He couldn't stop to see if they were alive or dead — and he couldn't help them either way. Someone else would have to take care of them, and he only hoped that all Desmond had done was to knock them out. Meanwhile, every moment that passed took Rosa farther from him, and that was all that mattered.
Leopold was right on his heels, though his friend probably couldn't imagine how he was getting directions. Still the open gate and the guards alone would tell him that they were on the trail.
The horse made straight for the forest without any guidance, but slowed as they neared it. The Forest Road paralleled the edge, with dozens of smaller paths and trails leading in and wandering off in wildly different directions. Siegfried peered at the forest, looking for a sign of where their quarry might have gone in.Nothing...it's too dark....noth —
The horse abruptly reared on his hind legs, screaming with alarm;
Siegfried fought to stay in the saddle, his heart accelerating with alarm. What — he couldn't see anything —
"Don't be foolish, mouse. I am not going to eat you" What Siegfried had thought was a shadow detached itself from the other shadows and lumbered forward, further spooking the horse, who half reared again, then stood, trembling.
"Bear?" he said in astonishment, as Leopold's horse also danced sideways.
It was, indeed, the bear that he had rescued from the showman. A scar across the bear's muzzle identified the beast.
"Wolf is tracking them. I will guide you, for I have his scent, and he will take care to lay it down thickly" The bear whuffed at them. "I told you that we would not forget your kindness. Now follow me" The bear lumbered into the forest, shoving his way into a game trail.
"Siegfried, what the hell — " Leopold sat atop his trembling horse, his own teeth chattering.
"The bear is a friend....Remember, I can talk to all animals, not just the bird." He shook his head. He probably should have told Leopold about the animals he'd been rescuing, but he hadn't thought it was that important. "I'll explain later. We need to follow the bear, because a wolf that I know is tracking Desmond for us, and the bear is tracking the wolf."
"A wolf...a bear..." Leopold shook his head. "Friends. All right. I have either gone insane or you did just say that, and if you did just say that — " He paused. "I have accepted the Queen turning into the Godmother in front of my eyes, mice becoming horses and squash becoming carriages. What's so hard about you talking to wild animals as well as tame, and making friends of them?" He dug his heels into his horse's ribs, causing it to nervously leap forward after the bear. "Come on! Rosa is getting farther away from us all the time!"
* * *
Once she had magicked up the mouse horses and their gear, Lily had transformed back into Queen Sable. It would be too much trouble getting the servants who hadn't seen her actually resume her real identity to obey her orders otherwise. She ran back up to her rooms, and from there, she sent out the servants to rouse the whole Palace. Desmond probably thought he had time to get back to the Palace before he was missed. Well, too bad for that plan; it had been disrupted the moment that Siegfried's cat saw him steal the Princess.
That means either he has taken Rosa somewhere close by, or he has some variation on a spell of transportation.She didn't think they would be lucky enough for the former, so it was probably the latter. She didn't think he'd have the "All Paths Are One" spell, since that was, as far as she knew, the peculiar property of Godmothers. But there were others, many others....
"Seven League Boots" — possible but unlikely; there were two of them, and neither of them would care to carry Rosa for very long. Probably they had left on horseback....
"Seven League Horseshoes" were possible. They wouldn't be restricted to paths...but they'd seriously disturb birds in their wake, and creatures with magic in them would sense the passage. But they were rare, and required not just a magician, but a blacksmith-magician. There were none here, and none that she knew of in the surrounding Kingdoms; most of them were up north — or Dwarves.
She also hadn't felt any huge perturbations of magic power, so he probably hadn't built anything as powerful as building a Portal.
Likeliest..."Pass Unhindered." That was an old, old spell, it was likely that Desmond knew it, and it would let the horses go at top speed through the densest of forest as if they ran on a smooth road. And if he was willing to kill his horses — which he probably was — he could layer on another particularly nasty bit of work, making it "Pass Unhindered Swiftly", that would make them run at three times the pace that any normal horse could do. "Pass Unhindered Swiftly" absolutely required the life of the creature it was cast on, a form of blood magic that took the sacrifice at the end, rather than the beginning. A fresh horse at his destination, and casting the spell again, would get Desmond back in no time at all, comparatively. Her head pounded as she dropped down into a chair. Their best bet would be if he came back and didn't discover that the Palace had been roused against him until it was too late to flee. She could get the location out of him — not easily, but unless he was extremely powerful, she could, if only because she could bring in as much help as she needed to.
But catching him by surprise wasn't likely.
So they would have to hunt for him.
"Jimson," she began.
As usual, he practically read her mind, answering her question before she asked it. "There's a pair of mirrors in Siegfried's saddlebag, and a second pair in Leo's. I'll speak to them through one of them at the first halt."
"Is Desmond — "
"There is nothing shiny on his harness or his person." Jimson's face swam into view in her mirror; he looked positively haggard with worry. "We have to assume he knows about mirror-scrying at least, if not mirror-travel. If he is in league with the Huntsman, that would be how both of them evaded my scrutiny. So there will be no mirrors where he takes her."