Once safely in the shadows, she put her back against one of the cool stone walls, and deeply breathed in the night air, only faintly scented with straw and horse and dog.
Dog? She realized with a start that she must be near the kennels. Not necessarily a good thing…the kennels were where the Huntsman had his quarters, and he was the very last person she wanted to encounter in the dark even if he didn’t recognize her.
Just as that thought passed through her mind, she heard the voices.
One was Desmond’s.
What was Desmond doing out here so late at night?
She didn’t recognize the other.
Impelled by concern as well as curiosity, she inched forward until she could hear the two speakers clearly.
“…the progress on hunting that unicorn?” Desmond asked, impatiently. Her hand went unconsciously to the necklace at her throat.
“Slowly, Prince.” That was the Huntsman! “The beast is proving elusive. I find its spoor, but always days old. I took the bait—verified bait, I swear to you—out into the forest, and the unicorn never came near.”
“I want that horn. I need that horn. Besides that, I need the blood, the mane and the hooves, but the horn is imperative.” This was an entirely different Desmond from the one she was used to hearing. Arrogant. Demanding.
And ordering the Huntsman to kill a unicorn. Anger suffused her, and outrage. How dared he! This was her Kingdom’s treasure, in her forest!
“As you say, Highness. Have you any other tasks for me?”
And then, after the anger, disgust. Kill a unicorn? Of all things, a unicorn?
When she told Lily—
“The Princess is proving resistant,” Desmond was saying, snapping her attention back to the topic at hand. “I am going to need you to stand ready to take her at any moment.”
Had he been the one giving the Huntsman his orders all along? Had he been the one who had sent the Huntsman in the first place?
“That won’t be easy, sire,” the Huntsman replied, and she could almost hear the frown in his voice. Sire? “She is well guarded these days.”
And I am going to be even better guarded now that I know about you! she thought with a feeling of shock. The Huntsman she had been wary of, but Desmond? He was in no way related to any of the five enemy Kingdoms on the border! At least…they had thought he was not…
She calculated how quickly she could get help here if she just started running and screaming now—
Not quickly enough. The guards won’t know it’s me. They might not even realize it’s a human sound. It could be taken for one of the peacocks, disturbed, or some other animal. We are near enough the forest that anything could come into the yard and be killed by a dog or kill something else. If she began running and screaming, Desmond and his lackey would have plenty of time to grab her and make off with her before help came. She knew then she was going to have to get away, get to the Palace, raise an alarm—
No, that would not do—it would be her word against his. Between this moment and when she finally organized guards to come after him, the Huntsman could be back in his bed, and even if Desmond was found outside of his rooms, he could say, well, anything. He could deny he was ever at the stables, and he would deny that he was talking to the Huntsman. He could claim that she was dreaming, sleepwalking. She would have no way of disproving him.
No, she needed to get back into the Palace, wake Lily and tell her what she had overheard. Her best bet to catch him was through magic. All this time, they had been watching the Huntsman, not him. Now that they knew what he was up to, they should be able to catch him at meetings with the Huntsman. At something, anyway—
She froze, as she heard a growl behind her, and smelled hot, doggy breath.
“What’s that?” Desmond said sharply.
She knew not to move. That growl had been deep and menacing.
“My hound seems to have found a spy, sire,” the Huntsman replied, in a growl not far removed from the dog’s.
“Well that you set him to watch then,” replied the Prince, and uttered a few guttural words in a language she didn’t recognize. “Now you can call him off.”
She heard a whistle, and the dog padded away. Now! she thought, ready to run for it, and—
Couldn’t move. Not a muscle. She couldn’t even make a sound.
She was barely able to blink and breathe.
“Let’s see what little mouse we’ve caught,” said Desmond, his voice full of cruel amusement. Two dark figures approached her where she was stuck, leaning against the stable wall. The light from a shuttered lantern flashed into her face, and she heard the Huntsman’s swift intake of breath, and then Desmond’s slow chuckle.
“Well, well, well. It looks as if you have managed to snare me my quarry after all,” Desmond said. He tore off the magical bracelet Lily would have used to find her, and threw it on the ground before uttering another handful of words. And that was all she knew….
…until she woke up.
She was not in the stables of her Palace. This place was cold, and it was dank. It smelled like wet stone. It was so dark that at first she was in a panic, thinking she was blind, and she lurched to her feet, fell, smacked her head on stone and saw stars.
That was when a shutter in a door she could not see until that moment grated open, and a light shone in on her, proving that at least she wasn’t blind.
“You’re awake!” It was the Huntsman, and he sounded surprised. “His Highness told me you wouldn’t be awake for half a day yet!”
“Well his Highness doesn’t know everything, then, does he?” she snapped. Her head hurt. Where was she?
The Huntsman laughed. It was the sort of laugh that put cold chills up her back.
“Bold little Princess. Not that it will do you any good. Desmond is the best sorcerer in his generation. He is patient, and thorough, and you are where you cannot escape and cannot communicate with anyone or anything. Not even a mouse or a spider. Every way in which a magician can see at a distance has been eliminated.”
She gulped, the pain in her head forgotten. So that was why they had never caught the Huntsman doing anything other than what he was supposed to! Desmond…
“Your Godmother will not find you a second time, Princess. And in case someone is listening as well, somehow, you may be sure that neither of us will say where you are within your hearing. I myself have been geased against doing so.”
Her blood ran cold. It sounded as if Desmond had thought of everything.
“He is still at the Palace, of course. When your loss is discovered, he will be as horrified as anyone else.”
Of course he will.
“I, of course, will be the logical suspect. When searchers are sent out, he will come here. No one suspects him of anything. Unlike some of the others, no one will demand he take a partner.”
It was logical. There would be no reason to suspect Desmond.
“When he returns here, he will proceed to envelop you in magic. He has specialized in the kinds of magic that—well, to put it simply, make it possible to control one other person. He has studied these things for years. Such spells take a great deal of time to cast, but that does not matter. He will have all the time he needs to make them work on you as there is very little chance that anyone will discover this place. If they do, there would be no reason to think you are here. If you are sought here, this cell is well hidden. His Highness will have sufficient time to wrap your mind in so many, many spells that not even the urge to eat and sleep will be your own. Then, when you are completely his thrall, he will ‘rescue’ you.” The Huntsman laughed again. “Perhaps he will put you to sleep, and wake you with a kiss. You will be overjoyed to be with him by then, and he will reveal to your people that he is the answer to your problem, that his magic can control the enemies of this land and set them against each other instead of Eltaria. You will adore him, and be overjoyed to wed him. Who knows, you might even actually feel those things. You will probably be very n
ext to an imbecile when he gets done draining you of magic, but that won’t matter.”
The slide clattered shut, then abruptly opened again. “There is a bucket of water and a dipper at the rear and to the right of this room. There is an empty bucket in the left. Food and water will be left here when you are sleeping.”
The slide clacked shut, leaving her alone in the dark.
Panic rose in her, and she gave it room to run for a while. That was something she had learned from Lily; when things were at their worst, if you had the space, let the panic run out. Besides, they were expecting this. If she were calm, they would suspect her of being strong, or of having some secret way to get help. If she acted like one of the helpless things they expected, they would underestimate her.
That, she had learned from Siegfried.
So she screamed, cried herself hoarse, permitted herself hysteria. The stone cell echoed with the noise of anguish. She sobbed helplessly as she felt her way around the stone cell on her hands and knees and begged the Huntsman to let her go. She offered immense bribes, and cried some more.
She knew he was out there, listening. She could hear him moving occasionally, or laughing quietly. And when the hysteria ran out, when her eyes were so raw she could hardly see, she felt her way to the pallet she had found and lay down on it.
She hadn’t recognized the language that Desmond had used for his spell-casting…but that didn’t actually matter. Lily had not been teaching her narrowly defined or restricted magic of the sort that those tied to rituals did.
Lily had instead been teaching her how magic worked.
She had learned how to see the constructions that magic made around the person or object a spell was cast upon. It was entirely appropriate to say that a spell was “woven,” because that was what such things looked like, an intricate interlacing of something between thick yarn and thin rope. Desmond had been very careful and very clever not to weave any powerful magic back at the Palace, nothing that he could not have been given by some tame wizard to help him with the trials, or she and Lily would have seen it. Probably he had made arrangements to meet the Huntsman in the forest. Now, however, he was free to weave as many spells as he cared to.
She strongly suspected that The Tradition had a great deal to do with spells working. If it were only following exact ritual that worked, then how could the improvisational magicians get anything done? Yet exact ritual was much, much more powerful than extempore work.
Unless you knew the principles behind how magic worked. And unless you could see completed spells.
“There are many more magicians who work by what they have memorized than there are those who work by knowing the principles of magic,” Lily had said. “There are plenty who can’t see it, and rely on the ritual to do the manipulation for them, rather like a blind person threading a maze that he has memorized. All the Fae can, which is one reason why Fae magic seems so unpredictable to many human magicians. If they need to, the Fae can cast and unmake spells without using any sort of ritual at all.”
Lily did use spells and cantrips all the time, she said—and certainly Rosa had seen her do so. Was that because it was easier? Or was it because The Tradition said that they worked, so—they worked?
Did it even matter? No it doesn’t. My mind is spinning in circles again. The point was, she could see magic. With patience, she could unravel it—
Or maybe, apply what Siegfried taught me about squirming out of a hold. Don’t resist, look for the weak point, then duck under it…Oh, bless you, Siegfried! If magicians thought, well, like humans, they would model their spells, whether they knew it or not, on how humans bound things—grappling, ropes. Ropes could be unwound. The grappling arms could be squirmed out of.
She just had to keep her head…
Desmond had frozen her in place, then had the Huntsman carry her—up. She did her best to conceal her shock when she realized that underneath the cosmetic changes, she recognized that he had carried her up through the cellar to what had once been the Dwarves’ cottage.
It had been heavily fortified somehow. Given how beautifully the stonework fit together, it had probably been the Dwarves themselves who had been forced to labor on it. She recognized the kitchen immediately, although it, and the huge table and stools around it, had been cleaned until the wood of the furniture was a clear gray and the stone of floor and walls was almost white. The blackened beams of the ceiling remained, but the plaster between was snowy. The windows were gone; the entire ground floor had been encased in a layer of stonework, the original door replaced by a new, thicker one. That door stood open on what had been a garden, and now looked like a tangle of wicked thorns as long as a man’s arm. As she looked for magic, they all glowed; they had been magically grown, then.
Oh no… Thorns? Tower? He was using The Tradition, too! The thorns that guarded the Beauty Asleep! No wonder he kept her sleeping most of the time! No wonder the Huntsman had laughed about awaking her with a kiss!
Everything but the table in the kitchen was gone, replaced by new fittings and utensils. The Huntsman carried her up a new set of stairs built along the outside wall in what had been that storage room to a second and much more luxurious room. The original cottage was now the base of a fortified tower.
In the center of the room on the second floor was a chair, covered, rather ominously, with engraved signs. The Huntsman put her in that chair—of course she still couldn’t move, but as soon as she got over the shock of recognition, she began trying to see the bonds of the magic that held her. As she began to make them out, she saw that they were like heavy shackles, one on each arm, one on each wrist, made of braided bands of power. Experimentally, she tugged a little on one of the ends.
It loosened.
Yes! She could do this—
Then heavy footfalls above warned that someone was coming down. Her chair faced the staircase that slanted down the outer wall, and she knew it was Desmond from the moment she saw the too-shiny boots.
The genial manner was gone, replaced by a complete lack of expression. She had seen statues with more animation. By now, she had managed to ease herself free a little, and he didn’t seem to have noticed, so she kept quiet and acted as if she was still paralyzed.
Meanwhile, he went to work.
He began to chant.
And within moments she knew this was going to be a real fight, for her mind, for her very self.
But in the same moment she realized that, she also felt something else. The necklace of unicorn hair lying around her neck began to warm.
Neither the Huntsman nor Desmond had taken it from her; for whatever reason, they hadn’t noticed it. They probably assumed it was from a dead unicorn, not a live one, and couldn’t do anything to help her—and of course, once she was bespelled, Desmond could have it merely by asking her for it. Strictly speaking, it couldn’t help her, she supposed. But the bands of power that were snaking around her, trying to bind her, pulsed with a faint sensation of evil, and the necklace would not allow them to actually touch her.
She didn’t know how long that would last…but the fact it was happening at all gave her the breathing space she needed. I can study how these things are weaving, so I can unweave them, she thought with a spark of anger-fueled energy. But she remembered what Siegfried had taught her about anger, and using it, and not being used by it. She throttled that anger down, letting it become the force behind her concentration, rather than letting it destroy her concentration.
Siegfried had taught her so many things—not just how to defend herself, but how not to be helpless. How to keep still and see a way out of what looked hopeless. He had shown her that, even if The Tradition was trying to steer your fate, you could push right back at it and change it.
She wasn’t going to let The Tradition rule her, and she certainly wasn’t going to let some arrogant Prince who fancied himself a great sorcerer do so. The very fact that he was depending on exact ritual meant he wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was.
He was going to find out exactly how wrong he was.
19
SIEGFRIED WOKE FROM A DREAM OF SHARPSTONE guarding the border, a dream that he knew in an instant was the key to his winning Rosa’s hand. Dragons! He thought with elation. Not all dragons are bad, but they all need a lot of feeding and safe lairs….
But the dream was driven out of his mind by the agony that woke him, screaming, with twenty kitten claws impaling his left foot with red-hot needles of pain.
So much pain that for a crucial moment he was paralyzed. Then his reflexes kicked in—and so did he. The bedclothes went flying.
Fortunately the kitten had better reflexes than he did, and leapt off his foot and out of harm’s way before his reflexes made him do something regrettable to it.
He sat up, eyes bulging, staring at the demon-in-fluff that had lacerated his foot. He tried to get words out, and failed utterly.
“BigMan, BigMan, BigMan!” the kitten mewed, bouncing like a demented ball of wool. “Mama says get BigMan! Mama says BadMans take Lady!” It repeated this in a high-pitched cat-yowl that cut right through his bewildered brain.
By this point, the bird, awakened by the screaming, was flying blindly around the darkened room, screaming “Cat! Doom! Cat! Doom! Cat!”
Siegfried hit the side of his head to clear it, but it was several moments before he managed to fumble a match onto a candlewick—by which time the bird had flown into a wall and knocked itself silly and had to be rescued from the kitten. It was longer before Siegfried could get any sense out of the kitten.
But once he did, he was into clothing and tearing down the hallway to the Royal Chambers as fast as he could go.
Of course, the guards there wouldn’t let him in, but he was shouting so loudly before they grabbed his arms to drag him away that he made more than enough noise to wake Godmother Lily, who came to the door of her rooms herself. More to the point, he made more than enough noise to wake Rosa’s maids, who discovered that she was gone about the time that Siegfried was insisting to Lily that she was in danger, which prompted more shrieking and shouting. Siegfried was at his wits’ end by that point, trying to get someone to listen to what he had to say about the kitten—
The Sleeping Beauty Page 27
