The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 (92 page)
Read The Magic Kingdom of Landover , Volume 1 Online
Authors: Terry Brooks
Tags: #Andrew - To Read, #Retail
I
t was time to leave. No one much cared for the idea of spending another night in the Melchor. It was agreed they would be better off setting up camp in the foothills below.
So they trudged wearily down out of the mountains through the fading daylight, the sun sinking behind the western rim of the valley in a haze of scarlet and gray. As they walked, Willow dropped back next to Ben, and her arm locked gently about his.
“What do you think will become of the unicorns?” she asked after a moment.
Ben shrugged. “They’ll probably go back into the mists, and no one will ever see them again.”
“You do not think they will go on to the worlds to which they were sent?”
“Out of Landover?” Ben shook his head. “No, not after all they’ve been through. Not now. They’ll go back home where it’s safe.”
“It isn’t safe in your world, is it?”
“Hardly.”
“It isn’t very safe in Landover, either.”
“No.”
“Do you think it is any safer in the mists?”
Ben thought about that a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
Willow nodded. “Your world has need of unicorns, doesn’t it? The magic is forgotten?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then maybe it doesn’t matter that it isn’t safe there. Maybe the need outweighs the danger. Maybe at least one unicorn will decide to go anyway.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it.”
Willow’s head lifted slightly. “You say it, but you do not mean it.”
He smiled and did not reply.
They reached the foothills, passed through a broad meadow of red-spotted wildflowers to a stretch of fir, and the kobolds began scouting ahead for a campsite. The air had gone cool, and the approaching twilight gave the land a muted, silvery sheen. Crickets had begun to chirp, and geese flew low across a distant lake. Ben was thinking about home, about Sterling Silver, and the warmth of the life that waited there for him.
“I love you,” Willow said suddenly. She didn’t look at him, facing straight ahead as she spoke the words.
Ben nodded. He was quiet a moment. “I’ve been meaning to say something to you about that. You tell me you love me all the time, and I can never say it back to you. I’ve been thinking lately about why that is, and I guess it’s because I’m afraid. It’s like taking a chance you don’t have to take. It’s easier to pass it by.”
He paused. “But I don’t feel that way right now, right here. I feel altogether different. When you say you love me, I find I want to say it back to you. So I guess I will. I love you, too, Willow. I think I always did.”
They walked on, not speaking. He was aware of the increased pressure of her arm about his. The day was still and restful, and everything was at peace.
“The Earth Mother made me promise to look after you, you know,” Ben said finally. “That’s part of what started me thinking about us. She made me promise to keep you safe. She was most insistent.”
He could feel Willow’s smile more than see it. “That is because the Earth Mother knows,” she said.
He waited for her to say something more, then glanced down. “Knows what?”
“That one day I shall bear your child, High Lord.”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Oh.”
EPILOGUEI
t was two days before Christmas.
Southside Chicago was chill and dreary, the snowfall of the previous night turned gray and mushy on walks and streets, the squarish highrise projects and tenements vague shadows in a haze of smoke and mist. Steam rose out of sewer grates in sudden clouds as sleet pelted down. Not much of anything was moving. Cars crawled by like prehistoric beetles, headlights shining their luminous yellow eyes. Pedestrians ducked their heads against the cold, their chins buried in scarves and collars, their hands jammed into coat pockets. Late afternoon watched an early evening’s approach in gloomy silence.
The corner of Division and Elm was almost deserted. Two boys with leather jackets, a commuting businessman, and a carefully dressed woman headed home from shopping, stepped from a bus, and started walking in different directions. A shop owner paused to check the locks on the front door of his plumbing business as he prepared to close up for the day. A factory worker on the seven-to-three shift ducked out of Barney’s Pub after two beers and an hour of unwinding to begin the trudge two blocks home to his ailing mother. An old man carrying a load of groceries shuffled along a sidewalk path left in the snow by a trail of icy footprints. A small child engulfed by her snow-suit played with a sled by the steps of her apartment home.
They ignored each other with casual indifference, lost in their own private thoughts.
The white unicorn flew past them like a bit of strayed light. It sped by as if its sole purpose in being was to circle the whole of the world in a single day. It never seemed to touch the ground, its graceful, delicate body gathering and extending in a single fluid motion as it passed. All the beauty in the world—all that was or could ever be—was captured by its movement. It was there and
gone in an instant. The watchers caught their breath, blinked once, and the unicorn had disappeared.
There followed a moment of uncertainty. The old man’s mouth dropped open. The child put down her sled and stared. The two boys ducked their heads and muttered urgently. The businessman looked at the shop owner and the shop owner looked back. The carefully dressed woman remembered all those magical stories of fairies she still enjoyed reading. The factory worker thought suddenly of Christmas as a child.
Then the moment passed, and they all moved on. Some walked more quickly, some more slowly. They glanced over at the misted, empty street. What was it they had seen? Had it really been a unicorn? No, it couldn’t have been. There were no such things as unicorns—not really. And not in cities. Unicorns lived in forests. But they had seen something. Hadn’t they seen something? Hadn’t they? They walked on, silent, and there was a warmth within each of them at the memory of what they had experienced. There was a feeling of having been a part of something magical.
They took that feeling home with them. Some of them kept it for a time. Some of them passed it on.
For Alex
Who is something of a wizard at large himself…
At that word the young man let his glass slip through his fingers, and looked upon Keawe like a ghost.
‘The price,’ says he; ‘the price! You do not know the price?’
‘It is for that I am asking you,’ returned Keawe. ‘But why are you so much concerned? Is there something wrong about the price?’
‘It has dropped a great deal in value since your time, Mr. Keawe,’ said the young man, stammering.
‘Well, well, I shall have the less to pay for it,’ says Keawe. ‘How much did it cost you?’
The young man was white as a sheet. ‘Two cents,’ said he.
‘What?’ cried Keawe, ‘two cents? Why, then, you can only sell it for one. And he who buys it—’ The words died upon Keawe’s tongue; he who bought it could never sell it again, the bottle and the bottle imp must abide with him until he died, and when he died must carry him to the red end of hell.
—Robert Louis Stevenson,
The Bottle Imp
SNEEZEB
en Holiday sighed wearily and wished he were somewhere else besides where he was. He wished he were anywhere else.
He was in the garden room at Sterling Silver. The garden room was probably Ben Holiday’s favorite of all the many rooms at the castle. It was bright and airy. Flower boxes crisscrossed the tiled floor in dazzling swatches of color. Sunshine streamed through floor-length windows that ran the length of its southern wall, tiny motes of pollen dancing on the broad bands of light. The windows stood open and fragrant smells wafted in. The room looked out on the gardens proper, a maze of flower beds and bushes that spread their way downward to the lake on which the island castle rested, mixing and mingling their colors like paints run together on a rain-soaked canvas. The flowers bloomed year-round, reseeding themselves with commendable regularity. A horticulturist from Ben’s old world would have killed to study such treasures—species that grew only in the Kingdom of Landover and nowhere else.
Just at the moment, Ben would have killed to escape them.
“… Great High Lord …”
“… Mighty High Lord …”
The familiar calls of supplication grated on him like rough stones and reminded him anew of the cause of his disgruntlement. His eyes rolled skyward momentarily.
Please!
His gaze shifted furiously from flower box to flower bed and back again, as if somewhere among all those tiny petals the escape he so desperately sought might be found. It wasn’t, of course, and he sagged back further in his cushioned chair and contemplated the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t that he was trying to shirk his duty. It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about these things. But this was his
refuge
, for Pete’s sake! This was supposed to be his place for time away!
“… and took all of our hard-earned berry stores.”
“And all of our ale kegs as well.”
“When all we did was to borrow a few laying hens, High Lord.”
“We would have replaced those that were lost, High Lord.”
“We intended to be fair.”
“We did.”
“You must see that our possessions are returned …”
“Yes, you must …”
They went on, barely pausing for breath.
Ben studied Fillip and Sot the way his gardener studied weeds in the flower beds. The G’home Gnomes rambled on unself-consciously and endlessly, and he thought about the vagaries of life that permitted misfortunes such as this to be visited on him. The G’home Gnomes were a pitiful bunch—small, ferretlike burrow people who begged, borrowed, and mostly stole everything with which they came in contact. They migrated periodically and, once settled, could not be dislodged. They were regarded in general as a blight upon the earth. On the other hand, they had proven unswervingly loyal to Ben. When he had purchased the Kingdom of Landover from Rosen’s Department Store Christmas Wishbook and come into the valley—almost two years ago now—Fillip and Sot, on behalf of all of the G’home Gnomes, had been the first to pledge their loyalty. They had aided him in his efforts to establish his kingship. They had helped him again when Meeks, the former Court Wizard, had slipped back into Landover and stolen his identity and his throne. They had been his friends when there were precious few friends to be had.