by Terry Brooks
“Oh, poor Abernathy!” Elizabeth's face tightened into a knot of anguish. “Michel will hurt him, I know he will! He was starving to death when I helped him escape! Now Michel will really hurt him. That's how he is! He'll really hurt him!”
Willow turned her toward the bed and sat with her on its edge. “We have to find another way to help him escape from here, Elizabeth,”she said. “Is there anyone you can think of who could help us?”
Elizabeth looked doubtful. “My father, maybe. But he's gone.”
“When does you father return?”
“Next week, Wednesday.”Elizabeth's face knotted further. “It's not soon enough, is it, Willow? Michel was looking funny at me at dinner tonight—as if he knew something. He kept talking about dogs, and then he would smile, a mean smile. He knows I helped, I'll bet. He's just teasing me with it. He's going to hurt Abernathy, isn't he?”
Willow squeezed the small hands. “We will not let him. I have friends with me. We are going to take Abernathy away.”
“You are?” Elizabeth was immediately excited. “Maybe I can help!”
Willow shook her head firmly. “Not this time.”
“But I want to help!” Elizabeth said firmly. “Michel already knows I helped once, so I can't be in any worse trouble! Maybe you can take me, too! I don't want to stay here anymore!”
Willow frowned slightly. “Elizabeth, I…”
“Michel's already said I can't leave my room! I have to stay up here all the time until he says different. He has to know! Tomorrow is Halloween, and I don't even get to go trick-or-treating! I practically had to beg to get permission to go to the school party tomorrow night. I even had to get Nita Coles to get her parents to call up and offer me a ride! With my dad gone, Michel wasn't going to let me go. But I told him everyone would wonder if I wasn't at the party because the whole school was going—so he gave in.”She was crying. “I guess going to the party doesn't matter much now, not with Abernathy locked up again. Oh, I thought he was safe!”
Suddenly she stopped crying and her head jerked up sharply. “Willow, I know a way to get Abernathy out! If Michel's got him locked up again in the cellar, I know how to get him out!”
Willow touched the little girl's tear-streaked face. “How, Elizabeth?”
“The same way I got him out before—through the passageway in the wall! Michel doesn't know about that yet! I know because I was in it again after Abernathy got away, and it wasn't closed off or anything! And I could get a key to those cages again if I had to—I know I could!” She was excited now, her breathing rapid, her face flushed. “Willow, we could get him out tonight!”
For just an instant, Willow considered it. Then she shook her head. “No, Elizabeth, not tonight. Soon, though. And perhaps you can help. In fact, you already have. You have told me of a way to reach Abernathy. That was one reason I came to you—to see if there was a way. But we must be very careful, Elizabeth. We must not make any mistakes. Do you understand?”
Elizabeth was crestfallen, but managed a grudging nod.
Willow tried a wan smile. She had already stayed beyond her allotted time and she was growing dangerously weak from the effort. “You must not say anything about seeing me, Elizabeth. You must pretend I never came. You must act as if you know nothing about Abernathy. Can you do that?”
The little girl nodded. “I can pretend better than any-one.
“Good.”Willow rose and started for the door, one of Elizabeth's hands still clinging to her. She turned. “Be patient, Elizabeth. We all want Abernathy safe again. Perhaps tomorrow…”
“I love Abernathy,”Elizabeth said suddenly.
Willow turned, looked at the little girl's face, and then hugged her close. “I do, too, Elizabeth.”
They held each other for a long time.
“Twenty-five million dollars is a lot of money, Mr. Squires,”Michel Ard Rhi was saying.
Ben smiled. “We try not to put limits on the price of our research, Mr. Ard Rhi.”
Still seated in the stuffed leather chairs, they studied each other in the silence and shadows of the study. No sound reached them from without.
“The subject of our discussion would have to be in good condition, of course,”Ben repeated. “A damaged specimen would be useless.”
The other said nothing.
“I would need to make an inspection.”
Still nothing.
“I would need assurances that Abernathy…”
“There is no Abernathy, Mr. Squires—remember?” Michel Ard Rhi said suddenly. Ben waited. “Even if there were… I would have to think about your offer.”
Ben nodded. He had expected that. It was too much to hope that he would have a chance to see Abernathy right away. “Perhaps if I were to arrange to stay a bit longer than planned, Mr. Ard Rhi, we might continue this discussion tomorrow?”
The other man shrugged. He touched something beneath the table beside him and rose. “I will decide the time and the place of any future meetings, Mr. Squires. Is that understood?”
Ben smiled companionably. “As long as it's soon, Mr. Ard Rhi.”
Surprisingly, Michel Ard Rhi smiled back. “Let me give you some advice, Mr. Squires,”he said, coming forward a few paces. “You should be more careful with your demands. This is a place of some danger, you know. That is its history. People have disappeared in these walls. They were never seen again. There is magic here—some of it very bad.”
Ben was suddenly cold. He knows, he thought in horror.
“A life or two snuffed out, what does it matter? Even important lives—like your own—can be swallowed up and disappear. The magic does that, Mr. Squires. It simply swallows you up.”
Ben heard the door behind him open.
“Be careful after this,”the other warned softly, eyes hard with the promise that the threat was real. “I don't like you.”
The doorman stepped into view and Michel Ard Rhi turned abruptly away. Ben walked quickly from the study, daring to breathe again, feeling the chill in his spine begin to fade. He passed back down the empty corridor to the front entry and went out, the doorman showing the way. As he stepped into the night, he thought he felt something brush against him. He looked but there was nothing there.
The door closed behind him. Miles was standing by the rear door, holding it open. Ben climbed into the car and sat back wordlessly. He watched Miles walk around the rear of the limo to the driver's door. The trunk was already closed. There was no sign of Willow.
“Willow?” he whispered urgently.
“I'm here, Ben,”she replied, a disembodied voice from out of the pool of shadows at his feet, so close to him that he jumped.
Miles got in and started the car. Within minutes they were back through the portcullis, over the drawbridge, up the winding roadway, and out the iron gates. Willow sat up in the seat then next to Ben and related everything Elizabeth had told her. When she was finished, no one said anything for a time. The car's engine hummed in the silence as they passed back out onto 522 and turned south toward Woodin ville.
When Miles turned up the heater, no one complained.
*October 31 was a gray, cloudy, drizzly day where the wind blew in sharp gusts, and the rain spit and chilled the air, as the whole western half of Washington State experienced a forewarning of winter's coming. It was a gloomy day of shadows and strange sounds, the kind of day when people think about curling up next to a warm fire with a glass of something hot and a good book. It was a day when they found themselves listening to the sounds of the weather and to things that weren't even there. It was, in short, a perfect day for an Allhallows Eve.
Elizabeth was eating lunch in the school cafeteria when she got the message that a telephone call from home was waiting for her in the office. She hurried to get it, leaving Nita Coles to guard her double-chocolate-chip cookie; when she returned, she was so excited she didn't bother to eat it. Later, when they were at recess, she told Nita that she didn't need a ride to the Halloween party that night
after all—although she might need one home. Nita said okay and told Elizabeth she thought she was acting weird.
Ben Holiday spent the better part of that blustery day south of Woodinville and Bothell in greater Seattle visiting costume shops. It took him a long time to find the costume he was looking for. Even then, he had to spend several hours afterward, back in the motel room, altering its appearance until it met with his approval.
Willow spent the day in bed, resting. She was growing steadily weaker and she was having trouble breathing. She tried to hide it from Ben, but it wasn't something she could hide. He was good about it, though, not saying anything, letting her sleep, forcing himself to concentrate on his preparations for that night. She saw that and loved him the more for it.
Miles Bennett visited several private airports until he found one with a suitable plane and pilot that could be chartered for a flight out that night. He told the pilot that there would be four of them and they would be flying to Virginia.
They all went about their business, right along with the rest of the world, but for them, it seemed, Friday was an endless wait…
Finally, dusk found Ben, Miles, and Willow back once more on 522 headed north out of Woodinville toward Graum Wythe. They were in the rental car this time, the limo long since dispatched back to Seattle. Ben was driving, Willow was beside him in the passenger seat, and Miles sat in back. The wind whistled and the weaving shadows of branches played along the car's dark shell like devil's fingers. The skies were slate gray, turning black as the final twinge of daylight slipped rapidly away.
“Doc, this isn't going to work,”Miles said suddenly, breaking what had been a seemingly interminable stretch of silence.
It was like a replay of yesterday. Ben grinned, though Miles couldn't see it. “Why not, Miles?”
“Because there are too many things that can go wrong, that's why. I know I said the same thing about last night's plan and you still got away with it, but that was different. This plan is a hell of a lot more dangerous! You realize, of course, that we don't even know if Abernathy is down there in those dungeons or cages or whatever! What if he's not there? What if he's there, but you can't get to him? What if they've changed the locks or hidden the keys, for God's sake? What do we do then?”
“Come back tomorrow and try again.”
“Oh, sure! Halloween will be over! What are we supposed to do? Wait for Thanksgiving and go in as turkeys? Or maybe Christmas and go down the chimney like Santa and his elves?”
Ben glanced around. Miles looked pretty funny sitting there in that gorilla suit. But, then, he looked pretty funny himself in the shaggy dog outfit that made him look somewhat like Abernathy. “Relax, Miles,”he said.
“Relax?” Ben could practically see him turning red inside the heavy suit. “What if they count heads, Doc? If they count heads, we're dead!”
“I told you how to handle that. It will work just the way we want it to. By the time they figure out what's happened, we'll be long gone.”
They rode on in silence until they reached the stone pillars with the lighted globes and Ben wheeled the car left down the wooded, private road. Then Willow said, “I wish we didn't have to take Elizabeth with us.”
Ben nodded. “I know. But we can't leave her behind— not after this. Michel Ard Rhi will know she was involved. She's better off out of there. Her father will understand after Miles has talked to him. They'll be well looked after.”
“Humphhh!” Miles grunted. “You're crazy, Doc, you know that? No wonder you like living in fairyland!”
Willow slumped back in the seat and closed her eyes again. Her breathing was ragged. “Are you sure you can do this?” Ben asked quietly. The sylph nodded without replying.
They drove through the vineyards and finally the electric sensor that triggered the floodlights. When they reached the low stone wall, the iron gates were open and Graum Wythe's drawbridge and portcullis were already in operation. The castle looked massive and forbidding against the mix of low-hanging clouds and distant mountains, the outline of its towers and parapets hazy with the mist and rain. The wipers of the car clicked back and forth, blurring and clearing in brief intervals the sweep of the land ahead. Ben eased the rental car down the winding roadway, unable to escape the feeling that he had somehow managed to forget something.
They crossed the drawbridge, the tires thumping on the timbers, passed through the maw of the castle gates, and pulled around the drive. Lights blazed through the mist and gloom, but the guards they had seen the previous night were not in evidence. Doesn't mean that they're not out there, though, Ben thought and swung the car in close to the entry.
They stepped out quickly and hastened into the shelter of the front entryway, Ben holding Willow close to keep her from slipping. They knocked and waited. The door opened almost at once, and the doorman was there to greet them. He blinked in surprise.
What he saw was a gorilla, a shaggy dog, and a young woman dyed green from head to foot.
“Evening,”Ben greeted through the dog suit. “We're here to pick up Elizabeth for her Halloween party at the grade school. I'm Mr. Barker, this is my wife Helen, and this is Mr. Campbell.”He made the introductions quickly so the names wouldn't register, and they didn't.
“Oh.”The doorman was not a conversationalist. He beckoned them inside, however, and they gladly went. They stood in the entryway, brushing off stray drops of rain and looking guardedly about. The doorman studied them momentarily, then went to a phone and called someone. Ben held his breath. The doorman put the phone down and returned.
“Miss Elizabeth asked if one of you could help her with her costume,”he said.
“Yes, I can help,”Willow offered, right on cue. “I know the way, thank you.”
She disappeared up the winding stairway and was gone. Ben and Miles sat down on a bench in the entryway, oversized bookends from a curio shop. The doorman studied them some more, probably trying to figure out how any sane adult could be talked into dressing up like that, then turned down the hall and disappeared from view.
Ben felt the heat of the two costumes he was wearing turn his back and underarms damp.
So far, so good, he thought.
Willow tapped lightly on Elizabeth's bedroom door and waited. Almost immediately, the door was opened by a small clown with frizzy orange hair, a white face, and an enormous red nose. “Oh, Willow!” Elizabeth whispered, grasping her hand and pulling her urgently inside. “It's all going wrong!”
Willow took her shoulders gently. “What's going wrong, Elizabeth?”
“Abernathy! He's all… strange! I went down to the cellars this afternoon after school to see if he was all right —you know, to make certain he was still there. I know I probably shouldn't have, but I was worried, Willow!” The words practically tumbled over one another. “I sneaked out of my room. I made sure no one saw me, then went down through the passage in the walls to the cellars. Abernathy was there, locked in one of those cages, all chained up! Oh, Willow, he looked so sad! He looked all ragged and dirty. I whispered to him, called to him, but he didn't seem to know who I was. He just… he sounded like he couldn't talk right! He said a bunch of stuff that didn't make any sense and he couldn't seem to sit up or move or anything!”
The blue eyes glistened with tears. “Willow, he's so sick! I don't know if he can even walk!”
Willow felt a mix of fear and uncertainty wash through her, but she forced it quickly away. “Do not be afraid, Elizabeth,”she said firmly. “Show me where he is. It will be all right.”
They slipped from the room into the empty hall, the tiny clown and the emerald fairy. An old clock ticked in the silence from one end, and the sound of very distant voices echoed faintly. Elizabeth took Willow to a cluttered broom closet. Closing the door behind them, she produced a flashlight, then spent a few seconds pushing at the back wall until a section of it swung open. Silently, they went down the stairs that lay beyond, navigating through several twists and turns, two landings, and one sho
rt tunnel, until at last they reached another section of wall, this one with a rusted iron handle fixed to it.
“He's right through here!” Elizabeth whispered.
She took hold of the handle and pulled. The wall eased back, and the rush of stale, fetid air caused Willow to gasp. Nausea washed through her, but she swallowed against it and waited for the feeling to pass.
“Willow, are you all right?” Elizabeth asked urgently, her brightly colored clown's face bent close.
“Yes, Elizabeth,”Willow whispered. She couldn't give in now. Just a little longer, she promised herself. Just a little.
She peered through the opening in the wall. Cages lined a passageway, shadowed cells of rock and iron bars. There was movement in one. Something lay there twitching.
“That's Abernathy!” Elizabeth confirmed in a small, frightened voice.
Willow took a moment longer to check the corridor beyond for other signs of movement. There were none. “Are there guards?” she asked softly.
Elizabeth pointed. “Down there, beyond that door. Just one, usually.”
Willow pushed her way out into the cellar passage, feeling the nausea and weakness surge through her once more. She went to the cage that held Abernathy and peered in. The dog lay on a pile of straw, his fur matted and soiled, his clothes torn. He had been sick, and the discharge clung to him. He smelled awful. There was a chain fastened about his neck.
The medallion hung there as well.
Abernathy was mumbling incoherently. He was talking about everything and nothing all at once, his speech slurred, his words fragments of witless chatter. He has been drugged, Willow thought.
Elizabeth was handing her something. “This is the key to the cage door, Willow,”she whispered. She looked very frightened. “I don't know if it fits the chain on his neck!”
Her clown nose fell off, and she picked it up hurriedly and pushed it back into place. Willow took the key from her and started to insert it into the cage door lock.
