Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! (24 page)

The third inlet was smaller still, barely two dozen yards wide. Rushes screened the shoreline, and cedars and willows
canopied above the waters, throwing dark shadows toward the lake. Ben dove beneath the water and swam silently into the cove, pulling his way toward the shallows.

He surfaced a dozen yards from the shoreline—and a woman was directly in front of him. She stood not ten feet away, a little more than ankle-deep in the lake’s waters, as naked as he. She made no attempt to turn away or to cover herself. She was like a frightened animal caught in the light, frozen in that split second of hesitation before it would be gone.

Ben Holiday stared, seeing momentarily in his mind someone he had thought forever lost. Water ran down into his eyes and he blinked it away.

“Annie?” he whispered in disbelief.

Then the shadows and the mist shifted where they fell across her, and he saw that she was not Annie—that she was someone else.

And perhaps
something
else as well.

Her skin was pale green, smooth and flawless and almost silvery as the waters of the Irrylyn shimmered against it. Her hair was green as well, deep forest green, the tresses tumbling to her waist, braided with flowers and ribbons. But her hair grew in narrow lines along the backs of her forearms as well and along the backs of her calves, silken manes that stirred gently with the whisper of the night wind over the lake.

“Who are you?” she asked softly.

He could not bring himself to answer. He was seeing her clearly now, finding her exquisite beyond anything he would have imagined possible. She was an artist’s flawless rendering of a fairy queen brought suddenly to life. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

She came forward a step in the moonlight. Her face was so youthful that it made her seem hardly more than a girl. But her body …

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“Ben.” He could barely make himself answer, and it never occurred to him to answer any other way.

“I am Willow,” she told him. “I belong to you now.”

He was stunned anew. She came toward him, her body swaying with the movement, and now it was he who had become the frightened animal poised to flee.

“Ben.” Her voice assumed a sweet, lilting cadence as she spoke to him. “I am a sylph, the child of a sprite become human and a wood nymph stayed wild. I was conceived on the midyear’s passing in the heat of the eight moons full, and my fates were woven in the vines and flowers of the gardens in which my parents lay. Twice each year, the fates decreed, I was to steal to the Irrylyn in darkness and bathe in her waters. To the man who saw me thus, and to no other, would I belong.”

Ben shook his head quickly, his mouth working. “But that’s craz … that’s not right! I don’t even know you! You don’t know me!”

She slowed before him, close enough now that she might reach out and touch him. He wanted her to do that. The need for that touch burned through him. He fought against it with everything he could muster, feeling trapped in the emotions that rushed through him.

“Ben.” She whispered his name and the sound of it seemed to wrap about him. “I belong to you. I feel that it is so. I sense that the fates were right. I am given, as with the sylphs of old. I am given to the one who sees me thus.” Her face lifted, the perfect features radiating back the rainbow colors of the moons. “You must take me, Ben.”

He could not force his eyes away from her. “Willow.” He used her name now, desperate to turn back the emotions that raged through him. “I cannot take … what does not belong to me. I am not even from this world, Willow. I barely know …”

“Ben,” she whispered urgently, cutting short the rest of what he would say. “Nothing matters but that this has happened.
I belong to you.” She came a step closer. “Touch me, Ben.”

His hand came up. Thoughts of Annie flashed with lightning clarity through his mind, and still his hand came up. The warmth of the waters of the Irrylyn and the air about him wrapped him so close that it seemed he could not breathe. The fingers of her hand touched his.

“Come away with me, Ben,” she whispered.

Fire burned through him, a white-hot heat that consumed his reason. She was the need he had never known. He could not refuse her. Colors and warmth blinded him to everything but her, and the whole of the world about him dropped away. His hand closed tightly about hers, and he felt them join.

“Come away with me, now.” Her body pressed close.

He reached for her, his arms wrapping her close, the softness of her body astonishing to him.

“High Lord!”

Everything blurred. There was a crashing of underbrush and the sound of footsteps. Rushes stirred, and the silence of the evening was shattered. Willow slipped from his arms.

“High Lord!”

Abernathy shoved his way into view at the shore’s edge, panting with near exhaustion, his glasses askew on his furry nose. Ben stared at him in stunned silence, then glanced wildly about. He stood in the tiny inlet alone, naked and shivering now. Willow was gone.

“Goodness, do not wander off like that again without one of us!” Abernathy snapped, a mix of irritation and relief in his voice. “I would have thought that your experience at Sterling Silver would have been lesson enough!”

Ben barely heard him. He was scanning the inlet waters and shoreline for Willow. The need for her still burned through him like fire, and he could think of nothing else. But she was nowhere to be found.

Abernathy sat back on his haunches, grumbling to himself. “Well, I suppose that it is not your fault. It is mostly the fault of Questor Thews. You did tell him that you wished to
bathe in the lake and he should have known better than to send you off without Parsnip for company. The wizard seems incapable of understanding the risks this land poses for you.” He paused. “High Lord? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Ben answered at once. Had Willow been some sort of bizarre hallucination? She had seemed so real…

“You appear a bit distressed,” Abernathy said.

“No, no, I’m fine …” He trailed off. “I just thought that I… saw something, I guess.”

He turned then and moved to the shoreline, stepping from the waters of the Irrylyn to dry ground. Abernathy had brought a blanket and wrapped it about him. Ben pulled the blanket close.

“Dinner is waiting, High Lord,” the dog advised, studying Ben closely over the rims of his glasses. Carefully, he straightened them. “Perhaps some soup will warm you.”

Ben gave a perfunctory nod. “Sounds good.” He hesitated. “Abernathy, do you know what a sylph is?”

The dog studied him some more. “Yes, High Lord. A sylph is a sort of woods fairy, the female offspring of sprites and nymphs, I’m told. I have never seen one, but they are supposed to be very beautiful.” His ears cocked. “Beautiful in human terms, that is. Dogs might differ.”

Ben stared off into the dark. “I suppose.” He took a deep breath. “Soup, you say? I could use a bowl.”

Abernathy turned and started away. “The campsite is this way, High Lord. The soup should be quite good if the wizard has managed to refrain from trying to improve on it by using his sadly limited magic.”

Ben cast a quick glance back at the inlet. The waters of the lake glimmered undisturbed in the moonlight. The shoreline stood empty.

He shook his head and hurried after Abernathy.

The soup was good. It steamed down inside Ben Holiday and took away the chill that had left him shaking when he had discovered he was alone in that inlet. Questor was relieved
to see him safely back and quarreled with Abernathy all during the meal as to who should assume responsibility for the High Lord’s disappearance. Ben didn’t listen. He let them argue, spoke when spoken to, and kept his thoughts to himself. Two bowls of soup and several glasses of wine later, he was comfortably drowsy as he stared into the flames of the small fire Parsnip had built. It hadn’t even occurred to him to worry about drinking the wine.

He went to sleep shortly after. He rolled into his blankets and turned away from the fire, his gaze directed to the silver waters of the lake, the trailers of mist that hovered and swirled above them, and the night beyond. He listened to the silence that settled quickly over the hill country. He searched the darkness for shadows.

He slept well that night and, while he slept, he dreamed. He did not dream of Annie or Miles. He did not dream of the life he had left when he crossed over into Landover, nor of Landover or the myriad problems he faced as her King.

He dreamed instead of Willow.

Bunion returned at dawn. The morning was chill and damp; mist and shadows settled thick across the forest like a gray woolen blanket pulled close about a still-sleeping child. The remainder of the little company was at breakfast when the kobold appeared from the trees, a phantasm slipped from the dreams of last night. He went directly to Questor, spoke to him in that unintelligible mix of grunts and hisses, nodded to the others, and sat down to finish off what was left of the cold bread, berries, and ale.

Questor advised Ben that the River Master had agreed to receive them. Ben nodded wordlessly. His thoughts were elsewhere. Visions of Willow still lingered in his mind, images so real that they might have been something other than the dreams they were. Waking, he had sought to banish them, feeling them a betrayal somehow of Annie. But the visions had been too strong and he had been strangely anxious to preserve them in spite of his guilt. Why had he dreamed of Willow? he pondered. Why had the dreams been so intense? He finished his meal wrapped in his private reverie and saw nothing of the looks exchanged by Questor and Abernathy.

They departed the campsite shortly thereafter, a ragged
little procession of ghosts, winding silently through the half-light. They made their way single file about the Irrylyn, following the shoreline along a pathway barely wide enough for one. It was a journey through fantasia. Steam lifted snakelike from the valley floor in a mix of warm earth and cool air to mingle with the trailers of mist that swirled about the forest. Trees stood dark and wet against the gray, a tangle of huge, black-barked oaks, elms, gnarled hickories, willows, and cedars. Wraiths of the imagination whisked into view and were gone in the blink of an eye, lithe creatures that teased and taunted. Ben found himself numbed by the intransiency of it all—feeling as if he could not come fully awake from last night’s sleep, as if he had been drugged. He rode in a fog that shrouded mind and eyes both, straining for a glimpse of what was real through the maze of shadow pictures. But only the mist-dampened trees and the flat, hard surface of the lake were certain.

Then the lake was gone with the rest of the world, and only the trees remained. Morning lengthened, and still the mist and shadows wrapped the land close and would do no more than whisper of hidden secrets. Sounds filtered softly through the deep haze, bits and pieces of other lives and other happenings that Ben could only guess at. He searched the haze at every turn for a glimpse of Willow, a prodding voice within him whispering that she was there somewhere among the sounds and shadows, watching. He searched, but he did not find her.

It was shortly thereafter that the wood sprite appeared to them.

They had turned their horses down a draw formed by a series of fallen trees, Bunion leading the way on foot, when the sprite slipped from the mists at the kobold’s shoulder. He was a lean, wiry figure, barely taller than Bunion, skin as brown and grainy as the bark of a sapling, hair grown thick down the back of his neck and along his arms. Earth-colored clothing hung loosely against his body; his sleeves and pantlegs were cut short, his feet slipped into a boot that
laced about the calves with leather. He barely slowed the procession as he appeared, falling in beside Bunion, moving forward through the haze in an almost birdlike manner, quick and restless.

“Questor!” Ben’s voice was a rough hiss, louder than he had intended it to be. “Who is that?”

The wizard, riding just ahead, leaned back in his saddle, a finger to his lips. “Gently, High Lord. Our guide is a wood sprite in service to the River Master. There are others all about us.”

Ben’s gaze shifted quickly to the mist. He saw no one. “Our guide? Our guide to what?” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

“Our guide to Elderew, the home of the River Master.”

“We need a guide?”

Quester shrugged. “It is safer to have one, High Lord. Marsh lies all about Elderew and more than a few have been lost to it. The lake country can be treacherous. The guide is a courtesy extended us by the River Master—a courtesy extended to all guests upon their arrival.”

Ben glanced once more into the opaque curtain of the fog. “I hope the same courtesy is extended to guests upon their departure,” he muttered to himself.

They moved ahead into the trees. Other forms appeared suddenly from the mist, lean, wiry shapes like their guide, some with the same wood-grained appearance, some sticklike and gnarled, some smooth and sleek with skin that was almost silver. They fell in silently on either side of the column, hands grasping the reins of the horses, guiding the animals ahead. Pools of water and reed-grown marsh materialized all along the trail they followed, vast patches of swamp in which nothing moved but the fog. The trail narrowed further and at times disappeared altogether, leaving them in water that rose to their guides’ waists and the horses’ haunches. Creatures swam in the water, some with fins, some with reptilian scales, some with faces that were almost human. Creatures darted through the mist, dancing across
the mire’s surface like weightless skip-flies. They surfaced far out in the fog, and there were only flashes before they were gone again. Ben felt himself waking now, the dreams of last night dissipated finally, no more than faint memories and disconnected feelings. His mind sharpened as he peered through the gloom and studied the beings about him with mingled incredulity and disbelief. He was enveloped in a sudden, biting sense of hopelessness. Sprites, nymphs, kelpies, naiads, pixies, elementals—the names came back to him as he watched these marsh creatures appear and fade again. He recalled his early, exploratory reading of fantasy and horror fiction, an almost forbidden trespass, and relived his wonder at the strange beings he had encountered. Such creatures could only exist in the writer’s mind and come to life through his pen, he had believed—wishing secretly at the same time that it could be otherwise. Yet here those creatures were, the inhabitants of the world into which he had come, and he knew less of them than he did of those make-believe writer’s creations he had encountered in his youth—and they, in turn, knew nothing at all of him. How, in God’s name, could he convince them then to accept him as their King? What could he say that would persuade them to pledge to him?