Orson Card - Hart's Hope

Urubugala shrugged. "Then she didn't force me. If I hadn't taught her how to bind you, then she would have had to kill you to save herself. So you owe your life to me."

"I don't want my life," said Orem. "My son is going to die."

"Yes. Tomorrow," said Urubugala, brutally. "Your son has no hope, he never had hope, and Beauty warned you not to love him. We all warned you not to love him, but you did, for Hart knows what reason. How can we undo that? You chose it yourself, Little King. But there's still a way that when Queen Beauty kills your son she'll destroy herself as well. Listen, Little King. You know who I really am; can you doubt that I know what's possible and what is not? The Queen will do the rites that put her power into the child. All that she is she'll take out of herself and put in him. And in the moment that the Passage is complete, she'll cut him and drink the living blood, and through the blood receive back all herself, a hundred thousandfold increased."

In vain Orem cried out and buried himself in the bed, to shut the vision from his mind.

"Little King, if you do the rites along with her, but secretly, so she cannot see, then at the moment of completion, when all her power goes into the child, yours will also go. Yours will also go, Little King, Little Sink, and all the power will seep away into the earth, and when she drinks, there will be nothing, for her power, her life itself will die with the child."

Orem heard, though he did not want to hear; he thought though he did not want to think. "No," he whispered.

"If Youth is dead, what is the rest of it to me?"

"Doesn't it matter to you that you're the only one in the world with the power to stop her? That the gods themselves are at your mercy? Why do you think they brought you here? Why do you think that you're alive at all?"

Orem rolled over, looked at the dwarf eye to eye, inches away at the edge of the bed. "I don't know why I'm alive," he softly said. "Once I thought I was myself, just myself, free to make what I liked of my life. But now I know from my conception on I've never been myself, but just a tool. As Beauty brought forth a daughter and a son to use for tools, so God and the Hart and the Sisters brought me forth. How are they different? If my son is not to be saved from the Queen, I at least can save myself from the gods."

He looked into Urubugala's eyes, waiting for the argument. But it did not come. The dwarf's eyes filmed over with tears. "You dreamed of freedom, did you?" he whispered. "So have I, for three hundred years. But you're not the only one who'll pay a price for Beauty's end. Beauty's power has sustained the four of us for centuries. Weasel, Craven, Palicrovol himself, and me. When her power goes, what sustains us then?"

Orem had thought that Weasel would simply become Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin again. As she had been on her wedding night. It had not occurred to him that the intervening years would also be restored.

"And yet," said Urubugala, "we'll gladly pay that price."

"If I do what you say, it'll still depend on Beauty killing him."

"Yes."

"Then won't we be consenting to his death?"

"What is the price of freeing all the world? One small child. What is the price of enslaving all the world? That same child. Either way dead."

Orem covered his face with his hands and wept.

Weasel

That night Weasel Sootmouth came to him. He did not speak, for there was no need to speak. She took the clothing from him and anointed him with balm, and gently rubbed his swollen shoulders, and changed the bandages on his feet. For an hour she labored over him. And then she covered him again, and sat beside him. He reached his hand for her, and she took it. "Weasel," said Orem, "how can I give less than you?"

And when all was said, and Orem drifted off to sleep, still he held her hand. She pulled it back, but he clung to her weakly and said, "I love you."

And she said to him, because he was so young, so innocent, and so in pain, "I also. Love you." She said it because it was true.

She left the Lesser Donjon and went to Urubugala, where he waited with Craven in the Palace.

"He'll do it," she told them.

"If all goes well, he'll hate me forever," Urubugala said.

"Why is that?" asked Weasel.

"I lied to him," he said.

"What did you tell him?" Weasel demanded.

"I won't tell you, Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin, or you would tell him the truth, and then I think he

would fail us."

"Why can't you believe, Urubugala, that some of mankind will act better if they know the truth than if they do not?"

"Experience is my only teacher," Urubugala answered. "Men are better when they know

nothing."

"Then what of you, Sleeve, who know everything?"

Urubugala shrugged. "I'm just the Queen's little black dwarf."

25 The Victory of the Hundred Horns

How Youth and Beauty died, and were borne away on the crest of the Hundred Horns.

The Readying of the Twelve-Month Child They wakened Orem in darkness; he dressed by candlelight and walked the Long Walk with guards assisting him because he could not easily support himself. It was cold; Orem had so diminished Beauty's power that the springtime of Palace Park was broken. The winter of the world outside had come at last. The flowers all were dead, the trees that turn were turning madly red and gold; the fountains were ice, and the wind was bitter here for the first time in centuries.

"Papa," cried the boy. "Where have you been? Let me tell you a story!"

Weasel, Urubugala, and Craven waited on the opposite side of the square from Orem. Only Urubugala did not hold still. He danced and pranced and rolled, cavorted here and there; only once did he come near Orem, and then only to whisper, "All she does, you do!" Then he was gone again, playing the fool at another place, pretending to be bound by spells that could not utterly bind him.

The first light appeared in the sky of the east. They were in the shadow of the Palace, but Beauty was in a hurry. She knew what was truly necessary to the rite and what was not; direct sunlight was not, and she began the Passage.

She took all the clothing from her son and laid him on the silver table. Youth cried out, for the metal was cold; but there he stayed, cry or not, while Beauty removed her clothing, too. Orem looked at Urubugala—was this a part of it? Need he undress as well? Beauty had learned almost all of what she knew from Sleeve's books. Urubugala shook his head.

Youth cried out and pleaded with his mother to let him down, it's cold, it's cold. Orem knew he could not escape; Beauty had bound him, and his nets and webs stayed furled within him. We watched, and Orem kept himself as calm as if his son's cries were the calls of a bird, distant and meaningless. Kept himself calm and did all that Beauty did, making every hand sign, muttering every word along with her. After a while Youth stopped crying and began to play, catching at his mother's fingers as she made the signs. If he broke a pattern she repeated it, and so did Orem. It was long, but he made no mistakes; Weasel, Craven, and Urubugala all watched to be sure of it.

As the light grew brighter, just before the sun crested the Palace, Queen Beauty smiled and took a pin from a servant, then drew the pin along her arm, drawing blood. She dipped a finger in the blood and anointed the child's eyelids with it.

What do I do? asked Orem's questioning eyes. The answer came from Craven, who suddenly began to sing a ribald, bawling song from his common soldiering days with Palicrovol's rebel army. The solemnity was broken; guards lunged to silence him; in the confusion Urubugala was near Orem and took hold of his hand. Orem was ready—he had already cut his wrist as deep as he could with his fingernail. The blood beaded on the shallow wound. Urubugala caught some on his fingers and was gone. As he rolled before the altar he jumped up, leaned out and spat in Beauty's face. She shouted at him; guards bound him as they had gagged Craven; but as he spat he had touched his bloody fingers to the child's eyes.