A Princess Of Landover Part 27

"I'm mostly just glad you're back," he said when she asked if he was mad at her. "I'm glad you're safe."

She was both relieved and pleased. She had no desire to engage in another confrontation with him. While she had been in hiding, she had thought a lot about her att.i.tude toward her parents and decided that it could use some improvement. So one of the first things she did on her return, once they were rea.s.sured that she was unharmed, was to tell them how sorry she was for not trying to understand better that they had only her best interests at heart. Her father responded at once by telling her he was sorry he had treated her as a child.

"I still think of you that way," he told her. "Maybe I always will. Parents do that. We can't help ourselves. We can't help thinking that you need us to look after you. We can't get used to the idea that you are growing up and need s.p.a.ce to find your own way. We don't like it that you might one day discover you will be just fine without us."

"I would never be fine without you and Mother," she had replied and hugged him so hard he thought she might break something.

Thom had come back with her, deciding that he would return to Rhyndweir as successor to his brother. This decision had more to do with his determination to change the way things were done in the Greensward than anything to do with Questor's repeated references to destiny and fate. Ben had received him warmly and told him that he could count on the throne to support him. He had suggested that he send Questor to the Greensward to make certain the transition went smoothly. Not that he believed there would be any problem, he was quick to a.s.sure the boy. Berwyn Laphroig had not been well liked, and the people of Rhyndweir would be happy to have a new Lord. They would be especially accepting of one who seemed so willing to put the welfare of his subjects ahead of his own.

"He wants to give the land to the people," Mistaya had told her father later. "He wants the people to feel they have a vested interest in it, something they can call their own and pa.s.s on to their children. All he wants in return is for them to agree to pay a reasonable tax to the crown. He has a plan to accomplish all this, and it is a good one. Listen."

Her father did so, and after asking a number of questions he was inclined to agree. Perhaps Thom's openness would provide a working model for the other Lords of the Greensward, one that would revolutionize the old practices and herald the beginning of an era of fresh cooperation between the Lords of the Greensward and their subjects.

Perhaps.

"I think Thom will become a valuable ally, Father," Mistaya finished. "I think you'll come to like him very much."

She had not missed the way the boy looked at her, of course, and she knew how he felt about her. What she didn't know was exactly how she felt about him. The two had shared a very dangerous and exhausting ordeal at Libiris, and that sort of experience had a way of bonding people. She liked Thom, but she wasn't sure she liked him in that way-even though she couldn't stop thinking about the way he had kissed her in that storeroom at Libiris when she was to be married to Laphroig. It still sent chills up and down her spine when she thought about it. It still made her want to try kissing him again. Someday.

She sat with her father for a long time after that without speaking, comfortable just to be together. She couldn't remember when they had last done this, and she was almost afraid to say or do anything that might break the spell. One or the other of them was always rus.h.i.+ng away, and time spent doing nothing, father and daughter sharing s.p.a.ce and nothing more, was a rarity. Thinking on it, she felt a pang of regret that it might be another broad stretch of time before they would do it again.

She caught him looking at her and said, "What?"

He shook his head. "I was just thinking about how much I enjoy being with you like this. Just sitting and not saying anything or doing anything. Just ..."

He trailed off, unable to finish. "I know," she said. "You don't have to say it. We don't do this like we did when I was a little girl."

"You remember, do you? I thought that maybe all that was so far in the past that you had forgotten."

"I haven't forgotten any of it. We would go on picnics, and I would sit next to you and watch everything you did. Mother would set things out, but I would sit with you. Sometimes you would carry me on your shoulders into the trees and pretend you were my charger."

He grinned. "I did do that, didn't I?"

"You did a lot for me-you and Mother both. Since coming home, I've been thinking about it. I've been doing a sort of self-a.s.sessment. There might be some areas of improvement needed. What do you think?"

He arched one eyebrow at her. "You've got to be kidding. You don't really expect me to answer that one, do you?"

"Not really."

"Then don't ask me things like that. I'm trying to walk a fine line here between parenting and friends.h.i.+p."

"They're supposed to be the same thing, aren't they?"

"When the stars align properly, yes. But you might have noticed over the past few weeks that sometimes you have to work at it."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "Well, I guess I did notice something of the sort."

They were quiet again for a time, and then her father said, "What do you think you will do now, Mistaya? Now that you've come back home."

She had thought of little else. "I don't know."

"You have a lot of options open to you. You've probably thought of a few that I haven't. I'm not asking this to try to persuade you to do anything in particular. The choice is yours, and whatever you decide is fine with your mother and me. I think."

"Thank you."

"So do you have any ideas?"

"Some."

"Care to talk about them with me?"

He sounded so eager, she could hardly make herself give the reply she had already decided on. "Maybe later. Can we just sit here like this for now?"

He said they could, but she thought that he would have preferred the discussion he had suggested. Trouble was, she just wasn't ready. She didn't know what she was going to do. She thought it might take some time to figure it out.

As it turned out, she was wrong. She went for a walk outside the castle grounds late in the afternoon, needing to stretch her legs and find s.p.a.ce to think. She was in a meditative mood, and movement always seemed to help spur her thinking. In addition, she wanted to see if there was any sign of the G'home Gnomes, Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel. After the horse to which they were tied had galloped in terror away from a hungry Strabo, they had thought themselves doomed. The dragon had caught up to them almost immediately, but then it had refused to eat them after finding out they were G'home Gnomes. Even dragons had limits when it came to food choices, Strabo had observed archly before abandoning them to fly after tastier morsels. Eventually, Questor Thews and Abernathy had come across them on their way to Libiris, still bound and gagged astride their grazing horse. Showing considerably more compa.s.sion than others, they had released the pair and, after hearing how they had revealed Mistaya's hiding place to Laphroig, had sent them packing, and no one had seen them since. Mistaya wouldn't have blamed either one for refusing to have anything to do with her from that day forward and wouldn't have lost a great deal of sleep over it, either. But she felt certain she hadn't seen the end of them.

So she went looking for them that afternoon, out to the woods where she had first encountered a dangling Poggwydd some weeks earlier on her return from Carrington. Maybe they had come back and made a new home, a fresh burrow in the soft earth. Maybe it wasn't that they didn't want anything to do with her. Maybe they were waiting to see if she she wanted anything to do with wanted anything to do with them them, given that they had betrayed her whereabouts to The Frog.

But a thorough search of the area revealed nothing, and she was just about to turn around and start home again when she saw Edgewood Dirk.

The Prism Cat was sitting at the base of an ancient broadleaf, his emerald eyes fixed on her, his silver-and-black coat glistening in a wash of hazy sunlight. She stopped and stared, making sure she wasn't seeing things, and then she walked over to stand in front of him.

"Good afternoon, Princess," the Prism Cat greeted.

"Good afternoon, Edgewood Dirk," she replied. "I wondered what had become of you."

"Nothing has become of me. I've been here all along, watching."

"Watching? Me?"

"Not simply you. Everything Cats like to watch. We are curious creatures."

She smiled despite herself. "So you know what happened back at Libiris?"

The cat blinked. "I know what I care to know, thank you. All's well that ends well, it seems."

"Do you know what became of His Eminence and Pinch?" She arched one eyebrow at him. "You do, don't you?"

"Perhaps."

"Will you tell me?"

"Someday, if the mood strikes me. But the mood doesn't strike me just now. Now is the wrong time. Why don't you tell me something instead?"

She sighed. She could have guessed that it wouldn't be that easy. Dirk revealed what he knew of things only now and then. "What would you like to know that you don't already know?"

"What do you intend to do now that you are back home again?"

"You sound like my father. He wants to know that, too. But I guess I haven't decided, so I don't have an answer to your question."

"Perhaps you do. Perhaps you just need to consider the possibilities."

She glared. "Why don't you save us both a lot of time and list them for me. In fact, why don't you just tell me what you think I should do and save me the trouble of having to decide anything at all?"

The cat blinked and then began was.h.i.+ng himself. He took a long time in doing so, a rather deliberately slow process that she was certain was intended to aggravate her. But she held her tongue and waited.

Finally Dirk looked at her. "It isn't my place to tell you what to do with your life. But I do think putting things off is not a good idea. Or leaving things undone. Cats never do that. They always finish what they start before going on to anything else. Cats understand the importance of completing what they start. They are easily distracted, as you know, so it is necessary for them to establish good life habits early so that they learn to focus."

He paused. "It might be true of young girls, as well. Although I do not pretend to understand young girls in the same way I understand cats."

She studied him a moment, and then she nodded. "I think you probably understand young girls pretty well. For a cat."

Edgewood Dirk closed his eyes and then slowly opened them. "Just the ones who merit understanding. And only once in a very great while."

Suddenly she heard her father calling her, although later she could never be certain that she had heard anything at all, and she turned toward the castle to look for him.

When she turned back again, Edgewood Dirk was gone.

She stood staring at the spot he had occupied for a very long time, as if by doing so she could make him reappear. She could hear him speaking in her mind; she could hear his words quite clearly. They jumbled together at first and then they sorted themselves out, and suddenly she discovered she knew exactly what she was going to do. Maybe she had known all along, but just hadn't realized it. In any case, it hadn't taken any time at all to figure it out. It had just taken a few words of wisdom from a very unusual cat.

She started back to the castle. She would tell her parents at dinner. She would tell them that it was important to finish what you start and to make a habit of doing so. She would tell them that she had learned this from a rather unexpected source, and now she must act on it.

DeJa VU.

Vince stopped when he reached the aviary and stood looking for what he already knew wasn't there. He couldn't seem to help himself. Every day he came and every day he looked and every day it was the same thing. The bird was gone. The crow or whatever it was with the red eyes. After all these years, it had disappeared. Vanished. Just like that.

No one knew for sure what had happened. Most hadn't paid much attention to the bird for months-years, really, if you didn't count the ornithologists. Some still didn't realize it was gone. There were more important matters to occupy their working lives and dominate their conversations. But Vince was of a different mind. He didn't think there was anything more important than the disappearance of the bird. Even if he wasn't sure why, he sensed it.

That bird shouldn't have gotten free. Security should have taken greater care than they did when they opened the door and took those two madmen into custody. But they weren't paying attention to anything but the two men, and the crow would have been watching.

Just like it was always watching.

Vince knew, even if the others didn't. It gave him a creepy, uncomfortable feeling, thinking about it. But he knew.

Five weeks gone now, and things were pretty much back to normal. No one had forgotten that day, a day that had started out pretty much like every other. He wasn't the first one to notice the two men in the aviary, but he heard Roy shouting and rushed over to see what was happening, and there they were-these two guys, trapped in the aviary, kicking and hammering on the bars and shaking the cage in their efforts to get free. Odd pair of ducks-that was Vince's first thought when he saw them. They were wearing clothes of the sort you sometimes saw on those people who spent their weekends playing at being knights and fighting with swords. They didn't have any armor on, but they wore robes and tunics and scarves and boots and big belts with silver buckles. One was tall and skinny with a head that looked too big for the rest of his body, and the other was short like a dwarf and all wrinkled and whiskery. They did not look happy, their faces contorted and flushed with anger and frustration. They wanted out, but neither Vince nor Roy was about to help them. How they had gotten into the cage in the first place was hard to guess, considering that the cage door was still locked. But they had no business being there, whatever their excuse. At best, they were trespa.s.sing on city property, and it was likely that by interacting with the animals without authority they had broken a few more laws, as well.

Roy had already called security, so Vince and he stood side by side watching the two men rant and rave. Neither could understand anything the pair was saying. Roy thought they were speaking an Eastern European dialect, although how he would know that, being of Scottish descent, was a mystery to Vince. Vince thought it more likely that they were speaking Arabic. He thought the emphasis on the hard vowels suggested one of the Middle Eastern languages, and even if the big one was as pale as a ghost, it wasn't impossible that he might be an Arabic albino or something. He might have been raised in Egypt or Morocco, Vince thought-even though he had never been anywhere outside the state and didn't know the first thing about either of those countries.

Nevertheless, the two speculated on the matter until security got there and hauled the interlopers out of the cage in handcuffs and tossed them into one of those holding pens on wheels they used when the animals needed to be moved to a new enclosure. Shut the doors and took them away, and that was the last anyone had heard of either one. Vince guessed the authorities would try to find out where they came from and send them back. But he heard later that they didn't have any identification on them, and no one could figure out what language they were speaking. That last was especially puzzling. In this day and age, with people all over the world moving here and there at the drop of a hat, you would think they could find someone someone close by who could speak any language in existence. close by who could speak any language in existence.

But not in this case, apparently. So the pair had ended up in the hands of the Homeland Security people to determine if they might be terrorists. But if no one could understand them or figure out where they came from, what could Homeland Security do?

It was odd that the two men had appeared just like the crow with the red eyes. Exactly the same way: not there one day, there the next, and no explanation for how they got there. It was as if animal shelters and aviaries were some sort of transport devices, like in that TV show Star Trek Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty. Maybe the madmen and the bird had been beamed up from another planet.

Staring at the aviary now, in the aftermath of all the excitement, Vince shrugged his disinterest. What did it matter? If there were answers to be had, they weren't going to be given to him. They were gone, all three of them, and they likely weren't coming back. The crow with the red eyes especially. It wasn't coming back for sure. Any fool who had watched it as he had could tell you that. Now that it was free, it was long gone. It wouldn't be caught again, either. Not that bird.

He wondered where it would go. Somewhere far away, he hoped. He didn't like that bird. He didn't want to see it again. Better if it were someone else's problem.

That bird was trouble waiting to happen.

Coming from Del Rey: Bearers of the Black Staff First book in the Legends of Shannara saga

Bearers of the Black Staff returns to Shannara at a strange and dangerous time in history. The Genesis of Shannara trilogy- returns to Shannara at a strange and dangerous time in history. The Genesis of Shannara trilogy-Armageddon's Children, The Elves of Cintra, and The Gypsy Morph The Gypsy Morph-charted the fall of our own world into the hands of once-men and demons and the escape of a few humans and those of other races into a remote mountain valley walled in by impenetrable magic. For five hundred years the survivors have lived peacefully, learning to coexist and to build a new world with the limited resources and skills available to them. Now the magic that kept them safe for so many centuries is wearing down. Frightening creatures are penetrating the barriers and wreaking havoc on the valley within. It is time for the four peoples to stand together-or for all of them to fall. In this excerpt from Bearers of the Black Staff Bearers of the Black Staff-coming from Del Rey in August 2010-Sider Ament, last of the Knights of the Word, meets an unexpected ally.

Sider Ament regained consciousness slowly. He rose out of his slumber in a lethargic waking that seemed to take forever. But the pain and his memories of what had brought him to this state helped speed his efforts, and mustering what strength of body and will he could, he dragged himself back into the light.

He opened his eyes and looked around.

The first thing he saw was the corpse of his attacker, its body blown open and bloodied, its head thrown back and gone rigid in its death throes. He stared at it a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, to imagine what sort of weapon could do such damage.

Then he noticed the splints and bandages that wrapped various parts of his own body. His tattered gray robes had been cut away in several places, exposing part of his torso and his damaged left arm. The bulk of the pain he was experiencing seemed centered on those two places in particular, but the rest of him had not been spared.

His pack lay to one side, untouched.

His right hand still gripped his black staff.

"Awake at last, are you?" a voice boomed. "Welcome back to the land of the living!"

A man moved into view from behind him. He was big and powerfully built, his face bronzed by sun and wind, his features crosshatched with scars and his hands missing several fingers. It was difficult to determine his age, but he had clearly seen the years of his youth come and go awhile back. He was dressed in black, his clothing a mix of thick leather and heavy metal fastenings, the material as scarred and beaten as he was.

He smiled cheerfully at Sider and knelt down next to him, long black hair falling down about his face in tangled hunks. "I thought maybe you wouldn't wake up. I thought maybe my bandaging job wasn't enough to save you."

Sider wet his lips. "Good enough, thanks. Do you have any water?"

The big man rose and walked back to where the other couldn't see him and then returned carrying a soft leather pouch. He held it up to Sider's lips and let the water trickle down his throat. "Just a little," he said. "Until I'm sure your injuries aren't any worse than what they seem, we don't want to rush things."

Sider nodded and drank gratefully.

"There, that's enough," the other said, taking the skin away. He rocked back on his heels. "You ought to be dead, you know. Even with my help. I saw what that beastie did to you. Ugly stuff. But you took a couple of blows that would have crushed an ordinary man and barely flinched. So you must not be so ordinary, huh?"

Sider closed his eyes. "What do you call that thing I killed? Does it have a name?"