The Dragon and the Fair M Read online

  The door opened and Edward's head looked out.

  "James!" he said happily. "I will join you in a moment."

  The door closed. Jim waited, feeling even more uncomfortable following Edward's cheery welcome. The minutes stretched out. Finally the door opened again and the Prince stepped out, quietly closing it behind him.

  "Well, James," he said, "what word do you have for me?"

  "One beset with many problems, Your Grace. Unfortunately, my lady wife is asleep in the Solar at the moment after a full night directing the servants in their preparations against the plague—"

  "There is no plague here yet, James, any more than there is in Devon—which was the reason my father was moved there."

  "The very reason we are rushing to complete our defenses before arrival of it. But, as I was about to say, the day is not inclement and no place could be more privy than the tower top, once I have sent the watchman away."

  "Very well," said the Prince, "though I must say this is much of a coil over a simple matter. If you would lead the way then."

  They went up to the tower top, and Jim sent the man-at-arms on duty there down until he should be called back. The day was not, as Jim had promised, inclement. The sun shone brightly, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. However, a stiff, cold breeze—very noticeable up there in the open—whipped the loose ends of their clothing about them, and Jim was thankful for the cloth linings of his hosen and the medieval thickness of his green cote-hardi. Edward, more lightly—if no less fashionably—dressed seemed to pay no attention to the brisk air.

  "You may remember, Your Grace, I said yesterday your small request might conflict with the rules of the Collegiate of Magickians, to which I am bounden in duty—"

  "I remember very well, and I—" The Prince checked himself. "But as the Countess later pointed out to me, we all have a number of obligations and duties which may not lightly be put aside. Continue, James."

  "What I thought might be a clear and simple answer to the question turned out to require knowledge I had not yet acquired. The matter was like those rules that keep monks from falling into worldly ways. I was forced to consult with my Master-in-Magick, the Mage Carolinus, of whom you may have heard."

  "Heard and spoken to, James. Get on with it!"

  "He directed me to the relevant passage in our Great Book." Magically, Jim produced his copy of the Encyclopedic Necromantic, and the Prince, not easily given to startlement in Jim's experience, widened his eyes and stared at the sight of the great tome floating weightlessly above Jim's palm. Both these solid pieces of evidence seemed to impress him more than anything Jim had said so far.

  "And—" Edward said.

  "And Mage Carolinus directed me to the relevant passage. I can't, of course, read it to you—the words of this Book are forbidden to anyone not a Magickian. But essentially it's like the rules I mentioned that keep monks from slipping into worldly ways."

  The Prince nodded, a little impatiently.

  "Briefly, it amounts to the fact that you can visit Malencontri any time you wish—in fact, Viscount Verweather could also visit here if he wished—but not both of you at the same time."

  Edward exhaled a heavy breath.

  "I can't tell you, Your Grace," said Jim, "how sorry I am that I can't fall in with a wish of yours, but this one is not allowed."

  "No, James. I see it can't be," the Prince said with sudden, astonishing reasonableness. He straightened up, squaring his shoulders and taking in as deep a breath as he had breathed out a moment earlier. "Very well. What cannot be cured must be endured."

  He turned and started down the stairs from the tower roof. Jim went after him and caught up with him on the Solar floor as the Prince was hesitating at the top of the interior staircase to the lower levels.

  "Is it three floors down, or two, James? I didn't think to count on the way up."

  "Two," said Jim. "I can't tell you how unhappy I am—" he was just beginning to add as they came to the door of the room the Prince shared with the Countess.

  "Have done with apologies!" said Edward. "The fault was mine in jumping to conclusions. I will need to leave early tomorrow to get back to Tiverton well before suppertime. If I do not see you again before we go, farewell, my lord, and thank you for your hospitality—as well for providing for the Countess here while I am away. You—can understand. I dare not take her with me to my father until we are on stronger terms. I'll say farewell myself for the moment now, then."

  "Farewell," said Jim. "Would you want some men-at-arms as escort?"

  "Hah! I can guard myself—and better I ride into Tiverton alone."

  The Prince went in, shutting the door behind him.

  Back at the Solar, Jim found Angie still sleeping. But Hob was standing in front of the fireplace, and he stiffened up as Jim came toward him so they could talk with lowered voices.

  "My lord," said Hob, standing very straight, indeed, "I need a sword!"

  Chapter Nine

  A sword?" Jim was startled enough to raise his voice. He looked quickly at Angie to see if he had wakened her, but she was continuing to slumber peacefully. He spoke more quietly. "For you, Hob? What would you want with a sword?"

  "To die with it in my hand with those I have slain in a ring around me. They have said hobs cannot fight! They will learn it is not that we cannot, but that ordinarily we choose not!"

  Jim looked at the little Natural closely. Was this another of the grandiose speeches he had learned from the strolling player and ballad-singer he had at one time hidden for months at Malencontri? The fellow who promised to teach him how to "talk like the gentry," and who as a result had stuffed Hob full of vainglorious stage speeches.

  No, Jim decided, this time Hob was serious. Dead serious.

  "I still don't understand," Jim said.

  "I own I acted like a usual cowardly hob when we ran into them, last night. I hid down in the back of your shirt, shaking like a leaf. But now I've had time to think things over, and I'm not afraid! Also, I'm not any run-of-the-mill hob. I am your hob—and you are a paladin! Would the hob of a paladin cower in a corner when his lord fights for his life? No, he would fight alongside and, when the time came, die as a hob should, sword in hand!"

  "But who are you going to fight?" Jim stared at him.

  "Why them, m'lord! You know. Those we encountered when we went with the Bishop to Wells."

  "The little Naturals with the spears, riding the ratlike animals? We may never run into them again."

  "Oh no, m'lord! With the rats—they were rats, M'lord—a herd of plague flea-ridden rats being ridden into Somerset to spread the sickness. They're determined to win this time. They'll kill off as many of you as they can and rule the rest—and kill off all of us hobs, too. It'd be one of them my lady would be left with, instead of me."

  "The rats are trying to win? What?"

  "Not the rats, M'lord. THEM."

  "Hob," said Jim. "I'm not making head or tail of this. Where did you pick up such a wild story?"

  "It's no wild story, m'lord! It's the truth. It's history—their history and mine and the history of every hob there is. They're goblins, m'lord, just like we are—only we're a different kind of goblin, and always were. Maybe I should tell you the whole story, right from the beginning."

  Jim glanced over at Angie, but she was still sleeping undisturbed. If their voices hadn't wakened her before this, it wasn't likely they would now.

  "Go ahead," he said. "But keep your voice down."

  "It's an old, old story," said Hob, low-voiced but earnest, "hundreds and hundreds of years old. But once all the goblins were part of the Kingdom of Demons and Devils."

  "Including hobgoblins?"

  "We weren't called by that name, then. Then, we were just goblins like the rest of them—only now and then one of us would be born different. I mean, we were all part of goblin-kind, but mixed in with the rest, except we didn't want to do mean and terrible things to everyone else. Like the others did. And the other kin
d of goblins hated us for it. But they weren't doing too much to us about it—at least, not then. But they said we kept giving goblin-kind a bad name among the devils and demons—and they had to bear that because of us."

  Jim sat down. This was evidently going to be anything but a short story. Hob remained standing, shoulders squared.

  "It was a bad place, that kingdom, m'Lord. A terrible place," he said. "It held—and still does—those like that Ahriman we faced when we brought back Lady Geronde's father…"

  His voice softened for a moment, and for that movement his gaze became absent.

  "…it must be wonderful to be a father. A hob almost never is—or a mother. But the other goblins—that's why there's so many of them—"

  He broke off, pulled himself together and went on.

  "I never thought then, long, long ago, that I'd ever find myself actually face to face with Ahriman—let alone pushing him back the way we did, back into the kingdom. In the early times, he and those with him were called the Great Demons. Below them came rank on rank of the Lesser Demons, like that djinn we met on the same trip. And then at the very bottom there were us, the goblins, and we were called the Least Demons by all the rest. The kingdom swarmed, earth, water and air filled thick with all those wanting to get out into the world, hurt and kill… too many of them to count."

  Jim found his mind boggling. That many individual entities with only one wish. It wasn't believable.

  "They must have had some other aim besides just doing harm," he said. "That many couldn't all just live for just that alone!"

  "Not all, m'lord. There were we few hobs—though not called that yet, as I told you, m'lord. But all the rest, m'Lord—they liked being cruel. They lived for it. The Great Demons had very terrible powers of magic. With those they'd work on one man, say, who was very powerful or ambitious among humans—a King or an Emperor, or somebody who just for the moment was able to do great harm. And because of the demon-work, that person would end by doing what the demon wanted to happen, and hundreds or thousands of you humans starved, or suffered and died—so that the demon who made it happen could watch and enjoy what he saw happening."

  Oh, my Lord! thought Jim. A kingdom of sadists? I can't believe it!

  "…but the moment that was all over," Hob was going on, "the Great Demon who made it happen was all sour and unhappy and upset again as usual, and he'd stay that way until he could do something like it again. And so it was with all the Lesser Demons, including even we goblins—though we were so weak in magic all we could hope to do was creep into houses and play cruel tricks that weren't strong enough to kill, inside. Like making maidservants spill boiling water on themselves."

  Hob paused.

  "But then trouble came!" he said, and stopped, and Jim realized these were dramatic pauses, not the end of the story.

  "—All over the world humans started making shields of what they believed in—whatever their faith was, m'lord. As long as they really had faith in it shielding them—all at once, goblins couldn't creep into houses, anymore. The Lesser Demons began to be stopped, too. Even, finally, the Great Demons found there were places they couldn't go, people they couldn't touch or harm. Some humans could walk right at as great a demon as Ahriman, like we did. Of course, they all had to believe in something. I believed in you and your magic staff, m'lord—and the demon had to back up, just as Ahriman had to when we walked at him on that same trip to bring home Lady Geronde's father—"

  I'll be damned: thought Jim. I knew it was the strength of spirit in each of us holding hands as we walked toward that demon that was pushing him back, not the staff, hard as it was for me to get it. The staff only focused what was in all of us. But never in a million years would I have dreamed Hoh could have known that at the same time.

  "—the Kingdom of Demons and Devils was all upset when they found they were kept out," Hob was continuing. "Everybody blamed everybody else for not thinking, and doing something wrong. The Great Demons blamed the Lesser Demons, and all the Lesser Demons, down their ranks, blamed the Least Demons for getting into houses and other buildings in the first place."

  Hob paused again.

  "And the Least Demons, the goblins, turned around and blamed us hobs!" he said. "That is, m'lord, they blamed those of us who didn't want to do cruel things."

  "That's how it usually goes," said Jim.

  "So they drove us out of the kingdom, killing those of us who wouldn't go, and there we were, adrift in the world."

  "How'd you survive?" Jim asked. "I know you really don't seem to need to eat, hardly at all, but I'd think the loneliness, the cold—all the weather, in fact—"

  "We discovered a wonderful thing, m'lord." Hob's eyes all but literally shone at Jim. "All the things that kept the others of the kingdom from getting into human buildings didn't stop us!"

  Jim stared at him for a full fifteen seconds.

  "Well, of course!" he said at last. "There was no desire to do harm in you—nothing there to be kept out."

  "Was that it, m'lord? Anyway, we crept in at first, into some building or other, just to get out of that weather you mentioned. We hid very carefully at first, but finally all of us started exploring the buildings we were in—and we found fireplaces, sometimes with fires in them. Warmth, m'lord! It was always warm to hot in the kingdom, for all the other goblins couldn't stand fire, itself, and now we had heat, and chimneys to hide in!"

  "And, of course," said Jim, "in time the people in the house began to catch glimpses of you, and eventually they got to know you, so here you are today."

  "Yes, m'lord, and how lucky I am to be your hob! The one thing I'm sorry for is that the only magic we had as goblins was the little magic, and the only part of that they didn't think to strip from us as they drove us out was the one they no longer could use themselves, the ordinary magic for entering strange houses and other places. My regret is I no longer have any magic at all to use in your service, as even a one-time Least Demon should."

  "No magic?" said Jim. "What about your being able to ride the smoke halfway around the world—and being able to thin yourself down so much you can go through the crack of a tight-fitting, locked door?"

  Hob stared at him for a second.

  "Oh! forgive me, m'lord," he said. "But are those truly magic—I mean magick like you do—is that the way I should say the word?"

  "You say it any way you want."

  "Oh, then I'll say it the way you do… magick. Thank you m'lord. But all our hobs can do those things. How would we get them?"

  "My guess is," said Jim, "you were used to making magic—small magic, if you say so—and when what you had was taken away, you simply made more in its place. Only, this time it was magic that helped you in your new life, as the magic you had before was built to help goblins in your old."

  "You really think so, m'lord?"

  "I do."

  "I'm magic! I'm magic!" cried Hob happily. More than you think, thought Jim, remembering how Hob had warmed the icy heart of the Witch Queen of Northgales, down in Lyonesse. In his excitement Hob was now turning a perfect cartwheel—but then he instantly sobered up.

  "Oh! Forgive me, my lord. I'm so sorry—"

  "It's all right."

  "Thank you, m'lord, but I must be serious. It's so important you understand. To make a long story short, in the end the other demons drove all the goblins out of the kingdom, and persecuted them once they were out. In defense, the goblins went deep—very deep in the earth, where demons and devils don't like to go. There, their only enemies are the gnarlies, though the gnarlies, being so tough and strong, it usually costs them more than they win to fight them. But that's why they're called the deep-earth goblins to this day, and now there's thousands and thousands of them. But their greatest hatred still isn't on the demons that threw them out, or even on us quiet hobs. It's you humans they hate, blaming you for doing things to your houses so they couldn't get in. For a long, long time they've wanted to pay you all back, and now with the sickness to help, they
're trying."

  He stopped. Jim looked at him.

  "But what's all this to do with you wanting a sword?" he asked.

  "Last night was just the beginning, m'lord," said Hob earnestly. "But I know goblins. I'm the only one here who really does. They've let us see them, they'd never have done that unless they had at last thought they could finally pay humans back for locking them out of their human places. Either now they can get around the faith that's kept them out before, or they've found out how they can get into houses and buildings in spite of it. We will have to fight them for our lives, m'lord, and I must fight with you. They must see a hob matching them, weapon for weapon. I need a sword—a real sword!"

  "You don't know how to use it."

  "I will learn."

  Jim stared at him. The little fellow meant what he said.

  "Come on," he said. "We'll go talk to the castle blacksmith."

  "Of course," said the blacksmith, almost cheerfully. He could not quite manage a real cheerfulness, being the kind of person who usually went about growling at people—so much so that the rest of the staff visited his open-sided smithy in the courtyard only when they had to. But it did not pay for the most skilled artisan to growl at his lord. "I'll make him a pretty little sword."

  "I want a real sword!" said Hob. "A killing sword."

  " 'Course you do," said the blacksmith, winking at Jim.

  Jim did not wink back.

  "That's right," said Jim. "A sword just like my own, but his size. Harkye, Master Blacksmith, that means a working blade."

  The blacksmith, stared, open-mouthed.

  "You heard me," said Jim.

  The blacksmith literally wrung his hands.

  "But, m'lord, I can't do that!"

  "You can if I tell you to."

  "But I can't—I mean, m'lord, I would do so, right now, right willingly. But I just can't! I haven't the metal. I haven't the Mystery. I haven't the skill in my hands. My lord—it takes a swordsmith to make a weapon such as you ask for!"