Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(20)

The last man to push Yannis aside also furiously directed him, pointing at the dismal park, by then disappearing in night-gloom.

“See, there. The palace. And don’t come back.”

To which Yannis, thrusting him off in turn, in a rush of lost patience answered, “So I’m the king’s business, am I? Are you this way with any stranger who asks for anything? Go and be used and win—or die?”

But the man raised his fist. In a steely assessment of his own ? 71 ?

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trained strength—which the witch’s teaching had returned him to awareness of—Yannis retreated. No point in ending in the jail.

Black, the sky, and all of it falling down in icy streamings, which, even as he went on, altered to a spiteful and clattering hail.

He thought of falling arrowheads. Of the horse which fell. Of the surgeon’s tent . . .

At the brink of the park a black crow sat in an oak above. And Yannis was not sure it was quite real, though its eye glittered.

I am here by Something’s will.

But the will of what? A king? A witch? Some unknown sorcerer?

Or only those other two, Life and Death.

In the, end, all the trees seemed to have crows in them. Stumbling over roots and tangles of undergrowth, where rounded boulders and shards nestled like skulls, Yannis came out onto a flight of stony stairs.

It was snowing, and the wind howled, riotously bending grasses and boughs and the mere frame of a strong man. And then a huge honey-colored lamplight massed above out of a core of towery and upcast leaden walls.

He judged, even clapped by now nearly double and blinkered by snow, that the palace was like the rest, partly ancient, its additions balancing on it, clinging and unsure. But it was well-lit, and rows of guardsmen were there. One of them, like the unwilling ones below, trudged out at him and caught him, if now in an almost friendly detaining vice. “What have we here?”

“I was sent here,” said Yannis, speaking of Fate, or the fools in the city, not caring which.

“That’s good, then. Will cheer him up, our lord. Not every day, would you suppose, some cripple on a stump can enhance the evening of a king.”

His own king had once spoken to Yannis. The king had been on horseback, the men interrupted, respectfully standing in the mud, just after the sack of some town. The king had commended them ? 72 ?

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for their courage. It was ritual, no more, but Yannis had been oddly struck by how the king looked not like other men. That was, the king was not in any way superior—more handsome, say, let alone more profound, yet different he was. It had not been his fine clothes, the many-hands-high horse. It perplexed Yannis. The king seemed of an alien kind—not quite human, perhaps, but nor was it glamorous.

This king was nothing like that anyway. When Yannis first saw him he was some distance off, but even over the sweep of the tall-roofed, smoky, steamy, hot-lit hall, he appeared only a man, ageing and bearded between black and gray, and drunk, possibly; he looked it.

The guardsman who brought Yannis in quickly pushed him into a seat at one of the lower tables. Here sat a cobbler, tellable by his hands, some stable grooms still rank from their duties, and so on. A lesser soldier or two was in with the rest. The guard said, “Eat your fill. Have a big drink and toast his kingship. Don’t get soused. He’ll be talking to you later.”

The tables where the king’s court sat near him lay over an area of painted floor just far enough off to indicate status. The king’s own High Table was up on a platform. It faced the hall, but directly to its left side another table spread at a wide angle. The king’s table was caped in white cloth-of-linen, hung with medallions of gold. It had utensils, beakers, and jugs of silver and clear gray crystal. It was crowded, the Master occupying the central carved and gilded chair.

The left-hand table meanwhile had a drapery of three colors, a deep red, a plum yellow, and a chestnut shade. But no medallions hung on it. The jugs were earthenware. It was also completely empty, but having twelve plain chairs.

An armorer next to Yannis asked questions and commented.

Where did Yannis come from? Oh, there—Oh, that little war? A horse did for his leg? What luck! Try that pie—best you’ve tasted, yes?

Finally Yannis asked a question. “Why is that other table empty up there?”

“Oh, they’ll be in.”

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“Who?”

“His girls.”