The Dragon Knight

  He paused as if so much talking was beginning to hurt his hoarse voice. "Also in one of those top levels," he went on, "is the secret working place of Malvinne himself. So you can see that he's kept his prisoner close to his most secret secrets all the time; and therefore no doubt warded not only with locks and bolts—for no one is welcome up mere except by special order—but by magic, as well."

  He paused and stepped backward to me door.

  "Go, then," he said, "and luck with you. I would wish you Godspeed, but I doubt that God hears from such as I nowadays. And if you should chance to slay Malvinne in your rescue attempt, you may command me for the rest of my days."

  He opened the door behind him, but hesitated before stepping through.

  "I will try to be somewhere outside the outer door when you come down," he said finally, "but the odds are against it, since I am not free most of the time to do what I wish. But when I am free, I will be close. Don't count on me, then; but go swiftly to the opening of that path from which we came out, and which I had you look at so closely. Once in that, you stand half a chance of getting free; so be it that the creatures of Malvinne are not close behind you."

  He went out and the door closed behind him.

  "Let us be moving," said Giles eagerly. "I could swear I feel his royal self waiting above us."

  They moved out together. There had been no one in the first room they had stepped into, and the second had only a few people, some entirely human, some half animal, stacking sacks, which Jim guessed were filled with grains or other food, so that the room was a sort of warehouse or storage locker.

  No one spoke to them and they spoke to no one, going quickly the length of the room and through the left door.

  They entered a kitchen that seemed to be given over to the preparation of fowl; and beyond that were more rooms in which more things were being stored or being taken from the walls against which they were piled. All in all, it was only a short length of time until they stood before what should be the final door.

  Here they stopped for a moment. The rest looked at Jim.

  Jim looked at the door, wishing there was some way he could see through it. He was positive that somewhere inside of him was some sort of enabling magic that would allow him to do so. But his mind could not envision any that would make it possible.

  "We'll just have to take our chances on what's beyond," he said at last; and, leading the way, he opened the door and pushed his way through the opening into the area beyond.

  Bernard had not exaggerated the difference. The room they stepped into was almost as large as all the others they had passed, put together. Its walls soared to a ceiling that must have been between thirty and fifty feet high; and the floor itself was covered, not with a single stretch of carpeting, but with innumerable small rugs that had the same effect. Some ornate furniture stood, as the furniture had stood in the various inns they had stopped at—and as, Jim had learned, was medieval custom—against the walls.

  This room was thronged with people, all of them human, young, and good-looking and all of them dressed in expensive, if sometimes fanciful, costumes. They were standing around in groups, gossiping it seemed; but unlike the people that they had come across before, these did pay attention to them, breaking off their conversations and frankly staring at the four men and Aragh.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  "Keep moving!" commanded Jim under his breath; and the five swept forward, ignoring the stares, comments, and a few small burblings of laughter from those around them—driving forward, as if they were in the grip of some very strict duty, to the foot of the stairs, against the wall on their right.

  The minute it became obvious that they were going up the stairs, the attention of those in the room left them. It was as if knowledge of their destination had made them, not only no longer of interest, but something into which it probably would be better not to inquire.

  In silence they mounted the stairs, the only sound being that of their boots upon the stone surface of the steps. Aragh, as usual, moved noiselessly.

  After a large number of steps, they passed through an opening in the ceiling; and their staircase, which spiraled around the wall of the tower, carried them beyond the sight of those below. They looked down now on a different room, this one equally lavish in its furnishings—even to a small pool and a fountain tucked is a corner of the room—but with no living creature in it.

  They went on up.

  Jim had discovered when he was very young that he was almost completely free of the fear of heights that bothered so many other people. As a boy he had taken advantage of this to show off to his friends, by going where they dared not follow.

  He had stopped this only when one friend, obviously terrified but determined to do what Jim had done, tried to follow him along a ledge that was barely a couple of inches wide, panicked, and almost fell to his death.

  Sobered by the knowledge that his freak ability was not to be played with, Jim stopped using it to show off. In the years between, he had all but forgotten it. It only came back to mind in situations where he realized he was with somebody else who might be bothered by heights.

  Because of all this, he had unthinkingly taken the outside of the steps, where his feet trod inches from the edge of the gray stone; that had no guardrail above it and fell away to the ceiling of the last floor they had passed.

  Between the lower floors it had not been bad. But then these lower floors ceased; and they began the long climb toward the circular ceiling far above them that signaled the floor at the top of the tower. Now the empty space beyond the edge of his right boot deepened and deepened. He congratulated himself on having started in this position; so as to save his friends the vertigo they might have experienced there.

  Glancing at his companions, he saw that his self-congratulation was justified. Beside him, Brian was hugging the wall against which each step anchored. Below them, Giles and Dafydd had instinctively crowded together, also near the wall. One step below them even Aragh was much closer to the wall than to the outside of the steps.

  They continued to mount, however, and while Jim's fearlessness of heights continued to hold good, as the distance of empty space by his right boot increased, he found himself glancing upward at the narrowing spiral of steps that went up and up and up toward the top floor of the tower. For the first time it struck him what a fragile route this was, with the steps cantilevered out from the wall.

  Their farther ends would be buried deep in the wall to counterbalance them and anyone who might walk up them; but still, there was a possibility of a block cracking and giving way, precipitating anyone on it to the depths below, where death would be certain.

  With this thought in mind, he felt a slight touch of vertigo himself, as he looked up at what seemed to be the endless spiral of the stairway upward on the now-naked walls of the tower. However, as he looked, he began to alter his attitude about the fragility of the steps. He noted that, all the way up, the stairs were supported underneath by a thick triangular spine that projected from the wall; a spine that must be at least six or eight feet deep at the wall and curved outward to where it was even a couple of feet in thickness under the outward end of the step.

  The stairs might look fragile, seen from his perspective looking up the tower, but obviously they were not. They had been built most solidly.

  It was at this point in his thinking that he was interrupted by Brian.

  "We have been climbing at a fast pace," said Brian breathlessly. "Maybe it would not be amiss to rest for a moment or two, then go on more slowly, since there seem to be so many more steps above us?"

  "Of course," said Jim, and stopped, hearing those behind him stop as well.

  To his surprise, his own voice had been breathless. Immersed in his thoughts, he had not realized how the climb had been getting to them; and that he was probably responsible. As his thoughts had taken hold of him, he had increased his climbing speed unconsciously. There was no need to race up these stairs. If Brian
had not called his attention to it, his own body would have forced him to acknowledge that it was getting breathless and tired, within a few more minutes.

  Brian leaned against the wall to his left and breathed heavily. Below him, Giles was leaning against the interior wall the same way and Dafydd, in lieu of leaning up against Giles, had reached one long arm past the knight and was supporting himself on that. Below, Aragh was leaning against nothing, but his jaws were open and his tongue was out as he panted.

  Jim was a little surprised that he had been able to exhaust those with him, all of whom he knew to be in much better shape than himself. It just went to show how mental occupation could block out physical discomfort to a certain extent—unless, somehow, his ability to work magic had entered into it, so that he had unconsciously and magically ordered his lungs to supply him with more oxygen.

  The final thought struck him as farfetched. But at the same time, it started him to thinking. And he cursed himself silently for not having thought in that vein before. Malvinne obviously kept no guards on this stair. It could be he trusted completely to the fear of those who served him, to keep them from mounting the stairway without proper permission. But was it likely that such a magician would trust to that alone?

  Not likely, Jim concluded.

  Somewhere up ahead, Malvinne must have laid some magic traps for any foolish or unwanted intruder. At first, the notion filled Jim with despair; for he knew very well that Malvinne was capable of setting traps that would be far beyond his own magical ability to comprehend. Unless… Malvinne was trusting to the lack of suspicion and experience of those who might try to climb as Jim and his friends were doing now.

  At the same time, Jim, with his little knowledge of magic, could not imagine what kind of traps Malvinne, with his much greater knowledge, might choose to set.

  That was the sticker. He had learned the hard way that in order to create any magical change he had to be able to envision both whatever he started with and whatever the result was to be. Since he had no idea what kind of traps Malvinne would lay, he had no way of doing that with them.

  He found himself pinched between a need and a lack of knowledge. There had to be some way around it…

  Abruptly, something occurred to him. Hastily he wrote on the inside of his forehead:

  ME/SEE→MAGIC WORKSABOVEINRED

  As usual, there was no particular feeling to tell him if one of his attempts at magic had worked. So far, he had been able to confirm success only when a change occurred to show him that his attempt had worked, as when he turned into a dragon; or when he had made himself able to breathe in Melusine's lake. So now he was left wondering whether his latest attempt at magic had actually worked or not. He looked up the inside of the tower, but could see no difference.

  "We should get on," said Brian.

  The knight had got his breath back, and behind him Jim could hear that Giles and Dafydd also were breathing less obviously. He glanced back and saw that Aragh had also stopped panting.

  "You're right," he said, "let's go."

  They resumed their climb, this time more slowly. Brian had been quite right about the speed with which they had been mounting the steps. It was very easy to exhaust yourself going up steps like these in a hurry. If they had been the kind of steps that Jim had been used to in buildings back in the twentieth century, it would not have been so bad. But these steps, while only about eighteen inches wide, each rose a good two feet above the one before, so that climbing them, particularly at speed, was not all that easy.

  Now, at a slow and steady pace, they climbed without too much difficulty. They had covered about half the distance between them and the bottom of the first of the tower's upper stories, when Jim saw something that brought him to an abrupt halt. Brian stopped beside him, and the ones behind also stopped.

  "What is it, James?" asked Brian.

  "I thought I just saw something," answered Jim. "Let me go back down a couple of steps."

  He went back down to Aragh's step and looked up. Even here, the angle was bad, so he went another half dozen steps down the stairs. Above him, the rest were staring at him—all except Aragh, who seemed to be grinning slightly, as if at a secret joke.

  From the step on which he finally stopped, Jim was not only further underneath what he was viewing, but was partway around the tower from it, so that he looked at it more directly. What had caught his eye was the color red. He made it out clearly now. The final step before the stairs reached the top landing shone red all the way through, including the buttressing underneath it. In fact, the whole structure glowed in a subdued way, as if it had been carved in one piece from a dull ruby.

  "I've just tried a little magic to look for traps that Malvinne might have set for anyone coming up," Jim told the rest as he rejoined them, "and I've spotted one. It's the step just before the landing."

  They started up the stairs once more, Jim's mind busy with the business of that final step. His first assumption was that the whole step and buttress were hinged inside the wall, so the moment anyone stepped upon it the added weight would cause it to pivot, throwing the unfortunate person out and down for the long, fatal fall to the ceiling of the level far below.

  He thought no more about it until they were right at the very top of the stairs; then he discovered an additional complication. The step that he still saw marked in red was not like the steps below it. It was a good eight feet in width. That meant that a standing broad jump from the step below was not likely to carry anyone across. The trap had been a little more complex than he had figured.

  Jim called a halt while they all considered this.

  "It looks like we're well and truly blocked," said Jim grimly. "Any touch against that step may send whoever touches it into a fall. Does anybody have any ideas?"

  There was a dead silence from his companions. Brian and Giles were staring at what to them must appear to be an ordinary step, except for its unusual width. Dafydd was also considering it, but with a more thoughtful look on his face. Aragh was merely looking at it intently, his head a little forward, his ears up, his mouth closed.

  "Shame to us if we go back!" said Giles, after a long moment.

  "Yes," said Brian.

  But still, neither of them made any suggestions on how the gap might be bridged.

  It was to Jim at last that an idea came. It was not an idea he particularly liked; but it seemed the only possible way that any of them could think of. He cleared his throat to draw the attention of all the others.

  "I've got a plan," he said. "It's not one I particularly like; and I doubt that the rest of you are going to enjoy it either."

  "Liking has little enough to do with duty," said Sir Brian; and Giles murmured assent. Dafydd merely nodded; and Aragh looked at him with yellow eyes.

  "I can turn myself into a dragon and fly over this step, myself," said Jim. "The problem is to get the rest of you over. Now you all weigh too much for me to simply pick you up and fly off with you—"

  "Can this be so?" asked Giles. "Remember, you're a very large dragon, James. Also, it seems to me I've heard many times of dragons snatching people up and carrying them off to—er—uh—dine upon them at their leisure."

  "I think you'll find most stories like that have little substance in fact," answered Jim grimly, "or if they have, it was actually a small child or something weighing not more than a hundred pounds that the dragon picked up and carried off. Believe me, I know what I can do as a dragon; and there's no way I can carry a full-grown human being any distance and stay aloft."

  He turned to Brian.

  "But let me tell you the rest of what I plan," he said. "There isn't room here on the steps for me to change into a dragon. So what I'll do is jump off into the air and make the change as I'm falling."

  Aragh grinned. Brian frowned. Giles's eyes got as large as saucers.

  "James," said Giles, "does it work that way for you? Do you turn into a dragon automatically when you get into the air?"

  "Well, no
t quite," said Jim, "but I think I'll have plenty of time to change into a dragon and fly back up before I fall the whole way down, or hurt myself."

  He paused for a moment, thinking that the phrase "before I hurt myself" was rather an understatement.

  "Then once I'm a dragon I'll swoop by and take you up, one by one, over that step," said Jim. "Now, all of you but Aragh will have to do one thing. Take off your belt and wrap its ends around your fists so that it can't come loose; and hold the rest of the belt up over your head, so that I've got something to grab with the claws on my hind legs. You've got that?"

  "If you mean do we understand you, James," said Brian, "indeed we do. And then I can imagine the rest. You want us each, one by one to hold on as you carry us to the landing? Am I right?"

  "Exactly right," said Jim.

  "Yes," said Brian, "I've not been hawking since I was twelve years old without knowing something about what might be necessary in a case like this."

  "Now there's one more thing I want you to do for me," Jim went on. "The one who is going to be lifted by me should stand on the step by himself, with everybody else at least three steps below, so that I'll have plenty of room to come in. Please stand as close to the outer edge of the step as you can bring yourself to do. I'll need room for my wing that's closest to the wall. Stand crouched with your legs bent, ready to jump. And when you feel me take hold of the belt over your head, jump! Jump as if you're going to cover that whole step ahead of you by yourself, without my help. That's understood?"

  All three men nodded.

  "Now, there's one more thing," said Jim. "I'm going to have to take my clothes off to turn into a dragon—otherwise I'd burst them apart. So I'll do that right now."

  As a matter of fact, he had already begun to strip off the things he was wearing.