ESCAPE FROM THE CRYSTAL CITY
In those days Athal was called the Jewel City, and this name had two meanings.
The first sprang from the peak of the mountainside into which the city was set, a river of pure water which flowed into its palace and over its tiered walls, through its streets and down its many levels to irrigate the farmland far below. The cascading of this enormous fountain turned Athal into a sparkling topaz by day, or a glittering opal by night.
The second meaning came also from within the mountain, veins of blue crystal which the city had mined for many years and upon which its merchants and kings had built their wealth. This lapis was the city’s true jewel, and its most famous gem was called the Queen’s Tear, held within the palace on a pedestal of grey mountain stone.
It was this blue gem Nettle placed, carefully but quickly, into a small pouch like a wineskin, sealing it up and concealing its shine from the jealous moonlight.
He stood within a great hall, carved from the mountain. Tapestries and carpets of deep blue and cloth-of-gold flowed across the walls, depicting the great deeds of kings. The river ran clear and rippling through wide channels in the floor.
The palace was at the city’s height, overlooking the myriad buildings below, windows all alight like a blanket of stars.
Nettle clutched his prize, silently making his way towards the great doors, there to steal away into the night. His dark curls and faded green tunic were not so easily visible in the night, and his polished bronze sword was stowed safely in its scabbard beside a small pouch of coin, which made a tiny, echoing clink with each step as he swiftly approached the exit.
Then the doors were flung open, and through them marched a dozen guard clad in blue with silvery iron helm and plate. They were all men, dark-haired and amber-skinned, and all wielded long pikes, excepting one at their head who drew an iron sword. He wore a thick beard beneath a winged helm, and bore the lapis teardrop crest of Athal’s king.
Nettle stopped, caught in a moonbeam in the middle of the hall, the sealed pouch in his hand. The guard lowered their pikes and, following the point of their captain’s stout blade, aimed their sharpened points at the intruder.
“Hello!” said Nettle. Then he threw the pouch high into the air and ran to the window.
“Seize him!” yelled the captain of the guard, then “Catch it!”
As if upon his order, a little shining bronze shape flew out from the darkness like an arrow, snatching the pouch from the air. The men, whose advance had already been confused by the thief’s sudden movements, were for a moment stunned into inaction, for none of them had ever seen a fairy.
She was only a few inches tall, speeding through the air effortlessly on fluttering wings. Her skin glinted like bronze and her hair was all thick coils of copper, and she wore a white dress that to a mortal might only have been a handkerchief.
“S-spirit!” said one of the guards, and “The spirits haunt us!” came the cry from another.
Nettle ran to one window and the fairy, whose name was Thorn, flew to another. The guard hesitated, some crashing into one another, their captain barking at them to pursue. Then each of the two thieves slipped through a wide, open archway, and out into the night.
Thorn ducked down out of sight then flew around the outside of the palace, darting between the waterfalls that fell from its balconies. She found Nettle at the far side, hanging below the window-ledge and slowly making his way down on the rope she had hung for him earlier.
“Hurry!” she said over the rushing water. The night air was pleasant, and carried the smells of smoke and spices from the many hearths beneath them.
“People with wings,” panted Nettle, “do not get to rush me.”
In truth he climbed fairly quickly on long, lean-muscled limbs, and had soon alighted in an alleyway on the tier below. Thorn sped back up, and untied the rope after him.
Finally afforded a moment of calm, the two grinned at each other. Then they ducked into the shadows and made their way out onto the street.
Athal by night was only half-asleep, and citizens still wandered the narrow, torchlit paths. Nettle and Thorn made sure to keep out of sight, Thorn especially, as they slunk around statues and passed by drunken revellers spilling from alehouses.
Nettle held the sealed pouch tightly in his hand, feeling the weight of it as they followed a channel in the roadside through which a branch of the clear river flowed, crossing a bridge of worn stone, wending where the walkway split and sloped away through arches and alleys.
“Remind me,” Nettle hissed to the darkness where he knew his companion to be, “why you don’t just fly away with it now and meet me at the gate by morning?”
Thorn poked her head out of a barrel of overripe apples left out for passing horses.
“The guard of the Jewel City are renowned across the World’s Edge!” she whispered. “They’d surely spot me in the air and shoot me down with arrows, shiny and unmissable as I am.”
Nettle huffed. “Ha! Renowned. Did you not see them at the palace?”
Thorn chuckled. “That big one with the beard! Trying to herd them like cats on a -”
She stopped, and so did Nettle. They had made it almost to the grand stair which connected this level of the city with the next, but in their path stood that same bearded guard, flanked by his pikemen.
The captain looked at Nettle from beneath bushy brows, his eyes twinkling.
“Halt! By order of the King!”
Several townsfolk had cleared to the sides of the path, and more now stopped to look at the tall man now stood in the middle of the street. Some even saw the little fairy in amongst the apples, and cooed and pointed, leaning from windows to marvel at the strange scene.
Nettle spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Thorn. “Once more?”
Thorn flew out to catch the pouch as Nettle threw it again. She aimed herself straight at the guardsmen. Some flinched away but their leader stood firm, then suddenly swung, batting the little fairy out of the air before she could turn away.
Nettle shouted as Thorn fell, dropping the pouch which skidded across the stone and fell with a plop into the roadside canal. It bobbed, already caught in the lazy current, and floated away downstream.
The captain of the guard ran after it, jostling through the gathering crowd. Nettle leapt towards Thorn. By the time he looked up, the pouch was reaching the channel’s edge, and he watched it silently disappear over, falling to the tier below.
Nettle scooped Thorn up in his hands and jumped into the water. Several of the guard tried to grab him from the bank, but none followed. Thorn looked up at him as he waded downriver, dazed but conscious, and nodded.
Nettle summoned his courage and took a breath, and they tumbled over the waterfall together.
For a moment all was a tumult of roaring water until they felt themselves land, plunging into a deep pool. Nettle kicked himself out from under the torrent and rose to the surface, emerging at the poolside panting for air, and extending his hand for Thorn to do the same.
Nettle looked around through the water that dripped from his dark hair. The fall had taken them through a circular opening in a domed roof. The walls within were tiled in pale yellow and patterned blues, and the air was thick with steam, humid compared to the cool, clear water of the city’s river.
There were about two dozen people in the room, all nude, staring at Nettle and Thorn in bemused wonder. Golden-skinned locals and one or two travellers all sat and stood about in pools of steaming water, encircling the central basin where the waterfall had deposited its cargo.
Thorn spluttered, shaking droplets of water from her hair and stretching out her wings. Nettle wasn’t sure where to look, eyes falling of their own accord on a woman not much older than himself. She flushed, but smiled. Nettle quickly turned away.
“Are you all right?” asked an older man close to where they had fallen, mercifully wearing a cloth about his midsection.
Nettle coughed. “Pouch... A little pouch fell, is it here?”
A few bathers looked between themselves blankly, then someone called out. “That one?”
Nettle turned to see a channel continuing from the central pool, across the room and away through a little mouth in the stone carved into the likeness of a gaping fish. There was the pouch, bobbing on the current, but as Thorn darted into the air to follow it had already vanished out of sight.
There came a pounding from the bathhouse door. “Open up! This is the palace guard!”
People around them started clamouring, scrambling to cover themselves. Nettle looked at Thorn, sighed, and held out his hand. The pair took another deep breath, and Nettle kicked off from the side of the pool, letting the current carry them through the fish-shaped opening and into darkness.
Here the river passed beneath the street, and the pair were carried along in lightless confusion. Nettle felt for the surface above with the hand Thorn clung to, but neither felt air before stone. They were trapped underwater.
Nettle kicked as hard as he could, trying to swim along with the current, hoping that the channel would open out onto the street before his held breath gave way. His lungs burned in his chest, aching for air as he forced himself blindly on, clutching Thorn tightly.
Finally he saw light through the crystal water ahead, and with a kick of his powerful legs he came heaving out into the air, Thorn thrust out ahead of him like the figurehead of a ship, both gasping.
The air they breathed in reeked. They were outside again but the torchfires were gone, only a few lonely hearths burning behind iron-barred windows. The canal they had washed out into was strewn with dead leaves and fouler things besides, a layer of grime that tainted the pristine water.
The river split here, flowing either way down narrow, dirty streets. The thieves looked this way and that, peering through the gloom for a glimpse of the pouch.
They saw it in the hand of a young boy, face smeared with muck, sifting through the detritus swept up in the water’s wake. He clutched his prize to his chest, pulling in vain at the sealed opening with his grubby little fingers.
“Ho! You there, boy,” said Nettle. He could not keep the intensity from his voice, and the child yelped, startled as he noticed the bedraggled stranger, backing away.
“Wait!” piped up Thorn, and the boy did, little mouth falling open as he stared rapt at the only sight he had yet seen stranger than a man coming out of the river.
“What’s your name?” asked the fairy.
“Tem,” came the breathy reply.
“Tem,” said Nettle, doing his best to calm his tone. “That pouch belongs to me and my friend. Could we have it?”
He wasn’t lying, Nettle thought. The pouch itself was his. He’d stolen it a while ago.
The boy Tem, however, shook his head. Nettle looked up and down the street for signs of the guard, growing impatient again.
“How about this,” said Thorn, and she flitted to the bag of coin at Nettle’s belt, light fingers helping themselves to a gold piece.
At this sight of its lustre the boy’s eyes grew wider still.
“I’ll give you this,” said the fairy, “for whatever is in that pouch. A fair trade. What do you say?”
Tem nodded enthusiastically, and Thorn tossed the coin which he scurried to grab, dropping the pouch. Nettle grasped for it, and he and Thorn wasted no time in fleeing down the street towards the city’s outer wall where they slipped, sodden, into the night.
Some way down the road into the surrounding farmland, the pair ducked into the shade of an old tree to catch their breath. Nettle held the pouch between them, fumbling with the seal, before Thorn huffed and sliced it open with her wings.
Out fell a large, smooth stone of flawless grey.
High atop the Jewel City, in the chambers of the captain of the guard, a bearded man looked out over the lights below as they slowly twinkled out, and smiled to himself.
And in the hall of the palace of Athal stood the Queen’s Tear, the greatest gem in all the World’s Edge, atop a pedestal, glinting blue in the moonlight.
THE END
NETTLE AND THORN WILL RETURN IN...
FIRE AND WINE
