It took Questor Thews the better part of three days to travel by horseback from Sterling Silver to the eastern edge of the Wastelands. He went alone, slipping from the castle before dawn of the first day, departing while the bothersome G’home Gnomes and all those annoyingly insistent ambassadors, couriers, and supplicants from one place or another still slept. Affairs of state would simply have to wait, he had decided, whether it was convenient or not. Bunion and Parsnip were there to see him off, anxious that they be allowed to accompany him, distressed at his insistence on going alone. Questor would not be swayed by the toothy grins and the furtive looks. This was something he must do by himself. Neither of them could help. It was best that they stay at the castle and look after things in his absence. He mounted his old gray and rode out, Don Quixote without his Sancho Panza, a scarecrow searching for his field of need. He went north through the wooded hill country of Sterling Silver, northeast across the fields and pastures of the Greensward, and finally east into the Wastelands.
It was nearing sunset on that third day when he finally sighted the distant glow of the Fire Springs.
“Come along, now,” he urged his old gray, who had caught the scent of what lay ahead and was beginning to balk.
Questor Thews was a man who bore a very large burden of guilt. He knew that things would not be right again in the Kingdom of Landover until the High Lord was returned. Nightshade would continue her campaign of disruption and anarchy until someone found a way to deal with that bottle and its demon. Questor was not, unfortunately, the one who could do that. The High Lord was. But the High Lord was trapped in his old world and would not be able to come back again until he recovered his lost medallion—and even then would likely not come back if he could not bring Willow and the missing Abernathy with him. All of this was the fault of one Questor Thews, of course, and the wizard could not afford to stand by longer and allow matters to assume their own course when the course they assumed might well be the wrong one.
Therefore, he had come up with a plan to put things back the way they were. It was a very straightforward, if somewhat minimally developed plan—but a plan nevertheless. He would enlist the aid of the dragon Strabo to bring Holiday and the others back.
It was all quite simple, really, and he was surprised that he hadn’t thought of it earlier. No one could journey in or out of the valley of Landover without passing through the mists of fairy, and no one could pass out of Landover and back in again through the mists of fairy without the magic of Holiday’s missing medallion—no one, that is, except Strabo. Dragons could still go pretty much where they chose. Oh, they couldn’t go deep into the fairy mists, of course, because dragons had been banished from there long ago. But they could go most places. The magic that allowed them passage through the mists was their own. That was why dragons were apt to pop up almost anywhere. Strabo was no exception. He had already taken Ben Holiday down into the netherworld of Abaddon for the purpose of rescuing Questor, Willow, Abernathy, and the kobolds from the demons. He could certainly make a second trip now to rescue Holiday.
Questor’s face knotted. Strabo could, to be sure—but whether or not he would was another matter entirely. After all, the Abaddon trip had been made under extreme duress, and the dragon had made it quite clear on a number of occasions since that he would rather choke on his own smoke than lift a claw to help Ben Holiday again.
So while the plan’s conception was indeed quite simple, its execution probably would not be.
“Ah, well,” he sighed resignedly. “Something has to be tried.”
He guided the gray to the edge of the hills that ringed the Fire Springs, dismounted, stripped saddle and bridle from the old horse, slapped him on the rump, and sent him home. No point in worrying about keeping the horse, he thought. If he couldn’t persuade Strabo to help, he wouldn’t be needing a horse.
He tugged at one long ear. How was he going to persuade Strabo to help anyway?
He thought about it a moment, then shrugged away his worry and began to make his way up the slope through the heavy scrub. Twilight descended gradually over the valley in darkening patches of blue and gray, and the sun diminished to a thin silver slash above the tree line along the western rim, then disappeared altogether. Questor glanced up. A bank of low-hanging clouds hung directly overhead, and its underside shimmered orange and red from the glow of the Springs. The wizard breathed in smoke and ash and sneezed. A sneeze, he thought irritably! That was how this whole mess had begun! He shoved ahead doggedly, heedless of the brambles and scrub that caught his robes and tore through fabric and skin. The explosions were audible now, short, booming coughs that lifted into the night like giant hiccups before subsiding into gurgles of discontent. The heat grew intense, and Questor began sweating freely.
At last he topped a rise and stopped, hands settling firmly on his hips. The Fire Springs were spread out below him, a series of jagged craters in which a blue and yellow liquid bubbled and sizzled. Periodically, a crater would erupt in a geyser of flame, then settle back again discontentedly. The air was sulfurous and hot, its stench a mix of the burning liquid and the blackened bones of animals the resident dragon had devoured.
The dragon was eating now, it happened. He lay wrapped about one of the smaller craters at the north end of the Springs, busily gnawing on what appeared to Questor to be the remains of an unfortunate cow. Bones snapped and crackled loudly within the monstrous jaws, black teeth grinding contentedly. Questor wrinkled his nose in distaste. Strabo’s eating habits had always annoyed him.
“Dragon, dragon,” he murmured softly to himself.
Strabo seared a section of the cow with his fire, then tore it from the carcass and chewed loudly.
Questor Thews came forward to the very edge of the rise so that he was plainly visible. “Old dragon!” he called out. “I need a word with you!”
Strabo stopped chewing a moment and looked up. “Who’s there?” he snapped irritably. He squinted. “Questor Thews, is that you?”
“It is.”
“I thought so. How boring.” The dragon’s teeth snapped the air for emphasis. “And who are you calling ‘old’? You’re practically a fossil yourself!”
“I need a word with you.”
“So you said. I heard you quite clearly. It comes as no surprise, Questor Thews. You always want a word with someone. You seem to delight in talking. I sometimes think that if you could manage to transform your unending conversation into magic, you would indeed be a formidable wizard.”
Questor’s brow furrowed. “This is quite important!”
“Not to me. I have a dinner to finish.” The dragon went back to work on the cow, gnawing a new portion free and chewing contentedly. He seemed oblivious of anything else.
“Reduced to stealing cows again, are you?” Questor asked suddenly, coming forward another few steps. “Tch, tch. How sad. Practically a charity case, aren’t you?”
Strabo stopped eating in mid-bite and swung his crusted, scaled head slowly about to face the wizard. “This cow is a stray that wandered in and stayed for dinner,” he said, grinning. “Rather like yourself.”
“I would make a poor meal for you.”
“Then perhaps you would make a decent dessert!” The dragon seemed to consider the idea. “No, I suppose not. There’s not enough of you even for that.”
“Not for a stomach the size of yours!”
“On the other hand, eating you would at least silence you.”
Questor shook his head. “Why don’t you just hear what I have to tell you?”
“I told you, wizard, I am eating!”
Questor hunkered down on his heels, smoothing his patched robes. “Very well. I shall wait until you are finished.”
“Do anything you please, so long as you keep silent!” Strabo returned to his meal, searing the flesh with quick bursts of fire, tearing off great chunks of meat and bone, and chewing ferociously. His long tail twisted and snapped as he ate, as if it were the impatient recipient of food that was too long in reaching it. Questor watched. Out of the corner of one eye, Strabo watched back.
Finally, the dragon discarded the carcass of the cow by spitting it into the mouth of the crater he was wrapped about and wheeled sharply once more toward the wizard! “Enough of this, Questor Thews! How can I eat with you sitting there and staring at me as if you were some harbinger of doom? You ruin my appetite! What is it that you want?”
Questor climbed gingerly to his feet, rubbing at his cramped legs. “I want your help.”
The dragon snaked his way through the craters, his monstrous, cumbersome body impervious to the ash and fire, his tail and wings shaking off drops of liquid flame as he went. When he reached Questor’s end of the Springs, he lifted himself up on his hind legs and licked his jaws hungrily with a long, split tongue.
“Questor Thews, I find it impossible to think of a single reason why I would want to help you! And do not, please, give me that tired old recitation about the close ties of dragons and wizards, how we have shared so much of history, and how we must do what we can for each other in times of need. You tried that last time, if you recall. It was nonsense then and it is nonsense now. Helping you in any way, frankly, is abhorrent!”
“Your help is not for me,” Questor finally managed to get in. “Your help is for the High Lord.”
The dragon stared at him as if he were mad. “Holiday? You want me to help Holiday? Why ever in the world would I agree to do that?”
“Because he is your High Lord as well as mine,” Questor said. “It is time to acknowledge the fact, Strabo. Like it or not, Ben Holiday is High Lord of Landover, and so long as you live within the valley you are subject to his laws. That means that you are required to give aid to your King when he needs it!”
Strabo was in stitches. He was laughing so hard he could no longer hold himself upright; he collapsed in one of the craters, showering flames everywhere. Questor ducked a scattering and straightened. “There is nothing to laugh about here!”
“There is everything!” the dragon howled. He choked and gasped and belched smoke and fire. “Questor Thews, you are truly astounding. I think you even believe yourself sometimes. How droll!”
“Will you help or not?” Questor demanded indignantly.
“I should say not!” The dragon rose up once more. “I am not a subject of this land or its High Lord! I live where I choose and obey my own laws! I am certainly not required to give aid to anyone—least of all Holiday! What utter nonsense!”
Questor was not surprised to hear Strabo speak like this, knowing perfectly well that the dragon had never willingly done anything to help anyone in his entire life. But it had been worth the try.
“What of the pretty sylph, Willow?” he asked, “She is in need of your help as well. You saved her life once before, remember? She has sung to you and given you dreams to muse on. Surely, you would help Holiday if it meant helping her.”
“Not a chance,” the dragon sniffed.
Questor thought. “Very well,” he said. “Then you must help Holiday for your own sake.”
“My own sake?” Strabo licked his teeth. “What clever argument will you conjure up now, wizard?”
“An argument that even a dragon can understand,” Questor Thews replied. “Nightshade has gained control of a magic that threatens everyone in the valley. She has already begun to employ it, turning humans and the fairy folk against each other and causing disorder everywhere. If she is allowed to continue, she will destroy them all.”
The dragon sneered. “What do I care?”
Questor shrugged. “Sooner or later she will get around to you, Strabo. Next to Holiday, you are her worst enemy. What do you imagine will happen to you then?”
“Bah! I am a match for any magic the witch might command!”
Questor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I wish I could say the same. This is a different magic, Strabo—a magic as old as your own. It comes in the form of a demon that lives in a bottle. The demon draws its strength from the holder of the bottle and can employ that strength in any way it chooses. You would agree, wouldn’t you, that Nightshade’s strength is formidable?”
“I agree to nothing!” The dragon was irritated. “Get out of here, Questor Thews! I tire of you!”
“As much as you hate Holiday, his is the only magic that can withstand the demon. Landover’s High Lord commands the Paladin, and the Paladin can withstand anything.”
“Begone, wizard!”
“If you do not agree to help Holiday, Strabo, there will be no Paladin to stand against Nightshade and the demon. If you do not agree to help, we are all doomed.”
“Begone!”
The dragon breathed a stream of fire that seared the whole of the slope below where Questor Thews was standing and left the air smoking and filled with ash. Questor choked and gasped and retreated from the heat. When the air cleared, he saw the dragon turning sullenly away. “I care nothing for Nightshade, her demon, Holiday, you, or anyone else in this valley!” he muttered. “I barely care anything for myself! Now, go!”
Questor Thews frowned his deepest frown. Well, he had tried. No one could say that he hadn’t. He had done his best to reason with the dragon and he had failed. The dragon was simply being his normal, intractable self. If he continued to press the matter now, it would mean a fight.
He sighed wearily. That was the way it was between dragons and wizards. That was the way it had always been.
He strode forward to the edge of the rise again and stopped. “Strabo!” The dragon’s crusted head swung about. “Old dragon, it appears that we shall have to do this the hard way. I had hoped that common sense would prevail over innate stubbornness, but it now appears clear that will not be possible. It is necessary that you agree to help the High Lord, and if you will not do so willingly, then you shall do so nevertheless!”
Strabo stared at Questor in genuine amazement. “Good heavens, Questor Thews, are you threatening me?”
Questor drew himself up to his full height. “If threatening you is what it takes to gain your cooperation, then I will threaten you and worse.”
“Really?” The dragon took a long moment to study the wizard, then slapped his tail in a crater of fire with a loud whack and sent the burning liquid flying everywhere. “Go on home, silly old wizard!” he snapped and started to turn away.
Questor brought his hands up in a broad sweep, fire gathering at his fingertips as he did so. With a lunge, he sent the fire hurtling at the dragon. It struck Strabo full along the length of his great body, lifted him from the earth, and sent him flying over several of the bubbling craters to land in a tangled heap. Rock and flames scattered everywhere, and the dragon gave an audible grunt.
“Dear me!” Questor whispered, surprised that he could muster such magic.
Strabo picked himself up slowly, shook himself head to tail, coughed, spit, and turned slowly back to the wizard. “Where did you learn to do that he asked, a hint of admiration in his voice.
“I have learned much you do not yet know about,” Questor bluffed. “Best that you simply agree now to do as I have asked.”
Strabo replied with a sheet of flame that lanced at Questor and sent him cartwheeling head over heels into a patch of brush. A second rash of fire followed, but Questor was tumbling back down the hillside by that time, out of sight, and the fire merely fried the landscape until it was black.
“Bah, come back here, Questor Thews!” the dragon called after him from the other side of the rise. “This fight hasn’t even started yet and already you’re running for home!”
Questor picked himself up gingerly and started back up the slope. This was going to require a considerable effort on his part, he decided grimly.
For the next twenty minutes, wizard and dragon attacked each other with a ferocity that was terrifying. They twisted and dodged and skipped about, hurdling craters that spit smoke and steam and flame, turning the whole of the Fire Springs into a blackened battleground. Blow for blow they traded, Questor employing every conceivable form of magic against the dragon, conjuring up spells he didn’t even know he knew, Strabo answering back with bursts of flame. Back and forth they swung, pushing and shoving like fighters in a ring, and when the twenty minutes drew to a close, they were both gasping for breath and lurching like drunks.
“Wizard... you continually astonish me!” Strabo panted, slowly curling himself into a ball at the center of the Springs.
“Have you... given further consideration to... my request?” Questor demanded in reply.
“Most... certainly,” Strabo said and sent a fireball hurtling at the wizard.
They resumed their struggle wordlessly, and only their grunts and cries and the occasional booming coughs of the craters broke the evening stillness. The clouds dispersed, and a scattering of stars and several of Landover’s moons broke through the cover. The wind died, and the air warmed. Twilight passed away, and night descended.
Questor sent a swarm of gnats at the dragon, clogging his nose, eyes, and mouth. Strabo choked and gasped and breathed fire everywhere, thrashing as if chained. He began to swear, using words Questor had never heard before. Then he lifted free of the earth, launched himself at the wizard, and attempted to flatten him. Questor conjured a hole in the earth and dropped into it just before the dragon landed with a whump where previously he had been standing. Strabo sat there, looking about for him, not seeing him, so angry at his apparent miss he didn’t realize what had happened. Then a six-foot bee stinger shoved at him from underneath and sent him lurching skyward again with a howl. Questor appeared from the hole, throwing fire; the dragon threw fire back; and both of them fell apart again, singed and smoking.
“Wizard, we are... too old for this!” Strabo gasped, licking away bits of ash that were crusted on his nose. “Give it up!”
“I will give it up... when you say ‘yes’—not before!” Questor answered.
Strabo shook his blackened head. “Whatever... it is you wish, it cannot possibly... be worth all this!”
Questor wondered. He was black from head to foot with ash and burns, his robes were tattered and soiled beyond repair, his hair was standing straight out from his head, and the muscles and joints of his body felt as if they would never be right again. He had tried every magic he knew and then some, and nothing had fazed the dragon. He was alive, he thought, only by a series of flukes unparalleled in the history of wizardry. Much of the magic he had tried had misfired—as usual—and much of what he might like to do was beyond him. The only thing that was keeping him on his feet was the knowledge that if he failed now, he might as well forget about ever calling himself a wizard again. This was his last chance, his one opportunity to prove to himself—even if to no one else—that he really was the wizard he had always claimed to be.
He took a deep breath. “Are you... ready to listen?” he asked.
Strabo opened his maw as far as it would open and showed Questor all of his considerable teeth. “Step... inside, why don’t you, Questor Thews... so you can better hear my answer!”
Questor sent a flurry of canker sores into the dragon’s mouth, but the hide was so tough they couldn’t even begin to settle before they were dispatched. Strabo responded with a blast that sent the wizard tumbling head over heels and burned off his boots. They traded fireballs for a moment, then Questor pinwheeled his arms until it seemed they might fly off and sent a ferocious ice storm at the dragon. Sleet and frigid wind beat against the dragon as he sought refuge in the fire of one of the larger craters. But the storm was so fierce it suffocated the flames and turned the liquid in the crater to ice. Strabo was trapped in the resulting block, the ice hammering off his head as he howled in rage.
Finally, the magic gave out and the storm subsided. A foot of snow covered the dragon, but it was already melting from the heat of the other craters. Strabo poked his head out from beneath the covering and shook off the last of the flakes irritably. Then he heaved upward with a roar, and the ice shattered into cubes. The dragon was free once more, steam pouring from his nostrils as he swung about to face Questor Thews.
Questor stiffened. What would it take to overcome the beast, he wondered in frustration. What did he have to do?
He dodged another rush of flame, then another, and threw up a shield of magic against a third. Strabo was simply too strong. He wasn’t going to win a test of strength against the dragon. He had to find another way.
He waited for Strabo to pause for breath, then sent an itch.
The itch started inside the dragon’s left hind foot, but when he lifted the foot to scratch, the itch moved up to his thigh, then to his back, his neck, his ear, his nose, and back down to his right foot. Strabo twisted and grunted, flailing madly as the itch worked its way up one side and down the other, as elusive as buttered sausage, slipping and sliding away from him as he sought to relieve it. He howled and he roared, he writhed and he lurched, and nothing helped. He forgot about Questor Thews, working his serpentine body over the sharp edges of the craters, dousing himself in the liquid fire, trying desperately to scratch.
When at last Questor Thews made a quick motion with his hands and took back the itch, Strabo was a limp noodle. He lay gasping at the center of the Fire Springs, his strength momentarily spent, his tongue hanging out on the ground. His eyes rolled wearily until they settled at last on the wizard.
“All right, all right!” he said, panting like an old dog. “I have had enough! What is it that you want, Questor Thews. Just tell me and let’s get it over!”
Questor Thews puffed up a bit and permitted himself a smile of satisfaction.
“Well, old dragon, it is really quite simple,” he began.
Chief Deputy Pick Wilson of the King County Sheriff’s Department leaned forward cautiously across his paper-laden work desk and said to Ben Holiday, “So you and your friends were just on your way to a Halloween party at... What hotel was that again?”
Ben looked thoughtful. “I think it was the Sheraton. I’m not sure. The invitation should be in the car somewhere.”
“Uh-huh. So you were on your way to this party, in a rental car, your suitcases packed in the trunk...”
“We were leaving right afterward for the airport,” Ben interjected. The room smelled of new paint and disinfectant and was suffocatingly hot.
“With no identification, not even your driver’s license?” Wilson paused, looking mildly baffled.
“I explained all that, Deputy.” Ben was having trouble concealing his irritation. “Mr. Bennett has identification. Mine was left behind by accident.”
“Along with that of Mr. Abernathy and the young lady,” Wilson finished. “Yes, so you explained.”
He eased himself back again in his chair, looking from the skeleton to the gorilla to the shaggy dog to the pale green lady and back again. None of them had taken off their costumes yet, although Ben had long ago removed his death’s mask and Miles had finally gotten rid of the troublesome gorilla head. They sat there in that sterile, functional, bare-walled office somewhere in the bowels of the King County Courts Building, where the Washington State Police had deposited them nearly an hour ago, looking for all the world like candidates for “Let’s Make A Deal.” Wilson continued to look at them, and Ben could tell exactly what he was thinking.
The deputy cleared his throat, glancing down at some papers before him. “And the shaggy dog costume we found in the back seat...?”
“Was an extra. It didn’t fit right.” Ben leaned forward. “We’ve been over this ground before. If you have a charge to make, please make it. You’ve seen our card, deputy. Mr. Bennett and I are both lawyers, and we are prepared to defend ourselves and our friends, if that should prove necessary. But we are growing very tired of just sitting here. Are there any more questions?”
Wilson smiled faintly. “Just a few. Uh, wouldn’t Mr. Abernathy be more comfortable with his mask off?”
“No, he would not,” Ben snapped irritably. He glanced sideways at Abernathy. “It took considerable effort to get it on him in the first place, believe me. And we still hope to make that party, deputy. So another five minutes and that’s it. You’ll have to charge us.”
He was bluffing, but he had to do something to move matters along. He still didn’t know exactly what Wilson knew or what sort of trouble they were in. Just a mix-up of some sort, the deputy had assured them. Just a matter of straightening it all out. But when it came right down to doing any straightening, they just seemed to continue running about in circles.
Willow sat next to him in something that resembled a trance. Her eyes were half-closed, and her breathing extremely shallow. Wilson had watched her with growing suspicion. Ben had explained to the deputy that she was just a little under the weather, but he knew Wilson didn’t believe him. Wilson believed she was on drugs.
“Your lady friend doesn’t appear to be doing so well, Mr. Holiday,” the Chief Deputy said, as if reading Ben’s mind. “Would she like to lie down?”
“I don’t want to leave you, Ben,” Willow said quietly, eyes flickering open briefly before closing again.
Wilson hesitated, then shrugged. Ben moved his chair closer to Willow and put his arm around her, trying to make it look as much as possible as if he were simply comforting her rather than holding her upright. She sagged against him weakly.
“I’m going to call local counsel, Deputy Wilson,” announced Miles suddenly. He stood up. “Is there a phone I can use?”
Wilson nodded. “Next office. Dial 9 to get an outside line.”
Miles glanced meaningfully at Ben, then exited the room. As he went out, one of several clerks working in the reception area outside stuck her head through the door and told Wilson he was wanted on the phone. Wilson got up and walked over. Ben could hear a couple of the deputies lounging outside talking about how the whole city was overrun like this every Halloween. Witches, goblins, ghosts, and God-knew-what, one said. Zoo animals everywhere, the other said. It was hard enough keeping the peace on normal nights, the first said. Impossible on Halloween, the other said. Bunch of nuts, the first said. Bunch of crazies, the other said.
Wilson finished his conversation with the clerk. “Excuse me a moment, Mr. Holiday,” he said and went out. The door closed behind him.
Abernathy looked over worriedly. “What’s going to happen to us, High Lord?” he asked in a whisper. He hadn’t said a word since they got there because Ben had warned him not to. It was hard enough keeping up this charade about a Halloween party without trying to explain how the mouth in a dog mask could move so much like the real thing.
Ben smiled, trying to look reassuring. “Nothing’s going to happen. We’ll be out of here soon enough.”
“I don’t understand why they keep asking if I want to take off my mask, High Lord. Why don’t I just tell them the truth?”
“Because they can’t handle the truth, that’s why!” Ben sighed, irritated with himself. There was no point in snapping at the faithful scribe. “I’m sorry, Abernathy. I wish we could just tell the truth. I wish it were that simple.”
Abernathy nodded doubtfully, glanced at Willow, then leaned forward and whispered, “I know you came back for me and I am deeply grateful. But I think that, if we are not allowed to go soon, you must forget about me. You must cross back into Landover and help those whose needs are more pressing.” His eyes flickered briefly to Willow and away again. Willow appeared to be asleep.
Ben shook his head wearily. “Too late for that, Abernathy. I’m as much a prisoner now as you. No, we’ll all go back together. All of us.”
Abernathy kept his brown eyes locked on Ben’s. “I don’t know if that’s going to be possible, High Lord,” he said quietly.
Ben didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He watched as Miles reappeared through the door and closed it again.
“Help’s on the way,” he said. “I reached Winston Sack, senior partner with the firm of Sack, Saul, and McQuinn. We did some business with them a few years back in that Seafirst case. He said he’d send someone right over.”
Ben nodded. “I hope whoever it is hurries.”
Wilson came back into the room, all business. “Mr. Holiday, do you know a man named Michel Ard Rhi?”
Ben had been ready for that question from the beginning. There couldn’t be any other reason that they would be detained like this. He pretended to think a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, it appears that Mr. Ard Rhi has accused you and your friends of stealing something from him. Some sort of medallion.”
The room got very quiet. “That’s ridiculous,” Ben said.
“Mr. Ard Rhi has given a description of the medallion to us. The description is quite thorough. The medallion is silver and engraved with some sort of knight and a castle.” He paused. “Do you have a medallion like that, Mr. Holiday?”
Ben felt his throat constrict. “Let’s wait for the attorney that Mr. Bennett contacted to arrive before we answer any more questions. Okay?”
Wilson shrugged. “Up to you. Mr. Ard Rhi has contacted someone in the Attorney General’s office. That’s why you’re here. Mr. Ard Rhi’s coming down from up around Woodinville, I gather. Should be here in just a bit. The Attorney General’s office already has a man in the building.” He got up. “Maybe when everyone gets here, we can clear all this up.”
He went out again, closing the door softly behind him. There was a moment of silence while he moved away, then Miles snapped, “Damn it, Doc, all he has to do is search you to find...”
“Miles!” Ben cut him short with a hiss. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him I had it? If he finds out I have it, we’ll be charged for sure and the medallion confiscated in the bargain! I can’t allow that to happen!”
“Well, I don’t see how you can prevent it! They’ll find it anyway the moment they search you!”
“Listen up, will you? He’s not going to search me! He can’t do that without probable cause, and he hasn’t got any! Besides, it won’t come to that!”
Miles’ round face tightened. “With all due respect, Doc, you are not a criminal lawyer! You’re a hell of trial lawyer, but your specialty is civil litigation! How do you know if he’s got probable cause or not? Ard Rhi is going to say you took it, and that sounds like probable cause for a search to me!”
Ben felt trapped. He knew Miles was right. But if he admitted to having the medallion, they would be there in that Courts Building for the rest of their lives, or at least long enough to make it seem that way. He looked from Miles to Abernathy to Willow. Miles was beside himself with worry, Abernathy was within an inch of doing something that would blow his cover, and Willow was so sick she could no longer even sit upright without help. Landover was looking farther and farther away with the passing of every moment. His plan of escape was coming apart at the seams. He could not afford any further complications. He had to find a way to get them out of there right now.
He got up, walked to the door, and opened it. “Wilson,” he called quietly, and the Chief Deputy left what he was doing to wander over. “I’ve been thinking,” Ben said. “Why not put this whole matter over until tomorrow—or even until the first of the week. This isn’t anything that won’t keep. Willow seems to be getting worse. I want her to get some rest, maybe see a doctor. When that’s done, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you want. How about it?”
He meant it. He would come back, from Landover if necessary, and set things straight once and for all. He had already decided that he didn’t care for the idea of Michel Aid Rhi running around loose in his old world after all.
But Wilson was already shaking his head. “Sorry, Mr. Holiday, but I can’t do that. I might consider it if it were just me making the decision. But the order to hold you came right from the Attorney General’s office. I can’t release you until they say so. You’re a lawyer; you understand.”
Ben nodded wordlessly. He understood, all right. Somewhere along the line, Michel Aid Rhi had greased some political wheels. He should have expected as much. He thanked Wilson anyway and went back inside the office, closing the door once more. He sat down again beside Willow and cradled her against him.
“Well, you tried, Doc,” Miles offered quietly.
Willow’s head lifted momentarily from his shoulder. “It will be all right, Ben,” she whispered. “Don’t worry.”
He did worry, though. He worried that time was slipping away. He worried that all the doors out of this mess were closing one after the other, and he wasn’t going to be able to do a thing about it.
He was still worrying twenty minutes later when there was a brief knock, the door opened, and a young man in a neatly pressed, three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase appeared, spoke momentarily over his shoulder to Wilson, and stepped inside. This had better be the cavalry, Ben thought. The young man stopped. He was not prepared for what greeted him.
“Mr. Bennett?” he asked, looking doubtfully at the skeleton, gorilla, shaggy dog, and pale green lady facing him. Miles stuck out his hand and the young man shook it. “Lloyd Willoughby, Mr. Bennett, from Sack, Saul, and McQuinn. Mr. Sack called me and asked me to come over.”
“We appreciate it, Mr. Willoughby,” Miles said and proceeded to introduce the others. Ben shook his hand. Abernathy and Willow just looked at him, and he in turn looked back at them. Ben thought he looked awfully young—and that meant awfully green. You could tell from the way he was looking at them that he was thinking much the same thing Chief Deputy Wilson had been thinking a short time earlier.
Willoughby put his briefcase on Wilson’s desk and rubbed his hands together nervously. “Now, then, what seems to be the problem?”
“The problem is simple,” Ben offered, taking charge. “We are being held on a bogus theft charge—a charge made by a Mr. Ard Rhi. This man apparently has some clout in the Attorney General’s office, because that’s where the order to hold us originated. What we want—and right now—is to be allowed to go home and worry about this another time. Willow is quite ill and needs to be put to bed.”
“Well, I understood that there was a possible theft charge pending,” Willoughby said, looking increasingly nervous. “Some sort of medallion? What can you tell me about that?”
“I can tell you that I have it and that it is mine,” Ben answered, seeing no purpose in pretending otherwise. “Mr. Ard Rhi has no basis for his charge that I stole it.”
“Have you told this to the Chief Deputy?”
“No, Mr. Willoughby, because if I did, he would want to take the medallion, and I have no intention of giving it up.”
Willoughby now looked as if he were waist deep in alligators. He managed a faint smile. “Certainly, Mr. Holiday, I understand. But, do you have the medallion on you? Because from what I understand, if they choose to charge you, they might search you, find the medallion, and take it from you anyway.”
Ben fumed. “What about probable cause? Isn’t it Ard Rhi’s word against ours? That’s not enough for probable cause, is it?”
Willoughby looked perplexed. “Actually, Mr. Holiday, I’m not sure. The truth is, criminal law is only a sideline in our firm’s practice. I handle a small amount to satisfy those of our clients who want one of us to represent them, but I don’t do much otherwise.” He smiled weakly. “Mr. Sack always calls me to cover for him on these nighttime matters.”
Green as new wood, Ben thought. We’re doomed.
“You mean you’re not even a criminal attorney?” Miles began, coming to his feet as if he might actually be the gorilla he was dressed as. Willoughby took a quick step back, and Ben restrained Miles with a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down again into his seat with a quick warning glance in the general direction of the door that separated them from Wilson.
He turned back to Willoughby. “I don’t want them to search me, Mr. Willoughby. It is as simple as that. Can you prevent it?” Willoughby looked doubtful. “Tell you what, then,” Ben followed up quickly. “Let’s play it by ear. You be local counsel, but I’ll call the shots. Just follow my lead, okay?”
Willoughby looked as if he were considering whether or not he was being asked to do anything unethical. His brows were knit and his smooth, young face was deeply intense. Ben knew he would be useless if push came to shove. But there was no time to bring in anyone else.
The door opened to re-admit Wilson. “Mr. Martin of the Attorney General’s office has asked me to bring you up to Three Court for a short meeting, Mr. Holiday. All of you, please. Maybe now you can go home.”
When cows fly, Ben thought dismally.
They took the elevator up several floors and got off in a carpeted waiting area. The Chief Deputy led them down a short hall to a pair of paneled doors and from there into an empty courtroom. They stood at the head of an aisle that led down through a dozen rows of a viewing gallery to a gate that opened onto the trial floor and the judge’s bench. The jury box and the witness stand sat to the left, the reporters’ stand to the right. Further right, a bank of windows that ran the length of the wall opened out onto the lights of the city. Shadows lay over the room, broken only by a pair of recessed ceiling lamps that spotlighted the counsel tables situated directly in front of the gate.
A man with glasses and graying hair rose from one of the tables and said, “Chief Deputy, would you bring Mr. Holiday and his friends down here, please?”
Willoughby stepped to the forefront on their arrival, sticking out his hand and announcing, “Lloyd Willoughby of Sack, Saul, and McQuinn, Mr. Martin. I have been asked to represent Mr. Holiday.”
Martin shook his hand perfunctorily and promptly forgot him. “It’s late, Mr. Holiday, and I’m tired. I know who you are. I’ve even followed a case or two you’ve tried. We’ve both been around the block, so let me get right to the point. The complainant, Mr. Ard Rhi, says you took a medallion from him. He wants it returned. I don’t know what the dispute is, but I have Mr. Ard Rhi’s word that if the medallion is returned, the whole matter will be forgotten. No charges will be filed. What do you say?”
Ben shrugged. “I say Mr. Ard Rhi is nuts. Is that why we’re being detained—because someone says we stole a medallion? What kind of nonsense is this, anyway?”
Martin shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t know. A lot of what happens anymore is beyond me. At any rate, you better think it over because if the medallion doesn’t show up and Mr. Ard Rhi does—he’s supposed to be on his way—you are likely to be charged, Mr. Holiday.”
“On one man’s word?”
“Afraid so.”
Ben came right against him. “As you said, Mr. Martin, I’m a lawyer who’s been around the block. So is Mr. Bennett. Our word ought to count for something. Who is this Ard Rhi? Why should you take his word? That’s all you have, isn’t it?”
Martin was unruffled. He stood his ground. “The only word I get, Mr. Holiday, is from my boss, who keeps me employed, and he says to charge you if Mr. Ard Rhi—whoever he is and whatever he does—signs a complaint. My guess is that if he doesn’t get the medallion back, he’ll sign. What do you think?”
Ben couldn’t say what he was thinking without getting in worse trouble than he already was. “Okay, detain me, Mr. Martin. But how about letting the others go? Apparently I’m the one who’s to be charged.”
Martin shook his head. “No such luck. Your friends are to be charged as accomplices. Look, I’ve just finished a long, hard day in court. I lost the case I was trying, I missed my kid’s Halloween party, and now I’m stuck down here with you people. I don’t like this any better than you do, but that’s the way life works sometimes. So let’s just have a seat here while we wait for Mr. Ard Rhi. And maybe I can finish some of this paperwork I’m too damned tired to haul back to my office.” He motioned to the gallery. “Give me a break, huh? Talk it over. I don’t want to mess with this thing.”
He trooped wearily back to the counsel table and sat down, bending over a legal pad and notes. Willoughby motioned them all solicitously toward the gallery seats, where they sat in a row.
Martin looked up again. “Chief Deputy? Your people got orders to bring Mr. Ard Rhi up here when he arrives?” Martin waited for the affirming nod, then went back to his notes. Wilson drifted back up the aisle to the courtroom doors and stayed there.
Willoughby eased his way down the line to Ben and bent down. “Maybe you really should reconsider your decision not to give up the medallion, Mr. Holiday,” he whispered, sounding as if perhaps Ben should realize that this would be best for all concerned.
Ben gave him a look that caused him to move quickly away. Willow’s voice was a whisper in his ear. “Don’t... give them the medallion, Ben.” She sounded so weak it made his throat constrict. “If you must,” she said, “leave me. Promise you will.”
“Me as well, High Lord,” Abernathy said, bending close. “Whatever happens to us, at least you must get back to Landover!”
Ben closed his eyes. There was that choice. He had the medallion back again. Alone, he could undoubtedly find a way to slip out. But it would mean abandoning his friends, and he wasn’t about to do that, no matter what. Miles would probably be all right, but Willow wouldn’t last the night. And what would become of Abernathy? He shook his head. There had to be another way out of this.
Miles leaned over. “Maybe you better think about hiding the medallion, Doc. Just for tonight. You can come back for it tomorrow. You can’t let them find it on you!”
Ben didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. Hello, choice number two. He knew Miles was right, but he also knew that he didn’t want to part with the medallion again for any reason. Twice now he had lost it, once before when Meeks had tricked him into thinking he had given it up when in fact he hadn’t, and this time when he had given it to Abernathy in Questor’s ill-fated effort to change the dog back into a man. Both times he had managed to retrieve it, but only after considerable difficulty. He was not anxious to risk a third mishap. The medallion had become an integral part of him since he had crossed into Landover, and while he didn’t yet fully understand how it had happened, he knew that he could no longer function without it. It gave him the magic that made him King. It gave him power over the Paladin. And while he was reluctant to admit it, it gave him his identity.
He sat in the near-dark courtroom and thought about the medallion and all that he had become since it had been given to him. He looked at the trappings of the courtroom, symbols of his old life as a member of the bar, shards of the person he had been, and thought about how far he had gone away from them. Democracy to monarchy. Trial and error to trial by combat. A jury of his peers to a jury of one. No law but his. It had all been made possible by his acquisition of the medallion. His hand drifted to his tunic front. His smile was ironic. The trappings of his old life might be gone, but hadn’t he simply exchanged them for new ones?
The doors pushed open and another deputy appeared. He spoke briefly with Wilson, and Wilson walked down to Martin. They in turn conversed, and then Martin got up and walked back up the aisle with the Chief Deputy. All three men pushed through the doors and disappeared.
Ben felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle. Something was up.
A few moments later, they were back. Martin walked down the aisle to stand before Ben. “Mr. Aid Rhi is here, Mr. Holiday. He says you came to his house last night posing as a Mr. Squires in an attempt to buy the medallion. When he wouldn’t sell, you came back tonight with your friends and stole it. Apparently, the daughter of his steward helped you. He says she’s admitted her part in the matter.” He looked toward the courtroom doors. “Chief Deputy?”
Wilson and the other deputy pushed open the doors and said something to someone outside. Michel Ard Rhi stepped into view, his face impassive, but his eyes dark with anger. Behind him appeared two members of Graum Wythe’s watch.
Elizabeth stood disconsolately between them. Her eyes were downcast and tears streaked her freckled face.
Ben felt sick. They had found Elizabeth. There was no telling what they had threatened her with to force her to confess to stealing the medallion. And there was no telling what they would do to her if Ard Rhi didn’t get it now.
“Do any of you know the little girl?” Martin asked quietly.
No one said anything. No one had to.
“How about it, Mr. Holiday?” Martin pressed. “If you return the medallion, this whole matter can be dropped right here and now. Otherwise, I have to charge you.”
Ben didn’t answer. He couldn’t. There seemed no way out.
Martin sighed. “Mr. Holiday?”
Ben leaned forward, just to shift positions while he tried to stall, but Abernathy misinterpreted the move, thinking he had decided to give up the medallion, and hurriedly brought up a paw to restrain him.
“No, High Lord, you cannot!” he exclaimed.
Martin stared at the dog. Ben could see in the man’s eyes what he was thinking. He was thinking, how can the mouth on a dog costume move like that? How come he has teeth and a tongue? How come he seems so real?
Then a ball of crimson fire exploded outside the bank of courtroom windows, a black hole opened through the night, and out of the hole flew Strabo the dragon and Questor Thews.
It was one of those rare moments in life when everything seems to come to a halt, where movement is suspended, and everyone is trapped in a sort of three-dimensional still life. It was one of those moments that imprints itself in the memory, so that years later everyone still remembers exactly what it was like—what the feelings were, the smells, the tastes, the colors, and the lines and angles of everything around; and most of all, the way everything that happened just before and just after seemed focused on that moment like sunlight reflected off still water in colored threads.
It was like that for Ben Holiday. For that one moment, he saw everything as if it were captured in a photograph. He was half-turned in his seat in the front row of that courtroom gallery, Willow on one side, slumped down against his shoulder, Abernathy on the other, eyes shining, and Miles further left, still in his gorilla outfit, his cherubic face a mix of astonishment and dismay. Martin and Willoughby stood just in front of them on the other side of the gate, two generations of three-piece suits, their entire lives given over to a belief in the value of reason and common sense, the former looking as if he had just witnessed Armageddon, the latter looking as if he had caused it. Behind and to the rear, just visible in Ben’s peripheral vision, were Chief Deputy Wilson and his brothers-at-arms, minions of the law, bent in half crouches that gave them the appearance of startled cats poised to run either way. Michel Ard Rhi had black hatred etched on his face, and his men were white with fear. Only Elizabeth radiated the pure wonder that was captured, too, somewhere in Ben.
Outside, pinned against the backdrop of the lights of the city of Seattle, was Strabo. His bulk seemed to hang in the air, wings outspread like a monstrous hang glider’s, his black, crusted, serpentine form framed in the windows of the courtroom like an image projected on a screen. His yellow-lamp eyes blinked, and smoke trailed in streamers from his nostrils and mouth. Questor Thews sat astride him, patchwork gray robes so tattered they seemed to hang in strips, white hair and beard streaked with ash and flying in the wind. There was wonder mirrored in the wizard’s face as well.
Ben wanted to howl with the exhilaration he was feeling.
Then Martin whispered, “Good God!” his voice like a small child’s, and the moment was gone.
Everyone began moving and shouting at once. Wilson and the second deputy came down the aisle still crouched, slipping their guns from their holsters, yelling at everyone to get down. Ben yelled back, telling them not to shoot, glancing once over his shoulder to where Questor Thews was already making a quick circling motion with his fingers, then back again to see the astonished deputies staring at fistfuls of daisies where the guns had been. The hallway outside had become an impassable jungle, floor-to-ceiling deepest Africa, and Michel Ard Rhi and his men, trying desperately to flee, found their exit blocked. Elizabeth had broken free of them and was running down the aisle to greet Abernathy, crying and saying something about a clown nose and Michel and how sorry she was. Willoughby was pulling and tugging on Miles as if somehow Miles might get him out of this nightmare, and Miles was trying in vain to shove the other man away.
Then, suddenly, Strabo shifted positions outside the window, and his huge tail swung about like a wrecking ball and hammered into the bank of windows with an explosion that shattered glass, wooden frames, and half the wall. The city night rushed in, wind and cold, the sounds of cars from the streets and ships from the docks, and the lights of the adjacent high rises which now seemed magnified a hundredfold.
Ben went to the floor, Miles was thrown back into the gallery seats, and Abernathy and Elizabeth came together in a rush.
“Strabo!” Michel Ard Rhi screamed in recognition.
The dragon flew in through the opening like a dirigible and settled onto the courtroom floor, flattening counsel benches, the reporters’ stand, and part of the gate.
“Holiday!” he hissed, and his tongue licked out from between the blackened spikes of his teeth. “What an ugly world you come from!”
Martin, Willoughby, Wilson, the second deputy, Michel Ard Rhi, and his men were climbing all over one another in an effort to get out of the way of the dragon, but they couldn’t break through the wall of foliage that blocked the courtroom doors. Strabo glanced at them; his maw opened, and a jet of steam shot out at the five, who screamed in terror and dove for the cover of the gallery seats. The dragon laughed and clicked his jaws at them.
“Enough of that nonsense!” Questor Thews snapped. The wizard began climbing down from the dragon’s back.
“You drag me here against my will, force me to rescue a man I despise, a man who is nothing less than what he deserves to be—the victim of his own foolhardiness—and now you would deprive me of the tiny bit of pleasure this pointless venture affords!” Strabo huffed and snapped his tail, taking out another row of gallery seats. “You are so tiresome, Questor Thews!”
Questor ignored him. “High Lord!” The wizard came forward and embraced Ben warmly. “Are you well?”
“Questor, I have never been better!” Ben exclaimed, pounding the other on the back so hard he almost knocked him over. “And I have never been happier to see anyone in all my life! Not ever!”
“I could not tolerate even the thought of you being here another moment, High Lord,” Questor declared solemnly. He straightened. “Let me make my confession here and now. This entire mishap has been my fault. I am the one who made a mess out of things and I am the one who must put them right again.”
He turned, his eyes settling on Abernathy. “Old friend!” he called over. “I have done you a grave disservice. I am sorry for what I did. I hope you will forgive me.”
Abernathy wrinkled his nose with distaste. “Cat’s whiskers, Questor Thews! There is no time for this nonsense!” Questor assumed a pained look. “Oh, for the... Very well! I forgive you! You knew I would! Now, get us out of here, confound it!”
But Questor had caught sight of Michel Ard Rhi. “Ah, hello, Michel!” he called up the aisle to where the other was crouched behind a line of benches. He smiled brightly, then whispered out of the corner of his mouth to Ben, “What is going on here, anyway?”
Quickly, Ben filled him in. He told him what Michel had done to Abernathy and tried to do to them.
Questor was understandably appalled. “Michel hasn’t changed a bit, it seems. He remains the same detestable fellow he always was. Landover is well rid of him.” He shrugged. “Well, this is all great fun, but I am afraid we must be going, High Lord. I suspect the magic I employed to close off this room won’t last very long. Magic has never enjoyed much success in this world.” He took a moment to survey his handiwork at the courtroom door, then sighed. “That’s a much better than average forest wall I conjured, don’t you think? I am quite proud of it. I have always been rather good at growing things, you know.”
“A regular green thumb,” Ben acknowledged. He had his eyes fixed on Michel Ard Rhi. “Listen, Questor, as far as I’m concerned, the quicker you get us out of here, the better. But we have to take Michel with us. I know,” he added hastily, seeing the look of horror on the other’s face, “you think I’m nuts. But what about Elizabeth if we leave him? What happens to her?”
Questor frowned. Clearly, he hadn’t considered that. “Oh, dear,” he said.
Elizabeth, a dozen feet up the aisle, was clearly thinking much the same thing. “Abernathy!” she begged, tugging on his sleeve. When he looked down, her eyes were huge. “Please don’t leave me behind! I don’t want to stay here anymore. I want to come with you.”
Abernathy shook his head. “Elizabeth, no...”
“Yes, Abernathy, please! I want to! I want to learn magic, and fly dragons and play with you and Willow and see the castle where...”
“Elizabeth...”
“...Ben is King and the fairy world and all the strange creatures, everything, but I don’t want to stay here, not with Michel, not even if my father said it would be all right, because it wouldn’t, not ever...”
“But I can’t take you!”
They stared at each other in anguish. Then Abernathy bent down impulsively, hugged the little girl close, and felt her hug him back. “Oh, Elizabeth!” he whispered.
Outside the window, still in the distance, sirens sounded. Miles grabbed Ben. “You have to get out of here now, Doc—or you’re liable not to get out at all.” He shook his head. “I still think this whole thing is just a crazy dream. Green fairies and talking dogs and now dragons! I think I’m going to wake up tomorrow and wonder what I had to drink tonight!” Then he grinned. “Doesn’t matter, though:” He glanced at the dragon, who was chewing on a section of the judge’s bench. “I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it!”
Ben smiled. “Thanks, Miles. Thanks for sticking with me. I know it wasn’t easy—especially with so many weird things happening all at once. But someday you’ll understand. Someday I’ll come back and tell you everything.”
Miles put a big hand on his shoulder. “I’ll hold you to that, Doc. Now get going. And don’t worry about things here. I’ll do what I can for the little girl. I’ll find a way to straighten it all out, I promise.”
Questor had been studying Elizabeth and Abernathy while Miles was speaking, but now suddenly he started. “Straighten things out!” he exclaimed. “That gives me an idea!” He wheeled and hurried up the aisle to where Michel Ard Rhi and the others still crouched behind the gallery seats. “Let me see,” the wizard muttered to himself. “I think I still remember how this works. Ah!”
He muttered a few quick words, added a few curt gestures, and pointed, one after the other, to Chief Deputy Wilson, to the second deputy, to Michel’s two henchmen, to Martin, and finally to Lloyd Willoughby of Sack, Saul, and McQuinn. All immediately assumed a rather blissful look and settled to the floor sound asleep.
“There!” Questor rubbed his hands together briskly. “When they wake up, they will have had a very pleasant rest and all this will seem a rather vague dream!” He beamed at Miles. “That should make your task somewhat easier!”
Ben glanced at Miles, who was studying the vacant look on Willoughby’s face suspiciously. The sirens had settled underneath the Courts Building, and a spotlight was playing about the ragged opening in the wall.
“Questor, we have to get out of here!” Ben called sharply. He picked up Willow and cradled her in his arms. “Bring Michel and let’s go!”
“Oh, no, High Lord!” Questor shook his head adamantly. “We can’t have Michel Ard Rhi running about Landover again! He was much too much trouble the last time he was there. I believe he will do better here, in your world.”
Ben started to object, but Questor was already approaching Michel, who was on his feet again and backed up against the courtroom wall. “Stay away from me, Questor Thews,” he was snarling. “I’m not afraid of you!”
“Michel, Michel, Michel!” Questor sighed wearily. “You were always such a pathetic excuse for a Prince, and it seems you have not changed. You appear determined to bring unpleasantness into the lives of everyone around you. I simply don’t understand it. In any case, you are going to have to change—even if I have to help you.”
Michel crouched. “Don’t come near me, you old fool. You play tricks with your magic that might fool others, but not me! You always were a charlatan, a pretend wizard who couldn’t begin to do real magic, a ridiculous clown everyone...”
Questor made a short chopping motion, and the words ceased to come out of Michel Ard Rhi’s mouth, even though he continued trying to speak. When he realized what had been done to him, he reeled back in horror.
“We can all improve ourselves in this life, Michel,” Questor whispered. “You just never learned how.”
He made a series of intricate, motions and spoke softly. There was a wisp of golden dust that flew from his fingers and settled onto Michel Ard Rhi. The exiled Prince of Landover shrank back, then stiffened, and his eyes seemed to catch sight of something very far away, something that none of the others could see. He relaxed, and there was a strange mix of horror and understanding mirrored in his face.
Questor turned away and started back down the aisle. “Should have done that a long time ago,” he muttered. “Simple sort of magic, best kind there is. Strong enough to last, too, even in this barbaric world of nonbelievers.”
He stopped momentarily as he reached Abernathy and Elizabeth, and he put his gnarled hands on the little girl’s shoulders. “I am sorry, Elizabeth, but Abernathy is right. You cannot come with us. You belong here, with your father and your friends. This is your home, not Landover. And there is a reason for that, just as there is a reason for most of what happens in life. I won’t pretend that I understand all of what that reason is, but I understand a bit of it. You believe in the magic, don’t you? Well, that is surely part of why you are here. Every world needs someone who believes in the magic—to make certain that it isn’t forgotten by those who don’t.”
He bent to kiss her forehead. “See what you can do, will you?”
He continued down the aisle past Ben. “Do not worry, High Lord. She will have no further problem with Michel Ard Rhi, I assure you.”
“How do you know that?” Ben asked. “What did you do to him?”
But the wizard was already through the gate and climbing back up on the dragon. “I’ll explain later, High Lord. We really have to be going now. Right this instant, I think.”
He motioned back up the aisle, and Ben could see that the wall of foliage blocking the courtroom entry was beginning to fade. In moments, the entry would be clear again.
“Get out of here, Doc!” Miles whispered roughly. “Good luck!”
Ben clutched the other’s arm for a moment, then released him and carried Willow through the courtroom debris to where Strabo had swung about to face the opening in the wall. The dragon eyed Ben malevolently, hissed, and showed all of his teeth. “Ride me, Holiday,” he invited menacingly. “It will be the last chance you will ever have to do so.”
“Strabo. I would never have believed it,” Ben marveled.
“I care nothing for what you believe,” the dragon snarled. “Quit wasting my time!”
Ben cradled Willow tightly against him and started to mount. “It must have taken a small miracle for Questor to...” He stopped at the sudden sound of approaching helicopters, their rotors whipping through the night.
Strabo’s lips curled back. “What is that I hear?” he hissed.
“Trouble,” Ben answered, and hitched his way up quickly behind Questor. Willow opened her eyes briefly and closed them again. Ben squeezed her shoulders and pulled her close. “Hurry up, Abernathy!”
Elizabeth was hugging the dog once more. “I still want to go with you!” she whispered fiercely. “I still do!”
“I know,” he whispered back, then broke free roughly. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Good-bye.”
The others were calling out to him. He was halfway through the shattered gallery gate to join them when he heard Elizabeth call frantically, “Abernathy!” He turned at once. “Come back? Please? Someday?”
He paused, then nodded. “I promise, Elizabeth.”
“Don’t forget about me!”
“I won’t. Not ever.”
“I love you, Abernathy,” she said.
He smiled, tried to respond, then simply licked at his nose and hurried away. He was crying when he pulled himself up behind Ben. “Sorry, High Lord,” he said softly.
“Home, dragon!” Questor Thews cried.
Strabo hissed in response and lifted clear of the shattered courtroom. Wind blew and dust swirled with the beating of the great beast’s wings; the lights that remained flickered and went out, and the dragon seemed to fill the whole of the night. A thing out of legend and bedtime tales, he was real for yet another instant to the man and the child who watched. Then he flew through the opening in the wall and was gone.
Miles walked back up the aisle to where Elizabeth was staring out into the dark. He stood there with her in silence, smiling as he felt her hand come up to take his own.
Strabo burst through the opening in the wall of the Courts Building five stories up and nearly collided with a helicopter. Machine and beast veered away from each other, slicing through the chill night air and the narrow beams of several spotlights situated in the streets below. Neither was sure of what the other had encountered, each a dark shape against the city, and the confusion was evident. The helicopter disappeared skyward with a roar of its engine. Strabo dropped down between the buildings, flattening out.
There were screams from the people in the streets.
“Climb, dragon!” Questor Thews cried frantically.
Strabo soared skyward once more, arcing between a pair of tall buildings, steam rolling off his scaled hide. Ben and his companions clung to him for dear life despite the fact that Questor’s magic strapped them all securely in place. The helicopter roared back around the corner of a building, lights searching. A second ship followed. Strabo shrieked.
“Tell him not to use his fire on them!” Ben cried to Questor in warning, picturing flaming ships and buildings and Miles and Elizabeth in jail.
“He can’t!” Questor shouted back, head bent close. “His magic is as limited in this world as my own! He has only a little fire and he must save it if we are to make the crossover!”
Ben had forgotten. Strabo needed his fire to open a passage back into Landover. That was how he had brought them out of Abaddon when the demons had trapped them there.
They dodged and twisted, but the helicopters followed. Strabo rounded the corner of a building and shot out toward the bay. Wharfs, piers and jetty’s, shipyards with their dry docks and containers of freight, giant cranes that looked like goose-necked dinosaurs, and a kaleidoscope of vessels of all sizes and shapes passed away underneath. Ahead, far beyond, loomed a massive range of mountains. Below, the lights of the city winked and flashed.
A ship whistle sounded with a shriek, frightening them all with its closeness. Strabo shuddered, twisted left, and began to climb. Ben squinted. Something huge loomed close behind, dropping rapidly, small red and green lights blinking.
“A jet!” he cried in frantic warning. “Look out, Questor!”
Questor screamed something to Strabo, and the dragon whipped aside, just as the huge airplane dropped past on its path of descent. Engines roared, the wind screamed, and every other sound disappeared into white silence.
Strabo came around again and started back for the city, blackened teeth showing.
“No!” Questor howled. “Climb, dragon—take us home!”
But Strabo was too infuriated. He wanted someone or something to fight. Steam blew in jets from his nostrils and there were strange, frightening sounds emanating from his throat.
He passed back over the harbor and spotted the helicopters. He roared in challenge, and now fire burned redly from his jaws.
Ben was wild. “Turn him, Questor! If he uses up all his fire, we’ll be trapped here!”
Questor Thews shouted in warning at the dragon, but Strabo ignored him. He went straight for the helicopters, slashed between them so that they were forced to veer frantically aside to avoid a collision, then sped back into the midst of the city buildings. Spotlights whipped across the sky. in search of them. Ben was certain he could hear people screaming. He was certain he could hear gunfire. Strabo, heaven help them, was flying blind.
Then, just when it appeared that matters were completely out of control, the dragon seemed to remember himself. With a shriek that froze the entire night into stillness, Strabo suddenly shot skyward, Ben, Questor, Abernathy, and Willow were thrust back viciously. Wind whipped and tore at them, threatening to unseat them, chilling them to the bone. Sound and sight disappeared in a vortex of motion. Ben held his breath and waited for them all to disintegrate. That was how this chase was going to end, he decided. They were simply going to come apart. There wasn’t any doubt of it.
He was wrong. Strabo shrieked a second time and suddenly breathed out a rush of fire. The air seemed to melt and the sky to open. A jagged hole appeared, black and empty, and they flew into it.
The blackness swallowed them. There was a flare of light and a surge of heat. Ben closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again.
A scattering of colored moons and solemn, twinkling stars brightened the night like a child’s picture book. Mountain walls rose all about and trailers of mist played hide-and-seek through craggy peaks and great, silent trees.
Ben Holiday let his breath escape in a slow hiss of relief.
They were home.
The little company spent the remainder of that night on the western slope of the valley just north of the Heart. They settled themselves in a grove of fruit trees mixed with a scattering of crimson-leaved maples, the smell of berries and apples mingling with hardwood bark and new sap in the cool night air. Cicadas hummed, crickets chirped, night birds called from near and far, and the whole of the valley whispered in the softest cadence that all was well. Sleep was an old and valued friend on such a night. For all but one of the worn and harried members of the little company, it came easily.
Ben Holiday alone remained awake. Even Strabo slept, curled up some distance off within the shelter of a low ravine, but Ben stayed awake. Sleep would not come for him. He leaned back against Willow and waited for the dawn, troubled and anxious. Willow was a tree now. She had made the transformation moments after they had eased her down off the back of the dragon, barely conscious. She had tried to reassure Ben with a quick squeeze of one hand and a momentary smile, and then she was changing. Ben remained unconvinced. He stayed awake next to her, wishing that it was not just in his imagination that he could seem to hear the sound of her breathing grow steadily stronger, smoother, deeper in tone. He knew she believed the transformation was necessary, that whatever the nature of the illness that had ravaged her in his world, whatever the form of the poison that attacked her, the soil of her own world would heal her. Maybe yes, maybe no, Ben thought. He had seen it work before, but that was before. He continued to keep an uneasy watch.
Even so, he tried several times to snatch a bit of sleep, tried to close his eyes and let it embrace him, but his thoughts were dark and filled with the promise of terrifying dreams. He could not shake the memory of how close they had all come to not making it back. He could not forget the sense of helplessness he had experienced there in that empty courtroom when all his options had been stripped from him, a trial lawyer whose arguments and appeals had finally been exhausted. He could not forgive himself for so completely losing control.
Questions whispered to him from the night. How far away from himself had he come in giving up his old life for his new? How much had he sacrificed to regenerate his sense of purpose? Too much, perhaps—so much, that he was in very real danger of losing his identity.
He drifted in and out of a sort of half sleep, through uneven bouts of self-recrimination and second-guessing, plagued by demons of his own making. He knew he should dismiss them, yet he could not find the means. He grappled with them helplessly, each encounter provoking new pain and doubt. He was too vulnerable, and he could not seem to protect himself. He simply drifted.
When dawn’s light did begin at last to creep into the dark recesses of his consciousness, the eastern sky lightening and the night fading west, he found he had slept somehow, if only briefly. He jolted awake from a fitful doze, his eyes searching quickly for Willow, finding her asleep beside him, her color strong again, her life miraculously restored. There were tears in his eyes, and he brushed at them, smiling. Then, finally, the demons began to slip away, and he could feel again some small measure of hope that he might yet make sense out of who and what he was and take back into his own hands the lines that measured out his life.
He confronted then, for the first time, something he had carefully avoided that entire night—the prospect of dealing with Nightshade and the Darkling. The specter of such an encounter had been lurking at the edge of his subconscious ever since Questor had told him after landing what had become of the bottle, kept just back of where he would be forced to think about it. But now he must think of it, he knew. He could put it off no longer. Everything that had gone before in his long search for the medallion and Abernathy would be rendered pointless if he did not find a way, once and for all, to dispose of that damnable bottle. That meant he must face Nightshade. And that could easily cost him his life.
He sat in the gradually brightening clearing, feeling the pulse of the morning begin to quicken and the sluggishness of its night sleep begin to fade. He let his hand drift down to Willow’s face and his fingers brush her skin softly. She stirred, but did not waken. How was he to do what must be done? he wondered. How was he to retrieve the bottle from Nightshade so that the demon could be put back inside? The doubts and fears had left him now, their needles withdrawn. He was able to think in clear, pragmatic terms. He must become the Paladin again, he realized, the knight-errant that was the alter ego of the Kings of Landover, that frightening iron juggernaut that seemed to claim a bit more of his soul each time he called upon its services. He shuddered involuntarily at the surge of ambivalent emotions that were stirred within him. He would need the Paladin’s strength to withstand Nightshade’s magic, not to mention the demon’s. Questor Thews would help, of course. Questor would lend his own magic to the cause. The real question was, would the two of them be enough? Even forgetting Nightshade for the moment, how could they overcome the Darkling? How could anyone overcome a creature whose power was apparently limitless?
Ben Holiday sat alone in the brightening dawn and pondered this puzzle. He was still pondering it when the others came awake, the solution he sought as elusive as summer frost.
He was pleasantly surprised, therefore, when halfway through a breakfast in which he was principally concerned with assuring himself that Willow was well again, the answer came to him.
He was surprised, too, when, following breakfast, Strabo offered to carry them all north to the Deep Fell. He needn’t have been. The dragon didn’t make the offer because he felt an obligation to do anything further to help, or because he felt Questor had any further hold over him either. He had no sense of responsibility or concern for the success of their endeavors. He made it because he was anxious to let Holiday and Nightshade have at each other and he wanted to be there to enjoy the show. Someone’s spilled blood was necessary to satisfy his irritation at having been dragged into this conflict in the first place, and he could only hope that witch and King would both bleed freely in the battle that was to follow.
“You owe me, Holiday!” the dragon announced with a venomous hiss on making the offer to convey Ben to his own funeral. “This makes twice now that I have saved your worthless skin and twice now that you have given me nothing in return! If Nightshade dispatches you, I will consider the debt paid—but not otherwise! Think of what I have suffered for you! I was attacked, Holiday—chased and hounded by metal flying things, hunted with lights, screamed at and threatened by others like yourself, my system fouled by poisons I can only guess at, and my equanimity thoughtlessly disrupted!” He took a long, careful breath. “Let me put it another way. I find you the most annoying, bothersome creature I have ever had the misfortune of encountering and I long for the day you are finally no more!”
Having said that, he knelt down so that the object of his derision might mount him. Ben glanced at Questor, who shrugged and said, “What else can you expect from a dragon?”
Willow and Abernathy gave him fits as well by insisting that they should accompany him. When he had the temerity to suggest that he didn’t think this was such a good idea, given the extent of the danger Questor and he would likely be facing from the witch and the bottle demon, both immediately suggested that perhaps he had better think again.
“I did not survive the acute discomforts of Graum Wythe’s dungeons and the vicissitudes of Michel Ard Rhi’s personality to be left behind now!” his scribe announced rather irritably. “I intend to see this matter through to its proper conclusion! Besides,” he huffed, “you need someone to keep an eye on the wizard!”
“Nor do I intend to be left behind, either,” Willow hastened to add. “I am well now, and you may have need of me. I have told you before, Ben Holiday—what happens to you happens to me.”
Ben was hardly convinced by either argument; neither appeared to him to have fully recovered from the hardships of the journey over and back and neither would be of much help in dealing with Nightshade and the Darkling. But he knew there wasn’t anything he could say that would change their minds and he decided it would be easier to take them than to try to force them to remain behind. He shook his head. Things never seemed to work out quite the way he wanted them to.
So they lifted skyward aboard the dragon, departing the grove of fruit and maple trees that had been their night’s camp, leaving behind the Heart with its rows of flags, stanchions, and polished oak benches and the distant, tiny island where rested castle Sterling Silver, and passing finally out of the hill country of the south into the plains and grasslands of the north. They flew until the Greensward was behind them and the wall of the Melchor rose ahead. Then Strabo dipped earthward, sailing lazily across the dark, misted bowl of the Deep Fell, presumably so that Nightshade couldn’t miss seeing them, settling at last on a small scrap of grassland a short distance from the hollows’ edge.
Ben and his companions eased themselves down from the dragon’s back, casting furtive glances toward the rim of the witch’s home. Mist swirled sluggishly in the windless midday air as if stirred by some invisible hand, and silence masked all signs of whatever life waited below. The air was sultry and fetid, and the clouds were gathered thick across this stretch of the mountains. East, sunlight brightened the land; here, gray haze cloaked everything.
Signs of the wilt that had marked the land at the time of Ben’s arrival in Landover were evident again. Leaves were withered and sick-looking; whole stands of trees and patches of scrub were black. The devastation spread outward from the Deep Fell for as far as the eye could see—almost as if some sickness had crawled out of the hollows and begun devouring what lay beyond in ever-widening circles.
“A fitting place for your demise, Holiday!” sneered the dragon, bending close. “Why don’t you get on with it?”
He spread his wings and soared off into the mountains, settling comfortably upon an outcropping of rock that overlooked the hollows and gave him a clear view of everything below.
“I find him quite intolerable these days,” Questor Thews said quietly.
“I find it hard to believe he was ever anything else,” Ben said.
He positioned Willow and Abernathy in a broken stand of Bonnie Blues some distance back, pleading with them to stay out of sight until matters with the witch and the demon were resolved. He had no real expectation that his entreaties would be heeded, but he at least had to make the effort.
He returned to Questor and spoke quietly with him then, explaining for the first time his plan for dealing with the Darkling. Questor was thoughtful for a moment, then announced, “High Lord, I think you may have found the answer.”
Ben’s smile was faint. “Finding the answer is one thing; applying it is another. You know what I mean, don’t you? This will be tricky, Questor. It has to be done just so. Much depends on you.”
Questor’s owlish face was solemn. “I understand, High Lord. I won’t let you down.”
Ben nodded. “Just don’t let yourself down. Are you ready?”
“Ready, High Lord.”
Ben turned to face the Deep Fell and called out sharply, “Nightshade!” The name echoed and slowly died away. Ben waited, then called again. “Nightshade!” Again, the name echoed into silence. Nightshade did not appear. Beside him, Questor shifted his booted feet uneasily.
Then a swirl of black mist lifted out of the hollows, churning and seething as it settled on the parched grasses at its rim, and Nightshade appeared at last. She stood there against the mist, robes and hair black, face and hands white, a stark and forbidding vision. One hand clutched the familiar bottle, its painted surface luminescent in the gray air.
“Play-King!” she whispered with a hiss. With her free hand, she pulled the stopper on the bottle. The Darkling crept forth, wizened spider’s body dark, sticklike, and covered with hair. Red eyes gleamed and fingers curled on the bottle’s edge. “See, precious one?” the witch asked softly and pointed. “See what comes to amuse us?”
Neither Ben nor Questor moved. They became statues, waiting to see what would happen next. The Darkling crept about the lip of its bottle like an anxious cat, searching here and there, whispering and hissing words that no one but the witch could hear. “Yes, yes,” she soothed, over and over, bent down now. “Yes, little demon, they are the ones!”
Finally, she looked up again. Her free hand slipped the stopper into her robes, and her fingers stroked the fawning demon. “Come play with us, High Lord and Court Wizard!” she called over. “Come play! We have games for you! Such games! Come closer!”
Ben and Questor held their ground. “Give us the bottle, Nightshade,” ordered Ben quietly. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
“Anything I wish belongs to me!” Nightshade screeched.
“Not the bottle.”
“Especially the bottle!”
“I will bring the Paladin, if I must,” Ben threatened, his voice still quiet.
“Bring whomever you like.” Nightshade’s smile was slow and wicked. Then she whispered, “Play-King, you are such a fool!”
The Darkling shrieked suddenly, leaped upward, and thrust its tiny crooked fingers toward them. Fire and shards of iron flew at them with the blink of an eye, slicing through the hazy afternoon air. But Questor’s magic was already in place, and the fire and shards of iron passed harmlessly by. Ben’s hand was about the medallion, his fingers closed upon its metal surface, the heat beginning to surge through him. Light flared less than a dozen yards off, and the Paladin appeared, white knight on white charger, a ghost come out of time. Fire burned in the medallion, then surged outward through mist and gray to where the ghost took form. Ben felt himself ride the light, borne on its stinging brightness as if a mote of dust, carried from his body as if weightless. Then he was inside the iron shell, and the transformation had begun. A second more and it was completed. Iron plates closed about, clasps, straps, and buckles tightened, and the harness latched in place. Ben Holiday’s memories faded and were replaced by those of the Paladin—memories of countless battles fought and won, of struggles unimaginable, of blood and iron, of screams and cries, and of the testing of courage and strength-of-arms on distant fields of combat. There was that strange mix of exhilaration and horror—the Paladin’s sharpened expectation of another fight, Ben Holiday’s repulsion at the thought of killing.
Then there was only the feel of iron and leather, muscle and bone, the horse beneath, and the weapons strapped close—the Paladin’s body and soul.
The King’s champion surged toward Nightshade and the Darkling.
The lance of white oak dropped into place.
But the witch and the demon were already fusing hatred and dark magic to produce something they believed not even the Paladin could withstand. It climbed out of the hollows behind them, born of green fire and steam, clawing free of the mists and the haze, a huge, lumbering thing as white as the Paladin himself.
It was a second Paladin—of sorts.
From behind the shield of his magic, Questor Thews blinked and stared. He had never seen anything quite like this monster. It was a perversion—a joining of what appeared to be a huge, squat, lizard like creature and an armored rider twice the size of the knight-errant, all twisted and sprouting weapons of bone and iron. It was as if some impossibly warped mirror had produced a distorted image of the Paladin, as if that image had been reflected in the most loathsome way possible and given life.
The monstrous creature—a single being—wheeled from the hollows’ rim and lumbered to meet the charge of the Paladin.
They came together with a thunderclap of sound, white oak and bone shattering, iron scraping and clanging, beasts grunting and shrieking in pain and anger. They slid off each other and passed by, dust and debris flying. Back around came the Paladin, discarding the remains of his lance, reaching down for the battle axe. The creature of the witch and demon slowed, turned, and seemed to swell in size, growing as if fed by the force of the conflict, lifting until it towered over everything.
All eyes were fixed at that moment on the creature.
Questor Thews made a slight motion with his hands. He seemed to shimmer, disappear, then reappear looking vaguely translucent. No one noticed.
The Paladin attacked, battle axe swinging. Nightshade and the Darkling fed their combined magics into their creation, shrieking with delight as it swelled even further, then lifted on its hind legs and waited. It was as big as a house now, a mass of slug like flesh. The Paladin rushed it, and the creature surged forward, trying to crush its attacker. The earth shook with the force of its weight as it struck. The Paladin just managed to slip past, the battle axe ripping along the beast’s thick hide. But the wound closed over almost at once. Magic gave the creature life, and magic was not subject to the laws of man and nature.
Back came the Paladin, broadsword drawn now, the gleaming blade cutting and hacking with tremendous fury, carving lines of red along the length of the beast. But the wounds closed as quickly as they were made, and the creature kept lunging for the knight, waiting for its chance. Nightshade and the Darkling urged the monster on. The witch’s face was rapt with pleasure. The demon’s tiny body was stretched taut. Magic surged from both of them, feeding their creature, keeping it strong. They could see that the beast’s lunges were getting closer now to the attacking knight. It would not be long now, they knew.
From within the cover of the decimated Bonnie Blues, Abernathy and Willow watched silently. They, too, could see how this fight was going and could tell how it was going to end.
Then something strange happened.
The creature suddenly lurched upward and began to shrink.
It shuddered as if stricken with a poison. The Darkling saw it first. The demon shrieked with anger and disbelief, raced down Nightshade’s black robes, and thrust its spider arms out to feed its pet more magic. But the creature failed to respond. It continued to shrink, flinching back now from the blows of the broadsword struck by the Paladin, stumbling and tottering away as it felt its life drain from it.
Nightshade saw it now, too, screamed in fury, then made her own determination of the cause and wheeled suddenly on Questor Thews. Fire as dark as pitch flew from her outstretched hands and enveloped the wizard. Questor Thews erupted in a pillar of smoke and ash. Willow and Abernathy gasped in horror. The wizard had disappeared completely.
But the creature was still shrinking. And now something was happening to the Darkling as well. It was doubled over, writhing on the ground at Nightshade’s feet, twisting as if the same poison that had infected its creature had infected it as well. It was shrieking something at Nightshade, who bent quickly to listen.
“The bottle, mistress!” it was saying. “The bottle has been sealed! I cannot find the magic! I cannot live!”
Nightshade still had the bottle in one hand. She stared at it uncomprehendingly, finding it unchanged, undamaged, the stopper pulled, the neck open. What was the demon screaming about? She was mystified.
A short distance away, the creature of the witch and demon’s magic had breathed its last, crumbling completely into dust. The Paladin ground it beneath his charger’s hooves and wheeled about once more. Nightshade looked up from the bottle in confusion. The Paladin was coming now at her.
Only then did she think to reach down to test the bottle’s opening. Blue wizard fire sparked and bit at her, and she jerked her fingers back. “Questor Thews!” Willow heard her shriek in fury. The Darkling was barely moving, clinging to one sleeve. The witch snarled, clasped the bottle by its throat, and prepared to send her own magic surging into its blocked opening.
She was too late.
The Paladin was almost on top of her.
Then Questor Thews seemed to explode out of nowhere right in front of the witch, seizing the bottle before she could think to react, snatching it quickly away. Nightshade shrieked once and lunged for the wizard just as the Paladin reached her.
Fire seemed to erupt from everywhere at the point of impact.
No longer within the concealment of the Bonnie Blues, but running to reach Questor Thews and Ben, Willow and Abernathy drew up short, wincing from the sound and the heat. Fire flared, seemingly of all colors and shapes, exploding into the mist and gray like a geyser out of the earth.
Then the debris settled, and Nightshade and the Paladin were gone. Questor Thews was on his knees, both hands clutched tightly over the top of the bottle, watching stone-faced as the Darkling writhed on the scorched earth and turned to lifeless dust.
Ben Holiday returned to himself, lightheaded and dazed, with the medallion still warm against his chest. He started to sway and topple over, but then Willow was there, holding him upright, and Abernathy was beside her, and he managed to smile and say, “It’s okay now. It’s over.”
The four friends sat quietly at the site of battle and talked about what had happened.
Nightshade was gone. Whether she had been destroyed by the Paladin or escaped to trouble them another day, none of them knew. They could recall the moment of impact—a flare of light and a glimpse of the witch’s face. That was all. They were not willing to bet that they had seen the last of her.
Strabo was gone, too. He had lifted into the sky almost immediately at the battle’s conclusion, winging his way east without a backward glance. They could only imagine his thoughts. They were certain they had not seen the last of the dragon.
The Darkling, they hoped, was gone for good.
So, with any immediate danger dispelled, Ben was able—with occasional interjections from Questor—to explain to Willow and Abernathy how the puzzle of the Darkling had been solved.
“The secret was the bottle,” Ben said. “The Darkling lived in the bottle and never left it completely for long, even when freed from it, so there had to be some logical tie between them. Otherwise, the demon, who was always so anxious to be let out, would have simply abandoned its prison and gone its way. I thought, what if it can’t leave the bottle? What if that’s where it gets its power? What if the magic comes from the bottle, not the demon, and the demon stays with the bottle because it has to, if it wants to continue to use the magic? The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.”
“So the High Lord suggested to me,” Questor broke in eagerly, “that if the magic came from the bottle, then shutting off the bottle would cut off the Darkling’s power.”
“The trick was in doing that without letting Nightshade know what was happening—and then getting the bottle back before she could do anything about it.” Ben regained control of his explanation. “So while the Paladin was engaged in battle with the Darkling and Nightshade, Questor used the magic to shrink himself down and slip over to hide in the bottle’s neck. He became its stopper. He left an image of himself so that Nightshade wouldn’t know what he was up to. What Nightshade ended up destroying, when she guessed that Questor was behind the loss of magic, was just the image.”
“You might have alerted us to that much, at least!” Abernathy interrupted heatedly. “You scared us to death with that trick! We thought the old... Well, we thought he had been fried!”
“Questor sealed off the bottle,” Ben continued, ignoring his scribe’s outburst. “That shut off the source of the Darkling’s power and rendered Nightshade’s own magic, which was focused on the bottle’s, useless. It all worked exactly the way we had thought. By the time Nightshade figured out what had happened, it was too late. The creature was done, the demon was too weak to help, and the Paladin was bearing down. Questor surprised Nightshade by jumping out at her the way he did, full-size again, and snatching back the bottle. She couldn’t do anything.”
“What we hadn’t anticipated, of course, was the extent of the effect that sealing off the bottle would have on the Darkling,” Questor cut in again. “The demon drew not only its magic from the bottle, but its life as well. Once it was shut outside, it could not survive.”
The four glanced as one at the small pile of dust some dozen feet away. A fresh breeze had come up. Already, the flakes were beginning to scatter.
It was Monday morning in Seattle, nearing noon. Miles Bennett sat in one of the waiting areas of the United Airlines Annex at SeaTac Airport waiting for the arrival of Flight 159 out of Chicago O’Hare. Elizabeth’s father would be on that flight. It had taken Miles most of the weekend to track him down and arrange for his return. When he landed, they would drive out to Graum Wythe and begin making the necessary arrangements to dispose of Michel Ard Rhi’s estate.
Miles stared out the Annex windows momentarily into the gray, overcast day. It was funny how things worked out.
Elizabeth was seated beside him, reading something called “Rabble Starkey.” She was wearing a black and yellow knit skirt and blouse, and her jeans jacket was draped over the back of the seat next to her. She was immersed in the book and unaware that he was watching. He smiled.
Copies of the Seattle Times and the Post Intelligencer rested on his lap, and he began leafing through them idly. He had read the headlines and their various trailers a dozen times already, but each time it seemed he found something new. The events of Halloween night were far enough behind him already that he could hardly believe he had been a part of them. It was almost as if he were reading about something that had happened to someone else. It was as if it were one of those foreign affairs reports that he never quite felt had anything to do with him.
But that wasn’t true, of course—not with foreign affairs and certainly not with this.
The headlines were all very much the same. “Halloween Goblins Invade Seattle.”
“Seattle Spirits Trick-Or-Treat City Hall.”
“Spook Wars Over Elliott Bay.”
The subheadings referred to the mysterious collapse of a portion of the Courts Building, the sightings by policemen, firemen, various city officials, and the ubiquitous man on the street of some form of unexplained phenomenon, and the strange state in which a number of lawyers and members of the sheriff’s department had been found in a courtroom that looked as if World War III had been fought in it.
The stories beneath related the details, at least insofar as anyone was able to relate them, given what little there was to work with. The municipal police and fire departments had been summoned on Friday night, Halloween, to the Courts Building in downtown Seattle, following a report of an explosion. Upon arrival, they found a hole apparently blown out of the side of the building on the fifth floor. Attempts to reach that floor from inside were unsuccessful. There were varying accounts as to why. Several stories referred with tongue in cheek to the reports of vast jungles of growth that later disappeared entirely. Helicopters were summoned. Firefighters eventually broke through and found most of one courtroom in ruins, with an outside wall gone entirely. A number of people working in the building were found “in a dazed condition” but no one was seriously injured.
Farther down the page and often farther into the paper, there were stories about the sightings. A dragon, some indicated quite positively. A flying saucer, others said. A return of Satan’s hordes, some swore. Yes, there was something, agreed the helicopter pilots who had chased and been chased by whatever it was. They didn’t know what. Could have been some form of sophisticated aircraft playing games, one city official theorized. Sure, and maybe it was one of those close encounters that have their origins in Friday night taverns, another quipped. Come Christmas, we’ll be getting sightings on Santa Claus.
Ho, ho, ho, Miles thought.
There were stories in which scientists, theologians, lay ministers, government officials, and one or two channelers were interviewed and asked for their opinions, which all were only too happy to give.
No one was even close, of course.
Miles finished with those stories and turned to the single column report on the front page of the Northwest section of Sunday’s Times. There was a picture of Graum Wythe and a headline that read: “Millionaire Gives Castle To State.”
Underneath, the accompanying story began:
Millionaire businessman Michel Ard Rhi announced at a news conference today that he was donating his castle home and surrounding lands to the state of Washington as a park and recreation area. A fund will be set aside to maintain and improve the facilities, and the balance of Ard Rhi’s estate, conservatively estimated at three hundred million dollars, will be donated to various organizations throughout the world for humanitarian and charitable causes. Ard Rhi announced that the castle, Graum Wythe, will become a museum for pieces of art he has collected over the years and will be open to the public. Arrangements for readying the facilities will be handled by his private steward, whose name was not released. Ard Rhi, a reclusive businessman who is thought to have made the bulk of his fortune in real estate and foreign trade, advised newsmen that he plans to retire to the Oregon coast to write or work on other projects. A small trust will be set aside for his support.
The story went on for several more paragraphs, relating Michel Ard Rhi’s personal history and the reaction of a number of local and national notables. Miles read the story twice and shook his head. What had Questor Thews done to the man?
He put the papers aside, stretched, and sighed. Too bad Doc wasn’t still around. There were just too many unanswered questions.
Beside him, Elizabeth looked up suddenly from her book, blue eyes intense. She seemed to read his mind. “Do you think they’re all right?” she asked.
He looked down at her and nodded. “Yep, Elizabeth,” he said. “Matter of fact, I’m sure of it.”
She smiled. “Me, too, I guess.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t worry about them, though.”
“Or miss them. I miss them a lot.”
Miles looked out the windows again, across the broad expanse of the runways and taxi lanes, into the distant gray mix of clouds and mountains and sky. “Well, they’ll be back,” he said finally. “Someday.”
Elizabeth nodded, but didn’t reply.
A moment later, the arrival of Flight 159 was announced. Miles and Elizabeth got up from their seats and walked over to the windows to watch it come in.
* * *
Several weeks later, Ben Holiday and Willow were married. They would have been married sooner, but there was protocol to be observed in a wedding such as theirs, and it took awhile even to figure out what the protocol was, let alone to implement it. After all, hardly anyone alive could even remember a marriage of a High Lord of Landover. So Abernathy dug out his histories, and Questor Thews consulted a few of the valley’s elders, and between them they finally figured out what had to be done.
Ben frankly wasn’t interested in the formalities. All he knew was that it had taken him an impossibly long time to realize what Willow had known from the very first—that they should be together, joined as one, husband and wife, High Lord and Queen, and that whatever it took to get the job done, they should do it. Once, not so very long ago, he would never have allowed himself to feel that way; he would have considered such feelings a betrayal of his love for Annie. But Annie had been dead almost five years, and he had managed finally to lay her ghost to rest. Willow was his life now. He loved Willow, had known he loved her almost from the first, had heard her speak countless times of the foretelling of her destiny at the moment of her conception, and had learned from her the Earth Mother’s prediction that one day she would bear him children.
Still he had hesitated to believe and to commit himself. He had been afraid, mostly. He had been afraid of a lot of things—that he still didn’t belong, that he was somehow inadequate to be Landover’s King, and that one day he would simply be gone, back again in the world he had wanted so badly to escape. The realization of the dream was greater than his expectations, and he had feared that he hadn’t enough to give,
He was still afraid. Fears such as these lingered in the subconscious and would not be banished.
But it was another fear altogether that decided him on Willow. It was his fear that he was going to lose her.
He had almost lost her twice now:
It was not almost losing her the first time, when he had just come into Landover, that decided him. It was all too new then, and he had not yet put Annie behind him.
It was almost losing her this second time, when she had come back with him into his old world and he was forced to face the fact that she had come, not because she had to, but because she loved him enough to die for him. She had known that such a journey would endanger her and ignored the risk to herself because she knew that he might have need of her.
That was what decided him. She loved him that much. Didn’t he love her just as much? Did he want to risk losing her before they had even tried to discover what sort of life they might have as husband and wife? At least he had shared that much with Annie. Didn’t he want to share it with Willow as well?
Any fool could have given the right answers to those questions. And Ben Holiday was no fool.
So there was nothing more to say, nothing more to be decided. The marriage took place at the Heart. Everyone came: The River Master, uneasy as always in the presence of his child, still reminded too much of her mother by what he saw in her, and still searching for a way to reconcile the mix of feelings she generated within him; the fairy folk of the lake country, some almost human, some no more than faint shadows flitting through the trees; the Lords of the Greensward, Kallendbor, Strehan, and the rest, with their retainers and followers, an unsettled group that trusted no one, each other least of all, but who arrived and encamped together for the sake of appearances; the trolls and kobolds from the mountains far north and south; the G’home Gnomes, Fillip and Sot in the vanguard, proud of their part—the story varied as to what it was—in the making of this marriage; and common folk from cottages and forms, shops and villages—farmers, merchants, hunters, trappers, traders, peddlers, artisans, and workers of all sorts.
Even Strabo put in an appearance, flying overhead during the feast that followed the marriage ceremony, breathing fire across the sky and presumably taking some small satisfaction from the fact that women and children still ran shrieking at the sight of him.
The marriage was simple and direct. Ben and Willow stood at the center of the Heart on the dais of the Kings of Landover and told each other and those gathered that they loved each other, would be kind and good to each other, and would always be there for each other when needed. Questor Thews recited a few archaic vows of joining that High Lords and Queens might possibly have repeated years ago, and the ceremony was concluded.
The guests feasted and drank all that day and night and into the next, and all behaved themselves relatively well. Quarrels were kept to a minimum and quickly settled. Those from the Greensward and those from the lake country sat side by side and talked of renewed efforts at cooperation. The reclusive trolls and kobolds exchanged gifts. Even the G’home Gnomes took only a few dogs when they left.
Ben and Willow thought it all went pretty well.
It wasn’t until several days later, when things had settled back down to normal, that Ben thought once again to ask Questor about what he had done to Michel Ard Rhi. They were seated in the chamber at Sterling Silver that housed the histories of Landover, a cavernous study that always smelled musty and close, trying to interpret some ancient rules on land ownership. Just the two of them were there, it was late at night, and the day’s work was completed. Ben was sipping at a glass of wine and thinking about all that had happened the past few weeks; then his thoughts drifted to Michel, and he suddenly remembered that Questor had never finished his explanation.
“What did you do to him, Questor?” he pressed, after asking the question once and getting only a shrug for a response. “Come on, tell me. What did you do? I mean, how did you even know what kind of magic to use? I seem to remember you telling me that use of the magic was pretty uncertain over there.”
Well... most kinds of magic,” Questor agreed.
But not the kind you used on Michel?”
Oh, well, that magic was mostly for effect. Not much real magic was necessary.”
Ben was floored. “How can you say that? He was... he was...”
“Basically misguided, if you recall the story,” Questor finished. “Remember, my half-brother was primarily responsible for making him into the disagreeable kind of person he was.”
Ben frowned. “So what did you do?”
Questor shrugged once more. “He just needed his values rearranged, High Lord.”
“Questor!”
“Very well.” The wizard sighed. “I gave him back his conscience.”
“You what?”
“I let the poor thing out from where Michel had locked it away. I used the magic to enlarge it and to give it a primary place of importance in Michel’s thoughts.” Questor smiled. “The guilt he felt must have been intolerable!” He smiled some more. “Oh. I did do one other little thing. I planted a small suggestion in his subconscious.”
He arched an eyebrow, looking like the cat who had eaten the canary.
“I suggested that in order to atone for his guilt, he should give everything away immediately. That way, you see, if the magic gives out before his conscience has a chance to take hold permanently, it will be too late for him to do anything to reverse matters.”
Ben grinned broadly. “Questor Thews. Sometimes you really amaze me.”
The wizard’s owlish face crinkled. They regarded each other with amusement for a moment, sharing the joke.
Then suddenly Questor jumped up. “Goodness! I almost forgot! I have some news that will amaze you indeed, High Lord.” He forced himself to sit down again, clearly excited. “What if I were to tell you that I have found a way to change Abernathy back again? I mean, really change him back!”
He studied Ben eagerly, waiting. “Are you serious?” Ben asked finally.
“Certainly, High Lord.”
“Change him back? Into a man?”
“Yes, High Lord.”
“Like before?”
“Oh, no, not like before.”
“But with magic?”
“Of course, with magic!”
“Have you tested it? This magic?”
“Well...”
“On anything?”
“Well...”
“So this is still just a theory?”
“A well-reasoned theory, High Lord. It should work.”
Ben leaned forward until their heads were almost touching. “It should, should it? Have you told Abernathy about this?”
The wizard shook his head. “No, High Lord. I thought... uh, perhaps you might?”
There was a long silence. Then Ben whispered, “I don’t think either of us should tell him just yet. Do you? Not until you’ve spent a little more time on it.”
Questor frowned, then squinched up his owlish face thoughtfully. “Wellll... perhaps not.”
Ben stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. “Good night, Questor,” he said. Then he turned and walked from the room.
The End