The Door In The Hedge Part 5

She opened her mouth, and gave utterance to the one thing she had brought with her to the wizard's lair: "Will you set the two you hold in bondage free?"

The chair, and the creature on it, and the cavern itself disappeared; silently and seemingly gently, for the Princess felt no shock; it was as though she watched a shape of snow melt in spring sunshine. She blinked, and found herself ... somewhere else; and the first thing she knew was Sellena's hands again on her face, and all that Sellena had held safe for her ran back inside her and made her breathe quickly for joy; for the first thing she then did was turn to Darin, who stood at Sellena's side, lame no longer, but standing strong on both feet.

And Darin and Korah looked long and deep in one another's eyes.

Then they turned away to see Sellena's eyes shining brightly on both of them together; and they all three laughed, and Darin and the Princess blushed, and then they looked around to see where they were.

But Darin's and the Princess's hands somehow met and clasped, while their eyes were busy elsewhere.

The grey grim mountain was gone, and they stood on a sweet green plain untroubled by rough stone and starry with flowers, and a stream ran off to their right, and before them was the forest. And the Princess's chestnut mare came running to greet them.

"We must return to your city," said Sellena, and her eyes were shining still, but the thoughts behind them were changed. It was only then that the Princess saw the warm beauty of her friend and sister, and knew that she had been healed too. "For as my brother's leg is whole again, so-so many other things come right."

The Princess drew her mare's head down to her own breast a moment, and whispered in the chestnut ears that flicked forward to listen. "Go," she said then to Sellena. "Ride my mare; she will take you as swiftly as she may to my home and hers; and we will follow after." And the Princess bridled and saddled her horse, and Sellena mounted and rode off.

The forest did not seem wide to the two who followed behind; and though they walked swiftly, it was gaily too, and without thought of weariness nor any desire that the journey come to an end. But the dense undergrowth that had stretched on and on almost without measure when the Princess had followed the Hind gave way now to tall easy-s.p.a.ced trees and frequent meadows full of singing birds; and the two that walked on had not by any means come to the end of all they had to say to each other when they found they had come to the end of the frees. They emerged from the forest just in time to see the party that was setting out from the city to meet them. In that party rode the thirteenth hunter, who reined his horse so close to his wife's that he might hold her hand as if he would never let it free again; and at their head rode the Prince, who was perhaps thinner than he should be, but he rode his tall stallion with his old grace and strength, and at his side rode Sellena. And behind the two that stepped out of the forest stepped several more, eleven in all, whose presence had not been suspected even by themselves, for they had thought themselves long dead in a wizard's cave. But now they strode forward to bow to the Prince and ask the way to their homes and countries, barring the two who belonged to this kingdom, and who wept for joy at finding themselves in it again; and they all did homage to her who had rescued them.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Prologue.

ONCE THERE WAS a soldier, who was a good man and a brave one; but somehow he did not prosper in a soldier's life. For he was a poor man, the son of a poor farmer; and when he wished to join the Army, at the age of eighteen, bright with hope and youth and strength, the only regiment that would have him, a poor man's son, was a regiment that could not keep its ranks filled. This regiment was commanded by a colonel who was a hard man; he bullied his men because he was himself afraid, and so his regiment was shunned by the best men, for none wished to serve under this colonel, but because he was a very wealthy man, none could seek to replace him.

But the young farmer's son knew nothing of this; and so he signed his name to the regiment's papers, freely and joyfully, waiting only to be asked to do his best.

But twenty years pa.s.sed, and the farmer's son became an old soldier; he lost his youth and much of his health and strength, and gained nothing worth having in their place. For his colonel had soon learned of the fineness of the new man under his command; and the colonel's pride and weakness could not bear the sight of such strength in a farmer's son. And the colonel sent him on the most dangerous missions, and made sure that he was always standing in the first rank of his company when it was thrown into battle; and the farmer's son always did his best, but the best that he was given in return was his bare life.

And so at the end of twenty years the soldier left his regiment and left the Army, for he was stiff with many wounds; and, worse, he was weary and sad at heart, with a sadness that had no hope in it anywhere.

He shouldered the small bundle that held in it all that he owned in the world; and he walked down the first road he came to. And so he wandered aimlessly from one week to the next; for his father had died long ago, and his brother tilled the farm, and the soldier did not want to disturb his family's quiet happiness with his grey weariness.

As he wandered through the hills, he found himself going slowly but steadily downhill, like a small rivulet that searches for its own level, seeks a larger stream that will in turn spill it into the river; but where the river flowed at last into the sea stood the tall pale city of the King. And the soldier, as he bought himself meals and a hayloft to sleep in by doing small jobs for the people he met-and he found, however slow the last twenty years had made him, that his hands and back still knew how to lift and heave a pitchfork, how to back a skittish horse to a plough or a wagon-he found in him also a strange and rootless desire to leave the mountains for the first time in his life, to descend to the lowlands and go at last to the King's city at the mouth of the river, and see the castle of the man for whom he had worked, nameless, all the years of his youth. He would look upon the King's house, and perhaps even see his face for a moment as he rode in his golden carriage among his people. For the soldier's regiment had been a border regiment, patrolling the high wild mountains beyond the little hill farms like the one he had grown up on; and the only faces of his countrymen that he had seen were those of other soldiers; the only towns, barracks and mess halls and stables.

As he went slowly downhill he began to hear bits of a story that told of an enchantment that had been laid on the twelve beautiful daughters of the King.

At first the tale was only told in s.n.a.t.c.hes, for it was of little interest to farmers, who have enough to think about with the odd ways of the weather, of crops, of animals-and possibly of wives and sons and their own daughters. But in the first town he came to, big enough to have a main street with an inn on it, instead of the highland villages which were no more than half a dozen thatched cottages crouched together on the cheek of some gentler hill: at this town he stopped for a time and worked as an ostler, and here he heard the story of the Princesses in full from another ostler.

The King had twelve daughters and no sons; and perhaps this was a sorrow to him, but perhaps not; for sons may fight over their father's crown-even before he is decently dead. And these twelve Princesses were each more beautiful than the last, no matter how one counted them. The Queen had died giving birth to a thirteenth daughter, who died with her; that was ten years ago, now. And it was only a little after the Queen's death that the trouble began.

The youngest Princess was then only eight years of age, and the Princesses' dancing-master had only begun to instruct her; although truth to tell, these girls seemed to have been born with the knowledge of the patterns of the dance written in them somewhere. A royal household must have a dancing-master; but the master who taught these twelve Princesses had the lightest labor of anyone in the castle, although he was a superb artist himself and could have taught them a great deal if they had needed it. But they did not; and so he smiled, and nodded, and waved his music-wand occasionally, and thought of other things.

Sometime during the youngest Princess's ninth year it was observed that during the night, every night, the dancing shoes of the twelve Princesses were worn through, with holes in the heels, and across the tender b.a.l.l.s of the feet. And every morning all the cobblers of the city had to set aside their other work and make up twelve new pairs of dancing shoes by the evening; for it was not to be thought of that the Princesses should do without, even for a day. And every morning those twelve new pairs of delicate dancing slippers were worn quite through.

After this had gone on for some weeks the King called all his daughters to him at once and looked at them sternly, for all that he loved them dearly, or perhaps because of it: and he demanded to know where it was they danced their nights away till they wore their graceful shoes to tatters that could only be tossed away. And all but the eldest Princess hung their heads and the youngest wept; the eldest looked back at her father as he looked at her, but hers was a glance he could not read. And none of them spoke a word.

Then the King grew angry in his love for them which made him afraid: and he shouted at them, but still they gave him no answer.

And then he sent them away, dismissed them as he would servants, with a flick of his hand, and no gentle words as he was used to give them; and they went. If they dragged their feet at all, in sorrow or in shame, the soles of their shoes were so soft they made no sound. Their father, the King, sat silent on his throne for a long s.p.a.ce after they had left, his head bowed in his hand, and his eyes shaded from the sight of his courtiers. The courtiers wondered what he might be thinking; and they remembered the Queen, for she was then but recently gone, and wondered if there was anything she might have done.

At last the King stirred, and he gave orders: that the Princesses henceforward should all sleep in the same room; and that room would be the Long Gallery. And the Long Gallery should be fitted at once with the Princesses' twelve beds and thirty-six wardrobes. And that the windows should be barred in iron, and the door also; and the door fitted with a great iron lock to which only one key would be made; and that key would be hung around the King's neck on a long black leather thong.

This was done; and although the carpenters and ironmongers were well paid, they had no joy in their work; and the blacksmith who had made the single heavy lock for the door and the key for the King's own neck would take no payment for them whatsoever, and he went back to his own shop on the far side of the city with a slow tread, and spoke to no one for three days after. There were rumors, whispered uneasily, that the castle had shaken underfoot with more than the blows of the craftsmen's hammers while the work went forward; but no one quite dared to mention this openly, and no one was quite happy with the idea that they were imagining things.

And still the Princesses' shoes were worn through every morning. And it was seen that the Princesses grew pale and still paler within their imprisonment, and spoke rarely-even the youngest, who had been used to roll hoops down the long, echoing Long Gallery when it was still an open way, and chase them laughing. The Princesses laughed no longer; but they grew no less beautiful. The eldest in particular held the dignity of a lioness caged in her wide deep eyes and in her light step. And the King looked after his daughters with longing, and often he saw them looking back at him; but they would not speak.

Then the King sought out all the wise men of his land and asked them if they could discover anything about the enchantment-if enchantment it be, and how could it not?-that his daughters went under, and how it might be broken. And the wise men looked into their magic mirrors and their odd-colored smokes, and drank strange ill-smelling brews and looked at the backs of their own eyelids; and called up their familiars, and even wrestled with dark spells that were nearly too much for their strength, and spoke to creatures better left alone, who hissed and babbled and shrieked. And they spoke to their King again, shaking their heads. Little enough they had to tell him: that spell it was there was no doubt; and that it was one too strong for them to destroy in the usual ways, with powders and weird words, was also, sadly, beyond doubt; and several of them shivered and rubbed their hands together as they said this.

The King looked at them for a long moment in silence, and then asked in a voice so low that if they had not been wise men they might not have heard it at all: "Is there, then, no hope?" One who had not spoken before stepped forward; his hair was grey, and his long robe a smoke-draggled green. He looked at the King for a time, almost as if he had forgotten the language he must use, and then he said: "I can offer you this much. If someone, someone not of the Princesses' blood kin, can discover where they dance all night, and bring the tale back to this earth, tell it under this sun-for you may be sure that this dark place knows neither-with some token of that land, then the enchantment shall be broken. For I deem that its strength depends upon its remaining hidden." The King whispered: "Not of their blood kin?"

The wise man looked upon him with what, had he been anyone but the King, might have been pity.

"Sire," he said gently, "one of the Princesses' blood would only fall under the same sorcery that enthralls them. They are still your daughters, even as they move through the web that has been woven around them. What that sorcery might do to another-we cannot tell. But if he lived, he would not be free." The King nodded his head slowly and turned away to begin the journey back to his haunted castle.

And when he returned he gave more orders: that any man who discovered where the Princesses danced their shoes to pieces each night should have his choice of them for a wife, and reign as king after his wife's father died. Any man who wished to try was welcome: king's son or cobbler, curate or knight or ploughman. And each of them, whatever his rank, should have an equal chance; and that chance was to spend three nights on a cot set up in the Princesses' locked chamber; three nights, no more nor any less.

A king's son came first; he was the son of a king from just over the border that the soldier's regiment had fought for; but, for all that, he was graciously welcomed, and fed the same dishes that were set before the King and his daughters; and there was music to entertain them all as they sat silently at their meal, and later there were jugglers and acrobats, but no dancers; and the music was stately or brisk, but it was never dancing music, and the King and the Princesses and their guest sat quietly at the high table.

When the time came to retire, the King clasped a rich red robe around the shoulders of the son of his old enemy with his own hands, and wished him well, kindly and honestly; and showed him where he would spend his three nights. A bed had been set up at the end of the Long Gallery, behind a screen; and besides a bed and a blanket and the robe around his shoulders he was given a lamp, for it was dark at the end of the Gallery. And the King embraced him and left him; and there was perfect silence in the long room as thirteen pairs of ears listened to the heavy door swing shut and the King's key turn in the lock.

But somehow the king's son fell asleep that night; and in the morning the Princesses' shoes were worn through. And so went the second night; and even the third. On that last night the king's son wished so much to stay awake and see how the Princesses did that he never lay down at all. But in the morning he was discovered to have fallen asleep nonetheless, still on his feet, leaning heavily against the rough stone wall, so that his cheek was marked by the stone, and so harshly that the bruise did not fade for days after.

The prince went away, pale behind the red stain on his face, and he was not seen again.

Here the ostler paused in his story, and stared at the soldier, who was listening with an attention he had not felt since his first years in the Army. "You'll hear that our King cuts off the heads of them who fail to guess the Princesses' riddle. But it's not so. They fade away sometimes so quickly it's as if they have been murdered; but it's not our King puts his hand to it, nor do I believe another story that has it that the Princesses poison them to keep their secret. All that is nonsense. The way of it is just that they have to meet our King's eyes when they tell him that they've failed; and the look he gives them back has all a father's sorrow in it, and all a king's pride-and all our King's goodness, and it takes the heart right out of them that have to see it. And so they leave, but there's no heart left in them for anything." The ostler shrugged; and the soldier smiled, and then stood up and sighed and stretched, for the story had been a long one-and then thoughtfully collected his and his friend's tankards and disappeared for a moment into the taproom. When he returned with two br.i.m.m.i.n.g mugs, the ostler was examining a headstall with disfavor: the new stable boy had cleaned it, and done a poor job. He would be spoken to tomorrow, and if that didn't work, on the next day, kicked. But he dropped the reins happily to take up his beer; and as he looked at his new friend over the brim there was a new flicker behind his eyes.

"And what are you thinking?" he said at last.

"You already know or you would not ask," replied the soldier. "I'm thinking that I would like to see the city of our King, the King in whose Army I labored so long and for so little. And I'm thinking that I would like to find out the secret of the shoes that are danced to pieces every night, and so win a Princess to wife and a kingdom after." He smiled at the ostler, hoping to win an answering smile. "It is perhaps my only chance to try to see the ways of the Army hierarchy set to rights." The ostler slowly shook his head without smiling, but he said no word to dissuade him. "Good luck to you then, my wild and wandering friend. But if your luck should not be good, then come back here, and we'll try to save you with good horses and good beer. They can if anything can."

"I have little enough heart left in me now," said the soldier lightly. "The King is welcome to the rest, for I'll not miss it."

And on the next morning the soldier set out.

Part One.

HE WENT still downhill, but more purposefully; and the bundle across his shoulders was a little stouter, thanks to the ostler. He cut himself a green walking-stick by the bank of the brook his path led him beside; and the sap ran over his hand, and the sweet sharp smell of it raised his spirits. He whistled as he walked, Army songs, songs about death and glory.

The sun was high in the sky and the place of his waking miles behind him when the soldier began to look around him for somewhere to sit and eat his lunch; he hoped for a stream of clear mountain water; if luck was with him he would find a wide-branching tree at its edge to sit beneath, for the sun grew hot, and shade would be welcome. The soldier's boots began to scuff up the dust of the lowlands as the hard rocky earth of the mountains was left behind him. He had pa.s.sed through several villages on his long morning's walk, for the villages sat close together at the mountains' green feet. But as he looked around now for his stream and his tree, he saw grazing land, with cows and sheep and horses on it, and fields of grain; and far off to his left he could see the hard shining of the river that led to the capital that was also his path's end. But there were few houses. He looked ahead, and saw a small grove of trees, and quickened his step, antic.i.p.ating at least their leafy shadow, and perhaps a pool of water.

As he approached he heard an odd creaking noise that began, and stopped, and began again; but the trees hid from his sight anything that his eyes might discover to explain it. When his way led by them at last, he saw a small hut nestled within the grove, and before it and near his path stood a well. An old woman stood at the well, winding up the rope with a handle that creaked; and she paused often and wearily, and as the soldier watched, she, unknowing, stared into the depths of the well and sighed.

"May I help you?" said the soldier, and strode forward; and he seized the handle from the brown wrinkled hand that gladly gave it up to him, and wound the handle till the bucket tipped past the stone lip of the well; and he pulled it out, br.i.m.m.i.n.g, and set it on the ground.

"I thank you, good sir," said the old woman. "And I beg you then, have the first draught; for I should be waiting a long time yet for my drink if I had to wait upon my own drawing of it. I believe the bucket grows heavier each day, even faster than the strength drains away from my old hand." The soldier pulled the knapsack from his shoulder, and from it took a battered tin cup: one of the scant relics of his Army days. He picked up the old woman's brown pottery cup from the edge of the well and dipped them both together; and as he handed her dripping cup to her he held his own; and they drank together.

The woman smiled. "Such courtesy demands better recompense than a poor old woman can offer," she said. "Rest yourself in the shade of these trees a little while, at least, and tell me where so gallant a gentleman may be bound." She looked straight at him as she spoke, and when he smiled at her words she must have noticed the strength and sweetness in his smile, for all the weariness of the face that held it; and certain it is that, as he smiled, he noticed the strange eyes of the woman who stared at him so straightforwardly. Her eyes were a blue that was almost lavender, and they held a calm that seemed to bear more of the innocence of youth than the gravity of age. And the lashes were long, as long as a fawn's, and dark.

"Indeed, I will be most grateful for a chance to sit out of the sun's light." And they sat together on a rough wooden bench under a tree near the tiny cottage; and the soldier told the old woman of his journey, and, thinking of her strange eyes-for he spoke with his eyes on the ground between his knees-he also told her of its purpose, for the thought came to him that behind those eyes there might be some wisdom to help him on his way. In the pause that followed his telling, he offered her some of his bread and cheese, and they ate silently.

At last, and trying not to be disappointed by her silence, the soldier said that he would go on; for he could walk many more miles that day before he would need another meal, and sleep to follow. This much his soldier's training had done for him. And he stood up, and picked up his knapsack to tie it to its place on his back again.

"Wait a moment," said the old woman; and he waited, gladly. She walked-swiftly, for a woman so old and weak that she had trouble drawing up her bucket from the well-the few steps to her cottage, and disappeared within. She was gone long enough that the soldier began to feel foolish for his sudden hope that she was a wise woman after all and would a.s.sist him. "Probably she is gone to find for me some keepsake trinket, a clay dog, a luck charm made of birds' feathers, that she has not seen in years and has forgotten where it lies," he said to himself. "But perhaps she will give me bread and cheese for what she has eaten of mine; and that will be welcome; for cities, I believe, are not often friendly to a poor wanderer."

But it was none of these things she held in her hands when she returned to him. It was, instead, a cape; she carried it spilled over her arms, and shook it out for him when she stood beside him again by the bench and the tree. The cape was long enough to sweep the ground even when she held it arm's-length over her head; and a deep hood fell from its collar. It was black with a blackness that denied sunlight; it looked like a hole in the earth's own substance, as if, had one the alien eyes for it, one could see into the far reaches of some other awful world within it. And it moved to its own shaken air, as if it breathed like an animal.

The soldier looked at it with awe, for it was an uncanny thing. The old woman said: "Take this as my gift to you, and consider your time spent telling me your story time spent well, for I can thus give you a gift to serve your purpose. This cloak is woven of the shadows that hide the hare from the fox, the mouse from the hawk, and the lovers from those who would forbid their love. Wear it and you are invisible: for the cloak is close-woven, finer than loose shadows, and no rents will betray you. See-" and the old woman whirled it around her own bowed shoulders, shaking the hood down over her bright eyes-and then the soldier saw nothing where she stood, or had stood, but the dappled, moving leaf-shade over the gra.s.s and wildflowers and the rough wooden bench. He blinked and felt suddenly cold, and then as suddenly hot: hot with the hope that blazed up in him and need not, this time, be quelled.

A whirling of air become shadow, become untouched entire blackness, and the old woman stood before him again, holding the cloak in her hands, and it poured over her feet, "-or not see," she said, and smiled. "Take it." She held it out to him. It was as weightless as the shadows it was made of, soft as night; he wound it gently round his hands, and it turned itself to a wisp like a lady's scarf; and gently he tucked it under a shoulder strap of his knapsack. It whispered to itself there, and one silken corner waved against his cheek.

"I have words to send with you too," said the old woman. "First: speak not of me, nor of this cloak," and she looked at him shrewdly. "But you may guess that for yourself. You may guess this too: drink nothing the Princesses may offer you when you retire to your cot in the dark corner of the Long Gallery.

It is a wonder and an amazement to me that the men before you have not thought of this simple trick; but it is said otherwise-and I, I have my ways of hearing the truth."

"Perhaps it is the youth of those men," said the soldier gravely; "for I have heard that all those who have sought this riddle and the prize have been young and fair to look upon. I have little of either youth or beauty to spend, and must make it up in caution."

The old woman laughed oddly, and looked at him still more oddly, the leaf-shadow moving in her eyes like silver fish in a lake. "Perhaps it is as you say. Or perhaps it is something that stands with the Princess as she offers the drink; something that is loosened in that Long Gallery once the key in the door has turned and this world, our world, is locked away for the night's length." There was something in her face like pain or sorrow.

"For this too I wish to say to you: the Princesses you must beware, for the spell they lie under is deep, and spell it truly is, but neither of their making nor their fault, and very glad they would be to be free of it, though they may stir no hand to help themselves." The old woman paused so long that the soldier thought she might not speak again, and he listened instead to the shadowy whispering at his ear, and let his eyes wander to the path that would take him to the city, and to his chosen adventure and his fate.

"The story is this, as I believe it," said the old woman; "and as I have told you, I have ways of hearing the truth.

"The Queen had the blood of witches in her," she went on slowly, "and while the taint is ancient and feeble, still it was there; while the King is mortal clear through, or if there is any other dilution, it is so old that even the witches themselves have forgotten, and so can do nothing.

"The Queen was a good woman, and she was mortal and human, and bore mortal daughters. The drop of witch blood was like a c.h.i.n.k in the armor of a knight rather than a poison at the heart. The knight may be valiant in arms and honor as was the Queen in honor and love; but the spear of an enemy will find the c.h.i.n.k at last.

"There is a sort of charm in witch blood for those who bear it; a charm to make the spears that may fly go awry. But the charm weakens faster than the blood taint itself if the bearer chooses mortal ways and never leaves them.

"In the Queen there was something yet left in that charm. In her daughters-nay. And so when the Queen died, a witch seized her chance: that her twelve demon sons, who bear a taint of mortal blood as faint as the witch blood of the Queen's twelve daughters, those sons shall be tied to those daughters closely and more closely, till by their grasp they shall be drawn from the deeps where they properly live to the sweet earth's surface; and there they shall marry the twelve Princesses, and beget upon them children in whom the dark blood shall run hot and strong for many generations, and who shall wreak much woe upon simple men.

"Eleven years will it take for the witch's dark chain to be forged from Princes to Princesses, till the Princesses return one morning with the witch's sons at their sides; eleven years' dancing underground.

And nine and a half years already have run of this course."

The soldier grew pale beneath his sun-brown skin as he heard the old woman's words. "Do any but you know of this? You-and now I?"

The old woman shrugged, but it was half a shiver, the soldier thought, and wondered; for a wise woman usually fears not what she knows. "The Princesses know, but they cannot tell. The King knows not, for the knowledge would break him to no purpose, for the quest and the venture are not his. For the rest, I myself know not; those fools the King consulted when the trouble first began may know a little; but they knew at least not to tell the King anything he could not bear. And you are the only one I have told." The old woman again lifted her long-lashed eyes to the soldier, and the silver fish in her lakewater eyes had turned gold with the intensity of her telling.

"And the Princesses can do nothing," repeated the soldier, "nothing but watch the sands of their own time running out." The soldier thought of battles, and how it was the waiting that made men mad, and that to risk life and limb crossing b.l.o.o.d.y swords on the battlefield was joyful beside it.

"The eldest, it is said," the old woman said even more slowly, "has more of wit than her sisters; and yet even she cannot put out a hand to save herself one night's journey underground, nor even fail to give the man who would free her the drugged wine when he retires to his cot in the dark corner of the Gallery." The old woman turned her eyes to the path the soldier would follow, that would lead him to the city, and the King's pale castle, and the twelve dancing Princesses.

He was miles down that road, the corner of the cloak of shadows caressing his cheek, before he thought to wonder if he had bade the old woman farewell. He could not remember.

He spent that night in the open, under the stars, at the edge of a small wood; and he ate his bread and cheese, and stared into the impenetrable forest shadows that were yet less black than his cloak. But when he lay down, he fell asleep instantly, with the instincts of an old soldier; and the same instinct gave him as much rest as he might have from his sleep, and swept his dreams free of demons and princesses and old women at wells. He dreamed instead of his friend the ostler, and of sharp brown beer.

He arrived at the capital city in the late afternoon of the following day. The streets were full of people, some shouting, some driving animals; some silent, some alone, some talking to those who walked beside them. The soldier had noticed, when he rose on the morning of this his last day's journey, that the ways he walked held more people than those he had trod recently; and there is a bustle and a stirring to city-bound folk that is like no other restlessness. By this if nothing else the country-wise farmer's son and old campaigner would have known his way.

He was one of the silent and solitary ones as he pa.s.sed the city gates: at which stood guards, stiff and wordless as axles, staring across the gap they framed like statues of conquerors. He looked around him, and listened. The streets were wide and well paved, and he saw few beggars, and those quiet ones, who stayed at their chosen street corners with their begging-bowls extended and their eyes calmly lowered.

The buildings were all several stories high; but there were many trees, too, green-leafed and full, and frequent parks, each with its t.i.tular statue of an historical hero. The soldier made his way slowly from the eastern gate, where he had entered, to the river, which lay a little west of the center of the city. At the river's bank he paused, then stepped off the path and went down to the very edge of the whispering water.

Here he saw the King's castle for the first time. It stood near the mouth of the river, on the far bank, so the river gleamed like silver before it, and behind it one caught the green-and-grey glitter of the sea, stretching out beyond the castle's broad grounds. The vastness of that glitter, reaching the horizon without a ripple, accepting the river's great waters without a murmur, made the castle seem a toy, and all the lands and their borders for which men fought, a minor and unimportant interruption of the tides. The soldier, staring, for a moment forgot his quest; forgot even his beloved mountains, and his twenty wasted years. He shook himself free, set himself to study the castle of the King, and of the twelve dancing Princesses.

It was high, many-towered, each tower at this distance seeming as slender as a racehorse's long legs.

The castle walls were built of a stone that shone pale grey, almost phosph.o.r.escent in the sun's westering light; and as smooth and faultless as a mirror.

There was the path at the top of the riverbank, paved as a city street, but the soldier found that he did not want to take those extra steps away from the river and the castle and his fortune. All the steps he had taken so far were toward these things: he would not backtrack now, not even a little. So he took a deep breath and began walking along the gra.s.sy edge of the river, over hummocks of weed and grey stones hiding sly moss in their crevices, crushing wild herbs under his heavy boots till their scent was all around him, carrying him forward, pillowing his weary neck and shoulders and easing his tired feet.

Thyme and sage he remembered from the stews his mother made, and for a few minutes he was young again; and those few minutes were enough to bring him to the wide low bridge that would lead him over the river to the castle gates.

The bridge was white and handsome, paved with cobblestones. But the stones were round and the foot slid queerly over them, the toe or heel finding itself wedged in a crack between one hump and another, waiting for the other foot to find a place for itself and rescue it, only to begin the uneasy process again. People did not talk much on the bridge, but kept their eyes on their feet, or their hands firmly on the reins and their horses' quarters under them; they could tell well enough where they were by the bridge's gentle arch that rose to meet them and then fell away beneath them till it left them quietly on the far bank. The soldier was accustomed to curious terrain, so he continued to gaze at the castle, although he was aware that his feet were working harder than they had been. At the far end of the bridge the road divided into three; the soldier was the only figure to turn onto the far right-hand way, which led to the castle.

He was on the castle grounds immediately; here was no complex of roads, as in the city, but only the path that he followed, and all around him was the silence of the forest. None hunted here but the King himself with his huntsmen; and the King had lost his pleasure in the chase with the death of his wife, and the animals were nearly tame now. Birds flew overhead, sparrows that dove at him and chirruped, woodc.o.c.k that whirred straight overhead, pheasants that clacked to each other as they flew; and he caught the gleam of eyes and small furry bodies around the roots and branches of trees. It was hard to believe that any place so green and full of life held any spell as ominous as the one the soldier sought, knowing he would find it; but then, he reflected, why should a spell 'twixt demonkind and human folk, first cousins among creatures, disturb the squirrels and the fish and the deer, who are third cousins at best, and much more sober and responsible about their lives? A young deer, its spots still vaguely discernible on its chestnut-brown back, raised its head from its quiet feeding and peered out at him through the leaves as if reading his mind. "Good day to you," he thought at it, and it lowered its head again. No one but a farmer's son raised on the skirt-edges of the wilderness, or an old campaigner who walked as wild as the game he shared the countryside with, would have seen it at all, enfolded in the forest shadows.

The sun was low when he reached the castle walls, and the iron gates threw bars of shadow first across his path, and then across his face and breast as he approached. The guards who stood at this gate stood no less straight than those he had seen before, but the eyes of these watched him, and when he grew near enough their voices hailed him.

"What business do you seek at the castle of the King?"

The soldier walked on till he stood inside the barred shadow, in the twilight of the courtyard. He replied: "I seek the twelve dancing Princesses, and their father the King; of him I seek the favor of three nights in the Long Gallery, that I may discover where his daughters dance each night." There was a pause, and the captain of the guard stepped forward: there was gold on the sleeves of his uniform, and his eyes were much like the eyes of the soldier. "You may go if you wish," said the captain, "but I would ask you to stay. I see the Army in the way you walk and answer a hail, and would guess by your eyes that you have come upon hard times. The King's guard can use a man who walks and speaks as you do. Will you not stay here, and leave the Princesses to the n.o.bles' sons, who can do naught else but follow hopeless quests?"

The soldier replied: "I walk as I must, for I bear the wounds of too many battles, and I speak as I must, for I am a farmer's son who learned young to shout at oxen till they moved in the direction one wished; and the n.o.bles' sons do not seem to be following this hopeless quest with a marked degree of success." The cloak of shadows stirred in his knapsack. "I thank you for your offer, for I see your heart in it, but I have had enough of soldiering, and a bad master has ruined me for a good one." But he offered the captain of the guard his hand, and the man took it. "Go then as you will. This road travels straight to the door of the front Hall of the castle, and there, if you will, tell the doorman as you answered the guards' hail; and he will take you to the King. And the King shall receive you with all honor."

"Have there been many recently who walk where I go now?" inquired the soldier.

"No," said the captain of the guard. "There have not been many." And he stepped back into the shadows without saying any more.

The soldier went on up the wide white avenue. Here he heard no birdsong, but the trees seemed to murmur together, high overhead; but perhaps that was only the coming of the night.

At the door of the castle a tall man in a long white robe with a silver belt asked him his business; and the soldier answered as he had answered the guards. And the man bowed to him, which the old soldier found unnerving in a way totally new to him, who was accustomed to awaiting an order to charge the enemy over the next hill, if he hasn't crept round behind while you waited.

The man in white led him inside, into the Great Hall, as the captain of the guard had told him; and the soldier blinked, and realized how dark it had grown outside by the blaze of light that greeted him. A long table ran down the center of the room; and the table was on a dais, and at the end farthest from the soldier was a chair he could recognize as a throne, though he had never seen such a thing before. The man in the white robe bowed to him again, by which he a.s.sumed the man meant him to stand where he was; so he waited while the man in white went to the King, and bowed low-much lower than he had to the soldier, as the soldier noted with relief-and spoke to him. And the King himself stood up and came to where the soldier waited, and it took all the soldier's battlefield courage to stand still and not back away as the King, whose health he had toasted and in whose name he had fought many and many a time, strode up to him and looked him in the face.

They were very nearly of a height; the soldier may have had the advantage, or perhaps it was the heavy soles of his boots over the royal slippers. The soldier looked back at the King as the King looked at him; for a moment he wondered if he should bow, but the King's look seemed to wish to forestall him.

The soldier saw a face for whom he would be willing to carry colors into battle once more, and the memory of his colonel seemed to fail and fade nearly to oblivion. But it was also a face all those healths drunk and gla.s.ses smashed after, to do him honor, had not touched. The sadness of the King's eyes was so deep that it was opaque; nor could the soldier see any small gleam stirring in the depths. The soldier smiled, for pity or for sympathy or for recognition; and did not know he smiled till the King smiled in return; and the King's smile reminded the soldier of something, though he could not quite remember what, and the soldier's smile, for a moment, warmed the King's heart as nothing had done for a very long time. And with the smile suddenly the soldier wondered what the King saw in his face as they looked at one another; but the King did not say, and his smile was only a smile, although it was the smile of a king.