The Dragon At War

by Gordon R. Dickson

  It was probably an illusion, thought Jim; but the distances within the building seemed almost as long to him as their walk through the streets to get here. But at last they reached an area where the furnishings became more luxurious and Dafydd drew them aside into the niche of a window alcove. Bright sunlight lanced through the glass beside them, for all the windows here had been paned.

  "From here," said Dafydd, "the corridor splits to two corridors. From this point I've no more idea of which way we might take than anyone else. James, what do you think?"

  Jim considered the situation.

  "The right corridor," he said at last slowly, "has windows. The left corridor doesn't. I'd bet the left-hand corridor leads more directly to King Jean's apartments; since his rooms would have windows looking out the other side of the building."

  He thought a moment.

  "So, let's try the left corridor. We might even do better than just trying it. We might wait until a servant comes along to go down that corridor and follow him. Then, see if what he does, or the door he opens, can show us anything. We might learn something, that way."

  "That is well thought out, James, and like you," said Dafydd.

  "Just the toss of a coin," said Jim. "But it seems it might give us a slightly better chance. If we can make sure that the left corridor has entrances to the King's private quarters, then we know for certain that the right-hand corridor doesn't."

  "My 'prentice told me," went on Dafydd, in the same whisper in which they had been talking all along, "that Ecotti's room is right next to the royal privy chambers, with a door from it to them, so that the King may summon him on an instant at any hour of the day or night."

  "That's good to know—if true," said Jim. "We'll keep it in mind. Now, to wait for a servant going in the right direction."

  They waited. It was a good quarter of an hour before a servant came by, and he went down the right-hand corridor where they did not intend to follow. However, almost on his heels was another, who turned down the left corridor.

  This servant, like the one who had preceded him, was carrying a tray on which were a couple of wine bottles and two well-formed, clear glass wine cups. All those at the inn had been thick, clumsy utensils.

  They followed the second servant. He looked right past them as he went by. The floor here was carpeted, and their feet made no sound. The servant stopped outside a door; and, balancing his tray on one hand, scratched at the door with his fingernails.

  It was a common way for a servant to announce that he was there. Otherwise, and much more often than Jim had expected when he at first settled in the fourteenth century, a servant would just walk right in.

  Servants ignored—or seemed to—whatever was going on inside the room; and certainly those inside the room of superior rank ignored them. In fact, as far as the occupants were concerned in a situation like this, the tray would waft itself in on invisible hands and place itself on a table. But now as Jim, Dafydd and Secoh waited close behind him, after a moment the servant shrugged, lifted the latch of the door himself and went in, leaving the door half open behind him.

  They were about to follow him, when Jim held out an arm to stop the other two.

  Without a word he pointed to the door and Dafydd and Secoh's eyes swung onto it. What Jim had noticed were a series of meaningless symbols painted on the door. Jim stepped back from the doorway and whispered to the others.

  "Ecotti's room, I think."

  Dafydd nodded. Secoh simply looked bright-eyed and interested. Jim turned back to the doorway and the others with him.

  Within, the servant was now placing his tray on a small table by the side of a bed. In the bed a man lay asleep on his back. And as they watched his open mouth opened even wider and a loud snore issued from between the lips. It was a narrow face of the kind normally described as foxy. But the receding hairline just barely peeping from under the nightcap that was askew on the head of the man there showed sparse, wiry, black hair.

  The servant, having delivered his tray-load, turned and came back out the door. Jim pushed the others back behind him and stepped forward to confront the man as he turned from closing the door behind him. Standing directly in front of him and looking directly into his eyes he said two words, which had been already keyed for use by his spell earlier. They had their effect hypnotically, not magically.

  "Still!"

  The man froze in mid-step beyond the door.

  "You can't speak," Jim said to him in a low voice, "and you will still not be able to see or hear me. You will forget all about our conversation. You understand? Nod your head if you do, then be still again."

  The servant's head nodded like the head of a mechanical figure.

  "Then you may answer my questions with a nod or shake of the head," said Jim. "Is this the room of Ecotti the necromancer?"

  The servant nodded.

  "Is there a further door in the necromancer's room that leads to the King's quarters?" Jim asked.

  Once again the servant nodded.

  "Where are the dungeons, or any other place where the two Englishmen just arrested—Neville-Smythe and de Mer—are presently held? You may speak in a whisper."

  "A room below the King's apartments," whispered the servant.

  "Which room?"

  "I don't know," whispered the servant.

  "Good. Now, you will forget all about our conversation. You will remember only that you simply walked out the door and went straight back up the corridor the way you would ordinarily," said Jim. "Now!"

  The servant turned from him and went away up the corridor without a word. He turned to the other two.

  "I risked that," he said, "because the man on the bed was asleep and I was betting he was Ecotti. Those marks on the door are cabalistic marks, or I miss my guess."

  "What's cabalistic, m'Lord?" asked Secoh interestedly.

  "I haven't time to tell you now," said Jim. "The point is, with Ecotti asleep he's less likely to take alarm from magic being used in his vicinity. Now you heard the servant say there was a door inside his room that led to the King's quarters. But I'm hesitant to use it. Because Ecotti will undoubtedly have his room warded. And the wards will wake him, without a doubt, if we try to pass through the way the servant did."

  He looked at the other two, hoping for a suggestion from either one of them. But they merely looked back at him.

  "Well," he said, "our first duty is to rescue our friends, in any case. We'll wait until another servant comes. I'll deal with him the way I dealt with the one who brought the wine to Ecotti; and get him to show us the way down to the dungeons. Do you think this wisest, Dafydd?"

  "Without a doubt," said Dafydd.

  "Then," said Jim, "we'll simply have him show us the way to the dungeons, and I'll magically take over whoever's in charge down there. Then we'll see if our friends are there. If not we'll look elsewhere. It should be even safer if I have to use magic down there, since Ecotti wasn't woken when I used it up near his room."

  "Should there be any need," Dafydd asked, "to use magic at all?"

  "Maybe," answered Jim. "I'll try to use it to make the jailer think they have to be taken to the King and Ecotti. I'll make them invisible too. Then we'll all go up together, invisibly, into the King's presence—I'll fix things so Giles and Brian can see us. Then we'll have the four of us together; and, hopefully, the King and perhaps even Ecotti to ourselves."

  He stopped and thought a moment.

  "No," he said. "I'll have to do it all by hypnosis. If we show up with the other two with any kind of magic about us, and Ecotti's there, he'll smell it and know immediately what's going on."

  "Why can he smell magic and you can't?" asked Secoh interestedly.

  "Well," said Jim, "it's because I'm not a very good magician, yet. I haven't learned enough so that I can smell the presence of magic. But of course he—"

  He broke off, suddenly thoughtful.

  "Wait a minute," he said. "Carolinus said that the sorcerer's magic couldn't compa
re to that of a magician's. But I'm sure that he was thinking of a magician of his level or at least fairly near it."

  He paused, still thinking hard.

  "But maybe," he said, "it could be looked at the other way…"

  He stopped and smiled at Secoh.

  "Secoh," he said, "you just may have given me an idea. Damn this brain of mine that misses what's most obvious!"

  Chapter Twenty

  The other two were staring at him. He grinned.

  "M'Lord," said Dafydd—and his use of the formal address for Jim was a signal that the matter had suddenly become very important—"what idea is this, now?"

  His grin widened.

  "You know, Dafydd, Secoh," he said, "in some ways I'm an idiot."

  The other two protested at once that he wasn't.

  "Oh, yes," said Jim. "I never thought of turning the thing around and looking at it from the other side. I'm not much of a magician; but maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is how much of a sorcerer is Ecotti? Now, with any magician I would have expected him to come awake the minute we were outside his door; even before the servant opened it and we were able to look in and see him sleeping. He should have woken immediately and taken action—magical action—against us. But he's not a magician."

  "But you just said he worked magic—" Secoh said puzzledly.

  "That alone doesn't make him a magician," Jim answered. "He's a sorcerer, as Carolinus says. It could be that sorcerers are nowhere near as good at sensing the presence of magic around them as magicians. Or maybe just Ecotti himself isn't very good at that. Now, if that's the case—"

  "Perhaps we can walk right up to him and he'll never even see us," said Secoh brightly.

  Dafydd frowned at the dragon in human shape, and Secoh looked crestfallen.

  "Sorry," he said in a small voice. "I know I shouldn't talk, just listen. But I get carried away."

  "That's all right, Secoh," said Jim. "It just might be, if I'm right, that we can do exactly what you just said. The point is, though, it'd be a gamble. It could be that once awake he can sense magic as well as any—well, at least as well as a low-level magician like me. Or it could be that—while he can't sense magic well—when it's right under his nose, so to speak, he'll sense it. But at least we've got a good chance of having the four of us, armed, alone with the King of France and Ecotti himself."

  "Ah!" said Secoh, all but rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

  "If," Jim went on, "I can somehow use magic to tie Ecotti's hands, then we've got a couple of valuable prisoners that can tell us things, instead of them making Brian and Giles tell them things."

  "We might," put in Dafydd thoughtfully, "even have hostages, James, who could help us get out of this city."

  Jim thought for a moment.

  "Maybe," he said, "but come to think of it, we don't want to attract that much attention to ourselves. It would be better all around if we can simply have the King and Ecotti forget all about seeing us; and then get away as quietly and invisibly as we can, taking whatever we've learned to England and Sir John Chandos—"

  He broke off.

  "Here comes a servant now," he hissed, dropping his voice to a whisper.

  He waved the other two back into the window niche, and himself, still invisible, stepped out to stand directly in the way of the incoming servant. True to what he had expected, the fact that the man was essentially under hypnosis rather than under a magic spell alone, caused him to unconsciously be aware that Jim was in his way, even if his mind refused to credit the fact, and he tried to go around Jim.

  Jim abruptly made himself visible, by hiding the twig with his hand.

  "Stop," said Jim, meeting the servant's eye, as he hastily wrote on his forehead:

  YOU ARE → HYPNOTIZED

  The man stopped.

  "Now listen to me," said Jim. "You can't see me or hear me, but you will obey what I tell you. The King has charged me with a new order for you, that is more important than whatever else you were told to do. You are to show me the way down to the dungeons. Do you know where they are? Nod your head, if you do."

  This servant also nodded his head.

  "All right, then," said Jim. He made himself invisible again. "Turn around, and lead off. We'll be right behind you."

  He glanced back to see if Secoh and Dafydd were with him, as he began to follow the servant back down the hall up which he'd come. They were right behind him.

  He led them for some little distance back down the corridor, up another corridor, down a third and so by various ways to a door, which he opened on a flight of stairs going down. He led the way down, and the smell that came up to them told them that they were headed in the right direction.

  Still invisible, Jim spoke in the servant's ear.

  "Before you can be seen by anyone down there, stop, and give me a chance to look ahead of you. Do you understand? Nod if you do."

  The man nodded.

  The stair steps were planks of rough wood, without paint or carpeting, and open, with no riser behind them.

  "Go quietly," hissed Jim in the servant's ear. "Tiptoe down."

  The servant obeyed.

  Jim, Dafydd and Secoh tiptoed behind him. The stairs would have been absolutely lightless if it had not been for meager illumination of the stone-walled and floored corridor at the bottom of the stairs. The light from this was enough to reflect up the stairs. Sufficiently, at any rate, to show them where to place their feet.

  Three steps from the bottom, the servant stopped. Jim eased around him and stepped close to the left wall of the stairway.

  It was not until he actually brushed against it that he realized the wall was plain earth. These dungeons, like many medieval dungeons, must simply be holes in the ground. The corridor below would be reinforced with stone above, below and on its sides, simply to keep it from falling in.

  Keeping his hand brushing the earth very lightly, he went down as close to that wall as he could and gradually peered around its corner into the passage that led off also to his left. Then he remembered the twig that made him unseeable; and looked out boldly.

  The illumination that had been guiding their feet was simply a tall and thick tallow candle standing in a mound of congealed wax on a table. He found he welcomed its greasy smell against the stench of the dungeons.

  At the table sat a heavy, middle-aged man with several days' growth of gray beard. On its surface rested a couple of wine bottles and a metal cup, probably of pewter. Jim, peering around the corner into the corridor with one eye, leveled the tip of a finger at the warder of this dungeon, seated with his back to Jim, an arm's length away.

  Jim said one word.

  "Still."

  The man froze in the act of reaching for the cup. Jim took the twig from his helmet and, turning so Dafydd and Secoh could see him, signed to them to do the same. They did.

  "All right," said Jim in the ear of the servant and no longer whispering, "go to the bottom of the stairs and stand there, until I come and give you further orders."

  The servant went down. They followed behind him, passing by him once they had reached the floor of the corridor and going up to where the warder still sat immobile. Jim spoke to him.

  "Listen to me, now," he said. "In a moment I'm going to say the word 'stop.' When I say that, you will cease to be under the magic command of still. Instead, you won't be able to move or talk, and you stay that way until I give you further orders. If you understand me, you're now free to nod your head."

  The warder nodded.

  "Good!" said Jim.

  "Now," he said to the others, "let's look—"

  "James!" called Brian's voice. "James, is that you? James, if that's you, we're down here in the last dungeon. Giles and I!"

  Together, they hurried down past the two doors on the left and the two doors on the right, which stood yawning open on darkness, to the one door on the left at the end of the corridor that was closed and bolted.

  "Call out again, Brian!"
said Jim, knocking on the door. "Is this the one you're in?"

  "Yes!" chorused two voices, not only Brian's but Giles's as well.

  "We'll have you out in a minute," called Jim, turning to the door.

  The door was locked by a simple, rusty, iron bar about two inches wide that slid into an equally rusty iron bar holder on the other side. Jim tugged on it. It was rusted enough so that it resisted him for a moment, but then it slid back. Jim pulled the door open and was about to step inside, when he realized that if he did he would have taken a tumble. The dungeon within was a further hole in the earth at least four feet below him and maybe more. Brian and Giles were pressed against the earth wall of their prison, their heads on a level with his ankles. If the stench had been bad in the corridor, it was choking here.

  "How'll we get you out of there?" asked Jim, almost choking on the fetid air.

  "The warder just reaches down a hand and hauls us up, one by one. Of course, we're supposed to help, and anybody would want to get out of here, so we do." It was Brian's voice answering out of the darkness of the hole.

  Jim glanced at the back of the still immobile warder, with a new sense of respect. Middle-aged the man might be, but he must have extraordinary muscles to lift men up out of a dungeon like the one below, all by himself.

  "Dafydd," said Jim, "help me here. I'll take one hand and you take the other, and we'll lift."

  Dafydd came up beside him; and with the bowman's added strength, which was—as Jim knew—considerable for all his slim build, they lifted out both Brian and Giles. As they came to their feet on the corridor above, they both clanked. Both had leg irons around their ankles connected by a short length of chain. Both men's ankles had dried blood around and about where the iron encircled their ankles.

  Jim gazed at them in the light. Their faces were a little drawn and they stank, but other than the blood on their ankles, they seemed unchanged. Jim felt a sense of awe. Half an hour in that dungeon and he would have gone mad.

  He looked down at their ankles again and felt a sudden fury, seeing those irons and the blood beneath them. He strode back to the warder.