“No, after. While I was burying her and getting in the roots. I wasn’t happy when she was so sick. I couldn’t be. But afterward it was just me. I could do anything I wanted. I went to bed and listened to the owls, when I woke up I lay in bed and listened to the wren and the song sparrow.” She laughed, a strange but almost a living sound. “Once I put bread beside the bed, so I could eat before I got up. When I got it in the morning the mice had nibbled out a place.” She laughed again.

  “I went to prison,” he told her, “because I helped a patient too much, and my records were very important to me. My notes. I had to know what my patients had told me, so I could review it. I couldn’t remember everything, so I had to write it down. My patients had to know those records would never be made public.” He tried to remember what those patients had called him, Dr. Something, and finished weakly by saying, “I’m Tuck, by the way.” His mother had called him Tuck.

  “I’m Mej. Are you going to step on that, Tuck?”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t believe that would be right. I’m going to pat it down with my hands.”

  “Thank you. I think I’ll get a little sleep.”

  When he looked around for her again, she was no longer there. He shrugged, selected a likely vegetable from the small garden, and walked on, eating as he walked. “There are no such things as ghosts,” he told himself, “yet I’m nearly sure patients see ghosts frequently. From those two facts, two more emerge readily. The first is that things which do not exist are frequently visible. The second: I myself am a patient.

  “If I am a patient, I must assist in my own cure; but how can I, if I do not understand the nature of my disease? Answer: by examining the symptoms, I can deduce the nature of my disease.

  “First symptom: I frequently mutter to myself when my mouth is full.” He chewed vigorously and swallowed, grinning.

  “That symptom is disposed of. My disease remains, of course. Second symptom: I have lost all contact with reality. Presumably I am in the prison hospital in a vegetative state. To return to reality, I must comprehend the nature of my delusions. This darkness presumably represents the ethical desert of the penitentiary. It is less now than it was because I have been taken to the hospital where things are somewhat better. The vertical trees reflect the vertical bars on windows and doors. Take that one.” He directed his own attention toward an inoffensive sapling. “It’s even the right thickness.”

  Seizing it with both hands, he shook it until its dying leaves rattled. “Just so, Dr. Tuck. I cannot effect my escape by shaking the bars. I am still in prison. What if I take my sword to it?”

  He drew his sword and slashed halfheartedly at the sapling, scarring the bark. “No result. But what about a serious attack?” He cut, right and left and right again. Chips flew, and soon the sapling fell.

  “Listen!” said a familiar voice at his elbow.

  Tuck spun around. “Nerys?”

  “Here I am.” She stepped out of the shadows. “Did you believe I had left you?”

  He nodded.

  “I was with you. Where else should I be? Weeping among the living while I watched my husband’s body rot?” She pointed to the sword he held. “There is my man.”

  “This?” He held the sword up.

  “There.” Her finger slipped between his to touch the wooden grip he had made. “Your hand warmed that. Thus you see me.”

  “When I carried the club…” He let the sentence trail away.

  “Again! Listen!”

  Screams, he thought.

  Silence succeeded the screams; he visualized another Tree Woman like Nerys in the grip of a second beast, and dashed away.

  Before he had run far he struck another road, the first real road he had seen, a road of pounded red clay wide enough for horsemen to ride four abreast. The man thundering toward him rode alone, and if he had ever had three companions it seemed likely they were dead—his clothing was bright with blood, which streamed from his head and shoulders.

  Tuck stood aside panting and let him pass, receiving two drops of blood on his face for his trouble, and three on his shirt.

  Jogging now, he topped a rise. Dead men lay in the road; not far from one lay a horse too badly wounded to rise, with blood pulsing from its nostrils. A second horse shied as soon as it caught sight of him, its reins dragging, its head up, and its eyes wide.

  He stopped, careful not to meet its gaze. “You are mistaken,” he said. “I don’t hate horses or want to hurt them. I love horses.” It was not true, and he felt obliged to amend it. “I like horses. Before Sally left me, we had three horses, two geldings and a beautiful little Arabian mare. You’re a stallion, right? You would have loved her.” He edged closer, careful not to look directly at the brown stallion with the trailing reins. “Sally loved her a lot more than she ever loved me, but I liked her anyway. She was as affectionate and gentle as any animal could ever be.”

  At the word, he had gotten a foot on the trailing reins. He picked them up, still careful not to look directly at the brown stallion. “You’re a fighting horse,” he said. “I’m not a fighting man, but I’m a man who’ll fight when he has to. For the present that may be good enough. It may have to be.”

  Mounted, he wheeled the stallion and trotted up the slope.

  They were nearer than he would have guessed, one covering the woman while six more watched. Those six turned at the drumroll of the stallion’s hooves, and one managed to raise a javelin before he was ridden down. The sword with the wooden grip split the skull of another. Frantic with victory Tuck dropped the reins and threw the coarse knife at the man separating himself from the woman. The pommel struck his eye, and in a moment more he was ridden down as well.

  The woman was naked and weeping, and for an hour or more unwilling to rise. Tuck found the ruin of a silk gown, covered her with it, and sat beside her stroking her hand. “It was terrible,” he said. “I know how bad it was. Believe me, I know. Now it’s over, and it won’t happen anymore. For the rest of your life you’ll know that nothing you face will be as terrible as what happened here today, and that you lived through this and came out of it better and stronger.” He said this and much more again and again, perhaps a score of times.

  At last she said, “Will they come back?”

  He shrugged. “You would know better than I.”

  After that he lifted her onto the brown stallion’s saddle and mounted behind her. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Wherever you want to.”

  “It will be more dangerous if we go back,” she told him, “but I would like to go back.”

  She had pointed as she spoke. He turned the brown stallion, holding it to a rapid walk. “Where are we?”

  “This is the Valley of Coomb. You must be a stranger here. Are you from the west?”

  “From a far country,” he said, and to himself added, “I think.”

  “You are a brave man, if you are rushing to meet the night, O my husband. But I knew you for a brave man when you slew those who had slain my guards.”

  “I’m not your husband,” he said.

  “You have seen my nakedness. Do you not know the law?”

  “More than I want to now,” he told her, “but I don’t think I’ve come across this one.”

  “If a man beholds the nakedness of a maid, he must restore her honor by wedding her, if he himself is unwed. That is the law for common women. But if a man beholds the nakedness of a royal maiden, he must put away his wife, and he has one, to wed the royal maiden and restore her honor, O my husband. Had you a wife?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Indeed. Indeed.” She looked over her shoulder, smiling. “You that saved me are harmed the worse. Though I am most grateful for the hand which braces my waist in your saddle, might it not perhaps be some trifle higher?”

  The light failed as they followed the road into the Valley of Coomb. “Here our poor folk left a hundred-eatings gone,” she told him, “for this valley is the very Herald of Night.”

  “I’m surprised you wanted to come back here.”

  She wiggled closer, although they were already very close. “I have you to protect me. Besides, we met their group as we were about to leave the eastern side, thus they had only entered. Had there been others in deeper night, they would have attacked us sooner.”

  “I met bandits deeper in,” he told her.

  “Our own people?” She turned to look at him over her shoulder.

  “Not my people,” he said, “but Night People, which I suppose must be what you mean.”

  “My people are the Sun People,” she said, “and because they are mine, yours as well, O my husband. Do you not know me?”

  “No, but I should introduce myself first.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m Tuck, at your service.”

  “You are Prince Tuck, my consort. My own name is Estar.” She coughed apologetically. “Princess Estar. Please do not grovel.”

  “I’ll avoid it if at all possible.”

  The smile she directed at him was almost a grin. “Thank you. I have met others, now and then, who did not know me. They groveled, and I hate that. That is a poor man’s sword you wield so well. You are not rich?”

  “I have nothing,” Tuck said.

  She dimpled. “Except me.”

  “No, you have me. You’re the loveliest woman I’ve ever seen. I’m afraid that I’ll wake up any minute and you’ll be gone.”

  “You,” she said, “are going to make a most satisfactory husband.”

  There was a farm at the western edge of the valley. He left her some distance from it and explained to the farm wife that she must sell a gown.

  “Sacking,” Estar said as she pulled it down, “at least you will no longer see that my hips and legs are fat.”

  “I’ve seen your hips, and your legs, and they are perfect. Both of them.”

  “Both legs you mean, and you are looking very far down. You have no money?”

  “Nope. I paid the woman for your dress with what I had.”

  “You could have become rich by searching the bodies of those you killed back there. They took my jewels.”

  Tuck shrugged.

  “You are right. Swords, not jewels, make a king. It was a saying of my father’s.”

  “He’s passed away? I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Died?” Estar shook her head. “He seldom speaks. He is old, and… Sometimes he will not eat.”

  “I see.”

  “If he were dead, I would be queen. You, my husband, would be our king until I bore an heir and he reached the age of maturity. But I do not want my father to die. Does that surprise you?”

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “That is well. Look above those trees.”

  She pointed, and he discovered an unexpected pleasure in the slenderness and whiteness of her arm. His lips brushed the shoulder that held it in the lightest and swiftest of kisses.

  “Do you see—” For an instant she seemed to choke, and coughed. “The flag? It is green and yellow, and so not easily seen above the trees.”

  “I think so.”

  “It flies from Strongdoor Tower. There is yellow stone beneath it. Perhaps you cannot see it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.

  “The baron’s name is Blaan. He is my most loyal vassal, or says loudly that he is, and would wed me if you would step aside for him. Will you?”

  “No.” A woman—this woman—was much too precious.

  She dimpled. “You have not seen how large and strong he is. You will shake with fear, O my husband.”

  He smiled back. “I doubt it.”

  “We must see. I cannot ride back to Cikili in this gown. Thus we must ask his aid. He has, I should think, three hundred men, if not more. Will you kill them all for me?”

  “I doubt that it’ll prove necessary.”

  The guard at the portcullis looked incredulous when Tuck said that the woman who shared his saddle was Princess Estar, and gawked when he recognized her. Baron Blaan welcomed her, ignored Tuck, and turned her over to a housekeeper and a bevy of maids. He was, as she had said, a tall, beefy, and quite muscular man.

  Tuck seated himself in the best chair in the Great Hall and stared at the fire, which was larger than any summer evening could have required.

  He had refused to turn over someone’s records. Who had she been? Records showing he had helped with what? Bit by bit he pictured a dozen patients and former patients. A woman accused of killing a child—accused on slender evidence, presumably, since they would not have wanted her psychiatrist’s notes if they had a strong case. He himself had been psychoanalyzed ten years ago, as all analysts were at the beginning of their careers. Could it have been those notes they wanted?

  Could he have murdered a child?

  He decided that he could not, but that he could certainly have been accused of having done it and worse. Anyone these days—any man, particularly—could be accused of anything by anyone.

  “That’s my chair you’re sitting in,” Blaan said.

  “Sorry.” Tuck rose and moved to another.

  “That’s my chair, too.”

  Tuck sighed. “No doubt it is. This is your castle and you own all its furniture. I thank you for allowing me, a mere prince and your guest, to use it. But if you want me to vacate it, you need stronger arguments.”

  “A prince? You don’t look it. Of what nation?”

  “Yours.”

  The word hung there for perhaps half a minute. At last Blaan said, “You’re a dreamer. I can tell that—a dreamer with a torn cheek! What do you dream of as you peer into my fire, dreamer?”

  He had been thinking of the prison wood shop to which he had initially been assigned, his practice in the prison hospital, and his fill-in work in the library. “Stevenson,” he said. “Blinking embers, tell me true, where are those armies marching to, and what the burning city is, that crumbles in your furnaces?”

  Blaan blinked too; he was saved by Estar, who swept into the room, resplendent in cloth-of-gold, with two maids to carry her train.

  Blaan rose, and Tuck with him.

  “My husband is not obliged to bow save on the most ceremonial occasions.” Estar’s voice would have frozen seawater. “You, Baron, are not thus exempt.”

  “You have married this—this…” For a moment Blaan could only stare, at a loss for words. “This vagabond!”

  Tuck laid a friendly hand on Blaan’s shoulder. “Bow.”

  Blaan spun to face him. His sword was in his hand so quickly it seemed impossible that he had actually drawn it. “Guards!”

  Estar screamed.

  Tuck dodged behind the chair. “I think you need to consider what you’re doing. Will you listen to reason? Just for a minute?”

  “I will not only listen to it,” Blaan told him, “I will voice it. The princess has wed a vagrant, a decision she must deeply regret. I will free her from her miscegenation. In gratitude, she will accept me and obey me as a good wife should. Or suffer the consequences.”

  The last word was nearly drowned in the pounding footfalls of the guards, a score of big men with helmets and spears.

  “Wait!” Estar raised both her hands. “I am your Princess Plenipotentiary, the Regent of our King.”

  Tuck kept his eyes on Blaan. “Your lord’s following a suicidal policy,” Tuck said.

  Estar’s voice rose above the hubbub. “Hear the Prince Consort!”

  “True loyalty lies in saving him from it.”

  Blaan lifted his sword for an overhand cut, edging to his right.

  “That will preserve your own lives too. Obey him now and you’ll die as traitors, and quickly.”

  “Die!”

  Tuck got the chair up in time to block the swift sword cut, though the edge bit deep into its back. He grabbed one end of the wide sword guard, and Blaan jerked to free it.

  Estar spoke again. “Do none of you wish this barony? Not one?”

  As if by magic, the blade of a spear emerged from Blaan’s chest. His blood followed it, his eyes glazed, and he fell.

  With all the poise she might have exhibited at her coronation, Estar approached the guardsman while her maids scurried behind her, trying to snatch up the cloth-of-gold train they had let fall. “Congratulations, my lord.” She smiled. “A good cast!”

  · · · ·

  The king lay in bed staring at the embroidered canopy eight feet above his snowy head. “He will speak at times,” Estar whispered. “Let us hope this will be one.” More loudly she said, “This is my husband, Father. The ceremony will be at sunset—we’re hoping that will cheer the city as well as giving our warriors a new leader.”

  There was no response.

  “Already, he wears the seal, Father. Don’t you see it?” She touched the heavy gold seal suspended from Tuck’s neck. “The seal you wore for so many years?”

  There was nothing to indicate that the old man in the huge bed had heard her.

  “He is wise, and certainly much too wise not to listen to the advice of a man much older than he who has devoted his life to statecraft. A few words from you, now, might help him shape a better path for our whole nation.”

  “No,” the old king said distinctly. “Go, Estar. Leave me.”

  “Better,” Tuck muttered to her.

  “Is it really?” She scarcely breathed the words. “I would have said worse.”

  “It’s better,” Tuck’s tone was conversational, “because it doesn’t point to Alzheimer’s, which is what I was afraid of. I can’t treat that with what we’ve got here. This is senile depression, I would say, and I may be able to do something.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Will you trust me alone with him for half an hour or so? I won’t hurt him, I promise, or demean him in any way. But this will be tricky and may not work.”

  When she had kissed him lightly and gone out, he took off the seal and pulled a chair up to the bed. Seated, he held the seal by its chain, letting it swing gently. “I wanted to give you a better look at this, Your Majesty. Do you see it? Look carefully, please. I know you wore it for years, but you were very busy during all those years. Did you notice how beautiful it is? See how it catches the light as it swings back and forth. See how it turns as it swings. It’s bright gold, pure gold, and my valet polishes it every time I change clothes.”