He was hidden within my clothing, Ben thought in despair, with me all the way back, and I never realized it. That was why the rune stone glowed in warning. The threat was always there, but I couldn’t see it!
“Ironic, isn’t it, Mr. Holiday — you bringing me back as you did?” The skin on Meeks’ cheeks and forehead was pulled back with the intensity of his smile, and his face was like a skull. “I had to come back, you know. I had to come back immediately because of your damnable, insistent meddling! Have you any idea of the trouble you have caused me? No — no, of course not. You have no idea. You do not even know what I am talking about. You understand nothing! And, in your ignorance, you have very nearly destroyed what it has taken years to create! You have disrupted everything — you and your campaign to become King of Landover!”
He had worked himself into a rage again, and it was only with great effort that he brought himself back under control. Even so, the words spit from him like bile. “No matter, Mr. Holiday, no matter. This all means nothing to you, so there is no point in belaboring it. I have the books now, and there is no further damage that you can do. I have what I need. Your dream has given me mastery of you, my half-brother’s dream has given me mastery of the books, and the sylph’s dream will give me…”
He stopped sharply, almost as if he had erred. There was a curious uneasiness in the pale, hard eyes. He blinked and it was gone. One hand brushed the empty air in dismissal. “Everything. The dreams will give me everything,” he finished.
The medallion, Ben was thinking frantically. If I could only manage to put my hands on the medallion…
Meeks laughed sharply. “There is undoubtedly much that you wish to say to me, isn’t there, Mr. Holiday? And surely much that you wish to do!” The craggy face shoved close before his own once more. The hard eyes bored into him. “Well, I will give you your chance, play-King. I will give you the opportunity that you were so quick to deny me when you smashed the crystal and exiled me from my home!”
One bony finger crooked before Ben’s frozen eyes. “But first I have something to show you. I have it right here, looped safely about my neck.” His hand dipped downward into the robes. “Look closely, Mr. Holiday. Do you see it?”
He withdrew his hand slowly. There was a chain gripped tightly in the fingers. Ben’s medallion hung fastened at its end.
Meeks smiled in triumph as he saw the look of desperation that flooded Ben’s eyes. “Yes, Mr. Holiday! Yes, play-King! Yes, you poor fool! It is your precious medallion! The key to Landover — and it belongs to me now!” He dangled it slowly before Ben, letting it twirl to catch the mixed light of blazing rune stone and candle’s flame. His eyes narrowed. “Do you wish to know what happened to separate you from the medallion? You gave it to me in a dream I sent you, Mr. Holiday. You took the medallion off and passed it to me. You gave the medallion to me willingly. I could not take it by force, but you gave it to me!”
Meeks was like a giant that threatened to crush Ben — tall, dark, looming out of the shadows. His breath hissed. “I think there is nothing I can tell you that you do not already know, is there, Mr. Holiday?”
He made a quick gesture with his hand, and the invisible chains that held Ben paralyzed dropped away. He could move again and speak. Yet he did neither. He simply waited.
“Reach down within your nightshirt, Mr. Holiday,” the wizard whspered.
Ben did as he was told. His fingers closed on a medallion fastened to the end of a chain. Slowly he withdrew it. The medallion was the same shape and size as the one he had once worn — the one Meeks now possessed. But the engraving on the face was changed. Gone was the Paladin, Sterling Silver, and the rising sun. Gone was the polished silver sheen. This medallion was tarnished black as soot and embossed with the robed figure of Meeks.