And Julian, of course, being the gallant young fellow that he was (and probably hoping that somehow he could wiggle out of the "fate" that awaited him), threw the game. So by losing, he won, which was the whole point of the trial, not the outcome of the game itself.
At this point, of course The Tradition was in full flood, and the moment they set eyes on each other they were passionately in love. The Sorcerer was making certain that the wedding went off unhindered in order to have King Henrick's messengers arrive at the wedding-feast itself. Beautiful timing. This put any idea of Julian returning home out of the question; he was Prince Regnant now, and had his own Kingdom to rule, King Stancia having established Julian and his daughter as co-Rulers, and intending to abdicate in a year or so. So the messengers would return home with the news that the most despised of the three had triumphed, but with only the vaguest hints of what had happened to the other two Princes.
Meanwhile, Karelina in Phaelin's Wood had passed Octavian on to Arachnia. And that was proving to be a stroke of genius. Arachnia and her consort looked the part of Evil Sorcerers, and at this point, they really enjoyed playing the part so long as they could do so without ever harming anyone. So Octavian was now wandering about in Arachnia's forest, a place perpetually shrouded in gloom, dripping with rain, thick with will-o-the-wisps and foxfire, abounding in giant frogs, enormous insects, and colossal spiders. Some of the weirder tribes of the Fair Folk liked to live in such surroundings, and they were all of the mischief-making sort. The place was tailor-made to give Octavian the sort of lesson he deserved, and eventually Arachnia herself would take over the final portion of it, as he was reduced to begging at the door of her kitchen for shelter and work. And when he proved himself worthy, he would be sent home, beautifully clothed and armed, on a finer horse than anything King Henrick had in the stables. Randolf had done some delving into the past for her, and it seemed that Octavian was less of a bully than Elena had thought; the "bullying" was Octavian's clumsy attempt to get Julian to come up to the standard that their father thought was acceptable. It wasn't done out of sadism or spite; in fact, Octavian was dimly worried for his youngest brother, afraid —
Well, what he was afraid of was the sort of thing that one didn't talk about in Kohlstania. But one single conversation that Randolf dug up explained it all. Octavian had been talking to his best friend, the Master-At-Arms of the castle. "Afraid he's turning into a — " Octavian's voice had dropped to a whisper" — a nancy-boy." Both men had shuddered, as at a fate so much worse than death it didn't bear thinking about. Octavian had straightened his shoulders. "Gotta cure him of that, by God," he'd said gruffly. "Can't have that in the family. Disgrace! Besides, Papa'd kill him." And Octavian had then gone about, making his clumsy, simpleminded best effort to turn Julian into a Real Man for his Own Good.
Alexander had missed all of this, of course, having been packed off to the military academy to get him away from Julian's possible "taint."
All of which explained a great deal about the youngest and oldest scions of the Kohlstanian Royal Family. Julian was the rebel, in his own quiet way, and had come out of it all the better man — certainly the more humane man. Octavian desperately needed some of that moral superiority shaken out of him.
But Alexander — Alexander was a different kettle of fish altogether.
He was afflicted with Octavian's sense of moral superiority; he was also afflicted with a case of class superiority. But there was one more little problem with Prince Alexander. It was what the military academy had made out of him.
She sighed. She did not understand it, and could only observe the results, which were dire. There was no apparent connection in his mind between himself and the vast majority of mankind. The only people that mattered were the ones of "his" class and a little below. Everyone else was chattel.
She suspected this was because the military academy to which he had been sent turned out officers that treated their men like little counters on a game-board. Fodder for the front lines, and not human at all. And it was a place reserved only for the sons of the elite of Kohlstania, which only reinforced the cadets' sense of superiority.
Whatever the reason, it would take more than wandering about as Octavian was doing to drive it home to him that he was, when all else was stripped away, no better than any other man, and quite a bit worse than a lot of them.
"I believe he'd better eat in the garden," she decided aloud, and went on to help Robin in the kitchen.
At least he had learned his first lesson as a donkey; according to Rose, who brought him his breakfast, there was quite a pile of chopped and split wood already stacked up for seasoning. Elena had almost brought him his breakfast herself.
Except that she had realized, even as she was reaching for plates, that there was something other than her own thoughts nudging her down that particular path.
And when she realized that, she stopped, closed her eyes, and felt the unmistakable presence of The Tradition.
When Rose brought the dirty plates back, she took a moment to check again. And there was no doubt. The Tradition was trying to fit them into a tale.
At that moment, she thought she could hear Madame Bella, and her warning about what having a Prince hanging about a Godmother could mean.
She tightened her lips, and realized that it was far more important for her to keep the upper hand with him than she had realized. There was no place in The Tradition for a Godmother to be courted honorably by a Prince — therefore, The Tradition would be hunting for some other option that might fit. The most logical one was to fit him in as The Prisoner, which, in effect, he was. And there was a precedent for good magicians holding royalty prisoner in order to facilitate their going through a set of trials. That was the path she wanted this thing to take.
The trouble was, in that case, the magician was usually old and male.
The Tradition was having some difficulty with her being neither.
So the next logical role for Alexander was that of the Seducer, and ultimately, the Betrayer.
And as for her — she remembered all too well what Bella had told her. She was supposed to have been the bride of a Prince, and hence, every unmarried Prince that crossed her path was going to be irresistibly attractive to her. She was going to have to fight that, every moment that he was not a donkey.
Hob was right. The man was trouble.
The problem was, she had taken the situation on; she was honor-bound now to see it through.
"I'm an idiot," she muttered under her breath, and went off to see the Unicorns. The stallions had agreed to let her have as much magic as she wanted — which was considerably less than she was going to take.
There was at least one bright spot in all of this. If The Tradition was going to start trying to manipulate her again, there was going to be magic accumulating around her, magic she could siphon off of herself for the first time since she had become a Godmother. There was a sort of ironic justice in it; she was going to have the magic she needed to fight the will of The Tradition from the magic The Tradition was using to try to force her to its will. And using that magic to fight The Tradition was only going to make The Tradition bring more magic to bear on her, which she could in her turn use to fight it....
It was enough to make a sane person dizzy.
At least she was getting firewood for the winter out of all of this!
Confined to the cottage and grounds as he was, Alexander got his fill of looking at the Witch early in the day. As the sun rose and the heat increased, Hob took him off cutting wood and moved him to carrying water for the Brownie, Lily, to water the garden. At several points in the proceedings, that woman sauntered past with a Unicorn following her like a faithful dog, and finally he muttered something under his breath.
The Brownie had sharper ears than he had reckoned on. "She's not a Witch," Lily said, matter-of-factly, as she carefully watered the base of each of the squash plants.
"What?" he asked.
"She's not a Witch," Li
ly repeated. "She's a Fairy Godmother. Except that she's mortal, not one of the Fair Folk."
He muttered something under his breath. The Brownie evidently took this to mean that he was interested, and proceeded to lecture him at length about Witches, Godmothers and Sorceresses, and how they were different from each other. He got some relief from the lecture when he had to go fetch more water, but not much, since she took it up again where she had left off the moment he returned.
And she asked him questions about what she'd told him, just as if she was one of his tutors! If he didn't answer to her satisfaction, she went on about it until his head was full of it, and he took to paying attention just so she wouldn't natter endlessly about it so much. So by the time he got to take a break for something to eat at around noon, he knew a thousand times more about magicians than he'd ever learned in his entire life.
At least he knew enough not to call that woman a "Witch" again. Though he was damned if he'd call her "Godmother." He thought about "Mistress," with the sarcastic inflection that would turn it into an insult, but decided, on the whole, he'd better stick to what the Brownies called her. "Madame Elena."
Arrogant bitch.
After lunch, Master Hob came and dragged him off to some other work, helping to lay the drystone wall that he had hauled stone for as a donkey. At least Hob didn't lecture.
Finally, though, when he saw that woman wander by three times in the course of what could not even have been an hour, he growled under his breath, "Oh, Godmother, is it? Base-born peasant more like! Belongs in the kitchen, she does; too stupid to recognize her betters, cleaning pots would be good enough for her. Doesn't she ever do any work?"
Hob stopped what he was doing. Stopped dead. And in a cold voice that put goose bumps on Alexander's arms, said, "Don't ever say that in my hearing again."
No threat. No punishment. Just that. And somehow, that simple sentence felt more imperiling than a cold knife-blade laid along his neck.
He coughed. Hob ignored him. Not, as in merely ignored him, but as in, "paid no attention to him because his intelligence was less than that of the village idiot." To say he resented that was an understatement, but he was also not going to push things.
Because thanks to Lily's lecture, he knew what, exactly, the four little people were. Though they might play at being servants, they were Fair Folk, and if the tales of his childhood were anything to go by, they could be powerful. He already knew that Hob was physically stronger than any two adult human men and all you had to do was look at the amount of wall he'd built today, by himself, to know that there was something quite formidable about the Brownie; Hob had magic himself, for sure, because every stone he laid (and he laid them twice as fast as a human mason) was placed perfectly and never moved or shifted. Alexander wasn't particularly anxious to see Hob perform some sort of magic on him.
He must have offended Hob more deeply than he guessed, for about dinnertime, Hob simply got up and stalked off, leaving him there beside the stone wall, wondering what to do. It was Lily who came for him a moment later.
"Come along, young fool," she said, beckoning to him. "You've gotten Hob in a temper, you have, and that takes some doing."
Alexander got up and followed her obediently, as she led the way to the kitchen yard. She pointed at the pump.
"Wash yourself up," she told him curtly. "And yes, I know what you said around Hob. Maybe your kind don't think that much of an insult, but I'm going to tell you why our kind does."
And while he stripped himself to the waist, while he washed himself in cold water and harsh soap until she was satisfied, and while he donned the clean, coarse clothing of a base-born laborer that she handed to him, she told him.
He got the main idea early on; how it was the Godmothers and the Wizards who worked tirelessly to keep things running smoothly. But as she elaborated on her theme, detailing all that Madame Elena had, herself, accomplished in the last several weeks, he found himself grudgingly impressed against his will. It wasn't so much the steering of lives into the most pleasant — or at least, the least harmful — path. It was something else; the way that the Godmothers also served as intermediaries between the world of the fully magical and the "real" world that he had (until now, at least) lived in.
Madame Elena had been doing a respectable amount of what he would call "herding" — protecting the Fair Folk from human encroachment, and the humans from Fair Folk meddling. "Used to be, before there was a lot of Godmothers and Wizards, half the time a farmer wouldn't know when he went out to his barn of a morning whether he'd find his horses lathered up from being stolen for a Wild Hunt in the night, or whether his cows had been milked dry. And as for you so-called highborn lot, well! Used to be unless you had nursery-maids awake all night, and horseshoes over the cradle, you'd end up with a changeling in place of your firstborn! There'd be Fair Folk coming around at feast-time, and woe betide if you failed in courtesy! There's many a noble house was in ruins within a year, or still has some dreadful curse hanging over it, because the door got slammed in some Fae Queen or Elven Knight's face! And then there was what you Mortals used to do to our kind!"
Now, as it happened, this was one aspect of which Alexander himself had direct experience, and no reason to doubt.
When he had first been sent to the military academy, his best friend had been another young Prince, the only other royal scion in the place at the time, Robert of Bedroford. The instructors, and indeed, some of the other pupils, had kept their distance from the likable young lad, for no reason that Alexander had been able to see. His own valet had tried to discourage the friendship, but when he had been unable to dissuade Alexander by indirect means, had finally shrugged and said, enigmatically, "Well, perhaps it won't come, being as he isn't home."
What "it" was, no one would tell him, and Robert had seemed blissfully unaware of the existence of "it."
Then came the morning of Robert's seventeenth birthday.
The two of them had planned to spend it together, once drills and lessons were done, but Robert was missing from his bed at reveille.
Frantic searching and questioning of the servants finally uncovered a single kitchen-girl who'd seen him, just after midnight, going down to the stables, white-faced, and moving like a man in a nightmare. He'd emerged a short while later, astride a huge black, red-eyed stallion, and galloped off into the night.
Now, as Alexander himself knew, there were no stallions of any color, and no black horses, red-eyed or otherwise, in the academy stables. In point of fact, because the academy uniform was a handsome dark blue, all of the academy horses were a carefully dappled-grey, so that all of them matched. And all of them were geldings.
A search party was organized — but it had seemed to Alexander that it was a singularly disorganized party, with no sense of urgency to it. And in fact, nothing was found.
A week later, a letter had come from Bedroford, which Alexander, as Robert's friend, had been permitted to read. Prince Robert's body had been deposited "as anticipated" on the threshold of the Palace by a huge, black, red-eyed stallion at dawn on the morning of his birthday. It was the phrase "as anticipated" that had come as a shock.
Even more of a shock had been the explanation, carefully and clinically given to him. The Royal House of Bedroford, it seemed, was under a curse, incurred when the firstborn son and heir had insulted an Elven Queen and stolen her favorite stallion five hundred years before. Since that time, the firstborn son of every generation was doomed to try to ride the Elven Stallion between midnight and dawn of his seventeenth birthday. Very few of them survived the experience, as the Stallion could, and usually did, perform antics such as galloping along the bottoms of rivers and charging along the tops of mountains where the air was too thin to breathe. And, of course, it could (and did) gallop through the Faerie Realms as well, which contained things that were not meant for mortal eyes. Of all of the firstborn Princes of Bedroford, only three had survived the ride, and of those three, only one had emerged sane.
/> All this Alexander had learned only after Robert's death. His family had hoped that the curse might be subverted if he was not raised at home, that when the Stallion came for him, it would look for him at Bedroford and, not finding him, give up.
Clearly, nothing of the kind had happened.
"Have you ever heard of the curse on Bedroford?" he asked, hesitantly.
She put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, yes. And have you ever heard our side of it?" She didn't give him a chance to answer. "Young fool makes a drunken bet, marches into the High Hall as drunk as a tinker, sits down at the Queen's Table, and treats her like his doxy. Then, if you please, he steals the Black Horse. Bad enough. Except, the Black Horse is her brother, and the bridle he bound the Horse with was made with Cold Iron. He was a year in healing, can't show his face, now, without a mask. He bears the scars and the pain of them to this day; mark one of us with Cold Iron and we suffer from it forever. And thanks to that, he'll never be made King, for our Kings must be without flaw."
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