The Dragon in Lyonesse

by Gordon R. Dickson

  He dropped onto his own knees beside the unmoving King. He still had the stick in his hand, held by one feather; and he looked at it closely.

  He could safely open his ward to use his personal magic. That was no problem here. On the other hand, on their last trip through here to Gnarlyland, his magic had not worked. But—he remembered suddenly, that was before Kineteté sent him back down with her own double ward.

  So, there was a way around the magic limitation, he knew now. He could envelope the boy with him inside his double ward—and work all his art within the special enclosure that made possible. No, getting the magic and the boy together was not the real problem. The problem was which way to cure the young King.

  The obvious way was to strip it from him, as Morgan le Fay had intended to strip Jim's magic from him—if Kineteté had not booby-trapped his ward against anyone trying exactly that. This that held the King in thrall might well be booby-trapped, too; and the trap could be deadly. It could be a killing trap of the sort that could only be used in offense—that type of use which the Collegiate of Magickians, to which Carolinus and Kineteté belonged, had agreed never to use.

  He could try to direct the magic elsewhere—but that meant he would be responsible for using its power offensively, if it did turn out to be a killer. He wondered why it had not killed the boy. Obviously, it must have been deliberately designed not to—but he could inquire into the why of that later.

  A weighty, additional problem was that if he did any of these things that helped the King magically, whoever had designed this piece of wood to do its work would have to know another magician had countered it—and that this other magician had to be loose now in the Drowned Land.

  Only as long as he did not use magic outside himself here would he be invisible to someone like Morgan le Fey. She would have to physically come, herself, into the Drowned Land, to use her magic against him, of course—but there was nothing to stop her doing that. The QB might have been doubtful if any of the legendary figures from Lyonesse could go on existing outside it; but Morgan would be under no such delusion. If she did come… magic for magic, she would be like a heavy warship compared to him as a weekend pleasure boat.

  But how could he possibly remove magic from the boy without using magic? It was an impossibility—

  No, it wasn't. His racing mind had stumbled over the answer and almost passed on without recognizing it. There was just the shadow of a possibility…

  He had touched the King already to examine him; and nothing had happened. So the boy's body was safe to handle. He looked around himself and saw, at about fifty yards of distance, a grove of what looked like oak trees.

  "Dafydd," he said, "can we carry the King carefully over to the nearest of those trees? I want one with a thick trunk."

  "Yes," answered Dafydd; and switched to the Drowned Land tongue, calling to the crowd.

  "My cousins! I need your help! Three of you—William, Thomas, and Rhys!"

  Three of the tall men in sky-blue with bows on their shoulders came forward. Dafydd explained; and they, with him, picked up the lax figure and followed Jim. The rest of the crowd trailed behind.

  Jim led them all to the largest tree trunk he could see.

  "Put his Majesty down, sitting with his back against the tree," he said to Dafydd.

  They did so. Happily, there was a space between two large exposed roots for the lad's hips to fit; so that he actually sat at a small distance from the trunk, and only his upper back and head leaned against it. The tree was broad enough so that his head did not roll back around either side of it. He held his position, once they had put him there.

  Dafydd, however, hovered nearby in case the unconscious body should slip. The three men who had helped to carry the boy backed off; and the crowd that had been following formed a circle at a respectful distance from any magic that might be about to happen.

  "It's all right, Dafydd," Jim said. "You can stand by if you want, but you'd better back off a few feet. The King won't slip. I'll use magic if necessary to keep him as he is."

  Dafydd took two steps back.

  "My Lord," whispered a small voice in Jim's left ear.

  "My Lord, can I—"

  "Just sit tight," said Jim, almost voicelessly. "I'll have something for you to do in a minute."

  Jim stepped a quarter of the way around the tree from the young King. Then he moved to the tree and put his arms as far as they would go in both directions around it, and laid his cheek against its rough bark. It seemed to him that, like the tree he had hugged in the Forest Dedale, there was a warmth and friendliness to the touch of the rough bark.

  Turning his face away from those who watched the King, he thought the words he wanted to say but dared not risk saying out loud. There was one other way he might manage—a way the tree should hear, but not the people standing close by.

  He could feel the movement in his vocal cords as he tried it, subvocalizing his message.

  "Dear tree," he subvocalized, "can you help this lad sitting against you? Or can you get in touch with the trees of Lyonesse and see if they can't take away whatever magic has him unconscious now? I think it is part of the alien magic that is trying to take over the land of Lyonesse, and now troubles matters here. I know the trees of Lyonesse are willing to help. Will you? I can't do it myself, or I would; and I'm afraid that if the magic isn't taken off him, his unconsciousness will give way to death."

  He stopped. He could not hear or sense any response from the tree.

  "Hob," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "Did the tree hear? Did you hear it say anything to me?"

  "Oh yes, my Lord. It said the boy wouldn't die, but he would not wake up, either. That would mean the leaders of the Colors would have to choose someone else for King. No one, not even the man in brown you made hold the magick stick, dares to actually kill a king. But unless rescued, the boy will sleep forevermore; and there is no hope for the Drowned Land under a wrong king."

  It was a long speech for Hob, Jim thought, even as he was turning the information over in his head.

  "But will the tree—this tree, or the trees of the Drowned Land in general—help?" he asked finally.

  "This tree says so, m'Lord—I mean, my Lord. Pray pardon for not telling you that first. This tree's going to take the magick holding the boy and push it out through every leaf, twig, or branch end it's got. He says any tree can do that much. Then the magick'll be split up into lots and lots of small parts, so that none of them will be big enough for whoever sent it to find; and many too many to be put together again. So no one can find how it never worked."

  "Excellent!" said Jim, hugging the tree in sheer happiness. Then he let go of the trunk. "But why didn't I hear the tree say that? I heard the one in Lyonesse."

  "The Lyonesse trees talk in a different place from the ones here—or back home."

  "Place?" said Jim. "Place?"

  "Yes—" Hob hopped off Jim's shoulder to stand remarkably balanced on a wart-like bulge of the tree trunk level with Jim's eyes. He held his two hands flat, palm to palm, one above the other, with their fingers parallel but with a space between them. Then he passed the two hands back and forth on their different levels, still one above the other.

  "See, m'Lord?" he said. "When a tree in Lyonesse tries to talk to a tree in the Drowned Land, they miss each other. Neither one can hear the other. They miss."

  Jim stared for a long moment. Then, suddenly, it made sense.

  "You mean—they're on different wavelengths!"

  "Wave? Oh no, m'Lord, it's just in the air, not on the water."

  "Never mind," said Jim. There might be time later for him to work out a means of bringing the trees of the two countries to a single wavelength—or at least finding a magical way for him to hear any tree, anywhere. The important thing right now was to bring the King back to consciousness.

  He embraced the tree again.

  "Thank you, tree," he told it. "Will you do that, then?"

  There was
a sound like the faintest of rustling of the tree's leaves, though no breeze had come up to break the stillness of the warm air. The boy sitting against the tree opened his eyes slowly, stared about him, and then jumped to his feet before Dafydd could reach out an arm to stop him.

  "What is this?" said the King. "One moment we are under attack, then we are—what happened?"

  "My King," said Dafydd, dropping to one knee in front of him. "God be praised. You are restored and well!"

  "Of course I am well! Why should I not be? I asked what had happened? Rise, Dafydd; and answer me!"

  "You will learn all, my Lord King," said Dafydd, rising to his feet with his face darkening. He shouted over his shoulder to the cluster of men in their different colors, behind him.

  "Seize Gruffydd ap Howel and bring him here!"

  There was a stir among the men, a stir that prolonged itself and finally, shamefacedly, settled into stillness. Gruffydd was not among them. He was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Strangely, no one had missed him, let alone noticed his disappearance. Each of those in the group who had followed Jim to the tree, it turned out, had been thinking someone else would be keeping an eye on Gruffydd, while they looked for the magicked stick and then for the health of their king. But none had.

  "As Aargh would tell us," said Dafydd grimly, "a cold trail. There will be no way to follow Gruffydd's going—or trace that tainted quarrel-piece back from where it came."

  He looked at Jim.

  "Unless magick can help us, Sir James?"

  "I doubt it," said Jim. "I'll try to think about ways; but I don't know Gruffydd well enough to find him just from my memory of seeing him here."

  The answer was a form of half-truth. The full reason was that the object or person to be found had to be visualized by the magician. Well enough with someone you had met and got to know to some extent. But Jim, who had been preoccupied with the matter of saving the young king, had only a general impression of a man, shorter than most in this land, with long hair and wearing brown clothing.

  The tall leader in green, who had been the first to object to a welcome for Jim and those with him, came forward and dropped on one knee before the youngster.

  "Sire," he said, "the life of our King is a sacred life, not even to be threatened. Of your grace grant me pardon for speaking against these strangers, one of whom has now saved you for us. I own my error of judgment and I entreat your forgiveness for that I doubted your Regent."

  "There is nothing to forgive, Llewelyn," said the boy, now on his feet. "I know you spoke so from care for me. Rise!"

  The man rose and stepped to Dafydd. Dafydd's right hand caught him by the elbow and held him up as he started to descend again.

  "Leaders do not kneel to Leaders, Llewelyn," he said. "And the Regency is a temporary title. You spoke like an honest man and a fair one. I have forgotten what words you used, other than that."

  "I will speak for the Greens, then," the man said. "We will trust these you have brought here as you do; and we will follow you as you may lead from now on, without further question. Let others say what they may."

  But there arose a chorus of voices, as men in one color or another pushed themselves to the front of the crowd to endorse what Llewelyn had said, for their own Colors.

  "Then," said Dafydd, looking at the boy, "if our King agrees, there is no reason we should not continue our talk out here with all listening—unless there are still some who doubt the honesty of our visitors?"

  No one spoke.

  "Damndest chatter-chatter I ever heard!" muttered Brian in Jim's ear, once more obviously irked by the fact he could not understand the tongue of the Drowned Land. "All jostling together to do service—and one of them just magicked their king. Who's to say there's not another like him still among them? What's to keep one of them from lying about his feelings and running off to tell their enemies every word we say here?"

  "Shh," said Jim, embarrassed. Brian's grumble in English was too low-pitched for anyone else to make out the words—even the King and Dafydd, who could have understood them. But the fact he had said something in Jim's ear was obvious to everybody. "Dafydd told you they do things differently here."

  "Cut their own throats differently—" Brian closed his mouth. Happily, no one in the mass of faces Jim was looking at seemed to have suspected offense.

  Dafydd's ears, however, may have been sharper than the others. He turned to Jim and Brian.

  "How are your wishes in this, then, Sir Brian, Sir James, QB?"

  The QB graciously fielded the fact of finding himself among those to be consulted.

  "It may well all be for the best," he said.

  "I wish us to find these people who may have been moving into your Borderland—find and deal with them!" said Brian.

  "As long as we three aren't expected to make any firm commitments," said Jim, "I think that's probably the next order of business. We don't want to be bound, though, in case something unexpected arises."

  "Sire, you will allow us then?"

  "Oh, certainly. Certainly, Dafydd. As our forefathers would have done it."

  "Then let the table in the tent be brought out here, so that our King and visitors may sit in your midst."

  The first half-dozen men to reach the entrance to the tent disappeared within. The rest stood back. In moments, the King, Dafydd, and the visitors were seated all on one side of the table under the bright sun, with an audience of the men of Colors seated cross-legged on the ground in a semicircle before it. Those at the table spoke in English, their words translated by Dafydd for the men who did not understand.

  "Sir James," Dafydd said now, "you, a Magickian as well as a knight, have just seen what came upon us here. Magick is something of which our land has always been free; nor do we wish it now. What can such as we do against such as just struck down our King?"

  Jim looked at the earnestly gazing faces of the men on the ground.

  "To tell the truth," he said, "I don't know what you can do. It seems plain enough that, however the Dark Powers plan to gain control of Lyonesse, their plan seems to involve the Drowned Land, too. But I can't think why they want to take you over—it doesn't make sense. Lyonesse is different. The Dark Powers are magic forces; and of course, Lyonesse is full of magic—so like might draw to like. There might be a connection there. No offense to you, QB—"

  He glanced at the QB, beside him at the table, sitting on the ground with his snake-head well above its top.

  "I do not take offense easily, Sir James," the QB answered, his tongue flicking out for a moment, startlingly thin and black in the bright, yellow sunlight. "But are you sure you cannot think of a reason these Powers and their invaders would have to concern themselves with this land as well as my own?"

  "Well, there's one—only one—" said Jim. "There's no Chance or History in Lyonesse. Its mold is set; and time, except for its minute-to-minute aspect, doesn't seem to exist. In other words, History is not moving forward there. But the Drowned Land has both History and Chance. Its own version of it, of course, compared to that in the land above—but History and Chance, nonetheless; and the Dark Powers exist for the destruction of either one of those two elements, wherever they can do that."

  "But how—" began the young King.

  "I don't know," said Jim. "It's a far-fetched bit of reasoning, but the best I can do right now. It could be the Powers are just using the Drowned Land because it's conveniently here for what they want to do. Didn't you and the QB tell me, Dafydd, that the Borderland could hold their invasion force?"

  "Perhaps, James," said Brian unexpectedly, "you might explain why Chance and History are so important to the Dark Powers. I swear England is full of gentlemen and ladies—not to mention those who swink and sweat all their lives for their living—who have never given a thought to either one. Must say it took me a little time to get my wits around it, myself!"

  "Indeed! I think that a good idea of Sir Brian, Sir James," said Dafydd
. "Would you tell us, then?"

  Jim looked across the table and around at the waiting, hopeful faces. How to explain the Dark Powers?

  "I can't, really," he said. "I don't understand them myself."

  Dafydd translated. Jim went on. The light of hope began to die in those he watched. Magicians were supposed to have answers.

  "The best I can do," he said, "is tell you what my Master-in-Magick"—he did his best this time to pronounce the word as those here said it—"told me of the Dark Powers. My Master's name is Carolinus, and he's one of the three most powerful magicians in the land above. Would you want to hear that?"

  "Speak of it anyway in your own words, Sir James," said the King in English; and a few heads nodded in the half circle before them—obviously belonging to those who knew enough English to follow the talk so far—even as Dafydd translated for the others.

  Jim looked at the half circle of faces, watching and waiting to hear what he would say. For a moment, in their stillness and unvarying attention, they reminded him of children—no, not children. Perhaps actors playing the parts of obedient children.

  Perhaps they were indeed playing a part, he told himself. A part in a life-play of some kind. For a moment Jim found himself caught up in a dizzying sensation of unreality. Colors, Leaders, a sunlit land hundreds or thousands of feet under the ocean surface—another land of legend and magic, but like the first, one where people lived and could die. Talking trees, Old Magic, Dark Powers, Witch Queens…

  His mind spun. Reality and unreality were all mixed up. For the first time since he and Angie had come to this world, Jim felt a piercing homesickness for the century of their birth. A time when there was no magic or strange powers, no archaic loyalties, obligations, and ways. He felt as if caught up in a whirlwind with nothing stable around him.

  He longed for Angie. Once back with her, even this world would have a firm point—all else would fall into order. Safe within himself, protected by his ward, he had the magic to return to her in a moment. He could be back with her at Malencontri in no time at all.