//------------------------------// // XV. What the Princess Saw // Story: The River Rose // by Stosyl //------------------------------// Before Mercury could come to terms with his surroundings, Gumdrop had already pounced on him and was hugging him tightly. Plum Cake stood staring at the marble floor, and Opalwater warmly patted his sergeant on the back. The Princess appeared horrendously tired, breathing heavily and her coat disheveled, and took a seat on a cushion beside him to rest her wavering legs. Oilslick was nowhere to be seen. Mercury’s heart sank. “Where’s Oilslick?” he asked in a frantic tone. “He’s okay,” said Gumdrop quickly. “Emerald Alembic is caring for him in the infirmary,” the Princess said. “He was deeply traumatized by the Umbra, but don’t worry: Emerald’s expertise is the workings of the mind. He has already prepared the necessary medicines.” “And Oilslick will be all right?” Mercury persisted. “Emerald expects a full recovery, and I see no reason to doubt him.” Mercury heaved a sigh of relief. “What happened in the Umbra?” he asked. “Did you find the Elements of Harmony?” The Princess shook her head disconsolately. “Stowaway Spade got there before us,” she said. “We met him in the Umbra just before we made our escape.” “What!” Mercury’s head reeled; he remembered the sight of the empty cells which had so bewildered him before. “And what about the prisoners,” he asked hurriedly. “Galeheart and Storm Cloud? They went missing this morning, did you see them?” “Lieutenant Galeheart was with Spade in the Umbra. We did not see Sergeant Major Storm Cloud with them.” “I think you can stop using their titles now, Princess,” said Emerald’s voice from the doorway. “They are past the dignity of distinction.” “Did you pursue them?” Mercury insisted. “With Galeheart injured, he couldn’t have escaped you so easily!” “Galeheart wasn’t hurt,” said Opalwater matter-of-factly, unaware of all that had happened in his absence. “Come now, Celestia,” Emerald said, “Sergeant Mercury is awake now. The time has come for you to tell us what happened in the Shadow World.” Celestia took in a long, ragged breath and rubbed her tired eyes. Everyone else stood—each of them being too anxious to sit comfortably. “Before I left,” the Princess began, “I ordered the palace to be placed in a state of emergency. Whenever this happens, the Umbra is sealed. The Umbra, after all, belongs to the Royal family, and contains many of its most valued possessions. Often we retrieve these possessions by summoning them, but during a state of emergency, it is impossible to summon anything from the Umbra. With Spade unable to use alchemy and Galeheart incapacitated, I assumed that would be enough to keep the Elements of Harmony safe for me to retrieve them. “After several hours of searching, however, when I located Private Gumdrop and her group, there was no sign of the Elements. None of them recalled coming across them, and Private Oilslick was in such a state of shock that I could not delay in getting him out. I did not meet with any of the Umbra’s traps, but it was obvious that the privates had. Many of them were suffering from hallucinations, and of course I have mentioned Oilslick’s condition. Indeed, he was completely delirious. I made all haste to pull them out of the Shadow World. “Yet when I was about to do this, I caught sight of Spade in the corner of my eye, and I gave chase after him. Opalwater and Plum Cake left Gumdrop to care for Oilslick and followed me. As we came up to him I noticed Galeheart by his side, by some miracle uninjured . And you can imagine my surprise at seeing him there at all, when he ought to have been in the palace dungeon. “They were carrying the Elements. I attempted to seize them, but they fled immediately, taking the Elements of Harmony with them. I would have pursued them into this world had I not the privates to look out for. The five of us then returned to the palace. There is nothing more to say.” When the Princess finished speaking, Emerald appeared very distraught. “How did the privates escape the Umbra, Princess?” he said. “I carried them out,” she replied. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.” “None of this makes sense,” Emerald muttered. He knitted his brow as if he were solving an impossible riddle. “We must return to the dungeon so I can figure this out.” Having said this, the six of them descended the tower into the dungeon, and stepped into Galeheart’s empty cell. Once there, Emerald began again: “Spade could have been carried out of the Umbra, could he not?” “As he has no faculty of magic,” the Princess replied, “I would assume he was.” “You say he has no faculty of magic, and yet just this morning two prisoners in his charge, one gravely injured and one terrified of him, escaped an impenetrable prison.” “You are saying that he has use of his magic.” “I am saying,” said Emerald, his forehead furrowed with thought, “that I saw him chase me half a mile without casting a single spell on me. And yet Storm Cloud, as unreliable a memory as he seems to have, still distinctly described helping Spade into a splint for his paralyzed leg. Did he not tell us that sometimes his leg acted up, and at other times it was fine? What if his magical faculty is the same?” “Then at times he could use magic,” Mercury offered, “and at others he would be a normal Earth stallion.” “Precisely,” said Emerald. “Princess, there must be some loopholes in the prison defenses. What are they?” “Emerald Alembic,” Celestia said nervously, “you can’t expect me to—” “No time for games!” he said. “How are the dungeons kept?” Celestia sighed. “They are kept with a containment spell.” “That much is obvious,” Emerald muttered. “But any unicorn worthy of a palace dungeon, with enough time, could study the magical signature of the spell and fashion a counter-spell against it. Mercury himself, not a day ago, broke free of a containment spell by this method. There must be more to it.” “The structure is designed to vacillate,” the Princess added reluctantly. “The magical signature changes every six minutes.” “Six minutes!” Emerald said. “That’s impossible! Give me one thousand years to practice, and still I could never counter a containment spell this complex in under six minutes.” “Yes, Emerald, that is the point.” “Is it really that complex?” said Mercury. “I got out of Galeheart’s trap in under three.” “You have learned to read magical signatures,” Emerald began, adopting the somewhat condescending tone of rhetoric. “Had you not, you could not have unraveled the spell’s structure. Feel around you, Mercury: try to sense the magical signatures in this room.” Mercury gave an earnest effort, and gave it up after a moment of struggle. “It’s murky, isn’t it? Like river water disturbed by a swimmer. Seeing magical signatures is second nature to me—it is a useful skill for knowing when ponies with a capacity for magic are approaching. Yet even I was unaware that this magical signature was changing around us every tenth of an hour, because I can hardly see the first string of its structure. Like the words of an unfamiliar language, it is a code that requires a key to break.” The Princess shook her head rapidly. “No, no,” she said, “Galeheart was not a dungeon guard. He was never informed of the key.” “That is what makes it so terrible, Princess,” Emerald said. His head turned to and fro in a fit as he tried to think. “Spade needed no key.” “Now you are the one speaking impossibilities, Emerald,” said Celestia. “Impossible is just what we call the unfamiliar. Remember what you thought of the steam engine before it was created! It takes genius to innovate. Stowaway Spade is the first Earth pony ever to use magic. It is terrifying then that he should be such a genius, but not impossible.” “I refuse to accept that,” said the Princess flatly. “Which is exactly why progress is so difficult in this world,” Emerald grumbled. “Think about it, Your Highness. The Elements of Harmony are supposed to be protected by a spell only you can break. How then did two guards, whose job it is only to keep people from entering the Temple Hall, make off with them?” “But Spade could not have had anything to do with the heist itself,” Mercury protested. “According to Storm Cloud, he was waiting in Sparkling Crag, in Glimmerwood, and they were ordered to carry the Elements back to him.” Emerald Alembic let out a frustrated scream and tore at his own mane. Then a shimmering of clarity entered his mind. “He could have manipulated their memories,” he said. “I did not inform you of this, Princess, but on the night of Luna’s attack I inspected Whitesnout’s corpse. No doubt a proper autopsy would never have been performed, so I set about it. In his system I found traces of Blue Swamp Lily. Naturally this is how Spade learned their secrets and used this information to manipulate the soldiers into obedience. If he had access and knowledge enough to brew a truthfulness potion from the swamp lily, perhaps he brewed a forgetfulness potion as well.” “That would explain Storm Cloud’s sporadic memory of his time with Stowaway Spade,” the Princess admitted. “But he would have to have implanted memories, not only of his crippled condition—which, if you are correct, must have been an act—but also of his waiting for them, when all the time he was escaping to Glimmerwood by their side. That is no easy feat, Emerald Alembic.” “And besides that there seems no reason for him to pretend to be crippled,” Emerald agreed. Again he was frustrated by being unable to solve the riddle of the facts. With a heavy sigh he gave up the fruitless attempt. “We are all exhausted,” he said finally. “I doubt whether any of us has slept a wink for twenty-four hours. It would be better if we slept. The first full moon of the Double Harvest is only a week away, and while I would like to capture him before he breaks the seal on himself, we must also think about Princess Luna. When we have confirmation that he has the ability to break a sealing spell, we can capture him and learn how to revive Luna. Until then we are of no use to her.” Emerald said all this with the quivering voice of emotion. The Princess of the Day, holding Luna’s safety foremost in her heart, was ready to face any elevation of danger where success meant helping her sister. All of them being in agreement, and every one ready to collapse from exhaustion, they each retired to their chambers. Even the privates were assigned rooms in the tower for their own safety; while Celestia, remaining in the watchtower room, made her way slowly to the rotunda where Princess Luna lay sealed on her bed. She lay beside her frozen sister and fell quickly asleep, far too tired to be roused by her own sobbing.