The Dragon Knight

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Or—the idea burst on him suddenly like a bright light in the back of his skull—from a less-intoxicating substance to a more-intoxicating substance!

  "Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years," Melusine was saying, staring down at the cover of the bed, "and not really my fault at all. After all, somebody like me, with royal blood in them—I have royal blood in me, you know?"

  She tugged at Jim's sleeve to attract his attention.

  "Royal blood?" echoed Jim. "Oh, I was almost sure of it, from the way you look."

  "That's right," said Melusine, "royal blood. I am the true daughter of Elinas, King of Albania. My mother was the fairy Pressine. But he was so cruel, my father. You just can't imagine how cruel he was. So I just had to shut him up in a mountain. I mean, what would you do? I'm sure you'd shut him up in a mountain too!"

  She tugged at Jim's sleeve again.

  "Don't you agree?"

  Brandy! The thought exploded in Jim's mind. Yes, from wine to brandy would be the most natural step in the world, seeing brandy was made from wine. But Melusine already had abandoned the subject.

  "Don't you think we've had enough wine?" she asked.

  She put down her glass and waved her hand. The little fish congregated and took away not only her glass and the two bottles but the glass out of Jim's hand that was still better than two-thirds full.

  Jim looked at her and saw that her attractiveness had suddenly glowed clear up to at least two thousand watts. He faced the fact that it was now or never.

  Hastily he wrote on the inside of his forehead:

  MELUSINE-WINE→MELUSINE-BRANDY

  Melusine threw herself into his arms.

  "Oh, I'm so lonely!" she wailed.

  Jim closed his eyes, desperate and helpless. Too late. He had been just a little too late. His mind felt empty. He could not think of anything left to do that might still save him. He sat there for a long minute or so, waiting for her to make another demand on him, or move in his arms; but she did not.

  Cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked down at her.

  Her own eyes were closed, her long lashes down on her cheeks. She looked like a sleeping child; and when Jim spoke to her, she neither opened her eyes nor answered.

  The sudden change of well over two and a half pints of wine into brandy in her stomach—fairy or not—had had its effect. She was out cold.

  Chapter Twenty

  Melusine's fish gathered about her worriedly as he laid her down. They paid no attention to Jim, which was just as well. He was already on his feet and on his way out of the palace. He had barely escaped beyond the limits of the palace when he went, in a single breath, from breathing what seemed like normal air to what seemed like something that was half-water. Hastily, he wrote the magic formula on the inside of his forehead that would change him into an oxygen-producing electrode, and the atmosphere around him cleared. Bubbles streamed up from the end of his arm. Experimentally, he tried extending the other arm and that also produced bubbles. In fact, now that he stopped to notice it, he had a prickly sensation all over his body including his scalp. He was apparently exuding oxygen from every point on the surface of his body.

  He headed toward the far end of the lake. Since he was not with Melusine, he no longer skimmed along above the surface of the lake bottom, but had to tramp it as if it were ordinary dry ground. He thought with a shudder of the mud-flats, and remembered that they did not stretch quite to the walls of the lake. He therefore angled toward the nearest lakeside, which was the one from which Melusine had originally pulled him down, and found there enough rocky surface—even if sharply angled upward, into the nearly vertical cliffs that walled in the lake at this point—so that he could continue toward the far end of the lake, where it would be possible to get out of it entirely.

  It was not until he got into the far end of the lake with its gullies and its mounts, and away from the mud, that he began to be conscious of potential opposition to his leaving. The edge on which he walked had lasted all the way around the sea of mud and he was traveling nicely up the underwater slopes among the weeds and other growth, before he was aware that those accompanying him had been getting definitely more threatening—and able to threaten.

  Somewhere along the line the little fish, like those that served Melusine in her palace, had begun to cluster about him, apparently held at a distance by the bubble of oxygen around him. Happily, the magic that produced it was making it stay with him on the lake bottom, instead of streaming up to the surface and leaving him exposed not only to the lake water, but its inhabitants.

  These fish were none of them friendly, for all of their tiny size. He paid them very little mind until he reached the far end of the lake, when their numbers began to be swelled by much larger fish. By the time the water was getting quite light around him and he felt the surface could be only about fifteen or twenty feet away, he was completely surrounded, not by little fish, but by pike the size of that four-and-a-half-foot specimen that had greeted Melusine when she had brought Jim here earlier.

  There was no doubt about the fact that the pike were not friendly. They clashed their jaws at the extremity of the bubble, but either could not or did not want to enter it. Jim wondered fleetingly whether it was the magic that kept them from coming through, or the fact that the bubble was effectively pure oxygen. In fact, if it had not been for a certain amount of moistening of the gas by the water around it, he suspected he would have been uncomfortable breathing it before this. As it was, his mouth and throat and nose felt increasingly dry.

  But now, the surface was not far away. Very soon his head broke water and he saw that he was only about twenty yards from shore. He waded toward it, his bubble clinging to those parts of him that were still below the surface, until he came at last upon a rocky shoal that led him abruptly up and out of the lake entirely. He stood at last on shore, unnaturally and ridiculously dry from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, while a large school of disappointed pike prowled angrily along the shoreline behind him.

  His first feeling was one of immense relief. Then came one of apprehension. After all, Melusine was not just any other human. She was an elemental—or, if her father actually had been the King of Albania, perhaps she was only half an elemental.

  In any case, there was no telling how quickly she would recover from a large dose of brandy. Nor what her reaction would be. She would hardly be happy with Jim for having tricked and escaped her. The question was, what would she do about it?

  Would she simply sit there in the lake and hold a grudge, hoping for some future time to pay him back? Or would she actually make an attempt to follow and recapture him? With all these unknowns, the smartest thing he could think of to do was to get out of this area as quickly as possible.

  He had intended to stay on foot until he was beyond the range of her dragon perception. But if she was still sleeping the sleep of the well-brandied just, then there was no reason for him to delay getting back on wing and gaining some distance from her. He stripped off his clothes, remade his bundle, and hung it around his neck loosely enough so that it would not choke him once he became a dragon—and changed bodies.

  It was a great relief being back in his dragon body again, he found. Along with that body went a whole set of dragon emotions and dragon attitudes. And where he, in his human body, had perhaps too much imagination for his own good; in his dragon body he had a lot less imagination, so that his worry over how Melusine might react dwindled considerably; and he had a great deal more confidence in his own size, strength, and readiness to take care of himself.

  It struck Jim that in his dragon body he was a lot closer to the human medieval point of view, than he was in his human one.

  Is any case, it was time to fly. He leaped into the air, spread his wings, and climbed for altitude.

  He found convenient thermals only about two thousand feet above the ground, and commenced soaring in the general direction of Amboise and the road toward Orléans, somewhere below whic
h Malvinne's castle stood.

  It was late afternoon; and in spite of the fact that this was only reasonable, since he could count back over his time in Melusine's bed and the time he had spent examining the interior of her lake with her, the lateness of the day was disorienting. Instinctively he found himself feeling that he ought to have come out of the lake at roughly the same time of day at which he had gone in—to wit, noon.

  In essence, although he knew better it felt as if no time should have gone by at all while he was under the water. Actually he knew very well that he had lost at least two nights, one with Melusine and one with Sorpil and Maigra. The distance from where he had left Giles to Amboise was not really that far. Giles had undoubtedly reached it by this time and set himself up at an inn. But the lateness of the day had aspects that might pose problems.

  Sir Raoul had given them some information on Amboise, but in any case Jim would have been sure that it would be a walled city. Almost all the medieval towns were. Usually, the wall was nothing more than a tall palisade running completely around the important part of the city, with a scattering of dwelling places taking their chances outside those walls.

  The walls would not be for defense alone. They were also useful for keeping people in, and regulating who came in. The gates would be shut at sundown; and that meant that anyone in the town who wanted to sneak out and not be recognized by the gate guards, would be penned up where he or she was until morning.

  Similarly, anyone attempting to enter who seemed at all suspicious, or threatening, could be arrested by the gate guards and disarmed, and/or taken into the city to have judgment pronounced upon him or her. Further, the gates allowed the city to collect taxes on goods coming and going for sale within the city. This was both a neat and necessary matter from the viewpoint of the city treasury.

  On wing, as he was, Jim was covering ground much faster than Giles would have, even on horseback, down on the surface. Nonetheless, it was very close to sunset, and once the gates were barred, it would be unwise of him to try to get in—either flying in as a dragon, for fear someone would see him; or as a human being attempting to bribe the guards to open the gate momentarily, or otherwise allow him an entrance—simply because they would remember particularly anyone who came in under those circumstances.

  If he could not get in before the gates were closed, the only sensible thing to do would be to spend the night outside in dragon form. Then, turning back into his human shape, he could mingle with those coming and going through the gate in the daylight. He had his story ready for this. He was a little too well dressed to be a simple man-at-arms; but he could claim to be a knight whose horse had had an accident or otherwise died under him; and say his retainers had gone on ahead into the city the day before. He could even give them Sir Giles's name, although that probably would not be necessary. This, plus a small bribe—there was no hope of getting away with no bribe at all—should get him in without fuss.

  At a city gate you either paid taxes or a bribe, if you came in through it at all. This way he could slip through and be forgotten in a short while. Then it would be simply a matter of looking up Giles.

  He had reached this point in his thoughts when a new sense of caution took hold of him. He had been following the road to Amboise from the air for some time now, trusting to his distance above the surface, and his similarity to other flying creatures such as birds, to make him unremarkable to anyone who might be below.

  But now it occurred to him that anyone who looked closely at him from the ground was bound to make out fairly quickly that he was no bird, but a dragon. Birds might be unremarkable. Dragons were not. Since his chances of making it through the Amboise gates before sunset were small anyway, perhaps it would be wiser of him to go back down to the ground now, change into his human form and clothes, and proceed on foot as far as he could, until night fell.

  Then, under cover of darkness, he could change back into a dragon—since dragons could sleep quite comfortably in the outdoors, ignoring small things like changes in temperature and occasional rainfalls—get a good night's sleep, and be up at dawn and back into his human shape and clothes to go in with the early crowd to the gate.

  It fact, it would not be a bad idea to be among the first crowd that came in through the gate. At that time the guards would have a lot of people to check; and they would probably want to deal with these people as quickly as possible, get their tax or bribe or whatever was coming from them, and let them in.

  He must have, Jim estimated, at least a couple of days' beard by now, which would back up his story of being a knight who had lost his horse at some point back on the road. Perhaps he could tell a story about being attracted by some wild animal that he thought he could ride down and dispatch with sword or lance; and it had been while chasing this animal away from the road that his horse had broken a leg and needed to be killed and left.

  Accordingly, he looked around for a patch of trees, and did a quick descent. There he changed back into being Sir James Eckert, Dragon Knight; and set forth on foot once more toward the road and the rest of the way into Amboise, which he had estimated from the air as being about five miles distant.

  The road was nothing to write home about. It was dry and dusty this time of year, but it was also deeply rutted and pocked with potholes that he could avoid, possibly a horse could avoid, but a cart would have a very rough time with. Yet carts must travel regularly up this route which led eventually to Paris.

  Still, it was slower going than he had estimated. He resigned himself to the fact that there was no real hope of reaching the village gate before it closed. He began, indeed, to look around for someplace to spend the night as a dragon, and saw that just ahead the road curved into a fairly thick woods and, somewhat to his surprise, suddenly improved as far as its surface went. Someone had been at work on this stretch of it.

  He was well into the woods, and just thinking that this might indeed be the very place that he would want to curl up for the night, when he began to hear the sound of the bell, like a church bell, coming from ahead of him.

  He was still too for from Amboise for it to be one of the churches inside the city walls. Intrigued, he picked up his pace a little, aided by the now much smoother surface of the road which compensated for the fact that here, shaded by the fully summer-leafed trees, it was not so easy to judge the depths of ruts and potholes as it had been out in the full late sunlight of the day.

  The bell continued to toll. It was really very close indeed, and the trees were thinning. A moment later Jim had stepped out from underneath them into a full moment of sunset, with the rays striking red across an open field to gild a whole complex of large buildings, most of them built of a brown stone. Into a sharp-roofed wing of one of these large buildings a group of figures in brown robes, their hands tucked in their sleeves, was proceeding single file.

  At their head walked a heavier man dressed as they were, with the cowl piled up behind his head and the hooked top of an abbatical staff carried in his right hand. Before him walked a smaller, single figure carrying a pole which supported a crucifix which seemed to be of gold, for it caught the final red light of the sun and burned brilliantly against the dark stone of the building.

  Jim halted. He was seeing a monastery, with its monks filing in for some special service at the normal evening prayer-time of vespers.

  He stood watching. The sunset, the solid buildings, the black and open doorway, the file of slowly moving figures, and the steady, slow tolling of the bell overhead struck some unexpected, deep chord of feeling in him. The road that he had been following led toward the buildings and then away from them again. It was as if the moment and the whole image of it was a picture of that retreat from the bloody outside world that the medieval Church alone offered at this time.

  For a moment, strangely, he felt drawn toward the figures and toward the buildings. He was not built to be one of them; but for the first time he felt deeply within him how a man of this time could want to turn his back on t
he rest of the world and enter this special and secluded sanctuary where the battles of knights and princes and Dark Powers did not enter.

  He could not help himself. He stood watching until the last of them had disappeared inside, the door had closed, and the bell at last ceased to sound. The sun was now setting squarely upon the open horizon to his left. He cut across from the part of the road he was on, that still pointed toward the monastery; to the part beyond, that carried back into the outside world.

  Shortly, he was on it, and heading toward the town beyond, which was still not in sight. For a little while the road continued to be cared for and well surfaced, but in a bit it went back to its ruts and potholes again, and the general state of disrepair in which it had been since he had first begun to follow it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Within minutes after leaving the monastery, the road took Jim through another band of trees and into a wide, open space; a cleared space, in effect, as there were cleared spaces around all castles and dwellings of any size anywhere for defensive purposes, beyond which Amboise was fully visible.

  The gates were shut.

  It was no more than he expected, but he felt an instinctive irritation at the idea of a night's delay. Nonetheless, since there was nothing to be done for it, he turned back on the road to find himself a place for the night.

  The last patch of trees was too thin to provide any real cover or security. Jim went all the way back past the monastery into the growth of trees beyond, that was much deeper and wider. Penetrating into these, and after having been lashed in the face by a number of branches and tripped up by a number of roots, he decided he might as well change into dragon form now as later, and did so.

  Now he was much better off. Not only was he more at home in the dark, but he had a nose, a pair of ears, and a sort of animal sense of ground underfoot that he had not had before, all of which made his penetration through the woods easier. He simply shoved through patches of brush and small growths of sapling with his heavier dragon body, not only able to push the lighter stems aside, but able to ignore those that rebounded to hit his thick, scaled hide as he passed.