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disappearing into the shadows and half-light like some aberrant wraith. The others rode after in a line,
Ben leading, Willow and Questor following, Parsnip bringing up the rear on foot with the pack animals.
They traveled in silence. It was cold, rainy, and dark, and no one felt much like talking. It was the kind
of day that you wished on your enemies or, at the very worst, on yourself when you knew you were
going to be comfortably settled indoors before a warm fire. It was not the kind of day in which you
traveled. Ben sat atop Jurisdiction and wondered why things had to be like this. He was thoroughly
discomforted within minutes of setting out. The rain gear kept the water off his body, but the damp and
the chill permeated everything. His toes were numb through his boots, his fingers through his gloves.
What good thoughts he might have started out with trickled away with the speed of the puddles and
streams that passed underfoot.
He began brooding about his life.
Oh, sure, he liked his life well enough. He liked being King of Landover, High Lord of a fantasy realm in
which mythical creatures were real and magic was a fact of existence. He liked the challenge of what he
did, the diversity of its demands, the constant ebb and flow of the feelings it generated. He liked his
friends, even at their worst. They were good and loyal, and they genuinely cared for one another and for
him. He liked the world in which he had placed himself and would not have traded it back again for the
world he had left, even in the darkest of times.
What disturbed him was how little he felt like what he was supposed to be  a King.
Jurisdiction snorted and shook his head lazily, and a shower of water flew into Ben's face. Ben brushed
it away and kicked the horse reproachfully with his boots. Jurisdiction ignored him, plodding ahead at his
own pace, blinking against the rain..
Ben sighed. He just didn't feel as if he really was a King, he told himself gloomily, picking up his train of
thought. He felt that he was just playing at it, that he was filling in for the real King, someone who had
been called away unexpectedly, but who would return and prove infinitely more capable than he. It
wasn't that he didn't try to do the job right; he did. It wasn't that he couldn't understand its demands; he
could. It was more a question of not ever being quite in control. He seemed to spend all his time trying to
extract himself from situations he should have avoided in the first place. After all, look at this latest mess
 Abernathy dispatched to God-knew-where, his medallion gone the same way, and now the G'home
Gnomes run off with the bottle. What sort of King allowed these things to happen? He could excuse
matters by arguing that events beyond his control were responsible for everything that had happened, but
wasn't it a bit ridiculous for him to try to blame everything on a sneeze?
He sighed again. Well, it most certainly was. He had to accept whatever responsibility needed accepting;
that was what Kings were for, after all. But the minute he did that, he was confronted once again with
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that nagging sense of inadequacy  that sense that he really didn't have a handle on things and never
would.
Willow saved him from further self-degradation by riding up next to him and offering a quick smile. "You
seem so alone up here," she said.
"Alone with my thoughts." He smiled back. "This day is depressing me."
"You mustn't let it," she said. "You must keep its unpleasantness from you and make it serve your own
needs. Think of how good the sunshine will feel after the rain has gone away. Think of how much better
its warmth will seem."
He rocked back slightly in his saddle, stretching. "I know. I just wish some of that sunshine and warmth
would hurry up and appear."
She looked away for a moment, then back again. "Are you worried about the gnomes and the bottle?"
He nodded. "That, Abernathy, the medallion, and a dozen other things  mostly the fact that I don't feel
like I'm doing much of a job as King. I can't seem to get it right, Willow. I just sort of muddle around,
trying things out, trying to get out of trouble I shouldn't have gotten into in the first place."
"Did you think it would be different from this?" Her face was shadowed and distant beneath her riding
hood.
He shrugged. "I don't know what I thought. No, that's not so. I knew what it would be like  at least, I
knew once I was here. That's not the problem. The problem is that things keep happening that I don't
seem to have any control over. If I were a real King, an honest-to-God true King, that wouldn't be the
case, would it? Wouldn't I be able to anticipate and prevent a few of these things from happening?
Wouldn't I be better at this?"
"Ben." She said his name quietly and for a moment didn't say anything more, simply riding there next to
him, looking over. Then she said, "How long do you think Questor Thews has been trying to get the
magic right?"
He stared at her. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that you have been a King for a much shorter time than Questor has been a wizard. Should you
expect so much of yourself when you see how hard it still is for him? The truths of what we undertake in
our lives are never quickly mastered. No one is born with those truths; they must always be learned." She
reached over and touched him briefly on the cheek. "Besides, was there ever a time in your life when
events you could neither anticipate nor control did not intrude on your plans and disrupt them? Why
should it be different now?"
He felt suddenly foolish. "It shouldn't, I suppose. And I shouldn't be moping about like this, I know. But
it just seems that I'm not really what everyone thinks I am. I'm just... me."
She smiled again. "That is what we all are, Ben. But it doesn't stop others from expecting us to be more."
He smiled back. "People should be more considerate."
They rode on in silence, and he consigned his brooding to the back burner, concentrating instead on
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formulating a plan for getting the bottle back from Fillip and Sot. Morning passed steadily away, and it
was nearing midday when Bunion reappeared from out of the mist.
"He has found the gnomes, High Lord," Questor advised hurriedly after a brief conference with the
tracker. "It appears that they are in some sort of trouble!"
They spurred their horses ahead and rode at a fast canter through the gloom, the rain and wind blowing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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