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 The Fairy Godmother
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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.
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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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of nursery-tales, and this did not seem like a family in which nursery-tales were encouraged.
On the whole, that was not a bad thing at all. It meant that none of the young men would even guess she was testing them. She closed the book and put it back in her pocket.
Now, because Elena liked to conserve power as much as possible, she had a number of clever ways to do things using a minimum of magic that Bella would have accomplished with several spells. And the next item she pulled from her pocket was a false nose.
It was a particularly beaky object, carved and colored by Robin, and held onto her face by means of two pink ribbons that tied in the back. Ludicrous, one might say—until she put it on.
For the nose was ensorcelled with a spell of illusion; whoever put it on would appear as an old crone or an old man.
In this way, Elena only ever had to cast one disguise spell; thus conserving her power and allowing her to disguise other people as well, if there was need. She was rather proud of herself for coming up with such a thing.
She tied on her false nose over her real one, and although she felt no differently, anyone looking at her would have seen a bent and feeble old woman with a great beak of a nose and a dowager’s hump. Her hair had gone from golden to white as snowdrops; her face was a mass of wrinkles and her hands were spotted with age.
Although she was standing straight, she would appear to have a dowager’s hump, and her clothing aged just as she had. The colors faded, the seams took on the look of hav
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ing been unpicked and resewn as the cloth was turned and turned again, and the hems looked tattered.
Now she was ready.
She looked down at the crossroads at her feet; there were conventions that any Witch would have followed, the more especially when she knew that someone else would have to take up the task in her place. Karelina had, as expected, cast the tanglefoot spell from this very crossroads.
There were three threads to the skein, one for each Prince, ending in a knot practically at her feet.
She took her staff and touched it to the knot. Tradition must be served; eldest must be tested first. “Octavian,” she said aloud, and a little spark of power jumped from the wand and ran down the thread to release him from the spell and bring him to her.
Prince Alexander of Kohlstania was hot, thirsty, and exasperated. It was quite bad enough that he found himself on this ridiculous “Quest,” though he could certainly understand his Royal Father’s reasoning, but to have been wandering in this stupid forest for days was outside of enough. Now he was sorry he had ever agreed to this—
But I had to, he reminded himself. All of Kohlstania’s immediate neighbors were, if not allies, at least not overtly hostile, but King Henrick had not held his throne for this long by being naive. King Stancia did not particularly care about the politics of the man who would win his daughter and his throne, so long as that man would treat daughter and country alike with care and gentleness. How he treated his neighbors did not matter a whit to Stancia, al
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though he certainly would never actually come out and admit that.
Father is right. We can’t just sit by and hope that whoever won the girl would follow Stancia’s policies. King Henrick could not take the chance that some enemy would win girl and country, and then proceed to sit on Kohlstania’s border and cast covetous eyes on what Henrick ruled as well. Stancia’s land was prosperous, and could easily afford to field a large army. This would never do.
He had gathered his three sons before him the moment that he got the messenger from Stancia throwing open the contest to any and all comers. “You will go to Fleurberg, and one of you will conquer this so-called ‘Glass Mountain’
and win and wed the girl,” he ordered. “If it is you, Octavian, all to the good; we can unite the Kingdoms into one.
If it is you, Alexander, that will be excellent too, sin
ce it will give you a Kingdom of your own. If it is you, Julian—which, may I add, I do not anticipate—” he had cast a jaundiced eye on his youngest son then “—at least we will be spared having to try to find something for you to do with your life.”
Alexander also understood why his father had given his youngest son such a poisonous look. Julian was considered by the King and by his eldest brother to be a fool and a dreamer. Alexander, nearer in age to Julian, was not so sure of that, but he doubted whether Julian had the necessary abilities to go through whatever tests Stancia was going to put in front of them. Most likely he would be eliminated at the first. Poor Julian; he seemed content enough with his lot, but Alexander wondered, sometimes, if it was all a facade.
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But maybe he simply didn’t have any ambition at all, and was perfectly happy with his books and his horses.
Octavian had been the first out of the gates, somewhat to Alexander’s chagrin. He would have thought that being heir to one Kingdom was enough, but apparently not. With the prospect of not one, but two Kingdoms within his grasp, one of which he would not have to wait for (or at least, not very long, since Stancia was well over sixty), Octavian had ordered up his provisioning and been in the saddle within an hour.
Alexander had taken longer; he hadn’t left until later that afternoon, for he had been taking careful consideration of what he should and should not pack, and had decided to forego speed for preparation. He had a packhorse tied to the back of the saddle of his destrier. He did not intend to fail one of the tests because he lacked, say, fifty feet of rope, or a storm-lantern that the wind could not blow out.
When he had left, Julian was still not ready, and oddly enough, he seemed to be taking as little as Octavian.
Furthermore, he wasn’t taking any armor, and in fact, was carrying little more than his sword and a bow by way of weapons.
For a moment, Alexander had considered staying long enough to advise him, but he shrugged the impulse off. Octavian would probably fail this Quest for lack of preparation; well and good, he was the heir, and he already had his Kingdom guaranteed. Julian would fail because of foolishness, and too bad for him; well and good, that would get him out of Alexander’s way.
He had trotted off on his best warhorse in a very posi
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tive frame of mind. This “Quest” should cause him no great difficulty; he was prepared for every possible eventuality. He was the one, after all, who had been sent to military school, and had learned everything there was to know about tactics and campaigns. Octavian, though the elder, could not best him on that score, and Octavian’s haste and greed would probably be his undoing.
Not that he blamed Octavian. Their Royal Father showed no signs of shuffling off the mortal coil any time in the near future, and Octavian was not the sort of fellow to enjoy sitting about, kicking his heels, as the King-In-Waiting. Not that any of them wanted the King to die—or at least, Alexander didn’t think either of the others did—but it was hard to be trained to rule but not actually get a chance to do so.
As for Alexander, he had long ago resigned himself to playing Commander-In-Chief to the Army of Kohlstania under his brother’s rule for the rest of his life. He wanted a Kingdom of his own, and although he would rather it had come without the need to marry some brainless bit of fluff probably spoiled into uselessness by her father, he would put up with the girl to get the throne. This opportunity was not going to slip through his fingers; Princesses and thrones for the taking were not presented to one on a platter every day, even if one was a Prince himself.
He thought that he would be generous once he had won, and find Julian some pretty young heiress to marry, once he had settled into the position. He liked Julian well enough—certainly more than Octavian did, and Julian would be much more comfortable in Alexander’s court than in Octavian’s.
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And far more comfortable than under Father’s eye.
He had been full of these plans right up until he got well into these cursed woods and found the first night falling without any sign that he was going to get out of them before darkness fell. And without any sign that Octavian was on the road ahead of him, either, though initially that didn’t worry him as much as the coming of darkness.
Of course he had made camp—an excellent camp—long before the last of the twilight had faded. And because he had made careful provisioning, he had not gone hungry or cold, either. But he had gone to sleep seriously concerned. For where was Octavian?
He had a map, of course, and a compass, so he could not be lost, and at any rate, the road simply didn’t branch at all until it came to a marked crossroads. Therefore, Octavian must have somehow strayed off the road, unlikely though that seemed. There was, of course, the possibility that he could have been waylaid, but Alexander had interrogated peasants outside the woods very carefully before he went in, and they had all assured him that there were no bandit bands living in Phaelin’s Wood. There might, they said, be a robber or two, but there were no groups of outlaws. And no single robber could have overcome Octavian, even Octavian only lightly armed.
Besides, there had been no sign of a struggle anywhere.
Octavian would never have given up without a fight.
He had gone to sleep still worrying over the problem, and not really even thinking about the fact that this Wood, which he should have crossed in a few hours, was still all around him.
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However, the longer he traveled the next day, the more he began to think that there was something more going on than met the eye. He had certainly been thinking about that very problem when he camped for the second night.
He had gotten out his map and compass at first light, and gone over them, and then his irritation had only increased.
The road on the map ran straight and true right to a crossroads in the middle of the Wood. The road he had been following had twisted and turned like a snake in its death-throes. The road on the Map represented a journey of no more than half a day to cross the Wood entirely. He had been here for two days now, and there was still no sign of the crossroads!
Which left only one answer. And it wasn’t that he was lost.
“Magic,” he said aloud, savagely. Someone was plaguing him with some sort of magical impediment.
He did not like magic. It was not logical, it was not ordered, and any sort of riff-raff could use it. It might have been a very useful weapon in war, but the trouble was, the only time that the so-called “good” magicians would consent to do such a thing was when you were fighting against an “evil” magician. You could employ an “evil” magician, of course, but you could never trust him not to turn on you, and anyway, the moment you made use of such a tool, every “good” magician for hundreds of leagues around would come fight for your enemies because you were using an “evil” magician.
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neither, people who did not answer to any laws that he recognized and could not be depended upon to act logically. He didn’t like any of them. When you fought a man, you should be able to use straightforward tactics on him, and not have to wonder if he was going to set fire to you. When you met a woman, you should be able to tell at a glance what her station in life was, and know what to expect from her, and not have to wonder if she would seduce you or let you think you were seducing her, and then wake up turned into a pig.
No, he did not like magic at all, and if this was King Stancia’s idea of a good first test—
It might well be, too. He’d heard a rumor that Stancia had got the aid of a Sorcerer in setting up this Quest. Sorcerers had a habit of showing complete disregard for such niceties as borders. The Sorcerer might think it amusing to set the first “test” in Phaelin’s Wood, on the Ko
hlstania side of the border.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. He packed up his camp, seething, and mounted his destrier in a foul mood. Magic! It might as well be cheating!
Wretched magicians. Stupid, senile old men who depended on them. Well, he would show them! From now on, he would depend on his compass and not the map, if he had to cut his own road to do so.
He took his compass out of the saddlebag and opened the case with a smirk that swiftly turned to a teeth-clenched frown.
For the compass needle was spinning merrily, with no sign that it intended to stop.
Magic!
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* * *
Elena waited, sitting on a rock in the concealment of a dense clump of birch-saplings, just before the crossroads. She had the advantage that the crossroads itself was on the far side of a relatively cleared space in the forest; she was able to get a good long look at the Questers as they emerged from the denser growth. The first Prince, Octavian, approached on a great bay warhorse looking rather the worse for two nights spent in the forest. He was wearing light armor, but he didn’t seem to have a great deal of kit about him, and it showed in his appearance. From the look of him—moving stiffly, dark circles under his eyes, twigs in his hair—he’d spent both nights on the ground, under the stars, with his saddle for a pillow. All three boys had reminded her of animals, actually—Julian an amiable hound and Alexander an arrogant and rather sleek fox. This one was the gruff wolf, and the resemblance was only heightened by his state.
She waited on her rock, quietly, to see if he’d notice her.
She saw his eyes flicker towards her, then saw, just as clearly, that he dismissed her as unimportant.
Oh, yes, do that. She waited until he was just passing her before speaking up.
“Have ye a crust of bread, milord?” she whined. “They’ve turned me out as too old to work, and I’m perishing of hunger.”
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