The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [53]
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