Wizard at Large (21 page)

Then the horns disappeared, and the sound of their wailing faded into silence. The land was still again, empty save for the awestruck men of Rhyndweir and the cloud of dust and silt that rose above the rubble of the shattered tower.

The Darkling skittered back across the river and bounded up once more onto the lip of the bottle, its grin wicked and sharp. “Done, master!” it hissed. “Done at your command!”

Kallendbor's face was alive with excitement. “Yes, demon! Such power!”

“Your power!” the Darkling soothed. “Yours only, master!”

Questor Thews did not care one bit for the look that crossed Kallendbor's face when he heard that. “Kallend-bor…” he started to say.

But the big man waved him into silence. “Back into the bottle, little one,”he commanded.

The Darkling slipped obediently from view, and Kal-lendbor replaced the stopper.

“Remember your promise,”Questor tried again, stepping forward to claim the bottle.

But Kallendbor snatched it away. “Yes, yes, Questor Thews!” he snapped. “But only when I am finished! Only then. I may have… other uses yet.”

Without waiting for the wizard's response, he mounted his horse and rode quickly away. Questor Thews stood there, staring after him. He turned back one final time to gaze up at the empty space where only moments earlier the tower had stood. All those men dead, he thought suddenly. And Kallendbor barely gave them a thought.

He shook his head worriedly and pulled himself back up on his frightened gray.

He knew already that Kallendbor was never going to return the bottle to him. He was going to have to take it back.

He returned to Rhyndweir lost in thought, the day slipping into evening almost before he knew it. He ate dinner in his room with the gnomes and Parsnip. Kallendbor left him there willingly, making no effort to insist on his presence in the dining hall. Kallendbor did not attend himself. There were clearly other matters of more pressing concern for the Lord of Rhyndweir.

Questor was halfway through his meal when he realized that Bunion had failed to return. He had no idea what had become of the little kobold. No one had seen anything of him since early morning.

When dinner was finished, Questor took a walk to clear his thoughts, found that they were too murky to do so, and returned to his bedchamber to sleep. He went to bed still wondering what had become of Bunion.

It was after midnight when the bedchamber door burst open and Kallendbor stalked through. “Where is it, Questor Thews?” he shouted in fiiry.

Questor looked up from his pillow, sleepy-eyed, and tried to figure out what was happening. Parsnip was already between him and the Lord of Rhyndweir, hissing in warning, teeth gleaming brightly. The G'home Gnomes were cowering under the bed. Torchlight cast a harsh glare from the hallway beyond and there were armed men milling about uncertainly.

Kallendbor loomed over him, an angry giant. “You will return it to me at once, old man!”

Questor rose, indignant now. “I haven't the faintest idea what you…”

“The bottle, Questor Thews—what have you done with the bottle?”

“The bottle?”

“It is missing, wizard!” Kallendbor was livid. “Stolen from a room locked all around and guarded at every entrance! No ordinary man could have accomplished that! It would have required someone who could enter and leave without being seen—someone like yourself!”

Bunion!
thought Questor instantly. A kobold could go where others could not and not be seen doing it! Bunion must have…

Kallendbor reached for Questor, and only the sight of Parsnip's bared teeth kept him from seizing the wizard's thin neck. “Give it to me, Questor Thews, or I'll have you…!”

“I do not have the bottle, my Lord!” Questor snapped in reply, pushing forward bravely to confront the other. Kallendbor was as big as a wall.

“If you do not have it, then you know where it is!” the other rasped in fury. “Tell me!”

Questor took a deep breath. “My word is known to be good everywhere, my Lord,”he said evenly. “You know that to be so. I do not lie. The truth is exactly as I have told you. I do not have the bottle nor do I know where it is. I have seen nothing of it since this morning when you took it away.”He cleared his throat. “I warned you that the magic was dangerous and that—”

“Enough!” Kallendbor wheeled away and stalked back to the open door. When he reached it, he wheeled back again. “You will stay as my guest a few days more, Questor Thews!” he said. “I think you would do well to pray that the bottle reappears in that time—one way or the other!”

He walked out, slamming the door behind him. Questor could hear the locks snapping into place and the sound of men taking up watch.

“We are being made prisoners!” he exclaimed in disbelief.

He started across the room, stopped, started forward again, stopped again, thought angrily of what the High Lord would do when he learned that his representatives were being held against their will by a land baron, and then remembered that the High Lord would do nothing because Ben Holiday wasn't even in Landover anymore and wouldn't know a thing about any of this.

In short, Questor realized dismally, he was on his own.

It was several hours later that Bunion reappeared. He did not come through the door, being no fool, but through the window of the tower wall. He tapped softly on the shutter until Questor opened it in curiosity and found him perched there on the window ledge. Below, it was a straight drop of at least sixty feet to the battlement wall.

The little kobold was grinning broadly, his teeth flashing. In one hand was a length of knotted rope. Questor peered out. Somehow Bunion must have scaled the castle wall to reach them.

“Come to rescue us, I see!” Questor whispered in excitement and smiled back. “You were right to do so!”

Bunion, it happened, had been as suspicious of Kal-lendbor's intentions as Questor and had decided to keep an eye on things from a distance after witnessing the destruction of the tower. Kobolds, of course, could do that; you couldn't see them if they didn't want you to. That was the way of things with true fairy creatures. Bunion understood all too well the awesome power of the magic wielded by the Darkling and he did not think Kallendbor strong enough to resist its lure. Better that he remain hidden, he had decided, until he could be certain that Questor and the others would not become victims of Kallendbor's misguided ambition. It was fortunate he had done so.

Questor helped the kobold crawl inside, and together
they began tying one end of the knotted rope about a wall hook. The others were awake now as well, and Questor was quick to hush the gnomes into silence. The last thing he needed was for Fillip and Sot to start whining. They worked quickly and quietly, and the rope was firmly fastened in minutes. Then out the window they all went, one after the other, hand over hand down the castle wall. It was easy going for the kobolds and the gnomes, and only Questor was forced to work a bit at it.

Once safely down, they followed Bunion along the castle wall to a stairway and down that to a passage leading to an iron door that opened to the outside. Slipping through the dark, keeping within the shadows, they crossed to the back of the town and arrived at a shed where waited the horses and pack animals Bunion had somehow managed to retrieve.

Questor mounted his gray, put Fillip and Sot together on Jurisdiction, left the remaining animals to Parsnip's care, and signaled for Bunion to lead them out. Slowly, cautiously, they made their way through the sleeping town, crossed the bridge, and disappeared into the night.

“Farewell and good riddance, Lord Kallendbor!” Questor shouted back once they were safely into the grasslands.

He was feeling considerably better about things. He had extracted himself and his friends from a difficult situation before any harm had been done to them. He neatly sidestepped the fact that it was Bunion who had actually rescued them by telling himself that it was his leadership that had made it all possible. He was free now to resume his duties and to carry out the responsibilities that had been given him. He would prove his worth to the High Lord yet!

There was only one problem. Bunion, it turned out, didn't have the missing bottle after all. Someone else had stolen it—someone who, like Bunion, could get in and out of a heavily guarded room without being seen.

Questor Thews knotted his owlish face in thought.

Now who could that someone be?

When the phone finally rang, Ben Holiday almost broke his leg falling over a chair in his eagerness to catch the call.

“Damn! Hello?”

“Doc? I'm here, finally,”Miles Bennett said through the receiver. “I'm downstairs in the lobby.”

Ben breathed a long, audible sigh of relief. “Thank God!”

“You want me to come up?”

“Immediately.”

He hung up the phone, collapsed onto the nearby sofa, and rubbed his sore leg ruefully. Salvation, at last! He had been waiting four days for Miles to arrive with the information on Michel Ard Rhi and Abernathy—four long, endless days of being cooped up in the opulent confines of the Shangri-La. Miles had wired the promised money, so at least he had been able to avoid starvation and eviction. But it hadn't been possible to leave the room for more than an
hour or two each day—always late at night or early in the morning. Willow simply drew too much attention.

Besides, the sylph had not been feeling well ever since their arrival from Landover.

He glanced over to where she sat naked in a pool of sunlight on the balcony just outside the sliding glass doors that opened off the living room of their suite. She sat there every day, sometimes for hours, staring out into the desert, face lifted toward the sun, perfectly still. It seemed to help her to be exposed like that, so he left her alone. He figured that it had something to do with her amorphous physiology, that the sunlight was good for both the animal and plant parts of her. Nevertheless, she seemed listless and wan, her coloring not quite right, her energy mysteriously depleted. At times, she appeared disoriented. He was very worried about her. He was beginning to believe that something either present or lacking in the environment of his world was causing the problem. He wanted to finish this business with Abernathy and the missing medallion and get Willow safely back to Landover.

He got up, walked into the bathroom, and splashed some cold water on his face. He hadn't lept well these past few days, too keyed up, too anxious to do something and end this waiting. He toweled his face dry and gazed at himself in the mirror. He looked healthy enough, he decided, except for his eyes. His eyes were tiny roadmaps. That came from lack of sleep and reading two or three paperback novels a day to keep from going stir crazy.

A knock sounded on the door; He tossed aside the towel, crossed the room, and squinted into the peephole. It was Miles. He released the latch and pulled open the door.

“Hiya, Doc,”Miles greeted, extending his hand.

Ben took it and pumped it vigorously. Miles hadn't changed a bit—still the big, baby-faced teddy bear with the rumpled suit and the winning smile. He was carrying a
leather briefcase under one arm. “You look good, Miles,”he said and meant it.

“You look like a damn yuppie,”Miles replied. “Running suit and Nikes, camped out in the Shangri-La, waiting for nightfall and the lights of the city. Except you're too old. Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure you can.”He stepped aside to let his old friend into the room, checked both ways down the outside hall, then closed the door behind them. “Find a comfortable seat, why don't you?”

Miles moved across the room, admiring the furnishings, whistling softly at the fully stocked bar, and then suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. “For Christ's sake, Doc!”

He was staring through the sliding glass doors at Willow.

“Nuts!” Ben exclaimed in dismay. He had forgotten all about Willow.

He went into the bedroom, took down a bathrobe, and went out onto the balcony. He placed the robe gently around Willow's slender shoulders. She looked up at him questioningly, her eyes distant and haunted.

“Miles is here,”he told her quietly.

She nodded and rose to join him. They walked back into the living room to confront the still-paralyzed man who was clutching his briefcase like a shield. “Miles, this is Willow,”he said.

Miles seemed to remember himself. “Oh, yeah, pleased to meet you… Willow,”he stammered.

“Willow is from Landover, Miles,”Ben explained. “From where I live now. She's a sylph.”

Miles looked at him. “A what?”

“A sylph. A mix of wood nymph and water sprite.”

“Sure.”Miles smiled uneasily. “She's green, Doc.”

“That's just her coloring.”Ben was suddenly uncomfortable. “Look, why don't we sit down on the sofa and have a look at what you brought, Miles.”

Miles nodded, his eyes still on Willow. The sylph smiled briefly, then turned and moved off into the bedroom. “You know, it's a good thing I'm standing here having this conversation with you, Doc, and actually seeing this girl, rather than hearing about her over the phone,”Miles said quietly. “Otherwise, I'd be tempted to write you off as a certified nut case.”