Lily, so she told Rosa, had been unsurprised, and a little amused.
She had asked why he was telling her now, though. "Because I have no good ideas for the defense of this realm," he had replied. "If I did, be sure I would tell you, but I do not, so I must bid you farewell. I have greatly enjoyed testing myself against your challenges."
It became obviouswhy he had never intended to finish the trials when his mother, the Sorceress Aubergine, arrived to fetch him away. With her, driving a second chariot, this one drawn by a pair of Gryphons, was a stunning flame haired young female. Any thoughts that she might have been his sister evaporated in the heat of their greeting. It was quite entertaining for those who happened to be present to watch it.
The other dropout was the son of the ruler of Reritain, to the east. No one had been sorry to see him leave. He had been sullen to the point of surliness, and had made no allies here.
That left three remaining candidates from the neighboring kingdoms, which was enough to prevent anyone from deciding to invade, whether their candidate had lost the contest or was still in the running. At least, for now.
Rosa turned over again, trying to find a cool spot. Nothing. Her thoughts kept circling around the remaining competitors, trying to work out if there was anything she could do to keep them from quitting.
The longer this trial went on, the better.
There were eight left now. Eight young men who had taken various approaches to the problem they had been set. Leopold gambled. Every night he sat down at the gaming tables with her courtiers — and by day, she knew, he went into the city to a gambling club where he pitted his luck against that of rich young men of merchant families. He was winning, too, quite handily, and growing increasingly cheerful as he did so. She didn't know him well enough to tell if this meant he couldn't think of anything so he was glad he was making a small fortune at the tables, or if it meant he had thought of something, and he was cheerful and winning because of it.
As for Siegfried — well, Siegfried vanished from the Palace for most of every day. His bird told her that he was going out to the forest. She could sympathize with that; if you were used to being alone in the wild a great deal, then the Palace was not the best place to be able to think. But what if he was going to the forest to escape having to see her, knowing he had no ideas and was not likely to have any?
She intercepted him early one morning — getting up much, much earlier than she usually did, only to have him look at her with the eyes of a man cut off from what he most desires. "Princess," he had said, holding up his hand. "This is the hardest thing I have ever done. I am not good at thinking — but I will not give up and go away." He had paused then, looked at his feet and stammered, "And I wish you were a shepherdess so that there would be no contest over you, and I could put you in a ring of fire and awaken you and we would live happily ever after."
That had left her dumb for a moment.
"If you did not mind being poor, I would rather be wandering roofless with you, than living in a palace with anyone else."
Her heart thudded in her throat when he said that. But before she could muster the wits to reply to him, he had turned, striding rapidly away.
Desmond tried to corner her. When he caught her, briefly, he asked, framed in cautious words, if she would give him a boost over the pack. She was both angry and hurt by this — angry because he had asked her to cheat for him, hurt because of the way he had asked. Not that he wanted to win for her, but because he wanted to win, no matter what it took.
"This trial isn't a form of joke or the sort of test that the riddles were, Desmond," she had said gravely. "And there is no 'right answer' sealed away somewhere. This is a situation that needs resolving. Thus far, none of the best heads in the Kingdom have an answer for it, and whoever comes up with that solution will properly be the right one for the throne."
She had to give him this much: he took her rebuke well, as far as she could tell. He bowed over her hand, and had been pretty solitary ever since.
The remaining five closeted themselves in the library or in their rooms. Presumably they were looking for answers, too.
"She distracted you, didn't she?" The bird was keeping pace with him, flitting from branch to branch.
"Yes, and I cannot afford to be distracted. Do you think the Godmother could build a great wall around Eltaria?"
"I think if she could have, she would have. Besides, you'd need troops to man it, wouldn't you? Otherwise all it would take to get in would be a battering ram." The bird was quite good at picking holes in Siegfried's ideas — which he appreciated no end. An idea that was only a little good was not going to win him the girl.
The forest was a good place to think, and even Luna — who was, of course, pacing on the path behind him — knew enough to keep quiet while he was trying to come up with a good idea.
It didn't help, not at all, that there were rumors of mysterious sleeping women in rings of fire appearing in random meadows. Doom was trying to close in on him. And he knew how The Tradition worked. He was a stag, and The Tradition was the pack of hounds. Sooner or later it was going to run him into exhaustion, or into a dead end that he couldn't escape from.
Then again...