But the sound of her scream still echoed through the trees.
Combat
The scream reached Ben Holiday as he knelt alone in the forest beside the tiny stream, restored to himself at last, the medallion of Landover’s High Lords a brilliant silver wonder cradled gingerly, unbelievingly within the cup of his hands. The scream rose out of the trees, a thin, high wail of anguish and fear, and lingered like the whistle of the wind through canyon drops in the still mountain air.
Ben’s head jerked up, his neck craning. There was no mistaking that cry. It was Willow’s.
He leaped to his feet, hands closing possessively over the medallion, eyes searching the forest shadows as if whatever threatened the sylph might be waiting there for him as well. A mix of fear and horror raced through him. What had been done to Willow? He started forward, stopped, whirled about desperately, and realized that he could not trace the direction of the scream. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. Damn! Meeks would hear that scream as surely as he — Meeks and that winged demon. Perhaps Meeks already had…
He was holding the medallion so tightly that it was cutting into his palms. Willow! A vision of the sylph blossomed in his mind, a frail and beautiful creature whose life was his special charge. He recalled again the words of the Earth Mother investing him with responsibility for seeing that she stayed safe and his promise to keep her so. His emotions tore at him and left him ragged and frantic. Truths to which he had not yet given heed flayed his soul.
The truths all reduced to one.
He loved Willow.
He experienced a warm rush of surprise and frantic relief. All this time he had denied his feelings, unable to come to terms with them. He had wanted no one close to him again, not after Annie, his dead wife. Love brought responsibility and the possibility of hurt and loss. He had wanted none of it. But the feelings had remained — as such feelings do — because they had never been his to deny in the first place. The reality of their existence had been forced upon him that first night out in the eastern wastes after fleeing Strabo and Nightshade — revealed in a dream in his dialogue with Edgewood Dirk on the reason for the urgency of his hunt for Willow.
Why do you run so? Why must you hurry so? Why must you find Willow? Dirk had asked.
Because I love her, he had answered.
And so he did — but had not allowed himself until this moment to think on it, to reason on it, and to consider what it meant.
Seconds was all it took to do so now. The thoughts, the reasonings, and the considerations all passed through his mind in a smattering of time that was barely measurable. It was as if everything that had taken so long to reach resolution was compressed down into a single instant.
But that instant was enough.
Ben never hesitated. There was a time when he would have, a time that now seemed a thousand years gone. He released the medallion with its silver-engraved image and let it fall against his chest, the sunlight sending shards of brightness into the dappled forest.
He called the Paladin to him.
Light flared and brightened at the edge of the little glade, chasing the shadows and gloom. Ben’s head lifted in recognition, and there was excitement in his eyes. He had thought never to do this again, wished it in fact, prayed it might never be necessary. Now he was anxious for it. A part of him was already beginning to break away.
The Paladin appeared out of the light. His white charger stamped and snorted. His silver armor glittered, its harness and traces creaking. His weapons hung ready. The ghost of another age and life was returned.
Ben felt the medallion begin to burn against his chest, ice and fire first, then something else altogether. He felt himself separating, drawing out of his own body.
Willow! he heard himself scream her name once in the silence of his mind.