And then a shadow fell over them both, and the sky was filled with Strabo’s dark bulk as the dragon settled gingerly down at the edge of the dais, serpent body coiling up, wings folding in. Steam rose from his black-as-pitch, fire-slicked, scaled body, and the stench of him filled the air. Even Nightshade drew back in repulsion as he swung his horned and fearsome head from one of them to the other.
“What is this?” he growled, the sound a deep, unpleasant rumble, the grating of stone against the earth. His huge, implacable bulk was outlined against the forest. “Why is Holiday here, Witch?’ he demanded ominously. “What does he have to do with your note?”
“Mynote?” Nightshade’s voice was a rasp of disbelief. “I sent you no note! I came in answer to the play-King’s missive!”
“Foolish old crone,” the dragon purred, a big cat contemplating dinner. “You waste my time with your idiotic denials. The note was yours, the words all too clearly your own. If you have some treasure you wish to trade, then offer it up and be done with it.”
Nightshade’s face was livid with fury. “Treasure?”
Ben saw what was happening then, recognized the truth of what had been done to them, and knew instinctively that it was already too late to escape. Separate notes sent to each, seemingly from one another, actually from someone else entirely, meant to lure them to this spot—the bait for a trap. Why? The word screamed at him as he started forward, catching sight suddenly of someone who had appeared just long enough to set something down, a tall, gawky figure, vaguely familiar, backing away from a box that sat open at the edge of the dais, smoke or mist or whatever already lifting from its ulterior, the box unfamiliar but the figure someone he knew …
Horris Kew!
What in the name of sanity was going on?
“Wait!” he managed to yell, pointing at the scarecrow figure. Strabo’s scaled head whipped around, the fire leaking from his maw as he hissed in warning. Nightshade’s arms came up threateningly, the magic forming streaks of wicked green light on her fingertips. There was a sudden crackling in the air. Ben’s hand went instinctively to the medallion, and he called forth the Paladin to his rescue.
All too late. Light flared suddenly from all about, thrusting from the blackness on every side, born of some origin earlier fixed and triggered now as the jaws of the trap set to ensnare them closed tightly about. They were hammered forward toward each other and the box, all three of them, King, witch, and dragon, and there was not a moment’s time to react. The light caught and carried them across the velvet benches and rests, across the distance separating them from one another, and locked them in a knot of magic that bound them up with ferocious purpose. Then mist and gloom closed about, rising to receive them as if they were an expected offering. Abruptly they began to fall into a deep, impenetrable void. The void opened beneath them, growing in size as they neared it (or were they shrinking?), a vast, empty sinkhole that sucked them inexorably downward.
But there was something more. All were experiencing an odd sense of loss, as if some essential part of who and what they were was being stripped away in layers. And there surfaced within each a demon, a nameless, formless, terrible beast they had kept sealed away, but was now suddenly, inexplicably set free. All three howled in fury and despair.
Where did Horris Kew get such power?was Ben’s last, desperate thought.
Then down he tumbled with the dragon and the witch, voiceless and powerless, to disappear into the interior of the Tangle Box.
When they were gone, the Gorse lifted out of the gloom at the edge of the trees behind the dais and hissed coldly at Horris Kew, “Pick up the box.”
Horris was shaking so badly he could not make himself move. He stood with his hands clenched tightly and his size-sixteens rooted in place. He was stunned by the magnitude of what he had just witnessed—Holiday, Nightshade, and Strabo picked up like rag dolls by the magic and hurtled down into the murky depths of the Tangle Box. Such power! Yes, the Gorse had taken great pains to set the underpinnings of its implementation, to cast the nets of sorcery, to speak the spells that would lie waiting for the three. Or rather, to have Horris do all this, for the Gorse still seemed unable to act on its own. Horris had glimpsed the depth of the creature’s power even then, sharp twinges and stabs that pricked his psyche, but even so he could not have imagined that all these little conjurings could be brought together to form such a singularly devastating magic.