Heaven Cent (35 page)

“I do not love you,” Dolph told her. “But that is no fault of yours; I only met you yesterday, and I hardly know you, but I'm sure you are worth marrying. You will die if I don't marry you, and I need you to make the Heaven Cent so I can find Good Magician Humfrey and complete my Quest, so I will marry you. It will be seven years before I am of age to many, and by that time I should know you very well. So don't be concerned because I don't love you; there is plenty of time for that to change, and even if it doesn't, I will do what I must to save you, just as I did for Grace’l. Meanwhile, we can be friends.” And the rose he held assumed the merest tinge of pink.

He tossed it to her. She caught it, and held it. “I know,” she said. “You are a prince. If it hadn't been for Murphy's curse, it would have been the Princess who slept, and you would not have been betrothed before. You are very nice to handle this mess so graciously.”

“I don't think the Princess would have been much interested in a nine-year-old boy,” Dolph remarked with a wan smile.

“She would have slept a few more years, until you were a man, and then she would have been the answer to all your wildest dreams. She was perfect.”

Dolph remembered something. “You told us of Millie the maid! Did you know that she arrived here too? She was a ghost for eight hundred years, and then she recovered and married the Zombie Master.”

“He's here too?” Electra asked, amazed.

“Of course they're older now, and have grown children, but you could visit.”

“I must do that!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands girlishly and flinging her braids about. She was remarkably fetching when she did those things. “I had hoped Millie escaped the curse, but it must have caught her and killed her, but now the curse is gone from her and she can be happy. Oh, I'm so glad!” Then she turned pensive. “But I wish I knew what happened to the others, to Tapis and the Princess, after I ruined both their hopes.”

“I watched them on the Tapestry,” Ivy called. “After Castle Roogna was finished, King Roogna came and talked to them, and they went with him. The Sorceress saw to the furnishing of the castle, making it nice, and you know it really needed it, because the King just wasn't much of a hand at that. And the princess—well, after a while she married the King.”

“But she was of the line that preceded his,” Electra protested. “They didn't like King Roogna much.”

“I guess that changed, because the King liked her, and he needed a wife who knew how to do things the royal way,” Ivy said. “They looked pretty friendly the last time I tuned them in; you can come and watch with me, if you like.”

“Oh, yes!” Electra exclaimed. “I guess the Sorceress found where she was most needed after all, and the Princess was willing to settle for a king if she couldn't have a prince. So maybe Murphy's curse didn't do them as much harm as I thought. I'm so glad! An awful burden is gone from me.” And she clapped her hands again, and made a little skip with her legs that Dolph noticed. She was going to have good legs when she grew up.

Then Electra put the stem of the rose between her teeth and climbed the ladder to the balcony. Soon she was on her way to join Ivy; it was evident that the two were going to get along well. Electra would surely be a good companion around the castle, because she possessed many of the traits that Dolph had thought Nada did. And of course she would be making the Heaven Cent, so that he could finally complete his Quest and find the Good Magician. He did not regret being betrothed to her.

But now it was time for the serious business. “Princess Nada,” Dor said solemnly.

Nada got up, walked to the up-ladder, and climbed it as readily as Electra had, though she was in her mature lady form. She reached the balcony, and transferred to the rope ladder. It swung as it took her weight, and her skirt flared, showing her legs. Dolph was unashamed about looking, for he knew it was his right as her betrothed. She did not need to wait until she grew up to get her legs nice; she was there already. Of course there was no reason why she shouldn't be, since this was not her natural form, merely her natural age; she would hardly assume an ugly human form. He had become a fair connoisseur of legs in the course of the Quest.

She landed on the tile, and the rose bushes touched her, zeroing in. In a moment they settled; they were ready.

Dolph approached again. He circled, then stopped at the red bush. He touched a stem, and the thorns fell from it, as they had for the yellow rose. He picked a fine red one, and held it up so all could see its brightness and that his hand was unscratched.

There was a little squeak, as of almost-concealed dismay, it was Irene, who had thought he could not pluck that color rose. She had thought him too young. Dor, too, was surprised, but none of the others were. The young had known better than the old, and the skeletons had understood better than many humans. Love knew no barriers of age.

“I love you, Nada,” Dolph said. “You are a princess, and you are a fine person, and you are beautiful, and I want to marry you. We have had good times and bad times together, and I thought you were a child like me; to see you adult is strange, but it doesn't matter. I came to know you as a companion, and I liked you from the start. But I know it is a political liaison, a betrothal made for business purpose, not really of your choosing. I know you are prepared to do what you must to make it work, and that that will make you become the very best wife it is possible for a woman to be. But it is no longer necessary for you to make this sacrifice. My folk will help your folk regardless, and my sister will marry your brother instead, if you wish. So you can be free, without hurting your people.”

He paused, nerving himself for his conclusion. “I love you, Nada. But I know you do not love me. I would not make you suffer. I would not make you marry one you did not love, or wait seven years for your own fulfillment. I promised not to break our betrothal, and I shall not, but you may break it if you wish. I would not have my joy at the expense of yours. I want your happiness more than anything else.”

There: he had said it, as he had rehearsed it during the night, and he had not stumbled or spoken inelegantly. But though his voice had behaved, his eyes had not. Nada was blurring before him, and he knew the tears were running down his cheeks. He had garbled his summation at the trial, but this speech had been even harder to make.

Then Nada spoke, and her voice shook, and he realized that she was crying too. “You have made a very generous offer, Dolph, and I think I knew you would do it, because I have come to know you well. When I revealed my deception to you, and begged you not to break the betrothal, you were hurt but constant; you did not break it. I can not break it now. I see how fine a person you are, and I know that you will be even better when you mature, and it is not in me to reject you though you give me leave to do so. You are a prince, and a fine person, and I liked you from the start, and I know you love me and will make the very best husband, when you come of age, and I will wait for you, if you do not change your mind. Perhaps when it is time I will be able to meet your generous love with my own.”

Dolph stared at her through the blue of tears. She had not done it! She had not taken the easy way out. She was letting the betrothal stand. “Oh, Nada,” he whispered, and the rose he held became so bright it seemed on fire. Then he tossed it to her, and she caught it and held it, accepting it and what it signified.

Then she climbed the ladder and was gone from the tile. Dolph found a hanky and wiped his face. He had thought the dilemma of the double betrothal would be solved at this point, and that he would now be grieving while his parents relaxed. He wanted only to prove that his love was real, before it was damned. To establish the principle, by making his own decision. But, as with the decision at the trial, the outcome was reversed, and Nada would after all marry him. Instead of grief he had joy—and instead of a solution, he still had the problem of two girls to marry.

“Dolph,” Dor said.

Oh, yes—the other part of the test of the roses. In a daze Dolph walked to the ladder, climbed to the balcony, and down the rope ladder to the tile. The bushes touched him as his vision cleared. They had to know him, so that they could tell whether he was the true object of the emotion indicated by the color selected by the one who picked a rose. The roses were very specific; they could not be fooled by a person who loved but loved not the one on the tile.

Electra approached. She walked without hesitation to the red bush, and picked a red rose, and tossed it to him. Then she returned to her seat without a word. She had proven her case, and vindicated her betrothal. She was not a princess, but that did not exclude her. She was exactly the kind of girl who was right for him; indeed, the spell of the Heaven Cent had brought her to where she was most needed, both as a person and as a talent. Except for Murphy's curse, that reached even this far into the future to mess it up. Could that have been the reason that he, rather than Ivy, had come to fulfill the naga's Answer? Dolph knew it would have been much easier for Ivy to marry Naldo, and for him to marry the ancient Princess, or Electra. Everyone would have been conveniently settled. Instead he had met and loved Nada, and though he could see in this the operation of a curse against Electra, he still loved Nada. He almost had to smile: if this was all the power of an eight-hundred-year-old curse, what a powerful curse it had been! Even with knowledge and the means to nullify it, he could not bring himself to do so. Whatever could go wrong, had gone wrong—and he would not have it otherwise.

Yet what of Good Magician Humfrey? He had left the message that had sent Dolph on the long additional loop of the Quest. Surely Humfrey had known about the complication on the way! Why, then, had he done it? Where was the Good Magician now? Dolph's Quest had really solved nothing, only generated a horrendous]y difficult situation where someone was bound to be badly hurt. Or had Murphy's curse messed up even the Good Magician's perception? No, that seemed unlikely; probably Dolph had messed it up by himself by misunderstanding the nature of the skeleton key and looking in the wrong places, and by letting himself get captured by Mela Merwoman. The rest had followed from that.

Now Nada approached. She walked slowly around the bushes. She paused at the yellow bush, but did not reach for it. Instead she went on to the red bush.

“Don't try that one!” Dolph said with sudden alarm. “I understand about you, just as Electra understands about me.”

“I have to, Dolph,” she said.

She put her hand to a stem—and screamed, jerking her hand back. Bright red blood was flowing from a terrible slash. The magic thorns had struck her.

Nada stared at her hand, and at the blood, seeing the proof of what she had hoped was not the case. She did not love Dolph, even though she wished she could.

Her face crumpled. Then she stepped toward the black bush, the one with the roses of death, and reached for it.

Dolph dived from the tile. He plunged through the bushes and tackled Nada, bearing her away from the black rose. They fell together to the ground, clear of the bushes.

“You should not have stopped me!” she cried. “I could have taken that one!”

“I know you could have!” Dolph agreed. “You wanted to die for me! To free me! But I don't want to be freed! Promise me never to do that again.”

“I know.” she said, and kissed him. ”I promise. I think one day I will be able to take the red rose.”

Then the others were around them, and Marrow was helping Dolph to stand, and Grace’l was helping Nada.

“There's not a scratch on him!” Irene exclaimed. “How could—?”

“Our son has proven himself again,” Dor said. “The roses understand true conviction.”

“But he's only nine years old!”

“Old enough,” Dor said. “They all are.”

“But he can't marry both!”

“There will be seven years to work that out,” Dor said.

Dolph, holding Nada, turned and gestured to Electra. She came to him, and he held them both. Seven years seemed like a very long time. In Xanth, with magic, anything could happen, and usually did.