“The duration of your rule in Landover amounts to a splash of water in the ocean of my lifetime. Holiday,” the dragon advised him coldly, eyes lidded against his thoughts. They stood together in the clearing where Strabo had waited the night.
Ben shrugged. “Then the condition should be easy to accept.”
“Conditions from a human are never easy to accept, especially when the human is as deceitful as you.”
“Flattery will gain you nothing more than I have already offered. Do you agree or not?”
The crusted snout split wide, teeth gleaming. “You risk the possibility that my word means nothing — that extracting it while the magic binds me renders it worthless!”
Ben sighed. “Yes or no?”
Strabo hissed, the sound rising up from deep within. “Yes!” He spread his leathered wings and arced his long neck skyward. “Anything to be free of you!” Then he hesitated and bent close. “Understand — this is not finished yet between you and me, Holiday. We will meet again another day and settle the debt owed me!”
He rose with a rush of beating wings until he was atop the trees, banked eastward, and disappeared into the rising sun. Ben watched him go and then turned away.
Questor Thews could not understand. First he was astonished, then angry, and finally just mystified. Whatever could the High Lord have been thinking? Why would he release Strabo like that? The dragon was a powerful ally, a weapon that none would dare to challenge, a lever which could be used to exact the pledges the High Lord so desperately needed!
“But that’s precisely what’s wrong with keeping him,” Ben tried to explain it to the wizard. “I’d end up using him like a club; I’d have my pledges not because the people of Landover felt they should give them but because they were terrified of the dragon. That’s no good — I don’t want loyalty from fear! I want loyalty from respect! Besides, Strabo is a two-edged sword. Sooner or later the effects of the Io Dust are going to wear off anyway, and then what? He’d turn on me in a minute. No, Questor — better that I let him go now and take my chances.”
“Aptly put, High Lord,” the wizard snapped. “You will indeed take your chances. What happens to you when you face the Mark? Strabo could have protected you! You should at least have kept him until then!”
But Ben shook his head. “No, Questor,” he answered softly. “This isn’t the dragon’s fight; it’s mine. It always has been, I think.”
He left the matter there, refusing to discuss it further with any of them. He had thought it through carefully. He had made up his mind. He had learned a few things he had not known earlier and deduced a few more. He saw clearly what a King of Landover must be if he were to have any value at all. He had come full circle in many respects from the time he had first entered the valley. He wanted his friends to understand, but he did not think he could explain it to them. Understanding would have to come another way.
Happily, there was no further opportunity to dwell on the subject right then. The River Master appeared, alerted by his people that something strange was going on in the grove of the old pines. Strabo had flown in toward midnight and flown out again that dawn. He brought with him a handful of humans, including the man named Holiday who claimed Landover’s throne, the wizard Questor Thews, and the River Master’s missing daughter. Ben greeted the River Master with apologies for the intrusion and a brief explanation of what had befallen them all during the past several weeks. He told the River Master that Willow had followed him at his invitation, that it was his oversight in not advising the sprite earlier, and that he wished the sylph to remain with him for a few days more. He asked that they meet again three dawns hence at the Heart.
He said nothing of the challenge issued by the Mark.
“What purpose will be served. High Lord, in meeting with you at the Heart?” the River Master asked pointedly. His people were all about them, faint shapes in the mist of the early dawn, eyes that glimmered in the haze of the trees.