The Dragon, the Earl, and Read online

  "—And for you, wee mage," said Rrrnlf.

  Jim got his own hands cupped out in front of him just in time to receive a box, about ten inches long by eight wide and four deep, beautifully carved and colored; with figures on its top and all sides, of what looked more like writing in Sanskrit than anything else.

  The box was extraordinarily light. Because Rrrnlf seemed to be expecting him to do so, Jim made an attempt to lift the lid. It came up easily.

  The box was empty. Clean, white-brown wood, beautifully fitted, enclosed a space with absolutely nothing in it except a space smelling faintly but pleasantly of a scent like cedar.

  Jim put a large smile on his face and opened his mouth to thank Rrrnlf. But Angie, who had now recovered from her shock on seeing her own gift, was ahead of him.

  "Rrrnlf!" she said. "They're enormous! Where did you find them?"

  "Oh, on the sea bottom, somewhere. Some wreck of an old ship…"

  Rrrnlf peered down at the rubies still cupped in Angie's two hands.

  "Enormous? No, no. You're being kind, wee Lady, like you usually do. But I'll find something else for you, to help make your gift equal with the one I gave the wee mage. I promise. By the way, how do you like his present? That did take some getting, I can tell you! It's a box to keep his magic in."

  "Oh—it is?" said Jim. "I mean—of course it is! Just what I've needed. I couldn't believe that I'd actually gotten something like that. I've just been looking at it, having trouble believing it's real!"

  He caught Angie's eye.

  "Yes," said Angie, "yes, indeed. Jim will never forget this present, Rrrnlf. I can promise you that!"

  "Oh, well…" Rrrnlf almost simpered.

  "Oh, well," he said, again. "It's nothing, really. But it'll do for a gift for now, anyway. But I really promise you, wee Lady, that I'll make up your gift into something more worthy just as soon as I can."

  "You needn't, Rrrnlf," said Angie very sincerely. It occurred to Jim belatedly that Angie almost undoubtedly did not realize that what she held might not be real rubies, but spinels. The Black Prince's ruby, back in the fourteen century of their own world, had been a spinel; and no one had known the difference then. Gems had not been cut in those days, and even an expert would have had trouble seeing the difference between the two shades of a real ruby and an isotropic spinel ruby. In this world and time, what Rrrnlf had just given Angie might as well be real rubies. The best thing for Jim to do would be to say nothing; and just be surprised along with Angie, if it was discovered later that the rubies were indeed spinels.

  Trying to think of something more to say by way of thanks to Rrrnlf for the gift of the empty box, pretty as it was, Jim glanced out over the curtain wall and instantly noticed that the upward lines of smoke had faded almost to invisibility above the forest. The necessities of the present drove everything else out of his mind. He turned sharply on Rrrnlf.

  "You came in from over that way," he said, pointing. "Tell me, did you see anything of other—er, wee men among the woods?"

  "No," said Rrrnlf thoughtfully. "I wasn't paying too much attention, of course."

  He brightened.

  "I did see quite a flock of wee people further off, going away from here in that direction—all together and rather quickly."

  He pointed off toward the east, at about a ninety-degree angle from the direction of his own approach to the castle.

  Angie and Jim turned to each other instinctively and hugged each other in relief.

  "They probably saw you coming and ran!" said Angie to the Sea Devil as soon as she came up for air. She and Jim separated.

  "I wouldn't have hurt them," Rrrnlf protested. "I would have told them. I would have said, 'I'm Rrrnlf. I'm a Sea Devil. I'm your friend.' "

  "Never mind, Rrrnlf," said Angie. "We're your friends; and so is everybody in the castle here. You've got lots of friends here."

  "True—" said Rrrnlf, brightening.

  "True? What's true?" demanded Carolinus, appearing suddenly on the walkway beside Jim.

  "Now you get here!" said Angie, with no note of comfort in her voice at all.

  "It's true that I've got lots of friends," Rrrnlf was telling the Master Magician. "But you probably knew that yourself, Mage."

  The way Rrrnlf pronounced the word "Mage," speaking to Carolinus, was very definitely different from the way he pronounced it when referring to Jim as a "wee mage." Neither Rrrnlf nor anybody else ever referred to Carolinus as wee; although this had nothing to do with his physical size. In fact, he was a frail, white-bearded and rather skinny old man—if tall—in a red robe that could invariably stand washing. Angie happened to know that he had a number of such robes; but he also had a tendency to let the ones he had worn for some time simply pile up in a corner of his cottage by the Tinkling Water, until he thought of telling them magically to be clean again—so that he always looked as if the robe was something thrown away by a more prosperous magician.

  "I've just been giving the wee mage and his wee Lady gifts because they helped me get my Lady back. You helped too, Mage. I'm sorry I don't have a gift for you. But look at what I gave the wee mage!"

  Carolinus looked.

  "A soothing box!" he said. He took the box from Jim, opened it, looked inside, sniffed, closed the lid and handed it back to Jim again. "You should be grateful, Jim."

  There had been a dry note in Carolinus's voice, particularly in his last words. And he had called Jim "Jim"—which no one here in the fourteenth century, except Angie, ever did. He was otherwise always addressed as James, Sir James, the Dragon Knight, or "my Lord."

  Jim would ordinarily have had no objection to being spoken to familiarly, except that there was something about the way Carolinus said it that made it almost a contemptuous form of address, as if he was speaking to a poorly trained dog. But Carolinus, in addition to being one of only three AAA+ magicians in this world at the present moment (Jim was only a C-rated magician and Carolinus had openly expressed his doubt that Jim would ever go any farther), addressed everybody familiarly—commoners, kings, Naturals, fellow magicians or even the Accounting Office—which kept track of each magician's level of magical credit. Jim had once heard the Accounting Office make land, sea and sky tremble at once with the sound of an imperative order from its bass voice; but it was always polite to Carolinus.

  Jim was resigned to the Master Magician's ways, now. Not so Angie, at this moment. Jim could see her stiffen with resentment. Right at the moment, Angie was not in a mood to have anyone speak contemptuously to Jim. Particularly Carolinus, who had not been here when needed.

  "He can keep his magic in it," Rrrnlf was saying, beaming down at Carolinus.

  "I don't need a Sea Devil to tell me that!" snapped Carolinus.

  "No, Mage," said Rrrnlf contritely. "Of course not. I just—"

  He was interrupted—which was something of a feat, considering the volume of his voice—by the raucous sound of a hunting horn. Or rather, the sound of a cow horn fitted with a nipple, so that what came out when it was blown was more like a musical tone and less like a raucous squawk.

  They all turned and looked out over the curtain wall. A column of armed men was approaching from about the segment of woods that Rrrnlf had appeared from. At its head rode a figure in armor that was clearly Jim and Angie's very good friend Sir Brian Neville-Smythe; and riding beside him was a diminutive female figure, decorously wearing a tall, peaked hat, from which depended an equally decorous travel veil, to keep out the dust and other annoyances in the atmosphere while moving from place to place.

  Someone who could be no one else than Brian's betrothed, Geronde Isabel de Chaney, who was indeed decorous—after her fashion. She was also Chatelaine of Malvern Castle and sole authority there, now that her father had been nearly three years gone to the Crusade.

  "Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" muttered Angie.

  Jim had not been wrong in what he had thought he had just seen and felt in her. She was in a dangerous mood, not only towar
d Carolinus, but against these friends to whom they had sent messengers for help and who were now appearing after Rrrnlf's fortuitous appearance had caused the attackers to run.

  To put the icing on the cake of this particular situation, another familiar figure, four-legged, trotted out of the woods to join Sir Brian's group, moving along on the other side of the Lady Geronde from Sir Brian, and wagging his tail at her. It was Aargh, the English wolf.

  "Carolinus!" exploded Angie. "What's the meaning of this? Don't try to tell me you aren't responsible for all this! Did you deliberately keep everyone from coming to help us?"

  "Oh, Aargh did see how it was and came to me for help," said Carolinus. "There were too many of them attacking you for him to do much by himself. As it happened, I was gone to a special Emergency Meeting of magicians of A-rank and above. So, since Sir Brian lives closest to you, Aargh went looking for him; but found him and most of his men gone from his castle. The retainers that were left knew Aargh, however, and told him Brian had gone to pick up Geronde and her train at Malvern Castle; because the two of them were going to the Earl's Christmastide. So Aargh went after them, but they'd already left for that annual Christmas party at the Earl of Somerset's; and the wolf only caught up with them about the time I got to them as well."

  "You got to them?" said Jim.

  "That's right," said Carolinus. "I'd just come back from the Emergency Meeting—"

  Carolinus broke off.

  "Rrrnlf," he said, "don't you have some sea devilish things to do about now?"

  "Why, yes!" boomed Rrrnlf, with a wide smile. "I was just going to go and find the wee Lady something more than that little reddish trinket I just gave her so that she'd have a present more equal to that I gave the wee mage."

  "Well then," said Carolinus, "you'd better be about it, hadn't you?"

  "Yes, Mage!" Rrrnlf turned, put one hand on the wall, vaulted it and strode off toward the forest as they watched.

  Jim winced, looking at the wall, which had shuddered under Rrrnlf's weight like someone in pain. He looked back at Carolinus, who was glancing up and down the catwalk as if to make sure that no one else was within earshot.

  "I've got to get him to stop that," he said.

  "Now, now, pay attention!" said Carolinus. "As I say, I'd got to Brian and Geronde and Aargh; but the important matter was I was just back from the Emergency Meeting, saw the situation at once in my scrying glass, and immediately magicked myself to where Sir Brian, Geronde and their escort were on their way to the Earl's Christmas Party. I told them, though, that I'd seen the Sea Devil on his way to Malencontri, and that Rrrnlf would get here before anyone else could—except me, of course—and before any further damage could be done; and he'd scare the attackers off, if nothing else. They'd have known that the castle was owned by Jim; and, seeing a giant coming toward it, they'd be sure that Jim had come back to it, too. Well, in a nutshell, I told Brian and Geronde to follow me back here; because you and Angie will be going with them to the Earl's."

  Jim and Angie stared at him.

  "We aren't going," said Jim.

  "But you are," said Carolinus grimly. "Necessity requires it."

  "Necessity—" began Jim; and he stopped himself just in time from saying what necessity could do with its needing him to take Angie and make a trip to one of the Earl's wild twelve days of celebration, piety, partying and dangerous physical violence going on under the name of healthy sport, all mixed together. A social situation that Jim did not believe Angie would like at all; and he knew he would not.

  "The answer is NO," he said.

  "Jim!" said Carolinus coldly. "Will you listen to me?"

  Carolinus had a number of angry tones of voice. This was not one of them. This was coldly serious—enough so to send chills down Jim's back.

  "Of course, I'll listen," Jim said.

  "The Emergency Meeting I went to," Carolinus said slowly, "was called because a number of magicians around our world of sufficient rank had noticed indications that the Dark Powers would be attempting to change History at a particular Christian feast—specifically, at your Earl's Christmastide gathering a few days from now."

  "But they can't do that, can they?" Angie asked. "It's a Christian Feast. The Dark Powers wouldn't have any power to interfere with anything there. Even if they did, aside from the Holy occasion, whatever clergy are around would have blessed the place and its environs and nothing belonging to the Dark Powers could even get close."

  "Quite right," said Carolinus, "that's what makes this situation so serious. We can't imagine how they could have an effect under those conditions. But the indications are too numerous and too noticeable to be ignored."

  "What sort of indications were they?" asked Jim.

  "I won't try to explain them to you now," said Carolinus. "If you could see what's going on at World's End, for example— but, no point in going into details. For one thing you're nowhere near advanced enough in magic to understand the importance of much of what I could tell you. You'd have to be at least A-rank. But everything Angie just said is exactly true. In reason, there's no direct way in which the Dark Powers could have any effect on such an occasion. Take my word for it, they're simply acting as if they can—and that worries us."

  "But if they can't—" began Angie.

  "We don't even want them trying," said Carolinus grimly. "If they're thinking they can accomplish anything like that, it'll only be because they've come up with a plan to exert their influence in some way that none of the magicians in our world can conceive of. It wasn't my suggestion, but the assembled body voted overwhelmingly to have you go, with your otherworldly background, to see if you could notice anything one of us might miss. If you do, tell me. I'll be there, too."

  They stared at him.

  "You?" said Angie.

  "Me!" said Carolinus. "Is there anything so remarkable in that? I'm an old friend of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who'll be there. If anything difficult comes up, you can turn to me."

  He surveyed them balefully.

  "Now," he said, "Jim, that isn't asking too much of you, is it?"

  Jim would have liked to have told him that simply asking him to be at the Earl's twelve days of Christmas under any circumstances was asking too much. Clearly, this was a case in which Jim, having accepted use of this world's magic for his own ends, could hardly turn around and refuse to give anything in return. But there were too many good reasons for their not going, though it would not be easy to tell Carolinus that.

  Happily, Angie beat him to it.

  "As Jim said," she told Carolinus. "The answer is NO."

  Carolinus seemed to grow a foot. His eyes all but literally shot sparks.

  "Very well!" he said. "See for yourself, then!"

  Suddenly, the three of them were at World's End.

  Chapter 3

  It was unmistakenly World's End. There was no sign to that effect, nothing carved in a nearby rock, but it was simply impossible that it could be anyplace else.

  In appearance it looked rather like a spur jutting out from a mountainside at high altitude. The mountain to which it possibly belonged, however, was completely hidden in mist, so that the visible rock made a sort of shelf with a hump on one side of it that reached up perhaps fifteen or twenty feet.

  The spur narrowed down to a sharp point that seemed as if it would reach off to infinity, if only infinity would reveal itself behind the thick mist that also hid the mountain, and prevented them from seeing as well what kind of distance or void existed beyond the sharp end of the rock spur.

  In the angle where level rock met the hump, some twenty feet or so back from the end of the spur, was an enormous nest, apparently made of some golden yellowish material like spun silk; and in this nest slumbered what at first glance seemed to be a peacock larger than an ostrich.

  It was not, however, a peacock. For one thing, no peacock was ever so beautiful. Its fan of tail feathers covered the complete spread of the spectrum and had blendings of those colors that
made Jim's head swim.

  The peacock slumbered with a contented smile on its beak. Not so the oversized hourglass beside the nest. It was taller than Jim, and clearly built to allow a very large amount of sand to trickle very slowly indeed through a minuscule aperture between its upper and lower parts.

  These parts consisted of two huge globes of glass with a narrow neck between them, all enclosed by a slim framework of some dark wood. Right now nearly all the sand seemed to be in the upper chamber of the hourglass, and only a few grains had so far trickled through into the lower chamber, which had a happy face drawn or painted on it—or, rather, a face that had been painted there originally as a happy face, but right now seemed anything but happy. Jim had to look twice, because it was upside-down, before he realized its mouth was turned down instead of up. In fact, it was a very unhappy happy face standing on its head.

  "The Phoenix!" snapped Carolinus. "And its thousand-year hourglass!"

  Jim and Angie stared at the nest and the hourglass, which were side by side against the rock.

  "Why—" Jim began, but he was cut short by the hourglass when the mouth on the happy face suddenly spoke, interrupting him.

  "Why, indeed?" it cried in a high-pitched, angry voice. "Do you have to ask that? I do my work, don't I? I'm patient, aren't I? I wait out my thousand years, don't I? Do I ask for overtime? Do I ask for time off? No! A myriad of Phoenixes, since this world was new; and I've had no trouble until this one came along. It had the nerve, the effrontery—"

  The happy face began to sputter, and Carolinus held up a hand.

  "There, there," he said in a soothing voice, "we completely understand."

  "Well, I'm glad someone does!" said the hourglass, in a sudden startling bass. "Can you imagine, Jim and Angie—"

  "How do you know our names?" asked Angie.

  "Tut, tut!" said the hourglass impatiently.

  "Tut, tut!" said Carolinus.

  "But how do you know?" insisted Angie.

  "I know everything!" said the hourglass back in its falsetto voice again. "Can you imagine? You see him sleeping there. His time's up! It's been up for nine days, thirteen hours, forty-six minutes and twelve seconds—and still he sleeps. It's not my fault. I woke him right on time when his thousand years were up. Who could imagine a Phoenix with such a small sense of duty, such a—"