Very near her eyes was a narrow dark shape with a slightly irregular outline, like a table-leg, perhaps; she had the sense of something suspended over her, something not too high or far away, and of the presence of more legs similar to the first. But they could not be table-legs after all, for the one directly in the line of her slowly clearing sight was . . . hairy. And then the rest of her consciousness returned to her in a rush, and she perceived, at the same moment as she understood that it was a living leg braced in front of her face, that it was Ash's leg, and Ash who was standing over her, that she was lying on the floor of the dais, and that the roaring in her ears was not of invisible monsters any longer, but her father's shouting voice:
"Kill the damned dog! Where are the archers? Kill it! Oh, my darling, my darling!
And I not wearing a sword!"
Beneath his voice, another sound, much nearer her ear: the sound of Ash's growl, echoing through the deep fleethound chest. She sat up at once and grabbed Ash around the neck; no one would dare harm her with the princess clinging to her-said a tiny voice in the back of her head, but it did not sound certain. Or perhaps the archers will come, and will dare to shoot, and perhaps their arrow-points will fall away just the width of a thread, just at the moment of release....
And then her father's voice drowned out the tiny voice. "I will not have a dog about me that behaves so! Kill it! I care not for what you say! I am the king!"
"No!" Lissar climbed shakily to her feet, leaning on Ash, who had stopped growling. Almost. But her ears were still pinned back, and her usual gentle expression was replaced by an intent, almost longing look that every hunter in the room might have recognized; and perhaps everyone but Lissar recalled that the prince Ossin's hounds were renowned for their hunting prowess-and for their loyalty to the person they accept as their master.
"Ash is my best friend! You will not take her away from me!"
The court was startled again, in this morning full of shocks, by the strength of the princess's voice, that little weak creature who could barely stand on her feet, saying such words, and about a dog.... They noticed too that for the moment she was not pale either; her cheeks were flushed and her hazel eyes flashed.
The king, blustering, reached out to lay possessive hold upon his daughter again, but Lissar shied away from his touch, and the tall dog moved not a whit, nor shifted her steady, baleful regard, and the king's hands dropped to his sides again, empty.
"You have three days to say good-bye to your childhood pet, then," said he at last, and there was no love nor gentleness in his voice. "For you shall have it no longer, after the wedding--after our wedding!" He cried the last words like a herald declaring a victory, and struck himself on the chest with a blow so fierce it must have hurt.
"For with the wedding, you shall set aside all childish things and enter into your womanhood, and the devotion you have learnt-and I do not say it was ill learnt-shall now be centered upon me. Upon only me!" And again he smote himself on the chest.
"No," whispered Lissar, and the color drained away from her face again. The roaring returned to her ears, and she staggered a little, but her watchful dog was as still and steady as a marble dog might be. The tall slim fteethound with ankles more slender than the princess's own wrists, and a chest barely more than the princess's hand's-breadth wide, stood as unshakeably as a round stone tower, and Lissar clutched at her, and stood, and did not lose consciousness again.
Beleaguered as she was, Lissar was slow to comprehend the reaction of the court to the events that overwhelmed her. What finally attracted her attention was the lack of archers nocking arrows to strings, should the king change his mind once more and reject a foolish leniency. He had been shouting for archers when she came out of her faint, and the king's commands were acted upon immediately.
Kneeling beside her, she leaned across Ash's silken shoulders as she looked, that she might dispose herself best for her dog's protection. The king had changed his mind; but he had called for archers, and archers should have appeared, if only to be dismissed. But no archers had come. Even his body-guardsmen had failed to draw their swords.
She drew a sharp breath and risked a more complete look around her, turning her head away from her father for the first time, but warily, as if in certain knowledge that she did a foolish thing, that her father was the sort of enemy to attack if watchfulness failed. But because she was herself again now, she recognized what she was seeing: the court was paralyzed in horror. Their faces were blank with shock; but as her eyes sought to catch theirs, their eyes slid away, and horror began to separate itself from indeterminate shock. She saw them begin to decide what to think, and she did not dare to watch any longer; for she feared their decision.
She turned her eyes back to her father in time to hear him say, "Do you,understand me, Lissla Lissar? Three days. On the morning of our wedding, the dog goes into the kennel with the other hounds-where she should have been all along. I have been lax. If there are any complaints of her before or after-then I will have lirr shot after all. You should not be distracted by a dog on the eve of the most important day of your life."
"No," said Lissar. It was hard to talk at all; harder still to bring out this one word-this word that acknowledged, in the saying, that it needed to be said, that what was happening was not mere nightmare, when a word spoken aloud by the dreamer into the dark will awaken her to her real life. "No. F-father, you cannot mean to do this. You cannot mean to m-marry me."
With these words from Lissar, the court stirred at last. "Marry! The princess marry her own father! It will be the death of the country. The country must rot, go to ruin and decay under such a coupling. The princess marry her father! What spell is this! We have thought her so weak and timid! We cannot understand it! He has been so fit and well; his justice and judgements have been faultless. What has she done to him, this witch-daughter, that he should desire to devastate his country and his people this way? The other kings will know that he has gone mad; we shall be invaded before the year is out. How can this have happened to us? Oh, that her mother should have lived! Then this could not have happened."
"Mean to?" thundered the king. "Of course I mean to marry you. I have proclaimed it-you have heard me proclaim it-" He flung his arms out to either side, as if he would embrace the entire court; the court which was shrinking away from the man and woman standing on the dais, with the dog standing between, and the painting blazing impotently over their heads. "I will marry you, three days hence, in the great courtyard, and everyone shall attend upon us!
"It will be a glorious day-and a glorious night," and as he said this the pupils of his eyes suddenly expanded, so that they looked like bottomless black pools, like the lightless, lifeless place she had found herself drowning in when she fainted; and these pools seemed all of his face, and his face was no longer human. She threw up a hand as if to ward off a blow.
"It is terrible!" muttered the court. "Do you believe it? Hear what he says. It is terrible. How evil the girl must be, to have brought her own father to this pass; how can we never have noticed? She has always been such a quiet little thing. What can we do? There is nothing we can do; it is too late. We can only hope the fit passes, and our good king returns to us unharmed. Three days! There is no hope for the marriage; we will have to play this vile thing to its close. Perhaps we can prevent news of this-wedding-from leaving the kingdom. Perhaps there will be a way to spirit the girl away after a little while, send her far away, where she can be no further trouble, and our king's own will may return to him, and he become himself again.