Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(22)

“Well,” said the king, “you’ve few words. Do you know what you’re to do here?”

Yannis did, of course. “No, sire.”

“Then you are not like all the rest, all seven—or was it seventeen of them—those others who failed. Very well. My daughters, in my hall, those girls with their hair. Even you will have noticed them. On nights of the round moon they go to another place, the place we spoke of. Despite they sleep all together in their luxurious bedchamber, which every night is locked and guarded to protect and make sure of them—on those three nights they slip through, like water from a leaky bowl. At dawn, they come back. Do you know how this was discovered?”

Yannis heard himself say, “By the soles of their feet.”

The king unsmiled. His eyes shone like scorched stones, cooling, cold. “So you do know.”

“Only the phrase.”

“Yes. The soles—not of their shoes, which are pristine as when sewn for them—but the skin of their feet. That is marked as if worn right through. Blemished, black and red and decorated in silver and sparkle, too. As if they’d bruised and torn them, then dipped them ? 76 ?

? Tanith Lee ?

in rivers of moonlight and rime. You must follow these bitch-whores of mine, and see how they get out, and where they go, and if— if— it’s to that hidden underland, and next—what goes on there. Things no man can see, of course, and keep his sanity. But you’ll already have been there, as I said, when you lost half your leg. You’ll already know.

You’re already partly mad. Why else are you here now?”

“And were the other men mad, sire?”

“They must have been, would you not say, old Crook-Shank?”

“Have you,” said Yannis, “never yourself asked your daughters?”

“I?” The king stared at Yannis. “A king does not ask. He is supplied.

Without asking. I set others to find out. And now you are here. If you succeed, you will be my son, and a prince, my heir, to rule after me.

Any of the twelve whores you choose shall be your wife. Or all of them, if you want. I’ll have someone fashion an extra large bed for the sport. If you fail, however, your head shall be slashed from your body, as the best of your leg once was. Top to toe, soldier. That’s fair.

And now,” said the king, “since this is the first of the moon’s three round nights, the servant outside will show you the way.”

It was rising in the long middle window, the moon, round as the white pupil of an immense dark eye. It watched him as he entered and was closed in, but it watched them, also, all twelve. Together, they and he made thirteen beings. But the moon perhaps made fourteen.

Besides, there were the animals.

Three big, wolf-like dogs sat or stood, still as statues; a strange pale cat, with a slanted yellow gaze, lay supine. Additionally, there were little cages hung up, in some of which small birds perched twittering—and as the door of every cage stood open, several others flitted to and fro, while occasionally one would let loose a skein of lunar song, or a moon-white dropping would fall, softly snow-like on the floor.

The princesses were arranged, like warriors before a skirmish, some on the richly-draped yet narrow beds, or they stood up, and two were combing their hair with plangent silking sounds, and ? 77 ?

? Below the Sun Beneath ?

drizzles of sparks that flew outward in the brazier-spread fire-glow.

This combing and spark-making was like the playing of two harps, a musical accompaniment to the birds’ descant.

A magical, part uncanny scene. It lulled Yannis, and therefore made him greatly more alert.

But he took time, as with the king, and since they stared full at him, even the dogs and the cat, and some of the birds, to study these women a while.

For a fact though, he could not properly see past their hair.

Charms they had, and they were alike, all of them to each other— and unalike, too—but the hair was still, in each one her symbol, extraordinary, unique. Three colors, every time transmuted. For she had hair red as amber, and she hair brown as tortoiseshell, and she gold as topaz—and she red as beech leaves, she brown as walnut wood, she gold as corn fields— she red as summer wine, she brown as spring beer, she gold as winter mead, and she was red as copper, and she was brown as bronze. But she—Yannis hesitated between two flickers of the brazier-light— She—the youngest, there, there in the darkest shadow of the farthest bed— she had hair as gold as gold.