Free The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson Page B

Water, this other growth was apparently of deciduous trees such as oaks and willows. They all seemed curiously leafless for this time of year and their branches, seen from above, had a gnarled and tangled look that gave the forest a particularly forbidding look; as if it was the kind of place that would not easily let out again anyone who wandered into it on foot. Jim felt a twinge of smugness at being able to soar safely above it.
    In fact, once again the intoxication of being airborne was making him feel better than conditions justified. He had no real idea of what he was headed into; but that did not seem to disturb his cheerful feeling. He had wanted to go to the Loathly Tower and Carolinus had argued against it. But here he was, at Carolinus' direction, going toward it anyway. Whatever the reason was for his being headed in this direction, what he was doing at the moment felt to him particularly right…
    Now, the far edge of the forest was almost underneath him. Beyond, there was nothing but the green fenland, stretching to a misty deeper-blue line which must be the open sea. The fens was a good-sized area, he saw, a greenly lush, lowlying wilderness of land and water. It filled the landscape before him to the skyline in all directions except straight ahead, where the sea blue showed.
    He searched about it with the telescopic vision of his dragon-eyes for some sight of a structure which could be the Loathly Tower, but he could pick out nothing. The breeze that had been blowing against him dropped abruptly, and a new, light wind began to push from behind him. He stretched his wings to it, and let it carry him, gliding at a small angle down the invisible air surface as if it was some miles-long, magic slide. The fenland rose to meet him: spongy, grass-thick earth, broken into causeways and islands by the blue water, thick-choked itself in the shallower bays and inlets with tall seagrass and club rushes.
    Flocks of water fowl rose here and there like eddying smoke from one mere, drifted over and settled on the surface of another, a few hundred yards away. Their cries, thinned by the distance, came faintly to Jim's hypersensitive ears.
    Ahead, heavy clouds were piling up above the coastline to the west.
    Jim soared on, above the still water and the soft grass, smelling the distant saltwater. He looked worriedly at the declining sun which was just now beginning to slip down behind the thick cloudbank he had just noticed. It would be nightfall before long. He was hungry and he had absolutely no notion of what he should do once it was dark. Certainly, he could not continue in the air. It would not be pleasant to fly full-tilt into the ground because he could not see where he was going. It would not be pleasant, in fact, to fly full-tilt into one of the bays or meres. He could land and travel onward on foot—but there would probably be bogs.
    The sensible thing once the sun set, he thought, would be to spend the night on one of the small land patches below him. Not that such a prospect sounded very comfortable. Also, he would be completely exposed down there if anything decided to creep up on him.
    Jim was brought up short in his thoughts at this point by the sudden remembrance of what he was. He had, he realized, been thinking like a human, not like a dragon. What, in its right mind, would want to creep up on a dragon? Outside of a knight in armor. And what would a knight in armor be doing prowling around in the dark? Or another dragon, for that matter? The only other dragon he had any reason to fear around here, if Smrgol's report on the mere-dragons had been correct, was Bryagh; and Bryagh would be making a mistake if he came anywhere near, in the mood possessing Jim right now.
    In fact, thought Jim, he would like nothing better than to get his jaws and claws on Bryagh right now. He felt a grim and sullen anger begin to kindle in him like a hot coal fanned to life just beneath his breastbone. The feeling was rather