The Dragon Knight

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Well, yes," said Jim, diffidently. "If I've come at a bad time—"

  "When did anybody ever come to see me at a good time?" snapped Carolinus. "You're here because you're in trouble, aren't you? Don't deny it! That's the only reason anybody ever comes to see me. You're in trouble, aren't you?"

  "Well, yes—" said Jim.

  "Can you talk without beginning every sentence with 'well'?" demanded Carolinus.

  "Of course," said Jim. His own temper was beginning to shorten a little bit. Carolinus sometimes had that effect on people; even normally easygoing characters like Jim.

  "Then pray do so," said Carolinus. "Can't you see I've got difficulties of my own?"

  "I rather figured you had," said Jim, "from the way you were talking; but I don't really know what it is that's bothering you."

  "You don't?" retorted Carolinus. "I should think any fool could see—even a Master of Arts." The last word came out with a definitely sarcastic edge. Jim had been incautious enough early in their acquaintance to mention to Carolinus that he had gotten a degree as Master of Arts in Medieval Studies at a midwestern university. It had only been later that Jim had discovered that in this world, and particularly in the exclusive province of magicians, the term Master of Arts indicated a great deal more prestige and accomplishment than the academic equivalent he had picked up at Michigan State.

  "Can't you see my orrery isn't working right?" went on Carolinus. "It's showing me a view of the heavens that's all turned around. I can tell that by one glance; but I can't put my finger on what's wrong. I'm sure the North Star shouldn't be there," he pointed to a far corner of the room, "but, where should it be?"

  "In the north," said Jim innocently.

  "Of course, in the—" Carolinus broke off suddenly, stared at Jim, and snorted. Bending over his ivory globe, he rotated it roughly a quarter turn.

  The lights on the ceiling flickered to a new position. Carolinus looked up at them and sighed happily.

  "Merely a matter of time until I found the right spot myself, of course," he said. For a moment he sounded almost genial.

  He looked at Jim again.

  "Well now," went on Carolinus in what, for him, was a reasonable tone, "what does bring you to see me, then?"

  "Do you mind if we step outside to talk about it?" asked Jim, still diffidently. The fact of the matter was that with his size and the low ceiling of the room, plus its general darkness at the moment, he had a vision of stepping on, or brushing off a table, some priceless, object; and sending Carolinus back into his ill-temper once more.

  "I suppose I could do that," said Carolinus. "All right then. After you."

  Jim turned and squeezed back out the door into the sunlight. Gorp raised his head momentarily from the grass he was cropping to look at the two of them as they emerged; and then went back to the more important business of feeding himself. Jim stepped down from the red step to the pathway and Carolinus joined him there.

  "So," said Carolinus, "you're here in dragon body. Why?"

  "That's it," answered Jim.

  "What do you mean, that's it?" echoed Carolinus.

  "I mean," said Jim, "it's the dragon body, that's the reason I'm here. I seem to have started turning into a dragon unexpectedly from time to time. I asked the Accounting Office and all they'd tell me was that my account had been activated."

  "Hmmm," said Carolinus, "that's right, been a good bit over six months hasn't it? I’m surprised they didn't do it before now."

  "But I don't want my account activated," said Jim. "I don't want to keep changing into a dragon and back again without warning like this. I need your help to stop it."

  "Stop it?" Carolinus"s white eyebrows climbed up his forehead. "There's no way I can stop an account being activated. Particularly since the time limit's more than run out."

  "But I don't even understand what's meant by my account being activated!" said Jim.

  "Why, my good James!" said Carolinus, exasperatedly. "You shouldn't need any help to reason that out. You've a certain balance with the Accounting Office. A balance is energy—potential magical energy. And energy is not static. It has to be active, by definition. That means you put it to use, or—as now, very evidently—it puts itself to use. Since you haven't done anything with it; and all it knows as far as your taste and choices of use go, is that you once were in the body of a dragon, it's started turning you into a dragon and from a dragon back again into a human at random. Quod erat demonstratum. Or, in language you can understand—"

  " '—as has been demonstrated,' " translated Jim, a little testily, himself. He might be an ordinary twentieth-century M.A., but he did know Latin.

  He forced his voice back into reasonable tones.

  "Well, that's all very well," he said, "but how do we get it to stop turning me into a dragon and back again without any warning?"

  "We don't," said Carolinus. "You've got to do that for yourself."

  "But I don't know how!" said Jim. "If I knew how I wouldn't be here asking you for help."

  "This isn't the sort of thing I can help," Carolinus said grumpily. "It's your account, not mine. You've got to handle it. If you don't know how, you've got to learn how. Do you want to learn how?"

  "I have to learn how!" said Jim.

  "Very well then. I'll take you on as my pupil," said Carolinus. "The usual ten percent of your balance for my fee will therefore automatically and immediately be transferred to my balance. Noted?"

  "Noted!" said the bass voice of the Accounting Office, from its customary height of a few feet above the ground and with its customary effect on Jim—as if a firecracker had gone off between his toes.

  "A pittance," Carolinus was grumbling into his beard. "However, since it's the customary fee…"

  He raised his voice to a conversational level again.

  "You will be counseled by me in all things magical, as was Merlin by the mighty Bleys, his Master?" he said. "Answer No, and the bargain is unmade, answer Yes and you pledge your total Account to your word to obey!"

  "Yes," said Jim, readily enough.

  He was thinking he might actually be a great deal better off without that ridiculous Account, so it would hardly break his heart if it came to a matter of disobeying Carolinus on some magical matter.

  "Well," said Jim, "now about getting me out of this dragon body and back into my regular one—"

  "Not so fast!" snapped Carolinus. "First we've got to feed you with Knowledge."

  He turned aside and snapped his fingers at empty air.

  "Encyclopedia!" he commanded.

  A red-bound volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica materialized out of thin air and fell to the gravel below. A second volume was just about to follow it—in fact it had half materialized—when Carolinus's rather brisk attitude changed to one of fury.

  "No! Not that, you idiot!" he shouted. "The Encyclopedia. The Necromantick!"

  "Sorry," said the deep bass voice of the Accounting Office. The already-extant and the half-materialized volume of the Britannica disappeared.

  Jim stared at Carolinus. He had never spoken at all irritably to the Accounting Office, himself. Something in his bones warned him that it would not be a wise thing to do. Even if he had not remembered the single moment, some nine months ago, in which Earth, sky, and sea had spoken with a single voice, echoing what the Office had just said, he had the feeling that he would know better than to speak up to the Accounting Office voice.

  It had been true that the one word the Accounting Office had uttered then had not been addressed to him. But all the same, he would remember it for the rest of his life.

  Nor had it been ineffective. The Dark Powers, for all their omnipotence, had been immediate in delivering Angie back to him once that command had been given. Yet here was Carolinus, who regularly treated the Accounting Office voice as if it was some junior employee, and a half-witted one at that.

  "Ah!" said Carolinus.

  A leather-bound book big enough to make the first volume of t
he Britannica look like a postage stamp appeared out of empty air and fell downwards. Unbelievably, Carolinus caught it as lightly in the palm of one hand as if it had been a feather. Jim was just close enough to read the slanted writing in gold across the cover of the book.

  Encyclopedie Necromantick.

  "Complete with index. That's right," said Carolinus, balancing the volume in his hand and gazing piercingly at it. "Now you—small down!”

  The huge volume began to shrink. It got smaller and smaller until it was the size of a sugar cube—until it was no more than the size of a very small medicine tablet. He passed it over to Jim, who automatically braced his arm to receive its weight and was surprised to find that he could hardly feel it in the palm of his dragon's horny paw. He stared at it.

  "Well," said Carolinus, "don’t just stand there. Swallow it!"

  With some misgivings, Jim flicked out a long red dragon tongue, curled it around the tiny pill-sized thing he was holding, drew it back into his mouth, and swallowed.

  It vanished down his throat without any feeling; but a moment later he felt rather as if he had eaten an enormous meal.

  "There you are," said Carolinus satisfiedly. "Everything a young magician needs to know. In fact, everything any magician needs to know—those who still have to go by spells, of course. You've got the knowledge now, my boy. It's just a matter of your learning how to use it. Practice, practice! That's the answer. Practice!"

  He rubbed his thin hands together.

  "How—how do I practice?" said Jim, still battling with the feeling of having eaten two Christmas dinners at once.

  "How do you do it?" said Carolinus. "I just told you. Practice! Look up the spell you need in the index, find it in the Encyclopedie, and apply it. That's what you do. Moreover, you keep on doing it until you have the whole Encyclopedie by heart. Then, if you have the talent, you move up a step to the point where needing to use such crutches is no longer necessary. Once you've learned all the spells in that Encyclopedie, you can construct your own. Once you know a million spells you can construct a billion, a trillion—however many you want! Not that I think you'll ever reach that point."

  Jim agreed. Moreover, he felt as if he didn't particularly care to reach that point.

  "How long do I go on feeling like a stuffed goose?" he asked feebly.

  "Oh, that," Carolinus waved a hand negligently. "That'll pass off in half an hour or so. You just need to digest what you've swallowed."

  He turned back toward the house.

  "Well," he said over his shoulder, "that takes care of your matter. I can get back to my orrery. Remember what I told you. Practice! Practice!"

  "Wait!" yelped Jim.

  Chapter Four

  Carolinus stopped and turned. His white eyebrows were drawn together in a frown and he was looking definitely dangerous.

  "Now what?" he asked, enunciating the words slowly and ominously.

  "I'm still in my dragon body," said Jim. "I need to get out of this. How do I do it?"

  "With Magic!" retorted Carolinus. "Why do you think I took you on as a pupil? Why do you think I had you swallow the Encyclopedie? You have the means, use them!"

  Jim made a flash examination of his mind. He could feel knowledge there, all right; a lump as indigestible and unavailable as the weight he seem to feel in his stomach.

  "You had me swallow it," said Jim desperately, "but I don't know how to use it. How do I turn myself from a dragon back into myself?"

  A malicious smile crept across Carolinus's face; but it relaxed from the ominous scowl that had held it a second before.

  "Aha!" he said. "As a teaching assistant I naturally assumed you'd know how to make use of resource materials. But clearly you don't."

  For a moment the frown came back. He muttered something in his beard about, "… disgraceful… younger generation…

  "However," he said, "I suppose I'll have to walk you through your first use of Magic.

  "Look on the inside of your forehead," he added.

  Jim stared at him. Then he tried what Carolinus had said. Of course he could not look at the inside of his forehead. But, strangely enough, he now had the feeling that, with a little bit of imagination, he could imagine a curved sheet of darkness, as available as a blackboard to write upon.

  "Got it?" demanded Carolinus.

  "I think so," answered Jim. "At least I've got a feel for the inside of my forehead."

  "Good!" said Carolinus. "Now bring up the index."

  Jim concentrated on his imaginary blackboard; and with another imaginative effort he discovered that large golden letters were forming against that dark surface; and that they read:

  INDEX

  "I think I've got that, too," said Jim, squinting at the scene around him, as if that would help focus his mind on what he was trying to envision.

  "Very well," said Carolinus, "now bring up the following, one at a time. Ready?"

  "Ready," said Jim.

  "Notshape," said Carolinus.

  Jim made some kind of intellectual effort—there was no way he could describe it, but it was somewhat as if he was trying to remember something that he knew very well. The word INDEX disappeared; and was replaced by a list of words that scrolled past from the bottom of his forehead up out of sight at the top. They seemed to keep on zipping past endlessly. He caught a flash of occasional ones—"fat." "thin." "elsewhere"… but none of them made any sense. He assumed that these were somehow attributes of shape he was looking at. But how to slow down the scrolling, or find what he wanted among them—even if he knew what he wanted—was a problem that right now teemed absolutely insoluble.

  "Dragon," he heard Carolinus's voice barking at him. Jim envisioned it.

  It was immediately replaced by more words scrolling, now different. Jim picked out "large," "British."

  "savage"…

  "Arrow," Carolinus was commanding.

  Jim struggled to obey. After a moment he got a straight line with what looked like the literal broad point of a clothyard arrow, on the right end of the line he was looking at. The image on the inside of his forehead now read:

  NOTSHAPE DRAGON→

  "Got it," said Jim beginning to feel a first tendril of pleasure at his own accomplishments. "Got it all so far. 'NOT-SHAPE-DRAGON—ARROW—.' "

  "Me!" said Carolinus.

  "Me," echoed Jim, summoning up the word just beyond the point of the arrow on the forehead-blackboard of his mind.

  It flashed for a moment on the inner forehead of Jim's imagination:

  NOTSHAPE DRAGON→ME

  Abruptly, he felt extremely chilly. Forgetting about the blackboard, and returning his attention to his outside surroundings and himself, he discovered he was standing naked on Carolinus's graveled path.

  "And there you are," said Carolinus, beginning to turn away once more.

  "Hold on!" cried Jim. "What about my clothes? My armor? It's all in pieces!"

  Carolinus slowly turned, and the expression on his face was clearly not agreeable. Jim hurried over to Gorp, unhooked his sword belt from the pommel, and brought it back, together with its bundle of weapons and bits and pieces of his clothing and armor, to where the other was standing. The March day was definitely cool. You could almost call it cold after all. The gravel of Carolinus's walk definitely hurt the soles of his feet. Nonetheless, he dumped the package at Carolinus's feet, undid the sword belt and displayed the remnants of his personal wear.

  "I see," said Carolinus thoughtfully, stroking his beard.

  "I was wearing this when I turned into a dragon," said Jim. "Naturally when I switched to the bigger body it sort of exploded off me."

  "Yes. Yes, indeed," said Carolinus, continuing to stroke his beard. "Interesting."

  "Well?" asked Jim. "Will you tell me how to put all these things back to the way they were, magically?"

  "Heal them, you mean?" Carolinus's bushy eyebrows were making a single line over his eyes once more.

  "That's what I had in mind. Yes,
" said Jim.

  "It can be done, of course," said Carolinus slowly, "but there are elements here which you have yet to discover, James. Perhaps, indeed—I think, yes."

  "Yes what?" inquired Jim.

  "It may just be time for your first lecture as my pupil," said Carolinus, casting a thoughtful glance at the sky overhead before looking back at Jim. "I will now explain to you some of what lies behind the elements of Magic. Pay heed."

  Jim shivered. The day was not merely cool or cold, it was positively icy. There were goose bumps all over him. On the other hand, he knew Carolinus well enough to know that the other was now embarked on an action which probably could not be frustrated, diverted, or in fact done anything with, but accepted. He wished he knew whatever spell there was for keeping himself warm. He tried to ignore the goose bumps, and listened.

  "Imagine," said Carolinus, "what it must have been like in the beginning. Back when man was a Stone Age savage and before, everything was Magic. If you and the rest of your tribe pounded away on a dangerous bear, let us say, until it fell over and did not move any more, the reason you had conquered it was Magic. Not the clubs. There was no connection between pounding something with clubs, and the life going out of the creature that had been a threat to you. That, at least, is the way it was in the beginning."

  Carolinus cleared his throat. He was speaking to Jim, but also to the little glade of the Tinkling Water itself and to the sky overhead. Lecturing the world in general, as a matter of fact.

  "Conceive this now, James," he said. "This is a time when everything happens by Magic. Rain is Magic, lightning is Magic, thunder is Magic; there is Magic all around you. There is Magic in everything that is done by animals and by other humans. If not directly Magic, it is affected by Magic. You get my point?"

  Now he did bend his eyes directly on Jim.

  "Er—I think so," said Jim. "You're saying that in the beginning magic was an explanation for everything, everything was done by magic."

  "Not an explanation!" scowled Carolinus. "Everything was Magical. However, as time went on, those things that were in the common area and used by everybody and about which there was no secret, began to lose their aura of Magic. So the idea came to be that there were things Magic and things that were not-Magic. But they changed over from one area to the other one by one. Consider, that for our purposes—you and I who deal with Magic, James—everything still is Magic, at base."