Bella shrugged; Elena felt her shoulder move. "She won't be our problem anymore, she'll be the hero's."
Her ironic tone of voice startled a shaky laugh out of Elena, who pulled a handkerchief of her own out of a pocket, and wiped her face with it. "This is horrible, though — we're taking one woman's daughter away once she's sixteen, which I think is too young to marry — we're turning a poor bewildered peasant girl who will barely have seen a knife, fork, and spoon at place settings together, and imprisoning her in that golden cage of Manners. And The Tradition is going to make her wed a man she won't ever have seen before!"
"Rosalie will have her daughter for as long as most women do," Bella pointed out reasonably, as the Horse increased his pace and the height they were flying at. "The girl would probably have married as young as fifteen otherwise; most peasant girls wed early. Colin knows very well what it is like to be a peasant in a King's Court, and he will see to it that no one is unkind to her while he has teachers show her how to behave. And last of all, even if she remained with Rosalie, she still could have wound up in an arranged marriage with someone she didn't know!"
Elena blotted her eyes, and had to admit the justice of Madame Bella's words. Most of them, anyway.
"But marrying a man she doesn't know?"
"The Tradition will ensure that she falls in love with him directly when she sees him," Bella replied, patting her hand soothingly, as the Horse tossed his head and whickered agreement. "Colin and Sophia are raising a well-grounded boy; I believe that Clarissa will remain as much in love with her Prince as Colin and Sophia have with each other. Eleven years between their ages is no worse than most royal marriages, and a great deal better than many."
"Maybe, but — " Elena began.
"So what have we possibly done that is wrong?" Madame asked.
"I don't know — but we did the best we could." On that point, at least, Elena was sure. She looked out over the head of the Horse, and saw that they were approaching the cottage. She had never been so glad to see a place in her life. She could talk this over with Randolf; he would understand. She could have a good meal, and Rose and Lily could talk of small things, and she could forget the cruel fates that The Tradition forced on people.
The sleigh touched down with a bump on the snow, and drew up to the front door. Madame patted her hand. "And there you are. That is all we can do, we magicians. The best we can. I think you're ready now."
She was halfway out of the sleigh before she realized what Madame had said. Ready? Ready? Good heavens, surely not —
But both her feet were already on the ground; before she could clamber back in, the Horse tossed his head and the sleigh moved off.
"Madame!" she cried, desperately, panic overwhelming her. "Madame Bella! Please! Come back! You can't! I'm not — "
"You are as ready as I was," Madame called over her shoulder, and the sleigh rose into the sky, over the treetops, and vanished among the clouds, leaving her standing on what was now her doorstep, now the Godmother of some Seven Kingdoms.
And she had never felt more alone, or been more terrified in her life.
Chapter 10
Deep in the middle of decanting a tincture, Elena heard the sound of something crunching in the garden, just outside the window of the stillroom. "Crunching" was not the sort of sound you wanted to hear coming from the kitchen garden. She looked up, already prepared to yell at whatever was out there.
She was not sure just what it would be — there was supposed to be a barrier that kept things like rabbits and deer out, but sometimes the spells failed. And such spells did nothing to keep out other visitors, some of whom seemed to be of the opinion that the garden had been planted for their benefit.
There was a Unicorn in the garden, eating the new peas, daintily taking each pod and munching them up between his strong white teeth with every evidence of enjoyment. Elena thrust her head out of the window, indignantly.
"You!" she shouted at him. "Shoo! I put out an entire flower bed of lilies for you lot, go eat those!"
The Unicorn looked up, and focused his attention on her. Then went cross-eyed with the immediate onset of the stupefied devotion every Unicorn was overcome by when in the presence of a virgin. His big brown eyes misted over, his ears swiveled towards her, and his ivory horn began to glow with magic. Unicorns, like the Fair Folk, were practically made of magic; Elena made a note to ask one of the mares later if the stallions who kept coming around would be willing to allow her to siphon some of it off. If they were going to plague her and eat her garden, the least they could do was to contribute to the cause, so to speak.
It was no use asking the stallions, of course. They went entirely idiotic at the sight of her. The mares went idiotic, too, of course, but only for virgin boys. Fortunately, those were in even shorter supply than virgin girls....
"Don't like lilies," he said, absently, around a mouthful of pods he had forgotten to chew the moment he spotted her. Half chewed pods fell out of his mouth as he spoke. He had, of course, also forgotten that he was supposed to look noble. "Like peas."
"Well I don't care!" she snapped in irritation. "You'll eat the lilies, and you'll learn to like them."
"Ah," the Unicorn replied, then dreamily turned and looked at the bed of pastel lilies on the edge of the garden. He turned his bearded head back to look at her. "If I eat the lilies, may I lay my head in your lap?"
"No, you may not — " she began, then at the sight of his ears drooping with dejection, changed her mind. She could spare a minute or two. "Oh, all right."
The Unicorn's head and ears came up, and his tufted tail flagged. He trotted over to the lily bed, and began eating with unbridled — well, of course, unbridled — enthusiasm.
A Unicorn would do just about anything that a virgin asked of him.
Elena finished her potions and dried her hands, before going out into the garden with a feeling of resignation. This was the fourteenth Unicorn loitering about, eating up the garden this spring. The first one had taken her breath away, and it was only after an entire afternoon spent petting him that she realized that he had destroyed the roses. She'd been warier at the second. She was getting tired of them now. Why had there never been Unicorns when Madame Bella was the Godmother here?
Maybe because she didn't qualify as a Unicorn extractor....
As soon as she sat down on the wooden seat that Robin and Lily had fitted around the trunk of the apple tree, the Unicorn knelt at her side and his head dropped into her lap, his round, brown eyes gazing up at her soulfully. With a sigh, she stroked his head and scratched behind his ears, while he moaned in ecstasy.
"Shouldn't you be making those sort of noises at a mate?" she asked, crossly. What was it about virgins that made them go so idiotic?
"Not until autumn, Godmother," the Unicorn replied, shivering all over at her touch. "Oh. Uh, I was sent. I'm supposed to tell you something."
She waited, still scratching. Unicorns were not the brightest of beasts at the best of times — they tended to remind her of highly inbred lapdogs, to tell the truth, all beauty and no brains. There was no point in rushing him while the stray thought fluttered around in his thick skull like a butterfly in a box, and he tried to catch it.
At least once you told one something, he never forgot it. It might take him a while to remember what it was, but he never actually forgot it.
"Questers," he said at last. "In Phaelin's Wood. For the Glass Mountain. Three Princes. They came just after Karelina left. There's no one there to guide and test them."
Ah. That explained why he was here; she'd had a message yesterday morning by way of Randolf that the Witch of Phaelin's Wood was off attending to a difficult birth that had a lot of Traditional potential behind it. Twins, if you please, which meant that someone had to be there, not only to make sure that mother and babies survived the birth, but to figure out just what The Tradition was going to try to do with them. Karelina had the same problem with Unicorns that Elena had. She too had a Mirror-Slave,
inherited from her Grandmother the previous Witch, and she had sent a message by way of Randolf this morning that she was going to be out of her Wood for a while. Well, this meant that no one would be able to meet the Questers at the crossroads and test them unless Elena took the task herself. "Did Karelina send you?" she asked. Karelina might be away from her mirror, but she was never far from a Unicorn.
The Unicorn gave another faint moan of pleasure, but answered, sensibly enough, "Yes. We came and told her that they had gone in, and she sent me to you. She's put the tanglefoot on their path until you can get to the crossroads."
The "tanglefoot" spell would make sure that all three of the Questers would travel in circles without realizing it, and without meeting each other, until Elena got into place. Small wonder that the woods that Questers entered always seemed to be much bigger than they had thought!
At least in this case, she was going to have no crisis of conscience over the quest. King Stancia of Fleurberg had only one child, a daughter, and he was old. He was understandably concerned that the husband she took be clever, intelligent, and kind, as well as strong, iron-willed, and tough, because he knew that he was probably not going to be around for very much longer to protect her from the consequences of a bad choice. He had a great many neighbors, most of whom had several sons — and he also wanted to be sure that whoever wedded his daughter would rule his Kingdom as Stancia would have wanted.
So he had obtained the services of a powerful Sorcerer, and placed her in a tower atop a mountain —
The mountain wasn't really glass, or at least, it wasn't man-made glass, and the tower was hardly a place of imprisonment. The mountain was volcanic; there were obsidian boulders and shards everywhere, and it would take a very strong man with immense stamina merely to endure the path to the top. To complicate matters further, there were many tests and trials for anyone who wanted to earn the reward of her hand and throne. As for the tower, it was the Sorcerers' own home, and the Princess was, by all reports, having a delightful time exploring it.
The King and the Sorcerer had been very careful in deciding what trials the Questers would face. Unless a man was very stupid, or exceedingly stubborn, there was no chance that anyone would actually die along the way — not unless he kept trying until he perished of exhaustion or did something monumentally foolish. Everyone understood The Tradition in this case, and making it work for them. The Sorcerer had a great many truly dreadful tests of courage, intelligence, quick-thinking, and so forth set up once the Questers set foot on his mountain.
But the first of these trials was the simplest, and it weeded out any seeker who was not kind, generous, and unselfish. There were at least a dozen magicians who were tasked to provide this particular test, and for once, it was something that Elena had no second thoughts in agreeing to, not now, and not when she had first heard of the Quest.
She gave the Unicorn one last scratch, and pushed his head out of her lap, gently. "All right," she said. "The sooner I get on my way, the sooner I get this over with. And you can't lie here in my lap all day, either. Now, shoo."
The Unicorn heaved a final, sorrowful sigh, got to his feet, cast a last, longing look at her, and slipped off into the forest.
Elena stood looking after him for a moment, shaking her head. "Unicorns!" she said, to nobody at all. "I'm not surprised they're easy to hunt. It's a good thing for them that the bait is so hard to find."
Then she went back into the cottage to get her stoutest walking shoes and a staff.
Poor old Dobbin had finally dropped dead of extreme old age last February, and she still hadn't replaced him, so she was going to have to get to where she needed to go by walking.
Well — sort of.
She pulled out her wand — the simple one today, anything else would be drastically out-of-character for the old peasant woman that she was going to appear to be. She released a tiny packet of power, and sent it into the path ahead of her, concentrating on where she was now, and where she wanted to be — the crossroads in the middle of Phaelin's Wood, which would be where she would meet and test the Questers. She held up her staff. "Shorten my way, please," she told the path.
The glowing power circled over her head like a swarm of tiny star-bees, then dropped down and zoomed down the path, out of sight in a moment. The forest became very still for a moment.
And then she felt the path shiver beneath her feet, and braced herself. She knew what was coming. She hadn't necessarily expected this, but this was a forest that the Fair Folk as well as many other magical creatures lived in, and when that happened, even inanimate objects and bits of landscape could take on a life of their own.
The path rose up about a foot beneath her, and suddenly began to move.
She'd done this before, when Bella was still the Godmother.
She remained perfectly still, but the path was carrying her along on top of a little mound, at a pace that a horse would be hard put to equal. The last time she'd cast the Way-Shortening spell, the path hadn't moved, but every step she'd taken had covered a dozen yards. And the time before that, she'd apparently reawakened the remnants of an "All Forests Are One" spell, because she just strolled down the path a few yards and found herself where she wanted to be.
It was a chancy thing, living in a magical forest. Things tended to get minds of their own. Not long after Bella turned over the position to Elena, one of the few true Fairy Godmothers had paid a call, and had told Elena that the cottage and the forest had once been the home of another of the original Fairy Godmothers, and had hinted that this uncanny semi-intelligence of the very forest itself was a common thing where the Fair Folk dwelled. Elena had not precisely gotten used to it, but she was no longer surprised by what happened.
She had also taken to saying "Please" and "Thank you" when the forest responded with something to help her. Anything that allowed her to conserve power was a fine thing, and if the forest was going to help her, she was willing to let it help her in its own way.
Bella had never stood for that sort of thing; when she'd cast a spell, she by-Heaven wanted the same spell to do the same thing, every time, and no free-will nonsense. But that took a lot more power — and perhaps because of coming from a childhood where the next meal was not taken for granted, Elena did not feel at all comfortable with simply using all the power that was available to her. instead, her style was to use the minimum possible to get the result she wanted, and if the means to that result was a bit unnerving now and again, well, that was the chance she was willing to take.
Elena leaned forward a little, into the wind created by her passing, and the path responded by speeding up still more. She hoped that there was no one else actually on this path — if she came up on them before they had a chance to get out of the way, they'd be bowled over like tenpins. As it was, there were half a dozen small animals left scattered to the right and left of the path in her wake.
Still, it was a novel form of transportation, and peculiarly enjoyable — like running, but without the effort. She was almost disappointed when she felt the path begin to slow, recognized the landmarks, and knew she was nearly at journey's end.
The path dropped her gently where the road that would ultimately lead out of Otraria crossed the one that led to the Kingdom of Kohlstania. And Kohlstania was, presumably, where the three Princes were coming from.
Elena stepped out into the road and sat down on a stone at the crossroads, taking a little book out of her pocket. Now this was a very useful bit of conjury that she had worked out for herself, and she was terribly proud of it. Working with the spell that allowed a Godmother or other powerful magician to copy his or her chronicles to the libraries of other magicians, this little book was able to repeat what was on the pages of every other book in her library, if she knew what to ask for.
She opened the blank pages, waved the head of her staff over them, and let a little sparkle of power drift down over them. "The current Royal Family of Kohlstania, please," she ordered.
Something
appeared, like blurred writing beneath a smudge; a moment later, the writing resolved itself, and so did the smudge, and she saw an image of the stern visage of a man who appeared to have never laughed in his life. King Henrick of Kohlstania, read the caption beneath the picture. Widower, three sons —
Yes, those would be the Questers —
— has held the throne for twenty-seven years. Took the crown in — She skipped the rest, and moved on to the next page. Three more smudges resolved into three more drawings. Three young men. Octavian, Alexander, Julian. Well, it was easy enough to see where this tale was going. Octavian and Alexander looked like hard, uncompromising men formed in the image of their stern father. Julian, however, must have taken after the now-gone mother; while no one could possibly say that he looked soft, he certainly looked softer, and there was a very gentle and humorous look to his eyes that Elena liked quite a bit.
"Laws, attitude and recent history in Kohlstania regarding magic, magicians, and Godmothers, please," she said aloud, and the pages filled with notations. She read through it all swiftly; nothing there to be particularly concerned about, although there had not been any magical intervention in a major way in the Kingdom for three generations. There was, in fact, no one alive there who had any experience of any magician more powerful than a Witch, much less a Godmother, and Witches and Hedge-Wizards were creatures that the country-folk depended on, not city-dwellers, and certainly not the upper crust of nobility.
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