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FATHER KNOWS BEST

Ben Holiday sat across the table from his daughter and stared at her in dismay. It was all too much. Here she was, a young girl who had everything she could possibly want. She was beautiful, intelligent, talented, and skilled. She possessed an extremely potent form of magic. She was the daughter of the King and Queen of Landover and had every opportunity to become something special and to accomplish wonderful things.

Yet her wrongheaded stubbornness and poor judgment eclipsed all of her good qualities and extraordinary abilities and reduced her to a source of constant irritation to those who loved her most.

“Suspended,” he repeated for what must have been the fifth or sixth time, staring down at the letter.

She nodded.

“For using magic.”

She nodded again.

“You used magic?” he repeated in disbelief. “Despite what we agreed? Despite your promise never to do so outside of Landover?”

Mistaya was wise enough to sit there and not even nod this time.

“I don’t understand it. Where was your common sense when all this was happening? What about our agreement to give this a try? Did you think that meant you wouldn’t have to put any effort into it? That you could just do whatever you felt like doing without any consideration for the consequences?”

She straightened just a bit. “Why don’t you just accept that this was a bad idea in the first place? I don’t belong over there. I belong here.”

His jaw clenched and he felt his face redden. He wanted to tell her that she belonged where he told her she belonged, but he managed to keep from doing so. Barely.

“So what I want for you—what your mother wants for you—that doesn’t count at all?”

“Not when it’s the wrong thing.” She sighed. “If you were in my shoes, what would you do? You wouldn’t let someone send you to a place where you didn’t fit in, where people made fun of you and called you names, where they didn’t even understand the importance of taking care of their trees. Would you?”

Ben didn’t know what he would do, and he didn’t think that was the issue here. They weren’t talking about him; they were talking about her. That wasn’t the same thing at all.

He took a deep breath to calm himself and exhaled slowly. King of Landover, ruler of a nation, overseer of a crossroads that linked multiple worlds, and he couldn’t even control his own daughter. He didn’t know when he had been as angry as he was at this moment. Or when he had been so frustrated. He felt powerless in the face of her emotionless response to what had happened and her clear refusal to allow it to affect her in any meaningful way. She wasn’t talking about when she would go back or what she would do to make that happen. She wasn’t talking about going back at all. This was his idea, damn it. His idea for her to go to a boarding school in his world and mingle with girls her own age. Not girls with magic at their command. Not creatures strange and exotic, dragons and mud puppies and the like, for which she had such a fondness. Real, live human girls with human quirks and oddities that required that she exercise at least a modicum of diplomacy. But did she do this? Did she even try? Oh, no, not Mistaya. Instead, if this letter was any indication, she had simply run roughshod over students, administration, and rules with no regard for anyone but herself, and the end result was that she had gotten tossed right out the door.

Now she was sitting here as if nothing important had happened, looking not in the least contrite or ashamed, having decided quite clearly that this put an end to his grand experiment as far as she was concerned.

He read the letter from Headmistress Harriet Appleton once more as he tried to think what to say.

“Reading it again won’t change anything,” his daughter declared quietly. “I broke their stupid rules, and I’m out.”

“You’re out because you didn’t try to fit in!” he snapped. “You keep trying to turn this back on the school and the other students, but it’s really about what you failed to do. Life requires that you make concessions; not everything will go your way. That was what I was hoping you might learn by attending Carrington. You have to work at being part of a larger community. How do you think I function as King? I have to take other people’s feelings and needs into consideration. I have to remember that they don’t always see things the same way I do. I have to treat them with respect and understanding, even when I don’t agree with them. I can’t just tell them what to do and sit back. It doesn’t work like that!”

“Perhaps Mistaya needs a little more time to grow up in Landover before she goes back into your world,” Willow offered quietly. She had been sitting off to one side, listening, saying nothing until now.

Ben glanced over at his wife and saw his daughter’s features mirrored in her face. But the similarity ended there. Willow was measured and calm in her thinking while Mistaya was emotionally driven, quick to act, and less willing to spend time deliberating. Of course, Willow had been like that, too, when she was younger, before Mistaya was born. Probably she understood their daughter better than he did, but she wasn’t saying anything to demonstrate it.

“She’s a very mature, smart young lady,” Ben pointed out. “Much smarter and more mature than those girls who got the best of her.” He shook his head. “She needs to be able to deal with this sort of thing. It’s not going to go away just because she’s come back here. There will be challenges of the same sort in Landover, whether today or tomorrow or somewhere down the road. That’s just the way it is.”

He looked back at his daughter. “But we’re getting away from the point. You’ve been suspended from Carrington, and now I get the clear impression that you don’t think you’re going back.”

“It’s not an impression,” she replied. “It’s a fact. I’m not going back.”

Ben nodded slowly. “Then what is it that you think you are going to do?”

“Stay here in Landover and study with Questor and Abernathy and learn from whatever they can teach me.” She paused. “Is that so unreasonable?”

That’s not the issue, Ben thought. This isn’t about being reasonable; it’s about doing what’s expected of you when there’s something to be gained from doing so. But Mistaya wasn’t about to see it that way, and he couldn’t think of a way to change that at present. He knew he couldn’t let her get away with this, couldn’t let her come back and dictate what she was going to do with her life after failing to give the learning experience he had afforded her a decent chance. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said carefully. “I’ll give it some thought. I’ll talk it over with Questor and Abernathy and see what they think. They may have some ideas on the matter, too. Fair enough?”

She eyed him suspiciously, but he held her gaze until finally she nodded. “I suppose.”

She rose, walked over to her mother, and bent to kiss her cheek. Then, without looking at her father, she left the room.

Ben glared as she closed the door behind her. He waited until he was sure she was safely out of hearing and then said, “I can’t let her get away with this.”

“This isn’t personal, Ben,” his wife said quietly. “She’s a young girl trying hard to grow up under difficult circumstances.”

He stared. “What are you talking about? She’s got everything! How much easier could it possibly be for her?”

Willow came over and knelt next to him, one hand on his arm. “It could be easier if she were like everyone else and she didn’t have to work so hard at trying to be so. You forget what it was like for you when you first came into Landover. Another world entirely, another life, everything you knew left behind, everything unfamiliar and uncertain.”

She was right, of course. He had purchased his right to be King through a Christmas catalog in a scheme that was designed to take his money and leave him sadder but wiser or, in the alternative, dead. He hadn’t really believed a place like Landover existed or that he could be King of it, but he had lost his wife and child, his faith in himself, and his sense of place in the world; he was desperate for a chance to start over. He had been given that chance, but it was nothing like what he had expected, and it took everything he had to fulfill its promise.

Willow had been there to help him almost from the start. She had come to him at night in a lake where he had impulsively gone swimming, a vision out of a fairy world, slender and perfect, a sylph daughter of the River Master, her skin a pale green that was almost silvery, her hair a darker, richer green, fine fringes of it growing like thin manes down the backs of her arms and legs. He had never seen anything like her, and he knew he never would again. She was still the most exotic, marvelous woman he had ever known, and every day he spent with her was a treasure he could scarcely believe it was his good fortune to possess.

Willow patted his arm. “It might not seem like it, but she’s doing the best she can. Mistaya is a grown woman intellectually, but she is still emotionally very young. She is trying to find a balance between the two, and I don’t think she’s done that yet.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” he demanded in frustration. “I can’t just stand around and do nothing.”

“Be patient with her. Give her some time. Keep talking to her, but don’t try to force her to do something she so clearly doesn’t want to do. I know you think it is important for her to spend time in your world. I know you believe there are things there that would help her to be a better person. But maybe all that can wait a few years.”

She stood up, her dark eyes warm and encouraging. “Think about it. I’m going to go talk to her alone and see if I can help.”

She left the room and, as always, his heart went with her.

He walked over to the window after she was gone and stared out at the countryside. His reflection was mirrored in the glass, and he looked at himself with critical disdain. His hair was graying at the temples, and the lines on his forehead and around his eyes were deepening. He was aging, although not so quickly as he had before coming over from his old world. Aging in Landover was slower, although he had never been able to take an accurate measure of its general rate of progress because it differed considerably from one species to the next. Some aged much more slowly than others. Some, like Mistaya, followed no recognizable pattern. Fairies, he had been told, did not age at all.

He should be fifty-eight or so by now, by normal Earth standards. But he looked and felt as though he were about fifteen years younger. It was most noticeable when he crossed back through the mists and saw his old friend and partner from the law firm, Miles Bennett. Miles looked years older than Ben did. Miles knew it, but never spoke of it. Miles was like that; he understood that life treated people differently.

Especially if you lived in Landover and you were Ben Holiday.

He remembered anew his own first impressions when he had come into Landover to take possession of the throne some twenty years ago. Culture shock did not begin to describe what he had experienced. All of his expectations of what being King would mean were dashed immediately. His castle was a tarnished ruin. His court consisted of a wizard whose magic wouldn’t work right, a scribe that had been turned into a dog and couldn’t be turned back into a man again, and a cook and runner who looked like evil monkeys but were actually creatures called kobolds.

And those were just the occupants of the castle.

Outside, there were knights, a dragon, a witch, trolls, G’home Gnomes, elves, and various other creatures of all types, shapes, and persuasions. There were demons housed underneath Landover in a hellish place called Abaddon that Ben had been forced to enter several times over the years. There were trees and plants and flowers that were incredibly beautiful and could kill you as quick as you could blink. There were cave wights and bog wumps and crustickers and cringe-inducing vermin you didn’t want to get within spitting distance of. Literally.

There was the castle herself, Sterling Silver, a living breathing entity. Formed of hard substances and infused with magic, she was created to be the caregiver for Landover’s Kings, seeing to their comfort and their needs, watching over them, linked to them as mother to a child. The life of the King was the life of the castle, and the two were inextricably joined.

Finally, there was the Paladin.

He stopped himself. Don’t go there, he told himself angrily. This isn’t the time for it.

But when was it ever the time? When did he ever want to think about the truth of who and what he was?

He shifted his gaze to the land beyond and his thoughts to his daughter’s return. He knew he could not just ignore what she had done, but he also knew that Willow was right when she said it would be a mistake for him to force Mistaya into something she had so clearly set herself against. Carrington was still a good idea, but maybe not right now. Given that admission, painful though it was, the problem remained of what to do with her. She would happily return to being tutored by Questor and Abernathy. And why not? Both were besotted with her and would let her do pretty much what she chose.

Which, in part, was why he had sent her off to boarding school in the first place, thinking it might help her to have some rules and some social interactions that didn’t involve a hapless wizard and a talking dog.

He returned to his chair. He was still sitting there thinking, mostly to no avail, when there was a knock on the door, and Questor Thews and Abernathy stepped through.

He gave them a critical once-over as they approached. Now, there’s the original odd couple, he thought.

He loved them to death, would have done anything for either one, and couldn’t possibly have succeeded as King of Landover without their help.

Still, you couldn’t ignore how odd they were.

Questor Thews was the court wizard, a trained conjurer whose principal duties included acting as adviser to the King and making his life simpler by the use of magical skills. Trouble was, Questor wasn’t very good at either, but especially the latter. Ben would give him credit for moments of helpful advice, with a few notable lapses, but the court wizard’s use of magic was another matter entirely. It wasn’t that he didn’t try or didn’t have good intentions; it was all in his execution. With the magic of Questor Thews, you never knew what you were going to get. Much of their time together had been spent figuring out ways to correct the many things that Questor’s magic had gotten wrong.

Abernathy was the chief case in point, and Questor still hadn’t managed to fix that one. To keep him safe from the unpleasant and dangerous son of Landover’s last King, Questor had turned the court scribe into a dog. Not fully, of course. He only managed to get him halfway there. Abernathy retained his human hands and his human mind and his human voice. The rest of him became a dog, although he still walked upright. This was not a good thing, because Abernathy still had his memories of his old life and wanted it back. But Questor couldn’t give it to him because he couldn’t work the spell that would reverse the change. He had tried repeatedly to help his friend—because they were friends, despite the fact that they argued and fought like cats and dogs. He had even gotten it right once, and for a brief period Abernathy had reverted to his human form. But mostly Questor had gotten it wrong, and those weren’t incidents anyone cared to talk about.

So here they were: a tall, scarecrow of a man with long white hair and beard, robes of such atrocious patterns and colors that even Mistaya winced, and a distracted air that warned of mishaps waiting just past the next sentence he spoke; and a dog that dressed and walked upright like a man and sometimes barked.

He could tell right away that they had something to tell him. It almost certainly had to do with Mistaya.

“High Lord,” Questor Thews greeted him, offering a deep bow.

“High Lord,” Abernathy echoed, but without much enthusiasm.

Questor cleared his throat. “We need a moment of your time—that is, if you have a moment to spare just now—to put forth an idea that we have stumbled upon while attempting to help you through this crisis with Mistaya, knowing how painful it must be for you—”

“Fewer words, Questor!” Abernathy growled, almost dog-like. “Get to the point!”

Ben smiled indulgently and held up both hands to silence them. “I trust this visit has a constructive purpose and isn’t just a misguided effort to advise me where I went wrong with my daughter’s upbringing?”

Questor looked horrified. It was hard to tell with Abernathy; a dog pretty much always looks like a dog, even if it’s a soft-coated wheaten terrier. “Oh, no, High Lord!” the former exclaimed in dismay. “We have no intention of trying to correct you on your efforts at raising Mistaya! We wouldn’t think of such a thing—”

“We might indeed think of such a thing,” Abernathy interrupted. He glared at Questor. “But that isn’t why we are here. As you may eventually find out, I hope.”

Questor glared back. “Perhaps you would rather handle this than I? Would that suit you better?”

Abernathy perked up his ears. “It might. Shall I?”

“Oh, please do.”

Ben hoped the vaudeville act was finished, but he held his tongue and waited patiently.

Abernathy faced him. “High Lord, Questor and I are well aware of the fact that Mistaya’s return is a disappointment and an irritation. We are also aware of what she thinks is going to happen, which is that things will go back to the way they were before she left. You, on the other hand, would like to find some more productive use of her time, preferably something educational and perhaps a bit challenging?”

He made it a question, even though the force of his words made it clear he was certain of his understanding of the situation. “Go on,” Ben urged, nodding.

“We know that she must be disciplined, High Lord,” Questor broke in, forgetting that he had ceded this territory to Abernathy only moments earlier. “She is a willful and rebellious child, perhaps because she is smart and beautiful and charming.”

“Perhaps because she is your daughter, as well,” Abernathy muttered, and gave Ben a knowing look. “But to continue.” He turned the full weight of his liquid brown, doggy gaze on Questor to silence him. “What is needed is a lesson that will teach Mistaya at least something of what you had hoped Carrington would provide. Study with Questor and myself, however educational, has its limits, and I think we may have reached them.”

Questor bristled. “That is entirely wrong—”

“Questor, please!” Abernathy bared his teeth at the other, then turned to Ben anew. “So we have an idea that might accomplish this,” he finished.

Ben was almost afraid to hear what it was, but there was probably no avoiding it. He took a deep breath. “Which is?”

“Libiris,” Questor Thews announced proudly.

Ben nodded. “Libiris,” he repeated.

“The royal library.”

“We have one?”

“We do.”

“Libiris,” Ben repeated again. “Unless I am mistaken, I have never heard mention of it.” He sat back, mildly confused. “Why is that?”

“My fault entirely,” Abernathy declared.

“His fault entirely,” Questor Thews agreed. He looked pleased with the pronouncement. “He never told you about it, did he?”

“Nor did you,” the other pointed out.

“Nor did anyone else.” Ben leaned forward again, irritated despite himself. “How is it we have a royal library I know nothing about? As King of Landover, aren’t I supposed to know these things? Where in the heck is it?”

“Oh, well, that is a long story, High Lord.” Questor looked saddened by the fact, as if the length were an unfortunate accident.

“Perhaps you can shorten it up for me.” Ben smiled. “Perhaps you can do that right now, while I’m still smiling in hopes that all this has something to do with my daughter.”

Questor cleared his throat anew. “Long, long ago, in a time far, far away, there was a King—”

Abernathy’s sudden bark cut him off mid-sentence. The scribe shook his head. “Now look what you’ve made me do, wizard! You made me bark, and you know how I hate that.” He gestured at the other in annoyance. “Let me tell it or we’ll be here all day!”

He faced Ben. “Libiris was founded by the old King, the one who ruled for so long before you, a man more enlightened than his son or the rabble of pretenders who came afterward. He built it to house his books and those of the Lords of the Greensward and others who had libraries of their own. It was his hope that making the books available to the entire population of Landover would foster a greater interest in reading, something that had been sorely lacking. It was a good idea, and it worked for a while. But complications arose, and the King grew old and lost interest, and the entire effort simply bogged down. Eventually, Libiris ceased to function in any meaningful way. It has, in point of fact, fallen into a sad state of neglect. Enough so that it has ceased to function at all.”

“But you’ve never even spoken about it?” Ben pressed.

“There were other, more important concerns for much of the time during our early years together, High Lord. Such as trying to keep you alive. You may recall that part of your life? Since the birth of Mistaya, I simply haven’t given the matter any thought. There hasn’t been any reason to. Libiris has been closed now for many years.”

He shrugged. “I should have said something before, but it just didn’t seem important enough to bring up.”

Ben found this odd, but given the state of things in Landover, even after almost twenty years of his presence as King, he wasn’t entirely surprised. “Well, now that you have brought it up, what does any of it have to do with Mistaya?”

Questor stepped forward, taking command once more. “It was our thought that perhaps you should send Mistaya to Libiris with instructions to reorganize and reopen it. Such an effort fits well with your other programs regarding education through community service, and it seems to us, Abernathy and me, a perfect project for a young lady of Mistaya’s capabilities.”

Ben thought about it. “You think I should send her there to find out what’s needed and then to undertake repairs and rehabilitation of the books and fixtures and buildings? A fifteen-year-old girl?”

Questor and Abernathy exchanged a quick glance. “I wouldn’t call her that to her face,” Abernathy declared quietly. “And yes, I think she is more than equal to the task. Don’t you, High Lord?” He paused. “It would be a mistake to underestimate her capabilities.”

“It would provide an educational and challenging task for her,” Questor added. “One that would require working with others and finding middle ground for agreement on how to do things. Just the sort of project I think you had in mind when you talked to her earlier.”

Well, it wasn’t what he’d had in mind at all. He hadn’t really had any project in mind, although thinking it through now he had to agree that the general idea was sound. A project of this sort—the reorganization of a library—would keep Mistaya occupied and involved in something meaningful while she grew up a little more and perhaps rethought her decision to leave Carrington. This whole business about having a royal library came as a surprise, but now that he knew about it there was no reason not to do something constructive with it.

“You wouldn’t send her there alone, would you?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” Questor declared. “I would go with her. Abernathy could go, as well. Later, once she’s taken the measure of the place, we’ll send for craftsmen and laborers. But it would be her vision, her project, from start to finish.”

Ben thought about it some more. “All right. Let me talk to Willow. Then we’ll make a decision. But I think you might be on to something.”

He regretted the words almost before they had left his mouth, but once spoken there was no taking them back. He would just have to hope that this time was different from some of the others.

Beaming in unison, the wizard and the scribe bowed and left the chamber.

Once outside, the door closed tightly behind them, Abernathy turned to Questor. “Perhaps we should have told him the rest,” he whispered.

The court wizard shook his head, mostly because Abernathy’s whiskers were tickling his ear. “Time enough for that later. He doesn’t need to know everything right away.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Besides, we don’t know if he’s still there. He might have moved on. When was the last time you visited Libiris?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You see? Anything could have happened. Besides, what if he is still in residence? We’re more than a match for him, the three of us.”

“I don’t know,” Abernathy said doubtfully. “Craswell Crabbit. He’s awfully clever. I never trusted him.”

“Then we will have reason to get rid of him first thing. In fact, we will suggest that to the King before leaving, once he has made the decision to send her. Which he will. I could tell by the way he spoke about it that he likes the idea. Anyway, you and I will be with her when she goes. What could happen?”

It was the kind of question Abernathy didn’t care to ponder, and so he dismissed it from his mind.