“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 title 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 circumstances 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 mass 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 nobody 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, compassionate 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 assumed 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 spaces. 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.”

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.

“Forgive me, forgive me...” whined the dog hurriedly; and the lid of the chest flew up, revealing its contents which were indeed colored stones of all kinds; none of them cut and faceted, of course, since the cutting of gems had not yet been developed on this world.

The chest disappeared. Jim felt a small pang of regret-but appearances were everything at this stage.

“Now,” said Jim, “I’ll listen to your story and then make my decision.”

Jim had been thinking furiously, trying to remember. The names ‘ ‘Sakhr al-Jinni” and “Sharahiya” rang a faint bell in his head, connected possibly with Richard Burton’s Thousand Nights and a Night. No-Sakhr al-Jinni was only referred to there. Somewhere he had read more about him. There was a connection with King Solomon of the Hebrews. But Kelb was clearly waiting for some response from him before going on.

“And then what?” Jim said in the best tone of impatience he could manage or muster. “Why did Sakhr al-Jinni let you out of the lake of fire?”

“I was released not by him, but because the great King Solomon, David’s son, imprisoned him, with other evil Djinn and Marids, each in a copper bottle; stopping these up with lead which Solomon sealed with his ring, and casting Sakhr al-Jinni into Lake Tiberius to lie where he would forevermore be beyond harming anyone. Once he was embottled, his powers that kept me in the lake of fire no longer held, and I was free to go.”

“Well, then,” said Jim, “your troubles are over. I don’t see why you’re bothering me.”

“Alas!” said Kelb. “A clumsy undersea giant, picking up the bottle that held Sakhr al-Jinni to look at it curiously, loosened the seal only five days ago; and that evil one is now free in the world again-full of rage and searching for all those who were his servants before, and particularly me, who had now escaped the punishment he had given me. He is far stronger than I. I cannot withstand him. Help me, O my master!”

It was all pretty far-fetched, Jim felt. But on the other hand, this was a world of magic and unusual creatures. Anything could be true. It might be simply that Kelb was, at most, only embroidering the story of his life.

“Who was the clumsy undersea giant that let Sakhr al-Jinni loose?” he asked.

“I know not,” said Kelb. “I was only told it had happened by others like me, who were escaping at last from Sakhr al-Jinni’s wrath.”

The chances of it being Rrmlf who allowed Sakhr al-Jinni to escape from his bottle were not very large, Jim told himself. The ocean back in Jim’s twentieth-century world covered something like a hundred and forty-two million square miles of the earth’s surface. It was unlikely that the amount of ocean here on this world was much different. That provided enough room for a high number of sea giants, even if they weren’t to be considered common.

Also, even if Rrrnlf had been the cause of Sakhr al-Jinni’s release, jumping from that possibility to the further possibility that Sakhr al-Jinni had somehow managed to destroy or disable him was a second long guess. But Jim had spent enough time now trying to summon Rrrnlf, and this Kelb might turn out to be able to do a great many of the things that he was hoping that Rrrnlf could help him with.

“Have you some place where you can hide safely, until I summon you?” Jim said to Kelb.

“I have, my master,” said Kelb.

“Well, go and hide there,” said Jim. “I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve made up my mind about a few things. Mind you, I’m not saying I’ll extend my protection to you. I don’t extend it to just everybody, you know.”

“Off with you, then,” said Jim. “I’ll call you back when I’m ready.”

Jim stood up from the rock on which he’d been sitting.

He started back along the beach, around the headlands that separated where he’d been sitting from the town of Paphos itself-a place half village, half town, mainly filled by local Greeks; but with a fair sprinkling of the descendants of crusaders, from one crusade or another, who had never gotten any farther than Cyprus. These latter had prospered and built themselves almost European residences-not exactly castles, but very comfortable establishments; and it was Sir William Brutnor who was providing Jim with food and shelter right now in the customary fashion of British and European upper classes, when the visitor was someone they recognized as belonging to their part of society.

“Do you want me also to call you ‘master,’ m’lord?” asked Hob, in a small voice, as he rode Jim’s shoulder.

“But you would protect me?” asked Hob. “I’m not just one of the ‘everybodies’?”

“Of course not,” said Jim. “You’re my Hob of Malencontri.”