The Dragon, the Earl ,and the Troll

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Well, then, why do you say I can't?" said the Earl.

  "As Richard's chaplain will undoubtedly confirm," said Carolinus, "the troll is one of what are ordinarily referred to as the Naturals—one of the 'longaevi.' Humans may speak under torture and duress. The longaevi don't. They merely become silent and stay so. One's ability to force others to his will is restricted to men or women using such force against other men or women. It is a way that will not work with other kinds of life. For example, you could not torture a Holy Angel and make him speak."

  The Earl blanched at the suggestion, his eyes popping noticeably.

  "Just so," went on Carolinus, "the human use of torture is not effective against any other classes of Creatures, Shades, or natural Forces. Even some men and women have been sustained by faith, above and beyond their ordinary human frailties. They have ignored the worst that could be done to them. I'm sure the Lord Bishop or his chaplain would easily find examples for you if you wish. Even some knights, of whom you have certainly heard examples, have on occasion been able to ignore the worst pains that can be put on them for reasons of honor alone—"

  "Hah!" said Brian quietly, deep in his throat, a distant part of his attention roused momentarily from contemplation of a Farsed Fesaunt—otherwise more mundanely known as a pheasant or chicken stuffed with spiced apples and oats. But only Jim heard him.

  "A Natural," concluded Carolinus, "will only answer if the one questioning him is someone he wants to answer."

  The Earl threw himself backward in his chair.

  "All right, by Saint Anthony!" he said. "You question him, Carolinus. And find out what he means by calling himself a king!"

  "Very well, Hugo," said Carolinus. He transferred his attention to Mnrogar. "Mnrogar, I don't believe we've met, but most Naturals have heard of Carolinus. In two thousand years, you must have heard of me yourself."

  "Yes," growled Mnrogar.

  "And am I correct in assuming that what you heard was that Carolinus was a friend to all Naturals—indeed to all creatures; and that they could safely be friendly with him? Is that right?"

  "Yes," growled Mnrogar again.

  "Well, then," said Carolinus, "the only question is whether you believe that and would trust me enough to talk to me yourself. Will you?"

  Mnrogar gave him a long look.

  "Yes."

  "Very good, then," said Carolinus. "Then, to take a lesser matter first, some of us here are a little surprised that you should have announced yourself as a king."

  "I am a king," snarled Mnrogar.

  "King of what, Mnrogar?"

  "King among the trolls," said Mnrogar. "For that I have held my land longer than any of them, and none has dared venture upon it. For two thousand years nearly I have been king and kept my land here."

  "Your land—" The Earl choked himself off. He grumbled at Carolinus. "Go on, Mage."

  "Well, then," said Carolinus lightly, "since you are so regarded among trolls, even if not among us who are human, then we cannot indeed say that you lied in announcing yourself as such."

  "No troll lies," said Mnrogar. "We have no need to."

  "Who made you a knight, then?" shouted the Earl. "You named yourself as the Black Knight. Knighthood is given, not assumed—ask him who made him a knight, Mage!"

  "Who did make you a knight, Mnrogar?" asked Carolinus.

  "I did," said Mnrogar.

  The Earl's face went a dusky shade of red. Carolinus turned to him and smiled gently.

  "I don't think we can quarrel with that, Hugo," he said. "Even by our own standards, a King can make a knight, I believe?"

  "Yes, but he—he—"

  The Earl gave up and threw himself backward once more in his seat, having been carried away enough to lean forward toward Mnrogar when the subject of knighthood had come up.

  "Enough of this footling," he said. "Ask him why he spoke to Lady Agatha."

  "Very well," said Carolinus. "Now, Mnrogar, you spoke to Lady Agatha as if you knew her. How did you recognize her?"

  "I smelled her," said Mnrogar.

  "I take it," said Carolinus, "you mean you recognized her by her scent. How does it happen that you would recognize her that way, instead of someone else?"

  "I'd smelled her before," said Mnrogar.

  "Can I ask where?"

  "In the woods," said Mnrogar.

  "Where? How? Why? When?" barked the Earl.

  "Can you answer the questions that Hugo has just mentioned?" asked Carolinus.

  "Yes," said Mnrogar.

  There was a pause. But Mnrogar said nothing more.

  "Let me ask, then," said Carolinus to him. "Will you answer them?"

  "No," said Mnrogar.

  "Can I ask why?" asked Carolinus.

  "Yes."

  "Why, then?"

  Mnrogar was silent.

  "Mnrogar," said Carolinus in a mildly reproving tone, "I thought you were going to answer me."

  "I do," said Mnrogar. "What you ask. Not him."

  "Well, then, if I asked the same questions now—" Carolinus hesitated and the second stretched out into another, newer, more stubborn silence from the troll.

  "Ah, well," he said, at last. He turned to the Earl.

  "I'm sorry, Hugo," he said. "Since the questions came from you to begin with, he will not answer. I'm afraid there's nothing to be done about it."

  "But we've got to find out some way!" shouted the Earl. "Lady Falon's been sullied by this creature's pretending to know her. In truth—"

  Jim half heard the words as if the Bishop was instead saying, "Yn sooth—" He seemed to hear more of the actual speech when he was not really paying attention, he told himself… "Yn sooth." It had a familiar ring.

  "—It must be made clear, once and for all, he was lying!" The Earl was finishing his protest.

  "As you heard him say," said Carolinus, "trolls don't lie. Most Naturals don't. In fact, those who do have lying as a necessary part of their individual character—you might say, as part of their purpose and reason for being. I'm afraid, Hugo, you're never going to be able to find out from Mnrogar why he spoke to Agatha."

  "By Heaven, we've got to find out!" said the Earl, thumping the table with his fist. "A name must be cleared! A fair Lady has been sullied—yes, sullied—by some wild words said by what you call a Natural—Unnatural, I call him! She must be cleared; as I said in the beginning. That is why we are here!"

  "That is to say," broke in the Bishop, equally loudly, "the truth must be established! Supposedly this troll wished to smell out another troll among your guests, my Lord Earl. But who does he choose to speak to, out of all there? Lady Falon. He addresses her as 'granddaughter.' If Lady Falon has even the slightest trace of troll blood in her, then it must be known. She has been close to our royal King, whom God defends; and whom it is our duty also to defend from all things, human and otherwise. The royal Son sits by you at this moment, Somerset! Certainly we are concerned with calumny against any human soul—if indeed it be wholly a human soul. But our duty to the King comes before all, even Lady Falon's reputation!"

  The Bishop and the Earl were both on their feet, facing each other.

  Chapter 40

  Sit down." said Carolinus in a voice that even Jim had never heard before.

  The two men glared at each other; but they sat.

  "Angie," said Jim softly, under the cover of a small competition of meaningfully angry throat clearings and coughings on the part of both Bishop and Earl that had broken out, "have you any idea where that 'soothing box' is—the box the Sea Devil gave me for a Christmas present?"

  "It's right in our second room," said Angie, "in a slot under the crib I had some of our men-at-arms make secretly for little Robert, after we got here. I brought it because Carolinus and Rrrnlf talked about you keeping your magic in it. I thought you might need the magic you had in it while you're here; so of course I packed it with the rest of the things we brought."

  "Here? That's terrific!" said Jim. "Look, I'm
going to keel over now in a dead faint. Don't worry. It'll just be an excuse to leave this room so I can get the box. You're sure it's under the crib and nowhere else?"

  "Of course I'm sure," said Angie.

  "All right," said Jim, "here I go—"

  He closed his eyes and fell forward off his chair on to the floor, doing—he flattered himself—a very realistic job of it. Certainly he hit the floor a lot harder than he had expected.

  His eyes were closed, but he heard Angie give a very realistic shriek.

  "He has succumbed to a virus!" cried Angie. "My Lord Earl, Your Grace! I must take him down to our rooms immediately. It may be only a passing thing and he can be back in a moment; but he must be taken immediately!"

  "Sir Brian," said the Earl, "see to it. You will find men-at-arms outside the door, who can carry him for the Lady Angela. Lady Angela, once he is down there and safe to be left, you come back, leaving word that he is to return the minute he is able to do so!"

  Jim heard a thud near his head. Cautiously he opened the eyelid of his right eye, which was almost pressed against the floor.

  He looked and saw Brian down on one knee by his left side. Brian's left hand took him by the belt; his other hand took his right wrist and lifted him into a sitting position as Brian's shoulder was tucked into his belly. Then Brian stood up, sliding Jim even farther back over his right shoulder until he hung balanced by his middle there. By that time Brian had let go of his right hand and his left hand came around to take both Jim's wrists, while Brian's right hand slid down to hold him by the knees.

  Brian walked out. It was not so much what Brian had done, as the swift and practiced ease with which he had done it, that impressed Jim. Evidently, Brian had been a one-man rescue team before, for other individuals who had been unconscious on the ground—probably as a result of combat. But it was still a remarkable demonstration and a reminder of Brian's strength.

  Jim would not have thought it possible to pick up and carry off an unconscious body single-handed that matter-of-factly—simply put it on your shoulder, get up and walk away with it. It was one more in a long string of surprising examples of how strong most of these medieval people had all been made by the necessities of their work, play and fighting.

  Angie slipped ahead of Brian to open the door, and let them through. Jim heard the door close behind him and kept his eyes closed tightly.

  "Here, fellows," said Brian's voice. "Lady Angela will show you where to go."

  Jim found himself passed into a number of hands, at least two holding him by his legs, a couple of different arms holding his waist and another pair holding his shoulders and head. They made their uneven way off along what was obviously a corridor.

  It was not the most comfortable way to travel, and the trip seemed unreasonably long. At last he found himself laid down more or less gently on the sleeping mattress on the floor of their first room. He stayed where he was until he heard the feet of his carriers go out the door and the door close behind them. Then he opened his eyes and sat up. Angie was not in the room with him.

  In almost the same moment, though, she came through the leather door from the other room, holding the "soothing box."

  "It's empty as usual, as far as I can see," Angie said. "I wondered about that when I decided to bring it. But then, I suppose your magic is invisible?"

  "I hope so," said Jim. "But of course, Carolinus will know if I use any."

  "He certainly knew I was faking with that 'virus' excuse," said Angie. "All the rest swallowed it with no question. But anyway, what good is the box going to do you, since the Bishop already blessed the castle? Isn't it true no magic can be made inside since then, until he's left?"

  "No new magic," said Jim. "That's what I'm counting on. Whatever magic is in this may still work. But then there's Carolinus—well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

  "How are you going to take the box into the room without everyone wondering what it is?" asked Angie.

  Jim stared at her. He had simply not thought that far ahead.

  "Well, there's something I can do," said Angie, "if it'll help. I can hang it from a cord around my waist and tie it to the outside of one leg. These wide skirts can hide anything. It's light enough."

  "Angie," said Jim, "you're a genius!"

  "Oh, you say that to all the geniuses," said Angie. "I'll get some cord."

  She went back into the other room and did not come back right away. When she did, she twirled about in front of Jim.

  "Can you see any sign of it under my skirt?" she asked.

  "No," said Jim. "Will you have any trouble untying it and passing it to me once we're in the room? You could pass it behind my chair and I could hold it there until I was ready to use it."

  "There's no problem to that," said Angie. "But we'd probably better head back, shouldn't we?"

  "Yes!" said Jim. It suddenly struck him that things might already have gotten into a situation—during even this short absence—in which even the soothing box wouldn't be able to be of help. He climbed to his feet, and they started to hike back toward the room out of which Jim had recently been carried.

  "What are you going to do with it?" asked Angie as they went.

  "Use it as a lie detector, if I'm lucky. You know how, when we hear people, the dragons, Aargh and everybody else seem to say things in ordinary modern English—you know it isn't really what they're saying? If you listen, you get little echoes now and then of the real sounds they're making?"

  "I know it," said Angie.

  "Well, it just suddenly struck me," said Jim. "The Earl had just said 'in truth—' and when he did that I heard just sort of a ghost of the sounds 'yn sooth.' In other words, he was saying exactly the same thing, only in archaic language. Then I suddenly realized that when the Sea Devil gave me this box as a Christmas present Carolinus called it a 'soothing box.' I'd been thinking of 'soothing' in the modern form of the word—meaning comforting, easing. But what I think now it really is, is a sooth-box—a truth-box; or maybe just a box that separates the truth from anything false. It could be the answer to how to find out the true relationship between Agatha Falon and Mnrogar."

  By the time they had finished talking, they were almost back to the room where the Earl, the Bishop and the others were. The men-at-arms standing and squatting about the hall outside the door of the room stood up and came to the medieval equivalent of attention. Without having to be asked, one of them scratched at the door, then opened it without waiting for an answer and put his head in. They could hear his voice.

  "Sir James and Lady Angela are back, m'Lord!"

  "Send them in!" boomed the voice of the Earl.

  Now, with the door open, and the two of them approaching it, they could hear the Earl and the Bishop still in hot argument. The man-at-arms closed the door behind them, and they found everything almost without change from the way it had been when they had left it some minutes earlier.

  The only difference was that Brian was sitting in the first of the three seats on their side of the room, with the other two vacant beside him. Jim sat down next to him, so that there would be two bodies to hide Angie when she passed the box to him.

  Except for Carolinus and the chaplain, no one paid any attention to them. The Earl and the Bishop were still arguing. The Prince was frankly asleep, undisturbed by the loud voices right next to him. Mnrogar stood in the middle of the room; as if he had not only stood there for a century already, but was able to stand another century if necessary.

  "—My castle is my castle!" the Earl was saying. "Here I have sovereignty—"

  "—Not over matters of Church or Realm!" roared the Bishop. "And I speak for the Church—"

  "My Lords, my Lords," said Carolinus, "this disagreement between you could go on forever. Let us make one more effort to determine from Mnrogar whether he will tell us if there is indeed any relationship between himself and Lady Falon; or whether the matter is impossible to resolve. If it is impossible to resolve, then I can only suggest
that nothing is to be gained by questioning Mnrogar any further; and we must seek by other means to find whatever other troll was in this castle—if indeed there was one."

  His argument clearly offered a welcome excuse to both men to stop their verbal fighting. But both had to sputter, grumble and protest a bit before they agreed to it. Meanwhile, Jim took the opportunity to whisper to Angie.

  "Can you pass me the box now?" he asked.

  "Just a minute," said Angie.

  With her arm that was between her and Jim, she reached back behind her and sat, looking forward at the room with an innocent face for a few minutes. Then Jim felt something hard pressed against the small of his back. He reached back with the arm next to Brian, and his fingers closed on the box.

  "Thanks," he whispered.

  "A pleasure," said Angie.

  Meanwhile, up at the long table, the Earl and the Bishop had settled down to listen while Carolinus resumed his questioning of the troll.

  "Ah, Mnrogar," said Carolinus affably, "is Lady Agatha Falon your granddaughter?"

  "No," said Mnrogar.

  "But you called her granddaughter when you spoke to her there in the stands," said Carolinus.

  Mnrogar said nothing.

  "Why did you call her your granddaughter?" Carolinus said gently.

  "She is young," Mnrogar said.

  "And you, of course," said Carolinus, "are very old by comparison. I see. It was just a natural thing to speak of someone born just recently by your standards as granddaughter or grandson—am I correct?"

  Mnrogar did not answer.

  "There!" exploded the Earl. "More of his stubbornness—"

  "If you please, Hugo," said Carolinus. "I believe we can take Mnrogar's silence in answer to my question as evidence that he does so speak when addressing someone younger than himself. Otherwise he would have answered 'No.' "

  He turned back to Mnrogar.

  "But you had told us all that you were interested in finding another troll disguised as a human among the guests of my Lord Earl," he said to Mnrogar. "Yet, when you are given a chance to examine all the guests there, the one you choose to speak to is Lady Falon. If there had truly been another troll among the guests, and you knew that other troll was there, we would have expected you to put your attention on whatever person that was. Or will you tell us that there never was a troll among the guests to begin with, and your saying there was one was only a lie?"