She went hot and cold and she felt feather light as she rose and started forward. She was trembling, the horror and the anticipation mixing within her in equal measures, driving her reason from her, and leaving only her need.
Oh, Ben, she thought desperately! Why aren’t you here?
The black unicorn waited patiently, an ebony statue in the dappled shadows, eyes locked on Willow’s. There was a curious sense of its both not and always being mirrored in the sylph — as if it were her most carefully guarded wish, projected into being from her mind.
“I have to know,” she whispered to the unicorn as she stood at last before it.
Slowly, her hands came up.
* * *
The meadow, once grassy and bright with wild flowers, lay in ruins, a charred, smoking stretch of barren earth amid the forest trees. Questor Thews stood at its edge and peered futilely through the haze. He was covered with dust and ash, his tall, stooped figure more ragtag in appearance than ever, gray robes and colored silks singed and torn, harlequin leather boots scuffed and smudged. That last exchange of magic between Meeks, the demon, and Edgewood Dirk had sent him flying. The wind had been knocked from him, and he’d found himself resting rather precariously in the branches of an aged crimson maple, an object of great delight for the squirrels and birds nesting there. Abernathy, the kobolds, and the gnomes were nowhere to be seen. Ben Holiday, Willow, and the black unicorn had disappeared. Questor had climbed down from that maple and gone searching for them all. He hadn’t found a one.
Now his wanderings had brought him back to where he had last seen any of them. And none of them appeared to be here either.
He sighed deeply, his owlish face lined with worry. He wished he knew more of what was going on. He accepted now that the stranger who claimed to be Ben Holiday was in fact who he said he was; the man who appeared to be Ben Holiday was in fact Meeks. The dreams Willow, Ben, and he had experienced had been, in fact, the creations of his half-brother, all part of some bigger plan to gain control over Landover and the magic. But acceptance of all this gained him nothing. He still didn’t know what the black unicorn had to do with anything nor did he understand yet what plan Meeks was trying to implement. Worst of all, he didn’t have any idea at all how to find any of this out.
He rubbed his bearded chin and sighed again. There had to be a way, of course. He just had to figure it out.
“Hmmmmm,” he mused thoughtfully. But his thinking produced nothing.
He shrugged. Well, there was nothing more to be accomplished by standing about.
He started to turn away and found himself face to face with Meeks. His half-brother had reverted to his normal form, a tall, craggy figure with grizzled white hair and hard, dead eyes. Dark blue robes cloaked his body like a shroud. He stood less than a dozen yards away, just a step or two back in the trees from the clearing’s edge. The black-gloved hand of his one good arm cradled the missing books of magic close against his chest.
Questor Thews felt his stomach lurch.
“I have waited a long time for this moment,” Meeks whispered. “I have been very patient.”
Dozens of random thoughts rushed through Questor’s mind and were gone, leaving only one. “I am not frightened of you,” he said quietly.
His half-brother’s face was unreadable. “You should be, Questor. You think yourself a wizard now, but you are an apprentice still. You will never be more than that. I have power you never even dreamed could exist! I have the means to do anything!”
“Except catch the black unicorn, it appears,” Questor answered bravely.
The dead eyes flickered briefly with rage. “You understand nothing — not you, not Holiday, not anyone. You play a game you cannot win and you play it poorly. You are a distraction to be removed.” The pale, creased face was a death mask. “I have endured exile and a disruption of my plans — all brought about by you and this play-King — and neither of you understands yet what it is that you have done. You are pathetic!”