The Dragon and the Gnarly King

  "Oh, pray forgive me, Mage." Attending to that particularly male piece of apparel, Edgar came up to them, hesitated, and then sat down in one of the unpadded chairs.

  "It gladdens my heart to see you, Mage," he said. Under the lank hair, his spade-shaped face was managing to smile broadly while preserving a sort of background look of suspicion and insecurity. The kind of appearance, Jim thought, that you might not like to find on someone you had trusted to handle a large sum of money for you.

  "Don't waste my time, Edgar," said Barron. "Do you know the Lady Agatha Falon?"

  "Why, we aren't close," said Edgar, holding on to his smile. "But then, she spends so much of her time with His Majesty and the other people of importance here at Court. I am a Gentleman of the King's Chamber, of course, but she is kept far too busy by those far above my station. I would not presume—"

  "Never mind your presumption," said Barron. "We want to know about her. Is she here all the time?"

  "Oh, she hardly ever leaves the Court," said Edgar, "even to go into London to someplace like the Spanish Ambassador's ball, or an important dinner. I can get a message to her, if you like."

  "I do not like," said Barron. "What I would like is information, as I said. Whom does she have about her? I do not mean servants, I mean lesser gentlemen who serve her in small ways?"

  "Why, there are many who would seek her favor," said Edgar. The smile had finally vanished, but the appearance of closeness and secrecy was still in his face. "You don't mean those of rank like the Earl of Cumberland, for example?"

  "No, no," said Barron. "I said lesser gentlemen, did I not? Besides, I thought you told us it was his Majesty she was interested in."

  "Oh, it is, Mage," said Edgar. "But she is on very good terms with people like Cumberland and Gloucester and the Despensers. But there are many of lesser rank who hope to gain from her favor, since she is so welcome to his Majesty."

  "Jim," commanded Barron, "describe those two men to him."

  "Certainly, Mage," said Jim. "If you think it's wise."

  "Wise? Wise?" snapped Barron.

  "I'm afraid I don't know much about this gentleman," said Jim.

  "What of it?" said Barron. "He's perfectly harmless—to us. As I told you, he's Edgar de Wiggin—actually a bastard son left behind by a member of a Spanish Embassy. He is tolerated here at Court as a private communication channel between the English Throne and the Spanish. He speaks Spanish and does a little spying on Spanish visitors to Court, for the King. His position as a member of the King's Wardrobe is in name only. That's all he is—a penniless petty Baron, actually."

  Jim felt slightly nettled. He was, himself, among the pettiest of Barons; but it was not a good idea to show irritation just now.

  "I'd like to find two men," he said to Edgar. "One is in his twenties, with lighter-colored hair and a rather silky, youthful sort of goatee, and a little mustache. He wears fashionable clothes, stands almost six feet tall, and has a ferret-like face with over-large, protruding front teeth. He does not look much like a warrior. The other is at least twenty years older, about five feet six inches tall, and slightly stooped in the shoulders. He has greying hair and a little mustache. Neither one had any particular scars or marks on their faces, or signs of disease like smallpox."

  "Sir," said Edgar, "may I ask what they were wearing?"

  Jim had forgotten that here in the fourteenth century, if you were in a situation where your best suit of clothes was required, you lived in them day after day, with only an occasional stab at brushing or cleaning by some servant; until the day came when they were too worn, stained, or ragged to appear in. Then you did your best to obtain a newer garment, giving away or selling the older one—and proceeded to live in the new one for as long as it would last. The clothes he had seen the two wearing in Lyonesse were probably the only clothes they had been seen in lately.

  "I can't tell you the colors," Jim said, remembering for the first time that he had only seen those men in Lyonesse, where all was black-and-silver. "The younger wears a cote-hardie, and the older a mantle that covered much of his clothing."

  Edgar stared at Jim, and then slowly shook his head. "There are several gentlemen of the height and age you describe who could each be wearing such clothing as you mention," he said.

  "Well, then, we're going to have to go look at them," said Jim, a little more sharply than he had planned. It was true Kineteté had promised to get him back to the Throne Room of the Gnarly King quickly, but he had a sinking feeling that things here were threatening to become too complicated to handle in short order.

  "Exactly," said Barron, getting to his feet. "You go with him, Jim. Edgar, you take him to see anyone who could possibly fit that description. If at any time you want me, Jim, call me. I'm sure you know how to do that. Carolinus must have taught you that, at least."

  Jim had actually taught it to himself. But he held his tongue again, and, in fact, he did not have time to say anything because Barron had already disappeared.

  "If you will come along with me then, Sir," said Edgar de Wiggin.

  Jim followed him out into a narrow, musty, stone hallway. Edgar continued to lead the way.

  "I'm afraid that Mage Barron forgot to name you to me, Sir," said Edgar as they went.

  "That's right, he didn't," said Jim. "I'm Sir James Eckert, Baron de Bois de Malencontri in the Shire of Somerset."

  "I am honored to have your acquaintance, Sir James," said Edgar.

  "And I yours, Sir Edgar," said Jim, automatically

  The other looked embarrassed.

  "I pray you will not be offended to learn—to discover this, Sir James," he said. "But I have never been knighted."

  "You haven't?" said Jim, genuinely astonished. So far, in this century, he had never encountered anyone of gentle rank, male, and of fighting age, who was not a knight—unless he was clearly on his way to eventual knighthood or in Holy Orders.

  "I am afraid not, Sir James," said Edgar, as they started down a long flight of steep stairs built into a tall stone wall. "The King knights people here at Court—occasionally. It is a great mark of favor. Since knighthood conferred by the King is of such high value, it is generally felt that it would be offensive to his Majesty for anyone else—even though they might have the rank and right of knighting worthy individuals—to dub anyone knight at Court. Consequently, knighthood has never come my way."

  He fell silent; and, since Jim could think of nothing to say to this, they went on. They did not speak, in fact, until they had reached the ground level and gone out to their right through a doorway with an arched top. Beyond this, they were in something that might have been the very courtyard down on which Edgar's bedroom had looked.

  "Ah, tennis!" said Jim, pleased that his guess had been correct.

  "Pray forgive me, Sir James," said Edgar, "but it is merely rakets. One of the two men you mentioned, the young one, may be standing over there watching along the right side of the court. Do you see him?"

  Jim looked and saw a tall young man, but his hair was pale and he in no way resembled either of those Jim remembered seeing just before the giants with clubs moved in on them.

  "No," said Jim. "That's not the man."

  "Pray forgive me, Sir. We will search farther."

  So they did. Moving about through dingy hallways and scantly populated courtyards, Edgar turned up three more possible candidates for the role of the younger man, and two for the role of the older man; but Jim shook his head at all of them.

  "Pray forgiveness for asking, Sir James," said Edgar, "but are you completely sure that one of those we have looked at could not be one of those you saw? It is easily possible that even a good pair of eyes may make a mistake over something seen in a quick glance."

  "I'm sure," said Jim. "We'll go on looking."

  "Very well, Sir James. This way, if you please."

  This time Edgar led him up a staircase, stepping off it at the first level above ground. He conducted Jim down a long, rather narrow s
tone passage, that was also, Jim found, very dusty, as if it was not normally used. Jim sneezed twice and Edgar made sympathetic noises.

  "Just the dust," said Jim.

  "I am relieved to hear it," said Edgar. He had lagged a little bit behind Jim. "It is not too much farther to the next person I would show you. But the corridor is somewhat narrow here, so perhaps you should walk ahead of me—"

  The corridor was indeed narrowing, and Jim stepped out ahead. What warned him, even as he did so, he was never quite sure, but he suddenly started to turn around. In the same moment, he was struck a heavy blow high on the right side of his back. He staggered slightly and finished his turn to see Edgar standing, legs apart and staring in what could be either shock or fear. The sheath at his belt that held the knife he, like everyone else, carried—for purposes of eating and any other need that might arise—was empty.

  It did not take the sight of an empty sheath to give Jim a full understanding of what had happened. He was already beginning to feel the effects of shock, though there was no pain. There was a definite feeling of something on or in his back.

  He had apparently turned just in time, so that while the knife had gone in and was still there, it had struck and gone in at an angle, not as it had been aimed. He could feel his strength going, and a film was starting to obscure his vision. He lifted a heavy hand and thought, at least, that he had it pointed in Edgar's direction.

  "Still! " he managed to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Edgar did not even have time to change his expression. He was suddenly halted, frozen, awkwardly balanced in the act of turning to run, a frightened look on his long face.

  Leaning against the wall to keep from falling, Jim tried to reach for the knife still in his back, to pull it out. But it was in a difficult position, high on his back and apparently either in deeply, or somehow caught inside his body, chain-mail shirt, or clothes, so that it would not come out easily. He could barely get the fingertips of one hand on it. There was no hope of getting a grip firm enough to pull it out.

  There was nothing in magic that he could think of at the moment that could help him, but simply focusing his attention on what he was doing might help. He went through the same process of trying to visualize as he did in creating magic, but in this moment it was a major effort to think.

  He imagined himself with the mistiness that was threatening his eyesight pushed back so that it formed a globe within which he stood, and within that globe he could think clearly. There was still no pain, although he seemed to feel something unnatural inside him where no such thing should be. It felt like a weight pulling backward and downward—in fact, it felt like more of a weight than it possibly could be.

  He would have to make use of Edgar.

  "Edgar," he said out loud, turning his back once more on the man, "your body from the waist up is free. The rest of you stays still. You will take hold of the handle of your knife and pull it out of me. You will do that and nothing else. Now, stretch one arm out as far as you can."

  He looked over his shoulder. It was almost eerie. Edgar's arm slowly extended, as if it had a life of its own. Jim lost sight of its hand behind his shoulder.

  "Now," he said. "With your hand out like that, tell me as soon as your fingers touch the hilt of your knife—you can speak now, too," he added.

  He felt the weight in his back increase.

  "Are you touching the knife now?" he asked.

  "Yes," gasped Edgar. "Mage, I did not know you were a Magickian. I should have known by Mage Barron bringing you to me. Believe me, Mage, if I had known—"

  "Never mind that!" said Jim. "Have you got a grip on the hilt?"

  "Yes, Mage."

  "Then pull the damn thing out, now! Easy…"

  "Yes, Mage—yes, I understand. I'll get it out just as neatly…" Edgar ran out of words.

  "PULL, goddamn you!" said Jim.

  He felt himself tugged backward, and braced himself to stay on his feet. The pull stopped suddenly, and he almost overbalanced forward. However, he caught himself in time, and immediately visualized the blood vessels in the wound closing up. He turned, to see Edgar still standing, completely paralyzed by Jim's magic order, except for his one arm, with the bloody-bladed knife in his hand.

  "Throw the knife from you!" said Jim.

  Edgar obeyed, clumsily, and the knife clattered through the dust twenty feet down the hall.

  "Unfreeze." said Jim.

  Nothing happened; and after a moment Jim realized his mistake in using the wrong command. But on second thought, he decided to leave the other as he was for the moment.

  Ignoring the motionless Edgar, Jim began to concentrate on visualizing the wound in him as healing—torn tissues knitting together, the previously sealed blood vessels linking up, infectious material vanishing—just as he had envisioned the healing of Brian's wound up in Cumberland. He felt a brief stab of pain, then nothing for a long moment; then a steady ache began to spread out over the whole area of his back. He reached back to feel at the area, and touched wetness. Blood. He concentrated on making that vanish as well, and felt to see if the area was now dry. It was. He turned his back once more on Edgar

  "Is there any blood showing?"

  "No, Mage."

  Jim turned back to face him.

  "All right," he said—though things were actually very far from being all right. The ache in his back, the mist that hovered on the edges of his vision and the fogginess in his head that made thinking difficult, were threatening to overwhelm him. He felt very unsteady on his legs. "Do you know of an empty room somewhere close with a bed, where I can recline, or lie down?"

  "Yes, Mage," said Edgar timidly. "But—"

  "But what?"

  "But we'd have to go back down the stairs and into another part of the building. This wing is empty; it has not been used for some years."

  "That's why you brought me here to knife me," said Jim. "So nobody would find my body in a hurry!"

  "Yes, Mage." Edgar's voice almost squeaked on the words.

  "In this room you know of," said Jim, "is there anything that you know well enough to tell me exactly what it looks like? A chair, the bed itself, something in the room, a tapestry on the wall—"

  "Well," said Edgar slowly, "there is one chair with a broken back—one of the plain wood chairs. Just one side of the back is broken away from the seat. The other's all right."

  "What color and size is it?" said Jim. "Compared to the chairs that were in your rooms?"

  "It was just like the ones in my rooms. The same color, too, Mage."

  "All right." Jim summoned up a mental image of one of the unpadded chairs in Edgar's room, imagined one with its back broken on one side, and reached out for the nearest room that had such a chair. The view in his visualization seemed to open out to show a bedroom that had just a table and one other unpadded chair, plus the bed.

  Magically he moved himself and Edgar to it. He found the bed only a couple of steps away, and staggered those two steps. As he started to crawl onto the bed, he recalled the likelihood that it would contain vermin such as fleas and lice, and he laid down a ward to seal them within the bed's fabrics themselves.

  Lying half on his side, he propped himself against the headboard, with the help of a pillow. The pillow did not help the pain in his back; but the happiness of getting his weight off his legs and being able to cease the effort to stand upright, was tremendous.

  Jim sighed with relief, and then took a deep breath to fill his lungs again. He sneezed explosively.

  For the first time, he realized that the room was thick with dust and that the pillow he had put up behind him had also been dusty, so that now he was surrounded by a dust cloud.

  "Edgar, would there be anyone at all in either of your rooms right now?" he asked.

  "No, Mage," said Edgar, and added more cautiously "—I don't think so."

  "There better not be," said Jim grimly. Edgar's bedroom, with its bed and all its pillows and blankets—n
ice and clean, relatively speaking—came sharp to his mind's eye. Magically he switched them to that, moving himself and his anti-bug ward directly into Edgar's bed. He propped himself up against the headboard with a pillow behind him.

  He sighed again. This time there was no sneeze, and the relief was even greater. It seemed to him that the pain in his back had begun to lessen slightly.

  He was suddenly aware of Edgar standing unnaturally still near the bed, his arm still outstretched but sagging. Jim's head was definitely clearing, and he thought now that he had really gone about this business of handling the knifing in a very clumsy fashion. But all that was necessary now was to put a ward around himself and the bed, with another around the inside walls of the room, so that Edgar couldn't get out, and then they could both relax.

  He set up the two wards, specifying that he and Edgar would be able to talk back and forth through them; and then looked at Edgar almost with a touch of compassion.

  "Unstill," he said. Edgar slumped suddenly, almost collapsing. "Sit down in a chair."

  Edgar made a short step to a chair and dropped into it, where he sat huddled up and catching his breath. Jim watched him, thinking what Brian's opinion, for example, would be of someone like Edgar being considered for knighthood.

  Now that he was secure, Jim himself began to feel a serious exhaustion. It suddenly struck him that he hadn't slept or eaten for quite a long time. Back in the cave of the Gnarly King, he, Dafydd, and Brian, at least, had probably been too keyed up to think of food and sleep.

  He opened his mouth to tell Edgar to call a servant and order food, or go himself to get some. Then he realized that he'd have to figure out what to do about the wards he had set up to protect himself, and to keep Edgar inside. Resolutely he put sleep and food from him while he thought about it.

  The important thing was, he was now safe—with the wards about him there was nothing anybody could do to him—in fact, all the forces that this castle might be able to call upon would be unable to reach him. And the more he thought about it, the more sure he was that Edgar would almost surely obey orders—for the present, at least.