by Mike Ashley
Fiona was walking along it now, brooding as usual on her horrid obligation to marry a prince of peculiar virtue. The theory of the golden road was that crasser and more worldly princes would give too much thought to the road’s market value, and would discreetly ride along the grassy verge to the left or right; only a prince preoccupied with Fiona’s beauty would unconsciously ride down the middle of the road, to victory. How anyone who had not yet reached King Fardel’s dilapidated palace could have known so much about Fiona’s beauty was not explained by the theory. The princess had never had the heart to point this out, nor to add that, personally, she would incline towards a prince who could be trusted to wipe his boots at the door rather than walk in preoccupied with beauty. Meanwhile the surface of the golden road, never very thick at the best of times, had suffered the depredations of brigands, jackdaws, itinerant tax collectors, and (Fiona was sure, though the King refused to believe it) at least one incognito prince. Tiny gleams of gold could still be seen amid the trampled earth and grass, though only in brilliant sunshine like today’s; fewer such gleams were visible in the King’s treasury, and Fardel was rumoured to be having second thoughts about crassness and worldliness.
Fiona walked down the middle of the formerly golden road and dreamed again of her own ambition, which did not involve princes. She rather wanted to be a witch.
“A plague of frogs,” she crooned happily. “A plague of boils. A plague of toads. That would show them. Princes!”
There was almost no magic in Altrund, apart from the heavily mortgaged magic mirror which was the palace’s last valuable asset . . . but a wisp or two of enchantment had been left behind, like forgotten tools, by the obliging Graduate Sorcerer who had polished up the golden road; and perhaps one of these wisps twined itself into Fiona’s girlish daydreams of epidemic frogs, boils and toads. Certainly, without her noticing it, her aimless walk swerved off the road, through a clump of trees, through a stand of nettles (which despite her long skirt she did emphatically notice) and finally, at a slight run, to a malodorous pond she had not seen before.
“Be careful!” said a croaking voice from almost underfoot.
Princess Fiona recoiled slightly, and stared down at a singularly obnoxious and wart-encrusted toad on the damp grass at the pond’s rim. It stared back at her for some moments, breathing heavily. “Stamping on toads,” it complained at last, “is not in accordance with Royal protocol.”
“A fig for Royal protocol,” said Fiona airily, though uncertain of precisely what a fig might be.
“Well, you might as well get on with it,” said the toad.
“Pardon?”
“Oh dear me, I can see your education has been neglected. Did they never tell you about certain, erk, traditions of enchantment?”
Something was indeed beginning to dawn on the princess, who drew still further away. “Ah,” she said, “The Acting Royal Governess is a dear old fellow called Grommet, but I don’t think he knows very much except about vintages. Suppose I go and ask him, though—” She took another cautious step backwards.
“Stop!” said the toad. “And let me tell you a tale.”
Alarmingly, the princess found herself rooted to the ground.
The toad said, complacently, “I have strange power of speech; even though I can only usually stop one of three.”
“I rather think this is lese-majesty,” said Fiona, still struggling to lift her feet.
The toad fixed her with its glittering, golden eyes. “Once upon a time I fell foul of a wicked wizard in the College of Sorcery, who laid upon me the curse which you see, and in addition caused me to be magically flung to the most God-forsaken land in all the world.”
“Where was that?” asked Fiona, curious.
The toad gave a croaking cough. “Let me put this tactfully. Where did you find me?”
“Oh,” said the princess.
“But the incantation of binding did include a customary reversion clause. Erk. A matter of, as one might say, osculatory contact.”
“No,” said Fiona.
“A momentary and fleeting matter. None of your exotic requirements like being taken into a princess’s bed all night. Merely the kiss of a good person whose moral worth stands in a certain relation to one’s own.”
“No.”
“Think of it like this. Obviously you are a princess of high breeding—”
“At least you can tell,” said Fiona, flattered.
“The tiara is rather a giveaway.”
“It’s pewter. We’re a very poor kingdom; my father has only fivescore subjects even when you count the sheep.”
“All the better,” said the toad. “In poverty there is tremendous moral worth. And as I was saying – since you are a princess I’ll wager five to one that your father has planned all sorts of grotesque and ridiculous ways of testing the princes who come seeking your hand.”
She sighed, and nodded.
“Precisely! But are you worthy? Should you not be tested according to the ancient customs of the world? Have you given a crust of bread to a dwarf recently?”
Princess Fiona opened her mouth and closed it again. She looked critically at the toad. “Look. If I take your curse off you, can we simply leave it at that? I’m going to the College of Sorcery myself – if my parents will ever let me – and I’ll learn to make my own living. Getting involved with princes can wait, thank you very much.”
“I shall make no further claims on you,” said the toad in the sincerest of croaks. And then, as she still hesitated: “You could always shut your eyes.”
Looking the toad severely in the eye, the princess knelt, bent forward, and bestowed an exceedingly chaste kiss somewhere in the general region of its head. For an instant a cloud seemed to pass over the Sun, and there was that unmistakable tingle which comes with enchantment or champagne.
She leant back, still kneeling. Sure enough, where an ugly, warty toad had squatted, there was now a sleek and handsome frog.
“I see,” the princess said after a moment.
“Ahh, it’s good to be back to normal,” said the frog. “Thank you, your majesty. I feel as fit as a . . . prince.” At this point it appeared to notice something. “Oh. Conservation law. Well, I must be going. Awwk.”
The last agonized croak was because Fiona had noticed the same something, and had seized the wriggling frog in a firm grip. Her previously pale and lily-white hands were now covered in warts that crowded together like cobblestones.
“You knew this was going to happen!” she shrieked.
“Well, it was just a bare possibility,” said the frog.
Fiona squeezed it vengefully, and with distaste repeated the kiss. Nothing happened.
“Now that is interesting,” said the frog. “I suppose we are no longer equal in moral worthiness, as is necessary for such curses to be transferred.”
Distracted, the princess dropped the slimy creature. “Equal? You’re not telling me a princess is morally the same as a toad?”
“Ah. You are very virtuous, for a princess; and I was very virtuous, for a toad. As a frog I’m far more despicable, since I’m gloating terribly over having shifted my curse to a poor innocent creature like yourself.—Excuse me,” it added, dodging the princess’s foot as it came down. “I must go and see a man about a frog.” With a splash, it was gone.
Princess Fiona stared into the murky water; the ripples died and her own reflection took shape. It seemed an appropriate time to shut her eyes, but she forced them to stay open: her fingers could feel the swarming warts on her face, and she might as well learn just how unprincesslike her complexion had become. In the water, though, it looked the same as ever. Apparently magical warts had no reflections; possibly they did not even cast shadows, though this would be slightly more difficult to test.
The sun was lower in the sky. The princess’s vague thoughts of throwing herself with a despairing cry into the pool, or of becoming a hermit never again to be seen by mortal man, were dispelled by the more prac
tical considerations of duckweed and dinner.
She walked more and more slowly, though, as the palace came into view – a quarter-mile frontage of crumbling marble and alabaster. It seemed uncountable ages old, though in fact the former King of Altrund had caused it to be erected in a single night by means of a substandard wishing ring. Alas, the accumulated cost of servants and repairs was somewhat further beyond the dreams of avarice than the wealth King Sivvens had requested with this second wish; while the wasted third wish, said to have involved the former Queen and a sausage, was among the family’s best-kept secrets.
Taking a short cut through the disused portions of the palace, Fiona passed in succession through the Great Hall, the Great Ballroom with its litter of shrivelled pumpkins, the Great Dungeon, and the cobwebbed Great Cupboard before nearing the inhabited rooms. There she paused, hearing voices beyond the half-open door of the Great Sitting-Room.
“. . . exceedingly sorry about this wine,” her father the King was saying. “We have far finer vintages, but the Steward of the Royal Cellars keeps, ah, misplacing them. But, to business! Naturally you come seeking the hand of my daughter, the beauteous flower of a most wealthy and kingly line. – I must apologize that so much of the palace is being redecorated just now,” he added inventively.
There was a uneasy triple murmur.
“Well, my good princes, what dowry would you bring to be worthy of such a bride?”
The first prince’s voice was loud: “I am a crafty conqueror whose blood-dripping sword will hack a ruinous path of carnage through battlefields steeped in gore. And my consort will be no mere Queen but the Empress of an all-destroying Emperor!”
“Creditable,” said the King.
The voice of the second prince inclined towards oiliness. “Emperors may hold the world by the throat, but a merchant prince can put a noose of purse-strings about the throats of Emperors. Already I possess an immense fortune, and ultimately my Queen will share wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.”
“Very creditable,” said the King. On the tip of his tongue, Fiona thought, was the urgent question: “How far beyond the dreams of avarice?”
The third voice was thin and reedy and set her teeth on edge. “When tyrants, moneylenders, and even the stones about their unhallowed graves have fallen all to dust, my name shall linger on. To my Queen I bring no more than an unquenchable love and immortality in verse and song. I am a poet,” he explained.
Outside, Fiona made a hideous face and was sobered by the thought of how much more than hideous it must be. Inside, there was an embarrassed little pause.
“More wine, perhaps?” said the King at last.
“Thanks,” said the three princes together: “I don’t mind if I do.”
After a tentative query about the suitors’ ages (which shed a sad light on the tendency of palace records to become lost, burnt or consumed by rats), the King suggested that some simple test of worthiness for the Princess Fiona’s hand would be appropriate.
“None of those meaningless, old-fashioned tests,” he said with great fervour. “It is nonsense to have a beautiful princess’s fate decided by whether or not one speaks kind words to a dwarf—”
(“Yes indeed,” said the first prince grimly.)
“Or by the ability to slay huge and ferocious dragons—”
(“Hear, hear,” said the second prince.)
“Or by impractical talents like the soothing of savage beasts with verse and song—”
(“Oh, I say,” said the third prince.)
“No. We are practical men, you and I. Let us straightaway agree that he who at the end of three days returns with the most colossally valuable dowry shall win the hand of the Princess Fiona.”
“Colossal?” the merchant prince said in a pained voice.
Feeling it was nearly time to put a stop to this, Fiona peered around the half-open door. Without showing herself, she could see all four men reflected in the magic mirror on the far wall – a tall slab of pure, enchanted silver which magically attracted dust and smears (or so Fiona felt, one of her household duties being to keep it polished).
The King sat on a portable throne with his back to the mirror: facing him across the table were the three princes, and Fiona squinted to study them. The first was short and looked bad-tempered; for some reason he kept one hand tucked into his tunic. The second was sufficiently stout that he had to sit some way back from the table. The third, the poet, was tall and might have been almost handsome; but at the time of his christening, someone had neglected to invite whichever fairy is responsible for bestowing chins.
“Happiness,” the King was saying, “is all very well, but it can’t buy money.”
The merchant prince glanced at his companions, as though estimating the strength of the bidding. “A moderate amount,” he began – and his moist eyes met Fiona’s in the mirror. “Oh. Perhaps even a reasonably substantial amount,” he went on, and licked his lips.
Before Fiona could move, the wary gaze of the soldier also found her. He, too, licked his lips. He, too, studied his rivals; absent-mindedly he dropped a hand to the pommel of his sword. Meanwhile the poet also had seen Fiona’s reflected glory, and was mumbling what appeared to be an impromptu villanelle.
With a certain inner glee, Princess Fiona strode into the room and let her suitors see her, warts and all. Betrothal to any of these three, she considered, would undoubtedly be a fate worse than . . . well, warts.
“Father,” she said sweetly, “I seem to have this curse.”
King Fardel turned, gaped, closed his eyes and moaned softly.
“Only making a preliminary tactical survey, of course—” said the first prince.
“Cannot be expected to enter into a binding commitment at this stage of negotiation,” said the second.
“Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new,” muttered the poet.
The princess helped herself to a glass of the wine – which was indeed only a locally produced Falernian type – and told a discreetly edited version of her adventure. “And so,” she concluded, “only the kiss of a man of proper moral worth can lift this dreadful enchantment from me!”
“Meaningless, old-fashioned tests,” said the King through his teeth. With a visible effort he steeled himself to the necessities of tradition. “Very well. Whosoever shall with a kiss lift the curse from my fair daughter, him shall she wed, and we’ll have a quiet chat about marriage settlements afterwards.”
Inwardly Fiona was praying a twofold prayer: firstly, that one of these unlikely princes would somehow prove equal to her in moral worth, and secondly, that the King would not countenance her betrothal to a prince invisible beneath layers of warts.
After heartening himself with several long looks at the princess’s unspoilt reflection, the first suitor stepped forward. He hesitated, though, on the very brink. “You could always shut your eyes,” she said. He snorted, and Fiona bent down to receive a kiss of military efficiency. Nothing happened. The prince made a strategic withdrawal to the previously prepared position of his chair.
When the second prince had screwed his determination to the sticking-place, Fiona found that she had to lean forward over his firkin of a stomach before their lips were close enough for an economical and businesslike kiss. Again, nothing happened.
“I am, after all, the youngest,” the third prince murmured; and Fiona turned up her face for a final kiss which was not so much poetic as chinless. The only result was that the poet-prince turned green as a frog and lurched backwards, gabbling something about aesthetic values. Fiona found this disheartening.
With a resigned expression, the King rose and clapped his hands to draw attention. “Whosoever shall in three days return with a healing spell, charm, cantrip, physic, unguent, balm, lotion, potion, philtre, talisman, relic, totem, fetish, icon, incantation, rune, amulet, panacea—” At this point his breath failed him and he collapsed into uncontrollable coughing. But the suitors had gathered the general drift; they bowed to the King and
(with averted gaze) to Fiona, and departed as one prince.
“Oh . . . rats,” said Princess Fiona.
“. . . theurgy, thaumaturgy, sorcery, wizardry, necromancy, invocation, conjuration . . .” continued the afflicted King, rallying slightly. His voice died away as he noticed an absence of princes. There followed a stern lecture on the perfidy of faithless daughters who abandoned themselves to the embraces of strange frogs on the very day when three superlatively eligible suitors presented themselves, or at any rate two, or perhaps just one, but all the same . . . Still muttering, he left to consult the Court Physician, yet another post ineptly filled by the man Grommet.
Fiona pulled up a footstool and sat staring into the magic mirror. “Mirror, mirror,” she said briskly. There was a soft chime, and the silver clouded over.
“Good afternoon,” said the mirror. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Fiona regarded the mirror suspiciously. “You may have noticed this wart,” she said, touching one at random.
“That is not a problem. That is a solution.”
“That’s not exactly an answer,” said Fiona.
“You did not exactly ask a question,” the mirror said smugly. “But consider. You have always wished to be a witch. Now you look the part, if not more so. You have always wished half-heartedly to run away and enrol at the College of Sorcery. Now, with one of three eminently unlovable princes likely to cure your complexion and claim your hand in two days, twenty-three hours and thirty-seven minutes, you have an excellent reason for running away. What more could you ask?”
“I was thinking more in terms of being a beautiful sorceress full of sinister glamour,” said the princess. “Not a warty crone. Now is there a way I can lift the curse myself in the next day or two?”
“Indeed . . . there . . . is,” said the mirror with what sounded like reluctance.
“What is it?”
“Unfortunately . . . I cannot actually tell you, for reasons you would find absolutely inarguable if only I could tell you them.” The fog in the mirror began to clear again. “Your three minutes are nearly up.”