The Dragon in Lyonesse

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "I don't think so," said Jim cautiously. "What a Mage like Kineteté knows, compared to what little I've worked out for myself…"

  His voice trailed off. He sat thinking.

  "You could try," said Angie.

  "Well… not bring him here from Lyonesse. For one thing he belongs there, and Kineteté was only bringing us back where we belong. It makes a big difference magically."

  "But you could do something."

  "Well… just maybe. There's projections—let me think how she used them…"

  Angie let him think; and suddenly there was a somewhat fuzzy apparition of the QB standing in the Solar and staring at Jim—his back, catlike, rising.

  "Forgive me, QB," said Jim hastily. "I didn't mean to make you think you're really here in the land above. I just used a bit of magic to project the room we're in now at our castle around you. But I wanted you very much to meet my Lady wife, Angela de Montanya de Eckert, Baroness and Chatelaine de Malencontri et Riveroak; who's wanted very much also to meet you. But if you feel we're intruding I can take our projection away. It's just an illusion—a sort of glamor thrown around you—actually."

  But the QB's back had been subsiding even as Jim spoke. "I should not have been wary, Sir James," he said, "knowing as I do you are versed in magick; and it is an honor to have you name to me the Lady Angela. My Lady, I am not able to tell you how it pleasures me to speak to you."

  "Enough of courtesie, my Lord," Angie dropped him a curtsy—something she had got very good at, Jim thought now, out of the pleasantly contemplative glow that was replacing the almost-blinding brightness of his overdrive. "But I have needed to meet you for some time now, My Lord—"

  "Please. All speak me simply as the QB. I am happiest so."

  "Then may I pray you to call me simply Angela."

  "My Lady, it would make me uncomfortable to do so, as it would to address Sir James other than in that fashion."

  "Then your comfort shall be a rule between us," said Angie. "But what I've been wanting to say to you, QB, is that I love my husband and I can't tell you how I've been waiting a chance to thank you for all your kindness and help to him, that has brought him safely back to me, from the black monsters on his first trip to Lyonesse to all the help you gave him on this last trip. You have been a friend indeed!"

  "Alas, Lady Angela. I cannot claim such human things as friendship. I am not one of you. I am an animal, and not a tame one to claim such human virtues. But from centuries of closeness with King Pellinore, however, I have come to see them in humans and I make a practice of trying to aid those who show them."

  "Anyway, for whatever reason you do them, I am grateful for the help you've given Jim and I want you to know that," said Angie. "I wish I could do something for you in return."

  "Alas, there is nothing."

  "Then I'll have to leave it at that. How is good King Pellinore? Jim and Sir Brian were sad to leave him without saying farewell. Have you any idea when he might be feeling better about the new loss of his sons?"

  "I cannot say. Certainly not soon, if ever. My concern for him runs deep. So deep, in fact, I did what I would have otherwise never done. I asked Merlin for help and advice."

  Having said that, he stopped, so completely it seemed he had cut himself off in mid-sentence. Jim understood at once. Angie, who had yet to hear all that Jim had to tell her about Merlin, did not.

  "And he said—?"

  "Silence." The QB looked at her almost compassionately. "I should have known. What pains my King Pellinore is not one of the matters Merlin has committed himself to being concerned with."

  "But with time, surely, King Pellinore will adjust to his loss? It's not as if his sons won't be back, if ever Lyonesse needs them again."

  "King Pellinore thinks not; and he is not alone in this. He is convinced, now that ordinary men from the land above have attempted Lyonesse, that the truth of the Legends will be broken. The defeat of those who came against us will be laid to any number of small things. The invaders will become the new heroes; and others like them will come trying."

  "Arthur and the others'll be back again!" said Jim from the bed, drawn into the conversation at last. "Any who come will be bound to lose."

  The QB looked at him and back at Angie.

  "King Pellinore believes not," he said, "and many of the other Knights think as he does. It was prophesied Arthur would return; and now he has. But he has had his coming and gone. He will not come again, nor will the others who returned at the same time; and the ordinary men from the land above will never cease from coming—until the last of the Knights is killed for the last time and Lyonesse lies helpless for the taking." He paused.

  "King Pellinore," he went on, "believes his sons will never return to him now. For Arthur's sake the Knights did not put to the sword all who prayed to yield—and mischief was loosed in the world above. What hope of King Pellinore and his sons meeting again, if Heaven is not there for those who have lived only because they were an example to all men, but are no more remembered for that?"

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the Solar.

  "If I can prove to you that they will be remembered still," said Angie deliberately, "—at more than half a thousand years from now—as they are today, could you carry that proof back to King Pellinore and would it convince him and the other Knights that their fears are wrong?"

  "If such a thing were possible," said the QB doubtfully, "I believe it would."

  "How good is your memory?"

  "I forget nothing, from the time I first woke in Lyonesse, remembering all my life with King Pellinore before that."

  "Then," said Angie, "if I can tell you a poem—a poem written more than half a thousand years from our present time here in the land above, will you listen to it? The poem itself is proof of the time it was made, for the skill of it is beyond anything that can be written now, here."

  "Most gratefully I will listen!"

  "Very well," said Angie; and launched into it.

  She must mean Tennyson, Jim thought. But does she mean to start near the very beginning? It's too long for that, even if he's got a perfect memory to hold it. The QB'll never listen all the way through.

  "It's called The Passing of Arthur," Angie said; and with those words, Jim realized the QB would listen all the way through; and so would Pellinore and the other Knights when the QB repeated it to them. Maybe, however, Jim told himself, she's going to skip parts as she goes, to shorten it up. He settled himself to listen. The poem was a favorite of his; and he could sit in the small warm cocoon of contentment he was now in, watching Angie as much as he liked—she would be lost in her reciting and not notice.

  Then, ere that last weird battle in the west,

  There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain killed

  In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown

  Along a wandering wind, and past his ear

  Went shrilling: "Hollow, hollow all delight!

  Hail King! to-morrow thou shall pass away.

  Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee.

  And I am blown along a wandering wind,

  And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight!"…

  The rhythm of the poem lulled Jim. He looked at the QB and saw him motionless, with that particular perfect motionlessness of a wild animal concentrating on a prey that the slightest disturbance could alarm—and lose.

  He looked at Angie, and was relieved to see that the signs of weariness and strain he had seen in her face were gone. She was completely concentrated on the words she was reciting—as concentrated, if in a different way, as the QB.

  They were totally different in all ways, Angie and the QB, but the poetry was making a unit of the two of them. It was drawing Jim in, also, but in a different way. He was not so much listening to the well-remembered words, but in his mind reliving the images that the words created in him.

  Perhaps, come to think of it, they were all three seeing different images. But it did not matter. Their emotions were in u
nison.

  How differently emotions normally worked between species—or even those of the same species, but brought up under vastly different conditions. Even between men as a general group and women as a general group—so different. He looked at Angie again.

  Her face was alight—literally. She was glowing, in one of those moments when she looked most beautiful. Literally, she was able to glow with happiness. It's because she loves poetry so much, Jim told himself. She had glowed like that when they had brought the baby Robert Falon, legally Jim's ward now by order of King Edward, home to Malencontri and Angie had learned they could keep the boy.

  She had glowed the day they were married here—here in the fourteenth century—after he and the others had rescued her from the Loathly Tower. And he could remember seeing other women—usually younger—doing it at other times in his life.

  Men never glow, thought Jim. We may reach the utmost moments of happiness, but we don't glow. Did we ever, as children, before puberty?

  He could not remember doing so. He remembered being so happy at times it had felt as if he could fly apart—arms and legs detaching themselves and flying off in four different directions. But he could never remember feeling anything like what Angie showed; that all-pervasive illumination that lit up everyone around… Angie was reciting.

  … then rose the King and moved his host by night,

  And ever push'd Sir Modred, league by league,

  Back to the sunset bound of Lyonesse—

  A land of old upheaven from the abyss

  By fire, to sink into the abyss again…

  —Had Merlin looked so far forward as that moment? Jim found himself wondering. Merlin, in his relentless avoidance of the present in order to concentrate on past and future?

  … But now Jim had almost missed the next line of the poem. He hastily caught it from the last words Angie was presently reciting.

  … There the pursuer could pursue no more

  And he that fled no further fly the King…

  Angie recited on. The happenings of that last murky battle played out in Jim's mind as she spoke. Bedivere, standing by Arthur, seeing Modred, Arthur's son and foe. Bedivere pointing him out to Arthur "… unharmed, the traitor of thine house." And Arthur responding—

  "… And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,

  When all the purport of my throne hath fail'd,

  That Quick or dead thou boldest me for king.

  King am I, whatsoever he their cry.

  And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see

  Yet, ere I pass." And uttering this,

  the King Made at the man. Then Modred smote his liege

  Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword

  Had beaten thin, while Arthur at one blow

  Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,

  Slew him, and, all but slain himself, he fell…

  Jim sat, caught up entirely now in the visions of that last battle as Angie's steady voice unrolled it before him and the QB. That long night's battle by the cold sea, under an arctic twilight, with the last of the Knights of the Round Table fallen about their desperately wounded King.

  Bedivere was sent twice to throw Excalibur into the waters of the mere—as it had been handed to Arthur from the waters of the lake in the beginning. Twice he failed. But the third time a hand arose to take and brandish it and draw it down… and so he returned to tell Arthur.

  … And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:

  "My end draws nigh, it is time that I were gone.

  Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,

  And bear me to the margin, yet I fear

  My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

  No greater silent testimonial could be made, thought Jim, than the mere matter-of-fact mention of Bedivere, a Knight whose size and strength is nowhere remarked in the Legends, taking on his back and carrying for no short distance one of the two biggest and heaviest individuals of Arthur's Kingdom. Only that he…

  … swiftly strode from ridge to ridge

  Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd,

  Larger than human on the frozen hills…

  … Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves…

  The bare black cliff clanged round him, as be based

  His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang…

  And on a sudden, lo, the level lake,

  And the long glories of the winter moon!

  Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,

  Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern…

  Three queens with crowns of gold—and from them rose

  A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars…

  Then murmur'd Artbur, "Place me in the barge."

  So to the barge they came…

  Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:

  "Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?

  … For now I see the true old times are dead…

  And I, the last, go forth companionless,

  And the days darken round me, and the years,

  Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

  And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:

  "The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

  And God fulfils himself in many ways,

  Lest one good custom should corrupt the world …"

  So said he, and the barge with oar and sail

  Moved from the brink …

  Long stood Sir Bedivere… till the bull

  Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,

  And on the mere the wailing died away.

  All through this telling of the poem the QB had not moved. Nor did he move during the last few verses now. But when Angie stopped at last, he looked at her for a long moment before saying anything.

  "And was that poem indeed made half a thousand years and more from the moment where we speak now?"

  "Yes," said Angie.

  "Lady Angela, you have given us back our hope of life—and more—much more. I thank you for all of Lyonesse."

  He turned to Jim.

  "And now, Sir James, will you release me from the glamor of the magic you have thrown around me? For what with it and the hearing of the poem, I do not have strength to move myself."

  "It's gone," said Jim, and instantly the QB was backgrounded not by the rest of the Solar, but by the great dark trees and forest ground of Lyonesse—and in the same second he also had gone.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Sitting in the bed, sipping the last of his tea, in the afterglow of the poem, Jim put the finally empty cup carefully down on the table on his side of the bed and hugged Angie, who had just returned to bed.

  "Thank you," he said, "for being you—and on my side."

  "It's not that I'm always on your side in everything," said Angie, when he let go of her. "I'd like to be. I want to be. But we live two separate lives here—anyway, I thought you made a lot of sense with what you told Kineteté and Carolinus—isn't Carolinus looking good, finally?"

  "After what the Gnarlies did to him, he certainly is," said Jim. "But you think what I said made sense?"

  "Of course."

  "I'm glad it did to someone," said Jim. "By the time I was through talking to Kineteté and Carolinus I was starting to doubt myself."

  "Not really?"

  "No," said Jim. "No, I'm exaggerating. Not really. I'll tell you what—" He suddenly interrupted himself in an entirely different voice.

  "Hob?" he said sternly to the leaping flames of the fireplace. "Hob, you're listening, aren't you?"

  There was a hesitant moment, then a small and tremulous voice came down the chimney.

  "Yes, m'Lord. Pray pardon, but it was only because I was waiting for a chance to speak to you, m'Lord… my Lord."

  "You know I've ordered you not to listen to private conversations—and particularly not when we're talking to each other here. How important is this speaking of yours that you had to wait until now to have it?" />
  "Very important," quavered Hob's voice, "—to me, m'Lord. I needed to talk to you when you were alone and nothing terribly troublesome is happening. I had a privy thing to ask you when nobody but you and m'Lady were there to hear, m'Lord."

  "It'd better be important," said Jim in his best baronial tones.

  "It's just—I wanted to ask you—your Lordship knows that many knights and lords have two or three—even seven—squires; and I was wondering, now that I learned from the ballad singer how to talk as gentlemen and ladies do—that is, would your Lordship of your grace and kindness consider making me one of your squires, just as you did with Theoluf when he was only chief man-at-arms?"

  Hob stopped talking on a somewhat high-pitched, tense note. Jim, however, could almost imagine he was hearing the anxious beating of the small Natural's heart, as he waited for the words of Jim's answer.

  Jim was thinking as fast as he had ever thought. This ambition, then, was what had actually been behind the months of Hob's hiding the ballad singer in the castle, and the coaching in language and manners Hob had received from him in payment.

  As a knight who was also a magickian in the eyes of those in this world who knew of him, people tolerated a number of odd and unexplained behaviors from him. No ordinary member of the gentry could get away with the level of eccentricity he had shown at times. But having a squire who was a hobgoblin would be outside the limits of even that tolerance.

  The moment a hobgoblin was seen riding behind him as a squire, the general opinion about him would shift from being that he was a qualified knight who could also work magic on occasion, to a certainty that he was a full-time magickian who merely used magic to appear to be a knight, so he could act like one on occasion.

  Real knights were knights first—anything else they were was secondary; and squires were knights-in-training. As such, they took part in the mythos of knighthood. The vows they took on becoming a knight—at least the vows they were supposed to take—were not those anyone but a real knight could take.

  It was not for nothing that the accolade of knighthood was to be won by some specially worthy deed by the squire, beyond his training. It was not supposed to be automatic or an inevitable promotion—though a lot of times it was—any knight could make someone else a knight. Only a king could dub a half-grown son—or maybe even a hobgoblin—and get away with it.