Torture

You were outside the city when they carried him to prison, Palicrovol. Your armies were gathering at Back Gate, where the towers were fewest, as if the towers meant anything. As they brought Orem up the Long Walk to Corner Castle he could see your banners. He had protected you so long that you had begun to hope, hadn't you; and even now he had cost the Queen so much that she could not attack your wizards or your priests, could only bind Craven, Weasel, and Urubugala again, then hold the loyalty and courage of her guards and hope that you'd delay just seven days.

And you delayed. Because you did not believe that it was not a trap. You waited, outnumbering Beauty's troops—a hundred of yours for every one of hers. You could have piled corpses of your fallen men to scale the walls and still had enough to sack the town and take the Castle. She could not have stopped you then, for she hadn't the strength. You could have come to her, and all the power she had could have barely turned a sword. How would you have killed her then, Palicrovol? Fire?

Rope? Drowning? Any would have served—or what, had you a plan to use them all? If you had acted then, King Palicrovol, your grandson would still be alive, for as Beauty said, until the year was up he was not ripe.

But you delayed, and gathered your armies, and waited, and waited, while others took the only path, the impossible path, the hopeless path to bring her down before she was unassailable again. You could have stopped her, Palicrovol, but once again it was your son who saved you. Think of that, too, before you slay him for daring to sit upon your throne.

They kept him in the Little Donjon, and the keepers there perfunctorily tortured him, because that was what prisoners were sent there for. He wondered as they pulled his arms from his sockets if this was what had made the man scream; it did not make Orem scream. Was it the suffocation?

Needles in the soles of his feet? The binding of the testicles? The broken glass forced into his mouth that cut his tongue and filled his mouth with blood that he dared not swallow—was that what broke the other man? It did not break Orem.

For he did not dwell inside himself now. He dwelt in the body of a year-old child whose mind was five times that age, whose heart was bright, whose life was all rejoicing; Orem lived in Youth, and only watched his own agony from a distance, almost unconcerned. He had once drawn a sword through his own throat, he remembered. But the pain of that had been erased. All the pain was gone, was locked away somewhere and he could not remember where. Only the child's kiss on his lips, only the small arms around his neck. I never knew how a father loved a child until now. How did my father find the strength to ride away from the House of God and leave me? And when the pain was worst, Orem dwelt again with his father, and was four again, and saw the world from his father's shoulders, gripping the golden hair of his father's head as the world bounced up and down.

It was his comfort then, that Avonap had been his father. What if Orem had learned fatherhood from you, Palicrovol? He would have thought then that fathers do not love their sons. He would think that a father is a King, and decrees a man's death because he usurped his place. And then, when he is told that the usurper was his son, the King doubles the reward for his capture, for now he knows his son is guilty of incest as well as treason. How long would Orem have lived in Corner Castle, Palicrovol, if he had learned fatherhood from you? Not long enough to save your life, I think.