Free Ursus of Ultima Thule by Avram Davidson

am the king’s mouth and I am the king’s eyes and I am the king’s ears. Delay me not — and if I need aid, aid me
.
    “Thirty-deer Hill,” the courier might say. Or: “Whalefish Point.”
    Tirlag-usak puts out his hand. “Tally,” he says. “Why so slow?”
    The courier hands over the cut and carved piece of wood. He pants to show how hard he has run. Of late there had been increasingly less sham in this. Tirlag-usak, of course, knows whence every one of the couriers has come but he sees if the tally stick fits the proper one from his own box.
    “Report sightings,” he directs. “Swiftly.”
    “Good omens from the flocks of birds,” says the courier. It Would not do to report
No sighting
.
    “Eat. Wash. Rest. Return after evening meal.”
    The courier retires, sweating but relieved. His tongue may be the king’s tongue but that need not prevent its being cut.
    Behind the reed curtain the king’s lips writhe, the king’s hands move convulsively. The king’s face grows redder yet. The red-sickness increases fast upon him. And the red-sickness increases fast upon the iron. The courier has gone. Tirlag-usak remains standing. From behind the reed curtain comes an anguished whisper.
    “Iron?
Iron?
”
    “The ears of the king hear all things,” says the grizzled first captain. After just a breath, he says, “The king already has heard that it is not better. It is not even as it was.” After three breaths should come the groan or hiss which has come to mean
Go!
but Tirlag-usak today, after only two breaths, repeats, “The ears of the king hear all things.” And says further, “The king has already heard that ten of his men who went north in a search for nains have this day returned with captives.”
    “Uhh?”
    “One great and one small, as the king already has heard. The eyes of the king have already seen them and it may be that the king’s eyes have already recognized one of them as the king’s kin to whom the king’s mouth will speak more words.”
    Tirlag-usak had spoken somewhat more rapidly than usual. Now he waits for the space of many breaths and he hears each of these breaths from behind the reed curtain. But no question now comes from behind the reed curtain and what comes thence at last is a cry of such agony and terror and rage that almost the hand of Tirlag-usak touches the woven reed barrier — almost he stoops to lift it. But he hears other feet, other voices babble and whisper and shuffle and sigh. Then nothing. Then, only then, he departs.
    Later, in the enclosure where they were penned, Arnten suddenly looked up. Arntat, his father, did not pause in his shambling and shuffling, shuffling and shambling, back and forth and back and forth, head waving like a snake’s head from side to side. It seemed he did not share his son’s thought, a sudden one which projected into the boy’s mind a picture of the mandrakes dancing to the sound of the small drum in his old uncle’s medicine hut. The recollection was so clear that the boy sat and watched it inside his head for some time.
    • • •
    Mered-delfin beat the small drum and his mandrakes, which were the mandrakes of the king and queen, danced their witchery-dance and Mered-delfin watched them from the corner of his eyes and the king and queen watched them full front. Every feeling moved across the king’s face, none at all disturbed the face of the queen. The mandrakes moved and the mandrakes moved and they mimed and mimed and they danced. At first, coming forth from their carved wood chest, the mandrakes’ motion kept time to the tune of the witchery-drumlet. But after a while and after Mered-delfin had sung to them and hummed to them and chanted to them, whistled and drummed to them, then the pattern of their moving changed. They led and Mered-delfin followed, his fingers and his palms straining to keep up with them, to maintain the proper tune and rhythm upon the drumhead made from the skin entire of a dwarf deer slain