The Sleeping Beauty (16 page)

“But disciplined!” said one man, voice breaking pitifully. “All the generals have to do is issue orders, and things get done without any arguing!” Siegfried looked at his rabbity face. No wonder he had been sitting in a chair despairing, instead of panicking and trying to flee. It sounded as if he already knew he couldn’t get his family to agree on anything regarding an escape until it would be too late.

“Yes, but they need to be fed. They need to get their provisions together. Yes?” His expression prompted reluctant agreement. “Then they need to get their equipment. Armies need arrows, bowstrings, spare bows, spears, spearheads. They need horseshoes and horseshoe nails, spare reins, spare wagon wheels. They need blacksmiths and farriers and
those
people need supplies. Then they need to be sure of their supply lines, because they certainly cannot take everything they need with them, and they certainly cannot live off their
own
land because their own people will object to that. So getting them moving takes time.” And he pointed out, carefully, that the Queen’s messages had not yet had a chance to reach their intended hands, much less produce Prince-hostages. “Prepare to flee if you must,” he told them calmly. “But I intend to remain. I expect we will be seeing more Princes soon, and the more that arrive here, the more difficult it will be to attack us without getting other Kingdoms declaring war.”

His calm, he thought, did some good at least, even if his arguments weren’t all that convincing. Eventually, the remaining people dispersed to meet up with their families and retainers and decide what to do.

He had sent the bird off to his rooms as soon as all the panic began; he did not want someone to swat her accidentally, and although he
could have used her advice, he was a little uneasy about the notion of people watching him talk to her.
They
couldn’t understand animal speech, and it might make them less inclined to trust his sanity. As soon as he was alone, and the Palace had settled for an uneasy night, he went to see if the bird was still awake. She was, though very sleepy. Still, she fluffed all her feathers and got herself alert willingly enough for him.

“I didn’t even have to sing ‘Doom!’” she observed. “They were already singing it for themselves. Which is a bit silly, really. There isn’t any sign of Doom. But tell me what else happened.”

He told her everything he had learned since he had sent her back here. It was not much, but he was a careful fellow and had learned that the more the bird knew, the better her answers were.

She listened just as carefully as he laid out what he had gathered up, and he wished that the Godmother was still around so that he could ask her questions, too, but about the bird. Or perhaps, if he just asked the bird directly, she would answer them. Not her name, though; he wouldn’t ask that. He always called her just “Bird,” and she had never offered a name, which only made sense. Names were Power, and she was a tiny, relatively helpless thing and very magical. Giving away her name would give power over her. Perhaps she’d tell it to him one day, but only when she was ready.

Those questions were going to have to wait for now; there were much more pressing concerns to worry about.

The bird bowed her head, and her little eyes grew very bright with the intensity of her concentration. “So,” he said, “do you think you and I should leave?” She had told him to leave other situations before this, when it was clear there was nothing that he could do to make them any better. He always had—although, granted, those had generally been times when the troubled situation did not involve war or potential invasion, merely political or emotional conflict. He was not
good with those sorts of things. Among his people, a diplomat was someone who talked to his opponent
before
hitting him with an axe, rather than afterward.

This time she surprised him. “Before I say anything, what do
you
want to do?” she asked.

He furrowed his brow. “I think…I should stay. I know this makes no sense. I should leave. I’d have no difficulty getting into another country quickly enough. I am good at skulking and hiding, I know more than enough to avoid any trouble on the border, and I wouldn’t be going by road anyway. But I want to stay. The little Princess is brave, and deserves help, and while I am only one, maybe I can help simply by being calm while others are throwing their hands in the air and bleating.” Then he shrugged. “Besides. I am a Hero. It is the sort of thing that a Hero does. And if it all goes into the frozen river, I can fling her over my shoulder and escape with her. Perhaps once we were safe she’d agree to have a nap in a ring of fire so I can wake her up.”

“Well put,” the bird said. “I wanted to see if you were still thinking like a Hero, and you are.” She fluttered her wings and gave a trill of approval. “There will probably be a great many things you can do to make things better. You can certainly make things better if you stay, and better still if you agree to take part in the trials for the Princess’s hand.”

He felt immensely cheered at that. “I’m glad to hear that. I’m rather good at trials, and I like the Princess…” He felt his ears growing a little warm, and he stopped himself there before he said anything else.

The bird nodded. “Here are the reasons. You are a foreigner, and if anyone would have a reason to flee and no reason to stay, it would be a foreigner. If you stay and are calm, people will take heart from that. As for the trials, well, as you said, you are a Hero, and this is nothing new to you. And I know The Tradition. That will be a tremendous help to you. I will tell you this, as well—if anyone can save
this Kingdom, it will be that Princess and her Godmother. I cannot tell you what the chances are, because all the signs are jumbled, but if anyone can do this, they can.” The bird laughed. “In fact I expect that there will be a fine lot of candidates for the trials here by tomorrow. This sort of thing is fairly stiff with The Tradition, and there is so much magic wound up now that getting them here will be the easy part, and the Queen will have bought herself some time.”

Somewhat to Siegfried’s surprise, and to the utter shock of the rest of the Court, the Princes that the Queen had invited started arriving at the first light of dawn. It had to be magic: there was no other way they could have traversed even Eltaria, much less the vast distances that they
had,
in so short a period of time. Immediately, people began talking about the intervention of Godmothers in order to bring the Princes here. Several Godmothers, not just their own.

The bird had said that they would be here, but the first arrival at dawn came as a surprise to Siegfried, because he had never known anyone in these lands of wealth or birth to be up that early unless they were on a battlefield.
He
was, of course, and the servants were. Otherwise during his few days here he had had the entire Palace to himself until nearly midmorning.

And yet, before the sun was even on the horizon, a chariot—a
chariot!
—pulled by a pair of briskly trotting, snow-white mules, came rolling up to the front courtyard. Attracted by the unexpected sound of hooves and wheels, Siegfried hurried there in time to see the vehicle turn into the courtyard and pull to a halt in front of the big bronze front door.

It was driven by a queenly woman in a columnar, ivy-green gown, entirely unlike anything the women wore here. He didn’t get more than a glimpse of her, though, because the chariot wasn’t even at a full stop when a young man in half armor with a bow on his back
and a sword at his side leapt out of it. The woman blew a motherly kiss at him; he smiled, put his hand on his heart and bowed to her. With a wave of her hand, the woman slapped the reins on the backs of the mules, who cantered off in a cloud of dust.

And it appeared that the young man was expected, for the great door opened; the chief servant of this place—the bird called him a “majordomo”—appeared, greeted him gravely and ushered him inside.

He was the first of a procession of Princes. They arrived alone, afoot and threadbare, with no clear idea of how they had gotten here, but knowing that there was a Princess to be won. They arrived mounted, in shining armor without a speck of dust on it. They arrived with entire entourages and their own pavilions. There were fops that had never cut their own fingernails, and seasoned fighters bearing weapons with worn hilts and scabbards. There were ugly Princes, and Princes so handsome that they made Leopold look ordinary. There was even a frog that
said
he was a Prince, but he got turned back—or so the bird told Siegfried—since he really didn’t qualify yet. When Siegfried found out about the poor frog, he trudged a mile down the road looking for the creature, but it had disappeared. He just hoped it had found somewhere else to go and had not been eaten by something.

In three days, there were more than fifty Princes in the Palace, Siegfried and Leopold were sharing one room of his three-room suite, and there were two princes in each of the other two rooms. The rest of the guest quarters of the Palace were similarly crowded. There was a field set aside that was full of pitched pavilions, both those that had been brought by the candidates and those that had been put up at the Queen’s orders. There were even, so Siegfried had heard, plenty more without any claim to royal blood who had shown up for the trials. The bird said that they would be allowed to join, too—after all, The Tradition was full of tales of commoners who rose to thrones by winning Princesses.

And, it appeared that Queen Glacier’s plan had worked, for there was one Prince from each of the five neighbors of Eltaria. Three were sons outright of the ruler in question, two were nephews. Messages had come from the watchers on all of the borders. The armies had withdrawn, and the Eltarian army brought King Thurman’s body home.

There was a very impressive funeral, which Siegfried was able to see quite well, since he was a head taller than almost anyone else. There was a great deal of singing of massed people—the bird said it was called a “choir,” and this was quite a new thing for Siegfried. His people had skalds, who recited rather than sang, and very raucous drinking songs. On his travels, he had listened with great pleasure to bards, minstrels, jongleurs and ladies who were said to be accomplished singers and musicians, but he had never heard massed, disciplined voices before. It was very moving. He actually found himself with stinging eyes several times, even though he did not know the dead King. He rather wished there had been more of that and less of talking. The god here, if he understood the speeches aright, was considered to be very far away, and everyone who was good got to go to a lovely place that was completely unlike Vallahalia—more of a great sky-garden than a feast-hall and a battlefield. Then again, while these folk did enjoy their feasting, they didn’t seem to enjoy fighting nearly as much as Siegfried’s people did, so Vallahalia probably wouldn’t be much to their liking.

Finally the speeches and the singing were over, the King was put into a stone box in the god-hall instead of being set on fire, and the funeral was over. The bird, which had been on his shoulder the whole time, being very quiet, fluffed her feathers and stopped looking like a bird-shaped ornament. Some people milled about, talking about the dead King, while the throng of Princes remained to talk, retired discreetly to their quarters, or their martial exercises,
according to their natures, and Siegfried pondered which group it would be better for him to join, though he was inclined to the most active choice.

That was when Leopold drew him aside. “Care to get away from this lot with me?” the man asked, rather too casually. “I know a good tavern.”

Siegfried considered this. “Does it have plain food? Meat that is meat, and not hiding under a sauce?” He was getting just a little weary of the stuff these people ate. “And a good strong beer?”

Leopold smiled. “And no little dogs yapping around at your heels.”

Siegfried snorted. But it was to cover what the bird was saying, because this had all the trappings of some sort of trick or trap. It might not be, of course. Of all the people here, Leopold knew him the best, and he’d not seen nor sensed any falseness about the fellow. But it paid to be careful.

“It’s fine,” the bird sang. “I don’t feel any treachery from him. I think he wants to talk.”

“All right,” Siegfried agreed. “But I pay. And when my money is gone, we leave. I don’t want to be chased by your creditors.”

It was Leopold’s turn to snort. “I’m not the sort to think I don’t have to take care of my reckoning because of my blood. I always pay my due. I just do it with other peoples’ money.” He sighed melodramatically. “Lucky at dice, unlucky at love.”

“So you say.” Siegfried smiled. “Lead on, then. I already made my bow and condolences to the Princess and the Stormcrow before all of this. I don’t think we’ll be missed.”

“Stormcrow?” Leopold asked.

“Black Glacier. Frozen Obsidian.
You
know.” Siegfried shrugged. “The Bird of Ill Omen. She Who Is All In Black. The—”

“Oh, right.” Leopold eyed him curiously. “Are your people generally so poetic?”

“Cautious,” said Siegfried. “If you speak something’s name too
often, it might come looking for you. I don’t want
that
to come looking for me.”

“Ha! Point taken.”

Leopold led the way toward the gardens that the courtiers strolled in, and which now were packed full of Princes and courtiers, supposedly being sad about the late King but actually abuzz with speculation. There would be trials for the Princess’s hand, of course, that went without saying; it was the reason they were all here. But
what
trials? This sort of thing was unprecedented. There had not been a gathering of Princes like this for—well, in living memory of anyone who was here, and the Princes were a far-flung lot indeed.

The path Leopold took, however, skirted the edge of the gardens, then went behind all the lovely plantings and flower beds, shrubberies and fountains. Clearly it was one used by the gardeners. It led out of the pleasure gardens and into the practical ones, the vegetable and herb gardens. And from there, into the orchards; the particular plot of trees they were in was laden with little green apples.