Lily said all of this so matter-of-factly that Elena's head reeled. The house — had she said budding rooms, as if it was some sort of plant? And the books were going to move themselves?
It was, in a way, one thing to work magic herself. It was quite enough thing to hear that it was going to be working without her intervention....
And was she really going to be given the keeping of other Kingdoms? But which ones?
In the course of an hour, once again, her life was taking on a brand-new direction, and one she had never anticipated.
If only she had a way to contact Madame Bella! Right now she badly wanted advice — she wanted to talk to an older, more experienced Godmother! She needed to learn more than Madame Bella had initially taught her, and she had the feeling she needed to learn it quickly.
But wait — there was advice, advice in plenty, already written down and waiting for her. She had only to find it.
"Ah — I see," she said, carefully, and laughed a little. "I suppose you must be used to it by now."
"Oh, aye," Lily said, cheerfully, but shrewdly, and she was watching Elena's face quite narrowly. Elena remembered something that Bella had told her.
"The House-Elves might seem common as clay and without any kind of magic sometimes; don't allow yourself ever to believe that. They're Fair Folk, as truly Fae as any you've seen, through and through; they serve us because it amuses them to, and this house and everything around it is their creation. If they wished to, they could snap their fingers, and it would be gone in an instant, and them with it."
"I'll be in the library, I think," she said. Then, a little nervously, "It isn't going to do anything while I'm there, is it?"
"Bless you, no!" Lily replied. "Whatever it does, it'll be while you're asleep. It knows that budding unsettles the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, and it's sensitive about that sort of thing."
Oh my, she thought. She talks about the house as if it's alive. Then came a more comforting thought. But so is a tree alive, and I've no qualms about walking inside one of them to take tea with a dryad.
And like her house, the dryads' trees were all bigger on the inside than the outside. Perhaps that was what the cottage was; a kind of dryadic tree.
"Well, I'll be in the Library," she repeated, more confidently now. "All evening, probably."
"Very good, Godmother," Lily said, looking pleased out of all proportion to what Elena had just told her. "I'll let the others know."
Now what did I say that's made her smile so? Elena wondered, as she waved the lamps to light in the Library, and prepared a simple Seeking Spell to help her find the exact books she needed. Or — was it what I didn't say?
But she couldn't spare any more time in wondering one way or the other. She had to find out just how it was that Godmothers were assigned more responsibilities — and what it meant to the Godmother in question when it happened.
The Seeking Spell led her to book after book, until she had a pile of them, twenty deep, on the table she used as a desk. She looked at them and sighed. It was going to be a very long night.
Alexander was racked with so many conflicting emotions that he knew better than to be around anyone else, so he strode rigidly off back to the stable. That woman's casual pronouncement had left him both elated and crushed. When he'd realized that Hob had brought back other work animals he had hoped — and simultaneously told himself not to hope — that his term of punishment was at an end. To learn that it wasn't made him want to howl.
But on the other hand —
On the other hand, tonight I go to sleep as myself, and wake up as myself. In a bed! Or at least, in whatever passes for a bed in that loft....
And he realized then that he didn't even know what was up there; he had never been there, and —
— and I guess I was just taking it for granted that Master Hob slept up there. But come to think of it, I never heard any footsteps up there in all the time I've been here, so it must be empty.
He'd gone back to the stable, of course, out of habit. It was nearly dark, and he "should" have been in "his" stall, waiting bitterly for the magic to turn him back into a beast.
Tonight, it wouldn't, and that felt — unsettling.
To shake off the feeling, he sought the ladder that led to the loft and climbed it. Might as well find out what his new domain looked like.
He pushed open the hatch at the top of the ladder, and warm, welcoming light spilled down around him. Blinking, he finished his climb, poking his head up into an odd, but quite comfortable room.
The attics at the Academy had been like this; right under the roof, so that you could only walk upright down through the center. This was a thatched building, but someone had gone to the trouble of putting in tongue-and-groove boarding lining the ceiling so that at least he wouldn't have wildlife dropping into his bed and belongings out of the thatch. There was one very tiny window at each end of the single long room, curtained, with the shutters opened wide to the night air. There was a table under each window and a brass lamp on each table. That made sense; you wouldn't want candles with open flames around so much hay and straw. The lamps looked very heavy; you'd have to work hard to tip one over.
In the center of the room was an odd box that looked like a brick stove, except there was no chimney. He couldn't imagine what it was, so he dismissed it for the moment from his mind.
His bed was on the right; somewhat to his surprise, it was a real bed. Somehow he'd expected a pallet on the floor or something similar. But no, this was a real wood-framed bed, with a dark wooden blanket-chest at the foot of it, neatly made up, faded blue linen coverlet and pillows and all, and if he wasn't mistaken, beneath the sheets and coverlet was a featherbed mattress.
To his left, the lamp shared the table with a floral-figured pottery pitcher and basin. And fitted in under the slope of the roof, down both sides, were shelves. There was clothing on those shelves, and a pair of sturdy boots he didn't recognize, along with the carefully folded and familiar pieces of his princely garb and his riding-boots.
And there were books....
Now that, he had not expected at all.
He hadn't laid his hands on single book except for that strange little history that Lily had given him since he'd arrived here. That, he had read from cover to cover, and had thought about it quite a bit. But here were more books, many more, and though he was not the bookworm that Julian was, he was still fond of reading, and he had missed it.
So the first thing he did, the first things he inspected, were the books.
Now, this was a stable, and these were (presumably) the quarters of a stablehand. He expected books about horses and mules and donkeys.
These were histories and practical books on magic.
And it didn't take very long to discover that, like the book that Lily had gotten into his hands, they were written from, and for, the very peculiar viewpoint of the Godmothers and Wizards.
The Godmother's Book of Days, read one, and that was the one he settled in with, reading propped up in his new (and oh, so comfortable) bed, after blowing out the lamp at the farther end of the room.
Elena glanced out the window of the Library after darkness fell, and frowned for a moment to see a square of light where she hadn't ever noticed a light before. Then after a moment, she realized what it must be, and smiled ruefully.
The room over the stable, of course. So the Prince was in his new quarters.
Probably nothing like what he's used to, she thought, then had to laugh at herself. Of course! Lately he was used to bedding down in straw at the clean end of his loose-box! A bed of any kind should seem like a luxury to him now.
It was certainly better than his brother Octavian's lot. Octavian got an empty stall and slept on what he could find. He hadn't sunk so low as to use dirty straw, but he wasn't allowed the new, clean stuff the horses got. No, the best he could manage was fusty stuff from last year, that had gotten a bit moldy, the thin heap of it covered over with rags. He slept under
several moth-eaten blankets, arranged so that the holes at least didn't intersect.
Octavian would have regarded the clean little loft room with raw envy, and his reaction to the featherbed would have been disbelief.
She wondered what Alexander was thinking. She hoped he was grateful. She wanted him to be grateful; he hadn't been grateful for much of anything in his previous life, instead, he had accepted the good things that had come to him as his due. The more feelings of things like gratitude he could muster, the better off he would be.
Reluctantly she turned her eyes away from the window and back to her books.
Apparently there was some mechanism whereby Godmothers just got authority over Kingdoms as their experience, cleverness, and strength warranted. There was no formal announcement of the fact, it just happened. But there were unmistakable signs that one had gotten the Kingdom; the Witches and Hedge-Wizards would begin reporting information to one, and at some point, the Godmother would have the opportunity dropped in her lap to make some Grand Gesture at the Royal Court. A gesture like —
— like returning a lost Prince, a former failed Quester who has learned his lessons, to his parents —
There it was, unmistakable. And here was Arachnia's latest letter, brought by bat, lying open on the table next to her.
" — and I can't risk ruining my reputation as the Dark Lady by bringing Octavian back myself, Elena. That's the job of a Godmother. So you might want to think about how you want to do this, because I expect he'll be ready within the month, and unless he backslides, I really don't want to risk his health out there in that drafty stable in the winter. My stableman does fine, but he's a troll. No, really, a troll; a good enough fellow, but as stupid as a block of wood and as hard to hurt as a stone. The conditions he likes might kill a man."
Elena chewed on the end of an ivory pen. Arachnia was right; she was much too useful as a stalking-horse, the faux Evil Queen who was actually in charge of a failed Quester's ordeals. She was far enough away from Kohlstania that someone would have to invoke "All Forests Are One" to bring Octavian back. And ideally, in order to wake up Kohlstania to the fact that magic was very much alive and a force in the Kingdoms, as well as to cement King Henrick's change of heart as well as Octavian's changed ways, the return of the "lost" Prince would have to be conducted with a great deal of fanfare.
Which meant —
Which means, I fear, that Kohlstania is now mine. She wasn't certain whether to be pleased or worried. Kohlstania was certainly an orderly place. Perhaps a little too orderly. When things were too orderly, The Tradition had the unsettling habit of stirring matters up by creating an opening for a Dark One to move in.
Well, all right; at least I'm forewarned. I'll have to have Karelina put me in touch with the Witches and Hedge- Wizards. I might be able to nip trouble early.
She made a note of that on the tablet she was filling, right underneath, Octavian? Make him my helmeted Knight-Escort until I reveal him to his father?
She glanced out the window again; the lamp was still burning over the stable. It looked as if Alexander was celebrating his first night as a man again by staying up a bit. She thought she recalled Lily asking for some of the duplicate copies of books in the Library. Had she put them up there? Well, where else would they go?
If so, she hoped he was something of a reader. The more he learned about magic and The Tradition, the sooner he would really come to understand the path that he had made for himself that had brought him here.
A bat flew in the open window and fluttered around for a few moments before catching itself on a beam and hanging upside down, staring warily at Alexander.
He had been startled when it flapped past his ear, but he wasn't the sort to think that bats were somehow evil, or to want to chase it out. The Palace gamekeeper had once had a bat with a broken wing that he'd rescued and nursed back to health before turning it loose, and he'd shown it to the two youngest Princes, explaining how bats ate all manner of insects and were very useful to have about. Alexander had found the tiny thing fascinating, with its delicate wings, soft fur, and miniature features. It was nothing at all like a flying mouse.
So Alexander watched the bat watching him without moving from his bed, and finally the bat had relaxed, dropped off the ceiling, and fluttered around the room for a bit, catching the moths that had been attracted by the lamplight.
The arrival of the bat had been a useful interruption, because at this point, Alexander's head was beginning to feel very full.
When the bat flew out again, having swept the room clean of moths, rather than returning to his reading he put the book aside, and turned over on his stomach to blow out the lamp. And when he had done so, he saw a square of light down below, and in it, the unmistakable silhouette of Elena.
He supposed that he ought to be thinking of her as "Madame" Elena, but somehow the title really didn't fit her. It was like trying to put a collar on a wild doe; you could embellish it with gems and gold filigree all you wanted, but the doe was still a wild thing and would never be a pet. "Godmother" suited her, but only when she was becoiffed and powdered and tripping about on her silver-heeled slippers in court garb. In her ordinary clothing, she seemed, to him at least, nothing more imposing than simply "Elena."
Of course, if he dared address her that way, Hob would probably lay him out on the ground.
He wondered what she was doing; it looked as if she was writing, or reading, or perhaps both. Well, so much for thinking she was an illiterate peasant.
He wasn't doing very well on his analysis of the situation that he had found himself in. Truth to tell, he'd fouled it up almost beyond recognition with his assumptions. For someone who was supposed to be trained in assessing conditions correctly and making the right decisions based on those assessments, he was doing a damned poor job of it. And to think he was supposed to become Octavian's Commander-in-Chief! If this was how he would have fared in a war, maybe the Academy hadn't trained him all that well after all.
From what he had read in the Godmother's Book of Days, he was what was known as a Quester. Or, to be more accurate, a Failed Quester. It was his brother Julian who was the real Quester; Julian had succeeded. He had passed the trials and won the Princess. Alexander and Octavian had failed the very first test put in front of them — the test of courtesy.
He had been knighted, and so had Octavian, but he knew now that they had been knights in name only. He knew it now, or rather, acknowledged it, at least to himself.
He wasn't quite ready to confess it to anyone else.
But there was something else that he was finally putting together in his mind that was beginning to make him feel a smoldering anger that was nothing like the anger he had so unthinkingly loaded onto Godmother Elena. The first book he had read had left him a little baffled, referring to something called The Tradition, but in a way that had not left him with any sort of clear definition of what was meant.
In the first chapter of the Book of Days, everything that The Tradition was had been boldly and clearly spelled out. It was that which was making him so angry.
But not at Godmother Elena. Not anymore.
It was quite clear to him now that Elena was doing quite a bit more than the average Godmother to use The Tradition against itself. She should never have brought him here, for instance. Godmothers just did not intervene personally with Failed Questers. There was no place in The Tradition for a Godmother to take the training of a Failed Quester on herself. She properly should have done to him what she'd done to Octavian; turned him loose to wander without being able to get home until he either died or learned his lessons — lessons that would make him a much better King than he would ever have been without this humiliation. And if he died, well, that was too bad — either the second Failed Quester, himself, would survive his lessoning, or Julian would inherit both Kingdoms.
And if Elena had not intervened, it was the latter that was the most likely. The Book of Days had unflinchingly given the odds of a Failed
Quester surviving long enough to redeem himself, and the odds weren't at all good.
Elena had gone out of her way to get both himself and Octavian into situations where, even if they were brought down lower than the humblest commoner, they were not in any danger of dying. Except, perhaps, by being monumentally stupid.
Alexander turned over on his back and stared up into the darkness above his bed. Now that he knew about The Tradition, he had an explanation for something he had felt all of his life — a ponderous, implacable sort of weight hanging over him from the moment he'd been born. He'd often ascribed that feeling to God, the weight of the Almighty's regard upon a young Prince.
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