Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [89]
When he finished, she nodded and steepled her fingers together as she leaned back into her fur. “You are loyal, Prince Sasha, a trait which I have seldom seen in the mortals who come into my world. You are loyal and steadfast.” She smiled a bit. “And you are most amusing. I have not laughed so much in a very long time. I am tempted to keep you here—but I think that you would not be so amusing if I made you my prisoner, however comfortable the prison. So I have instructed my people to provision you and take you to the surface—well away from that evil hag, Baba Yaga.”
He wondered for a moment how she could have already “instructed her people”—but then, she and they were magic, and there was no telling what she could and could not do. So he merely bowed. “Thank you, gracious Queen.” He hesitated. “At this point, I have no idea what direction I should look in—”
“Then if I were you, as your betrothed is the Sea King’s daughter, I would begin at the sea. My people will put you within reach of it.” She looked up; hearing a footstep behind him, he saw that the advisers had returned and were waiting in the doorway. “Now I must to my duties. Fare you well, Prince Sasha.”
Well versed in the way of royalty, it did not take having the manservant appear at the other door to tell Sasha he had been dismissed. He left the Queen of the Copper Mountain sitting on her malachite throne and followed in the wake of the manservant.
“You did remarkably well, my lord,” the manservant said, leading him through tunnels that slanted upward. “You amused her without offending her.”
“Call it my Luck,” he said with a shrug. “I try, but an honest man in my place would admit that what happens is as much because of Luck as skill.” The tunnels, low-ceilinged and only lit at intervals, were beginning to make him nervous. He found himself longing to be out and seeing the sun again.
“I think it is more than merely luck. And here we are.”
The room they entered was what Sasha would have called a guardroom or a muster-room. There were weapons and weapon racks hanging on the walls, and crates and barrels of supplies. Presiding over it all was a wizened old man, who, oddly enough, looked completely human.
“Greetings to you, Pavel Romanovitch,” the manservant said to the old fellow. “The Queen wishes you to provision her friend so that I may let him out into the world above again.”
The old man eyed him with astonishment. “By gad! She’s letting him go?”
The manservant nodded gravely. “She was much amused, but he has a love to whom he is faithful, and she has released him to seek her.”
The old man cackled with glee. “See! I win my bet! I told you that one day there would come a man down here who would resist her wiles! By gad! This is good seeing!”
The manservant smiled. “And now you are to provision him, and provision him well, we can send him on his way, and you and I will share that bottle I promised you.”
“With a good heart!” The old man began getting things down off walls and out of barrels and boxes. Sasha watched with interest and growing glee as the man put together a rucksack stuff full of everything a traveler might want.
“Weapons?” the old man asked, his hands hovering over a heavy crossbow.
“Dagger and hunting bow,” Sasha replied, looking with regret at the armament arrayed along the wall. “Frankly, I’m not all that good with anything else, and no point in loading myself down with things I can’t use.”
“Smart fellow,” the old man said with a nod, getting down a good hunting bow, a quiver of arrows, and a belt with a long dagger. “Now lad, as pretty as that outfit may be—”
“It’s not fit to travel in,” Sasha interrupted, “I take it you have something better?”
The old man laughed, and brought out much more practical gear. The only thing that Sasha retained was the