Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Novel 06 Page 2

  Ludmilla nodded, sighing. "Since the wizards never did the man a lick of harm, I do wonder sometimes, why did he insist on executing them all?"

  Queen Artemisia handed the empty teacup to her handmaid. "You know Gudge. So do I, more’s the pity. Ordinarily you’d imagine that if a thought ever managed to crawl into his skull it would die of loneliness and despair, yet at the same time there is a certain primitive cunning to the creature. Just because our wizards weren't able to get then- wands up in time to prevent his conquest of our kingdom, he still saw their powers as a possible threat for the future. My louse-ridden lord is a simple, direct, and practical man: He decided that the best way to safeguard his future was to eliminate theirs."

  "Oh my, so sad, so sad." Ludmilla took a purple handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. "I know I shouldn't weep—the public beheadings were almost a year ago, and it does so weaken my sight—but I can't help it. It was such a moving ceremony."

  "Moving indeed," Queen Artemisia observed drily. "The way some of those wizards kept moving even after their heads were cut off was quite impressive, which was doubtless why Gudge ordered his men to round up the truant parts and burn them all. I heard that they had to chase Master Urien’s head all the way to the Street of the Mushroom Vendors before they caught it and brought it back to the bonfire."

  Old Ludmilla grew more and more nostalgic and mistyeyed over the past. “Do you remember, precious lambikins, how beautifully Master Urien's head prophesied just before King Gudge drop-kicked it into the flames? Thine own downfall, O thou crawling blight of Gorgorian honeysuckle which doth strangle the fair and noble oak of the Hydrangean kingdom, shall spring from thine own—' ” She stopped and wept afresh. “That was when your hubbikins punted the poor thing into the fire. I think it was very rude of the king not to allow Master Urien's head to finish what it had to say."

  “Then it shouldn't have called Gudge a honeysuckle," Queen Artemisia concluded. “All I remember of the whole disgusting business is that the smoke from the burning wizard-parts made me throw up. That was when I first suspected I might be pregnant." She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the pillows. “Well, what’s done is done. At least I was able to keep Gudge from finding out I was that pregnant by making up the whole ancient Hydrangean custom of secluding the royal mother-to-be. Not that he cared." She made that same unladylike noise again. “For Gudge, women are either beddable or invisible."

  “My lady," Ludmilla said softly, “shall I go ahead with the plan?"

  “Yes, yes, do." Queen Artemisia's voice sounded weaker and weaker. “Only you'll have to travel with two babies instead of just one. Are you up to it? You're not as young as you used to be."

  “And who is, I'd like to know?" Old Ludmilla's face was already a web of crepey wrinkles, but she carved out two more frown lines right between the eyes as she glowered at the queen. It was wasted on Artemisia, whose eyes remained shut. “Don't you worry about me, I'm sure. I know my duty, even if some people don't know the first thing about courtesy to their good and loyal servants. I'll take the babies straightaway to your royal brother, Prince Mimulus, and ..."

  “Weasel," came the faint comment.

  "Eh?" Ludmilla Cupped her good ear.

  Queen Artemisia sighed faintly. "You’ll never find him if you blunder around in the eastern mountains asking for Prince Mimulus. Gudge’s soldiers did that for ages and came up empty-handed. The whole point of going undercover to lead the secret Old Hydrangean resistance movement is to keep everything about it a secret. You don’t want Prince Mimulus of Hydrangea ..."

  "Don’t I, then?" Ludmilla blinked in puzzlement.

  "You want the Black Weasel, brave and dashing heroic leader of the Bold Bush-dwellers."

  "Right, then, my poppet." Ludmilla nodded. "I go to the eastern mountains with the babies, then, and I ask around for the Black Weasel."

  "The Black Weasel, brave and dashing heroic leader of the Bold Bush-dwellers,” Artemisia corrected her. "It’s no use asking for him any other way, he’s given strict instructions to his followers that they are not to say one word about him to anyone who doesn't use his full title. Do you remember the first message I sent him when I suspected I was carrying twins?"

  "Yes indeed, my cherub." Ludmilla smiled at the memory—not so much because it was a particularly pleasant one, but merely because it was there at all; many of her memories weren’t, these days. "We had young Pringus Cattlecart run up to the mountains with it. Such a pretty laddie, Pringus!"

  "Looks aren’t everything," Artemisia muttered. "He forgot to ask for the Black Weasel properly, and he was still wandering from one mountain village to another when Gudge's patrol caught him. Luckily for me, the message was unsigned and in code. Unluckily for Pringus, Gudge got so annoyed when no one could translate the note that he gave the poor boy over to his Gorgorian bodyguards as their regimental . . . mascot."

  "Oh." Ludmilla blanched. "Now that you mention it, the last time I saw the young man he didn’t look half so cheerful as he used to. Well, never you mind, my waddle- duckums, your Ludmilla will do everything right."

  "Ummmm," Artemisia murmured drowsily.

  "Now first off, let's see ..." Ludmilla began to gather herself together. "Where are those portraits? Whoop-sadaisy, here they be, right where I left them. Dearie, rouse yourself a bit, there’s a good girl. You've got to name these sweet dollykits before I go, you know. Now here's the miniature of Prince Helenium the Wise. Which one will you name for him?"

  "My firstborn son," the queen replied, her voice muzzy.

  "Well, and which one's that?"

  "Oh, Ludmilla, the one that's not a girl!"

  "Hmph! There's two of 'em as aren't girls, and as like as two straws in a haystack they are. Or haven't you been paying attention?"

  Artemisia opened one cold, blue eye. "I shall pay the closest attention to your execution if you don't stop dithering. Didn't you tie the sacred red cord around the wrist of my firstborn?"

  "Lawks! Well, I never—I am such a goose; of course I did. Let me just unwrap the babes a wee bit and . . . ah, there it is, red as red can be. So! I'll just untie it a moment so's I can thread this charm on the cord and we're all—oh, it is a striking resemblance to Prince Helenium, isn't it?"

  Prince Helenium had died two centuries ago, but considering how old Ludmilla looked, it was entirely possible that they had been acquainted. She babbled on about the many virtues of the Old Hydrangean prince until her royal mistress rather peevishly instructed her to get on with it. "We’ll never get these babies officially named and off to safety at the rate you’re going."

  "Oh! Now see what you've made me do, you willful girl! I've gone and dropped the naming tokens in the cradle. All righty, my little dovey-byes, let's just get you all named spang-spang-spang, jig time, like you was no better than a litter of puppies."

  Ludmilla was in a full-blown snit. Artemisia fought to open both eyes in time to watch her handmaid fussing about in the ceremonial cradle, muttering darkly as she worked. “You are Prince Helenium, and you can just be called after Lord Helianthus the Lawgiver, and never you mind about the proper naming rituals! No, we're in a hurry, we are! Now where did I put the cord for tying your token 'round your little wristy—? Ah, here it is. I’ll be forgetting where I put my own head next, we’re so desperate quick about things! And you, you can be named for Queen Avena the Well-Beloved—oh, bother these slipknots, I never could tie a decent. . . there! Fine. Done. All tagged with their proper tokens and with no more observance of the decencies than was they three sacks full of grain for the market. Will there be anything else, Your Majesty?”

  Icicles hung from Ludmilla’s last words, but Artemisia was too tired to mind. “Just change into your disguise and take Avena and Helianthus to my brother. And then let me get some rest before I strangle you,” said the queen as she drifted off into a well-deserved sleep.

  Chapter Two

  Queen Artemisia could not recall when she last had enjoyed such
a refreshing rest. It was the first decent sleep she'd had since the Gorgorian invasion. (It stood to reason that you didn't catch too many catnaps while hiding down in the palace cellars from the barbarian hordes, she reflected, and witnessing your noble father's beheading gave you such upsetting dreams for months afterward that you didn't really want to sleep all that much.)

  And then she had married Gudge.

  The Gorgorian chief kept her up until all hours of the night, insisting that his new wife join him for all royal council sessions. He said it was to show the Old Hydrangeans that there were no hard feelings and that they would still have a voice in the government. That would have been a flattering command, coming from a sane man—but this was Gudge.

  Artemisia soon learned that the real business of running the kingdom was transacted during ^the day. For the Gorgorian, nighttime council sessions meant long, sloppy drinking bouts with his cronies and any of the Old Hydrangean nobility stupid or unlucky enough to attend. Few of the native aristocracy managed to survive some of Gudge's more imaginative “Fun With Beer'' games, especially the ones involving reptiles, squash, and holding your breath.

  After the invasion was finalized, the late King Fumitory's former prime minister, Lord Desmodium, had tried to make the best of a bad deal. He had suggested that there might be something valid or interesting about Gorgorian culture; it only wanted to be studied. He had then spent several months visiting the tents of those Gorgorians who had flatly refused to live within city walls, asking them to tell him all the old legends.

  There wasn’t one of those tales that didn't include the gods getting disgustingly drunk just before perpetrating some unspeakably obscene and revolting "miracle" upon helpless humanity. About the time the seventy-third Gorgorian crone began the nasal chant, "The world came to be when Skufa, the Great Mother, needed a new place to void her blessed bowels and sacred stomach and holy bladder after drinking with her husband-son, Pog, Lord of Fermented Grain Products . . . ," Lord Desmodium got the idea, and quietly retired to his country villa to raise goldfinches.

  So it appeared that Gudge was a man true to his gods.

  To do him justice, he was quite willing to accept new gods, and add them to the old. The Old Hydrangeans had long ago perfected the fine art of brewery, and Gudge's first pious act had been to commission one of the court poets to write an epic in which the Gorgorian god Pog, Lord of Fermented Grain Products, fell madly in love when he first beheld the beautiful Hydrangean virgin goddess Prunella, Lady of the Five Hundred Local Beers. Then he raped her.

  Gudge showed his religious nature by refusing to do anything at the nighttime council meetings until he had paid proper homage to Prunella. This he did by attempting to sample all five hundred of the Lady's sacrosanct local brews. He made his council members do the same, and it wasn't long before the moment of unparalleled horror came when the goddess's influence convinced Gudge he had the best singing voice in all Hydrangea and yes he could so too sing the entire "Epic of Pog and Prunella" with a pitcher of beer balanced on his head.

  Artemisia begged off the nocturnal council sessions as soon as possible, but still she was cheated of sleep when her lord returned to the royal bedchamber and . . .

  Well, if it wasn’t Pog and Prunella all over again, it was a close blood relative.

  It didn’t bear thinking about. She had greeted her pregnancy as a rescue from Gudge’s rough affection, but pregnancy turned out to be just as big a sleep-cheat as Gudge, especially after the first three months.

  How wonderful it is to be able to lie on my stomach again! Artemisia mused between dreams. They were very pleasant dreams, mostly centering on the several futures of her children.

  First her imagination painted an idyllic picture of her tiny daughter Avena, being raised in the merry greenwood. The Black Weasel would of course have a Hydrangean court-in-exile, with all the old rites and refinements that poor, dear, decapitated da had enjoyed. The only difference would be that the Black Weasel’s living palace of stately forest giants would have a leakier roof, a lot more fresh air, and a woodpecker problem. Surely there would be at least one lady of gentle birth among the resistance fighters, a proud, high-spirited woman who defied the invaders of her homeland, unafraid to face the hardships of exile. Yet this same woman would still be a model of Hydrangean culture and femininity, and to her tender care would the Black Weasel commend his infant niece.

  Artemisia sighed with contentment as she dreamed of sweet Avena, wild roses in her hair, weaving daisy chains for the little bunny rabbits and reciting the immortal "Ode to a Nightingale’s Kiss’’ to kindly old Mister Bear. Then the child would dance off, singing, to finish "embroidering collars for all the pretty wolfies. Dwarfs might also be involved.

  And standing guard over his sister’s embroidery, tall and strong, would be young Helianthus. Browned by the sun, hardened by good, plain food and wholesome exercise, a dead shot with the bow, a hunter of keenest eye and sagest cunning, he would become a legend among the Bold Bush- dwellers. While he was still a mere stripling, the Black Weasel himself would recognize the lad’s qualities and voluntarily resign the leadership of the resistance to him. There would be a short, moving ceremony, then Helianthus would leap gracefully atop a tree stump to deliver his first speech to the troops. Inflamed by the boy’s spirit, the Bold Bush- dwellers would march down out of the mountains, gathering support wherever they went. At last a vast army—an Old Hydrangean army!—would stand arrayed before the gates of the city, eager to destroy the Gorgorians and place the true king on the throne!

  But they would be just a bit too late.

  Artemisia squirmed deeper under the sheets and purred, dreaming of the fate of her other dear son, Prince Helenium. As firstborn, he was the only one of the three left to her. She would raise him well, as a true Hydrangean royal prince. No expense would be spared, especially not when it came to his military training. Wise in statecraft, Prince Helenium must also be powerful at arms. And then, when the time was ripe, his adored and adoring mama would tell him the whole nasty truth about Dad. Artemisia’s dream of her children’s reunion ended when Helianthus and his army of Bold Bush-dwellers arrived at the gates just in time to see his twin brother Prince Helenium chucking Gudge’s head over the parapet, to the cheers of the crowd.

  And then the twin princes embraced joyfully and got down to the serious business of finding a husband for Avena.

  Artemisia's perfectly planned future was shattered into jagged fragments by the strident sound of a hungry infant's cry. Smiling like a henhouse dog, she got out of bed and reached into the cradle.

  While she was back in bed nursing the baby, a thunderous pounding shook the door.

  It couldn’t possibly be Ludmilla. The journey to the eastern mountains took days. “Probably one of Gudge’s trained apes, come to see if I died or not,” Artemisia muttered to the infant snuffling at her breast. She tossed her silky blond hair back as well as she could, sat up straighter against the pillows, and commanded, "Enter at Our pleasure!"

  The door opened to a Gorgorian guardsman. Gudge had insisted on integrating the palace guard as a gesture of goodwill to his newly conquered people. The qualifications for an Old Hydrangean entering that service were that he bear no other arms but an ornamental lance tipped with a limp silk peony and that he be handsome. For a Gorgorian looking to be a guard, the man must be able to carry forty pounds of steely death in assorted shapes and sizes and agree to shave his back.

  The guard dipped his head to the queen and said, "King Gudge's compliments, and how are you feeling?"

  . "Why doesn't my lord come and see for himself if he wants to know?" Artemisia teased. She enjoyed baiting the Gorgorians; they never caught on. Their idea of subtle wit always involved large quantities of well-ripened pig droppings.

  "His Majesty's gone huntin'. Sorry," the guardsman added as an afterthought.

  "Isn't that kind of him? No doubt he was afraid that if he had to listen to my cries of pain any longer, he might be s
o overcome with remorse, knowing that his love was the author of my woe, that he might heedlessly throw himself from the ramparts. This would of course result in a bloody war of succession, and being the wise monarch he is, King Gudge decided it would be best to get as far from the sounds of childbirth as a good horse could carry him."

  "Oh," said the guard. "Yeh. Tha's it in a nutshell. What he said. His 'zact words. So.. ."He looked around the tower room. "You all right?"

  "Never better."

  "And, uh . . ."He nodded toward the suckling child.

  "Go down the stairs," Queen Artemisia directed, pronouncing each word with elaborate care. "Go fast. Try to slip and break your neck on the way down. If you can't manage that, go to the stables, get a horse, and ride after His Majesty. See if you can fall off it in a painful, preferably fatal way before you find him. If you botch that, then do find him and tell him that he is the father of a prince."

  "A prince?" the guard echoed. "It's a boy, then?"

  "Princes generally are."

  "Right. Right, thanks, I’ll just be on my way, in that case. Uh—you want anything before I go, Y'r Highness?"

  "No, no, seeing the back of you is all I'll ever ask of life."

  The guard gave her another one of those shallow, meaningless bows. "Anything t' 'blige." Then he was gone. Shortly afterward, the sound of galloping hooves wafted up to the tower room, fading away in the direction of the royal hunting preserve.

  After nursing the baby, Artemisia was about to put it back in the huge, gilded cradle when an unmistakable odor hit her straight up the nostrils.

  "My," she remarked, shifting the swaddled bundle to her left arm and studying her damp right hand. "This is definitely not what my seven governesses trained me to do, but I suppose I can learn on the spot." She carried the baby over to the big black walnut chest by the window, where Ludmilla had thoughtfully laid out all the infant-care supplies that might be useful. There was even a soft blanket covering half the chest.