Part 15 (1/2)
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 gra.s.ses 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 h.o.a.rded 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 compa.s.s. 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.”
”You make the cat sound almost benevolent,” Abernathy huffed, his terrier face taking on an angry look, his words coming out a growl. ”I think you are deluding yourself, wizard.”
”Perhaps,” Questor agreed mildly. He didn't feel like fighting.
Abernathy didn't say anything for a moment, tapping his fingers against his cup annoyingly. ”Do you think that perhaps Mistaya might be trapped somewhere, like the High Lord was?”
Possible, Questor thought. But she had been wandering around freely not more than a few days ago in the company of those bothersome G'home Gnomes and the cat. Something had to have changed, but he wasn't sure it had anything to do with being trapped.
”We need to think like she would,” he said suddenly, sitting up straight and facing Abernathy squarely. ”We need to put ourselves inside her head.”
The scribe barked out a sharp laugh. ”No, thank you. Put myself inside the head of a fifteen-year-old girl? What sort of nonsense is that, wizard? We can't begin to think like she does. We haven't the experience or the temperament. Or the genetics, I might add. We might as well try thinking like the cat!”
”Nevertheless,” Questor insisted.
They went silent once more. Abernathy began tapping his fingers on his cup again. ”Well?”
”Well, what?”
”Well, what are your thoughts, now that you've taken on the character of a fifteen-year-old girl?”
”Fuzzy, I admit.”
”The whole idea idea of trying to think like a fifteen-year-old girl is fuzzy.” of trying to think like a fifteen-year-old girl is fuzzy.”
”But suppose, just suppose for a moment, that you are Mistaya. You've been sentenced to serve out a term at Libiris, but you rebel and flee into the night with two unlikely allies. You go to the one place you think you might find a modic.u.m of understanding. But it is not to be. Your grandfather takes the side of your parents and declares you must return to them and work things out. You won't do this. Where do you go?”
Abernathy showed his teeth. ”Your scenario sounds unnecessarily melodramatic to me.”
”Remember. I'm a fifteen-year-old-girl.”
”You might be fifteen, but you are also Mistaya Holiday. That makes you somewhat different from other girls.”
”Perhaps. But answer my question. Where do I go?”
”I haven't a clue. Where do I go? Where Edgewood Dirk tells me to go perhaps?”
”If he tells you anything. But he might not. He might speak in his usual unrevealing way. He might leave it up to you. That sounds more like the Prism Cat to me.”
Abernathy thought about it. ”Well, let me see. I suppose I go somewhere no one will think to look for me.” He paused, a look of horror in his eyes. ”Surely not to the Deep Fell?”
Questor shook his head and pulled on his long white beard. ”I don't think so. Mistaya hates that place. She hates everything connected with Nightshade.”
”So she goes somewhere else.” Abernathy thought some more. He looked up suddenly. ”Perhaps she goes to see Strabo. The dragon is enamored of her, after all.”
”The dragon is enamored of all beautiful women. Even more so of Willow.” Questor pulled on one ear and plucked at one eyebrow. ”But I've already considered that possibility and dismissed it. Strabo won't be of much use to her in this situation and she knows it. Unless she wants someone eaten.”
”A visit to the dragon doesn't doesn't seem likely, does it?” Abernathy sounded cross. ”Nothing seems likely, when you come right down to it.” seem likely, does it?” Abernathy sounded cross. ”Nothing seems likely, when you come right down to it.”
Questor nodded, frowning. ”That's the trouble with young people. They never do what you would expect them to do. Frequently, they do the exact opposite. They are quite perverse that way.”