Beast —
But the woods were singularly empty. Blast it. Blast the Tyrant and his pet magician all to perdition! Between his purely mortal evil and his magician's ability to track rivals for the pleasure of eliminating them and to hunt out the arcane beasties and other races for pleasure and profit, if there was anyone about, he, she or it was in hiding. For all practical purposes, there was no one nearby. She would have to work some magic at a distance. She could use the very magic boiling about these children to fuel it. But first — first, she made sure there was nothing about that could harm them in the time it would take her to search for a way to get them help. She set an “aversion” spell about them, that would make anything carnivorous avoid them. Crude, but effective.
Sure now that they were safe for the short term, she set about finding a solution that would make The Tradition “happy.” In the second mirror, she searched for what she needed, and after a moment, found it in the Kingdom of Daneland. Just over the border was another, quieter eddy of Traditional power building up, where a lonely cottage stood, owned by a woodcutter and his wife. As the babes searched the underbrush fruitlessly for hazelnuts, she siphoned off some of the magic around them and cast the All Paths Are One Path spell directly ahead of them, putting the terminus in Daneland, just at the gate of that little cottage.
She made sure the magical route would bring them there just at sunset. Then she waited, watching, holding both ends of the All Paths spell in her mind, keeping it balanced and ready; if someone else stumbled on that path at either end, it could make things very complicated indeed. They were already complicated enough. She was juggling two spells at a great distance, and one of them was potentially dangerous.
When both of the children had finally put their feet on the magic path, she dismissed the aversion spell, then let go of the terminus at Svenska — with a sigh of relief, for more reasons than one. Among other things, now they were entirely in her power. Neither the Tyrant's magician, nor any other, could interfere with them until she chose to let them go.
Now, all she had to do was watch. If anyone from that cottage accidentally left and got tangled up in her spell, no worries; it only went straight back to the cottage.
But no one did, and in the blue dusk, two tired children, crying because they were lost and hungry, stumbled out of her spell, out of the dark and ominous woods, right onto a lovely little soft path that ended in a cozy cottage. And the middle-aged, childless couple who had longed all these years for children of their own, heard them and came rushing out — reacting instinctively and without hesitation — to the sound of children in distress.
They could not understand each others' language, of course. That wouldn't matter. In a few weeks, the little ones would be prattling in Dansk, filling the lives of their adoptive parents with joy. They would have forgotten their stepmother, and as for their father, well, he would become something vaguely remembered in dreams.
And as for the wicked stepmother…
Another day, Aleksia decided. She wanted to think on an appropriate punishment, in case what her stupid husband came up with was not enough. Or in case she managed to feign innocence and convince him that she was not to blame.
Having her own child taken by gypsies might serve the purpose… She would have to look into that. Then again…there might be a simpler way.
It was very difficult to deal directly with The Tradition. You could not exactly “communicate” with it, and trying to do anything by brute force was a little like a flea trying to shift a warhorse. But if the flea bit the horse in exactly the right place at the right time…
She spent a good hour putting together a subtle spell. It was nothing like a compulsion, more like — a suggestion. She turned it loose and it settled around the countryside like a cobweb, much too subtle for the Tyrant's Wizard to detect. And if he did, he would not care about it. This had nothing to do with him, nor with the Tyrant.
But from this moment on, every storyteller, every woman reciting tales to put the little ones to sleep, every gaggle of girls about a fire, every twopenny musician singing for his supper would be telling tales of wicked stepmothers who got what they deserved. This was the flea biting the warhorse, for the more these tales were recited, spun and sung, the more The Tradition would be impelled to make them come true. And who, at the moment, was the wickedest stepmother in all of the Kingdom?
Aleksia smiled with a certain smug satisfaction.
With that crisis averted, Aleksia continued to look into the Kingdoms for which she was responsible, following the flows of the power generated by The Tradition. Everywhere that there was a situation that corresponded to a tale, a myth or a legend, The Tradition accrued power to force it down that Traditional Path to The Traditional Ending. Sometimes that was just fine; Godmothers didn't have to intervene. In fact, there was an Ella Cinders story waiting to be recreated in Eisenberg — wicked stepmother, nasty stepsisters, lovely young girl turned into a servant, all in the capitol of Konigsberg. The girl was the right age to be married to the Prince, the Prince had no particular sweethearts and the King and Queen were not at all averse to him wedding a commoner if his heart took him there. It just needed a little more time to percolate, as it were, and then all it would need was Aleksia's timely appearance and just enough adversity thrown in their path to make the happily ever after all the more satisfying. She smiled to herself as she contemplated the poor girl scrubbing pots at the hearth. She should have been sad, but somehow she was able to take pleasure in small things. The Tradition was truly working hard on this one — if she had been any sweeter, any more self-sacrificing, any better-tempered, she would have been sickening.
This, of course, was one of her rare ones.
The list of her usual headaches, however, went much longer.
There was a woman who was so much a shrew to her long-suffering husband that she was legendary to everyone around her. The Traditional force building around her was such that Aleksia judged it was time to let it take its course. But she made a mental note to keep an eye on the old man, lest her punishment overflow onto him.
What would be best? There were a number of things in the area that she could put into the shrew's way.
The neighbors, she decided, finally. She wove another subtle spell and set that in motion — the idea that it would be a fine trick to play on the nag, to put her in a position where her sharp tongue dug herself a deeper and deeper hole until she found herself in real trouble. The only one with any sympathy for her then would be her long- suffering husband, who, strangely enough, still loved her, despite being mocked, ridiculed and berated without end. Well, there was no accounting for taste. He would save her or he would leave her; in either case, he would no longer be subject to her abuse.
The Tyrant, however, was more troubling. With his punishment at least three years in the future, and with
