"But you must be tired!" said Geronde to Jim and Angie. "Will you stay overnight here"-she cast a glance down the table-"with my father's permission, of course?"

"Oh. Certainly, certainly, stay, I pray you, m'lord, m'lady," said Sir Geoffrey hastily. "I have scarcely had time to meet either one of you, and to thank you. I know it would pleasure me; and I am sure it would pleasure Geronde."

Angie cast a meaningful glance at Jim. Under the manners of the period, it was his job to announce whether they would stay or go; and Angie was clearly signaling that she believed they would do no good by hanging around here. Jim's guess was that she sensed that Geronde, herself, in spite of her invitation, would just as soon have all her visitors out of the way, so she could stop being hostess and be herself with her father- except, of course, when servants were present.

"You tempt us, Geronde," Jim said. "But you know, with Angie as well as my self gone from Malencontri, we need to get back there. There's something about your own roof, you know, that calls you back. Also, as you know, while our servants are pretty well trained now, they can't compare to yours; and they've been on their own with both of us gone. Something'll have gone wrong. I've no idea what-but something will have. It always does when neither Angie nor I are there. You understand?"

"I do indeed know the way of servants," said Geronde. "Therefore, though I would love to have you, I will not press you to stay."

She turned and looked down the table to Sir Renel.

"Sir," she said. "You are welcome to stay here as our guest until you have reason to go someplace else, of course-"

"I'm afraid, Geronde," interrupted Angie quickly, "that Jim and I are guilty of having hoped to invite Sir Renel to stay with us. Particularly, it would pleasure us to take him back with us now; and then after he is settled down a little bit, perhaps he can come back for a visit with you and Sir Geoffrey. Besides, you'll feel a duty to entertain him; but I know how busy you'll be getting ready for your wedding."

Whatever insensitivity Sir Renel originally had to the att.i.tudes and emotions of those around him, it had been burned away by his years as a slave.

"Indeed, m'lady," he said to Geronde, falling back with remarkable ease and a certain amount of obvious relish into the formality of earlier years, "blithe I would be to stay with you and Sir Geoffrey. But also I was hoping to visit with Sir James and his lady wife. I am most interested in one whom Sir Geoffrey tells me has renown as a Dragon Knight. Also, as Lady Angela has mentioned, I would not be a burden to you with your present cares and needs."

"Alas," said Geronde, "it cannot be denied there will be certain pressures upon me"-she darted a glance down at Sir Geoffrey-"but I will indeed have much to do; and would enjoy seeing you with more freedom of time on my hands, and more of a chance to enjoy your company. I must sound like an ill hostess to you, but perhaps Lady Angela is right and it would be best that you return with her and Lord James to Malencontri."

After a few more stilted verbal exchanges that fooled no one and were not intended to-Jim had heard their exact counterparts a number of times as he had been leaving social gatherings back in his own twentieth-century world-it was established that Sir Renel would not consider Geronde an ill hostess; and Geronde would not consider Sir Renel an ungrateful guest who was scorning Malvern's hospitality, because of a preference for the company of Jim and Angie. Sir Renel would leave with Angie and Jim.

But now Jim himself was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable.

He could not shake the feeling that there was something wrong with all this, the three of them going off (four, counting their own Hob, of course, though indeed the little hobgoblin might be at Malencontri right now, having returned there on a waft of smoke from Malvern). There was something badly wrong about leaving Sir Geoffrey here alone, abject and despairing, and Geronde as hard toward her parent as only Geronde could be.

It was not right. They were all on their feet now, ready to go their separate ways.

"Hold on!" said Jim.

He had spoken without thinking, but his anger was now out in the open. It was aimed primarily at Geronde, but also at Sir Geoffrey and all the rest of them, including himself.

He was stared back at awkwardly. He had broken the gla.s.s curtain of sociability with which they were covering up an uncomfortable situation; and the two responses to that in their historical period were to challenge him on it, or pretend to ignore what he had just said. Ignoring it had become a little difficult. On the other hand, Brian was his closest friend, Geronde would be in a sense acknowledging the situation by saying anything, Sir Geoffrey owed him his freedom from something very like slavery and Sir Renel had literally been rescued from that state.

Jim was aware of all this, and of Angie moving closer to him and looking back at the rest of them with him, and he had no solution to the impa.s.se he had created. But it did not matter. He was now in the full tide of his own emotion, and he charged ahead without bothering to sort out his words ahead of time.

"This is all wrong!" he said. "Sir Geoffrey, tell your daughter why, though you had the palace that she saw you in and the wealth to go with it, you couldn't come back to her, much less bring back what you had with you. Tell her!"

Sir Geoffrey stared at him with a white face, saying nothing.

"Tell her, man!" said Jim. "Tell her, or I will!"

Jerkily, moving like a jointed doll, Sir Geoffrey turned to face Geronde.

"I could not," he said to her. "I was under a curse."

"Could not?" said Geronde with emphasis on the first word. Her lip did not exactly curl contempt, but it looked as if it might.

"I dared not," said Sir Geoffrey then, bluntly.

"Dared not. Sir Father?"

"Tell her the whole story," said Jim. "The curse had originally been laid on Hasan ad-Dimri, he transferred it to you and you accepted it from him. Tell her why."

"Hasan offered me the palace and all that went with it that you saw in Palmyra, Geronde," said Sir Geoffrey. "That was to be my price for accepting the curse and lifting it off him on to myself. It offered, I thought, all I had been searching for. But he laughed when I accepted."

"Why did he laugh?" said Jim relentlessly.

Sir Geoffrey was still looking only at Geronde.

"He laughed, and I did not mind it, then," said Sir Geoffrey. "He laughed because he told me that now I had accepted, if I should ever try to escape from him, the curse would follow me wherever I went. Not only that, but it would be extended."

Sir Geoffrey ran down again.

"Tell it all to her," said Jim, more gently now.

Sir Geoffrey looked at the ground, away from Geronde's eyes.

"He said part of the curse was that if I did escape, its effect would go with me. It would not only fall on me, but on my descendants unto the seventh generation. That was why he laughed. "Think of your sons, and your son's sons,' he said, 'all of them suffering it, down to the seventh generation!' "

Sir Geoffrey took a deep breath, and without raising his eyes went on.

"I had gathered as much already from what he had said, although he had not made it plain in words until then," he said. "But I was sure I would find some way to get out from under the curse, you see; and manage to take much of what I now had back to England. Indeed, I doubted a curse that would hold a Muslim would have any effect on a Christian. I was wrong; but when I found out how wrong, I could not come back. I could never escape the curse-but I could not bring it back to you."

He raised his eyes to Geronde.

"So," she said cuttingly to him, "as you say, in the end you dared not."

"Tell her what the curse was," said Jim. "Geronde, you saw Ahriman. He was real enough. What would have followed Sir Geoffrey home would have been real enough too."

"I am not afraid of curses!" said Geronde, raising her head proudly. "Even if my father is."

"Tell her what the curse is," said Jim. "She may think differently after she hears."

Sir Geoffrey looked at him, the knight's face drawn and old.

"Surely, I need not-" He stopped.

"Name it," said Jim. "Don't you see that you're going to have to name it, for Geronde to understand?"

Sir Geoffrey took a deep breath and straightened, stiffening. He looked back at Geronde.

"I could not bring it back to you, my daughter," he said in a harsh voice. "The curse was leprosy."

"Leprosy!"

Brian's and Sir Renel's voices spoke together. As for Geronde, she said nothing; but the blood left her face.

In England, as Brian had told Baiju, lepers were not driven into a desert by men with clubs and sticks; but certainly, here too, they would be as surely put out, not only of the society of those they knew, but of their home and family-to wander, begging and ringing a bell to warn everyone out of their path. The horror of the disease as it was known in England during the Middle Ages was no less than it was in the Near East.

"That was why he would not come back, Geronde," said Jim softly.

Geronde's eyes moved. She stared at Jim for a second. She made a small choking sound, looked once more at her father for another second. Then she leaped up, whirled and ran, down from the dais and out through the doorway leading toward the stairs to the tower, where her own solar room was-leaving silence behind her.

After a long moment Angie spoke, her voice clear in the hall.

"Sir Geoffrey," she said, "I think what's been between your daughter and yourself will begin to heal, now. But it will take time, and you will have to prove yourself a different man."

The table was silent for a long moment.

"G.o.d send it so," said Sir Geoffrey.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

They were wing to wing, soaring on the broad river of air, home to Malencontri.

"Are you sure Sir Renel really wanted to stay at Malvern after all?"

Jim nodded, then realized the ridiculousness of this in his dragon body.

"Yes," he said. "He's a stranger here, and the situation'd gone through a large change since we had talked about taking him home with us. After all, Sir Geoffrey's the only one he actually knows, and they were close friends once, evidently. He'll be better off with a friend around, particularly if things are going to be starting to mend at Malvern."

"We hope. No, I shouldn't say that," said Angie, as they began to circle upward on another thermal.

"Things will mend. I'm sure they will."

"So am I," said Jim, and meant it He was happy; and he knew mat Angie was too. Happy to be going back to Malencontri. Happy that they would be alone there-alone, that would be, except for young Robert and the castle staff-and both were welcome elements in homecoming. In a way it was almost as if he and Angie had shared in the reconciliation of Geronde and her father.

He winced a little internally, thinking of the shock to Geronde-to learn that her father had been ready to accept leprosy for himself, rather than inflict it on her. Particularly after the way she had been thinking of him for years.

In any case, she understood him better, now. He and Angie had never had to suffer that way; and right now, for both of them, the world was good. Warm in their dragon bodies, riding the air currents together, it seemed to Jim that the sun had a special brightness.

Above, the sky was almost cloudless. Below them, a little of the rawness of winter still survived in the leaves that were still curled up tight in buds-too tight to show green on the dark limbs of the trees; and even farther down on the ground black patches of wet earth still showed through the drab carpet of soggy leaves revealed by the melted snow of a winter now vanquished. But the whole world, nevertheless, seemed to be demanding summer just as soon as it could get there; and birds called loudly.

The smell of early spring was in the rushing air around them. Jim snuffed it through his dragon nostrils with pleasure.

He was happy Sir Renel had decided finally that he would remain at Malvern, even if it had only been after everybody thoroughly a.s.sured him he would offend n.o.body by staying; and Geronde would echo that a.s.surance if she was with them.

So, with no reason for Jim and Angie to go home on horseback, as they would have if they had taken Sir Renel with them, it was a natural decision to bedragon themselves and fly. The others had waved them off from Malvern's tower.

"I'm going to be really glad to be home," Jim said to Angie.

"Me too," she said. "I hope everything's been all right with Robert."

"I'm sure it has," said Jim, and a moment later, they were landing on the tower roof. The man-at-arms on lookout gave what sounded more like a whoop than the usual ritual shout, on seeing them; but by the time they had changed back into their human bodies, clothes and all, his face was unusually rigid.

"Well, we're back, Harold," said Jim to him.

"Yes, m'lord," said the guard, without giving up a bit of the stiffness of his expression.

"Super-formal!" said Jim under his breath to Angie, grinning once his back was safely turned to the guard and they were going down the flight of stairs into the solar. There was no one on duty at the outside door; and inside there was a fire in the fireplace that was a very low fire indeed- just enough to "air the cloth," as the servants put it, coming from a profound belief that clothes hung in a room without a fireplace would overnight become damp and mildewed.

Actually, there was some reason for it, since many castles were afflicted with dampness most of the year around. Jim stood, gazing about himself with pleasure. What a homelike sort of s.p.a.ce it was, he told himself.

"I'll go see Robert," Angie said, vanishing out the door toward the separate room created for Robert out of the solar floor.

She was back in a minute.

"He just fell asleep, the lamb," Angie said.

Woken out of his pleasurable contemplation of their private quarters, Jim automatically went to add some of the logs standing beside the fireplace to the flames. Angie stopped him just in time.

"Oh, yes," said Jim, suddenly reminded that people would be along to take care of this in a moment-in fact, the man-at-arms overhead could be heard shouting something from the top of the tower down to the courtyard below right now.

Undoubtedly, the message was being pa.s.sed that the Lord and Lady of the castle were back. The servants would be very upset if Jim had needed to pick up a log with his own hands to lay it on a fire.

Indeed, there was only time for Jim to take off the mail shirt he had practically lived in these last weeks and settle himself in one of the comfortable chairs he had caused to be made for the solar, while Angie also got rid of her traveling cloak and sat down, before there was a scratching at the door.

It was opened without waiting for the order to come in; several servants entered, one of whom rebuilt the fire, another who went around straightening and dusting things, and a third who was already carrying a tray with wine and cakes into the room.

"Put it on the table, Beth," said Jim. He was still too full from the meal at Malvern to want anything more; and he suspected that Angie was in exactly the same condition. But to simply send the food and drink back could hurt servant feelings.

"Yes, m'lord," said Beth, a serving woman in her late twenties, her lips now thinned a little bit. She spoke without looking directly at him.

The others finished their tasks and they all went out, backing through the door, saying with the same odd stiffness the sentry had shown, "With your permission, m'lord!" and "Crave pardon, m'lord and lady, for the disturbance!"

After the door was shut behind them Jim looked at Angie.

"Did you notice anything?" he asked Angie. "It seems to me they're all acting unusually strange. I thought they were just being extra correct. But it's something more than that."

"It is," said Angie. "I don't know why."

"If this is their way of welcoming us back," said Jim, "I wish they'd get over it. You don't suppose they were upset by both of us being gone?"

"I don't know why they should be-" Angie was interrupted by another scratching at the door.

"What is it?" called Jim.

"Crave pardon, m'lord." The voice of a male servant came back, loudly. "John Steward is here to speak with you, m'lord. If your Lordship permits."

"Send him in!" said Jim. He looked at Angle. "Whatever's going on here, we ought to get a handle on it from John."