That didn’t come from tree branches rustling. Anya turned around. A green-skinned figure wearing a loose robe made from many different autumn leaves was coming towards them. She had a long back-scrubbing brush in one hand, once simply a fallen branch with just the right sticking-out twiglets, and her hair was done up inside a towel made from plaited grasses.
Clearly a dryad, come from her bath.
“I thought dryads were supposed to look like beautiful women,” whispered Anya to Shrub as the tree sprite approached. Elisandria might be mistaken for a human female from a distance, but up close she looked more like someone had roughly carved a tree to resemble a woman and it had somehow got a life of its own.
“She is beautiful,” said Shrub. “If you like trees.”
“I like trees,” said Ardent. “They hold the scent very well when you—”
“Quiet, Ardent,” commanded Anya. She bowed as the dryad came up to them.
“You must be Elisandria. I’m Princess Anya of Trallonia, this is Ardent the royal dog, the frog in the cage is Prince Denholm, and … ah … Shrub, you know.”
“Charmed, darlings,” said Elisandria airily. “What’s so important you need to talk to Dannith? You do know he became a tree to get out of the whole human business?”
“Uh, no,” said Anya. “I didn’t know why he became a tree. I don’t really know anything about why druids become trees—”
“Peace and quiet,” said Elisandria matter-of-factly. “Abdication of responsibility. A good long sleep. All of that.”
“Well, all I wanted was four drops of blood from a retired druid,” said Anya. “Sap, I guess. It’s one of the ingredients to make a lip balm to turn Denholm and Shrub back into humans.”
“Four drops of sap?” asked Elisandria. “Got a knife? Just make a cut on the diagonal and let it drip into the collecting vessel.”
“Uh, Dannith said to go away,” Anya said uncomfortably.
“Oh, don’t ask him again. He won’t even notice!” cried Elisandria. “He’s more tree than person at the moment—I doubt he would have woken at all for anyone but Shrub. I mean, if it was a big branch or something, that’d be different, but four drops of sap? Here, I’ll do it for you. Give me your knife and the bottle.”
“Oh,” said Anya. “I’ve only got a water bottle … ”
She hesitated, wondering what to do, once again regretting that she’d had to go forth on her Quest without proper preparation.
“I guess we’ll have to use that.”
She put down her burdens and opened the water bottle to splash some of the precious fluid over Denholm, who croaked in gratitude. Then she poured more into her cupped hand for Ardent and drank the last of it herself, before handing over the empty bottle and her knife to the dryad.
“This won’t take long,” said Elisandria. She cut through the bark expertly and held the bottle underneath, quickly collecting the required four drops. “There we are.”
Anya took the bottle and adjusted all her belongings along the staff.
“Nice to meet you all,” said Elisandria. She yawned, revealing that the interior of her mouth was a lighter shade of green, and her teeth a kind of greenish-white. “Time for me to have a nap too.”
She touched the trunk of the tree and suddenly became insubstantial, more like a waft of green smoke than a solid being. Anya could see the forest through her rapidly vanishing body and she watched in fascination as Elisandria—robe, scrubbing brush, towel-wrapped hair, and all—drifted into the chestnut tree and disappeared.
Where do we go now?” asked Ardent.
Anya looked around. She was hungry, and thirsty as well, despite her mouthful from the bottle. Both feelings were exacerbated by knowing she had neither food nor drink.
“Bert did say to wait for her,” said Anya, but not as if she thought that was the best thing to do.
“To rob us?” asked Ardent.
“I don’t think so,” said Anya. “Probably to talk me into their whole big Quest to restore the Bill thingie and the High Kingdom and everything.”
She thought about that for a moment. Bert and Dehlia had planted the seed of thought in her mind, and it was growing away busily and putting out new shoots of thought, all of which were quite bothersome, because they were about things like responsibility and fairness, and thinking about others, and why being a princess perhaps should be about more than just having a nice library and three meals a day, particularly when other people didn’t have these things …
Anya grimaced, forcing these thoughts back into the lower depths of her mind. But more bubbled up. Part of her wanted to wait for Bert, because then she wouldn’t have to make decisions and could relax. But if she did that then they would keep on at her about the Bill of Rights and Wrongs, and she had a very guilty feeling already that she ought to be doing whatever she could to help reestablish the laws.
But that would complicate everything, would make her Quest even more difficult than it was already. If she just moved on, Anya thought, she could still be in charge and forget about the Bill of Rights and Wrongs.
She could keep her Quest simple. Or relatively simple.
“We don’t need to wait for Bert,” said Shrub, almost as if he could tell what Anya was thinking. “I know all the paths and roads around here. All of ’em! For leagues and leagues. Where do you want to go?”
“Bert said something else,” said Anya. It had all been noise and confusion in the darkness, but she remembered. “She’d meet us here, but if delayed—”
“Go to the Good Wizard,” Ardent barked happily.
“Yes,” said Anya thoughtfully. Tanitha had suggested a Good Wizard would be a useful ally. A wizard might also have some of the ingredients she needed. Though she wasn’t sure whether wizards used ingredients or not. She smiled wryly at the sudden thought that the best place she could have got all the ingredients in one go was from a sorcerer, and the most powerful and most likely to have everything was Duke Rikard himself.
Her smile faded as she considered her probable fate if she had tried to sneak into his secret storeroom. She would be on her way to a distant school now, or more likely dead at Rikard’s agents’ hands, just far enough far away from Trallonia for her friends not to know about it and cause trouble.
Anya took a deep breath and forced all her troubled thoughts about the Bill of Rights and Wrongs aside. As Tanitha had said, she had to eat the food in front of her first. That meant concentrating on getting the ingredients for the lip balm.
She wished she hadn’t thought about food again.
“Do you know where the Good Wizard’s demesne is from here, Shrub?” asked Anya. “I know it’s somewhere on the downs, or nearby.”
“Oh sure!” said the newt. “That’s easy.”
“Have you ever been there?” asked Anya suspiciously. Shrub had led them well through the forest, but she doubted he would know anything farther afield very well. Even if he had been “a wanderer ever since he was six,” as his uncle Hedric had said.
“No,” admitted Shrub. “Seen the ‘Keep Out’ signs, though, when I went to New Yarrow to steal the Only Stone. It’s about halfway there. In fact, if we go to the Good Wizard’s, we might as well keep going to the city and steal the Stone—”
“We’re not stealing the Only Stone!” snapped Anya. “What do you mean ‘Keep Out’ signs?”
“Big signs that say ‘Keep Out, Visitors to the Good Wizard by Appointment Only’ and also ‘Beware of the Giant.’ ”
“How do you make an appointment?”
Shrub’s shoulders moved in the disturbing amphibian way that meant he was shrugging.
“I don’t know. Don’t know anything about the Good Wizard. Only from here we’d cross the downs, join the road about a league outside Rolanstown, take it towards New Yarrow, and then the path where the ‘Keep Out’ signs are.”
“What do you know about the Good Wizard?” asked Anya.
She hardly knew anything about Good Wizards in general and
nothing about the nearby one in particular. They cropped up in stories from time to time, and were wise and so on, but the stories were generally vague and just said things like “The Good Wizard also proved helpful in their quest” or “After taking counsel with the Good Wizard, the path became clearer.”
She supposed that by their very nature, Good Wizards would be required to help questers like herself. Otherwise they’d be Bad Wizards. Unless, of course, the reference was to their skill at wizardry. Then a Good Wizard would be a skilled wizard, and their ethics and behavior would be up to them, and a Bad Wizard would just be incompetent, but could be quite nice.
She hoped good in this case meant kind, wise, and helpful.
“We need water and food,” said Anya. “How long will it take to walk to the Good Wizard’s demesne?”
“Rest of the day,” said Shrub. “Easy peasy.”
“There could be weaselfolk closing in on us already,” said Ardent professionally. He stretched up and looked back the way they had come, ears up, his head slowly moving from side to side as he sniffed, the very model of a dog on guard.
“Is there somewhere on the downs or along the road we could buy food?” asked Anya. She probably could walk all day without anything to eat, but it would be very difficult. As a princess, she had never skipped a single meal before.
“We might run into a shepherd, buy some bread and cheese,” said Shrub. “There’s nothing on the road between Rolanstown and the ‘Keep Out’ signs. Except robbers and such.”
“Bert’s robbers?”
“Nah. The other kind. The ones that rob from everyone and keep it to themselves.”
“We don’t want to encounter any of them,” said Anya. “And what are ‘and such’?”
“The usual,” said Shrub vaguely.
“What’s the ‘usual’?”
“I dunno. It’s all right by day, most of the time. I heard stories about monsters at night. Maybe wolves, or a troll—that kind of thing. A cockatrice, maybe.”
“A cockatrice?” asked Anya. “I need some cockatrice feathers … but they have to be fresh pulled, so I was thinking of getting them last, when everything else is ready.”
“Not easy to pull a cockatrice’s tail,” said Shrub. “I wouldn’t try it meself.”
Anya reflected on this. She had read a little about cockatrices in Sir Garnet Bester’s Bestest Beasts and How to Best Them, but there wasn’t a lot of detail in that book. Cockatrices were basically poor cousins of dragons, with a giant rooster’s head and a rather stunted dragon’s body. They had weak wings, and could only flap about near the surface, not soar majestically like a real dragon. Their one real advantage was their cockatrician stare. According to Sir Garnet, they fixed their beady eyes on their prey, who would become disoriented and wobble about on the spot going “um, um, um” until the cockatrice got close enough to give them a lethal peck. So it was bestest to avert your eyes or use a mirror when stalking cockatrices.
(Sir Garnet had also mentioned the usefulness of an extra-heavy crossbow, which Anya was sadly lacking.)
“There was something else about cockatrices,” mused Anya. She cast her mind back to her reading, trying to visualize the page from Bestest Beasts. It was a lovely book, beautifully illuminated in the margins.
“That’s right!” she exclaimed. “Weasels are immune to the cockatrician stare!”
“As are stoats, ferrets, and otters,” said Ardent. This was the kind of thing he’d been taught in dog school. He probably knew more about cockatrices, or at least hunting cockatrices, than Anya.
“Good for the weaselfolk behind us if they run into a cockatrice,” said Shrub. “Dunno how it’ll help us, though.”
“Well, it might prove useful,” said Anya stiffly. “Knowledge is always useful, even if … if it is not immediately apparent how it will be useful.”
She sat silently for a minute or two, thinking about knowledge and, more to the point, exactly what she should do, while also trying to ignore the space in her stomach that was protesting the absence of breakfast.
“How long we going to wait?” asked Shrub. “Because I reckon it’s going to rain.”
“What?” Anya wondered how the newt could know this.
Shrub lifted his head towards the south.
“Clouds. Big dark clouds. Going to rain. Might get colder as well. If we’re going somewhere, we should go there.”
“If it rains, we can drink from puddles!” said Ardent. “Or you can just put your head back and let the drops fall in. That’s fun!”
Anya looked to the south. There was indeed a dark line of clouds there, but it was far away and moving slowly. Perhaps if they moved quickly, they might be able to get to the Good Wizard (and shelter and food) before the rain set in.
“We’ll go,” she decided. “Bert can find us there as easily as here, if she really wants to. Shrub, lead the way!”
* * *
Four hours later, the rain had well and truly caught up with them.
Anya was completely sodden, cold, and starving. She was also still kind of thirsty, since she hadn’t taken to drinking from puddles. And while catching raindrops with your mouth open might be fun for dogs, it wasn’t very practical for a girl to get a decent drink.
Shrub also finally confessed that they were lost and he didn’t know where they were, or where the road or anything else was. The clouds hid the sun, so they couldn’t fix their direction by that; the heavy rain meant everything disappeared into gray fuzz fifty yards out, and even where they could see, every hill with its ankle-high rough grass looked exactly the same.
For all Anya knew, they’d been walking in circles ever since the weather had closed in.
On top of the current hill, with the rain so heavy they couldn’t even see the beginning of the next hill, she called a halt to think about their position.
“I would have been fine if it hadn’t started raining,” complained Shrub. “Everything looks different in this weather.”
Anya bit back a sharp comment. She knew it wouldn’t help. She set her staff down and looked at Prince Denholm. He was the only one who seemed happy to be drenched, letting out cheerful croaks whenever a particularly heavy drop hit his cage and splintered into mist.
“I’m going to put my extra kirtle on,” Anya said, shivering. She undid the bundle of silk scarves and got out the dress. It was already wet, but an extra layer did provide some warmth. She put on Morven’s woolen tights as well, even though they were also wet, too long, drooped terribly around the knees, and made her smell like a damp sheep.
When she got everything approximately settled on herself, Anya retied the bundle and picked up her staff.
“I think it’s that way,” said Shrub, pointing with one foot.
“Hmmm,” said Anya. “Ardent, can you smell anything?”
Ardent paced around them, sniffing the air.
“It’s too wet; all the smells are sitting where they are,” he said. “But I’ll be able to tell if we cross our own path. We haven’t yet.”
“Oh, of course,” said Anya. She’d forgotten Ardent widdled at regular intervals on suitable tufts of grass or exposed rock. So at least they hadn’t been going in circles, or not completely.
Ardent sniffed the air again.
“Wait! There is something … ”
He growled, deep in his chest, and turned back in the direction they’d come from. Or the direction Anya thought they’d come from. Even just in stopping, putting things down, and getting dressed, she’d managed to disorient herself.
“What is it?” she whispered.
She spoke so softly Ardent couldn’t hear her over the steady beat of the rain.
“What is it?” she repeated, much more loudly.
“Weaselfolk! Err … or something similar … ”
“What do you mean similar?” asked Anya urgently. She put down her gear again and stayed crouched, drawing her knife. It didn’t feel like it would be much use against a transformed human-size wease
l. Her heart was suddenly pounding, all the discomfort of her wet clothes forgotten. The words of power for The Withering Wind leaped to the front of her mind, begging to be used. “How many of them?”
“One,” said Ardent. He was leaning forward, stiff-legged, nose twitching like mad. “Not exactly a weasel … weasel-like, but definitely transformed. There’s human—”
Something human-size stood up from where it had been sneaking through the grass and held up its arms.
“Peace!” it cried in a shrill voice as Ardent barked savagely and charged forward, and the first word of power for The Withering Wind came out of Anya’s lips without her even thinking about it.
“Peace! Help!”
Anya clapped her hand over her mouth to stop the rest of the spell coming out. Ardent changed direction and slid around in a circle in the muddy grass, still barking. Shrub, who had started digging a hole to hide in, stopped.
Denholm let out a croak, which might mean anything. Or nothing.
“Peace!” gasped the figure again. It wasn’t much taller than Anya, and though human shaped, was covered in slick brown fur that seemed to naturally shed the rain. Its face was quite long and pointed, but was not as pointy as a weasel’s. It had more rounded curves and attractive, dark brown eyes. Its hands, still held high, were webbed between the fingers and had only short claws.
“Who … what are you?” asked Anya cautiously. She still held her knife ready, and Ardent had prowled around behind the creature and was ready to lunge forward and bite a hamstring to bring it down. “Are you one of Duke Rikard’s creatures?”
“Not by choice,” gasped the transformed animal. “I was caught, transformed, and sent with the others. But I’m not like them. I’m an—”
“Otter!” barked Ardent suddenly. “I know that smell, I know!”
“You’re an otter?” asked Anya.
“Yes, yes, my name is … you would say … ah … Champion Smooth Stone Oysterbreaker, I think. Of the Yarrow River clan. A stupid trapper sent me with an order of weasels and stoats to Duke Rikard, and he transformed us all at the same time without checking. But as soon as I heard about you from Gerald the Herald, I knew I had to escape. Will you turn me back to myself, please, Frogkisser?”