Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

only three storeys high, but each
storey was twice the height of those in an ordinary house; the windows were as
tall and wide as carriage-house gates. The facade was impressively handsome but
forbiddingly plain, the heavy square pediments of the ranks of windows
emphasising a glowering look, and all was made of a grey-white stone which
glittered slightly, like the pebbles in the drive, and which made the building
hard to look at for very long. It seemed to shimmer slightly, like an elaborate
mirage.
    The merchant blinked, but the garden and the palace
remained. He looked down at himself. The snow was melting on his sleeves and
along the pony’s mane. He looked up. The sky overhead was iron grey, but he
could not tell if it was twilight or cioud cover that made it so. But no snow
fell from it. He was afraid to turn round; would he see wintry woods again. The
blizzard that might have killed them? If this was a mirage, he wished to
believe it was real till it was too late.... May kind fate preserve me, he
thought. If it is not a mirage, this must be the dwelling of the greatest
sorcerer that has ever lived. But where are his guardian beasts? His messenger
spirits? Everything was wrapped in the deepest silence and stillness, deep as
the snowbound stillness that follows a blizzard. When his pony bowed her head
and blew, the sound unnerved him.
    The merchant dismounted stiffly, took his pony’s rein, and
walked forward. His numbed face began to hurt, for the air here was warm. He
stripped off his sodden gloves and loosened his cloak. The pony had come out of
the blizzard and into this—this place at the head of the drive, as if she had
been following a clear path. Perhaps she had. Their feet crunched on the
pebbles; the sound was notliing like the squeak of feet on fresh-fallen snow.
    The huge arched portico over the doorway into the palace was
lit with hundreds of candles. There was not even so much wind as to make the
candle flames flicker.
    He stopped on the threshold, but only for a moment; he was
too tired, and too precariously balanced between fear of what lay behind them
and fear of what lay before, to risk any decision. His feel, had decided for
him; let them have their way. He took the pony through the archway too, partly
for company, partly because he would not leave her behind after all they had
been through together. She balked, briefly, when her hoofs touched carpeting, but
she did not wish to be left alone either, so she crowded up close behind the
merchant and pushed her face into his back.
    They walked down a long corridor together; the old merchant
was simply following the line of lit candles. He saw great dark doorways on
cilher side of him, but he had no urge to explore. The way they went was full
of light, and he went on hopefully, though he would not have wanted to say precisely
for what. He and his pony both needed sleep and food as well as shelter, but it
seemed ridiculous that they should be wandering through an enchanted palace
looking for these things.
    He looked back once over his shoulder. Their passage was
leaving no muddy footprints, no dark damp patches of melted snow. He did not
look back again, He knew they were caught up in some great magic, but this
little reminder of it was almost more frightening than the fact of the palace
itself. They walked here without trace; it was as if they were invisible,
insubstantial, as if they were ghosts.... He tried to rally himself: Think of
the row in an ordinarily grand house if one such as I, and leading a dirty,
shaggy pony as well!, should be found indoors, and uninvited! Think of the
cries of outrage, the rush of servants with their buckets of soapy water to
scrub the carpet—think of the disdainful footmen hustling us back to the door!
    He remembered the passionate strength he had had in the
first weeks following his wife’s death, when he had forbidden any magic or any
practitioners of magic in his house ever again. It was the only absolute law