The Dragon and the Gnarly King

  "Oh, it's not all that hard, Brian." Somehow, he felt like a dirty dog. He sat down at the table, then almost immediately stood up again.

  "Forgive me," he said. "I forgot to look in on Carolinus on the way down and see how he's doing."

  "He does well," said Brian. "Both Dafydd and I visited him this morning. He was awake, but weak. He feels he may be himself in several days, with rest and food."

  "Good!" said Jim. "But I think I'll just step up and see if he's still awake and have a word with him. I'll be right back."

  When he opened the door to the room Carolinus was usually lodged in, he expected to see a servant on watch. But there was only Carolinus himself, propped up in bed, his eyes closed.

  Jim went in, closed the door behind him, and approached the bed. Carolinus' eyes opened just as he got there.

  "Hah!" His voice was weak and hoarse, but in it there was the same indomitable tone of challenge and defiance that Jim was used to hearing from Brian.

  "I just wanted to speak to you for a moment," said Jim.

  "Well, then?"

  "I'm just about to sit down to breakfast with Brian and Dafydd—you do know you're back in Malencontri now, don't you?" asked Jim.

  "I am neither blind nor deaf," said Carolinus. "Of course I know it. Go on."

  "Well, how are you feeling?" asked Jim.

  "Never better," said Carolinus, sharply, out of a face that looked as pale and sunken as that on a corpse. "Is that what you wanted to talk about?"

  "Well, no," said Jim. "It's about what to do next with Brian. I've got to somehow get him cleared of any charges from his taking part in that attack on Cumberland's northern estates. Maybe I'll have to go to Court; Chandos could make it part of a deal with Cumberland, maybe."

  "Never mind," said the elder magician. At Jim's stricken look, he relented and went on: "The Collegiate of Magickians does not meddle with the politics of the Court. But since this affair reached into a Natural Kingdom, we have precedence. Cumberland will not be in a position to deny this."

  He closed his eyes, seeming almost to nod for a moment. But he spoke.

  "Kineteté will see to it," he said.

  Jim had been about to mention the fact of his being out of magic now; but Carolinus seemed on the verge of sleep, so he turned to the door and opened it softly.

  "… Silly nonsense," muttered Carolinus behind him. "Any trouble, tell Kineteté… silly… bureaucratic…"

  The last words faded off into nothing. His eyes closed the last fraction of an inch and stayed closed. His head fell back against the headboard. He snored.

  Jim went up another floor to the Solar, to get another hot cup of tea; he tried to be quiet, but Angie seemed to be on the edge of waking. He closed the door softly and headed for the stairs.

  There was still no one in the Serving Room, and he wondered idly if they were all off watching a fight somewhere again. He went on to the High Table.

  "Dafydd," he said, after he had taken the first edge off his hunger, "I don't know how to thank you enough. If it hadn't been for you getting us through the Drowned Land, so we could go on to Lyonesse, we'd never have gotten Robert and Carolinus back."

  Like people of all ranks at this time, Dafydd and Brian were not only gargantuan eaters—compared to Jim—they were also very fast eaters. Both had apparently dealt with their own hunger by now and were sitting back, toying with their mazers and nibbling at an occasional sweet cake.

  "Indeed, it could not have been a smaller thing," Dafydd answered. "For, look you, it was nothing but the chance of my having relations below the waves; apart from the matter that I would gladly adventure myself to rescue Carolinus at any time. You need not thank me for it, James."

  "But I do," said Jim. "I needed to thank both of you. But what I thought I'd better say, Dafydd, is that Brian and I may have to go off to the Court in London. Because that is where the King is; and I may have to see about this business with Cumberland. Anyway, what I wanted was to tell you, I didn't need to impose on you any longer; I know Danielle has returned to your home, and if you want to get back to your family, you don't need to have any qualms about doing so, now."

  The words had not come off his tongue sounding quite the way he had expected; and a cold, uneasy feeling grew in his chest as Dafydd did not answer immediately and Brian abruptly stopped nibbling on a sweet biscuit, and sat very still and expressionless.

  "Why, my Lord," said Dafydd, quietly, with a perfectly calm face and casual voice—and Jim knew immediately he had said exactly the wrong thing. "—I honor your thoughtfulness in this, now. I'll return home at once, then."

  "I," said Brian grimly, "feel we have the utmost need of Master ap Hywel in any further essay, James!"

  "Oh, so do I!" said Jim, quickly. "In fact, I've been trying to think how we could possibly manage without him—and no way comes to mind. But still I thought I should offer—I had an impression that perhaps cares and duties at his home…"

  "Ah," said Dafydd, "and might these cares and duties have been spoken of by some member of my family? The boys, perhaps? Or even Mistress ap Hywel, my best of wives?"

  "I don't remember, exactly—I sort of picked up the impression generally, if you know what I mean."

  "I do indeed, James. Look you, rest easy. I have no cares or duties that would hamper my accompanying you and Brian."

  "Terrific! Excellent!" said Jim. "The fact is, I woke up this morning, remembering something I hadn't mentioned to either of you. A letter from the Prince Edward came for me while we were gone, asking my help—and yours—because he is afraid of that same Agatha Falon who laid the trap for us just outside the entrance to the Gnarly Kingdom. It was a Court matter, and I didn't want to mix you two into it unless you would really want—"

  "But James!" said Brian, "you did say the letter asked for our help as well. Surely, we are in honor bound to help, then. I do not speak for Dafydd—that is," Brian went on rather hastily, "—anymore, I mean, than I would not speak for any other man. But Dafydd has already made his wishes known; and what is the Court that it should make any difference to us where a matter of honor is concerned?"

  "Well," said Jim uncomfortably, remembering Brian had never admitted to being concerned over his stand on the Royal taxes.

  He had been about to mention that they would also be concerned in freeing Brian from any danger of being hanged, drawn, and quartered on a charge of treason. But unless Brian admitted the danger, there was no way Jim could bring the subject up. He looked at Dafydd and found Dafydd looking at him. The bowman shrugged his shoulders slightly. Clearly they both knew and could say nothing. It did not matter.

  "You're right, Brian," Jim said. "The only thing that's important is helping the Prince—a matter of honor."

  "So do we all consider it, then!" said Brian. "Let us drink, therefore, to the further hunt."

  They all drained their capacious mazers, following Brian's lead. Luckily, Jim's was less than a quarter full. He managed to stifle a coughing bout; and when they set the cups down again, they were back to being the same comfortable partnership they were used to.

  "I'll just get a little food into me, here—" he said, shoveling some of what was closest to him into his mouth by way of showing his satisfaction with how things had just turned out. The other two watched him benignly for a while, then went to talk about hunting the three different kinds of deer—roebuck, fallow, and hart. Odd words like "brocket" and "staggard" bounced half-heard off his ears. They were clearly deep in a subject they had been discussing before.

  "Well done, James," Brian interrupted the conversation for a moment to say. "It is one thing to go without food for several days or even longer when food is not available; but when the good viands are there before you, it is time to take advantage of them. Say no more, but eat!"

  "I am," said Jim, and proceeded to make a much larger meal than he would have imagined he could. Necessarily this reduced him to silence. He was therefore free to think as he munched.

 
He had not had a chance to ask Carolinus about his magical account. But now that Carolinus had been rescued, he would soon be able to look into that. And Jim was sure that there was no one who would be willing to stand in the way of the wishes of the AAA+ magician—particularly since he, Jim, had been instrumental in rescuing his Master. So it was only a matter of a little time.

  The discussion about deer was a pleasant background noise, and a glance told him that the two were no longer paying attention to him. His appetite was just about satisfied, and he discovered that he had been mindlessly popping comfits into his mouth simply because they were there. He pushed the plate from him.

  Now feeling more full than he had thought, he sat back and tried to pick up the thread of the conversation, sprinkled though it was with obscure references.

  He began to become aware of how quiet things were. Sound did not carry between floors, except by courtesy of the tall, echoing emptiness that was the inside of the tower. But on this, the main level of the Castle, there were always servants talking with or calling to each other, and the general bustling noise of necessary activity.

  Now there was none of that. No one from the Serving Room had been out to refill the wine pitchers from which they had been refilling their mazers—in fact, Brian's was now empty. Usually the servants were interrupting him to check on such things more often than he could stand.

  Dafydd and Brian were looking now toward the door beyond which the Serving Room lay. Jim looked, himself, and saw coming through its arched space a tall man in priest's garb.

  "My Lord!" said the priest, as Jim's eyes came on him. He was walking toward Jim as he spoke, and he continued to come along at a steady, even pace toward the dais; and as he mounted it, Jim rose to his own feet to confront this stranger, and became conscious that the other was muttering something under his breath—muttering in Latin.

  The priest had been looking downward as he approached; but as he got within a step of Jim, he stopped and lifted his head to show a long, grave, smooth-shaven face in early middle age—and said his final words.

  "Benedicat te, Omnipotens Deus, Domine Jacobe Ekertis." He finished the sign of the Cross in the air.

  It took Jim a couple of seconds to realize what had been done. He had been blessed, with the words: "May the Omnipotent God bless you, Lord James Eckert."

  He had deliberately been blessed, which to a magician meant that for the next twenty-four hours, he could not make his magic.

  Jim opened his mouth to explain how ridiculous it was to bless a magician who already had no magic left—and shut it again.

  Armed men in chain mail, steel caps, swords, and all the other accoutrements of men-at-arms were pouring from the service entrance and from other doorways into the Hall—twenty or thirty of them at least—and converging on Jim, Brian, and Dafydd. Jim found himself driven back into three of them at once, his arms pinioned behind him, his wrists bound; and he was aware that his friends were also being overcome and bound in the same moment.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  "Well, well," said a voice behind Jim, as the last of his bonds were pulled tight. The voice was baritone, with an upper-class London accent. "It worked as it always does. Sooner or later, the rats come to the bait in the rat-trap."

  The owner of the voice came around in front of Jim, moving through the crowd of men-at-arms, who got out of his way. He halted at the end of the table, where Jim, Brian, and Dafydd could all see him.

  He was a little shorter than most of his men, but remarkably broad-shouldered and thin-waisted. He wore no armor or weapon at all, his shirt was open at the neck, and his hand held a mazer more than half-full of wine. There was a smile on his roughly triangular, suntanned face. A smile that at first glance seemed pleasant, but about which Jim had second thoughts almost immediately. The mouth that smiled was thin, and the smile was only at its corners. It was a, narrow, hard face.

  He sipped at his mazer and looked at them with something that might have been pleasure.

  "I take you for a gentleman, sir," said Brian, very coldly and evenly. "But I do not know you."

  "Sir Simon Lockyear, at your service. And I am here at the orders of our King, whom God preserve."

  "I find you unpleasing," said Brian.

  Sir Simon Lockyear laughed.

  "Do you now?" he said. "And no doubt on that account you would wish to challenge me?"

  "Exactly," said Brian. "If you would show the courtesy to have your men cut these bonds wherewith they have tied myself, the Lord James, and the archer, I would be most happy to meet you immediately, with sword or any other weapon you might choose."

  Simon Lockyear laughed again.

  "No, no," he said, "it would be enjoyable, no doubt. But I must not damage those I am sent to bring back. So, I fear you must stay bound, all of you. I hold Crown Warrants for arrest of you, Sir Brian, on a charge of treason for intent to engage in a rebellion against the peace of the Realm; and two other warrants: one for you, my Lord James, for harboring the said Sir Brian; and one for a Welsh archer—which I make little doubt is the third of you at this table—named Dafydd ap Hywel, also charged with assisting the traitor Sir Brian."

  He paused, and produced a handkerchief whose scent Jim could catch clearly even across the four feet or so between them.

  "But I must say," he wound up, "you are not over-nice about those you sit at table with, Sir Brian and my Lord James. An archer?"

  Brian paid no attention to the last words.

  "Duty is no knightly excuse, Sir Simon," he said.

  "Perhaps not. Perhaps not. On the other hand, there is neither profit nor honor to be gained by playing at weapons with a traitor."

  "Why, damn your soul!" exploded Brian. "I am no traitor, nor ever was! What is this nonsense?"

  Sir Simon doffed his heavy leather gloves, revealing long sensitive fingers, and looked across the table at Brian.

  "That you may argue before your appointed judges when you reach the Tower, Sir Brian," he said. "I am merely charged with bringing you in, and bring you in I shall."

  He turned suddenly on a tall man-at-arms by his side.

  "But why have you not brought Sir James' wife by now, Elias?" he snapped.

  "We have a woman, Sir Simon. But we are not sure if she is the lady you want."

  "God's Wounds! Dolts! Not able to tell a Lady from a servant wench! Look at the quality of her gown and whether it fits her! A tall woman, with dark hair. I'd know her in a wink! I spoke her once before this, on our first trip to this Castle. There will be no doubt when I see her. Bring her at once, I say! She will be all a-quiver, no doubt, to see her dear husband."

  His voice had dropped on the last words to a conversational level again, and he sat down in one of the empty chairs. "I shall wait here."

  He poured a little more wine into his mazer and addressed Jim, Brian, and Dafydd. "Seat yourselves, my prisoners. We will play that you are all three my guests."

  Brian, Dafydd, and Jim were shoved into chairs. Elias spoke to four of the men-at-arms, who disappeared through the entrance to the Serving Room and the tower stairs beyond. The tall man-at-arms turned back to the table.

  "Was there anything else you wished, Sir Simon?" he asked.

  "Not for the moment," said Sir Simon. "Do you follow and make sure those men of yours are doing as they should. I'll have no time for capers with drink or smock-lifting."

  Elias went out and Simon reached for one of the small cupcakes. He picked it up and nibbled it.

  "Ah," he said, in a quiet, thoughtful voice, washing it down with wine, "my congratulations on your kitchen, Sir James. I would not despise such cooking in my own home."

  "Who sent you here?" said Jim.

  "Sent me?" Sir Simon ate another cupcake before answering. "I am at the orders of my Lord the Earl of Cumberland, so I suppose you could say it was he. Though the orders, in fact, reached me from the leading knight of his household, Sir Adam Turner. I have been searching for you for some small time now, and
during the night I took your Castle and have been waiting for you to be in the right position—ah! Well and swiftly done, Elias!"

  He swung around, pushing his chair away and standing up. His men had just brought in Angie. Her wrists had been bound before her with a strip of cloth rather than rawhide thongs. Her face was perfectly calm and composed; and she looked at Jim as if she would reassure him.

  "Good day, my Lady," said Sir Simon. He advanced his right leg, and bowed over it in a courtly manner, but with that thin smile again at the corners of his lips. "I regret the necessity that forces us to meet thus. But my Lord, your husband, and the other two at this table, must be taken back to London, to face judgment for treason, and my spoken orders required me to bring you as well."

  Angie looked slightly amused, but said nothing

  He turned again to his men. "Make ready to travel," he said. "The Lady will be allowed a maid and some clothes. We cannot take too great a care of them. Prisoners are so apt to die on the way, and never arrive." He paused to smile at Jim.

  "To be sure, this often saves time and trouble in the long run, but I have always thought it a pity, particularly when there is information to be got. Elias, send a man to see what there is in the stable here."

  Elias went off, another of his men following him. Out of the corner of his eye, Jim saw one of the men-at-arms pick up a metal mazer standing at the far end of the table and slip it into a sack on his back. He suddenly realized all of them had such sacks—and they were bulging.

  There was no more time to waste.

  "Hob," he called to the fireplace. "Tell Carolinus!"

  There was no answer.

  "Calling a Devil to aid you from the fireplace, were you, Sir James?" Simon asked. "You should remember that the good Father, having blessed you, has taken away your magick. I entreat you and Sir Brian to sit quietly a little while longer, while my men make all ready for the trip back to London. It will not be long. Will my Lady sit?"

  But Angie had already done so.

  "That reminds me," said Sir Simon. "Have you a particular servant woman you would like to take with you, my Lady? I will have her fetched, and you can give her orders as to what to pack for your journey. I am a knight-bachelor in both senses, so I have no idea what a lady might require for such a journey. Who shall I send to fetch?"