His eyes were still on the visitor.
"Your likes and dislikes, and your reasons for being here are yours, mesire," he said. "The same, likewise, is true for the three of us. Such things are not for discussion. We are here to rescue our Prince and take him safely home if possible. You are here to give us whatever information you have that will help us do that. So, begin by telling us what you have come to tell us."
For a long moment the spy sat tensely on his stool, and the dark brown eyes in his narrow face glittered back into Jim's.
Then the tension went out of him. He relaxed, picked up his untouched wine cup, and drank deeply from it, then set it back down on the table.
"As you will," he said in a flat voice. "I will say no more of how I feel if others say none of such to me."
He took another drink of wine and this time Giles and Brian and—a little behind them—Jim, picked up their cups and also drank at the same moment. Their movement became a kind of silent pledge around the table.
"You may call me Sir Raoul, if that will make our conversation easier," said their visitor. He shifted a little on his stool to extend his long legs to one side of the table leg; and leaned his elbows on the table's surface, holding his cup thoughtfully between his two hands. He spoke over the rim of it. "Well, I have found your Prince. Though that was little enough to do since he was exactly where I expected him to be. The difficult part has been since, in trying to discover some way to get you to him; and give you all a chance of getting away again with your lives."
He put down the cup and reached inside his doublet to pull out a small folded piece of white cloth.
"I have here a map."
He unfolded the cloth on the tabletop as they all craned forward to get a look at it.
From Jim's point of view it was hardly more man the sort of map a third-grader might have drawn in the classroom, back in the world he came from. It showed a rough scribble that obviously was the coast, with the upper half of some sort of fish sticking its head out of the sea portion. Inland from that, up a V-shaped indentation that Jim took to be the estuary up which they had sailed, was the name of the town itself, BREST, printed in ink in curiously drawn block letters, but readable. The lines drawn on it all ran directly from point to point.
From the ink dot below the name of Brest, a line led around the southern coastal plain of Brittany and inland to another ink dot named Angers, on the Loire river. Then, following the Loire all the way, it led eastward to another dot called Tours.
From there it ran still eastward but a little northward, once more following the Loire, past a dot marked Amboise to one close to it named Blois. From Blois a line ran to a further dot, some distance up, marked Orléans. Some three-quarters of the distance from Blois to Orléans, was a dot with a capital M, and a very rough sketch of some kind of tree beside it. Beyond this, on the river, was a square building with towers and turrets sketched in.
Sir Raoul tapped a slim forefinger on the large letter M, the tree, and the towered representation of the building.
"The château—what you English would call castle—of Malvinne the sorcerer," he said. "You'll find it in outward appearance a very pretty place, surrounded by arbors, walks and plesaunces. Beyond these, you'll come upon the château itself, which is as stoutly built as any strong point in Christendom; strong enough to repel an army. Within are great, rich rooms; but also dungeons, terrible beyond the describing, and other things no man knows."
He paused to look at them for a moment, a little sardonically.
"But you are all paladins, are you not?" he said; then caught himself up short. "Nay, forgive me. I have a bitter tongue and it runs away before I can rein it in, sometimes. But in truth, the château of Malvinne is no place such as any good soul would wish to visit willingly."
He paused, looking at them.
"No offense taken," muttered Sir Brian.
"I am in debt to you for your courtesy, mesire," said Sir Raoul. "I will try to speak more gently from now on. The fact of the matter is, though, that you will be lucky to reach the pretty grounds of the château. First, you must penetrate a wood that Malvinne has caused to be grown all about that place. A wood of tangled trees, wherein you may be caught and held by branches until you starve to death unless you are wary. Also, through that wood roam at all times some of the hundreds of armed servants that he has created about himself—beings half-animal, half-human that once were men and women—"
"Good God!" said Jim, jolted entirely out of his ordinary caution, so that he spoke without thinking to the empty air beside him. "Accounting Office! Is that sort of use of magic allowed?"
"It is not forbidden, though not approved, to magicians of AA class and higher," replied the invisible bass voice some three feet above the floor to Jim's left.
"Saints defend us!" said Sir Raoul. His eyes stared at Jim with the pupils enlarged; and he quickly crossed himself. "I have delivered myself into Malvinne's hands, after all!"
Jim looked guiltily at the other two. Of them, Sir Brian was not affected, having heard that voice several times before in the company of either Jim or Carolinus. But Sir Giles was almost as badly shaken as Sir Raoul. It was the latter, however, whom Jim hurried to reassure first.
"That's just the voice of an accounting office that all magicians have to report to; and can ask questions of," he said to Sir Raoul. "Malvinne undoubtedly uses it, too; but he couldn't use it to find us any more than we could use it to find him. It simply keeps track of how much magic each one of us has. Besides, I told you I was just an apprentice magician."
"All the angels defend me from such an apprentice!" said Sir Raoul.
But the color was coming back into his face, and the pupils of his eyes had dwindled back to normal size. He filled his wine cup again, with a hand that shook slightly, and drank off the contents at a gulp.
"I would not hear that voice again," he said, "nor does your explanation really satisfy me. It proves once again that all magicians, like Malvinne, are the same at the core. As he is evil, they are evil."
"No, no. Listen to me please, Sir Raoul," said Jim earnestly, "it's all a matter of the character of the individual magician. I know another magician, a very high-ranking one, who told me just the other day how much he detested Malvinne and his ways."
Jim was embroidering a little on what Carolinus had said. Nonetheless, after the difficulty in getting Sir Raoul to be even as companionable as he had been for the few previous moments, before the Accounting Office had spoken, Jim did not want to lose whatever little goodwill had been achieved with the French knight. Under such conditions, he thought, a little embroidery of the facts would do no harm. Besides, Carolinus probably felt the way Jim had reported him feeling, judging by his last words to Jim on the subject.
"You'll not convince me," said Sir Raoul grimly. "All magicians are creatures of evil. How could they not be and deal with what goes beyond all ordinary belief and understanding?"
"Oh, come now," said Jim. "There’ve been good magicians."
"Indeed!" put in Sir Brian, "How about the mighty Merlin? And Carolinus? Men who did great good and were always on the side of those who served the right."
"Hah, yes," answered Sir Raoul, glancing aside at him. "Always I am quoted the names of magicians who are but memories and fables."
"Carolinus is no fable," said Jim. "In fact he's my tutor in the subject of magic. He lives less than seven leagues from my own Castle de Bois de Malencontri."
Sir Raoul looked him squarely in the eye. "He is a fable, as all in this country know!"
"I tell you," said Jim, "he isn't! He's a wise magician who's alive this moment!"
"And what reason might I have to believe that, except that you say it to me and are a magician yourself—and I have learned not to trust magicians?" retorted Sir Raoul.
"Sir James speaks the truth," growled Brian. "From my own Castle Smythe to the place of Carolinus is less than nine leagues. I have seen it, and him, often."
Sir Ra
oul looked from one to the other, from Brian to Jim.
"You would tell me that this Carolinus, then, who is known everywhere in our France as a fable only, not only lives but is alive today in England?" he said. "How can I believe that?"
"Whether you believe it or not is up to you," answered Jim, "but come to England sometime and be my guest at Malencontri. I'll introduce you to Carolinus myself. You'll find that his home is a lot different from Malvinne's. So is he different. Do your fables says he's evil?"
"No," admitted Sir Raoul slowly. "Like Merlin, they credit him with all sorts of good things. You swear he lives?"
"I do," said Jim and Brian, in chorus.
"Then I will say you this," said Sir Raoul, sitting upright on his stool and speaking deliberately, looking at each one of them in turn. "If you indeed win alive into the castle of Malvinne, rescue your Prince, and bring him safely out and back to England; then as soon as may be I will make the visit that you suggested; and see this Carolinus for myself."
He held up a finger.
"Not merely to see someone who calls himself Carolinus," he went on, "but to see a magician of that name, who will prove to be as good as Malvinne is bad, as good as the legends about Carolinus say. So much I pledge myself to do."
"You'll be welcome anytime," said Jim. "Now can we get back to what you were going to tell us about how we might be able to penetrate this forest, pass all these armed creatures he's made, and enter the castle to find our Prince?"
"Yes. Very well," said Sir Raoul after a moment. He leaned forward once more on the table. "Mark me, now."
He again tapped his finger where the M was on the map.
"As I have said," he went on, "I was sure your Prince would be kept in Malvinne's castle. Malvinne leads the King in all things, as a sighted man leads a blind one. Malvinne would want your Prince under his thumb, rather than under the royal one, where he might be too lightly kept and loosely held. But even if it were not for Malvinne's influence on our King Jean, he would see the advantage of your Prince—Edward, I think his name is? He would see the advantage of your Prince Edward being held in Malvinne's grasp; where it would take something more than ordinary rescue to steal him back."
He paused and drank from his wine cup.
"As I say, I was sure this Prince Edward was there," he went on, "but could not be absolutely certain. Neither could I penetrate to the castle myself and make sure. I told you Malvinne has destroyed my family. I meant that. All—all are dead. But the most foully slain of all was my father, though that is not a story that need concern you now. Enough to know that if one of my blood moved within the grounds of that castle, Malvinne would be warned of it immediately through his magic; and would, without doubt, secure me at any cost to make sure my race was exterminated forever.
"I'd only one hope," he said, looking up at them. "It lay in one of Malvinne's poor enchanted creatures, with the upper parts of a toad and the lower parts of a man, who once was one of my father's most able servants, leader of his men-at-arms. When Malvinne destroyed my family home, it pleased him to take those of our servants who survived to be made into his creatures. There were a dozen, no more. Of those, all but one died within the first year, for having been magicked like that, they do not have a strong hold on life. At a passing breeze they sicken and die; or some small accident that would merely keep an ordinary man or woman from their work for a week, will kill them in hours."
"Fore God!" swore Sir Brian. "It is an evil doing!"
Sir Raoul glanced at Brian for a moment with some surprise and possibly even a tinge of gratitude. His face had been so trained to conceal his emotions that it was hard to read. He went on.
"Malvinne's castle is deadly to me," said Sir Raoul. "The woods, however, threaten me with no more danger than they would any other man who lacked Malvinne's permission to come there. Accordingly, for a number of weeks I have haunted that wood, hiding whenever one of his armed creatures came by, so that I should not be found except by the one I looked for. I would know him when I saw him by the sword cut on his toad-face; for either by some whim of Malvinne's or some limitation of the magic that had made him so, a scar that he had taken as a man was still with him in his new shape."
"And he came at last?" Jim asked.
"He did—Bernard, his name is—and knew me. He was willing to help though it cost him his life, for any chance to strike against Malvinne."
Sir Raoul sat back on his stool and took a deep breath.
"To make it short," he said, "if you go to a certain spot in the wood, of which I shall advise you, and wait there, night after night, at certain hours; in the end Bernard will be able to reach you there. Having once found you, he will then conduct you by safe ways through the wood, into the castle. But then he will leave you. He dare go no farther with you; for part of his enchantment makes it that he shall be someone who guards the wood outside and the exterior of the castle; and he would be able to give no good reason for being in the tower itself. From there on you must depend upon yourselves."
The others considered this. Sir Raoul thoughtfully filled and drank another half-cup of wine.
"This Bernard will tell us how to reach the room where the Prince is held, you said?" said Brian finally. "And, I suppose, give us some ideas for getting him free from that place? After that, how do we find our way out?"
"I'm afraid much of that will be up to you," answered Sir Raoul. "If you can make it back down out of the tower, there will be a place at which Bernard will be waiting for you, if so be it he is not ordered to other duties. He can then lead you and your Prince back out through the woods again."
"And no more aid is available to us than this?" Sir Giles tugged at his mustache.
"If I could give you more, willingly I would do so," said Sir Raoul. "As it is, were it not for Bernard, I would have nothing to offer you but the location of the castle itself, and my prayers that you should be successful in getting inside and getting out again with your Prince."
"If that's all there is, then that's all there is," said Jim.
He put his hand on the map.
"But there are a number of other things," he said, "that you can help us with. For one thing you can give us a clearer idea of the kind of country we're going to travel through. Also, how much time it'll take. Also, what we're likely to run into along the way in the shape of other enemies or problems."
"That I can do," answered Sir Raoul, once more moving forward to put his elbows on the table.
He began to talk. His knowledge of the terrain and the country to be traversed was as Encyclopedic as his map had been sketchy. Jim desperately wished that he had the materials for taking notes. Then he remembered, from past experience with Sir Brian, that both Brian and Giles, being men of their unlettered time, were used to absorbing and remembering such heard information. This was still a period in which long messages would be spoken by one Lord to a messenger, who would then, some days or even weeks or months later, deliver it word for word to someone else in a different place. In short, their ears were trained to listen and their minds were trained to remember.
Accordingly, he did the best he could to keep up with what he was being told; but realized that he would have to depend on the other two for much of the specific information. He made a mental note that after Sir Raoul had gone he would find writing materials and make his own map and set of notes, both from what he remembered and from what Brian and Giles could tell him.
The telling occupied several hours. Both Giles and Brian had some very important questions about the country and any opponents they might encounter. They thought in terms of such things as men, horses, and weapons that might come against them; the prevalence of large and dangerous wild beasts; the availability of food and drink along the way; and a number of other things that might eventually have occurred to Jim—but probably would not have while he had Sir Raoul before him.
In the same process, Sir Raoul also mellowed, until they were all quite friendly by the time the talk wound
up.
"We will need to buy provisions and possibly even hire some servants to deal with the horses," said Brian, all business once Sir Raoul had left. "If the men we left behind with John Chester were here, we could use some of them. As it is, there is a slim chance I might be able to borrow one or two men for a short while from one of the other English in the city—but it is a very slim chance indeed."
"In any case," said Sir Giles cheerfully, "we will begin to be as busy as knights should, starting early tomorrow morning. As soon as we've decided on the provisions and other necessaries, I can see about purchasing those. You, Brian, can meanwhile see if men of trust can be borrowed. To hire any of the local people is taking a chance; but perhaps, with a sharp eye on them, we should be all right; since they will be as dependent on us for protection as we will be upon them to be good servants."
On that note the evening broke up. The next morning, Brian and Giles were up and out at dawn, after a hasty if—at least by Jim's standard—gargantuan breakfast. He wondered how men could eat like this and not put on weight. Then he remembered that there were times in between the periods of such eating, when food was scarce indeed—even for knights. The people of this time had the instinct of wild animals: to fill their stomachs while the chance was good, against the possibility there would not be another chance for some time.
After the other two had left, he went on his own search for materials with which to write down what he remembered from the night before. Searching about Brest—he had hardly been out of the inn since he had arrived—he finally found a shop that boasted not only someone with a clerkly ability to write letters on dictation, but who could be brought to part with pen, ink, and charcoal sticks, as well as thin sheets of parchment; for what Jim considered to be a rather extravagant sum. Jim bargained him down to a certain extent, but he was painfully conscious that he was nowhere near the class of Giles or Brian at this.
He returned to the inn, and spent the rest of the morning with the table pushed against the one window of their room to get adequate light; putting down everything he could remember Raoul saying, in as good an order as was possible. He left spaces between his lines, so that he would be able to write in whatever extra information Brian and Giles would be able to give him later on.
The Dragon Knight Page 19
