And Other Stories (30 page)

“In the common way of
things,” he said, in a quiet, carrying voice, “I seek out those I
wish to see. I am not used to uninvited guests.”

The armor was made of slate and
obsidian, because he was the King of Stones.

She couldn’t speak. She could
command the king of Hark End, but this was a king whose rule did
not light on him by an accident of blood or by the acclaim of any
mortal thing. This was an embodied power, a still force of awe and
terror.

“I’ve come for a man
and his soul,” she whispered. “They were wrongly taken.”

“I take nothing
wrongly. Are you sure?”

She felt heat in her face, then
cold at the thought of what she’d said: that she’d accused him.
“No,” she admitted, the word cracking with her fear. “But that they
were wrongly given, I know. He was not theirs to give.”

“You speak of the
prince of Hark End. They were his parents. Would you let anyone say
you could not give away what you had made?”

Moon’s lips parted on a word; then
she stared in horror. Her mind churned over the logic, followed his
question back to its root.

He spoke her thoughts aloud. “You
have attended at the death of a child, stilled in the womb to save
the mother’s life. How is this different?”

“It is different!”
she cried. “He was a grown man, and what he was was shaped by what
he did, what he chose.”

“He had his mother’s
laugh, his grandfather’s nose. His father taught him to ride. What
part of him was not made by someone else? Tell me, and we will see
if I should give that part back.”

Moon clutched her fingers over her
lips, as if by that she could force herself to think it all through
before she spoke. “His father taught him to ride,” she repeated.
“If the horse refuses to cross a ford, what makes the father use
his spurs, and the son dismount and lead it? He has his mother’s
laugh—but what makes her laugh at one thing, and him at
another?”

“What, indeed?” asked
the King of Stones. “Well, for argument’s sake I’ll say his mind is
in doubt, and his heart. What of his body?”

“Bodies grow with
eating and exercise,” Moon replied. This was ground she felt sure
of. “Do you think the king and the queen did those for
him?”

The King of Stones threw back his
cowled head and laughed, a cold ringing sound. It restored Moon to
sensible terror. She stepped back, and found herself against a tree
trunk.

“And his soul?” said
the King of Stones at last.

“That didn’t belong
to his mother and father,” Moon said, barely audible even to her
own ears. “If it belonged to anyone but himself, I think you did
not win it from Her.”

Silence lay for long moments in the
clearing. Then he said, “I am well tutored. Yet there was a bargain
made, and a work done, and both sides knew what they pledged and
what it meant. Under law, the contract was kept.”

“That’s not true. Out
of fear the king promised you anything, but he never meant the life
of his son!”

“Then he could have
refused me that, and died. He said ‘Anything,’ and meant it, unto
the life of his son, his wife, and all his kingdom.”

He had fought her to a standstill
with words. But, words used up and useless, she still felt a core
of anger in her for what had been done, outrage against a thing she
knew, beyond words, was wrong.

So she said aloud, “It’s wrong. It
was a contract that was wrong to make, let alone to keep. I know
it.”

“What is it,” said
the King of Stones, “that says so?”

“My judgment says so.
My head.” Moon swallowed. “My heart.”

“Ah. What do I know
of your judgment? Is it good?”

She scrubbed her fingers over her
face. He had spoken lightly, but Moon knew the question wasn’t
light at all. She had to speak the truth; she had to decide what
the truth was. “It’s not perfect,” she answered reluctantly. “But
yes, I think it’s as good as most people’s.”

“Do you trust it
enough to allow it to be tested?”

Moon lifted her head and stared at
him in alarm. “What?”

“I will test your
judgment. If I find it good, I will let you free the prince of Hark
End. If not, I will keep him, and you will take your anger, your
outrage, and the knowledge of your failure home to nurture like
children all the rest of your life.”

“Is that prophecy?”
Moon asked hoarsely.

“You may prove it so,
if you like. Will you take my test?”

She drew a great, trembling breath.
“Yes.”

“Come closer, then.”
With that, he pushed back his hood.

There was no stone helm beneath, or
monster head. There was a white-skinned man’s face, all bone and
sinew and no softness, and long black hair rucked from the hood.
The sockets of his eyes were shadowed black, though the light that
fell in the clearing should have lit all of his face. Moon looked
at him and was more frightened than she would have been by any
deformity, for she knew then that none of this—armor, face,
eyes—had anything to do with his true shape.

“Before we begin,” he
said in that soft, cool voice. “There is yet a life you have not
asked me for, one I thought you’d beg of me first of
all.”

Moon’s heart plunged, and she
closed her eyes. “Alder Owl.”

“You cannot win her
back. There was no treachery there. She, at least, I took fairly,
for she greeted me by name and said I was well met.”

“No!” Moon
cried.

“She was sick beyond
curing, even when she left you. But she asked me to give her wings
for one night, so that you would know. I granted it
gladly.”

She thought she had cried all she
could for Alder Owl. But this was the last death, the death of her
little foolish hope, and she mourned that and Alder Owl at once
with falling, silent tears.

“My test for you,
then.” He stretched out his hands, his mailed fingers curled over
whatever lay in each palm. “You have only to choose,” he said. He
opened his fingers to reveal two rings, one silver, one
gold.

She looked from the rings to his
face again, and her expression must have told him
something.

“You are a witch,”
said the King of Stones, gently mocking. “You read symbols and make
them, and craft them into nets to catch truth in. This is the meat
of your training, to read the true nature of a thing. Here are
symbols—choose between them. Pick the truer. Pick the
better.”

He pressed forward first one hand,
then the other. “Silver, or gold? Left or right? Night or day,
moon—” she heard him mock her again, “—or sun, water or fire,
waning or waxing, female or male. Have I forgotten any?”

Moon wiped the tears from her
cheeks and frowned down at the rings. They were plain, polished
circles of metal, not really meant for finger rings at all.
Circles, complete in themselves, unmarred by scratch or
tarnish.

Silver, or gold. Mined from the
earth, forged in fire, cooled in water, pierced with air. Gold was
rarer, silver was harder, but both were pure metals. Should she
choose rareness? Hardness? The lighter color? But the flash of
either was bright. The color of the moon? But she’d seen the moon,
low in the sky, yellow as a peach. And the light from the moon was
reflected light from the sun, whose color was yellow although in
the sky it was burning white, and whose metal was gold. There was
nothing to choose between them.

The blood rushed into her face, and
the gauntleted hands and their two rings swam in her vision. It was
true. She’d always thought so.

Her eyes sprang up to the face of
the King of Stones. “It’s a false choice. They’re
equal.”

As she said the words, her heart
gave a single terrified leap. She was wrong. She was defeated, and
a fool. The King of Stones’ fingers closed again over the
rings.

“Down that trail to a
granite stone, and then between two hazel trees,” he said. “You’ll
find him there.”

She was alone in the
clearing.

Moon stumbled down the trail, dazed
with relief and the release of tension. She found the stone, and
the two young hazel trees, slender and leafed out in fragile green,
and passed between them.

She plunged immediately into full
sunlight and strangeness. Another clearing, carpeted with deep
grass and the stars of spring flowers, surrounded by blossoming
trees—but trees in blossom didn’t also stand heavy with fruit, like
a vain child wearing all its trinkets at once. She saw apples,
cherries, and pears under their drifts of pale blossom, ripe and
without blemish. At the other side of the clearing there was a
shelf of stone thrust up out of the grass. On it, as if sleeping,
lay a young man, exquisitely dressed.

Golden hair, she thought. That’s
why it was drawn in so lightly. Like amber, or honey. The fair face
was very like the sketch she remembered, as was the scholar’s hand
palm up on the stone beside it. She stepped forward.

Beside the stone, the black
branches of a tree lifted, moved away from their neighbors, and the
trunk—Not a tree. A stag stepped into the clearing, scattering the
apple blossoms with the great span of his antlers. He was black as
charcoal, and his antler points were shining black, twelve of them
or more. His eyes were large and red.

He snorted and lowered his head, so
that she saw him through a forest of polished black dagger points.
He tore at the turf with one cloven foot.

I passed his test! she cried to
herself. Hadn’t she won? Why this? You’ll find him there, the King
of Stones had said. Then her anger sprang up as she remembered what
else he’d said: I will let you free the prince of Hark
End.

What under the wide sky was she
supposed to do? Strike the stag dead with her bare hand? Frighten
it away with a frown? Turn it into—

She gave a little cry at the
thought, and the stag was startled into charging. She leaped behind
the slender trunk of a cherry tree. Cloth tore as the stag yanked
free of her cloak.

The figure on the shelf of stone
hadn’t moved. She watched it, knowing her eyes ought to be on the
stag, watching for the rise and fall of breath. “Oh, what a stupid
trick!” she said to the air, and shouted at the stag, “Flower and
leaf and stalk to thee, I conjure back what ought to be. Human
frame and human mind banish those of hart or hind.” Which, when she
thought about it, was a silly thing to say, since it certainly
wasn’t a hind.

He lay prone in the grass, naked,
honey hair every which way. His eyes were closed, but his brows
pinched together, as if he was fighting his way back from sleep.
One sunbrowned long hand curled and straightened. His eyes snapped
open, focused on nothing; the fingers curled again; and finally he
looked at them, as if he had to force himself to do it, afraid of
what he might see. Moon heard the sharp drawing of his breath. On
the shelf of stone there was nothing at all.

A movement across the clearing
caught Moon’s eye and she looked up. Among the trees stood the King
of Stones in his gray armor. Sunshine glinted off it and into his
unsmiling face, and pierced the shadows of his eye sockets. His
eyes, she saw, were green as sage.

The prince had levered himself up
onto his elbows. Moon saw the tremors in his arms and across his
back. She swept her torn cloak from her shoulders and draped it
over him. “Can you speak?” she asked him. She glanced up again.
There was no one in the clearing but the two of them.

“I don’t—yes,” he
said, like a whispering crow, and laughed thinly. He held out one
spread and shaking hand. “Tell me. You don’t see a hoof, do
you?”

“No, but you used to
have four of them. You’re not nearly so impressive in this
shape.”

He laughed again, from closer to
his chest this time. “You haven’t seen me hung all over with satin
and beads like a dancing elephant.”

“Well, thank goodness
for that. Can you stand up? Lean on me if you want to, but we
should be gone from here.”

He clutched her shoulder—the long
scholar’s fingers were very strong—and struggled to his feet, then
drew her cloak more tightly around himself. “Which way?”

Passage through the woods was hard
for her, because she knew how hard it was for him, barefoot,
disoriented, yanked out of place and time. After one especially
hard stumble, he sagged against a tree. “I hope this passes. I can
see flashes of this wood in my memory, but as if my eyes were off
on either side of my head.”

“Memory fades,” she
said. “Don’t worry.”

He looked up at her quickly, pain
in his face. “Does it?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry—did you tell
me your name?”

“No. It’s Moon Very
Thin.”

He asked gravely, “Are you waxing
or waning?”

“It depends from
moment to moment.”

“That makes sense.
Will you call me Robin?”

“If you want me
to.”

“I do, please. I find
I’m awfully taken with having a name again.”

At last the trees opened out, and
in a fold of the green hillside they found a farmstead. A man stood
in the farmhouse door watching them come. When they were close
enough to make out his balding head and wool coat, he stirred from
the door; took three faltering steps into his garden; and shouted
and ran toward them. A tall, round woman appeared at the door,
twisting her apron. Then she, too, began to run.