A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 1 by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey [Lackey, Mercedes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488086311
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

When Alexander woke the next morning, it was with strange dream-fragments echoing in the back of his mind; blue moons and purple sand, and a very sweet and lissome lady in his arms. For the very first time since he had left Kohlstania, he woke feeling good, warm and very pleased with himself. It had been a wonderful dream, apparently. He just wished that he could remember more of it.

But just because he wasn’t waking as a donkey didn’t mean that the work was going to stop. Hob had made sure he knew that weeks ago. Back when he’d been thinking he’d only be spending every other day as a donkey rather than most of a week, Hob had told him in bald terms that man or ass, if he didn’t do his share, the same rule held: no work, no food. Alexander didn’t think that things would have changed just because the Godmother had decided that he was going to be spending his time as himself from now on. This was the season of harvest, and there was work even for the untutored hands of a Prince.

“Alexander!” bellowed Hob from somewhere beneath him. “Get your lazy royal ass down here!”

Royal ass— Maybe it was the good mood that he had awakened in, but the phrase that would have made him livid with anger yesterday struck him this morning as inexpressibly funny. He rolled out of bed and stuck his head through the hole in the floor. Hob was looking up at him.

“Lazy I am, but today, at least, I am no ass,” he replied. “Give me but a moment.”

There were three new beasts to tend now, and one of the few good things about being a donkey had meant that he didn’t have to tend himself. His first chore on his first morning waking as a man were quite enough to drive the last fragment of erotic dream out of his mind; nothing was less erotic than mucking out a stall.

Still it didn’t spoil his good mood at all. The beasts were mild-tempered and easy to work around and he was done reasonably quickly. He joined Hob at the pump in the kitchen-yard just as the sun came up, the two of them doing a thorough-wash-up in the cold water. “We won’t be able to do that much longer,” Hob said, shaking his head, and sending droplets flying everywhere. “Be too bloody cold before long. I don’t fancy icicles off my nose.”

“I don’t fancy them hanging off elsewhere on my anatomy,” replied Alexander, who had been a bit more thorough in his washing-up. But then, Hob hadn’t been mucking out the stable, either.

Hob grinned at him.

“Come on, lad,” he said, and led the way up the kitchen stairs.

Alexander stopped where he was. “Ah—”

“Come on, lad,” Hob repeated. Dubiously, and certain that he would be stopped dead at the door as he always had been before, Alexander followed him.

Followed him right into the warm and fragrant kitchen, where he stood in the doorway, blinking stupidly in the light, just as Rose entered from the door opposite.

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