A water elemental could probably be very useful against the Gorgorians—if anybody ever got around to fighting them again. Stories of the Black Weasel and his Bold Bush-dwellers still circulated in the valleys and villages as much as they ever had, but nobody ever seemed to mention any plans for doing more than waylaying and murdering any Gorgorians stupid enough to venture into the eastern mountains.
In fact, it rather seemed to Clootie that people were becoming accustomed to the Gorgorians.
Besides, he couldn’t very well ask a seven-year-old boy to go out there and fight for the rightful ruler of Hydrangea; the boy hadn’t even been born when the Gorgorians came, and nobody seemed entirely sure any more just who the rightful ruler was. Prince Mimulus seemed to have vanished and might be dead, Princess Artemisia was the Gorgorian’s queen…
It would clearly be simpler to stick to washing the dishes, and let Hydrangea take care of itself.
Chapter Seven
Queen Artemisia sat before her mirror and considered the tale it told. In the fourteen years since Prince Arbol’s birth she had not acquired so much as a wrinkle or a gray hair. As a happenstance, that would be wonderful enough in and of itself for any mother, but taking into account the constant, unremitting, merciless stress under which she lived each day, it was a miracle.
“I just don’t know how I do it, Mungli,” she told her lady-in-waiting. “It’s not the easiest task in the world raising a child, let alone a royal one and the heir to the Gorgorian Empire to boot, but if you only knew the real story about Prince Arbol, it would take your breath away.”
“Gkkh,” said Mungli, running an ivory-backed brush through the queen’s blond hair. It was about as much of an answer as Artemisia was going to get from Mungli, now or ever. The queen’s chosen lady-in-waiting was a Gorgorian wench who had gotten into a slight disagreement with her lover’s senior wife. Mungli had always been one to speak her mind, and it was a very creative mind, particularly when it came to dreaming up synonyms for old, ugly, and possessing the sexual attraction of silt. The wife was one of those Gorgorian women who cultivated the magical arts, one, in fact, who had developed them to an exceptional level, and who thought it appropriate to teach the upstart trollop a lesson about keeping a civil tongue in one’s head. She did this by removing Mungli’s tongue almost entirely.
This was rather more magic than Gorgorian women were supposed to have, certainly more than they commonly used, but these were not common circumstances; most comely young Gorgorians knew better than to argue with their magically-gifted elders.
Still, while it wasn’t a very nice spell, it was reversible—sort of a sorcerous warning shot across the bows, intended more to instruct than to punish.
Or rather, it would have been reversible if the Gorgorian man over whom the ladies tussled had not come in just then, noted his senior wife’s use of magic, decided that if he did not do something to indicate his displeasure she might next use her powers on him, and very prudently lopped her head off.
There was general rejoicing in the harem tent and a flurry of in-house promotions all around, but poor Mungli was left out of the fun, high and dry, permanently silenced—if any of the other Gorgorian women had the ability to restore her tongue, they weren’t admitting it. And although most men joked about the advantages of having a silent wife, no one seemed eager to acquire one who lacked a tongue.
It was a fortunate day for Mungli when news of her predicament reached the queen’s ears and she was summoned into the royal service. With Ludmilla gone, Artemisia longed desperately for someone in whom to confide. Not confide everything, you understand, just bits and pieces that might casually drop into the conversation. It was such a relief finally to have someone about the queen’s apartments before whom she could speak freely, without weighing every word! And, like most Gorgorians, Mungli was illiterate, so the danger of the girl writing down anything she might learn was nil.
“All those years, all those years…” Artemisia mused, tilting her head to one side in a fetching manner. “I don’t know how I could have managed if not for you.”
“Hnng,” Mungli agreed.
“Speaking of which, do be a dear and bring me my tea, won’t you?” the queen requested.
Dutifully Mungli trotted off to the sideboard where a silver teapot was bubbling over a spirit-flame. To the boiling water she added three pinches of a dried herb mixture which she carried in a tiny, carefully sealed casket around her neck. When the brew had steeped to her satisfaction, she poured off two cups and brought them to the queen. Together the ladies sipped their tea.
Artemisia smacked her lips. “Hmmm, tastes great,” she remarked. “But I’d drink it even if it tasted like stewed mule’s hocks, just to be sure I never again have to bear Gudge another child! Three—I mean he is quite enough. He being Prince Arbol. Ah, ha, ha, ha.”
“Anh, anh, anh,” Mungli laughed. She patted her own flat belly smugly, a testimony to the powers of the contraceptive tea.
The queen set aside her empty cup. “Are you sure, dear Mungli, that there is no similar tisane known to the women of your tribe that is capable of, uhhh, preventing a young girl from, mmmm, ever embarking upon that stage of life where this tea is necessary?”
Mungli stared at the queen, then made the Gorgorian sign meaning someone did not have all his oxen in the corral.
“No, of course not.” Artemisia was downcast. “It’s quite natural for a woman to want to save herself from too many childbirths, but why would any sane person want to keep a girl from becoming a woman? Well, never mind.”
Mungli cocked her head at the queen and made soft, inquiring noises in her throat. She was more than fond of her royal mistress, for if not for Artemisia she would have either starved in the streets or been shipped to one of the most distant Gorgorian outposts where men were men and the mares were skittish. She would do anything she could to relieve the queen’s distress, but Artemisia waved her off.
“There’s nothing for it but to trust to luck. And we have been pretty lucky so far. Blood will tell. I recall one of my governesses telling another that I was an especially late bloomer, and the other replying that it was because I was such a hoyden, running and riding and sneaking off to take exercise with my brother Mimulus and his companion, dear Lord Tadwyl. ‘If she keeps up such antics,’ Lady Dromedri said, ‘she’ll never get Vimple’s Blessing.’” The queen made a wry face. “Well, I finally did get blessed by good old Vimple, goddess of Alarums, Diversions, and Minor Shocks to the System, so all those athletics couldn’t keep it away forever. Oh, how I wish they could!”
Mungli about to utter a fresh string of questioning noises when there came a tremendous clash and clatter from the stairway without the queen’s apartments. Artemisia heard one of her Gorgorian guards bawl, “Halt! Who goes—? Aiiieee!” and a punctuating crash at the end followed by the second guard’s sheepish, “Oh, it’s you, Prince Arbol. Go right on in, Your Highness.”
“You bet I will!” came the gaily shouted response. The door to the queen’s apartments boomed as a booted foot assaulted the delicate woodwork. Three hearty stomps and the portal flew wide. Hands on hips, resplendent in the full barbaric glory of Royal Gorgorian battle dress, Prince Arbol did not so much enter the queen’s chamber as conquer it.
“Hello, Mom!” the prince said, grinning broadly. “Sorry I had to throw another of your guards down the stairs, but he was stupid.”
“Dear heart, they’re Gorgorians; stupid is what they do best,” the queen chided gently. “It’s not the guards I mind so much as the doors. Doors cost money. Hasn’t your Deportment tutor been able to teach you anything about knocking?”
“He tried, but it sounded stupid, so I threw him down the stairs too. It’s all right, Mom; he landed on a guard.”
“Oh, you naughty boy.” Artemisia could not quite hide a proud smile. She stretched out her hands to the prince. “Now come here and let me look at you.”
Prince Arbol did as bidden. From head to foot
the young royal was all any Gorgorian monarch could desire in an heir. Well grown in height, broad in the chest, legs powerfully muscled and slightly bowed by long hours in the saddle, arms able to wield a handy assortment of small- to medium-sized weapons with grace, skill, and bloodlust, the prince was one of a kind.
Indeed.
Queen Artemisia attempted to remove Arbol’s helmet and ruffle her child’s curly golden hair, but the prince was having none of it. “Aw, Mommmm! Come on, don’t do that. If any of my Companions found out, they’d tease the breeches off me and then I’d have to kill them and half of the bastards owe me money!”
“Arbol, really!” The queen was shocked. “Such language. Have I taught you nothing? When you leave my chambers do you revert to being a…a…Gorgorian?”
The prince was nonplussed. “But I am a Gorgorian.”
“And an Old Hydrangean, too! Never forget that.”
Arbol looked down and scuffed a battered riding boot over the queen’s best carpet. “’Kay,” came the sullen mutter.
“I suppose you came here to do more than sulk,” the queen said drily.
The prince’s head came up, all mopes burned away in the glory of a brilliant smile. “Oh, yes! I almost forgot, and it’s the best news I ever heard in my entire life!”
“Your father’s dead?” the queen asked eagerly.
Arbol made the your-oxen-have-escaped sign at her, then said, “No, I finally managed to wound my Dirty Combat tutor. Not mortally or anything, just your basic hamstringing and some superficial abdominal slashes, but I did him good enough for Dad to say it was about time I moved out of the schoolroom and into the world.”
The queen felt her fingers knotting in on themselves. “What?” she rasped.
“He’s taking me with him on campaign, Mom!” the prince exclaimed, nearly bouncing out of her riding boots. “We leave tomorrow to ravage the western flank of the Hypoglycemian Republic. Isn’t that swell?”
“Mungli,” said the queen, “leave us.”
No sooner had Artemisia’s mute lady-in-waiting departed than the queen seized Prince Arbol by the wrist and dragged her disguised daughter over to the windowseat. There was a special significance attached to all conversations that took place in this stony niche whose lack of cushions guaranteed the undivided attention of the participants. It was in this niche that Queen Artemisia had told Prince Arbol about the debt of honor and blood they both owed to dear, departed, decapitated da/grandda, King Fumitory the Twenty-second. It was here that she had instructed the prince in the holy obligation of all high-born Old Hydrangean children to never, ever, under any circumstances allow themselves to be seen naked by anyone save their mothers, lest a plague of newts occur.
It was here, now, that she said, “Darling, you can’t go.”
“Aw, Mommmmm!” The prince drummed her heels petulantly against the stonework. “Why not? Everybody else is going! All my Companions are going! If I don’t go they’re gonna tease me and then I’ll have to…”
“Young man, if you kill anyone without my express permission, you’re going to be spanked.”
The prince said nothing to this, but Artemisia noticed a cold, hard gleam in her eye that as much as said You and whose army? The queen cleared her throat and decided to use reason.
“My love, a military campaign is not…is not the most refined of milieus. The soldiers must perforce share all things among them. There is little or no privacy, even for men of the highest rank. And of course, the higher the rank, the greater the obligation upon us to keep ourselves splendidly isolated, lest the full glory of our inborn nobility dazzle and blind less exalted folk.”
“Dad says that’s a load of horseflop,” said the prince.
The queen kept her thoughts on the Gudge/horseflop equations to herself. “It is royal Hydrangean tradition,” she gritted. “Don’t you recall the happy days of your infancy when you and I remained gorgeously secluded from a vulgar and obstreperous world?”
“Yeah,” said the prince. “It was boring.”
Queen Artemisia counted to ten and tried another tack. “Precious, unless you are eager to find newts in your pudding, you can not place your modesty at risk. Surely you must recall the sacred obligation you have to keep your nakedness from all eyes save my own?”
“I guess so,” the prince replied. “But—but that’s just for children! You said so yourself. You told me that someday I wouldn’t have to bother with that any more. Well, I’m not a child now. When a Gorgorian boy goes out to his first battle, they count him as a man.”
The queen laced her slim fingers together and took a deep breath. “Arbol, my son, you speak the truth. By the degenerate laws and customs of your spittle-flecked father’s people, you are truly a man. Yet by the infinitely superior traditions and immemorial usages of the Old Hydrangeans, know that with this manhood come further sacred obligations.”
Arbol groaned. “I don’t have to take a bath again, do I?” Arbol was not at all fond of baths, a sentiment perhaps the result of repeated childhood memories of the queen whisking her out of the tub and into a smothering towel with startling violence every time there was the slightest sound outside the royal door.
“My son, ask rather when you will next be privileged enough to have a bath,” the queen intoned. “You see, the chief obligation of a Hydrangean prince is to be kind, courteous, considerate, thoughtful, and above all things to spare his subjects any embarrassment, humiliation, or chagrin.”
“What’s that got to do with—?”
The queen held up a silencing hand. “Some years since, noble son, while you were still too young to be aware of the tragedy, a fearsome plague swept through our realm.”
“Newts?”
“No, not newts. Newts would have been all right, but this—! This terrible pestilence afflicted only males, and those so stricken were—were—O, can I bear to say it?—they were most hideously... deformed!”
“Wow!” Prince Arbol was all ears, though she did not look properly aghast. “How deformed were they? Capsilac, my shield-bearer, showed me a two-headed hedgehog last week, but if this is better and I can tell him about it so he throws up—”
“Growths,” Artemisia pronounced. “They got growths.”
“Huh?”
“Right there.” She pointed at the place where Arbol wore a specially molded piece of armor whose usefulness the young prince had often questioned to himself. The queen went on to describe the hideous growths which were the shame of so many of her male subjects.
Arbol shuddered. “That sounds…ugh. But Mom, is—is Dad afflicted, too?”
The queen nodded. “Why do you think I spend so much time avoiding him? Oh, it’s not a pretty sight, and I want to do my best to spare him the shame of having his deformity exposed to ridicule. My boy, you are truly blessed to be one of the few men left in all Hydrangea whose generative organs are…normal. Think, now! If you go on campaign and heedlessly answer the call of nature in company with some soldier who was not so lucky, how do you think he will feel, beholding your good fortune and comparing it to…to…?” She conjured up a convincing sob and threw her arms around Prince Arbol’s neck.
“Swear to me, my boy!” she cried. “Promise me on the honor of Hydrangea that if you go on campaign with your father, you will do everything in your power and more to keep your body from the sight of other men. Swear this, lest you cause pain to the innocent and shame to the blameless!”
Half-smothered against her mother’s shoulder, Prince Arbol said, “I mfwear.”
“I accept your word, my dearest.” The queen released her with a motherly kiss on the cheek. “Now go have a nice time at the war.” Prince Arbol started from the room, had a second thought, dashed back to give her mother a hearty hug, and bounded off.
The queen sank back against the windowseat, exhausted. “Mungli! Mungli, come here!” The mute Gorgorian was there before her mistress had pronounced her name twice. “Mungli, writing paper!”
Mungli watched
with interest as her mistress scribbled a message. From time to time the queen muttered as she wrote, or read it over aloud. Those were the moments Mungli lived for. The mute had a theory which related the queen’s words to the queen’s marks on paper. She was not yet certain about the details of the connection, but she was positive that here was something very, very important and deserving of further study.
When Artemisia was through with her letter, she sent Mungli to fetch a messenger. Fourteen years’ practice had taught her how to build up a small, efficient, elite group of couriers whom she could trust to carry correspondence to and from her brother’s forest lair. It was quite simple, really: She invited them to her apartments for tea, slipped a Gorgorian aphrodisiac into their cups, made Mungli…available to them, then told them they could have some more every time they completed a successful mission to the Black Weasel’s headquarters.
The missions were growing more and more frequent, of late. The nearer Prince Arbol crept up on womanhood, the better a life in the merry greenwood was beginning to sound to Artemisia.
“If only there were another way,” the queen mused as she gazed down from her window and watched her latest courier spur his steed from the palace courtyard. “It’s not so much that I mind the thought of living in a forest, but it’s just so—so—arboreal!”
With a fastidious little shiver, she rose and called for her cloak. There were one hundred seventy-two shrines and temples of gods and goddesses, Hydrangean and Gorgorian, within walking distance of the palace. Lately it had become Queen Artemisia’s daily obsession to patronize every single one.
Better to hedge your bets, she reasoned, than to spend the rest of your days bedding in hedges.
Chapter Eight
The skies were gray, the grasses brown, the trail rocky beneath his feet, and Dunwin whistled merrily as he walked down the mountain. It was such a beautiful day—but then, every day was beautiful here.
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