Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! (32 page)

She passed the ring of keys to him, and he took them. His fingers brushed hers. He hesitated, thinking suddenly of what she had risked to come after him. She must have shadowed him since he had left the lake country. She must have been watching over him all that time.

Impulsively he reached for her and hugged her close. “Thank you, Willow,” he whispered.

Her arms wrapped about his body and she hugged him back. He felt the warmth of her body burn into him, and he welcomed it.

“High Lord!” Questor was pulling urgently on his arm.

He released Willow and glanced about hurriedly. The G’home Gnomes were stirring in their sleep, rubbing their eyes and stretching their furry limbs. Some were awake already.

“Is it time to leave, High Lord?” Fillip asked, coming drowzily to his feet.

“Yes, is it time, High Lord?” Sot echoed, rising with him.

Ben stared at them, remembering what had brought him here in the first place. Abernathy suddenly leaned close. “High Lord, it will be difficult enough for five of us to slip away unnoticed. We cannot hope to take an entire company of gnomes in the bargain!”

Ben glanced about once more. Mist and smoke were beginning to dissipate. The sky was growing lighter. There were signs of life in several of the stone huts. The entire village would be awake in the next few minutes.

He looked down at the anxious faces of Fillip and Sot. “Everyone goes,” he said quietly.

“High Lord …!” Abernathy tried to protest.

“Questor!” Ben called softly, ignoring his scribe. Questor stepped close. “We need a diversion.”

The wizard went pale. The owlish face twisted into a knot. “High Lord, I have already failed you once …”

“Then don’t do so again,” Ben cut him short. “I need that diversion—as soon as we’re through the gates of this cattle pen. Do something that will distract the Crag Trolls. Explode one of their kilns or drop a mountain on them. Anything— but do it!”

He took Willow’s arm and started across the compound. Bunion and Parsnip were ahead of him at once, clearing the way, creeping through the fading dark. Furry, ferret-faced forms squirmed and bunched close as he went.

He caught a glimpse of a lean, misshapen figure approaching the compound gates. “Bunion!” he warned with a hiss.

The kobold was through the gate in an instant, shoving free the chains from their rings. He caught the surprised troll before the creature knew what was happening and silenced him.

Ben and Willow rushed from the compound, Questor and Abernathy a step behind. The G’home Gnomes poured through after. Shouts of alarm broke through the stillness almost immediately, deep-throated cries that shattered the sleep of the Crag Trolls. The trolls stumbled from their huts, grunting. The gnomes scattered, stocky forms moving much faster than Ben would have thought possible. He drew up short. There were Crag Trolls at every turn.

“Questor!” he yelled frantically.

Brilliant white light exploded overhead, and Strabo appeared. The dragon flew across the valley breathing fire everywhere. Crag Trolls scrambled frantically for cover, and G’home Gnomes screamed in terror. Ben stared in disbelief. Where had the dragon come from?

Then he caught sight of Questor, arms thrust out of his robes and windmilling madly as the wizard stumbled back. He saw at the same instant that Strabo had only one leg, that the wings were not centered properly on the barrel-shaped body, that there were odd clumps of feathered plumage about the leathered neck, and that the dragon’s fire lanced earthward but burned nothing. The dragon was a fake. Questor had given them their diversion.

Willow saw it, too. She seized his arm, and together they broke for the valley pass that had brought the little company in the previous night. The others followed, Questor bringing up the rear. Already the illusory dragon was beginning to fade, bits and pieces of his body disintegrating as he flew back and forth above the astonished trolls. Ben and his companions dashed through their midst. Twice they were intercepted, but Bunion dispatched the attackers with a swiftness that was frightening. They gained the defile in moments, the way before them clear.

Ben risked a final glance back. The dragon had come apart completely, pieces of magic falling into the mist and smoke like a broken puzzle. The trolls remained in a state of complete confusion.

The little company dashed into the shadows of the defile, and the trolls, the fires, the valley, and the madness were left behind.

It was nearing midmorning when Ben and his companions finally ended their flight. They were safely out of the Melchor by then, well below the shadowed, misted cliffs and defiles, back within the foothills from which the G’home Gnomes had originally been taken. The gnomes had long since disappeared, the Crag Trolls appeared to have lost interest in the matter, and there no longer seemed to be any reason to continue running.

Make no mistake, Ben thought, lowering himself gingerly to rest his back against an oak trunk—they had been running. It was an ignominious admission. It would have been far more satisfying to couch their flight in terms of making an escape, or some such. But the truth of the matter was that they had been running for their lives.

Willow, Questor, Abernathy, and the kobolds gathered about him, seating themselves in a circle on a patch of wintry saw grass colored a faint pink. Clouds rolled overhead in a thick blanket of gray, and the smell of rain was in the air. They ate a brief meal of leaves and stalks from Bonnie Blues that grew close at hand, and they drank the water of a spring that ran down out of the mountains. They had nothing else to eat or drink. All of their possessions, horses included, had been lost to the trolls.

Ben chewed and sipped disinterestedly and tried to gather his thoughts. He could argue the relative merits of the matter until the cows came home, but things were not going well for the ruler of Landover. His track record was abysmal. With the exception of those seated about him, he had not gained a single ally. The Lords of the Greensward, traditional supporters of the throne, had received him coolly, tried unsuccessfully to bribe him, then practically thrown him through Rhyndweir’s gates. The River Master had been more congenial in his reception, but only because he was completely disinterested in anything the throne said or did, believing the salvation of his people lay entirely in his own hands. The Crag Trolls had imprisoned him and would have undoubtedly fried him had he not managed to escape their cattle pens—thanks, he reminded himself, not to anything he had done but to Willow’s perserverance and to a fortuitous turn of events that finally enabled Questor to conjure up the magic in more or less the right way for a change.

There were the G’home Gnomes, of course. Fillip and Sot had pledged for them. But what was that worth? What good was the pledge of a burrow people who were despised by everyone for being thieves and scavengers and worse?

“So what exactly do we have here?” he asked aloud, and everyone looked up in surprise. “We have this. The Lords of the Greensward—Kallendbor, Strehan and the rest—will pledge to the throne on the day I rid them of the dragon, something that no one has ever been able to do. The River Master will pledge to the throne on the day that I gain the promise of the Lords of the Greensward and various others to cease pollution of his lands and waters and to work with him to keep the valley clean. Fat chance. The Crag Trolls will pledge to the throne on the day I can walk back into the Melchor without fear of being offered up for roast beef. Good luck there, as well.” He paused. “I’d say that about covers the situation, doesn’t it?”

No one said anything. Questor and Abernathy exchanged uncertain glances. Willow looked as if she did not understand—which, indeed, she might not, he conceded. The kobolds
stared at him with their bright, knowing eyes and grinned their needle-sharp smiles.

He flushed with a mix of sudden embarrassment and anger. “The truth of the matter is I have made absolutely no progress whatsoever. Zero. Nil. Zip. Any arguments?” He hoped someone would try.

Questor obliged him. “High Lord, I think you are being entirely too hard on yourself.”

“Am I? What part of what I said was untrue, Questor Thews?”

“What you said was true as far as it went, High Lord. But you overlook an important consideration in your appraisal.”

“I do? What consideration is that?”

Questor held his ground. “The difficulty of your position. It is not easy to be King of Landover under the best of circumstances.”

The others nodded in agreement. “No,” Ben shook his head at once. “I can’t accept that. I can’t blame this on the circumstances. You take the circumstances as you find them and make the best of them.”

“Why do you think that you have not done this, Ben?” Willow wanted to know.

The question confused him. “Because I haven’t! I couldn’t persuade the Lords of the Greensward or your father or those damned trolls to do any of the things that I wanted them to do! I almost got us killed back there with the trolls! If you hadn’t followed us and if Questor hadn’t managed to get his magic working, we would probably all be dead!”

“I would not make too much out of any help you gained from my magic.” Questor muttered softly, owlish face twisting uncomfortably.

“You did succeed in freeing the gnomes, High Lord,” Abernathy reminded him stiffly. His brown eyes blinked. “I personally consider it wasted effort, but such value as their lives might hold is owed now entirely to you. You were the one who insisted that we take them with us.”

The others nodded once more. Ben glanced from face to face, frowning. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I
think it’s misplaced. Why don’t we just accept what we all know—I’m just not doing the job.”

“You are doing the best that you can, High Lord,” Questor replied at once. “No one can ask anything more.”

“Nor do anything more,” Abernathy added.

“But maybe someone else
can
do more,” Ben declared pointedly. “Maybe someone else
should.”

“High Lord!” Abernathy rose stiffly. He pushed his glasses back on his long nose and his ears cocked back. “I have been scribe to the throne for more years than you have lived. Perhaps that is difficult to realize given my present form,” he cast a withering glance at Questor, “but I ask you to accept my word nevertheless. I have witnessed Kings of Landover come and go—the old King and those many who followed after him. I have observed them all in their attempts to govern. I have seen them exercise their wisdom and their compassion. Some have been capable; some have not.” His right paw pointed dramatically. “But I will tell you now, High Lord, that none—not even the old King—have ever shown more promise than you!”

He finished and sat back on his haunches slowly. Ben was stunned. He would not have expected in his wildest dreams to receive such a ringing endorsement from the cynical scribe.

He felt Willow take his hand. “Ben, you must listen to him. The part of me that is my mother senses something very special about you. It tells me that you are different. I think that you are meant to be King of Landover. I think no one else should even try.”

“Willow, you cannot make that judgment…”he started to tell her, but a sudden hissing from the kobolds cut him short. They spoke between themselves a moment, and then Bunion said something quickly to Questor.

The wizard looked at Ben. “The kobolds agree with the sylph. There is something different about you, they feel. You show courage and strength. You are the King they wish to serve.”

Ben sagged back weakly against the tree trunk, shaking
his head reprovingly. “What do I have to do to convince you that you are mistaken about me? There is nothing different about me, nothing special, nothing that would make me a better King than the next guy. Don’t you see? You’re doing the same thing I did when I took the kingship—you’re deceiving yourselves! This may be a fantasy kingdom on paper, but it is real enough in the flesh—and we have to accept the fact that no amount of wishing or make-believe is going to solve its problems!”

No one responded. They stared at him silently. He thought about saying something further to persuade them, but decided against it. There wasn’t anything else worth saying.

Finally, Questor rose. He came to his feet as if the weight of the world were suddenly on his shoulders. His owlish face was screwed up so tightly that he appeared to be in pain. Slowly, he straightened.

“High Lord, there is something that you should know.” He cleared his throat nervously. “I told you before that my half-brother chose you quite deliberately as buyer of the throne of Landover. I told you that he chose you because he believed that you would fail as King and that the Kingship would revert once again to him—just as it has each time it has been sold since the old King’s death. He believed you one of life’s more obvious failures, High Lord. He depended on it, in fact.”

Ben folded his arms defensively across his chest. “Then I guess he won’t be disappointed when he discovers the way things are working out, will he?”

Questor cleared his throat again, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “As it happens, High Lord, he knows exactly how things are working out and he is extremely disappointed.”