A Princess of Landover (5 page)

Ahead, just visible now, was Sterling Silver, her ramparts rising in bright reflective shapes from the island on which she sat. She gleamed her greeting, so Mistaya sang a song for her, too.

She broke a branch from one of the Bonnie Blues as she passed by a small grove at the edge of the valley floor, stripped off the leaves, and began to munch on them eagerly. The Blues were the
staple of sustenance for Landover’s human occupants. They were trees formed thousands of years ago of fairy magic, their leaves edible, their stalks the source of a liquid that tasted like milk. They grew everywhere and replenished themselves with dependable regularity. Any resident within walking distance was allowed a reasonable culling. Any traveler was welcome to partake.

“Want some, Haltwhistle?” she asked the mud puppy, even though she knew he didn’t. She just wanted him to know she would be willing to share.

She passed on across the grasslands, through a meadow of brilliant firestick, their stalks as red as blood; a field of regal crown, golden flowers on bright green stems; and a long, looping line of pink wisteria that channeled down a border fence for miles. Blue ponds appeared here and there, and silvery streams flowed down out of the higher elevations, a sparkling latticework as they crisscrossed the valley floor. It was all summery and cheerful, a promise of better things.

Though she wished that just once it would snow in Landover. It did snow at the higher elevations, but the snow fell into the fairy mists where it was impossible to get to it. There would be snow aplenty at Carrington once real winter set in. There had been several light snowfalls already.

She brushed the thought from her mind. There was no point in thinking about Carrington. That was over.

She had just reached the small forest that marked the boundaries of the King’s land when Haltwhistle nudged her leg. She moved away, thinking she had strayed into his path, but he nudged her again.

This time she stopped where she was. Apparently it was all right for him to touch her, even though she wasn’t supposed to touch him. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him in surprise, but he was already walking away, moving off to the left toward a huge old Marse Red that dominated the trees around it by sheer size, its branches spreading wide in all directions.

Something was hanging from one of the branches. She walked
closer and discovered that it was some sort of creature, all trussed up and suspended by a heavy rope from one of the stouter branches. When she got closer still, she realized, despite all the rope looped about its head and body, that it was a G’home Gnome.

Now, everyone who lived in Landover, whether in the deepest reaches of the lake country or the highest of the Melchor or the most desolate of the wastelands, knew about G’home Gnomes. Mostly, they knew to stay away from them. Their name alone—evolved over time by repeated demands that began or ended with “Go home, Gnome!”—said it all. They were a burrow people with little to offer anyone, scavengers preying on small animals and birds—many of them others’ treasured pets. They enjoyed the reluctant favor of her father for two simple reasons: because they had been the first to swear allegiance to him when he was named King, and because he believed in equal treatment for all his subjects, no matter how low or how despised they might be. Good thing. There was no one lower or more despised than the G’home Gnomes.

Not by her, of course. She rather liked the little creatures. They made her laugh. But then, she hadn’t had a pet eaten by one, either.

She walked up to the bound-and-gagged creature and took a very close look at its muffled face.

“Poggwydd?” she whispered.

She could hardly believe her eyes. It was the G’home Gnome she had stumbled upon when she’d disobeyed Nightshade and gone outside the Deep Fell. She had been tricked into thinking the witch was her friend and was hiding her in the Deep Fell to keep her safe. But eventually, she had given way to an impulse to see something of the world she had left behind. Nightshade had caught them out and tried to kill Poggwydd, but Haltwhistle had intervened and saved him.

All that was some years ago, and she had not seen Poggwydd since.

And now, unexpectedly, here he was.

Quickly she began loosening the little fellow’s bonds, choosing
to remove the gag that filled his mouth first, which proved to be a big mistake.

“Careful, you clumsy girl! Are you trying to tear the skin off my face? It isn’t enough that I am humiliated and mistreated by those rat-faced monkeys, but now I have a cruel child to torment me, as well. Stop, stop, don’t yank so hard on those ropes, you’re breaking my wrists! Oh, that I should have come to this!”

She kept working, trying to ignore his complaints, a difficult undertaking by any measure. But the knots in the ropes that held him fast were tight, and it was taking everything she had to loosen them.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re breaking my arms! I am in great pain, little girl! Have you no pity for me, trussed and bound as I am? Do I deserve this? Do any G’home Gnomes deserve what happens to them? The world is a cruel place, hard and unforgiving—ouch! And we are its victims every—ouch, I said!—day of our miserable lives! Stop it, stop it!”

She stepped back. “Do you want me to free you or not?”

He stared at her, his lips quivering. “I do. But painlessly, please.”

G’home Gnomes looked a great deal like you might expect, hairy heads with ferret faces mounted on stout bodies. They were small creatures, most not quite four feet tall, and due to the circumstances of their burrow life perpetually dirt-covered and grimy. Poggwydd was no exception.

Enough so, in fact, that she wondered suddenly what had possessed her to attempt to free him by touching his filthy body.

She spoke a few quick words, gestured abruptly, and the bonds that constrained him fell away. As did he, tumbling to the ground in a ragged heap, where he lay gasping for breath.

“Was that really necessary?” he panted, looking up at her. Then abruptly, he paused. “Wait! I know you!”

He looked past her to where Haltwhistle sat looking back, and the light came on in his rheumy eyes. “You’re the little girl from the Deep Fell, the one that the witch had been keeping hidden! You’re the High Lord’s daughter … What’s your name again?”

“Mistaya,” she told him.

“No, that’s not it.” He shook his head and frowned. “It’s Aberillina or Portia or something like that.”

She reached down and pulled him to his feet, where he stood on shaky legs, looking as if he might fall down again. “No, it’s Mistaya,” she assured him. “What happened to you, anyway?”

He took a moment to think about it, working hard at brushing himself off and straightening his ragged clothing. “I was set upon by thieves,” he announced abruptly. “I was traveling to the castle to see you, as a matter of fact. I wanted to be sure you were all right since I hadn’t heard from you in quite some time. Rather poor manners on your part, I might point out, not to keep in touch with your friends. Why, if not for me, you might still be a prisoner of the witch!”

She decided not to correct his warped view of old events or to challenge his obvious lie about thieves. She was enjoying herself far too much to spoil the fun. “So the thieves took you prisoner?” she pressed.

“They did indeed,” Poggwydd continued dramatically, gesturing wildly with his hands. “I fought them off for as long as I could, but there were too many for me. They stole everything I had, trussed me up, and hung me from that tree. Not a care for what might happen to me, left like that; not one glance spared for me as they left.”

“Good thing I came along when I did,” she said.

“Well, you could have come sooner,” he pointed out.

“Are you all right now?”

“I’ve been better, but I think I will be all right after I’ve had something to eat and drink. You haven’t any dried meat in your pockets, do you?”

She shook her head. “Why don’t you come back to the castle with me and get something to eat there. You can be my guest at dinner tonight.”

A look of horror crossed his face, and he shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no, I can’t do that!” He swallowed hard, searching for something more to say. “I would like that, you understand. I would be honored to be your guest. But I have … I have a meeting of the
tribal council to attend, and I must get back. Right away. This incident with the thieves has thrown me well off my schedule, which, by the way, is very demanding.”

She nodded. “I suppose so. Well, perhaps another time, then?”

“Yes, another time. That would be wonderful.” He nodded and backed away. “Soon, I promise. It was good seeing you again, Mistrya. Or Ministerya. Good to see that you are doing so well. And your strange little dog, too. Does he still go with you everywhere, or does he sometimes wander? He looks like he needs a lot of fresh air and sunshine, so I hope you let him out now and then. Outside the confines of the castle, I mean.”

She gave him a look, and he smiled with all his teeth showing. “It was just a thought. Well, thank you for cutting me down from that branch, even if you did almost break every bone in my body.” He rubbed himself gingerly to demonstrate the pain he was feeling. “I hope to see you again. I shall, in fact. I have made my home in this part of Landover. A fresh beginning after the encounter with the witch. It took me a long time to get over that, you know. But it was worth it to help you.”

Well, she supposed that he did help her, if only indirectly and inadvertently. By engaging her in conversation, he had kept her out of the Deep Fell long enough for her to learn the truth about what everyone thought had happened to her. He had also provided an object lesson in the temperament and disposition of her would-be teacher and mentor. Witnessing Nightshade’s efforts to destroy him had given her cause to think, for the first time, that she might be making a mistake by staying.

“Good-bye now,” he called over his shoulder to her, moving rapidly away. “Farewell.”

She let him go. There was more to this business of being hung up in the tree than he was telling her, but that was usually the case with G’home Gnomes. She watched him disappear over a rise, and then she turned and started walking again toward the castle with Haltwhistle at her side. Time to be getting on.

She was within hailing distance of the front gates, just across the causeway leading over to the island on which Sterling Silver gleamed in brilliant greeting, when she saw Questor Thews appear on the battlements and wave to her with one stick-thin arm.

She thought the wave looked encouraging.

FATHER KNOWS BEST

B
en 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 Land over 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.