“Messire!” he said; and something about his high-pitched, thin voice matched the implication of his stare.

“Master Manikin!” replied Jim, falling back on the abrupt manners he had learned from observation of other knights dealing with inferiors in this age. “Will your bridge bear the weight of two horses, both laden? Answer me briefly, yea or nay.”

“Not even one horse, unladen” said the manikin; and it seemed that he sneered even more by answering with other words than the ones Jim had ordered him to use. “It floats upon the water, messire, and with that much weight would sink deep enough below the water’s top so that the current would sweep your horses off their hooves.”

“Hmm,” said Jim, deliberately ignoring the attitude of the other, who was now staring at Jim in an even more offensive way; as if any child would have understood what he had just said without being told. “Dumb insolence” the British armed forces had called that, a few hundred years before Jim’s birth in his own world.

“Well,” said Jim, “I guess in that case we’ll swim it.”

“I would not advise Messire to do that,” said the manikin, lifting his head with his upper lip twisted unpleasantly. “The current of the river is very strong; and no ordinary beast can swim it without being swept away and drowned. Only my Cloud Courser has the strength to stem its power. I will rent him to Messire for four gold pieces of value; and then whistle him back to me once Messire is on the other side.”

“Your price is a thought high, Manikin,” said Jim, still playing his knightly part, since the other seemed determined to go on playing his, “and your manner ill likes me. My horses will swim across.”

“Do not mistake... Messire,” said the manikin. “Look at the horse ye ride, and then at Cloud Courser. Has your horse such size and thews?”

Jim glanced briefly at the other horse, which had still neither moved nor made a sound. He was saddled and bridled, as if merely waiting for a rider. But it was true, Jim saw, now that the two were side by side, with only a small distance between them. The little man’s animal was taller, heavier boned and muscled than Gorp by a noticeable margin-Gorp, whom he had never seen, until now, matched in size and obvious strength, except by Brian’s Blanchard.

He looked again at the river. The broken limb of a tree shot toward them along the water’s surface, caught for a moment on the edge of the floating bridge, and then was pushed underneath it by the current; to reappear a second later on the other side and shoot with equal rapidity on downstream, to where its above-water outline, like a sketch of itself in soft, dark pencil, was lost to sight in the greater uniform darkness of the surrounding forest.

The current was definitely traveling at the speed of a river throwing itself down the steep side of a mountain. No horse could live in that. It would be a miracle-or magic-if the black horse could.

Well, there was always the knightly way of dealing with this problem. Thankfully, he had seen enough of those called knights and gentlemen in this time and world to realize that men like Brian and Chandos were not typical of those who wore armor. This was a spot where being like most of the pack would work better for him.

“Churl!” he said, drawing his sword. “Not even that horse of yours could carry me across. You seek to slay me for some purpose of your own; and the loss of your horse is a cheap price to pay for the death of a knight! With four gold pieces of worth you could buy yourself ten such horses!”

The results were remarkably gratifying.

The manikin ducked and cowered back as the blade of Jim’s sword gleamed like silver upheld in the white light. His face contorted.

“Not so, messire-my Lord!” he cried. “Not all the gold in the world could buy another like him! I swear on my soul he can take you safely across-take you, and pull your two horses with him on lead ropes as he goes!”

Jim lowered his sword, but did not resheathe it.

“Then you will make good those words!” he roared, beginning to be somewhat carried away by his knightly role. “You, yourself, will mount your stallion and ride him across the water. Now! While I watch. Do yon hear me?”

“Yes, yes, my Lord!” The manikin edged around Gorp’s rear hooves to get to his own steed. “But, my Lord-my four pieces of gold-“

“You dare speak to me of pay when I suspect you of tricking me to my death?” Jim roared. He reined Gorp half around to face the little man and lifted his sword once more in the air. “You’ll get your pay if and when I choose to give it to you. Now ride!”

The manikin scrambled into the saddle of his stallion. He picked up the reins and the motionless animal came to life. Together they rode to the brink of the rushing water, just below the floating bridge, and plunged in.

Jim put his sword away, and frowned at the two of them. The manikin seemed to have no doubt of the horse and his horse no fear of the racing water. They quickly reached the other side, the big black horse swimming powerfully until it could put its front hooves on the farther bank and heave its body up out of the water. The manikin reined its head around to face Jim from across the racing current.

By the time they were halfway back, the rushing stream plucking and pushing like powerful hands against the animal’s legs as high as his hocks, Jim was sure that the running water would carry the legs from under any other horse; but this one came on without pausing to the near side of the stream, successfully stepping out at last and striding up to where Jim sat on Gorp. The horse still looked past Jim, rather than at him.

“You see, my Lord?” cried the manikin triumphantly.

Jim saw, all right. What he had just watched being done was physically impossible. The black horse might be able to swim that current; but there was no way, walking on that bridge, that he could keep it from pulling him off balance. The stallion had to have accomplished what he had just done by magic-there was no other answer.

If Morgan le Fay was behind this-and Jim was feeling more and more sure she was-then it was her magic making this possible. So, if the fight with the accursed, wifeless knight had been an attempt to test Jim’s fighting ability and courage, it appeared more obvious all the time that this was an attempt to force him to use the black horse, for some reason.

Well, if that was what she wanted, she was not going to get it, he told himself.

The manikin must be in on it on her side. In fact, he, the stallion, the tent, and the river might all be her creatures or things. Unless they were all illusions-and Jim himself was enough of a magician to know they were not, now that he was close to them.

So, rule out illusions. What else was left?

“-Well, my most puissant Lord?” the manikin was saying, sneering once more and halting the still-wet stallion in front of Jim.

Jim stared at him, a long, wordless stare; and the sneer faded as the manikin’s face grew pale.

“How can I prove-“ the manikin began, wringing his hands. But then he stopped suddenly and the touch of a sly look crept onto his face. “But why does your Lordship not ride him across yourself, and see how strong he is? He has strength to lead both your horses and to spare. You will see.”

Jim hesitated. If the horse tried to throw him off and drown him in the river, he could always save himself, of course; but that would mean using his magic. And since the name of the game here had become avoiding any such use that Morgan le Fay might be able to observe...

Still, he had to go forward somehow. He could not stay on this side of the river indefinitely. He could, if he had to, try riding the stallion and see what developed. Besides, one of the few things that Brian-types and the kind of ordinary medieval gentleman-knight Jim was pretending to be had in common was that they never turned away from a challenge.

“I will ride the beast,” he said, and waved in his best disdainful fashion at the little man. “Fetch a clean cloth and wipe the saddle.”

“Yes, my Lord. Immediately, my Lord!” The manikin ran into the tent and came out with a cloth that seemed to gleam brightly silver in the Lyonesse sunlight. He carefully wiped the saddle and stood back from it.

Not only that, but he showed himself marvelously obedient to his rider’s intentions. Almost without Jim’s laying the right-hand rein against that side of the black neck, he turned about and angled toward the river just below the bridge. As he reached the edge and plunged in, Jim braced himself for the touch of icy waters, like those from high on a mountainside.

But the water was almost warm. Jim frowned. They were in midstream already and he tightened his legs around the barrel of the horse’s massive chest-

This was it. Only magic would get him out of this-and once he cracked his ward, Morgan would have him.

Water filled his mouth and despair mounted in his chest. Brian and Dafydd- God knows he needed them, but they needed him. If Morgan took him out of the situation now, his friends would be lucky to escape Lyonesse alive; and Brian, damn chivalrous fool that he was, would probably consider it his duty to stay and do what he could alone. If so, Dafydd might well feel that he could not leave; and both of them might die.

Better to lose his magic and hold on to life a little longer. Maybe, even without magic, he could frustrate Morgan somehow...

His strength was going. The water closed over his head. He heard a roaring in his ears and felt the toes of his shoes dragging on the bottom of the river. Panic took him. He tried to push himself off from that surface and reach the air; and to his astonishment he bobbed up with his face barely above the water.

He gulped air for a wonderful moment, to get what he could into his lungs before he went down again-and then, to his dawning astonishment, he realized he was not going down again. He was floating on the surface, being rushed along by the galloping speed of the water. It was a miracle.

Or was it?

He suddenly realized he was no longer in his human body. He was in his dragon shape. Morgan had now gotten a good look at his instinctive shape-changing ability-and as far as Jim knew, there were no resident dragons in Lyonesse.

But wait a minute-dragons were supposed to be heavier than water-that was why Smrgol and all the other dragons of the Cliffside Eyrie had thought him a reckless fool for flying about at night. Why, in the darkness, a dragon could fly right into a lake, where he would sink and drown.

But he was not sinking-for some strange but welcome reason. He heaved a sigh of relief... and immediately began to sink. He was aware of his half-spread wings under water making rowing motions, trying to push him up that way.

Hastily he inhaled again, filling his lungs; and once more his body rose to ride high in the water.

So much for dragon beliefs that they would drown if they fell into any water that they could not scramble out of. Certainly the dragon body-as a body-was heavier than water. But dragon lungs were enormous. That was why dragons had the pouter-pigeon chests they did. The lungs had to pump an incredible amount of oxygen to the dragon body while it was taking off, flying almost straight up.

But still, he had changed his shape; and if Morgan was watching closely, she had discovered more than he had wanted to show her.

He had to have done it unconsciously. He had been a dragon often enough to know how, as a dragon, he had an entirely different set of instincts. When he changed shape, he not only appeared as a dragon, he became a dragon-emotionally, reflexively, as well as consciously. As a man he did not enjoy fighting-the way Brian and a surprising number of other knights, both good and bad, seemed to. But as a dragon, he could get emotionally caught up in a fight and think only of destroying his opponent.

So it was not surprising, really, that by this time he was almost as much of a dragon as a man. It would not have occurred to the dragon part of him that he could use magic to escape-though at the cost of letting Morgan le Fay know of it. The dragon-Jim would have been thinking only that he was at the bottom of a river and drowning.

At any rate, he had not had to crack his ward.

In his dragon body, he was now able to hold all of his head above water, when as a man he could not have. Even as he thought this, he was making plans. All he had to do now was scramble ashore-both wings and feet would help with that- and he could go quietly back through the woods, or even through the air-

He inhaled deeply, held his breath, lifted his wings out of the water, and spread them to their full, enormous width as a preliminary to taking himself back to solid land-and suddenly recognized that, ridiculous as it seemed, he was being carried back into the same clearing the river had whisked him away from.

Yes, there it was, the clearing, the bridge, and the tent. The manikin was staring with a horrified face at a completely unexpected dragon. Gorp and the sumpter horse, who had seen dragons before-and probably recognized this one even at a distance-were calmly watching. The black horse was standing immovable and unmoved, exactly where Jim had seen him at first glance.

At that moment, the river sucked him under the floating bridge. He came to the surface beyond it and was whirled past and out of their sight again, as the clearing ended and the river curved into the forest. He had pulled his wings back to his body just in time to keep them from possibly being damaged on the bridge-or, for that matter, since they stretched far enough, and the trees were close enough, on the massive, upstanding tree trunks on either side of the water where the forest started.

But he was breathing comfortably now; and he had instinctively begun to look forward, again. He would have to wait for some open stretch to risk trying to get out of the stream; then, he would have to pull himself ashore swiftly before the river took him into thick forest once more.

He had a few moments, at least, in which to think and plan-on second thought, he could take almost as much time as he wanted. The river might run fast but he would be far faster, once in the air. He could fly back to his horses in minutes. The horses-there was still the problem of getting them across the river. No dragon could fly while carrying anything close to the weight of even an adult human. A dragon’s powerful muscles could deal bone-breaking blows with his wings, as he himself had done when battling a thirty-foot sea serpent on land; but flying the horses across the river was out of the question.

So, how to bring them over?

He did not have time to answer himself. He had been riding the current in the middle of the stream, his eyes watching for a clearing that would allow him to spread his wings and get up into the air. Just at that moment he saw one.

But it was not the kind of clearing he had in mind. This one had a tent in it, a floating bridge across the river, and a black stallion-to say nothing of a Gorp and a sumpter horse with an identical load roped on its back.

Clearly-crazy as it seemed-it was the same clearing and he was being carried into it once more. But the heavy trunks of the forest trees were still too close on either side for him to spread his wings at full stretch and literally fly out of the water. Cautiously, with the clearing he had originally left getting closer every second now, he tried half extending his wings; and made a great effort to move himself close to the bank.

He just managed it, half scrambling, half flying to the side of the river, the same one on which the tent and horses stood, ahead. There, he told himself; that took care of things for the present. He could get back in the river and be carried to the horses when he was ready. But first he wanted to unravel the puzzle of a river that raced in its shallow bed, but ended up going nowhere but back to the same point.

If he could only get up in the air, he could see the route he had followed and solve that puzzle. He looked around himself at the trees. First, he had to find the clearing he needed, large enough to spread his wings fully. Then, a short burst of his top takeoff speed, and he would be above the treetops.

Even as he thought this, he made out more than one-in fact, there were three such spaces visible, now that his eyes were above river level-deeper in the forest. He waddled to the nearest, cast a cautious eye upward to make sure the higher branches would not bar an ascent, and launched himself upward on an explosion of energy.

He did not need to go much higher than the treetops to see the secret of the river-what there was of it. As things like this nearly always turned out to be, there was nothing really marvelous about its galloping rush with no slope to account for it. The fact was, it was no real river at all.

Clearly, it was no more than a sort of very long, circular ditch. The warmth of the water, and its shallowness, should have been enough to make him suspect what he now saw. His knowledge of how magic could be used now made the whole matter an entirely possible creation. A trench like this could be created by magic- though human hands digging it would be cheaper if you had command of enough hands to do that much work for you.

Importing the water would take a chunk of magic, of course, but not an impossible amount if there was a lake or river lying not too far off; and he had to guess that Morgan le Fay might have as much magical energy at her disposal as any AAA magician in the world above. Given that, there was only the extra energy required to keep the water circulating whenever someone you wanted stopped reached it. It would still not be cheap to do, but well within the resources of an AAA individual.

On the other hand, Morgan might not be bound by the magical pattern he was familiar with in the world above. She might have a different kind of magic, and have it to burn; but just be a tightwad with it. Both Carolinus and KinetetE had shown some tightwad tendencies at times; and he had a strong suspicion that Charles Barren, the third of the upper world’s only three AAA+ magicians, might show the same tendency, though he had had little to do with him.

But at any rate, he now knew the river was not the impassible barrier it had seemed to be. The manikin must know, too, of course, but squeezing him for more information would probably just be a waste of time. Chances were he knew nothing useful; and any effort to make him tell would only alert Morgan to the fact Jim was learning things-he was still convinced she was watching him.

No, the best way was to go back into the river as if he had never escaped it, then climb out, and go on playing the bully knight who was possibly not too bright.

Jim returned to the river and plunged in, still a dragon. The current snatched him quickly to the clearing; where his own two horses and the manikin stood looking at him, while the black stallion continued ignoring everything.

He made sure he stayed on top of the water, and came bang up against the floating bridge, which stopped him. Happily, it did not break under the impact of his weight, with the push of the current behind him. He used the claws on his upper legs to pull himself along it to the bank where the tent stood.

The manikin was still staring, standing as if frozen, as Jim climbed up onto solid ground. The sumpter horse, recognizing him in dragon shape, began grazing again. But Gorp, always glad to see him-either as human or as dragon-came heavily toward him.

Jim changed back into his human shape again, complete with his sword and armor. The manikin stared, then shrank back as Jim gave him a long, steady look. Jim deliberately said nothing more. With as ominous a look on his face as possible, Jim put his left foot into its stirrup and mounted Gorp.

“Hah!” he said, staring at the manikin. The manikin cowered even more. Without another word, Jim rode off along the river in the direction he had just come from, the sumpter horse following automatically at the end of her tether.

“Hob?” He glanced back over his shoulder, once he was in the woods out of sight and hearing of the manikin.

“Oh, yes, my Lord. But, how do we get over that river?”

“Never mind that,” said Jim. “We’re just going to follow the river until you tell me we’re in line with the escape spot.”

“And we’ll only have to stop a moment to rescue the poor little bird. Then we’ll all be free!” said Hob happily.

“Oh, beg the grace of your forgiveness, my Lord. But this is it-what you wanted me to watch for.”

“I gathered that much.”

p

“Magic,” said Jim shortly, not feeling like making any greater explanation. His ear was still ringing.

Probably better not to ask Hob. Better to wait and see when they got there- they were already out of sight of the river.

“You know, Hob,” said Jim, to change the subject, “I’ve been thinking. Even once we’re out, I won’t know how to start finding Brian, wherever he is now.”-If he’s still alive, that is, he added silently to himself.

“I need help. But the only person I know from that first time here is the younger Sir Dinedan. He may be the direct descendent of the knight of that name among the original Knights of the Round Table; but he didn’t strike me as someone very useful in a case like this. Then there’s the Questing Beast you mentioned back at Malencontri. He seemed to know everybody. But how to find him... ?”

Jim had ended up talking to himself, almost inaudibly. Nonetheless, his voice in his own ears was enough to cover the sound of Hob beginning to speak. Jim just caught the end of what he was saying.

“How would you ask a tree anything?”

“Just ask them, my Lord.” Hob looked at all the heavy trunks and thick branches about them. “Trees, where is the QB right now?”

He fell silent. He listened. Jim listened. There was no sound, not even that of a breeze in the branches.

“Yes. But what I meant was-“ Jim broke off. There was no point getting into a discussion over it. “Sure. Go ahead, have the horses ask them, then. We’ve got nothing to lose by trying.”

“Well, actually, m’Lord, I don’t know how to ask the horses anything; but I thought you, with your magick...”

“Me?” said Jim heavily.

Of course, he might have known Hob’s inspiration would have been leading that way. Jim had never talked to a horse in his life-with any hope of being understood, that is. What good could magic-

The thought came to a sudden halt. Carolinus could talk to animals and be understood; and Jim had gotten the impression that this was at least possible. Carolinus had turned a huge boar into a warhorse capable of carrying a massive troll, magically armored to look like a knight for a joust at the Earl of Somerset’s Christmas party.

That had taken not only shape-changing, but getting the boar to act like a horse, and to know what a horse was supposed to do in a joust. Carolinus had said he talked to the boar. Jim could at least try-but it would have to be nonmagically, to avoid cracking his ward.

He half closed his eyes and concentrated on thinking like a horse. If he could think in horse-thoughts, then simply visualizing the horse he had picked to talk to as hearing the message that was intended might help... simple words, of course- no horse would see any sense in unnecessary verbiage.

He thought.

“Ask trees,” he visualized in his best-imagined equivalent of a horse snuffling at his belt in strong hopes of finding there a chunk of fresh, sweet apple, “How find QB?”

“What? What?” Gorp’s snort wrote itself on the mental slate of his visualization.

“I said-“ Jim was beginning again.

“Stallions stupid,” sniffed the sumpter horse unexpectedly. “I say. You, tree-where QB?”

“Hug a tree?” Jim turned his head to stare at the hobgoblin. Hob nodded solemnly. “You can’t mean that. A horse can’t hug a tree.”

Slowly Jim swung down from his saddle. He felt embarrassed even by the eyes of Hob and the horses on him. Thank heaven there were no other humans to see him-particularly some of his friends. They would think him wounded, sick, perhaps insane-or the most laughable object they had ever seen in their lives.

He could imagine the incident being repeated down the ages on this World: ‘... and did you ever hear the story of how the magickal and most valorous Dragon Knight fell in love with a tree?” (roars of laughter from those listening; and the speaker urged to tell the story over again several times in succession).

He stepped over to the yew tree. Close up, it did not seem to have so much of the strange, alien look that the forest had as a whole. He stopped in front of it, hesitated, gritted his teeth, and put his arms around it.

He hugged it. Actually, though it was not in any sense warm to his touch, and its bark was somewhat rough, the tree also had a strangely friendly feel-as if it and Jim were old acquaintances. It was a well-meaning, good-natured tree, he could feel that now, solid and deep-rooted-

“Over there,” spoke the tree, voicelessly inside him.

Jim heard a faint rustle overhead and looked up, letting go of the tree trunk in time to see its outermost twigs lifting and withdrawing. He turned back to Hob, now sitting on Gorp’s crupper.

“Over there?” he said to the hobgoblin, as he swung himself back up into the saddle. “That’s what it said to me.”

Hob nodded; and the sumpter horse gave a snort that could have been agreement.

“I heard this time, m’Lord,” said Hob proudly.

“And what’re those directions supposed to mean?” demanded Jim. “Over where? Over in what direction-and how far?”

“Can’t you tell by magick, m’Lord?”

“Hob,” said Jim, “you’re a good friend and I like having you with me. But there’s one thing you have to get straight, once and for all. Magic can’t do everything... not just any thing you happen to want...” His voice ran down and became thoughtful. “... hmm.”

“Hmm, m’Lord?” echoed Hob.

It wouldn’t hurt to try, Jim was thinking. He could visualize himself in-and transport himself to-a place he did not know only if he could clearly visualize someone he knew as being there. In that case the operative command was-only it wasn’t a command; that stage of magic was long behind him-the visualization was of him together with the individual he had thought of, wherever that individual might be. He had a clear, sharp memory of the Questing Beast, from passing through Lyonesse before.

At any rate, visualization had worked that way in the upper world, for him. Whether it would also work in this magic-laden land-which really seemed to be full of magic, drenched in magic-maybe more magic than reality...”

No, he decided. He would have to crack open his ward even to do a visualization transfer; and he dared not do that for fear a watching Morgan le Fay might immediately take advantage of his being unprotected.

Of course, Morgan might have grown tired of watching him by this time-no, not when he still hadn’t won free of the Forest Dedale.

“No, m’Lord,” said Hob. “I don’t either.”

Of course, it was just at that minute that they did hear something-the sweet trill of ascending notes from a bird, followed by a saw-edged, high-pitched voice trying to climb the same musical scale.

“Well, here we go,” said Jim; for the sounds came from the clearing just visible through the trees ahead of them. It revealed itself as a very small clearing indeed, but one admitting enough sunlight so that in its center an oak sapling about a dozen feet in height was daring to stretch out its skinny limbs almost parallel to the ground, just like its ancient relatives around it; with small twigs and sparse leaves on them.

On one of the lower limbs perched the small shape of a bird. Before it stood the Diejjenbacbia cantans.

“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.”

“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-“

“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.”

“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.”

“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, “KinetetE 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. KinetetE 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.