Fortune's Fool

by Mercedes Lackey

  Sasha impulsively flung his arms around the Horse’s neck. “Sergei, you—”

  “Are wise and noble, yes I know.” The Horse whinnied a chuckle. “Just you capture that bird and don’t let it fly back to—”

  Something small smacked Sasha in the face. He batted at it with a yell, and found himself with a handful of paper bird.

  “—speak of the devil and it shall appear,” said Sergei in a voice heavy with irony.

  “Bah, I need a light now!” Hoping he wouldn’t 334

  Mercedes Lackey

  somehow hurt or insult the bird, Sasha held it carefully in his teeth while he fumbled through his pack in the dark, looking for his fire-striker and the tiny lantern he had bought.

  Suddenly it became much easier to see, and he dug through his things for a good long moment before a polite cough made him look up.

  The Horse held some sort of glowing ball between his long ears.

  Sheepishly, Sasha stopped going through his pack, took the bird out of his mouth, and let it unfold. He peered at the tiny writing, shaking his head, until Sergei somehow made the ball glow brighter.

  “Saints! How can she write so small?” Carefully, he puzzled through the words. Some of it repeated what he already had learned from the Queen’s scholar. But one thing was completely new.

  “This Jinn was imprisoned in a bottle, she says,” he told the others. “One of the maidens was there when it was released by her master. She thinks the bottle has the spell to imprison him again on it, and perhaps—”

  he felt a sudden excitement “—perhaps even the Jinn’s True Name!”

  “None of us are mages, to force the thing back into its bottle,” said Gina doubtfully.

  “You won’t need to be a magician if you have the thing’s True Name,” said Sergei decisively. “Even a child could command it by its True Name.”

  “They’re hunting for the bottle now,” Sasha contin-

  Fortune’s Fool

  335

  ued. “She thinks that they are all safe for now, and says not to make any attempts to rescue them until they find the bottle.”

  “That makes good sense,” Sergei said, as Sasha stared at the tiny heart at the end of the message, and felt his cheeks growing hot. And not just his cheeks. It was a good thing it was dark….

  Even in the middle of terrible danger, she was thinking about him.

  He felt amply rewarded for the way he had handled the Queen.

  Then, as he watched, the ink slowly faded from the page, and the now-blank paper seemed to wait, expectantly, for him to fill it.

  “Should I send it back?” he asked the others, looking up.

  “No,” Sergei said immediately. “It’s too dangerous. If that Jinn can sense spells, every time the bird goes out or comes back, he will know.”

  Sasha looked down at the blank paper in his hand.

  “Wait for my answer,” he told it firmly.

  The paper shivered as if a breeze was about to pick it up. Then, slowly, it refolded itself and a paper bird lay quietly in his hand.

  Sasha searched for a place that was safe to put it, and finally settled on folding it inside a piece of paper, which he put inside the coin pouch that he emptied of coins, and put that inside a stocking, which he carefully folded up, folded the second one around it, and wrapped the bundle inside his spare shirt, which went into his 336

  Mercedes Lackey

  rucksack. If the bird could get out of that, it would be because The Tradition had decided it should.

  Sergei clapped his ears together and the globe of light vanished. “I’ll be going,” he said, with a nod of determination. “So don’t worry, Sasha, I’ll find a way to get to her and tell her the bird isn’t coming back yet. You keep track of those Copper Mountain miners. We’ll need to make sure that when they break through, the girls have that bottle, know the spell or at least the Jinn’s True Name.”

  With that, the Little Humpback Horse turned and galloped off, except that instead of galloping down the slope, each step took him higher and higher into the air, until at last, he vanished from sight.

  They all stared after him in silence for a long time.

  Then the Wolf said, genially, “Well, Prince Fool, I don’t suppose you thought about how you’re going to spend the night on the mountain, did you?”

  “Uh,” Sasha admitted, sheepishly. “No—”

  Maybe the bottle isn’t actually in the Castle at all. That had been Katya’s first thought on waking, and she had hurried into her clothing, made an excuse of breaking her fast on a bit of bread that she took with her, and headed for the Castle outbuildings. It had been like a revelation in the night, that thought. It would have been infernally clever, to put the bottle where the Jinn never went. It could be hidden among all the broken and useless objects in one of the sheds, of course. Or wedged in among the wood in the woodshed—as hot as it was, the only fires Fortune’s Fool

  337

  were being laid to cook things. Or even in the stable—the place was full of horses, donkeys, and mules, all brought by the troops that the Jinn had hired, but no one ever rode anywhere except to exercise a favorite mount.

  Katya decided to start with the stalls first. It would be just like that wretched Jinn to wedge the bottle in under a manger or a watering trough.

  The stables were a substantial stone building with exposed wooden beams and a huge hayloft overhead. She supposed that in the normal climate here the stone was a necessity to keep the horses warm in the winter; now it served to keep them from baking in the heat. When she entered the double doors and paused in the doorway she was met by a breath of cool air redolent with the scent of clean straw, the dryer scent of hay, and just a faint whiff of horse droppings. She was also met by at least two dozen sets of eyes as every beast in the stable turned to look at her.

  She had not been around horses much, but the legacy of the Sea King’s children and the dragon’s blood she had swallowed so long ago meant she could talk to and soothe most animals. The horses eyed her with suspicion, but a few words into the darkness convinced them that she was not an enemy.

  This was just as well, considering that these were warhorses. She went slowly from stall to stall, stopping to speak, and to listen, quieting fears, dispelling suspicion, and convincing them before she ever entered a stall that she was a herd member. These were not Wise animals, 338

  Mercedes Lackey

  merely animals, but they did listen to reason when it was given to them in their own tongue. Even the worst tempered eventually allowed her into their stalls.

  She had finished with the last of the horses and had started on the few mules, when she heard it. She was hunting at the back of a mule’s stall, just under the manger, feeling through the straw when the voice whispered to her.

  “Psst. Sea princess—”

  Startled, her head came up suddenly, and she banged it into the bottom of the manger. Red and black flashes passed in front of her eyes, she saw stars, and sat down abruptly in the straw, her head alive with pain.

  “Ow!” was the first thing out of her mouth, followed by a stream of articulate and literate curses that were neither blasphemous nor prurient.

  She’d had years to develop a vocabulary of invective that wouldn’t offend anyone. It was the sort of thing a princess had to do if she was going to be able to adequately release her feelings.

  She put up her hand and felt the brand new lump on the back of her head, wincing as her fingers probed it. “Ow.”

  “Good saints, princess, I am impressed!” said the voice. “I do not believe I have ever heard anyone call me a noodle-spined bar sinister son of a blind camel and a cactus before.”

  “I’m not,” she replied crossly, slowly getting to her feet and peering over the top of the stall. “I’m not impressed, that is. I can do without being introduced quite Fortune’s Fool

  339

  so intimately to the underside of a manger, thank you.

  Who are you?�
��

  She wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but the ugly little creature, like a tiny horse with the long ears of a donkey and two humps on its back, was not it. “And while I am at it, what are you?”

  “Sergei. Son of the Mare of the North Wind. Called

  ‘the Humpback Horse’ by some.” The beast looked around furtively. “I don’t think there is anyone here to overhear us, is there? I don’t sense anything. Sasha sent me. We all think it’s not safe to send back the bird.”

  She blinked, felt the lump on her head again, and stared at him. How—where had this all come from? Had she hit her head too hard? Was she seeing things, hearing things?

  How could this little fellow have come from Sasha?

  Then it occurred to her: Fortunate Fool. Help from unexpected places. This was Sasha’s Luck at work, the first she had ever seen of it really.

  Of course she knew of the Mare of the North Wind and her sons. The Humpback Horse was the most famous of them, and also the cleverest. How Sasha had managed to get the Horse’s help would probably be a story in itself.

  It was, after all, the way that the Tradition of the Fortunate Fool worked. He went about doing good deeds without thinking about it, just doing them. And The Tradition saw that he got paid back for them.

  But he was probably right about not sending the bird back. “I’ll need to send him information. You got in 340

  Mercedes Lackey

  here, can you get in and out more than once?” she whispered back.

  The Horse smirked. “Easily. Most of what I do depends on looking worthless. If I slip out of the Castle and go wandering off into the desert, who’s going to go out there to retrieve something that looks like me? And even if they tie me up, there has never been rope or halter that could hold me if it wasn’t magical.” He stared for a moment at the lead rope fastening him to the manger. His eyes crossed, and the rope unknotted itself and fell to the ground, followed shortly by the halter that had come unbuckled.

  “In fact,” he continued, “even if a bond is magical, most of the time I can get out of it.”

  Alarmed, she hissed, “The Jinn! He senses spells!”

  “Ah, but it’s not a spell,” the Horse corrected. “It’s just me. Now where was I? Ah, yes. Sasha sent me. There is an ally that is carving a tunnel towards the Castle, evidently as easily as a mouse eats its way through a loaf of bread. Are there any tunnels leading out of the Castle?

  Escape tunnels, perhaps?”

  “One,” she whispered back, fascinated. “How did you guess?”

  “I could sound all superior, and point out that it was the Castle of a creature who was suspicious of everything and everyone, but the truth is, our ally thought of it first,” the Horse replied. He cocked an eye up at her.

  “Well, I presume they have some means of sensing these things, and I was told that if such a thing exists, they are Fortune’s Fool

  341

  going to drive for that tunnel, which should make things easier. Sasha wants you to have the girls ready to get down there at all times. Since at that point it won’t matter, he can send back the bird as the signal that our ally is going to break down the last bit between the two tunnels.

  Then you and they and anyone else you feel moved to rescue can run far away as fast as you can.”

  “We need to get our hands on the Jinn’s bottle first!”

  she whispered urgently.

  “Well, yes, obviously.” The Horse sounded impatient.

  “I might be able to help with that. I knew the Katschei and I knew all the hiding places he had for his heart.

  Well, it wasn’t really a heart per se, it was—never mind, I’m rambling. There are some hiding places. It’s possible your Jinn used one.”

  She nodded. “But what about places like—well, the stables? Unlikely places? Places where people wouldn’t think to look because no one would ever put anything valuable there?”

  Sergei considered that for a moment. “Would you say that the Jinn is subtle?” he asked, with one ear raised.

  “Not—really.” She thought about the little she had actually seen of the Jinn. He had come in with a whirlwind to abduct her; presumably he had done the same with the rest of the girls. That was hardly subtle. He seldom appeared except to briefly watch them—or perhaps it might best be said, to glower at them. That wasn’t even remotely subtle. When he felt a magic spell, he rushed in from wherever he had been, and immedi-

  342

  Mercedes Lackey

  ately threatened whoever he thought had cast the spell, without waiting to see what had actually happened. Definitely lacking in finesse. He had said that he considered them all animals….

  “Not subtle at all,” she said.

  The Horse nodded. “Fire spirits seldom are. Firebirds being the exception, but then, they are female, and gender might have something to do with that.” She got the impression of a smirk, the sort that invited you to join in the joke. “That being so, I think we can eliminate subtlety in the choice of a hiding place. I think we can eliminate creativity as well.” He laid his ears folded over the top of his head. It looked very peculiar, as if he was trying to hold his head down with his ears. “Now, when the Katschei died, I suspect his minions proceeded to flee rather than looting the place. I would in their shoes. He wasn’t called ‘the Deathless’ for nothing, and you never know when a creature like that is going to bounce back from apparent death. So the good saints only know what got left behind. I suppose you’ve found that out to an extent, but I am talking about dangerous things. You might find other items in these hiding places besides the bottle. If I were you, I wouldn’t touch them, no matter how attractive or harmless they appear.”

  She shivered, thinking of all of the deadly potions, possessed daggers, gems and pieces of jewelry that had either curses or inimical spirits attached to them that she had encountered just in her travels. “No worries there,”

  she assured him. “I’d rather not spend my life as a toad.”

  Fortune’s Fool

  343

  “Or worse, find yourself dead and your body hosting the Katschei’s spirit. Or anyone else’s spirit for that matter,” the Horse said darkly. “There are more nasty things in pretty packages in the world than most people would believe. All right. The first hiding place was the most elaborate. There was a fountain in the garden. Is there still a goose in it?”

  “No, not when I got here,” she said.

  He heaved a sigh of relief. “Good. That one was a nightmare. You’d have to be an expert archer to deal with it. Have you looked for a secret compartment under the throne?”

  “Not yet. We were leaving the throne room until last.

  The Jinn is sometimes in it, and it’s generally guarded.” She couldn’t imagine why the Jinn would be in the throne room, but she had caught a glimpse of him there once or twice.

  “There’s a second hiding place in the throne room. If you sit on the throne and stare directly at the wall opposite, you’ll see the reflection of light from the facets of a jewel no larger than a grain of sand. Press that jewel and the hiding place will be revealed. Another hiding place is in the well in the root cellar under the kitchen.

  Lower someone down on the rope. Halfway down is a niche.” The Horse sighed. “The Katschei used all of those before he hit on what he thought was the perfect solution, and that was an elaborate version of the goose.

  There was an oak tree in the forecourt—it’s gone now.

  There was a dragon curled around the foot of the tree.

  In the tree was a chest. In the chest was a fox, in the fox 344

  Mercedes Lackey

  was a rabbit, in the rabbit was another duck, in the duck was an egg and in the egg was his heart. You had to get past the dragon, climb the tree, open the chest, kill the fox before it got away, then kill the rabbit, then kill the duck and break the egg.”

  Katya’s brows rose. “Good heavens. That just shrieks

  ‘I am an import
ant hiding place, look into me!’ Why didn’t he just put a big sign on the tree that said My Heart Is Up Here?”

  “He should have.” The Horse sounded amused.

  “Thank the saints that The Tradition favors villains making mistakes. But we can’t count on that this time.

  The Jinn isn’t in our Tradition. Any mistakes he makes will be due only to himself, not to The Tradition. We will have to be careful as well as clever. I think that bottle is our only hope of really ending this.”

  “Once I find the bottle, Sergei, I still have to read what is on it,” she reminded him. “That brings me to another question, when I find the bottle. Should I move it, or leave it where it is?”

  His eyes widened. “You are careful as well as clever!

  Leave it, by all means, if you can manage to read it without touching it. We won’t actually need the bottle until the time comes to confront him.”

  She smiled. “Thank you for the flattery.” Now the question she really and truly wanted answered. “Sergei—how is Sasha?”

  “Worried sick about you. Missing you. Blushing when he thinks about you. Blushing and other things Fortune’s Fool

  345

  that is, making me wonder how blood can rush to two places at once.” She blushed, but laughed. “And great friends with your father, despite the fact that your father sent a storm to fetch him.” The Horse sounded amused again. “Did your father intuit his existence, scry on you, or did you tell him?”

  “I told him. I’m his agent, it’s my duty to keep him informed.” She sniffed. “Father could use some lessons in subtlety himself. All right. I will try those hiding places right now—if the bottle isn’t there, we’re no worse off than we were before. I will be back before nightfall and let you know of my progress.”

  Or lack of it, she thought, as she left the stable. And she felt her head again. This task was turning out to bid fair to break her skull. Ow.