Fairy Godmother

Not a big surprise, he thought sullenly, if this is how she treats real men.

He dropped the stake, and the Unicorn imperiling his eyeball backed away a pace or two, without dropping its threatening posture. The Witch came up even with the second Unicorn, and placed a hand on its shoulder.

Oh, yes. The bitch is a virgin, all right.

It would have been funny, under other circumstances, to see how the Unicorn tried simultaneously to melt under the Witch's touch and maintain its threatening posture towards Alexander. She would have been attractive, under other circumstances. He wouldn't have minded tumbling her if he found her serving as pot-girl in an inn. But at the moment —

'Now, if I may continue,' the woman said, one hand absently petting the Unicorn's neck, 'you will be permitted to wear your shape as a man from sunrise to sunset, when you will become an ass again.' He thought for a moment that she was going to make another one of those nasty comments, but she evidently restrained herself.

'But just because you're wearin' your man-shape, my lad, don't think that means you don't work,' said that detestable Master Hob from behind him. 'The same rules hold true whether you're a man or a beast; if you don't work, you don't eat.'

The Unicorns both seemed to wake up a bit, and became all threat again. And perhaps that was because Master Hob stepped past Alexander and shoved an axe into his empty hands.

He hefted it experimentally. It was a woodman's axe, of course, and not a war-axe, but —

'Don't even think about it,' Master Hob warned, and poked him hard in the ribs with the stake he'd dropped. 'She's been easy on ye until now. And there's more Unicorns where these twain come from.'

'Don't I even get some breakfast, first?' he said, plaintively. His voice sounded unpleasantly whiny, even to him.

The Witch raised one eyebrow. Master Hob nodded at the east. 'Sun isn't up yet,' he countered. 'You go over to the woodpile, and you chop some wood. Your breakfast'll be ready when it's ready.'

'You ought to let us poke him, Godmother,' said one of the Unicorns, as the Prince slouched angrily away in the direction of the woodpile. 'You ought to drop the spell and let us chase him away with holes in his hide. You don't need him here.'

'Of course I don't need him here,' she replied, looking after him thoughtfully. 'But he needs to be here. He has lessons to learn.'

'Then let him learn them in the forest,' said the second, in an uncanny echo of what Master Hob had said to her just this morning before she transformed him.

'That one's all trouble, Madame Elena,' he'd said, shaking his head. 'Let me go down to the village and buy us a new donkey. Drive him out into the forest like his brother.'

She tapped her cheek with her wand, looking after him — astonishing how like a sulky adolescent he looked from the back! — and finally shook her own head and walked briskly back up the path to the cottage.

She was of two minds about letting him inside to eat. On the one hand, she wanted to keep an eye on him to assess him; on the other, the rest of the household was divided over keeping him on, and that sort of tension would only be increased if he shared the breakfast table with the rest of them.

Lily thought he was hilarious, and so did Rose. Robin was of two minds about him. Hob thought he was trouble waiting to happen.

Randolf's reaction was predictable; to Randolf, Prince Alexander and his family were a fresh new source of entertainment.

Julian's horse had returned to its stable with the desired effect. King Henrick had frantically sent searchers on the path of the Princes, only to learn that once they entered Phaelin's Wood, they vanished. He was frantic; he had sent messengers on to King Stancia to determine if any of the Princes had arrived, but the messengers were being delayed by Stancia's Sorcerer. Prince Julian had only just completed the last of the tasks — which was to play chess with the Sorcerer with impossible stakes.

Now, the Sorcerer's intention there had been something that was the talk of all of the white magicians that had heard about it. Everyone agreed that the way he set up the final task was a brilliant bit of trickery. If Julian lost, two things would happen. The Princess would be 'spared' — the Sorcerer cleverly did not specify what she would be spared. The second thing was 'you will meet your fate.' But of course at this point, Julian was putting the worst possible interpretations on everything. He assumed that it meant that the Princess would live and he, Julian, would die.

On the other hand, if Julian won, the outcome would be just as bad, from the point of view of someone who was worried about the Princess. 'You will live. The Princess will be no more — ' Of course, what he didn't know was that the Princess would be no more, because her father intended to make her Queen and co-ruler, with her new husband.

And Julian, of course, being the gallant young fellow that he was (and probably hoping that somehow he could wiggle out of the 'fate' that awaited him), threw the game. So by losing, he won, which was the whole point of the trial, not the outcome of the game itself.

At this point, of course The Tradition was in full flood, and the moment they set eyes on each other they were passionately in love. The Sorcerer was making certain that the wedding went off unhindered in order to have King Henrick's messengers arrive at the wedding-feast itself. Beautiful timing. This put any idea of Julian returning home out of the question; he was Prince Regnant now, and had his own Kingdom to rule, King Stancia having established Julian and his daughter as co-Rulers, and intending to abdicate in a year or so. So the messengers would return home with the news that the most despised of the three had triumphed, but with only the vaguest hints of what had happened to the other two Princes.