The Dragon in Lyonesse Read online

  "Well, now, the taxes—"

  "—the evil abroad everywhere in men. The plague, as I mentioned, the weakness of our kings—now, Edward the First of glorious memory was a man and a King! whereas our present Edward—and his taxes are piled upon taxes until we are stripped to the bone. I tell you, James… hark, hold up a moment! Do you hear what I hear?"

  Brian had pulled Blanchard to a halt. Jim stopped Gorp beside the other horse and listened. Now that neither of them were talking, he could clearly hear what Brian had mentioned, though it was at some little distance. It was someone crying, although the sound was not that of a child in tears. Possibly a woman.

  "Come," said Brian, and started Blanchard through the trees off to their left. Jim caught up with him, after being stopped short by the need to catch the lead rope of the sumpter horse, which Brian had summarily cut loose from Blanchard's saddle.

  The sumpter horse, in fact, had taken advantage of their pause to crop some of the dark vegetation underhoof; and it looked at Jim with a disgusted "What now?" expression as it had to follow once more.

  "I just hope that stuff growing here doesn't poison you," Jim said to it.

  "James?" Brian looked back over his shoulder.

  "Nothing," said Jim. "Keep going."

  Brian did; and scarcely a minute later they came out into a little glade, lit by the white moon (or sun) through a rare opening in the forest canopy overhead. On a mossy bank there was what looked like a girl in her teens, dressed in a long white gown, with a filmy scarf, also white, adorning rather than hiding her long, black hair.

  Brian spurred to her, and reined Blanchard in sharply just before her.

  "My Lady," he said, "is help needed? Because if it is I am at your command."

  She wept a few more tears.

  "Oh, kind knight," she said, "I seek my father, who has been carried off by cruel enemies, who live further in this wood. But a dear little creature of these wild lands, who by some miracle was able to speak to me, did just now tell me in words I understood that those same enemies are lying in wait for me, a round dozen of them. They wait to take me, in ambush, only a little further on. So that I dare not go on; and yet I must go on. Oh, was ever maiden in such a trouble as this!"

  She began to weep more heavily, into a tiny white handkerchief that should by this time be too sodden to be of any use; but at this moment seemed as dry as if it had never absorbed a tear.

  "Brian," said Jim uneasily, looking at that handkerchief. But Brian paid no attention.

  "I pray you, sorrow no more, fair lady," he was saying. "I and my friend will escort you forward; and I promise it, you may fear none of those who lie in wait for us."

  "Brian—" began Jim more strongly; but before he could say anything else, the blackness of the grass below him seemed to flow up about him, wrapping itself around him like a tight, heavy blanket, immobilizing and stifling him, so that he could not breathe. He felt himself suffocating, slipping away so that he plunged into unconsciousness.

  He came to groggily at first, but his head cleared rapidly. He was in what was clearly a castle, remindful of some of the older ones he had seen in England, since its walls were of rough-faced cut stone. But the arched doorway and ceiling gave a different feel to the building. Brian was not with him.

  The room was large and the ceiling high. A few straight chairs stood around the walls; and one, with carved armrests and a tall back with what looked like a snake cut into it, sat alone on a dais at the far end of the room. Immediately before him was the maiden they had seen, but grown suddenly taller, and older—with all the helplessness gone out of her.

  She was a tall woman now; and her dress, while still white, was a delicate thing of lace and a shimmering fabric like silk. But her hair was the color of utter lightlessness and her eyes so dark it was impossible to say what their original color was.

  She was incredibly beautiful, but there was a hardness and imperiousness about her that was the extreme opposite of the helplessness he and Brian had looked upon earlier.

  "So," she said, "you are recovered. You understand me now, do you not, my rash young intruder? What made you think you could intrude on my Domain, as if these lands were free of passage to anyone—"

  She broke off and sniffed at him.

  "Aha!" she said. "I smell magick on you. So you know something of the Art and that is what made you think you could trespass here—and you have a little ward, as well—no doubt with your filthy little magick inside. How did one so young even think he could learn enough to face me?"

  No answer came to Jim, offhand. This was all too much like a very old-fashioned melodrama, with the villain twirling his black mustache and saying to the heroine: "Hah, me proud beauty! So you dared to come plead with me yourself?… etc."

  He stood wordless, staring at her.

  "—Well, I'll just strip that ward from you and see what pitiful little power you do possess…"

  Her hand came toward him as she spoke, but before it touched him, a little flare like miniature lightning leaped from Jim's chest to meet her oncoming fingers; and she snatched her hand back, crying out.

  "Poisoned!" She spit the word out. "Poisoned against me, personally! Who dares do that?"

  Jim's lips parted without his willing it; but the voice that came out of him was not his, though it had become a very familiar one lately.

  "I am Kineteté."

  "Kin… what sort of unpronounceable name is that? I never heard of you. You must have some small holding of magick to poison the ward about this young lout here—let alone poison it against Me! Did you realize who you were offending when you did that to Queen Morgan le Fay?"

  "Oh, I had you clearly in mind at the time, I promise you, Morgan."

  "Why you insufferable cow! How dare you address me by my given name?"

  "We Mages speak to all lesser ones so."

  "Lesser! I am not lesser! All are lesser than I! I just told you—I am Morgan le Fay, Queen of Gore! And in this land, there is none who does not feel fear at my name!"

  "There are two who don't."

  "What two? I tell you there are none such! What two?"

  "Why, I'm one and the young magickian who stands before you in my ward is the other."

  "I don't like her," Hob was muttering between Jim's shoulder blades, barely loud enough for Jim to hear. For the first time Jim realized that the little hobgoblin must have crept into his favorite hiding place there under Jim's clothing, without his noticing it.

  "There's one other, at least, come to think of it," added Kineteté's voice, thoughtfully.

  "Name her to me!"

  "He, in this case. Merlin."

  There was a moment in which nothing in the vaulted room moved—even the air about Jim refused to enter his lungs. Then Morgan le Fay spoke.

  "Merlin is locked in a tree forevermore. I am unchallenged in Lyonesse."

  "Time is greater than you think, Morgan," said Kineteté. "Not that I think Merlin would have ever considered dealing with you as anything of a challenge."

  "You tire me," said Morgan le Fay. "It is time I was rid of you." She pointed a finger at Jim. "Come to me, here, Kin—whatever your name is! Now!"

  The finger stayed there. Nothing happened.

  "As I've been trying to make clear to you, Morgan," said Kineteté, "you vastly overrate yourself—and most vastly underrate me. You can't move me unless I let you. But if you really want to try yourself against what I know, come to where I am."

  "You are Elsewhere, in the world where Lyonesse was once," the Queen said. "None of us who lived there in its past may go back again. You know that much; at least. What has been cannot be changed."

  "I can move you here, if you really want to come. Just say so."

  "I will not let you take me against the Time, to break its Laws. Nor can you bring me there against my will."

  "Frankly," said Kineteté, "you're right. No, I can't."

  "So!" Morgan's voice was triumphant. "You admit a weakness!"


  "Which you don't; and which is the reason I know more than you do and keep on learning more. The Knight-Dragon will take care of you eventually, no doubt. But for now he must be tired, standing there and listening to us talk. I suggest you put him back carefully as he was; and don't bother him or anyone with him, from now on. I may not be able to get us together, but there are sendings I can direct your way; and I can promise there won't be one of them you like."

  "Sendings cannot touch me."

  "These can. But as I say, enough of this. Send Jim back now while I'm still watching."

  "Jim? Knight-Dragon? What is he? Both or which? What's his name?"

  "Don't you wish you knew? As far your other question goes, he's the Knight-Dragon because he can be either knight or dragon—even in Lyonesse."

  "Nonsense! But I'm glad to be rid of you both. Go, Knight-Dragon; and your name and bodies with you!"

  Jim was back, sitting on Gorp—who gave a grunt of surprise at the sudden weight returned to his saddle.

  Jim came close to giving a grunt of surprise himself. He, Gorp, and the sumpter horse were back in the forest of Lyonesse, but not in the glade where they had been when the shadows snatched him away from Brian and the weeping maiden.

  Morgan le Fay's voice spoke out of the air beside him, savagely.

  "Very well, my Knight-Dragon! I have done what your friend asked, but just because I couldn't lift your ward doesn't mean you aren't going to lose it along the way—and then you will be one to find what it means to anger Queen Morgan le Fay. I've just sent you and your beasts to the Forest Dedale. May you enjoy yourself there!"

  Jim got a sudden, very clear impression that Morgan le Fay had now abandoned him.

  "Hell!" he said. He leaned back to make sure that the sumpter horse's lead rope was securely tied to his saddle, then put them all in motion. He was moving at random, possibly in the wrong direction, but it helped him to feel he was attacking the situation rather than sitting baffled and helpless.

  This was a fine start for three heroes who had gone off to perform a rescue. Dafydd left behind in another Kingdom entirely, Brian almost surely tricked into going off on a rescue that was probably a trap even he couldn't fight himself out of—and Jim, himself, having already found an enemy in the most powerful magician still active in Lyonesse; and not even knowing where he was.

  The Forest Dedale?

  The name "Dedale" baffled him—though it had a familiar ring, as if he ought to know it. It sounded something like a French word, but what did it mean? He had an uncomfortable feeling about it. Morgan le Fay would not have sent him here if it was a pleasant or happy place to be. But the meaning of the name, if any, eluded him; though there was a faint tickle in the back of his mind… if only he could pin it down to some specific meaning…

  "Dedale… Dedale…" He said it out loud, and Gorp looked back at him curiously. The sumpter horse ignored him completely and thought about grazing on the ground cover. Hopefully it would not turn out to be poisonous to horses. Jim went on thinking.

  French, of course, was a latinate language, so there should be an ancestor of that word familiar to Romans—or even ancient Greeks. He knew Latin to some extent; but this did not sound as if it could be twisted into a word in that tongue. More likely the ancestor was a classic Greek one—he had it!

  Daedalus, of course! It all came back to him suddenly. The man, according to legend, who created the Labyrinth in Crete, to contain the Minotaur, the manlike monster with the head of a bull. Theseus was the name of the hero who finally killed it—and Daedalus died when the daughters of King Cocalus poured boiling water over him as he sat in his bath. They really liked gruesome endings in those early legends—come to think of it, so they did in this other time he had chosen to live in.

  "Of course!" said Jim out loud. "A Maze! That's what it is!"

  "What's a maze, m'Lord?" asked Hob in his right ear. The little hobgoblin had moved out onto Jim's shoulder.

  "A puzzle. A place that someone made deliberately hard to find your way out of," said Jim. "That's what this Forest Dedale is—this place Morgan le Fay's landed us in."

  "Is it a bad place, then?"

  "I don't suppose," said Jim, "that it's any worse than any other location in Lyonesse—except that it's like a closed box with only one hole in it. I'll just have to find that hole so we can get out."

  "If it's a box with only one hole," said Hob, "I can find the way out for us in no time at all, my Lord."

  "You?"

  "Yes, my Lord. All you have to do is light a fire."

  "Just light a fire?"

  "Oh, yes," said Hob. "If you make me some smoke, I can ride it to find the hole. If there's a way out of any kind of box, smoke will find it."

  Jim hauled on the reins; Gorp stopped, and the sumpter horse had to check abruptly to keep from running into the stallion's hindquarters, with the danger of automatically being kicked.

  It glared at Jim's back. Now what? it was clearly saying. Jim, used to the sumpter horse and its ways, ignored it.

  "Hob," he said, "you're a genius."

  "Oh, thank you, m'Lord!" said Hob; and hesitated. "Er—my Lord, is it good or bad to be a genius?"

  "It's good, very good," grunted Jim, now bent over, scanning the ground from his saddle for twigs and other small burnables to start a fire with.

  "Oh, thank you, m'Lord! Why am I a genius?"

  "Because you thought of using smoke to find our way out. I know about how you ride smoke, but it just never occurred to me to use it here."

  He dismounted as he spoke, to gather some twigs and dry grass; and began to struggle with flint and steel to get a spark. He had finally learned how to use the two for that purpose, but use still did not come easy. After several ineffective strikes of the one against the other, a spark did jump, the dry, dead ground cover he had piled in a small heap for tinder began to smolder—and seconds later a small flame wavered upward.

  "Oh, good!" said Hob happily, leaping on the first thin waft of smoke that lifted from the flames. "Be right back, m'Lord."

  He zipped off, out of sight in an instant between the black trees. Jim sat back, cross-legged on the ground, wondering how soon "right back" might be. After a few minutes, it occurred to him that in such a position he might be at a disadvantage if he was faced with a sudden attack by man, beast, or whatever. He climbed back onto Gorp; and, sitting there, lost himself in trying to think of a really popular fourteenth-century song that ended with everybody happy.

  "Here I am!" sang Hob, bringing him back abruptly. "I found the way out, m'Lord." He hovered in the air on his waft of smoke a foot or so in front of Jim's eyes. "It's easy. First you go right, then you go left, then you go left again, then you go right, and then left and another right and another right—"

  "Hold it," said Jim. "Why don't you just show me the way, instead of telling me?"

  "Of course, my Lord. This way, then."

  Hob started off between the trees to Jim's left and disappeared again. "Sorry, m'Lord," he said, reappearing. "I'll keep just ahead of you."

  "Yes," said Jim. "That'll be better."

  They started, Jim riding and leading the sumpter horse, and Hob riding his waft of smoke more or less level with Jim himself but slightly ahead and on the left.

  "Now right, my Lord," he said, turning for no apparent reason between two of the big trees. "That's right. Now go right again… now left… now left… now right, and right again—"

  "Whoa! Stop! Come back here!" called Jim, pulling his two horses to a stop. Hob turned and rode his waft back, looking apologetic.

  "Pray forgiveness, my Lord. I didn't mean to get ahead—"

  "It's not that, so much; though I'd like you to stay level with me. The horses and I keep trying to catch up with you. Stay beside me, if you can. But what I wanted to say was there can't be this many turns! It doesn't make sense. Are you sure this is the only way to get out of the Dedale Forest?"

  "Oh yes, m'Lord. If we went any other way
we'd just come to a great wall of stone like the face of a cliff, or a bottomless pit or a deadly marsh." "Well," said Jim, "if you say so." "We do run into some people on the way, m'Lord." "We do? Well, we'll deal with them as we reach them. Lead on." Hob turned his waft of smoke forward once more, and they went on together. "—And now left," Hob was saying, for what seemed to Jim to be the thousandth time; Jim's mind was elsewhere again, considering whether he should use the magic inside his ward once he was out of the Forest, to find Brian. Brian might have run into serious trouble by now—if not something worse. Jim told himself not to think about anything worse. Brian must remain unkillable, in Jim's mind at least.

  But also, there was the unhappy feeling that the first time he dared open his ward to use magic, Morgan le Fay would know of it; would pounce on him, gaining some advantage that could end with her managing to take it from him, or working out something disastrous with the Dark Powers—or something else to put him and Brian in trouble.

  "And now right… and there he is, my Lord." "Brian?" said Jim, startled back to his surroundings. "Where?" "No, my Lord," said Hob. "The first of the people I said we'd meet with." Jim stared ahead. They had come out into a large opening in the trees, a space big enough to hold a castle in the farther distance; and, closer, a pavilion before which stood another young maiden with a very sorrowful, pale face. An armed retainer with a sword stood on each side of her. Before her and these others a large knight, fully armored and weaponed, sat waiting.

  Chapter Nine

  Jim checked Gorp.

  "Is something wrong, m'Lord?" whispered Hob, in the air beside him.

  "Have you any idea who that is out there?"

  Hob looked earnestly through the thin screen of the last trees that hid them from the seated man.

  "I think… he's a knight, m'Lord."

  "Do you? Well, that helps."

  "It's nothing, my Lord." Hob glowed with pleasure. "Nothing any genius couldn't do."

  Jim sighed. Irony was wasted on Hob. He lifted the reins of Gorp and rode into the clearing. The knight jumped to his feet at the sight of him.