Having reappeared, however, he came from the trees to them at a more reasonable pace, to let the messenger he had spoken of trot his horse level with him. The messenger was young-surprisingly young, Jim thought, no more than fourteen years old. But he wore the clothing of the Drowned Land leaders, among which Dafydd and his Blues belonged. Also, there was a quiver at his side and an unstrung longbow at his back, stretching from above his head as he sat in the saddle, down to past the horse’s withers. A bow Jim would have thought too long for him to pull.

His face was pale and drawn with fatigue, which gave him the look of being older than his plainly youthful years-and it was only then that Jim realized that he was once more looking at the young King of the Drowned Land-a very worn young king.

“Your Majesty!” he said, stepping forward to hold the stirrup as the King swung down from his saddle. “I hadn’t thought-may I name to you King Pellinore, one of the Originals of the Legends that people this land of Lyonesse. As of course is the Questing Beast, whom you have met already. And Sir Brian you already know, also.”

“Yes,” said the boy-King.

“King Pellinore, may I name to you...” Jim ran out of words and turned to the Drowned Land monarch. “Forgive me, your Majesty, but I’m afraid I was never told the name by which you should be introduced.”

“I am David.”

“... Name to you King David of the Drowned Land. But what brings you, out of all the other people in your land, to me, your Majesty?”

“I speak for my people,” said the young King, lifting his head and squaring his shoulders. “We must have your help without delay, Sir James. Otherwise my people and my land are lost.”

Pellinore said nothing immediately; though the words “without delay” must have triggered a powerful reaction in him. But Jim felt his presence acutely, standing there, towering over both him and the newcomer. Jim’s mind raced; and he hurried to speak before Pellinore should.

“I’m afraid you’re asking me that at a bad time,” he said, as gently as he could. “I’m not free to leave Lyonesse right at the moment. What’s been happening in the Drowned Land? And why did you come, instead of sending someone else, like Dafydd?”

“Dafydd ap Hywel, like all our best bowmen, is needed to defend our cities, which now hold all who belong to the Drowned Land. Even the people of the fields and forests have fled to them for shelter from the winged monsters.”

“Winged monsters-“ For a second, Jim’s memory had jumped back to his first encounter with the creatures of the Dark Powers. “Didn’t Dafydd call them something other than that?”

“He did. I do not remember what it was. You are right, he had a name for them. But I had no time to remember it, for the decision was that I must go and get you to save us; for the bite of the monsters is death.”

In the end, his arrows used up, a harpy had gotten though to Dafydd and bitten him; but when Danielle, who was not then his wife, told him she loved him, he had refused to die...

I know them,” he said, jerking himself back from memory of that time. “They’re one of the kinds of creatures the Dark Powers make. But none of us except Dafydd could do anything against them. I’m no archer and never could be one like Dafydd; and it took him to aim and shoot fast enough to keep them from us. Besides, didn’t You say your best archers are holding off the Harpies?”

“Only the Blues are great with the bow,” said the young King. “The other Colors know it from childhood, but without a Blue to captain each guarding force, some Harpies would get through; and those Blues must sleep sometime. But beyond that, Dafydd said to get you. He said that where you go the Dark Powers draw back; you find always some means to drive them away. We must have you with us, Sir James, and speedily! Even the minutes we spend here talking count against us!”

“He cannot go,” said Pellinore, in a deep, hard voice. “He is committed to Lyonesse now. After he is done here, he may help you. Cannot you understand that, bo-“ He broke off just in time and substituted the words “-King David?”

The young King swung about to face Pellinore, and stood looking at him. They regarded each other as a small terrier and a heavy-shouldered mastiff of four times the size might do. Then David turned to Jim.

“Is this so?” he said.

“Well, you see...” Jim searched for words that were not there. They would not come. David swung back to face Pellinore.

“Then I challenge you!” said David. “I will fight you for possession of him.”

Pellinore stared down at him.

“You are mad,” he said. “Your worry for your people has driven all sense out of you. You are still a boy, far too young; and in any case, not a knight.”

David threw his head back.

“I was knighted by my father on my fifth birthday. After that, like all kings’ sons in the Drowned Land, one of my studies was the use of sword and lance. Yield up Sir James or I call you a recreant knight!”

Pellinore, Jim, and Brian stared at each other. It was unbelievable. Ridiculous- not merely like a terrier and a mastiff, but more like a small puppy squeezing though the bars of a cage in a zoo, to challenge the male lion there.

In this case, thought Jim, looking at Pellinore, the male lion was looking unusually grim-which baffled Jim until he realized the grimness was part annoyance, part admiration. Brought up in a martial environment, the one thing that was admired was courage-even if it was foolish courage.

Pellinore could be not without a feeling of kindness toward the boy. But unfortunately he was trapped by what and who he was. As a Knight of the Round Table, let alone as a King, he had been threatened by the one word he could not overlook. A recreant knight was one who was willing to buy his life at any price; and the young King, although he was inexperienced and something like a quarter of a man-in terms of his age and experience-was still old enough to know what he was saying.

There was no way out for Pellinore. As for the young King-Jim looked at his pale face, his head still held high. There was no way out for him either, now, but to beg mercy from Pellinore. No hope of that.

“King Pellinore,” burst out Brian suddenly, “I beg you accept me as the champion, to do battle for King David-“

“I will have no champion!” The boy’s voice cut across Brian’s. “I am a king. I choose to fight. I, myself, and no other for me!”

“You have neither weapons nor armor,” said Pellinore gruffly to David, looking down at his challenger. “I remember when my sons were your age... come along with me. Perhaps some of their armor will fit you.”

He led the boy in through the door of the log building, closing it behind him.

“Is the child mad?” said Brian to Jim. “Could it be he was bitten by a dying harpy without remembering it, and poisoned just enough to lose his wits?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jim. “I think it’s a couple of things, working together. One is that it’s hard to believe you can die when you’re his age. He knows what he’s up against, just by looking at King Pellinore; but I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought there was a chance for him to get lucky and win. But he’s also got guts and a sense of responsibility; and I’d bet he’s hoping that if he’s killed trying to get me to help his people, I’ll be so ashamed and impressed that I’ll find some way to get free of Lyonesse and go to their rescue. I give him credit for brains as well as guts.”

“There is something magickal you can do there, then, about the Harpies?”

“No,” said Jim. “That’s the thing. There isn’t. If I had the use of my magic-“ He broke off, lowered his voice, and looked around. No one but the horses-five of them now-was within hearing; and in normal horse fashion, there being nothing else to do at the moment, they were eating grass. “Brian, I’ve explained to you what a ward is, haven’t I?”

“The magick protection?”

“That’s it. I’ve got one around me now. I probably should have told you about it after we got away from Northgales, but...” He briefly explained about the ward KinetetE had put around him and that Morgan le Fay had burned her fingers on, trying to strip it from him.

“... So you see,” he wound up, “it’s as if I don’t have any magic at all, right now. To use it I’d have to open the ward; and I suspect Morgan herself, or someone or something, is ready, just waiting for the moment I crack it open-“

Jim broke off as the door to the building swung open, and both of them turned towards the sound of its opening. David came out, now in armor and with a sword scabbarded at his side-armor that was somewhat loose for him, but did not fit him badly enough to hamper his movements.

The suit of chain mail, however, did make him look bigger and more able. Unfortunately, he was followed out by Pellinore; and with his appearance, the illusion of added size and ability about David evaporated.

“You will have to use your own horse,” Pellinore said to the young King. “I have no horses here that will allow anyone but me to ride them. But I will ride the weakest of mine so that there shall be as little difference between us as possible. Horse! Back to where you belong. Tallow!”

His white horse stopped eating and headed back around the corner of the building, passing as he did so an approaching, somewhat overweight mare, also white, but of a rather strange white-literally, in fact, about the color of tallow wax. Like Horse, she was already saddled and bridled. She grunted agreeably as Pellinore’s weight descended onto her back.

David had already ridden his own horse-it appeared to be gray in the Lyonesse lighting, and was light-weight and bred for speed, rather than strength, as most of the Drowned Land equines seemed to be-some thirty yards off. Now he turned it about to face back the way they had come. He sat it quietly, waiting.

“This is crazy!” said Jim, suddenly overcome with a feeling of revulsion. “I can’t just let the boy be killed like that!”

Brian’s fingers closed like a metal clamp on Jim’s arm.

“You can do nothing,” he said. “James, do not open or break, or whatever you do with your ward, over this lad. I would help him, too, if I could. So would Pellinore, if I am any judge of knights-Round Table or not. But there is no way King Pellinore can do otherwise than if the lad was full-grown and skilled. If he does not fight, this boy will become a man someday; and the story will be told of how Pellinore yielded himself to him. What you see is King David’s doing and no other. May God’s mercy be upon him.”

He crossed himself as Pellinore touched his spurs lightly to the mare; and the animal, clearly startled by what was perhaps highly unusual treatment, leaped forward. The young King, seeing this, put his own horse into an almost immediate gallop; and had covered more than half the distance between them by the time they met.

David’s spear, correctly balanced loosely in his hand as he and Pellinore neared, was seized tightly only in the moment in which they came together. His actions could have been used as a perfect demonstration of all Brian had tried so hard to teach Jim. The point of David’s spear touched Pellinore’s shield first by a fraction of a second-touched and slid off the angled shield into air.

Oh, no! thought Jim. But in that same second, Pellinore lifted his spearpoint away from the center of David’s shield, to strike only on its upper edge; and the mare, who in spite of being smaller than Pellinore’s white warhorse stood at least three hands taller and weighed proportionately more than David’s horse, rode the young King’s steed into the ground.

“You are magick!” thundered Pellinore, laying the boy at Jim’s feet. “He is like , Lamorack, my son, at that age. Save him!”

Jim glared at Pellinore, the fury in him at himself finding in this command an excuse to turn itself on the Round Table Knight. Pellinore’s face above him was hard and grim-nothing more.

But abruptly, what he had said about his son Lamorack got through to Jim, making him realize that Pellinore was perhaps incapable of showing much other emotion-that inside he might be suffering over what he had just done to this boy. Jim turned on Brian, who had run out just behind him.

“Will you get out of my light, Brian?” he all but shouted, as he knelt beside the unmoving David “How can I see with you throwing your black shadow on him?

“Grant me pardon, James” said Brian, and stepped aside. The white sun overhead flooded the white, unmoving face of the boy. The worn, tired look on it was gone.

Now that Jim had shouted at Brian, however, there was little else he could do. David was either unconscious or already dead. Jim’s hand felt for the boy’s jugular vein, hunting for a pulse; and discovered that he, himself, was holding his breath. He breathed again, as he felt the throb of moving blood against his fingertips.

Unconscious meant hope-but it also could mean death in a while, if nothing was done when the unconscious person had suffered a concussion. In fact, even as he knelt beside David, the thought came home to him, hard and fast, that if anything was to be done, it should be done now. Seconds could be precious.

The hell with it! He would have to work quickly, almost instantaneously, before his vulnerability could be taken advantage of. But maybe...

He broke open his ward, concentrating on the magic for the healing of wounds. It was done in almost the same moment, but when he tried to close the ward again-just as quickly-it would not close.

David’s eyelids twitched. They opened.

“Sir James!” he said in a dreamy voice. His gaze went beyond Jim to Pellinore. “I admit myself vanquished, King Pellinore, and do crave your forgiveness for my trespasses against you.”

“You are forgiven, lad,” said Pellinore in a harsh voice. “You rode and fought in proper fashion. You have a good heart; and if sobeit you live, may well become a passing good knight. The armor and weapons you wear are now yours, by my gift.”

He turned and walked away, the mare following like a dog.

“James!” said the voice of Brian; and Jim, still kneeling, with an effort looked up and behind him, to find Brian smiling down at him.

“Thank you, Brian,” he said, meaning “Thank you for not resenting that I took my own upset out on you.”” But the words would not come out clearly, for some reason; and the ground, the sky, the trees-Brian himself, and the QB, who had also come to join them about David-were beginning to whirl around him, all their parts running into each other, everything being sucked down into darkness, like water whirlpooling into a drain.

“I had to open my ward,” said Jim. “I thought Morgan le Fay had got me.”

“I got to you first.” KinetetE sat down in a now green-and-white, newly slipcovered armchair, opposite the one he discovered he was sitting in. Curiously, the severely cut red-Magickian’s red-robe she was wearing did not clash with the other two colors, any more than white and red flowers, together with greenery, in a vase, would have clashed with each other.

“What I meant was, you managed to beat her to me; and I’m grateful. She’s pretty powerful.”

“Not bad. No slouch, of course,” said KinetetE. “Possibly worth an AAA rating if she were up above and lived right. The trouble is, she thinks she’s better than she is. She’s a fool if she imagines she can work with the Dark Powers and not be used by them, for example. But being in the position she’s got down in Lyonesse, now that Merlin’s shut up in the tree-by the way, you spoke to him a couple of times, didn’t you? What did he tell you; aside from what you told Brian?”

“I’m not really sure,” said Jim. “He doesn’t answer questions and he talked to me mainly about myself. If you don’t mind, I won’t say anything-for now, at least.”

“I would,” she said. There was a short, not entirely comfortable, silence.

“But,” said Jim, “there’re a lot of things I haven’t said to anyone else that I do want to talk to you about. In fact, I’ve been thinking of trying to get in touch with you.”

“Oh?” said KinetetE, suddenly in a thoroughly fresh, friendly, interested tone. “I’m glad to hear it. Your view of matters down there is exactly what I’ve been hoping to hear from you; but I preferred to have you volunteer to tell me. By all means, tell me what you wanted to talk to me about, Jim.”

“It’ll help if you’ll tell me first if you’ve been watching everything I’ve been doing and saying; or just checking on me occasionally.”

“Not checking,” said KinetetE. “I’ve got more to do in my twenty-four hours each day than I can get done, without adding your concerns to the rest. I set up a watch to let me know if you got into real trouble, that’s all.”

“Then,” said Jim, “I’d better hit all the high spots. You probably know Morgan sent me to the Forest Dedale-“

“After I got out of there, we got in touch with the Questing Beast-you know him?”

KinetetE nodded again-with a touch of impatience this time.

“She’s a caution,” remarked KinetetE.

“Caution?” said Jim. “Oh, I see what you mean. Well, she almost captured us; but we only got free with the help of-the QB thought-either the trees or the Old Magic. That reminds me, I wanted to ask you about the Old Magic-“

“I can tell you nothing about the Old Magic,” said KinetetE frostily. “I don’t know everything.”

“That’s odd-Merlin said the same thing. Anyway-“ Jim went on hastily, “from Northgales’s castle, all of sudden we found ourselves in the woods. And while the QB was talking about the Old Magic, there was another darkness, and when we came out of it, we were in the Drowned Land-“

“Interesting,” said KinetetE, putting the tips of her fingers together.

“-to find a discussion going on among men from several different colors, gathered about their new, young King-and there was an attempt to either assassinate or disable him while we were there. A man of the Sea-Purple was maybe responsible. Dafydd, Brian, and I went to look in the Drowned Land’s Borderland with Lyonesse; and found an army of fighting men from up here encamped there. And guess what?”

“I never guess.”

“Well, they took us prisoner; it turned out the Earl of Cumberland-you remember him and Carolinus at Malencontri?”

“I knew,” said KinetetE, “the Earl of Cumberland before you were-a long time before you did. Just tell me what happened to you in his hands.”

“We escaped from them into Lyonesse-that’s it, in short form-but I thought you’d want to hear about our seeing Agatha Falon with Cumberland-and Modred.”

“Modred?”

“Yes. All those Knights who died in the Legends have come back to life-still not enough to match the numbers of the men the Earl seems to have brought into the Borderland-and so, it appears, has Modred. At least, the Questing Beast says he smelled his scent; although the person I saw was wearing a mustache and beard, which no one remembers him wearing.”

“Never mind Modred. How did Cumberland get an army into Drowned Land territory? There’s no entrance but by magick.”

“Agatha,” said Jim. “She was there with the Earl. I know you told me she wasn’t a witch, and I believe you-but she could have picked up a simple spell or two. I thought of the Witches’ Gate.”

“Did you, now?” KinetetE stared hard at him. “And what were you doing to find out about the Witches’ Gate, yourself?”

“Well, there were all sorts of servants’ tales about witches getting into houses where every door was locked with a crucifix or a blessing. I just figured out how it was most likely to be done, tried doing it once on the wall of an empty guest room at Malencontri-and it worked. Is there another name for what I did?”

“He never told me not to.”

“Hmp!” said KinetetE. “Well, what did you learn about Modred, Agatha, and the Earl?”

“And you broke the ward I gave you, to save that young King of the Drowned Land,” said KinetetE coldly. “Luckily, at that moment I was checking on you. Why, may I ask-or was it mere sentiment?”

Jim had been ready for this question, expecting it and having time to think his answer over.

“He’s unusually bright. I think he’s what the Drowned Land needs, so I did what I had to to keep him alive.”

“And to hell with Lyonesse?” said KinetetE.

“Not to hell with Lyonesse,” answered Jim. “I also think the young King has a part to play in keeping Lyonesse safe.”

“You’ll have to explain how to me.”

“I can’t,” said Jim, looking at her squarely. “I’m not sure why I think so myself. That’s why I’ve been wanting to talk to you. There’re two things I’m pretty sure of, but I may be dead wrong on. The first is, there’s only so much magical energy in the world-am I right?”

“Of course you’re right,” said KinetetE. “Carolinus must have told you this more than once-save your magickal energy, no matter how much of it you seem to have at the time. For one reason, there’s always something turning up that will require a good deal of it-something unexpected. Don’t tell me he didn’t tell you.”

“He did, many times,” said Jim. “But he didn’t explain it was because there was only so much available.”

“But what other reason could there be? The nonmagickal person thinks that the high price he has to pay a magickian is simply because the magickian can get away with asking it-like that old dragon who was the grand-uncle of the dragon body you were in, whatever his name was-“

“Smrgol.”

“Yes. The time Smrgol tried to hire Carolinus’s help to get Angie back from the other dragon who’d stolen her-“

“Bryagh.”

“-for the Dark Powers at the Loathly Tower. You’ll remember, they settled on a high price-I don’t recall exactly how much, but-“

“Four pounds of gold, one of silver, and a large, flawed emerald.”

“James,” said KinetetE in a terrible voice, “outside of my own duty to join you in this battle against the Dark Powers, I have a real affection for you and Angie. But if you do not stop footnoting every third word I say, I will maroon you at World’s End-which I believe Carolinus showed you once-with no one to talk to for nine hundred and ninety-seven years but that oversize hourglass, counting the seconds until the next Phoenix wakes up!”

“Sorry,” said Jim.

“I should think so!” she said. “As I was trying hard to tell you, the ordinary person thinks the high price is because the magickian can ask it; actually it’s because magick takes magical energy, and that has to be earned in other ways by the magickian-so it’s not that easily replaceable!”

“Ah!” said KinetetE.

“But if the Dark Powers can only afford to lose so many Harpies, then maybe the Drowned Landers can get by without me. That’s important because I had to tell the King that Lyonesse had first claim on me. But, as it turned out, even though he had only been five when it happened, he had been knighted; and he challenged King Pellinore for me-“

“So that was it,” said KinetetE, with an unusual gentleness in her voice. “I wouldn’t have thought it of Pellinore-he was challenged, of course...”

“And he is Pellinore. He lent the boy the armor of one of his sons, and gave it to him afterwards. But I think if it had been the son himself at that age, who had challenged him, he would have felt he had to meet him.”

They both sat in a little silence for a moment. Jim finally broke it.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you happen to know how long it would take to make a new harpy to replace one who’s been killed?”

“No,” said KinetetE, “but I can find out. How long to create a new harpy, you?”

She was speaking directly not to any ordinary, invisible magician’s tool, but to the sampler. As Jim looked, its message about treading on thorns vanished. A new message spelled itself out in large letters.

“You should have learned to handle time yourself by now,” said KinetetE. “Practice! That’s the thing-oh, well, I guess I can manage it for you, once more.”

“Thank you,” said Jim. “Good of you to do this. I’ll practice. Oh, and by the way, could you send me to Malencontri first-I just want to say a word or two to Angie-and then give me a command I can say that will send me back to Lyonesse; arriving, as I say, just a minute or two after I must have disappeared?”

KinetetE looked at him for a long moment, and he was sure she was about to cancel the promise she had just made. But instead, she turned to the sampler.

“All right,” she said, “back to regular duty.”

The Years, Months, and Days in their numbers disappeared; and the advice about shoes came back again.

“I think,” she said, in a perfectly calm voice, “you said there were two things you wanted to ask me about?”

“Yes. I wanted to be sure about something. Am I also right that, being Powers only, the Dark Powers might be able to conquer something solid like a territory, but there’s no way they can hold it? They can’t change or build anything. All they could do would be to stand over it forever, ready to act against anyone else who tried to use it-and if they concentrated on doing that, they couldn’t use their abilities anywhere else?”

“Perfectly right,” said KinetetE. “How does that come to be important?”

“It struck me even before I came to Lyonesse this last time. They’ve always worked through some other party when there was something real to be done.”

“Yes,” said KinetetE darkly.

“-and I’d just chased them out of Malencontri, but this was the first time it occurred to me that, like everyone and everything else, they had to have limitations.”

“They’re not the kind of limitations any Magickian has ever been able to take advantage of,” KinetetE said.

“If they’re limitations, there has to be something an advantage can be taken of.” Jim discovered he had clamped his jaws tightly together. He undamped them. “I think they’ve realized this themselves, maybe a good time back; but that’s why they’re trying to gain Lyonesse, then-and the Drowned Land, too, for all I know. Though I don’t think the Drowned Land’s that important to them-except as some means to an end.”

He stopped talking. KinetetE did not reply immediately.

“Well, do you think I’m right about that?” Jim asked finally.

“I may owe you an apology, Jim,” she said at last. “You may see some things more clearly than the rest of us. I will tell you something I’ve made it a practice never to tell anyone: I don’t have any answer for you. I just don’t know.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Only if you could assume that they had a way of taking control through the magick connection; and also knew why the individuals couldn’t just refuse to be taken over.”

“Maybe people like the Knights of Lyonesse can’t refuse.”

“I doubt that,” said KinetetE. “In any case, what else can the Powers do but ask- ask and hold out some sort of bait? Isn’t that the situation, Jim? Just ask? And how far will that get them, with anyone who can’t be tempted or tricked into doing their will?”

“If asking is all they can do, you’re right,” he told KinetetE. “But it worries me to think they might even try this if they thought they had no other way around their problem.”

“We’ve got two different theories, you and I,” said KinetetE. “Go back down to Lyonesse and find out which-or neither-is right. I’ve put your ward back. Give my regards to Angie.”