The Tangle Box

Kallendbor nodded. There was no apology in his piercing blue eyes. “I'll answer if I must and if we are both alive at the end of this day.”


“Fair enough. For now, let’s concentrate on finding a way to dispatch the demons back to where they belong and the black-cloaked trickster with them. Do your men stand ready to fight?”

“We are at your service, High Lord.” There was no hesitation.

“Ride back then and wait for my signal,” Ben ordered.

Kallendbor saluted and galloped away. Unrepentant to the last, Ben thought. Some men refused to change.

He turned back toward the Gorse and the demons. A huge black rider had moved out in front of the others. The Mark. The others would follow its lead into battle. The demon leader stopped and stared across at Ben and Strabo.

The dragon’s crusted head swung about. “Call up the Paladin, Holiday. The demons grow edgy.”

Ben nodded. He was resigned to what must happen now, but despaired of it as well. Once again, he must summon the Paladin to do battle for him. Once again, there would be killing and destruction, and much of it would come at his hands. Another terrible battle, and he was powerless to stop it, helpless to do anything other than participate and hope that somehow he could find a way to shorten it. Faint hope, born of desperation and lack of choice. He felt Strabo’s eyes watching him. The Gorse was responsible for this and should be brought to account, but how could that be done? How powerful was this fairy creature? Very, he guessed, if the fairy people had gone to such extremes to lock it away in the Tangle Box and keep it there.

“Holiday!” the dragon rasped impatiently.

Lock the Gorse back into the Tangle Box—that was what he should do. Lock it away for good. But how? What magic would it take?

There was no time to wonder about it further, no time to decide what help could be found. The demons had begun to advance, coming across the meadow in a dark mass, slowly, deliberately, inexorably.

“Holiday!” Strabo hissed furiously.

Paladin’s sword and dragon’s fire—would they be enough to save Landover?

Ben Holiday reached for the medallion that would give him his answer.

Horris Kew was practically beside himself with frustration. He stood glumly next to Abernathy at the water’s edge, watching the approach of Questor Thews in the lake skimmer, thinking that his last chance to save himself was about to be taken away.

He had tried to tell Holiday, but Landover’s King did not have time for him. He had tried to tell Abernathy, but the scribe had heard all he wanted to hear. He considered telling Questor Thews when the wizard arrived to convey them back across to the comparative safety of the castle fortress, but he was reasonably certain that he would find no help from that quarter either. No one wanted to listen to Horris and that was the hard truth of the matter. Except that for once Horris had something important to say. He shuffled his size-sixteens, hugged himself like a rag doll and tried to remain calm. But it was hard to stay calm knowing what was going to become of him if the Gorse and the demons prevailed over Holiday. If Holiday won, his circumstances would still be precarious, but acceptable. If Holiday won, he had a reasonable chance of staying alive. But if the Gorse came out of this the victor, Horris Kew was stew meat. It didn’t pay to dwell on exactly what recipe would be used, but the result would be the same. The Gorse had seen him standing with Holiday and the dragon; it had seen him quite plainly. The inference was obvious. Horris had joined the enemy. There could be no forgiveness. No excuses would be allowed. The Gorse would grind him up and spit him out, and that would be that.

Horris recalled how the creature had made him feel when they first started out together in this hateful venture. He remembered the silky, dangerous voice and the lingering smell of death. He could still feel its power threatening to strangle him with invisible fingers. He did not relish experiencing any of it again. The tic was gone from his eye for the first time since he had set the Gorse free. Here was his chance to keep it from coming back.

Thunder rolled out of the west, building on itself where the clouds massed. The heavy bank was spreading rapidly toward the sun, swallowing up its light as it came, turning everything black. Wind whipped across the meadow and over the confronting armies. Horses shied, and armor and weapons clanged. The air began to smell of rain.

Horris had been thinking about the Tangle Box. How had the Gorse been put into it in the first place? Surely the renegade fairy had not gone willingly—no more so than Holiday, the witch, and the dragon. Twice now, Horris had been called upon to speak words of power that released captives of the box.

Could the spell be reversed?