"King? Prince Edward?" echoed Jim.
But Carolinus was no longer there. Jim stared at the place where the Mage had been. This was the second time Carolinus had made a cryptic reference to the need to protect the King of England and its Crown Prince.
"But I'm out to get Robert back, damn it!" Jim said to the empty air. He went slowly back to the High Table.
"Well," he said, sitting down and looking into the questioning faces of the others, "Carolinus is gone—just vanished. You probably noticed it wasn't him in the body, just an image of himself. But Dafydd, he said you'd know how to show us where we need to go. We're going to have to cross part of…" He ran down and, for a desperate moment, stared past everyone at the long side wall of the room, with its two great fireplaces, before turning to Angie.
"Damn it, now!" he said. "I know the name of the place perfectly well, but it's slipped clean out of my mind. Angie, what're the lines about an older land, from that poem I like about where King Arthur died?"
"Oh, you mean The Passing of Arthur, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson? Arthur didn't die, you know," said Angie of Infallible Memory, "He was carried off to Avalon by the three Queens. But the lines you want—"
She quoted them:
"Then rose the King, and moved his Host by night,
And ever pushed Sir Modred, league by league,
Back to the sunset bound of Lyonesse—
A land of old upheaven from the Abyss
by fire, to sink into the Abyss again—"
She broke off.
"That's it!" said Jim. "We go across part of Lyonesse to the entrance to the entrance to a place called Overhill-Underhill."
The others all stared at him. Then Dafydd spoke.
"Lyonesse has been under the sea these many centuries," said Dafydd, his quiet voice strange in the silence. "It is no longer mostly bare rock and empty waste. Now it is thick with magicks, beasts, and trees and other plants that talk and act."
"By all the Saints!" said Brian in a voice as excited as his weakness would permit it to be. "Is that how it is? It has been thought that all memory of its place and likeness was lost."
"Not in my country," said Dafydd. "But since it is Lyonesse that you must reach, you will need my help to reach it—no, my Golden Bird—" he said, turning to Danielle as she began to speak again, "I pray you, wait. You and I will talk this over afterward, and if you do not agree, I will not go. James, did Carolinus not say anything more except to mention that you had to go through Lyonesse?"
"Not about getting to where we need to go," said Jim. For some reason he was reluctant to mention the entrance to Overhill-Underhill with the message over it. "He did say something about how it was all-important that King Edward and the Prince be preserved—"
"But James!" burst out Brian. "This could be serious. What threatens the King and the Prince?"
"Carolinus didn't say—nothing but what I've told you," said Jim. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Angie, battling to keep from showing her outrage at the idea that any threat to the King could be more important than the recovery of Robert.
"Well, then you should use your magick and take us to Lyonesse immediately!" said Brian.
"You cannot go!" said Geronde fiercely, looking ready to spring from her chair upon Brian. "You are in no shape to go anywhere on two legs—or four. In no shape to be of any use, even if you go."
"Dammit all to Hell, Geronde!" said Brian. "I may be a bit weak today. Perhaps I need another good night's rest. But I'll be ready for a horse tomorrow, and in two days I'll outride everybody. Besides, I have no choice. It is in my vows."
"Your vows be—" Geronde checked herself just in time, on the edge of what Brian would surely consider out-and-out blasphemy. She turned her gaze on Angie. "Angela, you know he is not fit to go!"
"Well, he's very weak—" Angie was obviously wavering between an outright lie and her own desire to support Jim, who she knew would need Brian's combat-wise mind, even if it had to be carried along on a stretcher.
"My vows," said Brian, slowly and heavily. His face was pale to the verge of pure whiteness, but his voice was stronger than it had been. "My vows are that I will do no hurt to women, children, or members of Holy Church, but will otherwise offer them aid and succor if they are in need."
"The part about children is not in them!" said Geronde, fiercely.
"There are some knights," said Brian in the same hard, measured tones, "who leave it out, feeling that aiding and succoring children is beneath the dignity of a knight. I left it in, and those words were heard by God."
"Angela, James!" Geronde appealed. "Tell him you do not ask his help. Think! You have no right to ask. God knows I would wish well for the child for your sake, if for no other reason. But remember something. He is not a blood-son! Your house will not rise or fall on whether he lives or dies!"
"I want him back," Angie said. Jim kept his mouth closed.
"Then I will ride when you ride," said Brian, in the same tone of unalterable determination.
"In any case, that won't be before tomorrow morning," added Angie quickly, to try to bring the situation to a generally acceptable conclusion.
"Tomorrow morning it is," said Brian, inflexibly. "But by then, you will be ready to Magick us down to Lyonesse, will you not, James?"
"Well," said Jim, "as a matter of fact…" His mind was busily hunting for an alternative after what Carolinus had said about saving his magic energy. "—Actually, if Rrrnlf could just carry us down through the sea as he did that time when we went to face the Kraken, Granfer, he could get us to the undersea edge of Lyonesse. It might be a wiser way of going."
Everyone but Angie and Aargh was looking at him with puzzled expressions. Surely a trip like that was nothing to a Magickian?
"You see," Jim went on rapidly, suddenly remembering Carolinus' words to him in Cumberland, "I believe Lyonesse is another Kingdom where my magic won't work—as it didn't work when we all went by mistake into the Kingdom of the Dead below Malvinne's Castle—you remember, Brian?"
"I do," said Brian.
"So," said Jim, "there may be strong magical reasons why we shouldn't go there by magic, but by some other way. Why don't I just have Rrrnlf in to talk to us here and see what he has to say about it?"
Jim's mind had been galloping as he talked—not so much to find the right words, as to keep the floor, so no one else could begin to argue. He had quickly worked up a visualization to bring Rrrnlf into the Great Hall. Once the Sea Devil was with them, argument would be foreclosed.
"Rrrnlf—" he said out loud—purely to impress his audience, since it was not necessary for the magic—"I summon you to me, now!"
Everybody looked suitably impressed, except Angie—but then their expressions changed. Overhead there was a sudden splintering crash. Three-quarters of Rrrnlf filled the space between the two tables less than a dozen feet from where they sat, and above them his enormous voice roared, unseen.
"Who does this to me?" it roared.
"Hell's bells!" said Jim under his breath. "I forgot again how tall he was, compared to the roof in here!"
There was another splintering crash and one of Rrrnlf's enormous hands smashed through the ceiling next to the hole through which his body up to the middle of his chest was visible.
"Stop that, Rrrnlf!" shouted Jim. "I'll take care of everything for you in a moment! Damned if I'll mend the roof by magic, though," he ended up, muttering the last few words to himself. "The Carpenter can mend it. It's nice, dry weather."
He wavered for a second between shrinking Rrrnlf or moving them all magically outdoors. He settled for making Rrrnlf about ten feet shorter—and abruptly, all of the Sea Devil was visible, blinking down at them now in the relative dimness of the Hall—a dimness somewhat alleviated by the sunlight beaming through the holes in the ceiling.
"Wee Mage!" said the shortened Rrrnlf. "What happened? You are bigger than you usually are. So are those with you!"
"It's just one of those things that
happen with magic, occasionally," said Jim. "We'll go back to being as small as we ordinarily are the next time you see us. I wanted to ask you something. I'd like you to carry Brian and Dafydd and myself to Lyonesse."
"Not to Lyonesse, wee Mage," said Rrrnlf earnestly. "I can't come to it. Didn't I tell you that?"
"I only want you to take us to the edge of it—" Jim was beginning, when Dafydd interrupted.
"James," he said, "best you let me explain. Rrrnlf is quite right. He can't come to the edge of it unless he burrowed into another Kingdom or walked across one—and those Kingdoms are shut to such as he. What Rrrnlf can do is take us to the edge of the Drowned Land. From there, we can make our own way."
"Are you sure I can do that, wee Bowman?" said Rrrnlf doubtfully. "Maybe it's not possible."
"It is," said Dafydd.
"In any case," said Jim, "you don't have to take us into it. Just carry us down through the water to the edge of it, and maybe then I'll use just a little magic to go the last few feet into wherever this place is but I'll leave you behind I could go all the way by magic myself, true. But I'd have to visualize it first. Since I haven't been there, I can't do that."
I should have thought of that excuse sooner, for not using magic to take us into Lyonesse, he told himself annoyedly. He had only just bumped his nose into it when trying to reach Kineteté, after all.
"Is that what you do, wee Mage?" asked Rrrnlf. "Vizzle things?"
"Well, yes," said Jim. "But that's something that's hard to explain to someone who isn't another magician. Now, you're sure you can take us right to the edge of this Drowned Land, are you?"
"I wish I could vizzle things," said Rrrnlf wistfully.
"I wish I were thirty feet tall and as strong as a sea devil," said Jim. "But I'm not. We each do what we can in our own way."
"The most practical thing I ever heard you say, James," said Aargh approvingly.
"I suppose you're right," said Rrrnlf, sadly. "You wee people—"
He broke off, suddenly reaching under his shirt.
"That reminds me," he said. He brought his hand out holding the ugly Little Man with the tied sleeves, and set him on the table in the midst of them, as if he was an ornament. The eyes of the little man were fastened on Jim.
They stared at each other across some three and a half feet of polished table-surface. The other had been shrunken, proportionately, along with Rrrnlf, Jim noticed.
He was really not ugly, Jim told himself, distractedly. For that matter, he was not a man—that is, he was not human. He was—he had to be—a Natural. Not only his various oddities of person, but some deep instinct, told Jim that he was exchanging stares with someone not of the Human family.
Not that that made a lot of difference. A great many Naturals, like Rrrnlf, were a case of pure walking goodness and kindness—if perhaps a little short on what humans would call common sense. Others could be as terrible as the Earl of Somerset's ancient Castle Troll, who nevertheless had not only a surprisingly good side, but an emotionally vulnerable one. And some could be as inhuman as Melusine, the Elemental from France whose mercurial temperament and unthinking selfishness endangered all dragons and every human male she laid eyes upon.
There was something, some indefinable feel, about a non-human that humans somehow picked up on.
Nonetheless, he had been wrong about the small creature being ugly—he was really not so much ugly as odd. His face was a little longer than normal human proportions, and his thick brows and black, lank, very coarse hair seemed to give him a primitive look. But if you focused on his continually open mouth and large blue, wide-open, eyes, he seemed like one just beginning to discover the world around him.
The unhuman impression was certainly reinforced by his shortness, and the fact that his arms—unseen under those wide and over-long sleeves—appeared much longer than was natural It was as if no part of them should be seen by ordinary eyes.
Of course, it was possible that the shirt had originally belonged to somebody double his size. It hung oddly upon him, bulging up in unusual places as if his body were lumpy or angular underneath it.
"He's glad to see you again," said Rrrnlf, interrupting Jim's thoughts.
Jim continued to stare at the small man. "How do you know?" he asked. "Has he started talking, then? The last time you brought him here, you told me he'd never said a word."
Rrrnlf wound up scratching his left ear with his right thumb, dropped his arm, and stared at the small man, who was now paying no attention to him at all.
"Yes," he said. "He's doing it now. He's happy to see you again… or is it 'happy' he means? Maybe he's just happy he's looking at you again."
This, Jim thought, was the first instance of voiceless communication among this world's Naturals that he had ever run across. In an odd way, it seemed like something that did not belong even here, in this world of Naturals and magic.
However, he thought, catching himself up sharply, there was no point in wondering about all this.
"I'm sorry, Rrrnlf," he said. "I don't see how I can—"
"—No, I was wrong," Rrrnlf interrupted him. "What he's saying is, he wants to stay with you."
"Me?" said Jim.
"You," said Rrrnlf solemnly, nodding. "I understand him, now. He's saying you're his Luck, and he's got to keep you with him. If he keeps you with him, you're going to have to keep him with you."
This might be perfectly good logic to Rrrnlf, but it was a complication Jim did not need just now. He hardened his heart and spoke harshly.
"I can't keep him here," he said, "no matter what he thinks of me. You'll have to take him when you go."
Without warring the small man stretched out his strange arms to Jim, in the exact gesture of a very young child begging to be picked up and held. Jim's deliberately hardened heart melted like an ice cube on a hot stove.
"—Well, maybe…" he said, with a guilty glance at Angie, "for a while, anyway…"
"Well, that's that, then, wee Mage," said Rrrnlf. "I'll take a nap until you're ready to have me take you, the wee knight, and the wee bowman wherever I'm allowed to."
"All right," sad Jim, interpreting that as a desire to be returned to the courtyard. He returned Rrrnlf and the Little Man to their ordinary sizes; and Rrrnlf was abruptly back to being two-thirds in the Hall and one-third up through the hole in the ceiling.
"I'll have to jump," they heard his voice booming, beyond the roof, before Jim could visualize him back to the courtyard; and—amazingly, considering his size and weight—his knees flexed and he shot upward like a rocket, out of sight. There vas a tremendous thud in the courtyard and a few entirely honest screams from people who must have been there watching—hopefully, from a distance.
The group around the High Table had already begun to break up. Aargh was already gone somehow unnoticed. Danielle was going off with Dafydd, a hard look in her eyes. Geronde was supervising the servants who were to carry Brian back upstairs.
"—Can I help?' Angie was asking Geronde.
"It is not necessary," said Geronde, not looking at her.
Jim and Angie were left, still sitting in their chairs. They both looked at the small man.
"Well," said Jim, looking uneasily at her. "It looks like we're stuck with him for a while, at least."
"That's all right," said Angie, "as long as he doesn't get underfoot."
"Of course," said Jim, hastily. It had never entered his mind that he would have to take in the small stranger. There might be a problem of feeding him—but it was impossible to tell what that might involve. Some Naturals did not seem to need to eat at all. Others ate and drank, like Hob—but only when they felt like doing it, not because they needed to. Then, of course, there were some like the several different kinds of trolls, who were like all predatory creatures and had to kill and eat regularly.
As far as Jim knew, Rrrnlf did not need to eat, and if that was true, and if this little fellow had traveled with him all this time, the small man probably did not n
eed to eat either, because Rrrnlf would certainly never have thought of feeding him.
An inspiration kindled in Jim. The thought of Hob, their Castle Hobgoblin, had sparked it.
"Maybe—" said Jim, and broke off. He lifted his voice and directed it to the nearest fireplace. "Hob!" he shouted. The answer, as he had expected, was immediate. But not the words that made it up.
"I don't like him!" came back the answer from the fireplace in a small hobgoblin voice, but with no portion of Hob himself showing. "I don't like him at all!"
Chapter Sixteen
"Don't be an idiot, Hob!" said Jim. "He won't hurt you. If you like, I'll put a magic ward around you, so nothing can get at you while you're out here."
"I'm not afraid!" said Hob's voice. "I just don't like him."
"Well, then, come on out here and join Lady Angela and me."
"Well…" Hob's voice came back, "if you're going to go on being there…"
His narrow brown figure emerged from the top of the fireplace head-first, turning itself rightside-up in mid-air as it emerged, and leaped to the end of the High Table between Angie and Jim.
"I'm not afraid of him at all," he said. "But he doesn't belong here—and you like him better than you like me!"
"Hob!" said Angie. "You know we couldn't possibly like anybody better than we like you."
"Really?" said Hob, looking up at her.
She took his small hand in hers.
"Never!"
"Oh," said Hob. He squared his shoulders and grew a fraction of an inch in height.
"Well," he said, looking at the Little Man. "What are you going to do with him, then?"
"It's not what I'm going to do with him, or the Lady Angela is going to do with him. It's what I want you to do with him," said Jim.