Brian’s blade, bright in the setting sun, checked, hesitant. It wavered, sagged, then dropped like something forgotten. Brian did not lose his grip on its hilt, but sword and hand went down together, as if his arm had lost its strength.

“Why do you say such a thing, James?” he asked-but in an entirely different, bewildered voice.

His eyes were no longer like stones, but weary and unhappy. “How could I be drunk, and I without even a drop of water since I left King Pellinore’s home, these many hours past now?”

“Drunk on battle, Brian,” said Jim softly. “The fighting took you over. But that’s as good as done, now. Come along. It’s time you thought of your own home, and Geronde.”

“Geronde... yes,” said Brian unsurely. He fumbled, trying awkwardly to insert his sword into its scabbard. Finally the point found its opening, and the blade slid out of sight. “My duty to her...”

His eyes blinked, closed; and he fell suddenly from the saddle.

Jim caught him. There was no avoiding it. He could not let his closest friend simply smash to the ground.

He had intended merely to break Brian’s fall with his own body, not stay on his feet and hold him. But that was what he did; though the heavy, armored weight of Brian’s limp form staggered Jim for a moment.

In that passing second it came to him that his years in this early century had built more physical strength into him than he had realized, even though he had not known it was happening.

He eased Brian to the ground and knelt beside him. Over his friend’s mail shirt was his jupon, the blue one Geronde had seen him off in, he knew-but now darkened on its left side.

He tried to work his hand under the jupon, up to the darkness; but long before he came to it, he felt the slipperiness of the chain mail beneath it, and knew it was blood.

“Time to go,” he told his unconscious friend; and half turned his head. “Hob, are you still with me?”

“Yes, m’Lord. But the first Lady we met down here-the one that sent us to the Forest Dedale, is with us, too.”

Jim jumped to his feet and turned around. There, only three steps away, was Morgan le Fay, smiling grimly, resplendent in an elaborate gown of some misty material that Jim’s glasses showed him was purple in color, a fan of bird-of-paradise feathers behind her head, backgrounding a small but beautiful coronet of silver, sparkling with jewels.

“So you thought you were going to get away,” she said.

“Pay no attention to her, Jim!” said another recognizable voice. “I’m here also.”

Jim looked to his side and saw KinetetE-either her, or her projection. Morgan’s smile changed. She and KinetetE smiled at each other, but only with their lips.

“Thanks,” said Jim to whichever version of KinetetE it was. “But it’s not necessary, KinetetE, thanks. Everything’s under control. I can understand Queen Morgan le Fay’s position here very well indeed. Hob, where are your manners? Go escort the great Queen to me.”

Hob flashed past Jim’s right eye and landed at his feet, running the few steps it took him to reach Morgan.

“This way, by your grace and kindness, my Queen,” he said, in the best imitation Court manner the traveling ballad singer could have taught him.

There was a faint look of puzzlement on Morgan’s face. She was looking from KinetetE to Jim. She ignored Hob, making no move to follow the little hobgoblin as he took a first step back toward Jim.

“Come, my Queen!” said Hob more firmly. He stepped back to her, caught hold of her hand and tried to tug her after him. It was as useless as some small pleasure craft trying to tow a beautiful but towering ocean liner. Jim spoke quickly.

“That simple spell for the Witch’s Gate gave me the idea,” he said to KinetetE. “But it’ll take her a moment to work out how to get rid of it. Meanwhile she’ll know how Northgales and Hob felt-come on back to me, Hob. Thanks for coming, KinetetE. We’d like to go home now as fast as you can magick us there, now. But where’s Dafydd? He probably ought to go back now, too.”

“He’s at Malencontri already!” KinetetE said dryly. “So! You can pronounce magick properly, when you want to!”

Incredibly, Brian spoke again from the region of Jim’s feet, his voice once more starting out so weak as to be barely understandable, but growing stronger with each word.

“They were killed?” he asked harshly.

“No,” said the QB. “But like all those others who were allowed to come help us in this, our time of need, they have been taken away once more now the need is gone.”

“That would be hard,” said Jim, as gently as he could, “just when he thought he had them back again.”

“It was not unexpected,” said the QB. “We all knew they were only lent us, having all left us before Arthur’s final battle. But their second going has cut deeper in him than he had expected-especially it is hard on one such as he who will never let himself admit pain; so that he does not speak of it, but lives with it caged in his breast, alone.”

“Yes,” said Jim.

“If you would wish to send word by me, to be told him at a time when matters have eased a bit for him...”

“By all means,” croaked Brian. “Say our best...”

He did not finish. Looking down, Jim saw his eyes had closed.

They were all on the dais of the High Table in the Great Hall. KinetetE had been entirely correct. Dafydd was there, as was Danielle and their two older sons. But so, of all people, was Carolinus, in one of his worn-out red robes, looking much more healthy than when Jim had last seen him.

Also there was Angie, and Geronde-who swooped down immediately to examine the still and silent Brian-with John Steward and several of the servants running to be helpful to her if needed. Supper was being put on the High Table, bathed by the light of the tall white guest candles already lit there.

“Servants out of the Hall!” said Jim, almost as a reflexive response. “Not you, Hob.”

“Yes, m’Lord.”

The other servants left-at a run, as polite, trained servants were expected to do in this time and place.

They ran back-those who had gone and as many others as thought they could get away with it; since whatever the excitement was about, they wanted to be involved in it.

Brian was carried off in the direction of the stairs to the chambers on the upper levels of Malencontri’s Tower, where the room given Geronde undoubtedly waited.

“I earnestly beg your forgiveness-“ Jim began, finally understanding how he had insulted her magical competence-but Carolinus kept him from finishing.

“Yes, that spell!” snapped Carolinus with surprising strength in his voice. “I want to know. Why such a simple spell?”

“He undoubtedly heard me the first time I asked it!” said KinetetE.

Carolinus glared at her. But KinetetE was not a hobgoblin. She glared back.

“Well,” said Jim, who had now had time to think over his answer. “Actually, I had several reasons.”

“I’m listening.”

“The first is that I might have to go back to Lyonesse someday; and I wanted to show Morgan le Fay that I wasn’t quite helpless by myself. Also, I wanted to find out if I was right about something-whether Lyonesse’s own magical energy could be made to respond to one of our basic magic patterns from up here. I deliberately chose the simplest spell I could think of, to make sure I hadn’t been too specific-that was why I said it as I did.”

“Why shouldn’t it?” said Jim, meeting stares from the two of them. “There’s no Accounting Office down there. Anyone in Lyonesse who delves into magic seems to have as much credit as he or she wants for any purpose. Where do they get it?” He looked from one to the other of the Mages before him.

“Wherever it comes from, why should it be a different sort of magick than we get here?” he continued. “Does that mean that each different land has its own kind of magic? Doesn’t make sense. Anyway, I’m beginning to think they don’t, I think we just have magic as a sort of natural force here, like”-he boggled over the word gravity and decided not to use it-“like any other natural force-worldwide.”

“You remember, Mage Carolinus, how that magickian in Tripoli served just as well with a bowl of water as we do up here with crystal balls? I’ve tried it and it worked. Also, I drove the Dark Powers out of my Great Hall with the same sort of magical energy I’d have used on any intruder; and now I’ve got evidence Lyonesse magic can respond at least to simple commands.”

“Hah!” said KinetetE. “But it was Lyonesse magick you said you were using. That’s impossible.”

“Who knows?” snapped Carolinus. “If it was Lyonesse magick, Jim, how did you get possession of it?”

“It just happened to fall into my hands, actually,” said Jim. “The Witch Queen of Northgales had an unnatural coldness-a coldness that had to have some kind of magic basis. She deliberately tried to get one of us to touch her so she could steal the body heat of whoever it was-and she ended up touching Hob-I didn’t know what she was up to, then. Anyway, she was so much bigger than Hob that it almost killed him. I managed to save him, though, without using my magic-that’s important. But Hob insisted on liking her after that, and being kind to her; and the coldness left her-“

“Why the spell, then?” demanded Carolinus, on an odd note of eagerness.

“Oh, that was just to confuse Morgan and make her feel that I was responsible for what had just happened to her-that it was me, instead of Hob, who was responsible.”

“Very interesting,” said KinetetE dryly, “but I still fail to see what it’s got to do with what you were saying.”

“Why,” said Jim, “what I’m saying is that magic is possibly the same in all lands, in spite of small, surface differences-but it’s like any other natural part of things. It can float free, as the Old Magic perhaps does in Lyonesse-but be unable to do anything to those who have nothing to do with it.” Caught up in his words, he rushed on.

“It can be absorbed and used, unconsciously,” he said, “as Naturals use it. It can be used to one purpose only, as the devils and demons of all classes use it. And, finally, it can be taken from its free-floating state by those who’re aware of it- that’s us humans-and used for either good or ill. But we really only have a small corner of the available magic in this world-and all the rest put together would represent a tremendously powerful force. But what we have through the Accounting Department’s actually only a tiny part of it. I’m not sure of this, of course; but I’m just saying that’s how it looks to me.”

He stopped talking. He had run out of breath; and neither Carolinus nor KinetetE was responding. He had a sinking feeling that he had lost his audience- that he had explained too much, served them too large a meal of logical thinking; and their minds had ended up rejecting every part of it.

The uncomfortable silence stretched out.

“Very interesting,” said KinetetE, at last, “but I don’t believe a word of it. Carolinus, I hold you responsible for the magick I lent this lad to go to Lyonesse.”

She vanished. Carolinus did not disappear with her immediately. Instead, a remarkably gleeful expression gradually spread out over his face. He looked in a kindly manner at Jim, who had a momentary impression that the venerable magickian was less than an eyelash away from winking at him.

“Never mind,” Carolinus said. “Cheap at half the price-half the price. Well done! Your showing that the magic of Lyonesse alone was usable was worth the whole grand try by Cumberland and Morgan!”

Jim looked at him. Back with his wife and sons, a father among his family again, Dafydd was changed completely. A different person in the same familiar body had taken a step back from the rest of them into his own private world. His voice had a touch of formality, with that “Sir James”-after a Lyonesse-full of plain “James.”

“It is the Saint’s day after which our firstborn, here, is named,” Dafydd went on. “But indeed I thank you for your kind help in the time of a dire danger to my Drowned Land. Though it is my home no longer, it would have become a dark place in my heart, if it had fallen to such a pair as the Dark Powers and Morgan le Fay, even for the while. It and I remain in your debt for this as long as life bears with me.”

“No debt involved,” said Jim. “You were here when the Dark Powers had the nerve to stick their nose into this Hall. I had my own reasons for going. Besides, with friends we don’t keep count, anyway-you know that as well as I do.”

“We will leave in a moment, my golden bird,” said Dafydd, without turning his head. “Farewell, then, James. Farewell, Angela. We will meet again before the snow flies.”

“Farewell,” said Angie and Jim; and watched the family out through the Hall’s front door to the hard-trodden brown earth of the courtyard, still sunset-touched.

Then the thud of hooves, changing to a brief clatter as they passed over the drawbridge and out of view of the doorway, into silence.

The white candles, half burned down, were flickering in the little breeze from the open Hall door, above a dinner that had barely been touched, except by the children.

He could not stop talking.

It was something he had become familiar with in his early graduate years, when he had held down two part-time jobs in addition to his assistantship and his own studies. From time to time then he would go beyond his state of general exhaustion, into a super bright awakedness in which his mind dashed from answer to answer; and he felt as if he would never need sleep again.

It was on him now-in exactly the wrong time and place.

“... Terrific!” he heard himself saying. “That’s the only word for it! Terrific. I had to seem coldheaded and magickian-professional when KinetetE and Carolinus were here, but that was the only word for it. Terrific!”

“I’m sure it was,” said Angie, with weary, loving patience.

“You had to be there and feel it-could you give me another cup of tea?”

“Jim,” she said, “you never drink tea at bedtime. You don’t really like it that much; and you say it keeps you from sleeping. That’s your fourth cup, and it’s a stimulant. Why don’t I give you a mazer of wine; or even some-“

“No, no,” said Jim. “I can practically see the Empty Plain now, it’s all so clear in my memory! I don’t want anything that’ll blur that image for me just yet. Angie, it was just as if the whole Earth there and everything living on it rose up to throw back the Dark Powers and their army of invaders-never mind. I’ve been bothering you to make me tea steadily since we came upstairs here. I can make a cup, myself, this time.”

“No, you don’t,” said Angie, already out of bed. “Stay there. I’ll get it. But this has got to be the last. You have to get some sleep.”

“I might’ve gone without sleep for a couple of days-time was funny, there. I don’t really feel tired, though, now.”

“You’re on overdrive,” said Angie, from twelve feet away at the fireplace, swinging the refilled little kettle on the long, metal arm from which it hung in over the fire.

“I believe you,” she added, to whatever Jim had begun to say now.

She had finally got Jim and herself warmly, cozily, tucked into the big bed up here in the privacy of their Solar, at the top of Malencontri’s tower. Warmly, because with the setting of the sun a chilly, end-of-summer rain had begun, drumming on their valuable and rare glass windows that now showed only blackness. Cozily, because it was always somehow more that way when you knew that someone else had to be out in the weather.

The man-at-arms on watch on the thick stone tower top above their heads would be sheltering himself under the little wooden roof on four pillars over the firebox below the great kettle, kept there to heat boiling oil for pouring down on attackers. Not that anyone was likely to come attacking in this weather-but there were small outlaw groups that might try to take advantage of the rain and darkness, putting scaling ladders against the curtain wall; and try a smash-and-grab raid to see if they could not get away safely with whatever they could pick up and carry off.

Such raids had long been a common trick of marauders on both the Scottish and Welsh borders-and were not unknown here in southern England.

But it would be an unlucky band of marauders who came marauding here tonight, with the servants-and particularly the men-at-arms-in their present state of mind, thought Angie. Jim had kept himself under control until Dafydd and his family were gone, and Geronde was clearly settled in upstairs, on guard like a she-tiger while an exhausted Brian slept.

But it was only after the ap Hywels had disappeared into the sunset, and Geronde had sent down word she was settled for the night, that Jim had really uncovered his soaring emotions-and set fire to everyone in the castle. Not that it took much to do that, under any circumstances.

It was not that he said anything much more about the battle in Lyonesse itself. But he had fairly radiated excitement and martial fever.

What was the line from that great poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson about Richard Cory? Angie tried to remember. “... He glittered when he walked.”-it had fitted Jim tonight, in the eyes of all the staff of Malencontri. To have a Lord who was a Magickian was a great thing. But to have a Lord who also had fought alongside King Arthur like the knight he was-“... Yes, I said that Arthur, lady And if thee doubt it, just open thy mouth about it once more and I’ll give thee some of thy own teeth to chew on!”

Left to himself, Jim would have sat at the High Table in the Great Hall indefinitely, talking to Angie about the trip, if she had not practically hauled him upstairs here by main force-to where the servants, and above all the men-at-arms, could not find excuses to get close to them, in hopes of overhearing more of the details.

The men-at-arms in particular were eaten up with admiration and envy. They would probably be up drinking and talking until dawn; and in sad shape to take care of their individual duties tomorrow.

Well, their imaginations would be fed no further tonight. But that still left her with a Jim going off like an endless supply of rockets. “

“... Unbelievable!” he was saying now. “That’s the only word for it, Angie! Unbelievable! I had to seem coldheaded and magickian-professional when KinetetE and Carolinus were here, but that was the only word for it!”

“I’m sure it was,” said Angie.

“You’re right, of course. But it was worth it. Arthur! And those Knights of his, fighting like the Legends they are! But you know, Angie, it was the animals-little tiny animals attacking armed men in armor! And those North Gales coming down when they were called, the trees waiting for Cumberland’s men if they tried to run from the field-you could feel the earth and sky and everything in between fighting on our side. Cumberland’s bunch didn’t have a chance!”

“Then your arranging the lion with Brian to move along next to Arthur while you flew over his head as a dragon wasn’t really necessary?”

Angie almost literally tried to bite the words off the second they were out of her mouth.

She had been born with a naturally quick tongue, but too often found it made her more enemies than friends. So she had worked all her life to keep it under control; to the point where there were some people who considered her mealy-mouthed.

But she still slipped occasionally. Funnily, it was easier to slip with those she was closest to. Jim, bless his heart, either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it when she slipped with him. There was no one like him in this world or any other.

“I’ve already mentioned that business? Sorry. But in fact, it was useful,” he was saying now. “Everything contributes, of course. In this case it helped with morale; it raised the spirits of the Knights and very much upset their enemies.”

“Oh,” she said, determined to do better, “I didn’t think of that.”

Actually, Jim was busy thinking how lucky he was that her question had caught him before he started trying to explain the state of mind into which the battle had worked the Knights-which all too easily could have led to his foolishly giving an example by telling her how he had come within a few breaths of provoking Brian into killing him. That was the sort of incident on his trips that was the last thing he would ever want to tell Angie.

“It also reminded the Knights of Arthur and how he had believed in chivalry,” he said, instead. “Otherwise, in the heat of the moment, they could have slaughtered all the opposition, instead of taking their surrenders and herding them back out through the Witch’s Gate, or whatever route only Morgan le Fay would have been magically strong enough to open for them to the Drowned Land-and which they’ll be leaving now, since there’s no room for outsiders either in there or -That had been close to a bad slip, Jim told himself. He had been talking his silly head off about this particular adventure. He had caught a weary note in Angie’s voice just now. No reason to keep talking. He had already given her most of the battle part, anyway. There would be time for the rest later.

It had indeed been a remarkable experience-wouldn’t have believed half of it, himself, if anyone else had told him about it. A mulligan stew of tall tales. Angie had always been too good for her own good. He could tell her the rest later when he was not still geared up over it.

“On second thought,” he called to her, “maybe the wine would be better for me, after all. You’re right, I’ve had too much tea.”

“Well, it’s already made and ready,” said Angie. “How about this? How about the tea with a little something in it.”

“Well, why not? Yes, Angie-yes, pour in the cognac; a good slug of it.”

“This alcohol tastes better than usual,” he said, drinking the tea. “Do you suppose they’ve improved it?”

“It’s the tea-and the sugar, as I said.”

“I believe you’re right,” said Jim. “You certainly put in a hearty amount of both. We should offer some of this combination to KinetetE, someday-or even Carolinus. Make them relax.”

He went on watching her as she continued doing something further about the fireplace cooking apparatus. It was a wonderfully comfortable feeling, just sitting, sipping at his cup and watching her; but when she turned more toward him to do something else and he got a full glimpse of her face, he noticed for the first time that she was looking tired and drawn.

Why hadn’t he seen it when he first got here? Too full of his own adventures, of course. Angie had said he was in overdrive, and indeed he had been. But the unnatural brilliance of that rare period was fading in him now. The clearheadedness was still with him, but the unnatural energy was fading.

Into its place, as he watched her, a flood of empathy-of feeling how it must be for her here at Malencontri when he was away-was filling him. Running the castle twenty-four hours a day-and ready always to fight to defend it with what meager forces were at her disposal: the handful of experienced and trained men-at-arms, and the ordinary servants; who were brave enough and strong enough (men and women both) to stand around the curtain wall with spears and push scaling ladders back down, with the attackers already climbing them. But that was about all-and they were equally likely to lose their heads and want to rush out at the first fake retreat of the attackers.

He had not worried about her while he had been gone, immersed in the activity of each moment-had hardly thought of her at all except to feel a sense of satisfaction over the fact that Malencontri was in good hands. But she would have worried about him, imagined him in one dangerous situation after another, fretted when time went by and she had not had any word from him-and when at last he returned, said nothing at all about these things; only listened to his endless talk about what he had said and done.

A heavy sense of guilt oppressed Jim. It was true-he had admitted it to himself. Like it or not, he was still a prisoner of the future time in which he had been raised.

Unthinkingly, he was still unceasingly searching for a scientific and technological order to impose on this world of magic, Naturals, Forces, and a late medieval people to whom the words he knew had different values. Duly meant far more to them than it did to him, death far less. They were prepared to put their personal survival on the line every day in the line of duty, or to face up to any personal challenge. They did not expect a nonviolent death, and took it for granted that their moment of dying, natural or not, would probably be unpleasant.

So much for him. Angie, likewise, would be naturally reaching almost unthinkingly for a permanent and secure life, with Robert, their young ward, growing up into an ordered world where he could live a long and happy life.

Perhaps, one day, all these illusions from six hundred years later on would blow up in their faces-

“-What was I just talking about?” he asked hastily, for Angie was now turning back toward the bed and he did not want her to guess how his thoughts had been running.

There was a slight moment’s frowning hesitation as she paused in swinging the kettle arm out of the fire.

“The little animals, I think,” she said. “And how they impressed you, fighting alongside the Knights, and the way you said it made me feel for them, too.”

“I think that’s probably the one memory that’ll stick with me the longest-unless it’s the pain King Pellinore’s feeling at losing his two sons just after he’d found them again; and his feeling he has to keep it locked inside him. But that’s the way things are here-have always been, probably, for some in our time, too.”

“Yes,” said Angie, “but he’s doing something to himself he’s chosen to do. The one I feel for is his friend.”

“His friend? What friend?”

“The only close friend he’s got, apparently-since he insists on living inside a set of rules tighter than sleeping in his armor-the friend he’s had for centuries, and who’s got no choice now but to suffer silently with him since that’s the way Pellinore’s picked to bear it-the Questing Beast!”

Angle’s tongue had run away with her again. Well, I said it, she told herself. I probably shouldn’t have, but I did.

Meanwhile, Jim was feeling as if he had run into a brick wall.

“Oh, I don’t think the QB takes it that hard,” he said. “He feels for Pellinore all right, but-“

“Pellinore made the choice,” said Angie, “but it’s your QB who’s stuck with it. He can’t help Pellinore? and he can’t help himself from suffering for his friend- and he is suffering, I know he is-but with no choice. Nothing he can do to help and no hope of helping-in silence.”

“Oh, I think you underestimate the QB,” said Jim. “He’s a Lord of Lyonesse, after all. He’ll have friends down there he can talk to.”

“Who? Merlin?”

“Well, maybe not Merlin. Pellinore losing his sons is something happening in the present, and Merlin avoids the present to concentrate on the whole sweep of past and future-“

The trees?”

“I can’t explain it,” said Jim, driven into a corner at last. “But if you knew him, I think you’d feel differently.”

Angie stared at him.

“Could you bring him here-the way KinetetE brought you all back? Magically, I mean-so I could meet him?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jim cautiously. “What a Mage like KinetetE knows, compared to what little I’ve worked out for myself...”

“But you could do something.”

“Well... just maybe. There’s projections-let me think how she used them...”

Angie let him think; and suddenly there was a somewhat fuzzy apparition of the QB standing in the Solar and staring at Jim-his back, catlike, rising.

“Forgive me, QB,” said Jim hastily. “I didn’t mean to make you think you’re really here in the land above. I just used a bit of magic to project the room we’re in now at our castle around you. But I wanted you very much to meet my Lady wife, Angela de Montanya de Eckert, Baroness and Chatelaine de Malencontri et Riveroak; who’s wanted very much also to meet you. But if you feel we’re intruding I can take our projection away. It’s just an illusion-a sort of glamor thrown around you-actually.”

But the QB’s back had been subsiding even as Jim spoke. “I should not have been wary, Sir James,” he said, “knowing as I do you are versed in magick; and it is an honor to have you name to me the Lady Angela. My Lady, I am not able to tell you how it pleasures me to speak to you.”

“Enough of courtesie, my Lord,” Angie dropped him a curtsy-something she had got very good at, Jim thought now, out of the pleasantly contemplative glow that was replacing the almost-blinding brightness of his overdrive. “But I have needed to meet you for some time now. My Lord-“

“Then your comfort shall be a rule between us,” said Angie. “But what I’ve been wanting to say to you, QB, is that I love my husband and I can’t tell you how I’ve been waiting a chance to thank you for all your kindness and help to him, that has brought him safely back to me, from the black monsters on his first trip to Lyonesse to all the help you gave him on this last trip. You have been a friend indeed!”

“Alas, Lady Angela. I cannot claim such human things as friendship. I am not one of you. I am an animal, and not a tame one to claim such human virtues. But from centuries of closeness with King Pellinore, however, I have come to see them in humans and I make a practice of trying to aid those who show them.”

“Anyway, for whatever reason you do them, I am grateful for the help you’ve given Jim and I want you to know that,” said Angie. “I wish I could do something for you in return.”

“Alas, there is nothing.”

“Then I’ll have to leave it at that. How is good King Pellinore? Jim and Sir Brian were sad to leave him without saying farewell. Have you any idea when he might be feeling better about the new loss of his sons?”

“I cannot say. Certainly not soon, if ever. My concern for him runs deep. So deep, in fact, I did what I would have otherwise never done. I asked Merlin for help and advice.”

Having said that, he stopped, so completely it seemed he had cut himself off in mid-sentence. Jim understood at once. Angie, who had yet to hear all that Jim had to tell her about Merlin, did not.

“And he said-?”

“Silence.” The QB looked at her almost compassionately. “I should have known. What pains my King Pellinore is not one of the matters Merlin has committed himself to being concerned with.”

“But with time, surely, King Pellinore will adjust to his loss? It’s not as if his sons won’t be back, if ever Lyonesse needs them again.”

“King Pellinore thinks not; and he is not alone in this. He is convinced, now that ordinary men from the land above have attempted Lyonesse, that the truth of the Legends will be broken. The defeat of those who came against us will be laid to any number of small things. The invaders will become the new heroes; and others like them will come trying.”

“Arthur and the others’ll be back again!” said Jim from the bed, drawn into the conversation at last. “Any who come will be bound to lose.”

The QB looked at him and back at Angie.

“King Pellinore believes not,” he said, “and many of the other Knights think as he does. It was prophesied Arthur would return; and now he has. But he has had his coming and gone. He will not come again, nor will the others who returned at the same time; and the ordinary men from the land above will never cease from coming-until the last of the Knights is killed for the last time and Lyonesse lies helpless for the taking.” He paused.

“King Pellinore,” he went on, “believes his sons will never return to him now. For Arthur’s sake the Knights did not put to the sword all who prayed to yield- and mischief was loosed in the world above. What hope of King Pellinore and his sons meeting again, if Heaven is not there for those who have lived only because they were an example to all men, but are no more remembered for that?”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the Solar.

“If I can prove to you that they will be remembered still,” said Angie deliberately, “-at more than half a thousand years from now-as they are today, could you carry that proof back to King Pellinore and would it convince him and the other Knights that their fears are wrong?”

“If such a thing were possible,” said the QB doubtfully, “I believe it would.”

“How good is your memory?”

“I forget nothing, from the time I first woke in Lyonesse, remembering all my life with King Pellinore before that.”

“Then,” said Angie, “if I can tell you a poem-a poem written more than half a thousand years from our present time here in the land above, will you listen to it? The poem itself is proof of the time it was made, for the skill of it is beyond anything that can be written now, here.”

“It’s called The Passing of Arthur,” Angie said; and with those words, Jim realized the QB would listen all the way through; and so would Pellinore and the other Knights when the QB repeated it to them. Maybe, however, Jim told himself, she’s going to skip parts as she goes, to shorten it up. He settled himself to listen. The poem was a favorite of his; and he could sit in the small warm cocoon of contentment he was now in, watching Angie as much as he liked-she would be lost in her reciting and not notice.

He looked at Angie, and was relieved to see that the signs of weariness and strain he had seen in her face were gone. She was completely concentrated on the words she was reciting-as concentrated, if in a different way, as the QB.

They were totally different in all ways, Angie and the QB, but the poetry was making a unit of the two of them. It was drawing Jim in, also, but in a different way. He was not so much listening to the well-remembered words, but in his mind reliving the images that the words created in him.

Perhaps, come to think of it, they were all three seeing different images. But it did not matter. Their emotions were in unison.

How differently emotions normally worked between species-or even those of the same species, but brought up under vastly different conditions. Even between men as a general group and women as a general group-so different. He looked at Angie again.

Her face was alight-literally. She was glowing, in one of those moments when she looked most beautiful. Literally, she was able to glow with happiness. It’s because she loves poetry so much, Jim told himself. She had glowed like that when they had brought the baby Robert Falon, legally Jim’s ward now by order of King Edward, home to Malencontri and Angie had learned they could keep the boy.

She had glowed the day they were married here-here in the fourteenth century-after he and the others had rescued her from the Loathly Tower. And he could remember seeing other women-usually younger-doing it at other times in his life.

Men never glow, thought Jim. We may reach the utmost moments of happiness, but we don’t glow. Did we ever, as children, before puberty?

He could not remember doing so. He remembered being so happy at times it had felt as if he could fly apart-arms and legs detaching themselves and flying off in four different directions. But he could never remember feeling anything like what Angie showed; that all-pervasive illumination that lit up everyone around... Angie was reciting.

Bedivere was sent twice to throw Excalibur into the waters of the mere-as it had been handed to Arthur from the waters of the lake in the beginning. Twice he failed. But the third time a hand arose to take and brandish it and draw it down... and so he returned to tell Arthur.

“And was that poem indeed made half a thousand years and more from the moment where we speak now?”

“Yes,” said Angie.

“Lady Angela, you have given us back our hope of life-and more-much more. I thank you for all of Lyonesse.”

He turned to Jim.

“And now, Sir James, will you release me from the glamor of the magic you have thrown around me? For what with it and the hearing of the poem, I do not have strength to move myself.”

“It’s gone,” said Jim, and instantly the QB was backgrounded not by the rest of the Solar, but by the great dark trees and forest ground of Lyonesse-and in the same second he also had gone.