The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (105 page)

The demon did handstands and backflips and watched them through slitted eyes that glittered redly in the haze. A bit of multicolored fire spurted to
life at the end of the fingers of one hand, and it blew the fire toward them in a shower of sparks that flared, died, and turned to ashes that caused them to choke and cough and go silent again.

The troll who held the bottle looked down at the Darkling. “Do you belong to these gnomes, tiny fellow?” he asked solicitously.

The Darkling went still. “No, master. I belong only to the holder of the bottle. I belong only to you!”

“No, no!” wailed Fillip and Sot. “You belong to us!”

The other trolls laughed with glee, the sound as chill as the rain that fell all about them.

The speaker bent close. “Nothing belongs to a G’home Gnome, foolish ones! Nothing ever has and nothing ever will! You haven’t learned how to keep your possessions safe! How do you think we found you? Who do you think brought us here? Why, gnomes, it was this very creature you now call upon for help! It showered the skies with its brightly colored fire! It
asked
that we take it from you! It
asked
that it not be left your prisoner!”

The G’home Gnomes stared wordlessly, their last shred of hope gone. The Darkling—their friend, their maker of wondrous magic—had deliberately betrayed them. It had given them over to their worst enemies.

“Ho, hum,” the speaker said with a yawn. “Time to dispose of you, I think.”

The other trolls growled their assent and stamped their feet impatiently. They were growing bored with this game. Fillip and Sot struggled anew.

“What shall we do with them?” the speaker mused. He glanced about at the others. “Cut their throats and spike their heads? Pull off their fingers and toes? Bury them alive?”

Roars of approval sounded from all about, and the G’home Gnomes cringed down into small puddles of despair.

The troll leader shook his head. “No, no, I think we can do better than that!” He looked down at the cavorting demon. “Little fellow, what do you say should be done with these gnomes?”

The Darkling danced and balanced on fingers and toes, a wicked spiderlike shape clinging to the bottle’s slick surface. “They might make good feeding for the animals of the forest,” it teased.

“Ah!” the troll leader exclaimed. The others joined in a chorus of raucous approval, and the early morning stillness was filled with the sound.

So it was that Fillip and Sot were thrown to the ground, bound hand and foot with cord, hoisted feet first from a line slung over a low branch of a nearby hickory, and left to dangle with their down-turned heads some four feet above the ground.

“Not so close as to drown you in a rain wash and not so far as to prevent the scavengers from reaching you,” the speaker advised as the trolls turned away north. “Farewell, little gnomes. Keep your chins up!”

The pack laughed and shoved playfully at one another as they departed. The Darkling sat upon the speaker’s broad shoulder and looked back, eyes a blood-red glitter of satisfaction.

In moments, Fillip and Sot were left alone, hanging upside down from the hickory. They swayed gently in the wind and rain and cried.

ONE-WAY TICKET

I
t was raining and blowing on Ben Holiday as well as he began his day some twenty miles south of where the G’home Gnomes had been strung up by their heels. He unwrapped himself from the warmth of Willow and his sleeping gear and shivered with the early morning chill as he dressed. They were encamped within a sheltering stand of giant fir that sat back against a rocky bluff, but the damp seemed to penetrate even there. The kobolds were already up and moving about, Bunion making ready to begin scouting ahead for the fleeing gnomes. Questor staggered about sleepily, attempted to make breakfast with his magic, and succeeded in producing five live chickens that flapped about madly and a cow that scattered Parsnip’s cooking gear. Within minutes, wizard and kobold were yelling at each other irritably, and Ben was wishing he were back at Sterling Silver in the comfort and seclusion of his own bedchamber.

But there wasn’t much point in wishing for what he couldn’t have, so he consumed a stalk of Bonnie Blue and a little water, mounted Jurisdiction and set off with the others in tow. Bunion quickly went on ahead, disappearing into the shadows and half-light like some aberrant wraith. The others rode after in a line, Ben leading, Willow and Questor following, Parsnip bringing up the rear on foot with the pack animals.

They traveled in silence. It was cold, rainy, and dark, and no one felt much like talking. It was the kind of day that you wished on your enemies or, at the very worst, on yourself when you knew you were going to be comfortably settled indoors before a warm fire. It was not the kind of day in which you traveled. Ben sat atop Jurisdiction and wondered why things had to be like this. He was thoroughly discomforted within minutes of setting out. The rain gear kept the water off his body, but the damp and the chill permeated everything. His toes were numb through his boots, his fingers through his gloves.
What good thoughts he might have started out with trickled away with the speed of the puddles and streams that passed underfoot.

He began brooding about his life.

Oh, sure, he liked his life well enough. He liked being King of Landover, High Lord of a fantasy realm in which mythical creatures were real and magic was a fact of existence. He liked the challenge of what he did, the diversity of its demands, the constant ebb and flow of the feelings it generated. He liked his friends, even at their worst. They were good and loyal, and they genuinely cared for one another and for him. He liked the world in which he had placed himself and would not have traded it back again for the world he had left, even in the darkest of times.

What disturbed him was how little he felt like what he was supposed to be—a King.

Jurisdiction snorted and shook his head lazily, and a shower of water flew into Ben’s face. Ben brushed it away and kicked the horse reproachfully with his boots. Jurisdiction ignored him, plodding ahead at his own pace, blinking against the rain.

Ben sighed. He just didn’t feel as if he really was a King, he told himself gloomily, picking up his train of thought. He felt that he was just playing at it, that he was filling in for the real King, someone who had been called away unexpectedly, but who would return and prove infinitely more capable than he. It wasn’t that he didn’t try to do the job right; he did. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand its demands; he could. It was more a question of not ever being quite in control. He seemed to spend all his time trying to extract himself from situations he should have avoided in the first place. After all, look at this latest mess—Abernathy dispatched to God-knew-where, his medallion gone the same way, and now the G’home Gnomes run off with the bottle. What sort of King allowed these things to happen? He could excuse matters by arguing that events beyond his control were responsible for everything that had happened, but wasn’t it a bit ridiculous for him to try to blame everything on a sneeze?

He sighed again. Well, it most certainly was. He had to accept whatever responsibility needed accepting; that was what Kings were for, after all. But the minute he did that, he was confronted once again with that nagging sense of inadequacy—that sense that he really didn’t have a handle on things and never would.

Willow saved him from further self-degradation by riding up next to him and offering a quick smile. “You seem so alone up here,” she said.

“Alone with my thoughts.” He smiled back. “This day is depressing me.”

“You mustn’t let it,” she said. “You must keep its unpleasantness from you and make it serve your own needs. Think of how good the sunshine will feel after the rain has gone away. Think of how much better its warmth will seem.”

He rocked back slightly in his saddle, stretching. “I know. I just wish some of that sunshine and warmth would hurry up and appear.”

She looked away for a moment, then back again. “Are you worried about the gnomes and the bottle?”

He nodded. “That, Abernathy, the medallion, and a dozen other things—mostly the fact that I don’t feel like I’m doing much of a job as King. I can’t seem to get it right, Willow. I just sort of muddle around, trying things out, trying to get out of trouble I shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place.”

“Did you think it would be different from this?” Her face was shadowed and distant beneath her riding hood.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what I thought. No, that’s not so. I knew what it would be like—at least, I knew once I was here. That’s not the problem. The problem is that things keep happening that I don’t seem to have any control over. If I were a real King, an honest-to-God true King, that wouldn’t be the case, would it? Wouldn’t I be able to anticipate and prevent a few of these things from happening? Wouldn’t I be better at this?”

“Ben.” She said his name quietly and for a moment didn’t say anything more, simply riding there next to him, looking over. Then she said, “How long do you think Questor Thews has been trying to get the magic right?”

He stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you have been a King for a much shorter time than Questor has been a wizard. Should you expect so much of yourself when you see how hard it still is for him? The truths of what we undertake in our lives are never quickly mastered. No one is born with those truths; they must always be learned.” She reached over and touched him briefly on the cheek. “Besides, was there ever a time in your life when events you could neither anticipate nor control did not intrude on your plans and disrupt them? Why should it be different now?”

He felt suddenly foolish. “It shouldn’t, I suppose. And I shouldn’t be moping about like this, I know. But it just seems that I’m not really what everyone thinks I am. I’m just … me.”

She smiled again. “That is what we all are, Ben. But it doesn’t stop others from expecting us to be more.”

He smiled back. “People should be more considerate.”

They rode on in silence, and he consigned his brooding to the back burner, concentrating instead on formulating a plan for getting the bottle back from Fillip and Sot. Morning passed steadily away, and it was nearing midday when Bunion reappeared from out of the mist.

“He has found the gnomes, High Lord,” Questor advised hurriedly after a brief conference with the tracker. “It appears that they are in some sort of trouble!”

They spurred their horses ahead and rode at a fast canter through the
gloom, the rain and wind blowing into their faces as they sought to keep the elusive Bunion in sight. They passed along a ridge line and down a wash to a grassy hillock beyond. Bunion stopped them at its base and pointed.

There, halfway up, suspended head downward from an aging hickory, were Fillip and Sot. The G’home Gnomes dangled in the wind like a pair of rather bizarre pods.

“What the heck’s going on here?” demanded Ben.

He urged Jurisdiction forward, slowly, cautiously, the others following. When he was several dozen yards away, he dismounted and looked guardedly about.

“Bunion says they are alone,” Questor offered over one shoulder, his owlish face poking out of his rain cloak’s hood. “The bottle and the Darkling appear to be gone.”

“Great High Lord!” called out Fillip weakly.

“Mighty High Lord!” echoed Sot.

They sounded as if they were just about all done in, their voices a faint gurgle of rainwater and exhaustion. They were sodden and muddied and presented the most pathetic spectacle Ben had ever witnessed.

“I should just leave them there,” he muttered half to himself, thinking of the missing bottle.

It was as if they had heard him. “Don’t leave us, High Lord, please don’t leave us!” they implored as one, whining like beaten pups.

Ben was disgusted. He shook his head hopelessly, then looked at Bunion. “All right, Bunion. Cut them down.”

The kobold skittered forward, climbed the hickory, and cut the ropes suspending the gnomes. Fillip and Sot dropped headfirst into the muck. Serves them right, Ben thought darkly.

Willow hastened forward, rolled them out of the mud and water, and cut the bonds that secured their hands and feet. Gently, she helped them sit up, rubbing their wrists and ankles to help restore the circulation. The gnomes were crying like babies.

“We are so sorry, Great High Lord,” whimpered Fillip.

“We meant no harm, Mighty High Lord,” whimpered Sot.

“It was the bottle—it was so beautiful.”

“It was the creature—it could do wondrous magic things!”

“But it heard us say we would return it.”

“It made us free it in our sleep!”

“Then it brought the trolls, High Lord!”

“It used magic lights to guide them!”

“And they captured us!”

“And tied us like dogs!”

“And hung … !”

“And left … !”

Ben put his hands up quickly. “Whoa, stop! I can’t follow any of this! Just tell me what happened, all right—but slowly, please. Just tell me where the bottle is now!”

The G’home Gnomes told him everything. They dissolved into tears of repentance numerous times, but they finally got through it. Ben listened patiently, glancing once or twice at Questor and Willow, wondering for what must have been the hundredth time in the past few days why these things always seemed to happen to him.