Leopold nodded.
"Just don't tell anyone where you got it," Siegfried said, and winced a little. "Or especially how you got it."
"I promise," Leopold pledged. But he couldn't help himself, and Siegfried saw it in his face. "But how did you — I mean, why didn't you — why are you still — "
He had to ask. Of course he did. "Because up until I left Drachenthal, every single female I met was my aunt! My aunt, Leopold! Even at twelve, I knew better than that! In fact, the Shieldmaiden of Doom is probably my aunt, too, or at least my great-aunt!" He felt his face burning. "Why would anyone want to — with his mother's sister?"
Leopold waved his hands in the air to stop him. "Wait, wait, I'm confused here. I thought you said you were supposed to fall in love with the first person you see who is not your aunt...."
"I am. I'm supposed to fall in love with the Shieldmaiden, then I'm supposed to forget the Shieldmaiden and fall in love with the person who's not my aunt and then — " Siegfried let go of the reins to wipe his forehead " — then it gets very complicated and involves all the usual messy things like jealousy and retribution, and unusual things like murder and suicide and the death of gods and the fall of kingdoms and can we just not talk about this anymore?"
They rode on in silence for a good while longer. "Um...there is a way to fix that, you know," the Prince ventured at last.
"Fix what?" Siegfried turned in his saddle to stare at his friend.
"Being uni — " Leopold's face twitched, but he managed to hold in his hilarity. "Being unicorn bait. I know a lady. In fact, I know several ladies."
Siegfried thought that over for a moment. It was tempting. In fact it was very tempting. On the other hand —
"Let's just leave it for now," he said. "We know there's at least one unicorn in the forest now, and we might need more hair."
"If you're sure." Leopold's face twitched. Siegfried was pretty sure he had more things to say, and most of them would be funny someday. Just not right now.
"We have all sorts of tests ahead of us. Do you want to take the chance we'd need something like unicorn hair?" he asked. "Or unicorn blood? Or unicorn tears? She'll give me whatever I ask, you know. Unicorn blood cures any disease and most wounds. Unicorn tears mend broken hearts and broken minds. If we need either of those, the situation would be very nasty, and there are not many substitutes."
Leopold sobered.
"All right then. You go get a silver clasp put on that. Don't let it out of your sight. Wait while the jeweler does it. If you can help it, don't tell him what it is. That stuff is worth more than gold." Siegfried was not about to tell his friend that he had enough hair for several more necklaces inhis pouch. No point in letting Leopold's greed get the better of him. He was going to braid one for himself; it might come in useful.
"How did you learn all these things?" Leopold asked, just before they split up inside the city gate.
Siegfried deadpanned, "A little bird told me."
Siegfried didn't particularly want Leopold around as he ran this lot of "errands" anyway. He figured that he had gotten enough teasing from his friend for one day as it was.
His first stop was at the market stalls. This late in the day, everyone was willing to sell him what he wanted at bargain prices, which was good, because it made his money go further. Granted, Leopold was very generous with his winnings, sharing them despite Siegfried's insistence that he didn't need them.... But Siegfried generally ended up giving the money away. According to the bird, one of the effects of resisting the Rivergold Ring that the dragon had guarded was that greed had no hold over him, and that made him particularly generous of heart. That might well be so, but he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't given things away.
In all events, since he had arrived here, he had done more, a lot more, than just help that one fox. Leopold had no idea, and Siegfried was fairly sure that he'd find what Siegfried was doing incomprehensible, laughable, or both.
His first stop, because he really wanted to get rid of that fish that was just going stale, was at an old warehouse. As he got off the horse, a cat and three lively kittens came running up to him. He had taken the kittens away from boys who were going to drown them, and rescued the mother from their confederate who intended to tie burning straw to her tail and then let her go, to watch her set fire to everything in her path as she tried to escape. He had taken them to this warehouse where they could earn their living catching mice, and stopped by whenever he could with old fish.
The entire little family spilled out of the warehouse when they caught his scent. The kittens greeted him with happy noises, and the mother cat bumped her head against his hand. "You have a good heart, BigMan," she said as he put down the fish. "We will remember you, you know."
He laughed, for this was the clearest thing she had ever said to him, and rubbed her head as she purred like distant thunder. Interesting! Maybe she was a Wise Beast? "Raise big cats to catch rats that make people sick," he told her. "That is all I ask."
When he saw that they had eaten their fill and he didn't need to stave off other cats, dogs or crows, he got on the horse and went on to his next stop.
This time, it was at a stable, where he made sure that an old, slow little donkey was still being cared for properly. The stable owner had a crippled child who was just the right size and weight to ride the tiny beast. He had rescued the poor thing from the enormous cart it was trying to pull. The cart was meant for a full-size horse or ox, not a donkey, but the skinflint drover was bound that the poor old beast was going to pull it, and had been beating her and goading her with an ox-goad. Siegfried tried to reason with him, and when the fellow tried to hit him with the goad, he knocked the man to the ground and beat him as he had beaten his donkey. Then he threw just enough money on the man's chest to pay for the poor old thing, cut the donkey out of the traces and took her away. She was happy here. Her sores were healing, she was clean, her coat was shining, and she had something over her bones other than skin. And she loved the little girl; the two had formed an instant bond.
The stable owner loved her, too, not only because she was his child's favorite companion, but because she ate the thistles that plagued his pasture. Siegfried would have left money for her care, but the owner would have none of it. The donkey came up as he turned to leave, the little child on her back. "Thank you, BigMan," she said. "I will not forget your kindness."
"Just love and care for the child," Siegfried replied, smiling. "That is all I ask."
Definitely another Wise Beast. Then again...he was smack in the middle of a Kingdom, engaging in Traditional Trials, for the Traditional hand of a Princess. Maybe he should be surprised he wasn't encounteringmore Wise Beasts.
Not long ago he had followed his ears to the door of another warehouse, where he had found a crowd standing around a crude arena, where a bear and a wolf were being forced to fight each other by a showman. The poor things were half-starved, covered with wounds and nearly mad. When he discovered them, lying on the floor of the arena, they were nearly dead.
He had treated the showman as he had the drover, then taken the animals. He had treated their wounds himself, not daring to entrust them to anyone else. At first, they had been too sick and weak to move, and by the time they had recovered their strength, he had won their trust. He kept them in roomy cages in a shed he had rented — in cages for their protection and not to confine them; bars meant no one could get near them to kill or steal them. Slowly, he was able to talk to them; they had been less than sane when he rescued them but with the healing of their bodies, their minds had also healed. He had known from the start, though, that he was going to have to get them out of the city, and as soon as he possibly could.
Today would be that day. While not completely healed, they would be able to hunt — in the wolf's case, he would definitely find his pack, for he could smell them — and recover on their own, so today they were ready to be turned loose.
What he had paid for in the market were two
short-lived charms of illusion in the form of cloth collars. They were meant for people who wanted to disguise a valuable animal as something less valuable. He would need those to get them out of the city. While the wolf and the bear would do nothing worse than run for the gate, their presence in the street would cause panic.
He opened the shed and stood in the quiet semidarkness. For days, this place had smelled of blood and fear and pain. Now it smelled of the musk of bear and the doggy-scent of wolf. "It is I," he said to the shadows in the cage. "Are you ready to leave?"
"We are, BigMan," rumbled the bear. The wolf yipped agreement.
He held out the collars and their ropes so that they could see and smell what he had. "I must put cloth about your necks and ropes tied to the cloth. These things will make you look like tame beasts that no one will fear, so that I may take you through the man-paths to the forest. You must not run ahead, but stay at my side like tame beasts. Will you permit this?"
He heard uneasy shuffling and knew why. The cruel showman had kept spiked collars around their necks to control them. But finally the wolf answered. "You have never said us false, BigMan. You healed us, fed us and protected us. We will abide this."
He opened the wolf's cage first, and collared him, then the bear. The illusions settled over them, making them look like a pair of goats. He took the ropes in his hand and led them to and out the shed door. And all was well. No one paid him any heed as he walked down some of the quieter streets to one of the city gates — although cats fled in terror, and dogs backed away, hackles raised, trusting their noses rather than their eyes. Perhaps one or two people might have wondered at the sight of a relatively well-dressed man leading two goats himself, but his clothing was modest enough that no one would realize he was one of the Princes unless they actually knew him by sight.
Siegfried took them well into the forest before removing their collars. The wolf, who had been sniffing the air hungrily for some time, gave a happy yelp and vanished into the trees, but the bear paused, turned and looked up at him out of dark little eyes.
"You saved our lives and our minds, BigMan," the bear said. "Wolf cannot wait to return to his kin, so I will say for both of us. You have a good heart. We will not forget this."
"Then when you see men, do not fight, but run," said Siegfried. "This is all I ask."
He walked back to the city, got his borrowed horse and headed for the King's Arms.
Leopold was waiting for him, with a finely carved wooden box in front of him. When Siegfried arrived in the doorway, he grinned and waved him to the table.
"Come see if this looks fit for a Princess," he said, as Siegfried sat down beside him. He opened the box, and the pure white braid glowed against the velvet interior. There was a simple gold clasp on it, and nothing more.
"I am no woman, but I think that will please her," he said gravely. "Did the jeweler know what it was?"
"He did, and he gave me the gold clasp for the cost of silver if I gave him a single hair. He means to braid it with silver and gold wire for a ring for his daughter. That seemed harmless enough to me." Leopold gave Siegfried a sharpish, sideways look. "I confess I took a few of the hairs that you saved. I thought they might come in handy. You never know, right?"
Siegfried shrugged. "You made a good bargain with them. But you should be sure that the jeweler either knows you are a Prince or does not know you at all now. There will be wizards and sorcerers who would pursue you for those hairs or that necklace, and you either want to be thought of as too high to dare to harass, or impossible to find."
Leopold nodded. "So, shall we head back to the Palace? I hope you have had your fill of running about in the woods for now. I, for one, would be glad not to see them again for a while!"
Chapter 17
The number of suitors had been pared down, one trial at a time, over the past several weeks. From tournaments to hunts for odd items, to fiendishly complicated problems, the trials had been successful at eliminating most of the Princes.
But there were still ten left.
"I need more trials" muttered Lily, as she massaged both temples. "More than that, I need a long-term solution to keeping Eltaria safe. Thurman would still be alive if he hadn't been worn to a thread by running from one border crisis to another. Celeste might still be alive if he had been here instead of on the border."
"And you will be worn to a thread if you aren't careful, Lily," Jimson said with alarm and concern. "You do not need that many more trials. There are only ten candidates left. Three of them are the enemy Princes and two more are from Kingdoms flanking them. We are still safe. You can stretch this out as long as a year without any of them taking umbrage, I think."
"And I still don't have a long-term solution!" the Godmother said with despair. "I have been Godmother to this Kingdom for three hundred years, and I still haven't got a solution that doesn't involve sending the Kings to an early grave!"
There was no one to see her but Jimson, no one to he alarmed at her weakness, no one to wonder if she was no longer up to the task....
Even though she herself now wondered just that very thing.
For the first time in three hundred years, she felt inadequate to the job. She put her head down in her hands, and wept. The Fae, even the half-Fae, as she was, were not supposed, by mortals at least, to weep. Mortals didn't know. The Fae did not cry often, and never in public, but oh yes, they wept. When you lived as long as the Fae did, there was a great deal to weep over. She had not wept in decades, but she was at the end of her proverbial rope.
"Lily — Lily — "Jimson sounded frustrated and helpless. "Please, do not cry — you are a good Godmother. No one could have managed better than you!"
She couldn't stop weeping, although she wept as the Fae did, quietly, the tears flowing from her eyes like rain. It was all, suddenly, too much. Even if one of the decent men won the right to Rosa's hand, it would all begin again. This poor little kingdom would be the tasty morsel that the neighbors all wanted to devour as long as there was no practical way to protect it.
Jimson continued to try and comfort her with soothing words, with reminders of several of the many disasters she had averted, and then just with "it will be all right," repeated over and over. But for the moment, she was inconsolable. Finally he burst out, "Ah, I wish I was in your world, my love. I could at least hold you!"
That stopped her tears. She looked up suddenly and saw in the eyes of her Mirror Servant something she had never expected to see.
"Jimson?" she faltered.
He flushed. "I should never have said that," he mumbled, and started to fade.
"Wait!" she called. He paused, halfway between there and not there.
"Did you mean that?"
Slowly, he came back tothere. "It slipped out."
"But did you mean it?" She stared at him, as if she was seeing him, reallyseeing him, for the first time. For three hundred years, he had been her faithful helper, companion and confidant. Everything, everyone else, would come and go — but not Jimson. When had her feelings crossed that line? When had his? They had been together so long...
Perhaps it had only been recently. It came to her now, since all this started, he had stopped calling her "Godmother," unless Rosa was around. That might have been the first sign, if she had just been paying more attention.
Maybe she hadn't wanted to know; maybe her heart had known, and her head had realized that it was impossible and protected her from the knowledge. Because it was impossible. He could not be here, and despite knowing mirror-magic as well as she did, his world was still somewhere she could not go, for it was inhabited only by spirits.
"Of course I meant it." He stared at her with naked longing, and for the first time ever, a hand joined the image of the face in the mirror, a hand pressed up against the surface of the glass as if by will alone he could reach into her world.
She pressed her hand to the same place, palm to palm. "I'm sorry — " she began.
"That you don't feel the sam
e?" He smiled bitterly.
"No — " she replied. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to notice that I do."
Prince Leopold's gift encircled Rosa's neck under her gown, lying cool against her skin; there was something extraordinarily comforting about the feel of the unicorn necklace. She very much appreciated the gift, although the giver had pushed himself forward just a little too much, kissing her hand and then starting upward before she pulled away.
She had heard of such things of course, but she had never actually seen one, much less owned one. As wealthy as Eltaria was, all the money in the kingdom couldn't buy what no one would willingly sell.
She wondered about the unicorn this had come from. Leopold had said the hair was freely given, which made it more potent, but she rather doubted that he was a virgin. How had he gotten it? Had he followed the unicorn at a discreet distance, picking the hairs off bushes?
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