The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (10 page)

He stopped short. His gaze, wandering across the floor of the valley below as he puzzled matters through, had caught sight of something.

It was a castle.

Ben stared. A huge swatch of green dominated the central portion of the valley, a checkerboard of meadows and fields dissected by meandering rivers. The castle stood at the near end of that checkerboard. An odd haze that hung over the whole of the valley had obscured his vision at first. But now he was beginning to pick things out, to see things clearly.

One of those things was the castle.

The castle was some miles distant from where he stood, swathed in mist and shadows beyond a deep forest. It sat upon an island in the middle of a lake, forest and hills all about, patches of mist floating past like clouds dropped down to earth. It was a dark and forbidding citadel, appearing almost ghostlike within the swirling haze.

He squinted against the muted light of the sun to see more clearly. But the mist closed suddenly, and the castle was gone.

“Damn!” he muttered softly.

Had that been an apparition as well—another of Landover’s special effects? A faint suspicion was beginning to gnaw at him. Was it possible that all of these special effects were not special effects at all? He felt a twinge of the panic and excitement return. What if everything he was seeing was real?

A voice boomed out behind him, and he jumped a foot.

“Well, then, here you are, wandering about in this meadow—not at all where you were supposed to be. Did you stray from the pathway? You look a bit fatigued, if you don’t mind my saying so. Are you all right?”

Ben turned at once. The speaker stood about ten feet behind him—a bizarre caricature of some pop artist’s gypsy. He was a tall man, well over six feet, but so lean as to be almost sticklike. A mop of curling white hair hung down over large ears, wisps of it mingling with beard and brows of the same color and kind. Gray robes cloaked the scarecrow form, but they were decorated with an array of brilliant sashes, cloth pouches, and jewelry that left the wearer looking something like a fragmented rainbow pinned against a departing thunderstorm. Soft leather boots too big for the feet curled up slightly at the toes and a hawklike nose dominated a pinched and owlish face. A gnarled walking stick guided the way as he came a step closer.

“You are Ben Holiday, aren’t you?” the fellow asked, a sudden glint of suspicion in his eyes. A massive crystal dangled from a chain about his throat, and he stuffed it rather self-consciously into the recesses of his robes. “You do have the medallion?”

Ben didn’t care for the look. “Who are you?” he replied, trying to put the other man on the defensive.

“Ah, I asked you first.” The other smiled amiably. “Courtesy dictates that you answer first.”

Ben stiffened, a touch of impatience in his voice at being forced to play this cat-and-mouse game. “Okay. I’m Ben Holiday. Now who are you?”

“Yes, well, I will have to see the medallion.” The smile broadened slightly. “You could be anyone, after all. Saying that you are Ben Holiday doesn’t necessarily make it so.”

“You could be anyone, too, couldn’t you?” Ben asked in reply. “What gives you the right to ask me anything without first telling me who you are?”

“I am the one sent to meet you, as it happens—assuming, of course, that you are who you claim. Could I see the medallion?”

Ben hesitated, then pulled the medallion from beneath his clothing and, without removing it, held it out for examination. The tall man leaned forward, peered momentarily at the medallion and nodded.

“You are indeed who you claim. I apologize for questioning you, but caution is always well advised in these matters. And now for my own introduction.” He bowed deeply from the waist. “Questor Thews, wizard of the court, chief advisor to the throne of Landover, your obedient servant.”

“Wizard of the …” Ben glanced sharply about one time more. “Then this
is
Landover!”

“Landover and nowhere else. Welcome, High Lord Ben Holiday.”

“So this is it,” Ben murmured, his mind racing suddenly. He looked again at the other. “Where are we exactly?”

Questor Thews seemed puzzled. “Landover, High Lord.”

“Yes, but where is Landover? I mean, where is Landover in the Blue Ridge? It must be close to Waynesboro, am I right?”

The wizard smiled. “Oh, well, you are no longer in your world. I thought you understood that. Landover bridges any number of worlds—a kind of gateway, you might say. The mists of the fairy realm connect her to your world and the others. Some bridge closer, of course, and some don’t even have the barrier of the mists. But you will learn all that soon enough.”

Ben stared. “I’m not in my world? This isn’t Virginia?”

Questor Thews shook his head.

“Or the United States or North America or Earth? None of it?”

“No, High Lord. Did you think that the fairy-tale kingdom you bought would be in your world?”

Ben didn’t hear him, a desperate obstinacy seizing hold. “I suppose that those planets in the sky over there aren’t fake, either? I suppose that they’re real?”

Questor turned. “Those are moons, not planets. Landover has eight of them. Only two are visible in the daylight hours, but the other six can be seen as well after dusk during most of the year.”

Ben stared. Then he shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe one word of it.”

Questor Thews looked at him curiously. “Why do you not believe, High Lord?”

“Because a place like this can’t exist, damn it!”

“But you chose to come here, didn’t you? Why would you come to Landover in the first place, if you did not believe that it could exist?”

Ben had no idea. He was no longer certain why it was that he had come. He was certain of only one thing—that he could not bring himself to accept what the other man was saying. Panic flooded through him at the very thought that Landover could be somewhere other than on Earth. He had never dreamed that it would be anywhere else. It meant that all of his ties with his old life were truly severed, that everything he had once known was really gone. It meant that he was alone in an alien world …

“High Lord, would you mind if we walked while we carry on this conversation?” the wizard interrupted his thoughts. “We have a good distance to cover before nightfall.”

“We do? Where are we going?”

“To your castle, High Lord.”

“My castle? Wait a minute—do you mean that castle that I saw just before you appeared, the one in the middle of the lake on an island?”

The other nodded. “The very place, High Lord. Shall we be on our way?”

Ben shook his head stubbornly. “Not a chance. I’m not going anywhere until I find out exactly what’s going on. What about what happened to me in the forest! Are you telling me all that was real? Are you telling me there actually was a dragon sleeping back there in the trees?”

Questor shrugged nonchalantly. “There could have been. There is a dragon in the valley—and he often naps at the fringes of the mists. The mists were his home once.”

Ben frowned. “His home, huh? Well, what about that black, winged thing and its rider?”

The wizard’s shaggy brows lifted slightly. “A black, winged thing, you say? A thing that seemed a nightmare, perhaps?”

Ben nodded his head anxiously. “Yes—that was what it seemed.”

“That was the Iron Mark.” The other pursed his lips. “The Mark is a demon lord. I am surprised he would come after you there in the mists. I would have thought …” He stopped, smiled a quick smile of reassurance and shrugged. “A demon strays into Landover now and again. You happened to come across one of the worst.”

“Come across it, my aunt Agatha!” Ben flared. “It was hunting me! It chased me down that forest tunnel and would have had me if not for that knight!”

This time Questor Thews’ brows lifted a good deal further. “Knight? What knight?” he demanded quickly.

“The knight—the one on the medallion!”

“You saw the knight on the medallion, Ben Holiday?”

Ben hesitated, surprised at the other’s sharp interest. “I saw him in the forest, after the black thing came at me. He appeared in front of me and rode at the black thing. I was caught between them, but the knight’s horse sideswiped me and knocked me from the trail. The next thing I knew I was sitting here in this meadow.”

Questor Thews frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, the horse knocking you from the pathway would account for your appearance here rather than at your appointed destination …” He trailed off, then came slowly forward, bending close to look into Ben’s eyes. “You might have imagined the knight, High Lord. You might have only thought to see him. Were you to think back on it, you might see something entirely different.”

Ben flushed. “Were I to think back on it, I would see exactly the same thing exactly.” He kept his gaze steady. “I would see the knight on the medallion.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then Questor Thews stepped back again, one hand rubbing at his ear thoughtfully. “Well,” he said. “Well, indeed.” He looked surprised. More than that, he looked pleased. He pursed his lips once again, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and hunched his shoulders. “Well,” he said a third time.

Then the look was gone as quickly as it had come. “We really do have to start walking now, High Lord,” he said quickly. “The day is getting on and it would be best if we were to reach the castle before nightfall. Come along, please. It is a good distance off.”

He shambled down through the meadow, a tall, ragtag, slightly stooped figure, his robes dragging through the grasses. Ben watched dumbly for a moment, glanced hastily about, then hitched up the duffel over one shoulder and followed reluctantly after.

T
hey passed from the high meadow and began their descent toward the distant bowl of the valley. The valley stretched away below them, a patchwork quilt of farmlands, meadows, forests, lakes and rivers, and swatches of marsh and desert. Mountains ringed the valley tightly, forested and dark, awash in a sea of deep mist that strung its trailers down into the valley and cast its shadow over everything.

Ben Holiday’s mind raced. He kept trying to fit what he was seeing into his mental picture of the Blue Ridge. But none of it worked. His eyes wandered across the slopes they were descending, seeing orchard groves, seeking out familiar fruit trees, finding apple, cherry, peach, and plum, but a dozen other fruits as well, many of a color and size completely unfamiliar to him. Grasses were varied shades of green, but also crimson, lavender, and turquoise. Scattered through the whole of the strange collection of vegetation were large
clumps of trees that vaguely resembled half-grown pin oaks except that they were colored trunk to leaf a brilliant blue.

None of it looked anything at all like the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia or the mountains of any other part of the United States that he had ever heard about.

Even the cast of the day was strange. The mist lent a shadowed look to the whole of the valley, and it reflected in the color tones of the earth. Everything seemed to have developed a somewhat wintry look—though the air was warm like a midsummer’s day and the sun shone down through the clouds in the sky.

Ben savored cautiously the look, smell, and feel of the land, and he discovered in doing so that he could almost believe that Landover was exactly what Questor Thews had said that it was—another world completely.

He mulled this prospect over in his mind as he kept pace with his guide. This was no small concession that he was being asked to make. Every shred of logic and every bit of common sense that he could muster in his lawyer’s mind argued that Landover was some sort of trick, that fairy worlds were writer’s dreams and that what he was seeing was a pocket of merry old England tucked away in the Blue Ridge, castles and knights-in-armor included. Logic and common sense said that the existence of a world such as this, a world outside but somehow linked to his own, a world that no one had ever seen, was so farfetched as to be one step short of impossible: Twilight Zone; Outer Limits. And one step short only because it could be argued that anything after all was
theoretically
possible.

Yet here he was, and there it was, and what was the explanation for it, if it wasn’t what Questor Thews said it was? It looked, smelled, and felt real. It had the look of something real—but at the same time it had the look of something completely foreign to his world, something beyond anything he had ever known or even heard about this side of King Arthur. This land
was
a fantasy, a mix of color and shape and being that surprised and bewildered him at every turn—and frightened him, as well.

But already his initial skepticism had begun to erode. What if Landover truly was another world? What if it was exactly what Meeks had promised?

The thought exhilarated him. It left him stunned.

He glanced surreptitiously at Questor. The tall, stooped figure marched dutifully next to him, gray robes dragging through the grasses, patched with the scarfs and sashes and pouches of gaily colored silk, his whitish hair and beard fringing the owlish face. Questor certainly seemed to feel at home.