The Dragon and the Fair M

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "But—"

  "And he looks at all time from its beginning to its end. Do you know how small that makes the situation we're in here and now? Too small to waste a single thought on! But to us, with a man who, in spite of his human faults, has been a good King to England and is needed a few more years yet—let me show you what we're up against."

  "I don't like this at all!" snapped Angie. "Jim's not up to this kind of effort, yet—"

  "It's all right, Angie. I'm over the plague. I can hardly even feel the pain now!"

  "That's because you're in overdrive!" she said.

  "Let me show you," Carolinus repeated. "Solar!"

  Jim, Angie and Carolinus were suddenly in the Solar—Jim still in his bed. There was no sign of the King, who had evidently already vacated it for its true owners. Signs of careless royal occupancy were everywhere.

  "Will you look at this place?" said Angie. "Servant, here!"

  The door opened and a female servant popped her head in.

  "M'lady!" There was astonishment and joy in her voice. She popped the rest of the way in and curtsied. "Terrible sorry, m'lady, but he never wanted to be disturbed—"

  "Well, clean it up! Get the Room Mistress. Tell her to get a crew in here to help—tell her I told you to tell her so. If we're still here when the crew comes, they can clean around us."

  "At once, m'lady." Exit servant.

  Meanwhile Carolinus had pushed Jim's bed—which was floating in midair at about the same height above the floor as the dais in the Nursing Room had put it—over to one of the Solar windows, which he opened to the crisp outside air. Accustomed now to the hothouse temperature of the Nursing Room, Jim unthinkingly pulled his bedcovers up around his neck.

  "Good idea," said Carolinus, watching him. "But don't let them down there see you. Take a look outside and see what we're up against."

  Jim looked. He saw goblins. Starting at about the halfway point in the cleared space around the castle, the ground was thick with them. They were carrying spears. But none seemed inclined to stray any closer to the castle.

  "How did they know we came here?" he asked Carolinus.

  "Where would you look first," said Carolinus, "when your quarry had just vanished?"

  "The castle where the Knight Dragon Magickian lives—of course," answered Jim. "Yes, I see what you mean. How many of them are there, just outside?"

  "Several hundreds all around the castle, and more in the woods behind them. No telling how many more scattered though Somerset. Of course, the local predators are having a fine old feast off them."

  Jim felt a slight queasiness.

  "You say they're being eaten?"

  "Certainly—they're easy prey. Solid meat—no bones or tough hide to speak of. Just as hobs would be if all the animals hadn't learned long ago that hobs are their friends."

  "But eating them!"

  "If that upsets you, those dragon friends you have at Cliffside Eyrie have been taking them, too. They've got to eat also, you know. Why should a goblin be so shocking when a lamb or calf isn't?"

  "But… my dragons?"

  "I don't know how much you can call them yours. Your dragon self has been accepted into their community, that's all," growled Carolinus. "I don't think any of them would be too happy with your talking about them as if they were servants of your castle and lands."

  "I didn't mean it that way," said Jim. "But what about those spears? Pretty discouraging weapons."

  "Only because of the poison of the magick in their tips, and—"

  "I remember," said Jim, "magic doesn't work on animals."

  "That's right," said Carolinus. "Only on those who use magick—humans, Naturals and spirits of all kinds."

  "And, as I just said, not animals!" Jim glared at him.

  "One must never pass up the opportunity to teach Apprentices," said Carolinus, serenely. "On more important subjects, what do you think of the situation, now?"

  "We've got to get rid of them. Drive them back underground where they belong."

  "And how would you go about doing that?"

  "I don't know," said Jim. "Carolinus, I still hurt like hell, and I'm getting kind of exhausted. I don't think I'm up to making plans now. Don't you have anything in mind?"

  "If you mean can I snap my fingers and transport them all to deep earth, I can't. There're too many of them. But Jim—" the tone of his voice changed "—forgive me. I should give you another day or two to recover."

  "That's all right. I'm glad to know—and, Carolinus, thank you for getting me the opium. It worked like a charm, though I'd hate to live with it—it'd be like living in a bad dream."

  "Don't thank me."

  "Of course. I meant, and convey my thanks to Son Won Phon when you get the chance."

  "I shall."

  "And now," said Angie, suddenly appearing and with a hard note in her voice, "it's time for Jim to get some rest."

  "Of course," said Carolinus—and was no longer there.

  "I think he flicks in and out like that deliberately," said Jim.

  "Now that he's gone, though, do you want the pipe for just a bit?" Angie asked, pushing his still floating bed back deeper into the room, where it gradually sank to the floor. "You can stay where you are until the Solar's cleaned up, but then I'll move you back to our own bed. Still, there's going to be quite a fuss and bother around you until it's done. Should we just shift you over now?"

  "Yes. No! Dammit! I'll have to call Carolinus back. Chandos!"

  "Chandos?"

  "If anyone might know how to handle that army outside, it'd be him. I'm out of magick, and Carolinus would undoubtedly say I shouldn't try to use it if I had it. But he could bring Chandos here in a twinkling—"

  "I already tried to," said Carolinus, appearing again. "This is not my usual practice. He can't come. He's fighting a single-handed battle to keep Cumberland from taking over everything while the King's gone. But he said he had no ideas for us. There's too big a force facing us, and he knows nothing of goblins."

  "Were you listening in on us just now?" Jim looked at him sharply.

  "Certainly not. I just have myself alerted to your needing me. Clearly, the present need is ended."

  He vanished once more.

  "Give me the blasted pipe, Angie!" said Jim.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The opium blurred the bustle around Jim that was the returning of the Solar to the state in which he and Angie were used to it, but he was beginning to hate the stuff, It put an end to any sharp thinking he might have done, and he resented that. His mind had kept him alive and solved all his problems for him, as well as making life interesting, and he did not like being separated from it.

  On the other hand, what was left of his buboes were still hurting enough to make him want it. The pipe moved that hurt a long, long way from him. Furthermore, he was beginning to realize for the first time how exhausted he really was—as if he had put in a huge day's work under normal conditions. Sleep beckoned, and he went with it.

  He woke up in the middle of the night in his accustomed bed, with the comforting presence of Angie slumbering beside him. He put an arm over her. She stirred, but did not wake. This was one of the great things about being married a while, he thought, this warm, accustomed, semi-awake togetherness. He was hardly hurting at all, and his mind was almost his, again—he went back to sleep.

  He woke a second time, fully awake this time, clear-headed and still almost without pain. It was still dark outside the Solar windows, and from the sound of it, a little rain was hissing against the very expensive but very welcomed window glass.

  He wondered how the goblins were dealing with the rain. Huddling under trees? They could not be used to the falling water, but they had not seemed to have anything in the nature of tents or other shelters set up. There was one way in which hobs were better off than those who had kicked them out of their original kingdom: hobs were always warm and dry—

  He sat up suddenly, his mind clicking. Disturbed by th
e change of weight on the bed and the removal of his arm, Angie started to wake up.

  "Nothing…" he said to her softly. "Nothing… go back to sleep."

  She did, and he sat upright there, his back to the headboard, thinking, thinking…

  Of course! Those who could afford it always carried the fourteenth-century version of tents, if they expected to be spending nights in the open. The poorer classes were not so fortunate, usually. He had been forgetting the very large difference between the technology of this age and the practically primitive goblins, whose only evidence of anything beyond the Stone Age was their magic and their spears.

  Unless they had some way of using magic to shelter themselves. Setting up wards or something like that—but no other Natural he had ever heard of had that as part of his or her instinctive, built-in magical abilities. Carolinus could probably tell him. Could he wake Carolinus, wherever the Mage was now, and ask him?

  No.

  But Hob could be called at any hour, and he might know—almost certainly would know.

  Jim eased himself out of the bed—gently, so as not to wake Angie—and went to the welcome heat of the fire, crouching down before it so he could look up the chimney beyond the flames.

  "Hob!" he whispered to the chimney.

  Hob's face appeared a second later, upside down, peering out below the top edge of the fireplace opening.

  "M'lord!" he said, in a normally loud voice.

  "Shhh!" said Jim, casting a glance at the bed. But Angie had not stirred. Hob came all the way down from the chimney and stood upright, staring at Jim. It occurred to Jim that this was the first time the little Natural had seen his lord unclothed. Both Jim and Angie had adopted the medieval habit of "going to their naked bed"—or, in more modern word-fashion, going naked to bed. Not that this should make any difference. Hob had plainly never worn clothes in his life, and neither Jim, Angie, nor anyone else had ever paid any attention to the fact. The period, in effect, paid little attention to many of the later days' privacies.

  "Is m'lord cold?" whispered Hob. "Would he like me to wrap some warm smoke around him? I won't let it get in his eyes."

  "Yes," said Jim, suddenly conscious of gooseflesh and the nighttime temperature of the Solar outside the bedcovers. Smoke curled out from the fire and enveloped him up to the neck, its further end reaching back to the fire. It was indeed warm and pleasant. His gooseflesh subsided.

  "Hob," he said, "do the goblins have any magical ways of protecting themselves from the kind of rain we've got outside, tonight?"

  "No, m'lord. They only have magic for making things like their spearpoints out of diamonds or Great Silver."

  Great Silver was something beings like the Gnarlies could perceive in ordinary silver, and which they greatly prized. It had a jewel-like appearance. It was not surprising that the goblins, also now a race living in Deep Earth, could also perceive and isolate and work with it for their spearpoints.

  "Then they're getting very wet right now."

  "Yes, m'lord, very wet," said Hob happily. "Of course, they're not afraid of water, the way they are of fire."

  "And of course you hobs are right at home with fire."

  "Oh, yes m'lord. Fire is kind to a hob, and as m'lord knows, smoke is even kinder."

  "So what kind of magic can they do, compared to hob magic?"

  "Almost no magic, m'lord. As you know, we can pass through our friend fire and ride our friend smoke and all sorts of things they can't do. Oh, yes, we can even ride the smoke anywhere, even clear around the world—did m'lord know the world is round?"

  "I did."

  "Of course. Forgive my being so stupid. Of course, a great Magickian like m'lord would know!"

  "Fairly great," said Jim. "But that wasn't what I asked. I want to know what you can do that goblins can't."

  "Very sorry, m'lord. Well, we can do just about anything. Live with the fire, make friends with some humans, be very brave—Oh, and we can ask the smoke to do anything we want—like wrapping around you, just now. Smoke would wrap thick, top to bottom around the whole castle if I asked it. Would my lord like it to do something like that for him?"

  "You mentioned hobs being brave. Goblins aren't brave?"

  "Oh, no, m'lord. Goblins are never brave. They're just fierce."

  "I see," said Jim. "That's different?"

  "Isn't it, m'lord?"

  "Well, maybe it is. Give me an example of the difference, though."

  "Why, we hobs aren't scared to death of a cross marked on a building, the way goblins are. We can go right in—through a chimney usually, of course, but it doesn't have to be a chimney. We all like each other!"

  "I remember now," Jim said thoughtfully, "You told me about that. But goblins don't like each other?"

  "They hate each other, like they hate everybody else—just as they used to hate even the Great Demons, back when we all were in the Kingdom of Devils and Demons. But they hated us who became hobs most, and that's why they cast us out. They said we were freaks and not fit to be there, but it was really because all the other devils and demons were blaming them for not being able to get past any kind of holy mark anywhere in the world, and they were cast out of the Kingdom, too, after we were gone and there were still things to blame on someone… M'lord doesn't mind that I was born a goblin?"

  The last words came out a little tremulously.

  "Never!" said Jim. "Where I come from, it's what a person is, not what he or she was. That's the only thing that matters."

  "It must be a lovely place you come from, m'lord," said Hob wistfully.

  "Well, it has its faults," said Jim, feeling a twinge of guilt. "So you hobs evidently adapted to what you are up here?"

  "We always were what we were, but what we were helped us to adapted…" His voice faltered. "Forgive my ignorance, m'lord. But what's 'adapted'?"

  " 'Adapt' is when you change yourself to make it possible for you to do things you couldn't."

  "Oh."

  "Yes."

  "So we adapt—" Hob hesitated, glancing at Jim, "—ed?"

  "In this case you'd say 'adapted.'"

  "Well, all I can say, m'lord, is that I'm awfully glad we adapted. It's much nicer being a hob than a goblin. When I want to, I can even touch cold iron, like the sword you had made for me, instead of getting terribly burned the way I would have if I'd stayed a goblin."

  "It really burns them to touch or be touched by it, then?"

  "Oh, yes. It can burn them bad enough to kill them."

  "Is that so?" said Jim, suddenly very interested. "And Tiverton hob said they don't like fire."

  "It burns them right up—as if they were straw—but only one at a time. I mean, m'lord, they can't catch fire from each other."

  "Damn!" said Jim, his abrupt dream evaporating of setting fire to the whole goblin swarm around Malencontri with a single torch touching off just one of their beseigers.

  Just as well, he told himself. No creatures, not even goblins, should be burned to death. "What?" he asked, for Hob had started to talk again.

  "I just asked, m'lord, begging your pardon, but is he really a king—the man who was staying in the Solar here until today?"

  "He is," said Jim. "You sound disappointed."

  "Well, m'lord…" Hob writhed, a sure sign of embarrassment, "I thought he'd be bigger."

  "Bigger."

  "Double your size—I mean no offense, m'lord!"

  "None taken," said Jim. "Why bigger?"

  "I don't know. I just thought so. It seemed to stand to reason. If you saw Hill now, you'd see how much bigger than other Gnarlies he's become since he became King in Gnarlyland. He doesn't like the goblins, either."

  "I know. Just as much as the rest of us do."

  "Then why doesn't the King send for an army of knights to come here and chase them away? They'd be safe in their armor, and their horses wouldn't hardly even feel the magic poison in the speartips."

  Jim's mind suddenly lit up.

  "Hob," he said, "yo
u're a genius!"

  "I know, my lord. You told me so once before. Forgive my ignorance, though, but I'm still not quite sure what it is—being a genius."

  "Tell you later when we've more time to talk," Jim told him. "Right now, though… Hob, this smoke of yours is very comfortable, and all that. But I've got to do some thinking, now, and I do my thinking best in bed. So I'll say goodnight for what's left of it, and go back to my pillow and covers. You remember the rule about not listening in here?"

  "Oh yes, m'lord. I never ever listen to you and m'lady anymore."

  "Of course you don't. I shouldn't even mention it. Just habit, I suppose."

  "Goodnight, m'lord. Do you want the smoke to keep you wrapped until you're in bed?"

  "If it would be so kind."

  "But smoke isn't kind, m'lord. Or unkind either. It just does what it's asked to do."

  "I see," said Jim, his thoughts already galloping away from the present conversation. It was idiotic of him not to think before of what had just occurred to him—but for now it was only the grand outline of an idea. He would have to work out the details before he mentioned it to anyone. He got up and started back to bed. "Goodnight, Hob."

  "Goodnight, m'lord—though it's really morn, now."

  "Oh?" said Jim vaguely, and got cautiously back into bed. He made it safely without disturbing the slumbering Angie, and snuggled down himself under the covers.

  "Jim!" said Angie, suddenly awake. "Do you smell smoke?"

  "No," said Jim.

  He lay thinking while the first light fought its way through the heavy clouds beyond the windows. The rain had stopped, he thought, but there was every indication that it would be a gloomy day. Angie had returned immediately to sleep—a knack of hers—after being reassured about the smoke smell.

  He was feeling almost perfect, he thought. The excitement in him was overriding the pain of what was left from where his buboes had been—more a stiffness from the healing parts than pain.

  Angie slept. Jim lay awake, his mind spinning with plans, counterplans, scrapped plans that he had thought might work—until, worn out, his relentless brain gave up at last and sleep took him without warning.