Hart's Hope

  “What’s written on them?” Timias asked.

  Orem lowered his light. He had seen the words before, of course, and remembered well how they were written.

  He remembered another message that once had been written on these barrels: Let me die. He had obeyed that command; the rest of the message waited. Now he knew he had to understand if he was to do what must be done.

  “You know this writing?” Timias asked. “You know what it means?”

  “Not what it means. But it was written to me. Two years ago.”

  God slave you must serve. Orem looked at the old man. “You are what you say you are, I think.”

  The eyes blazed.

  “I will serve you if I can.”

  “At the Rising of the Dead,” God whispered. Then he turned his back on them, ducked down into a low passage, and disappeared. They followed him closer to the sound of rushing water.

  “What is God doing as a slave in Beauty’s house?” Timias asked quietly.

  Orem had no answer. And then they emerged into a vast chamber, the Rising of the Dead, where all the answers would be given.

  THE RISING OF THE DEAD

  There was no need of lamps here, for above them were holes that let in daylight—dim, but bright enough to see by, if they didn’t look up at them and dazzle their eyes.

  “The cisterns,” Flea whispered.

  And sure enough, there were the voices of the cisterns, rising and falling, crying out in terrible mourning. There was a river rushing along the bottom of the cave, so wide that Orem could not see across, a vast but shallow flow. And the stench was so vile that as they approached they could not breathe. The sound came from the water’s edge.

  “The sewers of the city,” whispered God. “They all flow here.”

  They did not come nearer the water. The old man led them off along a ledge that paralleled the flood.

  “Are we going downstream?” Timias asked.

  “Yes,” Orem said.

  “But we’re climbing, aren’t we?”

  Unmistakably they were. And yet they got no higher above the water. It had to be an illusion. Still, the farther they went, the steeper became their path along the ledge, while the water seemed to rise with them. It was definitely flowing uphill.

  The old man clambered up the last and steepest portion of the narrow path, almost straight up and down; soon they were all gathered on a much wider ledge. It was plainly level. Just as plainly the river had no such notion: it hurtled upward, soared in an impossible cascade. The spray of it covered them—and the drops drifted downward, as they should. Orem noticed that here the water did not smell; no odor at all, and he walked near the flood and wet his hand, and tasted the water. It was pure. It was as pure as—

  “The springs in the Water House.” Timias looked at him in awe. He turned and shouted to Flea. “This is the source of the springs in the Water House!”

  “Come and see what cleans it!” Flea called back. They followed his shout to the lip of the ledge and looked down. “With the light behind it, you can see now,” Flea said. At first Orem did not know what it was that he was looking at; then his vision adjusted, and he realized that both banks of the river were writhing, twisting, heaving.

  “Keeners,” said Flea. “The place is full of keeners.”

  Like the rush and retreat of the waves the serpents heaved themselves into the water, flowed back out. Millions of them, as far as the light from the cistern mouths would let them see. “They’re eating it,” Flea said. “What else could it be?”

  “It rises,” Timias said. “What could make it rise?”

  “It rises,” said a woman’s voice behind them, “because it wants to rise.”

  Orem whirled. He knew that voice—at once dreaded and longed for the sight of the speaker. She looked at him with a single eye, a twisted face, a body that was perfect as the limb of an upreaching tree. “Follow me,” she said. He followed.

  Her sister sat on a rock behind the rush of the water. It was bright here, though none of the sunlight could have touched the place; the light had no source and cast no shadow, merely was, merely illuminated this pocket in the rock so all that was there could be seen. The mist-faced woman moaned.

  “My sister greets you.”

  “And I her,” Orem said.

  “She says that all things come together in the end.”

  “Is this the end?”

  “Nearly.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “To free the gods, Orem son of Palicrovol.”

  Orem shuddered. “My father’s name is Avonap.”

  “Do you think the Sweet Sisters make mistakes in such things? We know all motherhoods and fatherhoods, Orem. Avonap is your mother’s husband, but Palicrovol sired you.”

  In a moment the whole dream of his own conception flashed through his mind from the crossing of the river until Palicrovol left the cave of leaves.

  “Queen Beauty took the forbidden power, which never a man can take, and never another woman would. She bound us, Orem, bound us as you see us now.”

  Orem looked at them, looked at God. “How are you bound?”

  The old man turned his head. Orem followed his gaze. On the floor of the cave lay the skeleton of a great hart. The bones were so dry they should have been scattered, but instead they were all connected, as if the animal still lived. The skull hung in the air, suspended by the great antlers; the hundred horns were embedded in the solid stone of the cavern wall.

  “See how the worlds are captive,” said the Sister who could speak. “Oh, Orem, we are feeble now, and what we do is slow. We can still send visions here and there, still do little works, but it’s a labor hard to bear. We made you, Orem. Shantih and I awoke your mother, named her Bloom, taught her to come to the riverbank; the Hart brought Palicrovol; God gave you Avonap and Dobbick to make you who you are. We bent your life to bring you here, watched and shaped where we could. You must not disappoint us now.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  But Orem knew the answer. God slave you must serve. Sister slut you must see. Hart stone you must save. But how?

  “I have no power. How can I unbind what I can’t see?”

  “Have you looked?”

  And so he looked, cast his nets. Yet there was no spark for the Hart, for the Sisters, or for God. He searched, but all the magic he could find was the simple spell that Timias had upon his sword.

  “What am I to see?” he asked.

  “We cannot tell you,” said the speaking Sister. “We are bound.”

  Shantih moaned.

  “My sister says that you must restore us as we were before black Asineth undid all.”

  But I don’t know what you were like before—I was only born some eighteen years ago, and all these things were done before I was conceived, before my mother or her mother or her mother were alive. “I can’t!”

  “Be at peace,” whispered God. “Only think of what you know of us; we will wait a while longer, after all this time.”

  Orem sat on the stone floor, reached out and touched the cold bone of the Hart’s corpse. He heard Flea gasp behind him; a keener whined and unentwined itself from the Hart’s ribs. It slithered off another way; it was not seeking Orem’s death today.

  He started with God, for he had studied Him for years in Banningside. What was God supposed to be? Kind, the father of all, perfector of the Seven Circles, raising all who would into the inmost round with him, to join in his unbodied labor, to gather all disorganized intelligence and teach it form, and—

  Unbodied.

  He looked at the old man, who placidly regarded him with eyes of amber, lid to lid.

  “What are you doing with a body?” Orem asked.

  God smiled.

  Orem arose, and reached for Timias’s sword. “What do you plan to do with it?” Timias asked. “Let me do it. You’re not much of a fighter.”

  “I don’t mean to fight,” Orem answered. Timias reluctantly surrendered the weap
on. It was too heavy for Orem’s hand, and he dreaded what he must do with it, but with all his strength he plunged it into the heart of God. Blood gouted forth, but Orem watched only the eyes, watched as the amber brightened, yellowed, whitened, dazzled like the source of sunlight. Suddenly the light leapt out, for a moment filled the cavern, and was gone.

  Timias bent over the old man’s corpse, put his finger into the empty socket that had held an eye. “Gone,” he said.

  Orem laid down the sword and covered his hands with the old man’s hot blood. Then he strode to the Sisters, who also smiled at him. He wiped the blood all over the face of the faceless one, and on the blind side of the one-eyed Sister. The blood steamed and sizzled on their skin. And then he took each by the hair at the back of the neck and pressed their faces together as they had been faced at birth, one looking only into her sister, the other gazing with one eye out. The heads trembled under his hands, and then were still. He loosed his grip, and the women rose. Their clothing was gone; their arms and legs so enwrapped each other that no clothing was needed for their modesty. Their hair was all one, their flesh unseamed across the expanse of their two heads. “Ah,” sang the half-mouth. “Nnn,” sang the other into her sister’s cheek, so that both tones were a single song coming from the same mouth. Together they rose from the ground.

  “Don’t leave!” Orem cried.

  “Free the Hart,” mumbled their mouth, “and then stop Beauty. She’s doing nothing that she hasn’t done before. Avenge your nameless sister and your nameless son.”

  And they rose upward in the cavern, spinning round and round each other, joined blindly again at the face, spinning up and around and madly through the cavern like a shuttlecock, and they were gone.

  “I’ve seen the Sisters with my eyes and I’m alive,” said Timias.

  Orem had three sisters and they all had names, and nothing had ever been done to them that called for vengeance. And his nameless son—what had happened to him that needed to be avenged? Orem did not understand, and so he turned himself to try to rouse the Hart.

  He knew how the Hart should be—alive, and clothed in flesh and fur. But how was he to accomplish that, when he had no power in himself, no magic he could exercise?

  “Will the old man’s blood work on the Hart?” asked Flea.

  “I don’t know,” said Orem. Now the blood was cold, and he knew as he anointed the Hart’s horns and head that it meant nothing, such blood meant nothing.

  Yet the sight of blood on the horns reminded him of the vision he had seen in the hart’s horn in Gallowglass’s house. Reminded him of the farmer who stretched his throat to the blade of the plow and spilled his blood for the Hart’s sake. And he reached up and touched the scar on his throat and knew what he must do.

  Timias had not seen the vision, but he knew the scar on Orem’s throat. He guessed what the Little King was thinking when he touched the scar. “No!” he cried, and lunged. Orem was quick, but Timias reached the sword first and snatched it out of reach.

  “Name of God, Timias, I must,” said Orem.

  “Have you gone mad?”

  Flea did not understand at all, only knew that Orem wanted the sword and this half-chewed bastard wouldn’t give it to him. It was a simple matter to knock down Timias with a blow to the balls; Flea retrieved the sword while Timias writhed, and tossed it hilt first to his friend.

  He would have taken it back as quickly, if he could have, but before Flea could do more than cry out as Timias had done, Orem drew the sword hard and sharp across his throat. The blood filled his mouth and flowed down his chest, and the pain was more than he had known that he could bear. He gagged; the blood ran into his lungs; but it must not be in vain. He struggled toward the Hart’s head, tried to raise himself so the blood would fall upon the horns. He hadn’t the strength now, but his arms were taken by hands on either side. Timias and Flea lifted him up, and the horns were drenched with his blood.

  Under him he felt the heat of the stag’s body; felt it rise, felt the vast back and shoulders with their rippling muscles and the stink of strength lift him up. He saw the antlers pull away from the stone that bound them, saw the tips aglow like stars, like suns, like little jeweled worlds. And then he spun around, lost among the hundred horns, turning and turning.

  He flew, he rose up with the water into the ceiling of the cisterns, to the place where it strained itself upward into the rock to emerge in the Water House. He was trapped in the water and he could not breathe. He had not had time to take a proper breath, and so he must rise, he must rise and breathe—

  But no, above him he knew was fire. He must go down into the water, and then he would live. So down he sank, waiting to find the bottom. But he did not find it. Instead he despaired and breathed in deep gasps of water. But it was not water. It was pure air. He opened his eyes.

  He was lying on the back of the Hart, but he was not weak now with the loss of blood. He reached his hands, took hold of the antlers, and lifted his head free from the nest of thorns. Then he swung himself down from the Hart’s back.

  “Orem,” breathed Flea.

  “My lord Little King,” said Timias.

  Orem touched his throat. The wound was gone; the scar was gone; his neck was whole and new, as it had been before he ever had the vision of the Hart.

  “I’ve worn the true crown,” he said. He still could feel the horns surround his head, though they weren’t there.

  “You’re alive.”

  They stood and watched the Hart as it stamped its hoof. The head lowered; only then did they realize that it meant to charge them.

  “Name of God, doesn’t it know we saved its life?” cried Timias.

  There was no time for an answer. They scrambled for the downward path and scurried and tumbled along the narrow ledge along the riverside. They looked back only at the entrance to the hewn passage. The Hart was clearly visible, pacing back and forth along the platform of rock, tossing its head.

  “How will it get out of here?” asked Flea.

  “He knows the way,” said Orem, though he didn’t know why he was so sure of that.

  Orem let Flea lead them, since he had come this way twice. Like Orem, though, the others were thinking more of the future than of getting out of this path under the Palace. “What do they expect us to do now?” Timias asked.

  “Not us,” said Orem, “but I’m glad you’re willing to share the burden.”

  “Did they mean that you’re really Palicrovol’s son?” asked Flea.

  Orem nodded. “They showed me—how it came to be.”

  “She’s doing nothing that she hasn’t done before,” said Timias. “Who’s doing it?”

  “Beauty,” said Orem. “She means to renew herself. By killing me and using my blood.”

  “Well, at least you’ve had practice now,” said Flea.

  “But she’s never killed a husband before,” Timias said.

  It was only then that Orem put together everything that he had learned. She has done nothing that she hasn’t done before. More potent than a stranger’s blood is the blood of a husband. He had got there before and stopped. But what is more potent than the blood of a husband? To a woman, the blood of her child. And a child who has taken no nourishment except from the mother’s breast. Avenge your nameless son. Orem had a nameless sister, years before. Palicrovol’s daughter, and Beauty had killed her for the power in her. Orem guessed it all at once, and believed it, too, and damned himself for a fool for thinking all this time that he was the one who was doomed. Youth! he cried out silently. Youth, my son, my son.

  “Leave me!” he shouted to his friends. “Get away from me!”

  They hesitated only a moment, but the agony of his face told them to obey. When they were gone, Orem leapt out of himself, and with his savage inward teeth he gnawed at all the magic he could find, exempted nothing, ravaged through the Palace where Queen Beauty was the strongest and undid her work wherever he could find it. Blinded her, loosed her bindings; he cared little
now whether it was Craven that he freed or Weasel. He found the power and unmade it, and he could not, would not be stopped.

  And at last the only power was in Beauty herself; all the other magic of the Palace was engulfed and gone. But this was where he meant to come all along. To the smiling face that held his son and meant to kill him. Layer upon layer he unwrapped her; she tried to flee but he followed. She attacked, she moved, she feinted, she tried to disappear but he was there, unmaking her at every step. He had never felt so large, and she was small as he chased her here and there in the labyrinth of sparks and smells and seas of taste and hearing. I will save my son.

  And then nothing.

  Nothing at all. He could not find her. He was back inside his body and could not escape. All he could taste or touch was in himself. He opened his eyes. Beauty stood above him, looking down. She held Youth in her arms. “Papa,” said the boy, reaching for him.

  “Youth,” Orem whispered.

  Beauty smiled. Orem understood. Hadn’t Gallowglass warned him? He had gone too far; he had told her who he was; he was bound. She could not destroy his gift, but she could turn him in upon himself, where he could do her no more harm.

  “Always you,” she said to him. “I should have known the Sisters would betray me. Did you join them again? No matter. In another week I’ll separate them. And you, Little King, you’ll be here to watch my work. You know at last how it’s done, I think. Only you were stupid enough to take so long to guess the price.”

  “Do you want to hear a story, Papa?” asked the child.

  He would have killed her with his hands, except the guards had him, and carried him away from the son who was his life, away from the frozen smile of his wife.

  24

  The Lesser Donjon

  How the Little King decided to help with the death of his son.

  TORTURE

  You were outside the city when they carried him to prison, Palicrovol. Your armies were gathering at Back Gate, where the towers were fewest, as if the towers meant anything. As they brought Orem up the Long Walk to Corner Castle he could see your banners. He had protected you so long that you had begun to hope, hadn’t you; and even now he had cost the Queen so much that she could not attack your wizards or your priests, could only bind Craven, Weasel, and Urubugala again, then hold the loyalty and courage of her guards and hope that you’d delay just seven days.