Chapter 4 The Relic

Edward spent the next three days in Thornbury, working odd jobs to earn enough for food and lodging while he thought. He worked at a blacksmith's shop, hammering horseshoes until his hands blistered and bled. He swept floors at an inn. He carried bundles of firewood for an old woman who lived on the edge of town. He did not talk to anyone except when necessary, and when he did talk, he spoke in short, careful sentences that revealed nothing. He thought about Corbin's words. The Crown of Saint Edmund. He had heard of it, of course—every child in the kingdom had heard of it, in stories told by firelight and in fragments quoted by priests. The crown was a relic of immense power, said to have been worn by the first king of the north, a holy man who had united the warring tribes and established the kingdom under God's law. When he died, his crown was buried with him, and over the centuries it had become the subject of legend and longing. Kings had sought it. Kings had died seeking it. And now it was in Blackmere, in a city that was supposed to be dead. The problem was not the crown. The problem was Blackmere. The plague had swept through the city twenty years ago, killing everyone except a handful of survivors who had sealed themselves in the cathedral crypt and waited out the storm. They had emerged months later, changed, hollowed out by what they had seen in the dark. They called themselves the Cursed Ones, and they were not welcome anywhere. No one knew how they had survived, or what they had become, and no one wanted to find out. But Edward had nowhere else to go. Oakhaven was behind him, Northgate was forbidden, and Thornbury was a place of work and anonymity that offered no future. If the crown was his only path to legitimacy, then he had to find it. He had to go to Blackmere. On the fourth day, he bought a horse—a sorry-looking nag that cost him his last silver piece—and set out for the eastern road. He rode for two days, leaving the fertile valleys behind and entering the wilder country where the forests grew thick and the roads became tracks and the tracks became paths and the paths disappeared altogether. The land was rugged, broken by rocky outcrops and steep slopes, and the sky was perpetually overcast, casting everything in shades of gray and green. On the third day, he reached the border of the cursed lands. A wooden signpost, rotting and half-collapsed, marked the boundary. On one side, the road continued into the forest. On the other, a second sign, nailed to the post with iron nails, bore a single word in crude letters: DEATH. Edward dismounted and tied the horse to a tree. He walked the rest of the way on foot, his hand on his knife, his senses alert. The forest was silent. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath as he passed beneath the canopy of ancient oaks. And then he saw it. Blackmere rose from the trees like a dream of a city, all spires and towers and crumbling walls, half-swallowed by ivy and moss and time. The plague had not destroyed it. It had preserved it, frozen in a single moment of chaos and terror, the way a fly might be frozen in amber. The streets were empty. The houses stood with their doors open, revealing interiors preserved in dust and silence. A cart lay overturned in the middle of the road, its wheels still turning slowly in the wind. Edward walked through the streets, his footsteps echoing in the silence, and he felt the presence of the dead around him, not as ghosts but as memories, as impressions left on stone and wood and earth. He felt their fear, their desperation, their final hours of life. And beneath it all, deeper than the fear, he felt something else—something ancient and patient, like the breath of the earth itself. He found the cathedral at the center of the city, a massive structure of stone and glass, its spire still standing despite the collapse of everything around it. The doors were open. Inside, the light was dim, filtered through stained glass that depicted scenes of saints and martyrs, their faces painted in colors that had not faded despite the centuries. Edward walked down the central aisle and stopped before the altar. And there, on a pedestal of black marble, he saw it. The Crown of Saint Edmund. It was smaller than he had expected, a circlet of gold worn thin by time, studded with stones that had lost their brilliance but still caught the light in fragments, like memories of their former glory. It sat on the pedestal like a crown waiting for a king, and Edward felt something stir inside him, something that was not quite hope and not quite fear but a mixture of both, sharp and urgent and alive. He reached out his hand. And the crown flared with light. The horse was a sorry-looking nag, gray and bony, with one white sock and a temper to match its appearance. The farmer who sold it to Edward charged him his last silver piece, watching with a mixture of pity and contempt as Edward mounted the beast and rode away. Edward did not look back. He had no money, no home, no prospects. But he had a destination, and for the first time in his life, that was enough. The road east led through rolling hills and narrow valleys, into the borderlands where the kingdom's reach grew thin and the law was more suggestion than statute. Edward rode for two days, sleeping in barns and ditches and under hedgerows, eating bread and cheese and drinking from streams when he was thirsty. He was not a soldier, but he had grown up working the fields, and his body knew how to endure. By the third day, he had reached the edge of the cursed lands. A wooden signpost, rotting and half-collapsed, marked the boundary. On one side, the road continued into the forest. On the other, a second sign, nailed to the post with iron nails, bore a single word in crude letters: DEATH. Edward dismounted and tied the horse to a tree. He would walk the rest of the way on foot.