Then they winced in pain and looked toward the door, and there was the Queen.

Queen Beauty, but now not haughty and imperious: now raging, with her eyes dancing as if aflame. They were afire, Orem saw, for flames licked outward, throwing light that danced in the silver discs and dazzled on the table. "How have you remembered what I took from you?" Her voice shook the room.

Weasel and Craven said nothing.

The Queen shouted and the discs banged on the wall. Weasel and Craven fell to the floor. Frightened as he was, Orem thought to wonder if he should pretend to be affected by whatever magic she was using. Before he could act, however, Urubugala took matters out of Orem's hands. He rolled out in front of the Queen and unfolded himself to lie supine before her, his face almost at her feet.

"You can't make Urubugala forget," he said. "What Urubugala once was, Urubugala always is."

All was still. The Queen looked down at the dwarf and smiled beautifully. It was the smile of impending cruelty; we all knew it well by then, except Orem.

"Are you?" she asked. "And what did you hope to accomplish? You couldn't stop me before; do you think some petty little spells of unmaking would terrify me?" She took hold of his hair and pulled him up as if he were no heavier than a dog. "Urubugala, my little fool, don't you know that your little unmakings caused all this? Oh, yes, Urubugala, your little try at resisting me, at helping the old cock escape me—I realized then that it was nearly time, nearly time to renew myself, Urubugala, and so the Little King is here, I called upon the Sisters for a dream and they obliged me, and sent me Little King and the infant in my womb. Do you think you can stop me?"

"No," said Urubugala, grinning. "Or did you merely hope that I would let you die?"

Her smile broadened, and the flames leapt from her eyes and ignited Urubugala's clothing. The dwarf screamed. As if his scream were the power of flight he rose into the air, high above the table, and there burned and burned, screaming. Orem was nauseated, stabbed with guilt. The dwarf had taken blame for all his acts, all his acts, and now was dying for it.

But not dying, after all. For as suddenly as the flames began, they stopped, and the dwarf was lowered, panting and whimpering, to the table. Queen Beauty walked near to him, reached out and took him by the ears, pulled him until she bent directly over his face, looked directly into his eyes.

"Did you block me at the cod's camp? Let me in, Urubugala, or I'll set you burning forever."

"In in in," he whispered. "All you like, see it all—" and he gasped a great rush of air and convulsed on the table. His head rose up, eyes locked on Beauty's eyes, until their faces touched, upside down to each other, mistress and slave, mother and child, Urubugala's head suspended by nothing but the force of Beauty's gaze.

She was finished. Urubugala's head dropped with a loud crack on the table. "The truth, the truth, name of the Sisters it's the truth. I was so sure it was you."

"Oh well," whispered the dwarf.

"Do you think I'm not a match for it, whatever it is? I won't be threatened by a petty wizard who has learned your unmaking spells, Urubugala."

"Oh well."

"Don't try me, Urubugala. I won't let you have even such a victory as that." And then she touched his forehead and he suddenly relaxed. Slept. Orem saw that his skin was unmarked by the flames. The Queen addressed Craven and Weasel. "And yet, why should I remake the mercies he removed? It pleases me that you should again remember all, think of all. Will you hate me? Hate me all you like. You will watch as I am made again, and hate me as you watch, and still you will do nothing, you can do nothing, don't you see? Urubugala may give you back your memories, but I think you'll wish for the old forgetfulness again. Don't bother asking me. Ask him." She pointed at the sleeping dwarf. "See what he can do."

The Queen was gone. Craven and Weasel watched her go, then turned and stared at Orem. He opened his mouth to speak, but Weasel put her hand to her mouth and shook her head. What then? They only waited, watched him. Until he realized that they were waiting for him to make it safe for them to speak. So again he timidly let out his net and cleared the room.

Urubugala instantly sat up in the middle of the table. "Never again," he said to Orem. "Touch whatever you like, do whatever you like, but not to us. We three, the Queen's Companions, we are her ornaments and she'll not have us altered."

Plainly Urubugala knew what he was, and as plainly believed that the Queen did not overhear them. What could Orem do but trust him? "I'm sorry," he said.

"Why am I here?" Orem asked.

Perhaps Weasel would have told him; she made as if to speak. But Urubugala raised his hand. "It's not for us to guess what the gods are doing. You're guided by wiser eyes than ours and we'll tell you nothing more. Only this: Seek not, and you will find; ask not, and it will be given you; do not knock, and the doors will open for you."

Then Urubugala rolled from the table and dropped to the ground at Orem's feet. Orem looked down and met his upward turning gaze.

"Even Beauty does not know why you are here."

And the black man waddled out the door, his phallus dragging between his legs; no longer funny, not to Orem, for he had seen him endure agony and speak again as if it were nothing.

The dwarf had preserved him, and borne his punishment, and kept him free. Craven and Weasel had kept their silence for his sake. If this was not friendship, Orem did not understand the word. They had his loyalty forever. Yet in truth they did not want it. They were loyal to you, Palicrovol, not to Orem, and he never understood that until the end, too late for him, and only just in time for you.

20

The Uses of Power

How did Orem use the name of King while he sat upon your throne, Palicrovol? You judged a King of Burland once before, when you were young. As Count Traffing you watched King Nasilee and thought him weak and wicked, deserving only death. What were his crimes? He was vengeful and cruel, rapacious and tyrannical. There are some who say it was his taxes that annoyed you, his weakness that tempted you, his daughter you desired, child though she was. You were ambitious, say these envious ones. But you have proved by your acts that you truly despise vengefulness and unjust punishment. So now let us judge the Little King, not by rumor, but by what he did with the power that was his to use freely. By that measure I think he was a fit son of Palicrovol.

The Little King at Court

For a week, Queen Beauty presented him as her husband to all of the hundreds of visitors and thousands of courtiers in the Palace. She never spoke of him without some crude and clever jest, some taunt that set the courtiers tittering behind their oh-so-delicate hands. His thinness, his youth, his supposed stupidity, his genuine innocence, all were cause of much mirth. Yet Orem was wise, he heeded the advice of the Queen's Companions and bore it patiently and also laughed, and soon enough, though all despised him, all were used to him and content with his role. He had his name at last, and his place: Little King, and butt of jokes.

Six weeks after his wedding he presided at a petty banquet for the resident courtiers. At his right hand sat Weasel Sootmouth; at his left sat Craven; there is order in these things. The banquet guests were perfectly willing to bait him, of course. No sooner was the first course well placed upon the table than a woman cried out, "My lord Little King, will you judge for us? My husband, there with his hand on Belfeva's thigh—he has treated me most unfaithfully." She then laid before them the shocking story—shocking, that is, to Orem—of her husband's infidelity with barnyard animals. She told it with practiced wit; only Orem of all the listeners didn't know the pleasant conventions of witty and ribald complaint. His face flushed, and his surprise at hearing such a tale at all gave way to anger at the husband's behavior; after all, there sat the husband, laughing with all the rest. Laughing! These people had no sense of right and wrong, it seemed.