“Lyonesse isn’t a thousand miles away. Maybe a couple of hundred-“

“Who cares if it’s a hundred or a thousand? You’re not supposed to do that!”

“Actually,” said Jim, although he felt his rejoinder so far had been rather weak, “I wasn’t even that far off. I was with KinetetE-“

“That makes it worse!”

Age and experience had taught Jim a few things-one being that this was one of those arguments he would never win if he argued until the end of eternity.

“Of course,” said Jim.

“-I actually couldn’t let you know I was coming in advance, this time,” he said, after they had sorted themselves out-which took a little while. “KinetetE was sending me back down to Lyonesse. She did the ward that protects me down there, you see, and I’d had to open it, so she had to do it over again. Also, I wanted to check on a few magical points with her-I love you, too-and I got her to send me to you on the way back. She sent her regards.”

“Just as long as it was necessary. Regard her for me, the next time you see her. Have you eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Oh, I think so,” said Jim, trying to remember. “There’s been so many things going on, I have to think. Yes, I’m sure I did.”

“Brian never thinks of it unless it’s under his nose; and then he eats like an ogre. He can get away with that, but when you’re with him you try to keep up with him. I could have some food sent up here in minutes”.

“No, there really isn’t time. Anyway, of course I ate. It’s just that so much has been happening.”

“Sleep?”

“Yes, I definitely did sleep, last night in the Drowned Land,” said Jim, thinking of waking in the darkness of the tent to find himself tied up, with Brian and Dafydd in the same situation.

“Why did you need KinetetE to send you back to Lyonesse? You could send yourself there, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Jim, “but she knows how to send me back to the minute after I left it, so no one there has any idea how long I’ve been gone. I still need to get back as soon as I can-magic-wise it’s expensive to burn time this way-but I couldn’t come up here without seeing you.”

“But you said you came from Lyonesse.”

“Well, we stepped over the border to have a look at the situation in Lyonesse, met the QB-the Questing Beast, I’ve told you about him-and some other people, including a couple of Witch Queens-Morgan le Fay of Gore and the Queen of Northgales. Oh, and we met the Original King Pellinore, too. I think you’d like him. Kind of like Brian, double-sized and just as stiff-backed about being a Knight. He was one of the Round Table, you know.”

“I’ve read about Pellinore.”

“Of course you have. But I think you’ll still be surprised if you ever meet him. I was. But how about you? How’ve things been here?”

“What you’d expect. The Castle people have their work down to fine points now, you know. Everything goes off like clockwork. I could sleep until noon every day if I wanted to and never be missed.”

“Doesn’t sound like the Malencontri I know,” said Jim. “Like clockwork? We never have even twenty-four hours go by without something jamming up the clockwork.”

“Everything was handled without dropping a stitch, I promise you.”

“Oh?” said Jim. He could not put his finger on what was bothering him. He looked at her carefully. There were no shadows under her eyes, but he had the feeling that there ought to be something like that showing on her. “How about you, then? How have you been eating?”

“Alone,” said Angie. “That’s how I’ve been eating.” And he could have sworn that it was an unfortunate choice of words; that if the shadows under her eyes had been there, they would have deepened.

“They came back!” he said furiously. “I told them to go and they came back! I’ll Put an end to that! I’ll throw a ward around the whole castle. They may be Powers, but they can’t move through a ward that’s set up to keep them out. And I’m going to find some way to make them pay for this and for the time before-“

“Be sensible, Jim! Putting a ward around the castle is just as bad as questioning John Steward about it. You’ll scare everyone else in the castle to death. Anyway, John wasn’t in the Hall at the time.”

“Nobody! Not even the servants, unless there were some out of sight but still in hearing.”

“What happened?”

“Did I?” he said, cooling down, but still ready to kill Dark Powers. “If so, I’d forgotten. But I’m glad I did; and I’m glad you remembered it and ordered the Dark Powers out. Angie, you’re a hero.”

She hugged and kissed him.

“Thank you, Jim,” she said. “But I’m really not. I’m just like any other rat. If you corner me, I’ll fight!” She hugged him again.

“Now,” she said, standing back, “I’ve told you the truth about here. You tell me the truth about things down there. How are things in the Drowned Land and Lyonesse?”

He slumped a little, and blew out a long breath.

“Not good, as a matter of fact,” he said. “For Lyonesse and the Drowned Land both. But that young King of the Drowned Land is bright and brave, too.” He went on to tell her in detail about the challenge King David had made to King Pellinore.

“David didn’t have a chance, of course,” Jim finished. “Even if he’d been as big and strong as Pellinore, he wouldn’t have had a chance. I had to break the ward KinetetE put on me to heal the hurt he’d taken, to make sure he’d live. Otherwise-“

Jim suddenly realized he was about to put his foot in his mouth.

“-Morgan le Fay might have got at me if KinetetE hadn’t picked me up in time.”

“So, she pulled you out of Lyonesse. That was why you went to her first!” Angie checked herself. “But these wards of hers really do keep you safe down there?”

Angie beamed.

“I’ll accept that,” she said. They looked at each other. “Now what, then?”

“I’m glad you told me about the wards,” said Angie. “That much is certain, anyway. What was KinetetE’s plan for fighting the Dark Powers?”

“She didn’t have any. I don’t think Carolinus would, either. But Merlin-I meant to tell you, Angie, I talked to Merlin. Talked to him just like we’re talking right now.”

“But he’s dead! Or as good as dead. Shut up in a tree with his own magic by what’s-her-name-“

“There’s some disagreement, evidently, about which name she actually had,” said Jim. “He’s shut up in a tree all right, but it seems he likes it that way. A powerful man, Angie, a powerful magician. I tell you, after talking with him I can believe people like him and Arthur and Lancelot were bigger than life. Oh, there was something he said I wanted to tell you.”

“What was it?”

“Well, he wouldn’t answer any direct questions-I got the impression he was sick and tired of people asking him to predict the future. Anyway, I’d gotten out of him that I’d done the right thing in letting Pellinore go talk to the other Originals-other Knights of the Arthurian Legends-since Pellinore was a King and Lyonesse could only hope to win if its forces were led by a king-and Arthur and Lancelot are both gone; and since Lancelot had become a hermit for the rest of his days, he would never pick up a weapon again.”

“But you said there was something Merlin said to you, you were going to tell me. Something else than what you’ve just said?”

“Yes. I was just explaining how it came about. I’d been trying to nudge him into telling me something useful about how Lyonesse could be made to win. He wouldn’t say. But he did come up with this other statement-and it’s hung in my mind as if it ought to mean more than it sounds at first hearing. He said, the selfish win in the short run. The unselfish nearly always win in the long run. You know, I can believe he’s right.”

“That was all he said?” Angie looked at him oddly.

“On that subject.” Jim found himself sounding defensive. “It sounds like some old granddaddy saying, some old saw, doesn’t it? But the more I think of it, the more it seems it ought to tell me something. Does it suggest anything to you?”

“I don’t know,” answered Angie slowly. “Was he talking about a man or a woman?”

“Neither. Or both. He didn’t specify.”

“Well, it’s certainly got a lot of truth in it. Someone who’s selfish usually just bulls in and takes what she or he wants, and leaves it up to you to object, if you want to. An unselfish person tends to let them get away with it-so there’s your short-term winner. But the unselfish person, who wasn’t just cowardly, but was in the habit of expecting to give more than he or she got, might just let it go. And in time, people would notice the unselfish one was unselfish; and like her or him for it. So the unselfish one would end up with more friends and a happier life-so there’s your long-term winner.”

“That’s been pretty much the way I was thinking about it myself,” said Jim. “But what you just came up with was a general statement; when you start trying to apply it to the ordinary world, it gets tricky. Who’s selfish? And who’s unselfish?”

“That’s splitting hairs, isn’t it?”

“Not if you try to stick to what Merlin said to begin with. My first thought was that the people in Lyonesse, especially the Originals, had to be the unselfish ones. But then I remembered, the Legends reported some of them as not doing all that much that was unselfish. Take Gawain. Arthur himself, when Gawain was dying, said, “In you and Lancelot I took all my joy... ‘-or words to that effect. But it was Gawain who answered it was he who was to blame for all Arthur’s final battles, because of the hatred he had developed for Lancelot. But Gawain’s hatred was because Lancelot slew his two brothers-though Lancelot didn’t know they were two of those he’d had to fight to save himself.”

“Well, at least the Dark Powers are certainly selfish!”

But are they? Or are they just as much a victim of what they were created to be-as the humans who suffer because of the way they help them try to destroy History or make Chance everything?”

“Got you!” said Angie, pointing her right index finger like a pistol at him. “You said they were ‘created to be.” Who or what created them? Whichever it was, wasn’t that creator selfish in making something only designed to destroy?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “Somehow, though, it doesn’t help to give me any ideas about how Lyonesse and the Drowned Land can rid themselves of the Dark Powers.”

“You could be right-though I’d rather they helped.” Jim shook his head. “Anyway, I’ve been around and around in my mind with Merlin’s words and turned up nothing. The trouble is, Angie, Lyonesse hasn’t really got that many people in it. Just the Originals and their descendants-if it comes to fighting anything like a war. The Drowned Land has people, but outside of the Blues and maybe a few others, none of them are fully armed, armored, or experienced in fighting.”

He sighed and held out his arms.

“But I’ve got to be getting back down.” They held on to each other for a long moment. “Look, if you ever need me, just call my name, out loud. I’m setting up magic so I’ll hear it no matter where I am; and be right with you.”

“I’ll be all right here,” said Angie, as they let go. “You just take care of yourself down there.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. The ones in trouble are those two unlikely little lands and the ones that live in them. But don’t you take anything from the Dark Powers if they show up at all again. Call me.”