The wood had evidently not been as close as he had first thought. Although he was making very good time indeed—Jim estimated his air speed as somewhere in the area of fifty to seventy miles an hour—the green band of trees was still the same small distance off. On the other hand, he did not seem to be tiring at all. In fact, he felt as if he could soar like this indefinitely.
He did feel the first, slight tickling of an appetite, however. He wondered what, as a dragon, he ate. Not—he winced away from a thought—no, definitely not human beings. If that was ordinary dragon fare, he'd just have to go hungry. Perhaps the magician could help him out in the food department as well as with the means of getting Angie and himself home again. He was finally beginning to get close to the wood now. He could make out separate trees. They were all pine, spruce and balsam, growing close together. For the first time a doubt crossed his mind. If he had to search through that forest on foot… But then he reassured himself. He could not have been expected to know exactly where this Tinkling Water place was, or Smrgol would not have reminded him that it lay to the northwest. On the other hand, if it had been a hard place to find, the older dragon, with the low opinion he had of Gorbash's mentality, would have given more explicit directions and double-checked to make sure his grand-nephew had them straight.
Possibly there would be something he could see from the air, Jim thought, as he began to swoop down on a long arc that would bring him in close above the treetops.
Suddenly, he saw it: a tiny clearing among the trees with a stream running through it and cascading over a small waterfall at its upper end. Beside the stream was a pool with a fountain, and a small, oddly narrow, peaked-roof house surrounded by grass and flower beds, except where a gravel path led from the edge of the dense woods up to the house's front door. A signpost of some sort stood to one side of the path just before the door.
Jim set down on the path with a thump.
In the silence that followed his rather heavy landing, he distinctly heard the sound of the water of the fountain falling and splashing in the pool. It did, indeed, tinkle—not like the sound of small bells, but with the very distant, fragile notes of glass wind chimes, clashing in the light breeze. The sound was somehow inexpressibly lulling to the nerves, and the rich and mingled odors rising from the blossoming flowers in the flower beds reinforced the effect; so that all at once Jim felt as if he had been plunged into a dream place where nothing was quite real and certainly nothing was overly important.
He moved slowly up the path and paused to read the signpost before the house. The sign itself was a plain, white-painted board with black lettering on it. The post on which it was set rose from among a riot of asters, tulips, zinnias, roses and lilies-of-the-valley, all blooming in complete disregard for their normal seasons. Printed on the board in black, angular letters was the name S. Carolinus. Jim went on up to the front door, which was green and sat above a single red-painted stone step.
He knocked.
There was no answer.
In spite of the soothing effect of the fountain and the flowers, Jim felt a sinking sensation inside him. It would be just his luck and Angie's to arrive at the residence of S. Carolinus when S. Carolinus was not within it.
He knocked again—harder, this time.
The sound came of a hasty step inside the house. The door was snatched inward and a thin-faced old man with a red robe, black skullcap and a thin, rather dingy-looking white beard stuck his head out to glare at Jim.
"Sorry, not my day for dragons!" he snapped. "Come back next Tuesday."
He pulled his head back in and slammed the door.
For a moment Jim merely stared. Then comprehension leaked through to him.
"Hey!" he shouted; and pounded on the door with some of his dragon-muscle.
It was snatched open furiously once more.
"Dragon!" said the magician, ominously. "How would you like to be a beetle?"
"You've got to listen to me," said Jim.
"I told you," Carolinus explained, "this is not my day for dragons. Besides, I've got a stomach ache. Do you understand? This-is-not-my-day-for-dragons!"
"But I'm not a dragon."
Carolinus stared at Jim for a long moment, then threw up his beard with both hands in a gesture of despair, caught some of it in his teeth as it fell down again, and began to chew on it fiercely.
"Now where," he demanded, "did a dragon acquire the brains to develop the imagination to entertain the illusion that he is not a dragon? Answer me, O Ye Powers!"
"The information is psychically, though not physiologically, correct," replied a deep bass voice out of thin air beside them and about five feet off the ground—causing Jim, who had regarded the question as rhetorical, to start.
"Is that a fact?" said Carolinus, peering at Jim with new interest. He spat out the hair or two still remaining in his mouth and stepped back, opening the door. "Come in, Anomaly—or do you have a better name for yourself?"
Jim squeezed through the door and found himself in a single cluttered room which evidently took up the full first floor of the house. It contained pieces of furniture and odd bits of alchemical equipment indiscriminately arranged about it. S. Carolinus closed the door behind him and walked around to face Jim again. Jim sat down on his haunches, ducking his head to avoid hitting the ceiling.
"Well, my real name is James—Jim Eckert," he said. "But I seem to be in the body of a dragon named Gorbash."
"And this," said S. Carolinus, wincing and massaging his stomach, "disturbs you, I gather." He closed his eyes and added faintly, "Do you know anything that's good for an unending stomach ache? Of course not. Go on."
"I'm afraid not. Well, the thing is—Wait a minute. Are you talking dragon, or am I talking whatever language you're talking?"
"If there's a language called 'dragon,' " said S. Carolinus, grumpily, "naturally, you're talking it. If you were talking it, I'd be talking it with you—naturally. Actually we're simply talking. Will you stick to the point? Go on about yourself."
"But, I mean, do dragons and humans here—I mean georges—speak the same language? I mean, I seem to be speaking your language, not mine—"
"Why not?" Carolinus said, closing his eyes. "In the domain of the Powers there is only one language possible—by definition. And if you're not talking to the point in five seconds, you're a beetle, on general principles."
"Oh. All right. Well," Jim explained, "the thing is, I'm not so interested in getting out of this dragon-body as I am in getting back to where I came from. My—uh—Angie, the girl I'm going to marry—"
"Yes, yes, on October thirteenth," said Carolinus impatiently. "Get on with it."
"October thirteenth? This October? You mean in just three weeks?"
"You heard me."
"But, I mean—so soon? We didn't hope—"
Carolinus opened his eyes. He did not mention beetles, but Jim understood immediately.
"Angie—" he began hurriedly.
"Who is where?" Carolinus interrupted. "You're here. Where's this Angie?"
"At the dragon cave."
"She's a dragon, too, then?"
"No, she's human."
"I see the difficulty."
"Well, yes—No," said Jim. "I don't think you do. The difficulty is, I can send her back, but possibly I can't get back myself; and she won't go without me. Look, maybe I better tell you the whole story from the beginning."
"Brilliant suggestion," said Carolinus, wincing and closing his eyes again.
"You see," said Jim, "I'm a teaching assistant at a place called Riveroak College. Actually, I ought to be an instructor in the English Department…" He ran rapidly over the whole situation.
"I see," Carolinus replied, opening his eyes finally. "You're sure about all this, now? You wouldn't prefer to change your story to something simpler and more reasonable—like being a prince ensorceled into a dragon by a rival with access to one of those Inner Kingdom charlatans? No?" He sighed heavily and winced again. "Wha
t do you want me to do about it?"
"We thought you might be able to send both Angie and myself back where we belong."
"Possible. Difficult, of course. But I suppose I could manage, given time and a proper balance between Chance and History. All right. That'll be five hundred pounds of gold or five pounds of rubies, payable in advance."
"What?"
"Why not?" Carolinus inquired, frostily. "It's a fair fee."
"But—" Jim almost stammered. "I don't have any gold—or rubies."
"Let's not waste time!" snapped Carolinus. "Of course you have. What kind of a dragon would you be without a hoard?"
"But I don't!" Jim protested. "Maybe this Gorbash has a hoard someplace. But if so, I don't know where it is."
"Nonsense. I'm willing to be reasonable, though. Four hundred and sixty pounds of gold."
"I tell you I don't have a hoard!"
"All right. Four twenty-five. But I warn you, that's my rock-bottom price. I can't work for less than that and still keep house and goods together."
"I don't have a hoard!"
"Four hundred, then, and may a magician's curse—Just a second. You mean you really don't know where this Gorbash-hoard is?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"Another charity patient!" exploded Carolinus, flinging skinny fists in the air, furiously. "What's wrong with the Auditing Department? Answer me!"
"Sorry," came the invisible bass voice.
"Well," said Carolinus, calming, "see that it doesn't happen again—for another ten days at least." He turned once more to Jim. "Haven't you any means of payment at all?"
"Well," Jim said, cautiously, "about this stomach ache of yours. I've just been thinking… Does it go away after you eat something?"
"Yes," said Carolinus, "as a matter of fact it does, temporarily."
"I was just thinking you might have what people where I come from call a stomach ulcer. People who live and work under a good deal of nervous pressure often get them."
"People?" Carolinus looked at him suspiciously. "Or dragons?"
"There aren't any dragons where I come from."
"All right, all right," said Carolinus, testily. "You don't have to stretch the truth like that. I believe you about this stomach devil. I was just making sure you knew what you were talking about. Nervous pressure—exactly! These ulcers, how do you exorcise them?"
"Milk," said Jim. "A glass of cow's milk six or eight times a day until the symptoms disappear."
"Ha!"
Carolinus turned about, darted over to a shelf on the wall and took down a tall black bottle. Uncorking it, he poured what looked like red wine into a dusty glass goblet from one of the nearby tables, and held the goblet up to the light.
"Milk," he said.
The red liquid turned white. He drank it off. "Hmm!" he said, with his head on side, waiting. "Hmm…"
Slowly a smile parted his beard. "Why, I do believe," he said, almost gently, "it's helping. Yes, by the Powers! It is!" He turned to Jim, beaming.
"Excellent! The bovine nature of the milk has a remarkably placating effect on the anger of the ulcer, which must, by-the-bye, be a member of the family of Fire Demons, now I come to think of it. Congratulations Gorbash, or Jim, or whatever your name is. I'll be frank with you. When you mentioned earlier you'd been a teaching assistant at a college, I didn't believe you. But I do now. As fine a small bit of sympathetic magic as I've seen for weeks. Well, now"—he rubbed bony hands together—"to work on your problem."
"Possibly…" said Jim, "if you could get us together and start out by hypnotizing us both at once—" Carolinus' white eyebrows shot up on his forehead like startled rabbits.
"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!" he snapped. "By the Powers! That's what's wrong with the world today! Ignorance and anarchy!"
He shook a long and not-too-clean forefinger under Jim's muzzle.
"Dragons galumphing hither and yon—knights galumphing yon and hither—naturals, giants, ogres, sandmirks and other sports and freaks each doing their billy-be-exorcised best to terrorize his own little part of the landscape. Every jackanapes and teaching assistant in his blindness setting himself up to be the equal of a Master of the Arts. It's not endurable!" His eyes lit up exactly like live coals and glowed fiercely at Jim.
"I say it's not! And I don't intend to endure it, either! We'll have order and peace and Art and Science, if I have to turn the moon inside out!"
"But you said for five hundred—I mean, four hundred pounds of gold—"
"That was business. This is ethics!" Carolinus snatched up some more of his beard and gnawed on it for a moment before spitting it out again. "I thought we'd chaffer a bit about price and see what you were worth. But now that you've paid me with this ulcer spell…" His tone became thoughtful suddenly; his eyes dimmed, unfocused, and seemed to look elsewhere. "Yes. Yes, indeed… very interesting…"
"I just thought," Jim said, humbly, "that hypnotism might work, because—"
"Work!" cried Carolinus, returning abruptly to the here and now. "Of course it'd work. Fire will work to cure a bad case of the dropsy. But a dead-and-cindered patient's no success! No, no, Gorbash (I can't remember that other name of yours), recall the First Law of Magic!"
"The what?"
"The First Law—the First Law! Didn't they teach you anything at that college?"
"Well, actually, my field was—"
"Forgotten it already, I see," sneered Carolinus. "Oh, this younger generation! The Law of Payment, you idiot! For every use of Art of Science, there is a required or corresponding price. Why do you think I live by my fees instead of running through the aleph tables? Just because a number is transfinite doesn't mean you can use it to get something for nothing! Why use hawks and owls and cats and mice and familiars instead of a viewing crystal? Why does a magic potion have a bad taste? Everything must be paid for, in proportion! Why, I wouldn't have done what this wooden-headed Hansen amateur of yours did without having built up ten years' credit with the Auditing Department first; and I'm a Master of the Arts. He's pushed his debit right to the breaking point—it can't go any further."
"How do you know?" asked Jim. "Why, my good teaching assistant," said Carolinus, "isn't it obvious? He was able to send this maiden of yours—I assume she is a maiden?"
"Well—"
"Well, well, call her a maiden for form's sake. Academic question, anyway," Carolinus snapped. "The point I'm making is that he was able to send her back completely, body and all; but he only had enough credit with the Auditing Department after that to transport your spirit, leaving your body behind. Result, you're an Imbalance in the here and now—and the Dark Powers love something like that. Result, we have a nice, touchy situation—now that I look a little deeper into it—ready to turn things here very much for the worst. Hah! If you'd only been a little more clever and learned, you'd have realized you could have had my help without paying for it with that ulcer exorcism. I'd have helped you anyway, just in order to help myself and all of us here." Jim stared at him.
"I don't understand," he said, finally. "Naturally not—a mere teaching assistant like yourself. All right, I'll spell it out. The fact of your appearance here—yours and this Angie's—has upset the balance between Chance and History. Upset it badly. Imagine a teeter-totter, Chance sitting on one end, History on the other, swinging back and forth—Chance up one moment, then Chance down and History up. The Dark Powers love that. They throw their weight at the right moment on a side that's already headed down, and either Chance or History ends permanently up. One way we get Chaos. The other we get Predictability and an end to Romance, Art, Magic and everything else interesting."
"But…" Jim found himself drowning in a sea of words, "if that's the case, what can we do about it?"
"Do? Push up when the Dark Powers push down. Push down when the Dark Powers push up! Force a temporary balance and then hit them head on—our strength against their strength. Then, if we win that final battle, we can s
et your situation to rights and be back on permanent balance again. But there'll be trouble, first."
"Look here, though—" Jim was beginning.
He was about to protest that Carolinus seemed to be making the situation out to be far more complicated than was necessary. But he had no chance to finish his sentence. Just then a loud thud outside the house shook it to its foundations; and a dragon voice thundered.
"Gorbash!"
"I knew it," said Carolinus. "It's already started."
Chapter Five
He led the way to the door, threw it open and strode out. Jim followed. Sitting on the path about a dozen feet from the door was Smrgol.
"Greetings, Mage!" boomed the old dragon, dipping his head briefly. "You may not remember me. Name's Smrgol. You remember that business about the ogre of Gormely Keep? I see my grand-nephew got to you, all right."
"Ah, Smrgol. I remember," said Carolinus. "That was a good job you did."
"He had a habit of dropping his clubhead after a swing," Smrgol explained. "I noticed it along about the fourth hour of the battle. Left himself wide open for just a second. The next time he tried it, I went in over his guard and tore up the biceps of his right arm. After that it was just a matter of finishing."
"I remember. Eighty-three years ago. So this is your grand-nephew?"
"I know," said Smrgol. "A little thick-headed and all that—but my own flesh and blood, you know. How've you been getting along with him, Mage?"
"Well enough," said Carolinus, dryly. "In fact, I'll venture to promise this grand-nephew of yours will never be the same again."
"I hope so," Smrgol said, brightening. "Any change is a change for the better. But I've bad news, Mage."
"Don't tell me!"
"Don't… ?" Smrgol stared.
"I was being sarcastic. Go on, go on," said Carolinus. "What's happened now?"
"Why, just that that young inchworm of a Bryagh's run off with our george."
"WHAT?" cried Jim.