The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (43 page)

Blood-red eyes blinked, but did not lift.

Ben crept slowly back again, taking the G’home Gnomes with him. When they were safely out of earshot, he dispatched them to carry out their assignment. Soundlessly, they disappeared into the trees. Ben watched them go, lifted his eyes skyward in a silent prayer, and settled back to wait.

He let fifteen minutes pass, judging the time as best he could, then stood up and started forward boldly. He passed through the screen of pine and brush and stepped into the clearing where Nightshade waited.

The witch looked up slowly, head and eyes lifting to watch his approach. Her stark, sharp-featured face reflected a mix of pleasure and surprise—and something else. Excitement. Ben came toward her cautiously, knowing he must be careful. He was still a dozen paces off when she stood up and signaled for him to stop.

“Do you have it?” she asked softly.

He nodded, saying nothing.

Her thin hand ran back through her raven hair, smoothing out the white streak like a trail of foam stirred in dark waters. “I knew you to be better than the play-King I called you,” she whispered, her smile suddenly dazzling. She was tall and majestic standing there before him, robes spread against the forest, marble skin flawless. “I knew you to be … special. I have always had the sight.” She paused. “The Io Dust—show it to me.”

He glanced about, as if searching. “Where is Willow?”

The red eyes narrowed almost immeasurably. “Waiting, safely kept. Now show me!”

He started forward, but her hand came up like a shield and her voice was a hiss. “From there!”

Both hands were in his pockets. Slowly he extracted the left, producing an oblong pod for her inspection.

Her face came alive with excitement. “Io Dust!” She was shaking as she beckoned him closer. “Bring it to me. Carefully!”

He did as he was told, but stopped just out of reach, glancing about once again. “I think you ought to tell me where Willow is first,” he hedged.

“First the Dust,” she insisted, reaching.

He let her take the pod, saying, “Oh, that’s all right, I see her now, back there in the trees.” He started past her, looking anxiously. “Willow! Over here!”

His call and the fervent prayers that accompanied it were both answered on cue. There was a rustling within the brush and a glimpse of someone coming into view. Nightshade turned in startled surprise, red eyes narrowing, following Ben’s gaze. Words of disclaimer were already forming on her lips.

Ben’s right hand came out of his pocket and he flung a handful of the concealed Io Dust directly into Nightshade’s face. The witch gasped in surprise—inhaling the dust as she did so. Surprise and fury twisted her thin features with a look of sudden horror. Ben threw a second fistful of the dust into her face—and again she inhaled it, tripping over her robes as he pushed her roughly back. The pod flew from her hands and she sprawled back upon the earth in a tangle.

Ben was on her like a cat. “Don’t touch me!” he cried in warning. “Don’t even think about hurting me! You belong to me; you will do anything and everything I tell you and nothing else!” He saw her lips draw back in a snarl of rage, and felt the sweat soak the back and underarms of his tunic. “Tell me that you understand,” he whispered quickly.

“I understand,” she repeated and her hatred for him burned in her eyes.

“Good.” He took a deep breath and slowly climbed back to his feet. “Stand up,” he ordered.

Nightshade stood, straightening herself slowly, her body stiff and unyielding, as if constricted from within by some iron will that she fought to resist and could not. “I will destroy you for this!” she snarled. “I will see you suffer in ways that you could not imagine!”

“Not today, you won’t,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. He glanced hurriedly about. “Fillip! Sot!”

The G’home Gnomes crept cautiously from the bushes where they had been hiding, waiting for Ben’s signal to pretend that they were Willow answering his call. They emerged with looks of apprehension etched into their furry faces, their ferret eyes peering almost blindly toward the witch.

“Great High Lord,” Fillip whispered.

“Mighty High Lord,” Sot whispered.

Neither sounded quite so certain he was either, inching forward like rats prepared to bolt at the slightest move. Nightshade swung her gaze on them like a hammer and they cringed from its blow.

“She can’t hurt you,” Ben assured them—working at the same time at assuring himself. He walked over to pick up the discarded pod and brought it back. He held it up for Nightshade to inspect. “Empty,” he said, pointing to a tiny hole he had carved in its bottom. “I took out all the dust and put it in my pocket to use on you. Just about what you had planned for me, wasn’t it? Answer me.”

She nodded. “It was.” The words were laced with venom.

“I want you to stand here and do only what I tell you. We’ll start with some questions. I’ll ask them and you’ll answer them. But tell me the truth, Nightshade—no lies. Understand?” She nodded wordlessly. Ben reached into his tunic front and extracted the second pod of Io Dust. He held it out to her. “Will the dust contained in this pod be enough to gain control of the dragon?”

She smiled. “I don’t know.”

He hadn’t expected that. A suspicion of doubt tugged at his mind. “Have I given you enough dust that you must do as I say?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

She smiled again. “I don’t know.”

He kept his expression neutral. There would be little margin for error, it appeared. “If you feel your need to obey me fading, you must tell me. Do you agree?”

The hatred in her eyes burned deeper. “I agree.”

He didn’t trust her, Io Dust or no Io Dust. He wanted to get this over with and get out of the Deep Fell. Fillip and Sot looked as if they were at least a dozen steps ahead of him already. They were crouched down in the shadow of one of the ruined tables, snouts buried in their chests like confused ostriches.

His eyes returned to Nightshade. “What have you done with Willow and the others who came with me?”

“I took them prisoner,” she said.

“Questor Thews, Abernathy the scribe, the two kobolds? All of them?”

“Yes. They came looking for you, and I took them.”

“What have you done with them?”

“I kept them for a time and then I sent them away.”

She looked almost pleased with the way this was going, and Ben hesitated in spite of himself. “What do you mean, you sent them away?” he pressed.

“I had no use for them, so I sent them away.”

Something was wrong. Nightshade had not planned to release him. She would never have released his friends. He stared at her, watching her eyes
change suddenly from crimson to green. “Where did you send them?” he asked quickly.

Her eyes glittered. “To Abaddon. To the Mark.”

He went cold all over. The lies he had imagined had become truths. He had failed his friends after all. “Bring them back!” he ordered sharply. “Bring them back now!”

“I cannot.” She sneered openly. “They are beyond my reach!”

He seized the front of her dark robes, enraged. “You sent them there—you can bring them back again!”

She was smiling in delight. “I cannot, play-King! Once sent to Abaddon, they are beyond my power! They are trapped!”

He released her and stepped back, fighting to regain control of himself. He should have foreseen this! He should have done something to prevent it from happening! He stared about the shadowed clearing futilely, anger and disgust coursing through him as he considered and discarded possibility after possibility in rapid succession.

He wheeled back on her. “You will go into Abaddon and bring them back!” he ordered triumphantly.

Her smile was a thing of near ecstasy. “I cannot do that either, play-King! I have no power in Abaddon! I would be as helpless as they!”

“Then I’ll go myself!” he said. “Where is the entrance, witch!”

She laughed, her face taut. “There
is
no entrance, fool! Abaddon is forbidden! Only a few … !”

Her triumph was so complete that she failed to catch herself in time. Her mouth snapped shut, but she was already too late. Ben seized the front of her robes.

“A few? What few? Who besides the demons can go there? You?” Her head twisted back and forth wordlessly. “Then who, damn it? Tell me!”

She shuddered and stiffened as if jerked by a hook embedded deep within. Her reply came out almost a scream. “Strabo!”

“The dragon!” he breathed, seeing now. He released her and walked away. “The dragon!” He wheeled and came back again. “Why can the dragon enter and not you?”

Nightshade was beside herself with rage. “His magic … encompasses a greater range than mine, reaches farther … !”

And is more powerful, Ben finished what she could not bring herself to say. He felt himself go limp, sweat soaking through him, weariness sapping at his strength. It made sense. He had first encountered Strabo at the fringes of the mists, still within the fairy world. If the dragon could pass into the fairy world, it stood to reason that he could pass into Abaddon.

And he could take Ben with him.

He almost smiled. The sudden coming together of circumstance and need
was frightening. He had thought to use the Io Dust simply to send the dragon out of Landover. That would have been difficult and dangerous enough. Now he must use the Io Dust to force Strabo to carry him down into Abaddon where his friends were trapped and then carry them all out again. The enormity of the task was staggering. He must do this without direction or guidance. He must do this alone. But there was never any question of his not doing it. Willow, Questor, Abernathy, Bunion, and Parsnip had risked themselves for him time and time again. It was an imperative beyond that of Kingship that required he do the same for them.

His eyes found those of the witch. He could see an undisguised satisfaction mirrored there. “You have sworn to destroy me, Nightshade, but it is I who ought to destroy you,” he whispered in fury.

Fillip and Sot had slipped from behind the table and were tugging tentatively at his legs.

“Can we go now, High Lord?” Fillip asked.

“Can we leave this place, High Lord?” Sot echoed.

“She frightens me,” Fillip said.

“She wants to hurt us,” Sot said.

Ben glanced down at them, saw the fear in their eyes, and watched their noses twitch expectantly. They looked like dirty children about to be punished, and he felt sorry for them. They had been through a lot.

“Just a moment more,” he promised. He looked back at Nightshade. “How long has it been since you sent my friends into Abaddon?”

The witch narrowed her green eyes. “I disposed of them this morning—quite early.”

“Did you harm them in any way?”

Her face pinched sharply. “No.”

“They are well, then?”

She laughed. “Perhaps—if the demons haven’t tired of them.”

He wanted to throttle her, but he managed to keep control of himself. “Once I am within Abaddon, how can I find them?”

Nightshade’s body seemed to fold itself deeper into the dark robes. “The dragon can find them for you—if he still obeys!”

Ben nodded wordlessly. There was that problem on top of everything else. How long would the Io Dust render the dragon helpless against him? How long before the effects of its magic wore off? There was only one way to find out, of course.

He shrugged the thought aside. “Where will I find the dragon?” he asked the witch.

Nightshade smiled darkly. “Everywhere, play-King.”

“I’m sure.” He rethought the question. “Where is he certain to go that I can wait for him to come?”

“The Fire Springs!” Her voice was a thin hiss. “He makes his home in the flame-waters!”

Ben remembered the Springs from his studies at Sterling Silver. Lava pools or oil pits or some such, they lay east beyond the Greensward, deep within the wastelands.

“High Lord!” Fillip called urgently, interrupting his thoughts.

“High Lord!” Sot tugged at his leg.

Ben nodded in response one time more. The day was coming to a close, the sun’s light giving way to darkness, the shadows of dusk lengthening through the trees. He did not want to be caught in the Deep Fell after dark.

He stepped forward and stood directly before Nightshade. “I am King of Landover, Nightshade. You may not think so and others may not think so, but, until I decide otherwise, that’s the way it is. A King has certain responsibilities. Among them is a responsibility to protect his subjects. You took it upon yourself to interfere with that responsibility and to place people who were not only subjects, but friends, in extreme danger—so extreme that I may never see any of them again!”

He paused, watching the hate glitter in her eyes as they turned from green back to red again. “You have passed judgment on yourself, Nightshade. What you have done to my friends, I now do to you. I command you to transform yourself into that crow and to fly back into the mists of the fairy world. Do not deviate from your course. Fly until you are once again within the old world and keep flying until … whatever happens, happens.”

The witch shook with rage and frustration, and a sudden glimmer of fear crept into her eyes. “The fairy magic will consume me!” she whispered.

Ben was unmoved. “Do what I have told you, Nightshade. Do it now!”

Nightshade went rigid, then shimmered with crimson light. Flames exploded skyward in the iron stanchions. The witch and the light disappeared and in their place was the crow. Shrieking, it spread its wings against the dusk and flew away into the forest.

Ben stared after her, half expecting that she would return again. She did not. Nightshade was gone. She would fly as he had commanded until she entered the mists and the fairy world that was forbidden to her. He didn’t know what would happen to her when she arrived, but he doubted that it would be pleasant. Too bad. He had given her at least as much chance to survive as she had given his friends. Fair was fair.

He shook his head. He had a bad feeling about it nevertheless.

“Let’s find our way out of here,” he muttered to Fillip and Sot, and the three of them hurried from the clearing.