#
… AND MEMORIES

Ben Holiday froze. Lightning streaked from skies leaden and packed with low-hanging clouds that shed their rain in torrents. Thunder boomed, reverberating across the emptiness, shaking the earth beneath with the force of its passing. Massive oak trees rose all about like the staked walls of some huge fortress, their trunks and leaf-bare limbs glistening blackly. Shorter pine and fir bristled in clumps through the gaps left by their taller sisters, and the rugged slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains lifted darkly against the nearly invisible horizon.

The spectral figure of Meeks stood pinned against this backdrop. He stood without moving, tall and bent and old, white hair grizzled, craggy face as hard as iron. He looked almost nothing of the man Ben remembered. That man had been human; this man had the look of an enraged animal. Gone were the pressed woolen slacks, corduroy jacket, and loafers—the trappings of civilization that had complemented an urbane, if gruff, sales representative of a highly respected department store. Those reassuringly familiar business clothes had been replaced by robes of gunmetal blue that billowed like sailcloth and seemed to absorb the light. A high collar jutted from the shoulders to frame a ghastly, pitted face twisted by fury that bordered on madness. The empty sleeve of his right arm still hung limp. The black leather glove that covered his left hand was yet a claw. But each was more noticeable somehow, as if each were a scar left bare for viewing.

Ben’s throat constricted sharply. There was a tension in the old man that was unmistakable—the tension of an attacker poised to strike.

My God, he has been waiting for me, Ben thought in shock. He knew I was coming!

Then Meeks started for him. Ben took one step back, his right hand tightening frantically about the medallion. Meeks was almost on top of him. The wind shifted, and the sounds of the storm echoed through the mountains with renewed sharpness. The rain swept back against his face, forcing him to blink.

When he looked again, Meeks was gone.

Ben stared. Meeks had disappeared as completely as if he had been a ghost. Rain and darkness cloaked the whole of the surrounding forestland in a shroud of gray wetness. Ben glanced about hurriedly, disbelief twisting his face. There was no sign of Meeks.

It took only a moment for Ben to regain his scattered thoughts. He caught sight of the dim outline of a pathway directly before him and started for it. He moved quickly ahead through the trees, following the pathway’s curve as it wound down the mountainside and away from the time passage that had brought him back to his old world from Landover. And he was indeed back—of that much he was certain. He was back in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, deep in the George Washington National Forest. This was the same pathway that had brought him into Landover more than a year ago. If he followed it far enough, it would take him down out of the mountains to Skyline Drive, a turn-around with the black number 13 stenciled on a green sign, a weather shelter, and—most important of all—a courtesy telephone.

He was soaked through in moments, but he kept moving steadily ahead, the duffel clutched tightly under one arm. His mind worked rapidly. That wasn’t Meeks he had seen, hadn’t even looked like the old Meeks, had been barely recognizable, for Pete’s sake! Besides, Meeks wouldn’t have just disappeared like that if it had really been him, would he?

Doubt tugged sharply at his mind. Had he simply imagined it all, then? Had it all been some sort of mirage?

Belatedly, he thought of the rune stone that Willow had given him. Slowing, he fished through the pocket of his jacket until he found the stone and brought it out into the light. It was still milky in color and gave off no heat. That meant no magic threatened him. But what did that tell him about the phantom vision of Meeks?

He pushed ahead, slipping on the damp, water-soaked earth, pine boughs slapping at his face and hands. He was aware suddenly of how cold it was in these mountains, the chill settling through him with an icy touch. He had forgotten that late autumn could be unpleasant, even in western Virginia. Illinois could be frigid. It might even be snowing in Chicago …

He felt something catch in his throat. Shadows moved through the mist and rain, darting and sliding from view. Each time, he saw Meeks. Each time, he felt the wizard’s gloved hand reaching for him.

Just keep moving, he told himself. Just get yourself to that phone.

It seemed to take much longer, but he reached the courtesy phone some thirty minutes later, climbing down from among the trees and crossing the parkway to the weather shelter that housed it. He was soaked to the skin and freezing, but he felt none of it. The entirety of his concentration was focused on the Plexiglas-enclosed black and silver metal box.

Please let it be working, he prayed.

It was. Rain beat down on the shelter roof in a steady thrum, and mist and gloom closed tightly about. He thought he heard footsteps. He rummaged through his duffel for the coins and credit card he still carried in his wallet, rang information for the name of a limo service out of Waynesboro, and called for a car to come up and get him. It was all done in a matter of minutes.

He sat down then to wait on the wooden bench fastened to the side of the shelter. He was surprised to discover that his hands were shaking.

By the time the limo reached him and he was safely inside, he had regained his composure enough to reason through what had happened to him.

He no longer thought that he had imagined the appearance of Meeks. What he had seen had been real enough. But it hadn’t been Meeks he had seen; it had been an image of Meeks. The image had been triggered by his crossing back through the time passage. He had been meant to see the image. It had been placed there at the tunnel’s end so that he would see it.

The question was, why?

He hunched down in the backseat of the limo as it sped down the parkway toward Waynesboro and considered the possibilities. He had to assume that Meeks was responsible. No other explanation made any sense. So what was Meeks trying to accomplish? Was he trying to warn Ben off—to chase him back through the time passage? That didn’t make any sense. Well, no, the warning part did. Meeks was arrogant enough to want to let Ben know that he was aware of his coming back. But there had to be more to it than that. The image must have been placed there to accomplish something else as well.

He had his answer almost immediately. The image had not only warned Ben of Meeks; it had warned Meeks of Ben! The image was a device to alert the wizard that Ben had come back from Landover!

It made perfect sense. It was only reasonable to expect that Meeks would employ some contrivance—magic or otherwise—to warn him when Landover’s failed Kings crossed back into their old world with the medallion. Once alerted, Meeks could then come after them …

Or, in this case, after him.

It was late afternoon when the driver deposited him at the front steps of a Holiday Inn in downtown Waynesboro, the rain still falling, the daylight completely gone. Ben told the fellow he was on vacation and had hiked the parkway north from Staunton until the bad weather forced him to abandon the plan and call for help. The driver looked at him as if he were nuts. The weather had been like this for better than a week, he snapped. Ben shrugged, paid him in cash, and hurried inside.

On his way to the front desk, he paused long enough to check the date on a newspaper someone had left lying on a table in the lobby. It read Friday, December 9. It was ten days more than a year since he had first walked through the time passage from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia into Landover. Time in the two worlds did indeed pass synchronously.

He booked a room for the night, sent out his clothes to be cleaned and dried, took a steaming-hot shower to warm himself, and ordered dinner sent in. While he waited for the meal and his clothes, he called the airport for reservations to Chicago. There was nothing until morning. He would have to fly to Washington, then transfer to Chicago. He booked the reservation, billed it to his credit card, and hung up.

It was while he was eating dinner that it occurred to him that using a credit card to pay for his air fare wasn’t exactly the smartest thing he could have done. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in front of the TV, the tray balanced on his lap, a Holiday Inn towel wrapped about him, and the room temperature at about eighty. His clothes were still out. Tom Brokaw was giving the news, and it suddenly struck Ben that in a world of sophisticated communications a computerized credit-card trace was a relatively simple matter. If Meeks had gone to the trouble of placing that image at the opening of the time passage to warn of Ben’s return, then he would almost certainly take the matter a step further. He would know that Ben would attempt a visit to Chicago. He would know that Ben would probably elect to fly. A credit-card trace would tell him the airline flight, date of travel, and destination.

He could be waiting when Ben stepped off the plane.

That possibility ruined what was left of the meal. Ben put the tray aside, clicked off the TV, and began to consider more carefully what he was up against. Abernathy had been right. This was turning out to be more dangerous than he had imagined. But he really didn’t have any choice. He had to go back to Chicago and see Miles long enough to discover whether there was any truth to his dream. Meeks would probably be waiting for him somewhere along the line. The trick was to avoid bumping into him.

He permitted himself a brief smile. No problem.

He had his clothes back by nine o’clock and was asleep by ten. He awoke early, had breakfast, shouldered the duffel, and caught a cab to the airport. He flew to Washington on the previous night’s reservation, then canceled the balance of the ticket, walked over to another airline, booked a seat to Chicago on standby under an assumed name, paid for this ticket with cash, and was airborne before noon.

Let’s see Meeks pick up on that one, he thought to himself.

Eyes closed, he leaned back in his seat and reflected on the strange set of circumstances that had taken him away from his home in Chicago to Never-Never Land. The memories made him shake his head reprovingly. Maybe, like Peter Pan, he had just never grown up. He had been a lawyer then, a damn good one, one from whom great things were expected by those who were the movers and shakers in the business. He was in practice with his friend and longtime associate Miles Bennett, a shared partnership in which the two complemented each other like old shoes and work jeans—Ben the outspoken, audacious trial lawyer, Miles the steady, conservative office practitioner. Miles often deplored Ben’s judgment in taking cases, but Ben always seemed to land on his feet despite the heights from which he insisted on jumping. He had won more courtroom battles than the average bear—battles in which his corporate opponents had thought to bury him under an avalanche of money-backed rhetoric and paperwork, legal dodges, delays, and gamesmanship of all sorts. He had so surprised Miles after his victory in the Dodge City Express case that his partner had begun referring to him as Doc Holiday, courtroom gunfighter.

He smiled. Those had been good, satisfying times.

But the good times faded when Annie died. The satisfaction disappeared like quicksilver. His wife had died in a car accident, three months pregnant, and he seemed to lose everything after that. He turned reclusive, shunning everyone but Miles. He had always been something of a loner and he sometimes thought that the death of his wife and baby had just reinforced what was always there. He began to drift, the days running together, their events merging indecipherably. He sensed that he was slowly slipping away from himself.

It was difficult to know what might have happened had he not come across the bizarre offering in the Rosen’s Department Store Christmas Wishbook for the purchase of the throne of the kingdom of Landover. He had thought it ridiculous at first—a fantasy kingdom with wizards and witches, dragons and damsels, knights and knaves for sale for one million dollars. Who would be foolish enough to believe that? But the desperate dissatisfaction he was experiencing in his life had led him to take the chance that something in this impossible fantasy might be real. Any risk was worth taking if it could bring him back to himself. He had shelved his doubts, packed his bags, and flown to Rosen’s New York office to see what was what.

He was required to undergo an interview in order to complete the sale. The interviewer had been Meeks.

The familiar image of Meeks flashed instantly to mind—the tall old man with the whispered voice and dead eyes, a veteran of wars Ben could only imagine. The interview was the only time they had ever met face to face. Meeks had found him an acceptable candidate to be Landover’s King—not to succeed as Ben had believed, but to fail. Meeks had convinced him to make the purchase. Meeks had charmed him like a snake its prey.

Meeks had also underestimated him.

He let his eyes slip open again and he whispered, “That’s right, Ben Holiday—he did underestimate you. Now be sure that you don’t underestimate him.”

The plane touched down at Chicago O’Hare shortly after three, and Ben caught a cab into the city. The driver talked all the way in, mostly about sports: the Cubs’ losing season, the Bulls’ playoff hopes with Jordan, the Blackhawks’ injury problems, the Bears at 13 and 1. The Chicago Bears? Ben listened, replying intermittently, a small voice at the back of his mind telling him there was something wrong with this conversation. He was nearly downtown before he figured out what it was. It was the language. He understood it, even though he had neither heard it nor spoken it for more than a year. In Landover, he heard, spoke, wrote, and thought Landoverian. The magic made it possible for him to do so. Yet here he was, back in his old world, back in good old Chicago, listening to this cab driver speak the English language—or a reasonable facsimile thereof—as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Well, maybe that’s exactly what it was, he thought and smiled.

He had the cab driver deposit him at the Drake, unwilling to return to his old penthouse apartment or to contact any friends or acquaintances just yet. He was being careful now. He was thinking about Meeks. He checked in under an assumed name, paid cash in advance for one night, and let the bellhop guide him to his room. He was increasingly grateful for the fact that he had decided to carry several thousand dollars in cash as a precaution when he had crossed into Landover a year ago. The decision had been almost an afterthought, but it was turning out to be a sound one. The cash was saving him from using the credit card.

Leaving the room with the cash and the billfold in one pocket of his running suit, he took the elevator down, left the hotel, and walked several blocks to Water Tower Place. He shopped, bought a sport coat and slacks, dress shirts, tie, socks and underwear, and a pair of dress loafers, paid cash, and headed back again. There was no point in being conspicuous, and a running suit and Nikes in the middle of the downtown Chicago business district was far too conspicuous. He simply didn’t look the type. Sometimes appearances were everything—particularly in the short view. That was exactly why he hadn’t brought any of his friends with him. A talking dog, a pair of grinning monkeys, a girl who became a tree, and a wizard whose magic frequently got the better of him would hardly escape notice on Michigan Avenue!

He regretted the superficial characterization of his friends almost immediately. He was being needlessly flip. Odd as they might be, they were genuine friends. They had stood by him when it counted, when it was dangerous to do so, and when their own lives were threatened. That was a whole lot more than you could say for most friends.

He bowed his head against a sudden gust of wind, frowning.

Besides, wasn’t he as odd as they?

Wasn’t he the Paladin?

He shoved the thought angrily to the darkest corners of his mind and hurried to catch the crossing light.

He bought several newspapers and magazines in the hotel lobby and retired to his room. He ordered room service and killed time waiting for his dinner by skimming the reading material to update himself on what had been happening in the world during his absence. He stopped long enough to catch an hour of world and local news, and by then his meal had arrived. He continued reading through the dinner hour. It was closing in on seven o’clock by this time, and he decided to call Ed Samuelson.

There were two reasons for Ben’s return to Chicago. The first was to visit with Miles and discover whether the dream about his friend had been accurate. The second was to set his affairs in order permanently. He had already decided that the first would have to wait until morning, but there was no reason to put off the second. That meant a call to Ed.

Ed Samuelson was his accountant, a senior partner in the accountancy firm of Haines, Samuelson & Roper, Inc. Ben had entrusted management of his estate—an estate that was considerable in size—to Ed before he had left for Landover. Ed Samuelson was exactly the sort of person one would hope for in an accountant—discreet, dependable, and conscientious. There had been times when he thought Ben clearly mad in his financial judgment, but he respected the fact that it was Ben’s money to do with as he chose. One of those times had been when Ben decided to purchase the throne of Landover. Ed had liquidated the assets necessary to collect the one million dollar purchase price and had been given power of attorney to manage the balance of Ben’s assets while Ben was away. He had done all this without having the faintest idea what Ben was about.

Ben had not told him then and he had no intention of telling him now. But he knew Ed would accept that.

Calling Ed Samuelson was something of a risk. He had to assume that Meeks knew Ed was his accountant and would be contacted eventually. Anticipating that contact, Meeks might have tapped the accountant’s phone. That was a somewhat paranoid assumption perhaps, but Meeks was no one to fool with. Ben only hoped that, if Meeks had decided on a phone tap, he had opted for one at Ed Samuelson’s office and not one at his home.

He called Ed, found him just finished with his evening meal, and spent the next ten minutes convincing him that it really was Ben Holiday who was calling. Once he got that job done, he warned Ed that no one—and that meant absolutely no one—was to know about this call. Ed was to pretend that he had never received it. Ed asked the same question he always asked when Ben made one of his bizarre requests: Was Ben in some sort of trouble? No, Ben assured him, he was not. It simply wasn’t convenient for anyone to know he was in town at the moment. He did plan on seeing Miles, he assured Ed. He did not think he would have time to see much of anyone else.

Ed seemed satisfied. He listened patiently while Ben explained what he wanted done. Ben promised he would stop by the office tomorrow about noon to sign the necessary papers if Ed could arrange to be there. Ed sighed stoically and said that would be fine. Ben said good night and placed the phone receiver back on its cradle.

Twenty minutes in the shower helped wash away the tension and the growing weariness. He came back out of the bathroom and crawled into his bed, a few of the magazines and newspapers stacked next to him. He started to read, gave it up, and let his thoughts drift and his eyes close.

Moments later, he was asleep.

He dreamed that night of the Paladin.

He was alone at first, standing on a pine-sheltered bluff looking down over Landover’s misted valley. Blues and greens mixed as sky and earth joined, and it was as if he could reach out and touch them. He breathed, and the air was fresh and chill. The clarity of the moment was stunning.

Then shadows deepened and closed down about him like night. Cries and whispers filtered through the pines. He could feel the shape of the medallion pressing against his palm as he clutched at it in anticipation. He had need of it once more, he sensed, and was glad. The being he kept trapped inside could be let loose again!

There was a darting movement to one side and a monstrous black shape surged forward. It was a unicorn, eyes and breath of fire. But it changed almost instantly. It became a devil. Then it changed again.

It was Meeks.

The wizard beckoned, a tall, stooped, menacing form, face scaled over like a lizard’s. He came for Ben, growing in size with each step, changing now into something unrecognizable. There was the smell of fear in Ben’s nostrils, the smell of death.

But he was the Paladin, the knight-errant whose strayed soul had found a home within his body, the King’s champion who had never lost a battle, and nothing could stand against him. He brought that other self to life with a frightening rush of elation. Armor closed about him, and the smell of fear and death gave way to the acrid smells of iron, leather, and oil. He was no longer Ben Holiday, but a creature of some other time and place whose memories were all of battle, of combat and victory, of fighting and dying. Wars raged in his mind, and there were glimpses of struggling behemoths encased in iron, surging back and forth against a haze of red. Metal clanged, and voices huffed and grunted in fury. Bodies fell in death, torn and broken.

He felt himself exhilarated!

Oh, God, he felt himself reborn!

The darkness broke against him, shadows reaching and clawing, and he went to meet them in a rage. The white charger he rode carried him forward like a steam engine driven by fires he could not begin to control. The pines slipped past him in a blur, and the ground disappeared. Meeks became a wraith he could not touch. He raced forward, flying out from the edge of the bluff into nothingness.

The sense of exhilaration vanished. Somewhere in the night, there was a frightening scream. He realized as he fell that the scream was his own.

The dreams left him after that, but he slept poorly for the remainder of the night anyway. He rose shortly after dawn, showered, called room service for breakfast, ate, dressed in the clothes he had bought yesterday, and caught a cab out front of the hotel shortly after nine. He took his duffel bag with him. He did not think he would be returning.

The cab took him south on Michigan Avenue. It was Saturday, but the streets were already beginning to clog with Christmas shoppers anxious to beat the weekend rush. Ben sat back in the relative seclusion of the cab and ignored them. The joys of the approaching holiday were the furthest thing from his mind.

Traces of last night’s dream still whispered darkly to him. He had been badly frightened by that dream and by the truths that it contained.

The Paladin was a reality he had not fully come to grips with. He had become the armored knight only once—and then as much by chance as by intention. It had been necessary to become the Paladin in order to survive, and he had therefore done what was necessary. But the transformation had been a frightening thing, a shedding of his own skin, a crawling into someone else’s—someone or something. The thoughts of that other being were hard and brutal, a warrior’s thoughts, a gladiator’s. There was blood and death in those thoughts, an entire history of survival that Ben could only begin to comprehend. It frankly terrified him. He could not control what this other thing was, he sensed—not entirely. He could only become what it was and accept what that meant.

He was not sure he could ever do that again. He had not tried and did not wish to try.

And yet a part of him did—just as in the dream. And a part of him whispered that someday he must.

He had the cab take him to the offices of Holiday & Bennett, Ltd. The offices were closed on Saturdays, but he knew Miles Bennett would be there anyway. Miles was always there on Saturdays, working until noon, catching up on all the dictating and research that he hadn’t gotten to during the week, taking advantage of the absence of those bothersome interruptions that seemed to dog him during regular business hours.

Ben paid the cab driver to drop him at the end of the block across the street from his destination, then stepped quickly into the doorway of another building. Pedestrians passed him by, oblivious to what he was about, caught up in their own concerns. Traffic moved ahead at a rapid crawl. There were cars parked on the street, but no one seemed to be keeping watch in them.

“Doesn’t hurt to be careful,” he insisted softly.

He stepped back out of the doorway, crossed the street with the light, moved up the block, and pushed through the storm glass doors to the lobby of his building. He saw nothing out of place, nothing odd.

He hurried to an open elevator, stepped inside, punched the button to floor fifteen, and watched the doors slide closed. The elevator started up. Just a few moments more, he thought. And if Miles wasn’t there for some reason, he would simply track him down at his home.

But he hoped he wouldn’t have to do that. He sensed that he might not have the time. Maybe it was the dream, maybe it was simply the circumstances of his being here—but something definitely felt wrong.

The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors slid open, and he stepped into the hallway beyond.

His breath caught sharply in his throat. Once again, he was face to face with Meeks.

Questor Thews brushed at the screen of cobwebs that hung across the narrow stone entry of the ruins of the castle tower and pushed inside. He sneezed as dust clogged his nostrils and muttered in distaste at the damp and dark. He should have had the sense to bring a torch …

A spark of fire flared next to him, and flames leaped from a brand. Bunion passed the handle of the light to Questor.

“I was just about to use the magic to do that for myself!” the wizard snapped irritably, but the kobold just grinned.

They stood within the failing walls of Mirwouk, the ancient fortress Questor had seen in his dream of the missing books of magic. They were far north of Sterling Silver, high within the Melchor, the wind whipping about the worn stone to howl down empty corridors, the chill settling through stale air like winter’s coming. It had taken the wizard and the kobold the better part of three days to get here, and their travel had been quick. The castle had welcomed them with yawning gates and vacant windows. Its rooms and halls stood abandoned.

Questor pushed ahead, searching for something that looked familiar. The late afternoon was settling down about them, and he had no wish to be wandering about this dismal tomb after dark. He was a wizard and could sense things hidden from other folk, and this place had an evil smell about it.

He groped about for a time, then thought he recognized the passageway he had entered. He followed its twists and turns, eyes peering through the gloom. More cobwebs and dust hindered his progress, and there were spiders the size of rats and rats the size of dogs. They scurried and crawled, and he had to watch for them at every step. It was decidedly annoying work. He was tempted to use his magic to turn the lot of them into dust bunnies and let the wind sweep them away.

The passageway took a downward turn, and the shape of its walls altered noticeably. Questor slowed, peering at the stonework. Abruptly, he straightened.

“I recognize this!” he exclaimed in an agitated whisper. “This is the tunnel I saw in my dreams!”

Bunion took the torch from his hand without comment and led the way down. Questor was too excited to argue the matter and followed quickly after. The passage broadened and cleared, free of webbing, dust, rodents, and insects. There was a new smell to the stone, a kind of sickly-fragrant musk. Bunion kept up a brisk pace, and sometimes all that Questor could see before him was the halo of the torch.

All was just as it had been in the dream!

The tunnel went on, angling deeper into the mountain rock, a coil of hollowed corridors and curving stairs. Bunion stayed in front, eyes sharp. Questor was practically breathing down his neck.

Then the tunnel ended at a stone door marked with scroll and runes. Questor was shaking with excitement by now. He felt along the markings and his hands seemed to know exactly where to go. He touched something and the door swung open with a faint grating sound.

The room beyond was massive, its floor constructed of granite blocks polished smooth. Questor led the way now, following the vision inside his head, the memory of his dream. He walked to the center of the chamber, Bunion at his side, the sound of their footfalls a hollow echo.

They stopped before a piece of granite flooring on which the sign of a unicorn had been carved.

Questor Thews stared. A unicorn? One hand tugged uneasily at his chin. Something was wrong here. He did not recall anything about a unicorn in his dream. There had been a sign cut into the stone, but had the sign been that of a unicorn? It seemed a rather large coincidence …

For just an instant, he considered turning about, walking directly back the way he had come, and abandoning the entire project. A small voice inside whispered that he should. There was danger hidden here; he could sense it, feel it, and it frightened him.

But the lure of the missing books was too strong. He reached down, and his fingers traced the ridges of the creature’s horn—again, almost of their own volition. The block stirred and slid aside, fitting into a neatly constructed chute.

Questor Thews peered downward into the hole that was left.

There was something there.

Nightfall draped the lake country in shadows and mist, and the light of colored moons and silver stars was no more than a faint glimmer as it reflected off the still surface of the Irrylyn. Willow stood alone at the shoreline of a tiny inlet ringed in cottonwood and cedar, the waters of the lake lapping at her toes. She was naked, her clothes laid carefully upon the grass behind her. A breeze blew softly against her pale green skin, wove its careless way through the waist-length emerald hair, curled and ribboned, and ruffled the fetlocks that ran the length of her calves and forearms. She shivered with the touch. She was a creature of impossible beauty, half human, half fairy, and she might have been a descendant of the sirens of myth who had lured men to their doom on the rocks of ancient seas.

Night birds called sharply from across the lake, their cries echoing in the stillness. Willow’s whistle called back to them.

Her head lifted and she sniffed the air as an animal might. Parsnip was waiting patiently for her in the campsite fifty yards back, the light of his cooking fire screened by the trees. She had come alone to the Irrylyn to bathe and to remember.

She stepped cautiously into the water, the lukewarm liquid sending a delicious tingle through her body. It was here that she had met Ben Holiday, that they had seen each other for the first time, naked as they bathed, stripped of all pretentions. It was here that she had known that he was the one who was meant for her.

Her smile brightened as she thought back on how it had been—the wonder of the moment. She had told him what was to be, and while he had doubted it—still doubted it, in truth—she had never faltered in her certainty. The fates of her birth, told in the fairy way by the manner of entwining of the bedded flowers of her seeding, could never lie.

Oh, but she loved the outlander Ben Holiday!

Her child’s face beamed and then clouded. She missed Ben. She worried for him. Something in the dream they had shared troubled her in a way she could not explain. There was a riddle behind these dreams that whispered of danger.

She had said nothing of it to Ben because she had read in his voice when he told her of his dream that he had already decided he would go. She knew then that she could not turn him from his purpose and should not try. He understood the risks and accepted them. The urgency of her concern paled beside the strength of his determination.

Perhaps it was for that reason that in telling him of her dream she had not told him all. Something in her dream was different than in his—or Questor Thews’. It was a subtle thing and difficult to explain, but it was there nevertheless.

She crouched in the shallows, emerald hair fanning out across her shoulders like a shawl. Her finger traced patterns on the still surface, and the memory of the dream returned. The wrong feeling was in the texture of the dream, she thought. It was in the way it played against her mind. The visions had been vivid, the events clear. But the telling was somehow false—as if it were all something that could happen in a dream, but not in waking. It was as if the memory was a mask that hid a face beneath.

She ceased her tracing motion and rose. What face was it, she wondered, that lay concealed beneath that mask?

The frown that clouded her face deepened, and she wished suddenly she had not been so accepting of Ben’s decision. She wished she had argued his going after all or that she had insisted that he take her along.

“No, he will be well,” she whispered insistently.

Her eyes lifted skyward and she let the moonglow warm her. Tomorrow she would seek the advice of her mother, whose life was so close to that of the fairy creatures in the mists. Her mother would know of the black unicorn and the bridle of spun gold and would guide her; soon she would be back again with Ben.

She stepped further out into the darkened lake, let the waters close about her, and drifted at peace.