A Princess of Landover

by Terry Brooks

  “Well, I can find him again,” she declared bravely.

  “Not before your father finds you.” Dirk’s remonstrance was maddeningly calm. “Now tell me where it is that you are going.”

  “I don’t know,” she said miserably.

  “Somewhere you won’t be found …,” he nudged.

  “Why won’t you just stay with me? Then it wouldn’t matter where I went. Why won’t you do that?”

  Edgewood Dirk licked his chops and closed his eyes. “I know myself too well to make a promise I cannot keep. My nature requires that I be interested in your actions. For that to happen, you have to make interesting choices. Now think. Where could you go that would interest me?”

  She shook her head helplessly.

  “Put it another way. Where is the last place your father would think to look? Because sooner or later he will give up on talismans and wizards and come looking for you himself.” Dirk paused. “Or perhaps he will send someone in his place, someone more effective at finding what is hidden. Perhaps he will send the Paladin looking for you.”

  Mistaya froze. She knew about the Paladin, of course, even though she had never seen him. Everyone knew about the Paladin. They whispered of it when they thought she couldn’t hear, and Questor Thews had talked of it quite openly. They were all proud of its service to the throne, but they were also quite afraid of it: huge and dark of purpose, all armored and armed astride its charger. There had never been anything in memory that had been able to stand against the Paladin.

  The last thing she wanted was something as implacable as that searching for her.

  “Think, Princess,” the cat pressed. “Where will your father look last for you?”

  She thought. The Deep Fell was a good choice because magic couldn’t penetrate its mists.

  “The Deep Fell?”

  “He will look there first.”

  “The Fire Springs!”

  “He will look there second. He knows how the dragon feels about you.”

  “Not Rhyndweir? I won’t go there!”

  The cat waited. Suddenly Mistaya realized what answer he was looking for. “No!” she said at once. The cat cocked his head. “No! Absolutely not!” she repeated.

  “When you wish to hide, the best place is always the one those hunting you are certain you will avoid.” Dirk gave her one of those patented looks. “Isn’t it?”

  “You want me to go to Libiris,” she declared.

  “I don’t necessarily want you to go anywhere. It isn’t up to me. The decision is yours. Please make it. I grow bored with this.”

  She saw the logic to Dirk’s reasoning. Her father would never think of looking for her at Libiris. He would look for her almost anywhere else before he looked for her there. But if she went, she was doing exactly what he had asked her to do in the first place. What sort of sense did that make?

  “At least you would be going of your own choice and for your own reasons,” Edgewood Dirk offered, as if reading her mind.

  She toughened her resolve so that she could accept what she now realized she must do. “All right, I will go to Libiris with Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel.” She paused. “Are you coming with us or not?”

  The cat took a moment to study the countryside, emerald eyes filling with a distant look, as if gone somewhere else entirely. Then he looked back at her. “I believe I will,” he answered softly, and then he began to purr.

  THE PRINCESS IS MISSING

  Ben Holiday was not particularly worried on that first morning when it was discovered that Mistaya was not in her room. She did not appear for breakfast or lunch, nor was she anywhere in the castle. No one had seen her leave. That might have been cause for alarm in another household, but not in his. Mistaya was famous for her unexpected comings and goings, for choosing to set out on a personal mission or exploration without telling anyone. That she might have done so here was a reasonable assumption, particularly when it was well known that she had been spending her last few days meeting with one of those endlessly troublesome G’home Gnomes that kept cropping up at the castle.

  This one, Poggwydd, had already been caught sneaking into the castle for purposes of pilfering whatever he could find—he didn’t see it that way, of course—and put out again by Bunion right before Mistaya returned from Carrington. She had taken up his cause, thinking that she might help him change his thieving ways. When he had come to the door asking to see her, she’d brought him into the castle for a visit, given him a tour of its many rooms, and spent hours visiting with him somewhere outside Sterling Silver, presumably in an effort to educate him in the error of his ways. She had even made it a point to speak with Bunion about his overly harsh treatment of the little miscreant. All this she had accomplished in the span of little more than the week that she’d been back home.

  Ben knew all this because he pretty much knew everything that happened in the castle. His retainers made it a point of telling him, especially when it came to Mistaya. Willow confided in him, too, when she thought it appropriate, and she had done so here because she was proud of the way that Mistaya was handling her ignominious return. Better that she find something useful to do with her time than sit around bemoaning her fate as a suspended student. Ben agreed, and so both of them had left her alone.

  By dinnertime, however, he was experiencing the first faint whisperings of the possibility that things were not all right. Mistaya was still missing, and no one had seen her anywhere since the previous night. He decided to voice his concerns to Willow.

  “It is possible she is punishing you,” she offered, none too helpfully.

  “Punishing me?” He frowned. They were sitting together after the dinner had been taken away, talking privately. “What do you mean by that?”

  “She’s angry with you. You’ve hurt her feelings, and she doesn’t like how that makes her feel. She already told me that much, Ben.”

  He shook his head. He hated it that the two of them had a private information-sharing arrangement, but it had always been that way, mother to daughter and back again.

  “I didn’t mean to make her feel bad,” he tried to explain. “I was just attempting to—”

  “I know.” She reached up and touched his lips to silence him. “But she doesn’t see it that way. She thinks you should have been more supportive of her situation. Not just about Libiris, but about Laphroig, too. She’s unsure of how she stands with you right now. Even when she can think about it rationally, she’s still not quite certain what’s going to happen.”

  “So she’s gone off somewhere in protest?”

  “Just for a little while, I think. Just long enough to make you worry and maybe rethink what you’ve decided about her future.”

  He sighed. “That sounds like her, doesn’t it?”

  Willow nodded. “She’s very headstrong, very determined.” She smiled and kissed him. “Very like you.”

  But by the following morning, when his daughter still hadn’t reappeared, Ben decided that waiting around was no longer an option. Without saying anything to Willow, he called in Questor Thews and Abernathy for a conference. The three of them gathered clandestinely in Questor’s office and put their heads together.

  “I don’t like it that there’s been no word of her from anyone,” Ben admitted to the other two. “It’s been too long for me to be comfortable with the idea that she’s just off sulking somewhere. Is Bunion back yet?”

  Bunion wasn’t, Questor advised. He sat up straight and prim in his high-backed chair, his colorful robes gathered about his scarecrow frame. “We could ask one of the other kobolds to have a look around, if you wish.”

  Ben didn’t wish. He didn’t want anyone but Bunion doing the looking because he could trust Bunion to do so without giving anything away. It was one thing to go looking for Mistaya because he was worried about her; it was another to give her the mistaken impression that he was spying on her.

  “No, we’ll wait for him to come back,” he said. “He should be here by tonight, should
n’t he?”

  The wizard and the scribe both agreed that he should. Three days was enough to find out whatever there was to find out about Laphroig, and Bunion would come right back after that.

  “Why don’t you use the Landsview, High Lord?” Abernathy asked. He cocked his dog ears to emphasize his approval of the idea. “You can find her that way, no matter where she is.”

  Which was pretty much true, Ben knew, unless she had gone down into the Deep Fell or outside Landover altogether. Neither of those options made a great deal of sense, so there was reason to think that by using the Landsview he might be able to determine where she was and reassure himself that she was all right.

  Departing Questor’s office, they passed down the castle hallways until they reached the tower that housed the Landsview. From there, they began to climb, winding their way up a spiral staircase to a landing that fronted a massive ironbound oak door. Ben placed the palms of his hands on the graven image of a knight and a castle that had been carved into the aged wood, and the door swung silently inward. They entered the small, circular room that waited beyond. A huge section of the far wall was missing, providing them with an unobstructed view of the countryside beyond. A waist-high silver railing ran along the edge of the opening. At its center stood a silver lectern, its fittings gleaming in the sunlight. Runes had been carved into the surface of the lectern, thousands upon thousands of them, all in a language that no one had been able to decipher in recorded history.

  This was the Landsview, Sterling Silver’s eye on the world.

  While Questor and Abernathy watched, Ben stepped up onto the platform and took hold of the railing in preparation for setting out. He reached down into the leather pouch that hung from one side of the lectern and pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment. Opening it, he fastened it with clips to the lectern, revealing an ancient map of the kingdom, its rumpled surface thick with names. Various colors of ink denoted forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, plains, deserts, territories, towns, and the like. Everything that could be named was meticulously marked.

  Ben stared down at the map a moment, remembering the first time he had used the Landsview. How strange it had been, not knowing what to expect, and then how frightening when the world dropped away so suddenly, as if jerked from beneath his feet. He hesitated despite himself, even knowing that there was no reason for alarm.

  Then he focused his concentration on the map, choosing the Greensward to begin his search, calling up the now familiar magic to aid him.

  At once the tower and castle and all that surrounded it disappeared and he was whisked out into the blue of the sky. All that remained was the lectern and its railing, and his hands held tight to the latter, even knowing that he had not left the room in which the railing was mounted; the magic only made it seem as if he had, as if he really were flying. He watched the land sweep away beneath him as the Greensward appeared in the distance and the countryside took shape.

  The last time he had used the Landsview, it was Mistaya who was missing then, too. Five years earlier, she had been stolen away by the Witch of the Deep Fell, who had hidden her from Ben and Willow with magic. It was Nightshade’s intention to subvert her, to turn her away from her parents so she could participate actively in their destruction. Because the Landsview could not penetrate the magic of the Deep Fell, Ben had been unable to find his daughter and had almost lost her forever. But Nightshade was gone and the threat she had once posed was finished, so even though he still could not penetrate the hollows without entering personally, he did not think that this was where his daughter would go.

  Still, after almost two hours of scouring his Kingdom—every hidden valley, darkened forest, and mountainous retreat, every town and village, every last possible place in which she might find refuge—he began to wonder. What if he was wrong about Nightshade? Or even about Mistaya’s reluctance ever to return to the Deep Fell? Maybe she thought hiding out there was a good idea because she knew he couldn’t find her unless he went there himself.

  Except that the Deep Fell was a dangerous place, and Mistaya was no fool. She might be angry enough with him to go off on her own for a few days just to spite him, as Willow had suggested, but she wouldn’t put herself at risk needlessly.

  When he returned to the tower and stepped down off the Landsview, he knew nothing more about Mistaya’s whereabouts than when he had set out to find her. “Nothing,” he reported to Questor and Abernathy, giving a shrug. He hesitated. “Though I suppose she might be hiding in the Deep Fell.”

  Both wizard and scribe bristled instantly at the suggestion, insisting that this was not possible, that Mistaya would never go back there after what had happened before. Which, in turn, made Ben feel foolish for making the suggestion, although it also made him feel somewhat better to hear that his friends agreed with his own assessment.

  “We have to do something else,” he told them as the three tromped back down out of the tower to the lower regions of the castle.

  “Maybe Bunion will have a suggestion,” Questor ventured finally. “No one knows Landover’s secrets better than he does. If there’s a hiding place we haven’t thought of, he’ll remember it.”

  “Maybe we ought to leave well enough alone,” Abernathy growled suddenly. The other two turned to look at him. “Well, I mean that if she doesn’t wish to be found, perhaps we ought to respect that. She might have discovered a way to use her magic to hide from us. I don’t know that we ought to be so quick to try to undo that.”

  “What are you talking about?” Questor demanded. “Of course we want to undo it! She’s got all of us worried to death!”

  “Well, maybe not to death,” Ben tried to amend.

  “Whatever the extent of our worry, it shouldn’t be allowed to continue,” Questor declared. His bushy eyebrows knotted fiercely. “She ought to know better than to do something like this! She’s a big girl, not a child. We have a right to do whatever we can to find out where she is!”

  Abernathy shook his head, ears flopping loosely. “Spoken like a man who jumps without looking.”

  “Well, I don’t see you doing anything to help matters!” Questor snapped in reply. “Should we all just stand around and hope for the best? Is that your answer to the problem?”

  “My answer to the problem is to point out how useless you are when it comes to contributing solutions to problems, Questor Thews!”

  The argument continued all the rest of the way down the stairs and well into the beginning stages of Ben’s first headache of the day, a headache that only grew worse as the hours lengthened and Bunion did not return.

  Berwyn Laphroig, Lord of Rhyndweir—for such was his full name and title—strolled through the weapons room of his castle in an irritated state. He was restless and bored, but the solution to these conditions was not to be found here. There was nothing in this room or even in the whole of his barony that could satisfy his insatiable need to make the young and lovely Mistaya Holiday his wife. There was no other woman who could replace her in his thoughts, none to whom he would give even momentary consideration. Thinking of her only worsened his condition, unfortunately; thinking of her made him even more determined to find a way to have her.

  It had seemed easy enough in the beginning, when he had decided he must replace his old wife. Things had not been going well for some time between them, and he could sense that she was looking for a way out of the marriage. Such insolence was intolerable, and he was perfectly within his rights to make certain she could not act on her foolish fantasies. Even her son had become a source of irritation, always clinging to her as if she were a lifeline to a safe place instead of deadweight that would pull him down. He cared nothing for them, really, so it was not difficult for him to decide to dispose of them when he determined they were no longer necessary.

  Like his brothers and sisters. Like everyone else who had outlived their usefulness.

  His counselors would have been horrified had they realized the extent to which he had gone to fulfill his
ambitions. The ambitions alone would have horrified them. Even more certain was the response of his fellow Lords of the Greensward, had he chosen to confide in them. Not that he would ever do such a thing. But if they knew that he had long coveted not only his father’s title and lands, but the King of Landover’s throne, as well …

  He smiled despite himself. Not much to guess about there. If they had known, they would have found a way to dispatch him in a heartbeat.

  He had confided in no one, however, and given no one reason to suspect the truth. He had disposed of his older brother all on his own. His younger had disappeared shortly after and was never seen again. A poisoner he had enlisted to his cause had taken care of his troublesome wife and son without anyone knowing, and then he had taken care of the poisoner. There was none to bear witness against him, no voices to speak, and no eyes that had seen. It had all been done quickly and quietly, and no trace of his crimes remained to convict him.

  Still, Ben Holiday suspected the truth and did not trust him. That might have been worrisome had he thought the High Lord could prove anything.

  A door opened at the far end of the room, and his scribe, Cordstick, a wisp of a man with a huge mop of bushy hair, came hurrying across the room. “My Lord,” he greeted, bowing low, hair flopping. “We have a problem.”

  Laphroig didn’t like problems and didn’t want to hear about them, but he nodded agreeably. “Yes? What is it?”

  “We received word from one of our loyal subjects that there was a man—well, not a man, really—but he was asking questions in the town below the castle about you, and he …”

  He stopped, as if uncertain where to go next with this. “He was asking questions about your family, my Lord, all of them, including your wife and child.” He swallowed hard. “About their untimely deaths.”