The Dragon At War

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Dimly aware, Jim collapsed on the rough but level surface of the platform. His senses swam. Dragons were not supposed to faint.

  He fainted.

  However, it felt as if he was out for only a second or so. He swam back to consciousness to be aware of a gabble of voices all around him, and piercing through them the single feminine one of Angie speaking to him desperately.

  "Jim!" she was asking. "Are you all right?"

  "Fine," he muttered… Although he was not sure whether he muttered it sufficiently out loud for anyone to hear. "Just worn out, that's all."

  He managed to raise his voice a little.

  "Just give me… a minute… to catch my breath."

  In fact, his head was clearing; which was a tribute, not only to the fact that he was really nothing more than as he said, exhausted; but to the tremendous recuperative powers of which dragons were capable.

  It occurred to him that possibly the most reassuring thing he could do would be to change back into his ordinary self.

  His still somewhat clouded mind struggled to link the proper pair of spells together, to both change him back to human, and dress him once more in his clothes and armor. Then he wrote them on the inside of his forehead.

  A second later he was standing upright on the platform. He swayed a little bit, but he was now upright, human and fully dressed. He smiled down into the face of Angie who was standing right in front of him, looking deeply concerned.

  "See, Angie," he said. "I couldn't be better."

  "Yes, you could!" snapped Angie. "For one thing, you're white as a sheet!"

  She was very pale herself, Jim noticed; but he was enough in possession of himself now to realize that was probably not the right thing to mention to her at the moment.

  "Well, I'll get my color back quickly. Wait and see," he said. "If you want to stand and watch, you can even watch it come back."

  Angie laughed shakily.

  "We don't have time for me to do that," she said. "While you were lying there unconscious, one of the young dragon watchers came in with a report."

  She half turned away from him. Jim turned to look in the same direction as she was looking, and saw Secoh had one of the young dragons with him; one that was hardly larger than himself. As his gaze fell on them, both dragons shuffled forward, and the knights, surprisingly, made way for them.

  "M'Lord!" said Secoh. "Listen to this! Tell him, Gnarjo."

  Gnarjo bobbed his head several times before speaking—a sure sign of embarrassment in a dragon.

  "M'Lord," he said in a bass voice that at the same time was almost squeaky, even for a young dragon, "I was over the coast, watching the sea in case more serpents should come."

  "Well?" asked Jim. "Did you see more serpents coming?"

  "Oh no, m'Lord," said Gnarjo. "But there's something big. Something terrible big, coming out of the ocean!"

  "How big is it?" asked Jim.

  "It's big—it's so big—" Words failed Gnarjo. "It's—it's two or three times as tall as this wall behind me!"

  "That big?" said Jim. "What did it look like?"

  "Well it was big and sort of—I don't know—" stammered Gnarjo, "sort of gray? No, sort of gray-blue? But there was a sort of flash of white about it—in the water around it, I mean—oh, m'Lord, I didn't really wait to see much after I saw how big it was. I just came straight back here to tell you!"

  Gnarjo hung his head miserably.

  "That's all right," said Jim. "You did exactly the right thing."

  "I did?" said Gnarjo, his head coming up with a snap and his eyes brightening.

  Jim looked at the serious faces of Angie, Brian, Giles, Dafydd and Chandos.

  "I wonder what those flashes of white around it were?" he said, to himself as much as to them. "It sounded at first like one very large creature. But maybe those white flashes mean there're others with it, or something…"

  "The wee dragon," rumbled Rrrnlf, above his head, "may have been too fearful to see clearly what he was looking at."

  Gnarjo looked indignant, but neither Jim nor anybody else paid attention.

  "I ought to look at it myself," said Jim.

  He broke off, suddenly aware of the silence along the wall. Startled, he suddenly realized that, long since, the serpents that had been chasing him should have reached the wall and be attacking it. He took one step forward and looked out into the open space.

  The canopy of dragons still darkened the skies above them. But the serpents had stopped, as if at a magic line, an invisible barrier running across the open space through the spot where the dead body of Essessili lay. As he looked closely at them, he saw that most of them had their heads down and were also canted to one side, so that they could look upward and see the dragons overhead; and at once understanding came to him.

  If the Dragon Knight could kill Essessili, then perhaps there was no reason why each one of those dragons above could not kill one of them. For the moment it was stalemate.

  But not for long, if this new intruder from the sea was a factor entering the situation. He thought again of changing back into a dragon, flying off himself to see what was coming; and then decided that there was no time for that. The stalemate could break at any moment, one way or another. The serpents might decide to attack after all. Or the dragons might decide to attack the serpents, or—

  Anything was possible.

  Desperately, he turned to Carolinus, who had his back to him. He walked around to stand before the older magician; and was shocked at what he saw. Even in the little time that had gone past since he had last looked at him, Carolinus's face had become even more haggard and unnatural. His body, which always before had been ramrod-straight, now stooped, with rounded shoulders. He had looked old always; but now, for the first time, he looked old and frail. Carolinus met his gaze with uninterested eyes.

  "Carolinus!" said Jim. "You can do this much for us, anyway! Let me have a look at what's coming from the sea toward us. Do that, at least!"

  "Leave me alone," said Carolinus, in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance. "I'm past it, I tell you. You'll have to do without me."

  "Carolinus—"

  Jim checked himself. Simply shouting at Carolinus would do no good. Whatever was destroying him was not something that could be shouted away.

  But it was absolutely necessary that he be roused from the depths of the depression that now held him; and had been holding him for some days now, at least since his illness and his rescue from the two wise-women. He tried to think of words that would stir the older man. Words came to him. Perhaps they were not the right words; but they were the only ones Jim could think of that might work in this moment.

  "Carolinus!" he said fiercely. "At least you can do this much. I can't, but you can—easily! Give us a sight of this new intruder!"

  For a moment Carolinus's eyes cleared, briefly; and the dullness disappeared.

  "Well," he muttered, "it alters nothing, now. But I can give you that. And I wish you joy of it!"

  He turned to face outward over the wall and, with his arm outstretched, and his finger pointing, he drew a circle perhaps three feet in diameter in the air.

  Suddenly, looking into the air within that circle, Jim and the rest saw—not the land, the serpents, the trees and the dragons beyond, but instead, something like a tremendous, living tower of light gray flesh, with two enormous eyes, crashing through a belt of woods, running lightly across an open space at the speed of an express train and crashing into a farther bit of forest.

  "Granfer!" said Rrrnlf, staring.

  "Yes," said Jim. "And headed this way."

  For a second they all stood, gazing wordlessly at Granfer as he plowed through a stand of trees that went down before him like stalks of asparagus. His three-story body was upright; and he ran nimbly on several of his tentacles.

  "How can he move that fast? How can he move at all," said Angie in a hushed voice, "when he's so large and so heavy? Those tentacles can't hold up all that weight,
can they?"

  "They aren't," put in the dull voice of Carolinus. "It's magic. He's traveling the way he would travel underwater. See what he carries."

  None of them had looked closely before, but now Granfer brought into full view a tentacle which he had been holding half-hidden by his bulk; and what it held became visible in the lens.

  "My Lady!" howled Rrrnlf. He had one hand on the wall and was about to go over it, when Jim pointed a finger at him and snapped out a single word.

  "Still!"

  Rrrnlf froze where he was.

  "I'm sorry to stop you, Rrrnlf," went on Jim, more gently. "But stop and think. Maybe you can tear sea serpents apart with no trouble at all. But think; you know you're no match for Granfer. If you want your Lady back, stay here. Let's fight him all together. That way we've got a chance. I'll unstill you now. Think it over."

  Carolinus gave an unpleasant grating laugh, of a sort that Jim had not only never heard from him before, but would not have been able to imagine him uttering. For now, however, Jim ignored it. He turned on Brian, who knew the area better than any of them.

  "Where is Granfer right now?" he asked. "And Brian, can you make me a guess at how fast he's coming toward us; and how soon he should be here?"

  Brian stared into the screen.

  "He's going much, much faster than the fastest horse could gallop," Brian said slowly. "Indeed, I think he may be going as fast as some birds can fly. Carolinus must have been right when he said it was magic; for surely no living thing could move with that speed."

  "And Brian," said Jim, "how soon do you think he'll be here? Where is he now?"

  "He is coming in from the beach where the serpents landed," Brian answered, still staring into the telescopic window. "It's longer that way than from the fens; but at the speed he's coming, I'd say he'd be here in less than a quarter of an hour. Nay, less than that. In as much time as a man may say ten to fifteen Pater Nosters, he will be upon us. He is already entering on the Round Hills. Past that he will plunge into the woods that run for some six miles right to the edge of your cleared space around this castle."

  Brian cast a longing glance at Carolinus's turned back; and Jim knew that the knight longed to ask the magician questions; but dared not, after his rebuff of Jim.

  "Even under the sea," said Giles, in a tone of awe, "I did not think the monster was so large. Why, he overtops the trees. He'll go through this wall and the rest of your castle as a knife goes through a cook's pastry, on his weight, alone."

  Giles's also pale but resolute face with its still-brave, blond mustachios, looked in troubled fashion at Jim.

  "How may we fight him, do you think?" Giles asked. "If he were alone, perhaps all those dragons overhead could pull him down, do you not think it? Would they come if you called them? Of course, if Granfer and the serpents are of one mind against us—"

  "They are muddled now," put in Chandos moodily. "But they will hear the noise of the shattered trees as he gets closer, very soon. Then they'll know who comes to their aid."

  Jim looked out over the wall. The serpents were milling around, talking to each other and pausing to glance at the dragons overhead. They seemed undecided whether to stay where they were, attack the castle, or retreat. Their chittering voices, low-pitched for conversation with each other, made a sound almost like that of a host of crickets.

  "Can you do nothing against them magical?" Chandos asked Jim.

  Jim shook his head.

  "And Carolinus—"

  Chandos looked from Jim to the mage. Carolinus whirled about at his words, as if he had been pricked.

  "And I?" he snarled at Chandos. "Do you think I can do anything? You are all fools. That out there is the one we have all been searching for from the beginning. The one behind it all."

  "The magician we couldn't find?" demanded Jim.

  "Yes, fool!" said Carolinus. "Double fool, because you come from a place and time where you should know more, not less, than the rest of us. You had no suspicion? Did you ever ask yourself why I, Carolinus, one of the world's great magicians, should be taken abed of some simple illness and be waited upon almost immediately by butchering midwives; who fed me draughts of poisonous liquors against my will, and might indeed have poisoned me—except that he—"

  He pointed out into the telescopic area at the approaching Granfer.

  "—was too clever for that. The Accounting Office might take note of the direct murder of a AAA+ magician!"

  He went on, almost raving.

  "How else could I be so incapacitated, made so helpless, except by magic I could not fend off? Did you have no suspicion when I told you that even the Accounting Office did not know who was behind Ecotti and the sea serpents—yet still they affected us?"

  "Well—" began Jim. But he really had no defense; and his voice faltered.

  "No, you did not. You did none of these things; because in spite of all you know, you are a fool. I knew from the beginning the danger that must be lying in wait for us. But I was a fool, too."

  He paused and his voice grew even more bitter. "I thought the work of this magician must be all in favor of the French King's attempt to invade England. What a pitiful idiot I was! What a puling babe! That kraken you see there in the circle I drew cares nothing for France or England, or dragons or serpents or anything else. He only wants to rule the world. And to rule that, he must rule all magicians first. That was his aim—and he chose me as the first target for his campaign! Now, he comes to close that campaign with his first win."

  "But there was no real evidence—" Jim protested, and was cut off by Carolinus.

  "No real evidence, you say?" Carolinus snarled. "You came back to tell me about a kraken reading a book. Did you never stop to think—did you never once stop to think? Tell me, how can a book be read underwater?"

  "Why—" began Jim; and then what Carolinus was driving at suddenly struck him like Rrrnlf's fist.

  "You mean—the ink!" he said to Carolinus.

  "Of course the ink, fool!" said Carolinus bitterly. "Any book taken under sea water for any length of time with any ink folk know how to make, will have that ink blur, run, and be unreadable within minutes at most. Even the parchment of the pages will at last turn to pulp, stick together and fall apart in chunks! So—what kind of book could this Granfer have been reading?"

  "No book, surely!" burst out Brian; half in defense of Jim.

  "No. One book," said Jim, for Carolinus's eyes were still hard upon him. "The Encyclopedic Necromantick. A book of magic is a magic book. A magic book could protect itself against sea water or anything else. But how would it get into the grasp of someone like Granfer?"

  "Who knows?" said Carolinus, throwing his arms wide. "Perhaps a magician, traveling aboard a ship on the deep sea, died; and the superstitious louts that crewed it threw the book and him, and all else connected with him, overboard—for fear that some unearthly trouble might come upon them, now he was dead. What matters it? The point is that Granfer is probably thousands of years old. He would have had all those years for that book to come into his possession. He would have had hundreds of years to learn how to read it, to study it after he had learned what it told. To master the knowledge within it; and dream his dream of owning the world."

  "But you've also mastered it," said Jim. "That's why none of us can see why you—"

  "He taught himself magic!" cried Carolinus. "Don't you understand? He taught himself magic as he found it. It's his own magic, unlike any other magic in the world today!"

  "How is it different?" demanded Jim.

  "It is the most primitive form of magic," said Carolinus. "Long forgotten by the rest of us. It is the magic of men when they crouched in caves and tried to control the weather and the animals who preyed upon them and other things, by means beyond their own physical strength. Why do you think he took and carries that which was once the figurehead of a ship; and which Rrrnlf calls his Lady?"

  "I don't understand," Jim said.

  "Totemic magic!" C
arolinus's voice rose and broke. He slumped. When he spoke again, he sounded very weary. "Forgive me, Jim. I should not have called you fool. I saw these evidences too and did not put them together. You might not have known, but I should have known. I did not—until it was too late. His magic makes use of a totem."

  "Why do you say it's too late?" Jim said.

  "Hush—" interrupted Chandos suddenly.

  They looked at him and he was holding up one hand and listening. Outside in the field, the serpents had fallen silent.

  Far off, there was a sound like sticks being broken—in the distance, far, far off. It was a steady crackling as of branches being trod upon, by someone heavy footed.

  "He comes," said Carolinus, still in that weary voice. "And neither you, Jim, nor I, can stop him. He uses magic that uses as its totem Rrrnlf's Lady. We have no totems to combat it with. Nor is it possible even for me—to become in seconds a master at totemic magic."

  His voice dropped to a mutter.

  "Once, maybe," he said. "But I am old—old. I recognize that, now."

  He stopped speaking. They stood silent. The noise of the trees being broken down by Granfer as he came closer now, was loud in that silence. Granfer himself, seen in the telescopic circle, was more enormous than ever. Now it seemed to Jim that he even recognized the falling tops of trees, whose height he knew, trees from woods he owned as Lord of Malencontri.

  Abruptly his whole soul rebelled against giving up. Carolinus had shrunk back into his dullness of eye and bentness of shoulder.

  "You told me," Jim cried, turning on him, "that a master in magic like you could watch another magician in action for only a short time and know all his secrets, be able to duplicate and surpass them. You told me that after your duel with Son Won Phon. Have you forgotten your own words?"

  Carolinus did not answer. He hardly seemed to have heard.

  "All you need is a totem!" Jim drove at him, trying desperately to rouse him from the withdrawal within him. "A totem; and then shake off this sense of defeat that's overtaken you! I can get you a totem. In fact you already have one! What about that kettle that came to call me to save you?"