White As Snow (Fairy Tale) by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

potential for rage. “War—is only war. I took the land for God. And I was assisted by Heaven. How else did I do so much?”
    “God wills that you be king, Draco, my son.”
    “Yes. I believe that, Father. But something gnaws at me.”
    The priest still waited.
    Draco walked about. A man of action, unwilling ever to be much at rest. The mind was the same. It strode from idea to idea, but the ideas of a little boy … A proud and brash little bully, who had been first treated harshly, then rottenly spoiled by fate.
    “Let me have confession,” demanded Draco.
    He kneeled down, and they began.
    When Draco had finished, the priest saw that his future king was now wrung-out, like a woman after tears, and malleable. You might take a certain pleasure in rubbing a king’s nose in his own mess.
    “She was of royal blood. Naturally what you did affects your honor. You, the king. And—she’s with child by your deed, you say?”
    “So they tell me. They always are, if I have them.”
    “Then, my lord, the teaching of the Church is clear.” It was. “You must marry her.”
    Despite everything, the priest anticipated a vile mouthful in response. Nothing came at first. Then the kneeling bully said, quietly, “You’re in the right. That’s my penance then. I’ll wed the girl.”
     
     
    She had been lying sick, the baby in her womb making her puke, when they came to tell her. The insanity of it was only at one with all the rest.
    Arpazia went to the altar of the church at Belgra Demitu in her fourth month. She wore a gown of sky blue, Marusa’s color, heavily embroidered with gold. Her rounding belly scarcely showed, but where it was noted, they took it for a benign omen. The naive among them even reckoned that it was only her proper womanly shape, the correct contour of a maiden made to conceive and carry to term.
    The ceremonies resembled, for Arpazia, certain festivals at the castle, when she had sat crowned by a garland beside her father. She experienced the same slight nervousness, boredom, if none of the excitement she had felt as a child. The priests did put a small garland on her head—not blossom, a crown—and a dark ring on her middle finger. Bells rang, which roared inside her skull. A crowd was cheering. She wished it would end quickly. That she was getting married did not impress itself upon her, for she was in an unusual state of mind and body. She passed across the rituals and left the feast early to throw up in a bowl held by her new waiting-women.
    He arrived much later.
    “You’re ill. I won’t tax you. Do you understand you’re a queen? There, little queen, you’re safe. Sleep well.”
    He was blind drunk, and meant the sentimental words. He had realized, after all, she was only a woman and could not be much trouble to him.
    So Arpazia lay alone in the wide marriage bed, with its strewing of asphodel and hyacinths, the early flowers that had been just in time. And she wondered why she had a knife, used to pare the nails, still in her hand. She let it slide out on the floor.
    It reminded her of Lilca, however. So dreaming, she had to watch Lilca, dangling from a rope, her heels kicking as if in one of the clapping dances of the war-camp.
    IV.
    D RACO RETURNED TO VISIT HER about twenty days later.
    “Are you well, at last?” he courteously, impatiently asked.
    Arpazia was afraid, trembling, and did not know why. Could not recall why. Then she recalled. He had torn her open in order to stuff her belly with his devilish seed, this “son” the women promised her, and the physician too, as if a son were something she longed for, like a precious toy.
    “No, I’m sick, still,” Draco’s queen muttered.
    “What? Ah, come, no need to be nervous of me. We’re as we should be, now, aren’t we, little queen. Sinless in God’s sight.”
    He was alight with lust, as before.
    To Draco, this lust was his virtue. There were a hundred women he could have had, including the one he liked most often in his