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… AND NIGHTMARES

Later, Ben Holiday would remember how ill-conceived his advice to himself had been that night. He would remember the words clearly. It will all keep. Tomorrow will be soon enough. He would remember those words as he ate them. He would reflect bitterly on the undiscerning reassurance he had allowed himself to take from them.

That was the beauty of hindsight, of course. It was always twenty-twenty.

The trouble began almost immediately. He retired directly to his bed chamber from the study, slipped on a nightshirt, and crawled beneath the covers. He was exhausted, but sleep would not come. He was keyed up from the day’s events, and the mystery of the dreams played about like a cornered rat in his mind. He chased the rat, but he couldn’t catch it. It was a shadow that eluded him effortlessly. He could see its outline, but could not grasp its form.

Its eyes glowed crimson in the darkness.

He blinked and shoved himself up on his elbows. The rune stone that Willow had given him shone fire red on the nightstand where he had placed it. He blinked, aware suddenly that he must have been nearly asleep when the light had brought him back. The color of the stone meant danger threatened—just as it must have threatened during the whole of the trip back.

But where was the danger to be found, damn it?

He rose and walked about the room like a creature stalking prey. There was nothing there. His clothes still lay draped over the chair where he had thrown them; his duffel still occupied its spot on the floor by the dressing room. He stood in the center of the room for a moment and let the warmth of the castle’s life reach out to him. Sterling Silver responded with a deep, inner glow that wrapped him from head to foot. She was undisturbed.

He frowned. Perhaps the stone was mistaken.

It was distracting, in any case, so he covered it with a towel and climbed back into his bed. He waited a moment, closed his eyes, opened them again, closed them a second time. The darkness cloaked him and did not tease. The rat was gone. Questions and answers mixed and faded in the night. He began to drift.

He might have dreamed for a time, then. There were images of unicorns, some black, some white, and the slender, timeless faces of the fairies. There were images of his friends, both past and present, and of the dreams he had envisioned for his kingdom and his life. They ran through his subconscious, and their fluid motion lulled him as the rolling of an endless sea.

Then a curious fire flared to sudden life within his mind, disrupting the flow. Hands reached from out of nothingness, and fingers clasped the chain about his neck—his hands, his fingers. What were they doing?

And suddenly there was an image of Meeks!

The image appeared from out of a black mist, the wizard a tall, skeletal form cloaked in gunmetal blue with a face as rough and hard as raw iron. He loomed over Ben as if he were death come for its latest victim, one sleeve empty, the other a black claw that reached down, down …

Ben jerked awake with a start, kicking back the bedclothes, sweeping blindly at the dark with one hand. He blinked and squinted. A candle’s flame lit one corner of the room, a solitary pinprick of white-gold against a haze of crimson fire given off by Willow’s rune stone as it blazed in frantic warning on the nightstand, the towel that had covered it gone. Ben could feel the presence of the danger it signaled. His breath came in sharp gasps, and it was as if a giant hand pressed down upon his chest. He fought to push it off, but his muscles would not obey. His body seemed locked in place.

Something moved in the dark—something huge.

Ben tried to shout, but the sound was no more than a whisper.

A figure materialized, scarlet light covering it like blood. The figure stood there and, in a voice that sounded of nails on slate, whispered, “We meet again, Mr. Holiday.”

It was Meeks.

Ben could not speak. He could only stare. It was as if the image that had haunted him during his visit to the old world had somehow managed to follow him back into this one. Except that this was no image. He knew it instantly. This was real!

Meeks smiled thinly. He was quite human in appearance now, the predatory look vanished. “What—no clever words of greeting, no brave admonishments, not even a threat? How unlike you, Mr. Holiday. What seems to be the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

The muscles of Ben’s throat and face tightened as he struggled to regain control of himself. He was paralyzed. Meeks’ flat, terrifying eyes bound him with cords he could not break.

“Yes, yes, the will is there, isn’t it, Mr. Holiday—but the way is so dark! I know that feeling well! Remember how it was when you left me last? Remember? You taunted me in the vision crystal—my sole link with this world—and then you shattered it! You broke my eyes, Mr. Holiday, and you left me blind!” His voice had become a hiss of fury. “Oh, yes, I know what it is like to be paralyzed and alone!”

He moved forward a step further and stopped, his gaunt, craggy face bent against the crimson light of the rune. He seemed impossibly huge. “You are a fool, play-King—do you know that? You thought to play games with me and you did not even bother to understand that it was I who made all the rules. I am the games master, little man, and you are but a novice! I made you King of this land; I gave you all that it had to offer. You took that from me as if you were entitled to it! You took it as if it belonged to you!”

He was shaking with anger, the fingers of his gloved hand knotted in front of his robes in a clawed fist. Ben had never been so terrified in his life. He wanted to shrink down into himself, to crawl beneath the covers once more. He wanted to do anything—anything—that would let him escape this terrible old man.

Then Meeks straightened, and abruptly the anger in his face was replaced by cold indifference. He looked away. “Well, it hardly matters now. The game is over. You have lost, Mr. Holiday.”

Sweat ran down Ben’s rigid back. How could this have possibly happened? Meeks had been trapped in the old world; he had been denied any possible entrance into Landover as long as Ben held the medallion!

“Would you like to know how I got here, Mr. Holiday?” Meeks seemed to have read his mind. The wizard swung slowly back on him. “It was simple, really. I let you bring me.” He saw the look in Ben’s eyes and laughed. “Yes, Mr. Holiday—that’s right. You were responsible for bringing me back again. What do you think of that?”

He came forward until he was standing next to the bed. His craggy face bent close. Ben could smell the stench of him. “The dreams were mine, Mr. Holiday. I sent them to you—to you, my half-brother, and the sylph. I sent them. Not all of my powers were lost in the destruction of the crystal! I could still reach you, Mr. Holiday! In your sleep! I could bridge the two worlds through your subconscious! My foolish half-brother forgot to think of that in cautioning you against me. Dreams were the only tools I needed to take control of you again. How vivid the imagination can be! Did you find the dream I sent you compelling, Mr. Holiday? Yes, of course you did. Your dream was sent to bring you to me, and bring you to me it did! I knew you would come if you thought your friend Mr. Bennett needed you. I knew you must come. It was simple after that, Mr. Holiday. The image at the end of the time passage was magic that alerted me to your return and let me trace your movements. It settled down within you, and you were never free of me after!”

Ben’s heart sank. He should have known that Meeks would use the magic to keep track of him in some way. He should have known the wizard would leave nothing to chance. He had been a fool.

Meeks was smiling like the Cheshire Cat. “The second image was an even more interesting ploy. It diverted you from what I was really about. Oh, yes, I was there with you, Mr. Holiday! I was behind you! While you were preoccupied with my image, I slipped down into your clothing, a thing no bigger than a tiny insect. I concealed myself upon you and I let you carry me back into Landover. The medallion allows only your passage, Mr. Holiday—yet if I am a part of you, it also allows mine!”

He was hidden within my clothing, Ben thought in despair, with me all the way back, and I never realized it. That was why the rune stone glowed in warning. The threat was always there, but I couldn’t see it!

“Ironic, isn’t it, Mr. Holiday—you bringing me back as you did?” The skin on Meeks’ cheeks and forehead was pulled back with the intensity of his smile, and his face was like a skull. “I had to come back, you know. I had to come back immediately because of your damnable, insistent meddling! Have you any idea of the trouble you have caused me? No—no, of course not. You have no idea. You do not even know what I am talking about. You understand nothing! And, in your ignorance, you have very nearly destroyed what it has taken years to create! You have disrupted everything—you and your campaign to become King of Landover!”

He had worked himself into a rage again, and it was only with great effort that he brought himself back under control. Even so, the words spit from him like bile. “No matter, Mr. Holiday, no matter. This all means nothing to you, so there is no point in belaboring it. I have the books now, and there is no further damage that you can do. I have what I need. Your dream has given me mastery of you, my half-brother’s dream has given me mastery of the books, and the sylph’s dream will give me …”

He stopped sharply, almost as if he had erred. There was a curious uneasiness in the pale, hard eyes. He blinked and it was gone. One hand brushed the empty air in dismissal. “Everything. The dreams will give me everything,” he finished.

The medallion, Ben was thinking frantically. If I could only manage to put my hands on the medallion …

Meeks laughed sharply. “There is undoubtedly much that you wish to say to me, isn’t there, Mr. Holiday? And surely much that you wish to do!” The craggy face shoved close before his own once more. The hard eyes bored into him. “Well, I will give you your chance, play-King. I will give you the opportunity that you were so quick to deny me when you smashed the crystal and exiled me from my home!”

One bony finger crooked before Ben’s frozen eyes. “But first I have something to show you. I have it right here, looped safely about my neck.” His hand dipped downward into the robes. “Look closely, Mr. Holiday. Do you see it?”

He withdrew his hand slowly. There was a chain gripped tightly in the fingers. Ben’s medallion hung fastened at its end.

Meeks smiled in triumph as he saw the look of desperation that flooded Ben’s eyes. “Yes, Mr. Holiday! Yes, play-King! Yes, you poor fool! It is your precious medallion! The key to Landover—and it belongs to me now!” He dangled it slowly before Ben, letting it twirl to catch the mixed light of blazing rune stone and candle’s flame. His eyes narrowed. “Do you wish to know what happened to separate you from the medallion? You gave it to me in a dream I sent you, Mr. Holiday. You took the medallion off and passed it to me. You gave the medallion to me willingly. I could not take it by force, but you gave it to me!”

Meeks was like a giant that threatened to crush Ben—tall, dark, looming out of the shadows. His breath hissed. “I think there is nothing I can tell you that you do not already know, is there, Mr. Holiday?”

He made a quick gesture with his hand, and the invisible chains that held Ben paralyzed dropped away. He could move again and speak. Yet he did neither. He simply waited.

“Reach down within your nightshirt, Mr. Holiday,” the wizard whispered.

Ben did as he was told. His fingers closed on a medallion fastened to the end of a chain. Slowly he withdrew it. The medallion was the same shape and size as the one he had once worn—the one Meeks now possessed. But the engraving on the face was changed. Gone was the Paladin, Sterling Silver, and the rising sun. Gone was the polished silver sheen. The medallion was tarnished black as soot and embossed with the robed figure of Meeks.

Ben stared at the medallion in horror, touched it disbelievingly, then let it drop from his fingers as if it had burned him.

Meeks nodded in satisfaction. “I own you, Mr. Holiday. You are mine to do with as I choose. I could simply destroy you, of course—but I won’t. That would be too easy an end for you after all the trouble you have caused me!” He paused, the smile returning—hard, ironic. “Instead, Mr. Holiday, I think I will set you free.”

He moved back a few steps, waiting. Ben hesitated, then rose from the bed, his mind working frantically to find a way out of this nightmare. There were no weapons close at hand. Meeks stood between him and the bedroom door.

He took a step forward.

“Oh, one thing more.” Meeks’ voice stopped him as surely as if he had run into a wall of stone. The hard, old face was a mass of gullies and ridges worn by time. “You are free—but you will have to leave the castle. Now. You see, Mr. Holiday, you do not belong here anymore. You are no longer King. You are, in fact, no longer even yourself.”

One hand lifted. There was a brief sweep of light and Ben’s nightshirt was gone. He was dressed in laborer’s clothing—rough woolen pants and tunic, a woolen cloak, and worn boots. There was dirt on him and the smell of animals.

Meeks studied him dispassionately. “One of the common folk, Mr. Holiday—that is who you will be from this day forward. Work hard and you may find a way to advance yourself. There is opportunity in this land even for such as you. You will not be King again, of course. But you may find some other suitable occupation. I hope so. I would hate to think of you as destitute. I would be most distressed if you were to suffer inconvenience. Life is a long time, you know.”

His gaze shifted suddenly to Willow’s rune stone. “By the way, you will not be needing that any more, will you?” His hand lifted, and the rune stone flew from the nightstand into his gloved palm. His fingers closed, and the stone shattered into dust, its red glow winking out abruptly.

He looked back again at Ben, his smile cold and hard. “Now where were we? Oh, yes—we were discussing the matter of your future. I can assure you that I will monitor it with great interest. The medallion with which I have supplied you will tell me all I need to know. Be careful you do not try to remove that medallion. A certain magic protects against such foolishness—a magic that would shorten your life rather considerably if it were challenged. And I do not want you to die, Mr. Holiday—not for a long, long time.”

Ben stared at the other man in disbelief. What sort of game was this? He measured quickly the distance to the bedroom door. He could move and talk again; he was free of whatever it was that had paralyzed him. He had to try to escape.

Then he saw Meeks watching him, studying him as a cat might a cornered mouse, and fear gave way to anger and shame. “This won’t work, Meeks,” he said quietly, forcing the edge from his voice. “No one will accept this.”

“No?” Meeks kept the smile steady. “And why is that, Mr. Holiday?”

Ben took a deep breath and a couple of steps forward for good measure. “Because these old clothes you’ve slapped on me won’t fool anyone! And medallion or no medallion, I’m still me and you’re still you!”

Meeks arched his eyebrows quizzically. “Are you certain of that, Mr. Holiday? Are you quite sure?”

There was a tug of doubt at the back of Ben’s mind, but he kept it from his eyes. He glanced sideways at the floor-length mirror to catch a glimpse of himself and was relieved to find that physically, at least, he was still the same person he had always been.

But Meeks seemed so certain. Had the wizard changed him in some way that he couldn’t see?

“This won’t work,” he repeated, edging closer to the door as he spoke, trying to figure out what it was that Meeks knew that he didn’t—because there most certainly was something …

Meeks’ laughter was sharp and acrid. “Why don’t we see what works and what doesn’t, Mr. Holiday!”

The gloved hand swept up, the fingers extended, and green fire burst from the tips. Ben sprang forward with a lunge, tumbling past the dark form of the wizard, rolling wildly to dodge the fire, and scrambling back to his feet. He reached the closed door in a rush and had his fingers on the handle when the magic caught up with him. He tried to scream, but couldn’t. Shadows wrapped him, smothered him, and the sleep that wouldn’t come earlier couldn’t now be kept away.

Ben Holiday shuddered helplessly and dropped slowly into blackness.