The Dragon Knight

by Gordon R. Dickson

  There was a sighing, grumbling mutter from the crowd. Secoh's gesture had impressed them all right, but, Jim noted, more with horror than with admiration.

  "Crazy mere-dragon!" Jim heard one grumble.

  The comment was a signal for another full-fledged, full-voiced argument among the dragons in the Great Cave. Listening to them, Jim felt his heart sink. Clearly almost all, if not every one of them, were against giving up their best jewels, even temporarily. To a certain extent, particularly now that he was in his dragon form, Jim could feel how the idea might effect them. A dragon's hoard was passed down through the generations, growing as it went. The best jewel that any dragon owned might well be one first gained hundreds of years before. It would be as much an heirloom as something of quality and value.

  To put that heirloom at any risk at all would be almost unthinkable to the individual dragon. They might quite honestly believe that Jim was trustworthy; and that, furthermore, he was capable of guarding their jewels as well as they could themselves. Nevertheless, the world they shared with the georges, the Dark Powers, and all the other elements in it—this medieval, fourteenth-century type of world—was one in which the unexpected could happen all too easily.

  It was that unexpected that would frighten them now. With all Jim's trustworthiness, with all his capabilities, they still had to take into account the fact that somehow, somewhere, something could go wrong and none of them would ever see his or her prize jewel again. In a sense, and he knew it, he was asking too much of them.

  On the other hand, in that same chancy world, they knew as well as he that sometimes it was necessary to take a desperate risk. The mere fact of existence forced such risks upon you. If only there was some way he could point out to all of them that his having the passport when he went to France involved one of these necessary and unavoidable risks.

  It was at this point that his thoughts were interrupted, as he noticed that the argument around him had taken a rather ugly turn. Certain dragons of definitely anti-passport persuasion were developing their arguments; not so much against the purpose of the trip for which Jim needed the passport, as against Jim himself, his first defiance of the Dark Powers and his involving dragons in that. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, his personal character.

  This argument Gorbash was not so much supporting or opposing, as cautiously hanging back from. His voice was not being heard.

  "It never had anything to do with us, anyway!" one dragon halfway up the amphitheater on Jim's left was bellowing.

  This individual was fat rather than large, but his or her voice had almost as much resonance and carrying power as that of Gorbash.

  "All right, so Bryagh was a Cliffside Dragon before he went rogue and stole the female george away!" this dragon went on, to an increasing crowd of listeners. "All right, so Gorbash just happened to be invaded by the mage, here. He couldn't help it. That's magic and nobody, not even a dragon, can stop magic. But were we asked about getting involved anywhere along the line? Was the Cliffside Community asked if it wanted to attack the creatures of the Dark Powers at the Loathly Tower? No! We were simply dragged into it whether we liked it or not. As if we had no rights at all!

  "In fact, the whole business was george business right from the beginning!" the shouter went on. "This mage invaded Gorbash without asking his leave. None of us asked to be visited by that skinny, bony, no-good female george that began the whole problem in the first place! If it hadn't been for that useless, smelly, female george—"

  "All right! Just hold it right there!" roared Jim with the full power of his lungs.

  He was a dragon as big as Gorbash, and in this moment be discovered that his voice could be equally, if not more, powerful. The truth of the matter was that, being in dragon form, he had fallen victim to that same instinctive dragon fury that Smrgol had warned him about when he had been in the body of Gorbash. In human terms, he was seeing red; and not stopping to think of the consequences. His sudden outburst silenced everybody, even the dragon who had been doing the shouting.

  "You're talking about my mate!" thundered Jim.

  He felt a definite warmness in the region of his stomach, as if the fires of a boiler down there were stoking up. He had never himself experienced the breathing of flames; and he had never seen any other dragon of this world do it. Possibly it was only a form of speech. But it was a feeling that suited his present mood and he enjoyed it. If he had been able to breathe flames at that moment, he would have been doing so.

  "No one—dragon or anybody else—" he roared, "is going to talk that way about Angie! Try it and you'll see what happens to you! And something else. I've been patient. I've sat here and listened to you all argue and make excuses and do everything else to get out of giving me the passport I need; a passport that in the long run is going to be as much for your good as for anybody else's. This is England and what happens to one happens to everyone here, george and dragon and everybody else alike!

  "Well, I've had enough!" he bellowed at them all. "I've waited for you to listen to reason; and you're not doing it. Now I'm through waiting! Secoh told you, and I showed you, I'm a magician; a mage-in-training. I hadn't wanted to use that; but you're not leaving me any choice!"

  He had a sudden inspiration, remembering something Carolinus had once said to a watchbeetle less than a year before, when trying to get answers for Jim as to where Bryagh had taken Angie. The watchbeetle had given an incomplete answer, then ducked back out of sight under the ground. Carolinus's words, only slightly altered, came conveniently to Jim at this moment.

  "So you won't be dragons of integrity and valor, won’t you?" he roared. "Well, there's other things than being dragons. There's watchbeetles!"

  He snapped his jaws shut in the midst of an awful silence.

  The dragons before him were as silent and still as statues carved from the rock of the Great Cave around them. They stared, frozen, at him.

  As the silence stretched out, Jim began to come slightly out of the red rage that had possessed him. He began to appreciate the effect of what he had said. The threat had come out of him without any real idea of what he was saying. He had absolutely no knowledge of how to turn dragons into beetles. No doubt, the proper magic was locked up in the miniaturized volume of the Encyclopedie Necromantick, somewhere within him. But he had never gone looking for it; and he did not know it now. If these dragons challenged him to be as good as his word, he could only show himself completely incapable of making good on it.

  For a moment a spasm of anger at himself flashed through him. How could he have been so stupid as to lay himself wide open this way? Effectively, his whole purpose in coming here was lost.

  Then, looking at the still unmoving dragons and the nearly a hundred pair of eyes fixed fascinated on him, his understanding of the situation suddenly changed. Perhaps he had not lost, after all.

  Just because he knew that it was impossible for him to carry through his threat and turn them all into beetles didn't mean that they knew that he could not. They had no evidence that would indicate that he couldn't; and they had a great deal of evidence that he might be able to. He had been identified as a magician, a mage-in-training. Before their eyes he had turned himself from a dragon into a human and back into a dragon again. If he could do that much, what was there that he could not do?

  In fact, considering the available evidence they had, the indications might well be that his ability to turn them all into beetles was child's play, compared to turning himself from dragon to human and back to dragon again.

  The more he looked at them, the more convinced he became that this was the fact. Conviction spilled over into a deeper understanding of dragon nature than he had ever had before. He suddenly understood how much more powerful the nature of his threat had been than he had ever intended.

  Now, in his dragon body, he could appreciate dragon feelings. Dragons were a race apart; neither bird, animal, nor flying mammal, like a bat. They were a people powerful, apart, and with pride.r />
  It was not just their size. They were bigger than almost any other creatures, but they were not the biggest by any means. Sea serpents, for example were larger.

  He could hear in the back of his head, almost as if it was yesterday, Smrgol speaking to him in that split-second before the fight started with the Worm, the harpies, and the Ogre, nearly a year ago now.

  "Remember, " Smrgol had said almost softly, "that you art the descendant of Ortosh and Aqtval, and of Gleingul who slew the sea serpent on the tide banks of the gray sands, and be therefore valiant. …"

  Under their avariciousness, their laziness, their self-centeredness and a great many of the other unprepossessing things about them, the dragons had pride in themselves. Sea serpents were larger, but Gleingul had slain one. Ogres were born larger and more dangerous, but Smrgol had killed one in his youth; and Jim in Gorbash's body had killed one at the Loathly Tower. To be a dragon meant a great deal to a dragon.

  To become a beetle was to loose all that being a dragon meant to each of these winged monsters before him. Even more than their hoards, that was precious to them. For a moment he felt a twinge of guilt at how he had threatened them. Then he realized that it had been necessary. He did need the passport. He might have to be a dragon and this was the only way to get it.

  "Well?" he said. The sound of his voice broke the spell that held them all.

  They turned without a word, all of them; and slowly began to shuffle up the amphitheater and out the many exits near the top of the Great Cave. There was not a word from them. In fact Jim's one-syllable question was about the last thing said until they were all back; and the favorite jewel of each had been gathered and put into a sack before Jim. The jewels were not small ones; and to Jim's surprise the sack gave the appearance of being somewhat larger than a sack bulging with a hundred pounds of potatoes. After the last jewel had been added, by the last Cliffside Dragon, Secoh reached out and took his own large pearl back from Jim's hand and put it delicately on top of the rest, then closed and tied the top of the sack.

  "Well," said Jim, feeling something ought to be said, "thank you Cliffside Dragons, one and all. I'll take good care of these jewels and get them all back safely to you."

  The only answer from the assemblage before him was a general heavy sigh. The dragons there, including Gorbash, watched him somberly; and with Secoh at his side he mounted the side of the amphitheater down which he had come; and went out, directed by Secoh, through the doorway by which he had entered. A few moments later he was on wing, with the sack clutched to his scaly chest with one clawed hand, headed back toward Malencontri.

  The voice of Secoh roused him out of his thoughts.

  "Jim!"

  Jim turned his head to see Secoh soaring beside him.

  "I'll peel off here," said Secoh. "You've got your passport now. I knew you would. You were magnificent there, threatening to turn them all into beetles. Serve them right too, if you had! Anyway, good luck, James—while in France!"

  At that, Secoh went into a wingover and swooped down and away from Jim, leaving him traveling on by himself toward his castle.

  Jim found the mere-dragon's comments did not exactly soothe his somewhat guilty conscience. Something inside him seemed to insist that he had obtained his passport jewels not only under false pretenses, but by definitely bullying the Cliffside Dragons.

  He pushed the voice from him and told himself that somewhere along the line he would make it up to the Cliffsiders. He remembered, then, that Smrgol had tried to get them to come and back up himself, Secoh, Carolinus, Brian, Dafydd, and the others at the Loathly Tower; and they had not come. In a sense, his borrowing their jewels this way might be regarded as just retribution for that refusal to help.

  But while this was true, the fact was it did not make him feel a great deal better.

  It was only a matter of minutes before he swooped down to land on the top of the tower above the Great Hall, just over the solar that was his bedroom and Angie's. The one man-at-arms on the tower, after bringing his spear around to ready position at Jim's approach, now saluted with it. He, like everyone else in the castle, was aware that Jim was wearing his dragon shape, and was determined not to show alarm at a large fanged monster landing within feet of him.

  "Good," said Jim. "You can leave me alone up here, now."

  The man-at-arms immediately disappeared down the stairs, on his way through the solar and farther down into the Great Hall.

  The reason for his being ordered to leave would probably not make much sense to the castle people; but then, it did not have to. The fact of the matter was, thought Jim, as he turned back from a dragon into his own body, and carefully picked up the sack of jewels, that he was simply not used to appearing naked before even the people of his own castle.

  The medieval attitude toward something like this was very indifferent. Clothes, people seemed to feel, were for warmth and convenience; and all very well for that. But modesty was a notion that had yet to take root among them. It would have meant nothing to them if Jim had made a habit of not wearing clothes most of the time. It would be merely one of their Lord's eccentricities. But Jim himself felt differently.

  He carried the jewels down into the solar, put them in a corner and covered them up with some of the furs—though he was quite sure that they would be absolutely safe in this room, in any case. In the first place, none of the people of his castle would dare to touch any of his things, being as much is awe of him as a magician as the dragons had been. Secondly, a sack that size, with jewels in it of a size that could scarce be believed, would be enough to give any would-be thief pause.

  Jim pulled on hose, shirt, doublet, and boots; and hurried down the rest of the winding stone stairs jutting out from the walls of the tower, and into the Great Hall.

  Arriving there, he was surprised to see, with Angie at a high table, the second of their unexpected visitors.

  Carolinus.

  "Mage!" he cried happily, hurrying forward to the end of the high table, where Carolinus and Angie were seated on two sides of that end. Jim pulled a chair up to the third side. "You're just the person I want to see!"

  "That's what they all say to me," muttered Carolinus. "Matter of fact, I came by because I had something to tell you. Can’t think of it right at the moment though."

  "Carolinus just got here, Jim," said Angie. She turned graciously back to the magician, who was clad as usual in a long, rather dingy red gown and black skull cap, contrasting with his wispy pointed, white beard, above which his blue eyes glared fiercely at both of them, "or will you take milk, instead?"

  "No, the ulcer-demon seems to be exorcised finally, thanks to that milk-spell of yours, James," said Carolinus. He helped himself to wine from the pitcher on the table, half filling the wine cup before him. "Must say I’m glad to get away from it, too. Milk's the worst-tasting food ever invented. And they force it on helpless babes! Barbarous!"

  "I think the babes have a different attitude toward it than someone like yourself, Mage," said Angie soothingly.

  "Not old enough to think yet, that's why," said Carolinus. He set down his wine cup, after taking a small drink from it. "What was it that I was going to mention to you? It's about this business of your going to France."

  "Oh," said Jim, "you heard about that?"

  "Who hasn't heard about it anywhere within fifty miles?" retorted Carolinus. "Not that I'd have to wait for common gossip to inform me. It came to me immediately you'd made your decision to go. It was then that it struck me that if you're going to do something foolish like that, then you ought to be warned about—"

  He broke off, drumming his fingertips irritatedly on the tabletop.

  "About what, now?" he asked himself; and fell silent, evidently busy exploring his memory.

  Jim and Angie sat politely silent for a few moments; and then, as it seemed that Carolinus had gone off completely into his own thoughts, Angie spoke again.

  "I take it you don't exactly approve of Jim going to Fra
nce, Mage?" she asked.

  "Oh! That!" said Carolinus coining to with a start. "Oh, I don't know. Good experience and all that. Particularly for a young magician with a lot to learn in every direction anyway."

  He looked sharply at Jim.

  "Don't go getting yourself killed, though, now!" he said. "Absolute waste, people getting killed right and left, for no good reason. Now what we did at the Loathly Tower had some purpose to it. But this business of galloping off to France to bring back some youngster who shouldn't have been there in the first place—ridiculous!"

  "I'm going to do my best not to," said Jim sincerely. "But, speaking of that business of going to France, I'm awfully glad you're here. You couldn't have come at a better time. I've got a very important question to ask you—"

  "I'm sure I could remember it, if I could just stop trying to remember it," muttered Carolinus to himself. "Right on the tip of my tongue, but I can't seem to think of the words."

  "You see," Jim cleared his throat, "I have a slight problem. I've got a large sack of superb jewels upstairs—"

  "Like jewels, do you?" said Carolinus, still absentmindedly. "Never cared much for them myself, I must say. Still, lots of people do like them—there, I almost had it! Beelzebub and Black Thunder-Bells!"

  "Jewels!" echoed Angie, staring at Jim. "Did you say jewels, Jim?"

  "Yes, yes," said Jim, "tell you all about it later, Angie. The point is, Carolinus, it's the best jewel from the hoard of every one of the Cliffside Dragons."

  "Ah, yes," said Carolinus, drinking again from his flagon, "passport. Of course. Should have thought of that myself. But then I can't think of everything; and it's not as if it's important like this other thing I'm trying to bring back to mind here."

  "Jim! You got the jewels for the passport?" Angie said. "Where are they? I'd like to look at them."

  "Upstairs in the solar," said Jim, still concentrating on Carolinus. "The point is, Mage, they make a pretty bulky package. Now I was thinking, if you could just point me in the direction of finding that spell that allowed you to shrink down the Encyclopedie Necromantick—"