Some of the horrors were blatant—entire countries laid waste, the inhabitants made into hopeless slaves, afraid to do anything but obey because of the cost of disobedience.
Some of the evil ones were precisely as she might have expected, gloating despots squatting on thrones they had no right to, torture and exploitation the hallmarks of their reigns.
But some were subtle, and once Elena realized what she was seeing, the implications were chilling. Often the evil 100
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one was not on the throne itself, but was the power behind it, whispering into the monarch’s ear. The effect was insidious; rather than creating despair for all, the dark one created factions, pitting the privileged, wealthy, and titled against those beneath them, placing the effort of exploitation one layer below the monarch. This kept despair from being total, for there was always the hope—“But when the King learns of this….”—even though the hope was destined never to be fulfilled. These spiders spun a cunning web, beginning as they always did by eroding conditions gradually, with rights converted to privilege, then the privilege revoked on one pretense or another, always for an excellent reason, always on a “temporary” basis, until the next
“privilege” was taken and the previous grievance forgotten.
Then as one hand took away, the other, the King’s, would give—something trivial, but pleasurable. Games perhaps, or entertainments. Nothing controversial, of course. A competition that would elevate the winner into the ranks of the wealthy and prominent—so that the illusion was maintained that this was possible for everyone. It was as if wholesome bread was being taken, and a tastier bread made with sawdust used to replace it.
Or, perhaps the one behind the throne would start a war on some trumped-up cause—a little war, of course, against a weak but convenient enemy, one that would be difficult to lose, that would stir up patriotic fervor, one that would, of course, entail “sacrifices for the good of all and the security of the realm” under cover of which more “privileges”
could be “temporarily” taken.
Clever and insidious, and damnably difficult to counter.
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And all the while, the spider spun his web, battening on the misery and depression, growing fat and ever more powerful, and in the darkness behind the throne, indulging himself in secret cruelties against the “enemies of the state.”
These, more than the others, were the ones that were the most dangerous to the Godmothers, the White Wizards, the Good Wizards. The first class were brutal, but seldom thought past the moment. The second planned ahead, months, years, decades—anticipated opposition, and moved to counter it well in advance. These were the ones who swiftly cleansed their countries of resident magicians, either directly murdering them or instigating the local peasantry against them, and then ensured that no one else would move in by creating intense hostility against “foreigners”
and “outsiders,” cleverly engineering their rhetoric so that the blame for anything that was bad would be laid to the door of “outsiders.” Since that effectively made isolationism a certainty, it protected the evil ones further, for anything outside the borders became suspect, even hated, and there would be no chance for anyone to learn that things might be better, elsewhere.
Elena saw, in detail, what was happening to the “outsiders” in several of the infected Kingdoms…imprisonment was the least of it. In rapid succession, she saw Faerie Folk being driven into grim encampments hedged around with cold iron and salt and spells, there to wither and die, or suffer torture at the hands of sadistic guards. She saw a Godmother dragged to the center of a town and burned alive, a White Wizard buried in the rubble of his own tower, a coven of Good Witches torn to pieces by a pack of savage hounds.
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It all played out with dreadful immediacy in front of her eyes, and sent her heart into her throat.
But more than that, it made her angry. This was what her stepmother had done to her, writ large on the face of the world. She had been powerless to stop it then, but she would not be powerless now, and she would not stand idly by when there was something she could do.
So that when, after it all was shown to her and the Faerie Queen took the wand from her forehead, she emerged from the nightmare fueled with rage and determination.
It must have shown on her face, for the Faerie Queen gave her a penetrating look, then a nod of satisfaction.
“Good,” she said. “You are made of stern materials. You are an iron bar, lady. We will give you the tools to be transformed to a sword.”
She beckoned, and an ethereal creature, outwardly sexless, winged like a dragonfly and garbed mostly in its own flowing hair, drifted forward, handing her what appeared to be a rose petal. “Eat it,” the Faerie Queen commanded, and wary of what had happened the last time she had followed a similar command, but obedient to Bella’s nod, she did so.
It tasted like nothing—but a moment later, she was seeing things—ribbons and auras of intense blue, surrounding and drifting between the Faerie Folk for the most part, but also around Bella, more faintly running everywhere she looked. And also, very strongly, around herself.
A second creature, another Brownie, came forward with what appeared to be a small stone. Again she ate it, and now, added to the ribbons of blue were ribbons of gold. A shin
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ing bird dropped what appeared to be a hot coal in her hand, which gave her ribbons of fiery red, and last of all, a girl clothed in water-weeds with a water-lily in her hair dripped a single drop of clear water into her hand, which granted her emerald-green ribbons and auras.
“Now you see the magic around you, of air and earth, fire and water,” the Faerie Queen told her. “What you see, you can use. Use this gift wisely.”
That seemed to be a dismissal, for the assemblage of Faerie creatures formed up around their monarchs, and the King and Queen descended from their thrones. An arch of vines at the far side of the clearing that Elena had taken for an accidental arrangement of wild plants over a natural pathway began to glow, faintly, with soft moonlike light, and fill with mist. The mist glowed, too, and there were hints of figures moving in it. The unearthly Court formed up in a rough line and began to file through it.
The King and Queen were the last to depart; the Queen passed through the arch without a moment of hesitation, but the King stopped for a moment, and looked deeply into Elena’s eyes. She could not have looked away if she had wanted to—but she did not really want to. Although his narrow, high-cheekboned face, with its winglike eyebrows, strange, slightly slanted, enormous eyes, beardless as a boy’s, with long midnight-black hair any woman would be proud to boast of, was not what she would have named as attractive before this moment, she understood exactly what was meant by “Elven glamorie.” She felt powerfully drawn to him, and knew that if he had cared to, he could have had her by snapping his fingers.
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But he did nothing of the sort; he merely looked deeply into her eyes, as if weighing and measuring her as his consort had done. And then, without a word, he touched her brow with a delicate forefinger.
Something passed between them, though she could not have said just what it was. A great shudder shook her, a moment of dizziness, and for a moment she heard a sound as of the rushing of great wings all about her. The hair stood up on the back of her neck, yet at the same time, she was filled with such intoxication she might have been drunk.
Then the moment passed; the Elven King smiled faintly, turned, and passed through the gate behind his consort. The light within the gate faded; the glow of the framing vines faded.
And Elena and her mentor were standing in a perfectly ordinary clearing, in the dim light filtering down through the myriad branches of the trees above them as a bird called somewhere in the middle distance.
Bella was regarding her Apprentice
with a look of great thoughtfulness. “Well,” she said at last, “he certainly never did that with me! What happened between you?”
“I don’t know,” Elena said honestly. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” She blinked as she said that; the pale glows and colors were everywhere now, and she was having to get used to the sight of magic all about her.
“Interesting.” Bella tapped her cheek with one finger, thoughtfully. “Well, whatever it was, it’s something that King Huon thinks you’ll need, and we’ll have to let it go at that. He’s too subtle for the likes of mere mortals.” She beckoned, and smiled. “Come along, Apprentice. We have to choose your wand.”
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But as they left the clearing, Elena could not resist looking back for a moment, wondering.
“Curious, Apprentice?” Madame called over her shoulder. Elena hurried to catch up.
She wanted to ask why the Elven King had been interested in her, but she heard herself asking a different question entirely.
“Why are the Fair Folk—” she groped for a word
“—involved?”
“Ah. Well, very long ago, all of the Godmothers were Fair Folk; that is the reason some folk call us Fairy Godmothers still. Some still are, and there is an equivalent to Wizard that you hear of very, very seldom, and that is the Elven Knight.
But most Godmothers are human now,” Bella told her, as they walked back towards the cottage.
“Why?” Elena asked.
“I suspect because there are so few of the Fair Folk and so many mortals,” Bella said wryly. “They soon discovered that if The Tradition is to be served and directed properly, they needed help. Since their very existence depends upon The Tradition, they did not have a great deal of choice, it would seem.”
She could not imagine at the moment why the existence of the Elves would depend on The Tradition, but she supposed that her reading or lessons would eventually tell her.
“So that is why the Queen has to accept an Apprentice?”
she hazarded.
“Exactly.” Bella seemed pleased that she had made the connection. “Having been the originals, they are best at judging who will be appropriate. And of course, their un
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derstanding is much deeper than ours; they can do with a touch things that require great effort from a human.”
That last only made her wonder the more, as they continued down the path. They can do with a touch….
So what had the Elven King done to her?
Choosing a wand turned out to be nowhere near as complicated as Elena had thought it would be—given the complexity of nearly everything else that had happened to her from the moment Madame Bella entered her life.
It was, oddly enough, the House-Elf Lily who helped her with the task. Robin she had expected, but not Lily. After all, Lily did the tending, didn’t she? So what would she have to do with the business of finding a wand?
Lily was waiting for them on the path, and smiled with satisfaction when she saw them. “Ah, good, you have the King’s Favor as well as the Queen’s!” she said and looked to Madame Bella, as Elena wondered how she had known of the Elven King’s odd behavior. Then, just as she wondered that, she saw it; more of the swirling color she now 108
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knew was magic, a haze, a dusting of pale silver (which must have been the Queen’s mark) and pale gold (surely the King’s) that drifted around her exactly like dust motes drifted in warm air. Bella didn’t have that cloud about her, nor did Lily. How peculiar. I wonder if it will wear off? This business of seeing magic was going to take some getting used to.
“Is she ready for her wand?”
“No reason to put it off,” Bella replied. “I have some things to attend to; this will take until luncheon?”
“Oh, at least; after Robin makes the wand, he wants to take her measurements for her costumes, and after this, you’re going to keep her too busy to take the time for proper measuring,” Lily replied, and turned to Elena. “Come along, Apprentice, and don’t look so wary; this won’t be anything like that nasty business over breakfast.”
I certainly hope not! she thought, following Lily with an apprehension that she hoped she veiled adequately.
They ended up in a little workshop where Robin already was at work, laying out lengths of perfectly straight wood on a workbench, placing longer, similar pieces of wood leaning against a wall. “The wand,” Robin said, with immense dignity, as if he was lecturing, “is not a thing of magic in and of itself, as most outsiders believe. It is merely the extension of the magician, a tool to help focus magic. Actually, practically any old stick will do in a pinch so long as it is made from a wood that the magician feels comfortable with.”
“Ah, but now, that’s the trick,” Lily said, taking up the lecture as smoothly as if she and Robin had rehearsed it. “And that is where I come in. All of these bits of wood have been The Fairy Godmother
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harvested over the years from trees I grew from cuttings or seeds, trees I nurtured and tended, and they gave me these lengths freely, as a gift. Not one piece was cut. There was no pain in the culling of these branches, and as a consequence, there is nothing here for the darker magics to work on. No Black Witch or Sorcerer can make a wand made from this wood turn against its Godmother.”
There it was again, that warning of danger. But she had accepted the risk, and though she shivered, she set her chin.
She would no go back on her given word.
“So would I need a little wand like that one—”
With the colors and currents of magic drifting all around her, Elena found that easier to accept than she might have before the Elven Queen bestowed the gift of Magic Sight to her. In fact, as she pointed at one of the wands, she saw and felt the potential of magic building up, as if the were act of pointing at something energized the magic to flow in a particular direction.
“That will depend on your costume; you will have your everyday clothing, of course, and probably a small wand like this—” Robin held up a slender, polished stick no bigger around than her little finger, and no longer than a foot.
“When you are in your most impressive garb, the sort of thing you will wear to attend Royal Christenings, for instance, you will bear a full-sized staff like this.” He hefted a length of wood about a foot shorter than she was.
“Have you ever seen a man concentrate the sun with a lens to make something catch fire?” Lily asked. Elena nodded; when she was younger, one of her playfellows used to purloin his granny’s glasses to amuse his friends with just 110
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that trick. “Well, there you are. The wand acts for magic as a lens does for the sun; it concentrates and focuses it. It won’t matter a pin if one of your wands is broken—we’ll keep several made up for you in each size. And you can certainly cast your spells without one—but it will be easier for you to use magic if you have one.”
“Now, please, Mistress, go along the ranks of these small lengths, and tell me when you have found a wand that feels right in your hand,” Robin said, stepping aside so that Elena could approach the bench. She did so, and picked up the first of the rough-finished wands. And it felt like—nothing. A stick of wood. She tried the next, and the next, with similar results.
Finally, about halfway through the ranks of samples, she found it.
And that mere act surprised her, because she had begun to think that she wasn’t feeling whatever it was she was supposed to sense, and would have to just make an arbitrary selection. Then the next wand she picked up came alive in her hand.
There was no other way to describe it; the rest had been as inert as an old broomstick; suddenly this one felt like a living thing in her hand.
“Ah!” Lily said, taking it from her—and she found that she was incredibly, inexplicably reluctant to let go of it.
“That would be the birch in the water-meadow. A good
choice.” And as she set the wand in a vice, Robin cleared away all the other lengths of wood but seven.
“I’ll have this finished for you in a trice,” Robin said matter-of-factly. “The others will take longer, but this will give you something to work with.”
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In less than an hour, Robin fashioned a wand for her of the polished and waxed birch, tapered, with a simple spiral carving to it so that it looked like the horn of a Unicorn. It was lovely, and although she had watched him make it, she could not imagine how he had finished it in so short a period of time.
“You’ll find a long, narrow pocket in your skirt,” said Lily, and when she hunted for it, she found that indeed, she did.
The wand fit in there as perfectly as it had in her hand.
“The other wands can wait,” Robin said, and gave her an unreadable look. “Next, we need to fit you for proper clothing.”
So she spent an uncomfortable two hours with every inch of her being measured by the little Brownie. This would be for her “Fairy Godmother” costumes, which Bella assured her, when the Godmother looked in on the fittings, were as vital a tool as her wand, if not more so.
“What people think of you is important,” Bella insisted.
“If you don’t look the part, they won’t believe in you, and if they don’t believe in you, you might not be able to get your job done right.”
Quite frankly, Elena was feeling very intimidated, and it got worse as Robin held up one length of fabric after another against her face. She was afraid to touch the delicate fabrics with her work-roughened hands, and thought that she would probably look a fool in the kinds of dressmaker’s confections that her stepsisters had worn.
She was even more intimidated when Hob brought in the trays of jewels, the bolts of trimmings that were to adorn these putative costumes. It was bad enough when they held 112
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up lace as fine as cobwebs, or gorgeous, heavy stuff shining as only bobbin lace made with silk thread could shine; it was far worse when they brought in the trimmings made with real gold and silver threads, and began selecting pearls and other gems to be added to the ornamentation.
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