Ursus of Ultima Thule by Avram Davidson Page B

circled around where thee had gone. Where could thee hide? We thought it woe, we whispered low, we told it to the forge, but nains mix not in the affairs of manfolk — would that man would mix as little in the life of nainfolk! They circled all about where thee had gone, they scanned the still, unbroken snow, they drew their lines inward as wading fishermen draw their nets, they met face to face and arm to arm in the center; but
Arn
they never met.”
    “I know.”
    He said, “I know. I know.” Crouching in the darkness marred by feeble flicks of flames, he said, “I cannot forget.” A prisoner, he remembered himself a fugitive; though it had seemed bitter then, now long later it revealed its sweetnesses. And he could not forget.
    The nains sighed and they sighed for him, not for themselves. The king had sought him then and found him not, and hunted him again and found him not. King and kingsmen hunted a man, but he whom they hunted was a man no more. He had become a bear.

Chapter VII
    Day followed day and toil followed toil and slowly the great rust increased. Its pace was not steady. At times it had seemed to leap onward like a dread grass fire in the dry season, at times it had seemed to pause as though tired. Now for some long while, the red-sickness had gone at so slow a step that some did not perceive that it still continued until, perhaps, an axhead crumbled as it met the wood it could not cleave, or an arrowhead collapsed into a pinch of russet dust when the quiver was moved. And many still had not realized that the pest pursued its course.
    But the king was not among the many.
    It was not only that he asked or caused to be asked, “How goes it with iron?” of those who came from far off. He asked always, in hope of hearing what he would hear; but he was not content only to ask. The king had great store of iron, not in the armories alone, but in his own chambers, very near to him. Several times a day, if he did not go to iron things, he had iron things come to him. He looked, he tested, poked, probed, he scraped iron with his fingernails and he scaled with instruments which were not of iron. The king knew the rate each day at which the plague pursued. He knew it and he sickened from his knowing.
    “Will you not leave off?” the queen asked him with a sigh.
    “How can I?” he asked, with a sick and sidelong look.
    There was almost a proverb in those days:
The queen grows not old
. Some had grown up hearing it and thought it a saying applied to all queens; that women who held the queenly seat, by virtue of the power of that office did not age. But in truth it was a saying which had not been heard before — although likely enough that any woman spared the labors of hoeing and bark-beating and preparing hides and all such toilsome work, who had but to put on her clothes and jewelry and suckle her children (and sometimes not even such slight, light tasks as that) likely enough that thus a woman, queen or not, would not grow old so soon and certain as the generality of her sex.
    Still, the saying was a new one, as sayings go. Here lies the truth: quite early had her hair turned the color of a winter’s sky, quite early and quite suddenly. Therefore most of Thule became aware of her when she in some measure already wore the mantle of more years than she had. And also her manner had already become grave and withdrawn. Since the mass of folk did not observe her slowly losing what were common tokens of youth, gradually the saying came to be heard:
The queen grows not old
.
    Some held this to be due to her command of witchery-wisdom. Only a few, and they not often and never openly, were lately beginning to whisper that she sipped the cup of the king’s own years, that she stayed one age while he aged swiftly. And at least the very last part of this was true.
    “You can leave off by leaving off.” she said. Only a very few lines were to be seen upon her face — about the eyes, and about the corners of the mouth