Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“You may go soon. Where are the Angrborn women, Sir Able? The women who named us queen when we wed?”

“Your Majesty must know better than I do.”

Idnn shook her head. “We stayed in a farmhouse on our way to Utgard. Our servant Berthold had been a slave there. You’ll recall it, we’re sure.”

“I do, Your Majesty, though it seems very long ago.”

“It wasn’t. There were slave women, too, as Gerda was on another farm. But of the owner’s own women, none. No wife, no sister, no mother. Hela says the womenfolk of the Angrborn remain our subjects.”

I asked whether Idnn hoped that I could add to what she already knew about them; when she did not reply, I assured her that I could not.

“She said she’d bring some of our subjects here, and so saying went into the night. Do you think us in danger?”

“From your subjects? I can’t say. We’re all in danger from the Angrborn, Your Majesty.”

“Of course. When Hela left, we called for Gerda. She’s lived among them most of her life, and she kept her eyes. We asked where the women were, the wives of the Angrborn we see. We won’t tell you all she said—much of it was foolish. She said she’d seen them from a distance, and they frightened her—that they have their own land, far away.”

No doubt I looked incredulous. “Your Majesty once said the same, I believe.”

“We did not, for that was not what they had told us. Our race would die out if we women lived in one nation and you men in another, and I know of no beast that lives so. Besides, if the females were so far away, how was it Gerda had seen some? So we popped her into the fire—you know what we mean—and wouldn’t let her out ‘til she’d told us everything. You see them early in the morning, mostly. Very early, before the sun is up. Or before moonrise. For more than our lifetime Gerda had to rise and dress by firelight, milk four cows, and turn them out to pasture. Do you know what frightened us? When we were at Utgard?”

“The place itself, I imagine, and the Angrborn.”

“Only some of them, the ones with two heads or four arms. We don’t know why, they were no worse than the others, but they did.”

For half a minute, perhaps, Idnn gave her attention to her soup. Then she said, “Who killed our husband, Sir Able?”

I told her I did not know.

“We feel it was one of those monsters. There was one with a lot of legs. Did you see him? Like a spider. A big eye and two small ones.” Idnn shuddered.

“There was one covered with hair as well.”

“We hated him—hated the sight of him, we mean. He may have been a perfectly worthy subject for all we know, and he was a member of our husband’s guard. But when you rode over them on your wonderful horse and slew a score—”

“Not as many as that, Your Majesty.”

“A score at least with your arrows, and we were shooting arrows too, with the maids we’d taught to shoot—or anyway with the ones who had stomach enough for it—we kept hoping that one would be him, and we’d see him and put an arrow into his eye. It didn’t happen, but that was what we hoped.”

“I’ve wondered about these things,” I told her. “The Angrborn were cast out of Skai because they were inferior. Not because they were evil—many of the Giants of Winter and Old Night were as bad or worse. Because they didn’t measure up in some fashion. It may have been because they had lost the ability, which the Giants of Winter and Old Night certainly have, to change size and shape. Having lost it, they may have been judged unfit for Skai.”

“You were there.”

Seeing what was coming, I did not nod.

“Could you do that then? Turn into an eagle or a bull. Or—or be smaller than Mani.”

I smiled. “Who’d catch and eat me, and serve me right, too. Can’t you see how foolish this is, Your Majesty?”

“You were a very poor liar before you went to Skai. You aren’t much better now.”

I explained that nothing I had said had been a lie, that it would indeed be foolish to make myself smaller than Mani.

“Can you do it?”

I shook my head. “No. No, Your Majesty, I cannot. Am I lying now?” Setting my soup bowl in my lap, I raised both hands to Skai. “Valfather, be my witness. I cannot do either of those things.”

“You’re not lying, but you’re holding something back.”

No doubt I sighed. “When I came back, the Valfather required an oath, one I dare not break. I had to swear I’d use none of the abilities I’d been given there. I gave it. Do you think that was cruel of him?”

“We doubt that he is ever cruel,” Idnn said, “but you must think him so.”

“I don’t. He’s wiser than any mere man, wiser even than the Lady, though she’s wise beyond reckoning. He knows how much harm such powers can do here. Remember Toug?”

“Of course.”

“In his village, people worship the Aelf. It’s a false worship, and it does harm to them and their neighbors. Isn’t the Most High God as high as the Valfather?”

Idnn said, “We’d always understood he was higher.”

“That’s right. But there are those who say he’s lower, inflicting on the Valfather such humiliation as they cannot conceive. If I were to use the powers he gave, there might spring up a cult to rival his, with worshippers claiming I was his superior. He’d be humiliated, and they’d be as far from the truth as those people in Glennidam. As it was, his kindness to me exceeded all reason. He let me take Cloud.”

I set aside my bowl and rose. “We’ve talked enough, Your Majesty, surely. May I go?”

“Eat your meat and let us eat ours, and you may go with our blessing, if we may go too.”

I must have gawked at her like a jerk.

“Are we so weighty? Your arms and armor will outweigh us by a stone, and your saddle’s big enough for two, when the second’s our size. Besides, Cloud’s carried us before.”

I fumbled for words, and at length managed to say, “Your Majesty will be in some danger.”

She smiled; Idnn had always had a charming smile, with a hint of mockery in it. “Our Majesty is in danger here, Sir Able. Our Majesty will be in less on your wonderful horse’s back, with you to protect us, than Our Majesty would be in here, with Sir Able and his wonderful horse gone.”

“Sir Svon would not like to hear that.”

Idnn nodded. “Nor need he, unless you tell him. But really, Sir Able. He is wounded, and not such a fool as to rate himself with you if he weren’t. Do you think he has spoken to the Valfather as a knight to his liege? Do—”

“I hope he has,” I told her. “He should have. Out of my ignorance I neglected his training when he was my squire. I didn’t realize at the time how badly I was neglecting it, but I can’t believe Sir Ravd neglected it at all. If he didn’t, Sir Svon has talked to the Valfather as his knight.”

Idnn rose; and though she was small, she seemed tall at that moment. “We are properly rebuked. Rebuked, we remain a queen. Take us with you. We ask a boon.”

I knelt. “A boon that does me far too much honor, Your Majesty. I was... Your condescension stunned me.”

“As your courtesy gratifies us. Perhaps it would be best if we mounted first, then took our foot from the stirrup. But here is our meat.”

It was not quite as easy as that, of course. I had to call Cloud, and saddle and bridle her with Pouk’s help.

“She’ll be tired,” Idnn said; and I thought that some small part of her regretted her decision.

“Not she, Your Majesty. She might be ridden in war a long day through, yet remain fresh enough for this.” Cloud’s thoughts had confirmed my words before I spoke them.

“May we stroke her?”