Hart's Hope (23 page)

How Orem came to be called the Little King and met those who would most kindly, most cruelly use him.

T
HE
L
OVE OF
B
EAUTY

Who can blame Orem Scanthips for awaking in wonder, surprised at joy? For the first time in his life the truth was better than the dream, and more improbable. For that first hour he thought he had found name and place and poem, all in one, and that all were happy. Sunlight danced from a thousand mirrors. And more:

I believe that if Beauty had been kind to him, he would have loved her, and so we and the gods would have been undone.

Yet if Beauty had been able to be kind, it would not have taken her death to release us all from bondage.

So we go in circles. And here is the cruelest circle of all, Palicrovol: I believe that, by the end of her life, Beauty loved Orem Scanthips as much in her way as the Flower Princess loved her King. Though Orem was born when Beauty had already passed three centuries of life in power, still the girl Asineth had found her lover—a dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it. That is how he was unlike you, Palicrovol, and that is why she loved him.

Poor Beauty. May I not pity her, of all people? She loved him, but she had only learned one way to show her love—through cruelty and abuse. After all, whom did she love most in all the world? Those who had dwelt at her right and left hand for fifteen score years: Weasel Sootmouth, Urubugala, and Craven. That was what she knew of love. No wonder Orem never recognized her love when she gave it to him. Even now, if he knew that she had loved him, it would break his heart.

But he did not know, and does not know, because this is how she served him from the first day of their life as husband and wife:

T
HE
N
AMING OF THE
L
ITTLE
K
ING

In the morning they dressed him in brocades and velvet, clothes so heavy that at first they bowed him and made him look a bit ridiculous. He did not know how to wear the robes of a King—that is not born in a man, as you know. Then they led him through the palace, whispering to him the names of the rooms so he could ask for them again, though he did not yet know what to do with the Chamber of Stars or the Hall of Asps, the Porch of Keening or the Room of the Dancing Bulls.

At the foot of a stair he saw an old man who seemed out of place, for instead of livery he wore only an old soiled wrap, and was covered with wood-colored stains. The old man's back was twisted, as if he had been wrung by great hands. He bent over the stair, pouring a clear fluid onto the wood and rubbing, rubbing it into the grain. Orem only paused to avoid stepping in his work. The man looked up at him. His eyebrows were heavy as moustaches, but they were the only hair on his face. The skin of his face was transparent, and the veins and arteries pulsed blue and red just under the surface. Eyes deep as amber, thick as cream, and with no pupil in them at all, none at all.

“Are you blind?” Orem asked softly. Surely he could not see without an aperture for vision; yet didn't the eyes look up at him?

“To light I am blind,” whispered the old man, not taking his gaze from Orem's face.

Where had he seen such eyes? “Who are you?” Orem asked.

“I am God,” said the old man. He smiled, and his mouth had neither tongue nor teeth nor anything at all—just blackness behind the lips. Then he bent again to his work, and the servants gently insisted Orem up the stairs.

Who but the Little King would have spoken to an aged, naked servant oiling the wooden stairs? This is sure: only one who carried with him an invisible hole in Queen Beauty's Searching Eye could have heard the answer that Orem heard. He did not understand; he did not forget, either, despite all he learned of Queen Beauty before the hour was up.

Who but Queen Beauty could be noticed in the Moon Chamber, with its great discs of silver lit by a thousand candles? She used it as her private court. The servants led Orem to the edge of that huge circle of glass called now the Round Table and called then Beauty's Moon. He faced the Queen, who sat on her ivory throne.

When the servants had left, the Queen arose and stepped forward, offering him her hand. Orem took it and started to bow to her, unsure of protocol, thinking only of the night before and marveling that this woman now was his wife. But the Queen stopped him, and did not let him bow. Instead she bowed her head to him. The gasp from behind him was the first he noticed that someone else was in the room.

“Beauty has taken a wife,” intoned a high-pitched voice with an edge of madness, “to last her all his life. Has she taken him to bed with poison in his head?”

The Queen lifted her head and faced the others in the room; Orem also turned. In the middle of the table sat a black man, a small man, nearly naked, with a headdress of cow's horns on his head and an immense false phallus hanging from his belt. He had not been there when Orem entered. It was he who had recited the rhyme, and now he spoke again.

“Shut up,” the Queen said beautifully. The dwarf turned a somersault and landed, laughing, at Beauty's feet.

“Ah, beat me, beat me, Beauty!” cried the black man, and then he wept piteously. In a moment he started tasting the tears, then retreated to a corner of the room, dabbing at his eyes with the stuffed phallus that dangled longer than his legs.

“As you see,” said the Queen, “I have taken a husband. He is a common criminal from the filthiest part of the city. He is as attractive to me as a leprous hog. But he was given to me in a dream from the Sweet Sisters, and it amused me to follow their advice.”

Orem could not sort out the difference between her sweet, musical voice and the harsh words she was saying. He smiled stupidly, vaguely aware that he was being abused, but unable to be angry at the song from Queen Beauty's lips.

“As you see, he is also quite stupid. He once had a name, but in this court he will be called Little King. Also, despite the fact that he has the sexual prowess of a dung beetle, we conceived a child last night.”

Orem was not surprised that Queen Beauty already knew. Other women might have to wait until the moon didn't rise for them, but not
her
. With Beauty such things were not left to chance.

“You will speak of my child to the others, my Gossips. Spread it as a rumor through all the world. Dear Palicrovol will know what it means, even if the rest do not, and he will come to knock at my gates. I miss the man. I want to see him weep again.”

Each in turn the Queen's Companions came to her, and she received them gravely.

The old soldier's step was slow and unsteady; he lurched under the weight of the armor. His voice was hollow and soft, full of air. He spoke to Orem first.

“Little King, I see you wear your ring wisely. Look at it often and follow its advice.” Then he turned to the Queen and looked in her eyes. Orem was surprised by the force of his gaze—when the old man looked at him his eyes had been gentle and soft, but now they were full of fire. Hatred? This man had power despite his weak body and the large armor that made a joke of it. “Beauty, dear Beauty,” said the old soldier, “I give your child a blessing. May your son have my strength.”

Orem looked at the Queen in alarm. Surely she would be angry that the old man had cursed her unborn child so. Orem knew well the power of wishes on the unborn—many a dullwit and cripple had been the result of an ill-thought jest. But the Queen only nodded and smiled as if the old man had given her a great gift.

And then the woman. Her walk was canted a bit, so that one step was long, the next short. Her hands were gnarled and twisted, and when she touched Orem's cheek it felt as though her fingers were scaled like fish. She smiled, and Orem realized that the dirt on her lip was a scraggly moustache; her hair was also thin and wispy, and she was bald in a few patches, which had not been granted even the mercy of a wig. “Little King,” she said in a voice that grated like the cry of a rutting hen, “be lonely, love no one, and live long.” Then she, too, turned to the Queen. “I also give your child a blessing. May your son have my beauty.”

Again the Queen accepted the cruel curse as if it were a gift.

The short man waddled up to take his turn, grinning idiotically. He stopped in front of Orem and pulled down his loincloth to reveal that he had only one testicle in his scrotum, and a penis so small it could hardly be seen. “I'm half what I should be,” said the fool, “but twice the man you are.” Then he giggled, pulled his loincloth back in place, and darted forward to part Orem's robe and lift his shirt and peer under it. Orem tried to back away, but the dwarf was quick and saw what he wanted to see. “Little King!” he crowed as he emerged from Orem's clothing. “Little King!” Then, suddenly, he was somber. “The Queen sees all, except that which she sees not that she sees not. Remember it, Little King!”

In the moment before the black dwarf turned away, he winked, and Orem found himself inexplicably sure that this fool knew something that Orem needed very much to learn.

“Beauty, dear Beauty,” sang the little black man to the Queen,

Then, laughing uproariously, the fool somersaulted backward and sprawled under the table.

Orem was horrified at the bitter gifts they had given the Queen's child—his child, for that matter, though he was far from having much parental feeling for a creature he could not even imagine yet. All Orem knew was that a great discourtesy had been done, and he fumblingly tried to put it right. He knew no blessings for the unborn except the common one used in Banningside and the farm country, the blessing Halfpriest Dobbick had invariably used. Orem turned to the Queen and said, “Queen Beauty, I'd like to bless the child.”

She half-smiled at him; he thought it was assent, not amusement. He blurted out his gift in words that in themselves had little meaning to him, only that they were a proper blessing: “May the child live to serve God.”

Orem had meant it as a kindness; the Queen took it as a curse. She slapped his face with such force that he fell to the floor. His cheek was cut open by her ring. What had he said? From his place on the floor he watched as she looked imperiously at the others and said, in a voice dripping with hate, “My Little King's gift has no more power than his pud.” Then she turned to her boy-husband. “Command and bless as you like, my Little King; you will only be obeyed by those who laugh at you.” Then the Queen turned and started toward the door. She stopped at the threshold. “Urubugala,” she said firmly. The black fool suddenly scrambled from under the table, and Orem knew it was his name.

“Come here,” the Queen said. Urubugala kept crawling, whining about his sad lot in life. He passed close to Orem, who instinctively retreated from the strange man. Suddenly the fool's black hand snaked out and grabbed Orem viciously by the arm and pulled him close. Orem lost his balance, and in the struggle to get up he found the fool's lips against his ear. “I know you, Orem,” came the almost soundless whisper. “I have waited long for you.”

Orem was kneeling, the fool standing in front of him—they were almost the same height, then—and the fool kissed him firmly on the mouth and put his hands on Orem's head and shouted, “I name you with your true name, boy! You are Hart's Hope!”

A shudder went through Orem, violent as if the floor itself had shaken. Orem ap Avonap, Scanthips, Banningside, Little King—of all the names he was given, only Hart's Hope was given him with the Passage of Names. His priestword would have been given him that way, had he taken oaths.

And perhaps the floor
had
shaken, for the fool was writhing on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching his head. Is it a show, part of his game of idiocy, or is the pain real?

“His name is Little King, and he will have no other,” said the Queen from the door.

She left. Urubugala immediately stopped screaming. He lay panting on the floor a moment, then arose and walked out of the room, following the Queen.

Orem also stood. His cheek hurt, and so did his elbow where he had hit the floor. He was confused; he understood nothing. He turned to the others, the ugly woman and the weak old soldier. They regarded him with pitying eyes. He did not really understand their pity, either.

“What do I do now?” he asked.

They glanced at each other. “You're the Little King,” said the soldier. “You can do what you like.”

“King.” Orem didn't know what to make of it. “I saw Palicrovol once.”

“Did you,” said the woman. She did not sound interested.

“He covers his eyes with golden hemispheres, so the Queen can't use his eyes to see.”

The woman chuckled. “Then he does it in vain, doesn't he? For the Queen sees everything.”

Except where I go and take away her sight, Orem thought but did not say.

“She sees everything, like an orchestra of visions in the back of her mind. She watches always.” The woman laughed. “She sees us now. And she is laughing, I'm sure.”

It made Orem afraid, then. How much
did
she see? She had given him no sign she knew of his tampering with her powers. Yet if she knew nothing of his gift, why had she chosen him? Not love, that much was plain now, and he knew enough to be ashamed in front of these companions of the Queen, ashamed of being so weak and helpless and pathetic. His very shame overcame fear. If she was going to discover his power or somehow limit it, let her do it now. He let his net slip from him, just enough to fill the room, to clear the room of that sickening sweet overlay of Beauty's Searching Eye. When Beauty could not see, he spoke: “What is the boar allowed to do once the sow is serviced?”