Wait, of course it would. If people think the dragon is sitting on a lot of cursed objects, they won’t try stealing anything.
All right then. They’d try talking to it. What was the worst that would happen?
The worst that would happen would be we’re stuck with these curses. No. No, I refuse to let that happen. I absolutely refuse to let that happen.
He glanced over at Leopold, who was hunting through their saddlebags.
“What are you looking for?” he asked with irritation, producing two toads and a big bullfrog.
“Paper. And something to write with. I thought of a rhyme for shadow.”
It was going to be a long night.
The next day, Leopold was in the depths of despair because he didn’t have anything black to wear, and there was no rhyme for ensanguined. Siegfried had to push him to do anything, he lost his temper multiple times, and another flood of toads marked every word.
That was when he got more avian advice. “You might not have noticed,” the bird observed, “but the angrier you get, the more hoppers you produce. Maybe if you concentrate on feeling sorry for Leopold, you’ll be able to take two steps without squashing a frog.”
Siegfried stared at his bird blankly, then slowly nodded. He couldn’t imagine how he had missed that simple fact, but there it was. He concentrated very hard on feeling grateful to the bird, and sorry for losing his temper. “Thank you. I’m sorry,” he said humbly, and was rewarded by dropping a baby toad scarcely the size of a beetle.
“You should be,” the bird said smugly. Siegfried’s temper flared again, but he reined it in and managed to get Leopold to saddle and bridle his horse and swing up into that saddle without having to say another word. Now his best hope was that he could just get them to the pass and the cave without Leopold deciding to start composing sad songs instead of poems. He wasn’t sure he would survive songs.
So far there were only seven Princes on the way to the pass. Desmond was in the lead—he’d gotten the rather common curse of boils, and they’d broken out all over his face. Almost as soon as the affliction had occurred, he’d gotten his horse and ridden out.
With the collusion of Jimson, Rosa was watching him, and Siegfried and Leopold, in Jimson’s mirror. Normally it was a good week of hard riding to Sharpstone Pass, but Lily had taken pity on the poor fellows, and she’d cast the “All Paths Are One” spell to shorten their journey. Their map routed them all over an obscure little trail that almost no one ever used, which they would encounter early on their second day. It was drawn to look like a shortcut, which would guarantee that they would use it. That was where the spell had been placed.
Prince Desmond, however, had been so desperate to rid himself of his affliction that he had pressed his horse onto that path late in the evening of the first day. As a consequence, at this very moment, with a pack on his back, he was climbing up one of the mountains at the pass—
Not the mountain that the dragon’s cave was in, but one opposite it, which puzzled her more than a little.
“What do you think he’s doing?” she asked Jimson.
“I confess myself baffled,” the Mirror Servant replied, as the mirror showed Desmond making his way up a narrow goat track. “Utterly baffled. I thought maybe he was going to talk to Gina and ask her to deliver the object, which is perfectly within the rules, but no. Wait, look, he’s settling down—”
And so he was. He removed the pack and pulled out a crossbow and a handful of blunted bolts, arrows that had a round ball-like head. With practiced ease, he cocked the bow, inserted a bolt and took aim at the entrance to Sharpstone’s cave.
“Oh, of course!” Rosa exclaimed as the bolt fell short. “Oh, that’s clever. As soon as it’s in the cave, it’s part of the hoard, of course. And with the head blunted, those bolts wouldn’t do more than bruise a man at the distance he’s shooting. If they hit Sharpstone, he probably wouldn’t even feel it.”
“Likely not. It is clever,” Jimson agreed. They both watched as the Prince sighted on the cave, made sure of his target by getting three bolts in succession inside the entrance, then took his object—a gold coin—and affixed it to the front of the blunt head with beeswax. This was risky; if he fell short, he was going to have to climb down, find the coin, climb back up and try again. Finding the coin was going to be the trick. There was a lot of mountain out there….
As Rosa held her breath, he sighted and let fly.
The bolt sailed in through the mouth of the cave, just under the upper rim.
“Oh, well done!” Jimson exclaimed, as a moment later Prince Desmond’s plague of facial boils began to fade. “Good shot!”
“I hope some of the others think of that,” Rosa said. “Let’s check Siegfried and Leopold.”
They left Desmond clambering back down the mountainside and found the Northerner and his companion within sight of the pass. The two of them were still on horseback, but the track was right in the mountains now. Pines clung to the steep slopes on either side of them. Siegfried was on the lead horse, slumped over the saddle, looking miserable. Leopold—was singing.
He wasn’t good at it.
“My heart is wrapped in endless night,” he warbled dismally. “And something, something, something blight. And in despair my soul is led—”
“Your mother dropped you on your head!” the bird sang scathingly.
Siegfried choked on a laugh. Evidently, that wasn’t misery; that was a valiant attempt to keep from falling out of his saddle with laughter. Rosa didn’t have to hide hers, nor did Jimson.
“My spirit weeps in awful dread!” Leopold howled, oblivious to the effect he was having on his audience. “Oh, love shall never-more be mine!”
“I think your brains were soaked in brine!” the bird sang.
“So drown it in a mug of wine!” Siegfried countered, and a frog hit his horse’s neck and leapt off into the brush at the side of the path.
“I moan, I sigh, I do repine!” groaned Leopold. “Oh love, sweet love, will never be!”
“Because she kicked you in the—knee!” The bird caroled. Siegfried choked.
Leopold stopped singing and glared at them both. “You’re ruining my art!” he whined.
Rosa convulsed with laughter, her sides aching and her eyes watering, to the point of having to gasp to catch her breath. Jimson snickered.
“Leopold,” Siegfried said, in a placating tone. “Vibration. Avalanche. Please.” He managed to produce only one toad, which followed the frog, as he pointed upward at the loose slip area above the trail, a tumble of boulders that didn’t look in the least stable.
“Oh, all right,” Leopold grumbled. He slumped down in his saddle, looking for all the world like a surly adolescent in a state of high sulk.
“Oh, poor Siegfried,” Rosa gasped, wiping tears from her eyes. “How did anyone ever produce a curse that complex? And more to the point, why?”
“I have no idea, Princess,” said Jimson. “None. I don’t remember Lily ever picking that one up, so either she got it before I became her helper, or it was in storage from her predecessor. But I must admit, it is a work of art of the highest order.”
By this time the two men had spotted the cave and the narrow, winding path that led to a final difficult scramble over a rock field up to it. And Sharpstone, possibly having been awakened from his sleep by Desmond’s arrows, was just oozing his way out of the cave. The dragon looked down at them from his heights and sneered.
Sharpstone was a long, lean, snakelike beast, a sort of bronze-black in color. His scales must have been the size of dinner plates. No teeth were visible when his mouth was closed, but since his head was easily twice the size of a horse, he might not need huge fangs to kill someone; he could just swallow the offending party whole. His eyes were a dull gold, and had a sardonic look to them.
He stretched out on a ledge to watch them, as they edged up the path, and then scrambled over the last several hundred feet of loose rock and boulders to get to him. From
his posture, Rosa got the feeling that he was really enjoying their struggles and was in no hurry to put an end to the fun.
He waited until they stood panting before him before he decided to speak.
“Go away,” he hissed, his eyes narrowing with pleasure at thwarting them. “You bore me.” He had maneuvered himself so that his considerable bulk blocked the entrance to his cave so they couldn’t just throw their cursed objects in.
“I’d appreciate it if you would hear us out,” Siegfried said testily.
Five frogs and a toad dropped down onto the rock at his feet, tried to leap away and plummeted to their doom.
Sharpstone’s eyes widened at that. “Why should I?” he replied, and tilted his head to the side in anticipation of Siegfried’s answer.
“Because perhaps it wouldn’t hurt you to be nice for a change?” Siegfried snapped. And a cascade of toads followed the first lot, and like the first, bounced pathetically over the edge.
Sharpstone’s head came up. All the way up. And as his pupils shrank to the size of pins with excitement, he goaded Siegfried again. “I see no reason to be nice to a couple of idiots who are too stupid to find some easier way to get rid of their problems,” he said gleefully. “Go away! I can’t be bothered with you!”
Siegfried’s temper snapped. He unloaded an angry lecture on the dragon, who paid no attention whatsoever to what he was saying. Instead, he kept his eyes delightedly fixed on the waterfall of toads, frogs and even an occasional snake that poured from the air in front of Siegfried’s lips and rained down the side of the mountain.
Meanwhile, Leopold, who couldn’t understand the dragon and was clearly bored with the entire situation, had wandered away until he found a boulder stable enough to sit on. There he slumped, until inspiration struck him again. Well, inspiration, or something else…
He picked up his song of misery just as Siegfried’s invective ran out. “Oh, death, come wrap me in your wings!” he sobbed. “In deepest darkness my soul sings! I will not fear the Reaper nigh! Oh take me for I want to die!”
Now Sharpstone turned his attention from the frog-fall to the tuneless troubadour. His mouth gaped open in astonishment.
“Eat him, would you?” the bird said crossly from Siegfried’s shoulder. “Put him out of our misery.”
“Sadness fills my life with pain! I cannot go on again! Darkness falls across the land! Come to me and take my hand!” Leopold’s eyes were clamped shut as he bleated out the words, caught up in a transport of creation. Or something like creation.
The dragon listened, with his mouth gaping, until he couldn’t restrain his mirth any longer.
His sides heaved. He began to snort, then gurgle, then belch out smoke and chortles.
“It’s not that funny,” Siegfried said crossly. More frogs, two of them, joined the others over the cliff. The dragon kept laughing, then fell over on his side, rolling on his ledge as he howled with laughter.
Leopold stopped singing and stared at him. Siegfried grew red-faced, but kept his jaws clamped tightly shut. Perhaps he didn’t want to be responsible for the death of any more amphibians.
Finally Sharpstone’s laughter subsided somewhat. The dragon clawed himself upright, raising his head weakly, wheezing. Little plumes of smoke leaked from his nostrils.
“Oh…First Egg,” the dragon gasped. “I haven’t laughed that hard in centuries.” He coughed a tiny flame or two. “Shells and stone…” He shook his head. “All right. You’ve earned it. You’ve earned it. You’ve given me endless entertainment here, so you’ve convinced me to take your cursed baubles.” He held out a massive claw, “palm” up. “You needn’t try and trick them into my hoard, nor do any more convincing, nor do me a further service, nor offer me something precious to take them. Put them here. I accept them.”
Instantly, Siegfried ripped off the gold ring he was wearing and dropped it in the dragon’s claw, then scrambled over to Leopold, and over the latter’s protests that “he was just getting inspired,” ripped the gold chain from his neck and deposited it in the same place.
The moment that the gold of the chain touched the dragon’s claw, Leopold went scarlet. He didn’t say a word—he simply scrambled to his feet and started down the mountain as fast as he could go without killing himself.
“Thank you,” Siegfried said to Sharpstone.
“My pleasure, literally,” the dragon replied, then wheezed with laughter a bit more. “Thermals! I’m going to put these things somewhere special and find a way to pass them off on some other unsuspecting booby in a century or two! That was worth double your weight in gold!”
And with that, the dragon turned around and oozed back into this cave. Siegfried followed Leopold down to where they had left their horses.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, until Leopold cleared his throat, and spoke.
“If you ever,” he said, quietly, but venomously, “tell anyone what I was doing? And most of all what I was singing? I. Will. Kill. You.”
15
THE CONTEST OF THE CURSED OBJECTS HAD taken its toll on the young men vying for Rosamund’s hand and Kingdom. Rather than face a dragon they didn’t have the skill to persuade, didn’t think to offer a service or gift to, couldn’t hurt and weren’t allowed to kill, many of them had given up, declared their forfeits and waited to be relieved of their afflictions. It had been rather sad, actually, to see the poor lads queued up when the Godmother had put in an appearance to take their curses away. It had been even sadder to see the procession of the dejected leaving the Palace as they had packed up and departed with figurative tails between their legs.
Most of the adventurers hadn’t even tried. Uninvited as they were, now they left unheralded. The tents emptied, the bunks in the Guardhouse went back to their rightful tenants, the tents were packed up and put away, and there was nothing left to show of the horde of hopeful suitors than the trampled-down grass and the burn-rings of their fires. A handful of the adventurers remained, all quartered with the Guards, and Siegfried had a notion that this handful might try to remain, not as suitors, but as new members of the Guard.
The Princes’ numbers had been reduced to thirty-one. That was still more than enough to serve as hostages, especially since it still included all of the enemy candidates, but it made the Palace a lot less crowded. Siegfried and Leopold were still sharing quarters, but they had the whole suite to themselves now, and Siegfried had moved his sleeping arrangements into the second room. Someone had even found him an old bed somewhere that he could use. The sun came in that room first thing in the morning, but that scarcely troubled him, since he was still up with the dawn.
The easy part was over. Now things could begin in earnest.
And now, they both instinctively understood, the competition was going to get a great deal more serious. And probably more hazardous.
While the Godmother would not purposefully make the contests deadly, there was no telling what might happen from here on. And Siegfried knew, though Leopold did not, that there was another factor to what could happen in the contests.
The Tradition. Depending on the Path you were taking, The Tradition might raise the hazard to Potentially Fatal.
The Godmother had to be aware of that, as well; she had proven herself to be as sharp as splintered glass so far, and Siegfried didn’t see that changing anytime soon.
But Siegfried and Leopold had something else to worry about besides the contests.
It appeared that they had real competition for Rosamund’s attention in the form of Prince Desmond, for now that the ranks had thinned, Desmond was moving his campaign forward.
“Good evening, Princess.” As Rosa entered the ballroom, she felt, for the first time since the hordes had descended, as if there was actually room to move and breathe in there. Her ladies were not as happy, of course, since there were no longer so many Princes to flirt with and be flirted with in return. Her gentlemen were much happier; they had a fighting chance to get their ladies’ attentions back.
The Princes were much happier, since there was less competition, though none of them was quite as bold about approaching her as this man was.
Rosamund turned, and smiled faintly at Prince Desmond, who smiled back. “Good evening, Desmond,” she replied, and self-consciously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. When in her presence he never looked less than perfect, and that triggered an urge in her to be the same. Even though she knew now that this perfection was nothing more than a carefully cultivated facade, it still induced that urge.
To look at him, you’d never know that a few days ago he had been scrambling desperately up a goat trail, covered in dust, face swathed in bandages. In fact, it was impossible to picture him scrambling up a goat trail. It was impossible to picture him in any sort of setting but this one.
She even felt a little embarrassed at having spied on him like that, as if she had used the mirror to watch him in his private rooms. He would hate it if he knew; no one who created a facade like his wanted anyone ever to see him at less than perfection—even though she had watched him demonstrating a high order of cleverness and skill.
He was, of course, oblivious to her thoughts. Instead, he offered her a single flower with a little bit of a flourish. It was one she wasn’t familiar with, about the size of the first joint of her thumb, a creamy white color, with five ruffled petals around a tiny pink heart.
A spicy scent wafted up to her from it, and she felt her eyes widening in delight. The scent was not familiar, either, and she thought she knew every meadow flower that there was. “Thank you!” she said, taking the curiously shaped little white flower with the scent that was all out of proportion to its size. “What is this?”
“To tell the truth, Princess, I have no idea.” He chuckled a little, his lids dropping down over his eyes to give him a slightly sleepy and very relaxed expression. “There was a woman in the flower market selling them. No one paid any special attention to her or her flowers, so I assume they are common, but I never encountered a scent like that before, and I thought you might like it. She assured me that one small flower will dispense its perfume all night long.”
The Sleeping Beauty Page 21