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  Zymas did not pause to listen to either of them, just kept moving relentlessly toward Beauty, his sword rising above his head. He was nearly upon her, and they all knew a moment’s hope that perhaps Zymas’s direct action was the antidote to this sudden sickness that had come upon the world. But no. Suddenly his hair turned steel grey, his face went old and wrinkled, the sword dropped from gnarled, arthritic fingers, and he staggered feebly under the weight of the armor.

  “Zymas, so bold, so brave, is dead,” said Beauty. “In his place is the Captain of my palace guard. Craven, I call him. Craven, we all call him. Because he was such a coward that he was afraid of a woman.”

  Beauty looked around at those she had hated so long, and smiled. There was real beauty in her smile, and the Flower Princess knew that when the face had been her own, it had never worn such an expression of ecstasy. “Craven, Urubugala, and Weasel. My strength, my wit, and my fair face. I will keep you with me always, Captain, Fool, and Lady of Ladies. You will be the jewels of my crown. And outside Inwit, where he must forever dwell, will be Palicrovol, King of Burland, always remembering me, always longing for me. If he ever begins to feel sorry for himself, he can always remember you, and imagine what I do to you, and that will cheer him up immeasurably.” She walked to the writhing Palicrovol and touched him gently on the flank. He cried out, he reached for her, and then he fell back witless. “Carry him out,” said Beauty. And the guests who had watched the scene in helpless horror obeyed her, carried him out of the palace, out of the castle, out of Inwit through West Gate.

  Outside the city waited a few of his bravest men, who dressed his naked body and carried him away. A nun was there, and she prophesied that the man who killed Beauty would enter through that same gate. Because of that, Beauty had the gate sealed up, never to be used again.

  Within a remarkably short time, the city of Inwit was back to normal and better than normal. All the laws of Palicrovol remained in force, and all the freedoms he had granted remained intact. Beauty ruled gently enough in her city that the people did not mind the change of rulers. And her court became a dazzling place, which the kings of other nations loved to visit. They soon enough learned not to visit Palicrovol’s court themselves, for they found that if they gave Palicrovol the honor due him as King of Burland, they would develop the most uncomfortable infections. So they had to send ambassadors, who soon learned to revile Palicrovol whenever they spoke to him, in order to avoid the plagues that otherwise came upon them.

  Beauty ruled in Inwit, and the exile of Palicrovol had begun. Yet as the years passed, she knew that her vengeance was empty and incomplete. For with all her abuse, she did not change you, and she did not change your three captive friends. Our flesh she could alter, our lives she could fill with misery and shame, but we were still ourselves, and short of killing us she could not make us other than what we were. We remained always beyond her reach, even though she had us always within her grasp.

  5

  The Captive King

  This is how a man may be a slave, though he is free to go all places in the world but one.

  THE TORMENTS OF BEAUTY

  Shall I catalogue the suffering of your exile for you, Palicrovol?

  The foreign ambassadors reviled you, or their bladders would burn when they urinated.

  Your own soldiers spat when you came near, or they would be infested with lice.

  No matter how the cooks labored, all food served to you was covered with mold, all drinks were filmed with slime.

  You fenced yourself with wizards, to give you a few moments’ respite now and then; Beauty tore away their feeble barriers whenever she chose, and whatever wizard helped you was incapable of coupling from that moment.

  You called also upon the priests, even though God had lost all power and was silent in the world; the priests that comforted and honored you all developed huge goiters and tumescences on the head and neck.

  For a week she would make you strain at stool, to no avail; then for another week she would give you dysentery, and open your bowels in public places, so that you were forced to diaper yourself out of courtesy to those who kept you company.

  You awoke itching unbearably in the middle of the night. You froze in summer, could not bear clothing in winter because of the heat she forced on you. For days terrible dreams would waken you; then for weeks you would doze off even as you sat in judgment, or led meetings of your generals.

  One of her worst tricks was to trade vision with you. She would look out of your eyes and see whatever was going on around you, and at the same time you would see whatever she saw within the palace. She did not do it in order to spy on you—she had her Sight, and could sense the whole Kingdom of Burland at will. She did it so that you would be forced to see Weasel being beaten for some offense or other; Craven feebly carrying some burden, or leaning on a serving boy; Urubugala cavorting before a laughing audience of baronets and scions of wealthy merchant families. Your friends, suffering for your sake, and you helpless to save them. So you fashioned golden cups and covered your eyes with them, so that no light could enter at all. That was how you came to be known by one of your names: the Man with the Golden Eyes. They also called you the Horned Man, the Man Who Cannot Be Alone, and the Husband of Far Beauty. And your people were not fooled: You might be Beauty’s toy, but you were a good King, and they prospered and lived mostly free, and paid your slight taxes willingly enough, and submitted to your judgment with trust.

  Yet, ironically, her plagues did you good as well as harm. You knew if a man stayed to serve you that he was not with you for pleasure or honor, or even because he pitied you or hated Queen Beauty. Those who stayed with you in those hard times, who lived closely with you, and were privy to your inmost thoughts—you knew that they served you either because they knew your heart and loved you or because they loved good government and endured you and the life they had to live with you for the sake of the people of Burland. You had a gift few kings are ever given—you could trust everyone near you.

  That good was matched with evil. With bitter injustice, your very justice made it all the harder for you to raise and keep an army—for whose heart stirred to oust Beauty from Inwit, when things went so well for Burland as it was? Only adventurers came to your army, and the Godsmen who hated her for silencing God, and the ne’er-do-wells who had no hope of any other trade. To fill your fifties and your regiments you had to conscript soldiers, which gave you an unwilling, weakish army, on the whole. It was enough to keep the enemies of Burland at bay, but rarely enough for you to hope to overcome the Queen herself.

  And thus it was for days, for weeks, for years, for decades, for centuries. Your loyal followers would come to you and serve you, grow old, and die, but still you lived on, and Urubugala lived on, and Craven lived on, and Weasel lived on, for Beauty, broken as a child, could never grow straight however many years she lived: she would live forever exacting painstaking vengeance for a brief and unwilling cruelty so many years before.

  Three times you brought your army to the gates of Inwit. Three times Queen Beauty let you hope for deliverance. And then she sent terror into the hearts of your soldiers, faced them with whatever they feared most in all the world, and all but the most resolute handful of them fled from your army, and you retreated from the city that you had won from her father so many years before, forced to begin again, ashamed again before the other nations of the world.

  THE HART’S HOUR

  After three centuries and more of exile, on a day when you wore the golden cups over your eyes, there came a vision to you. At first you thought it came from Beauty, but in only a moment you knew that it did not. You saw the Hart, the great shaggy stag, the one that Zymas had seen. The eagle clung to his belly, holding closed the wound there. And the Hart stopped, and turned his heavy head to face you, and you saw that he wore an iron collar around his neck, and his hooves were also banded and chained, and he bade you follow him, and set him free.

  I cannot, you said.

>   Come, he told you, though you heard no words.

  It will do no good, you said. Beauty will see me, and thwart all my works.

  Come, he said. For this hour, she sees not, and sees not that she sees not.

  So you took the golden cups from your eyes, and walked forth from your camp into the forest, and armed with your bow you followed the tracks of a deer into the wood, and went where the deer chose to lead you.

  It was all the power that the gods could muster, exercised for you that day in the woods not far from the town of Banningside. Did you not wonder why they led you where they led you, why you did what you did? Will you now kill what came from that hour? It was your salvation, Palicroval. It was your only son.

  6

  The Farmer’s Wife

  Now the life of Orem Scanthips, the Little King, began this way: with a man following a hart through the wood; with a woman bathing at a stream.

  SHE WAS A POET OF ALL THINGS THAT GREW OF THEMSELVES

  Molly the farmer’s wife had her six sons and didn’t long for more. Six sons, three daughters: too many sons to divide the farm among them, too many daughters to marry them off with any sort of dowry. It was not a son she longed to make when she went that spring morning to her hidden place on the banks of the Banning. She went with a twist of magic in her fingers, so none could follow; but she was followed. Or rather, she was found.

  It was a dark place, a still place, where the river ran narrow and deep and so swiftly that a twig was lost in an instant, so quietly that all songs were heard, all footfalls noted. The trees reached out over the water and met in a dense roof so that the sun did not dance upon the stream. It was cold here, even in the summer. A cave made of leaves and water, all the cold and terrible things of a woman: it was Molly’s truest home, the place where she dared to call herself by her most secret name.

  Bloom, she whispered, naming herself.

  Hush, spoke the river in reply. Hush, for the end of your life is coming, following the traces of a deer.

  THE PANDERING HART

  A great grey hart stood across the stream from her. Molly knew him well, knew that in the hart and hind were magics beyond the reach of the silly farm women of Waterswatch. Beyond even her own reach, and she was the best of them. The blood of the Hart, they say, stains all the world. So she watched as the hart condescended to drink from the stream; watched as water fell silver from his mouth back to the river; watched as behind the great beast a hunter came, arrow nocked, bow down but ready to be drawn in an instant.

  Do not dare to harm the horned head, she cried silently.

  And, as if obedient to her utterance, the hunter stood and watched the deer drink, letting the nock slip from the string, letting the bow grow slack. No death today for the hundred-pointed head.

  Molly studied the hunter as the hunter studied the hart. He was a strong-looking man. Not tall, and as dark as men of the west always were. He wore the deep green of the King—a soldier, then. But not like most soldiers, for Molly had never seen a slogger who had the wit to recognize the beauty of a deer; nor did she know any man at all who could fix his attention on one thing for such a long time. The man’s eyes gleamed in the darkness of her green and silent cave. He was so still, and yet even slack his arms had power in them. Even silent, his lips commanded attention. And she knew, or thought she knew, or dreamed it even as it happened: she knew that this was no common soldier of the King. It was Palicrovol himself, yes, Palicroval the Exile, the Husband of Far Beauty. No wonder, she thought, no wonder he stares with such longing at the hart. He wishes some god could be freed to bring him ease. Well, Queen Beauty, if you watch today, see how I bring him ease, thought Molly, thought fecund Daughter Bloom, for I will have this man, will have the life of him in me.

  I am a chaste woman, a part of her cried out. And his children are born monsters.

  But a part of her answered, with peace only the Sweet Sisters could bring, My children are not born monsters, and a woman is not truly chaste if she refuses what man the Hart brings. Her womb, which had been so often full, cried out to be filled again. But this time, this time with a King’s son, this time with the Hart’s child.

  “Man,” she whispered. Such was the stillness of the place that he heard and yet was not afraid.

  “Woman,” he said, and his face showed cold amusement.

  “Are you strong as this river?”

  “Are you,” he answered, “as deep?”

  In answer she lay upon the grassy, leafy bank and smiled. Come to me, if there’s as much man as king in you.

  As if he heard her taunt, he crossed the river, naked now except for his knife—for he would not be unarmed. He fought the current bravely, but still he came ashore far downstream from her, and she watched as he came dripping and exhausted from the water. River Banning was called unfordable and far from safe to swim. Yet the King had crossed it for her. Molly’s legs trembled.

  He stood over her, leaves and grass and dirt clinging to his shins. He had no beauty to him, and yet there was a quivering deep in her belly as she looked at him.

  “Woman, what do they call you?” There was neither lust nor affection in his gaze. He would not pretend that she was young and beautiful, for she was neither. Her belly sagged within her skirts, her thighs were heavy and her dugs hung as loose as the udder of an aging cow. What the Hart brings together is what would not have come together without him. Beauty or not, it was plain that he desired what she desired, and as much.

  “I am Bloom,” she said, giving her secret woman’s name to him, though he was a man. The Hart had led him.

  “Has the forest given you to me?”

  “I have a husband,” she said. “I will not be yours.”

  To her surprise, he looked angry and stepped back, as if her wife-hood would be a bar to him.

  “Man,” she said, “I will not be yours. But will you not be mine?”

  “Yes,” he said, “Yes I will. Yes.”

  He took her as the hart mounts the hind, and she cried out in the pain and pleasure of the giving and the taking. He put the seed of a son in her, and then kissed her at the small of her back, behind her womb. “What comes of this only God will say,” he said to her. But she only hummed and lay naked on the bank, not even turning to watch him as he plunged again into the flood and swam away. God had not brought him, didn’t he know it? No, it was not God but the Hart that would say what came of this; the blood of the Hart, the blood that flowed from her belly even though she had not been a virgin, as though he had secretly pierced her with his knife. What you have made in me, O Palicrovol, she said to her memory of his flesh, what you have made in me I will make stronger than you. I will make him large and strong. Nine children I have born alive, and always my husband’s own. But this one is not my husband’s. This one is mine. I will name him Orem, for silver water flowed from his father’s body on the morning he was made.

  7

  The Birth of Palicrovol’s Son

  These are the signs that came when Orem Banningside, called Scanthips, called the Little King, was born.

  THE SIGNS OF THE MOTHER

  As she lay on her childbed, her eyes swimming with the pain that never eased no matter how often she went through it, Molly saw the midwife lift the baby up, and in the sunlight of early morning that streamed through the spring window of her east-facing house, he gleamed silver to her; covered with the blood and mucus of birth, he gleamed silver as the water from the hart’s mouth.

  She held him, she sang to him, she talked to him long before the infant could possibly understand. Silently she told him in every way she could, You are the son of the King, my son, you are born to be great. The words were never spoken, but the child still understood. He learned to walk when he was only eight months into the world, because it did not occur to him that he could not; he spoke boldly from the first word, expecting to be understood no matter what he tried to say. A bright one, all the neighbors said to Molly.

  But for two reasons she
was not pleased at what they said. For one, she knew that there were other things said as well, for the child did not look like her blond giant of a husband. For another, there were her own doubts and fears. Quickly she learned that when her seventh son was with her, all her subtle powers were gone. Her cooking spells were meaningless when he was in the house, no matter how many dead mice she bled into the hearth. Her loom magics made no pattern in the homespun cloth if he looked on at her labors. The household goms were free here, where once they had been held in the tightest rein of all High Waterswatch.

  But the worst was when she made the signs that hid her path from mortal eyes as she wandered off into the wood. He could always follow her, could always see her despite the blood she pricked from her own finger. What have the Sweet Sisters given me? she asked herself in fear. But it was neither God nor the Sisters, she knew, for the Hart had also found her in her secret place, and Orem was the child of the Hart. These were the signs of the mother, and instead of love for her son, she soon felt fear, for he had made her weak, and she had once been strong in her small and vegetal way.

  THE SIGNS OF THE FATHER

  When Molly was in her childbed, Avonap her husband waited impatiently in the other room. Nine other times, six times sonned and three times daughtered, he had waited this way. Nine other times he had felt the same impatience. The fields are waiting, woman, he wanted to cry, the soil has called. Did she not know what a farmer’s work was?

  With the soil as with a woman, it was his work to plow, to plant the seed, to tend, to reap. But the corn did not require that he sit and wait in the next room for the grain to ripen in the husk. No, the ripening, the fruiting, that was the business of God who gave life, or the Sweet Sisters, after the woman’s reckoning, which he dared not despise. His business was out with the uncut soil, the unripe corn, the unbound sheaves, not waiting, waiting for—what this time? A daughter to dower? A son to raise to disappointment? Five times he had had to tell a boy of his loins that the fields would never be his, and ever since he had felt their hatred at his back, scythe in hand, or harrow. Not that he feared them; just that there was a weakness hidden in Avonap’s heart. He loved his children, and wanted to be loved by them. Not unheard of in a man, but not something to boast of. He spoke of it to no one, but still when he felt the heat of their anger like breath on his sweating back, Yes, he would think, Yes, they hate me, yes I am undone.