The Princess and the Hound (20 page)

But if Dr. Gharn could change Beatrice into Marit and Marit into Beatrice, if he could change his own daughter into a dove, why could he not undo the change?

George staggered back.

This was not possible. It could not be true.

But there was no reason for Dr. Gharn to lie. His own daughter—a dove? Of course he was not lying.

He was as devastated by the truth as George himself. Only he had been living with it for twenty years or more. No wonder he was bitter and half mad. No wonder he had had wanted revenge.

George felt a terrible sympathy for the man, though he did not want to. He wanted only to weep in despair. All was lost.

He would marry a woman who was a hound. And his true love would be lost to him forever.

“George,” said Beatrice. “Now is not the time.”

Yes. The hound was chiding him for his emotions.

And Marit?

She got off of Dr. Gharn and slowly moved away, as stunned as George himself. Her eyes seemed darker now than ever before.

Was this the end? Would she take herself into the forest and never return?

George expected it. He steeled himself to feel nothing. To be as unfeeling as Beatrice so often was.

And then he felt a warmth on his hand. He looked down and saw that Marit had come back to him.

She was not yet ready to give up hope.

Or him.

George breathed deeply and regained some modicum of self-control.

Jus then he heard Henry and the others arriving from behind. George did not wish them to hear any of Dr. Gharn’s talk of animal magic. Thinking quickly, he grabbed a bit of cloth from his pocket and shoved it into Dr. Gharn’s mouth.

“Go get the lord general,” George shouted at Henry.

Then he gave over control of Dr. Gharn to Beatrice and Marit once more.

When Henry and the lord general returned, George took a small, sour pleasure in seeing the lord general’s surprise at Beatrice’s strength.

She insisted on hogtying Dr. Gharn herself and throwing him over Ass’s back.

George secured the dove’s cage on one of the pack
horses. He noticed that the dove did not flutter or frighten as other birds seemed to. He stared through the bars, and the dove stared back.

Once that was done, George forced himself to act as normally as he could. He packed things up, spoke of riding order and night guards with the lord general, and stole glances at the stolid Beatrice and the wounded Marit.

He had found no solutions in Dr. Gharn, after all. He felt as if he were just beginning a new quest. But perhaps he knew now at last what it was he quested for.

Love.

G
EORGE TOOK THE
less fractious horse the lord general offered him. He had done something, it seemed, to raise his position in the lord general’s eyes. But not in his own. They rode hard for home, though they had to stop another night by the great forest when it grew dark.

George thought of how tightly bound Marit and Beatrice were now. And he with them. How could he love the one and not the other? How could he love either?

It was too much. Dr. Gharn. Sir Stephen. Elsbeth. Would he tell Sir Stephen that his beloved had not truly died, that she was a dove? What possible use could that be? Kinder to let him believe she was dead, that Dr. Gharn’s fantasies about the bird were no more than that.

But would he believe? Or would he always be haunted by guilt about what he might have done?

The truth was not always a gift.

In the evenings on that long journey home, George made a point to visit Beatrice, if only for a few minutes at a time. He spoke to her briefly of the day. But it was Marit he went to see, and Beatrice knew it.

When she had listened, she would wave to Marit and suggest that George might take her hound for a walk. And George always did.

Then George had the chance to touch her on the head. To feel the beat of her heart beneath his fingertips. To stop and look into her eyes and know who it was he saw in them.

He brought her back to Beatrice afterward, and all three of them were as silent as she.

Nothing was resolved between them, but there was honesty, at least, and George clung to that.

Dr. Gharn endured at first the silent scorn of the soldiers, and then, as the lord general did nothing to curb them, less subtle torments.

Meat so oversalted he could not eat more than a bite.

A leg held out to trip him, and he could not catch himself, for his hands were bound behind his back.

George put a stop to it when he saw Dr. Gharn forced to stand for hours on end.

“It sends no good message to other criminals if this one is given ease,” warned the lord general.

George shook his head. “Justice is not ease.”

The lord general grumbled over this but did not defy the prince.

But if Dr. Gharn noticed the change in behavior toward him, or to whom he owed it, George could see no sign of it. Dr. Gharn only looked at George suspiciously, if he looked at anyone at all.

At last, one morning, George smelled his own familiar forest and was reminded of his mother and the way she had first introduced him to his magic. Might George one day do the same thing for his own child?

He turned to Beatrice and Marit, but they were far behind and he could not share the moment with either of them.

“I will take him to the dungeon,” the lord general announced the following day, when they arrived back at the castle.

It was now long past noon, and George was half asleep on his feet and half dead in mind and heart.

But there was duty waiting for him again. “Give me an hour to eat and change my clothes. Then I will be down to speak to him myself,” he said.

The lord general made no protest.

George took the cage, but Beatrice came after him, Marit trailing. When they were alone, he turned on the stair and stared into the princess’s eyes. “I shall find a chamber for you to rest in.”

He glanced down at Marit. Marit? Or Beatrice? By which name should he call her? He had been introduced to her as Marit. Marit she would remain. Until—unless…

He turned back to Beatrice. This was impossible. Worse than impossible.

“I cannot believe I did not guess it earlier,” he said at last. What a fool she—they—must think him.

“We did not mean you to,” said Beatrice.

Which did not make him feel any better.

“We could not take the risk, you see. Because of the kingdom.”

George set down the cage, tired. “Even after I told you about my animal magic?” he asked. Had that not been the proof that he was trustworthy?

“Even then,” said Beatrice. She looked at Marit, and George wondered if there had been disagreement between them about that choice. If so, there was no sign of it now.

“Did you ever mean to tell me?” George asked at last.

“No.”

“I see.”

Marit gave a small sound, and Beatrice’s head turned slightly to the side. “And there was her father as well,” she said, as if making an admission. “Can you see what it would have done to the king if he had known the truth?”

So she was asking him still to keep this quiet. Of course he would. What kind of man did she think he was?

“You care for him more than he deserves, I think,”
George said at last. And yet he would have done the same for his father. Was it more than his father deserved?

All his life George had tried to live up to his father. But it suddenly struck him now that King Davit, for all his kindnesses in private, was not so very different from Beatrice’s father in public. All these years King Davit had made George keep his magic secret. He had refused to let George be who he was, just as King Helm had refused to see Beatrice as she was.

King Davit had not meant to harm George. He had meant to protect him. Perhaps King Helm had meant the same.

It was scarcely relevant to the damage that occurred. In fact the love that was between them made it worse.

“I shall send for you,” he told Beatrice.

She bowed her head. She did not ask for more than that. She did not beg him to continue their betrothal. She had too much pride for that.

George went to his chamber, set the birdcage on his wardrobe, and sat on his bed. It felt very cold there.

He changed his clothes, moving woodenly, trying to think of nothing else. Foot here. Leg there. Arm there. Then he was done.

He took a few breaths, then prepared himself to go to the dungeon. Was he ready to face Dr. Gharn?

No.

He should go see his father.

But was he ready for that? To see King Davit would mean facing the realization that had just come to him. All this time, since his mother’s death, since the judgment day on his twelfth birthday, his father had spoken about the animal magic in whispers here and there, but no more than that. He had made it seem that there was no other choice, that George could not possibly allow anyone to know the truth about his animal magic.

But if just once in all that time his father had stood up and declared that his son had animal magic, how different it all might have been.

It would have been harder in some ways. But it would have been true.

George stared at the dove. What would she say if she could speak to him? What would she wish for, for her father? For she too had been harmed by a man who had meant to show his utmost love for her.

It made George wonder why love was supposed to be such a wonderful thing. As far as he could tell, love was just another excuse for causing pain. It was just as well his marriage with Beatrice would be without it.

G
EORGE CHECKED ON
his father briefly and spoke to Sir Stephen. Then he bathed and changed. It was evening when, holding the dove’s cage, he forced himself down to the dungeon. It was built directly beneath the castle, but the only way to get there was to go out and around the moat, then descend by a hidden staircase near the stables. It was cold, and the stone walls sweated black drops. The stairs were uneven and treacherous, and George nearly tripped more than once.

The sounds of the place were eerily inhuman. It was only after George had descended all the way, ducked his head through the first arch, and begun down the long corridor that led to the row of closed stone doors that he could hear voices.

They came from inside the first chamber, where George was surprised to find not only the lord general,
but Sir Stephen inside as well. George looked through the bars to see the two arguing, while Dr. Gharn kept silent, a strange grimace on his face.

He looked now much less like the man whom George had seen as the physician in his father’s castle, but also very little like the drunken man with the sow. Yet his basic features were the same. Medium-length hair of indeterminate color, medium height, a face of no distinguishing characteristics.

The smell was gone, George thought. That was part of it. It kept George from always wanting to turn his head away.

More than that, something in the man’s eyes had changed. He seemed defeated now. But did that make him any more likely to give George what he wanted?

George lifted the birdcage and set it down at the barred door to the chamber. The dove made no sound, nor did Dr. Gharn. But the two were instantly aware of each other. Now the despair on the physician’s face was mingled with something else. Softness from a face that was used to being hard.

George left the cage where it was and knocked on the bars.

The lord general hesitated a moment, then shrugged and took the key off his chain to allow George inside.

“But I see no reason to believe you will have more luck convincing him to cure the king than I have.”

The king, yes. His father was the only part of this the
lord general knew about. Best to keep it that way.

“You must let me talk to him. He will say more to me than to you. I know him,” said Sir Stephen, nodding to George, but keeping his attention on the lord general.

Neither of them seemed to think that George had any part in the argument. They would not have treated his father so. He had half expected such treatment from the lord general, but Sir Stephen was supposed to be his friend and guide. For all he had said that day in the king’s bedchamber, he did not think of George as the man who was to be king.

Well, would he?

“That is precisely why you should not speak to him or even be anywhere near where he is. He will trust that you will protect him,” said the lord general, “and then I will get nowhere with him.”

George’s head turned back and forth, from Sir Stephen to the lord general, watching their game as if it were King Helm’s board of pieces, and he himself but another one of them.

“You mean you intend to torture him?” asked Sir Stephen. He moved closer to the lord general, pulling himself to his full height, some inches taller than the lord general.

“I will do what I must to get what I need,” the lord general insisted, his eyes blazing. “Do you argue with that? Do you believe his comfort is more important than my king’s very life and the good of the kingdom?”

“A lack of comfort? Is that all you intend toward this man?” demanded Sir Stephen.

“Well, what is pain but the loss of comfort?” replied the lord general.

The two men were talking about what might be Dr. Gharn’s last moments, but George noticed that the physician seemed hardly aware of their battle. His eyes were on the dove in the cage. And George.

“You are…” Sir Stephen sputtered.

The lord general seemed to take pleasure in Sir Stephen’s inability to find words to match his emotions. “Despicable?” he said. “Heartless? A blackguard?”

George was tired of the competition. He was even more tired of being ignored.

“Lord general, you are dismissed,” he said shortly.

The man turned and stared at George, his mouth open wide.

“You may complain to my father if you wish,” said George. But he would have to get through four-fingered Jack first, and George did not think that would be easy.

“You will regret this,” said the lord general, and stalked off.

“And you,” George said to Sir Stephen, nodding toward the door.

Sir Stephen looked stunned. “No,” he said. Then he added, “Please. Please let me stay. I swear I will stay silent if you ask me to. I will do whatever you say. But I must stay—” His eyes went to the dove and then away,
as if they had been burned.

George sighed. So someone had already told Sir Stephen the truth.

“All right then. Stay,” he said. He turned to Dr. Gharn and asked, “Have you spent all these years planning this revenge?”

Dr. Gharn looked up at him. “No,” he said slowly.

“Then what?” asked George. “Tell me.”

“I spent many years wandering in the eastern countries, searching for one who had the other half of the animal magic. I thought I might undo what had been done—to her. It was all I thought of then.”

George’s heart sank. If Dr. Gharn, with all his single-mindedness and all that time, had been unable to find a way to turn his daughter back into what she had been, what hope could there be for Marit and Beatrice? And George?

“Then I found a man on the edges of the great Salt Sea, a learned man who owned as many books written on animal magic as I had ever seen and knew even more stories of it. He told me that there was no hope for my dove, even if I found one who had the other magic. Because her body was gone. He told me that I might be able to give her another body, but that she could never again be the girl I had known.”

The physician was weeping, George realized, but hardly seemed to notice it.

“I spent some time simply wandering then, with no
thought except to feed myself and my dove. I worked here and there, at this court or that one, each more opulent than the last.”

His gaze caught on George for a moment, and there was a hint of disdain once more.

No doubt there were greater places than Kendel, but George had no wish to see them. They were not his.

“It came to me slowly, the thought of revenge. I moved from court to court, and my reputation followed me. Emperors asked after me, and I healed them. I should have been proud of it, and yet I felt nothing at all.”

He took a great, shaking breath.

“A lesser king died after I had given him the wrong medicine. I was hunted from the court, in danger of my life. I had to go without my dove, but I came back that night, in disguise, and got her. I saw then how I could be unnoticed by those who had seen me but days before. A few changes to my hair, leaning to one side, talking differently. It was not much, but they did not pay attention. And that was the beginning of the idea for my revenge.

“It did not take much more for me to see how I could most thoroughly destroy two kings. One through his daughter, and the other through his son.” He looked at George and sighed.

After this boldness, George did not want to feel sympathy for the physician, but he found it was there nonetheless. And yet he could not forgive him.

Sir Stephen glanced at George, eyebrows raised, as
if to ask permission to speak.

George nodded.

“Why did you never come to me?” he asked the physician quietly. “All these years I thought you were dead too.”

“And what could you have done?” Dr. Gharn demanded, shaken out of his memories to a sharp, new anger. “To help me or her?” He waved at the dove.

“I—I suppose nothing.” In a distant voice, Sir Stephen went on. “Do you know, I have never been able to love another? She was superior to all the others I have ever met. I could never see their faces without thinking of hers, and how much more beautiful she was, or how her laughter was more infectious, and her wit more quick.”

He looked down at Dr. Gharn and added, “I thought, if you were alive, that we might weep together for her. I thought that might offer us both some relief.”

George thought then of what the houndmaster had once told him: “There are hounds for whom gentleness is the worst punishment. They have not been trained to it. They want to be hit and pained with every movement. They expect it.”

It seemed that Dr. Gharn expected pain here, too. And Sir Stephen giving him gentleness might well prove his undoing.

“There is no relief for me,” said Dr. Gharn at last. “Not while she breathes. And yet, I cannot kill her myself.”

“Does she wish it, do you think?” asked Sir Stephen.

Dr. Gharn’s hands began to writhe. “I don’t know. How can I know what she thinks? She cannot speak.”

“But surely there are other ways?”

“Do you think I have not tried to speak to her in other ways?” Dr. Gharn’s voice was hoarse. “With notes? Asking her questions that she could choose to respond to in one chirp or two? Questions that she could fly to, or peck at my eyes to—or anything at all? She will not answer me. She hates me.”

There was a moment of silence as the dove made a small sound of distress and began to fly about in the cage.

George could hardly breathe for the swelling in his throat.

“She could not hate you,” said Sir Stephen with certainty. “Not the woman I knew. She could hate you least of all. After all you have given up for her. She must see that.”

“Must she?” said Dr. Gharn. He watched as the dove settled once more. Then he shook his head. “She is no longer the woman you knew. Or the daughter I loved. She is a dove. And yet, she can never be content to be only a dove. Do you see the position I have placed her in? If I let her go, she could never find a place among the birds. She does not know their ways.”

George thought of the bear, whose dreams he had shared. There was still a man inside the animal. Just as
there was a woman who remembered being human inside Marit’s hound body. “She can remember,” he said softly.

Dr. Gharn flinched at the words as if George had shouted them. “What do you know? How do you know this? Do you speak to her? Do you know her mind?” he demanded. His eyes were wild, and his body trembled.

But George just said, “She is not the only human so changed.”

Dr. Gharn began to shudder in great spasms.

Sir Stephen embraced him.

“What shall I do?” asked Dr. Gharn. “Tell me what I should do. You are the only one who can help me, who can know what she would wish better than I. If I had known you were here—No. I would not have come for you. But now you will help me, won’t you?”

He was asking Sir Stephen to decide if the dove should live or die. George could not bear it. He sagged against the stone wall and let its chill wetness soak through him, as if that would take away his fear.

“Do you let her out of the cage?” Sir Stephen asked.

Dr. Gharn shook his head. “Not anymore. Not for a very long time. I am too afraid that she would not come back. Or that she would be harmed while she was away.

“Years ago I did let her out, and she did not come back for three days, and then it was with a broken wing and a fever that I spent many weeks curing. I used all my physician’s skill to keep her living, and I did not dare let her go again after that. What if I did not have enough
skill to cure her the next time?”

“You must let her go,” said Sir Stephen at last.

“Is that not the coward’s way out? For then I could tell myself, when I wished it, that she was still alive. This way I have to look her in the eye day and night and see her contempt for me. It seems much more just.”

Dr. Gharn gave himself no mercy, George thought, so why should he give it to anyone else?

“It is not your choice. It is mine,” said Sir Stephen tightly. “I claim it by right of our love. She was to be mine. She would have been mine—”

Dr. Gharn looked up at him and held his hand tightly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“It is what she would have wanted,” said Sir Stephen. “If she had to live as a dove, she would want to be free as a dove, to enjoy the wings that a dove is given for flight, and to see the world from above as only a bird can. Even to experience the dangers that a dove must face.”

Dr. Gharn had closed his eyes and was so still that for a moment George wondered if he had poisoned himself and died. Then he nodded, just the slightest nod.

Sir Stephen bent to take the cage, then opened the barred door of the cell.

When he was gone, George turned back to Dr. Gharn. “My father?” he asked. The physician had already answered the question of Beatrice and Marit. Twice over now.

Dr. Gharn only shook his head. “There is no cure for the black-green leaf,” he said. “At least, there is nothing
I have ever heard of, in all my years of travel. It is ideal for that reason. Even the wealthiest man in the world can have no hope of recovering from a slowly given dose, day after day, for months on end.”

George did not disbelieve the physician’s answer, for the man spoke with such bluntness and seemed so little interested in mercy. And yet it was all George could do to keep his hands clenched at his sides, away from Dr. Gharn’s throat. After a long moment George recovered himself enough to ask, “Is there nothing you can do for him then?”

Dr. Gharn’s head jerked up at the question as if he had never considered it before. “Oh. Well, yes, of course I can give him ease from his pain. I cannot save his life, but I may be able to prolong it. By a few days, a few weeks.” He shrugged with a very small motion. “I do not know how long.” He turned to George. “Is that what you would wish me to do?”

George closed his eyes, wondering if Dr. Gharn would not kill his father with some other elixir he offered. Why should he trust him?

But, then, why had he gone after Dr. Gharn if he had no intention of allowing him to come near his father again? He had to choose, the hope of helping his father against the chance of hurting him.

The weight of the decision settled on him, and George had the first taste of what it would be like to be king.