Gently, they laid Willow down. Ben felt the girl’s wrist above the mass of roots and tendrils that had broken the skin. The wrist was cold and lifeless.
“She is not breathing, High Lord!” Questor whispered in a low hiss.
Ben was frantic. He lifted the stricken sylph in his arms and held her close against him. He was crying. “Damn it, you can’t die, Willow, you can’t do this to me!” He cradled her, feeling the roughness of her skin chafe his face. “Willow, answer me!”
And suddenly he was holding Annie, her body broken and bloodstained from the accident that had taken her life, another piece of wreckage to be swept from the scene. The sensation was so sharp that he gasped. He could feel bone and blood and torn flesh; he could feel the small, frail life of his unborn child. “Oh, God, no!” he cried softly.
He jerked his head up, and the image faded. He was holding Willow again. He bent close, kissing the sylph’s cheek and mouth, his tears running down her face. He had lost Annie and the child she carried. He could not stand it if he were to lose Willow, too. “Don’t die,” he begged her. “I don’t want you to die. Willow, please!”
Her frail body stirred, responding almost miraculously, and her eyes opened to his. He looked into those eyes, past the ravaged face and body, past the devastation wrought by the half-completed transformation. He reached for the flicker of life that still burned within.
“Come back to me, Willow!” he begged her. “You must live!”
The eyes closed again. But the body of the sylph stirred more strongly now, and convulsions became spasms of effort to regain muscle control. Willow’s throat swallowed. “Ben. Help me up. Hold me.”
He brought her quickly to her feet, and the others stepped back from them. He held her there, feeling the lifeblood work itself through her, feeling the transformation begin again. Her roots snaked deep into the forest soil, her branches lengthened and split, and her trunk stretched and hardened.
Then everything went still. Ben looked up. The change was complete. Willow had become the tree that was her namesake. It was going to be all right.
His eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Thank you,” he whispered.
He lowered his head, wrapped his arms about the slender trunk, and cried.
The demon appeared toward dawn, materializing out of the gloom, a black and misshapen thing wrapped in armor. It happened very suddenly. The wind whispered, the mist swirled, and the demon was there.
Ben was awake almost instantly. He had been dozing, sleeping in fits and starts, cramped from leaning against Willow, from holding her. Strabo was presumably still back in the clearing where Ben had left him.
The demon approached, and Ben rose to meet it. The kobolds interposed themselves instantly, moving to block the demon’s way. Abernathy jerked awake and kicked Questor roughly. The wizard awoke as well and scrambled to his feet. The demon’s helmeted head swung slowly about, and its crimson eyes surveyed the company and the pine grove with studied caution.
Then it spoke. Ben could not understand anything of what was said, and the speech was over almost before it began. Questor hesitated, then looked back at him. “The Mark issues you a challenge, High Lord. He demands that you meet him in combat three dawns from now at the Heart.”
Ben nodded wordlessly. What had been promised from the beginning was finally here. Time had run out. He was only half awake, still near exhaustion from his ordeal of the past several days, but he grasped the significance of the challenge instantly.
The Mark had had enough of him. The demon was angry.
But perhaps—just perhaps—the demon was worried, too. Questor had once told him that the demon always challenged at midwinter—and it was nowhere near midwinter yet. The demon was rushing things.
He thought about it a moment, tried to reason it through, then shook his head numbly. It didn’t matter. He had made the decision to stay long ago, and nothing would change that decision now. It surprised him that his resolve was so strong. It gave him a good feeling.
He nodded to the messenger. “I’ll be there.”
The demon was gone in a swirl of mist. Ben stared after it a moment, then gazed off into the trees where the first light of dawn was still a faint silver tinge against the far horizons. “Go back to sleep,” he told the others gently.
He settled down again by Willow, rested his cheek against her roughened trunk and closed his eyes.
Dawn had broken when he came awake once more. He was stretched full length upon the earth in the shadow of the aged pines. His head rested in Willow’s lap and her arms cradled him. She had transformed back again.
“Ben,” she greeted softly.
He looked at her slender arms, her body and then her face. She was just as she had been when he had seen her that first night bathing in the waters of the Irrylyn. The color, the beauty, and the vibrancy had been restored. She was the vision he had wanted and been afraid to seek. Yet it was no longer the vision that mattered to him; it was the life inside. The repulsion, the fear, and the sense of alienation he had once felt were gone. They had been replaced by hope.
He smiled. “I need you,” he whispered and meant it.
“I know, Ben,” she said to him. “I have always known.”
She bent her face to his and kissed him, and he reached up to draw her close.
The first thing Ben did that morning was to release Strabo from the spell of the Io Dust that bound the dragon to him. He gave Strabo his freedom on the condition that the dragon not hunt the Greensward or any other settled part of the valley or any of its citizens so long as Ben was King.
“The duration of your rule in Landover amounts to a splash of water in the ocean of my lifetime, Holiday,” the dragon advised him coldly, eyes lidded against his thoughts. They stood together in the clearing where Strabo had waited the night.
Ben shrugged. “Then the condition should be easy to accept.”
“Conditions from a human are never easy to accept— especially when the human is as deceitful as you.”
“Flattery will gain you nothing more than I have already offered. Do you agree or not?”
The crusted snout split wide, teeth gleaming. “You risk the possibility that my word means nothing—that extracting it while the magic binds me renders it worthless!”
Ben sighed. “Yes or no?”
Strabo hissed, the sound rising up from deep within. “Yes!” He spread his leathered wings and arced his long neck skyward. “Anything to be free of you!” Then he hesitated and bent close. “Understand—this is not finished yet between you and me, Holiday. We will meet again another day and settle the debt owed me!”
He rose with a rush of beating wings until he was atop the trees, banked eastward, and disappeared into the rising sun. Ben watched him go and then turned away.
Questor Thews could not understand. First he was astonished, then angry, and finally just mystified. Whatever could the High Lord have been thinking? Why would he release Strabo like that? The dragon was a powerful ally, a weapon that none would dare to challenge, a lever which could be used to exact the pledges the High Lord so desperately needed!
“But that’s precisely what’s wrong with keeping him,” Ben tried to explain it to the wizard. “I’d end up using him like a club; I’d have my pledges not because the people of Landover felt they should give them but because they were terrified of the dragon. That’s no good—I don’t want loyalty from fear! I want loyalty from respect! Besides, Strabo is a two-edged sword. Sooner or later the effects of the Io Dust are going to wear off anyway, and then what? He’d turn on me in a minute. No, Questor—better that I let him go now and take my chances.”
“Aptly put, High Lord,” the wizard snapped. “You will indeed take your chances. What happens to you when you face the Mark? Strabo could have protected you! You should at least have kept him until then!”
But Ben shook his head. “No, Questor,” he answered softly. “This isn’t the dragon’s fight; it’s mine. It always has been, I thi
nk.”
He left the matter there, refusing to discuss it further with any of them. He had thought it through carefully. He had made up his mind. He had learned a few things he had not known earlier and deduced a few more. He saw clearly what a King of Landover must be if he were to have any value at all. He had come full circle in many respects from the time he had first entered the valley. He wanted his friends to understand, but he did not think he could explain it to them. Understanding would have to come another way.
Happily, there was no further opportunity to dwell on the subject right then. The River Master appeared, alerted by his people that something strange was going on in the grove of the old pines. Strabo had flown in toward midnight and flown out again that dawn. He brought with him a handful of humans, including the man named Holiday who claimed Landover’s throne, the wizard Questor Thews, and the River Master’s missing daughter. Ben greeted the River Master with apologies for the intrusion and a brief explanation of what had befallen them all during the past several weeks. He told the River Master that Willow had followed him at his invitation, that it was his oversight in not advising the sprite earlier, and that he wished the sylph to remain with him for a few days more. He asked that they meet again three dawns hence at the Heart.
He said nothing of the challenge issued by the Mark.
“What purpose will be served, High Lord, in meeting with you at the Heart?” the River Master asked pointedly. His people were all about them, faint shapes in the mist of the early dawn, eyes that glimmered in the haze of the trees.
“I will ask again your pledge to the throne of Landover,” Ben answered. “I think that this time you will want to give it.”
Skepticism and a hint of alarm reflected in the sprite’s chiseled features, and the gills on his neck ceased their steady flutter. “I have given you my conditions for such a pledge,” the River Master said softly. There was a warning note in his voice.
Ben kept His gaze steady. “I know.”
The River Master nodded. “Very well. I will be there.”
He embraced Willow briefly, gave his permission for her to stay on with Ben and was gone. His people disappeared with him, melting back into the forest gloom. Ben and the members of his little company were left alone.
Willow moved close, her hand closing about his. “He does not intend to give you his pledge, Ben,” she whispered, lowering her voice so that the others could not hear.
Ben smiled ruefully. “I know. But I’m hoping that he won’t have any choice.”
It was time to be going. He dispatched Bunion to Rhyndweir castle with a message for Kallendbor and the other Lords of the Greensward. He had done as they had asked and rid them of Strabo. Now it was their turn. They were to meet him at the Heart three dawns hence and give him their pledge of loyalty.
Bunion disappeared into the forest wordlessly, and Ben and the remaining members of the little company turned homeward toward Sterling Silver.
It took them longer returning from Elderew and the lake country this time than it had before, because this time they traveled afoot. Ben didn’t mind. It gave him time to think, and he had a great deal to think about. Willow walked with him as they traveled, staying close, saying little. Questor and Abernathy questioned him repeatedly about his plans for dealing with the Mark, but he put them off. The truth of the matter was he didn’t have any plans yet, but he didn’t want them to know that. It was better if they thought that he was simply being closemouthed.
He spent much of his time surveying the country they traveled through and imagining how it had been before the failing of the magic. His memory of the vision shown him by the fairies recalled itself often, a gleaming, wondrous painting where the mists, the gloom and the wilting of the land’s life were absent. How long ago had this valley been like that, he wondered? How long before it could be made that way again? The vision of the fairies had been more than a memory; it had been a promise. He pondered the sluggish swirl of the deep mists that screened the sunshine and shrouded the mountains, the thinning groves of Bonnie Blues dotted with wilt and spotting, the lakes and rivers turned gray and clouded, and the meadows and grasslands grown sparse and wintry. He pondered the valley’s people and their lives in a world turned suddenly harsh and unproductive. He thought again of the faces of those few that had appeared for his coronation—of the many who had lined the roads leading into Rhyndweir. That could all be changed if the failing of the magic could be halted.
A King to serve the land and lead her people would accomplish that end, Questor Thews believed. Twenty years of no King upon Landover’s throne had caused the problem in the first place.
But the concept was a difficult one for Ben to grasp. Why would such a simple thing as the loss or gain of a King have so great an effect upon the life of this valley? A King was just a man. A King was just a figurehead. How could one man make such a difference?
It could, he decided finally, where the land took its life from the magic that had created it, and the magic was sustained by the rule of a King. Such a thing might not be possible in a world governed solely by natural laws, but it could be so here. The land took its life from the magic. Questor had told him so. Perhaps the land took its life from the King as well.
The implications of that possibility were staggering, and Ben could not begin to comprehend all of the ramifications that they suggested. Instead, he reduced their number to those relevant to his most immediate problem—staying alive. The magic failed without him; the land failed without the magic. There was a bond among the three. If he could understand it, he could save himself. He knew it instinctively. The fairies had not created Landover one day to see it fall apart the next simply because of the loss of a King. They had to have foreseen and provided a way to bring that King back again—a new King, a different King, but a King to rule and keep the magic strong.
But what provision had they made?
The first day for the journey back seemed endless. When night finally descended and the others of the little company slept, Ben lay awake, still thinking. He was awake a long time.
The second day passed more quickly, and by midday they had reached once more the island castle of Sterling Silver. Bunion was waiting at the gates, already returned from his journey to the Greensward. He spoke rapidly, punctuating his sentences with sharp gestures. Ben couldn’t begin to follow him.
Questor interceded. “Your message was delivered, High Lord.” His voice was bitter. “The Lords of the Greensward reply that they will come to the Heart as commanded—but they will postpone until then any decision as to whether or not they will pledge to the throne.”
Ben grunted. “Hardly surprising.” He ignored the look exchanged by the wizard and Abernathy and moved ahead through the entry. “Thanks for the effort, Bunion.”
He walked quickly down the connecting passageway to the inner court and crossed, the others trailing. He had just stepped inside the front hall when a pair of bedraggled apparitions darted frantically from the shadows of an alcove and threw themselves at his feet.
“Great High Lord!”
“Mighty High Lord!”
Ben groaned in recognition. The G’home Gnomes Fillip and Sot fell to their knees before him, grovelling and whimpering so pitifully that it was embarrassing. Their fur was matted and spiked, their paws were caked with mud, and they had the look of something dredged from the sewers.
“Oh, High Lord, we thought you devoured by the dragon!” Fillip wailed.
“We thought you lost in the depths of the netherworld!” Sot cried.
“Ah, you have great magic, High Lord!” Fillip praised him.
“Yes, you have returned from the dead!” Sot declared.
Ben wanted to kick them into next week. “Will you kindly let go of me!” he ordered. They had fastened themselves to his pant legs and were kissing his feet. He tried to shake free, but the gnomes would not release their death grip. “Let go, already!” he snapped.
They fell back, still hugging the s
tone flooring, their lidded eyes peering up at him expectantly.
“Great High Lord,” Fillip whispered.
“Mighty High …” Sot began.
Ben cut him short. “Parsnip, Bunion—get these two mud bunnies into a bath and don’t let them up for air until you can tell what they are again.” The kobolds dragged the G’home Gnomes from the foyer, still groveling. Ben sighed, suddenly weary. “Questor, I want you and Abernathy to take one last look through the castle histories. See if there is anything—anything at all—that refers to the way that Landover, her Kings and the magic are joined.” He shook his head sadly. “I know we’ve been this route before; I know we haven’t found anything, but… well, maybe we missed something …” He trailed off.
Questor nodded bravely. “Yes, High Lord, it is possible that we missed something. It doesn’t hurt to look again.”
He disappeared down the hallway with Abernathy in tow. Abernathy looked doubtful.
Ben stood alone in the foyer with Willow for a few moments after the others had gone, then took the sylph gently by the hand and climbed the tower stairs to the Landsview. He felt a need to explore the valley one last time—he bit his tongue at the thought—and he wanted the girl to go with him. They hadn’t spoken much since her recovery from the transformation, but they had stayed close to each other. It helped him having her there. It gave him an assurance that he didn’t entirely understand. It gave him strength.
He tried to tell her. “I want you to know something, Willow,” he said as they stood together on the platform of the Landsview. “I don’t know how all this is going to turn out, but I do know that, whichever way it goes, I’m the better by a long sight for having had you for a friend.”
She did not reply. Her hand closed tightly over his. Together they grasped the railing, and the castle walls fell away into the clouded gray skies.
They were gone all afternoon.
Ben slept soundly that night and did not wake until midday. Questor met him on his way downstairs. The wizard looked exhausted.