The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (74 page)

Fillip and Sot looked at each other again. They looked a bit uncertain this time.

“We don’t know,” admitted Fillip.

“No, we have no idea,” agreed Sot.

“But you are not the High Lord,” repeated Fillip.

“No, you are not,” agreed Sot.

Ben took another deep breath. “I smashed the crystal against some rocks after we discovered its purpose. Questor Thews admitted his part in its use. You were there, Abernathy and Willow were there, the kobolds Bunion and Parsnip were there. Then we went down into the Deep Fell. You took Willow and me in. Remember? We used Io Dust to turn Nightshade back into a crow and fly her into the fairy mists. Then we went after the dragon Strabo. Remember? How could I know this if I’m not the High Lord?”

The gnomes were shifting their feet as if fire ants had crawled into their ruined boots.

“We don’t know,” Fillip said again.

“No, we don’t,” Sot agreed.

“Nevertheless, you are not the High Lord,” repeated Fillip.

“No, you are not,” repeated Sot.

Ben’s patience slipped several notches despite his resolve. “How do you
know
that I’m not the High Lord?” he asked tightly.

Fillip and Sot fidgeted nervously. Their small hands wrung together, and their eyes shifted here and there and back again.

“You don’t smell like him,” said Fillip finally.

“No, you smell like us,” said Sot.

Ben stared, then flushed, then lost whatever control he had managed to exercise up to this point. “Now you listen to me! I
am
the High Lord, I
am
Ben Holiday, I
am
exactly who I said I was, and you had better accept that
right now
or you are going to be in the biggest trouble of your entire lives, bigger even than when you stole and ate that pet dog at the celebration banquet after the defeat of the Iron Mark! I’ll see you hung out to dry, damn it! Look at me!” He wrenched the medallion from his tunic, covering the face and the image of Meeks with his palm, and thrust it forward like a weapon. “Would you like to see what I can do to you with this?”

Fillip and Sot collapsed prone upon the earth, tiny bodies shaking from head to foot. They went down so fast it looked as if their feet had been yanked from beneath them.

“Great High Lord!” cried Fillip.

“Mighty High Lord!” wailed Sot.

“Our lives are yours!” sobbed Fillip.

“Yours!” sniffled Sot.

“Forgive us, High Lord!” pleaded Fillip.

“Forgive us!” echoed Sot.

Now that’s much better, Ben thought, more than slightly astonished at the rapid turnabout. A little intimidation seemed to go a whole lot further than a reasonable explanation with the G’home Gnomes. He was a bit ashamed of
himself for having had to resort to such tactics, but he was more desperate than anything.

“Get up,” he told them. They climbed to their feet and stood looking at him fearfully. “It’s all right,” he assured them gently. “I understand why this is confusing, so let’s just put it all behind us. All right?” Two ferretlike faces nodded as one. “Fine. Now we have a problem. Willow—the pretty sylph—may be in a lot of trouble, and we have to help her the same way she helped us when the Crag Trolls had us in their pens. Remember?” He was using that word “remember” a lot, but dealing with gnomes was like dealing with small children. “She’s gone down into the Deep Fell in search of something, and we have to find her to be certain that she’s all right.”

“I do not like the Deep Fell, High Lord,” complained Fillip hesitantly.

“Nor I,” agreed Sot.

“I know you don’t,” Ben acknowledged. “I don’t like it either. But you two have told me before that you can go down there without beeing seen. I can’t do that. All I want you to do is to go down there long enough to look around and see if Willow is there—and to look for something that I need that’s hidden down there. Fair enough? Just look around. No one has to know you’re even there.”

“Nightshade came back to the Deep Fell, High Lord,” announced Fillip softly, confirming Ben’s worst fears.

“We have seen her, High Lord,” agreed Sot.

“She hates everything now,” said Fillip.

“But you most,” added Sot.

There was a period of silence. Ben tried to imagine for a moment the extent of Nightshade’s hatred for him and could not. It was probably just as well.

He bent close to the gnomes. “You’ve been back to the Deep Fell, then?” Fillip and Sot nodded miserably. “And you weren’t seen, were you?” Again, the nods. “Then you can do this favor for me, can’t you? You can do it for me and for Willow. It will be a favor that I won’t forget, I can promise you that.”

There was another long moment of silence as Fillip and Sot looked at him, then at each other. They bent their heads close and whispered. Their nervousness had been transformed into agitation.

Finally they looked back at him again, eyes glinting.

“If we do this, High Lord, can we have the cat?” asked Fillip.

“Yes, can we have the cat?” echoed Sot.

Ben stared. He had forgotten Dirk momentarily. He glanced down at the cat, and then back at the gnomes. “Don’t even think about it,” he advised. “That cat is not what it seems.”

Fillip and Sot nodded reluctantly, but their eyes remained locked on Dirk.

“I’m warning you,” Ben said pointedly.

Again the gnomes nodded, but Ben had the distinct feeling that he was addressing a brick wall.

He shook his head helplessly. “Okay. We’ll sleep here tonight and leave at daylight.” He took an extra moment to draw their attention. “Try to remember what I just said about the cat. All right?”

A third time the gnomes nodded. But their eyes never left Dirk.

B
en ate another Spartan meal of Bonnie Blues, drank spring water, and watched the sun sink into the horizon and night settle over the valley. He thought of the old world and the old life and wondered for the first time in a long time whether he might have been better off staying where he was instead of coming here. Then he pushed his maudlin thoughts aside, wrapped himself in his travel cloak, and settled down against the base of the stump for an uncomfortable night’s rest.

Dirk hadn’t moved from the stump top. Dirk looked dead.

Sometime during the night there was a shriek so dreadful and so prolonged that it brought Ben right up off the ground. It sounded as if it were almost on top of him; but when he finally got his bearings and peered bleary-eyed about the campsite, all he found was Dirk crouched down atop the stump with his hackles up and a sort of steam rising from his back.

In the distance, something—or someone—whimpered.

“Those gnomes are persistent to the point of stupidity,” Dirk commented softly before settling back down again, eyes glistening in the night like emerald fire.

The whimpering faded and Ben lay back down as well. So much for his well-intentioned advice to Fillip and Sot. Some lessons had to be learned the hard way.

T
hat same night found an altogether different scene unfolding some miles south of Rhyndweir at an abandoned stock pen and line shack perched on a ridgeline that overlooked the eastern expanse of the Greensward. A sagging roof and shutterless windows marked the line shack as a derelict, and the stock pen was missing rails in half-a-dozen spots. Shadows draped the whole in a web of black lace. A white-bearded scarecrow and an Ozian shaggy dog, both decidedly unkempt, bracketed a brightly burning campfire built a dozen yards or so from the line shack and hurtled accusations at each other with a vehemence that seemed to refute utterly the fact that they had ever been best friends. A wiry, monkey-faced creature with elephant ears and big teeth watched the dispute in bemused silence.

“Do not attempt to ask my understanding of what you have done!” the shaggy dog was saying to the scarecrow. “I hold you directly responsible for our predicament and am not inclined to be in the least forgiving!”

“Your lack of compassion is matched only by your lack of character!” the scarecrow replied. “Another man—or dog—would be more charitable, I am sure!”

“Ha! Another man—or dog—would have bidden farewell to you long ago! Another man—or dog—would have found decent company in which to share his exile!”

“I see! Well, it is not too late for you to find other company—decent or not—if such is your inclination!”

“Rest assured, it is under consideration right now!”

The two glowered at each other through the red haze of the campfire, their thoughts as black as the ashes of the crumbling wood. The monkey-faced watcher remained a mute spectator. Night hung about all three like a mourner’s shroud, and the ridgeline was spectral and still.

Abernathy shoved his glasses further back on his nose and picked up the argument once more, his tone of voice a shade softer. “What I find difficult to understand is why you let the unicorn get away, wizard. You had the creature before you, you knew the words that would snare it, and what did you do? You called down a thunderburst of butterflies and flowers. What kind of nonsense was that?”

Questor Thews tightened his jaw defiantly. “The kind of nonsense that you, of all people, should understand.”

“I am inclined to think that you simply panicked. I am compelled to believe that you simply failed to master the magic when you needed to. And what do you mean, ‘the kind of nonsense that
I
should understand’?”

“I mean, the kind of nonsense that gives all creatures the chance to be what they should be, despite what others think best for them!”

The scribe frowned. “One moment. Are you telling me that you
intentionally
let the unicorn escape? That the butterflies and the flowers were not accidental?”

The wizard pulled on his chin whiskers irritably. “Congratulations on your astute, if belated, grasp of the obvious! That is exactly what I am telling you!”

There was a long silence between them as they studied each other. They had been traveling together since daybreak, inwardly seething at the turn of events that had brought them to this end, outwardly distanced from each other by their anger. This was the first time that the subject of the unicorn’s escape had been discussed openly.

The moment of testing passed. Questor looked away first, sighed, and pulled his patchwork robes closer about him to ward off the deepening night chill. His face was worn and lined from worry. His clothing was dusty and torn. Abernathy looked no better. They had been stripped of everything. Their dismissal had come immediately after the High Lord had learned of their failure to capture the black unicorn. The High Lord had given them no chance to
explain their actions nor had he offered any explanation for his. They had been met on their return to Sterling Silver by a messenger, who had delivered a curt handwritten directive. They were relieved of their positions. They could go henceforth where they chose—but they were never to return to the court.

Bunion, apparently given his choice in the matter, went with them. He had offered no reason.

“It was not my intention when we began the hunt to allow the unicorn to escape,” Questor continued softly. “It was my intention that it be captured and delivered to the High Lord just as he had ordered. I believed it a dangerous undertaking because the black unicorn has long been reported a thing of ill fortune. But, then again, the High Lord has shown an extraordinary capacity for turning ill fortune to his advantage.” He paused. “I admit I was bothered by his insistence on the unicorn’s immediate capture and by his refusal to explain that insistence to us. Yet I still intended that the unicorn be taken.” He took a deep breath. “But when I saw the beast before me in that wood, standing there—when I saw what it was … I could not allow it to be taken. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t. No, that is not true—I do know why. It wasn’t right. I could feel inside me that it wasn’t right. Didn’t you sense it, too, Abernathy? The unicorn was not meant to belong to the High Lord. It was not meant to belong to anyone.” He glanced up again uncertainly. “So I used the magic to see that it wouldn’t. I let it escape.”

Abernathy snapped at something that flew past him, then shoved his dust-encrusted glasses back on his nose and sneezed. “Well, you should have said so sooner, wizard, instead of letting me think that your magic had simply bested you once again. This, at least, I can understand.”