Read Online The Wilful Eye by Isobelle Carmody - Free Book Online

left it only for his midnight hunting expeditions, always alone and always in the dense forest at the foot of the mountains, said to be inhabited by wolves and ferocious bears and strange misshapen beasts with the faces of men or grizzled children. Moth had heard enough from animals to know the king liked to see things hurt and dying. People said he sometimes brought back strange and dreadful trophies, which he mounted upon the walls of his bedchamber, but that was likely an exaggeration, for few ever got beyond the audience chambers of the castle.
    For all its size and complexity, it housed none of the king’s staff or servants or ladies-in-waiting or ministers. There were only three mute servants who dwelt within the walls in a hut and had the task of shutting the great gates at night and opening them again in the mornings.
    Moth wondered if the queen of Oranda felt uneasy about the ministers’ plotting, for although there was little traffic between her land and the Middle Kingdom, there was enough for rumour to go along as a passenger. Despite only having a little fleet of ships with seamen warriors to protect her realm, she had made no effort to build up a land force. Indeed, according to one tale, when it was suggested Oranda might be invaded by the Middle Kingdom, the queen merely replied that the king would be brave indeed to turn his back on the vast and mysterious Mountain Kingdom whose own ruler was a mighty fighter and half giant besides.
    No one knew what the Mountain King thought of it all, since few ever travelled there from the other two kingdoms. She thought of the young traveller, who might have had something to say about it, if there had been time to consult him, but her mind dwelt rather irrelevantly on the breadth of his shoulders under the long sleek tail of his black hair, and the muscular strength of his arms. Then she shook her head crossly and gathered her wits.
    â€˜So where has all this thinking got me?’ she asked herself briskly. ‘The king is by his own account, and that of beasts, a cruel man who loves his solitude and his castle and his hunting, and who does not think much of women. More- over he has a penchant for cutting the heads off people who vex him.’
    â€˜You must look on this as an opportunity,’ her mother said, coming in with a tray of lip salves and skin creams and hair ornaments and curling tongs. ‘If only you had not cut your hair, but the colour is lovely, like butter. And your skin is smooth and delicate as an eggshell. You are too thin but there is fragility in that. Present yourself humbly and sweetly, and the king will surely soften. You must not be bold but neither must you cringe lest you make him despise you. There must be courage but humility so that he can admire and pity you. Only then may he fall in love with you.’
    â€˜The king wants magic from me. If I am fragile as an egg, and fail him, he will think only to smash me,’ Moth told her.
    â€˜You must not talk like that,’ her mother said. ‘You must not think such things.’
    â€˜You mean I must not think,’ said Moth, but not aloud. Suddenly she saw it all. The king was like Camber, only his lust was for pain, not flesh, or maybe both. The wheat farmer had recognised himself in the king and had brought Moth to his attention, relishing the knowledge that his master would do to her what he could not. For, once she failed to demonstrate magic, she would be his to do with as he desired.
    That night Moth lay in her narrow bed. She lay very straight with her arms pressed to her sides and legs together as one might lie in a shroud. She imagined her mother bathing her and perfuming her cold skin, weeping tears over the marks that had been made. She watched the passage of the light from the waxing moon move across the floor. She watched the ribboning coils and curlicues of smoke from the candles Dougal had given her. The scent was very strange and she was not sure