Well, maybe if you were scared enough, it would.
Still, how a ewe could be a soldier he wasn't sure; he didn't see how she could hold a sword, and besides, girls weren't supposed to be soldiers.
So maybe a dragon was something else besides a soldier, and his memory was playing tricks on him again; he wasn’t as young as he once was.
Or maybe they'd changed the rules.
"Changing everything these days," he muttered, looking at a malodorous heap of dirty clothing that sprawled in the center of the cottage'floor.
The boy hadn't wanted to let Bernice get away and leave him alone, so he had gone after her. That stirred a faint spark of admiration somewhere in Odo.
The boy hadn’t wanted to be left alone.
Well, demme, Odo thought, I don't want to be left alone, either! With sudden determination he stood up and began rummaging through the debris in search of his boots.
"You find Bernice, boy," he muttered, "and then I'll find youV’
Half an hour later, he stood atop the mountain, three of his most trusted sheep at his side, and gazed out over the broad landscape. Off to the east were the forested hills, a maze of leafy trails and hidden byways where the Black Weasel and his Bold Bush-dwellers still fought against the Gorgorians; to the west lay the open plain, and the capital city that was now the Gorgorian stronghold.
If Bernice was a soldier now, he knew where to find her—probably better than that fool boy of his did. Fighting and glory in the east, or a rich, peaceful city in the west, full of cheap wine and cheaper women—it was obvious where all the soldiers would be.
He turned west, and marched down the mountain toward the city.
Chapter Seventeen
“I need a food taster?" Prince Arbol asked doubtfully.
Queen Artemisia nodded emphatically. "Yes," she said, "you do. You need this food taster."
Arbol eyed the hooded figure. "Dad doesn't have a food taster anymore," the prince pointed out. "He threw the last one out the window because he didn't hand over the pasties fast enough. Why do I need one?"
"Because you,” the prince's royal mother informed her offspring, "are a true Hydrangean prince, not just a Gorgorian usurper."
"I am, too, a Gorgorian!" Arbol shouted, offended.
"Yes, you are," the queen agreed hastily, "worse luck. But you are also my child, and therefore a true scion of the Royal House of Old Hydrangea. And you will have to learn to behave accordingly. Really, dear, must we have this argument every time I see you?"
The prince did not answer that, but said instead, "I'll throw him down the stairs if he annoys me."
Wulfrith, who had listened thus far in silent befuddlement, snorted. If this gawky idiot tried to throw him anywhere, Wulfrith might just forget about the ban on sorcery and turn Arbol into a newt, or a carp, or something.
Or maybe he wouldn't; he didn't have his staff with him, or any of the other trappings of a wizard, and if he tried using Clootie's new spell he might wind up with a rhinoceros, or some other inconvenient creature.
But the prince didn't look any bigger than he was himself, so maybe, Wulfrith thought, he just wouldn't let himself be thrown down any stairs.
The queen had mentioned that Wulfrith bore a resemblance to the prince, and Arbol did have a certain odd familiarity, Wulfrith had to admit. There was a resemblance to the queen, of course, but it was more than that.
"Can I see him with that silly mask off, so I know who I'm talking to?" Arbol asked.
Queen Artemisia hesitated.
This was an awkward moment. Sooner or later, her daughter would have to find out what was going on, but surely, she didn't need to know yet . . .
"I mean, for all I know, Mom, you could have a girl under there!" Arbol said.
Artemisia, who had been drawing a deep breath in preparation for making a speech, choked suddenly and bent over, coughing. Prince Arbol and Wulfrith watched her nervously, not knowing what they should do, but the fit passed quickly, and with it, some of her caution.
"All right," she said, "you can see him without his mask. Arbol, my child, this is your new food taster. He says his name is Wulfrith."
Wulfrith was unsure whether to bow first, or to take off the mask, so he attempted to do both simultaneously and managed to tangle the mask in his hair and poke himself in the eye with a thumb, but a moment later he had the silly thing off and was able to stand upright and look the prince in the eye.
Those eyes did look familiar, and quite a bit like the ones he saw in the mirror.
"Mom," Prince Arbol said, startled, "he looks like you!”
Wulfrith blinked.
"Actually," the queen said, as she stared at her two children, "Wulfrith looks like you, dear."
He really did. The resemblance was uncanny, even for the children of a single birth. The scholars who had tutored her as a child had taught Artemisia about identical twins, but these two couldn’t be identical, she told herself. They weren't the same sex, and her teachers had insisted that identicals were identical in that, too.
But there could be no doubt at all that they were siblings. And seeing two of her children together for the first time in more than fourteen years produced a very strange mix of emotions in the queen, leaving her unable to say any more for a moment.
“He does?" Arbol studied Wulfrith, who returned this scrutiny. “I guess he does, a little."
Wulfrith snorted again. He had seen himself in mirrors any number of times, during various magical exercises, and he could see that he and Arbol looked a lot alike. What had made it less than immediately obvious was that the prince was a real person, not just an image—and of course, even with a mirror, Wulfrith had never seen himself from the side before.
“Is that why I have to be a masked food taster?" Wulfrith asked. “So people won't get me confused with Prince Arbol?"
The prince's face suddenly lit up. “Oh, Mom," Arbol said, “I know! You wanted him here to take my place, so I could go off hunting, and nobody would know I was gone! He can sit through all the boring stuff here in the palace!"
Caught off-guard, Artemisia said, “Uh . . ."
Sometimes, she reminded herself, she forgot that her daughter was not stupid. The child didn’t bother to think if she didn't have to, but she was not stupid.
And it appeared that her brother wasn't, either.
“Is that it?" Wulfrith asked doubtfully. “I don't know about that. I don't know anything about being a prince."
“Of course not," Queen Artemisia acknowledged. “You've been a shepherd all your life, haven't you?"
“Well . . . ,” Wulfrith began uncertainly. It was really very inconvenient, this whole business about wizardry being illegal. “Not exactly a shepherd ..."
“Whatever." The queen waved away the unimportant details of rural job classifications. "In any case, my dear Wulfrith, my dear, dear Wulfrith, of course you'll need to learn a great deal about palace life—but yes, I had hoped that you might be willing to fill in for my darling Prince Arbol at certain . . . functions." Artemisia hesitated, then added, "Not right away, of course."
"I guess," Wulfrith said, unenthusiastically.
"I think," Artemisia said, "that you two should get to know each other a little better. If Wulfrith will be filling in for you, Arbol, he’ll need to know more about you, as well as about being a prince."
"Okay, Mom," Arbol said, "we can go practice with swords together! Dad says that's the best way to get to know a man—try to hack his head open, and you'll either see his brains or you'll get an idea how he thinks."
"No!" Artemisia shouted.
"We'll use the wooden ones, Mom—honest! I won’t kill him!"
Wulfrith threw the queen an alarmed glance.
“No, Arbol! No swords, at least, not yet! A food taster isn’t supposed to fight, he's supposed . . . supposed to eat. And Wulfrith would have to keep his mask on, we don’t want anyone to know we have a substitute for you, and that wouldn't be fair, would it?"
<
br /> "Maybe if we enlarged the eyeholes?"
“No, I said. Wulfrith doesn’t know how to fight—do you, Wulfie?"
"No, ma'am. Uh . . . shepherds don’t use swords much." And wizards, he thought, have better weapons—at least, the smart ones.
"Oh, all right." Arbol looked at the new food taster. "What do you want to do then, Wulfrith?"
Wulfrith lit up. "We could study together, in the library," he suggested.
Arbol frowned. "The library?"
"The big room with all the books," Wulfrith explained.
"Oh." Arbol was puzzled. "What do you do, throw them at each other?"
“No, silly, you read them!’’
“Hey, don't call me silly! I’m the prince!’’
“I’m sorry,’’ Wulfrith muttered, glancing at the queen, uncomfortably aware that he had made an error in etiquette, and that he was bound to make many more. The stories all said that palace etiquette was very important and very complicated.
“Well, that's okay,’’ Arbol said. “So you like reading?’’
“Oh, yes!’’
“Wulfrith will be staying in the library, for now, when he's not with you or up here visiting me,’’ the queen interjected. “He won't be bothered there.’’
“That's for sure!’’ the prince agreed.
“Maybe I can learn about being a prince by reading some of the books,’’ Wulfrith suggested.
Artemisia sighed. “I'm afraid you'll find them out-ofdate,’’ she said. “But it can’t hurt to try."
“Well, come on," Arbol said, heading for the door. “I'll walk down there with you, and maybe you can show me a good book to read. One with lots of pictures of swords and horses."
“Put your mask on, dear," the queen said, as Wulfrith followed the prince.
The lad obeyed, and then had to scamper to catch up; the prince’s idea of “walking" was what Wulfrith would have considered a fast trot. He wondered what Arbol would call a “run.’’
Even more dismaying was the fact that Arbol kept up a steady stream of chatter the entire way. “It'll be great having you around here," the prince said. “Sometimes it seems like people avoid me, because I'm the crown prince, you know, and I'll be king when Dad dies, which I hope he never does of course, I like him a lot, even if he is kind of a slob, and of course he killed my grandfather, the old king, did you know about that? His name was Fumitory the Twenty-Second, which is one of those fancy old-fashioned Old Hy- drangean names, and I think I'm supposed to have one of those too, except I don't, I mean, Arbol's a good old Hydrangean name but it isn’t so prissy, except maybe I really do have a fancy name, I mean another one, because someone told me once'that* my name was supposed to be Helenium, which I think fs a really stupid name, don't you? This is the library, isn't it?”
Wulfrith, a trifle out of breath, nodded. Without thinking he waved his hand in a simple opening spell, and the heavy gilt-and-enamel doors swung wide.
"Hey!” Arbol demanded. “Who did that?”
“Um ... I did,” Wulfrith admitted.
“But you didn't touch the door, I was looking!”
“No,” Wulfrith said, shamefaced, “I used magic.” He hastened to add, “I'm not a wizard or anything, nobody needs to cut my head off, it's just a trick I learned.”
“Hunh.” The prince looked at this odd masked companion, then at the door. “Maybe you are a girl, after all. I mean, real men don't do magic—that's women’s stuff.”
“I’m not a girl,” Wulfrith replied, a bit hurt.
“ 'Course not,” Arbol agreed, stepping into the library. “I was teasing a bit. You can’t be a girl—you look too much like me!”
“That's right,” Wulfrith agreed, following.
The library was equipped with several tall, narrow windows squeezed in between towering bookshelves, but all of them faced southeast, and the afternoon was winding down toward evening. Combined with the fact that nobody had washed the glass in fourteen years, that left the room dim and shadowed.
Seeing how gloomy the library had become, Wulfrith once again acted without thinking, and lit the half-dozen nearest candles.
(That was a very simple spell; it involved using three- finger sign language to sweet-talk a fire elemental through an invisible window from the nether realm. Clootie had never gotten the hang of it, which still mystified Wulfrith.)
Arbol stopped dead.
“Was that more magic?” the prince demanded.
“Oops. Yes, sir,” Wulfrith admitted.
“Well, stop it! I'm a prince, I can't be seen with some limp-wristed sissy who uses magic! Act like a man!"
“Sorry."
In the candlelight, Arbol looked around at the endless shelves and stacks of dusty, sometimes mildewed volumes, and remarked, “A lot of books."
Wulfrith nodded.
“Are any of them any good?"
Wulfrith blinked in surprise. “Um," he said. “Um." The concept of books not being “any good" was entirely unfamiliar. Some books were better than others, of course, but these were all books, which meant learning and wisdom and wonderful words, stories and spells and ancient lore.
Arbol ignored the other's discomfiture and pulled a thick folio off the nearest table. The prince squinted at the faded title, and then, unable to puzzle it out, opened the book at random and read a few lines.
Wulfrith watched, and saw Arbol's lips moving. Whatever positive traits the prince might possess, scholarship did not appear to be among them.
Well, reading was one of those things that one could do just as well alone, Wulfrith reminded himself.
“This is all about somebody named Pollestius, who offended a woman by wearing a ruby ring on the wrong finger," Arbol said, slamming the book shut. “Who cares about that?"
Wulfrith, although he wondered why a lady would care where someone wore a ring, had to admit that it didn't sound terribly exciting.
“What about this one?" he suggested, pointing to a volume he had noticed before, A Compendium of Mystic Rituals. He hauled it down from the shelf and opened it.
Arbol took one look at it, then sneered, “It's more magic!"
Wulfrith had somehow failed to realize that people who didn't approve of practicing sorcery would not care to read about it, either. After all, he liked reading about adventures and battles, but he wouldn't care to be involved in any.
"Oh,” he said.
"Listen,” Arbol said, "I have other things to do—I think it's almost time for my riding lesson, and we're going to do peasant-trampling'today. You go ahead and look around here all you want, and maybe you can find some good stuff for me, for when I come back.”
"All right,” Wulfrith agreed, looking hungrily at the vast expanse of leather and cloth bindings. "It's been good meeting you, Prince Arbol.”
"Yeah. See you later!”
With that, Arbol departed, closing the door carefully.
Wulfrith snatched off the ridiculous hood he wore, and began prowling the stacks.
The books on magic were very tempting, but magic was not what was wanted, here at the palace. The prince apparently wanted adventure stories, or maybe books on combat or horsemanship; for himself, Wulfrith remembered that he was supposed to try to learn something about the business of being a prince.
He wasn't sure just where to start looking. There was so much here!
It was then that he noticed a small alcove at the back, one that was dimmer and more shaded than the rest of the room, half-hidden behind a particularly complex tangle of shelving. Curious, he picked up a candle and went to investigate.
At first glance the alcove was ordinary enough—three walls were lined with books, while a dusty table and threadbare upholstered chair stood in the center. Rather fewer of the spines had visible titles than the average, perhaps, but otherwise, Wulfrith saw nothing special about them.
Still, it was a bit cozier and less daunting than the remainder of the Royal Library, so Wulfrith decided to check out a few of the books
. He put the candle on the table and studied the nearest shelf.
One title immediately caught his eye. Fortune was with him, he decided, as he pulled The Prince and the Pretty Peasant from its place. He blew off the worst of the dust, then opened it carefully.
There was a finely etched frontispiece. Wulfrith’s eyes widened. He sat down suddenly on the chair, ignoring the cloud of dust and mildew that sprayed up on impact, and began turning pages. Choosing a paragraph at random, Wulfrith read:
“Oh, my Lord, the Wench gasped, I grow faint, for ne'er before have I glimpsed One so Large! Certes, I fear that such as That could make me great Harm, but by the Blessed Goddess Con- cupiscia, I swear, 'twould perchance be Well Worth It." And with those words, she laid her back upon the Couch, her Skirts flung up to her Thighs.
Wulfrith looked at the illustration on the facing page. This was a long way from spells or stories of heroic virtue, but there was certainly a fascination to it. Wulfrith saw readily that this might not teach him much about being a prince, but still, he thought it would be very educational indeed. Quickly, he flipped back to the beginning and settled down for a long read.
Chapter Eighteen
Prince Arbol leaped from the saddle and swaggered over to the fifth newly fallen foe of the afternoon. "Had enough, Pentstemon?"
"I had enough about three hours ago," came the cranky reply. "What's gotten into you, my lord?"
Arbol just laughed and offered the fallen Companion a hand up. "You know I've always liked a friendly contest."
"Friendly!" Pentstemon spat out two teeth and part of his horse's tail, which had somehow found its way into his mouth when Arbol's sideways blow with the practice lance sent him tumbling heels over head off the animal's rump. "If that was friendly, I'd hate to have you for an enemy."
The prince leered. "Exactly. That's what Dad says is the whole idea behind kingship: Scare your allies into loyalty and your enemies into line."
Pentstemon shook his head. Then he thought maybe he'd better not. Too many things besides his teeth felt loose and ready to give way. He was one of the Prince's favorite Companions—a corps of likely young men, all of the purest Old Hydrangean blood, all specially selected by Queen Artemisia herself.
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