“The Prism Cat found your daughter in the lake country and took her away with him. But first the cat sent Haltwhistle back to me. The message was clear.”
Clear enough, Ben thought in dismay. But what did Dirk want with Mistaya? The cat always wanted something; he knew that much from experience. It would be no different here. The trouble was in determining what he was after, which was never apparent and always difficult to uncover. The Prism Cat would talk in riddles and lead you in circles and never get to the point or answer a question directly. Like cats everywhere, he was enigmatic and obtuse.
But Edgewood Dirk was dangerous, too. The Prism Cat possessed a very powerful magic, just as the Earth Mother had said. Yet the extent of that magic went far beyond his ability to manipulate a mud puppy. Ben felt a new urgency at the thought of Dirk’s proximity to Mistaya.
“Where is Mistaya now?” he asked the Earth Mother.
“Gone with the Prism Cat,” she answered once more. “But the Prism Cat covers their tracks and the way of their passing, and even I cannot determine where they are.”
Ben felt a slow sinking in the pit of his stomach. If the Earth Mother didn’t know where Mistaya was and couldn’t find her, how could he expect to?
“Can you reverse the magic used to send Haltwhistle home to you?” Willow asked suddenly. “Can you send him back out again to find our daughter?”
The elemental shifted again, scattering droplets of water that sparkled like diamonds shed. “Haltwhistle can only go to her if she calls him now. She has not done so, child. So he must remain with me.”
All the air went out of Ben on hearing this. His one chance at finding his daughter had evaporated right before his eyes. If the Earth Mother couldn’t help him find her, he didn’t know if there was anyone who could.
“Can you tell us anything to do?” Willow asked suddenly, her voice calm and collected, free of any hint of desperation or worry. “Is there a way to communicate with her?”
“Go home and wait,” the Earth Mother said to her. “Be patient. She will communicate with you.”
Ben tried to say something more, but the elemental was already sinking back into the swamp, slowly losing shape, returning to the earth in which she was nurtured. In seconds she was gone. The surface of the water rippled softly and went still. Silence settled in like a heavy blanket, and the mist drew across the water.
Haltwhistle looked up at them, waiting.
“Take us back, mud puppy,” Willow said softly.
They walked back the way they had come, weaving through the swamp grasses and reeds, winding about the deep pools of water and thick mud, carefully keeping to the designated path. Neither Ben nor Willow spoke. There was nothing either of them wanted to say.
On reaching their camp and Bunion, Haltwhistle turned back at once and vanished into the mist. Ben shook his head. He had the vague feeling he should have done something more, but he couldn’t say what. He walked over to where their camping gear was already packed and ready to be loaded and sat down heavily.
He looked at Willow expectantly as she sat next to him. “What do we do now?”
She smiled, surprising him. “We do what the Earth Mother suggested, Ben. We go home and wait for Mistaya to communicate with us.”
This was not what he was hoping to hear, and he failed to hide his disappointment. “I don’t know if I can leave it at that.”
“I know. You want to do something, even if you don’t quite know what that something is.” She thought about it a moment. “We can ask Questor if he has a magic that can track a Prism Cat. He might know something that would help.”
Sure, and cows might fly. But Ben just nodded, knowing that he didn’t have a better suggestion. Not at the moment, anyway. Not until he thought about it some more.
So they loaded their gear on their horses and set out for home, and all the way back Ben kept thinking that he was missing something obvious, that there was something he was overlooking.
THEY SEEK THAT PRINCESS EVERYWHERE!
The sun was just cresting the horizon when Questor Thews slipped from his bed, drew on his favorite bathrobe (the royal blue one with the golden moons and stars), and his dragon slippers (the ones that looked as if his toes were breathing fire), and padded down to the kitchen for his morning coffee. He had discovered coffee some years back during one of his unfortunate visits to Ben’s world and had secured several sacks in the process, which he now hoarded like gold. Mistaya had been good enough to add to his supply now and again during her time at Carrington, but since she had been dismissed, he wasn’t sure how long it would be before he could replenish his stock.
He finished brewing a pot and was in the process of enjoying his first cup of the day when Abernathy wandered in and sat down across from him. “May I?” he asked, motioning toward the coffee.
Questor nodded, wondering for what must have been the hundredth time how a soft-coated wheaten terrier could possibly enjoy drinking coffee. It must be a part of him that was still human and not dog, of course. But it just looked odd, a dog drinking coffee.
“Any new thoughts as to where our missing girl might be?” Abernathy inquired of him, licking his chops as he took the first swallow of his coffee.
Questor shook his head. “Not a one. The High Lord is right, though. I think we are missing something important about all this.”
Ben Holiday had voiced his opinion on this late last night on his return from the lake country, more than a hint of discouragement coloring his voice and draping his tired visage. He had thought that he and Willow would find her there, but instead they had found only clues that seemed to lead nowhere. If neither the River Master nor the Earth Mother could help, it didn’t look good for the rest of them.
“What could Edgewood Dirk want with her?” Abernathy asked suddenly, as if reading his thoughts.
Questor grunted and shook his head. “Nothing good, I’m sure.”
“He wouldn’t be going to the trouble of hiding her tracks if his intentions were of the right sort,” his friend agreed. “Remember how much trouble he caused the last time he showed up?”
Questor remembered, all right. But on thinking back, it didn’t seem that Dirk had been the cause of the trouble so much as the indicator. Something like a compass. The Prism Cat had appeared at the behest of the fairies in the mists, a sort of emissary sent to nudge the High Lord and his friends in the direction required for setting aright things that had gone askew—all without really telling them what it was exactly that needed righting. If that were true here, then Mistaya might be headed for a good deal more trouble than she realized.
Questor sighed. He was at his wit’s end. He could continue to do what Ben Holiday and he had done every day, which was to go up to the Landsview and scour the countryside. But that had yielded exactly nothing to date, and it felt pointless to try yet again. He had thought about approaching the dragon, always a daunting experience, in an effort to see if it might be willing to help. But what sort of help might it offer? Strabo could cross borders that the rest of them couldn’t—he could go in and out of Landover at will, for example—but that would prove useful only if Mistaya were somewhere other than Landover, and there were no indications at this point that she was.
“I remember when the High Lord was tricked into believing he had lost the medallion and Dirk trailed around after him until he figured it out,” Questor mused, turning his coffee cup this way and that. “He was there when the High Lord was trapped with Nightshade and Strabo in that infernal device that Horris Kew uncovered, too. Dispensing his wisdom and talking in riddles, prodding the High Lord into recognizing the truth, if I remember right from what we were told afterward. Perhaps that is what’s happening here.”