The stable owner loved her, too, not only because she was his child's favorite companion, but because she ate the thistles that plagued his pasture. Siegfried would have left money for her care, but the owner would have none of it. The donkey came up as he turned to leave, the little child on her back. 'Thank you, BigMan,' she said. 'I will not forget your kindness.'
'Just love and care for the child,' Siegfried replied, smiling. 'That is all I ask.'
Definitely another Wise Beast. Then again...he was smack in the middle of a Kingdom, engaging in Traditional Trials, for the Traditional hand of a Princess. Maybe he should be surprised he wasn't encounteringmore Wise Beasts.
Not long ago he had followed his ears to the door of another warehouse, where he had found a crowd standing around a crude arena, where a bear and a wolf were being forced to fight each other by a showman. The poor things were half-starved, covered with wounds and nearly mad. When he discovered them, lying on the floor of the arena, they were nearly dead.
He had treated the showman as he had the drover, then taken the animals. He had treated their wounds himself, not daring to entrust them to anyone else. At first, they had been too sick and weak to move, and by the time they had recovered their strength, he had won their trust. He kept them in roomy cages in a shed he had rented — in cages for their protection and not to confine them; bars meant no one could get near them to kill or steal them. Slowly, he was able to talk to them; they had been less than sane when he rescued them but with the healing of their bodies, their minds had also healed. He had known from the start, though, that he was going to have to get them out of the city, and as soon as he possibly could.
Today would be that day. While not completely healed, they would be able to hunt — in the wolf's case, he would definitely find his pack, for he could smell them — and recover on their own, so today they were ready to be turned loose.
What he had paid for in the market were two short-lived charms of illusion in the form of cloth collars. They were meant for people who wanted to disguise a valuable animal as something less valuable. He would need those to get them out of the city. While the wolf and the bear would do nothing worse than run for the gate, their presence in the street would cause panic.
He opened the shed and stood in the quiet semidarkness. For days, this place had smelled of blood and fear and pain. Now it smelled of the musk of bear and the doggy-scent of wolf. 'It is I,' he said to the shadows in the cage. 'Are you ready to leave?'
'We are, BigMan,' rumbled the bear. The wolf yipped agreement.
He held out the collars and their ropes so that they could see and smell what he had. 'I must put cloth about your necks and ropes tied to the cloth. These things will make you look like tame beasts that no one will fear, so that I may take you through the man-paths to the forest. You must not run ahead, but stay at my side like tame beasts. Will you permit this?'
He heard uneasy shuffling and knew why. The cruel showman had kept spiked collars around their necks to control them. But finally the wolf answered. 'You have never said us false, BigMan. You healed us, fed us and protected us. We will abide this.'
He opened the wolf's cage first, and collared him, then the bear. The illusions settled over them, making them look like a pair of goats. He took the ropes in his hand and led them to and out the shed door. And all was well. No one paid him any heed as he walked down some of the quieter streets to one of the city gates — although cats fled in terror, and dogs backed away, hackles raised, trusting their noses rather than their eyes. Perhaps one or two people might have wondered at the sight of a relatively well-dressed man leading two goats himself, but his clothing was modest enough that no one would realize he was one of the Princes unless they actually knew him by sight.
Siegfried took them well into the forest before removing their collars. The wolf, who had been sniffing the air hungrily for some time, gave a happy yelp and vanished into the trees, but the bear paused, turned and looked up at him out of dark little eyes.
'You saved our lives and our minds, BigMan,' the bear said. 'Wolf cannot wait to return to his kin, so I will say for both of us. You have a good heart. We will not forget this.'
'Then when you see men, do not fight, but run,' said Siegfried. 'This is all I ask.'
He walked back to the city, got his borrowed horse and headed for the King's Arms.
Leopold was waiting for him, with a finely carved wooden box in front of him. When Siegfried arrived in the doorway, he grinned and waved him to the table.
'Come see if this looks fit for a Princess,' he said, as Siegfried sat down beside him. He opened the box, and the pure white braid glowed against the velvet interior. There was a simple gold clasp on it, and nothing more.
'I am no woman, but I think that will please her,' he said gravely. 'Did the jeweler know what it was?'
'He did, and he gave me the gold clasp for the cost of silver if I gave him a single hair. He means to braid it with silver and gold wire for a ring for his daughter. That seemed harmless enough to me.' Leopold gave Siegfried a sharpish, sideways look. 'I confess I took a few of the hairs that you saved. I thought they might come in handy. You never know, right?'
Siegfried shrugged. 'You made a good bargain with them. But you should be sure that the jeweler either knows you are a Prince or does not know you at all now. There will be wizards and sorcerers who would pursue you for those hairs or that necklace, and you either want to be thought of as too high to dare to harass, or impossible to find.'
Leopold nodded. 'So, shall we head back to the Palace? I hope you have had your fill of running about in the woods for now. I, for one, would be glad not to see them again for a while!'
Chapter 17
The number of suitors had been pared down, one trial at a time, over the past several weeks. From tournaments to hunts for odd items, to fiendishly complicated problems, the trials had been successful at eliminating most of the Princes.
But there were still ten left.
'I need more trials' muttered Lily, as she massaged both temples. 'More than that, I need a long-term
