Chapter 16

When Alexander woke the next morning, it was with strange dream-fragments echoing in the back of his mind; blue moons and purple sand, and a very sweet and lissome lady in his arms. For the very first time since he had left Kohlstania, he woke feeling good, warm and very pleased with himself. It had been a wonderful dream, apparently. He just wished that he could remember more of it.

But just because he wasn't waking as a donkey didn't mean that the work was going to stop.

Hob had made sure he knew that weeks ago. Back when he'd been thinking he'd only be spending every other day as a donkey rather than most of a week, Hob had told him in bald terms that man or ass, if he didn't do his share, the same rule held: no work, no food. Alexander didn't think that things would have changed just because the Godmother had decided that he was going to be spending his time as himself from now on. This was the season of harvest, and there was work even for the untutored hands of a Prince.

"Alexander!" bellowed Hob from somewhere beneath him. "Get your lazy royal ass down here!"

Royal ass— Maybe it was the good mood that he had awakened in, but the phrase that would have made him livid with anger yesterday struck him this morning as inexpressibly funny.

He rolled out of bed and stuck his head through the hole in the floor. Hob was looking up at him.

"Lazy I am, but today, at least, I am no ass," he replied. "Give me but a moment."

There were three new beasts to tend now, and one of the few good things about being a donkey had meant that he didn't have to tend himself. His first chore on his first morning waking as a man were quite enough to drive the last fragment of erotic dream out of his mind; nothing was less erotic than mucking out a stall.

Still it didn't spoil his good mood at all. The beasts were mild-tempered and easy to work around and he was done reasonably quickly. He joined Hob at the pump in the kitchen-yard just as the sun came up, the two of them doing a thorough-wash-up in the cold water. "We won't be able to do that much longer," Hob said, shaking his head, and sending droplets flying everywhere. "Be too bloody cold before long. I don't fancy icicles off my nose."

"I don't fancy them hanging off elsewhere on my anatomy," replied Alexander, who had been a bit more thorough in his washing-up. But then, Hob hadn't been mucking out the stable, either.

Hob grinned at him.

"Come on, lad," he said, and led the way up the kitchen stairs.

Alexander stopped where he was. "Ah—"

"Come on, lad," Hob repeated. Dubiously, and certain that he would be stopped dead at the door as he always had been before, Alexander followed him. Followed him right into the warm and fragrant kitchen, where he stood in the doorway, blinking stupidly in the light, just as Rose entered from the door opposite.

"Godmother won't be coming down until later," she informed Master Robin, who was the source of the wonderful smells of sausage and egg, of baking bread and frying ham. "She looks as if she hasn't had nearly enough sleep."

"She was awake rather late last night," Alexander offered. Both Rose, and Lily, who was already seated at the table, gave him odd looks. "She was reading, I suppose," he added. "I could see her from my window."

"I trust your room meets with your approval?" Rose asked tartly, managing to sound only the slightest bit sarcastic.

"Rosie—" Hob injected, with a note of warning in his voice. "Lad, sit down, have some breakfast."

Alexander did sit where Hob indicated, but he also answered Rose. "Mistress Rose, it is exceedingly comfortable, thank you," he replied as courteously as if she really had asked him the question seriously. "And I thank you for asking."

Rose blinked at him for a moment, then sat down without another word.

She ignored him during the meal, speaking only to the other Brownies, but Hob, Robin, and even Lily addressed him from time to time, making him a part of the conversation whether Rose liked it or not.

"So, you'll be going out with Lily and a cart today, past the water-meadow," Hob told him, after some discussion of what needed to be "got in." "Time we beat them deer t'the orchard fruit, I'm thinking."

"A fine plan, Hob," Robin said, nodding with enthusiasm, as he cleared up the plates from the table. "I've always said there was almost no point in having the orchard, we get so little out of it each fall. And nuts! With Alexander and the new beasts to help, we can rob the squirrels of the harvest of the nut orchard as well, later this fall!" He grinned. "I mind me that there's none of you would object to apple cake and spiced nuts."

So Alexander found himself harnessing up one of the mules to a small, two-wheeled cart, loading it with empty sacks and a couple of baskets and a ladder, and leading it out to meet the Brownie woman Lily. It was she who beckoned him down a path he was sure hadn't been there before today, past the meadow with the pond in it, and into what he had thought was just forest.

But it wasn't a forest; it was an incredibly ancient apple orchard.

The trees were huge and gnarled with age; the apples were small and a very bright red, but when he pulled one off a low-hanging branch and bit into it experimentally, expecting it to be sour or woody, he found it utterly delectable, tart and sweet at the same time, and bursting with juice.

"Finish that and let's get on with it," Lily chided, but with a smile. "I've a mind to fill the cart before the morning's over, at the least."

In fact, about the time that breakfast was beginning to wear off, Robin appeared with a second cart, mule, and their luncheon of bread, onion, and chunks of cheese. He brought water, too, but they hardly needed it with the juicy apples all about.

"We'll have cider this year, I think," Lily said with satisfaction as Robin led the mule and laden cart away. "And preserves, and plenty of apples in store, too. First year we'll have had cider of our own pressing in a while."

"Um—" He paused, not sure how to word the question he had delicately. Then he decided to just blunder on with it. "Why? I mean, why are we doing this by hand?"

"Why not use magic, you mean?" Lily didn't look in the least offended by his question. "Well, it's like this. We Brownie-folk don't have all that much magic to use for that sort of thing. We're small Fae, as such things go. The Great Fae, they've no need of mortal foods, for they create such things out of their own power if they choose—we little Fae, who haven't the magic, either feast at their tables or live as mortals do by the work of our hands."

"But surely the Godmother—"

"Ah." She laid a finger alongside of her nose and nodded. "Well, here's the thing. Aye, Godmother Elena could use magic for suchlike things if she chose, but she don't choose. And that's because she's a saving wench. She don't see the need to do with magic what can be done with hands, ye see. There's only so much magic that she has, without gathering more, and she reckons she can't always count on gathering more. Am I making sense?"

"You mean—" He groped to understand Lily's words. "You mean, magic is like rain, and sometimes there's a drought, and you can't always tell when a drought is going to come so you—

you save it in a cistern?"

"Very like!" Lily applauded. "Now not all Godmothers think like ours. There's plenty who do a lot more with their magic. But Madame Elena always thinks, 'what if something really terrible happened, and I didn't have the magic to fix it,' every time she goes to do something. So there you are."

"I—see." And actually, he did see, though it seemed a rather novel and perhaps parsimonious approach to him. After all, what was the point of having magic if you didn't use it?

But then again, what if she did go about squandering magic, then didn't have it to turn him from donkey back into man again? He'd supposed that he'd have felt very differently about her approach if he'd been the one feeling the "drought."

"Now, one of our Godmothers, one we served a long time ago, was like that," Lily continued thoughtfully. "Using her magic to do this and that, cleaning her rooms and appearing and vanishing where she chose and suchlike. And something bad did happen. The Kingdom of Lorendil was invaded, and a Black Sorcerer took the throne and held it for three generations.

And our Godmother didn't have the power to stop him because she'd used so much of it on things we could have done, traded for, or done without."

At the name "Lorendil," Alexander found himself feeling cold. Even in Kohlstania they had heard of the Black Beast of Lorendil, a Sorcerer whose atrocities were the stuff of nightmare.

"Could she have?" he asked. "I mean—she was a Godmother, but he was a Sorcerer...."

"We'll never know, will we?" Lily countered. "But Lorendil was her responsibility, and it went down on her watch, and it took a Prophecy, a Child of Prophecy, and a Sorcerer to set it all right again."

He pondered that for a moment. There was just so much he didn't know about magic—

"Well, in that case," he said, finally, licking the juice of his last apple off his fingers and wiping them clean on the napkin his luncheon had come wrapped in, "let's get back to these apples."

They filled that cart as well, and a third, before Lily decreed an end to the harvest for that day and they headed back to the cottage. And that was when something odd occurred to him.

The kitchen that he had sat in this morning was huge. It should have filled the entire ground floor of the cottage.

Except that it hadn't, for Rose had come in from what was clearly another room, and Elena had been sitting at a table that had not been in a kitchen.

"Lily," he said hesitantly, as they neared the building. "That cottage—"

"Is bigger on the inside than the outside, I know," she said nonchalantly. "No worries. You'll get used to it after a bit, and not even think about it."

"Ah," he replied. And tried not to, because the very idea made his head begin to hurt. How could a building be bigger on the inside than the outside? It sounded mad, and yet he knew that his own eyes had given him contrary evidence.

Hob came to take charge of the cart and its contents, and Alexander and Lily proceeded on to the kitchen yard, and if Alexander had thought that the aromas issuing from that chamber had been delicious this morning, they made his mouth water this evening.

But Lily drew him away from the kitchen door to one of the outbuildings. "Men's bathhouse,"

she laughed, pushing him at the door. "Go make use of it. And when the weather is too cold to bathe at the pump, you can come here, but you'll have to fire the stove yourself."

It was his first bath since he had left home.

He would have lingered, except that he was far too hungry. Even so, to revel in hot water was something of a revelation. Now he felt wholly human again. Hob had washed him down regularly as a donkey, and what had happened to the donkey had, of course, happened to the human. In fact, washing him as a donkey seemed to clean his clothing as well. But that was no substitute for a real hot bath.

Nor for real clean clothing, with the scent of the hot sun that had dried it still in the folds. He walked alone into the kitchen with some of the same euphoria that had buoyed him this morning.

There he found that the others were already sitting down to their dinner, the Godmother sitting at the kitchen table among them. And that surprised him a little. Ladies did not eat in the kitchen among their servants. But then, again, this was no ordinary lady, nor were these creatures strictly "servants."

Quietly he took his own seat, and held his peace while they talked of the day. The Godmother kept sending odd glances in his direction, and though he kept his mouth shut, he wondered what was going through her mind. Did she regret her decision to allow him to remain himself? But why?

Whatever the cause of her behavior, she said nothing to him. And eventually, he gave up trying to figure out what was in her mind, and just listened.

And ate, of course. The food was marvelous, and the results of today's work appeared at the end of the meal in the form of a huge apple pie.

Robin's food had always been good—it was just a great deal better eaten like a civilized man, on a table, in company with others. However strange that company might be.

Strange company, indeed. While casual talk of what must be done over the next several days went on all around him, he felt curiously detached from it all; it occurred to him that had anyone described this situation, these surroundings to him a year ago, he would have considered them to be mad. Sitting in a room in a building that was larger on the inside than the outside, in company with a magician and four Fae. And if he made one misstep, he might be spending the night as a donkey again.

"There's a new room in the cellar," Robin was saying, in answer to some question of Lily's that he had not been paying attention to. "Complete with barrels for the cider."

"Ah, well, that's one problem sorted," Lily said with satisfaction.

Elena was looking from one to the other of them with a look that was something between a smile and a grimace. "Would any of you mind telling me just how the house does this? Gets bigger when we need space, I mean?"

"We don't know," Rose replied, as it finally dawned on Alexander just what they had been talking about. "It's some magic that the first Godmother to live here did. Actually I don't think that the house is actually getting bigger. I think that it is merely giving us access to parts of it we didn't have before. We've never actually seen it growing, you know, even though Robin talks about it budding."

"Did you not say," Alexander said, thinking quite hard about some of his recent reading, "that the first Godmother to live here was one of the Great Fae?"

They all turned to stare at him as if they had not realized that he was there.

"Yes," Lily said. "So?"

"I always thought—" he shrugged "—children's tales in Kohlstania speak of the Elven Queens living in great palaces. Well, what if this is—and always has been—a great palace?"

"Ah!" Robin said, his wizened face lighting up. "Yes! One of the Great Halls of Faerie! So that the house we see is—is just the entrance hall to it, so to speak!"

"It's as good an explanation as any other, I suppose," Elena said, after a moment of thought.

But she looked relieved. "It makes sense. But why didn't any of you know this?"

"Because we weren't here, except Hob, and he was in the stable," said Lily, matter-of-factly.

"We did not take service here until the first of the mortal Godmothers was in residence. Then, the place was as you have seen, with fewer storage rooms and workrooms. And a much smaller Library."

Alexander shook his head. This was only contributing to his sensation of living in a dream. But the food in his belly was warm and solid, and the scent of sweet apples was still in his nostrils—

"We're all mad, you know," Elena said aloud, looking straight at him.

"I had begun to suspect this," he said in all seriousness.

She broke into a smile, a completely unexpected smile. She had never really smiled a great deal around him, and never at him before—or at least, she had never done so without a great deal of ironic mockery to her expression. This smile accepted the joke as being on both of them, and invited him to share in it. It hit him with an almost physical impact.He managed to return it, but not without a struggle to get his heart and breathing going again.

She's beautiful. How had he never noticed that before?

"Well, if that is the explanation—and thank you, Prince Alexander, for thinking of it—I will confess that I am much relieved," Elena said to all of them. "It had occurred to me that if this house was capable of growing, it might also be capable of shrinking. What would happen, for instance, if some enemy were to somehow drain away some of its magic? Would it shrink? With us in it?" She shuddered. "But one of the Palaces of the Great Fae, slowly opening rooms as we need them—now that, I feel much more comfortable with. And on that note, I shall go back to my studies."

That seemed to be a sort of dismissal for all of them. Elena got up and left, Robin collected the dishes, Rose left through the same door that the Godmother had used, Lily moving to help Robin. Hob stood up, and gave him a sharp look.

"We've had our dinner," he said, with a meaningful glance towards the stable.

Alexander understood him. "Time to feed the beasts," he replied, and got to his feet, himself.

Hob actually fed them; it was Alexander who gave them all water and made sure they were comfortable. Then Hob left, and Alexander climbed the ladder to his loft room, taking the lantern with him. When he got there, he stripped down to his breeks, and slipped into bed, taking a book with him.

Many pages later, he felt his eyelids drooping, and put the book aside, turning to blow out the lantern. As he did so, he glanced out the window, and saw the silhouette of Elena, also bent over a book, in the window that faced the stable.

It was another long night, but at the end of it, Elena felt as if she had a better idea, not only of what would be expected of her on taking the responsibility for a new Kingdom, but what she could expect from Kohlstania. And she had a bat-delivered note from Arachnia, to the effect that Octavian had passed, not only her trials, but a few little tests that her consort had contrived. She made a few notes, based on other Restoration spectacles in the various chronicles, and her imagination began to get to work. She fell asleep with her head full of ideas.

But the next morning, she had to work hard to wrench her concentration back to her plans for restoring Octavian to his proper place, for she had had a second one of those dreams about his brother.

Wretched man! she thought, irritated beyond all reason by the fact that he had so sensuously invaded her dreams. She put off going down to breakfast until after she saw Lily taking him back down to the apple orchard again.

The sooner I get all of them off my hands, the better, she decided, feeling very glad that Lily had taken responsibility for Alexander for the day. She told Rose that she would be gone overnight, and with a sense of relief, drove the donkey-cart out into the forest and evoked the

"All Forests Are One" spell to take her to Arachnia's dark and forbidding palace.

There, she gave Octavian one last test—resuming her guise as the old woman, she came to the back entrance to beg for food. Not only did Octavian give her half of his share, but he prevented the stable-troll from running her off and he was about to give up his sleeping place to her as well, when she dropped her disguise and revealed herself to him.

That went well. Arachnia appeared right on cue, dropping her guise as the Evil Sorceress, and the two of them played out the first act of Octavian's Redemption precisely as The Tradition preferred. In fact, The Tradition unleashed a veritable flood of magic upon the scene—presumably to ensure that Acts Two and Three would take place as well. Arachnia's servants took Octavian off to be bathed and reclothed, feasted, and finally put to bed until the morrow, when they would take him back to his father.

When the hurly-burly was over, Elena and Arachnia retired to the peace and quiet in Arachnia's Library. It was nothing like her own, cozy little chamber; this was a Library, stretching up three full stories, with two balconies ringing it. Dark banners hung down from the rafters above them—banners that featured, not the arms of defeated enemies nor of ancestors, but beautifully rendered images of creatures normally associated with night—several species of owls, bats, wolves, and cats, as well as a dragon or two, the rare Ebon Unicorn, and the Nightmare.

There was a fireplace in one wall of a size sufficient to make any ox placed on a spit therein look like a suckling piglet.

"Dare I ask how you got all of this—?" Elena said, looking about her.

Arachnia laughed. She was, all in all, very much prettier than she had been when Elena had first seen her, and for all that she and her Poet-Prince preferred being semi nocturnal, much rosier. Being in love and beloved evidently suited her well indeed. "I killed the owner," she said.

Elena felt her eyes widen. "You're joking?"

"Oh, no," Arachnia assured her. "I was her servant. She had a Sleeper here—she wasn't playing by The Tradition, and after she enchanted the poor thing, she carried the girl off to here, her palace. She wanted to ensure herself of a steady diet of Failed Questers without having to work at it too hard."

"Ah." Elena nodded. She remembered Bella telling her that like those whom The Tradition was trying to set down a path not of their choosing, there was a great deal of magical power invested in the life of a Quester. When one Failed, all that magical power was available to the evil magician—

—and it was also possible to transmute life-force into magical power as well. So it was in the interest of an evil magician to attract and slay as many Questers as possible.

"She had half a dozen human servants that she had kidnapped or lured here, and easily three times that in magical servants or enslaved magical creatures. She was really dreadful to all of us, but I was the only one who dared to think about killing her." Arachnia shook her head over the cowardice of her former fellow servants. "I watched for my chance, and one day when she was gloating over murdering yet another Quester and feasting on the magic that his death had released, I pushed her out a window."

Arachnia's eyes glinted at the memory; Elena had to wonder just how bad "dreadful" had been in order to bring that look to her face.

"The Sleeper awoke and ran off with the stableboy," Arachnia continued. "In fact, everyone ran off except me and the talking statue—" She indicated a statue in the corner of the library of a very graceful, half-nude woman. The statue gave Elena a stiff little bow; Elena bowed back.

"—and, of course, a few ghosts. I decided to stay, partly because I hadn't anywhere else to go, and the statue began to talk to me. She was the one who discovered that I could see magic; she pointed out that this meant that I could be a magician, and I decided that I would be the Sorceress here. I knew that the ghosts would keep everyone away until I had learned enough to be formidable." She shrugged. "Not a very exciting story, but the statue tells me that I was supposed to have been a Witch-killer except that the Spider-queen's hunters found me wandering around in the forest before I could find the evil Witch's hut. Which is probably why I could see magic in the first place."

"And why you shoved the Spider-queen out a window, I suppose," Elena said thoughtfully, as she watched the swirls and eddies of magic play about the banners overhead. It was so thick up there you could practically read by it; The Tradition really, truly wanted Octavian reunited with his father and reinstated as the Heir, and it was putting all sorts of effort to bear on the situation.

Perhaps because not one, but two magicians with a habit of opposing it were sitting here with Octavian's fate in their hands. "Don't Witch-killing children usually shove the Witches into their own ovens, or down wells? I suppose shoving just was the natural thing for you to do. How old were you?"

"Seven," Arachnia said serenely. "The statue taught me how to read. There were plenty of provisions stored under preservation spells, more than enough to feed me while I learned magic.

What I didn't learn from the books here, some of the ghosts taught me, but of course it was all a bit slanted."

Slanted? Considering that this has apparently been a stronghold of Evil Sorceresses for the last three hundred years? I'm surprised that she didn't go completely to the bad!

But of course, Elena didn't say that aloud.

"The ghosts are mostly very sweet," she continued thoughtfully. "They were all victims of my former mistress and her predecessors, so they were disposed to like me and wish me well. And the statue was stolen by her mistress, so she wasn't particularly upset about seeing me get rid of the Spider-queen, either. Now, what are we going to do with Octavian? Have you any ideas?"

"You do realize that whoever brings Octavian back is going to become Kohlstania's Godmother, don't you?" she asked instead of answering directly. It was only fair to give Arachnia the chance at having the place—it would mean another source of magic for her—

"Hellfire and damnation!" Arachnia swore with a start. "No! Elena, if you don't take him back, I swear, I will revert and curse you!"

Elena choked on a laugh. Well, that was certainly vehement enough! "I thought I ought to at least give you the option—"

"I do not want to be a Godmother! The wretched man is yours, and his Kingdom with him!

Now, have you any ideas?" Two pink spots flared on Arachnia's cheeks as she calmed herself.

"I don't suppose you have any sort of transportation that flies?" said Elena.

Of all of the means of transportation Elena had used as a Godmother, this was by far the most unique. She'd had to do some quick cosmetic work on it, though, or it would have frightened three-quarters of the citizenry of Kohlstania into fits, and had the remaining quarter running for the spears and bows.

It appeared that there was a reason for the dragon-banners in the library. The traditional means of transport for the occupant of this castle was—formidable. An elaborate black war-chariot, apparently forged of blackened silver, drawn by two black dragonets—which were the much smaller, unintelligent subspecies of Draconis Sapiens. A third dragonet generally served as the mount for the chariot-driver's outrider. This was why the stableman was a troll.

When the beasts were feeling fractious, nothing short of a troll could control them. These were not the beasts that Octavian usually had charge of, although he was familiar with them and they with him.

Elena didn't change much about the rig other than to make it far less menacing—she made the chariot and dragonets white, an opalescent rose and gold instead of black and silver, and she made a few cosmetic changes to the beasts' heads, giving them more a look of scaly horses than of man-eating carnivores. Octavian got armor to match, of course, and she herself had donned her most impressive costume as the Rose Fairy—complete with powdered wig and six-foot staff topped with a pink diamond in the shape of a star.

Octavian was in full armor—enameled in white and rose, with gilding. Luckily for him, it was magic in nature, which made it a great deal lighter than "real" armor. He had gotten very carefully detailed instructions from Elena, but she was taking no chances; there was such a superabundance of magic available that Elena took the precaution of putting a tiny geas on him to obey those instructions. This time, at least, she was going to give The Tradition what it wanted; a full spectacle which would probably turn into a tale that traveled through the Kingdoms for generations. Maybe that would make it leave her alone for a bit.

And no more dreams! she told it fiercely. Not that she had any evidence that the dreams of Alexander—of which she had had another last night—were coming out of The Tradition. But she had no evidence to the contrary, either, and in absence of evidence...

So the whole outré procession went flying off into the morning sky, heading for Kohlstania and the Royal Palace; she driving the splendid chariot, Octavian riding beside her on his winged mount, the whole of it buoyed on swirling clouds of magic that would have enveloped them in a thick, pea-soup fog except that only she could see it. It was practically thick enough to cut; she had stored as much of it away in wand and staff, whatever talismans she had on her person and could put together last night, and in her own reserves, and still it was like this.

And that was after she insisted that Arachnia divide the power with her! The Tradition was making certain that the Kingdom of Kohlstania got its Godmother with a vengeance!

Or perhaps it was trying to bribe her into being more cooperative and conciliatory.

Well, it wasn't going to work. On the other hand, there was no harm in taking the bounty that was given.

Naturally—since she insisted on flying at a little above tree-height, to ensure being seen—they attracted a great deal of attention, and even with her cosmetic changes, they excited a good deal of fear. For every face upturned to watch them pass, there was someone running for concealment down below. So by the time they landed in the courtyard of the Royal Palace, all of the Royal Guard had turned out, armed to the teeth, and she suspected that most of the Army was on its way from the Royal Barracks on the outskirts of the city.

The dragons pulled the vehicle around to stand as near to the door as the Guards would allow. She remained in her chariot; Octavian, however, dismounted from his dragon, and took his place between her and the Guard; with his visor down, he looked very formidable indeed.

She surveyed them all haughtily as the dragons tossed their heads.

"Is this any way to greet me?" she demanded "One woman, with a single escort-knight?

Where is your King?"

She suppressed a smile at her own words, though— Oh yes, one "mere" woman, clearly some sort of extremely powerful magician, three dragons, and a fellow whose face no one can see! You're right to be nervous, my lads!

"He is here, lady," said a weary, wary voice, and the Guard reluctantly parted to let King Henrick through. "What is it you would have of me?"

The King was armed as well, though he'd only had time to buckle on a breastplate over his velvet doublet, and replace his crown with an open-face helm. Still, he was brave, she had to give him that. He wasn't hiding in his throne room, depending on his Guards to protect him; he had his sword in his hand, and he looked as if he was prepared to use it.

"You have three sons, King Henrick," she said, sternly. "Where are they? Answer me true, for I am a magician of no little power, and I will know falsehood if I hear it. And the cost of falsehood may be more than you can ever dream."

Of course, the cost of falsehood would be that she would not allow Octavian to reveal himself. Not that she expected to hear anything but truth out of Henrick; if everything Randolf had shown her was true, he had spent a very long time learning a great deal about himself since his sons had vanished, and he did not much care for what he had learned.

He reeled as if she had struck him a blow, and yet, from the expression on his face, it was a blow he had, in part, expected. It did not break him—but in that moment, she saw him look at her and admit his own defeat and his own failures.

"I know only what has befallen my son Julian, lady," he replied, bitterly. "In my folly, in my greed, I sent them out, all three of them, to answer my neighbor's Quest and win his daughter, thinking to add his Kingdom to my own. And it is true that of the three, I sent Julian out expecting that he would fail and rid me of the one son I did not understand and could not care for. My cold-heartedness was well-repaid; it is Julian who has won the maid and the throne for himself, and not for me, and my other sons are lost. And in a sense, all three are lost to me, for I fear that Julian knew my heart only too well, and will never forgive me. So here I am—surrounded by wealth that I care nothing for, facing my own declining years with neither friend nor son at my side." He straightened, then, and looked her in the eyes. "So work your will on me, Witch. I am already living in the worst I can dream, and I brought it all upon myself!"

She caught Octavian's eye, and nodded slightly. He needed no further encouragement.

"Father!" he cried, pulling off his helm, and flinging himself to King Henrick's feet. "Father, I am here! I am home again!"

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then the King fell upon his son, weeping, and embracing him, as the Royal Guard erupted into a cheer. And after that—well, that was when things got very interesting indeed.

It was long after dark that Elena finally headed back home to her cottage, and she was just about ready to drop with exhaustion. First, there had been the whole Reconciliation scene to play out, then some (by no means all) of the explanation of what had happened to Octavian and why, then (this time, in private) Elena had delivered herself of a bit of a lecture to King and Prince. Not much of a lecture, but she had made it very clear that their first act must be to reconcile with Julian by delivering the one thing that the King had not been able to bring himself to send—

—an apology, a long one, for a long list of wrongs and neglect going back into his childhood.

It was the newly-humbled Octavian who'd had no difficulty with this rather obvious necessity, and in the euphoria of having his favorite son back, Henrick had agreed.

As for the rest—well, that would mostly be in Octavian's hands, but his Redemption had been very real, and she didn't think he was going to backslide. There would be some gradual improvement in the lot of the common people of Kohlstania, and it would begin with being accorded the common courtesies that had heretofore been honored more in the breech than the observance. She had left, flying off into the sunset, with the third dragon harnessed with the other two, and had returned the whole rig to Arachnia by the time darkness fell. And by the time she had left, there was one very interesting change already visible in Kohlstania. Out in the marketplace, there were stalls and shops hung with the signs of various sorts of magicians. Those hadn't been there when she flew over that morning. So, magic and magicians were already been accorded a great deal more respect by the "sophisticated" city folk.

Well, it only took looking up and seeing a dragon flying overhead to make a believer out of you, she supposed.

That was yet another change that had been badly needed here; from what Elena had learned from Alexander and her own readings, Kohlstania had been rapidly on its way to banishing magic altogether. And that would have had a very serious effect on the very soul of the country, for a country whose people ceased to believe in magic soon lost much of their ability to imagine and dream, and before long, they ceased to believe— or hope—for anything. This was one of the fundamental truths of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. Even the lowest of swineherds could believe that he, or his son, or his son's son could one day be a Prince—because all it took was magic, and being the right person in the right place. And the highest of Kings could know that at any moment, an act of dishonor or cruelty could send him tumbling out of his throne—because all it took was magic, and doing the wrong thing to the wrong person. In this way, The Tradition could be a blessing, and the magic by which it operated certainly was. "The carrot and the stick,"

Madame Bella had once said dryly, when explaining it all to Elena. "The carrot for the lowly, the stick for the mighty. It is quite astonishing how effective these things are when applied in that particular order."

Elena left the dragons and their chariot with Arachnia's troll, and enjoyed a fortifying and amusing dinner with the Dark Lady and her Lord.

At least, it had been amusing right up until the moment that they said their farewells and she drove off into the forest— alone. At that point, she was overcome by a spasm of envy so powerful it felt akin to pain.

She clutched at the reins, and slapped them over the donkey's back to make him hurry his pace. Wise little fellow that he was, he ignored her; he was going no faster than a walk, for he could not see the road well in the darkness. She had evoked the "All Forests Are One" spell, of course, and he might even be in her home forest even now, but it had never taken less than an hour to traverse the distance between where she was and where she was going, and she very much doubted that was going to change tonight, just because she was feeling miserable and wanted to be home.

She stared into the darkness, and felt tears dripping down her cheeks.

Arachnia hadn't meant to hurt her, of course. In fact, she had no idea that her words had left Elena feeling as if she had been stabbed. She'd only meant to explain why she had no intention of being the Godmother to Kohlstania, or any other Kingdom. And she had meant it as a compliment.

" I could never be as strong as you, Elena," she had said, earnestly. "You Godmothers, living all alone as you do, I don't know how you can bear it. You completely amaze me.

Now that I've found it, I could never stand to be alone the way you are, to live my life without love."

If she could see Elena now, she would be horrified, for she could have no way of knowing how bitter those words had been, and how they had made Elena's heart ache with pain. Not just because of what they meant now, but what they meant for the future. Because, of course, Godmothers did live alone. Who had ever heard of a Godmother's Consort, or a Fairy Godfather? It was one thing to manipulate The Tradition; it was quite another to forge a new one that would create such a monumental change as that.

In the back of her mind, she had been planning on having Alexander with her all winter—had been looking forward to his company during the days when snow would confine them all within doors. She had not been thinking at all, or at least, she had not been thinking like a Godmother.

If anything, she had been thinking like an ordinary woman.

Which, of course, she was not.

That was what Arachnia's words had made her realize. That she would have to put more effort into Alexander's redemption, so that he could be back in Kohlstania himself by the time the snows came.

That she was going to be spending another long winter alone.

As she would, for the rest of her life.