"Ah, there you are, Mage," said the dieffenbachia, without turning around.
Jim had no idea how the dieffenbachia saw—with the surfaces of its large leaves, perhaps? If so, it would be able to see all around itself at once. He put the question aside.
He also decided not to bother correcting the address of "Mage" which the plant had just used. He had grown weary of explaining that he was not qualified for that title. Those he told always listened, nodded, smiled—and went right on using it. If he was a magickian, he had to be a Mage—it stood to reason.
But he had reached the plant by this time. He halted Gorp, and the sumpter horse also stopped.
"Did you hear me exercising just now?" went on the dieffenbachia, before Jim could say anything. "She said I'd get steadily better, and I am!"
"She?" said Jim.
"The great Witch Queen, Morgan le Fay!" replied the dieffenbachia proudly, but in a decidedly rusty voice. "Didn't you notice the difference?"
"I didn't hear you sing exercises the last time I saw you."
"Well, take my word for it. With the great Queen's magick and that nightingale there glued to the tree by magick, I'm almost as good as I ever was. Perhaps better. Yes—almost better. In fact, so much better, I really don't need that bird anymore."
"Turn it loose, then," said Hob.
"Hob—" began Jim; but the plant was already answering what had come out from Hob almost as a command.
"Oh, I couldn't do that. The great Queen herself put it there. Once she finds my voice is back, she'll come turn it loose. Probably."
"Ha!" said Hob.
"Ha?"
"Hob!" said Jim sternly. "Don't do anything—please. Let me handle this. Clearly, Dieffenbachia cantans, you know nothing of hobs."
"Well, no," said the plant. "I never heard of them until now."
"I thought as much. Otherwise you might be shaking with fear. I call this one 'Hob' for short, but the truth is he's a Hobgoblin!"
"I've never heard of them, either."
"And well for you, you haven't. Lyonesse clearly doesn't have any. But there's a whole kingdom of Goblins, much feared in the land above—and of all the varieties of them, there is only one variety among them shunned by all the rest—the Hobgoblins."
"Are they"—the dieffenbachia's leaves had indeed begun to tremble slightly—"more fearful than the rest, then?"
"No one knows, from moment to moment," said Jim in the most low-toned and ominous voice he could manage, "what a Hobgoblin may do. No one wants to risk finding out. They cannot stand being denied what they want. Hob, here, now has set his heart on seeing your bird set free; and woe betide—"
"I can't. I might need it. In any case, it's fixed there by the magick of the great Queen! I can't turn it loose!" cried the dieffenbachia.
"That is false!" shouted Hob, in a voice that unfortunately was somewhat shrill for a fearful Hobgoblin. "Magick only works on people and Naturals. That's why your Queen couldn't just point a finger at you and cure your voice. All Creatures—birds and beasts—can't be touched by it and can't be helped by it."
"That's not true!" said the dieffenbachia, getting a little shrill himself. "If the great Queen's magick wasn't keeping it there for me, why did the bird stay?"
"Because nightingales are wonderful, gentle and kind!" retorted Hob. "They feel the pain of others—creatures and people alike! They feel it very much! But they need freedom. Your Queen must have told this nightingale about your trouble and it let her put it there with you. Ever since, it could have left any time; but it thought you needed it here. It'll starve before it leaves if you selfishly go on wishing it to stay here!"
"I don't believe the great Queen can't cure me. Nobody else could—"
The nightingale burst into a sudden brief but beautiful fountain of song.
They all looked at it.
"What did it say?" Jim asked Hob in an undertone.
"It?" said Hob. "That's easy, m'Lord. It said I was right and magick wouldn't cure the plant's voice."
"You're all against me. Nobody wants to help."
"Ha!" said Hob again—the most hard-hearted exclamation Jim could remember hearing from him.
The leaves of the dieffenbachia began to tremble seriously.
"But I'm better already—listen, Mage!"
It burst into song—if song was what it could be called. Actually, Jim thought, its voice wasn't quite as bad as it had been when he had heard it at Kineteté's and as they were coming to this clearing.
"How's that?" asked the dieffenbachia. "Aren't I better?"
"Well, it's certainly different than I heard it earlier," said Jim.
"See, Hobgoblin? I'm much better. Almost cured. I probably don't even need the nightingale anymore. It can go."
The nightingale left its branch and flew to perch on Hob's shoulder. Jim picked up the reins of Gorp.
"Where are you going?" asked the dieffenbachia.
"Out of this forest," Jim said; and the horses began to move.
"Wait—" said the dieffenbachia, "I'll go, too."
They moved out together, the nightingale still riding on Hob's shoulder, Hob riding on the pack of the sumpter horse, Jim on Gorp, and the dieffenbachia traveling beside him—gliding along in some strange fashion, possibly on its root ends; but however it moved was hidden from Jim by the large green leaves of its upper person.
"Mi, mi, mi, mi…" he was chanting in a low voice to himself, running up a scale of notes and hitting about half of them very flat indeed.
And suddenly the forest about them was different. How different, it was impossible to say—but undeniably no longer what it had been. It was as if the atmosphere around them had changed.
"You know," said Jim, his conscience beginning to trouble him, "Kineteté was not able to help your voice. Morgan le Fay may not have been, either." He held up a hand before the plant could object in more than a startled squawk.
"But," he went on, "this land you live in, Lyonesse, is the most magical place in the world. And that magic is in the earth, the trees, and all the creatures and everything else in it together. And it's a magic you've got as much a part of as anyone else. That could mean I can't fix your voice. Kineteté can't, Morgan le Fay can't—but it's just possible you can, using that magic that's always surrounded you. Believe in the song you sing long enough and you'll sing it as it ought to be heard."
The dieffenbachia's leaves rustled, all for a moment lifting toward Jim. Then they dropped, turning away again.
"No. No…" said the dieffenbachia. "The great Queen has almost cured me. I'll be back in full voice in just a day or so—I'll have to leave you now."
And it glided away between the trees, dwindling swiftly with distance, until the surrounding trunks hid it from view.
The nightingale sang two notes, took off from Hob's shoulder, and disappeared in the opposite direction.
"It's happy now, m'Lord," said Hob in a confidential tone of voice.
"Yes," said Jim, still thinking of the dieffenbachia—which was after all a thinking, feeling being—going off still unhappily wrapped in his self-delusion that Morgan would be his savior.
He shook himself out of that. The important thing now was to find a local guide and counselor. Almost without thinking, he pulled on the lead rope. The sumpter horse did not protest but came up close beside Gorp, though with her head no farther forward than Gorp's shoulder. Then she resisted going any farther. The only other equine Gorp would allow ahead of him was Blanchard—and not even always Blanchard.
"Speak to the trees," Jim asked. "Ask them which way we go now to find the Questing Beast."
"You need not find me, Sir James," said a voice. "I am here."
And so were they all—still in Lyonesse. Still in a forested part of that land. But not where they had been a moment before.
Chapter Twelve
Jim now found himself looking at a small stream running through an open glade; beside which stood the Questing Beast, with his snaky neck ou
tstretched, drinking from the clear, running water. As Jim watched, the Beast—or "QB," as he had asked to be called the last time Jim had been in Lyonesse—lifted his head and looked at Jim with no appearance of surprise at all.
"Forgive me," said Jim. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"You did not startle me, Sir James," said the QB in its pleasant tenor speaking voice, which at first seemed so unlikely coming from its snake's head. "After the first few centuries in Lyonesse, none of us startle. Things happen, people come and go—but, if you'll excuse me a moment… I was just moistening my hunting voice—"
He lifted his head; and from his serpent mouth suddenly came the sound of thirty couple of hounds questing. The sudden change in volume was enough to make Jim stiffen in his saddle. A few of the hound voices, moreover, sounded a little as if they were gargling.
The QB frowned. Jim was intrigued. He had never imagined a snake face being able to frown. How was the QB doing it? He had no eyebrows.
"—Crave a moment's pardon, Sir James," the QB was saying, even as Jim thought this. "But this won't do. I'll try it again…"
This time the thirty couple of hounds questing almost blew Jim out of the saddle; but every voice was clear and pure.
"Much better," said the QB. "You were looking for me? The trees told me that, so I brought you to me. Faster that way."
"The trees talk to you?" Jim asked.
"Yes, it was one of the two great gifts Merlin was good enough to give me, once. The other was to be able to become a black-and-white staghound when needed."
Jim opened his mouth to ask why becoming a staghound was such a great gift—then closed it again. The matter at hand was finding Brian. "Well," he said, "it doesn't matter now. We're here."
"In a sense," corrected the QB, a little severely. "Actually, you are not Here, you're There."
"There?" Jim stared at him.
"Look for yourself, Sir James." The QB pointed with his nose.
Jim looked down and saw his legs, but no horse between them. Nor was the sumpter horse to be seen.
"Hob!" he said, in sudden alarm.
"Yes, m'Lord?" Jim turned his head. But no hobgoblin was to be seen on his shoulder.
"You see," said the QB, "you're really still back there where you hugged the tree."
"Oh, you know about me and the tree?"
"The word as it was passed on to me was that you must have a noble heart to hug so well."
Caught between embarrassment and the need to say something modest in reply, Jim stammered a little. He regretted the somewhat stupid words, once they were out of his mouth.
"Well, I'm a Baron, of course."
"Indeed, it shows," said the QB. "But even kings, sometimes, have failed to have noble hearts. Not all are like our great King, Arthur Pendragon. Which reminds me. Whence do you come; and why are you here this time?"
"I'm down from the land above—my home's named Malencontri, in Somerset. England." The QB bowed with beautiful snaky grace, inclining his head and upper body. Jim bowed back in as courtly a fashion as he had yet learned to do. "But you know," Jim went on, "I'd like my horses with me."
"Then you shall have them," said the QB. "Follow me, Sir."
He headed off into the woods. Jim followed him, riding on invisibility and feeling very strange now that he knew he was doing it. But they went only a little distance before the QB halted again and turned back to face him.
"Stop!" he said. Jim pulled hard on his reins and stopped moving. "Now, turn your horses completely around." Jim could have sworn he heard the sumpter horse nearby, grumbling something.
"Is this what you mean?" he asked, when he had reined to the right until he was facing back the way he had come.
"Almost. A few feet to your left… there. So, there you are now, all together in one place."
Jim looked down, and saw himself. He also saw Gorp and the sumpter horse, and, turning his head, saw Hob on his shoulder. He did not understand it; but that did not matter.
"Were we that close to you and didn't know it?" he said.
"Oh, no," said the QB. "I was nearly half of Lyonesse away from the Forest Dedale, from which you must have escaped. But you've actually been here all the time; and it happens I'm able to move very swiftly if I want to."
"I see," said Jim. "And to take others with you, I see, also."
"We all have our little gifts," said the QB deprecatingly. "But in this case, I took you and yours nowhere; because you were really here all the time."
Jim coughed.
"Forgotten that," he said.
"An easy, small matter to forget," replied the QB. "Now, Sir James, how may I be of service to you?"
Jim hesitated, not sure how to ask someone like this politely for help.
"Let me ask you a question, first," he said. "How much do you know about the reasons that brought me here?"
"Nothing at all. I know only that you passed through Lyonesse once before, on your way to the Gnarly Kingdom. By the by, I hope your visit there was a pleasant one?"
"It was successful."
"Ah, that kind of visit. I also know that Queen Morgan le Fay of Gore had a dispute concerning you with a person of great magic from the land above; and that as a result she was forced to let you go, and sent you to the Forest Dedale. There was something said by the Dieffenbachia cantans who lost his voice—and therefore the honor of singing before the Original Knights of the Table Round at time of war—to the effect that you, yourself, are of strength in magic; and that is the reason Morgan le Fay was so incensed against you. Also, you came here with another from the land above; but he is not with you now."
"That's a lot," said Jim. "Actually, my friend's name is Sir Brian Neville-Smythe; and it's about him I was looking for help from you."
"I do not know the noble Knight, I'm afraid."
"No, of course not," said Jim. "But he was one of those with me when we came here before; and is a close Companion of mine, and my best friend. He's been captured by someone, I'm afraid. I thought someone who knew Lyonesse as well as you could help me find him."
Slowly, regretfully, in wide sweeping movements, the QB shook his head.
"Forgive me," said Jim, a little stiffly. He had not expected so quick and flat a refusal to help. "It was just a thought."
"A good thought, Sir James," said the QB. "An admirable thought. Pray don't think me unwilling. I just may not be able to help."
"Oh," said Jim.
"You must understand. I am of Lyonesse, and one of the Lords of Lyonesse, by virtue of being enshrined in the Legends of our great King and the Table Round. I know all there is to know about Lyonesse and what is within it; excepting that which is deliberately kept from me. I did not know your friend had been lost to you, therefore that knowledge must have been hidden from me. So I can neither know nor guess where he could be now."
Jim nodded slowly.
"I understand," he said. "But at least you know Lyonesse."
"Yes, Sir James."
"I don't. Can't you give me some kind of idea about where to look, or how to at least start looking?"
The QB looked at him with steady snaky eyes.
"At a guess—he must have been captured by someone or something of power. First to mind for that would be the Queen Morgan le Fay. But I have no way of knowing that, or finding where Sir Brian would be hidden."
"Well, give me the whole list; and I'll check them one by one."
The QB's head came up.
"Sir James," he said strongly, "you sound like a true knight indeed; one well fit to tread the soil of Lyonesse. I will help you to my utmost. But a full list is not possible. It would have no end. From the Old Magick upwards, there are many, many magicks in Lyonesse. They are in all things here, and in almost all who live here—"
Jim nodded. He was beginning to understand. His own upbringing, from more than half a millennium later in time, led him to suspect patterns in everything. There could be one for the magicks here.
"—For e
xample," the QB was going on, "there are those unskilled in magick, but with one magick talent. Recall how Gawain, having forced a fight with Sir Lancelot close to the time of our Great King's passing, made use of his gift of waxing in strength from morning to noon, to the strength of seven men; but Lancelot withstood him and won over him after the noontide."
Jim would have sworn that his memory of the King Arthur legends had been buried and all but lost since his earliest years of reading. Now, though, with the QB's words, Jim found an image rising to his mind.
It was a mental picture of Gawain—but by a strange sort of double vision of the imagination, it was Brian at the same time—lying wounded and unable to get up, and shouting at Lancelot to come back and fight until one of them was dead, or Gawain/Brian would one day force him to fight again; and Lancelot's unforgettable words in Malory's account, just before he turned and left, saying "I will no more do than I have done. For whan I se you on foote I wall do batayle uppon you all the whyle I se you stand uppon youre feete, but to smyte a wounded man that may nat stande, God defend me from such a shame!"
For a second, to Jim it was all as clear in his mind's eye as if it was taking place before him.
He shook his head. No. Men could go crazy with hate or fury. But Brian—like Lancelot, not like Gawain, to judge from Malory—was too caught up in the ideals of chivalry. He would never act like Gawain. He would wait to heal himself and then go hunting for his enemy.
"Well," Jim said, "give me the list anyway. I'll start with Morgan le Fay, then, and see where I go from there."
"No," said the QB. "You deserve better from me than that. I have considered. Clearly, you are brave enough to be taken where I can take you. If you choose, I will carry you to Merlin in the dark of the sky—which is soon, now."
"Soon?" Jim looked to his right, above the trees; and sure enough, the white sun was now almost low enough to be lost in the upper branches of the surrounding trees. "It does set, then? How long is nighttime?"
"But a short time," answered the QB. "Long enough only for you to ask Merlin's help—if he chooses to give it you; and if you do not fear to speak to him."
"Fear? Why should I be afraid?"