TheTangleBox

Horris Kew might have been a Disney artist’s rendering of Ichabod Crane. He was tall and gawky and had the look of a badly assembled puppet. His head was too small, his arms and legs too long, and his ears, nose, Adam’s apple, and hair stuck out all over the place. He looked harmless and silly, but he wasn’t. He was one of those men who possess a little bit of power and handle it badly. He believed himself clever and wise and was neither. He was the proverbial snowball who always managed to turn himself into an avalanche. As a result, he was a danger to everyone, himself included, and most of the time he wasn’t even aware of it.

This morning was no exception.

He came up the garden walk to the swinging gate without slowing, closing the distance in huge, loping strides, slammed the gate back as if annoyed that it had not opened of its own accord, and continued on toward the manor house. He looked neither left nor right at the profusion of summertime flowers that were blooming in their meticulously raked beds, on the carefully pruned bushes, and along the newly painted trellises. He did not bother to breathe in the fragrant smells that filled the warm upstate New York morning air. He failed to give a moment’s notice to the pair of robins singing on the low branches of the old shagbark hickory centered on the sweeping lawn leading up to the manor house. Ignoring all, he galloped along with the single-mindedness of a charging rhino.

From the Assembly Hall at the base of the slope below the manor house came the sound of voices rising up like an angry swarm of bees. Horris’s thick eyebrows furrowed darkly over his narrow, hooked nose, a pair of fuzzy caterpillars laboriously working their way toward a meeting. Biggar was still trying to reason with the faithful, he supposed. Trying to reason with the once-faithful, he amended. It wouldn’t work, of course. Nothing would now. That was the trouble with confessions. Once given, you couldn’t take them back. Simple logic, the lesson a thousand charlatans had been taught at the cost of their lives, and Biggar had somehow missed it.

Horris gritted his teeth. What had that idiot been thinking?

He closed on the manor house with furious determination, the shouts from the Assembly Hall chasing after him, elevated suddenly to a frightening new pitch. They would be coming soon. The whole bunch of them, the faithful of so many months become a horde of unreasoning ingrates who would rip him limb from limb if they got their hands on him.

Horris stopped abruptly at the foot of the steps leading up to the veranda that ran the entire length of the gleaming home and thought about what he was losing. His narrow shoulders sagged, his disjointed body slumped, and his Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork in water as he swallowed his disappointment. Five years of work gone. Gone in an instant’s time. Gone like the light of a candle snuffed. He could not believe it. He had worked so hard.

He shook his head and sighed. Well, there were other fish in the ocean, he supposed. And other oceans to fish.

He clumped up the steps, his size-sixteens slapping against the wooden risers like clown shoes. He was looking around now—looking, because this was the last chance he would get. He would never see this house again, this colonial treasure he had come to love so much, this wonderful, old, Revolutionary American mansion, so carefully restored, so lovingly refurbished, just for him. Fallen into ruin on land given over to hunting and snow sports deep in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, not fifty miles off the toll road linking Utica and Syracuse, it had been all but forgotten until Horris had rediscovered it. Horris had a sense of the importance of history and he admired and coveted things historical—especially when yesterday and today could be tied together for his personal gain. Skat Mandu had allowed him to combine the two, making the history of this house and land a nice, neat package tied up at Horris’s feet waiting to be opened.

But now Skat Mandu was history himself.

Horris stopped a second time at the door, seething. All because of Biggar. He was going to lose it all because of Biggar and his big mouth. It was inconceivable. The fifty acres that formed the retreat, the manor house, the guest house, the Assembly Hall, the tennis courts, the stables, horses, attendants, cars, private plane, bank accounts, everything. He wouldn’t be able to salvage any of it. It was all in the foundation’s name, the tax-sheltered Skat Mandu Foundation, and he couldn’t get to any of it in time. The trustees would see to that quick enough once they learned what had happened. Sure, there was the money in the Swiss bank accounts, but that wouldn’t make up for the collapse of his empire.

Other fish in the ocean, he repeated silently—but why did he have to go fishing again, for pity’s sake?

He kicked at the wicker chair next to the door and sent it flying, wishing with all his heart that he could do the same to Biggar.

The shouts rose anew from the Assembly, and there was a very clear and unmistakable cry of “Let’s get him!” Horris quit thinking about what might have been and went quickly inside.

He was barely inside the house when he heard the beating of wings behind him. He tried to slam the door, but Biggar was too quick. He streaked through at top speed, wings flapping wildly, a few feathers falling away as he reached the banister of the stairway that curved upward from the foyer to the second floor and settled down with a low whistle.

Horris stared at the bird in bleak appraisal. “What’s the trouble, Biggar? Couldn’t get them to listen?’

Biggar fluffed his feathers and shook himself. He was coal black except for a crown of white feathers. Quite a handsome bird, actually. A myna of some sort, though Horris had never been able to determine his exact lineage. He regarded Horris now with a wicked, gleaming eye and winked. “Awk! Pretty Horris. Pretty Horris. Biggar is better. Biggar is better.”

Horris pressed his fingers to his temples. “Please. Could we forgo the dumb-bird routine?”

Biggar snapped his beak shut. “Horris, this is all your fault.”

“My fault?” Horris was aghast. He came forward threateningly. “How could this be my fault, you idiot? I’m not the one who opened his big mouth about Skat Mandu! I’m not the one who decided to tell all!”

Biggar flew up the banister a few steps to keep some distance between them. “Temper, temper. Let us remember something here, shall we? This was all your idea, right? Am I right? Does this ring a bell? You thought up this Skat Mandu business, not me. I went along with the program because you said it would work. I was your pawn, as I have been the pawn of humans and humankind all my life. A poor, simple bird, an outcast…”

“An idiot!” Horris edged closer, trying unsuccessfully to stop the clenching of his hands as he imagined them closing about the bird’s scruffy neck.

Biggar scooted a bit farther up the railing. “A victim, Horris Kew. I am the product of you and your kind. I did the best I could, but I can hardly be held to account for my actions based on your level of expectations, now can I?”

Horris stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Just tell me why you did it. Just tell me that.”

Biggar puffed out his chest. “I had a revelation.”

Horris stared. “You had a revelation,” he repeated dully. He shook his head. “Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds.”

“I see nothing ridiculous about it at all. I am in the business of revelations, am I not?”

Horris threw up his hands and turned away. “I do not believe this!” He turned back again furiously. His scarecrow frame seemed to fly out in half-a-dozen directions at once as he gestured. “You’ve ruined us, you stupid bird! Five years of work out the window! Five years! Skat Mandu was the foundation of everything we’ve built! Without him, it’s gone, all of it! What were you thinking?”

“Skat Mandu spoke to me,” Biggar said, huffy himself now.

“There is no Skat Mandu!” Horris shrieked.

“Yes, there is.”

Horris’s broad ears flamed and his even broader nostrils dilated. “Think about what you’re saying, Biggar,” he hissed. “Skat Mandu is a twenty-thousand-year-old wise man that you and I made up in order to convince a bunch of fools to part with their money. Remember? Remember the plan? We thought it up, you and I. Skat Mandu—a twenty-thousand-year-old wise man who had counseled philosophers and leaders throughout time. And now he was back to share his wisdom with us. That was the plan. We bought this land and restored this house and created this retreat for the faithful—the poor, disillusioned faithful—the pathetic, desperate, but well-heeled faithful who just wanted to hear somebody tell them what they already knew! That’s what Skat Mandu did! Through you, Biggar. You were the channeler, a simple bird. I was the handler, the manager of Skat Mandu’s holdings in the temporal world.”

He caught his breath. “But, Biggar, there is no Skat Mandu! Not really, not now, not ever! There’s just you and me!”

“I spoke to him,” Biggar insisted.

“You spoke to him?”

Biggar gave him an impatient look. “You are repeating me. Who is the bird here, Horris?”

Horris gritted his teeth. “You spoke to him? You spoke to Skat Mandu? You spoke to someone who doesn’t exist? Mind telling me what he had to say? Mind sharing his wisdom with me?”

“Don’t be snide.” Biggar’s claws dug into the banister’s polished wood.

“Biggar, just tell me what he had to say.” Horris’s voice sounded like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.

“He told me to tell the truth. He told me to admit that you had made it all up about him and me, but that now I really was in contact with him.”

Horris’s fingers locked in front of him. “Let me get this straight. Skat Mandu told you to confess?”

“He said that the faithful would understand.”

“And you believed him?”

“I had to do what Skat Mandu required of me. I don’t expect you to understand, Horris. It was a matter of conscience. Sometimes you’ve simply got to respond on an emotional level.”

“You’ve short-circuited, Biggar,” Horris declared. “You’ve burnt out all your wiring.”

“And you simply don’t want to face reality,” Biggar snapped. “So save your caustic comments, Horris, for those who need them.”

“Skat Mandu was the perfect scam!” Horris screamed the words so loudly that Biggar jumped in spite of himself. “Look around you, you idiot! We landed in a world where people are convinced they’ve lost control of their lives, where there’s so much happening that it’s overwhelming, where beliefs are the hardest things to come by and money’s the easiest! It’s a world tailor-made for someone like us, just packed full of opportunities to get rich, to live well, to have everything we ever wanted and a few we didn’t! All we had to do was keep the illusion of Skat Mandu alive. And that meant keeping the faithful convinced that the illusion was real! How many followers do we have, Biggar? Excuse me, how many did we have? Several hundred thousand, at least? Scattered all over the world, but making regular pilgrimages to visit the retreat, to listen to a few precious words of wisdom, to pay good money for the experience?”

He took a deep breath. “Did you think for one minute that telling these people that we tricked them into giving money to hear what a bird would tell them—never mind who the bird said he was getting the words from—would be something they would be quick to forgive? Did you imagine that they would say, ‘Oh, that’s all right, Biggar, we understand,’ and go back to wherever they came from in the first place? What a joke! Skat Mandu must be laughing pretty hard just about now, don’t you think?”

Biggar shook his white-crested head. “He is displeased at the lack of respect he is being accorded, is what he is.”

Horris’s mouth tightened. “Please tell him for me, Biggar, that I could care less!”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself, Horris?”

“What?”

Biggar had a wicked gleam in his eye. “Tell him yourself. He’s standing right behind you.”

Horris sniggered. “You’ve lost your mind, Biggar. You really have.”

“Is that so? Is that a fact?” Biggar puffed out his chest. “Then have a look, Horris. Go on, have a look.”

Horris felt a chill climb up his spine. Biggar sounded awfully sure of himself. The big house suddenly felt much larger than it really was, and the silence that settled into it was immense. The riotous cries of the approaching mob disappeared as if swallowed whole. It seemed to Horris that he could sense a dark presence lifting out of the ether behind him, a shadowy form that coalesced and then whispered with sullen insistence,Turn around, Horris, turn around!

Horris took a deep breath in an effort to stop shaking. He had the sinking feeling that somehow, once again, things were getting out of control. He shook his head stubbornly. “I won’t look,” he snapped—and then added maliciously, “you stupid bird!”

Biggar cocked his head. “He’s reeeeeaching for you,” the myna hissed.

Something feather-light brushed Horris Kew’s shoulder, and he whirled about in terror.

There was nothing there.

Or almost nothing. There was a faint something, a darkening of the light, a small waver of movement, a hint of a stirring in the air.

Horris blinked. No, not even that, he amended with satisfaction. Nothing.

Outside, shouting rose up suddenly from the edge of the gardens. Horris turned. The faithful had caught sight of him through the open door and were trampling through the bedding plants and rosebushes and heading for the gate. They carried sharp objects and were making threatening gestures with them.

Horris walked quickly to the door, closed and locked it, and turned back to Biggar. “That’s it for you,” he said. “Good-bye and good luck.”

He walked quickly through the foyer and down the hall past a parlor, and a library sitting room to the kitchen at the back of the house. He could smell fresh wax on the pegged oak floors, and on the kitchen table sat a vase of scarlet roses. He took in the smells and colors as he passed, thinking of better times, regretting how quickly life changed when you least expected it. It was a good thing he was flexible, he decided. It was fortunate that he had foresight.

“Where are we going?” Biggar asked, flying up next to him, curious enough to risk a possible blow. “I assume you have a plan.”

Horris gave him a look that would have frosted a small child at play in midsummer. “Of course I have a plan. It does not, however, include you.”

“That is mean, Horris. And small-minded as well.” Biggar flew ahead and swung back, circling the far end of the kitchen. “Beneath you, really.”

“Very little is beneath me at this point,” Horris declared. “Especially where you are concerned.”

He went to a pantry, pulled open the doors, reached in, triggered the release for the panel behind, and stepped back as the whole assemblage swung open with a ponderous effort. It took a few seconds; the panel was lined with steel.

Biggar swooped down and landed on the top of the open pantry door. “I am your child, Horris,” he lamented disingenuously. “I have been like a son to you. You cannot desert me.”

Horris glanced up. “I disown you. I disinherit you. I banish you from my sight forever.”

From the front of the house came a pounding of fists on the locked door followed rather swiftly by a breaking of glass. Horris tugged nervously on one ear. No, there would be no reasoning with this bunch. The faithful had become a ragged mob of doughheads. Fools discovering their own lack of wit were famous for reverting to form. Would they be sadder but wiser for the experience? he wondered. Or would they simply stay stupid to the end? Not that it mattered.

He had to stoop to pass through the opening behind the panel, which was well under his six-foot-eight height. He had raised all the other doors in the house when he had renovated it. He had told everyone that Skat Mandu needed his space.

Inside was a stairway leading down. He triggered the release once more, and the heavy steel panel swung slowly back into place. Biggar flew through just as the door sealed and sped down the stairwell after Horris.

“He was there behind you, you know,” the bird snapped, flying so close he brushed the other’s face with his wing tip. Horris lashed out with one hand, but missed. “Just for a minute, he was there.”

“Sure he was,” Horris muttered, still a little unnerved by the experience, angry all over again for being reminded of it.

Biggar darted past. “Trying to blame me for your mistakes won’t save you. Besides, you need me!”

Horris groped for the light switch against the shadowed wall as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “Need you for what?”

“Whatever it is you are planning to do.” Biggar flew on into the dark, smug in the knowledge that his eyesight was ten times better than Horris’s.

“Rather confident of that, aren’t you?” Horris cursed silently as his searching fingers snagged on a splinter of wood.

“If for nothing else, you need me as a cheering section. Face it, Horris. You cannot stand not having an audience. You require someone to admire your cleverness, to applaud your planning.” Biggar was a voice in the dark. “What is the purpose of concocting a well-devised scheme if there is no one to appreciate its intrinsic brilliance? How shallow the victory if there is no one to hail its masterful execution!” The bird cleared his throat. “Of course, you need me, too, to help with your new plan. What is it, anyway?”

Horris found the light switch and flicked it on. He was momentarily blinded. “The plan is to get as far away from you as possible.”

The basement spread away through a forest of timbered pillars that held up the flooring of the old manor house and cast their shadows in dark columns through the spray of yellow light. Horris marched ahead resolutely, hearing pounding now on the steel panel above. Well, let’s see what they can do with that! he sneered. He wound his way through the timbers to a corridor that tunneled back into shadow. Another light switch triggered a row of overheads, and stooping again to avoid the low ceiling, he started down the passageway.

Again Biggar passed him by, a fleet black shadow. “We belong together, Horris. Birds of a feather and all. Come on. Tell me where we’re going.”

“No.”

“Very well, be mysterious if you must. But you admit we are still a team, don’t you?”

“No.”

“You and me, Horris. How long have we been together now? Think about all we’ve been through.”

Horris thought, mostly about himself. Hunched down in a crablike stance as he angled through the narrow tunnel, legs bent, arms cranked in, nose plowing through musty air and dusty gloom, ears fanned out like an elephant’s, he considered the road he had traveled in life to arrive at this moment. It had been a twisty one, rife with potholes and sudden curves, slicked over with rain and sleet, brightened now and again with brief stretches of sunlight.

Horris had a few things going for him in life, but none of them had served him very well. He was smart enough, but when the chips were down he always seemed to lack some crucial piece of information. He could reason things through, but his conclusions frequently seemed to stop one step short. He possessed an extraordinary memory, but when he called upon it for help he could never seem to remember what counted.

Skill-wise, he was a minor conjurer—not a magician who pulled rabbits out of hats, but one of a very few in the whole world who could do real magic. Which was because he was not from this world in the first place, of course, but he tried not to dwell on that point since his abilities were somewhat marginal when measured against those of his fellow practitioners.

Mostly, Horris was an opportunist. To be an opportunist one needed an appreciation for the possibilities, and Horris knew about possibilities better than he knew about almost anything. He was forever considering how something might be turned to his advantage. He was convinced that the wealth of the world—of any world—had been created for his ultimate benefit. Time and space were irrelevant; in the end, everything belonged to him. His opinion of himself was extreme. He, better than anyone, understood the fine art of exploitation. He alone could analyze the weaknesses that were indigenous to all creatures and determine how they might be mined. He was certain his insight approached prescience, and he took it as his mission in life to improve his lot at the expense of almost everyone. He possessed a relentless passion for using people and circumstance to achieve this end. Horris cared not a whit for the misfortune of others, for moral conventions, for noble causes, the environment, stray cats and dogs, or little children. These were all concerns for lesser beings. He cared only for himself, for his own creature comforts, for twisting things about when it suited him, and for schemes that reinforced his continuing belief that all other life-forms were impossibly stupid and gullible.

Thus the creation of Skat Mandu and his cult of fervid followers, believers in a twenty-thousand-year-old wise man’s words as channeled by a myna.

Even now, it made Horris smile.

Horris admitted to only one real character flaw, and that was a nagging inability to keep things under his control once he started them in motion. Somehow even the most carefully considered and well planned of his schemes ended up taking on a life of their own and leaving him stranded somewhere along the way. And even though it was never his fault, it seemed that he was always, inexplicably, being relegated to the role of scapegoat.

He reached the end of the corridor and stepped into a thirty-foot-square room which housed stacks of folding tables and chairs and crates of Skat Mandu pamphlets and reading material. The tools of his trade, enough fodder for a fine bonfire.

He looked beyond the mounds of useless inventory to the single steel-lined door at the far side of the room and sighed wearily. Beyond that door was a tunnel that ran for almost a mile underneath the compound to a garage, a silver and black 4WD Land Cruiser, and safety. A careful planner was never without a bolt hole in case things went haywire, as they had just done here. He had not expected to put this one to use quite so soon, but circumstances had conspired against him once again. He grimaced. He supposed it was a good thing that he was always prepared for the worst, but it was an annoying way to live.

He glared purposefully at Biggar, who was perched on the crates safely out of reach. “How many times have I warned you against giving in to acts of conscience, Biggar?”

“Many,” Biggar replied, and rolled his eyes.

“To no purpose, it seems.”

“I’m sorry. I am only a simple bird.”

Horris considered that mitigating circumstance. “I suppose you expect another chance, don’t you?”

Biggar lowered his head to keep from snickering. “I would be most grateful, Horris.”

Horris Kew’s gangly frame bent forward suddenly in the manner of a crouched wolf. “This is the last time I ever want to hear of Skat Mandu, Biggar. The last. Sever whatever lingering relationship you share with our former friend right now. No more private revelations. No more voices from the distant past. From this moment on, you listen only to me. Got it?”

The myna sniffed. Horris didn’t understand anything, but there wasn’t any point in telling him so. “I hear and obey.”

Horris nodded. “Good. Because if it happens again, I will have you stuffed and mounted.”

His wintry gray eyes conveyed the depth of his feelings far more eloquently than his words, and Biggar’s beak clacked shut on the snappy retort he was about to make.

From far back in the cellar came a rending sound—the prying of nailed wood away from its seating. Horris stared. The faithful were tearing up the floorboards! The steel door had not deterred them as completely as he had anticipated. He felt a tightening of his breathing passages as he hurried not toward the tunnel door but through the crates and furniture to a series of pictures bolted to the wall. He reached the fake Degas, touched a pair of studs in the gilt frame, and released the casing. It swung away on concealed hinges to reveal a combination safe. Horris worked the dial feverishly, listening to the sounds of the enraged mob as he did so, and when he heard the catch release, he swung open the layered steel door.

He reached inside and withdrew an intricately carved wooden box.

“Hope springs eternal,” he heard Biggar snicker.

Well, it did, he supposed—at least in this instance. The box was his greatest treasure—and he had no idea what it was. He had conjured it up quite by accident shortly after coming into this world, one of those fortuitous twists of fate that occur every so often in the weaving of spells. He had recognized the importance of the box right from the first. This was a creation of real magic, the carvings ancient and spell-laden, rife with secret meaning. Something was sealed inside, something of great power. The Tangle Box, he had named it, impressed by the weave of symbols and script that ringed its surface. It was seamless and lidless, and nothing he did would release its secrets. Now and again he thought he could hear something give in its bindings, in the seals that bound it close about, but conjure though he might the box defied his best efforts to uncover what lay within.

Still, it was his best and most important treasure from this world, and he was not about to leave it to those cretins who followed.

He tucked the Tangle Box under his arm and hastened on across the room, weaving through the obstacle course of spare furniture and worthless literature to reach the tunnel door. There he worked with a steady hand a second combination dial set close against a lever that secured the door’s heavy locks, heard them release, and shoved down.

The lever did not budge.

Horris Kew frowned, looking a little like a truant caught out of school. He spun the dial angrily and tried the combination again. Still the lever would not budge. Horris was sweating now, hearing shouts to go along with the tearing up of floorboards. He tried the combination again and yet again. Each time, he clearly heard the lock release. Each time, the lever refused to move.

Finally his frustration grew so great that he stepped back and started kicking at the door. Biggar watched impassively. Horris began swearing, then jumping up and down in fury. Finally, after one last futile try at freeing the inexplicably recalcitrant lever, he sagged back against the door, resigned to his fate.

“I can’t understand it,” he murmured woodenly. “I test it myself almost every day. Every day. And now it won’t work. Why?”

Biggar cleared his throat “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Warn me? Warn me about what?”

“At the risk of incurring your further displeasure, Horris—Skat Mandu. I told you he was displeased.”

Horris stared up at him. “You are obsessing, Biggar.”

Biggar shook his head, ruffled his feathers, and sighed. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we, Horris? Do you want to get out of here or not?”

“I want to get out,” Horris Kew admitted bleakly. “But ...”

Biggar cut him short with an impatient wave of one wing. “Just listen, all right? Don’t interrupt, don’t say anything. Just listen. Whether you like it or not, I am in fact in touch with the real Skat Mandu. I did have a revelation, just as I told you. I have reached into the beyond and made contact with the spirit of a wise man and warrior of another time, and he is the one we call Skat Mandu.”

“Oh, for cripes sake, Biggar!” Horris could not help himself.

“Just listen. He has a purpose in coming to us, a purpose of great importance, though he has not yet revealed to me what that purpose is. What I do know is that if we want out of this basement and away from that mob, we must do as he says. Not much is required. A phrase or two of conjuring, nothing more. But you must say it, Horris.You .”

Horris rubbed his temples and thought about the madness that ran deep within the core of all human experience.

Surely this was the apex. His voice dripped with venom. “What must I say, O mighty channeler?”

“Skip the sarcasm. It’s wasted on me. You must speak these words. ‘Rashun, oblight, surena! Larin, kestel, maneta! Ruhn!’ “

Horris started to object, then caught himself. One or two of the words he recognized, and they were most definitely words of power. The others he had never heard, but they had the feel of conjuring and the weight of magic. He clutched the Tangle Box against his chest and stared up at Biggar. He listened to the sounds of the mob’s pursuit, louder now, the flooring breached and the basement open. Time was running out.

Fear etched deep lines in his narrow face. His resistance gave way. “All right.” He rose and straightened. “Why not?” He cleared his throat. “Rashun, oblight, sur—”

“Wait!” Biggar interrupted with a frantic flutter of wings. “Hold out the box!”

“What?”

“The Tangle Box! Hold it out, away from you!”

Horris saw it all now, the truth behind the secret of the box, and he was both astonished and terrified by what it meant He might have thrown down the box and run for his life if there had been somewhere to run. He might have resisted Biggar’s command if there had been another to obey. He might have done almost anything if presented with another set of circumstances, but life seldom gives you a choice in pivotal moments and so it was now.

Horris held out the box before him and began to chant. “Rashun, oblight, surena! Larin, kestel, maneta! Ruhn!”

Something hissed in Horris Kew’s ears, a long, slow sigh of satisfaction laced with pent-up rage and fury and the promise of slow revenge. Instantly the room’s light went from white-gold to wicked green, a pulsing reflection of some color given off deep within a primeval forest where old growth still holds sway and clawed things yet patrol the final perimeters of their ancient world. Horris would have dropped the Tangle Box if his hands would have obeyed him, but they seemed inexplicably locked in place, his fingers turned to claws about the carved surface, his nerve endings tied to the sudden pulse of life that rose from within. The top of the box simply disappeared and from out of its depths rose a wisp of something Horris Kew had thought he would never see again.

Fairy mists.

They rose in a veil and settled across the steel door that blocked entry to the tunnel, masking it like paint, then dissolving it until nothing remained but a vague hint of shadows at play against a black-holed nothingness.

“Hurry!” Biggar hissed at his ear, already speeding past. “Go through before it closes!”

The bird was gone in an instant, and his disappearance seemed to propel Horris Kew on as well, flinging himself after, still carrying the once-treasured box. He could have looked into it now to see what was hidden there. It was lidless, and he could have peeked to discover its secret. Once he would have given anything to do so. Now he dared not.

He went through the veil, through the web of fairy mists come somehow out of his past, eyes wide and staring, thinking to find almost anything waiting, to have almost anything happen. There was a sudden vision of vanishing gold coins and fading palatial grounds, the bitter tally of his losses, the sum total of five wasted years. It was there and then gone. He found himself in a corridor that lacked floor or ceiling or walls, a thin light that he swam through like a netted fish seeking to escape its trap. There was no movement around him, no sound, no sense of being or time or place, only the passage and the frightening belief that any deviation would see him lost forever.

What have I done? he asked himself in terror and dismay.

No answer came, and he struggled on like a man coated in hardening mud, the freeze of night working down to the marrow of his bones, the cold of his fate a certainty that whispers wretchedly of lost hope. He thought he could see Biggar, thought he could hear the bird’s paralyzed squawk, and took heart from the fervent hope that the miserable creature’s suffering was greater than his own.

And then abruptly the mists were gone, and he was free of the paralytic light. It was night, and the night was velvet black, the warm air filled with pleasant smells and reassuring sounds. He stood upon a plain, the grasses thick and soft against his feet and ankles, their windswept flow running on like an ocean toward distant mountains. He glanced skyward. Eight moons glowed brightly—mauve, peach, burnt rose, jade, beryl, sea green, turquoise, and white. Their colors mixed and flooded down upon the sleeping land.

It can’t be!

Biggar emerged from somewhere behind him, flying rather unsteadily, lighting on the nearest of a cluster of what appeared to be small pin oaks colored bright blue. He shook himself, preened briefly, and glanced around.

When he saw the moons, he jumped a foot. “Awk!” he croaked, forgetting himself momentarily. He spit in distaste and shivered. “Horris?” he whispered. His eyes were as wide as saucers, no small feat for a bird. “Are we where I think we are?”

Horris was unable to answer. He was unable to speak at all. He simply stared skyward, then around at the landscape, then down at his feet, then at the rune-scripted surface of the Tangle Box, lidded once more and closed away.

Landover! This was Landover!

“Welcome home, Horris Kew,” a low hiss came from over his shoulder—insidious, pervasive, and as cold as death.

Horris felt his heart drop to his feet. This time when he turned around, there really was something waiting.

Child

Ben Holiday came awake slowly, languidly, and smiled. He could feel Willow’s deliberate stillness next to him. He knew without having to look that she was watching him. He knew it as well as he knew that he loved her more than his own life. He was facing away from her in the bed, turned on his side toward the open windows where dawn’s faint light crept through to dapple the shadowed bedchamber with patches of silver, but he knew. He reached back for her and felt her fingers close over his hand. He breathed deeply of summer air fresh with the smell of forest trees, grasses, and flowers and thought how lucky he was.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

“Good morning,” she replied.

He let his eyes open all the way then, rolled over on his other side, and propped himself up on his elbow. She faced him from inches away, her eyes enormous in the pale light, her emerald hair cascading down about her face and over her shoulders, her skin smooth and flawless, as if she were impervious to age and time. He was always stunned by how beautiful she was, a sylph born of a woodland nymph and a water sprite, an impossibility in the world from which he had come, but merely a wondrous truth here in Landover.

“You were watching me,” he said.

“I was. I was watching you sleep. I was listening to you breathe.”

Her pale green skin seemed dark and exotic in the early half light, and when she stirred beneath the covers she had the look of a cat, sleek and silky. He considered how long they had been together, first as companions, then as husband and wife. How mysterious she still seemed. She embodied all the things he loved about this world—its beauty, mystery, magic, and wonder. She was these and so much more, and when he woke like this and saw her, he thought he might have somehow mixed up dreaming with real life.

It was a little more than two years since he had come to Landover, a journey between worlds, between lives, between fates. He had come in desperation, unhappy with the past, anxious for a different future. He had left his high rise in Chicago for a castle called Sterling Silver. He had given up his law practice to become a King. He had buried the ghosts of his dead wife and unborn child and found Willow. He had bought a magic kingdom out of a Christmas catalog when he knew full well that such a thing could not possibly exist, taking a chance nevertheless that perhaps it might, and the gamble had paid off. None of it had come easy, of course. A transition of worlds and lives and fates never does. But Ben Holiday had fought the battles his journey required of him and won them all, so now he was entitled to stay, to lay claim to his new life and world and fate, and to be King of a place that he had believed once upon a time to be only a dream.

To be Willow’s husband, lover, and best friend, he added, when he had given up on the possibility that he could ever be any of those things to a woman again.

“Ben,” she said, drawing his eyes to her own. There was warmth there, but something else, too—something he could not quite define. Expectation? Excitement? He wasn’t sure.

He shifted higher on his elbow, feeling her hand tighten about his.

“I am carrying your child,” she said.

He stared. He didn’t know what he had expected her to say, but it definitely wasn’t that.

Her eyes glistened. “I have suspected as much for several days, but it was not until last night that I was able make certain. I tested myself in the way of the fairy people, kneeling among the garden’s columbine at midnight, touching two vines to see if they would respond. When they reached for each other and entwined themselves, I knew. It has happened as the Earth Mother once foretold.”

Ben remembered then. They were engaged in the search for the black unicorn and each had, on separate occasions, gone to the Earth Mother for help in the quest. She had told them then that they were important to her and specifically charged Ben with protecting Willow. When the quest was finished and the secret of the unicorn discovered, Willow had revealed to Ben what the Earth Mother had confided in her—that one day they would share a child. Ben had not known what to think then. He was still haunted by the ghost of Annie and not yet certain of his future with Willow. He had forgotten the Earth Mother’s prophecy since, preoccupied with the business of being King and lately of dealing with the old King’s son, Michel Ard Rhi, who had almost succeeded in stealing away the medallion that gave Ben power over the Paladin, the King’s champion. Without the Paladin, Ben could not continue as Landover’s King. Without the medallion, Ben would have a tough time just staying alive.

But all that was past now, the threats posed by the appearance of the black unicorn and Michel Ard Rhi ended, and what surfaced from the memories of those events was the Earth Mother’s prophecy, a promise of yet another change in an already indelibly changed life.

Ben shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.” Then he caught himself, his eyes snapping up. “Yes I do. I know what to say. It’s the most wonderful news I can imagine. I thought I would never have a child after Annie died. I had given up on everything. But finding you ... And now hearing this ...” His smile broadened and he almost laughed at himself. “Maybe I don’t know what to say after all!”

She smiled back, radiant. “I think you do, Ben. The words are mirrored in your eyes.”

He reached over and pulled her close to him. “I’m very happy.”

He thought momentarily of what it would be like to be a father, to have a child to raise. He had tried to imagine it once, long ago, and had since given up. Now he would begin again. The impact of the responsibilities he faced sent him spinning. It would be hard work, he knew. But it would be wonderful.

“Ben,” she said quietly, drawing away so that he could see her face. “Listen to me a moment. There are things you have to understand. You are no longer in your world. Everything is different here. This child’s coming to life will be different. The child itself will likely not be what you expect…”

“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “What are you saying?”

Her gaze fell, then lifted again, steady but uneasy. “We are from two different worlds, Ben, from two different lives, and this child is a joining of both, something that has never happened before.”

“Is the baby in some sort of danger?” he asked hurriedly.

“No.”

“Then nothing else matters. It will be ours, whatever the mix of its blood and history. It will be the best of both of us.”

Willow shook her head. “But each world remains a mystery in some ways, yours to me, mine to you, and the differences cannot always be easily explained or understood ...”

He put a finger to her lips. “We’ll work it out. All of it.” He was firm, insistent. He misread entirely the nature of her concern and brushed her words aside in his haste to experience the euphoria he was feeling. “A baby, Willow! I want to go tell someone about this! I want to tell everyone! C’mon! Let’s get up!”

He was out of bed in an instant, springing up and rushing about, pulling on his clothes, charging to the window and yelling wildly with glee, coming back to kiss her over and over. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll love you for ever and ever.”

He was dressed and out the door before she had even left the bed, and the words that perhaps she would have spoken to him were left forever unsaid.

He went down the castle stairs two at a time, bounding as if he were a child himself, humming and talking and whistling, buoyant as a cork. He was a man of average size with a hawk nose and frosty blue eyes. His brownish hair had begun to recede slightly, but his face and hands were smooth and taut. He had been a boxer when he was younger, and he still trained regularly. He was lean and fit and moved easily. He was approaching forty when he first crossed into Landover, but he didn’t know how old he was anymore. He sometimes felt as if he had quit aging altogether. This morning he was certain of it. He could feel the pulse of Sterling Silver beneath his feet, the beat of her heart, of her lifeblood, of her soul. He could feel the warmth of her stones and mortar, the whisper of her breath in the fresh morning air. She was alive, the home of Landover’s Kings, a thing of such magic that she sustained herself and relied only on the presence of a Master to function. When Ben had first come to her, twenty years of neglect had reduced her to a tarnished wreck. Now she was restored, polished and shining and vibrant, and he could sense her thoughts as clearly as his own when he was safe within her walls.

He could feel her joy for him now as he skipped off the stairs and headed for the dining hall. He could hear her wish for his unborn child’s long life and happiness.

Achild , he thought over and over.My child.

He was getting used to the idea a whole lot more quickly than he would have believed possible.

It occurred to him as he entered the dining hall, with its tapestry-hung walls and its long trestle table already set and occupied, that he should have waited for Willow—that he should still wait, for that matter—before delivering the news. But he didn’t think he could do that. He didn’t think he could help himself.

Abernathy and Bunion sat at the table. Abernathy, the Court Scribe, was a man who had been turned into a soft-coated Wheaten Terrier by a bit of misguided magic and forced to stay that way. Abernathy was shaggy-faced and splendidly dressed, possessed of human hands and feet and able to talk better than most regular humans. Bunion, the King’s messenger, was a kobold who, so far as anyone knew, had never been turned into anything other than what he was. Bunion was monkey-faced and gnarled with sharp teeth and a smile that belonged on an interested shark. The one quality they shared was an unswerving loyalty to Ben and the throne.

They paused in unison with forks raised to mouth as they saw the High Lord’s face on entering.

“Good morning, good morning!” he beamed.

The forks stayed poised. A mix of astonishment and suspicion crossed their faces. Two sets of eyes blinked.

Abernathy recovered first. “Good morning, High Lord,” he greeted. He paused. “Slept well, I trust?”

Ben came forward, ebullient to his toes. The china and glassware glittered, and the smell of hot food rose from the silver serving trays. Parsnip, the cook and other kobold who served the throne, had outdone himself again. Or at least it seemed that way to Ben in his euphoria. He snatched up a small apple muffin and popped it into his mouth on his way to his seat. He glanced about for Questor Thews, but the wizard was nowhere in sight. Maybe he should wait, he thought. Questor’s absence gave him a reason. Wait for Questor and Willow. Call in Parsnip from the kitchen. That way the announcement could be made to everyone at the same time. That seemed like a good idea. Just wait. That’s what he would do.

“Guess what?” he said.

Abernathy and Bunion exchanged a hasty glance. “I have to tell you, High Lord, that I am not particularly fond of guessing games,” declared his scribe. “And Bunion hates them.”

“Oh, come on. Guess!”

“Very well.” Abernathy gave a large, put-upon sigh. “What?” he asked compliantly.

Ben took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you. Not yet. But it’s good news. It’s wonderful news!”

Bunion showed a few teeth and muttered something unintelligible. Abernathy went back to eating. “Be sure to let us know when you feel the moment is right.”

“As soon as Questor gets here,” Ben advised, seating himself. “And Willow. And Parsnip. Everyone. Don’t leave until they get here.”

Abernathy nodded. “I’m glued to my seat, High Lord. By the way, I hope this announcement will take place before this morning’s scheduled land-use planning meeting with the representatives of the Greensward and the River Country?”

Ben slapped his forehead. “I’d forgotten!”

“And the noon lunch with the new district judges you appointed for the northern lands?”

“I’d forgotten that, too!”

“And this afternoon’s meeting with the irrigation planning committee to start work on the deserts east of the Greensward?”

“That one I remember.”

“Good. Did you also remember the meeting with the kitchen staff to discuss the ongoing disappearance of food from the larder? It is getting worse, I am afraid.”

Ben frowned in annoyance. “Drat it, why did you schedule all this for today?”

“I didn’t. You did. It is the beginning of a new week and you always like to start off a new week by cramming in as many projects as you can manage.” Abernathy dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “Overscheduling. I’ve warned you about this before.”

“Thanks for reminding me.” Ben reached for a plate and shoveled food onto it from the platters. Bread with jam, eggs, and fruit. “Well, we’ll get to it, all of it. There’s plenty of time.” He put the plate down in front of him, his mind already skipping ahead to the matters Abernathy had listed. Why, in the name of sanity, did anyone feel compelled to steal from the larder? It wasn’t as if there was a food shortage. “If Willow isn’t down here in a few minutes, I’ll go up and get her. And Bunion can find Questor, wherever he’s ...”

At that a door was flung open at the far end of the hall leading up from the lower entry inside the castle gates, and Questor Thews appeared.

“This is the last straw, simply the last!” he declared furiously.

He strode to the table without a pause, muttering with such vehemence that those gathered were left staring. The Court Wizard wore his trademark gray robes decorated with brightly colored patches of cloth and wrapped at the waist with a crimson sash, a ragtag scarecrow figure, tall and thin, all sticks and wisps of flying beard and hair. It was immediately apparent that he might have dressed and groomed himself better—at least to the extent of new robes and a trim about the ears, as Ben had tried to suggest on more than one occasion—but he saw no reason to change what he was comfortable with and so did not. He was mild and gentle and not given over easily to fits of pique, and it was strange to see him so agitated now.

He came to a halt before them and threw back his robes as if to shed himself of whatever it was that so burdened him this beautiful summer morning. “He’s back!” he announced.

“Who’s back?” Ben asked.

“Back and not a bit repentant for anything he’s done! There is not the least shame in him, not the least! He comes up to the gate as bold as you please and announces he’s here!” Questor’s face was reddening as he spoke, turning dangerously crimson. “I thought we’d seen the last of him twenty some years ago, but like the proverbial bad penny, he’s turned up anew!”

“Questor.” Ben tried to get a word in edgewise. “Who are you talking about?”

Questor’s gaze was fierce. “I’m talking about Horris Kew!”

Now Abernathy was on his feet as well. “That trickster! He wouldn’t dare come back! He was exiled! Questor Thews, you’ve been out in the sun too long!”

“Feel free to walk down and have a look for yourself!” Questor gave him a chilly smile. “He presents himself as a supplicant, come to ask forgiveness from the High Lord. He wants the ban of exile lifted. He wants back into Landover!”

“No!” Abernathy’s exhortation came out as something very close to a growl. He wheeled on Ben, bristling. “High Lord, no! Do not see him! Refuse him entrance! Send him away immediately!”

“I wouldn’t send him away if I were you!” Questor snapped, crowding forward to stand next to the dog. “I’d have him seized and thrown into the deepest, darkest prison I could find! I’d lock him up and throw away the key!”

Willow had come down the stairs and into the room and was now seating herself next to Ben. She gave him a questioning stare as she listened, but he could only shrug to indicate his own lack of understanding.

“Hold up a minute,” he interjected finally. Bunion was the only one who wasn’t giving any indication of what he thought, sitting across from Ben with that disconcerting grin on his face. “I’m not following any of this. Who is Horris Kew?”

“Your worst nightmare!” Abernathy sniffed, as if that explained everything.

Questor Thews was only slightly more eloquent. “I’ll tell you who he is. Horris Kew is the biggest troublemaker who ever lived! A conjurer of a very minor sort, one with just enough magic to get into mischief. I thought we were rid of him, but I should have known better! Abernathy, remember the cow episode?”

“The cow episode?” Ben asked.

Consumed by his tirade, Questor wasn’t listening. “Horris claimed he was trying to establish communication with the cows to permit better control over their milking habits, and things got out of hand. His conjuring efforts drove the poor beasts to a frenzy. They broke loose country-wide and trampled down the entire wheat harvest and several towns in the bargain. It was the same with the chickens. The next thing you know he’s subverted the evolutionary process, and they’re flying like birds and dropping eggs all over the place.”

Ben grinned. “What?”

“And don’t forget about the cats!” Abernathy snapped.

“He found a way to organize them into hunting packs in some harebrained scheme to rid the country of mice and rats, but it backfired and they ended up hunting dogs!” He shivered.

“That was bad,” Questor agreed, nodding emphatically at Ben. “But the worst thing he did, the thing that got him banished, was to conjure up that fast-growing plant that took seed overnight and turned everything within fifty miles of Sterling Silver into a jungle!” Questor folded his arms defiantly. “It took weeks to cut a way through it! And while it was being cut down, while the King and his court were trapped in the castle, Abaddon’s demons took advantage of the Paladin’s absence to raid the countryside in earnest. Dozens of towns, farms, and lives were lost. It was a mess.”

“I don’t get it,” Ben admitted. “What was all this supposed to accomplish? It sounds like he might have had good intentions.”

“Good intentions?’ Questor Thews was livid. “I hardly think so! These were schemes of extortion! The cows and chickens and cats and plants were levers with which to pry loose the purse strings of those with money! Horris Kew never cared a thing about anyone but himself! Ten minutes after one scheme collapsed, he was already hatching a new one! Excuse the choice of words.”

“But, Questor, this was more than twenty years ago, you said.” Ben was trying hard not to laugh.

“There, you see?” Questor snapped irritably, the other’s facial contortions not escaping his notice. “Horris Kew always seems harmless enough, just a bit of an annoyance. No one takes him seriously. Even my brother ignored him until that last bit with the demons, and then Meeks wanted him gone, too. Seems the unexpected appearance of the demons interfered with one of his own schemes, and my brother could tolerate almost anything but that.”

Meeks—Questor Thews’s brother, the Court Wizard before him, the man who had tricked Ben into coming into Landover and thereafter become his worst enemy. Gone, but hardly forgotten. He would surely not suffer a man like Horris Kew to cross up his plans.

“Anyway,” Questor finished, “my brother persuaded the old King to banish Horris, so Horris was banished, and that was that.”

“Uh-huh.” Ben rubbed his chin. “Banished to where?”

Questor looked decidedly uncomfortable. “To your world, High Lord,” he admitted reluctantly.

“To Earth? For the last twenty years?” Ben tried to remember reading anything about someone named Horris Kew.

“A favorite dumping ground for rejects and annoyances, I’m afraid. Not much you can do with magic where there’s so little belief in its existence, you know.”

Abernathy nodded solemnly. They stood staring at Ben, apparently out of steam, waiting for a response. Ben looked at Willow, who was eating now and refused to look back, and he remembered that he had wanted to tell his friends about the baby. He guessed that would have to wait

“Well, why don’t we hear what he has to say,” Ben suggested, rather curious about someone who could upset even the normally unflappable Abernathy. “Maybe he’s changed.”

Questor went from crimson to flaming scarlet “Changed? When cows fly!” He stopped, apparently thinking that where Horris was concerned perhaps that wasn’t qualification enough. “Never, High Lord!” he amended, just to make things perfectly clear. “Don’t see him. Don’t let him set one foot into this castle. I would have sent the guard to greet him on the road if I had known he was coming. I still cannot believe he had the gall to return!” He paused, suddenly perplexed. “In fact, how did he return?”

“Doesn’t matter. He is a supplicant,” Ben pointed out patiently. “I can’t be sending supplicants away without even speaking to them. What sort of precedent would that set? I have to at least speak to him. What can it hurt?”

“You don’t know, High Lord,” Abernathy said ominously.

“You really don’t,” Questor agreed.

“Get rid of him right now.”

“Don’t let him within a mile of you.”

Ben pursed his lips. He had never heard his advisors so adamant about anything. He did not see how a simple conversation could cause problems for him, but he was not inclined to dismiss their warning out of hand.

“Do you believe that your magic is a match for his?’ he asked Questor after a moment.

Questor drew himself up. “More than a match. But he is a very slippery character.”

Ben nodded. “Well, I can’t just send him away. Why don’t we all see him together. That way you can warn me if he tries anything. How about it?”

Abernathy sat down without a word. Questor stiffened even further, but finally nodded his agreement. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he declared curtly, and signaled to a retainer standing at the far end of the hall.

They sat in silence then, waiting. Ben reached for Willow’s hand and squeezed it gently. She smiled back at him. At the far end of the room, Parsnip appeared from out of the kitchen, gave a brief greeting to the silent assemblage, and disappeared back in again. Ben was thinking that he would like to dispose quickly of Horris Kew and get on with his day. He was thinking about the meetings he had scheduled and the work that needed doing. He had believed once that no one worked harder than a trial lawyer, but he had since discovered that Kings did. There were constant decisions required, plans to consider, and problems by the score to resolve. So much depended on him. So many people were affected by his actions. He liked the challenge, but was continually daunted by the amount of responsibility.

Sometimes he thought about the circumstances that had brought him to this place in his life and wondered that such a thing could happen. It was proof that anything was possible. He would measure where he was from where he had been and be amazed. He would measure, and he would tell himself once again that however severe the pressures and demands he would never exchange his present life for his past.

“You could still change your mind about this, High Lord,” Questor advised quietly, not quite ready to let the argument die.

But Ben was still thinking about his life, applied the comment accordingly, and found the wizard’s assessment wrong. He was a man who had rediscovered himself by daring to take a chance that others would not have, and changing his mind now was not a reasonable option. He was going to be afather , he thought with renewed amazement. What would that be like for a man who had passed his fortieth year with no children? What would it be like for a man who’d had no sense of family for so long? He wanted a child, but he had to admit that he didn’t know if he was ready for one.

There was a clomping of boots at the far end of the room, and a man entered. He was tall and gangly and strange-looking. He had arms and legs that were akimbo, and a nose, ears, and Adam’s apple that stuck out like they were parts attached to a Mister Potato Head. He was dressed in gray supplicant’s robes that looked like they had seen service last as floor mats in a stable. His feet were dusty and bare, his hands were clasped before him beseechingly, and his body was stooped. He came forward at something approaching a weary shuffle, his head bobbing. A bird with black feathers and a white crest sat on his shoulder, bright eyes searching.

“High Lord,” Horris Kew greeted, and dropped to his knees. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Ben rose, thinking to himself that this fellow was the most harmless-looking threat he had ever seen. “Stand up,” he ordered. “Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself. Your press has been pretty bad up to now.”

Horris rose, a pained look on his field-plow face. He had a rather bad tic in one eye that gave him the look of a man flinching from an imagined blow. “I confess everything, High Lord. I have done all that I am accused of doing. Whatever Questor Thews and Abernathy have told you, I admit. I don’t propose to argue any of it. I just want to ask forgiveness.”

Questor snorted. “What are you up to, Horris Kew? You’re up to something.”

“Awk! Biggar is better!” the bird squawked.

“That bird looks familiar,” Abernathy declared, squinting darkly at Biggar.

“Just a common myna, my companion on the road.” The tic in Horris Kew’s eye twitched double-time.

Abernathy frowned. “I suppose you’ve trained him to attack dogs?”

“Awwwkk! Fleas! Fleas!” the bird cried.

Ben came around the table to put himself between Abernathy and the bird. “Aren’t you supposed to be in exile, Horris? What Brings you back?”

“High Lord, I simply want another chance.” A truly penitent look settled across Horris Kew’s angular face. “I have had twenty years to repent, to consider my mistakes, to think about my misconduct. I was lucky I escaped Landover alive, as Questor Thews can tell you. But now I wish to come back to my home and start over again. Is this possible?”

Ben studied him. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t do it, High Lord,” Questor cautioned at once.

“Don’t even think about it, High Lord,” Abernathy added.

“Awk! Hooray for Horris, Hooray for Horris!” the bird declared.

“Thank you, Biggar.” Horris patted the bird affectionately and returned his gaze to Ben. “I have a plan, should you decide to let me return, High Lord. I ask nothing of you or anyone but to be left alone. I shall live out my life as a hermit, a bother to no one. But should the need arise, I stand ready to serve in any capacity required. I have some little knowledge of magic that may someday be of use. I offer it for when you think it appropriate. You can depend on me to come if called.”

“I believe that it was your use of magic that got you in trouble the last time,” Ben admonished softly.

“Yes, yes, too true. But I will not involve myself in the affairs of the country or her people unless I am asked,” Horris said, lie, tic went the bad eye. “Should I violate this covenant, you may restore the ban immediately.”

“No,” Questor Thews said.

“No,” Abernathy echoed.

Ben tried to keep from smiling. He should probably be taking this more seriously than he was, he thought, but it was hard to get too excited over someone who looked like this fellow and whose worst offense was making chickens fly and cows rebel against farmers.

“Awk! Pretty lady,” the bird whistled suddenly.

Willow smiled and glanced at Ben. He remembered the child.

“I will think about it and give you an answer in several days,” Ben announced, ignoring the groans from Questor and Abernathy. “You can come back then.”

“Happily, High Lord,” Horris Kew responded, bowing deeply. “Thank you, thank you. I am indebted.”

He backed quickly from the room and was escorted away. Ben wondered what kind of bird Biggar was. He wondered how many words the bird could say.

“Well, that was a monumentally foolish decision!” Questor Thews snapped in disgust. “If I am permitted to say so, High Lord!”

“You are,” Ben replied, since it was already said.

“There’s something familiar about that bird,” Abernathy muttered.

“Just because a man looks harmless doesn’t mean he really is,” Questor went on. “In Horris Kew’s case, appearances are not just deceiving, they are an outright lie!”

Ben was already tired of the subject, and he held up his hands imploringly. “Gentlemen!” he admonished. He was hoping for looks of chagrin but had to settle for hostile silence. He sighed. You couldn’t have it your way all the time, he supposed. That was why most matters required compromise. “We’ll discuss this later, all right?”

Willow rose to stand beside him, and he smiled as she looped her arm through his. “Parsnip!” he yelled, and when his cook appeared to stand with his wizard, scribe, and messenger, he asked, “How would you feel about our adding another member to our family?”

“As long as it’s not Horris Kew,” Questor Thews muttered and looked not the least chagrined for saying it.

Gorse

Horris Kew departed Sterling Silver like a fugitive in the night, hastening away as swiftly as propriety and pride would allow, casting nervous glances left and right with every step he took. He hunched along with purposeful, ground-eating strides, his tall, gawky frame rolling and swaying with the movement, a strange figure in this strangest of lands. The tic he had mysteriously developed caused the comer of his eye to jump like a trapped cricket. Biggar rode his shoulder, an omen of doom.

“I really dislike that dog,” the bird muttered, ruffling his feathers in a show of distaste.

Horris Kew’s lips tightened. “Shut up about the dog.”

“He almost recognized me. Did you see? He’ll remember, sooner or later, mark my words.”

“Consider them marked.” They passed across the bridge that connected the island to the mainland and set out toward the forests west. “What’s the difference if he does? Meeks is dead and gone.”

Biggar had belonged to the wizard in the old days. It was Meeks who had performed the magic that enhanced Biggar’s intelligence, hopeful of using the bird as a spy against his enemies. But Biggar had been as obnoxious and outspoken then as he was now, and Meeks had quickly grown tired of him. When Horris Kew had been exiled to earth by the old King, Meeks had sent the troublesome bird along for the ride.

Biggar hunched down into a black featherball. “If the dog connects me with Meeks, Horris, you can kiss our chances of ever getting back inside those castle walls goodbye.”

Horris tried to look unconcerned. “You’re worrying about nothing.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like the way the dog looked at me. In fact, I don’t like any of this.”

Horris didn’t say so, but he wasn’t sure he liked any of it either. Nothing had gone the way he had expected from the moment he had mouthed “rashun, oblight, surena, whatever” and that thing had come out of the Tangle Box. He shivered just thinking about it, picturing how it had looked when he had turned around on hearing its greeting, thinking of it waiting for them now. It was loathsome beyond description. It was the foulest being he had ever encountered.

And now it had taken charge of his life, ordering him about like a common servant, telling him where to go and what to do. It was his worst nightmare come to life, and Horris Kew didn’t think for a moment that he had better try to cross it.

“Why do you think it sent us to see the King?” Biggar asked suddenly, as if reading his mind. They passed up the hillside and into a meadow fronting the edges of the forest trees.

Horris exhaled wearily. “How would I know? It told me to go make this pitch to Holiday, so I did. It said to do it, so I did it. You think I was going to argue?”

Biggar didn’t have anything to say to that, which was just as well since Horris Kew’s temper was already on edge from the events of the past twenty-four hours. This was all Biggar’s fault anyway, he was thinking. The channeling scheme, the concoction of Skat Mandu (Skat Mandu, what a joke!), the releasing of that thing, and the return to Landover. Horris didn’t know what game it was they were playing, but he knew it was a dangerous one, coming back to the very last place in the universe they should have come, a place where they were anything but welcome. Except, of course, that the old King was dead and this new one, Holiday, at least seemed willing to consider his petition. No matter. What were they doing here? Sure, this was his homeland and all, but it was not a place that held fond memories. It was a place in which he had been born (luck of the draw, that), had grown up, had gotten himself in considerable trouble, been declared persona non grata, and left under duress. He had been perfectly happy in his new world, in the land of milk and honey and believers of Skat Mandu ready to pay him money for a wisp of smoke and a shimmer of light. He had been well settled, content with himself, his surroundings, and his prospects.

Now what did he have? Nothing. And it was all Biggar’s fault.

Except, of course, it really wasn’t. It was as much his fault as Biggar’s, and that made him even madder.

What was going to happen to him now? What did good old Skat Mandu have planned?

“I really don’t like that dog,” Biggar repeated, and finally lapsed into silence.

They journeyed on through the morning, and as midday passed they reached the Heart. The Heart was sacred ground, the wellspring of Landover’s magic and the touch Stone of her life. It was here that all of Landover’s Kings, including Ben Holiday, had been crowned. It appeared as a clearing amid a forest of giant broad-leaved trees, its perimeter encircled by Bonnie Blues, its floor a mix of green, gold and crimson grasses. A dais stood centermost, formed of gleaming white oak timbers and anchored by polished silver stanchions in which massive white candles had been set. Standards ringed the dais, and from their tips flew the flags of the Kings of Landover in a sea of bright colors. Holiday’s was the newest, a set of balanced scales held forth against a field of green, a nod back to his years as a lawyer in the old life. All about the dais and across the remainder of the clearing were rows of white velvet kneeling pads and rests.

All of it was clean and perfectly kept, as if in anticipation of the next coronation.

Horris Kew entered the Heart and looked around solemnly. A country’s history winked back at him from every polished timber and post. “Take off your hat, Biggar,” he intoned. “We’re in church.”

Biggar looked about doubtfully, sharp eyes gleaming. “Who in the world takes care of this place?”

Horris stared at him and sighed. “What a philistine you are.”

Biggar flew off his shoulder and settled down on one of the velvet rests. “So now you’re resorting to name calling, are you, Horris? That’s really pathetic.”

And very deliberately he relieved himself on the white cushion.

Horris went rigid for a moment, and then his lanky frame uncoiled as if part serpent and his long limbs worked this way and that, like sticks pinned to a rag doll. “I’ve had about all I’m going to take from you, Biggar. How would you like me to wring your worthless neck?’

“How would you like me to peck out your eyes, Horris?”

“You imbecilic jackdaw!”

“You moronic baboon!”

They glared at each other, Horris with his fingers hooked into claws, Biggar with his feathers ruffled and spread. The rage swept through them, then dissipated, evaporating like water on stone in the midday sun. The tension eased from their bodies and was replaced by wonder and a vague sense of uneasiness over the spontaneity of their embarrassing behavior.

“That thing is responsible for this foolishness,” Horris announced quietly. “Good old Skat Mandu.”

“He’s not what I expected, I admit,” Biggar declared solemnly.

“He’s not even ahe . He’s anit .”

“A maggot.”

“A serpent.”

Biggar closed his eyes. “Horris,” he said, a note of wistfulness creeping into his bird voice. “What are we doing here? Wait, don’t say anything until you’ve heard me out. I know how we got here. I understand the mechanics. We let that thing out of the Tangle Box where it was locked away in that patch of fairy mist, and it used the fairy mist to open a door into Landover. I got that part. But what are we doing here? Really, what? Just think about it a moment. This is a dangerous place for us.”

“I know, I know,” Horris sighed.

“All right, then. Why don’t we go somewhere else? Somewhere less ... threatening. Why don’t we? Maybe it would listen to a suggestion that we go somewhere else. Maybe it would at least consider sendingus through, even ifit still wanted to stay. After all, what does it need us for?”

Horris fixed him with a hard stare. “Where would we go, Biggar? Back to where we came from, where the faithful are waiting to tear us apart? You took care of that option quite nicely.”

“It wasn’t me, Horris. I already told you that. It was Skat Mandu! Or whoever.” Biggar hopped one rest closer. “You want to know where we can go? There are lots of choices. I’ve read about a few. How about that place with the yellow…”

Horris looked at him and sighed. “Biggar, that wasn’t a real place. That was in a book.”

Biggar tried frowning and failed. “No, it wasn’t. It was real.”

“No, Biggar. You’ve short-circuited again. That was Oz. Oz isn’t a real place. It’s a make-believe place.”

“With the wizard and all? With the witches and the flying monkeys? That wasn’t a story. That was real.”

“It was a story, Biggar! A story!”

“All right, Horris, all right! It was a story!” The bird clacked his beak emphatically. He thought a minute. “Okay. How about going to the place with the little people with the furry feet?”

Horris turned red. “What’s the use!” he hissed furiously. He strode past Biggar without looking at him, headed for the trees. “Let’s just report back and get this over with!”

He moved away again, disappearing back into the forest, leaving the Heart behind. After a moment, Biggar followed. They passed out of the sunlight to where it was dark and cool, even at midday, and shadows draped their intricate patterns like spider’s webs across the woodland. They traveled without speaking, Horris striding on determinedly, Biggar hopping from limb to limb, now flying ahead, now winging his way back. Locked in a brown study, Horris pointedly ignored him.

Less than a mile from the Heart, where the light was all but screened away by the interlocking branches of the trees overhead, they descended a steep slope to a dense thicket of brush backed up against a rocky overhang. Easing their way past the brush, they came to a massive flat stone into which symbols had been carved on both sides and across the top. Horris stared at the stone, sighed his weariest sigh, reached up, and touched various symbols in quick succession. He stepped back quickly as the door opened, stone grating on stone. Biggar landed on his shoulder again and together they watched the black opening of the cave beyond come into focus.

Rather reluctantly, they entered. The stone door grated shut behind them.

There was light in the cave to guide them back into its farthest reaches, a sort of dim phosphorescence that seemed wedded to the rock. It gleamed like silver ore in scattered patches and random streaks, breaking up the gloom sufficiently to allow a relatively safe passage through. It was hot within the cave, an unpleasant sort of warmth that suffused the skin and left it damp and itchy. There was a distinctive smell in the air, too. Horris and Biggar recognized it immediately and knew where it came from.

They reached the deepest part of the cave in moments, the part where the light was brightest, the heat hottest, and the stench rawest. The cave widened and rose some twenty feet at this point, and a scattering of stalactites jutted down from the ceiling like a medieval spear trap. The chamber was empty save for a rickety wooden bed set to one side and an equally rickety wooden table on which a metal washbasin sat. The bed was unmade and the basin unemptied.

Next to the wash basin sat the Tangle Box.

From the deepest corner of the cave came a stirring. “Did you do as you were told?” a voice hissed menacingly.

Horris tried to hold his breath as he spoke so as not to inhale any more of the smell than he had to. “Yes. Just as we were told.”

“What was the response?”

“He said he would think it over. But the wizard and the scribe are going to try to convince him not to let me stay.”

The speaker laughed. It shifted in the gloom, a lifting of its body, a straightening of its limbs. Really, it was hard to tell what was happening, which was very disconcerting.

Horris thought back again to when he had laid eyes on it for the first time, realizing suddenly that he was already unsure of what it was he had seen. The thing that was Skat Mandu had a way of showing only part of itself, a flicker of body or limb or head (never face), a hint of color or shape. What you were left with, ultimately, was a sense of something rather than a definite image. What you were left with, inevitably, was unpleasant and harsh and repulsive.

“Do I frighten you?” the voice asked softly. In the smoky gloom something gleamed a wicked green.

Horris suddenly regretted coming back, thinking that perhaps Biggar had been right after all. What sort of madness was this that they had embraced in releasing the monster? It had been imprisoned in the Tangle Box, and it had tricked them into freeing it, using Biggar as channeler, Horris as conjurer, both as instruments for picking the locks that held it chained. Horris Kew understood in the most secret part of his heart that nothing he had done in creating Skat Mandu had ever really been his idea—it had all come from the thing in the Tangle Box, the thing that had been locked within the fairy mists, dispatched into exile just as they had been, and consigned to oblivion except for a fate that had brought Horris and Biggar to its unwitting rescue.

“What are we doing here?” Biggar piped up suddenly, a frightened stiffness in his reedy voice.

“What I tell you to do,” the voice hissed. Skat Mandu came out of the gloom, rising up like a cloud of smoke that had somehow coalesced into a vaguely familiar but not yet complete form. Its smell drove Horris and Biggar back a step in response, and its laugh was low and satisfied. It rippled like fetid water as it shifted about, and they could hear the hiss of its breathing in the sudden silence. It was huge and fat and dominant, and it had the feel of something ancient and terrible.

“I am called the Gorse,” the monster whispered suddenly. “I was of the people who live within the fairy mists, one of their own until I was trapped and confined centuries ago, imprisoned in the Tangle Box for all time. I was a sorcerer of great power, and I will be so again. You will help me.”

Horris Kew cleared his throat. “I don’t see what we can do.”

The Gorse laughed. “I will be your eyes, Horris Kew. I see you better than you see yourself. You are angry at losing what you had in that other world, but what you want most lies here. You are frightened at what has been done to you, but the courage you lack can be supplied by me. Yes, I manipulated you. Yes, you were my cat’s paw. You will be again, you and the bird both. This is the way of things, Horris. The people of the fairy mists bound me within the Tangle Box with spells that could not be undone from within, but only from without. Someone had to speak them, and I chose you. I whispered the incantations in your mind. I guided your conjuring steps. One by one you spoke the spells of Skat Mandu. One by one you turned the keys to the locks that held me bound. When I was ready to come out, I made the bird confess that Skat Mandu was a charade so that you would be forced to flee. But your escape could only be managed by setting me free. But do not despair. It was as it should be, as it was meant to be. Fate has bound us one to the other.”

Horris wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, but on the other hand he was intrigued in spite of himself with the possibility that there might be something in this for him. “You have a plan for us?” he asked cautiously.

“A very attractive plan,” the Gorse whispered. “I know of your history, the both of you. You, Horris, were exiled for your vision of what conjuring should be. The bird was exiled for being more than his creator had expected.”

Oddly enough, Horris and Biggar found themselves in immediate agreement with this assessment (although Biggar didn’t much care for constantly being referred to as “the bird”).

“You were embarrassments and nuisances to those who pretended friendship toward you but in truth feared you and were jealous of you. Such is the nature of the creatures against whom we stand.” The Gorse eased back ponderously into the gloom, smoke, and shadow along the rock. The movement produced a sort of scraping sound, like a knife trimming fish scales. It should not have been possible with something that appeared to be so insubstantial. “Wouldn’t you like to gain a measure of revenge on these fools?” the Gorse demanded.

Horris and Biggar would have liked nothing better, of course. But their uneasiness with the Gorse remained undiminished for all the reassuring words. They didn’t like this creature, didn’t like the sight or smell of it, didn’t even like the idea of it, and they were still of a mind that they had been better off back where they had come from. Still, they were not foolish enough to say so. Instead, they simply waited to hear more.

The darkening atmosphere of the cave seemed to tighten down like a coffin lid as the Gorse suddenly expanded into the shadows, stealing the light. “For myself, I will secure dominion over the fairy mists from which I was sent and over those who dwelt free within them while I was imprisoned. I will have them for my slaves until I tire of them, and then I will see them closed away in such blackness that they will scream endlessly for death’s release.”

Horris Kew swallowed the lump in his throat and forgot about any attempt at backing farther away. On his shoulder, Biggar’s claws tightened until they hurt.

“To you,” the Gorse hissed softly, “I will give Landover—all of it, the whole of it, the country and her people, to do with as you choose.”

The silence that filled the cave was immense. Horris found suddenly that he could not think straight. Landover? What would he do with Landover? He tried to speak and could not. He tried to swallow and could not do that either. He was dry and parched from toes to nose, and all of his conjuring life was a dim recollection that seemed as ephemeral as smoke.

“You want to give us Landover?” Biggar squeaked suddenly, as if he hadn’t heard right.

The Gorse’s laugh was rough and chilling. “Something even Skat Mandu could not have done for you in your exiled life, isn’t that so? But to earn this gift you must do as I tell you. Exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”

Horris Kew nodded. Biggar nodded along with him.

“Say it!” the Gorse hissed sharply.

“Yes!” they both gasped, feeling invisible fingers close about their throats. The fingers clenched and held for an impossibly long moment before they released. Horris and Biggar choked and gasped for air in the ensuing silence.

The Gorse drew back, its stench so overpowering that for a moment it seemed there was no air left to breathe. Horris Kew was down on his knees in the cave’s near blackness, sick to his stomach, so frightened by the monster that he could think of nothing but doing whatever was required to keep from feeling worse. Biggar’s white crest was standing on end, the sharp bird eyes were squeezed shut, and he was shaking all over.

“There are enemies who might threaten us,” the Gorse whispered, its voice like the scratching of coarse sandpaper on wood. “We must remove them from our path if we are to proceed. You will help me in this.”

Horris nodded without speaking, not trusting what the words might be. He wished he had learned to keep his conjuring mouth shut a whole lot earlier.

“You will write three letters, Horris Kew,” the monster hissed. “You will write them now.” The gloom it occupied and its eyes (or so they seemed) found Biggar. “And when he is finished, you will deliver them.”

Night descended over Sterling Silver, the sun dropping beyond the horizon and changing the sky to deep crimson and violet, the colors streaking first the patterned clouds west, then the land itself. The shadows lengthened, darkening ever deeper, reflecting off the polished surface of the castle and the waters that guarded it, disappearing at last into a twilight lit by the eight moons in one of the rare phases of the year in which all were visible at once in the night sky. With Willow on his arm, Ben Holiday climbed the stairs to their bedchamber, smiling now and again at what he was feeling, still caught up by the news of their baby. A baby! He couldn’t seem to say it often enough. It produced a giddy feeling in him, one that made him feel wonderful and foolish both at once. Everyone in the castle knew about the baby by now. Even Abernathy, normally not given to displays of emotion of any kind, had given Willow a huge hug on learning the good news. Questor had immediately begun making plans for the child’s upbringing and education that stretched well into the next decade. No one seemed the least bit surprised that there should be a baby, as if having this child here and now was very much in the ordinary course of events.

Ben shook his head. Would there be a boy or a girl? Would there be both? Did Willow know which? Should he ask her? He wished he knew what to do besides tell her over and over again how happy he was.

They reached a landing that opened out onto a rampart, and Willow pulled him out into the starlit night. They walked to the battlement and stared out across the darkened land. They stood there in silence, holding hands, keeping close in the silence.

“I have to go away for a little while,” Willow said quietly. It was so unexpected that for a moment he wasn’t certain he had heard right. She did not look at him, but her hand tightened in warning over his. “Let me finish before you say anything. I must tell my mother about this child. She must know so that she can dance for me. Remember how I told you once that our life together was foretold in the entwining of the flowers that formed the bed of my conception? It was on the night when I saw you for the first time at the Irrylyn. I knew at once that there would never be anyone else for me. That was the foretelling brought about by my mother’s dance.”

She looked at him now, her eyes huge and depthless.

“The once-fairy see something of the future in the present, reading what will be in what now is. It is an art peculiar to each of us, Ben, and for my mother the future is often told in her dance. It was so when I went to see her in my search for the black unicorn. It will be so again now.”

She seemed to have finished. “Her dance will tell us something about our child’s future?” he asked in surprise.

Willow nodded slowly, her gaze fixing him, her flawless features carved in starlight. “Not us, Ben. Me. She will tell only me. She will dance only for me, not for someone who is not of her people. Please don’t be angry, but I must go alone.”

He smiled awkwardly. “I can come most of the way, though. At least as far as the old pines.”

She shook her head. “No. Try to understand. This must be my journey, not yours. It is a journey as much into myself as into the River Country, and it belongs only to me. I make it as mother of our child and as child of the once-fairy. There will be other journeys that belong to both of us, journeys on which you will be able to go. But this one belongs to me.”

She saw the doubt in his eyes and hesitated. “I know this is difficult to understand. It touches on what I tried to tell earlier. Carrying a child to term and giving birth on Landover is not the same as in your world. There are differences that run to the magic that sustains the land, that give life to us all but particularly to the once-fairy. We commune with Landover as a people who have spent all our lives caring for and healing her. It is our heritage and bond.”

Ben nodded, but felt something drop away inside him. “I don’t see why I can’t go with you.”

He saw her throat constrict, and there were tears in her eyes. “I know. I have tried to find a way to tell you, to explain it to you. I think that I will have to ask simply that you trust me.”

“I do trust you. Always. But this is hard to understand.” And more. It was worrisome. He had not felt comfortable being separated from her since their journey back to Earth to recover Abernathy and the missing medallion, when she had almost died. He had relived all the nightmares of Annie’s death, of the death of their unborn child, and of the severing of some part of himself that had come about as a result of their dying. Each time there was a separation from Willow, however necessary, however brief, the fear returned. It was no different now. If anything, the feeling was stronger because the reasons for their separation were so difficult to grasp.

“How soon must you go?” he asked, still struggling to come to grips with the idea. All of his earlier happiness seemed to have leaked away.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “At sunrise.” His desperation doubled.

“Well, at least take Bunion with you. Take someone for protection!”

“Ben.” She held both of his hands in her own and moved so close to him that he could see himself reflected in her eyes. “No one will go with me, I will go alone. You needn’t worry. I will be safe. I don’t need looking after. You know that. The once-fairy have their own means of protection within Landover, and I will be in the homeland of my people.”

He shook his head angrily. “I just don’t see how you can be sure of that! And I still don’t see why you have to go alone!”

In spite of his efforts to keep calm, his voice had risen and taken on an angry edge. He stepped away from her, trying to distance himself from what he was feeling. But she would not release his hands.

“This child is important to us,” she said softly.

“I know that!”

“Shhhh. The Earth Mother told us of its importance, do you remember?”

He took a deep breath. “I do.”

“Then accept that our needs must give way to those of the child,” she whispered. “Even though it hurts, even though the reasons are not clear, even though we might wish it otherwise.” She paused. “I do not want this any more than you do. Do you believe that?”

He was caught off guard. It had not occurred to him that she was not a willing party to this decision. “Yes, I believe it,” he told her finally.

“I would have you come if it were possible. I would never leave your side for a moment if it were possible. But it is not. It is not in the nature of life that we can be together in all things.”

She waited for him to speak. He stared at her wordlessly for a long time, thinking. Then he said, “I guess that’s true.”

“It will be all right,” she told him.

She put her arms around him and held him close against her. He lowered his face into her emerald hair and found himself aching already from having her gone. His fear was a black cloud that scudded about in the corners of his heart. He realized anew how different they really were, a human and a sylph, and how much there was about her that he still didn’t know.

“It will be all right,” she repeated. He did not argue, because he knew there was no point in so. But he could not help wondering if he shouldn’t try.

Roots

Willow’s journey from Sterling Silver was a relatively uneventful one. She departed under cover of darkness, slipping from the castle unseen and unheard. The guards of the night watch might have sensed her in some dim, quickly forgotten way, but the once-fairy retained enough of the old ways that she could disappear as surely as shadow into light. Willow went down a back staircase, through the castle’s deserted halls, along the darkened walls of several inner courts, and out through the central portcullis, which was always kept raised in time of peace to welcome late travelers and supplicants to a sure and friendly shelter. Forgoing use of the lake skimmer, she instead crossed the bridge that spanned the castle moat, a bridge built by Ben when the monarchy was restored and travelers began to come again to the land’s seat of power. She waited until the brightest of the moons were shadowed by clouds and the guards were turned away, speaking of things far removed from duties assigned, and in the blink of an eye she was gone.

She did not wake Ben on leaving. She stood looking down at him in the darkness for a time, watching him sleep, thinking how much she loved him. She did not want any more harsh words to pass between them. It was better that she left now. He loved her, but he was the product of a world that did not accept the existence of fairy creatures, and he was still learning to believe in them himself. That was why she had not told him everything. That was why she couldn’t.

She walked for the remainder of that night and all through the next day, winding her way along lesser-traveled paths, not hurrying or attempting speed, keeping herself unseen. She passed farmers in the field, plowing and laying in their second-season crop, harvesting the first. She watched peddlers and traders come and go between the communities of man south and east. There were travelers come from the once-fairy country and from the western hills where trappers and hunters roamed. There were families in wagons with possessions stacked high and tied down en route to new homes. Everywhere, there was activity, the bustle and energy of the warm seasons facilitating the plans made when it was cold. It made her smile. She followed the lolling flow of the forested hills, a small bit of movement in a vast sea of green that undulated like waves against the horizon when the breezes blew out of the west as they did at midsummer. She ate and drank from the Bonnie Blues, Landover’s most plentiful source of food and drink, and she sang softly to herself when there were only birds and small animals to hear.

She pondered as well. She weighed the wisdom of what she had done, knowing the consternation it would cause, appreciative of the worry it would engender. But hers was a cause born of primal necessity, and there was no room for debate over what was required. She must have this baby in the way that nature dictated, and the pattern of had been established generations ago in a time when humans did not even exist. The birthing of fairy people was complex beyond that of humans in any case, peculiar in each instance to the physical characteristics of the creature involved, different for each depending on the genetics that had spawned them. She might have discussed it with Ben earlier, when the immediacy of their child’s birth was removed and the requisite time for acceptance was still available. But she had not and there was no time now, and she knew him well enough to recognize that his reaction to what she would tell him was as likely to be damaging as helpful. Though Landover’s King, he remained a man from another world in many ways still, and he struggled constantly to accept what he viewed as strange and unusual. It was especially hard where she was concerned because he loved her and was committed to her and wanted so to be comfortable with who and what she was. She knew that, and she did what she could to make easier the transition he was still experiencing.

In the end it had been the Earth Mother’s dream that had decided her. It had not been so much a dream as a vision and not so much a vision as a sense of being. Fairy creatures spoke to each other in that way, coming often in sleep to give counsel and warning, speaking out of distant places, traveling on the back of swift winds to reach the listener, a whisper in stillness, a brightening in the dark. Willow sometimes spoke with her mother that way, her mother a wood nymph so wild that nothing could reach her if she did not wish it, a creature that not even the once-fairy could trace. Willow had slipped away from her old life as she made her new one with Ben, but now and again the old would intrude in some small fashion, and the Earth Mother’s coming had been the latest reoccurrence.

The Earth Mother was an elemental, the most powerful in Landover, a creature of great magic. She was as old as the land itself and embodied its spirit. Some believed that she was the creator of the land, but Willow thought her too fundamental in her ethics and too mired in her work to be anything so lofty. Nevertheless, she was a creature to be harkened to. Ben and Willow had both gone to her during their search for the black unicorn, and she had told them then that they were important to her and would share a child that was special. There had been no explanation then or since, and after a time both had ceased to think on the matter. Willow had heard nothing from the Earth Mother in all this time.

Yet now she was summoned, unexpectedly, abruptly, out of dreams. The Earth Mother had come to her twice, calling her back to the River Country, to Elderew, to the once-fairy country where the elemental most frequently surfaced. The calling was urgent and unarguable and so had decided Willow to leave Ben without attempting a full explanation. More than the words themselves, it was the Earth Mother’s tone that had compelled the sylph to put aside deliberation and act at once.

She camped that night on the shores of the Irrylyn, close by the cove where she had first encountered Ben and known in the fairy way that he was for her and she for him. She ate despite having little appetite, for her child required her strength. Then she stripped away her clothing and stepped into the Irrylyn’s waters. The lake was warm and soothing and drew her into its embrace. She floated in the silence of the night, the skies overhead clear and filled with the light of colored moons and silver stars, and she let her memories of Ben envelop her. She could still feel the rush of excitement his appearance had triggered within her. She could still feel the certainty of her love. They had been chosen for each other, and until death they would be together. She caught a glimpse of their future, for the once-fairy were so blessed (or cursed), and she had known then their lives would be changed irrevocably.

It had proven to be so. Ben had given up his old life, compelled to stay within Landover, decided by many things but by none more certain than his love for her. He had stayed as King and become a leader of strength and vision, and while he was tormented at times by what being King required of him, he had carried out his responsibilities faithfully. Most thought him fair and effective. Only a few still harbored doubts, and most of those were potential rivals for the power of the Kingdom’s magic. Her father was one, the leader of the once-fairy, and a wielder of considerable magic himself. The River Master would have preferred a Kingdom in which he alone controlled the magic, but he was no fool and he recognized the benefits that Ben Holiday provided as King—a stabilizing force, a well-reasoned juggler of diverse interests, and a decisive leader—and while he mistrusted Ben on occasion as an outworlder, he respected him always as a man.

Willow, as the River Master’s daughter, had lived an unsettled life in the lake country, the child of a union that had lasted but a single night, a constant reminder to the water sprite of the woman he had loved and been unable to hold. For Willow had been born of a hurried coupling and then left behind by her mother for her father to raise, her mother too wild to stay bound to anyone, even a child. Her father had done what was required and nothing more; he had many children and liked most better than her. Ben’s coming had opened the door to the life she had long known was waiting for her, and she had been quick to step through. He had questioned at first that they were meant to be together or even that he loved her, but Willow had never doubted, the prophecy of their joining immutable and fixed. Eventually what was promised at the moment of her birth had come to pass, and now there was to be a child.

She rose from the waters of the Irrylyn and stood upon its shore, her smooth green skin shedding water and drying in the cooling night air. She had not been entirely honest with Ben. She would let her mother dance for her, but then move quickly on. She would not see her father at all. She did not expect their help in the birth of this child. She might have wished it could be otherwise, but she knew there was little they could offer. She had returned to the lake country to see the Earth Mother. It was the Earth Mother alone who could provide useful insight, she sensed—for that was what the dream had whispered in summoning her. So she would go there and listen, and then she would have her child alone.

She slept long and well that night, her sleep undisturbed by dreams, and when she woke she found the mud puppy looking at her.

“Hello, little one,” she greeted softly, lifting to her knees.

The mud puppy regarded her with great, soulful eyes. It was short and long and with a vaguely beaver-like face, and it had great floppy ears and a lizard’s tail. It was splayfooted with broad, webbed feet, and its body was colored in various shades of brown as if streaked by dirt. Mud puppies were rare in Landover, being something of a fairy creature, and they were reputedly imbued with magic of their own, though Willow had never seen evidence of it. She recognized this one from her early years. Its name was Haltwhistle, and it served the Earth Mother.

“Good old Haltwhistle,” she murmured, smiling, and the mud puppy swung its tail to and fro.

She would have petted it, but the Earth Mother had warned her long ago that you should never touch a mud puppy. No explanation for this piece of advice had been offered, but Willow had learned to trust the Earth Mother.

She had known the elemental since she was a little girl growing up in the lake country. The Earth Mother had come to her first when she was still quite small, rising from the ground one day while she was playing, an unexpected apparition that was more intriguing than frightening. The Earth Mother had come to her, she was told, because she was special. The Earth Mother would teach her things that no one else knew, and they would be friends always. Willow accepted this as a child does, a bit wide-eyed, but not disbelieving because when you are a child all things are possible. She found the Earth Mother strange and wondrous, a spirit creature rather than a human or once-fairy, but their friendship seemed natural and welcome. She was one of many children in the home of the River Master and not one to whom much attention was paid or of whom much was expected. Willow was lonely, and the Earth Mother helped fill the void that the absence of her real mother had created. As she grew, the Earth Mother counseled her, coming to her less often as she became more sure of herself and her time filled with other things. She had seen nothing of the Earth Mother after Ben’s coming save when she went in search of the black unicorn.

But now she was summoned, and Haltwhistle had been sent to guide her to where the Earth Mother waited.

She rose, washed, ate a little, and, with the mud puppy leading, set out anew. The day was warm and sun-filled, and the forests of the lake country smelled of grasses and wildflowers. As they walked, lake and river waters sparkled like gemstones through breaks in the trees and cranes and herons swooped across the surfaces in flashes of white. They traveled on through the morning and by midday were nearing Elderew. Haltwhistle turned east then, away from the city of the River Master and his people, and entered a stretch of forest thick with old-growth trees. Vines and mosses clung to the barked surfaces in brilliant green strips and patches. Insects skittered here and there, bright-colored birds darted through the canopies overhead, and small, furry-faced animals appeared like apparitions and were gone in the blink of an eye. Dust moats floated in streamers of sunlight, lazy and inconsequential.

On nearing the Earth Mother’s refuge, Willow found herself wondering as she did from time to time at the elemental's interest in her. Happy for the companionship and special attention, she had never thought to ask when she was a child. When she had grown, she had accepted the Earth Mother’s assurances that destiny had provided an important fate for her, and she had never pressed the matter further. Elementals frequently possessed the ability to read the future, and so Willow never doubted that the Earth Mother could see things yet to come, things hidden from her. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting to know that someone besides yourself knew what was fated for you and would not reveal the specifics. She had thought to ask of her future on more than one occasion, but she could never quite bring herself to do so. Perhaps it was her awe of the Earth Mother’s history as the keeper of the lands. Perhaps there was a small part of her that did not want to know her future in any event.

But now, with the impending birth of her child, she thought that she must know, and she determined that this time her reverence for the Earth Mother would not prevent her asking.

Haltwhistle took her on through the thickening forests, back from the sunlit clearings into the deep shadows, and finally to where the silence was complete and unbroken by the sound of any life. The mud puppy stopped finally at the edge of a broad, empty clearing filmed with pond waters collected from streams all about, a still, black, mirrored surface that reflected the old-growth canopy that sheltered everything.

The mud puppy lingered for a soulful look back and then disappeared into the trees. Willow waited in the silence.

After a moment the pond stirred and the Earth Mother rose from the waters, her form taking shape out of the slick mud, lifting to stand within the shadowed silence.

“Welcome, Willow,” she greeted. “Are you well, child?”

“I am fine, Earth Mother,” Willow answered. “And you?”

“Unchanging. The land is stable and healed since the coming of Ben Holiday. It makes my work much easier.” She gestured vaguely with her hand, and the light flickered dimly from the damp. “Does your life with him go well and the love between you continue?”

“Of course, Earth Mother.”

“It gives me great pleasure to hear you say so. Now you will share a child, and it is for that reason that I have summoned you. There are things you must know, and I would not tell them to you through dreams. Have you come alone, then? And without the King?”

“I thought it better.” Willow’s gaze slid away momentarily. “He does not accept easily what he finds strange.”

“You have not told him about your birthing? About the cycles of life and the periods of growth and the ways of the once-fairy?”

Willow sighed. “I cannot seem to find a way to do so. I had planned to tell him, but when your dream came, I thought it best to wait.”

The Earth Mother nodded. “Perhaps you are right.” Her face was young and vibrant, a constant surprise when one considered that she had been alive since the creation of the land. “You will tell him when you think it best. For now, we must concentrate on the birthing. You know it nears?”

“I can feel it, Earth Mother. The child stirs inside me already, anxious to be born. It will happen soon.” She hesitated. “It is not like that with humans. Ben expects our child to grow within me for months in the manner of the women of his world. He has not said so, but I can read it in his looks. He thinks the child, since it is his, will be like him. But it will not. I can sense it already, and I do not know how to tell him.” She was surprised to find herself suddenly on the verge of tears. “What if he will not accept this child? What if he finds it loathsome?”

The Earth Mother’s smile was filled with kindness. “No, Willow, that will not happen. This child belongs to you both and was conceived of the love you bear for each other. His commitment to you, and now to the child, is complete.

He will not find the child loathsome. Nor shall it be so. It shall be beautiful.”

Willow’s eyes brightened. “Is this promised, Earth Mother? Can you see it in my future?”

The Earth Mother passed her hands before Willow’s face, and the question fell away, forgotten. “We will speak now of what you must do to prepare for your child’s birth, Willow. Conditions will not be entirely as you anticipate. Your child will not be born while you are in your human form. It will be born during your cycle of transformation into spirit form.”

“As my namesake,” Willow said. “I have sensed this might be so. It was one of the reasons for my worry about telling Ben. I did not think he could conceive of such a thing.”

“Do not trouble yourself further about Ben Holiday, child. What must concern you now are the conditions required for your birthing. Listen carefully. When you take root to give life to your child, it must be in a mix of soils from three worlds. The soils must come from Landover, from Earth, and from within the fairy mists. The soils reflect the child’s heritage, a mix of bloods. This child is a product of each world, born of the union of a human and a once-fairy. It does not happen often. It is a rare and special occurrence.”

The Earth Mother paused, and one hand lifted, a strange and compelling gesture. “The soils must be gathered by you, Willow, and by no one else. You must collect them, you must mix them, and you must take root in them when it is time to give birth. The soils must come from special places in each world, for they must reflect the character of that world, combining what is best and worst about the creatures who inhabit each. There is within your child some part of all three worlds, you see—something of Landover, of Earth, and of the fairy mists. If the child is to grow strong and healthy, if it is to secure wisdom and understanding, if it is to sort through and choose from the seeds of good and evil that exist in all living creatures, there must be a balance of possibilities inherent within it. The soils offer that balance. They offer magic that will sustain and secure.”

“Fairy magic, Earth Mother?” Willow asked doubtfully.

“As surely as any other. This child’s heritage is long and complex, Willow. Its bloodlines run back to when the people of the River Country were part of the fairy world. You carry both bloods within you; so must your child.”

Willow’s face was drawn and frightened. “Must I go into these worlds to gain possession of the soils, Earth Mother? I cannot do that. I cannot pass into the fairy mists or even out of Landover to Ben’s world if he does not take me there. The medallion he wears as King will be needed. I must take him with me after all.”

“No, Willow, he cannot go with you on this journey. Your own words—do you remember?” The elemental’s face was kind and sad and hard and certain all at once, such a strange mix of emotions that Willow took a step back. “Listen to me now. Hear everything that I would tell you. This will be difficult, but you will have help. There are things at work here that even I do not yet understand. But one thing is certain. Your child must have the soils I have described. You must gather them, mix them, and take root in them. You alone. You must not be deterred by your fear. You must be brave. You must believe. Your child’s life depends on it.”

Willow was ashen now, gone cold with the enormity of what she was being asked to do. Ben could not help her. Who then would?

“You will begin at the old pines where you go to see your mother dance,” the Earth Mother whispered in the stillness of the glade, her voice a ripple across the muddied waters on which she stood. “I will see you safely there. The first of the soils shall come from the lake country, where the best and the worst that is Landover can be found in a single grain. Take from the clearing where your mother dances a small bag of the soil you will find there. When you have finished, you will be met by someone who will guide you into Ben’s world.”

“Who will meet me, Earth Mother?” Willow asked softly. “Who will it be?”

“I am not given to see that yet,” came the reply. “I am given to see only this. Your guide will come from the fairy people, who are equally committed to the safe birth of your child. I have visited them in dreams and found that it is so. This child, this firstborn of human and fairy, of Landover’s King and Queen, is special to them as well, and they will do everything they can to keep it protected. Thus they will provide one of their own as guide, one whose magic will allow you safe passage, first into Ben Holiday’s world and then into their own. Your guide will know where to take you to find the soils you need.

“But, child, take warning,” she added quickly, her voice gone dark with premonition once more. “The fairy people harbor secrets in all that they do, and nothing with them is ever what it appears. They will have reasons beyond what they reveal for giving you aid. Do not accept everything you are told without question. Do not think that you know the whole truth. Be wary always. They will give you the help they have promised; that much is certain. They will see the child safely born; that is certain as well. But all else remains in doubt, so stay cautious in all that you do.”

“Can you tell me nothing more?”

“I have told you all.”

“There is too much uncertainty in this journey, Earth Mother,” the sylph whispered. “I am frightened.”

The Earth Mother sighed, the sound of the wind passing through the trees at eventide. “As I am frightened for you, child.”

“Must I go, then?”

“If you wish your child safely born, you must.”

Willow nodded, resigned. “I do.” She looked away into the trees, as if thinking to see something of what was hidden from her. “How much time do I have to make this journey?”

“I do not know.”

“The baby, then. How much time until the baby is born?”

“I do not know that either. Only the child knows. The child will decide when it is time. You must be ready when that time comes.”

A sudden desperation tightened Willow’s throat. “Can you see where the child is to be born? Can you tell me at least that much?”

“Not even that,” the Earth Mother replied sadly. “The child will decide the place of its birth as well.”

Willow fought back against her despair. “Little is left for me to choose, it seems. All decisions are given to others.” She could not keep the bitterness from her voice. “I am the mother of this child. I am the one who carries it within her body. I am the giver of its life. Yet I have almost nothing to say about its coming into the world.”

The Earth Mother did not speak. They stood facing each other in the silent clearing, the sunlight filtering down from the south where it eased toward day’s end, the waters of the pond between them reflecting their images as if through poorly blown glass. Willow wondered suddenly if her own birth had been so complicated, if the very complexity of it had contributed to her mother’s decision to leave her to her father, to abandon any further involvement, to forgo the pain of raising her when the pain of giving her life had been so intense. There was no way to know, of course. Her mother would never tell her the truth. Willow thought then of how she had left Ben, slipping away without saying good-bye, and she wished now that she had woken him.

She straightened. Well, there were few second chances given in life, and it was best not to dwell on their scarcity.

“Good-bye, Earth Mother,” she said, for there was nothing else to say, no other words to speak. “I will remember what you have said.”

“Good-bye, Willow. Keep strong, child. All will be well.”

It was almost exactly the same thing she had said to Ben. All will be well. The words reached out to mock her. Willow’s smile was bleak and ironic. She turned and walked to the edge of the clearing.

When she looked back again, the Earth Mother had disappeared.

Ensorcelled

When Ben Holiday woke that first morning to find Willow gone, he was not a happy man. She had told him she was leaving, of course, so he was not surprised to discover she wasn’t there. He even understood why she had left without waking him to say good-bye; he probably would have reacted every bit as badly as she had imagined. But none of that made him feel any better about the situation. He simply didn’t like being separated from her, even for the best of reasons—and he wasn’t sure this visit was one. He had listened to her explanation and tried to be fair about what she was doing, but in the end he still didn’t understand any of it. Why did she have to go alone? Why did she have to go now?

Why did the feeling persist, despite his efforts to suppress it, that she was keeping something from him?

He might have sat about stewing for the entire day or even the rest of the week if it hadn’t been for the fact that once again he had scheduled a full day of meetings in his continuing effort to find a way to be a good King. It wasn’t as easy as people might suppose. In the first place, there was a decided clash of cultures at work in his stewardship of Landover. This was a place in which the feudal system had been at work for hundreds of years (according to Abernathy’s carefully maintained histories), while Ben Holiday was a product of what passed in his world for a democracy. Instinctively almost, he found himself from day one looking for ways to implement the kind of government he knew and believed in. The lawyer in him wanted law and order to be the cornerstone of his government and to guarantee justice of, for, and by the people. But you didn’t come into a strange country and simply throw out the system already in place. That was a swift and certain path to anarchy. As they were fond of saying where he came from, you had to work within the system.

So Ben settled early on for working toward the establishment of a benevolent dictatorship (still didn’t sound too good when he said it, but it remained the best description he could come up with). The emphasis, of course, was supposed to be on the word benevolent and not on the other. The trick in all this was to introduce the changes he wanted without making it too obvious. People always accepted change more readily when they didn’t realize it was happening. Thus the need for Ben Holiday as King to constantly walk a tightrope. Of course, after two years he was getting pretty good at it.

The process was convoluted, and only Questor and Abernathy really knew what was going on. As the King’s closest advisors (not counting Willow), they were pretty much privy to everything that happened. In most instances, they supported Ben’s ideas, arguing mostly on the side of caution and restraint in the introduction of his somewhat-revolutionary ideas. Once Ben had established himself as an acceptable and resilient King, one not likely to be dislodged, the next step was to bring the Kingdom’s warring factions into some kind of accord. That meant getting at least a semblance of cooperation from such diverse peoples as the once-fairy, the humans, the kobolds, and the rock trolls—not to mention various smaller groups—none of whom wanted much to do with the other. Ben had succeeded in that endeavor through a combination of threats, promises, and bribes. A King had to be something of a magician—apologies to Questor Thews—and there was a great deal of on-the-job training. Thus a hard stand here led to a compromise there. You had to know when to bend and when to hold fast.

Starting out as a lawyer was good training, as Ben was fond of saying, for becoming a King.

So here was how matters stood at present in the reign of Ben Holiday, latest King of Landover, a place every reasonable person who hadn’t been there knew couldn’t possibly exist. The King still had the final say in all matters, particularly in disputes between lesser rulers and leaders of the various peoples of the Kingdom. Because Ben had finally garnered a solid base of support throughout the whole of the land and because he was backed by the armored might of the Paladin, almost no one ever considered using force against him. Ben, on the other hand, had to be careful not to give any of those lesser rulers and leaders reason to feel that their own stature was in any way being diminished. Thus they had to be left to govern where it was reasonable and sensible to allow them to do so. Where the King’s own special brand of magic came into play was in getting them to govern the way he wanted.

Ben established early on a series of advisory committees (his designation) to oversee such matters as resource management (land, water, air, and magic—well, of course, in a magic kingdom!), commerce and travel (trading of goods between peoples and the transportation of same), currency exchange (frequently bartering), public works (road building and repair and management of the King’s lands), and judicial review (resolution of civil disputes and criminal violations). He set up administrative officials in each part of the Kingdom to oversee the workings of all this, and periodically he brought them to Sterling Silver for a review of how the process was working and what could be done to make it stronger. It wasn’t a perfect system by any means, but it had the added benefit of teaching Landover’s many and diverse citizens—whether they realized it or not—how to participate in a government system. It was a learning process that took time, but Ben thought that he could see it building on itself. Where once the peoples of the lake country and the Greensward wouldn’t have given each other the time of day, now they were working together to solve such common problems as how to conserve and protect water resources and how most effectively to use crop lands for growing. He had them sharing their knowledge and reconsidering their prejudices. He had them behaving better than they had behaved in centuries.

In some ways it was all very primitive compared to where he had come from. But in other ways it was like being able to start over before so much was poisoned. Ben was careful about choosing what knowledge he introduced from his old world. He kept it pretty basic. Good health habits and unproved farming techniques, for example. He stayed away from things that would result in drastic change and possible harm—Industrial Revolution inventions and gunpowder. Some things he didn’t know enough about to introduce, and that limited what he could choose from. He was at heart a lawyer in any event—not an engineer or a chemist or a doctor or a manufacturer. Maybe, he reflected now and again, it was just as well.

Besides, Landover had something going for it that his old world didn’t, and it was important to remember to add it into the equation. Landover had magic. Real magic, the kind that changed things just as surely as electricity. Landover was infused with it, and many of her citizens practiced it in one form or another, and what they did with it obviated the need for many of the things that science had introduced once upon a time in Ben’s old world. So it wasn’t as simple as it first seemed, this business of categorizing and defining the pluses and minuses, pros and cons, and good and bad of the Kingdom of Landover.

In any case, Ben Holiday’s schedule that first day of Willow’s absence kept him from dwelling on his dissatisfaction with the matter of her going in the first place, and it wasn’t until he retired after a rather late dinner, alone in their bedchamber, that he found himself confronted by his personal demons once again. He stood on the balcony that opened off the room, staring out across the starlit land for a long time, trying to decide how he should handle the situation. He could go after her, of course. Bunion could probably track her down in nothing flat. But he knew even as he considered the idea that he would never do anything so contrary to what she expected of him. He considered using the Landsview, the strange instrument that allowed him to go out into the land and find anyone or anything to be found there, all without ever leaving the castle. He had used it more than once to see what was happening in a faraway place. That was a tempting alternative, but in the end he discarded it as well. It was too much like spying. What if he were to see something that he wasn’t supposed to see, something that she preferred to keep hidden from him? When you loved someone as much as he loved her, you didn’t resort to spying on them.

He settled finally for going to bed and lying awake most of the night thinking about her.

The second day passed very much like the first except that he was required to spend an extraordinarily long time with a delegation of Rock Trolls, convincing them of the wisdom of carting a portion of their raw ores down out of the Melchor for sale to others rather than insisting that the forging be done entirely in their furnaces and according to what they decided was needed. This in turn resulted in dinner coming even later, which of course delayed bedtime until well after midnight, so that when he finally crawled beneath the covers he was so tired that he was almost asleep before he happened to turn over one final time on the pillow and so bring his hand in contact with the piece of paper tucked under it.

He sat up at once. He didn’t know why, but he was instantly certain of the importance of this paper. He brought light to one of the bedside lamps with a touch of his hand, the castle awake even when he slept and responsive to his wishes. He angled the paper into the circle of the lamp’s faint glow. The paper was folded in quarters, and he opened it carefully and read:

Holiday,

If you would know of an invasive magic that threatens Landover in a way even I cannot tolerate then meet me two nights hence on the eve of the new moon at the Heart. Come alone. I will do so as well. I pledge you no harm and safe passage.

Strabo.

Ben stared. His mind raced. Strabo the dragon can write? How did this get here? The dragon couldn’t manage to fit through the bedchamber window, could he?

He stopped himself and reconsidered. The dragon wouldn’t have written this. Or delivered it. He would have had someone else do both. Somehow. If the letter really was from him. If this wasn’t some sort of trick. Which it likely was. Strabo had never written him before—or even contacted him. Strabo, Landover’s last dragon, a reclusive, melancholy curmudgeon of a creature who resided far east in the wasteland of the Fire Springs, didn’t even like Ben Holiday and had made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion that he would be ecstatic if he never saw the King again in his entire life.

So what was this letter all about?

Ben read it twice more, trying to picture the dragon speaking the words. It wasn’t hard. The letter sounded like him. But the sending of it was odd. If the dragon was indeed seeking a meeting, this threat of which he warned must be a serious one. Ben discounted the danger of a personal attack. Strabo wasn’t interested in harming him, and even if he was he wouldn’t bother sending a note to lure him out—he would just take wing and come after him. Asking Ben to come alone was in keeping with the dragon’s personality. Strabo didn’t care for humans in general and would want any meeting kept private and personal. He also was quite honorable in his own peculiar way, and if he promised safe passage he would keep his word.

Still, the whole business made Ben uneasy.

Come alone?

Come at midnight?

He read the letter again and learned nothing new. He sat propped up against the massive iron headboard, pillows at his back, thinking the matter through. He knew what Questor and Abernathy would say. He knew what reason dictated. But there was something compelling about this letter, something that refused to let him simply discard it and go on about his life. It kept him reconsidering the matter, insisting that it was imprudent to ignore the warning. A sixth sense whispered that there was indeed something to heed here, something of which to be wary. Strabo did not act without reason, and if he felt there was a danger facing Landover then he was probably right. If he felt Ben should know about it, then Ben probably should.

So what should he do?

He went to sleep finally without having made a decision. He thought about the letter all the next day, mulling it over between meetings and conferences, during meals and while reading documents, and as he ran the perimeter of the castle in the late afternoon hours before dinner, keeping up his training habits even now, Bunion as always his silent, invisible protector.

He retired to bed that third night following Willow’s departure with the matter still unresolved.

But by morning he had made his decision. He knew he must go. He must take whatever risk was involved on the chance that the letter and warning were real. Besides, he convinced himself, the risk wasn’t all that great. The Heart was only several hours away on horseback. He would take a mounted patrol of King’s Guards for protection. He would not tell anyone until just before he was ready to leave. That would keep Questor and Abernathy and the kobolds out of the matter. He would leave the Guards safely back from the Heart, go in alone to check things out, meet with Strabo if the dragon was there, and still be back before dawn. Easy enough, and it would satisfy his need to do something besides stand around wondering what he should do!

There was a deciding factor in all this, although he would not let himself dwell on it. No matter the danger he might actually face in any situation, he was protected always by the Paladin. The King’s Champion was the single most powerful being in the realm, and it existed for the sole purpose of seeing that the King was kept safe. It could be summoned at a moment’s notice, its appearance requiring nothing more than Ben’s grasping the medallion he wore always about his neck, the medallion with the graven image of a knight riding out of Sterling Silver at sunrise. Grasp that medallion, call for the Paladin, and the knight of ghosts and shadows would be there instantly.

The problem with the Paladin, of course, was that the King’s armored champion was in truth the King himself. Or another side of the King. Or, more accurately, another side of whoever was King at any given moment. In this case it meant that the Paladin was really another side of Ben, a dark, destructive side born out of some well of being that he would rather not acknowledge even existed. But it did, and it hovered somewhere at the edges of his consciousness, waiting. Ben had struggled with the knowledge of what this meant ever since he had discovered the truth about the Paladin. The Paladin was a killing machine that had served in the ranks of the Kings of Landover since the beginning, a creation of the fairy folk to give protection to the ruler they had installed to keep the gates to the fairy world safe. The Paladin had fought in every battle visited on Landover’s many and diverse rulers, championing all causes, standing fast against all enemies. It had been challenged time and again. It had never lost. It died only when the King died. It was reborn when a new King was crowned. It was a timeless, eternal being that lived only to fight and fought only to kill.

And it was a part of Ben Holiday, an integral part of who and what he was, not merely by virtue of the office he held and the responsibility he had accepted, but because there existed in every living creature the potential for deliberate, controlled destruction. Ben had discovered early on that the Paladin’s infusion into his being, their joining as one, was due as much to the darkness of his human side as to any conjuring of fairy magic. He was the Paladin in great part because the Paladin was in truth another side of him, a side that until he had become King of Landover he had kept carefully closed away.

So he could rely on the Paladin to come to his rescue if required, though he was loath to call the dark warrior out again unless the need was great indeed. Summoning it was a last resort, he constantly told himself, but it was something he could do if he must. It was something he no longer believed, as once he had, that he would never do again.

He went through the fourth day in deliberate fashion, standing just outside himself most of the time, watching as Ben Holiday went through the motions of being King. He felt so peculiar about what he was doing, keeping the knowledge of the coming night’s plans carefully tucked away, that he was surprised no one noticed. Questor Thews and Abernathy seemed to find him normal and did not question if something was wrong. No one did. He fulfilled his day’s duties, ate his dinner, retired to his room, and sat down to wait

When it was nearly dark, the twilight easing quickly toward night, he went downstairs to the stables, ordered Jurisdiction, his favorite mount, a big bay gelding, saddled, called for a guard of six men, and rode out. He did so quietly and without advising anyone, and he was able to slip away without being noticed. Patrols came and went from Sterling Silver all the time; one more riding out at dusk attracted no particular attention. Even Bunion would probably be resting by now, anticipating a sunrise run with Ben. It was a typical summer night, lazy and warm, and there was that sense of all being right with the world and sleep being just a yawn and a deep, slow breath away. As Ben and his guard rode over the causeway, Sterling Silver was a shimmer of polished starlight against the hazy darkness, a reflection that lingered as they climbed into the forested hills west, then faded as the trees closed about.

They traveled swiftly, Ben pushing the pace, anxious to reach the Heart before midnight, navigating by the stars and his own sense of time’s passage. He had learned to live without clocks and watches since coming into Landover, and he could now tell time in the old way—by a reading of the heavens, by the length and position of shadows on the ground, and by the feel of the air and the condensation that gathered on the grasses. His senses were stronger in this world, he discovered, perhaps because he was forced to rely on them more. He wore black clothing and boots and black chain mail devised by Questor Thews out of magic and iron to be lightweight but very strong. He wore the precious medallion of the Kings of Landover and a long knife. A broadsword was strapped to his back because the King was expected to travel armed on night sorties and patrols. Riding gloves protected his hands, and a dark scarf was wrapped about his throat to ward off the dust.

There was no wind as yet, no air movement of any sort, and the night was thick and sultry. Insects buzzed about his head when he slowed, so he kept the pace at a quick trot or canter when the way was clear enough to do so. The new moon left the land bereft of much of its nighttime light—in Landover, the new moon was a combination of some of its eight moons dropping below the horizon and some entering their dark phases (Ben never had figured out exactly how it worked, only when it occurred, which was about every other month). What light there was came from the stars which gleamed all across the cloudless sky, a maze of brilliant pinpricks that seemed to have been placed there for no better reason than to inspire dreaming in those who gazed up at them. Ben did so when the trees cleared enough to allow, but his thoughts this night were occupied mostly with the meeting that lay ahead.

Time passed swiftly, and it was still almost an hour short of midnight when the riders closed on the Heart. Ben brought the patrol up while they were still some distance away, had the Guards stand down, and ordered them to wait for him there. He rode on until he was within several hundred yards of his destination, then dismounted from Jurisdiction, left the horse to graze unfettered, and walked on alone.

The woods were dark and empty-feeling as he passed through them, and although he listened for familiar sounds in the blanketing silence he heard nothing. The smells of the forest were pungent and intoxicating, causing his thoughts to drift to other times and places, to events that had once seemed momentous and now were only memories of building blocks used in the construction of his life. He walked easily and without concern for his safety; oddly enough, he did not feel threatened. Perhaps it was the sense of peacefulness that the summer night instilled within him. Perhaps it was the presence of the medallion, a constant reminder of the power bequeathed him as King. Perhaps it was simply that nothing actually did threaten. Whatever the case, he traveled on toward the Heart as if undertaking no more than a nighttime stroll in his gardens, one that would end with sleep and a waking into the new day.

He reached the Heart shortly before midnight, entering from the trees and standing momentarily at the edge of the rows of white velvet rests and kneeling pads, facing toward the white oak dais with its polished silver stanchions and limp pennants. The clearing was silent and seemingly empty. Nothing moved; there was not the whisper of a wind in the stillness. Memories of all that had transpired here came and went. Ben looked about a moment longer, then walked down an aisle between the benches and rests toward the dais.

A breath of wind brushed his cheek and was gone.Careful .

He was almost to the stage when the dark figure materialized from out of nowhere to his right, lifting, it seemed, from the very earth. He stopped, a chill racing down his spine, a lurch in the pit of his stomach. The dark figure was robed and bathed in shadow, the light behind it unrevealing.

“Play-King,” a familiar voice greeted.

Nightshade!

Ben froze, on guard now for the first time. Why was Nightshade here? The Witch of the Deep Fell was no friend of his, and if she was present there was reason to believe that the meeting was a trap after all.

She came forward a few steps, tall and imperious, the light catching her features now, etching out the lean, cold, flawless face, the raven black hair with its single streak of white, the narrow shoulders and long, thin arms. “Why did you send for me?” she hissed at him, her voice cold and angry. “What is all this about a threat of magic to my home?”

Ben stared, speechless. Send for her? What was she talking about? He was here because Strabo had sent for him! What sort of game was she playing?

“I didn’t…” he began.

“You annoy…” she started.

And then a shadow fell over them both, and the sky was filled with Strabo’s dark bulk as the dragon settled gingerly down at the edge of the dais, serpent body coiling up, wings folding in. Steam rose from his black-as-pitch, fire-slicked, scaled body, and the stench of him filled the air. Even Nightshade drew back in repulsion as he swung his horned and fearsome head from one of them to the other.

“What is this?” he growled, the sound a deep, unpleasant rumble, the grating of stone against the earth. His huge, implacable bulk was outlined against the forest. “Why is Holiday here, Witch?’ he demanded ominously. “What does he have to do with your note?”

“Mynote?” Nightshade’s voice was a rasp of disbelief. “I sent you no note! I came in answer to the play-King’s missive!”

“Foolish old crone,” the dragon purred, a big cat contemplating dinner. “You waste my time with your idiotic denials. The note was yours, the words all too clearly your own. If you have some treasure you wish to trade, then offer it up and be done with it.”

Nightshade’s face was livid with fury. “Treasure?”

Ben saw what was happening then, recognized the truth of what had been done to them, and knew instinctively that it was already too late to escape. Separate notes sent to each, seemingly from one another, actually from someone else entirely, meant to lure them to this spot—the bait for a trap. Why? The word screamed at him as he started forward, catching sight suddenly of someone who had appeared just long enough to set something down, a tall, gawky figure, vaguely familiar, backing away from a box that sat open at the edge of the dais, smoke or mist or whatever already lifting from its ulterior, the box unfamiliar but the figure someone he knew ...

Horris Kew!

What in the name of sanity was going on?

“Wait!” he managed to yell, pointing at the scarecrow figure. Strabo’s scaled head whipped around, the fire leaking from his maw as he hissed in warning. Nightshade’s arms came up threateningly, the magic forming streaks of wicked green light on her fingertips. There was a sudden crackling in the air. Ben’s hand went instinctively to the medallion, and he called forth the Paladin to his rescue.

All too late. Light flared suddenly from all about, thrusting from the blackness on every side, born of some origin earlier fixed and triggered now as the jaws of the trap set to ensnare them closed tightly about. They were hammered forward toward each other and the box, all three of them, King, witch, and dragon, and there was not a moment’s time to react. The light caught and carried them across the velvet benches and rests, across the distance separating them from one another, and locked them in a knot of magic that bound them up with ferocious purpose. Then mist and gloom closed about, rising to receive them as if they were an expected offering. Abruptly they began to fall into a deep, impenetrable void. The void opened beneath them, growing in size as they neared it (or were they shrinking?), a vast, empty sinkhole that sucked them inexorably downward.

But there was something more. All were experiencing an odd sense of loss, as if some essential part of who and what they were was being stripped away in layers. And there surfaced within each a demon, a nameless, formless, terrible beast they had kept sealed away, but was now suddenly, inexplicably set free. All three howled in fury and despair.

Where did Horris Kew get such power?was Ben’s last, desperate thought.

Then down he tumbled with the dragon and the witch, voiceless and powerless, to disappear into the interior of the Tangle Box.

When they were gone, the Gorse lifted out of the gloom at the edge of the trees behind the dais and hissed coldly at Horris Kew, “Pick up the box.”

Horris was shaking so badly he could not make himself move. He stood with his hands clenched tightly and his size-sixteens rooted in place. He was stunned by the magnitude of what he had just witnessed—Holiday, Nightshade, and Strabo picked up like rag dolls by the magic and hurtled down into the murky depths of the Tangle Box. Such power! Yes, the Gorse had taken great pains to set the underpinnings of its implementation, to cast the nets of sorcery, to speak the spells that would lie waiting for the three. Or rather, to have Horris do all this, for the Gorse still seemed unable to act on its own. Horris had glimpsed the depth of the creature’s power even then, sharp twinges and stabs that pricked his psyche, but even so he could not have imagined that all these little conjurings could be brought together to form such a singularly devastating magic.

To one side, the Gorse hissed purposefully.

“The box, Horris!” Biggar whispered in his ear, an urgent plea from his perch on the conjurer’s shoulder.

Horris started out of his shock, then hurriedly stumbled forward onto the dais. He stared down at the swirling, misty surface of the Tangle Box. There was nothing to be seen. The box was closed once more.

Horris stepped back, sweating, breathing hard. He exhaled slowly. It had worked just as the Gorse had promised. The Gorse told them the notes would attract the three, their greatest potential enemies, the only ones in Landover who could offer any real threat. It told them the notes were spellbound so that their readers would find them impossible to resist, even should their reason and good sense caution otherwise. It told them the conjurings and magics and symbols of power cast and set about the Heart would ensnare the unsuspecting trio so swiftly that none would escape. It told them finally that the Tangle Box was a prison from which they would never escape.

But Horris couldn’t help asking again anyway. “What if they get out?”

The Gorse laughed, a low, humorless sound in the darkness. “They will never get out. They won’t even know enough to want to get out. I’ve taken steps to see to that. By now, they are hopeless prisoners. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know where they are. They are lost to the mists.”

Biggar ruffled his feathers. “Serves them right,” he croaked dismissively.

“Pick up the box,” the Gorse ordered once more.

Horris was quicker to respond this time. He snatched up the carved wooden container obediently, being careful nevertheless to hold it away from him. “What do we do now?”

The Gorse was already moving. “We take the box back to the cave, and we wait.” The voice was smooth and self-satisfied. “After the King’s absence has caused sufficient panic, you and the bird will pay another visit to your friends at Sterling Silver.”

The Gorse eased through the gloom like smoke. “Only this time you will take them a little surprise.”