The Door in the Hedge (11 page)

“I'm sorry,” said the frog for the second time, and in the same gentle tone. “You see, one never quite grows accustomed.”

She answered after a moment: “Yes. I think I do understand, a little.”

“Thank you,” said the frog.

“Yes,” she said again. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

But just before she fell asleep, she heard the voice once more: “I have one more favor to ask. That you do not mention, when you take me to the Hall tomorrow, that I … talk.”

“Very well,” she said drowsily.

PART THREE

THERE WAS A
ripple of nervous laughter when the Princess Rana appeared in the Great Hall on the next morning, carrying a large frog. She held her right arm bent at the elbow and curled lightly against her side; and the frog rode quietly on her forearm. She was wearing a dress of pale blue, with lace at her neck, and her fair hair hung loose over her shoulders, and a silver circlet was around her brow; the big green frog showed brilliantly and absurdly against her pale loveliness. She sat on her low chair before her father's throne; the frog climbed, or slithered, or leaped, to her lap, and lay, blinking foolishly at the noblemen in their rich dresses, and the palace servants in their handsome livery; but it was perhaps too stupid to be frightened, for it made no other motion.

She had seen Aliyander standing with the Crown Prince when she entered, but she avoided his eyes; at last he came to stand before her, legs apart, staring down at her bent head with a heat from his black eyes that scorched her skin.

“You dare to mock me,” he said, his voice almost a hiss, thick with a venomous hatred she could not mistake.

She looked up in terror, and he gestured at the frog. “Ah, no, I meant no—” she pleaded, and then her voice died; but the heat of Aliyander's look ebbed a little as he read the fear in her face.

“A frog, Princess?” he said; his voice still hurt her, but now it was heavy with scorn, and pitched so that many in the Hall would hear him. “I thought Princesses preferred kittens, or greyhounds.”

“I—” She paused, and licked her dry lips. “I found it in the garden.” She dropped her eyes again; she could think of nothing else to say. If only he would turn away from her—just for a minute, a minute to gather her wits; but he would not leave her, and her wits would only scatter again when next he addressed her.

He made now a gesture of disgust; and then straightened up, as if he would turn away from her at last, and she clenched her hands on the arms of her chair—and at that moment the frog gave its great bellow, the noise that had startled her yesterday into dropping the necklace into the pool. And Aliyander was startled; he jerked visibly—and the courtiers laughed.

It was only the barest titter, and strangled instantly; but Aliyander heard it, and he turned, his face black with rage as it had been yesterday when Rana had returned wearing a cold grey necklace; and he seized the frog by the leg and hurled it against the heavy stone wall opposite the thrones, which stood halfway down the long length of the Hall and faced across the narrow width to tall windows that looked out upon the courtyard.

Rana was frozen with horror for the moment it took Aliyander to fling the creature; and then as it struck the wall, there was a dreadful sound, and the skin of the frog seemed to—burst—and she closed her eyes.

The sudden gasp of all those around her made her eyes open against her will. And she in her turn gasped.

For the frog that Aliyander had hurled against the wall was there no longer; as it struck and fell, it became a tall young man, who stood there now, his ruddy hair falling past his broad shoulders, his blue eyes blazing as he stared at his attacker.

“Aliyander,” he said, and his voice fell like a stone in the silence. Aliyander stood as if his name on those lips had turned him to stone indeed.

“Aliyander. My little brother.”

No one moved but Rana; her hands stirred of their own accord. They crept across the spot on her lap where the frog had lain only a minute ago; and they seized each other.

Aliyander laughed—a terrible, ugly sound. “I defeated you once, big brother. I will defeat you again. You are weaker than I. You always will be.”

The blue eyes never wavered. “Yes, I am weaker,” Lian replied, “as you have proven already. I do not choose your sort of power.”

Aliyander's face twisted as Rana had seen it before. She stood up suddenly, but he paid no attention to her; the heat of his gaze was now reserved for his brother, who stood calmly enough, staring back at Aliyander's distorted face.

“You made the wrong choice,” Aliyander said, in a voice as black as his look; “and I will prove it to you. You will have no chance to return and inconvenience me a second time.”

It was as if no one else could move; the eyes of all were riveted on the two antagonists; even the Crown Prince did not move to be closer to his hero.

The Princess turned and ran. She paused on the threshold of the door to the garden, and picked up a tall flagon that had held wine and was now sitting forgotten on a deep windowsill. Then she ran out, down the white paths; she had no eyes for the trees and the flowers, or the smooth sand of the courtyard to her right; she felt as numb as she had the day before with her handful of round and glowing jewels; but today her eyes watched where her feet led her, and her mind said
hurry
,
hurry
,
hurry
.

She ran to the pond where she had found the frog, or where the frog had found her. She knelt quickly on the bank, and rinsed the sour wine dregs from the bottom of the flagon she carried, emptying the tainted water on the grass behind her, where it would not run back into the pool. Then she dipped the jug full, and carried it, brimming, back to the Great Hall.

She had to walk slowly this time, for the flagon was full and very heavy, and she did not wish to spill even a drop of it. Her feet seemed to sink ankle-deep in the ground with every step, although in fact the white pebbles held no footprint as she passed, and only bruised her small feet in their thin-soled slippers.

She paused on the Hall's threshold again, this time for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. No one had moved; and no one looked at her.

She saw Aliyander raise his hand and bring it like a back-handed slap against the air before him; and though Lian stood across the room from him, she saw his head jerk as if from the force of a blow; and a thin line formed on his cheek, and after a moment blood welled and dripped from it.

Aliyander waved his hand so the sharp stone of his ring glittered; and he laughed.

Rana started forward again, step by step, as slowly as she had paced the garden, although only a few steps more were needed. Her arms had begun to shiver with the weight of her burden. Still Aliyander did not look at her; for while his might be the greater strength at last, still he could not tear his eyes away from the calm clear gaze of his brother's; his brother yet held him.

Rana walked up the narrow way till she was so close to Aliyander that she might have touched his sleeve if she had not needed both hands to hold the flagon. Then, at last, Aliyander broke away to look at her; and as he did she lifted the great jug, and with a strength she thought was not hers alone, hurled the contents full upon the man before her.

He gave a strangled cry, and brushed desperately with his hands as if he could sweep the water away; but he was drenched with it, his hair plastered to his head and his clothes to his body. He looked suddenly small, wizened and old. He still looked at her, but she met his gaze fearlessly, and he did not seem to recognize her.

His face turned as grey as his jewels. His eyes, she thought, were as opaque as the eyes of marble statues; and then he fell down full-length upon the floor, heavily, without sound, with no attempt to catch himself. He moved no more.

Inthur leaped up then with a cry, and ran to his fallen friend, and Rana saw the quick tears on his cheeks; but when he looked up he looked straight at her, and his eyes were clear. “He was my friend,” he said simply; but there was no memory in him of what that friendship had been.

The King stood down stiffly from his throne, and the courtiers moved, and shook themselves as if from sleep, and stared without sorrow at the still body of Aliyander, and with curiosity and awe and a little hesitant but hopeful joy at Lian.

“I welcome you,” said the King, with the pride of the master of his own hall, and of a king of a long line of kings. “I welcome you, Prince Lian, to my country, and to my people.” And his gaze flickered only briefly to the thing on the floor; at his gesture, a servant stepped forward and threw a dark cloth over it.

“Thank you,” said Lian gravely; and the Princess realized that he had come up silently and was standing at her side. She glanced up and saw him looking down at her; and the knowledge of what they had done together, and what neither could have done alone, passed between them; and with it an understanding that they would never discuss it. She said aloud: “I—I welcome you, Prince Lian.”

“Thank you,” he said again, but she heard the change of tone in his voice; and from the corner of her eye she saw her father smile. She offered Lian her hand, and he took it, and raised it slowly to his lips.

The Hunting of the Hind

PART ONE

THE HUNTS
continued as they always had, for the game they killed was necessary for food; but there was no joy in them now, and few people attended, or rode with the Master, except those who must. There could be no pleasure in the chase while the King's only and much beloved son lay sick on his bed, paler and weaker with every day that passed, and raving always about the Golden Hind.

The Prince had ridden often with the Hunt; his horses were always fine and sleek and proud, and he sat them well; and he himself was as kind as he was handsome, and everyone loved to look at him, and loved more to speak with him. He had a word for everyone, and he remembered every man's name whom he had once met, down to the last village girl-child who gravely presented him with a fresh-picked daisy and her name, wise in all the dignity of her four years of age.

It was but a month gone by that the tragedy had occurred. The sighting of the Golden Hind had troubled the Hunt several times in the past two years; troubled, because the sight of her ruined the dogs, deerhounds tall and fleet and rabbithounds resolute and sturdy, for the rest of the day of that sighting. The dogs would not then follow her, nor any other game, but cowered to the ground, or ran in circles and howled. Thus it was that all realized that this Hind, although she was of a color to bring wonder to the cruelest eyes and tenderness to the darkest heart, was not a canny thing; and so men feared her, and feared that sight of her might prove an omen for more ill than just of that day's hunting.

But as the legend of her grew with the months that passed, some men saw the following of her as an adventure by which they might test their courage; and so the boldest men of the country rode their swiftest horses to join the Hunt, in the hope of a glimpse of her.

Twelve of them in the space of a year had their wish. Ten came home again, weary and footsore, and grim with a depression that seemed to be of something more than mere exhaustion or failure of a simple chase; their clothes in tatters and their faces cut by branches and thorns. And their horses were often lame and more often nervous, with a thin edge of fear that never again dulled, so that some of the finest horses in the land could no longer be ridden trustfully, for they shied and neighed at nothing, or ran suddenly away with their riders, their dark eyes white-ringed.

The other two of those twelve men who rode away in pursuit of the Golden Hind were never seen again, nor anything heard of their fate.

But a thirteenth joined the Hunt on a day that the Golden Hind was seen when the Hunt had barely left the city gates and entered the forest; and the Hunt had to turn and go back into the city, taking the shaking fearful dogs back to the kennels they had only just left, while the thirteenth man set spurs to his horse, and the Hind fled light-footed away from him.

The thirteenth man returned that evening after sunset, his horse covered with pale foam and a broken rattle in its throat; the rider was mad. They had to drag him out of the saddle, and he fought them, shouting words, if they were words at all, in a language that none could recognize, till they had to bind him, to protect not only themselves but this man from his own madness. Nor did he recognize his wife when they brought him to her; and she wept helplessly for him.

The Prince was a brave man, and as bold as a man confident in his courage might be; and he declared that he would hunt the Hind. But his father forbade him, and when he forbade him, he turned so white that the Prince, who loved his father, reluctantly agreed to obey; for he was capable of going against his father's wishes if his own desires were strong enough. But he continued as before to ride sometimes with the Hunt; and once he rode on a day when one of the twelve men rode too, and they saw the Hind, and the Hunt saw this man ride away in pursuit while the Prince had to remain behind, reining in his high-blooded horse, which was not accustomed to watching another man's horse leap away from him and run alone and unchallenged. The Prince remembered the King's command and his own promise, and he watched only, and then turned his fretful stallion's face toward home. But it did not go down well with him, for he was a proud man as well as a good and kind and brave one, and some of his horse's restiveness may have been the fault of the rider's mood.

The thirteenth man was a dear friend of the Prince's. They had known each other since boyhood, had learned to ride and to hunt together, and the man's father had been one of the Prince's father's good friends: the sort of friend who could speak an unpopular opinion to the King, and be heard.

The Prince went to visit his old friend and found him pale and senseless; his black eyes roved without resting, and he saw nothing that was before him, and started at shadows that were not there.