"Oh, thank you!" Rosa said gratefully. "I'm near famished. And I could sleep for a — " she stopped herself " — for a good night's rest."
Lily nodded with complete approval. Rosa was swiftly getting the knack of thinking on her feet; she had clearly remembered in time that The Tradition just might decide that with two Princes in attendance who might be able to kiss her awake, it would be a very good ideanot to say things like "I could sleep for a year." She was coming along nicely and her training hadn't even begun.
Her mother would have been so proud of her....
"Then let's just relax and enjoy our brief respite," Lily replied. She felt The Tradition hovering over them like a thunderstorm that hadn't yet decided when to break. "I do not think we are likely to have another anytime soon."
"Ugh," Rosa said, looking at the viscous, dark contents of the tiny flask that Lily had handed her. "What is that?"
Thurman was still on the border, though it was looking as though he could return soon. Rosa would be very happy when he arrived. Privately she had vowed to do whatever she could to help him through his own grief.
They were in the Queen's Chambers, and "Queen Sable" had shooed everyone out. She motioned Rosa to a comfortable chair and handed her the flask. The stuff in it looked black. It didn't slosh, it oozed. She wondered what the Godmother expected her to do with it.
"Dragon's Blood. Not the herb, the real thing. You need to drink it." Lily turned back from the sideboard with another glass, this time of a white wine that Rosa knew from experience had a very sharp taste. She shrugged apologetically at Rosa's appalled expression. "One of the first talents that a Godmother needs is the ability to understand the speech of animals. Tasting Dragon's Blood allows you to do that. One taste allows you to understand Magical Animals, like unicorns or dragons, and Wise Animals, like my mice and Siegfried's little bird. A full drink allows you to understand the speech of all animals. And that much will also allow you, if you have the ability in your bloodline, to see magic, as I described to you."
Rosa thought about that for a moment. "Can I just have a taste now and decide if I want a full drink later?" she asked, looking unhappily at the murky, dark liquid. Just looking at the stuff made her feel sick.
The King could understand the speech of animals, and when she was very small, he had told her silly stories that had made her laugh in rare moments of peace. The "speech" of real animals, unlike that of "wise" ones, generally wasn't all that enlightening. "I'm not sure I want to wake up every morning, listening to the doves under my window babble about nothing like a lot of silly girls gossiping."
Lily chuckled and shook her head, taking a seat beside Rosa. "On the one hand, I sympathize, but — no. Two reasons. One, it is rather difficult to get Dragon's Blood, since most dragons are not entirely friendly. Not that one could blame them, what with having to dodge heroes all the time, but dragons are difficult to find at the best of times, and it's something of a nuisance to the friendly ones to keep being asked for a bit of blood, so out of courtesy we try to limit our requests. The other reason is that the blood has to be drunk relatively fresh, within a couple of days of being obtained, or it does go off, so to speak, and we've not found any way to preserve it. I had to call in a great favor this morning to get it, and made quite a long journey by mirror to Godmother Elena to bring it back myself. So, you might just as well get it all over with at once. Hold your nose, dear, and take your medicine."
The liquid seemed to get darker even as she stared at it. It was about the consistency of honey, if honey could look malignant. Rosa gulped, braced herself and tried to toss it down in one fast gulp.
It was horrible. There were no words to adequately describe the sensations, which began even before the awful stuff touched her tongue. It had all the musk-laden pungency of a dead snake and the smell filled her head even as she tipped the vial into her mouth. It was worse than anything she had ever had before. So bitter it made her tongue curl up in a vain effort to escape the taste, so fiery-hot she felt sweat explode out of her forehead, so powerful that her eyes filled with tears and she had to fight to keep from throwing it up. Everything about it made her body scream,"No!"
Somehow she managed to swallow. It burned from her mouth all the way to her stomach, leaving her throat feeling as if someone had passed a red-hot poker down it. She gasped, and Lily put the glass of wine in her hand in the hope that the wine might cool the fire. She drank the glass as fast as she could — she couldn't breathe anyway — and that gave her enough relief that she was finally able to pull a shuddering breath into her lungs. The wine — which after the blood was utterly tasteless, like water — managed to cut through the fire and cool it, leaving only the bitter, oily taste behind.
Lily handed her a napkin and another glass, which she drank more slowly. After the first two sips, the bitter taste began to wash away, and she was able to get a flavor of something other than the blood. Or, not a flavor, precisely, but the idea that this liquid was something sweet, sherry perhaps, though it was hard to tell with the undertone of the dragon's blood still overwhelming her senses. She realized then that her eyes were leaking tears of pain, and that she was as damp as if she had stood in front of a furnace. She wiped her streaming eyes, finished the glass of whatever-it-was, and as she tried to clear the fog of tears by blinking furiously, Lily put a third cup into her hand. This was hot water mixed half-and-half with honey and some sort of fragrant herb cordial, and it succeeded in clearing the taste from her mouth, her nose and her throat.
Strangely enough, her stomach was not in revolt. This was possibly because every other part of her body that had come into contact with the awful stuff was. Possibly because her poor stomach still didn't realize what had been dumped into it. Or possibly because the blood had never actually gotten there, and instead had coated her throat and mouth.
She was very glad she had been sitting when she drank it. She was not entirely certain her knees wouldn't have buckled under the onslaught. She sincerely hoped that Lily would not ask her to drink or eat anything like that, ever again. The experience was enough to make her rethink wanting to be trained as a Godmother.
But Lily must have guessed her thoughts from the expression on her face. "I promise you, that is probably the worst thing that will ever happen to you in your training," Lily said in sympathy, patting her hand. "Eventually something will happen that you will need the gift of animal speech for, and you will be very, very glad that you have it. As for the rest, there is a great deal that you won't have to learn, because you already know it. The very existence of The Tradition comes as a shock to most new Godmothers-in-training, and they have to study for a good deal of time before they have the depth of lore that is already at your command. I can tell you already, because I am of Fae blood, that the Fae will accept you as a Godmother, should we decide you actually need to be one. And unlike Champions, Godmothers don't have to keep undergoing ridiculous ordeals every time one turns around. Our idea of besting a dragon is not to chop it into bits, but to get it to sit down to tea."
Rosa laughed weakly, and finished the honey drink. As her senses cleared of the noxious stuff, she was able to relax as she had not expected to since her mother's death.
The Queen's Chambers had always been the most welcoming in the Palace. Only the outermost room had the air of formality one would expect from a Queen. The rest — the bedroom, sitting room, and tiny supper room where she and her mother had often played silly card games long into the night — were decorated in a very curious but comfortable fashion. They looked exactly like what they were — the rooms of a country shepherdess with impeccable taste and an unlimited amount of money to spend. All the furniture was solidly built, and solidly comfortable; whitewashed oak and woven willow for the most part, with bleached muslin cushions stuffed with goose down. The white marble fireplace always had a nice fire in it. Wood-paneled walls had been whitewashed, then tinted pink, with a touch of gilding. There were sensible lamps instead of ostentatious candelabra.
Rosa had feared that Queen Sable had turned these rooms, once a haven, into a nightmare, despoiling them with expensive, spindly furniture and things too fragile to even look at lest they break, or worse, into a gloomy cave furnished in black velvet and plum satin. To discover that it was really Lily here, and that the rooms had been untouched, was a little like getting part of her mother back.
"Well." Rosa coughed a little. "What is there for me besides a near poisoning?"
"First, what we are doing, which will certainly set some tongues wagging." Lily smiled. "Simply being closeted together without anyone seeing what we are up to."
Rosa had kept to her rooms for two days after returning, mostly because she discovered she was a great deal more worn-out than she had thought. She had bathed until she finally had the last of the filth out of her hair, from under her fingernails, scrubbed off her skin. She'd slept an amazing amount. And she had eaten far more than she would have thought, too; mostly fresh fruits and lovely, lovely salads, but when Lily had suggested a nice bit of roast beef she had eaten such a great slab of it that the ladies of the Court would have been scandalized had they seen it.