"That'll thicken the broth so it's more stew and less soup. Fill them up and make 'em less likely to beat you." The old woman held out her hand for the comb, and with a sigh, Rosa handed it to her. "You might boil those shirts with that soap. They won't look any better, but they'll stink less. I'll be back in the morning, ducky, yes I will. Old Maggie keeps her promises!"
The old woman moved faster than Rosa would have thought she could. She was out the door and out of sight around the front of the cottage before Rosa got into the garden.
Her throat got tight for a moment when she realized she was alone again. She might have cried...
But she fought back the tears and straightened.Some sort of help had finally come. It wasn't a handsome prince, or a brave shepherd, or a wise hunter. But it was help, and it was welcome, and if Old Maggie was just a little crazy, she was also very clever. A handsome prince probably wouldn't be able to beat the craft of her shackle, either, and would have done nothing about the floor, her hair or her empty stomach.
On the whole...if The Tradition had finally elected to do something for her, it could have done a lot worse than Old Maggie.
Rosa went and got a spoonful of that harsh soap, stirred it into the kettle outside and put the shirts back in as the old woman had suggested.
Siegfried von Drachenthal stood over the remains of a boar roughly the size of a horse — or rather, leaned against the spear that was still sticking out of said remains. As Heroing tasks went, it had been an average one, but that didn't mean it hadn't been a tough fight. He was looking forward to a big flagon of mead and a slice of this fellow, nicely roasted and served with applesauce. And a bath. Definitely a bath. The peasants whose lands had been ravaged by the Black Boar of Brimsdale approached with commendable caution. They hadn't really believed it when Siegfried had promised he would kill it.
The astonished looks on their faces were quite gratifying.
"You slew the beast!" the village mayor said, gaping at it, then him, then it again.
"I said I would." He shrugged. "It's what I do."
"How can we ever repay you?" blurted an old woman whose fields had been ruined. "You've done what the King would not!"
"Could not, Mother Crey," the mayor admonished. "The King can't be in two places at once, and there's war a-brewing again. He'd have come if he could. He's done so before, and you know it well!"
Now Siegfried straightened, and let go of the spear. This was news to him, and truth to tell, good news. Here he had been doing this King a disservice by assuming he was just a neglectful monarch. But a war — that meant more work for a Hero. And it was a good reason for the King to be busy. "War, you say?"
Many heads nodded. "We've greedy neighbors," the mayor said bitterly. "They'd like nothing better than to swallow us whole — "
He looked as if he was going to make a good long speech, but Siegfried raised his hand to stop him.
"Then this is what you can do to repay me. Give me a good meal, a soft bed and provisions, then set me on the road to the King's hall. And tell me about this war while we eat."
The peasants gaped, as if they couldn't believe they were getting off that lightly. The mayor especially had a look on his face like a stunned calf. "But — "
Siegfried patted him on the shoulder. "There's a good fellow. I am a Hero. This is what I do. And right now, I am a hungry Hero and one in great need of a bath, as well. So let's have a feast and you can tell me about your land and its troubles. Besides — " he laughed " — Kings can afford to pay better than farmers. I shall tell him about the Boar, and let him reward me."
Now he was speaking words they understood; well of course he was going to claim a big reward, but it would be from the King and not from them. With a shout of approval, some went for a cart to carry off the Boar, while the rest carried Siegfried off in triumph to the Inn where the bird waited, perched on the rooftop, singing happily.
The next day, as soon as Coward left for his rounds, Rosa went out into the garden. This time Old Maggie was preceded by a veritable cloud of bees that swarmed around the garden and through the cottage before vanishing. Maggie appeared a moment after they had left.
"They're my little clever guardians, ain't they, then?" Maggie said triumphantly. "And if they find some nasty old Dwarf a-lyin' abed, well! All he'll think when he sees bees is that they're a-swarming, and all he'll think to do is to hide himself under the blanket lest he get stung!"
She cackled, and Rosa managed a laugh, herself.
"Now!" The old woman had a much bigger basket this time, strapped to her back. Out of it she pulled an old, threadbare, but immaculately clean shift, which she handed to Rosa, and a chunk of pinkish-purple soap. "Off with them clothes, pretty, and put this on. Into the cauldron with them and a piece of this — " She handed Rosa the soap. "No need to boil, just get the water warm, like, and then we'll stir, stir, stir."
Rosa scrubbed and rinsed, scrubbed and rinsed; wished she could wash her hair, too, but at least it wasn't matted up like a wild sheep's wool. Finally, as she put the shift back on over skin so clean it felt new, she asked, "Have you heard any news? I heard that the King has a new wife — "
"I only hear what the bees tell me, and they don't care for Kings nor Queens, no more what they do,"Maggie said dismissively. "Nor should you. Kings and Queens and their doings ain't for the likes of us."
Disappointed, Rosa agreed rather weakly. The two of them got to work on the minimum that the Dwarves were likely to expect, which was finished in plenty of time for them to take the slightly damp clothing, mend the tears with needles and thread that Maggie produced from her basket, and for Rosa to put it on again before Coward made his lunchtime appearance.
Maggie returned when he had gone, handed Rosa a meat-and-vegetable pasty, and gathered up the soap, the shift and the comb.
"You look as good as new, don't you, pretty!" she exclaimed, as she helped Rosa braid up her hair in a more tidy fashion. "And Maggie may have some good news for you tomorrow, yes she might! So keep your pretty head down, and don't call attention to yourself, and we'll see what the morning brings, aye!"
Once again, she whisked around the corner and out of sight before Rosa even got a chance to ask what she meant.
The potion was done. Tomorrow Lily would see if the time was right to reveal herself twice over. Tonight, thanks to the bespelled soap, Rosa was safe, still looking like the filthy thing that she had been yesterday. That wasn't a powerful spell and it would wear off; the trick was to make sure it didn't wear off until after the Dwarves got rid of what they thought was a dead girl.
Lily went to bed torn between anticipation and apprehension. With all of the potential of this situation, it wouldn't take much to unbalance it. She only hoped that she and Jimson were fast enough to get The Tradition to work with them, instead of against them.
Chapter 5
Lily was very glad that she had a great deal of experience behind her, for she could not imagine trying to juggle all of this two hundred years ago — or even only a hundred. She was back in the Palace, in the persona of Queen Sable, who had somehow not gotten around to telling the King that his daughter was missing. Or so everyone thought, for everyone seemed to be sending clandestine messages to the King at the northern border.
In actuality, she had told him the moment that she knew where Rosa was. She'd gone in person, assured him that she had the situation in hand and that Rosa was safer with her seven Dwarvish guardians than she was in the Palace, where someone was certainly trying to murder or abduct her. She had lied a little. She'd not told him the conditions that Rosa was in. Eventually, she supposed, it would have to come out, unless she could enlist Rosa in perpetuating the lie, but for right now it was better that he had in his mind the Traditional picture of the happy Princess playing at housekeeping amid a throng of adoring Dwarves. And since she was the Evil Stepmother, there would be no danger of an old woman slipping her a poisoned comb, a strangling necklace, or a fatal bit of fruit or candy.
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br /> So the messages to the King were all going unanswered and unheeded, which only cemented the certainty of the rumors that she had placed a spell on him. This was fine. This was perfect, in fact. The Tradition would be satisfied with that, if such an insensate thing could be said to be satisfied.
The search continued, although no one had gone as far afield as the Dwarves' fetid cottage. The horse had been found, lame, wandering in the forest, and that was where the search was concentrated. No one, not even the Huntsman, had been able to trace back to the point where Rosa had parted company with the wretched beast. The storm that night had obliterated every sign. Lily had the shrewd notion that with the distance Rosa had tried her utmost to put between herself and where she had last seen the Huntsman, as well as the distance traveled underground by the Dwarves, it was extremely unlikely that anyone would ever have found her.
Of course, she had made certain of that now. Spells of confusion for the hounds worked wonders. So did false traces.
Her sturdy Guard Captains were sticking to the Huntsman as if they were all members of the same devoted family. His frustration was cheering to watch.
The interesting, and somewhat alarming, aspect to all of this was that he had not approachedher, nor even tried. This meant he was almost certainly working for someone else; that was a very dark cloud on her horizon.
In the meantime, the Kingdom still needed to be governed, and the King was too busy facing down another army on the border to handle the day-to-day matters. And if Queen Sable was not beloved, she was certainly as good an administrator as Queen Celeste had been. She was rather better at quelling disputes among the nobles: all she had to do was bend a cold and faintly murderous glare on the offending parties, and suddenly everyone remembered more important business.
The administrative tasks, thank goodness, could all be handled by her Brownies. They were good at that sort of thing, and they enjoyed it. Perhaps it had something to do with being able to issue orders that the Big Folks had to obey!
Thanks to Jimson keeping an eye on almost everyone through anything that reflected, she knew who was likely to give her trouble at any given audience. The murderous stare was the best weapon in her arsenal, and she used it freely today. By the time she dismissed them, there wasn't a soul who would have dared to offer a petition, complaint or even a comment. The Lesser Audience Chamber was as silent as a tomb. "Is there any more business?" she asked. No one spoke up. "Very well. This session is concluded. May King Thurman be successful in preventing war, and if he cannot prevent it, may he be victorious. All hail King Thurman."
The courtiers and petitioners mumbled a response of "Hail King Thurman," and quickly shuffled out. She breathed a sigh, and hurried back to her rooms. It was time to become Old Maggie, the Bee-Woman. This was perhaps the easiest disguise she had ever donned, other than the complicated illusion itself. She liked bees, and bees liked her. Best of all, perhaps, bees never caused her any problems.
She stepped through the mirror in the Queen's Chambers into the Hall of Mirrors, picked up the cloak and the basket with the potion bottle in it from where she had left them and stepped through a new mirror, a temporary one, that she had set up just for this purpose. She stepped out of an identical mirror incongruously leaning against a tree. How it got there, she had no idea; the Brownies had managed it for her, as the Brownies managed so much for her. They hadtheir own rules and their own magic — if she was able to give them a day or so to do their work, they could accomplish amazing things. If not, though — well, that was where the ingenuity of a Godmother had to come in.
She shook out the cloak and pulled it on, feeling the persona of Maggie settle into place. The bees began to gather about her immediately. They told her with their dancing that the Dwarves were all gone and Rosa was alone.
She sent the bees on ahead of her, made her way down a mostly overgrown path, and came around the corner of the building. Rosa's face lit up to see her, and she felt a lovely warmth to see it. If they managed to get through this, she knew that she and Rosamund would have an especially close relationship, perhaps making up for the fact that she had held aloof for all of Rosa's childhood.
Rosa looked as if she was on tenterhooks, and well she might be. "I believe I have a solution," Lily said gravely. "But first...you should know I have been deceiving you, though never with malice."
She whipped off the cloak. Rosa gaped at her, blinking. "Godmother Lily!" was all she could manage. She stared, as if she couldn't believe it. "But — oh. Yes, of course. You're trying to force the Traditional Snowskin Path, right?"
"Exactly. Which is why I am also Queen Sable."
If the revelation that Old Maggie was really Godmother Lily had been a shock, this left Rosa reeling. "There were three women vying for the title of Evil Stepmother while your father was staying with Perrin," she continued, as she watched Rosa try to absorb this revelation and process it. "Three genuinely Evil Sorceresses. No matter how much Thurman was protected, it was clear that sooner or later someone was going to take him down that path. So I became just what The Tradition wanted."
"You married my father?" Rosa said incredulously.
"In name only." She smiled wryly. "Is all this making sense to you?"
Rosa suddenly sat on a stump. "I — think so," she replied after a moment. "This is all very sudden."
Lily spread her hands wide. "We were swiftly running out of time to act. This was a joint decision."
"It would have to be." Rosa looked dazed. "Is Father all right? Is there a war? Is — "
"Your father is as well as he can be, there is no war yet, and I've kept him informed as soon as I knew where you were and what was happening to you."
Relief spread over Rosa's face. "Well, I assume you can snap the chain? Break the manacle lock?"
Lily shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. When a Dwarf makes a chain to hold something, believe me, it stays held. They have a magic with metal that even I don't dare meddle with. But I do have a plan to release you, one that will follow the Snowskin Path."
Rosa made a face, but didn't object. "Well, I am glad you told me. I think if I had suddenly found myself paralyzed, I'd have gone mad. The Huntsman was bad enough." She frowned a little more. "But if the Huntsman isn't yours, who does he belong to?"
"Something I am trying very hard to find out," Lily replied. "But let me explain what I have in mind now. The Dwarves will come home and find you dead. After they make sure this isn't a trick, they won't want to have a corpse on their hands, and I fully expect them to unchain you and dump you somewhere in the forest. I'll be watching them. I'll have you taken to a safer place, and lift the spell. We'll decide together what to do from there." It looked as if Rosa was taking this much better than Lily had dared to hope. In fact, the bees were calmly circling both of them, visiting the flowers among the weeds, yes, but keeping them in a protective ring. A good sign. She sat on the grass near Rosa. "If I'd had any notion that the Huntsman was going to attack you so soon, I would have put more effort into keeping a watch over you, or told you what was going on."
The girl smiled wanly. She was certainly game, and resilient. "And if you had, something else would have happened. I've had a bad time, but it could have been much worse. It was Dwarves who found me. It could have been robbers, who wouldn't have thought me too ugly to touch."
Lily shuddered. "From this moment on, I pledge you, you will be entirely in my confidence. I'd also like you to wear this at all times." She pulled a bracelet out of her pocket and handed it to Rosa. Hanging from the fine silver chain was a piece of obsidian cuten cabochon. By Eltarian standards, this was a mere trinket, the sort of thing a milkmaid could own. The back of it had been polished to a mirror finish. Rose examined it curiously, then put it on. "As long as you wear that, I can find you."
Rosa nodded, and fingered it nervously. "So — what do I do?"
Lily took out the potion. "Drink this. That's all. The next time you see me, you'll be free, and we'll plan what we should do
from there."
Rosa's hand shook, but she took the bottle, screwed up her face and drank it down. Before she even reacted to the pleasant taste, Lily cast the net of the sleeping spell on her, the strands of it sparkling a little in the sunlight. She caught the girl as Rosa started to topple over, and laid her gently on the grass.
Lily did not trust to the reflective properties of the little pendant; she left a fragment of broken mirror propped among the weeds of the garden, in a position to reflect Rosa's image. With that in place, she escaped the scene, returning to her larger mirror. She took Jimson's mirror out of the basket, and settled down to wait.
"You timed things well," Jimson remarked, as the Dwarf that Rosa called Coward shambled into the garden, rabbits dangling from one hand, then stopped and frowned.
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