Father Orem

We of the Palace were all too used to the ways of wealth, to nurses, governors, and tutors for a child. In all of Queen's Town was there anyone who knew what it meant to be a father? Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on his shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind. Their laughter could be heard almost everywhere. And anyone who wanted to be sure of seeing them had only to go out into the gardens, and soon they would appear, to roll together in the grass or pluck blades or play hide-and-go-find.

Did Beauty ever watch them together? I think she did, for it was in that time that she inexplicably told me of the three lessons she learned as daughter of the King. I think she envied Youth the love of a loving father. I think it embittered her, and made it easier for her to hate the Little King and his son when she needed to.

Every few hours Orem would bring the child back to Beauty to be nursed. Beauty watched Youth all the time; Orem drew his power inside himself when he was with the boy, so that Beauty would never be hindered from watching to be sure her son ate no food except what he drew from her. Orem silently gave her the child, and Beauty as silently surrendered him when he was satisfied.

Whenever Orem gave the child to Beauty, he believed that he would never see the boy again; whenever he took the child back, he regarded it gratefully, as an act of mercy, that he would be allowed to live another little while. And because he felt death to be so imminent, he wasted none of the time he had with Youth. In those days, if you wished to be with Orem you had no choice but to keep company with him when he was with Youth.

For in the evenings, when Youth slept his twelve hours, Orem retired to his chamber and spent the night battling with Beauty. Now that her child was born, she had more strength for the war, and it was a constant fight to keep her away from Palicrovol. Sometimes he even thought: I am hastening my own death by frightening the Queen. She will kill me and renew herself all the sooner. I should stop fighting her, and she might let me live.

But he knew that Beauty would not spare him, and as he watched Palicrovol's army grow, he began to hope that the King might come and save him. That's what he told Youth once: the King might save him.

Youth himself was another miracle. Like his father and grandfather, Youth was black of hair and white of skin; like his mother, he was beautiful of face. Being a twelve-month child, his life was quick, his growth all sudden. He could sit within a week or so, and stand himself within a month; before it was summer outside Palace Park the child could walk, could run his short-legged run along the paths, hiding and finding, calling for Papa or for Weel. If he had a name for Beauty he never said it in their hearing; at times Orem wondered if she spoke to the child at all, or merely fed him in silence. His teeth came in, but still she nursed him; Orem taught him to know the letters that he scratched in the dirt and name them in two orders, and still Queen Beauty nursed the child.

Orem also had some quiet hours with Youth, but they were not silent. They would lie together in the grass of the park and tell each other stories. No one was allowed to come near, for as if with one will, they fell silent at the approach of an audience. Beauty could listen, if she liked, with her arcane abilities, though usually she slept during the day when she wasn't suckling the child. But the only person permitted to attend them in the flesh was Weasel Sootmouth. Orem had told her of his game, hoping that she would pretend to be the true mother; she never said that she was playing, but her presence let him have his imaginary family if he liked. Youth, too, accepted her, as if he knew her heart.

They told each other stories. Orem told Youth all the stories of his growing up. How he lived with his father; how his mother never loved him; the tales of the House of God, and how he was saved from the fire; Glasin Grocer, Rainer Carpenter, Flea Buzz and the snakes; all the tales except those that would have told Beauty, listening, that Orem was the Sink, her enemy. Weasel listened to all his stories and remembered them.

And Youth, too, told stories. In his high, impossible infant's voice, lisping on Ss, turning J into GZ, he spun his tales with a serious face, and sometimes so grieved himself that he cried, and sometimes so delighted himself that he cried. There was wisdom in his stories, and they have not all been forgotten.

Youth's Story of the Suckling Calf

Once there was a calf that was hungry. It wanted to suckle, but his mother told him, "Go away, you make me tired." So he went to his father, but the bull said, "Go away, I've got no teat." So the calf drank from the pool in the woods and grew horns on its head that got so heavy that it couldn't hold its head up and it died.

Youth's Story of the Dead Flower

Once there was a flower that got brown. God took the brown flower and put it in his window and it wouldn't get alive again. The old stag wore it on its antlers and it wouldn't get alive again. The two sisters braided it into both their hair and it wouldn't get alive again. But Papa kissed the flower and it got alive again and turned into me.

Youth's Story of the Snowstorm

Once there was a snowstorm but it always fell on the city. Far away under the snowstorm there were hundreds and hundreds of people who weren't servants or soldiers or Papa or Weel or anybody at all. The snow always fell on them, and covered them up until they went away. The little boy told the snowstorm, come and fall on me. And the snowstorm did come and fall on him, and the little boy went away, just like the people who weren't anybody.

Youth's Story of the King

The King is little but the King is good. The King never gives you anything to eat and people laugh at him when he isn't there but the King knows all the paths in the woods and someday he will find the old stag that lives in the woods and he'll let me ride on him.

Youth's Story of the River

This was a very big river and it goes from one end of the world to the other and back again. The grocers ride on it and the farmers ride on it and a million million flowers ride on it but God never rides on the river. The river goes by a little little house where a little man and an ugly lady live but they haven't got a little boy. Then the papa planted a seed in the ground and he planted hundreds of seeds and all the seeds came up gold except one, and it was brown. "This seed is brown like the dirt," said Papa, but he liked it anyway and so he ate it and it grew inside him and made him so full that he never had to eat again.

Orem Cries for His Son's Tale

I do not know which of Youth's tales it was, but as he lay on his back listening, Orem cried. He cried silently, but Weasel and Youth both saw the tears well up in his eyes. One tear hovered at the corner of his eye, as if it were timid to fall and yet knew it must.

Orem noticed that Youth had stopped his story. "Go on," he said.

But Youth did not go on—instead he reached out to his father's eye and touched the tear. He gazed at it a moment on his hand, then put the hand into his mouth and tasted it, looking up at Orem with his marvelous quick eyes.

Orem looked worried for a moment; then he relaxed. "Beauty's asleep," he said. "I wouldn't want her to accuse me of feeding him." Weasel only laughed. By such small things do kingdoms rise and fall.

It was a golden summer in the Palace, the first good summer in three centuries. But then the snow began to fall again outside Palace Park. In the west King Palicrovol suddenly turned his army eastward, to Inwit. In the Palace Orem began to hope seriously that his life would be spared. But Urubugala rolled on the floor in the Moon Chamber and said, Twelve months blossom on the tree,

Twelve months more and ripe you'll be.

The Low Way Out of the Palace

Orem was leaving the Queen's room, having brought Youth back to her for his evening meal.

Over the Palace the clouds moved quickly, roiling with the storm that would bury Inwit if it could.

Outside Queen Beauty's door, Belfeva met him, her voice and manner full of haste.

"Timias found someone in your room today," she said. "A boy. He says he knows you, but he was stealing all the same. Timias has him there."

So they hurried to Orem's chambers. Timias was leaning against a wall, holding onto the hair of an adolescent boy, who sat furious on a stool. Two years and puberty can change a child: Orem did not recognize him for a moment. Besides, the mutilation of his ears was all that could be seen at first—with the hair pulled up and away, the savage scars were ghastly. Only when he spoke did Orem know him.

"Orem, get this chewer's hands out of my hair, name of God!"

"Flea!" Orem cried.

"You know him?" Timias asked.

"Yes, I know him, I owe him my life a couple of times."

"And don't forget the three coppers you owe me," Flea said sourly.

"Flea! How are you?"

"Going bald. If I were six inches taller I'd teach this son of a puke to keep his claws in his own nest."

"How did you come?" Orem asked. "It can't have been easy to get in here."

"I came the low way."

Timias would have none of that. "The postern gate has more guards than a two-copper whore has lice."

"I wouldn't know about two-copper whores," Flea answered. "I said the low way, not the back way. Under the Palace."

Timias frowned. "There's no such way."

"Then I burrowed through the rock."

"Why do you think the aqueducts go over the walls? They built this place so there were no passages underground."

Flea pointedly turned his back on Timias. "Some people are so right they never learn a thing. I came to take you."

"Take me where?"

"Where you're needed. They say the time is short. You have to come."

"Come where?"

"I don't know the name of the place," Flea said. "And I'm not so sure I'd find the way too quickly on my own. I have a guide."

Flea looked toward the porch. Standing at the balustrade was a shadow Orem recognized.

"God," Orem said.

"Mad as a drunk pig, isn't he?" said Flea. "He must tell everyone that's who he is. Mad or not, though, he knows his way through the catacombs."

Orem strode through the outer door and touched the half-naked servant on the shoulder. "What do you want with me?"

The old man turned around, and his eyes were dark; in the light from the room Orem could see that there was no white at all—iris only, staring through his face to see what lay behind.

"Time," the old man said. "You delay too long."

"Delay what? What have you come for?"

"You blinded her, yet still you do not act."

Orem wanted to ask for explanations, but Flea tugged at his arm. "He's just the guide," Flea said. "The others want you—they found me, brought me down, and sent me here to get you because they figured that you'd come if I asked. You can trust me, Orem—it's not a trick or a trap. They say it's too important for delay."

"I'll come then."

"Wait!" Timias stopped him. "You're not following this little thief down into God knows what pit—you don't believe him, do you?"

"Before you were my friend, he was," Orem said, "and with less reason."

When he saw that Orem meant to go, Timias insisted that they stop at his room for him to get a sword. The old man seemed to sneer at him for it, but what of that? Orem didn't mind knowing that Timias was with him, and armed.

The old man led them a twisted route, all through the Palace itself, sometimes up, sometimes down, into places Orem had never seen, and finally into places that seemed to have been abandoned years before, dust thick on the floor, furniture nested with rats. They left the candled rooms behind, and carried lamps to light the way, all except the old man, though he led them into the darkness. At first Flea was full of talk, but later on that stilled.

Through one door, and now the stairs were wooden, and so ancient that they walked only on the outmost parts of the treads, for fear the lumber of the middle would give way beneath them. And when the stairs ended, the floor was stone, the walls rock, the ceiling moist and dripping here and there, and shored with timbers. It reminded Orem of his trip into the catacombs with Braisy. But the catacombs had been outside the city walls, on the west side, and they were in the east here, and within the mount of Queen's Town. And still down.

The manmade tunnel widened and became a cave; narrowed again into a natural crevice in the rock, through which they made their way with difficulty, forced to bend their bodies at odd angles.

Always the old man was waiting for them, not too patiently, on the other side.

"I'd like to know how that old man makes it through some of those places," Timias whispered.

"He says he's God," Orem answered.

"Look at his eyes. Have you seen his eyes?"

They traversed a ledgeless slope over a pit so deep the stones they dropped never made a sound at all. They shimmied down a chimney in the rock, scraping their knees and covering each over with the dust of passage.

"How were you so clean in my room?" Orem asked.

"I took a bath," Flea answered. "What else did I have to do while I was waiting? I was only borrowing some clothes when your friend came in. What are you looking at?"

Orem was looking at three barrels against a wall that was only faintly lit by Flea's lamp. Orem walked closer, knowing what he would see. But the tops were off, and the barrels were empty. He breathed again in relief.

"What's written on them?" Timias asked.

Orem lowered his light. He had seen the words before, of course, and remembered well how they were written.

Sis

Go

Ho

ter

d

rn

Slu

Sla

St

t

ve

one

Yo

Yo

Yo

u

u

u

M

M

M

ust

ust

ust

Se

Se

Sa

e

rve

ve

He remembered another message that once had been written on these barrels: Let me die. He had obeyed that command; the rest of the message waited. Now he knew he had to understand if he was to do what must be done.

"You know this writing?" Timias asked. "You know what it means?"

"Not what it means. But it was written to me. Two years ago."

God slave you must serve. Orem looked at the old man. "You are what you say you are, I think."

The eyes blazed.

"I will serve you if I can."

"At the Rising of the Dead," God whispered. Then he turned his back on them, ducked down into a low passage, and disappeared. They followed him closer to the sound of rushing water.

"What is God doing as a slave in Beauty's house?" Timias asked quietly.

Orem had no answer. And then they emerged into a vast chamber, the Rising of the Dead, where all the answers would be given.