Fortune's Fool Read Online Free Page B

then through the village, inviting further insults from the peasants. This was why he had called the pack; they would protect him from anything like an actual attack. “Prince Borzoi,” the peasants called him, after the hounds he so often ran with. He’d even been known to sleep with them as a child, in summer, all of them tumbled together in a heap in the kennel. He didn’t do that now, of course….
    Though in a way, he missed it. The hounds were just about the only creatures on the Palace grounds that he didn’t have to keep up some form of pretense with.
    Once out of sight of the village, he dismissed most of the pack and sent them home. He kept his favorite, his particular pet, a stunted fellow he called Ivan. This was no Wise Beast out of The Tradition, but he was a faithful old fellow, and good company, and quick to warn him if someone was approaching so he could put on his Fool face.
    The two of them ambled down a path they both knew well, to a spot deep in the forest that long ago had earned itself the designation of the “Heart of Led Belarus.” As Sasha understood these things, it was not so much the physical center of the Kingdom, and it certainly wasn’t the cartographic center, but something about the place ensured that anything done there would have resonance with the whole of the country.
    And now that he had been insulted, derided, and thrown out of the Palace, Sasha took his brimming Luck into the Heart of his land to be spilled out over it all.
    The path wandered, twisted, and turned like a snake trying to tie itself into five different kinds of knots. The trees here were old, old, old, very tall, broad of trunk and spreading of branch. Sunlight penetrated only here and there, piercing the gloom with shafts of slanting light; his feet made no sound on a path layered years-deep in evergreen needles. In fact, the only sounds were the trickling of water from one of the many little streams that cut through here, and the calls of birds high up in the trees,
    He understood those calls perfectly, of course. Nesting season was over, babies fledged, so mostly the calls were all “I’m here! I’m here!” Not even “Get out of my space! Interlopers beware!” nor “Where are you, gorgeous creature, whoever you are?”
    But there was one, far off in the distance, a heartfelt outpouring of “I’m happy!”
    Oh, how he envied that bird.
    Occasionally the dog would dart off after something scuttling in the underbrush, but he always returned without having caught anything. This was not a good place for a dog of his sort to hunt. Wolfhounds needed space and plenty of it; they were coursing dogs, and needed room to run. There was nothing like that here.
    Still, it didn’t keep Ivan from trying.
    This was, in its way, a very sacred place. The air was thick with the scent of cedar and age, the woods weighed down with years.
    Then, in the distance, a shaft of golden light as broad as a courtyard and bright enough, in the gloom beneath the branches, to dazzle the eye lanced down through the trees, illuminating a very special place indeed.
    He hurried his steps, beginning to feel the press of magic around him. He couldn’t see, taste, or smell it, as a real magician might, but he got the sense of it closing in on him. He needed to discharge it before it found some other outlet. The last thing he needed right now was for The Tradition to decide to “reward” his persecution in its own way. He could just imagine what sort of “way” that would be. With his luck, his brother’s intended bride would come wandering in here to pick berries, discover him, and fall in love.
    And if that happened, he thought with ironic amusement, Father would have every reason to be quite angry. And rightfully so. After all, it was also his job to know The Tradition well enough to keep things like that from happening.
    He stepped out of darkness and into the light. The sun poured down on him like warm honey as he stood beside the