He turned about determinedly and headed toward the door.
"Wait!" Jim yelped.
"Now what?" snarled Carolinus, turning back to him, with his hand on the door knob.
"I didn't ask you about the Worm."
"What Worm?"
"There's a Worm up in the Cheviot Woods in Hollow Men territory," said Jim. "But I checked with the Accounting Office and the Dark Powers themselves don't seem to be around there. What does it mean—a Worm without the Dark Powers nearby?"
Carolinus frowned and his hand dropped from the door knob.
"A Worm, and no locus of the Dark Powers?" he asked.
"That's right—although I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'locus'," said Jim.
"A locus," said Carolinus pedantically, "is a place, or locality. A point on a line, say, having no dimensions but position—"
"I know the ordinary definition of a locus!" broke in Jim. It always irritated him when Carolinus seemed to forget that he had had an education of his own—a good one—back in the twentieth century of his own world. "What I don't understand is how you're using it here."
"I'm using it in the sense of a point of concentration" said Carolinus frostily. "The Dark Powers establish a locus—like the Loathly Tower, which you remember so well—and then having established it they set about it their special creatures to either foray out and do damage or to defend the point or place they've chosen."
"What's this Worm doing up in the Cheviot Woods, then, with no Dark Powers to foray for, or protect?" demanded Jim.
Carolinus stared at him. There was a long moment before he spoke.
"My boy," he said in an unusually reasonable voice, "I don't know. I just don't know. I've never heard of it before. I can't imagine why a Worm would be there. It isn't as if the Dark Powers could simply lose a Worm someplace. They create them once the locus is chosen, ordinarily; and they cease to be when the locus is eliminated. Beyond that, I don't know. Did you ask the Accounting Office?"
"No," said Jim. "You know the Accounting Office. I didn't think it would tell me."
A sudden thought struck him.
"Maybe the Accounting Office would tell you more than it would tell me?" he asked.
Carolinus shook his head.
"I know I speak to it rather sharply from time to time," he said, "and well I may, being one of the three most valuable accounts it controls. But it does me no special favors because of that. Whatever it might tell you would be the most it would tell any magician. You're lucky to have that much connection with it and get that much of an answer. But, Jim—"
He broke off suddenly and there was a note of deep concern in his voice.
"You must absolutely find out about that Worm, why it's there, and what its connection is with the situation, as soon as possible," he said. "I don't like the feel of it. I don't like it at all. For the Dark Powers to go outside their ordinary way of working—well, the whole thing worries me. Never mind this silly invasion matter. Concentrate on finding out why that Worm's there!"
"I will," said Jim. "In fact, I intended to—find out, that is. But since you take it that seriously I'll give it absolutely as much of my time as I can."
"Very well. Bless you, my boy," said Carolinus, turning back to the door and putting his hand on the knob. "Now I really must be going. I am indeed sorry, though, that I can't be more help to you. It's this out-of-this-world origin of yours that causes all the trouble. It's caused you to end up with enemies on a much higher level than any magician with a D rating would be likely to get entangled with. A master should always be helpful to his apprentice. But in this case my hands are tied."
"That's all right," said Jim. "I appreciate what you do for me, Carolinus."
"Thank you, my boy!" said Carolinus.
He turned to his front door, opened it and began to enter, his voice changing noticeably. "—And did you get tired of waiting? I'm sorry. But you have indeed drunk some of the Madeira. That's a good dryad—"
The door closed behind him.
Jim stood alone on the gravel driveway, the water of the fountain tinkling in his ears. He sighed. It was time for him to go, too—back to his own body in the de Mer Castle.
He closed his eyes, wrote the magical line that would send him there, on the blackboard inside his forehead. A second later he opened his eyes again to find himself rolled up in his mattress on the floor of Liseth's bedroom.
"You're awake!" said Liseth, herself looming over him. "And I barely got here too. Well, it was most gentle of you to wake up so promptly. I'm glad you did. Greywings has found Snorrl, and if we go right now, we can catch Snorrl while there's still some of the afternoon left. What do you hope he can tell you?"
"I need a place," said Jim grimly.
"I only mention it, because he may not want to tell you," said Liseth. "You know how he is."
Chapter Thirteen
"Pardon me," said Jim, rolling over and over to unwind the mattress from around him. He got completely unwound and climbed to his feet, then squatted down again to roll the mattress up so that he could put it under his arm.
"You can leave that if you wish, m'Lord," said Liseth. "One of the servants will bring it around to your bedroom."
"Thanks," said Jim, "but if you'll forgive me I prefer to handle it myself and not have anyone else touch it. It's part of the magic I do."
"Oh!" said Liseth. "I should have remembered that. In that case, we should probably drop by the room where Sir Brian lies, so that you can leave the mattress with your other goods."
"Yes," said Jim, as they went out the door themselves into the corridor and headed toward the stairway to the floor above.
"As a matter of fact," he added, "I want to take another look at Brian before I go out, anyway. I should have been more instructive to the servants. They were to keep urging the small beer on him, one holding the weight of the pitcher to pour into his cup and even holding the cup while another of them supports his head as he drinks."
"I'll question them when we get there," said Liseth. "If they didn't understand this before, I'll make it clear to them."
"Thank you," said Jim, as they began to climb the stairs.
Liseth smiled at him.
"It is my pleasure, m'Lord," she said.
She had a face with cheeks that dimpled when she smiled so that she ended up looking twice as attractive as she did with a more sober expression. Jim felt a definite, physical stir of feeling toward her. Realizing what he was doing, he sternly pushed the feeling away from him.
"Thank you," he said again, this time rather woodenly; but Liseth did not seem to notice.
"Greywings found Snorrl less than half a mile from here," she went on. "By this time, if he hasn't reached our meeting place, he must be close on it. We'll go as soon as you've looked at Sir Brian."
"Good," said Jim.
"Good? Then why are you frowning?" asked Liseth, interested.
"I'm thinking of tomorrow," he said. "That packing I put on Brian's wound is going to have to come off and be replaced by another one. Have you boiled other cloths so that we have another long, soft one to replace the one on his wound now?"
"I have boiled a number of cloths of all shapes and kinds," said Liseth, "—or rather I made sure the servants did so. I also made them rinse and scrub off their hands as much as possible before handling the boiled cloths. Was that right?"
"It was," said Jim.
"I wish," said Liseth, as they reached the floor above and began their way down the corridor toward the room where Brian waited for them, "I could do more to help in this hap."
"Perhaps you can," said Jim, struck by a sudden thought. "May I look at your hands?"
Liseth offered her hands chest high for his inspection. She held them palms up.
"If you wouldn't mind turning them over, please, m'Lady," said Jim.
She turned them over. As he had feared, while the hands themselves were fairly clean, every fingernail had a rim of black under the end of it.
"I am afraid so, m'Lord," said Liseth. "Indeed, I must confess that I'm not quite sure what this stuff is you call 'soap'."
"It's most usually made by boiling wood ashes and animal fat together," said Jim, "and it makes cleaning things easier when you add it to the water in which something is going to be cleaned."
"Oh!" said Liseth. "You mean soap! I thought you meant something for magical use, with a same-sounding name. Why, yes, we make it every few months, in large vats. It is, as you say, good for cleaning. Also sometimes as medicine."
Jim felt a great sense of relief.
"Well, then," he said, "if you've got soap, there's no reason these servants up here can't thoroughly wash their hands and arms, using plenty of soap and making sure they clean under their fingernails."
"Under their fingernails?" said Liseth. "But anything that's safely under their fingernails isn't going to be touching Sir Brian or anything close to him."
"I'm afraid," said Jim, "that for a matter that involves healing by magic, it's necessary that there not even be any dirt under the fingernails. If you will forgive me for mentioning it, m'Lady, if you wish to help me with Sir Brian to the extent of actually handling him, I would appreciate your hands being as clean as if not cleaner than, those of the servants."
"Why, what a thought!" said Liseth sharply. They had just reached the room where Brian lay. "Of course my hands will be cleaner than the servants'! They couldn't possibly get their hands as clean as mine! But you do mean I should wash until there is nothing to be seen under my fingernails at all?"
"And then wash some more," said Jim.
"By Saint Anne!" exclaimed Liseth, halting with an astonished expression. After a second, she followed Jim into the room.
Jim halted by the bed. Brian's eyes were open, and he was wide awake.
"How do you feel?" Jim asked.
Brian focused on him with a little difficulty.
"Why, well," he said. "A trifle tired at the moment; but give me a good night's sleep and I should be up and around by tomorrow—"
"Not tomorrow or the next day," said Jim. "You rest in that bed for a week. Have you been getting some of this small beer drunk?"
He peered into the pitchers as he spoke, and saw one of them was a little more than half empty.
"I have," husked Brian, "though I am a little surprised my host should think so little of me as not to provide me with wine. Would you—"
"It's not your host's doing," interrupted Jim. "I'm the one who insisted that you be given nothing but small beer."
"Wine—" began Brian; but Jim cut him short.
"Wine has too much alcohol in it for you right now," he said. "Your wound isn't dangerous, but you don't want to get a lot of alcohol into you."
"Alco—" Brian stumbled over the word.
"That's what's in wine that makes you drunk when you drink it," said Jim. "It's not good for you right now. Besides, you've lost a lot of blood, and we've got to replace that liquid in your body. Small beer will do a safe job of doing it. Small beer and as much as you can get down you."
"Why, there's no problem," whispered Brian. "If it is drunkenness you fear, you've forgotten that I hold my wine very well. I will therefore drink only my normal three or four bottles a day; and stop before I have got too much of this al—whatever it is—in me. And for the rest of the day, I will drink only small beer."
"It doesn't work that way, Brian," said Jim firmly. "Besides, we want to keep liquid in you, not take it out. And wine is a diuretic."
"Dia…" Brian stumbled. "These magic words! I don't understand, James—"
"It, er—" Jim glanced around to find Liseth close beside him, looking at him interestedly, and the eyes of the servants all upon him. There was no hope for it. The words "urinate" and "defecate" would mean nothing at all to these people. "Wine is what makes you piss."
"Does it!" said Liseth brightly. "Now that you mention it, I'm sure I've noticed the fact, myself. But surely, m'Lord, pissing is a perfectly ordinary and harmless thing to do. I hate to see the good Sir Brian, here, deprived of the wine that would give him strength and pleasure. Could you not relent and allow him maybe two bottles a day?"
"No!" said Jim.
Liseth and the servants and Brian, all good fourteenth-century characters, did not argue with him. He took his mattress over and laid it down with the rest of his belongings; then he came back to Brian's bedside.
"It was a shallow wound you took," he said. "We're going to have to change the bandages on it daily; and that may be a bit painful—"
Brian made a faint contemptuous sound.
"At any rate, if we take care of it you'll be up out of that bed in a week and riding in two weeks."
"Riding in two weeks!" Outrage lent strength to Brian's voice. "I shall be riding within two days, three days at the outside!"
"We'll see," said Jim. "Now I'll leave you with these servants and they have orders to offer you the small beer often. I want you to drink as much as you possibly can of it. Remember, Brian, I have put healing magic into this same small beer. You must do as I say!"
Brian subsided.
"Yes, James," he said in so small a voice he could hardly be heard at all.
"I'll be in to look at you frequently," said Jim. "Right now I have to go out with m'Lady Liseth here. But I'll see you in early evening and early tomorrow and so forth. As soon as you're really able to get up and move about, I'll give you permission. All right?"
"Nay," said Brian, "but I will do as you command."
Jim placed a hand under the bedclothes on Brian's good shoulder. "That's the way to be! Now, we'll all be back in to see you later."
He went out and Liseth automatically went with him.
In the corridor outside, and on their way down the stairway, Liseth bombarded him with questions having to do with wine and its effect on the human body. Her language, like that of all the other fourteenth-century men and women he had encountered here, was unabashedly frank; and he felt his ears getting red. He finally shut her up by taking refuge in his magician's aura of mysterious authority; and they continued to the front door, where Jim found she already had a couple of horses waiting.
A few moments later they were out of the courtyard and on a canter inland from the sea toward the hills and the trees beyond.
There were still a good two hours or more until sunset. It occurred to Jim that a lot had happened today. Then he remembered—he had become so used to fourteenth-century habits that he had forgotten—that this day, like all days in a time of candles (if you were lucky) and cressets (if you were less so) began at sunrise or a little before and ended a little after sunset.
Shortly thereafter, they passed into the relative shade of the newly budded trees, and the day seemed to have suddenly become at least an hour later. However, here the trees were not very close and they rode in and out of sunlight—for the sky was almost clear of clouds—until they came to a small clearing that to Jim's eyes looked absolutely empty.
"Is this where Snorrl was supposed to meet us?" asked Jim, as they pulled their horses to a halt.
"It's where I have met you," said the harsh voice of the wolf, and Jim looked down to see Snorrl lying on his side, perhaps a dozen feet off in the sparse, newly green groundcover of the open space. Jim would have sworn the wolf had not been there a second before.
Liseth got down from her horse and he followed her example. She dropped the reins of her horse on the ground and it stayed where it was—'ground-hitched,' in the cowboy language of Jim's former world. He dropped his horse's reins, and the action had the same effect on his steed.
This was somewhat unusual as far as horses of the fourteenth century went; but possibly had something to do, Jim thought, with Liseth's close rapport with all animals. Now, she led the way toward Snorrl, who immediately got to his feet and came forward to her; head down, ears back and tail wagging slowly after the fashion of wolves rather
than dogs.
She squatted down—Jim had the feeling that she would have knelt for more convenience if the ground had not been damp from its spring condition—and scratched around his ears and under his chin.
"Did you need me?" Snorrl asked.
"Actually, it is m'Lord, the Mage, here, who had need of you," answered Liseth. Snorrl glanced over at Jim, but made no move to come up to him in the warm and friendly manner in which he had approached Liseth.
"What is it then, magician?" he asked. "Or Sir James, as I understand they call you."
"Sir James will be preferable," said Jim. "I wanted use of your knowledge of the Cheviot Hills. Particularly, of that area held by the Hollow Men, where no men dare go. I understand you go and come there, fairly freely."
"I do," said Snorrl. He snapped his jaws ringingly shut, then opened them again. "They are my woods, after all, and the Hollow Men only exist there because mortal humans like you cannot put an end to them. I have explained to you that the Hollow Men are not comfortable around me, whether I threaten them or not. They fear wolves as you mortals fear spirits."
"I, myself," said Jim, "do not fear spirits, Snorrl. I am prudently afraid, however, of evil—particularly of the Dark Powers. I assume you know of the Dark Powers?"
"Who doesn't?" growled Snorrl. "But they have no power and pose no threat to us who go on four legs. It is only you two-legged creatures with whom they dispute the Earth!"
"That seems to be the case," said Jim. "However, I've a question for you. In the territory of the Hollow Men, do you know of any place where they could all be gathered together, if necessary? A place from which they'd find it hard to escape?"
"There's more than one such place in the Cheviots," said Snorrl. There was a note of curiosity in his voice. "Why would you want them all gathered together; and how did you think it could be done, in any case?"
"That, Sir wolf," Jim answered, "I still have not decided upon. It is enough to know from you for the present that there are such places. I may ask you to show them to me, eventually."
"You would go in where the Hollow Men are?" said Snorrl, cocking his head at him. "Perhaps you tell the truth when you say you're not afraid of spirits."
The Dragon on The Border Page 14
