Hart's Hope

Weasel and Belfeva were there, watching. "Help me," Orem said.

"You can't take it off," Weasel said. "The ruby ring will burn till the child is born. It isn't really burning you. Anyway, you should be glad—it's proof that the child is not only yours, but also a son."

"The child is being born," Orem said. Then this was the last day of his life, he was sure. He walked to the lip of the roof, reached down, and helped Timias to the top.

"You won," Timias said, surprised. "I didn't think you had it in you."

"I kept looking down," Orem said. "The thought of death makes me quick."

Suddenly Weasel cried out in pain. "What is it!" they demanded, but she would not tell.

"At a birthing? The father?"

"At this birthing, with that mother, yes." She winced again.

"What's wrong? What's happening to you?"

"Help me to my room, Belfeva," Weasel said. "And you, Little King, go to your wife, I say."

"But she hasn't sent for me," Orem said. In truth, he wanted to spend the last day of his life with anyone but Beauty.

"Do you forget which finger bears her ring? She'll obey you if you command her to let you stay."

"No one commands Queen Beauty."

"You do," Weasel said. "But beware how you command her, for she'll obey you with cruel perfection if you ask unwisely."

"I don't want to go," he said angrily.

She winced again, and staggered against Belfeva. "Not for her. Your son. Your son has begun his voyage down the river to the sea. She'll have no other help but you. No one but the father can help at the birth of a twelve-month child."

Orem wanted to stay, wanted to know why Weasel was in such pain. But he knew that Weasel was wise, that Weasel did not lie; if she said he must go to Beauty, then he would go.

Parturition

The Queen was not in her normal sleeping room. Nor were there any servants there, to give direction. He did not know where she might have gone for her lying in. He had only one way of finding out: He spun his web through the Palace, and found her all aflame with silver sweetness, rough to his hearing, silent to his touch.

Through the corridors he went toward the place where he knew she was, but always the corridors turned, always the doors opened only the wrong way. He only understood when he stepped from a corridor and into a room, then changed his mind and stepped back again—and found that the corridor had changed direction. The short end now was on the left, the long end with the rising stairs now on the right. Queen Beauty was where he thought she was, but the magic of the Palace turned all paths away. So he let his power flow loose as a robe around him, lapping against the walls, breaking down the spells, revealing the doors where they ought to be. This was not the magic of illusion that he invariably saw through. It was true bending, and he feared that by finding her, he would confess to her what he really was. He found her worried servants gathered at a door.

"And alone," answered a servant. "She forbids us to come in."

"She won't forbid me," said Orem, and he knocked.

"Go away," came the husky, painful voice from inside.

"I'm coming in." And he did.

Beauty lay alone in the middle of a long and narrow bed. She was naked, her legs spread wide, her knees up. Some sheets had been tied to the five posts of the bed. Two were tied to her feet, and she strained against them; two she held in her hands, and pulled hard. The last lay on her pillow, and as a wave of pain swept over her, she turned her head and seized it in her teeth and bit and moaned, tossing her head, worrying the cloth like a dog with a rag. She dripped with sweat. The high-pitched moan that arose from her throat was not a human sound. Blood was trickling from the passage where the baby's head had crowned. The head was large and bloody and purple, and it would not come. Beauty looked at him through eyes wide as a deer's with fear and pain. The eyes followed him as he walked around the foot of the bed and stopped near her face as she chewed on the cloth. Even in such a state, she was beautiful, the most womanly of women.

"Beauty," he said.

And then the pain passed, and she shuddered and let the cloth slip back to the pillow.

"Beauty," he said again. "Haven't you any magic to end the pain?"

She laughed mirthlessly. "Little fool, Little King, there is no magic that has power over childbirth.

The pain must be felt or the child will die."

Then the pain came again, and she whimpered and writhed as muscles rippled over her belly. The child's head made no forward progress. Beauty looked at him with pleading in her eyes. What

did she want of him? To end the pain, but he could not do it.

"Tell me what to do, and I'll do it," he said.

"Do?" She cried aloud. "Do? Teach me what to do, husband!"

The child would die—he knew that much. A child who did not quickly come once it had

crowned would die. Not my son, he silently said. "Can someone bear the pain for you?" Did she nod? Yes; and whispered: "Not against the other's will."

"Then cast the pain on me," he said, "so the child will live."

"A man!" she said contemptuously. "This pain?"

"Look at the ring on your finger and obey me. Give the pain away." No sooner did he say the words than her convulsive movements stopped. Her heavy breathing fell to normal, her pressure on the sheets eased. He waited for the pain to come to him—but it did not. He had no time to question it, for suddenly the flesh opened impossibly wide, the bones of Queen Beauty's pelvis separated widely, and the child slipped out easily upon the sheets. It was impossible that Beauty could go through such a thing so peacefully, yet instantly the bones came together again, and Beauty reached down and picked the child up. There was no afterbirth; the baby had no trailing cord.

"Command me again, my Little King," she said. "It gave me pleasure to obey."

"But the pain didn't come to me," he said.

"You didn't command me to give it to you." She smiled triumphantly.

He thought back on his words and could not remember. Somehow she had tricked him, but he was not clever enough to know how. "Let me hold the child.."

"Is that also a command?"

"Only if—if it will cause no harm to him."

Beauty laughed again and held the infant out. Orem looked down at him, reached to him, took the child in his arms. He had seen newborns before, nieces and nephews, and had helped to care for foundlings at the House of God. But this child was heavier, and held his body differently. Orem looked into the infant's face, and the child gazed back at him wide-eyed, and smiled.

Smiled. Minutes after birth, and the baby smiled.

"A twelve-month child," Queen Beauty said.

Orem remembered his father, Avonap, remembered his strong arms that could toss him into the air so he flew like a bird, and catch him as surely as the treelimb caught the starling. My arms are strong enough for a child this small. And suddenly he was Avonap in his heart, and he longed for the child. The child Orem had loved his father more than life; that is the sort of child who, when a man, also loves his children with a devotion that ca

At once Orem knew that he must have this child, if only for a time. "You will let me see him whenever I want," he said.

"A command?"

"Yes," he said. She laughed. "Then I'll obey."

"You are too daring, Little King," she said. This time she didn't laugh.

"I command it."

"You don't know what you're doing."

"As long as I live I command you to let me know and love him, and him me!" She could not

begrudge him that—he did not dare to ask for more, did not dare to ask to be allowed to live a moment longer than she already had in mind.