A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks Read Free Book Online

entirely, another life, everything you knew left behind, everything unfamiliar and uncertain.”
    She was right, of course. He had purchased his right to be King through a Christmas catalog in a scheme that was designed to take his money and leave him sadder but wiser or, in the alternative, dead. He hadn’t really believed a place like Landover existed or that he could be King of it, but he had lost his wife and child, his faith in himself, and his sense of place in the world; he was desperate for a chance to start over. He had been given that chance, but it was nothing like what he had expected, and it took everything he had to fulfill its promise.
    Willow had been there to help him almost from the start. She had come to him at night in a lake where he had impulsively gone swimming, a vision out of a fairy world, slender and perfect, a sylph daughter of the River Master, her skin a pale green that was almost silvery, her hair a darker, richer green, fine fringes of it growing like thin manes down the backs of her arms and legs. He had never seen anything like her, and he knew he never would again. She was still the most exotic, marvelous woman he had ever known, and every day he spent with her was a treasure he could scarcely believe it was his good fortune to possess.
    Willow patted his arm. “It might not seem like it, but she’s doing the best she can. Mistaya is a grown woman intellectually, but she is still emotionally very young. She is trying to find a balance between the two, and I don’t think she’s done that yet.”
    “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” he demanded in frustration. “I can’t just stand around and do nothing.”
    “Be patient with her. Give her some time. Keep talking to her, but don’t try to force her to do something she so clearly doesn’t want to do. I know you think it is important for her to spend time in your world. I know you believe there are things there that would help her to be a better person. But maybe all that can wait a few years.”
    She stood up, her dark eyes warm and encouraging. “Think about it. I’m going to go talk to her alone and see if I can help.”
    She left the room and, as always, his heart went with her.

    H e walked over to the window after she was gone and stared out at the countryside. His reflection was mirrored in the glass, and he looked at himself with critical disdain. His hair was graying at the temples, and the lines on his forehead and around his eyes were deepening. He was aging, although not so quickly as he had before coming over from his old world. Aging in Landover was slower, although he had never been able to take an accurate measure of its general rate of progress because it differed considerably from one species to the next. Some aged much more slowly than others. Some, like Mistaya, followed no recognizable pattern. Fairies, he had been told, did not age at all.
    He should be fifty-eight or so by now, by normal Earth standards. But he looked and felt as though he were about fifteen years younger. It was most noticeable when he crossed back through the mists and saw his old friend and partner from the law firm, Miles Bennett. Miles looked years older than Ben did. Miles knew it, but never spoke of it. Miles was like that; he understood that life treated people differently.
    Especially if you lived in Landover and you were Ben Holiday.
    He remembered anew his own first impressions when he had come into Landover to take possession of the throne some twenty years ago.
Culture shock
did not begin to describe what he had experienced. All of his expectations of what being King would mean were dashed immediately. His castle was a tarnished ruin. His courtconsisted of a wizard whose magic wouldn’t work right, a scribe that had been turned into a dog and couldn’t be turned back into a man again, and a cook and runner who looked like evil monkeys but were actually creatures called kobolds.
    And those were just the occupants of the