The last time he had used the Landsview, it was Mistaya who was missing then, too. Five years earlier, she had been stolen away by the Witch of the Deep Fell, who had hidden her from Ben and Willow with magic. It was Nightshade’s intention to subvert her, to turn her away from her parents so she could participate actively in their destruction. Because the Landsview could not penetrate the magic of the Deep Fell, Ben had been unable to find his daughter and had almost lost her forever. But Nightshade was gone and the threat she had once posed was finished, so even though he still could not penetrate the hollows without entering personally, he did not think that this was where his daughter would go.
Still, after almost two hours of scouring his Kingdom—every hidden valley, darkened forest, and mountainous retreat, every town and village, every last possible place in which she might find refuge—he began to wonder. What if he was wrong about Nightshade? Or even about Mistaya’s reluctance ever to return to the Deep Fell? Maybe she thought hiding out there was a good idea because she knew he couldn’t find her unless he went there himself.
Except that the Deep Fell was a dangerous place, and Mistaya was no fool. She might be angry enough with him to go off on her own for a few days just to spite him, as Willow had suggested, but she wouldn’t put herself at risk needlessly.
When he returned to the tower and stepped down off the Landsview, he knew nothing more about Mistaya’s whereabouts than when he had set out to find her. “Nothing,” he reported to Questor and Abernathy, giving a shrug. He hesitated. “Though I suppose she might be hiding in the Deep Fell.”
Both wizard and scribe bristled instantly at the suggestion, insisting that this was not possible, that Mistaya would never go back there after what had happened before. Which, in turn, made Ben feel foolish for making the suggestion, although it also made him feel somewhat better to hear that his friends agreed with his own assessment.
“We have to do something else,” he told them as the three tromped back down out of the tower to the lower regions of the castle.
“Maybe Bunion will have a suggestion,” Questor ventured finally. “No one knows Landover’s secrets better than he does. If there’s a hiding place we haven’t thought of, he’ll remember it.”
“Maybe we ought to leave well enough alone,” Abernathy growled suddenly. The other two turned to look at him. “Well, I mean that if she doesn’t wish to be found, perhaps we ought to respect that. She might have discovered a way to use her magic to hide from us. I don’t know that we ought to be so quick to try to undo that.”
“What are you talking about?” Questor demanded. “Of course we want to undo it! She’s got all of us worried to death!”
“Well, maybe not to death,” Ben tried to amend.
“Whatever the extent of our worry, it shouldn’t be allowed to continue,” Questor declared. His bushy eyebrows knotted fiercely. “She ought to know better than to do something like this! She’s a big girl, not a child. We have a right to do whatever we can to find out where she is!”
Abernathy shook his head, ears flopping loosely. “Spoken like a man who jumps without looking.”
“Well, I don’t see you doing anything to help matters!” Questor snapped in reply. “Should we all just stand around and hope for the best? Is that your answer to the problem?”
“My answer to the problem is to point out how useless you are when it comes to contributing solutions to problems, Questor Thews!”
The argument continued all the rest of the way down the stairs and well into the beginning stages of Ben’s first headache of the day, a headache that only grew worse as the hours lengthened and Bunion did not return.
Berwyn Laphroig, Lord of Rhyndweir—for such was his full name and title—strolled through the weapons room of his castle in an irritated state. He was restless and bored, but the solution to these conditions was not to be found here. There was nothing in this room or even in the whole of his barony that could satisfy his insatiable need to make the young and lovely Mistaya Holiday his wife. There was no other woman who could replace her in his thoughts, none to whom he would give even momentary consideration. Thinking of her only worsened his condition, unfortunately; thinking of her made him even more determined to find a way to have her.
It had seemed easy enough in the beginning, when he had decided he must replace his old wife. Things had not been going well for some time between them, and he could sense that she was looking for a way out of the marriage. Such insolence was intolerable, and he was perfectly within his rights to make certain she could not act on her foolish fantasies. Even her son had become a source of irritation, always clinging to her as if she were a lifeline to a safe place instead of deadweight that would pull him down. He cared nothing for them, really, so it was not difficult for him to decide to dispose of them when he determined they were no longer necessary.
Like his brothers and sisters. Like everyone else who had outlived their usefulness.
His counselors would have been horrified had they realized the extent to which he had gone to fulfill his ambitions. The ambitions alone would have horrified them. Even more certain was the response of his fellow Lords of the Greensward, had he chosen to confide in them. Not that he would ever do such a thing. But if they knew that he had long coveted not only his father’s title and lands, but the King of Landover’s throne, as well …
He smiled despite himself. Not much to guess about there. If they had known, they would have found a way to dispatch him in a heartbeat.
He had confided in no one, however, and given no one reason to suspect the truth. He had disposed of his older brother all on his own. His younger had disappeared shortly after and was never seen again. A poisoner he had enlisted to his cause had taken care of his troublesome wife and son without anyone knowing, and then he had taken care of the poisoner. There was none to bear witness against him, no voices to speak, and no eyes that had seen. It had all been done quickly and quietly, and no trace of his crimes remained to convict him.
Still, Ben Holiday suspected the truth and did not trust him. That might have been worrisome had he thought the High Lord could prove anything.
A door opened at the far end of the room, and his scribe, Cordstick, a wisp of a man with a huge mop of bushy hair, came hurrying across the room. “My Lord,” he greeted, bowing low, hair flopping. “We have a problem.”
Laphroig didn’t like problems and didn’t want to hear about them, but he nodded agreeably. “Yes? What is it?”
“We received word from one of our loyal subjects that there was a man—well, not a man, really—but he was asking questions in the town below the castle about you, and he …”
He stopped, as if uncertain where to go next with this. “He was asking questions about your family, my Lord, all of them, including your wife and child.” He swallowed hard. “About their untimely deaths.”
“Get to the point.”
Cordstick nodded quickly. “Well, we thought it best to detain him, my Lord. We knew you would want to question him about his interest in your family, not knowing, of course, what his purpose might be. So we sent guards to take him prisoner and hold him for questioning.”
He stopped again, looking around the room as if help might be found among the suits of armor and racks of sharp weapons. Laphroig rolled his eyes. “Yes, you took him prisoner. And?”
“After we had done so, we discovered he was not a man at all, but a kobold. Why anyone would confide anything in a kobold, I couldn’t say. Perhaps they didn’t, but it was enough, it seemed to me, that he was asking these questions. I thought that holding him was the better choice, if it came to a choice about what to do with him, kobold or not, and …”