Shea yelled: «
Heads turned towards him. The upraised knife hung suspended. Shea had a blurred picture of the camp streaming past, and everywhere the backs of the Da Derga departing in a swirl of tartan. They screamed most gratifyingly.
Beyond the altar Shea tumbled off his mount and walked back. Belphebe had already cut the bonds from the others; but, stiff and weak as they were, they could not move.
«I trust,» said Chalmers feebly, «that you are. uh. convinced of the inadvisability of visiting the world of Irish myth, Harold.»
Shea grinned, «Well, yes, since you mention it.» He turned to Dolon. «I can take this weakness off you. But I’m sure master like you would have a much better method than anything I could use. If you’ll give the spell to me, I’ll use it instead of my own.»
«Marry, that will I. Few youngsters are so polite as to appreciate the powers of the masters these days. Bend down —»
Artegall raised a feeble hand to Belphebe. «What ails you, girl? Fall on these caitiffs! Slay them.»
«The squire and I have a truce.»
«A truce!» he growled. «Make a truce with the devil, or the Da Derga, but not with these enemies, of human kind. The queen’s majesty shall hear of this.»
Shea was working the spell on Chalmers. As he got up he grunted: «Thank you, Harold. Really, do we have to go on —»
«Shut up, Doc,» snapped Shea. He didn’t intend to have his delicate bit of finagling gummed up at this stage. Then he turned to Dolon and worked the spell again.
The magician seemed annoyed that Chalmers should have preceded him, but it turned out to be a good idea. The moment Dolon was on his feet, he snatched up one of the discarded sacrificial knives and flung himself towards the helpless Artegall. Belphebe tripped him as he tried to go past. Before he could get up, Shea was on his back with one hand on his neck and the other on his wrist. «Drop that!» he yelled.
The magician’s bulbous body heaved convulsively. Shea found himself gripping the neck of an enormous snake of the python type. With horror he felt the immense rubbery strength of the thing as ii writhed a section from under him and tried to throw a coil around his body.
But, as the snakes have no hands, Dolon had perforce dropped the knife. Shea put the edge of it against the scaly throat. «Change back,» he gritted, «or I’ll saw your head right off!»
Dolon changed back. «Are you clean daft?» he sputtered. «There’s a stinking fool ’prentice for you — ruining our chance to get rid of our greatest enemy.»
«Not at all, master,» said Shea, relaxing his grip a trifle.
«You forget there’s a truce on. Belphebe and I agreed not to have any scrapping until we’ve separated.»
«You mean to keep your word with
Shea clamped down his grip again and turned to Artegall. «If I release you from the weakness spell, will you give me your word of honour to let us have a two-hour start?»
«Fool! Doltard!» shouted Dolon. But Artegall settled the question. «Covenant with an enchanter? Not I! Slay me if you will; you shall nor rid yourselves of all Gloriana’s knights so easily!»
Shea sighed at the unreasonableness of men. «Doc, watch Dolon for a minute, will you?» He got up and said to Belphebe; «Take care of him after we go.» Then, more softly: «Say, how can I get in touch with you again?»
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
