He rose again, still unsteady, excused himself hastily to the others, and hurried toward the closest amphitheater exit. Abernathy came after him, but he sent the scribe scurrying with a sharp admonishment. Sprites, nymphs, kelpies, naiads, and pixies milled past him, dancing and singing, caught up in the spirit of the celebration. Ben brushed quickly past them. He had had enough of people for one day, and he wanted to be alone.
Shadows closed about him in the tunnel beneath, and then he was back in the forest. Lights winked from the treelanes overhead, and the sounds of the celebration began to diminish. He pushed ahead into the dark, anxious to be returned to his lodging and to be away from the festivities he had abandoned. His stomach churned with the wine, and suddenly he was sick at the pathside. He straightened, waited for his head and stomach to clear, and went on. When he reached the cottage, he climbed the walkway to an open-air side porch and slumped down in a high-backed wicker chair.
“Aren’t you wonderful?” he congratulated himself.
He felt depressed and discouraged. He had believed so strongly in himself in the beginning. He knew he could be King of Landover. He possessed intelligence and ability, he was compassionate, he had experience working with people, and he understood the application of laws in society. Most important of all, he needed this challenge and he had thought himself ready for it. But all of that seemed to count for nothing in the greater scheme of things. His progress toward gaining even the minimal amount of recognition a King required had met with no success whatsoever—just a lot of conditional bargains. The old King’s closest allies had rebuffed him; the others had ignored him. He had lost the services of the King’s protector, now become something very much akin to a ghost haunting a deserted house, and the Mark and his demons were footsteps creeping up on him with the passing of each day.
He stretched and stared out into the night. Well, what the hell? he thought obstinately. Nothing at stake here but his self-respect, was there? All he had to do was use the medallion and he’d go back to Chicago, a million dollars lighter, but safe and sound. He had failed before at things, and he would undoubtedly fail again. Face it—this might be one of the failures.
He played with the idea in his mind a moment, then found himself thinking of the faces of those few who had come to his coronation, the farmers and their families, the hunters, the ones who still looked for a King they might believe in. Too bad for them, of course, he thought, wondering even as he did so how he could be so damn flip.
“So maybe you’re not so wonderful after all,” he muttered wearily.
Something moved in the shadow of the trees close beside the porch, and he jerked about.
“Ben?”
It was Willow. She slipped from the trees and came toward him, a ghostly figure in white silk, her green hair shimmering in the light. She was like a bit of moonlit mist crossing a midnight lake, ephemeral but impossibly beautiful. She came up to him, the silk hanging close against her body.
“I followed you, Ben,” she told him softly, but with no apology in her voice. “I knew you would tire and come to sleep. But do not sleep yet. Come first with me. Come with me and watch my mother dance.”
He felt his throat tighten as she neared him. “Your mother?”
“She is a wood nymph, Ben—so wild that she will not live among the people of Elderew. My father has never been able to bring her to him. But the music will draw her and she will yearn to dance. She will come to the old pines and she will look for me. Come, Ben. I want you there.”
She came onto the porch, reached down for his hand and stopped. “Oh, your face! You have been hurt!” He had almost forgotten the beating Kallendbor had administered. Her hand touched his forehead softly. “I did not see your injuries at the Irrylyn. Here.”
She swept her fingers swiftly about his face and at once the pain was gone. He could not hide the astonishment in his eyes.
“The small hurts can be healed, Ben,” she whispered. “The ones that can be seen.”
“Willow…”he began.
“I will not ask you to come away with me again—not until you are ready.” Her fingers lingered on his cheek, warm and gentle. “I know who you are now. I know you to be of another world and not yet at peace with ours. I will wait.”
He shook his head. “Willow …”
“Come, Ben!” She grasped his hand firmly and pulled him from the chair. “Come, hurry!” She led him from the porch and into the trees. “My mother will not wait!”
Ben no longer thought to resist. They ran into the forest, she a vision of something he had not believed could exist and he the shadow she drew after her. They darted through the trees, his hand in hers, and soon he was hopelessly lost and did not care. The heat of her touch burned through him, and the need for her began to grow anew within him.
They slowed after a time, deep in a woods become misted and shadowed far beyond that of Elderew. The sounds of the celebration still echoed through the trees, but distant and soft. Colored slivers of moonlight slipped downward from the forest roof and dappled the earth like paint spots. Willow held Ben’s hand tightly in her own, the warmth of her like a fire that drew him. The mane of hair from her forearm brushed against his wrist like corn silk. She crept now through the trees and brush, soundlessly skirting the giant sentinels and their offspring, a bit of fragmented night.
Then the hardwood trees gave way to pine, evergreens that were giant and aged. Willow and Ben pushed through their needled boughs, and a clearing opened before them.
There Willow’s mother danced in a prism of colored moonlight.
She was a tiny thing, barely larger than a child, her features delicate and fine. Silver hair hung below her waist, and the skin of her slender body and limbs was pale green, like her daughter’s. She was clothed all in white gauze, and a radiance emanated from her that seemed born of some self-generated inner light. Spinning and leaping as if she were driven by a madness peculiar to her alone, she danced through the moonlit clearing to the rhythm of the distant music.
“Mother!” Willow breathed softly, and there was excitement and happiness reflected in her eyes.
The wood nymph’s eyes met her own for just an instant, but she did not slow her dance. Willow knelt wordlessly at the clearing’s edge, pulling Ben down gently beside her. Together they sat in silence and watched the phantasm before them do magic.
How long she danced and how long they watched, Ben did not know. Time seemed to come to a standstill in that clearing. All that had troubled him on his return from the amphitheater lost significance and was forgotten. There was only Willow and he and the lady who danced. He felt them made one by the grace and beauty of that dance. He felt them bond in a way he did not understand, but desperately needed. He fet the bonding take place, and he did not resist.
Then the dance was finished. There was a sudden stillness, a hush, and it seemed that the music had ceased to play. Willow’s mother turned for a fleeting moment to view them and was gone. Ben stared, hearing again the music of the celebration. But the wood nymph had disappeared as if she had never been.
“Oh, Mother!” Willow whispered, and she was crying. “She is so beautiful, Ben. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Ben nodded, feeling her small hand grasping his own. “She is very beautiful, Willow.”
The sylph rose, drawing him up with her. “Ben,” she spoke his name so softly he almost missed it. “I belong to you now. High Lord and the daughter of fairies, we shall be one. You must ask my father to allow me to go with you when you leave. You must tell him that I am needed—for I truly am, Ben—and when you have told him that, he will let me go.”
Ben shook his head quickly. “Willow, I cannot ask for …”
“You are the High Lord, and your request cannot be refused.” She hushed him, a finger resting on his lips. “I am but one of my father’s many children, one whose mother will not even live with the man she lay with to give me birth, one whose favor in her father’s eyes varies with his moods. But you m
ust ask for me, Ben.”
Annie’s face flashed in his mind, a counterpoint to the fire that this girl kindled within his body. “I can’t do that.”
“You do not understand the magic of the fairy people, Ben. I see that in your eyes; I hear it in your voice. But Landover is the heart of that magic, and you must accept what that means.”
She released his hand and stepped softly away. “I must go now. I must nourish in the soil that my mother has graced. Leave me, Ben. Go back through the forest; the way will open up to you.”
“No, wait, Willow …”
“Ask for me, Ben. My father must give me up.” Her delicate face lifted to the colored streamers of moonlight that bathed the clearing. “Oh, Ben, it is as if my mother were all about me, wrapping me close, drawing me to her. I can feel her still. The essence of her reaches to me from the soil. This night I can be with her. Leave now, Ben. Hurry away.”
But he stood rooted before her, stubbornly refusing to do as she asked. Why was she insisting that she belonged to him? Why couldn’t she see that what she was seeking was impossible?
She spun in the clearing’s center, beautiful, sensuous, delicate. He wanted her so badly in that instant that tears came to his eyes.
“Willow!” he cried out, starting forward.
She came out of her spin and faced him, feet planted firmly in the clearing’s earth, arms raised skyward, face lifted. Ben stopped. A sudden radiance began to emanate from the sylph, the same radiance that her mother had given off while dancing. Willow shimmered, turned transparent in the light and began to swell and distort. Ben shielded his eyes, dropping to one knee in shock. Willow was changing before him, turning into something different entirely, arms and legs darkening and turning gnarled, sweeping outward like a canopy, splitting and lengthening …
He blinked, and Willow was gone. A tree had taken her place. It was the tree from which she took her name. She had become that tree.
Ben stared. He felt a wave of shock and repulsion wash through him. He fought to deny it, but it would not give way. She had said she would nourish in the soil. She had said she could feel her mother reaching up to her. My God, what manner of being was she?
He waited for the answer to come to him, a solitary figure in the mist and shadows of the forest. He waited, but the answer would not come.
He might have waited there all night if Bunion had not appeared, stepping suddenly from the trees to take his arm and lead him away like a disobedient child. He went with the kobold without argument, too stunned to do anything else. Conflicting emotions raged through him, battering him. Willow was so beautiful and vibrant, and the need for her within him was impossibly strong. Yet at the same time he was repulsed by her, a creature who gave every appearance of being amorphous, who could become a tree as easily as a human.
He did not look back as he left the clearing; he could not bear to. He was too ashamed of what he was feeling. He pushed his way through the ancient pines, trailing after Bunion in silence. The kobold must have followed after him, he realized. Questor or Abernathy must have sent him. They were taking no chances after his disappearance at the Irrylyn.
He wished suddenly that they had not found him that night. He wished that he had disappeared. He wished a thousand other things that might have happened and now never would.
The journey back was a short one. The others were waiting for him at the cottage, anxious looks on their faces. They sat him down and gathered around him.
“You should have told us of the sylph, High Lord,” Questor said quietly, after exchanging a few brief words with Bunion. “We could have warned you what to expect.”
“I warned him once already that the people of the lake country were not like us,” Abernathy advised, and Ben didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Questor hushed the scribe quickly.
“You have to understand something, High Lord,” the wizard went on, turning back to Ben. “Willow is the child of a sprite and a wood nymph. Her father is only half human. Her mother is less so, more a part of the forest than a part of man, an elemental who finds life within the soil. Something of that was passed on to Willow at birth, and she requires the same nourishment. She is a changeling; she owes her life to both plant and animal forms. It is natural for her to take the form of each; she could be no other way. But it must seem strange, I know, to you.”
Ben shook his head slowly, feeling some of the conflict within dissipate. “No stranger than anything else that’s happened, I guess.” He felt sick at heart and weary; he needed to sleep.
Questor hesitated. “She must care deeply for you.”
Ben nodded, remembering. “She said that she belongs to me.”
Questor glanced quickly at Abernathy and away again. The kobolds stared at Ben with bright, questioning eyes. Ben stared back.
“But she doesn’t,” he said finally. “She belongs to the lake country. She belongs to her family and to her people.”
Abernathy muttered something unintelligible and turned away. Questor said nothing at all. Ben studied them wordlessly a moment, then climbed to his feet. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.
He started from the room, and their eyes followed after him. Then he stopped momentarily at the doorway to his bedroom. “We’re going home,” he told them and waited. “Tomorrow, at first light.”
No one said anything. He closed the door behind him and stood alone in the dark.
They left Elderew the next morning shortly after daybreak. Mist hung across the lake country like a shroud, and the dawn air was damp and still. It was the kind of day in which ghosts and goblins came to life. The River Master was there to see them off and looked to be neither. Questor had summoned him, and he appeared without complaint. He could not have slept, for the festivities had barely ended, but he looked fresh and alert. Ben extended his thanks on behalf of the company for the hospitality they had been shown, and the River Master, his grainy, chiseled face still as expressionless as flat stone, bowed briefly in acknowledgment. Ben glanced about several times for Willow, but she was nowhere to be seen. He considered again her request that she be allowed to accompany him back to Sterling Silver. Part of him wanted her with him; part of him would not allow it. Indecision gave way to expediency; time ran out on the debate. He left without speaking of it to her father.
The company rode north for the remainder of the day, passing out of the lake country and its mists into the gray, open expanse of the western end of the Greensward and from there to the forested hills surrounding Sterling Silver. Sunlight barely pierced a clouded sky that stretched above them the whole of the journey back, and there was the smell of rain in the air. It was nightfall when they stepped once more from the lake skimmer and walked the final few yards to the gates of the castle. A smattering of raindrops was just beginning to fall.
It rained all that night. The rain was steady and hard and it blotted out the entire world beyond the immediate walls. That was perfectly all right with Ben. He fished out the bottle of Glenlivet he had been saving for a special occasion, gathered Questor, Abernathy, and the two kobolds at the table in the dining hall, and proceeded to get roaring drunk. He got drunk alone. The other four sipped gingerly from their tumblers as he consumed nearly the whole of the bottle by himself. He talked to them as he drank about life in his world, about Chicago and its people, about his friends and family, about anything and everything but Landover. They responded politely, but he had no memory later of what they said and frankly didn’t care. When the scotch was gone and there was no longer anything left to talk about, he rose to his feet and stumbled off to bed.
Questor and Abernathy were both at his bedside when he awoke the next morning. He felt like hell. It was still raining.
“Good morning, High Lord,” they greeted together, faces somber. They had the look of pallbearers at a funeral.
“Come back when I’m dead,” he ordered, rolled over and went back to sleep.
He came awake a second time at noon. This time there was no one
there. The rain had stopped, and the sun was sending a few faint streamers of light earthward through a veil of mist. Ben pushed himself into a sitting position and stared into space. His head throbbed and his mouth tasted of cotton. He was so angry with himself that he could barely keep from screaming.
He washed, dressed and trooped down the castle stairs to the great hall. He took his time, studying the stone walls, the tarnished silver trappings, the worn tapestries and drapes. He felt the warmth of the castle reaching out to him, a comforting mother’s touch. It had been a long time since he had felt that touch. His hands brushed the stone in response.
Questor, Abernathy, and the kobolds were all gathered in the great hall, engaged in various make-work tasks. All looked up quickly as he entered. Ben came up to them and stopped.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he apologized immediately. “I guess that was just something that I had to get out of my system. I hope you all rested well, because we have a great deal of work to do.”
Questor glanced at the others, then back to Ben. “Where are we going now, High Lord?” he asked.
Ben smiled. “We’re going to school, Questor.”
The lessons began that afternoon. Ben was the student; Questor, Abernathy, Bunion, and Parsnip were his teachers. Ben had thought it all through—much of it in fits and starts while in various stages of inebriation and repentance—but carefully. He had spent most of his time since his arrival in Landover running about pointlessly. Questor might argue that the visits to the Greensward and Elderew had served a good purpose—and perhaps they had. But the bottom line was that he was floundering. He was a stranger in a land he had never dreamed could exist. He was trying to govern countries he had not even seen. He was trying to bargain with rulers and headmen he knew nothing about. However competent, hard-working, and well-intentioned he might be, he could not expect to assimilate as rapidly as he was trying. There were lessons to be learned, and it was time that he learned them.