"Yours, High Lord-to the daughter of any house you choose. Take for a wife the child of one of us, a wife to give you children, a wife to bind you to us with blood ties." Kallendbor smiled faintly. "Then we will pledge to you. Then we will acknowledge you as Landover's King!"
There was an endless moment of silence. Ben was so stunned that for a moment he could not even comprehend what was being asked. When he managed to accept the whole of what Kallendbor had requested of him, he saw as well the truth that lay behind it. He was being asked to provide to the Lords of the Greensward a legitimate heir to the throne of Landover-one that would rule after him. He thought that, once produced, such an heir would not likely have long to wait to ascend to the throne.
"I cannot accept," he said finally. He could see in his mind's eye Annie's youthful face, and the memory of it caused him new pain. "I cannot accept because I have recently lost my own wife, and I cannot take another so soon. I cannot do it."
He saw at once that not one of them understood what he was saying. Angry looks appeared instantly on the faces of all. It might be that in Landover's baronies, as in the baronies of medieval history in his own world, marriage was mostly for convenience. He didn't know, and it was too late now to find out. He had made the wrong decision in the minds of the Lords of the Greensward.
"You are not even a whole man!" Kallendbor sneered suddenly. Shouts rang out from the other Lords in approval.
Ben stood his ground. "I am King by law."
"You are a play-King like the others! You are a fraud!"
"He wears the medallion, Lord Kallendbor!" Questor shouted out from the far end of the table, shuffling away from his seat to come around.
"He may wear it, but it does him little good!" The red-bearded Lord had his eyes fixed on Ben. The shouts from the others continued. Kallendbor played to them, his voice rising. "He does not command the Paladin, does he? He has no champion to fight for him against man or demon! He has no one but you, Questor Thews. You had best come and get him now!"
"I need no one to stand up for me!" Ben stepped between Kallendbor and the approaching wizard. "I can stand for myself against anyone!"
The instant he had said it he wished that he hadn't. The room went still. He saw the smile come immediately to Kallendbor's hard face, the glint to his eye. "Would you care to test your strength against mine, High Lord?" the other asked softly.
Ben felt the dampness of sweat beneath his arms and along the crease of his back. He recognized the trap he had stepped into, but there seemed no way out of it now. "A test of strength seldom proves anything, Lord Kallendbor," he replied, his gaze kept steady on the other.
Kallendbor's smile turned unpleasant. "I would expect a man who relies solely on laws for his protection to say that."
Anger flooded through Ben. "Very well. How would you suggest that I test my strength against yours?"
"High Lord, you cannot allow ..." Questor began, but was silenced by the shouts of the others gathered about the table.
Kallendbor rubbed his bearded face slowly, considering. "Well, now, there are any number of possibilities, all of them ..."
He was cut short by a sharp bark from the far end of the table. It was Abernathy who, in his excitement to be heard, had lapsed back momentarily into the form of communication basic to this breed. "Forgive me," he said quickly as the snickers began to rise. "Lord Kallendbor, you seem to have forgotten the etiquette this situation demands. You were the one to issue the challenge to a contest. It is your opponent's right, therefore, to select the game."
Kallendbor frowned. "I assumed that because he was from another world he did not know the games of this one."
"He need only know a variation of them," Abernathy replied, peering at the other over his glasses. "Excuse me for one moment, please."
He left the table walking upright, head erect. Veiled laughter rose from the gathered Lords as the dog left the room. Ben glanced quickly at Questor, who shrugged and shook his head. The wizard had no idea what the scribe was about either.
A few moments later, Abernathy was back. He carried in his hands two pairs of eight ounce boxing gloves-the ones that Ben had brought with him into Landover to keep in training. "Fisticuffs, Lord Kallendbor," the soft-coated Wheaten Terrier announced.
Kallendbor threw back his head and laughed. "Fisticuffs? With those? I would prefer bare knuckles to leather socks filled with stuffing!"
Abernathy brought the gloves about the table to where the combatants stood. "High Lord," he bowed deeply, his soft eyes on Ben. "Perhaps it would be best if you forgave Lord Kallendbor his rash challenge. It would not do to see him injured because of his inability to master your weapons."
"No! I do not withdraw the challenge!" Kallendbor snatched one pair of gloves from the scribe and began to pull them on. Strehan turned to help him.
Abernathy passed the second pair to Ben. "He is very strong, High Lord. Watch yourself."
"I thought that you knew nothing of boxing," Ben whispered, working one glove on. Questor appeared at his side, helping him tighten the laces. "How did you know to find these?"
"I was responsible for the unpacking of your possessions when you arrived at Sterling Silver," Abernathy answered, giving Ben what might have been a smile coming from anyone else. "These gloves were there along with a magazine that demonstrated your game. I studied the pictures and drawings in the magazine. Our games are much the same. You call yours boxing. We call ours fisticuffs."
"I'll be damned!" Ben breathed.
Kallendbor had his gloves in place and was stripped to the waist. Ben glanced past Questor as he worked. Kallendbor's chest and arms rippled with muscle, and scars from battle wounds crisscrossed his body. He looked like a gladiator from the cast of Spartacus Spartacus.
A space was being cleared at the center of the room, ringed by thralls in service to the castle proper and by the other Lords of the Greensward. The space was a little more than twice the size of a normal boxing ring.
"Any rules to this game?" Ben asked, taking deep breaths to calm himself.
Questor nodded. "Just one. Whoever is still standing at the end of the fight is the winner."
Ben slapped his gloves together to test the tightness of the laces and shrugged the tunic from his back. "That's it, huh? I guess I won't have any trouble remembering, will I?"
He went around the dinner table and into the makeshift ring. Kallendbor was waiting. Ben stopped momentarily at the edge of the crowd; Questor, Abernathy, and the two kobolds crowded in close beside him.
"So much for the lawyer's approach to things," he sighed.
"I will look after you, High Lord," Questor whispered hurriedly.
Ben turned. "No magic, Questor."
"But, High Lord, you cannot ..."
"No magic. That's final."
The wizard grimaced and nodded reluctantly. "The medallion will protect you anyway," he muttered. But he did not sound all that sure that it would.
Ben shrugged the matter aside and stepped out into the ring. Kallendbor came at him at once, hands cocked, arms spread wide as if he intended to grapple. Ben hit him once with the left jab and sidestepped. The big man turned, grunting, and Ben hit him again, once, twice, a third time. The jabs were sharp and quick, snapping Kallendbor's head back. Ben danced away, moving smoothly, feeling the adrenaline begin to flow through his body. Kallendbor roared with fury and came at him with both arms flailing. Ben ducked, caught the blows on his arms and shoulders, then burrowed into the other's body with a flurry of quick punches, stepped away, jabbed and caught Kallendbor flush on the jaw with a full right hook.
Kallendbor went straight to the floor, a dazed look on his face. Ben danced away. He could hear Questor yelling encouragement. He could hear the oaths and shouts of the Lords of the Greensward. The blood pumped through him, and it seemed to him that he could hear the sound of his heartbeat throbbing in his ears.
Kallendbor climbed slowly back to his feet, eyes glinting with fury. He was as strong as Abernathy had warned. He would not be taken out easily.
He came at Ben once more, cautiously this time, fists held protectively before his face. The fighters feinted and jabbed, circling. Kallendbor's bearded face was flushed and angry. He pushed his gloves into Ben's, knocking them back, looking for an opening.
Then, suddenly, he charged. He was quick, and he caught Ben off balance with his rush. The blows rained into Ben, thrusting through his guard, catching him in the face. Ben danced away, his own fists jabbing back. But Kallendbor never slowed. He bore into Ben like a juggernaut, knocking him to the floor. Ben struggled back to his feet, but Kallendbor's wild blows caught him twice on the side of the head and down he went again.
The shouts of the Lords of the Greensward became a roar in Ben's ears, and there were colored lights dancing before his eyes. Kallendbor was standing over him, hitting at him with both hands, the smell of his sweat heavy in the air. Ben rolled away, careening into the ring of onlookers. Hands shoved him back. Kallendbor's boots and knees struck out at him, and he felt the pain of the blows lance through his body. He curled into a ball, his gloves tight against his face, his forearms against his chest.
He could feel the medallion he wore about his neck pressed against him.
The pain was becoming unbearable. He knew he was going to lose consciousness if he did not do something quickly. He rolled to his knees, bracing. When Kallendbor rushed at him again, he grappled desperately at the other's legs, pulled him off balance and tumbled him to the floor.
Ben came back to his feet at once, shaking the dizziness from his head, gloves cocked before his face. Kallendbor was up as well, his breath hissing from between his teeth. A strange light had appeared from behind the big man and the crowd of onlookers. It was a light that seemed to be growing brighter. Ben shook his head, trying to concentrate on the advancing Kallendbor. But now others were aware of the light as well. Heads had begun to turn and the crowd to part as the light advanced toward them. There was a figure within the light, a knight in battered, worn armor, helmet visor closed.
There was an audible gasp from the crowd of Lords and thralls.
The knight was the Paladin.
The assemblage stared, murmurs rippling through the sudden silence as the figure shimmered in the light. Some dropped to their knees, crying out in the same manner as had the demons when the Paladin had appeared to them in the Heart. Kallendbor stood uncertainly at the center of the circle, hands lowered, eyes turned away now from Ben to view the specter.
The Paladin shimmered a moment longer in the light, and then he faded back again and was gone. The light died away into evening dark.
Kallendbor wheeled at once on Ben. "What trickery is this, play-King? Why do you bring that ghost into Rhyndweir?"
Ben shook his head angrily. "I brought nothing but ..."
Questor cut the rest of what he was going to say short. "Lord Kallendbor, you mistake what has happened here. Twice before, the Paladin has appeared when the High Lord's safety was threatened. You are being warned, Lords of the Greensward, that this man, Ben Holiday, is the true King of Landover!"
"We are warned by a ghost in a light?" Kallendbor laughed, spitting blood from his cracked lips. "You have used your magic to try to frighten us, Questor Thews, and you have failed!"
He looked at Ben with disdain. "This game is finished. I want no more of you or your traveling circus. I want no part of you as my King!"
The shouts of the other Lords echoed his declaration. Ben stood where he was. "Whether you want any part of me or not, I am King nevertheless!" he snapped. "You may ignore me as you would ignore any truth, but I will remain a fact of your life! You think to ignore the laws that made me King, Kallendbor, but you will not be able to do so forever! I will find a way to see that you cannot!"
"You need not look far, play-King!" Kallendbor was beside himself with fury. He shrugged out of the boxing gloves and threw them at Ben. "You claim to be King of Landover? You claim to command the services of the Paladin? Very well, prove that you truly are what you claim by ridding us of the one plague on our existence that we cannot ourselves dismiss! Rid us of Strabo! Rid us of the dragon!"
He stalked forward until he was almost on top of Ben. "Twenty years now the dragon has raided our stock and destroyed our property. We have hunted him from one end of Landover to the other, but he has the magic of the old world and we cannot kill him. You are heir to the old magic, too-if you are who you claim! So rid us of the dragon, play-King, and then I will bow to you as High Lord and pledge you my life!"
A roar of approval rose from the throats of all assembled. "Rid us of the dragon!" they cried as one. Ben's eyes remained locked on Kallendbor's.
"Until then, I will ignore you as I would ignore the ants that crawl beneath my feet!" Kallendbor whispered in his face.
He wheeled and stalked from the circle, the other Lords following after. Slowly, the room began to empty. Ben was left alone with Questor, Abernathy, and the kobolds. The four came forward to remove his gloves and to clean the blood and sweat from his face and body.
"What's all this about the dragon?" Ben demanded immediately.
"Later, High Lord," Questor answered, dabbing at a mouse already beginning to form under one eye. "A bath and a night's sleep are in order first."
Ben shook his head. "Not in this place! I wouldn't spend another moment here if it meant hiking out across a damn desert! Pack everything. We're leaving right now. We'll talk about the dragon on the way."
"But, High Lord ..."
"Now, Questor!"
No one chose to argue the point further. An hour later their little company was back on the road traveling west out of Rhyndweir into the night.
WILLOW.
Ben's decision to leave Rhyndweir so abruptly proved to be a poor one. The company had barely cleared the outskirts of the village shops and cottages lining the castle's approach when it began to rain. The rain came slowly at first, a spattering of drops against their faces, light and teasing. Then the drops became a shower, and the shower became a downpour. Clouds blocked away the land's moons and the distant stars, and everything turned as black as pitch. Wind howled across the flat, empty pastures and fields of the Greensward, thrusting at the travelers like a giant's breath. It took only moments for the company to decide to seek immediate shelter, but they were already soaked to the bone by then.
They spent the night in a dilapidated, empty barn in which stock had once been housed. Rain blew through holes in the walls and roofing, and there were few dry spots to be found. The air turned chill, and the damp clothing seemed colder than before. Ben and his companions huddled together in the dark in a large horse stall at one end of the barn. It was dryer there than anywhere else in the building, and there was straw on which to bed. A fire was out of the question, so everyone had to make do with a quick change of clothing and a sharing of the blankets from their bedding. Questor offered to try his magic on a flameless warming device he had once successfully conjured up, but Ben would not allow it. Questor's magic evidenced an unpleasant propensity for backfiring, and their barn was the only shelter in sight. Besides, Ben reasoned obstinately, weathering out the storm in such poor surroundings seemed appropriate punishment for the way he had botched things at Rhyndweir.
"I blew it, Questor," he said to the other as they huddled in the dark and listened to the rainfall drum on the old barn's roof.
"Hmmmmm?" Questor's attention was concentrated on wiping dirt and blood from the numerous cuts and abrasions Ben had suffered during his fight with Kallendbor.
"I screwed up. I mishandled the whole thing. I let Kallendbor trick me into accepting his stupid challenge. I lost my composure; I let the entire affair get out of hand." He sighed and leaned back against the stall side. "I should have done a better job of arguing my case. Some lawyer, right? Some King!"
"I think you handled matters rather well, High Lord."
Ben looked at him skeptically. "You do?"
"It was obviously intended that you should fail in your attempt to gain a pledge from the Lords of the Greensward unless you were willing to gain that pledge on their terms. Had you agreed to marry a daughter of one of their households, the pledge would have been yours. You would have had a wife and a dozen in-laws for the balance of your reign as King-a reign that would have been considerably shorter than you would have liked." The wizard shrugged. "But you knew what they intended as well as I, didn't you?"
"I knew."
"So you were right to refuse the offer, and I think you showed great composure under the circumstances. I think that if the game had been allowed to continue, you might have beaten him."
Ben laughed. "I appreciate the vote of confidence. I notice, however, that you left nothing to chance."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you ignored my order not to use the magic and conjured up that image of the Paladin when it looked as if I was going down for the count!"
The owlish face studied him, a faint outline in the dark. Questor set aside the bloodied cloths. "I did nothing of the sort, High Lord. That was was the Paladin." the Paladin."
There was a long silence. "Then he has come three times now," Ben whispered finally, his bewilderment evident. "He came when I was caught in the time passage with the Mark, he came when the demons appeared at the coronation, and now he has come to the Greensward. But he seems just exactly what you called him, Questor-a ghost! He looks as if he's only an image made of light! What is he really?"
The other shrugged. "Maybe what he appears-maybe something more."
Ben hunched his knees up close against his body, trying to stay warm. "I think that he's out there. I think that he's trying to come back again." He looked at Questor for confirmation.
Questor shook his head. "I do not know, High Lord. Maybe so."
"What was it that brought him in the past? There must be something you can tell me about him-about why and how he appeared to the old King."
"He appeared when he was summoned," the other replied. "The summons has always come from the wearer of the medallion. The medallion is a part of the magic, High Lord. There is a link between it, the Kings of Landover, and the Paladin. But only the Kings of Landover have ever fully understood what that link was."
Ben pulled the medallion from beneath his tunic and studied it. "Maybe if I rub it, or talk to it, or just grasp it-maybe that will bring the Paladin. What do you think?"
Questor shrugged. Ben tried all three and nothing happened. He tried wishing for the Paladin's appearance, hands clutched about the medallion so tightly he could feel the impression of its carved surface. Nothing happened.
"I suppose I should have known it wouldn't be that easy." He sighed and dropped the medallion back down the front of his tunic, feeling it catch on the chain that lay looped about his neck. He looked up through a hole in the barn roof as the wind rattled the shingles against their fastenings. "Tell me about the dragon and the Lords of the Greensward."
The wizard's stooped form bent closer still. "You heard most of it from Kallendbor yourself. The Lords of the Greensward are at war with Strabo. The dragon is their nemesis. He has preyed upon them for the better part of twenty years-ever since the old King died. He burns their crops and their buildings; he devours their livestock and occasionally their thralls. He hunts their lands at will, and they are powerless to stop it."
"Because the dragon is part of the magic-isn't that it?"
"Yes, High Lord. Strabo is the last of his kind. He was a creature of the world of fairy until his exile thousands of years ago. He cannot be harmed by mortal weapons, only by the magic from which he was created. That was why Kallendbor felt safe in challenging you to rid him of the dragon-he believes you a fraud. A true King of Landover would command the magic of the medallion and could summon the Paladin to do his bidding."