"Let's go higher," said Jim, "and look at it from a little more altitude. Follow me, Brian."
In an explosion of wing movement, they shot up another hundred feet or so, found a second thermal that would let them soar more or less in the direction of what Brian had pointed out, and glided on a shallow downward angle toward it.
"No," said Jim. "This has to be just one end of the Empty Plain."
"Let us take a look at it, however. It is always wise to know your ground before you venture on it."
They went toward it accordingly. In only a few minutes, from this height, it opened before them. It was not a very impressive Empty Plain—not more, Jim judged, than a little over three miles long from its near to its farther end; and nowhere more than half a mile in width. It narrowed in sharply at the middle, like an hourglass.
"I'd expected something bigger," said Jim.
"Well enough for those who will engage here," said Brian. "Less than two thousand men and horses can fight each other in this space with room to spare—though no place to hide and little in which to escape, except into the trees."
"I suppose you're right," said Jim. The Plain was completely surrounded by trees; but there were no deer or other animals to be seen grazing on the black grass of Lyonesse. Unreasonably he was a little disappointed. He had expected more, had expected it to be longer, bigger all over, with something more to justify its name, even in this heavily forested land—something about it that was more… empty.
But apparently there was nothing. The closest thing to an oddity about it was the point in the middle where the trees on each side pinched in for a short space; but that really did nothing for its image but add a touch of irregularity.
"All right, Brian," he said. "We've seen it. Let's start circling out from here. Just come with me, again; and help look for anything at all in the forest around here that's different."
They flew outward about the Empty Plain in a spiral under Jim's piloting—a spiral whose connected, circular paths were close enough to one another so that they could connect the new ground they were seeing with what they had already passed over.
"James! James! Look to your right now—" burst out Brian suddenly.
"The gray spot?" said Jim. "Just a pile of rocks among the trees."
"But it is not!" boomed Brian.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jim looked again, and more closely, at what had seemed to be no more than some huge boulders or an outcropping of rock in a rare bare spot among the trees.
"Something moved there," said Brian.
"We'll go look, then."
They tilted their wings and wheeled over toward the gray area. They were very close to it when a shape came upward into sight, flapping clumsily. Jim immediately tilted his wings and banked away. Brian followed as swiftly and smoothly as if he had been a veteran fighter pilot, used to following his flight leader for months. It would have been more impressive if Jim had not known that it was the result of Brian's simply wanting to follow Jim—his dragon body had translated that wish into the necessary muscle reactions that took him where he wanted to go.
From a distance and a higher altitude they once again flew back in a circle around the gray area, spiraling cautiously inward toward it.
"A harpy, was that not?" said Brian, as the clumsily flying shape, after beating about in the air just above the rocks for an effortful moment, dropped back down out of sight below the treetop line.
Jim nodded. He moved even closer to Brian, going below the other dragon as they moved, and turning his neck with the remarkable ability of dragons, like some long-necked birds, to turn their heads so as to look almost directly backward. This put his face only a few feet below Brian's and his dragon-whisper bridged the gap to Brian's ears.
"Right! Just hatched or something—looked like it was learning to fly. We'll go up until we're at an angle from where we can look down on it. Then, if it's safe to go look, we'll come in again on a steeper angle; but slowly, until we've got a good view, then turn away immediately."
"And then, James?"
"This must be something like a beehive—their breeding center. We'll try to think of a way to destroy all of whatever's inside," said Jim.
He was not being a human magician right now. At the moment he was only a dragon operating on his innate magic like any Natural. For magickians there was the prohibition on using magick for any aggressive purpose. But he was not really a magickian at heart. He was a magician—and the Harpies were creatures that must be destroyed, if Lyonesse and the Drowned Land were to be safe.
From several hundred feet higher they began to circle, gradually drifting lower to get a better look. Slowly, to Jim's eyes, what had seemed like natural rock formations began to show more like a number of rough domes clustered together, with dark cracks in their bases.
The probably-just-hatched harpy was still in sight, trying to get back in through one of the cracks. This entrance was hardly more than a semi-vertical slit; and the harpy had to align itself with it to enter. It was blundering about, trying to do this, as they watched.
A coldness formed inside Jim as they saw it finally work its way inside. It was not the creature that was making him wary. It was the thought of the Dark Powers themselves. Surely they would not leave a hive where their creations were made unwatched and unguarded?
He told himself he had been an idiot to come here without a more detailed plan of what he would do when he found the hive. What he needed was another magic device like the color-aware spectacles—a warning signal of any sudden awareness and interest by the Dark Powers in the presence here of Brian and himself. Something like the canaries the miners used to carry into mines to warn them of poisonous gases—or the rose in the old fairy tale that had wilted in the presence of evil.
Back in the land above, he could have made himself such a rose if he had only thought of it ahead of time—if he could figure out how to do such a thing. But now he was in Lyonesse, with his magic locked up inside his ward. He could use it on himself or anything he had with him in the ward, but nothing outside—without breaking the ward open again.
Of course, he and Brian could fly off now, across the border into the Drowned Land, just long enough for him to open his ward enough to let him make such a sensitive rose.
But an unusual, almost superstitious, feeling was with him. Am I letting the Old Magic get to me in some way! he asked himself. There was a conviction in him that would not go away—the conviction that, now he had found the Dark Powers' monsters factory, he should not leave it without doing what he could to end it. A clinging certainty that if he left, he would come back to find the Powers at home here, the hive more securely guarded or otherwise impregnable.
But even that was only half his concern. The other half had to do with a feeling of guilt at keeping Brian out of the adventure and excitement that Brian had come here to find. However, the whole matter had turned out to be more magic than military.
If Jim was to have a hope of doing something about this place, he had to have a look at what was inside—where the harpy had gone; and while he could get in himself, with a good chance of getting back out alive, he could not take Brian with him with anything like the same hope.
But there was no point in his dithering around, chewing it over, hoping the answers would come out different than the way they seemed now. The first thing was to break the news to Brian that he would be carrying on here alone. Send his friend away on some pretext? It would have to be a good pretext, or Brian would see through him and insist on doing something foolhardy—like standing guard out here in the open while Jim was inside.
He had it.
"Brian," he said, as they soared along together, Brian above, Jim just below.
"Yes, James?"
"You were right. This is it—where the Dark Powers make all the Harpies and other creatures they plan to throw against the Lyonesse Knights, if and when it comes to a battle on the Empty Plain. Even on foot, ogres and Worms—and anything els
e of the same sort—could get into position to attack during the battle in no more than an hour's walk."
"We must act, James."
"Keep your voice low. We've no way of knowing what kind of hearing they've got down there on the ground. No, I'm the one who has the magic to meet with whatever magic's here. So I have to stay. But meanwhile one of us has to take word back to Dafydd, King David, Pellinore, and the other Round Table Knights about this; so they can know what to expect. That leaves you as the one to go."
"James…" said Brian, in a voice full of longing, "perhaps you might wait until I return—"
"If I can. I'll have to do what seems necessary under the circumstances."
"Only right to do that, of course. But it would be well for me to be in company with you."
"I'll hope it won't take you too long."
"My word on it," said Brian. "I shall be as swift as this dragon body may be. How is it best to make the greatest speed?"
"Well, you can't be pumping your wings all that distance. Gain a lot of altitude—go up very high—but don't start a fast climb until the sound of your wings won't be heard back here. Remember all the noise we made taking off? Then, from that altitude, glide directly toward where you're going. If you get down too low, you'll have to climb again. If you happen to find a strong tail wind high up, boosting you fast in the direction you want, just climb and glide until you get there."
"I shall do so," said Brian. He peeled off from their spiraling, gliding on a shallow slant away and downwards toward the surrounding treetops for a distance, so that he could climb unheard.
Jim watched him dwindle in size against the pale, bright sky, a little emptiness beginning to be felt in him. He actually would have felt better having Brian with him. It would have kept his spirits up. Against any solid, ordinary threat or danger, nothing could daunt Brian.
It was not that pain or death meant nothing to this friend of his. It was only that for him those two things rated below a number of other, more important, elements of existence, such as faith, loyalty, or the avoidance of anything which he would consider shameful in another man.
Meanwhile, Jim told himself, he should be getting busy. If the Harpies were coming from here, presumably the other monsters would, too—but were the Dark Powers themselves at home at this address?
When he had approached the Loathly Tower with Brian, Dafydd, Danielle o' the Wold and the dragons Smrgol and Secoh, the cold, powerful, creeping presence of those Powers had been felt long before they got to it, just as that same feeling had been in his own Hall. It was not here.
Strange.
For a second a hope raised its head within him, that perhaps the Dark Powers' magic would not work here, any more than his, if he had not been warded. But it had to be working if they were making Harpies. Forget that easy way out. What he had to do, now that Brian was safely out of the way, was to see what he could do by himself to destroy this hive—or whatever it should be called—and to do that he had to know what it was like inside.
There was only one way to do that—follow the harpy they had been watching through the crack it had entered. There was only one way to do this—be a harpy himself.
The thought of actually becoming one gave him an ugly feeling inside.
But it had to be done. He swung wide of the spot, planed down until he was out of sight behind the treetops between himself and it, then found the already somewhat amputated pear in his purse, sighed, brought it out and finished it off—visualizing himself as inside and controlling the harpy below.
And immediately that was where he found himself.
"My Lord:" cried Hob's mind in his. "What happened? Where are we?"
Jim snarled at himself silently. He had forgotten Hob completely. Of course, everything inside his ward included the little hobgoblin.
There had been a time, early in his stay in this world, when he was turning into a dragon whether he wanted to or not; and when he did, everything with him was left behind him—including his clothes. Now, more magically experienced, he could, and did, automatically make the magic to take everything with him. He should have remembered Hob had been brought into the ward for protection from Morgan le Fay.
"It's all right, Hob," he said. "We're just inside the harpy, you and I. It's magic—don't ask me to explain it."
The shock of the change had been considerable, however—even to Jim. In the past it had been enjoyable to fly like a dragon or sift through a place which smoke, but nothing solid, could enter; and he had indeed wondered on occasion what it must be like to be one of the Dark Powers' creatures. He had never stopped to consider that being in a harpy might not feel like being a dragon—or a Hob. Those other two had been living beings like himself. This was ugly.
It was like being in, and part of, something like a piece of machinery—a piece of machinery with life, but life that was both unnatural and unfeeling. It was like becoming that piece of machinery and necessarily being the programmed motor that activated it.
He pushed the feeling from his mind. He had made his decision; it did not matter how he felt.
The harpy was now wriggling its way downward through a narrow, tubular passage, like an oversized wormhole. Jim, taking command of the body, folded its wings tightly to its sides, aligned it with the angle of the walls, and continued to move forward.
But the harpy mechanism was still so clumsily unnatural to him that he over-controlled. Its body blundered partway up one side of the passage, onto what was evidently a small lump or boss where tunnel floor met tunnel wall; almost becoming stuck for a moment. It was a lump Jim could not see—the tunnel was as lightless as a mass grave, undisturbed for years.
But the lump itself broke off in his grasp, crumbling in his claws. He dropped the debris and pushed himself down the slope. Walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel pressed against the outer surface of his folded wings. Unexpectedly, for he was not subject to it usually, claustrophobia took him by the throat.
He realized with a sort of panic that he could not even turn around. He could go nowhere but forward; yet already there was a division in the middle of the passage—a fork opening on two different ways.
He realized that here, at least, he could turn himself, heading one way and then backing around into the alternate way. He hesitated.
He had not come in here just to turn back.
But he had no way of telling which way led where. The tunnel had been leading ever downward, and Jim had felt it was turning toward the interior of the structure. In any case, his harpy body seemed to want to continue now by the left-hand path, which to Jim meant they might be turning back toward the outside.
Instinct, it might be, that was directing the harpy here. It seemed to make the best sense to let the harpy body proceed as it had intended; but Jim found himself secretly pleased by the thought that he might be moving back toward the face of the boulder and the open air beyond. He had not thought that the darkness and the tightness of the tunnel would bother him—but it was doing just that.
He must remember, he told himself, the turns in their succession, in case he had to find his own way back to the opening.
But at the next point where the tunnel forked, the harpy body went to the right. Then left again—or had it been to the right both times before? Of course not. It had been left, right, left—in that order. In spite of being sure of that now, an ugly feeling of losing his way was beginning to grow in him. If he should really get lost here, where the Dark Powers could show up without—
—They were here now!
Like a cold hand, Their presence closed around him. He felt it pushing him deeper into the mechanical, primitive instincts of the harpy, deeper and deeper into the maze about him, deeper and deeper into a creature like itself—
An odd little thread of thought, a brave thread, but trembling slightly in spite of itself, broke the spell, speaking to itself in his mind.
"M'Lord … I don't like it here…"
Hob! A sudden burst of furious hum
anity erupted in Jim, warming him, driving back the darkness that had been trying to invade not only his body and mind, but the core of his vital spirit.
"Hang on," Jim thought at Hob. "We're going back out."
He had stopped the harpy body from moving any farther. After all, in these situations, it was his mind that was in control, not its. For the first time since he had entered this place, his mind was working completely apart and the way it should. He reached out his left arm and with one harpy leg felt for a wall beside him. It had been only inches away. He moved closer and leaned against it.
The Powers must know by now he was here—surely They could sense an alien presence in their hive? Yes, now that he felt for it, with the harpy's awareness he could feel Them speaking Their message of destruction to him, so They had to know. Unless… unless They thought he actually was a harpy. But They could hardly be that blind… his shoulder rubbed against the wall beside him, caught on another small outcropping there, and felt it disappear. He reached out with his harpy leg, slid it again over the invisible wall's roughness, found another projecting part, and closed his claws on it.
It crumbled as the projection earlier had done; and as he tightened his grip on what held, he felt the broken parts in his hand grind together into the smallest of particles. It was not so much like rock as it had seemed to be, but more like old bone, rotted by weather and time until what seemed whole, on being picked up, became only a handful of dust.
Of course. They could not build anything solid or permanent. All Their powers were nonphysical, and They had no physical way to strike at him except through one of Their creatures.
Here there seemed, so far, to be only Harpies; and it might well be that their poison would not harm each other.
But still, They had him—him and Hob—in Their possession, trapped. Why weren't They trying to destroy him with another of Their monsters? But maybe They hadn't had time for that, yet. Maybe…
Maybe it was because They still didn't know he was the alien who had intruded here?