The Sleeping Beauty

by Mercedes Lackey

  Rosamund slipped the stem in among the laces of her bodice. “Thank you for thinking of me,” she said. “I prefer scented flowers that are not so showy to scentless ones that produce enormous blossoms. The trouble with many of the lovely flowers in the Royal Garden is that they have no scent. The plantings were established in my great-grandfather’s time, and I would dearly love to remove some of them for choices of my own. But I’m not supposed to ask for change, or the chief gardener will get into a huff and sulk for days, which, apparently, is a disaster.”

  There was an odd moment, like a flicker of chill across his face, that startled her. What did I say to strike a nerve? she wondered, but then as quickly as it had come, the expression passed and she could not be certain it had ever been there at all. How strange…what on earth could that have meant? Was he a gardener in disguise? Was he under the impression that even a gardener could intimidate her? Did he not approve? Did he think that a ruler should have absolute power over servants? Did he think her weak?

  Did he not understand she was joking?

  “How often we are the slaves to our own servants,” he said lightly. “Or perhaps, slave to custom. There are probably good reasons for what seems like a ridiculous condition. Perhaps the beds are so well established that removing the plantings would take an enormous amount of effort and ruin the design of the garden for a decade.” He waved a hand in the air. “I am merely maundering and getting far from the subject I wished to broach to you. I was wondering if, now that there are fewer of us, I might challenge you to a game or two of cards in the evening? Not just with me, of course, but with whoever happens to wish to play. It would be a little more mentally challenging than walking around and around the gardens, as enchanting as they are.” There was a certain sharp look to his gaze, as if he expected her to refuse, and intended to persuade her.

  However, she was perfectly willing to agree without the persuasion. Of course, she wasn’t going to let him know that. That would spoil the game. “I think that might be arranged,” she replied noncommittally. “I will see what I can do.”

  He bowed again, at just the right moment, and backed away. As always, he did everything at just the right moment. She wondered how he did it, even as she moved on to other guests. But from time to time, as the scent of that little ruffled flower came to her nose, she smiled.

  While Rosa circulated among the Princes, Lily and Jimson were plumbing ideas for the next contest. All the windows to the Queen’s chambers stood wide-open to catch every hint of breeze that there was, for now that there were not so many suitors, the sound of distant conversation was far less than the drone of a few bees.

  It wasn’t a question of being able to stage contests—it was a question of having one that everyone could complete. Like the famous knot-puzzle that had been “solved” by a slash of a sword, it wouldn’t serve anything to have one man finish the task in a way that left all the others sitting on their proverbial thumbs.

  And there was the matter of what they were going to test.

  “What about intelligence?” said Jimson. “We don’t need to stage every contest in public. And not that the first two tests didn’t require intelligence, but I was thinking of solving something that is more obviously a problem. Something that requires logic and analysis and thinking.”

  Lily nodded and fanned herself with a sandalwood fan as she reclined on the cool satin of her favorite divan from this room. Since there was no one but Jimson and the servants to see her, she had rid herself of the overpowering weight of the gown and petticoats and corset, and was in a light and frothy wrap designed to be bearable for summer. It was getting very warm now; Midsummer Day was almost on them. “Well, there’s the old classic of separating different sorts of grains or seeds,” she suggested. “And that can be done in all sorts of ways. If you have animals to help, if you have magic, and if you are clever enough to get sieves with holes of three sizes.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t require intelligence,” Jimson countered. “Cleverness, ingenuity or resources, but not intelligence.”

  “Thurman was intelligent—oh!” She suddenly remembered a puzzle that Thurman had set her, and how much the late King had loved logic and riddles. “I think I have it!” She chuckled. “I think our Princes are not going to like it much, however. And we won’t have to set aside anything other than a room.”

  Today, when the contest had been announced, everyone had been afire to find out what it was. When they were all ushered into the ballroom—a ballroom that had been refurnished with thirty-one desks or tables and chairs—no one had quite believed what the trial was going to be.

  But when each of them was presented with a pen, a fat stack of foolscap, and a set of written pages—

  Well it was clear that the contest was going to involve something that brawn could not compensate for.

  Siegfried stared at the first lines on the first page of the stack of paper he had been given. At least it was in a language he could read. His own. That alone was amazing.

  A farmer is standing on one bank of a river, with a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain. He needs to get to the other side of the river, taking the fox, the chicken and the grain with him.

  However, the boat used to cross the river is only large enough to carry the farmer and one of the things he needs to take with him, so he will need to make several trips in order to get everything across.

  In addition, he cannot leave the fox unattended with the chicken, or else the fox will eat the chicken; and he cannot leave the chicken unattended with the grain, or else the chicken will eat the grain. The fox is not particularly partial to grain, and may be left alone with it.

  How can he get everything across the river without anything being eaten?

  Leopold chewed on the end of the quill. This wasn’t entirely foreign to him. He and all his brothers had gotten tested and schooled in a room not unlike this one. And to tell the truth, what they had been tested on was a lot duller than this sheaf of riddles he was being asked to solve.

  What is broken every time it’s spoken?

  Siegfried worked out the business with the chicken after a lot of playing about with possibilities and the utter ruination of several sheets of foolscap as he drew out river, boat, fox, grain and chicken. It finally occurred to him that you could always take something back over the river, and that was the key—you always kept the two things that might eat or be eaten apart by hauling one back. But this puzzle…

  If I say, “Everything I tell you is a lie,” am I telling you the truth or a lie?

  Leopold snapped his fingers as the answer occurred to him, and he quickly wrote it down. Of course! Speak the word silence and you broke the silence! Now the next—

  Hmm.

  Food can help me survive, but water will kill me. What am I?

  Siegfried grinned. That one was easy. It appeared in the old sagas all the time. If only some of the things are lies, then the statement that everything I tell you is a lie will always be a lie.

  He wrote down “lie.” Now the next…

  The one who makes it sells it.

  The one who buys it doesn’t use it.

  The one who’s using it doesn’t know he’s using it.

  What is it?

  Leopold snorted. A child could have figured that riddle out. It was fire of course, which needed “food” in the form of wood.

  He had been worried at first. He wasn’t worried now. If this was the worst they could do, he could get through this.

  A coffin… thought Siegfried. That was…a rather too-morbid riddle. He did not like the way this was going.

  At the end of the day, thirty-one men emerged from the room filled with tables, surprised at the amount of time that had passed. Some were elated. Some were in despair. All were happy to have the contest over and done with. They fell on the cold buffet laid out for them like starving wolves, and many were surprised at just how tired they were after a day of “only” thinking.

  The astonishment came w
hen they all started talking about the riddles and the answers, and compared what they could remember of the riddle test with each other. Because it appeared that no one recalled the same riddles.

  No one.

  “I don’t believe it. Are you sure you don’t remember that one?” Siegfried asked a particularly satisfied Prince Roderick, who was sure that he had done very, very well. The Prince shook his head.

  “And you don’t remember the wizard and the staircase?” the Prince countered. “I thought it was as morbid as your coffin one.”

  “I know I would have if I’d seen it, wretched murdering wizards…” Siegfried said, feeling more than a little confused now.

  He wasn’t the only one. No one was out in the garden tonight. The puzzle just grew and grew, as all thirty-one men conferred and cross-checked, and finally came up with the only possible solution there could be.

  Each of them had answered an entirely different set of riddles. Impossible as it seemed, somehow thirty-one different tests had been assembled and presented to them.

  As they separated, some to go straight to bed, some to drink, some to go straight up in despair and pack, Leopold and Siegfried elected to take the walk out to the King’s Arms. They were such regulars there now that they had a preferred table, and the serving boy brought them their drinks before they even sat down. Everyone else that was a regular there knew they were Princes, and no one troubled them about it. Leopold said wistfully that it was just like that in his favorite tavern, back before he’d left his home. Since in Drachenthal, there were no such things as inns and taverns, Siegfried had merely nodded.

  “That must have taken an immense amount of doing, making up all those riddle lists,” Siegfried said, and shook his head. “I don’t know how they did it. I don’t know how I managed to get through it. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I think if I had known in advance what we were going to do, I’d have packed up and left before trying. My brain feels worse than when Norbert dented my helm.”

  “Well, if nothing else would have convinced me that the Queen is the Godmother, this did. The only way you could do something like that is by magic. There weren’t enough clerks in the entire Palace to have found and written up that many lists of riddles and never repeat one.” Leopold drained his beer and signaled for another, then reached for a handful of the salted, toasted grain in a bowl parked between them. “And although no one said this out loud, I think we all know that the only reason to do it that way is to make sure no one cheated.”

  Siegfried chuckled at the idea of any one of the Princes knowing the runic alphabet in which the language of Drachenthal was written, much less the language itself. “I haven’t seen that much of my own script written out at one time, ever. I think that test was bigger than every book in all of Drachenthal.”

  Leopold smirked at that; the very few times he’d seen Siegfried write something down, he hadn’t been able to make head nor tail of how you were supposed to hold the paper, and never mind what was written on it.

  “I supposed that eventually there would be a riddle contest, but I thought it would be just one fiendishly difficult riddle.” Siegfried sighed. “And I thought it was going to be recited to us. I never thought I would spend a whole day answering puzzle after puzzle after puzzle.” He rubbed his head. “Well, that’s over. We might not have proved we’re scholars, but we proved we aren’t fools, either.”

  “I wonder how many of us were knocked out.” Leopold sighed. “I saw quite a few long faces, and I think there are going to be more empty guest rooms tomorrow. Too much to hope one of them is Desmond.”

  Siegfried shook his head. “Not unless someone stole his paper and substituted another. He’s smarter than he has any right to be.”

  “He’s certainly smarter than I am,” Leopold grumbled. “I couldn’t get him to play cards with me.”

  The next day, there were, indeed, a few new empty guest rooms in the Palace, and there was no announcement of the next contest. It was one of those hot summer days that threatened rain without actually producing it, making people restless and listless at the same time.

  Leopold managed to find himself a card game at last, and proceeded to fleece some of the other Princes.

  At loose ends, Siegfried decided that, although he and Leopold were helping each other as much as they could within the competitions, there was nothing binding them to do so outside of the competitions. If there was any way he could manage to bring himself to the Princess’s attention, well—it might not help him in the contests, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

  And he decided that Desmond was entirely too good at getting and holding the Princess’s attention during the evening. It was time to do something for himself, without Leopold.

  He resolved to get her attention in a different way, and maybe a way Desmond wouldn’t think of. As always, when he needed to think something out, he took a long, solitary walk. By this time, he knew the Palace as well as any of the servants did, and there were plenty of places where most people didn’t go. He just followed the lack of noise while he walked.

  And after due consideration, guided in no small measure by the fact that, while he had been raised by aunts, those aunts had given him most of his early training in fighting, he thought he had a good idea.

  And when Siegfried spotted the Princess alone except for her guards in an obscure hallway, he decided he was going to see if he couldn’t give her something new to think about, as well.

  The only reason he was here was because this hall was on the most shaded side of the Palace, for it led to a portrait gallery, and portraits were notorious for fading in sunlight. That meant it was cool—a good place for pacing. She was passing by the stairs going up to the gallery. He wasn’t at all sure why she was there, but he was going to take advantage of it.

  He bounded down the stairs and intercepted her, bowing comically, since he knew he couldn’t do so gracefully. Her two guards first looked startled, then relaxed when they saw who it was. “Princess Rosamund!” he exclaimed. “Are you busy?”

  She gave him an odd look and a raised eyebrow at his casual manner. Desmond was always formal, so Siegfried had decided to be the opposite. “I’m always busy,” she replied warily. “Do you need something?”

  “Some of your time.” He looked the guards over for a moment. Stout fellows, yes, but from the way they stood—they’d had nothing but standard training. And they were woefully relaxed in his presence. That was a mistake. “Well let me—”

  Just as he had been taught, he went from an unthreatening stance to a blur of action in the blink of an eye. The only thing that slowed him down was knowing that he didn’t want to do anything permanent to either of these boys. He could, all too easily, leave them with broken bones or worse if he wasn’t careful. A sweep of the leg knocked the feet of the one nearest him right out from under him so that he fell heavily to the ground, and a follow-up kick to the chin took him out.

  “—show you—”

  He grabbed the first one’s pike—a stupid weapon in a hallway!—and rushed the second, pinning his arms to the wall with it at the elbows. Now he couldn’t reach Siegfried or his weapons. Bar-fighting tactics, yes, but also the no-moves-barred style of his own people.

  “—what I mean.”

  He felt the Princess behind him, and wondered if she was staring at him in shock.

  “Now if this’d been a real attack on you, this lad would’ve been laid on the ground, too. Hit to his head with my forehead, then a knee to the stomach and then a kick to the groin, he’d be on the floor and you’d be unprotected.” He stared into the stunned and angry eyes of his victim, and tried to convey that he was rather sorry he’d done this—but also not at all sorry, because these fellows were supposed to be protecting Rosamund, not making themselves victims.

  “Not quite unprotected, I think,” came the cold reply right behind him, and he felt the prick of a knife at his kidneys. He grinned.

  “Good!” he said. Then
he snaked his arm around, grabbed the side of her hand and twisted. The knife fell to the floor and she gasped a little, though he had tried to be careful. “I’m fair glad that you know to defend yourself. But I want to teach you how to be better.”

  He let go of her and her Guardsman at the same time, and jumped back out of immediate range of a punch or a weapon. The man instantly started to draw his sword, but Rosamund stopped him with an outstretched hand.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think Siegfried had any intentions of doing anything other than giving us a very pointed lesson. If he’d meant any mischief, you two would be dead, and I would be dead or on a horse by now.” She massaged her wrist gingerly. “You have a strange way of trying to impress a woman, Prince Siegfried.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not trying to impress you.” Then he grinned sheepishly. “Or—all right, I am trying to impress you, but I’m not trying to impress you like the others are. I wanted to make sure you could see that I know what I’m doing, and that you and these good fellows aren’t really prepared to deal with a nasty scoundrel with no compunctions about anything. We both know it’s not going to do me any good if something happens to you before this contest is over. So can I show you some low fighting tricks that a Captain of the Guard won’t teach you?” He glanced at the red-faced Guardsman, and the one on the ground, who was starting to sit up, shaking his head and feeling his chin. “All three of you?”