The Runaway Princess (14 page)

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Authors: Kate Coombs

BOOK: The Runaway Princess
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Lex's eyes widened. Then he began to laugh. He didn't stop for some time. His laughter was so cheery that Meg giggled a bit, and even Nort smiled reluctantly.
“This is terrific!” Lex said. “I've run away, too!”
“You have?” Meg asked.
Lex waved his hand around. “Oh, my parents know where I am. I sent them a postcard painting of Crown Market.”
“But if they know where you are—” Meg said.
Lex interrupted. “I didn't run away from
them
. I ran away from an apprenticeship.”
“Why?” Nort asked.
“Because,” Lex explained, “I was apprenticed to a fool who didn't know his eels from his sea dragons.”
“I
thought
you were too young to be a real wizard,” Nort remarked.
Lex looked surprised. “I know what I'm doing.”
“You're not evil, are you?” Meg asked. “All those bloodthirsty symbols on your robes …”
“It's my image. People expect a bit of horror.” Lex picked up their cups. “More hot chocolate?”
“Please.”
“But I want to hear your story,” the wizard said. “I didn't know you'd run away.”
“Who would tell you?” Nort wondered.
Lex snapped his fingers. Three sparks floated out of the fire. “Go over to the castle and see what's happening,” he ordered them. The sparks drifted to the door and fizzed through it, disappearing.
“Nobody knew at first,” Meg said. She started recounting the events of the last few weeks, with Nort helping when she left something out.
 
It was after midnight when most of the princes and guardsmen straggled back into the castle courtyard. None of them had found the slightest sign of the witch or the missing princess. Hanak thanked the princes and told them to get some sleep. “We'll try again early in the morning.” Hanak dismissed his own men and went to report to the king.
King Stromgard was reading a book about witches.
“She always seemed harmless,” he told his guard captain.
“So is a viper, until you try to catch it,” Hanak replied.
“‘Economic development,' indeed,” the king said with a snort. “This contest has been nothing but trouble.”
“That may be,” Hanak said carefully. “Let us recover the princess, and afterward you can consider the next step.”
“No one's caught a glimpse of my daughter? Or found a small clue?”
“I'm sorry, Sire. We'll widen our search tomorrow.”
“Carry on, then.”
“Your Majesty, might I suggest you get some rest?”
“I'm not tired,” Stromgard said, his eyes bleak.
IT WAS STILL DARK OUT WHEN LEX RAPPED ON Meg's door. “You did say five,” he said apologetically. This morning he was wearing dark purple robes covered with demon faces. The faces showed their fangs when they saw Meg, but she hardly noticed, and Lex shut the door again.
Meg yawned and stretched. She managed to wash up and put on the clean brown dress Lex had somehow provided. The best thing about the dress was that it had secret pockets. Meg tucked the counterspell into one of them before she rambled off behind her swirling scarf to the room where she had first met the boy wizard.
Nort was already there, eating scrambled eggs.
“Did you sleep well?” Lex asked, pouring Meg a glass of apricot juice.
“Mm-hmm,” Meg replied.
“Not me,” Lex said brightly. “I stayed up making you a new spell.”
“I don't have any more treasure,” Meg mumbled.
Lex waved his hand. “It's on the house. It's not every day I get to aid and abet a runaway princess.”
Meg drank the juice, waking up a bit more.
“What's the spell for?” Nort asked, his mouth full of egg.
Lex held out a small round object.
“It's a compass,” Nort said, unimpressed. “Hanak has one.”
“Not just any compass. Ordinary compasses point north.”
“Where does this one point?” asked Meg, who was starting to feel more like herself.
“It points at the other spell.”
“Cam's spell?”
Lex nodded, setting the spell-compass on the table.
“That's wonderful! No matter where Bain goes, we'll be able to find him!”
“It is pretty wonderful, isn't it?” Lex sighed happily and bit into a muffin.
“It'll save us all kinds of trouble,” Nort admitted.
Meg picked the compass up. The little arrow—which appeared to be made of bone—spun and lingered. “What's that way?” Meg asked, pointing in the same direction.
“The castle.”
“Where Prince Bain is probably still snoring,” Nort said.
“With Cam in a box tucked under his pillow,” Meg added.
“My spies came back,” Lex said. “Bain was in his room, and the other princes and the guards searched the woods most of the night. The king is angry, and the queen is not.”
“She isn't?” said Meg, mystified. “Why not?”
“My spies don't do hidden motives,” the wizard said.
“Thank you,” Meg told him. She finished her breakfast quickly and stood up to go. Nort stood, too.
“You'll come again, won't you?” Lex asked.
“Of course,” Meg told him. “It isn't every day you meet a wizard who makes such good hot chocolate.”
“And compasses,” Lex reminded her.
“And compasses,” Meg said.
 
Gorba fed the chickens while Janna milked the cows. Then they sat down to a companionable meal of hot porridge.
“Do you think she'll bring him back?” Janna asked.
“Yes,” Gorba said after a moment. “The girl's got gumption. Like the girls in my books. Only with more—with more gumption.”
“What books?” Janna asked.
The witch turned red. “Just some tales of adventure and romance,” she said, her voice dropping on the last word.
“Can I see?”
Gorba looked up at the ceiling. “You really ought to patch that crack.”
Janna smiled knowingly. “You've been reading Lady Isabella Comfrey's books, haven't you?”
Gorba's mouth dropped open. “You read them, too?”
“The Golden Goblet of Love, The Perils of Princess Peridot, The Capture of a Royal Heart …”
Janna recited.
“And
Prince of My Dreams,”
Gorba added. “What did you think of that Esmeralda?”
For the next few minutes, Janna nearly forgot her brother's troubles, discussing Esmeralda's disdain for poor Prince Bronzehew.
“You know,” Gorba said, “all of my frogs are actually enchanted princes.”
Janna's eyes widened. “The—the frogs in my cow pasture?”
 
Meg and Nort circled around behind the castle from the west. The sky grew lighter as they hurried to meet Dilly.
“Stop!” Nort whispered suddenly.
Meg paused. A mutter of voices reached her from the direction of the pond. She hunched down beside Nort. They began to creep closer.
“She's not likely to be swimming in the frog pond,” a man's voice said.
“Vantor ordered us to search out here, so we search out here,” someone else rejoined. Meg looked through
the edge of a bush at Vantor's men. She gestured at Nort to pull back. They retreated a good thirty paces and hid in a little copse of trees, maneuvering so they could still see the men. “Which way are you going?” the princess muttered as she watched them trample the grass around the pond.
“The other way,” Nort said hopefully.
Sure enough, Vantor's men moved east.
“Here comes Dilly,” said Nort a moment later, starting to move.
“Wait,” Meg told him. “Over there—behind her.”
Nort peered at the shadows off to their right. One of them moved. “It's Prince Bain.”
Meg took out Lex's little compass. The arrow pointed right at Bain. “He has Cam.”
“Let's all three jump on him and take the box!”
“No,” Meg said with a great deal of reluctance. Vantor's men were moving away, but they were still within shouting distance. “They'll hear us. Besides, he has a knife. I don't want you and Dilly getting hurt.”
“Or you,” Nort pointed out.
“I'd rather steal it from him.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I have a better question,” Meg said as Dilly reached the pond and stopped, looking around. “Why is he following Dilly?”
“He did see her at the witch's house.”
“She told him she was there for a love spell,” Meg said, thinking.
Nort nodded.
“Dilly must be meeting her sweetheart down by the frog pond.”
“What?” Nort stared at Meg, confused.
“That's what Bain should think, anyway.”
Nort shrugged. “What are you talking about?”
“
You're
going to be her sweetheart.”
“What!” Nort said again, so loudly that Meg had to shush him.
“Something's wrong. Maybe this will make him less suspicious. And it will make it easier for me to follow him,” Meg explained.
“I should come with you!”
Meg waited stubbornly.
Nort made a face. “But Dilly won't know,” he argued.
“Whisper it in her ear,” Meg suggested.
Nort's brows lowered, but he said nothing. He merely crawled off through the underbrush toward the castle. When he was out of sight of both Dilly and Bain, he stood and walked back toward the frog pond.
Meg had a more difficult task, shadowing the shadow. She crept behind the hidden prince and waited. It helped that he was distracted by the sight of Nort coming over the hill. When Nort had passed, Bain went after him toward the pond. Meg followed Bain with careful movements. He glanced back once, but she froze, and he moved on.
Nort strode down to the pond, lifting his finger to his lips in front of him, where Bain couldn't see.
Dilly swallowed the words she had been about to say.
Nort came right up to her and stood too close. “Bain's watching,” he muttered.
“I see. Where's … ?” Dilly left off the name.
“Nearby. I'm to pretend I'm the boy you were getting the love spell for.”
“What?” Dilly said loudly. “Oh.” In a false voice, she went on, “Nort, how I've waited and waited for you.”
Nort took her hand, gritting his teeth. “How beautiful you look this morning,” he announced.
With an effort, the two embraced. Still Bain waited. Turning her eyes slantways, Dilly could just see his hair behind the reeds.
“When are you going to tell your father and mother about us?” Nort inquired.
“Soon, my dearest,” Dilly replied in lilting tones.
“Your eyes are so very blue,” Nort told her.
“Yours, too,” said Dilly. Bain's hair was no longer visible. In a lower voice, she said, “Do you think that's enough?”
Nort looked up the hill toward the castle. “I hope so,” he breathed. “I must get back to work, my sweet,” he said, raising his voice again.
They started back at a leisurely pace, in case the prince was still lurking about and needed to get out of their way.
“Why was he following you?” Nort whispered.
“Later,” Dilly said.
They walked in silence for a moment. Then Dilly asked smarmily, “Do you really think my eyes are blue?”
“It's a simple fact,” Nort snapped. “Come on.”
“I think you've forgotten something.”
“What?”
“You can't be seen at the castle,” Dilly reminded him.
Nort flushed. “If I hurry, maybe I can catch up with Meg.”
Dilly trailed him around the castle toward the stables.
 
After listening to Dilly and Nort exchange a few sweet nothings, Bain had crept up the hill again, surprising Meg, who hadn't considered his return path. She ended up flinging herself flat on the ground behind a too-short bush. Meg could hear the wind in the grass, the murmur of her friends' voices, and there—soft footsteps coming very near. She held her breath. The steps passed by.
Meg remembered abruptly that only three days ago she and Cam had spied on Bain together, hiding in the grass just like this. She lifted her head. Bain was walking back toward the castle.
Meg followed him around the west side, grateful it was so early that few of the castle folk were about. Bain stopped at the stables and spoke to a groom. The princess waited in the shadows. “No,” she said, aghast. He was going on horseback!
Sure enough, the groom brought out Bain's horse.
Meg had to watch Bain leap gracefully into the saddle and ride away down the royal road to the east.
Meg took the spell-compass out and consoled herself by watching its arrow turn in Bain's direction. “I
will
catch up to you,” she promised. She touched the counterspell in her other pocket. She was going to need a horse of her own.
As if in answer, the groom led out a second horse and tethered it to a post. The stallion snorted, tossing his head. Meg's eyes gleamed. Hanak had always put her on placid mares, despite her protests. “You'll do,” she murmured to her soon-to-be mount as the obliging groom stepped into the stable. Meg ran and quickly untied the horse's reins. To the horse's surprise, she managed to clamber onto his back. The horse bucked. Somehow she kept her seat, pulling the stallion's head around.
The groom came running out. “Hey!” he yelled as Meg burst down the hill onto the road east, taking the same path as the black-haired prince. “Black-hearted,” she spat, clinging to the horse as it galloped wildly away.
Dilly and Nort peeped around the corner just in time to see Meg's departing back. They watched Prince Vantor come striding out to the stables seconds later. “Where's my horse?” he demanded. But the groomsman could only shake his head and point at the tiny figure in the distance.
Dilly and Nort prudently withdrew as Vantor's shouts echoed through the stable yard.
“I should have gone with her,” Nort said.
“So now what will you do?”
“I can't stay here,” Nort said, remembering he was a wanted man.
“Spy on Vantor.”
“He's right there!”
“Yes, but everyone knows he's after the bandits. You can follow him.”
Nort looked at Dilly as if she were crazy.
“Do what you want,” she said. “I've got to get back to work.” And she flounced off.
Nort's stomach complained. He had to tell himself not to go to the kitchen to beg some toast from the cook. Instead he slunk away from the stables and took a circuitous route to the royal road. Then he set out after Meg. If he couldn't find her, maybe he could become a bandit, Nort thought miserably. He found himself wondering if there was a price on his head, and whether the balladeers might have anything to say about that.

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