The Dragon, the Earl ,and the Troll

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Has anything remarkable happened?" she asked.

  "No," said Jim, "unless you count the fact the dragons still haven't left and the Bishop is preaching or something to the people in the stands. None of them have gone—"

  He stopped abruptly. The Bishop was no longer talking. Suddenly the people across the field were beginning to flood toward the stage set, and them.

  "I was right," said Jim. "I don't like this, Angie. I'm going to send you back to the castle. Get Robert, Enna and the wet nurse or whatever you want and our men-at-arms—Brian, although Brian's here, but at any rate you and Robert; get the horses and any of our men-at-arms you can find and leave for home right away."

  "No," said Angie. "I'm going to stay here with you."

  The people flooded across the field and stopped in front of them. Then they all knelt, some yards in front of the set, while the Bishop prayed over them, including the Earl and the Prince. Then they stood up again. Jim and Angie waited.

  Then, without warning, one strong bass voice began to sing "Good King Wenceslas" and they all took it up.

  "Jim!" said Angie. "There's nothing wrong, everything's fine. They're just thanking us. They're just showing how happy they are! Now that everything's all right!"

  All of the audience was now singing "Good King Wenceslas"—and from the woods off to their right the dragons chimed in.

  The dragons had no idea of tone, and could not sing, although their voices had considerable range. But they were now trying to sing, trying to join in with "Good King Wenceslas" with a sort of sub-sub-bass echo of it… and, curiously, it did not clash with the human singing but matched it.

  "See, Jim," breathed Angie, "I told you everything was all right. Look! Look up!"

  Jim stared at her for a moment and then raised his eyes to the sky. The northern lights were still there, but going across them causing them to fade into nothingness with its own light like a comet with a many-colored tail—there was the Phoenix awake and crossing the sky… with his multicolored tail blazing across the heavens and—better late than never—promising great new things to come in a new millennium.

  Epilogue

  Do, you see," said Carolinus to Jim and Angie as they sat in the solar room of the tower at Malencontri—Jim and Angie after a two-day ride home through the snow, with their men-at-arms and the wet nurse; and Carolinus after appearing just a few minutes before in his usual unexpected way—"Magick is both a Craft and an Art."

  "I'd come to that conclusion," said Jim warily.

  "Good," said Carolinus. "You must never forget that, my boy. Craft and Art, yes. Now, the Craft part can be taught; and it is, as you know, to apprentices and those in the lower ranks. But Art, which earns promotion to the higher ranks, can never be taught, it can only be learned. This is because Art can be learned only after Craft has been mastered. As a result no two magickians, once they become competent—which is approximately and ordinarily not until they reach A level—work Magick the same way."

  He said this last with particular emphasis.

  "It is only then," he went on, "that they begin to use their own unique way of doing Magick to explore new frontiers, to blaze new territory. It is so, actually, with all the Arts; but of course Magick is far and away the most important of them."

  He paused, took a sip of wine from the glass beside him and looked piercingly at Jim and Angie.

  "You follow me?" he said.

  "Of course," said Jim. "As far as the Arts go, everybody knows—"

  "If you please, Jim," said Carolinus solemnly. "I am trying to instruct you in something."

  "Sorry," said Jim.

  Carolinus took another sip of wine.

  "This experimentation," he went on, "finally begins either with the magickian stumbling across the usefulness of combining two different bits of magical knowledge in a new and different fashion to get a specific result; or finding himself faced with a problem, or a set of problems, that do not seem to have either any solution, or a solution that he finds palatable. By palatable, I mean, the kind of conclusion he would like it to have. As a result he reaches out into the unknown, as it were—into creativity—to produce a different means of solving it than anything in the Necromantick—"

  Jim winced, remembering the huge volume of magical lore Carolinus had made him swallow on the occasion of his becoming Carolinus's apprentice. True, Carolinus had shrunk it down until it was hardly bigger than a very tiny pill. But it had felt just as heavy and uncomfortable in his stomach as if it had retained its original size and shape.

  "You are not attending, Jim," said Carolinus. "I will go on. He reaches—or she reaches—out into Creativity, as I say; and what does he or she come up with?"

  He paused. Jim was tempted to say something, but decided that this was a moment in which he was supposed to sit and merely look expectant. So he did. Angie had evidently already come to that conclusion; she was sitting back and waiting quite pleasantly and patiently.

  "He or she," said Carolinus emphatically, "then procures New Magick. Magick that no one else has ever accomplished before; but which, now that other magickians know it exists, they in turn can search their own abilities and knowledge for a parallel type of Creativity so they can achieve something like the same end. In other words, New Magick can not be counterfeitable and is priceless."

  "I can understand that," said Jim. "But—"

  "Jim, you absolutely must get over this habit of interrupting every other word I say," said Carolinus. "Now, where was I? Oh yes. In your case you were faced with a multiplicity of problems. Not only that; but they were a multiplicity of problems that, taken together, threatened to disrupt History for our whole human race, and by implication every living thing in the world."

  He stopped and frowned at Jim.

  "Quite frankly," he continued, "if there had been someone else in your unusually fitting position to deal with it, some other magickian of the very top rank like myself would have been expected to take care of the matter—and there was no certainty that anyone could take care of it."

  "So," said Jim grimly, "you knew from the start it was a tangle!"

  "Oh, yes," said Carolinus. "Knew it well before, of course. But there was no stopping it, then. Nothing but Natural forces were involved. The twins had been born Naturally, even if they were something in the way of freaks, even as far as trolls go. Mnrogar had already been in the castle for nearly two thousand years. Agatha Falon had been worming her way into the King of England's attention for some time—all these things were coming together at the Earl's Christmas Party—you understand?"

  He looked hard at both Jim and Angie.

  "We understand," said Angie.

  "I knew you would," said Carolinus. "Now you, Jim, encountered the situation, and the problems, one by one; and to your credit, my boy, you found that taking the easy way out of each particular problem was one that did not suit your taste. For example, it would have solved the destruction, alone—the eventual destruction—of the Earl's castle if the twins had simply been allowed to destroy Mnrogar. They would have never had the courage to take over Mnrogar's den; and somewhere along the line they would have been attacked by a group of trolls fighting together, now that they had set the example of several on one. They would have been killed, eaten, and there would be anarchy in trolldom. Likewise, it would have been simple, merely to lead Agatha Falon to her own destruction."

  "I didn't think of any such things," said Jim.

  "No, you didn't," said Carolinus, leaning forward. "And it's to your credit, Jim. You have something that I cannot put my tongue to at the moment—a feeling for other people and other creatures that is seldom found in this time and place. At any rate, your way of solving matters not only made Mnrogar's life happier, and incidentally made Agatha Falon more admirable; but dealt with the Earl, the gathering of trolls, the fact that the dragons had completely misread the whole matter of Christmas; and that the general misunderstanding caused by all this could have caused real trouble between th
em and the human race."

  "Thank you," said Jim.

  "I'm glad to hear you say that," said Carolinus. "Since now you know why I left you on your own so much to handle things. But it paid to do it—why, you even deserve all the credit for rousing the Phoenix. That much happiness and the prospect of a bright future you ensured, welling up from the earth below, would rouse several Phoenixes, let alone a slugabed like our current one. Would you be interested to know that our present Phoenix was very happy, once he got up and moving?"

  "It's about time," said Angie.

  "I agree with you, Angie," said Carolinus. But then he paused and his face lost its cheerfulness.

  "But," he said, "now we come to an unfortunate matter, Jim. While you did excellently with all the problems that were wished upon you, in an entirely separate other small area you made an unforgivable mistake. You must set that right at once. I'm sorry to tell you so, but this is the case."

  There was silence in the solar. Jim and Angie stared at Carolinus.

  "Well," said Jim after a moment, "tell me what I'm supposed to have done, then."

  Carolinus did.

  "Hob-One?" asked Jim, peering as far as he could see into the chimney above the low fire that was barely alit in the serving room fireplace.

  There was a pause; and then a familiar little voice answered.

  "Yes, m'Lord?"

  "Hob—no, you needn't come down," said Jim hastily, as a small face peered, upside down, from under the top edge of the fireplace.

  "Very well, m'Lord." The face vanished.

  "The fact of the matter is, I have some rather unhappy news for you," Jim said. "I'm afraid an authority higher than mine has corrected me on a certain point; and it affects you. Otherwise, believe me, nothing would be changed for you."

  "Changed, m'Lord?"

  "I'm afraid so, yes," said Jim. "It seems—in short, I've been told that when I renamed you Hob-One of Malencontri, I violated a certain law that applies to magicians and their dealings with beings belonging to another kingdom. You hobgoblins belong to a different kingdom, of course; and therefore—I'm sorry—I had no right to rename you."

  There was a moment's pause, then a little choked sound.

  "Wrong, m'Lord?"

  "Yes," said Jim grimly. "To make a long story short, you're going to have to be known to all the world, even here in the castle, not as Hob-One de Malencontri, but simply as Hob. Also, I'm afraid, you're going to have to tell any other hobgoblins you spoke to, including the one at the Earl's castle, that you were mistaken about being named something else."

  There was a long pause this time.

  "Not—Hob-One de Malencontri?" choked the little voice.

  "No," said Jim. "I'm sorry, but that's how it has to be."

  There was a definite sob from the chimney.

  "Now, Lady Angela and myself will go on calling you Hob-One," said Jim hastily. "That's our privilege; and as individuals nobody can take it from us. But it will be just between us and you, unfortunately. It will not be an official name for the world at large."

  Another sob.

  "If there was any way of avoiding this, Hob-One," said Jim, "believe me, I'd have done it. But there are some times you have to go by the rules. I broke one, and now I must mend it."

  "I—I understand, m'Lord."

  "I—I'm glad you do," said Jim. "And again, I'm very, very sorry."

  "That's all right—m'Lord."

  "Maybe some time in the future things can be changed. Anything's possible in the long run."

  "Yes—yes, I suppose so, m'Lord. Don't—don't you give it another thought, m'Lord."

  "I most certainly will, Hob-One," said Jim. "I will never cease thinking of ways to get you your name back."

  "That's good of you, m'Lord."

  Jim waited to see if Hob would say anything more, but no other sound came out of the chimney.

  "Well then, good night, Hob-One," he said.

  "Good night, m'Lord."

  "Sleep tight!" said Jim, strongly attempting to get a note of cheerfulness in his voice.

  But there was no answer from inside the chimney.