The bird's words turned lyrical, as her eyes half closed and she sang the tale. 'Asleep on a stone in a ring of fire is the Goddess-Shieldmaiden who sheltered his mother from the wrath of the god-her-father and allowed him to be born. She is awaiting the kiss of a Hero, for only the kiss of a true Hero can awaken her from her slumbers. When he kisses her, she will belong to him, and thus will begin his fate! Love! Death! Doom! And Glory! ' The bird ended on an upward spiraling trill, standing on the tips of her toes, her eyes completely closed.
Then she settled back down again, flipping her wings to settle them. 'Sounds nice in a song, not so nice in reality. The Shieldmaiden happens to be another aunt, which is rather awful, right there. Poor Siggy, until he got out of Drachenthal it seemed the only women heever saw were related to him! It's the usual messiness of cursed treasures — we managed to avoid that part — and then more messiness that would follow on rescuing the aunt from the sleep spell. Curses of forgetfulness, betrayal, jealousy, murder and suicide. The Drachenthalers all think this sort of thing is grand stuff, and they don't seem to have quite the same problem with incest that other kingdoms do, but from my point of view...' She fluttered her feathers with contempt. 'If they didn't wrap it all up in magic and saga and a lot of self-inflated ego, it would be pretty tawdry. Fortunately, Siegfried, although he does enjoy being a Hero, is not terribly fond of Doom and Death and he has a healthy dose of common sense. So since there is nothing particularly Heroic about leaping across a ring of fire and kissing a sleeping girl, he's been avoiding girls-sleeping-in-fire-rings-wearing-armor as if they were carrying plague.'
Rosa blinked. 'I'll admit that I am not very widely traveled, but are armored wenches in fire rings very common in the countryside?'
'You haven't been with us.' The bird sighed heavily. 'I'm beginning to suspect that the Drachenthaler gods are constantly moving the wretched wench and planting her in our path. Or The Tradition is. We are hardly a fortnight in some places before she turns up.'
'That's very possible,' Lily confirmed.
'I had this notion that if we could find a girl that was almost a match for Burning Helmet, or whatever her name is, we could trick The Tradition into leaving him alone and he could settle down with a nice wife and some ordinary Heroics. We've been trying to find a girl-sleeping-in-a-fire-ring who is not a Goddess-Shieldmaiden, nor wearing armor, for quite some time now, but we haven't been having a great deal of luck. And in fact, the Doom- fraught one has been cropping up more and more frequently.' The bird sighed, and regarded Lily with sad eyes. 'You see, that was why, when he saw your Goddaughter the Princess, we got so excited. There was just enough about the situation to satisfy The Tradition so that it would leave him alone, and enough that was unlike that he wasn't going to end up playing the rest of the tale out.'
Well, although Rosa had a great deal of sympathy for the poor nearly Doomed Hero-lad there was one thing she objected to. 'I don't particularly want to 'belong' to anyone,' she protested. 'Especially not forced into it by The Tradition.'
Lily looked quietly pleased at that. The bird fluffed her feathers. 'Well,' she sang, with just a touch of irritation, 'you can't blame the lad for trying to escape the simplest way possible. It isn't as if he has a Fairy Godmother to help him. Only a lot of gods who only make things worse.'
'You have a point,' Rosa admitted. 'Well then...I suppose he can stay, and if we find a Burning Maiden adorning one of the sheep fields, I'll send someone to cover her up or something.'
'He's large, strong, and a Hero,' Lily pointed out, pouring a saucer full of water for the bird, who drank some daintily. 'If anyone tries to hurt you again, he is pretty much honor-bound to chop them into small bits, since he has accepted your hospitality.'
'Well let's hope that he chops them up pre- rather than post-my-mortem,' Rosa said. 'Now, what about the other one?'
'I can't help you there,' the bird murmured. 'We never set eyes on him before he and Siegfried collided in the clearing.' She eyed the saucer. 'That's just big enough to bathe in....'
Taking the hint, Lily moved it to the window ledge where the bird could splash and sing to her heart's content, then fluff and drowse in the sun afterward, safe from cats.
'In that case,' the Godmother said, returning. 'We can move to our other source of information. Mirror, mirror, on the wall — '
'Who is the cleverest of them all? Myself, of course,' Jimson replied, his green face fading into view. 'I am so clever, I impress even myself.'
'Impress us, then,' Rosa chuckled, as he winked at her. She had gone from being terrified of the 'demon in the mirror' to becoming as fond of him as Lily was. Or — she cast a glance at Lily — perhaps not quite that fond, given the tender look the Godmother was giving to the creature. But certainly fond.
'Prince Leopold von Falkenreid,' Jimson intoned. 'Absolute dead middle of the five sons of the King of Falkenreid and the one his father was quickest to toss out of the Schloss with a horse, a sword and a hearty slap on the back.'
'And is there a reason why?' Lily asked. 'Drinking? Wenching? Gambling? Seduction of cloistered votaries?'
'Popularity,' Jimson replied.
Lily blinked. 'Surely I didn't hear you correctly? His father wanted to be rid of him because he was popular?'
'Let me show you.' The mirror cleared, and then showed a young man a few years older than Leopold, perhaps twenty-five, doggedly inspecting troops. He...was not handsome. He was not particularlyfat, but compared to Leopold, he was rather, well, lumpy. Leopold wore even the shabby outfit he had arrived in with a panache that made it look as if it was better than it was, and the fine garments that had been loaned him looked as if they had been made for him, and were flattered that he considered wearing them at all. This poor fellow in the mirror could never be described as anything but stodgy.
'This is the heir to the throne, Leopold's eldest brother, Theodore. No one dislikes Theodore, but he arouses no particular enthusiasm, either. He's not a bad fellow, and he's not dim, in fact he has a very good mind, but a good mind isn't the sort of thing you can trot out to show to the populace. He has never, in his entire life, done anything wrong. He has a plain little dumpling of a wife, who has produced three little dough-lumps of children. He is faithful to her, to his father, to his church.'
'Whereas Leopold?' Lily asked.
'Has riotous parties in taverns, is frequently found abed with women who are no better than they should be, organizes street battles between factions of students from the University and once rode his horse into church
