"This was the first Sleeper ever in that Kingdom, so it was important that someone with experience be in charge. No one wanted this one to go wrong, and I had a certain personal interest in the outcome as well."
"Now, now, Madame," Randolf chided from the mirror. "The whole truth, now."
Bella grimaced. "The Sorceress and I have history together. She has tried to kill me on several occasions. I wanted to see her eliminated, once and for all."
"Ah," Elena said, with understanding.
"Now, here's the rub — over the course of this Tale, there have been several Princes who had come close to the site, but none passed the ordeals to come to the point where they were entitled to Faerie aid, so there was no telling the exact moment when I would have to make my appearance. I had to invoke the 'All Forests Are One,' spell in order to get there in time," Bella said, as the story played out, the Prince slaying the Wyrm with his glass sword, and awakening the Princess by ringing the bells of the Palace chapel. "Most exhausting."
Elena already knew about the "All Forests Are One" spell — it was a very important one, that enabled a Godmother or the person she was supposed to guide to cross their paths, no matter how far apart they really were.
"And a good job she made of it, too," said Randolf cheerfully, invisible behind the moving picture of the Prince being greeted by the awakened Princess and her entire Court. "Is that enough, Madame?"
"Quite enough, thank you, Randolf; I'm sure she has the idea by now."
"Randolf shows the future?" Elena hazarded.
The face appeared in the mirror again, and gave an exaggerated sigh. "Alas, no, fair maiden. I show only the present and past. But I show the present as it happens, with enough warning and fully in time for the Godmother to arrive."
Well, that put an interesting complexion on things! Elena had wondered just how Madame had managed to keep track of her all these years, and now she knew.
"Amazing," she managed. The face in the mirror beamed. "Oh, Madame!" it said. "Don't forget the Christening tomorrow. You asked me to remind you."
"Yes, thank you, Randolf. Elena, you may give him his curtains back."
It seemed cruel to imprison the poor spirit behind heavy velvet drapes, but it didn't seem to mind. "Doesn't he get bored in there?" she asked.
Bella laughed. "Ah, my dear, unlike his former mistress, I have freed him to use his powers to look anywhere he cares to. He doesn't need to eat or sleep; what he enjoys is watching over my charges, the Kingdoms for which I am responsible, with some little time to view players, minstrels, and musicians! I give him the freedom and the magic power to enjoy himself when he is not watching on my behalf, and he keeps me apprised of what I need."
Kindness, Elena thought, with satisfaction. A little kindness to Randolf had won Madame a powerful servant. Here, at last, she was in a place where kindness was rewarded. "So you are attending a christening tomorrow?" Elena asked, disappointed, as she thought she was making some real progress in her magic lessons and frankly didn't want them interrupted.
"Oh, yes, a Royal Christening," Madame said, and gave Elena an opaque look. "I'll be there.
"And so will you."
Chapter 7
A carriage had appeared from nowhere, at least, so far as Elena was concerned. It had simply turned up at the door when Madame Bella and Elena had both been gowned and coiffed to Rose's satisfaction. There certainly wasn't a carriage, nor a carriage-horse in the tiny stable, and this wasn't the sort of equip-page you would find in any of the nearby villages. While not large, it was excessively opulent, a little mauve-and-gold jewel-box of a carriage drawn by a single, handsome grey horse, and driven by a curiously silent footman in mauve livery with a great deal of gold braid on it.
Elena, recalling all of the tales, had to wonder if this carriage was really their little farm cart, and the horse that old donkey. As for the footman, well, he could be anything; a frog, a mouse, a rabbit — even old Hob or Robin, transformed.
Their coach took them into the edge of the forest, where Madame paused to invoke the "All Forests Are One Forest" spell.
This was the first time that Elena had seen this Great Magic at work, and it was — remarkable.
Madame got out of the carriage, walked to the road just in front of the horse, and raised her staff, and it was as if she was the center of a whirlwind of the green dust motes of magic — but it was a very slowly moving whirlwind, and a soundless one. Denser and denser they became, and brighter and brighter, until Elena had to squint in order to see, and just as the light became painful, Madame thumped the end of the staff three times on the ground.
The light, the magic-motes, all vanished, and Elena got the strangest sensation, as if someone had dropped the carriage out from beneath her, at the same time thumping her in the middle of her chest.
Madame came back to the carriage and the footman handed her in, quite as if nothing whatsoever had happened. They entered the deep green depths, and no more than a mile later, emerged again. But this time, they were nowhere near the little village that should have been on that road. According to a signpost, they were in the Royal Forest of Leskamidia, very near the Palace. A mile after that, and they came out of the trees and into farm fields, the Palace clearly visible in the middle distance. Within a half hour, the footman was handing them out at the foot of the stairs, lined with guards in handsome uniforms, to join the throng of bewigged, bedecked and bejeweled guests moving into the Great Hall and the Throne Room beyond.
And difficult as it might be to believe, the Godmother was outstanding even in this group. Once again, Madame Bella was resplendent in her full Fairy Godmother glory, with no sign of the eccentric old lady about her. This time, the color of the outfit was a pale mauve, matching the carriage and the footman's livery, which was probably why the Major-Domo who announced them kept referring to her as "Her Grace, the Lilac Fairy." Her jewels were a chain of amethysts and pearls, amethyst rings, and amethyst and pearl buckles on her mauve satin shoes. The lace of her gown was beaded with tiny faceted amethysts, and seed-pearls ornamented the bodice. She was even wearing a tiara of little flowers made of amethysts, with emerald leaves and pearls for centers on her powdered wig. Elena was grateful that, as the mere Apprentice, she didn't have to look nearly as splendid. No tiara, no powdered wig, not even powder on her natural hair; in fact, all that Rose had done with her hair was to make it curl — though apparently even Brownie magic was not sufficient to make it form into neat ringlets. Her gown was a more subdued version of Madame's, with a great deal less of lace and no gemstone-beading at all; her jewels were a simple rope of pearls and her shoe-buckles of plain silver. For the first time in her life, she was wearing satin slippers, and truth to tell, she felt quite elegant enough. She had a wand instead of a staff, though it was a much longer wand than she was used to using now, and for some reason, Robin had elected to put a gilded star on the end of it. "Otherwise, it's just a stick," he had insisted. "People will expect it. How will anyone know you're Madame's Apprentice without a wand with a star on top?"
"The gown just might give the game away," she had pointed out dryly. "It might as well be livery, seeing as we match. And that wand looks, well, silly. Like something out of a book of tales."
He'd waved his hands in frantic triumph. "That's the point!"
She knew when she was beaten. But she still thought it looked silly.
Apparently no one else did, however. People did give her a wide and wary berth, and as she moved through the gathering in Madame's wake, they actually bowed slightly to her, with deeper bows reserved for Madame, who graciously nodded her head in return. That was gratifying, since there wasn't a single one of these people who would have looked at Ella Cinders with anything other than pity and disdain, and fretted lest she somehow dirty the hems of their garments from five feet away.
The Throne Room dazzled with color and light; name a hue, and someone was wearing an elegant, jewel-embroidered suit or gown in that color. Flowers garlanded the
creamy marble walls and were twined about veined marble columns; a thousand scented candles twinkled in sconces and chandeliers. The room was full of delicate scent and light.
It was, to the last detail, the sort of celebration that Elena had only read about — the sort to which not even Madame Klovis could ever have dared aspire. Not one guest here was of common blood; Elena suspected that even the servants considered themselves to be a sort of nobility. And among the dukes and counts and barons, were a sprinkling of another sort of nobility altogether —
Fair Folk. Well, some of them, anyway. The Major-Domo called them all Fairies, and identified them by the colors of their gowns, but that was probably because he didn't know any better, or perhaps, hadn't been told their true identities. Possibly the latter; better to call them all Fairies, for there were some folk who were unreasonably prejudiced against Witches and Sorcerers. Three of the guests were genuine Fair Folk indeed, Elves of the sort that Elena had already seen, gowned in rose, silver, and gold; four were quite powerful Witches, if the haze of power surrounding them was anything to judge by. One was a Sorceress.
Now, Elena only guessed at that last, but there were signs, for someone who had been reading as much of the history of the Five Hundred Kingdoms and The Tradition as she'd been. Fairies were immediately identifiable, of course, by their eyes and ears — and two of them had mischievously elected to cause tiny butterfly-wings to sprout from their shoulders, perhaps in mockery of some of the sillier stories Elena had read about them as a child. The Witches were all in earthy colors — russet, green, wheat-straw, and grey — and their staffs and the ornaments they wore, though fashioned of silver and gems, were modeled on vines, leaves and flowers, or beasts and birds. The one that Elena reckoned to be a Sorceress wore a very dramatic gown of brilliant blue and white, and her ornaments, made of silver, diamonds, and sapphires, were not representations of natural things. She looked a bit spiky, truth to tell, very splendid and aloof — but as Madame crossed her path, she winked at both of them in a conspiratorial manner, and there was a definite twinkle in her eye.
Madame was met by a page as she glided serenely across the ballroom floor, and conducted to the King, Queen, and the new little Princess, with the crowd parting before her as if someone invisible was shoving them aside. The nearer they drew to the thrones, the more tiaras and coronets there were —
Good heavens! Elena thought, catching sight of a haughty little head with a confection of gold, velvet, and ermine atop its ornate, powdered wig. Is that a crown? It is, and there's another! There are foreign Princesses here!
Princes, too, it seemed, as Elena caught sight of another crown, this time on a male head. Elena concentrated on Madame's back, and remembered that she was a Godmother's Apprentice, and that a Godmother's Apprentice didn't gape at the guests at someone else's party.
And then they entered the empty space around the dais, all eyes upon them, and Elena had to remind herself that she belonged here, and that someday it would be she who was the Godmother. It took a lot of reminding; her initial reaction was to want to stammer an apology and run off to the kitchen.
"Madame Bella!" said the King, rising from his throne and descending the two steps to take Madame Bella's free hand in both of his. "I cannot tell you how grateful we are — " He lowered his voice. "But are you sure nothing will go wrong? She did say she would be here, and we've done everything you said, but I just know that she'll find something to be offended by — "
Elena was utterly mystified by some of the King's words, but she had a good idea of the sort of things that Traditionally went wrong at Royal Christenings. There was usually an evil Witch or Sorceress who hadn't gotten an invitation — or if she had, she would find some great affront when she arrived. She would wait until she thought every magician there had delivered up his or her magical gift to the baby, and then descend with her own curse.
The young Queen — both the King and Queen were very young, Elena noticed; certainly no older than she herself was — leaned forward on her throne, one hand protectively on the edge of a canopied cradle spilling over with pink silk and lace coverlets. If anything, she looked more anxious than the King; perhaps he was better at hiding his feelings than she was.
"I've taken care of everything, don't worry," said Madame, soothingly. "But if you want to be sure it will work, Bertram, you and Linette have to look carefree, as if you are expecting no trouble whatsoever."
"We'll try," the King replied, and forced a smile onto his face, kissed Madame's hand, and let her go.
Madame bowed, and retreated with Elena still following like a faithful shadow. She moved off a little ways to the side of the throne, and took up what seemed to be a position, or at least, it felt that way to Elena. "I expect you're wondering what all that was about," she said in an aside to her Apprentice, as she nodded and smiled to other guests who wandered by, bowed to her, and passed on.
"Well, I know all the things that can go wrong at a Christening," Elena replied, dubiously.
"And so do Bertram and Linette; in fact, Linette is one of my Princesses, so she's doubly aware," Madame acknowledged. "Which is why, when their firstborn turned out to be a girl, they sent word begging me to take care of all of the — special arrangements — at the Christening. Not only did I make sure that all of the desirable magicians of the Kingdom got their invitations, I had Randolf spend a considerably store of his free time covering every square inch of this Kingdom, looking for the Evil Sorceress I knew had to be here. Then I made absolutely certain that her invitation was put right into her hands."
"But that's no guarantee — " Elena began, when suddenly —
She felt an inexplicable plummeting of her heart. A chill wind moved across the room, making the candles in the chandeliers flicker, and the guests shiver. Frightened silence spread from a point near the entrance, moving across the crowd like a ripple in a pond.
A shadow passed over the room. People edged away from something that was moving towards the thrones. And in the center of that moving point of silence Elena saw her first Evil Sorceress.
No great surprise, she was gowned all in black. From the shoes to her own tiara, she wore not a single hint of color. Her gown was a black velvet overdress, a black satin underdress, with faceted black crystals winking among the folds. More black crystals made up the tiara in her elaborately-styled ebony hair. Her staff was black, with a black serpent carved twining around it, and it was surmounted by a globe of black obsidian. As she drew nearer, Elena realized with a touch of reluctant admiration that even the black lace adorning her gown was very different from the swags and garlands on everyone else's garb — it had been made in the pattern of spiderwebs.
She glared about her, hostility and anger radiating from her, and it was then that Elena realized that she was, in fact, no older than the King and Queen, or even Elena herself. She exchanged a glance with Madame; hers startled, Madame's knowing. Madame nodded.
Sometimes, the ones who were "supposed" to have the happy endings go to the bad.... There was so much anger in the young woman's eyes, so much resentment, and so much pent-up pain, that Elena could not imagine how Madame was going to stop this creature from just exploding then and there, like a fermenting bottle —
Then, from out of the shadows where he had somehow been concealed behind the blue-and-white Sorceress, another figure stepped.
It was a young man; he wasn't handsome, and he clearly wasn't all that wealthy, but he had the most interesting and intense face that Elena had ever seen. He, too, wore black; a little threadbare, but not ill-kempt. Clearly, though he might be poor by the standards of the rest of the guests here, he was proud, but with the right sort of pride that will not be beaten by so small a thing as poverty, and insists on what Madame Fleur used to call "certain standards." Elena sensed that even if he had to mend and clean his clothing himself, he would be clean and mended. If he had to go without a meal, he would give no hint of it.
He moved into the Sorceress's path as if she w
as a lodestone, and he a needle. And when she paused in surprise, he seized his moment, and her hand, and bent nearly double to kiss it.
"Madame Arachnia, I presume?" he said, and his voice was so melodious that it made Elena yearn to actually hear him sing rather than speak. "Madame, I would never have accepted the invitation to come here this day, if it had not been that I knew that you had also been invited."
The Sorceress was taken so completely by surprise that she could only stare at him in shock. "You — you did?" she stammered, completely taken aback. "But — "
"I had to meet you," he replied, staring into her eyes with hungry intensity. "And please — could we come away from these — ordinary people?" Now his voice dripped disdain for those around him. "I sense that we must talk."
Still in shock, the Sorceress let him lead her, all unresisting, out of one of the double doors that led to the garden.
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