Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array - The Incomplete Enchanter

She thought. «If you go not beyond the confines of this great wood and know but how to call my unicorn of the forest — not that ungainly great beast of yours —»

«Can you whistle the tune for me — softly?» She did so, and he followed till he could do it. But she finished with a smile. «I misdoubt you could entice her close enough. These unicorns fear not maidens, but men they are greatly wary of.»

Shea pondered, then drew Chalmers aside leaving Belphebe to guard Artegall against Dolon. «Doc, can you conure up sugar?»

«Harold, you are a continual source of astonishment to me. I really feel quite wont out, though. I’m incapable of coherent effort —»

Shea shook him by the shoulders. «Listen, Doc!» he said fiercely. «I’m pretty close to the edge of collapse myself, but if you ever want to see Florimel again, you can’t let me down! This is just a little applied psychology; to wit, setting up an androphiliac fixation in the libido of one female unicorn. Now, go to it!»

Water, charcoal from the remains of one of the Da Derga’s cooking fires, and a spell produced a double handful of neat patty-shaped moulds of maple sugar, which Shea rather dubiously guessed would do. The unicorn sniffed suspiciously from a distance, then under Belphebe’s coaxing teetered close enough to taste. It munched meditatively, wiggling its ears, then reached out its muzzle for more. Shea fed it another piece, then ostentatiously put the remainder in his pocket.

«All right,» he said, «we’re off. Say, Belphebe, maybe you better hitch J. Edgar Hoover’s feet to the unicorn and haul him off before the Da Derga come back to see what happened.» He glanced at the glowering Dolon. «Two hours truce now, and you can thank Heaven they took her bow away.»

The dark was beginning to close in. As they reached the road, Dolon worked a spell and produced a horse. He mounted.

«Hey!» said Shea. «What about us?»

«I say a pox on you, ’prentice, for a rebellious rogue. Wend afoot and learn what it is to flout the great Dolon.»

Shea put on a sly grin. «You don’t understand, master. Don’t you think it pays for the Chapter to have someone that the opposition thinks is a real man of honour? I’m just building myself up for the job. When we get ready to put something really good over on that bunch and catch a lot of them at once, instead of just these two, I’ll come in handy.»

Dolon considered a moment, then a smile ran round his red, full lips. «Oho! Sits the wind so? You want that red-polled baggage, eh? Well, when we capture her, you shall have her before she goes to the torture chamber — if the Chapter chooses to admit you. For I tell you fairly I doubt you are skilled enough in the more practical forms of magic.»

Chalmers spoke up. «Ahem. You confessed, Doton, that you of the Chapter occasionally. uh. work at cross-purposes.»

«Aye. ’Tis the nature of things. For look you, magic is an art disorderly.»

«But it isn’t! We can show you how to change all that.»

«Here’s strange doctrine! Do you jest?»

«Not at all. Didn’t you notice the Druids’ methods of doing magic?»

«Those priests of the Da Derga? Magic they have, aye, but so meagre a sort any lout can outdo them.»

«That’s not the point. It’s not what they do, but how they do it. One man invokes their gods; another changes the altar from wood to stone, and so on. One man per function, and all timed to work together. That’s real organization. Now, if. uh. your Chapter were organized like that —»

Shea cut in: «You’ve been trying to break down Queen Gloriana’s government, and set up a council of magic to rule in its place, haven’t you?» Nobody had told him that, but it seemed a reasonable guess.

«That we have; but the others worked singly, without any such leaders as myself to guide them.»

«But even you, master, you’re only one, and can’t be everywhere at once. As it stands, your Chapter is a professional guild. It keeps you from cutting each other’s throats by competition, but that’s all. You won’t get anywhere just bopping off an occasional knight. We can show you how to make a real organization out of it with all the parts working together as smoothly as the Faerie knights work together. The beauty of such an organization is that when it gets such a man of genius as yourself to guide it, everyone in the organization becomes a kind of extension of the leader’s personality. It’s just as though your Chapter were made into twenty-one Dolons. Gloriana’s government could never stand against that.»

«Ho-ho!» cried Dolon. «Now this proves once more that I am, as some are good enough to say, the great Dolon, and practically infallible in my judgment of men. I knew from the beginning that your minds held some noble and worthy plan for the advancement of the Chapter and the cause of magic. But I was forced to test you to bring it out. So — we are friends again, and I’ll seal the bond by bringing forth your beasts and belongings.»

He wheeled his own horse behind a tree. He worked a spell that sent a pillar of smoke towering through the branches to catch the last rays of the sun. From beneath it Adolphus and Gustavus trotted out to stand in the twilight beside their masters, the former with Shea’s épée at the saddle. Dolon came back, grinning as though at some private joke.

«I shall present you to the Chapter as specialists in strange beasts,» he remarked amiably. «That monster you rode to our rescue was as fearsome a hobgoblin as ever I saw, friend Harold. You see, I have the custom, not common among great men, of being affable to my juniors.»

It was growing very dark under the trees, and the horses began to stumble on the ruinous road. Another hour of riding brought them to an opening. Midway along it and fairly close to the road, a thatched hut stood in the inadequate moonlight. One window was lighted.

«The castle of Busyrane,» remarked Dolon.

«It seems somewhat. uh. exiguous,» offered Chalmers timidly.

«Ho-ho! You know not our Archimage, who is a master of show and illusion, and sets such gulls to catch the unwary. Do but watch.»

As Dolon spoke the moon was blotted out. Shea heard a flutter of wings. Something brushed past his face. There was a sensation of insectlike crawling on his left hand that made him snatch it from the bridle. A long, low ululating shriek rose from out of the dark. The horse quivered uncertainly beneath him. Its hoofs clacked on stone in the velvet black. Down at stirrup level a face appeared. It had huge, drooping ears and ragged teeth fixed in a permanent grin above the pendulous lower lip. There was no source of light for it to be seen by, nothing but that face floating by itself.

«The master makes you welcome and bids you dismount,» mouthed the face indistinctly.

A clawlike hand reached up to help Shea from his mount. Though by now well inured to shocks, he could not help a shiver at the clammy cold touch. Dolon chuckled behind him. He shook off the horrors and followed the guidance of the corpselike fingers down a corridor of utter dark. Something rustled, and he caught the sickening odour of cockatrice. A door closed. He was standing in a big room, blinking in a flood of light, with the other two beside him.

An elderly man, wearing a palmer’s robe like Chalmers’, came forward to greet them. He smiled graciously. «Welcome, good Dolon! To what fortunate chance owe we your presence here before the meeting?»

«To the same chance that brings me here with these two stout fellows, whom I rescued but today from Artegall’s curst clutches.» This version was a trifle startling, but Shea had the sense to lay low as Dolon described his thrilling rescue of Shea and Chalmers. He went on: «Most noble Archimage, a plan has occurred to me. As you know, people are good enough to say that I have a talent for plans amounting almost to genius.»