“But I am the court wizard!” Questor insisted vehemently. “I should have magic enough at my command to deal with a handful of trolls!”
“And I should have brains enough to do the same! But it would appear that this time we both came up a bit short, so let’s just forget it, Questor. Forget the whole business. Concentrate on finding a way out of this cattle yard!”
Questor Thews slumped back in dejection. He seemed broken by what had happened, no longer the confident guide that had brought Ben into the land. Even Abernathy made no response. Ben quit looking at them.
Fillip and Sot edged closer to where he was chained.
“I am thirsty,” Fillip said.
“I am hungry,” Sot said.
“How soon can we leave this place. High Lord?” Fillip asked.
“How soon?” Sot asked.
Ben stared at them in disbelief. How about the twelfth of never? How about next decade? Did they think that they were just going to walk out of here? He almost laughed. Apparently they did.
“Let me give it some thought,” he suggested and smiled bravely.
He turned away from them and stared out over the pen yard. He found himself wishing he had brought some sort of weapon with him from the old world. A bazooka, maybe? A small tank, perhaps? Bitterness welled up within him. That was the trouble with hindsight, of course — it gave you perfect vision when it was too late to be of any use. It had never occurred to him when he had decided to come into Landover that he would ever have need of a weapon. It had never occurred to him that he would ever find himself in this sort of predicament.
He wondered suddenly why the Paladin had failed to appear when the trolls had come at him. Ghost or not, the Paladin had always appeared before when he was threatened. He would have welcomed an appearance on this occasion as well. He mulled the question over in his mind for a moment before deciding that the only difference between this time and the others was that this time he had failed to think about the medallion when threatened. But that seemed a tenuous link. After all, he had tried to summon the Paladin by willing his appearance when he was testing the medallion’s power, and absolutely nothing had happened.
He sagged back against the holding post. The throbbing was beginning to ease in his head. Hell wasn’t as bad as it had been five minutes ago. Before it had been intolerable; now it was almost bearable. He reflected momentarily on his life, dredging up all the bad things that had gone before to hold up in comparison to this. The comparison failed. He thought of Annie, and he wondered what she would say if she were alive to see him like this. Annie would probably have dealt with the situation much better than he; she had always been the more flexible, always the more resilient.
There were tears in his eyes. They had shared so much. She had been his one true friend. God, he wished he could see her just once more!
He brushed furtively at his eyes and straightened himself. He tried thinking of Miles, but all he could think about was Miles telling him “I told you so” over and over. He thought about his decision to come to Landover, to the fairy-tale Kingdom that couldn’t exist. He thought about the world he had left to come here, about all of the little amenities and irritations he would never experience again. He began to catalogue the wishes and dreams that he would never see fulfilled.
Then he realized what he was doing. He was giving up on himself. He was writing himself off as dead.
He was immediately ashamed. The iron-hard determination that had carried him through so many fights reasserted itself swiftly. There would be no quitting, he swore. He would win this fight, too.
He smiled bitterly. He just wished he knew how.
Two familiar ferretlike faces shoved into view once more.
“Have you had enough time to think about it yet, High Lord?” Fillip asked.
“Yes, have you decided when we will leave. High Lord?” Sot asked.