Sleeping Beauty fhk-5

by Mercedes Lackey

  "I don't know!"Jimson screamed back, the green face contorted with emotion. The Mirror Servant might occasionally be snippy and even snide, but Lily would have been the first to say he took his duties very seriously. "I can'tfind her if she's not near something that reflects!" A bolt of lightning, striking right outside the palace, and the simultaneous barrage of thunder punctuated his scream, making the maids decide that the work could wait until morning and flee to their rooms to cower in, or under, their beds. The thick palace walls prevented them from hearing the words clearly, but Queen Sable shrieking at someone — and being answered — in a room they knew no one else was in was not a good sign. Lily jumped as the bolt hit, feeling almost as if it had hit her. After a frozen moment, she put the mirror down, carefully, and just as carefully walked away from it.

  She knew that Jimson couldn't find anything that wasn't reflected; she'd known that for hundreds of years. She also knew that Jimson was just as eager to find Rosa as she was. The Mirror Servant had been with her as her helper longer than anyone else she knew, and was patient and kind and forbearing with her out of all reason. She knew that screaming at him didn't help. She knew all of these things, but it didn't stop her from wanting to scream at him. She was in a panic, and she wasn't going to solve anything if she couldn't get herself under better control.

  This was a disaster. This was the worst disaster in Eltaria in three hundred years. No Godmother of this Kingdom had ever lost an entire Princess.

  "If it's any help," Jimson said wearily, "she is still the fairest in the land." Even if he couldn't see her, there were still some things that worked. He could still tell that she was out there, alive, and unharmed enough to trump Lily's beauty.

  So Rosa was still alive at least. Lily took many deep breaths and forced herself to calm down and think. "All right, the most logical point of trouble is the Huntsman," she said to herself as much as to Jimson. "What's he doing?"

  "He's not in his quarters." When the man had turned up with his hound pack, ostensibly as a wedding present from Duke Perrin, Lily had taken the precaution of putting reflective surfaces everywhere he might conceivably go. "He's not in the stables. He's — he's in the woods. With the pack."

  Lily was reasonably sure that Perrin had not sent the man, but she was also reasonably sure that Perrin would say that he had. There were many ways to ensure the Duke would think he had sent this most peculiar present — anything from coercion to a spell that gave a false memory. The spell would be the most likely; while Perrin was warded by his Palace wizard against magic that would harm him, there was nothing about the memory of having sent a valuable servant and a dog pack as a wedding present that would causePerrin any harm.

  There were pitfalls to relying too much on magical protections. There was only so much that magic could do — especially when The Tradition was forcing a path. Unfortunately, Perrin was a man who did not think long or deeply about anything that didn't interest him, and when it came to magic, it bored him. So chances were, the Huntsman was a planted agent for someone, and it would be impossible to prove it. There was no telling when or how the manipulation had taken place, nor by whom, and rather too late to worry about that now.

  "Can you see anything useful?" she asked immediately. "Can you tell where he is, other than in the forest?" Thurman's Palace was — of course — on the edge of an enormous woodland that stretched for miles. It would not have been a proper setting for tales if it had not been. All sorts of Traditional Paths started in Palaces and ended in Woodlands, and vice versa. Even if the Palace had once been in the heart of a city, here in Eltaria The Tradition moved so strongly that eventual lysomething would have happened to change the very landscape.

  "Not really. Bits of him in the bridle brass. Bits of dogs and woods in the bridle brass. A lot of storm in the bridle brass. The question is, why would he be out in this weather?" Jimson's mouth pursed shrewdly. "The Princess is missing, and the Huntsman is miles away in the forest? In a storm?"

  "That is a very good question, which is probably answered by 'because he is chasing the Princess.'" She rang immediately for a servant; one came, cowering. She'd had to maintain the illusion that she was Evil by a fierce and intimidating manner, though she hadn't actually done anything to any of the servants. Poor things, she felt so sorry for them. Queen Celeste had been a gentle and considerate mistress. She could console herself by reminding herself that if she was terrifying them, at least she wasn't making their lives a living hell the way a real Evil Stepmother would have. "I want a count of the horses in the stable immediately. Get the grooms to do it. Tell me if any are missing, and which ones."

  The man left and returned very quickly; he must have gone himself, for his green livery was rain-soaked and his hair was plastered to his head by water. He made a profound obeisance and stayed that way. "Two horses are gone, Majesty," he said, his voice a little muffled by the fact that he was still in a deep bow. "One is the Huntsman's, and one is your usual ride." She noted that he did not also mention that the Huntsman and his pack were gone before he backed out of the room. Already the servants were rebelling in small ways, telling her only what she had asked about and no more. While this was good, since it meant they were much more likely to be very loyal to Rosa, it meant she was going to have to be very precise in what she demanded of them.

  Lily put the mirror down and began to pace; though her body moved restlessly, her mind was curiously calm. "I can still feel The Tradition putting pressure on the situation, so we can assume something or someone will come to her rescue."

  "Or try to kill her again," Jimson said glumly.

  "Well we can deal with the Huntsman — does the man have a name?" she added irritably. "At any rate I am fairly sure I can find a way to tie him up, at least temporarily... in fact, I know exactly how." She felt just a little satisfaction at that. "I'll put him to looking for her, and partner him with someone trustworthy. I'll have to do this carefully, so it doesn't look like my idea, but I think I can manipulate things in our favor." She ran over the list of Thurman's best men in her mind. "Hodges and May. They are both Captains of the Guard and technically outrank him. I can reinforce that by putting them in charge of the search effort. He won't be able to shake them, and they're suspicious of me — well, of 'Queen Sable."'

  She rang for the servant again. The poor man. He was going to get a back injury from spending so much time bent over in a bow.

  "I want to be informed as soon as the Huntsman returns," she said. "And gather the Guard. Princess Rosamund must be found."

  This was Eltaria. Rosa was an Eltarian Princess who studied The Tradition. So Rosa had known all of her life that there were some skills an Eltarian Princess needed to have that... were not generally in the curriculum of a Royal or even a Noble.

  She knew, basically, how to clean clothing and a room, how to mend garments, how to plain-sew as well as embroider, and how to cook very, very basic food. She could not make bread, but she could make griddle cakes. She could make porridge, soup and stew. She could milk a cow or a goat. She could cook game over a campfire after cleaning and skinning it herself, and she could start the campfire herself. She could spin, and in a pinch, knit and weave. She knew how to hunt, of course, and shoot; most nobles knew that. But she also knew how to set snares and traps, choose wood, find edible plants and knew a half a dozen mushrooms that were safe to eat.

  In short, she had most of the skills her mother had. After all her mother had been a shepherdess before she was a Queen.

  An Eltarian Princess never knew if The Tradition was going to decide to dump her in the middle of nowhere and force her to fend for herself.

  And now, faced with a filthy kitchen, and seven sullen "masters," she needed those skills.

  In her mind, she started giving them names. The biggest, she called "Bully," because he shoved everyone around, not just her. The eldest was "Deaf," because he was, or nearly, but since he didn't speak at all, and none of the others spoke to him, it didn't seem to matter; pus
hing and pointing pretty much conveyed everything that needed to be said. There was "Sly," who could never look at anyone straight on; "Surly," whose every other word was a curse; "Angry," who was too out of sorts even to curse, and just glared; "Lumpy," who, when not eating, just sat and stared into space; and "Coward," who deferred to everyone except her.

  "Need meat," Bully said when they were on their second bowl of the stuff. He glared at Coward, who cringed. "Ye didn't get meat."

  "'S the storm, see? Can't check the traps inna storm!" Coward whined. "What'f I get struck by lightnin'?"

  "What if I shove me foot up yer arse?" snarled Bully. "Ye got one job, tha's traps. We need meat. Dwarf gotta have meat t'dig. Tha's yer job, cause yer shite at diggin', ye lazy sod."

  Coward sank down in his chair and whimpered into his bowl. Bully indicated to Rosa that he wanted more by the simple expedient of flinging the empty bowl at her and grunting at the kettle.

  They pretty much ate the kettle bare, left the dirty bowls and spoons on the table and shuffled off to some other part of the cottage. To sleep, she presumed. She gathered everything up and started cleaning — the two kettles first, and since it didn't seem that they minded a bit of ash in their food, the second one got filled with coals from the fire to have its insides burned out.

  It didn't appear that the Dwarves cared what they ate or when, so she did what was easiest: she took the clean kettle and filled it full of water and dried peas with some salt and set it to cooking all night for pease porridge. They could eat that in the morning. Right now, she was too tired to think past morning. Her hands were a mess; she was filthy, bruised, exhausted, wanted to sit on the floor and howl with fear and grief; and at the moment, the only thing good about her life was that the Huntsman wasn't going to be able to kill her. Tonight, anyway.

  In the morning, the Dwarves woke her with the sound of their thumping and quarreling. With that warning she had the bowls full of pease porridge waiting on the table for them, even though she was sleepy and muddleheaded and so stiff and sore from sleeping on the stones that her eyes leaked tears with every stab of pain. They said nothing to her about the food, which she knew wasn't particularly good, which just told her that their own cooking must have been pretty bad.

  Then again, judging by what she'd had to scrape out of the bowls, it was stuff that the Palace cooks would have beaten an apprentice for making, just before throwing him out the door onto the rubbish pile. If they noticed she was crying, they said nothing about that, either.

  When they were full, they stomped out of the kitchen and headed into the cellar, all but Coward, who went out the door into the forest. So their mine must be below the cottage, and they reached it by the cellar. How had they found her in that tree? Was it an extra way in that they had been checking? Did they seize her thinking she was a thief coming to loot their mine? It couldn't have been a very good one, since the really good mines were all in the mountains; she wondered what they were mining. But she didn't wonder for long; there were a lot of other things she needed to get done right now. She had to find out just what her options were, here.

  She explored the cottage as far as her chain would reach, which took her just outside the kitchen door and to every room in the cottage. There had been a kitchen garden there, next to the door, once. There were at least a few hardy herbs still struggling. Mint, of course. Nothing killed mint. She could just reach a few feet away, as far as the outhouse, but at least that meant she could start a garden midden for garbage. She had the sinking feeling she was going to need it.

  She quickly discovered that absolutely nothing in the cottage, not the heaviest tools or the sharpest chisel, made the faintest scratch on the loop of metal on the hearth, the chain or the manacle. She hadn't really expected them to, since she doubted that the Dwarves were so stupid as to leave the tools to free herself in the reach of their captive, but it was disappointing anyway.

  They'd told her to "clean," but given the state of their house and themselves, it appeared that their idea of what was acceptable was set to a standard a lot lower than hers.

  Good.

  She got a stick, picked up their discarded clothing with it, started a fire in the kitchen garden with a big cauldron of water over it and boiled the entire lot. That was as much in the way of laundry as she intended to do. She did sweep, and swept everything out the kitchen door to the place where she was making a midden, because there was a prodigious amount of petrified or rotting food, bones and other nastiness. She had no intention of scrubbing the floors, or anything, unless they ordered her to, or she just couldn't stand it herself. And she wasn't using the outhouse; the stench in there was enough to knock a person over and suffocate her. Instead, she made her own place to go discreetly behind some overgrown bushes.

  The storeroom actually proved to be somewhat valuable. There were a lot of things in there that looked as if they must have belonged to the previous owner of the cottage, now broken and tossed aside. Some real bedding, for instance, which was moth-eaten and tattered, but was better than sleeping on the bare stone floor. She boiled it, too; heaven only knew what was living in it. And wedged on a shelf, there was a cookbook. She leafed through it, and figured she might be able to manage some of what was in it. By that time, the stuff she had spread in the garden to dry was ready to take in. She left all the clothing in one pile and the blankets in another; let them fight it out among themselves who belonged to what. Coward returned with some scrawny hares at that point. He tossed them on the kitchen table and dived for the piles, greedily picking through them before claiming what looked like the best of a bad lot of rubbish for himself, changed with no thought for modesty and demanded food.

  She gave him leftover pease porridge. He didn't complain, gobbled down three enormous bowlfuls and went back out again, leaving her to gut and skin the game herself.

  To make it go as far as possible, she made soup, managed unleavened griddle cakes without burning too many and spread the leftover pease porridge, which by now was a paste, onto them. She took her bedding in from the garden, but left it piled in a corner behind the broom and some buckets, because she had a good idea that if they saw it, they'd take it. She also ate first, at least of the griddle cakes, with some of the stewed rabbit meat. Coward turned up again with more game, squirrels this time; he looked with longing at the soup, but this time didn't demand any, though he did grab greedily for griddle cakes. She didn't stop him. He was still stuffing himself when the other six came stumping up the stairs. Bully had a very small bag at his belt. He smacked Coward with the back of his hand when he saw the smaller Dwarf was eating.

  "Wha?" Coward sniveled. "I din touch yon soup!"

  "See ye remember not ta, then," Bully sneered, and sat down at the table.

  She brought bowls of the soup — the squirrel wasn't completely cooked, but they didn't seem to care — and the griddle cakes for as long as they lasted. They had no leavening, no milk, no eggs in them, being more like flat unleavened bread than cakes, but again, the Dwarves didn't seem to care. They ate everything she put in front of them.

  Once again, they gobbled everything down and left a mess behind. By the time she was done and had set another kettle of pease porridge up to cook overnight, she was ready to weep with exhaustion. She dragged her bedding out onto the hearth, and made a more comfortable bed there than she had the night before.

  And then she did weep. Because how would anyone ever find her out here? Who would come here, even if The Tradition led them? Who would see she was pretty beneath the layers of filth that were going to build up on her? Keeping clean was going to be impossible. And if they did, how would they get her free without cutting off her foot? There was nothing in the Snowskin Tradition about the princess being chained — or having to cut off her foot to get free!

  No, this was a new twist, and a horrible one, and right now there seemed to be no Path, Traditional or otherwise, out of it.

  Chapter 3

  "I've got her!"

  Jim
son's shout woke Lily from her fitful doze. She had fallen asleep in the chair while Jimson searched for the missing Princess, combing through every reflective surface in the general vicinity of the buildup of Traditional power that he and she could sense. Now she knuckled the fog out of her eyes and leaned forward. "Where?" she demanded.

  "It's in the forest. I can place it on a map for you later. Not many reflective surfaces there, I'm using a knife and a water bucket." The image from the bucket wasn't very useful since it showed mostly ceiling. The one from the knife wasn't much better; it was fogged and distorted.

  "Ah, I have some more options. Cups."

  The glimpses Lily got of the Princess as she filled those cups made her wince. Bruised, hurt, poor child — her hands were a mass of scratches and cuts, the nails broken and torn. She was filthy, too. Her hair was full of twigs and bits of leaf.

  Not as filthy as the creatures appropriating the cups, though. The glimpses she got of matted, fouled beards, yellowed teeth, snarled hair and filthy faces made her grimace. The reflection from the knife gave relative heights, proving that girl's captors were Dwarves. But...not the sort of Dwarves that Lily was used to dealing with.