“Landover and nowhere else. Welcome, High Lord Ben Holiday.”
“So this is it,” Ben murmured, his mind racing suddenly. He looked again at the other. “Where are we exactly?”
Questor Thews seemed puzzled. “Landover, High Lord.”
“Yes, but where is Landover? I mean, where is Landover in the Blue Ridge? It must be close to Waynesboro, am I right?”
The wizard smiled. “Oh, well, you are no longer in your world. I thought you understood that. Landover bridges any number of worlds — a kind of gateway, you might say. The mists of the fairy realm connect her to your world and the others. Some bridge closer, of course, and some don’t even have the barrier of the mists. But you will leam all that soon enough.”
Ben stared. “I’m not in my world? This isn’t Virginia?”
Questor Thews shook his head.
“Or the United States or North America or Earth? None of it?”
“No, High Lord. Did you think that the fairy-tale kingdom you bought would be in your world?”
Ben didn’t hear him, a desperate obstinacy seizing hold. “I suppose that those planets in the sky over there aren’t fake, either? I suppose that they’re real?”
Questor turned. “Those are moons, not planets. Landover has eight of them. Only two are visible in the daylight hours, but the other six can be seen as well after dusk during most of the year.”
Ben stared. Then he shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe one word of it.”
Questor Thews looked at him curiously. “Why do you not believe, High Lord?”
“Because a place like this can’t exist, damn it!”
“But you chose to come here, didn’t you? Why would you come to Landover in the first place, if you did not believe that it could exist?”
Ben had no idea. He was no longer certain why it was that he had come. He was certain of only one thing — that he could not bring himself to accept what the other man was saying. Panic flooded through him at the very thought that Landover could be somewhere other than on Earth. He had never dreamed that it would be anywhere else. It meant that all of his ties with his old life were truly severed, that everything he had once known was really gone. It meant that he was alone in an alien world…
“High Lord, would you mind if we walked while we carry on this conversation?” the wizard interrupted his thoughts. “We have a good distance to cover before nightfall.”
“We do? Where are we going?”
“To your castle. High Lord.”
“My castle? Wait a minute — do you mean that castle that I saw just before you appeared, the one in the middle of the lake on an island?”
The other nodded. “The very place, High Lord. Shall we be on our way?”
Ben shook his head stubbornly. “Not a chance. I’m not going anywhere until I find out exactly what’s going on. What about what happened to me in the forest! Are you telling me all that was real? Are you telling me there actually was a dragon sleeping back there in the trees?”
Questor shrugged nonchalantly. “There could have been. There is a dragon in the valley — and he often naps at the fringes of the mists. The mists were his home once.”
Ben frowned. “His home, huh? Well, what about that black, winged thing and its rider?”
The wizard’s shaggy brows lifted slightly. “A black, winged thing, you say? A thing that seemed a nightmare, perhaps?”
Ben nodded his head anxiously. “Yes — that was what it seemed.”
“That was the Iron Mark.” The other pursed his lips. “The Mark is a demon lord. I am surprised he would come after you there in the mists. I would have thought…”He stopped, smiled a quick smile of reassurance and shrugged. “A demon strays into Landover now and again. You happened to come across one of the worst.”
“Come across it, my aunt Agatha!” Ben flared. “It was hunting me! It chased me down that forest tunnel and would have had me if not for that knight!”
This time Questor Thews’ brows lifted a good deal further. “Knight? What knight?” he demanded quickly.