“Don’t you talk about sap in front of my newt!” exclaimed Martha, shocked.
“He can’t hear us anyway,” said Anya.
“Yes I can,” said Shrub, twisting out of his mother’s hands.
“Well, I guess I need to get four drops of sap from a tree that used to be a druid,” said Anya. “Do you know where one is?”
Martha stood up, crossed her arms, and frowned.
“I can’t help Shrub otherwise,” said Anya firmly.
Martha’s mouth twisted about as if it was fighting itself, before finally opening.
“Oh well, I suppose he had to know sometime,” she said.
“Who?” asked Anya.
“Shrub,” said Martha with a sniff. “It’s his own father who’s become an ex-druid! He’s turned into a chestnut tree and is living with a dryad called Elisandria!”
She burst into tears and fled into the cottage.
“I already knew all that,” said Shrub companionably, shrugging his newt shoulders, which looked quite disturbing. “Uncle Hedric told me ages ago. I’ve even been to see my old dad and everything, though he don’t talk much now, being a tree.”
“You don’t listen properly,” said Hedric. “Chestnuts talk a lot, they do. Compared to an elm, say, or a willow. Willows talk so quiet, and they lisp. If you listened—”
“I’m not a druid, Uncle,” said Shrub crossly. “Don’t want to be one, neither. I’m a thief.”
“You’re a newt right now,” Anya pointed out. “And likely to stay that way unless I help. Is your father nearby?”
“Edge of the forest, above the downs,” Shrub answered. “Maybe five miles from here. Got to know the right path, though—he’s not near the road.”
“The downs are the low hills between the forest and Rolanstown, right?” asked Anya, trying to picture the map in her head. “And I suppose you know the path?”
“Course I do.” Shrub raised one webbed limb. “Like the back of my hand … my foot.”
“He does know the paths,” said Hedric. “Been a wanderer ever since he was six, that boy, causing his mother no end of apprehension. If you can help Shrub, Princess, it would be greatly appreciated. Poor Martha has been beside herself, what with Dannith … retiring himself … and this transformation business.”
Anya thought for a moment. She hadn’t planned on recruiting a newt to their questing party, but Shrub might be useful in some way. If he could get over his obsession with the Only Stone, and if he could help her get the ex-druid’s blood before they even got to Rolanstown to find an alchemist, they’d be ahead.
“Very well,” she said. “But you must agree to follow my orders, Shrub. No independent thievery, you understand?”
“You’ll turn me back into a boy?”
“When I get all the ingredients for the lip balm.” Anya grimaced, thinking about kissing a newt. That would be even worse than kissing a frog. She also vaguely recalled that newts were poisonous, or had poison slime on their backs or something. “I will turn you back.”
As she spoke, the wind shifted around the clearing, lifting the lower branches of the surrounding trees with a sudden susurration of leaves. Which is a fancy word for rustling. Ardent’s nose twitched and his head turned swiftly. He let out a single sharp bark and leaped at the undergrowth, twisting around in the air to attack something hidden there.
“Princess Anya Plans to Kiss Lizard!” shouted a nervous, out-of-breath voice, accompanied by the sound of branches snapping, Ardent’s deep barking, and the bark-shredding noise of someone desperately climbing a tree.
Anya turned around, the words for the Withering Wind spell on her lips, to see Ardent just missing out on delivering a tremendous bite to the foot of a man who was ascending a tree as if his life depended on it.
Which quite possibly it did.
“Herald Assaulted by Vicious Hound!”
Anya looked up at the long-limbed tatterdemalion who had successfully reached a fork between the trunk of the oak and a long, reaching branch. A man neither old nor young, with a thin beard and a draggling moustache, he wore a parti-colored jacket that was yellow on one side and red on the other, and his legs were encased in hose that were blue on the left and green on the right. It was not a pleasing combination, made still worse by the grubby hat he wore, which resembled a stiffened nightcap and might have been striped like a rainbow if it was clean. It was hard to tell in its current state.
Anya knew who he was, because he had been thrown out of the castle more than once in the past few years: a wandering herald, who traveled through all the little kingdoms spreading news and gossip. Most of the “news” he spread sounded to Anya as if it was entirely made up.
“Gerald the Herald,” she said. “I don’t suppose there is anything I can say or do that will make you forget what you’ve overhead?”
“Princess Tries to Suppress News!”
“Can you please stop talking like that?” asked Anya.
“Herald’s Announcements All the Rage in New Yarrow!” said Gerald. He took a breath and shouted, “Death-Wish Princess Takes On Duke!”
“What do you mean by ‘Death-Wish Princess’?” Anya did not like the sound of that.
Gerald reached inside his yellow sleeve, pulled out a slip of parchment, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it down to the princess. Anya unraveled it and saw the familiar handwriting of the Duke, with its tiny, pinched letters interspersed with grandiose capitals and emphases. It said simply:
Herald. Spread WORD to suitable Blackguards, MALCONTENTS, Assassins, rotters, HOBDEHOYS, evil witches, and No-goodniks as follows: “Huge REWARD for head of Princess Anya. Not NECESSARILY attached. 200 GOLD Nobles. Apply Duke of Trallonia.”
“Had it by raven two hours ago,” said Gerald with a sniff.
“Why show this to me?” asked Anya suspiciously. “And how did you find me?”