by Tia Nevitt
He blinked at her. “The Lost Prince?” The girl was dizzying to be around, and not simply because of her beauty.
“Yes—didn’t you know? Your father has declared you dead, and your sister is to inherit.”
He gaped at her like a startled child. He was disinherited, and his elder sister would inherit the place she always thought should have been hers. He felt surprisingly little pain at the notion of losing his throne, but his heart ached to think that his father now thought him dead. “Maybe that’s for the best,” he said. “Then the bloodline of the curse will now be separate from the bloodline of the throne.”
Angelika put her hand on his arm, startling him back to himself. “Curse?” she asked.
A shriek sounded from an upstairs window. “Angelika! Find Angelika now!”
Richard jumped to his feet. “We can’t discuss that now. You must flee!”
“Flee?”
“I am so sorry. I’ve put you in great danger. You must run. Into the woods—away from here. The last woman I found fairest did not survive a week.”
Shouts sounded from within the castle.
“Please come, Princess,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I can protect you until dawn, when I must answer the summons of the mirror again.”
She took his hand.
He headed for the castle gates, but she stopped him. “Not that way—we will be chased. There is a secret exit. Not even the queen knows of it.”
“Lead the way.”
She went into the henhouse. Around them, hens began to cluck. In the back of the noisy room, she reached for an empty chicken crate. One edge was hinged to the wall. When she released a latch and pulled it away, an opening was revealed.
“It will be dark, but the way is short.”
He followed her in. He found himself in a narrow stone hallway within the wall of the castle.
She closed the crate door. It clicked shut, sealing them in darkness.
“This way,” she whispered.
He followed her perhaps twenty feet, where a ladder led to a square of light above. They climbed it into a small, square tower jutting out from the wall. It had one window. There was no other exit or entrance save a bundle of rope ladder on the floor.
“This tower is secret,” she said. “This part of the wall is difficult to get to from the outside.”
Ange affixed two loops at the end of the ladder to two hooks just beneath the window.
“Someone is supposed to take up the ladder after we make our escape,” she said.
“I will be returning shortly,” Richard said. “I’ll take up the ladder then.”
She paused, and then she nodded. He helped her out the window, and she climbed down. As soon as her feet were on the ground, he came after her.
“We need to go that way,” Ange said, gesturing directly opposite the castle. “That way lies—”
“It would be better if I didn’t know,” he said. “Have you anywhere to go?” he asked.
“Yes, I can go to—”
“Don’t tell me!” he said. “Can we get there before sunset?”
“I think so.”
“Then just head in the direction you need to go, and let me know well before we get there.”
“Then what will you do, sir?”
“I’ll return to the castle and destroy that magic mirror.”
“No one can touch the mirror, sir. It reflects everything. Even voices echo from its surface.”
“I have to try.” He clasped her shoulder. “Her jealousy is great. She will suffer no one else to be thought more beautiful than she.”
“But I’m not! Her beauty is legend, and while I—”
“The mirror has pronounced you the fairest of all, therefore you are. How do you think her beauty became legend in the first place?”
She stared at him for a moment.
“Now, let’s go,” he said.
Chapter Nine
Ange looked sideways at Richard as they walked along an old forest path. She could not help but to think of that long-ago wedding trip. It was before her father had remarried, and it was the last happy summer that she could recall. The young people had been shockingly unsupervised, and there were several hasty marriages afterward. Richard’s was not her first kiss of that summer, but she had thought it meant something before he started mooning after that Princess Anastasia.
“What did you mean,” she said, “when you spoke of the bloodline of a curse?”
Richard did not answer immediately. “The curse of the mirror has long been in my family. I inherited it from my father when I turned eighteen.”
“Inherited it? But I thought your father still lived.”
“And I am glad to hear that he does. Perhaps inherited is the wrong word. I...accepted the duty of the curse at that age.”
“The queen had a spell on your father as well?”
“No, the curse existed long before she discovered it. But her discovery of it was our undoing. Before, we didn’t think of it as a curse. It started as a way for the son and heir to prove his loyalty. As legend has it, a grandfather of mine tried to usurp the throne. The father defeated the son, and in order to ensure the son’s loyalty, he had an enchantress cast a spell upon him, binding him to the mirror. The spell would pass onto his descendants, as a guard against future such treachery.”
“How did my stepmother discover it?”
A flush covered Richard’s face, and he ducked his head. It was a gesture of deep shame. “It was...I’m afraid it was my fault,” he said. “So it is only right that my sister inherit.”He spoke on. She might have asked that he elaborate had it not caused him such obvious pain. “But you have not told me why it is you wanted to slap me whenever you saw me again.”
She felt a blush warm her face. “Oh. I had a certain, well, girlish attraction to you.” It was so difficult to say, even though it happened so long ago. “And after that kiss you completely ignored me. You would only look at Anastasia.”
“Oh, yes. That must have been the Bohemian princess.”
It was her turn to smile. “You didn’t even remember her name?”
He shrugged. “It was what—six years ago? Seven?”
“Some people you never forget.”
He met her eye. “Indeed.”
When the sun was high overhead, they could hear speaking on the road up ahead.
“It’s the crossroads,” she said.
Richard gestured for silence. “Hide in the brush,” he murmured. “I’ll see who is there.”
She crouched behind a bush while watching Richard creep ahead, keeping to the underbrush as well. Soon, he returned, took her hand, and they retreated a short distance.
“Two mounted soldiers are at the center of the crossroads. They’re keeping watch on the road that leads toward the castle,” he said.
“We can slip by in the woods,” she said. “I am not headed back that way, after all.”
He paused for a moment. She could see the struggle in his face.
“You should know,” he said, “that I’ve always been taught to defend women, to keep them safe. But now...as much as I hate to admit it, it would be safest for you to be well away from me.”
She thought of the mirror. “I understand.”
“Therefore, we should part here. I must be far away from you by sunset, and it is better if I know nothing of your destination.” He looked back toward the soldiers. “I’ll give you a
distraction. Slip by in the woods, and do not look back.”
She nodded and put her hand on his arm. “Thank you for your help, Prince Richard.”
He looked down at her hand. “How can you thank me? I’ve done nothing but bring trouble to you.”
She reached up and kissed his cheek. “Thank you just the same,” she said. And she turned away into the woods.
“Wait!” he said.
She turned back.
“It would be best if you did not arrive at your destination before sunset. That would give you at least until dawn tomorrow before the queen knows where you are.”
She paused for a moment and then said, “Thank you, sir. I’ll take my time.”
Despite her promise, she could not help but to hear Richard as he provided the distraction. As she peered at him through the leaves, she restrained a gasp as one of the guards pushed him. He fell to the ground and seemed to have a difficult time regaining his feet. After watching for a moment, confused, Ange realized he was pretending to be simple-minded. The guards—they ought to be flogged, then dismissed!—were taking turns pushing him back and forth between them, and he lurched about as if he could only stand askew.
Then as she recalled he was doing it for her, she hurried away in the woods.
* * *
The guise of a slightly idiotic nobleman was one that had suited him well in the past. He let the guards play with him for a full twenty minutes before he deemed that Ange must be safely away. Then he sauntered off toward town, promising his new “friends” that he would look for them at the castle.
As darkness swept over the land, the call of the mirror drove him to his knees.
“Where is my stepdaughter?” the queen asked without any preliminaries.
A vision of Ange swept before him. “She is walking down a road in the forest.”
The queen squinted at him, her eyes shrewd. He could not tell the future, as she well knew. The road Ange traveled upon most likely did not have a name, and it would be pointless to ask Richard to describe it, as she well knew he would do so in the vaguest way possible.
“What have you been doing in town?” she asked.
“Scrivening. Earning a living. Learning about you.”
“What do you plan to do next?” she asked.
The next thing on his agenda didn’t worry him. “Return to your town.”
She smiled. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
* * *
The escape tower was indeed well hidden. It was a long search along the walls in the dark before he found it, and at one point he almost fell into a chasm where the town walls formed a bridge over a canal. He climbed down into the canal, waded through it, and on the other side, he at last found it. He hauled himself up the ladder, pulled it up after him, and when he at last emerged from the henhouse, the night was as deep as his exhaustion.
Richard entered the castle through the quiet kitchens. The stove was warm, but not even the bakers had arisen. Richard walked through the empty great hall and out the far door. He found himself in some sort of entry hall. At one end, a pair of guards stood in front of a set of elaborate silver doors. The room immediately beyond was probably the throne room, from which a back door would lead to the inner private chambers.
He narrowed his eyes. This castle was much like his father’s own, a once medieval structure, now expanded and modernized. The great hall had become a dining hall for servants and hangers-on. The arrow-loops had all been converted into peaked windows with glass both clear and stained. And if he guessed correctly, there was another, discreet entrance to the royal quarters.
A passage opened opposite him. He ducked into it. In the hallways beyond, he took a few false turns, but eventually he found a door with a key in the lock and single guard. This had to be it. The guard was already looking at him and there was no time for subtlety. He threw back his shoulders and assumed his princely look—the one that caused servants to throw open doors before him and sycophants to scurry in his wake. He saw a look of uncertainty pass over the guard’s face. He palmed his knife.
“I have dread news from abroad,” he announced. “Let me pass at once.”
“My lord, who—” His voice cut off as Richard whacked him on the side of the head with the pommel of the knife. The guard groaned, dazed. Richard shoved him aside, twisted open the key, threw open the door and entered the hallway beyond. He took the key with him and locked the door behind him. He didn’t hope to have much time, but maybe this would earn him a few more minutes.
He found the entrance to the throne room with little trouble. It was unguarded from this end, and empty.
At last, he stood before the looking-glass that was famed throughout the lands. It was made of the purest of elements, gold and silver, worked in fine filigree. It was oval-shaped and large enough for him to see his head, shoulders and chest reflected within. The smooth plate surface was made by Venetian glassmakers.
He licked his lips. He was now about to break one of the three laws of the mirror, laws that his father had told Richard about after the spell of the mirror had passed to him. But since he needed the mirror’s knowledge, he decided to risk the consequences.
He placed his hand on the silvered surface to awaken it. A vision of his own face now hovered before his reflection in the mirror. His plan was simple. He would ask the mirror how he could remove the curse.
“I am Richard of Schwarzburg,” he said, perhaps unnecessarily. His voice bounced back to him weirdly. “Answer this question: I took on the spell of this mirror. How may I remove it?” One.
He didn’t fight the answer, and uttered it immediately. “Find someone who is willing to take on the spell.”
He pressed his lips together. Unlikely, and he already knew about this way, besides. “Is there another way to remove the spell of this mirror, other than the method you just mentioned?” Two.
“Die, and it will pass on to your next of kin.”
“Damn it! Is there another way to remove the spell of this mirror, other than the two methods you just mentioned?” Three.
“Break the mirror.”
Another law of the mirror—well, damn the consequences. He held up his knife and smashed the pommel into his reflection.
Pain exploded in his cheek with a powerful blow. His head snapped back as he let out a cry of pain. His hand flew up to his cheek. There was no blood, but it was as tender as if he had struck his own face with the pommel. He blinked, then looked in the mirror. One more time he asked, “Is there another way to remove the spell of this mirror?”
No responses came to him. He had asked his questions.
Frustrated, he regarded the mirror. He remembered what Angelika told him about the mirror reflecting everything that touched it. And indeed, his voice had echoed back to him.
But what about the back of the mirror?
His gaze shifted to the frame of the mirror. Perhaps if he could remove the mirror, he could simply hurl it to the ground. He stepped to the side in the hopes of seeing how it was fastened to the wall.
Something yanked him back. He frowned and looked around, but there was no one there, just as he thought. Again, he tried to step to one side, and again, a force pulled him back. He tried to go the other way, but the mirror somehow held him where he was. He tried to grasp the frame of the mirror, but he was unable to get his hands around it. He tried sliding his hands up the mirror, but it was firmly attached.
Then he remembered that he
had to be released from the mirror. He placed his hand on the mirror and said, “I release myself from the mirror,” feeling slightly foolish as he did so.
And still, he felt himself held in front of the mirror.
He still had not escaped at least an hour later, when the door opened.
“So,” the queen said as she strode inside, unsurprised to see him. “You somehow slipped past the castle gate, attacked my guards and broke into my throne room.” She stopped and regarded him. He did not react. “And what do you do here?” she finally said. “Are you consulting yourself?”
“Yes,” he said, bluffing. “It’s been most educational.”
“And what did you learn from yourself?”
He smiled. “Why don’t you ask the mirror and find out?”
She drew near him. “You are unusually smug.”
“Perhaps I have good reason to be.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he tried not to bite his lip in anticipation before she finally placed her hand on the mirror. To his great relief, he felt the mirror somehow release him. “Take him,” she said to her guards as he stepped out of her way.
Two guards came on either side of him and each took one arm. He let himself be drawn back without a struggle.
“My slave prince,” she said into the mirror, “what did you learn from this mirror when you asked your three questions?”
The mirror seized hold of him again. He hadn’t learned anything of value from the mirror itself, so he spoke without resisting. “I learned of three ways to release myself from this mirror.”
She was silent for a moment. “They must not have been much use to you, because here you stand.”
It was not a question, so he did not reply.
“Where is Princess Angelika?”
“She is—” again, he struggled for vagueness as an image of her in slumber swept across his vision, “—sleeping in a cot, in a room, in a farmhouse, on a farm at the edge of the Schwarzwald.”
She frowned. “Did you tell her to run away?”
