He stopped for a moment, as if catching his breath.
"We do not cross that border. It is forbidden, and the few who have defied that rule have either never come back, or come back only briefly—changed or under strange circumstance. There was one man who entered Lyonesse. Since then he has returned only once every hundred years to his family. Each time it is only for moments. He does not seem to know or be able to speak to his descendants; and each time, his clothing is more ragged, his beard is longer and more wild, and he himself looks more like a soul in pain. Then he vanishes again. I would warn you what to guard against if I knew what might be there. But I know not."
"I appreciate your thinking of warning us, though," said Jim. "All the more since you'd like Dafydd to stay with you and be safe from whatever happened to that other man you just told us about. But in any case, I have to go on—"
"And I!" interrupted Brian.
"—And," said Jim, "I, of course."
"Then," said the King, "there is no more to say. In my heart I knew it. I ask you only one thing as gentlemen—for that you are such I know by the fact that Dafydd is with you—if you return safely, do not speak of our Land anywhere, even to those of the Wales of which we used to be part. I ask that if any ask you questions, you do not answer them. Will you do that much for me?"
Both Jim and Brian murmured agreement.
"Then," said the King, turning toward his carriage, "I will leave you now—"
He shook off Dafydd's light grip on his arm. "I will go by myself, unaided. Dafydd, the people of your household will want a last touch of you—that, at least."
"I had intended they should have it," said Dafydd.
The King nodded, turned, and with his long if uncertain stride, went the short distance back to his carriage. He was helped in, said something in his own language, and the carriage turned; his spearmen surrounded him, and they all began to move away, back down the road they had come.
Meanwhile, Dafydd had turned to face the blue-coated bowmen. Beginning with those closest to him, one at a time they came off the crest and down the slope to him, each a little distance after the one before, almost in a line.
"Sir James, Sir Brian," said Dafydd, without turning to look at them, "you will favor me, if you go back to your horses."
"Certainly, Dafydd," said Jim.
He and Brian remounted and sat watching. They were still only twenty yards from Dafydd; and as they watched the sky-blue-clad bowmen came to Dafydd, one by one.
Each, as he approached, took off his small cloth hat when he was about three paces from Dafydd, took the last few steps, and knelt on one knee, with his head bowed. Dafydd reached out with his left hand, closing it on each right shoulder, and pressed gently. No words were said. Dafydd let go, the bowman stood up, put the cloth cap back on, took a step back, turned, and went—and another came.
One by one they came. Jim had not thought to count when they first started, but when he did, he stopped at a little over a hundred. There were only a few more blue-clad figures yet to come by that time, and then Dafydd would be alone once more. Those who had knelt before him had gone back over the crest and vanished. The thought reminded Jim of the crowds that had walked with them earlier, but withdrawn when the King's troop approached. He looked. They, also, were gone now.
As Jim turned back, the last archer put his cap on, turned, and left. As he vanished over the crest, Dafydd came back to Jim and Brian, mounting without a word but with a set face.
"Let us on!" said Brian.
Above them the improbable sun, that should not shine under hundreds of fathoms of seawater, was lowering toward the west.
They lifted their reins and moved together up the road, Jim and Brian moving forward to ride one on each side of Dafydd. He himself was sitting his horse like a man in deep thought, his eyes unfocused on the road ahead.
The silence was complete. Jim found some obstinate twentieth-century part of him rebelling against the King's almost unnatural horror of Lyonesse. He knew magic existed in this world—who better? But none of it cold be so terrible as to be beyond explanation—
"Thank you, Sir Brian, Sir James," Dafydd unexpectedly said.
"Hah!" said Brian—that convenient, one-syllable sound for dealing with moments of high emotion or tension.
"No need for thanks, Dafydd," said Jim.
Dafydd became silent again, and they rode along with no further words until they had rounded the next curve in the road. Then, unexpectedly, Dafydd spoke again.
"It is only right," he said, "that you should know what the King said to me, now that you have promised not to speak to anyone else of what you have seen and heard here."
"Not necessary, dammit!" said Brian.
"Nonetheless, it would please me to tell you. You do not mind hearing?"
"Of course not," said Jim.
"The way of it is," said Dafydd, looking down at his horse's ears, "that he mentioned many things to do with my ancient lineage here, and those of my blood who still exist—as you saw. But there was more than that. He is this land's King, of a direct line of the Kingship as long as folk can remember. But that line has dwindled—"
Without warning, it was as if they passed through an invisible, impalpable wall. Nothing around them seemed changed. The sun shone as bright as ever from the same sky. But—
"We approach our border with Lyonesse," said Dafydd, with no change in his voice. "To continue. His line dwindled with his children. His three sons all died, two before they were yet men, and his two daughters sickened of an illness that no one in the land could understand, and died also, less than a dozen winters ago. No grandchild was born.
"He is an old man; and he sees this Land, which we both love, he and I, left Kingless. My family is closest to the throne. I am its head—insofar as it has a head, since I live not here, but elsewhere. So he wished me to stay, bringing my wife and children here, and to take up the duties of King after he was gone."
Neither Brian nor Jim said anything. There was nothing to say.
"I told him," said Dafydd, looking straight ahead at the white road that now ran into a crowded forest of dark trees, whose leafless branches, tangled together, coated both slopes so thickly that the earth beneath was lost to sight in deep shadow within a few steps.
"I said to him that while I felt the pull of a duty here, I felt the pull of a stronger one elsewhere. My life is not in this Land; it is above, in the world we know, with my wife and children, as Dafydd the Master Bowman, not Dafydd the King. For me, being a Master Bowman is more than being King, and I would not want to bring up my sons and my daughters in this lost and drowned land, but in the world where life and history go forward."
The road narrowed, and the branches of trees on either side began to meet above.
"A man must choose," said Brian, after a while. "That is the way God ordained life to be for us. There can be no hesitation in such choosing."
They rode into the full shadow of the forest; and while there was nothing fearful or strange about that shadow, yet in some way it seemed to come between them. So that they each rode on, isolated, talking no more and, in Jim's case, deeply immersed in thought.
The stone road they had been following had some time back given way to a smaller road of white dust, which had narrowed from there to the width of a simple path, so that they had come to ride separately. Brian had moved to the front at that point, without discussion; Jim came next, and Dafydd third, with the sumpter-horse.
Their road dwindled further, to the point where it was scarcely more than a trail that faded out from time to time, so that they had to remain alert as they went—although the horses seemed perfectly confident that they were traveling straight ahead, as if on a familiar road, and Brian also did not seem to feel any doubt about how they were going.
The black, sparsely leaved trees, meanwhile, had closed in around them, almost as if they would like to reach down and hold anyone passing. Silver light filtered through the intertwined branches and
illuminated their way dimly, but well enough, as their eyes adjusted, that they had no trouble seeing where they went.
Jim's mind was occupied by the last words Dafydd had spoken about his decision not to be a King—and Brian's immediate agreement with them. When he and Angie had decided to stay here in the fourteenth century rather than return to their own native twentieth century, Jim had never thought he could have any serious difficulty handling whatever problems might come up: if he did not know how to deal with one to start with, he could easily learn how—after all, learning had been his life from his earliest childhood.
But lately, there had come this problem of the changed attitude of the Malencontri servants. It was a problem that involved all sorts of things that the people of this time took for granted—one of the strongest being that the way things always had been, so they must go on being forever.
"It stands not different in the memory of man" his tenants would quote to him, when he wanted them to try a new way of doing anything at all. Theirs was the way they had done it all their lives.
It was an argument against which nothing he could say had any force. Any change, to them, would be turning the world upside-down.
It was, he thought now, simply Reality slapping him in the face for not paying proper attention. Only when he recognized how greatly he had to adjust to be at home in this earlier culture, had he finally realized how badly suited he was for life in this era.
It was probably not surprising that it had taken him this long to figure it out: he had never been a person given to self-doubt. In his own way, he was almost as brash as Brian, who never seemed to have a doubt in the world.
Needing to raise money to pay the bride-price demanded by Geronde's father, Brian had cheerfully joined what amounted to an insurrection against his King—in spite of his feeling of utter and complete loyalty to that King. How he had justified it to himself Jim still did not understand; but undoubtedly, knowing Brian, the conscience that had to deal with it was at rest.
Now, for the first time, Jim had begun to feel doubt creeping out into other areas. Perhaps he was not up to this business of trying to find and rescue young Robert—
Suddenly they emerged from the trees into a clearing. The sparse grass under the feet of their horses ended abruptly in a line at which another type of landscape started—a stony, forbidding landscape, though thick with stunted trees. A silver light coldly flooded all he looked upon; and something like a white sun was barely visible above the trees.
But it was not just this that had jolted him so suddenly from his self-examination. It was a voice, calling out to them.
"Stop!" cried the voice—and it belonged to Carolinus.
Chapter Twenty-One
What struck Jim immediately was that Carolinus looked as if he had been in a fight with a bear. His red robe was ragged and stained along the bottom edge. His face looked gaunt and weary, as if he had gone without sleep. But his voice was as strong as ever.
He was, however, still only a projection rather than a living three-dimensional actual Carolinus. Jim, Brian, and Dafydd had all automatically reined in their horses at his first word. Now, they stared at him, seemingly standing about half a foot off the ground, and perhaps ten feet in front of them. His eyes did not so much look at them as past them, as if he could not see them.
"Before you enter Lyonesse, you must hear a warning." His voice rang oddly—formal and oracular. "Note well that you are about to enter a black-and-silver Land, where none but those colors exist. Keep always alert that what is around you remains black-and-silver. Little by little, it may seem to fade toward the colors of an ordinary world. But before the black-and-silver is gone completely, be you gone yourselves! If you wait until you see no more black-and-silver, but all seems as if it were seen in honest sunlight, you have already been captured. You can never go home to stay. You will have to remain in Lyonesse forever. Now, I must—"
"Still!" shouted Jim, pointing his finger at the red-robed magician. It was a forlorn hope, almost a desperate reflex action, to keep Carolinus from disappearing again; as Jim had suddenly felt sure he would, once he stopped speaking. It produced an odd result.
The projection broke off at the last word spoken before Jim interrupted it, and suddenly Carolinus was starting again from the beginning, repeating the same words.
"Stop! Before you enter Lyonesse…"
The image of Carolinus continued, to the point where Jim had stopped it, and wound up suddenly in the magician's ordinary, testy tone and everyday speech pattern "… must go because I have only a moment to talk to you. But let me say one more thing. Lyonesse is a Land of Magick, old, old Magick. Do not trust what you see. A dwarf may be a giant, a hovel may be a castle, or a castle a hovel. A maiden in distress may be indeed a maiden in distress—but also might be a deadly foe. Where you see one knight, there may be twenty. I must leave now. Fare—"
There was a bright flash of red, even as Jim quickly repeated his earlier command, but this time it had no effect—Carolinus winked out like a suddenly snuffed candle.
Jim looked at Brian and Dafydd on their horses beside him, suddenly feeling guilty. He was the only one who had a real duty to cross this border, and it might be that he should go on alone. Just in time he checked himself from suggesting it, realizing that instead of welcoming the proposal, they would be offended by his making it.
He was learning, he thought grimly to himself. Perversely, that realization made him feel better.
"What think you, James," said Brian. "Is there any lesson we should take from this, before we go forward?"
"Well," said Jim, "it's clear that we should be careful." He paused to think for a moment, then went on: "It also seems that it would be dangerous to prolong our stay in this Lyonesse place; so we should try to move through it as fast as is possible."
His friends nodded solemnly, naturally, they would look to him for decision, where things magical were concerned. "In fact," he said, looking up at the sky, "it seems to me that the evening is coming upon us. If we proceed into Lyonesse, we'll soon have to make camp for the night—don't you think it might be better if we go back a little way, to stop overnight? Then we can enter Lyonesse with a full day to move through it."
They rode back beyond the dark forest to make their camp; but they found no water and so made a dry camp in a fold between two bare hillsides. They talked little, and in the morning Jim wondered if Brian and Dafydd had slept as badly as he.
As they mounted once more, Jim looked at his friends somberly. "I'll keep my eye out to protect us from anything like Carolinus mentioned, any deception of magic. But it'd be best if we all watched for the change in the color, as Carolinus said."
"Amen," said Brian; and Jim thought he heard Dafydd echo him, but in a much lower tone.
They lifted the reins and rode forward, Jim wincing internally as he did so. The other two had utter faith in his ability to make decisions in this area, and he now found it bothered him greatly. This was something new; a part of his new sensitivity to the way people around him reacted. He had not been made uncomfortable by their complete belief in him before.
Maybe, in this case, it was also that, so recently, Brian had demonstrated his ability to make a hard decision swiftly and surely—and stick with it. And Dafydd had, only a short distance from here, also faced a like hard decision; and been firm and immediate in rejecting what was offered to him.
It was not just that these two seemed decisive where he was not. Everyone in this medieval world seemed to show that ability. Their decisions might end up being wrong, but they were made without hesitation and were stuck to. These people did not wander around in their own heads as he seemed to do, worrying about finding the right answer.
Lost in his own thoughts, Jim came to himself to realize that they had again reached the spot where the projection of Carolinus had appeared; but nothing happened this time. They moved on into Lyonesse.
Silence surrounded them in this wood—no sound of birds singing
, no leaves rustling, not even the soft breathing of a breeze among the branches and tree trunks. But he began to be aware of a sound, irritating to him in the stillness, like the buzzing of a particularly annoying insect. It began to resolve into a voice talking some distance off, insistently and even pompously.
He roused himself enough to make out what the voice was actually saying. It was Hob's voice.
"—And I said to him," the hobgoblin's voice was announcing, " 'Varlet' I said to him, 'I am Hob-One de Malencontri, and you…"
Jim tried to close his mind to the words, but now that he had tracked the sound to its lair, he found himself paying attention to it, whether he wanted to or not. Hob, of course, was boasting about his experiences at the Earl of Somerset's Castle last Christmas, and how he had lorded it over that Castle's Hob, who only had for name the simple three-letter one by which all hobgoblins were called.
Happily, since Hill either could not talk, or talked by some strange mode that Jim could not perceive, there was only one voice for Jim to endure. It ought to be possible to shut it out by picking something that would keep his mind off it.
But then an inspiration occurred to him. The question of how Hob and, earlier, Rrrnlf, had talked back and forth with Hill, and how Hill could talk to them, was a puzzle that had to have a solution. So far, in this world of magic, he had found nothing so mysterious that it did not have some kind of a rational solution.
Was it possible that Hill was sending some kind of signals in a way other than with his voice, and both Rrrnlf and Hob were reading those signals without realizing they were doing anything unusual?
It was certainly a possibility, but no sooner had he thought of this than objections began to occur to him. Certainly Hob, if not Rrrnlf, would have realized by this time that Jim was not picking up the signals, and tell him about the different way Hill "talked."