"What exactly is happening in these Borderlands?" asked Jim. "And where is it?"
"It is a wild strip of forest between Lyonesse and the Drowned Land," said the QB. "You went through it the last time you were here—it was there I helped you against the tall, black-furred ones."
"It is only part in Lyonesse," said Dafydd. "Therefore we are responsible. It is like a finger of our land reaching into the earth of Lyonesse—so that you can be in Lyonesse one moment and, with little change in what is about you, pass into Drowned Land space for a moment—and then be once more in Lyonesse. So perhaps it is there that the poison of what the Dark Powers attempt in Lyonesse has seeped, finding a safe nest between our two peoples. Certainly, there is now a gathering there of strangely unlikely creatures, and men never born or raised in either of our lands—a strong force of them there."
"But if they're confined to the Borderlands—" Jim broke off. "—How far from here is this Borderland, anyway?"
"Close," said Dafydd. "Less than an English mile. But it was through the south corner of it that we passed before on our way to the entrance of the Gnarly Kingdom."
"Yet I thought we were still in Lyonesse at that time," said Brian. "And perhaps it was the Lady Agatha Falon who blinded me with arts witcherly, to lead us into her trap."
"Perhaps some of your Knights of Lyonesse, my Lord QB," said Dafydd, "could tell us more of what is afoot there?"
"Of your grace and pleasure," said the QB, lifting his narrow head almost regally to Dafydd, "I pray you again, that you address me simply as the QB. I am more used to it and prefer it—yes, we know the Borderland; but none of our people live close to it. A dark and friendless place."
Jim looked at the strange, legendary animal with sudden curiosity. If none of those belonging to the Arthurian Legends lived there, what had the QB himself been doing there—and how had he happened to show up just at the right moment to help them? Jim opened his mouth to ask, and then closed it again. It would be awkward to request an answer to those questions now; and in any case this was not the place to do so. However, probably not too surprisingly, Dafydd's thoughts seemed to have been running along the same line Jim's had.
"You must go there from time to time yourself," he said to the QB, "since you showed up when we needed you. Have you been there lately?"
"I have not," answered the QB.
"Then you knew not it had become a gathering ground for all such as I have just mentioned," Dafydd told him. "It is ill to have this coming upon us at this time, with our young King still some years from his full manhood; and when the Dark Forces are at work in your Lyonesse. Tell me your thought, QB. Do you think these powers have designs on the Drowned Land as well?"
"I know not," said the QB. "I could have asked Merlin, had I suspected it; but almost surely he would not have answered me. It is like him to know—but for his own reasons not to tell. But at least magick does not enter into the tangle of your people here."
"Does it not, James?" said Dafydd, looking at him.
"I'm afraid it does," said Jim, "Tell me, Dafydd. How old is your King right now?"
"He has fifteen years."
"He's older than he looks, then. I'd have guessed a year or so younger. But still he's more capable than I'd have expected for that age."
"He is one who will make a great King for us, if his life is spared," said Dafydd. "He has the wits of a grown man—and not just any grown man—perhaps one such as your friend Sir John Chandos, James, when he had the age of our lad."
"You're measuring the boy against an unusual man," said Jim. He smiled as he said it; but in fact, to his way of thinking, Chandos was the kind of individual who comes along only once in several centuries.
"You will see," said Dafydd. "But now, since time presses, will you tell me why and how you have come here?"
Jim looked at Brian and the QB, but neither said a word.
"Brian and I were both captured. He was led into the hands of the Lady Annis, a demoiselle of the Witch Queen Morgan le Fay—who captured me. You must have heard of the Queen."
Dafydd inclined his head, briefly.
"Morgan tried to get at me magically, but Kineteté stopped her; so Morgan turned me loose in the Forest of Dedale. I got out of there, met QB, and he took me to Merlin, who told me where Brian was being held. I went there, we got Brian loose, and went on to the castle of the Queen of Northgales, to try and find out what she knew of the Dark Powers, since she had been named to us as an ally of Morgan le Fay. We got nowhere with her, however. She seemed to want to hold us in her castle; but then, either the trees of Lyonesse or the Old Magic got us out when a cloud covered the sun and something—I think it was the Old Magic again—sent us to you—but none of us really know."
Jim took a drink of wine and a long breath. He had thought he could tell their story in one long sentence; but it had not turned out to be possible.
"Sent you to us? You think so?" Dafydd rubbed his chin, gazing at Jim. "Could it not have been the Dark Powers instead that got you out of Northgales' Castle and sent you here?"
"No," said Jim, and hesitated. "It's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't worked with magic. You were with us in my Hall when the Dark Powers showed up there, and I told them to get out. Do you remember how you felt when they were there?"
"Yes," answered Dafydd. "I am not a fearful man, I think; but there was something then that touched the place where fear is in me, in that moment."
"All right," said Jim. "Well, to me—to any magician—that touch, once felt, is something to be recognized at once, if it's ever felt again. It's the way magic-workers of any kind get in touch with each other, if they're able to reach out far enough to feel for it. Morgan, and Northgales as well, could probably use it to find me anywhere, as long as I was in Lyonesse. Of course, once I'm here, I'm lost to them."
"You are?"
"Absolutely!" said Jim, with a strength that surprised him. He could not have said why he was so sure of that; but now that the words were out of his mouth, he had no doubt about the truth of them. No doubt at all.
"Then that would put a limit to what those Powers can do?"
"Yes," said Jim, with the same surprising certainty. "They found me at Malencontri only by following you to me."
"But you had had to do with them several times before. Surely they knew where was your castle?"
"I think," said Jim, choosing his words slowly, "that just as your ways in the Drowned Land are not the ways of Brian in the land above, so there are differences between people like us, and Forces like these Dark ones. For one thing, I don't think they see the way we do. Earth and sky, tree, creatures and humans—could be to them only parts of a general swirl of energy—like the flames of a fire… or something like that—"
He broke off. On this he was no longer sure. He had let Dafydd's questioning run away with his thoughts; and begun to talk about possibilities beyond what their medieval minds could imagine—he could see it in the faces of Brian and Dafydd because he knew them so well. Even the QB, he saw, had his snake's head cocked curiously on one side—saying nothing, watching him.
"But let's talk about your problem, Dafydd," Jim said. "It must be tied into ours, or else the Old Magic, or whatever, wouldn't have brought us here. You wanted to get this interview over quickly. We and you may be two parts of a puzzle that fit together, but we won't know until both of us have both parts. How does the threat—whatever it is—against the King tie in with the business of the gathering in the Borderlands?"
But he had delayed just a little too long. There was a sudden, alarmed shout from outside the tent, and a second later ugly, short, tearing noises, as things began to come through its cloth walls.
Jim, Brian, and Dafydd hit the earth floor of the tent at the same moment. The QB and Hob stayed upright, looking wonderingly about them.
The noises stopped. They had actually only sounded for a moment. Dafydd was immediately back on his feet, Jim and Brian only an instant behind him. Dafydd wrenched wh
at looked like a short, thick arrow out of the tabletop.
"Quarrel!" he said grimly. "There are no crossbows in the Drowned Land—not the Drowned Land as we know it!"
He threw the shaft flat on the table, turned, and ran out through the entrance of the tent. Once again, Jim and Brian were right behind him; and caught up with him as they went.
Outside, where the group of men had stood, two men lay on the ground. Another five stood upright, being bandaged by those around them. Some quarrels were sticking at an angle in the ground. But Dafydd ignored all this. It was at another small group, so tightly clustered about someone else that it was impossible to see, that he looked; and it was toward this group he ran.
"Is the lad hit?" he shouted as he went. "Is he hurt?"
Faces turned toward him, but he was breaking into their midst, with Jim and Brian following, before they had time to answer. Sure enough, the boy-King was on the ground, motionless, eyes closed; with one man in brown kneeling over him, pressing gently on his chest as if to invite him to breathe. He raised his pale face as Dafydd and Jim reached him. It was Gruffydd, the visitor from the Sea-Purple.
"There is no wound on him," he said. "But he breathes not; and I cannot hear his heart."
"Let me at him," said Jim. "I have wisdom with wounds."
"Sir James is a magickian, Gruffyddi" said Dafydd harshly. "Up, and stand aside."
Reluctantly, the brown-clad Leader of the Sea-Purple rose from his knees, his face dark now, and his lips pressed close together as he looked at Jim. He looked again at Dafydd.
Chapter Twenty
The Sea-Purple's Leader, now on his feet, took no more than half a step backward; not enough to give Jim room by the still figure.
"I'm just trying to help," said Jim to him in English, suddenly forced to remember what he had acquired by magic had been only an understanding of the Drowned Land language when others used it—not the voice-training to speak it.
Dafydd translated. Grudgingly, the man took another step back. Dismissing him from his mind, Jim knelt beside the boy. He felt for a pulse in one lax wrist.
There was none.
"None of the short arrows hit him," said a tall man in blue above Jim's head to Dafydd in the Drowned Land tongue. "It may be he has only swooned."
Jim held his palm over the King's mouth to feel for any warmth or moistness of exhaled air that would signal the lad was breathing. There was none.
He rolled back an eyelid, then the other one. The pupils underneath looked perfectly normal; neither was enlarged, or bulged outward. According to what Jim remembered of his first aid, the pupil of a dead person would be expanded to its full size, the muscles completely relaxed in death. If just one pupil had been enlarged and the other not, then the opposite side of the body could have been damaged. But neither eye showed as anything but normal.
Just to make sure, Jim reached down to pinch the inside of the left thigh of the King. The right eye reacted. Good, that was as it should be. Holding the eyes open, Jim turned the head to let the sun of the Drowned Land fall full upon them. The pupils shrank.
He sighed silently with relief. The boy was certainly not dead. But whether Jim could bring him out of whatever had caused this condition was another question.
He looked up at Dafydd.
"I think I can make him well," Jim said. "I have to try, because I think he has been attacked with magic; and the longer the magic is with him, the more damage it'll do to him. So I'll do my best; but your people'll have to understand I can't promise they'll see him completely well again."
Dafydd rattled off a small torrent of harsh words at those standing around. There was a moment of silence, and then an answering murmur of approval.
"How can we be sure—" Gruffydd began at the top of his voice; but the murmur rose in volume and became menacing. Those who had moved back from him earlier now began to move in to form a tight, inescapable ring around him. He drew himself up, looking back at them scornfully.
"James," said Dafydd, "do not hesitate, for the love of God!"
Jim was staring at the motionless young King. There was, as the man in blue had said, no sign of a wound. But a sudden suspicion woke in his mind.
He lifted his head and turned it. Taking advantage of the fact that most of those around him should not understand English, he snapped at Dafydd in that language.
"No one's to move!" he said. "Everyone stand still, just as they are. Then every one look about them for something the size of a small stick—not just some stray twig, but something shaped purposefully. It's most probably on the ground. But it may be hard to see, so look closely. Anyone finding something like that, bring it to me. Everyone else stay exactly where you are until I say you can move!"
A light weight landed on Jim's left shoulder.
"My Lord! Can I help find it? I'm good at finding things!"
"No, you can't, Hob," said Jim under his breath. "Get back under cover on the sumpter horse."
"Pray, m'Lord, can't I stay with you? Pray—"
"All right," muttered Jim. "But don't say or do anything unless I tell you to."
Dafydd was still passing on Jim's instructions, in a voice hard with authority. There was no sound for a moment, then a sudden grunt of pain from one of the men in green, standing to Jim's left and about twelve feet away.
"I've got something!" he called in the Drowned Land tongue.
"Bring it to me," said Jim.
Dafydd translated. The man walked to Jim, gingerly holding what looked like the back half of a quarrel, a broken shaft with only two feathers still showing on it. He carried it delicately by one of the feathers, between two fingers of his left hand. The fingers of his other hand were held out as if to be cooled by the air of his movement.
"I did not think it could be what was sought," he said to Dafydd, as he held out the stick to Jim. "But I picked it up, thinking it strange that it had broken so, and wondering where the rest of it was—"
"Lay it down on the ground beside me," said Jim, without waiting to hear the last words, or Dafydd's translation of the whole. "Carefully, now!"
Dafydd passed on the instruction. The man carefully laid the broken shaft down not more than six inches from Jim's right foot. Jim picked it up carefully by the same feather the man had been holding, and let it dangle from his fingers.
Something like the tingle of a mild electric current touched the fingers. Carefully, Jim took hold of the feather with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand and slid the original two holding fingers down the feather closer toward the shaft. Immediately, the tingle surged upwards in strength to become a burning pain.
"Warded!" said Jim, with grim satisfaction. "It's all right, the rest of you. You can move around now."
The tone of his voice was enough, even without Dafydd's translation. There was no movement, but a faint wave of relaxation that went through all those standing closely about; and something like a sigh of relief.
Jim turned to Dafydd.
"This stick was prepared ahead of time," he said. "It was magicked; and the magic was protected by a ward. It did not come here through the air. Someone here struck the King with it when the quarrels started falling. Who was standing closest to the boy?"
There was no answer. But a small, almost noiseless movement went through the men standing about, like a ripple on the surface of a pond; and everyone had moved away again slightly, so there was now a little space around Gruffydd.
"Here," said Jim in English, holding the piece of wood by its feathers and extending its further end toward Gruffydd.
"Take it!" said Dafydd harshly in the Drowned Land language.
"I will not," said Gruffydd. "Am I to obey the whim of any Saxon?"
"You will obey me," said Dafydd.
"Not even my Lord King, if he were so speaking," said Gruffydd, throwing back his long, brown hair in a wild, fierce movement, to stare up into Dafydd's face. "Who in any case is yet to be agreed upon by all the Colors, as our law demands!"
"Dare?" shouted Gruffydd. "I dare anything!"
He snatched the quarrel end from Jim, wrapping his hand around the shaft. Jim knew the others standing about could not be aware that the man was doing the equivalent of grasping a red-hot shaft of iron; but not as much as the twitch of a muscle in his face gave away the fact.
"Here, take it!" Gruffydd extended the shaft to Jim; but Jim had already gone back a step and was out of reach.
"Keep holding it a while longer," he said in a level voice. "It'll burn to the bones in a moment or two; and then you'll have nothing left but a claw for a hand."
The threat of being made one-handed got the result for which Jim had hoped. Gruffydd threw the stick at him; and as he did, his self-control broke. He grunted, waving the hand that had held the stick in the air, as if to cool it. A dark line could be seen running across his palm.
Once again, it was only Jim there who saw the mark as confirmation of what he had suspected. That line—very like a burn—was Gruffydd's body's reaction to the magic that was still animating the stick.
It was not for nothing Jim had been an AAA-rated volleyball player in the future from which he had come. With only a few feet between himself and the Sea-Purple Leader, he still easily sidestepped the thrown stick and caught it with his right thumb and forefinger, grasping one of the flight feathers, holding it harmlessly as he had before.
"Dafydd," he said, "tell them what I say."
"I will do that," said Dafydd.
"This I hold," said Jim, raising his voice, "is not the broken-off back of a crossbow shaft it seems. Let any man who doubts that try to find the front end of it, on or in the ground here. It is a made thing, touched with special magic, so that it may be safely held a certain way, to kill or make unconscious anyone touched with the broken end of it. Your King has been touched with it, none noticing, as the crossbow quarrels came down upon you. It is magic that has made him as he is now—but it may be magic that can be driven off. I'll try!"
The Dragon in Lyonesse Page 21