Alexander thought about Robert; thought about all of the Princes before Robert who had died. Then thought about living — forever — in pain, denied the right to your own throne. It might drive you mad.
"It's thanks to the Godmothers and the Wizards that sort of thing doesn't happen nearly as often anymore. And you lot don't see any of this," Lily finished crossly, handing him a thick wooden comb to get the tangles out of his hair with. "Because that's the way it's supposed to be. Them as don't want to be bothered with magic, doesn't have to see it. Which lets us as is magic go about our business without having to turn the likes of you into toads out of temper. And that doesn't even begin to cover what all the White Mages do, keeping the Dark Court Fae away from you, and the Black Mages in check. So don't you dare even hint that Madame Elena doesn't work."
She reclaimed the soap and her comb, snatched up his filthy clothing, and stalked off. She returned with his dinner and shoved it at him, then stalked off again.
Apparently, no one was going to invite him to the table....
He glanced around and finally elected to sit on another section of drystone wall to eat. He could hear the murmur of voices in the kitchen, and occasional laughter. He wondered if they were laughing at him.
Sunrise to sunset — He didn't have much longer as himself; he'd better enjoy it.
As the sun began to set, Elena reluctantly finished the last of her pastry and went out to look for the Prince. A bit to her surprise — because it wouldn't have been out of keeping with his attitude for him to try to make a few more attempts at escape — she found him waiting in the garden, back in his princely (now clean) clothing again. There was a stubborn set to his chin and a rebellious glare in his eyes, but she ignored both and crooked her little finger at him.
"Down to the stable, my lad," she said, leading the way. Another surprise; he followed.
He had looked quite different in the sort of loose shirt and breeches that common folks wore, with his hair all tousled and rough-combed. He wouldn't have been out of place in the village, though she had to admit, he was quite a bit handsomer than most of the village lads.
Hmm. Break hearts and promises and never give a damn, either, she reminded herself.
As the last light of sunset faded from the sky, she watched her spell take hold again, watched the despair on his face before it turned into that of a donkey. And decided, out of fairness to him, to at least tell him what had happened to his brothers.
She perched on an upturned bucket. "Your brother Julian has won King Stancia's daughter," she began.
"Oh, yes," the donkey grumbled. "With your help. Cheating."
"No, it wasn't," she retorted. "My test was as valid as any of the others, and for your information, twenty young men, both royal and common, passed that same test at the hands of other White Mages. Julian was the twenty-first Quester to make it that far. But he was the only one to get the help of all three wilderness spirits before he got there."
"Wilderness spirits? Was that what you were gabbling about with him?" the donkey asked reluctantly, as if the words were being pulled from him.
"The first was a fox-spirit, whose tail was caught in a tree. That one was fairly obvious. The second was a lark, whose nest was being threatened by a snake; that one, only about half of the Questers spotted. The final one was something you truly had to look for." She smiled to herself, but the donkey noticed; his ears flattened a little, sulkily. "A Queen ant on her maiden flight was caught in a spiderweb; he heard her crying and freed her."
"What good is an ant?" the donkey asked crossly.
"Now, the first task on the mountain was to get into the maze that surrounds it, by going past the lion at the obvious entrance," she continued, ignoring him. "That was where the fox came in; she could slip through a rabbit tunnel dug under the wall and trip the latch to a locked door on the other side. The second task was to thread the maze, and that was where the lark came in; she could hover above and call out the right turnings. But the third task was to separate a bushel of wheat from a bushel of oats and place the oats in one measure of a scale and the wheat in the other. Only if the scale balanced correctly, proving you'd separated them all, would the door to the Sorcerer's Tower open. It was the ants that separated the grain for Julian; the Queen he had saved called on them and got them to help him."
"Those are stupid tasks!" the donkey burst out. "What about fighting a terrible monster, or climbing a cliff? Things that would prove a Quester is a good warrior!"
"What about them?" she replied. "The Mountain itself is enough to prove whether or not you are strong and can endure. As for fighting — " She shrugged. "Any fool can fight. The wise man is one who knows when not to, and when to rely on the cleverness of others."
There was a long moment of quiet; shadows had begun to fill the stable, and she wondered if Alexander had fallen asleep.
"So what was the final task?" the donkey asked suddenly, out of the darkness.
She told him.
"Huh," he grunted. "So where's the cleverness in that?"
"He had to lose without making it look as if he was losing on purpose. Otherwise, the Sorcerer would have known he was stupid, not gallant and willing to sacrifice himself," she replied.
"Huh." Another silence. "Does my father know?"
"Yes," she told him, and left it at that. "Now, I have things to do. Good night."
"Huh," said the donkey as she rose. She waited a moment longer, but there was not even a curt "good night" coming from the shadowy corner of the stall where he stood.
Still no more manners than a donkey, she thought in disgust, and left him alone in the dark.
Chapter 14
Alexander bided his time during the next six days, working — well, like a donkey — waiting for the seventh day when he would be himself again. All right, so he couldn't escape because of that woman's spell. Very well, he would break the spell by breaking her wand. He had tried to remember as many nursery-tales about magic as he could, and every one of them said that when you broke a magician's wand, you broke all the spells that had been cast with it.
And if that didn't work, he had some other ideas.
Sure enough, at dawn on the seventh day, he woke up to find himself in his own shape again, and in his old clothes, with the woman standing over him as before. This time, though, he feigned sleep until his disorientation and dizziness passed, waiting for her to poke him with a toe again.
"Wake up, your highness" she said again, with that smirk in her voice that turned it into an insult. "This is no holiday — "
That was when he jumped up out of the straw, seized her wand before she or Master Hob could react, and broke it over his knee.
At the least, he expected a flash of light and a peal of thunder as all of her spells fell apart.
What he got was a peal of laughter.
In fact, that woman was so convulsed with laughter that she had to hold onto the wall of his stall to keep standing up; she bent nearly double, with one hand on her stomach, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes as she laughed. It was Master Hob who supplied the explanation, around peals of laughter of his own.
"Ye gurt fool!" he howled. "What sort of ignoramuses are they growing in your country? Ye think a magician's power is in a puny thing like her wand?"
His face must have fallen a mile, for one look at it set Master Hob off a second time, and that woman, too. And when she picked up the pieces and fitted them back together again as if the wand had never been broken at all, that just put the icing on the cake for him.
All his energy ran out of him in a single moment, like water out of a broken jug. Utterly crestfallen, he slouched his way up to the woodpile without being ordered, eager to get away from their pitiless laughter. Thank heavens, they did not follow him, and he picked up the axe waiting for him in a foul, angry state of mind.
He worked off his anger on the wood. All right. So his first ploy had failed. He still had a second string to his bow, and he'd bide his
time and watch for an opportunity to try it today. It had to be today; he didn't want to spend another week as a beast.
He wanted to go home.
He had to be careful, though; the one thing he didn't want around when he tried his second plan was a Unicorn.
It wouldn't be hard to carry off, really. The wench was pretty enough; curled, golden hair that she wore without powder (surely a sign that she was base born), sparkling blue eyes, a luscious red mouth that practically begged for kisses, skin like cream. And the peasant-costume she wore most often displayed the best and most interesting of her attributes to the fullest; a pair of ripe breasts that made his groin tighten even when he was around her as a donkey. If he'd seen her working in the castle, he'd have tried for her, assuming Octavian hadn't gotten there first. Of course, his father wouldn't have liked it — he didn't like the idea of anyone trifling with the staff — but he wouldn't have been more than annoyed about it. I'd have gotten a lecture, but no worse than that.
A woman like that, still a virgin — she'd probably been mewed up here with some old stick teaching her magic, never seeing a proper man alone. A waste, that was, a damned waste. She'd be easy, so long as he could corner her somewhere without a Unicorn or one of those Brownies about to interfere. He was angry now, and it made him want to humiliate her, bring her to heel, show her who was the rightful master here. Master! That's what she needed, all right, a master! And women needed that, needed to be shown their place. Whether or not they realized it, they wanted it, too. Especially a base-born peasant. Wooing was too subtle for them. A woman like that wanted to be conquered, wanted to be overwhelmed. That's all these peasants knew, really, they were like rutting animals, no subtlety to their lovemaking. Once she had an idea of what a real man could do, she'd quit this nonsense about "teaching him lessons" and come to heel like a proper wench.
Not before lunch, though. He had to work off his anger, and besides, he wanted the memory of his humiliation to have faded before he tried.
It was after luncheon that his opportunity came. The last of the drystone wall was laid, the woman Lily was off somewhere doing something else and didn't need his hand at watering the garden just then, and he was alone in the kitchen yard. That was when she came by, basket full of some herbage or other, without a Unicorn in tow, and not a Brownie in sight.
He stepped into her path; her thoughts were clearly elsewhere, and she practically ran into him. She stopped; looked up at him with a frown as if just now really seeing him. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, then she shrugged. He moved to block her way completely as she tried to step around him, and her frown deepened, those eyes beginning to take on the hue of storm-clouds.
"Shouldn't you be doing something?" she asked, irritably.
"Yes," he replied, and seized her, crushing his mouth down on hers, ruthlessly, left hand around her waist, right hand thrust into the top of her bodice. For one glorious moment he felt her warm breast under his hand, the nipple hardening against his palm, tasted the faint, sweet taste of her mouth as he thrust his tongue past unresisting lips.
There was a flash of light, and a sound like a church bell booming right in his ear.
Then nothing.
And he woke up, flat on his back, in the straw in his stall, his head aching as if from a dozen blows. And when he tried to move, he realized that every headache he'd ever had, including the other ones her magic had left him with, was nothing compared with this one.
"What's the matter?" cried Robin in alarm, as Elena stormed into the kitchen and threw the basket of herbs at the table. It skidded across the tabletop and landed on the floor.
"That — that — that man!" she shouted, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand to get the taste of him out of it. "He tried to — to seduce me!"
"I warned you," Rose said, dourly, coming into the kitchen and rescuing the basket and its contents. "I told you he was going to be trouble. I'll just take these to the stillroom, shall I?"
"Well, he's trouble with an aching head now," she replied savagely. "And if he tries that again, I'll — I'll geld him!"
"I doubt that'll be necessary," Hob put in his bit, coming in through the door from the yard himself. "But I think I'll just go threaten him with it. After he wakes up from your spell that is. I saw you knock him down just now, and I just dragged him off and put him in the stall, by the way."
"He'll be unconscious for an hour at least." That much gave her some satisfaction; he was going to lose some of his precious time as a man, and serve him right. "I'm going upstairs; leave me alone until dinner, please."
The House-Elves exchanged significant looks, but she pretended not to see them. At the moment, she wanted to be alone to get herself under control again, and not because she was angry.
Or to be completely accurate, not just because she was angry, and not just because she was angry at him.
She ran up the stairs and through the sitting room to fling herself into a chair at the window. Fortunately, the curtains over Randolf's mirror were closed. Not that he couldn't have seen what happened for himself, of course, but at least she wouldn't have to talk to him about it.
Once again she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand in a very unladylike fashion; her lips felt bruised.
Well, he'd be feeling a bit bruised himself when he woke up. She didn't actually know how hard her magic had hit him when she'd finally gotten over her shock; she was so angry that she had lashed out without thinking. He was lucky she hadn't used a killing-stroke instead of the disabling one.
Brute. Beast. How dare he try to overpower her like that? Did he think she was some idiot milkmaid in a bawdy song, ready to spread her legs for the first good-looking man who came her way?
Actually, that was probably exactly what he'd thought.
And The Tradition had done its best to make his thought a reality. Evidently, bawdy songs created as many paths as the Traditional tales did. She would have to remember that from now on.
She'd felt it, when he kissed her; felt it hit her nearly as hard as her spell had hit him. Felt the weight of it crashing down on both of them, making her knees go weak, parting her lips for him, making her secret places feel tight and hot with a rush of longing as she —
She realized what was happening and slashed at the thought with venom.
Damn it! It was doing it again!
Furious now, she got up and splashed cold water on her hot face. No, she thought at it, summoning up images of ice and snow, of frozen rivers and chill grey skies. No, damn you! You will not do that to me!
Half of her wanted to send him away, now, this instant. Sending him away, perhaps to a Wizard, would be so much safer! She would never have to see him again, and surely there was someone she could trust with his education!
Half of her refused to even consider the idea of giving up.
It wasn't only that she hated to concede that she had failed — which she hadn't, not yet! It wasn't only that now that she was looking into his past with Randolf, she had an idea that if she could just get past the arrogance and the assumption of superiority, there was something there that could be worked with. Well, look at Octavian! She would have been willing to bet that it was going to take until winter set in before he humbled himself to appear at Arachnia's castle to offer himself as a kitchen-boy! But there he was, scrubbing pots, submitting himself to the insults of her cook —
"I think it was the Mirrormede," Arachnia had said in her letter, brought by bat just last night. "He managed to find his way to the Mirrormede — you know, that naiad pool I have that shows people what they most need to see. About half the time it shows people the present, about a quarter of the time it shows them what other people think of them, and about a quarter of the time it shows them their future as it will be if they go on as they are. I don't know what he saw in it, but whatever it was, it's shaken him to the core."
Whatever it was — and Elena had to wonder if it wasn't a glimpse of the future — the image
of him that Randolf showed her was a far cry from the arrogant Prince that had passed her by without a word. He was working as Arachnia's lowest stablehand. He took the abuse that her coachman heaped on him without a word of complaint.
And he had begun to take notice of the timid little tweenie who served as the cook's scullery-maid. If he was moved to protect her rather than abuse her himself, that would signal the moment when the ruse would be dropped and Arachnia would send him home.
So; it was clear that Julian was already a decent fellow. It appeared that Octavian was good enough stock to have an unexpectedly swift redemption. So there was plenty of hope for Alexander.
Plenty of hope for such a handsome fellow, with such fine, broad shoulders and hard, strong body, with a face like a young god and hands that knew how to caress a —
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