Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

Lily was very glad that she had a great deal of experience behind her, for she could not imagine trying to juggle all of this two hundred years ago — or even only a hundred. She was back in the Palace, in the persona of Queen Sable, who had somehow not gotten around to telling the King that his daughter was missing. Or so everyone thought, for everyone seemed to be sending clandestine messages to the King at the northern border.

In actuality, she had told him the moment that she knew where Rosa was. She'd gone in person, assured him that she had the situation in hand and that Rosa was safer with her seven Dwarvish guardians than she was in the Palace, where someone was certainly trying to murder or abduct her. She had lied a little. She'd not told him the conditions that Rosa was in. Eventually, she supposed, it would have to come out, unless she could enlist Rosa in perpetuating the lie, but for right now it was better that he had in his mind the Traditional picture of the happy Princess playing at housekeeping amid a throng of adoring Dwarves. And since she was the Evil Stepmother, there would be no danger of an old woman slipping her a poisoned comb, a strangling necklace, or a fatal bit of fruit or candy.

So the messages to the King were all going unanswered and unheeded, which only cemented the certainty of the rumors that she had placed a spell on him. This was fine. This was perfect, in fact. The Tradition would be satisfied with that, if such an insensate thing could be said to be satisfied.

The search continued, although no one had gone as far afield as the Dwarves' fetid cottage. The horse had been found, lame, wandering in the forest, and that was where the search was concentrated. No one, not even the Huntsman, had been able to trace back to the point where Rosa had parted company with the wretched beast. The storm that night had obliterated every sign. Lily had the shrewd notion that with the distance Rosa had tried her utmost to put between herself and where she had last seen the Huntsman, as well as the distance traveled underground by the Dwarves, it was extremely unlikely that anyone would ever have found her.

Of course, she had made certain of that now. Spells of confusion for the hounds worked wonders. So did false traces.

Her sturdy Guard Captains were sticking to the Huntsman as if they were all members of the same devoted family. His frustration was cheering to watch.

The interesting, and somewhat alarming, aspect to all of this was that he had not approachedher, nor even tried. This meant he was almost certainly working for someone else; that was a very dark cloud on her horizon.

In the meantime, the Kingdom still needed to be governed, and the King was too busy facing down another army on the border to handle the day-to-day matters. And if Queen Sable was not beloved, she was certainly as good an administrator as Queen Celeste had been. She was rather better at quelling disputes among the nobles: all she had to do was bend a cold and faintly murderous glare on the offending parties, and suddenly everyone remembered more important business.

The administrative tasks, thank goodness, could all be handled by her Brownies. They were good at that sort of thing, and they enjoyed it. Perhaps it had something to do with being able to issue orders that the Big Folks had to obey!

Thanks to Jimson keeping an eye on almost everyone through anything that reflected, she knew who was likely to give her trouble at any given audience. The murderous stare was the best weapon in her arsenal, and she used it freely today. By the time she dismissed them, there wasn't a soul who would have dared to offer a petition, complaint or even a comment. The Lesser Audience Chamber was as silent as a tomb. "Is there any more business?" she asked. No one spoke up. "Very well. This session is concluded. May King Thurman be successful in preventing war, and if he cannot prevent it, may he be victorious. All hail King Thurman."

The courtiers and petitioners mumbled a response of "Hail King Thurman," and quickly shuffled out. She breathed a sigh, and hurried back to her rooms. It was time to become Old Maggie, the Bee-Woman. This was perhaps the easiest disguise she had ever donned, other than the complicated illusion itself. She liked bees, and bees liked her. Best of all, perhaps, bees never caused her any problems.

She stepped through the mirror in the Queen's Chambers into the Hall of Mirrors, picked up the cloak and the basket with the potion bottle in it from where she had left them and stepped through a new mirror, a temporary one, that she had set up just for this purpose. She stepped out of an identical mirror incongruously leaning against a tree. How it got there, she had no idea; the Brownies had managed it for her, as the Brownies managed so much for her. They hadtheir own rules and their own magic — if she was able to give them a day or so to do their work, they could accomplish amazing things. If not, though — well, that was where the ingenuity of a Godmother had to come in.

She shook out the cloak and pulled it on, feeling the persona of Maggie settle into place. The bees began to gather about her immediately. They told her with their dancing that the Dwarves were all gone and Rosa was alone.

She sent the bees on ahead of her, made her way down a mostly overgrown path, and came around the corner of the building. Rosa's face lit up to see her, and she felt a lovely warmth to see it. If they managed to get through this, she knew that she and Rosamund would have an especially close relationship, perhaps making up for the fact that she had held aloof for all of Rosa's childhood.

Rosa looked as if she was on tenterhooks, and well she might be. "I believe I have a solution," Lily said gravely. "But first...you should know I have been deceiving you, though never with malice."

She whipped off the cloak. Rosa gaped at her, blinking. "Godmother Lily!" was all she could manage. She stared, as if she couldn't believe it. "But — oh. Yes, of course. You're trying to force the Traditional Snowskin Path, right?"

"Exactly. Which is why I am also Queen Sable."

If the revelation that Old Maggie was really Godmother Lily had been a shock, this left Rosa reeling. "There were three women vying for the title of Evil Stepmother while your father was staying with Perrin," she continued, as she watched Rosa try to absorb this revelation and process it. "Three genuinely Evil Sorceresses. No matter how much Thurman was protected, it was clear that sooner or later someone was going to take him down that path. So I became just what The Tradition wanted."

"You married my father?" Rosa said incredulously.

"In name only." She smiled wryly. "Is all this making sense to you?"

Rosa suddenly sat on a stump. "I — think so," she replied after a moment. "This is all very sudden."

Lily spread her hands wide. "We were swiftly running out of time to act. This was a joint decision."

"It would have to be." Rosa looked dazed. "Is Father all right? Is there a war? Is — "

"Your father is as well as he can be, there is no war yet, and I've kept him informed as soon as I knew where you were and what was happening to you."

Relief spread over Rosa's face. "Well, I assume you can snap the chain? Break the manacle lock?"

Lily shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. When a Dwarf makes a chain to hold something, believe me, it stays held. They have a magic with metal that even I don't dare meddle with. But I do have a plan to release you, one that will follow the Snowskin Path."

Rosa made a face, but didn't object. "Well, I am glad you told me. I think if I had suddenly found myself paralyzed, I'd have gone mad. The Huntsman was bad enough." She frowned a little more. "But if the Huntsman isn't yours, who does he belong to?"

"Something I am trying very hard to find out," Lily replied. "But let me explain what I have in mind now. The Dwarves will come home and find you dead. After they make sure this isn't a trick, they won't want to have a corpse on their hands, and I fully expect them to unchain you and dump you somewhere in the forest. I'll be watching them. I'll have you taken to a safer place, and lift the spell. We'll decide together what to do from there." It looked as if Rosa was taking this much better than Lily had dared to hope. In fact, the bees were calmly circling both of them, visiting the flowers among the weeds, yes, but keeping them in a protective ring. A good sign. She sat on the grass near Rosa. "If I'd had any notion that the Huntsman was going to attack you so soon, I would have put more effort into keeping a watch over you, or told you what was going on."