The flowers and grass lay down as if in a hurricane. Carolinus tottered, and Smrgol winced.
"My boy," he said, reproachfully. "How many times must I tell you not to shout? I said Bryagh's taken the george."
"WHERE?" Jim yelped.
"Gorbash!" said Smrgol severely. "If you can't talk about this in a polite tone, we won't include you in the discussions after this. I don't know why you get so excited whenever we mention this george."
"Listen—" said Jim. "It's time you found out something about me. This george, as you call her, is the woman I—"
His vocal cords seemed to become paralyzed suddenly. He was unable to say another word.
"—and to be sure," Carolinus interrupted quickly, shoving into the gap caused by Jim's sudden and unexpected silence, "this is a matter of concern to all of us. As I was telling Gorbash, the situation is bad enough already without our making it worse. Eh, Gorbash?"
He bent a penetrating eye on Jim.
"We want to be careful and not make it any worse than it is already, don't we? We don't want to disturb the already disturbed fabric of things any more than it already is. Otherwise, I might not be able to be of any help."
Jim found his vocal cords suddenly free to operate again.
"Oh? Oh… yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely. "And to be sure," repeated Carolinus, smoothly, "Gorbash has asked the right question. Where has Bryagh taken this so-called george?"
"Nobody knows," Smrgol answered. "I thought maybe you could find out for us, Mage."
"Certainly. Fifteen pounds of gold, please."
"Fifteen pounds?" The old dragon visibly staggered. "But, Mage, I thought you'd want to help us. I thought you'd—I don't have fifteen pounds of gold. I lived up my hoard a long time ago."
Shakily, he turned to Jim.
"Come, Gorbash, it's no use. We'll have to give up our hope of finding the george—"
"No!" cried Jim. "Listen, Carolinus! I'll pay you. I'll get the fifteen pounds somewhere—!"
"Boy, are you sick or what?" Smrgol was aghast. "That's only his asking price. Don't be in such a sulphurous hurry!"
He turned back to the magician.
"I might be able to scrape together a couple of pounds, maybe, Mage," he said.
They dickered like fishwives for several minutes while Jim sat quivering with impatience; and finally closed on a price of four pounds of gold, one pound of silver and a large flawed emerald.
"Done!" said Carolinus.
He produced a small vial from his robes and walked across to the pool at the base of the fountain, where he filled the vial about half full. Then he came back and searched among the soft grass around the edge of one flower bed until he found a small, sandy, open spot between the soft green blades. He bent over and the two dragons craned their necks down on either side of him to watch.
"Quiet now," Carolinus warned. "I'm going to try a watchbeetle—and they're easily alarmed. Don't breathe."
Jim held his breath. Carolinus tilted the vial in his hand and a drop fell on the little sandy open spot with a single glass-chime musical note. Tink! Jim could see the bright sand darken as the moisture sank into it.
For a second nothing happened; then the wet sand cracked, opened, and a fine spray of lighter-colored, drier sand from underneath spouted into the air. A small amount of this under sand grew about a depression that sank and became a widening hole, like the entrance to an anthill. An occasional flicker of small black insect limbs could be seen, rapidly at work. After a second the work ceased, there was a moment of silence, and then an odd-looking black beetle popped halfway out of the hole and paused, facing up to them. Its forelimbs waved in the air and a little, squeaky voice like a cracked phonograph record repeating itself far off over a bad telephone connection came to Jim's ears.
"Gone to the Loathly Tower. Gone to the Loathly Tower. Gone to the Loathly Tower."
The watchbeetle stopped abruptly, popped back out of sight and began churning away inside the hole, filling it in.
"Not so fast!" Carolinus snapped. "Did I give you leave to go? There're other things than being a watchbeetle, you know. There're blindworms. Come back at once, sir!"
The sand spouted into the air once more. The watchbeetle reappeared, its front limbs waving agitatedly.
"Well, well—speak up!" said Carolinus. "What about our young friend here?"
"Companions!" creaked the watchbeetle. "Companions! Companions!"
It ducked out of sight again. The sand began to work itself smooth once more; and in a couple of seconds the ground looked as if it had never been disturbed.
"Hmm," Carolinus murmured thoughtfully. "It's the Loathly Tower then, that this Bryagh of yours has taken the maiden to."
Smrgol cleared his throat noisily.
"That's that ruined tower to the west, in the fens, isn't it, Mage?" he asked. "Why, that's the place the mother of my Gormely Keep ogre came from, as the stories go. The same place that loosed the blight on the mere-dragons nearly five hundred years ago."
Carolinus nodded, his eyes hooded under his thick white brows.
"It's a place of old magic," he answered. "Dark magic. These places are like ancient sores on the land, scabbed over for a while but always breaking out with new evil whenever the balance of Chance and History becomes upset."
He went on musingly, speaking almost more to himself than to Jim and the older dragon.
"Just as I feared," he said, "the Dark Powers haven't been slow to move. Your Bryagh belongs to them, now—even if he didn't, before. It'll be they who caused him to take the maiden there, to become a hostage and weapon against Gorbash here. It's a good thing I took a stern line with that watchbeetle just now and got the full message."
"Full message?" Jim echoed, puzzled.
"That's right—the full message." Carolinus turned commandingly upon him. "Now that you know your lady's been taken there, no doubt you're all ready to go to her rescue, aren't you?"
"Of course," said Jim.
"Of course not!" snapped Carolinus. "Didn't you hear the second part of the watchbeetle's message? 'Companions!' You'll have to have companions before you dare venture close to the tower. Otherwise your Angela and you are both doomed."
"Who is this Angela?" Smrgol asked, puzzled.
"The Lady Angela, dragon," said Carolinus. "The female george Bryagh took to the tower."
"Ah," said Smrgol, a little sadly. "Not a princess then, after all. Well, you can't have everything. But why does Gorbash here want to rescue her? Let the other georges do whatever rescuing there has to be—"
"I love her," said Jim, fiercely.
"Love her? My boy," Smrgol scowled, aghast, "I've put up with a good deal of your strange associates in the past—that wolf and so forth. But falling in love with a george! There's a limit to what any decent dragon—"
"Come, come, Smrgol," said Carolinus, impatiently. "There are wheels within wheels in this matter."
"Wheels… ? I don't understand, Mage."
"It's a complex situation, derivative from a great many factors, unobvious as well as obvious. Just as in any concatenation of events, no matter how immediate, the apparent is not always the real. In short, your grand-nephew Gorbash is also, in another sense, a gentleman named Sir James of Riveroak, obligated to rescue his lady from the Dark Powers now controlling Bryagh, the Loathly Tower, and the Powers-know-what-else. In words of one syllable, therefore, he whom you know as Gorbash must now embark on a quest to restore the balance between Chance and History; and it is not for you to criticize or object."
"Or understand either, I suppose," Smrgol said, humbly.
"One might say that," barked Carolinus. "In fact, I do!" His voice softened somewhat. "We're all caught up in a new battle for freedom from domination by the Dark Powers, Smrgol. And it's going to be a battle that makes your set-to with the ogre of Gormely Keep seem unimportant. You can stand aside if you want, but you can do nothing to change what's coming."
"Stand aside? Me?" Smrgol huf
fed. "What kind of dragon do you take me for? I'm with Gorbash—and with you too, Mage, if you're on the same side he is. Just tell me what to do!"
"I am," said Carolinus, dryly. "Very well, Smrgol. In that case, you'd better get back to the other dragons and start making them understand what's at stake here and just where Bryagh, you, and Gorbash stand on matters. As for you—" he turned on Jim.
"I'm headed for that tower, like it or not," said Jim.
"Do, and you'll never see your lady again!" Carolinus' voice cracked like a gunshot. His eyes were burning once more. "Do it, and I wash my hands of you; and if I wash my hands of you, you've no hope! Now—will you listen?"
Jim swallowed his immediate impulse to take off then and there. There might be something in what Carolinus was about to say. In any case, he and Angie would still need the magician's help to get home again, even after Angie was rescued. It would hardly be wise to make an opponent of Carolinus now.
"I'll listen," he answered.
"Very well, then. The Dark Powers have taken your lady to their tower for the very reason that they hope to draw you into their territory before you've gathered the strength to oppose them. They want you to come immediately to the rescue of the Lady Angela; because if you do, you'll be easy to defeat. But if you hold off until you've gathered the companions the watchbeetle indicated, it's they who can be defeated. Therefore, you're foolish if you go now."
"But what'll they do to Angela—I mean, Angie—" said Jim, "when they see I'm not coming right after her? They'll figure she's no good as a means to stop me, and do something terrible to her—"
"They cannot!" Carolinus snapped. "By taking the lady they've over-extended themselves, made themselves vulnerable. If they treat her any way but well, all who might oppose them—man, dragon and beast—will form a solid front against them. There're rules at work here; and just as if you go now to her rescue you will certainly lose, so if they harm their hostage they will certainly lose!"
Jim found himself wavering in his firm intention to go after Angie at once. He remembered his earlier determination to figure out the system by which this world operated. If Carolinus was correct… and the magician was a very convincing arguer…
"But you're sure she'll be all right if I don't get to that tower right away?" Jim asked.
"She'll only be other than all right if you do go now."
Jim gave in with a deep sigh.
"All right," he. said. "What do I do, then? Where should I go?"
"Away!" said Carolinus. "That is, in exactly the opposite direction which you would use in returning to the dragon cave from which you came."
"But, Mage," put in Smrgol, puzzled, "away from the cave is exactly toward the fens and the Loathly Tower. And you just finished saying he shouldn't go to the tower—"
"Dragon," cried Carolinus, wheeling on Smrgol. "Have I got to argue with you, now? I said 'away!' I didn't say 'to the tower.' The Powers give me patience! Have I got to explain the intricacies of Advanced Magics to every dumbwit and numbskull who flies in here, or don't I? I ask you?"
"No!" said the deep bass voice out of thin air.
"There," Carolinus said in a relieved tone, mopping his brow. "You heard the Auditing Department. Now, no more talk. I've got my hands too full as it is. Off with you to the dragon cave, Smrgol. And away with you, Gorbash, in the opposite direction!"
He turned around and stamped into his house, slamming the door shut behind him.
"Come, Gorbash," boomed Smrgol. "The Mage's right. Let me get you started in the right direction, then I'll leave you on your own. My, my, who'd have thought we'd run into such interesting times in my old age?"
Wagging his head thoughtfully, the elderly dragon sprang into the air, leathery wings opening out with a thunderous clap, and mounted skyward.
After a second's hesitation, Jim followed him.
Chapter Six
"You can just see the beginning of the fens, there—that misty, bluish line beyond that bit of forest coming in from the north and stretching out like a finger across your way."
Smrgol, soaring alongside Jim, broke off as they left the thermal they had been rising upon and had to use their wings to get to another. The prevailing breezes seemed to be blowing against them.
Jim noticed that the older dragon had a tendency to fall silent when he had to exert himself flying. It gave the information Smrgol seemed determined to impart something of a fragmentary feeling.
"Nothing important comes out on the fens nowadays to concern our people, of course. Except, that is," Smrgol went on abruptly as they caught another thermal and started on a long, buoyant glide toward the dimly seen fens, "for the mere-dragons. Relatives of ours, as you know, Gorbash. Distant, naturally. You'll have some fifteenth or sixteenth cousins among them without a doubt, though probably they won't remember the connection. Never were a very solid branch of the family to start with; and then when this blight hit them—well, they generally fell apart."
Smrgol paused to clear his throat.
"Took to living separately, even from each other. There are no good caves out there among all that bog and water, of course. They must be feeding themselves mostly on fish from the sea, nowadays, I don't wonder. Only an occasional sandmirk, sea lizard or stray chicken is to be found in that sort of territory. Oh, there are a few small holdings and impoverished farms on the borders of the fens, and occasionally they can be raided. But even those'll have suffered from the blight; and everything they own'll be stunted or hardly worth the eating to a healthy dragon like you or me, boy. Why, I've even heard some of our mere-dragon relatives have fallen so low as to try and exist on garden truck. Heard of one even eating cabbages. Cabbages! Unbelievable…"
Once more they had to use their wings to reach another thermal; and by the time they got to it and Smrgol took up talking again, it was obvious to Jim's ears that the older dragon was definitely winded.
"Well, there you have it… Gorbash…" he said. "I guess that covers it, pretty well. Keep… your head, my boy. Don't let your natural… dragon fury run away with you; and you can't help… But do well. Well, I guess I'd better be turning back."
"Yes," said Jim. "Maybe you'd better. Thanks for the advice."
"Don't thank me… boy. Least I can do for you. Well… good-bye, then…"
"Good-bye."
Jim watched Smrgol fall off in a sloping dive, turning a hundred and eighty degrees as he swung to catch a lower thermal and the wind from the seacoast, which was now behind him. Smrgol dwindled quickly and Jim turned his attention back to what lay ahead of him, personally.
Below him at the moment, the forest and open ground over which Jim had approached the woods holding Carolinus' house had given way to a wide landscape of desolate moors, interrupted by strands of just a few trees, and some poverty-stricken huts made of what looked like fallen branches tied together in bundles, the roofs thatched with hay or grass. The inhabitants of these, when surprised outside their dwelling, invariably scurried for shelter at the sight of Jim winging overhead. They were dressed in furs rather than in more conventional clothes and did not appear to be a very attractive people.
However, as Jim continued on his flight, these habitations became more and more occasional and finally disappeared altogether. The moors were ending now and the forest Smrgol had pointed out was close. Unlike the coniferous woods around the Tinkling Water, this other growth was apparently of deciduous trees such as oaks and willows. They all seemed curiously leafless for this time of year and their branches, seen from above, had a gnarled and tangled look that gave the forest a particularly forbidding look; as if it was the kind of place that would not easily let out again anyone who wandered into it on foot. Jim felt a twinge of smugness at being able to soar safely above it.
In fact, once again the intoxication of being airborne was making him feel better than conditions justified. He had no real idea of what he was headed into; but that did not seem to disturb his cheerful feeling. He had wanted to go to the Loat
hly Tower and Carolinus had argued against it. But here he was, at Carolinus' direction, going toward it anyway. Whatever the reason was for his being headed in this direction, what he was doing at the moment felt to him particularly right…
Now, the far edge of the forest was almost underneath him. Beyond, there was nothing but the green fenland, stretching to a misty deeper-blue line which must be the open sea. The fens was a good-sized area, he saw, a greenly lush, low-lying wilderness of land and water. It filled the landscape before him to the skyline in all directions except straight ahead, where the sea blue showed.
He searched about it with the telescopic vision of his dragon-eyes for some sight of a structure which could be the Loathly Tower, but he could pick out nothing. The breeze that had been blowing against him dropped abruptly, and a new, light wind began to push from behind him. He stretched his wings to it, and let it carry him, gliding at a small angle down the invisible air surface as if it was some miles-long, magic slide. The fenland rose to meet him: spongy, grass-thick earth, broken into causeways and islands by the blue water, thick-choked itself in the shallower bays and inlets with tall seagrass and club rushes.
Flocks of water fowl rose here and there like eddying smoke from one mere, drifted over and settled on the surface of another, a few hundred yards away. Their cries, thinned by the distance, came faintly to Jim's hypersensitive ears.
Ahead, heavy clouds were piling up above the coastline to the west.
Jim soared on, above the still water and the soft grass, smelling the distant saltwater. He looked worriedly at the declining sun which was just now beginning to slip down behind the thick cloudbank he had just noticed. It would be nightfall before long. He was hungry and he had absolutely no notion of what he should do once it was dark. Certainly, he could not continue in the air. It would not be pleasant to fly full-tilt into the ground because he could not see where he was going. It would not be pleasant, in fact, to fly full-tilt into one of the bays or meres. He could land and travel onward on foot—but there would probably be bogs.
The sensible thing once the sun set, he thought, would be to spend the night on one of the small land patches below him. Not that such a prospect sounded very comfortable. Also, he would be completely exposed down there if anything decided to creep up on him.