Hart's Hope

2

The Girl Who Rode the Hart

Three times in her life, Asineth learned what it meant to be the King's daughter. Each lesson was the beginning of wisdom.

Asineth's Lesson of Good and Evil

When Asineth was only three, the ladies who cared for her walked her in the palace garden, in the safe part, where the gravel walks are neatly edged and the plants all grow in animal shapes. One of her favorite games was to sit very still, dribbling sand or gravel from her fingers, until the watching women grew bored with her, and got involved in their own conversations. Then she would quietly get up and walk away and hide from them. At first she always hid nearby, so she could watch the first moments of panic on their faces when they realized she was gone. "Oh, you little monster," they would say. "Oh, is that a way for a princess to run off and leave her ladies?"

But this time little Asineth hid farther away, because she was getting older, and the world was getting larger, and she was drawn to that part of the garden where moss hangs untrimmed and the animals are not rooted to the ground. There she saw a great grey beast drifting slowly through the underbrush, and she felt a strange attraction to it, and she followed. She would lose sight of the beast from time to time, and wander searching for it, and always she caught a glimpse of it, or thought she did, and moved after it, farther and farther into the untamed garden.

"Not you," said the soldier who carried her. "Never you. King Nasilee is your father. What man would dare to take a whip to you?"

So it was that Asineth learned that the daughter of the King can do no wrong.

Asineth's Lesson of Love and Power

King Nasilee's favorite mistress was Berry, and Asineth loved Berry with all her heart. Berry was lithe and beautiful. When she was naked she was slender and quick of body, like a racing hound, and all her muscles moved gracefully under her skin. When she was clothed she was ethereal, as distant from the world as a sunburst, and as beautiful. Asineth would come to her every day, and talk to her, and Berry, beautiful as she was, took time to listen to the little girl, to hear all her tales of the palace, all her dreams and wishes.

"I wish I were like you," Asineth told her.

"And how would you like to be like me?" Berry asked.

"You are so beautiful."

"But in a few years my beauty will fade, and the King your father will set me aside with a pension, like a housekeeper or a soldier."

"You are so wise."

"Wisdom is nothing, without power. Someday you will be Queen. Your husband will rule Burland because he is your husband, and then you will have power, and then it will not matter if you are wise."

"What is power?" asked Asineth.

Berry laughed, which told the six-year-old girl that she had asked a good question, a hard one. Adults always laughed when Asineth asked a hard question. After they laughed, Asineth always studied the question and the answer, to see what made it such an important question.

"So power is naming people?" asked Asineth.

"And something more. Power is to tell the future, little Asineth. If the astronomer says, Tomorrow the moon will come and cover the sun, and it happens as he said, then he has the power of the sun and the moon. If your father says, Tomorrow you will die, it will also happen, and so your father has the power of death. Your father can tell the futures of all men in Burland. You will prosper, you will fail, you will fight in war, you will take your cargo downriver, you will pay taxes, you will have no children, you will be a widow, you will eat pomegranates every day of your life—he can predict anything to do with men, and it will come to pass. He can even tell the astronomer, Tomorrow you will die, and all the astronomer's power over the sun and the moon will not save him."

Berry brushed her hair a hundred times as she spoke, and her hair glistened like gold. "I have power, too," said Berry.

"Whose future do you tell?" asked little Asineth.

"Your father's."

"What do you say will happen to him?"

"I say that tonight he will see a perfect body, and he will embrace it; he will see perfect lips, and he will kiss them. I predict that the seed of the King will be spilled in me tonight. I tell the future—and it will come to pass."

"So you have power over my father?" asked Asineth.

"I love your father. I know him as he does not even know himself. He could not live without me." Berry stood naked before the glass and drew the borders of herself, and told Asineth how her father loved each nation of her flesh, told her which he came to as a gentle ambassador, which he dealt with sternly, and which he conquered with the sword.

Then her voice softened, and her face became childlike and peaceful, even as her words became colder. "A woman is a field, Asineth, or so a man thinks, a field that he will plow and plant, and from which he means to reap far more than his little seed. But the earth moves faster than a man can move, and the only reason he does not know it is because I carry him with me as I turn. He only plows what furrows he finds; he makes nothing. It is the farmer who is plowed, and not the field, and he will not forget me." Asineth listened to all of Berry's words and watched the motion of her body and practiced talking and moving like her. She prayed to the Sweet Sisters that she would be like Berry when she grew; she knew that there was never a woman more perfect in all the world.

She loved Berry even on the day she spoke of her to the King. Nasilee let her sit beside him in the Chamber of Questions, and though she was young, he would sometimes publicly consult her. She would give her answer in a loud voice, and Nasilee would either praise her wisdom or point out her error, so all men could hear and benefit, and so that she could learn statecraft. This day the King asked his daughter, "Who is wiser than I am, Asineth?"

"Ah," said her father. "And how is she so wise?"

"Because she has power, and if you have power you don't have to be wise."

"I have more power than she has," said the King. "Am I not wiser, then?"

"You have power over all men, Father, but Berry has power over you. You can never get a farmer to plow the same field twice in a year, but she can get you to plow twice in a day, even when you have no seed left to sow."

"Ah," said Nasilee again. Then he told the soldiers to bring Berry to him. Asineth saw that her father was angry. Why should he be angry? Didn't he love Berry as much as Asineth did? Wasn't he glad that she was wise? Hadn't he poisoned Asineth's own mother because she was angry at him for taking Berry into his bed?

Berry came with manacles on her wrists and hands. She looked at Asineth with a terrible hatred and cried out, "How can you believe the words of a child! I don't know why she is lying, or who told her to say these things, but you surely won't believe the tales of my enemies!"

Nasilee only raised his eyebrows and said, "Asineth never lies."

Berry looked in fear at Asineth and cried, "I was never your rival!"

But Asineth did not understand her words. She had learned her first lesson so well that she was incapable of imagining that she had done something wrong.

Berry pleaded with her lover. Asineth saw how she used her beautiful body, how she strained against the manacles, how her robe parted artfully to show the swell of her breasts. Father will love Berry again and forgive her, Asnieth was sure of it. But Berry's lover had become her King, and when all her pleading was done, he sent for a farmer and a team of oxen and a plow.

Out in the garden they did it, plowed Berry from groin to heart with a team of oxen pulling, and her screams rang in the palace garden until winter, so that Asineth could not go outside until winter changed it into another world.

It was a cruel thing her father did, but Asineth knew that he, too, heard Berry's screams in the night. Berry dwelt in every room of the palace, even though she was dead, and one day, when Asineth was nine, she found her father slumped in a chair in the library, a book open before him, his cheeks stained with half-dried tears. Without asking, Asineth knew who it was he thought of. It comforted Asineth to know that even though Berry had not so much power as she had thought, she had this much: she could make herself unforgotten, and force her lover to live forever with regret. Yet Berry's death itself was still a half-learned lesson, with the meaning yet ungiven, and so Asineth asked her father a question. "Didn't you love her?" asked Asineth.

"Why did you kill her, then?"

"Because I am the King," said Nasilee. "If I hadn't killed her, I would have lost the fear of my

people, and if they do not fear me, I am not King."

Asineth knew then that of the two powers Berry taught her, the stronger power was naming. It was because Nasilee was named King that he had to kill what he loved most. "You did not love Berry most of all," said Asineth.

Nasilee opened his eyes, letting their light shine narrowly out upon his young daughter. "Did I

not?"

"More than her, you loved the name of King."

Her father's eyes closed again. "Go away, child."

"I don't want to go, Father," she said. I loved Berry more than I loved you, she did not say.

"I don't want to see you when I think of her," said her father.

"Why not?" asked Asineth.

"Because you made me kill her."

"I?"

"If you hadn't told me of her treasonous words, I wouldn't have had to kill her."

"If you had merely laughed at the words of a child, she could have lived."

"A King must be King!"

"A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed." The words could have been Berry's, for Berry understood these things, and Asineth only still guessed at all that she meant.

"What does it matter?" said the King wearily. "You said the words, the King heard them and had to act, Berry had to die, and now I mourn her and wish that you had died in birthing, and taken your mother with you, by the Hart I wish it, by the Sisters I swear it, now leave me, little girl."

She left him. Until that time, she had been the one person in all Burland who did not fear King Nasilee. Now there was no one left who did not fear him, for he was King, and could break anyone with a word. Asineth's Lesson of Justice and Mercy

The terrible rebel had roused all the people of Burland against the King. With that traitor Zymas he had defeated army after army, not in open battle but by cutting off their supplies, separating, wooing soldiers, troops, whole armies to desert and serve Palicrovol. Now, at last, after fifteen years of a war that had never come to battle, Palicrovol's army was outside the walls of Hart's Hope. Hart's Hope, the great city on the Burring, the capital; and Nasilee looked out and saw no help.

For the last ten years tax payments had fallen steadily, ceasing first in the outlying counties, and finally diminishing to almost nothing. The commerce of Hart's Hope itself had failed, for Palicrovol had built a highway in the west and forced all the river traffic to travel overland, though it raised prices; Hart's Hope was starving, and the people fled. Now Nasilee waited inside the impregnable walls, watched as Palicrovol, a Godsman, gathered his white banners, each with a hundred men around it, until the land outside foamed white as the crests of the sea.

Asineth also waited. She watched her father consult his wizards—the few that remained. She watched him wander the half-empty halls of the palace, haunted by the knowledge of his own death. Everyone knew that the walls of Hart's Hope could not be breached. They were miles long, rods high, yards thick; even the few soldiers Nasilee had left could hold it against Palicrovol's army, even with Zymas the traitor in command.

But Asineth was afraid. She was old enough now—twelve years old, with her womanhood newly on her—to know that her father was a wicked man, that the people were right to hate him. Asineth knew that Palicrovol was beloved of the people, for even the servants in the palace, loyal as they were, talked wistfully—and quietly—of the freedom and prosperity that Palicrovol brought wherever he conquered. Asineth feared that her father's soldiers would betray him and open the gate for Palicrovol. And so she prayed to the Sweet Sisters. She brought the blood of the moon with her to the altar of women in the secret place, and said, "Make the hearts of these men loyal to my father, so we are preserved from our enemy."

The morning after the night when she burned blood for the Sweet Sisters, the gates of the city swung open, and the soldiers of the outer wall raised the white banner of Palicrovol's God. Word was that Zymas had come to them alone in the night, unarmed, and with his stirring words had won their hearts.

Asineth took four strong guards with her to the Sisters' shrine, where no man had ever been brought before, and commanded them to break the altar in pieces. They broke in with four blows of a sledgehammer. Inside, the solid rock of the altar was hollow. Like a little pot it held ancient water that had been there since the world first gleamed upon the point of the Hart's Horn. The water spilled upon the floor, and Asineth trod in the water and muddied it with her shoe. "I hate you," she said to the Sweet Sisters.

Now Palicrovol's army held even the city of Hart's Hope itself. Word was that Palicrovol had changed the city's name. Now he would call it Inwit, and he was causing half his soldiers to work on building a great temple to his God. He forbade anyone to offer blood at the shrine of the Hart.

This gave Asineth hope. Even though the Hart was a strange god to her, as to all women, she was sure that the Hart would listen to her. Weren't they allies now? Wasn't Palicrovol an enemy to both of them? She prayed to the Hart, then, to be a shield around the Castle walls. There was no chance of treachery now—only a few guards remained, and King Nasilee himself held the only keys that would open the rooms where the gate could be lifted or the postern door unblocked. But Palicrovol had Sleeve, the greatest wizard in the world, and what no man could do, Sleeve might do. So Asineth prayed to the Hart to protect them.

Asineth ran searching for her father through the labyrinth of the Palace. She looked in every hiding place; she did not know her father as well as she thought. He was not in a hiding place. So she did not find him until the soldiers did, in the Chamber of Questions.

"Father!" she cried.

"Fool!" he shouted. "Run."

But the soldiers knew her at once, and caught her, and held her until Palicrovol came.

I hate you, Hart, said Asineth silently.

They came into the Chamber of Questions within the hour: Palicrovol, tall and strong, with the light of God in his face, or at least the light of triumph. Zymas, the traitor, with arms and legs like the limbs of an ox, and the look of battle black in his eyes. Sleeve, gaunt and ghostlike with his white skin and white hair and pink eyes, drifting like a fog over the floor.

"He should die as so many thousands of his people died," cried Zymas. "Sit him naked on a stake, and let the people spit on him as he screams in agony."

"He should be burned," said Sleeve, "so that the power of his blood is returned into the world."

"He is King," said Palicrovol. "He will die like a King." Palicrovol drew his sword. "Give him your sword, Zymas."

"Palicrovol," said Zymas, "you should not take this risk yourself."

"Palicrovol," said Sleeve, "you should not dirty your hands with his blood."

"When the singers say that I vanquished Nasilee," said Palicrovol, "it will be true."

So Asineth watched as her father raised the sword they gave him. He did not attempt to fight—that would have been undignified. Instead he stood with the point of the sword upraised. Palicrovol beat twice upon the sword, trying to force it back, but Nasilee did not flinch. Then Palicrovol thrust his sword under the King's arms, beneath the breastbone, upward into the heart. Asineth watched her father's blood rush gladly down Palicrovol's blade and wash over his hands, and she heard the soldiers cheer. Then she stepped forward. "I am the daughter of the King," she said in a voice that was all the more powerful because it was so feeble and childish.

"The King my father is dead. I am Queen as of this moment, by all the laws of Burland. And the King will be the man I marry."

"The King," said Zymas, "is the man that the armies obey."

"The King," said Sleeve, "is the man clearly favored by the gods."

"The King," said Palicrovol, "is the man who marries you. And I will marry you."

With all the contempt she could manage, Asineth said to him, "I scorn you, Count Traffing."

Palicrovol nodded, as if he honored her verdict upon his honor. "As you wish," he said. "But I never asked for your consent." He turned to one of the servants cowering under the gaze of the soldiers. "Has this girl her womanhood?"

The servant stammered, as Asineth answered for her. "Why don't you ask me? I do not lie."

At those words Palicrovol's face brightened, as if in recognition. "I knew another woman once

who would not lie. Tell me, then, Queen Asineth. Have you your womanhood?"

"Three times," said Asineth. "I am old enough to marry."

"Then marry you shall."

"Never to you."

"Now. And to me. I will not have it said that I do not rule in Burland by right."

They dressed her in a wedding gown that had been made for a child bride eight generations before her. It had never been worn, for the child had died of a plague before her wedding. Now, as they carried Asineth in a prison cart through the streets of Inwit, with ten thousand people jeering at her, cursing her though she had never done them harm, she prayed.

She prayed to the only god left, Palicrovol's God, whose temple was rising in the southeast corner of the city. God, she said to him, your triumph is complete, and I also scorn the Sisters and the Hart. Be merciful to me, God. Let me die unmarried to this man.

But there was no miracle. No unwatched knife lay near her hand; she stood at no precipice; there was no water larger than the contents of an urn. She could not slit her throat or leap to her death or drown. God had no mercy on her.

The image of the Hart had been torn from its place at the Shrine and now stood shabbily in front of Faces Hall. A thousand generations of wizards had stood upon the back of the Hart to pray for Burland and offer the blood of power. Now only Palicrovol stood there, waiting for her, dressed in the short tunic of the bridegroom. There would be no Dance of Descent, no rites; it was plain to anyone with eyes that Palicrovol intended to consummate this marriage in full view of ten thousand witnesses, so that no one afterward could say that he had not been the duly wedded husband of the daughter of the King.

They forced a ring upon the thumb of her left hand—it was Palicrovol's only gentle gesture to her at that time, to name her Beauty at her wedding day. She saw also that he had his ring upon the thumb of the right hand, signifying strength. "Now everyone will know how strong you are," she said, "to conquer a dangerous enemy like me."

He did not answer her. He only watched.

They tied padded boards to her hands, making them so heavy and unwieldy that she could hardly lift them. They put a gag on her mouth, with barbs in it so if she so much as touched it with her tongue or tried to clamp her teeth upon it, it cut her painfully. Then they lifted her to the back of the Hart, and before all the citizens and soldiers of Inwit her husband said the words of the vow, then cut her dress from her. Asineth felt the breeze on her naked skin as if it were the darts of ten thousand eyes. I am the daughter of the King, and you have made me naked and defenseless among the swine. You gave my father the dignity of a King's death, but me you will degrade as the worst of whores is not degraded. Asineth had never known such terrible shame in her life, and she longed to die.

But her maidenhead was Burland, and Burland would be his. Zymas the traitor took Palicrovol's clothing from him; his wizard, Sleeve, anointed him for the marriage bed. And as he was anointed, Palicrovol looked upon the girl he meant to defraud of all she had, saw in her anguish how terrible a thing it was that he must do to this child, and yet for the kingdom's sake he did not flinch from what he must do.

Because she was the daughter of the King, she looked back at him. These gawking churls will see a princess broken, but they will not see her bow. She bit savagely into the barbs of her gag, hoping to drown in her own blood, but the barbs were too slender to draw the heavy stream she needed, and she could not keep her throat from swallowing.

Then she saw the pity in his face, and she realized for the first time that he was no monster of power, but a man; and if a man, then an animal; and if an animal, then a prisoner of his body. Palicrovol was not as strong as a god, for the gods had no mercy, and the gods were weak or malicious anyway. Palicrovol had the power to ensure that she would be alive when he broke into her secret chamber and left his slime. But did she not have the power Berry had taught her: to make this man remember her? She began to move her girlish body as she had seen Berry move. She saw Palicrovol's surprise, and then Palicrovol's eyes filled with—desire. Her movement was so subtle that it could not be seen by anyone but Palicrovol; but once he saw it, he could see nothing else. Asineth was not surprised at his fascination—she had learned from Berry, and Berry was perfection. Palicrovol trembled as he took her, and Asineth ignored the pain and tried to use him as Berry had said a woman must use a man if she is to be remembered. When he was done at last, he stood, her blood glistening upon his triumphant horn, and she watched them set the Antler Crown upon his head, and put the Mantle of the Stag upon his shoulders. His eyes were distant, and his knees were weak, and she knew that she had shaken him. She thought he was trembling with the memory of her body, as men had trembled for Berry.

The rite was finished, and the few participants withdrew from the crowd into Faces Hall. "Kill her now," said Zymas. "You have what you need from her. If you let her live, she will only be a danger to you."

"Kill her now," said Sleeve. "Women can take vengeances that men cannot understand."

Kill me now if you dare, Asineth challenged him, her tongue flicking painfully against the barbs. All gods have forsaken me, I have done what little I could do, and I long not to live. Kill me now, but I will haunt the inner chamber of your heart.

"I will not kill her," said Palicrovol.

And Asineth believed, for that moment, that she was Berry's true disciple, that he had found her body too beautiful, too desirable to be slain. Of course the others, who had not known her flesh, did not understand his need.

"Mercy to her is injustice to Burland," said Zymas. "If she lives, you promise us all a future of war and suffering."

Palicrovol's eyes flashed with anger, and he said nothing for a long moment. Asineth waited for him to speak of his love for her. Instead he looked at her and tears came from his eyes and then he said, "I can kill a King, I can ravish a child, all for the sake of God and Burland, but in God's name, Zymas, wasn't it to stop the killing of children that you first came to me?"

Sleeve touched the King's shoulder. "She is Nasilee's daughter. Imagine how much mercy she would have if she ever had the Flower Princess in her power."

At the mention of the Flower Princess, King Palicrovol bowed his head. "I remember the Flower Princess, Sleeve. I have not forgotten. This girl is so much Nasilee's daughter that even as I took her, she tried to seduce me. That is the sort of animal that was bred in Nasilee's palace."

Asineth went cold, for he sounded horrified at the memory. She had tried to be Berry, but this man only pitied her, and the others looked at her with contempt. Her shame before had been the shame of a King's daughter degraded; now her shame was of a woman despised, and she hated herself for having tried to make him love her, and hated Berry for being so much more beautiful than she, and hated Palicrovol and Zymas and Sleeve for knowing her pitiable attempt at womanhood, and hated most of all this unknown Flower Princess who never would be raped upon the Hart. She cried out against the gag, and Palicrovol ordered them to free her tongue. "If I am an animal, kill me!" she cried. With no crowd to watch her now, with all dignity gone, she was willing to beg. "Kill me now! Like my father!"

"But never Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin," said Sleeve.

"No," said Palicrovol. "But we ask the gods for only one miracle in a lifetime."

"You have broken and humiliated her," Zymas said. "Nasilee's daughter will not forget."

"I have broken and humiliated her," Palicrovol echoed, "and killed her father before her eyes, and taken away her kingdom, and to harm her any more would make me despise myself more than I can bear. If I do not temper my victory with one act of mercy, even one that is dangerous to myself, then how will I look in the crystal and say to God that a better man than Nasilee now wears Nasilee's crown?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Sleeve stepped forward and took Asineth by one of the clumsy boards that encased her hands. "If you insist that this broken creature live, then put her in my care. I alone am strong enough to guard her in her exile, and hide her from the eyes of all your enemies who would love to find her and use her to destroy you."

"I need you by me," protested the new King.

"Then kill this woman."

Palicrovol hesitated no longer. "Take the little Queen, then, Sleeve, and be kind to her."

"I will be as kind to her as you will let me be to one whose only desire is to die," said Sleeve. "By my blood I wish that you had truly been merciful."

Sleeve enclosed her in the folds of his own robe, so that no one could see the naked body of the little Queen. Little Queen, thought Asineth. I will remember the name he called me, she told herself. He will know someday who is little, and who is great. Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a Little Queen. And your mercy will be your undoing. You will regret leaving me alive, and someday you will remember possessing me, and yearn to possess me again.

What was the third lesson that Asineth learned? She told me herself, many times, when she dwelt in your palace and you hopelessly wandered the forests of Burland.

Asineth learned that justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all. That would be useful to her. She would remember that. That is why she left you alive for three centuries when she had the power to kill you whenever she wished. As the Godsmen say, no act of mercy goes unrewarded. Ah, Palicrovol, will you not learn that mercy is as good as the person to whom the mercy is given? You spared Asineth, who should have died; now you will not spare Orem Scanthips, called Banningside, whose good heart should be born a hundred thousand times upon the earth. Are you like Asineth? Will you learn all your lessons backward?