CHALA AND RICHON reached the palace on the tenth day after they stepped through the gap in time. The dust-colored stone towers were plainly visible against the acres of cleared land. There was no moat, but the gates were twice as tall as any human, with pointed spears on top to prevent incursions. There was a tower on either side of the gates, but the lookouts that should have been filled with guards were empty.
There was no one to be seen, however.
And when Richon pushed against the gates, they creaked open.
Was it possible that Richon had been king here only days ago? It looked as if the palace had been abandoned for months.
Why should humans wait to make a new leader when a pack of wild hounds would not?
“Perhaps you should wait here,” said Richon.
Chala growled low in her throat and did nothing of the sort.
Richon walked carefully on the overgrown stones and then through the gates. Chala followed behind, conscious for the first time of how little she looked like the companion to a king. Her hair was matted with sweat. Her skin was scratched and dirty. Her gown looked more gray than red.
Yet she kept her head high and walked onward.
The cobblestone path led to a courtyard faced on three sides by the palace itself. Inside the courtyard, Chala began to walk more easily, her breath steady in her throat, her feet light. Somehow the stained-glass windows and cut stone around them made Chala feel almost as if she were back in the forest, giving her a sense of peace and tranquillity.
When Chala looked more carefully, she could see that there were abstract figures of animals embedded in the center of each window. One had a deer, another a wolf, a third a bear.
Had Richon ever noticed them before? Had he seen how the palace was homage to the animals of the forest, and an attempt to re-create it here in a human way? Chala had never spoken to Richon about his ancestors, but this seemed to her clear evidence of the animal magic in those who had built the palace. There was love of animals and knowledge of their way of life in every stone here.
Richon walked more and more slowly through the courtyard, and then he ducked his head under an arch. Under the light was a garden, or the remains of one.
“This was my mother’s place,” said Richon. “My father cut it out for her and she came here nearly every day. Sometimes she brought me with her, and I sat and watched her dig in the dirt with her hands—she would not wear gloves.
“After she died, I kept this. So many reminders of my parents I destroyed or sold, but this I could not touch. I did not come to see it, but the cook made sure that the herbs were cared for, and she watered the bushes.”
His shoulders shook and tears streamed down his face; he knelt on the ground, his hands touching the dirt, his nose turned to the dead bushes.
When humans wept, what did other humans do? In King Helm’s court Chala had seen them laugh or make snide remarks. Or, if the cause of the weeping was an attack by another, it seemed to invite a second attack, or a third. Especially among women of the court.
Only once had Chala seen a man touch the shoulder of another man gently. But the weeping man had thrown the other off with a vehemence that Chala had been surprised to see in any human. The rejected man’s jaw had grown taut, and his eyes glassy, staring nowhere at all. Then he had moved away from the weeping man.
A wild hound snarled or bit when in pain. A wild hound used claws as weapons, sometimes on its own flesh. But once a hound began to whimper in pain, it was either near death or wild no longer.
She had never been uncertain before. She hated the feeling of it, like a loose cloak over her skin that rubbed against her neck with every step.
At last Richon got to his feet and walked, head bowed, away from the small garden. He began to move through the palace itself, room by room. The kitchen smelled of dusty spices and was full of broken tools. In the servants’ quarters Richon seemed unsure of himself, and he turned back and back again before returning to the courtyard.
“My own palace, and I don’t know its secrets,” he muttered. He led her through the main hall and through the larger, obviously royal rooms. The fine tapestries had been taken from the walls and left pale shapes behind, marking where they had been. Finally Richon stopped at a door, his hand to his heart.
“It has been so long,” he said. Some part of him seemed to grow smaller as he walked through.
It was a large room, empty but for a child-sized chair that had been smashed and lay on its side. Richon bent over the chair and ran a hand smoothly over it.
For a long moment he stared into the cold, empty fireplace.
Chala wanted to shout at him, to demand he tell her what he felt. As a hound she had been able to read emotions in other hounds just by the way they stood. Even with the bear she had been able to see what he felt in his stance, and smell it in his breath. But with this man she was at a loss.
At last Richon said, “The royal steward and the lord chamberlain came here to tell me my parents were dead. I did not believe them at first. I kicked and screamed. And when I was finished at last, they told me that it was time for me to give up my childish habits, for I was to be king.
“After that day I never came back to this room. I was trying so hard to be a grown man that I dared not remember how much I had loved being a child. I do not even know what they did with the playthings I had here—if they waited for me all those years or if they were taken away from the first.”
He paused for a long moment and then sighed.
“I should like to have had one to give to a child of my own.”
Chala stiffened.
She thought of him married, sharing this palace with another woman, giving her his child. She could not think of a human woman she thought would deserve Richon. A human woman would surely drill the wildness out of him.
Yet the most she could hope for was to stay and watch, hoping that Richon did not send her back to the forest to live without him. He knew all too well that she might look like a human, but she was a hound.
Richon moved on, and Chala matched his strides without thinking. They passed through the throne room, which was empty and stank of urine—and worse. Someone had taken the trouble to truly foul the place before leaving.
Then the ballroom and the dining hall. Richon looked each of them over, surveying the damage stonily.
Then they went to the stables.
Richon walked by each stall.
He stopped for a few seconds longer at one that had the name Crown burned into the door.
And then, near the far end of the stable, there was a noise.
“Who’s there?” called Richon.
The reply came in a snort and a whinny.
Richon’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Crown?” he said.
The whinny came again, and this time Chala could hear a note of desperation.
“Crown, I’m coming,” said Richon. He moved cautiously through the other end of the stable, looking in each stall.
He found Crown lying down, one eye nearly shut with crusted pus. One leg was broken, and there was a terrible slash that must have been done deliberately with a sword down his belly. That he had not been killed was a miracle, but not a kind one.
He should be put down, thought Chala. No animal would wish to live through this. Nor any human, either.
But she did not know if Richon had the strength to do it, not after what he had been through this day.
Richon helped Crown to stand on three legs, and the horse seemed happy, but only for a moment.
As soon as it was standing, Richon had a look at the bleeding sores on the horse’s side. Its body, which must once have been the pride of the king’s stables, was now withered. It was clear that the horse had gone without water for far too long. It would die within the day, in terrible misery.
Richon put his head close to Crown’s. There were no more tears flowing down his face, as there had been in the garden. He did not look devastated as he had in the child’s bedchamber. He looked determined. And Chala knew then that he could bear the horse’s pain no better than she could.
He went back through the stalls, his voice calling back to gentle the horse in his absence.
While he was gone, Chala moved closer to the animal. He was too far gone to care if she was a familiar hound or not.
She only meant to comfort the horse while Richon was gone. She put a hand out to touch the horse’s belly, near the infected sword wound. And with that one touch, she suddenly felt all of the horse’s pain and deprivation. It was as strong to her as if she were close to dying herself.
She pulled back, trembling.
What had happened?
She had become the horse, in a way. But that was only possible through magic.
Impossible.
And yet she had had magic in the dream. If it was a dream.
Chala put out her hand once more. The pain of the horse flowed into her, and then she let her strength flow out.
Chala did not remember anything of herself for a long time after that.
But she remembered what the horse remembered. She saw the man standing above her, the one called Lord Kaylar, holding the sword, the vicious look in his eyes, her horse legs tied to posts so she could not turn away. She remembered the sound of terror that had come from her horse’s mouth and then the man’s laughter, mocking her agony.
And then, in and out of pain, in sleep and waking, the fever that had come and then finally passed, leaving her weak and trembling, waiting for death.
And the king, at last, who came to help her.
Chala felt it all through Crown.
And when she woke, Richon was standing over her, holding a short, rusty knife.
Dropping the knife, he fell to her side. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes dark with concern.
Chala lifted her head—a human head again now—so she could see the horse. It was nearly healed. There was a scar on its belly, but the sores on its side were gone and it stood on all four legs now, no sign of a break on any of them.
“Magic,” said Richon, staring at her with awe on his face. And not a little pain.
Chala understood immediately, for in seeing Crown healed by her, Richon was faced once again with the fact that he did not have the magic. He had not been the one to heal the horse he cared for.
There was a long silence, and then Richon offered her his arm. They walked out of the stables together, Crown behind them.
Chala stared at the horse and thought of how much faster Richon could go if he rode it, alone, to the border where the army waited.
But Richon patted his horse and said, “You’ve served long enough here. It’s time for you to be free of this palace and all that has happened to you here.”
Letting Crown go was the kind thing to do for the horse. And now Richon could hold to his memories of how the horse had once been with him.
In the silence that followed, Chala and Richon turned and walked to the south side of the palace. He did not look back, only forward—to the battle that lay days ahead. And this time Chala knew her purpose. She had magic after all, and she would use it to defeat Richon’s enemies.