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“So, you’re back.” She sighed, propping herself up in her strange feathered bed. The birds rearranged themselves, regarding him with dozens of beady eyes. “I suppose that makes you a good Prince, as Princes go. But you’re early. The dark moon rises only an hour before dawn, and it is not yet time to give my girl her second birth. And there is one thing more to tell.”
She shifted, and the geese moved with her, stretching their long necks to lay their heads on her, to touch her in any way they could. Silver wings like crossed arms covered her chest.
“I told the first part for myself, so that you would know what was. This I tell for you, so that you will know what is to come.”
THE KNIFE CUT TRUE, BUT NOT DEEPLY. THE Wizard did not even spare a hand to staunch the blood from his own wound. It was a thin scarlet line under his chin, above the collar’s iron rim, but only one line among many on that leather-thick expanse of flesh. In one fluid motion like wind moving from one willow to the next, he caught my grandmother’s hand, snapping her wrist in his grip, and thrust her own knife into her belly.
Grandmother stood still, surprised, looking at the knife’s bone handle jutting like a new limb from her body. And then suddenly she choked, and bright blood erupted from her white lips. She collapsed into my arms as the Wizard ducked into a small room behind the throne, servants in tow, looking after his shallow wound.
And through all this, the King had said nothing, nor moved, but watched it with a falcon’s curiosity. He did not take his cool eyes off me for a moment. Grandmother lay like a child in my arms. She smiled wanly, and the blood kept pouring out of her, deep, dark blood from the depths of her, thick and black until it was not, until it was silver and pale, flowing over my hands, over my lap like a little brook of fresh water. I was soaked in it, and Grandmother reached up, her hand dripping with the stuff, and put her fingers into my mouth, so that the light trickled down my throat.
It tasted of nothing at all.
“You see? I can fill you up after all. You are all of us now, all that is left, drenched with blood and light like our long-dead grandmother in that terrible tent. You are strong enough to buy our vengeance for us. With my death, I instruct you.”
She smiled, just the faintest shadow of a smile, and died, with a noise in her throat like dried beans rattling in a gourd. There was nothing left in her; the blood-light had seeped into me and she was a shell, a hole, empty space.
I did not weep; I would not let them see it. I took the knife with its thick bone hilt from her flesh and clutched it
tightly in my bloody fist.
And as I looked up at the King in all his jewels, for a moment I could see a shape just behind him—a pair of black eyes glittering amid bristled red fur.
It was the Fox, and he was laughing.
I could never discover what they did with my grandmother’s body, but it was removed from the hall as though it were kitchen rubbish, a pile of apple cores and pig fat. The stains were scrubbed from the floor when the Wizard returned, his throat bandaged.
The King had never taken his unblinking eyes from me, and now I stood before him in rags which had once dreamed of being white, covered in the dark glut of her blood, my face streaked with it as though I had painted myself for war, or marriage. The Wizard pushed back his braided gray hair from his creased, high forehead and addressed the King.
“That leaves only the girl, my lord. I will take her into my tower, if I have your leave.”
But the King raised a silky hand, dismissing the suggestion. I stared hard at him as his eyes ranged over my body, clawing at me, trying to gain entrance. For he had conceived a terrible lust for me in his heart, and I could see it grow like a bristled boar behind his gaze.
“You have your tower, Omir. And I have mine.” His voice was quiet and utterly cold, a foul wind through the feathers of a dead crow. I saw the understanding that I had gripped like a new blade at the moment I saw him watching me dawn in the Wizard’s pale eyes. It was a thick-tongued silence as the three of us thought furiously, each to gain his end.
Finally, the Wizard won through, and spoke in a brusque tone that excluded me as wholly as a doubled fist.
“My lord, may I speak to you in private for a moment?”
The two retreated to the opposite end of the great hall. But the ears of my people are keen, and I heard them as clearly as my own horse snorting in a field of grass.
“My King, I have a thought which may achieve all our ends. You want the Witch-woman. I want whatever power her grandmother might have taught her. Why satisfy only your lust? Why not marry the creature?” The King was silent—one could almost hear the tick of calculation echo in the rafters.
“But she is a barbarian,” he reasoned. “She is worthy of my use, not my hand.”
“But lord,” the Wizard insisted, “to marry her would show the conquered tribes that you are to be trusted, that you are a good and just ruler. To win their trust is the only way to quiet the savage bands. Make her Queen and they will adore you for it. Even monsters are given fair hand by the new King, they will whisper. And everyone knows those tribeswomen are fertile as cows. She’ll bury you in sons. I only ask, humbly: The nights she does not spend with you, give her over to me, so I may extract what I can from her before she dies, whether from your ministrations or mine.
“Let me tell you a tale to make clear my meaning…”
ONCE, IN A FAR-OFF KINGDOM—OF COURSE, NOT nearly so magnificent as yours, my lord—there lived a Raja by the name of Indrajit. He was a fine ruler, strong and just as an arrow through the heart of a thief. His conquering Hand was laid out on the fields and farms like a cloud that brings blessed rain. None refused his rule, and no voice was raised against the power of that most sacred Hand.
But still he sought to bring the light and glory of his just rule to the far reaches of the countryside, an ambition not unknown to you, my lord. He looked beyond the great river that flowed like a bolt of silk through the fertile kingdom. And so he led his famed Royal Guards, who as legend told it had sprung up from the earth when Indrajit slew a monstrous boar in the hinterlands and the beast’s teeth fell to the ground and shattered. From those teeth came the hundred and forty-four warriors ever after known as the Dentas Varaahasind—the Teeth of the Boar. They were bound utterly to Indrajit, whose slaying of the monster had given them life. The boar-soldiers were fierce and terrible, and their loyalty was pure as snow on the carcass of a kill. They carried shields made from the vast shoulder blades of the wild pigs of the mountains, which grew in that time to be as large as the vaults of the Raja’s treasure house. Their armor was covered in the blood-red skin of these boars, and they wore necklaces of the long, curving teeth that had given them birth. They painted their faces in pitch and sharpened their teeth with blacksmith’s tools, so that the sight of them was like seeing a demon horde rising up under the moon. The country loved the Raja, as subjects should, but they lived in cold terror of the Varaahasind.
Indrajit one summer led his loyal band across the sparkling river to a small monastery, which he wished to conquer and use as an outpost for the bringing of his just reign to the South. The temple was, curiously, peopled entirely by women, and it was dedicated to some heathen serpent-god draped in jewels. When the women saw the Varaahasind approach, and heard their ghastly battle cry, which was like to the screaming of a boar pierced with an ash spear, they did not shriek or run, but gathered close around the icon of their god, shielding the green-bronze metal with their veiled bodies. A few of the women did show their fear, and fainted dead away, but their limbs were held up by the other acolytes.
Touched by their devotion, Indrajit did not sever their ungrateful breasts immediately and feed their bodies to his men. Instead, he pulled them aside and simply smashed the statue into jagged shards with the pommel of his massive sword, famed in all regions as an invincible blade. Still the women did not cry out as women ought to do. Instead, one of them, with eyes as black as the lightless throat of the serpent, looked at the great King and said:
“That was ill-done. You will walk under Her curse now, for the length of your days, which will spool out onto the earth like a hideous thread.”
