The Unbeheaded King

by L. Sprague DeCamp

  "How?"

  "Better that you know not. Suffice it to say that I shall depart next month. Meanwhile I must find another means of livelihood. The windmill is shut down until the spring wheat begins to come in."

  When he saw the judge off, Jorian said: "Your Honor, you had better warn the Regency Council not to send any more squads of kidnappers after me. I have some influence with the Grand Duke, and he assures me that he would regard another such incursion as cause for instant war with Xylar."

  This was a bluff; Jorian had never met the Grand Duke. He delayed his warning until he was sure that Judge Grallon would not have time to make inquiries to confirm or refute Jorian's story.

  Grallon grunted: "I hear Your Majesty!" and climbed into the coach, which rattled away on the road to Xylar.

  Jorian would like to have left for his native Ardamai right after seeing Grallon off to Xylar. But he had already missed the first diligencia of the season to Vindium, and the next would not depart for three sennights. He could not fare on horseback, because the horse Fimbri, which he had ridden to Mount Aravia, had fallen ill of some equine ailment of the lungs, rendering it useless for hard riding. Jorian was too soft-hearted to sell the beast to a knacker, so he continued to maintain the animal until one day he found it dead in its stall. The knacker got the carcass at the bottom price.

  Jorian decided against buying another horse for the time being. A good one would cost more than he thought he could afford. Besides, he had had enough rides over hundreds of leagues, in all weathers, to last him a lifetime.

  Jorian picked up a few nobles as assistant to Tremorin, a fencing master in Othomae City. He even thought of setting himself up as a fencing master on his own; but inquiry convinced him that this was impractical. First, the city's three fencing masters would combine to suppress competition, if need be by hiring thugs to assault or kill him. Second, even if he became established, the Grand Duke would levy not only the usual tax on his earnings but also would add a surtax because he was a foreigner.

  One day, Jorian saw, pinned to the bulletin board in the square, a placard reading:

  MERLOIS SON OF GAUS PRESENTS his superlative, matchless, unexcelled theatrical troupe, the None-suchers, performing two new plays by Pselles of Aussar, the innocent vampire and the wrong bedroom, as well as a revival of Physo's classic, the tinsel crown.

  The placard bore further information about time, place, and price of admission. Jorian learned that the sheet had been tacked up by Merlois's advance man. This one told him that Merlois and his troupe would arrive that afternoon.

  When Merlois lighted down from his carriage, he found Jorian awaiting him. With a yell of joy, the elderly actor and Jorian seized each other in bear hugs. Merlois whispered: "What name go you by now?"

  "Nikko of Kortoli," said Jorian. "So you have your own troupe at last?"

  "Aye. I wax a little old for leaping from balconies, slaying dragons, and whacking a fellow actor with a wooden sword, as my profession doth tyrannously demand. Oh, I still take small parts; I shall be the good wizard in The Innocent Vampire. You must attend, on pain of my august displeasure! Let me give you these passes."

  "Could I beg an extra set for a companion?" asked Jorian.

  "Oho, aha, so thither blows the wind! Certes; here you be. Bring a whole harem if such be your desire."

  "Nay; this is merely a brotherly friendship. My heart still belongs to Estrildis, mewed up in durance vile in Xylar. I take it The Innocent Vampire is a horror show?"

  "Aye, verily! Twill freeze the blood in thy veins to the consistency of cold tar, bring thy fluttersome heart to an ominous halt, and make thine eyes protrude on stalks, like unto those of the dilatory snail."

  "And The Wrong Bedroom, I suppose, is a farce?"

  "Doth the sun rise in the east? Doth the tiger devour flesh? Doth water run downhill? Indeed, sirrah, 'tis the cynosure, the acme, the epitome of farces! Twill shake thy belly with mirth until thy very ribs do ache, as if thou hadst been beaten by the roughhewn clubs of a regiment of Ellornian savages. I shall warn persons with weak hearts against attendance, lest they laugh themselves to death. But one thing worries me."

  "And that is?"

  "It is a short play, in two acts. I need something wherewith to flesh it out, lest my fickle audience deem themselves cozened. We got some bad notices on this score in Vindium."

  "Hmm," said Jorian. "Since my escape from Xylar, I have betimes eked out a living as a storyteller. Thanks to the coaching you gave me in preparation for my flight, I have, I flatter myself, a fair stage presence."

  Merlois clapped Jorian on the back. "Just the thing! Zevatas must have sent you in answer to my prayer, or he would have if I had thought to pray to him. You shall come on between the acts and tell one of your enthralling, fascinating, spellbinding, gripping, absorbing tales. I recall hearing some of them when I was teaching King Jorian to act."

  "Am I to be paid?"

  "Oh, aye, the going rate, as set by the Actor's Guild, minus your initiation fee into that cabal of graspers. When I was but a player, methought producers the world's worst tyrants, oppressors, cheats, and skinflints. Now that I am a producer, meseems that actors are the most grasping, vain, arrogant, capricious, unreasonable, untrustworthy, dissolute, and generally worthless rogues in Zevatas's world."

  When the curtain fell at the end of the first act of The Wrong Bedroom, Jorian excused himself from Margalit and went around to the stage entrance. Presently Merlois stepped out on the stage and introduced that "celebrated, cultivated, renowned, charming, versatile, entertaining, and altogether irresistible storyteller, Nikko of Kortoli."

  Jorian took a bow and said: "I shall tell the tale of a onetime king of Kortoli named Forbonian, who loved a mermaid. Know that all the kings of Kortoli since the days of Ardyman the Terrible have had names beginning with 'F.' This Forbonian was a good-to-middling king, not so brilliant as Fusinian the Fox, but far superior to that ass Forimar the Aesthete. Forbonian went about amongst the people, learning how they practiced their skills and betimes taking a hand at the plow or the loom or the hammer himself. Thus he found himself in the fishing village of Storum, helping the fishermen to haul in a net they had cast.

  "The net seemed unwontedly heavy, and when with many royal grunts and heaves it was hauled ashore, it transpired that caught in its meshes was a veritable, palpable mermaid. She was not at all pleased at being snatched from her native element, and she screamed threats at the fishermen in her own language, which none understood.

  "One old fisherman said: 'Your Majesty, here's a picklement. Whilst I know not her speech, I had it from my grandsire that mermaids threaten those who capture them with storms and shipwrecks, and that such calamities invariably come to pass. Let us, therefore, slay her and bury her well inland, ere she return to the sea to raise her fishy tribe against us.'

  'That seems unduly drastic,' said the king. 'I cannot overmuch blame the sea-wench. I should be wroth if the mer-folk were to net me and draw me down into their liquid element. Let me bear her back to the palace. I will essay to turn her hostility to friendship by kind treatment'

  "So Forbonian whistled up his bodyguard. They made a litter of poles and lashed the mermaid to it, notwithstanding that she struggled and gave one guardsman a nasty bite with her needle-sharp, fish-catching teeth. Back at Kortoli City, the king commanded the guards to drop the mermaid into the royal swimming pool, which stood in a small courtyard in the palace, open to the sky. The return to the water seemed to calm her, albeit she still muttered threats and maledictions.

  "That very day, Forbonian began to train the mermaid. His first task was to establish communication. This he did by offering her a reward of a small fish every time she learned a new word of Novarian. At the end of a fortnight, the mermaid actually smiled when the hour of instruction came round. She said: 'You good man, King. I love you.'

  "Forbonian spent more and more time with the mermaid, to the neglect of his royal business. Since none could pronounce h
er name in her own tongue, Forbonian bestowed upon her the name of Lelia.

  "Let me say that real mermaids are not much like the beings depicted by artists. If you imagine the lower half as the after end of a porpoise, and the upper half as a hybrid of human being and seal, you will have an idea. True, the mermaid had arms much like those of a human being, save for the webbing betwixt the fingers. Her face was more or less human, but the forehead and chin sloped smoothly back. When she swam, she cocked her head up to swim nose first, like a seal, and her head, neck, and body merged smoothly into one another. Under water, her nostrils closed tightly, like those of a seal or an otter.

  "Furthermore, real mermaids do not sit on bulging buttocks on the sea rocks, combing their long hair over protrusile breasts. They have no buttocks, their breasts are small and hardly break the piscine smoothness of their shape, and their hair is but a patch of seal-like fur on then-scalps. I do not think many of us would find such a creature surpassingly beautiful by human standards, although they doubtless have their own kind of beauty, just as a horse or a tiger may have.

  "Natheless, a mutual sympathy sprang up between Lelia and the king, so that his greatest pleasure came to be the hours he spent beside her pool, instructing her. He took to stripping and swimming with her, claiming that she was teaching him new strokes.

  "Now, King Forbonian's queen was Dionota, the daughter of the Hereditary Usurper of Govannian. Dionota was a comely female but, alas, not a sweet or companionable one. Her voice had become permanently roughened from screeching at the king, or anyone else within earshot, during her frequent tantrums. Now she became jealous of Lelia, notwithstanding Forbonian's assurances that the mermaid meant no more to him than a good horse or dog.

  "At length, one day when the king was elsewhere, Dionota entered the courtyard of the pool and dumped a bucket of lye into the water. Either she mistakenly thought that the lye would instantly slay Lelia, or she did not realize how fluent in Novarian the mermaid had become, so that she would inevitably tell the king what had been done to her.

  "Lelia's shrieks brought the king running, to find his mermaid writhing on the flags beside the pool, her skin blistered and inflamed. He fetched the royal physician, who used several jars of salve in coating Lelia's injured skin, and he had the pool drained and refilled.

  "Lelia told Forbonian about the bucket of lye—not that she knew what lye was, but the cause and effect of her distress were plain enough. In a fury, the king went to Dionota and said: 'This is the end, you stupid bitch! Pack your gauds and get out. I am dissolving our marriage and sending you back to your father.'

  "And so it was done. A month later, Forbonian got a letter from the Hereditary Usurper of Govannian, saying: 'Curse it, I thought I had got rid of this peevish baggage when I palmed her off on you, but no such luck. I shall have to wed her to the Tyrant of Boaktis, whose wife has lately died.'

  "Forbonian chuckled, for he knew there was bad blood between the Usurper and the Tyrant. In this way, in the guise of cementing eternal friendship, the Usurper was playing a scurvy trick on his enemy.

  "Now there was no one to come between the king and his mermaid. One day he told her: 'Lelia, I truly love you. Will you marry me?'

  "Lelia said: 'But Lord King, how can that be? We are of different kinds, you and I.'

  " 'Oh,' quoth Forbonian, 'we shall manage. What is the use of being a king if one cannot put over things impossible to common men?'

  "Forbonian went to the high priest of Zevatas to ask him to sanctify the union, but the priest recoiled in horror. So did the priests of Heryx and the other gods. At length Forbonian simply issued a royal decree, making Lelia his lawful wife.

  "Then arose the problem of consummating this unconventional marriage. The doors of the courtyard had all been shut, and the only light was that from the twilit sky overhead and some candles that the king had caused to be set on the flagstones about the pool. Forbonian said to his bride:

  " 'Lelia dearest, if you will hoist yourself out on the stones, we will have at it.' Lena did not much like being out of water, claiming that the dry air made her skin itch. But she heaved herself out.

  "Assured of his privacy, the king, a man of about my size, doffed his garments and set to fondle and caress Lelia. When he thought her properly receptive, he essayed to mount her; but try as he would, he could not effect an entry. At last he said: 'Devils take it, Lelia, how do they do it amongst your folk?'

  " 'I am sorry,' she said, 'but my vent closes up tightly when I am out of water. I cannot relax it even if I would; besides which, I find it painful to be squashed between your weight and the stones. We mer-folk always copulate in the water.'

  " Then let us try it in the water,' said the king. Both slipped into the pool. Lelia explained: 'We mer-folk approach each other side by side. We turn to face each other and, when the juncture has been made, the pair roll slowly from side to side, so that first one and then the other has its nostrils out of water. We are not fishes with gills, you know, and must needs breathe even as you do.'

  "During this explanation, the cold water had robbed Forbonian of his royal rigidity; but by embracing and cosseting Lelia, he managed to restore it. When he attempted to play the part of a mer-bridegroom, however, he found that he could not time his breathing with the alternate surfacing and submersion, since Lelia expected him to stay under much longer than he could hold his breath. At every attempt, he would take a breath at the wrong time and emerge coughing and gasping, all thoughts of love banished by the urgent need to get the water out of his lungs.

  "On his third try, after a long period of recuperation from the last one, Forbonian did succeed in penetrating his love. Lelia was by now in a highly excited state. In a transport of amorous passion, she seized him in her finny arms and dragged him beneath the surface. To her it was naught to submerge for a quarter-hour or more between breaths, but the poor king had no such amphibious talent.

  "Soon Lelia realized that, instead of marching on to his climax, Forbonian had gone limp all over. In panic she hauled him to the surface, boosted him out on the flagstones, and heaved herself out, meanwhile shouting for help.

  "The guardsmen burst in to find Lena leaning on the prone and naked body of Forbonian, repeatedly pressing his rib cage down and releasing it. A couple of guards seized her arms, while their officer shouted: 'Drown our king, will you? Water witch, you shall beg for death ere the headsman gives the final stroke!'

  "Lelia tried to explain about artificial respiration; but in her excitement she lost command of her Novarian and spoke the language of the mer-folk. They were dragging her away when the king groaned and raised himself on his elbows, gasping: 'What do you?'

  "When they told him, between coughs he said: 'Release her! I risked my life by my own folly, and she saved it.'

  "Forbonian issued another decree, annulling the mer-marriage. He caused Lelia to be put back into the sea, and shortly thereafter he wedded the daughter of a merchant of Kortoli City and begat heirs. But for years, they say, on moonlit nights he would go down to the sea and climb out on an old pier at Storum, and there converse with someone or something in the water below. The lesson, if you wish me to point one out, is that marriage is a chancy enough business without wantonly adding to its problems.

  "And now I think the scenery has been shifted, and my old friend Merlois is ready to announce his second act. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."

  Jorian's storytelling proved so popular that Merlois kept him as an adjunct to his shows as long as the troupe played in Othomae. He insisted on taking Jorian to a costumer's shop to buy him an outfit more theatrical than his everyday jacket and trews. The costumer, Henvin, ordinarily furnished materials for the costume balls by which the gentry and nobility amused themselves. He clad Jorian in a black jacket with spangled lapels, which glittered when Jorian moved.

  "Were these any wider, I could fly with them," said Jorian, looking doubtfully at the lapels.

  Merlois said: "It makes you look like a pr
oper hero of romance. How would you like a permanent post, to travel with my troupe and take acting parts as well as tell tales between acts?"

  "I am flattered and grateful, but I cannot accept just now. When I get my wife back, if you still feel thus, we shall see. I am a good second-rater at several occupations, including clock-maker, farmer, carpenter, accountant, surveyor, soldier, sailor, fencing master, storyteller, poet, and I daresay actor. Which I shall finally settle into remains to be seen."

  Between his storytelling for Merlois and his work at Tremorin's salle d'armes, Jorian managed to save some money. Hearing that the registrar at the Academy had died, he went to Doctor Gwiderius and persuaded him to give Margalit a try at the job.

  "I never saw such confused records!" she told Jorian after her first day. "The old registrar must have long since discarded his trump cards. I will try to bring order out of this chaos, but 'twill be a struggle."

  "How do you get on with the faculty?" asked Jorian.

  "Not so different from other men. Some take me for a kind of monster, being the first woman to hold the post. As for the others—well, I can count on at least one attempted seduction a day."

  "That's not surprising. You are a spectacularly attractive person."

  "Thank you, Jorian. These solicitations are a compliment of sorts, even though I reject them."

  In the month of the Ram, Jorian boarded the diligencia for Vindium, riding through a countryside lashed by spring rains and soon ablaze with spring flowers. At Vindium he took another coach to Kortoli. After the death of his father Evor, his brothers had moved the clock-making business from tiny Ardamai to Kortoli City. His mother remained in Ardamai, living with his sister and her family.

  "Country practice is all very well, if you want to take life easily and have little ambition," said his elder brother Sillius when the greetings were over. "It is costlier here, of course, but the wealth of street tradt more than makes up for it."