Heir Apparent (26 page)

Xenos pouted.

"Do you have anything else I could use that would help me survive my encounter with the dragon, so I could come back here and return your boots to you?"

"You're trying to trick me." Xenos folded his arms across his chest. "You're a tricky talker, just like your father."

I needed a moment to remember he was talking about Cynric and not Dexter the peat cutter or my own dad back in Rochester, New York.

"I'm not trying to be tricky," I assured him. "If, for example, you have a second pair of seven-league boots and you want to come with me so that you could bring the first pair back..."

"No," Xenos admitted sullenly.

"Or something else to help me defeat the dragon?"

"No," he repeated, but I didn't believe him.

"OK, then. Well, thanks for the boots." I held one foot up admiringly. "Maybe, somehow, they'll get back to you. Come on, Kenric, let's see if Orielle's potion is ready."

"All right, all right," Xenos said. "I know of something that may be able to help you. But I don't
have
it. I was telling the truth when I said I didn't
have
anything to help you. My father has it."

His father?
When he'd been around to make the crown for the first barbarian king? How old could this fa-
ther
be?

"What is it?" I asked.

"A hat."

"What kind of hat?"

"A hat that lets you slip between the moments of time."

Kenric and I exchanged a puzzled glance.

"Excuse me?" I said.

Xenos explained, "You can keep on moving, but all around you everyone and everything else stays at the moment when you first put the hat on."

"It stops time?" I asked incredulously.

"Obviously, you don't understand the concept at all," Xenos scoffed. "It only
feels
as though you've stopped time. You're slipping through the time stream." He shook his head and muttered in disgust, "Amateurs."

"This sounds like it would be very helpful," I said.

"I should think so," Xenos sneered.

"And all I need to do is go to your father and ask him for the hat, and he'll give it to me?"

"Yes."

Somehow I doubted it would be that simple. Somehow I suspected that Xenos knew something—in
fact,
probably a lot of somethings—I didn't.

While I was worrying about that, I had a sudden inspiration. I said, "That crown you made: Is that magical, too?"

"Maybe," Xenos said.

"Do you want me to shake him a bit?" Kenric offered, sounding for a moment like his brother Abas.

"It grants the Midas touch," Xenos said.

"You mean whoever wears it can turn things to gold?"

"
Thing,
" Xenos corrected. "It only works one time for each owner. The barbarian kings have slowly been building their wealth. King Cynric, of course, thought big. King Cynric used it on the tallest tree in the forest."

I finished, "But once he'd used up his 'once,' he gave it to the dragon."

Kenric said, "The fact that the dragon was about to make dinner out of all of us would have helped in that decision."

So much for Andreanna's claim that Cynric had scared off the dragon—he'd
bribed
it. This also explained why Grimbold wasn't willing to accept Andreanna in exchange for the crown.

"Do we know what the dragon used the crown on?" I asked. "Or if) in fact, he's used it yet?"

"Don't know and don't know," Xenos said. "But even if he's used it, he
still
won't be willing to give it up. Dragons love gold."

"So I've been told," I said

O
R
I
E
L
L
E
M
E
T
us back in the Great Hall, where she handed me an earthenware vial about as big as a medium-priced bottle of perfume. "It isn't my best-tasting potion," she apologized.

Naturally.

She said, "But I added mint to make it more palatable."

I wondered if that was just coincidence, or if somehow the people at Rasmussem knew that I hate mint. But I thanked her, even so.

"One hour," she reminded me.

Uldemar woke up then and asked, "Have you thought of any way I can help you?"

"You've been a help already," I said, "contacting everyone for me, and finding the dragon."

"Still..." he said.

"And Xenos has me going to his father to pick up a magical hat that will help me."

"Well, then, let me bring you to his father."

"I have the seven-league boots," I reminded him.

"But what if his father doesn't live seven leagues away?"

"Excuse me?"

Uldemar explained, 'The boots take seven-league steps. No more, no less."

Seven leagues, I calculated—no doubt helped by Rasmussem's subliminals—was about twenty-five miles. "You mean I can't take, like, a half step? Maybe if I only wore one boot?"

"I'm afraid not," Uldemar said. He had taken out his scrying glass, and he set it on the table. He cast his magic spell and said, "I see he lives beyond Fairfield. I could take you there; then once you have what you need, I can calculate exactly how to get you to Old Hag Mountain in seven-league increments."

"All right," I said. "Thank you. How can you get me to Xenos's father's place?"

"I can turn into a horse and carry you."

"That would be wonderful." I thought about it for a moment. "Ahm, I hate to be rude or anything ... but when you transform into an animal ... ahm, does that mean you can ... ahm..."

"I'll still be blind," he said. "You'll have to guide me."

Well, maybe
wonderful
had been a slight overstatement. Maybe this would be...
OK,
I hoped. "And what payment do you want?"

"Well, I certainly don't want to eat centipedes or to wed any of the queen's remaining sons. How about twenty-five gold pieces?"

It was expensive, but I said, "Yes."

We packed some food, since I'd seen that these things always took longer than I guessed.

"Good-bye," Kenric told me. "Good luck."

"Keep everybody out of trouble while I'm away," I said to him.

Uldemar turned into a handsome bay horse, already saddled. His eyes were still disconcertingly blank.

I climbed on and blew kisses to those who came to see me off, which was Kenric, Orielle and Wulfgar, King Grimbold, and Captain Penrod.

We rode over the drawbridge, and—after we'd passed—I heard the guard order the bridge to be taken up.

Nothing.

Oh boy. The ghosts were coming with us.

Actually, Uldemar was very surefooted; and if we didn't make as good time as I had with the horse I'd ridden last night, we made better time than I would have walking.

"Let me know when you get tired," I told him.

He threw his head and whinnied.

We rode through Fairfield at a time my subconscious insisted was between midafternoon and vespers, though I would have called it somewhere around five-thirty of a summer afternoon.

For a blind guy, Uldemar was certainly good about landmarks. Periodically he would return to his own shape to say something like, "We should be coming upon a pond ahead and to our right." And, "We'll be going through some scraggly trees, but there's a meadow beyond." And, "As soon as we reach the stream, we'll turn to travel into the sun."

"Have you been here before?" I asked.

"No," he answered. "I saw it all in my scrying glass."

It took about an hour beyond Fairfield before Uldemar said, "The house is on a hill after the lightning-struck elm. It isn't," he added, "much of a hill."

And there it finally was, a neat little house with a little garden around it, all on top of a grass-covered hill.

Reverting to human shape, Uldemar put his hands to the small of his back and stretched. "Does it look promising?" he asked.

"Hard to say." I turned him so he was feeing in the right direction.

The hill was about fifteen or twenty feet tall, steeply inclined except in front of the house, where it sloped more gently and there was a flagstone walk.

"There's a path," I told Uldemar.

"Lead on."

I took one step onto the walk.

And couldn't take a second.

I could lift my foot up, but I couldn't put it down. I felt like a mime walking into a giant wind. Something I couldn't see was keeping me from moving my foot forward.

"Princess Janine," Uldemar said, "there appears to be something in my way."

"There appears to be something in
my
way, too," I said. "But I can't see what it is."

"Drat! Has it gotten to be night already?" Uldemar asked.

"No. I can see perfectly well, but when I try to move my foot..." I still couldn't move it forward. I tried to one side. I tried to the other.

The other
worked.

"Oh," I said. "Here we go." I took another step forward. But then I was blocked again. "No, wait," I said.

I looked down at the walk. Each flagstone was big enough to accommodate a person's foot. They were various colors, set in what appeared to be a random pattern: a heathery blue, rose, gray, black, and cream. I was currently standing on a rose-colored stone, and the stone behind me was rose, too. The one directly behind that was cream, but the one I had crossed over from was another rose. I took a step to the left, onto another rose stone. "I think this path is color-coded," I said.

"Lucky me," Uldemar said.

There wasn't another rose touching the one I was on, but there was one two over. I stretched my leg and stepped onto the new stone.

"It seems," I said, "as though we can only step on the rose-colored stones." But then I looked back and saw that he was on a gray one. "Or maybe not. Uldemar, can you take a step, not exactly to your right, but halfway between forward and right?"

He did, and he was able to move.

I revised my analysis of the situation. "It seems as though whatever stone we first step on, after that, that's the only color we can step on."

Uldemar went back to his original stone, then backed off the path entirely. "I'm going to let you handle this," he said.

"OK." I made my way more or less forward for about a dozen more easy steps. The path even let me jump over three stones to get to one that was rose. But when I tried to leap over four stones, I bounced back as though a rubber band attached me to the previous rose-colored stone. There were no other rose ones to step on from where I was, so I had to back up and find my way down another pathway. After following that for a bit, I once again came to a place from which I couldn't step or jump to another rose stone. From where I was, I looked toward the doorway of the house. All the stones near the stoop were cream, black, or gray. No wonder I wasn't getting anywhere on the rose path. I made my way back to the start.

Uldemar was sitting on the lawn. "Back already?" he asked. "Did you get the hat?"

"Not yet," I told him, and started again, this time using the gray stones.

But no matter how I tried, there was one stretch I couldn't get beyond—where there were too many rose, blue, cream, and black stones in between the grays.

Again I made my way back.

Again Uldemar turned his face expectantly in my direction.

"I'm trying the cream ones now," I explained before he could ask.

What was it with the Rasmussem people and mazes?

But this time, eventually, I made it to the front stoop. "I'll be back as soon as I can," I called to Uldemar.

He waved cheerily.

I knocked on the door.

A little boy answered.

I realized I didn't know Xenos's father's name, so I was left to say, "I'm looking for Xenos's father."

"That's me," the kid said. He looked about five.

"Not Xenos's child," I said, creepy as that idea was. "Xenos's father."

"That's me," the kid repeated.

Cute. Like when people let their toddlers record the message for their answering machines. I hate that, too. "Is there an adult home?" I asked.

"Look, honey," the kid said, "if I gotta tell you one more time, I'm going to slam the door in your face and go back to smoking my cigar in peace: Xenos's father—that's me."

He
was
holding a cigar in his pudgy little hand, I noticed.

OK.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You took me by surprise. Xenos said to go to his father—that would be you, I see now—to get the hat that allows the wearer to step out of the time stream. Or was it step
into
the time stream?" I tried to remember what Xenos had said. "Something like that. It doesn't stop time, but it makes it
seem
as though time has stopped. To an amateur."

"Honey," Xenos's father said, "you've got to learn to stop dithering. I know what hat you mean." He held the door open for me, and I stepped into a tidy hallway. There was a hat rack with an assortment of hats on it, and I was already sure the one I was going to get was the ugly pink faux fur with the rhinestones and the ratty peacock feather.

"Stand here," Xenos's father said. He pointed to a spot where there was a big red X on the floor.

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

"I'm bored," he said. "Humor me."

I stood on the center of the X.

"Now I'm going to ask you three riddles," he said. "If you answer them correctly, I'll give you the hat."

"And if I don't answer correctly," I guessed, "that coatrack is going to come over here and beat me to death."

Xenos's father shook his head in obvious distaste. "You have an unhealthy imagination, young lady—anybody ever tell you that? No, if you don't answer correctly, you get another chance."

"One chance?" I asked.

"As many as you want."

My suspicion must have shown on my face.

"I'm an old man," Xenos's father said, despite his appearance. "Nobody ever comes to visit
me.
Everybody comes because they need to pick up something Xenos promised them." He gave a baby-toothed grin. "Humor me," he said again.

Well, I could just give him the ring and demand the hat, but what if I needed that ring later?