She understood. She might wish it otherwise—and indeed had done so more than once before—but she could not deny the fact of it. The twenty-day cycle was at its end; the change was upon her. The need was already so strong that she could barely control herself. She shivered again. She must hurry.
She thought suddenly of Ben and wished he were there with her.
She stood up and walked to the clearing’s center. Her arms lifted skyward as if to draw in the colored moonlight. A radiance enveloped her, and she could feel the essence of her mother emanating from the earth upon which she had danced. She began to feed.
“Stay close to me, Mother,” she pleaded as her body shimmered. Her feet arched and split into roots that snaked downward into the dark earth, her hands and arms lengthened into branches, and the transformation began.
Moments later it was finished. Willow had disappeared. She had become the tree whose namesake she bore and would stay that way until dawn.
Her mother sank down next to her, a child’s ghost slipped from the shadows. She sat motionless for a time. Then her pale, slender arms wrapped about the roughened trunk that harnessed her daughter’s life and held it tight.
Dawn was approaching. Landover’s moons were fading away, one after the other, and night’s shadows were giving ground before a broadening golden hue that edged its way slowly out of the eastern horizon.
Questor Thews stalked the halls of Sterling Silver, a skeletal, ragtag figure in his gray robes with the colored sashes, looking for all the world as if he had lost his best friend. He rounded a corner near the front entry hall and bumped up against Abernathy.
“Taking an early constitutional?” the scribe inquired archly.
Questor grunted and the furrows lining his forehead deepened. “I find I cannot sleep, and I do not for the life of me know why that is. There is reason enough to be tired, heaven knows.”
Abernathy’s shaggy face revealed nothing of what he thought of that. He shrugged and turned to walk next to the wizard. “I understand someone was caught breaking into the High Lord’s bedchamber this evening—someone who claimed to be the King.”
Questor grunted a second time. “A madman. He was lucky to be released. But the High Lord ordered it. ‘Put him across to the mainland,’ he said. I would not have been so generous about the matter had the decision been mine, I assure you.”
They walked a bit further. “Odd that the High Lord simply released him,” Abernathy remarked finally. His nose twitched. “He usually finds better uses for his enemies.”
“Hmmmmmm.” Questor didn’t seem to hear. He was shaking his head at something. “It bothers me that the man knew so much about the dreams. He knew of the books of magic, of the High Lord’s visit back, of the unicorn …” He trailed off momentarily. “He seemed to know everything. He seemed so sure of himself.”
Neither spoke for a time. Questor led the way up a stairwell to a walk overlooking the outer parapets at the front of the castle. Below, the bridge which connected the island to the mainland stretched out across the lake, misted and empty. Questor peered through the fading gloom to the far shore, scanning the water’s edge. His owlish face tightened like a drawn knot.
“The stranger appears to be gone,” he said finally.
Abernathy glanced at him curiously. “Did you expect anything else?” he asked.
He waited in vain for an answer to his question. Questor continued to stare out across the lake and said nothing.
The new day did not find Ben Holiday standing about the gates of Sterling Silver with his nose pressed up against the timbers as might have been expected. It found him hiking his way south into the lake country. He walked quickly and purposefully. By the time the sun had crested the rim of the valley east above the mists and tree line, he was already half-a-dozen miles into his journey and determined to complete at least a dozen more before the day was finished.
The decision to leave had not been an easy one. It had taken him a long time to make it. He had sat out there in the dark and the chill, staring back at the lights of the castle and wondering what had hit him, so stunned he didn’t even move for the first half hour; he just sat there. His emotions ran the gamut from shock to fear to anger and back again. It was like a bad dream from which you are certain you will escape—even after the time for escape is long past. He recounted the events of the night over and over again in his mind, trying to construct some rational explanation for their being, to discover some purpose to their order. He failed. It all came down to the same thing—Meeks was in and he was out.
It was with a sense of desperation that he finally acknowledged that what had happened to him was for real. He had given up a life and a world that were familiar and safe to come into Landover; he had risked losing everything he had on the chance that he would find something better. Obstacles had confronted him at every turn, but he had overcome them. He had gained in reality what most found only in dreams. Now, just when he had begun to feel comfortable with what he had, just when it seemed the worst was past, everything he had struggled so hard to find had been snatched away from him, and he was faced with the distinct possibility that he would end up losing it all.
It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t fair.
But it was a fact, and he hadn’t been a successful trial lawyer for all those years in the old world by avoiding the reality of facts. So he choked down his desperation, got over being too stunned to move, swept away the anger and the fear, and forced himself to deal with his situation. His repeated replays of what had happened to him failed to yield the information he might have wished. Meeks had tricked him into returning to the old world, and he had carried the wizard back with him into Landover. Meeks had done that by sending him a false dream about Miles. But Meeks had also sent the dreams of the missing books of magic and the black unicorn to Questor Thews and Willow. Why had he done that? There had to be a reason. The dreams were all tied together in some way; Ben was certain of it. He was certain as well that something had forced Meeks to choose this particular time to return to Landover. His diatribe in the bedchamber had made that clear. In some way Ben had messed up his plans—and it was more than simply the thwarting of the wizard’s sale of the throne of Landover to others or the exiling of the wizard from his home world. It was something else—something of far greater importance to Meeks. The wizard’s anger at Ben was fueled by events and circumstances that Ben hadn’t yet uncovered. They had compelled Meeks to return—almost out of desperation.
But Ben had no idea why.
He did know that, despite what should have been adequate provocation, Meeks hadn’t killed him when he could have. That was puzzling. Clearly Meeks hated him enough to want him to suffer awhile as an outcast, but wasn’t it a bit risky letting him wander around loose? Sooner or later someone was going to see through the deception and recognize the truth of things. Meeks could not assume his identity and Ben remain a stranger to everyone indefinitely. There had to be some way to counter the magic of that vile amulet Meeks had stuck him with, and he would surely search it out eventually. On the other hand, maybe what he accomplished in the long run didn’t matter. Perhaps time was something he didn’t have. Maybe the game would be over for him before he understood all the rules.
The possibility terrified him. It meant he had to act quickly if he didn’t want to risk losing the chance of acting at all. But what should he do? He had stared back across the lake at the dark shape of the castle and reasoned it through. He was wasting his time here where he was a stranger to everyone—even to his closest friends. If neither Questor nor Bunion recognized him, there was little chance anyone else at Sterling Silver would. Meeks was King of Landover for the moment; he would have to concede that much. It grated on him like sand rubbed on raw flesh, but there was nothing to be done about it. Meeks was Ben—and Ben himself was some fellow who had slipped uninvited into the castle and tried to cause trouble. If he attempted to break in a second time, he would undoubtedly wind up in worse shape than he was i
n now.
Maybe Meeks was hoping for that. Maybe he was expecting it. Ben did not want to chance it.
Besides, there were better alternatives to choose from. Admittedly he did not know exactly what Meeks was about, but he knew enough to know how to cause the wizard problems if he could act fast enough. Meeks had sent three dreams, and two of them had already served their purposes. Meeks had regained entry into Landover through Ben, and he had used Questor to bring him the missing books of magic. Make no mistake, Ben admonished himself—Meeks had those books by now as surely as the sun would rise in the east. That left only the third dream to be satisfied—the dream sent to Willow of the black unicorn. Meeks was looking for something from that third dream as well; he had let a hint of it slip in his anger. He was looking for the golden bridle that would harness the black unicorn and he fully expected Willow to bring it to him. And why shouldn’t she, after all? The dream had warned her that the unicorn was a threat to her, that the bridle was the only thing that would protect her, and that she must bring the bridle to Ben. That was exactly what she would think she was doing, of course, once she found the bridle—except that it would be Meeks disguised as Ben who would be waiting to greet her. But if Ben could reach the sylph first, he could prevent that from happening. He could warn Willow, and perhaps the two of them could discover the importance of the bridle and the unicorn to the wizard and throw a monkey wrench into his plans.
So off Ben went, heading south, the difficult decision made. It meant forgoing his responsibilities as King of Landover and conceding those responsibilities to Meeks. It meant abandoning the problems of the judiciary council, the irrigation fields south of Waymark, the always-impatient Lords of the Greensward, the tax levy, and all the others who still waited for an audience with Landover’s High Lord. Meeks could act in his place with impunity in the days ahead—or fail to act, as the case might be. It meant abandoning Sterling Silver and leaving his friends, Questor, Abernathy, and the kobolds. He felt like a traitor and a coward going this way. A part of him demanded that he stay and fight. But Willow came first. He had to find her and warn her. Once that was accomplished, he could turn his attention to exposing Meeks and setting things right.
Unfortunately, finding Willow would not be easy. He was traveling down into the lake country because that was where Willow had said she would go to begin her search for the unicorn and the golden bridle. But Willow had been gone almost a week, and that search might have taken her anywhere by now. Ben would appear a stranger to everyone, so he could not trade on his position as Landover’s King to demand help. He might be ignored totally or not even be allowed into the lake country. If that happened, he was in trouble.
On the other hand, it was difficult to imagine being in worse trouble than he was in already.
He walked all that day, feeling better about himself as he went, for no better reason than the fact that he was doing something positive and not simply sitting around. He wound his way southward out of the lightly forested hill country around his island home into the more densely grown woods that comprised the domain of the River Master. The hills smoothed to grasslands, then thickened to woods damp with moisture and heavy with shadow. Lakes began to dot the countryside, some no larger than marshy ponds, some so vast they stretched away into mist. Trees canopied and closed about, and the smell of damp permeated the failing light. A stillness settled down about the land as dusk neared, then began to fill slowly with night sounds.
Ben found a clearing by a stream feeding down out of the distant hills and made his camp. It was a short project. He had no blankets or food, so he had to content himself with the leaves and branches from a stand of Bonnie Blues and the spring water. The fare was filling, but hardly satisfying. He kept thinking that something was moving in the shadows, watching him. Had the lake country people discovered him? But no one showed. He was quite alone.
Being so alone eroded his confidence. He was all but helpless when you got right down to it. He had lost his castle, his knights, his identity, his authority, his title, and his friends. Worst of all, he had lost the medallion. Without the medallion, he did not have the protection of the Paladin. He was left with only himself to rely upon, and that was precious little against the dangers posed by Landover’s denizens and their mercurial forms of magic. He had been lucky to survive his arrival in Landover when he had enjoyed the benefit of the medallion’s protection. What was he to do now without it?
He stared off into the dark, finding the answers as elusive as the night’s shadows. What distressed him most was the fact that he had lost the medallion to Meeks. He could not figure out for the life of him how that could have happened. No one was supposed to be able to take the medallion from him. That meant he must have given it over willingly. But how had Meeks compelled him to do something so stupid?
He finished his meager dinner and was still brooding over the turn of events that had brought him to this sorry state when he saw the cat.
The cat was sitting at the edge of the clearing, perhaps a dozen feet or so away, watching him. Ben had no idea how long the cat had been there. He hadn’t seen it until now, but it was keeping perfectly still, so it might have been occupying that same spot for some time. The cat’s eyes gleamed emerald in the moonlight. Its coat was silver-gray except for black paws, face, and tail. It was a slender, delicate thing—seemingly out of place in the forest wild. It had the look of a strayed house pet.
“Hello, cat,” Ben ventured with a wry smile.
“Hello, yourself,” the cat replied.
Ben stared, certain that he must not have heard correctly. Had the cat spoken? He straightened. “Did you say something?” he asked cautiously.
The cat’s gleaming eyes blinked once and fixed on him, but the cat said nothing. Ben waited a few moments, then leaned back again on his elbows. It wasn’t as if it were surprising to imagine that the cat might have said something, he told himself. After all, the dragon Strabo spoke; and if a dragon could speak, why not a cat?
“Too bad you can’t talk,” he muttered, thinking it would be nice to share his misery with someone.
The night brought a chill with it, and he shivered briefly in the rough work clothes. He wished he had a blanket or a fire to help ward off the damp; or better, that he were back in his own bed at the castle.
He glanced over again at the cat. The cat hadn’t moved. It simply sat there, staring back at him. Ben frowned. The cat’s steady gaze was a bit unnerving. What was a cat doing out here in the woods alone like this anyway? Didn’t it have a home? The emerald eyes gleamed brightly. They were sharp and insistent. Ben shifted his own gaze to the shadowed woods. He wondered again how he was going to find Willow. He would need help from the River Master and he hadn’t the foggiest idea as to how he would convince that being of his true identity. His fingers brushed the tarnished medallion that hung about his neck, tracing the outline of Meeks. The medallion certainly wouldn’t be of any help.
“Maybe the River Master’s magic will help him recognize me,” he thought aloud.
“I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you,” someone replied.
He started and looked quickly in the direction of the speaker. There was no one there but the cat.
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “I heard you that time!” he snapped, irritated enough that he didn’t care how foolish he sounded. “You can speak, can’t you?”
The cat blinked and answered. “I can when it pleases me.”
Ben fought to regain his composure. “I see. Well, you might at least have the courtesy to announce the fact instead of playing games with people.”
“Courtesy has nothing to do with the matter, High Lord Ben Holiday. Playing games is a way of life with cats. We tease, we taunt, and we do exactly as we please, not as others would have us do. Playing games is an integral part of our personae. Those who wish to have any sort of relationship with us must expect as much. They must understand that participation in our games is necessary if they wish communication on any le
vel.”
Ben stared at the cat. “How do you know who I am?” he asked finally.
“Who else would you be but who you are?” the cat replied.
Ben had to stop and think that one through a minute. “Well, no one,” he said finally. “But how is it that you can recognize me when no one else can? Don’t I look like someone else to you?”
The cat lifted one dainty paw and washed it lovingly. “Who you look like counts for little with me,” the cat said. “Appearances are deceiving, and who you look like might not be who you really are. I never rely on appearances. Cats can appear as they choose. Cats are masters of deception and masters of an art cannot be deceived by anyone. I see you for who you really are, not who you appear to be. I have no idea if how you appear just now is how you really are.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
“Whatever you say. I do know that however you might appear, you are in any case Ben Holiday, High Lord of Landover.”
Ben was silent a moment, trying to decide just what it was he was dealing with here, wondering where on earth this creature had come from.
“So you know who I am in spite of the magic that disguises me?” he concluded. “The magic doesn’t fool you?”
The cat studied him a moment, then cocked its head, reflecting. “The magic wouldn’t fool you either, if you didn’t let it.”
Ben frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
“Much and little. Deception is mostly a game we play with ourselves.”
The conversation was turning a bit oblique. Ben sat back wearily. “Who are you, Mr. Cat?” he asked.
The cat stood up and came forward a few feet, then sat back down again, prim and sleek. “I am a great many things, my dear High Lord. I am what you see and what you don’t. I am real and imagined. I am something from the life you have known and something from dreams of life you have not yet enjoyed. I am quite an anomaly, really.”
“Very insightful,” Ben grunted. “Could you be a bit more precise, perhaps?”