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  Sleeping Beauty

  ( Five Hundred Kingdoms - 5 )

  Mercedes Lackey

  Godmother Lily is having a hard time protecting the small but rich kingdom of Eltaria. The Tradition is trying to force Princess Rosamund down a path -- but is it that of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White? Everything seems to be being subverted, from the seven evil dwarfs who capture Rosamund, to the Wicked Stepmother who rescues her. And to top it all, Prince Siegfried needs to rescue a maiden who isn't his aunt from a ring of fire in order to avoid his own Doom. The only solution to all this: issue a set of challenges to all the local Princes, the prize being the kingdom and fair Rosamund's hand.

  MERCEDES LACKEY

  Sleeping Beauty

  To Terry Pratchett.

  If I can be half as witty and funny on my best days as he is on his worst, I will be a happy woman.

  Author Note

  I love comedy.

  But comedy is nothing to laugh about. I know from listening to comics talk and reading their thoughts about it that comedy is hard, hard work. The best comedians study comedy, study timing and pacing, balance a fine line between "too far" and "not enough."

  Terry Pratchett, for instance, has my undying admiration. He manages to sustain comedic writing on that narrow line for entire books; he doesn't rely on tricks like puns or pratfalls, and his books just flow from one great scene to another, loaded with terrific one-liners and dry, wry descriptions and little asides to let you knowhe knows that you are smart enough to get the joke and that he appreciates that.

  Alas, I do not write comedy. I'm not nearly brilliant enough for that. I settle for "occasionally funny," with the occasional drop intoAmerica's Funniest Home Videos territory.

  But I did have fun, a great deal of fun, with this latest Fairy Godmother bookemdash the fifth in my Five Hundred Kingdoms series. Here we have a truly fractured set of fairy talesemdash when Sleeping Beauty gets hijacked by Snow White, then punted right off the field by the Siegfried saga. All three have sleeping princesses in them, which is how they manage to get crossed up, but how theystay entangled is what made this so much of giggle to write.

  I'd also suggest you listen to comedian Anna Russell's hilarious routine "The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis)." You can find it online. I fully agree with her observations.

  At any rate, I hope you find a laugh or two in this chapter of the Fairy Godmothers. Heaven knows there are few enough of them to be had these days.

  Prologue

  "Mirror, mirror, in my hand, who's the fairest in the land?" Fairy Godmother Lily stared intently into the book-size, gilt-framed mirror she held cupped between her palms, and muttered under her breath, "And if you say you are, Jimson, I am going to hurl you so hard against the wall they'll be looking for your shards with tweezers for years."

  "You don't need to get so appallingly aggressive, Godmother," the round, slightly green face in the mirror huffed. "I'm only the messenger."

  "I'm appallingly aggressive because The Tradition has been gathering over this Kingdom in force for the past three weeks."Ever since Queen Celeste died. "I need to know who it's about to gather up and fling, like I am going to fling this damned mirror unless you give me a good answer!"

  Though she expected it, the "good answer" would not be —

  "Princess Rosamund, Godmother," sighed Jimson. "Cheeks, roses, check. Mouth, cherry, check. Hair, spun gold, check. Eyes, sky, check. Not even weeping buckets over her dead mother, sleeping little and eating less has changed any of that. And that indefinable something that means The Tradition is taking an intense interest in her makes her nothing short of radiant. If it weren't for the loss of her mother, she would be a prime candidate for the Beauty Asleep path. Still, that's relatively harmless..."

  "Relatively? Leaving Eltaria unguarded with everyone asleep for a month, let alone years, would be a disaster." Fairy Godmother Lily-groaned. That Rosa was the "fairest" was not what she wanted to hear. It would have been much better if it had been some shepherdess somewhere. Or even herself. She had been in charge of the Kingdom of Eltaria for three hundred years now. Unlike many of the Fairy Godmothers, the Godmother of Eltaria had been the same person all that time, rather than a different Godmother under the same name. Her longevity was aided in part by the fact that she was Fae on her father's side, and partly because the Fae themselves had made sure that Lily was granted extraordinary Gifts at her birth, even more than the firstborn Princess of any Kingdom, ever. They had known what she would become, and she had been trained for this since she was old enough to prattle. The kingdom of Eltaria was a very special case, and needed a Godmother who was skilled, vigilant and knew every trick in the Godmothers' book.

  Eltaria was small, but tending it was a full-time job for its Godmother, because it was incredibly wealthy. The mountains that comprised most of it yielded gold, silver, copper and gems in abundance. Where the farmers and peasants of other Kingdoms rarely saw a copper piece, here even the humblest shepherdess had at least one gold ring and a thin gold necklace with a locket of her true love's hair in it. Unlike most fanciful tales, the monarchs of Eltaria actually did dine on gold plates and drink from gem-studded cups. Eltaria also had greedy neighbors. Often, the only thing that kept them from invading was the knowledge that if one did, the monarch would soon find himself facing off against the other three. The current King, Thurman, at whose christening Lily had presided, wore his Crown of State so seldom it had just been locked in the Vault, and his War Crown so often it had needed replating three times.

  Thurman had married a darling little shepherdess he had met while out hunting in true fairy-tale fashion, thus neatly sidestepping the question of having to choose the daughter of one of his neighbors or the daughter of one of his nobles. One did not argue with true fairy-tale endings in this land, even though his choice somewhat disgruntled the small — and in Lily's opinion just a bit too inbred — Eltarian noble families. Nevertheless, fairy tales are fairy tales, and Eltaria was Eltaria, and no one dared to flout a choice approved by the Kingdom's Godmother. Lily did not intervene in the actual workings of the Kingdom often, but when she did, it was important.

  It was not long before the new Queen became very popular in any event, for Celeste was sweet, practical, and clever as well as pretty. She did all the things a good and kind Queen is supposed to do, and more. She was a natural peacemaker. Among the peasants and farmers she was adored.

  They had produced a single daughter, Rosamund. On Lily's advice, they had not had a public christening, which would simply have been the occasion for a veritable swarm of Wicked Witches, Dark Fairies, Evil Sorceresses and the like to decide that they had been slighted and come descending on the celebration to curse the poor thing. Instead, claiming, after the fact, the child's frailty at birth, they had had the priest waiting to perform an immediate christening before the child even got a chance to draw her first breath. With a completely mortal godmother, so that no blasted troublemaker could say that Lily had had foreknowledge and level a curse anyway.

  Of course, no public christening meant no horde of Good Fae to come bless the child, but everyone agreed that the inevitability of curses, more curses and multiple curses, outweighed the loss of some blessings.

  Thurman and Celeste, like all monarchs of Eltaria, and unlike most other Kings and Queens, were nearly as educated in the workings of The Tradition as Godmothers. They had to be. It was the only way that Eltaria had stayed intact for this long.

  But of course, only a Godmother, or one of the Fae themselves, had the ability to sense that The Tradition was gathering to strike, and the power to command the sort of servants that could show them where....

  "All right, show me where The Tradition is gathering thic
kest."

  "I'm working, I'm working," Jimson grumbled. The Mirror Servant could see anything that was in view of any reflective surface, but that was a lot to sort through. Lily wished she could have her hands free to rub her aching temples.

  If it had been possible to exclude The Tradition from every one of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, she would have done so in an instant. That powerful, yet completely unintelligent force of magic that the Fairy Godmothers called "The Tradition" quite literally made stories come to life. If a tale got told often enough, it became part of The Tradition — and the force then sought out those whose lives matched that tale closely in order to replay the story over and over again.

  One might think that this was a good thing. After all, it meant that good, kind maidens, like Celeste, found themselves married to handsome Princes — that brave, penniless orphans slew dragons and won the hands of beautiful Princesses. And that was true.

  But before the penniless orphan slew the dragon it had to decimate the countryside. The dragon might have been perfectly good-hearted before The Tradition drove it mad. The countryside generally was not improved by being decimated. Often many people suffered in the path of a Traditional Story on its way to its ending. It was also true that for every girl whose circumstances exactly matched those of, say, an Ella Cinders, there were dozens for whom the Prince in question was already married, an infant, a senile old man, a rake, a cad, or...would much rather marry another Prince, thank you. But The tradition did not care, and would senselessly keep trying to force the poor girl and her "destined mate" down the "right" Traditional Path, generally to grief all around. Not only that, but with that much magical force building up around her, the girl and her destined mate would quickly become the target of however many Wicked Witches, Dark Fae, Evil Wizards or the like that happened to be in the neighborhood and in the market for a nice juicy dollop of magical power.

  Which, of course,every Wicked Witch, Dark Fae, and Evil Wizard was on the prowl for. Always. It was easy enough to take someone around whom the Tradition was moving, and drain that power. The procedure, unless carefully managed by an extremely skilled, patient and highly ethical magician, generally killed, maimed, or mind-wiped the victim. Patience and ethics were not something dark magicians worried about. Not when it was easier to just rip the stuff away.

  That, of course, was not the only set of problems The Tradition caused. Because not all — nor even most — tales had happy endings. For every Ella Cinders, there was a Bluebeard, a Laithley Wurm, and a Rakshasha. For every Gingerbread Witch, there were Babes in the Woods. Girls danced themselves to death. Wolves ate grandmothers. Little Match Girls froze to death in the snow. Mothers told their errant offspring about the Boggles that would get them if they weren't good — and lo! a child misbehaved, as what child doesn't now and again, and a Boggle got him.

  At least as tragic were all the times that people failed the tests. The witch that held Ladderlocks captive generally infested the ground beneath her tower with brambles, and plenty of would-be suitors would fall into them to have their eyes put out and wander sightless for the rest of their lives. The palace of a Beauty Dreaming was always surrounded by poisonous thorns, and if a Prince's courage failed him, even a little, they would impale him and his sad corpse would hang among the vines until he turned to bones. If a Prince of the Kingdoms of the Rus failed to get the help of Zhar-ptica, he would adorn the garden of the Katschei as a statue forever.

  Preventing the tragedies, steering the stories, finding a way to prevent the mismatched from becoming the victims of those who would drain that magical power, was the job of the Fairy Godmothers.

  Like Lily.

  But unlike Lily, most Godmothers didn't find themselves trying to stem off an entirely mortal invasion on a monthly basis on top of her other duties.

  "Ah!" said Jimson, finally. And then..."Oh dear."

  Before Lily could snap at him to explain himself, the mirror cleared and revealed a room she recognized — as she would recognize the public, and most of the private, rooms of most of the kingdom's nobles. This was the audience chamber of Duke Perrin, which was currently serving as Thurman's audience chamber, since at the moment he was there. Perrin's Duchy was right on the border with the Kingdom of Dastchel, which had moved troops to the border it shared with Eltaria as soon as the Queen died. Poor Thurman was not even allowed to mourn as anyone else would —

  At first she had trouble understanding what she was seeing. The entire audience chamber was full of people in mourning garments in deference to the King, so three women in black and purple didn't stand out particularly.

  Then her memory caught up with her, and she recognized three of the faces in the crowd.

  In no small part because they were glaring at each other like the rivals they were. "Nicolette ol the Gray Forest." Dressed with deceptive simplicity, with wide violet eyes that looked utterly without guile, blond hair cascading to her hips, and a d'e colletage that was shocking in a mourning gown, Nicolette was widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful of the practitioners of the Dark Arts in this Kingdom. "Asteria of the Ice Tower." True to her name, Asteria was aloof, cold and remote as a statue of snow. White hair and pale skin, eyes so pale a blue they looked like glacier-ice; the high-necked dress of dark purple made her hands and head look as if they were detached from her body in some peculiar way. "Desmona of Ghost Lake." Of the three, Desmona was the most obviously an Evil Sorceress. Her black gown featured a spider theme, down to the glittering jet spiders — which might well be real spiders, enchanted — ornamenting her black hair. She openly carried her magical staff, atop of which a murky globe emitted the occasional sullen red spark in its depths.

  She knew what they were there for, of course. And they knew it, too, throwing smoldering glances of sullen rivalry at each other. It didn't seem to have occurred to any of the three that she might be watching, because they were doing nothing to keep her from spying on them.

  "Good job, Jimson," she said, putting the hand mirror down, carefully. She was going to have to act quickly. But she hadn't been the Godmother of Eltaria all this time without learning to plan ahead. She ran to her Hall of Mirrors, generally the most-used room in her palace. Other Godmothers might be able to take the time to travel by roads or flying beasts or even the "All Paths are One," spell; in Eltaria things moved too quickly for that.

  The Hall was, true to its name, lined with mirrors. All of them were shrouded in draperies, and each had a name above it. She pulled aside the drapes from the one marked "Perrin," and gazed into it.

  Luck was with her. The King was using the Duke's private chambers, which was where the mirror linked to this one already was. He was slumped over in a chair, his face in his hands, and the War Crown on the table beside him.

  The magic was already in place, and keyed to her. She stepped through, from her Hall into the private rooms of the Duke, through a mirror mounted permanently on the wall. A gift from her to the Duke's great-great-grandfather. Just in case she ever needed to use it. She had to step down a little, and the leather sole of her shoe scuffed the wooden floor.

  The sound of an unexpected footfall made Thurman look up; when he saw her, his face crumpled. She held out her arms to him, and he stumbled into them.

  "My poor boy," she murmured, as he sobbed on her shoulder, as he had not dared weep with anyone else. He was the King. He could not cry for his Queen, nor show any weakness, not in public, and not with most of his Court. But she had known him since he was an infant; she was the person with whom the Kings and Queens of her Kingdom could be people, and not monarchs. "My poor, poor boy."

  She let him cry as long as she dared, then pulled away ever so slightly. He felt that, and immediately straightened. He was, after all, a King, and he knew what her sudden appearance would mean.

  "Lily — what is it?"

  "There are three of the Evils downstairs right now, waiting for you to show your face, and the moment you do, the enchantments will be flying thick and fast t
o ensnare you with all of the force of The Tradition behind them." She hated to do this to him, but there was no choice.

  He didn't curse; Thurman was not that kind of man. But his face went to stone as he ran through all the possible scenarios in his mind. She saw him realize what she had, that there was no escaping this. The Tradition wanted him married, so that his daughter would have an Evil Stepmother, and there was an avalanche of force building toward just that.

  Then she saw his eyes light up. She nodded. He had come to the same conclusion she had. She cast a spell over herself, changing her appearance utterly. Now she, too, wore mourning, a high-necked, Dark velvet gown, embellished with jet beads, her hair was as black as a raven's wing, her eyes as dark as the night sky, her skin as pale as milk. She looked precisely as she meant to — as another Dark Sorceress. The three below would see her and assume an unknown rival had stolen a march on them while they were jockeying with each other. Each of them would blame the other, and never think to work together to be rid of her.

  The Tradition's power swirled and settled. It was satisfied. Rosamund would have an "Evil" Stepmother.