He spent that night in the open, under the stars, at the edge of a small wood; and he ate his bread and cheese, and stared into the impenetrable forest shadows that were yet less black than his cloak. But when he lay down, he fell asleep instantly, with the instincts of an old soldier; and the same instinct gave him as much rest as he might have from his sleep, and swept his dreams free of demons and princesses and old women at wells. He dreamed instead of his friend the ostler, and of sharp brown beer.
He arrived at the capital city in the late afternoon of the following day. The streets were full of people, some shouting, some driving animals; some silent, some alone, some talking to those who walked beside them. The soldier had noticed, when he rose on the morning of this his last day’s journey, that the ways he walked held more people than those he had trod recently; and there is a bustle and a stirring to city-bound folk that is like no other restlessness. By this if nothing else the country-wise farmer’s son and old campaigner would have known his way.
He was one of the silent and solitary ones as he passed the city gates: at which stood guards, stiff and wordless as axles, staring across the gap they framed like statues of conquerors. He looked around him, and listened. The streets were wide and well paved, and he saw few beggars, and those quiet ones, who stayed at their chosen street corners with their begging-bowls extended and their eyes calmly lowered. The buildings were all several stories high; but there were many trees, too, green-leafed and full, and frequent parks, each with its titular statue of an historical hero. The soldier made his way slowly from the eastern gate, where he had entered, to the river, which lay a little west of the center of the city. At the river’s bank he paused, then stepped off the path and went down to the very edge of the whispering water.
Here he saw the King’s castle for the first time. It stood near the mouth of the river, on the far bank, so the river gleamed like silver before it, and behind it one caught the green-and-grey glitter of the sea, stretching out beyond the castle’s broad grounds. The vastness of that glitter, reaching the horizon without a ripple, accepting the river’s great waters without a murmur, made the castle seem a toy, and all the lands and their borders for which men fought, a minor and unimportant interruption of the tides. The soldier, staring, for a moment forgot his quest; forgot even his beloved mountains, and his twenty wasted years. He shook himself free, set himself to study the castle of the King, and of the twelve dancing Princesses.
It was high, many-towered, each tower at this distance seeming as slender as a racehorse’s long legs. The castle walls were built of a stone that shone pale grey, almost phosphorescent in the sun’s westering light; and as smooth and faultless as a mirror.
There was the path at the top of the riverbank, paved as a city street, but the soldier found that he did not want to take those extra steps away from the river and the castle and his fortune. All the steps he had taken so far were toward these things: he would not backtrack now, not even a little. So he took a deep breath and began walking along the grassy edge of the river, over hummocks of weed and grey stones hiding sly moss in their crevices, crushing wild herbs under his heavy boots till their scent was all around him, carrying him forward, pillowing his weary neck and shoulders and easing his tired feet. Thyme and sage he remembered from the stews his mother made, and for a few minutes he was young again; and those few minutes were enough to bring him to the wide low bridge that would lead him over the river to the castle gates.
The bridge was white and handsome, paved with cobblestones. But the stones were round and the foot slid queerly over them, the toe or heel finding itself wedged in a crack between one hump and another, waiting for the other foot to find a place for itself and rescue it, only to begin the uneasy process again. People did not talk much on the bridge, but kept their eyes on their feet, or their hands firmly on the reins and their horses’ quarters under them; they could tell well enough where they were by the bridge’s gentle arch that rose to meet them and then fell away beneath them till it left them quietly on the far bank. The soldier was accustomed to curious terrain, so he continued to gaze at the castle, although he was aware that his feet were working harder than they had been. At the far end of the bridge the road divided into three; the soldier was the only figure to turn onto the far right-hand way, which led to the castle.
He was on the castle grounds immediately; here was no complex of roads, as in the city, but only the path that he followed, and all around him was the silence of the forest. None hunted here but the King himself with his huntsmen; and the King had lost his pleasure in the chase with the death of his wife, and the animals were nearly tame now. Birds flew overhead, sparrows that dove at him and chirruped, woodcock that whirred straight overhead, pheasants that clacked to each other as they flew; and he caught the gleam of eyes and small furry bodies around the roots and branches of trees. It was hard to believe that any place so green and full of life held any spell as ominous as the one the soldier sought, knowing he would find it; but then, he reflected, why should a spell ’twixt demonkind and human folk, first cousins among creatures, disturb the squirrels and the fish and the deer, who are third cousins at best, and much more sober and responsible about their lives? A young deer, its spots still vaguely discernible on its chestnut-brown back, raised its head from its quiet feeding and peered out at him through the leaves as if reading his mind. “Good day to you,” he thought at it, and it lowered its head again. No one but a farmer’s son raised on the skirt-edges of the wilderness, or an old campaigner who walked as wild as the game he shared the countryside with, would have seen it at all, enfolded in the forest shadows.
The sun was low when he reached the castle walls, and the iron gates threw bars of shadow first across his path, and then across his face and breast as he approached. The guards who stood at this gate stood no less straight than those he had seen before, but the eyes of these watched him, and when he grew near enough their voices hailed him.
“What business do you seek at the castle of the King?”
The soldier walked on till he stood inside the barred shadow, in the twilight of the courtyard. He replied: “I seek the twelve dancing Princesses, and their father the King; of him I seek the favor of three nights in the Long Gallery, that I may discover where his daughters dance each night.”
There was a pause, and the captain of the guard stepped forward: there was gold on the sleeves of his uniform, and his eyes were much like the eyes of the soldier. “You may go if you wish,” said the captain, “but I would ask you to stay. I see the Army in the way you walk and answer a hail, and would guess by your eyes that you have come upon hard times. The King’s guard can use a man who walks and speaks as you do. Will you not stay here, and leave the Princesses to the nobles’ sons, who can do naught else but follow hopeless quests?”