Mercedes Lackey - Sleeping Beauty

They erupted in laughter, raucous laughter that sounded like rocks banging together, slapping each other on the back and grinning evilly. "A Bargain!" they shouted. "A Bargain is made!"

Five of them turned, proving that there was a way out of this room, and lumbered on ahead up a staircase carved out of the rock wall that she hadn't seen until now. Two of them seized her, roughly cut her bonds from her, and then shoved her, stumbling, up the crudely cut stone staircase. They continued to shove her through what looked like a cellar — and a meagerly appointed one it was, too — then up another stone staircase to come out into —

A kitchen. A perfectly ordinary kitchen, if an extraordinarily filthy one. A dirty, sooty fireplace with two iron cranes for pots in it and a spit above the smoldering fire that currently was empty. A big wooden table in the middle, laden with wooden plates, cups and bowls, most of which could use a good scrubbing. A big iron sink with a pump, various bags, boxes and kitchen implements. Stone floor, stone walls and one tiny window.

And there were the other five, with tools in hand, waiting, and before she knew it, she had a shackle around one ankle, a chain leading from it to a big metal ring on the hearth. "Take a look around, ugly!" said the one that seemed to be the leader. "This'll be yer home from hence! Yon chain will reach anywhere in the house, if ye're careful, and ye'll be a-cookin' and a-doin' fer us now."

And with a sudden sinking of her heart, she realized what it was she had gotten herself into. She was to be, in essence, their slave.

There had never been anything in the tradition like this! There was Snowskin, but...the Snowskin's saviours were good kind creatures, not horrible things that took her as a slave!

As the chief of them — he told her importantly that from now on she could call him "master" — shoved her toward the hearth and ordered her to make porridge with the bag of oats next to it, she could only comfort herself with one thing.

She wasn't dead, and she was still a Princess. Sooner or later, The Tradition would move again. She would just have to be ready for it.

Lily shook the mirror, frantically. "Where is she?" she screamed, making maids on the floor below jump and look for a place to hide. The moment when she knew that Rosamund was missing had coincided with the onset of a terrible storm. The torrents of rain and volleys of thunder and lightning had only made her covert search more frantic.

And it had to be covert, because she dared not drop her persona of "Queen Sable" to show any real interest in the Princess.

"I don't know!"Jimson screamed back, the green face contorted with emotion. The Mirror Servant might occasionally be snippy and even snide, but Lily would have been the first to say he took his duties very seriously. "I can'tfind her if she's not near something that reflects!" A bolt of lightning, striking right outside the palace, and the simultaneous barrage of thunder punctuated his scream, making the maids decide that the work could wait until morning and flee to their rooms to cower in, or under, their beds. The thick palace walls prevented them from hearing the words clearly, but Queen Sable shrieking at someone — and being answered — in a room they knew no one else was in was not a good sign. Lily jumped as the bolt hit, feeling almost as if it had hit her. After a frozen moment, she put the mirror down, carefully, and just as carefully walked away from it.

She knew that Jimson couldn't find anything that wasn't reflected; she'd known that for hundreds of years. She also knew that Jimson was just as eager to find Rosa as she was. The Mirror Servant had been with her as her helper longer than anyone else she knew, and was patient and kind and forbearing with her out of all reason. She knew that screaming at him didn't help. She knew all of these things, but it didn't stop her from wanting to scream at him. She was in a panic, and she wasn't going to solve anything if she couldn't get herself under better control.

This was a disaster. This was the worst disaster in Eltaria in three hundred years. No Godmother of this Kingdom had ever lost an entire Princess.

"If it's any help," Jimson said wearily, "she is still the fairest in the land." Even if he couldn't see her, there were still some things that worked. He could still tell that she was out there, alive, and unharmed enough to trump Lily's beauty.

So Rosa was still alive at least. Lily took many deep breaths and forced herself to calm down and think. "All right, the most logical point of trouble is the Huntsman," she said to herself as much as to Jimson. "What's he doing?"

"He's not in his quarters." When the man had turned up with his hound pack, ostensibly as a wedding present from Duke Perrin, Lily had taken the precaution of putting reflective surfaces everywhere he might conceivably go. "He's not in the stables. He's — he's in the woods. With the pack."

Lily was reasonably sure that Perrin had not sent the man, but she was also reasonably sure that Perrin would say that he had. There were many ways to ensure the Duke would think he had sent this most peculiar present — anything from coercion to a spell that gave a false memory. The spell would be the most likely; while Perrin was warded by his Palace wizard against magic that would harm him, there was nothing about the memory of having sent a valuable servant and a dog pack as a wedding present that would causePerrin any harm.

There were pitfalls to relying too much on magical protections. There was only so much that magic could do — especially when The Tradition was forcing a path. Unfortunately, Perrin was a man who did not think long or deeply about anything that didn't interest him, and when it came to magic, it bored him. So chances were, the Huntsman was a planted agent for someone, and it would be impossible to prove it. There was no telling when or how the manipulation had taken place, nor by whom, and rather too late to worry about that now.

"Can you see anything useful?" she asked immediately. "Can you tell where he is, other than in the forest?" Thurman's Palace was — of course — on the edge of an enormous woodland that stretched for miles. It would not have been a proper setting for tales if it had not been. All sorts of Traditional Paths started in Palaces and ended in Woodlands, and vice versa. Even if the Palace had once been in the heart of a city, here in Eltaria The Tradition moved so strongly that eventual lysomething would have happened to change the very landscape.

"Not really. Bits of him in the bridle brass. Bits of dogs and woods in the bridle brass. A lot of storm in the bridle brass. The question is, why would he be out in this weather?" Jimson's mouth pursed shrewdly. "The Princess is missing, and the Huntsman is miles away in the forest? In a storm?"

"That is a very good question, which is probably answered by 'because he is chasing the Princess.'" She rang immediately for a servant; one came, cowering. She'd had to maintain the illusion that she was Evil by a fierce and intimidating manner, though she hadn't actually done anything to any of the servants. Poor things, she felt so sorry for them. Queen Celeste had been a gentle and considerate mistress. She could console herself by reminding herself that if she was terrifying them, at least she wasn't making their lives a living hell the way a real Evil Stepmother would have. "I want a count of the horses in the stable immediately. Get the grooms to do it. Tell me if any are missing, and which ones."

The man left and returned very quickly; he must have gone himself, for his green livery was rain-soaked and his hair was plastered to his head by water. He made a profound obeisance and stayed that way. "Two horses are gone, Majesty," he said, his voice a little muffled by the fact that he was still in a deep bow. "One is the Huntsman's, and one is your usual ride." She noted that he did not also mention that the Huntsman and his pack were gone before he backed out of the room. Already the servants were rebelling in small ways, telling her only what she had asked about and no more. While this was good, since it meant they were much more likely to be very loyal to Rosa, it meant she was going to have to be very precise in what she demanded of them.