“They will have no choice; they will have to receive you,” Questor declared. “Courtesy dictates that they not turn away a Lord whose stature is equal to or higher than their own. Of course, they would have to receive you if you were simply a traveler seeking shelter and food, too, but that is beneath you as King.”
“Very little is beneath me at this point,” Ben replied.
They rode out through the mists and shadows of the early morning, skirted the shores of the lake until they were turned east, then wound slowly to the valley rim. Several times Ben Holiday glanced back through the gray, watching the stark, colorless projection of Sterling Silver against the dawn sky, her towers, battlements, and walls ravaged as if by some nameless disease. He was surprised to discover that it was hard for him to leave her. She might appear as Castle Dracula to the naked eye, and he might find her loathsome to look upon, but he had felt the warmth of her and he had touched the life within. She had been kind to him. She had made him feel welcome. He found himself wishing that he could do something to help her.
He consoled himself with the thought that one day he would.
Then the castle, the mists, and the valley disappeared behind them as the company rode east through forest and hill country toward Landover’s heartland. They traveled steadily for the better part of the day, stopping once for a midday meal and several times to rest, and by dusk they were within sight of the broad sweep of fields, pastures, and farmland that comprised the Greensward.
They made camp that night within a copse of fir on a knoll overlooking pastureland given over to cattle and goats and a cluster of small huts and wooden houses some miles further east. Ben swung down gratefully from Wishbone’s back when Questor brought them to a halt. It had been some time since he had ridden a horse. It had been, in truth, the better part of twenty years — and that last time had been on a date in college that he would just as soon have forgotten. Now, a world and a lifetime away, he recalled the feeling that came with a long ride — his body stiff, the land still moving about him as he tried to walk, the sensation of the horse still locked between his knees, though he was dismounted. He knew that by tomorrow he would be sore from the shoulders down.
“Would you walk with me a moment. High Lord?” Questor asked and beckoned to him. Ben wanted to throttle the wizard for even suggesting the idea, but he forced his irritation aside and went.
They walked only a short distance to the edge of the knoll and stood shoulder to shoulder staring out across the flatlands below.
Questor’s arm swept the horizon. “The Greensward, High Lord — the estates of the old families, the baronies of Landover. Their domain encompasses more than half of the kingdom. There were but twenty families at last count, and those twenty rule all of the land, its thralls, their villages and families and stock — subject to the King’s will, of course.”
“Of course.” Ben looked out over the valley. “You said twenty families at last count. What do you mean, ‘at last count’?”
The wizard shrugged. “Families merge through marriage. Families accept wardship from stronger families. Families die out — sometimes with a little help.”
Ben glanced at him from the corner of one eye. “Charming. They don’t all get along so well, then, I gather?”
“Just so. United under the old King, they were less disposed to take advantage of one another. Divided under no monarch, they are a suspicious and at times scheming lot.”
“A circumstance that I might be able to use to my advantage, you think?”
The owlish face glanced over. “There is that possibility.”
Ben nodded. “There is also the possibiity that their suspicions and schemes might result in them trying to do away with me.”
“Tch-tch,” Questor clucked. “I will be with you. High Lord. Besides, they are unlikely to waste time and effort trying to do away with a King that they regard as essentially worthless. They refused, after all, even to attend your coronation.”