The Sleeping Beauty (23 page)

“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 thwart
ing 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.”

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.”

Rosamund slipped the stem in among the laces of her bodice. “Thank you for thinking of me,” she said. “I prefer scented flowers that are not so showy to scentless ones that produce enormous blossoms. The trouble with many of the lovely flowers in the Royal Garden is that they have no scent. The plantings were established in my great-grandfather’s time, and I would dearly love to remove some of them for choices of my own. But I’m not supposed to ask for change, or the chief gardener will get into a huff and sulk for days, which, apparently, is a disaster.”

There was an odd moment, like a flicker of chill across his face, that startled her.
What did I say to strike a nerve?
she wondered, but then as quickly as it had come, the expression passed and she could not be certain it had ever been there at all. How strange…what on earth could that have meant? Was he a gardener in disguise? Was he under the impression that even a gardener could intimidate her? Did he not approve? Did he think that a ruler should have absolute power over servants? Did he think her weak?

Did he not understand she was joking?

“How often we are the slaves to our own servants,” he said lightly. “Or perhaps, slave to custom. There are probably good reasons for what seems like a ridiculous condition. Perhaps the beds are so well established that removing the plantings would take an enormous amount of effort and ruin the design of the garden for a decade.” He waved a hand in the air. “I am merely maundering and getting far from the subject I wished to broach to you. I was wondering if, now that there are fewer of us, I might challenge you to a game or two of cards in the evening? Not just with me, of course, but with whoever
happens to wish to play. It would be a little more mentally challenging than walking around and around the gardens, as enchanting as they are.” There was a certain sharp look to his gaze, as if he expected her to refuse, and intended to persuade her.

However, she was perfectly willing to agree without the persuasion. Of course, she wasn’t going to let him know that. That would spoil the game. “I think that might be arranged,” she replied noncommittally. “I will see what I can do.”

He bowed again, at just the right moment, and backed away. As always, he did everything at just the right moment. She wondered how he did it, even as she moved on to other guests. But from time to time, as the scent of that little ruffled flower came to her nose, she smiled.

While Rosa circulated among the Princes, Lily and Jimson were plumbing ideas for the next contest. All the windows to the Queen’s chambers stood wide-open to catch every hint of breeze that there was, for now that there were not so many suitors, the sound of distant conversation was far less than the drone of a few bees.

It wasn’t a question of being able to stage contests—it was a question of having one that everyone could complete. Like the famous knot-puzzle that had been “solved” by a slash of a sword, it wouldn’t serve anything to have one man finish the task in a way that left all the others sitting on their proverbial thumbs.

And there was the matter of what they were going to test.

“What about intelligence?” said Jimson. “We don’t need to stage every contest in public. And not that the first two tests didn’t require intelligence, but I was thinking of solving something that is more obviously a problem. Something that requires logic and analysis and thinking.”

Lily nodded and fanned herself with a sandalwood fan as she reclined on the cool satin of her favorite divan from this room. Since
there was no one but Jimson and the servants to see her, she had rid herself of the overpowering weight of the gown and petticoats and corset, and was in a light and frothy wrap designed to be bearable for summer. It was getting very warm now; Midsummer Day was almost on them. “Well, there’s the old classic of separating different sorts of grains or seeds,” she suggested. “And that can be done in all sorts of ways. If you have animals to help, if you have magic, and if you are clever enough to get sieves with holes of three sizes.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t require intelligence,” Jimson countered. “Cleverness, ingenuity or resources, but not intelligence.”

“Thurman was intelligent—
oh!”
She suddenly remembered a puzzle that Thurman had set her, and how much the late King had loved logic and riddles. “I think I have it!” She chuckled. “I think our Princes are not going to like it much, however. And we won’t have to set aside anything other than a room.”

Today, when the contest had been announced, everyone had been afire to find out what it was. When they were all ushered into the ballroom—a ballroom that had been refurnished with thirty-one desks or tables and chairs—no one had quite believed what the trial was going to be.

But when each of them was presented with a pen, a fat stack of foolscap, and a set of written pages—

Well it was clear that the contest was going to involve something that brawn could not compensate for.

Siegfried stared at the first lines on the first page of the stack of paper he had been given. At least it was in a language he could read. His own. That alone was amazing.

Leopold chewed on the end of the quill. This wasn’t entirely foreign to him. He and all his brothers had gotten tested and schooled in a room not unlike this one. And to tell the truth, what they had been tested on was a lot duller than this sheaf of riddles he was being asked to solve.

What is broken every time it’s spoken?

Siegfried worked out the business with the chicken after a lot of playing about with possibilities and the utter ruination of several sheets of foolscap as he drew out river, boat, fox, grain and chicken. It finally occurred to him that you could always take something
back
over the river, and that was the key—you always kept the two things that might eat or be eaten apart by hauling one back. But this puzzle…

If I say, “Everything I tell you is a lie,” am I telling you the truth or a lie?

Leopold snapped his fingers as the answer occurred to him, and he quickly wrote it down. Of course! Speak the word
silence
and you broke the silence! Now the next—

Hmm.

Food can help me survive, but water will kill me. What am I?

Siegfried grinned. That one was easy. It appeared in the old sagas all the time.
If only some of the things are lies, then the statement that
everything
I tell you is a lie will always be a lie.

He wrote down “lie.” Now the next…

Leopold snorted. A child could have figured that riddle out. It was fire of course, which needed “food” in the form of wood.

He had been worried at first. He wasn’t worried now. If this was the worst they could do, he could get through this.

A coffin…
thought Siegfried. That was…a rather too-morbid riddle. He did not like the way this was going.

At the end of the day, thirty-one men emerged from the room filled with tables, surprised at the amount of time that had passed. Some were elated. Some were in despair. All were happy to have the contest over and done with. They fell on the cold buffet laid out for them like starving wolves, and many were surprised at just how tired they were after a day of “only” thinking.

The astonishment came when they all started talking about the riddles and the answers, and compared what they could remember of the riddle test with each other. Because it appeared that no one recalled the same riddles.

No one.

“I don’t believe it. Are you sure you don’t remember that one?” Siegfried asked a particularly satisfied Prince Roderick, who was sure that he had done very, very well. The Prince shook his head.