The Dragon and The George

"But how could you be in my mind?" demanded Jim.

  "The Dark Powers, or whatever they call themselves, put me there," said Angie. "I didn't catch on, at first. Right after Bryagh brought me here, I got sleepy and lay down on those fir branches. The next thing I knew, I was in your head—seeing everything that was going on. I could tell what you were thinking, and I could almost talk to you. At first I thought some accident had happened; or maybe Grottwold had been trying to bring us back and got us mixed up together this time. Then I caught on."

  "Caught on?"

  "The Dark Powers had put me there."

  "The Dark Powers?" Jim asked.

  "Of course," said Angie, calmly. "They were hoping I'd want to be rescued so badly that I'd keep trying to push you to come to the Loathly Tower here, alone. When I was about half asleep, I thought I heard some voice or other talking to Bryagh about ways of getting you to come after me without Companions to help you."

  "How did they know?" Jim frowned.

  "I don't know, but they did," said Angie. "So, when I remembered that, it wasn't hard to guess who'd put me in your mind, and why. As I say, I couldn't really talk to you, but I could make you feel the way I was feeling, if I sort of pushed hard enough, mentally. Remember when Brian told you he had to get Geronde's permission to be a Companion of yours and you would both have to go to Castle Malvern, first? You remember how you suddenly felt guilty about turning your back on the tower, with me there? Well, that was me in your mind. I'd just woken up there, and didn't realize why. Then it hit me that you might be in pretty terrible danger going on to the tower alone, if Carolinus had insisted you get some Companions before trying it; and I remembered what I'd heard when I was falling asleep. I put two and two together, and stopped wishing you'd come to rescue me. The moment I did that, I could tell that you began to feel better about going with Brian to Castle Malvern."

  She ceased talking. Jim stared at her, too full of questions to sort out what he wanted to ask first. Now that he had a moment to notice, he realized that apparently Angie had grown in translating to this other world. He had thought of Danielle as tall, but now he saw that Angie was equally so. Not that she looked any the worse for the increase in size. To the contrary—

  Carolinus clicked his tongue.

  "Two minds in one body!" he said, shaking his head. "Highly irregular! Highly! Even for the Dark Powers, that's taking a chance. Could be done, of course; but—"

  "But wait!" Jim had found his voice. "Angie, you said Gorbash was in my mind, too? How could he be?"

  "I don't know how, but he was," Angie said. "He was there already when I got there. I couldn't communicate with him, though. You had him sort of locked up."

  Jim winced internally. Now that Angie had identified Gorbash as the other mind in the back of Jim's, he could feel the original owner of the dragon body strongly. Gorbash had evidently returned to his own head back during that moment in the dragon caves, when Jim—alone with Angie—had been as good as knocked out by some invisible force. Now Jim could feel Gorbash clearly—wanting control of his own body again.

  "Three!" Carolinus was saying, staring at Jim.

  "What do you mean, 'locked up'?" Jim asked Angie, feeling a twinge of conscience toward the dragon.

  "I don't know how else to describe it," said Angie. "You've been sort of holding his mind down with yours—that's the best explanation I can give you. I didn't see any of this, you understand, I could just feel what was going on. He couldn't do a thing unless you got emotionally wound up about something and forgot him for a moment."

  "Three!" Carolinus repeated. "Three minds in one skull! Now that really is going over the line, Dark Powers or not! Auditing Department, are you copying all this—"

  "Not their fault," said the voice out of thin air.

  "Not… ?"

  "Not the fault of the Dark Powers that Gorbash was there," explained the Auditing Department. "They did put the Angie-mind in with the James-mind, but the responsibility for the presence of the Gorbash-mind lies outside our departmental area."

  "Ah. Complicated matter?" asked Carolinus.

  "Decidedly. Wheels within wheels. So if you'll start to straighten things out as soon as possible—"

  "Count on me," said the magician. He turned back to Jim and Angie. "All right, now. What do you want? Am I to send you both back?"

  "That's right," said Jim. "Let's go."

  "Very well," said Carolinus. He looked at Angie. "And you wish to return?"

  She looked at Jim for a moment before answering.

  "I want whatever Jim wants…" she said.

  Jim stared at her, bewildered.

  "What sort of an answer is that?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean what I say," Angie said, with a hint of stubbornness in her voice. "I want what you want—that's all."

  "Well, I want to go back, of course. I just said so."

  She looked away from him.

  "Very well," Carolinus agreed. "If you'll both move over here by me—"

  "Wait!" said Jim. "Wait just a minute!"

  He turned to face Angie.

  "What's all this?" he demanded. "Of course we're going to go back—just as quick as we can. What else can we do? There's no choice about this!"

  "Of course there's a choice," said Carolinus, irritably.

  Jim looked at the magician. The old man appeared tired and cross.

  "I say, of course there's a choice!" repeated Carolinus. "You've now got sufficient credit with the Auditing Department for a return. You can spend it all going back; or stay and keep some of it to help build your life here. It's up to you. Make up your mind, that's all!"

  "Stay, James," said Brian, quickly. "Malencontri can be yours—yours and the Lady Angela's, just as we promised earlier. Together, our two estates and families will be too strong for any enemies."

  Aragh growled, a wordless sound. When Jim looked over at him, the wolf glanced away.

  Jim turned back at Angie. He was feeling completely mixed up.

  "Come on," said Angie, putting her hand on his massive dragon-shoulder. "Let's go and talk for a second."

  She led him toward the side of the causeway. By the edge of the water, they stopped and Jim heard the lapping of tiny waves against the edge. He looked down into her face.

  "Did you really know everything I did?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "Everything you did and thought!"

  "Hmm." Jim remembered a stray thought or two he had had about Danielle.

  "That's why I believe you ought to think about this."

  "But what do you think?" he insisted.

  "I said what I think. I want whatever you want. But what do you want?"

  "Well, of course I want to get back to civilization. I'd think we'd both want that."

  Again she said nothing. It was very irritating. It was as if she forced his words to hang in the air in front of his nose, staring back at him.

  "Hmm!" he growled to himself.

  It was ridiculous, he thought, to suppose that he could want anything other than to go back. His job was waiting for him at Riveroak, and sooner or later they would be finding someplace to live—admittedly, nothing palatial—but it would be at least a one-room and kitchenette. And later on, when they both had teaching positions, they could move up to something better. Meanwhile, back there they had all the blessings of civilization—doctors, dentists, accountants to figure out their bills, time off every summer to do what they liked…

  Moreover, all their friends were back there: Danny Cerdak; and, well, Grottwold… Here, there were only a bunch of strange characters they had met only the week before last: Brian, and Aragh, Carolinus, Danielle, Dafydd and the dragons and so forth…

  "To hell with it!" said Jim.

  He turned around to take his decision back to Carolinus, with Angie trotting along beside him. No one was looking at them now, however. All were facing the approaching figures of Giles o' the Wold and the men with him. The little army was a sorry
looking lot, and many bore evidence of wounds, but they were smiling through their weariness as they began to report the final rout of Sir Hugh's men, now fleeing back in the direction of Castle Malencontri.

  "And Sir Hugh?" Brian asked.

  "Alive, worse the luck," Giles told him. "Though he was reeling a bit in the saddle, the last I saw of him. One of my men got a shaft through his armor, and he'd be losing blood. Less than half his men go back with him."

  "Then we can take Malencontri before he can recoup his losses," Brian exclaimed. Then he frowned uncertainly and turned his face toward Jim. "That is, we could, if we had reason…"

  "I'm staying here," Jim told the knight gruffly.

  "Hurrah!" shouted Brian, throwing his helmet into the air and catching it, as if he was twelve years old.

  "Very well!" Carolinus said, testily. "If that's your decision. You realize that if you spend your credit with the Accounting Department to get your own body back here, you won't have enough left over to change your mind and return whence you came? You'll have enough to get you started here, but not enough to get moved back, after all."

  "I understand. Of course, I understand that."

  "All right, then. Stand back, all the rest of you! We're going to be having two bodies where one is now. All right, then"—Carolinus lifted his staff and thumped its end down on the earth—"there you are!"

  And there he was.

  Jim blinked. He found himself looking directly into the dangerously toothed jaws of a dragon-muzzle less than six inches from his nose; and clutching a pillow to his body, which was now dressed only in what seemed to be a white hospital gown.

  "Just who do you think you are?" demanded the dragon-jaws.

  Jim took a couple of steps backward, partially to keep himself from being deafened and partially to get a better look at what was confronting him.

  "Gorbash?" he said.

  "Don't try pretending you don't know me!" said the dragon, which Jim was now seeing entire.

  It—Gorbash—was a very large and fierce-looking animal. Larger and fiercer than Jim had realized, from his experience inside the body.

  "Of—of course I know you," Jim gasped.

  "You certainly do! And I know you. I ought to. Who do you think you are, taking over somebody else's body, doing what you want with it and treating the dragon who really owns it as if he just appeared in it yesterday? All the time using it the way you choose to. Mishandling it, taking risks with it! Would anybody believe what this george did with my body in just the first few days after he had it?"

  Gorbash turned appealingly to the others standing around.

  "Shut me up completely. Wouldn't let me twitch a muscle—in my own body, mind you! Then, before I could think, he went headfirst off a cliff and started flailing around with my wings so much that I could barely get them beating properly in time to keep us from smashing on the rocks. Then, he nearly got the Mage here to turn us into a beetle. Next, he overflew and got my muscles stiff. Then, instead of resting up, he swims—mind you, swims—across all sorts of water in the fens. Never a thought about our toes and vicious sea turtles or giant sea lampreys come into the tidewater. And that's only the beginning. Then—"

  "I—I didn't end up in your body on purpose," protested Jim.

  "But you certainly acted like you owned it from the minute you got there! And don't interrupt!" Gorbash roared, resuming his appeal to the audience. "And that was just the beginning. He nearly got us eaten by sandmirks, did get us nearly killed by the horn of that other george, and never a bite to eat or a drop to drink… er, except for that time at the inn. But that hardly counts!"

  "Oh, it doesn't, doesn't it!" cried Secoh. "I heard about that feast of yours at the inn. All the lovely meat without hardly any bones you could stuff into you! All the rich, rich wine! It wouldn't be James who wanted to drink that cellar dry, and you know it as well as I do—"

  "WHAT? Shut up, mere-dragon!" boomed Gorbash.

  Secoh gave a sudden bounce that landed him nose to nose with Gorbash, who reared back instinctively.

  "I will not shut up!" roared Secoh. "I don't have to shut up! I'm as good as any other dragon, mere-born or not."

  "Mere-dragon, I'm warning you…" Gorbash began ominously, beginning to hunch his shoulders and gape his jaws.

  "You don't scare me!" cried Secoh. "Not anymore, you don't. It was your own grand-uncle taught me I didn't have to bow down to anyone. Death before dishonor! I've just fought a dragon as big as you were—to the death! Well, anyway, I helped your uncle fight him. He didn't scare me and you don't scare me. You haven't done anything—all you did was get carried along by what James wanted to do with your body. But you'll go around preening yourself for the next hundred years, talking about how you were in a fight with an ogre! All right, you go ahead, but don't try to push me around. I'll tear your wings off!"

  And Secoh snarled into the very teeth of the bigger dragon.

  Gorbash bobbed his head and looked uncertain.

  "Yes, and another thing!" said Secoh. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! If your grand-uncle was alive, he'd certainly tell you so. He was a real dragon! You're just one of those fat cave lizards. Here, James made you famous and all you can do is complain…"

  "Ha!" said Gorbash—but he said it without quite the force he had in his words a moment before. He looked away from Secoh toward the others. "I don't have to worry about what some mere-dragon thinks. The rest of you were around and saw how it was with this george taking over my body—"

  "And a good thing he did!" Danielle interrupted, sharply. "You don't sound like anyone I'd trust to face an ogre."

  "Gorbash," said Aragh, grimly, "you never had much in the way of brains…"

  "But I—"

  "Nor will I stand by and hear Sir James maligned," Brian announced. The knight's face was set and dark. "Another word from you, dragon, about this good knight and gallant gentleman and I'll find yet one more use for my sword this day, bent as it is from the worm."

  "I'll help!" said Secoh.

  "Enough!" snapped Carolinus. "Dragons, knights—you'd think there was nothing in the world but fighting, ready as you all are to do it at the drop of a leaf. Enough of this now! Gorbash, another word from you and you can be a beetle, after all!"

  Gorbash collapsed abruptly. He thumped down on his haunches and began making choking noises.

  "You don't have to cry!" said Danielle, slightly less sharply. "Just don't go around making foolish statements like that."

  "But you don't know!" mourned Gorbash, in his sub-bass voice. "None of you know! None of you understand what its been like. One minute, I'm counting my diam—cleaning my scales. And the next, I'm in some tiny magician's room aboveground, and this george—I don't know if he was the Mage there or not—bending over me. Naturally, I get up and start to tear him apart, but all I have is a sort of george-body, no claws at all, no teeth to speak of… And a lot of other georges come in and they try to hold me, but I get away and run out of this large castle I'm in and some georges dressed all in blue, with clubs, corner me; and one hits me over the head with his little club. That george's head I've got can't even stand a little hit like that; and the next thing I know I'm back in my own body, but this george called James is already there, and he keeps me crowded back into a corner so that I can't do a thing unless he's so busy he almost forgets about me. I can't even do anything when he's asleep, because when he goes to sleep the body goes to sleep and I have to go to sleep, too. That time in the inn when we drank a little wine is the only time I got loose at all, and if I hadn't been so hungry and thirsty—"

  "Gorbash," said Carolinus. "Enough."

  "Enough? Oh, all right." Gorbash gulped and fell silent.

  "Speaking of wine, Mage," said Brian, a little hoarsely, into the stillness. "Can you do something? It's been a day and a night since any of us ate. A day since we drank—and nothing but the water of the few fresh ponds of the meres for drinking, even now."

  "Also, if nothing els
e," put in the clear voice of Danielle from where she still sat on the ground beside the bowman, "Dafydd needs shelter and warmth for the night; and he's in no condition to travel. Can't your Auditing Department do something for him, after all he did for it?"

  "His credit lies in another area," Carolinus explained.

  "Look," said Jim, "you said I'd have some credit left over with the Auditing Department even after getting my body back, if I decided to stay here. Let's use some of that to get food, drink and shelter for everyone."

  "Well, perhaps…" Carolinus answered, gnawing his beard. "However, the Auditing Department doesn't keep a kitchen and a cellar stocked for entertainment. But I can use some of your credit, James, to move everyone to where food and drink are available."

  "Go ahead," Jim suggested.

  "All right, then"—Carolinus raised his staff and struck its end against the ground once more—"done!"

  Jim stared around him. They were no longer on the fenland causeway by the Loathly Tower. They were back once more before the establishment of Dick Innkeeper. The sunset was rosy behind the treetops to their west and a gentle twilight held everything. A mouth-watering smell of roasting beef came from the open doorway of the inn.

  "Welcome, welcome, travelers!" called Dick, himself, bustling out of the open door. "Welcome to my inn, whoever ye may—"

  He broke off, his jaws dropping.

  "Heaven help me!" he cried, turning to Brian. "Sir knight, Sir knight, not again! I can't afford it. I simply can't afford it, no matter how many times you're affianced to milady in the castle. I'm only a poor innkeeper, and my cellar holds only so much. Here you are now with not one dragon but two, and at least one other—uh—" He stared doubtfully at Angie, and at Jim, still dressed in his hospital gown. "Gentleman and lady?" he wound up a questioning note; and added hastily, "Plus the Mage, of course. And all the rest…"

  "Know you, Dick," said Brian, sternly, "that this other gentleman is Baron James Eckert of Riveroak, just lately freed from his ensorcellment into the body of the dragon, after slaying an ogre at the Loathly Tower and defeating the Dark Powers who threatened us all. This is his lady, the Lady Angela. Over there you see the dragon—Gorbash, by name—in which the ensorcellment took place. You can even see the scar of Sir Hugh's lance upon him. Beside him is a dragon of the meres and fens—Secoh, by name—who despite his smaller size has fought most valiantly this day—"