The Dragon in Lyonesse

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Grant me pardon, James" said Brian, and stepped aside. The white sun overhead flooded the white, unmoving face of the boy. The worn, tired look on it was gone.

  Now that Jim had shouted at Brian, however, there was little else he could do. David was either unconscious or already dead. Jim's hand felt for the boy's jugular vein, hunting for a pulse; and discovered that he, himself, was holding his breath. He breathed again, as he felt the throb of moving blood against his fingertips.

  Unconscious meant hope—but it also could mean death in a while, if nothing was done when the unconscious person had suffered a concussion. In fact, even as he knelt beside David, the thought came home to him, hard and fast, that if anything was to be done, it should be done now. Seconds could be precious.

  The hell with it! He would have to work quickly, almost instantaneously, before his vulnerability could be taken advantage of. But maybe…

  He broke open his ward, concentrating on the magic for the healing of wounds. It was done in almost the same moment, but when he tried to close the ward again—just as quickly—it would not close.

  David's eyelids twitched. They opened.

  "Sir James!" he said in a dreamy voice. His gaze went beyond Jim to Pellinore. "I admit myself vanquished, King Pellinore, and do crave your forgiveness for my trespasses against you."

  "You are forgiven, lad," said Pellinore in a harsh voice. "You rode and fought in proper fashion. You have a good heart; and if sobeit you live, may well become a passing good knight. The armor and weapons you wear are now yours, by my gift."

  He turned and walked away, the mare following like a dog.

  "James!" said the voice of Brian; and Jim, still kneeling, with an effort looked up and behind him, to find Brian smiling down at him.

  "Thank you, Brian," he said, meaning "Thank you for not resenting that I took my own upset out on you." But the words would not come out clearly, for some reason; and the ground, the sky, the trees—Brian himself, and the QB, who had also come to join them about David—were beginning to whirl around him, all their parts running into each other, everything being sucked down into darkness, like water whirlpooling into a drain.

  He was sucked down into that same darkness; and he heard a woman's laugh—in a voice he knew.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  "Where am I?" said Jim.

  "Where do you think?" said Kineteté, standing over him. "Does this look like some place in Lyonesse?"

  It did not. Sunshine flooded the room from its one high, arched window. Yellow sunshine. WHEN THY SHOE IS ON THY FOOT, TREAD UPON THORNS still proclaimed itself from the sampler on the wall.

  "I had to open my ward," said Jim. "I thought Morgan le Fay had got me."

  "I got to you first." Kineteté sat down in a now green-and-white, newly slipcovered armchair, opposite the one he discovered he was sitting in. Curiously, the severely cut red—Magickian's red—robe she was wearing did not clash with the other two colors, any more than white and red flowers, together with greenery, in a vase, would have clashed with each other.

  "That was lucky!" said Jim gratefully.

  "No luck to it at all. I had a watch on you."

  "You did! Thank you."

  "Merely protecting my investment."

  "Oh. Of course," said Jim, agreeable to anything, now that he had turned out to be somewhere safe, "It just hadn't occurred to me you might. But what I meant by lucky was, I was pretty sure Morgan would be watching and waiting for me to make a slip; and even if both of you were watching at the same time, of course she'd be closer to me than…" Jim became conscious he was talking nonsense. Distance made no difference to magic.

  "What I meant was, you managed to beat her to me; and I'm grateful. She's pretty powerful."

  "Not bad. No slouch, of course," said Kineteté. "Possibly worth an AAA rating if she were up above and lived right. The trouble is, she thinks she's better than she is. She's a fool if she imagines she can work with the Dark Powers and not be used by them, for example. But being in the position she's got down in Lyonesse, now that Merlin's shut up in the tree—by the way, you spoke to him a couple of times, didn't you? What did he tell you; aside from what you told Brian?"

  "I'm not really sure," said Jim. "He doesn't answer questions and he talked to me mainly about myself. If you don't mind, I won't say anything—for now, at least."

  "Why not?"

  "Personal matters."

  "Are you," said Kineteté, "making game of me?"

  "No, no," said Jim hastily. "It's just a fact that I don't feel comfortable talking about what he said. Wouldn't you want me to hesitate about telling everything I heard from you—no matter who asked?"

  "I would," she said. There was a short, not entirely comfortable, silence.

  "But," said Jim, "there're a lot of things I haven't said to anyone else that I do want to talk to you about. In fact, I've been thinking of trying to get in touch with you."

  "Oh?" said Kineteté, suddenly in a thoroughly fresh, friendly, interested tone. "I'm glad to hear it. Your view of matters down there is exactly what I've been hoping to hear from you; but I preferred to have you volunteer to tell me. By all means, tell me what you wanted to talk to me about, Jim."

  "It'll help if you'll tell me first if you've been watching everything I've been doing and saying; or just checking on me occasionally."

  "Not checking," said Kineteté. "I've got more to do in my twenty-four hours each day than I can get done, without adding your concerns to the rest. I set up a watch to let me know if you got into real trouble, that's all."

  "Then," said Jim, "I'd better hit all the high spots. You probably know Morgan sent me to the Forest Dedale—"

  Kineteté nodded.

  "After I got out of there, we got in touch with the Questing Beast—you know him?"

  Kineteté nodded again—with a touch of impatience this time.

  "He helped me find Brian and he's been a great help ever since. He introduced me to Merlin—oh, you'll know that, too—anyway, one thing Merlin did tell me was that Brian was being held prisoner by the Lady of the Knight More Bright Than Day. We got him free and questioned the Lady—Annis is her name—and she seemed to confirm that Morgan was working with the other Witch Queens. So we all went to talk to the Queen of Northgales—"

  "She's a caution," remarked Kineteté.

  "Caution?" said Jim. "Oh, I see what you mean. Well, she almost captured us; but we only got free with the help of—the QB thought—either the trees or the Old Magic. That reminds me, I wanted to ask you about the Old Magic—"

  "I can tell you nothing about the Old Magic," said Kineteté frostily. "I don't know everything."

  "That's odd—Merlin said the same thing. Anyway—" Jim went on hastily, "from Northgales's castle, all of sudden we found ourselves in the woods. And while the QB was talking about the Old Magic, there was another darkness, and when we came out of it, we were in the Drowned Land—"

  "Interesting," said Kineteté, putting the tips of her fingers together.

  "—to find a discussion going on among men from several different colors, gathered about their new, young King—and there was an attempt to either assassinate or disable him while we were there. A man of the Sea-Purple was maybe responsible. Dafydd, Brian, and I went to look in the Drowned Land's Borderland with Lyonesse; and found an army of fighting men from up here encamped there. And guess what?"

  "I never guess."

  "Well, they took us prisoner; it turned out the Earl of Cumberland—you remember him and Carolinus at Malencontri?"

  "I knew," said Kineteté, "the Earl of Cumberland before you were—a long time before you did. Just tell me what happened to you in his hands."

  "We escaped from them into Lyonesse—that's it, in short form—but I thought you'd want to hear about our seeing Agatha Falon with Cumberland—and Modred."

  "Modred?"

  "Yes. All those Knights who died in the Legends have come back to life—still not enough to match the numbers
of the men the Earl seems to have brought into the Borderland—and so, it appears, has Modred. At least, the Questing Beast says he smelled his scent; although the person I saw was wearing a mustache and beard, which no one remembers him wearing."

  "Never mind Modred. How did Cumberland get an army into Drowned Land territory? There's no entrance but by magick."

  "Agatha," said Jim. "She was there with the Earl. I know you told me she wasn't a witch, and I believe you—but she could have picked up a simple spell or two. I thought of the Witches' Gate."

  "Did you, now?" Kineteté stared hard at him. "And what were you doing to find out about the Witches' Gate, yourself?"

  "Well, there were all sorts of servants' tales about witches getting into houses where every door was locked with a crucifix or a blessing. I just figured out how it was most likely to be done, tried doing it once on the wall of an empty guest room at Malencontri—and it worked. Is there another name for what I did?"

  "No," said Kineteté shortly. "Did Carolinus give you leave to experiment like that?"

  "He never told me not to."

  "Hmp!" said Kineteté. "Well, what did you learn about Modred, Agatha, and the Earl?"

  "Just that they all seemed to be in it together—and I suspect Morgan le Fay might be the link working directly with the Dark Powers. That's as much as I can tell you. After that we escaped back into Lyonesse."

  "And you broke the ward I gave you, to save that young King of the Drowned Land," said Kineteté coldly. "Luckily, at that moment I was checking on you. Why, may I ask—or was it mere sentiment?"

  Jim had been ready for this question, expecting it and having time to think his answer over.

  "He's unusually bright. I think he's what the Drowned Land needs, so I did what I had to to keep him alive."

  "And to hell with Lyonesse?" said Kineteté.

  "Not to hell with Lyonesse," answered Jim. "I also think the young King has a part to play in keeping Lyonesse safe."

  "You'll have to explain how to me."

  "I can't," said Jim, looking at her squarely. "I'm not sure why I think so myself. That's why I've been wanting to talk to you. There're two things I'm pretty sure of, but I may be dead wrong on. The first is, there's only so much magical energy in the world—am I right?"

  "Of course you're right," said Kineteté. "Carolinus must have told you this more than once—save your magickal energy, no matter how much of it you seem to have at the time. For one reason, there's always something turning up that will require a good deal of it—something unexpected. Don't tell me he didn't tell you."

  "He did, many times," said Jim. "But he didn't explain it was because there was only so much available."

  "But what other reason could there be? The nonmagickal person thinks that the high price he has to pay a magickian is simply because the magickian can get away with asking it—like that old dragon who was the grand-uncle of the dragon body you were in, whatever his name was—"

  "Smrgol."

  "Yes. The time Smrgol tried to hire Carolinus's help to get Angie back from the other dragon who'd stolen her—"

  "Bryagh."

  "—for the Dark Powers at the Loathly Tower. You'll remember, they settled on a high price—I don't recall exactly how much, but—"

  "Four pounds of gold, one of silver, and a large, flawed emerald."

  "James," said Kineteté in a terrible voice, "outside of my own duty to join you in this battle against the Dark Powers, I have a real affection for you and Angie. But if you do not stop footnoting every third word I say, I will maroon you at World's End—which I believe Carolinus showed you once—with no one to talk to for nine hundred and ninety-seven years but that oversize hourglass, counting the seconds until the next Phoenix wakes up!"

  "Sorry," said Jim.

  "I should think so!" she said. "As I was trying hard to tell you, the ordinary person thinks the high price is because the magickian can ask it; actually it's because magick takes magical energy, and that has to be earned in other ways by the magickian—so it's not that easily replaceable!"

  "I know," said Jim. "Like I did at the Loathly Tower."

  "Except you weren't—still aren't—a magickian."

  "I understand," Jim said. "But I wanted to be sure of the fact that there's only so much magic in the world. If so, then the Dark Powers don't have an unlimited supply of it, either. That means there's a limit to how much of their power they can spend on ogres, Worms, Harpies, and the like. Particularly Harpies, because the young King came for my help because his people are being attacked by Harpies. Dafydd, who learned with us at the Loathly Tower that arrows could stop them, and his Blue clan have been defending them, but they're beginning to get exhausted."

  "Ah!" said Kineteté.

  "But if the Dark Powers can only afford to lose so many Harpies, then maybe the Drowned Landers can get by without me. That's important because I had to tell the King that Lyonesse had first claim on me. But, as it turned out, even though he had only been five when it happened, he had been knighted; and he challenged King Pellinore for me—"

  "He did what!"

  "Challenged Pellinore—"

  "Just a moment. Are we speaking of the same Pellinore? King Pellinore of the Legends?"

  "That's right."

  "The boy was insane. High fever, perhaps."

  "I don't think so, unless being young is sort of like being in a high fever most of the time… anyway, the boy was nearly killed in a spear-running, in spite of Pellinore's taking it as easy on him as possible. He would have died if I hadn't cracked my ward so I could heal him magically."

  "So that was it," said Kineteté, with an unusual gentleness in her voice. "I wouldn't have thought it of Pellinore—he was challenged, of course…"

  "And he is Pellinore. He lent the boy the armor of one of his sons, and gave it to him afterwards. But I think if it had been the son himself at that age, who had challenged him, he would have felt he had to meet him."

  They both sat in a little silence for a moment. Jim finally broke it.

  "Tell me," he said, "do you happen to know how long it would take to make a new harpy to replace one who's been killed?"

  "No," said Kineteté, "but I can find out. How long to create a new harpy, you?"

  She was speaking directly not to any ordinary, invisible magician's tool, but to the sampler. As Jim looked, its message about treading on thorns vanished. A new message spelled itself out in large letters.

  9 DAYS 3 HOURS 4 MINUTES

  "That's good!" said Jim. "That's very good! If the rest of the Blues are even a patch on Dafydd, they could pretty well have stripped the Dark Powers of Harpies, by this time—oh, by the way, Kineteté, can you send me back to Lyonesse only a minute or so after you brought me here? The longer I'm away from there, the more chance there is of someone doing something to tangle things up."

  "You should have learned to handle time yourself by now," said Kineteté. "Practice! That's the thing—oh, well, I guess I can manage it for you, once more."

  "Thank you," said Jim. "Good of you to do this. I'll practice. Oh, and by the way, could you send me to Malencontri first—I just want to say a word or two to Angie—and then give me a command I can say that will send me back to Lyonesse; arriving, as I say, just a minute or two after I must have disappeared?"

  Kineteté looked at him for a long moment, and he was sure she was about to cancel the promise she had just made. But instead, she turned to the sampler.

  "All right," she said, "back to regular duty."

  The Years, Months, and Days in their numbers disappeared; and the advice about shoes came back again.

  "I think," she said, in a perfectly calm voice, "you said there were two things you wanted to ask me about?"

  "Yes. I wanted to be sure about something. Am I also right that, being Powers only, the Dark Powers might be able to conquer something solid like a territory, but there's no way they can hold it? They can't change or build anything. All they could do would be
to stand over it forever, ready to act against anyone else who tried to use it—and if they concentrated on doing that, they couldn't use their abilities anywhere else?"

  "Perfectly right," said Kineteté. "How does that come to be important?"

  "It struck me even before I came to Lyonesse this last time. They've always worked through some other party when there was something real to be done."

  "Yes," said Kineteté darkly.

  "—and I'd just chased them out of Malencontri, but this was the first time it occurred to me that, like everyone and everything else, they had to have limitations."

  "They're not the kind of limitations any Magickian has ever been able to take advantage of," Kineteté said.

  "If they're limitations, there has to be something an advantage can be taken of." Jim discovered he had clamped his jaws tightly together. He unclamped them. "I think they've realized this themselves, maybe a good time back; but that's why they're trying to gain Lyonesse, then—and the Drowned Land, too, for all I know. Though I don't think the Drowned Land's that important to them—except as some means to an end."

  "Why?"

  "Why?" echoed Jim.

  "Why do you think the Drowned Land's only a means to an end?"

  "Because it's only Lyonesse they can really use. The Legendary human beings in Lyonesse are already partly made of magic, or else the original Round Table Knights wouldn't be still alive. They could hope to work, hope to get control of these men and their descendants, through that immaterial, magical element in them, where they wouldn't find anything to tie to in ordinary, mortal humans—unless the human already wanted to do something evil. They could never get flesh-and-blood people to do what they wanted done, only those twisted by greed, or hatred, or whatever made them temporarily useful in the past."

  He stopped talking. Kineteté did not reply immediately.

  "Well, do you think I'm right about that?" Jim asked finally.

  "I may owe you an apology, Jim," she said at last. "You may see some things more clearly than the rest of us. I will tell you something I've made it a practice never to tell anyone: I don't have any answer for you. I just don't know."