With another roar, Siegfried actually drove his sword down with both hands into Desmond's undefended chest, impaling Desmond to the table like a beetle pinned to a display board.
Desmond shook once, then was utterly still, a look of disbelief still on his cruel, handsome face. Freed from her shock, Rosa ran to Leopold, undoing the useless light armor, tearing open his shirt with her bare hands, which were soon blood-covered. Grateful that she was wearing her peasant clothing, she pulled up her skirt and began ripping strips off her petticoat.
"Leave it be, Princess," Leopold croaked as Siegfried joined her, and grimly pressed his own hands against the wound while Rosa fashioned a bandage. "Looks like the contest is over. Hell of a way to get eliminated, but you got the better man. We wouldn't have suited each other anyway." He tried to laugh, but it came out as a moan. "Just give me a big fancy funeral."
"Shut up, Leopold," said Siegfried. But Rosa glanced at his face, and her heart sank as she read the truth in his expression. Leopold's wound was fatal.
And to prove it, at that moment, Leopold slipped into unconsciousness, his face gone gray and pasty.
"It's now or never," Lily said, putting Jimson's mirror in her pocket. She had suspended her travel-mirror facedown between the back of a chair and the table. Crouching beneath it, she invoked the spell, hoping that combining the four small mirrors wasn't going to scramble her, or leave her quartered as she came through.
Slowly and carefully, she stood up, passing through her travel mirror at the oddest angle she had ever taken.
She found herself waist-deep, as if she was in a pool of water — except, of course, she was in a mirror at the edge of a churned-up field. Beside her, there was an exhausted firebird, and a very surprised unicorn. The unicorn yelped and jumped away. The firebird's eyes pinned in startlement as she fluttered her wings and trilled with alarm.
She ignored them, getting a grip on the frame and pulling herself out, exactly as she would have pulled herself out of a pool of water, getting her rump up on the frame, then swinging her legs out. That went better than she had any reason to believe. "Jimson?" she asked.
"Still here, Lily, and much relieved," he said from her pocket.
She turned to the unicorn and firebird. The stared at her as if they could not believe their eyes. "Where are Leopold and Siegfried?" she demanded.
"In the Tower," the unicorn said promptly, the first of the two to recover her wits. "They told us to stay here."
"And you obeyed them?" she asked incredulously. "Come on! Let's go! They might need us!"
The unicorn blinked. "You have a point, Godmower." And as Lily dashed across the field to the tunnel in the thorns, she shook herself and followed at a weary trot.
It was not easy ground to run across. Every step threatened to turn her ankle, and the gown she was wearing was not exactly constructed for running in. I should have taken the time to change — She thought about transforming what she was wearing, but that would take too much time. Illusions were one thing. Actually changing — that was something else entirely.
Halfway across thefield, she heard Rosa scream. Cursing the encumbering skirt of her gown, she reached down, grabbed the hem in both hands, and hauled the mass of fabric up to run faster.
As she entered the tunnel through the thorns, she heard a bestial roaring that sounded more as if it had come out of a bear's throat than a human's. And just as she was within sight of an open door —
The vines shrieked in a high-pitched cry that sounded like nothing she had ever heard in her entire life. She had to clap her hands over her ears, and she bent over double; the terrible sound cut through her head like a knife, bringing tears of pain to her eyes. The vines shook with a convulsion that nearly brought the entire tunnel down around her.
For a moment her heart leapt into her mouth as the vines thrashed uncontrollably. Something was killing them — but if they broke through the barrier of their own dead, they could still impale her and the unicorn. Then the scream cut off abruptly, leaving behind an echoing silence.
And with another convulsion they all straightened, pointing skyward. Then they abruptly shivered into black, bitter dust. The dust went everywhere, and she found herself coughing desperately to rid her lungs of it. Dashing her hand across her eyes to clear them, Lily ran the last few feet to the open door, and froze at the gory vision that she had stumbled into.
The first thing she saw was Prince Desmond, quite dead, grotesquely pinned to a table by a sword. His eyes stared sightlessly at her, his face bearing a strange expression of surprise.
The second thing she saw was Siegfried cradling a near-fainting Rosa in his arms, touching her face and kissing her, both covered in blood. Her heart nearly stopped.
Then as they both looked up, she realized it was nottheir blood, and her heart started again. "Godm — " Rosa exclaimed, reaching for her.
And the Huntsman rose up from the table, face made with rage, a sword in one hand, a meat cleaver in the other.