"Well..." said Jim again, hesitantly.

"James, do not think I mean to make any opposition to your decision," said Geronde earnestly. "In life, we all must make hard choices. I know well how your heart must have beaten higher, like Brian's, at the thought of a venture into the Holy Lands; let alone your natural desire to aid a fellow Companion-at-arms. Already, you will probably have decisions to make and matters to concern you, as far as the administration of Robert Falon's estates are concerned. But I thought I might come and plead with you to consider a certain decision, in spite of all that."

"The fact is, Geronde-" Jim was beginning. But Geronde interrupted him again.

"No," she said. "Hear me out, I pray you, James."

"Of course," said Jim, more uncomfortable than ever.

"I would like to tell you something that I would not otherwise tell anyone, except perhaps you two," said Geronde. "I can say this because Brian and I are so alike."

She looked at Angie.

"I never had a close woman friend until you, Angela," she said. "I could never stand them. Chattering, spineless creatures, most of them- except for some older ones; and they so stuck in their ways and determined to be right all the time that I would have fought with them continually. But you were different, Angela."

"Well, Geronde..." said Angie, as obviously embarra.s.sed, Jim noticed with a certain amount of perverse satisfaction, as he had been himself, a moment before.

"It is a matter of being able to agree with each other on things," said Geronde. She turned her attention back to Jim again. "It is exactly that way with Brian where you are concerned, James. He never had any close friends of his own spirit and rank. He must always be in contest with them-better than any at anything, if it killed him; and indeed, he has been better than most. As a result, he has found few men he could respect; and of those, he had full respect only for superiors such as Sir John Chandos, who is so much older and so proven in war and peace that there could be no measuring by Brian of himself with such a knight. All others of worth he might otherwise have respected, he must be fighting with. You saw it yourself with Sir Harimore at the Earl's. Brian will kill Sir Harimore one day, unless Harry kills him. But meanwhile he gives Harry full credit for his fighting skills, only. Oh, he can like your bowman Dafydd ap Hywel, because Dafydd is of common birth. Therefore there cannot possibly be any compet.i.tion between him and Brian; and Brian will cheerfully acknowledge that Dafydd is not only a better bowman than others, but a better bowman than he."

She turned again to Angie.

"But have you not also heard the like, from Danielle, Angela?" she said. "How Dafydd, in his own rank, like Brian cannot abide an equal? So that when she and he started to live with her father, Giles o'the Wold, and all his other outlaws-how Dafydd must be forever measuring himself against each of the band, before he would be at peace with himself- taking them on in contest two at a time, if necessary."

"Yes," said Angie. She looked across at Jim.

"n.o.body ever told me," said Jim. "But I'm not surprised."

"Well, that is the point I'm making, James. You now have-according to what I was told by the good Sir John Chandos-the wardship of Robert Falon firmly in your hands. While Brian has gone on alone."

She hesitated.

"He would not expect you to follow him," Geronde said. "No, not even if he knew that the matter of the wardship was now settled. He would not ask it. But you mean a great deal to him, James. You are the one man whom he can accept as an equal. Also, you are the one man he would depend upon in any strait"

"Geronde," said Jim, "you know I'm not very useful with weapons. Brian could pick up a dozen knights, or even many less than knights, who'd be much more skilled in fighting, and protecting his back than I'd be."

"But that is not the point, James!" said Geronde, leaning forward. "It is true-and I crave your pardon for saying it to your face, James-that you will probably never be either a goo- a great horseman, nor a master of any weapon; nor even, possibly, a good average man of your hands with any such. But otherwise he admires you tremendously."

"Oh, you mean my magic," said Jim. "You must know that's an accident, Geronde. If chance hadn't made me a dragon, I'd never have become a magician's apprentice in order to take care of the magic that I happen to generate without meaning to. It all grew out of that-by accident."

"No!" said Geronde. "It is not that either. Though we all respect the courage and mind in you that would send you to study that strange Art. No. It is the fact that you are so like what Brian most admires-that which is to be found in Sir John Chandos-a preux chevalier, you are a truly chivalric knight in that you could never do anything less than your knightly duty in all matters."

"Geronde..." said Jim helplessly. He could think of no easy way of handling a compliment like this. All he could do was sit there and suffer under it He was quite certain that he was nowhere near being the kind of person Geronde was talking about and Brian evidently believed him to be; but he could also feel very clearly that it would be doing her no favor to argue against that fact just now.

"That is why I greatly venture at this moment," Geronde went on, "to beg you, James, that you consider following Brian and catching up with him, so that you can be with him on the rest of his trip. He will be no farther than the Isle of Cyprus by now-if he is indeed that far. I can give you the names of those he knows there; and you can find him easily by searching them out-for they are men well known on the island. James-by your favor, James-do not say no without thinking about it for a moment."

"Geronde-" interrupted Angie; but Geronde charged on, speaking to Jim and ignoring the interruption.

"This is why it is so important that you be with him on this search for my father," said Geronde. "He will listen to you, James, where he would listen to no other-and you know that he is apt to be drawn aside by a trifle chance at a pa.s.sage of arms, or some such. He will be stronger and more sensible if you are with him. You are wiser than he. Yes-do not look at me like that-you are wiser than he! So, you will keep him safer by being with him; and he knows and I know that you would never fail him in any strait. That is why I beg you now-I beg you on bended knee-to follow and join him, James!"

"Whoops-whoa!" said Jim, catching her just in time, for Geronde had literally been about to kneel to him. This was not remarkable from a medieval point of view, but from Jim's twentieth-century viewpoint, the very idea made him go hot with embarra.s.sment. "It's all right, Geronde. I'm going. That's what we came here to tell you!"

She stared up at him, and all the blood drained out of her face. For a moment it seemed as if she would collapse like the sentry who had come so close to being hung, if Jim had not been holding her upright.

"That's right, Geronde," said Angie urgently, moving to her and putting her arms around her. "Jim's decided to go. Haven't you, Jim!"

She stared at Jim. Jim had not quite realized the full meaning of what he had just said. He did so, now.

"Of course I am!" he told Geronde, with as much heartiness as he could manage. He let go of her elbows, because Angie was hugging her.

The blood came back to Geronde's face. She exploded upward from her chair. She kissed Jim. She kissed Angie. She whirled from one to the other, as if she was beginning to dance.

"It is dinner time!" she cried. "And we will have such a dinner! Ho, there! Attend me!"

The door to the solar from the hall outside burst open, showing Bernard and another man-at-arms, both with swords drawn.

"Put up your weapons, you idiots!" snapped Geronde. "Run to the cook and the serving room. We will have two guests for dinner, Lord and Lady Eckert. It will be the finest and best of everything we have.

We will be down in five minutes. You hear, five minutes, and I shall expect to see a table laid, set and with the first of the meal upon it. Run!"

"Run!" roared Bernard to the other man-at-arms, who disappeared from sight immediately. "Your pardon, m'lady-your pardon, m'lord and lady..."

Bernard backed hastily out, closing the door behind him.

"Now, let us pray you to forgive us, Geronde," said Angie. "We should have told you this right away, without letting you go through all you had to tell us before we told you."

"What difference makes it?" sang Geronde. This time, she actually did twirl. "Howsomever the news comes, it is what I have dreamed and prayed for. I shall tell five rosaries of beads tonight in thanksgiving.

I regret not a word of what I said, not a moment of not hearing until just now. It is the fact that you are going, James, that makes all the difference. Oh, how we shall celebrate!"

"I'll need to know all you can tell me about how I might follow him and where I might find him," said Jim.

"You shall know all that I know!" said Geronde. "I shall tell you every word he said, at dinner. But-it will be a long, hard trip for you, James. You do go willingly?"

"Of course!" said Jim.

"Then all is well!" said Geronde. "Though the travel itself may be none too easy."

"Not at all," said Jim. "From my standpoint-a nothing. You forget I am a magician."

CHAPTER SIX.

"Magician-hah!" said Jim morosely to himself. What good was it to be a magician, if you were deliberately never using your magic? With magic you could say, "Let so-and-so, wherever he is, appear before me!" and instantly the one named was there.

"Is something the matter, m'lord?" asked Hob, the official castle hobgoblin of Malencontri (plain "Hob"

as he was once more called, like all hobgoblins, now that he had been shorn of the t.i.tle Jim had given him earlier-"Hob-One de Malencontri").

"No," said Jim.

But of course there was. Hob was now out of the pouch on Jim's back in which he normally traveled, and perched on Jim's right shoulder. Jim, himself, was sitting on a rock on a pebbly beach in Cyprus, gazing out at the Mediterranean and waiting. He had been waiting for five hours now.

He was long past the point of being impatient. He now slumped on his rock, despondent, gazing at the Mediterranean Sea, which was in a good mood at the moment, the curling surf coming neatly in to the gray-blue pebble beach in front of him.

Before Jim, the waves came up, came up, one after the other, laid down on the beach and died. Every so often-it was either the eighth or ninth wave in the Mediterranean, except in extraordinary circ.u.mstances when it seemed to skip a whole cycle and go sixteen-one came farthest up the beach; and each time this longest wave came into the island, he waited for an individual named Rrrnlf to start emerging from the water before him. But this friend of his, a sea devil, had not appeared.

This was all the more irritating, in that the only other time he had taken Rrrnlf up on his invitation to summon him, by calling out over the salt waters, Rrrnlf had arrived almost immediately. Also, he had once told Jim-or given Jim the clear impression-that he would always hear instantly and could always be with Jim in almost no time at all after that.

A typical adult male sea devil, Rrrnlf was about thirty feet tall, narrowing wedge-shaped from a great head above wide shoulders down to feet that were only three times as big as Jim's. How he could move this tremendous ma.s.s of body easily around on such tiny feet, Jim had no idea. The contrast was particularly striking when you looked from his feet to his hands. His hands seemed big enough, not only to pick up as much of a load as a bulldozer could push before it, but bulldozer and load together, in one fist.

He was a Natural. That was to say that he could do some things that could be explained only as magic; but he had no conscious control over that magic. It was rather like a dog wagging his tail when he was happy. When a sea devil was in the sea, possibly thousands of feet down, he breathed water with no trouble. When he came up on the land, he breathed air with no trouble. He had no idea how or why he could do it. He simply took it for granted he could.

Hob-though miniscule compared to any sea devils, and ordinarily the hobgoblin of the serving room, back at Malencontri-was also one of the category of what were called Naturals; but he and Rrrnlf were, as you might say, at opposite ends of the Natural yardstick.

"M'lord," said Hob's voice in Jim's ear now, timidly, "I think you are sad. Would it help if I took you for a ride on the smoke? All you'd have to do would be to start a small fire."

"No," said Jim.

Then, he realized that his tone had been a little too abrupt. The hobgoblin's feelings were easily hurt.

"No, thank you, Hob," he said, more gently. "I just don't want to go anyplace else right now."

"Yes, m'lord," said Hob.

Jim concentrated on the waves again. Rrrnlf had to be out there, underwater, somewhere. Was something keeping him from coming, or was he simply failing to answer? Had something happened to him? There were things far larger even than he in the oceans. Granfer, the ancient deep-sea squid (or Kraken), for one.

Jim had now been on Cyprus for a week without finding Brian. Brian had clearly gotten here, because a number of people had seen him and n.o.body remembered him either leaving the island, or talking about leaving. But he was being strangely difficult to locate.

If he had already gone on to the city of Tripoli, Jim should waste no time in following him. On the other hand, if he was still here on the island, Jim had to run him to earth so that they could go together.

Jim scowled once more at the scene before him. It had the effrontery to be a happy, picturesque scene.

The Mediterranean was in one of its brightest, most blue moods, the salt-smelling wind blowing off it in Jim's face was mild and warm, and the beach itself, although it could possibly have been improved by a few thousand tons of very clean sand spread over the pebbles, was still a kindly sort of beach, with most of its pebbles nicely rounded from water action.

The only unpretty thing in the whole scene was a brownish mongrel searching among the rocks and pebbles some little ways up the beach. It was a small, starved-looking dog, clearly intended to be coated with short tan hair, but the hair was either very dirty or else it had acquired a naturally dingy appearance somewhere in the animal's lifetime; so that the only other living thing on the beach beside Jim and Hob was definitely out of key with all else visible. On the other hand, it was not bothering Jim and Jim had no real interest in it.

Jim forgot the dog and concentrated on the waves once more. He had called out loud more than enough times for Rrrnlf. Now he was trying visualization-but with no magic command to appear-concentrating on Rrrnlf wherever the sea devil should be in the undersea, with Jim's calls necessarily reverberating over and over again in the large Natural's ears.

So far this had shown no signs of working, either.

"Oh great and puissant, compa.s.sionate magician," said a high-pitched, but oddly gruff, voice at his elbow. "Of your mightiness and strength, aid me in my terrible plight; and your reward shall be greater than any could ever imagine."

Jim came out of his concentration to discover at his elbow the dog which, a moment before, had been nosing about, farther up the beach.

That it was an animal speaking to him did not startle him-although it was the first talking dog Jim had so far encountered on this magical, medieval world. All sorts of creatures spoke, here, of course-while others didn't; and there seemed no rhyme or reason to which did and which didn't Also, while no dog had ever addressed him until now, one of his best friends was Aargh, an English wolf, who not only spoke but issued very definite and uncompromising statements. So, also, had a Northumbrian wolf whom Jim had met up near the Scottish border. Until now, Jim had simply a.s.sumed that wolves spoke in this fourteenth-century environment and dogs didn't. Apparently the rule was not universal. But he had heard so many unlikely speakers by this time that what concerned him at the moment was the fact that his concentration had been interrupted.

"What is it?" he asked the dog sharply.

"I am in desperate need and I cast myself on your mercy, O mighty one!" said the dog, fawning upon him.

"Yes, yes," said Jim, "but what do you want?"

The dog pressed close against his right leg and lowered his voice to a murmur. Thoughts of fleas, lice and possible skin diseases flitted momentarily through Jim's mind, but his natural instinct not to be unfriendly to dogs-even ratty-looking specimens like this-which in general he liked and usually got on well with, kept him from pulling his leg away.

"I am in desperate need of your protection, O great and invincible master," the dog went on, barely above a whisper. "I am in flight from a powerful and wicked one, who most cruelly ill-used me; and when I saw you here, casting spells upon the ocean, I knew you at once. You are as much greater and stronger than him as he is than me; and so I have ventured to ask you for protection, knowing that by your Art you already knew that I was a Djinni-as is the one who so mistreated and would now pursue me-so that I need not first show you myself in my own real form."

For the first time in some hours, Jim dropped his concern with Rrrnlf and the undersea s.p.a.ces. There had been one glaringly false note in what the dog had said so far, in speaking to him.

It was not surprising the dog/Djinni might recognize him as a magician. Unlikely sorts of non-humans had done that before. Others had not, of course, but there was always the chance that some of them could feel, smell or somehow tell the difference that his magic gave him. But the other had clearly been guessing when he threw in that bit just now about casting spells on the sea-since Jim had been doing nothing of the kind.

Jim was instantly wary. Experience in this particular world had taught him it was usually wisest not to disabuse a stranger's favorable misapprehension about him too quickly. By letting the mistake slide by, he might be able to find out more of what was actually going on around him-and usually he badly needed to know what was going on around him-for his own safety's sake, to say nothing of that of little Hob.

He had been aware that he was now in the territory of those middle-eastern Naturals called collectively Djinn or Jann; and, individually, Djinni or Jinni. If this dog actually was a Djinni, then probably the most prudent thing to do was to first find out what kind of magiclike powers he had, while keeping him as much in the dark as possible about the scope of Jim's own abilities.

"You say you're a Djinni," Jim said. "But before I give you any kind of protection, I'd have to know if I could trust you. I need to know more about you. To begin with, are you really the sort of Djinni you say you are?"

"O my master, I am. I am!" cried the dog in a high, thin voice, then quickly looked around behind him, as if he expected somebody to be there, listening.

"We'll see," said Jim. "You're right, of course, in taking for granted I knew you were a Djinni without having to see you in your true shape. But what if you're really a Djinni who's been stripped of his powers by some holy person because of evil things you did, and condemned to live permanently as the dog you pretend to be? Prove to me first you can change back to your true shape."

"Does he have to?" whispered Hob fearfully in Jim's ear.

"Hush!" said Jim, over his shoulder. He looked at the dog. "Well?"

The dog changed his appearance.

"Tell me when to open my eyes," said Hob in Jim's ear.

"That's fine. You can change back. That's just fine," said Jim hastily. "It's all right now, Hob. You can look."

What he had seen, and Hob had almost caught a glimpse of, was a huge male figure with gray skin and large belly, scantily dressed in a sort of vest plus loose billowy, purple trousers. It had possessed a hideous face, with a third eye above and between two other eyes not in line, a face with a mouth that was off to one side and tilted up at the right corner. This kind of tilt should have given the face a cheerful look.

Instead it gave it a look of the deepest evil imaginable.

Then the dog had become a dog again.

"All right," said Jim. "That much you can do. Do you have your other powers? For example, if I was just an ordinary person instead of the magician I am, would you have tried to bribe me to help you by promising me great treasure?"

"Forgive me, O my master," said the dog, fawning on him again, "but I would have. Of course, I know better than to bribe such as your incorruptible self."

"Prove to me you could have done such a thing," said Jim. "For example, produce a chest full of rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and other precious gems to show me you can do it"

The chest appeared, but its top was down, its contents hidden.