But there also was Dafydd, who had just swung down from a horse that was still sweating and breathing hard.

“Dafydd!” said Jim.

“I called you, James, just as I was coming out of the woods, but you were already gone.”

“Well, I’m back now-“ Jim stopped and snapped his ringers in exasperation. “I knew I’d forget something. Be back again in a minute!”

“It’s no use, I tell you,” she was telling the singing plant. “The disorder of your voice is a side effect of the presence of the Dark Powers in Lyonesse. Leave Lyonesse and I can help you. Or stay until the Dark Powers go-Jim, what are you doing here?”

“Nothing-for the moment,” said Jim. “I just forgot to ask you something. Tell me: Morgan le Fay can always watch me whenever I’m in Lyonesse; I assume you can watch me all the time, too, or you wouldn’t have been able to snatch me up a little while ago, before she got me for opening my ward. So you ought to know what her limits are. Can she see me if I’m in my dragon body?”

KinetetE frowned at him.

“I don’t know,” she said, after a moment of silence. “Turn into a dragon and I’ll see.”

“Er-“ said Jim, looking around him, “this is a very nice little sitting room, but-“

“It is perfectly capable of making room for a dragon if I want,” said KinetetE. “Be one.”

Jim turned into a dragon. The room had expanded.

“I see you clearly and unmistakably,” said KinetetE. “Whatever gave you the notion that I couldn’t-ah, I see what you’re trying to tell me. Being human, I can see you with unassisted eyesight. Fly out the window and around the building until you’re out of my normal sight. Then fly back.”

“It’s a little small,” he said.

“What did I just tell you about this room? That also holds true for a window in it.”

He flew around the blind side of the tower and back in the window.

“Quite right!” said KinetetE. “You’re absolutely quite right. Magically, I lost sight of you the second you moved out of my physical eyesight. Of course! It’s a branch-off from the Law that magick can’t touch animals. It’s true dragons are something more than animals-like Naturals-but that just means some things magickal work with them, some don’t.”

“Good!” said Jim. “And can I take off the ward you put on me and use my magic when I’m in dragon body, then?”

“Not unless you know how to poison the ward you put back around you later, so Morgan can’t strip it off you when you have gone back to being human,” she said.

“Yes,” said Jim. She was right, of course. That principle was one of the first things he had picked up from Carolinus. “Too bad. I could be a real help down there if I could just use my magic.”

“That’s life,” said KinetetE. “Begone.”

“Poor Dafydd just rode in-more ready for a bed than a battle, James,” said Brian, an edge of reproach in his voice. King David and the QB were beside him.

Brian was standing, for all the world like a male emperor penguin Jim had once seen in an Antarctic photograph, that was balancing an egg on his two feet to keep it warm under a fold of his skin in a howling, snow-filled wind. But instead of an egg, Brian was supporting Dafydd, who was seated on the ground, using Brian’s legs for a backrest and sleeping so heavily he was on the verge of snoring. Very unusual behavior for Dafydd.

He had probably been captaining a team of Drowned Land archers against the Harpies, around the clock, thought Jim, remembering what young King David had told.

“Though, damme,” went on Brian thoughtfully, looking down at their motionless friend, “it might have been kinder to him if you had been even longer.”

“Sir James!” he said thickly. “I saw you from the edge of the woods and called-“

“And I disappeared again. I’m just now back. Sorry, Dafydd; but it was necessary for all our sakes.”

Dafydd ran the back of a hand across his lips.

“Is there water, anything, to drink about?” he said. “My mouth is dry as a land in drought.”

“Here,” said Brian. He stepped over to Blanchard, untied his saddle flask, and pulled out the stopper as he brought it back to Dafydd.

“I will go ask the good King for some,” said David. “He must have water within doors.”

But Hob was already coming up to Dafydd, carefully pouring water from a flask, as he came, into a rather battered bronze mazer-both items retrieved from among the goods on the sumpter horse.

Hob handed the brimming mazer to Dafydd, who took it in both hands and poured its contents down his throat without stopping to breathe; although the mazer would have held more than a pint.

“Good,” said Brian, watching him hand the empty mazer back to Hob. He passed his flask once more to Dafydd; who, to Jim’s surprise-Dafydd was usually almost as abstemious as Jim, himself-drank heartily from it.

“Now I have my voice again,” said Dafydd, handing the flask back to Brian. “My thanks to you, Brian, and James and Hob. I will remember this kindness so long as I live. But James”-he turned once more to Jim-“matters are desperate in the Drowned Land. Did our King not tell you?”

“Indeed, he did so,” said Brian. “And on being told James was bespoke by Lyonesse and could not come, challenged for James’s release King Pellinore, whom you do not know-“

“But I do, if only by legend and repute,” said Dafydd. He stared at the young King. “You were fortunate indeed he did not take up your challenge, as he had every right to do.”

“But Pellinore did,” said Brian, “and King David did right nobly in their spear-running, though of course he was unhorsed and the wits knocked out of him. But Sir James made him well again with magick.”

“Thank God! And thank you, James.” Dafydd looked at David severely and shook his head. “What madness took you to make such a challenge to a knight-a Knight of the Round Table at that?”

“At the worst, Dafydd,” said the King, “it seemed to me he might feel a sadness at having slain me; and from that sadness felt an obligation. So that he might, possibly with some others of Lyonesse, come sometime to our aid.”

Dafydd only shook his head again.

“You are King,” he said. “You owe it to all those in the Drowned Land to live and work for their good; rather than die for them. There are no lack of men to do that.”

“Yet I thought it worth the trying,” said David, “and it came out well. Beyond that: look you, Dafydd, if I am King, these decisions are mine to make.”

“Yes, Sire,” said Dafydd. There was an uncomfortable silence all around for a moment or two.

“But you came here for a reason, Prince Dafydd,” said the QB.

“I am no Prince here,” said Dafydd, “but a Master Archer, Bowyer and Fletcher; and would wish to be no other than that. But you are right, my Lord Questing Beast-may I continue to address you so?”

“As a matter of fact, there’s a limit to the Harpies you can have coming at you, said Jim. “I spoke to Mage KinetetE about that. I can promise you that for the Dark Powers to send endless Harpies at you has to finally exhaust their magical powers. More than that, though, I think I’ve come up with a way of hitting back at the Harpies.”

He turned into his dragon self.

The QB started at the suddenness of the change, moving backward a pace. David turned very pale indeed, but did not move an inch.

“It’s all right, Sire,” said Jim, his dragon voice booming forth. “It’s just me, James.

Turning into a dragon is one of the things I can do; and I did it just now because I think being a dragon may let me help your Drowned Land people against the Harpies-“

Behind him a door slammed, and a voice almost as powerful as his own roared.

“What is this? A dragon?” There was the slick, rasping sound of a sharp sword being drawn from a scabbard. “Horse!”

They all turned. Pellinore had come outside. There had not seemed any great difference in this last cry of his, but this time his tall white horse came around the end of the building toward him at as close to a gallop as the turn made possible. As it reached him, he leaped into the saddle, returned his sword to its scabbard, and seized the tall spear that stood upright in its boot beside the saddle.

He reined the white horse about to face Jim.

“It’s all right!” called Jim, changing back, with the middle word, from being a dragon to a human. “I was just demonstrating something.”

Pellinore’s spear was still in his hand and leveled at Jim. He reined his horse back to a walk; but came on, his face still dangerous.

“Are you such a Magickian as Holy Church would approve?” he demanded.

“Assuredly, he is!” said the QB, who had moved forward once more. “Would I have brought him to you otherwise? Also, the trees have spoken for him!”

“Well,” said Pellinore. “If that is so, I will put up my spear.” He did so. “But what was it you had been about to show these others-and I trust you had not forgotten that your first duty was here, in Lyonesse?”

Jim was trying to remember exactly what he had said that had bound him to Lyonesse first. It would not come to him. But of course, he told himself, Pellinore would undoubtedly take a very strict view of a knight’s word. Nonetheless, it was time to look this King in the eye.

“I forget nothing,” he said, trying to sound as close as he could to the way he thought Merlin would have said it.

“It’s time,” he went on, “for you to tell me some things. I want to meet with whoever’ll be the leaders of the Original Knights of the Round Table here in Lyonesse. While you’re arranging that, I must make some magical preparations for what I may have to do; and for that I may have to leave Lyonesse-because as long as I’m here, Morgan le Fay’s going to know where I am. As it is, she can’t touch me, for certain magical reasons-but on the other hand I can’t use my own magic to help you. But if I can get out of her influence, maybe I can arrange things so I can help. Starting-I hope-with what comes from my meeting with the Originals. Now, can you arrange that?”

Pellinore slid his spear, upright and butt-down, almost absentmindedly back into its boot by his saddle.

“Now that you speak of this meeting,” he said, “I cannot remember such a gathering, since Arthur left us. But if all are to come and that means all who once were, save Arthur and Lancelot, to be with us once more... it minds me... my two sons could be there.”

His face had taken on a light as he talked. Not a great light, but as if the rocky face of a mountain had been touched for a moment with winter twilight. His gaze, which had slid aside as he talked, almost to himself, returned and sharpened on Jim.

“I will essay it,” he said. “But mark me, Sir James, if there are some who will not come, I will not attempt to force them. We have long since ceased from fighting among ourselves-for any reason.”

“I have a feeling,” said Jim, “that they’ll all come.”

“If God is with us,” said Pellinore. Turning, he rode off, away from them into the trees, as he had gone before.

Jim changed back into a dragon.

“Brian, Dafydd, your Majesty, QB-forgive me, all of you. I can’t tell you why I’m leaving you, because of the danger of Morgan overhearing; it may be half an hour, or it may be as long as a full day or two, I don’t know. But if you’ll all stay here, where I can find you when I come back, it’ll help more than anything. Can you all wait for me; or is there anyone who’ll have to leave?”

“James,” said Dafydd, “I do not know what dangers you will be going into. But I do know that our Drowned Land needs their King. Even I am needed in this evil time. We two must return to our own land.”

“That’s up to you, Dafydd,” said Jim. “I can only say I’d like you both to stay. The serious battle’s to be here. And think about something else. Harpies can fly. That’s what makes their poison teeth so dangerous to any who can’t. But dragons can fly, too.”

“James!” said Brian. “Am I to wait here and do nothing, then?”

Jim hesitated, already crouched for his upward spring.

“Shelter was not my concern,” said Brian, a little stiffly. “It was the need to ride and do.” He thawed abruptly. “I will await you patiently, James.”

“Thanks, Brian. I’ll be as quick as I can; then there’ll be plenty for both of us to do.”

He leaped skyward, leaving them with the thunder of his going.