Robin McKinley

by Deerskin

  It was almost her turn; perhaps he had been looking her way already, searching longingly for the end of the queue, the end of this afternoon's work. He looked, and his gaze paused. She knew what he saw: a black-eyed, white-haired woman in a white deerskin dress; she was an exotic figure, enough taller than the average that she stood out even before the oddity of her clothing (and bare feet) might be remarked.

  And she was growing accustomed to the way other people seemed to leave a little space around her; it was no different from her feeling separate from the rest of humanity, though she had no name for what the separation meant or was made of.

  And, whatever the truth of it was, she was glad to be spared the closest proximity of the crowd. Then the woman ahead of her stepped forward, and Lissar stood next in line, and the prince saw Ash.

  He straightened up in his chair then, and she saw that he was tall; she also saw that he was capable of enthusiasm, and not so sluggish as she would first have guessed. His eyes brightened, and he shoved his hair back from his forehead. He was paying no attention whatsoever to the woman now telling her story.

  With his motion, two long narrow heads rose from behind his chair; or rather, the one she had already noticed rose as the dog sat up, and a second head appeared around the shoulder of the first. One was fawn-colored, a little more golden than the silvery Ash; the other was brindle, with a white streak over its muzzle, continuing down its chin, throat and chest. The two looked first in response to their master's interest, and then they, too, saw Ash. Ash went rigid under Lissar's hand.

  The king and queen said something to the woman before them, and she bowed, slowly and deeply, and made her way to the door all the supplicants left by, different from the one they had entered, a smaller and simpler door, as if exiting was a much easier, less complex and less dangerous matter than was the feat of going in in the first place. It was Lissar's turn, and she had heard nothing of what had just occurred between the woman next to her in line and the king and queen, for she had been distracted by the prince and his dogs. Now she had to go forward without the reassurance of seeing someone else do it first. She walked forward.

  The prince's eyes were on her dog, the king's on her dress, and the queen's on her feet. She did not notice where the handsome young man's eyes rested, or the princess's, or if perhaps they might have found her too dismaying an object to look at straight at all. Her bare feet were silent on the glossy floors, against which even the softest shoes were liable to tap or click; Ash's nails were well worn down from the many leagues she had travelled with her person, and so she too made no sound.

  Lissar felt that the whole court had fallen silent though she knew this was not true; but a little bubble of silence did enclose the dais. The two dogs rose fully to their feet and came to stand by the prince's chair; an almost negligent wave of his big square hand, however, and they stopped where they were, although their tails and ears were up. Ash was Lissar's shadow, and she stopped when Lissar stopped, but Lissar kept her hand on her shoulder, just to reinforce her position. She bowed, still touching her dog.

  "Welcome to the yellow city," said the king in a friendly voice. "I say welcome, for I have not seen you before, and I like to think that I see most of my subjects more than once in their lifetimes. New you are at least to this our city, I think."

  "Yes, your greatness, and to your country as well; and so I thank you for your greeting." Lissar hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. "I-I was told that you would hear anyone who presented herself to you. I-have little to present. But I-think I would like to stay here, if I could, and so I need work."

  "What can you do?" said the prince, not unkindly. The handsome young man laughed, just a little, gently, and at that moment Lissar decided she disliked him. Her eyes moved in his direction and she noticed the princess sitting straitly on her bench, and thought that for the moment she did not look poised, but stiff, as if her backbone had turned to iron. She thought, The princess does not like the handsome young Cum of Dorl either: but what does she think of her brother?

  She looked at the prince as she answered honestly: "I do not know what I can do." She did not know what inspired her to add: "But I like dogs."

  "Where is yours from?" said the prince. "If it were not for her long coat, I would say she is a line of my breeding."

  "Ossin," said the king.

  The prince smiled, unabashed, and shrugged, as if to say that a dog was a dog and he could not help himself. The Cum of Dorl made a little, catlike wriggle in his chair, and for a moment his beautiful profile presented itself to Lissar, and out of the corner of her eye she caught the curl of his lip; but she remained facing the prince.

  The humor faded from Ossin's face and now she realized that he looked tired and sad, and that the droop of his shoulders as he slumped forward again was of a weary burden. He said softly, "One of my best bitches died this morning. She left a litter of puppies a few hours old. The pups haven't a hope unless they are nursed most carefully; they probably haven't a hope even with nursing, but I dislike giving up without a struggle-and their mother was a very special dog. There are eight of them. If any survive it will have been worth almost any price to me. Would you care to play wet-nurse? It will be disgusting work, you know; they'll be sick at both ends right up through weaning time, most likely, if any should live so long, and you won't get much sleep at first."

  "I will do it," said Lissar, "but you will have to teach me how."

  TWENTY

  THAT WAS THE END OF HER AUDIENCE; SHE BOWED, AND IF SHE did not include the Cum in her courtesy, she doubted that anyone noticed but herself.

  The prince spoke a few words to a servant, who came to Lissar, bowed himself, and said, "If the lady will follow me." Lissar thought to bow again to the dais because the servant did; somewhere she recalled that one always bows last thing before leaving the royal presence, even if one has already bowed several times previously.

  Somehow she remembered this from the wrong angle, as if she were sitting on the dais.... She followed the servant, leaning a little on Ash as a brief wash of dizziness assailed her.

  The servant led her to a small antechamber off a vast hall similar to the one she had entered by. She sat down when the man bowed her to a chair, but she was not comfortable, and as soon as he left the room she stood up again, and paced back and forth. Ash remained sitting next to the chair with her chin propped on its seat but she kept an eye and an ear toward Lissar. Lissar was thinking, I have been in the wilds too long, this great building oppresses me. Why do I remember sitting while someone bows to me? I am an herbalist's apprentice-an herbalist's apprentice who has lost most of her memory to a fever she was not clever enough to cure herself of.

  And yet her own thought rang strangely in her head, for a voice very like the one that had spoken to her on the mountain, the voice that had left her without guidance since she and Ash had come down from the wild lands, said, It is not that you have been in the wilderness too long. But this brought her no comfort; instead she felt angry, that she was permitted to understand so little; that even her own mind and memory spoke warily, behind barricades, to each other, without trust; that her guiding voice was not to be relied on, but spoke like an oracle, in riddles that she must spend her time and thought to unravel, to little effect.

  She began to feel caged, began to feel that there was something searching for her; perhaps the creature whose gullet led to the royal receiving-room would tear itself free of its bondage and come looking for her. She heard a distant rumble like roaring, she heard a swift panting breath.

  She started violently when a long nose was thrust into her hand, but as she looked down into Ash's brown eyes she recognized the panting breath as her own.

  Deliberately she slowed her breathing, and she had regained her self-possession when the servant re-entered the room, another servant on his heels, bearing a small table, and yet another servant behind him, carrying a tray. Lissar, standing, still breathing a little too hard, barefoot, in the middle of
the velvet-hung room, longing for her mountains, suddenly laughed, and then the roaring in her ears went away entirely. With the laugh she felt strangely whole and healthy again.

  She looked with interest at the plate of fruit and small cakes on the tray, and was spilling crumbs down herself (which Ash swiftly removed as soon as they touched the floor) when the prince entered without warning.

  She stopped chewing, and bowed, half a cake still in one hand. "By all the gods and goddesses, high, low, wandering or incarnate, never bow to me unless I'm pinned to that blasted chair in that blasted room," he said feelingly, "or, I suppose, if my parents are present, or my sister-she's suddenly gotten very conscious of her standing-that's Dorl's doing, drat him, and she doesn't even like him. Pardon me," he said, his voice a little calmer. "All my staff knows not to bow to me, that's my first instruction, but usually-I hope-handed out a little more graciously. It has not been a pleasant afternoon, and I was up all night. I didn't want to believe that Igli would let herself die on me.

  "But today has been worth it--even with Dorl there-to have someone to take care of the puppies. My regular staff are all falling in each other's way to avoid it; they all have better sense than I do, and it's a grim business watching little creatures die when you're wearing yourself out trying to keep them alive."

  He was not as tall as she had expected, looking up at him and his big booted feet on the dais from her place on the floor; but he was broad-shouldered and solid, and his feet were still big, even looking down at them from standing height instead of having them at chest level. "Come on, then, I'll introduce you to them."

  He picked up a piece of fruit from the table and paused a moment, looking at Ash. He frowned, not an angry frown but a puzzled one. "It's true, I don't know northhounds much, but she looks so much like another bitch of mine who died a few years ago-never threw a bad pup, all her children are terrific. She was my first really top-quality dog, and when I was still a kid I gave too many of her get away to impress people-too dumb, or obsessed, to realize that most people, particularly the so-called nobility, who are, I suppose, obliged to have other things on their minds, don't know the difference between a great dog and an ordinary one. Even those who can tell a good dog from a bad one. I look at yours and I could swear. . ." He shook his head.

  Lissar cast her mind back; but in the anxious, pleading, elusive way her fragmented memory now presented itself to her, she could not remember exactly how Ash had come to her. She remembered the kind man handing her an armful of eager puppy.... She remembered wearing a black-ribboned dress, as if she were in mourning.... She looked down at her dog, who, conscious of her person's gaze, moved her own from this interesting new person who smelled so fetchingly of other dogs, to meet Lissar's eyes. Her ears flattened fractionally. In public, on her dignity in the presence of a stranger, she was not going to do anything so obvious as wag her tail, or rear up on her hind legs, put her paws on Lissar's shoulders, and lick her face.

  "She was a gift," Lissar said finally. "I do not know where she came from," she added truthfully. It was hard to think of her life before Ash, as if trying to remember life before walking or speech. She knew, theoretically, that such a period existed in her history, but it was very vague, as if it had happened to someone else. As if the rest of my life were not vague, she thought, in a little spasm of bitterness.

  "Wherever she came from, she is obviously your dog now," said the prince, who could read dogs and their people, and knew what the look Ash was giving Lissar meant, even without tailwagging.

  He had idly eaten the remaining cakes on the tray, and now he went through the door. Lissar followed with Ash at her heels; just outside the two dogs that had sat behind the prince's chair sprang to attention. Ash stopped and the other two froze; heads and tails rose, toplines stiffened. Ossin looked from one to the next. "Nob, Tolly, relax," he said, and tapped the nearer on the skull with one gentle finger. "I hope yours isn't a great fighter," he added, as his two moved forward on only slightly stiff legs.

  Lissar thought of the black dog that had chased them, and said nothing.

  There was some milling about-Ash did some extremely swift end-to-end swapping when she felt the two strangers were taking unfair advantage of their number-and Lissar noticed with interest that Ash was standing a little ahead and the other two a little behind when all three chose to remember the presence of human beings. "Hmm," said the prince, doubtless noticing the same thing; and strode off.

  Lissar and the dogs followed.

  They went down a dozen hallways, took two dozen left and right turns, and crossed half a dozen courtyards. Lissar gave up trying to remember the way, and gave herself instead to looking around her, at people and rooms and sky and paving stones, and horses and wagons, and feet and shoes and the size and shape of burdens and the faces of the people and beasts who carried them; and the end result was that she still felt hopeful about the place she had come to.

  Many of the people hailed the prince, and many bowed to him, but she noticed that the ones whose greetings he answered the most heartily bowed the most cursorily. There were other dogs, but both Ash and the prince's dogs disdained to notice them.

  The kennels smelled of warm dog, straw, and meat stew. Several tall silent dogs approached to investigate Ash; but Ash, apparently feeling that two at a time was enough, raised her hackles and showed a thin line of teeth, and growled a growl so low it was more audible through the soles of the feet than the ears. "Con, Polly, Aster, Corngold, away," said the prince, as carelessly as he had gestured at the two dogs behind his chair; and the dogs departed at once, though there was much glancing over shoulders as they trotted soundlessly back into the kennel hall.

  The prince strode after them without pause; Nob and Tolly circled Ash carefully to stay at his heels. Lissar and Ash followed a little more warily. The floor was hard-packed earth, and wellswept; Lissar thought of the double handful she had combed out of Ash that morning, and wondered how often someone swept here, even with short-haired dogs. The hall was lined with half-doors, the tops mostly open and the bottoms mostly shut. One wall by the wide doorway was covered with hooks from which hung a wide assortment of dog-harness.

  The roof was much higher on one side than the other, and the high side held a line of windows, so that the entire area was flooded with light (Lissar was faintly reassured to see a few short dog-hairs floating in the sunbeams). The dogs that had come out to look them over were retiring through one or two of the open half-door bottoms; one disappeared through a tall open arch, and Lissar heard: "It is not mealtime, as you perfectly well know, Corngold! Get out of here or I'll lock you up."

  Corngold, looking not the least abashed, trotted out again, exchanged looks with Ash, and went off after the others.

  Ossin paused and opened the top of one of the half-doors. Lissar stepped forward and looked over the bottom half. There was a small, pathetically small, rounded, lumpy pile in one corner of the small room, which was ankle-deep in straw.

  A small window-this room was on the low side of the hall, and the door ran up to the ceiling-let sunlight in, a long yellow wedge falling across the floor and brightening the white-and-brindle rumps of a couple of the tiny puppies in the pile. Lissar could see blanket-ends protruding from under tiny heads and feet.

  "There they are," said the prince sadly. "I thought of putting a bitch in with them, but my two most reliable mothers have litters of their own. By the time I found out if one of the others would accept them and start producing milk, if the answer was no, it would probably be too late to try again."

  Lissar softly pulled the bolt on the lower half-door and stepped inside. She knelt down beside them and touched a small back, ran a finger down the fragile spine. The puppy made a faint noise, half murmur, half squeak, a minuscule wriggle, and subsided. She looked around. Ash was standing in the doorway with a look of what Lissar guessed to be consternation on her face; Nob and Tolly were nowhere to be seen. There was a water dish with a piece of straw floating in i
t, near the puppy-heap. The little run was very clean.

  "That water dish is doing a lot of good," said the prince irritably. "Jobe-has anyone tried to feed Ilgi's litter?"

  Lissar heard footsteps stop. "Hela tried, but I don't think she got too far." The voice was that of the messenger who is not completely sure that his message won't get him killed.

  "Oh, get out of here, I'm not asking you to be wet-nurse," said the prince in the same tone. The footsteps began again, quicker this time, and then a pause, and a voice, as if thrown back over a shoulder, "There's six left."

  "There were nine born, live and perfect," said Ossin, and there was both anger and grief in his voice. "While they're asleep, I'll show you where your room is-after I ask Berry what's available. Cory's old room, I expect."

  Lissar shook her head. "I'll sleep here, if you don't mind, and I have no possessions to keep. Ash will stay with me." She looked up, sitting on her folded legs; the prince was looking at her with an expression she could not read. It might have been surprise, or relief. It was not wistfulness or longing; it might have been hope. "They will have to be fed every couple of hours anyway," she said. "And kept warm."

  The prince shook himself, rather like a dog. "As you wish. Washrooms and baths are that way"-he raised an arm, the hand invisible behind the frame of the door.

  "Jobe and Hela and Berry can get you anything you need-milk, meal, rags and so on-you and the dogs get the same stew, most of the time, but my dogs eat very well, so it's not a hardship, and the baker is the same one providing bread for my father's table." The prince's smile reappeared, and fell away again immediately. "I have to go attend some devils-take-it banquet tonight, and I will probably be trapped till late. I'll come by when I can, to see how you are doing."