Deerskin

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Deerskin

Robin McKinley

To Mary, Mary, Barbara, Susan, Alex, Steve, Andrea and George: thanks.

Author's note:

There is a story by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin which, because of its subject matter, is often not included in collections of Perrault's fairy tales. Or, if it does appear, it does so in a bowdlerized state. The original Donkeyskin is where Deerskin began.

PART ONE

ONE

MANY YEARS LATER SHE REMEMBERED HOW HER PARENTS HAD

looked to her when she was a small child: her father as tall as a tree, and merry and bright and golden, with her beautiful black-haired mother at his side. She saw them, remembered them, as if she were looking at a painting; they were too splendid to be real, and always they seemed at some little distance from her, from all onlookers.

They were always standing close together as she remembered them, often gazing into each other's eyes, often handclasped, often smiling; and always there was a radiance like sunlight flung around them.

Her mother had been the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and seven kings had each wanted her for himself; but her father had won the priceless prize, even though he had been only a prince then, and his father hale and strong.

When the old king fell from his horse only a year after his son married, and died of the blow, everyone was shocked and surprised, and mourned the old king exceedingly. But he was forgotten soon enough in the brilliance of the young king's reign, and in the even brighter light of his queen's beauty. When the worst grief was spent, and such a joke could be made, some people laughed, and said that the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms had the luck of seven kingdoms as well, for she was now queen of the richest, and for a mere year's wait.

It was the princess's nursemaid who told her this story, and told it often. It was the nursemaid's favorite, and became the little girl's, the long story containing many stories, of her parents' courtship and marriage. This story was better than uuytlung read draggingly out of a storybook-for the nursemaid was uneasy with her letters, but as the ability to read was one of the requirements of her post, she was extremely anxious that no one should find this out. She told the princess that there was no need for dull stories out of heavy hard books, and as she made the storybook stories dull and the stories she herself told interesting, the princess came readily to agree, perhaps because her parents were only a little more real to her than the characters in the storybooks.

"Your lovely mother cast her eyes down when her new people said such things to her, for she was a modest girl then as she is a modest woman now; but everyone knew that she would have chosen your father over the other six kings even had he been a goat-boy with naught but a bell and a shepherd's stick to his name."

"Tell me about the task he was set," said the little princess.

"Ah, it was a terrible task," said the nursemaid, cuddling her close on her lap.

"Each of the seven kings-six kings and one prince-was given a task, and each task was more difficult than the one before, as your lovely mother's father began to comprehend the setting of tasks; for such a joy was the daily presence of your lovely mother that her father was not eager to part with her. And so he looked to drive her suitors away, or to lose them on topless mountains and in bottomless valleys or upon endless seas. But who could blame him? For she is the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and he died of a broken heart eight months after she married your father and left him, and even your uncle, who is now lord of those lands, says the country, the earth itself, is sad without her."

"The task," said the princess.

"I was coming to it," said the nursemaid reprovingly. "So your father was the seventh suitor after the six kings, because his father thought he was young to marry, and had heard besides that your lovely mother's father was setting such tasks that might lose him his only son. But in the end he did his son no favors, for his son-your father-would go, and so it was he who had the last and hardest task."

"And what was it?" said the princess, though she had heard this story many times.

"I am coming to it. The task was to bring a leaf plucked and unfallen from the tree of joy, which grows at the farthest eastern edge of the world, and an apple plucked and unfallen from the tree of sorrow, that grows at the farthest western end of the world. "And when your lovely mother's father said the words of the task, he smiled, for he knew that no living man could accomplish it; and so at worst his daughter had but six suitors left.

"But he did not see the look that passed between his daughter and her seventh suitor; the look that said, I will do this thing, and was answered, I know you will, and I will wait for you.

"And wait she did; four of the six kings returned successfully from their adventures, bearing what they had been ordered to bring. The word came that the fifth king had been killed, and that the sixth had thought better of his third cousin twice removed, and went home and married her-and I've always heard that they're very happy," the nursemaid added, doubtfully, to herself. "And she such a plain girl, with a heavy jaw and thick legs. They all say she's kind, and loves her husband, but if you're king 'twould be easy to find plain girls with thick legs to love you, a penny the dozen, and any such who was made queen would be sure to be kind from . . .

from surprise. It would be easy!" said the nursemaid, fiercely, pleating the edge of her apron with her fingers.

The princess fidgeted. "The task!"

The nursemaid started, and smoothed her apron, and put her arm again around the princess. "Oh, yes, my love, his task. So your lovely mother refused to choose among the four kings who had completed their tasks, saying that she would wait for the return of the last, which was only fair.

"The four kings grumbled-particularly since it was only a prince they were waiting for, and his father the king young yet-but your lovely mother's father smiled and smiled, because he began to suspect that some such a look as had passed between his daughter and her seventh suitor must have done so, and that his daughter waited for some reason other than fairness. He was well pleased, because he knew that no living man could bring back a leaf plucked and unfallen from the tree of joy, as well as an apple plucked and unfallen from the tree of sorrow. It might take a lifetime to do just the one or the other; and then the man who came at last within the shade of either of those great trees, did he once let those branches' immortal shadows touch him, might lift a sere and curled leaf or a bruised and half-rotted apple from the ground, and think his life well spent to do so much." The nursemaid was not easy with her letters, but she listened closely to every minstrel who sang in the king's halls, and she knew how a story should be told.

"So the father of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms smiled, for he foresaw that he would not need to set further tasks for the four kings, now sitting at his board, glowering and restless, because his daughter would refuse them all, waiting for the one who never came. And such was the love that he bore for his only daughter, and the desire for her presence, that he did not begrudge the entertainment of those four kings, however long they sat at table, however expensive their serving and stabling.

"But what he did not know was the strength of that look that had passed between the prince and the lady; for the strength between them of wanting and of need was greater than what one mortal man could do in one mortal lifetime. And so it was but a year and a day from your father's setting out on his quest, not caring that it was a hopeless one so long as he carried the look your mother had given him deep in his heart, that he returned. Because he loved her beyond life itself, and because he knew she loved him equally, he knew he must return; that knowing was greater than time and mortality.

"The old lord's health began to fail as soon as he set eyes on your father, striding into the court of his beloved's father, his face alight with happiness and hope; but I doubt your father noticed, for he had eyes only for the raven-haired lady sitting at her father's side. But everyone else noticed, and everyone remembered that your lovely mother's father had threatened to set a second task for any suitor she favored, so terribly did he want to keep her.

"But they said that when he saw the strength of the bond between them shining in your father's face, he did not have the heart to set any more challenges, for the strength of his own love made him recognize what he saw. Certainly he gave them his blessing when they turned to him and asked for it; but he gave it to them in the creaking voice of an old, old man, and when he passed his hands over their heads, the hands were thin and gnarled."

The princess, who did not care for old people, said, "But what of the leaf and the apple?"

"Ah, that was an amazement among amazing things. They thought the old king would defy this last successful suitor by saying that the leaf and the apple were not what they must be, but any shining leaf and any bright, round apple, for how is anyone to tell if something no mortal hands has touched before be that thing or no?

But when your father took his tokens out of his pack and held them up for all to see, a strange blindness struck the company, as if their eyes had for the moment forgotten their work, or fled from the task of seeing. And they were dazed with this, with the betrayal of their own vision, and sank to their knees, and trembled, and did not know what had come to them, and only wished to return to their ordinary lives, and deal no more with marvels.

"But from out of their mazing they heard your father's laugh, and then there was a burst of flame that everyone saw, like a bonfire at Midsummer, blinding indeed if you look too closely, but a familiar kind of astonishment this was, one you understand and can turn away from. Everyone blinked, and in blinking their vision returned to them; and they looked around. The fire in the great fireplace had gone out; and it and the walls around it were blackened as by some great explosion, and the prince and the lady stood before that blackened hearth, now locked in each other's arms. And yet they had stood half across the wide court from each other before the blindness struck all those who watched."

"He had thrown them in the fire, the leaf and the apple," said the child.

"Aye, that he had," agreed the nursemaid. "Tokens worth the finest treasure in this world or any other, tokens no living man should be able to bear; and he threw them into the fire for the love of your mother, and felt no regret. For, he said, all the joy he needed was in your mother's eyes; and he could withstand any sorrow so long as he had once known that joy."

"And so they were married."

"Aye, they were married. The four kings came, and danced with your mother, and drank to your father's health; and went away sadly but politely, for they were all true kings. The successor of the fifth king was twelve years old, but he knew what was expected of him, or had ministers to tell him what to do, and he sent a handsome young lord who brought a golden casket full of pearls as a wedding gift. The sixth king ... sent his regrets by herald, with but a second herald to accompany him, and they also brought a gift, a quilt, a patchwork quilt, made by his heavy jawed queen and her ladies, in shades of blue, embroidered with stars ... as well send an ostler with a horse blanket!" The nursemaid sniffed. "It cannot be imagined what your lovely mother's life could have been, with such a husband.

"The other kings have all since married too, and each of their queens has borne a son, and"-the nursemaid lifted the child off her lap, and gave her a little, intense, gleeful shake-"in twelve or fourteen years, your father will be setting tasks for,them!"

The princess fell asleep nights thinking of the tree of joy and the tree of sorrow, and sometimes she dreamed of the sound of leaves rustling, and of the sweet, sharp, poignant smell of ripe apples. And she woke to another day bright with the presence of her parents, for they lit their world as the sun lights the great world, and every one of their subjects loved them and was grateful.

It was a favorite joke among their people that the way to be certain that it did not rain on any fair or harvest was to invite the royal couple to it. The sun himself, it was said, could not resist the queen's beauty, and loved nothing better than to tease the hidden red fires from deep within her glossy black hair.

There were no wars, nor even threat or thought of war, for the people were all too contented. It was said that any foreign danger, any officer from a rival king, would be so bewitched by the queen that he would charm his own master into renouncing his claim. The queen said nothing to this, neither yea nor nay, but smiled her secret smile, and cast her eyes down, as she had done when she was teased for her luck in her father-in-law's early death. The queen spoke little, but few words of her were necessary, for the wonder of her presence was enough.

When the king and queen made processions through their kingdom, the princess came too; and people were kind to her. They were kind to her when they noticed her, for all eyes were upon the king and queen, and she was but a child, and small, and shy; and during those early years of her life she worshipped her parents more than anyone, except, perhaps, her nursemaid.

Even her dancing-master, her riding instructor, and her mistress of deportment seemed able to think of teaching her only in terms of the queen's gifts and graces; and so the princess, who was only a child, thought little of her own talents, because by that standard she could not be said to succeed. And because she was a child, it did not occur to her to wonder why neither her nursemaid, nor her dancing-master, nor her riding instructor, nor her mistress of deportment ever said to her, "My dear, you are but a child yet, and the queen a woman in the fullness of her prime; you stand and step and move very prettily, you take instruction graciously, and I am well content to be your teacher." Her father and mother never suggested such things to her either; but then they never saw her practice dancing or riding, or sewing or singing. There were always so many other things for so popular a king and so beautiful a queen to do.

On the princess's twelfth birthday there was a grand party just for her, and all the lords and ladies came, and one of the sons of the once-rival kings, who was thirteen, and stood almost invisible among the tall figures of his guardsmen. There were musicians, and dancing, and talk and laughter, and the banqueting tables were piled high with beautiful savory food, and she could not bear it, that so many eyes should think to turn upon her as the cause of all this magnificence, and she ran and hid in the nursery.

When her old nursemaid found her at last, and washed her face free of tear-stains, and pressed her crumpled dress, and tidied her dark hair, and took her downstairs again, the queen was sitting at the head of the table, in the chair the princess had fled.

The king sat at her right hand, and they were feeding each other bits of cake and sweetmeats, looking into each other's face, utterly absorbed in these things. The thirteen-year-old prince sat near them, watching, his mouth hanging a little agape.

The princess slipped away from her nursemaid, who would have wished to make her present herself formally. But even a royal nursemaid's jurisdictions end at the ballroom door. The princess found a chair standing next to a curtain and shadowed by the column at its back, and set herself silently down.

When the princess's return was noticed, and the dancing started again, one or two young men approached the princess hopefully. But she disliked her dancing lessons, and disliked being touched and held so by strangers, and she drew back in her chair and shook her head emphatically at her would-be partners. They went away, and after a little time no more came. She curled up on her gilt chair and rested her head softly on one of its velvet arms, and watched her mother and father dancing, their footsteps as light and graceful as the dainty steps of the royal deer.

TWO

IT WAS TWO YEARS LATER THAT THE QUEEN FELL ILL, AND NO

doctor could help her; and at first no one thought it was serious. Indeed, some went so far as to hint that nothing at all was wrong; that the queen merely needed taking out of herself-or perhaps putting back into herself, for she gave of her presence and her beauty too freely, and was wearied by the adoration of her people. At first it was only that she rose late and retired early; but the weeks passed, and she rose later and later, and was seen outside her rooms less and less; and then the news came that she no longer left her bed, and then that she could not leave her bed.

And then it was said that she was dying.

The doctors shook their heads, and murmured long words to each other. The people wept, and prayed to their gods, and told themselves and each other many stories, till the real story sounded no truer than the rest. The story that contained the most truth, although it was not the story that was listened to the most often, was that the queen might not die, except that her illness, the strange invisible illness with no name, had robbed her of the tiniest fraction of her beauty. Her brilliant hair was just a little dulled, her enormous eyes just a little shadowed; and when she guessed she might no longer be the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms she lost her will to live.

She had the window curtains drawn first, that the sun might not find her out; she did not care that he might miss her, even as her people did, or that his warmth might be less cruel than her own eyes in the mirror were. Nor would she listen to her doctors, that sunlight might mend her; for she heard behind their voices that they knew nothing of what was wrong with her and therefore nothing of what might heal.

She sank deeper into her pillows, and had her bed-curtains drawn as well.

The king was frantic, for after a time she refused to see him either; but she was convinced to yield to her husband in this thing after all, for he grew so wild at her denial that his ministers feared he would do himself an injury. So the queen drew a scarf over her head and a veil across her face, and gloves upon her hands, and permitted one candle only to be lit in her dim chamber; and it was held at some distance from the queen's bed, and shaded by a waiting-woman's hand.

The king threw himself across the queen's bed in a paroxysm of weeping, and tore at the bedclothes with his finger-nails, and cried aloud; and the waiting-women all trembled, and the candle flickered in the hands that held it, for they all thought the king had gone mad. But it could be seen that, through the veil, the queen smiled; and one hand, in its lacy, fragile glove, reached out and stroked his shoulder. At this he looked up at her, with a great snarl of bedclothes in his big hands, pressing them to his face like a child.

"There is something I would have you do for me," she said in the whisper that was all her voice now.

"Anything," he said, and his voice was no stronger than hers. "I want you to commission a painter," she said, in her perfectly controlled whisper, "and he must be the finest painter in this or any other land. I want him to paint a portrait of me as I was, for you to remember me by."

"Remember you by!" screamed the king; and some time passed before even the queen could calm him. But in the end he agreed, because it was true that he would do anything for her, and she knew it.

Now every painter in the seven kingdoms considered long when the news of this commission came to them; although very few painters responded from the kingdom of the sixth king, who had married the girl with thick legs. It was said, scornfully, that this was because, in that kingdom, there was no beauty to inspire the painter's art.

But very many other painters came from the other five kingdoms. Most of all, however, painters came from the queen's own country, from the towns where the king and queen had brought sunshine to harvests and celebrations. All brought drawings they had made over the years of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, for they all had found her an irresistible subject. The highest number of painters from the smallest area, however, came from her uncle's, now her brother's, little fiefdom, and they brought drawings of a raven-haired child and young girl who would obviously grow-up to be the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms.

It was originally assumed that the king would attend the interviews and make the decision, but this was swiftly proven false, for the king did nothing but crouch by the queen's bed, clinging to her hand, and wetting it with his tears, until, sometimes, the queen tired of him, and sent him away. When he first tried to stand after the long hours of his vigil, he could barely walk for his grief, and without aid would have crawled like a beast. The burdens of the queen's desire thus fell upon his ministers, and they shared among themselves, some staying near the king, some hearing the most pressing matters of statecraft, some leafing through portfolios and sending away the most conspicuously inept. The other artists were made to wait, day after weary unbroken day-while their work was shown to the queen herself. And she did not hurry to make her decision.

She ordered the king to leave her while she looked at unfinished sketches and finished portraits; he grew so distraught, she said, that he distracted her. At first he was banished merely to the next room, but the queen could hear him, pacing, muttering brokenly to himself, and she said that even this fatigued her, and that she needed all her small remaining strength for the task at hand. And so the king was sent, stumbling, to a far wing of the palace, till she sent word that he might return.

The queen studied every painting, every fragment, every chalky shred, brought to her; and every one was beautiful, for even awkward artists could not fail to capture some beauty when they set out to portray her. She lay in her bed and stared at paintings till her attendants were exhausted by the intensity of her purpose.

After the first few days, every day or so thereafter she would discard one or another painter; and he would have his work returned to him, be given a coin for his trouble (everyone thought this royally generous, since none of the painters had been under any obligation to answer the invitation), and sent on his way. No one, apparently, thought to remark on the fact that all the artists hoping to paint the queen's portrait were men; although one maid-servant, who worked in the king's kitchens and was rarely allowed upstairs, and who had cousins who lived in every one of the seven kingdoms, did comment that the sixth king's official court painter was a woman. But she was only a maid-servant, and no one found this statement interesting.

The waiting painters began to dread the sight of the majordomo. He would appear with canvas and sketchbook-sized bundles under his arms, or in the arms of an attending footman, and beckon some unfortunate, waiting in the receiving-hall, or in what had been the receiving-hall when the queen had been well and the king had done any receiving. Occasionally, and worse, the majordomo paused in the grand arched doorway with the carved vines twining round and round the bordering columns twice as high as a man's head, and framed by this grandeur sonorously pronounced some name. And then the poor artist had to cross the long shining floor (for the house-maids were kept severely up to the mark however preoccupied the king was) under the eyes of all the other painters, and admit that the work thus displayed as a failure was his.

The selection was down to three at last. Three paintings stood cm three easels at some little distance from the queen's bed in the queen's chamber; and downstairs, very far away, three painters nibbled at the food the impassive servants brought, and fidgeted, and could not speak to each other. Even farther away the king ignored the food his closest, most anxiously loyal attendants brought, and cursed them, and cursed his ministers too when they tried to encourage him to eat, or to engage him in the ruling of his country. He paced, and tore his hair, and cried aloud.

In the queen's chamber something extraordinary happened. She asked her attendants to move the three paintings to stand directly in front of the closely curtained windows; and then she dismissed the footmen who had done the moving, and all her serving-women but one. That one she told to draw the curtains-open; let the sunlight in, to fall upon the faces of the portraits. But the woman was to stand facing out the window, with her back to the room; and she was not to stir till she was told. This woman knew her mistress well, as the queen knew; and would do exactly as she was told, as the queen also knew.

But the woman could hear. And what she heard was the sound of the queen turning back her bedclothes, and setting her feet upon the floor. She had lain there among her pillows for so many weeks that her steps were feeble and uncertain, and the waiting-woman trembled where she stood, for all her training told her she should rush to support her queen. But her training also told her that she must obey a command; and the command was that she remain where she was; and so she did not stir a foot, though her muscles shivered.

The queen stumbled-fell; "Mistress!" cried the woman, half turning-"Stay where you are!" said the queen in a voice as sharp and strong and unflinching as the fall of the executioner's axe. The woman burst into tears and covered her face with her hands, and so did not hear the queen pull herself to her feet and resume her slow progress toward the windows.

When the woman dropped her hands and sniffed, she could see, out of the corner of her eye as she looked straight ahead of her, the dark narrow bulk of the queen's body, leaning on the back of a chair. The queen moved the chair a little, her hands groping either at her own weakness or at the unfamiliarity of such a task, so its back was perfectly opposed to the waiting-woman's tiny peripheral glimpse of it. Slowly the queen sat down in the chair, facing the last three portraits of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, lit as they were now by golden afternoon sunlight, till they were almost as glorious as the woman herself had been. The waiting-woman saw the shadow of a gesture, and knew that the queen was raising her veil.

The final selection was made, and the other two painters sent on their way-with three coins each, and a silver necklace and a ring with a stone in it, because they had been good enough almost to have been chosen. Although they would not have admitted it, they were at the last relieved that their work had not found favor in the queen's eyes, and that they could go home, and return to painting bowls of flowers for rich young men courting, and dragons the size of palaces being dispatched by solitary knights in gleaming armor for city council chambers, and fat old merchants spilling over their collars and waistbands for their counting-houses and inheriting sons. For they did not like the smell of the place where the queen lay dying of her own will, who had once been the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms; and they had heard that the king was mad.

The young man who remained behind grimaced at his paintstained fingers, and wondered if those fingers, of which he had long been proud, had betrayed him.

He never saw the queen. The painting that had won him his commission was returned to him, and he and it-now standing on a jewelled easel-were established in a large sunny chamber with windows on three sides and a curtained bed pushed up against the fourth. He was asked what he wanted; he wanted very little. He wanted a plain easel-plain, he emphasized-to set up his new canvas; and enough food to keep him on his feet. No wine, he said, only water; and food as plain as his painting-frame.

He had been so sure he would win the commission-so sure of his talent-that he had brought a fresh canvas with him, and all his best brushes and colors, for he was very particular about these things, and knew that to paint the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms he must be more particular than he had even guessed at, thus far in his risky career. And so he had spent all his last commission-which might otherwise have kept him through the winter, so that he need not paint portraits of ugly arrogant people with money for some months-to hire a horse, to carry his exactingly stretched canvas and his paint-boxes and his beautifully tipped and pointed brushes, because this was going to be the commission, and the painting, of his life, and after this he would be able to pick and choose who hired him. He would even be able to sell paintings-large paintings-of his own composition, including the several already completed during the occasional months that he was enough ahead, for he lived frugally at all times, to paint what he wished, and not what people who did not know how to spend their money thought they wanted.

In the first days of waiting he had, set up his beautiful naked canvas and begun the first sketching strokes of the portrait he would make of the queen, for he had the kind of armored singlemindedness that enabled him to work even when other, possibly rival, painters peered over his shoulder. This was a useful talent, and one that had earned him more than one winter's rent and food at harvest festivals. But this was no quick study to be thrown off in an hour; this was a masterpiece, and he felt it tingling in his fingers, till he had no need of concentration to ignore the other painters around him, for he forgot their existence.

The queen would be standing, looking a little over her shoulder toward her audience, and her royal robes would be so gorgeous that only paint could render them, for no mere dyed and woven cloth could have produced such drapes and billows, such tints, such highlights and fine-edged hues. And yet she would be lovelier, far lovelier, than all. It hurt his heart, standing before his empty canvas, his hand poised to make the first mark, how beautiful she would be.

But he stood now in the wide, light-filled chamber, having succeeded in winning the commission that would change his life staring at the canvas with the few graceful lines on it, and his hand shook, and his mind's eye was full of shwauws, and the velvets and silks and the soft gloss of skin and sparkle of eye would not come to him. He had put the canvas away very soon in that great receiving-hall, although it was not the waiting that preyed upon him. He stared at his canvas now, and felt as mad as the king.

The word went round that the young painter never slept; he called for lamps and candles at twilight, and, as the queen had ordered that he have everything he wanted, lamps and candles were brought. More! he shouted. More! And more were brought, till the room was brighter than daylight, and the chamber was a sea, and its rippled surface was the fragile points of hundreds of burning candles and oil-soaked wicks, and the painter gasped a little as he worked, keeping his head above that sea. He pulled down the curtains that hung round his bed, and told the servants to bear them away. The chamber pot he kept not under the bed but beside it, that he need not reach into even the small vague grey shadows of a well-swept floor under a high-framed bed.

In the morning, said the servants, the candles had burnt to their ends and even some of the lamps-full the night before-were empty for they had burnt through the night; and the painter was still working. Each evening he called again for candles, and fresh candles were brought, round and sweet-smelling; and the lamps, refilled, were again set alight. And in the morning, when the servants brought him breakfast, all were still burning, or guttering, or entirely consumed, and the painter still lashed his canvas.

It was not true that he never slept; it was true that he slept little, lying down for a few minutes or half an hour, till the light flickering against his eyelids brought him awake again, rested enough to work a little longer. But the underlying truth was that he hated the dark, hated it here, in this palace, hated and feared it, which he had never done before; some of his best studies had been done of twilight, or of Moon's image across dark water. But all that seemed to belong to another life, and here if any shadow fell undisturbed by light he would move a candle or call for another one, till there was nowhere he could stand, near his new portrait of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, that did not have many tiny tongues of light flicking across his shadow, the canvas's, and that of the paintbrush that he held in his hand. It was true furthermore that he could not sleep with the queen's brilliant painted eyes upon him; no matter how he set the frame, he felt her eyes, felt her command, her passion, her presence; and so after a very few minutes' sleep he found himself pulled to his feet again, staggering toward the canvas, groping for a brush.

It was done in barely a fortnight. When the servants came in one morning they found him collapsed at the new painting's feet, and they rushed forward, full of dread that his heart had burst from overwork-or from the queen's gruelling beauty-and that the painting would remain unfinished.

But as they came up behind him they saw the painting itself for the first time, for he had guarded it from them before, fiercely, almost savagely. They cried out as they looked at it, and fell to their knees. At the sound, the painter stirred and sat up; and they did not notice it, but he carefully looked away from the painting himself, his masterwork, and looked at them instead; and he appeared to be satisfied with what he saw, and heard. She was, they said, the most beautiful woman not only in seven kingdoms, but in all the kingdoms of the world. What none dared say aloud was: she, this splendid, immortal woman on the canvas, is more beautiful than the queen ever was. Or perhaps they had only forgotten, for it had been so long since the queen had walked among them.

The servants seized the painting. The painter might have protested their handling, but they treated it with the reverence they treated the queen herself with; and someone ran for a bolt of silk to swathe it in. Already they had forgotten the painter, who had not moved from where he sat on the floor after recovering from his swoon; but he did not care.

Dimly it occurred to him that he should wonder if the paint might still be damp enough to smear; dimly it occurred to him that he might wish to protect his masterwork, for himself, or, more, from the wrath of she who had commissioned it, for he feared the queen as much as he feared the darkness in this place where the king was mad. But he did not care. When they had wrapped his painting and borne it away, he stood up with a sigh, and packed his paints and his brushes, walking carefully, for he was more tired than he could ever remember being, tired, he thought, almost unto death.

He walked very carefully around the tall, wide-raking arms of the guttering candles in their candelabra, and the slim shining globes of the oil lamps, none of whose light he disturbed, for all that the morning sun was now pouring through the windows; for even the possibility of shadows in this place was more than he could bear, especially now, as his own fatigue claimed him. Almost it was as if the painting itself had been some kind of charm, even if a malign one, a demon holding off imps by its presence, and he now felt exposed and vulnerable. He rolled up his breakfast in a napkin and made to leave the room he had not left for a fortnight.

He paused to look at the other portrait, that which had won him the commission he knew he had executed better than any other painter could have done it; very rough it looked to him now, rough and yet real, real and warm and joyous. He looked at it, and thought of the canvas under it, that he might lay bare and paint again; but he left it.

He went downstairs with his two bundles under his arms, and his cloak and his extra shirt in a third bundle on his back, and he found his way unassisted to the stables. There he took the horse he had hired weeks ago, scrambled onto it among the harness that had held his canvases, and pointed its nose for home. No one stopped him, for the word had already gone out that the painting was done and that it was a masterwork; but no one stopped him either to praise him for his genius. He rode out through the court gates, and down the road, and at the first river he had a very long bathe, and then lay on the shore for a while and let the sun bake into his skin, while the horse browsed peacefully nearby.

Then he clambered on it again, grateful that he had a horse to ride, for he was too exhausted to walk, though he knew he could not have stayed in that palace another hour; and they kept on, for the horse seemed to be glad to be going home too, or perhaps it was merely bored from standing too long in its stable, however large the box and generous the feed. And though the way was a long one, and the journey back made in a haze of weariness so profound as to be pain, he was not sorry that it was no step shorter, and he was glad that his own country shared no border with that queen and king's.

But the painter lost nothing for having left his masterwork so cavalierly, for the minister of finance sent six horses with panniers full of gold across their backs after him. And so he never painted another fat merchant again, although it was observed that he never painted a beautiful woman again either, but often chose to paint the old, the poor, the kind, and the simple. But because he was the artist who had painted the most famous portrait in the world, of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, everything he set his name to now and ever after sold easily; and soon he had not only a horse (for the first thing he did when the twelve panniers of gold caught up with him was to buy the horse he had ridden home) but a saddle. And then a house, and a wife, and then children, and he loved his family very much; and so he believed it had been worth it. But it was a long time before he could sleep without leaving a candle lit; and he never ventured across the borders of his own land again.

THREE

THE QUEEN, WHO HAD BEEN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN seven kingdoms, had her new portrait set by her bed, still wrapped in silk; and she called for the king her husband. And he came, and everyone noticed that while he was thinner, and his face was grey and haggard, he was no longer mad; and he sat down quite gently at the queen's side, and took her hand.

"I am dying," she said, through her veil, and the light cloth rippled with her breathing. The king shivered, and clasped her hand tighter, but he said nothing.

"I want you to promise me something," she said, and he nodded, a stiff, tortured little jerk of the head; and he never took his eyes from where her face was, under the veil. "After I die, you will want to marry again-"

"No," said the king in a cracked whisper, and now his trembling grew worse, and his voice sounded like no human voice, but the cry of a beast or bird. "No. "

"Yes," said the queen, and held up her free hand to silence him: or rather lifted her fingers for a moment from their place on her coverlet, for she had little strength left for movement. "I want you to promise me this: that you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was," she said, "so that you will not always be comparing the poor girl to me in your memory, and be cruel to her for it." There was a strange tone in the queen's voice; were it not so sad an occasion and were she not so weak, it might have been thought that the tone was of triumph.

The king, his head hanging, and his knees drawn up like a little boy's who is being scolded, said nothing. "Promise!" hissed the queen.

The king laughed a little wildly. "I promise! I will marry no one less beautiful than you, I swear it."

And the queen sighed, a long, deep, satisfied sigh, and gestured for the servants to display the painting. They slowly, respectfully unwrapped the long folds, but the silk was thin, so while there were still several turns of cloth over it, the splendor of the painting burned through its swaddling. When its final, perfect glory was revealed the queen stared at it-or so everyone thought, as her face-veil was turned unmoving toward it. Then she turned her head away on her pillow and gave another great sigh, a sigh so vast and profound that it seemed impossible that a figure so slight and wasted as the queen's could have made it; and with that sigh she died.

The king remained with his back to the painting, crouched over his queen's hand; and for a long time the servants dared not disturb him, dared not try to discover whether he knew that he was holding the hand of a corpse.

The funeral was three days later, as she had wished it; and as she had wished it, her body was not washed and dressed and laid out for burial. Still in her veil, her long gown, gloves and slippers, she was wrapped in layers and layers of silk and brocade, and thus laid in her satin-lined coffin. And the first stuff which they lay over her, set next to her still-warm figure, was the thin white bolt that had wrapped her portrait.

But the mourning went on for weeks after that. The whole country dressed in black, and many people dyed their horses' harness black, painted their oxen's horns black, the doors of their houses, their wagon wheels, even their own hair, though their blackened hair never fired red in the sunlight the way the queen's had. The king was quiet and polite, but his eyes were blank, and his ministers steered him through his days.

Expressions of grief and condolences came from far around; the receiving-hall grew crowded with gifts bearing black ribbons, and ministers' aides hired aides of their own to do the list-making and write the acknowledgements, which the king himself never signed, his hands limply on his lap and his eyes turned to empty space.

One king, their nearest neighbor, sent four matched black horses, without a white hair on them; another king sent a black carriage that gleamed like a mirror. The third king sent a heavy rope of black opals, and the fourth sent a cape of the feathers of the ebony bird, the cost of one of. whose feathers would feed a peasant family half a year. The fifth king, who had been twelve years old when the dead queen had married her true love, sent the same lord as had attended the wedding, older now, and the casket he bore this time contained black pearls.

One day two heralds and three horses arrived, all bearing black stripes on their gear (although some noticed that the stripes were of the sort that could be taken off again), and this was an embassy from the sixth king of the queen's seven suitors.

Their own black-robed king was in his receiving-hall that day, for his ministers had determined that it would be good for him to go through the motions of governing, even though each motion had to be prompted by the ministers themselves. He could not even be trusted to feed himself, these days, but someone must sit next to him and tell him to put food in his mouth for every bite. But he was docile now, unlike the first weeks of the queen's illness; and the harassed ministers wished to believe this an improvement. And so it was the king who welcomed the heralds from the sixth king, or, more accurately, it was his ministers who welcomed them and, when prodded, not very subtly, the king who nodded slowly in an acknowledgement he did not feel.

The heralds noticed that his eyes were steady, if dazed, and they thought that if the rumors heard in their kingdom of his madness had been true, they were true no longer; for here was a man made weak and simple by his grief. So they made the correct obeyances, and were graciously granted leave (by the ministers) to demonstrate what gifts they had brought; and so they opened their baskets, displaying sparkling jars of preserves that the queen and her ladies had put up themselves; and some meltingly supple leather from a deer that the king and his huntsmen had themselves shot, dressed out, skinned and tanned, and dyed a flawless black. And, last, there was a small woven basket-pannier, and the herald who handled it touched it with particular gentleness, and when he set it down, and knelt beside it to lift the loop from the pin that held it closed, it seemed to move of itself, to stir where it sat.

When he opened it he reached in to lift something out: and there was a small silver-fawn-colored fleethound puppy who trembled, and struggled to be set down, and as soon as the herald had done so tried to climb into his kneeling lap, and hide her small slender face under his arm.

"The prince's favorite bitch whelped two months ago," said the herald, while the fleethound presented her rear parts to the court and dug her head farther under his arm. "When he heard of your loss, he begged his parents to let him send the princess one of the puppies."

It was the first time anyone of the court had thought of the princess since the queen fell ill.

Her nursemaid had seen to it that they watched the long days in and out of the queen's long decline; and the nursemaid sank deeper and deeper into her grief, and the girl herself grew more and more silent and withdrawn, for her nursemaid had been her only lasting companion for as long as she could remember. And when the queen died, the nursemaid saw to it that the princess had a black dress to wear to her mother's funeral, and a black scarf to tie up her dark soft hair, and black boots for her feet, black stockings for her legs, and black gloves for her hands; and a black cap, gloves, and overskirt for herself. For even in her grief she knew what was required, just as she had seen to it that both she and the princess bathed every day, and had enough to eat, and proper clothing as the season changed. But it did not seem to her strange that the court forgot the princess in its preoccupation with the queen, for she would have forgotten the princess herself, had it not been her job to take care of her. There was no hauteur in her when she made sure of the necessities for herself and the princess.

The two of them had gone to the funeral, quietly, like any other mourners from the vast royal household; and if any recognized them as perhaps having a special place in the affair, no mention was made nor notice taken. The king and queen had absorbed all their people's attention for as long as they had been king and queen; there had never been anything left for the princess. That there might be something odd about this, even wrong, occurred to no one; their king, their queen, were too glorious, too luminous, too superb, for there to be anything wrong with them. That they forgot their child themselves, and distracted their people into forgetting her also, was merely a natural result of their perfections, as was the fact that the princess had no place and no purpose. No one of their people could imagine the country without this king and this queen. The idea that this child of theirs was their heir was incomprehensible; as if someone had suggested that a tadpole might inherit the sea upon the death of water. At the queen's funeral no one was capable of thinking beyond the fact that this was the end of their world.

The nursemaid and the princess stood with the two housemaids who most often attended to their simple needs, and who had helped in making up the princess's mourning clothes. The princess looked around quietly into the faces of her parents'

people, last of all looking in her nursemaid's face, who was as dazed as anyone else in the kingdom-as the king himself. She had worshipped the queen with every breath she took, and had sought the position of caring for her daughter because she was her daughter.

The princess was in a daze also, but her confusion had more to do with perplexity than with sorrow. For what she realized was that her mother's death had no effect on her, but only on those around her. But this was so amazing to her that her amazement looked like grief, had there been anyone to notice.

She had grown up understanding that almost all those around her, chiefly her nursemaid but also the maids and the occasional courtier or minister who thought it politic to visit her, and certainly her parents, on those rare occasions that she was summoned into their presence, desired her to be biddable. For the most part she had acquiesced in this. She knew no other children, and never guessed the noisy games that most children play; and she learned very young that when she cried or was cross she was likely to be left alone; and as she had so little companionship she was unwilling to risk the little. She could not remember her babyhood; her first memories were of her nursemaid telling her stories, stories about her mother and father in the years before she was born; her second memories were of asking for those stories to be retold.

Her first rebellion, although she did not know it, was in learning to read. She learned rather easily, which was remarkable, for the nursemaid was an even worse teacher than she was a scholar. With the curious stark comprehension of children, she knew that her nursemaid's reluctance to read stories from books was because she was not good at it, and that it would be as well not to tell her that it was otherwise with herself. But the princess had seized on this thing not commanded of her, unlike dancing and riding and deportment, and soon came to treasure it; for books were companionable.

Somehow the occasional ladies who wished to pet her-either for her own sake, or for the sake, as they hoped, of their husbands' careers-rarely came to see her more than a few times. The queen, the nursemaid told the princess reprovingly, when she showed signs of missing a very young and playful lady who had contrived to visit her nearly a dozen times before being banished as mysteriously as the rest, was very strict about who might be permitted to cultivate her only child. The young and playful lady had not only taught the princess games that involved running and shouting, but had brought her fresh new storybooks, and helped her to hide them from the nursemaid; and although the princess noticed that this seemed to make the lady unhappy, she refused to fell the little girl why. But the princess had let herself be consoled for this loss, for she was still very young, when the nursemaid look her on her lap and told again their favorite story.

She thought of that lady now; it had been years before she had quite given up the hope that she would see her again (though she never told her nursemaid this) and had looked around her, shyly but eagerly, on such state occasions as she attended on her parents, seeking one face amoung the many faces in the crowds gathered to pay her parents homage. But it was all so long ago now that the princess doubted she would recognize the lady's face even if she did see her again; and she would be older now, and perhaps no longer playful. Then she surprised herself by thinking that if she could remember the lady's name, she might ask for her. The surprise was so severe that any chance that she might recall the name she wished fled forever; and she sat very still, as if she might be caught out at something.

But she knew her mother's death had changed her position in the royal household, though she did not know how. It was enough, for the moment, that she no longer believed in the shining figures of her nursemaid's stories, though she dared not think why.

Something had happened to her the evening of her twelfth birthday, three years ago now, when she sat on the glittering chair and watched her parents dance. Some time during that long evening, after she had sent her prospective dancing-partners away, she had looked thoughtfully at her hands, with their clean nails and soft palms, and at her legs, hidden beneath their long skirt, and she had wondered, as a hero might wonder before stepping across the threshold of a great Dragon's lair, what these hands and legs might be capable of.

It was a question that had returned to her a number of times over the next weeks, making her restless and peevish; but when her nursemaid spoke to her sharply, she subsided, as she had always subsided, for she had no words for what she felt was trying to express itself. There was no outlet for the wondering, nor for the emotions that it caused; and her life did not change, nor had she any idea of how she might make a change, or what she might like that change to be. And so while she was aware of some quiet evolution going on in her heart and brain, she did not know what it was and, to a great extent, did not seek to know, for she could imagine no good coming of it. What the first twelve years of her life had taught her chiefly was patience, and so she held patience to her like a friend, and went on being quiet and biddable. One new pleasure she gave herself, and that was to observe what went on around her; and she began to have thoughts about the palace and the people in it that would have surprised her nursemaid very much.

But then the queen's illness overshadowed all else, and any idea, faint as it had been at its best, of trying to explain to her nursemaid what she was thinking about, what made her uneasy, faded to nothing, and she tried not to pursue these thoughts while the queen lay dying, for it seemed to her that it was disloyal. The fact that it did not feel disloyal to be anxious and preoccupied with her own thoughts while her mother lay dying distressed her; and the distress was real enough, and she clung to it.

She was sitting in a window seat, as she often sat, staring out of the window as she often stared, turning over her bewildering and possibly traitorous idea, and the even more bewildering ideas that fell from it, like sparks from a burning stake, all of which seemed somehow connected with that earlier wondering of what she might be capable of. She still could not imagine uttering any of her musings aloud; and she glanced down at her mourning clothes. The nursemaid sat by the cold hearth, hugging and rocking herself, absorbed in her own grief; dimly aware of the creature comfort of the presence of another human being, assuming that the princess was as mazed by grief as she was-no more and no less. That the princess was the queen's daughter left no special mark on her; all the nursemaid knew was that her own grief was overwhelming, and that she had no attention to spare from it.

The knock on the door surprised them both, for it was not time for a meal or a bath or a ladylike walk in the formal gardens; and they both started in their seats. The door was flung open after a minute of silence, and a footman stood there. The nursemaid fell out of her chair to curtsey, for this was an upper footman, and he did not look at all pleased with his commission. "Her highness's presence is requested in the receiving-hall. At once." He turned and left immediately. He did not close the door.

"Oh! Oh!" cried the nursemaid. The princess stepped down from tier perch and let the maid flutter around her, still murmuring, "oh, oh ---oh." The princess herself combed her hair, and asked her maid, in a clear, careful voice, to press her black ribbons for her, and shine the toes of her black boots, while she washed her face and put on her new black stockings. She was perfectly composed as she walked out of her chamber, the nursemaid still bobbing after her and murmuring, "Oh!"

The princess walked down the stairs, her boot-heels clicking to the first landing, for the final flight to the nursery was uncarpeted. She had consciously to recall the way to the receiving-hall, for she went there so rarely, and it was down and down long twisting corridors and more flights of stairs. The footman had, of course, not waited to escort her. She paused, hesitating, at a final corner, and looked round, and knew she had come the right way after all, for at the door of the receiving-hall the upper footman stood, still stiff with outrage at having to climb to a region of the palace where the stairs were uncarpeted, and with him were two lower footman and two pages.

The upper footman flung open the door for her without ever looking at her, and entered, and bowed, and stood aside; then the lower footmen entered as a pair, and parted, and faced each other across the doorway. The princess paused, waiting, but decided that perhaps it was her turn next, so she entered, with her chin up, and her steps were quite steady. The pause after the squad of footmen had prepared her entrance had done her no harm in the court's eyes; what she knew was the feeling of their gaze upon her, a feeling not unlike the prickly cling of cloth before a thunderstorm. She felt their awakening curiosity; they were wondering about her for the first time, she thought, wondering who she was and what she was worth. She wondered too. She was just fifteen years old; even her nursemaid had forgotten her birthday in grief for the dead queen.

One herald stood beside the dais where her father and his ministers sat, and one crouched at its foot with something, some pale lumpish bundle, in his lap. She walked calmly forward, not knowing what else to do, nor where the summons had come from, nor to what purpose. She went up to the dais and curtseyed to the floor, to her father; and looked up, and met his eyes. The blankness there parted for a moment, and she saw-she did not know what she saw, but it made her cold all over, suddenly, so cold that the sweat of terror broke out on her body. She stood up from her curtsey too hastily, and had to catch her balance with an awkward side-step.

There was a whisper behind her, among the court: a pity she is not more graceful.

Who has had the teaching of her? Such a drab little thing, such an odd child of such parents.

One of the ministers addressed her. "These heralds are come from King Goldhouse and Queen Clementina to offer their sorrow to us in our ... loss. And their son, the prince Ossin, has sent you a gift."

The standing herald came forward, and bowed to her, and handed her a piece of stiff paper, folded and sealed. She looked at the herald on the floor, and realized that what was on his lap was the rear parts of a dog; the head and forequarters were wedged under his arm. She took the paper and broke the seal.

"To the princess Lissla Lissar, from the prince Ossin, I give you greeting.

I have heard of your great grief and I am very unhappy for it. I do not know how I could bear it if my mother died.

My favorite bitch had her puppies a few weeks ago and I am sending you the best one. Her name is Ash, for her coat is the color of the bark of that tree. There are many ash trees here. She will love you and I hope you will be glad of her.

My highest regards and duty to you and your father. Ossin."

She looked up. She did not quite know what to do. The herald with the dog, who had children (and dogs) of his own, stood up, tucking the puppy firmly under the arm she was trying to disappear beneath. Her legs began a frantic paddling. He supported them with his other arm and slowly drew her out from hiding, turning her round to face the princess. The puppy bobbed in his grasp for a moment, but the princess had, as if involuntarily, taken a step forward, and reached out a hand.

The puppy caught the gesture, and large brown silvery-lashed eyes caught the glance of large dark-fringed amber-hazel eyes, and then the puppy began bobbing in good earnest, her ears flattening, her tail going like a whirlwind. The princess held out her arms, and the herald, smiling, lay the puppy in them, and the puppy thumped and paddled and kicked, and banged her nose against the princess's breastbone, licked her chin, and made tiny, urgent noises deep in her throat.

The princess looked up: hazel eyes met blue, and the princess saw kindness, and the herald saw that the puppy would have a good home, and he was pleased, both because he loved dogs and because he loved his prince; and because he felt sorry for this young girl who had lost her mother. The herald bowed, deeply, and the princess smiled down at her armful. (Which made a dive at her face again, and this time succeeded in grazing the princess's nose with a puppy fang.) The court noticed the smile, and found themselves interested again, despite the clumsy curtsey. "She's a pretty little thing," they murmured to each other. "I had never noticed. She might even grow up to be a beauty; don't forget who her mother was. How old is she now?"

But the princess had forgotten all about the court. She curtseyed again to her father-without raising her eyes from her new friend's face-and requested permission to withdraw, in a voice as steady as her steps had been, before she met her father's eyes. There was a pause, and her smile disappeared, and she stared fixedly downward-she would not look up, remembering without remembering why she had not liked looking at her father before-but the puppy made her smile again and the waiting was no longer onerous. As the court began to wonder if the father was seeing something in the daughter that he, like they, had perhaps overlooked, he moved abruptly in his chair, and without any prompting from his ministers, spoke aloud, giving his leave for her to go.

As she turned away, the herald who had handed her the letter (which was presently being beaten to death by the puppy's tail) stooped to one knee before her.

"I have also instructions for your splendor's new dog's feeding and care," he said.

"May I give them to your waiting-women?"

She had no waiting-women, but she now had a dog; and she thought her old nursemaid would never notice the existence of a dog, let alone remember the necessities of caring for it. Then it occurred to her that she did not want anyone caring for her dog but herself: and this thought pleased her, and banished, for the moment, the memory of her father's eyes. "No, I thank you, you may give them to me," she said. Both the heralds remembered this, to take home and tell the prince, for he too took personal care of his dogs. It never occurred to them that the princess of this great state, much richer and vaster than their own and their king's and queen's and prince's, had no one to give instructions to.

FOUR

THEN BEGAN THE HAPPIEST TWO YEARS OF THE PRINCESS'S LIFE.

It was as if Ash crystallized, or gave meaning to, the princess's tumbled thoughts about who she herself was, and what she might do about it. Being a princess, she recognized, was a decisive thing about her, though it had meant little thus far; perhaps it would mean more if she tried to make it mean more. She did not know for certain about this, and for herself she might have hesitated to try. But now there was Ash, and nothing was too good or wonderful for Ash.

First she had her rooms moved to the ground floor. She had no appetite for breakfast on the day she steeled herself to tell the under-maid who brought them their morning meal that she wished to speak to a footman; and she was glad that she had eaten no breakfast when the under footman presented himself to her and she informed him that she desired to change her rooms.

He disappeared, and an upper footman appeared, and she repeated her declaration, but more firmly this time, for she was growing accustomed to speaking; and because the first footman had bowed, just as the under-maid had. He disappeared in turn, and three more servants with increasing amounts of gold braid on their collars and lace about their wrists appeared and disappeared, and the parade climaxed with the arrival of one of her father's ministers-and not, she thought frowning a little, one of the most insignificant of them either. She preferred speaking to servants; the effects of asserting herself were developing a little too quickly. But she kept her face smooth, and nodded to the man as if she were accustomed to such visits at the top of the flight of uncarpeted stairs.

He had come to look her over. He wanted a closer look at her after her appearance in the receiving-hall. "By the locks on the treasury door," he thought,

"she is going to grow up to be a beauty. All she needs now is a little more countenance-and some finer clothing." Mentally he rubbed his hands together at the prospect of this exciting new pawn venturing onto the gameboard, for he was a mighty player; and it suited him that she should have made the first move, that it should not be quite so conspicuous that he thought of the princess now that the queen was dead and the king showed no sign of recovering his former vitality.

He smiled, showing all of his teeth. "Of course, princess. Your rooms shall be seen to today. You are growing up, and your new status should be honored." He cast a quick glance around the shabby nursery and gloated: the girl was young and naive, and would be marvelously grateful to him for the glamorous new chambers he would provide her with-careful that she should understand that his was the hand that provided. Some token from my own house, he thought, something that he could point to that had conspicuously not been produced from her father's coffers, should have a prominent place. He congratulated himself on his foresight in bribing the upper footman to bring him any news of interesting goings-on in the king's household; for it was by this means that he stood here now.

His wits very slightly discomfited by the faint smile the princess was wearing when he looked at her again after his perusal of her room; she should, he thought, be looking timid and embarrassed, tucked away here like a poor relation, like a distant cousin-by-marriage taken in out of charity. He did not know that she was thinking, Because I am growing up! I want rooms on the ground floor because I don't want to run up and down four flights of stairs every time Ash must go out; how can I ever train her about outdoors, if she has forgotten, by the time we get there, what she was scolded about when we began trying to leave indoors?

Again the minister demonstrated all of his teeth, and then bowing low, he backed through the door he had entered by, and left her.

Ash was in her lap, eating one of the black ribbons on her dress. Ash did not fit in her lap very well, for already her length of leg spoke of the dog she would become; but she did not care about this, and neither did the princess. As one or another dangling leg began to drag the rest of the puppy floorward after it, the princess scooped it back into her lap, whereupon some other dog-end inevitably spilled off in some other direction. "Did you see him?" Lissar murmured. "He backed out of my presence-just as if I were . . ." She stopped. She had been going to say "as if I were my father," but she found that she did not want to align herself with her father about this or any other thing.

To distract herself, she concentrated on the silky fur along Ash's back. The ribbon on her dress was beginning to look rather the worse for wear. Lissar thought she should probably remove it from the puppy's joyful attentions. But she didn't.

She didn't care about mourning or about mourning clothes; all she cared about was Ash.

The chambers that the important minister arranged for her were very grand indeed. There were seven individual rooms opening off a great central room like a smaller version of the royal receiving hall; and not, to her startled eyes, enough smaller. Squarely in the center of the big room was a sculpture, that of a woman festooned with a great deal of tumultuous drapery, which appeared to be trying to strangle her. Lissar stopped dead in front of it, momentarily transfixed; and then the minister with the teeth appeared as if from nowhere, very pleased at the effect his chosen art object appeared to be making. The princess, who was growing accustomed to the surprising things her intuition told her since the first profound shock of knowing that she did not care about her mother's death, looked at him, knew what he was thinking, and let him go on thinking it.

Her bed-chamber was almost as large as the room with the alarming statue in it, and the bed itself was large enough for several princesses and a whole litter of long-legged puppies. She discarded it instantly, behind the unbroken calm of her expression, and explored further. In the last of her over-furnished rooms there was a large purple couch which Ash leaped on immediately, and rolled over, gaily, digging her shoulder and hipbone and long sharp spine into its cushions, leaving a mist of little silver-fawn dog hairs behind her. The princess, all of whose black clothing was now covered in little fawn-silver dog hairs, laughed.

To the right of the couch was a door; a rather plain door, after all the princess had recently seen, which she therefore opened hopefully. There was a key-hole in the door, and as she opened it, there was a clatter on the stone flags beyond, where the key, which had been left loosely in the far side of the door, fell out.

She picked it up without thinking, and pocketed it.

There was a flight of three shallow stone steps and then a little round room, and she realized she was standing at the bottom of one of the palace's many towers. The wall, immediately above the ceiling of this little room, began to flare out, to support a much vaster tower above; the walls of this little ground-level room were subsequently very thick.

There was another door, which she again opened. This time she looked for a key in the key-hole, but there was none; perhaps the key to the inner door opened both, for the shape of the lock looked the same. She did not greatly care, and did not pause to try the key she had picked up in this second lock. She stepped through the door and found herself in what once had been a garden, though it had obviously been left to go wild for some years. The official door to the out-of-doors, from a short but magnificent hall off the princess's receiving-room, and through which therefore she would have m take Ash several times a day, led into a formal courtyard with raked gravel paths and low pruned hedges; simple grass was not to be got at for some distance, grass being too ordinary for the feet of a princess who was abruptly being acknowledged as possessing the usual prerequisites of royal rank.

She had looked out over the clipped and regulated expanse and thought that this was not a great deal better than the four flights of stain she was seeking to escape.

And, standing on the wide shallow marble steps, she had wondered what the high wall to the left was, with ivy and clematis creeping up it so prettily; but she had not cared much, for she was already rejecting the minister's exotic suite in her mind.

When she had gone back indoors through the receiving-room, past the statue, she had begun, between the sixth and seventh rooms, to arrange what she would need to say to the minister to get what she wanted. That was before she found the tower room, and the wild garden.

But now she was changing her decision, standing on the other side of the high mysterious wall. Great ragged leaves on thick stalks stood shoulder-high on that side; yellow sunbursts of flowers erupted from them, and shorter spikes of pink and lavender flowers spilled out in front of them. A small graceful tree stood against the wall, over which rioted the ivy and clematis so tidily cut back on the other side. In the center she could see where paths had once been laid out, to demarcate, she thought, an herb garden; she could smell some of the herbs growing still, green and gentle or spicy and vivid, though she could not give names to them. One path looked as if it led to the small tree; perhaps there was a door in the wall there, buried under the tiny grasping hands of ivy and the small curling stems of clematis seeking purchase. The garden was walled all around; against the wall opposite the one she had seen from the other side a tangle of roses stood, leggy as fleethound puppies, sadly in need of some knowledgeable pruning.

Perhaps this was something she could learn: to prune roses, to recognize herbs from weeds and cultivate the one and pull up the other. Between the herb garden and the flower beds there was plenty of room for rolling and leaping and the chasing of balls, even for a dog as large and quick as Ash was becoming; Lissar wondered why such a lovely garden had been neglected for so long. But it did not matter.

For the moment she looked at the high wall around her garden with satisfaction; Ash was no more than half grown and already she could leap higher than Lissar's head. The little round room, for her, and the big walled garden, for Ash, made her new chambers perfect. The other rooms mattered little, but ... it would probably be wise not to ask that the statue be removed; she could learn to ignore it. And perhaps a few pillows could stun the purple of that couch.

The minister had been trying to break into her reflections for several minutes; she'd heard a grunt of suppressed protest when her hand had first touched the plain door next to the extravagant sofa. She turned to him gravely as Ash disappeared into the undergrowth, waving stems marking her passage. She was now willing to hear, and to pretend to listen, to what he might have to say, now that she had found what she was looking for.

"I am terribly sorry, princess," said the minister. "I wished you to see your new rooms at once, and so the work of preparation was not complete; the door to this place was to have been closed off."

"I am very glad it was not," said Lissar. "I will want the little round chamber set up as my bedroom, and this garden is perfect for Ash. It is for Ash that I wished to move to the ground floor, you understand," she explained, kindly, as he had obviously not taken this in the first time she spoke to him. "Ash is only a puppy, and it will make her training much easier."

The minister's jaw dropped. He looked toward Ash, who had re-emerged from the shrubbery, and was defecating politely by the side of one of the overgrown paths, flagged with the same rough-surfaced stone as the three small stairs down to the base of the tower. He jerked his eyes away from this edifying sight, and worked his lips once or twice before any words emerged.

"But-princess-" he said, or gabbled, "the tower chamber will-it is very small, and it will be damp, and there is only the one window, and the ceiling is so very low, and the walls are not smooth, and enormously thick, they will be very oppressive, and surely one of your waiting-women can-er-attend your dog out-of-doors?"

Lissar refrained from laughing. She had, it was true, acquired waiting-women with her new rooms, or so it-or rather they-appeared; and the minister wished delicately to claim their assignment also. But Lissar knew that he had not been the only one looking her over, and knew also that he would not have been able to arrange for her new rooms entirely by himself and in secret. Some of the waiting-women were ladies, and had assigned themselves; some had been maneuvered into position by other ministers. Since the presence, and hypothetical usefulness, of waiting-women appealed to Lissar about as strongly as did the statue in the hall, it was not a point she felt compelled to dwell on.

"The bed-chamber you so beautifully set up for me is too large," said Lissar firmly, "and while I thank you very much," here she dropped a tiny curtsey-"the round room will suit me much better. I want a bed only so wide that my hands can touch either side simultaneously. And the rough walls can be hung over with rugs and drapes, pink, I think, because I like pink, which will also brighten it despite the one window and thick walls. These, with the fire that will be in the grate, will take care of the dampness. My waiting-women, perhaps, can make use of the bed-chamber."

The minister swallowed hard. He had little experience of dealing with anyone so apparently unmotivated by greed. He could not think what to do in this instance, and so in confusion and dismay he acquiesced, assuming he could regain lost ground-for he felt sure that somehow he had lost ground-later. He was too good a player to withdraw; this was but a pause to recoup.

In this he was mistaken, for in awakening to the fact that she had a mind to use, Lissar was discovering the pleasure of using it. And by using it, she came to know it.

Had Ash not come to her, she might have discovered greed instead, for her world as she understood it had ended with her mother's death; and what she had learned by that death was that she was alone, and had always been alone, and had grown accustomed to it without knowing what she was accustoming herself to.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came the rush of self-declaration: I will not be nothing. She was fortunate, for Ash happened to her before the minister or his kind did. She understood that she was fortunate, but not for years would she understand how fortunate; she did not see, because she already had Ash, the threat that the minister really was, behind the machinations she saw quite well enough to wish to avoid.

The little tower room was furnished as she wished; and she herself began the work of reclaiming the garden, although she was frustrated in this for some time, since she could only guess at how to do what needed to be done. There was no one to ask; her muddy fingers and green-stained skirt-knees and hems horrified the waiting-women, whose ideas of gardening began and ended with baskets full of cut flowers and graceful pairs of shears specially made for a lady's soft delicate hands.

Lissar, indeed, proved so odd in so many ways that one or two of the waiting-women decided at once that the game was not worth the candle, and disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. Some of the others stayed for the pleasure of a turn in the bed-chamber that had been outfitted for a princess.

A few of the waiting-women and one or two of the ministers (not including the one whose statue continued to grace the princess's receiving-room) had enough common sense to recognize what was under their noses, and cultivated relationships with Ash. Lissar, who was learning many things, rapidly formed a working definition of expediency, but could nonetheless not quite harden her heart against anyone who smiled at her dog. Ash, who thought that people existed to be playmates for puppies, was only too happy to be cultivated.

Lissar became friends with one of her ladies, not a great many years older than herself, who obviously was not pretending her affection for Ash, nor her admiration for a fleethound's beauty. It was novel and interesting to have a human friend, Lissar found, although a little alarming; she was never quite sure what she could say to Viaka. Viaka laughed, sometimes, at the things Lissar said, and although her laughter was never unkind, Lissar was puzzled that she had laughed at all, and thought it was perhaps because she, Lissar, had had so comparatively little practice talking to other people. But when she suggested this to Viaka, Viaka became so distressed that Lissar stopped in the middle of what she was saying. There was an unhappy little pause, and then Viaka patted Lissar's cheek and said, "You mustn't mind my laughing; I am a very frivolous person. Everyone knows that." But her eyes were sad as she said it, and not frivolous at all.

Viaka was kind and good-natured, and pleasant to have around, and Lissar began to rely on her without, at first, intending to, or even realizing what she was doing. It became Viaka who went with Lissar once a week to visit her old nursemaid, who now lived in a little comfortable room not far from where the old nursery was. The nursery itself had become something of a boxroom, and was mostly shut up, but the room Hurra now occupied was brighter and cosier than the nursery had ever been, and when Lissar suggested, quite gently, that the last flight of stairs might be carpeted, it was done.

Hurra sat rocking in her favorite chair, knitting, sometimes, her yarns almost always some shade of blue, which had been the queen's favorite color. Sometimes she only sat and rocked and stared at her hands. Often she talked to herself. The most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, she murmured. The most beautiful.... She would seize the hands of anyone who came too near her, and tell stories of the dead queen, of her beauty and charm, of how the king loved her, how neither he nor his kingdom would ever be the same again.

Lissar sat and stared out the window that Hurra never seemed to notice, and endured the stories of her mother; but it was Viaka's hands that Hurra held, Viaka's eyes she fixed her bright mad gaze on. Lissar tucked her own hands under Ash's ears, as if to protect her dog from the tales; she wished she could protect herself.

Ash sat with her head in Lissar's lap (which was all that would fit any more), and waited till it was time to leave. Lissar did not realize how much Viaka learned of what Lissar's life had been by listening to Hurra's stories.

Lissar could not stop the visits to her old nursemaid; she was the only visitor the old woman had, barring the maid who opened and closed the curtains, and made up the bed, and brought food and clean water and linen and took away what was dirty and discarded. Only Lissar and Viaka and an under-maid cared that the last flight of stairs was now carpeted. But Lissar could not forget that Hurra had been all that she had had for all the years of her life till the death of her mother. She understood, now, what Hurra had really been to her, all those years, and she to Hurra; but that did not change the fact that it was Hurra who had fed and dressed and looked after her. And Lissar listened to the low stumbling intense syllables of Hurra~s endless, repetitive tales, and felt herself ground like wheat between stones.

But there were many things that even her now unshackled mind could not tell her, for it had no knowledge to work with; and Viaka could tell her some of these, gently, as if it were not surprising that Lissar did not know them. And Viaka was wise enough to know that it was indeed not surprising. Viaka knew about family; and it was from this knowledge, and not merely because of her own mad Aunt Rcho, that she could visit Hurra, and hold the old hands, and let the stories wash over her.

It was near Ash's first birthday that the Moon woke Lissar's body to its womanhood for the first time; Viaka, suppressing her misgivings that Lissar had come to it so late, told her what the blood meant, and that it was no wound-or that it was a wound without cure. Lissar grew in stature as well, as if catching up for the years pent in the nursery, when she should have been learning to be a young woman; and then came the first days when some of the grand visitors to her father's hall brought gifts to curry the princess's favor as well.

FIVE

LISSAR SAW LITTLE OF HER FATHER DURING THIS TIME; LITTLE

because she wished it so and he did not require otherwise. By the time of the first anniversary of his wife's death, the king was going out among his people again and his ministers no longer ruled the country alone. One or two of them who were inclined to resist this change found themselves rewarded for their deep devotion to their land and their king by the gift of country estates that urgently needed setting in order, which happened to lie at some considerable remove from the king's court.

The king was thinner than he had been, and at first, when his people saw him, he walked a little stooped, like an old man. But as the months passed he began to take on his old strength, though the deep lines on his face remained, and he wore few colors, even for festivals appearing in black and grey and white.

By the time Lissar was almost seventeen and her mother had been dead for two years, the kingdom was speaking more and more openly of the hope that their king would marry again, a strong man in his prime as he was, and with, many said, a new, ethereal beauty from the great grief he had suffered and survived.

Lissar began to be obliged occasionally to attend royal dinners, when either some visiting dignitary wished to see her, or some of her father's ministers wished such a dignitary to see her. The summons never seemed to come from the king himself, or so the phrasing led her to guess, and wonder: "the greetings and deep respects of Lord Someone Important, who wishes the princess Lissla Lissar to understand that her father the King requests and commands her attendance upon him for the occasion of the dinner to honor the arrival of Significant Personage Someone, from the county or country of Wherever."

The court banqueting tables were very long, and she rarely sat near the king; he sat at the head while she often sat at the foot, or rather at the right hand of the foot, next to the dignitary not quite so fortunate as to sit at her father's right or left hand.

Since the minister whose compliments had been delivered with the summons invariably sat opposite her at the dignitary's left, she had little to do but not spill her soup and, now and again, respond, briefly, and without too great a show of personality, to some remark addressed to her by either the dignitary or the minister.

She did not understand how it was that she had immediately known that no one who addressed the princess on these occasions was speaking to any portion of her but the part epitomized by her being her father's daughter; but she had never been tempted to make any mistake about this. Perhaps it was another result of the long years of invisibility in the nursery with her single maid; but the effect was that her brevity of speech, in a princess of such tender years, was accounted modesty, and applauded.

About one thing the princess was stubborn. Ash lay under or beside her chair, no matter how lofty and formal the event. Ash developed her own legend, and people began to speak of the grace of the pair of them, the princess entering hall or chamber not on anyone's arm, but with her hand resting gently on the head or back of her tall dog; both moved elegantly, and were inclined to silence. The people, who liked a little mystery, began to sigh over the half-orphaned princess, and how it was the loss of her mother that made her so grave.

Lissar was grave and silent because it had never occurred to her to be otherwise-not with people. And she entered every room with her hand on Ash's back that she might be observed to have a habit of entering alone with her dog; that it might therefore be that much less likely she need ever enter any room on her father's arm.

She had not forgotten the look on his face when she had entered the receiving-hall on the day that Ash was given to her-although she wanted to, although she blamed herself and was angry at her failure to forget, as if it were something she could or should control. She could not remember when, before that day, she had last seen him; she could not remember his ever looking at her. She remembered that, on a few occasions, when she was very small, her father carried her in his arms; but he seemed always to be looking over her head, at his queen, at his people. She could not remember, before that day in the receiving-hall, ever having seen her father without her mother at his side.

She tried not to look at him after that day; she tried to make not looking as much of a habit as entering rooms with her dog at her side was habit, so that she need not think about it, need nol remember its origin. But this too she failed at: she knew why she did not look. She did not want to see that expression again; and she was afraid if she looked, it was that she would see. She knew what his people saw in his face, the grief and the nobility; she could not forget that she had seen neither. She woke from nightmares, seeing his eyes bent on her again. It was that much worse that she had no name for what she saw and what she feared; and this she spoke of to no one, not even Ash. It was that much worse that she could not see what sought her down the long tunnels of dream, could not see, nor hear, nor smell it, would not escape it, neither its seeking nor simply the knowledge of its existence.

Those dreams were the worst; but she had nightmares as well that the painting of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, which now dominated the receiving-hall, came to life, stepping down from its frame to press a tiny, shapely foot into the cushion of her husband's throne, alone now on its dais, her own great chair having been removed; and her foot left no dint. But the look she bent upon her daughter was only slightly less terrible than the king's. Six months after the queen's death the painting had been hung behind the king's throne (this too had been specified by the queen, both the space of time and the location), and since the day of its unveiling Lissar had avoided the receiving-hall almost as assiduously as she avoided meeting her father's gaze.

But Lissar was young, and he was her father, and the king; there was little she could do but try to avoid her avoidance being noticed. She would have cultivated a fondness for the company of her ladies, if it had come more easily to her; her shyness in the company of ministers and courtiers came very easily indeed. She played tag and hide-and-seek with Ash in the garden; and she went for walks with Viaka. There was for a time some jealousy from the other ladies about Viaka's ascendence over them; but when they found that Lissar gave her preferred companion no rich presents, nor insisted on her being seated at the high table with her during banquets, the jealousy ebbed. It disappeared for good when they learned-for Viaka, who was rather cleverer than she pretended, told them-that Lissar gossipped not at all and, indeed, at times barely spoke. If all Viaka gained in her congress with the princess was the loss of time that might have been more gainfully expended elsewhere, well then, there was little to be said after all for being the princess's apparent confidante. And the waiting-women all nodded together, and argued over whose turn it was to sleep in the royal bed-chamber that Lissar never set foot in.

The maid-servant who raked out the old embers and lit the fire in Lissar's bedroom (which was kept burning even in the summer, against the damp) more than once found the princess in her wild garden at an unfashionably early hour. The maid-servant had initially been alarmed by this, because it might mean the princess would require her to get up even earlier, and mend her fire before she arose. But the princess never made any such suggestion, and the maid-servant, cautiously, went on as she had begun, without telling anyone what she saw.

Once Lissar was stepping back indoors as the maid entered the little rose-colored room, and impulsively Lissar held out the twig she had between her fingers. She had bruised the leaves, and from her hand arose a wonderful smell, both sweet and pungent. "Do you know what this is?" she asked.

"No, splendor," the maid said; but she was caught for a moment by the wonderful scent and stood quite still, her bundle of sticks for the fire dangling unregarded from her hands. She remembered herself in a moment and ducked her head before the princess could have a chance to notice that she was not attending to her business; for the palace housekeeping was run under a stern eye.

The princess was having no such thoughts, but stood with her head a little bowed, twirling the little sweet leaves in her fingers. The maid, who had come to like her a little, in a wary and disbelieving way, said, on her knees by the hearth, "My aunt would know-splendor," and then crouched lower in the ashes, fearful that she had been too bold. The fact that Lissar never asked her to do anything was almost as alarming as if she asked her to do too much. She heard the stories from some of the other maids about some of the other palace ladies, and worried that perhaps when the blow came it would be stunning. Ash ambled up behind her and licked the back of her neck, and she started.

"Your aunt?" said Lissar. "It's only Ash," she added, as Ash did it again. "Do you mind it?" she said, not thinking that her maid would never tell her "no" but only in amazement that anyone might wish to reject Ash's advances. Lissar forgot to wear her cynicism about court life all the time, and she saw everything Ash did through a haze of devotion. The maid was saved from having to frame any reply by Ash's ceasing her attentions and climbing on the bed for a nap, having first scrabbled the coverlet into a twist to her shape and liking. The maid did not mind Ash licking the back of her neck-she'd grown up with dogs-but was braced against the possibility that her volunteering a comment might be counted too forward.

"Could I meet your aunt?" said Lissar, taking the maid's breath away.

"You can do anything, splendor," said the maid without irony, stating the truth as she saw it.

"Will you ask her to come to me, then?" said Lissar, equally without irony. She did know that she was asking something a little out of the way, but she did not know how the world looked to a young maid in a new job, especially a job involving royalty. The maid was silent for a moment, at the enormity of the breach of courtly order she was about to commit in response to this mildly spoken command, and wondered what Layith, who was mistress to all the maids, would say if she found out. "Yes, splendor," she said, accepting her fate.

The maid, who was young and simple and came from a simple family, merely appeared one morning about a fortnight later with a small woman, wearing a great many shawls, at her side. This was Rinnol; and Rinnol was a gardener, an herbalist, a midwife. Rinnol had never been to court, nor wanted to, and was very cross with her younger sister's girl, and inclined to refuse the summons. But Lissar's maid, panic-stricken at what might happen to her if she did not fulfill the princess's orders, talked her into it, she and her mother both, who thought that she had done a good thing for her daughter by sending her up to the palace.

So Rinnol came, prepared grudgingly to be polite but little else, for she had as little understanding of the breach of court etiquette as Lissar herself did. She found, to her surprise, a girl the age of her niece who was perfectly willing to get down on her knees and dig in the dirt with her fingers, despite the possibility of damp soft earthworms and small jointed things with many legs, and getting smudges on one's face and clothing. So Rinnol began to teach the princess which green things were weeds to pull out and which were things to be kind to, and she taught her the names of many and the uses of some, returning to the palace every few days for another lesson, without any words of any such arrangement ever passing between herself and Lissar. After that first day she simply stumped in, up the grand sweep of low stairs from the grand smooth garden that lay on the other side of the wall, through. the marble hallway, behind the statue with the homicidal draperies, and through to Lissar's tower room; and the waiting-women learned to bear her indifference because they had to, although she was one more mark against the princess in their minds. But Rinnol had found that she enjoyed the lessons, for Lissar was a good pupil.

Lissar surprised herself in this, since she had been given so few lessons to learn in her life she did not know that she was quite able to learn, and was further surprised to find that she could like learning besides. Hurra had taught her her letters, but those lessons had been given her grudgingly, and that she learned them seemed almost cause for shame. She knew how to ride a horse, so long as the horse was reasonably cooperative, and how to curtsey, and how to dance, which she believed she disliked, for she had never danced with a friend. But these things had not engaged her. She was stiff with Rinnol at first, and Rinnol with her, and Rinnol was not a cheerful personality, as Viaka was. Viaka, after one or two meetings, avoided Rinnol; plantlore did not interest her, and Rinnol was herself so dour. But Rinnol, like many people who follow a vocation and know they do well by it, was won over by Lissar's attention.

Their unlikely friendship blossomed to the point that Lissar visited her at home several times, in her little house an hour's brisk walk from the palace; for the odd erratic attention that her father's ministers paid her was such that she could absent herself even overnight occasionally with no one to tell her nay. There was indeed no one in a position to tell her anything but her father, and he seemed willing to let her avoid him, and live out her young girlhood with few adult restraints and admonitions.

Lissar then filled her days with Ash and Viaka and Rinnol, and they were enough.

She bore with state dinners, and with the occasional attempts by some member or other of the court to cultivate her. The seasons passed, and she watched them with greater attention than she had before Rinnol had come into her life, and she found that everything in nature interested her, and that she was happy to spend entire days walking the wide lands beyond the beyond the court gardens with no companion but her dog. And almost she managed to convince herself that she took no thought for the future

SIX

FOR LISSAR'S SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY THERE WAS TO BE A GRAND ball. Lissar did not know who made the decision; she was informed of it by one of the oldest and grandest court ladies, who occasionally embarrassed Lissar by trying, in her orotund and inflexible way, to mother her. Lissar received the news in silence and waited on events.

The portrait of the queen, which had hung in terrible splendor in the receiving-hall for the last year and a half, was to be moved, hung in the ballroom for this event. Its placement seemed to be the first and most important decision to be made, and everything else was arranged from that first priority. It was impossible to say whether the haunted portrait was assumed to be casting its blessing on its human child, or making sure that that child could never compete with its beauty; no one, afterwards, could remember where the initial idea of moving the portrait originated, although everyone vaguely, or hastily, guessed that it must have been upon the king's orders.

Because the curious thing was that it was not only Lissar who found the portrait's magnificence oppressive, or eerie, or ... no one was willing to pursue this thought because everyone insisted on grieving for the queen and loving her memory; but even the servants no longer went in the receiving-hall alone, when it was not in use, but always at least in pairs. No one ever remarked on this or made it difficult to accomplish; the feeling was too general. And so the beautiful queen stared down, glittering, and her people scuttled by her.

Lissar did not look forward to her birthday banquet and ball. There would be many foreign lords and princes there, as well as all the more local lords, and she knew she was now old enough to be auctioned off in marriage to the alliance best for her country. She knew because her waiting-women had kept her apprised of this, all through her seventeenth year, till the birthday at its climactic end began to look as dreadful as the thought of dancing, gracefully and gaily, before her mother's portrait was. When she heard, not that the portrait was to be moved, because she was rarely told anything directly, but of the moving of it, it was like the Iast blow of a long and tiring joust; this one knocked her out of the saddle at last, and she lay on the ground gasping for her lost breath. She did not look forward to her inevitable marriage, but she thought of it in terms of being sent away from her father, and this she found hopeful. In the meanwhile there was the ball to be got through.

Another very great lady, and one that brooked no nonsense about motherliness, attended to the production of Lissar's first real ball-gown. Everyone who might be expected to have the price of a ball-gown was invited to this royal birthday-party, and so the seamstresses and tailors had instantly been swamped; the very great lady, having been assigned this task a little late, merely plucked the seamstresses she wished to patronize from whatever other commitments they had (neither giving birth nor dying would have been sufficient excuse), as, perhaps, a farmwife might choose a chicken or two from the flock for the evening's supper. The chicken does not argue.

Lissar's gown was to have a vast skirt, and to be covered with so many tiny glinting stones as to be blinding to look upon. The grand lady thought privately that the princess was a washed-out little thing, and that to make her visible at all, drastic measures were required. The lady granted that there were points to work with; Lissar's hair had left off being mousy, and had darkened to black, except when the light struck it, when it gave off red sparks, just like her mother's. And she was tall and slender, as her mother had been, and could stand well, although she was still inclined to move awkwardly (the lady had only seen her in court situations), particularly if startled. Her tendency, indeed, to look like a trapped wild creature was the greatest difference between her and her mother; her mother had had all the poise and graciousness in the world. The very grand lady had the unexpected thought that perhaps this had been as much a part of her reputation as the anatomical facts of her beauty; for Lissar, upon close inspection, nhysically resembled her mother a great deal. If only she were less timid! Even her complexion was pale, and she looked at the grand lady as if the grand lady were a judge about to pronounce her sentence.

The grand lady was not much given to thought, and this one thought she had about the resemblance between the late queen and her daughter became so unsettling, as she began to follow it to its logical conclusion, that she banished thought altogether (as she had banished acknowledging her faint uneasiness about the rather overwhelming portrait that had been moved to the ballroom), and began treating Lissar with a kind of impatient briskness, as if Lissar herself were an obstacle to be got round.

Lissar bore this without protest; she had found that she did not want to think about her prospective marriage after all, because it would take away Rinnol and Viaka and her garden. It did not occur to her that she might request Viaka, at least, to go with her as her companion; but it did not occur to her either that any husband she might have could object to Ash.

On the day of the ball Lissar's hair was dressed very early, and then she was told to behave herself and not disturb any of the coils so delicately arranged, nor the golden filigree woven through it, to hold the fresh flowers that would be thrust among its tiny links at the very last moment that evening. Lissar felt as if she were carrying a castle on her head, and it made her scalp itch. Ash was put off by the perfumes of the hair oils, although nothing would keep Ash away from Lissar for long.

So Lissar took Viaka and went up the long stairs and down the long halls to visit Hurra, for Hurra liked to hear of grand doings at the palace, which would remind her of the grander doings in the queen's day, which would then be her opportunity, eagerly seized, to retell these at length. Lissar could sit at her usual place next to the (closed) window, and not get herself or her hair into any impetuous draughts.

Hurra told the story of the first ball that the old king had given to honor his son's new bride, and how lovely the bride had been; Hurra herself had been there, in one of the trains of one of the grand ladies. She lost herself in the telling, as she always did; but on some days her mad gaze softened and looked inward, and even Lissar could sit near her and be untroubled. When Hurra's voice fell into silence, Lissar stood up and came to stand behind Viaka's chair. Some shadow of her movement disturbed Hurra's reverie, and she looked up, blinking through tears, at Lissar's face.

A look of puzzlement passed over her face, and with it a look Lissar had not seen in two years: recognition. "Why, Lissla Lissar, child, is that you? You're all grown up. How can I not have noticed? I almost didn't recognize you, you have such a look of your mother. My dear, how much you do look like your mother!"

Lissar's hands clamped down on the back of Viaka's chair. "Thank you, Hurra,"

she said in a voice she could barely hear over the ringing in her ears, "but you do me too much honor. It is the headdress merely."

But Hurri shook her old head stubbornly, staring with bright, curiously fierce eyes at the young woman who had once been her charge. As Viaka stood up to join the princess in leave-taking, Hurri look a firmer grip on the young hands she held. "She looks like the queen! She does. Can't you see it?" She gave Viaka's hands a shake.

"Look! Don't you see it?"

Viuku turned awkwardly, her hands still imprisoned, to look over her shoulder at the princess; what she saw was the princess, looking white and frightened. Because she was the princess's friend she said: "I see Lissar in a splendid headdress for her first ball."

Hurra dropped her hands, and the bright fierce look faded from her face, and she began to work her empty hands in her lap, and to rock, and murmur, "The most beautiful woman in seven kingdums,"

Lissar, without another word, turned and fled, Ash, her ears flat with worry, crowding into her side. Viaka paused only long enough to pat the old woman's hand and say, with the distinctness she reserved for her own old and wits'-wandering relatives, "Good-bye, Hurra, we'll tell you all about the ball when we come next,"

and then hurried after her friend.

"I don't look like my mother," said Lissar, as Viaka caught up with her. She stopped, whirled around, seized Viaka by the shoulders. "Do I?"

Viaka shook her head, not knowing what to say, for Hurra was right. But Lissar had none of the manner of her mother, as the very grand lady had already noted, none of the regal graciousness, the consciousness of her own perfection, which was why Viaka herself had not observed the growing resemblance; that, and the fact that the queen had been dead for two years and the memory of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms begins over time to adapt somewhat to the rememberer's personal preferences in beauty.

Viaka went into the receiving-hall no oftener than Lissar did and so did not have her memory-or her awe-freshened by the scintillant example of the master painter's art. She did remember that when she was younger, and her parents had a few times taken their flock of children to some grand event where the king and queen were present, Viaka had been more frightened than drawn by the king's grandeur and the queen's exquisiteness, which qualities seemed to stand out around them like a mist that it would be dangerous for more ordinary mortals to breathe. Viaka remembered one occasion vividly, when a very pretty young woman had collapsed, sobbing, at the queen's feet, and Viaka had taken her breath in in a little jerk of fear when the queen bent down to the girl. She had been surprised, and then wondered at the strength of that surprise, both at the gentleness of the queen's touch and at the look of passionate adoration on the girl's face as she permitted herself to be lifted up.

All these thoughts went confusedly and fragmentarily through Viaka's head; they produced no useful possibilities for soothing remarks. "Your-your hair is a little like," stammered poor Viaka at last, quailing under the princess's eyes. "It is only old Hurra, you know, and she is easily confused."

"My hair is brown!" cried Lissar. "The queen's hair was black!" Viaka said nothing, but the spell had been broken, and Lissar felt a little relieved; she dropped her hands from her friend's shoulders and charged off down the hall, her skirts whipping around her, making Ash half-invisible amid them and, from the weight of her grandly arranged and decorated hair, holding her chin much higher than usual.

Viaka had to look up at her, as she hurried beside her; Viaka had been the taller a year ago, but Lissar had grown.

Perhaps it was the unusual angle, or the unusual expression on Lissar's face-unlike the very grand lady, Viaka knew Lissar's face often bore high color and animation; but the very grand lady had never seen the princess playing with her dog. This was nothing like the beaming face she daily turned to Ashand to Viaka; this was an obsessed intensity that-Viaka thought suddenly-made her indeed resemble the queen.

Lissar parted her lips a little and flared her nostrils, and Viaka remembered something her parents had said of the queen: "When she lets her lower lip drop a little, and her chin comes up and her nostrils flare-get out of the way! If she notices you, you'll be sorry."

"Lissar-" Viaka began, hesitatingly.

Lissar stopped. Viaka stumbled several more steps before she caught her balance to stop and turn; her friend was still staring straight ahead with that queer glassy fierce look. But then Ash, re-emerging from the quieting froth of petticoats, put her nose under her mistress's hand, and Lissar's gaze came back into ordinary focus.

Her chin dropped, and as it did so her headdress overbalanced her, and she put her free hand up to it with a little grimace of irritation. With that grimace Lissar was herself again. She looked at Viaka and smiled, if a little wryly.

"Well, I am not my mother, of course," she said. "Even if I am wearing too much hair and too many petticoats today. And that's all that really matters, isn't it?" She ran a thoughtful finger down the delicate ridge in the center of Ash's skull. "You know they've rehung the-the portrait"-Viaka did not have to ask what portrait "in the ballroom, don't you?" Viaka nodded. Lissar tried to laugh, and failed. "That should stop everyone from thinking I look like my mother. I'll try to be grateful. Come, help me dress, will you?"

"Oh yes," said Viaka, whose own toilette would be much simpler. "Yes, I would like to."

"Thank you. You can protect me from Lady Undgersim," Lissar said; Lady Undgersim was the very grand lady. "Shall we go to your rooms first, and get you in your dress: it will be practice for all the buttons and laces and nonsense on mine."

Viaka laughed, for her own dress was very pretty, and both of them knew that Viaka did not envy Lissar her splendid dress nor the position that went with it. "Yes, let's."

SEVEN

THE PRINCESS'S FIRST BALL WAS AS GRAND AS ANY PROUD AND

domineering lady could want. Lissar, watching from the corner of her eye, could see Lady Undgersim swell with gratified vanity at the immediate attention, the reverberent bustle involving many servants and lesser notables, that their entrance produced.

Lady Undgersim, indeed, had visible difficulty not pushing herself forward into the center of events; Lissar, on the other hand, would have been delighted to permit her to do so, and wished it were possible. She, Lissar, would be overlooked in Lady Undgersim's large shadow--or, better yet, her invisibility could have been such that she could have remained quietly in her little round room, keeping Ash company.

Ash, who hated to be parted from her princess, was capable on such occasions (said the maids, and there were the shredded bedding and seat covers as proof) of actual, incontrovertible bad temper. Lissar guessed there would be some marks of chaos when she got back. She wished she could shred a blanket herself, or rip a pillow apart, and throw the feathers into all these staring eyes.

Without warning, her father, resplendent in sapphire blue, was at her side, offering her his arm. Too suddenly: for she did not have time to compose herself, to prevent her body's automatic recoil from his nearness; and she knew by the tiny ripple of stillness around her that her involuntary step back had not been unnoticed. She swallowed, laid a suddenly cold, reluctant hand on his arm, and said, in a voice she did not recognize, "Forgive me my surprise. My eyes are dazzled by the lights, and I did not at once understand the great blue shadow that stooped over me." She thought that the courtiers would accept this-for how else to explain an only daughter, especially one so richly taken care of, cringing away from the touch of her father's hand? How indeed?

She looked briefly into his face and saw there the look she had spent the last two years eluding; the look she found treacherous but with no word for the treachery.

She had the sudden thought that these last two years of her life had been pointless, that she had learned nothing that was of any use to her, if she still could not escape that look in her father's eyes. It was all she could do not to snatch her hand away again, and the palm felt damp against the hot blue velvet.

The crowd parted as the king led the princess down the length of the huge hall; at the far end hung the painting of the dead queen. Lissar felt that she watched them come, but she dared not look into the queen's blazing face for fear of what she would find there: not treachery but understanding of treachery, and from that understanding; hatred. She kept her eyes fixed on the bottom of the frame, upon the small plaque, too small to read at a distance, that stated the queen's name and the artist's. "How beautiful she is!" Lissar heard, and her first thought was that they spoke of the queen.

"How beautiful she has grown!"

"How handsome he is!"

"What a beautiful couple they make!"

No, no! Lissar wanted to cry out; we do not make a beautiful Couple! He is my father!

"It is almost like seeing the king and queen when he first brought her home! She looks so like her mother! And see how proud he is of her! He is young again in his pride; he might not he a day over twenty himself, with the queen at his side!"

There was a wide clear space in front of the painting of the queen, for this was where the dancing was to be held. To one side the musicians sat, and she felt their eyes piercing her; their gaze felt like nails, and she felt dizzy, as if from loss of blood.

Her father swept her around, to face back the way they had come; her full white skirts whirled as she turned, and twinkled in the light. She raised her chin to look out steadily over the heads of her father's people, and she heard a collective sigh as they stared at her. Then she felt her father's big heavy hand clamp down over the fingers that rested so gingerly on his sleeve, and she felt as if his hand were a gaoler's bracelet of iron, and as she caught her breath in a gasp she heard, like a chorus with an echo, "How like her mother she is!"

"She is the perfect image of her mother!"

She found herself trembling, and her father's hand weighed on her more and more till she thought she would go mad, and there before all the people staring at her, try to gnaw her hand off at the wrist, like an animal in a trap. Her mouth fell open a little and she panted, like a trapped animal. Her headdress was as heavy as a mountain, and she could not keep her chin up; it was pushing her down, down to the floor, through it to the cold implacable earth, and she could feel her father's body heat, standing next to him, standing too close to him.

"She is just as her mother was!"

"How proud he must be!"

"How proud he is! You can see it in his eyes!"

"I give you," said the king, and at his side the princess trembled, "the princess Lissla Lissar, my daughter, who is seventeen years old today!"

The applause and cheers filled the room like thunder. She took the occasion to snatch her hand free, to bury both hands in her flooding skirts, and curtsey low to the people who hailed her. They loved this, and the cheers grew as enthusiastic as courtiers, well aware of their own dignity, ever permit themselves to become. The king raised his hands for silence, and the princess rose gracefully, tipping her chin up again in just the way her mother had, the white flowers in her headdress framing her young regal face. The king gestured to the musicians and caught the princess around the waist.

Perhaps a few of the onlookers noticed how stiffly the princess responded, how awkward she seemed to find it, held so in her father's arms. But the occasion was grand and dizzying, and she was known to be a modest girl. The light flickered as if the air itself were the breeze-ruffled surface of some great bright lake. There were thousands of candles hung in the great chandeliers of silver and gold, and thousands of clear drops and icicles of crystal that reflected each candleflame thousands upon thousands of times. The saner, more sober oil lamps that stood at all times at intervals around the huge room were lit, and, as always, polished till they were almost as bright as the crystals on the chandeliers, and the light they reflected was golden.

But for grand occasions there were also heavy gem-studded rings hung round their throats, and these on this night flashed and sparkled as well.

The costumes the courtiers wore were the grandest thing of all, grander even than the tapestries that hung on the walls, that were worth the fortunes of many generations of kings. All the colors and fabrics that were the finest and richest shone and gleamed upon arms and shoulders, backs and breasts. Local seamstresses and tailors had outdone themselves, and when even this surpassing splendor was not enough, messengers had been sent far away for strange rare decorations heretofore unseen in this country; for Lissar's father's courtiers were very conscious that they were the richest of the seven kingdoms and must not be outshone by any visitors, however lofty and important. All the jewellery that present wealth could buy or past victories bestow upon its heirs was on display.

It is unlikely that anyone there was entirely undazzled, entirely themselves, or much inclined to see anything that they had not already decided beforehand that they would see. Almost everyone decided that the young princess looked just like her mother, and looked no further. Only two sets of eyes saw anything different: Viaka watched anxiously, but from such a distance, as she was not an important person, that she could not say for sure that the princess's frozen look was anything but the grandness of the occasion and the gorgeous dishonesty of thousands of candles reflected in thousands of gems and crystal drops. And the queen's eyes knew the truth, and hated it, but she was only paint on canvas, and could do nothing but watch.

And within her costume, her magnificence, her heritage, Lissar moved, invisible to the crowd. The music howled in her ears; it sounded no different to her, no more like music, than had the cheers of the crowd earlier. She went as her father guided her, and had no need to listen to the music, for this was the easiest thing she did that whole long desperate night, moving as quickly as possible away from her father's lightest touch, that he might not touch her any more firmly. As the king was an excellent dancer, Lissar stepped here and there as if she were an accomplished dancer herself, as if the music itself moved her feet.

And so the royal couple passed, magnificent, as dazzling as any chandelier, with the shining medals and golden chains upon the king's breast, and the gleaming tiny colored stones sewn upon Lissar's white dress, down the long hall they had walked up. And then the first dance was over, and most people stopped looking at the king and princess so that they might look for a partner, and seized upon whom they would or could; and the dancing became general.

The king courted the princess as assiduously as a young lover might; rarely and reluctantly, it seemed, did he release her into another man's arms. One foreign prince took offense, for he had understood that the purpose of the ball had been to introduce the princess to possible suitors, and he saw the king's reluctance as an insult to his eligibility. He and his courtiers left early, watched in dismay by the king's ministers, for he was a very wealthy prince. Two of the ministers then bore down upon the king; one took Lissar's hand and presented her to a duke who was looking for a young wife, and could afford to pay for one that suited him.

Lissar took the proffered arm in a daze, and danced away with the duke, the size of whose midsection necessitated a somewhat awkward arrangement Lissar's hand reached only as far as the duke's large, soft upper arm. Lissar danced lightly with this partner too, her body reflexively glancing away from the guiding hand at her waist. "How ethereal she looks!" murmured the onlookers. "Even with that great clumsy brute she moves like flower petals on the wind."

"How modest she is!" thought the duke. "She would do."

But the king would not listen to his ministers. After but the one dance with the duke he took his daughter away again for himself, and so the long night wore on.

Occasionally she was permitted to stop, to rest, to sit down on some tall padded chair, to drink something cool and sweet. When it was once Viaka who brought her her glass, she barely recognized her friend; Viaka, looking into her face, thought she looked like one in a fever, her eyes too bright and unfocussed, but she dared not say anything. She dropped a curtsey to the king without looking into his face, where her friendship for the princess might have given her the same knowledge that glittered in the queen's eyes; but then perhaps not, for she loved her own parents, and they loved their children, as parents and as children. She went away again, swearing to herself that she would stay up however late she had to, to see the princess to bed herself.

Lissar drank what was brought to her, for her throat was dry with fear; but she thought little of what she drank, for her father stood near her, and she could think of nothing else. When he offered to share a plate of food with her, she refused, and averted her eyes as he lifted a tiny biscuit ornamented with pate in the shape of a fish, and set it between his red lips.

There was an enormous mahogany and gilt clock, its face starred with rubies, that crouched on a silver table near the door Lissar had entered by, a clock grand and glorious enough to overlook a royal ball. From a distance she could not always read the hands against the jewelled and enamelled face, but she could make out the dancing figures that moved around its circumference as the hours passed; she looked at it as often as she could without noticeably turning her head. As she was harried through the figures of the dance she raised her eyes when she faced the door, to let her gaze sweep across the clock, and lowered them again before she must face her mother's face. The tiny dancing figures did not seem to her to dance, but to creep.

At midnight she begged to be excused; but the king said that the party had barely begun, and did her feet hurt so soon? Her other dancing-partners must be careless boors, and had tread on her; he would have to keep her all to himself. The ministers, hovering around, agreed with the king's initial sentiments, for they wanted the princess on public view for as long as possible, but were twittering in alarm and frustration by the end of their master's short speech.

"But the princess must meet-"

"But the duke is very taken with-"

"But the baron came specially to-"

"Nonsense!" said the king, throwing out his chest, and tossing back his heavy hair, still as yellow and as thick as it had been in his youth. Many female eyes were fixed upon him, and not merely for his rank. "This is her birthday-party, and she is here to enjoy herself. She does not wish to meet all your old men."

"They are not all old!" protested one minister, misunderstanding, for he was young himself, and had not held his position long. The king looked at him with a look that said he would not keep his post much longer.

"Who would make her happier than her own father?" he said, looking down from his magnificent height upon the unfortunate young minister, who was small and slender.

"But-" began the minister whose statue stood in Lissar's antechamber, silently cursing the young minister's bluntness. "And," said the king, fixing this minister with his brilliant eyes, "she is my daughter, and I can do with her as I please. As I please tonight is to dance with her!" He seized the princess's shrinking hand once more, and they joined the dance.

It was not Lissar's feet merely that hurt; it was her whole body. She felt that her spirit had come loose from its webbing deep within her bones and muscles, had slid from beneath its center behind her heart, and was being tossed about inside her fragile skin, lost in the dark. It was hard to keep herself in her body, conscious of the need to keep it upright, its feet moving in specific patterns, its arms raised, a faint stiff smile on its face; conscious of the thick male arm crushing her ever nearer to the immense male breast opposite her. She smelled warm clean velvet, and perfume; and she smelled him. She thought he stank.

Panic whispered to her; he would smash her against him soon; it grew harder and harder to see over his high broad shoulder; he would hold her so tightly that she would smother, her face in warm velvet, her lips and forehead cut by medals and gems. She thought that if she could not see over his shoulder, see that there was more of the world than his encircling arm, she would yet go mad.

At one o'clock, all but weeping, she insisted that she was exhausted, and must go to her ... she stumbled over the word "bed" and altered it to chamber. To rest, she said. She was used to going to ... sleep early, and rising early; the people, the music, the myriad flickering lights, all were overwhelming her; she was very sorry, but she was at the end of her strength. She sank down in a chair as she said this, leaving her arm in her father's grip like a hostage. She blinked her eyes, and the heavy headdress remorselessly bent her head forward.

The ministers re-formed around them, as they did any time the king paused. One of them, the oldest, the one who seemed the least inclined to press the duke's or the prince's or the baron's suit, said, "Of course, my dear, your splendor, such an evening is a great strain on one's resources when one is not-er-accustomed to it."

Lissar could feel the ministers' eyes withdraw from her and refocus on the king, who stood beside them, tall and handsome and strong and unwearied. The king laughed, a rich full sound, and when he spoke to the princess, his tone was caressing.

"Go back to your soft narrow bed, then, my lovely, and rest well, that beauty may blossom again on the morrow. Sleep sweetly," he said, and he raised her hand to his lips, "in your white child's bed, with your lace pillows and your smooth cool sheets." After he kissed her hand he kissed her cheek; she closed her eyes.

When he released her it was only her own weariness that prevented her from fleeing him headlong; slowly instead, and with the half-helpless grace of someone near the point of collapse, she stood, and tipped her chin up; and found herself on the arm of the old minister-the first arm in the whole long evening she had been glad to lean on.

He escorted her to the door she had entered so many centuries ago, murmuring small nothings that neither of them paid attention to; but she recognized that he was attempting to be kind to her, not only preventing the princess, the king's daughter, from making an awkward exit. At the door she dropped her hand and turned to face the old man, to thank him. He bowed to her and, upon straightening, looked into her face as if looking for a sign. He opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again, bowed a second time and turned away silently.

Viaka had been watching, and was waiting for her at the door. She looked into her friend's face and then put an arm around her waist, expecting to have to support her; but as soon as Lissar was free of the ballroom and walking down the hall full of none but ordinary serving folk and occasional lords and ladies-no kings, no painted queens-her strength began to return, and soon they were walking so quickly that Viaka, with her shorter legs, had to half trot to keep up.

Lissar paused once to pull off her shoes-"Oh, don't run," pleaded Viaka, recognizing what this meant; "I am much too tired." Lissar laughed, not a light-hearted sound, but one not devoid of humor either, and they went in a somewhat more leisurely fashion the rest of the way to Lissar's round tower room.

Her bed had, as it turned out, to be remade, down through to the top mattress, for when Ash had finished flinging the blankets all over the room (including one into the fireplace, where the banked fire scorched it beyond recovery, and, as Lissar said severely to Ash, who knew she was in disgrace but did not care, it was fortunate she had not set the palace on fire or at least the room and herself) she began digging a hole, causing a considerable rain of feathers.

Lissar, although she attempted to give Ash the scolding she deserved, at heart cared for this as little as Ash cared for the burnt blanket. She tore off her ball-gown, to the dismay of the other ladies who had appeared to assist and, as they hoped, to hear from the princess's own lips how she had enjoyed her ball. They were all of them envious that the king had danced with none but his daughter; but Lissar would not speak, and she dropped her hall-gown on the floor as if it were no more than a rag. Her high-heeled shoes, embedded with diamond chips, had been left in the receiving-room, like an offering at the feet of the statue. Her stockings followed her dress, and then she wrapped herself in an old woolen dressing-gown and began tearing at her hair. Viaka took her hands away and began to take it down herself, gently.

The other ladies were dismissed, somewhat abruptly, but since the princess would not play the game with them of what a lovely ball it had been, how beautiful she (and they) had looked, and how splendid her father was, they were not all that unwilling to go, and talk among themselves about how unsatisfactory a princess Lissar was, even on an occasion like this one. They had thought that her very own ball would have had an effect, even on her.

Lissar and Viaka and Ash went to sit in the cold garden; Lissar loaned Viaka another dressing-gown, so that she would not harm her own ball-gown.

After Ash's initial transports, including suitable but absentminded grovellings when she was scolded, were over, followed by racing around the perimeter of the garden at a speed that made her only a vague fawn-grey blur in the starlight, she came and wrapped as much of her long leggy self as would fit around and over Lissar's lap. Autumn was passing and winter would be there soon; the three of them huddled together for warmth. Viaka kept looking into her friend's face, a narrow line of worry between her own brows; but for once she had nothing to say, and they sat in silence, Lissar combing her released hair through her fingers as if reassuring herself it was her own.

Rinnol's niece came out in a little while to tell Lissar that the bath she had ordered was ready. Even in Fichit's voice was some consternation that Lissar should wish instantly to divest herself by washing of so delicious an event as the evening's ball.

But Lissar at once disentangled herself from Ash's legs and tail and came indoors.

Viaka, who was happy to keep her fancy clothes on a little longer, for the only shadow cast on her evening was by watching her friend, came indoors too. She carefully took the protective dressing-gown off, so that she might float around the little round room, humming gently to herself, pretending still to be in the arms of young Rantnir, son of her parents' friends. She was anxious about Lissar, but willing to set that anxiety aside; being a princess, she thought, was doubtless a difficult business in ways she had no guess of.

She recollected herself enough from the sweet dream of Rantnir's eyes, when Fichit emerged from the bath-room to ask if Viaka had any orders for her, to ask if Lissar had ordered dinner; and upon the negative, commanded some herself. She had eaten with Rantnir, but she could guess that Lissar had eaten nothing, and perhaps after her bath she would be relaxed enough to be ravenous-which Viaka felt that by rights she should be. Viaka herself, who did not chase a fleethound around a garden on a daily basis, nor go for long plant-gathering walks with the indefatigable Rinnol, was often astonished at the amount of food Lissar could eat.

One of life other maids was still creeping about the round edges of the tower room in search of escaped feathers.

Lissar rubbed herself all over with the soap, and washed her hair vigorously. Over and over again she scrubbed at her cheek, as if her father's kiss had left an indelible mark. The bath was so hot as almost to be scalding, for she had added even more hot water from the ewer after Fichit had left and yet beneath the soap and hot water she still smelled warm velvet.... She stayed in the water till it cooled, and when she came out, rubbing at her hair, she found Viaka asleep in a chair by the fire, her face in her hand, smiling happily in her sleep, with a tray of covered dishes next to her on the round table.

Lissar tucked a blanket around her and climbed into bed herself, with no inclination to discover what was under the dish-covers, her wet hair still wrapped in towels. Her last waking memory was of Ash's long length stretching out beside her.

EIGHT

LISSAR AWOKE LATE, AND MUZZY-HEADED, WITH A HEAVY, dragging sense of dread, but without at first remembering any cause. She recalled vague oppressive dreams; remembered one in which someone was shouting at her, though she could not remember the words spoken, nor if they were uttered in joy or wrath.

In another, a distant figure waved at her, in a gesture like a farmer scaring crows from cropland. His sleeves gleamed: blue velvet.

Even after she recalled the evening before she felt confused; the ball was over with, the new morning wanted to tell her. She had disliked the night before very much, but ... her thoughts trailed away, and morning became an evanescent thing, with no comfort to give. It wasn't over with. Last night, the ball, had been a beginning, not an ending.

There had been many lords present; she had known they were there, though she had been introduced to few of them, by their heraldry. She had seen them conferring with her father's ministers, as her gaze wheeled through the room and her father drew her through the long dances. She sought out the ministers to focus on, to keep her feet when the ground seemed too uncertain; to eliminate the possibility of accidentally meeting the eyes of her mother's sovereign portrait. Only her mother and the ministers, in all the huge ball-room, were not dancing; even the servants seemed almost to dance, as they made their ways through the guests; even the musicians moved and swayed as they bent over their instruments. Only her mother, and the ministers, were quiet enough that she could look at them without making herself dizzy; and looking at her mother made her more than dizzy.

The lords danced with other ladies; but some of the lords stood a while and spoke to the ministers, and when they did this she saw how often their eyes looked toward her. What if one of them bid for her? What if the fat duke were to offer his best price for her?

Why did these thoughts seem less horrible than others that remained wordless?

She sat up suddenly, dislodging Ash, who muttered to herself and burrowed farther under the bedclothes without ever opening her eyes. What if-? She could not bear the what if's. She would not let herself think of them.

Viaka had gone; but someone had come in and quietly made up the fire while she slept, and taken away the supper she had not touched. There was water that had been hot but was still warm in a basin with fresh towels laid out beside her tooth-brush; and a fresh dressing-gown lay over the back of a chair. She stood up slowly, feeling old, as old as Hurra, as old as Viaka's tiny bent grandmother, who was carried from her bed to her chair by the hearth every day, and back again every night; as old as the stones in her round tower room.

She picked

up

the dressing-gown,

gratefully inhaling its

ordinary,

quilted-cotton-with-a-whiff-of-laundry-soap aroma, ignoring the creaking of her joints. There was nothing of ball- perfume ... velvet. . . about the dressing-gown. She put it on and opened the door to the garden.

After the warmth of the bed, and of Ash, who radiated heat like a hairy, long-legged stove, the autumn wind cut through her, cut through her skin, and tugged, as if it were peeling back a layer of ... what?.. . left by the ball: of a gummy film deposited by the touch of all those eyes, of warm blue velvet, that her bath the night before had not dissolved. She went outdoors, feeling the wind on her face, blasting through the seams of her nightgown and up the sleeves of the dressing-gown; she paused, shivering, at the mint patch, not yet frost-killed, and pulled up several stems. She bruised them in her hands and put her face down among the sharp-smelling leaves, breathing thankfully in-till she coughed from the sting at the back of her throat.

She looked up, at the blue sky; it was a beautiful day. She would take Ash for a long walk-they would go to see Rinnol; and after that she would feel much better.

Absently she put a few mint leaves in her mouth and dropped the rest in the pocket of her robe. She rubbed her mint-sticky hands through her hair, banishing the last whiff of perfume. It was a beautiful day, and it was going to be all right. She would think no further than this fragile splendid morning, and the wind on her face.

She went back indoors to drag Ash out of bed, where she would stay, so far as Lissar could tell, till her bladder burst, if no one disturbed her. Once or twice Lissar had been a little late, and Ash had left a small yellow trail in her wake, just the few steps from the bed to the garden's threshold. Lissar was careful that no rugs were laid at that edge of the cold stone floor, and she cleaned up herself, and soaked the towel afterwards in her bath when she was done with it.

"Ash," she said. Nothing. "Ash, " she repeated. Faint rustling, then silence. She walked to the bed and ripped the bedclothes off. Ash opened one eye, every graceful line of her body expressing outrage and indignation. "It's time to go out,"

said Lissar. "You will go, or I will pull you out of bed by your tail."

Ash yawned hugely, displaying several ells of pink tongue, daintily stepped out of bed and stretched elaborately (this absorbed most of the floor space of the small round room; Lissar retreated to the doorway) and then bounded for the open door.

After she relieved herself Lissar chased her around for a few minutes-or Ash let her think she was chasing her-and when they came back in again they were both in quite a good humor and ready for breakfast.

Lissar brushed her dark hair, separating by hand the strands that the mint-sap had matted, relishing still the smell of it, glad that she need not have her hair imprisoned in a headdress or herself in a ball on this day. She banished the knowledge that last night was a beginning, not an ending, from her mind; she concentrated on thoughts of breakfast, and on what Rinnol was likely to be looking for, this late in the season.

Fichit should be here soon, to see if she was awake yet, to see if she wanted anything. She had missed dinner last night; she was very hungry. She would make an excellent breakfast. Lissar hummed to herself while Ash chewed on her current favorite stick, leaving wet, gooey wood fragments on the carpet.

Fichit came in almost immediately with the breakfast, but Lissar's eyes had barely rested on the well-burdened tray when she noticed that on Fichit's heels came Lady Gorginvala. Lissar could not remember her ever having penetrated so far as to the little room before; the receiving-room with the statue was much more her usual habitat. She was a friend, insofar as such ladies had friends, of Lady Undgersim.

Gorginvala was wearing a gown so elaborate that only someone who had seen her in a ball-dress could imagine it as ordinary day wear; she had some trouble getting through the door. Lissar paused, hairbrush still in her hand.

Lady Gorginvala cleared her throat and said, as if announcing to a multitude,

"Your father wishes you to attend him in the receiving-hall, as soon as you are . . ."

She paused, and her eyes travelled briefly over Lissar, still in her nightdress, its hem muddy from running through the garden. ". . . Ready." She turned, stately as a docking ship, and went back up the few low stairs as if they were tile steps to a throne, and disappeared. The odor of her perfume lingered, an almost visible cloud.

Ash sneezed.

Lissar laid down her hairbrush and felt the weight of the evening before shut down over her again. She forgot that it was a beautiful blue day with a wide bright sky, a perfect day for visiting Rinnol and petitioning for another lesson in plantlore. She felt trapped, squeezed; she felt.... She took a deep breath. She tapped her fingers against the back of her hairbrush, shook her hair back over her shoulders. She was imagining things. She didn't even know what the things she was imagining were. But when she picked the hairbrush up again, her hand trembled.

There was no reason for her to have hated the ball as much as she did.... The word hated just slipped into her thoughts; she had not meant to use it. How could she have hated her seventeenth-birthday ball? No reason, no reason. No reason to hate and fear her father. No reason.

Ash ate Lissar's breakfast for her, licking the jam jar clean and leaving the porridge. Lissar dressed herself as if she were still going for a walk in the woods: a plain shirt, with a green tunic and long dark skirt over it, and plain dark boots. She wore no jewellery, and tied her hair with a green ribbon not quite the shade of the tunic. She did not look like a princess. Her hair was pulled severely away from her face; she fastened the shirt closed up to her throat, and the sleeves came down nearly over her hands. The heavy skirt gave no hint to the curve of hip and leg beneath it, and the boots hid her ankles.

The upper footman who was doorkeeper to the receiving-hall that day looked at the princess's clothing with something like alarm, but he knew his place, and made no comment. He stepped past the doors and announced, Her young greatness, the princess Lissla Lissar.

Lissar, her hand on Ash's back, stepped forward. The receiving hall was alight with lamps and candelabra and the flashing of jewels; there were windows in the room, but they seemed very small and distant, muffled by the heavy grand curtains that framed them. Daylight did not seem to enter the room gladly, as it did most rooms, but hesitated at the sills, kept at bay by the gaudier glare of the royal court.

Lissar thought it looked as if everyone from the ball had simply stayed up through the night and into the morning, and now had moved from the ballroom into the smaller receiving-hall and throne room, bringing the night-time with them. In the smaller room there were too many bodies, and too many shadows, tossed and flung and set against each other by the tyranny of too many candleflames, too many gestures by too many jewelled hands.

Involuntarily Lissar's eyes went to the place where her mother's portrait usually hung, expecting to see bare wall; to her dismay the portrait had already been returned to its place, and the painted eyes caught at hers like claws. Lissar blinked, and in tearing her gaze loose again two tears, hot as blood, fell from under her eyelids.

Why were so many people present? She knew that her father's court had grown over the last year, and as she avoided its occupations as much as possible, perhaps she did not know if this was an unusual gathering or not. But there was a quality of expectancy about these people that she did not like, too eager an inquiry as they turned to look at her. She had nothing for them, nothing to do with them. Nothing!

This thought wanted to burst out of her, she wanted to shout Nothing aloud, and let the sound of it push the peering faces away. But she knew that the word was not true, nor had it any charm to save her.

Last night was a beginning, not an ending.

But she still did not exactly know, beginning of what; she did not want to have to know yet. She wanted to go for a walk in the woods with her dog. She wanted not to return. Her hand on Ash's back quivered, and the tall dog turned her head to gaze up at her person's face. Whatever it is, I'm here too, her eyes said.

"My daughter!" said her father, and swept regally toward her, his handsome face shining and his tunic perfectly fitted to his wide shoulders and slim hips. Lissar registered that he was not wearing the glittering costume of the ball the night before; then his hand seized hers, and her mind went blank.

The three moved down the length of the room slowly. The princess looked dazed, as if she was having difficulty setting one foot after the other. (It is just like last night, she thought. No, it is not just like last night; Ash is here.) She seemed to cling more to her dog than to her father's hand. What an odd creature she was! And she was dressed so plainly; had she not sufficient warning that she was to wait upon her father and her father's court? But why would a princess ever dress as plainly as this? What matter be a princess? She looked like a woodcutter's daughter, not a king's.

Many people remembered how blank and bewitched she had looked she night before, and frowned; could she not remember what was due her rank, due her father; her father who was royal in all things, all ways, as her mother had been, whom she resembled so much in face and figure? How could this daughter do nothing but stumble, this daughter of such a king, such a queen, how could she refuse to meet the eyes of her own people?

But the king was resplendent enough for them both, and the people's eyes left thc unsatisfactory princess and returned to linger upon the king. More than one of the older courtiers murmured to their neighbors that they had not seen him look so strong and happy since the first days of his marriage; one would never know that he was thirty years older than the young woman at his side; he looked young enough to be her lover.

Murmured the older courtiers' neighbors: the princess's physical resemblance to her mother is astonishing to us all, and makes us recall how it was when we had both a king and a queen, and how happiness radiated from them like heat from a sun, and warmed the entire country. Briefly their eyes touched the unsatisfactory princess again: how pale she was; there was no heat there, to warm her people's hearts.

What a thousand pities that the princess has not more presence!

When the king reached the dais where his throne now stood alone, he swung the princess around, or he would have, had she not moved so stiffly, like a wooden doll with too few joints. The tall dog at her side was more graceful. Princess Lissla Lissar looked down at the dog, who looked up at her, and the court saw her lips move briefly; the dog sat, and curled its long tail around its feet, like a cat.

"I have an announcement!" cried the king; and all the court smiled and were happy to see him so joyful. It will be about the princess's marriage, they said wisely to each other; the king of Smisily must have made the offer after all; or perhaps our duke Mendaline fell so in love with her last night....

"I have an announcement!" the king repeated, gleefully, as if keeping them in suspense for another few minutes brought as much pleasure to him as the announcement itself.

"The princess Lissla Lissar is of an age, now, to marry." He turned to look at her, moving to arm's length, as if to display her to best advantage to his audience, perhaps to the future husband, while he admired her with a connoisseur's vision. One or two of the ministers-the ones who had tried the hardest the night before to present the princess to different dancing-partners-looked faintly uneasy. The pale princess closed her eyes.

"Is she not beautiful? Look at her, my friends, my lords and ladies, my vassals, servants, bondsfolk, ministers, and all of my court. Is she not the loveliest thing your eyes have ever beheld?"

The two or three ministers who were feeling vaguely uneasy exchanged even more vaguely uneasy glances.

In fact the princess was not the most beautiful thing the court of the king who had been married to the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms had ever beheld, and had they any moment of doubt they need only raise their eyes to the portrait of that queen which hung behind the very dais where the king stood and spoke of his princess. The painting seemed to be presiding over the magnificent room, the drama being enacted at its feet. Never had the painted face seemed fiercer or more compelling, or more alive; certainly it seemed more alive than the drooping princess, dangling from her father's hand, leaning upon her dog. She swayed a little, and looked ill.

The uneasiness of the ministers became a little more general, but the uneasiness had yet to take definite shape or name. It began to occur to the court that they had seen very little of the princess for the whole of the seventeen years of her existence, and was that not very odd, for a princess, and an only child of so grand a personage as their king, as well? It was true that she had been a little more visible the last two years, but she rarely spoke, and seemed to prefer the company of her dog; there were rumors of a dirty, uncouth old woman, some herb-hag, that the princess was mysteriously attached to; no one knew why.

Was it not possible therefore that there was ... something amiss about the princess?

The smiles began to fade off the faces of the courtiers. She looked, as they thought about it, haggard. Did she have a wasting illness? (What had, finally, her mother died of? The doctors never said.) Suddenly the king's over-jovial words struck on them harshly. Could he not see that there was something wrong with her?

Although perhaps he could not. She was his daughter and his only child, and he could not look at her but with eyes of love. But ... they did not want to think it, but they did ... perhaps there was a sinister reason for her habitual absence from her father's court, for her reluctance to take up her birthright, her royalty-why did she shrink from the eyes of her people?

The court shook itself, and decided to be impatient with the princess, impatient so that they need think no worse.

But the king-did he not speak a little wildly? Was it completely . . . proper ... even in a king, to praise his daughter so extravagantly? Some of the courtiers remembered his madness upon the queen's death, and the long months he had remained locked up in his rooms during her decline, seeing almost no one, state affairs attended to by a featureless collection of ministers with ponderous voices. Those had been bad times for the country.

But that was all over ... so everyone had hoped. He had been lit and capable again now for over a year-surely there was nothing really wrong now (with him or with the princess)-it would be a good thing when the princess was married and gone-he would settle down again then. He praised her extremely because she so obviously did not deserve it; with a father's love he wished her shortcomings to be overlooked; which meant that he was aware of her shortcomings.

It was really not surprising that any man should be a little over-anxious, over-thoughtful of his only daughter, particularly when that daughter was also his only child. And this girl has yawn up so distractingly like and yet unlike her mother-it is not to be wondered at, that the king does not know quite how to behave toward her.

He still misses his wife, of course, for he has not remarried. That is probably the girl's doing. Every girl wants her father to herself. Look at her now, pretending to be so bashful, so shy that she cannot open her eyes, as if she did not like being the center of attention. Look at her, half-swooning, making sure by her weakness that her father will stand close, will hold her, protect her, not take his eyes off her. She probably has a hundred little petting, luring ways with him when they're alone together. And the poor man, thinks the sun rises and sets in her. Just see the way he looks at her.

It will be better when she is married and gone.

"The princess, as I say, is to be married!" And the king gave a high-pitched giggle as he said it; and then all the court truly was uneasy. "It is high time she was married, for she is a woman grown!" And he stroked her arm in a way that made many members of the court look away, although they would not have admitted why, even to themselves.

"The princess, furthermore, is to be married very soon; the sooner the better."

The king's voice, too loud, boomed out over the heads of his people. The candles flickered, as if in response; people's gazes flickered, the expressions on their faces flickered. "I have set a great machinery in motion today, this morning, to have all this great land in readiness for the most magnificent celebration any of us has ever seen! I decided upon this thing last night, at the ball, as I beheld the princess for what seemed to be the first time; and I realized there was no time to waste. And so I set about the work this morning before dawn."

A sense of dread had settled on the company no less profound than that which lay upon the princess, who still stood silent, facing her father's people, suffering his hand upon her arm.

"For in the princess's face I have seen a thing more glorious than any I have looked on before in the long years of my life: I have seen my youth returned to me, something no man ever thinks to behold, something no man-ere now-has ever been granted. In three days' time we shall celebrate the wedding of our beautiful, beloved princess, Lissla Lissar-but it is not only your princess's wedding you shall celebrate, but your king's as well-for I shall be her bridegroom!"

Lissar fainted. She swam back toward the light again, fleeing from the roaring of invisible monsters who seemed to press close around her. She thought briefly that one of them had seized her right arm-the arm her father had held-which ached fiercely. But as she opened her eyes she realized that it was only that she had fallen on that side, and bent the arm painfully under her; and she noticed further that her shoulder ached, as if wrenched, and she guessed that her father had not wanted to let her go.

For a moment she could not move. It seemed her trapped arm held the rest of her captive; she was twisted in such a way that for a moment there seemed no way to begin the untwisting. She lay, blinking, her mind, still confused by the roaring of the monsters, failing to make sense of what she saw; the rippling of hems and the strange, abrupt, unconnected motions of shoes and boots bewildered her.

Very near her eyes was a narrow dark shape with a slightly irregular outline, like a table-leg, perhaps; she had the sense of something suspended over her, something not too high or far away, and of the presence of more legs similar to the first. But they could not be table-legs after all, for the one directly in the line of her slowly clearing sight was . . . hairy. And then the rest of her consciousness returned to her in a rush, and she perceived, at the same moment as she understood that it was a living leg braced in front of her face, that it was Ash's leg, and Ash who was standing over her, that she was lying on the floor of the dais, and that the roaring in her ears was not of invisible monsters any longer, but her father's shouting voice:

"Kill the damned dog! Where are the archers? Kill it! Oh, my darling, my darling!

And I not wearing a sword!"

Beneath his voice, another sound, much nearer her ear: the sound of Ash's growl, echoing through the deep fleethound chest. She sat up at once and grabbed Ash around the neck; no one would dare harm her with the princess clinging to her-said a tiny voice in the back of her head, but it did not sound certain. Or perhaps the archers will come, and will dare to shoot, and perhaps their arrow-points will fall away just the width of a thread, just at the moment of release....

And then her father's voice drowned out the tiny voice. "I will not have a dog about me that behaves so! Kill it! I care not for what you say! I am the king!"

"No!" Lissar climbed shakily to her feet, leaning on Ash, who had stopped growling. Almost. But her ears were still pinned back, and her usual gentle expression was replaced by an intent, almost longing look that every hunter in the room might have recognized; and perhaps everyone but Lissar recalled that the prince Ossin's hounds were renowned for their hunting prowess-and for their loyalty to the person they accept as their master.

"Ash is my best friend! You will not take her away from me!"

The court was startled again, in this morning full of shocks, by the strength of the princess's voice, that little weak creature who could barely stand on her feet, saying such words, and about a dog.... They noticed too that for the moment she was not pale either; her cheeks were flushed and her hazel eyes flashed.

The king, blustering, reached out to lay possessive hold upon his daughter again, but Lissar shied away from his touch, and the tall dog moved not a whit, nor shifted her steady, baleful regard, and the king's hands dropped to his sides again, empty.

"You have three days to say good-bye to your childhood pet, then," said he at last, and there was no love nor gentleness in his voice. "For you shall have it no longer, after the wedding--after our wedding!" He cried the last words like a herald declaring a victory, and struck himself on the chest with a blow so fierce it must have hurt.

"For with the wedding, you shall set aside all childish things and enter into your womanhood, and the devotion you have learnt-and I do not say it was ill learnt-shall now be centered upon me. Upon only me!" And again he smote himself on the chest.

"No," whispered Lissar, and the color drained away from her face again. The roaring returned to her ears, and she staggered a little, but her watchful dog was as still and steady as a marble dog might be. The tall slim fteethound with ankles more slender than the princess's own wrists, and a chest barely more than the princess's hand's-breadth wide, stood as unshakeably as a round stone tower, and Lissar clutched at her, and stood, and did not lose consciousness again.

Beleaguered as she was, Lissar was slow to comprehend the reaction of the court to the events that overwhelmed her. What finally attracted her attention was the lack of archers nocking arrows to strings, should the king change his mind once more and reject a foolish leniency. He had been shouting for archers when she came out of her faint, and the king's commands were acted upon immediately.

Kneeling beside her, she leaned across Ash's silken shoulders as she looked, that she might dispose herself best for her dog's protection. The king had changed his mind; but he had called for archers, and archers should have appeared, if only to be dismissed. But no archers had come. Even his body-guardsmen had failed to draw their swords.

She drew a sharp breath and risked a more complete look around her, turning her head away from her father for the first time, but warily, as if in certain knowledge that she did a foolish thing, that her father was the sort of enemy to attack if watchfulness failed. But because she was herself again now, she recognized what she was seeing: the court was paralyzed in horror. Their faces were blank with shock; but as her eyes sought to catch theirs, their eyes slid away, and horror began to separate itself from indeterminate shock. She saw them begin to decide what to think, and she did not dare to watch any longer; for she feared their decision.

She turned her eyes back to her father in time to hear him say, "Do you,understand me, Lissla Lissar? Three days. On the morning of our wedding, the dog goes into the kennel with the other hounds-where she should have been all along. I have been lax. If there are any complaints of her before or after-then I will have lirr shot after all. You should not be distracted by a dog on the eve of the most important day of your life."

"No," said Lissar. It was hard to talk at all; harder still to bring out this one word-this word that acknowledged, in the saying, that it needed to be said, that what was happening was not mere nightmare, when a word spoken aloud by the dreamer into the dark will awaken her to her real life. "No. F-father, you cannot mean to do this. You cannot mean to m-marry me."

With these words from Lissar, the court stirred at last. "Marry! The princess marry her own father! It will be the death of the country. The country must rot, go to ruin and decay under such a coupling. The princess marry her father! What spell is this! We have thought her so weak and timid! We cannot understand it! He has been so fit and well; his justice and judgements have been faultless. What has she done to him, this witch-daughter, that he should desire to devastate his country and his people this way? The other kings will know that he has gone mad; we shall be invaded before the year is out. How can this have happened to us? Oh, that her mother should have lived! Then this could not have happened."

"Mean to?" thundered the king. "Of course I mean to marry you. I have proclaimed it-you have heard me proclaim it-" He flung his arms out to either side, as if he would embrace the entire court; the court which was shrinking away from the man and woman standing on the dais, with the dog standing between, and the painting blazing impotently over their heads. "I will marry you, three days hence, in the great courtyard, and everyone shall attend upon us!

"It will be a glorious day-and a glorious night," and as he said this the pupils of his eyes suddenly expanded, so that they looked like bottomless black pools, like the lightless, lifeless place she had found herself drowning in when she fainted; and these pools seemed all of his face, and his face was no longer human. She threw up a hand as if to ward off a blow.

"It is terrible!" muttered the court. "Do you believe it? Hear what he says. It is terrible. How evil the girl must be, to have brought her own father to this pass; how can we never have noticed? She has always been such a quiet little thing. What can we do? There is nothing we can do; it is too late. We can only hope the fit passes, and our good king returns to us unharmed. Three days! There is no hope for the marriage; we will have to play this vile thing to its close. Perhaps we can prevent news of this-wedding-from leaving the kingdom. Perhaps there will be a way to spirit the girl away after a little while, send her far away, where she can be no further trouble, and our king's own will may return to him, and he become himself again.

What a terrible thing this is!"

"Go now," said the king to his daughter. "Go, and begin your preparations; and remember that in three days we shall be wed, with all rejoicing. Remember!" In his mouth, remember was a word that had nothing to do with joy.

Lissar stumbled down from the dais, still leaning on her dog, who pressed against her side; pressed against her as the people pressed away. Once she raised her eyes, despairingly, pleadingly, seeking any eyes that might meet hers; but none did. And so she made her slow way to the door, her dog placing one steady foot after the other, that her person might walk safely; and when the princess went through the doors of the receiving-hall the doorkeeper shied away from her as from a curse, or contamination by disease; and as soon as she was fairly through, he hastened to the other side of the doors, and slammed them shut behind her.

The sound reverberated through the hall, through Lissar's body and the soles of her feet; she shuddered. The receiving-hall doors were never closed; it was the purpose of the king's attendance in that room, that by making himself thus available, anyone who wished to address the king might approach through the open door, and lay the matter before him. Even when he was not there, the doors remained open, and a secretary awaited any who might come with a message. The doors were never closed.

Ash took a step forward, suggesting that they go on; Lissar had stopped when the doors were closed, and stood staring at them as if at the end of her world, as if at the appearance of a fabulous beast, something out of a storybook. Lissar felt Ash's movement, and a bolt of courage or despair shot through her, and she picked up her skirts and fled, Ash bounding at her side.

They ran till they reached the princess's rooms, and through all the great, solemn, over-furnished chambers, to the little round rose-colored room that Lissar felt was the one room that was truly hers; and she buried her face in her pillow, tearing her fingernails with the strength of her grasp upon the bedframe; and she moaned. The horror was too deep for tears or cries; even to think of it-to try to think of it-only-made her numb, made her feel as if some portion of herself were being split off from the rest, some portion of herself must move to some distance away from the rest even to contemplate something so alien, so abominable, as marriage to her father.

It could not be so. It was the worst, utterly the worst, of all nightmares; the nightmare that had lived with her, hiding in the shadows, since that day the heralds had brought her a puppy from a kind young prince from far away, and she had looked up, her arms full of Ash and met her father's eyes. She had feared him since then. without naming her fear; and last night, last night at the ball, when he would not yield her to any of the lordly suitors who had attended the ball for her sake, the nightmare had begun to take shape, but a shape then still made of shadow....

Had there been a ball last night, or was that a part of this nightmare?

Had she a father? Who was she?

She moved slightly, raised her head. She knew who she was, for there was Ash, and she knew who Ash was, Ash was her dog and her best friend.

It occurred to her to notice that there was no one else around, and that this was odd. There were always the waiting-women, the latest court ladies, murmuring and rustling in the outer rooms, occasionally breaching the princess's small sanctum, speaking of ribbons and satin, pearls and lace, and of balls, and lovers, and ...

weddings.

But word of the king's announcement had penetrated the entire palace as if instantly, as his voice had penetrated the ears of the audience in the receiving-hall, and the court ladies had responded as everyone else had responded.

Lissar guessed this, dully, without putting it to words; dully she wondered if she would ever see Viaka again; and if she did not, if Viaka had been kept away, or had stayed away voluntarily. Dully she wondered who would be assigned to see to her wedding-dress.

She thought that the king's people would not dare defy him openly; shun her they might-and would-but if he declared that she was to be adorned for her wedding, then adorned, bedecked and bedighted, she would be.

Ash was sitting by the side of the bed, looking at her gravely. Her person did not lie on the bed in the middle of the day; whatever was wrong, whatever she had tried to protect her from just now, was going on being wrong.... She leaned toward Lissar, and licked her face. Lissar began to weep then, the stunned, uncomprehending tears of hopelessness: of a truth too appalling to be contained by nightmare breaking into reality, that the body one inhabits is about to be used in a way one would rather die than undergo.

But it was part of the horror that Lissar knew she had not even the strength to kill herself, that the unspeakable might be avoided at the last. That kind of courage required that all the parts of her, body and mind, flesh and spirit, be united enough to take decisive action; and instead she was a handful of dead leaves in a high wind.

She could not even sit up, or stop crying.

"Oh, Ash," she groaned, and cupped her hands under her dog's silky, whiskery chin. Ash delicately climbed up on the bed and curled up next to her; she rested her long sleek head on her person's neck, and Lissar clasped her hands around Ash's shoulders, and so they spent the day.

NINE

LISSAR DRIFTED IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS. SHE COULD NOT

have said what she dreamed and what she saw with open eyes in the physical world.

At some point, near twilight, she rose, and let Ash out into the garden to relieve herself; and while she was alone, she went to a small drawer in the desk that stood in one cornerless corner of the round room, and from it she took a key. With the key she locked the door that led into the palace, into the chambers for a princess. When Ash returned, she tried to fit the key into the lock of the garden door, but it would not go.

She looked at it, at first in dismay, and then in rising panic; and she had to sit down abruptly, and press her hands to the back of her head. As she sat thus-with Ash's nose anxiously inquiring over the backs of both hands-she thought, It does not matter. The other garden door, the one to the rest of the out-of-doors, has a hundred years of ivy growing over it; the key to it must no longer rxist. From the outside, from the other side, one cannot see that there is a door at all; I only know from this side because of the old path.... I have looked, from the other side. I know the door cannot be found. It does not matter.

She stood up, and brushed herself off, and fed Ash some of the cold cooked eggs from her breakfast, which had never been cleared away; and she drank a little of the water that had been left in the big pitcher, which had been hot twelve hours ago, for her washing, before the summons had come, before her world had wavered; and she gave Ash water as well.

She thought she did not sleep that night, although it was hard for her to tell, for her life now felt like sleeping, only a sleeping from which she could not wake. She lay curled upon the bed, feeling her limbs pressing into the mattress, feeling them too heavy to shift; and Ash curled around her. As the dark grew thicker, her eyes seemed to open wider, her body become more torpid. She could not count the passage of time, but she knew that it did pass; and she felt the essence of herself poised, perched, at the edge of some great effort, some bright hard diamond-spark of self burning deep within her slack flesh; but she knew too that this was a dream of respite only, and that she had not the strength to win free. And she lay on her bed, imprisoned by the languor of her own body, and listened to herself breathe, felt the dampness of the air as it returned from its dark passage of her lungs, and watched the night-time with her open eyes.

She knew that midnight had come and gone when a hand was laid upon the latch of the inner door, and the latch lifted. But the lock held. The door was shaken, and she heard anger in the shaking, and felt anger, and something more, seeping through the pores of the ancient wood, a miasma that filled her room as the person on the other side of the door shook it and hammered upon it in his rage and desire.

She buried her face deeper in the hard muscle of Ash's shoulder and breathed in the warm sweet clean smell of her. And at last the person, having said no word, went away. Lissar could not bear the dark when silence returned, and sat up, and lit a candle that lay on a table near her bed, though it took her many tries to kindle fire, for her hands shook. And she sat up, wrapping the blankets closely around her, for she was numb with cold, and felt the miasma seep away; but it left a stain upon the walls, which were no longer rosy, but dark, like dried blood.

In the morning Lissar rose and let Ash out, and fed her the end of yesterday's breakfast bread. Then she unlocked the inner door, and ventured through it, that she might relieve herself like a human being instead of a dog; and she met no one on her way. But she found a tray bearing a pitcher of fresh water, a loaf of bread, and butter and cheese and apples, on a small table usually reserved for ladies' gloves, near the door from the anteroom with the statue, leading into the hallway of the palace; as if the person who left it could not risk coming any farther inside. Lissar did not know why she had come so far through her rooms herself; but when she saw the tray, and picked it up, she thought, Viaka.

She carried it back to her round room with the darkened hangings on the walls, and the ivy creeping around the window, and gave Ash some bread and cheese although she herself drank only water. Her mind was vague and wandering; it had focussed, for a moment, on the memory of Viaka; but there was nowhere to go from that thought, and it fled from the memory of yesterday, and the knowledge of the day after tomorrow.

Lissar sat on the bed, and rocked, and hummed to herself, and thought about nothing, and once or twice when Ash thrust her nose under her person's arm for attention, Lissar had to make an effort to remember not only who Ash was, but what: a living creature. Another living creature. A living creature known as a dog. This dog: Ash. Her dog. But then her mind wandered away again.

That evening again as twilight fell she arose from the bed where she and Ash had spent a second day, and locked the inner door again; and again she lay wakeful, and her mind cleared a little, for it was waiting for something, and it hovered around the waiting and eluded the knowledge of the thing awaited.

She listened to the soft sound of the dog's breathing, and of her own, and heard the hours pass, though she did not count them. And again at some time past midnight she heard a hand upon the latch, and this time when the person beat upon the door that would not open it made a noise louder than thunder, and Ash turned to marble under Lissar's hands again, as hard and still as marble, except for the reverberant buzz that Lissar could feel though not hear, which was her growl. And this time too the person went away without a word, though the attack upon the door, this second night, had gone on for longer, as if the person could not believe that by mere force of will it could not be made to open.

And in the morning Lissar again arose, and unlocked the inner door, and went out, and this time there was meat as well as bread upon the tray, pears instead of apples, with another pitcher of water, and a bottle of wine, and a deep bowl of green leaves, some sharp and some sweet, in a dressing smelling of sesame. And Lissar built a small fire with the remains of the kindling from two days ago, and heated the rest of the water from yesterday, and washed herself.

Tomorrow was her wedding day. She would not think of it.

She had seen and spoken to no one but Ash since the king's pronouncement.

What of the ladies to make her dress, and the maid-servants to bring her flowers, flowers for her and for those special friends who would stand behind her in gorgeous dresses of their own, to weave the maiden's crown? And because she was a princess, the form the flowers were woven into was not basketry, but the finest, lightest, purest golden wire, not easily found at any village market, which had to be ordered from a jeweller familiar with such rare and dainty work. What of the preparations for her wedding?

But perhaps the preparations did proceed; perhaps she only did not remember, as she did not-would not-remember that tomorrow was her wedding day. Her wounded mind flared up a little, and declared that it was no wedding that would occur on the morrow, but a murder; it was not that she feared her wedding, but that she grieved her execution. But her mind could not hold that thought long, either, any more than it could hold any other thought.

And perhaps the preparations were going on. Perhaps the last two days had been full of ladies talking and laughing, full of bolts of cloth so light that when unrolled too quickly they floated, waveringly, in the air, like streamers of sparkling mist; full of laces so fine as to be translucent, that they might shine with the maiden's own blushing beauty when laid over her innocent shoulders; full of ribbons so gossamer that they could not be sewn with ordinary needle but must be worked through the weave of the fabric itself. Perhaps even now her maiden's crown lay in the next room, in a shallow crystal bowl of scented water, to keep the flowers fresh till the morrow.