Ben’s mind raced. “It’s because I’m determined,” he replied. “I didn’t come into the Deep Fell to be frightened off.”
“More’s the pity for you, perhaps,” she whispered, and the color of her eyes seemed to change from crimson to green. “I have never liked the Kings of Landover; I like you no better. It matters nothing to me that you are from another world, and it matters nothing why you have come. If you wish something of me, you are a fool. I have nothing I wish to give.”
Ben’s hands were sweating. This was not going well at all. “What if I have something I wish to give to you?”
Nightshade laughed, black hair shimmering as her body rocked. “You would give something to me? Landover’s High Lord would give something to the witch of the Deep Fell?” The laughter stopped. “You are a fool after all. You have nothing that I want.”
“Perhaps you are mistaken. Perhaps I do.”
He waited and would say nothing more. Nightshade came nearer, her ghostly face bent down to view him more closely, her sharp features taut against the bones of her face. “I know of you, play-King,” she said. “I have watched you travel from the Greensward to the lake country to the Melchor and finally to here. I know you seek the pledge of the valley’s people and can command nothing more than the misguided loyalty of this girl, that charlatan Questor Thews, a dog, two kobolds, and those pathetic gnomes. You hold the medallion, but you do not command the magic. The Paladin stays gone from you. The Mark hunts you. You are a single step from being yesterday’s memory!”
She loomed over him, a head taller, her dark form hanging like death’s specter. “What can you give to me, play-King?”
Ben edged a step in front of Willow. “Protection.”
The witch stared at him speechlessly. Ben kept his eyes fixed on hers, trying to back her away from him by sheer force of will, the closeness of her dark form suffocating. But Nightshade did not move.
“I am King of Landover, Nightshade, and I intend to remain King,” he said suddenly. “I am not the play-King that you believe me, and I am not a fool. I may not be of this world, and I may not yet know everything about it I shouid. But I know enough to recognize its problems. Landover needs me. You need me. If you lose me, you risk losing yourself.”
Nightshade stared at him as if he were mad, then glanced at Willow as if to ascertain whether or not the sylph thought him mad as well. Her eyes glittered as they sought his again. “What risk is there to me?”
Ben had her close attention now. He took a deep breath “The magic goes out of the land, Nightshade. The magic fails. It fails because there is no King as a King was meant to be. Everything fragments, and the poison settles deeper. I see it happening, and I know its cause. You need me. The Mark claims the land, and sooner or later he will have it. The demon will not tolerate you. He will drive you out. Ha will not abide strength greater than his own.”
“The Mark will not challenge me!” she sneered and there was fury in her eyes.
“Not yet, he won’t,” Ben pressed quickly. “Not in the Deep Fell. But what happens when the rest of the land has withered into an empty husk and only the Deep Fell remains? You’ll be all alone. The Mark will have everything. He’ll have strength enough to challenge you then!”
He was guessing, but something in the witch’s eyes told him he was guessing right. Nightshade straightened, her black form rising up against the gloom. “And you believe that you can protect me?”
“I do. If the valley’s people pledge to me, the Mark will not be so quick to challenge. He cannot stand against all of us. I don’t think he will even try. And if you pledge first, the others must do the same. You are the most powerful, Nightshade; your magic is the strongest. If you give your allegiance to me, the others will follow. I ask nothing else from you. I promise in return to guarantee that the hollows will belong to you alone — always. No one shall bother you here. Not ever.”