An enormous smacking of lips bade Gary to awaken. Before he ever opened his eyes, he realized that he was no longer netted beside his horse, no longer in crushing quarters. He found that his arms were bound tightly together behind him, though, the edges of the metal armor digging painful creases into his shoulder blades.

" 'Orsie's a good supper," he heard a resonant troll voice declare. "Arg, but me'd like a bit o' man-meat," said another, and Gary's eyes popped wide and he let out a tremendous shout when the troll reached over, caught an exposed piece of skin between two huge fingers and twisted so brutally that Gary soon after felt warm blood oozing from the spot, just above his hip.

There were five of the monsters, giant and appearing human, except that their ears were far too small, and their eyes and noses too large, and their skin was the color of granite, as was their long and dirty, tangled hair.

"That waked the little feller up!" roared another of the group, and when he laughed, a thousand elfish bells that he had draped around his body began to jingle.

Gary winced and looked away, understanding what had happened to his courageous mount. The tinkling bells did not seem so gay to him anymore, mixed in with the smacking sounds of trolls devouring the beautiful horse.

It went on for many minutes, trolls slobbering and talking to each other in their typically unpleasant way. Every once in a while the same one of them near Gary would beg for just a bite of man-meat, and Gary seemed to always wind up getting sorely pinched at least once. The other trolls were adamant against that, though, and after a few occasions, seemed to tolerate their too-hungry companion less and less. At one point, the troll gave Gary a pinch, but was hauled away by another, lifted to his feet, then punched right in the eye. He tumbled back, hitting the ground hard just a foot away from prone Gary's head. He leaped up immediately, surprisingly fast given his half-ton bulk. Gary looked at the deep depression the thing had left in the ground and nearly fainted away, imagining what his head might have looked like if the troll had fallen atop him.

"Yer turn to carry!" one of the trolls growled, picking his teeth with a horse bone.

"Arg, he can't carry!" protested another, the fattest of the group, with black eyes and a tongue that didn't quite seem to fit inside his mouth. " 'E'll eat the man, and then the witch'll eat us!"

"Troll-bunny pie," another remarked, nodding stupidly.

Gary did not miss the obvious reference to Ceridwen.

"Then you carry 'im!" snarled the tooth-picker. The fat troll protested more, but the tooth-picker whipped the horse bone off his head, then set on him, punching and biting. Two others joined in, the fifth staying back so that he wouldn't damage his precious elfish bells, and soon the fat troll relented.

"You wiggle and I'll squeeze ye good!" the behemoth promised as he easily lifted Gary with one hand and tucked him under his round, though still rock-hard, arm.

The strength of the thing horrified Gary. He had fought trolls before, a couple of times, on his first visit to Faerie, but he was still surprised at how solid these monsters were. He felt as though he had been lifted by the steel shovel of a backhoe and tucked tight against the side of a brick wall. He was facing forward, at least, and the wind felt good in his face as the trolls ran off with long strides that could match the pace of a race horse.

Gary settled into a bouncing rhythm as the minutes became an hour. His shoulders ached with his arms bound so tightly behind his back, but he knew that if he complained, the trolls would probably just rip his arms off so he wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.

"Caught by trolls on your way to see the evil witch," Gary whispered sarcastically under his breath. -"You've done good."

A huge hand came across in front of his face, the nail of the troll's middle finger held tight against its thumb.

"Arg, stop the spellcastin'!" the creature demanded, and it snapped the finger into Gary's forehead. Gary's head jerked back, his vision blurred, and he felt as if he had been kicked by a horse. He lay limp in the troll's grasp for a long while, watching the pretty stars that had suddenly come up, though night was still far away.

Geno was not gentle as he pushed the magical spear the rest of the way through the dead Redarm.

"There," Mickey, obviously upset, spat at Kelsey. "Did the lad get his honor back in yer own stupid way o' seein' things?"

Holding the empty helmet, Kelsey nodded gravely. "Gary Leger has done well," the elf admitted. "On almost every occasion."

"Damned good spear," Geno proclaimed, examining the incredible wound, with Redarm's metal armor folded into his chest around the gaping hole. Mickey looked from the spear to Kelsey, and took an impatient draw on his pipe. He knew that Kelsey, in his typically understated way, had given Gary about as great a compliment as anyone could expect from one of the haughty Tylwyth Teg, but it didn't seem enough to the leprechaun at that grim time. Mickey had brought Gary back to Faerie, was leading a quest through dangerous lands by holding to a lie. The leprechaun felt responsible now, one of the few burdens the carefree Mickey hadn't been able to simply let roll off his rounded shoulders.

"Well, he won the fight," Geno said, hands on hips as he regarded the ground around Redarm. The other soldier, the one Redarm had cut down with his sword, lay in a pool of blood to the side, his horse and Redarm's grazing easily on the grassy field in the distance. "So where in the name of a stupid gnome did he go?"

Gerbil glared at the dwarf.

"Just a saying," Geno grumbled. "No such thing."

"Indeed," replied the gnome. "And can we conclude that this other unfortunate soldier was killed by the knight?"

Geno drew out Redarm's bloodied sword. "Seems that way." "Thus did the knight and the soldier come at odds," reasoned the gnome, determined to prove Geno's insulting "saying" far from the truth. "Might we conclude that the disagreement came from the sight of Gary Leger?" "Redarm wanted him dead," Mickey put in. "But the others had orders to take him alive."

"Others?" Geno and Kelsey said together, that thought sparking new lines of reasoning. The two of them went into a search immediately, certain that other clues would not be far away.

They found their answer not far to the south of the dead men, in the form of the huge tracks of bare-footed monsters right where the tracks of Gary's horse abruptly ended.

"Trolls," Kelsey announced grimly, looking to the south as he spoke, for he understood the potential implications.

"What?" Geno asked in surprise.

"Trolls," Kelsey said again, turning to regard the dwarf. Only then Kelsey realized that Geno hadn't been addressing him at all. The dwarf stood unblinking, staring at the spear he held in his hands. He looked over to Kelsey and Mickey a moment later, a stupefied look on his normally unshakable features.

"Damned spear just told me that they're taking him to the witch," the dwarf announced. He beamed a helpless smile a moment later. "Been good to know you, Gary Leg-er!"

The spear responded to that unfaithful farewell by jolting Geno with a burst of electrical energy. The dwarf growled, his straight, sandy brown hair standing up on end, one eye twitching uncontrollably. He spun the spear about in his hands and planted it deep into the ground, then prudently hopped away. "Damned spear."

"We've got to go and get the lad," Mickey said to Kelsey, recognizing that the elf was truly torn. In truth, Mickey, too, did not like the prospects. Trolls could move with incredible speed, and would not tire for many days. They already had a head start, and even without it, would get to Ynis Gwydrin, Ceridwen's enchanted island, long before the companions.

Kelsey sighed and looked around. The mounts from Tir na n'Og were certainly up for the run, and Gerbil had done well to keep pace in that curious contraption of his, but what of Cedric?

The smithy had managed to ease his way down from the horse, but leaned heavily against it. Sweat covered his face; his breath came in shallow, forced gasps. He seemed incoherent, staring away into empty air, but he apparently understood more than the others realized, for he announced, "I am dying," and bade them to leave him there.

Mickey and Kelsey believed the man's claim, but even so, neither of them could simply leave the brave smithy behind.

"Geno and I will go for Gary," the elf decided. He looked to Mickey. "You and the gnome can get him to cover." He indicated Cedric, looking that way as he spoke, and was surprised to see the man walking away from the supporting horse.

"No!" Cedric declared in a voice that amazingly did not quiver. He strode, defiant of his garish wounds, over to the spear and, somewhere finding the strength, roughly tore it from the ground. The huge man's eyes glistened as he held the magnificent weapon before him, seeming to draw strength from simply holding the artifact that was so dear to one of his trade. Cedric nodded and smiled, as though he was holding a private conversation with the sentient weapon. This was the spear of his namesake, an item most holy to smithies all across the land of Faerie, and never before had Cedric of Braemar been so serene.

"Can he ride hard?" Kelsey asked Mickey.

The leprechaun shrugged, not even chancing a guess about what was going on, about where this grievously wounded man had found the sudden burst of strength.

"I understand," Cedric said to the spear. He came out of his private conversation then, and looked to the friends and nodded. Then, to their surprise and horror, the altruistic smithy turned the spear suddenly and plunged its tip into his breast, smiling with supreme contentment.

He held the pose for a long, horrible moment; then his legs buckled under him and he went down in a heap.

"Oh, oh, oh!" a stunned Gerbil uttered repeatedly, a stubby gnome finger poking out from the low seat of the quadricycle to the spectacle of the dead man. "Oh, oh, oh!"

"I'm not getting that out!" Geno roared in rage, pointing to the againimbedded spear. The gruff dwarf turned and walked away, spitting curses about "stupid peoples!"

"Oh, you should have a plaque for that," the gnome offered in all sincerity.

"Indeed," Mickey muttered, and took another long draw off his pipe. They were in the mountains, and the daylight was fast disappearing. This was not Dvergamal, Gary knew, for these peaks were not quite as tall and rugged as in the dwarfish homeland. The trolls were carrying him through the region called Penllyn, whose heart was Ynis Gwydrin, the isle of glass.

Ceridwen's isle.

Act fast, Gary told himself. He stretched and yawned loudly, gaining the attention of the troll carrying him.

"How long have we been running?" he asked, trying to sound calm, even relaxed.

The troll's other hand came around again, middle finger tight against the thumb, and Gary thought he was about to take another nap.

" 'Ere, shut yer mouth," the monster growled, and it shook its free hand dangerously, but did not snap Gary in the head again.

Gary knew that he had to speak directly, had to say something that would immediately attract the dim-witted troll's attention - else the stupid thing might knock him cold before it ever realized that he had something important to say. He squirmed a bit so that he could look around, tried to find something that might lead the conversation forward. He found himself thinking of The Hobbit, and of Bilbo's encounter with similar trolls, and of how those adventurers got out of their rather sticky predicament. He heard the elfish bells ringing gaily, draped about one of the monsters.

"Why does he get the magical bells?" Gary asked suddenly, without even thinking.

The troll carrying him slowed noticeably. Its hand, finger cocked, started around towards Gary, but it held back, apparently intrigued. "Magical?" it asked as quietly as a troll could, which meant that Gary was not quite deafened.

"Of course," Gary replied. "The bells make a horse run swifter, make the wearer stronger."

"Stronger?" "Of course," Gary whispered, his eyes flashing excitedly. "Stronger" was the perfect buzz-word for any troll, the word that brought drool to the bully's lips. Gary knew from the troll's tone that he had started something important here. "The troll wearing the bells ..."

"Petey," Gary's bearer interrupted.

"Petey," Gary continued, "will soon grow much stronger. As he absorbs the magical energy of the elfish bells, he will likely become the strongest troll in all the world."

There came a long pause as the troll considered the news. "Hey, Petey," he called a moment later. "I wants to wear the bells."

The ringing stopped as Petey stopped, looking around to consider his garment. "They're mine, they is," he snarled. "I looked 'em, and I'm keepin' 'em."

"Gimme the bells!" Gary liked the urgency of the troll's tone as the monster stepped towards stubborn Petey. He would have liked it even more if his troll had thought to put him down first.

"Go pick a goblin's nose!" Petey yelled back.

The troll reacted the only way trolls ever react - with violence. The monster wasn't close enough to punch Petey in the eye, so he hurled something instead, the only thing he had in his hands at the time.

Gary's cry ended with a guttural grunt as he connected on Petey's blocking forearm and was roughly deflected off to the side. He spun down to the rocky ground, dazed and battered, his thoughts screaming all the while that he had to get up and get away.

Predictably, the troll fight soon became a general row, with all five of the monsters rolling and clawing, biting each other and landing some incredibly heavy punches. One rolled Gary's way, nearly rolled over him, and that surely would have been the end of him!

"Get away!" he whispered under his breath, and he, too, rolled, over the side of a rock into a short drop. Then, when he found his breath again, he began to crawl on his knees, stumbling and tumbling across the broken landscape. He managed to get up to his feet, but soon tripped back to the ground.

He took some comfort in the continuing thunder of the troll battle. But that ended soon enough when one of the monsters, Petey, Gary believed, yelled out above the din, "Hey, where'd he go to?"

"Oh, damn," Gary muttered, and he forced himself up again, running with all the speed he could manage, hoping he wouldn't fall blindly into a deep ravine in the fading light. He bounced off rocks, clipped his shoulders and head on low-hanging branches as he disappeared into one copse, and finally tripped facedown over the roots of a scraggly bush. Dazed, he rolled to his side, looking for some place to crawl into and hide.

He saw the giant, smelly foot of a troll instead, and a moment later felt as though he was flying. He stopped his ascent even with, and looking into, a bruised troll face, contorted with frothing rage.

" 'Ere, don't kill him!" one of the monsters ordered from the side, and Gary was glad to hear those words, for he thought that this troll certainly meant to kill him.

"Yeah, the witch says that we don't kill him!" another troll emphatically agreed.

"Little sneakster's gonna run again!" the troll, holding Gary declared. "Bite 'is feets off," another offered, and the troll holding Gary smiled wickedly and turned him upside-down. An instant later, Gary felt the pressure of troll jaws against the sides of his sneakers.

"Ceridwen wouldn't like that!" he squeaked frantically. He felt the pressure ease, but not relinquish, and knew that he had to concoct some story, some excuse to save his feet, at once.

"I'm already bruised and cut," Gary stuttered. "Ceridwen won't like that, but these wounds will heal. If you bite my feet off, though, they won't grow back!"

"What's that got to do with it?" Petey demanded.

"Yeah, yous's just a prisoner," added another.

Gary laughed - it wasn't an easy thing to do in his predicament. "Just a prisoner?" he asked incredulously. "Don't you know why Ceridwen wants me?"

"Duh?" came the common response as the trolls, having no idea of what the man was babbling about, looked around at each other.

Gary considered the best way to put this. He had no idea of what horrid trolls understood of love and sexuality. They seemed to be carved out of stone, not born, and he had never seen a female troll, after all.

"Ceridwen thinks I'm cute," he announced. "She wants me as a husband." "Duh?" Gary went up into the air, coming to a stop hanging upside-down right in front of the troll's confused face.

"I don't think the witch - whom I've seen turn trolls into bunnies," he added quickly, "would like a husband with no feet."

The troll looked to its companions and shrugged heavily, Gary bobbing three feet with the movement. A moment later, he was tucked under the troll's arm, every limb still intact, and the group headed off.

Gary thought of The Hobbit again, but came to the conclusion that he was not quite as sneaky as the wizard in that tale, and so he kept his mouth shut, all the way to the crystalline lake.

Geek and some other goblins were waiting for them there. They tied Gary down in a rowboat, then finished their business with the trolls.

Despite his grim situation, Gary Leger twisted about to stare with admiration at the castle that came into sight as they neared the distant island. Its walls were of glass, sparkling wondrously in the first light of twinkling stars. It was beautiful and icy, a palace fitting for Ceridwen, Gary decided as he remembered the witch, so alluring and so dangerous.

Beautiful and icy.

Gary had been in this room before. He had battled a demon here, which had caused many of the scorch marks that marred the otherwise beautiful decor. The doors had been repaired, as had Ceridwen's canopy bed, and the large leatherbound book - the book that had distorted time itself - was no longer out in plain view on the carved desk.

Gary continued his scan of the witch's bedroom, pointedly keeping his gaze away from the wall to the right of the door. There sat Alice, Ceridwen's pet. She appeared as a normal house cat now, but Gary had seen her in more ominous trappings. When he and his friends had escaped Ceridwen's castle, Alice had taken on the form of a lioness and attacked them. Gary had skewered the cat with the magical spear, a vicious fight that the young man remembered all too well.

Alice apparently remembered it also, and recognized Gary. From the moment Geek had escorted him into the bedroom, Alice had eyed him like he was a field mouse come to play. Geek had quickly departed, leaving Gary feeling oh, so vulnerable.

He was almost relieved when the door opened - almost, until he saw Ceridwen enter the room, her posture typically perfect, seemingly taller and more ominous than Gary remembered her. She verily floated across the way, Geek the goblin cowering in her wake, her icy-blue eyes locked into Gary's gaze.

Gary had met a few women at least with black hair and blue eyes, a somewhat unusual combination, in his own world, but that mixture paled when measured against this standard. Ceridwen's eyes burned with an intensity Gary could hardly believe, an intelligence that transcended her human trappings. The luster of her thick and long hair showed every other color within its general blackness, like a raven's wing shining in the sunlight.

She sat on the bed next to Gary, and he unconsciously brought his suddenly sweaty palms in close to his sides. Ceridwen had made romantic overtures towards him before. Only her evil reputation, and the fact that Gary knew she was looking for no more than a conquest, had given him the strength to keep the witch at arm's length.

He could resist her now, he knew, for all the previous reasons and for the fact that he had a marvelous friend waiting for him should he manage to get out of Faerie alive. Still, he couldn't deny the powerful allure of the witch.

"Again, you have done well, Gary Leger," the witch said, and Gary was surprised by her tone, seeming almost subdued.

Gary nodded but did not reply, fearful that anything he might say would give the witch too much information. Ceridwen looked down at him, nodded in the face of his nod, as though his silence, too, had proven revealing. Gary wanted to crawl under the bed; he knew that he was outmatched here. Ceridwen motioned to a mirror on the wall. She waved her hand and spoke a word and the glassy surface clouded, and then reformed into an image of the field on the southeastern edge of Dvergamal. Geldion was there, in the midst of Connacht's encamped army, along with several dead dwarfs and dead farmers, butchered in the field as they tried to flee. Several human prisoners sat in a heavily guarded area, looking thoroughly miserable, their expressions hopeless. Gary remembered the high poles at the crossroads, and could easily guess what Geldion had in mind for them. "You may talk freely, Gary Leger," the witch explained. "I know all that I need to know." Ceridwen waved her hand again and the image in the mirror disappeared.

Gary tried not to show his revulsion for the brutal scene. He couldn't help but think how much like his own world Faerie could sometimes be. But why had Ceridwen chosen to show him that particular view? he wondered. He looked over to her, sitting perfectly straight, eyeing him closely and licking her red lips in anticipation. Then Gary understood. The gruesome battle scene had overwhelmed him, mainly because he had played such a large part in bringing it about. He was indeed one of the authors of this tale, as Mickey had said, and Ceridwen wanted to show him the flip side to the adventure and the glory, the harsh price of victory. Inevitably, Gary's shoulders began to slump, but he straightened immediately, reminded himself that to show such weakness now could only help this alluring enemy sitting beside him.

"Do you know why I have brought you?" the witch asked calmly. "The spear and armor," Gary replied indignantly, and his eyes narrowed, for he did not possess the spear. Fortune had aided him in getting one up on Ceridwen.

Ceridwen chuckled softly. "I could have had that and left you dead on the field," she reminded the young man. "And did you not think it odd that my trolls took you and did not bother to retrieved the spear?"

Gary fought hard to hide his surprise. Ceridwen knew about that! Suddenly none of this was making any sense to him. He believed that the witch must be bluffing, at least in part. She had not ordered the trolls to specifically bring her the spear, and so it had been left, but Gary could not believe, for whatever reason Ceridwen needed him, that the witch would not want the precious spear, possibly the only weapon in all of Faerie that could even hurt her, in her clutches.

So that might have been part of it, but if not for the artifacts, then why had Ceridwen taken such trouble to get him alive? Only one thought came to Gary, and it was not a pleasant one: revenge.

"You do not know our ways," Ceridwen said, rising from the bed and moving over to Alice, who was curled up in a purring ball. Gary tensed, fearing that the witch was about to send the vicious feline his way.

"You understand the general principles of the land," Ceridwen continued, absently draping a hand over the furry ball. "That much you proved in your first fight - in your flight - from the knight Redarm. It is the particulars that you need a lesson in, Gary Leger." Ceridwen rose again and turned suddenly on Gary, her blue eyes flashing with the first indication of eagerness Gary had seen.

"The particulars," she said again.

Gary had no answer for her, didn't even have a clue about what she was talking about.

"You were the one who banished me," the witch said. Gary's mind whirled in several different directions, most of them holding terrible implications. Might it be that Ceridwen could reverse the banishment by killing him?

The witch calmed again, apparently realizing the young man's distress. "Let me explain it differently," she offered. "Robert is free upon the land, more free than in centuries, since I do not stand to oppose him." "The two evils kept each other in check," Gary remarked, and then he thought his choice of words incredibly stupid. Still, Ceridwen seemed to take no offense at being referred to as an "evil."

She nodded, as if to say louche, and went on. "In your victory, you and your pitiful friends have inadvertently plunged the world into dire trouble," she said. She waved at the mirror and an image of Gondabuggan came into view, many parts of the town still smoldering from Robert's initial attack. Ceridwen didn't let the image hang for long, though, and Gary saw through the propaganda, sensed that the gnomes had gotten off fairly well.

"This will be but the beginning," the witch proclaimed. "Robert will fly unhindered from one end of Faerie to the other, his breath burning a swath of destruction. And when he is fully convinced that his day has come, he will bring out his lizard soldiers."

Gary shuddered, remembering all too well Robert's strange and dangerous troops, the lava newts.

"Farewell, then, to Braemar," Ceridwen remarked. "And to Drochit and Dilnamarra, and all the towns and hamlets within the dragon's long reach." "We'll stop that," Gary declared, and he caught himself one step shy of revealing the whole plan to the witch.

"No," Ceridwen replied. "Nor will I, banished as I am on my island. In a hundred years I will come out to find all the land under Robert's shadow."

"What are you getting at?" Gary demanded, his anger pushing aside all fears. If killing him would have released Ceridwen, then the witch would have already done so. This elaborate explanation, apparently trying to convince Gary that no scenario could be as bleak as having Robert flying free in Faerie, told Gary much about what was going on, told him that Ceridwen needed his willing assistance.

"Faerie does not have a hundred years," the witch snarled back at him, but she quickly put her dangerous frown away, taking on an innocuous appearance once more.

"You want me to release you," Gary replied, finally catching on. "I banished you, so by your rules, the particulars of which I do not know," he had to add, "I am the only one who can release you from that banishment."

Ceridwen did not answer, did not have to, for the firm set of her sculpted features told Gary that he had hit the mark.

"Not a chance," the young man said smugly.

"Consider the consequences," Ceridwen replied, her voice deathly calm. "For Faerie, and for yourself."

The threat certainly made an impression on Gary Leger, altruistic though he wanted to be. Ceridwen could hurt him; he could boast all he wanted to and pretend to hold the upper hand in this meeting, but he couldn't forget for one moment that Ceridwen could utterly destroy him with a clap of her deceivingly delicate hands.

"There is one evil upon the land, and you advise me to loose another to counter it?" Gary asked incredulously, trying to put this conversation back into the hypothetical.

"I advise you to consider the consequences," Ceridwen said again. "For Faerie, for yourself, and for your pitiful friends!" With that, the witch cried out at her mirror. Again an image formed, this time of the passes in Penllyn near the lake.

Gary saw his companions - four at least, for Baron Pwyll and Cedric the smithy were not with them - moving slowly along the trail, Kelsey carrying the magical spear and Gary's lost helmet.

Ceridwen muttered under her breath and the scene shifted, scanning the rocky ridges in the companions' wake, where lurked many, many trolls. "Two score of them," Ceridwen remarked. "Awaiting my word to descend upon your friends and destroy them."

Gary forced himself to sit up straight. "How do I know that you're telling me, showing me, the truth?" he asked, though the obvious quiver in his voice proved that he believed what he was seeing. "I'm sure that your mirror could show me whatever you wanted it to."

Ceridwen didn't justify the remark with an answer. "You are the one who can end my exile," she said coldly. "You alone, Gary Leger. Consider the weight that has been placed upon your shoulders." Ceridwen looked to the mirror, showing again the four companions moving slowly along the winding trail. "A pity that friends so loyal should perish." She looked to Geek and started to say something, but Gary, his nerves at their end, cut her short.

"We can deal," he said. "Deal?"

"You let me go, and my friends," Gary explained. "Guarantee us safe passage out of Penllyn." Gary paused, to study Ceridwen's reaction as well as to carefully weigh the confusing thoughts that were rushing through his head. What should he do? The answer was obvious, as far as he and his friends were concerned, but what would truly be the best course for Faerie? Would the land be better off if Ceridwen were allowed to come forth and help put Robert back in his hole?

"I'll reduce the terms of your banishment to one year," Gary finished, as good a compromise as he could think of on such short notice.

Ceridwen laughed at him. "A year?" she balked. "In a year, Robert's hold on the land will be nearly absolute."

"Unless my friends and I can stop him," Gary was quick to put in.

"And if you cannot?" Ceridwen asked simply, revealing Gary's dilemma. Gary didn't know how to respond. He thought of Mickey's words when the leprechaun had explained why he had retrieved Gary. "There might be things that only yerself can do," Mickey had said, and that made perfect sense to Gary now, though it did little to show him which choice was the proper one.

"Two weeks," Ceridwen snapped, seeing nothing forthcoming.

"Six months," Gary shot back, instinctively bargaining for every advantage. "Not so long a time to one such as Ceridwen."

"Three months," the witch replied. "I will be free before the onset of winter, that I might find my wintry allies to battle against Robert." Gary thought long and hard, his eyes never leaving the dangerous situation revealed in Ceridwen's mirror.

"My friends and I run free?" he asked.

"For whatever good that will do," Ceridwen agreed.

Gary felt as though he was forgetting something - until he thought of the previous image in the magical mirror. "And you retract the army of Connacht," he said. "And let those prisoners go free."

Ceridwen acted surprised. "I?"

"Get off it, witch," Gary snarled. "Everyone, even a newcomer to Faerie, knows that you pull Kinnemore's strings. Badenoch, Drochit, their men - all their men - and the dwarfs can return to their homes unhindered, while Geldion and the army go back to Connacht, where they belong."

Now it was Ceridwen's turn to carefully consider the deal. She was not an impatient witch, and three months certainly was not a long time. "King Kinnemore's army will be recalled to Connacht," she agreed.

"Three months," Gary said grimly, and he was surprised to hear the words, surprised that he and Ceridwen had come so quickly to a deal. Surprised that it was, suddenly, over. "On condition that I have your word that you will no longer interfere with my progress," he quickly added, wanting everything to be exactly spelled out.

"Interfere?" Ceridwen asked, feigning surprise. "I?" Gary scowled and Ceridwen cackled like a crow. "Agreed," she said quickly, before anything more could be tagged on.

Gary nodded, hoping that he hadn't forgotten anything else, hoping that he had made the best deal he could - for himself, and for the land. "But why would I interfere, my dear Gary Leger?" the witch asked a moment later, her tone sincerely incredulous.

Gary thought that somewhat surprising question over, but had no answer, even had no answer as to why Ceridwen would ask it. "I will go so far as to tell you something, my unwilling associate," the obviously thrilled witch purred on. "Robert knows of your return, and of the missing armor and spear. The dragon is onto your little game, Gary Leger, and if you think that Connacht and Prince Geldion are the worst of your troubles, then think again!"

Gary's face was twisted in confusion - both at the news and at why Ceridwen would offer it to him.

"Do you not understand?" Ceridwen innocently asked him. "I hope that you and your friends are successful. That way, when I walk free in three months, Robert will not be there to oppose me.

"But you cannot change your mind and not go after Robert, now, can you?" the witch teased. "He will lay waste to all the land."

Gary chewed on his lips, wondering how badly he had fared in this meeting. He had followed his heart, and had, indeed, put a secondary plan of action into effect should he and his friends fail in recapturing Robert, a plan that could save many lives across the land. But at what cost? Gary had to ask himself. He didn't know the particulars, as Ceridwen had said, and he had been forced by a desperate situation to make a quick decision that he was not fully prepared to make.

He looked to the mirror, to his friends, and realized that others, and not he, would suffer the consequences if he had chosen badly.