Crystal
It was nearing midmorning when Ben and his companions finally ended their flight. They were safely out of the Melchor by then, well below the shadowed, misted cliffs and defiles, back within the foothills from which the G’home Gnomes had originally been taken. The gnomes had long since disappeared, the Crag Trolls appeared to have lost interest in the matter, and there no longer seemed to be any reason to continue running.
Make no mistake, Ben thought, lowering himself gingerly to rest his back against an oak trunk, they had been running. It was an ignominious admission. It would have been far more satisfying to couch their flight in terms of making an escape, or some such. But the truth of the matter was that they had been running for their lives.
Willow, Questor, Abernathy, and the kobolds gathered about him, seating themselves in a circle on a patch of wintry saw grass colored a faint pink. Clouds rolled overhead in a thick blanket of gray, and the smell of rain was in the air. They ate a brief meal of leaves and stalks from Bonnie Blues that grew close at hand, and they drank the water of a spring fhat ran down out of the mountains. They had nothing else to eat or drink. All of their possessions, horses included, had heen lost to the trolls.
Ben chewed and sipped disinterestedly and tried to gather his thoughts. He could argue the relative merits of the matter until the cows came home, but things were not going well for the ruler of Landover. His track record was abysmal. With the exception of those seated about him, he had not gained a single ally. The Lords of the Greensward, traditional supporters of the throne, had received him coolly, tried unsuccessfully to bribe him, then practically thrown him through Rhyndweir’s gates. The River Master had been more congenial in his reception, but only because he was completely disinterested in anything the throne said or did, believing the salvation of his people lay entirely in his own hands. The Crag Trolls had imprisoned him and would have undoubtedly fried him had he not managed to escape their cattle pens — thanks, he reminded himself, not to anything he had done but to Willow’s perserverance and to a fortuitous turn of events that finally enabled Questor to conjure up the magic in more or less the right way for a change.
There were the G’home Gnomes, of course. Fillip and Sot had pledged for them. But what was that worth? What good was the pledge of a burrow people who were despised by everyone for being thieves and scavengers and worse?
“So what exactly do we have here?” he asked aloud, and everyone looked up in surprise. “We have this. The Lords of the Greensward — Kallendbor, Strehan and the rest — will pledge to the throne on the day I rid them of the dragon, something that no one has ever been able to do. The River
Master will pledge to the throne on the day that I gain the promise of the Lords of the Greensward and various others to cease pollution of his lands and waters and to work with him to keep the valley clean. Fat chance. The Crag Trolls will pledge to the throne on the day I can walk back into the Melchor without fear of being offered up for roast beef. Good luck there, as well.” He paused. “I’d say that about covers the situation, doesn’t it?”
No one said anything. Questor and Abernathy exchanged uncertain glances. Willow looked as if she did not understand — which, indeed, she might not, he conceded. The kobolds stared at him with their bright, knowing eyes and grinned their needle-sharp smiles.
He flushed with a mix of sudden embarrassment and anger. “The truth of the matter is I have made absolutely no progress whatsoever. Zero. Nil. Zip. Any arguments?” He hoped someone would try.
Questor obliged him. “High Lord, I think you are being entirely too hard on yourself.”
“Am I? What part of what I said was untrue, Questor Thews?”
“What you said was true as far as it went. High Lord. But you overlook an important consideration in your appraisal.”