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QUESTOR THEWS

Sunshine seeped down through rifts in a clouded sky, bathing the meadow with bits and pieces of its warmth. Ben blinked and squinted through its brightness. The misted forest with its shadowed tunnel was gone. The apparitions were gone as well—that black thing, the battered knight, even the dragon.

Ben straightened. What in the hell had happened to them? He brushed at the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Hadn’t they been real after all?

He swallowed hard. No, of course they weren’t real! They couldn’t have been! They were just some sort of mirage!

He glanced about quickly. The meadow in which he sat spread away before him in a carpet of muted greens, blues and pinks, a mix of colors he had never seen in grasses. The clover was white, but touched with crimson spots. The meadow dropped downward into a sprawling valley which rose again miles distant in a wall of mountains that formed a dark barrier against the skyline. Behind him, the trees of a forest loomed blackly against a mountain slope. Trailers of mist hung over everything.

The apparitions had been somewhere in the trees behind him, he thought suddenly. Where had they disappeared to?

And where was he?

He took a moment to collect his thoughts. He was still shaken from his ordeal in the forest tunnel, frightened by the dark things that had come at him, bewildered that he was sitting here in this meadow. He took several deep breaths to steady himself. Whatever it was that had seemed to threaten him in that forest, he was all right now. He was back in the Blue Ridge. He was in Virginia, some twenty miles or so below Waynesboro, a few miles in from the parkway that ran through the George Washington National Forest.

Except that …

He glanced about once again, more carefully this time. Something wasn’t quite right. The weather was wrong, for one thing. It was too warm for late November in the Virginia mountains. He was sweating beneath his running suit and he shouldn’t have been doing that, even with the scare he had just experienced. The air had been cooler than this by at least thirty degrees before he had entered that tunnel in the forest.

The clover was wrong, too. There shouldn’t be clover blooming in November—especially clover that looked like this, white with crimson spots, like a polka-dot flower. He looked back at the forest. Why were there still leaves as green as summer’s new growth on the trees? The leaves should be colored with autumn’s touch. The only green should be on the pines and spruce.

He shoved himself hurriedly to one knee. A mix of panic and excitement crept through him. The sun was directly overhead, exactly where it ought to be. But in the distant skies two spheres hung low against the horizon—one faintly peach, the other a sort of washed-out mauve. Ben started. Moons? Two of them? No, they had to be planets. But when had the planets of his solar system ever been so clearly visible to the naked eye?

What in the hell was going on?

He sat back slowly, forcing himself to remain calm. There was a logical explanation for all of this, he reasoned, fighting back against a mix of panic and excitement. The explanation was simple. This was what he had been promised. This was Landover. He glanced about at the green meadow with its spotted clover, at the summer trees of the forest, at the odd-looking spheres hanging above the horizon, and he nodded sagely. There was nothing to worry about. This was just more of the special effects he had experienced in the forest tunnel. This was only a broader projection of such effects within a pocket of land hidden away in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He wasn’t sure how it had been managed—especially in the middle of a national forest—but he was sure of what it was. He had to admit that it was pretty amazing. The valley with its summer temperatures could have been a lucky discovery, but the odd flowers, the spheres that looked like planets or moons, and the apparitions in the forest tunnel must have taken some effort and scientific know-how to create.

He came to his feet, slowly rebuilding his confidence. His experience in the forest had unnerved him badly. That black thing and the knight had seemed almost real. The knight’s horse had felt very real when it galloped past, knocking him from the trail into the shadows. And he could still feel the breath of the dragon on his face. He might almost have believed …

He stopped short. His gaze, wandering across the floor of the valley below as he puzzled matters through, had caught sight of something.

It was a castle.

Ben stared. A huge swatch of green dominated the central portion of the valley, a checkerboard of meadows and fields dissected by meandering rivers. The castle stood at the near end of that checkerboard. An odd haze that hung over the whole of the valley had obscured his vision at first. But now he was beginning to pick things out, to see things clearly.

One of those things was the castle.

The castle was some miles distant from where he stood, swathed in mist and shadows beyond a deep forest. It sat upon an island in the middle of a lake, forest and hills all about, patches of mist floating past like clouds dropped down to earth. It was a dark and forbidding citadel, appearing almost ghostlike within the swirling haze.

He squinted against the muted light of the sun to see more clearly. But the mist closed suddenly, and the castle was gone.

“Damn!” he muttered softly.

Had that been an apparition as well—another of Landover’s special effects? A faint suspicion was beginning to gnaw at him. Was it possible that all of these special effects were not special effects at all? He felt a twinge of the panic and excitement return. What if everything he was seeing was real?

A voice boomed out behind him, and he jumped a foot.

“Well, then, here you are, wandering about in this meadow—not at all where you were supposed to be. Did you stray from the pathway? You look a bit fatigued, if you don’t mind my saying so. Are you all right?”

Ben turned at once. The speaker stood about ten feet behind him—a bizarre caricature of some pop artist’s gypsy. He was a tall man, well over six feet, but so lean as to be almost sticklike. A mop of curling white hair hung down over large ears, wisps of it mingling with beard and brows of the same color and kind. Gray robes cloaked the scarecrow form, but they were decorated with an array of brilliant sashes, cloth pouches, and jewelry that left the wearer looking something like a fragmented rainbow pinned against a departing thunderstorm. Soft leather boots too big for the feet curled up slightly at the toes and a hawklike nose dominated a pinched and owlish face. A gnarled walking stick guided the way as he came a step closer.

“You are Ben Holiday, aren’t you?” the fellow asked, a sudden glint of suspicion in his eyes. A massive crystal dangled from a chain about his throat, and he stuffed it rather self-consciously into the recesses of his robes. “You do have the medallion?”

Ben didn’t care for the look. “Who are you?” he replied, trying to put the other man on the defensive.

“Ah, I asked you first.” The other smiled amiably. “Courtesy dictates that you answer first.”

Ben stiffened, a touch of impatience in his voice at being forced to play this cat-and-mouse game. “Okay. I’m Ben Holiday. Now who are you?”

“Yes, well, I will have to see the medallion.” The smile broadened slightly. “You could be anyone, after all. Saying that you are Ben Holiday doesn’t necessarily make it so.”

“You could be anyone, too, couldn’t you?” Ben asked in reply. “What gives you the right to ask me anything without first telling me who you are?”

“I am the one sent to meet you, as it happens—assuming, of course, that you are who you claim. Could I see the medallion?”

Ben hesitated, then pulled the medallion from beneath his clothing and, without removing it, held it out for examination. The tall man leaned forward, peered momentarily at the medallion and nodded.

“You are indeed who you claim. I apologize for questioning you, but caution is always well advised in these matters. And now for my own introduction.” He bowed deeply from the waist. “Questor Thews, wizard of the court, chief advisor to the throne of Landover, your obedient servant.”

“Wizard of the …” Ben glanced sharply about one time more. “Then this is Landover!”

“Landover and nowhere else. Welcome, High Lord Ben Holiday.”

“So this is it,” Ben murmured, his mind racing suddenly. He looked again at the other. “Where are we exactly?”

Questor Thews seemed puzzled. “Landover, High Lord.”

“Yes, but where is Landover? I mean, where is Landover in the Blue Ridge? It must be close to Waynesboro, am I right?”

The wizard smiled. “Oh, well, you are no longer in your world. I thought you understood that. Landover bridges any number of worlds—a kind of gateway, you might say. The mists of the fairy realm connect her to your world and the others. Some bridge closer, of course, and some don’t even have the barrier of the mists. But you will learn all that soon enough.”

Ben stared. “I’m not in my world? This isn’t Virginia?”

Questor Thews shook his head.

“Or the United States or North America or Earth? None of it?”

“No, High Lord. Did you think that the fairy-tale kingdom you bought would be in your world?”

Ben didn’t hear him, a desperate obstinacy seizing hold. “I suppose that those planets in the sky over there aren’t fake, either? I suppose that they’re real?”

Questor turned. “Those are moons, not planets. Landover has eight of them. Only two are visible in the daylight hours, but the other six can be seen as well after dusk during most of the year.”

Ben stared. Then he shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe one word of it.”

Questor Thews looked at him curiously. “Why do you not believe, High Lord?”

“Because a place like this can’t exist, damn it!”

“But you chose to come here, didn’t you? Why would you come to Landover in the first place, if you did not believe that it could exist?”

Ben had no idea. He was no longer certain why it was that he had come. He was certain of only one thing—that he could not bring himself to accept what the other man was saying. Panic flooded through him at the very thought that Landover could be somewhere other than on Earth. He had never dreamed that it would be anywhere else. It meant that all of his ties with his old life were truly severed, that everything he had once known was really gone. It meant that he was alone in an alien world …

“High Lord, would you mind if we walked while we carry on this conversation?” the wizard interrupted his thoughts. “We have a good distance to cover before nightfall.”

“We do? Where are we going?”

“To your castle, High Lord.”

“My castle? Wait a minute—do you mean that castle that I saw just before you appeared, the one in the middle of the lake on an island?”

The other nodded. “The very place, High Lord. Shall we be on our way?”

Ben shook his head stubbornly. “Not a chance. I’m not going anywhere until I find out exactly what’s going on. What about what happened to me in the forest! Are you telling me all that was real? Are you telling me there actually was a dragon sleeping back there in the trees?”

Questor shrugged nonchalantly. “There could have been. There is a dragon in the valley—and he often naps at the fringes of the mists. The mists were his home once.”

Ben frowned. “His home, huh? Well, what about that black, winged thing and its rider?”

The wizard’s shaggy brows lifted slightly. “A black, winged thing, you say? A thing that seemed a nightmare, perhaps?”

Ben nodded his head anxiously. “Yes—that was what it seemed.”

“That was the Iron Mark.” The other pursed his lips. “The Mark is a demon lord. I am surprised he would come after you there in the mists. I would have thought …” He stopped, smiled a quick smile of reassurance and shrugged. “A demon strays into Landover now and again. You happened to come across one of the worst.”

“Come across it, my aunt Agatha!” Ben flared. “It was hunting me! It chased me down that forest tunnel and would have had me if not for that knight!”

This time Questor Thews’ brows lifted a good deal further. “Knight? What knight?” he demanded quickly.

“The knight—the one on the medallion!”

“You saw the knight on the medallion, Ben Holiday?”

Ben hesitated, surprised at the other’s sharp interest. “I saw him in the forest, after the black thing came at me. He appeared in front of me and rode at the black thing. I was caught between them, but the knight’s horse sideswiped me and knocked me from the trail. The next thing I knew I was sitting here in this meadow.”

Questor Thews frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, the horse knocking you from the pathway would account for your appearance here rather than at your appointed destination …” He trailed off, then came slowly forward, bending close to look into Ben’s eyes. “You might have imagined the knight, High Lord. You might have only thought to see him. Were you to think back on it, you might see something entirely different.”

Ben flushed. “Were I to think back on it, I would see exactly the same thing exactly.” He kept his gaze steady. “I would see the knight on the medallion.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then Questor Thews stepped back again, one hand rubbing at his ear thoughtfully. “Well,” he said. “Well, indeed.” He looked surprised. More than that, he looked pleased. He pursed his lips once again, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and hunched his shoulders. “Well,” he said a third time.

Then the look was gone as quickly as it had come. “We really do have to start walking now, High Lord,” he said quickly. “The day is getting on and it would be best if we were to reach the castle before nightfall. Come along, please. It is a good distance off.”

He shambled down through the meadow, a tall, ragtag, slightly stooped figure, his robes dragging through the grasses. Ben watched dumbly for a moment, glanced hastily about, then hitched up the duffel over one shoulder and followed reluctantly after.

They passed from the high meadow and began their descent toward the distant bowl of the valley. The valley stretched away below them, a patchwork quilt of farmlands, meadows, forests, lakes and rivers, and swatches of marsh and desert. Mountains ringed the valley tightly, forested and dark, awash in a sea of deep mist that strung its trailers down into the valley and cast its shadow over everything.

Ben Holiday’s mind raced. He kept trying to fit what he was seeing into his mental picture of the Blue Ridge. But none of it worked. His eyes wandered across the slopes they were descending, seeing orchard groves, seeking out familiar fruit trees, finding apple, cherry, peach, and plum, but a dozen other fruits as well, many of a color and size completely unfamiliar to him. Grasses were varied shades of green, but also crimson, lavender, and turquoise. Scattered through the whole of the strange collection of vegetation were large clumps of trees that vaguely resembled half-grown pin oaks except that they were colored trunk to leaf a brilliant blue.

None of it looked anything at all like the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia or the mountains of any other part of the United States that he had ever heard about.

Even the cast of the day was strange. The mist lent a shadowed look to the whole of the valley, and it reflected in the color tones of the earth. Everything seemed to have developed a somewhat wintry look—though the air was warm like a midsummer’s day and the sun shone down through the clouds in the sky.

Ben savored cautiously the look, smell, and feel of the land, and he discovered in doing so that he could almost believe that Landover was exactly what Questor Thews had said that it was—another world completely.

He mulled this prospect over in his mind as he kept pace with his guide. This was no small concession that he was being asked to make. Every shred of logic and every bit of common sense that he could muster in his lawyer’s mind argued that Landover was some sort of trick, that fairy worlds were writer’s dreams and that what he was seeing was a pocket of merry old England tucked away in the Blue Ridge, castles and knights-in-armor included. Logic and common sense said that the existence of a world such as this, a world outside but somehow linked to his own, a world that no one had ever seen, was so farfetched as to be one step short of impossible: Twilight Zone; Outer Limits. And one step short only because it could be argued that anything after all was theoretically possible.

Yet here he was, and there it was, and what was the explanation for it, if it wasn’t what Questor Thews said it was? It looked, smelled, and felt real. It had the look of something real—but at the same time it had the look of something completely foreign to his world, something beyond anything he had ever known or even heard about this side of King Arthur. This land was a fantasy, a mix of color and shape and being that surprised and bewildered him at every turn—and frightened him, as well.

But already his initial skepticism had begun to erode. What if Landover truly was another world? What if it was exactly what Meeks had promised?

The thought exhilarated him. It left him stunned.

He glanced surreptitiously at Questor. The tall, stooped figure marched dutifully next to him, gray robes dragging through the grasses, patched with the scarfs and sashes and pouches of gaily colored silk, his whitish hair and beard fringing the owlish face. Questor certainly seemed to feel at home.

His gaze wandered back over the sweep of the valley, and he consciously opened a few heretofore padlocked doors in the deep recesses of his mind. Perhaps logic and common sense ought to take a backseat to instinct for a while, he decided.

Still, a few discreet questions wouldn’t hurt.

“How is that you and I happen to speak the same language?” he asked his guide suddenly. “Where did you learn to speak English?”

“Hmmmmm?” The wizard glanced over, preoccupied with something else.

“If Landover is in another world, how does it happen that you speak English so well?”

Questor shook his head. “I don’t speak English at all. I speak the language of my country—at least, I speak the language used by humans.”

Ben frowned. “But you’re speaking English right now, damn it! How else could we communicate?”

“Oh, I see what you mean.” Questor smiled. “I am not speaking your language, High Lord—you are speaking mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yes, the magic properties of the medallion that permit you passage into Landover also give you the ability to communicate instantly with its inhabitants, either by spoken word or in writing.” He fumbled through one of the pouches momentarily and withdrew a faded map. “Here, read something of this.”

Ben took the map from him and studied the details. The names of towns, rivers, mountain ranges and lakes were all in English.

“These are written in English!” he insisted, handing the map back again.

Questor shook his head. “No, High Lord, they are written in Landoverian—the language of the country. They only appear to be written in English—and only to you. I speak to you now in Landoverian as well; but it seems to you as if your own language. The medallion’s fairy magic permits this.”

Ben thought it through for a moment, trying to decide what else he should ask on the matter of language and communication, but decided in the end that there really was nothing further to ask. He changed subjects.

“I’ve never seen anything like those trees,” he informed his guide, pointing to the odd-looking blue pin oaks. “What are they?”

“Those are Bonnie Blues.” Questor slowed and stopped. “They grow only in Landover as far as I know. They were created of the fairy magic thousands of years ago and given to us. They keep back the mists and feed life into the soil.”

Ben frowned dubiously. “I thought sun and rain did that.”

“Sun and rain? No, sun and rain only help the process. But magic is the life source of Landover, and the Bonnie Blues are a very strong magic indeed.”

“Fairy magic, you said—like the magic that enables us to communicate?”

“The same, High Lord. The fairies gave the magic to the land when they created it. They live now in the mists about us.”

“The mists?”

“There.” Questor pointed in a sweeping motion to the mountains that ringed the valley, their peaks and forests shrouded in gray. “The fairies live there.” He glanced once more at Ben. “Did you see faces in the mist when you passed through the forest from your world to ours?” Ben nodded. “Those were the faces of the fairies. Only the pathway you walked upon belongs to both worlds. That was why I was concerned that you had strayed too far from it.”

There was a moment’s silence. “What if I had?” Ben asked finally.

The stooped figure pulled the gray robes free from a trailer of scrub on which they had caught. “Why, then you might have wandered too deep into the fairy world and been lost forever.” He paused. “Are you hungry, High Lord?”

“What?” The question startled Ben. He was still thinking about his brush with the fairy world and the possibility that one could wander lost in it forever. Until now, this world into which he had come had seemed fairly safe.

“Food and drink—it occurs to me that you may not have had either for some time.”

Ben hesitated. “Not since this morning, as a matter of fact.”

“Good. Come this way.”

Questor walked past him down the slope to a small cluster of Bonnie Blues at the edge of an oak grove. He waited for Ben to join him, then reached up and tore free a branch from one of the trees. The branch broke cleanly and soundlessly. The wizard knelt, grasped the base of the branch with one hand, and with the other stripped it of its leaves. The leaves tumbled into the lap of his robe.

“Here, try one,” he offered, holding out one of the leaves. “Take a bite of it.”

Ben took the leaf, examined it, then cautiously bit into it and chewed. His face brightened with surprise. “It tastes like … like melon.”

The other nodded, smiling. “Now the stalk. Hold it like this.” He held the broken end upright. “Now suck on it—there, at the break.”

Ben did as he was told. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he whispered. “It tastes like milk!”

“It is the staple of human existence in the valley,” Questor explained, chewing a leaf himself. “One can live on only the Bonnie Blues and a small amount of drinking water, if one has nothing else—and there are those who do not. It wasn’t always so, but times have changed …”

He trailed off, distracted. Then he glanced at Ben. “The Bonnie Blues grow wild everywhere in the valley. Their reproductive capacity is amazing—even now. Look there—look at what has happened.”

He pointed to the tree where the limb had been broken off. Already, the break was healing over and beginning to bud anew.

“By morning, a new limb will have begun to grow. In a week’s time, it will be exactly as we found it—or should be.”

Ben nodded without comment. He was thinking about Questor’s carefully phrased qualifications. “Times have changed … Their reproductive capacity is amazing—even now … In a week’s time, it will be exactly as we found it—or should be.” He studied the Bonnie Blues behind the one the wizard had chosen. They seemed to be flourishing less successfully, signs of wilt on their leaves and a drooping to their limbs. Something was distressing them.

Questor interrupted his thoughts. “Well, now that we have sampled the Bonnie Blues, perhaps something a bit more substantial would be in order.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “How would you like some ham and eggs, some fresh bread, and a glass of ale?”

Ben turned. “Are you hiding a picnic basket in one of those pouches?”

“A what? Oh, no, High Lord. I will simply conjure up our meal.”

“Conjure … ?” Ben frowned. “You mean use magic?”

“Exactly! After all, I am a wizard. Now, let me see.”

The owlish face screwed up, the shaggy brows narrowing. Ben leaned forward. He had eaten nothing since breakfast, but he was more curious than hungry. Could this odd-looking fellow really do magic?

“A bit of concentrated thought, fingers extended so, a quick motion thus, and … hah!”

There was a flash of light, a quick puff of smoke, and on the ground before them lay half a dozen scatter pillows, tasseled and embroidered. Ben stared in amazement.

“Oh, well, we will need something to sit upon while we eat, I suppose.” The wizard brushed the matter aside as if it were of no consequence. “Must have turned the fingers a bit too far right … Now let me see, once again, a bit of thought, fingers, a quick motion …”

Again the light flashed, the smoke puffed, and on the ground before them appeared a crate of eggs and an entire pig dressed out and resplendent with an apple in its mouth.

Questor glanced hurriedly at Ben. “The magic is fickle on occasion. But one simply tries harder.” He stretched forth his sticklike arms from his robes. “Here, now, watch closely. Thoughts concentrated, fingers turned, a quick motion, and …”

The light flashed brighter, the smoke puffed higher, and from out of nowhere a massive tressel table laden with food enough for an army materialized before them. Ben jumped back in surprise. Questor Thews could certainly do magic as he claimed, but it appeared his control of it was rather limited.

“Drat, that is not what I … the thing of it is, that …” Questor was thoroughly agitated. He glared at the table of food. “I am simply tired, I imagine. I will try once again …”

“Never mind,” Ben interrupted quickly. He had seen enough of the magic for one sitting. The wizard looked over, displeased. “I mean, I’m really not that hungry after all. Maybe we should just go on.”

Questor hesitated, then nodded curtly. “If that is your wish, High Lord—very well.” He gave a quick motion with one hand, and the pillows, the pig, the crate of eggs and the entire tressel table with its meal disappeared into air. “You see that I have the magic at my command when I wish it,” he announced stiffly.

“Yes, I see that.”

“You must understand that the magic I wield is most important, High Lord.” Questor was determined to make his point. “You will have need of my magic if you are to be King. There have always been wizards to stand behind the Kings of Landover.”

“I understand.”

Questor stared at him. He stared back. What he understood above everything, he thought to himself, was that, except for this half-baked wizard, he was all alone in a land he knew almost nothing at all about and he had no desire to alienate his one companion.

“Well, then.” Questor’s ruffled feathers seemed suddenly back in place. He looked almost sheepish. “I suppose that we should continue on to the castle, High Lord.”

Ben nodded. “I suppose we should.”

Wordlessly, they resumed their journey.

The afternoon wore on; as it did so, the mists seemed to thicken across the land. The cast of the day dimmed, shadows gathered in dark pools, and the color of the fields, meadows, forests and the lakes and rivers scattered through them lost all hint of vibrancy. There was a sullen feel to the air as if a storm might be approaching, though clearly none was. The sun still shone, and no wind stirred the leaves of the trees. Another moon hung suspended against the skyline, newly risen from beneath the mists.

Ben was still wondering what he had gotten himself into.

It was becoming increasingly apparent to him that Landover was nothing of the sham that Miles Bennett had envisioned. The creatures were not courtesy of the San Diego Zoo and the inhabitants were not supplied by Central Casting. The magic that Questor had performed was not the old rabbit-in-the-hat variety, but magic of a sort imagined in newsstand pulp fantasy. By God, would Miles have been astonished by that table and twenty-course dinner trick! How could anyone possibly conjure something like that up so quickly unless they truly were in a fantasy world where magic was real?

That was the other side of the coin he toyed with, unfortunately. Landover was really not a part of Virginia or the United States or North America or anywhere else on Earth. Landover was a whole other world entirely, and he had somehow stepped through a time zone to reach it.

Damn, it was exciting and terrifying all at once!

He had wanted this, of course. He had made the purchase understanding that he was going to a fantasy world, that he was buying the throne to a fantasy kingdom. But he had never imagined that it could actually be. He had never thought that it would turn out to be just exactly what the promo and old Meeks had said it would be.

He thought suddenly of Annie and wished she were here with him. She would have been able to help him accept what was happening, he thought. But Annie was not here, and it was because he had lost her that he had come in the first place. Landover was his escape from what her loss had cost him.

He shook his head admonishingly. He must remember that he had come to this world to renew his life, to leave behind the old, to find a different existence from what he had known. He had intended to cut all of his ties; he had wanted to begin again. That being so, it was foolish to bemoan the fact that he might have gotten exactly what he had wanted.

Besides, the challenge it presented intrigued him beyond anything he had ever known.

He mulled matters over in silence, letting Questor lead the way. The wizard had not volunteered any further information since the aborted luncheon, and Ben thought that he might be well advised not to ask any more questions of the man for the time being. He concentrated instead on studying the land about them; first, what was visible from the high slope during their descent and, later, what could be seen more closely from the valley floor. They were traveling east, he concluded, if the sun’s passage through the skies was an accurate compass. Mountains ringed the valley and the mist lay over everything. Lake and river country comprised the south end of the valley, desert and scrubland the east, hills the north and heavy woods the west. The center of the valley was a green flatland of fields and meadows. There were castles in the central plains; he had glimpsed their towers through the mist. There was a very dark, very unpleasant-looking hollows north and west, a deep bowl that seemed to gather mist and shadows until they stirred like steaming soup. He viewed all this during their descent from the meadow where Questor had found him; when they reached the valley floor he saw his first people. They were an unimpressive bunch—farmers with their families, woodsmen and hunters, a few stray traders with their wares, and a single rider bearing an heraldic banner of some sort. Except for the rider, the rest looked rather downtrodden. Their clothes were poor, their tools and wagons battered, and their stock worn. The homes of the farmers had seen better days and lacked any decent upkeep. Everyone seemed tired.

Ben saw all of this from some distance off, including the people, so he could not be entirely certain that he was seeing it accurately. Nevertheless, he didn’t think he was mistaken.

Questor Thews said nothing about any of it.

It was mid-afternoon when he turned Ben suddenly north. A stretch of wooded hills lay before them, shrouded in trailers of mist that hung across the trees like factory smoke. They passed through in silence, picking their way cautiously where limbs and leaves left the pathway in shadow. They were well north of the lake and river country Ben had seen earlier, yet a sudden cluster of lakes and ponds came into view through the trees, bits of dark water mirroring the muted sunlight in bright splashes. Trailers of mist hung over these as well. Ben glanced about uneasily. There was in these woods a hint of the look and feel that had been present in the fairy world.

They climbed a high ridgeline that rose above the forest trees, and Questor brought Ben to a halt. “Look down there, High Lord,” he said and pointed.

Ben looked. Several miles off, ringed in a gathering of trees, mist and shadows was a clearing that shimmered with sunlight. Colors reflected brightly, a rainbow’s mix, and there seemed to be flags waving softly in a forest breeze that did not reach to the ridge on which Ben stood.

Questor’s arm swept down again. “That is the Heart, High Lord. There you will be crowned King of Landover several days hence when the proclamation of your coming has been sent. Every King that Landover has ever had has been crowned there—every King since Landover came into being.”

They stood on the ridgeline a moment longer, staring downward into that single spot of brightness amid the haze of mist and shadows. Neither spoke.

Then Questor turned away. “Come, High Lord. Your castle lies just ahead.”

Ben followed dutifully after.