Wizard at Large (33 page)

A man with glasses and graying hair rose from one of the tables and said, “Chief Deputy, would you bring Mr. Holiday and his friends down here, please?”

Wiiloughby stepped to the forefront on their arrival, sticking out his hand and announcing, “Lloyd Wiiloughby of Sack, Saul, and McQuinn, Mr. Martin. I have been asked to represent Mr. Holiday.”

Martin shook his hand perfunctorily and promptly forgot him. “It's late, Mr. Holiday, and I'm tired. I know who you are. I've even followed a case or two you've tried. We've both been around the block, so let me get right to the point. The complainant, Mr. Ard Rhi, says you took a medallion from him. He wants it returned. I don't know what the dispute is, but I have Mr. Ard Rhi's word that if the medallion is returned, the whole matter will be forgotten. No charges will be filed. What do you say?”

Ben shrugged. “I say Mr. Ard Rhi is nuts. Is that why we're being detained—because someone says we stole a medallion? What kind of nonsense is this, anyway?”

Martin shook his head. “Frankly, I don't know. A lot of what happens anymore is beyond me. At any rate, you better think it over because if the medallion doesn't show up and Mr. Ard Rhi does—he's supposed to be on his way—you are likely to be charged, Mr. Holiday.”

“On one man's word?”

“Afraid so.”

Ben came right against him. “As you said, Mr. Martin, I'm a lawyer who's been around the block. So is Mr. Bennett. Our word ought to count for something. Who is this
Ard Rhi? Why should you take his word? That's all you have, isn't it?”

Martin was unruffled. He stood his ground. ‘The only word I get, Mr. Holiday, is from my boss, who keeps me employed, and he says to charge you if Mr. Ard Rhi— whoever he is and whatever he does—-signs a complaint. My guess is that if he doesn't get the medallion back, he'll sign. What do you think?”

Ben couldn't say what he was thinking without getting in worse trouble than he already was. “Okay, detain me, Mr. Martin. But how about letting the others go? Apparently I'm the one who's to be charged.”

Martin shook his head. “No such luck. Your friends are to be charged as accomplices. Look, I've just finished a long, hard day in court. I lost the case I was trying, I missed my kid's Halloween party, and now I'm stuck down here with you people. I don't like this any better than you do, but that's the way life works sometimes. So let's just have a seat here while we wait for Mr. Ard Rhi. And maybe I can finish some of this paperwork I'm too damned tired to haul back to my office.”He motioned to the gallery. “Give me a break, huh? Talk it over. I don't want to mess with this thing.”

He trooped wearily back to the counsel table and sat down, bending over a legal pad and notes. Willoughby motioned them all solicitously toward the gallery seats, where they sat in a row.

Martin looked up again. “Chief Deputy? Your people got orders to bring Mr. Ard Rhi up here when he arrives?” Martin waited for the affirming nod, then went back to his notes. Wilson drifted back up the aisle to the courtroom doors and stayed there.

Willoughby eased his way down the line to Ben and bent down. “Maybe you really should reconsider your decision not to give up the medallion, Mr. Holiday,”he whispered,
sounding as if perhaps Ben should realize that this would be best for all concerned.

Ben gave him a look that caused him to move quickly away. Willow's voice was a whisper in his ear. “Don't… give them the medallion, Ben.”She sounded so weak it made his throat constrict. “If you must,”she said, “leave me. Promise you will.”

“Me as well, High Lord,”Abernathy said, bending close. “Whatever happens to us, at least you must get back to Landover!”

Ben closed his eyes. There was that choice. He had the medallion back again. Alone, he could undoubtedly find a way to slip out. But it would mean abandoning his friends, and he wasn't about to do that, no matter what. Miles would probably be all right, but Willow wouldn't last the night. And what would become of Abernathy? He shook his head. There had to be another way out of this.

Miles leaned over. “Maybe you better think about hiding the medallion, Doc. Just for tonight. You can come back for it tomorrow. You can't let them find it on you!”

Ben didn't answer. He didn't have an answer. Hello, choice number two. He knew Miles was right, but he also knew that he didn't want to part with the medallion again for any reason. Twice now he had lost it, once before when Meeks had tricked him into thinking he had given it up when in fact he hadn't, and this time when he had given it to Abernathy in Questor's ill-fated effort to change the dog back into a man. Both times he had managed to retrieve it, but only after considerable difficulty. He was not anxious to risk a third mishap. The medallion had become an integral part of him since he had crossed into Landover, and while he didn't yet fully understand how it had happened, he knew that he could no longer function without it. It gave him the magic that made him King. It gave him power over the Paladin. And while he was reluctant to admit it, it gave him his identity.

He sat in the near-dark courtroom and thought about the medallion and all that he had become since it had been given to him. He looked at the trappings of the courtroom, symbols of his old life as a member of the bar, shards of the person he had been, and thought about how far he had gone away from them. Democracy to monarchy. Trial and error to trial by combat. A jury of his peers to a jury of one. No law but his. It had all been made possible by his acquisition of the medallion. His hand drifted to his tunic front. His smile was ironic. The trappings of his old life might be gone, but hadn't he simply exchanged them for new ones?

The doors pushed open and another deputy appeared. He spoke briefly with Wilson, and Wilson walked down to Martin. They in turn conversed, and then Martin got up and walked back up the aisle with the Chief Deputy. All three men pushed through the doors and disappeared.

Ben felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle. Something was up.

A few moments later, they were back. Martin walked down the aisle to stand before Ben. “Mr. Ard Rhi is here, Mr. Holiday. He says you came to his house last night posing as a Mr. Squires in an attempt to buy the medallion. When he wouldn't sell, you came back tonight with your friends and stole it. Apparently, the daughter of his steward helped you. He says she's admitted her part in the matter.”He looked toward the courtroom doors. “Chief Deputy?”

Wilson and the other deputy pushed open the doors and said something to someone outside. Michel Ard Rhi stepped into view, his face impassive, but his eyes dark with anger. Behind him appeared two members of Graum Wythe's watch.

Elizabeth stood disconsolately between them. Her eyes were downcast and tears streaked her freckled face.

Ben felt sick. They had found Elizabeth. There was no telling what they had threatened her with to force her to
confess to stealing the medallion. And there was no telling what they would do to her if Ard Rhi didn't get it now.

“Do any of you know the little girl?” Martin asked quietly.

No one said anything. No one had to.

“How about it, Mr. Holiday?” Martin pressed. “If” you return the medallion, this whole matter can be dropped right here and now. Otherwise, I have to charge you.”

Ben didn't answer. He couldn't. There seemed no way out.

Martin sighed. “Mr. Holiday?”

Ben leaned forward, just to shift positions while he tried to stall, but Abernathy misinterpreted the move, thinking he had decided to give up the medallion, and hurriedly brought up a paw to restrain him.

“No, High Lord, you cannot!” he exclaimed.

Martin stared at the dog. Ben could see in the man's eyes what he was thinking. He was thinking, how can the mouth on a dog costume move like that? How come he has teeth and a tongue? How come he seems so real?

Then a ball of crimson fire exploded outside the bank of courtroom windows, a black hole opened through the night, and out of the hole flew Strabo the dragon and Questor Thews.

It was one of those rare moments in life when everything seems to come to a halt, where movement is suspended, and everyone is trapped in a sort of three-dimensional still life. It was one of those moments that imprints itself in the memory, so that years later everyone still remembers exactly what it was like—what the feelings were, the smells, the tastes, the colors, and the lines and angles of everything around; and most of all, the way everything that happened just before and just after seemed focused on that moment like sunlight reflected off still water in colored threads.

It was like that for Ben Holiday. For that one moment, he saw everything as if it were captured in a photograph. He was half-turned in his seat in the front row of that courtroom gallery, Willow on one side, slumped down against his shoulder, Abernathy on the other, eyes shining, and Miles further left, still in his gorilla outfit, his cherubic face a mix of astonishment and dismay. Martin and Willoughby
stood just in front of them on the other side of the gate, two generations of three-piece suits, their entire lives given over to a belief in the value of reason and common sense, the former looking as if he had just witnessed Armageddon, the latter looking as if he had caused it. Behind and to the rear, just visible in Ben's peripheral vision, were Chief Deputy Wilson and his brothers-at-arms, minions of the law, bent in half crouches that gave them the appearance of startled cats poised to run either way. Michel Ard Rhi had black hatred etched on his face, and his men were white with fear. Only Elizabeth radiated the pure wonder that was captured, too, somewhere in Ben.

Outside, pinned against the backdrop of the lights of the city of Seattle, was Strabo. His bulk seemed to hang in the air, wings outspread like a monstrous hang glider's, his black, crusted, serpentine form framed in the windows of the courtroom like an image projected on a screen. His yellow-lamp eyes blinked, and smoke trailed in streamers from his nostrils and mouth. Questor Thews sat astride him, patchwork gray robes so tattered they seemed to hang in strips, white hair and beard streaked with ash and flying in the wind. There was wonder mirrored in the wizard's face as well.

Ben wanted to howl with the exhilaration he was feeling.

Then Martin whispered, “Good God!” his voice like a small child's, and the moment was gone.

Everyone began moving and shouting at once. Wilson and the second deputy came down the aisle still crouched, slipping their guns from their holsters, yelling at everyone to get down. Ben yelled back, telling them not to shoot, glancing once over his shoulder to where Questor Thews was already making a quick circling motion with his fingers, then back again to see the astonished deputies staring at fistfuls of daisies where the guns had been. The hallway outside had become an impassable jungle, floor-to-ceiling
deepest Africa, and Michel Ard Rhi and his men, trying desperately to flee, found their exit blocked. Elizabeth had broken free of them and was running down the aisle to greet Abernathy, crying and saying something about a clown nose and Michel and how sorry she was. Willoughby was pulling and tugging on Miles as if somehow Miles might get him out of this nightmare, and Miles was trying in vain to shove the other man away.

Then, suddenly, Strabo shifted positions outside the window, and his huge tail swung about like a wrecking ball and hammered into the bank of windows with an explosion that shattered glass, wooden frames, and half the wall. The city night rushed in, wind and cold, the sounds of cars from the streets and ships from the docks, and the lights of the adjacent high rises which now seemed magnified a hundredfold.

Ben went to the floor, Miles was thrown back into the gallery seats, and Abernathy and Elizabeth came together in a rush.

“Strabo!” Michel Ard Rhi screamed in recognition.

The dragon flew in through the opening like a dirigible and settled onto the courtroom floor, flattening counsel benches, the reporters’ stand, and part of the gate.

“Holiday!” he hissed, and his tongue licked out from between the blackened spikes of his teeth. “What an ugly world you come from!”

Martin, Willoughby, Wilson, the second deputy, Michel Ard Rhi, and his men were climbing all over one another in an effort to get out of the way of the dragon, but they couldn't break through the wall of foliage that blocked the courtroom doors. Strabo glanced at them; his maw opened, and a jet of steam shot out at the five, who screamed in terror and dove for the cover of the gallery seats. The dragon laughed and clicked his jaws at them.

“Enough of that nonsense!” Questor Thews snapped. The wizard began climbing down from the dragon's back.

“You drag me here against my will, force me to rescue a man I despise, a man who is nothing less than what he deserves to be—the victim of his own foolhardiness—and now you would deprive me of the tiny bit of pleasure this pointless venture affords!” Strabo huffed and snapped his tail, taking out another row of gallery seats. “You are so tiresome, Questor Thews!”

Questor ignored him. “High Lord!” The wizard came forward and embraced Ben warmly. “Are you well?”