He stalked back to his starting point and stood staring at the smudge of the Deep Fell helplessly. The dangers of the hollows had never bothered the gnomes before. Had something changed that? Damn it, he should have gone with them!

He glanced over at Dirk. Dirk appeared to be sleeping.

Ben waited some more because he didn’t have much choice. The minutes dragged interminably. It was growing darker. It was becoming difficult to distinguish things clearly as the twilight deepened.

Then suddenly there was movement at the hollows rim. Ben straightened, came forward a step, and stopped. A mass of brush parted, and Fillip and Sot pushed their way into view.

“Thank heavens you’re all …” Ben started and trailed off.

The G’home Gnomes were rigid with fear. Paralyzed. Their furry faces were twisted into masks of foreboding, their eyes bright and fixed. They looked neither right nor left nor even at Ben. They stared straight ahead and saw nothing. They stood with their backs to the mass of brush and held hands in the manner of small children.

Ben rushed forward, frightened now. Something was dreadfully wrong. “Fillip! Sot!” He knelt down before them, trying to break whatever spell it was that held them fast. “Look at me. What happened?”

“I happened, play-King!” an unpleasantly familiar voice whispered.

Ben looked up, past the frozen gnomes, at the tall, black shape that had materialized behind them as if by magic and found himself face to face with Nightshade.

WITCH AND DRAGON,DRAGON AND WITCH

Ben stared voicelessly into the cold green eyes of the witch and, if there had been some place to run, he would have been halfway there already. But there was no running away from Nightshade. She held him fast simply by the force of her presence. She was a wall that he could neither scale nor get around. She was his prison.

Her voice was a whisper. “I never believed it possible that you would be so foolish as to come back here.”

Foolish, indeed, he agreed silently. He forced himself to reach out to the terrified gnomes and draw them to him, away from the witch. They fell into him like rag dolls, shaking with relief, burying their furry faces in his tunic.

“Please help us, High Lord!” was the best Fillip could manage, his own voice a whisper.

“Yes, please!” echoed Sot.

“It’s all right,” Ben lied.

Nightshade laughed softly. She was just as Ben remembered her—tall and sharp-featured, her skin as pale and smooth as marble, her hair jet black, save for a single streak of white down its center, her lean, angular frame cloaked all in black. She was beautiful in her way, ageless in appearance, a creature who had somehow come to terms with her mortality. Yet her face failed to reflect the emotions that would have made her complete. Her eyes were depthless and empty. They looked ready to swallow him.