Three Hearts and Three Lions Page 8

  No, that didn’t make sense. It was much the most reasonable to keep on supposing this was another universe, a complete space-time continuum with its own laws of nature. Given a large enough number of such universes, one of them was bound to fit any arbitrary pattern, such as that of pre-Renaissance European legendry.

  Though matters couldn’t be quite that simple. His irruption had not been into any random cosmos, for no reason whatsoever; too many elements of his experiences were too appropriate to something or other. So: between his home world and this, some connection existed. Not only the astronomy and geography showed parallels, the very details of history did. The Carl of this world could not be identical with the Charlemagne of his, but somehow they had fulfilled corresponding roles. The mystics, dreamers, poets, and hack writers of home had in some unconscious way been in tune with whatever force linked the two universes; the corpus of stories which they gradually evolved had been a better job of reporting than they knew.

  Doubtless more than two continua were involved. Perhaps all were. All the uncounted stellar universes might be separate facets of one transcendental existence. Holger didn’t pursue that idea. He had more immediate questions. What else could he identify in this world?

  Well, Hugi had spoken of Morgan as King Arthur’s sister. The Arthur! Holger wished he had read the old tales more closely; he had only a dim childhood recollection of them.

  As for the rest, let’s see, Carl’s paladins had included Roland and Oliver and Huon and—whoa. Where did he remember Huon from? The dark strange face rose in his mind, the sardonic humor which had so often irritated the others: Huon de Bordeaux, yes, he had finally gone off and become a king or duke or something in Faerie. But how do he know that?

  Hugi’s grumble broke his train of thought. Half-grasped memories scurried back down into hiding. “’Twill na be a funnish trip, this, if each nicht we maun list to they long-legged beasties howl beyond the firelicht.”

  “Nay, I think no they’ll keep that up,” answered Alianora. “’Tis o’ no use to them, sairly now when they must be busied gathering their hosts for war.” She frowned. “Yet belike they’ll try summat else. Alfric’s no one to surrender a prey.”

  That idea was scarcely pleasant company.

  They scrambled higher into the hills, bearing northwest at the girl’s direction. By noon they were far up. Here the land was cliffs and crags and boulders, wiry grass, an occasional tree twisted and stunted. They could see widely on each side, from the receding darkness of Faerie to the stark heights they must cross, and straight down into canyons which rang with the noise of glacial rivers. The sky was pale, ragged streamers of cloud hurrying across it, the light chill and brilliant.

  They took shelter behind a bluff when they stopped for lunch. Holger, gnawing away at a slab of stone-hard bread and a hunk of rubbery cheese, could not resist griping. “Is Denmark the only land in creation where they know how to make a decent sandwich? Now if you gave me some thin-sliced pumpernickel, baby shrimp, eggs and—”

  “Ye cook too?” Alianora looked at him with awe.

  “Uh, not exactly, but—”

  She snuggled close against him. He found that a bit disconcerting, having grown up with the idea... or illusion... that the man takes the initiative. “Come the chance,” she murmured, “I shall fetch what ye require, and we shall ha’ us a feast, the two o’ us alone.”

  “Hm,” said Hugi. “Methinks I’ll go squint at the weather.”

  “Hey, come back!” yelped Holger, but the dwarf had already gone around the bluff.

  “He’s a good little man,” said Alianora. She laid her arms around Holger’s neck. “He kens when a lass needs comforting.”

  “Now, wait a minute. Look here, I mean, you’re awfully nice and I like you a lot. But. I mean— Oh, hell. Never mind.” Holger gathered her in.

  Hugi landed almost in their laps. “A dragon!” he screamed. “A dragon flying hither!”

  “Huh?” Holger jumped up, spilling Alianora. “What? Where?”

  “A firedrake, och, och, ’tis been sent by Alfric and noo we’re done!” Hugi clung to the man’s knees. “Save us, Sir Knicht! Is ’t no yer business to slay dragons?”

  Papillon snorted and shivered. The unicorn was already off. Alianora ran after it, whistling. It stopped long enough for her to spring on its back, and then leaped from sight. Holger snatched Hugi, mounted, and galloped on her trail.

  As he topped the bluff, he could see the monster. It came from the south, still half a mile away, but already the thunderclap wingbeats hit his ears. Fifty feet long, he thought in a vortex of panic. Fifty feet of scale-armored muscle, a snake head which could swallow him in two bites, bat wings and iron talons. He didn’t need to spur Papillon. The horse was crazed with fear, running almost as fast as the unicorn. Sparks flew from his shod hoofs. The noise of them on rock was lost in the nearing roar of dragon wings.

  “Yi-yi-yi!” wailed Hugi. “’Tis roasted we’ll be!”

  Downward the monster slanted, overhauling them with nightmare speed. Holger glanced back again and saw flame and smoke roll from the fanged mouth. For a lunatic moment he wondered about the metabolism; and what amendment to the square-cube law permitted that hulk to fly? A whiff of sulfur dioxide stabbed his nostrils.

  “Look yonder!” Alianora’s cry drifted down the slope. He gazed the way she pointed and saw a narrow cave mouth in a nearby cliff. “He canna follow us in there!”

  “No!” bellowed Holger. “Keep out of that! It’s death!”

  She cast him a frightened glance, but obediently urged the unicorn away from the cave. Holger felt the first billow of heat on his back. Ye gods, if they went to earth in that hole, the dragon could suffocate them with six puffs.

  “We’ve got to find water!” he bawled.

  Up and over the stony land they fled, while the thresh of wings and the rumble of flames grew louder. Holger drew his sword. But what chance would he have? The dragon could grill him in his hauberk.

  Well, he thought, I may win a chance for Alianora to get clear.

  He didn’t stop to reason out why he must find water. There was only time to flee, over the hills, along a precipice edge, down a gorge. Papillon screamed as fire touched him.

  Then they burst through a screen of brush, and a river ran below them, green and swift and thirty feet wide. The unicorn plunged in. Spray sheeted about the spiral horn. Papillon followed. They stopped in midstream. The river was icy cold, daggers in their feet.

  The dragon landed on the bank. It arched its back and hissed like an angry locomotive. Afraid of water, Holger realized. So that was what his intuition had known.

  “’Twill fly above, snatch us into the air,” gasped Alianora.

  “Get down, then!” Holger leaped to the pebbly streambed. The current swirled strong around his chest. Hugi and Alianora clung to the tails of their respective mounts. “When the attack comes, duck below the surface,” Holger commanded.

  But no human could stay down long enough. They were done.

  Yeah, done to a turn.

  The dragon flapped clumsily aloft. Its shadow fell on them as it hovered against the sun. Slowly, it descended. Flame gushed ahead, out of the open jaws.

  Flame! Holger sheathed his sword, snatched off his helmet, and scooped it full of water. The dragon rushed down. He threw up one arm to protect his eyes. Blindly, he sloshed.

  Steam burst around him. The dragon bellowed, nearly splitting his eardrums. The scaled bulk wobbled in flight, long neck dashing to and fro, tail churning the stream. Holger cursed and threw another helmetful of water at its snout.

  The dragon stunned him with a shriek. Slowly and painfully, it rose in the air and flew back south. They heard its clamor for a long while.

  The breath sobbed into Holger’s lungs. He stood motionless, exhausted, till the beast was out of sight. Finally hd led the others back to shore.

  “Holger, Holger!” Alianora clung to him, trembled and wept and laughed.

&
nbsp; “How’d ye do it? How’d ye conquer him, best o’ knichts, darling, my jo?”

  “Oh, well. That.” Holger felt his face gingerly. He’d gotten several blisters. “A little thermodynamics is all.”

  “What manner o’ magic be that?” she asked with reverence.

  “Not magic. Look, if the creature breathed fire, then it had to be even hotter inside. So I tossed half a gallon of water down its gullet. Caused a small boiler explosion.” Holger waved his hand with elaborate casualness. “Nothing to it.”

  11

  A FEW MILES farther on they entered a hollow sheltered by cliff walls, as mild and sunny as any lowland. Beech and poplar rustled above long grass full of primroses, a brook tinkled, a flock of starlings fluttered off. The place seemed ideal for a rest such as they and the mounts badly needed.

  After a defensive circle was constructed, Alianora yawned—she could do even that quite charmingly—and curled up to sleep. Hugi sat down below the cross, whittling with his new knife. Holger felt restless. “I think I’ll take a look around,” he said. “Call me if anything goes wrong.”

  “Is ’t safe to gang off alane?” said the dwarf. He answered himself: “Aye, o’ coorse ’tis. What can harm a drakeslayer?”

  Holger blushed. He was the man of the hour, but knew much too well what a series of accidents had caused that. “I won’t go far.”

  He got his pipe lighted and strolled off, jingling a bit. The scene was utterly peaceful: meadow, flowers, trees, water, Papillon and the unicorn cropping, the liquid notes of a thrush. Except for the smart of his burns, he could easily have sat down, blotted up sunshine, and considered Alianora. But no. He wrenched his mind away. He had some heavier thinking to do.

  Let’s admit it, he was a crucial figure, or at least an important one, in this Carolingian world. In view of everything that had happened, it must be more than coincidence that Papillon, preternaturally strong and intelligent, should have been waiting exactly where he appeared, with clothes and arms that exactly fitted his own outsize frame. Then there was the excitement he had caused in Faerie, and the curious fact that despite his ignorance they had not been able to kill him... Well, there had been a Charlemagne in both worlds. Maybe he himself was also, somehow, doubled. But then who was he? And why, and how?

  He lost sight of the camp as he wandered on, trying to fit what he had learned into a pattern. This business of Chaos versus Law, for example, turned out to be more than religious dogma. It was a practical fact of existence, here. He was reminded of the second law of thermodynamics, the tendency of the physical universe toward disorder and level entropy. Perhaps here, that tendency found a more... animistic... expression. Or, wait a minute, didn’t it in his own world too? What had he been fighting when he fought the Nazis but a resurgence of archaic horrors that civilized men had once believed were safely dead?

  In this universe the wild folk of the Middle World might be trying to break down a corresponding painfully established order: to restore some primeval state where anything could happen. Decent humanity would, on the other hand, always want to strengthen and extend Law, safety, predictability. Therefore Christianity, Judaism, even Mohammedanism frowned on witchcraft, that was more allied to Chaos than to orderly physical nature. Though to be sure, science had its perversions, while magic had its laws. A definite ritual was needed in either case, whether you built an airplane or a flying carpet. Gerd had mentioned something about the impersonal character of the supernatural. Yes, that was why Roland had tried to break Durindal, in his last hour at Roncesvalles: so the miraculous sword would not fall into paynim hands...

  The symmetry was suggestive. In Holger’s home world, physical forces were strong and well understood, mental-magical forces weak and unmanageable. In this universe the opposite held true. Both worlds were, in some obscure way, one; the endless struggle between Law and Chaos had reached a simultaneous climax in them. As for the force which made them so parallel, the ultimate oneness itself, he supposed he would have to break down and call it God. But he lacked a theological bent of mind. He’d rather stick to what he had directly observed, and to immediate practical problems. Such as his own reason for being here.

  But that continued to elude him. He remembered a life in the other world, from childhood to a certain moment on the beach near Kronborg. Somehow he had had another life too, but he didn’t know where or when. Those memories had been stolen. No, rather, they had been forced back into his subconscious, and only under unusual stimuli did they return.

  A thought drifted through him. Cortana. Where had he heard that name? Oh, yes, the nickel had mentioned it. Cortana was a sword. It had been full of magic, but now lay buried away from sight of man. Once I held Cortana when brands were flashing on a stricken field.

  He walked around a clump of trees. Morgan le Fay stood waiting.

  At first he couldn’t move. His heart hammered; a curious darkness passed over him, and the darkness was beautiful. She came forward, tinged by the gold light that filtered down through green leaves. Her dress was like snow, her lips a coral curve, her hair shining as a starlit deep lake. All he could see to begin with were the colors. Her tone flowed into him.

  “Greeting, Holger. How long it has been!”

  He fought for calmness, and lost. Morgan took his hands. She was tall, her smile didn’t have far to go before it rocked him. “And how lonely I have been for you,” she murmured.

  “For me?” His voice broke in an idiotic squeak.

  “Aye, who else? Have you forgotten that too?” She called him “thou,” making the word a caress. “Indeed a night was laid on you. You have been long away, Holger.”

  “Bu-bu-bu-but—”

  She laughed, not as ordinary humans do but as if laughter itself laughed most softly. “Ah, your poor face! Few men could have stood up to the firedrake as you did. Let me heal those burns.” Her fingers touched them. He felt pain and blisters vanish. “There, now, are you more comfortable?”

  As a matter of fact, he wasn’t. He was perspiring, and the cloak seemed too tight around his neck. Enough wit had returned for him to notice details, but they weren’t the sort to calm a man: pale perfect features, feline grace of movement, a body with more curves than a scenic highway.

  “You’ve gotten some uncouth habits in the other world. “She took the pipe from his slack mouth, shook it out, and stuck it into the pouch at his belt. On the way back her hand slipped along his side and came to rest on his upper arm. “Naughty boy!”

  That gave him back a measure of self-possession. Big women had no business acting kittenish. Nor was that any way to treat a pipe. “Look here,” he croaked. “You were with Alfric, and he’s been doing his best to kill me. What do you want with me?”

  “What does any woman want, who longs for a man?” She sidled closer. Holger backed up till a tree stopped him.

  “In truth,” said Morgan, “I knew not who you were, and aided Alfric unwittingly. The instant I learned of his deception, I hastened to find you.”

  He wiped the sweat off his brow. “That’s a lie,” he said harshly.

  “Well, we of the gentler sex must be permitted a little fancifulness, must we not, my sweet?” She patted his cheek. “It’s God’s truth that I have come to win you back.”

  “Win me back to Chaos!” he blustered.

  “And why not? What is there about dull Law that drives you to defend it? See, I am honest with you; now do you be honest with yourself. Why, Holger, my darling bear, you’re but bulwarking loutish peasants and fat-gutted burghers, when the mirth and thunder and blazing stars of Chaos could be yours. When were you ever one for a safe and narrow life, locked in its own smugness, roofed with a sour gray sky, stinking of smoke and dung—you who drove armies from the field? You could hurl suns and shape worlds if you chose!”

  Her head lay on his breast and her arms about his waist. “N-n-no!” he stuttered. “I don’t trust—”

  “Ah, lackaday! Is this the man who dwelt so long with me in Avalo
n? Have you forgotten what centuries I gave you of youth, and lordship, and love?” She looked up at him again with huge dark eyes. He told himself how corny her act was, but didn’t believe his own claim. “If you will not join with us, then at least do not fight against us. Return to Avalon, Holger. Come back with me to Avalon the fair.”

  Somewhere in his buckling mind he knew that for a change she was sincere. She wanted him out from underfoot in the coming battle, but she also wanted him, period. And why not? his thought lurched. What did he owe to either side, in this universe that was not his? When Morgan le Fay embraced him—

  “Such long years,” she whispered, “and when we meet you have not even kissed me.”

  “That,” he choked, “c-c-could be remedied.”

  It was rather like being in a soft cyclone. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Not that he wanted to.

  “Ah-h-h,” she breathed at last, her eyes still closed, “my lord, my lord, kiss me again. Kiss me forever.”

  He collected her. A flicker of white caught the corner of his eye. He raised his head and saw Alianora on the unicorn. She was just rounding the nearby thicket. “Holger,” she called, “Holger; dear, where be ye—oh!”

  The unicorn reared and threw her to the grass. With a thunderous indignant snort, the animal fled. Alianora sprang up and glared at Holger and Morgan, “Now see wha’ ye ha’ done!” she wailed irrationally. “He’ll ne’er comeback!”

  Holger disentangled himself. Alianora burst into tears.

  “Get that peasant wench out of here! “ cried Morgan in a fury.

  Alianora flared up. “Get away yourself!” she screeched. “Foul witch that ye be, get away from him!”

  The queen’s teeth gleamed forth. “Holger, if that beanpole betake herself not hence this very minute—”

  “Beanpole!” yelled Alianora. “Why, ye overstuffed flesh-pot. I’ll claw your popeyes out!”