The Dragon Knight

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "I—yes," said Jim.

  "Very good," went on Carolinus. "Therefore let us imagine the first time someone who was used to just draping himself with furs, happened to get hold of a garment that was made of two furs; one that had been sewed together. And he wore those happily for some time; until some accident or other caused the sewing to tear and the two furs to part. So he took them back to the person from whom he had first gotten the joined furs, or the person he had heard of as being responsible for joining them, who turned out to be the old, wise woman of the tribe."

  He stopped and looked severely at Jim. "Every tribe in those days had a wise woman. It was required."

  "Yes, yes," said Jim, massaging his upper arms with their opposing hands. "Go on. Go on."

  "She took the furs from him," continued Carolinus, "and said, 'Yes, I can put these back together again. But it is very secret magic. I will take them into my cave and you must by no means try to follow or watch me. If you do, lightning will tear your skin from your bones, the next storm we have! "

  Jim had just recalled that his hose, which he now finally remembered had only been stretched, not torn apart, were still essentially wearable. He pulled them on and began to drape himself with bits and pieces of his shirt and doublet. It was not much, but it made the outdoor air a little more bearable.

  "Go on," said Jim, looking at his boots, which unfortunately had been rather badly torn apart. He could get them on his feet, all right; but there was no doubt they would not stay on the minute he tried to lift his foot to take a step.

  "So," said Carolinus, cheerfully ignoring him and immersed in his own lecture, "the wise woman took the skins into the cave; and after a while brought them out and—Lo, they were joined together again! The man for whom she had done this paid her, and everyone was happy."

  Jim was still searching among the fragments of his clothing for more protection from the weather.

  "So what do you think had happened?" Carolinus's voice exploded like a bomb in his ear, and he jerked up to find the magician glaring at him from six inches away.

  "Well, I—ah—she sewed them together again," said Jim.

  "Exactly!" said Carolinus. "But at that time, you now see, sewing was a Magical act. What she did was to pierce holes in the skin and pull sinew through them; and this created a Magic condition in which the two skins had to stay together. Do you understand?"

  "Yes," said Jim, shocked back into complete attention.

  "Now," went on Carolinus almost sweetly, "insofar as this applies to your situation: Yes, within the Encyclopedie Necromantick, there is the information that will allow you, or would allow me to show you, how to put your clothes back together with Magic. However, the spell would have to be renewed every sunrise. It would be a problem. It would be vulnerable to any kind of counter-influence from another Magic entity. In short, it is not an ideal solution. Because, my dear James, the moral of what I’ve been telling you is that those things which have passed from the realm of Magic into the realm of common everyday ways of doing things are always the best forms of Magic!"

  He stopped and frowned again at Jim.

  "This has ramifications far and beyond the matter of putting clothes back on your body right now," Carolinus went on. "You must always remember what you’ve just learned from me. Magic that has entered the common domain is the best Magic. It should be used first. The best of Magic that is still unknown to nonprofessionals is liable to mischance and destruction. I will tell you a story."

  He glared at Jim again.

  "You're listening?"

  "Absolutely," said Jim.

  "This story concerns a fellow Magician who unfortunately was not the best of us. There are no bad Magicians," said Carolinus, "there are only Magicians gone astray. There are extenuating circumstances, of course; but—I won't tell you his name. You'll find that out after you move up in the ranks—if you ever do—but even though there were extenuating circumstances, what he did was inexcusable."

  Carolinus paused importantly. "This Magician chose to use his Magical abilities for mundane ends," he said slowly and impressively. "You must never fall into that trap James. Never."

  "Oh, I won't," said Jim quickly.

  "Good," said Carolinus. "As I was saying he decided to use his Magic for mundane ends. He thought he saw his way to control a Kingdom by causing the young prince of it, who had just succeeded his father the king as ruler there, to fall in love with a maiden who would be completely under the Magician's control. A contrived maiden who would direct every move the young prince made, and consequently make him a puppet of the Magician."

  Carolinus had paused again and Jim felt that he was waiting for Jim to make some kind of comment. Jim could mink of nothing to say so he merely clicked his tongue.

  "Tch, tch," he said.

  "Yes, indeed," said Carolinus. "So the Magician imported the finest and purest snow, from the top of the highest mountain close enough so that the snow would not melt in its journey to him; and fashioned from it the most beautiful maiden that the world has ever seen. He introduced her to the prince, the prince fell deeply in love with her, they were married amidst great rejoicing throughout the kingdom."

  Carolinus paused to draw a breath.

  "All through the introduction, the courtship, the marriage and so forth," Carolinus went on, "the Magician was very careful to make sure that no moisture touched the maiden—who, of course, being made of snow would melt if it did. He impressed on the prince the fact that the maiden had such delicate skin that she could only be touched by moisture in the form of a Magic potion that he himself imported at great cost from the other side of the world and that even her bathing must remain a secret from the prince."

  "But—" began Jim.

  "I am talking," said Carolinus frostily.

  "Sorry," said Jim. "Go on."

  "All other forms of moisture the princess must be shielded from," continued Carolinus. "On the day of the wedding there was a slight shower, but there were plenty of ready coverings to protect the princess. All went well until the newlyweds started to reenter the castle of the prince, who was now king. Without any thought for possible dangers the prince swept up the maiden in his arms to carry her in over the threshold. The Magician was too far away to reach him, even if he had foreseen the danger in this. Unfortunately, the threshold of the castle lay beyond a short bridge that covered the castle moat. The prince started up the slight slope of this bridge. But it was now wet from the rain. He slipped, he fell. He and the maiden were both plunged in the moat—you can guess, I suppose, that he came up alone."

  Carolinus paused at last, on a deep and impressive note.

  Jim felt vaguely as if he was expected to bare his head at this point and place his hand over his heart. Unfortunately, he had nothing to take off by way of a hat and he decided he would feel decidedly silly putting his hand over his heart.

  "She melted in the waters of the moat, of course," Carolinus said. "Tragic."

  Jim tried to look properly impressed.

  "Particularly for the prince, it was tragic," went on Carolinus. "For the plans of the Magician, of course, it was ruin. For the Accounting Office, there was the necessity of imposing a severe fine upon the Magician—for technical reasons, which are somewhat beyond your reach at the moment, my dear James. The point of the whole story is—Never use Magic when you can better employ some mundane, if no longer recognized as such, form of Magic that exists generally. Now, what I suggest—and I'll coach you through it—is that you use a spell for temporarily sticking together those parts of your apparel and armor that are now—er—dismembered. But when you get home, you have them property reattached the one to the other, or whatever else needs to be done, by purely mundane means. Do you follow me?"

  "Certainly!" cried Jim, relieved to be done with the lecture and overjoyed to know that he was going to be clothed once more. He had been rather sure that Gorp would not be likely to let him mount in his present ragtag appearance; and he did not look forward
to a walk all the way back to the castle.

  Carolinus accordingly put him through a procedure with the inside of his forehead, the Index, and the Encyclopedie Necromantick, and Jim found himself, at last, to all intents and purposes, dressed, armored and on his way home.

  A couple of hours later he reached the portal of his own castle, feeling more than a little contented with himself. He had the technique for changing himself back from a dragon to a human firmly in mind now; and he should have no more trouble with that. Under Carolinus's tutelage, he had even experimented with turning himself back into a dragon, simply so he could turn himself back to human again, back and forth several times, to make sure the lesson stuck. It had been, all in all, a good day.

  "M'Lord!" said the man-at-arms at watch on the gate. "Sir Brian Neville-Smythe. He's here!"

  "Oh?" said Jim. "Good!"

  He got rid of his horse and hurried to the great hall, which was where Sir Brian was most likely to be, unless Angie had taken him up into their solar bedroom for privacy. The fact of the matter was, there were not a great many places in the castle that were not essentially public. The result was that both Jim and Angie had fallen into the medieval habit of simply living and talking with all sorts of people around them. Eventually they had simply gotten to the point where they ignored being watched and overheard, except in their most private moments. Sir Brian was seated at the high table in the great hall with Angie, pretty much as Jim had expected. Jim strode up to the table, clasped hands with Sir Brian, and joined them.

  "Jim!" said Angie. "What happened to you?"

  It was plain, to Jim at least, that the minute the words were out of her mouth, she was wishing that she had not said anything. However, his appearance was bound to be remarked on in any case; and Jim had already come up with a temporary, stopgap answer.

  "Oh," he said, "it's a matter of magic gone wrong. Nothing important. We'll just have to get these clothes of mine sewed back together properly and my armor straightened out where it needs to be."

  He was conscious of at least twenty other people in the hall drifting close as he spoke.

  "Indeed, you do look somewhat the worse for wear, m'Lord," said Sir Brian.

  "Nothing important, Brian," Jim said, wincing a little at being "m'Lorded" by Brian. He covered up the reaction by hastily half filling one of the extra flagons on the table with wine from the pitcher that had been placed between Angie and Brian.

  When they had first met—nearly a year before, in the matter of the Loathly Tower, and Sir Brian had offered to be the first of Jim's necessary Companions in matching forces with the evil powers within that tower—Jim had informed the other, purely in a spur-of-the-moment attempt to give himself some status, that he was Baron of Riveroak, back in the land he came from.

  Sir Brian had accepted this quite naturally; but had always addressed Jim simply as Sir James, until Jim had taken over the castle and lands belonging to the Baron of Malencontri. After that, he had begun using the "m'Lord" term of address to Jim—something that made Jim very uncomfortable indeed. They were old friends now. Close friends. Jim had argued with him on this point of the "m'Lord" several times, asking Brian to simply call him by his first name of James, as he called the other Brian. Still, Brian had a tendency to slip from time to time. Habit was strong.

  Sir Brian was now sitting at a forty-five degree angle from Jim, since he, Jim, and Angie were clustered around one corner of the high table, with Jim along the long axis of it, and Brian on the short, with Angie in between. Of the three of them, Sir Brian would have seemed to almost any eye to stand apart from both Angie and Jim.

  The good knight was in his twenty-fifth year (as Jim happened to know), actually a good three years younger than Jim.

  But any observer seeing them together for the first time would have undoubtedly assumed Brian was at least ten years older than Jim.

  Partly this was due to his angular, clean-shaven, suntanned face, which showed evidence of exposure to outside weather. But also a great deal was simply due to the fact that Sir Brian radiated an air of confidence, self-possession, and natural authority to command; which Jim simply did not. Brian had grown up taking it for granted he would be a leader. He had always led, he was a leader now; and, a little like Aragh the English wolf, the day that changed for him, he would be dead. In which case any question about his right to his appearance would be beside the point.

  Compared to Jim and Angie, he was poor. He was a knight-bachelor, which simply meant he was not a knight-baronet. The "bachelor" part did not refer to his unmarried state. He awaited the return of the father of Geronde Isabel de Chaney, another neighbor, from the Holy Land—which return might never happen—so that Brian could ask for permission to marry Geronde. His castle, Castle Smythe, was old and in poor repair. His lands were small, compared to those of Malencontri. Once married to Isabel, he would eventually, on Lord de Chaney's death, be able to add the de Chaney lands to his possessions. Then he would be more on a par with Jim and Angie. But for the present, as it had been for some years now, he was more or less living on the edge of poverty. It did not, Jim had thought, ever seem to concern him a great deal.

  "Well?" said Angie, impatiently. "What about your visit? What did you find out?"

  "Oh. Well," said Jim, "it turns out that my magic balance with the Accounting Office—"

  He looked at Brian.

  "You're familiar with that, aren't you, Brian?" he said.

  "Assuredly, James," said Brian.

  "Apparently, it can't be allowed just to lie idle. I have to use it, or it'll start using me," he said. "Carolinus fixed me up with the necessary knowledge to use it. If you don't mind, I won't explain any further, because it gets a little complex. But he gave me the knowledge, and what I've got to do now is practice. So, that's what I'll be doing for the next six months, except when necessity keeps me from it. Practicing magic."

  "You may not have time, James," said Sir Brian solemnly.

  Chapter Five

  Jim merely blinked at Brian, but Angie was quicker off the mark.

  "What do you mean he won’t have the time?" she demanded, leaning aggressively toward Sir Brian. "Why shouldn't he have the time? What's going to keep him from it?"

  "As a matter of fact," said Brian, "that was what I dropped by to tell you about. I wanted to wait until Jim was also here to tell you both, since it is a matter concerning you both."

  There was an absence of any smile on his face and a gravity of manner generally. For a moment Angie said nothing; and so Jim asked the direct question.

  "What's this you came to tell us?"

  "Why, there's been a great battle fought at a place called Poitiers, in France," answered Sir Brian, "by Edward, eldest son to our King Edward and first Prince of the realm. It was fought against King Jean of France, with all his knights and footmen. And, though it wrings my heart, and that of every loyal Englishman to hear it, Prince Edward has been taken prisoner by that same Jean."

  Jim and Angie flashed a glance at each other, in which they agreed they were both at a loss as to how to respond to this. But a response was certainly expected by Brian. They turned back to him.

  "Shocking!" said Angie, getting a real note of outrage into her voice.

  "Yes, indeed!" added Jim hastily.

  "You may well say that, and a good deal more," said Sir Brian grimly. "All England is in an uproar. There is no gentleman worthy of the name who is not now readying horse, armor and troops to recover our Prince and teach that proud Frenchman a lesson!"

  "You, too, Brian?" asked Angie.

  "Yes, by Saint Dunstan!" said the knight emphatically. He directed a burning blue glance on Jim. "Knights like yourself and myself, James, will not wait for our Liege—whom we all know is somewhat inattentive in matters of state—"

  Brian meant, Jim knew of course, that the King was a confirmed alcoholic and usually in a drunken stupor. Confronted with any kind of decision, he could dither and avoid it for months, putting it off until
some day he conceived to be decisive. A day which, needless to say, would never come for him.

  "—but will start now to ready ourselves for the expedition," went on Sir Brian.

  Jim and Angie stared at each other again.

  "I’ve already heard," Brian went on, "that the Earl Marshal, and a few other responsible Lords about the throne, will see to a proper levy being ordered. Meanwhile, there need be as little waiting as possible. We'll gather our forces as quickly as we can, and embark from one or the other of the Cinque Ports—probably Hastings."

  The gravity had largely gone from Brian's voice, pushed into the background by what was plainly and unmistakably a note of pure enthusiasm. Jim felt his heart sink. This close friend of his, for all his other sterling qualities, had always shared the glee that those like him in this world and age felt for any prospect of a battle. As Jim had said to Angie once—literally, Sir Brian and those like him would rather fight than eat.

  "Jim," Angie appealed to him, "you surely don't need to be caught up in this!"

  "Angela," said Brian, "your womanly concern does you credit. But you remember Jim is now bounden in duty to the king, holding these lands of Malencontri in fief directly from His Majesty. As such, James's feudal duty gives him no choice but to submit himself and a certain minimum force to the King's pleasure, for a hundred and twenty days of service during time of war."

  "Yes, but—" Angie broke off, still looking appealingly at Jim. Jim hardly knew bow to meet her eye. He knew that she knew that there would be many knights who would find some excuse or other for staying home. However, Brian and most of those in this particular district of medieval, rural England, were not of that sort. And if Jim should stay home while his neighbors all answered the call to rescue the Prince, he and she would forever after be isolated and treated as outcasts by those who went and their families.