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think he was supposed to become Octavian’s Commander-in-Chief! If this was how he would have fared in a war, maybe the Academy hadn’t trained him all that well after all.
From what he had read in the Godmother’s Book of Days, he was what was known as a Quester. Or, to be more accurate, a Failed Quester. It was his brother Julian who was the real Quester; Julian had succeeded. He had passed the trials and won the Princess. Alexander and Octavian had failed the very first test put in front of them—the test of courtesy.
He had been knighted, and so had Octavian, but he knew now that they had been knights in name only. He knew it now, or rather, acknowledged it, at least to himself.
He wasn’t quite ready to confess it to anyone else.
But there was something else that he was finally putting together in his mind that was beginning to make him feel a smoldering anger that was nothing like the anger he had so unthinkingly loaded onto Godmother Elena. The first book he had read had left him a little baffled, referring to something called The Tradition, but in a way that had not left him with any sort of clear definition of what was meant.
In the first chapter of the Book of Days, everything that The Tradition was had been boldly and clearly spelled out.
It was that which was making him so angry.
But not at Godmother Elena. Not anymore.
It was quite clear to him now that Elena was doing quite a bit more than the average Godmother to use The Tradition against itself. She should never have brought him here, for instance. Godmothers just did not intervene personally The Fairy Godmother
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with Failed Questers. There was no place in The Tradition for a Godmother to take the training of a Failed Quester on herself. She properly should have done to him what she’d done to Octavian; turned him loose to wander without being able to get home until he either died or learned his lessons—lessons that would make him a much better King than he would ever have been without this humiliation.
And if he died, well, that was too bad—either the second Failed Quester, himself, would survive his lessoning, or Julian would inherit both Kingdoms.
And if Elena had not intervened, it was the latter that was the most likely. The Book of Days had unflinchingly given the odds of a Failed Quester surviving long enough to redeem himself, and the odds weren’t at all good.
Elena had gone out of her way to get both himself and Octavian into situations where, even if they were brought down lower than the humblest commoner, they were not in any danger of dying. Except, perhaps, by being monumentally stupid.
Alexander turned over on his back and stared up into the darkness above his bed. Now that he knew about The Tradition, he had an explanation for something he had felt all of his life—a ponderous, implacable sort of weight hanging over him from the moment he’d been born. He’d often ascribed that feeling to God, the weight of the Almighty’s regard upon a young Prince.
Now he knew better. It hadn’t been God. It had been this faceless, formless, impersonal Force that went about shoving people down the way it wanted them to go, just because it fit a sort of well-worn path. It didn’t care what they 338
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wanted. It didn’t give a toss about pain or pleasure. It only wanted things to happen in a predictable way.
Oh, how he hated it!
He wondered if Robert had been aware of such a thing, for surely Robert was a victim of The Tradition in all its cruelty. On the whole, he hoped not. To live your life feeling yourself impelled towards your early death—as if your fate was a cliff that you were rushing towards, with no way to stop—
That would have been unthinkably horrible, turning what had been a tragedy into something infinitely worse.
He sighed, and the sound filled the little loft room. He became aware that outside the window, crickets sang and frogs croaked, much quieter to his human ears than to the donkey’s. For the first time in too long, he was in a bed, feeling two arms, two legs, all the parts of him what they should be and where they should be, resting on a feather mattress as good as any in the Palace of Kohlstania and better than the ones at the Academy. He was himself again.
I won’t backslide, he vowed fiercely to himself. I swear it.
No matter how provoked I am, no matter what that damned Tradition wants and tried to make me do, I won’t backslide! I will be courteous, I will be considerate, I will remember my knightly vows and I will live up to them instead of merely giving lip service to them. There was nothing, absolutely nothing he would not do to avoid feeling his body warp and change into the beast.
Which meant he would have to be careful, very careful.
If The Tradition could not force him into one role ( dead failed Quester) it would probably try and force him into an
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other. He would have to read and study to find out what that role might be, and whether or not it was one that would get him out of here. He might hate The Tradition, but there was no point in pretending it did not exist, nor that it was not very, very powerful. Clearly it took knowledge and magic to beat it. He only had a chance at half of that equation.
He closed his eyes, and for the moment, felt rather disinclined to open them again.
Strange, he thought, as he felt sleep creeping up on him.
Strange how things worked out. He might have discovered that he was little more than a fancy pawn on some giant chessboard—but at least now he had a better target for his hate and anger than a pretty woman….
Shortly after midnight, Elena blinked, looked down at her notes, and realized that her handwriting was just short of illegible. It was time to call a halt to all of this and go to bed, before she dropped off to sleep right here at the table. She really wasn’t minded to wake up at dawn with a crick in her neck and an inkblot on her cheek.
She tidied her papers, put up the quill, corked the ink, and with a wave of her hand, extinguished the lamps. A glance out the window showed her that Alexander had already given up for the night. He was probably smarter than she was.
She made her way up to her room; behind his curtain, Randolf was very quiet. He might not even “be” there at the moment; it was likeliest that he was off watching something or someone else. She waved the lamps in this room to darkness, and went on into her bedroom.
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With a few touches, it was very much as Madame Bella had left it. By the time she had moved into it, Elena had decided that she liked it that way and saw no reason to change anything that was there. It felt—old. Very old. She had to wonder, in fact, if the furnishings in this room dated all the way back to the first human Godmother to live here.
For the furniture was, in fact, rather more antique than anything in the Klovis household had been, and far more than anything in any other room in the house except, perhaps, the kitchen. The walls were of wood, but there were tapestries hung on all of them. The bed was huge, a whole family could have slept there comfortably; it stood on a little dais of its own, and it was curtained twice. The inner curtains were of thin gauze, the outer of heavy velvet. In the summer she closed only the inner ones, to keep insects out, so that she could leave the windows open without resorting to a spell. The rest of the furnishings, wardrobe, a sort of couch, backless chairs, chests, and her dressing table, were just as massive, and had an air of comfort about them that was rather surprising given how heavily they were built. The walls were dark oak paneling, the floor darker yet, the colors of the curtains and cushions all dark burgundy and garnet. The tapestries all around the walls were of magical creatures; the one above the fireplace showed Unicorns sans maidens. Sometimes she wondered if a Godmother had woven it herself, and why. It certainly managed to portray them accurately—beautiful, but with a certain vacuity in their eyes.
She left her clothing draped neatly over the blanket-chest at the foot of the bed for Rose to deal with in the morning The Fairy
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and slipped into the clean nightgown that was waiting for her, left lying on the pillows. It smelled pleasantly of violets and lavender. She waved the lights out and climbed up into the bed, feeling fairly satisfied. Of course, there was no way of knowing what Alexander would actually do or think following his first night of freedom from his curse, but she had high hopes for him, given that he had managed to remain in control of his temper. And she could hardly blame him for being angry that she hadn’t just freed him outright. He still hadn’t, in his heart, acknowledged that he had failed some crucial tests of character.
On the other hand, if he was reading her spare histories, they might point his mind in the right direction.
It would be a bit awkward to have him around in his natural form, though. When he’d been an ass, she hadn’t thought twice about acting as she always had in his presence. The more she had allowed him to be himself, the more conscious she had been of the presence of an admittedly good-looking young man about the place. And now, if he was going to be himself all of the time—
But he’ll be gone soon, she told herself. By winter. I’m sure of it. Besides, he’s made it quite clear that he considers me very much his inferior in birth, if our births were to be compared.
So although he may begin to treat me with courtesy at last—
she yawned, and closed her eyes— of course the courtesy—
her thoughts began to ooze away from her— will be the kind…a Prince…gives….
She did not often dream, or at least, she did not often dream in ways that could be linked back to the real world.
That was deliberate; the dreams of a Godmother had the po
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tential to take on a life of their own, and one of the things that Bella had taught her was how to dream in pleasant nonsense. So when her dream began, and she found herself walking along a shore of purple sand by an amethyst sea beneath a silver sky with three azure moons in it, she felt quite relaxed and comfortable. So comfortable, that she did not in the least mind when she realized that Alexander was walking beside her.
They did not speak, but after a while, quite easily and naturally, her hand stretched out a little of its own accord, and encountered his reaching for hers. Their fingers entwined, and they walked on, climbing up the purple dunes, through sand as soft as powdered velvet. There they sat down together, on the top of the tallest dune, listening to the sea and watching as the moons set, one after another, like blue pearls on an invisible chain being pulled below the horizon. She leaned her head to the side, and quite naturally found that she was leaning it against his shoulder, and just as naturally his arm came around her and pulled her closer.
Then her heart started to pound, and her skin came alive, so that she was acutely aware of the brush of his fingers against it, the touch of the warm breeze on her face. She felt her stomach tighten, and when he bent his head down to hers and she lifted hers to meet his and their lips met, she felt as if lightning had jumped between them, or maybe the spark of life itself, though she could not have told if it went from her into him or the other way around.
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cup her breast; her nipples hardened and the soft teasing of his fingers sent jolts of pleasure through her that made the secret parts between her legs tighten and burn with anticipation. She moaned a little, and her lips parted insensibly beneath his kiss, and his tongue slipped between them, teasing and tickling her lips and teeth and playing with her tongue, until she—
—Damn it!
She came awake all at once, and in a fury. The benighted Tradition couldn’t manipulate her when she was awake, so now it was trying to do so in her sleep!
“No.” That was all she said into the darkness, but she put every bit of her will behind it.
Nothing answered her. There was neither an increase in pressure upon her, nor a decrease—nor was there any change in the amount of the magic she could sense swirling in potential around her.
Could it possibly be that what she had just dreamed had come, not out of what The Tradition wanted, but out of what she wanted? Or what her body wanted, anyway.
She lay there afire with wanting and not knowing, well, not really, not truly, what it was she wanted. Madame Klovis’s servants hadn’t bothered to hide themselves when they dallied, but her curiosity had never been enough to overcome her embarrassment and past a certain point, she’d always covered her eyes.
But she ached with frustration and need. And it took a very, very long time to get back to sleep again. And when she did, it was to toss the rest of the night as part of her tried to get back to that purple sand dune, and part of her utterly 344
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refused to go there, which left all of her so bleary-eyed when she woke at dawn that Rose took one look at her and ordered her to sleep in late for a change.
When Alexander woke the next morning, it was with strange dream-fragments echoing in the back of his mind; blue moons and purple sand, and a very sweet and lissome lady in his arms. For the very first time since he had left Kohlstania, he woke feeling good, warm and very pleased with himself. It had been a wonderful dream, apparently. He just wished that he could remember more of it.
But just because he wasn’t waking as a donkey didn’t mean that the work was going to stop. Hob had made sure he knew that weeks ago. Back when he’d been thinking he’d only be spending every other day as a donkey rather than most of a week, Hob had told him in bald terms that man or ass, if he didn’t do his share, the same rule held: no work, no food. Alexander didn’t think that things would have 346
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changed just because the Godmother had decided that he was going to be spending his time as himself from now on.
This was the season of harvest, and there was work even for the untutored hands of a Prince.
“Alexander!” bellowed Hob from somewhere beneath him. “Get your lazy royal ass down here!”
Royal ass— Maybe it was the good mood that he had awakened in, but the phrase that would have made him livid with anger yesterday struck him this morning as inexpressibly funny. He rolled out of bed and stuck his head through the hole in the floor. Hob was looking up at him.
“Lazy I am, but today, at least, I am no ass,” he replied.
“Give me but a moment.”
There were three new beasts to tend now, and one of the few good things about being a donkey had meant that he didn’t have to tend himself. His first chore on his first morning waking as a man were quite enough to drive the last fragment of erotic dream out of his mind; nothing was less erotic than mucking out a stall.
Still it didn’t spoil his good mood at all. The beasts were mild-tempered and easy to work around and he was done reasonably quickly. He joined Hob at the pump in the kitchen-yard just as the sun came up, the two of them doing a thorough-wash-up in the cold water. “We won’t be able to do that much longer,” Hob said, shaking his head, and sending droplets flying everywhere. “Be too bloody cold before long. I don’t fancy icicles off my nose.”
“I don’t fancy them hanging off elsewhere on my anatomy,” replied Alexander, who had been a bit more thor
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ough in his washing-up. But then, Hob hadn’t been mucking out the stable, either.
Hob grinned at him.
“Come on, lad,” he said, and led the way up the kitchen stairs.
Alexander stopped where he was. “Ah—”
“Come on, lad,” Hob repeated. Dubiously, and certain that he would be stopped dead at the door as he always had been before, Alexander followed him.
Followed him right into the warm and fragrant kitchen, where he stood in the doorway, blinking stupidly in the light, just as Rose entered from the door opposite.
“Godmother won’t be coming down until later,” she informe
d Master Robin, who was the source of the wonderful smells of sausage and egg, of baking bread and frying ham. “She looks as if she hasn’t had nearly enough sleep.”
“She was awake rather late last night,” Alexander offered.
Both Rose, and Lily, who was already seated at the table, gave him odd looks. “She was reading, I suppose,” he added.
“I could see her from my window.”
“I trust your room meets with your approval?” Rose asked tartly, managing to sound only the slightest bit sarcastic.
“Rosie—” Hob injected, with a note of warning in his voice. “Lad, sit down, have some breakfast.”
Alexander did sit where Hob indicated, but he also answered Rose. “Mistress Rose, it is exceedingly comfortable, thank you,” he replied as courteously as if she really had asked him the question seriously. “And I thank you for asking.”
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Rose blinked at him for a moment, then sat down without another word.
She ignored him during the meal, speaking only to the other Brownies, but Hob, Robin, and even Lily addressed him from time to time, making him a part of the conversation whether Rose liked it or not.
“So, you’ll be going out with Lily and a cart today, past the water-meadow,” Hob told him, after some discussion of what needed to be “got in.” “Time we beat them deer t’the orchard fruit, I’m thinking.”
“A fine plan, Hob,” Robin said, nodding with enthusiasm, as he cleared up the plates from the table. “I’ve always said there was almost no point in having the orchard, we get so little out of it each fall. And nuts! With Alexander and the new beasts to help, we can rob the squirrels of the harvest of the nut orchard as well, later this fall!” He grinned. “I mind me that there’s none of you would object to apple cake and spiced nuts.”
So Alexander found himself harnessing up one of the mules to a small, two-wheeled cart, loading it with empty sacks and a couple of baskets and a ladder, and leading it out to meet the Brownie woman Lily. It was she who beckoned him down a path he was sure hadn’t been there before today, past the meadow with the pond in it, and into what he had thought was just forest.
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