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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.
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.
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"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
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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 theLoathlyTower 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 coursenot!" snapped Carolinus. "Didn't you hear the second part of the
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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, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]