“You should have told us of the sylph. High Lord,” Questor said quietly, after exchanging a few brief words with Bunion. “We could have warned you what to expect.”
“I warned him once already that the people of the lake country were not like us,” Abernathy advised, and Ben didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Questor hushed the scribe quickly.
“You have to understand something, High Lord,” the wizard went on, turning back to Ben. “Willow is the child of a sprite and a wood nymph. Her father is only half human. Her mother is less so, more a part of the forest than a part of man, an elemental who finds life within the soil. Something of that was passed on to Willow at birth, and she requires the same nourishment. She is a changeling; she owes her life to both plant and animal forms. It is natural for her to take the form of each; she could be no other way. But it must seem strange, I know, to you.”
Ben shook his head slowly, feeling some of the conflict within dissipate. “No stranger than anything else that’s happened, I guess.” He felt sick at heart and weary; he needed to sleep.
Questor hesitated. “She must care deeply for you.”
Ben nodded, remembering. “She said that she belongs to me.”
Questor glanced quickly at Abernathy and away again. The kobolds stared at Ben with bright, questioning eyes. Ben stared back.
“But she doesn’t,” he said finally. “She belongs to the lake country. She belongs to her family and to her people.”
Abernathy muttered something unintelligible and turned away. Questor said nothing at all. Ben studied them wordlessly a moment, then climbed to his feet. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.
He started from the room, and their eyes followed after him. Then he stopped momentarily at the doorway to his bedroom. “We’re going home,” he told them and waited. “Tomorrow, at first light.”
No one said anything. He closed the door behind him and stood alone in the dark.
G’home Gnome
They left Elderew the next morning shortly after daybreak. Mist hung across the lake country like a shroud, and the dawn air was damp and still. It was the kind of day in which ghosts and goblins came to life. The River Master was there to see them off and looked to be neither. Questor had summoned him, and he appeared without complaint. He could not have slept, for the festivities had barely ended, but he looked fresh and alert. Ben extended his thanks on behalf of the company for the hospitality they had been shown, and the River Master, his grainy, chiseled face still as expressionless as flat stone, bowed briefly in acknowledgment. Ben glanced about several times for Willow, but she was nowhere to be seen. He considered again her request that she be allowed to accompany him back to Sterling Silver. Part of him wanted her with him; part of him would not allow it. Indecision gave way to expediency; time ran out on the debate. He left without speaking of it to her father.
The company rode north for the remainder of the day, passing out of the lake country and its mists into the gray, open expanse of the western end of the Greensward and from there to the forested hills surrounding Sterling Silver. Sunlight barely pierced a clouded sky that stretched above them the whole of the journey back, and there was the smell of rain in the air. It was nightfall when they stepped once more from the lake skimmer and walked the final few yards to the gates of the castle. A smattering of raindrops was just beginning to fall.
It rained all that night. The rain was steady and hard and it blotted out the entire worid beyond the immediate walls. That was perfectly all right with Ben. He fished out the bottle of Glenlivet he had been saving for a special occasion, gathered Questor, Abernathy, and the two kobolds at the table in the dining hall, and proceeded to get roaring drunk. He got drunk alone. The other four sipped gingerly from their tumblers as he consumed nearly the whole of the bottle by himself. He talked to them as he drank about life in his world, about Chicago and its people, about his friends and family, about anything and everything but Landover. They responded politely, but he had no memory later of what they said and frankly didn’t care. When the scotch was gone and there was no longer anything left to talk about, he rose to his feet and stumbled off to bed.