"Now, my lad," said the little man, "it's time for you to earn your keep and get to work."
Well, maybe he wasn't going to fight where he couldn't win, but he would be damned if he was going to be this woman's slave!
He set all four hooves and refused to move, staring at her and her minion defiantly.
"Ah. So that's how it's going to be," said the woman, when all of the man's hauling could not make him move an inch. "Good enough, then. Hob, tie him up and make sure there isn't a scrap of hay or a grain of corn about. But do put fresh water within reach; I want to teach him a lesson, not kill him or drive him mad." She put both her hands on her hips and matched his defiant glare. "If you won't work, you don't eat."
He snorted angrily at her.
"Very well, have it your own way," she replied. The little man tied his reins short, and left a bucket of water hung within reach. Then he, too, left, and Alexander was alone in the stable.
It didn't take long for him to get bored; there wasn't much to look at. The high walls of the stall cut off his view of anything outside, so he was left with the rough wooden walls, the old bucket on a peg, the manger, and the straw-strewn dirt floor to stare at. The view palled pretty quickly.
He closed his eyes, and listened. Roosters crowed occasionally or a rooster did; he didn't know enough about chickens to tell if there was more than one. Hens clucked, and beyond that, he could hear several sorts of birdsong and jackdaws calling. And someone humming, someone female. He couldn't imagine a Witch humming under her breath, so it must be yet another servant.
His stomach growled. It had been a long time since yesterday's lunch. He buried his nose in the water bucket, and then snorted and choked as the water went up his nose.
It took several tries before he figured out how to drink as a donkey.
The water eased his hunger temporarily, but what began to creep in on him was another sense, so much sharper that it might have been an entirely new one. He could smell everything!
The straw under his feet, for instance, strong and strangely appetizing. The damp earth under the straw. Green growing things, a smell which began to tease him mercilessly with need. Baking bread, which drove him mad with wanting it. The scent of roasting meat which, oddly, was faintly nauseating. A whiff of honey, which made his mouth water.
He'd never actually missed a meal in his life before this. He was behind by two, now.
Could you eat straw, if you were a donkey? He strained at the rope and reins holding his head to the manger, but they were tight, and so were the knots. The straw was just out of reach.
Damn them!
Could he bite through the bonds holding him?
He gave it a try, but the leather was tough and wouldn't yield to his teeth. And the additional lead-rope was thick; even if he could get through the reins, he didn't think he could chew through the rope.
He almost gave up, but the thought of the Witch's smirk galvanized him. He started in on the rope. At least it was something to chew.
Elena heard Randolf laugh, and looked up from her writing. "What's so funny?" she asked.
"He's chewing on the ever-renewing rope," Randolf replied, with unconcealed glee. "Oh, I know it's not that funny, but I can't wait for the moment when he figures out that however many strands he breaks, they always get replaced."
Sometimes Randolf shows his origins a little too clearly to be comfortable, she thought. And the personality traits he picked up from his previous owners. It was like the wicked Sorceress to whom he had belonged to take delight in the pain of others.
She kept her tone light, however; there was no point in rebuking Randolf, as he wouldn't understand why he was being chided. "I think it will be more interesting to see how many meals he misses before he gives in," she replied.
"You ought to let me give him a good hiding," Hob said from the door. She turned her head to see him standing there with his arms full of clean linens. She wondered how long he had been there.
"I'm not going to kill him with kindness; he's already had much too much spoiling in his life, and I've no desire to reinforce that. But I told you before, and I will repeat it, there will be no beatings," she said adamantly. "It will just make him feel martyred and justified. Think, Hob — if you beat him, he'll be certain that he is in the right. Can't you see that? No, we have to do this the hard way. Nothing to make him feel that we are worse than he is. Everything to make him see that our way is the better way."
"Hmph," Robin said from behind Hob, his arms full of clean clothing. "Spare the rod and spoil the child is what my old father used to say."
Elena pursed her lips and frowned. "But he's not a child. Not by our count of years, anyway. No, the lessons he learns have to come from his pain, things that he essentially brings on himself, not from anything we actively do to him."
She returned to writing her part in the tale of Stancia's daughter thus far. She already knew, thanks to another volume that was writing itself down in the library, that Prince Julian had passed the second of his tasks, freeing a fox whose tail had been caught in a log. It was not just any fox, of course, but he was not to know that, and the Fairy Godmother who was responsible for that task did not elaborate on just what sort of "fox" it had been. Prince Octavian was nowhere to be found at the moment, but she wasn't worried. There wasn't much in Phaelin's Wood that could harm a fully armed man the size of Octavian, though by now he was surely getting tired, unkempt, and rather hungry.
Now, if he ran across a segment of road where an "All Forests Are One" spell had been put in place and was still active, there was no telling what he might run into. And, of course, there was always the chance that an evil magician would get wind of his wanderings and intercept him. But that was out of Elena's hands now; Karelina was back in her place, and what happened to Octavian was largely up to her.
And when she began to feel a little pity for him she just thought of his stone-cold expression as he looked right past her and moved on. No, he deserved what he got, and like Alexander, the end of his punishment was in his own hands.
She finished her chronicle and fanned at the ink to dry it. "I think it'll be tomorrow before he gives up," she said, consideringly. "And at the end of six days, I'll have to give him a day as a man, you know."
"Hmm. Dangerous, that," Hob said. "And Madame, we're not much help if he decides to attack you."
"I know; I've planned for that," she replied. "At least, I hope I have."
If missing breakfast had been a torment, missing lunch was an agony. All Alexander could think about was food. The hot summer breeze from the garden brought him the scent of the vegetables out there, and to his surprise, he could identify them by their scent, if he didn't think too hard about it. Not that it helped; if anything, it made it worse. And the scent of baking bread — oh, if there was a heaven for horses, Alexander now knew, intimately, that it was full of loaves of fresh-baked bread. The aroma of fresh-cut grass made his mouth water. The scents of other things were not at all tempting, but the memories of the foods he had enjoyed as a man were maddening. And no matter how hard he tried not to think of them, more memories of sumptuous breakfasts, al fresco luncheons, and amazing feasts piled into his mind to the point where he could taste his favorites. It didn't help at all that there was nothing to see or do in this stall, with his head tied up to the manger. He was able to hear things perfectly well, but it wasn't enough to occupy his mind, and what he could scent for the most part only made him hungrier.
By nightfall he had learned two more things. The first, that not even three buckets of water are enough to keep hunger at bay for long, and the second, that all that water has to go somewhere. That was when his final humiliation occurred, that of having to stand in his own — well. He could only hold it for so long, after all.
If he'd thought it smelled when he was a man, it was a lot stronger to a donkey's nose.
The strange little man came and carried the soiled straw away, but still — he'd had to stand over it for hour
s. He vowed that if he was ever himself again, he would assign a stableboy the task of doing nothing else but carrying away mess as soon as it was made.
It was humiliating. Dreadfully humiliating.
Darkness fell without anyone coming to look in on him but that little man, who elected not to speak to him. When it was pitch-dark in the stable, he managed to fall asleep again, actually standing up as horses did, even with his stomach growling at him.
He woke in the middle of the night, out of restless dreams interrupted by hunger and emotions he couldn't exactly put a name to. It was very dark in the stable, too dark to see anything. His ears twitched, and it was an extremely strange sensation to feel them twitching, to feel the air moving over the surface of them, to be aware of how big they were. He'd never been aware of his ears before, only of the sounds they brought him.
There were owls hooting out there. His ears twitched again, and he realized he could pinpoint where they were, or close to it. They were moving, flying from tree to tree, he guessed, calling to each other. Were they mates?
Why couldn't she have turned him into an owl?
He heard crickets outside the stable, frogs somewhere in the distance; the night was a rich tapestry of sound the like of which he had never experienced before. Was this what life was like for an animal?
Why couldn't she have turned him into a frog? A frog would be better than a donkey.
He heard something else, then. Something coming in out of the forest. Two things; hooved beasts, he thought, walking so lightly they hardly made a sound. Deer?
Being a deer wouldn't be bad.
He felt his nostrils spreading as he tried to scent what it was that was out there. And what he got was a bizarre odor that his donkey-instincts couldn't identify....
It was sweet, with musky overtones. Not horse, certainly not deer or goat — too sweet for any of those. If a flower could have been an animal, or an animal a flower, it would have smelled like that.
"The Godmother said to eat the lilies," whispered a voice out there in the darkness. "Not the peas."
A second voice sighed. "But I like peas," it objected. Then he heard a snort. "Enemy!" it said, more loudly. "I smell — "
"Godmother's," said the first voice dismissively. "A Quester who failed."
"But it is not a virgin!" the second objected, disapproval heavy in its voice.
"It is also not a man" said the first. "And the Brownies are not virgins, either. Let the Godmother deal with it."
"All right, you two!" snapped a third voice that was altogether and detestably familiar to Alexander. His tormentor, the little man with the bad temper. "We figured some of you would be here tonight. Come along; the Godmother wants a word with you."
"But we didn't touch the peas!" objected the first voice indignantly.
"Yet," said the voice of the Witch's little servant, darkly. "Now, come along."
"Will we get to lay our heads in her lap?" asked the second voice, so full of hope and yearning that it made Alexander blink. Then blink again. Why would someone want to put his head in that Witch's lap?
"We'll see," the little servant replied. "Just come along."
The sound of hooves and feet moving off was the last he heard of that conversation.
He finally fell asleep again, falling back into troubled dreams that were interrupted at the first hint of light when the chickens began fussing over something. If anything, he was more hungry — and more stubborn — than ever.
This day was a repeat of the first. At this point, he would so gladly have eaten even the dry straw at his feet that he found himself tearing at the lead-rope on his halter in a frenzy of activity that ceased only when his jaws tired.
That was when he took a good look at the place he'd been gnawing on, and cursed the Witch fervently and thoroughly.
There was no sign, none whatsoever, that he had been chewing on it for most of two days. It was magic of some sort, of course.
More of that cursed magic! A surfeit of magic! When had he ever had anything to do with magic? Oh, he knew it existed, but at a distance. The peasants called on Witches and other magicians to help them, because they were — well — stupid peasants. It was not the habit of the sophisticated folk of the towns to do so; or if they did, they did not do so openly. Certainly not one of the people of King Henrick's Court ever used magicians, for his father prided himself on surrounding himself and his sons with people who were rational and logical, and had no need of magic. Magic was for those who did not have the intelligence to come up with other solutions. Magic was for the weak, for it relied on weak little things like potions and talismans. The strong used their own will and force of arm to bring about what they desired. It appalled him in a way, how quickly he had come to accept so quickly that magic really was strong enough, after all, to bring him to his knees.
And it had. It had brought him to his knees. Because when the little man arrived just before darkness fell, with the last bucket of water for him, he heard himself saying — or rather, braying — "Stop."
The little man looked down his long nose at him. "Oh?" he replied. "You have something to say to me?"
"I'll work," he said, in despair, so hungry now that he was positively nauseous. "I'll work tomorrow."
"I see." The little man put his bucket down, and regarded him skeptically. "So I feed you now, and in the morning, you decide that you won't work, after all. I didn't fall off the turnip cart yesterday, young man."
Alexander shook his head impatiently, unable to comprehend just what that was supposed to mean. "I pledge it. My word of honor. Feed me, and I'll work."
The little man hmphed and glared at him.
"Word of honor. My word as a Prince of the Blood and a knight," he repeated, his temper starting to rise. Just who did this dwarf think he was, to question his word?
"Just now you're an Ass of the Blood, and more like the thing the knight would use to carry his squire's bags," the little man observed, crossly. "And you certainly weren't acting like a knight when you tried to run the Godmother down. But the Godmother said you might make that sort of pledge, and that I was to accept it if you did. All right, then. Pledge accepted."
He left the bucket of water, went off somewhere, and returned with a pottle of hay and a great wooden scoop of something. Alexander felt his nostrils widening again as he greedily drank in the scents, and identified them as not only the best clover-hay, but a scoop of grain as well. The oats went in the manger, the hay in a hay-bag the little man tied to the side of the stall, and then it was a matter of a moment and the little man had the bridle off as well.
Alexander had no thought for him; his nose was deep in the grain and he was on his first mouthful when the man hit him — lightly, this time — between the ears.
"Mind!" the man said sharply. "You're a man, think like one, ye gurt fool! Eat too fast and ye'll founder!"
Curse it! He's right. So though his empty stomach was crying out for him to shove the food as quickly down his throat as he could, he did nothing of the sort. He chewed each mouthful slowly and carefully, counting to twenty before he took the next — and he wasn't taking big mouthfuls, either, just dainty little bites. He didn't shove all the grain in first, either; he alternated. One bite of grain, one mouthful of hay torn from the net, one sip of water.
He would never have believed that anything could taste as good. It surprised him, actually; he'd expected the hay to taste like — well, hay. It didn't; it was a little like dry cake, a little like new peas, and there was just the faintest hint of nectar; in fact, it tasted like new-mown hay smelled, utterly delicious. As for the grain, it was earthy, a little bit truffle-flavored, and a lot like bread-crust from the best bread he'd ever eaten. Well, no wonder horses seemed to enjoy these foods so much! It made him wonder what grass tasted like.
When the little man was certain that he wasn't going to eat fast enough to make himself sick, he took himself off with a grunt and a word of warning.
"I'm not going to
leave you tied up tonight," the man said, "but remember what I said about running away. Try and run off, and you'll soon find yourself in more trouble than you think. If you're lucky, someone will eventually figure out you belong to Madame Elena. If you aren't, the work you'll be doing will make what I have planned for you seem like mild exercise. And if by some chance you actually manage to get into the deep forest — "
Something about the relish with which the little man said that made Alexander look up at him. He was grinning. It was not a sign of mirth.
" — let me just say that the packs of wolves in the forest would find donkey-flesh quite the tastiest thing to come their way in a long time. Fancy yourself being able to take on a wolf pack in your current shape?"
Since Alexander had no illusions about being able to take on a wolf pack in human shape, he shook his head.
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