Dirk hadn’t moved from the stump top. Dirk looked dead.
Sometime during the night there was a shriek so dreadful and so prolonged that it brought Ben right up off the ground. It sounded as if it were almost on top of him; but when he finally got his bearings and peered bleary-eyed about the campsite, all he found was Dirk crouched down atop the stump with his hackles up and a sort of steam rising from his back.
In the distance, something — or someone — whimpered.
“Those gnomes are persistent to the point of stupidity,” Dirk commented softly before settling back down again, eyes glistening in the night like emerald fire.
The whimpering faded and Ben lay back down as well.
So much for his well-intentioned advice to Fillip and Sot. Some lessons had to be learned the hard way.
* * *
That same night found an altogether different scene unfolding some miles south of Rhyndweir at an abandoned stock pen and line shack perched on a ridgeline that overlooked the eastern expanse of the Greensward. A sagging roof and shutteriess windows marked the line shack as a derelict, and the stock pen was missing rails in half-a-dozen spots. Shadows draped the whole in a web of black lace. A white-bearded scarecrow and an Ozian shaggy dog, both decidely unkempt, bracketed a brightly burning campfire built a dozen yards or so from the line shack and hurtled accusations at each other with a vehemence that seemed to refute utterly the fact that they had ever been best friends. A wiry, monkey-faced creature with elephant ears and big teeth watched the dispute in bemused silence.
“Do not attempt to ask my understanding of what you have done!” the shaggy dog was saying to the scarecrow. “I hold you directly responsible for our predicament and am not inclined to be in the least forgiving!”
“Your lack of compassion is matched only by your lack of character!” the scarecrow replied. “Another man — or dog — would be more charitable, I am sure!”
“Ha! Another man — or dog — would have bidden farewell to you long ago! Another man — or dog — would have found decent company in which to share his exile!”
“I see! Well, it is not too late for you to find other company — decent or not — if such is your inclination!”
“Rest assured, it is under consideration right now!”
The two glowered at each other through the red haze of the campfire, their thoughts as black as the ashes of the crumbling wood. The monkey-faced watcher remained a mute spectator. Night hung about all three like a mourner’s shroud, and the ridgeline was spectral and still.
Abernathy shoved his glasses further back on his nose and picked up the argument once more, his tone of voice a shade softer. “What I find difficult to understand is why you let the unicorn get away, wizard. You had the creature before you, you knew the words that would snare it, and what did you do? You called down a thunderburst of butterflies and flowers. What kind of nonsense was that?”
Questor Thews tightened his jaw defiantly. “The kind of nonsense that you, of all people, should understand.”
“I am inclined to think that you simply panicked. I am compelled to believe that you simply failed to master the magic when you needed to. And what do you mean, ‘the kind of nonsense that I should understand’?”
“I mean, the kind of nonsense that gives all creatures the chance to be what they should be, despite what others think best for them!”
The scribe frowned. “One moment. Are you telling me that you intentionally let the unicorn escape? That the butterflies and the flowers were not accidental?”
The wizard pulled on his chin whiskers irritably. “Congratulations on your astute, if belated, grasp of the obvious! That is exactly what I am telling you!”
There was a long silence between them as they studied each other. They had been traveling together since daybreak, inwardly seething at the turn of events that had brought them to this end, outwardly distanced from each other by their anger. This was the first time that the subject of the unicorn’s escape had been discussed openly.