No one was even close, of course.
Miles finished with those stories and turned to the single column report on the front page of the Northwest section of Sunday’s Times. There was a picture of Graum Wythe and a headline that read: “Millionaire Gives Castle To State.”
Underneath, the accompanying story began:
Millionaire businessman Michel Ard Rhi announced at a news conference today that he was donating his castle home and surrounding lands to the state of Washington as a park and recreation area. A fund will be set aside to maintain and improve the facilities, and the balance of Ard Rhi’s estate, conservatively estimated at three hundred million dollars, will be donated to various organizations throughout the world for humanitarian and charitable causes. Ard Rhi announced that the castle, Graum Wythe, will become a museum for pieces of art he has collected over the years and will be open to the public. Arrangements for readying the facilities will be handled by his private steward, whose name was not released. Ard Rhi, a reclusive businessman who is thought to have made the bulk of his fortune in real estate and foreign trade, advised newsmen that he plans to retire to the Oregon coast to write or work on other projects. A small trust will be set aside for his support.
The story went on for several more paragraphs, relating Michel Ard Rhi’s personal history and the reaction of a number of local and national notables. Miles read the story twice and shook his head. What had Questor Thews done to the man?
He put the papers aside, stretched, and sighed. Too bad Doc wasn’t still around. There were just too many unanswered questions.
Beside him, Elizabeth looked up suddenly from her book, blue eyes intense. She seemed to read his mind. “Do you think they’re all right?” she asked.
He looked down at her and nodded. “Yep, Elizabeth,” he said. “Matter of fact, I’m sure of it.”
She smiled. “Me, too, I guess.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t worry about them, though.”
“Or miss them. I miss them a lot.”
Miles looked out the windows again, across the broad expanse of the runways and taxi lanes, into the distant gray mix of clouds and mountains and sky. “Well, they’ll be back,” he said finally. “Someday.”
Elizabeth nodded, but didn’t reply.
A moment later, the arrival of Flight 159 was announced. Miles and Elizabeth got up from their seats and walked over to the windows to watch it come in.
* * *
Several weeks later, Ben Holiday and Willow were married. They would have been married sooner, but there was protocol to be observed in a wedding such as theirs, and it took awhile even to figure out what the protocol was, let alone to implement it. After all, hardly anyone alive could even remember a marriage of a High Lord of Landover. So Abernathy dug out his histories, and Questor Thews consulted a few of the valley’s elders, and between them they finally figured out what had to be done.
Ben frankly wasn’t interested in the formalities. All he knew was that it had taken him an impossibly long time to realize what Willow had known from the very first—that they should be together, joined as one, husband and wife, High Lord and Queen, and that whatever it took to get the job done, they should do it. Once, not so very long ago, he would never have allowed himself to feel that way; he would have considered such feelings a betrayal of his love for Annie. But Annie had been dead almost five years, and he had managed finally to lay her ghost to rest. Willow was his life now. He loved Willow, had known he loved her almost from the first, had heard her speak countless times of the foretelling of her destiny at the moment of her conception, and had learned from her the Earth Mother’s prediction that one day she would bear him children.
Still he had hesitated to believe and to commit himself. He had been afraid, mostly. He had been afraid of a lot of things—that he still didn’t belong, that he was somehow inadequate to be Landover’s King, and that one day he would simply be gone, back again in the world he had wanted so badly to escape. The realization of the dream was greater than his expectations, and he had feared that he hadn’t enough to give,