Orson Scott Card - Hart's Hope

HART'S HOPE

Orson Scott Card

To Mark Park,

Who knows the Little King

From the heart out.

Proem

O Palicrovol, with death and vengeance in your eyes, I write to you because over the centuries

there are tales you have forgotten, and tales you never knew. I will tell you all the tales, and because

my tales are true, you will withhold your blade-filled hand, and no longer seek the death of the boy

Orem, called Scanthips, called Banningside, called the Little King.

The Exiled Rebel and the Flower Princess

This is not the earliest of the tales, but it is the first that I must tell, because if you remember this,

you will hear me to the end.

He came to her in the garden, where her women were draping her with flowers, which they must

do every day of the spring. "What is the name of the girl?" he asked.

Her women looked to her for permission to answer. She nodded at sharp-tongued

Cold-in-the-Western-Waters, who would know the proper words to say.

"Our lady will know the name of this man who walks boldly in the holy garden, and risks

knowing all the secrets that only eunuchs know."

The man looked slightly surprised. "But I was told I might walk anywhere in the city."

Again the women looked to her, and this time she chose Bent-Back-from-Birth, whose voice

was high and strange.

"You may walk where a man may walk, but you must pay what a man must pay."

To her surprise, the man did not look afraid. By his fearlessness he was a fool. By his clumsy

accent he was a foreigner. By his presence in the holy garden, he was new to

Isle-Where-Winter-Is-But-One-Day-in-the-Mountains. But above all, by his face he was strong and

beautiful and good, and so she nodded to Born-among-Falling-Lilac-Petals.

"You are in the presence of the eldest child of King Over-the-Sea-on-a-Swan's-Back," said

Mesmisfedilain in her most velvet voice.

At once the stranger dropped to his knees and bowed his head, but he did not bend his back.

This was remarkable. She nodded to Truth-without-Torture.

"If you are a king in your own land, Man, why do you kneel? And if you are not a king, why

does your unbent back pray for your death?"

"I am Palicrovol," said the man. "I am one battle away from death or a throne. My enemy is

Nasilee, who rules by right of blood in Burland."

Truth-without-Torture took the challenge of his words. "If he rules by right of blood, how do

you dare oppose him? Answer truthfully, for your life is in your tongue."

"Because I am a good man," answered Palicrovol, "and Nasilee is one of those who rule by right

of blood, but earn the hate of all good men. Still, I would not have rebelled if the gods had not chosen

me."

"If the gods have chosen you, then why are you an exile here in

Isle-Where-Winter-Is-But-One-Day-in-the-Mountains?"

Palicrovol leapt suddenly to his feet. For a moment the girl was afraid that he meant to harm her,

and even more afraid that perhaps he meant to flee. But instead he flung out his arms and half-chanted

the tale of the battle. In her language the words were clumsy, but she soon realized that the

awkwardness was because he was translating from poetry. You know the poem. He told her that he

stood on a hilltop late in the evening before the battle, the campfires of the largest armies ever brought

to war in Burland spread out before him, and he saw that whether he won or lost, too many men

would die. There would not be army enough left to defend the borders against the raiders from the

inland mountains, or the coasts against the raiders from the sea. So he told his great general Zymas to

break the army into pieces and send them into hiding before morning. Let all men think that Palicrovol

is a coward, and then Palicrovol will come and win his battle when the cost is little and the prize is

greater. In those days, Palicrovol was wise.

And she smiled at him, for he was a fit king.

"May I live then?" he asked her.

She nodded.

"With my lifelong accoutrements intact?"

The women giggled, but she did not laugh. She only nodded, gravely, once again.

"Then may I risk my life again, and tell you that you are only a child, and yet I have never seen

such perfect beauty in all my life."

She nodded to Born-among-Falling-Lilac-Petals.

"Of course she is beautiful, Almost-King-of-Burland. She is the Flower Princess."

"No," he said. "I do not speak of her perfect face or the flowers that look harsh beside her

perfect skin or the way her hair looks deep as a new-plowed field in the sunlight. I say she has the

perfect beauty of a woman who will never tell a lie in all her life."

He could not have known, unless a god told him, that she had taken that most terrible of all

vows when she was given to the sea at the age of five. She was bound to the truth, and though she

had said not a word to him, though not even the Sea Mothers knew of her vow, he had looked at her

and seen it.

"She is not a woman," said Born-among-Falling-Lilac-Petals. "She is only eleven years old."

"I will marry you," said Palicrovol. "When you are twenty years old, if I am King of Burland I

will send for you and you will come to me, for I am the only king in all the world who can bear the

beauty of a wife who will not lie."

She stood then, letting the flowers fall where they would, ignoring the gasps of her women. She

reached out and touched his wrist, where he opened his hand to her. "Palicrovol, I will marry you then

whether you are King or not."

Palicrovol answered, "My lady, if I am not King by then, I will be dead."

"I do not believe that you will ever die," she said.

Then her women wept, for she had now betrothed herself, and it could not be undone however

her father might grieve or rage at her choice.

But Palicrovol cared nothing for their keening. "My lady," he said, "I do not even known your

name."

She nodded to Bent-Back-from-Birth. She could not say her own name, for in those days her

name was not true.

Bent-Back-from-Birth found her voice despite her weeping, and said the name of the Flower

Princess. "Here-Is-the-Woman-with-the-Joy-of-All-Women-in-Her-Face.

The-Pain-of-All-Women-in-Her-Heart."

Palicrovol repeated the name softly, looking at her lips. "Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin," he said.

She listened joyfully, for with his love she was sure that someday those words would be true, though

she feared the path that would lead her to her name. "I will send for you," he said, "and you will be

worth more to me than the Antler Crown."

He went away, and the Flower Princess waited for him. In all her life she has never regretted her

betrothal, nor grudged the terrible price she paid for him, nor lied to Palicrovol, even when you

wished her to lie, even when you commanded her, so cruelly, not to speak.

1

Palicrovol Becomes a King in His Heart

This is the story of how God taught an unambitious man to seek a throne.

The Dream of Zymas

Zymas was the King's right arm, the King's right eye, and—so the irreverent said—the King's

right cobble, too. Zymas was born to a stablehand, but first his strength, then his skill, and at last his

wisdom brought him such fame that now he was general of all the King's armies, and the terror of

Zymas spread throughout all of Burland.

Zymas had only five hundred soldiers, both horse and foot, but this was a day when a village had

five families and a town had fifty, so that five hundred soldiers were quite enough to subdue whoever

needed subduing. And if some group of barons or counts combined their petty forces so that they

outnumbered Zymas, they were still foredoomed. If there were ten such barons, they could be sure

that one had joined the rebellion as the King's agent, two had joined as Zymas's men, and the rest

would hang before the month was out.

Zymas had known days of glory on the frontier, where wild tribes from the inner mountains

destroyed themselves against the pikes of Zymas's army. And there were days of glory on the littoral,

when the raiders from the east beached their craft and died by the hundreds before they could get

beyond the tideline. Oh, Zymas was a mighty warrior! But now, with the King's outward enemies all

broken and paying tribute, Zymas led his men from mountain to coastline, not to defend Burland from

attack, but to protect the tax collectors, to punish the disobedient, to terrorize the weak and

defenseless.

There were those who said that Zymas had no heart, that he killed for pleasure. There were

those who said that Zymas had no mind of his own, that he never so much as questioned any order

that the King gave him. But those who said such things were wrong.

Zymas camped for the night with his half a thousand men on the banks of Burring, high on the

river, where the locals still called the stream Banning. The village was too small to have a name—four

families, recorded in the books as "seventh village near Banningside." It was recorded that this village

had not paid their assessment of thirty bushels. This was causing resentment and was a bad example

to the other villages. Zymas was here to punish them. Tomorrow he would come with fifty

footsoldiers, surround the village, and then call for their surrender. If they surrendered, they would be

hanged. If they did not surrender, they would be spitted and hung over fires or seated on sharpened

stakes or some such thing, the normal these days, men and women and children, the normal. Zymas

contemplated tomorrow and felt his heart drain away as it always did, so that he would not be

ashamed.

When at last his heart was empty, he lay on the cold ground and slept. But tonight his still rest

was broken by a dream. It surprised him to be dreaming, surprised him even within the dream, for

dreaming was something he had given up long ago. It was a most holy dream, for in it he saw an

ancient stag walking painfully through a wood. What was the pain? A rat hung by its teeth from the

hart's belly, and at every step the stag shuddered with the pain. Zymas reached out his hand to take

the rat, but a voice stopped him.

"If you take away the rat, what will close the great wound in the hart's belly?"

Zymas looked closer, and now he saw that the rat's teeth were holding together the lips of a long

and vicious wound that threatened to split the stag from breast to groin. Yet he knew the rat was

poisoning the wound.

Then a fierce eagle stooped, and landed brutally on the hart's back. Zymas saw at once what he

must do. He took the eagle in his hands, turned it upside down, and thrust its feet under the hart. The

talons reached and seized, spanning the wound, binding the edges together far more firmly than the

rat's teeth. Then, still upside down, the eagle devoured the rat, every bit. The stag was saved because

Zymas had set the eagle in its place.

"Palicrovol," said the voice, and Zymas knew it meant the eagle.

"Nasilee," said the eagle, and Zymas knew it meant the rat.

Nasilee was the name of the King. Palicrovol was the name of the Count of Traffing. Zymas

awoke then, and lay awake the rest of the night.

Before dawn he took his fifty men and went to the village, and in moments the people had

surrendered. The patriarch of the little village tried to explain why the taxes had gone unpaid, but

Zymas had heard the excuses a thousand times. He did not hear the old man. He did not hear the

moans of the women, the crying of the children. He only saw that each one stood before him with the

face of a great old stag, and he knew that his dream had not come to him by chance.

"Men," he said, and all heard his voice, though he did not shout.

"Zymas," they answered. They called him by his unadorned name because he had made it nobler

than any title they might have given him.

"Nasilee gnaws at the belly of Burland like a rat, and we, we are his teeth."

Puzzled, they did not know how to respond.

"Does the true King hang these helpless ones?"

Unsure what kind of test Zymas was posing, one of the men said, "Yes?"

"Perhaps he does," Zymas said, "but if he is the true King, then I will follow a false King who is

good, and I will make him true, and the people will no longer have to fear the coming of the army of

Zymas."

It seemed impossible to the soldiers that Zymas could speak such treason, but not so impossible

as the idea of Zymas telling a lie or making a jest. So Zymas was going to rebel against the King. Was

there any man there who would choose the King over Zymas?

Zymas let them choose freely, but all five hundred marched with him away from the bewildered

villagers, toward Traffing. He did not tell them whom he meant to put in the King's place. The dream

had said Palicrovol, but Zymas meant to see the man for himself before he helped him to revolt.

Dreams come when your eyes are closed, but Zymas only acted with his eyes open.

The Guard and the Godsman

In the land of Traffing, in the dead of winter, a figure in a white robe walked like a ghost upon

the snow. The guard at the fortress of the Count trembled in fear until he saw it was a man, with his

face reddened by the cold, and his hands thrust deep into a bedroll for warmth. Ghosts have nothing

to fear from the cold, the guard knew, and so he hailed the man—hailed rudely, because the guard

had been afraid.

"What do you want! It's near dark, and we do no work on the Feast of Hinds."

"I come from God," said the man. "I have a message for the Count."

The guard grew angry. He had heard all about God, whose priests were so arrogant they denied

even the Sweet Sisters, even the Hart, though the people had known their power far longer than this

newfashioned deity. "Would you have him blaspheme against the Hart's own lady?"

"Old things are done away," said the Godsman.

"You're done away if you don't go away!" cried the guard.

The Godsman only smiled. "Of course you do not know me," he said. And then, suddenly,

before the guard's very eyes, the Godsman reached out his hands beseechingly and the bar of the gate

broke in two and the gate fell open before him.

"You won't hurt him?" asked the guard.

"Don't cower so," said the Godsman. "I come for the good of all Burland."

From the King, then? The guard hated the King enough to spit in the snow, despite his fear of

this man who broke gates without touching them. "The good of Burland is never the good of Traffing."

"Tonight it is," said the Godsman.

Suddenly the sunset erupted, hot streams down the slope of the sky, and the guard became a

Godsman himself from that moment.

The Prophecy

"Were you invited?" asked Palicrovol.

The Godsman looked about him at the nearly naked men sitting on ice-covered rocks around a

fire. "I am invited to the feasts of all the gods." Palicrovol was young and beautiful, even with the

treebark mantle on his shoulders; the Godsman loved the sight of him, even though the Count was

angry. Anger would pass. The Count's beauty would not.

"My guard is impressed with you," the Count said.

"Such men are easily impressed," said the Godsman.

"I've seen magic before," said the Count, for beside him sat Sleeve, the pink-eyed wizard who

served only the master that he chose.

"Then I will give you what no other can: I will give you truth."

Palicrovol smiled and looked at Sleeve, but Sleeve was not smiling, and Palicrovol began to

wonder if he ought to take this Godsman seriously. "What sort of truth?"

"Words can only tell two kinds of truth. Words can name you, and words can say what you will

do before you do it."

"And which will you do?"

"To name a man is to say what he will do before he does it. So I will name you, Palicrovol. You

are King of Burland."

Suddenly Count Palicrovol grew afraid. "I am Count of Traffing."

"The people hate King Nasilee. They have given him their life's blood, and he has given them

only poverty and terror. They long for someone to set them free from this burden."

"Then go to a man with armies." If Nasilee heard that Palicrovol had even listened to this

Godsman, it would be the end of the house of Traffing.

"General Zymas will come to you and follow you to the day he dies."

"Which will be very soon, if he dares to rebel against the King."

"On the contrary," said the Godsman. "Three hundred years from now you and Zymas and

Sleeve will all be alive, with a man's life yet ahead of you."

Sleeve laughed. "Since when does your magic-hating god give gifts to a poor wizard?"

"For every day that you're glad of the gift, there will be five days when you hate it."

Palicrovol leaned forward. "I should have you killed."

"What would be the point? I'm only a poor old man, and when God lets go of my body, I will

know even less than you do."

Sleeve shook his head. "There is no poetry in this man's prophecy."

"True," said Palicrovol. "But there's a tale in it."

"This is not a prophecy," said the Godsman. "This is your name. Zymas will come to you, and in

the name of God you will conquer. You will enter the city of Hart's Hope and the King's daughter will

ride the hart for you. You will build a new temple of God and you will name the city Inwit, and no

other god will be worshipped there. And this above all: You will not be safe upon the throne until

King Nasilee and his daughter Asineth are dead."

These words spoken, the Godsman shuddered, his jaw went slack, and the light departed from

his eyes. He began to look about him in tired surprise. This had no doubt happened to him before, but

plainly he was not yet used to finding himself in strange places—particularly in the midst of a very

serious Feast of Hinds.

"What bright servants this god chooses for himself," said Sleeve.

Palicrovol did not laugh. The fire that had left the old man's eyes had left a spark in Palicrovol.

"Here before you all," he said, "I will tell you what I have not dared to say before. I hate King Nasilee

and all his acts, and for the sake of all Burland I long to see him driven from the throne."

At these treasonous words, especially spoken at the Feast of Hinds, his own men grew still and

watched him warily.

"It is good that we love you," said Sleeve. "We will all keep silence and tell no one that you

spoke against King Nasilee. And we will pray to the Hart that you will not be seduced by the flattery

of a strange and jealous god."

Sleeve's words counseled against rebellion, but Palicrovol had learned that Sleeve's words rarely

gave Sleeve's meaning. Sleeve might mean that it was already too late for Palicrovol to change his

mind, for now he would live in constant fear of betrayal by someone who had heard his words. And

as to the Godsman's prophecy of victory, was Sleeve doubting? Or testing? Palicrovol looked at the

unnaturally white face of the wizard, his transparent skin, his hair as fine and pale as spiderweb. How

can I read your strange face? Palicrovol wondered. Even as he wondered, he knew that Sleeve did

not mean his face to be read. Sleeve probed others, but was not himself probed; Sleeve

comprehended, but remained incomprehensible. "You came to me for no reason I could understand,"

said Palicrovol. "Until now. You came to me because of now."

Sleeve pursed his lips contemptuously. "I follow the entrails of animals. I use the power of their

blood and in return they teach me where to go. Whatever plans God has for you, they're no concern

of mine." But his denial was a confirmation, for never had Sleeve bothered to explain himself before.

A trumpet sounded outside the palisade. Count Palicrovol leapt to his feet. The treebark mantle

slipped from his shoulders as he stood. "The King," whispered some of the men, for such was the

terror of King Nasilee's Eyes and Ears that they thought he had already heard of this treason and

come to punish Palicrovol. They felt no easier when they saw an army of five hundred men gathered

outside the fortress.

"Who are you, who bring an army to my gate!" cried Palicrovol from the battlement.

"I am Zymas, once general of the King's army. And who are you, who stand naked at the

battlement!"

Palicrovol felt the winter cold for the first time in the Feast of Hinds: the prophecy was already

being fulfilled. In that moment he made his decision. "I am Palicrovol, King of Burland!"

But the army did not raise a cheer, and Palicrovol felt the giddiness of despair: he had spoken

treason in front of the King's right hand, all because he had believed the mad prophet of a foolish

God.

"Palicrovol!" called Zymas.

"Can these gates keep you out if you want to come in?" asked Palicrovol.

Zymas answered, "Can these soldiers keep you in if you want to come out?"

"If these soldiers are my enemies, then I will not come out. I will stay here and make them pay in

blood for every step they take inside my walls."

"And if we are your friends?"

"Why did you come to me?" cried Palicrovol from the battlement. "Why do you taunt me?"

"I dreamed of you, Count Traffing. Why did I dream of you?"

Palicrovol turned to Sleeve, who smiled. "It is the Feast of Hinds," said Sleeve.

"It is the Feast of Hinds!" called Palicrovol.

"The tripes were heavy, and the womb was all but five days full," said Sleeve.

"The tripes were heavy, and the womb was all but five days full!" called Palicrovol. As he

echoed Sleeve's words, Palicrovol was relieved. When the hind that gave herself at the Feast of Hinds

was utterly full, the enterprise of the master of the feast could not go wrong. Someone's enterprise,

anyway, and it was usually polite to read all good omens for the host.

"I know nothing of augury," said Zymas. "Who is the wizard who is teaching you what to say?"

Sleeve spoke for himself then. "I am Sleeve," he said. "The Sweet Sisters showed me a heavy

hind. God spoke to Palicrovol through an old fool. And the Hart has come to you in a dream. If all the

great gods are with Palicrovol, what will withstand him?"

Zymas had not said there was a hart in his dream. "What need has he of me?"

"What need have you of him? It is enough that you are both committed to treason now. If you

work together, you can bring down this King. If you oppose each other, Nasilee will find his work

much easier."

Zymas thought of still another argument. Sleeve, the greatest of the living wizards, is with this

Count Traffing. "Palicrovol, if you would be King, I will help you wed the King's daughter and have

the throne. Will you be a just and good king?"

"I will be the same sort of king as I have been Count," said Palicrovol. "My people prosper

more than the people of any other lord. I am a just judge, as far as any man can be."

"If that is true, I will follow you, and my men will follow you," said Zymas.

So the Godsman's prophecy was perfect, though it had predicted an event as unlikely as Burring

flowing backward. Zymas had come to him, and come even before Palicrovol himself had taken one

single act toward rebellion. God was now his god. "And I," cried Palicrovol, "I will follow God."

And I, whispered white-skinned Sleeve, pink-eyed Sleeve, I could shake the earth and unmake

this fortress, and with my left hand I could cause a forest to rise in the place of Zymas's five hundred

men. Why should I link myself to these unmagicked men, particularly if they fear that ridiculous god

named God? They have no need of me, nor I of them. But Sleeve felt the hind's blood hardening on

his arms and hands, and he was content that Palicrovol should be king, even if he did it in the name of

this angry young God.

And that is how Palicrovol began his quest for the throne of Burland.

2

The Girl Who Rode the Hart

Three times in her life, Asineth learned what it meant to be the King's daughter. Each lesson was

the beginning of wisdom.

Asineth's Lesson of Good and Evil

When Asineth was only three, the ladies who cared for her walked her in the palace garden, in

the safe part, where the gravel walks are neatly edged and the plants all grow in animal shapes. One

of her favorite games was to sit very still, dribbling sand or gravel from her fingers, until the watching

women grew bored with her, and got involved in their own conversations. Then she would quietly get

up and walk away and hide from them. At first she always hid nearby, so she could watch the first

moments of panic on their faces when they realized she was gone. "Oh, you little monster," they would

say. "Oh, is that a way for a princess to run off and leave her ladies?"

But this time little Asineth hid farther away, because she was getting older, and the world was

Orson Scott Card - Hart's Hope

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