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SANGREAL TRILOGY
IIITHE POISONEDCROWN
Amanda Hemingway
CONTENTS
Chapter Three A Touch of Death
Chapter Seven How to Stop a War
Chapter Eight The Dragon’s Reef
Chapter Nine The Horn of Last Resort
Chapter Twelve Scarbarrow Fayr
Fimble famble sift the boards pentacles and cups and swords fingers fleet as beetles’ wings fiddlefeet and twiddlestrings sift and shuffle, spiel and deal, Hand of Fortune spin the Wheel weave together strands of fate Ace of Wands opens the Gate – turn the card to learn your doom Death’s a portal not a tomb.
Double-deal and deal them double, eggs and bacon, toil and trouble, kings and queens and knights and knaves cups and coins and swords and staves lay them crooked, lay them straight, splay the pattern of your fate.
Earth and water, fire and air, Strength the maiden waiting there bold to part the lion’s jaws someone’s friend, but is she yours?
Sift and shift and wrap and weft the Emperor stands on your left authority, conviction, power – above your head the Falling Tower – see through the cobwebs of the Moon the silver lies unravel soon.
Fimble famble fi-fo-fum there we go and here we come.
Mist and magic, truth and lies Moon’s a card to fool the wise strangely lie with truth accords – now we turn the Three of Swords: alone, forsaken and betrayed another card must yet be played; veil the future while you can beyond the veil – the Hanged Man!
Double-deal and deal them double earth and water, toil and trouble, cups and coins and swords and wands fate is never set in bronze, eggsand bacon, blood and bone, betrayed forsaken and alone sift the cards and let them fall fate is never set at all
Humpty Dumpty runs through town knights and knaves will all fall down best-laid plans gang aft agely words on water flow away – when the cards are scattered far still you may turn up the Star.
Fimble famble fi-fo-fum therewego, and here we come …
He was the bird, and the bird was him. He was Ezroc, son of Tilarc, fifteenth grandson in a direct line from Ezroc Stormrider, the greatest albatross who ever lived. He had flown the Four Oceans and the Ten Seas, and had seen the South Pole rising like a spire of emerald from the violet hills of the Land-Beyond-Night, and the white foam of the combers on the pink coral beaches, and had smelt the perfume of the last flowers that ever were, before the hungry waters took it all away. He had lived to a hundred and two, and had died in the season his fifteenth-generation grandson was born, so the name had been passed on, but young Ezroc knew he could only dream of touching the legend.
They had set out from the Ice Cliffs more than two moons past, the albatross flying on wings still short of three spans from tip to tip – three spans would mark him for an adult – leaving the cold clean seas of the north far behind, heading south, always south. Keerye could not match his speed, for all his seal-swiftness, and from time to time the bird would descend onto the rocking waters, waiting for his friend to catch up. Some nights they would rest together, sea-cradled, Keerye half-human, steadying himself on the swell with his tail-flippers, while they gazed up at the unfamiliar stars.
‘Do you think we’ve reached the Fourth Ocean yet?’ Ezroc said once.
‘There are no Four Oceans any more,’ said Keerye, who was older and wiser, or at least more knowledgeable. ‘No Ten Seas. When people speak of them, it’s just words. Now, it’s all one big ocean, without any land in between to divide it up.’
