Other than those few, there was no one.
Ben frowned. There was a hunted, almost desperate look in the eyes of those few that was troubling.
“Who are they?” he asked Questor quietly.
Questor looked out at the ragged gathering and turned away. “Spectators.”
“Spectators?”
“To the coronation.”
“Well, where is everybody else?”
“Fashionably late, perhaps.” Abernathy deadpanned. Behind him, the kobolds hissed softly and showed their teeth.
Ben put his hand on Questor’s shoulder and brought him about. “What’s going on, Questor? Where is everyone?”
The wizard rubbed his chin nervously. “It is possible that those who are coming are simply a bit late arriving, detained perhaps by something that they had not foreseen when they …”
“Wait a minute.” Ben cut him short. “Run that by me once more—’those who are coming’ did you say? Does that mean that some don’t intend to come?”
“Oh, well, I was simply using a figure of speech, High Lord. Certainly all who can come will.”
Ben folded his arms across his chest and faced the other squarely. “And I’m Santa Claus. Look, Questor, I’ve been around long enough to know a fox from a hole in the ground. Now, what’s going on here?”
The wizard shifted his feet awkwardly. “Ah … well, you see, the truth of the matter is that very few will be coming.”
“How few is very few?”
“Perhaps only a couple.”
Abernathy edged foward. “He means just the four of us, High Lord—and those poor souls standing out there in the shadows.”
“Just the four of us?” Ben stared at Questor in disbelief. “The four of us? That’s all? The coronation of the first King of Landover in more than twenty years, and no one is coming …”
“You are not the first, High Lord,” Questor said softly.
“…but the four of us?”
“You are not the first,” the wizard repeated.
There was a long moment of silence. “What did you say?” Ben asked.
“There have been others before you, High Lord—other Kings of Landover since the death of the Old King. You are simply the latest of these to ascend the throne. I am sorry that you have to hear this now. I would have preferred that you heard it later when the coronation ceremony was …”
“How many others?” Ben’s face was flushed with anger.
“… completed, and we had … What did you say?”
“Kings, damn it! How many others have there been?”
Questor Thews squirmed. “Several dozen, perhaps. Frankly, I have lost count.”
The sound of thunder rolled from somewhere distant through the forest trees and mist. Abernathy’s ears pricked sharply.
“Several dozen?” Ben did not yet hear it. His arms dropped to his sides and the muscles of his neck corded. “I can understand why you might have lost count! I can understand as well why no one bothers to come anymore!”
“They came at first, of course,” the other continued, his voice irritatingly calm and his gaze steady. “They came because they believed. Even after they quit believing, they came for a time because they were curious. But eventually they were no longer even curious. We have had too many Kings, High Lord, who were not real.”
He gestured roughly toward the few who had assembled at the forest’s edge. “Those who come now come only because they are desperate.”
The thunder sounded again, louder this time and closer, a deep, sustained rumble that echoed through the forest and shook the earth. The kobolds hissed and their ears flattened back against their heads. Ben looked about sharply. Abernathy was growling.
Questor seized Ben’s arm. “Climb onto the dais, High Lord! Go, quickly!” Ben hesitated, frowning. “Go!” the wizard snapped, shoving. “Those are demons that come!”
That was reason enough for Ben. The kobolds were already scampering ahead, and he went after them. The thunder reverberated all about them, shaking trees and earth.
“It appears that you will have your audience after all, High Lord,” Abernathy said as he bounded up the dais steps on all fours, nearly losing the ceremonial robes and chains of office.
Ben went up the steps behind him, glancing back over his shoulder anxiously. The Heart was deserted save for the four of the little company. The farmers, herdsmen, their families, the hunters, and the beggar had all scattered into the concealing shadows of the forest. The mist and gloom of the surrounding trees seemed to press in tightly against the sunlit clearing.
“Help the High Lord on with his robes and chains,” Questor Thews directed Abernathy, hastening onto the dais to stand with them. “Quickly!”
Abernathy rose up again on his hind legs and began fitting the robes and chains of office about Ben. “Wait a minute, Questor,” Ben objected, his eyes darting apprehensively to the black tunnel entrance across from them. “I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”
“It is too late, High Lord—you must!” The other’s owlish face was suddenly hard with purpose. “Trust me. You will be safe.”
Ben thought that he had ample reason to question that assertion, but Abernathy was already fastening the clasps to the robes and chains. The scribe was surprisingly dexterous for a dog, and Ben found himself glancing downward in spite of the situation. He started. Abernathy’s paws had blunted fingers with joints.
“He failed to get even that part right,” the scribe muttered on seeing the look on Ben’s face. “Let us hope he does better with you.”
Shadows and mist joined and swirled like stirred ink at the far side of the clearing, and the stillness turned suddenly to a howling wind. The thunder of the demon approach peaked in a harsh rumble that shook the forest earth. Ben turned, the wind whipping his robes until they threatened to break loose. Abernathy stepped away, growling deep in his throat, and the kobolds hissed like snakes and showed their teeth to the black.
Then the demons broke from the mist and dark, materializing as if a hole had opened in the empty air, an army of lean, armored forms as shadowy as night. Weapons and plating clanked, and the hooves of monstrous, serpentine mounts thudded from rock to earth, reverberated, and died. The army slowed and clattered to a halt. White teeth and red eyes gleamed from the mists, and claws and spines jutted from the mass, as if the whole were tangled into one. The army faced the dais in a ragged line, hundreds strong, pressed between the forest trees and the kneeling pads and rests, the sound of their breathing filling the void left by the passing of the thunder. The wind howled once more and died away.
The clearing was filled with the sound of heavy, clotted breathing. “Questor …?” Ben called softly, frozen where he stood.
“Stand, High Lord,” the wizard whispered softly.
The demon horde stirred, weapons lifted as one, and a maddened howl broke from the army’s collective throat. Abernathy stepped back, jaws snapping. The kobolds seemed to go mad, hissing and shrieking in fury, crouching to either side of where Ben stood.
“Questor …?” Ben tried again, a bit more urgently this time.
Then the Mark appeared. The demons parted suddenly at their center, and he came from out of their midst. He sat astride his winged serpent, a thing that was half snake and half wolf, a thing out of the foulest nightmare. The Mark was all in black armor, opaque and worn with use, bristling with weapons and serrated spines. A helmet with a death’s head sat on his shoulders, the visor down.
Ben Holiday wished he were practically anywhere other than where he was.
Questor Thews stepped forward. “Kneel, High Lord!” His voice was a hiss.
“What?”
“Kneel! You are to be King! The demons have come to see you made so, and we must not keep them waiting.” The owlish face crinkled with urgency. “Kneel, so you may be sworn!”
Ben knelt, eyes locked on the demons.
“Place your hands upon the medallion,” Questor ordered. Ben lifte
d it from beneath his tunic and did so. “Now repeat these words: ‘I shall be one with the land and her people, faithful to all and disloyal to none, bound to the laws of throne and magic, pledged to the world to which I have come—King, hereafter.’ Say it.”
Ben hesitated. “Questor, I don’t like …”
“Say it, Ben Holiday, if you would truly be the King you have said you would be!”
The admonishment was hard and certain, almost as if come from someone other than Questor Thews. Ben met the other’s eyes steadily. He could sense a restless movement from the ranks of the demons.
Ben lifted the medallion until it could be seen clearly by all. His eyes never left Questor’s. “I shall be one with the land and her people, faithful to all and disloyal to none, bound to the laws of throne and magic, pledged to the world to which I have come—King, hereafter!”
He spoke the words clearly and boldly. He was mildly surprised that he had remembered them all so easily—almost as if he had known them before. The clearing was still. He let the medallion fall back upon his chest.
Questor Thews nodded, and his hand passed through the air immediately above Ben’s head. “Rise, Your Majesty,” he said softly. “Ben Holiday, King of Landover, High Lord and Liege.”
Ben rose, and the sunlight broke over him as it slipped suddenly through the ceiling of mist. The silence of the clearing deepened. Questor Thews bent slowly and dropped to one knee. Abernathy followed him down and the kobolds knelt with him.
But the demons held their place. The Mark stayed mounted, and none about him moved.
“Show them the medallion one time more!” Questor hissed beneath his breath.
Ben turned and held forth in his right hand the medallion, feeling with his fingers the outline of the mounted knight, the lake, castle, and rising sun. Demons cried softly in the ranks of black forms, and a few dropped down. But the Mark brought his arm back swiftly, beckoning all to stand where they were, to keep their feet. The death’s head turned back to Ben defiantly.
“Questor, it isn’t working!” Ben breathed from out of the side of his mouth.
There was sudden movement in the demon ranks. Astride his monstrous, winged carrier, the Mark was advancing through the screen of mist and shadows. The demons he led were coming with him.
Ben went cold. “Questor!”
But then there was a flare of light from across the Heart, as if something bright had caught the reflection of the sun. It broke from the edge of the forest shadows between the advancing demons and the dais on which Ben and his companions stood. The demons slowed, eyes shifting. Ben and his friends turned.
A horse and rider appeared from out of the mists.
Ben Holiday started. It was the knight he had encountered in the time passage between his world and this, the knight whose image was graven on the medallion, a battered and soiled iron statue as he sat astride his wearied horse. His lance rested upright in its boot cradle and his armored form was still. He might have been chiseled from stone.
“The Paladin!” Questor whispered in disbelief. “He has come back!”
The Mark rose in the harness that bound him to his mount, death’s head facing toward the knight. Demons shrank back within the mist and shadows all about him, and there were whimpers of uncertainty. Still the knight did not move.
“Questor, what’s happening?” Ben demanded, but the wizard shook his head wordlessly.
A moment longer the demons and the knight faced each other across the sunlit span of the Heart, poised like creatures at hunt. Then the Mark brought one arm upward, fist clenched, and the death’s head inclined, if only barely, toward Ben. Wheeling his mount, he turned back into the dark, the army he led turning with him. Shrieks and cries broke the stillness, the wind howled and hooves and boots thundered once more. The demons disappeared back into the air out of which they had come.
The mist and the gloom drew back again, and the sunlight returned. Ben blinked in disbelief. When he turned back once more to find the knight and his war horse, they had disappeared as well. The clearing was empty but for the five who stood upon the dais.
Then there was new movement in the shadows. The few farmers and herdsmen and their families, the hunters and the lone beggar slipped back into view, gathering hesitantly at the fringe of the trees. There was fear and wonder in their eyes. They came no further, but one by one they knelt in the forest earth.
Ben’s heart was pounding, and he was damp with sweat. He took a deep breath and wheeled on Questor. “I want to know what in the hell is going on, and I want to know right now!”
Questor Thews seemed genuinely at a loss for words for the first time since they had met. He started to say something, stopped, tried again, and shook his head. Ben glanced at the others. Abernathy was panting as if he had been run. The kobolds were crouched close, ears laid back, eyes slitted.
Ben seized Questor’s arm. “Answer me, damn it!”
“High Lord, I don’t … I am at a loss to explain …” The owlish face twisted as if caught in a vise. “I would never have believed …”
Ben brought his hand up quickly to cut him off. “For God’s sake, Questor, get hold of yourself, will you?”
The other nodded, straightening. “Yes, High Lord.”
“And answer the question!”
“High Lord, I…” He stopped again.
Abernathy’s shaggy head craned forward over one shoulder. “This should be interesting,” he offered. He appeared to have regained control of himself more quickly than the wizard.
Questor shot him a dark look. “I should have made you a cat!” he snapped.
“Questor!” Ben pressed impatiently.
The wizard turned, took a deep breath, cocked his head reflectively and shrugged. “High Lord, I don’t quite know how to tell you this.” He smiled weakly. “That knight, the one that appears on the medallion you wear, the one that confronted the Mark—he doesn’t exist.”
The smile disappeared. “High Lord, we have just seen a ghost!”
Miles used to say that there were lawyers and then there were lawyers; trouble was, there were too many of the former and not enough of the latter. He used to say that when he was steamed by some act of incompetence visited upon him by a fellow practitioner of the arts.
Ben Holiday ran that saying through his mind on and off during the hike back to Sterling Silver, altering the words a bit to fit the circumstances of his present dilemma. There were ghosts and then there were ghosts, he corrected. There are imagined ghosts and real ghosts, phantoms of the mind and sure-enough live spooks that went bump in the night. He supposed one could safely say that there were indeed too many of the former and not enough of the latter—although maybe everyone was better off that way.
Whatever the case, the knight graven on the medallion he wore, the knight who had twice come between him and the Mark, the knight who materialized and then disappeared as if made of smoke, was certainly one of the latter and not some chemically induced distortion that was the result of eating the food or drinking the water in a strange land. He knew that as surely as he knew that Questor Thews was still holding out on him about the circumstances surrounding the sale of the throne of Landover.
And he meant to learn the truth about both.
But he was not going to learn much of anything right away, it appeared. For Questor, after proclaiming the knight a ghost that no longer existed, refused to say anything more about the matter until they were safely returned to Sterling Silver. Ben protested vehemently, Abernathy tossed off a few barbs about cold feet, the kobolds hissed and showed their teeth to the vanished demons, but the wizard remained firm. Ben Holiday had a right to know the whole story behind the appearance of the ghost—what was it he had called it, the Paladin?—but he would have to wait until they were again within the walls of the castle. The owlish face set itself, the stooped figure turned, and Questor Thews stalked off into the forest without a backward glance. Since Ben had no intention of remaining in that clearing
by himself after what had just happened, he hastened after like an obedient duckling following its mother.
Some posture for a King, he chided himself. But then who was he kidding? He was about as much King of Landover as he was President of the United States. He might have been proclaimed King by an inept wizard, a converted dog, and a couple of hissing monkeys and he might have paid a million dollars for the privilege—he set his teeth, thinking of that—but he was still just an outsider who had wandered into a foreign country and who didn’t yet know the customs and could barely speak the language.
But that would change, he promised. He would see it change or know the reason why.
It took them the better part of the afternoon to complete the journey back again, and dusk was settling over the misted valley and waterways when they again came in sight of Sterling Silver. The dreary, hollow cast of the fortress dampened Ben Holiday’s spirits further, and they scarcely needed that. He thought again about the ten days allotted him to return to his own world under the terms of the contract he had signed—and for the first time the wisdom of doing so seemed clear to him.
Once back within the castle, Questor dispatched Parsnip to prepare dinner and Bunion to lay out a fresh set of clothing for Ben. Then taking Ben and Abernathy in tow, he set out on an expedition that took them deep into the bowels of the castle. They passed down numerous corridors and through countless halls, all musted and stained by the Tarnish, but lit with the smokeless lights and warmed by the life of the castle. Colors shimmered weakly in the gray, and touches of polished wood and stone glimmered. There was a sense of something grand and elegant passing away in the wake of the Tarnish, and Ben was bothered by it. He should not have been, he thought, as he trailed silently after Questor. He had slept only a single time within these walls, and the castle held no special meaning for him. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Questor telling him that she was a living thing …