The courtiers and petitioners mumbled a response of "Hail King Thurman," and quickly shuffled out. She breathed a sigh, and hurried back to her rooms. It was time to become Old Maggie, the Bee-Woman. This was perhaps the easiest disguise she had ever donned, other than the complicated illusion itself. She liked bees, and bees liked her. Best of all, perhaps, bees never caused her any problems.
She stepped through the mirror in the Queen's Chambers into the Hall of Mirrors, picked up the cloak and the basket with the potion bottle in it from where she had left them and stepped through a new mirror, a temporary one, that she had set up just for this purpose. She stepped out of an identical mirror incongruously leaning against a tree. How it got there, she had no idea; the Brownies had managed it for her, as the Brownies managed so much for her. They hadtheir own rules and their own magic — if she was able to give them a day or so to do their work, they could accomplish amazing things. If not, though — well, that was where the ingenuity of a Godmother had to come in.
She shook out the cloak and pulled it on, feeling the persona of Maggie settle into place. The bees began to gather about her immediately. They told her with their dancing that the Dwarves were all gone and Rosa was alone.
She sent the bees on ahead of her, made her way down a mostly overgrown path, and came around the corner of the building. Rosa's face lit up to see her, and she felt a lovely warmth to see it. If they managed to get through this, she knew that she and Rosamund would have an especially close relationship, perhaps making up for the fact that she had held aloof for all of Rosa's childhood.
Rosa looked as if she was on tenterhooks, and well she might be. "I believe I have a solution," Lily said gravely. "But first...you should know I have been deceiving you, though never with malice."
She whipped off the cloak. Rosa gaped at her, blinking. "Godmother Lily!" was all she could manage. She stared, as if she couldn't believe it. "But — oh. Yes, of course. You're trying to force the Traditional Snowskin Path, right?"
"Exactly. Which is why I am also Queen Sable."
If the revelation that Old Maggie was really Godmother Lily had been a shock, this left Rosa reeling. "There were three women vying for the title of Evil Stepmother while your father was staying with Perrin," she continued, as she watched Rosa try to absorb this revelation and process it. "Three genuinely Evil Sorceresses. No matter how much Thurman was protected, it was clear that sooner or later someone was going to take him down that path. So I became just what The Tradition wanted."
"You married my father?" Rosa said incredulously.
"In name only." She smiled wryly. "Is all this making sense to you?"
Rosa suddenly sat on a stump. "I — think so," she replied after a moment. "This is all very sudden."
Lily spread her hands wide. "We were swiftly running out of time to act. This was a joint decision."
"It would have to be." Rosa looked dazed. "Is Father all right? Is there a war? Is — "
"Your father is as well as he can be, there is no war yet, and I've kept him informed as soon as I knew where you were and what was happening to you."
Relief spread over Rosa's face. "Well, I assume you can snap the chain? Break the manacle lock?"
Lily shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. When a Dwarf makes a chain to hold something, believe me, it stays held. They have a magic with metal that even I don't dare meddle with. But I do have a plan to release you, one that will follow the Snowskin Path."
Rosa made a face, but didn't object. "Well, I am glad you told me. I think if I had suddenly found myself paralyzed, I'd have gone mad. The Huntsman was bad enough." She frowned a little more. "But if the Huntsman isn't yours, who does he belong to?"
"Something I am trying very hard to find out," Lily replied. "But let me explain what I have in mind now. The Dwarves will come home and find you dead. After they make sure this isn't a trick, they won't want to have a corpse on their hands, and I fully expect them to unchain you and dump you somewhere in the forest. I'll be watching them. I'll have you taken to a safer place, and lift the spell. We'll decide together what to do from there." It looked as if Rosa was taking this much better than Lily had dared to hope. In fact, the bees were calmly circling both of them, visiting the flowers among the weeds, yes, but keeping them in a protective ring. A good sign. She sat on the grass near Rosa. "If I'd had any notion that the Huntsman was going to attack you so soon, I would have put more effort into keeping a watch over you, or told you what was going on."
The girl smiled wanly. She was certainly game, and resilient. "And if you had, something else would have happened. I've had a bad time, but it could have been much worse. It was Dwarves who found me. It could have been robbers, who wouldn't have thought me too ugly to touch."
Lily shuddered. "From this moment on, I pledge you, you will be entirely in my confidence. I'd also like you to wear this at all times." She pulled a bracelet out of her pocket and handed it to Rosa. Hanging from the fine silver chain was a piece of obsidian cuten cabochon. By Eltarian standards, this was a mere trinket, the sort of thing a milkmaid could own. The back of it had been polished to a mirror finish. Rose examined it curiously, then put it on. "As long as you wear that, I can find you."
Rosa nodded, and fingered it nervously. "So — what do I do?"
Lily took out the potion. "Drink this. That's all. The next time you see me, you'll be free, and we'll plan what we should do from there."
Rosa's hand shook, but she took the bottle, screwed up her face and drank it down. Before she even reacted to the pleasant taste, Lily cast the net of the sleeping spell on her, the strands of it sparkling a little in the sunlight. She caught the girl as Rosa started to topple over, and laid her gently on the grass.
Lily did not trust to the reflective properties of the little pendant; she left a fragment of broken mirror propped among the weeds of the garden, in a position to reflect Rosa's image. With that in place, she escaped the scene, returning to her larger mirror. She took Jimson's mirror out of the basket, and settled down to wait.
"You timed things well," Jimson remarked, as the Dwarf that Rosa called Coward shambled into the garden, rabbits dangling from one hand, then stopped and frowned.
"Wake up, lazy ugly!" the Dwarf shouted. "No time to sleep!"
When Rosa didn't respond, his face grew red with anger. He stormed toward her and kicked her. Lily winced as Rosa's body rolled over, head lolling. The Dwarf drew back his foot to kick her again, then realized that there was something very wrong. He bent over, felt her face and cursed.
Rabbits forgotten, he lumbered for the kitchen and the staircase down into the cellar and the secret mine. Sometime later, all seven of the Dwarves emerged from the kitchen, to Coward's babbling and gesturing. Bully cuffed him into silence, and went to examine Rosa himself. By this time, her body was getting cold. After assuring himself that she really was dead, Bully vented his spleen in a round of cursing, blaming Coward in part for the loss of their house-slave. Coward cringed away, as Bully stomped angrily around the garden, cursing the Dwarf, Rosa and anything else he could think of.