He brought her quickly to her feet, and the others stepped back from them. He held her there, feeling the lifeblood work itself through her, feeling the transformation begin again. Her roots snaked deep into the forest soil, her branches lengthened and split, and her trunk stretched and hardened.
Then everything went still. Ben looked up. The change was complete. Willow had become the tree that was her namesake. It was going to be all right.
His eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Thank you,” he whispered.
He lowered his head, wrapped his arms about the slender trunk, and cried.
The demon appeared toward dawn, materializing out of the doom, a black and misshapen thing wrapped in armor. It happened very suddenly. The wind whispered, the mist swirled, and the demon was there.
Ben was awake almost instantly. He had been dozing, sleeping in fits and starts, cramped from leaning against Willow, from holding her. Strabo was presumably still back in the clearing where Ben had left him.
The demon approached, and Ben rose to meet it. The kobolds interposed themselves instantly, moving to block the demon’s way. Abernathy jerked awake and kicked Questor roughly. The wizard awoke as well and scrambled to his feet. The demon’s helmeted head swung slowly about, and it’s crimson eyes surveyed the company and the pine grove with studied caution.
Then it spoke. Ben could not understand anything of what was said, and the speech was over almost before it began. Questor hesitated, then looked back at him. “The Mark issues you a challenge. High Lord. He demands that you meet him in combat three dawns from now at the Heart.”
Ben nodded wordlessly. What had been promised from the beginning was finally here. Time had run out. He was only half awake, still near exhaustion from his ordeal of the past several days, but he grasped the significance of the challenge instantly.
The Mark had had enough of him. The demon was angry.
But perhaps — just perhaps — the demon was worried, too. Questor had once told him that the demon always challenged at midwinter — and it was nowhere near midwinter yet. The demon was rushing things.
He thought about it a moment, tried to reason it through, then shook his head numbly. It didn’t matter. He had made the decision to stay long ago, and nothing would change that decision now. It surprised him that his resolve was so strong. It gave him a good feeling. He nodded to the messenger. “I’ll be there.” The demon was gone in a swirl of mist. Ben stared after it a moment, then gazed off into the trees where the first light of dawn was still a faint silver tinge against the far horizons. “Go back to sleep,” he told the others gently.
He settled down again by Willow, rested his cheek against her roughened trunk and closed his eyes.
Dawn had broken when he came awake once more. He was stretched full length upon the earth in the shadow of the aged pines. His head rested in Willow’s lap and her arms cradled him. She had transformed back again. “Ben,” she greeted softly.
He looked at her slender arms, her body and then her face. She was just as she had been when he had seen her that first night bathing in the waters of the Irrylyn. The color, the beauty, and the vibrancy had been restored. She was the vision he had wanted and been afraid to seek. Yet it was no longer the vision that mattered to him; it was the life inside. The repulsion, the fear, and the sense of alienation he had once felt were gone. They had been replaced by hope. He smiled. “I need you,” he whispered and meant it.
“I know, Ben,” she said to him. “I have always known,” She bent her face to his and kissed him, and he reached up to draw her close.
Iron Mark
The first thing Ben did that morning was to release Strabo from the spell of the Io Dust that bound the dragon to him. He gave Strabo his freedom on the condition that the dragon not hunt the Greensward or any other settled part of the valley or any of its citizens so long as Ben was King.