Hart's Hope Page 5

  “And God?” asked Sleeve, amused.

  “He’s slippery. I’ll have to keep him where I can watch him over the years. But you, Sleeve. You I do not fear at all.”

  His love of theatricality would have made him say some heroic epigram in answer, but he had learned at an early age that theatricality is no substitute for sure victory. So he bit down upon her heart with the teeth of his left hand, to fell her at once with a single magical blow. Even if she endured it she would be too shaken to fight him after that.

  But she did not so much as flinch, and as he squeezed with his cruel inward hand, he was surprised to find that he felt the agony in his own chest. He stopped, but his pain went on, and in a moment of anguish he realized that her words were not brag. There was no help for him from the Hart, and that presence of gods that he had always felt underlying all his power—it was gone.

  “What have you done!” he cried.

  “Took you by surprise, didn’t I,” she said. “Oh, never mind, Sleeve. If the gods could not resist me, how could you?”

  The pain in his heart eased, and he found himself lying on the sand, looking up at her through blurred eyes.

  “Can’t you see me well?” she asked. And suddenly his eyes were clear of tears. It was that which frightened him most of all. A magic that could break the power of gods was terrible indeed, but a magic so delicate it could take the tears out of a man’s eyes—that was a thing he had never heard of before in all his reading, in all his life.

  “Look at me,” she said again. “Berry was the most beautiful woman I know, but I am Beauty, and I thought of some improvements. Here, is this better? And this?”

  He lay in the sand and told her yes, yes, it was better.

  “Well, now,” she said at last, dressing herself as she spoke, “well, now, Sleeve. I suppose you’ll want to come with me.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Why, to Palicrovol,” she said. “Am I not his wife? Did he not marry me with many, many witnesses?”

  “I told him he should have killed you.”

  “I remember that,” she said. “But he didn’t, and here I am. Do you think he’ll find me beautiful?”

  It was impossible that she could mean to live with him as his wife.

  “Oh, I don’t mean to,” she said. “Live with him? Absurd. But I heard that he was bringing the Flower Princess to him from the southern islands. She is of age, I hear. And apparently he thinks that he can marry her. While I still live, he thinks that he can marry her. When he sees me, will he still think that she is beautiful?”

  Sleeve took a bit of satisfaction in telling her, despite his fear, “Asineth, improve on Berry all you like, but no woman of flesh has ever been so beautiful as Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin.”

  Suddenly his tongue was thick in his mouth, and he felt snakes slithering inside his clothing, a forked tongue tickling at his throat. “Never call me Asineth again,” she whispered.

  “Aye, Beauty,” he answered.

  “You will come with me to Palicrovol. I will keep you as a pet.”

  “As you wish,” he said.

  She giggled, and the snakes were gone. “Get up,” she said.

  He got up, and in the process discovered that she was not content with changing her own shape. She had changed his, too.

  “Tell the truth,” she said. “Don’t you like yourself better like this? Weren’t you tired of standing out, a pale giant among other men?”

  He did not answer her, just stared at his hands and nodded. This is what defeat feels like, he told himself, but he knew it was not true. This was only the beginning of defeat. He knew that Asineth had plans. And he pitied Palicrovol, for there was no hope for him now. It was plain that all the warnings about the power of a ten-month child were feeble compared to the danger of its mother, and now it was too late to think of how he might thwart her. Asineth’s power was so beyond his that she could swat away his strongest effort with a laugh. It would be something besides the power of the living blood that would undo her now, if anything ever did. He had never been so afraid in all his life.

  Only when he had packed his books and hoisted them on his back, only when she led him away from Brack on the end of a golden chain, only then did he invent a role for himself that might just keep him alive. He wrapped the long chain around his legs to hobble him and toddled after her like a child, singing loudly,

  I have captured Beauty,

  I have her on a string,

  I keep her in the cupboard,

  And poke her with my thing.

  She looked back at him in annoyance and pulled on the golden chain. Immediately he fell forward against the rocks, gashing his shoulder. Ignoring the pain, he sat upright and poked the wound with his finger, then licked off the blood.

  “The wine is strong, but the vintage is wrong,” he declared solemnly.

  Looking down at him, she smiled in spite of herself. She had given him a ridiculous shape; now he was living the part she had assigned him. It pleased her. “What is the name of the wine?” she asked, playing along.

  “Splenetic Red, from the fields of Urubugala.”

  “Urubugala,” she said, and she laughed aloud. “Urubugala. That is the language of Elukra, isn’t it? What does it mean?”

  “Little cock,” answered Sleeve.

  “My little cock,” she said. “My Urubugala.” It was a good name for the creature he had become. And the name did not displease Sleeve. If it kept him alive, he was happy with it. Sleeve was not one of these weak, proud men who can be controlled by the threat of humiliation. There were times when he even enjoyed the freedom that he won through his fool’s part.

  Beauty’s daughter

  By the water—

  Did you wish

  She were a fish?

  At that Beauty glowered, but Sleeve immediately raised his tunic and strutted toward her, showing off his grotesque genitals. “If you like to be a mother, I’ll gladly sire another!”

  “You are not always funny,” said Beauty. “I don’t like you when you aren’t funny.”

  Sleeve sidled up to her and whispered, “Where is the baby?”

  Immediately he felt an excruciating pain in his head, as if his eyes were being forced out by the pressure of something growing behind them. After a few moments it stopped. He refused to be so easily vanquished. “The baby is dead! It lives in my head!”

  “Shut up, Sleeve.”

  Sleve drew himself up to the full height she had left him. “My name, Madame Beauty, is Urubugala.” He whispered again. “You are a very quick learner. Was all this in those books you read?”

  Asineth was only fourteen years old—she was susceptible to flattery. She smiled and said, “The books were nothing. They knew nothing. All I learned was how to get the power. Once I paid the price for it, the power was its own teacher. So far, I need only to think of a thing, and I can do it. And the most delicious thing of all is that Palicrovol himself gave the power to me. Gave me the power, but only a woman can ever have it.”

  “A man can have it,” said Urubugala.

  He saw the fear leap into her face. She was not secure yet with her power. “How can a man have it, when a man cannot create a child out of his body?”

  Again he answered her in rhyme:

  If we fasten our balls to the walls,

  And then if we feed on our seed,

  The power will come in an hour

  To pee like the sea and to fart like a flower.

  “You are disgusting,” she said. “No man can have a power that is the match of mine. And no other woman, either, for no woman has enough hate in her to do what I have done.” She said it proudly, and Sleeve again hid his fear of her behind mockery.

  “I am your minstrel and you are my monstrel. Where is your teeny one, tinny one, tiny one?”

  “Oh, we had an argument.” Beauty carelessly tossed her head and smiled. “I won,” she said. Sleeve fancied he could still see the blood on her tongue.<
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  4

  The King’s Bride

  How the Flower Princess lost her body, her husband, and her freedom all in an hour on her wedding day.

  THE ROYAL PROGRESS

  She came to the mouth of Burring with her father’s fleet of tall ships. Palicrovol had a thousand singers meet her at the port. So perfect was their singing that the deafest sailor on the farthest ship heard all the words.

  She was rowed up the river on the only galley that her father ever built, but the oarsmen were free, not slaves, and all of them wore robes of flowers. Every day of the voyage, a hundred women sat below deck, winding fresh flowers into new robes, so that every day the robes were new. And when she reached the great city Inwit, a thousand bags of flowers were released upstream, and all of Burring, from shore to shore, was a pond of petals for the coming of the Flower Princess.

  Palicrovol himself met her at King’s Gate, with the white-robed priests of God surrounding him, and white-robed virgins from the nunnery led the Flower Princess from her father’s ship. Palicrovol knelt before her, and the carriage that met her began the Dance of Descent.

  The Dance ended in the palace, in the Chamber of Answers, a room not opened for a century because it was too perfect to be used. Ivory and alabaster, amber and jade, marble and obsidian were the walls and floor and ceiling of the Chamber of Answers, and there the Flower Princess chose to wear her ring on the middle finger of the left hand, but high on the finger, to promise fecundity and faithfulness; and lo, of all miracles, Palicrovol also wore his ring on the middle finger of his right hand, high on the finger, to promise worship and unwavering loyalty. The watching hundreds cheered.

  And then an imperious woman walked out onto the floor, leading a grotesque black dwarf on a golden chain, and Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin turned to face the woman, and the wedding was broken at that moment.

  THE USER USED

  “I see,” said the strange woman.

  The dwarf piped up in a strange little song.

  Ugly Bugly, Mercy Me,

  You are not as fair as she.

  Palicrovol spoke from behind the Flower Princess. “Who are you? How did you get into the palace?”

  “Who am I, Urubugala?” asked the strange woman.

  “This lady is Beauty, the greatest of all the gods,” said the dwarf. “First she chained the Hart at the root of the world. Then she captured the Sweet Sisters and trapped them into such comical bodies. Then she bent God and imprisoned him. And at last she came home to poor Sleeve, and undid him, undid him, undid him.”

  “Sleeve,” said Palicrovol. “Came home to Sleeve.”

  “Do you know me, Palicrovol?” asked the strange woman.

  “Asineth,” he whispered.

  “If you call me by that name, you do not know me yet,” she said. Then she turned to the Flower Princess. “So you are what he loves best in all the world. I can see that you are beautiful.”

  Again the dwarf chanted in his strange voice.

  Beauty is fair, Beauty is fair,

  But Beauty chose the wrong body to wear.

  “I can see that you are beautiful,” said the stranger, “and so it is only fitting that Beauty should have that face and form.”

  Enziquelvinisensee saw the woman change before her eyes, into a face that she knew and did not know. Knew because it was her own face. Did not know because it was not mirrored, as the Flower Princess had always seen it, but exactly as others had seen it. “This is what others have seen in me,” she whispered.

  “Do you worship?” asked Beauty. “Am I not perfect, Flower Princess?”

  But Enziquelvinisensee Evelvinin had taken a vow to tell only the truth, and she had none of her women beside her to lie for her, and so she destroyed herself by saying, “No, Lady. For you have filled my eyes with hate and triumph, and I have never felt such things in all my life.”

  Beauty’s perfect nostrils flared a bit with rage, and then she smiled and said, “That is because you have lacked the proper teachers. So let me teach you, Flower Princess, as I was taught.”

  The Flower Princess did not feel a change, but she saw the watching people look at her and gasp and turn away. She was afraid of what had been done to her, and spun on her toes to face her husband, gracious Palicrovol, who loved her. But Palicrovol, too, was revolted at what he saw, and stepped back from her. It was only a moment, and then he came to her again, and held her close to him, but in that moment Enziquelvinisensee Evelvinin knew the truth: Palicrovol thought of her beauty as part of herself, just as everyone else did; he did not know her without her face. Yet she was comforted that he still embraced her, and that he spoke with courage against Beauty.

  “Did you think I could be so easily deceived, Asineth?” he asked. “You may startle me, but my heart belongs to another heart, not to a face.”

  Beauty only smiled again. Suddenly the Flower Princess felt Palicrovol take her brutally by the waist and throw her from him onto the floor. She looked up at him in horror, and saw the anguish of his face as he cried out to her, “It wasn’t I!” Then, though he tried to speak, he fell mute, but the Flower Princess had heard enough to understand. It was Beauty, it was Asineth who had used his arms to hurl her away.

  “Lie on the floor, Weasel,” said Beauty. “Lie on the floor, and see what your husband does when he finds a virgin body to despoil. Your body, Weasel. Too bad you won’t be wearing it when your fine new husband takes his pleasure.”

  At first Palicrovol moved jerkily, as Beauty learned to control his body. It cost her more power than anything else she did, to battle the King for control of his flesh and win—it was the rarest of the powerful acts she did. But she was clever, and soon learned to overmaster him. Then his body moved smoothly, and others forgot that Palicrovol did not act of his own free will. But the Flower Princess, now named Weasel, she knew truth as no other knew it, for her lips had never spoken a lie, and she remembered easily that Palicrovol acted with another will. Beauty had power, but not wisdom yet. At that time she was still a child, and thought vengeance would come at the price of a cheap and easy show.

  So Palicrovol’s hands cut the clothing from Beauty’s body, which was the body of the Flower Princess. And Palicrovol, act for act, ravished her as he had ravished Asineth two years before. Only this time he did not disdain her attempt at seductiveness. Now when the body of the Flower Princess moved so subtly for him, he cried out with the pleasure of it. Now when his arms lifted his body from her, he moaned in protest. Let it not be over, cried his flesh. Let it not finish. And as long as he looked at her naked before him, as long as he remembered the pleasure that her body and her power had given him, his body again and again convulsed in pleasure; even after his seed was spent, even after the pleasure had turned to agony, he writhed against the impossibility of having her, the memory of having her, the longing to have her forever.

  “Kill her!” he cried, but his guards had long since fled.

  “Help me,” he whispered to Urubugala, but the dwarf only said a little rhyme:

  In the morning

  Heed no warning.

  In the night,

  No respite.

  “Weasel,” said Queen Beauty, “you know how I was served. Tell me—is my vengeance just?”

  “You were wronged,” said the Flower Princess.

  “Is my vengeance just?”

  “You are just to take vengeance.”

  “But is my vengeance just?” Beauty smiled like the blessing of a saint.

  “Only if you avenge yourself on those who harmed you, and only if your vengeance is equal to the wrong done you.”

  “Come now, I heard I could count on Weasel Sootmouth to tell the truth. I ask you a fourth time—am I just?”

  “No,” said the Flower Princess.

  “Good,” said Beauty. “I was unjustly treated, and unless my vengeance is monstrously unjust I won’t be satisfied.”

  “I’m the one who wronged you,” Palicrovol said. “Take your vengeance on m
e.”

  “But don’t you see, Palicrovol, that it is part of my vengeance on you, that you know your woman and your friends suffer unjustly for your sake?”

  Palicrovol bowed his head in helplessness.

  “Look at me, Palicrovol,” said Beauty.

  Against his will he looked up and convulsed again in passion for her.

  “Here is my vengeance. I will not kill you, Palicrovol. I despise you even more than you despised me when I was weak. You may keep your army—as many as you want. Fill the world with your armies and bring them against me—I will vanquish them with a thought. You may keep your Antler Crown—I need no crown to rule here. You may govern all of Burland outside this city—I can overrule you any time I please. You will send me tribute, but not so much that it will harm the people—I do not have my father’s greed. I will not undo your laws or your works. This city will still be called Inwit. The new temple you are building to your God may continue to rise. All the worship they give your God will please me, for I also rule God. I will leave you everything except for this: you will never enter this city again while I am alive, and you will never be alone again while I am alive, and you will never know a moment of peace again while I am alive. And Palicrovol—I will live forever.”

  Urubugala somersaulted and sprawled on the floor between them. “There are limits on the life of a daughter and a wife!” he cried.

  “I know that,” Beauty said. “But when my power wanes, I will simply have another child. Next time, I think, a twelve-month child. Find some wizards, Palicrovol. Have them study that in their books.

  She laughed then, and compelled Palicrovol to gaze upon her, throwing him into paroxysms of rapture until he sprawled on the floor, exhausted and retching.

  As she laughed, a powerful-looking man strode boldly into the hall, carrying a sword and wearing heavy armor, though the helmet was cast away.

  “Zymas, run!” cried Palicrovol.

  “Oh, stay, Zymas,” said Beauty. “Today would not have been complete without you.”