An Incomparable Pearl by Jon Jacks
‘We don’t know what we saw, my lord: only that we didn’t see what the Prophet saw!’
‘Hierkoracica! I’m in no mood to suffer one of your lectures about being blinded to the truth by our own self-righteousness!’ the king snapped back irately, looking back to the prince with yet another apologetic shrug, ‘Daily she bludgeons us, saying that in the brightness of day we fail to see even the moon, seeing the sun and only the sun.’
The princess ignored King Teleion, her eyes briefly remaining fixed upon nothing but the sword.
‘But it’s a Prophet without his heart…ah!’
The eyes of the King’s Daughter lit up as she caught the gleam of the sparkling peridot upon the prince’s breastplate. And, as if she were the most completely open person the prince had ever met, as the prince reached for the precious stone, he himself clearly saw deep inside her heart, the very first time he had been able to access any of the stones’ remarkable gifts.
At heart, she swam within the waters of love, like the most glorious of water nymphs. Her cup overflowed, like a bridal cup readily offered to her intended, the love of the honey-moon that remains endless. It was bright light that shone within her, unrestrained, sharper and far more illuminating than any lamp or mirror.
Her heart leapt, more enflamed than ever, when she saw the stone returned to its true setting within the head of the Prophet.
‘The birds have returned!’
‘They’re back!’
Cries went up throughout the king’s hunting party, everyone eagerly pointing up into the sky, and already removing the hoods and jesses of their hawks.
And with a wave of an arm, each courtier let their hawk free.
*
Chapter 42
Although every knight within the prince’s party agreed that they would have wished to stay within King Teleion’s realm for ever, each also recognised that their loyalty to their king and the wellbeing of their people took precedence over their own worldly enjoyment.
Realising he couldn’t persuade anyone but the very unhealthiest to stay, Teleion offered the invaluable services of the King’s Daughter to be their guide back to their own lands, qualifying his kind offer with a warning:
‘Although my kingdom fortunately encompasses a gateway between our two realms, even the remarkable skills of my daughter might not be enough to help you safely back: for usually she only ever has to light the way from the gate to my lands.’
The king’s anxious tones almost dissuaded the prince from taking up this offer of relatively safe escort through the gate; yet he realised he had little choice in the matter if he wished to return to his own realm.
He no longer had any idea where to find the hole in the wall that he’d entered these lands by, and neither had any of his knights, Sir Grandhan admitting they’d had no hand in its construction: they had all been fully asleep, the tunnel miraculously appearing overnight, as if by a brief reawakening of the Shamir himself.
As the prince and his party followed the King’s Daughter across his pleasantly lit lands, he wondered why King Teleion had spoken of lighting the way, particularly as Hierkoracica didn’t appear to have brought any form of lamp with her as he might have expected. Rather, she was still attired as simply and as inappropriately as she had been on the day of the hunt: a white wedding veil, so delicately translucent it could have been nothing more than a thin, second skin.
Apart from her horse, and the curiously observing raven who could have been welded to her wrist, she had brought nothing to either protect her from inclement weather of grant her any sustenance. Although naturally beautiful, she appeared careless of maintaining the way she appeared, refusing to protect her delicate skin from either fierce wind or driving rain.
‘What use anything like a mirror to me now?’ she answered scathingly when the prince offered her anything she desired that could protect her from an increasingly storm-ridden sky. ‘I was made aware long ago of the darkness we must necessarily face.’
Although her own crow remained virtually motionless upon her arms, the crows that had earlier pestered the prince’s party were gathering in increasing strength once more. Their massing added to the darkness, giving it all the appearance of being alive, of flowing fluidly as the vast swarms of pitch-black birds rushed across the sky. Their beating wings made the air itself crackle, granting it a terrifying energy.
Even where they had passed, the areas suddenly cleared of their black presence remained dark once they had gone, such that the sky became blacker with each passing move. It became harder with each fleetingly transitory second to determine where they still clustered, where they had moved on.
No eye could easily penetrate such a profound, rolling darkness; it would have been easier to peer through the blackest of seas. The crows were like a dark mist of concealment, conjured up by the most fearfully breathed incantations.
It was no surprise to the prince that he began to sense the shudders of the men around him, for it seemed to them all that they were drawing ever closer to a gigantic scorpion, facing them and ready to strike: it’s claws raised and opening, its stinger curling up between them as if it were a venomous and already aggravated serpent.
And the more they rode on, the more this monster appeared to grow in size, to loom over them, as if the most fearsome thing they had ever encountered.
Only the girl remained completely free of fear, the prince recognising that this could well be because she had made this journey many times.
Even so, he admired the way she rode through the growing storm without the slightest flinch, ignoring the wind ferociously whipping up her veil, the rain pummelling at her flesh.
He flattered himself that he saw within her something akin to his younger self – the child who lived only for the present, unaware of the realities that dictated the future self, no longer recalling and remaining unforgiving of past hurts.
Naturally, the prince believed that the monstrous scorpion could only be a figment of their imagination. Yet no one was at ease, fearing that the land they were returning to would have changed beyond all recognition. Sir Grandhan had already informed the prince of the many alterations that the queen had immediately put into place on the death of the king, not least the miraculously rapid construction of an impregnable citadel made of the hardest stone.
Around the prince now, there were many sighs of relief.
The crows had risen on the soaring waves of the storm, their frenziedly fluttering wings no longer veiling the scene lying before the prince’s column of men and girl.
Now the crows chiefly crowded around the very top of what had appeared to be a raised stinger, spreading out like the wind-thrashed leaves of a vast, world tree, what could have been its immense trunk now at last revealed to be a single, looming black stone.
To either side there rose similarly immense yet nonetheless relatively smaller pillars, each topped with angled, curved copper bowls – one containing a roaring fire, the other an endlessly upward flowing stream of a mauve, fiery water that glowed even brighter than the flames.
It could have been a giant’s funeral pyre, concealing on its very top the body of a slain man given up to the air, to the shroud of hungrily, angrily cawing carrion.
Running up what could have been the spine of the soaring stone there glittered precious stones, equally spaced, even though there seemed to be no more than ten in all: unless others lay beneath the mass of writhing crows, or even set within the very lowest part of the towering obelisk, which still remained obscured by a weirdly endlessly swirling haze.
The ten stones matched the ones already collected upon the prince’s breastplate, those from the cursed lands alternating with those from the blessed.
Did this mean, the prince wondered, that the pearl he’d once sought lay somewhere beneath those whirling clouds of crows or lively mist?
*
Chapter 43
The looming stone had been carved into what could be the world’s most precipitous
No one could possibly descended let alone climb such an insensibly constructed edifice.
More bizarrely still, the blessed stones were set within the perfectly perpendicular rises, while the cursed stones graced what could have offered at least some form of break in anyone’s ascent.
Six ascenders and six landings, including the very top; twelve stages in all to surmount, like the twelve stones he had been expected to collect upon his breastplate.
It was the most perfect instrument of cruelty.
‘The Tower of Silence,’ the girl breathed, as if at last expressing some sense of fear, or at least awe. ‘Dismount and wait here,’ she added with a tone that brooked no disagreement. ‘Your mounts must be left here anyway, so say goodbye to them if a fondness has developed between you.’
‘When do we follow?’ the prince asked as, along with the rest of his men, he followed the orders of the King’s Daughter and slipped down from his mount.
‘You’ll know,’ she chuckled.
‘And you’re sure…?
The prince was worried for her safety, yet feared insulting her by insisting he take her place. She seemed determined to do this on her own, her self-will evident in her resolved pose and fierce grimace.
‘It has to be me,’ she declared assuredly. ‘On my way here, I shed a veil at every gate, every landing – six veils, seven including this one. If I am to lead you back to your own realm, I have to re-garb myself, regaining all that is base and corruptible.’
She drew the veil completely about her face.
‘For the bees,’ she explained, seeing confusion cross the prince’s face, adding (as she saw his confusion increase), ‘they gather at the base just as the crows gather at the crown.’
Now the prince understood why the tower’s base appeared to be concealed behind an ever-moving mist.
‘Are there precious stones hidden by the bees and the crows?’ the prince asked. ‘Is one of them a pearl?’
Behind her veil, the girl frowned.
‘A pearl? A pearl isn’t a precious stone. It is, rather, Herador, serene gift of the moon.’
She looked up towards the massed crows.
‘What appears to us to be the top landing is that of the green stone, of judgement, the heliodor – or the gift of the sun.’
‘Appears to be…?’
‘On reaching the top, when you at first look down, then, yes: you might feel you are looking down a wall dug down into the deepest, darkest pit. Yet when you first find yourself on that landing of judgement, after arriving there from your world, it’s as if you’re looking up, with a vast ladder to climb: yet a ladder you nonetheless sense leads you to the true crown, an abode of strength – not a fake ascension of intoxication, but a true and ultimate blessing, shepherding us to mercy and redemption.’
‘And yet this stone isn’t the pearl?’
The girl shook her head in reply to the prince’s query. She glanced back surprisingly wearily at the impatiently waiting men, turned back towards the prince.
‘As men who aren’t much longer for the world, I see no harm in granting them a little while longer before they return in the correct manner through the gate,’ she said curiously, although the prince saw no earthly reason to impolitely query her remark.
‘Time has no real meaning here,’ the girl added a little more grimly, ‘which means we have time for a tale.’
*
Chapter 44
The Loose Thread
Princess Doxa was a very opinionated princess.
Fortunately for her, she had an incredibly understanding lady in waiting, Ginoskein, who loyally and ever-so patiently served the princess as maid, advisor, nanny, chaperone and seamstress.
A lady in waiting taking on the role as seamstress might seem an oddity, but the truth was that Princess Doxa came from a much poorer and backward kingdom than she would have liked to: and so whenever she was on her many travels to other realms, and the poor princess discovered once again that her wardrobe was so frightfully way behind the times, Ginoskein always took it upon herself to cut and sew every night until the dresses were no longer an embarrassment to Doxa.
Naturally, Princess Doxa was always extremely grateful for Ginoskein’s painstakingly hard work and many skills, gleefully informing her that she ‘had saved the day for me yet again!’
Of course, despite Ginoskein’s admirable efforts, no matter where poor Princess Doxa went she was always sniggered at from behind veiling fans: for what kind of princess only had one maid to serve her?
Most princesses had ladies in waiting who had their own maids, and plenty of them too!
Indeed, there was one particular kingdom where even the maids had maids, who themselves had maids, who of course also had to be served by maids.
Now despite Ginoskein’s best advice and warnings, Princess Doxa insisted on visiting this fabulous realm, having heard so many wonderful stories about it.
How everyone adhered to judiciously agreed rules of greeting and conversation, so that no one might be offended.
How all manner of dress followed a sensibly discreet if elaborate code, so that no one need fear that they appeared unusual and strange.
How correct patterns of behaviour for all occasions were prudently set out in vast tomes, ensuring everyone always acted thoughtfully and wisely.
On first arriving within this amazing land, the princess quite unintentionally aggravated the inhabitants of a border village when she politely and excitedly asked them if the road her carriage was on led the way to their capital city.
‘It’s not our capital city,’ the people snorted in disgust at the princess’s rudeness. ‘Quite clearly people like us, of such lowly stock, couldn’t possibly hope to own even one minute building in such a fine city!’
‘Not to worry,’ the princess trilled stoically, ‘that’s the whole point of having rules; so that we may learn them, and make sure we aren’t breaking them!’
Within the first town they arrived at, the princess wisely decided to avoid asking questions of people in the street and, rather, seek out the council officials and judges who she knew would be gathering within the guild hall and town’s chambers.
Such learned people, she not unreasonably reasoned, would be aware of the rules she had to follow. They would be more than welcoming when she asked them to introduce her to the many books they owned setting out these instructions.
‘You can’t come in here attired as if for some frivolous ball!’ the council officials and judges stormed when the princess entered wearing a dress Ginoskein had spent all night and a day altering, ensuring it followed the kingdom’s very latest fashions. ‘Have you no sense of decorum?’
‘There’s no point in worrying,’ the princess adamantly declared afterwards, resolutely holding back her tears. ‘Quite rightly, the high officials here wear elaborate gowns and wigs that grant them due authority, setting them apart from anyone naive enough to just walk in of the street.’
At last, they arrived at the brightly glistening and towering white walls of the capital city, entering by the imposing gate with its resplendently dressed guards.
Naturally, the princess hoped she could avoid asking anyone for directions to the palace, particularly as the way was quite clear, the tree-lined avenue leading to it being both wide and paved with highly polished slate.
Unfortunately, one of the guards approached her carriage, refusing to let her pass until she disclosed the reason for her visit.
‘The ball: I intend to attend the prince’s grand ball!’ the princess blurted out with relief, having seen a nearby princess allowed through after making the very same declaration,
‘And your signed and sealed Document of Intent?’ the guard said, holding out a hand as if expecting some official pass.
‘Oh, er, I don’t have…don’t have it yet,’ the princess admitted ashamedly, it being only a partial li
‘Ask when you attend your appointment at the chambers of His Most Royal Excellency the Grand Chamberlin.’
‘Erm, and how do I get an appointment?’
‘Ask when you present your pass at the meeting for the provision of appointments at The Royal Halls of Accommodation.’
And I get this pass by…?’
‘Ask when you hand over your Articles of Officiation within the Offices of The High Lord.’
‘Hah, and these Articles of Officiation will be from?’
‘Ask when you...’
And so it went on until, after over an hour of directions on how to collect the correct documentation, the guard finally waved their carriage on. However, he also firmly directed them to take a narrow, ramshackle road leading off into the poorer and more crowded part of town.
The poor princess was in tears.
‘I’m so worried, Ginoskein!’ she wailed, her lips quivering, ‘I’m never going to learn all the rules of conduct that they adhere to here! I’m just going to look like some dreadful country bumpkin to anyone attending the royal court!’
Ginoskein tenderly wrapped her arms around the tearful princess’s shoulders, giving her a loving and caring hug.
‘Don’t take all this nonsense to heart, my dear,’ she said, wiping the poor girl’s fevered brow. ‘Can’t you remember the fairy story I used to tell you, the one called The Height of Fashion?’
The prince leapt back out of the maid’s tender embrace, her expression both hurt and scolding.
‘Ginoskein!’ she snapped. ‘You see, even you’re treating me like some naive child! A story, a fairy story!’
Even so, she could indeed remember the fairy story Ginoskein used to tell her.
*
There once was a king who, unusually for kings, was reasonably intelligent, if not particularly wise.
He was admired throughout his kingdom for his astute decisions concerning everything from finances to farm yield, from wars with neighbouring realms to wares sold in the increasingly prosperous markets.
Despite his remarkable success as a ruler, he was constantly trying to improve himself.