Fairy Godmother

was not taken for granted, Elena did not feel at all comfortable with simply using all the power that was available to her. instead, her style was to use the minimum possible to get the result she wanted, and if the means to that result was a bit unnerving now and again, well, that was the chance she was willing to take.

Elena leaned forward a little, into the wind created by her passing, and the path responded by speeding up still more. She hoped that there was no one else actually on this path — if she came up on them before they had a chance to get out of the way, they'd be bowled over like tenpins. As it was, there were half a dozen small animals left scattered to the right and left of the path in her wake.

Still, it was a novel form of transportation, and peculiarly enjoyable — like running, but without the effort. She was almost disappointed when she felt the path begin to slow, recognized the landmarks, and knew she was nearly at journey's end.

The path dropped her gently where the road that would ultimately lead out of Otraria crossed the one that led to the Kingdom of Kohlstania. And Kohlstania was, presumably, where the three Princes were coming from.

Elena stepped out into the road and sat down on a stone at the crossroads, taking a little book out of her pocket. Now this was a very useful bit of conjury that she had worked out for herself, and she was terribly proud of it. Working with the spell that allowed a Godmother or other powerful magician to copy his or her chronicles to the libraries of other magicians, this little book was able to repeat what was on the pages of every other book in her library, if she knew what to ask for.

She opened the blank pages, waved the head of her staff over them, and let a little sparkle of power drift down over them. 'The current Royal Family of Kohlstania, please,' she ordered.

Something appeared, like blurred writing beneath a smudge; a moment later, the writing resolved itself, and so did the smudge, and she saw an image of the stern visage of a man who appeared to have never laughed in his life. King Henrick of Kohlstania, read the caption beneath the picture. Widower, three sons —

Yes, those would be the Questers —

— has held the throne for twenty-seven years. Took the crown in — She skipped the rest, and moved on to the next page. Three more smudges resolved into three more drawings. Three young men. Octavian, Alexander, Julian. Well, it was easy enough to see where this tale was going. Octavian and Alexander looked like hard, uncompromising men formed in the image of their stern father. Julian, however, must have taken after the now-gone mother; while no one could possibly say that he looked soft, he certainly looked softer, and there was a very gentle and humorous look to his eyes that Elena liked quite a bit.

'Laws, attitude and recent history in Kohlstania regarding magic, magicians, and Godmothers, please,' she said aloud, and the pages filled with notations. She read through it all swiftly; nothing there to be particularly concerned about, although there had not been any magical intervention in a major way in the Kingdom for three generations. There was, in fact, no one alive there who had any experience of any magician more powerful than a Witch, much less a Godmother, and Witches and Hedge-Wizards were creatures that the country-folk depended on, not city-dwellers, and certainly not the upper crust of nobility.

For the King and his family, magic was probably a thing of nursery-tales, and this did not seem like a family in which nursery-tales were encouraged.

On the whole, that was not a bad thing at all. It meant that none of the young men would even guess she was testing them. She closed the book and put it back in her pocket.

Now, because Elena liked to conserve power as much as possible, she had a number of clever ways to do things using a minimum of magic that Bella would have accomplished with several spells. And the next item she pulled from her pocket was a false nose.

It was a particularly beaky object, carved and colored by Robin, and held onto her face by means of two pink ribbons that tied in the back. Ludicrous, one might say — until she put it on.

For the nose was ensorcelled with a spell of illusion; whoever put it on would appear as an old crone or an old man. In this way, Elena only ever had to cast one disguise spell; thus conserving her power and allowing her to disguise other people as well, if there was need. She was rather proud of herself for coming up with such a thing.

She tied on her false nose over her real one, and although she felt no differently, anyone looking at her would have seen a bent and feeble old woman with a great beak of a nose and a dowager's hump. Her hair had gone from golden to white as snowdrops; her face was a mass of wrinkles and her hands were spotted with age.

Although she was standing straight, she would appear to have a dowager's hump, and her clothing aged just as she had. The colors faded, the seams took on the look of having been unpicked and resewn as the cloth was turned and turned again, and the hems looked tattered.

Now she was ready.

She looked down at the crossroads at her feet; there were conventions that any Witch would have followed, the more especially when she knew that someone else would have to take up the task in her place. Karelina had, as expected, cast the tanglefoot spell from this very crossroads. There were three threads to the skein, one for each Prince, ending in a knot practically at her feet.

She took her staff and touched it to the knot. Tradition must be served; eldest must be tested first. 'Octavian,' she said aloud, and a little spark of power jumped from the wand and ran down the thread to release him from the spell and bring him to her.

Prince Alexander of Kohlstania was hot, thirsty, and exasperated, it was quite bad enough that he found himself on this ridiculous 'Quest,' though he could certainly understand his Royal Father's reasoning, but to have been wandering in this stupid forest for days was outside of enough. Now he was sorry he had ever agreed to this —

But I had to, he reminded himself. All of Kohlstania's immediate neighbors were, if not allies, at least not overtly hostile, but King Henrick had not held his throne for this long by being naive. King Stancia did not particularly care about the politics of the man who would win his daughter