“You,” he said to one of the ubiquitous servants. “Do you know where the Queen’s chambers are?”

  “I’m forbidden to tell,” she said, wide-eyed.

  “I’m going to her. She’s having my child. I want to help.”

  Suddenly the servant laughed. Then she covered her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then she turned and led him along a hall, which went on forever, lined with doors. He knew where all of them led, he thought. But there were more than a hundred doors, and as he followed the girl farther and farther down the hall, he realized that whenever he had come this way in his explorations, some door had been standing open, and he had been distracted by some conversation, some novelty, some person with whom he had to speak. He had never walked the full length of the hall before.

  “You mustn’t mind the illusions,” said the girl.

  Illusions? Orem said nothing, but now understood why the girl would sometimes hesitate in midstep, and then set her jaw and go on. It would do no good to announce that whatever illusions there were, he saw none of them.

  A year, Orem thought. I have been here a year. And the child has been carried a year. Such a birth would kill an ordinary woman. But somehow when he opened the last door and stepped in and saw the Queen, it was not her life he worried about.

  The servant quickly closed the door, and Orem stood alone at the foot of the Queen’s huge bed. Beauty lay alone in the middle, naked, her legs spread wide, her knees up. All the topsheets and cushions had been pushed from the bed. Some sheets had been tied to the five posts of the bed. Two were tied to her feet, and she strained against them; two she held in her hands, and pulled hard. The last was gripped between her teeth, and in her agony she tossed her head and worried the cloth like a dog with a rag. She dripped with sweat, and a high-pitched moan emerged from her throat. Blood was trickling from the passage where the baby’s head had crowned. The head was large and bloody and purple, and it would not come. Beauty looked at him through eyes wide as a deer’s with fear and pain. The eyes followed him as he walked around the foot of bed and came to the left head of the bed, above and behind her. Even in such a state, she was still beautiful, and Orem was trembling at the sight of the body he had once loved. But he ignored that distraction.

  “Beauty,” he said.

  She only moaned.

  “Beauty, you wear the ring on your rightmost finger.”

  She shook her head back and forth, not to say no but to ease the pain.

  “I command you to speak to me.”

  Orem could not see her eyes. He only knew that suddenly her painful writhing and straining stopped. She sighed a long, relieved sigh. “How gladly I obey,” she said, and suddenly the baby’s head popped from between her legs, though she gave no sign of pain. Her belly convulsed, rippled; she sat up easily, forcing the baby out farther in the process, and then pulled him from her groin. Like an animal she licked the mucus from the baby’s face. Then she held the child, a boy, as he cried.

  Orem could not believe how quickly, as if at his command, the child had come.

  And there was the Queen, as if she had suffered nothing, laughing at him, laughing long and loud.

  “Is the child’s birth so funny?” Orem asked, still determined to be angry, to command her, to shake off his terrible fear of her.

  “I think not,” she said, turning a beautifully contemptuous face to him. “But you, Little King, you are a joy better than a hundred clowns.”

  “What have I done?”

  “Command me again, Little King.”

  “I want the truth from you!”

  “All the truth that is in me, you may have.”

  “Who is Weasel?”

  The Queen’s eyes went wide in a mockery of surprise. She laughed again, then put her breast in the child’s mouth. The boy had no idea what to do with it, but she stroked his cheek as if she had been midwife at a thousand births; with her Searching Eye, she probably had.

  “I asked you—”

  “I heard you,” the Queen answered, still laughing softly. “Weasel, is it? Weasel is the greatest mystery you’ve been able to come up with? In a whole year, she’s the best mystery you’ve been able to find?”

  “And Urubugala. And Craven.”

  “You’re a child, Little King. The only people who interest you are the three you can’t command. Well, then. Here’s the tale. Have it with joy and see if it brings you any contentment. You’ve heard the story of my marriage to Palicrovol, I’m sure. Of the tender ceremony of ravishment performed before a thousand swine at Faces Hall.”

  Orem nodded.

  “It was a joyful bridal day for me, my dear Little King. As my pitiful bride’s blood seeped, with it went my father’s kingdom. And then my loving spouse sent me to a fisher’s hut to be raised as a fishwife, no doubt, while he ruled where it was my right to rule until I chose my own husband and gave the power to him.

  “But I was found by a wizard, who taught me all. More than he knew he taught me, in fact, and I learn quickly—much more quickly than you, Little King. It had been only a year from the day I was so blithely wed when the tool came into my hands that would give me all the power I needed for centuries. Yet, though the wizard saw my weapon every day, he thought nothing of it, ignored it completely. Until it was too late, and I wielded it.

  “The wizard’s name was Sleeve. I bound him first, and he is still bound. I blessed him with a gift and brought him with me to Harts Hope. Here in Hart’s Hope my loving husband waited for me with an army. But his army fled, all but one man, a general named Zymas, who once had served my father. Zymas betrayed my father, doubtless for sincere reasons, and when Palicrovol had stolen my only birthright, Zymas urged my husband to kill me lest I cause trouble later. I had not forgotten Zymas, and I was pleased that my spell of terror did not touch him.

  “And there was someone else in Hart’s Hope that I came to see. A beautiful sea princess from Onologasenweev, whom he had taken as his wife. My timing was superb. I arrived just as Palicrovol had thought to hold his wedding night and shed bride’s blood again, though I suspect more tenderly than before. I turned his attention away from her, and when I had driven him out, she also fell into my hands. Her name was Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin. But from my first night here in my father’s home, her name was never heard again. Nor the name of Zymas. Nor the name of Sleeve.

  “Have you any wit, my Little King?”

  Orem could only think of Weasel, ugly Weasel. Who had come innocently from the islands to marry the great King Palicrovol. Who had found instead the terrible rage of a woman who had been wronged, but who was thought to be dead, or at least forgotten.

  “Weasel,” Orem said.

  “It really wasn’t a change of name for her. Just a translation. Weasels are beautiful in the islands, and the fur of that animal is a prerogative of royalty. And Sootmouth—a family name. Is that the story you wanted? Think of it, Little King. Do you see my face? Is it beautiful? This was not the face of the wretched, frightened little girl who screamed in Palicrovol’s arms. Oh, no. This is the face I gave myself, as a reward for my patience in suffering. As a birthright, since the only inheritance I had was gone. This once was the face of Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin.” And she laughed and laughed.

  But through the laughter Orem began to feel something he had not expected to feel. His grief for Weasel, who suffered innocently, was not dimmed; but he also felt a sympathy for the Queen. He imagined her now, not as the imperious beauty he knew, but as the helpless, plain little girl who was made to suffer the agony of her unworthy fathers defeat. What a feast of hate she had fed upon then; she still ate from the same table. He remembered the words from Halfpriest Dobbick’s favorite passage in the Second Song, and he sang to her, not really meaning to sing, but not able to stop himself, either:

  “God surely sees your sins, my love,

  The blackness of your heart, my love;

  He weighs them with your suffering:

  Which is the lesser part, my love?”

  Orem’s voice had not been welcome in the choir of the monastery, but here it was not the art that made the light in the room dance. It was the power in the song. The power of God, which none had been able to bring before the Queen’s face in all these years; but more, the power to undo Queen Beauty, for that was what Orem had done.

  She held the child to her breast and wept and wept and wept. She forgot to make her face beautiful as she did, and in her crying Orem thought he saw a memory that he could not possibly have seen. He thought he saw young King Palicrovol rise up, naked before a multitude, his swollen penis shining in the sunlight; and the crowd cheered as the antler crown was placed on his head. Then he turned and left, and the crowd dispersed, until no one was left, no one at all, except a young girl, a child, weeping, weeping, weeping, and an infant appeared and she held it against her nonexistent breast.

  Orem reached out and touched her, and Queen Beauty leaned to him. In a moment he held her hot shoulders in his embrace. But pity is not infinite; he soon looked beyond her hair, forgot the tears that had soaked his gown. He saw only the child, only his son, who had stopped crying and was staring up at them. A year in the womb, a third again the normal time; perhaps that explained the brightness of his eyes, the beauty of his face, the deftness of his hands as they already reached out and grasped at his mother’s hair. Perhaps it was the year in the womb that explained why the child could already smile when Orem smiled at him.

  “What is his name?” Orem asked.

  The Queens crying was silent now, and the trembling of her body stopped all at once, though she made no move to pull away from him.

  “He will never have a name.”

  “Why not?”

  “Little King, I won’t let him have a name.”

  “But I command you,” Orem said.

  The Queen pulled away now and looked at him coldly. “You command easily now, don’t you? See how well your commands work, Little King, before you try any others.”

  “Name him,” Orem said.

  “Youth,” she answered, smiling at him. Her amusement had returned.

  “Youth? That’s a name for him?”

  “It is more name than he will earn in all his life,” she answered.

  “He’s my son,” Orem said. “I will be free with him.”

  “Will you?”

  “I command it. You can cut me off from you, Queen Beauty, but he’s half mine, half me, and I’ll not be cut off from him.”

  “Will you not?”

  “I command it.”

  “Oh, you’re a delicious fool; I’ve kept the three most marvelous fools in all the world with me for all these years, and you—the best fool of all—you came as the Sweet Sisters’ gift in a dream. Have your wish then, my Little King. All the time you want with this child, all the time you can possibly use, it’s yours. Yours, and may it bring you joy. May you love this child better than you love yourself.”

  Orem reached down and took the child from his mother. He did not complain; already the child’s body responded, reacted, tautened to rise into Orem’s arms, something that should have been impossible to an infant not yet fifteen minutes old. The child smiled at him.

  “I already love him that much,” Orem said. “It’s a poor enough measure.

  And then he remembered that the Queen had no intention of letting her Little King live for very long at all, and a lump of self-pity came to his throat. He refused to let the emotion take him. The Queen meant nothing but evil to him, but at least he had this one gift from her. “Youth,” he said to the child, and the young boy smiled at the name.

  Beauty giggled on the bed. “Little King,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Why, in all this time, if you were determined to be so commanding—why didn’t you ever come to me and command me to lie with you again?”

  Orem looked at her and could not think of the answer to the question. And he asked himself another: If she would obey him, why didn’t he command her not to sacrifice him to feed her great magic? Why could he only command her to tell him a tale and let him play with a child?

  “Oh, my Little King,” she said, “have ever the Sweet Sisters led so innocent a victim into a trap as they have this time?”

  Command her now, Orem told himself. It was an oversight before; make up for it now and command her to give you your life and her love.

  But she was laughing at him, and he couldn’t say the words. In the face of her laughter, he couldn’t ask for his life. And never her love. Never that.

  He laid the child in her arms again and left the room, not knowing what it was that made him choose this and not that; it couldn’t be pride stopping him, could it? What gom led his steps? Sure enough every step he took was a stumble.

  A servant met him in the hall.

  “Little King,” she said. “If you forgive me, please, but the Lady Weasel is crying for you.”

  “Crying?”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, but she calls your name, calls Little King, Little King, and we don’t know what to do for her except beg you to come.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Orem remembered that when he left her—how long ago?—she had been in pain.

  “We don’t know. Please come.”

  He went. Weasel was lying on a bed in a room he supposed was her own, a beautiful enough place, but he had no heart to notice that. Weasel looked white as if half her blood had been lost, and she tossed and turned deliriously on the bed.

  “What happened to her?” Orem asked.

  “She was in pain, and we led her to bed, and then suddenly she screamed and all this blood came out of her. And this, too. It’s a miracle, but it may kill her.” What the servant pointed to on a silver tray was impossible, but Orem had seen births before and knew a placenta when he saw one; a placenta with all the umbilical cord attached. “Oh, God, oh, Sweet Sisters,” he said, and he knelt by the bed and touched his hand to Weasel’s hideous face, even uglier now from pain. He remembered now, should have noticed it then. When Youth was born so suddenly, Queen Beauty had not had to cut the cord, for there was no cord. Here was the cord, here was the pain the Queen had so abruptly forgotten. Beauty had borne her own pain until Orem came—and commanded her to tell him a tale. After months with the wizard Galloway, hadn’t he learned at least this one most fundamental rule? No magic is done without a price, no life is lived without a loss, no pain is suffered without a profit, no death comes without its gift. Youth was born in agony; but Orem had commanded, and the Queen had treacherously obeyed. If she were not to suffer the pain, someone else must, and it was Weasel.

  Orem knelt by the bed and whispered to her, “Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin.”

  She held still, suddenly stopped her turning. “You know me,” she said, but there was nothing in her eyes to show that she knew him.

  “It’s my fault,” he said miserably.

  “You know me.”

  “I did this to you.”

  And then she said, “I forgive you,” and fell asleep. The servants looked at him in amazement. One of them touched her head. “The fever’s gone,” he said.

  And another servant whispered, “What were the words you said? It’s a strong magic you brought, that it comes only from a few words.”

  Orem was not sure what had cured her. The naming of her name? Or the forgiveness that this much-wronged woman had still given so easily? Or just the whim of Queen Beauty, who was doubtless watching from her room at the end of the long hall?

  Orem looked at Weasel’s sleeping face, and let his eyes forget what they saw and see instead what they should see: Weasel with another face, the sweet virginal face of Queen Beauty. And it occurred to Orem that he loved Weasel more than anyone else in his life; that he loved her more than he feared the Queen. And it occurred to him right afterward that he loved her no less when the image failed and he saw only the ugly woman he had known all this year.

  He waited by her bed until she awoke. He had napped, and now he was awake and hungry, wondering if he should leave her and go eat, when she suddenly turned in bed and winced in anticipation of pain. But there was no pain, and she was surprised. “Little King,” she said faintly.

  “The Queen bore my son,” he told her, “but you bore the pain.”

  “She told me I’d share it. Not that I’d have all of it.”

  Orem touched her hand; she gently pulled her hand away. “My lady Weasel,” he said. “She did it because I commanded her—”

  “Never mind, Little King. The use she has for you requires that she let you rule her, but it isn’t in her to do it genuinely. It’s not your fault when she twists your words against you. Is the child good?”

  Orem shrugged, then laughed a little. “I haven’t had any others. Yes, he’s good. But he doesn’t seem like a newborn. Already he seems wise.”

  “Oh, yes. Wise indeed. And loving. He smiles, surely.”

  “And grasps with his hands.”

  “I dreamed,” Weasel said, “that you called me by another name.”

  Orem looked away from her, looked out the window. “She told me your story.”

  “And my name?”

  “I haven’t forgotten it, either.”

  “Now that you’re a father, I doubt you’re still a child.”

  “I’m not really a father,” Orem said. “Not yet.”

  Weasel raised an eyebrow.

  “But I will be.”

  “Perhaps you would be happier if you never saw the child again.”

  Orem frowned. “The time will come soon enough when I will never see the child. While I still can, I mean to love him.”

  Weasel looked at him with—what expression was it? Orem could not tell. Horror, it seemed, or anger, or puzzlement.

  “Then you know?” Weasel asked. “You know what the Queen intends to do?”

  “It hasn’t been hard to guess.”

  “Sweet Sisters,” Weasel whispered, “and you haven’t tried to kill the Queen.”

  “I suspect she wouldn’t let me if I tried.”

  “No, you’re not a man,” Weasel said. “You’re either much less, or much more.”