"And damned little good to her until we restore him. Blankets and broth and a fire in his room. Hurry up about it! And bring in the next one, quick, quick!"

Orem found himself borne off again, but this time in more courteous hands, and when they came to a small hot room with a fire in it, they unshackled his arms and laid him on a feather cushion in a corner and covered him. He slept before they left the room, and barely woke for the broth they brought him, and again for the pisspot. Finally he awoke of his own accord and crawled from the blanket because he was sweating and the blanket stuck to him prickly with wool. Where the shackle had torn his skin he felt the stinging of the wound; his joints all ached, and he shuddered several times, then vomited the broth onto the bricks of the hearth.

He felt better then, and crawled off to a corner and leaned his head against the walls and watched the fire through half-closed eyes. The scene with the magistrates stayed with him as clearly as a dream not fully wakened from. She had set the guards to looking for him. She could see even now. She had seen his face in a dream. She could only be Queen Beauty, and now Orem understood that he would have to pay a price for having challenged her attack on Palicrovol only a few nights ago. Yet after what he had already been through, he did not bother to be afraid. What could she do to him now to hurt him further? He still had not fully returned to his body; the sensations of it still were not wholly his own again. Let her torture, let her kill, it was all one to him, all one.

Servants came with a tub, stripped his wrap from him and plunged him into the warm water. Some carried out his clothes; others mopped and scrubbed the floor while his back was harshly scrubbed and his hair was sudsed and wrung clean like the mop. The dried urine and crusted spittle of the cages came off into the water; they bore the tub away and came with another and washed him all over again, then toweled him before the fire, cut his hair and combed it, and dressed him in a simple shirt with an elaborately figured chain belt that glowed yellow as gold. Yellow as gold, thought Orem, but even then it did not occur to him that it might be gold. He would not have been able to tell real from sham anyway.

The magistrates looked at him one more time, to be sure. Orem did not care what they decided. It was enough to have felt the smooth cloth on his clean and aching skin, to have felt the heat of the fire, to have touched the warm brick with every finger and found that each one tingled alive, to test his feet and have them respond, living and warm.

Apparently he was the man they were looking for. "Yes. Yes, that will do. The best we can do." They brusquely apologized to him. "A terrible mistake, Orem, my boy. Just a mistake, could happen to anyone, you won't complain of this, will you?"

Complain? What did he have to complain of? Only keep me warm, he said, only keep me warm and clean and dry and I have no complaint at all. He fell asleep again before the magistrates left.

18

The Dance of Descent

The Tortured Trees

They brought him to the palace in a twelve-wheeled carriage drawn by eleven horses, but he didn't think to count. Though he was still not fully strong again after his ordeal in the Gaols, he was dazzled by the wonders of the Palace, and gazed out the window at the mosaic-covered walls, the gilt minarets, the turquoise roofs, the bright-painted sculptures that grew in profusion beside the whitestone drive. The history they depicted was lost on Orem, but he recognized the perfection of these works of human hands.

But when he saw the sculptured garden in the circle of the palace drive, he was disturbed. Others had seen the trees and bushes growing to form elephants and giant roses and had admired them. The cleverness of the lovers grown in leaves; the heroic sculpture of the Battle of Greyling Mountain—Orem did not think they were clever or noble. He had enough of his mother in him to hate the violence done to the trees; he had enough of his father to be profoundly disturbed to see this verdure in the cold of early winter.

Then came the hands of the servants, so many hands silently touching him, lifting him weak and flexible from the carriage. "Don't the leaves fall here?" he asked.

"For a week, whenever the Queen chooses," said an oldish man. "Autumn pleases her from time to time, if only to have spring again the following day."

It was then that Orem understood the power of the Queen. He marveled that he had ever dared to challenge her. Whatever punishment she meted out to him, he knew now that there was no hope of resistance. He had been a shark trying to gnaw away at the shore, sharp-toothed and dangerous, yet unworthy of his adversary.

The Virgin Dancer

They took him through rooms larger than the town of Banningside, whose ceilings looked as distant as the sky. All the walls were layered seven times in tapestries and metal-work and stone. There was no marble that was not living with the figures of men and animals engaged variously in killing and in coitus. There was no iron that was not silvered, no silver that was not inlaid with gold. The furniture was made of heavy woods, yet all was delicately carved so that there were thousands of tiny windows in the wood and it looked as if the weight of it was borne by dark and insubstantial lace. And through it all no one spoke to him, so that only gradually did he come to realize that it was not for vengeance that the Queen wanted him.

After all, in the villages and farms it was done only symbolically, for they were poor. It was the Dance of Descent, of course, the last thing Orem could have expected. And it was done for real. He realized now that the carriage that bore him to the palace had twelve wheels, that one of the six teams of horses that drew it was incomplete. As he entered the Palace he was surrounded by ten armored men, their shields marked with nine black stones. The red-shirted barber cut his hair in eight passes of the shears, and now seven naked women with blood on their thighs immersed him six times in hot water and five times in cold, so that he was given the sacrament of the Sweet Sisters the only time in his life a man may receive it.

The oils did not reek of animals; they were delicate yet strong of scent, and the boys rubbed them firmly into his skin, each oil in turn, scraping his body between the oils. They did not even speak to ask him to turn himself over; instead, their thin childish arms reached out and their small hands gripped him firmly, and he was turned abruptly without any volition of his own, and yet without any discomfort, either. The odor of the oils went into his head, and he felt a slight aching between his eyes. Yet it was a delicious pain, and the scraping of his body was a pleasure he was not prepared for. It left him weak and relaxed and trembling, and he reached gratefully for the first of the Two Cups when they brought it in.

No rough clay cups here. The Cup of the Left Hand was a crystal bowl set in a lacy gold cradle that rested on the top of a thin spiral stem. The liquid in it was green and seemed to be alive with light, a smooth light that did not flicker with the dancing of the lamps on the walls. As he reached for the cup with his left hand, Orem was filled again with fear. This was the stuff of poems, but he was not ready, had not been warned. I am like Glasin Grocer, chosen by chance for adventures that only the Sweet Sisters could have predicted. I am not ready, he cried out inside himself; but still his hand reached out, and though he trembled he spilled no drop of the green. In the villages it had been a tea of mints; here it was a wine, and when it touched his tongue the flavor went through him like ice, bringing winter to every part of his body, so that he felt it sharply in his fingers, and his buttocks clenched involuntarily. Still he drank it all, though when he was through, his body shook violently and his teeth chattered. Steam rose from the empty crystal cup.