A Princess of Landover

His Eminence and Rhyndweir’s Lord nodded eagerly, babbling their understanding in a jumble of hurried promises.

Strabo backed away a few yards, still watching them. “I don’t know. I’m awfully hungry. Eating you now would solve a great number of potential problems later.”

Mistaya didn’t want that to happen quite yet, so she stepped forward quickly. “I wonder if I could ask one further favor. An associate of His Eminence is holding my friend Thom prisoner, too. Can he be released, as well?”

Strabo licked his chops as he nodded. “Have her friend brought to me right away, Crabbit.”

His Eminence looked as if he might implode, but he turned to the building and shouted for Rufus Pinch to produce Thom. Laphroig still didn’t know who they were talking about, but as soon as Thom appeared, sliding past him quickly to stand next to Mistaya, he turned purple with rage and screamed a long string of bad words that don’t bear repeating.

“You knew about this, Crabbit! You knew, and you kept it from me! You will pay for this, I promise you.” He wheeled on Thom. “As for you, I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’ll hunt you down once this is finished, no matter how long it takes, and when I find you—”

“You won’t do anything, if you’re inside Strabo’s belly,” Mistaya pointed out smugly.

But all of a sudden Strabo reared up and wheeled away, his attention diverted. “What’s that I smell?” he growled.

They all looked and saw a handful of mounted knights racing away across the hills, trying unsuccessfully to escape notice. Apparently, they had recovered from their earlier fright and finding themselves on the wrong side of escape had decided to circle back north and try to slip past the dragon.

“Oh, my favorites!” Strabo enthused. “Crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. And all that iron is fuel for my inner child.” He glanced at Mistaya. “I have to go now, Princess. I need a snack after all that flying. Good luck to you.”

He wheeled away, spread his wings, and soared off into the sky, Mistaya and her captors forgotten in an instant. Already they could hear the rumble of his internal furnace as the bellows heated the flames to cooking temperature.

Mistaya was so shocked by the dragon’s abrupt and unexpected departure that for a moment she just stood there. How could he leave like that, right in the middle of rescuing her?

Then Laphroig looked over at her and His Eminence did the same, and she realized how much danger she was in.

She brought up her hands in a warding motion. “Don’t even think about it. This wedding is over. Just stay right where you are. I’m not your prisoner now, and if you try to make me one, I’ll fry you where you stand.”

“I think that it is dragons who fry people, Princess,” His Eminence purred, his fingers flexing. “In any case, you are no match for me, free or not. You are young and inexperienced, and you are alone. Thom can’t help you, either. His brother will see to him while I see to you.”

The oblong head bobbed and a smile played across the odd face. “I would let you go if I didn’t think you already knew too much for your own good. Best if you come back inside and remain as my guest until your father gets here.”

Mistaya kept one eye on his hands, the other on Laphroig. “My father isn’t coming. Didn’t you know?”

“Oh, I think maybe he is. I sent him a message.”

She didn’t know if he was lying or not, but it wasn’t something she wanted to chance. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not helping you trap my father by staying. We’re leaving.”

Laphroig stepped forward quickly. “You’ll leave when I say you can leave, you little snot-nosed whelp! You’re mine, wedding or not, and I will do with you as I wish. By the time the dragon finds out what’s been done, it will be too late. Crabbit, I will deal with you and your lying ways later. For now, bind her hands and my brother’s, too, and get out of my way.”

To emphasize the point, he produced a wicked looking dagger from beneath his robes and held it in a way to suggest that he was ready to use it on any one of them should they give him reason.

His Eminence looked taken aback. “Who do you think you are, issuing orders to me, Laphroig? I am not one of your lackeys.”

He shifted away slightly, putting himself at the same distance from Laphroig as he was from Mistaya. “I’ve had enough of you, Lord of Rhyndweir. I think perhaps it is time for you to take your leave. You can do so voluntarily or I will help you on your way. Mr. Pinch? Do you have the crossbow pointed at his back?”

“I do, Mr. Crabbit,” the other replied from just behind Laphroig. “As you instructed me to do earlier when I warned you that he was a snake in the grass and not to be trusted.”

Laphroig smiled. “A crossbow won’t do the job, Crabbit. I am armored against such weapons. And before you can work a spell, I will have this dagger through your throat. Now do as I say and stop playing games.”

Mistaya was at a loss as to how to proceed. The standoff had pitted them against one another. If one attacked, the others would retaliate. She took two steps back and bumped into Thom.

“Get behind me, Mistaya,” he whispered in her ear.

She shook her head. “Stay out of this.”

“I won’t. I can help.”

“Not with this.” She didn’t dare take her eyes off His Eminence and Laphroig to look at him. “Please, Thom.”

“Princess,” His Eminence called out suddenly, “what of your promise not to try to escape? Does that mean nothing to you? Have you abandoned your word and your honor, as well?”

“I kept my word,” she replied. “I said I wouldn’t do anything during the wedding. The wedding is off, so I am released from my promise.”

“Some of us might argue with you.”

“I think we are beyond arguing, Your Eminence.”

Although she was pretty sure by now that talking was the only thing keeping her would-be captors at bay. She had to find a way to break this off without provoking an attack, and then she had to find a way for both Thom and herself to leave.

She wondered suddenly what had happened to Edgewood Dirk. She had thought the Prism Cat would be there to help her at this point. But it appeared he had abandoned her in the same way as Strabo. She regretted anew that she hadn’t done a better job of keeping loyal Haltwhistle at her side. He would never have left her.

“Haltwhistle,” she whispered to herself in a voice so low that even Thom, standing right next to her, couldn’t hear.

“Lord Laphroig,” His Eminence called. “Let’s put our differences aside long enough to deal with the Princess. She remains our common enemy and the lure by which we might still trap her father. You and I can settle up later, once she is incapacitated.”

Laphroig seemed to be thinking it over, and now Rufus Pinch was turned toward her, too, crossbow pointed. Mistaya saw her window of opportunity slipping away. She had to do something, and she had to do it right now.

Suddenly she saw Haltwhistle standing just at the edge of the trees behind His Eminence and Laphroig, hackles raised. She took a long moment to register his presence, to make certain she wasn’t mistaken. But there he was, good old Haltwhistle, not an apparition but the real thing.

She took a deep breath. “Haltwhistle,” she whispered a second time, and the sound of his name almost made her cry.

“Mr. Pinch?” His Eminence called softly.

In the next instant, everyone moved at once. Pinch released the trigger on the crossbow, Laphroig flung the dagger, and His Eminence leveled a dark charge of magic with lightning quickness. Mistaya retaliated with her own magic, already waiting at her fingertips, to protect both Thom and herself, and as she did so she felt Thom slam into her, knocking her aside. As all of this was happening, she saw Haltwhistle’s hackles turn to frost and his magic lance out in a sudden rush.

Dagger, crossbow bolt, and magic seemed to arrive at the same moment, exploding in front of her in a cloud of smoke. The force of the explosion sent her sprawling, so she didn’t see clearly what happened next, except that the confluence of magic and dagger and crossbow bolt seemed to rebound from her own defenses and carom away, sharp flashes indicating results she could not make out. She found herself sprawled on the ground, the stench of His Eminence’s powerful magic raw and pungent in her nostrils, the heat of it layered against her skin. She lay stunned for a moment, entangled with Thom, who had also been upended by the attack. Struggling to disengage, she tried to peer through the clouds of smoke and the mix of random flashes to see what had happened, but everything was obscured.

As she scrambled to her feet, she took a deep breath of air that was suddenly sharp and bitter and assailed her mouth and nostrils with suffocating power. She tried to fight it off, failed, and lost consciousness.

She came awake with a blinding headache. Everything seemed hazy and a bit vague, as if she were viewing it through gauzy curtains.

“Mistaya!” Thom whispered from somewhere far away. She felt his hand squeeze her arm. “Are you all right?”

She wasn’t entirely sure, but at least she could breathe again. She opened her eyes and looked into his. “Are you?”

“The dagger missed me,” he replied.

She wasn’t so sure how that could be. Right at the last, he had tried to save her and put himself in the path of the blade. It hadn’t looked to her, in the split second she’d had to witness the attack by his brother, that it could have missed him. But maybe her magic had deflected it.

Haltwhistle nudged into view through the haze, his hackles lowered again, his coat smooth. Things must be all right after all, she thought. She sat up slowly and smiled. “Good old Haltwhistle. I’m so sorry for not taking better care of you. I won’t do that ever again.”

The mud puppy’s beaver tail wagged eagerly as he sat down close by, but safely out of reach. If he didn’t think there was any danger, there probably wasn’t. With Thom helping, Mistaya climbed back to her feet, searching for her adversaries, the last wisps of smoke wafting away on the breeze.

Then she saw Laphroig. He was standing approximately where she had last seen him, one arm raised in the follow-through of a throwing motion, his face twisted with anger. He wasn’t moving.

Chances are he wouldn’t ever move again.

He had been turned to stone.

She looked farther around the clearing. But there was no sign of Craswell Crabbit and Rufus Pinch.

“What happened here?” Thom asked quietly.

Mistaya didn’t know. It was entirely possible, she decided, that she never would.

Mistaya and Thom conducted a hurried search of the grounds but failed to find any trace of Crabbit and Pinch. Their complete disappearance suggested that the pair might have been vaporized or spirited away to some other corner of the Kingdom. After all, a collision of magic as powerful as those commanded by herself, His Eminence, and Haltwhistle could result in almost anything.

Nor was there much she could do about The Frog. She was not particularly adept at reversing magic spells, and the one that had turned him to stone was no exception. She decided it was best to leave him as he was and see if Questor could do anything to help.

She was about to suggest to Thom that they search within Libiris itself just to make certain Crabbit and Pinch hadn’t somehow gotten past them when a huge squalling sound from inside the building signaled that whatever the fate of those two villains, something else was clearly amiss. With Thom at her side, she charged back through the front doors toward the entry into the Stacks, tracing the cacophonous noise to its source.

They had not yet reached their destination when dozens of frantic Throg Monkeys came pouring out, flinging their arms wildly and howling as if they had lost their minds. Some few made it all the way out of the building and disappeared into the woods, but most seemed to lose their sense of direction before they reached the outside. As Mistaya and Thom entered the Stacks, they could see dozens more of the little monsters charging about, racing up and down the aisles, climbing shelving units, clinging to the ceiling rafters, and generally milling around to no recognizable purpose.

Then Mistaya saw it. From the rear of the chamber, back in the deep gloom where the wall had been broken through, a wicked crimson light was pulsing to the steady rhythm of a coarse and ominous chanting.

The demons of Abaddon were trying to break out on their own.

“Thom, stay here!” she shouted and raced down the closest aisle for the darkness ahead.

Thom apparently had no thought of obeying. He caught up with her in nothing flat. “You wait!” he called over to her as he sped past, flashing his familiar grin.

She was furious with him and at the same time scared. He had no business going back there like this! He had risked an encounter with magic once and it had almost killed him. Now he was risking another. The demons of Abaddon would brush him aside like a fly. What was wrong with him?

Well, she knew the answer to that one before she finished the thought. He was doing it for her, because he cared for her and was trying once again to protect her. It made her chest ache with pride; it made her want to do the same for him. She increased her pace, flying through the near darkness, darting from one pool of shadows to the next, dodging errant Throg Monkeys and books that lay scattered about. All the while the air throbbed with the sound of the chanting and the invisible pulse of demon magic. She had no idea what she was going to do, only that she had better do something or all of her efforts would have been for nothing.

Her worst fears were realized as the rear wall of the Stacks came into view. The hole opened in the building wall by the theft of the books of magic and the release of their power was clearly outlined by the crimson light. The hole was enlarged anew, a torn, aching wound filled with the dark shapes of the demons and their minions, all grouped around the black-cloaked form that held the red leather book. This demon, the largest of them all, led the chanting, holding up the book to the glow of torch flames so that the others could see, crimson light leaping off the pages as the reading stole the magic of the words and turned it back against the hapless building. Throg Monkeys too scared to flee were crouched in the shadows just on the other side of the opening, eyes wide. The scene was a bizarre tableau, all the characters frozen in place against the ebb and flow of the crimson light.

Now Thom slowed, uncertain what to do. He glanced over at Mistaya, searching for direction, but she had none to give. There was a screen of clear light across the opening; she could see a distension where the demons pressed up against it. It was all that held them back, and it was being stretched more thinly as the magic eroded the library walls and widened the opening. Mistaya’s gamble in tricking the Throg Monkeys into returning the stolen books had worked for a time, but something had gone wrong. Either the demons had discovered her ruse or her battle with His Eminence had triggered this new response. Whatever the case, the demons weren’t waiting any longer to break free.

They were coming out now.

Mistaya stood a dozen yards away, squarely in their path, and summoned a conjuring of storm-strength repulsion that she had learned from Questor Thews. She brought it to her fingers and threw it at the demons, a white-hot explosion that knocked them backward into the tunnel, turning them into a sprawling dark mass of arms, legs, teeth, and claws.

But in the process of stopping their advance, she had destroyed the thin membrane that held them at bay.

She stared. She couldn’t believe how foolish she had been. She had acted impulsively, out of haste and fear; she had responded to the danger without thinking things through.

Already the demons were back on their feet, a knot of twisted dark faces and feral eyes searching her out. She summoned an iron-infused blocking spell, throwing it up across the opening, and they were stopped short. But only for a few precious moments, she knew; the spell would not last.

They plunged ahead again in seconds, the big demon with the red leather book leading the way. He held the book clutched close against his chest, claws gripping it tightly. Following in his wake, the foremost invaders cleared the tunnel opening and were suddenly inside the library before her third casting—this one a combination of tornado-force wind and hurricane rain—threw back the entire pack once more.

She dropped to one knee, nearly exhausted by her efforts. She had used the best of the conjurings she had learned from Questor. She had nothing left to try.

She caught herself. She did have another weapon: one of the deadly incantations she had learned from the witch Nightshade, one that would burn the demons to ash, that would steal the life from them with a certainty that was frightening even to think about.

It would stop them—if she could use it. If she could react as Nightshade had taught her and not think of what it meant.

But, no, she wouldn’t do that. Not even against creatures like these. Not even to save Libiris.

Then she saw the book. The leather cover glistened, shards of wicked red light seeping from between the pages even though its covers were closed. The book was lying on the floor just inside the library where the big demon must have dropped it when her spell struck.

Thom had seen it, too, and he was already racing toward it.

“Thom, no!” she screamed.

Too late. He was already there, just ahead of the demons that had regrouped inside the tunnel and were charging for the opening once more. Thom snatched up the book and stood frozen in place. The demons were almost on top of him, tearing at the space that separated them, claws eager for something more substantive. Mistaya waited for him to run, to drop the book, to save himself. But he just stood there, holding his ground against the onrush.

“Thom!” she screamed in desperation. “Throw me the book!”

He glanced back at her, his face bloodless.

“Throw me the book, Thom!” she repeated, gesturing wildly.

For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, abruptly, he turned from her and flung the book over the heads of the demons, a whirling, spinning missile.

Mistaya understood at once what he was trying to do: turn the demons around, using the book as a lure to send them back into the tunnel. He was trying to save her.

Mistaya reacted instinctively, doing something entirely un expected, even to herself, something she had sworn she would never do.

She summoned one of Nightshade’s spells.

Her hands a blur, her voice a hiss, she dispatched a chaser bolt of killing green fire, one that could have incinerated the demons but here was meant for something else. It caught the red leather book in midflight over the heads of the demons and broke through its protective magic. The leather covers flew open, the pages tore free, and the book disintegrated into hundreds of pieces that scattered everywhere. The demons tried to snatch them out of the air, but some burst into flames and others eluded their grasp and flew away like tiny birds. The demons howled and gave chase, but their efforts were futile.

Mistaya didn’t wait. As soon as she saw that the book had lost its power, she put her magic to work creating a healing spell that would close the breach in the library wall. Weaving her fingers, she spoke words of power and brought the spell to life, spinning it out toward the opening. It wasn’t as strong or complete as she would have liked, but it was enough. Libiris, freed from the book’s wounding magic, was already healing on her own, able once more to begin repairing the breach. Mistaya could see the results—the rent smoothing and tightening, the hole narrowing, the wall strengthening anew.

A handful of the demons trapped inside turned from their efforts to salvage the book and rushed to stop what was happening. Thom grabbed a huge iron stanchion, knocked aside the candles it bore, and prepared to use it as a club, placing himself in their path. Mistaya could do nothing to help; trying to stop the demons now meant abandoning her spell, and she could not afford to do that. But luck was with them. The demons that reached the opening were unable to pass through. They tried a second time and then a third with no better results. Without the magic of the red leather book to aid them in their efforts, they could not break free.

In moments, they had fallen back to join their fellows. The largest demon looked back at Mistaya, rage bright in its yellow eyes. But the gash was healing, the opening slowly shrinking. Soon the space had emptied of everything but shadows and the lingering wisps of ash and smoke.

The way out of Abaddon was closed.

Even supposing that the danger was over, she decided to stay where she was, braced before the opening with her arms extended, until her strength left her. Exhausted by her efforts, she sat cross-legged on the floor with Thom and waited longer still to be sure that nothing else was going to happen. Then she and Thom went back into the Stacks and took stock of her efforts to return the missing books of magic. It was impossible to know how successful her plan had been. The Throg Monkeys had all fled, even the ones that had cringed about the opening at the end of things. She had no idea where they had put the books she had ordered returned from Abaddon, and no idea where those never taken might be. It would take a thorough search of the library to discover their whereabouts, and she wasn’t up to it just now.

She was disappointed in losing the red leather book, but then she could hardly blame Thom for its destruction. When it came right down to it, he had probably saved their lives.

It was enough that he had done so.

Satisfied, she turned her efforts anew to finding out what had become of Crabbit and Pinch.

She received only marginal assistance from Questor Thews when he arrived late in the day with Abernathy in tow and not before she got a stern lecture that had something to do with not listening to the warnings of her elders. Which warnings those were and how listening to them would have helped she wasn’t sure, but she endured it all and at the end kissed and hugged them both and told them she loved them dearly. This seemed to placate them, and not another word was uttered about what she should have done.

Unfortunately, her patience did not yield much in the way of rewards. Questor was not able to shed much light on the disappearance of Crabbit and Pinch or do anything about The Frog’s unfortunate condition. He was pretty certain that the spell that had turned The Frog to stone had come from His Eminence, intended for Mistaya but redirected by Haltwhistle. It was typical of what happened when you attacked someone under the protection of a mud puppy. The strange little animal couldn’t actually harm you, but it could turn your efforts against you or deflect them. Something of the sort had happened all those years ago when Nightshade had attempted to retaliate against Mistaya.

“So I would guess that was what occurred here,” he finished, giving a shrug of dismissal. “Wherever they are, Craswell Crabbit and Rufus Pinch will have to find someone else to manipulate.”

“And good riddance!” Abernathy added with an audible growl.

On a more positive note, when Questor went back inside with her to inspect the damage to the back wall, he was enthusiastic. After taking measurements of the magic still in use by the building, he pronounced her well on the way to a full recovery, adding that Mistaya and Thom had done extraordinarily well and he couldn’t have done better himself.

“Damned by faint praise,” Abernathy whispered in her ear and gave a small bark that approximated a dog laugh.

They decided they would spend the night at Libiris. Thom took them all into the little kitchen and fixed them dinner, more cheerful than at any time since Mistaya had known him. He laughed and joked with her and even managed to charm Abernathy out of his usual pessimistic attitude.

“Andjen Thomlinson,” the royal scribe declared at one point, ebullient and expansive, “you will make a fine new Lord of Rhyndweir.”

Thom instantly went still. “It wasn’t ever my intention to become Lord of Rhyndweir,” he answered at once.

“Perhaps not your intention, but quite possibly your destiny,” Questor chimed in. “Rhyndweir needs a master, and you are next in line and the logical choice. More to the point, I think Abernathy is right. You are most suited to the task.”

“But there is still so much work to be done here,” Thom objected.

“Thom, you can still supervise that work,” Mistaya cut in quickly. “Why not? Father will give you authorization; I will ask him myself. You can bring all the help you need from the Greensward and send those dreadful Throg Monkeys back to wherever they came from.”

Everyone but Thom thought this a grand idea, and in the end he promised to sleep on it.

“And you, Mistaya,” Questor said. “Will you continue to work here with Thom?”

She knew what Thom wanted her to say, but she wasn’t yet sure of her own wishes, so she shook her head and shrugged. “Like Thom, I have to sleep on it. I also have to go back to Sterling Silver and straighten things out with my parents. They may not want me coming back.”

So they talked on through the meal, agreeing that the best thing for The Frog was to have him transported back to Rhyndweir and placed somewhere in a park where those who chose to do so could visit him at their leisure. Perhaps to comment on how much better behaved he was now than before, Abernathy observed. Perhaps to provide recalcitrant children with an object lesson on what could happen if you were not a good person, Questor added.

After dinner was over, Questor took Mistaya aside, putting his hands on her shoulders as he faced her. “I want you to know how proud I am of you. Well, how proud we both are, Abernathy and I. You have conducted yourself with courage and demonstrated both wisdom and determination. You stayed when you could have left—when I told you to leave, in fact—and you were right to do so. Had you followed my advice and not discovered what Crabbit and Pinch were up to, we all might have found ourselves in a much more dangerous situation down the road. And your father would have been in considerable peril as a result. The trap set for him on his arrival was cunningly conceived and well hidden. He might not have been able to avoid it, even with the help of the Paladin.”

“What sort of trap was it?” she pressed him quickly.

“The sort I don’t care to talk about.”

“But shouldn’t I know?”

Questor shook his head. “What you need to know is that the disappearance of the man who contrived it effectively put an end to its usage. Your father is safe now, and he can thank you for that.”

She frowned. “You won’t tell me?”

“I won’t tell him, either. But I will tell him that you helped save him from his enemies and that no blame should attach to your behavior during these last few weeks. I will tell him you are every inch a true Princess of Landover.”

Then he kissed her on the forehead. “Mistaya Holiday, I do believe you are growing up.”

Several days later, she was back home. The walls of Libiris were continuing to heal, the books were safely back in place, and the library would soon be under new management that Questor had promised he would personally arrange. The demons of Abaddon were shut away again, perhaps without fully understanding what had happened to derail their plan, but that was their problem. Laphroig’s spy at Sterling Silver had been rooted out, a cook’s assistant with ambitions for advancement whose reach exceeded his grasp. An irate Parsnip, in ways that the kobold would not discuss and summarily dismissed when questioned, had disciplined him. All was right with the world, and there had been no reason to stay longer at a place she still didn’t much care for, so off Mistaya had gone.

Now she was sitting with her father on the south lawn at the edge of the castle walls, enjoying the sunlight and the sweet smell of lilies wafting on the summer breeze. She had told him everything by then—well, almost everything; there were one or two things she was keeping to herself—and to her surprise he had not scolded or criticized her for anything she had done. Not even for running away. Not even for trying to hide from him. Not even for worrying her mother and himself to the point of distraction.

“I’m mostly just glad you’re back,” he said when she asked if he was mad at her. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

She was both relieved and pleased. She had no desire to engage in another confrontation with him. While she had been in hiding, she had thought a lot about her attitude toward her parents and decided that it could use some improvement. So one of the first things she did on her return, once they were reassured that she was unharmed, was to tell them how sorry she was for not trying to understand better that they had only her best interests at heart. Her father responded at once by telling her he was sorry he had treated her as a child.

“I still think of you that way,” he told her. “Maybe I always will. Parents do that. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t help thinking that you need us to look after you. We can’t get used to the idea that you are growing up and need space to find your own way. We don’t like it that you might one day discover you will be just fine without us.”

“I would never be fine without you and Mother,” she had replied and hugged him so hard he thought she might break something.

Thom had come back with her, deciding that he would return to Rhyndweir as successor to his brother. This decision had more to do with his determination to change the way things were done in the Greensward than anything to do with Questor’s repeated references to destiny and fate. Ben had received him warmly and told him that he could count on the throne to support him. He had suggested that he send Questor to the Greensward to make certain the transition went smoothly. Not that he believed there would be any problem, he was quick to assure the boy. Berwyn Laphroig had not been well liked, and the people of Rhyndweir would be happy to have a new Lord. They would be especially accepting of one who seemed so willing to put the welfare of his subjects ahead of his own.

“He wants to give the land to the people,” Mistaya had told her father later. “He wants the people to feel they have a vested interest in it, something they can call their own and pass on to their children. All he wants in return is for them to agree to pay a reasonable tax to the crown. He has a plan to accomplish all this, and it is a good one. Listen.”

Her father did so, and after asking a number of questions he was inclined to agree. Perhaps Thom’s openness would provide a working model for the other Lords of the Greensward, one that would revolutionize the old practices and herald the beginning of an era of fresh cooperation between the Lords of the Greensward and their subjects.

Perhaps.

“I think Thom will become a valuable ally, Father,” Mistaya finished. “I think you’ll come to like him very much.”

She had not missed the way the boy looked at her, of course, and she knew how he felt about her. What she didn’t know was exactly how she felt about him. The two had shared a very dangerous and exhausting ordeal at Libiris, and that sort of experience had a way of bonding people. She liked Thom, but she wasn’t sure she liked him in that way—even though she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had kissed her in that storeroom at Libiris when she was to be married to Laphroig. It still sent chills up and down her spine when she thought about it. It still made her want to try kissing him again. Someday.

She sat with her father for a long time after that without speaking, comfortable just to be together. She couldn’t remember when they had last done this, and she was almost afraid to say or do anything that might break the spell. One or the other of them was always rushing away, and time spent doing nothing, father and daughter sharing space and nothing more, was a rarity. Thinking on it, she felt a pang of regret that it might be another broad stretch of time before they would do it again.

She caught him looking at her and said, “What?”

He shook his head. “I was just thinking about how much I enjoy being with you like this. Just sitting and not saying anything or doing anything. Just …”

He trailed off, unable to finish. “I know,” she said. “You don’t have to say it. We don’t do this like we did when I was a little girl.”

“You remember, do you? I thought that maybe all that was so far in the past that you had forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten any of it. We would go on picnics, and I would sit next to you and watch everything you did. Mother would set things out, but I would sit with you. Sometimes you would carry me on your shoulders into the trees and pretend you were my charger.”

He grinned. “I did do that, didn’t I?”

“You did a lot for me—you and Mother both. Since coming home, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been doing a sort of self-assessment. There might be some areas of improvement needed. What do you think?”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t really expect me to answer that one, do you?”

“Not really.”

“Then don’t ask me things like that. I’m trying to walk a fine line here between parenting and friendship.”

“They’re supposed to be the same thing, aren’t they?”

“When the stars align properly, yes. But you might have noticed over the past few weeks that sometimes you have to work at it.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I did notice something of the sort.”

They were quiet again for a time, and then her father said, “What do you think you will do now, Mistaya? Now that you’ve come back home.”

She had thought of little else. “I don’t know.”

“You have a lot of options open to you. You’ve probably thought of a few that I haven’t. I’m not asking this to try to persuade you to do anything in particular. The choice is yours, and whatever you decide is fine with your mother and me. I think.”

“Thank you.”

“So do you have any ideas?”

“Some.”

“Care to talk about them with me?”

He sounded so eager, she could hardly make herself give the reply she had already decided on. “Maybe later. Can we just sit here like this for now?”

He said they could, but she thought that he would have preferred the discussion he had suggested. Trouble was, she just wasn’t ready. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She thought it might take some time to figure it out.

As it turned out, she was wrong. She went for a walk outside the castle grounds late in the afternoon, needing to stretch her legs and find space to think. She was in a meditative mood, and movement always seemed to help spur her thinking. In addition, she wanted to see if there was any sign of the G’home Gnomes, Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel. After the horse to which they were tied had galloped in terror away from a hungry Strabo, they had thought themselves doomed. The dragon had caught up to them almost immediately, but then it had refused to eat them after finding out they were G’home Gnomes. Even dragons had limits when it came to food choices, Strabo had observed archly before abandoning them to fly after tastier morsels. Eventually, Questor Thews and Abernathy had come across them on their way to Libiris, still bound and gagged astride their grazing horse. Showing considerably more compassion than others, they had released the pair and, after hearing how they had revealed Mistaya’s hiding place to Laphroig, had sent them packing, and no one had seen them since. Mistaya wouldn’t have blamed either one for refusing to have anything to do with her from that day forward and wouldn’t have lost a great deal of sleep over it, either. But she felt certain she hadn’t seen the end of them.

So she went looking for them that afternoon, out to the woods where she had first encountered a dangling Poggwydd some weeks earlier on her return from Carrington. Maybe they had come back and made a new home, a fresh burrow in the soft earth. Maybe it wasn’t that they didn’t want anything to do with her. Maybe they were waiting to see if she wanted anything to do with them, given that they had betrayed her whereabouts to The Frog.

But a thorough search of the area revealed nothing, and she was just about to turn around and start home again when she saw Edgewood Dirk.

The Prism Cat was sitting at the base of an ancient broadleaf, his emerald eyes fixed on her, his silver-and-black coat glistening in a wash of hazy sunlight. She stopped and stared, making sure she wasn’t seeing things, and then she walked over to stand in front of him.

“Good afternoon, Princess,” the Prism Cat greeted.

“Good afternoon, Edgewood Dirk,” she replied. “I wondered what had become of you.”

“Nothing has become of me. I’ve been here all along, watching.”

“Watching? Me?”

“Not simply you. Everything Cats like to watch. We are curious creatures.”

She smiled despite herself. “So you know what happened back at Libiris?”

The cat blinked. “I know what I care to know, thank you. All’s well that ends well, it seems.”

“Do you know what became of His Eminence and Pinch?” She arched one eyebrow at him. “You do, don’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Someday, if the mood strikes me. But the mood doesn’t strike me just now. Now is the wrong time. Why don’t you tell me something instead?”

She sighed. She could have guessed that it wouldn’t be that easy. Dirk revealed what he knew of things only now and then. “What would you like to know that you don’t already know?”

“What do you intend to do now that you are back home again?”

“You sound like my father. He wants to know that, too. But I guess I haven’t decided, so I don’t have an answer to your question.”

“Perhaps you do. Perhaps you just need to consider the possibilities.”

She glared. “Why don’t you save us both a lot of time and list them for me. In fact, why don’t you just tell me what you think I should do and save me the trouble of having to decide anything at all?”

The cat blinked and then began washing himself. He took a long time in doing so, a rather deliberately slow process that she was certain was intended to aggravate her. But she held her tongue and waited.

Finally Dirk looked at her. “It isn’t my place to tell you what to do with your life. But I do think putting things off is not a good idea. Or leaving things undone. Cats never do that. They always finish what they start before going on to anything else. Cats understand the importance of completing what they start. They are easily distracted, as you know, so it is necessary for them to establish good life habits early so that they learn to focus.”

He paused. “It might be true of young girls, as well. Although I do not pretend to understand young girls in the same way I understand cats.”

She studied him a moment, and then she nodded. “I think you probably understand young girls pretty well. For a cat.”

Edgewood Dirk closed his eyes and then slowly opened them. “Just the ones who merit understanding. And only once in a very great while.”

Suddenly she heard her father calling her, although later she could never be certain that she had heard anything at all, and she turned toward the castle to look for him.

When she turned back again, Edgewood Dirk was gone.

She stood staring at the spot he had occupied for a very long time, as if by doing so she could make him reappear. She could hear him speaking in her mind; she could hear his words quite clearly. They jumbled together at first and then they sorted themselves out, and suddenly she discovered she knew exactly what she was going to do. Maybe she had known all along, but just hadn’t realized it. In any case, it hadn’t taken any time at all to figure it out. It had just taken a few words of wisdom from a very unusual cat.

She started back to the castle. She would tell her parents at dinner. She would tell them that it was important to finish what you start and to make a habit of doing so. She would tell them that she had learned this from a rather unexpected source, and now she must act on it.

Vince stopped when he reached the aviary and stood looking for what he already knew wasn’t there. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Every day he came and every day he looked and every day it was the same thing. The bird was gone. The crow or whatever it was with the red eyes. After all these years, it had disappeared. Vanished. Just like that.

No one knew for sure what had happened. Most hadn’t paid much attention to the bird for months—years, really, if you didn’t count the ornithologists. Some still didn’t realize it was gone. There were more important matters to occupy their working lives and dominate their conversations. But Vince was of a different mind. He didn’t think there was anything more important than the disappearance of the bird. Even if he wasn’t sure why, he sensed it.

That bird shouldn’t have gotten free. Security should have taken greater care than they did when they opened the door and took those two madmen into custody. But they weren’t paying attention to anything but the two men, and the crow would have been watching.

Just like it was always watching.

Vince knew, even if the others didn’t. It gave him a creepy, uncomfortable feeling, thinking about it. But he knew.

Five weeks gone now, and things were pretty much back to normal. No one had forgotten that day, a day that had started out pretty much like every other. He wasn’t the first one to notice the two men in the aviary, but he heard Roy shouting and rushed over to see what was happening, and there they were—these two guys, trapped in the aviary, kicking and hammering on the bars and shaking the cage in their efforts to get free. Odd pair of ducks—that was Vince’s first thought when he saw them. They were wearing clothes of the sort you sometimes saw on those people who spent their weekends playing at being knights and fighting with swords. They didn’t have any armor on, but they wore robes and tunics and scarves and boots and big belts with silver buckles. One was tall and skinny with a head that looked too big for the rest of his body, and the other was short like a dwarf and all wrinkled and whiskery. They did not look happy, their faces contorted and flushed with anger and frustration. They wanted out, but neither Vince nor Roy was about to help them. How they had gotten into the cage in the first place was hard to guess, considering that the cage door was still locked. But they had no business being there, whatever their excuse. At best, they were trespassing on city property, and it was likely that by interacting with the animals without authority they had broken a few more laws, as well.

Roy had already called security, so Vince and he stood side by side watching the two men rant and rave. Neither could understand anything the pair was saying. Roy thought they were speaking an Eastern European dialect, although how he would know that, being of Scottish descent, was a mystery to Vince. Vince thought it more likely that they were speaking Arabic. He thought the emphasis on the hard vowels suggested one of the Middle Eastern languages, and even if the big one was as pale as a ghost, it wasn’t impossible that he might be an Arabic albino or something. He might have been raised in Egypt or Morocco, Vince thought—even though he had never been anywhere outside the state and didn’t know the first thing about either of those countries.

Nevertheless, the two speculated on the matter until security got there and hauled the interlopers out of the cage in handcuffs and tossed them into one of those holding pens on wheels they used when the animals needed to be moved to a new enclosure. Shut the doors and took them away, and that was the last anyone had heard of either one. Vince guessed the authorities would try to find out where they came from and send them back. But he heard later that they didn’t have any identification on them, and no one could figure out what language they were speaking. That last was especially puzzling. In this day and age, with people all over the world moving here and there at the drop of a hat, you would think they could find someone close by who could speak any language in existence.

But not in this case, apparently. So the pair had ended up in the hands of the Homeland Security people to determine if they might be terrorists. But if no one could understand them or figure out where they came from, what could Homeland Security do?

It was odd that the two men had appeared just like the crow with the red eyes. Exactly the same way: not there one day, there the next, and no explanation for how they got there. It was as if animal shelters and aviaries were some sort of transport devices, like in that TV show Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty. Maybe the madmen and the bird had been beamed up from another planet.

Staring at the aviary now, in the aftermath of all the excitement, Vince shrugged his disinterest. What did it matter? If there were answers to be had, they weren’t going to be given to him. They were gone, all three of them, and they likely weren’t coming back. The crow with the red eyes especially. It wasn’t coming back for sure. Any fool who had watched it as he had could tell you that. Now that it was free, it was long gone. It wouldn’t be caught again, either. Not that bird.

He wondered where it would go. Somewhere far away, he hoped. He didn’t like that bird. He didn’t want to see it again. Better if it were someone else’s problem.

That bird was trouble waiting to happen.

TERRY BROOKS is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five books, including the Genesis of Shannara novels Armageddon’s Children, The Elves of Cintra, and The Gypsy Morph; The Sword of Shannara; the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy: Ilse Witch, Antrax, and Morgawr; the High Druid of Shannara trilogy: Jarka Ruus, Tanequil, and Straken; the nonfiction book Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life; and the novel based upon the screenplay and story by George Lucas, Star Wars ®: Episode I The Phantom Menace.™ His novels Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word were selected by the Rocky Mountain News as two of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the twentieth century. The author was a practicing attorney for many years but now writes full-time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest.

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