“That was what they told you? You don’t think they covet our wealth? Our prosperity? Our crops grow lush and our livestock plump under my protection, and the kingdom is happy and thriving. For a hundred years, they have seen no war, no famine. Babies are born healthy and hale.”
“Not anymore.”
“And whose doing is that?” argued the king. “Any harm that has come to this kingdom has come from beyond our borders. Before the corruption spread, we took so few hearts. Snippets, here and there. Rarely whole hearts. A small sacrifice. If anyone is to blame for this harvest, it must be your friends over there.”
“It is not right, however few you take,” said Sylvester. “I have learned that, too.
“You have only the faintest inkling of just how powerful hearts are—and what I can do with them. You don’t care if your subjects are happy, or peaceful. All you want is the power their hearts give you and to push the borders ever outward. You want more, more, more. Always.” Sylvester shook his head.
“And again, I say, so? What does it matter if all I want from them is their hearts? Most of them will live their whole lives with their heart intact. They will never know about the world beyond their borders.”
“They are cattle,” said Sylvester.
The king shrugged. “Maybe. But if the cattle are content ...”
I looked around at the assembled crowd, bespelled into stillness. The mothers, the housewives, the greengrocers, the apothecaries, the doctors, the barkeeps, the wenches, the lawmen, the children, the farmers, the laborers, the drunks, the schoolteachers, the blacksmiths, the pretty girls, the plain girls.
I felt such a hatred for the king at that moment that I almost felt like a sorceress myself, with the power to reduce someone to a burning heap of ash.
“Camilla,” said the king to one of the sorceresses, and even in the midst of the horror I thought,Of course she has a name like Camilla. “Show them how gentle we are. Show them that they will not die. It is giving up a small thing, a very little thing, in exchange for peace and prosperity. Show them.”
The sorceress chose, of all people, Aron. Aron of the “Toad Wine.” There were many times I had fantasized about getting some sort of revenge for how he had treated me, but I would never have wished this upon him.
She just had to smile at him, and he moved toward her as if in a dream—I knew how that felt—and, when he reached her, allowed her to stroke his cheek and ruffle his hair, in a sisterly manner, while he swayed under her touch.
Then, as the whole village watched, she reached her hand into his chest, `and he arched his back, and his head tipped back, mouth open like the big lunk he was, and his feet seemed to rise from the ground. She released him, and he collapsed. Only for a moment, though, and then he struggled to his feet, dazed and dead eyed. The sorceress held up his heart to show the crowd—crimson and glistening—before dropping it into a jar at her waist.
“See?” said the king. “It does not kill you.”
After that horror show, I don’t think anyone cared. Aron was so obviously empty, so obviously doomed. You could feel the fear, like a wind passing through us all, even though they were bespelled. None of the villagers had ever seen a whole heart taken at once.
“You have no idea how much study and experimentation it took,” the king went on conversationally. “I started with animals, of course. Small ones. Then worked my way up. I found power my father could never have dreamed of.”
“Then face me with your own magic,” challenged Sylvester. “No hearts.”
“Why on earth would I do that? This isn’t a fairytale, boy.”
Sylvester made a sudden gesture as if to hurl one of his fireballs at his father but instead he staggered. I caught him as he started to wilt, ignoring the sorcerous tingle in the air and the overpowering scent of hot metal that magic seemed to bring with it. His eyes lost their unnaturally bright light and faded to their usual gray blue.
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning on me heavily.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “You tried.”
He flicked his gaze upward to where his father still stood, arms upraised.
“Let my Da go!” I cried, hatred turning my voice hoarse. “You can have my heart. I will come willingly. Just let my Da go, and let Sylvester live.”
“Foss ...” protested Sylvester, but it was an effort for him to speak.
“You have to release him first,” I shouted.
“With pleasure,” said the king, and with a flick of his wrist, Da’s bonds were gone, which is what I had hoped would happen.
Da rushed over to us, seeing me buckling under the sorcerer’s weight, and threw Sylvester’s other arm over his shoulders. We were both so much shorter than him that, even in that tense moment, I was aware of how comical it must look—two squat stakes propping up a willow tree.
The king turned away, back to his daughters, brushing his hands briskly together like a man appreciating a hard job well completed.
“Come on, girl,” he said to me over his shoulder. “That was the bargain.”
