A Princess of Landover (27 page)

“Willow,” he said softly, shaking her gently awake.

She opened her eyes, saw the mud puppy, and was on her feet at once. “That’s Haltwhistle, Ben,” she whispered to him, an unmistakable urgency echoing off the words.

They dressed hurriedly, and leaving Bunion to watch over things they let the mud puppy show them the way. Haltwhistle gave no indication that he knew who they were, and to tell the truth Ben wasn’t sure he could have identified the creature without Willow to help him. Mud puppies all looked the same to him. But if it really was his daughter’s, then Mistaya was out there somewhere on her own without her assigned protector, and that was not good.

He took a moment to recall all the times that the Earth Mother had helped them in the past, both together and individually. An ancient fairy creature come out of the mists eons ago when Landover was first formed, she was the kingdom’s caretaker and gardener. Wedded to the earth and its growing things, an integral part of the organic world, she nevertheless maintained a physical presence, as well. She was wise and farsighted and ageless, and she loved Mistaya.

They walked for a long time, leaving behind the Irrylyn and the surrounding forests and descending into mist-shrouded lowlands in
which the ground quickly grew soggy and uncertain. Patches of standing water turned to acres of swamp, and stands of reeds and grasses clogged the passage in all directions. But the mud puppy maneuvered through it all without pausing, leading them along a narrow strip of solid ground until at last they had reached a vast stretch of muddied water amid a thick forest of cedars.

Haltwhistle stopped at the edge of this water and sat. Ben and Willow stopped next to him and stood waiting.

The wait was short. Almost immediately the waters began to churn and then to heave and the Earth Mother appeared from within, rising to the surface like a spirit creature, her woman’s form slowly taking shape as she grew in size until she was much larger than they were. Coated in mud—perhaps formed of it—and her body slick with swamp waters, she stood upon the surface of the mire and opened her eyes to look down on them.

“Welcome, King and Queen of Landover,” she greeted. “Ben Holiday of Earth and Willow of the lake country, I have been expecting you.”

“Is that Haltwhistle who brought us here?” Ben asked at once, wasting no time getting to the point.

“It is,” the Earth Mother confirmed.

“But shouldn’t he be with Mistaya?”

“He should. But he has been sent home to me. He will remain here until Mistaya summons him anew.”

“Why would Mistaya send him home?” Willow asked.

The Earth Mother shifted positions atop the water, causing her sleek body to shimmer and glisten in the misty, graying light. “It was not your daughter who sent Haltwhistle home to me. It was another who travels with her.”

“The G’home Gnomes?” Ben demanded in disbelief.

The Earth Mother laughed softly. “A mud puppy will not leave its master or mistress and cannot be kept by humans. A mud puppy is a fairy creature and not subject to human laws. But powerful magic wielded by another fairy creature is a different matter. Such magic was used here.”

Ben and Willow exchanged a quick glance, both thinking the same thing. “By Nightshade?” Ben asked quickly. “By the Witch of the Deep Fell?”

“By a Prism Cat,” the Earth Mother answered.

Ben closed his eyes. He knew of only one Prism Cat, and he had crossed paths with it more than once since coming to Landover, almost always to his lasting regret. “Edgewood Dirk,” he said in dismay.

“The Prism Cat found your daughter in the lake country and took her away with him. But first the cat sent Haltwhistle back to me. The message was clear.”

Clear enough, Ben thought in dismay. But what did Dirk want with Mistaya? The cat always wanted something; he knew that much from experience. It would be no different here. The trouble was in determining what he was after, which was never apparent and always difficult to uncover. The Prism Cat would talk in riddles and lead you in circles and never get to the point or answer a question directly. Like cats everywhere, he was enigmatic and obtuse.

But Edgewood Dirk was dangerous, too. The Prism Cat possessed a very powerful magic, just as the Earth Mother had said. Yet the extent of that magic went far beyond his ability to manipulate a mud puppy. Ben felt a new urgency at the thought of Dirk’s proximity to Mistaya.

“Where is Mistaya now?” he asked the Earth Mother.

“Gone with the Prism Cat,” she answered once more. “But the Prism Cat covers their tracks and the way of their passing, and even I cannot determine where they are.”

Ben felt a slow sinking in the pit of his stomach. If the Earth Mother didn’t know where Mistaya was and couldn’t find her, how could he expect to?

“Can you reverse the magic used to send Haltwhistle home to you?” Willow asked suddenly. “Can you send him back out again to find our daughter?”

The elemental shifted again, scattering droplets of water that sparkled like diamonds shed. “Haltwhistle can only go to her if she
calls him now. She has not done so, child. So he must remain with me.”

All the air went out of Ben on hearing this. His one chance at finding his daughter had evaporated right before his eyes. If the Earth Mother couldn’t help him find her, he didn’t know if there was anyone who could.

“Can you tell us anything to do?” Willow asked suddenly, her voice calm and collected, free of any hint of desperation or worry. “Is there a way to communicate with her?”

“Go home and wait,” the Earth Mother said to her. “Be patient. She will communicate with you.”

Ben tried to say something more, but the elemental was already sinking back into the swamp, slowly losing shape, returning to the earth in which she was nurtured. In seconds she was gone. The surface of the water rippled softly and went still. Silence settled in like a heavy blanket, and the mist drew across the water.

Haltwhistle looked up at them, waiting.

“Take us back, mud puppy,” Willow said softly.

They walked back the way they had come, weaving through the swamp grasses and reeds, winding about the deep pools of water and thick mud, carefully keeping to the designated path. Neither Ben nor Willow spoke. There was nothing either of them wanted to say.

On reaching their camp and Bunion, Haltwhistle turned back at once and vanished into the mist. Ben shook his head. He had the vague feeling he should have done something more, but he couldn’t say what. He walked over to where their camping gear was already packed and ready to be loaded and sat down heavily.

He looked at Willow expectantly as she sat next to him. “What do we do now?”

She smiled, surprising him. “We do what the Earth Mother suggested, Ben. We go home and wait for Mistaya to communicate with us.”

This was not what he was hoping to hear, and he failed to hide his disappointment. “I don’t know if I can leave it at that.”

“I know. You want to do something, even if you don’t quite know what that something is.” She thought about it a moment. “We can ask Questor if he has a magic that can track a Prism Cat. He might know something that would help.”

Sure, and cows might fly
. But Ben just nodded, knowing that he didn’t have a better suggestion. Not at the moment, anyway. Not until he thought about it some more.

So they loaded their gear on their horses and set out for home, and all the way back Ben kept thinking that he was missing something obvious, that there was something he was overlooking.

THEY SEEK THAT PRINCESS EVERYWHERE!

T
he sun was just cresting the horizon when Questor Thews slipped from his bed, drew on his favorite bathrobe (the royal blue one with the golden moons and stars), and his dragon slippers (the ones that looked as if his toes were breathing fire), and padded down to the kitchen for his morning coffee. He had discovered coffee some years back during one of his unfortunate visits to Ben’s world and had secured several sacks in the process, which he now hoarded like gold. Mistaya had been good enough to add to his supply now and again during her time at Carrington, but since she had been dismissed, he wasn’t sure how long it would be before he could replenish his stock.

He finished brewing a pot and was in the process of enjoying his first cup of the day when Abernathy wandered in and sat down across from him. “May I?” he asked, motioning toward the coffee.

Questor nodded, wondering for what must have been the hundredth time how a soft-coated wheaten terrier could possibly enjoy drinking coffee. It must be a part of him that was still human and not dog, of course. But it just looked odd, a dog drinking coffee.

“Any new thoughts as to where our missing girl might be?” Abernathy inquired of him, licking his chops as he took the first swallow of his coffee.

Questor shook his head. “Not a one. The High Lord is right, though. I think we are missing something important about all this.”

Ben Holiday had voiced his opinion on this late last night on his return from the lake country, more than a hint of discouragement coloring his voice and draping his tired visage. He had thought that he and Willow would find her there, but instead they had found only clues that seemed to lead nowhere. If neither the River Master nor the Earth Mother could help, it didn’t look good for the rest of them.

“What could Edgewood Dirk want with her?” Abernathy asked suddenly, as if reading his thoughts.

Questor grunted and shook his head. “Nothing good, I’m sure.”

“He wouldn’t be going to the trouble of hiding her tracks if his intentions were of the right sort,” his friend agreed. “Remember how much trouble he caused the last time he showed up?”

Questor remembered, all right. But on thinking back, it didn’t seem that Dirk had been the cause of the trouble so much as the indicator. Something like a compass. The Prism Cat had appeared at the behest of the fairies in the mists, a sort of emissary sent to nudge the High Lord and his friends in the direction required for setting aright things that had gone askew—all without really telling them what it was exactly that needed righting. If that were true here, then Mistaya might be headed for a good deal more trouble than she realized.

Questor sighed. He was at his wit’s end. He could continue to do what Ben Holiday and he had done every day, which was to go up to the Landsview and scour the countryside. But that had yielded exactly nothing to date, and it felt pointless to try yet again. He had thought about approaching the dragon, always a daunting experience, in an effort to see if it might be willing to help. But what sort of help might it offer? Strabo could cross borders that the rest of them couldn’t—he could go in and out of Landover at will, for example—but that would prove useful only if Mistaya were somewhere
other than Landover, and there were no indications at this point that she was.

“I remember when the High Lord was tricked into believing he had lost the medallion and Dirk trailed around after him until he figured it out,” Questor mused, turning his coffee cup this way and that. “He was there when the High Lord was trapped with Nightshade and Strabo in that infernal device that Horris Kew uncovered, too. Dispensing his wisdom and talking in riddles, prodding the High Lord into recognizing the truth, if I remember right from what we were told afterward. Perhaps that is what’s happening here.”

“You make the cat sound almost benevolent,” Abernathy huffed, his terrier face taking on an angry look, his words coming out a growl. “I think you are deluding yourself, wizard.”

“Perhaps,” Questor agreed mildly. He didn’t feel like fighting.

Abernathy didn’t say anything for a moment, tapping his fingers against his cup annoyingly. “Do you think that perhaps Mistaya might be trapped somewhere, like the High Lord was?”

Possible, Questor thought. But she had been wandering around freely not more than a few days ago in the company of those bothersome G’home Gnomes and the cat. Something had to have changed, but he wasn’t sure it had anything to do with being trapped.

“We need to think like she would,” he said suddenly, sitting up straight and facing Abernathy squarely. “We need to put ourselves inside her head.”

The scribe barked out a sharp laugh. “No, thank you. Put myself inside the head of a fifteen-year-old girl? What sort of nonsense is that, wizard? We can’t begin to think like she does. We haven’t the experience or the temperament. Or the genetics, I might add. We might as well try thinking like the cat!”

“Nevertheless,” Questor insisted.

They went silent once more. Abernathy began tapping his fingers on his cup again. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, what are your thoughts, now that you’ve taken on the character of a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Fuzzy, I admit.”

“The whole
idea
of trying to think like a fifteen-year-old girl is fuzzy.”

“But suppose, just suppose for a moment, that you are Mistaya. You’ve been sentenced to serve out a term at Libiris, but you rebel and flee into the night with two unlikely allies. You go to the one place you think you might find a modicum of understanding. But it is not to be. Your grandfather takes the side of your parents and declares you must return to them and work things out. You won’t do this. Where do you go?”