The Unhandsome Prince

by Moore, John

  “Did you tell Hal?”

  “Not yet. I didn’t want to discourage him.”

  “Right,” said Emily. “Let’s keep a positive outlook. Something will come up. The first thing is that Hal has to win the final match.”

  “Right. But actually, I don’t think that will be a problem. He’s just fought two very good swordsmen, and neither one could touch him.”

  “Oh dear,” said Caroline. She pointed. “Is that who he’s fighting next?”

  The other two looked. Approaching the ring was a large man, muscular and very broad-shouldered. He had shaggy black hair and a thick dark beard, and carried a cut-and-thrust sword in his hand.

  “Don’t you recognize him?”

  Jeff looked at the man carefully. “No. I’ve never seen this guy before.”

  “He looks familiar,” said Emily. “But I can’t place him.”

  “It’s Bear McAllistair,” said Caroline. “He’s the man who sold Hal that magic sword.”

  Emily leaned out of the box, as far over as she could, trying to see Hal’s face. The youngest prince was completely without expression. “I think he’s worried,” said Caroline. “He looks worried. Does he look worried to you?”

  “No,” said Emily, who wasn’t sure.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” said Jeff, who definitely sounded worried. “Who is this guy? You say he sold Hal the magic sword?”

  “Yes,” said Caroline. “And he beat Hal when Hal was fighting with it.”

  “Oh that. Uh, don’t worry about it.”

  “Right,” said Emily. “Caroline, Hal is fighting much better that he did at the tavern. There’s a trick to using this sword, remember, and Hal figured out the trick.”

  “Unless Bear knew the trick all along and was setting Hal up.”

  “No. No, I don’t believe it. How could he know Hal would enter the tournaments? Hal never entered before.”

  “Look!” snapped Caroline.

  Emily looked. The two men had come together in a clash of ringing steel and flashing blades. Cut, thrust, parry, counterthrust, parry again, and the two men drew apart.

  “No hits,” said Jeff. “No points.”

  “But look how fast Bear was,” said Caroline. “Emily, doesn’t he seem much faster than he was at the tavern?”

  “Yes, you’re right. Oh no. He did trick us.”

  “This man’s a pro,” said Jeff. He was watching the fight with narrow eyes. “He’s got experience. He’s probably been in the country, working the small tournaments. He might have staged that fight to look slow, so as to get better betting odds.”

  “That’s despicable,” said Emily. “How can people be so dishonest?”

  “Um, I don’t know.”

  Hal suddenly attacked, leaping forward and swinging his sword in a vertical cut. The blade rang against Bear’s steel and for long seconds the two men were all over the ring, weapons glittering in the bright sunlight. There was another round of applause from the crowd, which had grown larger, and Emily saw a few drops of blood on Bear’s sleeve.

  “Bear’s hit.”

  “Just a scratch,” said Jeff.

  “Point for Hal, though,” said Caroline.

  But there was no time for jubilation. Bear feinted, Hal countered, Bear caught Hal’s blade with his dagger, and at the same time drove his own sword into Hal’s arm.

  There were screams from the women in the stands, and some ragged cheers from the men who bet on Bear. The news quickly spread that blood had been drawn, and ticket holders rushed to their seats. Hal staggered back to the edge of the circle. He dropped his dagger.

  “Yes!” said Jeff.

  “What!” Emily had turned pale. “Jeff, he’s hurt!”

  “Yes, and it was deliberate. Bear went for his dagger arm! You know what that means? He still hasn’t figured out that Hal can parry with the blade.”

  The tip of Bear’s sword had passed clean through Hal’s arm, and blood was flowing freely. Caroline felt sick. The spectators were all on their feet now. The Queen was weeping openly, and even the King was out of his seat. Hal’s teeth were clenched, and his face showed nothing but pure pain. He put his arm in his pocket to support it. But he still kept his sword up at middle guard. Bear circled him warily.

  “Come on, Hal,” said Jeff quietly. “Strike now, before you lose too much blood.”

  Hal apparently had the same thought. He aimed a stab at Bear’s chest, but Bear knocked it aside and charged forward. As Hal had no dagger for close-in defense, the big man easily got inside the prince’s guard, the points of both his sword and dagger aimed true, victory but an instant away.

  Yet even at that last moment Hal twisted his body and Bear’s sword passed harmlessly by the young man’s head. The miss was by a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. And even as he twisted Hal swept the oriental sword in one of those blindingly fast counterattacks, so familiar in the east, still surprising in the west. Bear felt the point of his dagger penetrate the prince’s clothing, but it was too late. The edge of Hal’s sword drew a line of blood across the big man’s upper arm, sliced through his tunic, and scraped along his breastplate, trailing sparks that were clearly visible to the crowd even in broad daylight. Hal had won.

  Applause from the crowd. Hal dropped his sword in the dirt. Bear caught him as he seemed about to topple forward. The next instant Bear was pushed aside as a blond girl in a white dress wrapped her arms around Hal, laughing and crying all at once. The crowd applauded again, more enthusiastically. The blond girl was followed by a raven-haired girl, and finally by Prince Jeffrey. Bear nodded deferentially. Jeff nodded back and put his arm around Hal’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”

  “We won,” Hal whispered. “Let’s collect our bets.”

  “Let’s get your arm taken care of,” said Jeff.

  Emily had felt like crying all day. She wasn’t crying now. And she hadn’t actually cried at any time. But she felt like crying. And she couldn’t explain why.

  She made her way through the streets of Melinower, wearing the garb of a sorcerer’s apprentice. The city was still unfamiliar to her, but she could find her way to Bungee’s tower. He had sent word to her that he had an ointment to speed the healing of Prince Hal’s wound—Bungee had a firm grip on the business aspects of sorcery and knew the importance of networking. Around her the streets were filled with nervous, tense people, with shopkeepers standing outside their doors, looking up and down the street and chatting with the passersby, not wanting to go inside for fear of missing something. It was the kind of shared foreboding that cities get when word comes that an invading army is just over the horizon, or a severe storm is blowing in from the sea, even though no overt sign of danger has yet appeared. There was an awful lot of what looked like soldiers in the streets, although Emily knew that they were actually the Royal Guard. Caroline and Jeff and Hal had told her about the upcoming expulsion. So far the King had made no official pronouncement. But he didn’t have to, really. Jeff and Hal said that if you got people stirred up enough, the thing would take off on its own. The ruler just had to look the other way.

  Happily ever after, Emily thought. Caroline got to marry a prince. Hal was rescued from being a frog. Emily got a first-rate apprenticeship. The royal family would erase its debts. It was amazing how things just worked out well for everyone. Only the Jews would suffer, and surely they were used to it by now.

  So why did she feel like crying?

  She reached Bungee’s tower, pushed past the imposing iron door, and went up the spiral stairs. And was surprised to find Twigham there. “Twigham?”

  The two men were sitting at the long table, smoking their pipes. From the amount of smoke that still hung in the air, they had either been there a long time, or had been smoking furiously, or both. There were the remains of tea things on the table and half a plate of lemon cookies.

  “Hello, my dear.” Twigham rose, and she gave him a hug. “I was just reviewing your apprenticeship with your new master.�
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  “Do you know Bungee?”

  “Not until today, no. I hope you don’t think I intended to interfere in your schooling. But Ripplebrook has to look after its daughters. Nosiness is one of the prerogatives of being old.”

  “He wanted to make sure your apprenticeship contract was aboveboard,” said Bungee. “Quite right, too. Amanda would have done the same.”

  “I went over it carefully,” said Emily. “What was wrong with it?”

  “The contract? Nothing at all.”

  “Something was wrong.” Emily pointed to the empty tobacco pouches and the piles of ash in the tray. “You’ve gone through about three pipes each. Twigham, you only do that when you’ve got a particularly knotty problem to work out.”

  “Ah.” Twigham looked at Bungee.

  Bungee passed Emily the plate of lemon cookies. “Make yourself a cup of tea, Emily. And then sit down. I’ve been explaining Amanda’s spell to Mr. Twigham.”

  “The problem,” said Bungee, “is that your mother’s spell doesn’t work.”

  “Which spell is that?”

  “The one by which she turned Prince Hal into a frog.”

  “Excuse me, Master Bungee. As your apprentice, I don’t want to be contradictory. But the fact that the spell did work shows that it does work.”

  “And that is the problem. Caroline cannot marry Prince Hal. It lacks magicality.”

  There was a short silence. Then Emily said, “Was that my cue to ask what magicality is? You’ve mentioned it before.”

  “No,” said Bungee. “I was just composing my thoughts.”

  Twigham said, “Master Bungee has been explaining his theory to me. It is quite fascinating.”

  Bungee put down his pipe, adjusted his hat, and straightened the collar of his robes, all unconsciously, as if he were preparing to make a speech. Since the job of a master sorcerer is to teach apprentices as well as extract work from them, Emily was not surprised to hear him adopt a lecturing tone. She settled back to listen.

  “It’s one of the eternal questions of sorcery,” he said. “Why do some spells work, and others don’t? When you’re starting out you concentrate on learning how to cast spells and prepare potions and many practical and hardworking sorcerers spend their whole lives perfecting and expanding that field. But some of us seek to go further, to find the underlying principles that govern magic.”

  “Like the Law of Transformation and the Law of Similarities,” said Emily.

  “Exactly so. One of the things that has perplexed magicians for years is why a spell will work sometimes and not at other times. Why some things can be magicked and others cannot. Why some people fall under enchantments or curses and others seem immune. I have occupied myself with these questions for many years, and lately I have begun to formulate what I believe is another underlying law of magic. I call it the Law of Magicality, and what it means is that for a spell to work, the spell itself must ‘feel’ magical.”

  He paused, waiting for the reaction from Emily, waiting for the inevitable question. Emily frowned. “I know you realize, Master Bungee, that you are not giving me a very helpful definition.”

  “I do realize that, my dear, and at this point I don’t have a very precise definition of magicality, nor have I even come up with a better term. But to give you a working definition, magic works when even an ordinary person, who has no knowledge of magic, recognizes that magic has occurred. If it doesn’t seem magical to him or her, it won’t be.”

  Another pause. “I hate to sound obtuse,” Emily began.

  “Let me see if I understand it,” said Twigham. “Emily, if a raven was to fly in through this window, is it possible that it could be enchanted?”

  “Certainly it is possible,” said Emily, “although it could also be an ordinary raven.”

  “An owl may or may not be enchanted. Or a hawk. A bluebird.”

  “Sure.”

  “What if a squirrel were to run in the window?”

  Emily laughed.

  “You see,” said Bungee. “You laughed at the idea of a magic squirrel. Unicorns are magical, and dragons, and cats, especially black ones, but who ever heard of a magic slug? And in fact, it is nearly impossible to put a spell on a squirrel or a slug, or even a goat, and when it does take it wears off in no time. Fireflies are magical, and so are ladybugs, and you can enchant a spider with ease, but when was the last time you heard of a magic termite?”

  “Well, isn’t that what you’d expect? You can’t create a magic squirrel, so people haven’t learned to think of squirrels as being magical?”

  “I thought the same way at first,” said Bungee. “But now I think differently. Consider the case of a child, switched at birth through some enchantment and raised as a swineherd. Later, through yet more magical means, he finds out that he is really the son of . . . who?”

  “A lord,” said Emily.

  “Perhaps even a king,” said Twigham.

  “Right,” said Bungee. “You never hear of a swineherd inheriting a bricklaying business, even though it would certainly be a step up from herding swine. Wait a minute.”

  He stepped into a corner of his lab and came back with a chalice. Inside a liquid was bubbling and giving off small clouds of white vapor. He set it in front of Twigham, who put the back of his hand against the cup. It was stone cold.

  “One of my most powerful potions,” said Bungee. “Notice how it bubbles and steams, even though it is not boiling. Over the years I’ve noticed that the best potions always bubble and steam. And that they work even better when you drink them out of chalices. People expect a magic potion to bubble and steam, and to be drunk from a chalice. Or to be an emerald green liquid, held in a crystal vial. Certainly there are potions that are murky yellow and can be swilled from a wooden mug. But the vast majority of them are ineffective.”

  “So the potion works because people believe that it works?” said Twigham. “Because it looks magical?”

  “No,” said Emily. “Real magic works whether you believe it or not. It’s one of the ways we tell the real magicians from the charlatans.”

  “Emily is correct. No, what I call magicality is a property of the spell itself. You can tell if a spell is going to work or not by whether it seems magical.”

  “I get it,” said Emily. “Like turning flax into gold. Gold seems magical. No one has a formula that turns, say, mud into cast iron, even though cast iron is more valuable than mud.”

  “Hmm, yes, you have the idea. Of course, that’s alchemy. It’s outside my field of study, so I’m not certain that the theory holds up there.”

  “But isn’t this subjective? Wouldn’t every person have a different idea of what seems magical and what doesn’t?”

  “I think not. I have been trying to quantify magicality and have had some little success. I expect the work will take many years. But the results I have obtained so far—well, there is a problem. Emily, we must discuss our Prince Hal.”

  Emily suddenly found that she was not breathing. She forced herself to start again and hoped the two men hadn’t noticed. “What is the problem with Prince Hal?”

  “He is not handsome.”

  Emily looked at Twigham. “Not again. I thought we’d been through all this.”

  Twigham was scraping out his pipe with a little jack-knife. He tapped the ashes onto his tea saucer. “So did I. Apparently there is more to it.”

  “Much more,” said Bungee. “I don’t know exactly how your mother enchanted Prince Hal, and there is no way to find out now. But I have worked through every variation of the frog spell that I can get my hands on, and they are all very clear. The beautiful girl marries a handsome prince. There is no way around it. Anything else lacks magicality.”

  “We have been through this. We all talked it over back in Ripplebrook. To marry any kind of a prince at all is a step up.”

  “Magic doesn’t work that way. You can’t negotiate with a spell. A beautiful girl finds the frog and kisses it. There is absolutely
no record of a plain girl ever finding the frog. Maybe they never find it. Maybe they find it and kiss it, but they can’t break the spell. It’s always a beautiful girl, and she always marries a handsome prince.”

  “But I told you that Hal had been turned into a frog and you know how he looks and you told me to make sure they got married.” Emily found herself getting a bit shrill.

  “True. Actually I said that Caroline must get married, but that is nit-picking. I had not seen Caroline. I did not realize how attractive she is. Which means she’s got to be able to marry a really handsome prince.”

  “But Caroline likes Hal!”

  “Marrying a handsome prince is meant to be a reward for her perseverance and self-sacrifice in breaking the spell. She’s not supposed to be doing him a favor.”

  “She’s not doing him a favor!” Emily was really shouting now. “Caroline’s lucky to find a boy like Hal. Hal is a very nice person! He’s loyal to his family and he’s good to people and he’s hardworking and smart, and as far as looks go, I happen to think that he’s really, really . . . cute! Sort of.”

  She heard a cracking noise. Twigham was trying so hard not to laugh that he bit through the stem of his pipe.

  Bungee had also raised his voice. “Emily, look at my bookshelves. You could spend a year combing through the histories, the legends, the tales, and the fables, and you will not find one single story about a beautiful maiden who marries a sort of cute prince.”

  “Fine,” snapped Emily. “I’ll tell them to break it off right now. You have the ointment or not?”

  “By the door.”

  She scowled at the ointment—it was an emerald green liquid in a crystal vial—and snatched it up as she stalked out. Bungee sat down heavily. “Damn. I should not have raised my voice. I have been too long without a student. I’m out of practice.” He looked around for the teapot and tried to pour a cup. It was empty.

  Twigham was putting away his pipe things. “Emily will understand. I’ll catch up with her. You are quite sure about this spell?”

  “You can never be certain of another wizard’s spell. Especially Amanda’s.” Bungee was boiling more water. “But I can tell you there is something wrong with that one. It shouldn’t have worked. An unhandsome prince like Hal should never have turned into a frog in the first place. And a beautiful girl like Caroline should not have broken the spell even when it did work, which it shouldn’t have.”