“Not so foolish as thou might have thought,” the witch grated. “Yet thou art lately come, to be of aid.” She frowned in thought. “Nay, but mayhap thou’rt timely come also; for, an thou hadst been with her when first she had appeared in my cave-mouth, I doubt not I would have sent thee both packing.”

Rod started to add, “If you could,” then thought better of it. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry to intrude.”

“Think naught of it,” Agatha said acidly, “no other man has.” She transferred her gaze to Gwen. “Thou’rt most excellent fortunate, to be sure.”

Gwen lowered her eyes, blushing.

“Yet, I doubt thou knowest the true extent of thy fortune.” The witch turned back to the fireplace, jammed a paddle into a huge caldron, and stirred. “There was no tall young wizard for me, but a horde of plowboys from mountain villages, who came by ones and by fives to me for a moment’s pleasure, then come threescore all together, with their mothers and sisters and wives and their stern village clergy, to flog me and rack me and pierce me with hot needles, crying, ‘Vile witch, confess!’ till I could contain it no longer, till my hatred broke loose upon them, smiting them low and hurling them from out my cave!”

She broke off, gasping and shuddering. Alarmed, Gwen clasped Agatha’s hands in her own, and paled as their chill crept up to her spine. She had heard the tale of how, long years ago, the witch Agatha had flung the folk of five villages out of her cave, how many had broken their heads or their backs on the slopes below. No witch in Gramarye, in all the history of that eldritch island, had been possessed of such power. Most witches could lift only two, or perhaps three, at a time. And as for hurling them about with enough force to send them clear of a cave—why, that was flatly impossible.

Wasn’t it?

Therefore, if a witch had indeed performed such a feat, why, obviously she must have had a familiar, a helping spirit. These usually took the form of animals; but Agatha had kept no pets. Therefore—why, there still had to be a familiar, but it must have been invisible.

“’Twas then,” panted the witch, “that I came to this cavern, where the ledge without was so narrow that only one man could enter at once, and so that in my wrath I might never injure more than a few. But those few…”

The scrawny shoulders slackened, the back bowed; the old witch slumped against the rough table. “Those few, aie! Those few…”

“They sought to burn thee,” Gwen whispered, tears in her eyes, “and ’twas done in anger, anger withheld overlong, longer than any man might have contained it! They debased thee, they tortured thee!”

“Will that bring back dead men?” Agatha darted a whetted glance at Gwen.

Gwen stared at the ravaged face, fascinated. “Agatha…” She bit her lip, then rushed on. “Dost thou wish to make amends for the lives thou hast taken?”

“Thou dost speak nonsense!” The witch spat. “A life is beyond price; thou canst not make amends for the taking of it!”

“True,” Rod said thoughtfully, “but there is restitution.”

The whetted glance sliced into him, freezing almost as effectively as the Evil Eye.

Then, though, the gaze lightened as the witch slowly grinned. “Ah, then!” She threw her head back and cackled. It was a long laugh, and when it faded Agatha wiped her eyes, nodding. “Eh! I had pondered the why of thy coming; for none come to old Agatha lest they have a wish, a yearning that may not be answered by any other. And this is thine, is it not? That the folk of the land be in danger; they stand in need of old Agatha’s power! And they have sent thee to beg me the use of it!”

Her gaunt body shook with another spasm of cackling. She wheezed into a crooning calm, wiping her nose with a long bony finger. “Eh, eh! Child! Am I, a beldam of threescore years and more, to be cozened by the veriest, most innocent child? Eh!” And she was off again.

Rod frowned; this was getting out of hand. “I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘cozening.’”

The witch’s laughter chopped off. “Wouldst thou not?” she spat. “But thou wilt ask aid of me, aye! And wilt seek to give me no recompense, nay!” She transferred her gaze to Gwen. “And thou wilt do as he bids thee, wilt thou not?”

“Nay!” Gwen cried, affronted. “I have come of my own, to beg of thee…”

“Of thine own!” The witch glared. “Hast thou no stripes to thy back, no scars to thy breasts where their torturers have burned thee? Hast thou not known the pain of their envy and hate, that thou shouldst come, unforced, uncajoled, to beg help for them?”

“I have.” Gwen felt a strange calm descend over her. “Twice I was scourged, and thrice tortured, four times bound to a stake for the burning; and I must needs thank the Wee Folk, my good guardians, that I live now to speak to thee. Aye, I ha’ known the knotted whip of their fear; though never so deeply as thou. Yet…”

The old witch nodded, wondering. “Yet, you pity them.”

“Aye.” Gwen lowered her eyes, clasping her hands tight in her lap. “Indeed, I do pity them.” Her eyes leaped up to lock with Agatha’s. “For their fear is the barbed thong that lashes us, their fear of the great dark that stands behind such powers as ours, the dark of unknown, and the unguessable fate that we bring them. ’Tis they who must grope for life and for good in midnightmare, they who never ha’ known the sound of love-thoughts, the joy of a moonlit flight. Ought we not, then, to pity them?”

Agatha nodded slowly. Her old eyes filmed over, staring off into a life now distant in time. “So I had thought once, in my girlhood.…”

“Pity them, then,” said Gwen, sawing hard at the reins of her eagerness. “Pity them, and…”

“And forgive them?” Agatha snapped back to the present, shaking her head slowly, a bitter smile on her gash of a mouth. “In my heart, I might forgive them. The stripes and the blows, the burning needles, the chains and the flaming splinters under my nails—aye, even this might I forgive them.…”

Her eyes glazed, gazing back down the years. “But the abuse of my body, my fair, slender girl’s body and my ripe-blossomed woman’s body, all the long years, my most tender flesh and the most intimate part of my heart, the tearing and rending of that heart, again and again, to feed them, their craving, insensible hunger…no!” Her voice was low and guttural, gurgling acid, a black-diamond drill. “No, nay! That, I may never forgive them! Their greed and their lust, their slavering hunger! Forever and ever they came, to come in and take me, and hurl me away; to come for my trembling flesh—then spurn me away, crying, ‘Whore!’ Again and again, by one and by five, knowing I would not, could not, turn them away; and therefore they came and they came.…Nay! That, I may never forgive them!”

Gwen’s heart broke open and flowed; and it must have shown in her face, for Agatha transfixed her with a shimmering glare. “Pity them if you must,” she grated, “but never have pity for me!”

She held Gwen’s eyes for a moment, then turned back to the caldron, taking up her paddle again. “You will tell me that this was no fault of theirs,” she muttered, “any more than it was of mine, that their hunger forced them to me as truly as mine constrained me to welcome them.”

Her head lifted slowly, the eyes narrowing. “Or didst thou not know? Galen, the wizard of the Dark Tower. He it was who should have answered my hunger with his own. The greatest witch and the greatest warlock of the kingdom together, is it not fitting? But he alone of all men would never come to me, the swine! Oh, he will tell you he hath too much righteousness to father a child into a Hell-world like this; yet the truth of it is, he fears the blame of that child he might father. Coward! Churl! Swine!”

She dug at the caldron, spitting and cursing. “Hell-spawned, thrice misbegotten, bastard mockery of a man! Him”—she finished in a harsh whisper—“I hate most of all!”

The bony, gnarled old hands clutched the paddle so tight it seemed the wood must break.

Then she was clutching the slimy wooden paddle to her sunken dried breast. Her shoulders shook with dry sobs. “My child,” she murmured. “O my fair, unborn, sweet child!”

The sobs diminished and stilled. Then, slowly, the witch’s eyes came up again. “Or didst thou not know?” She smiled harshly, an eldritch gleam in her rheumy yellowed eye. “He it is who doth guard my portal, who doth protect me—my unborn child, Harold, my son, my familiar! So he was, and so he will ever be now—a soul come to me out of a tomorrow that once might have been.”

Gwen stared, thunderstruck. “Thy familiar…?”

“Aye.” The old witch’s nod was tight with irony. “My familiar and my son, my child who, because he once might have been, and should have been, bides with me now, though he never shall be born, shall never have flesh grown out of my own to cover his soul with. Harold, most powerful of wizards, son of old Galen and Agatha, of a union unrealized; for the Galen and Agatha who sired and bore him ha’ died in us long ago, and lie buried in the rack and mire of our youth.”

She turned back to the caldron, stirring slowly. “When first he came to me, long years ago, I could not understand.”

Frankly, Rod couldn’t either—although he was beginning to suspect hallucinations. He wondered if prolonged loneliness could have that effect in a grown person—developing an imaginary companion.

But if Agatha really believed in this “familiar,” maybe the hallucination could focus her powers so completely that it would dredge up every last ounce of her potential. That could account for the extraordinary strength of her psi powers.…

Agatha lifted her head, gazing off into space.

“It seemed, lo, full strange to me, most wondrous strange; but I was lonely, and grateful. But now”—her breath wheezed like a dying organ—“now I know, now I understand.” She nodded bitterly. “’Twas an unborn soul that had no other home, and never would have.”

Her head hung low, her whole body slumped with her grief.

After a long, long while, she lifted her head and sought out Gwen’s eyes. “You have a son, have you not?”

There was a trace of tenderness in Agatha’s smile at Gwen’s nod.

But the smile hardened, then faded; and the old witch shook her head. “The poor child,” she muttered.

“Poor child!” Gwen struggled to hide outrage. “In the name of Heaven, old Agatha, why?”

Agatha gave her a contemptuous glance over her shoulder. “Thou hast lived through witch-childhood, and thou hast need to ask?”

“No,” Gwen whispered, shaking her head; then, louder, “No! A new day has dawned, Agatha, a day of change! My son shall claim his rightful place in this kingdom, shall guard the people and have respect from them, as is his due!”

“Think thou so?” The old witch smiled bitterly.

“Aye, I believe it! The night has past now, Agatha, fear and ignorance have gone in this day of change. And never again shall the folk of the village pursue them in anger and fear and red hatred!”

The old witch smiled sourly and jerked her head toward the cave-mouth. “Hear thou that?”

Rod saw Gwen turn toward the cave-mouth, frowning. He cocked his ear and caught a low, distant rumble. He realized it had been there for some time, coming closer.

The heck with the cover. “Fess! What’s that noise?”

“’Tis these amiable villager folk of thine,” said old Agatha with a sardonic smile, “the folk of twelve villages, gathered together behind a preacher corrupted by zeal, come to roust old Agatha from her cave and burn her to ashes, for once and for all.”

“Analysis confirmed,” Fess’s voice said behind Rod’s ear.

Rod leaped to the cave-mouth, grabbed a rocky projection, and leaned out to look down.

Halfway up the slope, a churning mass filled the stone ledges.

Rod whirled back to face the women. “She’s right—it’s a peasant mob. They’re carrying scythes and mattocks.”

A sudden gust blew the mob’s cry more loudly to them.

“Hear!” Agatha snorted, nodding toward the cave-mouth. Her mouth twisted with bitterness at the corners. “Hear them clamoring for my blood! Aye, when an unwashed, foaming madman drives them to it!”

She looked down at the swarming mob climbing ledge by ledge toward them. Steel winked in the sun.

Gwen felt the clammy touch of fear; but fear of what, she did not know. “Thou speakest almost as though thou hadst known this beforehand…”

“Oh, to be certain, I did.” The old witch smiled. “Has it not come often upon me before? It was bound to be coming again. The time alone I did not know; but what matter is that?”

The ledges narrowed as the horde surged higher. Gwen could make out individual faces now. “They come close, Agatha. What must we do against them?”

“Do?” The old witch raised shaggy eyebrows in surprise. “Why, nothing, child. I have too much of their blood on my hands already. I am tired, old, and sick of my life; why then should I fight them? Let them come here and burn me. This time, at least, I will not be guilty of the blood of those I have saved.”

Agatha turned away from the cave-mouth, gathering her shawl about her narrow old shoulders. “Let them come here and rend me; let them set up a stake here and burn me. Even though it come in the midst of great torture, death shall be sweet.”

Rod stared, appalled. “You’ve got to be joking!”

“Must I, then?” Agatha transfixed him with a glare. “Thou shalt behold the truth of it!” She hobbled over to a scarred chair and sat down. “Here I rest, and here I stay, come what will, and come who will. Let them pierce me, let them burn me! I shall not again be guilty of shedding human blood!”

“But we need you!” Rod cried. “A coven of witches scarcely out of childhood needs you! The whole land of Gramarye needs you!”

“Wherefore—the saving of lives? And to save their lives, I must needs end these?” She nodded toward the roaring at the cave-mouth. “I think not, Lord Warlock. The very sound of it echoes with evil. Who saves lives by taking lives must needs be doing devil’s work.”

“All right, so don’t kill them!” Rod cried, exasperated. “Just send them away.”

“And how shall we do that, pray? They are already halfway up the mountain. How am I to throw them down without slaying them?”

“Then, do not slay them.” Gwen dropped to her knees beside Agatha’s chair. “Let them come—but do not let them touch thee.”

Rod’s eyes glowed. “Of course! Fess’s outside on the ledge! He can keep them out!”

“Surely he is not!” Gwen looked up, horrified. “There must be an hundred of them, at the least! They will pick him up and throw him bodily off the cliff!”

Rod’s stomach sank as he realized she was right. Not that it would hurt Fess, of course—he remembered that antigravity plate in the robot’s belly. But it wouldn’t keep the peasants out, either.

“What is this ‘Fess’ thou dost speak of?” Agatha demanded.

“My, uh, horse,” Rod explained. “Not exactly…a horse. I mean, he looks like a horse, and he sounds like a horse, but…”

“If it doth appear to be an horse, and doth sound like to an horse, then it must needs be an horse,” Agatha said with asperity, “and I would not have it die. Bring it hither, within the cave. If it doth not impede them, they will not slay it.”

Loose rock clattered, and hooves echoed on stone as Fess walked into the cave. Behind Rod’s ear his voice murmured, “Simple discretion, Rod.”

“He’s got very good hearing,” Rod explained.

“And doth understand readily too, I wot,” Agatha said, giving Fess a jaundiced glance. Then her eye glittered and she looked up, fairly beaming. “Well-a-day! We are quite cozy, are we not? And wilt thou, then, accompany me to my grave?”

Gwen froze. Then her shoulders straightened, and her chin lifted. “If we must, we will.” She turned to Rod. “Shall we not, husband?”

Rod stared at her for a second. Even in the crisis, he couldn’t help noticing that he had been demoted from “my lord” to “husband.” Then his mouth twisted. “Not if I can help it.” He stepped over to the black horse and fumbled in a saddlebag. “Fess and I have a few gimmicks here…” He pulled out a small compact cylinder. “We’ll just put up a curtain of fire halfway back in the cave, between us and them. Oughta scare ’em outa their buskins.…”

“It will not hold them long!” Agatha began to tremble. “Yet, I see thou dost mean it. Fool! Idiot! Thou wilt but madden them further! They will break through thy flames; they will tear thee, they will rend thee!”

“I think not.” Gwen turned to face the cave-mouth. “I will respect thy wishes and not hurl them from the ledge; yet, I can fill the air with a rain of small stones. I doubt me not an that will afright them.”

“An thou dost afright them, they will flee! And in their flight, they will knock one another from the ledge, a thousand feet and more down to their deaths!” Agatha cried, agonized. “Nay, lass! Do not seek to guard me! Fly! Thou’rt young, and a-love! Thou hast a bairn and a husband! Thou hast many years left to thee, and they will be sweet, though many bands like to this come against thee!”

Gwen glanced longingly at her broomstick, then looked up at Rod. He met her gaze with a somber face.

“Fly, fly!” Agatha’s face twisted with contempt. “Thou canst not aid a sour old woman in the midst of her death throes, lass! Thy death here with me would serve me not at all! Indeed, it would deepen the guilt that my soul is steeped in!”

Rod dropped to one knee behind a large boulder and leveled his laser at the cave-mouth. Gwen nodded and stepped behind a rocky pillar. Pebbles began to stir on the floor of the cave.

“Nay!” Agatha screeched. “Thou must needs be away from this place, and right quickly!” Turning, she seized a broomstick and slammed it into Gwen’s hands; her feet lifted off the floor. Rod felt something pick him up and throw him toward Gwen. He shouted in anger and tried to swerve aside, but he landed on the broomstick anyway. It pushed up underneath him, then hurtled the two of them toward the cave-mouth—and slammed into an invisible wall that gave under them, slowed them, stopped them, then tossed them back toward old Agatha. They jarred into each other and tumbled to the floor.

“Will you make up your mind!” Rod clambered to his feet, rubbing his bruises. “Do you want us out, or don’t…” His voice trailed off as he saw the look on the old witch’s face. She stared past his shoulder toward the cave-mouth. Frowning, he turned to follow her gaze.

The air at the cave-mouth shimmered.

The old witch’s face darkened with anger. “Harold! Begone! Withdraw from the cave-mouth, and quickly; this lass must be away!”

The shimmering intensified like a heat haze.

A huge boulder just outside the cave-mouth stirred.

“Nay, Harold!” Agatha screeched. “Thou shalt not! There ha’ been too much bloodshed already!”

The boulder lifted slowly, clear of the ledge.

“Harold!” Agatha screamed, and fell silent.

For, instead of dropping down onto the toiling peasants below, the boulder lifted out and away, rising swiftly into the sky.

It was twenty feet away from the cave when a swarm of arrows spat out from the cliff above, struck the boulder, and rebounded, falling away into the valley below.

The old witch stood frozen a long moment, staring at the heat haze and the boulder arcing away into the forest.

“Harold,” she whispered, “arrows…”

She shook her head, coming back to herself. “Thou must not leave now.”

“He ha’ saved our lives.” said Gwen, round-eyed.

“Aye, that he hath; there be archers above us, awaiting the flight of a witch. Mayhap they thought I would fly; but I never have, I ha’ always stayed here and fought them. It would seem they know thou’rt with me. A yard from that ledge now, and thou wouldst most truly resemble two hedgehogs.”

Agatha turned away, dragging Gwen with her toward the back of the cave. “Thou, at least, must not die here! We shall brew witchcraft, thou and I, for a storm of magic such as hath never been witnessed in this land! Harold!” she called over her shoulder to the heat haze. “Guard the door!”

Rod started to follow, then clenched his fists, feeling useless.

Agatha hauled a small iron pot from the shelf and gasped as its weight plunged against her hands. She heaved, thrusting with her whole body to throw it up onto a small tripod that stood on the rough table. “I grow old,” she growled as she hooked the pot onto the tripod, “old and weak. Long years it ha’ been since I last stewed men’s fates in this.”

“Men’s fates…?” Gwen was at her elbow. “What dost thou, Agatha?”

“Why, a small cooking, child.” The old witch grinned. “Did I not say we would brew great magic here?”

She turned away and began pulling stone jars from the shelf. “Kindle me a fire, child. We shall live, lass, for we must; this land hath not yet given us dismissal.”

A spark fell from Gwen’s flint and steel into the tinder. Gwen breathed on the resulting coal till small flames danced in the kindling. As she fed it larger and larger wood scraps, she ventured, “Thou art strangely joyous for a witch who ha’ been deprived of that which she wanted, old Agatha.”

The old witch cackled and rubbed her thin, bony hands. “It is the joy of a craftsman, child, that doth his work well, and sees a great task before him, a greater task than ever his trade yet ha’ brought him. I shall live, and more joyous and hearty than ever before; for there is great need of old Agatha, and great deeds a-doing. The undoing of this war thou hast told me of will be old Agatha’s greatest work.”

She took a measure from the shelf and began ladling powders from the various jars into the pot, then took a small paddle and began stirring the brew.

Gwen flinched at the stench that arose from the heating-pot. “What is this hideous porridge, Agatha? I have never known a witch to use such a manner of bringing magic, save in child’s tales.”

Agatha paused in her stirring to fasten a pensive eye on Gwen. “Thou art yet young, child, and know only half-truths of witchery.”

She turned back to stirring the pot. “It is true that our powers be of the mind, and only of the mind. Yet true it also is that thou hast never used but a small part of thy power, child. Thou knowest not the breadth and the width of it, the color and the warp and the woof of it. There be deep, unseen parts of thy soul thou hast never uncovered; and this deep power thou canst not call up at will. It lies too far buried, beyond thy call. Thou must needs trick it into coming out, direct it by ruse and gin, not by will.” She peered into the smoking, bubbling pot. “And this thou must do with a bubbling brew compounded of things which stand for the powers thou doth wish to evoke from thy heart of hearts and the breadth of thy brain. Hummingbird’s feathers, for strength, speed, and flight; bees, for their stings; poppyseed, for the dulling of wits; lampblack, for the stealth and silence of night; woodbine, to bind it to the stone of the cliffs; hearth-ash, for the wish to return to the home.”

She lifted the paddle; the mess flowed slowly down from it into the pot. “Not quite thick enow,” the old witch muttered, and went back to stirring. “Put the jars back on the shelves, child; a tidy kitchen makes a good brew.”

Gwen picked up a few jars, but as she did she glanced toward the cave-mouth. The clamor was much louder. “Old Agatha, they come!”

The first of the villagers stormed into the cave, brandishing a scythe.

“Their clamor shall but help the brew’s flavor,” said the old witch with a delightedly wicked grin. She bent over the pot, and crooned.

The peasant slammed into the invisible haze barrier, and rebounded, knocking over the next two behind him. The fourth and fifth stumbled over their fallen comrades, adding nicely to the pile. The stack heaved as the ones on the bottom tried to struggle to their feet. The top layers shrieked, leaped up, and fled smack-dab into the arms of their lately-come reinforcements. The resulting frantic struggle was somewhat energetic, and the ledge was only wide enough for one man at a time; the peasants seesawed back and forth, teetering perilously close to the edge, flailing their arms for balance and squalling in terror.

“’Tis a blessing the ledge is so narrow, they cannot come against me more than one at a time.” Agatha wrapped a rag around the handle of the pot and hefted it off the hook, strands of muscle straining along her arms. “Quickly, child,” she grated, “the tripod! My son Harold is summat more than a man, but he cannot hold them long, not so many! Quickly! Quickly! We must prepare to be aiding him!”

She hobbled into the entryway. Gwen caught up the tripod and ran after her.

As she set down the tripod and Agatha hooked the pot on it again, two sticks of wood thudded against the ledge, sticking two feet up above the stone.

“Scaling ladders!” gasped Agatha. “This was well-planned, in truth! Quickly, child! Fetch the bellows!”

Gwen ran for the bellows, wishing she knew what old Agatha was planning.

As she returned—handing the bellows to Agatha where she crouched over the pot in the middle of the entryway—a tall, bearded figure appeared at the top of the ladder, clambering onto the ledge. The man leveled his dark, polished staff at the cave-mouth. The staff gave a muted clank as he set its butt against the stone.

“An iron core!” Agatha pointed the bellows over the pot at the preacher and began pumping them furiously. “That staff must not touch my son!”

But the forward end of the staff had already touched the heat haze. A spark exploded at the top of the staff. Skolax howled victory and swung his staff to beckon his forces. The peasants shouted and surged into the cave.

“Bastard!” Agatha screamed. “Vile Hell-fiends! Murrain upon thee! Thou hast slain my son!”

She glared furiously, pumping the bellows like a maniac. The steam from the pot shot forward toward the mob.

They stopped dead. A deathly pallor came over their faces. Little red dots began appearing on their skins. They screamed, whirling about and flailing at their comrades, swatting at something unseen that darted and stung them.

For a moment, the crowd milled and boiled in two conflicting streams at the cave-mouth; then the back ranks screamed and gave way as the phantom stings struck them too, and the mob fled back along the ledge, away from the cave.

Only the preacher remained, struggling against the flock of phantom bees, his face swelling red with ghost-stings.

The old witch threw back her head and cackled shrill and long, still pumping the bellows. “We have them, child! We have them now!” Then she bent grimly over the pot, pumping harder, and spat, “Now shall they pay for his death! Now shall my Eumenides hie them home!”

With a titanic effort, Skolax threw himself forward, his staff whirling up over the witch’s head. Gwen leaped forward to shield her; but the staff jumped backward, jerking the preacher off his feet and throwing him hard on the stone floor. Agatha’s triumphant cry cut through his agonized bellow: “He lives! My son Harold lives!”

But the preacher lifted his staff as though it were a huge and heavy weight, his face swelling with ghost-stings and rage. “Hearken to me! Hearken to Skolax! Tear them! Rend them! They cannot stand against us! Break them—now!” And he lurched toward his victims with a roar.

Rod leaped forward, grabbing the staff, yanking it out of the preacher’s hands with a violent heave. But the whole crowd surged in after him, screaming and shouting. Fingers clawed at the witches; scythes swung.…

Then light, blinding light, a sunburst, a nova—silent light, everywhere.

And silence, deep and sudden, and falling, falling, through blackness, total and unrelieved, all about them, and cold that drilled to their bones.…

 

 

TWO

 

And something struck his heels, throwing him back. Something hard, heels, hips, and shoulders, and he tucked his chin in from reflex.

And fire burned in the blackness.

A campfire, only it burned in a small iron cage, black bars slanting up to a point.

Rod’s eyes fastened on that cage for the simple reassurance of solid geometry in a world suddenly crazy. It was a tetrahedron, a fire burning inside a tetrahedron.

But what the hell was it doing here?

And for that matter, where was “here”?

Rephrase the question; because, obviously, the fire and cage belonged here. So…

What was Rod doing here?

Back to Question Number Two: Where was “here”?

Rod started noticing details. The floor was stone, square black basalt blocks, and the fire burned in a shallow circular well, surrounded by the basalt. The walls were distant, hard to see in the dim light from the fire; they seemed to be hung with velvet, some dark deep color, not black. Rod squinted—it looked to be a rich maroon.

The hell with the curtains. Gwen…

A sudden, numbing fear pervaded Rod. He was scarcely able to turn his head, was afraid to look, for fear she might not be there. Slowly, he forced his gaze around the darkened chamber, slowly…

A great black form lay about ten feet from him: Fess.

Rod knelt and felt for broken bones, taking things in easy stages. Satisfied that he didn’t have to be measured in fractions, he clambered carefully to his feet and went over to the horse.

Fess was lying very still, which wasn’t like him; but he was also very stiff, each joint locked, which was like him when he had had a seizure. Rod didn’t blame him; being confronted with that journey, he could do with a seizure himself—or at least a mild jolt; bourbon, for instance…

He groped under the saddlehorn and found the reset switch.

The black horse relaxed, then slowly stirred, and the great head lifted. The eyes opened, large, brown, and bleary. Not for the first time, Rod wondered if they could really be, as the eye-specs claimed, plastic.

Fess turned his head slowly, looking as puzzled as a horsehair-over-metal face can, then turned slowly back to Rod.

“Di-dye…chhhab a…zeizure, RRRRRodd?”

“A seizure? Of course not! You just decided you needed a lube job, so you dropped into the nearest grease station.” Rod tactfully refrained from mentioning just how Fess had “dropped in.”

“I…fffai-led you innn…duhhh…momenduv…”

Rod winced at the touch of self-contempt that coated the vocodered words and interrupted. “You did all you could; and since you’ve saved my life five or six times before, I’m not going to gripe over the few times you’ve failed.” He patted Fess between the ears.

The robot hung his head for a moment, then surged to his feet, hooves clashing on the stone. His nostrils spread; and Rod had a strange notion his radar was operating, too.

“We arrre inna gread chall,” the robot murmured; at least when he had seizures, he made quick recoveries. “It is stone, hung with maroon velvet curtains; a fire burns in the center in a recessed well. It is surrounded by a metal, latticework tetrahedron. The metal is an alloy of iron containing nickel and tungsten in the following percentages…”

“Never mind,” Rod said hastily. “I get the general idea.” He frowned suddenly, turning away, brooding. “I also get the idea that maybe my wife isn’t dead; if she was, her body would have been there. So they’ve kidnapped her?”

“I regret…”

“‘That the data is insufficient for…’” Rod recited with him. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how do we find her?”

“I regret…”

“Skip it. I’ve got to find her.” He struck his forehead with his fist. “Where is she?”

“In the next room,” boomed a deep, resonant voice. “She is unharmed and quite well, I assure thee. Agatha is there also.”

A tall old man with long white hair streaming down over his shoulders and a long white beard down his chest, in a long, dark-blue monk’s robe with the hood thrown back, stood by the fire. His robe was sprinkled with silver zodiac signs; his arms were folded, hands thrust up the wide, flaring sleeves. His eyes were surrounded by a network of fine wrinkles under white tufts of eyebrows; but the eyes themselves were clear and warm, gentle. He stood tall and square-shouldered near the fire, looking deep into Rod’s eyes as though he were searching for something.

“Whoever you are,” Rod said slowly, “I thank you for getting me out of a jam and, incidentally, for saving my life. Apparently I also owe you my wife’s life, and for that I thank you even more deeply.”

The old man smiled thinly. “You owe me nothing, Master Gallowglass. None owe me ought.”

“And,” Rod said slowly, “you owe nothing to anyone. Hm?”

The wizard’s head nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Rod chewed at the inside of his cheek and said, “You’re Galen. And this is the Dark Tower.”

Again the old man nodded.

Rod nodded too, chewing again. “How come you saved me? I thought you ignored the outside world.”

Galen shrugged. “I had an idle moment.”

“So,” said Rod judiciously, “you saved two witches, my horse, and my humble self, just to kill time.”

“Thou art quick to comprehend,” said Galen, hiding a smile deep in his beard. “I had no pressing researches at the moment.”

“Rod,” Fess’s voice murmured, “an analysis of vocal patterns indicates he is not telling the whole truth.”

“For this I need a computer?” Rod muttered dryly.

Galen tilted his head closer, with a slight frown. “Didst thou speak?”

“Oh, uh—just an idle comment about the physical aspects of thought.”

“Indeed.” The old wizard’s head lifted. “Dost thou, then, concern thyself with such problems?”

Rod started to answer, then remembered that he was talking to a wizard who had locked himself away for forty years and had gained power continually throughout that time—and it wasn’t because he’d been fermenting. “Well, nothing terribly deep, I’m afraid—just the practical side of it.”

“All knowledge is of value,” the wizard said, eyes glittering. “What bit of knowledge hast thou gained?”

“Well…I’ve just been getting some firsthand experience in the importance of the prefrontal lobes.” Rod tapped his forehead. “The front of the brain. I’ve just had a demonstration that it acts as a sort of tunnel.”

“Tunnel?” Galen’s brows knit. “How is that?”

Rod remembered that the original Galen had authored the first definitive anatomy text back at the dawn of the Terran Renaissance. Had to be coincidence—didn’t it? “There seems to be a sort of wall between concept and words. The presence of the concept can trigger a group of sounds—but that’s like someone tapping on one side of a wall and someone on the other side taking the tapping as a signal to, oh, let’s say…play a trumpet.”

Galen nodded. “That would not express the thought.”

“No, just let you know it was there. So this front part of the brain”—Rod tapped his forehead again—“sort of makes a hole in that wall and lets the thought emerge as words.”

Galen slowly nodded. “A fascinating conjecture. Yet, how could one verify its accuracy?”

Rod shrugged. “By being inside the mind of someone who doesn’t have prefrontal lobes, I suppose.”

Galen lost his smile, and his eyes lost focus. “Indeed we could—an we could find such a person.”

Rod couldn’t help a harsh bark of laughter. “We’ve got ’em, Master Wizard—more than we want. Much more! The peasants call ’em ‘beastmen,’ and they’re raiding our shores.” He remembered the alarm, and guilt gnawed at him. “Raiding ’em right now, come to think of it.”

“Truly?” The old wizard actually seemed excited. “Ah, then! When I finish my current tests I will have to let my mind drift into one of theirs!”

“Don’t rush ’em,” Rod advised. “But please do rush me! I’m needed at the home front to help fight your test group—and I’d kinda like to take my wife back with me.”

“As truly thou shouldst.” Galen smiled. “Indeed, there is another here whom thou must also conduct away from this Dark Tower.”

“Agatha? Yeah, I want her too—but not for the same reasons. Would you happen to know where they are?”

“Come,” said Galen, turning away, “thy wife is without the chamber.”

Rod stared after him a moment, surprised at the old man’s abruptness; then he shrugged and followed, and Fess followed Rod.

The wizard seemed almost to glide to the end of the cavernous room. They passed through the maroon hangings into a much smaller room—the ceiling was only fifteen feet high. The walls were hung with velvet drapes, cobalt blue this time, and one huge tapestry. The floor boasted an Oriental carpet, with a great black carven wood chair at each corner. Roman couches, upholstered in burgundy plush, stood between the chairs. A large round black wood table stood in the center of the room before a fair-sized fireplace. Six huge calf-bound volumes lay open on the table.

Rod didn’t notice the splendor, though; at least, not the splendor of the furnishings. The splendor of his wife was something else again.

Her flame-red hair didn’t go badly with the cobalt-blue drapes, though. She stood at the table, bent over one of the books.

She looked up as they came in. Her face lit up like the aurora. “My lord!” she cried, and she was in his arms, almost knocking him over, wriggling and very much alive, lips glued to his.

An eternity later—half a minute, maybe?—anyway, much too soon, a harsh voice grated, “Spare me, child! Pity on a poor old hag who never was one tenth as fortunate as thou!”

Gwen broke free and spun about. “Forgive me, Agatha,” she pleaded, pressing back against her husband and locking his arms around her waist. “I had not thought…”

“Aye, thou hadst not,” said the old witch with a grimace that bore some slight resemblance to a smile, “but such is the way of youth, and must be excused.”

“Bitter crone!” Galen scowled down at her from the dignity of his full height. “Wouldst deny these twain their rightful joy for no reason but that it is joy thou never knew? Hath the milk of love so curdled in thy breast that thou canst no longer bear…”

“Rightful!” the witch spat in a blaze of fury. “Thou darest speak of ‘rightful,’ thou who hast withheld from me…”

“I ha’ heard thy caterwauls afore,” said Galen, his face turning to flint. “Scrape not mine ears again with thy cant; for I will tell thee now, as I ha’ told thee long agone, that I am no just due of thine. A man is not a chattel, to be given and taken like a worn, base coin. I am mine own man to me alone; I never was allotted to a woman, and least of all to thee!”

“Yet in truth thou wast!” Agatha howled. “Thou wert accorded me before thy birth or mine and, aye, afore the world were formed in God’s own mind. As sure as night was given day, wert thou allotted me; for thou art, as I am, witch-blood, and of an age together with me! Thy hates, thy joys, are mine.…”

“Save one!” the wizard grated.

“Save none! Thine every lust, desire, and sin are each and all alike to mine, though hidden deep within thy heart!”

Galen’s head snapped up and back.

Agatha’s eyes lit with glee. She stalked forward, pressing her newfound advantage. “Aye, thy true self, Galen, that thou secretest veiled within thy deepest heart, is like to me! The lust and body weakness that ever I made public thou hast in private, mate to mine! Thus thou hast hid for threescore years thy secret shame! Thou hast not honesty enow to own to these, thy covered, covert sins of coveting! Thou art too much a coward.…”

“Coward?” Galen almost seemed to settle back, relaxing, smiling sourly. “Nay, this is a cant that I ha’ heard afore. Thou wanest, Agatha. In a younger age, thou wouldst not so soon have slipped back upon old argument.”

“Nor do I now,” the witch said, “for now I call thee coward of a new and most unmanly fear! Thou who cry heedlessness of all the world without the walls of thy Dark Tower; thou, who scornest all the people, fearest their opinion! Thou wouldst have them think thee saint!”

Galen’s face tightened, eyes widening in glare.

“A saint!” Agatha chortled, jabbing a finger at him. “The Saint of Hot and Heaving Blood! A saint, who hast as much of human failing as ever I did have, and great guilt! Greater! Aye, greater, for in thy false conceit thou hast robbed me of mine own true place with thee! For thou art mine by right, old Galen; ’twas thou whom God ordained to be my husband, long before thy mother caught thy father’s eye! By rights, thou shouldst be mine; but thou hast held thyself away from me in cowardice and pompousness!”

Galen watched her a moment with shadowed eyes; then his shoulders squared, and he took a breath. “I receive only the curse that I have earned.”

Agatha stared for a moment, lips parting. “Thou wilt admit to it!”

Then, after a moment she fixed him with a sour smile. “Nay. He means only that he hath saved mine life six times and more; and thus it is his fault that I do live to curse him.”

She lifted her head proudly, her eyes glazing. “And in this thou mayst know that he is a weakling; for he cannot help himself but save us witches. It is within his nature, he who claims to care naught for any living witch or plowman. Yet he is our guardian and our savior, all us witches; for, if one of us should die when he might have prevented it, his clamoring conscience would batter down the weakness of a will that sought to silence it, and wake him in the night with haunted dreams. Oh, he can stand aloof and watch the peasant and the noble die, for they would gladly burn him; but a witch, who has not hurt him, and would render him naught but kindness—had he the courage or the manhood to be asking it—these he cannot help but see as part and parcel like him; and therefore must he save us, as he ha’ done a hundred times and more.”

She turned away. “Thou mayst credit him with virtue and compassion if thou wishest; but I know better.”

“’Tis even as she saith,” said the old man proudly. “I love none, and none love me. I owe to none; I stand alone.”

Old Agatha gave a hoot of laughter.

“Uh…yes,” said Rod. The fight seemed to have reached a lull, and Rod was very eager to be gone before it refueled.

And since Galen’s brow was darkening again, it behooved Rod to make haste.

“Yes, well, uh, thanks for the timely rescue, Galen,” he said. “But now, if you’ll excuse us, we really gotta be getting back to Runnymede, uh—don’t we, Gwen?”

He paused suddenly, frowning at the old wizard. “I don’t, uh, suppose you’d consider coming back with us?”

Agatha’s head lifted slowly, fire kindling in her eye.

“I thank thee for thy kindness in offering of hospitality,” said the old wizard in a voice rigid with irony. “Yet greatly to my sorrow, I fear that I cannot accept.”

“Oh, to thy sorrow, to be sure!” spat Agatha. “Indeed, thou art the sorriest man that e’er I knew, for thou hast brought me sorrow deep as sin!”

She spun toward Rod and Gwen. “And yet, fear not; thy folk shall not go all unaided! There lives, at least, still one old witch of power threescore-years-and-ten in learning, who will not desert her countrymen in this time of need! There lives still one, aye, be assured; though this old gelding”—she jerked her head toward Galen—“will idly stand and watch thy folk enslaved, a power strong as his will guard thy land!” She stretched out her hand. “Come take me with thee, get us gone, for my stomach crawls within me at his presence! He thinks of naught but himself.”

“And thou dost not?” Galen grated, glaring at the old witch. “Is this aught but a sop to thy thwarted wish for mothering of a child thou never hadst?”

Agatha flinched almost visibly and turned, hot words on her tongue; but Galen raised an imperious hand and intoned:

“Get thee hence, to Runnymede!”

White light flared, burning, blinding.

When the afterimages faded, Rod could see, as well as feel, Gwen in his arms, which feeling had been very reassuring while the sun went nova.

He could dimly make out Agatha too, leaning shaken against a wall, a gray granite wall.

And a high timbered ceiling, and a knot of young witches and warlocks gathered around them, staring, eyes and mouths round.

Their voices exploded in clamoring questions.

Yep, home, Rod decided. It was obviously the Witches’ Tower in the King’s Castle at Runnymede.

He wondered what would happen if Galen ever got mad enough to tell someone to go to Hell.

 

One young warlock’s face thrust closer as he dropped to one knee. “Lord Warlock! Where hast thou been?”

“Galen’s Dark Tower,” Rod croaked, and was rewarded with a huge communal gasp. He looked around at eyes gone round as wafers. “And as to how we got here—well, he sent us home.”

The teenagers exchanged glances. “We can wish ourselves from place to place,” said one of the warlocks, “but none of us can do it to another.”

“Yeah, well, Galen’s a little older than you, and he’s learned a few more tricks.” Privately, Rod wondered—that did amount to a new kind of psi power, didn’t it? Well, he was prepared for constant surprises. “Your name’s Alvin, isn’t it?”

“Thus am I called, Lord Warlock.”

Rod rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I seem to remember, before I lit out to find Gwen, something about the beastmen attacking?”

“Aye, milord. Their three long ships were only the vanguard. Behind them, their fleet did darken the waters.”

“Fleet?” Rod snapped completely out of his grogginess. “How many of them were there?”

“An army,” a girl answered from behind Alvin. “Thou couldst not call it less.”

Rod staggered to his feet, looking around. He saw the great black horse standing stiff-legged, head hanging low. Rod stumbled over to him and slid a hand under the head. It lifted, turning to look at him. Rod frowned. “No seizure, huh?”

“Indeed I did not,” the robot’s voice said in his ear only, “since I had experienced it once, and knew it to be possible. It thus did not cause great enough anxiety to trigger a seizure.”

“So,” Rod said carefully, “you were awake during the whole thing.”

The horsehead lifted higher. “I was. I…recorded it…all.…I must play it back…very slowly…later…later.…”

“Just offhand, what would you say…happened? Just at a guess.”

“A preliminary analysis would indicate that we passed through another dimension.” Fess’s body shuddered. “At least, I hope that is what I will decide happened.”

“Yeah.” Rod swallowed. “Uh. Well…decide it later, okay?” He set his foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the saddle. “We’ve got to get to the coast. Where’d you say they landed, Alvin?”

“At the mouth of the River Fleuve, milord. We wait as reserve, yet have heard no call.”

Rod took a more thorough look at the handful left in the room and realized there wasn’t a one over fourteen. Small wonder they hadn’t been called. If they had been, things would have been really desperate. Rod nodded. “The Fleuve isn’t too far. I might still get in on the action.” He leaned down from his saddle to plant a quick kiss on Gwen. “Keep the home fires burning, dear. Come help pick up the pieces when you’ve got your strength back.” He swung back upright and kicked his heels against Fess’s sides. The black horse started trotting toward the doorway, protesting, “Rod, the lintels are too low.”

“So I’ll duck. Upward and onward, Steel Steed! Ho, and away!”

“You forgot the ‘horse and hattock,’” Fess reminded.

 

Fess swept down the road to the south in the easy, tireless, rocking-chair gait possible only to electric horses. Rod sat back in the saddle and enjoyed the ride.

“Of course,” he was saying, “it’s possible this revivalist is just what he seemed to be, nothing more—just a neurotic, unordained religious nut. But somehow I find myself able to doubt it.”

“Coincidence is possible,” Fess agreed, “though scarcely probable.”

“Especially since his activities are weakening the war effort very nicely—nicely for the beastmen, that is. And why else would he start operating at just this particular time? He must have begun preaching a week or two before Catharine began recruiting; otherwise we would have had at least a few volunteers.”

“We may assume, then, that there is some correlation between the two phenomena—the war and the preacher,” Fess opined.

“Correlation, Hell! He’s working for ’em, Fess! How else could you explain it?”

“I do not have an alternate theory prepared,” the robot admitted. “Nonetheless, the probability of direct collusion is extremely low.”

“Oh, come off it!”

“Examine the data, Rod. The Neanderthals and the preacher are separated by approximately a hundred miles of ocean. Moreover, there is no physiological resemblance apparent from the reports we have received.”

“A point,” Rod admitted. “Still, I say…”

“Pardon the interruption,” Fess said suddenly, “but…you are aware that I am using radar…”

“I should hope so, when we’re going sixty miles an hour!”

“Two flying objects have just passed overhead.”

Rod’s stomach sank. “Just a couple of birds, right?”

“I’m afraid not, Rod.”

Rod darted a glance at the sky. There they were, already dwindling in the distance—two broomsticks, with women attached. “They didn’t!”

“I fear they did, Rod. I estimate their equivalent ground speed in excess of one hundred miles per hour. And, of course, they can fly in a direct, straight line.”

“They’re gonna get to the battlefield before us!” Rod glared after the ladies, then heaved a sigh and relaxed. “Well…I suppose I should be glad they’ll be there in time to help out.…Gwen will have enough sense to keep them both up in the sky, won’t she?”

“I trust not, since she will need to be able to concentrate all her powers in fighting the Evil Eye.”

“Yeah…I’d forgotten about that. Well!” Rod sighed and sat back. “That’s a relief!”

“I should think it would cause greater anxiety, Rod.” Fess actually sounded puzzled.

“No—because she’ll probably settle down wherever the Royal Witchforce is stationed—and Tuan’ll have ’em very well guarded.” Rod grinned. “She’ll be safe in spite of herself. But just in case…step up the pace, will you?”

 

“Then did the Foemen fall upon us in endless waves. Their long ships were myriad, a plague of Dragons clawing up out of the ocean onto the beach, vomiting forth beastmen in their thousands. Tall, they were, and fanged, with their heads beneath their shoulders, and Murder in their eyes. Our doughty soldiers blanched and fell back; but the King exhorted them, and they held their places. Then did the High Warlock rise up before them, and Thunder smote the air, and Lightning blasted the ground about him. In a voice like unto a trumpet, he swore unto the soldiers that his Witches would ward the Evil Eye away from them; therefore he bade them march forth to meet and best the foemen, for the sakes of their Wives and Daughters and Sweethearts. Courage flowed from him to the heart of every soldier, and they began their march.

But the beastmen then had formed their line, and the lightning glittered from their shields and helms. They roared with bestial Lust and set forth against King Tuan’s army.

With a shout, the soldiers charged; yet each beastman caught the eyes of two among them, or mayhap three, then half a dozen, and froze them where they stood. Then did the beastmen laugh—a hideous, grating Noise—and ’gan to stride forward to make Slaughter.

But the High Warlock cried out to his Witchfolk there on the hill from whence they watched the battle, and they joined hands in prayer, speeding forth the greatest of their Powers, grappling with the beastmen’s darkling Strength, and freeing the minds of all the soldiers from its Spell. The army then cried out in anger, striding forth with pikes upraised; but Thunder crashed, and Lightning smote the land, leaping up into the beastmen’s eyes, to freeze the soldiers there again within their tracks; and on their hill, the Witchfolk lay in a swoon, like unto Death—for the power of the demon Kobold had seared their minds.

And the beastmen grunted laughter and swung huge war axes, laying low the soldiers of the King.

The High Warlock cried out then in his Rage, and did ride down upon them on his steed of Night, laying about him with a sword of Fire, hewing through the beastmen’s line; while his wife and an ancient Hag of the Hills did hear his cry, and sped unto the battle. There they joined hands, and bent their heads in prayer, and did betwixt them what all the King’s Witchfolk together had done—grappled with the Kobold’s power, and lifted its spell from off our soldiers’ minds. Yet too many amongst them had fallen already; they could defend themselves but little more.

Then did the High Warlock again charge the beastmen’s line, chanting high his ancient War Song, and the soldiers heard it and took heart. They gave ground then, step by step, and laid waste such beastmen as were foolhardy enough to come nigh them; thus King Tuan brought them away from that cursed beach whereon so many of their Comrades did lie slain; thus he brought them up into the hills—battered, bruised, yet an army still—and bade them rest themselves and bind their wounds, assuring them their Time would come again.

And the High Warlock turned unto his wife upon the Hill, to consider how they might yet confound the beastmen; and they left the monsters to number their dead, and dig themselves deep Holes to hide in.”

—Chillde’s Chronicles of the Reign of Tuan and Catharine

 

Fess trotted up to the crest of the hill, and Rod stared down at the most miserable collection of teenage warlocks and witches he’d ever seen. They lay or sat on the ground, heads hanging, huddling inside blankets. Brother Chillde wove his way among them, handing out steaming mugs. Rod wondered what was in them—and wondered even more if the Lord Abbot knew that Brother Chillde was actually helping witchfolk. The little monk seemed, to say the least, unorthodox.

Then Rod realized that one of the blanketed ones was his wife.

“Gwen!” He leaped off Fess’s back, darting down to kneel by her side. “Are you…did you…” He gave up on words and gathered her into his arms, pressing her against his chest. “You feel okay.…”

“I am well enough, my lord,” she said wearily; but she didn’t try to pull away. “Thou shouldst have greater care for these poor children—and for poor old Agatha.”

“Have care for thyself, if thou must,” spat the old crone. “I am nearly restored to full energy.” But she seemed just as droopy as the kids.

“What happened?” Rod grated.

Gwen pushed a little away from him, shaking her head. “I scarce do know. When we came, Toby and all his witchlings and warlocks lay senseless on the ground, and our soldiers stood like statues on the beach. The beastmen passed among them, making merry slaughter. Therefore did Agatha and I join hands to pool our power against the beastmen’s Evil Eye—and, oh, my lord!” She shuddered. “It was as though we heaved our shoulders up under a blackened cloud that lay upon us like unto some great, soft…” She groped for words. “’Twas like the belly of a gross fat man, pushing down upon us—dark and stifling. Seemly it could soak up all the force that we could throw unto it; yet we heaved up under, Agatha and I; we did lift it off our soldiers’ minds so that they could, at least, defend themselves—though scarcely more; they were sorely outnumbered. Then lightning rent the sky, and that huge, dark bank fell down upon us, smothering.” She shook her head, eyes closed. “’Tis all that I remember.”

“Yet ’twas enow.”

Rod looked up; Brother Chillde stood near them, his eyes glowing. “Thy wife, milord, and her venerable crone held off the beastmen’s power long enow.”

“Long enough for what?”

“For King Tuan to retreat back up this slope with the remnant of his soldiers, far enough so that the beastmen durst not follow. Nay, they stayed below, and began to dig their graves.”

“Theirs or ours?” Rod grated. He surged to his feet, giving Gwen’s hand a last squeeze, and strode to the brow of the hill.

A hundred feet below, the river-mouth swept into a long, gentle curve—a bow; and the beastmen were stringing that bow. They were digging, but not graves—a rampart, a fortress-line. Already, it was almost complete. Rod looked down and swore; they’d have a hell of a time trying to dig the beastmen out of that!”

Then he saw what lay on the near side of the rampart—a jumbled row of bloody bodies, in the royal colors.

Rod swore again. Then he spat out, “They had to be planning it. They just had to. Somebody had to have put the idea into Gwen’s mind—the idea to go see old Agatha; somebody had to have told that nutty preacher to attack Agatha’s cave right then. Right then, so I’d be pulled away and couldn’t be here! Damn!”

“Do not berate thyself so severely, Lord Warlock,” Tuan said wearily behind him. “’Twas not thy absence that defeated us.”

“Oh?” Rod glared up at him. “Then what was it?”

Tuan sighed. “The power of their Kobold, like as not!”

“Not!” Rod whirled away to glare down at the beach. “Definitely ‘not’! That Kobold of theirs can’t be anything but a wooden idol, Tuan! It’s superstition, sheer superstition!”

“Have it as thou wilt.” Tuan shrugged his shoulders. “It was the beastmen’s Evil Eye, then. We did not think its power would be so great, yet it blasted our witches’ minds and froze our soldiers in their tracks. Then the beastmen slew them at their leisure.”

“’Twas the lightning,” Agatha grated in a hollow voice.

Tuan turned toward her, frowning. “What goodly beldam is this, Lord Warlock? Our debt to her is great, yet I wot me not of her name.”

“That’s just ’cause you haven’t been introduced. She’s, uh, well…she’s kinda famous, in her way.”

Agatha grimaced, squinting against a throbbing headache. “Temporize not, Lord Warlock. Be direct, e’en though it may seem evil. Majesty, I am called ‘Angry Agatha.’” And she inclined her head in an attempt at a bow.

Tuan stared, and Rod suddenly realized that the King was young enough to have heard some nasty nursery tales himself. But Tuan was never short on courage; he forced a smile, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped up to the old lady. “I must needs thank thee, revered dame, for without thee, my men and I had been naught but butcher’s meat.”

Agatha peered up at him through narrowed eyes; then slowly she smiled. “Mine head doth split with agony, and I ache in every limb; yet would I do this service again for so handsome a thanking.” The smile faded. “Aye, or even without it; for I think that I have saved some lives this day, and my heart is glad within me.”

Tuan stood, gazing down at her for a moment.

Then he cleared his throat and turned to Rod. “What manner of hill-hag is this, Lord Warlock? I had thought the ancients ’mongst the witches were all sour and bitter and hated all of humankind.”

“Not this one, it turns out,” Rod said slowly. “She just hated the way people treated her.…”

“Oh, still thy prattle!” Agatha snapped. “I do hate all men, and all women, too, Majesty—unless I’m near them.”

Tuan turned back to her, nodding slowly with glowing eyes. “Now, God save thee! For hypocrisy such as thine would confound the very Devil! Praise Heaven thou wert here!”

“And curse me that I wasn’t!” Rod snapped, turning to glower down at the entrenched beastmen.

“Again thou hast said it!” Tuan cried, exasperated. “What ails thee, Lord Warlock? Why dost thou say that thou wert absent, when thou wert here in truth, and fought as bravely as any—aye, and more!”

Rod froze.

Then he whirled about. “What!”

“Thou wast here, indeed.” Tuan clamped his jaw shut. “Thou wert here, and the beastmen could not freeze thee.”

“I’ truth, they could not!” Brother Chillde cried, his face radiant. “Thou didst sweep across their line, Lord Warlock, like unto a very tempest, laying about thee with thy sword of flame. Five at a time thou didst grapple with, and conquer! Their whole line thou didst confound and craze! And ’twas thou who didst give heart unto our soldiers, and didst prevent their retreat from becoming a rout.”

“But…that’s impossible! I…”

“’Tis even as he doth say, my lord.” Gwen’s voice was low, but it carried. “From this hilltop did I see thee far below; and ’twas thou who didst lead, even as this good friar saith.”

Rod stared at her, appalled. If she didn’t know him, who did?

Then he turned away, striding down the back of the hill.

“Hold, Lord Warlock! What dost thou seek?” Tuan hurried to keep pace with him.

“An on-the-spot witness,” Rod grated. “Even Gwen could be mistaken from a distance.”

He skidded to a stop beside a knot of soldiers who huddled under the protection of a rocky overhang. “You there, soldier!”

The soldier lifted his tousled blond head, holding a scrap of cloth to a long rent in his arm.

Rod stared, amazed. Then he dropped to one knee, yanking the cloth off the wound. The soldier yelled, galvanized. Rod glanced up and felt his heart sink; surely that face belonged to a boy, not a man! He turned back to the wound, inspecting it. Then he looked up at Tuan. “Some brandywine.”

“’Tis here,” the young soldier grated.

Rod looked down and saw a bottle. He poured a little on the cut and the soldier gasped, long and with a rattle, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. Rod tore open his doublet and tore a strip of cloth from his singlet. He held the wound closed and began to wrap the bandage around it. “There’s a lot of blood, but it’s really just a flesh wound. We’ll have to put some stitches in it later.” He looked up at the young ranker. “Know who I am?”

“Aye,” the young man gasped. “Thou’rt the Lord High Warlock.”

Rod nodded. “Ever seen me before?”

“Why, certes! Thou didst stand beside me in the melee! Thou wert then no farther from me than thou art now!”

Rod stared up at him. Then he said, “Are you sure? I mean, absolutely sure?”

“Nay, be sure that I am! Had it not been for the sight of thee, I’d ha’ turned and fled!” Then his eyes widened and he glanced quickly at his companions, flushing; but they only nodded somber agreement.

“Take heart.” Tuan slapped his shoulder. “Any would have fled such a battle, an they could have.”

The young soldier looked up, finally realized the King himself stood near, and almost fainted.

Rod grasped his shoulder. “You saw me, though. You really did see me.”

“Truly, my lord.” The young man’s eyes were wide. “I’ truth, I did.” He lowered his eyes, frowning. “And yet—’tis strange.”

“Strange?” Rod frowned. “Why?”

The young soldier bit his lip; then the words spilled out. “Thou didst seem taller in the battle—by a head or more! I could have sworn thou didst tower above all soldiers there! And thou didst seem to glow.…”

Rod held his eyes for a moment longer.

Then he went back to wrapping the bandage. “Yeah, well, you know how it is during a battle. Everything seems bigger than it really is—especially a man on a horse.”

“Truth,” the young soldier admitted. “Thou wast astride.”

“Right.” Rod nodded. “Big roan horse.”

“Nay, milord.” The young soldier frowned. “Thy mount was black as jet.”

 

“Calm down, Rod,” Fess’s voice murmured, “you are beside yourself.”

“I am?” Rod looked around in a panic.

“It was a figure of speech,” the robot assured him. “Lower your anxiety level—you are quite definitely a singular personality.”

“I’d like to be sure of that.” Rod frowned down at the soldiers around him. He was walking through the camp, surveying what was left of Tuan’s army. Whether he’d been there during the battle or not, the mere sight of him was putting heart back into them. Personally, he felt sheepish, even guilty; but…

“Your presence is good for morale, Rod,” Fess murmured.

“I suppose,” Rod muttered. Privately, he wondered if he wasn’t “showing himself” to reassure himself that he was indeed himself. “I mean, the phenomenon is totally impossible, Fess. You do understand that, don’t you?”

Soldiers stared up at him in awe. Rod ground his teeth; he knew the rumor would fly through the camp that the Lord Warlock had been talking to his “familiar.”

“Certainly, Rod. Attribute it to mass hysteria. During the battle, they needed the reassurance that the Lord High Warlock stood by them, to oppose the beastmen’s magic. Then one soldier, in the heat of the fight, mistook some other knight for yourself, and doubtless cried out, ‘Behold the High Warlock!’ And all his fellows, in the gloom of a lightning-lit battle, also imagined that they saw you.”

Rod nodded, a little reassured. “Just a case of mistaken identity.”

“Lord Warlock?”

“Um?” Rod turned, looked down at a grizzled old sergeant who sat in the mud. “What’s the matter, ancient?”

“My boys hunger, Lord Warlock.” The ancient gestured to a dozen men in their young twenties, who huddled near him. “Will there be food?”

Rod stared down at him.

After a moment, he said, “Yeah. It’ll just take a little while. Rough terrain, and wagons—you know.”

The ancient’s face relaxed. “Aye, milord.”

As Rod turned away, he heard a soldier say, “Surely he will not.” The man beside him shrugged. “A king is a king. What knows he of a common man-at-arms? What matters it to him if we are slain and frozen?”

“To King Tuan, it matters greatly,” the other said indignantly. “Dost not recall that he was King of Beggars ere he was King of Gramarye?”

“Still…he is a lord’s son.…” But the other seemed to doubt his own prejudice. “How could a lordling care for the fate of common men!”

“Assuredly thou’lt not believe he wastes his soldiers’ lives?”

“And wherefore should I not?”

“Because he is a most excellent general, if for no reason other!” the first cried, exasperated. “He’ll not send us to our deaths unheeding; he is too good a soldier! For how shall he win a battle if he has too small an army?”

His mate looked thoughtful.

“He’ll husband us as charily as any merchant spends his gold.” The first soldier leaned back against a hillock. “Nay, he’ll not send us ’gainst the foe if he doth not believe that most of us will live, and triumph.”

The other soldier smiled. “Mayhap thou hast the truth of it—for what is a general that hath no army?”

Rod didn’t wait for the answer; he wandered on, amazed by Tuan’s men. They weren’t particularly worried about the Evil Eye. Dinner, yes; being sent against the beastmen with the odds against them, yes; but, magic? No. Not if Tuan waited till he had the proper counterspell. “Put the average Terran in here,” he muttered, “put him against an Evil Eye that really works, and he’d run so fast you wouldn’t see his tracks. But the way these guys take it, you’d think it was nothing but a new kind of crossbow.”

“It is little more, to them,” Fess’s voice murmured behind his ear. He stood atop the cliff, far above, watching Rod walk through the camp. “They have grown up with magic, Rod—as did their fathers, and their grandfathers, and their ancestors—for twenty-five generations. The phenomena do not frighten them—only the possibility that the enemy’s magic might prove stronger.”

“True.” Rod pursed his lips, nodding. Looking up, he saw Brother Chillde winding a bandage around an older soldier’s head. The man winced, but bore the pain philosophically. Rod noticed several other scars; no doubt the man was used to the process. Rod stepped up to the monk. “You’re all over the field, good friar.”

Brother Chillde smiled up at him. “I do what I may, Lord Warlock.” His smile didn’t have quite the same glow it had had earlier.

“And a blessing it is for the men—but you’re only human, Brother. You need some rest yourself.”

The monk shrugged, irritated. “These poor souls do need mine aid far more, milord. ’Twill be time enough for rest when the wounded rest as easily as they may.” He sighed and straightened, eyeing the bandaged head. “I’ve eased the passing of those who had no hope, what little I could. ’Tis time to think of the living.” He looked up at Rod. “And to do what we can to ensure that they remain alive.”

“Yes,” Rod said slowly, “the King and I were thinking along the same lines.”

“Indeed!” Brother Chillde perked up visibly. “I am certain thou dost ever do so—yet what manner of aiding dost thou have a-mind?”

The idea crystallized. “Witches—more of ’em. We managed to talk one of the older witches into joining us this time.”

“Aye.” Brother Chillde looked up at the hilltop. “And I did see that she and thy wife, alone, did hold off the beastmen’s Evil Eye the whiles our soldiers did retreat. Indeed, I wrote it in my book whilst yet the battle raged.”

Rod was sure he had—in fact, that’s why he’d told the monk. He seemed to be the only medieval equivalent to a journalist available, there being no minstrels handy.

Brother Chillde turned back to Rod. “Thy wife must needs be exceeding powerful.”

Rod nodded. “Makes for an interesting marriage.”

Brother Chillde smiled, amused, and the old soldier chuckled. Then the monk raised an eyebrow. “And this venerable witch who did accompany her—she, too, must have powers extraordinary.”

“She does,” Rod said slowly. “Her name’s ‘Angry Agatha.’”

The old soldier’s head snapped up. He stared; and two or three other soldiers nearby looked up too, then darted quick glances at each other. Fear shadowed their faces.

“She decided it’s more fun to help people than to hurt them,” Rod explained. “In fact, she’s decided to stay with us.”

Every soldier within hearing range began to grin.

“’Tis wondrous!” Brother Chillde fairly glowed. “And dost thou seek more such ancient ones?”

Rod nodded. “A few more, hopefully. Every witch counts, Brother.”

“Indeed it doth! Godspeed thine efforts!” the monk cried. And as Rod turned away, Brother Chillde began to bandage another damaged soldier, chattering, “Dost’a hear? The High Warlock doth seek to bring the ancient wizards and the hill-hags to aid us in our plight!”

Rod smiled to himself; just the effect he’d wanted! By evening, every soldier in the army would know that they were fighting fire with blazing enthusiasm—and that the witches were going out for reinforcements.

He stopped, struck by another thought. Turning, he looked back up the hillside. Tuan stood, silhouetted against a thundercloud, arms akimbo, surveying the devastation below him.

You shouldn’t lie to your army. That’d just result in blasted morale—and, after a while, they’d refuse to fight, because they couldn’t be sure what they’d be getting into, that you wouldn’t be deliberately throwing their lives away.

Rod started back up the hill. He’d promised the rank and file more witch-power; he’d better convince Tuan.

Tuan’s head lifted as Rod came up to the brow of the hill; he came out of his brown study. “An evil day, Rod Gallowglass. A most evil day.”

“Very.” Rod noticed the use of his name, not his title; the young King was really disturbed. He stepped up beside Tuan and gazed somberly down at the valley with him. “Nonetheless, it could have been worse.”

Tuan just stared at him for a moment. Then, understanding, relaxed his face; he closed his eyes and nodded. “I’ truth, it could have. Had it not been for thy rallying of the troops…and thy wife, and Angry Agatha…i’ truth, all the witches…”

“And warlocks,” Rod reminded. “Don’t forget the warlocks.”

Tuan frowned. “I trust I will not.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind seeking out some more of them.”

“Nay, I surely will not,” Tuan said slowly. “Yet where wilt thou discover them?”

Rod sighed and shook his head. “The ladies had the right idea, Tuan. We should’ve gone out recruiting.”

Tuan’s mouth twisted. “What young witch or warlock will join us now, with this crazed preacher raising the whole of the land against them?”

“Not too many,” Rod admitted. “That’s why I’ve realized Gwen had the right idea.”

Tuan’s frown deepened in puzzlement. “Of what dost thou speak?”

“The old ones, my liege—starting with Galen.”

For the first time since Rod had known him, he saw fear at the back of Tuan’s eyes. “Rod Gallowglass—dost thou know whereof thou dost speak?”

“Yeah—a grown wizard.” Rod frowned. “What’s so bad about that? Don’t we want a little more mystical muscle on our side?”

“Aye—if he’s on our side i’ truth!”

“He will not be,” croaked Agatha from a boulder twenty feet away. “He doth care for naught but himself.”

“Maybe.” Rod shrugged, irritated. “But we’ve got to try, don’t we?”

“My lord,” Gwen said softly, “I ha’ told thee aforetime, ’tis the lightning that lends them their strength—and not even old Galen can fight ’gainst a thunderbolt.”

Rod turned slowly toward her, a strange glint coming into his eye. “That’s right, you did mention that, didn’t you?”

Gwen nodded. “We did free our soldiers from the Evil Eye—but the lightning flared, and the witches lay unconscious. ’Twas then the soldiers froze, and the beastmen mowed them like hay in summer.”

“Lightning,” Rod mused.

He turned away, slamming his fist into his palm. “That’s the key, isn’t it? The lightning. But how? Why? The answer’s there somewhere, if only I could find it and FESSten to it.”

“Here, Rod,” his mentor murmured.

“Why would the Evil Eye be stronger right after a lightning flash?” Rod seemed to ask of no one in particular.

The robot hesitated a half-second, then answered. “Directly prior to a lightning flash, the resistance of the path the bolt will follow lowers tremendously, due to ionization, thus forming a sort of conductor between the lithosphere and the ionosphere.”

Rod frowned. “So?”

Tuan frowned, too. “What dost thou, Lord Warlock?”

“Just talking to myself,” Rod said quickly. “A dialogue with my alter ego, you might say.”

Fess disregarded the interruption. “The ionosphere is also capable of functioning as a conductor, though the current passed would have to be controlled with great precision.”

Rod’s lips formed a silent O.

Gwen sat back with a sigh. She had long ago acquired the wifely virtue of patience with her husband’s eccentricities. He would’ve been patient with hers as well, if he could find any (he didn’t think of esper powers as eccentric).

Fess plowed on. “The ionosphere is thus capable of functioning as a conductor between any two points on earth—though it would tend toward broadcast; to avoid loss of power some means of beaming would need to be developed. There are several possibilities for such limiting. Signals may thus travel via the ionosphere rather than by the more primitive method of…”

“Power, too,” Rod muttered. “Not just signals. Power.”

Gwen looked up, startled and suddenly fearful.

“Precisely, Rod,” the robot agreed, “though I doubt that more than a few watts would prove feasible.”

Rod shrugged. “I suspect psi powers work in milliwatts anyway.”

Tuan frowned. “Milling what?”

“That’s right. You wouldn’t need much for a psionic blast.”

Tuan eyed him warily. “Rod Gallowglass…”

“All that would be needed,” said Fess, “is a means of conducting the power to ground level.”

“Which is conveniently provided by the ionization of the air just before the lightning bolt, yes! But how do you feed the current into the ionosphere?”

Tuan glanced at Gwen; they both looked apprehensive.

Old Agatha grated, “What incantation’s this?”

“That,” said Fess virtuously, “is their problem, not ours.”

Rod snorted. “I thought you were supposed to be logical!”

Tuan’s head came up in indignation. “Lord Warlock, be mindful to whom you speak!”

“Huh?” Rod looked up. “Oh, not you, Your Majesty. I was, uh…talking to my, uh, familiar.”

Tuan’s jaw made a valiant attempt to fraternize with his toes. Rod could, at that moment, have read a gigantic increase in his reputation as a warlock in the diameters of Tuan’s eyes.

“So.” Rod touched his pursed lips to his steepled fingertips. “Somebody overseas lends the beastmen a huge surge of psionic power—in electrical form, of course; we’re assuming psionics are basically electromagnetic. The beastmen channel the power into their own projective telepathy, throw it into the soldier’s minds—somehow, eye contact seems to be necessary there…”

“Probably a means of focusing power. Unsophisticated minds would probably need such a mental crutch, Rod,” Fess conjectured.

“And from the soldiers’ minds, it flows into the witches’, immediately knocking out anyone who’s tuned in! Only temporarily, thank Heaven.”

“An adequate statement of the situation, Rod.”

“The only question now is: Who’s on the other end of the cable?”

“Although there is insufficient evidence,” mused the robot, “that which is available would seem to indicate more beastmen as donors.”

“Maybe, maybe.” Rod frowned. “But somehow this just doesn’t seem like straight ESP.…Oh, well, let it pass for the moment. The big question is not where it comes from, but how we fight it.”

Tuan shrugged. “Thou hast said it, Lord Warlock—that we must seek out every witch and wizard who can be persuaded to join us.”

“We tried that, remember?” But Rod smiled, a light kindling in his eyes. “Now that we’ve got some idea about how the Evil Eye gains so much power so suddenly, we should be able to make better use of the available witch-power.”

The phrase caught Tuan’s military attention. A very thoughtful look came over his face. “Certes…” He began to smile himself. “We must attack.”

“What!?”

“Aye, aye!” Tuan grinned; “Be not concerned, Lord Warlock—I have not gone brain-sick. Yet, consider—till now, it has not been our choice whether to attack or not. Our enemy came in ships; we could only stand and wait the whiles they chose both time and place. Now, though, the place is fixed—by their earthworks.” He nodded contemptuously toward the riverbank below. “We do not now seek a single long ship in the midst of a watery desert—we have a camp of a thousand men laid out before us! We can attack when we will!”

“Yeah, and get chopped to pieces!”

“I think not.” Tuan grinned with suppressed glee. “Not if we fight only when the sky is clear.”

A slow smile spread over Rod’s face.

Tuan nodded. “We will make fray whilst the sun shines.”

 

“You must admit that the idea has merit, Rod,” Fess said thoughtfully. “Why not attempt it full-scale, immediately?”

“Well, for one thing, those earthworks are a major barrier.” Rod sat astride the great black robot-horse on top of the cliffs in the moonlight. “And for another, well…we’re pretty sure it’ll work, Fess, but…”

“You do not wish to endanger your whole army. Sensible, I must admit. Still, logic indicates that…”

“Yes, but Finagle’s Law indicates caution,” Rod interrupted. “If we made a full-scale frontal attack by day, we’d probably win—but we’d lose an awful lot of men. We might be defeated—and Tuan only bets on a sure thing, if he has a choice.”

“I gather he is not the only one who favors caution. Allow me to congratulate you, Rod, on another step toward maturity.”

“Great thanks,” Rod growled. “A few more compliments like that, and I can hold a funeral for my self-image. How old do I have to be before you’ll count me grown-up—an even hundred?”

“Maturity is mental and emotional, Rod, not chronological. Still, would it seem more pleasant if I were to tell you that you are still young at heart?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Then, I will,” the robot murmured. “And to do you justice, Rod, you have never been a reckless commander.”

“Well…thanks.” Rod was considerably mollified. “Anyway, that’s why we’re just gonna try a raid first. We’ll hit ’em under a clear sky where they’re weak.”

A dark shadow moved up beside them, about even with Rod’s stirrup. “The moon will set in an hour’s time, Rod Gallowglass.”

“Thanks, Your Elfin Majesty.” Rod looked down at Brom. “Any particular point in the earthworks that’s weaker than the others?”

“Nay. Yet should we spring up the riverbanks to attack them, then would they fall back amazed and confused, and elves might hap upon them and trip them in flight.”

Rod grinned. “While our men relieve their camp of everything portable, eh? Not such a bad idea.”

“I shall be amused,” Brom rumbled.

“You shall? They’ll just die laughing.”

 

The moon set, and Tuan gave the signal. A picked band of soldiers (all former foresters) clambered into the small boats Rod had hurriedly requisitioned from the local fishermen and rowed toward the beastmen’s camp with feathered oars.

But the advance party was already at work.

The sky was clear, the stars drifted across the hours; but there was no moon this night. The Neanderthal camp lay deep in gloom.

There are superstitions holding that the dark of the moon is a time conducive to magical, and not always pleasant, events. They are justified.

Watchfires dotted the plain locked within the semicircle of cliffs. Groups of beastmen huddled around the fires while sentries paced the shore. In the center of the camp, a large long hut announced the location of the chiefs.

The beastmen were to remember this night for a long time, wishing they could forget. Looking back, they would decide the defeat itself wasn’t all that bad; after all, they fought manfully and well, and lost with honor.

It was the prelude to the battle that would prove embarrassing.…

While one of the small groups gathered around one of the fires were companionably swiping gripes as soldiers always have, a diminutive shadow crept unseen between two of them, crawled to the fire, and threw something in. Then it retreated, fast.

The beastmen went on grumbling for a few minutes; then one stopped abruptly and sniffed. “Dosta scent summat strange?” he growled.

The beastman next to him sniffed—and gagged—gripping his belly.

The smell reached the rest of the group very quickly, and quite generously. They scrambled for anywhere, as long as it was away, gagging and retching.

Closer to the center of the camp, a dark spherical object hurtled through the air to land and break open in the center of another group of beastmen. With an angry humming sound, tiny black flecks filled the air. The beastmen leaped up and ran howling and swatting about them with more motivation than effect. Little red dots appeared on their skins.

At another group, a series of short, violent explosions from the fire sent the beastmen jumping back in alarm.

At still another fire, a beastman raised his mug to his lips, tilted his head back, and noticed that no beer flowed into his mouth. He scowled and peered into the mug.

He dropped it with an oath as it landed on his toe, and jumped back with notable speed, holding one foot and hopping on the other as a small human figure scampered out of the mug with a high-pitched, mocking laugh.

The elf howled in high glee and scampered on through the camp.

Another beastman swung after him, mouthing horrible oaths as his huge club drove down.

A small hand swung out of the shadows and clipped through his belt with a very sharp knife.

The loincloth, loosened, wobbled a little.

In another two bounds, it had decidedly slipped.

The elf scampered on through the camp, chuckling, and a whole squad of beastmen fell in after him, bellowing, clubs slamming the ground where the elf had just been.

A small figure darted between them and the fugitive, strewing something from a pouch at its side.

The Neanderthals lunged forward, stepped down hard, and jumped high, screaming and frantically jerking leprechaun shoe-tacks out of their soles.

The fleeing elf, looking over his shoulder to laugh, ran smack into the ankles of a tall, well-muscled Neanderthal—a captain who growled, swinging his club up for the death-blow.

A leprechaun popped up near his foot and slammed him a wicked one on the third toe.

The captain howled, letting go of his club (which swung on up into the air, turning end over end) as he grabbed his hurt foot, hopping about.

He hopped up, and the club fell down and the twain met with a very solid and satisfying thunk.

As he went down, the fleeing elf—Puck—scampered away chortling.

He skipped into a tent, shouting, “Help! Help! Spies, traitors, spies!”

Three beastmen dashed in from the nearest campfire, clubs upraised and suspicions lowered, as the tent’s occupants swung at Puck and missed him. Outside, a score of elves with small hatchets cut through the tent ropes.

The poles swayed and collapsed as the tent fabric enfolded its occupants tenderly. The beastmen howled and struck at the fabric, and connected with one another.

Chuckling, Puck slipped out from under the edge of the tent. Within twenty feet, he had another horde of beastmen howling after him.

But the beastmen went sprawling, as their feet shot out from under them, flailing their arms in a losing attempt at keeping their balances—which isn’t easy when you’re running on marbles. They scrambled back to their feet somehow, still on precarious balance, whirling about, flailing their arms, and in a moment it was a free-for-all.

Meanwhile, the captain slowly sat up, holding his ringing head in his hands.

An elf leaned over the top of the tent and shook something down on him.

He scrambled up howling, slapping at the specks crawling over his body—red ants can be awfully annoying—executed a beautiful double-quick goose step to the nearest branch of the river and plunged in over his head.

Down below, a water sprite coaxed a snapping turtle, and the snapper’s jaws slammed into the captain’s already swollen third toe.

He climbed out of the water more mud than man, and stood up bellowing.

He flung up his arms, shouting, and opened his mouth wide for the hugest bellow he could manage, and with a splock, one large tomato, appropriately overripe, slammed into his mouth.

Not that it made any difference, really; his orders weren’t having too much effect anyway, since his men were busily clubbing at one another and shouting something about demons.…

Then the marines landed.

The rowboats shot in to grate on the pebbles, and black-cloaked soldiers, their faces darkened with ashes, leaped out of the boats, silent in the din. Only their sword-blades gleamed. For a few minutes. Then they were red.

An hour later, Rod stood on the hilltop, gazing down. Below him, moaning and wailing rose from the beastmen’s camp. The monk sat beside him, his face solemn. “I know they are the foe, Lord Gallowglass—but I do not find these groans of pain to be cause for rejoicing.”

“Our soldiers think otherwise.” Rod nodded back toward the camp and the sounds of low-keyed rejoicing. “I wouldn’t say they’re exactly jubilant—but a score of dead beastmen has done wonders for morale.”

Brother Chillde looked up. “They could not use their Evil Eye, could they?”

Rod shook his head. “By the time our men landed, they didn’t even know where the enemy was, much less his eyes. We charged in; each soldier stabbed two beastmen; and we ran out.” He spread his hands. “That’s it. Twenty dead Neanderthals—and their camp’s in chaos. We still couldn’t storm in there and take that camp, mind you—not behind those earthworks, not with a full army. And you may be very sure they won’t come out unless it’s raining. But we’ve proved they’re vulnerable.” He nodded toward the camp again. “That’s what they’re celebrating back there. They know they can win.”

“And the beastmen know they can be beaten.” Brother Chillde nodded. “’Tis a vast transformation, Lord Warlock.”

“Yes.” Rod glowered down at the camp. “Nasty. But vast.”

 

“Okay.” Rod propped his feet up on a camp stool and took a gulp from a flagon of ale. Then he wiped his mouth and looked up at Gwen and Agatha. “I’m braced. Tell me how you think it worked.”

They sat inside a large tent next to Tuan’s, the nucleus of a village that grew every hour around the King’s Army.

“We’ve got them bottled up for the moment,” Rod went on, “though it’s just a bluff. Our raids are keeping them scared to come out because of our ‘magic’—but as soon as they realize we can’t fight the Evil Eye past the first thunderclap, they’ll come boiling out like hailstones.”

The tassels fringing the tent doorway stirred. Rod noted it absently; a breeze would be welcome—it was going to be a hot, muggy day.

“We must needs have more witches,” Gwen said firmly.

Rod stared at her, appalled. “Don’t tell me you’re going to go recruiting among the hill-hags again! Uh—present company excepted, of course.”

“Certes.” Agatha glared. The standing cup at her elbow rocked gently. Rod glanced at it, frowning; surely the breeze wasn’t that strong. In fact, he couldn’t even feel it.…

Then his gaze snapped back to Agatha’s face. “Must what?”

“Persuade that foul ancient, Galen, to join his force here with ours,” Agatha snapped. “Dost thou not hearken? For, an thou dost not, why do I speak?”

“To come up with any idea that crosses your mind, no matter how asinine.” Rod gave her his most charming smile. “It’s called ‘brainstorming.’”

“Indeed, a storm must ha’ struck thy brain, if thou canst not see the truth of what I say!”

The bowl of fruit on the table rocked. He frowned at it, tensing. Maybe a small earthquake coming…?

He pulled his thoughts together and turned back to Agatha. “I’ll admit we really need Galen. But how’re you going to persuade him to join us?”

“There must needs be a way.” Gwen frowned, pursing her lips.

An apple shot out of the bowl into the air. Rod rocked back in his chair, almost overturning it. “Hey!” Then he slammed the chair forward, sitting upright, frowning at Gwen, hurt. “Come on, dear! We’re talking serious business!”

But Gwen was staring at the apple hanging in the air; an orange jumped up to join it. “My lord, I did not…”

“Oh.” Rod turned an exasperated glare on Agatha. “I might have known. This’s all just a joke to you, isn’t it?”

Her head pulled back, offended. “What dost thou mean to say, Lord Warlock?”

A pear shot out of the bowl to join the apple and the orange. They began to revolve, up and around, in an intricate pattern.

Rod glanced up at them, his mouth tightening, then back to Agatha. “All right, all right! So we know you can juggle—the hard way, no hands! Now get your mind back to the problem, okay?”

“I?” Agatha glanced at the spinning fruits, then back to Rod. “Surely thou dost not believe ’tis my doing!”

Rod just stared at her.

Then he said carefully, “But Gwen said she wasn’t doing it—and she wouldn’t lie, would she?”

Agatha turned her head away, disgusted, and ended looking at Gwen. “How canst thou bear to live with one so slow to see?”

“Hey, now!” Rod frowned. “Can we keep the insults down to a minimum, here? What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“That if I have not done it, and she hath not done it, then there must needs be another who doth do it,” Agatha explained.

“Another?” Rod stared up at the fruit, his eyes widening as he understood. He felt his hackles trying to rise. “You mean…”

“My son.” Agatha nodded. “Mine unborn son.” She waved a hand toward the spinning fruits. “He must needs fill the idle hour. Dost’a not know that young folk have not great patience? Yet is he good-hearted withal, and will not wreak any true troubles. Dismiss him from thy mind and care. We spake, just now, of the wizard Galen…”

“Uh…yeah.” Rod turned back to the two ladies, trying very hard to ignore the fruit bobbing above him. “Galen. Right. Well, as I see it, he’s a true isolate, a real, bona fide, dyed-in-the-haircloth hermit. Personally, I can’t think of a single thing that could persuade him to join us.”

“I fear thou mayest have the truth of it,” Gwen sighed. “Certes, I would not say that he is amenable.”

Air popped and a baby was sitting in her lap, clapping his hands. “Momma, Momma! Pa’y cake! Pa’y cake!”

Gwen stiffened, startled. Then a delighted smile spread over her face. “My bonny babe!” Her arms closed around Magnus and squeezed.

Rod threw up his hands and turned away. “Why bother trying? Forget the work! C’mere, son—let’s play catch.”

The baby chortled with glee and bounced out of Gwen’s lap, sailing over to Rod. He caught the boy and tossed him back to Gwen.

“Nay, husband.” She caught Magnus and lowered him to the ground, suddenly becoming prim. “’Tis even as thou sayest—we have matters of great moment in train here. Back to thine elf-nurse, child.”

Magnus thrust out his lip in a pout. “Wanna stay!”

Rod bent a stern glance on his son. “Can you be quiet?”

The baby nodded gleefully.

Gwen gave an exasperated sigh and turned away. “Husband, thou wilt have him believing he can obtain aught he doth wish!”

“But just one bit of noise, mind you!” Rod leveled a forefinger at the baby. “You get in the way just one little bit, and home you go!”

The baby positively glowed. He bobbed his head like a bouncing ball.

“Okay—go play.” Rod leaned back in his chair again. “Now. Assuming Galen can’t be persuaded—what do we do?”

Agatha shrugged. “Nay, if he will not be persuaded, I cannot see that we can do aught.”

“Just the words of encouragement I needed,” Rod growled. “Let’s try another tack. Other veterans. Any other magical hermits hiding out in the forests?”

“Magnus, thou didst promise,” Gwen warned.

Agatha frowned, looking up at the tent roof. “Mayhap old Elida…She is bitter but, I think, hath a good heart withal. And old Anselm…” She dropped her eyes to Rod, shaking her head. “Nay, in him ’tis not bitterness alone that doth work, but fear also. There is, perhaps, old Elida, Lord Warlock—but I think…”

“Magnus,” Gwen warned.

Rod glanced over at his son, frowning. The baby ignored Gwen and went on happily with what he had been doing—juggling. But it was a very odd sort of juggling; he was tossing the balls about five feet in front of him, and they were bouncing back like boomerangs.

Rod turned to Gwen. “What’s he doing?”

“Fire and fury!” Agatha exploded. “Wilt thou not leave the bairn to his play? He doth not intrude; he maketh no coil, nor doth he cry out! He doth but play at toss-and-catch with my son Harold, and is quiet withal! He maketh no bother; leave the poor child be!”

Rod swung about, staring at her. “He’s doing what!”

“Playing toss-and-catch,” Agatha frowned. “There’s naught so strange in that.”

“But,” Gwen said in a tiny voice, “his playmate cannot be seen.”

“Not by us,” Rod said slowly. “But, apparently, Magnus sees him very well indeed.”

Agatha’s brows knitted. “What dost thou mean?”

“How else would he know where to throw the ball?” Rod turned to Agatha, his eyes narrowing. “Can you see your son Harold?”

“Nay, I cannot. Yet what else would return the apples to the child?”

“I was kinda wonderin’ about that.” Rod’s gaze returned to his son. “But I thought you said Harold was an unborn spirit.”

“Summat of the sort, aye.”

“Then, how can Magnus see him?” Gwen lifted her head, her eyes widening.

“I did not say he had not been born,” Agatha hedged. She stared at the bouncing fruit, her gaze sharpening. “Yet I ha’ ne’er been able to see my son aforetimes.”

“Then, how come Magnus can?” Rod frowned.

“Why, ’tis plainly seen! Thy son is clearly gifted with more magical powers than am I myself!”

Rod locked gazes with Gwen. Agatha was the most powerful old witch in Gramarye.

He turned back to Agatha. “Okay, so Magnus is one heck of a telepath. But he can’t see a body if there’s none there to see.”

“My son ha’ told me that he did have a body aforetime,” Agatha said slowly. “’Twould seem that he doth send outward from himself his memory of his body’s appearance.”

“A projective telepath,” Rod said slowly. “Not a very strong one, maybe, but a projective. Also apparently a telekinetic. But I thought that was a sex-linked trait.…”

Agatha shrugged. “Who can tell what the spirit may do when it’s far from its body?”

“Yes—his body,” Rod said softly, eyes locked on the point where the fruit bounced back toward Magnus. “Just where is this body he remembers?”

Agatha sighed and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and resting her head against the high back. “Thou dost trouble me, Lord Warlock; for I cannot understand these matters that Harold doth speak of.”

“Well, maybe Gwen can.” Rod turned to his wife. “Dear?”

But Gwen shook her head. “Nay, my lord. I cannot hear Harold’s thoughts.”

Rod just stared at her.

Then he gave himself a shake and sat up straighter. “Odd.” He turned back to Agatha. “Any idea why you should be able to hear him, when Gwen can’t?”

“Why, because I am his mother.” Agatha smiled sourly.

Rod gazed at her, wondering if there was something he didn’t know. Finally, he decided to take the chance. “I didn’t know you’d ever borne children.”

“Nay, I have not—though I did yearn for them.”

Rod gazed at her while his thoughts raced, trying to figure out how she could be barren and still bear a son. He began to build a hypothesis. “So,” he said carefully, “how did you come by Harold?”

“I did not.” Her eyes flashed. “He came to me. ’Tis even as he doth say—he is my son, and old Galen’s.”

“But, Galen…”

“Aye, I know.” Agatha’s lips tightened in bitterness. “He is the son that Galen and I ought to have had, but did not, for reason that we ne’er have come close enough to even touch.”

“Well, I hate to say this—but…uh…” Rod scratched behind his ear, looking at the floor. He forced his eyes up to meet Agatha’s. “It’s, uh, very difficult to conceive a baby if, uh, you never come within five feet of one another.”

“Is’t truly!” Agatha said with withering scorn. “Yet, e’en so, my son Harold doth say that Galen did meet me, court me, and wed me—and that, in time, I did bear him a son, which is Harold.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“The depth of thy perception doth amaze me,” Agatha said drily. “Yet Harold is here, and this is his tale. Nay, further—he doth say that Galen and I reared him, and were ever together, and much a-love.” Her gaze drifted, eyes misting, and he could scarcely hear her murmur: “Even as I was used to dream, in the days of my youth…”

Rod held his silence. Behind him, Gwen watched, her eyes huge.

Eventually, Agatha’s attention drifted back to them. She reared her head up to glare at Rod indignantly. “Canst thou truly say there is no sense to that? If his body has not been made as it should have been, canst thou be amazed to find his spirit here, uncloaked in flesh?”

“Well, yes, now that you mention it.” Rod leaned back in his chair. “Because, if his body was never made—where did his spirit come from?”

“There I can thresh no sense from it,” Agatha admitted. “Harold doth say that, when grown, he did go for a soldier. He fought, and bled, and came away, and this not once, but a score of times—and rose in rank to captain. Then, in his final battle, he did take a grievous wound, and could only creep away to shelter in a nearby cave. There he lay him down and fell into a swoon—and lies there yet, in a slumber like to death. His body lies like a waxen effigy—and his spirit did drift loose from it. Yet could it not begin that last adventure, to strive and toil its way to Heaven…” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. “And how he could be eager for such a quest is more than I can tell. Yet indeed he was”—she looked back up at Rod, frowning—“yet could he not; for though his body lay in a sleep like unto death, yet ’twas not death—no, not quite. Nor could the spirit wake that body neither.”

“A coma.” Rod nodded. “But let it alone long enough, and the body’ll die from sheer starvation.”

Agatha shrugged impatiently. “He’s too impatient. Nay, he would not wait; his spirit did spring out into the void, and wandered eons in a place of chaos—until it found me here.” She shook her head in confusion. “I do not understand how aught of that may be.”

“A void…” Rod nodded his head slowly.

Agatha’s head lifted. “The phrase holds meaning for thee?”

“It kind of reminds me of something I heard of in a poem—‘the wind that blows between the worlds.’ I always did picture it as a realm of chaos.…”

Agatha nodded judiciously. “That hath the ring of rightness to it.…”

“That means he came from another universe.”

Agatha’s head snapped up, her nostrils flaring. “Another universe? What tale of cock-and-bull is this, Lord Warlock? There is only this world of ours, with sun and moons and stars. That is the universe. How could there be another?”

But Rod shook his head. “‘How’ is beyond my knowledge—but the, uh, ‘wise men’ of my, uh, homeland, seem to pretty much agree that there could be other universes. Anyway, they can’t prove there aren’t. In fact, they say there may be an infinity of other universes—and if there are, then there must also be universes that are almost exactly like ours, even to the point of having—well—another Agatha, and another Galen. Exactly like yourselves. But their lives took—well, a different course.”

“Indeed they did.” Agatha’s eyes glowed.

“But, if Harold’s spirit went looking for help—why didn’t it find the Agatha in that other universe?”

“Because she lay dead.” Agatha’s gaze bored into Rod’s eyes. “She had died untimely, of a fever. So had her husband. Therefore did Harold seek out through the void, and was filled with joy when he did find me—though at first he was afeard that I might be a ghost.”

Rod nodded slowly. “It makes sense. He was looking for help, and he recognized a thought-pattern that he’d known in his childhood. Of course he’d home in on you.…Y’know, that almost makes it all hang together.”

“I’ truth, it doth.” Agatha began to smile. “I ne’er could comprehend this brew of thoughts that Harold tossed to me; yet what thou sayest doth find a place for each part of it, and fits it all together, like to the pieces of a puzzle.” She began to nod. “Aye. I will believe it. Thou hast, at last, after a score of years, made sense of this for me.” Suddenly, she frowned. “Yet his soul is here, not bound for Heaven, for reason that his body lies in sleeping death. How could it thus endure, after twenty years?”

Rod shook his head. “Hasn’t been twenty years—not in the universe he came from. Time could move more slowly there than it does here. Also, the universes are probably curved—so, where on that curve he entered our universe could determine what time, what year, it was. More to the point, he could reenter his own universe just a few minutes after his body went into its coma.”

But Agatha had bowed her head, eyes closed, and was waving in surrender. “Nay, Lord Warlock! Hold, I prithee! I cannot ken thine explanations! ’Twill satisfy me, that thou dost.”

“Well, I can’t be sure,” Rod hedged. “Not about the why of it, at least. But I can see how it fits in with my hypothesis.”

“What manner of spell is that?”

“Only a weak one, till it’s proved. Then it becomes a theory, which is much more powerful indeed. But for Harold, the important point is that he needs to either kill his body, so he can try for Heaven—or cure it and get his spirit back into it.”

“Cure it!” Agatha’s glare could have turned a blue whale into a minnow. “Heal him or do naught! I would miss him sorely when his spirit’s gone to its rightful place and time—but, I will own, it must be done. Still, I’d rather know that he’s alive!”

“Well, I wasn’t really considering the alternative.” Rod gazed off into space, his lips pursed.

Agatha saw the look in his eyes and gave him a leery glance. “I mistrust thee, Lord Warlock, when thou dost look so fey.”

“Oh, I’m just thinking of Harold’s welfare. Uh, after the battle—a while after, when I was there and you’d recovered a bit—didn’t I see you helping the wounded? You know, by holding their wounds shut and telling them to think hard and believe they were well?”

“Indeed she did.” Gwen smiled. “Though ’tis somewhat more than that, husband. Thou must needs think at the wound thyself, the whiles the wounded one doth strive to believe himself well; for the separate bits of meat and fat must be welded back together—which thou canst do by making them move amongst one another with thy mind.”

“You can, maybe.” Inwardly, Rod shuddered. All he needed was for his wife to come up with one more major power—all corollaries of telekinesis, of course; but the number of her variations on the theme was stupefying.

He turned back to Agatha. “Uh—did you think up this kind of healing yourself?”

“Aye. I am the only one, as far as I can tell—save thy wife, now that I’ve taught her.” Agatha frowned, brooding. “I came to the knowing of it in despair, after I’d thrown aside a lad who sought to hurt me.…”

Rod had to cut off that kind of train of thought; the last thing he wanted was for Agatha to remember her hurts. “So. You can help someone ‘think’ themselves well—telekinesis on the cellular level.”

Agatha shook her head, irritated. “I cannot tell thy meaning, with these weird terms of thine—‘tele-kine’? What is that—a cow that ranges far?”

“Not quite, though I intend to milk it for all it’s worth.” Rod grinned. “Y’know, when we were at Galen’s place, he told me a little about his current line of research.”

Agatha snorted and turned away. “‘Researches?’ Aye—he will ever seek to dignify his idle waste of hours by profound words.”

“Maybe, but I think there might be something to it. He was trying to figure out how the brain itself, that lumpy blob of protoplasm, can create this magic thing called ‘thought.’”

“Aye, I mind me an he mentioned some such nonsense,” Agatha grated. “What of it?”

“Oh, nothing, really.” Rod stood up, hooking his thumbs in his belt. “I was just thinking, maybe we oughta go pay him another visit.”

 

The dark tower loomed before them, then suddenly tilted alarmingly to the side. Rod swallowed hard and held on for dear life; it was the first time he’d ever ridden pillion on a broomstick. “Uh, dear—would you try to swoop a little less sharply? I’m, uh, still trying to get used to this.…”

“Oh! Certes, my lord!” Gwen looked back over her shoulder, instantly contrite. “Be sure, I did not wish to afright thee.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I was frightened…”

“Wouldst thou not?” Gwen looked back at him again, wide-eyed in surprise.

“Watch where you’re going!” Rod yelped.

Gwen turned her eyes back to the front as her broomstick drifted sideways to avoid a treetop. “Milord,” she chided, “I knew it was there.”

“I’m glad somebody did,” Rod sighed. “I’m beginning to think I should’ve gone horseback after all—even though it would’ve been slower.”

“Courage, now.” Gwen’s voice oozed sympathy. “We must circle this Dark Tower.”

Rod took a deep breath and squeezed the shaft.

The broomstick began to swing around the tower, following Agatha’s swoop ahead of them. Rod’s stomach lurched once before he forgot it, staring in amazement at the Tower. They were sixty feet up, but it soared above them, a hundred feet high and thirty wide, the top corrugated in battlements. Altogether, it was an awesome mass of funereal basalt. Here and there, arrow-slits pierced the stones—windows three feet high, but only one foot wide.

“I wouldn’t like to see his candle bill,” Rod grunted. “How do you get in?”

The whole bottom half of the Dark Tower reared unbroken and impregnable, pierced by not so much as a single loophole.

“There has to be a door.”

“Wherefore?” Gwen countered. “Thou dost forget that warlocks do fly.”

“Oh.” Rod frowned. “Yeah, I did kinda forget that, didn’t I? Still, I don’t see how he gets in; those loopholes are mighty skinny.”

“Yonder.” Gwen nodded toward the top of the Tower, and her broomstick reared up.

Rod gasped and clung for dear life. “He would have to have a heliport!”

Agatha circled down over the battlements and brought her broomstick to a stop in the center of the roof. She hopped off nimbly; Gwen followed suit. Rod disentangled himself from the broom straws and planted his feet wide apart on the roof, grabbing the nearest merlon to steady himself while he waited for the floor to stop tilting.

“Surely, ’twas not so horrible as that.” Gwen tried to hide a smile of amusement.

“I’ll get used to it,” Rod growled. Privately, he planned not to have the chance to. “Now.” He took a deep breath, screwed up his courage, and stepped forward. The stones seemed to tilt only slightly, so he squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and took another step. “Okay. Where’s the door?”

“Yonder.” Agatha pointed.

Right next to a merlon and its crenel, a trapdoor was set flush with the roof. Rod stepped over to it—carefully—and frowned down, scanning the rough planks. “I don’t see a doorknob.”

“Why would there be one?” Agatha said beside him. “Who would come up here, other than the ancient cockerel himself? And when he doth, I doubt not he doth ope’ this panel from below.”

“And just leaves it open? What does he do about rain?”

Agatha shook her head. “I misdoubt me an he would come up during foul weather.”

“True,” Rod said judiciously. “He probably only comes up to stargaze—so why bother, when there aren’t any stars?”

He drew his dagger and dropped to one knee. “Gotta be careful about this—it’s good steel, but it could break.” He jabbed the tip into the wood and heaved up. The trap rose an inch; he kicked his toe against it to hold it, pulled the dagger out, and dropped it, then caught the wood with his fingertips and heaved again—with a whine of pain; the maneuver certainly didn’t do his manicure any good. But he hauled it up enough to get his boot-toe under, then caught it with his fingers properly and swung it open. “Whew! So much for basic breaking-and-entering!”

“Well done!” Agatha said, mildly surprised.

“Not exactly what I’d call a major effort.” Rod dusted off his hands.

“Nor needful,” the old witch reminded him. “Either thy wife or myself could ha’ made it rise of its own.”

“Oh.” Rod began to realize that, with very little persuasion, he could learn to hate this old biddy. In an attempt to be tactful, he changed the subject. “Y’know, in a culture where so many people can fly, you’d think he’d’ve thought to use a lock.”

At his side, Gwen shook her head. “Few of the witchfolk would even dare to come here, my lord. Such is his reputation.”

That definitely was not the kind of line to inspire confidence in a hopeful burglar. Rod took a deep breath, stiffened his muscles to contain a certain fluttering in the pit of his stomach, and started down the stairs. “Yes. Well—I suppose we really should have knocked…” But his head was already below the level of the roof.

The stairs turned sharply and became very dark. Rod halted; Agatha bumped into his back. “Mmmmf! Wilt thou not give warning when thou’rt about to halt thy progress, Lord Warlock?”

“I’ll try to remember next time. Darling, would you mind? It’s a little dark down here.”

“Aye, my lord.” A ball of luminescence glowed to life on Gwen’s palm. She brushed past him—definitely too quickly for his liking—and took up the lead, her will-o’-the-wisp lighting the stairway.

At the bottom, dark fabric barred their way—curtains overlapping to close out drafts. They pushed through and found themselves in a circular chamber lit by two arrow-slits. Gwen extinguished her foxfire, which darkened the chamber; outside, the sky was overcast, and only gray light alleviated the gloom. But it was enough to show them the circular worktable that ran all the way around the circumference of the room, and the tall shelf-cases that lined the walls behind the tables. The shelves were crammed with jars and boxes exuding a mixture of scents ranging from spicy to sour; and the tables were crowded with alembics, crucibles, mortars with pestles, and beakers.

Agatha wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Alchemy!”

Rod nodded in slow approval. “Looks as though the old geezer has a little more intellectual integrity than I gave him credit for.”

“Thou canst not mean thou dost condone the Black Arts!” Agatha cried.

“No, and neither does Galen, apparently. He’s not satisfied with knowing that something works—he wants to know why, too.”

“Is’t not enough to say that devils do it?”

Rod’s mouth tightened in disgust. “That’s avoiding the question, not answering it.”

Glass tinkled behind him. He spun about.

A jar floated above an alembic, pouring a thin stream of greenish liquid into it. As Rod watched, the cover sank back onto the jar and tightened in a half-turn as the jar righted itself, then drifted back up onto a shelf.

“Harold!” Agatha warned. “Let be; these stuffs are not thine.”

“Uh, let’s not be too hasty.” Rod watched a box float off another shelf. Its top lifted, and a stream of silvery powder sifted into the alembic. “Let the kid experiment. The urge to learn should never be stifled.”

“’Tis thou who shouldst be stifled!” Agatha glowered at Rod. “No doubt Harold’s meddling doth serve some plan of thine.”

“Could be, could be.” Rod watched an alcohol lamp glow to life under the alembic. “Knocking probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway, really. Galen strikes me as the type to be so absorbed in his research that…”

“My lord.” Gwen hooked fingers around his forearm. “I mislike the fashion in which that brew doth bubble.”

“Nothing to be worried about, I’m sure.” But Rod glanced nervously at some test tubes on another table, which had begun to dance, pouring another greenish liquid back and forth from one to another. They finally settled down, but…

“That vial, too, doth bubble,” Agatha growled. “Ho, son of mine! What dost thou?”

Behind them, glass clinked again. They whirled about to see a retort sliding its nose into a glass coil. Flame ignited under the retort, and water began to drip from a hole in a bucket suspended over the bench, spattering on the glass coil.

“My lord,” Gwen said nervously, “that brew doth bubble most marvelously now. Art thou certain that Harold doth know his own deeds?”

Rod was sure Harold knew what he was doing, all right. In fact, he was even sure that Harold was a lot more sophisticated, and a lot more devious, than Rod had given him credit for. And suspense was an integral part of the maneuver, pushing it close to the line

But not this close! He leaped toward the alembic. Gasses being produced in the presence of open flame bothered him.

“What dost thou?”

The words boomed through the chamber, and Galen towered in the doorway, blue robe, white beard, and red face. He took in the situation at a glance, then darted to the alembic to dampen the fire, dashed to seize the test tube and throw it into a tub of water, then leaped to douse the lamp under the retort.

“Thou dost move most spryly,” Agatha crooned, “for a dotard.”

The wizard turned to glare at her, leaning against the table, trembling. His voice shook with anger. “Vile crone! Art so envious of my labors that thou must needs seek to destroy my Tower?”

“Assuredly, ’twas naught so desperate as that,” Gwen protested.

Galen turned a red glower on her. “Nay, she hath not so much knowledge as that—though her mischief could have laid this room waste, and the years of glassblowing and investigating that it doth contain!” His eyes narrowed as they returned to Agatha. “I do see that ne’er should I ha’ given thee succor—for now thou’lt spare me not one moment’s peace!”

Agatha started a retort of her own, but Rod got in ahead of her. “Uh, well—not really.”

The wizard’s glare swiveled toward him. “Thou dost know little of this haggard beldam, Lord Warlock, an thou dost think she could endure to leave one in peace.”

Agatha took a breath, but Rod was faster again. “Well, y’ see—it wasn’t really her idea to come back here.”

“Indeed?” The question fumed sarcasm. “’Twas thy good wife’s, I doubt me not.”

“Wrong again,” Rod said brightly. “It was mine. And Agatha had nothing to do with tinkering with your lab.”

Galen was silent for a pace. Then his eyes narrowed. “I’ truth, I should ha’ seen that she doth lack even so much knowledge as to play so learned a vandal. Was it thou didst seek explosion, Lord Warlock? Why, then?”

“’Cause I didn’t think you’d pay any attention to a knock on the door,” Rod explained, “except maybe to say, ‘Go away.’”

Galen nodded slowly. “So, thou didst court disaster to bring me out from my researches long enough to bandy words with thee.”

“That’s the right motive,” Rod agreed, “but the wrong culprit. Actually, not one single one of us laid a finger on your glassware.”

Galen glanced quickly at the two witches. “Thou’lt not have me believe they took such risks, doing such finely detailed work, with only their minds?”

“Not that they couldn’t have,” Rod hastened to point out. “I’ve seen my wife make grains of wheat dance.” He smiled fondly, remembering the look on Magnus’s face when Gwen did it. “And Agatha’s admitted she’s healed wounds by making the tiniest tissues flow back together—but this time neither of them did.”

“Assuredly, not thou…”

“’Twas thy son,” Agatha grated.

The laboratory was silent as the old wizard stared into her eyes, the color draining from his face.

Then it flooded back, and he erupted. “What vile falsehood is this? What deception dost thou seek to work now, thou hag with no principle to thy name of repute? How dost thou seek to work on my heart with so blatant a lie? Depraved, evil witch! Thou hast no joy in life but the wreaking of others’ misery! Fool I was, to ever look on thy face, greater fool to e’er seek to aid thee! Get thee gone, get thee hence!” His trembling arm reared up to cast a curse that would blast her. “Get thee to…”

“It’s the truth,” Rod snapped.

Galen stared at him for the space of a heartbeat.

It was long enough to get a word in. “He’s the son of another Galen, and another Agatha, in another world just like this one. You know there are other universes, don’t you?”

Galen’s arm hung aloft, forgotten; excitement kindled in his eyes. “I had suspected it, aye—the whiles my body did lie like to wood, and my spirit lay open to every slightest impress. Distantly did I perceive it, dimly through chaos, a curving presence that…But nay, what nonsense is this! Dost thou seek to tell me that, in one such other universe, I do live again?”

“‘Again’ might be stretching it,” Rod hedged, “especially since your opposite number is dead now. But that a Galen, just like you, actually did live, yes—except he seems to have made a different choice when he was a youth.”

Galen said nothing, but his gaze strayed to Agatha.

She returned it, her face like flint.

“For there was an Agatha in that other universe, too,” Rod said softly, “and they met, and married, and she bore a son.”

Galen still watched Agatha, his expression blank.

“They named the son Harold,” Rod went on, “and he grew to be a fine young warlock—but more ‘war’ than ‘lock.’ Apparently, he enlisted, and fought in quite a few battles. He survived, but his parents passed away—probably from sheer worry, with a son in the infantry.…”

Galen snapped out of his trance. “Do not seek to cozen me, Master Warlock! How could they have died, when this Agatha and I…” His voice dwindled and his gaze drifted as he slid toward the new thought.

“Time is no ranker, Master Wizard; he’s under no compulsion to march at the same pace in each place he invests. But more importantly, events can differ in different universes—or Harold would never have been born. And if the Galen and Agatha of his universe could marry, they could also die—from accident, or disease, or perhaps even one of those battles that their son survived. I’m sure he’d be willing to tell you, if you asked him.”

Galen glanced quickly about the chamber, and seemed to solidify inside his own skin.

“Try,” Rod breathed. “Gwen can’t hear him, nor can any of the other witches—save Agatha. But if you’re the analog of his father, you should be able to.…”