The Sleeping Beauty

by Mercedes Lackey

  The wolf looked up at him. “I am not suited to that. Let me run the outside, breaking legs.”

  “Agreed.” Siegfried took a deep breath. “It will probably take them a little while to come out of the earth and attack us. Let’s try to get halfway there before they do. Ready. Set. Run!”

  The moment he and Leopold set foot on the churned-up soil, there was a strange, moaning sound, followed by the appearance of bony arms sprouting all over the field, punching through the dirt like some macabre crop. The three of them sprinted for the center of the area, but the arms were quickly followed by the rest of the bone-bodies, as the things got a grip on the loose surface and hauled themselves up. Before they had gotten a quarter of the way there, the creatures had shoved themselves up out of the dirt and turned the empty eyeholes of their skulls toward them.

  They were all armed, and armored, though the armor hung loosely on them and looked as if it would be more hindrance than help. Most had round shields, though a handful had shields of other sorts. Most had helmets of wildly varied design. None had any weapon that would give them any reach, and Siegfried gave silent thanks that they were not going to have to deal with rains of arrows. No, the weapons they faced now were swords, axes and the shields themselves. If they could manage to not be overrun—they could do this.

  What seemed like hundreds of dark eye sockets glared at them. Then, from all directions, the reanimated army charged.

  “Form up!” Siegfried shouted; the bear reared up on his hind legs, and he and Leopold put their backs up against that furry bulwark just as the first of the skeletal warriors reached them.

  If they had not been warned of how to fight these things, Siegfried and Leopold would certainly have been cut to ribbons in the first moments. But they had been, and instead of trying to stab or slash the monsters, both he and the Prince concentrated on smashing down the skeletal arms. Leopold’s reach with that staff was tremendous, and Siegfried’s strength was definitely his best asset in this fight. The bear roared, and when Siegfried took a sideways glance, he saw that the great beast was sending skulls flying, leaving the bodies to flail their weapons in random directions, connecting with their fellows more often than not.

  So they need the heads—

  “Leopold!” he shouted. “They need the heads to see!”

  Leopold’s answer was a swipe with the staff that took off at least four skulls.

  There were hundreds of the things. But as Siegfried had suspected, they were essentially mindless. Breaking their arms or heads off was the best tactic, since there wasn’t much they could do to attack or defend themselves with no arms, and leaving them headless meant they attacked whatever was nearest. The ones with shields held out a bit longer, but eventually either a blow from the flat of Siegfried’s sword, or from the bear’s paw, would break the shield-arm, and at that point the warrior had fundamentally lost.

  As the ranks thinned, Siegfried could see the wolf darting into and out of the mob, snapping legs with a single bite of his tremendous jaws. That took them down, but not out. His stomach twisted with nausea as he watched the downed skeletons continue to crawl toward them—until they got within sword, staff, or paw-reach, and were reduced to fragments.

  And then…it was over. The field was covered with twitching bits of bone, all of them trying to get to where the three of them stood. The bear dropped to all fours, and looked up wearily at them. The wolf limped in, a couple of shallow slashes across his ribs. They were all wounded—but not badly. Nothing like as badly as they could have been.

  “We will leave you now, BigMan,” said the bear. “We have done all that we can for you. Your fate lies within the stone place. Farewell.”

  “Thank you!” he called, as they turned and padded back into the forest. “I will not forget your kindness!”

  The bird flew to him, followed by Luna, as the bear and wolf vanished into the undergrowth. The twitching bone fragments attempted to roll away from Luna as she paced near them. Most of them succeeded.

  As one, they all looked toward the tangle of black, bare thorn-vines, most of which had thorns as long as Siegfried’s arm. The windowless stone tower rose above the thicket, grim and gray. There was a terribly long distance from where the thorns began to that tower.

  “Let me get my breath,” wheezed Leopold.

  “This is very, very dangerous,” said Jimson.

  “I know that,” Lily replied tensely. “I’m just glad that all four mirrors survived. We can lose two, and this can still work.”

  “I’m not trying to dissuade you—” Jimson swallowed. “All right, I am trying to dissuade you. I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

  “And you know very well I have to.”

  He sighed. “Alas, yes. I do.”

  “All right, then.” She concentrated on the image within a tiny crystal ball. It was all she had the power to spare for. It showed the four identical mirrors lying together on the ground outside Desmond’s stronghold. Now she deeply regretted that she had taken her travel-mirror away when she had made off with the sleeping Rosa, for if she had just left it there, she wouldn’t have to do this now.

  “This” was a calculated adaptation of the sort of spell used to join two objects, except that this adaptation was not meant to join them, but to merge them, and do so seamlessly. The sort of mirrors that you could pack on a horse’s back, even though she had enchanted them to allow her to pass through them, were not big enough for her to travel through. Two of them together would be big enough for her Brownies to attempt to bring a bigger mirror through. Attempt, because no one ever had successfully done so to her knowledge; she had the feeling that the problem was that it was like trying to transport a horse on the back of a horse. She didn’t want to try that unless she had to.

  Three of them might be big enough for her to squeeze through.

  Four would be perfect. Although doing so was going to require some flexibility on her part….

  Concentrate, Lily!

  She wove delicate strands of magic through her spell, inching the first two mirrors together bit by bit. The frames touched. The frames butted against each other so tightly you could not have gotten a silk thread between them. With little stroking motions, she suggested to the frames that they should be one.

  Reluctantly, the frames obeyed her.

  With further motions of her fingers, she suggested to the frame bar in the middle that it should move to either side and allow the glass to merge. The bar didn’t care for that, but eventually—it flowed, sulkily, off to either side. Both sides thickened. She tickled the mirror that had been beneath it.

  The mirrors were not as reluctant as the frames. They rippled a little, then merged.

  She let out the breath she had been holding. “That’s one and two,” said Jimson.

  “I’m going to do three and four first,” she said aloud. “It occurs to me the symmetry will be better.”

  “I—” Jimson began, then stopped himself. “No, you are the magician. I am not. Just be sure you are ready. We won’t get another chance.”

  She refrained from telling him that she knew that, and bent her concentration on the second pair of mirrors.

  The four companions stared at the wall of thorns. “We aren’t getting anywhere trying to stare a hole into it,” Siegfried said finally. With a stiffening of his back, he walked toward it, sword at the ready, prepared to start chopping his way through.

  But the hair on back of his neck rose when, as he neared it—the vines started to move. They uncoiled like sleepy snakes just aroused, then they reached for him. Slowly at first, then—

  With a yelp, he leapt back just in time, as a vine with one of those evil thorns on it whipped through the space where he had been, and buried the thorn all the way into the dirt where he had been standing.

  He looked at the huge tangle of the things—hundreds of vines, thousands of thorns—he tried to imagine himself chopping through them and fending them off at the same time.

  It wasn�
��t possible.

  He had to try.

  “No,” said Luna sharply. They all jumped, and turned to stare at her. She took a deep breath and dipped her horn. “No. It is our turn, I fink. Yes, bird?”

  “Definitely,” trilled the firebird. “Why else would the Godmother have transformed me?”

  “Then fowwow,” Luna replied with immense dignity, and walked forward, her horn leading, as if she was planning on battering her way through the tangle.

  The vines seethed and writhed, as if they weren’t quite sure what to do about her. As she reached the edge of the tangle, several of them reared back to strike—but then reversed themselves, and buried themselves in the mass of their fellows. It was clear that they didn’t want to get anywhere near Luna, her horn, or both.

  She stepped right into the edge, confronting the thicket with her presence, and they withdrew from her in what looked like a panic, leaving her standing in a hollowed-out alcove of thorns. Luna moved in deeper, her horn glowing faintly in the gloom, then deeper still. The thorns slowly began to move to close in behind her.

  That was when the bird moved in.

  With a trumpetlike call, she dived after Luna, and when she got just inside the wall of thorns, she hovered and burst into flames, a fire so intense that Siegfried winced and looked away for a moment.

  That was when the vines screamed. They sounded like mice screaming, a thin, high-pitched keen.

  The firebird continued to hover, and burned brighter. The vines turned themselves into knots in an effort to escape the fires. In vain. They caught and burned with a sullen green flame and an ugly green-black smoke that gave off a stench like burning carrion. When the vines around the firebird were truly dead, she hovered forward a little, deeper into the wall of thorns, following Luna.

  Luna keeps them away, and the firebird can kill them without getting hurt! Siegfried was astonished. It was brilliant! The firebird moved deeper still, into the wall of thorns, leaving behind her a charred tunnel. Soon she was nothing but a ball of fire at the end of the long, blackened expanse.

  Then—suddenly, the fires vanished.

  “Siegfried!” cried Leopold, but Siegfried was already racing for the thorns, his heart sinking. But it rose again when Luna emerged from the tunnel of char, head hanging, the firebird clinging exhausted to her mane. She was sweating as badly as the horses had at the end of their run, and it was clear that she and the bird were at the absolute end of their strength.

  “Luna! You are brilliant!” Siegfried cried, throwing his arms around Luna’s neck. With a sigh, she rested her chin on his shoulder. He could feel every muscle in her body trembling with exhaustion.

  “We know,” sang the bird. “It took both of us—Luna to make the tunnel, me to burn it in. The thorns can’t cross the threshold of their own purified dead.”

  Luna pulled her chin off Siegfried’s shoulder and tapped him with her horn. “Now go,” she said. “Wescue your Pwincess. We’ll fowwow when we can.”

  Siegfried kissed her nose, then turned and ran into the tunnel of dead, crackling thorns, Leopold beside him. And the sudden thought that he was off to rescue a Princess by crossing what had been a ring of fire gave him a sudden burst of hope that the Tradition might once more be moving in his favor. And just as he thought of this, he looked up at the sound of flames. There was still fire up there in the thorny canopy, fire that winked out just as he crossed beneath it. Just as the magical ring of fire around his Aunt would have. Hoy-yo toho!

  21

  LEOPOLD REACHED THE DOOR FIRST, AND stopped—he held out his hand and Siegfried all but ran into it. Outside the tunnel of burned and dead thorn-vines, the still-living ones had recovered and were trying in vain to get to them. The burned “bower” above their head shook and rattled, and little bits of ash and burned wood rained down on them. Both of them glanced up. There was no telling how long the protection would hold.

  Leopold put his finger to his lips, signaling for quiet, and pressed his ear to the door. Siegfried nodded, and held his breath, wishing there was some way he could get the vines to stop making noise.

  “They may not know we’re out here,” Leopold whispered, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “Better if we can surprise them.”

  Siegfried nodded again, and waited. Finally Leopold shook his head. “I can’t hear anything,” he whispered. “But we aren’t doing Rosa any good out here.” He grimaced a little. “The man who trained me always told me to try the door before I tried knocking it down—”

  “I’m ready,” Siegfried breathed, and watched as Leopold carefully tried the handle. To his shock and disbelief, it began to turn. Leopold eased the door open as slowly as a snail crawling, while Siegfried held his breath expecting a loud creaking at any moment. When it was open a mere crack, Leopold put first his ear, then his eye to the tiny gap.

  “I think they’re upstairs,” he whispered, and eased the door open farther. “I can barely hear them at a distance, and it sounds up.”

  When the door was open just enough to allow them to slip inside, they did so, Leopold first, then Siegfried. They both paused and looked around.

  They were in a kitchen; the windows here, which had never been large, had been covered over with stonework. It was lit by candles stuck in their own wax in the middle of a great table. There were shelves around the walls that looked old, a cupboard against the wall to Siegfried’s right that had once had a window that looked just as old, a stone sink next to it, chairs around the table that looked new. To Siegfried’s left was a blank wall with an immense stone chimney and a huge hearth. Opposite him was another wall with a rack for kitchenware that was mostly empty. The kitchen was unoccupied, but there were signs someone was using it; a pot hung over the hearth, covered, giving off the aroma of rabbit stew, and there was an empty bowl with a spoon in it, and an equally empty bottle on the table. There was a doorway without a door at the far end, and an open door in the wall opposite them, halfway along it. That open door gave out into darkness; there was light coming from the doorway without a door in it, and that was where the voices were coming from.

  Siegfried inclined his head at that dark door, and Leopold nodded; moving as quietly as possible, they eased along the wall until they came to the open door. This time Siegfried stuck his head inside—he could just make out a set of crude stone steps that went down into darkness. He toyed with the idea that Rosa might be in a cellar or dungeon or something below, then decided that whatever was down there didn’t matter right now. If it was Rosa, she could stay there until they eliminated the threat. Nothing was going to happen to her that hadn’t already. If there were reinforcements of some kind he could make sure they didn’t get a chance to act. With a nod to Leopold, he eased the door shut, and then gently let a bar down across it, to keep whatever was down there from coming up. Then he slipped up to the next doorway and peeked around the frame.

  The next room was also unoccupied, but contained a single bed, a stool and a wooden chest. The windows here were also walled up, and it was lit by more candles stuck about randomly.

  Siegfried signaled to Leopold, who slipped past him into the room. Siegfried followed. They kept their backs pressed firmly up against the wall. Desmond might be a magician, but he had certainly put no magical guardians or alarms inside this place. He had put rather too much trust in his external safeguards. That, in Siegfried’s opinion, was never a good idea.

  The voices were definitely coming from the next room, and above. It looked as if the tower was in the shape of a rough square; the kitchen and this room formed half of the square, with this room leading into the other half of the square.

  In the wall to Siegfried’s left was the door to that other half of the bottom floor, and this door also stood open. This time it was Leopold’s turn to peek his head around the frame, and Siegfried’s to slip inside at his signal.

  Light for this room poured down the staircase going up the wall. It looked like something added recently; the stone was a lighter color.
It also looked as if this had once been divided into two rooms. And there were some dark brown stains on the floor that Siegfried did not like at all. Signs of the previous owners?

  Siegfried slipped back to the bedroom, and motioned to Leopold. “They’re definitely up there, and Rosa is either in the cellar I barred or up there with them,” he whispered. “We need a plan. We can’t just rush up those stairs and hope everything comes out all right.”

  Leopold nodded. “We’re definitely at a disadvantage if we come at them up that stair. We need to get them down—”

  He was interrupted by a shout from the other room.

  Their heads swiveled toward the open doorway as if they were on the same wire, and there was the Huntsman, standing in the middle of the staircase, staring at them. So much for plans.

  He and Leopold nearly collided in the doorway trying to get to the man before he could get off the stair, in the hopes of blocking Desmond from coming down, too. But the Huntsman was quicker than either of them; he leapt off the stair and charged them before they could get clear of the door and get their swords up. He hit them without drawing his, shouldering them into the bedroom. Leopold hit the floor and tumbled back up to his feet; Siegfried staggered but didn’t fall, his heart pounding and his focus already narrowing to the fight. He backed away from the Huntsman and shifted his grip on his own weapon, just as Desmond leapt from the second story, disdaining the use of stairs altogether.

  With a single glance and a nod, Leopold jumped for the Huntsman, while Siegfried charged Desmond.

  He came straight at the magician in his usual style, and Desmond parried him easily. Then Desmond closed, and he pivoted out of the way. Within the exchange of three blows, Siegfried, at least, knew he was in trouble.

  Desmond had been holding back in the practice bouts they’d all had. The bastard had even allowed himself to lose once in a while. If he’d actually exerted himself, he’d never have lost at all. Desmond was not just good.