great deal. They keep their little secrets. Though one of them once drank too much and blurted out all about the Great Hoard.” The voice was scathing. “All that gold! It will do them no good at all. Do they really believe that Flain would . . .” It stopped.

“What?” Carys asked eagerly.

There was silence. Then the voice said testily, “It’s so crazy I’d love to tell you. But I can’t. Promised them I’d never mention it. As if there’s ever anyone to mention it to! Well, good luck then.”

“Yes,” Carys said hurriedly, “but wait . . .”

“Pity about Tasceron,” the palace muttered. “Perhaps I’d better run a full systems check.”

“Wait! I want to ask you . . .”

“Another time. Have to keep the power down.”

And the door in the rock snicked shut.