Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Beagle, Peter S.

  Schmendrick seemed to take a minute getting his own breath back. He said, “I have never known my old friend Lír to need any of those services. Especially a protector.”

  Lisene was busy with the king and didn’t look at Schmendrick as she answered him. “How long has it been since you saw him last?” Schmendrick didn’t answer. Lisene’s voice was quiet still, but not so nervous. “Time sets its claw in us all, my lord, sooner or later. We are none of us that which we were.” King Lír sat down obediently on his chair and closed his eyes.

  I could tell that Schmendrick was angry, and growing angrier as he stood there, but he didn’t show it. My father gets angry like that, which is how I knew. He said, “His Majesty has agreed to return to this young person’s village with her, in order to rid her people of a marauding griffin. We will start out tomorrow.”

  Lisene swung around on us so fast that I was sure she was going to start shouting and giving everybody orders. But she didn’t do anything like that. You could never have told that she was the least bit annoyed or alarmed. All she said was, “I am afraid that will not be possible, my lord. The king is in no fit condition for such a journey, nor certainly for such a deed.”

  “The king thinks rather differently.” Schmendrick was talking through clenched teeth now.

  “Does he, then?” Lisene pointed at King Lír, and I saw that he had fallen asleep in his chair. His head was drooping—I was afraid his crown was going to fall off—and his mouth hung open. Lisene said, “You came seeking the peerless warrior you remember, and you have found a spent, senile old man. Believe me, I understand your distress, but you must see—”

  Schmendrick cut her off. I never understood what people meant when they talked about someone’s eyes actually flashing, but at least green eyes can do it. He looked even taller than he was, and when he pointed a finger at Lisene I honestly expected the small woman to catch fire or maybe melt away. Schmendrick’s voice was especially frightening because it was so quiet. He said, “Hear me now. I am Schmendrick the Magician, and I see my old friend Lír, as I have always seen him, wise and powerful and good, beloved of a unicorn.”

  And with that word, for a second time, the king woke up. He blinked once, then gripped the arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t look at us, but at Lisene, and he said, “I will go with them. It is my task and my gift. You will see to it that I am made ready.”

  Lisene said, “Majesty, no! Majesty, I beg you !”

  King Lír reached out and took Lisene’s head between his big hands, and I saw that there was love between them. He said, “It is what I am for. You know that as well as he does. See to it, Lisene, and keep all well for me while I am gone.”

  Lisene looked so sad, so lost, that I didn’t know what to think, about her or King Lír or anything. I didn’t realize that I had moved back against Molly Grue until I felt her hand in my hair. She didn’t say anything, but it was nice smelling her there. Lisene said, very quietly, “I will see to it.”

  She turned around then and started for the door with her head lowered. I think she wanted to pass us by without looking at us at all, but she couldn’t do it. Right at the door, her head came up and she stared at Schmendrick so hard that I pushed into Molly’s skirt so I couldn’t see her eyes. I heard her say, as though she could barely make the words come out, “His death be on your head, magician.” I think she was crying, only not, the way grown people do.

  And I heard Schmendrick’s answer, and his voice was so cold I wouldn’t have recognized it if I didn’t know. “He has died before. Better that death—better this, better any death—than the one he was dying in that chair. If the griffin kills him, it will yet have saved his life.” I heard the door close.

  I asked Molly, speaking as low as I could, “What did he mean, about the king having died?” But she put me to one side, and she went to King Lír and knelt in front of him, reaching up to take one of his hands between hers. She said, “Lord… Majesty… friend… dear friend—remember. Oh, please, please remember.”

  The old man was swaying on his feet, but he put his other hand on Molly’s head and he mumbled, “Child, Sooz—is that your pretty name, Sooz?—of course I will come to your village. The griffin was never hatched that dares harm King Lír’s people.” He sat down hard in the chair again, but he held onto her hand tightly. He looked at her, with his blue eyes wide and his mouth trembling a little. He said, “But you must remind me, little one. When I… when I lose myself—when I lose her—you must remind me that I am still searching, still waiting… that I have never forgotten her, never turned from all she taught me. I sit in this place… I sit… because a king has to sit, you see… but in my mind, in my poor mind, I am always away with her….”

  I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. I do now.

  He fell asleep again then, holding Molly’s hand. She sat with him for a long time, resting her head on his knee. Schmendrick went off to make sure Lisene was doing what she was supposed to do, getting everything ready for the king’s departure. There was a lot of clattering and shouting already, enough so you’d have thought a war was starting, but nobody came in to see King Lír or speak to him, wish him luck or anything. It was almost as though he wasn’t really there.

  Me, I tried to write a letter home, with pictures of the king and the castle, but I fell asleep like him, and I slept the rest of that day and all night too. I woke up in a bed I couldn’t remember getting into, with Schmendrick looking down at me, saying, “Up, child, on your feet. You started all this uproar—it’s time for you to see it through. The king is coming to slay your griffin.”

  I was out of bed before he’d finished speaking. I said, “Now? Are we going right now?”

  Schmendrick shrugged his shoulders. “By noon, anyway, if I can finally get Lisene and the rest of them to understand that they are not coming. Lisene wants to bring fifty men-at-arms, a dozen wagonloads of supplies, a regiment of runners to send messages back and forth, and every wretched physician in the kingdom.” He sighed and spread his hands. “I may have to turn the lot of them to stone if we are to be off today.”

  I thought he was probably joking, but I already knew that you couldn’t be sure with Schmendrick. He said, “If Lír comes with a train of followers, there will be no Lír. Do you understand me, Sooz?” I shook my head. Schmendrick said, “It is my fault. If I had made sure to visit here more often, there were things I could have done to restore the Lír Molly and I once knew. My fault, my thoughtlessness.”

  I remembered Molly telling me, “Schmendrick has trouble with time.” I still didn’t know what she meant, nor this either. I said, “It’s just the way old people get. We have old men in our village who talk like him. One woman, too, Mam Jennet. She always cries when it rains.”

  Schmendrick clenched his fist and pounded it against his leg. “King Lír is not mad, girl, nor is he senile, as Lisene called him. He is Lír, Lír still, I promise you that. It is only here, in this castle, surrounded by good, loyal people who love him—who will love him to death, if they are allowed—that he sinks into… into the condition you have seen.” He didn’t say anything more for a moment; then he stooped a little to peer closely at me. “Did you notice the change in him when I spoke of unicorns?”

  “Unicorn,” I answered. “One unicorn who loved him. I noticed.”

  Schmendrick kept looking at me in a new way, as though we’d never met before. He said, “Your pardon, Sooz. I keep taking you for a child. Yes. One unicorn. He has not seen her since he became king, but he is what he is because of her. And when I speak that word, when Molly or I say her name—which I have not done yet—then he is recalled to himself.” He paused for a moment, and then added, very softly, “As we had so often to do for her, so long ago.”

  “I didn’t know unicorns had names,” I said. “I didn’t know they ever loved people.”

  “They don’t. Only this one.” He turned and walked away swiftly, saying over his shoulder, “Her name was
Amalthea. Go find Molly, she’ll see you fed.”

  The room I’d slept in wasn’t big, not for something in a castle. Catania, the headwoman of our village, has a bedroom nearly as large, which I know because I play with her daughter Sophia. But the sheets I’d been under were embroidered with a crown, and engraved on the headboard was a picture of the blue banner with the white unicorn. I had slept the night in King Lír’s own bed while he dozed in an old wooden chair.

  I didn’t wait to have breakfast with Molly, but ran straight to the little room where I had last seen the king. He was there, but so changed that I froze in the doorway, trying to get my breath. Three men were bustling around him like tailors, dressing him in his armor: all the padding underneath, first, and then the different pieces for the arms and legs and shoulders. I don’t know any of the names. The men hadn’t put his helmet on him, so his head stuck out at the top, white-haired and big-nosed and blue-eyed, but he didn’t look silly like that. He looked like a giant.

  When he saw me, he smiled, and it was a warm, happy smile, but it was a little frightening too, almost a little terrible, like the time I saw the griffin burning in the black sky. It was a hero’s smile. I’d never seen one before. He called to me, “Little one, come and buckle on my sword, if you would. It would be an honor for me.”

  The men had to show me how you do it. The swordbelt, all by itself, was so heavy it kept slipping through my fingers, and I did need help with the buckle. But I put the sword into its sheath alone, although I needed both hands to lift it. When it slid home it made a sound like a great door slamming shut. King Lír touched my face with one of his cold iron gloves and said, “Thank you, little one. The next time that blade is drawn, it will be to free your village. You have my word.”

  Schmendrick came in then, took one look, and just shook his head. He said, “This is the most ridiculous… It is four days’ ride—perhaps five—with the weather turning hot enough to broil a lobster on an iceberg. There’s no need for armor until he faces the griffin.” You could see how stupid he felt they all were, but King Lír smiled at him the same way he’d smiled at me, and Schmendrick stopped talking.

  King Lír said, “Old friend, I go forth as I mean to return. It is my way.”

  Schmendrick looked like a little boy himself for a moment. All he could say was, “Your business. Don’t blame me, that’s all. At least leave the helmet off.”

  He was about to turn away and stalk out of the room, but Molly came up behind him and said, “Oh, Majesty—Lír—how grand! How beautiful you are!” She sounded the way my Aunt Zerelda sounds when she’s carrying on about my brother Wilfrid. He could mess his pants and jump in a hog pen, and Aunt Zerelda would still think he was the best, smartest boy in the whole world. But Molly was different. She brushed those tailors, or whatever they were, straight aside, and she stood on tiptoe to smooth King Lír’s white hair, and I heard her whisper, “I wish she could see you.”

  King Lír looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Schmendrick stood there, off to the side, and he didn’t say anything either, but they were together, the three of them. I wish that Felicitas and I could have been together like that when we got old. Could have had time. Then King Lír looked at me, and he said, “The child is waiting.” And that’s how we set off for home. The king, Schmendrick, Molly, and me.

  To the last minute, poor old Lisene kept trying to get King Lír to take some knights or soldiers with him. She actually followed us on foot when we left, calling, “Highness—Majesty—if you will have none else, take me! Take me!” At that the king stopped and turned and went back to her. He got down off his horse and embraced Lisene, and I don’t know what they said to each other, but Lisene didn’t follow anymore after that.

  I rode with the king most of the time, sitting up in front of him on his skittery black mare. I wasn’t sure I could trust her not to bite me, or to kick me when I wasn’t looking, but King Lír told me, “It is only peaceful times that make her nervous, be assured of that. When dragons charge her, belching death—for the fumes are more dangerous than the flames, little one—when your griffin swoops down at her, you will see her at her best.” I still didn’t like her much, but I did like the king. He didn’t sing to me, the way Schmendrick had, but he told me stories, and they weren’t fables or fairytales. These were real, true stories, and he knew they were true because they had all happened to him! I never heard stories like those, and I never will again. I know that for certain.

  He told me more things to keep in mind if you have to fight a dragon, and he told me how he learned that ogres aren’t always as stupid as they look, and why you should never swim in a mountain pool when the snows are melting, and how you can sometimes make friends with a troll. He talked about his father’s castle, where he grew up, and about how he met Schmendrick and Molly there, and even about Molly’s cat, which he said was a little thing with a funny crooked ear. But when I asked him why the castle fell down, he wouldn’t exactly say, no more than Schmendrick would. His voice became very quiet and faraway. “I forget things, you know, little one,” he said. “I try to hold on, but I do forget.”

  Well, I knew that. He kept calling Molly Sooz, and he never called me anything but little one, and Schmendrick kept having to remind him where we were bound and why. That was always at night, though. He was usually fine during the daytime. And when he did turn confused again, and wander off (not just in his mind, either—I found him in the woods one night, talking to a tree as though it was his father), all you had to do was mention a white unicorn named Amalthea, and he’d come to himself almost right away. Generally it was Schmendrick who did that, but I brought him back that time, holding my hand and telling me how you can recognize a pooka, and why you need to. But I could never get him to say a word about the unicorn.

  Autumn comes early where I live. The days were still hot, and the king never would take his armor off, except to sleep, not even his helmet with the big blue plume on top, but at night I burrowed in between Molly and Schmendrick for warmth, and you could hear the stags belling everywhere all the time, crazy with the season. One of them actually charged King Lír’s horse while I was riding with him, and Schmendrick was about to do something magic to the stag, the same way he’d done with the crow. But the king laughed and rode straight at him, right into those horns. I screamed, but the black mare never hesitated, and the stag turned at the last moment and ambled out of sight in the brush. He was wagging his tail in circles, the way goats do, and looking as puzzled and dreamy as King Lír himself.

  I was proud, once I got over being frightened. But both Schmendrick and Molly scolded him, and he kept apologizing to me for the rest of the day for having put me in danger, as Molly had once said he would. “I forgot you were with me, little one, and for that I will always ask your pardon.” Then he smiled at me with that beautiful, terrible hero’s smile I’d seen before, and he said, “But oh, little one, the remembering!” And that night he didn’t wander away and get himself lost. Instead he sat happily by the fire with us and sang a whole long song about the adventures of an outlaw called Captain Cully. I’d never heard of him, but it’s a really good song.

  We reached my village late on the afternoon of the fourth day, and Schmendrick made us stop together before we rode in. He said, directly to me, “Sooz, if you tell them that this is the king himself, there will be nothing but noise and joy and celebration, and nobody will get any rest with all that carrying-on. It would be best for you to tell them that we have brought King Lír’s greatest knight with us, and that he needs a night to purify himself in prayer and meditation before he deals with your griffin.” He took hold of my chin and made me look into his green, green eyes, and he said, “Girl, you have to trust me. I always know what I’m doing—that’s my trouble. Tell your people what I’ve said.” And Molly touched me and looked at me without saying anything, so I knew it was all right.

  I left them camped on the outskirts of the village, and walked home by myself. Malka met
me first. She smelled me before I even reached Simon and Elsie’s tavern, and she came running and crashed into my legs and knocked me over, and then pinned me down with her paws on my shoulders, and kept licking my face until I had to nip her nose to make her let me up and run to the house with me. My father was out with the flock, but my mother and Wilfrid were there, and they grabbed me and nearly strangled me, and they cried over me—rotten, stupid Wilfrid too!—because everyone had been so certain that I’d been taken and eaten by the griffin. After that, once she got done crying, my mother spanked me for running off in Uncle Ambrose’s cart without telling anyone, and when my father came in, he spanked me all over again. But I didn’t mind.

  I told them I’d seen King Lír in person, and been in his castle, and I said what Schmendrick had told me to say, but nobody was much cheered by it. My father just sat down and grunted, “Oh, aye—another great warrior for our comfort and the griffin’s dessert. Your bloody king won’t ever come here his bloody self, you can be sure of that.” My mother reproached him for talking like that in front of Wilfrid and me, but he went on, “Maybe he cared about places like this, people like us once, but he’s old now, and old kings only care who’s going to be king after them. You can’t tell me anything different.”

  I wanted more than anything to tell him that King Lír was here, less than half a mile from our doorstep, but I didn’t, and not only because Schmendrick had told me not to. I wasn’t sure what the king might look like, white-haired and shaky and not here all the time, to people like my father. I wasn’t sure what he looked like to me, for that matter. He was a lovely, dignified old man who told wonderful stories, but when I tried to imagine him riding alone into the Midwood to do battle with a griffin, a griffin that had already eaten his best knights…to be honest, I couldn’t do it. Now that I’d actually brought him all the way home with me, as I’d set out to do, I was suddenly afraid that I’d drawn him to his death. And I knew I wouldn’t ever forgive myself if that happened.