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“You will know it,” I added helpfully, “for it is bordered by the two rivers, one white and one black.”
“Yes, yes, mistress, I shall go and accomplish your task. Only—I was not only sent to kill the Leucrotta. There is a maiden in a tower—” At this the Witch spat, again rolling her marvelous eyes.
“Those revolting creatures are always getting themselves locked up. If only they would stay that way,” she growled. The Duke’s Son blushed deeply as a girl caught naked.
“Nevertheless, she has been imprisoned by a terrible Wizard of these parts, and I am charged to rescue her—if I complete your Quest, who will complete mine?”
With an exasperated snort, the Witch bent, removed the shaft, and dressed his wound without response. Seeing her work well done, she finally spoke, her voice thorny with delicious irritation.
“I loathe this habit of Quest after Quest. It is useless and shabby as a secondhand crown. But I would do many things I loathe if it earned the death of the King, and perhaps more for the Wizard of whom you speak. I will take on your Quest myself and release the brat from her shack.”
She murmured something to the horse and fed it a bit of apple she had hidden in her pack.
“Go,” she ordered the lad, “and kill nothing but the King. Return to the Glen when your murder is complete.”
The Duke’s Son scampered off. I heard much later that he caused a great scandal by killing some poor, inoffensive monarch in quite another part of the world.
But I was left with an unpaid debt, a pauper before a jeweled queen.
“But as for my part,” I purred, “I am still your own Beast, to do with as you like.”
She considered for a moment. “Is your skin really a tool of assassination?”
“Undoubtedly, my little lemon tart. It is quite a unique appendage—I grow new ones each month like a fruit tree. Cut into strips and combined with certain ointments of belladonna and hyssop, it can cause paralysis in men born under the sign of the goat. Soaked in an infusion of yarrow and fennel with a dash of Manticore blood, it will cause a woman who has conceived under a new moon to miscarry, or the resulting child’s heart to stop in its sleep at the age of seven. Yet that same child, wrapped in a blanket of the skin, will revive, so long as it forever after keeps the skin against its own. This is a particularly good trick, as the child will drop dead should it lose the skin, even if he or she should live to one hundred and seven by its grace. Ground into a powder with a handful of ants from a common hill and a measure of pickled salamander liver, it will cause a man overfond of public speech to swallow his own tongue at a banquet in his honor—there are many applications, each peculiar to the man or woman it is meant to harm. It is utterly devoid of noble uses, I am told. But I have not researched the matter properly, so I could not say. It is, of course, in demand for these properties, and not for warmth or shelter.” I was suitably proud of my skin, for it made me an Exotic Animal, rather than simply average. The Witch furrowed her excellent brow, which was the exact texture of curdled cream.
“Then my price is twofold. One day I will require your skin. You must give it to me without question or hesitation. Agreed?”
“It is an honor, my crumpet, my plum. I shall await your summons. And in the meantime, I shall trumpet your beauty to the corners of the earth, so that all may know what I have learned: that a jewel dwells in the Glen, and she is beyond all rubies that the earth can press into life.”
The Witch laughed, a sound like a saw cutting across rusted iron.
“Two, you must help me get this girl free—it is a silly task but the sooner done the sooner we are rid of her. Will you come with me
?”
I suppressed the sudden desire to dance with glee. “With profound pleasure, my honeycomb. In fact, we may accomplish this all the sooner if you would,” I could hardly contain my eagerness, “deign to ride upon my back.”
“Is there always such camaraderie between monsters?” she mused.
“We must look out for each other,” I answered softly, “for we are a small and dwindling band. Didn’t you know?”
“I have not always been a monster,” she murmured.
She climbed onto my back with the ease of a whisper, as though she had ridden me for a decade. For a moment I heard her breath catch strangely, as if in recognition of a lost love, or a child long dead. She wound her hands into my mane with great tenderness, and if I am not mistaken, actually put my mane to her face and breathed in my smell.
“It has been years since I have sat astride a horse,” she marveled. I protested that I was not a horse at all, but she did not seem to hear. “The place most maidens find themselves caught is to the northwest of here, in the center of a nameless forest, in a nameless tower.”
It took less than a day to arrive there, and I reveled unexpectedly in the sensation of a rider, of her small weight like a branch of holly and her gruff company. It is a pleasant thing to be tame, to recognize a rough-carved voice. I shall not say it will not happen again.
The tower itself was solid black stone, hewn from one great block of obsidian, so that it mirrored the forest around it in a dark, rippling mockery of its green beauty. The sky overhead was a uniform gray, like the metallic flesh of a cannon, and sullen clouds dragged themselves west. The fragrant pines and birches would not grow near the tower, which stood in the center of what once must have been a meadow, but was now only a circle of leached grass, dead and white. The thing tapered, as towers do, to a sharp point, giving the impression of a great arrowhead rising from the earth. Its architecture was unnatural, beyond even what magic can build, and I could smell the blood of children in the gently waving grass at its base. It was a coldly terrible place, but the Witch seemed undisturbed by it. She dismounted and strode to the foot of the tower, and called up to its wicked heights.
“Woman! Come out! I have—” She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. “I have come to rescue you,” she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils. I was momentarily distracted by the delectable image of her covered in boils, but my reverie was rudely broken by the appearance of a head at the top of the tower.
It was crowned in hideous golden curls which fell in long braids down the side of the parapet, and possessed of eyes blue as a drowned eel, set in a face which was smooth and plague-rosy. The maiden’s bosom heaved in a most gauche fashion, bound far too tightly into a white dress which showed nothing of any interest to me. She was quite a spectacle, this maiden. Most distasteful. Perhaps she locked herself in the tower to save the world the sight of her ugliness. Certainly beside my ravishing Witch she was a toad, a wart, a pustule.
The creature pursed her lips curiously and spoke with a voice sweet as spoiled milk. “Certainly. Come up.”
A black arch appeared noiselessly in the flesh of the tower, a lightless curtain parting to reveal nothing but further and deeper darknesses. With a knowing glance towards me, the Witch entered the fissure, and I trotted in behind her.
