Thursdays with the Crown (10 page)

“And there is being the marks of the other ring,” Lulath said.

He pointed a long finger to the king's right hand. There were the two plain rings with their beautifully cut gems, on the king's first and third fingers, but on the middle finger was a deep depression where a ring had been. Now that Celie was looking for it, she could see the pattern of the wings and beak of her father's ring marking the dead king's finger.

“The ring of the first king of Castle Glower,” Lilah said in awe.

“I wonder how much better Father could control the Castle, with both rings,” Rolf said.

“No one can control the Castle,” Celie objected.

“Poor choice of words,” Rolf conceded. “I wonder how much better Father could
communicate
with the Castle, if he had the other ring?”

Celie had to agree with this. It was very possible that with two rings the Castle would obey the king, as much as it pained her to think of the Castle's being at anyone's beck and call, even her father's.

“Pogue, are you thinking of the crown, too? As I am seeing the crown, it is giving me wonderings,” Lulath said.

“Let me have a look,” Pogue said.

He moved around Celie and stood at the head of the bier, his hands behind his back to avoid touching anything. He studied the crown closely for a moment and then nodded and looked up at them.

“I'd bet my life the crown and both rings were forged by the same goldsmith, from the same materials,” Pogue said.

“What does that mean?” Lilah wanted to know. “I mean, I know what that
means
, but what does it mean for
Father
?”

“It might mean nothing,” Pogue said with a shrug. “But it might be the key to understanding the Castle.”

“What do we do?” Lilah looked around at them all with wide eyes, ending with Celie.

Rolf and Pogue looked at Celie, too. So did Lulath. She was looking at the ancient griffin. The collar around its neck was of the same make as the rings and crown. The Arkower was like a shadow in the corners of her mind.
The wild griffins. The Castle, in distress, waiting back in Sleyne.

“We need to take the crown and ring with us,” Celie said finally. “Also the griffin's collar.”

“No, no, no!” Lilah took a step back, tugging Celie's sleeve so that she followed. “That is a very bad idea. We are not grave robbers!”

“I agree with Celie. And we'd be doing it for the good of the Castle and our family,” Rolf said.

“We've gotten along for hundreds of years without these things,” Lilah protested. “If they had any real power, don't you think the Arkower would have taken them by now, anyway?”

“You saw Ethan refuse to come in,” Celie said. “This place is sacred to him.” Her stomach made a little queasy motion at this, but she pushed it down. “It's very likely that none of them would dare to touch the king.” Another queasy flop, but again she reminded herself of how much good they could do with the ring and the crown.

Or so she hoped.

“Our Lilah, we must be doing this for Sleyne,” Lulath said. “Or so is my thinking.”

The others all nodded.

“And I'd feel safer if we took some of the weapons, too,” Pogue said.

Pogue had spent the past few months helping their brother Bran, the Royal Wizard, study and catalog a gallery
full of strange weapons and armor that had appeared one Tuesday. Now they went to the rack of weapons in the tomb, and Pogue pointed out the ones that he recognized.

There were long rods that shot lightning bolts from the tip and gilded gauntlets that burned whoever the wearer touched. There were blades shaped like serpents and leaves, and bows that curved so fancifully that if she didn't know better, Celie would have thought they were purely decorative. After some discussion, though, they decided not to take the weapons. The swords would only provoke the Arkower and his people, if they saw strangers with them, and Pogue wasn't entirely certain he knew how to use the lightning weapons.

Not only that, but Lilah sat down on a gilt-covered stool and refused to go with them if they took a single dagger.

So in the end Celie took the ring from the king's finger, the crown from his head, and the collar from the griffin's neck. The others watched, hands folded and heads bowed in respect, as she did so. She carefully wrapped the precious relics in embroidered silk that Lilah found and put them in a leather purse that was among the more practical treasures of the tomb.

“I still say this is wrong,” Lilah fretted as they left.

“Anything to help us get home,” Rolf said.

“Anything to heal the Castle,” Celie corrected him, wiping her hands on her skirts again. She hadn't liked touching the king, or his griffin, but it had been her idea, after all.

“But we don't know that,” Lilah insisted. “The relics might do nothing at all, and all we've done is desecrate this poor man's tomb.”

“Well, they're doing nothing here,” Pogue said roughly. “And I feel like we've finally made steps toward getting home.”

“Is that being one of the many fine weapons of which you and the wizard Bran are discovering the secrets thereof?” Lulath asked, pointing to one of the lightning spears.

“Yes,” Pogue said, giving it a last longing look.

“It enthralls me!” Lulath said.

“That is hardly reassuring,” Lilah muttered as they turned to go.

But Celie stopped. They were on the other side of the tapestry now, the one that made a wall between the biers and the treasure. In the Arkower's caves there were also walls made of tapestries.

But these tapestries were different. These tapestries looked just like the ones in the Castle. There were people, tall and pale, with golden hair like Celie's, and griffins frolicking at their feet. The Arkower's tapestries had been more angular and stylized, much like the cape that Lilah wore. There had been tapestries like that in the Castle, too, but only a few. Celie had found them in the newest parts of the Castle, the ones that had recently arrived in Sleyne and had never been seen before.

“What is it?” Pogue asked.

“It's nothing,” Celie said. “I think.”

Still carrying torches they walked silently out of the Tomb of the Builder, and closed and wrestled the latch back into place behind them.

It was dark now, the clearing filling with shadow. Rufus and his father were both snoring, none the worse for having been left behind.

Not that they had been alone. In the torchlight, Ethan's eyes were wide with fear. His gaze immediately found the leather bag Celie carried, and what little color there was in his face leaked right out of it.

“What did you take?” His voice was low, and he almost choked on the words. “What have you done?”

“You see?” Lilah said. “You see, we've done something horrible and sacrilegious.” She took a few steps closer to Ethan. “I'm really sorry, I didn't want to, but they all voted to take some things and …”

“We need these things, we really do,” Rolf put in. “Or we wouldn't have done this. We didn't intend to disturb anything, but —” He shrugged.

“I — I understand,” Ethan said after a long pause. He took a deep breath. “You should probably come and see what I just found, too.”

And he turned and led them away through the trees.

“Wonderful. Now I'm actually regretting that I didn't take that crossbow we saw,” Lilah grumbled.

“I went into the trees to … ah …,” Ethan said. He turned bright red.

“Oh, I see,” Rolf said.

Celie giggled nervously.

“Anyway …?” Rolf prompted.

“Yes, well,” Ethan went on. “That's when I saw it.” He pointed, and they all took a few more steps forward.

Lying at the base of a large tree, in the hollow between its roots, was a nest of dried ferns and twigs. The nest would have been big enough for Celie to curl up inside, if it wasn't already occupied. Right in the middle of the nest was an egg. It was orange, a darker orange than Rufus's and Lorcan's eggs had been, but smaller than either of them.

“A griffin's egg,” Lilah breathed. “I've never seen one.” Then she flinched and looked around. “We'd better leave before the mother gets back. Mother birds can be vicious if
you disturb their nests, and I can't imagine what a griffin might do!”

“There is no mother,” Ethan said. He was standing off to one side, half-hidden by a clump of ferns. There was a funny look on his face.

“I think he's right,” Pogue said. “Look at how dirty it is.”

Celie looked, and felt her face screwing up with worry. Rufus hadn't had a mother, either, except for her, and Lorcan had been taken from his original nest to the Arkower's caves. So she really couldn't say what a well-tended egg in the wild should look like.

But this did not look like a well-tended egg. There was dirt and grit stuck to one side as though the wind had blown against it, and bits of leaves that had drifted down from the trees above. A few marks in the soil around the nest might have been griffin tracks, but they weren't fresh, even to Celie's untrained eye. The more she looked, the more she became convinced that the egg had been abandoned.

“The poor dear!” Lilah went forward to put one hand on the egg, and then drew it back. “Oh, it's hot!”

“So the egg is still alive?” Ethan asked. “I was afraid to check.”

“Well, it's very warm,” Lilah said. She looked at her little sister. “Celie?”

Celie went forward and put her hands on the egg, trying to choke back the lump in her throat as she remembered finding Rufus's egg all those months ago. This was not the same, she told herself firmly.

“It feels alive,” Celie said.

And it did. It was uncomfortably warm to the touch, and Celie felt the tiniest of vibrations. She rocked it a little, and it rocked back. Lilah flinched.

“Don't make it hatch,” she said, clutching Celie's arm.

“I'm not,” Celie told her. “I'm just checking it. I used to roll Rufus around; I think he liked it.” The lump rose in her throat again.

“I want to try,” Rolf said eagerly. He came forward and put his own hands on the egg. “It's so warm! And I think I can feel something moving inside!” He gently rocked the egg as Celie had done.

“That's a pity,” Ethan said.

“Why?” Celie looked at him sharply. He was the only one of them that hadn't come closer to the nest. He was standing, half-concealed by foliage, with that strange look on his face.

“What have you done?” Pogue demanded.

“I haven't done anything,” Ethan said. “But someone else has.”

He stepped out of the ferns and gestured for them to look behind where he'd been standing. A sudden premonition came over Celie, and she didn't think she wanted to see what he'd found. She looked at Rolf, who took her arm and moved a little in front of her.

“Do I really
want
to see this?” Lilah asked, echoing Celie's thoughts.

“I am thinking that this answer would be no,” Lulath said softly, his gaze also on Ethan.

He, Rolf, and Pogue nodded to one another in that infuriating way boys have before they stepped over to the ferns, keeping Lilah and Celie behind them for protection. Celie bit back a smart remark: she was twelve years old, after all! But at the same time she really didn't want to see whatever they were looking at, especially after Pogue looked, went pale, and swore. Rolf uttered a wordless cry, and then something that sounded like a quick prayer.

“Oh, the beautiful mother,” Lulath said. He shook his head and Celie saw tears in the corners of his eyes. “The beautiful mother!”

Seeing their reactions, Celie started to turn away, but then she couldn't help herself. She knew what was on the other side of the ferns but she had to see it with her own eyes. She slipped out of Rolf's grip and peered over the clump of ferns.

There, in a small clearing, was a dead griffin. Her golden fur and feathers appeared tarnished, her body limp and frail. There were three black arrows sticking out of her side and neck. And insects—

Celie ran back to the egg. She rested her hands on the poor unhatched orphan and breathed deeply, doing her best not to vomit. A minute later Lilah joined her.

“Well,” Lilah said. She cleared her throat. Then, to Celie's shock she turned her head and spit noisily like one of the
stable hands. “Well. That is … that is really, really horrible, and I hope whoever shot that griffin meets a terrible fate of their own.”

“It was recent,” Ethan said calmly. “In the last couple of days.”

“That's nice,” Lilah said bitterly. “Although I'm not sure how that helps, exactly.”

“So now we must be worrying that this person of horrorbility is here in the forest near to us?” Lulath looked around nervously.

“Yes,” Pogue said. “We need to get far away from here.” He took Lilah's arm and tried to draw her away.

“But what about the egg?” Rolf joined Celie and Lilah at the nest and gave the egg another playful rock. It twitched under their hands. “Is it close to hatching, Cel?”

“It might be,” she said. “I mean, it feels just like Rufus did … but I don't know if griffin eggs are like that the whole time they're eggs or just at the end. And I don't know how long they are in the eggs, either.” She raised her eyebrows at Ethan.

“They're warm and they move the last two months, and it takes four months for them to hatch,” he said. He sighed heavily and bent down to pick up a rock. “It's a royal griffin, so this is really a shame.” He raised the rock.

Lilah screamed and Pogue lunged at Ethan, grabbing his hand and forcing him to drop the rock. Rolf threw himself to his knees and shielded the egg with his body.

“Are you mad?” Rolf shouted over his shoulder.

“You would be killing this only precious egg?” Lulath was angrier than Celie had ever heard him. The tall prince's face was red with rage, and he stepped toward Ethan with one hand on his belt knife, Lorcan hanging out of his tunic and hissing.