The Dragon and the Gnarly King

  "Closer to the truth, anyway," said Jim. "All right, from now on you will answer me truthfully, or else. Next question: are there any secret passages between Agatha Falon's rooms and the Earl of Cumberland's?"

  "Mage, I swear by God I have no knowledge of secret passages here or anywhere! There is always talk of them, but I know nothing with certainty. Nothing!"

  "Yet you told me that you went into a room Agatha'd entered, and found no one there, and that you knew the room was empty because you searched for secret passages."

  "I lied about that, too, Mage," said Edgar unhappily. "I really do not know about secret passages. There is some talk of a passage between the Earl of Cumberland's and the King's suites, and more talk, of course, of secret passages from the King's suites to other areas of the Castle—and even to without the walls, so that he may come and go secretly. But I have no true knowledge."

  "Then we'd better find out right now," said Jim. "Take me to Cumberland's quarters, to the place where they come up against, or close to, the King's area."

  "But, Mage," said Edgar, "I cannot take you openly through the Castle and to that part where are the rooms of the King, as you are. You carry sword and poignard at your belt, and are wearing a mail shirt—to say nothing of the fact that your face is not known about Court." He paused, and seemed to swallow before continuing.

  "—Before, I took care to take you only in areas little-frequented and far from the King—places where a stranger would not look too unusual. But if you—armed and unknown—come close to him, we should both be challenged and thrown into chains, without question, immediately!"

  "Were those also places you knew would not be frequented by the men I was seeking?" Jim asked.

  Edgar cringed, and nodded rather shakily.

  "Well, it makes no difference for the moment," said Jim. "I'll make both of us invisible and inaudible."

  In his mind's eye he envisioned the room they were in, with Edgar and himself still in it, but the room appearing absolutely empty. Once he had thought it impossible to make himself—or anything else—invisible, but had found a way to accomplish a similar effect in another way. But with experience, he could now do it more simply.

  "But, Mage—by your favor—we aren't invisible," said Edgar in a small voice. "I can see you clearly, and I can see parts of myself."

  "That's right," said Jim. "I can see you, and you can see me, and we can see ourselves. But nobody else can see us. You have to take care that anyone else we meet doesn't walk into you, thinking there's nothing there. We don't want people to know we're there."

  "No, Mage," said Edgar. "Of course not."

  "Well, lead me to the Earl of Cumberland's suite, then."

  Edgar led him back down to the courtyard where another game was in progress, although with fewer spectators. From there they took a different doorway and a long passage; another stairway; more corridors… and, eventually, a wider, cleaner set of stairs than any they had yet climbed.

  Atop these, they entered a wide corridor. A long walk, but it had taken Jim's mind off the ache in his back.

  In this corridor servants were coming and going, with full or empty trays, or, occasionally, articles of clothing.

  "Can they hear us?" Edgar whispered in Jim's ear.

  Jim shook his head.

  "They can't hear us either," he said in his ordinary voice. "Now show me where the Earl of Cumberland's quarters end and the King's begin."

  Edgar stared at him.

  "Well?" demanded Jim.

  "Mage, I—I don't know where it is," he said. "In fact, I don't know exactly where the Earl of Cumberland's quarters are."

  "Hell's bells!"

  "In fact, Mage," said Edgar miserably, "I'm not even sure which doors might open on the quarters of any Lord here. You see, someone of little importance like me… I—I've never been here before. This is my first time."

  Jim stared at him. Edgar shrank back.

  "If you could give me a couple of weeks," he said hastily, "possibly I could ferret it out and give you the information—"

  "Hell's bells!" said Jim again, realized he was repeating himself, and moved them both back to Edgar's room so fast that Edgar wobbled a little on his feet and gasped uncertainly. Jim looked around the room.

  "Get me a bowl of clean water," he ordered. "No, wait, you'd take too long."

  He searched his memory for a moment, trying to remember where at Malencontri or anyplace else he'd seen the kind of bowl he wanted. One came to mind—a bowl in Carolinus' cottage. The idea of taking any of Carolinus' belongings made him feel uncomfortable. But then, he reminded himself, Carolinus was locked in a cage and might never get out unless Jim did something about it. He visualized the bowl he had in mind—one of a sea-green ceramic material with a high scalloped rim and small fish set inside it. It appeared on the table before him.

  "Get me some water," he said to Edgar. "Clean water!"

  Edgar hurried into the next room, and came back with a leather pitcher. He offered it to Jim.

  "Thanks," said Jim shortly. He poured from the pitcher into the bowl, but immediately saw that the water was full of small floating bits of something—possibly leather, but possibly something worse.

  Jim picked up the bowl and, with Brian's best sort of casual gesture, tossed its contents on the floor. He set the bowl back down on the table.

  "Go back to Carolinus' cottage," he told the bowl. "Rinse yourself thoroughly in the pool of the Fountain of Tinkling Water. Then come back to me, filled with clean water."

  The bowl vanished and was back almost immediately, filled to the brim with water so clean it shamed the room around it.

  "Now, we're getting someplace," said Jim. He pulled up a chair, sat down at the table, and focused on the surface of the water. He was no longer in the Gnarly Kingdom, and his magic ought to enable him to look in on the cave of the King and everyone there.

  It was scrying, of course, as he had seen it done by Abu al-Qusayr, when Jim, with Brian, was hunting for Geronde's father. The Eastern magician had used a bowl of water rather than the crystal globe which Carolinus and most northern European magicians used. Jim concentrated, and the scene in the cave formed before his eyes, everyone in it apparently motionless.

  Hill still stood facing the King, who was leaning out from his throne—obviously they were still in argument. Jim puzzled a moment over why nobody seemed to be moving, then he dismissed the problem—he had suspected, from stories he had heard, that sometimes time was different between Kingdoms.

  He looked for Hob and did not see him, until he peered more carefully at the sumpter-horse, dozing on its feet, and saw Hob's little face barely peeking out from under the weather-cover

  Now the question became whether his magic could reach into the King's cave. The best way to find out was to try what had come to his mind. There was every reason it shouldn't work, since it could be thought of as trying to make magic in a Kingdom where foreign magic was not allowed. But then, Carolinus had somehow sent his projection, and that implied his Master-in-Magic had some way of taking at least some of his magic to the Gnarly Kingdom.

  Foreign magic might not work on anything physical in another Kingdom, but maybe it could on something that was pure energy.

  "A puff of smoke, six cubic inches," Jim commanded—and such a puff appeared, hovering in the air before him.

  "Now," he told it, "everything physical about you will cease to be. Only the energy in you will remain."

  The small cloud of smoke bobbed in the air for a second or two, uncertainly. Then it disappeared.

  "And now," he told the space where he had last seen it, pointing at the apparently motionless little face peeking out from under the cover of the sumpter-horse, "go to him!" Hastily he prepared magic to make Hob as invisible as he and Edgar were.

  For a long moment nothing seemed to happen. Then Hob's face suddenly seemed to speed up, changing in expression to startlement. A second later, Hob himself, wearing a grin, appeared before Jim; and
the thin air beneath him suddenly became a puff of smoke. He launched himself to Jim's nearest shoulder, throwing both his arms around Jim's neck as he arrived.

  "M'Lord! I knew you sent that smoke! I knew you did. I rode it right back to you!" he said, hugging Jim's neck fiercely with both arms.

  "Guk!" said Jim.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, m'Lord!" said Hob, loosening his grip. "Did I seize you too stoutly? I'm so glad to see you! How did you get here? What is this place? Who's he—"

  Hob pointed at Edgar.

  "Name's Edgar," said Jim, on his first lungful of air. "—Wait a minute."

  He had just remembered the bowl which he had used to scry the Gnarly cave. Carolinus might raise a fuss if it was lost or stolen—though it was obviously an old bowl and unimportant. At the same time, Jim might need it again. Not only the bowl, but its sparkling-clear Tinkling Water.

  "You—" he pointed at it, "stay with me, but be inaudible and invisible; and none of your water is to fall out. That's a magical command."

  The bowl disappeared. "Now," said Jim, turning back to Hob, "what were you asking me?"

  "With your pardon, m'Lord," answered Hob, a little timidly, "I just asked who he was. But you told me. He is an Edgar."

  "Oh," said Jim. "I meant his name was Edgar. Look—I'll explain things later. We're in the King's Castle near London. It's a very big place; but if we find a fireplace, can you go into it, and ride up and down chimneys until you find some secret passages in the wall?"

  "Of course, m'Lord," said Hob. "Your Lordship knows that!"

  "Well, that's what I want you to do. I'll take you to as close as we were able to get before—remember now, we're all invisible and we can talk, but nobody can hear us talk." They were suddenly back again in the corridor busy with servants.

  "Invisible, really, m'Lord?"

  "Yes, really, and you can loosen up on my neck again."

  "Very sorry, m'Lord."

  "Now," Jim went on. "Somewhere along here there're the rooms of the Earl of Cumberland. They end at a wall, on the other side of which we'll find all the rooms of the King. I'm sure there has to be a secret passage through that wall. Do you think you can find it?"

  "Oh, yes, m'Lord," said Hob. "If I just have a place to start—like a fireplace?"

  "Well…" Jim turned around and, as luck would have it, not too far away, a servant was carrying a tray to a door. It was a tray that required both hands, so that he had to rather balance it in mid-air with one hand, while scratching on the door. He waited—and in that moment of waiting, Jim reached him, with Hob on his shoulder, and Edgar close behind.

  The servant opened the door and shouldered his way in, reaching back with an elbow to try to pull the door closed behind him. It gave a slight swing inward; but Jim caught it with invisible fingertips, and he, Hob, and Edgar slipped through.

  "Close that door!" snarled a voice.

  Jim had heard that voice before—in France. He had been trying to stop a potentially bloody battle between the English and French armies; and, with the help of the French Dragons, as well as both Prince Edward and Carolinus, had succeeded—though the encounter had managed to be bloody enough. But in the aftermath of the affair, Jim had earned the enmity of an Earl.

  The speaker was a large burly man with a round, greying head of hair and a short-cropped greying beard on a square, heavy-boned face—his body bulky in red velvet cote-hardie and hose and his face set in a scowl that made the beard jut forward belligerently: Robert de Clifford, the Earl of Cumberland—the same man who had refused to allow Jim and Brian to take the body of their friend, Giles, to the sea for the burial he had wanted.

  Clearly, Jim thought, nothing had changed with the Earl, in any way.

  The servant they had followed carefully put his platter down on a table in front of the Earl. Jim and his party continued across the room, to pass invisibly through a half-open door that might lead them to the connecting wall with the King's quarters. Jim was deep in thought as he went.

  Agatha Falon did not like Angie, or him, at all—it would not be going too far to say that she hated both of them with a vicious hatred—simply because they had thwarted her plans to inherit the vast Falon estates by controlling or murdering her baby nephew, Robert.

  It was bad enough to be up against Agatha alone, now that she was apparently reinstated as the King's favorite. It was much worse if she were also working, somehow, with one of the King's chief Advisors—perhaps the most important of them—and him already disposed to be an enemy to Jim.

  But Jim still could not understand how Agatha could have persuaded the Gnarly King to steal Robert for her, or how she could have gotten to Lyonesse to try to ambush Jim and his party.

  While Jim pondered this, he and his party had passed through two rooms and still not come up against a wall with no door in it—a lack indicating a dividing wall between suites of rooms. But as they headed for the next door, it opened before them.

  Through it appeared the King himself, walking heavily right at them—not seeing them at all, of course—and, Jim supposed, heading toward a meeting with the Earl of Cumberland.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  There was no doubt he was the King. Edward Plantagenet, under God King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Brittany, Duke of Carabella, Prince of Tours, Prince of the Two Sicilies—and too many other places for Jim to remember right at the moment—had been a tall, soldierly Royal-appearing figure in his early manhood.

  Now, the years had shrunk him and padded his lower figure with fat. He wore no crown; but, though his mustache and beard were untidy and stained with wine—as was his mulberry-colored gown—the golden belt around his waist, although naked of sword or poignard, proclaimed him no common man. He advanced, if unsteadily, still with the authority of someone who owned the ground he walked on—which, legally, of course he did. And all the other ground in the Kingdom, too.

  Moving quietly, Edgar, and Jim with Hob on his shoulder, got out of the Royal way and watched him go in the direction from which they had just come. Then they went through the door by which his Highness had come and found themselves at last in a room with no further visible exit.

  It did, however, have a fireplace, with the remains of a few logs burning in it, and a large curtained bed with two bedside tables and a couple of padded chairs. Tapestries hung on the walls, and the curtains of the bed were of heavy material—a dark blue velvet. At the moment, these had been pulled back to show a rumpled, unmade bed with at least six enormous pillows and any number of sheets and blankets.

  "Oh, look, m'Lord!" said Hob, pointing at the fireplace.

  "I see it," said Jim. The logs in it were burned down to charred stubs, and only a tiny wisp of smoke came up from their faintly glowing ends. "Don't you need more of a fire than that, to make smoke?"

  "Just fine, m'Lord!" cried Hob cheerfully—and launched himself from Jim's shoulder into the fireplace, on a dive that caused him to plane in just above the flames.

  "Wait!" called Jim. Hob had already disappeared up the chimney, but now he reappeared, upside-down, his face peering at Jim inquiringly, just below the upper edge of the fireplace opening.

  "Yes, m'Lord?"

  "What are you going to do if you run into the Hob who belongs to this place?" asked Jim.

  "Oh, I'll say 'Greetings!' " said Hob. "And he'll say 'Greetings—' "

  "He won't be able to see you," Jim pointed out. "Let me change the magic so that other Hobs can see you.—There! But what if he isn't all that friendly to you?"

  "Oh, m'Lord," said Hob, "all Hobs are friendly to each other. We're never like, like… well, like some of you big people."

  "Well," said Jim, "you remember, you gave the Hob at the Earl's Castle rather rough treatment when you first went there, according to what you told me."

  "I did?" Hob's face was a mirror of upside-down astonishment.

  "Certainly," said Jim. "You ordered him about and called him 'Sirrah!' "

  "I did?" said Hob again.
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  "That's right," said Jim.

  Hob's face abruptly stopped looking astonished.

  "Oh, that was different, m'Lord. You see, you'd just given me that magnificent name I wasn't able to keep—you remember? Can I say it?"

  Jim nodded.

  "Hob-One-de-Malencontri," said Hob, a couple of tears rolling up his forehead.

  "Well," said Jim, touched with remembered guilt, "Carolinus told me I wasn't allowed to give names to a Hob. But maybe we can get it back for you someday."

  "D'you think so, m'Lord?"

  "We'll see," said Jim. "Anyway, be prepared, because this Hob will be the King's Hob, and he just may think he's got higher rank than you. Now, are you sure you can find the secret passage in this wall—if there is one?"

  "Certainly, m'Lord," said Hob. "You see, I'll make the smoke feel over everything. And if there's a crack someplace, or some sort of a little hole, the smoke will work its way into it even if it has to go out into a room and back in again to do that. It may take me a little while, though."

  "That's all right," said Jim, struck by a sudden thought. "You go ahead. Edgar will stay here and wait for you, so he can come for me when you've found it."

  Hob disappeared, then almost immediately popped back into sight again.

  "I don't suppose you could make me invisible every time I come out of a fireplace, m'Lord?"

  "No," said Jim, thinking of what might happen at Malencontri if he did.

  "Oh, well," said Hob, and disappeared again.

  "Where are you going, Mage?" asked Edgar, sounding alarmed.

  "Just back to where Cumberland was sitting," said Jim. "Don't worry now. If anyone comes in, they can't see you. Just make it a point to keep out of their way, so that they don't bump into you."

  "I will, Mage. You can trust me," said Edgar.

  Fairly sure that he could trust Edgar, for that at least, Jim went back through the various rooms to the door of the room where Cumberland had been seated. The door was ajar, but not enough that Jim could see the Earl. He slipped quietly through the opening, shouldering it slightly to do so, and stepped into the room, counting on his invisibility to make this a safe move.