“There, child,” the cat purred, not unkindly, “is the beginning of wisdom. I must go. I’ve already talked more in these few minutes than I have in a hundred years.”
“Please don’t leave. Can’t you tell me anything more? You’ve only talked in riddles.”
Moriah hesitated. “There are rules about these things that constrain even one such as I. Meddling produces ripples that become tsunamis. Answers have a price that questions don’t.”
“You’ve already meddled,” Thorn pointed out.
“Hardly an argument for me to compound the impact of my actions.”
Thorn cast about furiously for something to convince her unlikely visitor. “If you can’t give answers, perhaps one more question for me?”
The cat glanced over her shoulder and gave Thorn a slumberous wink. “In the stories, when the quester goes seeking the power, the key, the answer, the way—where is it always, always, always found?” Her purr became a comforting singsong.
“Within,” Thorn answered before she knew that she had it.
“Within.” Moriah smiled and flicked her tail. “The answer isalways within. You have far more power than you know. Learn to use it.” She turned away again.
“Will you return?”
“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.” And Moriah disappeared into the gathering night as if she’d never been.
But her pawprints, bigger than Thorn’s hand, dinted the soft snow. Though they already blurred and filled with the thickly falling snowflakes, their outlines remained as evidence of her visit.
Along with the newly minted hope in Thorn’s heart.
4
His Highness Prince Sebastien managed to make it to the ripe old age of twenty before he was outed as a sorcerer. Even to himself.
His magical ability was so meager as to not register to any of the truly powerful sorcerers attached to his father’s court at Castle Vega, nor to those who trailed along with their masters and handlers to various formal occasions and negotiations. He’d been hearing voices in his head for years and dismissed them as figments of a traumatized imagination. Besides which, most people dismissed him as pretty and amusing, but unimportant. Certainly no one expected a frivolous ornament like himself to turn up interesting in any way. As for Sebastien, himself… well, he had to admit that the possibility had never occurred to him either.
But then, he’d been occupied with walking the narrow line of being handsome and charming enough to be included in all the right social groups, but not so much that anyone worried about him having political aspirations. He’d meticulously cultivated the appearance of having an empty head, which only made him an even more delightful companion for dinner and dancing with the influential ladies of the court, which was his entire strategy for surviving the den of feral dogs dressed up in rich clothing who occupied Castle Vega.
As the seventh of King Soren’s nine sons, and one with no mother to advocate for him, having something for people to remember you by came in handy. His eldest brother was the heir, the second the spare, then three through six, along with eight and nine, bumbled along with various levels of notoriety.
His twelve sisters had it even worse, struggling to make themselves stand out via whatever attractive physical attributes they possessed—the fortunate ones—or, lacking that, some agreeable talent. The two princesses who possessed neither beauty nor the sort of talents people found entertaining were Princesses Ali and Dianna. They were only clever, which no one appreciated, and thus shared a cramped and dark apartment near the dungeons at Castle Vega—though, saliently, notinthe dungeons—also sharing a single servant between them. Since the network of servants at the castle jockeyed among themselves to provide their masters with the best food, fabric for clothing, and other necessities of life, their overburdened handmaiden barely scraped enough together to keep the forgotten princesses fed and clothed.
Perhaps because they had no political power to lose by it, Ali and Dianna were kinder to Sebastien than any of his other siblings were. They stepped in for his long-dead mother, raising him as best they could. As they had become expert at making the most of their own unremarkable looks, and recognizing that their younger half brother had the potential to capitalize on his golden handsomeness, Ali and Dianna taught him every enhancement trick they’d learned to elevate their own meager beauty. Most men, they counseled, paid no attention to details like their teeth and complexion, or the sheen of their hair, thinking such preoccupations unmanly, but others noticed and admired those qualities, often without realizing it. Beauty could be as powerful a weapon as charm or talent.
So, Sebastien learned to cleanse and moisturize his skin, to care for his teeth and keep them white, to condition his hair so that his blond hair shone in a gleaming fall to his shoulders. His valet, who kept all of his secrets, added a bit of curl, subtle enough to look natural—and to garner exactly the right attention.
The strategy worked and, as Sebastien grew into his teens and parlayed the coin of popularity into wrangling himself a decentstaff, he added a footman, a page, and a dedicated groom at the stables. And he shared the wealth with his sisters. In return, the forgotten princesses fed him useful gossip. Sebastien didn’t need repayment, but he also paid attention to the intelligence they passed along.
So, when their eldest brother, their father’s heir, His Royal Highness Prince Rupert, “invited” Sebastien to join him and his degenerate friends at Rupert’s “hunting lodge”—an opportunity he’d been literally unable to refuse—they all knew the event had been constructed to destroy Sebastien’s profile at court by painting him as unmanly. Beyond Rotten Rupert’s competitive schemes to eliminate his brothers, including the suspicious deaths of two, Rupert hated Sebastien in particular and had nothing but contempt for him. To be fair, Sebastien returned the contempt.
Several of the court ladies—approving of Sebastien’s excellent appearance and attractive personality—had taken to providing him with intimate tutelage in pleasing a woman. They had plenty to say about Rupert’s bestial ways in bed, including numerous stories of his cruelty to women less powerful than they.
Sebastien didn’t much like bedding those ladies—and Ali and Dianna liked it even less, growing so upset about it that he’d begun keeping the trysts secret—but his grateful lovers helped him at court in countless small ways, including useful gossip like this. Most of the gifts he bestowed on his sisters came as tokens from his lady friends and he wouldn’t give that up.
Ali and Dianna worried that Rupert planned for Sebastien to encounter a fatal hunting accident, and he didn’t disagree. Focused on keeping himself alive, Sebastien blundered into Rupert’s real trap: maneuvering him into humiliating himself by being unable to kill the cornered stag. With an avid audience to his failure of courage, Sebastien’s reputation as a worthless and inconsequential fool was cemented. He would never hold any position of import in Rotten Rupert’s court, come the inevitableand much dreaded day he became king. His Majesty King Soren was bad enough; Rotten Rupert was already a terror. Only the worst imaginings could predict what would occur when Rupert’s utter lack of scruple married the power of the throne.
Though Ali and Dianna were glad to have him home alive, the incident undermined all of their futures. Sebastien had failed utterly.
But what Ali and Dianna didn’t know, what Sebastien had never told any living soul, was that the stag had spoken to him—and Sebastien had known it was the animal and not some random voice whispering in his head. The stag had looked him in the eye and begged to be allowed to live. And Sebastien had deliberately blundered, allowing the majestic creature to go free.
At first he’d thought himself crazed by the pressure of the moment, until his horse, Kismet, assured him he hadn’t imagined it. And then his faithful hounds, Nina and Nonna, told him of their love. Repeatedly. For a long time, Sebastien thought it was their quirk, that he could hear their thoughts, and the stag’s, and that he’d simply been incredibly fortunate in being blessed with such clever animal companions who loved him so well.
In those months following the hunting debacle, though, as he worked more deliberately with Kismet and in training the young dogs, Sebastien began to notice that the other, background voices in his head were the thoughts of other animals, some more coherent than others. The hounds in the royal kennels yelped as he passed by, giving him greetings and offering assistance. The falcons in the mews suggested outings and promised tasty quail for him. The palace cats followed him surreptitiously, even the most reclusive liking to be petted by him, asking if he needed any rodents dealt with. He sent them to patrol the apartments Ali and Dianna shared, which is how that part of the quasi-dungeons came to be uncannily free of mice and rats.
