Cards of Grief by Jane Yolen

of feasting and rejoicing. And you shall come to us and serve us.”
    And the six grieving families saw that it was so.
    Then the tall sister said, “Because it is not right that my brother alone, who is all but past the time of seeding, shall plow me, you shall send your tallest sons to me to do their duty. And in turn I shall send my sons to your daughters. But the tallest and fairest shall dwell with me in the place of beauty.”
    And it was so.
    So the six dark grievers serve the seventh, drinking from them the sweet milk of blessing and rejoicing. And the seventh family was known as Royals. It was their duty to shine brightly and rule lightly and recall by their presence the blessing and rejoicing of L’Lal’ladia in the long and dolorous dark days of L’Lal’lor.
    Selah.

Tape 7: BETRAYALS
    Place : Palace of the King, Apartment of the King
    Time : King’s Time 1, First Patriarchy; 2137.5 + A.D.
    Speaker : the King, called B’oremos, also called the Singer of Dirges, to anthropologist Aaron Spenser
    Permission : King’s own
    T RAITOR IS SUCH A soft word, don’t you think? And what, after all, is a betrayal? What I did to Gray, I did for her as well. She became stronger, she grew in her art because of it. And besides, I was only following the Queen’s orders. So where was the betrayal? Whom did I really betray?
    I rode off that very night, my skin still smelling from the Queen’s unguents and scents. She lent me a mount from her own stable, a perfumed white charger that lifted its feet clumsily along the cobblestones but once in the meadows was swift as arrowshot.
    In the fields I could see last year’s liliroot nodding in the passing winds. Purple-and-white sweet lanni and wild narsis covered the hillocks. And along the ridges, capped with windstrife, were clouds like gray puddles against the darker sky. Nightsight, we say, is truesight. It is the one gift of the Common Grievers we have bred into Royal lines.
    As I rode, it was as if I saw everything anew, as if I had been born again to represent all the lost celebrations of our kind. It is said that the Queen’s first touch renews the spirit. For me that was certainly true. I rode toward the complacent Middle Lands with an enthusiasm I had not felt my entire mission year. I even hummed as I rode, the horse’s gait lending a strange vibrato to my voice.
    It took me a day and a night more to reach the millhouse where Gray’s mother and grandmother ruled over that houseful of slack-jawed, runny-nosed boys.
    If my coming surprised them, they let me in without too many questions and only a single argument between them. I assured them that their Linni was comfortable and had already made a great impression at court. Three times I had to tell them of her entrance down the aisle of princes: how she looked, what she wore, who had dressed her hair. I told them what the Queen had said and what Linni had said in return, but I did not mention the priestess’s words. I did not mention betrayal. If they sensed it behind my stories, they did not say.
    At last we sat down for dinner, the usual overcooked and understrained common meal of Lands. The greens were limp and the meat—some kind of local fowl—had been boiled until its wings had fallen off. I pushed it around my plate enough times to seem interested.
    The three brothers had questions about the white charger, for they had unsaddled it and stabled it willingly.
    “Is it fast?” asked the youngest.
    “Faster than the wind,” I assured him, which said little since the winds across Lands are soft and slow.
    “Does it handle easily?” asked the eldest.
    “ It is a she, and the handling is all done with wrists and thighs,” I explained, showing them and thus ending my charade with the tasteless meal. They aped my gestures until, at a signal from their grandmother, the youngest rose to clear the table.
    I let them finger the leather leggings I wore over my rainbow-colored kirtle. The padding on the inside of