The Very Best of F & SF v1 (60 page)

“Does he, then?”
Lisene pointed at King Lír, and I saw that he had fallen asleep in his chair.
His head was drooping—I was afraid his crown was going to fall off—and his
mouth hung open. Lisene said, “You came seeking the peerless warrior you
remember, and you have found a spent, senile old man. Believe me, I understand
your distress, but you must see—”

Schmendrick cut
her off. I never understood what people meant when they talked about someone’s
eyes actually flashing, but at least green eyes can do it. He looked even
taller than he was, and when he pointed a finger at Lisene I honestly expected
the small woman to catch fire or maybe melt away. Schmendrick’s voice was
especially frightening because it was so quiet. He said, “Hear me now. I am
Schmendrick the Magician, and I see my old friend Lír, as I have always seen
him, wise and powerful and good, beloved of a unicorn.”

And with that
word, for a second time, the king woke up. He blinked once, then gripped the
arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t look at us, but at
Lisene, and he said, “I will go with them. It is my task and my gift. You will
see to it that I am made ready.”

Lisene said, “Majesty,
no! Majesty, I beg you!”

King Lír reached
out and took Lisene’s head between his big hands, and I saw that there was love
between them. He said, “It is what I am for. You know that as well as
he
does. See to it, Lisene,
and keep all well for me while I am gone.”

Lisene looked so
sad, so
lost
,
that I didn’t know what to think, about her or King Lír or anything. I didn’t
realize that I had moved back against Molly Grue until I felt her hand in my
hair. She didn’t say anything, but it was nice smelling her there. Lisene said,
very quietly, “I will see to it.”

She turned
around then and started for the door with her head lowered. I think she wanted
to pass us by without looking at us at all, but she couldn’t do it. Right at
the door, her head came up and she stared at Schmendrick so hard that I pushed
into Molly’s skirt so I couldn’t see her eyes. I heard her say, as though she
could barely make the words come out, “His death be on your head, magician.” I
think she was crying, only not the way grown people do.

And I heard
Schmendrick’s answer, and his voice was so cold I wouldn’t have recognized it
if I didn’t know. “He has died before. Better that death— better this, better
any
death—than the one he
was dying in that chair. If the griffin kills him, it will yet have saved his
life.” I heard the door close.

I asked Molly,
speaking as low as I could, “What did he mean, about the king having died?” But
she put me to one side, and she went to King Lír and knelt in front of him,
reaching up to take one of his hands between hers. She said, “Lord...
Majesty... friend... dear friend—remember. Oh, please, please
remember.”

The old man was
swaying on his feet, but he put his other hand on Molly’s head and he mumbled, “Child,
Sooz—is that your pretty name, Sooz?—of course I will come to your village. The
griffin was never hatched that dares harm King Lír’s people.” He sat down hard
in the chair again, but he held onto her hand tightly. He looked at her, with
his blue eyes wide and his mouth trembling a little. He said, “But you must
remind me, little one. When I... when I lose myself—when I lose
her
—you must remind me that
I am still searching, still waiting... that I have never forgotten her, never
turned from all she taught me. I sit in this place... I
sit.
.. because a king has
to sit, you see... but in my mind, in my poor mind, I am always away with
her....”

I didn’t have
any idea what he was talking about. I do now.

He fell asleep
again then, holding Molly’s hand. She sat with him for a long time, resting her
head on his knee. Schmendrick went off to make sure Lisene was doing what she
was supposed to do, getting everything ready for the king’s departure. There
was a lot of clattering and shouting already, enough so you’d have thought a
war was starting, but nobody came in to see King Lír or speak to him, wish him
luck or anything. It was almost as though he wasn’t really there.

Me, I tried to
write a letter home, with pictures of the king and the castle, but I fell
asleep like him, and I slept the rest of that day and all night too. I woke up
in a bed I couldn’t remember getting into, with Schmendrick looking down at me,
saying, “Up, child, on your feet. You started all this uproar—it’s time for you
to see it through. The king is coming to slay your griffin.”

I was out of bed
before he’d finished speaking. I said, “Now? Are we going right now?”

Schmendrick
shrugged his shoulders. “By noon, anyway, if I can finally get Lisene and the
rest of them to understand that they are
not
coming. Lisene wants to bring fifty men-at-arms, a dozen wagonloads
of supplies, a regiment of runners to send messages back and forth, and every
wretched physician in the kingdom.” He sighed and spread his hands. “I may have
to turn the lot of them to stone if we are to be off today.”

I thought he was
probably joking, but 1 already knew that you couldn’t be sure with Schmendrick.
He said, “If Lír comes with a train of followers, there will be no Lír. Do you
understand me, Sooz?” I shook my head. Schmendrick said, “It is my fault. If I
had made sure to visit here more often, there were things I could have done to
restore the Lír Molly and I once knew. My fault, my thoughtlessness.”

I remembered
Molly telling me, “Schmendrick has trouble with time.” I still didn’t know what
she meant, nor this either. I said, “It’s just the way old people get. We have
old men in our village who talk like him. One woman, too, Mam Jennet. She
always cries when it rains.”

Schmendrick
clenched his fist and pounded it against his leg. “King Lír is
not
mad, girl, nor is he
senile, as Lisene called him. He is
Lír
, Lír still, I promise you that. It is only here, in this castle,
surrounded by good, loyal people who love him—who will love him to death, if
they are allowed—that he sinks into... into the condition you have seen.” He
didn’t say anything more for a moment; then he stooped a little to peer closely
at me. “Did you notice the change in him when I spoke of unicorns?”

“Unicorn,” I
answered. “One unicorn who loved him. I noticed.”

Schmendrick kept
looking at me in a new way, as though we’d never met before. He said, “Your
pardon, Sooz. I keep taking you for a child. Yes. One unicorn. He has not seen
her since he became king, but he is what he is because of her. And when I speak
that word, when Molly or I say her name—which I have not done yet—then he is recalled
to himself.” He paused for a moment, and then added, very softly, “As we had so
often to do for her, so long ago.”

“I didn’t know
unicorns had names,” I said. “I didn’t know they ever loved people.”

“They don’t.
Only this one.” He turned and walked away swiftly, saying over his shoulder, “Her
name was Amalthea. Go find Molly, she’ll see you fed.”

The room I’d
slept in wasn’t big, not for something in a castle. Catania, the headwoman of
our village, has a bedroom nearly as large, which I know because I play with
her daughter Sophia. But the sheets I’d been under were embroidered with a
crown, and engraved on the headboard was a picture of the blue banner with the
white unicorn. I had slept the night in King Lír’s own bed while he dozed in an
old wooden chair.

I didn’t wait to
have breakfast with Molly, but ran straight to the little room where I had last
seen the king. He was there, but so changed that I froze in the doorway, trying
to get my breath. Three men were bustling around him like tailors, dressing him
in his armor: all the padding underneath, first, and then the different pieces
for the arms and legs and shoulders. I don’t know any of the names. The men
hadn’t put his helmet on him, so his head stuck out at the top, white-haired
and big-nosed and blue-eyed, but he didn’t look silly like that. He looked like
a giant.

When he saw me,
he smiled, and it was a warm, happy smile, but it was a little frightening too,
almost a little terrible, like the time I saw the griffin burning in the black
sky. It was a hero’s smile. I’d never seen one before. He called to me, “Little
one, come and buckle on my sword, if you would. It would be an honor for me.”

The men had to
show me how you do it. The swordbelt, all by itself, was so heavy it kept
slipping through my fingers, and I did need help with the buckle. But I put the
sword into its sheath alone, although I needed both hands to lift it. When it
slid home it made a sound like a great door slamming shut. King Lír touched my
face with one of his cold iron gloves and said, “Thank you, little one. The
next time that blade is drawn, it will be to free your village. You have my
word.”

Schmendrick came
in then, took one look, and just shook his head. He said, “This is the most
ridiculous... It is four days’ ride—perhaps five—with the weather turning hot
enough to broil a lobster on an iceberg. There’s no need for armor until he
faces the griffin.” You could see how stupid he felt they all were, but King
Lír smiled at him the same way he’d smiled at me, and Schmendrick stopped
talking.

King Lír said, “Old
friend, I go forth as I mean to return. It is my way.”

Schmendrick
looked like a little boy himself for a moment. All he could say was, “Your
business. Don’t blame me, that’s all. At
least
leave the helmet off.”

He was about to
turn away and stalk out of the room, but Molly came up behind him and said, “Oh,
Majesty—Lír—how grand! How beautiful you are!” She sounded the way my Aunt
Zerelda sounds when she’s carrying on about my brother Wilfrid. He could mess
his pants and jump in a hog pen, and Aunt Zerelda would still think he was the
best, smartest boy in the whole world. But Molly was different. She brushed
those tailors, or whatever they were, straight aside, and she stood on tiptoe
to smooth King Lír’s white hair, and I heard her whisper, “I wish
she
could see you.”

King Lír looked
at her for a long time without saying anything. Schmendrick stood there, off to
the side, and he didn’t say anything either, but they were together, the three
of them. I wish that Felicitas and I could have been together like that when we
got old. Could have had time. Then King Lír looked at
me,
and he said, “The child
is waiting.” And that’s how we set off for home. The king, Schmendrick, Molly,
and me.

To the last
minute, poor old Lisene kept trying to get King Lír to take some knights or
soldiers with him. She actually followed us on foot when we left, calling, “Highness—Majesty—if
you will have none else, take me! Take me!” At that the king stopped and turned
and went back to her. He got down off his horse and embraced Lisene, and I don’t
know what they said to each other, but Lisene didn’t follow anymore after that.

I rode with the
king most of the time, sitting up in front of him on his skittery black mare. I
wasn’t sure I could trust her not to bite me, or to kick me when I wasn’t
looking, but King Lír told me, “It is only peaceful times that make her
nervous, be assured of that. When dragons charge her, belching death—for the
fumes are more dangerous than the flames, little one—when your griffin swoops
down at her, you will see her at her best.” I still didn’t like her much, but I
did like the king. He didn’t sing to me, the way Schmendrick had, but he told
me stories, and they weren’t fables or fairytales. These were real, true stories,
and he knew they were true because they had all happened to him! I never heard
stories like those, and I never will again. I know that for certain.

He told me more
things to keep in mind if you have to fight a dragon, and he told me how he
learned that ogres aren’t always as stupid as they look, and why you should
never swim in a mountain pool when the snows are melting, and how you can
sometimes
make friends with
a troll. He talked about his father’s castle, where he grew up, and about how
he met Schmendrick and Molly there, and even about Molly’s cat, which he said
was a little thing with a funny crooked ear. But when I asked him why the
castle fell down, he wouldn’t exactly say, no more than Schmendrick would. His
voice became very quiet and faraway. “I forget things, you know, little one,” he
said. “I try to hold on, but I do forget.”

Well, I knew
that.
He kept calling Molly
Sooz, and he never called me anything but
little one
, and Schmendrick kept having to
remind him where we were bound and why. That was always at night, though. He
was usually fine during the daytime. And when he did turn confused again, and
wander off (not just in his mind, either—I found him in the woods one night,
talking to a tree as though it was his father), all you had to do was mention a
white unicorn named Amalthea, and he’d come to himself almost right away.
Generally it was Schmendrick who did that, but I brought him back that time,
holding my hand and telling me how you can recognize a pooka, and why you need
to. But I could never get him to say a word about the unicorn.