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ABADDON

It was nearing dusk when Ben tightened the last of the straps on the makeshift leather riding harness he had fashioned, ordered Strabo to kneel down and climbed aboard. He settled himself carefully in the seat that rested at the juncture of several clusters of bony spikes that ribbed the dragon’s spine, tested the cinch straps for slippage and fitted his boots into the iron stirrups.

At least he had the riding harness. He was lucky to have that. It was an unwieldy apparatus, constructed from traces, straps, buckles, and rings that had belonged to various field animals fallen victim to the dragon and brought to the Fire Springs for leisurely consumption. He had picked it out from among the bones and fastened it all together. It was bound about the dragon’s neck just above and behind the forelegs, the saddle on which he sat settled forward of the haunches. Reins ran to the neck just behind the crested head. Ben didn’t think for a moment that he would be able to guide the dragon as he would a horse; the reins were just one more precaution to keep him from falling off.

“If you fall, you’re in trouble, Holiday,” the dragon had warned him earlier.

“Then you’d better make sure that I don’t,” Ben had replied. “You are ordered to make sure that I don’t.”

He wasn’t convinced, however, that Strabo could do that, Io Dust or no Io Dust. They were descending into the netherworld of Abaddon, and both lives would be at risk. Strabo would have difficulty keeping them safe under the best of circumstances—and the proposed rescue of his missing friends from the realm of the demons did not promise the best of anything.

He paused momentarily, seated atop the dragon, and gazed out across the wasteland. They had moved to the rim of the Fire Springs, clear of the burning craters and the thick undergrowth. The day was dying into evening; as the sun slipped down behind the distant mountains, mist and gloom settled over the valley. Landover was a murky gathering of shadows and vague shapes. Ben could almost watch the failing of the daylight from one moment to the next. It was as if the valley were disappearing before his eyes. He had the uneasy sensation that it was, the unpleasant feeling that he would never see it again.

He straightened himself in the stirrups, hardening his resolve against such thoughts. He forced a grim smile. Ben Holiday was about to sally forth, a knight atop his steed, off to the rescue. He almost laughed. Don Quixote, off to tilt with windmills—what a picture he could send home again if he had his camera! Damn, but he had never thought—never believed—that he would be doing anything like this with his life! All those years of living behind concrete and steel walls; all those stuffy courtrooms and musty law libraries; all those sterile pleadings and legal briefs; all those lawbooks and statutes and codes—how far removed from that he was now!

And he knew, with a certainty that surprised him, that he could never go back again to any of it.

“What are you doing up there, Holiday—admiring the view?” Strabo’s hiss of displeasure interrupted his thoughts. “Let’s be on our way!”

“All right,” Ben agreed softly. “Take me up.”

The dragon’s wings spread wide, and he lifted from the ground with a lurch. Ben held tightly to the reins and harness straps, watching the land drop away quickly beneath him. He had a momentary glimpse of bramble, thicket, and deadwood forests fading into trailers of mist and dusk’s lengthening shadows, and then there was only gloom. Fillip and Sot were down there somewhere, hidden from view. He had gone back to them long enough to let them know that he was riding Strabo down into Abaddon to rescue the others. He had dispatched them back again to Sterling Silver to await his return. They had been only too quick to go, their horror-stricken faces clearly reflecting their unspoken conviction that they had seen the last of him.

Maybe they had, he mused. Maybe he should have told them to go on home and forget about him. They probably wouldn’t have done that, though. They still took their pledge to him quite seriously.

He reflected momentarily on all the help they had given him—a pair of larcenous, grimy little cannibals. Who would have thought it? Silently, he wished them well.

Strabo flew into the coming night, passing from the eastern wasteland to the fringes of the Greensward and then west. The daylight failed completely, darkness descended, and Landover’s moons began to shine. They were all visible on this night—white, peach, washed-out mauve, burnt rose, sea green, beryl, turquoise, and jade—their colors unobstructed by the mists that shrouded the valley below. They were like giant balloons, Ben thought and wondered where the party was.

The minutes slipped rapidly past. Strabo’s massive body undulated rhythmically beneath Ben as the leathered wings beat against the night winds and carried them westward. Ben gripped the reins and harness and hung on for dear life. Air currents buffeted and chilled him. Landover was a vast bowl of steaming soup over which he hung suspended. He was exhilarated by the sensation of flying like this, but he was frightened, too. He hadn’t liked horseback riding and he didn’t like dragon riding any better. The dragon kept a steady pace and that helped, but Ben still distrusted the situation. He knew the Io Dust could wear off at any time and that would be the end of him.

“This is a foolish venture!” Strabo called back to him moments later, as if reading his thoughts. The crusted, misshapen head swung about, eyes glinting. “All this for a handful of humans!”

“My friends!” Ben shouted in reply, the wind whipping the words back into his face.

“Your friends mean nothing to me!”

“Fair enough—you mean nothing to them! Except Questor Thews, I suppose—he thinks you special!”

“The wizard? Pah!”

“Just do what I told you to do!” Ben ordered.

“I hate you, Holiday!”

“Sorry—I don’t care!”

“You will! Sooner or later, I’ll get free of you and when I do you’ll be sorry you ever decided to use me this way!”

The head swung back again, the cold, mechanical voice dying into the rush of the wind. Ben said nothing. He gripped the reins and the harness straps tighter.

They flew deep into the Greensward toward the center of the valley. Ben did not know where they were going. He knew the dragon was taking him to Abaddon, but he had no idea where Abaddon was. Abaddon was the netherworld of Landover, but its gates were time passages of the sort that had brought him from his own world. They were not, however, the same time passages. They were not to be found within the mists that ringed the valley. They were hidden somewhere within the valley, Strabo had told him—somewhere only the demons and the dragon could reach …

Strabo slowed suddenly and began a long sweep back that became a widening circle. Ben looked down. The valley was a shroud of mist and gloom. Strabo’s wings spread wider, and the dragon began to bank sharply on the night winds.

“Hold tight to me, Holiday!” the dragon cried back to him.

Strabo dipped suddenly and started down. Wings flattened back and the long neck stretched forward. They began to pick up speed as the dragon’s dive steepened. The wind rushed past Ben Holiday’s ears in a vicious roar that drowned out everything. The ground began to come into focus, a shapeless blur sharpening with the passing of each second they dropped. Ben was cold all the way through. They were going too fast! They were going to dive right into the middle of the Greensward!

Then abruptly the dragon fire exploded from Strabo’s throat, a huge, brilliant arc of crimson flame. The air seemed to melt before it, cellophane that wrinkled and expanded at its edges, leaving a jagged hole. Ben squinted against the rush of the wind and saw the blackness of the hole open out of the night. Dragon fire died away, but the hole remained. They were passing through it, flying into the empty dark. Landover disappeared; the misted Greensward was gone. There was a sucking noise as the hole closed behind them and then sudden stillness.

Strabo leveled off within the black. Ben lifted slightly from where he had crouched down against the dragon’s spine and stared about, awestruck. The world had undergone a radical change. Moon and stars were gone. There was a sky of inky black, canopied over a sprawling mass of jagged peaks and deep gorges. Flashes of lightning danced at the juncture of earth and sky, filling the fringes of the horizon with a bizarre light show. Volcanos growled in the distance, their reddish fires glimmering from out of mountainous cones of rock; streams of lava flowed in long red trailers like blood. The earth shook and grumbled with the eruptions, and geysers of flame and molten rock exploded skyward against the blackness.

“Abaddon!” Strabo advised, his voice a slow hiss.

He dropped downward with sickening speed, and Ben felt the pit of his stomach lurch. Mountain peaks rushed past, and the fire from the volcanos burst skyward all about. Ben was terrified. Abaddon was the realization of his worst nightmare. He had never seen anything so inhospitable. Nothing could survive in such a world.

A shadow rocketed past, winged and elusive. Strabo hissed in warning. Another shadow slipped past, then another. There were sharp hisses and flashes of teeth. Dragon fire burst suddenly from Strabo’s maw, and one of the shadows screamed and dropped earthward. Ben flattened himself within the nest of spikes that protected the dragon’s spine. The fire burst forth again and again. Another of the shadows exploded into ash and fell. Strabo was weaving evasively as more of the shadows appeared. He stretched out his massive body and increased his speed. The black things fell behind and were gone.

A series of rugged peaks whipped past, and then the dragon slowed once more. “Gnats!” he growled contemptuously. “No match for me!”

Ben was drenched with sweat and could barely catch his breath. “How much farther?”

The dragon’s laugh was harsh. “A bit, Holiday. What seems to be the matter? Is this more than you bargained for?”

“I’ll be fine. You do what you were told to do and get to my friends!”

“Temper, Holiday.”

The dragon flew on through the fire-streaked blackness. The “gnats” came at them twice more, and twice more Strabo burned a handful of them before flying past. The world of Abaddon stretched on below, unchanging in its look, a world of rock and fire. White light danced frantically on the horizons all about, and lava flared within the craters of the mountain peaks, but in the valleys and gorges below all remained impenetrably black. If there was something living down there, it could not be seen from the air.

Ben began to experience a growing sense of futility. His friends had been trapped in this world for almost five days!

Strabo banked left between two monstrous volcanic peaks and started down. Wind rushed past, and trailers of fire laced the mountain rock on both sides. Ben peered down into the lava. Things were swimming in the fire! Things were playing there!

A monstrous black shadow heaved up from out of the shadows on one peak, tentacled arms reaching. Strabo hissed and the dragon fire burned at the arms. The arms shuddered and drew back. The shadow disappeared.

Then they were through the mountains and within a valley ringed by jagged peaks. Strabo dove sharply and leveled off less than fifty feet above its floor. Pools of fiery lava bubbled at the fringes of the valley, throwing rocks and flame skyward in small bursts. Cracks and crevices split the barren floor, dropping away into blackness. Creatures scurried everywhere, small and misshapen in the crimson half-light, things barely human. Cries rose up at the sight of the dragon, shrieks that disappeared as quickly as they sounded in the distant roar of the volcanos. Ben heard the dragon screech in reply.

The “gnats” reappeared, dozens strong. Other things winged into view, larger and more fearsome-looking. Strabo leveled out and flew faster. Ben was hunched down so close to the dragon’s spine that he could feel the pulsing of his hide. Straps and cinches strained with the effort of the dragon’s flight. Ben could feel things beginning to loosen.

Then a monstrous pit of fire appeared before them, its throat thousands of feet deep. A tiny slab of rock hung suspended by chains across that throat—a disk of stone that measured no more than a dozen feet across. The slab of rock danced and bobbled unsteadily on its webbing of iron, and the fire licked up at it hungrily from far below.

Ben caught his breath sharply. There were a handful of tiny figures crouched on that slab of rock, fighting to keep their balance.

His friends!

Strabo dove for them, gnats and other flying demons in pursuit. Other demons still, hundreds strong, were gathered about the fire pit, throwing rocks at the figures crouched upon the slab and shaking the chains that secured it. All were yelling gleefully. It was a game they were playing, Ben realized in horror. The demons had trapped or placed his friends on that slab and were waiting now to see them fall into the fire!

The pit drew closer. The demons turned, seeing the dragon now, crying out. Hands reached for the pins that fastened the chains to the pit wall. The demons were trying to drop the slab and his friends into the fire before he could reach them!

Ben was frantic. Chains fell away quickly, one after another, and the slab of rock buckled and shook. Strabo breathed fire at the demons and burned dozens to ash, but the rest continued to work at the chains. Ben screamed in fury as he saw clearly now the faces of Questor Thews, Abernathy, the kobolds—and Willow! Strabo rocketed clear of the rim of the pit, past the demons working to release the chains that bound the rock slab. Too late, Ben thought. They were going to be too late!

There was an instant then in which time froze. There was no time and all the time in the world. Ben seemed to see everything that happened with a frightening detachment that held him suspended in the instant of its happening. The chains at one section fell away completely and the slab of rock buckled and sagged. His friends dropped to their hands and knees and began to slide toward the pit.

Strabo dove sharply, dragging Ben with him toward the fire. He reached the slab of rock as the people on it slipped away. Clawed feet snatched two out of midair. With a quick snap of his jaws, he caught another, and his great head twisted back to deposit a kobold in front of Ben. The second kobold flung himself at the harness and grasped the straps.

The final figure dropped into the pit. It was Questor Thews.

Ben saw him fall, watching in horror as the gray robes with their rainbow-colored sashes flared and billowed like a failing parachute. Strabo arced downward, then rose quickly again into the night. He was too far away to reach the wizard. He could not save him.

“Questor!” Ben screamed.

Then something truly magical happened, something so bizarre that even with all that had happened in the few moments past, it left Ben stunned. Questor’s plunge into the fire seemed to slow and then to stop altogether. The wizard’s arms spread wide against the crimson light of the flames and slowly the sticklike figure began to rise from the pit.

Ben caught his breath, his mind racing. There was only one possible answer. Questor Thews had finally conjured up the right spell! He had made the magic work!

Strabo arced downward quickly, bursts of fire incinerating the “gnats” and other flying demons that sought to intercede. He reached Questor Thews just as the wizard levitated above the rim of the pit, flew under him, and caught him on his back so that he was settled just behind Ben.

Ben turned hurriedly and stared. Questor sat there like a statue, his face ashen, his eyes bright with astonishment. “It … it was all in a proper twist of the fingers, High Lord,” the wizard managed before fainting.

Ben reached back and secured him, one hand firmly fixed to the gray robes as Strabo began to climb. Shrieks rose from the demons, a cacophony of epithets that faded quickly as the dragon outdistanced them. The ground dropped away below, transformed into a rumpled black shroud rent by jagged holes and cracks of flame. The lightning at the edges of the world danced wildly, streaking across the horizon’s sweep, and all of Abaddon seemed to shake and rumble.

Then Strabo breathed dragon fire into the air before them, and once again the sky melted and gave way. Edges frayed and crinkled about a jagged hole, and the dragon and his passengers passed through.

Ben had to squint against a sudden change of light. When he opened his eyes wide again, stars and colored moons brightened a misted night sky.

They were back in Landover once more.

It took Ben several moments to regain his bearings. They were in Landover, but not over the Greensward. They were north, almost to the wall of the valley. Strabo circled for a time, winging over thick forestland and barren ridgeline, then eased down gently into a deserted meadow.

Ben scrambled down from the dragon’s back. Bunion and Parsnip greeted him with hisses and gleaming teeth, so agitated they could barely contain themselves. Abernathy dropped rudely to the ground, picked himself up, brushed himself off, and denounced the day he had ever let himself become mixed up with any of them. Questor, conscious again, lowered himself gingerly along the harness straps and stumbled over to Ben, barely aware of what he was doing, his eyes fixed on the dragon.

“I had never believed I would see the day that anyone would rule this … this marvelous creature!” he whispered, awestruck. “Strabo—last of the old dragons, the greatest of the fairy creatures, brought to the service of a King of Landover! It was the Io Dust, of course, but still …”

He stumbled into Ben and suddenly remembered himself. “High Lord, you are safe! We thought you lost for certain! How you found your way clear of the fairy world, I will never know! How you accomplished what you did …” His enthusiasm left him momentarily speechless, and he reached for Ben’s hand and pumped it vigorously. Ben grinned in spite of himself. “We came looking for you after you failed to return that first day, and the witch took us,” the wizard went on hastily. “She sent us to Abaddon and dropped us on that slab of rock for the demons to play with. Almost five days, High Lord! That’s how long we have been trapped there! Days of being teased and taunted by those loathsome, foul …”

The kobolds hissed and chittered wildly, pointing.

Questor nodded at once, his enthusiasm fading. “Yes, you are correct to intercede—I had indeed forgotten.” He took Ben’s arm. “I ramble, High Lord, when there are more pressing concerns. The sylph is very ill.” He hesitated, then pulled Ben after him. “I am sorry, High Lord, but she may be dying.”

Ben’s smile was gone instantly. They hurried forward of where Strabo crouched, watching them with lidded eyes. Abernathy was already kneeling in the grass next to Willow’s inert form. Ben knelt with him, and Questor and the kobolds gathered close.

“Her time for joining with the earth came when she was trapped in Abaddon,” Questor whispered. “She could not deny the changeling need, but the rock would not accept her.”

Ben shuddered. Willow had tried to transform, unable to resist the need, and the attempt had been only partially completed. Her skin had gone wrinkled and barklike, her fingers and toes had turned to gnarled roots, her hair had become slender branches, and her body had twisted and split. She was so hideous to look upon that Ben could barely manage to do so.

“She still breathes, High Lord,” Abernathy said softly.

Ben fought down his revulsion. “We have to save her,” he replied, trying desperately to think of what to do. He stared in horror as Willow’s body convulsed suddenly, and more roots split from the skin beneath one wrist. The sylph’s eyes fluttered blindly and closed again. She was in agony. Anger coursed through Ben like a fire. “Questor, use your magic!”

“No, High Lord.” Questor shook his head slowly. “No magic that I possess can help. Only one thing can save her. She must complete the transformation.”

Ben wheeled on the wizard. “Damn it, how is she supposed to do that? She’s barely alive!”

No one said anything. He turned back to the girl. He should never have left her alone with Nightshade. He should never have permitted her to come with him in the first place. It was his fault that this had happened. It would be his fault if she died …

He swore softly and thrust the thought aside. His mind raced.

Then suddenly he remembered. “The old pines!” he exclaimed. “The grove in Elderew where her mother danced and she transformed herself that last night! It was special to her! Perhaps she could complete the transformation there!” He was already on his feet, directing the others. “Here, help me carry her! Strabo—bend down!”

They bore the sylph to the dragon and bound her to his back. Then they climbed up beside her, fastening themselves where they could to the makeshift harness. Ben rode in front of the unconscious girl, Questor and Abernathy behind, the kobolds to either side at the stirrups.

Strabo grunted irritably in response to a command from Ben and then lifted into the night sky. They flew south, the dragon leveling out and straining to increase his speed, the wind threatening to tear them all loose from the creaking harness. The minutes slipped past, and the hill country north gave way to the plains of the Greensward. Ben’s hand reached back to touch the body of the sylph and found the barklike skin cold and hard. They were losing her. There wasn’t enough time. The Greensward passed away and the forests and rivers of the lake country appeared, dim patches of color through the haze of mist. The dragon dropped lower, skimming the treetops and the ridgelines. Ben was shaking with impatience and frustration. His hand still clasped Willow’s arm, and it seemed as if he could actually feel the life passing from her.

Then Strabo banked sharply left and dove downward into the forest. Trees rushed up to greet them, then there was a small clearing through the wall of branches; as quick as that, they were on the ground once more. Ben scrambled down wordlessly, the others with him, all working frantically to free Willow. The forest loomed about them like a wall, trailers of mist swirling through the rows of dark trunks. Bunion hissed at them and led the way, his instincts sure. They moved into the trees, slipping and groping their way through the near black, carrying the rigid form of the girl.

They reached the pine grove in seconds. The pines stood empty and silent in the mist, sentinels against the dark. Ben directed the procession to the grove’s center, the earthen stage on which Willow’s mother had danced the last night before he had departed Elderew.

Gently, they laid Willow down. Ben felt the girl’s wrist above the mass of roots and tendrils that had broken the skin. The wrist was cold and lifeless.

“She is not breathing, High Lord!” Questor whispered in a low hiss.

Ben was frantic. He lifted the stricken sylph in his arms and held her close against him. He was crying. “Damn it, you can’t die, Willow, you can’t do this to me!” He cradled her, feeling the roughness of her skin chafe his face. “Willow, answer me!”

And suddenly he was holding Annie, her body broken and bloodstained from the accident that had taken her life, another piece of wreckage to be swept from the scene. The sensation was so sharp that he gasped. He could feel bone and blood and torn flesh; he could feel the small, frail life of his unborn child. “Oh, God, no!” he cried softly.

He jerked his head up, and the image faded. He was holding Willow again. He bent close, kissing the sylph’s cheek and mouth, his tears running down her face. He had lost Annie and the child she carried. He could not stand it if he were to lose Willow, too. “Don’t die,” he begged her. “I don’t want you to die. Willow, please!”

Her frail body stirred, responding almost miraculously, and her eyes opened to his. He looked into those eyes, past the ravaged face and body, past the devastation wrought by the half-completed transformation. He reached for the flicker of life that still burned within.

“Come back to me, Willow!” he begged her. “You must live!”

The eyes closed again. But the body of the sylph stirred more strongly now, and convulsions became spasms of effort to regain muscle control. Willow’s throat swallowed. “Ben. Help me up. Hold me.”

He brought her quickly to her feet, and the others stepped back from them. He held her there, feeling the lifeblood work itself through her, feeling the transformation begin again. Her roots snaked deep into the forest soil, her branches lengthened and split, and her trunk stretched and hardened.

Then everything went still. Ben looked up. The change was complete. Willow had become the tree that was her namesake. It was going to be all right.

His eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Thank you,” he whispered.

He lowered his head, wrapped his arms about the slender trunk, and cried.

The demon appeared toward dawn, materializing out of the gloom, a black and misshapen thing wrapped in armor. It happened very suddenly. The wind whispered, the mist swirled, and the demon was there.

Ben was awake almost instantly. He had been dozing, sleeping in fits and starts, cramped from leaning against Willow, from holding her. Strabo was presumably still back in the clearing where Ben had left him.

The demon approached, and Ben rose to meet it. The kobolds interposed themselves instantly, moving to block the demon’s way. Abernathy jerked awake and kicked Questor roughly. The wizard awoke as well and scrambled to his feet. The demon’s helmeted head swung slowly about, and its crimson eyes surveyed the company and the pine grove with studied caution.

Then it spoke. Ben could not understand anything of what was said, and the speech was over almost before it began. Questor hesitated, then looked back at him. “The Mark issues you a challenge, High Lord. He demands that you meet him in combat three dawns from now at the Heart.”

Ben nodded wordlessly. What had been promised from the beginning was finally here. Time had run out. He was only half awake, still near exhaustion from his ordeal of the past several days, but he grasped the significance of the challenge instantly.

The Mark had had enough of him. The demon was angry.

But perhaps—just perhaps—the demon was worried, too. Questor had once told him that the demon always challenged at midwinter—and it was nowhere near midwinter yet. The demon was rushing things.

He thought about it a moment, tried to reason it through, then shook his head numbly. It didn’t matter. He had made the decision to stay long ago, and nothing would change that decision now. It surprised him that his resolve was so strong. It gave him a good feeling.

He nodded to the messenger. “I’ll be there.”

The demon was gone in a swirl of mist. Ben stared after it a moment, then gazed off into the trees where the first light of dawn was still a faint silver tinge against the far horizons. “Go back to sleep,” he told the others gently.

He settled down again by Willow, rested his cheek against her roughened trunk and closed his eyes.

Dawn had broken when he came awake once more. He was stretched full length upon the earth in the shadow of the aged pines. His head rested in Willow’s lap and her arms cradled him. She had transformed back again.

“Ben,” she greeted softly.

He looked at her slender arms, her body and then her face. She was just as she had been when he had seen her that first night bathing in the waters of the Irrylyn. The color, the beauty, and the vibrancy had been restored. She was the vision he had wanted and been afraid to seek. Yet it was no longer the vision that mattered to him; it was the life inside. The repulsion, the fear, and the sense of alienation he had once felt were gone. They had been replaced by hope.

He smiled. “I need you,” he whispered and meant it.

“I know, Ben,” she said to him. “I have always known.”

She bent her face to his and kissed him, and he reached up to draw her close.