The Princess and the Hound (18 page)

G
EORGE BROUGHT
B
EATRICE’S
breakfast to her tent, then sat with her while she ate it in the cold morning air. She fed Marit bits directly from her hands.

“Do you know why Dr. Gharn—Dr. Rhuul to you—would want to take such revenge on your father? Or on mine?”

“It has something to do with the dove in the cage, I think,” Beatrice said after a moment.

How had she gotten that idea? George told her about Sir Stephen and the physician’s daughter and how the war had killed her.

But Beatrice shook her head: “It has to do with the dove.”

Her certainty almost made George doubt himself. But it made no sense.

“He spoke to it constantly,” said Beatrice, for evi
dence. “He asked it questions and then waited to hear an answer.”

George had not seen this himself, but he did not doubt that Beatrice had. Still, what did that prove? “Perhaps his revenge and his isolation have made him mad.” But as soon as George said it, he remembered that he had been certain that Dr. Gharn was not at all mad, merely determined.

He had no desire to argue with Beatrice any longer, so he shrugged. “It doesn’t matter why, I suppose. We can ask him that when we find him, if we wish. But the important thing is to capture him—and soon.”

Beatrice nodded, and George went away quite unsatisfied. What did he feel for her? Something strong and warm, but he had no name for it. Not yet.

The next day George and Beatrice rode together. The lord general set a cruel pace, and while Marit might have been able to keep up if left to herself, Beatrice’s mare lagged far behind. Ass tried to get ahead of her and snapped at George when he put his heels deep into his sides.

By late afternoon, when they reached a deep forest in the south that was the last part of Kendel, George was exhausted. It was, George realized, the forest his mother had mentioned when he was but a boy, the forest she had meant to take him to.

The lord general asked, “Shall we go around the forest and make camp on the other side? I believe the trails
inside the forest are too overgrown for such a group to travel safely.”

Perhaps he did not want to force his men, who looked terrified of the rumors of the forest they must have heard. Even Henry seemed uneasy, his mouth twitching at one side as he watched George.

George turned to Beatrice. He wondered if she would demand that they make camp directly by the forest, just to be contrary, but her face wore a strange expression, half dreamy, half defiant. At last she said, “Yes, we will go around.”

Marit, however, kept wandering to the edge of the forest as they skirted around it, daring to go in for a few yards and then coming back out when Beatrice called for her loudly. George did not understand it.

He nodded to Beatrice, then pulled Ass back and around her, toward Marit. Was there something in the forest she had seen and they had not? Suddenly Ass was galloping, and George could see a branch looming ahead, as wide around as George’s head and right at the level of his throat.

George ducked just in time to miss it and didn’t get his head up again until much later, when he was utterly lost in the depths of the forest.

George had never in his life been lost. It was a strange sensation.

Finally Ass slowed nearly to a stop, and George took the chance of sliding off his bare back to stretch his legs.
He heard a whinnying sound, then remembered Ass had not been tied to a stake or corralled in a pasture. By the time he looked around for the horse, Ass had disappeared into the trees.

This wasn’t a familiar forest, but the sounds weren’t entirely alien either. It was not light enough to see much more than the outlines of trees and plants, but George had only to listen carefully to catch the sound of running water. He headed toward it, thinking that if he followed the water, it eventually would lead him out of the forest.

He hoped.

Or at least to some animals to which he could talk. Perhaps they would know the way out. If he could get them to tell him in a way that made sense, then he might have a chance of getting back to the lord general and Beatrice. And of finding Dr. Gharn.

The water was cool on his face and in his mouth. George didn’t even bother taking off his trousers before sitting down in the middle of it. He leaned back and fought the desire to sleep.

Then he heard what sounded like a pack of wolves readying for a contest. He slipped out of the water and moved toward the sounds of growling and encouragement. He pushed past the reeds by the stream, then reached for the first branch of an oak tree nearly as large as his palace. He pulled himself upright as silently as he could, edged toward the trunk, and climbed until he could see the wolves beneath him.

No, not wolves. Wild hounds. A pack of twelve or more, and they surrounded a large black hound.

It was Marit.

She had been drawn to the forest in some way. George had noticed it just as Ass went wild. But why?

“Our territory,” growled the lead male in the language of hounds, swiping at Marit with one paw.

Marit didn’t move, though the paw sliced within inches of her face.

George didn’t know what to think. She had to have smelled the wild hounds about. She had to have known she was headed for them. She had endangered herself deliberately.

“Don’t belong here now,” snarled the lead female as she nudged her way to the side of her mate. She leaped toward Marit, and this time it was no feint. The two bitches flipped end over end until the lead female landed on top of Marit. Her paw raked Marit’s side.

And still, Marit did not struggle. She was so limp she might have been fighting a bear.

But wild hounds would not accept surrender as a bear would.

I have to do something for her,
thought George.
But how?

The lead female did get bored, tangling with an unwilling enemy. At last she got up and sauntered away, leaving Marit behind, bleeding and unsteady. But Marit would not leave. The pack had turned their backs on her, but she would not take an easy escape.

Did she want to die? George wondered. It reminded him a little of the way Beatrice treated the women in her father’s court. She made no attempts to secure their affection, and when they insulted her, she did not turn away from the fight.

Now Marit howled after the pack.

The lead female turned and came back, this time with several others at her side. The lead male turned up his nose and watched her. This had apparently become a matter for the females and something he would not meddle in.

The lead female nodded at the others to stand to the side and approached Marit, this time with teeth flashing.

But Marit did not pay any attention to her. She seemed to have eyes only for the young bitch that had just emerged from the pack, a little smaller than herself with the same color coat, though she did not walk with the same proud, defiant stance that Marit had.

Still, it was Marit’s daughter. George was sure of it.

The lead female tore another gash in Marit’s side, but Marit seemed only distracted. She hissed and tried to lick at the wound herself, then turned back to the young bitch.

But how had it happened? The only bitch in a pack of wild hounds that had a child was the lead female. What had happened to Marit and to the pack to so change things now? The lead male George had seen showed no sign of a bond to Marit. Perhaps her lead
male was dead. And if she had been chased from the pack following that tragedy, then her child was no longer her own. No matter how much their shared scent and features made Marit still feel a connection, her child now belonged to the pack.

Ah.

How human of her to refuse to give up that child. Perhaps she fought within herself, the wild hound and the part of her that had learned human ways, coming back to her child to claim her. If she could.

George felt for her and tensed at the danger to come.

The lead female attacked again, this time cutting at Marit’s face. George’s shoulders twitched at the strangled sound of pain, but when the lead female growled, “Leave,” at Marit, she did not seem to hear.

Marit whined at the young bitch.

As if deciding at last that she had to make some response, the young bitch turned her head toward Marit and answered directly, “Not my mother.” It was clearly said, and the effect on Marit was immediate and devastating.

As much as if she were a human mother.

Marit let her head bow at last, then turned away from the lead female, who gave her a final swipe across the flanks as she moved away from the pack. George dropped to the forest floor and waited only long enough to be sure that the pack of wild hounds were eagerly moving away from the place of conflict before he ran toward Marit.

She was limping noticeably now, as if the pain that had passed her by before had returned in full force.

She looked up at George, seeming ready to snarl at him as well. He held his hands up in surrender, and she began walking again. He let her lead him, hand on her back, out of the forest and to the camp.

It was not as far as he had thought, but he would never have been able to find the way himself, even if it had been full light. She led him directly, without any apparent trouble. So much for her having turned human. Still, the way that she held her head down, defeated, seemed very human indeed.

She had lost a child not once but twice now.

When they emerged from the forest at last, George could see the moon just beginning to rise in the sky. He let his hand fall from Marit’s back and walked the remaining distance to the camp on his own.

“You are here,” said Henry, sighing with relief. He stared down at the hound. “I told the lord general you would catch up, that you must have fallen off Ass.” He gestured toward where all of the horses were tied. Ass was indeed among them.

“Did he believe you?” asked George.

“He didn’t doubt it for a minute,” said Henry with a grin.

George was sure he hadn’t.

M
ARIT MADE HER WAY
to Beatrice’s tent. She poked her head in, then lay down halfway across the threshold, as if she could make it no farther.

George heard a yelp of anguish from Beatrice, then saw her form at the flap of her tent as she struggled to pull her hound inside.

He went to her assistance immediately, but she would have none of it. George suspected she blamed him for what had happened to Marit, for not protecting her while they were together.

Why hadn’t he? He had felt that Marit’s business with the hounds was her own, not his. Even if he had tried to intervene, he could not have changed the outcome in the least. Oh, perhaps he might have kept her from being injured physically, but he did not believe that was where the true injury lay.

“She was attacked by other hounds,” George said, standing just inside the tent.

“I can see that. Do you think I am an idiot?” asked Beatrice tartly.

“No,” said George. He was taken aback, but he would not be so easily chased from this scene. “Do you know that she has—had a daughter among them?”

“She should never have gone back there. I have told her it is not her business. A pack is not kind to those that are set outside it. They are worse than strangers.”

It sounded as though Beatrice understood the pack mentality of the wild hounds better than Marit did. Perhaps Marit was too close to it, and Beatrice was not.

“I do not think she will go back again, though. She has learned her lesson,” said George.

Beatrice’s head jerked up at this. “You are so sure of that, are you?” she demanded.

“I—well, I trust in Marit’s judgment. She is no idiot either,” George answered.

“No?” Beatrice’s sharp, gleaming eyes turned back to Marit. “Are you not?”

Marit tried to lick at her wound, but it was too far up her back for her to reach it. She tried again.

George reached for her, to ease the cut himself. Beatrice snarled at him until he backed away.

“She is my hound,” said Beatrice.

“Yes, I know. I am sorry—”

Beatrice began to weep, great racking sobs that
shook her whole body. While she wept, she tended to Marit’s wounds, getting out a packet of supplies she had brought with her. It was well planned, George thought, as good as anything Dr. Gharn might have had. A poultice that smelled of herbs and oil, narrow strips of cloth for wrapping.

George stood nearby, thinking himself entirely useless. Marit and Beatrice both would be more comfortable if he left, and yet his legs would not move. He needed to be here.

He should do something then. Offer to help wrap the bandages, or put on the ointment. Anything!

At the very least, he could put an arm around Beatrice to comfort her. But he was so sure that it would only make her think he believed her weak. And he did not want that. What was between them seemed so fragile, and he would do much to keep it from breaking.

So he listened to her weeping until, as she finished wrapping the wound, her weeping stopped.

If he thought Beatrice would thank him then, however, he was mistaken.

“How was she?” Beatrice demanded.

“Who?”

“The hound. Her daughter.”

“Oh. She looked well. A little smaller than Marit, but otherwise full grown.”

“And the others in the pack? Do they treat her well? Did she have injuries?”

“No,” said George.

“Any sign of illness?”

George shook his head.

Beatrice took a breath and then let it out. She did not ask any more. “Dr. Gharn told me there was a woman who had accused him and his daughter of animal magic,” she said.

The hair on the back of George’s neck stood up.

“He said that he would have his revenge on her as well. That is why I brought you south. This is where he said he would find her.”

“He told you this himself?” George asked in surprise.

“He told it to Marit,” said Beatrice.

“And you can speak with her?” George asked.

A bleak expression crossed Beatrice’s face. “After a fashion,” she said. “We have worked out our own way of communication, but it is not as you can do.” She sounded jealous. Of him! George could hardly believe it.

“I can speak to other animals,” said George, “but not to her.” He nodded to Marit.

“But you can,” Beatrice said.

What could she mean?

“The dreams,” said Beatrice.

But George shook his head. Somehow she knew about the dreams he had, but they had been almost entirely of her. Not of Marit.

“But—” George protested.

“Tell me what you have dreamed.”

So he told her. Since he had left Sarrey, it had only been in bits and pieces. One dream showed her caught in her father’s bedchambers, playing with his soldier pieces, and being punished by missing two meals in a row. As soon as she had the chance, however, she had gone back to them, again and again. Until her father had locked the pieces up in a chest to which only he had the key, which he hung around his neck.

She had gone to the woods then, to make herself pieces out of clay and dry them. But they were never good enough for her, and eventually she despaired of it.

He had dreamed of her being dressed to go to one of her father’s weddings, then running away before it started and being chased by her father’s guards and dragged back.

George had dreamed of the days when the new queen was laboring to bring a son into the world and then of that stillborn child, bloody and pale, next to his dying mother. He had seen the pyre that had burned both of them and Beatrice’s refusal to cry for ones who were so weak.

George had become so used to the dreams that he no longer thought it unusual when he fell asleep and saw things through her eyes. Yet the dreams were all of the past. Nothing from the last year and certainly nothing of himself. Or was it too arrogant to think that she would ever dream of him?

“They give me glimpses of you that let me see how you have become who you are. And why.”

Beatrice smiled a strange smile. Then she glanced down to Marit and sighed. “The dreams are not from me,” she said. “They are from her.”

“What? How?” He was baffled.

Beatrice gave him an odd look. “Have you not guessed it yet?” she asked.

“Guessed what?” George’s mind whirled. Was it possible that Beatrice had told the hound so many stories of her childhood that Marit dreamed them real in her own mind?

But that was not what Beatrice explained. “It must be part of your gift,” she said. “Not only do you speak the language of the animals, but you can become one with them. In their dreams.”

George thought of his dreams of the bear so long ago. Part human, part bear. Those dreams had confused him.

He took a sharp breath, then stared at Beatrice and saw somehow beyond the shell of hardness to the fragile shape within. A strange, struggling shape.

Two women in one.

That was what Dr. Gharn had said.

Why had he not understood it then?

Dr. Gharn had worked his revenge on King Helm’s daughter, but he had not tried to poison her. What had he done to her? What terrible thing?

George looked at Beatrice, at the hound, and back at Beatrice.

The answer was in her eyes. And in the wild way she held her head. In the way she sniffed at the air.

Answers everywhere, if only one thought to ask the right question.

Memories came tumbling over one another in his mind, in case he did not see the truth clearly enough already.

Wild hound though she was, Marit did not understand the rules of the pack. He thought of Beatrice’s strange behavior. Her inability to dance. The way she spoke. Her growling stance with the lord general. So like a hound’s.

How could he not have guessed?

The woman he had thought he was coming to love, the woman from his dreams, that woman had been transformed into a hound, while the woman who stood before him, the woman who was called Princess Beatrice and whom he was expected to marry, was no woman at all. Though she had the figure of a woman, and the hair, the eyes, and the voice, inside, she was a hound.

George found he had no words.

“I am sure that you wish to be gone now,” said Beatrice stiffly. Marit had moved to her side, rubbing against her leg as if to ask for comfort, but Beatrice would not look down at her.

Neither of them came close to George.

“That is not true,” said George. But he did not even know whom to speak to. Marit or Beatrice?

“Stay then.” It was not spoken with any kindness. She turned away from him. They both did.

George’s hands were sticky with Marit’s blood. The bitch hound in the forest had been Beatrice’s daughter, not Marit’s. But Marit, human as she was in her heart, had sought her out for Beatrice. To see if she could still be her mother, and if not, at least to bring back news.

And Beatrice had scolded her. Beatrice, who understood what pack meant all too well.

George licked his lips and found he could speak, though hoarsely. And slowly. “When I was a boy, my mother would tell me stories of those who had animal magic in the old days. They had such power. And we had so little. I thought that it was gone now. I thought—” The truth was, he had not thought of it much at all.

A darkness swept over him.

He was failing. Far worse than he had before King Helm with a sword, far worse even than on that distant judgment day.

Dr. Gharn had been right. He was not fit to be king.

He was not fit to have animal magic.

He was not fit for anything.

“You are afraid of your magic,” said Beatrice as he stepped back toward the tent flap.

George stopped.

“As much as any of the people from whom you hide it.” Beatrice went on, not even looking at him, but at Marit. As if she were voicing what Marit thought.

“What do you mean?”

“You believe you will betray it. It is in everything you say about it.”

“Surely I am afraid of its betraying me,” said George.

But Beatrice shook her head.

George thought of the owl in the story his mother had told him, the owl that no longer wished to live after his family had died. It meant he had an obligation that came with his magic, as much as the obligations that came with his crown. But what could he do? She had not taught him enough.

“I am sorry,” George said. Sorry for so much that he could not begin to list it.

There was silence behind him. He listened for a long while, and then he went to his own blanket, rolled up in it, and stared at the stars the rest of the night. He could not sleep, and he was glad this time. At least that way he knew he would not dream.