Chapter Seventeen

I wasn’t entirely sure where the cave in the dungeon wall had come from-I could have sworn it hadn’t been there when we had come down-but I wasn’t about to object. If the rats knew where it was, it had to be real-at least, assuming the rats themselves were real; which made me begin to wonder about the Rat Raiser.

While I was wondering, we were going downhill; I couldn’t help but think of Hellmouth in the old mystery plays, and wonder if this was its throat. It was certainly dark enough-and growing warmer; and the aromas rising were anything but life-giving. Trickles of water glittered in the torchlight here and there, becoming broader as we descended deeper.

Time to start the active part. I took a deep breath-and regretted it-and began to recite:

 

“Where Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. Turn, to where there’s naught but rest! Turn, to find the spider’s nest! Through all the worlds his web he spins, Catching prey by hidden sins! Turn, to pierce his secret ring! Turn, to find the Spider King!”

 

We moved down, our pool of torchlight coming with us, until water glistened below, black water, and the Rat Raiser whispered, “We have come into the sewers. Carefully, now, children-the water is deep, and the way is narrow.”

He turned to the left, following his pets. I saw a spark off to the side and frowned, glancing at it; then I glanced again. There were two sparks, a pair, and, as I watched, another pair appeared, and another.

“We are regarded,” Gilbert said, indicating a bank of little jeweleyes glowing at the edge of our torchlight.

Angelique gave a strangled gasp, but the Rat Raiser crooned, “Gently, children, gently. ‘Tis only the small ones who dwell hereand, no matter what you think of them, they will not hurt you while I am here.”

It was a gentle reminder of who held the power at the moment, and I didn’t trust it. I thought up a protecting verse and held it ready on my tongue. I also glanced at Angelique, to make sure she was okay-then glanced again.

She was solid!

Apparently, her incorporeality was right in phase with whatever nonexistent realm of nonreality we were in.

My lord, that woman was beautiful! None of the bruises or wounds showed on her ghost-only a hollowness of the cheek, a darkness around the eye, that spoke of the harrowing experience she had been through. Even that enhanced her beauty, rather than diminished it-or was I so much the captive of my own binding spell, so much in love with her, that nothing could lessen her beauty in my eyes?

I shook off the notion with a shudder and turned away. Women were for enjoying, nothing more-and since you couldn’t just enjoy them without hurting their hearts, I was determined not to notice them. Never mind that Angelique already knew my true feelings for her-that didn’t mean I had to let them show. I resolutely turned my back and followed the Rat Raiser into the unknown-and surely that couldn’t have been a small, very self-satisfied smile I had glimpsed on her lips as I had turned away, could it?

We paced the narrow path, scraping the stone wall on our left, with a host of bright beady eyes watching us. To our right, torchlight reflected off thickened, tainted water. The aroma had become almost unbearable; we breathed through our mouths, but I could have sworn I was tasting the air.

The surface heaved, and a huge clawed hand broke through with a long, scaly, tooth-filled snout behind it. The hand groped toward us, and the Rat Raiser shrank back with a squeal that had the ring of command-but also of fright; and his pets answered him with a squealing and skittering as they disappeared into the darkness.

But I was already chanting.

 

“Room for our shadows on the path Let us pass! To the left and right, stay clear! Or we shall call the Buyer of the Blade Be afraid! Call upon the great god Tyr!”

 

The questing talons paused, wavered, then withdrew, slowly sinking out of sight.

“I thank you, Wizard.” The Rat Raiser sighed. “I had not known such a monstrous being might rise from this stew.”

“Always pays to be ready.” I didn’t tell him what I’d been ready for. “Frisson, do you think you could hold that verse ready to chant?

And no improvements, mind you! I have another spell to recite.”

“Aye, Master Saul,” the poet said grudgingly. “But be mindful, I am no wizard.”

“Don’t worry, I am.” Okay, so it was a little white lie-but they needed the reassurance, just then. “I’ll join in and chant with you, as soon as I can drop the other verse. But my reaction time will be slow, and I think yours will be fast.”

“Be sure of it,” Gilbert muttered.

“I shall.” The poet sighed.

“Well enough.” The Rat Raiser pulled himself together and stepped forth, making little squeaking noises interspersed with words. “Where have you gone, sweetings? Nay, come back, little friends-the monster has fled, and we have need of your guidance.

Slowly, a couple of huge, ragged rats appeared at the edge of the torchlight.

The Rat Raiser nodded with satsifaction. “Lead on, then-we shall follow.

We did-not that we had much choice.

I watched the Rat Raiser’s back, gauging him. The man hadn’t been quite the abject coward I had expected him to be-but then, he couldn’t have been short on nerve, to have dared the climb within Suettay’s organization. Sense, maybe, but not nerve.

I started reciting my navigation spell again, with a touch of the frantic. At the end, I repeated, “Turn, turn, turn!” with perhaps excessive force.

Excessive, because the Rat Raiser was just warning us, “Slowly, now, and warily-for this ledge was made only for guardsmen from the castle, who knew its ways. Strongholds have been taken by parties raiding through the sewers, look you, and-” He broke off with a gasp-because the water was dwindling, showing blank stone to either side.

“Keep walking,” I grated, and went back to mumbling my verse.

The Rat Raiser stumbled as the walkway disappeared, and he cried out. His rats echoed him, squealing with horror and fleeing away; but the sludge had dwindled to a mere trickle, and I demanded, “Go on!”

“Nay, I am no longer master here,” the Rat Raiser panted, white showing all around his eyes. ” ‘Tis you must lead now.”

I shoved past him with a mutter of impatience. The Rat Raiser fell in behind me, staring incredulously at the stone underfoot. it was completely dry now, but curved, in the middle as much as at the sides. “We are no longer in the sewers!”

“Praise Heaven!” Angelique sighed. “I may breathe again!”

“Yet where are we, then?” Gilbert demanded.

“In the wizard’s realm,” Frisson answered. “Be patient, my friends, and trust our guide; surely he knows where he goes!”

“Then he must know where we are.” The squire had to shift his gait as the tunnel curved to our right. “Ho, Wizard! What place is this?”

“A torus.” My voice sounded remote even to me, unconcerned with this mundane reality; but the roof rolled over us, and the tunnel’s curve had become permanent. We were walking inside a granite doughnut.

Yet not granite either, for it was seamless, and slightly resilient underfoot. What it was, I couldn’t have said. My friends muttered behind me, afraid of the unknown-but they followed.

I wasn’t really perceiving my surroundings all that well-I A,as busy muttering, concentrating on what the next development should be, so intent on where I was going that I wasn’t really aware of where I was.

Shadows loomed about us, just outside the circle of torchlight.

Then the shadows parted ahead, and I saw two tubes, branching in a fork. I bore to the left with complete assurance, not even thinking about it-almost as if I hadn’t even noticed the split-and my companions followed me, mute with astonishment.

After a few minutes, the way branched again, then again.

“Are you sure of your course?” the Rat Raiser husked, but I only nodded once briefly and paced ahead, mumbling.

Then, suddenly, the tunnel ended. We halted, facing a blank, curving wall. My companions muttered with overtones of fear, but I just frowned at the wall, shaking my head, irritated, and turned back, retracing my steps. My companions made way for me, then hurried to fall in behind again-but Gilbert demanded, “Wizard, where are we?”

“In a maze,” I answered.

They fell silent again, and I could almost feel their dread. I didn’t want to-I had enough of my own. My skin was trying to raise hair where there wasn’t any.

“Do you know the way?” the Rat Raiser whispered.

I came to a halt, head cocked at a thought. Slowly, I turned back to the Rat Raiser. “Maybe you should take the lead again, come to think of it. Rats are very good at running mazes.”

“I am not a rat!” the ex-bureaucrat stammered. “And none of my little friends are here!”

I just gazed at him with an abstracted frown, then sighed and turned away. “Guess it’s up to me, all right. Come on, folks.”

They did.

The tunnel branched, and I chose a way. It branched again, and I took the arm that curved back the way we’d come. Another fork, and I turned to my right, but muttered to the Rat Raiser, “Try and call your pets, will you?”

The Rat Raiser sighed and let out a series of squeaks.

We waited.

Finally, the Rat Raiser shook his head. “There are none near us, Wizard. Whatever place this may be that you have taken us to, it has no rats.”

Gilbert frowned. “What manner of human place is this, that it has none?”

My attention caught on the word “human”; it sent prickles down my spine. “Good question. Should we maybe ask, instead-what does live here?”

My friends exchanged quick, apprehensive glances.

“Saul,” Angelique said, “if you can lead us through this maze, I pray you, do so quickly!”

“You can, can you not?” Gilbert asked with a worried frown.

“Given enough time, yes,” I said slowly. “I was always pretty good at solving mazes when I was a kid, sick in bed. But I think we may need faster action than that, right now.”

“Indeed!” Gilbert agreed. “Bring us out, Wizard!”

“Patience, friend,” Frisson counseled. “He is only human, after all, as lost as any among us.”

“We could wander here till we die of thirst!” the Rat Raiser cried, appalled.

“oh, come on!” I protested. “I can always conjure up a good meal, you know.”

The tunnel was silent.

Then Frisson said, delicately, “That is not entirely reassuring, Wizard Saul.”

“What, because you think it’s really going to take that long?” I shrugged. “Look-you knew this wasn’t a morning’s jaunt. Even without the maze, this could be a long journey.”

They looked at one another, and I could feel the apprehension growing. Finally I capitulated. “All right, all right! I’ll see if I can’t summon a guide who can take us out of this mess!”

“What manner of spirit would that be?” Gilbert still looked wary.

“One good at figuring out mazes, of course.” I frowned. “Which means one who could understand how a straight, direct path could become twisted and convoluted.”

“Why, I am able to ken that,” the Rat Raiser said.

“Yes, you would be, wouldn’t you? Any good bureaucrat would.

But I had in mind the one who’s good at coping with bureaucratsone who knows how to weave in and out of the red tape, how to go around the runaround, how to keep from losing his way in a paper storm.” I frowned, rubbing my chin. “Let’s see …

“We need a one who can discover The tortured track that turns and runs Through forest dark and hidden bower, Past concrete towers and Stone Age duns, A spirit who can comprehend The twists and turns it finds inside, And so can lead us past blind ends TO where the monarch hides!”

There was a flash of light, so bright as to dazzle us all with afterimages-but a gravelly voice was calling, “What? Where? How came I here?”

In a panic, I blinked and rubbed, trying to clear my eyes before the creature I had summoned could turn on us.

Too late-it was howling, “What benighted son of a sorcerer and a witch has brought me into so bleak a place as this?”

“Guilty!” I shouted. “It’s my fault, not theirs! But have the courage to wait until I can see you, you … “

“Then clear your eyes!” the newcomer snorted; and suddenly, I could see again.

I blinked, asking, “What kind of creature can … Oh.

My friends gasped with shock. The “creature” looked up from the neighborhood of my belt buckle, arms akimbo and his other two arms folded under his shoulder blades, tapping the forward-facing foot while he balanced on the backward-facing one and took aim at my shin with the third. His noseless face glowered up at me in indignation, huge saucer eyes glowing an angry yellow while he twiddled the tentacles on top of his head. Overall, he looked like a mauve cucumber whose vines had decided to turn into legs and arms and prehensile hair. He wore pointed shoes with curling toes and a wide belt loaded with every sort of tool imaginable, plus a few that I couldn’t.

And he wasn’t happy.

I swallowed. “Hi! I’m Saul, urn, a wizard. And who are you?”

“Who did you expect?” the gravelly voice growled. Yes, its lips moved.

“Just somebody who understands the illogical well enough to get us out of here. Uh-who are you? “

“I,” said the little monster, “am the Gremlin.”

I stared.

“Saul,” Angelique quavered, “what is a Gremlin?”

“An imaginary creature whose goal in life is making things go wrong,” I told her. “If anybody can understand the kind of realm we’re in, he can.”

“But will he aid us?” Frisson breathed.

“Unlikely,” the little monster grated. “I delight in foiling and frustrating, not aiding-especially to folk who yank me unceremoniously from my home!”

“My apologies,” I said, “but there really wasn’t any way I could ask you ahead of time. The Gremlin unlimbered an arcane tool from his belt. “I’m minded to send you back in that time you speak of, to give you space to learn your manners.”

“No, please! We really do need your help. We’re stuck in this maze, see, and we need to get through it fast. There’s a whole kingdom that needs our help.”

“What’s your kingdom to me, or I to it?”

“You could be its rescuer,” I said, “and it’s a goodly land that’s being laid waste by black sorcery. Forests are being blighted-trees and animals are being twisted out of their natural forms …”

“How foul!” the Gremlin cried, outraged. “That is my workthough I would rather work it through machinery, and the more complicated, the better. What bastard of spirits usurps my prerogative in such fashion?”

“Her name is Suettay,” I explained, “and her grandmother seized the throne three generations ago. They’ve been ruining the land ever since.”

The Gremlin shook his fists, hopping mad-literally. “So many years? Have my tasks been usurped for so long as that? Why has no one told me of it before?”

I sensed an opening. “Because they didn’t know how. I mean, even with me, it was as much accident as intention.”

“But you did at least bring word!” The Gremlin stilled, scowling.

“Surely I shall help you, if it will bring me a chance to annihilate this usurper! What do you wish of me?”

“Well, we’re trying to get to the Spider King, see-we’re hoping that maybe he-”

“The Good Bourgeois King?” The Gremlin stared. “Aye, most surely he could aid you! But how think you to come to him?”

“That’s why we’re trying to get through this maze, see. I recited a spell that should take us to the Spider King.”

“A spell?” The Gremlin rounded on me, looking me up and down.

“Art a sorcerer, or a warlock?”

“Neither, really-I think I’m a wizard. But I don’t believe in magic, see, and the spell didn’t take us right to him, so “A wizard who works magic that he does not believe in!” the Gremlin crowed. “Why, this is too delightful! How shall I bollix work for you, mortal? By making your spells all work aright? Oh, this is priceless!”

I exhaled a shaky breath. “Surely you wouldn’t do anything so perverse.”

The Gremlin eyed me shrewdly. “I think you know me by repute, and too well to think there is anything too perverse for me. So you wish to come to the Spider King, eh? “

“Yeah, but my spells haven’t been working, and-”

“Nay, I should think not! His realm is too closely guarded, to come at him unawares!”

“Unawares?” I looked at the tunnel about me. “You mean this whole thing is his early warning system?”

“He will know of you when you arrive, aye.” The Gremlin tilted his head to the side, looking me up and down. “This much I will do for you-I will lead you back through this maze, whence you’ve come. if “Nay!” Angelique cried. “We must go on!”

The Gremlin looked up, surprised.

” ‘Tis the salvation ” of the land we speak of,” Gilbert explained.

“Besides,” I said, there. ” you don’t know what’s waiting for us back

“Tell me,” the Gremlin coaxed.

“Oh, all right.” I sighed. “An evil queen and a torture chamber, not to mention a dungeon.”

“You have reason to wish to go on,” the Gremlin admitted. “Yet ‘tis not so simply done as that. There are greater dangers than this maze, look you.”

“If you think they’re bad, you should see what we left behind us.”

“I have.” The monster leered. “Or ones much like them. So you think, then, that you are on the road to his palace, this Spider King?”

“Well, to his kingdom, maybe.”

The Gremlin shook what passed for his head, with certainty.

“His kingdom runs throughout the heart of the continent between the Northern and the Middle seas; it overlies your own, like a saucer on a plate. You seek his palace, not his kingdom alone. I will take you there, for I’ll need his aid against this woman who usurps my prerogatives.” He grinned. “And, too, I’m minded of the mischief you will wreak in Allustria, if the Spider King lends his strength to your cause.

I didn’t remember mentioning a cause-and I certainly didn’t remember mentioning Allustria. The prickling feeling moved over my shoulders and the back of my head again, as I began to feel the tendrils of a conspiracy waft around me. The worst of it was that I suspected that I might be part of the conspiracy, not just its object-but I wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky. “Then you will help us?”

“And gain a chance to help confound the self -important and harshruling ones? Aye, and gladly!” The Gremlin leapt to the fore. “Follow me!” He strode off into the darkness. “Do You follow close!”

I hurried after him, and the gang followed, but I don’t think any of us was convinced that it was entirely a good idea.

Lead us the Gremlin did. How, I couldn’t have said-but every time my sense of direction told me I should zig, the Gremlin zagged, and every time I thought we should turn left, the Gremlin turned right.

Archways and corners swooped past us in dizzying array, for the little monster never faltered. How he could tell where to go, I couldn’t guess, but I wasn’t about to argue.

Then, finally, the tunnel opened out. I looked up, with a notion of what I might see-and I was halfway right, at least. I saw a convex wall curving up and away from me, continuing onward in a great circle. It was as if we stood in the center of a doughnut.

But what was above that doughnut was a surprise.

“Wizard,” Angelique said softly, “what is that darkness all about?”

It was dead black, flat, total darkness, without the slightest hint of light. It seemed to dim everything near it.

“The void,” I answered. “That’s what lies outside of space and time.”

“Then what,” Frisson said, “is that great curve that rises above us”, it was like a huge corkscrew, rising up over the rim of the doughnut, slanting upward into the void and out of sight.

“Yonder lies your path,” the Gremlin informed him.

Angelique frowned. “Yet how are we to come to there,”’ “Through yonder gate.” The Gremlin pointed. On the far side of the circle, the wall curved inward, forming the mouth of another tunnel.

“If we must, we must,” Gilbert growled. “Lead on.”

“Even so,” the monster murmured; but he had taken scarcely one step when a huge roar sounded, a roar that shook the very walls, a roar that pained our ears and hit us with almost physical force.

” There are impediments,” the Gremlin murmured.

Forth it came from the darkness of the tunnel mouth-a monster who stood upright on hooves and switched an oxtail, whose body swelled into the deep, muscular chest of a bull, merging into huge, human arms and shoulders. The mouth opened and loosed another closely, I realized there was no muzzle, but only a great russet beard roar; I thought, at first, that it was a lion’s head. Then, looking more and mustache, and that the face was human, though with a huge mane of tawny hair.

But those were fangs inside that human mouth-fantastically elongated canines.

Angelique moaned and shrank back against me; I reached out a protective arm.

“Wizard,” Gilbert said, “what manner of creature is that?”

“He is the Bull,” the Gremlin answered, “and he is set to slay any who come herein.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Bull charged, arms reaching out for easy meat.

“Scatter!” I shouted, leaping away to my left, Angelique darting with me. Gilbert dashed off to the right, and Frisson leapt out ahead, then veered around in a circle.

The Bull turned to follow him.

But the Rat Raiser popped up in front of the monster, crying, “Hold! Show me your permit!”

The Bull screeched to a halt, forgetting Frisson in its amazement at the sheer arrogance of this overweening human. Then it lowered its head, shoulders rising, and let out a bellow of tripled rage, lunging toward the bureaucrat.

The Rat Raiser turned and fled, crying, “Summon the men-atarms!

“Why, then, here am I!” Gilbert cried, and threw himself at the Bull’s hocks in a perfect flying tackle. The monster slammed down like a tidal wave hitting shore, letting out a roar like an earthquake.

I winced, and hoped there’d be enough of Gilbert left to hold a ceremony over.

One way or another, the squire had bought us some time, enough for me to search my memory.

But Frisson got in there before me:

 

“Gazing down from Olympian heights, Zeus beheld the Phoenician maid, Whose face and form with beauty bright Awoke desire in the Jovian blade.

 

He changed himself into a Bull; He mingled with her father’s herd With gentle mien, and hide all white, His breast with ardent passion stirred As he watched the maid; his heart was full.

Europa saw, and in delight,

 

Plaited a garland of blossoms while Each graceful movement made him sigh Her beauteous face, her glowing smile, Sweet curves of breast and cheek and thigh, And thresh of limbs as she came nigh!”

 

Something glimmered in the center of the circle, glimmered and took form, that of a tall, voluptuous woman in a chiton, blond hair piled high, with a face of pure innocence. She whirled and ran, revealing smooth ivory thighs.

Of course, if you looked closely, she was a little translucent.

Maybe transparent-the Bull saw right through her, anyway. He stampeded straight past the illusion, shaking the whole chamber with his bellow, and the Gremlin gibed, “You have mistaken quite, if You wish a female for his taste.”

And, suddenly, the illusion-woman wasn’t there any more; in its place was a young and shapely heifer, slender-for a cow-and, even to my eyes, somehow alluring. She sauntered out between the humans and the Bull, who dug in his hooves and jolted to a halt, its eyes fairly bulging. The heifer turned, switching her tail in his face, ambling away from me and my companions.

Bewitched, the Bull followed.

Gathering my wits, I dashed over to Gilbert, but the squire had pulled himself together and was sitting up, shaking his head. I stopped by him with a sigh of relief. “You okay?”

Gilbert looked up with a frown. “What is ‘okay’?”

“Uh-sound, in this instance,”

“Aye.” Gilbert caught my arm and pulled himself up. “Sound, and ready for another round. Where is our foe?”

Another wall-shaking roar answered us. We whirled and saw that the Bull had finally caught the heifer-but she had turned into a Spanish fighting Bull, head lowered and pawing the earth. The halfhuman Bull bellowed his bafflement and rage, and charged.

Somehow, he missed.

And, somehow, the Spanish Bull was a heifer again, scampering away with a playful moo. But the Bull, fully aroused, roared his wrath and pounded hot-hoof after her.

I saw our chance. “Now! While he’s too mad to think at all!”

“Even as you say.” Gilbert hurled himself forward again.

“Hey, no!” I cried, appalled; but the squire did even better than before. He landed in a crouch right in front of the Bull and, with its next step, surged upward, arms wrapped around the monster’s knees, pitching upward with his full strength, slinging the Bull high and hard. The monster’s bellow took on a note of bafflement; it flailed about as it flew, and Gilbert turned with it, hands still on its hooves, then slammed it down with all his might. The Bull hit the ground with an impact that shook the whole cavern, and Frisson yanked off his wooden shoe, leapt in, and swung hard. The crack! of wood on bone was almost as loud as the roar, and I winced, hoping the Bull wasn’t dead even as I wondered if I’d have to conjure up a new shoe for Frisson.

But the Bull only sagged, pushing itself halfway up, then tilted over and fell heavily again. He lifted his head, looking about, then rolled over to his belly and got his legs under him.

“He has a hard head,” Frisson noted, pulling his shoe on again.

“Yet he will recover, and soon.” The Gremlin was there by me.

“Quickly, Wizard! Conjure tea!”

“Tea?!” I stared, totally taken aback.

“Aye, tea and scones, with a silver service and a linen cloth!

Quickly! Lose no time!”

“But what good will tea and “Do you not hear me? I tell you, I know this Bull! High tea, and promptly, for even now he regains his senses!”

I gave up trying to make sense out of it, and recited:

 

“Oh I some are for the red wine, and some are for the white, And some for guzzling moonshine by the pale moonlight; But I’m for tea and crumpets, for high tea just sets me right!”

 

The air thickened; then light glittered off shiny surfaces, and a linen picnic cloth was there, with cups and saucers next to a bonechina teapot. Hot scones nestled in a linen napkin lining a silver basket; another held crumpets, with butter dish and jam pot close by.

“Maiden, pour!” the Gremlin urged.

Angelique stared, startled to be told to do something for which she’d had no training; but she turned, gamely stepping in with her upbringing as a proper hostess, and sat gracefully by the pot.

“One hand keeps the lid on,” I whispered.

Angelique took the cue as if she hadn’t even noticed it, pouring tea into a cup and burbling, “How pleasant the weather is! Quite cool for August, do you not think? Lemon, Sir, or milk?”

The Bull looked up, sighting an island. staring at the service like a shipwrecked sailor

“Sweetening, perchance?” Angelique prompted. or two? “One lump,

“She picked up on that awfully fast,” I muttered at the Gremlin with a hint of accusation.

The little monster looked up at me with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “There are more ways than one to put a notion into a body’s head, Wizard.”

“Two lumps,” legged. the Bull rumbled, pulling himself up to sit cross

Frisson and Gilbert exchanged a look of amazement, but Angelique didn’t even bat an eye. She dropped two lumps of sugar into the cup with silver tongs. “Will you take milk, or lemon?”

“Milk, if you please, the Bull answered, with a good public-school accent. “And perhaps a scone?”

“Surely.

” Angelique presented him with a cup and saucer, then turned to take a bit of scone from the basket. “Butter?”

“Of course.”

“So I had thought.” Angelique spread butter, set the cake on a plate, and handed it to him, then looked up at me. “Saul?”

“Milk and sugar.” I folded myself into a tailor’s seat, surprised to find I was hungry. “And a scone, if You please./i “Most certainly.

” Angelique poured, chattering, “I think we will have an early fall, do you not? And you, Sir Bull, what fine chance brings you our way?”

The Bull frowned. “I might have asked the same.”

“Then do, I prithee! And might you have a name?”

“John,” the Bull said.

Of course.

Then, obligingly, “And what chance brings You my way?”

Slowly, Frisson and Gilbert came up and sat down. Angelique poured tea with milk and sugar for them as she answered, “We flee a wicked tyrant, who would imprison us, abuse each of us in ways as foul as she can imagine, then slay us by slow torture. And yourself?”

“I have been here as long as I may remember,” the Bull answered slowly, land that is long, maiden, very long.”

“Centuries,” the Gremlin breathed.

“Even so.” The Bull bowed his head to the monster in acknowledgment. “I know not who sent me here-only that his voice did echo all around me as I woke, saying, ‘Here you stand, and here you must remain, slaying all who seek to pass until fair Chance may send you they who seek to rise for good.’ Angelique exchanged a glance with me. “Mayhap we are they.”

“Mayhap,” the Bull said slowly, trying to throttle hope. “Where do you seek to go, and why?”

“To the castle of the Spider King,” Angelique answered. “We seek his aid in defeating a foul sorceress who has laid a whole land ‘neath a grid of rules and clerks. indeed, her people scarcely dare to stir out of doors without her say-so.”

The Bull frowned. “Why should the Spider King aid you?”

“Why,” Angelique said, “we have heard that he is a good man, who aids those who seek to help the poor, and yearn for justice.”

“He does that, aye, does both. Yet what advantage is there for him in thus aiding you to give aid?”

I do not know,” Angelique admitted.

“Maybe we could tell, if we knew what he wants,” I said slowly.

“Do you know?”

“He lacks nothing,” the Bull said.

I shook my head. “If that were the case, he’d either help people just for the fun of it, or he’d be getting something out of it. A sense of purpose, maybe?”

“How old is he?” Frisson said.

“Centuries,” the Bull said firmly. “As long as I have been here, at the least.”

“Mayhap, then,” the poet offered, “he has need to justify his continnued existence?”

I looked up, startled. Where had this country bumpkin taken his philosophy course?

But the Bull was nodding. “I could think that, aye. Why else does he constantly seek out human misery and invent ways to assuage it?

“Does he so?” Frisson fastened on the words, his eyes keen.

I wondered at it, but the poet didn’t seem inclined to expand upon the point, so I said, “If that’s his motivation, why does he have you here to keep people out?”

“I cannot say with any surety that ‘twas he who set me here,” the Bull said slowly. “As to the ‘why’ of it, I cannot so much as conjecture.

“Not without knowing the ‘who,’ no,” I said dryly. “Well, let’s assume for the moment that we’re the ones you’re supposed to let through.

“Let us not!” the Bull said sternly. “And let us recall that, when this teatime is ended, we shall war again, you and I.”

Inside, I went cold, but my mouth kept going. “But what if we are the ones you’re supposed to help?”

“If you are, why, you shall defeat me, and I shall go on to the Spider King’s palace with you.” The Bull sounded angry, and I could imagine the anguish he was feeling at the moment of decision. “If you are not, then you shall die in the attempt.”

But Frisson had fastened to the first sentence. “If you are to go with us, can you guide us? Have you been to the palace before?”

“No,” the Bull said slowly, “yet I have a memory of the route. ‘Tis as if I were made with it in me.’ “DNA can do such wonderful things,” I murmured. Then, louder, “Trust the inborn hunch-and take a gamble on us. After all, how many other groups have ever come this way?”

“Only three,” the Bull admitted.

I felt another chill, trying to imagine what the last questers Must have been.

“Yet they were all men,” the Bull continued, “and wore the black robes of sorcery. There was a reek of evil about them, which there is not about you.”

“We are a force of right,” Gilbert said with total conviction.

The Bull gave him the jaundiced eye, but I said, “At least we’re fighting evil …”

“And each of us has suffered from it,” Gilbert stated.

“Well, yes,” I said, shifting uncomfortably as I remembered a few of my less glorious deeds, then shifting back with apprehension as I remembered my encounter with my guardian angel. “I have to admit I’m out for my own ends, though.”

The Bull’s head snapped about to stare at me. “How so?”

“I’m trying to find a friend,” I explained, “and after that, I’m out to get back home.” But I glanced at Angelique as I said it, and suddenly found the issue much less pressing than it had been. “It just seems that I’m going to have to defeat the evil queen before I can do either. “

“His gain will be the people’s salvation,” Gilbert said quickly.

The Bull ignored him, eyes still on me. “That is not the most noble motive for a quest.”

“It’s better than a lot of ‘em,” I answered, reddening, “and its side effects would benefit the people of Allustria. Couldn’t very well be worse than what they’ve got.”

“There is that,” the Bull admitted. “And, mayhap, it would be less of a bore to assist you, than to guard this gate interminably. It would, at the least, be adventure.”

My hopes soared. “Oh, I guarantee it wouldn’t be boring!”

“Indeed it will not,” the Bull admitted, “for we must pass mine enemy. Will you aid me in fighting him?”

I felt sudden interior brakes slamming on. If this monster felt the need of help confronting the next one, how horrible did it have to be?

“Just what kind of beastie is this?”

“His name is Ussrus Major,” the Bull answered, “and he is the Bear.

The tone in which he said it was enough to chill the blood, but Frisson murmured, “Saul, you are a great wizard, surely.”

“Yeah, with your verses.” I remembered a poem, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay. Count us in.”

“I may indeed,” the Bull answered, “for the Bear blocks the way to the Spider King.”

Suddenly, he straightened, slapping his knees. ” ‘Tis done; I am with you. If I am wrong, and mayhem strikes, why, then, let it come!

“

 

“You are noble,” Angelique murmured.

“I wish escape from my prison.”

“You are brave,” Frisson qualified.

The Bull stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yet every man fears some thing, and this is mine, this journey. Still, I long for it, too-so let us be about it.”

He to le, lithe, twisting movement and set off toward se in one sing his cave. We others sprang to our feet and followed. I glanced back; saw the remains of our picnic; and, with a quick, muttered verse, banished the mess. It twinkled and was gone.

The Bull wrenched open the gate, and we followed him into the cave beyond it-with some trepidation, if truth be known. Me, I was remembering the story of Chicken Little-but the cave extended, going on and on. I realized it was another tunnel.

“What spell you used to seek out the Spider King, use now,” the Bull rumbled. The Gremlin nudged me; I took a breath and started chanting, low, almost subvocally.

I had scarcely finished the first recitation when the tunnel started changing. its roof developed a split; then, as we walked along, the split became wider and wider until the roof was gone. I began to eye the dark space beyond it nervously, especially as the walls of the tunnel began to taper down, lower and lower, until they were scarcely knee-high, and we were walking on a concave pathway.

“Now,” the Gremlin said, “one might feel dangerously exposed.”

“One might,” I agreed, with a nervous glance at the darkness around us-then looked again. “Hey! It’s getting lighter!”

“We approach his region-mine enemy.” The Bull came to a halt, pointing. “Yonder lies the pit of greatest danger for me-the pit of the Bear! Mark it!”

There he came, shambling through the mist, a huge dark shape in a phosphorescent cavern, and my heart sank down to my boots. But the trail led through that huge cave, a floating pathway with no visible means of support, angling through the ghostly cavern, perhaps six feet off the floor.

“Onward,” the Gremlin said, face grim. “We gain naught, if we stand to be prey.”

“Why, then, pray we must,” Frisson countered, and immediately chanted, loudly, ‘God of pity, God of wrath!

Save us from the ursine path!”

I looked around in a panic, but there was no visible damage, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Please, Frisson! Write it down!”

“Even a prayer?” the poet cried, amazed.

“Anything,” I snapped, “as long as it’s original.”

But the Bear had heard and reared up on his hind feet, forelegs upraised as if imploring. “Comrades, please! I wish only detente!”

“Keep walking,” I said grimly, and we did, though our steps had slowed with dread.

“Surely we are too heavy for so fragile a path,” Angelique demurred.

“Forward,” I commanded, “or he’ll take the hindmost.”

“Can you not make our weight less?”

,oh, all right,” I grumped.

 

“Afoot and hearted I take to the climbing road, Healthy, free, The world before me, dismayed Rising up un Forward the Light Brigade!”

 

“Volga, mother dear!” the Bear cried, “you have never had such a gift as this!” With that, he swung a huge paw with double eagle’s talons at the maiden, to snag her dress. She screamed and shrank back, but the Bull roared in anger and leapt from the pathway, hooves slamming straight toward the Bear.

Ussrus stepped back just in time, and the Bull landed right in front of him, slamming a haymaker into the Bear’s jaw. its head rolled back, and its arms came up. “Comrade, please! I come in peace! A truce, I beseech you!”

“Don’t trust him!” I called. “Cry no peace with the Bear who walks like a man!”

The Bull only kept his guard up, glowering.

“Bring him up, quickly!” the Gremlin hissed. “We cannot go on without him”’ The way ahead was luminescent, glowing with distant fires. I called,

 

“Up, up and away! For he who fights and runs away, Will live to fight another day!”

 

The Bull admitted, “yet should I therefore “There is sense in that,”

not give him his truce?”

“No!” I bleated.

“Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer, Making his supplications rose Adam-Zad the Bear …

When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise, When he veils the hate and cunning of his little swinish eyes, When he shows as seeking quarter with paws like hands in prayer, That is the time of peril-The time of the Truce of the Bear!

over and over the story, ending as it began:

 

There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that walks like a man!”

 

“Betrayal!” the Bear cried. “Our plan is discovered!” His huge paw scythed toward the Bull’s face, but the claws tangled in the Bull’s long hair, just long enough for John to beat away the attack and counterpunch. The Bear recoiled, then came back roaring, with scytheclaws flailing. “Transform the imperialist war into civil war!”

Frisson pressed a piece of paper into my hand. I read it without thinking.

 

“Raise up our tiring friend! That we might rise away with him, Up toward our chosen end, Clambering dire to meet the arachnid sire Spiraling higher in a widening gyre!”

 

The Bull shot up into the air as if a huge hand had grabbed him, then dropped back onto the pathway-but very lightly, as if that same invisible hand was setting him down with the greatest of care.

I began to wonder about Frisson’s verse of prayer.

The Bear recovered, its shoulders hunkering down, an ugly gleam coming into its eyes. “Do not set yourself above us! For surely, all history is that of class conflict!”

“The conflict part, I can believe,” I said to the Gremlin, “but he totally lacks class.”

“Keep walking, Wizard,” the monster answered nervously.

“I sense an uprising,” Gilbert muttered.

The pathway shuddered under our feet, then pulled itself loose from the ground and drifted upward, curving into a widening spiral that wound up out of sight.

The Bear rose up, both forepaws hammering at the pathway, claws flashing like icicles. “Let us restructure the economy!” He hooked huge talons into the spiral and pulled downward.

The path jolted, and my companions cried out, fighting for balance. Frisson and I fell, but Angelique and Gilbert managed to keep their feet. The Bear dragged the pathway down, roaring, “Scorch the earth and burn the city! Let not a scrap remain to strength the enemy! It

“Too much anachronism is too much,” I growled.

 

“Oh, hear you not the singing of the bugle, wild and free? And soon you’ll know the ringing of the rifle, from the tree! oh, the rifle, yes the rifle, in our hands will prove no trifle!

 

Light gleamed along a length of blue steel, and I found myself holding a Kentucky flintlock.

Well, one shot was better than none. I tucked it into my shoulder and sighted.

The Bear dropped the pathway and backed away, arms up high again. “Brothers, do not shoot!”

The pathway whipped back up, then sank down, then back up, and even Angelique and Gilbert howled as we tumbled. I squeezed the trigger, and the hammer snapped down-but there wasn’t even a flash in the pan. I threw the rifle at the Bear with an oath of disgust.

The butt caught Ussrus right across the chops, and he reeled, head spinning.

“Enough of this!” the Gremlin cried, exasperated, and jumped down into the cave of the Bear.

“No!” I cried in alarm, but the Gremlin was muttering something as he dashed in a circle around Ussrus Major.

The Bear suddenly let out a howl. “What are these leaves? What are these-gooseberries?”

“What ails the beast?” Frisson asked, wideeyed.

“He supposes he is a bush,” the Gremlin answered, hopping back up onto the pathway. “But the spell will not endure forever, Wizard.

The Bull must find some way to bring this path up high, where the Bear cannot reach, or he will surely drag us down.”

“Right.” I pulled myself together, racking my wits for some verse about a rising path. The first thing that came to mind was,

 

“Up and away, Chingachgook’ The hunter who follows shall now be shook!”

 

“I’m out of rhymes!” I shouted. “Take it, Frisson!”

The poet adlibbed as easily as a stream flows:

 

“As we go faster, we slow our pursuer! The pilgrims rise up, and disdain the lure!”

 

“Walk!” the Gremlin commanded us, and we scrambled to our feet, swayed a moment in the motion of the rising path, then managed a sort of bowlegged gait, leaning into a hike that had suddenly become a climb, as the path rose up at an angle and kept rising. Below us, the Bear roared in impotent fury, clawing in vain at a curve that had risen so high that it exceeded his grasp. He stood below us, flailing away at those whom he would drag down, until his voice was lost in the mists that rose up to obscure him, mists that rose even higher until they were all about us, then hardened-and we found ourselves walking in an enclosed tunnel once again.

“You have succeeded, Wizard,” Frisson whispered.

“Yes, but only because I had a lot of help. The tunnel has changed a lot, though. Are we still on the right path?”

“Aye,” the Bull said, “for we have but discovered the way to the Spider King, in spite of all the deceptions with which the Bear sought to enshroud us.”

“Yet it seems to differ so,” Angelique objected. And it did, for the curve was much sharper, and rose in an incline. We toiled upward through a torus that became a hollow expanding helix, ascending and ascending until it suddenly opened out into a great room, so vast that its ceiling glowed in an opalescent mist, a fabric of gossamer threads. it had no walls, but columns as numerous as the trunks of a forest, with vistas of hills and meadows and groves visible between them, bathed in sunlight and vividly green. We walked out in wonder, across a floor that was a mosaic of marble so huge that our eyes couldn’t even begin to discern the picture it formed.

Directly before us, in an archway, stood a stocky figure with a flowing cloak, silhouetted against the sun.

“Gentlemen and lady,” the Bull said, in a hushed, almost reverent tone, “we have attained our goal. We stand in the palace of the Spider King.

Chapter Nineteen

The dark form came forward. As he left the sun-dazzle, his face became visible. At first glance, he wasn’t a terribly prepossessing figure-only a man of middle height, wearing tunic and hose of dark gray broadcloth, a hip-length coat with wide sleeves, and a cap encircled by a band of leaden medallions.

Then I saw the face, as rough as if it had been hewn from stone, with fire in the eyes and a grim set to the lips, and I quailed for a moment.

Only a moment, not even long enough for my natural mulishness to arise-because I looked at his eyes again and decided that if this man told me to follow him into a battle we couldn’t win, I probably would.

“Be welcome in my palace,” the Spider King said. “If you have found the means to come to me here, the stoutness of heart to win through, you must be good folk.”

I glanced around, but nobody else seemed inclined to answer, so cleared my throat.

But Gilbert spoke up first. ,you must be sure indeed of your power, Majesty, to greet so unseemly a crew as we, with no guardsmen or knights about you. The Spider King’s lips quirked into a smile, apparently ignoring the element of threat in Gilbert’s words-was the squire out of his mind?

He started to answer, but before he could get out a single word, a horrifying apparition came dashing from behind a pillar. He was only a man, but incredibly ugly. His eyes and nose were surrounded by a huge tangle of red hair and beard. His tunic and leggings were of good cloth, but irretrievably rumpled. He ran hunched over, a standing cup of dull white metal in his hands. “The cup, Majesty! The antimony cup! You must drink!”

The king glanced at him, irritated. “Away, Oliver. I have affairs in train.

But, “You must drink!” the shaggy man maintained, and he set himself beside the king like a tree that had suddenly taken root.

The king gave him a look of exasperation, but took the cup and drank off the draught. Then he pushed the cup back and said, “Now begone! I shall summon you at need!”

“As your Majesty pleases.” The vagabond bowed and scurried off.

“As you see, I am attended,” the Spider King said to Gilbert. The squire had not moved, but somehow gave the impression of having shrunk away in loathing as Angelique had very definitely done, and the rest of us had backed away a pace or two.

“He could repulse a squadron by the mere look of him,” Frisson murmured.

“Not that he would have need to.” For some odd reason, Gilbert seemed to relax. “We have come in peace, Majesty, to beseech your aid.

“None would come for aught reason else,” the king said, with a sardonic smile. “You seek aid against the queen of Allustria, do you not?” Something clicked in my mind. “Yes, we do,” I said slowly, “and I think you know all about it-starting with my being transported to this universe.”

“To the universe of Allustria and Merovence,” the Spider King corrected me. “We stand between all universes, here. Yet I cannot be certain that I know all your grievances. Therefore, tell me them.”

For a moment, Gilbert looked lost. “There is so much …”

“I am a poet whose verses wreak evil, Majesty,” Frisson said, “even though I intend it not. Yet this wizard …” He nodded toward me. “… has taught me to write, so that my verses no longer need to be spoken, and no longer wreak havoc.”

Gilbert took his cue. “The people of Allustria have suffered at the hands of Queen Suettay, Majesty, and I was of the band of the Order of Saint Moncaire sent to free one good yeoman and his family from her oppression. Yet my general did command me to accompany this Wizard Saul, for he had a vision that showed Saul to be the salvation of Allustria.”

i still didn’t like the sound of that.

“He wrested me from my prison cell,” the Rat Raiser said, “where I had languished for years, since Queen Suettay consigned me there for no crime but fulfilling my function too well.”

“And seeking to rise higher?” The Spider King fixed him with a gimlet stare.

The Rat Raiser bore it as long as he could; then he lowered his gaze and muttered, “I was ambitious, aye. Yet I did not seek her throne.”

“That would have come,” the Spider King assured him. He turned to Angelique. “And yourself, lady? Have you, too, suffered at the hands of this Queen Suettay?”

Angelique straightened, lifting her chin. “She did sacrifice me to evil, majesty, and did attempt to ensnare my ghost to be her slavebut the Wizard Saul did remind me that I had but to repent my sins, and I would be Heaven-bound. He thus freed me from her power-but she kept my body between life and death, so that I must yet linger on this Earth.”

The Spider King nodded slowly, eyes still on her. “And ‘tis only the trickle of life in your body that holds you here?”

Angelique blushed and lowered her eyes, and I felt a thrill shoot through every limb and extremity. it surpassed anything that was ever brewed in a test tube.

Then the Spider King turned to me with a skeptical lift of the eyebrow. “What say you, 0 Hope of the Oppressed?”

“Uh …” I swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. “I just want to find my friend Matthew Mantrell, your Majesty.” I was about to add the bit about getting back to my own universe, but I glanced at Angelique, looking so vibrant, alive, and curvaceous, and decided to leave that part out. Honesty, however, compelled me to admit, “I also want to get Angelique’s ghost back into her body.”

“How shall you do that, with the queen in your way?

I shrugged. “Take the queen out of the way.”

“So you are set upon the slaying of a monarch?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I admitted, “though I wouldn’t mind, now that you mention it-nobody could deserve it more. Besides, her grandmother usurped the throne-she isn’t a rightful monarch.

“If she was born to it, it is hers by right,” he stated with an air of full authority.

I looked at him narrowly; I’ve developed this instinct for knowing when a person’s trying to snow me. “You don’t believe that for a second,” I accused. Then pieces pulled themselves together in my mind-the picture of that great fat spider sitting back and laughing at me, after she had just bitten me in Matt’s apartment, and all the little arachnids that had been watching me ever since. “You were the one who brought me here in the first place! Maybe you can tell me how I’m going to unseat Suettay! That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

He stood still for a moment, then smiled. “You are astute, Wizard Saul-and, yes, you are a wizard; your denials are futile. As to deposing the usurper, you are the lodestone to which the forces of opposition will gather, and may have the strongest chance of success-but it is not by any means certain.”

I frowned. “Just a minute, there. In the first place, I thought you said Suettay wasn’t a usurper.”

“Her own actions betray that she is, at least, no rightful monarch,” the king said. “Since taking the throne, she has sought for the rightful king; for twenty years she has sought the descendant of the queen her grandmother slew.”

I nodded. “So she knows she’s trying to impose herself on a land that isn’t hers, one that rejects her naturally.” I had heard of such a thing, in the comparative lit major that I almost finished. “So if I kick her out, I’m just punishing a would-be regicide. And since she’s a sorceress, it will be in the land’s best interests for me to overthrow her.”

“Even so.” The king’s face darkened; right or wrong, the killing of a monarch went against his grain. “None but a monarch born may claim a crown-and one who knows her claim to be unrightful must bring chaos upon the land she would rule. To do so is to offend against nature and goodness! To do so is to turn her power to evil!/’ His glare was so damned intimidating! I stood against it, though, and said stoutly, “So whether she was evil or not, she certainly would be, once she had decided to keep the crown and kill the rightful claimant-if she could.” Privately, I was remembering the long history of European dynasties being established by usurpation, and the Chinese convention of the Mandate of Heaven passing to the successful usurper-but the rules seemed to be different here. Or, no, not different, but lying on a deeper foundation; there was some sort of affinity between the rightful ruler and the land itself. Now that I thought about it, European usurpers usually had been related to the previous dynasty in some way, no matter how tenuous-at least, the usurpers whose families had managed to hold the throne for several generations. I took a deep breath and said, “Majesty, aid us in overthrowing this vile sorceress, and we will seek the legitimate heir!”

Gilbert and Angelique both stared at me, eyes very wide. I didn’t blame them; I felt the same way. I had been so determined not to get myself committed! But this was, at least, only a short-term commitment-and it seemed to be the price of the king’s help. I guessed that was what he had brought me here for.

Seemed I’d guessed right, too. The Spider King stood in thought, chin sunk on his breast. Finally, he lifted his head and said, “Will you swear? ” I ground my teeth in resentment, even though it meant I’d guessed rightly. But he didn’t leave me much choice, now. “Yes. But I want to hear the wording first.”

“You shall have it.” The king plucked one of the leaden medallions from his hat and held it out in his palm. “Upon Saint Louis!

Swear that you will hold the throne only to search for its rightful occupant, and that you will make no attempt to take the crown permanently for yourself or for your line!”

I didn’t move, just stood there and looked him eye to eye. “I wasn’t planning to take it at all.”

“And who will rule the land when the usurper is dead, while you seek out the rightful heir?” the king said impatiently. “Come, swear!

“

 

“I’m tempted. But, actually, I had in mind a ruling council, maybe with representatives from all the different classes-uh, estates.”

His mouth twisted in sarcasm. “And who will lead it?”

I just glared back at him while my mind raced like a rat in a maze, searching for a way out. There wasn’t one, so I went for the most limited terms I could think up on the spot. “Okay, so I’ll call myself prime minister, or president …”

He frowned, not understanding.

“The one who presides,” I explained, my exasperation beginning to show. “But I won’t call myself king.”

He glared at me, but the glare was softening a little. Finally, he ave one short, curt nod. “Good enough. Swear!”

I stared for a second longer, then sighed and gave in. I clasped my hand over the king’s. “All right. I swear.”

“Speak the words!”

I took a deep breath, as much for patience as for a long sentence.

“I swear by Saint Louis that, if I come to lead the government of Allustria, I will hold it only for the purpose of …” I broke off, staring at our joined hands.

Beneath my palm, the medallion had grown warm.

“Swear!” the Spider King commanded.

All around me, I felt tension, as if the air itself were thickeningbut I couldn’t see anything. I looked up, and the king’s glare seemed to bore into my eyes. “Swear!” he demanded. “Or are you false?”

I reddened and tried to ignore the heat. “… for the purpose of governing its people as well as I can, but only while seeking its rightful heir …”

But the tension in the air was growing physically tangible, and the medallion had become hot. It was beginning to be painful. I gritted my teeth and went on. “I swear that I shall never leave off searching for the heir and will resign as soon as I have found him-or her! And that-” The medallion was a searing pain beneath my hand, but I forced myself to ignore the agony and go on. “-under no circumstances will I seek to take the throne for myself, or for my heirs! By Saint Louis! ” Then I tried to pull my hand away, but the king still held it, gaze probing mine, as the heat died away and was gone. Then, finally, the Spider King released my hand. I snatched it away with a groan of relief and looked at my palm to make sure I wasn’t burned.

There, tan against the skin, was the image of Saint Louis.

I screamed. “No! I’m nobody’s man! I’m not property!”

My friends stared at me, Angelique frightened, Gilbert appalled, and Frisson very interested.

“It will fade when the terms of your vow are completed,” the Spider King advised me. “But for now, you are committed. Never forget.”

“How can I, when I’ve got this brand to remind me?” I shouted.

He nodded slowly, unfazed by my anger. “That is its purpose.”

“And to make sure everybody can tell whose side I’m on,” I yelled, “including my enemies! What chance do I have now to survive if I’m captured?”

“What chance did you have before?” he returned.

I just stared at him while the blood drained from my face. He was right-Suettay knew who I was, sure enough, and so did all her henchmen. A disguise might have worked, but I doubted it.

I was a marked man-in more ways than one.

The king still held my gaze, then nodded slowly. “Peradventure you will not forget. Yet if ever you are tempted to, you have but to look in your palm.”

I stared at the image in my hand.

“As is your body, so be your soul,” the Spider King said softly.

“May your duty to Saint Louis and the people of Allustria be as a brand upon your spirit.”

I lifted my head, staring in surprise and shock. Then finally I remembered how I had come into this mess in the first place and said, “It is. It already was.”

But I hadn’t realized it before.

So did it matter that I was now locked into it?

Not really. No. But it sure made me feel eerie. I hated being committed, in any way.

I looked up and noticed Angelique eyeing me with a very leery look. I think she was noticing my attitude, too.

Heat …

I had felt the force of magic enveloping me, binding me, through the leaden icon of the saint. I was branded, indeed, and I wondered what form the results of that branding would take.

“Now,” the king said, “I will hearken to your tale of woe. What moves in this Allustria of yours that is so ruinous to her people?”

“Sorcery!” Gilbert declared.

“Slaughter and rapine!” Angelique cried, appalled.

But I just stared into the eyes of the Spider King and said slowly, “You already know all that, don’t you? You have spies everywhere.”

“Everywhere,” he said, “and too much-for I must winnow amongst my knowledge to find that whereof you speak. Where is your Allustria?”

Gilbert frowned, puzzled. “By Merovence, and north of the Middle Sea.”

“In which universe?”

The others stared, floored. I felt a chill, even though I had guessed this, and said, “In that universe in which magic works by poetry, Majesty, and in which Hardishane’s empire drove out the minions of evil, with the aid of Saint Moncaire.”

“Ah! Saint Moncaire.” The Spider King nodded. “I know the hundred of which you speak. Tell me more of it.”

“Why,” Gilbert said, “Alisande has become queen of Merovencc, five years past-”

“The only one in which evil has not overwhelmed all of Europe’

Aye, I know it! Yet my attention has turned to the other universes near it, which are more in need of my aid.”

“Allustria stands in need of your aid, Majesty, too, and desperately,” Angelique protested. “We dwell in horror there, as fodder for evil men!”

The king shrugged. “I pity you, lady-yet what may I do? There must be some who wish the rule of right, and one to lead them; else I can do naught.”

“Why, we wish such a rule,” Gilbert cried, “and here is our leader.” He clapped me on the back.

I regained my stability and forced a smile.

The king turned to me, interest whetted. “Is it so? Then tell me summat of this Allustria, and of yourselves.”

But I shook my head and said slowly, “It’s the Allustria that you brought me to, because you wanted me to fix it.”

The king’s mouth quirked toward a smile, but he said nothing.

“You have tendrils reaching into all the universes, don’t you?” I accused.

“Not all,” the king admitted, “only those in which I, or my analog, one very like to me, was born, or will be. I am outside time, as are the saints. In the universe that holds your home, I have been dead for almost five centuries; in life, I was known there as Louis XI of France. In this universe of which you speak, I was the Crown Prince Karl of Allustria-but when Suettay’s grandmother slew the rightful queen, she also slew all her heirs, and all her possible heirs. Thereby did I die.”

I stared, shocked. Then I gathered the remnants of my wits and said, “But that was a hundred years ago!”

“Two hundred,” he said. “These sorcerous monarchs live far past their natural time.”

“But why didn’t you call me in sooner?” I bleated.

“Because you had not been born,” he said simply, “and because the forces that can be gathered to oppose the queen did not yet exist.

Now, however, Alisande rules in Merovence and has a most puissant Lord Wizard by her side, who defeated the evil sorcerer that sought to take her kingdom. When I saw how Allustria had fallen and my system of clerks been perverted, I resolved to one day cleanse both-and my chance came when a wizard rose who spearheaded the overthrow of the sorcerer-king of lbile-Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. “

I stood galvanized, just staring at him. He knew why, too, the has

tard; he just smiled back at me with that small smile and that selfsatisifed look in his eyes.

Then I burst out, “Matt? A lord?”

“Aye,” he said, “and a royal consort, after three years.”

“Married?” I turned away, my brain whirling-and thoughts tumbling. Matt had always had the look of the kind who would get married, mind you-but to a queen?

Well. Good for him. I pulled myself together and turned back to the Spider King. “I’m glad to hear it-he’s my best friend-but you knew that, didn’t you?”

“The times were right, at last,” he answered. “There is a similarity of talents to you two.”

“So you just followed his back-trail and looked for a man who could do what he had done.” I looked at him narrowly. “But you did say three years,”’ The king nodded. “Time runs at different rates, in your world and mine. I sought a man who had a strong enough sense of self, whose individuality was so certain, that he would not compromise with any group force, but would maintain his integrity in spite of all temptations. ” I backed away, staring, shaking my head, harder and harder. “No.

Not a chance. That’s not me. No.”

“Truth,” the Spider King insisted, with iron tones. “Yet there was this flaw in the scheme: A man who is so obsessed with becoming his true self is not committed to either evil or good, and his commitment to himself may make him corruptible by self-seeking.”

Well. That sounded a bit more like me.

“That’s really a minor danger,” I said slowly. “Self-aggrandizement would violate my integrity. I’d just like it clearly on the record that I resent being drafted, though.”

“Noted,” the king said, his eyes glowing, and somehow, I was certain the fact had just been written down, somewhere, by some being that I preferred not to know about. “Noted-but ‘drafted’ you are.”

“Yes, damn it!” I snapped. “You know just what you’ve done, don’t you? Throwing these really solidly good people in my path! You’ve got me too caught up in this universe, now, to be able to reject it without trying to save it!”

“Therein am I indeed guilty.” The bastard sounded proud of it.

“But you don’t do anything!” I exploded. “You just sit here and watch! How can you call yourself a force for the good?”

“In your universe, and in many others, I was a force for goodness overall,” he qualified, “though I achieved my ends with guile and stealth, which laid a great deal of guilt upon my soul. I thus was able to see to your world and recruit you. Your friend the Lord Wizard would not do for this affair-he is too strongly allied with good and too scrupulous for some of the means we must use to combat Suettay. But you, with your determination not to commit yourself to any larger force, to remain yourself, alone if need be-you may be able to combat this system of Suettay’s, that seeks to grind all souls into the same likeness.”

“I do have an interest in fighting depersonalization,” I admitted.

“But with the kind of power you have, I find it difficult to believe that you couldn’t have just walked in and kicked out any of these evil monarchs, any time you wanted.”

“The power,” he agreed, “but not the right. if these people do not wish to change their queen, what right have I to meddle?”

I stared. My companions stared, too, aghast.

Chapter Twenty

Then the statement suddenly made sense to me. “It’s not just the queen, is it? Her successor might not bring better rule, after all. So a new king can’t do any good there, unless he changes the system of rule. That country can keep running just as well as it does now without any king-or just as poorly!”

“The monarch has appointed clerks and reeves enough,” the Spider King said, by way of agreement.

I frowned, trying to pierce the man’s emotionless mask by the sheer intensity of my own feelings. “And you think that’s good, don’t you? A good way to rule.”

“If the clerks are mastered, aye. if a capable monarch of good intent commands them, they can strengthen the land immeasurably, preserving the peace and bringing greater wealth to all.”

“Like Joseph in Egypt,” I murmured, “storing up grain for the famine. That’s your goal, isn’t it? No one starving, no one wearing rags or sleeping on the streets.”

This time, the king nodded as he smiled.

“But that’s not enough.” I frowned. “No one should have to kneel to somene else, just because that someone else is stronger. No one should have to live in fear of an overlord’s cruel whim. No one should have to be locked into doing whatever job someone else assigns him, if he doesn’t want it and can find other work that he likes better!

“None should have to marry where they do not wish,” Angelique murmured.

“All should be free to seek their own paths to Heaven,” Gilbert added.

The Spider King pounced on it. “Freedom for Heaven is in one’s soul, squire. Earthly bondage will not hinder it; mundane freedom may not aid it.”

“There is some truth in that,” Frisson admitted. “Yet how if one dwells in agony of spirit, Majesty, as the peasants do in Allustria? if they seek to live morally, they are sorely beset by the miasma of evil and tortured by its minions. The lives of the common folk need not be Hell on Earth.”

The Gremlin just stood by, looking interested.

The king pulled his head down, glowering. “You speak truly,” he admitted, “and the reign of sorcery must cease. Yet that is a fault of Suettay’s, not of the form of her government. A rightful king, devoted to good, may transform that heap of clerks into a force for virtue. ” “The rightful king cannot return!” Frisson protested. “The heir cannot be found! For if he is, Suettay will slay him out of hand!”

“Then seek him out and protect him,” the Spider King said, with an air of grim finality. “Bring him to the throne. For the clerks wield the law, look you, and the law preserves the weak against the assaults of the strong.”

“Unless the law is made by the strong for their own advantage,” I pointed out.

The king cast a quick frown at me, then turned back to Frisson.

“Those who are freed to seek their own destiny may ofttimes go astray and find instead their own ruination.”

“Free or bound, ‘tis they who must answer to God for the prosperity or corruption of their souls,” Frisson said evenly. “Their lord cannot speak to God for them, when they are come to judgment.”

“And shall their lord hinder them, if he is unjust and evil? “He shall,” Frisson said, “if the torments he visits upon them try them unduly.”

“All life is the trial of the soul, if the priests speak truly,” the Spider King returned. ” ‘Tis God who allocates tribulation, each to the strength of his soul. The withstanding of it is the winning of Heaven. “

“Then isn’t it the king’s job to make life as pleasant as he can for his people?” I put in. “He can leave it up to God to assign hardships.”

The king’s lips twitched with impatience. “Should the king, then, ennoble all his peasants?”

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “And if he can’t do that, he can at least stop preventing them from ennobling themselves.”

“They who mislike their lowborn state, may aspire to clerkship,” the king returned, “and rise within the king’s service.”

“Until they do their tasks too well,” the Rat Raiser said. “Until the king says, ‘Thus far, and no farther.’ ” But I addressed the larger issue. “The government of clerks may be led by a strong king, Majesty, true-yet unless he is extremely strong, the layers of clerks will choke off his will and govern in his stead.”

The king turned to me again, frowning. “Why, how is this?”

“The clerks will begin by serving the government, but end by becoming the government,” I explained, “a government that becomes like a living being itself and works to maintain its own interests, disregarding the good of the people.”

“Is this an old wives’ tale?” the king demanded. “Or have you seen such monstrous growths?”

“Oh, yes,” I said softly. “In fact, they’re so common where I come from that the law has even made them legal entities, and scholars have stated the rules of their behavior.”

“Why, what rules are these?” the king demanded.

“They were deduced by a man named Parkinson,” I explained, “and they describe the workings of a form of government called ‘bureaucracy.’ ” The king frowned. “What is the meaning of that word?”

” ‘Government by desks.’ The problem is that any request for action has to go from one desk to another, higher and higher up the ladder, until it reaches the one that can actually do something about it.”

“What monarch would so ignore his clerks?”

“Any one that doesn’t enjoy work.” I raised a hand to forestall the king’s protest. “I know how scandalous that sounds, Your Majesty, but there have been quite a few of them.”

“They cannot have been rightful kings.”

I shrugged. “All right, so they were illegitimate. They stayed in power for fifty years and more, though, sometimes, and their sons and grandsons after them. It’s all well and good to say they weren’t fit to be kings-but no one else was doing the job.”

The Spider King gave me a fierce glare, but held his peace.

“Not that it matters,” I qualified. “After all, once the bureaucrats take hold, they set up so many layers of desks that the king can’t possibly keep in touch with all of them. That’s one of Parkinson’s lawsthat every clerk will try to hire more people to work for him.”

“Who will allow him, if he does not need them?”

“Anybody who looks at his situation on paper-and paper is the key word. The ambitious clerk manufactures more and more pieces of paper that need to be filled out for any one decision, until he really can’t do them all by himself-never mind that they don’t really need to be written. And when each bureaucrat does that, pretty soon you have an immense number of people, and it takes a king’s whole reign just to figure out who is really necessary and who isn’t.”

“It cannot be,” the king scoffed, “for naught would ever then be done, and the land would sicken.”

I carefully looked elsewhere. Gilbert cleared his throat with a covert glance at Angelique.

The king’s gaze darkened. “Speak, then! For I know that Allustria does languish-but can this be why?”

“It is,” the Rat Raiser said heavily, “and ‘tis some fault of mine. I made a ladder of command from the smallest town to the queen’s chancellery, that any command might be executed the next day.

‘Twas for this Suettay cast me into the dungeon-yet she kept my ladder to make her will felt on the instant, wheresoe’er she wished.

‘Tis even as the wizard says-each reeve chose bailiffs, and each bailiff chose a watch, and each watchman chose-”

“Enough.” The king chopped laterally. “I take your point. Yet all will jump to the king’s whistle, will they not?”

“They will,” Frisson said slowly, “when they hear it, which can take a great deal of time, if they wish-but the peasant who cries to the king for aid will not be heard.”

“Why, how is this? Surely these clerks dare not withhold news from the king!”

“Well, not openly,” I answered. “But the lower down the ladder they are, the less power each one has to make a decision-so each one thinks it over for a day or two, then passes it up to the man above him. Unless he takes a dislike to the person who made the complaint, of course-then he just loses the piece of paper with the complaint on it. Parkinson called that one, ‘Delay is the deadliest form of denial.’ “

“And if it does come to the chancellor,” the Rat Raiser breathed, “he will have piles of such petitions. He must decide which to show the queen, and which Her Majesty would count a waste of time . .

“And which ones might make the chancellor look bad,” I added.

“if the king should discover he has suppressed a report … !”

“He’ll have a good excuse. He ‘lost’ it, or it was too minor to trouble her Majesty with, or-”

“Enough.” The king closed his eyes, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Can a monarch care so little for his power?”

“No, Majesty, but she can care that little about her people. All Suettay really cares about is whether the taxes come in, and whether the orders she does give are obeyed.”

“And her chancellor will always assure her they are,” the Rat Raiser finished.

The king lowered his hand and looked up again, eyes burning. “Yet if what you say is true, the land would be near chaos! Bandits would be rife - - .”

“I was beset by armed bands three times, ere I met the wizard,” Frisson murmured. “… barons would cease to fear the king’s peace and would rise against one another in war - - .”

“We’ve seen it,” I said, “and they do it with the queen’s blessing.”

The king stared, aghast. “And the peasants? Cares she not that they starve? “

“She cares that they be able to farm,” Frisson said, “that they grow wool for her to shear. Beyond that? What cares she if they wallow in squalor? if their clothes are rags, and their faces pinched with hunger? When they are too weak to follow the plow, mayhap she will take notice …”

“Yet before they come to that,” Gilbert put in, “they will have ablured the faith and gone to serve the reeve-or taken to the greenwood, and gone in banditry.”

“Her minions set neighbor against neighbor,” Frisson added, “by saying that whosoever the village watchman chooses as best plowman shall be accorded extra victuals-meat once a week, a sack of meal each month, and new cloth for his family.”

“These are great prizes indeed,” the Rat Raiser informed him.

Angelique stared, shocked. “Will they not, then, seek each to plow harder? “

“Aye, and all will excel. Yet the watchman must rank them, as first, second, and third-so each peasant seeks to curry favor with the watchman and to revile his neighbors. They, in turn, seek to take the credit for his work, by claiming ‘twas of their doing; and each seeks to make all others believe poorly of his fellows.”

“Each bailiff, meanwhile, accepts favors from his watchmen,” the Rat Raiser added, “and the plowman is pressed to bring his comely wife, or his blooming daughter, to the bailiff for the night-”

“If those chaste ladies have not come to the watchman themselves,” Frisson pointed out, “seeking favor for their husbands-”

“Or for themselves, in disdain of their husbands-”

“Anon the husband, discovering he’s a cuckold, strikes down his wife-”

“And the plowmen ply the watchman with such gifts as they may discover-”

“Uh, boys, I think that’s enough,” I said. The king looked ready to explode.

“Enough it is-a surfeit!” The king turned his back, stalking away toward the archway, where he stood looking down. “Alas for Allustria! If matters have come to so foul a pass there, we must find a way to hale down this false queen!”

I breathed a sigh of relief and saw my friends go limp. I, of course, was as sturdy as spaghetti.

“Yet we cannot tear out her whole government, root and branch,” the king mused, “or the land will be plunged into chaos absoluteand in that chaos, Satan’s minions may well establish themselves anew. It

“But you cannot leave these parchment-bound clerks to plunder the people!” Gilbert cried.

“Nor shall I-but ‘tis you who must do the work. I can aid you with knowledge, I can tell you where to seek the lever that will topple the tyrant; I may even lend you strength, through the strands of my web. Yet I cannot march with you; I must remain here, in the nexus of the worlds.”

The others stared, not understanding, but the Gremlin nodded, and I pursed my lips. “We can’t rightly ask for more-and the bureaucrats will be quick to reform, once they see their sorcerer overthrown, and a God-dedicated king on the throne. But how about the system, Majesty? Any bureaucracy has certain inherent tendencies toward corruption. ” “Why, so does a man,” the king cried, “and ‘tis naught but the morality stemming from his sense of self that makes him retain his wholeness, his integrity, to resist the Tempter! And whence, I ask you, comes that morality, that self-warding wisdom?”

“Why-from the priests,” I admitted, “and the philosophers. And the poets, and all the wise men who try to guide people away from ruin and toward fulfillment.”

“An odd choice of terms.” The Spider King frowned. “Yet they are nearly as true as to say that the men of God guide us away from the road to Hell and seek to set our feet on the path to Heaven. And as they do for men and women, so may they do for the government by clerks.”

“A spiritual adviser for a bureaucracy?” I frowned. “I’ll have to nvinced a bureaucracy has think about that, Your Majesty. I’m not co

a conscience.”

“Why, then, ‘tis a beast, and not a soul, and may be purged and goaded without compunction! You have but to find your emetic and your prod.”

“Now wait a minute!” I held up a hand. “It’s made of human beings, after all!”

“Who need to be governed in their own right,” the king returned, “and justice meted out, even to those who mete out justice.”

“Who shall watch the watchers?” I hazarded.

“Nay,” Frisson said. ” ‘Who shall govern the government?’ “Be mindful!” The king raised a forefinger. “If they are humans, may not another human be their conscience? For is not a ‘conscience,’ after all, but the wisdom to preserve one’s own soul?”

“Recognizing one’s ultimate good, even if it means a temporar or apparent loss?” I frowned. “Interesting notion. But even human consciences need to be made aware of the pain and disaster that befall those who stray.”

“Then make them so aware! Find some device that will punish the clerk who strays, and will make his plans of malice go awry!”

“Why,” the Gremlin chuckled, “that can I do.”

The Spider King bent his frowning gaze upon the monster. “I am sure that you can-but have you the self-denial to withhold your mischief when a clerk does rightly?”

I stared. “You two know each other?”

The king looked up, amused. “Whence did you think he came, Wizard?

“

 

“We are both outside the universes,” the Gremlin explained, “and flit from one to another, as need or inclination dictates.”

I found myself wondering about the forms of angels-or disguises.

“What is this?” Gilbert demanded. ,what shall the monster then do?

“

 

“Why, as I will,” the Gremlin answered. “Does a clerk write out a writ of foreclosure? I shall make it go astray. Does a reeve set out a warrant? I’ll make sure the writing’s changed ere the bailiff comes unto the victim. Does the chancellor seek to withhold reward from one who has toiled long? Does he seek to imprison one whose only fault is aiding those in danger? Does the king himself seek to draw and quarter one who would resist him, or to exile a saint on a desert isle, for no offense but that of lending comfort to souls in misery? In a sieve I’ll thither sail!”

“And, like a rat without a tail,” Frisson murmured, “he’ll do, and he’ll do, and he’ll do!”

I clapped a hand over the vagabond’s mouth. “Hold it, boy! You were coming perilously close to poetry!”

“Let him versify; he cannot cause havoc here, where we are beyond the laws of any universe,” the Spider King said.

I took my hand away, and Frisson beamed with glee.

“Yet before he speaks,” the king said hastily, “we must confer on ways of confounding your vile tyrant. The Spirit of Disorder will beset his clerks …”

“With effects that are comic and tragic,” the Gremlin murmured.

“So much the better; you may then make these puffed-up clerks to see their own fallibility, thus restoring to them some measure of humility. “

“Mayhap I shall even make them to laugh at the absurdity of their own vanities and strivings after dross!”

“Ah! If you can, if you but can! Then might they see themselves as they are, and see how petty are the goals for which they strive!”

“It would destroy them!” the Rat Raiser said, ashen-faced.

“Mayhap; but out of this crushing of the soul, they may emerge with some truer view of life, and greater inclination to labor for the common weal.”

“Yet that cannot be,” the Rat Raiser said, frowning, “for each clerk, in the end, labors for himself.”

The Spider King wheeled toward him. “We have each the need to labor for something greater than ourselves, friend, so that we may feel less alone, and feel our lives to have worth.”

But the bureaucrat only frowned, not understanding.

I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t help thinking that this Spider King had an awfully idealistic view of bureaucracy.

The Gremlin clapped his hands and chuckled. “We shall craft a bureaucrat’s bane! Ah, what fun! I have not had so grand a time for eons! I have grown rusty, I have grown stale!”

“We’re going to pit entropy against perversity, then?” I asked.

The Spider King nodded. “It may not succeed in great measure, since the one is but an aspect of the other ,Oh, no,” I said softly. “That could be very, very effective.”

“Devastating.” The Gremlin chuckled. “if an enterprising spirit doth move the confrontation.”

“And on this kind of issue, you can be very enterprising, right?”

“Just so!”

“So much for Suettay’s ministers.” The king dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “They may be rendered benign. Yet how shall you deal with the woman herself?”

That brought me up short. I spread my hands. “Confront her and try to match magics with her, I guess-and hope I’ve got better verses.”

The king shook his head with certainly. “That way lies disaster.

You must enlist a power greater than your own, that together you may be more than the sorceress-queen.”

I frowned, instantly suspicious. “How do I do that? Pray?”

“Nay.” The King beckoned, and I came over to the archway with him. Looking down, I saw an azure field ringed with green and tan, and with a fleck or two of green in it. With a shock, I recognized the Mediterranean.

“Yon lies the world of Merovence and Allustria,” the Spider King murmured.

I wondered how he had locked in the view of that one universe -from this nexus. I began to realize why the man was called “the Spider King.”

“There is a man who is bound for sainthood, though he knows it not.” The king’s arm reached past me, pointing at an island in the Aegean. “There, where Circe beguiled the men of Odysseus, dwells a nymph named ‘Thyme’-and the sorceresses of Suettay’s guild have kidnapped the saintly man and placed him there, within the bondage of her spell.”

“What a way to get to sainthood! I take it he’s having a good time?

“Nay. His spirit’s sorely tried, and he is racked with the hot irons of desire-for he will not yield to the nymph’s blandishments. He knows that no man can serve two masters, and that love is a most demanding one-but he chose Christ for his master long ago. He seeks to do Christ’s work, aiding the poor and friendless, and there fore will not yield unto the nymph.”

“Wholeness,” I murmured. “Integrity. The unity of his spirit.” ” Even so. Yet from his enduring struggle, his soul has gained strength tenfold-and it was a mighty spirit ere he came there. Folk said that he worked miracles of curing, and of producing food, but he denied it. Yet if any man can give you strength ‘gainst Sucttay, it is he. it “A veritable treasure,” Gilbert mused behind him. “How shall we know the man?”

“By his sex-he is the only male on the islandand by his habit.”

“Habit?” The squire frowned. “Is he a cleric, then?”

“He is-a monk, of the Order of Saint Louis, one Ignatius by name.

And you will find him a source of strength in other conflicts, too; he may even rekindle the ideals of the clerks.”

“If he can do that,” I murmured, “he can work miracles.”

“And so, away!” The Spider King clasped my arm, turning me around and propelling me toward another archway. “Yonder lies your path! Together, now, and off upon your quest!”

“Hey, wait a minute!” I tried to backpedal, but the king’s grip was surprisingly strong, and I found myself gliding over the smooth marble floor in spite of my efforts. “How are we going to get hold of you if we need help?”

“You will not-I will maintain touch with you! Each separate one of you is now at the end of one of my threads; you are all caught within my web! When you doubt it, find a moment in a place of stillness, and you will feel my power! Now, Godspeed! And may your patron saint stand by you!”

I tried to stop, but I skidded through the archway, and my friends came tumbling after me with shouts of alarm, tumbling after me into a warm, clinging darkness that enveloped us, rocked us, soothed us

…

 

And vanished.

Chapter Twenty-one

The trees crowded in on us, towering up to form a roof overhead, lowering down with an ominous susurrus. I swallowed against a knot of apprehension deep in my throat and glanced back at my companions.

They were feeling it, too-some lurking presence that did not want us there.

Fortunately, we had the Gremlin along to chase the baddies away.

“Uh-you sure you know where you’re going?”

“Of a certainty, I know!” Then why did the monster look worried?

“I am going to the bower of the nymph Thyme!”

“Uh-right.” I frowned. “Did you, uh-have any idea what route we were going to take? “

“As I told you, we follow the sun. If it is before us in its course as it arcs dawn to dusk, we go aright.”

I glanced back at my friends, noting Angelique’s apprehension and the Rat Rasier’s angry glower. “Right. Say, uh, Gremlin-we haven’t been able to see the sun for six hours now. Not since we got kicked out of the Spider King’s palace and found ourselves in this forest.”

“Do you doubt me?” the Gremlin challenged. “Could I go astray without wishing it?”

“Just what I was going to ask.”

“Mayhap the wood itself wishes to mislead you,” Angelique suggested quickly.

The Gremlin halted and heaved a huge sigh. “You have said it, maiden, and I think you may have some hint of truth in that saying.

Nay, we have lost our way.”

I frowned. “Of course, it couldn’t just be that you think it’s fun to help travelers get lost.”

“Not when I am one of them! I swear, Wizard, ‘tis no doing of mine! ” I winced and glanced around me. “Please! You swearing anything strikes me as extremely hazardous!”

“We must forge ahead,” Gilbert said grimly. “We shall come to naught if we do naught. “There’s a certain sort of sense in that,” I agreed. “Onward, mes amis! “

“If the way ‘onward’ doth reveal itself,” the Gremlin grumped; but he started forward again.

An hour later, I called a halt again. “Okay-we’ve been watching the light on the trees, and it has always stayed on their fronts-but I’m sure I recognized that birch tree at least three times!”

“Why,” the Gremlin growled, “how can you be sure it is the same tree?

“Because this is a deciduous forest, mostly oak and ash, and that’s the only birch tree I’ve seen. Also because the markings on its bark have twisted themselves into a gloating leer.”

Everybody turned and looked at the birch tree. ” ‘Tis true,” Gilbert said. “In the center of the trunk, the blackbird marks have shrunk into eyes, and the one beneath has widened into a grinning mouth.”

The Gremlin stamped up to the tree. “At what do you laugh, white-face? Do you dare?”

It must have been the wind in the branches. The tree couldn’t really have been laughing.

“I submit,” I said, “that the queen knows where we are and has placed a spell on this forest to keep us going around in circles.”

“But she thinks that we are dead!” Angelique protested.

“She must have developed suspicions and looked in her crystal ball. “

“Not likely,” the Gremlin said, coming back, “for no crystal can see into the palace of the Spider King, unless he wills it, I would as lief believe the forest was enchanted in antiquity, and all who dwell nearby do know to avoid it.”

“Could be.” But I glanced aside, distracted. “Frisson, what are you doing?

“Only toying with a stick.” Frisson snapped up straight, hands going behind his back.

My scalp prickled. “Why do I get the willies when you start playing around? What’s the game, Frisson?”

“oh … naught but this.” Frisson took the stick out from behind his back-three sticks, actually. One was a section of a tree trunk, like a flat table; the other was a peg, going through a hole in the center of the long one.

“What does it do?” I asked suspiciously.

“I recited a verse in praise of the Pole Star,” Frisson explained. “It will always point to the north, now. just an idle amusement, of no worth-”

“No worth, he says! He just invented the compass, that’s all!” I went around behind the poet. “Lead on, Frisson! As long as that stick is pointing toward us, we’re going south!”

Frisson looked up, pleased, then started off into the forest again.

The Gremlin followed at the end of the line, grumbling.

Another hour later, I called a halt again. “Okay. No luck. We’ve ight line according to Frisson’s compass, but here’s that gone in astra blasted birch tree again. I’ve got half a mind to blast it for real.”

A long moan sounded.

I glared at the tree. “That got you, didn’t it? Gonna let us go, now? ” The moan came again, drawn out and quavering.

“Saul,” Angelique said, “it came from our left, and the tree is to our right. ” I looked up, frowning, peering off into the underbrush. Sure enough, the moan came again-but it was coming closer. “Everybody step back!”

The moan came loud and clear, and a gnarled, bent old woman tottered into the clearing, hurrying as fast as she could, glancing over her shoulder in terror.

That bothered me-badly. “What’s chasing you?”

“My death!” she cried. “Away, fool! or would you catch the pox that does infest me? Then Death will dog your footsteps, too!”

Everybody edged back, including me-but the rational part of me took over. “You can’t run away from Death, lady-you have to stop and fight him.”

“Do you think my master would give me power to fight Death?” she screeched. “Fool, thrice a fool! When Death has taken me, the Devil shall have me! Begone!” And she tottered straight toward me.

Reflex took over. I stepped aside, saying, “If you repent, maybe I can heal you.”

She stopped dead-as it were-in front of me, and those old green eyes pierced me to the marrow. “If you can heal me, do so now!”

“You’ve sold your soul,” I pointed out. “I’m not a priest or an exorcist, just a magician.” One of us was, anyway. “My magic can’t work on you as long as you’re in Satan’s grasp.”

“Then I repent!” The panic suddenly broke through, and the woman sank to her knees, hands uplifted in prayer. “Lord of Heav … of Hea … Lord above, save me! I know I am unworthy, for all the evil I have done-but let this foolish magician save my raddled hide, and I shall never work evil again!”

Something rattled in the shadows. I glanced at them apprehensively and held out a hand toward Frisson. “Pox.”

“I have searched it.” Frisson pushed a piece of parchment into my hand.

I held it up and read it.

“Smallpox, cowpox, all are healed!

French pox, East pox, marks annealed!”

That inspired me; I added a couplet Frisson couldn’t have known about:

 

“Spirochetes be rent asunder! Germs of raddles, be plowed under!

 

Whatever was rattling in the shadows stopped.

The ex-witch looked up, amazement lighting her face-and even as we watched, the hideous marks of the disease were fading. ” ‘Tis true! I can feel the sickness leave me, feel the fever abate, my strength reviving!

“It might not last,” I said, “if you don’t get to confession. You’re out of Satan’s power, but not very far out. “Aye! I must seek out a priest without delay!” She scrambled to her feet and headed off into the forest, her thankyou floating behind her. “I cannot bless, for I am too sodden with evil-but I thank you, kind strangers!”

A sudden inspiration hit, and I leapt after her. “Which way to the nearest priest?”

“South! He lives in a village in the plain beyond these woods!”

“Follow that witch!” I shouted to my friends, and we all pelted off through the forest.

The sun was nearing the horizon as we came out of the forest and saw the plain, rolling away under a huge expanse of sky. Even from the edge of the forest, we could see the roofs of three little villages.

Between, the flatland was a jigsaw puzzle of small fields, divided by hedges.

The nearest town was maybe half a mile away. Sunlight glistened off whitewashed adobe houses. “The priest lives yon!” The old witch pointed toward the smallest hovel in town. “oh, how deeply I rejoice that I put off and put off the bearding of him, and the slaying of him for the queen!”

So she had been an official. A nasty thought occurred to me. “You didn’t maybe put a spell on that forest so that anybody trying to get through it would get lost, did you?”

“Aye. It protected me from those who sought to hurt me-they could not find my cottage. Farewell, kind strangers! When I am shriven, I shall bless you! I shall sing your praises throughout the land! ” I felt the old familiar chill again. “I’d really rather you didn’t. I’m working on a low profile here, you see, and-”

“Ever shall I trumpet your virtues!” she cried. “So wise and merciful a wizard is deserving of glory! And when I’m shriven, I shall bless you with my every breath!” She went tottering off to find a priest, and absolution.

I turned to the Gremlin. “Narrow thing, that. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with her catching the pox, would you?”

The monster grinned, showing a lot of snaggled teeth. “I did not happen by here so many years ago as that, Wizard.”

“Just wondering. By the way, which way to the nymph’s house now?

“Yon.” The Gremlin pointed due south.

“Yon it is.” I sighed. “But only until sunset. We’re still in hostile territory, and we’ll need some time to pitch camp.”

“Shall we never leave Suettay’s country?” Angelique sighed. “It was so great a blessing to be free of her, in the palace of the Spider King!

“I’m afraid she knows we’re still alive,” I said with chagrin. “I shouldn’t have cured that last witch.”

“Nay, you should have,” she said quickly, but her eyes were huge with trepidation in the shadows.

“Mayhap you need not come, milady,” Gilbert told her. “Perchance the Spider King would let you remain in his palace. The poet will stay with you-will you not?”

“Aye, if you bid me.” Frisson sighed. “Yet I had hoped to witness the end of this sage that unwinds before me.”

“You shall,” Angelique said quickly. “I shall not be left behind.”

I wondered if it was courage, or reluctance to be left alone with Frisson’s unharnessed verses. “Okay, then, we’re all agreed,” I said.

“Southward he!”

“All right, sprite, want to explain this plight?”

We stood between the forest and the seashore, watching the breakers foam up onto the gravel.

“We seek the nymph, Thyme,” the Gremlin said stubbornly. “The path to her lies yon.” He stood with the setting sun at his right and pointed toward the south-and several hundred miles of waves, sea stretching away to the rim of the world.

“Yeah, I thought it was an island.” I sighed. My stomach sank, rehearsing its probable behavior as we crossed the sea. But there was no help for it. We couldn’t exactly drive, and though I was tempted to think about flying, I didn’t-what would happen if Suettay managed to cancel my spell when we were a thousand feet up over the miles and miles of waves that were all there was between the island of Thyme and this southern border of Suettay’s kingdom. I guessed the little port town I saw in the distance would have grown up to be Trieste, in my own world. “At least we get to leave the queen’s jurisdiction.

“

 

“Then we shall go, and gladly,” Gilbert said. “I confess that I, too, rejoice that the nymph does dwell outside Allustria’s borders.”

The Gremlin shrugged. “For all we know, she may not. Who holds sway over these little islands?”

It was a moot point, and one that hadn’t been entirely resolved even in my own universe. “If she lives on an island,” I said, “why didn’t the Spider King just send us there?”

“Mayhap he has work for us to do on the way,” Frisson suggested, “though I could wish he had told us what it was,”

“You and me both, brother,” I muttered.

“Peace, gentlemen,” Gilbert soothed. “He could have sent us into the middle of Allustria, to fight our way free again.”

“Praise Heaven he has not!” the Rat Raiser said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but after we find this monk Ignatius, we have to come back.”

ingly philo”What must be, must be.” The Rat Raiser was surpris sophical. “Yet be assured, companions-if we must return to Suettay’s domain, we are better to do it by sea, where there is less chance of meeting with her wardens.”

“Yes, now that she has definitely decided to get rid of us,” I agreed.

“And it will be a lot quicker, in any event. We got through from the mountains last time, but it took a great deal of luck.”

“Come, then!” The Gremlin turned away. “We must seek out a ship and a captain. Yet I think it best that you be the one to haggle with him, Wizard-he might be shy of my dealings.”

“Understandable,” I muttered, as I followed the monster. I called back to my friends, “Come on, folks! Gotta hurry!” I forced my tired legs into long strides.

Even so, Gilbert caught up with me. “Wherefore must we hasten, Wizard? “

“Because,” I said, “Thyme and tide wait for no man. Let’s go.”

“I carry only cargo,” the captain said stubbornly.

It could have been worse-it could have been night instead of sunset, with Angelique totally visible, instead of being washed out by the sun’s orange rays. if he could have seen her, he would no doubt have been pointing out that a woman on a ship is bad luck. Come to think of it, he might have extended that notion to ghosts, too, so it was just as well my beloved could stay hidden.

“We’re not asking you to take us any great distance,” I argued, “just to some obscure little island out in the middle of nowhere.”

“But you have no passports.” The captain eyed the gold in my hand. No question about it, he was tempted-but he was balancing the danger of breaking Suettay’s emigration laws, against the cash in my hand. So I slipped another gold piece from my pocket and added it to the stack. The captain’s eyes fairly bulged, and he drew in a sharp breath.

“Guaranteed,” I said. “Just an offshore island. We’ll even supply our own local transportation-all you have to do is carry us there and lower us over the side in the longboat.”

The captain stared at the stack of gold, teetering on the brink.

Then he cried, “Done!” His hand scooped up the coins and made them disappear.

I gaped, wondering if I could make money vanish that quickly. In fact, I hoped his wouldn’t. My money never lasted very long, anyway.

“But you must board right now,” the captain said, “while my crew is ashore on their last roister. As to the longboat, you shall have mine, for two gold pieces more. I shall buy another in Mycenaea.”

He sure would, I reflected as I climbed the gangplank-and for a lot less than even a single gold piece. But I wasn’t about to haggle. Besides, I could make more of the stuff whenever I wanted to. I just had.

We clambered down a ladder and stowed ourselves in the hold, under the captain’s cabin.

“How may we be sure of his troth?” Frisson asked, wideeyed.

“By his own peril,” the Rat Raiser answered. “We have but to denounce him to the harbormaster, and he is food for the gulls.”

“But he need not take us to Thyme’s isle! He need but have us thrown into the sea, as soon as we are too far from land to swim!”

“And what sailor-man would raise his hand against us?” Gilbert retorted. “We are not the most mild-seeming of bands, look you.”

“We could make short work of his whole crew,” I assured the poet.

“So you might scribble down a verse for giving sailors heart attacksand either you or I will be awake at all times.”

Frisson nodded slowly, frowning.

“Then, of course, there are the members of the party they haven’t seen.” I glanced at a row of hogsheads against the wall of our timber dungeon. “Are you in there, Gremlin?”

One of the barrels wavered, waxed, and transformed itself into a monster. “Aye,” the Gremlin answered. “Let this trip be quick, Wizard! I mislike so much water!”

“I’ll make certain they have a favorable wind,” I assured him. I tried to remember what I’d heard about the Finnish recipe for summoning a breeze.

The ship tossed and heaved, and the Gremlin was green from top to toe. On the other hand, that wasn’t that far from his natural color.

“Wizard, you have given them too much wind!”

I held my hands out, palms up. “Not a bit! They were doing fine without me; I didn’t even whistle!”

“Yet mayhap,” Angelique gasped, “you could find a way to slacken their progress some little.”

Chartreuse was definitely not her color, I decided. How she was managing to be seasick without a body, I didn’t know; must have been psychosomatic. “I know it’s rough, but try to stick it out. Ships always pitch and heave a lot, especially little ones like this.”

Gilbert turned away, his hand over his mouth. I decided that I shouldn’t have said “heave.”

The Rat Raiser frowned at us, puzzled. “I do not ken it. There is excitement in this, truly, but no cause for discomfort.”

“It’s all right for you,” I retorted. “You’ve got friends here!”

But the Rat Raiser shook his head. “No longer, Wizard. My little furry ones have sought their holes in the keel beam.”

I sat bolt-upright. “They have? Then something must be really wrong! ” A huge blast of thunder answered me from above. I frowned upward; I seemed to hear yelling.

” ‘Tis a tempest,” Frisson moaned.

The trapdoor overhead wrenched open to show the captain’s face, laring down at us in the light of a lantern. “What ill luck besets my ship?” Then he saw Angelique, and his eyes went wide. “A woman!

Know ‘ee not ‘tis bad luck to bring a woman aboard ship?”

“Not really,” I said. “She’s a ghost.” Then I bit my tongue, but I was just a second too late.

“A woman and a ghost!” he howled, wideeyed with sudden fright.

“Small wonder my ship is beset! Now could my bark founder and all my crew drown on her account!”

Gilbert forced himself to his feet and stepped over to stand-or sway-in front of Angelique.

“Don’t plan anything rash.” I scrambled to my feet. “Here, let me take a look.”

But the captain pushed me back, though not before I had seen a couple of hulking sailors behind him, glowering with resentment and trembling with fear. “Are you daft, man?” the captain demanded. “It is hard enough for a seagoing man to hold his feet above decks. A landlubber would certainly be lost to the waves!”

“You can lash me to the nearest mast,” I offered. “Believe me, I can help.”

“Oh, aye,” one of the sailors sneered. “And who do you think you be-the Old Man of the Sea?”

“No, but I’m sure we’d be on speaking terms, if we met. You see I’m a wizard.”

Their eyes widened, and they shied away. Even the captain was startled just long enough for me to push past him. He came back to himself quickly enough to lurch after me, trying for a tackle, but I sidestepped and threw myself toward the mast.

The wind hit me like a sandbag, and thunder blasted my eardrums.

Lightning dazzled me; I almost did go into the sea. But I managed to grab a rope and haul myself up against the sudden wash of icy water as a wave broke over the little vessel. I came up gasping, shivering, and chilled to the bone, but still aboard, and pulled myself a little farther until I could get an arm around a belaying pin.

“See you not the folly of it?” the captain roared in my car; I could just barely hear him. “Do you not see you can do naught to aid? Nay, get below! “

“Not … yet,” I gasped, and dredged up Kipling’s words, with a few quick adaptations:

 

“The tempest caught us out at sea, and built its billows high, Till we heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford, The roar of its wind and sky. Till we heard the roar of its wind and sky Rise up, die down, and cease And the heaving waves did all subside Till we sailed on a sea of peace.”

 

It might have been my imagination, but I thought the wind abated ů fraction.

” ‘Tis not enough!” the captain called. “It will still drag us under!”

“We must throw the ghost-woman to the waves!” the first mate shouted. “Then will they be appeased!”

Nice to know who was the vice of the piece.

“Give it time,” I shouted back. “It didn’t fall on you out of a clear blue sky, you know.”

The mate and captain exchanged looks. Then the master called out, “Indeed it did! One moment, we sailed in fair weather-the next, the sea heaved and a gale struck us like a huge hand, with a torrent of rain in it!”

I stood immobile, hanging on to the rope and staring at the sea.

“Wizard?” the captain called, scowling.

“Yeah, I’m here.” I turned to look at him. “That means the storm was set on you by a sorcerer.”

Chapter Twenty-two

“Beset by a sorcerer?” the captain cried, “Aye, because of the woman! “

“No-because of me.” I turned to scowl out at the waves, muttering, “Now, how the hell did she find out where I was?” -but

So I missed the startled glance between the mate and captain I turned back in time to see the way their faces hardened with put pose as they advanced on me. I was in time to see their fists coming up, too.

I raised my hands and started spouting nonsense syllables.

They stared, appalled, then lowered their hands.

I smiled with bitterness. “I may have a better way. it’ll take a little time, of course, because I’m battling a sorcerer, not just a storm-but it’ll bring back the sun.” Then I turned back to the waves and started singing.

“Peace, we ask of thee, 0 ocean, Peace, peace, peace!”

The racket began to subside. The mate and captain looked up at the sky, startled-but the wind had already abated enough for them to hear each other without shouting.

“He is a wizard,” the mate said.

“Who is this who has sailed with us?

But the captain frowned.

Then the wind hit us like an earthquake, and a tsunami towered over us.

They shouted and grabbed at belaying pins as the water fell on them. It drained away as the wave lifted the little ship crazily toward the sky, and the horizon dipped and rolled around us. The captain coughed out some unintelligible remark, and I stopped my singing long enough to call back, “I know-it’s going to take more than that!” And it certainly would-I’d almost lost my hold on the rope!

A new wave smashed down on me, and I held on for dear life, very close to wishing I would never have to see another drop of water.

Then the wave washed by, and there was shouting all around. I gasped for air, searching my memory frantically. I didn’t dare take out my packet of Frisson’s verses; I had to rely on remembering them.

 

“Built straight by a worthy master, Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle! Small showers last long, but Sudden storms are short; The waves reach high in play, And with the winds disport. Domain of soaring gull and diving pike, The winds are wanton, and the sea is like A lass flirtatious, whose lover is ginned Oft shifts her passions, like th’ inconstant wind, Sudden she rages, like the troubled main, Now sinks the storm, and all is calm again!”

 

I chanted through to the end and, when I’d finished, started from the beginning again. As I chanted, the wind slackened and the waves began to subside.

Then a fresh gust hit us, and I knew Suettay was calling in more power from somewhere.

Well, I had reinforcements of my own. “Saint Brendan,” I cried out,

 

“Patron of they who sail in ships! Aid us with the power of prayers from your lips! Patron of those who sail on sea and air, Aid us now with the power of your prayer!

 

Then I sang on.

The storm slackened again-and kept on slackening. As I chanted the hymn over and over, the wind died down and the waves subsided until the sailors could tell it was raining. Then the rain itself died, and the clouds drifted off to the west. A sunbeam lanced down, and the sailors bellowed a cheer, waving their caps.

I left off singing with a cough. “A drink! I’ve sung myself dry.”

The mate dashed away, still bellowing for joy.

Even the captain grinned, but his eyes were shadowed with con cern. “What if the sorcerer strikes again, Wizard?”

“Then I’ll have to start singing again,” I croaked. “I feel sorry for you. Get me that drink, quick!” Silently, I breathed a quick thankyou to Saint Brendan, the holy Irish sailor who had set out to explore the Atlantic in a cockleshell of a boat, and who may have found North America.

The mate shoved a wooden tankard into my hand, and I drank gratefully. It was warm, bitter beer, but at that point, it tasted heavenly.

A long, triumphant cry split the air above us.

“Land!” cried the sailors who had gone aloft to unfurl the sails again. They pointed off toward the west, crying, “Laaaand!”

“Aye, ‘tis land.” The captain shaded his eyes, following the sailors’ pointing arms. “That storm has lent us wings indeed, if’that coast be

Crete. ” ‘Tis an island!” the lookout cried, but the men cheered anyway.

“Land is land,” the captain said, his face closing into a mask. “You paid us to take you to an island off the coast of Allustria, Wizard, no more. “

“Yes, I did, and we’ll count the contract fulfilled.” I couldn’t rightly put him and his men into peril again-and after that ride, I a travel. I’d make a magic carpet, or was definitely set against se something. “And, uh, might I suggest that after you drop us off, You go find another island to visit for a week or so? you might want to give Suettay time to forget who brought us this far.”

-after all, the storm hadn’t been The longboat pitched and tossed over all that long-and Gilbert and Angelique were still looking rather green; but they managed to summon up the energy to wave good-bye to the retreating ship. The sailors raised a shout and waved back. I didn’t doubt that a sourpuss or two among them might remember who had gotten them into the storm in the first place-but to most of them, I was only the hero who had saved them.

Then the ship slipped below the horizon, and I turned back to rowing. We didn’t even need the sail; the waves were carrying us toward the island on their own. I needed the oars mostly to steer.

Then the bottom rose up to meet us, and the longboat ground into the sand. I jumped out, trying to remember that my jeans would dry out, and threw all my weight against the bow. Gilbert muttered something about incompetence, dragged himself over the side, and all but fell into the water. I leapt to help him up.

“I thank you, Master Saul,” the squire gasped. “Aid me to stay upright, here.” With my help, he tottered toward the bow.

“Look,” I said, “seasickness is sickness, no matter how you slice it! You’re in no shape to …”

Gilbert grunted as he yanked on the bow, and the longboat slid up the shingle till its forward half was clear of the water. Gilbert leaned against the side, gasping and swallowing. “… exert yourself,” I finished. I tried not to stare.

Gilbert slumped, hanging onto the side of the boat and gasping like a beached whale.

Angelique was over the gunwale and at his side in a second, although she was still looking somewhat bilious herself. “Are you?

…

 

Courage, valiant squire! It … it will … pass.

Gilbert hauled himself upright. “I draw courage indeed, from your gallant example, maiden.” He forced himself to step away from the side of the boat, but kept a hand on the gunwale. “Into what … mannet of country are we come, Wizard?”

“Rock and scrub, mostly.” I frowned, looking around me. “Not exactly the most hospitable beach I’ve ever seen.”

The beach itself was gravel, turning quickly into flat, shelving rock that mounted upward in steps, like the seats of an amphitheater, toward a fringe of grass adorned with the occasional stunted, twisted tree. Its cousins grew here and there about the rocky shelves, interspersed with boulders and thickets of scrub.

“Are there … any folk about? “Not that I can see.” I cocked my head to the side, listening for the mewing of the gulls. “Nor hear, for that matter.”

Up high, a goat leapt down onto one of the rock ledges and let out a bleat.

I grinned. “Well, there’s life, at least. Come on, folks. Let’s see if we can find a spring. We deserve a little R & R before we shove off for Thyme’s island.”

Aye Gilbert agreed, “water He pushed himself away from the boat and stumbled after me.

Angelique, whose pride ran in different directions, was quite willing to lean on Gilbert’s arm, especially since she wouldn’t tax his strength any, not weighing anything.

jealous? Who, me?

The Rat Raiser brought up the rear, frowning as his eyes flicked from side to side; he didn’t trust the outdoors. If the Gremlin was still around, he gave no sign.

Perhaps with good reason; we hadn’t clambered up more than three stony shelves before a dozen men stepped out from behind rocks and bushes, gathering silently in an arc before us, arms akimbo.

I stared, totally taken aback.

Then I whirled, thinking about the longboat …

Another man stood by it, and six more stood along the gravel beach between us and our transportation.

“I think,” I said slowly, “we’ve definitely got the wrong islandand I think we’ve been trespassing.”

The Rat Raiser grunted. “I might have known. Where there are goats, there are people.”

“Let us have at them,” Gilbert groaned, pulling himself together.

I glanced at the squire. If Gilbert had been in shape, I might have chanced it-but even without him, I could unleash Frisson …

“Wizard,” the poet said, “let me speak-”

“Nay, do not!” the Rat Raiser said sharply. “Work magic so near to Allustria, and Queen Sue-the queen will know our placement to the inch!

“I think she’s already pretty close,” I said, “but I hate to shed blood when it isn’t necessary.”

“It is not,” Gilbert said. “Smite them down with a blow; stun them, no more. But if you wait, we may be so beset that you cannot choose your verses with care.”

“A point,” I admitted, “but I notice none of them is holding weapons.”

They weren’t. Each of them wore a knife as long as his forearm, but all the knives were still thrust through the peasants’ beltsthough their hands, clapped to their waists, weren’t exactly far from the hilts. They were broad-shouldered, thick-chested men, dressed in belted tunics and loose pantaloons, with brightly colored kerchiefs tied around their heads. Their faces were swarthy and hard, and most of them wore mustaches that drooped down around their mouths. if I had been the kind to judge by looks, I would have thought they were pirates.

“No fighting,” I decided. “We’re not enemies yet.” I pursed my lips, gazing at the man directly in front of me, who stood a little in advance of his comrades, and made up my mind. “You folks stay here.” I stepped forward, ignoring Gilbert’s shout of alarm, and inclined my head in greeting. “Sorry to intrude-but we didn’t have much choice. There was a storm, you see “Indeed. We saw.” The man’s voice sounded like a hacksaw chewing through old iron. Even so, I looked up in surprise. The words were heavily accented, but he spoke the language of Allustria. “We saw, too, that the ship left you in your longboat and sailed away. What plague do you carry, that the sailors should wish to be rid of you?

I stared at the man. Suspicious, weren’t we? I glanced at the hardfaced peasants to either side of him, remembered the ones behind us, and decided on the truth. “We are enemies of Sue … of the Queen of Allustria. Are we also enemies of you?”

The man’s brow drew down in a scowl, and his whole body tensed, but he said, “Mayhap-though it may also chance you are not.” Then he stood still, just glaring at me.

My mind flipped through alternatives and decided I didn’t want the ball in my court. I held my best deadpan, looking right back in the man’s eye.

It did as much good as anything. Finally, the peasant nodded and turned away. “Come,” he said back over his shoulder. “This is a matter for the duke.”

The castle he took us to was hundreds of years old, to judge by the weathering and the thickness of the crust of salt spray. it was squat and thick, with Roman arches and thick, Doric columns. If I’d been in my own world, I would have guessed that it had been built by adventurous Normans, and would have called it Romanesque.

For all that, though, it wasn’t especially menacing. It was made of some light-colored stone that had a touch of red in it, warm with the stored sun-heat. It might be forbidding, but it wasn’t gloomy.

Its owner was very much like it.

The duke, as it turned out, was somewhere in his fifties, grizzled but still powerfully built, looking about as aristocratic as a rugby serum. Certainly he fitted right in with his men-except that he was wearing a midnight-blue robe decorated with the signs of the zodiac and girded with a belt that held a heavy-looking broadsword.

He carried a six-foot staff made of some hard, gleaming wood, so dark as to be almost black, carved into the form of a serpent. Instinctively, I braced myself; the astrological gown was neither black magic nor white, but the staff was definitely tending toward symbols of evil. In European culture, the snake was, if not always a sign of Satan, at least usually a sign of menace.

“I am Syrak, duke of this island,” the martial magician said. “Who are you, who come unbidden to my shore?”

I decided on the most general truth. “We are wayfarers, seeking to come to an island near Allustria, milord.”

“Vincentio tells me you were cast adrift by the ship that brought you here.

“That was by our own request.”

“Request? Why would you request to be set adrift from a ship, hey?” The duke’s gaze sharpened. “Did you not tell Vincentio you were enemies of Queen Suettay?”

I winced at his use of the queen’s name, but maybe it wouldn’t matter-if she noticed him, she might not notice us. I nodded, still carefully deadpan. “We did. We did not wish the captain and crew to suffer for having brought us.”

“And you also wished to go secretly from Allustria, did you not?

You did not care whether you would bring the queen’s wrath down on us, hey? “

“We weren’t really planning to land on an island with people on it,” I admitted. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Gilbert’s scowl had darkened, and that he had noticeably #erked up a bit. I did not think that was an entirely favorable sign.

“But you have landed on an island with people! And if we let you go free, Suettay’s wrath will fall on us! Will it not?”

His men stirred around him, muttering.

“There’s a chance of it,” I admitted. “But, if we get some fresh water, and a little rest, and food, we can be away before dawn tomorrow.

The queen doesn’t even have to know we were here.” And to Gilbert, “We’re outnumbered, you know.”

“When has that ever given you pause?” Gilbert asked.

The duke scowled, but decided not to notice him. “There is something in what you say-if you speak truly.”

“Oh, I do!” I said, with alacrity. “Believe me-there is absolutely no reason to doubt my veracity!”

“Yes,” the duke said. “And surely you would say just that if you lied. In truth, the more false your words, the more you will swear they are true.”

I drew myself up with maximum indignation. “Are you saying I’m a liar? “

“I am saying that I wish you to prove the truth of your words. I stared at him, trying to think of a proof. Finally, I shook my head.

“I can’t. I am telling the truth, mind you-but, prove it? Short of bringing the queen here to testify, I can’t think of a way.”

“No, and I think she would be a grumbly guest,” the duke said, with grim humor. “Yet if you cannot think of a way to prove your truth, be assured that we can.”

“And that is?” I asked, with foreboding. Somehow, I had a notion that the duke’s idea of proof wouldn’t exactly delight Euclid.

“The Ordeal,” the duke said, and I could hear the capital. “One of you must undergo the Ordeal, that the others may go free.”

“Me,” I said, without even stopping to think-which was a good thing, because Gilbert was one syllable behind me.

“I shall!”

The duke nodded, a slight smile curving his lips. “You have said it,” he said to me. “It is your portion!”

“But I-” Gilbert started, before Angelique drowned him Out.

“Ohhhh, nooooo!” She threw herself between me and the duke, her substance wavering, growing brighter and dimmer as she tried to hold his attention. “You have no way of knowing what manner of horrible things this Ordeal may hold, my love! Oh, nay, Lord Duke, do not submit him to the torture! You cannot, you must not! He is a good man, he is truthful in all he says and does, he is not deserving of such horrid treatment!”

Gilbert stared, flabbergasted.

“Gently, gently,” I soothed. I caught her hands, wishing I could feel them, and summoned up every ounce of reassurance I could. “I’ll survive, never you fear. And as to pain and torture, why, I expect I’ve withstood worse. Right, milord?”

The duke stood with a face of flint. “What manner of man are you, that you have won the love of a ghost?”

“A wizard,” I answered.

“But one not wise.” Nonetheless, the duke nodded. “Still, it speaks well for you that your friends are so quick to leap to your defense.”

“There, I knew it,” I said quickly. “You see? It’ll be all right

…

 

Gilbert, help the lady, will you? There now, darling, don’t worry. I’ve been though tortures before.”

“But there is no need! You are an honorable man!” she cried, then collapsed weeping into Gilbert’s arms. He held her up and turned her away, his face a study in consternation.

“You will take them to their boat,” the duke informed Vincentio.

“Bid them sail, and watch till they’ve gone from sight.”

Vincentio nodded, and his band closed around my companions, hiding them from view.

I didn’t even get to watch them out of sight, myself; the duke took me by the elbow and turned me away, leading me back across the drawbridge and into the castle. “So, then, you come. And begin your Ordeal, yes?”

“Of course,” I said, feeling somewhat numb. At least the duke wasn’t gloating about it. I took that to mean he wasn’t a sadist-so things could have been worse.

Couldn’t they,’ As we passed through the huge portal into the keep, a shadow moved, and I thought I recognized the Gremlin’s silhouette-but I hoped I was wrong. I’d far rather he was with Angelique and the boys.

I didn’t think the sprite could do much for me, but he could make the difference between freedom and capture for my friends.

But it would have been nice to know I wasn’t completely alone.

Besides, how bad could the Ordeal be? I eyed the duke, again taking in the astrological signs on his gown and the snaky staff. He wasn’t completely gone over to black magic, that was obvious. Using some aspects of it, maybe, but not wholly dedicated to it yetplaying the old game, thinking he could take what he wanted of the Devil’s power without giving anything of himself.

I halted, shocked. Was that what I was trying to do?

Certainly not. There had to be a distinction. Had to.

That was it-I wasn’t trying to use the Devil’s power. Or God’s, for that matter, though I wasn’t doing as well there-I had called on a saint or two, now and then, and even recited a prayer or two directly to the Top. As an equivocator, I wasn’t doing so well. Could be the duke was better at the balancing act.

Or maybe he wasn’t even the equivocator he seemed to be. Maybe he was a white magician who was only borrowing a few diabolical symbols.

And being tempted. Sorely.

The duke led me up to the battlements so I could watch the longboat put out to sea. I could just barely make out the little black dots that were heads, but the duke was true to his word. My friends, at least, were safe.

“Now you come,” the duke said, and led me down the stairs.

And down.

And down.

Somewhere below the dungeons, in a pool of torchlight, we stopped. Before us, a stone slab rose up from the floor, knee-high, six feet long, and four feet wide. I eyed it warily and decided it was too low to be an altar. Which was a definite comfort to me, as the peasants stripped off my shirt and started tying me down.

Chapter Twenty-three

The duke hit the floor with the heel of his staff. It struck with a huge, booming reverberation, out of all proportion to its size. Then he thrust it up high, swirling its tip above his head in a widening he lix and calling out. The call became rhythmical, settling into a chant.

I frowned, straining to understand; the language sure wasn’t the one I’d been hearing. It seemed older somehow, kind of like Latin.

Latin! Once I realized that, I was able to catch the occasional cognate. “Sun,” that word had to be, and “heat,” which made senseand sure as taxes that next one had to be “water,” or a near relative.

days” after it? Wasn’t that That was a number-five! And was that

“

 

a negative suffix, though ? But why negative? …

The duke finished his chant, brandishing his staff again, and the peasants repeated the verse; the cavern boomed with it. Then all of a sudden they went quiet, and the duke shouted out a last sentence, punctuating it by slamming his staff against the floor again …

Where the heel struck the rock, an explosion blossomed in silence, a burst of searing white light against the cavern’s gloom, swelling, expanding, filling the chamber …

it was the sun.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare; afterimages danced. I gave my eyes time to adjust to the crimson, then opened them just a little, squinting.

I was still lashed to the rock-but it was surrounded by miles of sand. Heat waves shimmered about me, and the sky was a brazen coin in pitiless blue. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and the heat baked me as if I were in an oven. I could have sworn I could feel the rock heating up below me, and I was already bathed in sweat.

Suddenly, the significance of the duke’s “five days” hit me-I was supposed to stay bound to this stone bed for a hundred and twenty hours! And the negative suffix was about water!

In panic, I realized Frisson had been right-like it or not, I’d have to try to work magic on my own. Call it working within the frame of reference of the hallucination, call it selling out, call it whatever you like-I was going to have to do it, or die.

Preferably without drawing on either the powers of good, or of evil.

I tried to think of some verse that would stop my sweat glands-I was going to need every ounce of water my body held. Then I remembered that without sweat, I would overheat in an hour.

Decisions, decisions!

It was going to be a long day.

I decided it had been a long day already, but the sun was still ominously close to the zenith. My tongue felt like a piece of leather, and my skin felt about right for writing. How long had it really been-an hour? Maybe less?

No matter-I wasn’t going to last the day, and I had a notion my body was going to stay there without me for at least twenty-four hours. I had to have water, fast-or something to drink, anyway.

What I wouldn’t have given now, for a cola …

Inspiration struck. Commercial jingles! Could I remember one?

Could I ever forget?

Could I talk enough to recite it?

I smacked my lips, or tried to-and found I couldn’t get them to open. In desperation, I worked my cheeks, trying to pump up some saliva-but nothing came. Panic began to grow, but I forced it down sternly while I kept working my cheeks …

Pain lanced through my lower lip. Blast! I’d bitten it again. It hurt, on top of everything else, and I tasted blood …

Blood.

Moisture.

I moved the tip of my swelling tongue against the inside of my lips, pushed hard-and they opened. I took a deep breath …

And the blood dried up.

Quickly, before my mouth could seal up again, I cried,

 

“Drink Sass-Pa-Rilla, like a man, In the bottle, in the can! Right from the store, into my hand!”

 

Something slapped into my palm, something cold and wet. I breathed a sigh of relief and started to bring it to my lips …

My hand wouldn’t move.

it was tied over my head.

I bit down against anger, and called up a verse:

 

“Unravel the cord, and untie the knot! Loosen the binding, for bind it shall not!”

 

I felt a writhing about my wrists and ankles that made my innards twist in revulsion. Sternly, I schooled my stomach; it was only the ropes untying themselves-I hoped. I lifted the arm with the soda in it, experimentally …

it lifted. And was instantly filled with a hundred hot needles.

I let the arm fall back, groaning with agony. But I had to get at that soda. I lifted again, but the effort made my body roll, and I finished up scraping the can across the stone toward my mouth. I made it, and my teeth closed on aluminum.

just aluminum. No soda.

I had forgotten to open the can.

I just lay there a second, marveling at my own stupidity. Then, with another groan and a great deal more stabbing pain, this time in the upper arms, shoulders, and chest, I managed to work my way up onto my elbows and achieve the stupendous feat of hooking a finger through the ring. I pulled; the top popped; I bowed my head and lifted, and a splash of soothing, chilly Sass-Pa-Rilla flowed into my mouth. Most of that first shot ran down my chin and sizzled onto the rock, but enough of it sloshed into my mouth to fill me with the blessed, icy taste, burning the cut where I’d bitten my lip. My throat worked, and I felt the trail of cold all the way down into my stomach.

I sighed, lifted the can, and took a real swallow. I had never known a commercial product could taste so good and decided I’d never make a joke about Sass-Pa-Rilla again.

Which was very good because, as I lifted the can, it disappeared.

I stared at my cupped and empty hand as if it had betrayed me. Then I curled it into a fist, feeling the anger rise. Not my hand, but somebody else, some person, had betrayed me-and I had a notion who. The duke had decided he didn’t want the rules changed. I didn’t feel sorry for him; after all, I’d told him I was a wizard before he tried hanging me out to dry. He shouldn’t have been so sure I couldn’t survive@yen though, come to think of it, I wasn’t all that sure of it, myself.

But I was also a wizard who was going to need a little help to fight back-and whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to do it quickly, before the spurt of energy from the cold drink wore off. Already, I could feel the searing heat enveloping me again, and the first tendrils of a headache were rising to meet it. Where could I get reinforcements?

Of course! The local spirits. Every little location had them-the nature spirits, the sprites and dryads and nixies and pixies, the spirits of trees and streams and even grass!

“Ye elves of desert, rocks, and wind-blown dunes, And ye that on the sand with printless foot Do chase siroccos, and do fly them, Whose aid, weak masters though ye be, I now require, to bedim the noontide sun, And save my hide from furnace winds!”

Well, Shakespeare would forgive me.

Tendrils of mist started to rise from the ground around me, from the boulders and the sand-mist, where there was no moisture. I breathed a sigh of relief and croaked, “Let’s hear it for animism.”

Then the spirits finished taking form.

There wasn’t much of them-just tenuous, smoky-looking, hulking shapes about knee-high. Behind them was a miniature whirlwind filled with sand-a dust devil?

“You have called,” one of the rock-faces croaked. “We have come.”

“What manner of spirits are you?”

“You have called for the spirits of the land,” another boulder-type grated. “We are they-spirits of rock and sand.”

“I should have realized,” I groaned. “Mineral spirits.”

“We will aid you, if we can,” the first rock-ghost growled. “How may we do so? “

“Hanged if I know,” I muttered. “You wouldn’t have anything cool about you, would you?”

“At midday?” hissed the whirlwind. “Nay! We all are heated through and through.”

“I figured as much.” The rock under me was getting hot even in my shadow. “And none of you have any moisture, do you?”

“You cannot get water from a stone,” a boulder grated.

The whirlwind drifted closer. “Shall I fan you with my breeze?”

The first tendrils of moving air caressed me, and I gasped, drawing back. “Uh, no thanks! I appreciate the intention, but you have all the charm of a furnace!” A horrid notion crossed my mind. “Uh-what do men call your kind of spirit? “

“A dust devil,” the whirlwind answered.

“I thought so.” I swallowed, painfully. “You, uh-haven’t come hot from Hell, have you?”

“Nay!” The tone was indignant. “You asked what men call me, not what I am!”

I nodded. “I thought so. What’s in a name? Not much, in this case. You’re no more a part of the Hell crew than-”

I broke off, my eyes widening.

“Than what?” the dust devil pressed.

“Than something I learned about in general physics! Of course! If I’m hot and I want to get cool, who should I call for but Maxwell’s Demon?

“I know of him,” the dust devil hummed. “We dwell in neighboring realms and are much alike in that we are neither evil nor good, but much maligned by men.”

“Can you get him here? He’s an expert in air conditioning! If anybody can save me, he can! “

“I shall try,” the dust devil said, and whirled faster and faster until it had flung itself to bits, disappearing.

I stared. That was going home? in dread. MaxThen I realized what I had asked for, and waited well’s Demon was a gimmick James Clerk Maxwell had dreamed up, in an attempt to get around Newton’s laws of thermodynamics. Being from the never-never land of scientists’ whimsy, he wouldn’t be either good or bad-he’d be an impersonal force. So he wouldn’t be one that could be ordered around-and might decide not to help me. In fact, there was no guarantee he would be here; he came if he wanted to, and didn’t if he didn’t.

Maybe I hadn’t made the situation clear. I tried again.

 

“Entropy personified, I will soon be mummified if your power retrograde Comes not eftsoons unto my aid!”

 

I wasn’t sure about the “eftsoons” part; after all, Maxwell had invented his Demon in the nineteenth century, not the

Air split with the sound of gunshot, and the Demon was there, a point of unbearably intense light, with the dust devil rising from the sand again behind it. The Demon was singing and humming, “What have we here? What other mortal knows of me in this universe of magic? “

“The name’s Saul,” I said, with my most ingratiating smile. Then the implications of the spark’s remark hit me like a ton of books.

“Other mortal?”

Aye. I have a friend who knows my name, though he learned of it in another realm within the curves of time and space.”

I forced myself not to ask; first things first, and right now, survival was kind of the top priority. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to lend a hand to another know-it-all, would you?”

“Mayhap,” the Demon hummed, “if it strikes me as amusing.

Know, mortal, that the bane of existence of immortals is tedium. if you can offer me respite in the form of some unusual event, I shall be quite pleased to intervene on your behalf, What diversion can you offer me?”

“How about saving my life?”

“I have saved mortals before.” The Demon seemed irritated.

“What is new in the fashion in which you would have me save you?”

I began to realize that I was really dealing with an embodiment of physical principles-impersonal, like a computer, and therefore needing explicit instructions that it would follow to the letter. Unlike a computer, though, it wanted to be amused.

I would have to be very careful of what I said.

“I specialize in paradoxes,” I told the Demon. “You might have fun watching.”

“Paradox?” The Demon sounded interested. “In what fashion?”

“Well, for openers, I contradict myself every five minutesespecially since I came to this universe. Not my own idea, by the way. “

“I doubt it not.” The Demon’s hum deepened to a lower pitch. “In what manner do you contradict yourself?”

“I’m bound and determined not to be committed, you see-not to a woman, not to an idea, not even to myself, if I can help it-but especially not to good or evil.”

“Amazing,” the Demon murmured. “How have you endured more than thirty seconds in this universe in which all action stems from either good or evil, from God or Satan?”

“By pure dumb luck, I guess, until I found out what was going on.

But as soon as an emissary from each side had tried to recruit me, I dug my heels in and turned mule-headed. I was bound and determined not to be a tool for either one-so every time I accidentally did something a little bit good, I tried to follow it with something a little bit bad. “

” ‘Tis a set of poles, not a continuum,” the Demon corrected me in an abstracted tone. “Indeed you live in contradiction-not in thoughts or words alone, but in’deeds. Yet do you dare no more than little bits?”

Indignation hit, along with the age-old alertness that someone was trying to infringe on my identity, to twist me into his own path. “I’m me,” I said, “not an extension of somebody else, natural or supernatural. I have to be me; I can’t be anybody else. If I go in for big gestures, stupendous feats of nobility, I’m committing myself to good so thoroughly that I become just an extension of it. Worse, I’d have to counteract that by doing something really vile, which would mean I’d have to infringe on someone else’s identity, destroy their integrity, ittle bits of good and evil, and that’s just flat-out wrong. No, I’ll do I thank you, but all I’ll go for in a big way is being me.”

“Excellently stated!” the Demon hummed. “You have grasped the essence of paradox!”

I had?

“I cannot allow a mind such as this to be wasted and withered,” he went on. “What would you of me?”

“Shelter!” I gasped-then, afraid of seeming too eager, I tried nonchalance. “As you can see, I’m in the kind of a bind only you can save me from.”

“Save?” The Demon hummed, surveying the situation.

The local spirits groaned and winked out, vanishing into their boulders and sand grains.

“Kin!” the dust devil gusted. “Source and lord!”

“In some measure, mayhap,” the Demon hummed, and to me, “wherefore seek you my aid? Here is one with power enough!”

“Only to make things hot,” I groaned, “and my species doesn’t do too well at temperatures above ninety degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Aye-I had forgotten you were so fragile,” the Demon answered.

“I ken not how your kind has survived so long, balanced on so fine a line of energy.”

“Cultural evolution! Artificial temperature control! Technology!

But the duke and his men stranded me out here without any machines, and I’m just not built for it! Please, Demon-take me someplace cool! About seventy degrees Fahrenheit,” I added quickly.

Somehow, I didn’t think I wanted to be where it was cool for the Demen.

“Someplace that is neither hot nor cool, rather,” the Demon corrected me, “a barrier between heat and cold. Aye, I know of such a place. But ‘tis such a realm as would drive a mortal mad.”

Ingrained caution welled up. “How so?”

“Why, for that ‘tis a realm of paradox incarnate, where a mortal would be lost in confusion …” The Demon’s voice trailed off, then ignited with enthusiasm. “Aye, we shall put you to the test of yourself! Do you think that you are so wholly dedicated to paradox as to withstand the confrontation of it?”

I hesitated-but he was putting me to the test of my selfimage. “If I’m not,” I said, “I want to know about it.” Then the counterimpulse ma e me say, “Besides, if I can’t, you can always drop me back in the real world-preferably at some point a little less extreme in temperature.

The Demon keened with delight. “You contradict yourself indeed!

t Nay, let us see how you withstand the test that you yourself conceive! Come, mortal, away!”

The landscape tilted and slid-or was it I who was sliding? I didn’t know, but suddenly, blessed coolness surrounded me. In fact, I shivered.

“Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit,” the Demon informed me.

“I’ll get used to it,” I promised, “fast. Thank you, Demon. You’re a lifesaver.” I looked around, and found myself in a realm of formless gray. Mist seemed to fill all the volume about me, and beyond it were only clouds. I looked down and, for all I knew, I could be sitting on another cloud. “Where are we?”

“Where you have wished to be,” the Demon said, “the barrier between the cold and the hot. I looked up, startled, finally recognizing the reference.

“Welcome to my home,” the Demon sang.

“Uh-thanks.” I looked around, feeling kind of weird-new boy in town, and all. And a town there was; shapes were beginning to show through the mist-houses, or things that my mind was interpreting as houses; it occurred to me that I probably wasn’t seeing what was really there-or, rather, that I was seeing it, or my eyes were, but my mind couldn’t accept it or comprehend it, so it was giving me familiar analogs. If that was the case, then the mist would be the fog of my own confusion. One way or another, it was thinning as I began to be able to recognize forms, and I was feeling a bit better at being able to see houses-in the shapes of geometric solids, and with polygons for windows and doors, but definitely houses. And a street-though it looped about in a funny way, and I couldn’t see anything supporting it. And some strange, amorphous masses of greenery that kept fluxing and flowing and changing shape, like vegetable amoebas; I figured they had to be analogous to trees and bushes.

And there were animals.

Or should I say, “creatures”? The first ones to come ambling up were a pair of cats that hadn’t quite made it into twins-there were two of them from the middle forward, but at the end of the rib cage, they joined, and only had one set of hindquarters. A single tail snaked around and tickled the ear of the head that had its eyes shut; they opened, and the other head’s eyelids closed.

That unnerved me, not to mention its offending me -how would you feel if someone sauntered up to you and fell asleep? “What’s the matter?” I asked the wide-awake head. “Early morning last night?”

“Nay,” the cat answered, which somehow didn’t surprise me. “He has died-and I have come alive.”

I stared.

Then I said, “Is he going to come alive again, too?”

“Aye, at some odd moment. We can never know when, though. We know that when he lives, I die, for the two of us cannot both be alive at one time.”

Something connected. “I thought that only applied when you were in your box,” I said.

“Nay,” he contradicted me. “When we go home to our box, both become comatose-neither alive nor dead.”

“Till someone opens the lid,” I said. “You’re Schredinger’s Cat.”

Which explained the joined hindquarters-only the front part had split into two time lines yet.

The cat turned to the Demon with a look of surprised approval.

“You have found a mortal with some modicum of sense.”

“No,” I said, “just a little knowledge.”

“Then you are very dangerous.”

“More than you know,” the Demon sang. “I did not find him-he called for me!”

The cat looked at me and shuddered. “You could visit chaos upon us all! “

“I could?” I said blankly, then realized that I was throwing away a bargaining chip. “Oh, yeah, I could! I wouldn’t, of course-especially since your friend Maxwell’s Demon has helped me out of a tight spot. “

“A hot spot, rather,” the Demon explained. ” ‘Twas like to fry his brains. ” The cat looked at me as if that might be an improvement. “Can you not send him back?”

“Aye, when the night has come, and coolness with it/ I glanced around at the alien setting, feeling kind of nervous. “If you don’t mind the waiting.” I wasn’t sure I didn’t.

“Oh, we need not wait!” the Demon sang. “From this space-time, we may project you to any point within your own.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling stupid. “You mean I’m not even in the same universe?”

“Nay. This realm lies between universes.”

“Then it’s a universe of its own.”

“Mayhap, though I would be reluctant to term it so, when Itis so small.”

I sat bolt-upright, galvanized by a sudden revelation. “Then you could just as easily send me back to my home universe!”

“I could,” the Demon agreed. “Do you wish it?”

That brought me up short. I frowned, considering alternativesAngelique, and the fun I’d been having not working magic, and Angelique, and the adventure, and Angelique, and the friends I’d gained-or companions, at least-and Angelique, and the fact that I felt as if I was worth something. Especially to Angelique. Okay, there was danger in it, too, but at least it wasn’t boring. “No,” I said slowly, tinot just yet.”

After all, I couldn’t commit myself to not committing myself, could I?

“Then to the universe of Allustria, whence you came,” the cat urged.

But the Demon asked, “Are there many like you, in your home universe?

“Not enough for comfort.” I frowned; a long horizontal plane was coming into focus, looking like a fence made out of a continuous sheet of plywood. “Like me in what way?”

“In believing in Maxwell’s Demon.”

“Oh.” I relaxed, shaking my head. “No, not many. Maybe a million.

“A million!”

“Out of three billion,” I said quickly. “Even out of the ones who know about you, most of them think you’re just a scientific fable.”

“But we are,” the Demon and the cat sang together, and the Demon went on, “This is the home of all such fables-and of those of logic and reason, too.”

But I was distracted by the big eyeballs and the long nose peeking over the fence. When I glanced directly at them, though, they disappeared. “What’s he doing here?”

The Demon didn’t even look. ” ‘Tis as much his home as Yehudi’s.”

“Yehudi”’ I glanced around, noting a series of level planes rising away off to’ my left, like a staircase-but it was empty. “I don’t see him. “

“Of course not; the little man is not there,” the cat said contemptuously. Behind him, I noticed two guys with saffron robes and bald heads, sitting in lotus position facing each other; each was holding a light bulb, but one was so dark it must have been burned out.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. “Then the Gremlin is here, too? “

“Shh!” The cat glanced about with apprehension. “Speak not of him, for if he comes, he will make all go awry.”

“I don’t think so; we/ve been getting to know each other.” I felt in still wasn’t home-and even better, better, knowing the Greml from the cat’s look of surprise. I noticed a guy with medium-length hair and a very bland face, in a powder-blue oxford-cloth shirt, blue jeans, and running sneakers, strolling along the row of polygons.

“Who’s he?”

“The Norm ” the Demon sang.

“I thought he didn’t really exist.”

“Be still!” the cat spat, but he was too late. The Norm faded away and disappeared. “Now you have done it.” The cat sighed. “It will take him many days to believe in himself strongly enough to manifest again.” very guilty, so I whispered the next one.

” Sorry, ” I said, feeling “Who’s the anorexic over there?” I was talking about the guy who was a stick figure, like the ones kids draw-a featureless circle on top, with straight lines for arms and legs and torso.

“The Statistical Abstract,” the Demon hummed softly. “You need not fear; he will not go away.”

A robot came clanking up and ground to a halt.

I stepped back, ready for trouble. “He doesn’t belong here! Where I come from, he’s real-these days!”

“Only my body,” a voice said, but the robot’s mouth just opened once, and a wispy form drifted out of it to float in midair before us.

“I had wondered how long ‘twould be ere you came amongst us!”

“Hey, I know you!” I said. “You’re the philosophy assignment I really resented!”

“The Ghost in the Machine,” the breezy voice agreed. “Wherefore did you resent me? “

“Not you,” I said, “just having to prove that you didn’t exist, when something inside me told me you did!”

“Indeed I do, but only in this realm that defies all logic, agreed. the ghost “Oh,” I said. “So that’s why you thought I’d come here some day.”

“Indeed,” the ghost agreed. “Do you still rail against reason, even as you practice it?”

“Not really,” I said with a smile. “Kant got me out of that.”

“Even so,” said the large, egg-shaped guy who came strolling up. I looked closer and realized he really was an egg. ” ‘Tis even as I’ve said about words-only a matter of whether they will master you, or You will master them/ “Right.” I nodded. “Logic’s just a tool. You can’t let it run your life by itself.” But I was bothered by the implication of his knowing my inner thoughts so well-was I really as much of a fence sitter as he was?

Yes. I had that sense of balance.

In the distance, I heard a long and mournful whistle, and a locomotive chuffed by drawing a train around a circular track, with so many cars that the engine was both pulling the tender and pushing the caboose, which was pulling it. I didn’t have to look; I knew it had no driver. It was going faster and faster the longer it ran, and I looked away.

“Say, you wouldn’t know where I can find the Dinganzich, would you?”

“It is not here the ghost lamented.

“We have only its shadow among us,” the Demon said.

“No,” I said with regret, “I was looking for the real thing. Next dimension, huh? “

“Nay; beyond them,” the Demon commiserated. “I fear, mortal, that what you truly seek is not here.”

“And probably not anywhere,” I sighed, except inside me after all.

“Or in Heaven,” one of the monks spoke up.

I frowned, looking up at him. “Thought you guys didn’t believe in that state.”

“It has many names,” the monk explained.

“Look, I gave up on trying to find God a long time ago.”

The monk shook his head. “Foolish. You must seek while you live, if you would find Him after death.”

But that had a false ring to it. “Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me the Ultimate Buddha is in Heaven along with Jehovah.”

“Nay,” the monk contradicted. “They are Heaven, and they are one it t/One what?” I asked, then felt a chill pass over my back and into my vitals. I tried to chase it by saying, “You would think that way,” but I shivered and turned to the Demon. “I think maybe I’d better get out of here. I’m not ready for this.”

“Will you ever be?” the cat mocked, but the ghost said, “He may be, if he never leaves off seeking.”

“Yet for now, you have the right of it,” the Demon told me. “Back to your Ordeal, mortal. Are you refreshed?”

“Enough to last,” I told him. “Could you send me back to just before sunrise at the end of the fifth night after you found me?”

“Gladly,” the Demon said. “Prepare yourself. “Hey, just a minute!” I said. “I almost forgot. This other guy in that universe-the one that you said knew about you, too. Who is he? “

“He is Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. Do you wish to go to him? ” It was tempting-but there was Angelique, and the need to get her body back. “No,” I said slowly, “I’m just glad to know he’s alive and well.

“He is,” the Demon assured me. “Now let us see to yourself. Lie back and relax, mortal.”

I did, closing my eyes.

“Awake,” the Demon’s hum said right next to my ear. I opened my eyes and sat up-and realized I could sit up. Of course-I had spelled away the ropes. No reason to think they would have come back, was there?

“Thanks, Demon,” I said. “I won’t forget you for this.”

I could feel an impulse to laughter somewhere around me, and the Demon’s voice hummed, “I am rewarded in your mere existence, mortal, so long as you seek to remain poised on the cusp of paradox. Farewell, for the sun is rising.”

I looked toward the east just as the first ray pierced the lightened sky. “Good-bye, Demon,” I said into the roseate glory of the new morning. “And thanks.”

Chapter Twenty-four

They appeared as black dots on the face of the rising sun, then expanded hugely, seeming to zoom out of the ruddy disk-the duke, with a dozen of his men behind him. Most of the men carried shovels, but one of them was nice enough to be carrying a big water skin-probably for them, not for me.

I debated whether I should play dessicated semicorpse, or just be sitting up obviously alive, well, and nonchalant. That last sounded suspiciously like bragging, but what the Hell, it was the truth, so I went with it.

They loomed dark and darker until they were close enough to begin seeing features. That’s when I sat up.

They shied off like elephants confronting a lemming, and the duke took time for some loudly intoned verses in his archaic language, with a few mystic passes. I just sat there and watched, studying his technique-but I didn’t feel anything, so he must have been working on de-ghosting a risen corpse. Wouldn’t have any effect on me, of course, since I was still alive and in my body …

The duke finished his gestures and chants, and his eyes widened when I didn’t disappear or even waver. He came closer, very carefully, as if I were a rattlesnake that might strike any minute, the whites showing all around his irises. He edged up near enough for a close inspection, reached out toward me as if he were going to prod me to make sure I was really there, but said instead, “You live!”

“That’s my main occupation,” I agreed.

“He should be dried!” one of the boys in the back row muttered, with a quaver that would have done credit to a vibraphone. “He should be leather!”

“I’m not feeling too chipper,” I admitted. “But I’m still juicy.

” ‘Tis not unknown.” You could see the duke was doing a quick revision on his estimates. “Yet those few who have endured till the second morn were feverish, seeing sights that mortal eyes seldom view I felt a chill; that sounded uncomfortably like the Demon’s home.

“They told you about that, did they?”

“Some one or two who endured to reclaim life,” the duke admitred. “Most have not lived to see a third dawn, no matter how gently we tend them, for they are the chattels of the god, look you … “

The god? Suddenly I realized why this man’s magic seemed to be halfway between good and evil-he was a pagan and didn’t realize the source of the powers he was drawing on!

and surely none can speak of the holy sights they have seen, when we find them, for their tongues are swollen.” A look of foreboding came over his face. “How is it yours is not.

I didn’t see any reason to lie. “I conjured up something to drink.”

“That, I did senseand did seek to block! How is it you were able to go around my wall, and without my knowing of it?”

I wondered where he thought I’d brought that drink from-and I began to see what he was afraid I’d been doing. “I went away. I called up some friendly spirits, and one of them took me to one of those places your victims see, but can’t tell you about. He and his friends took care of me and sent me back as you see me.” I didn’t figure I needed to tell him about the time shift-that would just have complicated matters.

The man in the back row spoke up again, his voice trembling.

“What spirits are these he can call upon?”

“Be silent!” the duke snapped, so viciously that I knew he must be scared-and overawed, or he would have thrown a whammy at me.

“In truth,” he said to me, “you must be a far more puissant wizard than I had thought. I caught the subtext-that he was afraid I was more powerful than he was. Maybe I could play on that. “I guess so,” I agreed. “‘I’hings being as they are, maybe you’ll go a step further than just letting me live, the way you promised.”

“What step is that?” He was braced for the worst.

“A boat,” I said. “Nothing elaborate-just a one-man craft, with a sail and a rudder. Say, about twenty feet long.”

He looked startled, and another anonymous voice from the ranks muttered, “What will he conjure up to sail it for him?”

Now, that was a thought. For a moment, I toyed with asking Sir Francis Drake or Christopher Columbus in for an excursion, but I decided they might be otherwise occupied. “I’ll manage,” I assured the duke. “You might put in a few goodies, too-say, a week’s worth of journey rations. And water.”

“Oh, aye!” He nodded his head, most emphatically. “For one who has survived the Ordeal? Oh, most surely.”

You bet he thought it was a good idea. Get me out of his hair, for only a longboat and a week’s worth of rations? Cheap at the price. For all he knew, I might have been sore enough to turn against him.

Which wasn’t that bad an idea, now that I thought of it-but I didn’t have time; I had bigger fish to spear.

“And speaking of water I glanced suggestively at the water skin.

The duke snapped his fingers, and the water carrier hurried to the front with the skin. He started to hand it to me, then thought better of it and shoved it at his boss. Let him take the risks.

“All praise to he who has survived the ordeal,” the duke said, presenting the skin as if it were a trophy.

By extreme self-control, I managed not to snatch it; I only took it from his hands slowly, popped the cork, and shot a jet from it into my mouth, reflecting on the irony of cool wetness tasting so good, so soon after I had almost hoped I would never have to see another drop of it. I was going to have to be careful what I wished for.

A couple of men-at-arms were very willing to push the boat into the waves for me, saving my legs from wetness at the cost of their own dousing. I could have done it myself easily enough, but if they wanted to honor me, I was willing to let them. I was beginning to realize the value of status and prestige in a world like this one. Besides, it helped them feel as if they were doing something to get rid of me.

I let go of an oar long enough to wave bye-bye, then managed to catch it again before it had quite slipped away into the next wave. It was going to take me a while to get used to having just a couple of pegs for an oarlock.

Nonetheless, I did manage to get the boat through the breakers and out beyond the bar-I could almost hear the soldiers snickering at my lack of seamanship, all the way out here. After all, on a little island like this, every able-bodied man must have started out as a fisherman or a sailor, even if he later became a soldier. They’d make fantastic marines.

Out into the swells, I shipped the oars and hoisted canvas. I’d learned to sail in the summers, out of sheer boredom-when you grow up near the Great Lakes, you have all sorts of opportunities for water sports. So I managed to get the sail up and catch a breeze without capsizing. My wake began to foam, and I was off.

Very quickly the wind picked up. I frowned, shivering and wishing I’d thought to ask the duke for a cloak, then glanced up at the sun.

There wasn’t much of it there.

I glared up at the clouds, willing them away-but I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. The day had dawned clear and sunny-very sunny. If it was clouding up so soon, it could just be a storm front moving in-or it could be Suettay, out to have another try at drowning me. If I had another storm blow up, there wouldn’t be any Frisson around to hand me magic verses. I’d have to try to lull it by myselfand I hated working magic on my own. It felt like surrender, somehow. Besides, I wasn’t all that sure I could succeed.

None of that! I reminded myself sternly. Defeatist attitudes wouldn’t help. Besides, I didn’t really need to make the storm go away-just manage to get safely to shore.

Safely?

A nasty suspicion budded in my head and blossomed into the fullgrown conviction that the storm dying down just where it did hadn’t been completely my doing. Suettay could have seen that I was going to win that round and kept wrestling just long enough to drive us onto the island, hoping that its xenophobic duke would do her dirty work for her, conveniently killing us off before we could do her any more damage. Maybe I hadn’t won such a great victory, after all. Maybe it had really been a very deliberate conjuration by a very nasty sorceress.

Of course, she might have been doing me a favoras a ghost, I could no doubt have had a much better time with Angelique than I could as a

I clamped down on that thought, hard. That way lay suicide, and losing all hope of getting Angelique completely free Of Suettay’s machinations.

Careful, there, boy, I warned myself. You’re coming perilously close to admitting that magic works in the hereand-now.

No. Absolutely impossible. A philosophical absurdity. Which, of course, was the point-magic was completely illogical.

Completely?

I reined in my thoughts, exasperated. When would I ever learn to stop making sweeping generalizations? They always had exceptions.

Okay-so maybe this universe was one of the exceptions?

I backed up against that one like a Missouri mule against an overloaded wagon. Somehow, I was constitutionally unable to accept the notion that magic might work, outside of a massively detailed hallucination. Possibly because if I allowed that it did, I would find it very hard to come up with a reason to avoid committing myself to one side or the other.

Or to Angelique?

Well, now, that was the advantage to being in love with a ghost.

The vow, after all, reads, “Till death do us part,” and death already had parted us-before we even got together.

Somehow, that sounded pretty thin, but I held onto it.

All right. Try something else then. And hurry, stupid-those clouds have grown awfully thick and awfully low, and that breeze has a definite taste of rain to it.

Okay. I decided to suppose, just suppose, magic really did work in this world. How would I work my way out of this storm?

All right, so I was cheating. I put that issue aside and decided to deal with it when I had time.

Actually, I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to get rid of the storm.

Drifting without any wind at all wasn’t exactly my idea of a picnic, either. If I could throttle it down, maybe, or direct it

…

 

Or both. After all, the nymph Thyme was supposedly nearby, on one of these Mediterranean islands. I decided to work from that.

 

o blow, ye winds, heigh-ho! To Thyme I wish to go! I’ve stayed no more on the ordeal’s shore, So let the music play! I’m off with the morning’s gain, To cross the raging main! I’m off to see Thyme With a pack of rhyme, So many miles away!”

 

The wind veered. I knew, because my sail swung about almost ninety degrees. it creaked as the strength of the wind bellied it out to its limit, and the wind sang in the stays-sure enough, the music played! I noticed that, just as a burst of spray drenched my back and shoulders. I yelped-it was cold! But that didn’t matter, because just then a giant kettledrum boomed overhead and rolled all about me, and its owner pulled the plug. Rain sluiced down, not bothering with individual drops, and I was soaked to the skin. Shivering, too, and my canvas sail groaned. I hitched around, alarmed, to lower itand my feet sloshed through a few inches of water. I stared down, feeling the first faint fingers of fear take hold as I realized I might ship enough water to sink.

All of a sudden, I was in favor of half measures. A little thunderstorm can be a blast, when you can revel in the wildness of the wind and the power of the storm-but when it’s all directed right at you, it can be a little unnerving. Scaled down, mind you, I would probably have loved it-if I’d had a soulwester.

What harm could it do? I tried.

 

“So blow, ye winds, heigh-how, But not so hard as now! I’ve need of speed, but less, indeed, So slacken your gale-force blasts! My sail can’t stand the strain! Slow down your wind and rain! I can wait for the tide, And Thyme can bide. Be a good stiff breeze that lasts!”

 

The thunder cracked and growled, and I could have sworn it cursed. But it faded even as it snarled, and the wind slackened. My sail groaned with relief, and the rain toned down to a heavy soaker with headstrong winds. I shivered and sneezed. Landing near Thyme’s hideout wouldn’t do me much good if I was dead of pneumonia when I got there, or even just delirious with fever. I thought of trying for that sou’wester, then rebuked myself for being greedy, not to say soft.

What was a little rain, anyway? After all, yesterday I would have given anything for this. I gritted my teeth and held on.

Over the waves that gale blew me. I lashed the line around a thwart and held on to the tiller for dear life. It wasn’t too bad for the first hour, but then I began to get tired. It didn’t help that I couldn’t see too far in front of me, either-but after the second hour, my eyelids were drooping so much that it didn’t matter terribly, either. How far could it be to Thyme’s island, anyway? I thought these Mediterranean mountaintops came in archipelagoes.

Finally, the sky lightened. The last thunderclap sounded far behind me, and the rain lightened to a drizzle. Not that I stopped shivering, though. Fortunately, the wind was still strong enough to keep my boat going into the waves, instead of veering crosswise; unfortunately, it was also hard enough to keep my teeth from chattering.

Then I realized there was a dark blob on the skyline ahead of me.

My spirits lifted amazingly. I tightened my weary grip on the tiller and grinned into the salt spray that doused me in the face. Relief was in sight.

Relief swelled up mighty fast, too, the blob growing into something that filled most of the horizon. Almost too late, I realized that the wind behind the boat was going to keep driving me until I was right up on the shore-which would be just fine if there weren’t any rocks in the way, but I heard a suspicious booming, dead ahead. I managed to pry my fingers loose, pulled my right hand off the tiller, and just barely got the knot loose in time. Then I hung on as the rope sizzled through my fingers so that the sail would collapse, not blow away. I yelped as the rough hemp burned me, then reflected that it was the first heat I’d had in hours. First too much heat and dryness, then too much heat and coldness-I longed for a happy medium.

The boat slowed down just in time for me to notice rocks rising up to left and right, but I could see a narrow gap between them. I heaved and pushed at the tiller, just barely managing to slip the boat through without shoaling. Then I realized that there was a pole in the bottom of the boat. I caught it up and fended off the rocks on either side until, amazingly, they were gone.

I turned and looked ahead to see the beach heaving toward me. I figured it was my boat that was doing the heaving, not the shore, and held on to try to enjoy the ride. Okay, after those rocks took out the worst of it, the surf wasn’t anything you’d find on Malibu, but it was still enough to drive my longboat ashore.

It jammed into sand, and I barely had enough presence of mind left to jump out, wade to the bow, and haul it onto the beach before the backwash could pull it out to sea again. Then another wave came along and pushed, and I gained another yard or two, enough to keep the boat secure from the next tug of receding water. I waited for the next wave. It came, I closed my eyes and threw my weight back against the boat-and it came. Easily.

Too easily.

I had to run backward to keep from being bowled over. I opened my eyes to see what had happened and saw a huge pair of hands clamped onto the far side of the boat, pulling. I kept pulling, too, as I followed the hands up arms like hawsers, to a huge and hairy chest with eyes like saucers at the top, looking down at me while a huge mouth curved open into a grin set with shark teeth.

I stared up as my heart dropped down, trying to hide in my boot tops.

Then I recognized him-I hoped. “Gruesome!”

The grin widened even further, and his top half nodded eagerly.

“Yuh! Yoh! Goosum!” And the huge arms crunched me up against his stony hide while his basso voice chirped, “Goosum so happy see Saw! ” It was more of a croak than a chirp, actually, and he stank abominably. I made a mental note to teach him about bathing and squirmed around enough to gasp, “I’m glad to see you, too, Gruesome.” And I was, surprisingly-after that stint in the desert and all that ocean, anything familiar looked good. Besides, he had saved my life once or twice, or had at least helped out.

But that clinch was inching me uncomfortably close to those shark teeth. “Yeah, glad to see you. Uh-how about putting me down, Gruesome? ” He started to, but hesitated with both huge mitts wrapped around my ribs, holding me up, and I could have sworn I saw a hungry glint in his eye. I was sure about the drops of drool glinting on his canines.

They made him swallow, and it sure sounded as if he smacked his lips.

“Down, Gruesome!”

“Yuh, yuh! Down! ” He finally lowered me till my feet touched sand, and loosened his hold. I twisted the rest of the way out of his grip with a sigh of relief, telling myself that I really hadn’t had anything to worry about-but myself wasn’t listening too well. “You won’t believe this, but I’m really glad to see you. What’re you doing here, though? I thought you were still on the mainland!”

“Mainland?” He scowled.

I decided that was better than the grin-it showed fewer teeth.

“You know-Allustria? The place where I met you? Where we fought Sue … uh, the wicked queen?”

“Queen! Uh-h-h-h!” He shrank away. “Queen found us! Shellmen! Sharp!”

Us? Had Gruesome somehow found the others? If so, I gathered that they had made it back to the mainland, but Suettay had ambushed them with a dozen or so knights-and panic stirred in my depths, assuming I had any. “Couldn’t Frisson make them disappear?”

“Yuh, yuh!” He nodded. “Got two! But shell men had spell man!”

“The war party had a sorcerer?”

“Yuh, yuh! Bad, bad! Stopped Fish-un’s spells! Shell men hit himboom!” He slammed one huge fist into the other for emphasis.

I braced myself against the shock wave, then said, “You mean a couple of the knights knocked him out?”

“Yuh, Yuh! Sleep! More shell men hit Gibbet! And me!”

“I was wondering if you’d done any fighting.” Frankly, I had difficulty imagining that he hadn’t. I hoped he’d remembered that just because something’s in a shell doesn’t mean it’s fair game for eating.

“How many of them did you knock out?”

“Two! Tree! Five!” Gruesome held up one combination of fingers after another, and his brow furrowed at the immense task of counting.

I decided to spare him the trouble. “You knocked out a lot of them, anyway. How come that didn’t stop them?”

“Spell man! Threw fire! Fire sticks! Hurt, hurt!”

I got the message. The party’s sorcerer had thrown lighted torches at Gruesome, thick enough and fast enough to drive him away. But that didn’t sound like your garden-variety sorcerer to me. Alarm thrilled through me. “So they captured all of them?”

“No, no!” Gruesome shook his head most emphatically. “Only Angel!

“Angelique!” I yelped. “How could they capture her? She’s a ghost!

“Bad spell! Bad, bad spell!” Gruesome shook his head to show how thoroughly he disapproved, scrunching up his whole face. “Held up jug! Skinny jug! Angel go skinny, too, and go in jug … Thhhhhw-pp!”

He made a sucking noise through pursed lips. “Shriek! Loud!” He clapped his hand over his ears, remembering. “Bad, bad!”

Now the anger started. “Into a bottle?” I howled. “He said a spell that sucked her into a bottle? And it hurt her?”

“Yuh, yuh!” Gruesome nodded. “Shriek!”

Of course, she might have just been scared, but either way, I was c out, even if I did have to mad enough to go turn that sorcerer insid work magic to do it-and even if he was more powerful than the average spell-caster. “Which way did he go? where did he take her?”

“No, the’!” Gruesome waved his spread hands back and forth.

“Changed! Like lizard skin! Not magic man, magic woman!”

My heart sank. “Once Angelique’s ghost was in the bottle, the sorcerer changed into Sue … into the queen?”

“Yuh, Yoh! Gruesome nodded vigorously. “Wanted Saw! Mad, mad!

“

 

“I’ll just bet she was,” I growled.

It all made sense. Suettay had come out in disguise, expecting me to be with the party and knowing that once I saw her, I’d forget about everything else and just get Frisson working on immobilizing her spells. But with your ordinary infantry sorcerer, I would have put him on the back burner and set Frisson to knocking over the knights.

Once she saw I wasn’t there, she changed herself back into Suettayespecially since, by then, Gilbert and Frisson had been knocked out, and she’d driven Gruesome away.

Which raised another issue. “You hung around close enough to see all this?”

“All!” Gruesome nodded. “But couldn’t stay watch! Queen tell shell men kill friends! Couldn’t watch! Shriek, run back, hit!”

“Good troll!” I could just picture Gruesome thundering down on the knights again, bellowing in rage. “I’ll bet they pulled back!”

“Yuh, yuh! Shell men run! Goosum put Gibbet and Fish-un in boat! Queen shout, shell men run back! Hit, hurt! Gibbet and Fish-un wake up! Fish-un make spell, wind come, blow boat into water!”

For him, that was a major soliloquy. it wasn’t all that bad a job of reporting, either-I’d heard worse on the ten o’clock news. “They left without you?

“No, no! Queen throw fire, Goosum run into water!” He shuddered at the memory, and I could only think that there must have been a lot of fire, considering the troll’s fear of water. “Gibbet pull Goosum into boat!”

That must have darn near swamped it, but it sounded like the kind of foolish, gallant thing Gilbert would do. The incongruity struck me.

So. They had reached the mainland right enough, but as soon as they had, they’d walked into an ambush. Suettay had looked in her crystal ball, or pool of ink, or whatever, and seen where they were going to land. She’d taken a band of knights and waited for my buddies to show up. When they had, the knights had descended on them, four overwhelming Gilbert while a dozen or so harried Gruesome, who harried them back-but then Suettay, in disguise, threw fireballs at him until he had to run, while a half dozen attacked Frisson. He got two of them with his spells, but the “sorcerer” knocked him out with a magic verse, then recited another one that pulled Angelique’s ghost, screaming, into a bottle. No wonder-the sorcerer was Suettay, disguised enough so they wouldn’t be able to detect her. She was no doubt outraged to discover that I wasn’t with the party, and headed back to her castle with Angelique locked up in the bottle. On the way out, though, she had thoughtfully ordered her soldiers to kill Gilbert and Frisson. That was when Gruesome had flown into a rage and charged from his hiding place, holding off the soldiers just long enough to drag Frisson and Gilbert back to the boat. Apparently the dragging brought Frisson around, reviving him just in time to call up a wind that blew them out to sea. Suettay had come back and thrown fireballs at Gruesome, driving him into his hated enemy element, water-but Gilbert had pulled the troll in at the last second, nearly swamping the boat.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “If that all happened on the mainlandwhat’re you doing here?”

“Big wind!” Gruesome made whirling motions with his paws.

“Fish-un say queen send! Blew back toward land!”

“The queen conjured up a gale to blow you back to her.” I nodded.

So did Gruesome, apparently delighted that I’d understood him so easily. I wished he weren’t delighted so often-all those shark teeth made me nervous. “But Fish-un make spell! Wind change, blow from land! Goosum look back, see boat sink!” He shuddered. ” Goosum see Goosum go into water!”

“It was just an illusion,” I said quickly, “like a dream.”

Gruesome frowned, puzzled; apparently trolls didn’t dream.

“Pretend.” I struggled to explain a concept. “Something that wasn’t real. Like a story, only you could see it happen.”

His eyes widened, and his mouth formed a saw-toothed 0.

“You know it didn’t really happen,” I pressed the point, “because you’re really here. it was just a fake Gruesome that drowned-like a picture.”

He nodded, faster and faster, 0 turning back into a grin. “Then wind blow, land go away. Then wind go away, too. Gilbert push boat. ” I had a sudden vivid vision of Gilbert getting out to walk on the water, pushing the boat in front of him like a wheelbarrow-but of course, Gruesome only meant that Gilbert had rowed the boat.

“Didn’t Frisson take a turn?”

Gruesome nodded. “Short.”

“No staying power,” I agreed, “but I’ll bet he got back into shape fast. Didn’t he try to raise a wind?”

Gruesome shook his head. “Queen might know,” So Frisson had been afraid to whistle up a wind, because Suettay might have detected it and realized they were still alive. I gave him points for foresight, but subtracted them for underestimating his opponent-I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Suettay had seen through his illusion.

A nasty suspicion occurred to me. “Did a new wind start up?”

Gruesome nodded, staring at me in amazement.

“Same thing happened to me,” I assured him. “And it blew you here?

“

 

“How know? How know?” Gruesome bleated.

“Just a lucky guess.” I had remembered that I had told the wind to take me to Thyme. Apparently, this was where she lived. I had twisted the wind to blow me here, but I needn’t have botheredThyme was keeping an eye out for any boat that came close enough to puff into her trap. My friends’ arrival on this island was no accident, either. I had a sudden image of a spider again, but this time, it was a black widow. “So where are they? Frisson and Gilbert, I mean.”

Gruesome started to answer, then shrugged helplessly and pointed inland. “In woods. In cage.”

“Cage?” I stared. jail? Frisson and Gilbert? A nearly-knight and a nouveau wizard?”

“How? ” Gruesome shrugged. “Woman.”

“They were captured by a woman? Okay, I can understand that-I guess. But what kind of spell did she use? “

“No spell.” Then Gruesome frowned, reconsidering. “Maybe spell.

“

 

” ‘Maybe spell’” I frowned. “How can you have a ‘maybe’ spell?”

“Fish-un and Gibbet see woman. She smile. Gibbet turn red, start shaking, go hide. Fish-un big-eyed, come to her. She lead him into cage. She chase Gibbet into cage.”

So. She hadn’t needed any magic, other than her own sweet self-or sweet body, I amended; the self was yet to be determined.

Just the ordinary magic that any beautiful woman has naturally, or can learn.

Well, I was armored against it. I’d been worked over by champions and had accumulated some thick layers of scar tissue around my heart in the process. Any time a pretty woman started giving me the come-hither look now, all I had to do was remember what the other ones had done to me, and the beautiful lady suddenly seemed much less enticing. Okay, so maybe I had lost out on a good one that way, but I didn’t really think so-experience had shown me that every time I’d fallen in love with a woman who turned out to be good, she tactfully and gently let me know it wasn’t mutual. I attracted neurotics and sickles, women who wanted to use me for their own twisted purposes, and the hell with what it did to me.

What can I say? Like will to like? I hated to think that. But if it was true, all the more reason to stay single. Which I had.

“Thyme,” I informed Gruesome. “The woman’s name is Thyme.”

“Time?” Gruesome asked, frowning. “Day? Week?”

Well. I hadn’t known he had grasped the concept. Apparently the spillover from that spell I’d thrown at Gilbert had done more than I’d known. I felt a chill, wondering just how much else Gruesome knew that I didn’t know about. “You might be right,” I conceded, “but I thought she was named after an herb. After all, she’s a nymph.”

“Nimf?” Gruesome screwed up his face in trollish concentration.

“A nature spirit,” I explained, “a personification of fertility-or at least sexuality. She’s not really human, she’s supernatural-and, thank Heaven, can’t leave this island. She’s tied to the plant whose life energy she embodies.”

That was too much for the poor troll. He just shook his head, loo ing frazzled-or shook the upper part of his torso, anyway. “Like Saw say. We go break cage?”

“We can try,” I said slowly, “but that brings up another question.

Did you try to break them out? “

“Me try break!” Gruesome nodded with vigor-something like bowing. “She touch cage, and cage bite Goosum. jump back and fall-plants tied around feet.”

“The cage bit you?” Then I remembered-that was how you explained an electric shock to a toddler. Thyme had touched the cage, and it had given Gruesome a jolt. “Was the cage made of wood?”

“Yuh! Wood! Sticks!”

So. Anything made of plants, she could use to work magic. I laid a bet with myself that the “sticks” were still alive, plants that she had just told to grow into a huge box. “And while you weren’t looking, the grass tied itself around your legs?”

“Yuh! Legs! Arms, too, after fell! Try get up, grass pull me down!

Roar! ” He gave a sample, letting loose a bellow that shook some nearby rocks and left waveforms in the sand. I winced and reminded myself to conjure up some mouthwash for him. “How’d you get loose?

“

 

“Woman tell Goosum go stay near water, watch for Saw. Find him, eat him! “

“Saul!” I stared. “Me?” How the hell had Thyme known I was coming?

Exactly. Maybe she had a message from the Other Side.

Or maybe she had asked Frisson. From what Gruesome said, he was so besotted he would have told her anything. Of course, he also would have told her that the moon was made of green cheese, if that was what she had wanted to hear, but she seemed to have overlooked that possibility.

Then the rest of what Gruesome had said percolated through to my undernourished brain. Something about if I showed up, he was supposed to have me for dinner. I swallowed thickly and looked up at him. Was that a hungry gleam in his eye, or was I just imagining it?