Wizard at Large

Sneeze

Bottle

Graum Wythe

Darkling

Spellbound

Michel Ard Rhi

Slight Miscalculation

One-Way Ticket

Castles and Cages

Charades

Button, Button

Jericho

Show Time

Love Song

Lost and Found

Gambit

Snatch

Itch

Halloween Crazies

Dragon at the Bar

Stopper

Homecomings

Ben Holiday sighed wearily and wished he were somewhere else besides where he was. He wished he were anywhere else.

He was in the garden room at Sterling Silver. The garden room was probably Ben Holiday's favorite of all the many rooms at the castle. It was bright and airy. Flower boxes crisscrossed the tiled floor in dazzling swatches of color. Sunshine streamed through floor-length windows that ran the length of its southern wall, tiny motes of pollen dancing on the broad bands of light. The windows stood open and fragrant smells wafted in. The room looked out on the gardens proper, a maze of flower beds and bushes that spread their way downward to the lake on which the island castle rested, mixing and mingling their colors like paints run together on a rain-soaked canvas. The flowers bloomed year-round, reseeding themselves with commendable regularity. A horticulturist from Ben's old world would have killed to study such treasures—species that
grew only in the Kingdom of Landover and nowhere else.

Just at the moment, Ben would have killed to escape them.

“…Great High Lord…”

“… Mighty High Lord…”

The familiar calls of supplication grated on him like rough stones and reminded him anew of the cause of his disgruntlement. His eyes rolled skyward momentarily.
Please!
His gaze shifted furiously from flower box to flower bed and back again, as if somewhere among all those tiny petals the escape he so desperately sought might be found. It wasn't, of course, and he sagged back further in his cushioned chair and contemplated the unfairness of it all. It wasn't that he was trying to shirk his duty. It wasn't as if he didn't care about these things. But this was his
refuge
, for Pete's sake! This was supposed to be his place for time away!

“… and took all of our hard-earned berry stores.”

“And all of our ale kegs as well.”

“When all we did was to borrow a few laying hens, High Lord.”

“We would have replaced those that were lost, High Lord.”

“We intended to be fair.”

“We did.”

“You must see that our possessions are returned…”

“Yes, you must…”

They went on, barely pausing for breath.

Ben studied Fillip and Sot the way his gardener studied weeds in the flower beds. The G'home Gnomes rambled on unself-consciously and endlessly, and he thought about the vagaries of life that permitted misfortunes such as this to be visited on him. The G'home Gnomes were a pitiful bunch—small, ferretlike burrow people who begged, borrowed, and mostly stole everything with which they came in contact. They migrated periodically and, once settled,
could not be dislodged. They were regarded in general as a blight upon the earth. On the other hand, they had proven unswervingly loyal to Ben. When he had purchased the Kingdom of Landover from Rosen's Department Store Christmas Wishbook and come into the valley—almost two years ago now—Fillip and Sot, on behalf of all of the G'home Gnomes, had been the first to pledge their loyalty. They had aided him in his efforts to establish his kingship. They had helped him again when Meeks, the former Court Wizard, had slipped back into Landover and stolen his identity and his throne. They had been his friends when there were precious few friends to be had.

He sighed deeply. Well, he owed them something, certainly—but not this much. They were taking advantage of his friendship in a way that was totally unconscionable. They had traded on it to bring this latest complaint before him, deliberately circumventing the regular channels of a court administration he had worked hard to implement. They had brandished it like a fiery torch until he was hounded to this, his last sanctuary. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't do this every single time there was a complaint of any sort—which was every five minutes, it sometimes seemed—but, of course, they did. They didn't trust anyone else to be fair and impartial. They wanted their “Great High Lord” and their “Mighty High Lord” to hear them out.

And hear them out, and hear them out…

“… a fair disposition would be a return of all things stolen and a replacement of all things damaged,”said Fil-lip.

“A fair disposition would be for you to order to our service several dozen trolls for a reasonable period of time,”said Sot.

“Perhaps a week or two,”said Fillip.

“Perhaps a month,”said Sot.

It would also help matters if they didn't bring most of
their problems on themselves, Ben thought darkly. It was difficult to be either objective or sympathetic when he knew before the first word was out of their mouths that they were
at least
as guilty of causing the dilemma as whomever their latest complaint was to be lodged against.

Fillip and Sot rambled on. Their grimy faces twitched as they talked, their eyes squinting against the light, their fur wrinkled and worn. Their fingers curled and straightened as they gestured, and bits of dirt crumbled and broke away from beneath the nails where it was caked from digging. Their shabby clothes hung on them, leather and sackcloth, colorless save for a single incongruous red feather stuck in the headband of their caps. They were bits of wreckage that had somehow washed up on the shores of his life.

“Perhaps a tribute would help serve as recompense,”Fillip was saying.