The Black Swan

by Mercedes Lackey

  As they cautiously warmed to her and included her in their conversations (or at least stopped guarding their words when she was around), so Odile slowly gained sympathy for their situation. Their plight was especially poignant now, when they were almost too tired to eat when they landed, sometimes so weary that they fell asleep on the bank before the moon rose, and spent all of their brief transformation still in slumber. There was something incredibly pitiful about the poor things, curled up on the damp grass in their thin silk dresses, oblivious to everything around them but shivering in their sleep. They would have been far more comfortable as swans, and it was a measure of her father's indifference to their welfare that he didn't simply arrange for the spell to remain in force so that they could at least sleep in peace.

  As soon as von Rothbart left, the flock drifted toward the shore. One by one, they clambered out onto the shore; watching how hard it was for them to accomplish even that simple task because of their weariness, Odile seethed with further resentment.

  But anger was useful in this case; it gave her more energy than usual, enough to reinforce her drained magical power. With that extra boost, she coaxed a rough semicircle of bushes to grow and twine into a windbreak, created another of her flameless "fires" in the center, and induced the grass within the windbreak to grow thick and lush. The swans saw what she was doing and gathered close to her, warming themselves at the fire and tearing tiredly at the grass until the moon rose.

  She began summoning food from the manor; she was determined to do what she could tonight to bolster their strength as well as hers. As they assumed their proper shapes, she thrust bread and cheese and sliced meat at them, urging them to eat. "Father intends a long flight tomorrow," she told them. "But he promises that we'll be where he wants us when he guides us to ground, so we'll all get a proper rest at last."

  The flock accepted her offerings without hesitation—another sign of improvement in their relationship. "He gave us no time to forage tonight, and what will he allow us tomorrow?" asked Catherine in dismay. "I am so tired now I'll never wake before dawn!"

  "That's why I'm bringing food for you," Odile pointed out. "I'll risk his anger if he finds out." She passed Katerina a portion, and the young woman nodded as she held out her hands for it.

  "If we do not eat, we won't have the strength to fly, and he will be angry at all of us," Odette said shrewdly. "Thus far, we have given him no reason to be angry with the flock, but I should not care to thwart him even by a little so near to his goal."

  Odile nodded, as she took a bite of her own meal. One of the little ones nibbled her bread daintily, and offered a shy "Thank you," that pleased her a great deal, although she did not show it.

  The flock ate what Odile provided with birdlike appetites— which was to say, they devoured an amazing amount of food before they were sated; not quite their own weight, perhaps, but certainly far more than one might expect. That was hardly surprising, since they hadn't eaten all day, and by now they must be starving. By the time they finished eating, Odile was even more exhausted than before. If she'd had to do anything more with magic, even something so simple as lighting a candle, she wouldn't have had the strength.

  For that matter, I don't have the strength to keep my eyes open much longer. She knew that after all her efforts today, not the least of which was the fetching of so much food, she was actually closer to dropping into sleep than the rest were. I can hardly keep my eyes open, and the warm fire is only making it harder to stay awake. She was supposed to be watching the flock, but how could she do that if she was asleep?

  I'm not going to watch them, she decided. Where are they going to go? We're in the middle of a forest, and they're already so tired they couldn't manage to run if a bear was chasing them! Even if they tried to slip off into the forest, they'd transform back into swans before they got very far. She considered her own soft- soled, silk shoes, identical to theirs, and laughed at herself for worrying. Those shoes wouldn't protect against anything, and after a quarter of an hour of walking in the woods, shoes and feet both would be ruined. Even though some of the flock had been peasants, used to going barefoot in all weather but winter, by now they all had equally sensitive delicate feet. You had only to look at their hands to know that, for you couldn't have told anymore which were the fine ladies and which had scrubbed floors.

  She yawned, as the others huddled closer to the fire and chatted softly among themselves, speculating about their destination. They no longer watched her out of the corners of their eyes and kept their conversation to inconsequentials around her; their speculations were remarkably intelligent. She decided to lie down in the soft grass, pillowing her head on her arms, listening with her eyes closed.

  "He won't have us too near people, I wouldn't think," someone said. "He doesn't want people to know about us, or see us transform."

  "But if he expects me to be able to prove myself, our home will have to be within reach of people. A few at least." That was Odette,

  "I don't suppose we can expect a castle or something we could live in, could we?" one of the younger girls asked wistfully, "Will he have a manor there, do you think?"

  One of the black swans, older and less hopeful, replied with a bitter laugh. "We'll be fortunate if there's a ruined barn or a cave we can shelter in," she said. "Wherever we go, it will be untenanted land, probably as forested as this place. People don't build castles in the wilderness."

  "No, but they do build hunting lodges, and that might be the answer," Odette replied. "There will be a lake. We'll need one as swans, and he's never taken us to a place where there wasn't Water. There might be a hunting lodge on that lake, and whoever uses it would be the person I am supposed to win over."

  Odile privately thought that there would be no such thing, but decided not to say anything. Once they weren't using all their strength just to fly from one overnight stopping place to the next, she'd be able to husband her resources and create a place for all of them to use, even if her father couldn't be bothered with anyone's comfort but his own. The nights are getting colder, and I have no intention of spending them in anything other than a decent room with a fire and comfortable furniture. And I'm going to sleep during the day in a real bed, even if the swans don't need one. Once again, she felt amusement at her own expense. And here am I, planning on creating a shelter for the entire Hock. I suppose I wasn't as fond of my own company as I thought.

  The speculations drifted on to other things, and she let herself drift into sleep.

  SIEGFRIED reflected with a great deal of amusement that he had not been nearly so virtuous as his mother and her pet minstrel thought. He had not given up women or drink—well, not entirely, anyway. He'd just given up on the single-minded pursuit of both, rediscovering in the process the enjoyment he'd savored in scholastic pursuits before he'd been introduced to the first two pleasures.

  Wine was always available, of course, but now he drank it to savor the taste and aroma, not to get as drunk as possible as quickly as feasible. He discovered, when he no longer kept specific mistresses, that there were plenty of wenches among the servants who flung themselves into his path and bed now and again in hopes of generous presents. He didn't disappoint them in the generosity of his presents, and they didn't disappoint him either. He made it very clear to all of them that he had no intention of keeping another woman—or women—but that didn't seem to make any difference to them. It was a bargain honestly kept on both sides.

  And although he (and by extension, Benno and Wolfgang) were more moderate in their late-night wine-bibbling cum discussions, by no means had they taken to having the discussions without the wine to lubricate their words. The palace cellarer was happier; fewer bottles went missing on a night, and Siegfried found that the less they drank, the better their conversations were. Once again, it seemed a good trade for a slight sacrifice.

  Nevertheless, there were some profound, though less visible, changes in his life. Most of them had to do with the way he conducted himself.
r />   Only he knew how hard it was to keep his mouth shut and accept unasked-for advice and lectures from the "old men" of the Court, especially when the lectures had mostly to do with how depraved and degenerate the younger generation was. The only reward he got out of holding his tongue was that when he responded by looking sober and nodding, the lectures were notably shorter than they had been when he made witty retorts. The counter to that was that now the old goats considered it their privilege to deliver the lectures more often. He also had headaches more often now, caused by the strain of keeping his thoughts to himself.

  It was easier with the men of his own generation, once he managed to convince himself that it was no stain on his own courage to lose occasionally, or refrain from making jests at the expense of those who lost to him. There was an immediate reward; the others became more companionable without trespassing over the boundary of the respect due to him as their prince. That alone was worth a great deal of the trouble he went to, and if he had to bite his tongue to keep from making clever remarks that would have irritated the others, perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing.

  He still had scant respect for the Church in the person of the priest, so that much of his life hadn't changed. He still didn't bother with attending anything other than Sunday Mass. The priest said nothing to him concerning the abandonment of his vigil; perhaps the cleric reckoned it was to be expected, given his past behavior.

  He made a point of watching people, rather than ignoring them as of no interest or importance, and tried to think before he acted or spoke. Because of that, he had noticed that the minstrel Uwe was acting rather oddly of late.

  Uwe was watching him; well, he expected that, the minstrel was his mother's creature, after all. To a greater or lesser extent, Uwe had always watched him. The difference was that now Uwe seemed to be spending time flattering and courting Siegfried, and that was strange.

  The prince pondered that as he watched his mother hold her Morning Court. He still didn't spend much time or attention on court or the affairs of running the kingdom; Queen Clothilde managed that very well and he saw no real reason to worry himself about it. What was the point? She was regent, and would rule until he came of age; until she stepped down, he had no secular power that she did not give him. He was interested in Uwe, not in the workings of the court or the petitions before the queen this morning.

  More precisely, he was interested in seeing if Uwe's influence with his mother had either grown or shrunk. It had occurred to him that Uwe might be working out some long-term plan with Siegfried in mind. Was it possible that the minstrel had a higher position in mind than that of mere minstrel—the position of royal consort? Was he courting Siegfried's favor in hopes of winning him over? Could it be that he actually hoped to marry the queen? Did he, in fact, plan to use Siegfried's influence on his mother to further that goal?

  If he does, he's more of a fool than I thought, Siegfried mused, watching the minstrel through narrowed eyes. However much he disliked Uwe, he had to admit that the minstrel was both a handsome man and a clever one. It was not only Clothilde who admired the chiseled features, the square jaw, the keen blue eyes and silver-streaked golden hair of the musician—but Clothilde was probably the only woman in her court who admired the minstrel's mind as much as his lean body. I've next to no influence on Mother if she's already made up her mind about something. If she hasn't, she's not likely to ask my opinion on something so important, either. Not when she's made it clear how much she dislikes my habits with women. He knows that; he'd have to be blind, deaf, and three times as stupid as the gooseherd to think otherwise.

  No, surely Uwe didn't expect him to do anything to further the minstrel's ambitions with the queen.

  But if Mother decides she does want to wed this minstrel, her courtiers would certainly have something to say about it! Uwe was a commoner without a single noble drop of blood in him, not even from the sinister side. Granted, he had some small fame for his talents, and minstrels did have a specious sort of rank, but when it came to marriage with even the lowest-born woman of rank in the court, although the women might think it romantic, the men would not. As for marriage with the queen, every nobly-born male in the court would be outraged, especially the single ones, who could reasonably expect to have the queen turn to one of them for a proper consort, if that was what she wanted.

  He has to know that. So maybe what he wants is my support in the face of the disapproval of the rest of the court. If the crown Prince and heir was in favor of the union, it would be a great deal more difficult to oppose it. There would be no one to use as a focal point for factionalization, and no one to back as an alternative ruler in order to force Clothilde to give up the idea or face losing her rank.

  That was far more likely, if the situation was that Uwe's influence with the queen had grown to the point that he would dare to press for marriage. Now, if Uwe's influence was waning, he might want Siegfried to plead his case with the queen for him, and that, too, made a certain amount of sense. Although Siegfried would have no influence on his mother if she had made up her mind to be rid of the minstrel, he might be able to remind her of Uwe's past services and loyalty, of his usefulness to her. If Uwe feared she was about to cast him off for a younger man, Siegfried could make some subtle jests about the one or two of the older widows of the court who persisted in making themselves ridiculous by setting their caps at bachelor knights who were younger than their own offspring. That would remind the queen that what was laughable behavior in a mere lady would give fodder for cruel gossip and crude jokes as far away as the Emperor's court if she indulged in it. Of all the things Clothilde feared, being thought ridiculous was probably one of the worst.

  So Siegfried could have a part in turning her attention back to Uwe, Presuming, of course, that Siegfried wanted to do that.

  He watched them for quite some time from the side of the Great Hall, wondering if either of his guesses was correct. He couldn't tell. Nothing in either the behavior of the queen or of the minstrel gave him any indication that anything had changed between them. Uwe stood in the ranks of her advisers, all of them positioned near the throne and ready to be called on at need. He was, however, just as clearly the least of her advisers, as always; farthest from the throne, and at least today, never called on for his opinion or even looked at for more than a moment,

  Siegfried finally sighed and gave it up as a waste of time. Court was enormously boring, and he lacked the patience to sit through very much of it. He slipped out, being careful not to disturb anything or anyone, and retired to the library to join his tutor there.

  Wolfgang had acquired a new prize for the palace library, a copy of one of the plays of Aristophanes—The Wasps—in the original Greek, rather than the more common Latin translation. He could never have afforded such a rarity on his own, of course, but he was empowered to use the Kingdom Treasury for such acquisitions, provided he kept them within reason. Clothilde enjoyed having scholars come to her library to examine or copy manuscripts; it gave her kingdom elevated status as a place of learning and culture. Siegfried was looking forward to many hours of arguing over the nuances of translation, as well as relishing the Greek's cynical brand of humor. The Wasps was a new work to him and, as such, added the enjoyment of novelty and the pleasures of discovery.

  He found Wolfgang exactly where he expected, at the desk in front of the library's large glass window, frowning ferociously at the manuscript. In his old black gown and flat cap, bent over the manuscript stand on the desk, he could have modeled for an illuminated scholar in any Book of Hours. The older man looked up at the sound of the prince's footfall on the inlaid wooden floor, and beckoned Siegfried to his side.

  "Hang it all, the monk that made this copy must have been under orders to save parchments he wrote so small! I can hardly make out the letters!" the tutor complained querulously, his gray eyebrows wriggling in irritation. "What do you make of this phrase? All I can make out is, Therefore, summon the cheeses, and that can't be right!"
r />   Siegfried looked over Wolfgang's shoulder to see what the old man was pointing to—and as he half thought, it was perfectly legible and nothing like therefore, summon the cheeses. The carefully inscribed words were beautifully written in the blackest of ink on snowy parchment, and no smaller than in any other manuscript, but Siegfried had suspected that Wolfgang's eyes had been failing for some time. This was just a confirmation of that suspicion.

  He had no intention of saying anything about it, though. He just leaned over, as if he, too, found it difficult to read the manuscript, and finally ventured his opinion on the phrase in question.

  I am going to have to get Wolfgang a pair of spectacles, he decided, though such things were difficult to come by and might be ruinously expensive. I can probably get him to wear them if I tell him that they make him look like a great University Doctor. Wolfgang was very susceptible to flattery, and was absolutely certain that he was utterly immune to it.

  The two of them wrangled happily over the manuscript for the rest of the morning, and only put it away when hunger drove both of them to join the rest of the household at the midday meal. As Siegfried strolled into the hall, a page ran to his side and whispered that his mother specifically wished him to attend her as soon as he had eaten.

  Interesting. Since I haven't done anything she has any reason to be annoyed about—could it be that one of those notions about Uwe were right? Curiosity heightened his appetite; he ate quickly, but well, and went straight to the queen's chambers, leaving Wolfgang to finish his dinner alone.