BEFORE THEY LEFT the market, Richon saw a woman who sat behind a table on which many carvings were displayed. Most of them were mundane likenesses of children or grown men and women, some of animals. One showed a man kneeling beside a hound that he seemed to love, another a girl on a horse, her hair flowing behind her in the wind, an expression of joy on her face.
After Richon had stared at the carvings for some time, the woman looked around, then reached below the table and took out a new set of carvings. These were entirely different from the first. The animals and humans were entwined.
One was a bear’s head on a man’s body. Another was a woman on her hands and knees with a hound’s tail.
Another was a hound with a woman’s head.
The merchant woman touched a figure of a woman with the claws and eyes of a cat, and the same feral expression on her face.
It was not just any woman, either. There were distinct similarities between the wooden figure and the merchant woman herself.
Richon had no idea why she was revealing herself to him. She might not know that he was the king, but could she not tell, as Halee had, that he had no animal magic? Apparently not.
Last of all, the woman pointed out a figure of a woman connected to a hound, as twins are sometimes connected at birth. The woman did not have a left arm, and the hound was missing limbs entirely on its right side.
Neither could stand alone.
Richon felt guilty at the sight and turned away, thinking of how much of her hound self Chala had already given up.
But Chala leaned forward and touched the figure. “Sometimes two halves are more than one whole,” she said.
The woman in the stall nodded. “She understands,” she said to Richon. “Perhaps better than you.”
Richon pulled Chala a discreet distance away.
“Do you not sometimes wish you were a bear, even now?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said immediately.
“Why?”
“Because a bear can do things a man cannot,” said Richon.
“And a woman can do things a hound cannot,” said Chala.
“Then you are saying—” Richon began. She could not be saying that she wanted only to be a woman now, could she?
“I am hound and woman,” said Chala. “Just as you are bear and man.”
“And king,” Richon muttered to himself.
“Perhaps the woman there has a triple figure,” said Chala. “Shall we ask her?”
Richon was surprised to see the gleam of humor in her eyes. He had seen humor in the hound many times, though it was rarer in the woman Chala.
But her eyes were bright indeed, and when he smiled at her she let her lips spread widely over her teeth.
“Another day we will come back here,” Richon suggested. Until this moment, he had not allowed himself to think beyond getting his kingdom back. But now he realized that his kingdom was not enough. He needed Chala, as well, to feel whole.
“Another day?” said Chala blankly. “What need for another day when we have this one?” she asked.
He smiled at her. In a way, he supposed, she was still very much a hound.
And he was glad of it.
They had walked nearly to the end of the marketplace when Richon saw a wagon full of books.
His heart began to skip and he hurried closer. He knew those books. They were from his father’s library.
The one on the far left was the book on training horses that his father had tried so hard to get him to read. Not that he had offered him bribes for it. His father would never do that. He felt that reading and the knowledge that came from it must be its own reward. He would only show the book to Richon and mention that he had read it when he was a boy, that he had enjoyed it very much.
Then his father might cautiously mention that he had noticed how interested Richon was in horses. He would ask if Richon knew how it was that a young horse was taught to answer to a particular command, or if he knew why a horse should never be allowed to drink its fill after a hard ride.
Richon had been interested in horses as he had been in no other animals. Other animals reminded him of animal magic that he did not have, but when he looked at a horse he thought only of the way it ate up the ground, the feel of air rushing through his hair, and the undeniable excitement of riding up so high.
But to learn about caring for a horse—he thought that was a duty for others.
His father had never forced the matter and Richon had never opened the book. He had not thought about it once in his three years as king. But now he itched for it. He felt that his horses had deserved more from him, but only now was he able to give it. If he had the book.
Underneath the first one, a little to the left, there was also his father’s favorite novel, though King Seltar had not liked to admit that he read such things. In fact, the king had hidden this volume under his own pillow. Richon had found it there and stolen it away, to see if it could be as deliciously sinful as his father seemed to think. He had read more than a hundred pages into it before giving up.
It was only now, looking at the book, that Richon wondered if his father had planted the book under his pillow on purpose to tempt Richon. It had been a young boy’s book, of impossible adventures in other lands, and new friends met along the way. But perhaps it was also his father’s favorite book from when he was a boy.
Richon saw book after book that he remembered from his father’s library. For a moment he felt dizzy, swaying, and imagined the library around him once more as it had been on that last day he had seen it, after his father’s death.
His father had labored all his life to collect them in one place, and Richon had cared for nothing but his own feeling of inadequacy at the sight of them.
They were his books no longer.
Richon turned and recognized the man he had sold the books to at the palace. This man had paid in good faith. Richon had no right to demand them back, even as king. He would have to leave them here, and hope that the books went to those who would love them.
But suddenly the man’s eyes widened in terror, and he put his hands to his head, falling to the ground in prostration.
“Forgive me, forgive me, Your Majesty,” he begged.
Somehow, despite his disguise of filth and a growing beard, the man had recognized the king. And perhaps he remembered that Richon was known for his temper and his whims.
But the man then said, “Do not hurt me with your magic!”
And that surprised Richon.
The man must have heard some garbled version of the story of King Richon being turned into a bear. Otherwise there was no reason for any of his subjects to think that Richon had the least acquaintance with magic.
Richon knelt beside the man. “Stand up,” he said.
The man stood slowly, trembling.
“King Richon,” he got out at last. “Do you wish to have a particular book back? Or—more than one?” He waved at them. “Take as many as you wish, Your Majesty.”
The fear in the man’s eyes made Richon see himself again as the selfish, spiteful boy king that his people had always feared.
Well, that must change.
Suddenly the man’s name came into Richon’s head.
“I want nothing, good Jonner,” said Richon. “But thank you for your kind offer.”
Jonner stared at him, as if waiting for the truth to come out.
Then Richon had an idea. “If you wish to give me something, there is another thing I would value more than the books.”
The man seemed terrified, but he simply nodded. “Whatever the king commands,” he said.
“Information,” said Richon. “What news have you heard in the last few days?”
“They said—there was a battle. A week ago. Magic,” the man stammered out. “And then—you turned yourself into a bear and fled the palace.”
Richon looked about for Chala and found that she had drawn herself away from him, watching. He motioned for her to come closer, and felt better when he could smell her breath next to his.
“Anything else?” he asked the man, who looked back and forth between the king and Chala and said nothing.
The man shook his head. Then he bit at his lip and added, “There is something about the southern border.”
Richon went rigid. “What about the southern border?” He had always had difficulty with the kingdom in the north, threatening war. But not the south.
“They say that what remained of the army has gone to the border in the south.”
“Why?” asked Richon, his head and heart suddenly pounding.
“Because there is another army there, from Nolira, ready to invade. It is said they have been gathering for months now, a new surge with each sign of your weakness, begging Your Majesty’s pardon. Now they have begun to attack what little of our army remains after the fight with the magical animals.”
Richon felt a terrible weight on his chest. He had known none of this, had never been informed of the gathering army. And had never insisted on being told.
Chala came closer to him and put a hand on his arm, but he could only think of what he had done to his people, to his kingdom.
Jonner spoke again. “Perhaps this is all a ploy. You meant to lure your enemies into battle so that you could defeat them in their pride.”
There was a long silence, and then the pressure on his arm from Chala increased until Richon realized he must respond. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”
“The money that you have taken to yourself, selling so many of the palace artifacts from your father these last few years—it must all have been spent on secret supplies of weapons and armor. Ah, what a great surprise the king of Nolira has in store for him,” Jonner said excitedly.
“Indeed,” said Richon, though it was not true. He wished he had been so wise as to plan to protect his kingdom, but he had not.
Why had the wild man sent him here if his kingdom was to be conquered by another? What purpose for a king that was no king?
Well, Richon would not give up easily. And if false hope was all he had to offer, he would not stint of it.
“I will not speak of seeing you unless you wish it,” said Jonner. “So as to make sure the surprise is all the greater for the enemies of our kingdom.”
“Thank you,” said Richon, relieved. He sent the man on his way.
Then he and Chala made their way to the edge of town. It warmed him to see the familiar parts of his kingdom stretching out before him, the waving fields of grain and orchards of ripe, fragrant fruit trees. But he also knew they were several days from the palace.
“We must hurry,” said Chala.
“If we are not too late already,” said Richon.
Any other woman would have given him reassurance, but Chala gave him the truth.
“If not that,” she said.