"Yes," said Jim, "that's a real problem. Right at the moment I don't see any way around it."
"It's possible I may have," said Brian. "It was for this reason I suggested that I come with you, James and Giles; and also would have it that we bring along Aragh and Dafydd. Has it struck you how apt the five of us are as a force to find its way into an unknown castle and locate someone held prisoner there?"
"I hadn't thought," said Jim honestly, "but now you mention it—"
He fell thoughtfully silent.
"With the bowman," went on Brian, "we now have the means to slay silently from a distance any guard whom we must needs pass. And with the wolf, not only have we someone who can warn us if we are approached in darkness and in silence by an enemy; but who can, if necessary, track one of the warders back to whatever doorway by which he left the castle, so that we may make our own plans for getting through it."
"But you assume something," said Giles. "That there will be more than one entrance to this castle. Few castles have more than one; and if there is an extra one, it is a privy escape route for the Lord of the castle, well hidden and probably heavily guarded."
"I am guessing," said Brian, "that in a castle such as this, that is warded as much by magic as by arms, there may be not merely more than one, but several, ways in and out."
He looked at Jim and Giles significantly. "One for large bodies of men and horses, one or more privy entrances such as you suggest, Giles; but also other ways in and out that are used by the lesser folk of the castle. It is, as I say, no more than a guess on my part; but I think it is a good guess. Moreover, the one to find out if it be true may be the wolf, who if he thinks it wise, could go in ahead of us or simply search the place while we wait at our meeting spot for the one who should meet us there, and bring us back word of any entrance we could use in case this former servitor does not show up."
Jim felt more than a little humble. As they had been descending from the boat at Brest, and heading toward the local inn there, he had thought about the fact that only his rank had caused him to be the titular head of this expedition; and that either Brian or Giles would be much better at commanding it. Certainly, Brian's thinking and what he had told them so far bore this out.
It was true that Jim was not an expert on castles. He knew Malencontri, he knew Castle Smythe and Malvern Castle, which was the home of the de Chaneys, the family of Brian's ladylove. But that was all; and, he had to admit to himself now, he had never stopped to study any one of these castles, including his own of Malencontri, as to its practicality for defense and its probable means of being infiltrated by enemies from the outside.
They spent that night on the road, camping out. Aragh did not return. Late the next afternoon, they came to Blois, and stayed overnight at an inn there; where Aragh, of course, also did not show up. It was not until they were two days beyond Blois that he joined them again. Meanwhile, Jim had been trying mightily to think of some way in which he could use magic to determine what the reason was for Aragh's presence.
He had a sneaking feeling that Carolinus could probably point him in the direction of that reason, if the older magician wanted to. The only question was how to contact Carolinus. There ought, Jim thought, to be some magic equivalent of the telephone. Or at least of some form of communication that could put his mind in touch with the mind of Carolinus.
It was not until the second night out from Blois that inspiration came to him.
Mythology was full of the kind of thing he was reaching for. Further, it had struck him that here was a common mechanism that was used in psychology.
Mythology certainly ran along the edge of magic, in that magic was very often involved in it. One of the very common magic happenings in mythology was that someone dreamed something that was about to come true, or that had happened someplace else, or was happening someplace else at that same time.
Certainly, if such dreaming was something that the magic within him could invoke, then he ought to be able to set up a link between him and Carolinus.
That night, before he fell asleep, he carefully wrote on the inside of his forehead:
ME/DREAM→DREAM/CAROLINUS
The more he thought about it—as he lay wrapped up in his sleeping cloths under the stars and by the dying embers of the fire, beyond which the black humps that were the shapes of his three other human companions lay—the more he liked his idea. His mind worked it back and forth. He did his best to think of reasons why such a clumsy formula might work, or might not. Worn out at last with going back and forth from one possibility to the other, he slipped into slumber.
For a while his mind hopped and slid through a series of disconnected dream scenes that were very ordinary and customary when he was first falling asleep. Then came a blank spell. Then, unexpectedly, he found himself outside Carolinus's cottage at the Tinkling Water. It was just about dawn. Carolinus and Aragh were both there, standing outside Carolinus's dwelling on the path between the flowers. The only difficulty with his dream picture was that everything was upside down.
"What is this?" he snapped in his dream at the Accounting Office. No sooner had he dreamed that he had spoken the words, than he was amazed at his own audacity. He had never spoken brusquely to the Accounting Office in his life. But in his dream it answered now; and its tone, far from being angry, was apologetic.
"Oh, sorry," the bass voice answered; and the scene turned right side up.
"Actually," the bass voice went on, "you were the one who was upside down."
It fell silent. Jim was left wondering how he could be upside down, when as far as he could see he was not in the scene at all. He merely seemed to be a disembodied point of view, an invisible pair of eyes. And an invisible pair of ears, also, evidently; for just then he realized he could hear Carolinus and Aragh talking.
"Well, everything's well—here at least," Carolinus was saying. "You'd be as aware of that as I would, too bad I can't say the same thing for elsewhere. You know that James has gone to France?"
"Yes," growled Aragh. "I told him it was nonsense!"
"Nonsense is a matter of point of view, wolf," said Carolinus. "What's nonsense to you may not be nonsense to James, or Sir Brian, or a number of other people."
"All the two-legged ones—" said Aragh grumpily, and broke off. "No offense, Mage. I wasn't speaking of you. But I swear, nearly anything on two legs has about as much sense as a butterfly."
"There is more to what moves the world than simply sense; common sense, I take it you mean," said Carolinus. "This business of rescuing the Prince from France is no such thing as the Loathly Tower affair, is it? No clear-cut matter with Evil perched in a dark place, its creatures gathered below, ready to fight all comers; sending out its legions of such as the sandmirks to overcome any who might oppose it. Not at all like the affair at the Loathly Tower, is it?"
Aragh stared at the mage with hooded eyes.
"If you are trying to tell me something, say it right out, Mage," he said. "My way has ever been the straight way. I’ve no love for dark hints and tricky twists of words."
"Very well," said Carolinus, "then I'll tell you bluntly that this present matter is as much of a joust with the Dark Powers as was that of the Loathly Tower, of which you were a part. But this time it's cloaked about by the worldly ambitions and imaginations of men, so that it's not as visible as it was before. Nonetheless, it's the same thing all over again. There's a threat; and James, Brian, and now even Dafydd, go against it as the only hope to stop it from breaking out and doing great damage, just as it threatened to do the time before. They are all there—but you."
"No affair of mine," growled Aragh.
"You mean you won't see it as an affair of yours," said Carolinus, "and to support that blindness, you pretend that your comrades don't need you; that James and the others go up against an enemy which is no more than their equal in strength."
Aragh growled again, wordlessly but uneasily.
"You talk in large words with small sense in
side them, as usual, Mage," he said. "I asked you to tell me plainly what the situation was; but you keep moving around and around it, without coming out squarely to say what it is. Why've you passed word to me to come here, now? What do you want of me; and why do you think I should give you whatever it is?"
"I tell you this way," said Carolinus, "because you're a cross-grained, hard-headed, selfish, English wolf; and you need to be able to find the answers to those questions of yours yourself—otherwise you'll never believe them. You know what a wolf cub is, I take it?"
"Do I know—" Aragh's tongue hung out in something very close to a laugh. "I not only know, there are a number of grown wolves these days who—but never mind that. My life is my life. Yes, I know what a wolf cub is and what it's like. What of if?"
"Would you send a wolf cub to fight another full-grown wolf?" demanded Carolinus.
"Your questions become slightly mad, Mage—again with respect," said Aragh. "Of course I would not. Nor would I send—not that I could send in any case, since an English wolf whatever his age is an English wolf and will do what he wants; not just what someone else tells him to do—nor would I send even a two-year-old wolf against one who has stayed alive five years, and known the fights of them. It would be like sending a sheep against my jaws."
"Then what do you think of sending a young D-class magician against a magician with a rating almost as high as mine—AAA? Would that not be rather like sending a two-year wolf against a five-year one? Or even a cub against a grown wolf?"
"You are speaking of James, and his knowledge as a sorcerer—"
"Magician, if you don't mind, wolf!" snapped Carolinus. "Among us whose work is with the Art, 'sorcerer' is not a pretty term. I am a magician and James is a magician. The one he goes against might justify the name you just used."
"So," said Aragh, "you're telling me that James needs me in France?"
"Yes," said Carolinus.
"Then I'll go," said Aragh, "though I've no love for traveling outside of England. And I'll do what I can to help James and my other friends, but only because they're my friends."
Aragh laughed suddenly and silently, his great jaws opening wide, deadly teeth catching the morning sunlight.
"I can help them against all but wolves," he said.
"Wolves?" snapped Carolinus. "Why not wolves as well? Are the French wolves friends of yours?"
Aragh laughed again.
"Friends? Anything but," he said. "But there are rules among wolves, too, Mage—little as you and your kind may know it. I will be on the territory of the French wolves. There I must back down from any of them; or fight all the wolves in France; and not even I believe I can beat all of the wolves in France."
He closed his jaws and cocked his head on one side, looking quizzically at Carolinus.
"And you, Mage?" he asked. "While all the rest of us are engaged with this foreign sorcerer, or magician, or whatever you wish to call him, where will what help you can give, be?"
"I've been in this before the beginning," said Carolinus harshly, "though you've not seen it, and may never see me involved in it."
His voice, for Carolinus, suddenly became unusually gentle.
"Of all the Kingdoms into which the human and nonhuman creatures of this world are divided," he said, "that Kingdom which is closest to the one that contains the Dark Powers and their creatures, is that of us magicians, Aragh. For it is a perilous study, our Art, and a hard study and a long study and one that is never done. Nor is our responsibility to help contain the Dark Powers ever done. Always we—we who call ourselves magicians—are in the forefront of any battle against those powers, and all they control, including even our fellows who have crossed over to become sorcerers on the other side."
"Then—" Aragh began, but Carolinus held up a hand to stop him.
"But the reasons are those which no one but a magician of my rank or near it would understand," said Carolinus. "Reasons such as why, at this moment, Jim must go up against he who calls himself Malvinne, alone; even though Malvinne towers over him as a mountain towers over a small dwelling like my own. While someone like myself, who is Malvinne's equal or more, must stand back and let what happens, happen. I cannot step forward now. But you can, Aragh; and I'm greatly relieved to hear you'll do so. Because Jim will have need of you; a need no one else could fill."
"I've always known you to be honest, Mage," said Aragh, "so we'll let it go at that. Jim's already left for the coast, and by this time may be on ship for France. If not, however, I may still catch him before he leaves, which will make my getting over the water much easier. Though I'd find a way in any case. Just do one thing for me. Don't tell Jim I do this for love of him. There's no need for him to start thinking that he need only have some difficulty and Aragh will come running. I am a free wolf; and I make up my own mind."
"I promise you," said Carolinus, "I won't say a word to him about your doing anything for love of him."
"Good," said Aragh.
He turned, and was gone in an instant.
Dreaming, Jim looked at Carolinus standing alone on the walk before his small house. For a moment Carolinus stood as if in deep thought; then he turned, and in the dream it was as if he walked directly toward a Jim who was not there. His face grew larger and larger until it blotted out nearly all of the rest of the scene.
"From here on, the real test starts, James," Carolinus said, "but don't try to reach me like this again. Malvinne dreams also."
Jim woke up. The night was silent about him, except for a faint wind that wandered overhead between him and the stars. For some moments Jim's mind was full of what he had just seen; and then the memory of it began to fade, until he began to wonder if it really had not been a sort of wish-fulfillment dream, that he had summoned up to comfort himself.
He lay down and worked his way finally back into dreamless slumber.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Jim and the others had approached the Loathly Tower for their final battle with its creatures, almost a year before, land, sky, and water alike—and everything enclosed by those three—had shown signs of the sort of place they were approaching. There had been a grayness, a dullness, an overall sadness—almost a deathliness—to everything.
Now, however, as they finally drew close to Malvinne's castle, there were no such signs to be seen in the day around them. It was late afternoon, but the sun still shone brightly. What clouds there were, were gathered to the eastward, so that they did not dim the sunlight in any fashion. The drier green grass of summer was thick on the ground, the trees full with their leaves. Summer flowers bloomed in patches here and there.
Following the instructions of Sir Raoul, they had left the main road some ways back, at a point he had warned them to look for. The road to Malvinne's castle, Raoul had said, was visible only, when Malvinne wanted it to be. Otherwise most traffic passed far out of sight of his estate and his territory, and never suspected he or it was there.
Their first sight of Château Malvinne was from a relatively high point of land that looked down upon the blue stream of the Loire River in the distance, just beyond the structures that made up Malvinne's castle. In some respects, in some of its architecture, it did resemble a castle, although it was spread out much farther than any castle Jim had ever seen or imagined.
All of this sparkled in the sunlight.
Only in the black wood, the black, thick wood—which must be a mile to a mile-and-a-half deep around the castle, so that it fenced the castle in completely against the waters of the Loire—was the first hint of a darkness resembling that which they had seen near the Loathly Tower.
The blackness was not merely the blackness of dark wood, but of wood that was literally black; of undergrowth literally black—bushes, small trees and perhaps even the grass itself—though there was no way to be sure of this at this distance; and it could simply be black earth underneath the trees.
The trees themselves grew thickly together, so thickly that the whole forest looked lik
e a single bramble patch. None of the trees were tall. Jim estimated that there were hardly any of them over fifteen or twenty feet in height. But it was not necessary that they be tall. Their thick growth and intertwining limbs were sufficient to give the forest its reason and its reputation.
Yet, Jim told himself, there must be paths through it, or else those that Malvinne sent out to patrol it against intrusion would not be able to get through it. But these paths could well be like the paths of a maze—safe enough for those who knew them, but a trap for anyone who did not know them and intruded under the dark branches.
All of them stopped instinctively at the top of the green rise, including Aragh; and stood or sat silent, gazing down at their destination. Beyond the trees, the castle was bathed in the last sunlight. Only an ominous grayness of the castellated parts of it, the towers and walls and turrets, seemed at all forbidding. The sculptured gardens, arbors, small pools, and stretches of grass that lay about the foot of the castle for some distance, were attractive and inviting. But from where the castle proper started, all was as it might be around the sternest fortress; except that there was no moat.
Once Jim would have laughed at the notion—but now it occurred to him that the moat might be there after all, as invisible to their eyes as the road that Malvinne caused to appear, from his estate to the main road, when he had visitors he wished to welcome.
"We'll wait at least until twilight," said Jim, surprised to hear the note of command in his voice. "Then when the light begins to get uncertain we'll reconnoiter those woods. Meanwhile, we probably ought to find some place where we can be invisible ourselves, until the sun is down."
"Indeed, you're right, James," said Brian. "The wisest part by far is to find a place to hide ourselves, not only for the moment, but for several days if necessary. For something tells me it'll take at least several days of trying, to make contact with this thing that was once a man."