The Princess and the Bear (12 page)

A
FTER NINE DAYS
of traveling, they were nearly at the palace. There was only one more village to go through, and then over the hill and down into the valley. But Richon saw immediately that this village was very different from the towns they had passed through in the north.

The village streets were nearly empty, and those figures they did see were haggard, missing limbs or eyes, starving, ragged, and hopeless. As for the buildings, they were crumbling, roofs unpatched, door hinges broken, with untouched grime everywhere. He saw no animals and very few humans.

Richon wanted to ask someone what had happened, but who to ask? He stared at a man who was walking by, his face down, his shoulders sloped. He moved slowly, as if each step were painful.

Richon reached out a hand to touch him, then let the hand fall.

“Excuse me, sir?” he asked.

The man looked up, blinking. His eyes were red. “Are you mocking me?” he asked.

“No, no,” said Richon.

“No sirs here in this town. Not for a long while, and we don’t want them coming back, either,” he said fiercely.

At this point Richon’s clothes looked more like cast-offs taken from a dung heap than anything else. He was glad he did not look like a “sir” much at this point, either.

“Have things gone badly here, then?” Richon gestured at the buildings.

The man snorted. “Badly? That’s one way of putting it,” he said.

“Will you tell me why?” Richon’s mouth felt parched. He swallowed hard and forced himself to continue. “Is it because of the king?”

“King?” The man spat and then stomped on the wet spot that came from his spit. “We don’t give him that name around here.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” said Richon sympathetically. “Can you tell me what he’s done to you, then?”

“Gladly. It’s all we ever think about here. That and what we’d do to him if we could put our hands on him,” he said.

Richon went rigid at this, but he did not try to escape the punishment of hearing the truth.

He only wished that Chala were not there to hear it. She looked away, but he knew she understood all quite clearly.

At least, he told himself, he did not give excuses.

“It was three years ago the king first outlawed magic,” the man continued. “Those who were found to use it in the normal acts of living—in planting and protecting crops, in hunting and bringing home to a family meat to eat—they were punished by the loss of a hand on the first offense, and an arm on the second. Here, because it was closest to the palace, the laws were most strictly enforced, in case the king ever happened by.”

Richon had signed the laws against animal magic, but he had not written them himself. He was not even sure if he had read them. His advisers, the lord chamberlain and the royal steward, had been eager to help him when he expressed his hatred of the magic. He had not been interested in the details, only in the outcome, which was less talk about magic and less use of it where he could be made to feel inadequate.

Yet he could not blame others for the consequences. He had used his power to take from his people with no thought of their welfare. And if he had read the laws, Richon knew, it would have made no difference. He would have thought the punishments perfectly just. What did he know of townspeople who would lose their livings without a hand or an arm?

“My son was found speaking to an antelope,” the man
said. “He was coaxing her toward his knife, for it was close to winter and she was near death. She had no children left to care for. He would have given her a pleasant death and no need to face the cold.

“But the servants of the king caught him with his hand on her neck, and they proclaimed him guilty without a chance of defense.

“They cut off his hand on one side, and then his arm on the other. This, they said, because they were certain he had had more than one offense to his name. Or else how could he have spoken to the antelope so well?

“And then my son found himself without any way to help his family live. He would take no food, though I put it in his mouth myself. He spat it out and said that it was not right for him to take what he could not earn.

“His wounds were not bandaged well. They were not cut cleanly. And soon they began to fester. His eyes went bright with fever, and he no longer spoke the language of humans at all. He raved in the words of all the animals he had ever known, and always he begged for the same thing: his death.

“I tried to keep him close to me, but in the end he broke free. He was still strong then, with the muscles of youth that had not yet wasted away. He ran to the animals he had always loved. I do not know what became of him, but he never returned.

“The king who made these laws killed him as surely
as he signed that law.”

I am a murderer
, Richon thought. What must Chala think of him now?

But telling the people his identity and allowing himself to be punished would not bring back this man’s son. All he could do now was to ensure more men’s sons did not die, either because of their magic or because of the war at the border. And he could work to become a king this town deserved.

He stared at Chala and tried to read her expression. He would not try to keep her with him if she wished to go. He could not see what she was feeling. It was so strange, since when she had been a hound she had showed every fleeting emotion clearly on her face. Now that she was human, she hid it all.

But it was the kingdom he would focus on now, and not let himself be distracted by selfish needs.

A young man came down the street as the man finished speaking. The first man waved him over, and said, “He wants to hear your story, too, no doubt. Tell him about your father. What the king’s laws did to him.”

The young man looked at Richon, eyebrows raised, as if to be sure Richon wanted to hear it, after all.

Richon nodded. Hearing it was the least he could do.

“Please tell me,” he said.

And the young man did.

“My father survived the first year of the new laws
without being caught. He learned to be cautious. He only showed his magic when there were no strangers about in the village. He did not use it beyond the borders of the village, either, because there were too often soldiers there, protecting the king’s own animals for his hunt. All animals belonged to the king, it seemed. As all people belonged to him. And all magic.

“But then the rewards were announced. A dozen gold coins for each man who was betrayed to the king’s men. They came through each year. The first year no one in the village betrayed another. But the second year it had been a bad harvest. Too many of us had been afraid of the king’s law against magic. We had not asked the beetles and worms to irrigate the ground for us. We had not called to the birds to keep from our fields.

“And so we were starving, all of us, when the news of the rewards came. My father, as well as many others, was betrayed that year. Those who betrayed them were equally betrayed, for they received no payment at all in return for their loss of honor.

“When the day of the executions came, they were forced to speak their accusations aloud before all in the village, and to watch as the sentence was carried out against those to whom they had meant no harm.

“We all watched as they died, and perhaps the king expected that there would be yet more deaths, that we would turn against those in our village who had
turned against us. But we saw the true enemy, and it was not those who had spoken out in their need. It was the king.”

Richon clenched his fists and told himself he was not yet done. There was more pain here for him to share.

Finally a girl came, no more than eight years old. She spoke with a lisp, and her voice was so childlike that Richon was chilled to hear it speak with such anger. She said:

“My mother had no magic. My father left us long ago, and it was his magic I inherited. I used it in fits and spurts because I had no one to teach me. My mother tried to tell me that it was wrong, but it was as if she told me to stop eating a sweet. I held it in my hands—how could I let it be wasted?”

She ought to have all the sweets she wished for, Richon thought. Now, when it was too late for her to be the child she should have been.

“She died because of the magic I used,” the girl said. “I made a locust dance on my hand. A man saw me and sent to the king for his reward. When the king’s men came, my mother insisted that it was her magic that had made the locust dance.

“And so she died in my place. Her last words to me were that she loved me and to remember that I was only a child. But at that moment I grew up. There are no children when a king like that rules over us.”

Richon suspected there were many more stories, just as bad.

In time, if all went well, he would invite these villagers to the palace to tell him the rest. And he would make what compensation he could to those who remained.

C
HALA AND
R
ICHON
reached the palace on the tenth day after they stepped through the gap in time. The dust-colored stone towers were plainly visible against the acres of cleared land. There was no moat, but the gates were twice as tall as any human, with pointed spears on top to prevent incursions. There was a tower on either side of the gates, but the lookouts that should have been filled with guards were empty.

There was no one to be seen, however.

And when Richon pushed against the gates, they creaked open.

Was it possible that Richon had been king here only days ago? It looked as if the palace had been abandoned for months.

Why should humans wait to make a new leader when a pack of wild hounds would not?

“Perhaps you should wait here,” said Richon.

Chala growled low in her throat and did nothing of the sort.

Richon walked carefully on the overgrown stones and then through the gates. Chala followed behind, conscious for the first time of how little she looked like the companion to a king. Her hair was matted with sweat. Her skin was scratched and dirty. Her gown looked more gray than red.

Yet she kept her head high and walked onward.

The cobblestone path led to a courtyard faced on three sides by the palace itself. Inside the courtyard, Chala began to walk more easily, her breath steady in her throat, her feet light. Somehow the stained-glass windows and cut stone around them made Chala feel almost as if she were back in the forest, giving her a sense of peace and tranquillity.

When Chala looked more carefully, she could see that there were abstract figures of animals embedded in the center of each window. One had a deer, another a wolf, a third a bear.

Had Richon ever noticed them before? Had he seen how the palace was homage to the animals of the forest, and an attempt to re-create it here in a human way? Chala had never spoken to Richon about his ancestors, but this seemed to her clear evidence of the animal magic in those who had built the palace. There was love of animals and knowledge of their way of life in every stone here.

Richon walked more and more slowly through the courtyard, and then he ducked his head under an arch. Under the light was a garden, or the remains of one.

“This was my mother’s place,” said Richon. “My father cut it out for her and she came here nearly every day. Sometimes she brought me with her, and I sat and watched her dig in the dirt with her hands—she would not wear gloves.

“After she died, I kept this. So many reminders of my parents I destroyed or sold, but this I could not touch. I did not come to see it, but the cook made sure that the herbs were cared for, and she watered the bushes.”

His shoulders shook and tears streamed down his face; he knelt on the ground, his hands touching the dirt, his nose turned to the dead bushes.

When humans wept, what did other humans do? In King Helm’s court Chala had seen them laugh or make snide remarks. Or, if the cause of the weeping was an attack by another, it seemed to invite a second attack, or a third. Especially among women of the court.

Only once had Chala seen a man touch the shoulder of another man gently. But the weeping man had thrown the other off with a vehemence that Chala had been surprised to see in any human. The rejected man’s jaw had grown taut, and his eyes glassy, staring nowhere at all. Then he had moved away from the weeping man.

A wild hound snarled or bit when in pain. A wild hound used claws as weapons, sometimes on its own
flesh. But once a hound began to whimper in pain, it was either near death or wild no longer.

She had never been uncertain before. She hated the feeling of it, like a loose cloak over her skin that rubbed against her neck with every step.

At last Richon got to his feet and walked, head bowed, away from the small garden. He began to move through the palace itself, room by room. The kitchen smelled of dusty spices and was full of broken tools. In the servants’ quarters Richon seemed unsure of himself, and he turned back and back again before returning to the courtyard.

“My own palace, and I don’t know its secrets,” he muttered. He led her through the main hall and through the larger, obviously royal rooms. The fine tapestries had been taken from the walls and left pale shapes behind, marking where they had been. Finally Richon stopped at a door, his hand to his heart.

“It has been so long,” he said. Some part of him seemed to grow smaller as he walked through.

It was a large room, empty but for a child-sized chair that had been smashed and lay on its side. Richon bent over the chair and ran a hand smoothly over it.

For a long moment he stared into the cold, empty fireplace.

Chala wanted to shout at him, to demand he tell her what he felt. As a hound she had been able to read emotions in other hounds just by the way they stood. Even with the bear she had been able to see what he felt
in his stance, and smell it in his breath. But with this man she was at a loss.

At last Richon said, “The royal steward and the lord chamberlain came here to tell me my parents were dead. I did not believe them at first. I kicked and screamed. And when I was finished at last, they told me that it was time for me to give up my childish habits, for I was to be king.

“After that day I never came back to this room. I was trying so hard to be a grown man that I dared not remember how much I had loved being a child. I do not even know what they did with the playthings I had here—if they waited for me all those years or if they were taken away from the first.”

He paused for a long moment and then sighed.

“I should like to have had one to give to a child of my own.”

Chala stiffened.

She thought of him married, sharing this palace with another woman, giving her his child. She could not think of a human woman she thought would deserve Richon. A human woman would surely drill the wildness out of him.

Yet the most she could hope for was to stay and watch, hoping that Richon did not send her back to the forest to live without him. He knew all too well that she might look like a human, but she was a hound.

Richon moved on, and Chala matched his strides
without thinking. They passed through the throne room, which was empty and stank of urine—and worse. Someone had taken the trouble to truly foul the place before leaving.

Then the ballroom and the dining hall. Richon looked each of them over, surveying the damage stonily.

Then they went to the stables.

Richon walked by each stall.

He stopped for a few seconds longer at one that had the name Crown burned into the door.

And then, near the far end of the stable, there was a noise.

“Who’s there?” called Richon.

The reply came in a snort and a whinny.

Richon’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Crown?” he said.

The whinny came again, and this time Chala could hear a note of desperation.

“Crown, I’m coming,” said Richon. He moved cautiously through the other end of the stable, looking in each stall.

He found Crown lying down, one eye nearly shut with crusted pus. One leg was broken, and there was a terrible slash that must have been done deliberately with a sword down his belly. That he had not been killed was a miracle, but not a kind one.

He should be put down
, thought Chala. No animal would wish to live through this. Nor any human, either.

But she did not know if Richon had the strength to do it, not after what he had been through this day.

Richon helped Crown to stand on three legs, and the horse seemed happy, but only for a moment.

As soon as it was standing, Richon had a look at the bleeding sores on the horse’s side. Its body, which must once have been the pride of the king’s stables, was now withered. It was clear that the horse had gone without water for far too long. It would die within the day, in terrible misery.

Richon put his head close to Crown’s. There were no more tears flowing down his face, as there had been in the garden. He did not look devastated as he had in the child’s bedchamber. He looked determined. And Chala knew then that he could bear the horse’s pain no better than she could.

He went back through the stalls, his voice calling back to gentle the horse in his absence.

While he was gone, Chala moved closer to the animal. He was too far gone to care if she was a familiar hound or not.

She only meant to comfort the horse while Richon was gone. She put a hand out to touch the horse’s belly, near the infected sword wound. And with that one touch, she suddenly felt all of the horse’s pain and deprivation. It was as strong to her as if she were close to dying herself.

She pulled back, trembling.

What had happened?

She had become the horse, in a way. But that was only possible through magic.

Impossible.

And yet she had had magic in the dream. If it was a dream.

Chala put out her hand once more. The pain of the horse flowed into her, and then she let her strength flow out.

Chala did not remember anything of herself for a long time after that.

But she remembered what the horse remembered. She saw the man standing above her, the one called Lord Kaylar, holding the sword, the vicious look in his eyes, her horse legs tied to posts so she could not turn away. She remembered the sound of terror that had come from her horse’s mouth and then the man’s laughter, mocking her agony.

And then, in and out of pain, in sleep and waking, the fever that had come and then finally passed, leaving her weak and trembling, waiting for death.

And the king, at last, who came to help her.

Chala felt it all through Crown.

And when she woke, Richon was standing over her, holding a short, rusty knife.

Dropping the knife, he fell to her side. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes dark with concern.

Chala lifted her head—a human head again now—so she could see the horse. It was nearly healed. There was
a scar on its belly, but the sores on its side were gone and it stood on all four legs now, no sign of a break on any of them.

“Magic,” said Richon, staring at her with awe on his face. And not a little pain.

Chala understood immediately, for in seeing Crown healed by her, Richon was faced once again with the fact that he did not have the magic. He had not been the one to heal the horse he cared for.

There was a long silence, and then Richon offered her his arm. They walked out of the stables together, Crown behind them.

Chala stared at the horse and thought of how much faster Richon could go if he rode it, alone, to the border where the army waited.

But Richon patted his horse and said, “You’ve served long enough here. It’s time for you to be free of this palace and all that has happened to you here.”

Letting Crown go was the kind thing to do for the horse. And now Richon could hold to his memories of how the horse had once been with him.

In the silence that followed, Chala and Richon turned and walked to the south side of the palace. He did not look back, only forward—to the battle that lay days ahead. And this time Chala knew her purpose. She had magic after all, and she would use it to defeat Richon’s enemies.