The Thicket, LilyRose [best sales books of all time TXT] 📗

to make yourself disagreeable, I find you quite fair.

Do you, now? One would never guess from your words and the way you use them.

Prince Gyllain gazed at her, and wondered if even this exchange might have occurred for many mornings prior to this one.

Accept my apologies, Lady; I allowed my impatience to get the better of me.

Meridian said nothing, but inclined her head instead.

But I must be true to my quest. You do understand that, yes? There is an evil enchantment about this place. Someone needs to be the one to break the spell holding Princess Briar Rose.

You agreed to stay here, if I took you. Until the final turning of the Wheel of Time.

I agreed to abide the wishes of the Princess Briar Rose. But as of now, I know not what those wishes are.

But I told you what they are, said Meridian. I haven't been dishonest with you.

Haven't you? If she knows that I am here, why hasn't she allowed me into her presence?

I cannot say.

No? I am here to free her from all this. Why has she not acknowledged me? I can only presume that she is being kept from doing so.

Kept from doing so?, said Meridian. By whom?

By you, of course.

By me? I am not her Mistress; she is mine. I do not make her choices for her.

I do not believe she would choose to stay here.

Briar Rose is here of her own accord. And I am here to serve her will.

I don't believe you.

Meridian looked at him but said nothing.

I wonder if perhaps it is you who are holding her here, said the Prince.

Meridian's eyes changed for the very briefest instant. Gyllain saw something flat, and cool, and quite unknown to him in them. The Prince felt, in himself, the hint of something that in a lesser man would have been called fear. The need to erase that sensation made him only bolder.

Perhaps you are the Enchantress, he said. Perhaps this is your domain, and the Princess Briar Rose is held in your thrall.

You would say such a thing?, said Meridian. Now she simply looked sad. After what I did for you. How very low of you.

You could have brought me here to be a prisoner, too. How am I to know?

So, I am a witch, is that it?

All I know is that the Princess is under an enchantment, bound here, and all that has prevented me from going to her since I got here has been you.

It is not she who is under an enchantment, said Meridian. It is not she who is bound.

Who, then?, said the Prince.

Are you so blind? Me, of course.

Prince Gyllain stared at the servant girl, faintly stunned at her outburst. But Meridian was not done.

I am the one bound to this place, she cried. I am a slave to her every whim. My life belongs to her. I do her bidding day by day. At night, her dreams invade my sleep, so that even that respite is denied me. If you wish to break a spell, then break the one holding me. Leave Briar Rose to her branches and thorns, and take me away from this place.

How can you be prisoner here?, he asked. When first we met, you had left this place on your own, and now you've taken me back with you. Whereas the Princess has never left here at all.

I am bound to always return, said Meridian. Until the spell upon me is broken.

And how is that to be done?

Take me away with you. Take me away from this place.

How can I do that?, said Gyllain. I needed you just to get here.

I can show you the way. But you must take me. It must be your Will that breaks the spell, not mine.

A light dawned in Prince Gyllain's mind. This is why you brought me here, then. Not so I could fulfill my Quest, but so I might help you to escape instead! This was not for the Princess. This has all been for yourself!

Your Quest is to break an enchantment. Why is it you cannot break mine? Is that not good enough?

No, because my Quest is to save the Princess Briar Rose, Gyllain thought, but he thought better of speaking it, so he did not. He was desperately trying to make sense of all this. Could it be true? Could it be that Princess Briar Rose was herself the enchantress? No; this girl must be lying to him. He had studied enough of heroic deeds and acts to know that a hero needed his Wits about him at all times, and he needed his Wiles to make the most of what comes along. He would find a way to make this work for him.

So you are under a spell, he said to her, but your Mistress is not; is that it?

Prince: free me, and you will have broken all the enchantments you will ever need to. Of that, I can promise you.

And all I need do is to take you away from this place?

That is all you need do, said Meridian. But, of course, you can never come back here again. Because you will have gotten what you came for.

And you swear that it is not you who keeps me from seeing the Princess?

Only Briar Rose decides what happens to Briar Rose, said Meridian. My swearing to it changes nothing. Especially whether or not you believe me.

Alright then, said Gyllain. I'll take you. My retinue is staying at the large Inn on the west end of the village. Or they were. After so long, they might have given me up for lost or dead.

They will be there, said Meridian. Time moves differently here. You will see.

Fine, then. Do you need to take anything with you?

I have everything I need, said Meridian. But we cannot go now: the morning has grown late. When we awaken tomorrow. Will you take me then?

I will take you, said the Prince. We will go from this place, with you showing me the way. We'll make our way to the Inn, and stay there for the night. You will be given your own room. After that, you can do as you will, and if you wish, I will take you with me to my palace, which is the capital city of my domains. And, again; if you wish; you can stay with me there.

If he expected to see servile gratitude in the servant girl's eyes, he was disappointed. Instead, she looked at him appraisingly, as though she were considering him in all his various facets. If it bothered him, however, he let it go by. He had another plan in mind, and he was busy thinking it through.

* * *

In the morning the Prince awoke as before, splayed out on the sofa before the fire in the hearth. Meridian, however, was already in the inner courtyard by the well, waiting for him.

It is best to leave during the waxing of the day, she said to him. Spells are most easily broken in the sunlight. She hesitated before speaking again. That is, if you still plan on holding to your promise of last night.

Of course I'm going to hold to it, said Gyllain. But I can't help but wonder if the Princess is going to make an appearance at all before we leave. After all; neither one of us will be coming back.

If the Princess plans on appearing, she will appear, said Meridian. If the Princess wants you to take her from this place, then she will be with you when you leave.

The Prince looked up at the darkened windows of the castle. Well, then. I suppose you're right. That being the case, we might as well make our leave now.

And so we shall, said Meridian, and she led him across the courtyard to the castle gate. Again, they passed through the fallow fields littered with abandoned tools. When they reached the gates of the outer wall, Gyllain turned back. The castle was as dark and desolate looking as the first time he'd laid eyes upon it. He had half-hoped to see the Princess herself coming toward them on the road, finally ready to leave this place forever. But there was nothing. Only the grasses, bowing in the wind.

Together, they walked up to the wall of briar thorns. Meridian repeated her instructions from the time she took him through from the outside. He grasped her sash with his left hand, ready to follow her through. But as she began to move, his free right hand began to pull at loose golden threads on his sleeve cuff; threads that he had spent the night before unraveling, ready to be pulled out, one by one.

As they moved through the thicket, he plucked one long thread of pure spun gold after the next, and allowed them to get caught on the branches and thorns of the hedge, leaving a gleaming trail: a trail that he would be able to come back and follow on his own, with no need for anyone to show him the way through anymore.

* * *

When the full moon filled the windows of the Inn with it's soft, silver-blue glow, Prince Gyllain slipped out of his room and down the stairs to the courtyard. All was quiet. Meridian had been right: only a day had passed here, in the time he had spent behind the thicket on the grounds of the enchanted castle. Even his horse had been waiting for him, and, gentleman that he was, he had allowed Meridian to ride the mare all the way down to the Inn. He had secured her a room, and they had ordered food and eaten, and then, after Gyllain gave instructions to his servants, they had each gone to bed.

The late summer night was filled with the grating music of the crickets, so loud that their chorus covered the crunching of his boots on gravel and crushed shells. He carried with him a lantern, unlit now in the brilliance of the moon, but which he knew he would need in the gloom of the thicket. A small leather knapsack was strapped to his back, and he carried a walking stick of polished hardwood, tipped by a shoe of steel. As prepared as he was ever going to be, he set out along the uphill track to that place where, behind a forest of thorns, waited the enchanted Princess Briar Rose.

He cast a final look back to the Inn, and cast a final thought to the servant girl Meridian, sleeping in her own bed in her own room there. She would be recompensed well for her aid; he had already seen to that with his orders to his staff. If she was to feel deceived, she would in time come to understand that his Quest was meant for a higher calling; to Right a Mighty Wrong that had been done to one both innocent and pure. He could think of no Nobler thing to do, than to risk