by Terry Brooks
The Ardsheal stalked him through the bedchamber’s gloom, another of night’s faint shadows sidestepping the light. It was no longer attempting a frontal attack; it was looking to do something else. The Paladin shifted, turning to follow its movements, not leaving his place before the King and Queen. His armor hung loosely from the bindings in several places. He was coming undone, as ragged as his attacker. He could feel the other’s eyes studying him, searching for an opening. Beneath the armor the Paladin was vulnerable. The Ardsheal sensed this. One strike was all it would take if the strike was deep enough.
It faked a quick rush and retreated. It faked another. The Paladin stayed set, not allowing himself to be drawn out. Then, in a flash of recognition, he saw what the Ardsheal was trying to do. It was trying to pull him far enough away from the King and Queen to leave them exposed. It would kill them, sensing, perhaps even knowing, that this would mean the defeat of the Paladin as well.
As if reading his thoughts, the Ardsheal attacked anew. It came in a slashing, wild charge, so quick that it was almost past the Paladin before he could act. As it was, he barely caught the Ardsheal’s arm as it reached for the Queen, snatching the creature back and flinging it aside. This time he went after it, intent on finishing the battle, but again he was too slow, and the Ardsheal was up and away again into the gloom.
Twice more the elemental tried to slip past, and both times it nearly succeeded. Only the Paladin’s experience and determination kept it at bay. The Queen was crying on the bed behind him now, small sounds only, almost silent in her misery, her despair. She was strong, but her fear was immense and impossible to conceal. She was terrified of the Ardsheal. The King was awake again. He had placed himself before her, and he held the medallion out like a talisman. Too frail, the both of them, the Paladin knew, to survive if he should fall.
The thought was a mind spike he was quick to wrench free and cast away from him.
The Ardsheal faded into emptiness, leaving the Paladin searching the darkness frantically. Then it reappeared out of nowhere directly before him, a frenzied blackness whipping atop him and beating him to the floor. It sought to break past, but the Paladin collapsed and, momentarily blinded, held on to one leg and dragged it back. The Ardsheal wrenched at the fallen champion, kicked at him, struck at him, tore at his weakened armor. The Paladin felt pain. In desperation, he hauled himself to his knees through the flurry of blows, through a massive effort that came mostly from the heart, and one final time hurled the Ardsheal away.
This time when the Ardsheal came to its feet, one arm hung limp. But the Paladin was a shambles of broken armor and torn bindings, aching muscles and wearied limbs, standing upright through sheer force of will. There was blood in his mouth and on his body. He still gripped the long knife, still waited for his chance to use it. But time was fleeing quickly now. Time was racing away.
The Ardsheal moved forward, an inexorable, implacable force.
Then the door to the room flew open, and a small bristling fury hurtled into the fray. It hammered into the Ardsheal and bore it backward to the wall. All claws and teeth, Bunion appeared to have gone berserk. The Ardsheal was caught off guard, staggered by the force of the kobold’s attack. It twisted wildly, trying to dislodge its assailant. The Paladin lunged forward, the chance he had been waiting for there at last. He drove the dagger through the Ardsheal’s skull with such force that he buried it to the hilt. The Ardsheal arched upward, silver eyes filling with blood. It tore Bunion free and wheeled toward the Paladin. But the knight had unsheathed the great broadsword, and with every ounce of strength left to him he swung the blade crosswise and down at his enemy. The blade caught the Ardsheal between neck and shoulder and cut straight through. Down it sliced, all the way to the creature’s heart.
The Ardsheal slumped into the blow. It convulsed, and in the terrible eyes there was a hint of some ancient recognition that not even the darkest magic could withstand. The eyes fixed, and the magic faded. Death stole the Ardsheal back once more.
Broken, exhausted, a ragged caricature of the silver knight he had been when the battle had begun, the Paladin freed the broadsword and turned to Landover’s King where he crouched on the bed. Their eyes met and held. He had the odd sense of looking back at himself. He started to drop to one knee, but he was caught up in the light of the medallion still held outstretched in the King’s hand and carried down into healing sleep.
In the silence that followed Ben and Willow could hear the rain begin to fall again.
King’s Guards were summoned, and the remains of the Ardsheal were removed. The sounds of the struggle had gone unheard, an impossibility in the absence of magic deliberately employed. When the soldiers were gone and the room had been cleaned and straightened, Bunion took up watch just outside the door. The kobold blamed himself for what had happened. He had been scouting once more, just beyond the castle walls, but somehow the very enemy he had been seeking had slipped past him and entered the castle unseen. No words were spoken, but Bunion’s apology was there in the squint of his eyes and the flash of his teeth.
When Ben and Willow were alone again, they clung to each other as if to the last solid grip on a crumbling rock. They did not speak. They stood pressed together in the darkness and took comfort from their closeness. Willow was shaking in the summer heat. Ben, though he appeared steady, was inwardly shattered.
They climbed back into their bed, there in the no-longer-reassuring dark, eyes wandering the room, ears pricked for the faintest of sounds. They could not sleep and did not try. Ben stilled Willow’s shivering, chasing momentarily at least her fear of the thing that had come to kill them. He held her tight against him and tried to find words for what he would say, for the confession he now knew he must make if he was ever again to find peace.
Without, the rain pattered on the stone and dripped from the capping on the walls in a steady cadence.
“I have to tell you something about the Paladin,” he said finally, speaking in a rush the words he could not seem to organize better. “This isn’t easy to explain, but I have to try. We’re the same person, Willow. Right now his pain is all through me. I can feel the ache of his body and limbs, the wear on his soul, the hurt that threatens to break him down. I feel it when he does battle, but I feel it now, as well.” He took a deep breath. “It’s all I can do to stand it. It seems as if it might pull me apart, break all my bones, and flatten me into the earth. Even now it’s there. He’s gone, but it doesn’t matter.”
He felt her head lift from his shoulder so that her eyes could see his face. He felt her fingers move along his chest, searching. “He is part of me, Willow. That’s what I want to say. He is part of me and always has been, ever since I came into Landover and took up the medallion of Kingship. The medallion joins us, makes us one when I call him up from wherever it is he waits.”
He looked at her, looked quickly away. “When the medallion summons him, the magic carries some part of me inside his armor. Not my body or my mind but my heart and will and strength of purpose—those he requires. In some way the King and the King’s champion are the same. That’s the real secret of the medallion. It’s a secret I couldn’t tell you.”
Her emerald eyes were steady as she stared at him. “Why couldn’t you tell me?” she asked quietly.
“Because I was afraid of what it would do to you.” He forced himself to meet her gaze and hold it. “I’ve wanted to tell you. I’ve felt I should, that it was wrong not to, but I was afraid. What would it do to you to know that every time the Paladin was summoned, it was me—or at least some important, necessary part of me—that would be required to do battle. What would it mean if you knew that the Paladin’s death could bring mine as well.”
He shook his head, feeling adrift. “But it’s worse than that. Every time I go into the Paladin and become one with him, I feel myself slipping farther away from who I really am. I become him, and each time it is harder to get back. I live in constant fear that one time I might not be able to return
because I do not want to, because I have forgotten who I am, because I like what I have become. The power of the magic is so seductive! When I’m the Paladin, he’s all I wish to be. If the medallion did not bring me back to myself, if it did not take the Paladin away, I do not think I could ever return of my own will. I think I might be lost forever.”
The pain in her eyes was terrible to see. “You should have told me,” she said quietly. He nodded, emptied of words. “Don’t you understand, Ben? I gave myself to you unconditionally when I found you at the Irrylyn. I belong to you, and nothing would ever make me leave. Nothing!”
“I know,” he agreed.
“No, you don’t, or you would not have hesitated to tell me this.” Her voice was soft, but there was iron at the core. “There is nothing you could not tell me, Ben. Not ever. We will be together always, until the end. You know how it was foretold. You know the prophecy. You should never question the strength of its truth.”
“I was afraid—” he began, but she hushed him quickly.
“No, let it go for now. Let it go.” She touched him gently. “Tell me again. All of his pain comes back into you? All that he bore in your defense?”
He closed his eyes. “I feel as if I am falling apart. I feel as if I’m dying, and I cannot find the wound that’s killing me. It’s everywhere, inside and out. I am in fragments scattered all over this room—in the air, in the sound of the rain, in my own breathing. I don’t know what to do. The Paladin won, but I seem to have lost. Calling him again so soon was too much to bear. It took too much out of me, Willow. I haven’t the heart for this!”
“Shhh, no more,” she comforted, pressing herself against him. She kissed his mouth. “You have heart enough for all of us, Ben Holiday. It has always been your greatest strength. You survived a terrible struggle. No ordinary man could have done what you did. Do not disparage yourself. Do not demean what you have accomplished. Listen to me. The secret of the Paladin is ours now, not yours alone to bear. Its weight can be better carried by two. I will help you. I will find ways to sustain you when you are weary and sick at heart as you are now. I will help shield you from the pain. If you must go into the Paladin for our sake, I will find a way to bring you back. Always. Forever. I love you.”
“I have never doubted that,” he replied softly. “I would have been finished long ago if I did.”
She stroked his forehead gently, kissing him once more. Gradually he felt himself relax and begin to drift. “Go to sleep,” she whispered.
He nodded, his breathing growing slower and deeper. Some of the pain eased. Some of the ache lessened. The memories of his battle as the Paladin lost their hard edge, giving way to the softness of Willow’s touch. Sleep would renew his strength, and with morning he would be able to go on. All that would remain was the inescapable knowledge that he must go through this again with each new transformation. And even that could be accepted, he supposed. Even that.
He stilled himself, pushed back the fear and despair. Find Mistaya, he thought. Find her safe and well, and it would all be worth it. Bring back Questor Thews and Abernathy. Put an end to Rydall of Marnhull and his insidious games.
In the inky night’s stillness the words were a whisper of hope.
Seek out Nightshade in the Deep Fell. Look there for the truth.
Then he was asleep.
DOG DREAMS
When Abernathy woke the next morning, having slept particularly well considering the trauma of yesterday’s events, Questor Thews was sitting in a chair across from his bed, staring at him like Death’s coming. It was very disconcerting. Abernathy blinked, reached for his glasses, and gave the wizard a long, slow deliberate look.
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
The wizard nodded, then shook his head, unable to decide. “We have to talk, old friend,” he announced wearily.
Abernathy almost laughed at the solemnity of the declaration. Then he saw the look in the other’s empty eyes and felt something cold settle into the pit of his stomach. Questor Thews was deeply troubled.
“Well,” he said in reply, and went still again, as if that one word had addressed the matter and disposed of it without the need for further conversation.
He rose to a sitting position, taking a moment in spite of himself to admire the smooth line of his arms and legs, pausing then to give critical consideration to the look of his fingers and toes. His fingers were long and slim, but his toes were all scrunched up like those gummy things he had recently acquired a taste for. Elizabeth kept a bag of them down in the kitchen and was forever offering him one. He didn’t care for the idea that they reminded him of his toes.
He cleared his throat. “What would you like to talk about?” he asked, hoping it was something other than Poggwydd.
Questor Thews bestirred himself sufficiently to rise from the chair and pace to the window, a tall, bent scarecrow with the stuffing coming out at the seams. He parted the curtain and looked out, squinting against the light. The day was sunny and warm, the sky cloudless, the world coming awake. “Let’s go down to the yard and sit in the shade of those trees,” he suggested, sounding cheerful in a forced sort of way.
Abernathy sighed. “Let’s.”
He showered, shaved, and dressed, and in the middle of doing so it occurred to him that what Questor Thews wanted to talk about was the book. Theories of Magic and Its Uses. Abernathy had forgotten about the book, all caught up in Poggwydd’s unexpected appearance at Graum Wythe and resultant capture, the G’home Gnome another outcast from Landover, trapped now as he was, the difference being, of course, that Poggwydd really didn’t want anything at all to do with this world, while Abernathy was growing steadily more comfortable with his exile.
Which meant, he concluded, that the book had revealed something to Questor about leaving. That was why the wizard was still awake: he had found the answer he was looking for and was trying to decide how to tell Abernathy, who he knew wasn’t as keen to be getting back. Although, he argued to himself, he really was, because he understood as well as Questor that the High Lord needed them, Mistaya was in the hands of Nightshade, and something awful was going to happen if they didn’t get back in time to prevent it.
But what? What was going to happen? He wished he knew. A little certainty in the matter certainly wouldn’t hurt.
He finished pulling on his shoes and went out of the bathroom to stand before Questor. The wizard faced him, seemed startled by what he saw, and quickly turned away.
“Well, thank you very much, I’m sure!” Abernathy snapped. “Are my pants on backward? Are my shoes the wrong color?”
“No, no.” The other put a hand to his forehead, pained. “In fact, you look quite sartorial.” The wizard waved vaguely at the air. “I’m sorry to be so rude. But I’ve been up all night reading, and I didn’t particularly care for the end of the story.”
Abernathy nodded, having no idea at all what he was nodding about. “Why don’t we go on down and get started with this talk,” he pressed, anxious to get it over with. “We can see if Elizabeth is awake and ask her to join us.”
But Questor quickly shook his head. “No, I’d rather this discussion was just between you and me.” He looked down, then bit at his lower lip. “Indulge me, please.”
Abernathy did. They went out the door of the bedroom, along the short hallway, and down the stairs. As they passed Elizabeth’s closed door, they heard her singing inside. At least someone was feeling cheerful. They walked from the living room into the kitchen and came face to face with Mrs. Ambaum. She was standing in front of the stove making tea, bluff, hardy, watchful, and decidedly triumphant as she turned to face them.
“I spoke with Elizabeth’s father last night. He doesn’t recall having an Uncle Abernathy. Doesn’t recall anyone by that name. What do you have to say to that?”
One hand gripped a tea strainer. Armed and dangerous if they were foolish enough to try anything.
Abernathy offered his most disarming smile. “We haven’t
seen each other in years. We were just boys the last time.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “He said to tell Elizabeth he’s flying in tonight. He wants to have a look at you.”
Abernathy blinked, conjuring up a picture of the meeting. Mrs. Ambaum cocked her head as if trying to get a look inside his.
Questor Thews quickly took charge. “Imagine that!” he declared. He took Abernathy by the arm and steered him past the startled housekeeper and out the back door. “Don’t be worried, now,” he called over his shoulder. “It will all get straightened out before you know it!”
They went down the porch steps and into the yard, Abernathy working very hard at not looking back over his shoulder to see if Mrs. Ambaum was staring after them. “I don’t much care for that woman,” he muttered.
Questor Thews grimaced. “Fair enough. She doesn’t much care for you, either.”
They moved out into the backyard, well away from the house, where curious ears might pick up what they had to say. Abernathy gazed at the sky and took in the sweep of its vast blue dome. He breathed in the smell of flowers and grasses and fading damp. Mrs. Ambaum was forgotten.
They reached an old bench painted glossy white to protect the wood against weathering and seated themselves, looking east across a broad stretch of empty fields to where the Cascade Mountains rose white-peaked against the depthless sky.
