Only the sylph Willow, just come into the dining hall of castle Sterling Silver and seated next to him, showed any real interest—a sudden change of expression that was oddly disquieting.

“I dreamed about home,” he continued, determined to pursue the matter. “I dreamed about the old world.”

“Excuse me?” Questor was looking at him now, apparently returned from whatever planet he had been visiting. “Excuse me, but did I hear you say something about … ?”

“Exactly what did you dream about the old world, High Lord?” Abernathy interrupted impatiently, polite curiosity become faint disapproval. He looked at Ben meaningfully over the rims of his eyeglasses. He always looked at him like that when Ben mentioned anything about the old world.

Ben forged ahead. “I dreamed about Miles Bennett. You remember my telling you about Miles, don’t you—my old law partner? Well, I dreamed about him. I dreamed that he was in trouble. It wasn’t a complete dream; there wasn’t a true beginning or end. It was as if I came in halfway through the story. Miles was in his office, working, sorting through these papers. There were phone calls coming in, messages being delivered, people in the shadows where I couldn’t see them clearly. But I could see that Miles was practically frantic. He looked terrible. He kept asking for me. He kept wondering where I was, why I wasn’t there. I called out to him, but he didn’t hear me. Then there was a distortion of some sort, a darkness, a twisting of what I was seeing. Miles kept calling, asking for me. Then something came between us, and I woke up.”

He glanced briefly at the faces about him. They all were listening now. “But that doesn’t really tell you everything,” he added quickly. “There was a sense of … some impending disaster lurking behind the whole series of images. There was an intensity that was frightening. It was so … real.”

“Some dreams are like that, High Lord,” Abernathy observed, shrugging. He pushed the eyeglasses back on his nose and folded his forelegs primly across his vested chest. He was a fastidious dog. “Dreams are frequently manifestations of our subconscious fears, I’ve read.”

“Not this dream,” Ben insisted. “This was more than your average, garden-variety dream. This was like a premonition.”

Abernathy sniffed. “And I suppose the next thing you are going to tell me is that on the strength of this emotionally distressing, but rationally unfounded, dream you feel compelled to return to your old world?” The scribe was making no effort to conceal his distress now, his worst fears about to be realized.

Ben hesitated. It had been more than a year since he had passed into the mists of the fairy world somewhere deep in the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains twenty miles southwest of Waynesboro, Virginia, and entered the kingdom of Landover. He had paid a million dollars for the privilege, answering an advertisement in a department store catalogue, acting more out of desperation than out of reason. He had come into Landover as King, but his acceptance as such by the land’s inhabitants had not come easily. Attacks on his claim to the throne had come from every quarter. Creatures whose very existence he had once believed impossible had nearly destroyed him. Magic, the power that governed everything in this strangely compelling world, was the two-edged sword he had been forced to master in order to survive. Reality had been redefined for him since he had made his decision to enter the mists, and the life he had known as a trial lawyer in Chicago, Illinois, seemed far removed from his present existence. Still, that old life was not completely forgotten, and he thought now and then of going back.