Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

“Listen, and get this right. You’re done dining. In a count of twenty heartbeats get up. Go out that door to the yard. Someone will meet you. You’ll be going to see the king.”


Then the man himself got up and went, and the armorer did not return, and Yannis counted twenty beats, rose, and moved out into the torch-scripted, black-white winter yard. The wind had dropped with the snow. Two new guards bundled him along to another entry, and up some miles of crooked steps. It was like being escorted to his own hanging. God knew, it might well be before too long.

The king stood in his chamber. He was a bloody king, lit by the galloping hearth.

The king scrutinized Yannis, unspeaking.

After which, the king spoke: “The Land of the Sun Beneath.”

Yannis stared. He must be meant to—the king unsmilingly smiled: “Have you heard of such a land? No? But you’re traveled. Where have you put your ears? In a bucket?”

Yannis had pondered what to do if offered a drink—in the light of the witch’s advice to trust only the communal and well-patronized plate or jug, as in the hall. But this was not a hospitable king, either.

It was a game-player, and—an enemy?

Something nudged Yannis’s brain back to its station.

“Your Majesty means—the country into which the sun sinks at evening, in the tales . . . ? The lands beneath the world . . . ”

“In the tales,” said the king. “The sun goes under the rim of the earth. Where else can it go?”

Yannis stood there. He knew that many clever scholars had decided the earth was not flat, that the sun circled it. Others, however, remained stubbornly in the belief of a flat world with killing edges. It was, observing nature, difficult not to. And the roots of this city were ancient, primal.

? 75 ?

? Below the Sun Beneath ?

“Yes, Majesty.”

“Yes. The Land of the Sun Beneath, where the sun rules after darkness falls here. But there is a land beneath those lands, ever without the sun. Some call it Hell, and some the Underworld. What do you call it, Crank-Leg?”

Yannis thought the king did not anticipate a reply.

The king said, “I suppose, soldier, you’d call it death. Maybe, when they cracked your leg off, you even paid a little visit.”

Yannis found he hated the king. It was a response that this king wished to foster in him. The king preferred to know how he weighed with common men, and to make men hate and fear provided an instant measure. Yannis had glimpsed traces of hate, fear, all over the court, both high and low exhibited signs. So the king knew where he was.

“Well,” said the king, “you’ve few words. Do you know what you’re to do here?”

Yannis did, of course. “No, sire.”

“Then you are not like all the rest, all seven—or was it seventeen of them—those others who failed. Very well. My daughters, in my hall, those girls with their hair. Even you will have noticed them. On nights of the round moon they go to another place, the place we spoke of. Despite they sleep all together in their luxurious bedchamber, which every night is locked and guarded to protect and make sure of them—on those three nights they slip through, like water from a leaky bowl. At dawn, they come back. Do you know how this was discovered?”

Yannis heard himself say, “By the soles of their feet.”

The king unsmiled. His eyes shone like scorched stones, cooling, cold. “So you do know.”

“Only the phrase.”

“Yes. The soles—not of their shoes, which are pristine as when sewn for them—but the skin of their feet. That is marked as if worn right through. Blemished, black and red and decorated in silver and sparkle, too. As if they’d bruised and torn them, then dipped them ? 76 ?

? Tanith Lee ?

in rivers of moonlight and rime. You must follow these bitch-whores of mine, and see how they get out, and where they go, and if— if— it’s to that hidden underland, and next—what goes on there. Things no man can see, of course, and keep his sanity. But you’ll already have been there, as I said, when you lost half your leg. You’ll already know.

You’re already partly mad. Why else are you here now?”