The Dragon, the Earl ,and the Troll

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "I've got that figured out," said Angie. "I'm going to tell them that there's an invisible wall between them and the stage area; and that nothing on the other side of that wall that they can see is going to be able to come through at them and they won't be able to get through to it, unless they're invited."

  "Fine idea," said Jim. "Why not make it real?" He concentrated. "There, I've just set up the wall by magic."

  "I didn't know you could do that," said Angie, looking at him. "You're doing an awful lot of magic lately—rather important magic, aren't you?"

  "I do seem to have got a grasp on it lately," said Jim. "It started with this visualization business, but I really think I'm beginning to get the feel of it otherwise, too. But I've got to go talk to Secoh and the other dragons now."

  "All right. I'll wait till you get back to send the man-at-arms to tell the people in the castle they can come. Go on to the dragons, then. Go!"

  Jim turned and headed off, stopped and turned back.

  "What?" he called.

  "Watch out for those trolls, now!" said Angie.

  "Oh, for Lord's sake!" said Jim. "Don't go worrying about that now. I can take care of any troll, or any number of trolls, that pop up around me. Anyway, they're not going to try it!"

  "Well, take care," said Angie, waving him off.

  He went.

  He had not been exactly specific about where the dragons should land, except that it was away from the place where the play was to be given, so they would not be seen ahead of time. But his own experience in being a dragon part of the time had given him something of the way dragons thought. The prevailing breeze at the moment was from the southwest—and doing a nice job of clearing the last few clouds from the sky; although he had forgotten, in spite of several years here, how England was at a more northern latitude than Michigan; and how early sunset came in wintertime here.

  They would only have a little over an hour or so of good light in which to put on the play. Of course, he could light the scene magically. But in spite of the bravery of the knights, none of the guests would really feel comfortable outdoors after dark. This was still the last night of the Christmas season, which meant the Wild Hunt would still be riding the sky overhead, with the legendary danger of it reaching down to snatch one of them up from the ground and carry them off to the devil's dominion.

  In any case, he had been thinking about where the dragons were to be found. Or rather, he had been simply heading toward where they would be found, without actually having to think about it; and he had unconsciously headed into the woods in the proper direction.

  With a wind out of the southwest, they would be landing from the northwest, which was what had probably made a few of the latecomers noticeable to the lookout in the tower. The majority of them really should have been on the ground here long before this. No more than the trolls were they bothered by the temperature and snow underfoot. When he thought of it, Jim found he could almost sense dragons, a little distance ahead of him through the trees in the direction in which he was going now.

  But it was not dragons he came across first, but another old friend. Aargh was standing in a little open space as he entered it, very obviously waiting for him.

  "Aargh!" said Jim. "I rather thought you'd be around; but I didn't think I'd stumble across you this early."

  "You didn't stumble across me," said Aargh. "I came to meet you."

  "Well, well," said Jim, "either way. How do things look to you?"

  "Things look the way they always have," said Aargh. "If you're asking about the trolls, they're all around. They're waiting for the twins to get up the courage to challenge Mnrogar; and both they and the twins are wishing that you and Angie and the men-at-arms you've got there weren't with him."

  "They're afraid of us?" said Jim. "That's good."

  "I wouldn't exactly say they're afraid of you," said Aargh. "But you're an extra part of the situation that shouldn't be there, and they haven't yet figured out just how you fit in; or how you might be involved when the twins challenge Mnrogar. In fact, that's what's holding the twins back from attacking him right now, in my opinion—and my opinion about this, Jim, is something you should well listen to."

  "I know that," said Jim. "But what I mean is, if they're hesitant about doing anything because there's just a few of us here, they'll be even more hesitant once all the people come out from the castle—don't you think?"

  "Maybe," said Aargh, sitting down in the snow and scratching under his chin with a hind leg. "Cold weather like this, these fleas should all be asleep!"

  "Would you like me to try to use magic to get them off you?" said Jim. "I don't think I can just make them vanish; but I might be able to transport them some place else."

  "Never you mind," growled Aargh. "They're my fleas. If anything's done about them, I'll do it. If it was summer I could wade into water slowly until only my nose was above water and then stick my nose on the edge of a log or a lily pad and let them escape onto that as I gradually go down under the water completely. But the ice is too thick on the lakes now, and the running water in streams under the ice is too cold. Never mind fleas, Jim. Your dragons are just a moment away, even at the pace you move at. I'll let you talk to them alone. Gorbash is an old friend, but other dragons and I have nothing to say."

  "Will I see you later—" Jim started to ask; but Aargh, in his customary elusive way, had already disappeared.

  Jim went on through the woods and came out into a clearing where the air was perceptibly warmer. The reason was obvious. The clearing was full of the large bodies of dragons, not indeed breathing fire as legend had it about them, but great clouds of warm breath white into the air. Like all very large animals they gave off body heat, particularly when clustered together.

  "Secoh?" Jim asked. But Secoh had already emerged from among the larger dragons and was doing his best to bow in a courtly, human fashion before him.

  "Yes, m'Lord," he said happily. "Here I am. With all the Cliffside dragons too—well, almost all. Old Garnoch stayed back at the cliff because his rheumatism was bothering him; and Tanjara was about to lay her egg. Everybody here wants to know how soon we can see the young Prince."

  "I can't tell you yet," said Jim. "That's not a simple question to answer. First you must understand—can everybody here hear me? Are all the Cliffside dragons close enough to hear me?"

  There was a chorus of "yes" from the crowd around him; with a touch of asperity in some of the basso profundo voices.

  "M'Lord," said Secoh reproachfully, "you know how well all we dragons can hear."

  "Of course. Forgive me," said Jim.

  He remembered how, once when he had been in his dragon body, flying on a dark night, his own hearing had worked remarkably over a considerable distance. But then, with being that sensitive, he asked himself, didn't they all go deaf, shouting into each other's muzzles during the arguments that were their form of ordinary conversation?

  "Anyway," he said, "here's how things are going to go. You'll be able to hear what will be going on with Angie and myself and all the people watching the play."

  "Play? Play?" said a number of voices in a multitude of different tones, but all of inquiry.

  "Yes," said Jim. "In fact, this is going to be something of a treat for all of you. Angie, or somebody, is going to start out by telling all the people there a story; and I'd like you to listen to it. I think you'll like it. It's the story you heard about the young Prince and the dragons, only it'll be the way it was told in the beginning. The way it was when it was first told, so everything is told right. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  There was a general deep murmur of approval.

  "If you like," said Jim, "and if you can do it without being seen by the people sitting in the wooden thing there—'stands,' we call them—you could even come closer and see what's happening. Because we're going to do something more than tell the story. Using magic, and people actually doing what the people in the story did, we do what's called 'acting it
out.' It makes what we call a 'play'; and it's like seeing the story actually happen for the first time before your eyes."

  This time the murmur of approval rose to a volume that made Jim wince. He could imagine it being heard by Angie and the men-at-arms back in the woods'-edge clearing.

  "But be very quiet, and be sure you're not seen," said Jim.

  They all told him in a jumble of voices that they wouldn't be seen and that they would be as quiet as ferrets/mice/snakes/shadows… and a number of other examples of creatures particularly known for their quietness.

  "Good!" said Jim.

  "But what about these trolls, m'Lord?" said Secoh. "Should we do something about these trolls? Like tear a few apart and chase the others away?"

  "No, I don't think so, Secoh," said Jim. "They've got their own ways, after all; and it's only right they be left to them. Besides, they aren't troubling us right now; and I don't really think they will. It's just a matter of the troll who lives underneath the Earl's castle here possibly being challenged by a pair of twin trolls."

  "Ah, a fight!" said Secoh happily, and there was an added buzz of pleased excitement that went back through the dragon ranks. Much as dragons detested trolls, given a choice, they would ordinarily rather watch any kind of a fight any day than be in it—that is, unless the instinctive fighting fury that slumbered in the breast of every mature dragon was triggered; in which case there was essentially no question of anything but action. Jim in his Gorbash-dragon body had experienced this himself. In fact, he had gotten both Gorbash and himself almost killed by letting it take him over.

  "Well then, Secoh," he said. "If Angie hasn't sent word to the guests to come already, she will as soon as I'm back in the clearing, so things will begin to happen pretty quickly now. I'd say before the sun has moved much more in the heavens, you'll be able to move in and watch the proceedings."

  "Thank you, m'Lord," said Secoh.

  Jim left, and behind him the dragons burst into low-voiced, interested discussion of what watching a play might be like, what to watch for in observing a troll-fight, and other related subjects. Jim strode back through the forest; and, going around a rather thick-bodied oak that was in his path, he almost bumped into Carolinus.

  "Carolinus!" he said, staring at the magician. "You're almost as bad as Aargh."

  "That is something not to be said by an apprentice to his Master!" retorted Carolinus severely. "I am not someone that others are almost as bad as, Jim. I am someone that others might hope to be almost as good as—but with little or no opportunity, probably."

  "Of course," said Jim. "By the way, thank you for magicking up those stands for Angie."

  "Oh, that," said Carolinus, with a wave of his hand. "I'd almost forgotten that. Nothing at all, really. You've been using a lot of Magick yourself, lately."

  "Well, yes," said Jim cautiously. "Necessarily so—"

  He felt like an ordinary chess player who somehow (probably in a dream) had found himself in a match with a grandmaster of the game; and who had built up an apparently innocent but actually very strong arrangement of pieces to put his opponent's most powerful piece, the queen, in danger.

  He had until this moment just been waiting for the grandmaster to make one more incautious move; and it seemed to him that now, Carolinus had just committed his final error by moving an unimportant pawn. A harmless and uninteresting move that merely cleared the way for his opponent's bishop to threaten Jim's queen. But actually that bishop could simply be taken by one of Jim's own, humble pawns; thereby ensuring Jim's total, crushing victory. The grandmaster had really been asleep on this move.

  "Good!" said Carolinus, interrupting him before he could finish what he had been just about to say.

  "Good?" echoed Jim, thrown off stride temporarily, "I'd thought you'd want me to lie low at this time, by using as little magic as possible."

  "Not at all, not at all," said Carolinus cheerfully. "You remember what I've always said to you, Jim. Practice! Practice! Practice! Every time you use your Magick you're practicing. That pleases me."

  "Yes, but with this difficulty building up against me in Magickdom—" said Jim.

  "—Oh, that. What will be, will be," said Carolinus. "If you're going to survive here, the more practice you put in, the better. If you're not, then it doesn't matter, does it?"

  "I suppose not," said Jim. "I'm just a little surprised that you're taking the matter so lightly. I thought you were concerned on my behalf."

  "Why, of course I am!" said Carolinus. "But while I can do many things, Jim, there have to be a few things that I cannot do. Saving you from the concerted opinion of the majority of other magickians of Magickdom is, I'm afraid, one of them."

  That statement did it. Jim found the suspicion he had been nursing inside him for some time now becoming a certainty. Mentally, he reviewed his own position on the imaginary chessboard. No, his position was invincible. With one clear accusation he would now crush Carolinus with the truth.

  "Carolinus," he said, accordingly, "you've simply been using me in a game of your own, haven't you; from the moment you arranged to have all our friends delayed from coming to our help at Malencontri when the castle was attacked by Sir Peter Carley and his gang of raiders?"

  "Why, of course!" said Carolinus.

  Chapter 43

  "Tut-tut, my boy," Carolinus was saying. "Don't tell me you were under any other impression. Why, that's what an apprentice is for. I believe you told me when you first came here from where you used to be that you were a 'Master of the Arts'—hah! Or, at least, what they considered a 'Master of Arts' in that place you came from. But even under those conditions, you must have been familiar with the relationship of the student to his Master. What you mention is a natural part of an apprentice's job, Jim! To do the troublesome small things. To take care of all the time-consuming details that his Master can't be bothered with—while, of course, being educated in those things that an apprentice needs to learn if he is to have any future in a professional sense—"

  Jim thought bitterly of Professor Dr. Thibault Shorles, the head of the History Department of Riveroak College, who had been Jim's own particular taskmaster there.

  "The apprentice is to sweep up, so to speak," Carolinus was going on cheerfully, "polish something perhaps roughed out by the Master. Perhaps even to do some independent work, for which his Master can afterwards take the credit. These are always the terms of an apprenticeship, Jim; and you must have known that from experience. I find it hard to believe you've forgotten it already. For shame, my boy!"

  Jim's head whirled. By his rash taking of the bishop with his king's pawn he suddenly realized he had removed the only protection his king had; opening a clear path, so that his own king was now in an uncovered check from the grandmaster's well-protected knight; and, with no way to rescue the situation—since all his forces had been concentrated on attack rather than defense—Carolinus had, in effect, won the game.

  He could, of course, reproach Carolinus for his hypocrisy in pretending to be such a close friend that he would never make such callous use of their association. Then it suddenly came to Jim that, after all, this was the way it was here in the fourteenth century. People of lesser rank were routinely expended for the benefit of their superiors. If they escaped being so, it was only because they were too valuable at the moment to be used up in such a way.

  To say anything like "I thought you liked Angie and me better than to throw us to the wolves just for some use of your own!" however, would probably convey no sense to Carolinus at all. He was just doing what was always done. Besides, saying anything like that would sound like whining. It would not mend the situation at all; and in any case Jim could not whine. It was simply not in him. He drew himself up.

  "Well, let me tell you something, Carolinus!" he said, his anger breaking out in spite of himself. "You can do what you want; and I may not be able to do anything about it; but I'm not going to pretend I'm happy about it."

  "Jim!" said Carolinus, l
ooking shocked.

  "But I'll tell you one thing," Jim went on. "I've done a pretty good job of handling every problem that's come up since you first rigged things so Angie and I would have to visit this damnable twelve-day Christmas party; and I can finish it without any help from you!"

  "I sincerely hope so, my boy," said Carolinus; and vanished.

  Jim was left staring at the snow, the leafless trees and the rapidly reddening sky as the sun slowly descended toward the horizon on this northern winter day.

  He shook off the emotion that had held him and began to plod back through the trees toward Angie and the play that was to come.

  "I've already sent one of the men-at-arms to tell the guests to start coming; and if you'll look at the stands, a few of them are here already," said Angie, when Jim finally got back to her. "Some of the knights like Sir Harimore didn't even wait to be told they should come. Do you notice how dark it's getting? Is there some way we could light things up if it gets too dim?"

  "Oh, that," said Jim dully. "Yes, I can take care of that."

  Using his new way with magic, he envisioned something like the troll-light he and Brian had encountered the first time they had gone down into Mnrogar's den at Carolinus's orders. Only in this case, the light was emanating from all the trees and branches—including the magical ones that were not really there—around the clearing. It was not a particularly noticeable illumination now, because there was still too much daylight coming from the sky; but as the early winter afternoon dimmed, this other light would become more apparent.

  Rather neatly done, he told himself. The stands were now filling, and none of them seemed to see anything unusual in the extra light that was coming feebly at the moment from the trees around them. The tension of his talk with Carolinus began to ease.

  "Oh, by the way," Angie said. They were talking behind the wall that held the manger, out of sight of the audience, just so that the audience shouldn't see their costumes until the performance actually started. "Carolinus took down your wall between the people in the stands and us here. He said I was right; it wasn't really necessary. If the people in the stands are told to stay where they are, they will; and if we should need the men-at-arms and the knights to come down to defend us, then they'd be able to."