The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [50]
As a hound, she had relived experiences she had had in the past. But this dream was different. It combined bits and pieces of new and old to make completely new stories. Did other humans dream this way?
She woke feeling drained, as if she had bled from a wound. But she did not speak to Richon of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Richon
AFTER NINE DAYS of traveling, they were nearly at the palace. There was only one more village to go through, and then over the hill and down into the valley. But Richon saw immediately that this village was very different from the towns they had passed through in the north.
The village streets were nearly empty, and those figures they did see were haggard, missing limbs or eyes, starving, ragged, and hopeless. As for the buildings, they were crumbling, roofs unpatched, door hinges broken, with untouched grime everywhere. He saw no animals and very few humans.
Richon wanted to ask someone what had happened, but who to ask? He stared at a man who was walking by, his face down, his shoulders sloped. He moved slowly, as if each step were painful.
Richon reached out a hand to touch him, then let the hand fall.
“Excuse me, sir?” he asked.
The man looked up, blinking. His eyes were red. “Are you mocking me?” he asked.
“No, no,” said Richon.
“No sirs here in this town. Not for a long while, and we don’t want them coming back, either,” he said fiercely.
At this point Richon’s clothes looked more like cast-offs taken from a dung heap than anything else. He was glad he did not look like a “sir” much at this point, either.
“Have things gone badly here, then?” Richon gestured at the buildings.
The man snorted. “Badly? That’s one way of putting it,” he said.
“Will you tell me why?” Richon’s mouth felt parched. He swallowed hard and forced himself to continue. “Is it because of the king?”
“King?” The man spat and then stomped on the wet spot that came from his spit. “We don’t give him that name around here.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do,” said Richon sympathetically. “Can you tell me what he’s done to you, then?”
“Gladly. It’s all we ever think about here. That and what we’d do to him if we could put our hands on him,” he said.
Richon went rigid at this, but he did not try to escape the punishment of hearing the truth.
He only wished that Chala were not there to hear it. She looked away, but he knew she understood all quite clearly.
At least, he told himself, he did not give excuses.
“It was three years ago the king first outlawed magic,” the man continued. “Those who were found to use it in the normal acts of living—in planting and protecting crops, in hunting and bringing home to a family meat to eat—they were punished by the loss of a hand on the first offense, and an arm on the second. Here, because it was closest to the palace, the laws were most strictly enforced, in case the king ever happened by.”
Richon had signed the laws against animal magic, but he had not written them himself. He was not even sure if he had read them. His advisers, the lord chamberlain and the royal steward, had been eager to help him when he expressed his hatred of the magic. He had not been interested in the details, only in the outcome, which was less talk about magic and less use of it where he could be made to feel inadequate.
Yet he could not blame others for the consequences. He had used his power to take from his people with no thought of their welfare. And if he had read the laws, Richon knew, it would have made no difference. He would have thought the punishments perfectly just. What did he know of townspeople who would lose their livings without a hand or an arm?
“My son was found speaking to an antelope,” the man said. “He was coaxing her toward his knife, for it was close to winter and she was near death. She had no children left to care for. He would have given her a pleasant death and no need to face the cold.
“But the servants of the king caught him with his hand on her neck, and they proclaimed him guilty without a chance of defense.
“They