“Dwarves are like rocks,” said Ardent. He was unusually sedate, possibly still bath-affected, and was not trying to chase his tail or speak too quickly. “Very long-lasting, unless something breaks them. Tanitha told us that too. But I’ve never met any before.”
“I guess we’re going to meet some now,” said Anya. She had been awed enough by the Good Wizard, tempered somewhat by the woman seeming to be only a decade or so older than herself. But to meet the fabled Seven Dwarves and possibly even Snow White himself …
“His must be the thirteenth place,” she said quietly. “Snow White.”
“If he c-c-omes. The Wizard only said he might.” Ardent sniffed the air. “Mmm. Roast beef. You know his real name, don’t you?”
“Whose real name?”
“Snow White’s,” said Ardent, shrugging off the towel and heading for the door. “His real name.”
“No,” said Anya, chasing after him.
“Neither do I. C-c-an’t remember. Tanitha told us, though. There are stories about him under that name as well.”
As the door swung open ahead of them, doubtless pushed by an invisible apprentice, Anya wondered where Shrub had gone. He’d climbed out of his bath earlier, protesting that the water was too clean for a newt. The last she’d seen of him was as a lump underneath a rapidly moving towel that an apprentice had thrown over him. The towel had been heading this way, so hopefully he was already at the dinner table. And Smoothie too, if she had managed to tear herself away from the eels.
Anya had spent her time in the bath thinking very deep and hard. Her hunger pangs had receded with warmth and the prospect of an imminent meal, so she had been able to think clearly for what felt like the first time in ages.
Her thoughts had naturally enough been about the recipe for Transmogrification Reversal Lip Balm, and the ingredients she needed for it, and where she might get them. But she had found her mind also inexorably drawn to the conversation she’d had with Bert the Responsible Robber and the ancient raven Dehlia, last of the wardens of the High Kingdom of Yarrow.
This in turn led to thoughts about the All-Encompassing Bill of Rights and Wrongs, and those thoughts led to the common people of Trallonia and what they deserved as opposed to what they generally got. This made her think about Morven as queen, and indeed about rulers in general and what Duke Rikard might do if he became king, which in turn led to thinking about the perils of sorcery and her own ambitions in this direction, and the curiosity that was wizardry, and back again to the problem of Duke Rikard, and thus the lip balm and finally, at long last, to a number of drawn-out sighs she hastily curtailed when she realized she was sighing them.
No matter which way she looked at it, Anya had the distinct feeling that her Quest was going to get a lot more complicated than she wanted. But short of giving up, that’s the way it was going to be.
She was not going to give up.
This reminded her about the only other thing she remembered from her mother. As well as the comfort of the red woolly, she remembered the sound of her mother’s voice, that soft voice telling her how much she was loved.
And she remembered one conversation between her parents in detail, though she was not absolutely sure whether she remembered it or had made it up. But it was true either way.
Her mother had been talking to her father. They had thought Anya was asleep, but actually she’d been nestled in her mother’s lap, listening intently with her eyes shut.
“I will not give up. It is the right thing to do, no matter the consequences.”
Anya wondered what it was that her mother had decided to do, and whether it had played some part in her early and untimely death.
“It is the right thing to do, no matter the consequences.”
Now that she knew about the All-Encompassing Bill of Rights and Wrongs, she wondered if her mother’s words had something to do with that. It would have been just like her mother to want to bring back the old laws and make things fairer for the people.
Anya sniffed and wiped a tear from her eye.
“Makes me c-c-ry too,” said Ardent. He was staring at the table through the open door, nose up and sniffing, inhaling the scent from the platters of roast beef and roast lamb and roast pork with roast potatoes and roast sprouts and roast pumpkin and roast whole cloves of garlic, intermingled with the somewhat lesser scents (to a dog) of a salad of pungent summer herbs and watercress, a huge bowl of steamed green beans, and several long platters stacked high with fresh-baked, crusty bread.
“Come on,” said Anya. “Let’s eat.”
She was extremely hungry, but even so she stopped short as they went through the door, and Ardent ran into the back of her legs yet again. She stopped because the Seven Dwarves were standing by the long table. Four male and three female dwarves, all of them wearing pajamas and silk dressing gowns like Anya’s. They were no more than four feet six inches tall, but far broader in the shoulders, and their arms and legs were much more muscular.
They didn’t look particularly old in face or features, but there was a quality about them that suggested great age indeed. Though each had different colored skin, in all of them that skin gave the sense of ancient, weathered stone; the deep blackness of obsidian, the pale gray of slate, the gold-red of granite, the translucence of limestone, and many shades in between.
Two of the male dwarves had long beards, neatly tied. The third had a kind of long goatee, and the fourth no beard, only a long, waxed moustache. Two of the female dwarves had short hair, beautifully cut, and one had very, very long plaited hair under a soft velvet cap that Anya immediately wanted for herself, because it was so perfect.
“Ah, the little maid and the puppy!” exclaimed the dwarf with the waxed moustache. He held up one large hand, heavy with rings, and waved them closer. “Come, let us greet you properly to these halls!”