The Hidden Coronet

26

“Help me!” the innkeeper screamed, drowning in riches. Agramon smiled.

“Why?” she said. “This is what you’ve wanted all your life.”

Agramon’s Purse

THEY WERE UNDER THE WALLS of the ruin. Behind them the shadowchimes still rang; gong-like notes, soft and disturbing.

Raffi put a hand on the wall, feeling through the holes in his gloves how each enormous block of stone had been expertly fitted, though now snarlbines and weeds were sprouting through the cracks.

Snow clung to his hair; strange wet stuff, faintly phosphorescent. He climbed hurriedly after Galen, up steep steps and under a vast drafty archway into a dark interior. The floor was paved here; all around were arches and galleries, the stonework fallen and crumbling, making their footsteps echo and multiply like some invading army.

It was bitterly cold.

As he came through, small shadows slunk behind him; turning, he saw their eyes gleam in the dark. The sense-lines told him they were cats, cats of all sizes and colors, their pointed inquisitive faces alert in holes and on walls.

The Sekoi climbed ahead, a spindly figure. As it emerged into the open again, snow clotted its fur.

“There,” it said proudly. “What no Starman ever beheld until now. The Great Hoard.”

Below them a huge arena descended, a ghostly crater of stone. Thousands of seats and steps and galleries gleamed pale in the snow-light, and out of them sprouted a jungle of weeds and self-seeded plants, in places tangled into tunnels of gloom. A sweet smell of mutated flowers rose up from its depths; they saw white frostblossoms and tiny spring bulbs that had thrust out and flowered already in the drafty shelter of columns and balustrades, and from the split seating bulbous fungi ballooned.

Clouds drifted; a few stars gleamed. Agramon lit a sudden cascade of snow. And everywhere, they saw the gold.

It was scattered freely down the stairs, piled and heaped, barrows and cart-loads and buckets of it; there were boxes and chests and crates that had broken so that the heavy coins had slid and tinkled out. Some had been there so long scarbines had crawled all over them, roots cracking through split wood. Raffi saw plates, dishes, candlesticks, jewelry, goblets, mangled scraps of gilt, broken relics, statues, rings; anything that could be stolen or won or bought was down there, spilling in shining rivers down the stairways into a heap so enormous that it looked from here like a hill of gold.

They were silent, their breath clouding the frosty air.

Then Marco managed a pale grin. “Flainsteeth,” he said. “It must have taken decades.”

“Centuries.” The Sekoi stroked an eyebrow. “Since the Makers left.”

“There must be millions. Billions . . .”

Solon smiled gently. “No wonder your people feel confident of their ransom. But how are we to find the Coronet in all this?”

“I have only been here once before.” The creature brushed snow from its fur. All at once it looked nervous. “I suspect your relic will be in the center, on . . .” It stopped, then turned.

“Galen, listen. Only the Karamax are allowed down there, into the heart of the Hoard. I will take you, and the Archkeeper, for the sake of our friendship and because I believe your quest for the relic is a true one, though if my people find us there, it is likely we will all die.”

Galen nodded, his eyes dark. “You won’t be sorry.”

“I am already sorry. The others—even the small keeper—must remain up here. They have already come too far.”

Its yellow eyes looked at him sharply. Galen nodded. “I agree.”

“Well, I don’t,” Carys muttered.

Galen turned to her urgently. “We must respect their beliefs.” But his mind was saying something else, and to her amazement she could hear it, something that made her clench her fingers on the cold spangles of snow. She nodded, reluctant. “If you say so.”

Marco sat himself down.

“And you,” Solon said to him severely, “will not let your fingers stray to the tiniest edge of the least coin.”

“Holiness! What do you take me for?”

“A thief and a rogue, my son.”

Marco grinned. “And I thought I’d fooled you all along.”

Galen dumped the pack and hauled out his stick. He looked at Raffi. “When they come, keep them out as long as you can. Use the awen-field, use the third and even the fourth Actions. I don’t want anyone killed, but we must have time to find the relic.”

Chilled to the heart, Raffi nodded. “Understood.”

Galen glanced at Carys. “I’m depending on you.”

She smiled wryly. “Good luck.”

Then he and Solon and the Sekoi were gone, ducking under an archway into darkness.

IT ALL SEEMED SUDDENLY QUIET.

Raffi crouched out of the snow. He felt sick with bitter disappointment. All this way. And now he would never even see the Coronet.

Marco put the crossbow down and hugged himself. “God, it’s cold. We should get a fire going.”

But no one moved. They huddled in silence. Far below, something slithered, a distant clatter of movement. The fall of the snow around them was almost hypnotic, and through it Raffi could feel the cats gathering, a stealthy curiosity in the shadows. When the moons glimmered out, he saw their eyes, hundreds of them, pale green and amber.

Marco looked around. “Shoo,” he said.

The cats scattered.

Instantly Carys reached out, grabbed the crossbow, and aimed it at his head. The bald man froze in mid-scramble.

“God almighty,” he muttered. “Be careful!”

“I’m very careful. Sit down.”

Inch by inch, he sank back. His face looked tauter, older. “So you really are the spy,” he said icily.

“No.” Her eyes were steady. “You are.”

“That’s absolute rubbish.”

“Galen thinks so. He thought you’d try and follow him. Asked me to stop you.” She leaned a little closer. “Tell me this, Marco, how did you manage it? I can’t work that out. How did you get the messages back?”

He shook his head, then froze as the bow twitched. “It’s not me.” He glanced at Raffi. “You don’t think so, do you? I’m a thief, yes, and a liar, but a spy? Never. Not for the Watch. Not after I’ve hung in their stinking prisons.”

Raffi was shivering. He was almost too confused to think, but after a moment he said, “Someone is. Someone has the Margrave inside them.”

They stared at him, horrified.

“Inside?” Carys breathed.

He wrapped his arms tight around himself, rocking slightly, not looking at her. She thought he seemed on the edge of some nightmare; his voice had a harsh, broken strain.

“All the way here I’ve sensed it. Small things at first. Cold touches. As we’ve gone on, it’s gotten stronger. As if I’m tuning in.”

“But the Margrave!” Carys’s whisper scattered the returning cats.

“I saw him once, remember? Since then I’ve felt . . . as if he knows me.” He looked up. “We’re not the only ones looking for the Coronet. He’s using us to find it for him. One of us, whether we know it or not, is telling him everything. He’s so deep inside one of our minds that even Galen can’t find him.”

They were silent. Then Marco said, “Unless Galen is the spy himself.”

SOLON SLIPPED; the Sekoi grabbed him quickly. A glissade of coins slithered underfoot, an avalanche of tiny shining circles, catching the moons.

It had been hard to find a way down. They had to thread a maze of aisles and galleries, stoop through tunnels of ancient mirrorwort. Down here it was darker, and the snow was beginning to freeze, crunching underfoot and making the hoard glimmer with weird light. Gold was a landscape around them; Galen glanced up at the towering mountains of it, the hills and valleys, whole revenues of treasure, cold and shining.

“What a fortune it is,” Solon marveled.

Galen snorted. “And how many hungry bellies it could feed.”

The Sekoi paused. “I think this path may be the one.” But it still seemed hesitant. Then it turned abruptly. “I have to ask you one more thing.”

“What?” Galen said, wary.

The creature’s eyes were evasive. “There is something ... unusual at the heart of the Hoard. Something that will amaze you.” It bit its thumbnail. “Keepers, I want you to swear you will never tell anyone what you see.”

“AH, BUT THIS CROW THING!” Marco ignored Raffi’s anger. “I mean, what is it? What can it make him do? You don’t really know anything about it, do you?”

“It’s a gift from the Makers!”

“Ha! So was the Margrave!”

“It can’t be Galen!” Raffi was white with fury. “It’s impossible!”

“Calm down!” Carys said quietly. “When have you sensed these warnings? Try to remember. Exactly when?”

He held his head in both hands. “By the river. At the Circling. Just outside here—it was certain then. And in the vortex. That night in the cellar.”

The bow flickered; Carys glanced at him for one startled instant.

At once Marco’s foot shot out; he slammed her back against the wall and she screamed in fury. The bolt splintered stone and suddenly they were both struggling for the bow, Raffi leaping up in horror, until Carys was shoved away and Marco had the bow under one arm and his knife hard against her neck.

“See how you like it,” he growled.

Carys dragged muddy hair from her face. She looked white and breathless, but her voice was concentrated with suppressed excitement.

“Neither of us was in the cellar,” she said.

THE PATH WAS A TRAIL OF GOLD. Coins had been trodden deep in the mud, one on another. On each side rose a hillock of spilling metal, and as the moons drifted through the snow-cloud Galen saw in the very heart of the Hoard a great golden reliquary, carved and encrusted with gems. It stood on a platform; the Sekoi led them up to it without a word, and under the moons each of them had seven shadows, a hidden company that seemed to follow stealthily at their heels.

Solon’s scarred fingers reached for the handrail; above him the Sekoi reached down to help. Galen hauled himself after them, the snow falling in his eyes. At the top the Archkeeper stared, then crumpled to his knees.

“Dear God,” was all he could say.

The reliquary was a coffin, sealed with glass.

In it lay a man.

A small man, thin and wiry. He had brown hair and a clipped brown beard and his clothes were of Makercloth, incorruptible and perfect. He had been dead for three hundred years, but he looked as if at any second he might open his eyes and speak to them.

Galen stood still, catching his breath as if struck with a sharp pain.

At the heart of the Great Hoard they had found the body of Kest.

And Flain’s Coronet lay between his hands.