Hart's Hope (27 page)

She swam slowly, barely rippling the water, never splashing at all. She is misnamed, thought Orem: Not weasel but otter is her animal self. Then she dove under the surface.

Now the servant who called himself God moved, throwing wide his arms. Green flashed his eyes, a light so bright that Orem looked away. And when he turned to watch again, the old servant was naked, pissing savage green into the water, his eyes bright green and staring into the wood. Still Weasel had not come up. The green spread shining across the water until the pool was all suffused with that living light. Still Weasel stayed beneath. Then the old man bowed and bent and knelt beside the pool, and dipped his head into the water up to the neck. Only then did Weasel rise, only her head above the surface, as if those faces could not live on the same side of the water. She seemed not to notice the vividness of the pool.

The tableau broke; the old servant pulled his head from the water, and Weasel turned to him, reached out and touched him. Perhaps they spoke: Orem could not hear. She kissed his brow and the servant—wept? Sobbed or cried out or spoke a single word, Orem could not tell. Then the servant arose, taking his loincloth, and walked haltingly into the well-trimmed path that would take him to the Palace. Weasel swam a few minutes more until the water gradually grew dull and ordinary. But Weasel did not become dull. Orem looked at her and realized that it was not an accident the Queen kept her close at hand. Those nearest the Queen were those most tortured; the quiet ugly woman who had come with him on so many jaunts with Belfeva and Timias was more than she seemed, surely, or the Queen would not torment her.

He cast his net for her, and counted the layers of spells, the depth of the spells the Queen had laid to pen her in, and yes, as he suspected, she was bound and tortured. Who are you, Weasel? Prisoner here as much as I, and perhaps as hopeless. I who will die, am I luckier than you? For I will soon be free of her, and you will not, bound forever in the company of a Queen who grieves you as she can; and she can so exquisitely give grief.

It was then that Orem first loved Weasel Sootmouth. Not for her flesh—Orem had known the body of the Queen. Not out of pity—he knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden that the Queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter. And because when she swam in the pool and kissed the servant who called himself God, she was, oddly enough beautiful. Does that surprise you, Palicrovol? That of all people, your son could look at Weasel Sootmouth and see beauty?

T
HE
Q
UEEN
D
ISCOVERS
H
ER
H
USBAND

Orem returned to the Palace well before the hour when he usually awoke, and now he was weary from too little sleep and the unaccustomed exercise. He planned to rest awhile, but a servant met him at the door.

“Queen Beauty has been looking for you.”

“Oh,” said Orem.

“She wants you to come to her at once.”

For a terrible moment he thought that his war with her was already over, that she had found him out and meant to kill him now. He did not feel as brave as he had felt yesterday on the portico. Then he realized that if it were death she intended, she would not have entrusted her message to this quiet servant. So he followed the servant to a place in the maze that he had not known existed; Beauty's apartments were well-masked, both with magic and with the illusions of clever artisans. Having gone to her once with a guide, however, the illusions were spoiled for Orem and he could find his way again easily. As for the spells, they never worked on him at all.

Queen Beauty lay in her bed looking out the window when he arrived. The servant left him alone with her. The door closed, and she turned to him.

“My Little King,” she said.

Her beauty was undiminished, but her weariness could not be hidden. After all, it was a living beauty that she had, and her face was not unexpressive. She was tired, she was worried, she was grim, and her belly was heavy with the child that she had carried for eleven months. Only then did it occur to him that the pregnancy might be sapping her strength, and that was why she could not respond well to his attacks on her in the night.

“I fear I've ignored you far too long,” she said.

“I've made friends.”

“I know,” she said. “Weasel tells me that you're pleasant company.”

He could not hide the fact that it pleased him to know that Weasel Sootmouth had said such a thing—he was young enough to make more of that than was really in it. “Does she think so?”

“It's your child in my belly, you know. I'm weary with the waiting, and the child weighs me down. You should cheer me up.”

“How can I?”

“Tell me things. Tell me about your country home. Tell me about childhood on the farm. They say your rustic stories are amusing.”

It was a grotesque hour he spent then, telling tales of High Waterswatch to the woman who meant to kill him. It galled him to tell of his father and mother to her—but what other stories could he tell? She laughed a little when he told her of his early attempts at soldiering, and how the sergeant regarded him as unfit. She seemed interested in everything, even tales of how a farmer knows when the grain is near to harvest, and whether a cow is full of twins, and the signs of a storm.

“Look outside, and tell me if a storm is coming.”

He looked. “No storm today or tomorrow,” he said.

“But there'll be a storm all the same. Hart's blood, but I wish that it would come.”

He turned and looked at her, wondering if she wished for the storm or the baby growing in her. Her hands were folded across the gravid mound beneath the blankets of her bed, but she was gazing neither at the window nor at her belly. When the child came, his life would quickly end, he knew. But surely he would live to see his child. Surely his future would not forbid him that.

At last, near noon, she wearied of him.

“Go now,” she whispered. “I need to sleep.”

He started for the door with triumph singing in his heart. She needed to sleep indeed. That was his doing, and it would be a long time before she slept well, if he had his way.

But she stopped him at the door. “Come to me again,” she said. “Tomorrow, at the same time.”

“Yes, my lady,” Orem answered.

“I've used you badly, haven't I?” she said.

“No,” he lied.

“The gods are restless,” she said. “They don't bide well under discipline. Do you?”

Orem did not understand. “Am I under discipline?”

“I only noticed it today. You look like
him
.”

“Who?”

“Him,” she said. “Him.” Then she turned her face away from him to sleep, and he left.

Orem did not understand it, and I did not tell him, but
you
know, don't you, Palicrovol? She began to love him then. And part of why she loved him was because he looked like you. Does it make you laugh? Three hundred years of torturing you, and her hate for you had twisted into love. Not that she meant to free you. Never that. But still it ought to flatter you. You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love.

This is the way the paths of our lives entwine and cross and go apart: If she had sent for him the day before, even then he might have loved her. But she did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her. If only we could stand outside our lives and look at what we do, we might repair so many injuries before they're done.

The tale of the birth of Orem's son, Beauty's son, the bastard grandchild of King Palicrovol, in all the world no child more beautiful and bright.

T
HE
B
URNING
R
ING

Orem's war with the Queen made him almost frenetic during the days, as if he had to work off some of the power he stole from her. As she neared the time of delivery, he harried her more and more, so that she spent her days exhausted after battling futilely all night. Orem, however, spent his days in ever more active games. Timias and Belfeva were surprised, but gladly joined him, even when he indulged in madness like racing horses with the cavalry on the parade ground or competing with Timias to see which of them could throw a javelin the farthest. Timias was not the sort to let Orem win, and so Orem, untrained in any of the manly arts, invariably lost. But he kept at it furiously, and gradually improved.

When Beauty went into labor for the birth of Orem's son, he was climbing up a wall of the Palace, racing to the top with Timias. This was one competition where agility and endurance counted for more than brute strength and long practice, and Orem was holding his own. He was nearly to the top, in fact, when he noticed a sharp pain like a candle flame on his leftmost finger. He looked, and saw that his ruby ring was glowing hot. He could not take it off, not without falling a hundred feet or so. Instead he endured it, climbed the rest of the way to the top, and only then tried to pry it off his finger. He could not.

Weasel and Belfeva were there, watching. “Help me,” Orem said.

“You can't take it off,” Weasel said. “The ruby ring will burn till the child is born. It isn't really burning you. Anyway, you should be glad—it's proof that the child is not only yours, but also a son.”

“The child is being born,” Orem said. Then this was the last day of his life, he was sure. He walked to the lip of the roof, reached down, and helped Timias to the top.

“You won,” Timias said, surprised. “I didn't think you had it in you.”

“I kept looking down,” Orem said. “The thought of death makes me quick.”

Suddenly Weasel cried out in pain.

“What is it!” they demanded, but she would not tell.

“Orem,” she said, “you must go to your wife.”

“At a birthing? The father?”

“At this birthing, with that mother, yes.” She winced again.

“What's wrong? What's happening to you?”

“Help me to my room, Belfeva,” Weasel said. “And you, Little King, go to your wife, I say.”

“But she hasn't sent for me,” Orem said. In truth, he wanted to spend the last day of his life with anyone but Beauty.

“Do you forget which finger bears her ring? She'll obey you if you command her to let you stay.”

“No one commands Queen Beauty.”

“
You
do,” Weasel said. “But beware how you command her, for she'll obey you with cruel perfection if you ask unwisely.”

“I don't want to go,” he said angrily.

She winced again, and staggered against Belfeva. “Not for
her
. Your son. Your son has begun his voyage down the river to the sea. She'll have no other help but you. No one but the father can help at the birth of a twelve-month child.”

Orem wanted to stay, wanted to know why Weasel was in such pain. But he knew that Weasel was wise, that Weasel did not lie; if she said he must go to Beauty, then he would go.

P
ARTURITION

The Queen was not in her normal sleeping room. Nor were there any servants there, to give direction. He did not know where she might have gone for her lying in. He had only one way of finding out: He spun his web through the Palace, and found her all aflame with silver sweetness, rough to his hearing, silent to his touch.

Through the corridors he went toward the place where he knew she was, but always the corridors turned, always the doors opened only the wrong way. He only understood when he stepped from a corridor and into a room, then changed his mind and stepped back again—and found that the corridor had changed direction. The short end now was on the left, the long end with the rising stairs now on the right. Queen Beauty was where he thought she was, but the magic of the Palace turned all paths away. So he let his power flow loose as a robe around him, lapping against the walls, breaking down the spells, revealing the doors where they ought to be. This was not the magic of illusion that he invariably saw through. It was true bending, and he feared that by finding her, he would confess to her what he really was.

He found her worried servants gathered at a door.

“Is she inside?” he asked.

“And alone,” answered a servant. “She forbids us to come in.”

“She won't forbid
me
,” said Orem, and he knocked.

“Go away,” came the husky, painful voice from inside.

“I'm coming in.” And he did.

Beauty lay alone in the middle of a long and narrow bed. She was naked, her legs spread wide, her knees up. Some sheets had been tied to the five posts of the bed. Two were tied to her feet, and she strained against them; two she held in her hands, and pulled hard. The last lay on her pillow, and as a wave of pain swept over her, she turned her head and seized it in her teeth and bit and moaned, tossing her head, worrying the cloth like a dog with a rag. She dripped with sweat. The high-pitched moan that arose from her throat was not a human sound. Blood was trickling from the passage where the baby's head had crowned. The head was large and bloody and purple, and it would not come. Beauty looked at him through eyes wide as a deer's with fear and pain. The eyes followed him as he walked around the foot of the bed and stopped near her face as she chewed on the cloth. Even in such a state, she was beautiful, the most womanly of women.

“Beauty,” he said.

And then the pain passed, and she shuddered and let the cloth slip back to the pillow.

“Beauty,” he said again. “Haven't you any magic to end the pain?”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Little fool, Little King, there
is
no magic that has power over childbirth. The pain must be felt or the child will die.”

Then the pain came again, and she whimpered and writhed as muscles rippled over her belly. The child's head made no forward progress. Beauty looked at him with pleading in her eyes. What did she want of him? To end the pain, but he could not do it.

“Tell me what to do, and I'll do it,” he said.

“Do?” She cried aloud. “Do? Teach
me
what to do, husband!”

The child would die—he knew that much. A child who did not quickly come once it had crowned would die. Not my son, he silently said.

“Can someone bear the pain for you?”

Did she nod? Yes; and whispered: “Not against the other's will.”

“Then cast the pain on me,” he said, “so the child will live.”

“A man!” she said contemptuously. “This pain?”

“Look at the ring on your finger and obey me. Give the pain away.”

No sooner did he say the words than her convulsive movements stopped. Her heavy breathing fell to normal, her pressure on the sheets eased. He waited for the pain to come to him—but it did not. He had no time to question it, for suddenly the flesh opened impossibly wide, the bones of Queen Beauty's pelvis separated widely, and the child slipped out easily upon the sheets. It was impossible that Beauty could go through such a thing so peacefully, yet instantly the bones came together again, and Beauty reached down and picked the child up. There was no afterbirth; the baby had no trailing cord.

“Untie my feet,” Queen Beauty whispered. She licked the mucus from the baby's face. The child cried, and Beauty cuddled him, held him to her breast, guided his mouth to the nipple, then sighed and comfortably crossed her legs. Orem noticed with amazement that her belly was not slack at all, but perfect in form, as if she had never carried a child at all; indeed, she had again the unutterably beautiful body he had loved, and he could not help desiring her again, for all he feared and hated her.

“Command me again, my Little King,” she said. “It gave me pleasure to obey.”

“But the pain didn't come to me,” he said.

“You didn't command me to give it to
you
.” She smiled triumphantly.

He thought back on his words and could not remember. Somehow she had tricked him, but he was not clever enough to know how. “Let me hold the child.”

“Is that also a command?”

“Only if—if it will cause no harm to him.”

Beauty laughed again and held the infant out. Orem looked down at him, reached to him, took the child in his arms. He had seen newborns before, nieces and nephews, and had helped to care for foundlings at the House of God. But this child was heavier, and held his body differently. Orem looked into the infant's face, and the child gazed back at him wide-eyed, and smiled.

Smiled. Minutes after birth, and the baby smiled.

“A twelve-month child,” Queen Beauty said.

Orem remembered his father, Avonap, remembered his strong arms that could toss him into the air so he flew like a bird, and catch him as surely as the treelimb caught the starling. My arms are strong enough for a child this small. And suddenly he was Avonap in his heart, and he longed for the child. The child Orem had loved his father more than life; that is the sort of child who, when a man, also loves his children with a devotion that cannot be broken. You would not know, Palicrovol, but there are such men, and they are not weaker than you; you are merely poorer than they.

At once Orem knew that he must have this child, if only for a time. “You will let me see him whenever I want,” he said.

“A command?”

“Yes,” he said.

She laughed. “Then I'll obey.”

“And you'll do nothing to bar him from knowing me, and loving me, and I him.”

“You are too daring, Little King,” she said. This time she didn't laugh.

“I command it.”

“You don't know what you're doing.”

“As long as I live I command you to let me know and love him, and him me!” She could not begrudge him that—he did not dare to ask for more, did not dare to ask to be allowed to live a moment longer than she already had in mind.

“Little King, you don't know what you ask.”

“Will you do it?”

“Don't come to me and blame me, Little King. Love the child if you want, and let him love you, it's nothing to me, all one to me.” She turned her face to the wall.

“A child must know his father if he's to be happy.”

“I have no doubt of it. Only this, Little King: He'll eat no food but what he draws from my breast. And he'll never have a name.”

That was wrong; it could not be. To have no name is to have no self, Orem knew that. “I command you to give him a name.”

“You command easily now, don't you? Like a child, not guessing at the price of things. See how well your old commands have worked, before you try any others.”

“Name him.”

“Youth,” she answered, smiling and amused.

“That's not a name.”

“Nor is Beauty. But it's more name than he could earn in all his life.”

“Youth, then. And I'll be free with him.”

“Oh, you're a delicious fool. I've kept the three most marvelous fools in all the world with me for all these years, but you, the best of all, the Sisters saved you for the last. You will have all the time you want with the boy, all the time you can possibly use is yours. May it bring you joy.”

The boy reached up and clutched at Orem's nose and laughed.

“Did you hear? Already he laughed!” And Orem couldn't help but laugh in turn.

“That's the way it is with a twelve-month child,” Queen Beauty said.

“Every day I'll come to see him. He'll come to know my face, and be glad to see me; I'll have time enough for that.”

Orem did not see it; but I believe that every word he said was pain to Beauty, made plain to Beauty how much he already loved the child, and how little love he had for her. It could not have surprised her, but it could hurt no less for all that.

“Give me the boy,” she said. “He needs to eat.”

“Youth,” said Orem to the child, who smiled. He handed the infant to Beauty, and this time the child needed no guidance to the nipple. Beauty looked up at Orem with eyes strangely timid, like a doe's. She looked innocent and sweet, but Orem was not deceived. “Beauty,” he said, “how did you escape the pain of this, when you didn't give it to me?”

“Does it matter?”

“Tell me. I command it.”

Studying his face, she said, “You commanded me to give the pain away; you didn't say to whom.”

That was true, he realized. The second time, when she obeyed him, he had not said she had to give it to him. “But who else would willingly take it?”

“The woman who of all women could not bear to see this body torn asunder. The woman whose face this really is.”

Orem stared at her stupidly. Who else's face was it, if not Beauty's? Orem had never known that Beauty wore a borrowed shape. But knowing that, it was not hard to know who it was who truly owned that face.

“Weasel,” Orem whispered. “You gave the pain to her.”

“We always
shared
my pains anyway,” Beauty said. “It seemed only fair. She had had the use of this body during her perfect childhood—we agreed that it was fair she suffer some of the pain of its adulthood.” Beauty smiled lovingly at Orem. “And pleasure, too. I made sure she felt half the pleasure of our wedding night, Little King. I wanted her to remember what it felt like to be unfaithful to her beloved husband.”

“Her husband?” Orem had not known that Weasel had a husband.

“What a fool,” Beauty said. “Her husband, the King! Palicrovol meant to make her Queen in my place. Why else do you think I've kept her here? Weasel is Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin, the Flower Princess. She wanted my place, so I've taken hers. Inside her perfect body. Well, her perfect body just went through a birthing that could have killed it. But thanks to you, her
perfect
body didn't have to bear the pain, or heal from the injury. Too bad for the imperfect flesh she actually dwells in, though.
That
may well die.”