THE WITCH DOCTOR

A Wizard in Rhyme Volume Three

Christopher Stasheff

First Published in 1994

Chapter One

What can you say about a friend who leaves town without telling you?

I mean, I left Matt sitting there in the coffee shop trying to translate that gobbledygook parchment of his, and when I came back after class, he was gone. I asked if anybody’d seen him go, but nobody had-just that, when they’d looked up, he’d been gone.

That was no big deal, of course I didn’t own Matt, and he was a big boy. If he wanted to go take a hike, that was his business. But he’d left that damn parchment behind, and ever since he’d found it, he’d handled it as if it were the crown jewels-so he sure as hell wouldn’t have just left it on the table in a busy coffee shop. Somebody could have thrown it in the wastebasket without looking. He was just lucky it was still there when I got back. So I picked it up and put it in my notebook. “Tell him I’ve got his parchment,” I told Alice.

She nodded without looking up from the coffee she was pouring.

“Sure thing, Saul. If you see him first, tell him he forgot to pay his bill this morning.”

“Saul” is me. Matt claimed I’d been enlightened, so he called me “Paul.” I went along-it was okay as an in-joke, and it was funny the first time. After that, I suffered through it-from Matt. Not from anyone else. “Saul” is me. I just keep a wary eye for teenagers with slingshots who also play harp.

“Will do,” I said, and went out the door-but it nagged at me especially since I had never known Matt to forget to pay Alice before.

Forget to put on his socks, maybe, but not to pay his tab.

When I got back to my apartment, I took out his mystical manuscript and looked at it. Matt thought it was parchment, but I didn’t think he was any judge of sheepskins. He certainly hadn’t gotten his.

Well, okay, he had two of them, but they hadn’t given him the third degree yet-and wouldn’t, the way he was hung up on that untranslatable bit of doggerel. Oh, sure, maybe he was right, maybe it was a long-lost document that would establish his reputation as a scholar and shoot him up to full professor overnight-but maybe the moon is made of calcified green cheese, too.

Me, I was working on my second M.A.-anything to justify staying around campus. Matt had gone on for his doctorate, but I couldn’t stay interested in any one subject that long. They all began to seem kind of silly, the way the professors were so fanatical about the smallest details.

By that standard, Matt was a born professor, all right. He just spun his wheels, trying to translate a parchment that he thought was six hundred years old but was written in a language nobody had ever heard of. I looked it over, shook my head, and put it back in the notebook. He’d show up looking for it sooner or later.

But he didn’t. He didn’t show up at all.

After a couple of days, I developed a gnawing uncertainty about his having left town-maybe he had just disappeared. I know, I know, I was letting my imagination run away with me, but I couldn’t squelch the thought.

So what do you do when a friend disappears?

You have to find out whether or not to worry.

The first day, I was only a little concerned, especially after I went back to the coffee shop, and they said he hadn’t been in looking for his damn parchment. The second day, I started getting worried-it was midnight and he hadn’t shown up at the coffeehouse. Then I began to think maybe he’d forgotten to eat again and blacked out-so I went around to his apartment to tell him off.

He lived in one of those old one-family houses that had been converted into five apartments, if you want to call them that-a nine-bytwelve living room with a kitchenette wall, and a cubbyhole for a bedroom. I knocked, but he didn’t answer. I knocked again, Then I waited a good long time before I knocked a third time. Still no answer. At three A.M when the neighbor came out and yelled at me to stop knocking so hard, I really got worried-and the next day, when nobody answered, I figured, Okay, third time’s the charm-so I went outside, glanced around to make sure nobody was looking, and quietly crawled in the back window. Matt really ought to lock up at night; I’ve always told him so.

I had to crawl across the table-Matt liked to eat and write by natural light-and stepped into a mess.

Look, I’ve got a pretty strong stomach, and Matt was never big on housekeeping. A high stack of dishes with mold on them, I could have understood-but wall-to-wall spiderwebs? No way. How could he live like that? I mean, it wasn’t just spiderwebs in the corners-it was spiderwebs choking the furniture! I couldn’t have sat down without getting caught in dusty silk! And the proprietors were still there, too-little brown ones, medium-sized gray ones, and a huge malecater with a body the size of a quarter and red markings like a big wide grin on the underside of its abdomen, sitting in the middle of a web six feet wide that was stretched across the archway to the bed nook.

Then the sun came out from behind a loud, its light struck through the window for about half a minute-and I stood spellbound.

Lit from the back and side like that, the huge web seemed to glow, every tendril bright. It was beautiful.

Then the sun went in, the light went away, and it was just a dusty piece of vermin-laden debris.

Speaking of vermin, what had attracted all these eight-legged wonders? It must have been a bumper year for flies. Or maybe, just maybe, they’d decided to declare war on the army of cockroaches that infested the place. If so, more power to them. I decided not to go spider hunting, after all. Besides, I didn’t have time-I had to find Matt.

The strange thing was, I’d been in that apartment just three days before, and there hadn’t been a single strand of spider silk in sight.

Okay, so they’re hard to see-but three days just isn’t time enough for that much decoration.

I stepped up to the archway, nerving myself to sweep that web aside and swat its builder-but the sun came out again, and the golden cartwheel was so damned beautiful I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Besides, I didn’t really need to-I could look through it, and the bedroom sure didn’t have any place that was out of sight.

Room enough for a bed, a dresser, a tin wardrobe, and scarcely an inch more. The bed was rumpled, but Matt wasn’t in it.

I turned around, frowning, and scanned the place again. I wouldn’t say there was no sign of Matt-as I told you, he wasn’t big on house keeping, and there were stacks of books everywhere, nicely webbed at the moment-but the pile of dirty dishes was no higher than it had been, and he himself sure wasn’t there.

I stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind me, chewing it over. No matter how I sliced it, it came out the same-Matt had left town.

Why so suddenly?

Death in the family. Or close to it. What else could it be?

So I went back to my apartment and started research. One of the handy things about having some training in scholarship, is that you know how to find information. I knew what town Matt came from Separ City, New Jersey-and I knew how to call longdistance information.

“Mantrell,” I told the operator.

“There are three, Sir. Which one did you want?”

I racked my brains. Had Matt ever said anything about his parents’ names? Then I remembered, once, that there had been a “junior” attached to him. “Matthew.”

“We have a Mateo.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” It was a good guess, anyway.

“One moment, please.”

The vocodered voice gave me the number. I wrote it down, hung UP, picked up, and punched in. Six rings, and I found myself hoping nobody would answer.

“‘Alio?”

I hadn’t known his parents were immigrants. His mother sounded nice.

“I’m calling for Matthew Mantrell,” I said. “Junior.”

Mateo? Ees not ‘ere.”

“Just went out for a minute?” I was surprised at the surge of relief I felt.

“No, no! Ees away-college!”

My spirits took the express elevator down. “Okay. I’ll try him there. Thanks, Mrs. Mantrell.”

“Ees okay. You tell him call home, si?”

“Si,” I agreed. “Good-bye.” I hung up, hoping I would see him indeed.

So. He hadn’t gone home.

Then where?

I know I should have forgotten about it, shoved it to the back of my mind, and just contented myself with being really mad at him.

What was the big deal, anyway?

The big deal was that Matt was the only real friend I had, at the moment-maybe the only one I’d ever had, really. I mean, I hadn’t known Matt all that long; but four years seems like a long time, to me. Four years, going on five-but who’s counting?

It’s not as if I’d ever had all that many friends. Let me see, there was jory in first grade, and Luke, and Ray-and all the rest of the boys in the class, I suppose. Then it was down to Luke and Ray in second grade, ‘cause jory moved away-but the rest of the kids began to cool off. My wild stories, I guess. Then Ray moved, too, so it was just Luke and me in third grade-and Luke eased up, ‘cause he wanted to play with the other kids. Me, I didn’t want to play, I was clumsy-I just wanted to tell stories, but the other kids didn’t want to hear about brave knights rescuing fair damsels. So from fourth grade on, I was on decent terms with the rest of the kids, but nothing more. Then, along about junior high, nobody wanted to be caught talking to me, because the “in” crowd decided I was weird.

What can I say? I was. I mean, a thirteen-year-old boy who doesn’t like baseball and loves reading poetry-what can you say? By local standards, anyway. And in junior high, local standards are everything.

Made me miserable, but what could I do?

Find out what they thought made a good man, of course. I watched and found out real quick that the popular guys weren’t afraid to fight, and they won more fights than they lost. That seemed to go with being good at sports. So I figured that if I could learn how to fight, I could be good at sports, too. A karate school had just opened up in town, so I heckled Mom until she finally took me, just to shut me up. I had to get a paper route to pay for it, though.

It only took six months before I stopped losing fights. When school started again in the fall, and the boys started working out their ranking system by the usual round of bouts, I started winning a few-and all of a sudden, the other guys got chummy. I warmed to it for a little while, but it revolted me, too. I knew them for what they were now, and I stopped caring about them.

It felt good. Besides, I’d connected with karate-and from it, I got interested in the Far East.

One of the teachers told me I should try not to sound so hostile and sarcastic all the time.

Sarcastic? Who, me?

So I learned to paste on the smile and sound cheerful.

Didn’t work. The other kids could tell. All I succeeded in doing was acting phony.

Why bother?

Of course, things picked up a little in high school, because there was a literary magazine, and a drama club, so I got back onto civil terms with some of the other kids. Not the “in” crowd, of course, but they bored me, so I didn’t care. Much.

So all in all, I wasn’t really prepared for college. Academically, sure-but socially? I mean, I hadn’t had a real friend in ten yearsand all of a sudden, I had a dozen. Not close friends, of course, but people who smiled and sat down in my booth at the coffee shop.

Who can blame me if I didn’t do any homework?

My profs, that’s who. And the registrar, who sent me the little pink slip with the word probation worked in there. And my academic counselor, who pointed out that I was earning a quick exit visa from the Land of Friendship. So I declared an English major, where at least half of the homework was reading the books I’d already read for recreation-Twain, and Dickens, and Melville. I discovered Fielding, and Chaucer, and Joyce, and had more fun. Of course ‘ I had to take a grammar course and write term papers, so I learned how to sneak in a few hours at the library. I didn’t take any honors, but I stayed in.

Then I discovered philosophy, and found out that I actually wanted to go to the library. I started studying without realizing it-it was so much fun, such a colossal, idiotic, senseless puzzle. Nobody had any good answers to the big questions, but at least they were asking.

My answers? I was looking for them. That was enough.

So I studied for fun, and almost learned how to party. Never got very good at it, but I tried-and by my senior year, I even had a couple of friends who trusted me enough to tell me their troubles.

Not that I ever told them mine, of course. I tried once or twice, but stopped when I saw the eyes glaze. I figured out that most people want to talk, but they don’t want to listen. It followed from that, logically, that what they liked about me was that I listened, but didn’t talk. So I didn’t. I got a reputation for being the strong and silent type, just by keeping my mouth shut. I also found out, by overhearing at a party, that they thought I was the Angry Young Man.

I thought that one over and decided they were right. I was angry about people. Even the ones I liked, mostly. They wanted to take, but they didn’t want to give. They cared about fighting, but they didn’t care about brains. They spent their time trying to get from one another, and they didn’t care about why they were here.

Oh, don’t get me wrong-they were good people. But they didn’t care about me, really. I was a convenience.

Except for Matt.

Matt was already working on his M.A. when I met him, and by the time I graduated, he was making good progress on his PhD.

So what was I going to do when I got my degree? Leave town, and the one good friend I had? Not to mention the only three girls who’d ever thought I was human.

No way.

So I started work on my master’s. Physics, of course.

How come? From literature and philosophy?

Because I took “Intro to Asia” for a freshman distribution requirement, and found out about zen-and learned about Shredinger’s Cat in “History of Science.” Put the two together, and it made a lot of sense.

Don’t ask. You had to be there.

Then Matt ran into a snag on his doctoral dissertation. Do you know what it’s like to see a real friend deteriorating in front of your eyes? He found that scrap of parchment, the-i got hung up trying to translate it. Wasn’t in any known language, so it had to be a prank.

I mean, that’s obvious, right? Not even logic-just common sense.

Matt didn’t have any.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Matt’s my friend, and I think the world of the guy, but I’m realistic about him, too. He was something of a compulsive, and something of an idealist, as well-to the point of

…

 

Well, you know the difference between fantasy and reality? Matt didn’t. Not always, anyway.

No, he was convinced that parchment was a real, authentic, historical document, and he wasted half his last year trying to decipher it.

I was getting real worried about him-losing weight, bags under his eyes, drawn and pale … Matt, not me. I didn’t have any spare weight to lose. Him, he was the credulous type-one of the kind that’s born every minute. I’m one of the other kind, two born for every one of him. I mean, I wouldn’t believe it was April if I didn’t see the calendar. Forget about that robin pecking at the window, and the buds on the trees. If I don’t see it in black and white, it’s Nature pulling a fast one. Maybe a thaw.

So he had disappeared.

I thought about calling the police, but I remembered they couldn’t do anything-Matt was a grown man, and there hadn’t been any bloodstains in his apartment. Besides, I hadn’t been on terribly good terms with the local constables ever since that year I was experimenting with recreational chemicals.

Still, I gave it a try. I actually went into the police station-me, with my long hair and beard. Nobody gave me more than a casual glance, but my back still prickled-probably from an early memory, a very early memory, of my father saying something about “the pigs” loving to beat on anybody who didn’t have a crew cut. Of course, that was long ago, in 1968, and I was so little that all I remember of him was a big, tall pair of blue jeans with a tie-dyed T-shirt and a lot of hair at the top. I hated that memory for ten years, because it was all I knew of him until Mom decided to get in touch with him again, and I found out he wasn’t really the ogre I figured he must have been, to have left Mom and me that way. Found out it wasn’t all his idea, either. And I had a basis for understanding him-by that time, I had begun to know what it was like to have all the other kids put you down.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he told me once. “I didn’t know alienation was hereditary. ” Of course, it wasn’t-just the personality traits that led to it. I wouldn’t say I ever loved him, but at least I warmed to him some. He had shaved and gotten a haircut, even a three-piece suit, by then, but it didn’t fool anybody for very long. Especially me. Maybe that’s why I wear chambray and blue jeans. And long hair, and a beard-like my early memories of him.

And early memories stay with you longest and deepest, so I really felt as if I were walking into the lion’s den.

The cop at the desk looked up as I approached. “Can I help you?”

About then, he could have helped me out of there, and I might have needed it-but I said, “I hope so. A friend of mine. He’s disappeared.

Right away, he looked grave. “Did he leave any message?”

I thought of the parchment, but what good is writing you can’t read? Besides, he wasn’t the one who wrote it. “Not a word.”

He frowned. “But he was over twenty-one”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Any reason to think there might have been foul play?”

Now, that question sent the icicle skittering down my spine. Not that the idea hadn’t been there, lurking at the back of my dread, mind you-but I had worked real hard not to put words to it. Now that the sergeant had, I couldn’t ignore it any more. “Not really,” I admitted.

“It’s just not like him to pick up and pack out like that.”

“It happens,” the sergeant sighed. “People just get fed up with life and take off. We’ll post his name and watch for him, and let you know if we find out anything-but that’s all we can do.”

I’d been pretty sure of that. “Thanks,” I said. “He’s Matt Mantrell. Matthew. And I’m-”

“Saul Bremener.” He kept his eyes on the form he was filling in.

“Three-ten North Thirteenth Street. We’ll let you know if we hear anything. ” My stomach went hollow, and my skin crawled. It doesn’t always help your morale, finding out that the cops know you by name. “Uh … thanks,” I croaked.

“Don’t mention it.” He looked up. “Have a good day, Mr.

Bremener-and don’t take any wooden cigarettes, okay?”

“Wooden,” I agreed, and turned numbly about and drifted out of that den of doom. So they remembered my little experiments. It makes one wonder.

The sunlight and morning air braced me, in spite of the lack of sleep. I decided they were nice guys, after all-they’d left me alone until they could see if it was a passing fad, or something permanent.

Passing, in my case. So it was smart-they’d saved taxpayers’ money and my reputation. I wondered if there was anything written about me anywhere.

Probably. Somewhere. I mean, they had to have something to do during the slow season. I began to sympathize with Matt-maybe blowing town suddenly wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Get real, I told myself sternly. Where else would I find such sympathetic cops?

Back to the search. Maybe they couldn’t do anything officially, but I wasn’t official.

So I searched high and low, called the last girl Matt had been seen with-back when I was a junior-and started getting baggy eyes myself. Finally, I took a few slugs of Pepto-Bismol as a preventative, screwed my disgust to the nausea point, and went back into his apartment.

I scolded myself for not having moved that table; just lucky Matt hadn’t left anything on it. I laid my notebook down on the desk next to the phone and gave a quick look at the table, the kitchenette counter, and the miniature sofa. Nothing there but dust and spider silk.

Then I went through that apartment inch by inch, clearing webs and squashing spiders. Or trying to, anyway-I must have been dealing with a new and mutant breed. Those little bug-eaters were fast!

Especially the big fat one-I took my eyes off it for a second to glance at the arachnid next door, and when I glanced back, it wasn’t there any more.

it wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t there-neither was any sign of where Matt might be. I mean, nothing-until I turned and looked at the kitchenette table and saw the parchment.

I stared. Then I closed my eyes, shook my head, and stared again.

it was still there. I could have sworn I’d put it back in my notebook-so I picked up the notebook and checked. Yep, the piece of sheepskin was still in it, all right.

That gave me pause. Practically a freeze, really, while I thought unprintable thoughts. Finally, slowly, I looked up and checked again.

it was on the table.

I looked down at the notebook, real fast, but not fast enough-it was back between the lined sheets. I held my head still and flicked a glance over to the table, but it must have read my mind, ‘cause it was there by the time I looked. Then I laid down the notebook, real carefully, and stepped back, so I could see both the notebook and the table at the same time.

They each had a parchment.

Well, that settled that. I gave up and brought the notebook over to the table. I set it down beside the parchment. Yep, they were both still there-Matt’s parchment in my notebook, and a brand-new one where none had ever been before. At least, a few minutes before-I had checked the table as I crawled across it. I frowned, taking a closer look at the new parchment.

It was written in runes, and the “paper” was genuine sheepskin, all right.

How come runes?

Because runes are magical.

I tried to ignore the prickling at the base of my skull and told myself sternly that runes were just ordinary, everyday letters in somebody else’s language. Okay, so it was an old language, and a lot of the items written in it had been ceremonial, which was why they had been preserved-but that didn’t mean they were magical. I mean, the people who wrote them may have thought they could work magichut that was just superstition.

But it was also something that made the scholar in me sit up brightly and smack his lips. I mean, literature had been one of my undergraduate majors-justified an extra year on campus, right thereand although it wasn’t my main field any more, I was still interested.

I’d learned at least a little bit about those old symbols-and I knew Matt had a book around here that explained the rest. I hunted around until I found it, blew the dust and webbing off, and sat down to study. I looked up each rune and wrote its Roman-letter equivalent just above it. I tried pencil first, but it just skittered off that slick surface, so I had to use a felt pen. After all, this couldn’t really be anything old, could it?

After three letters, I leaned back to see if it made a word.

H-e-y.

I recoiled and glared down at it. How dare it sound like English!

just a coincidence. I went to work on the next word.

P-a-u-l.

I sat very still, my glance riveted to those runes. “Hey, Paul”? Who in the ninth century knew my name?

Then a thought skipped through, and I took a closer look at the parchment. I mean, the material itself. It was new, brand-new, fresh off the sheep, compared to Matt’s parchment, which was brittle and yellow-several years old, at least. Something inside me whispered centuries, but I resolutely ignored it and went on to the next word.

I wrote the Roman letters above the runes, refusing to be sidetracked, resisting the temptation to pronounce the words they formed, until I had all the symbols converted-though something inside me was adding them up as I went along, and whispering a very nasty suspicion to me. But as long as I had another rune to look up, I could ignore it-even after I’d already learned all the runes again and was looking each one up very deliberately, telling myself it was just to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake.

Finally, though, I had written down all the letter equivalents and I couldn’t put it off any longer. I stayed hunched over the parchment, my hands spread flat on the table, trying to grip into the plywood as I read the translated words.

H-e-y P-a-ul g-e-t i-n t-o-u-c-h I-v-e I-o-s-t y-o-u-r address.

Or, to give it the proper emphatic delivery: “Hey, Paul! Get in touch! I’ve lost your address!”

I could almost hear Matt’s voice saying those words, and I swear my nails bit into the plywood. What kind a ousy joe was t is?

Friend? You call that a friend? First he leaves town without a word, and then he sends me this?

I was just realizing that he couldn’t have sent it, when I felt the pain in the back of my hand.

“Damn!” I snatched it back, saw the little red dot in the center, then the big fat spider standing there with that big wide grin painted on its abdomen, and so help me, it was laughing at me. Anger churned up, but the room was already getting fuzzy. Still, I tried to hang on to that anger, tried to lift a hand to swat-the blasted thing had no right to …

But before I could even finish the thought, the haze thickened, wrapped itself around me like a cool blanket, rolled itself up, and bore me away to someplace dim and distant, and I almost managed to stay conscious.

Chapter Two

When I came to, the mist was gone, and I felt amazingly well. I mean, I had never felt that whole, that healthy, since I was a kid-and I hadn’t been aware of it then, of course. it was like waking up on an April day, with the air fresh and warming from the night’s chill, and the sun painting the day in primaries as you watch, and knowing it’s your birthday.

But it wasn’t April, it was November, and I was inside Matt’s apartment. Only I wasn’t, I was out in the open-and it wasn’t November any more, it really was April. Either that, or it was Florida.

Florida, with mountains stabbing up from the horizon? And not gently rounded mountains, like the Appalachians, but jagged granite obelisks, with snow on top?

Of course, they were off in the distance. Close by, all I could see was a field of wheat, with two or three little hedges cutting it into odd shapes. Whoever lived here, they could use some lessons in geometry.

I was just beginning to wonder how I’d come here, when I saw the knight.

Well, I knew about the Society for Creative Anachronism, of course, but I also knew they didn’t go in for tilting, and this guy was carrying one of the most authentic lances I could have imagined. Plus, he was riding a Percheron-and I don’t know any SCA types who could afford the upkeep on a pony, let alone a beerwagon bronc. And, of course, there were the half-dozen men on foot behind him, all wearing more or less the same combination of brown and gray, with steel bands glinting on their hats and long spears in their hands. They raised a whoop and pointed at me. The knight turned to look.

He saw me and perked up right away-dropped the point of the lance to horizontal, aimed the warhorse at me, and kicked it into a gallop.

Must have been the long hair and the beard. Mine, I mean. Either that, or he had something against blue jeans and chambray.

His men raised another whoop and came pelting after him like children hearing the bells on an ice cream truck. I just stood there, staring at all that scrap iron and horse meat thundering down at me, trying very, very hard not to believe any of it.

Then I realized the tip of the lance had come close enough so that I could see it was sharp and made of steel, and I had to believe that much. I jumped aside. The rider tried to swerve, bellowing some nasty things, but his Percheron didn’t have that tight a turning radius, and he went crashing into the underbrush.

Underbrush?

I whirled around and, sure enough, there it was, just stunted trees and bushes, a little thicket in the middle of all those fields, presumably where the ground was too poor to grow anything. Or maybe around a creek-I braced myself, hoping to hear a splash.

Instead, I heard a crack that filled my whole head, along with a piercing pain. The scene went dark for an instant, then came back full of bright little shiny lights. I would have fallen down, but a big rough hand was holding me up by the arm while a voice guffawed, “He is nothing, only a scrap of skin and bone! Here, Heinrich, you try him! ” And I was spinning and staggering across the grass, dazed and amazed to realize I could understand the words, though I knew damned well they weren’t English.

Then I slammed into something else meaty and with foul breath.

He slammed a fist into my gut. I doubled over, my stomach trying to climb up my throat, and a huge bellow of laughter filled my ears.

Then something hard slammed into my bottom, and I heard another nasty laugh. I moved my legs fast, just barely managing to catch up with my top half in time to keep from falling-but behind me, I heard an outraged shout. “It was not your turn, Rudolf! Remember your place!”

Then I slammed into another wall of leather and sweat that made an evil laugh and pushed me back far enough so that I could see the fist swinging at me. Reflex finally took over, and I squirmed aside so that the fist hit my shoulder, not my head. It spun me around enough so that I could see Heinrich belting Rudolf one. Rudy went down to his knees and stayed there, rubbing his chin-and behind them, the knight was sitting his horse with his visor up, nodding and laughing.

Then another tough snarled, “My turn!” and grabbed me.

But another clunk grabbed my other arm and yanked back. I yowled, but I could still hear him bellowing, “Take a lower place, Gustang! I will not be forborne!” And he swung a quick left hook into Gustang’s gut.

I couldn’t believe it. Not only were they beating up a total stranger, just for fun-they were fighting over me, too, about the pecking order.

But the wrangling had taken just long enough for me to collect a little bit of my wits, and it was the part that held the memory of my karate training. What would I have told my teacher, if he’d been here? “Sorry, Sensei, I was watching the scenery?” Sure.

Time to remember I was a trained killer. I’d never killed anything larger than a mouse, of course, and that was only with a trap-but that didn’t change the training.

I spun around, slamming into the guy who had my arm and snaking my leg around his in the process, shoving and kicking back.

Down he went, and I spun to the next one, who was so surprised he was slow getting his guard up-only it wasn’t a guard, he was just swinging at me, not even trying to block. I ducked and kicked, and he went down.

The other four finally woke up to what I was doing and fell on me with an outraged roar. I sidestepped, ducked, punched, whirled, and kicked, recovered and chopped. The adrenaline was singing, and if I was bruised and groggy, I didn’t realize it. Two of them were down, and the other two hesitated, uncertain-at a guess, I decided they weren’t used to having their toys play back.

Then the knight shouted and slammed down his visor-obviously time to restore a little order here. His men relaxed, stepping back and leaving it to Papa.

All the outrage I felt boiled up as I saw the Percheron plodding forward and beginning to pick up speed. This was no way to treat a stranger, at least one who hadn’t even offered an insult! As the huge beast lumbered into a trot, I shouted, “What are you doing, jumping a stranger just going his way? Are you out of your brains, have you nothing but hay? Do you have any sanity? Any common humanity? You should feel what it’s like to be crashed up this way!” The huge horse tripped. It tumbled. It hit the ground hard and rolled. The knight bellowed in alarm, and just managed to kick free at the last instant.

I stared.

So did his men.

Then somebody hissed, “Zabreur!” and the knight began to kick his arms and legs-he was on his back, trying to turn over.

But he was out of action long enough for me to make some headway against his men. I turned to them, advancing-if I tried to run, it would restore their self-confidence.

But that was very thoroughly shot. They moaned and backed off fast, then turned, stumbling, and started to run.

I stared, thunderstruck. They couldn’t be that scared, just because the horse had hit a gopher hole and tripped! Okay, so it was a lucky coincidence that I had just finished yelling something-but that shouldn’t have scared them that much.

The knight didn’t think so, either. “Hans! Klaus! You worthless, good-for-nothing blobs of dog meat! Come back here and aid me, or I’ll …” Then he caught sight of me limping toward him, frowning, curious, and I guess I must have looked pretty bad, being mussed up with my shirt torn and all, because he moaned and made some sort of sign. “You cannot prevail! My master is an Earl of Evil!

Some force staggered me, making my head ring. He must have thrown something I hadn’t seen. Anger surged, and my instinct sent me to kick his head in-but prudence took over at the last second, pointing out that I should get as far away from him as possible, and not add homicide to any other charges the local authorities might dream up against me. This was especially true because he obviously was one of the local authorities. I had laid off smoking grass for similar reasons, and it had apparently paid off, since I hadn’t been arrested. I slowed and nodded. “Right. I love you, too, sweetheart.

Remind me to return the hospitality some day.” Then I turned and went away, walking fast-or as fast as I could; I seemed to have developed a limp.

I glanced back a couple of times, but no one was showing any great interest in following me. That made me curious after a while, so I shinnied up a tree until I had a line of sight back to the little forest we’d been near. I was on the other side of that woods now, but I could see the knight and his boys trudging off toward the castle way up high across the valley. That was both good and badgood, because it meant I had some time to find a hiding place, or get farther away; bad, because it meant they’d apparently decided I was too much to handle and were going back for reinforcements.

Of course they could just be cutting their losses. Maybe they were planning not to mention me to anybody again-but somehow, I doubted that. Might have had something to do with that word somebody’d hissed when the knight went down-“Zabreur.” My German was a little rusty, and that probably wasn’t real German, anywaybut didn’t the word mean “male witch”?

Possible.

I shinnied back down, turning thoughtful. Chambray and blue jeans probably looked like luxury fabrics, to them-now that I thought about it, their cloth had looked pretty much homemade. And my styles were certainly odd, by their standards. The belt and boots alone would be enough to mark me as above peasant rank, and weird-tooled leather with a huge metal buckle, and high heels. No, from their point of view, I was familiar enough to be real, odd enough to be special.

I set off uphill again, deciding I’d better stay alert. The “magician” pose was a good idea-it could help protect me, and I sure didn’t have anything else to do the job. Well, no, I had a large clasp knife in my pocket-I like ‘em big enough so that “jacknife” seems like an understatement. I decided I’d better use it to help me make something better in the way of a weapon. I stopped off at the next woodlot, hunted around, and found a fallen branch that was still pretty solid. I whittled away twigs as I walked and, pretty soon, I had a serviceable staff.

I’d hung around with some SCA guys and learned a little about quarterstaves from them-but I’d learned a bit more from my sensei. I wasn’t an expert, mind you, but I was capable, and it was better than nothing.

I looked around me then, finally letting the scenery sink in, instead of just taking a quick glance to know which way to go. There were rugged mountains in the distance, big hills nearby, with sheep grazing on the slopes and every more-or-less horizontal spot taken up by grain. I couldn’t have told you one cereal from another unless it came in a box, but this stuff looked too hairy to be wheat.

Finally, it hit-I wasn’t in the Midwest any more. In fact, I doubted I was even in America-and judging from what I’d seen of the locals, I wasn’t even it the twentieth century.

Time travel? Space zapping? Impossible! I had to be dreaming.

But those punches had sure hurt. A dream, this wasn’t.

Hallucination?

Possible-but if it were, it would’ve had to have been the most detailed trip I’d ever heard of, and the most enduring. Besides, I had sworn off all chemical experiences years before.

Flashback?

Again, possible-though I didn’t think I’d taken anywhere near enough drugs, ever, to have caused a spontaneous trip to happen, and certainly not one that lasted this long. Still, it was a possibility. I closed my eyes and willed myself back to my apartment.

But there were no psychedelic patterns inside my eyelids, only darkness-well, redness; I was standing in sunlight. I groped for my identity symbol, but my hands were empty, except for the staff. In desperation, I put my left hand on my belt buckle and started tracing the patterns of the Native American symbols I could feel there.

Nothing happened.

I sighed and gave up, opening my eyes. I was stuck here, wherever “here” was-and I was going to have to live by the local rules, whatever they were. Denial wouldn’t help, and it might be a quick road to disaster. Whether that disaster was psychological or physical was kind of a moot point-it would be very unpleasant, either way.

Unless there was some evidence to the contrary-and I couldn’t see any-I had to assume that the knight and his bullyboys were genuine not modern people putting on some incomprehensible show.

Those guys couldn’t have been SCA members-they weren’t polite, they weren’t friendly, and their weapons weren’t padded. So, somehow, I’d landed in the middle of some sort of medieval culture, from what I could see of it-and if they thought I was a magician, that could explain a few things.

I wondered where I was. I couldn’t offhand think of any place on Earth that was still living in the Northern European Middle Ages.

Okay, there were some isolated islands where the living was still pretty limited-no TV, even-but so far as I knew, they didn’t run to knights.

A medieval fair, being held to attract the tourists? No; you don’t beat up on tourists.

I sighed, deciding that I just didn’t have enough information to figure out where I was, how I’d been brought there, or why. I shelved it until I could learn more. There were more immediate problems that needed tending to, such as survival.

I set off up-slope. A few hundred yards later, I passed a berry bush-and I was amazed to realize I was hungry. I stopped and stepped closer, inspecting the berries carefully, and decided that I couldn’t be all that badly off, if I could still want food. I’d tied in with a local back-to-the-basics group for a year or two, going out on field trips into the countryside to learn how to survive in the wild, or at least without grocery stores; I hadn’t quit until they started talking about setting up a commune. So I knew which plants were edible and which weren’t, and the all-important rule: if you’re not sure it’s good to eat, don’t touch it. But these looked to be perfectly ordinary raspberries, so I took a chance, and a handful. They tasted good, so I took another handful.

As I was munching, I noticed a very big spiderweb, glowing with the sunlight behind it-in fact, several of them; the neighborhood must have been saturated with flies. The biggest web, though, had an eight-legger the size of a quarter, an exact double for the one that had stung me. Anger rose, and my hand tightened on my staff-but I told myself that it couldn’t be the same bug, and I turned away.

Bad year for spiders, folks.

The land was still sloping upward. I decided I must be in the foothills of the mountains I’d seen in the distance. After a little while, I came to a woodlot that went on and on. I stayed on the fringe, just this side of the underbrush, and kept a wary eye on it-for all I knew, a dragon might have come charging out any second. On the other hand, I wanted to be able to duck into it quickly, if Sir Overbearing and his boys decided to come hunting, after all.

Then, suddenly, the shock hit. I stopped dead still, leaned on my staff, and waited for the feeling of desolation to pass.

it didn’t.

I lifted my head, looking out over that strange, strange view, and Kullervo’s lines from The Kalevala sprang into my mind. I chanted them aloud, hoping the sound would make me feel better:

 

“And the friendless one reflected, ‘Wherefore have I been created? Who has made me and has doomed me, Thus without a sun to wander Through the starry wastes forever?’

 

It worked. just the sound of a human voice helped, even if it was my own-and the feeling of kinship, the knowledge that somebody else had felt this way before, somewhere, somewhen, and that a lot of other people had to have felt the same way, too, to keep that verse alive down the centuries. I wasn’t a total oddball, and I wasn’t completely alone. Culture can be a great consolation.

Consolation enough to put some spirit back into me. I straightened up, squaring my shoulders, and set off again.

Light blossomed-an actinic, piercing light that seemed to lance though my eyes.

I fell back, raising a forearm to protect them. Panic surged through me-the only thing I’d ever heard of that made sudden light like that was a from .

But there was no explosion. Instead, I seemed to hear, very faintly, the sound of a chiming gong-but it could have been imagination.

In fact, it had to be-and so did the strange, vague, anthropomorphic shape at the center of that light burst, where the glare was strongest. As I watched, it coalesced, becoming clearer and more humanlike.

Then I caught my breath. It had turned into the shape of a young man, swallowing up all the light so that it still shone faintly, even though I could see through him. just barely.

He wore a glowing robe, and there was a shimmering behind him, a suggestion of huge folded wings-and his face was very severe.

No. It couldn’t be. An angel?

“I am even so,” the being responded, “and the one who hath known thee even since the day of thy birth, Saul.”

Well. That brought me back to my senses, a little. “If you’ve known me that long,” I said, “how come I’ve never seen you before?”

“In that dull world to which thou wert born, naught of the spirit can be seen, save to those few souls that do glow with goodness.

Here, though, the world of the spirit is open to men, if they do but seek. “

“World?” I frowned. “You mean I’m in a totally different world from the one I’ve lived in all my life?” Somehow, that didn’t seem like news.

“Even so,” the angel agreed, but he was still frowning.

Then the other part of his message registered. “But,” I said, “I’m not particularly interested in the world of the spirit.”

“How little thou dost know thyself, Saul! And how greatly dost thou seek to hide thine own nature from thyself. Thou hast ever been preoccupied with the things of the spirit, and ‘tis even thy aching search for truth that hath led thee away from the churches of men.”

I just stood there for a second while that sank in. Then I said, “I thought you boys were supposed to think the churches had a monopoly on truth.”

“The religions they serve have truth within them, and therefore do the churches, also-yet the folk who constitute each church are but human, and as fallible as any among thee. How intolerant art thou, to excuse thine own failings and condemn them for theirs!”

I lifted my head in indignation. “I haven’t condemned anybody!”

“Hast thou not turned from them because thou hast judged them to be hypocrites? Yet surely thou must needs see that their fait is a striving after perfection.”

I nodded, not following.

“Therefore, if they do strive for perfection, they cannot already have attained it.”

“Now, wait a minute!” I held up a hand, seeing where he was going.

“Thou hast learned it,” he said, nodding. “If they are thou canst not blame them for their imperfections.” not perfect,

“But I haven’t judged anybody!”

“Hast thou not but now judged even thy Creator? Hast thou not blamed Him for creating thee doomed to loneliness?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s what brought you here.”

“Even so,” the angel confirmed. “In this world-nay, this universe-prayers are answered more obviously than in thine own, and verses are prayers, or petitions to the Adversary.”

Suddenly, I was very glad I hadn’t sung “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Then the rest of what he’d said sank in. I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘this universe’?”

“Hast thou not perceived it with thy vaunted reason?” he taunted.

“Thou art no longer in the universe of thy birth. Thou hast been transported to another, in which magic rules, and physics is superstition.”

I stared.

“Yet the God of All is the One God here, as well as in thy home,” the angel said inexorably, “and of all the universes that be; for ‘tis He who made them, and doth maintain them by the force of His will. It is this mighty and majestic God whom thou dost blame for thine own failings! “

“But I wasn’t talking about the judaeo-Christian Creator,” I objected. “I was reciting a quotation from the Finnish national epic! If you want to look for the ‘creator’ I was talking about, go look among the gods of the Finns! Besides, I didn’t even make a statement! I just asked a question!”

The angel waved the objection away with an impatient gesture.

“‘Tis immaterial. Thou art in a universe in which the only true Creator is Jehovah, and thou must needs align thyself either with God, or with the Devil.”

“Are you trying to say God didn’t make me to be lonely?”

“Nay, nor to wander. If thou dost lack friends and home, that is the consequence of thine own deeds and choices. If thou dost not wish it so, thou canst choose otherwise.”

I frowned. “Choose to go back to my own world?”

“Even that, though thou shalt have to seek the means, and labor long and hard to earn or learn the way. Yet I spoke more of thy grieving for friends and place.”

“I’ve been looking for friends all my life!”

“They have been there,” the angel said inexorably. “Thou hadst but to live as they did, to learn their ways and follow them.”

“Wait a minute! You’re saying that if I wanted to be part of a group, I had to do as everybody in that group did? “

“Thou hadst need to abide by their rules,” the angel said. “There are many such that I have rejoiced to see thee turn away from-yet there were others who were good folk, whose customs thou didst disdain. “

I remembered the kids in grade school, who thought fighting and sports were everything. “Damn right!”

The angel’s face flared in wrath. I shrank back. “Uh, sorry, there. Darn right.”

He diminished to a slow burn.

I collected the pieces of my wits and said, “They were so phony!

And their standards were, too! Thinking that how well you could hit a ball really mattered!”

“It did,” the angel said, “to them.”

“Not to me! Reading books counted! Knowledge counted!”

“Thus thy books meant more to thee than friendship. Thou hadst made thy choice; thou hadst small room to rail ‘gainst God.”

“Oh, yes I did! I should’ve been able to have friends and booksother kids who liked to read, liked to learn! Then I would have been part of a group! We might even have learned how to play baseball together! “

“Dost thou not wish to be rare?”

“No!” I exploded, and was shocked to hear myself say it-but I’d worked up too much momentum to be able to stop. “I’d love to be normal! To have friends! To be a social animal! And I tried! I did learn their ways, at least a little bit-but it was too late! I couldn’t acquire the instinct! And they knew I was faking!”

“Yet nonetheless would have given thee toleration, if thou hadst continued to strive.”

“To try to be something I wasn’t? To be a phony? I thought you guys were supposed to value truth!”

“As indeed we do,” the angel returned, “and I rejoice that thou hast chosen the more truthful way. Yet ‘twas thy choice, not God’s doing.”

“Sure, but look what He gave me to choose from!” I drew a deep breath and reined myself in. Harmony, balance; center yourself … “I thought having more brains was supposed to give you a big boost toward Heaven.”

“Nay,” the angel returned. “Heaven is open to all, to the lame as well as the nimble-and to the moron as well as the genius. ‘Tis the soul that is of concern to God, not the mind.”

I stared, shocked.

Then I said, “But I thought people with better minds had a better chance of coming closer to the truth! And that’s God, isn’t it?”

gel said, “or a description of it.

“That is an aspect of God,” the an ‘Tis no more the whole of Him than is His omnipotence. Oh, a man of greater intellect can come to a fuller and more complete knowledge of God, if he doth strive lifelong-yet his way is more torturous, for his mind can see more obstacles to faith in God than can the man of less nimble wits.”

“But the smarter man can do more holy works!”

” Not ‘more’ ” the angel corrected me, “only ones that others cannot see. Yet his temptations to error are greater, for if he does not apprehend the truth in an instant, he is like to say it doth not exist, and turn away.”

“So,” I said slowly, “that’s why the student went to the rabbi and said, ‘Teach me the whole of the law while I stand on one foot.’”

“That is an allegory,” the angel agreed. “Yet if thy mind is the means of coming closer to God in the end, it hath also its own forms of obligation.”

I turned wary. When someone says obligation, they’re trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do. “Such as?”

“To use thy mind to labor for the good of thy brethren,” the angel said. “To never rest till thou hast come to see the Truth of God-and, till thou hast attained that clarity of vision to hold fast in the faith that ‘tis there.”

I turned very cold. “You’re asking me to believe in something I don’t know is there.”

“If thou didst know it,” the angel returned, “there would be no need for faith.”

“Nice twist to the logic.” I dismissed the argument with a wave.

“But if I can’t prove it, I won’t accept it.”

“Yet thou must!” The angel stepped closer, face creased with anxiety. “For this world to which thou hast come is a domain in which spirit rules, and if thou art not dedicated to God and His goodness, thou wilt slip toward Satan and evil.”

“Ridiculous!” I scoffed. “I’ve heard that before, too-‘you’ve got to commit yourself. There’s no middle ground.’ “

“There is not, here. With each deed thou dost to any other human being, thou dost commit thyself to good, or to evil! Thou canst not remain poised between! Thy smallest action will doom thee, if thou dost not choose God as thy goal. Thou canst not stand alone! “

“Well, I blasted well intend to!” I snapped. “I’m not about to commit myself to anything! Or anybody! All my life, people have been telling me, ‘You’ve got to sign up! You have to join! You can’t just stand by yourself!’ But I didn’t believe them-I learned early that being part of a group always results in having to do things you don’t believe are right. I refused to do those things before, and I’ll refuse again! “

“And therefore wilt choose to be alone,” the angel warned.

“Yeah, I’ve been ostracized! Sometimes directly and openly, sometimes subtly and covertly-but always cut off, snubbed. if that’s the price I have to pay for being my own honest self, I’ll pay it-and I have! I’ve been doing just that for twenty-four years now, thank you, and doing just fine!”

“Thou hast not,” the angel contradicted. “Thou dost endure in loneliness and instability.”

“Well, if that’s the price of freedom, I’ll pay it! And if you think you’re going to do anything to punish me for it, you’d better just stop talking and get to the thunder and lightning!” I braced myself, ready for annihilation, and found myself hoping that I’d been right about God, and that He was on my side after all.

The angel looked unutterably sad as he studied me, then seemed to rally a little. “Nay. My power may not be spent ‘gainst the living, and most especially not ‘gainst the mortal who was placed in my care. I shall repel devils who seek to torment thee with all of my power, as I have in the past-but thy choices are thine own to make, by God’s decree. And thou hast made them.”

I stood still, waiting for the adrenaline rush to wear off.

The angel turned stern again. “Yet henceforth do not rail ‘gainst Heaven for thy loneliness-for ‘tis thou who hast chosen it.”

Suddenly the light exploded outward, enveloping him. It dwindled, rising and soaring upward, but faded out before it had gone very far.

I just stood staring after it, feeling the stiffness ebb from my limbs, feeling the weakness begin, and letting myself realize that I had just seen my guardian angel.

But I intended to go on griping all I wanted. I might have to accept loneliness as the price of freedom and integrity, but I didn’t have to be happy about it.

On the other hand, I wasn’t accepting it, either. “You can have friends and still be yourself,” I muttered to myself. “It’s just that friends who like you the way you are, are few and far between.”

Which reminded me of Matt.

I turned and started trudging uphill again. If I’d been transported into a different universe, maybe he had, too.

Same different universe?

I hauled up my sinking stomach. There was a good chance of it, wasn’t there? After all, I’d been looking for him when that damned spider had bitten me and sent me into this world.

How could a spider bite transport you between worlds?

Death?

Or hallucination. Which reminded me of the angel. Had to be a hallucination. Couldn’t possibly have been anything else. The berries, I realized-they may have looked like ordinary raspberries, but they had probably contained a hallucinogen of some sort. They’d just opened up a channel for my subconscious to speak to me, in the form of my guardian angel.

Which meant my subconscious was religious.

I definitely didn’t like that notion.

I could almost hear it speaking. Sub to conscious. Come in, conscious.

No. I refuse. I’ll stay outside.

And I would, too.

Chapter Three

As I walked, I tried to reason it out-after all, forty credits’ worth of philosophy ought to be good for something, and if it wasn’t any good in this situation, it never would be, anywhere. I resisted the personal, supernatural view of the local phonemena-angels weren’t real, and neither was magic. Well, okay, something that sure looked a lot like magic was going on here-but magic wasn’t a person, with emotions and a personality; magic could much more believably be just a force, a kind of energy, impersonal and …

My train of thought derailed as a flicker at the corner of my eye caught my attention. I glanced that way, but it had disappeared, of course. No, there it was again, like a glitch in my field of view. A wild stab of panic hit; this would be a very, very bad time to lose my vision! But it passed, with a little shove from my common senseand just in time, too, because the glitch widened, and I felt the impulse to reach out and adjust tracking. Silly, of course-because it not only widened, but swelled, turning into a zigzag tearing that reached downward to the ground and churned up a cloud of dust.

Then the membranes in my nose stood on end, and wrung themselves dry as the stench hit them with a rotten egg. “Guardian angel,” I muttered, “if you’re anything more than an hallucination, now would be a great time to show yourself!”

It didn’t, of course-hallucinations don’t usually come on demand.

But I did feel a surprising surge of confidence, almost reassurance.

Shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose-the mind plays funny tricks on itself, and this was just my subconscious’ way of getting itself to believe it could cope with whatever was coming. I suppose.

But I happened to notice a tickling in my thumbs.

The dust cloud died down, and there sat an ancient crone in a gown of charcoal gray.

That, I could live with, given the milieu-I had seen her before, in my extreme youth, in dozens of illustrations in books of fairy tales.

What threw me, though, was that she was sitting at a desk, with papers strewn all over it, and a quill pen in an inkwell.

“You have cast two unauthorized spells in the space of half an hour.”

Two?

Spells?

The crone wheezed on. ” ‘Sobaka,’ said I to meself, ‘there’s nothing for it but to come hither and gaze-and aye, there he be! Yonder he stands, flaming with zeal to oust the palsied old witch-woman from her bailiwick and take her peasants for his own! If there’s aught I cannot abide, ‘tis a bursting new magus!”

“Hey now, wait a minute!” I was beginning to get angry again. “I don’t want anybody’s ‘bailiwick’-and you can’t own people!”

“Blasphemy!” she cried. “Not only a magus, but also a liar! As if ‘tweren’t a plentitude of folk in the art one must struggle with as ‘tis!

Aye, a body’s no sooner believing she’s secure in her place, to lord it over her own trembling churls in easy breath, when, whoosh! Another young’un crops up, with cheek and with challenge, to be put in his place. It’s no wonder the land’s going to the pigs, with half the peasants turning to bandits, and a good number of them trying to out-evil their own township witch! And all from letting delinquents get out of hand! Abe, for the auld days! When younglings knew their places, or we had leave to fry them!”

“Leave?” I glanced at the desk again. “Who gives you leave to blast people or not?”

“Why, my master, fool, Queen Suettay!”

“Sweaty?” I stared; it struck me as an odd name for royalty.

“Nay, fool-Suettay! And be sure you do not take her name in vain, or she will surely appear to blast you!”

That gave me back some composure. I smiled, not too nicely; I’d heard that before, though usually about a personality a bit higher than an earthly monarch-that you have to talk nicely about Him, or He’ll strike you with a lightning bolt. But I’ve seen and heard an awful lot of people saying nasty things about God, and I’ve never noticed any of them running afoul of large doses of electricity-except for the one who was working on a live wire at the time, and he didn’t start cursing until after he got zapped. “Okay, so she’s Queen Suet-ty.” I had a mental image of a very, very fat lady looking like an awning pavilion with a crown on top.

“Suettay!” the old witch snapped. “Speak her name properly, crack-pate, or she will wish you ill indeed!”

Now I had it-the French word for wishes, intentions, as in, “I wish you a good day.” The pronunciation had thrown me off, that was all. “Whatever. And this Queen Suettay will zap you, if you zap me?

“

 

“Without showing you the error of your ways, aye. I am the bailiff of this bailiwick, given authority to see to its taxes and enforce the queen’s laws o’erit! ‘Tis for me to see you are noted in its book, and deal you work to do that will give the queen crops-or, if I have no need of you, to another.”

I bridled instantly. I mean, had I left my own civilized universe, with running water and modern medicine, just to come to a godforsaken medieval backwater that still made me cope with a bureaucracy? “Okay,” I snapped, “so you’ve got the authority to issue me a travel pass, or whatever, because you’re the witch in charge of the local parish …

“Bailiwick!” she screamed. “Speak not in the words of the Flock!”

I frowned. Flock? Then I remembered the parable of the Good Shepherd, and that “ecclesia” literally means “flock,” and I understood. So anything having to do with Christianity was anathema to her, huh? Maybe I could use that-but I kept it in reserve. After all, calling on the saints, or making the Sign of the Cross, or anything like that, kind of rankled; I hadn’t been about to cop out to religion back home, and I didn’t intend to here. Besides which, it might require conviction, which I definitely did not have.

She must have seen that in my eyes, because she gave me a gaptoothed grin. “Ah, then! You shy from those words yourself, eh?

Well, then, come! Prick your finger, write your name in my book, and swear to serve the queen and her master, or I’ll call upon his power, and you’ll writhe in flames!”

Outrage kindled. “No way!” I snapped. “I’ve heard about that book-and I’d end up writhing in flames either way, until this hallucination wears off! I won’t be a slave, and I won’t accept any master! ” She answered with an evil grin. “Excellent,” she crooned, “most excellent! For if you’ll serve no master, then you cannot be protected by any-and the Other Side will not ward you!”

I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

“I felt your first use of a spell and said to myself, ‘Sobaka, what bother is this?’ and began to tidy up my work to spare time for a visit-but ere I departed, I felt the nerve-grating shimmer that could only have come from an agent of the Other Side, and withheld my visit till that grinding had ceased …”

Translation: she’d sensed the visit from my guardian angel and had been so scared that she’d burrowed under the bedclothes. I felt a little more confident.

“Yet cease it did,” she crowed, “and totally-there was no shred of it left! Therefore did I come here, and sure enough, I see no particle of the aura of the Other Side about you! You have not aligned yourself with them, and have not their protection!”

The temperature of my precious bodily fluids began to fall again.

 

“

 

“Tis an idiot, surely,’ I said to myself, ‘an idiot who doth think to gather magic as if he were a windmill, gathering power from the gale and wielding it to grind what he will! Ay, such a fool I can twist right easily!’ So come, addle-pate, and sign in my master’s book, or die in agony!”

Somehow, for a second, I didn’t doubt that she could do as she’d said, and my heart sank down to join the caterpillars that were trying to turn into butterflies in my belly-but mostly, I felt the hot anger of indignation. How dare this old witch try to push me around! “No way will I get on your hook!” I snapped. “Keep the fire for your blasted book!”

She let out an outraged squawk, just about three-quarters of a second before her book burst into flames. She screamed, jumping back.

All I could do was stand there and stare.

That was too bad; it gave her a chance to recover from her surprise.

“Vile recreant!” she screamed. “The records of all who owe my master are destroyed!” Then she hooked her fingers into claws, chanting, “By the most vile of obscene names, Follow that book into the flames!”

And she threw a whammy at me.

Only this whammy took form very fast, some unseen energy gathering itself together until it materialized about halfway between us as a roaring globe of fire. I shouted and leapt out of the way, but it swerved to follow me. I jumped again, in a forward somersault, but came up to see it still following.

I ran.

Behind me, the hag’s cackling almost drowned out the roar of the fireball-and it was gaining. In a rush of adrenaline, I suddenly realized I should be trying verbal acrobatics, not physical-she had brought this phenomenon into being by versifying; I sure hadn’t seen her pulling the pin on a grenade. I ducked behind a boulder; it followed me, and it was roaring, but so was I, tapping myself on the chest and chanting,

 

“Put out the light, and then put out the light. If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out t y ig t, Should I, considering, find it sinister I can leave it dark and quenched forevermore.”

 

I had to do a little rewriting there, since rhyme seemed to be important here-but under the circumstances, I didn’t think Shakespeare would mind.

The fireball dimmed, darkened, and took a nosedive for the ground. By the time it hit, it was only a smoking cinder.

Sobaka stared at it.

Then she snapped her glare up to me, and I have never seen so much malice in a pair of human eyes. “Villain! Aroint thee! If you wilt not bend to my will, you shall break!” She began to move her hands in some sort of jagged pattern, chanting in a language I didn’t know, though it sounded like Latin.

I gave her a grim smile. She must have thought that if I didn’t know the words, I wouldn’t realize she was versifying-but I could recognize rhymes when I heard them, and the meter was strong enough to slice up for seasoning. Well, if she wanted to have a contest slinging verses, that was okay with me.

Or maybe it wasn’t. There was a huge rumble, and the ground heaved beneath my feet. I fell, instinctively turning to land on my side and roll as Sensei had taught me-and saw a jagged crack opening the earth where I’d been standing. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. How had she known an earth tremor was coming?

But it was my turn, and the minor chasm made me remember an old hard-times song. I made a few modifications:

 

“Well, if I had it, why, you could have it, But I ain’t got it-I’m down and out. And now I’ve had it-with you, I’ve had it, So now I’ll send it, and end this bout. She gave me trouble On a scale that’s Richter, So from the rubble Now I have picked her. And I will drop her Into a deep hole That will stop her From hurting people. And this old clown Will be unfound As she sinks down, down, down.

 

The earth rumbled again, and a hole opened right under the old woman’s feet. She dropped like a stone.

I stared.

Sobaka screamed.

I was so flabbergasted, I couldn’t think of anything to do until she had disappeared. Then I came to and leapt over to the hole to tell her not to panic, I’d dig her out-never mind that she’d been threatening to kill me-but she was wailing, “Air! Nay, give me air!”

I looked down the hole and saw two very wide and frightened eyes peering up out of the darkness about ten feet below me. “The earth, the earth presses in all about me! Spare me, Wizard! I shall trouble you no more! Only release me! Do not let the earth fall in on me, I pray! “

“Holy cow!” I gulped. I had just put a claustrophobic in a hole.

“Enough, right now!”

I heard a moo.

I froze. I didn’t want to look up.

But the wailing down below roused my guilt; I had to do something. I looked up slowly, straight into the big brown eyes of a leanlooking bovine female. It had a hump on its back-a Brahma cow.

Coincidence. Pure coincidence. Obviously, I was closer to India than I had thought.

I turned back to the hole, assured that the cow wouldn’t bother me. “Just keep calm! We’ll get you out of there!”

“Be quick,” she wailed, “before my master seizes the chance to take my soul!”

I froze again.

Then I said “No taking of souls allowed. Not while the person’s still living.”

“Aye, but death might happen thus! The master needs but a slight chance, a crumbling of the earthen wall, to bring about a natural death! Then he can take me, and I am doomed forevermore!”

“He?” I frowned. “You’re talking about the Devil?”

“Do not say his name!” she wailed. “Or you will hear the rustle of leathery wings!

I was about to object, saying that was only a superstition. Then I remembered the cow, and decided I didn’t want any more coincidences. “Look, as long as you’ve lived a good life by your own beliefs, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

“But I have not!” she wailed. “I have been as evil as I might! I have sold my soul for power over my fellows!”

“Sold your soul?” I stared. “Why the hell-uh, heck?-would you do a dumb thing like that?”

“I was ugly, and small, and shrewish, and all shunned me. ‘Sobaka,’ they said, ‘you are so ugly, even the swine will spurn you! You are stupid, Sobaka-step aside.’ ‘ ‘Tis done badly, Sobaka-you can never do anything right!’ ‘Not even I could love you, Sobaka, and I am your mother!’ ‘Do not sing, Sobaka, you have the voice of a crow!’ Until, at last, hate waked like a burning coal in my breast, and I swore I would someday have power to make them all suffer, to rue the day they had mocked me! But I could see no way to it, till the master appeared to me in a dream!”

I couldn’t believe it. Not only a paranoid with a five-star inferiority complex-it had blossomed into raving delusions. She had actually convinced herself that she had sold her soul! All of a sudden, I could understand how come she had dug herself under when she’d heard my verse-it had fitted into her delusional system and had convinced her subconscious that she’d been overwhelmed by a spell. And since I wouldn’t sign up with the Devil, presumably I had the force of good behind me, which is always stronger than evil in the end-at least, in the sort of medieval culture this seemed to be-so she’d been convinced my spell had taken over anything she could dream up.

Selling her soul was a metaphor for having dedicated herself to evil, of course. She had probably managed to become a minor bureaucrat just by toadying to the people in power-but she had convinced herself she was damned.

I couldn’t let her die in that kind of agony, no matter what she’d been trying to do to me. “Look,” I said, “even if you sold your soul, you can still get it back. All you have to do is repent, tell God you’re sorry and won’t do it again!”

“But what if I should live?” she cried, in an agony of indecision. “If I should repent and live, I would be the lowest of the low! All whom I have wronged would rise to smite me down! The master would send agents to deprive me of what life I’d have left-though ‘twould be precious little; I am more than an hundred years old already! ” Delusion again-she couldn’t have been a day over sixty, judging by looks. This being a medieval culture, she was probably only forty-life aged them fast, back then.

“Look,” I said, “just because you were small and plain didn’t mean everybody hated you.”

“Yet they did! All need to know there is one lower than they! How could they fail to despise me?”

“By your being good, way down deep,” I reasoned. “Sure, they’re cruel-but if they saw you were really good inside, trying hard to make up for everything mean you did, they’d start liking you.”

There was silence down at the bottom of that hole. Then, almost shyly, “Do you truly think so?”

Well, no, I didn’t, actually-just from the clues, I had a notion she had been maximally mean to everybody she’d ever known, and people aren’t that quick to forgive. So I changed the subject. “It doesn’t get done in a day, of course-you have to earn trust, earn forgiveness by proving you’ve reformed-and proving it again and again for years and years. They’ll punish you at first, sure, but you deserve it by now, don’t you?”

“I did not when I was a maiden!” she said hotly. “Where was their good will then?”

“That was then,” I reminded. “How much punishment do you deserve now? “

It was quiet, down there in the dark. Then she began to cry.

I hate the sound of a woman crying. “Please,” I said. “Please don’t cry. I’ll get you out of there somehow.”

“I have been so evil!” she wailed. “I deserve death, slow and agonizing death! Nay, what if they were to do to me as I’ve done to them? “

“Maybe it would be quick,” I suggested. inside me, my blood ran cold. just how wicked had this woman been, anyway? “Maybe they’d be so angry, they’d just kill you out of hand.”

“Then I would be damned!” she howled.

“Not if you’d repented.” Then I remembered my Dante. “Sure, you’d spend a long time in Purgatory-but at least it wouldn’t be Hell. Besides, the more they hurt you before they killed you, the less time you’d spend in Purgatory.” I hated that kind of logic-I had a notion it had resulted in a lot of people torturing themselves, and certainly refusing painkillers when their last hours could have been a lot less agonizing-but it would help in this case.

“I cannot face it,” she wept. “I cannot face the tortures I have meted out.”

There was a rustling noise, just in front of me.

I froze. Then, very slowly and much against my better judgment, I looked up.

He was very toothy in the grin, very red in the skin, very black in the wings, and very sharp in the horns.

Sobaka saw him and wailed so hard she almost jarred the earth loose.

I found my voice. “Is this your master?”

“Nay!” she howled. “‘Tis his minion!”

Or some peasant, I realized, come to get revenge by scaring the life out of her.

“Get back, slave,” he sneered. “This soul is forfeit!” And he jabbed at my face with his pitchfork.

I recoiled, but reflex took over; I grabbed the pitchfork and yanked, hard. I took him by surprise; he stumbled into the hole and fell flat on his face.

Dirt cascaded down inside.

Sobaka screamed in terror.

I realized I had to work on her delusional system-nothing else was going to work fast enough. “Get out of here,” I snapped. “You can’t take her soul till she’s dead!”

“I shall see to that, too.” The devil bared his teeth in a snarl, rolling up to his knees, crouching to spring. “I shall cave in the hole.

Fear not-she’s already buried.” And he sprang at me.

I leapt to the side, rolling. Oh, well, what the hell-I had a delusional system, too. “Guardian angel! This is where violence is authorized! “

“It is indeed!” a steely voice sang. “Avaunt thee, hell spawn! Or I shall rend your ectoplasm asunder!”

There he was, my guardian angel, twisting the pitchfork into a pretzel and throwing it at the devil. The horny one howled in terror and disappeared.

I wondered just what had been in those berries.

“Only juice,” the angel assured me. “I am real, Saul. Remember.”

I was thinking at a frantic pace. “Uh, before you go, could you step ver to that hole, for a second?”

“Wherefore?” The angel frowned down at the hole-and then, bless him, he stepped up to the brim and called down. “Sobaka! Call on God, and He shall yet send your angel to ward you! I have banished your demon, but he will not stay gone when I go!”

I couldn’t take a chance on any more hesitating. I began to chant, “Aid me now, insightful Freud,

 

To help this woman to avoid Paranoia stemming from Insecurities that come From toxic parents, spiteful peers, And all anxieties and fears They bred, that are a key That locked inferiority Into her soul, therein to fire Hot into a complex dire. Vengeful fantasies, begone! Grandeur-delusions, all be done!

 

I swear to this day, I don’t know where that verse came from. I mean, if I’m really up for it, I can improvise-but not like that.

Then I remembered the tried and true.

 

“Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

 

“I repent me!” Sobaka wailed, deep down in the hole. “Alas, my soul! All these years, I have sought revenge for naught! For insults that need not have hurt me! Ah, what a monster I have been!

Well. Results already. What had been major wounds suddenly seemed like minor irritations. It didn’t matter what people said to her, because she knew she was good.

Now.

But why was my guardian angel looking at me that way-I mean, surprised?

I shoved the question aside. The memories of her cruelties would swamp her newfound self-esteem, if I didn’t give her an out.

“What’s done cannot be undone, But what’s broken can be mended.

Remorseful sinners can atone For all the hurt intended.”

“Yet there is hope!” the voice cried from the hole. “I can make amends-some, at least! Those whom I’ve slain, I can give aid to their survivors! And if ‘twill restore some faith in goodness to them, to see me suffer as justice dictates, why then, let them hurt me!”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that-but it would probably give her the strength she needed, to endure the transition back to goodness. Seeing herself as a martyr was better than the fire of her own self-damnation-I meant, condemnation-and if I ever came back this way, I could see to it that she moved on from suffering to service.

“I repent me!” she cried again. “Dear Lord, save my soul! inflict what trials Thou wilt, what sufferings Thou dost deem just! Only let me come into Thy presence!”

There was a howl of rage and frustration somewhere, distant, but ringing. I looked up, surprised, but I didn’t see anybody except my angel.

He was smiling a very smug smile, though. “That, Saul, was her personal tempter. You cured her mind, and she saved her own soul.”

I stared.

Then I gave my head a shake. Whatever sort of dream this was, working within its rules was working very well. “Okay,” I said, “but we’d better hurry up and save her life, shouldn’t we?”

“Should we? For the longer she lives, the greater the chance that she’ll slip back into sin.”

I looked up at him, scandalized-but he wasn’t even looking at me, he was talking to empty air on the other side of the hole. I felt the gooseflesh rise.

“Indeed, you are right,” he said with regret. “If the Lord doth wish her home, naught we can do will save her.”

“So if we can save her,” I said, “that means it’s not her time.”

He looked down at me in surprise. “Indeed, Saul. You see it most clearly. ” Well. I wasn’t impressed. I’d figured that one out, long ago. Hadn’t he been watching? “So how do we get her out?”

“Try a verse,” he suggested.

“Ridiculous!” I snapped. “You can’t make things happen just by talking!

I speak of that to Madison Avenue,” he retorted. “‘Twas you put her down there, did you not?”

I just glared at him. I always hated it when the other guy was right.

But he was right-so I sighed and called down into the hole,

 

“The day doth daw, the cock doth craw, The channering worm doth chide! ‘Gin you must be out of this place, Though in sore pain you may bide!”

 

And she was standing beside the hole, looking about her in surprise that very quickly became major fear. “How-how did you achieve that?”

“By poetry,” I said impatiently, “or at least a very, very old folk song. What’s the matter-don’t you even know the rules of your own universe? ” She shook her head, faster and faster, stepping away from me, hands coming up to fend me off. “I know only the rules of good and evil! ” That stonkered me. “Then how did you work magic?”

“Why, by reciting the spells my mas … doomer gave me.”

Rote memorization. Parrotlike repetition. Coincidence and association. She hadn’t understood anything about what she was doing. No wonder she was a minor functionary. “There are other rules,” I said.

Then I remembered. “But you don’t need to know them any more.”

“‘Tis true.” Her hands came down. “All I need now is the justice of God, and the need for faith in Him.”

Suddenly, she was on her knees, clutching at my jeans. “And ‘tis you who have rekindled that faith! ‘Tis you who have cured my soul of the curdled anger called hatred, that did drag it down! ‘Tis you who have freed me to suffer for the right and seek to aid my fellow creatures! Oh, a thousand thanks, young Wizard, and a thousand blessings!” Then she remembered herself and dropped her hands. “If the blessings of a corrupted soul may be of benefit to you.”

I was hugely relieved. I just don’t like having things clutching at me-unless they’re young, female, and shapely; and even then I’m wary. This one may have been female, but she was anything but beautiful, and I could have sworn she was growing older by the second.

“Your soul shines like newly minted silver,” my angel said.

I looked up at him, startled. Compliments were one thing, but this

…

 

Then I realized he was prompting me. “Say it yourself,” I snapped.

“No way am I going to deliver a line like that!”

“To whom do you talk? ” Sobaka quavered.

I looked down at her, then looked up quickly at the angel. No, he was still there. “Him,” I said, pointing. “Can’t you see?”

She looked where I was pointing, and fear creased her wrinkled face, not that it made much difference. “Nay,” she said. “There is none there.”

“Well, there is,” I sighed, “even if he’s invisible to you.”

“A familiar!” Her tones quaked.

“No, an angel,” I said quickly, and started improvising; anything to give her the guts to keep going. “You’ve got one, too, and he-” “She,” my angel prompted.

“She,” I corrected. Maybe the Quakers had been right. “She is watching you every second.”

Sobaka glanced around her, fear turning into wonder on her face.

“Can you see her?”

“No,” I said, “but she’s there.”

“She is very happy just now,” my angel informed me.

“She’s very happy just now,” I told Sobaka. “Don’t make her sad again, okay?”

“Oh, I shall not!” She turned away, heading off downslope. “Oh, bless you, unseen angel, for never having despaired of me! Oh, stand by me and lend me strength, for I now must undergo the strongest trials of my life!” She turned back to call to me. “Ever shall I praise you in my prayers, healer of my soul!”

I shuddered, but managed to fake a smile. “Pay it back to other people,” I called. “You don’t have much time left. Better get busy.

“

 

“I shall! Oh, I shall!” And she headed off down the hill, caroling her joy.

I winced; a singer, she wasn’t. “At the rate she’s aging,” I muttered, “I don’t think she’ll even make it to the bottom of the hill.”

“Even if she dies, she will be on the road to Heaven,” my angel assured me. “Her angel thanks you, too.”

“Tell her she’s welcome.” I turned to him, frowning. “So angels come in sexes, too?”

“Well, no,” he admitted, “but it makes you humans think of us more easily if we seem to. You term it ‘identification’ and ‘selfimage.’ Call it ‘gender.’ “

“Identification!” I looked up, understanding something I’d been wondering about. “So that’s why you’ve dropped the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ form.

“That you might better understand me, aye.”

“Understand, my foot! You want me to identify with you, to emulate you! Hey, I’m not even supposed to be able to see you!”

“You did call upon me,” he reminded.

“And Sobaka didn’t, so she couldn’t see her angel? Is that who you were talking to, about whether or not to get her out of the hole or let her die,

“Her guardian angel, yes.” He nodded. “You have made three most happy today.”

“Three?” I looked around, frowning. “I only count two-Sobaka, and her guardian angel. if you say so.”

“Three,” he said proudly. “Count me, also. You have struck a blow for the angels today, Saul. You are on our side, after all.”

Why did that send such a thrill of panic through my veins? Why did I snap out, “No way! If I did something that worked for your side, it’s just because it was the right thing to do under the circumstances!

Don’t bet I’ll do it again! If something else comes up that I think is right, I’ll do it, even if it’s for the other side-by your rules!”

A look of apprehension crossed his face. “Nay, nay! Do not sin for no reason other than my having said you are on the side of the angels! “

“Very funny,” I said bitterly, “considering who’s talking. If it seems right, I’ll do it, even if it’s against your side-but don’t worry, I won’t murder, loot, or rape, just to keep from signing up with your team, either. I won’t go out of my way to commit what you think is wrong.” I turned on my heel and stalked away.

“You have lied,” he called after me, “with that speech.”

“See?” I said over my shoulder. “I’ve started already.”

Chapter Four

The nice thing about being past Sobaka’s checkpoint was that I was able to keep on trudging up-slope. I didn’t know where I was going, except that it felt right-especially since it was out of her domain.

Maybe, if I was lucky, I could get out of this massive hallucination.

Or else find Matt …

Another nice thing about getting up in the world, was that I kept stretching out the sunset. Finally, I came to a pass at the top of the mountain. Down below me, the valley was in shadow-twilight, to them. I could even see a few lights appearing-fires of some sort.

Maybe smoke-holes in huts? Had these people invented the chimney yet?

Then I looked up and saw one of the most glorious sunsets of my life. The only ones to beat it had been out in the Great Plains, where the landscape is mostly sky. Here, I was high enough up to have a lot of sky again, though not quite as much. Everything looked golden and rose, every mountaintop-and there were a lot of mountaintops.

I wondered where I was-the Pyrenees? The Alps? Was I even in Europe?

Or even on Terra?

I shelved that thought, but it shook me enough so that I stopped contemplating the sunset, I turned back to the pass, saw its huge granite walls towering to either side, and decided I wanted to be through it before the light completely failed. I hurried, with a wary eye above me, glancing from side to side-I’d heard that mountaineers, historically, tended to be rather territorial. I’d also heard that they had reasons. But if they were watching, I guess they figured I was no threat, or was too small a fly to swat, because nothing happened. in fact, the only living creature I saw was a kind of mountain goat, who watched me for a while, then jumped into a shadow and disappeared. He was beautiful, but the experiences of the day made it seem rather spooky.

So, as I came to the other end of the pass, I was wondering what I was going to do about being alone in a strange country, in what was promising to be an extremely dark night.

I was very glad to see the camp fires below me.

Not very far below, and I could tell they were camp fires, because of the tents. But the hallucination was still on-the men between the tents and the fires were wearing armor covered by long white tabards, and leading Percherons.

I sighed, squared my weary shoulders, and started the downhill hike.

One of the younger ones looked up, saw me, and called out, “Stranger!” He lugged out a sword the size of the Eiffel Tower and brandished it as he came toward me, demanding, “Friend or foe?”

“Either one,” I snapped-that sword got my back up. “Take your choice.”

He frowned at me-it wasn’t one of the expected answers. But his buddies dropped what they were doing and came clustering around; I hadn’t seen that much steel in one place since I’d crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. “Declare yourself,” one of the older ones demanded.

That was exactly what I had been trying not to do. “Saul Delacroix Bremener,” I told them, and nothing more.

“Saul Delacroix?” He frowned at his companions. “Named for the king or the apostle, and one of the cross.”

“But Paul was not of the cross,” one of the others objected. “He never knew the Savior, in life.”

“Still, ‘tis a goodly name,” another said, then moved aside quickly as a tall, broad-bodied man with grizzled hair stepped through. He had a face like tanned leather and a jaw like a vise. The commander, at a guess.

He looked me up and down and pronounced, “His attire is odd, but he has no horse or arms. He cannot be a gentleman; he must be a peasant.” Then he turned away, dismissing me with a gesture. “Let him stay; but he must draw water and fetch wood for the fire.” He glanced back at me. “See to it, fellow.”

The command did it. “Peasant” got to me, and the bit about menial labor made it worse-but the command made my anger turn cold and active. “Fetch it yourself,” I snapped. “I may be a commoner, but I’m no serf-and I am a gentleman.” Which was true, on a technicality-I was a scholar, after all. By their standards.

“Oho!” A glint came into the commander’s eye. “If you are a gentleman, then you are a gentleman-at-arms-for there is no other sort!” Great. To be a gentle man, you had to be capable of violence.

oddly, the idea appealed to me; it fit into my configurational pattern of contradictory concepts. Hypocrite? Who, me? I just calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.

“Yet he is clearly not a knight, or he would wear a sword. Ho, Gilbert! You aspire to knighthood-prove yourself! Test this stranger for Me!”

A kid with only a small sword grinned and stepped up to me, dropping into a wrestler’s crouch and beckoning.

I was appalled. He was at least six years younger than me, certainly still a teenager, and the top of his head was bald. “You’ve got a tonsure!” I said.

“All monks do,” he agreed.

“But you’re a knight!”

“Only a squire.” His lip curled at my ignorance. “I am not yet worthy of my final vows. Will you fight, or talk?

Well. Monks were obviously different here than they were at home. I dropped into karate stance, circling my hands and coming up ready to catch or chop. “Ready.”

He stared at my actions, then frowned and lunged.

He telegraphed the move-I saw the half step forward on the leftbut I resisted the urge to dodge, staying in to test the waters, so to speak.

He hit, and he hit hard. it was like slamming into an opening door.

He grabbed me in a bear hug and hoisted-it had to be the crudest move I’d run into since grade school.

But effective-he was very strong. I found myself rising high, then slamming down at the ground, while all around me, those monkscum-knights were cheering.

I twisted, landing on my side, and rolling back up to my feet to see the kid grinning as he came back in for more. But this time, I sidestepped at the last second. “That was your freebie,” I told him.

“Now I get my turn.”

He didn’t like that; he turned with a bellow and charged. I grabbed his arm and turned, put a hip against his, and flipped him. He swung up and down like a Ferris wheel. I figured he wouldn’t know how to fall, so I held on to his arm and pulled up, to make sure he landed on his side, without too much force. The knights rumbled at that-they didn’t like the look of it. I let go, and the kid scrambled to his feet again, face red, boiling mad.

Good. Angry, he’d make mistakes.

But he didn’t charge again; he was smart enough not to make the same error twice. He shuffled in, hands circling, hunched over, watching for an opening.

I decided to give him one. I dropped my guard and put my hands on my hips, looking exasperated.

Sure enough, he bit. He went for my knees. I shoved against his shoulders, pushing myself back, That made him madder; he charged forward, trying to catch my knee like a donkey going after the carrot that’s hanging from the pole. But he only took a couple of steps before he went for my crotch and arm, trying to hoist me. That meant he was coming up; I stepped back just long enough for his momentum to take him up far enough so that I could grab his tunic, lifting him a little bit as I hooked a leg behind his, and pushed as I kicked back. He fell-harder this time, since I wasn’t trying to break his fall for him. He scrambled up, eyes blazing, and sent a fist shooting toward my face.

Oh, so he wanted to box. I blocked, and the blow went wide as I counterpunched. He hit my shoulder, and pain jolted the joint, but nothing big. On my other hand, his head rocked back, and I brought the left down, fingers stiffened, and jabbed him in the solar plexus.

That took the fight out of him, along with the breath and the legs.

He folded around a center of agony, fighting for breath. I relaxed with a sigh of distaste-I really didn’t like doing this to anybody, but especially not to a guy who really hadn’t had a chance to fight back. Then I stepped around behind him, massaging his back and sides right opposite where I’d hit. The ring of men let out a shout of outrage, but the biggest guy held up a hand. “Nay. He but seeks to give aid to a fallen foe.” He turned to me. “Yet give over, good man-let us tend to him.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think you know the technique. I broke it, I’ll fix it.” I heard a hiss of breath below me and looked down at Gilbert.

“You okay now?”

“I will mend,” he gasped. “You are a doughty fighter.”

“Just had a little training,” I assured him. “You’re very strong, did you know that?”

“Strength is not enough,” he groaned.

“True.” I grasped his arm and pulled. He followed and came to his feet. From the heft of that biceps, I knew I’d done right to try to stay away from him. It was a good thing he had used that bear hug to throw me; if he’d just kept squeezing, I’d have been out like a light.

“You have fought bravely,” the commander assured him, and beckoned a couple of other squires. “See to him.”

They took him away, one on either side, and the ring of men began to break up as they turned back to their tasks, eagerly discussing the bout-what there had been of it. I noticed several guarded glances in my direction, but none of them seemed contemptuous.

I sighed. It was the same old story all over again. just win a few fights, and they’ll accept you. Wasn’t there anything more to a man than his fists?

“You are welcome among us now,” the commander assured me.

Of course.

But he was still watching me warily.

“Thanks for your hospitality,” I said wryly. “I assure you, I won’t start attacking without an invitation.”

He shrugged the comment away. “We have swords enough. As to this wrestling, ‘tis a peasant’s sport-yet you do it well.”

“Maybe too well?” I hazarded, from the look on his face.

“Mayhap.” He turned, glowering. ” ‘Tis a most strange manner of wrestling. Where did you learn it?”

“In the East,” I said. Okay, so America was west of here, assuming I was in Europe; but Japan was west of America, wasn’t it? And it was the East. So I had learned it in America, but it was Japanese, and America was east of Japan, so I had learned it in the East.

“All.” His face cleared; he nodded grimly. “The land of the paynim. Any rarities might come thence.”

He meant the Near East, I was pretty sure-but Muslim culture was just different enough from his that, for all he knew, anything, but anything, might be there. It struck me with sudden inspiration-an excellent means of explaining any way in which I didn’t fit in. “I lived in the distant land for many years,” I said. “I’m a scholar, and not terribly interested in the things of this world-but their wise men taught me that training of the body has to come before any really advanced training of the mind.”

“There is truth in that,” he allowed. “With what weapons were you trained?”

“Only the staff,” I said. “They drew their scholarship from holy men, who taught that it was wrong to use edged weapons.”

“As do ours.” The commander nodded. “Save for we few who are sworn to defend the True Faith by force of arms.”

“I was wondering about that,” I said. “You have tonsures. Are you monks, or knights?”

He frowned more closely at me. “How long have you been away from Christian lands?”

“Since I was very young,” I admitted. After all, the American public schools fit that description, these days.

His face cleared. “Small wonder, then. Know that we are knights of the Order of Saint Moncaire-yet monks, also.”

Well, now, that rocked me. I mean, I’d learned about the Knights Templars in school and read about them in Ivanhoe, and been thoroughly scandalized by the mere notion that a man who is purportedly dedicated to God could also be dedicating himself to smashing up his fellow human beings with a Clydesdale and a mace. But I tried to be tactful. “Uh … isn’t that kind of a contradiction in terms?”

Instantly, the frown was back. “Why, how mean you?”

“Why,” I said, “a monk is dedicated to love of his fellow human beings, and to upholding the Commandments-including ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and ‘Love one another.’ But a knight is dedicated to hurting those same people.”

“Assuredly, you cannot mean it!” He paled, and I could have sworn he was genuinely shocked. “Do you truly know so little of your own faith?”

“Of my own civilization, you mean.” I frowned up at him. “You forget I’ve spent most of my life in a foreign land.”

“Aye, I had forgot.” He gathered composure around him, but still seemed rather shaken. “Know, then, young man, that we, as knights, are dedicated to the protecting of God’s people from those who worship evil. And they who are dedicated to evil, scruple not to kill and maim in their lust to capture all that they can. It is therefore necessary to take arms against the minions of Satan; only major force can stay them.”

I braced myself and tried to smile. I was hearing the rationalization that had allowed medieval Christians to mount a crusade against their own countrymen, for no better reason than that they had come up with a different version of Christianity.

The commander turned away and began to stroll through the camp, glancing around him to see all was in order-but he was still talking, so I tagged along. “Know, too,” he said, “that in these lands of Christendom, many folk have fallen under the sway of Satan and his minions. Allustria, where we are now, is sunk in the bog of corruption; it is ruled by a sorcerer-queen. lbile is only lately freed from a similar fate, and Merovence is free only because a most powerful wizard came to the aid of the heir, Queen Alisande, and fought off the evil spells of the usurper’s sorcerer, so that her armies might cleanse the land of the false king Astaulf and his twisted knights.”

Well, usurpation I could understand, even if it was saturated with superstition. “I take it you come from this, uh, Merovence?”

“In truth, we have.”

“Ibile”-that had a familiar ring. The Iberian peninsula? if so, the “reign of evil” would probably have been nothing more than the Moorish Empire-to medieval Spaniards, the Muslim Moors seemed like pagans, therefore worshipping false gods. So I took the rest of it with a grain of salt. “Allustria” sounded like “Austria” with a couple of Is thrown in-maybe “Allemagne,” which was Germany, combined with Austria? I knew of a pretty demonic figure in recent history who had tried to do just that-but he wasn’t medieval. So I decided to reserve judgment on the evilness of Allustria’s queen. But Merovence-would that be France, or Italy? Or maybe Poland or Russia? At a guess it was the land of the Merovingians, which would have been France.

Why not ask? “I’m kind of turned around,” I said. “Which way is Merovence? “

“Why, ahead of you,” said the commander, surprised. “You are near its border. Did you not know you had come out of Allustria?”

Suddenly, the business about Allustria being under the reign of an evil queen gained credence-at least, judging by the reception I’d had there, and the things Sobaka had said. “I hadn’t known,” I said.

“Wherever it was, though, I was trying to get out of it.”

“In that, you succeeded. Know that you have come into the mountains, and even though the queen of Allustria claims them, her writ does not truly run-though she has folk stationed in pretense of governance. if these hills are held by anyone, they are held by the mountaineers who call themselves Switzers.”

Suddenly the geography clicked into place, and I frowned. “But aren’t you kind of going the long way around? To go through Switzerland to get into Allustria?”

The commander nodded. ” ‘Tis even so. Yet there is no other way to come upon the minions of Queen Suettay unawares. Even coming down from the mountains, we may be espied.”

“I think not,” I said slowly. “If you go down through the pass I came from, you may find that the functionary who’s supposed to watch that crossing point may not have been replaced yet.”

He glanced at me keenly. “Have you slain him, then?”

“Her,” I corrected, “and no, I didn’t do any killing. Persuaded her to see the error of her ways, you might say.” I didn’t like the way he looked at me then, and I added quickly, “Don’t get any ideas. I’m not a missionary.”

“You must have a silvered tongue, then, to have so swayed one of Queen Suettay’s liege men!”

I noticed my correction about gender hadn’t taken, and I wasn’t surprised. People tend to see what they want to see, and the Middle Ages kind of locked people into certain expectations, blinding them to anything they hadn’t been taught. I recognized this whole business about needing to take arms against evil as just another excuse for doing what Christianity forbade, which amounted to hypocrisy.

I wasn’t about to say that out loud, though. Standing for truth is one thing, but saying it when you haven’t been asked is another. I had no desire to get pummeled, or to become the subject of an impromptu beheading.

But I was still kind of dazed by the notion of an order of military monks. I wondered what their monastery looked like. Did it have a gate, or a portcullis?

“Strange that you know so little of your own land,” the commander sighed, “from sojourning so long among the paynim. Yet you are a scholar, and therefore also a gentleman-though you know not the weapons of honor.”

Again, I nodded. I knew something of late medieval society. A gentleman was below the aristocracy, but above the peasantry-upper middle class, in my own day’s terms. Knights qualified, but by the eighteenth century, so did squires, even if they never became knights.

They owned enough land to have several tenant farmers, and generally had more education than most. At this point in historyassuming it to be about 1350; I didn’t dare ask, for fear of betraying ignorance that might make me suspect-that meant being able to read and write, and knowing table manners and strict rules of protocol.

Not that these boys seemed all that big on class distinctions, though-I saw knights in their gambesons, fetching buckets of water and lighting campfires, right along with their squires. “Uh,” I said.

And, “I notice that your men are fetching and carrying, right along with their squires.”

“Aye,” he said. ” ‘Tis a lesson in humility.”

“But,” I said, “when I came up, you said all I was good for was fetching and carrying.”

“Aye, and I regret the haste of my words-yet by your appearance, who was to know your quality? Still, friend, though peasants may be fit only for hewing wood and drawing water, a knight is fit for any task, short of those fit only for royal blood, or appropriate to a monk.”

“But knights can draw water and gather wood, too, eh?” I nodded; it made sense, within their worldview. You can always do less than you’re able-and to them, it was a gesture of humility-but you can’t do more. The idea raised my hackles, especially since I knew damn well that any man could learn to ride or swing a broadsword-though I would have been the first to admit that some can learn it better than others. It was just that my enlightened age believes that every task is as honorable as any other-or tries to, anyway. “But you’re monks, too.”

“Aye, and like other monks, we labor at menial tasks as well as great, to make us mindful that we, too, are only mortal, and must strive lifelong if we would become saints in Heaven.”

Something about that struck a faint resonance of rightness within me. I tried to ignore it. “Meaning that all people are equal in God’s eyes? ” He stared at me as if I had spoken treason. “Nay, nay! Only that all may become saints, after death!”

But some saints were greater than others, no doubt. I had a vision of Heaven with everyone walking around with different sizes of halos, and smaller houses for the peasant-saints but bigger houses for the gentry-saints, and of course palaces for the aristocratsaints. My mouth quirked, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, then speak quickly to cover up. “In that case, do you mind if I help? ” The commander smiled slowly. “Why, how is this? Will you now freely offer to do what you refused, when commanded?”

I looked up at him, amused. “Kind of answered your own question, haven’t you? “

The commander laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “Aye, you are indeed a gentleman! We will be glad of your aid.’, “And I’m glad of your hospitality,” I rejoined, “for which, my thanks. Even with the opening wrestling match, you’re a lot more friendly than the last bunch I ran into.”

The tension was back, suddenly; he was alert all over again. “Who were they, and where?”

“A knight and his men-at-arms,” I answered slowly. “Don’t know their names, but his shield had a torch turned upside down and mashed flat. “Sir Hohle of the Tarn,” he said, his face grim. “I know him by repute, and all of it is evil. Where did you meet him?”

“On the other side of the pass, and a long way down, before the climbing became really steep.”

” ‘Tis well; his horses could not follow. What manner of welcome did they give you?”

“None at all; they used me for a punching bag, until I got mad and started hitting back.”

“Mad? You are a berserker, then?”

“No, no!” I closed my eyes, then looked up at him with a forced smile. “I meant ‘angry.’ I knocked down a couple of them, and the knight decided to flatten me-but his horse crumpled underneath him, and the fall knocked him out’ “Sheer happenstance?” The commander frowned. “I trust it not.

What spirit wards you?”

That brought a chill trickle of familiarity through my vitals, but I shrugged and said, “Just the usual guardian angel, as far as I know. “

“Then it must have been something you said,” the commander mused. “Are you a wizard?”

Again, that cold trickle-I couldn’t think why. “Not as far as I know.” I didn’t bother mentioning what had happened to Sobaka; surely that must have been my guardian angel at work. Or my hallucination

…

 

Hallucinations that happen to somebody else?

“It may be that you have an inborn talent for magic,” the commander said, brooding. “If so, walk very carefully! The merest misstep might cast you into the power of the Evil One-for folk who have such gifts draw either on the power of Satan, or the power of God, though they know it not. Beware, lest you evoke a power you wish not to worship.”

That got my back up. I wasn’t about to worship any source of power, no matter where it came from. After all, who’d worship Niagara Falls, just because it produced electricity? “Thanks for the advice,” I said, though. I’ve always tried to be polite, but at the moment, I had extra reasons.

” ‘Tis scarcely a matter for astonishment, that you had so ill a greeting,” he said, “since you were coming out of Allustria. In truth, I am amazed you could walk through that benighted land with no i-nore unpleasantness than such as they gave.” He stopped by a stack of leather buckets and handed me a couple. I braced for another scene, but he picked up two himself and started walking toward the stream that was gurgling nearby.

Mollified, I followed. “I wasn’t in Allustria very long.” That much, at least, was true.

He nodded. “You came through the Balkans, then?”

I didn’t want to tell a real lie, so I said, “I wasn’t about to ask for hospitality there.” I looked up sharply at a sudden thought. “Wait a minute! That’s why you insisted on that wrestling match, wasn’t it?

To see if I’d pull any tricks!”

“We did test you,” he admitted. “Think not harshly of us, I prithee. You were coming from Allustria-we marked you as soon as you came forth from the pass-and you wear outlandish garments .

Who knew but you might be a sorcerer come amongst us?”

I stopped, frowning. “How do you know I’m not?”

“Why, a sorcerer would have used foul magics to best his opponent, before ever the man had struck him-or, at least, would have used foul blows and no slightest mercy. You accorded your opponent first strike and did what you could to lessen the impact of his fall.”

So he had noticed why I’d held on to the kid’s arm. I nodded slowly; for the first time in my life, starting with a fight made sense.

Almost.

Suddenly, I felt bad about deceiving him, especially if I was going to accept his hospitality. What had happened to my obsession with truth? “Actually,” I said, “I didn’t go into Allustria by my own choice. I was in my homeland, thousands of miles away, and a very large spider bit me. I blacked out, and when I came to, I was on the other side of that mountain.” I gestured behind us.

The commander stopped in his tracks, staring at me. “Were you truly? Then you have been transported hither by some great magical power! “

“One that works through spider bites?”

He glanced to either side and lowered his voice. “I have heard of such-of a Spider King, whom no one knows to be either good or evil. ” Instinctively, I liked this arachnid autocrat. “Where can I find him? Maybe he can send me home!” Could I dispel the hallucination by working through its own terms?

“None knows, nor do I think he would send you hence, for he must have brought you here for a purpose of his own.” He frowned down at me for a few seconds, then forced a smile. “Still, be of good cheer! It may be you were transported here by a saint!”

I shuddered, deciding that, saint or Spider King, I was dealing with superstition.

That was what this whole scene was, of course. Was that what was really underneath my rationalist mind-a superstitious subconscious?

The commander turned away and started walking again. “Still, if you waked in Allustria, whatsoever it was that brought you must have work for you there. Mayhap you should not be fleeing that benighted land.”

“Or maybe I should,” I gritted. “After all, I didn’t apply for the job.

I wasn’t even consulted.”

We do not always choose our paths.” He knelt by the river and filled each leather bucket with a single swing of his arm, then stood again.

“Have you?” I asked. “Chosen your path, I mean.”

He nodded slowly. “We have chosen to go into Allustria, no matter the risk. There do be yet a few good folk there, who strive to maintain their virtue in a sink of absolute corruption. The sponsor of our order, Saint Moncaire, came to our abbot in a dream a fortnight agone, to reveal the plight of one such poor family, who hold by God and goodness, though they dare not do so openly … “

I felt the anger of outrage ring through me. Superstition or not, people have a right to worship as they please, without having to hide it. “But they’ve been careful, so they haven’t been bothered?”

“oh, nay! They were gentry, but over the span of generations, they suffered again and again, because their rulers sought to rob them of their faith by driving them into despair-first by taxes, then by spells.”

“But how’d these rulers know about them?”

“Because the good souls of this household never left off doing good for their neighbors and aiding those who were poor or beset.

Thereby did the witches and warlocks who were given jurisdiction over their parish know them for what they were and seek ways to bedevil them.”

“Sounds like some petty bureaucrats I know.” I nodded, with a bad taste in my mouth.

“Now,” the knight said, “they live without land and are tenants on the acres their ancestors owned-for they were squires, and their holdings held a whole parish within their boundaries. All its people, following the example of this family’s goodness, forsook their dog-eat-dog ways and persevered in the face of all the harassments and abuse their masters did heap on them. Those harassments have grown more and more frantic as the decades have passed, for such fortitude and perseverance in virtue is bound to attract the attention of the queen, who will no doubt punish her henchmen for failing to drive these virtuous folk into sin. Therefore they will harry this family out, root and branch-for they persevere in their faith and charity, even though they are poor and must ask aid of others, which none dare grant. One child is dead of poor food and chill; another is ailing. They are at wits’ end and near to despair. Therefore hath our abbot sent us forth, to win glory by bringing these poor folk out of the land of spiritual misery, and into the light of Merovence.”

“That could be dangerous,” I suggested, “if there really are so many evil sorcerers around-and even more, so many evil knights.”

“Most dangerous indeed, and ‘tis quite possible we shall lose our lives in the attempt.” His jaw firmed and his eyes flashed. “Yet ‘tis for us to seek to ward the godly, unheeding of the peril-and if we die, we die. Spending our lives in so worthy a cause, we shall surely not linger long in Purgatory, and it may be that we shall even be accorded the crown of martyrdom.”

I winced; I wondered how many people had been lured into unnecessary suffering and early death by that promise.

” ‘Tis not death we should fear,” the commander said, “but that we might fail in the attempt-for we must bring that family out right quickly, ere they despair and are subverted and dishonored, or slain.”

“Should fear,” I said softly. “But what you really do fear is the evil that you have heard is in that land. Right?”

“We should be fools if we did not.” His whole body tightened so much that I knew it was closer to terror than fear. Privately, I gave him credit for being either a hero, a saint, or a fool. I didn’t think he could really qualify as a saint, since he was using a sword-so, all things considered, I strongly favored the last option: a fool. Not that I was about to say so, of course.

So I accepted their hospitality for the night, helped with the camp chores, and joined in the sing-along on the less-religious songs-I always did like “Amazing Grace,” but I wasn’t too good on the Gregorian stuff. I was a devoutly agnostic Protestant, and the God I didn’t believe in was Calvin’s, so I didn’t do too well on the Latin-only one year in high school, and it didn’t sound much like theirs. Different dialect, no doubt.

Then I bedded down at their fire, helped with the morning chores, hauled a bucket of water to help douse the fire-and held up an open hand in salute. “Well, it’s been fun. Thanks a lot for your hospitality, Sir Monk-but I gotta be going now.”

“Assuredly you will not ride alone!” He seemed to be genuinely dismayed. “You are not yet past the reach of Queen Suettay. Wizard or not a lone man is a marked man; you will be easy prey for whatever evil forces she may send against you!”

“I’ve managed okay so far,” I objected.

He sighed. “You have indeed-yet you slept among armed monks last night. How many other nights have you spent in Allustria?”

I swallowed thickly, remembering what superstition claimed about nighttime. “None,” I admitted. “Only one day.”

“Even so.” He scowled. “And in that day, you did work magic?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have said so, but …”

He chopped off my comment with a sideways sweep of his hand.

“What you would say matters little; what you did, is all. Be assured that Suettay knows of your presence-or that her underlings do.”

That, I could believe, whether or not magic really did work here.

Sobaka’s boss was bound to notice she was missing, sooner or later-and if she were at all efficient, it would be sooner. First thing I knew, I might have bloodhounds on my track, and I had a notion that in this world, the emphasis was on the blood. “I’ll be okay,” I protested.

“You mean, ‘well enough,’ ” he interpreted, “and in Allustria, there is no such state. You are either holy enough to withstand the assaults of the satanic, or you will succumb to their temptations and become yourself an ally of evil.”

“No way!” I glared up at him. “I don’t buy it, Captain! You don’t have to be either a saint or a devil-you can just be yourself, human and humane. A man can stand alone, and I intend to! I refuse to commit myself!”

“Mayhap that is true in the land from which you came, but it is not, in Allustria.” He clapped and beckoned. The knights and squires looked up in surprise, and he pointed at Gilbert, the guy I’d wrestled yesterday, then beckoned. The kid dropped his horse’s reins and came over.

“This foolish wizard seeks to ride alone, still within Queen Suettay’s reach,” the commander explained.

The kid went wideeyed, staring at me as if I had just volunteered to be the main course at a state dinner.

“It’s not really that bad,” I protested.

“Nay, it is!” he said. “You will be corrupted or slain ere you see another dawn! ” My stomach sank, but I stood up a little straighter and said, “Look, I’m not the superstitious kind, but I’m no fool, either. if I see trouble coming, I’ll hide, and if it won’t pass by, I’ll fight.”

” ‘Tis praiseworthy to die fighting,” Gilbert admitted, “yet foolish to spend your life needlessly.”

The commander nodded. “Buy some advance in grace, at least, if you must give up your life. Nay, I cannot let you ride fully unguarded. Gilbert, do you ride with him, as his shield and buckler.”

The kid stared at him as if he’d been wounded. “But, my general!

To lose my chance for glory in our quest-”

“is what I require of you.” The commander’s tone was iron.

Gilbert flushed, then slowly bowed his head, but his back was ramrod-stiff.

” ‘Tis not so vile as it may seem.” The commander’s tone softened. “I have had a dream that has shown me that this man is a hinge-upon him will turn great events, and if he can be held to the path of goodness, I doubt not he will aid greatly in the overthrow of the evil queen, and the establishment of the reign of goodness in Allustria.”

Gilbert looked startled, then glanced at me.

“Don’t look over here,” I said. “It’s news to me, too.”

“A stalwart man with a rugged face did speak to me as I lay sleeping,” the commander said. “He wore kingly robes, and a cap with leaden images of saints all about its rim. He told me that this man Saul will be the lever that topples the throne of Allustria, even as the disciple Paul was transformed from the sword that slew the early Christians, to the share that plowed the field of Gentiles.” He turned to me. “You are fortunately named.”

I wasn’t about to disagree with him, but I did think his metaphors were a little odd. “Who was this saint you saw in your dream?”

But the commander shook his head. “Some holy man of Allustria’s age of virtue, belike, who lived in humble obscurity and died unknown; not all the saints were famed, or even known. He was none of whom I have ever heard. Yet his face did not shine, so he may be a blessed one, not a saint.”

I frowned. “How do you know he isn’t a devil masquerading in disguise? ” Everybody in hearing range looked up with a gasp, and the commander stared, offended. “Why, for that I am in a state of grace!”

“Uh, sorry.” I swallowed and forced a smile. “But even in a state of grace, you could be tempted.”

“Mayhap,” he said slowly, “but a devil would not wear saints’ medals on his hat.”

I gave it up. He was so certain about it that he couldn’t even consider being wrong. “But look-I really don’t need an escort. This young man has important work to do.”

“My work is what my captain commands,” the kid assured me, and if he says that accompanying you is of greater import than our quest, he must be right.”

That grated. Faith is all well and good, but so is skepticism.

But the commander was nodding. “Import there is, and the danger will be no less-mayhap greater. Nay, there will be great chance of gaining glory in this mission-and, win or lose, you will gain your spurs.

The kid’s eyes fired.

“Dead or alive,” I muttered.

“How do you say?” the young man asked me courteously.

“That this really isn’t necessary,” I snapped. I had to admit that I liked the idea of an armed escort, but I have this thing about close and continued contact with people I don’t know well. “Look, I really appreciate the offer, but I travel alone.” I grabbed his hand and pumped it. “Nice wrestling with you. Have a good trip.” I dropped his hand, gave the commander a curt bow. “Thanks for your hospitality, Sir. I wish you well on your quest-and good-bye.” Then I turned on my heel and strode away.

Behind me, I heard him call, “God be with you, too, Wizard,” and to somebody else, presumably the squire, “Why do you wait, Gilbert?

Take sword, buckler, and horse, and go with him!”

I walked faster. If the kid had to pack, I had a few minutes to get lost, at least. There was a line of evergreens ahead; if I could make it to the trees, I could hide well enough so that he might miss me.

I was about ten yards away from the first fir when I heard the hoof beats behind me.

Chapter Five

Look, I hate jocks-or, well, not jocks as people, just jocks as a class; and you couldn’t have any better example of the jock-ocracy than medieval knighthood.

“Ho, Wizard!”

I sprinted.

The evergreen boughs closed around me. I heard a blundering behind me, and a cry, “Wilt thou not wait?”

No. I wouldn’t. At least, not if I had any choice. I dodged to the left, since he’d probably be expecting the right, and plastered myself behind the largest trunk I could find.

“Wizard? Wizard!

I tracked his voice and, as he moved forward, I sidled around backward, trying to keep the tree trunk between us. I must have succeeded, because he blundered around for an awfully long while, coming up with all sorts of swear words that had to be so clean they were almost antiseptic-things like, “By blue!” and “Bones!” and “Blood and iron!” I resolved to remember them if I ever had to cure an infection. When he was far enough away, I sprinted to a little thicket I had seen and crawled in. He kept crashing around, coming up with an amazing variety of expletives that had absolutely no need to be deleted, while I tried to stifle my laughter, Finally he gave up, blundering back out the way he had come, lamenting his failure loudly and at great length. I felt sorry for him, a little, then reminded myself sternly that he was probably better off with his buddies-and in any case, this was my chance for a getaway.

I crawled out and started walking fast, heading downhill. Twice I struck a trail wide enough for a horse, but I sheered away from them-that was exactly the kind of road he’d be likely to take, if he hadn’t given up looking for me yet. They angled across my path, instead of going straight down, which I figured was a plus.

Finally, I came out onto a clear road, wide enough for two horses side by side. It was still trending downhill, but at an angle opposite to the trails I’d seen, and I decided to chance it. The kid had either given up by now, or passed me by. But I kept a wary ear tuned as I went down the dirt track, walking fast, alert for the slightest sign of him. So the first time, Gilbert saved my bacon without even being therebecause I was listening for him, I heard the sudden rustle in the leaves just behind me, and had already leapt forward before I heard the thud on the ground. I whirled, chopping at the point where a uy’s neck would be if he were crouching. I was a little high; I caught him on the side of the head, and he yelled as he went sprawling.

I whirled back to the front, having a hunch he wouldn’t have dared jump an able-bodied man if he were alone. Sure enough, another specimen was just coming out of his crouch from having dropped from the branch ahead of me, as four of his buddies stepped in from the sides, two with battle-axes, two with arrows drawn.

Let me tell you, these were not the nice, clean boys from Sherwood Forest-or, rather, if there really was a Robin Hood, this is probably what most of his merry men really did look like. Their clothes were patched and filthy-I could actually see the dirt-and the only one of them who shaved had been neglecting that art for several days. The others looked as if their beards got trimmed once a year, and that had been January first. Their grins showed rotten teeth, and they smelled to high Heaven.

The one in front uncoiled from his crouch and sprang at me with a shout. I didn’t try to get out of the way, just gave ground fast, so that he didn’t slam into me terribly hard. I nearly kicked him away from sheer disgust; the stench of him was more likely to knock me out than his fighting. But the archers wouldn’t try a shot, if he was real close, so I ignored the stench and grappled him. Unfortunately, he grappled back, throwing his arms around me and squeezing. I whirled him around with the pain in my ribs getting worse and worse-all he knew was a bear hug, but he was strong! I’d caught him with one of my arms up, though, so I waltzed him over toward his buddies at the side of the path, hoping my wind would last until I was next to one of the hatchet men.

Max the Axe saw me coming and backed off, keeping just far enough away for a swing, worse luck, and I was starting to see spots, so I stamped on my hugger’s instep. He howled and loosened up; I broke his hug and hit him with three quick punches to the face. He let go with an oath that would have blistered paint, if they’d had any, and I staggered away, just accidentally stumbling into the axeman.

He saw me coming and shouted, swinging his blade up, but I slammed into him in a body block, and we both went down. I grabbed the axe handle and twisted as I rolled. He yelped, and I came up holding an axe in both hands.

A stick cracked down on my right-hand fingers. I yelled as the fingers went numb, and somebody twisted the axe. My hurt hand fell loose, but I yanked hard on the other one and kicked. I got him in the gut-he was the first one I’d chopped, getting back into the fight. He gave a loud grunt and fell away, and I started whirling the axe, as if it were a propeller blade. The four who were still on their feet backed away-they didn’t like the look of that, and the archers didn’t look too sure about trying a shot.

I was just realizing that one was missing when the blow caught me on the back of the head, and for a minute, I couldn’t see. Somebody grabbed the axe out of my hand; somebody else kicked me in the gut, and I went down with that awful dread that the final blow is coming, that I was just about to gain empiric evidence as to whether there is an afterlife.

But there was a lot of yelling going on still, and some very odd ringing noises. I heard heavy, dull, staccato sounds with some howling thrown in, and managed to pull myself up, my eyes clearing, to see three of the bandits trying to scramble back into the brush, three of them lying crumpled on the ground in front of the horse’s hooves, and my old buddy Gilbert, with a little round shield on his left arm and a large sword in his right, hefting and glaring after them as if trying to decide whether to go chasing.

“Don’t try it,” I croaked. “Once you’re off the road, they’ve got the advantage. They can just sit up in the trees and throw rocks at you, even. “

“Friend Saul!” he cried, whirling toward me. “You are hurt!”

“Just a mild concussion.” I hoped I was as well as I was trying to sound. “Y’ know, I think I’m glad you decided to tag along, after all.”

Then things got kind of dim, and my knees folded.

He was there before I hit the ground, leaning down from his horse, holding me up.

“I’ll … be all right,” I managed. “Just … need to get my bearings. “

“You should rest.”

“Just a little while.” I looked up into his broad, open face, saw the frown of concern, and decided maybe there was something to be said for jocks, after all-if they were on my side.

Well, what could I do? Tell him to go home to Papa, after he’d saved my life? Right.

So we went along together. Gilbert insisted that I ride the horse, and I insisted that I didn’t-if it doesn’t have brakes and a gear shift, I’m not interested.

“You shall have to learn to ride, if you stay long in our land!” he remonstrated.

“I’m not planning to,” I assured him. “What’s a nice kid like you doing in the military, anyway?”

“Why, for that good folk need protecting!” He was mildly scandalized that I even asked.

Well, that made sense. “But why as a monk?”

“I felt the call,” he said simply. “I have a vocation.”

I’d always wondered about that. “What’s it feel like-the call? Did you have a dream? A sudden moment of enlightenment?”

“I have heard of such,” he said slowly, “yet in my case, ‘twas simply that there was a famine when I was so small that all I can remember is the great gnawing in my belly, and the kindly face of the monk who came at last to give my family a loaf of bread. In the rush of gratitude that came then, I wished to be like him-and that wish never left me.”

“Just a good example.” I frowned. “Didn’t it bother you, when you were old enough to know what was going on, to find out that some monks were greedy and lustful?”

His face hardened. “I did hear of such, aye, though we only knew of one, ourselves-but we did learn of a whole abbey full of them, miles away, and heard that other abbeys did visit grinding rents upon their tenants, the whiles their monks did live in luxury. Yet the monks who dwelt nearby us lived in a cloister they had built with their own hands and which they themselves had enlarged and repaired. They farmed, even as we did, and would not accept gifts of any more land than they themselves could till.”

“Sounds like the Franciscans,” I said.

He frowned. “I know none of that name. Their example has shone down the years of my life, though. I cannot condemn all clergy for the mistakes of a few, aye, or even of many, when those I have met myself are good and godly men.”

I nodded. “Then why didn’t you join their order?”

“Alas! As I grew older, I found that I was fond of fighting. The good monks did rebuke me, and I strove hard to contain my anger at others’ taunts; but when they struck at me, I felt outrage at their injustice and smote them down. Then did I come near to despair, thinking myself fit only for the plow and never for the cloister-but the monk who came to say Mass for us, every Sunday, did learn of this and told me of the order of Saint Moncaire. ‘If you must needs strike a blow,’ quoth he, ‘let it be the minions of Satan that you smite, so that you may protect the poor and weak.’ Thereupon my heart did thrill, and I gave my poor parents no rest till they agreed to let me try my vocation, and I went to the monastery as a squire.”

I nodded. “So you like fighting, but you wanted to be a monk, and the Moncaireans let you combine the two. Very neat. And you wanted to be a knight?”

“What lad does not? Yet I knew I could not, for I was baseborn; I wished only to be a squire, and never thought I could be more.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “So that’s how it goes here, is it’ You have to be born a knight in order to become one?”

“‘Tis possible that a lowborn squire may be knighted for great courage and prowess,” he pointed out, “yet ‘tis rare.”

“A battlefield commission, huh? And of course, he’ll never really be accepted by the other officers.”

“Your terms are strange-yet ‘tis so. His children, though, will be ranked with any, for they will have grown with other knights. Natheless, ‘tis otherwise, in my order-any lad may become a knight of Saint Moncaire, if he proves his vocation. Yet it will take great deeds to win my spurs.” He flashed me a grin. “Therefore, lead me into danger, Wizard Saul! For I would prove my worth!”

“I’ll try not to arrange it,” I assured him, but I had this secret, nagging dread that he was going to get his wish.

Maybe right now. We came to the top of a rise and saw a huge crack in the ground right in front of us. It was a gorge, and it stretched away out of sight to the right and left.

But there was a bridge over it. Very narrow, but it was a bridge.

“Well, at least there’s a way over.” As we came up to it, though, I developed doubts-it looked kind of flimsy.

“Looks like single file,” I told Gilbert. “Think it’ll take your horse’s weight?”

He scanned it with a practiced eye-I guessed he’d been trained in military engineering. “Aye, if I dismount.”

“Good enough.” I started out across.

“Nay, Wizard Saul!” he yelped. “First we must test for-”

“Ho! Ho!” something tumbled.

I stopped and glanced at the sky. “Thunder?”

“Worse!” Gilbert cried. “Flee, Wizard!”

Hands as wide as bread boxes slapped onto the railing. Something huge and smelly swung itself up in an arc and landed with a shock that made the bridge sway. I held tight to the railing and stared, totally dumfounded.

It was about eight feet tall and shaped like a turnip, with legs as thick as kegs coming out of the narrow end. The wide end tapered down into two tentacles with the huge hands on the ends, and two eyes the size of dinner plates stared down at me from its chest. Beneath them, a knob of nose twitched over a vast slice of mouth, which opened in a grin set with shark’s teeth.

“What the hell is that?” I yelped.

“‘Tis a troll!” Gilbert howled. “Not from Hell, but vile enough!

Stand aside, Wizard Saul, and let me have at him!”

“How?” I looked frantically to left and right, but there was no place to jump to. Then I remembered that I knew how to swim. I turned to dive over the rail, but Gilbert called, “Nay! He’ll leap in after you and catch you in a trice! ” I wondered crazily if a trice was anything like a net, as I turned back to watch the troll slobbering toward me. I backed away, blurting, “But you can’t be real-you’re a fugitive from a fairy tale! So I can’t be your meal!

The monster jerked to a halt and glanced about him, and I could have sworn he was looking nervous. So help me, one huge finger came up over his mouth, looking for all the world as if he were trying to shush me!

“I will not be silenced!” I cried. “The word is my weapon!”

The troll shrank back, hands coming up to fend me off, and Gilbert cried, “A deft stroke! oh, bravely done! Smite him again, Wizard!”

“How?” I cried.

The troll relaxed, straightening up with a slobbering grin, and came slavering toward me again.

I backed away fast, wondering what had spooked it. “What’s a matter, big guy? You worried about fairies?”

The troll jerked to a stop again, making frantic shushing motions and glancing about him.

“You are!” I cried in triumph.

 

“You’re afraid of the word itself! Okay, Gruesome, try this one on for size! ‘Rushing down the mountain And trooping through the glen, We dare not go a-hunting For fear of little men!’

 

The troll gave a moan of fear and jumped.

He landed on top of me, and I slammed a punch in sheer reflexand howled; it had felt like hitting rock. The howl was a mistake, because then I had to inhale, just as that huge midriff slammed me back against the wood, Something cracked under me; I saw stars, and my w o e universe was filled with the incredible stench of that monster.

I couldn’t believe it-that close to water, and he didn’t bathe?

Dimly, I beard Gilbert yelling, and beard something that sounded like ringing.

Then, suddenly, there was light, and the hideous smell was gone.

I gasped, pushing myself up as quickly as I could-and there, so help me, were a dozen little guys scarcely as tall as my knee, in red caps and brown outfits, kicking at that troll and pinching him, How their pinches could make any progress against that granite skin, I didn’t know-but I wasn’t about to object.

“You have summoned them!” Gilbert shouted. “Oh, bravely done, Master Wizard!”

Master? I wasn’t even a journeyman!

The yelping troll was caught between two packs of little men now.

He couldn’t even jump off the bridge, because there was a batch of them on each side, pinching and kicking if he came near them. He huddled down into a miserable, wailing bundle, tentacle-arms curled to protect his face. Somehow, I almost felt sorry for him, “Your charity does you credit, but is sadly misplaced.”

“Hub?” I looked up to see a bigger-than-average elf standing on the railing by my shoulder. instead of a red cap, this one wore a coronetyour basic, minimal crown.

“Yet ‘tis foolishness, also,” the little guy went on, “for this monster has no mercy within his flinten skin, no heart, no compassion; he would have devoured you as soon as looked at you.”

“I believe it.” I glanced at the huddled, moaning granite turnip, then back to the guy with the crown. “Lucky for me you were in the neighborhood. Thanks for the save, Your Majesty.”

“Highness,” he corrected. “I am a prince of Wee Folk, not a king.

And ‘tis a hobnailed jest to speak of luck, when ‘twas your spell that summoned us.”

He glanced at his corps, while I stared. Spell?

Then he turned back with a severe frown. “‘Twas unwise of you to venture to cross a bridge without having taken precaution ‘gainst that which might dwell beneath it. You know the signs of bridges that were built by trolls to tempt mortals to their doom.”

“Uh-no, to tell you the truth, I don’t. I’m, uh, kinda new in this country, you see.”

“New?” He stared at me. “Have you no trolls whence you come?”

“Not like this,” I assured him. “I admit I know some people who could qualify, but they’re really human underneath it all.”

“This one is not!” He turned on Gilbert, who had come onto the bridge behind me. “You, squire! Assuredly you must know this land-you wear the badge of the Moncaireans! Did you not warn him of his danger?”

“I did not speak quickly enough,” Gilbert said contritely.

“Did you not know he was a stranger?”

“I confess I did not realize the depth of his strangeness.”

I’d heard that before, from other jocks-but I decided not to take offense, this time.

The elfin prince turned back to me. “Do you henceforth survey most closely every bridge that you may come to! If ‘tis rudely made, and the ends of the logs show the marks of teeth, not axes, be sure to recite a spell for the banishing of trolls ere you cross.”

I looked and, sure enough, the ends of the logs did look as if they’d been chewed through. “I didn’t think to look,” I admitted. “Even if I had, though, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it.”

“Not thought!” the elf prince and Gilbert cried together.

“Yeah,” I admitted ruefully. “I probably would have just thought somebody had used logs that beavers had cut down.”

The prince and the squire exchanged a glance, then turned back to me. “What are beavers?”

Then I remembered that the flat-tailed rodents with the buck teeth were American fauna only. “Uh, small animals, where I come from, who like to chew on things.”

“Most amazing,” Gilbert muttered. The elf prince said firmly, “I would not offend you, squire, but you alone are not protection enough for this ignorant man.”

“Hey,” I objected.

“Not a word!” The prince held up a hand, then turned to snap his fingers at his retinue. “Stand back, and let him rise!”

They looked up, startled. “But, Highness “Do as I bid!”

Reluctantly, they stepped back.

“Rise, troll,” the elf prince said, with a tone that hinted at dire tortotes.

Slowly, the troll uncurled itself and stood up to a shaky eight feet, whining at the back of its throat.

“What is thy name?”

The troll shrank back, but a hail of kicks and pinches made it straighten up with a howl, “Your name,” the prince intoned, in a pitch that wavered like the pattern on a Damascus blade.

The troll croaked some incomprehensible pattern of gutturals and rachetings-but it was unmistakably language, if one I couldn’t understand.

I stared, amazed that the monster could talk, but the elf prince held up both hands and began to chant something dire. I could tell it rhymed and had meter, but I couldn’t have made the first guess as to what the words meant. I only know that it made the troll cower away, hands up to fend off the words, and I caught the grinding and grating of his name in there a couple of times. Then I got a real shock, because the verse ended in my name, “Saul!”

The elf prince clapped his hands, and the troll straightened up, moaning, his huge mitts dropping to his sides.

The prince nodded, satisfied, and turned back to me, fists on his hips. “He is tamed now. I have laid a geas upon him, binding him to go wherever you go and protect you from any thing, beast or man or spirit, that does seek to hurt you.”

My mouth dropped open; I stared at the troll, appalled. Then I turned back to the prince to protest that I didn’t really want such a gruesome traveling companion, but the prince only held up’a hand, palm out. “Nay, do not thank me, I know you wish to protest that I am too kind, but it is our great amusement to protect good mortal folk from such depraved creatures as this.”

I wanted to protest, all right, but not about his kindness.

“Your Highness is exceedingly gracious,” Gilbert said gravely. I turned to ask him if he was out of his mind, but he was bowing his head to the prince, and I realized anything else might get me in worse trouble than I was in already. No matter what, I didn’t want these little guys for enemies. I swallowed my protest and turned around to bow, too-after all, we could always find a way to lose the monster when the elves were out of sight. He didn’t look to have too high an IQ. In fact, he didn’t look to have an IQ at all.

The prince pointed off toward the cast. “The gorge will narrow a league or so farther on, and you will find there has been a rock slide that will provide a bridge for you.”

Something rumbled in the distance, in the direction he was pointing. I wondered how long that rock slide had been there. No, I definitely didn’t want these little guys to take a dislike to me.

“Henceforth,” he said, with a very severe stare at me, “if you realize that you shall need our help, summon us at once. There is an aura about you that tells me that you shall be vital to the casting out of the rule of evil which we so hate for the trouble and grief it has caused my people; so summon if you so much as think you may have need of us; and be sure, we shall come.”

“I’m not really that important.” Why did everybody here think I was the solution to all their troubles? I admit I was used to that attitude from the women I met, but supernatural beings were another matter.

“You are,” he said, with a steely glare that allowed no argument.

“Call at the slightest need. Till then, farewell! Men of mine! All flit!”

Sunlight got in my eyes; I blinked, and they were gone. There was no one there but Gilbert, his horse, me-and the troll.

I braced myself, ready to run-I didn’t think fighting would do much good.

But a very dejected troll came mincing up to me, hanging his head-or the whole top half of his body, at least-and fell to his knees.

I backed away, horrified. “All right, all right! I’ll have to put up with you-but no kneeling! I hate that!”

The troll scrabbled to his feet, staring down at me expectantly.

“Do you remember my saying anything about agreeing to take this lunk along?” I asked Squire Gilbert.

“Why-you have no choice in the matter, Wizard,” he said in surprise. “Neither has the troll.”

“Oh, yeah?” I started out across the bridge. “Just watch me.”

There was a loud groan from below.

I froze. I hadn’t stopped to think that Huge-and-Gruesome might have had company. I backed away in a hurry; whatever was under there just might have brains enough to realize that the easy way to get rid of Gruesome’s geas was to get rid of me.

On the other hand, if it tried, Gruesome would have to fight itand it might not be smart enough to realize that. I decided I didn’t want to find out. I retreated back to Gilbert’s side with alacrity and turned away east. “On the other hand, maybe a one-mile detour wouldn’t be so bad after all. Let’s go, Gilbert-fast!”

“If you say so, Wizard.” He mounted and paced alongside me on his horse, trying not to let his smile show.

I tried to ignore it-and tried harder to ignore the slap of huge flat feet behind me. I’d had experience with that, too, but it wasn’t working any better this time than it had before.

Gilbert didn’t seem to mind it, but every now and then, I caught him glancing back out of the corner of his eye. All in all, it was a very nervous-making mile, though he and I tried to cover up with light conversation.

“So you were born a peasant, but within the order you can become a knight?”

“Aye. Even so, ‘tis not likely, mind you-but I may attain glory enough to cover me with honor.”

Interesting metaphor. I was tempted to try to figure out if it was mixed, but resisted in favor of gaining information. “Any chance you can change your mind then, leave the order, and get married?”

“Oh, nay!” He turned to me, shocked. “I would never wish to leave the order!”

“Eighteen is young,” I said, from the airy height of twenty-five.

“Twelve years from now, you might be tempted to reconsider.”

“Heaven forfend! May the angels protect me from such!”

“I hope so,” I agreed. “But could you, if you wanted to?’ He started to object again, then closed his mouth, frowning, and thought it over.

“Purely hypothetically, mind you,” I said.

“Nay, I could not,” he said. “In the Order of Saint Moncaire, we do not take our final vows until we are accorded the accolade of knighthood.

“So.” I nodded. “Once you become a knight, you can’t quit.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “Before that time, whilst I am still a squire, I could leave the order, if I wished-but I do not wish.”

I hoped he wouldn’t get the quick exit that would no doubt be the most honorable. I’m sure he would have wanted it, though. These medieval Christians were crazy for martyrdom.

Well, there went my notion of social mobility. In my own feudal Europe, the only two ways for a young man to rise in socioeconomic status were through the army, and through the Church. in the army, there was an extremely long shot that a peasant might be knighted on the battlefield for services above and beyond the call of sanity. In the Church, native ability alone might push him up to the rank of bishop, or pope if he were Italian-but he wouldn’t have any heirs to leave it to. So, okay, the Order of Saint Moncaire was giving Gilbert a chance to improve himself-but only just himself. Well, that was all he asked, anyway.

So far.

The slapping of big flat feet was coming closer. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that the troll was gaining, and he had a big wide grin. Okay, it was an eager, puppy-dog, ingratiating grin-but it didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm. “Uh, Squire Gilbert-should we do anything about our hungry friend back there?”

“Feed him, do you mean?” Gilbert looked back, then thought better of the idea. “With meat of beasts, that is.”

“Assuming we’re not beasts.” I gave the troll a jaundiced eyeglance, I mean. “I’m not sure he knows the distinction-and he’s definitely getting closer.”

“But of course! How can he protect us if he is not with us?”

“By being far away.” I turned back to the front and hurried. “Come on. Let’s find that rock slide.”

Chapter Six

it was just a little farther along. A chunk of the hillside was raw and ragged, and the gully was filled with weed-tufted dirt, heavily interspersed with boulders. I eyed it with trepidation. “We’re supposed to cross on that?”

“it does look infirm,” Gilbert agreed, “but the weeds show that it has been here long enough for the rains to settle it somewhat.”

“Yeah, too much-it’s at least two feet lower in the center.” I decided I must have heard another landslide happening.

“I shall essay it first.” Gilbert swung down from his horse’s back.

“Yet let Thorn carry only his own weight, that his hooves may not sink lower than they must.”

I glanced over my shoulder at what was coming up behind and said, “No, I’m the leader of this expedition-or at least, you’re here because of me. I’ll go first.” I stepped out onto the dirt bridge before he could stop me.

“Nay, Wizard Saul! ‘Tis my place!” he cried, but I waded on with determination.

And I do mean “waded”-the dirt gave beneath my feet with every step. My stomach started fluttering, and I began to envision a minilandslide with me in the middle. It was almost enough to make me believe in the magic the people here kept talking about. I tried to remember some stabilizing verses.

“We come,” Gilbert called behind me. I took his word for it; my eyes were on the path ahead, if you could call it that. I tried stepping on the larger stones, and that was better; they sank in a little farther, but at least my feet didn’t. I was glad I wore boots.

Finally I reached the other side. I grabbed hold of the nearest tree and let myself sag against it. Then I turned around so I could watch Gilbert finishing the trek.

He was doing better than I had, possibly because he was walking in my footsteps-had to shorten his stride to do it, but it gave him a firmer surface. His horse followed on the reins, with a lot of snorting, head tossing, and rolling of the eyes-but whenever they rolled back far enough, he saw the troll wallowing along behind him and decided the dirt was the lesser of two evils.

Gilbert guided him up onto firm land, then looked back at the laboring troll with a frown. “Mayhap we ought to help him.”

“Are you crazy?” I protested. “The monster that would have gleefully had us for lunch-even without ketchup? Besides, we’re trying to get away from him, remember?”

“‘Tis so,” Gilbert conceded, but his open, honest face looked unhappy about it. “I hate to leave even an adversary so beset.”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” I assured him. “Look, any chance your horse could carry double for a little while? I hate to ask it of him, but I’d feel a lot better if we could put a few miles between Gruesome, there, and us.”

“As you wish,” Gilbert sighed, “though ‘twill do no good. Once under a geas, a living creature will ever press after his duty.” He held the horse steady while I mounted. Fortunately, I’d learned a little bit about riding in my one trip to summer camp, so I knew how to get aboard, at least. I hiked myself back behind the saddle, though.

“Nay, Master Wizard! Do you take the saddle!”

“You don’t think I’m dumb enough to try to steer this thing, do you? No, you can have the front seat!”

Gilbert gave me a funny look, but he climbed aboard, bending his knee so his foot missed my face-but not by much-then turning the horse’s head inland and shaking the reins. The beast started trotting, and I held on for dear life. “Aren’t there … any … shock absorbers … on this bus?”

“I do not follow your meaning, Master Wizard, but I’ll essay a faster gait.” He knocked his heels into the horse’s sides. I was about to protest when the ride smoothed out amazingly. I remembered that a canter is less jouncy than a trot-but only by comparison; it was still pretty rough. On top of that, I was discovering why the army adopted the McClellan saddle. I held tight to Gilbert’s midriff and glanced back. Sure enough, Gruesome was still wallowing through the dirt and was growing smaller behind us. I relaxed a little, set my teeth, and turned to the front, determined to last it out.

After about fifteen minutes of this-just a guess; my watch seemed to have stopped-I said, “That ought to do it. Must have been a couple of miles, at least.”

“Aye.” Gilbert reined in. “Will that suffice, Master Wizard?”

“Just fine,” I said through clenched teeth. I made it through the deceleration trot, then gratefully slid off the rump. “Maybe he’ll lose us now. “

“I fear not.” Gilbert started to dismount.

“Hey, what’re you doing? No reason you should walk!”

“But you are my leader “Not your superior, though, only your senior! You just keep riding.

After all, you’re the one with the armor.”

“‘Tis only a mail coat.” But he seemed relieved. “Even so, Wizard Saul, ‘tis my duty to advise you that distance will not stop a troll, nay, even if he did not labor under a geas,” That was doubly less than reassuring. It didn’t exactly guarantee that Gruesome was under a geas. Compulsions I could understand, but greed was even more comprehensible.

We strolled along, exchanging biographical notes, and I switched the topic to future aspirations. Gilbert practically glowed as he recounted the glories of knighthood and the potential glories of martyrdom. You can’t help liking a guy with that much zeal, but I couldn’t help feeling that somebody was playing him for a real sucker. On the other hand, I think Jonah felt that way, too.

The sun was almost overhead, and I was just beginning to think of calling a halt for lunch, when Gilbert looked back and said, “Yonder he comes.”

I spun about, staring. Sure enough, there he came, snowshoe feet and turnip shape, grinning from ear to ear with pathetic eagerness. I had to remind myself that I was the one who was likely to be pathetic, not him.

“No help for it,” I decided. “Time for lunch, anyway. Let’s relax and rest awhile-and if he attacks, he attacks, and we’ll deal with it then.” I was nowhere nearly as nonchalant as I pretended. The presence of an actual, me-eating troll was incentive enough to get me to working up some good verses, not that I really thought they’d help any.

On the other hand, if my hallucination included trolls and elves, why not magic? Though a troll was hardly the kind of opponent you would expect to start slinging rhymes.

“He will not attack,” Gilbert said with blithe unconcern as he dismounted. “He goes under a geas.”

Obsessive-compulsive disorders, I could understand-it was just the object of the obsession that worried me. Nonetheless, I let Gilbert lay the fire while I waited, arms akimbo, looking a lot more certain than I felt-but as Huge-and-Ugly came closer, I felt the old, familiar chill within me that seems to come whenever danger looms.

I didn’t feel fear, because I didn’t feel anything. After the crisis was over, I’d turn to jelly-but there’d be time, then.

“Running behind schedule, I see,” I commented, as he came up.

The troll looked surprised. “Ske-dool?” That’s right-I remembered he’d demonstrated a limited vocabulary.

“Took you awhile to catch up with us.” I braced myself and said, “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

It stared down at me with blank incomprehension.

“Don’t catch up with us,” I explained. “I don’t want you near me.

Go. Away. Shoo!”

He stared, grin fading, mouth loosening. “Go?” And, so help me, a huge, fat tear welled up in one eye.

My inner chill almost warmed into remorse for a second, but I focused on the shark teeth inside that woebegone lip and said, “You tried to eat me. I can’t trust you. I don’t want you along.”

“Me come!” he protested, in a voice like a basso chain saw.

“Fairies see! Fairies say! Want only ward you!”

“He speaks truth, Master Wizard,” Gilbert said, his voice low and completely calm. “He cannot turn his heart against you now, not under the elf prince’s geas.”

He sounded very confident, and it occurred to me to wonder how the troll would react if I really did drive him away. if this was anything like a love-hate relationship, I could find myself with a real nemesis on my trail. “Well … if you’re sure The troll’s grin came back, and he nodded eagerly. At least, I think it was nodding; it might have been bowing. But Gilbert assured me, “He is your guard and servant now, till the Wee Folk remove the geas. ” That was the other thing that bothered me. If some enemy magician came along and counteracted this artificial compulsion, I could find myself on the inside real fast, in small pieces. But I didn’t really see that I had much choice. I sighed and said, “Okay, Gruesome, you can join us.”

The troll looked hugely delighted, then frowned, puzzled.

“Goosum?”

“Gruesome,” I amplified. “That’s my name for you.” Then one of my few moral principles kicked in-I hated infringing on anybody’s identity; I knew what it felt like to have people try. “But I’ll drop it if you have a name of your own.”

“Name?”

So much for that idea. “What do other trolls call you?”

“Odder trolls?”

“They are solitary beings, Master Wizard,” Gilbert explained.

“They are never seen together.”

I frowned. “They have to now and then, or there would never be any little trolls.”

Gilbert blushed. So help me, he blushed. I tried to remind myself he was an adolescent, and a very sheltered one, in some respects.

“All right,” I sighed. “If they don’t have a social structure, they don’t have any need for names.”

“Well, there is the secret name,” Gilbert said slowly. “Every creature takes the first sound of its own kind that it hears after birth, as the designation for itself. It is this the elf prince used to compel the troll. “

“But it’s secret?”

Gilbert nodded.

I’d heard of it. Almost every primitive culture believed that identity was so intimately linked with name that your enemy could use it to work magic against you-so the true name was secret. Everybody had a public name for communication, and a private name for identity. I turned to the troll again. “What is the sound that means you?

“No say!” Gruesome almost looked panicked-and I wasn’t an elf prince, with a host of little accomplices that could pinch hard enough to be felt through that igneous hide. So, “No se, indeed,” I muttered.

I fell back on primitive communication, pointing to the troll’s granite chest. “You. Gruesome.” Then I pointed at myself. “Me-Saul.” Then I jabbed a finger at the squire. “Him-Gilbert.” I frowned up at the dinner-plate eyes. “Understand?”

“Unner … ? ” He didn’t have the concept of understanding. “Gruesome, go to Gilbert.”

His face cleared, and he turned to trot over to the squire. Gilbert braced himself, but he didn’t need to-he was still kneeling by the camp fire, and the troll shied away at the sight of flame.

“Gruesome!” I called. “Come to Saul!”

“Gruesome come,” he said brightly, and shambled back to me.

I nodded, satisfied. “Good. Now, eat.”

The troll stared, unbelieving.

I suddenly realized what he thought I meant he should eat. “Gilbert, food! Quickly!”

“Here, Wizard.” A round, hard loaf came flying through the air.

I caught it and presented it to the troll. “Gruesome eat.”

The troll frowned down at the loaf, then took it from me between thumb and finger. His lump of nose wrinkled.

“All right, let it go if you want.” I said. “But it’s all we’ve gotisn’t it?”

“There is a little dried beef.” Gilbert held out something that looked like a collection of buckskin thongs. I took them and held them out to Gruesome, but he backed away, shaking his top.

“Well, sorry.” I went to sit down by Gilbert. “But we have to eat.”

I took another loaf, broke it, handed half to Gilbert, and started munching. He handed me a wineskin; I took a sparing sip, then handed it back.

Three bites later, I happened to notice Gruesome. He was sitting down now, with his hands on his knees, eyeing us hungrily. I told myself it was the food he was eyeing, but I didn’t believe me.

“I mistrust his gaze,” Gilbert muttered.

“I mistrust this whole geas thing.” I frowned at Gruesome. “I’d feel a little safer if it had been my idea.”

“An excellent notion!”

“Say what?” I looked up blankly.

“Make a spell of your own! That will hold him doubly!”

He looked at me with such total trust that I figured I at least had to go through the motions. “if you say so,” I sighed, and turned back toward Gruesome, trying to remember a verse having to do with loyalty. I found it among my boyhood Kipling collection, and tapped my own chest as I recited,

 

“Now here is your master-understand! Now you must be my guide, To walk and stand at my left hand, As shields on shoulders ride. Till Death or I cut loose the tie, At camp and board and bed, Your life is mine-your life’s design is to guard me with your head.

 

The troll sat bolt-upright, looking very surprised. Its eyes glazed, then cleared, and it turned to me and said, “Saul master of Gruesome. Gruesome guard Saul with life.”

He said it with such total conviction that I just couldn’t doubt him. I decided that trolls were very suggestible.

Behind me, Gilbert let out a hiss of breath. I turned back, surprised, and the kid was staring at me almost with reverence, “You have done it indeed! All, fortunate am I, to see such spells worked so hard by me!”

“It’s pretty hard by me, too,” I grunted, “and speaking of hard, let’s finish this journey bread.”

But Gilbert was looking past me at the troll. “He is your creature now, and woe betide any who seek to hurt you-but he still hungers.

“

 

It occurred to me that Gilbert might be feeling less than Secure.

“Guard Gilbert, too,” I ordered Gruesome.

“Gilbert safe from hurt!” the troll assured me, but he still looked hungry.

“He must be fed, with something,” Gilbert said, his voice low.

“I’d rather be a little more definite about the ‘something,’ ” I said, and raised my voice. “Gruesome! Go gobble up a billy goat!”

The troll looked very surprised for a minute, then grinned, gratified, and scrambled off.

Not believing my luck, I stared after him, then turned to start stuffing the rations back into Gilbert’s sack. “Quick! Now’s our chance! “

“Chance for what?” Gilbert said blankly.

“To lose that monster! Come on, let’s go!”

“It will avail naught,” Gilbert protested, but he gathered his gear and mounted up.

We were only a hundred yards down the road when I stopped dead in my tracks. “What’s the matter with me!”

“Naught, that I can see,” Gilbert said, surprised.

“Nice of you-especially considering what some other people I know might have said for an answer.” I turned about and started hiking back, double-quick. “I just realized what I told that fool troll to do!

“Aye-to dine upon a goat.”

“Right! And where do you find goats in a country like this?”

“Why, upon Suddenly, Gilbert’s eyes filled with foreboding.

“Upon a farm!”

“Right! And I only told him to guard you-I didn’t say anything about any other humans! Come on, let’s go!”

“Ride,” Gilbert snapped.

His tone riled me, but I had to admit there was no time to debate the issue now. I scrambled up behind him and held on for all I was worth. He kicked the horse into a gallop and went pounding up the hillside.

“There he is!” I pointed.

Gilbert swerved, and the horse leaped the fence.

I wasn’t expecting it-I almost went flying. But I managed to hold on tighter, and Gilbert grunted as I gave him an impromptu Heimlich maneuver, Then we were pounding over the meadow grass and swung about in front of a slavering troll just as the goatherd boy yelled in fright.

“No, Gruesome!” I held up a hand. “Mustn’t eat any people.”

“Not eat?” Gruesome protested, wounded.

“Not eat people!” I said with conviction. “Only goats! And wolves and bear and deer,” I modified, and turned to the goatherd. “It’s okay-he’s only after your goats, not you.”

“But-but I shall be whipped!” Trembling, he faced us all, crook held slantwise across his body, ready to strike.

I almost invited him to come along right there, he was so brave. I would have, too, if I’d known where I was going. As it was, I just reached in my pocket and fished out a quarter. “I’ll buy one goat from you.”

He caught the quarter, then held it up, staring at it. “‘Tis silver!”

“Will it …” I remembered the principles of bargaining and changed the wording. “How big a goat will it buy?”

“The biggest in my herd! But ‘tis a most strange coin, gentleman!”

“I’m a foreigner,” I explained. “Make it a billy goat, all right?” I glanced at the troll and said, “A gruff one.”

“My worst,” he said eagerly. in thirty seconds, he had driven out the most ornery billy goat I’d ever seen, who kept turning and trying to butt him. I didn’t blame it-if I’d been being driven toward a troll, I would have tried to run, too.

But Gruesome solved the issue by pouncing. There was a startled bleat that ended abruptly, White-faced, the goatherd backed away.

“Gruesome! Come to Saul!” I said sternly, and to Gilbert, “Walk away. ” We turned and started walking. I glanced back; Gruesome was following, taking large bites. I winced and turned away. “Crisis over. Do we have to go through this every mealtime?”

“You will find a way,” Gilbert said with total confidence. I wished I’d shared it.

I didn’t make the same mistake when we set camp for the night-I made a different one. Well, no, maybe not a mistake, really-as soon as I realized Gruesome was eyeing us hungrily, I said, “Hungry enough to eat a bear?”

Gruesome nodded, a huge slab of tongue coming out to slurp over his lips, what there were of them.

“Then go catch one.” I said. “If you can catch it, you can eat it.”

He nodded brightly, surged up to his feet, and trotted off into the trees.

Gilbert stared after him open-mouthed, then turned to me. “Will he find one?

I shrugged. “Whether he does or not, we’ll get an hour or so of worry-free sleep.”

Gilbert smiled, a slow grin. “Ingenious, Master Wizard! Nay, let us dine quickly and seek sleep faster! I’ll take the first watch.”

I realized I was dog-tired, so I didn’t object. Right after we finished, I rolled up in the cloak Gilbert’s commander had sent with the squire.

“Will you not pray first?” Gilbert asked, scandalized.

“No, I don’t think so,” I told him, then thought better fast. “I meditate while I’m going to sleep.”

His face cleared; where he came from, “meditate” meant the same as “pray.” He nodded and turned away to watch the night.

He woke me some time around midnight and said, “Wake me for the third watch.” I bit back a gripe and nodded, rolling up to my knees, watching the landscape, and wishing heartily that this universe had discovered coffee. Much better for my health, I’m sure, but no more pleasant than healthful things usually are. Gilbert was snoring within five minutes. I’d heard that soldiers developed that ability.

As my head cleared, I looked around and realized what was missing-the troll. My spirits picked up-maybe the bear had won.

I was really getting to be hopeful when I woke Gilbert about six hours later-my watch had gone on the fritz, so I was going by the Little Dipper. He came awake instantly, took one glance at the stars, and said “Master Wizard! You should have waked me sooner! Nay, I’ve slept through two watches!”

“Six hours for you, six hours for me,” I told him. “Comes out even.” I didn’t mention that mine had been two and two. I decided that the next night, I’d take the first watch.

“Natheless, a knight should be able to keep a vigil!”

“How about we talk about it tomorrow evening?” I suggested.

He brightened surprisingly. “Aye, assuredly. Good sleep to you, Wizard! “

“Good night to you, squire,” I said, puzzled. I was almost asleep before I realized why he’d been so pleased-saying we’d talk about it tomorrow night implied that I was accepting his company. I broke out in cold sweat as I felt the clammy tendrils of commitment gluing themselves onto me. I was going to have to find some way to send Gilbert back to his buddies.

it took me a while to get to sleep.

I woke in the false dawn, to hear a sound like a chain saw eating its way through a stack of garbage cans. I sat bolt upright to see Gilbert standing guard, hand on his sword, casting nervous glances at a huge, gently heaving hulk. I realized it was my pet troll come home, snoring like a railroad car full of scrap steel, swaying on loose tracks. Next to him lay a collection of bones and hide, all of them sizable.

I stared. So the bear hadn’t won. I repressed a surge of guilt-better it than me. Or Gilbert.

Then I relaxed-the fact that Gruesome had done as I told him was very reassuring. So was the fact that he could handily defeat a fullgrown bear, Muscles like that might come in useful for a stranger in a mighty strange land. I decided I’d keep him for a while. All things considered, I might be safer with him than without him.

Unless some enemy sorcerer decided to remove the restraint spell, anyway.

That thought, combined with the dawn’s early light, pretty much guaranteed that I wasn’t going to get any more sleep. I got up, waved Gilbert to silence, and started rousting up breakfast. If there was one thing I didn’t need, it was an ornery, fresh-wakened troll.

I took a chance on nudging him with my boot an hour later and told him we were taking off. He rolled up to his feet right away, eager as a puppy dog.

So we set off south, heading into what I hoped was Switzerland, with a squire looking for enough trouble to win him a knighthood, and a half-tame troll eager to find something to protect me from.

Understandably, I was nervous.

Chapter Seven

Late that day I looked around, frowning and footsore. “Notice anyhing strange?”

“Aye,” Gilbert said. “We have come into a barren waste.”

“Yeah, but there used to be a lot of trees here-at least, little ones.” I pointed at the expanse of four-inch stumps, lopped off so cleanly that you could see the rings. “What was it, a lumber crisis?”

“I ken not.” Gilbert looked around nervously. ” ‘Tis uncanny, though. I would we did not have to stay the night here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s getting dark. Think we ought to pitch camp pretty soon?”

“It would seem likely,” Gilbert said grudgingly.

A distant, bloodthirsty moan stopped us in our tracks.

“But not right here,” I qualified.

“Mayhap not.” Gilbert nudged his horse ahead and drew his sword.

“Hold on!” I protested. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To discover what made that sound,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “If ‘tis our enemy, ‘tis better that we come upon it, than that it come upon us.”

“Now, hold on!” I protested. “If it’s going to be that dangerous, you can’t go in there alone!”

“I am a squire,” he said simply, “a man of arms.”

“That’s what I mean.” I stumbled on ahead. “Whatever it is, it’s a long ways off yet.”

“We must be silent,” he protested. “You should stay here.”

“Of course,” I said, “not.”

“Yuh, not.” Gruesome flexed his huge hands, grinning, and padded forward. For all his bulk, he moved more quietly than I did-but then, he wasn’t wearing boots.

“See?” I said. “We’re coming along, Gilbert. Gilbert?”

“Up here,” a voice whispered ahead of me. “For Heaven’s sake, be still “Still. Yuh.” Gruesome turned to hiss at me. “Still!” Then he turned back without waiting for an answer.

I followed along, wondering what had happened to my usual common sense.

But it was my party-these two were here because of me. I rushed the pace a little, passed Gruesome, and came up level with Gilbert as his horse groped its way along a stony path in the gathering darkness.

Gilbert started to protest, but just then the moan burst out again, and I saw a glowing shape drifting toward us through the gloom, its mouth an impossibly wide circle of slavering emptiness, eyes staring and covetous, and its fingers hooked like talons, poised to grab.

Then some stranger jumped out of the dimness, dove past me, and cowered behind a boulder, trembling.

That seemed to be okay with the ghost. it shifted its attentions to me, zooming toward me with a gloating howl.

The fugitive leapt to his feet, turned, ran-and slammed right into the only tree on an otherwise barren hillside. He slumped down, beneath a huge spiderweb with a very large spider in it. The ghost, shifting back to its original quarry, fluttered after its victim, then hesitated, apparently repelled by the spider. I could sympathize, but I knew the specter wouldn’t be halted long.

“Hold it right there!” I shouted. I jumped in front of a big boulder, yanking my belt out of the loops and swinging the buckle. “Cold iron, remember?”

The ghost yelled something that sounded suspiciously like “Yum! ” and threw itself on the buckle. I dropped the belt and yanked my hand out of the way just in time, and the ghost bored on into the rock, sinking out of sight. Of my belt, there was no trace. There was also a large hole in the boulder.

Then the ghost veered out of the rock face, swooped out in a circle, and headed back toward me, smacking its lips and drooling. Whatever kind of spook this was, it was a virtual flying appetite. it reminded me of a shark-but it also reminded me of my Kipling. I shouted,

“We come to fight and triumph in The savage wars of peace, To fill full the mouth of Hunger, And bid the Famine cease!”

The ghost jolted to a halt with a look of startled shock as its mouth snapped shut and sealed itself. its checks bulged, and its body ballooned with a huge flapping sound.

“Wizard Saul!” Gilbert pounded up to me, panting. “Beware! ‘Tis a hunger ghost!”

“Yuh,” Gruesome grunted, scrabbling up behind the squire. “Get ‘way! Ghost eat all!”

“It will indeed,” Gilbert corroborated. “it will eat anything it encounters-and it is never full!”

“Then I think I’ve created a first,” I said, picking up a stone, “but get ready with some rocks anyway, will you? If it opens its mouth, pitch for the breadbasket.”

Gilbert turned to the ghost, then stared. “Opens? But a hunger ghost’s mouth is never shut!”

“This one’s is,” I said. “It’s full.”

Full, and getting fuller-its belly was still stretching, turning it into a perfect globe with stubby limbs sticking out and a bulge of head on top.

“it doth depart,” a wondering voice breathed somewhere around my kneecap. I looked down and saw a patched hat with a gaunt face beneath it, all eyes and pointed nose and jawbone, with hollows for cheeks, and more hollows at the back of which eyes glittered.

Well, at least whatever I’d saved was human.

I looked up again just in time to see the ghost drift high enough to catch an updraft and shoot away to the west, shrinking until it was lost in the twilight.

“It must have sped most quickly indeed,” Gilbert said, “for ‘twas still swelling with thy spell, Wizard Saul.”

“Spell?” the man I had saved cried. He looked up at me with a feverish hunger of his own. “Are you a wizard, then?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” I demurred-but I saw the scandalized look on Gilbert’s face and said quickly, “but everybody else here seems to. Why do you ask?”

“If you are a wizard, you can cure me.”

Gruesome looked away, humming. That made me uneasy. I stalled. “How do you know I’m a good guy? just because I worked, urn, a-” I swallowed heavily and forced it out “-a spell, doesn’t say which side I’m on. I could have been an evil sorcerer.”

Gilbert stared, appalled, but the famine case shook his head firmly and said, “If you had been a sorcerer, you would have let the ghost have me, and welcome.”

“Good thinking,” I approved, but I frowned up into the sky. “Do you suppose that thing will burst when it’s had too much?”

“Nay, surely,” Gilbert said, and the other added, “A hunger ghost can never have had too much.”

I was again seized with the unhappy reminder that everybody else in this country seemed to know more about what was going on than I did. To cover it, I said to the man cowering at my feet, “Come on, bucko, up with you!” I caught his arm and helped him stand. “How’d you get that ghost sicced on you, anyway?”

“I think his appearance tells us that,” Gilbert said softly.

Yes, it was pretty obvious, now that I looked-the tattered coat, the patched leggings, the holes in the shoes, and, above all, the general emaciation. The arm I was clinging to felt like a bone wrapped by a rag, and the man’s whole face was pinched with hunger.

I remembered a college lecture on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. “Gilbert, could you get a piece of beef jerky out of your saddlebag? And the water skin.”

In a second, Gilbert was holding out the tough, leathery strip, and the water skin.

The vagabond snatched the pemmican from him and bit into itthen forced his molars down onto it, pulled his jaw open, and bit down again, and again.

“That’s it,” I soothed. “Don’t bite, chew. That meat is so dried that you can’t gulp it.”

The man gave it a valiant try, I had to admit, but beef jerky takes an awful lot of chewing just to get a bite off the stick, let alone soften it enough to swallow.

“Not much else to eat, I’m afraid,” I apologized, and was glad I didn’t have to lie. “One swallow of water when you get that bite down, okay? just one swallow-then another bite of jerky. By the time you finish that strip, maybe we’ll have some stew on.” I turned to Gilbert. “Now I’ll take the first campsite you can find.”

Fifty yards farther down, the path broadened out onto a twenty-footwide terrace. Gilbert pronounced it fit, so I arranged a ring of stones and looked around for firewood. “Seen any kindling, Gilbert?”

“Aye.” The squire held out an armload of sticks. “I gathered what I found, as we did come down the slope.”

“Ah, to have Gilbert’s forethought!” I dumped the sticks into my fire ring. “Good thing this path wasn’t always above the timberline.”

“Aye,” our mystery guest said. “This slope bore a few scrub trees, till the Spirit of Famine began to chase me.”

I swallowed, hard, at the thought of the hunger ghost planing every living thing off the side of the mountain, and put the thought resolutely behind me. “Gilbert, will you do the honors?”

The squire stepped up and struck flint against steel. A spark fell, and he breathed it into a small flame. Seconds later, fire bloomed from the kindling.

I looked around for something to skewer the provisions Gilbert had collected along the way.

“Will this serve?” Gilbert held up a three-foot splinter of rock.

“Yeah, just fine.” I poked the spear through the three pheasants, rested the ends on the highest two rocks, and sat back to watch. I thought of asking how Gilbert had come by the rock spit, but decided I didn’t want to know.

Our guest watched them hungrily, but he didn’t leap on the raw flesh. The pemmican had filled him up a bit, especially with the water swelling it in his stomach-and it had taken him so long to chew and swallow it that he’d begun to feel full before he could gobble enough to hurt himself.

“A sword would come in handy for this sort of thing,” I said. “Remind me to make one right after dinner.”

Gilbert looked scandalized at the idea, but our hungry guest said obligingly, “Make a sword right after dinner; are they done yet?”

“They’ve just barely started cooking.” I rummaged in Gilbert’s saddlebag, pulled out another strip of jerky, and pressed it into the man’s hand. “Chew on that while you’re waiting, Pavlov. Say, what is your name, anyway? “

“Frisson,” the man mumbled through his pemmican.

I nodded. “How’d you get into this fix, anyway? No, I don’t mean attracting the hunger ghost-I mean getting so close to starvation in the first place?”

“Why,” Frisson said, “I am a poet.”

I just sat still for a minute.

Then I nodded. “Yeah, that explains it, all right. But, I mean, you could have gone after a job. Woodcutter, for instance.”

“The very thing,” Frisson muttered, nodding as he chewed. “I have been a woodcutter, a plowman, a cooper’s prentice, and a chandler’s prentice.

I frowned. “Then why were you starving?”

“I could not cease chanting poetry.”

Gilbert gasped, covering his mouth in alarm, and Gruesome edged frantically away from our guest.

I frowned around at them. “All right, so maybe his verses weren’t the best, but they couldn’t have been that bad. Does everybody have to be a critic?”

” ‘Tis not that, Wizard Saul,” Gilbert said. “For all we know, his verses may have been most excellent. True poetry, mayhap-yet he is not a wizard.”

“What difference does that … ? Oh!

Frisson watched me, nodding as he chewed, and Gilbert said softly, Aye, Wizard Saul. A poet’s concern is for the words themselves, for the excellence of the verses and the manner in which they fit together to form a whole-not for their effects.”

The poet turned to him in surprised, though masticating, approval.

I nodded. “And if he doesn’t worry about their effects, the images he creates in his verses may come to life as he chants, and-” “Do untold damage,” Gilbert finished for me. He turned to Frisson. “What hazards did you unfold, poet? A juggernaut of doom rushing down upon the heads of the men in your master’s shop? A corpse come to life in the coffin you were building? Wood nymphs slipping out to seduce the passersby, in the wood you had gleaned?”

Frisson hung his head, but he didn’t stop chewing.

“The man’s a walking catastrophe,” I muttered.

“Oh, poor fellow!” Gilbert burst out, showing an unexpectedly sympathetic side to his nature that got the better of his healthy dread. “You have been cast out to roam the wilds alone!”

The poet nodded; a tear trembled in his eye. “I have sought to prevent it, good squire. I have broken the meter into odd phrases with the accents reversed; I have used slant rhymes, broken rhymes, and no rhymes-yet all to no avail!”

“Of course not.” I groaned. “You concocted new kinds of verse, and just made the magic stronger!”

The poet looked up at me, frightened. “Aye, my lord. The mayor’s house did fly apart on the instant; my words did breach the baron’s wall. I foreswore my verses; I bit my tongue; I ground my teeth against the words-yet all to no avail! I could not help myself; anon I shouted words aloud! They chased me from the town, they chased me from the parish, they chased me from the province-and anon they chased me from my native land of Merovence, to live or die in this wilderness of Allustria.”

“But,” I said. “But-but-” Gilbert looked up at me with a frown. “We have only two pheasant and a partridge, Wizard Saul.”

“But!” I shouted in exasperation. “But you don’t have to chant your verses out loud!”

Frisson’s jaw gelled, and he stared up, appalled. “I’d as lief stop eating, milord.” Then he set to work chewing again.

“Write them!” I exploded. “Why don’t you just write them down?

Your verses, I mean! Then read them over, and just don’t recite anything that looks dangerous!”

Frisson stared up at me; his jaw dropped.

“He has never thought of it,” Gilbert murmured.

“Aye, never!” Frisson burst out. “So that is why men learned to write! “

“Well, there were some other little things,” I said uncomfortably, “such as grain inventories, and bills of sale, and laws, and history.

But it works for poetry, too, yes.”

“Can … can you teach me?” Frisson begged.

I just stared at him.

Then I said, “You’re a poet-and you don’t know how to read and write? “

“I had never thought of a need for it,” Frisson confessed.

“Well! I’ve heard of the oral tradition-but I’ve also heard of departures.” I wondered, uneasily, if I was witnessing the downfall of poetry, or the beginning of its glory. “Sure, I’ll teach you to write.”

After all, if I could handle two dozen freshmen, surely I could manage one starving poet.

Well, it helped. He understood it instinctively, took to it like a goose quill to ink. More likely, like graphite to paper; fortunately, I carried a pocket notepad and a stub of pencil. I showed him how to draw the letters, and the sound each one made. His eyes went wide with wonder; he snatched the pencil and pad from me, and in half an hour, he was sitting cross-legged by the fire, scribbling frantically in an impossibly small hand. From then on, as long as I knew him, he would be constantly writing in that book-he filled it in a day, but fortunately, one of his first poems was a wish for an endless supply of parchment-he didn’t know the word for paper-and my little pocket notebook never ran out. On the other hand, after the first fifty poems, it started producing a much higher quality of writing material.

Nonetheless, sometimes some of his magic leaked out. Writing it down seemed to channel it safely, since he didn’t speak it aloud-but when he didn’t have time to write and suppressed too much poetry, he thought about it so intensely that the magic started working without his having to say it aloud. Sometimes we’d be hiking down the road, and his eyes would start bulging, and a bat would materialize by the roadside in bright daylight, or a gushing fountain would spring up right smack-dab in the middle of the path, or we would suddenly find ourselves walking on gemstones, and let me tell you, when the soles of your boots get thin, that’s no picnic.

The first time it happened, I reined in my temper and turned to him with a sigh. “Frisson, you’ve got to stop and write it down.”

“Eh?” He looked up at me, startled, then saw the glitter on the road. “Oh! My apologies, Master Saul!”

“No problem, no problem. Never can tell when we’re going to need a little hard currency. Just So Frisson sat down by the while I knelt down and started you never could tell.

After a while, though, it got never knew when he was going ages. He never did, fortunately, front of us, too quickly for me to keep from smacking into it nosefirst, was almost as bad as the wolf I saw when I opened it. I slammed it fast. “Frisson! Write it down!

He did, and I showed him how to write as he walked. That helped-but hey, nobody’s perfect.

I developed a streak of prudence, though, and I took to going through his day’s output every evening, around the campfire; he was pathetically eager to have me read them and tell him how much I liked them-I was careful never to criticize partly because I knew how hard beginners take it, and partly because I just flat out didn’t understand what he was trying to do. But I knew from experience that it worked, so I figured he had to be doing something right.

I always enthused as I handed them back to him-but I kept the ones that I thought might be particularly useful. With his permission, sit down and write it out, okay?”

roadside and filled his parchment, filling my pockets. As I’d told him, to be a nuisance, especially since I to start using dragons as poetic imbut the door that appeared right in of courser had a notion that infringing copyright could have bad results, in this particular hallucination. I even memorized the ones that looked to have the most potential. As I’d told him, you never know …

But that first evening, I needed a distraction; the first dozen verses he turned out, and proudly showed me, filled my head with such a clamor of acoustics and clashing of images, that I needed some mental soothing.

of course, a philosophy student always has a distraction to handreasoning out arguments. It’s risky, because sometimes you get so caught up in it that it keys you up even more, but under the circumstances, I figured it was worth a try. So I spent a half hour or so trying to rationalize my way out of having to believe in trolls or fairies, or magical spells that could have anything to do with either. It wasn’t much use, of course-I kept coming back to the conclusion that either the evidence of my senses was unreliable, or what I had seen and heard was real.

Of course, it didn’t take much to discredit sensory evidence, for a man of my generation. I seriously considered the possibility that I was simply stoned out of my mind, and all this was happening in a fantastic hallucinogenic trip-but I couldn’t help remembering that I had sworn off all drugs for final exams-years ago.

Fortunately, there was an alternative. Bishop Berkeley had pretty much discredited the senses for us all, way back in the 1700s, by pointing out that if we don’t actually see something, we can’t really know it exists-and that even if we do, we could be wrong, because even if our minds perceive it, all they have to go on is the sensory impulses from our eyes and ears and nose and tongue and hands, all of which can be very easily deceived. Optical illusions are the most obvious example, of course, which is why science insists on measurement-but how’re you going to prove, logically and completely, that the ruler itself isn’t an illusion? He managed all this without knowing about LSD, too.

Of course, to Berkeley, the fact that we can’t really know anything was just proof that we had to have faith-but to the rest of us, the idea that things don’t exist if they’re not perceived, and the corollary, which is that we can’t know what’s real because of the fallibility of our senses, just means that we have to live in the world as we perceive it, while we’re trying to stretch the limits of our perceptionsand raises the distinct possibility that hallucinations may just be the perception of an alternate reality, or two, or three. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” as the poet says, and there may be a lot more to the universe than we see, as Hamlet was kind enough to point out to Horatio.

I was faced with the unfortunate conclusion that both ideas applied to my current situation. The world I was perceiving was certainly real to all intents and purposes, and I had to deal with it as if it were, because it was certainly going to deal with me as if I were.

Dr. Johnson claimed he disproved Berkeley by kicking a cobblestone, presumably meaning that if the cobblestone flew away, he did interact with it, and therefore he and the cobble were both in the same frame of reference; what he failed to mention was that his toe hurt.

So did mine-metaphorically, at least. Gruesome would eat me if my spell slipped, and there might be a monster around the next hill who would sneak up on me in the night if Squire Gilbert nodded off while he was on guard duty. it might be an illusion, but it would hurt just as much as if it were real-so I was going to have to treat it as if it were totally authentic, or it might kill me just the same.

But I wasn’t going to believe in magic. Okay, some unexplainable things had happened, and they did seem to coincide with verses I’d spoken aloud-but coincidence was no doubt what it was, and the events were unexplainable only because I didn’t know enough. I made a firm resolution to learn more about this strange-but-familiar world, and not to delude myself into thinking I was practicing magic.

But I decided to save Frisson’s verses, just in case.

I remember thinking, just before I drifted off to sleep, that I had stubbed my own toe.

Chapter Eight

Guardsmen were shoving me roughly, trying to push me into a cell, and one of them was saying something about things being wrong. I turned to him with sullen resentment, and was surprised to see that he had a troll’s head.

I stared at the troll, then looked quickly about me and saw the campfire with Gilbert lying on his side asleep, soles of his feet toward the coals, Frisson across from him, curled around the warmth. I realized I’d been dreaming. I looked up and, sure enough, the troll’s head was still there-but now I recognized it. “Time for my watch again?”

Gruesome shook his head, looking agitated. “Wrong! Wrong!” He pointed out toward the darkness in several different directions.

I frowned. “What’s the problem, then?”

“Dunno.” The troll twitched, raising his head to look out into the night. “Feel wrong, wrong!”

“Just a hunch?”

Gruesome nodded and held up his huge mitts. I backed off in alarm, but he only wiggled his inside talons. “Feel pinches! Trouble, trouble! “

” ‘By the pricking of my thumbs,’ ” I quoted, but remembered, in the nick of time, not to finish the verse: lisomething wicked this way comes.” I rolled up to my feet. “I’m never one to scoff at intuition-at least, not in this world. Want to wake up the broke off, staring.

With my usual paranoia, I had decided to set up a barrier against supernatural attackers-there had been too many things that had gone bump last night, though that could have just been Frisson dreaming in verse. We hadn’t gone very fast today, out of deference to his weakened condition, and we were still in pretty open country, though there were a lot of scrub trees about.

So I had conjured up some talcum powder, sprinkled it around our campsite in a circle, and chanted the tail end of Shakespeare’s dirge from Cymbeline, with a few adjustments:

 

“No sorcerer shall harm thee! Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Evil ghosts forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee! Safe shall we be within this sign, For nothing ill shall cross this line!”

 

I’d figured if anything spooky had tried to get too close, that verse ought to keep it outside our perimeter-and it seemed I’d been right.

Just outside the circle of white powder, a blob of formless mist was rising from the ground, thickening and coalescing into a human form-but a mangled human form. Its face was bruised and swollen, one eye socket empty, thumbs dangling, one foot twisted almost backward, and its tunic ripped open to show dark smudges against its chest and abdomen.

“It is a ghost,” Gilbert murmured from his place by the fire. Apparently, Gruesome and I hadn’t been as quiet as we’d thought. The squire sounded excited, fascinated. “It is the shade of one who died by torture. ” I was glad he could take such a detached interest in it. For myself, I felt rather queasy and thoroughly sickened in my heart.

The specter flitted from point to point about the circle, moaning.

Chains, attached to the fetters on its wrists, clanked and rattled.

“Bewa-a-a-re!” it cried. “Oh, foolish mortals, bewa-a-a-re! Flee! Hide yourselves away! ” I summoned my courage and called out, “Having you hang around just outside the perimeter doesn’t exactly imbue me with a great desire to go exploring!”

“Heart of stone, who would mock a soul in torment!” the ghost cried. “O kindred of my fate, arise! Up, all ye who died by torture!

Spirits bound to this world in unquiet slavery to a sorcerer’s will, come now to school this foolish mortal!”

I had to turn to follow its progress, and I muttered out of the corner of my mouth, “Keep an eye on the place it came from, Gruesome.”

The troll moaned in answer-but I figured he’d fight all the harder if he were scared. Either that, or run.

I wished I could.

Moans began to fill the night in horrendous discord, faint, but growing louder; and dim forms, drifting here and there, swam out of the darkness.

“Abandon your ill-advised escape!” the ghost cried. “Return whence you came! For know that, if you do persist in opposing Queen Suettay, you shall become as I-a shadow of a soul who died in agony unspeakable!”

I felt the blood draining from my face. I remembered Gilbert’s commander warning me about the evil sorceress-queen of this country. How the Hell had I attracted her attention?

How the Hell?

No. Couldn’t be. just a figure of speech.

But I spoke up bravely. Unfortunately, it sounded more like a croak. “So I’m to be deterred by the thought of a horrible death, a punishment for even thinking about leaving Allustria, or raising my hand against the queen?” Not that I had …

“Even that!” the spirit cried over the chorus of moans and wails behind it. “I gave the queen my fullest measure of obedience-yet she had me rent apart, while still alive, for her mere pleasure! Chortled with delight at all my screams! And as I died, despairing, she seized my soul, to chain it in eternal slavery to her will!”

Now I began to tremble inside. I scolded myself harshly, if silently, and reminded myself this was all impossible.

“It is true.” Gilbert came to his feet. “Suettay tortures folk for mere amusement, daily.”

A sadist. I was being pitted against a sadist of the worst kind-and for what?

To get home. Preferably, alive.

I steeled myself to the piteous cries around me and called out, “Go! The afterworld is huge-you don’t have to stay around here!

The queen loses power over you when you die!”

“Foolish mortal, how little you know!” Another specter swam up beside the first, a ghost like an illustration from an anatomy text, muscles and ligaments naked to the night. “She whose power comes from Satan can petition her master for dominion over others who have turned their hearts toward the Evil One!”

“But you only fall into the Devil’s power through your own fault!”

“And so we did,” the phantom sneered. “I myself sought poweralways power. While yet a boy, I swore to do whatever deed the Devil wished, if he would give me power-and I gained dominion over peasant folk, then over soldiers. Yet Suettay plucked me out for her fell mirth, and I died in agony, crying to my master Satan for power against this corrupted sorceress-and as I cried out to evil, Suettay wove her spell about me to capture my soul! At the last instant, I cried out in despairing repentance, but it was too late. Suettay had claimed me, and I am bound to her!”

I suppressed nausea. I mean, I really felt sorry for them, even if they had been total vipers when they’d been alive. If ever I’d heard a sound reason for being good, this was it. Unfortunately, I was aware of my own enormous failings and knew I wasn’t in the world’s greatest shape for combatting evil.

“Be of good heart, Wizard Saul,” Gilbert counseled. “They cannot touch you here, within your enchanted circle.”

I turned, welcoming the change of topic with zeal. “You’re right.

So why did Suettay sic them on us? just to make sure we don’t sleep and are so weak tomorrow that we’ll fall into her hands? I can’t really believe that! “

“I doubt it, also,” Gilbert answered. “It may be that they seek to frighten you into joining their foul cause.”

“That’s crazy.” I turned back to the spooks, debating within myself. I could only wonder how Suettay had come to know I was here.

Crystal balls? Ink pools?

It didn’t matter. “Go tell your mistress that it will take worse than you to scare me!”

The ghosts’ moans turned into roars, and they came swooping against the invisible barrier like moths to the chimney of a hurricane lamp, anger and outrage in their faces.

I turned back to the squire. “Has to be more than just a try at scaring me.”

“It must,” Gilbert agreed. “Otherwise, when they saw you were not daunted, they would have fled.”

” Yeah.” I gestured to the barrier of specters. “You’d swear they were trying to attack us, but it’s obvious they can’t get in.”

“Obvious indeed,” the squire said, turning toward the perimeter, but not looking all that sure, himself. “Yet there’s this, too—if they cannot come in, it is equally true that we cannot go out.”

I could feel my eyes widen. “But that means somebody’s trying to keep us here, to make sure we haven’t gone anywhere until A gout of greenish flame ripped the night, lighting all the hillside with an eerie light. The ghosts moaned in terror as the light dwindled. The residual chartreuse glow flickered on a dozen hooded forms, and lighted from below the face of the huge, grossly fat woman who stood before them, swathed in brocaded robes, rings glittering on her fingers, an elaborate crown on her head.

“So, then.” She smiled, and her eyes almost disappeared in folds of fat. “You have the audacity to trespass in my Allustria.”

“It is not yours, gross mockery of a woman,” Gilbert cried, and I had to stifle an impulse to shush him. “The land belongs unto the people! “

“Then it cannot, of a certainty, belong to you, who come from Merovence.” Suettay laughed, a sound like frying bacon. “You are not yet a man-only a beardless youth.”

Gilbert flushed; blond beards don’t show much.

The queen turned to the row of men behind her. “Counselors, behold a marvel! A boy that speaks like a man! Yet an he were, he would feel desire!”

The hooded forms dutifully laughed, but there was little humor in the sound.

Suettay turned back to me. “The more fool you, to be so cozened into taking a mere boy for to ward you! “

“Oh, he’s man enough,” I assured her. Bitches always make me mad, and she wasn’t the first one I’d run into who’d thought she was a queen. Gilbert looked up at me with surprised gratitude, but it was as much for myself I’d said it as for him-I felt anger growing, just enough to begin countering the fear. “You twisted the facts,” I told Suettay. “But then, you twist everything that’s true within your domain, don’t you? Or try to leach the life from it, if it won’t twist! “

“Indeed, as my dunce of a country sorcerer will yet bleed your troll.” Suettay’s lip curled. “What a vile thing is he, that’s neither gnome nor rock! What a catastrophe of nature, nay, a perversion of life! Yet you should thank me, corrupted monster, for you owe your life to me.”

“Wozzat?” Gruesome’s grunt had a dangerous edge.

“Your father was a gnome who strayed out of his hole!” the queen chortled. “I saw, and cast a glamour over a boulder, to make it seem a woman of his own kind, wondrously beautiful in his eyes! For my own amusement, I inflamed him with lust for it! Then, in my crystal, I watched what did ensue, and oh! what delightful-” Gruesome’s roar drowned out the rest of her words, as he lunged.

“No, Gruesome!” I cried in panic. “If she can get you mad enough to break the circle-”

The monster stopped with a jolt, his head poking out above the white line. I wondered what could have stopped him, then saw Gilbert down below, ramrod straight, shoulder against Gruesome’s chest, straining against Gruesome’s bulk-but his feet were plowing up the ground as Gruesome pushed steadily toward the witch, and Gruesome’s top had made a hole in my defense screen.

The troll roared, almost managing to make words-but anything he was saying was drowned in a mass shriek, as all the ghosts dove at the hole he’d made in the magical wall.

I leapt up to shout at the monster. “It couldn’t be true, Gruesome!

Rocks can’t have children! only a mommy troll and a daddy troll can make little trolls!”

The troll’s eyes suddenly lost focus, and his brow creased with effort as he tried to figure out the facts of life. He wasn’t long on brain power-but the distraction was enough for the squire.

“Back, brave being!” Gilbert shoved harder, and the troll rocked back just enough for its head to clear the white line.

The ghosts’ noise rose to a howl as they all tried to jam into the hole, but I shouted out, “If these shadows have offended, Be but brave, and all is mended!”

The ghosts groaned in disappointment, then roared in rage and began to dash themselves against the invisible circle again.

I called out to Gruesome, “Let your hide of flint Deflect all hint Of insults dire!

Come to the fire!”

He looked up, blinking his huge, glowing, saucer eyes, totally dumfounded, then turned slowly and came hulking back to the campfire.

Gilbert breathed a long and shaky sigh of relief.

But Suettay and her boys were laughing themselves silly. “Oh, skillfully done! Skillfully done!” the queen wheezed, between giggles.

“Why not march upon my kingdom, mortal! Do! For you should be mired in your own muddle ere the day is out!”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” I strode up to the circle, anger getting the better of common sense. “We’re such total klutzes that you bring yourself and your top twelve henchmen out to try to scare us? Meanwhile, of course, you can’t even breach this simple little guarding circle I’ve set up!”

The queen’s laughter chopped off on the instant, and her eyes narrowed to slits with glowing coals behind them. “Enough! Show this foolish impostor what awaits im!”

A scream rent the air-but one that was very much alive, not like the ghosts’ mourning wails. This one was filled with terror and was definitely feminine.

The hooded ones threw her sprawling onto the grass between Suettay and the guarding circle. She was young, with long blonde hair and an enchanting figure; I could see it through the rips in her tunic.

She scrabbled in the dirt, turning toward Gilbert and Frisson and Gruesome and me, her face filled with horror-a face bruised and battered, with a swollen nose, marks of burns on her breasts and belly, blood still dripping from triple gouges in her skin. “Help me! Please, I beg of you, before I-” Then she broke off into a scream as four hooded forms surrounded her, two of them falling on their hands and knees side by side, the other two catching her thrashing limbs to lift her and swing her up onto the backs of the first two.

I almost went right through the guarding circle. All that restrained me was Gilbert’s arm-but it had about as much give as granite.

“You cannot help her now, Wizard Saul-you can but break your warding circle!

“Besides, ‘tis like enough that she did put herself into Suettay’s power, in hope of preferment,” Frisson quavered, staring at the scene in loathing. “The most you can give her now is a quick death and the queen will do that herself.”

The woman cried, “I did not-” but her sentence ended in a one of the hooded forms twisted something.

scream, as My mind raced as I stared. The poor victim had been trying to say she hadn’t done anything wrong. How could I save her? Without breaking the guarding circle, of course-that was what Suettay wanted. She was lumbering forward, hitching at her robes and pulling out a long, twisted knife. She held it up in both hands, gloating gaze fixed on the woman’s body as she droned out a long chant, overriding the screams.

“It is an invocation,” Gilbert told me, “an invocation in the Old Tongue! ” It must have been very old indeed-it didn’t sound a bit like Latin, or even Greek. I felt a chill prickling outward from my spine-how could I fight spells in a language I couldn’t understand?

“She calls on the Devil.” Apparently, Gilbert didn’t labor under that handicap. “If the woman, in her terror, despairs of salvation and is damned, the queen dedicates the woman’s soul to Satan, but asks that her ghost be the queen’s slave as long as Suettay endures.”

I felt my scalp prickle; the woman’s screams filled my ears, maddening me. I fought to control myself, to keep from charging out to try to save her, knowing that I couldn’t win, that Suettay had chosen the time and the conditions. The knife soared high in Suettay’s fists, beginning to glow with the chant as the hooded acolytes joined in.

I fought back with the only thing I could think of-a chant of my own. I sang it, of course-that’s how I’d learned it.

“Tell her to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme!

Without a seam, or belt to be girl, Then she’ll be a true love of mine!”

The girl stared up at me, and Suettay flushed with anger and jerked a nod at one of her acolytes. He reached down and twisted, and the girl screamed.

I fought down the urge to leap out of the circle and start kicking.

I couldn’t win alone.

Alone?

“All right, angel!” I yelled. “Now’s your chance! You want to make me believe? Then give me a hand-or an idea! Nothing physical, mind you, just inspire me! Fill my mind with a way to rescue this poor victim!”

And, confound me, it was there-the knowledge that the woman didn’t deserve this fate and, moreover, was human and worth any help that I could give, and my mouth was moving, a voice booming out of it that didn’t seem to have anything to do with my thoughts, but had a very familiar ring.

 

“Woman, pray! Even now, call upon the Lord your God, and He will save your soul from Hell’s power! Only repent and pray to be forgiven, and He will snatch you from the jaws of evil, even in the instant of your death!”

 

But the knife was slashing down, and the woman was screaming

Screaming, “My God, forgive me my sins and save-”

Then there was only a gurgle, for her throat had been cut, and the knife slashed downward through her heart. Her whole body convulsed once and was still.

“Rise and obey!” Suettay thundered.

She didn’t.

Well, she rose, all right-at least a shred of her, a wraith. It was her ghost, and it floated over toward the white chalk line of my guarding circle as if a breeze were blowing it.

Suettay screamed like a spoiled brat seeing a box of candy being snatched away. “Vile interloper! Ball of slime, thatch of dung! She should have despaired in that last instant and been bound for Hell, whereupon my master would have given her soul into my power! But you have interfered, curse you, and her soul is lost to me! She was innocent of all but the smallest sins, and her spirit will flee to Heaven! ” Then, suddenly, she fell silent, eyes bulging, a depraved grin spreading over her face. “Not yet! Not if I act quickly!” She whirled to the corpse, hands spread wide and going through gestures whose meanings I shuddered to consider while she chanted some racheting verse in a language I didn’t understand. A glow sprang up around the body, like the phosphoresence around decaying vegetable matter in a swamp, then died away, and Suettay spun about to me with a crow of triumph. “I have bound her to Earth! As long as her body lives, her soul is bound here, for I have cast a spell that has preserved her mortal coil.”

“Why, you filthy bitch!” I swore.

“How dare you!” she shrieked, and her hands clutched something unseen and threw it at me while she snapped out a quick, incomprehensible rhyme. Energy lanced from her fingertips in purple streamers-and dashed itself to sparks on my shield.

This time, though, the queen didn’t scream. She only glared at me, her eyes gleaming malevolently in the midst of her slab of pitted face.

“See to the purifying of your own soul, Wizard, for if you do not, you shall fall into my power-and you shall meet the same fate as the girl. Maiden, come!” she snapped at the wavering spirit.

But the girl’s ghost had drifted across the line into my circle, and now she cowered away from the wicked queen, eyes wide and frightened, shaking her head.

“You have stolen her!” Suettay screamed. “You have taken from me my rightful-” But her voice was drowned out by a long, shuddering moan that filled the air, rebounding from ghost to ghost, the specters’ eyes widening and filling with hope.

“I did repent!” one cried.

“I, too, with my last breath!” another answered.

“God forgive my sins!” a third cried.

One by one, they remembered their final moment of repentance, wailed their appeals for salvation-and, one by one, they winked out, like candles snuffed.

I stared. “You mean all that was holding them here was their own belief in the queen’s magic?”

“It would seem so,” Frisson said, huge-eyed. “They lost faith-but you have restored it.”

That hadn’t exactly been one of my prime goals in life. On the other hand, it hadn’t exactly been me speaking, either.

But a new moan filled the air, a moan of dread, as the hooded acolytes shrank back from the bleeding corpse, huddling together, terror-filled faces turned up to watch the ghosts depart.

And Suettay was turning to me with a gaze filled with more malice and hatred than I had ever seen before, a glare of berserk fury. She strode forward, arms uplifted, striding straight at my guarding circle, intoning a chant in the Old Tongue.

“She summons a devil!” Gilbert cried.

“Angel!” I yelped. “She’s breaking the rules! You can protect us! ” Blue sparks leapt at the queen’s fingers with crackles like gunshots. She shrank back with one of the foulest curses I had ever heard, then turned to me and my companions, eyes just slits in fat, hands weaving a symbol I didn’t know, bellowing, “Rot their flesh and boil their blood!

Meat slough off and turn to mud!”

Her hands snapped out, all fingers pointing at us.

A coruscation of sparks filled the air over the white line. A wave of nausea swept me, and my knees gave way, but Gilbert held me up, and my legs strengthened again as my stomach settled.

“Cowards!” Suettay screamed. “Pusillanimous pests! Come out to battle!

“We … we battled,” I managed.

“You shall, you must, soon or late! Then shall I be revenged upon you! Then shall I see your flesh fry from your bones, your eyes drop from their sockets!”

I was feeling a little bolder and said the only counterspell I could think of.

“I’m rubber, and you’re glue.

Whatever you say Bounces off me And sticks to-”

With a shriek of frustration, Suettay disappeared. Green fire thundered inward on itself, seeming to consume the huddled, hooded forms. It died away, and the night was quiet and dark again.

And clean. Even the corpse was gone.

For some reason, that bothered me.

But I didn’t have long to think about it-my head suddenly swam, and my knees gave way again.

“Now, now, buck up! You did marvelously!” Frisson assured me.

“Heroes are made of sterner stuff, Wizard Saul!” Gilbert chided.

“You must not collapse as soon as the battle’s over!”

“It’s better than … melting while … it’s still going on,” I gasped.

“That is true, and there is no shame in it, so long as he does wait until the battle’s over,” Frisson allowed. He propped me up against Gruesome’s side and began chafing my hands. “Really, you were masterful-you came only moments from death, and a horrible one at that.”

“Huh?” I blinked, the thrill of dread pulling my mind back into focus. “You mean I almost blew it when I started to charge out?”

“You did indeed. That whole affair with the poor peasant lass served one purpose, and one only-to induce you to leave your magic circle in an attempt to save her.”

“Yeah.” I swallowed thickly. “Yeah, I knew that’s what I was doing as soon as I heard her scream. I knew it, but it almost worked on me anyway-and on Gruesome. Thanks, Gilbert. You saved his life-and all of us.”

“Surely, Wizard Saul,” the squire said, blushing with pleasure at the compliment. “It was little enough I could do.”

“It was enough all right. Thanks again, Gilbert.”

“My pleasure,” he said, then frowned. “Yet there’s another you should thank, whose aid was greater than mine.”

I frowned ‘ looking around me. “Who … ? Oh. Yeah.” I remembered my guardian angel. “Well, I’ll give him my warmest, next time he shows up.”

The night was awfully quiet.

Then Frisson cleared his throat, and Gilbert looked away, abashed.

I looked around, frowning. “What’s the matter?”

Neither of them answered.

Then Gruesome growled, and my hair rose. “All right, all right!

Frisson, what did he mean?”

“I do not speak the troll’s language,” the poet said with hesitation.

“Still, if I did, I would guess he had said … that your behavior was rather …” He trailed off, looking away.

“Cheap,” Gruesome rumbled.

Frisson looked up, startled. “I did not know he knew the word!”

I frowned. “What do you mean? Angels don’t want bribes.”

“Of course not,” Gilbert said slowly, “but it might be polite to at least indicate a willingness to return the favor.”

I frowned at him while his meaning percolated in. Then I went hard inside. “Now listen, and understand this well! I am not committing myself to either side, or any side! Anybody who does me a favor, I’ll do a favor for him, if I can-but aside from that, I’m not promising anything! ” But it seemed to me that the stars winked, and the sounds of the night began again as the land came to life around me.