“The Queen can take care of herself,” Orem said, but he was glad to hear of Palicrovol’s coming. Come quickly, enemy of my enemy, he said to himself.

  “I know that better than you,” Weasel said. “It’s you I worry about. Little King, don’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?”

  “I’m playing with my son.”

  “You’re playing with your own heart. When the King comes, that is when the Queen calls all her debts due. That is when she will renew herself. Do you understand me? This strange wizard the King has found to fight her may think that he’s winning, but he isn’t. She’s losing now, but not when she gets the power to renew all her great magic. And you, playing with your child—don’t you know the price of her power?”

  “I know it,” he said bitterly. “And small loss it will be to you.”

  Her anger surprised him—he had expected protests and pity. “Small loss, yes! Because I’ve been careful to make it a small loss! I haven’t let myself love where my love would end so quickly! You would have been wise to do the same.”

  So that was why she didn’t love him—to protect herself from grief when he died. And yet it was strangely selfish, when her love might have made his last weeks much happier. “So keep your love to yourself, Weasel. It doesn’t matter much to me.” He turned back to Youth, who was now playing with the grass, trying to pull it up. “I don’t have to turn to you. My son loves me, even if you don’t, and my last two weeks will still be happy because of him.”

  She did not answer. Orem felt some satisfaction at perhaps having shamed her for her selfishness. But when he turned to look at her, she was facing the palace, and when she turned back to him it was with cold anger on her face—that emotion, at least, he could read clearly. “She’s a devil,” Weasel said. “She must be laughing.”

  “At what?” Orem asked, suddenly afraid that something was very wrong. Weasel should not be angry. She should be ashamed.

  “I thought you knew,” Weasel said.

  “Knew what? Knew that the price of her magic is human blood? And that I was brought here for that purpose? You made it clear enough to me when I first arrived. I’ve felt death hanging over me all this time. It’s good to know, finally, when the ax will fall.”

  “Death isn’t hanging over your Weasel cried, her voice thick with emotion.

  And suddenly Orem knew what it was that he had never understood before.

  “Whose death is it, then?” Weasel shook her head.

  “Tell me!” Orem grabbed at her gown, pulled her down to his level, and looked into her ugly face for an answer. “In the name of God, tell me!” he shouted.

  Weasel doubled over in pain, her head striking the grassy ground. “I can’t!” she said faintly, moaning.

  “I have to know!”

  “The Queen—”

  Orem pulled her up by a thick handful of hair—but most of it came out in his hand, and Weasel cried out in pain again. “I can’t speak it!”

  Orem already knew the answer, knew it but refused it, and yet had to hear it spoken to confirm his worst fears. “In the name of God,” he said.

  “Sweet Sisters, let me go!”

  “By the hart, tell me.”

  She shook her head and tried to get up, tried to run away.

  In anguish Orem caught her and held her. He gripped her face between his hands and shouted, “Tell me if you have any love for me at all!”

  She opened her mouth and tried to force words to come. Her lips moved, but her face twisted in agony and her eyes grew wide and bulging and her breath stopped. She turned red, but at last she forced a sound from her throat, a thin, feeble squeal that said nothing but the fact that she was doing all she could, and all she could was not enough.

  It was with an effort that Orem discarded his long-practiced caution and used his gift in a way that would clearly tell the Queen who and what he was. But he had to know, had to have the words, and so he closed his eyes and found the magic that bound the woman he held between his hands. It was a strong binding, and it was obvious to him that the Queen’s attention was here, that she was watching him. It made no difference to him, in the end; he worked harder and swallowed every bit of power she threw at him and at Weasel. And finally all the magic had been beaten off, and it was not Weasel he held, but Enziquelvenisensee Evelvenin, wearing the face the Queen had worn before weariness ravaged it. She was weeping, but at last she could speak.

  “You’ve ruined it now,” she said. “You’ve ruined every hope. All depended on the Queen’s not knowing. I pled with the hart for centuries to send you here, and you came, and now you’ve wrecked it all.”

  But Orem did not know what plan she had, what plan he might have ruined. He only knew that he had exposed himself to the Queen at last, and all for the sake of one answer. An answer which he had not yet heard.

  “Tell me,” he said again, softly this time. And she answered.

  “The price of the Queen’s power is not your blood, Little King. When Palicrovol ravished her, she was not a child, not inside her; though her blood had only flowed once, she was able, and she conceived his daughter. She bore the child, and by magic that she learned from Sleeve she made her a twelve-month daughter. Sleeve thought she wanted to imbue the child with power. But Beauty wanted the power for herself.”

  “She had a daughter?”

  “For two years she kept the child—by then it already could talk like a little woman—and then she used the one spell that is unthinkable to any creature that doesn’t live for hate. The greatest of the great magics comes from putting all your power into your own child, a child who was a twelve-month child who has eaten nothing but your own milk, and when the child contains all yourself, you drink his blood while the child still lives, and take back to yourself all your own power, and all the power of the child’s blood, and all the youth of the child. You can live forever if you don’t spend the power on other things. Is that answer enough for you? The Queen is running out of strength. When Palicrovol stands before the city walls, the Queen will drink the blood of Youth.”

  In the silence, the baby crawling through the grass said, “Buh-buh-buh.”

  “And that’s what we tried to tell you before. The Sweet Sisters brought a husband for the Queen, and the hart brought a Sink to swallow up her strength. It is because all gods are cruel that you came to answer both calls. Little King, my heart is breaking for you.”

  But Orem did not answer. He knelt in the grass beside Youth and picked the child up. Youth started to play Touch-the-Nose. Orem did not weep, did not cry out. He just held his son and refused to admit that there was anyone or anything else in the world. He even paid no attention when the Queen herself came, looking haggard beside the sweet, fresh young girl that Orem had freed. The Queen and Evelvenin coolly regarded each other.

  “I haven’t the strength to waste on you right now,” Beauty said. “So enjoy the mirrors while they still show such a pretty sight.”

  Evelvenin showed no sign of having heard, except that she continued to gaze in the Queen’s eyes.

  Beauty turned to Orem, who was laughing softly as Youth pulled his nose.

  “Little King,” she said. “I see I haven’t the strength to fight you. But now I know what you are, my little husband. Not a wizard, not at all. Just a weak little boy. My magic may not be able to touch you. But there are other kinds of power.”

  Orem ignored her until the guards took him and pulled Youth away from him. The child cried, but quieted as soon as the Queen took him in her arms and carried him inside. Orem watched them go placidly. Then he moved—so smoothly and calmly that the guards, for just one second, were not alarmed—and slipped a knife from a soldier’s belt and started to pull it across his own throat. The knife had not touched a vein or artery, however, before they stopped him. It was only when the knife had been torn from his hand that Orem showed what he felt Such a shout should not have been able to come from his throat. It filled the palace park, echoed in the halls and corridors of the palace itself, made bureaucrats in the Taxhouse scribble furiously to blot out the sound.

  They took him to Corner Castle. And Orem at last understood the kind of pain that could make a man cry out in an agony that made the stones ring in sympathy.

  In her chambers, the Queen nursed her little child and smiled and played with him until he slept.

  And King Palicrovol reached the town of Pry that night.

  Orem spent eleven days in his cell in Comer Castle. It was not uncomfortable, if he had worried about comfort. And after the first shock he remained rather calm. Food came regularly. He was not tortured. He was not abused. He simply was confined. And there was no one Orem was especially anxious to see.

  No wonder the others had tried to warn him against spending any time with Youth. No wonder the Queen had laughed when he commanded her to let him be free with his son. Even so, it had only been two months since the boy was born. Yet in those two months Orem had put all his love and all his hope in the boy, had spent every moment that he could playing with him, and cleaning him, and watching him sleep. It was bad enough that the boy wasn’t with him now; it was intolerable to think of what was planned for him, and so Orem tried not to think of it at all. And so, of course, he thought of nothing else.

  He wept sometimes for the child’s life cut short. He seethed with rage at the monstrous sort of woman who could feed on her own child. He tried again and again to strike at the Queen in the night, but now that she knew who he was and what she faced, she could protect herself easily. It was as if a thin but impenetrable wall had been placed around her and the palace—Orem could swallow all the magic that he liked outside that barrier, but inside the palace he simply could not go.

  And he tried to think of a way to turn events against the Queen. Palicrovol’s coming meant nothing now. He would stand outside the walls, thinking he faced a weakened Queen, and she would drink the child’s blood and suddenly her powers would be more than he or any other living soul could match.

  He thought of only one plan and did not know if it could work. But it was his only hope, and he would try it if he could. It all depended on his being present at the one event he would have longed to miss—the death of his own child. And his plan contained no hope of saving Youth. Only of avenging his death in the moment it occurred. How strong and uncompassionate was the Queen’s hatred? If she had any spark of humanity left in her, she would never bring Orem to watch Youth die. Orem was counting on her having lost that spark years ago. Yet he could not forget that she had wept in his arms the day Youth was born. Was that compassion? Or self-pity?

  The answer came on the twelfth day. There was a distant sound of trumpets. They kept sounding, off and on, for an hour. And then the guards came and took Orem from his cell.

  “Those trumpets,” he said. “Palicrovol has come, hasn’t he?”

  The guards did not answer. “The Queen commands you to come,” one guard said, and then it was silence all the way to the palace, all the way to the mirrored room that had been Orem’s own during all his time as the Queen’s Little King.

  There were many guards for just the four of them: Orem, Urubugala, Craven, and Weasel. Urubugala was still the fool—the Queen could not afford to let him loose—but Craven and Weasel were not bound by magic. The great soldier and the beautiful girl each stood quietly, surrounded by guards. Only Urubugala was tied enough by the Queen’s spells that he needed no guard. Instead he cavorted in the middle of the room, from which the bed had been removed, and jumped up on the new altar which had been placed there.

  “Beauty! Beauty! Beauty!” he cried, turning a backflip off the altar.

  Orem did not want to watch him, but the fool’s antics helped distract him from the sickening dread that threatened to overcome him. He was determined to be calm, to keep his eyes open, to act as far as it was possible to act.

  And then the Queen came in, carrying Youth.

  The child squirmed happily in her arms, twisted around to see what was going on. It took very little time for Youth to notice Orem; he remembered him instantly. “Buh-buh-buh!” he cried out, reaching for his father. Orem almost tried to run to the boy and embrace him and try to carry him away; but the guards’ weapons were drawn, and if Orem was to have any hope of saving something from the Queen, he would have to stay placid, docile, cowardly behind the fence of swords.

  “Why, my friends,” said the Queen. “You who have stayed with me so faithfully all these years. I thought you might want to be with me for the renewing of my strength. The dear King Palicrovol’s army is assembling outside the gates of Hart’s Hope, and I must prepare a home-coming for my loving first husband.”

  Orem longed to answer, but he kept his peace. Her walls against him were strong; she was obviously sure he could do nothing to interfere with the magic here. He was determined that she still be complacent about him. It was Zymas, once called Craven, who shouted at her. “A cowards welcome!” He was struck by a guard immediately, but the Queen only laughed. “You’re wise to talk of cowards, my friend. I remember the brave soldier who advised dear Palicrovol to kill the little girl he had just raped. As if a child could be a danger to you.”

  “I wish I had done it myself, instead of asking!”

  And the Queen looked at him calmly. “There are times, when I wish the same myself. But you did not, my friend. And I suppose the Sweet Sisters had their hand in that. So much injustice had to have its price. I will exact that price. I have exacted it for three hundred years, but in three times that time the price will not be paid.”

  “You put a high value on your own suffering,” said Evelvenin.

  “Perhaps we’ve had enough of this. There’s much to do, and not much time to do it in.” And the Queen laid the baby on the altar.

  The fool rolled on the floor. “Watch and learn, or you will burn!” he cried, giggling all the time.

  “Shut up,” Queen Beauty said, and Urubugala smiled inscrutably, playing with his phallus and winking at anyone who looked at him. He also winked at Orem. And then, without looking at anyone else, he got up and stood beside the Queen. Orem watched, and realized immediately what he was doing.

  He was duplicating every action that the Queen made.

  The Queen had undressed Youth, removing even his diaper, so that the child lay naked on the cold silver of the altar. Now she was removing her own gown, and as she did, the fool also stripped. Both were naked in a moment.

  “I am through!” the fool cried. “Now it’s you!”

  And Orem realized that he was not the only one who had thought of a way to stop Queen Beauty.

  So the wizard Sleeve had spoken from behind his mask as Urubugala. Orem must imitate the Queen, must perform the rites she performed. And yet he had to do it in such a way that he would not be noticed. It was almost impossible. Was impossible, Orem suspected. But it must be tried. For now the Queen was beginning the rites of putting all her powers into the boy; and Orem meant to do the same. He had not been sure that his unlearned gift of being a Sink could be passed from him to someone else. But Sleeve seemed to think so. And Sleeve would surely know.

  And so Orem followed the ritual carefully, not taking his eyes off Queen Beauty, not missing a word she said. The rites were uncomplicated, without paraphernalia; only words and signs, which he repeated subtly, so she would not hear or see. This was not great magic, not yet—now it was just a gift from a mother to her child, and it had no cost.

  The ceremony was not terribly long, either, though Youth did get restless and call out every now and then, wanting to play. The child kept catching at his mother’s fingers as she made signs over him. Orem could not take time to notice Youth, though. He duplicated the signs, hoping that the distance between him and the child would not matter.

  And then, at the end, there was something Orem could not do. Queen Beauty took a pin and cut a thin, bloody line on her arm and anointed the child’s eyes.

  At that moment, Zymas bellowed and struggled to get away from his guards. The Queen looked at him. “Do you think you can stop me with noises?” She did not see that Urubugala grabbed Orem’s hand and drove it against the blade of a soldier’s drawn sword. Blood flowed profusely, and several drops got on Urubugala’s hands. Orem immediately drew his hand back and held it behind him. The only guard who had been alerted was the one whose sword was used, and he contented himself with glaring at Urubugala, not realizing exactly what had happened.

  No sooner had the Queen turned back away from Zymas than Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin broke away from her guards, who had not thought her as dangerous as Zymas, and ran for the altar. The Queen moved quickly, despite her weakened body, and caught her—but the struggle was intense, with both women shouting at each other. But Orem saw that Urubugala ran past the altar. The fool’s eyes remained intent on the battle between the women—but his bloody hand went out and anointed both the child’s eyes. Then he danced back out of range of the altar and sucked the remaining blood off his hand.

  It was done. The ritual lacked only a few words to be complete.

  But the Queen did not say the words. She only looked at Orem and laughed.

  “Do you think I’m so blind, Little King? Urubugala’s little plot, and your two friends’ little distractions—they can’t blind me. Or did Urubugala forget that one other little requirement of the ritual? The child must have swallowed the fluid of your own body, freely given to him. He has suckled at my breast all these weeks. How much did he suck from yours, Little King?” And she laughed.

  And Orem despaired.

  The Queen said the final words of the ritual.

  Youth cried in sudden, terrible pain. All the powers, all the hatreds, all the knowledge of his mother passed into him. He cried out, and there were words in his weeping, curses in his infant voice that sounded all the more terrible because the voice should have been innocent. As remarkable, however, was the change in Beauty. Now every vestige of Evelvenin’s beauty dropped away from her, and she became the cruel-faced woman that she ought to be; and not only cruel, but also ancient, the magic she had worked on herself fading rapidly as it passed into the child. She reached quickly for the knife, and Orem realized that he had neither saved his son nor stopped the Queen. He shouted, not knowing what he said, just knowing that he could not bear what would surely happen next.