One bony finger crooked before Ben’s frozen eyes. “But first I have something to show you. I have it right here, looped safely about my neck.” His hand dipped downward into the robes. “Look closely, Mr. Holiday. Do you see it?”

He withdrew his hand slowly. There was a chain gripped tightly in the fingers. Ben’s medallion hung fastened at its end.

Meeks smiled in triumph as he saw the look of desperation that flooded Ben’s eyes. “Yes, Mr. Holiday! Yes, play-King! Yes, you poor fool! It is your precious medallion! The key to Landover—and it belongs to me now!” He dangled it slowly before Ben, letting it twirl to catch the mixed light of blazing rune stone and candle’s flame. His eyes narrowed. “Do you wish to know what happened to separate you from the medallion? You gave it to me in a dream I sent you, Mr. Holiday. You took the medallion off and passed it to me. You gave the medallion to me willingly. I could not take it by force, but you gave it to me!”

Meeks was like a giant that threatened to crush Ben—tall, dark, looming out of the shadows. His breath hissed. “I think there is nothing I can tell you that you do not already know, is there, Mr. Holiday?”

He made a quick gesture with his hand, and the invisible chains that held Ben paralyzed dropped away. He could move again and speak. Yet he did neither. He simply waited.

“Reach down within your nightshirt, Mr. Holiday,” the wizard whispered.

Ben did as he was told. His fingers closed on a medallion fastened to the end of a chain. Slowly he withdrew it. The medallion was the same shape and size as the one he had once worn—the one Meeks now possessed. But the engraving on the face was changed. Gone was the Paladin, Sterling Silver, and the rising sun. Gone was the polished silver sheen. The medallion was tarnished black as soot and embossed with the robed figure of Meeks.

Ben stared at the medallion in horror, touched it disbelievingly, then let it drop from his fingers as if it had burned him.

Meeks nodded in satisfaction. “I own you, Mr. Holiday. You are mine to do with as I choose. I could simply destroy you, of course—but I won’t. That would be too easy an end for you after all the trouble you have caused me!” He paused, the smile returning—hard, ironic. “Instead, Mr. Holiday, I think I will set you free.”

He moved back a few steps, waiting. Ben hesitated, then rose from the bed, his mind working frantically to find a way out of this nightmare. There were no weapons close at hand. Meeks stood between him and the bedroom door.

He took a step forward.

“Oh, one thing more.” Meeks’ voice stopped him as surely as if he had run into a wall of stone. The hard, old face was a mass of gullies and ridges worn by time. “You are free—but you will have to leave the castle. Now. You see, Mr. Holiday, you do not belong here anymore. You are no longer King. You are, in fact, no longer even yourself.”