WIZARD AT LARGE. Terry Brooks

WIZARD AT LARGE

Terry Brooks

WIZARD AT LARGE

Terry Brooks

Magic Kingdom of Landover, Book 3

Contents

Sneeze

Bottle

Graum Wythe

Darkling

Spellbound

Michel Ard Rhi

Slight Miscalculation

One-Way Ticket

Castles and Cages

Charades

Button, Button

Jericho

Show Time

Love Song

Lost and Found

Gambit

Snatch

Itch

Halloween Crazies

Dragon at the Bar

Stopper

Homecomings

At that word the young man let his glass slip through his fingers, and looked upon Keawe like a ghost.

“The price,” says he; “the price! You do not know the price?”

“It is for that I am asking you,” returned Keawe. “But why are you so much concerned? Is there something wrong about the price?”

“It has dropped a great deal in value since your time, Mr. Keawe,” said the young man, stammering.

“Well, well, I shall have the less to pay for it,” says Keawe. “How much did it cost you?”

The young man was white as a sheet. “Two cents,” said he.

“What?” cried Keawe, “two cents? Why, then, you can only sell it for one. And he who buys it—“ The words died upon Keawe’s tongue; he who bought it could never sell it again, the bottle and the bottle imp must abide with him until he died, and when he died must carry him to the red end of hell.

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Bottle Imp

Sneeze

Ben Holiday sighed wearily and wished he were somewhere else besides where he was. He wished he were anywhere else.

He was in the garden room at Sterling Silver. The garden room was probably Ben Holiday’s favorite of all the many rooms at the castle. It was bright and airy. Flower boxes crisscrossed the tiled floor in dazzling swatches of color. Sunshine streamed through floor-length windows that ran the length of its southern wall, tiny motes of pollen dancing on the broad bands of light. The windows stood open and fragrant smells wafted in. The room looked out on the gardens proper, a maze of flower beds and bushes that spread their way downward to the lake on which the island castle rested, mixing and mingling their colors like paints run together on a rain-soaked canvas. The flowers bloomed year-round, reseeding themselves with commendable regularity. A horticulturist from Ben’s old world would have killed to study such treasures—species that grew only in the Kingdom of Landover and nowhere else.

Just at the moment, Ben would have killed to escape them.

“…Great High Lord…”

“…Mighty High Lord…”

The familiar calls of supplication grated on him like rough stones and reminded him anew of the cause of his disgruntlement. His eyes rolled skyward momentarily. Please! His gaze shifted furiously from flower box to flower bed and back again, as if somewhere among all those tiny petals the escape he so desperately sought might be found. It wasn’t, of course, and he sagged back further in his cushioned chair and contemplated the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t that he was trying to shirk his duty. It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about these things. But this was his refuge, for Pete’s sake! This was supposed to be his place for time away!

“…and took all of our hard-earned berry stores.”

“And all of our ale kegs as well.”

“When all we did was to borrow a few laying hens, High Lord.”

“We would have replaced those that were lost, High Lord.”

“We intended to be fair.”

“We did.”

“You must see that our possessions are returned…”

“Yes, you must…”

They went on, barely pausing for breath.

Ben studied Fillip and Sot the way his gardener studied weeds in the flower beds. The G’home Gnomes rambled on unselfconsciously and endlessly, and he thought about the vagaries of life that permitted misfortunes such as this to be visited on him. The G’home Gnomes were a pitiful bunch—small, ferret like burrow people who begged, borrowed, and mostly stole everything with which they came in contact. They migrated periodically and, once settled, could not be dislodged. They were regarded in general as a blight upon the earth. On the other hand, they had proven unswervingly loyal to Ben. When he had purchased the Kingdom of Landover from Rosen’s Department Store Christmas Wish book and come into the valley—almost two years ago now—Fillip and Sot, on behalf of all of the G’home Gnomes, had been the first to pledge their loyalty. They had aided him in his efforts to establish his kingship. They had helped him again when Meeks, the former Court Wizard, had slipped back into Landover and stolen his identity and his throne. They had been his friends when there were precious few friends to be had. He sighed deeply. Well, he owed them something, certainly—but not this much. They were taking advantage of his friendship in a way that was totally unconscionable. They had traded on it to bring this latest complaint before him, deliberately circumventing the regular channels of a court administration he had worked hard to implement. They had brandished it like a fiery torch until he was hounded to this, his last sanctuary. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t do this every single time there was a complaint of any sort—which was every five minutes, it sometimes seemed—but, of course, they did. They didn’t trust anyone else to be fair and impartial. They wanted their “Great High Lord” and their “Mighty High Lord” to hear them out.