An Incomparable Pearl
*
The crows gave up their crown, flowing down, the very darkest of waterfalls.
The excitement of bees rose, rushing upwards, thousands of vibrating, virtually translucent wings glistening spectrally.
The darkness took over the base. And, as if rising from a dark soil, a body emerged from that darkness; a human body no doubt, but one clad in a black cloak of feathers.
‘We must hurry,’ the girl declared sorrowfully, her face unrecognisable behind many dark veils, ‘even I don’t wish to stay here long like this.’
*
Chapter 46
Passing through the great whirlwind of crows was like passing through a dark air that beat and pestered you, that didn’t want you to pass through it easily, let alone pass completely unscathed.
From this seething blackness, a ladder soared, seemingly forever upwards, its top shielded in a restless, silvery glow. Just as the girl had described it earlier, from here the tower was transformed, the very lowest now the highest, that which had been dark and foreboding now the light and inviting.
Similarly, at once it blocked their way through the pillars, and then it was abruptly behind them.
The prince and his men, closely following the girl, stepped out one by one into gloriously green, rolling hills. And as the last of the men stepped through the pillars, the tower vanished, taking its darkness with it so that the now shrunken pillars stood innocently amongst those undulating fields.
From the pillars, there streamed a bright, light gleam of pale green, of peridot, threading through the air until it merged with other shades, weaving into a tapestry of airborne tones.
The prince couldn’t fail to recognise this land and, as if to prove him correct, a shiningly white hart appeared nearby, an orb of the very brightest of lights safely cupped within its antlers.
It wasn’t a pearl, he recognised that now of course, seeing it rather as a wondrously coruscating moon – the nestling babe now replaced by the Saviour pinioned there, as if upon the white tree of horn.
‘Something’s changed here,’ the girl announced ominously, what little of her face that could be seen behind the veils creasing as if with anxiety.
‘I heard that a pair of the pillars had been destroyed here,’ the prince replied helpfully.
‘The pillars of heliodor, one of the gems you still seek,’ the girl said, glancing towards his breastplate. ‘But they were destroyed long ago, by Shamir herself.’
‘He was still alive after the construction of the pillars?’
‘Such a serpent never seeks death, for it is only of the darkest materials. She wouldn’t want anyone to have easy access to the elemental designs lying behind all earthly reason and judgement – ah, but it’s that that is the difference I felt!’
With an upward wave of a hand, the girl drew the prince’s attention to the strands of colours wafting above them.
‘See that? The darker green of heliodor has unravelled from the rest, no longer obeying its set course towards the smashed pillars: it’s heading instead to where the Pillars of Zebulun stand.’
She glanced down at the sparkling honey coloured stone on his breastplate, looked back up at him with what could have been accusing eyes behind her dark veil.
‘It’s one of the stones you didn’t return? The Haven’s Eye?’
The prince responded with a nod, an admission that, ‘I was told they were in no hurry for its return.’
The girl nodded too, as if this made sense.
‘The green gem has made these pillars its own: I suggest it may be the best way back to your own lands for you and your men, as it may even present you with an opportunity to gain yourself this eleventh stone.’
The river of green flickered in the blue sky, fibres that had broken free, that led back home.
‘I don’t need the stone,’ the prince declared confidently, ‘but if it takes us back to the other side of the wall, then that’s where we need to be.’
*
Although huge when compared to the size of each man, the twin pillars they walked between were once again the size of those they saw elsewhere within this land of rolling hills, of stags carrying a memory of the Saviour upon their crowns.
And yet as soon as they passed through to the other side, each pillar appeared to have miraculously soared to the ridiculous heights of those standing either side of the tower. Similarly, an unnatural darkness pervaded the whole land, making it unrecognisable to anyone as any realm previously seen on this side of the wall.
‘This is odd,’ the girl mumbled quietly to the prince so that no one else might hear or detect the apprehensiveness in her tone. ‘A sense of darkness I expected, after living so long in the light: but this is another form of darkness entirely, while the pillars…well, they shouldn’t be anywhere near this size, unless the towe–’
As she spoke, there was a roar of cracking earth, an eruption of a rushing spout of pure blackness between the twin pillars – and what could have been the tower began to urgently rise up from the darkness, causing the great pans of fire and water crowning the pillars alongside to appear as immense weighing scales, balancing one against the other.
Yet there was nothing but the briefest opportunity for them to ensure spirit and love were in equal measure, for the soaring column of sheer blackness caught the pans’ contents in its ferocious updraft, dragging them along with it like writhing serpents.
And in that glow of flickering flame, of silvery waters, the spiralling darkness was itself revealed to be a serpent of unimaginable size.
‘Brother!’ it shrieked gaily. ‘It took you so long to get here!’
*
Chapter 47
How can you fight a column of darkness?
Especially one that coils, curls, and strikes with unexpected, unbelievable speed?
The prince’s men, no matter how valiantly they attempted to fight, were scattered again and again.
Even when it seemed they might have clustered enough of them together to slow the beast down, to briefly constrain it, it seemed to abruptly vanish, only to equally unexpectedly appear amid another group of surprised men, striking them down at will.
It shrank and it grew, it slithered and it pounced, it veiled itself and announced itself by bringing death.
I would bring death and I would welcome death, it hissed triumphantly.
*
Each scale of the serpent was for the most part impregnable, constructed from only the most impenetrable of dark materials: devoid of any airy weakness, of watery malleability, entirely incapable of combustion, and entirely bereft of the trembling uncertainty of spirt, of which it had always been forever free.
It writhed through the darkness as if in its element, bringing death, an extinguishing of light within this world. Crumpled bodies lay everywhere, amongst the glistening of discarded swords, battered armour, and cracked helms.
A sparkling universe for the dead.
‘That’s what this is now!’ the girl yelled out fearfully to the prince as, sword in hand, he once more waited uselessly and hopelessly for the serpent to abruptly reveal itself. ‘That’s why it has the huge pillars! It’s become another, darker abode for the dead – one for the endlessly cursed, rather than the blessed – another choice for them: not that the choice is ultimately theirs!’
The ground beneath their feet rumbled, quaked, such that their legs trembled.
Everyone tensely clasped their swords, glancing nervously about themselves, wondering where the serpent would strike next; it had never waited this long before striking, and that only added to their anxiety. Wearied and bloodied – yet only with the blood of their friends – they faced up to the miserable hopelessness of their task, fretfully wondering only what the serpent might have in mind for them.
The ground continued to rumble without breaking, however; and, one by one, the knights began to swap grim, knowing grins. Some even twirled their blades, eager to be a bringer as opposed to receiver of d
eath.
They recognised this sound, this feeling of a shifting earth.
It was the growing thunder of innumerable pounding hooves, the harbinger of a massed, mounted charge, something in its own right that was to be feared. And yet, in these circumstances, it brought only a wallowing relief – for at least it was something they were accustomed to, and had had to deal with many times before.
Of course, they should have realised that this was to be no normal mounted charge.
It was, rather, the first rushing gusts of a dark storm.
These mounted knights could have been of the same matter as the serpent’s scales, although they had indeed once been men. Men whose darkness had always emanated from their hearts, solidifying over the years, becoming at last their own very substance.
Their armour was of their body, black, and full of the whirls of chaos. An unnatural armour, neither iron nor flesh, but of both indelibly combined. Their mounts, too, were of their body, such that no one could really tell when they had ever been separated.
They struck the already sorely beleaguered knights as an onrushing force, a dark wave that flooded around them, bringing with it the harsh hacking of muscular swords, the pinioning of lances of bone, the crush of axes formed from firmly intertwined veins surging with dark blood.
Heads flew from necks, arms from shoulders, legs from hips. Men fell, unable yet again to strike back with any noticeable effect.
The blood that splattered everywhere was once more theirs and theirs alone, their own blades effortlessly turned aside by armour that had a life of its own.
Then the earth rumbled, quaking this time as if about to crack and split, clods of dark soil and grass erupting into the air.
The serpent soared up from amongst them all, a hurtling fountain of hardened darkness, columnar in its rigidity until it finally began to arch what passed for its neck, the head weaving only slightly from side to side, the eyes like wells drawing everything into their endless blackness.
With a whip-like snap, the serpent brought its head rushing down, its jaws open in readiness to devour its prey whole as it plunged inexorably towards the startled prince.
*
The girl pushed the prince aside, willingly taking his place.
The maw of the serpent hungrily enveloped her, even as she hurriedly shrugged off her many veils.
She shone once more, even as the serpent’s jaw began to rapidly and tightly snap about her, briefly leaving only the most fragmentary crescent of her light visible to the prince – before this, too, was fully devoured by the great and terrible wyrm.
The serpent’s head whipped back up into the air, his elevated body looming over the battle once more. Around it, as if it were a dark gravestone, men continued to die uselessly and hopelessly, the black knights as untouchable as a ferociously lashing sea.
With a slight tipping back of its immense head, the serpent swallowed the girl as if she were nothing but a tasty titbit, what could have been glee or satisfaction crossing its evilly creased face.
The men had thought the serpent’s dark scales entirely impenetrable to anything
And yet the glowing light of the girl glistened through them now, lighting them up from inside as she slipped farther and farther down that immense throat, drawing closer and closer to what could be the beast’s stomach; where everything dissolved, liquefying, vanishing.
The girl ever so momentarily smouldered there, her light once more firmly cocooned.
She was imprisoned far too high off the ground for the prince to hope to cut her free, even if it had been possible to hack through that indestructible body, to batter his way through the many dark knights barring his way.
As he fought, he cried, the tears falling down his bared cheeks, along the silvered breastplate, welling around the sparkling stones, settling within the settings still awaiting their own jewels. And where they became safely cupped within one of these beds, these waters swirled and mingled with the blood of his own wounds, freshly reopened and raw.
Like rising lava, the burning glow lying deep within the coils of the serpent began to shift, to bubble and strive for freedom, forcing their way up through even the most resistant of passages.
It expanded, grew, wormed its way up through the serpentine body, like the grubs some insects lay within living prey so that their progeny might have fresh food to sustain them on their birth. The Great Wyrm, plainly shocked by this unexpected turn around, painfully gagged and retched, choking on a meal it was clearly unaccustomed to and unprepared for.
The beast writhed and coiled in its agonies, its maw opening once more, this time to release a relieved scream, the fork of its extended tongue trembling in fear and pain as it heaved and threw up an incandescence that was blinding in the darkness of that unfortunate land.
The orb of purest light flashed and shimmered more brightly and wonderfully than the prince had ever seen – and then in the blink of his eyes, it was gone, the giant serpent vanishing along with it.
*
Chapter 48
Everywhere about them, the black knights fell, crumpling to the ground as if whatever had animated them had abruptly deserted them.
They lay upon the ground, lifeless black maggots, a mass of wyrms swiftly weaving in and out of their dark and empty substance, unravelling it all, turning it all back to well mulled soil.
In a moment, there was nothing to show the dark forms had ever existed, unless you counted as proof the wounds of the exhausted men, the corpses of their dead.
Amongst it all, the only sound was that of weeping.
The sobbing of a girl in utmost agony.
She lay where the belly of the serpent had last touched the ground.
With a cry of relief, the prince rushed over to her, kneeling alongside to tenderly help her turn towards him.
But it wasn’t the King’s Daughter.
It was the queen’s daughter.
His sister.
‘Brother: I never knew you cared,’ she sneered gaily.
*
‘Don’t worry; thankfully, I’m dying,’ Princess Episteme breathed painfully.
‘Thankfully?’ the prince declared both sceptically and harshly. ‘If you sought death, it could have been granted you long ago!’
‘And to have ceased to exist completely? Would anyone seek such a thing? Why else would I seek to deny you the pearl, unless I feared it would bring about my end? I was never as you, Brother, for I was always of nothing but the darkest materials: as all offspring of my mother inadvertently turned out to be. Naturally, she didn’t intend it to be this way: she had originally meant well, can you believe it? Bringing what she presumed must be her divinity to man, unaware that it wasn’t her gift to pass on the light of spirit. But at last, I have tasted that light; enough, I hope, even though it was my end, to give me the new beginning so long denied me.’
The deep black wells of her eyes briefly glimmered with a spectral mauve, the amethyst of a mingling blood and water.
‘Ah, I see, Brother, that you’ve partially attained your eleventh stone.’
She reached out to touch the fragment of sparkling purple stone that had at some point miraculously appeared within the setting lying to the end of the third row. It wasn’t a complete stone, but only a small segment of the whole thing, a piece that had hardened within the slightly cupped base of the setting.
The prince glanced down at the glistening gem, wondering when it had appeared there. He had been granted this strangest of jewels in the land where, at best, he had expected only to gain the green heliodor.
‘And this pearl you sought to deny me: does it really exist?’ he asked his sister hopefully.
His sister chuckled harshly, a racking cough bringing up blood and water.
‘Suddenly, you expect help from me, Brother?’ she asked mockingly, yet softening her tone as she added, ‘So, here it is, here’s my help: it really is – as that old crone who gave you life declared – an inconceivable pearl.?
??
‘That’s it? That’s your help? After all the trouble you’ve caused?’
‘There’s so little I know myself: so little, in fact, that I didn’t realise we really were siblings after all, “Brother”. Not until a moment ago, when at last I received the light. Our mother has hidden so much from both of us!’
‘Our mother? But…as you just said, the crone, the fay: she was my mother. And your mother was there, in the hall, when she arrived!’
The princess chuckled, a laugh that made her cough up blood and gasp for breath.
‘Oh Brother, Brother! You’re still constraining yourself within Earthly reason, allowing it to cloud your already ridiculous judgements, aren’t you? Where does past and future lie within a circle? Wasn’t she here, just now, even though we both know she also resides within the palace?’
‘Who? Who was here?’
The princess laughed again, yet weaker still this time.
‘Don’t you see? Towards the end, before you were born, even her better nature – the last of little light she had left, already withered to almost nothing, and ready to breathe its last – finally deserted her. Perhaps to make amends, for your birth is undoubtedly the beginning of the end of her: or maybe because, selfish to the end, the only way to replenish her lost light was generating a new branch of man capable of recognising her for whom she really is.’
The prince’s laugh was scoffingly disbelieving.
‘Is this your new way of denying me the pearl, Sister? Making me believe I’m some sort of god? That, somehow, I’ve inherited some sort of extra inner light denied any other man?’
‘Isn’t that why man creates his gods? So he can flatter himself he’s made in their image? And yet in your case, Brother, you falsely flatter yourself that you’ve almost attained what no other man could: refusing to acknowledge that maybe all those other men didn’t have the help you’ve benefited from!’
The prince shrugged uncomfortably, unsure as to how to take this; for no matter his response, it seemed to him, he would indeed be in some way flattering himself that he was superior to others.