"M'lord—" said the familiar voice of Hob. Jim turned to see both hobs pressing closely on his heels.
"Not now," said Jim, turning back. He had caught sight of the Prince and Joan, just entering the room, undoubtedly returned from seeing the King—whose quarters, after all, were just at the end of this top corridor. But such a quick return suggested they had won the King's approval to move everyone into his quarters right away. Fast work. Jim was eager to hear the details. The King's rooms were all connected by inner doorways rather than openings on the corridor, making them a much better defensive position than this one overcrowded space—until he could get his brain, at present strangely dull, to work seriously to a better and longer-term goal.
He waded through the crowd to Joan and the Prince, and threw a privacy ward around them all, including Angie, who was close beside him.
"How do you feel now?" she asked in a low voice, seeing him glancing at her.
"Fine," he said. He had no time to worry about his health, now. But he did make the ward's circle around them generous, to give himself breathing space.
"You're back!" he said to Joan and the Prince. "That was good."
"Not good at at all, Sir James," said Joan. "The King will not even consider any movement of those here to his quarters. I'm afraid I—"
"The fault is mine, entirely!" The Prince broke in. "I should have given her more time to soften him up to the plan. He has always loved and been indulgent toward her. But I spoke too soon—rash! rash! Rashness is a great fault in military matters, too, as you can guess, James. The Countess was doing beautifully when I dropped the whole story in his lap, and it has always been his way to correct me, and disagree on principle with anything I said. He wound up losing his temper—wouldn't believe the fleas in this house were sick with the London plague, absolutely dismissed the idea that the staff were goblins in disguise—and wound up swearing there was no such thing as a goblin anyway, and if there was he, as an anointed King, would have nothing to fear from them!"
"Oh, great!" muttered Jim, seeing his immediate plans crumble into dust. The goblins might run from the terrier once, out of tradition, when surprised by her, but it was inconceivable that in their numbers they would let her stop them long, even if it meant burying her in attackers while the rest of them went around her.
"Great, James?" The Prince was staring at him.
"I think the matter requires only a little rethinking," said Jim desperately, though his thoughts at the moment were being no help to him, at all. He was used to starting to talk before he knew how to get himself out of pinches, and had always found a glib answer of some kind at least put off the problem until a more practical excuse or solution could occur to him.
The trick was not working now, however, he realized in panic, as he found himself absolutely without an idea.
"M'lord!" said the urgent voice of Hob behind him, and he suddenly realized that both hobs were also inside the privacy ward, having apparently closely followed him across the room.
Any excuse for a moment in which to think, He turned sharply, saw both hobs and said, equally sharply, "Hob, what are you two doing here? I'm having a very important private talk with Prince Edward and my Lady Joan. I'll open the ward I've set up around us for privacy and you two get out of it—"
"But m'lord, begging your pardon!" cried Hob. "We could get a goblin and bring him to show the King there are such—and they're here!"
"Nonsense! Now, you go—"
"Pardon me, my lord," said Angie, in a meek but dangerous voice, "in this present peril, might it not be wise to at least listen to Hob?"
"Indeed," said Joan, "I can see no harm in that."
"Oh!" Jim's mind was still failing to produce even a temporary answer to their situation. "Well? How? Who's we?"
"Me and Tiverton hob, m'lord—and the little dog."
"You two and the dog?" Jim stared.
"Yes, we could, my lord!" said Tiverton hob. "No one knows this castle as I do."
"How does that help?" Jim said.
"And you know we hobs can talk to animals," Hob went on heedlessly.
"Yes, yes."
"So I'd make the dog understand what we were going to do, and promise her that m'lady'll keep her pups safe here until we're back. Then, Tiv and I will take the dog on the smoke through all the chimneys of the castle, until we can find just one goblin—or maybe only a few—in a room with a fireplace.'
Hob paused to look for signs of understanding or approval from Jim.
"Go on," said Jim.
"Then we grab the goblin—and if there's more than one goblin in that room, the rest of them won't dare do anything with the dog there—I'll have to tell her to growl only, and not attack them. Then one of us carries the goblin—that'll be me—and the other the dog, and we carry them away up the chimney where the rest can't follow—"
"I want to carry the goblin," said Tiverton hob, fiercely. "It's my castle!"
"Well, I suppose you've got the right—anyway, m'lord, we bring the goblin back to you, you put magic around him so he can't get away, the little dog goes back to her pups and you take the warded goblin up to show the King."
"Is this possible?" the Prince asked Jim.
"I don't see why not," said Jim slowly. Actually, it did sound like at least a possible idea.
"But how will these two get up and down chimneys—particularly carrying a goblin and a dog?"
"Oh, they travel on the smoke. Malencontri hob's been from the Holy Land to England here, and then back to me, on one waft of smoke. He's even carried me on the smoke."
"Everyone knows that," said Tiverton hob.
The Prince ignored the remark.
"Well, I'll take your word for it," he said to Jim. "Then once we have the goblin you can lock him up with magic so the Countess and I can take him to show to my father?"
"Absolutely, Your Grace."
"And this time," said Joan to the Prince, "let me do the talking until I ask you to speak."
"If you wish it that way," answered the Prince, a little stiffly in spite of himself.
"I want you to use your forceful voice for a military appraisal of the situation, now that we've seen their numbers on the stairs—" said Joan.
Jim realized that the two of them must have gone to the stairs after they got back, no doubt having been told that there had been a battle, by someone still out in the hallway.
"—Your father will listen to you on that," Joan was going on, "only let me tell him about the fact that Cumberland may have sent his King here to die from the plague. Your father, Your Grace, won't find it easy to accept that."
"No, by Heaven! So it shall be as you say, sweeting—Countess. You have had him always in the palm of your hand."
"Not always," said Joan, somewhat dryly. "Otherwise I would not have married Salisbury. I would have confronted him with my marriage to Holland. But I was only twelve then—come to think of it, I do a much better job speaking to him nowadays."
"That was all to blame on me—but come," said the Prince, as if suddenly remembering the other ears listening to his apologies. "So you guarantee this hobish expedition, James?'
"I guarantee nothing," growled Jim. He was not feeling in shape to be particularly polite at the moment. "I've said I think it'll work, and I'll stand by to do whatever magic's necessary if it does, Your Grace!"
"Your word is well by me, James," said the Prince, in as close to an appeasing tone as he probably could manage. "I am much indebted to you in many ways."
"I do not count it so, Your Grace," said Jim, making an equal effort to recover his politeness.
"Nonetheless," said the Prince, "I shall not forget."
"That alone is recompense, Your Grace. Hobs, you better get busy, then!"
"Come Tiv," said Hob, "I've got to talk to the little dog first—I'll let you talk to her, too, if you want, after I'm done."
He turned and led Tiverton hob out through the crowd—neither of them bumping their noses on an unyiel
ding, invisible surface, as Jim hastily removed the ward he had set up about them all.
"Come sweeti—Countess," said the Prince, "let you and I walk out in the corridor in the direction of the stairs, for a breath of air."
And they two walked off, Jim turned to Angie. She looked him squarely in the eye.
"I'm going to clear off everyone on and around the bed," she said. "And you are going to lie down! I mean that!"
Chapter Twenty-Six
"I mean that!" Angie repeated. "You're looking more and more like death warmed over, every minute. You lie down. Now!"
"Well…" said Jim, thinking how ridiculous he would look in the midst of this crowd, lying on the bed when most of them could not even find a place to sit down. Then he remembered that people of this time were used to being on their feet for long periods. And it also occurred to him how good it would be to stretch out for a moment… "Until the hobs get back with a goblin, anyway," he answered.
Indeed, once he was lying down on the too-short bed (What possessed these medieval people to build beds for three-quarters-size humans?) he began to believe that he might actually need some rest.
Once horizontal, with all the crowd around him casting curious glances in his direction, but warned off from asking questions by Angie, who was standing by the bed with a grim look on her face that effectively announced that this was Magickian-knight business and none of theirs—Jim's head had begun to swim.
He was exhausted, his body told him. How the hell had he gotten this way? He had slept well enough last night… He closed his eyes—and opened them, it seemed only a second later, to find Angie gently rubbing his forehead, reluctantly bringing him back awake.
He stared.
Beside his bed, facing him, was a goblin, his arms pinioned behind him, and flanked by a triumphant-looking Hob and Tiverton hob. The goblin's eyes glittered malevolently. There seemed to be no cowards among these enemies, at least.
The Prince and the Countess stood like giants behind the three small Naturals, and the rest of the crowd in the room had somehow compressed itself to put a respectful distance between them and the gathering at the bed.
Reflexively, Jim threw a privacy ward around the little group by his bed. He was surprised at the amount of mental effort it took—perhaps it was because he had been lying down. He sat up on the bed and found that equally effortful. Manners said he should be standing if the Prince was standing, but his legs seemed to have lost their strength.
"You got him!" Jim croaked at the hobs.
"I—" began Hob.
"We—" began Tiverton hob in the same second. They glared at each other for a moment, then Malencontri hob went on alone.
"I must report to my lord," he said, "that the prisoner was secured as expected."
"There were five in the one room we could find that had the least in," said Tiverton hob eagerly.
"—The little dog growled at them and they didn't dare move a muscle," broke in Hob, once more. "I chose this one, the biggest, carried him off and we went back up the chimney—"
"I carried the prisoner—" Tiverton hob broke in.
"Yes," said Hob, "asking him all the way if this was fun and should you do it again! What were you doing to him?"
"Never mind," said Tiverton hob. "I may have pinched him a little from time to time because of the way I had to carry him."
"And you had the dog?" Jim asked Hob. It was an effort even to speak. But he wanted an end to this chitchat.
"I did!" said Hob. "See her, back in her box, now?"
Jim looked in the right direction. Because of the crowd's retreat, he could see a corner of the pen, the terrier was there, fussily and rather roughly tongue-washing all her pups over again.
"Enough of this!" broke in the Prince. "We have the goblin. Make him magically caged and helpless at once, James, and send us back up to my father without further delay!"
"Your Grace—" began Angie, in a tone of voice that eerily evoked in Jim's long-familiar mind an image of a cougar crouching, ready to make its spring.
"Come, my lady," said Jim hastily. "His Grace is right. There's no time to waste in more talk."
With an effort that felt tremendous, he created an impenetrable ward around the goblin, disintegrating his bonds in the process. With an even greater effort, he transported goblin, ward, Countess and Prince once more to the King's suite of rooms.
Head swimming, he fell back on the bed into what seemed to be a bottomless hole of lightless sleep.
He woke again—or was he awake? He seemed to be two versions of himself: one lying utterly unconscious on a bed, the other—bodiless, impalpable and invisible—standing over it, its lower legs seeming to be buried up to the knees in the bed. To his astonishment the crowd was still pulled back respectfully, and besides Angie, not only Kineteté, but Carolinus was at his bedside.
"Carolinus!" he shouted soundlessly. "Can you move all these human people, including the King, back to Malencontri? I don't seem… somehow I don't seem to have the strength—"
Carolinus, in Jim's vision, seemed to move without moving, to look down at him.
"Sleep!" commanded Carolinus.
But he—that astral part of himself—stayed stubbornly awake and standing upright.
"He's not responding to the sleep command!" said Kineteté, sharply. "What in the name of—"
"You couldn't do it yourself, in any case, Jim!" said Carolinus, speaking directly to Jim's astral self as if he could see it perfectly clearly. "You don't have enough magic left in you to tickle a mouse!"
"What is it?" Kineteté asked her fellow Mage. "I've never seen a command fail like that. Shall I try?"
"No, no," said Carolinus irritably. "It wouldn't do a bit of good!" The irritation went out of his voice. "Actually, Kin, I'm not surprised you haven't. I've only seen one case before—and that not nearly as bad as this. He's simply drained himself of all possible human energy—spent more magick in the last hour or so than a self-respecting C-class Magickian would use in a month. He's achieved a complete separation between the spirit and the body, while still living. Take a look there, above the bed—that's his spirit talking to us."
"Saints forbid!" said Kineteté. "I see him—the other him, now. James, how could you do such a thing?"
"Don't bother the boy!" said Carolinus. "There's nothing he can do to help himself now. You and I have to do it for him. That and complete rest. First step, get him back to Malencontri—"
"And everybody else!" cried Jim, from his astral body. "I tell you they're all in danger of being killed here by plague—and the King, as well! All of them—the only safe place for them's Malencontri!"
"Hah!" said both Mages in the same instant. "The King?"
"That's what I said!"
"How—?" said Kineteté, looking at Carolinus.
"I don't know. And he's in no shape to tell us!"
"Get the hobs in!" cried Jim, noiselessly, frantically.
"Very well. Hobs here!" said Carolinus.
"Have them tell you," said Jim—and gave up, exhausted. The room started slowly to rotate around him.
The two hobs appeared.
"Sir James is sleeping?" asked Malencontri hob, a little anxiously, looking at the still figure on the bed.
"That's right," said Carolinus. "But I can talk to him. He wants you to tell me everything you just did. Do so!"
"Oh yes, Mage Carolinus," said Hob, making the elaborate stage bow the traveling actor had taught him, when Hob had had dreams of becoming Jim's squire.
"Another Mage?" said Tiverton hob, open-mouthed with awe. He tried to copy Hob's bow and failed utterly.
"Sir James is not a Mage," said Carolinus. "However, beside me here is Mage Kineteté, who is."
"Two—" managed Tiverton hob again, once more trying the bow and falling flat on his face.
"Get up! Get up!" said Kineteté, testily. "It's not necessary to bow to Mages when you meet them, Tiv. Carolinus may like it—"
"Not necessarily,"
said Carolinus. "Now, with Sir James unable to tell me, you two have to. What have you been up to?"
"We captured a goblin for His Grace and the Countess to take to show the King," said Hob. "The King didn't believe there were goblins."
"The place is swarming with them," said Kineteté.
"Yes," said Tiverton hob, suddenly bold at the unhesitating way Hob spoke up. "They were part of a plan to kill the King with sickness. Plague sickness!"
"How do you know that?" Carolinus turned to him.
"Because I used to watch Sir Verweather talking to the chief goblin," said Tiverton hob, proud at being center stage. He added smugly, "The goblins were having a lot of work pretending to be humans—they'd changed shape to look like castle servants, but they'd each had only two days to study how each human was going to be talked and acted. Some of them were pretty good at being servants and men-at-arms, but none of them really knew how to be special people like sirs and ladies, or blacksmiths or stable masters, and they couldn't understand why the King didn't catch the plague, when they kept putting all the plague-sick fleas in his rooms.'
"You saw this? You heard them?"
"Oh, yes, Mage."
"That is odd," said Kineteté.
"The King was Destined, of course. But Edward III must be much more strongly Destined than I've ever given him credit for. Nonetheless, Kin, we've got to get him and these others out of here right away if he's swarmed over with plague fleas. Tiv, think of the room where you saw the goblin talking to… to…"
"Verweather," said Kineteté. "Tiv, just imagine the room as you know it—ah, that's better!"
All at once the hobs, the Mages, Angie, and even the bed Jim was in, were in what must be one of the guest bedrooms lower in the tower—a room in which there were now at least a dozen goblins, who spun about to face them.
"Still!" said Carolinus absentmindedly. "No. There're too many of you to ignore."
He flipped the back of his hand at them. "Got to the—go to the kitchen!"
The goblins vanished.