The Tangle Box by Terry Brooks

He drank the last of his ale, sitting on the edge of his bed, dejected. Nothing seemed right with Holiday gone. Everything seemed disrupted and out of joint. He wished that there were something he could do to change things.

Bunion had gone out to scout the surrounding countryside, to see if there was anything to be learned of the missing King. Perhaps he would find something in his quest. Perhaps something good would come of this trek through the Greensward. Perhaps.

Abernathy lay back upon his bed once more and held his crystal out to catch the light.

Kallendbor did not appear for dinner. Neither did Bunion. Horris Kew and Abernathy ate dinner alone with Biggar looking on from the back of the conjurer’s chair like some foul omen of doom. Abernathy tried to ignore him, but it was difficult since the bird was sitting directly across the table, staring down malevolently from his perch. Abernathy couldn’t help himself. At one point, when Horris wasn’t looking, he bared his teeth at the bird.

Biggar told Horris about it later, but Horris wasn’t interested. They were back in their room, sitting in near darkness with but a single candle burning on the bedside table. Horris was seated on the bed, and Biggar was hunched down on the deep window ledge.

“He growled at me, I tell you!” the bird was insisting. “He practically snapped at me!”

Horris was looking about the room nervously. The tic was working furiously at the corner of his eye. “Growled at you? I didn’t hear anything.”

“Well, all right, maybe he didn’t actually growl.” Biggar was not up to hair-splitting. “But he showed all of his considerable teeth, and there was no mistaking his intent! Horris, pay attention, will you? Quit looking all over the place!”

Horris Kew was indeed scanning the room end to end. He stopped long enough to stare at Biggar in a rather harried, suspicious manner. Tic, tic went the eye. The bird cocked his head. “Are you all right, Horris?”

Horris nodded doubtfully. “I keep seeing something …” He gestured vaguely. “Out there.” He shrugged. “Sometimes in the shadows of trees and buildings, and sometimes at night in dark corners I think I see it. I feel like I’m being watched.” He took a deep breath. “I think it might be here.”

“The Gorse?” Biggar sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous. How could it be here? It never leaves the cave. You’re imagining things.”

Horris hugged his lanky frame as if cold. His plow-blade nose thrust forward. “I keep thinking about Holiday and the witch and the dragon and what it did to them. I keep worrying that you were right, that it might do the same to us.”

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Biggar felt an immense satisfaction at the admission. “On the other hand, we’ve gone a bit far with this crystal business to be worried about that now.”

Horris rose and walked about the room uneasily, checking into corners and behind furniture. Biggar cocked his white-crested head. A waste of time, he was thinking. If the Gorse doesn’t want to be seen, it won’t be. Not a creature like that.

“Will you sit down and relax?” he said irritably. Horris was making him nervous.

Horris moved back to the bed and seated himself once more. “Do you know what the Gorse said when I asked what would become of Holiday and the others in the Tangle Box?”

Biggar couldn’t remember and didn’t care. But he said, “What, Horris, tell me.”

“It said they would become entangled in the fairy mists. It said that the spell of forgetfulness would start them down a road that had no end. They would not know who they were. They would not remember from where they had come. They would be sealed away in the mists, and the mists would play with them and eventually drive them mad.” Horris shuddered. “The Gorse said it would take a very long time to happen.”

“None of this is our concern,” Biggar sniffed. “We have enough to worry about as it is.”

“I know, I know.” Horris fidgeted and looked off into the shadows as if he had heard something. “I just can’t stop thinking about it.”