The Enchanter Reborn

KNIGHT AND THE ENEMY Holly Lisle

To L. Sprague de Camp and in memory of the late Fletcher Pratt, whose Compleat Enchanter stories were the first fantasy for grown-ups I ever read—and still some of my favorites. Without, them, I would never have considered writing fantasy.

And to Toni Weisskopf, my fairy godmother (and editor), who gave me the chance to write a Harold Shea story.

Harold Shea, tired of walking along the unchanging road, thumped down solidly on the nearest rock. He sighed and stared at the bleak landscape around him. On one side, low hills rolled to the horizon, rounded and grimly browned, dotted with clumps of dead grass and stunted trees. On the other, a flat plain sprawled, equally sere and rocky but dotted in the distance with windmills that spun slowly in the hot, sluggish breeze, as if any movement were an effort. The sun lay near the horizon, but it was obviously rising; the day could only get hotter. A steady breeze blew past, but it was already stifling and heavy with dust. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, and the heavy woolen tunics from the world of Aeneid, stuck to his skin wherever they touched.

Behind him, Reed Chalmers groaned and muttered, "I don't suppose you have any idea where we might be now, do you, Harold?"

"I'd considered asking you the same question." Shea watched the dusty two-rut road that bisected the parched hills. A shimmer and a pillar of dust crept along the road out of the hills, moving closer. He felt at his side for the reassuring presence of the saber, and curled his fingers around the wire-wrapped grip inside the basket hilt. It was a good saber—a better travelling weapon even than the épée that had served him so well in previous jaunts. When forms materialized inside the nearing dust cloud, he merely smiled. After all, a man who had fought giants side by side with the god Heimdall, and bested foul enchanters in the world of the Faerie Queen, had little to fear.

"Someone's coming," he told his associate.

Chalmers, who had been watching the listless performance of the windmills, looked where Shea pointed. "Quite so," he agreed. The psychologist ducked behind a boulder. "I hope they aren't hostile. Why don't we stay out of sight—at least until we get some idea what universe we're in?"

Shea remained standing and used his hand to shade his eyes while he tried to make out details of the approaching figures. All he could make out was that there were two of them. "I hope they can tell us where to find something to eat. I'm starving."

"While I value you as a travelling companion, Harold," Chalmers huffed, "I find you lacking in prudence. Get out of sight! May I remind you that dead men have very little need for food?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Shea said, and kept his eyes on the approaching travellers. "I'll just watch from here, thanks."

"I wish you wouldn't take this attitude toward adventures," Chalmers fumed. "You refuse to consider that I am not a young man anymore, and that my contributions to this campaign must be mental, not physical."

Shea chuckled. "You're saying that you're a theoretician, not a fighter?" He glanced over his shoulder at the psychologist and raised an eyebrow. "I already knew that, Reed." Shea looked back down the road. "I can finally make them out. One of them is a knight—and I'd guess the little round fellow riding beside him is his squire."

Chalmers, from behind his rock, asked, "Can you make out the device on the shield? Remember, I'm not unfamiliar with heraldry."

"As clear as day," Shea said. He refused to elucidate.

Chalmers' exasperated snort carried clearly to his fellow psychologist. "Well?"

"There isn't one."

There was long silence from behind the rock. "Suit yourself. Have your amusement at my expense. Get skewered by some strange knight out in the middle of God-only-knows where. I'll make sure I get your body back to Belphebe somehow—if I ever get home again without your help."

Harold Shea climbed up on top of his rock and stood on it. "We look harmless, Doc. A stalwart knight and his loyal squire won't gain any glory by running us through—Halloo!" Shea bellowed, as the pair came into range. He waved vigorously from his perch atop the rock. "Halloo! Over here!"

"I wish you hadn't done that," Chalmers muttered.

The unknown knight stopped and looked at Shea waiting on the rock. Shea watched him turn to his squire and say something—then the knight called out, "Stranger—confess that in the whole world there is no more beauteous creature than the Empress of la Mancha, the glorious Dulcinea del Toboso—or arm yourself and stand against me." The knight couched his lance and waited atop his horse, still as the statue he resembled.

"I'll bet your girl doesn't hold a candle to Belphebe," Shea growled under his breath. "Besides, I bested Sir Hardimore and a pack of loesels with an épée, fella. I can take you on." He rested his hand on the hilt of his saber.

"Harold," Chalmers squeaked from behind his rock.

"He said this world. Belphebe isn't on this world. Be agreeable."

Shea heard the squeak, and took his hand off his saber. Chalmers was right. There was not much point in being difficult, he thought. He did not want to fight. He wanted to get something to eat—and soon. "I confess," he shouted. "—That—" He turned to his associate. "What did he say her name was?"

Chalmers had a funny look on his face. "He said her name was Dulcinea del Toboso. The Empress of la Mancha."

"Yeah? That sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Shea frowned, then called back, "—That the Lady Dulcinea is the fairest lady in this world." He watched the unknown knight return his lance to its carrier and cover it. "I mean," he added to his associate, "that sounds very familiar.

"Then well met," the knight called back. He began to trot down the road toward Shea and Chalmers. "Who acknowledges my lady fair may sup with me."

"The name ought to sound familiar," Chalmers sniffed. "It belonged to Don Quixote's imaginary lady."

"You're right," Shea agreed. "Quite a coincidence that this fellow and Don Quixote should claim the same girl. I wonder if they know."

Chalmers stood up. "Did it occur to you that this knight might be Don Quixote."

Shea looked at him and smiled blandly. "No," he said.

Chalmers started to say something else. But when he came out from behind his rock and saw the approaching knight and squire, the only sound to come out of his mouth was a slightly breathless "Oh!"

The knight who approached was glorious—no— radiant would be a better word, Shea thought. His plate armor shone in the dull yellow light, bright as quicksilver. His helm was golden—perhaps even gold, with outward flaring peaks of some eastern design The knight lifted his faceplate, and Shea thought he had never seen a more regal visage—which was saying something, considering Shea had been keeping company with gods recently. The man looked wise and noble, with thoughtful brown eyes and a majestic expression Shea envied. The knight's steed was purest white, unsullied by the dust that roiled around him, massive and muscled. Even burdened with a knight in a full suit of armor, the beast pranced with spirited grace—Shea thought that no creature so huge or so burdened should have been able to manage that.

The squire's bearing also spoke volumes about the success of his master, the unknown knight. The man was well-fed to the point of roundness and dressed in beautifully embroidered robes in his master's colors. He rode a mare that Shea thought was clearly of Arab descent and extraordinary lineage.

The knight studied the two of them silently for a long moment. "I would have taken you for Moors by your outlander garb," the knight finally said, "but you have not a Moorish countenance. From whence came you, O gallant and courteous strangers?"

Shea noticed that Chalmers was staring at the knight with hypnotized fascination. "Sir Knight, the older man said, "I am Reed Chalmers. My lady, the fair and chaste Florimel, was kidnaped away from me by an evil enchanter, the vile Malambroso. My servant, Harold Shea, and I have sojourned from world to world in the hope of rescuing her. The gods of a distant and incredible land sent us to seek her here— they said Malambroso had brought her hither."

Harold glared at Chalmers. His servant, indeed! However, the older man paid no attention to his associate.

"A sad tale, and worthy of the might and justice of my arm and honor," the knight said. He drew himself even straighter in the saddle and rested his mailed fist on his chest over his heart. "Hear me, Lord in Heaven" he intoned, and his voice took on a ringing, amplified quality that seemed to fill the whole barren plain. "I swear that I will give my aid and my arm to assist in this just came for the glory of my own fair Dulcinea, though it cost me my life, my estates, and even my own good name. Nor will I eat, nor sleep, nor partake of wine or song or other battle until his lady is recovered unto him, for—"

The hair on the back of Harold's neck prickled in recognition. Magic. The knight's oath was magic—a form of binding spell.

The plump squire interrupted. "Good Sir Knight and master, we did offer these gentlemen dinner with us."

The knight halted in mid-speech, and stared at the little round man. "Indeed, we did, good Sancho," he said, and his voice lost its unearthly quality. "Then you must spread a repast for them at once—one worthy of travellers from the outer spheres. I, having given my word, shall not dine." And so saving, the knight dismounted and knelt, still fully armored, in an attitude of prayer. "Attend me, Rosinante," he commanded his horse. Then he fell silent.

The squire, Sancho, set forth a cloth and began removing provender from an apparently bottomless supply bag. Meanwhile, Chalmers edged up to Shea and whispered, "That has to be Don Quixote! His lady is named Dulcinea del Toboso, his squire is Sancho, and his horse is Rosinante."

Shea whispered back, "Doc, Don Quixote was a run-down, flea bitten, moth-eaten old schizophrenic with a glue-factory horse and delusions of grandeur."

"And this knight obviously isn't." Chalmers scowled at his associate. "Even I have noted the disparities, Harold. But perhaps Cervantes got it wrong. Perhaps he bore some grudge against this knight, so that when he wrote his chronicle, he made the knight a laughingstock instead of the hero he obviously is."

Harold Shea sat down on one of the cushions the squire provided and waited until Chalmers took one of the other two. "How could he have gotten it wrong, Doc?" he asked when the psychologist was settled. "Cervantes made the whole thing up."

Chalmers stared at Shea and opened and closed his mouth a few times. His face reddened. Without another word, he began eat.

Shea helped himself to a chunk of black bread and several slabs of hard white cheese, a handful of olives and some grapes. The fat squire brought out several wineskins as well, took a long draught from one, and passed it to Harold.

Shea took a bite of the bread and cheese, washed it down with the wine, and sighed. The bread was slightly bitter, the cheese strong and rich, and the wine some of the best he had ever tasted. "Delicious, friend squire," he said. "My thanks to you and your master."

The fat squire spread his hands palms up and shrugged. Through a mouthful of food, he said: "It is nothing, Geraldo de Shea. All that we have is yours." He said that in a flat tone that told Shea it was a formula response, and not one to be taken literally. "Sir Chalmero," the squire added, "do you need anything?"

"Only to know the identity of our host, that I may thank him adequately."

Sancho puffed himself up, threw back his shoulders, pointed at the kneeling knight, and declared, "That is the famous and wonderful knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha. the greatest knight who ever lived."

Chalmers threw Shea a gleeful look. He smiled broadly around a mouthful of dry bread and cheese, and after a swig of wine, he remarked, "I told you so."

Shea did not envy the knight his tin-can suit; he was amazed by the man's resilience. Quixote took the broiling sun without complaint, and responded to his squire's ceaseless diatribe against the weather with tolerant amusement. The two famous Spaniards rode ahead, while the psychologists plodded along on foot behind them. The foursome travelled away from the hills and toward the field of windmills. Reed Chalmers, sweat-soaked and dusty, had rolled up the sleeves of his ankle-length tunic and pulled the garment up through its belt until it ended. Shea thought the rotund psychologist looked ridiculous. In spite of the heat, he left his own garb alone.

Chalmers had been regaling Shea with a running commentary on Don Quixote and the world in which they found themselves—Shea had tuned the monologue out several miles back. Suddenly his ears picked up an interesting comment, however, and he began to pay attention again.

"It is extraordinary," Chalmers was saving, "how Cervantes got the small details right, yet completely missed (he bigger picture here." He Happed the bottom of his tunic up and down while he walked, apparently trying to cool off.

Shea spat out another mouthful of the dust that gritted between his teeth and tried flapping his own garment to see if it helped. It did not. "What did he get right?" he asked.

"Quixote was given to the grand oath," the older psychologist said, "and to the grand gesture. We have seen that today. I recall a point in Cervantes' narrative where Quixote told Sancho Panza it was a point of honor with knights errant not to eat once in a month."

Sancho Panza must have been listening to their conversation, for he dropped back to ride beside them. "Even so," he agreed. He tipped his head to one side, studying the psychologist. "His worship told me that except for banquets and such, knights lived off the flowers of the field. And so his worship does. When we're short on daisies, as we are hereabouts, he'll take some sup of mine—but now he's made this oath to help you find your lady, so there'll be no more of that for a while."

Chalmers rubbed his hands together. "Yes, that is it exactly. Quixote was convinced that since his books never mentioned knights eating and sleeping, such things weren't important. I recall places in the tale where the old knight ate nothing, and made a point of staying awake all night, lying on the ground and thinking of his mistress Dulcinea."

Sancho Panza's brows furrowed in worry. "There's not a word of what you say that isn't so," he said, "but send me to the Devil if I can see how you knew it you who never saw us before today. I'd say you were more enchanters sent to plague the master, but you don't look it." He cast a dark scowl at the two of them. "Still, what things look like don't much matter." He kicked his mare once sharply and caught back up with the knight.

Shea bit his lip and, "Nice move. Doc. Now they're bound to think we're evil enchanters and the next thing you know, we'll be speared like shish kebab on the good knight's lance."

But Chalmers was suddenly beaming. He shook his head and grinned at his associate. "Sancho Panza was wrong," he said, ignoring Shea's prophecy. "What things look like do matter—to us, anyway. Think, Harold—when your delusional patients describe themselves to you, what do they describe?"

Shea was watching the squire in earnest conversation with his master. Something about their attitudes made him nervous. When he answered Chalmers at last, his reply was abrupt. "Gods, mostly. And great heroes. Fiction. What's your point?"

Chalmers appeared oblivious to the little drama up ahead. His round, ruddy face glowed with internal delight. "When Don Quixote described himself, did he describe himself as a crazy old man astride a pitiful swaybacked hack? No. Of course not. He described himself as the greatest knight who had ever lived."

Shea did not see Chalmers' point. He said, "And—?"

Chalmers spread his hands in front of him, palms up. "And what do you see up there? A crazy old man or the greatest knight who ever lived?"

The duo on horseback had finished talking, and were looking over their shoulders at Shea and Chalmers. Harold Shea did not like their expressions. "Unfortunately," he said, carefully loosing his saber in its scabbard, "I see the greatest knight who ever lived."

"Precisely," Chalmers gloated. "We're not in Cervantes' Spain. We're in Don Quixote's delusion. This world is the old Spaniard's psychosis."

"Does that mean we won't die if we get killed here?" Shea asked. Watching the knight on the road ahead, his Adam's apple suddenly felt like a baseball lodged in his throat, and his stomach squirmed and flipped as if it had ridden a roller coaster without him.

"I don't see how we could," Reed Chalmers said, still not noticing the impending doom ahead.

"I hope you're right," Shea muttered, as Quixote, in the echoing magical voice Shea had heard earlier, demanded, "I shall have truth. Are you foul and evil wizards and enchanters, come to ensnare me? Speak, cravens!"

"Fabulous. Perfect paranoia, Chalmers whispered. "Fits beautifully with the delusions."

Harold Shea's thoughts regarding Chalmers' delight were unprintable, but he was unable to share them with his boss. Instead, words were coming from his mouth that he had no control over. "We are enchanters," he heard himself saying in a voice that boomed as loudly and weirdly as the knight's, "but neither foul nor evil. We have come to rescue Reed Chalmers' kidnaped lady, and we mean you no harm.''

The Don's sound effects switched off, and Shea found he could control his vocal cords again.

"You are enchanters, yet not evil?" Quixote asked. His eyes were as round and puzzled as a confused spaniel's. "I would have thought all enchanters were evil—that it were the very nature of the beast, so to speak."

"Master!" Sancho interrupted, rapping on Quixote's armor. "Sir Knight, we need to be going!" He was bouncing a bit in his saddle, and his eyes darted nervously—Shea had seen the same body language displayed by patients who were trying to hide important information. "We need to head back to the village; we forgot something," the fat squire added.

He's lying, Shea thought, and at the same moment noticed that the windmills seemed to be closer than they had been a moment before. In the next instant, he realized that they did not look as much like windmills as they had. And in the next instant, he realized that about thirty giants, some with four arms, some with six or even eight, were marching across the plain towards him, waving clubs the size of telephone poles.

"Doc, let's get out of here," Shea said, grabbing Chalmers by the sleeve and pulling him back down the road they had just covered.

Chalmers was watching the giants without concern. He resisted Shea's desperate tugs. "Harold, what's gotten into you?"

"The giants, Doc."

Quixote had finally spotted them, too. Hah, Freston!" he snarled. "Vile wizard—no doubt these monsters are your doing." He uncovered his lance and couched it. His visor clanged down over his face, and he dug his spurs into Rosinante's sides. He roared, "Do not fly, cowards, vile creatures, for it is one knight alone who assails you!" and charged across the plain toward the approaching giants.

Chalmers might as well have been a tree, rooted in the middle of the road. "Those aren't giants, Harold. They're windmills," he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

They looked like giants to Shea. However, niggling doubt rose in the back of his mind. He stopped trying to pull his boss back up the road for a moment, and stared at the approaching monsters. The giants swung their warclubs and roared and shrieked. "Do you see windmills?" he asked, suddenly uncertain.

Chalmers sighed, the brilliant lecturer faced with an especially slow pupil. "No, I don't," he said, and his voice dripped with strained patience. "I see giants. But I know they're windmills. And so do you."

The hot breeze, however, reeked with the stench of never-washed bodies, with fetid breath and sweat and filth—and Harold, without another word, ran for the hills. Sancho Panza, on his fine Arab mare, passed him almost instantly, his beast galloping flat out. The ground shook. The air rang with Quixote's battle cries and oaths and the screams of wounded giants. Over the noise, Harold clearly heard Chalmers' bellow— "Harold, wait for me!"

Harold glanced over his shoulder. Chalmers was racing, face red, away from the mayhem on the plain. Behind him, Quixote, astride Rosinante, challenged the monsters. They surrounded him and towered over him, paying no attention to the easier prey that fled down the road. When he saw that, Harold ran behind a rock and crouched there to watch from a point of relative safety. Chalmers joined him, panting and dripping sweat.

Don Quixote's shattered lance stuck out of the side of one fallen giant. He wielded his sword, which blazed with a pure white light that made the sun dim by comparison. Astride his great horse, he darted among the forest of swinging clubs, slashing and stabbing. Already, giants' severed hands and massive war-clubs littered the plain. Quixote fought well—but the giants outnumbered him dreadfully.

Then Chalmers gasped. "Look, Harold, the giants' arms are growing back!"

Shea realized that his associate was right. The only giant who was not still in the fight was the one Quixote had killed with the lance. "We've got to help him. Doc," he said. He unsheathed his saber and got ready to charge into the fray.

"Wait!" Chalmers wrung his hands. "Surely if we intervened magically from a distance—"

"We don't know the rules of magic here," Shea objected.

Chalmers shrugged. "The Laws of Contagion and Similarity should hold. They have everywhere else we've been."

''Fine. Then do something helpful—watch your decimals, though. We don't want a hundred pacifist giant-killers instead of one that will do the job." Shea looked over the top of the rock, and noticed that the tide of battle was going against the Knight of the Woeful Countenance. "If we don't do something quick, though, he's going to look like a Buick that collided with a brick wall." Shea ran back down the road. Behind him, he could hear Chalmers beginning an incantation that sounded suspiciously like 'The number of things in a given class is the class of all classes—" Shea grinned in spite of everything. Good incantations needed rhyme and meter. Doc's incantations never had much of either. He was a great magician—but a lousy poet.

Harold Shea's smile died quickly. As he raced closer, the appalling stench of giant assailed him, and the monsters—big as the windmills they had once been—shook the very earth over which he ran. Shea realized his saber would reach no higher than mid-calf on the monsters. Thus, his assistance to Don Quixote would be limited to acting as a distraction and stabbing the nightmare in the legs—provided his saber would penetrate giant flesh.

Suddenly Sancho Panza was at his side, sliding out of his saddle and pressing the Arab mare's reins into Shea's hands. "Sir Geraldo," the squire said, "since you go to help my master, ride Dapple. And Godspeed."

Shea nodded and mounted. He cantered toward the battle, saber drawn. The nearest of the giants sniffed the air, then turned from watching Quixote and stared straight at him. The monster glared with milky-white, slit-pupilled eyes, and loosed a gape-mouthed roar which revealed green, dagger-pointed teeth that angled back in rows—like shark's teeth. Shea gulped. Oh, God—" he whispered—

—And his whisper took on the same odd, echoey character Don Quixote's oaths had.

Magic. Don Quixote had used it—had compelled Shea to tell the truth by an oath sworn to God and the old knight's lady. Could Harold Shea use the same formula?

"God," he said louder, and was rewarded with an increase in the volume of the echoes. "On my honor, let me—uh, smite— these giants with my sword that, um, blazes—for the ah, glory of my own fair lady, Belphebe of Ohio."

His saber burst into oily blue flames that licked along the blade. Good enough, Shea thought. If the sword blazed, it probably smote serviceably, too. He galloped to one side of the nearest giant, darted around behind him, and stabbed the monster through the back of the knee. The wound smoked, then ignited with a vigorous "whoosh," and the giant went down like a condemned skyscraper.

Shea, keeping out from underfoot, bellowed "For Belphebe!" and galloped behind the next nearest giant. His blazing saber burned brighter. Clubs whizzed past his ears, and the Arab mare pranced and started, but Shea avoided contact, delivered his stroke to the back of the next monster's knee, and got out again.

The giants paid him more attention after that, and he found eluding their massive clubs more difficult. He did the best he could—he was not able to hit fast or often, but he counted six giants down to his credit at one point.

Don Quixote attacked head on, lopping off arms; Shea brought the stinking, club-swinging titans down from behind. The only problem was that the hands regenerated, the knee wounds healed, and the giants got back up, evidently refreshed from their little rests.

Time passed and stretched; the battle became surreal, an inescapable nightmare. Dapple wore a thick coat of lather, her nostrils flared, and her sides heaved. Rosinante, moving the armored knight around, was in the same state. Quixote's sword strokes were still fierce, but they looked a bit less well-aimed to Shea— and he wasn't surprised. His own muscles ached from swinging and thrusting. The giants' blows struck closer as the knight and the psychologist tired. Death became personal to Shea, and felt very near.

What was taking Chalmers so long? The older magician should have figured out something—if he did not come up with a spell quick, he would not need to bother. "God knows," Shea muttered, darting out of range of an eight-armed monster that plodded after him, swinging, "I wish these troglodytes would turn back into windmills." Abruptly, they did.

Shea hung in his saddle and gasped for air and stared. All around him sat windmills and the toppled, battered remains of windmills. Most lacked an arm or two or three; a few burned steadily. In each of them, he recognized details transmuted from giant to giant structure. Perhaps he anthropomorphized the buildings—but he did not think so.

It occurred to Shea that his wish had echoed loudly in his ears when he made it. Somehow, his statement fitted in with the structure of magic in Quixote's world. Either that, Shea reflected, or Chalmers hit on a solution just as he made his wish. He could check on that later, he decided. Don Quixote, surveying the wreckage with evident surprise, trotted across the battlefield to join the psychologist.

"Nice work. Sir Knight," Shea panted. "I didn't think we were going to make it out of that mess.

"Indeed," Don Quixote replied, watching Shea closely, "we nearly did not. I mind me to tell you, Don Geraldo, that those strokes to the back of the caitiff blackguards' knees were unchivalrous, and not meet for a gentleman. Nevertheless, I thank you for your brave assist—unknightly though it was."

Shea managed an exhausted grin. "That's the advantage of not being a knight and a gentleman. There aren't so many rules.

Quixote spared Harold a smile as he wiped the blood from his sword. "You speak nothing but truth, good man," the knight agreed. "And now, to discover by what means and manner these veritable fiends have been ensorcelled into windmills—I suspect that coward Freston had his hand in these doings from the very start. He ever seeks to unmake me." The knight reined Rosinante around, and trotted back the way he had come, head swinging suspiciously from side to side.

Harold Shea prudently kept his mouth shut.

The four travellers lay on the ground, Quixote and his squire on one side of their cookfires and Chalmers and Shea on the other. Sancho Panza snored like an enraged swarm of bees; Quixote, still dressed in full armor, lay flat on the hard ground staring at the stars that wheeled overhead and maintained his silence.

Harold Shea, hardened to outdoor living, still found the rocky plain an incredibly uncomfortable place to sleep. He rolled from side to side, trying to find one position that did not hurt somewhere. Finally, with a gloomy sigh, he gave up. He glanced over at his fellow psychologist and discovered Chalmers engaged in the same futile search for comfort.

"Doc?" he said, keeping his voice low.

Chalmers rolled over to face him. "Hmmm?"

"What went wrong with the magic today? I kept waiting for you to fix the giants, but you never did.'

The expressions that ran across Reed Chalmers' face reflected frustration and bewilderment. "The Laws of Similarity and Contagion don't work here," the older man said.

Shea rolled on his side and propped himself up on one elbow. "They don't work? I thought they were the magical equivalent of the laws of physics." His voice rose in volume.

Chalmers waved a hand to quiet his associate. "I'll remind you that the laws of physics don't exactly work here either. No. I was doing everything I could think of, from blowing on little makeshift cloth sails to drawing pictures of windmills in the dirt over pictures of giants—and nothing happened. When the giants turned back into windmills again, I had nothing to do with it."

Shea said, "Oh, then I think I did that. I got my sword to flame a little, which helped with the giants—"

The small psychologist propped himself up on both elbows and whispered, "You did? I was so busy working on spells to stop the giants I didn't have time to watch you."

"I did. And then I sort of" accidentally turned the giants back into windmills." Shea shrugged. "How?"

Shea glanced over at Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. Quixote hadn't moved; his eyes were still open and fixed at some point in the distant heavens. Panza had rolled over on his side and was not snoring so loudly anymore, but still looked as if he were asleep. Shea scooted closer to Chalmers and confided, "I'm not completely certain, but I think I have the basic-principles of the spells I used worked into a feasible law. Tentatively, I'm thinking of calling it the Law of Heroic Namedropping."

Chalmers gave his associate a disgusted look. "That's a ludicrous name.

Shea grinned, delighted to get a rise out of the stuffy psychologist. "Not really," he insisted. "It fits. The spell is cast by swearing a binding oath while calling on God and one's lady. I'm guessing that the more important people you drag into the oath, the more powerful the spell will he. Sincerely planning on fulfilling the terms of the oath makes a difference, too, I imagine."

Chalmers hissed suddenly and began burrowing in the dirt under his bedroll. "Hah! There you are!" he muttered finally, and came up with a large, irregular rock. "I'll have bruises from that tomorrow." He flung the rock into the darkness and returned his attention to Harold Shea. "All right, if what you say is so. then why wasn't Quixote successful in transforming the giants back into windmills?'

The younger psychologist shook his head. "He never tried, Doc. He was too busy fighting them for the glory of his lady to think about the bigger picture."

"You're saying he could have—that in this world, he is truly an enchanter?"

"That's what I'm saying, but I'm not saying it too loudly."

Harold Shea began to feel the effects of his arduous day. He nestled back into his bedroll, marveling that the ground had somehow grown much softer and smoother. "You saw how he compelled me to tell him what we're doing in this world. Still, I don't think Don Quixote would be too happy imagining himself occupying the same role as his archenemy Freston," he added.

Chalmers harrumphed. "There's a problem with your theory, of course, Harold."

Shea yawned. "Really? What's that?"

Chalmers' voice sounded pedantic, and very far away. "Evil enchanters," he was saying, "aren't too likely to use the name of God in binding oaths to cast spells. That sort of thing could backfire. And Malambroso, if he is here, will be using this world's version of black magic. I believe what we must do is determine how Don Quixote's delusions affect the operation of magic. Perhaps by curing him of his delusions, we can alter the rules of magic, thus rendering Malambroso powerless and—"

Shea, however, never heard the rest. With a gentle snore, he rolled on his back.

Knights liked their mornings early and busy, Shea noted unhappily. He lay inside his bedroll, listening to the activities going on around him. Quixote had already fed and was currently brushing Rosinante and it was not even dawn yet. Chalmers stood next to the knight, handing him things and holding things, all the while talking earnestly. Sancho Panza snored on, oblivious to the activity.

Shea wished he could get back to sleep, but it did not feel likely. The ground had turned to brick during the night. He also wished he had not run out of toothpaste. It was a minor point, really, but waking up after drinking so much wine with his meals the day before— and realizing that nobody in the world had any toothpaste to lend him—made it very hard to face the new day.

He closed his eyes and feigned sleep until he was certain the rocks in the dirt had taken root and started growing beneath him. Then, with a resigned sigh, he heaved himself up and wandered over to see what was available for breakfast.

He found Chalmers and Quixote in the midst of heated argument.

Chalmers glared at the knight and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. "Sir, your name is not Don Quixote. It is Señor Quixiana, or perhaps Señor Quesada—my sources weren't entirely clear on that. But you are not a knight. You are a well-born villager who suffers from delusions—"

"Good sir, it is not I who insists this helmet of mine is a washbasin, when anyone can plainly see it is nothing more nor less than the enchanted helmet of Mambrino, which I won in honorable battle from another knight." Don Quixote put down the last of Rosinante's hooves and straightened up. He towered over the stout psychologist. "It is not I who looks at my fine steed and sees a knock-kneed, sway-backed, thin-tailed nag, and not I who claims the giants his own servant and I fought yesterday were windmills, and never anything but windmills." He stomped over to his saddlebags with his curry-brush and hoofpick, and shoved them angrily inside. "Señor Chalmero, when you go looking for delusions, look first in your own mind."

Chalmers growled, "The insane always insist they're sane."

Quixote nodded solemnly. "On that point, good sir, we are agreed. Now, you will please excuse me. I must attend to my morning devotions and ask God's grace in finding your lady." He walked past Chalmers and out to the edge of the camp. There he drew his sword and planted it point down on the ground. He knelt beside it, and became still.

"Right now, his case is stronger than yours," Shea said from behind Chalmers.

His boss jumped and turned. "I do wish you would refrain from making jokes at times like those." The senior psychologist tried to jam his hands into nonexistent pockets, and ended up crossing his arms. "Why don't you go talk to him, Harold? Present him with reality—don't coddle his delusions."

"Ah—" Shea grinned. "Not right now, thanks." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the kneeling knight. I don't really want to tell him he isn't a knight while he has his sword out. Besides, those giants yesterday might actually have been windmills all the time—" He looked at his partner and sighed. "But they didn't fight like windmills."

Once the sun came up, the weather, to Shea's regret, was a repeat of the previous day's. The scenery, however, was briefly more interesting when the two Spaniards and their quaintly garbed followers paraded through a tiny village. The village sported the usual chickens scurrying in and out of doorways; barefoot, dirty urchins running wild; and run-down whitewashed houses with red-tile roofs sagging precariously in places. Its smell was the usual smell of dirt and dust and poor sanitation. But the people, black-clad peasant men in wide-brimmed hats and black-skirted, broad-hipped peasant women with their babies in tow, were not at all what Harold Shea had expected. When the knight rode into town, they raced out of their houses, shouting, "Don Quixote! Señor Sir Knight!" They lined the streets, beaming at their armor-clad hero, nudging each other and saying, "Look, Rosa, is he not the handsomest knight in the world?" and "Ah, Miguel, are we not fortunate that Don Quixote is our protector?" Men and women pressed gifts and food on the knight and his squire—and when Quixote and Sancho Panza were unable to accept anymore, the peasants forced their largess on Chalmers and Shea.

Harold found himself in the possession of a massive loaf of bread still hot from the oven and a live, trussed chicken who eyed him with deep suspicion and clucked its fowl obscenities at him. Chalmers carried a smoked rump of something, several bunches of grapes, and a basket that proved to be filled to the top with fresh panecillos.

"That was not what it seemed to be at all," Chalmers noted as they left the village behind. "In reality, the villagers mocked Quixote, heaping scorn and trash on him. I dread to think what these foods they've shoved at us must truly be. Hog-slops, no doubt." His expression darkened. "Or worse."

"It looks good and smells good to me." Shea admired the loaf of bread he held, which was a deep golden brown, rolled in the shape of a sheaf of wheat, and still hot and aromatic. He could not feel so charitable toward the chicken.

"You've been pulled in by the mad knight's delusion." Chalmers scrutinized the things he carried with distaste, "None of this is edible."

Shea sighed. "Then what are we supposed to eat, Doc? I'm sure most of what Quixote is carrying he got from villages just like that last one."

The plump psychologist thought. "I'll develop a spell that will turn all this food into what it appears to be. Then we'll know what we're eating is safe."

Ahead of them, Don Quixote turned off the road, and began winding his way along a narrow track that led into the dusty hills. Chalmers put his arm out to stop Shea from following and watched the knight and his squire riding away. "I don't like the idea of wandering around in those hills," Reed Chalmers said under his breath. He looked at Shea, and raised one bushy, greying eyebrow. "In this time period, I suspect the hills of Spain harbor as many bandits as they do shepherds."

"I would think travelling with the greatest knight in the world should be some protection," Shea noted.

Sancho Panza looked back and realized Chalmers and Shea were stopped. Shea saw the fat squire rap on Quixote's armor until the knight reined in Rosinante and turned him around. Knight and squire conferred; then Panza trotted back to the main road.

"Good sirs, you must follow us now," the squire said. He sat straight in his saddle, face gleaming with sweat, fat palms gripped around the reins. He looked down at the two men standing on the dusty road, then glanced nervously toward the hills. "My master says your lady is ahead, held prisoner by your enemy, the evil enchanter. He says we must hurry, though, to catch the wizard unaware."

Shea nodded and started onto the side path, but Chalmers stopped him. "Nonsense, Harold—Quixote has no way of knowing where Florimel is. And I won't follow some delusional old man into bandit-infested hills on a wild goose chase."

Shea gritted his teeth. Chalmers could have chosen a better time to get stubborn. On the path, the knight waited as a boulder would wait—silent and impassive ... and immovable. Sancho Panza threw anxious glances behind him, and wrung his hands. Shadows lengthened across the parched, desolate land.

Silence stretched like the shadows, until Shea blurted out, "How does your master know Malambroso has Florimel there?"

Sancho looked flummoxed. "Why—by his oath, of course!" He stared as Shea, his expression suggesting Shea had lost his mind.

Harold shrugged and spread his arms in front of him, palms up.

"His oath," Sancho repeated, and when neither of the two men made any response, he sighed and said, "He swore he would help you find your lady, Señor Chalmero. He cannot do otherwise. That was his oath."

Chalmers opened his mouth to protest, but Shea cut him off. "Doc," he whispered urgently, "think of this as an opportunity to prove him wrong. If Florimel isn't there, this will give you a perfect opening to help him differentiate between his delusions and reality."

Chalmers' mouth snapped shut, and he eyed his colleague doubtfully. "I believe you're rationalizing, Harold," he said finally. "I believe you have fallen under the spell of Quixote's delusions, and vou are only saving that to manipulate me. However—" he took a deep breath and fixed Shea with a fishy stare, "it also happens that your suggestion is basically sound. Therefore, we shall follow the knight." He took off at a brisk pace, leaving Shea and Panza staring after him.

The squire turned to Harold Shea, and shook his head slowly. "Geraldo de Shea," he said, "please do not take offense-- but your master is very crazy."

Shea's mouth twitched into a grin he couldn't suppress. "Occupational hazard of psychologists," he agreed. "It happens to the best of them, sooner or later."

They rode until well after dark and set up a wretched, fireless campsite. Quixote insisted that a fire so near Malambroso's lair would alert the enchanter, who would then rain down curses upon them. Shea satisfied his hunger with some of the wonderful loaf of bread and a slab of the smoked meat Chalmers had carried all day, ignoring his partner's expressions of disgust and comments about the actual provenance of the food. He gladly handed over the chicken to Chalmers when his partner took a sudden interest in it. And then he went to sleep.

A searing flash of light, the crack of thunder, a sudden sub-bass "cluck" and screaming wind woke Shea from uncomfortable sleep. Dust scoured his face; clogged in his nose and mouth; gritted in his eyes. Another flash of lightning briefly silhouetted both a slight human form and a huge, twisted shape of feathered ghastliness against the craggy outline of the hill— then shuddered away into whale-belly blackness. The crash of thunder almost, but not quite, obliterated an other gargantuan "cluck." The earth bucked like a goaded horse and threw Shea from his bedroll, down the rock-strewn hill.

"Attend me, God!" Chalmers bellowed. "And by the grace of the Lady Florimel and all the saints, let this chicken be as it was!"

Chicken? Shea thought. That's what he did to a chicken? I told him to watch his decimals.

By the lightning flashes, Shea could see the chicken, which remained the size of a bull elephant, chasing after Sancho Panza with dinner in his eye. Don Quixote, still in full armor, lunged in front of the hungry bird and said, "On my honor, bird, be what you were." The softly spoken words reverberated through the hills.

Shea heard another squawk, but this one was far less impressive. As he climbed back up the hill, cautiously feeling his way, the thunder and lightning subsided, and the wind died down, and the hills stood still again. Shea assumed the chicken-monster also returned to its original form, though there were no helpful thunderbolts to shed a bit of light on the matter.

The camp was in an uproar.

"What is the meaning of this?" Quixote demanded of Chalmers. "For what reason have I pledged my arm and my honor in the aid of an enchanter who seeks to destroy us as we sleep?"

Meanwhile, Sancho Panza milled his arms wildly, shrieking, "Did you see that? The giant chicken tried to eat me like a bug. Did you see it, Sir Knight?"

Chalmers bellowed, "I was demonstrating the true form of the chicken, or rather, the monster that you, in your delusion, insist on calling a chicken. I'm going to make you see this world the way it really is, and you the way you really are."

How out of character of Chalmers, Shea thought. Doc isn't taking the misfiring of his magic well at all. He noticed that Panza was tying the now-normal chicken's legs together with an almost insane vigor. He tried not to laugh. I ought to say something to defuse the situation, he thought; unfortunately, the voices of his three fellow travellers kept getting louder, and he did not feel up to shouting all of them down simultaneously.

From behind him, Shea heard a loud "pop." Without warning, the stench of sulfur and brimstone washed over him. He whirled, and by the sudden glare of a wall of hellish red flames, saw Malambroso appear. The sorcerer's billowing velvet robes were picked out with gold threads that glittered in the hell-fire. His hair whipped and tossed in a nonexistent wind.

"Doctor Chalmers!" Malambroso waved a hand in a delicate gesture and the wall of flames vanished. His robes quit billowing and his hair settled into place. The rotten egg stink, however, hung in the air. "My sincerest thanks for alerting me to your presence." The sorcerer bowed, and snapped his fingers, "Give me back my wife," Chalmers yelled.

Malambroso smiled.

"Not possible, dear sir. I've decided I want to keep her. Incidentally—" His smile grew broader. "I challenge you here and now to magical battle. I noted your little fiasco with the chicken—I don't imagine you will do very well against me. I, after all, have learned to use this world's magic."

That whiff of sulfur and brimstone gave Shea a clue about how Malambroso's half of the magical world worked. The religious alignments probably went both ways, he thought. The good could call upon God, the evil on Satan. Except that Chalmers was not having any luck with magic, and he was a good man. He wondered if, in Quixote's world, only the truly pious and the truly evil could be great enchanters. There was a flaw in that theory, too, though. Shea was no more pious than Chalmers, but he was having a great deal more success with his magic.

Was there no rhyme or reason to the magical system in Quixote's world? If that were the case, things looked bad—not just for the moment, but for even getting back home.

Chalmers puffed and glowered at the evil sorcerer. "I'll accept—" he started to answer, and was interrupted by the booming voice of Don Quixote, amplified by God.

Shea had forgotten about Quixote. So had Chalmers and Malambroso. Now, without warning, the knight, armed and armored and astride his giant war steed, interposed himself between Chalmers and Malambroso.

"Sir Chalmero does not accept your challenge!" Quixote boomed. "I am his champion—and I have sworn an oath against your body, vile fiend, malodorous wizard, by God and my Lady—and by God and the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and by all that is good and right, you shall issue your challenge to me."

This speech had an electric effect on Malambroso. He froze, and stared blankly at the knight, and his mouth began to move. His eyes widened, and it became apparent to Shea that he was fighting Quixote's spell—and losing. The sorcerer looked as if an invisible puppetmaster was pulling the words out of his mouth one at a time. "I ... ch-challenge ... you, s-s-sir ... knight, ch-ch-champion ... of ... my enemy, ... R-r-reed Chalmers, to s-s-single combat. Sweat beaded on the sorcerer's face, and ran down his forehead and along his narrow, hooked nose.

Chalmers yelped. "I don't need the help of a crazy old man to beat Malambroso! I can take care of that second-rate charlatan by myself."

Shea made shushing motions. He ran to Chalmers' side. "Shut up, Doc," he whispered. "Let the knight handle it. Malambroso was right—you don't know how to use this system.''

Sancho Panza, on Chalmers' other side, said, "Do not insult my master, Señor Chalmero. He's fighting for you."

Quixote, meanwhile, paid no mind to Chalmers. His attention remained fixed on Malambroso. In what Harold Shea had come to think of as the "bullhorn of God" voice, the knight said, "By God's will and my might, your magic cannot harm me, vulgar conjurer. Quixote and his armor began to glow with pure pale blue light. Shea found the effect impressive.

Malambroso hissed and backed up a step. "By the Devil in his Hell, and all his archangels, your sword will rust between your fingertips and your lance fall to ashes, sir knight."

The knight held up his unblemished, blue-glowing sword, and watched as little flickers of red light beat uselessly against it. He laughed hollowly and advanced against Malambroso. "You battle the greatest knight in the world, wizard. You did not think to defeat me in such manner, did you?

Malambroso cocked his arm back as if he were getting ready to throw a baseball, and there appeared between the magician's lingers a blazing ball of fire. The sorcerer threw the fireball—it shot straight at Quixote, hissing and squealing like arcane fireworks, trailing sparks behind it. The fireball picked up both speed and size as it went, so that as it neared the knight, it looked like a comet.

Quixote swung his sword in an easy arc and hit the thing—it vanished with a "pop" as if it had never existed. "Enough, knavish enchanter," the knight said. "You would hound me with your petty magics—so then will I harry you with the force of my arm."

Quixote's visor clanged down, and he spurred Rosinante forward "For Dulcinea!" he shouted, and swung his sword down at the sorcerer.

Malambroso ducked. Even so, Quixote's sword slashed through his robe, and Shea saw blood start from a deep wound in the magician's shoulder. The magician screamed in pain, and waved his good arm, shrieking unintelligible words. Red flames leapt up around him, and Rosinante started and backed, whinnying.

"Forward," Quixote cried, bringing the beast under control. Knight and horse shot through the flames. Malambroso cowered. The Knight of the Long Face swung again. The sorcerer sidestepped and cried out, bleeding from a new wound.

Chalmers snorted in exasperation. "Damn it all to hell, Harold," he growled, and his voice boomed around Shea's head, "Quixote can't be beating Malambroso. He's nothing hut a doddering old man on a nag too decrepit to use for dog food!"

The smell of fire and brimstone overwhelmed Harold Shea. Lightning flashed, thunder cracked—and the knight on the horse changed. Where before two magnificent creatures had battled the evil Malambroso, now a scarecrow of a man with a washbasin tied to his head charged against the wizard on a horse so knock-kneed and splayfooted it could barely trot. The horse stumbled on the uneven ground and pitched the transfigured Quixote feet-over-head into the bleeding sorcerer.

Malambroso, bloodied and weak, crawled away from the knight. Freed by Quixote's transformation and the breaking of the spell that had bound him to fight, he growled, "There will be another time and another place, Chalmers. Beware!" Then he vanished into nothingness, leaving only stinking yellow smoke behind him.

Sancho Panza cried out: "My master!" Then he picked a short, gnarled stick off the ground and attacked Chalmers. "You were one of them all along, you monster!"

Chalmers yelled, "He's cured! Look, Harold. Now you see the true Don Quixote!" He ran behind Shea.

Sancho Panza got in a solid lick with his cudgel. "Give me back my master," he demanded.

"This is the break we've—been waiting for—Harold," Chalmers panted as he dodged behind Shea again to avoid Panza and the stick. "With Quixote rational, his—delusions won't affect the m-m-math-ematics of magic any further. Keep this luna—tic off of me and I'll—spell us out of here." Panza doubled back, and landed another thwack on Chalmers' ribs.

Harold Shea stepped in and grabbed the squire's wrists. He twisted both of them outward until the little man dropped his stick. "Enough, sir squire," he said. "I'll take care of this now." He looked at Chalmers, who squatted, panting, at his side. "Go ahead, Doc."

Chalmers pulled Florimel's handkerchief out of the little leather travel bag that hung at his waist, and with it a feather Shea suspected of having chicken origins. He drew two circles side by side in the dirt, with an intersection between them like the set-and-subset diagrams children used in grade school.

The older psychologist carefully placed his wife's handkerchief, the feather, and a strand of his own hair into the intersection formed by the two circles, then asked Shea for a hair from his head. Shea complied. Chalmers dropped that into his intersection, too. Then he chanted:

Nothing happened. Chalmers waited. Shea waited. Even Sancho Panza stopped struggling and watched the circles in the dirt with keen interest.

When the silence stretched to uncomfortable lengths, Chalmers muttered, "That should have worked." He stood and turned to his associate and the still-captive squire, brushed the dirt from the knees of his garment, and fixed both men with a withering glance.

"That should have worked. Dammit," he muttered. "It's just like the chicken."

Shea saw a minor puff of sulfurous smoke erupt behind his partner, and a small, furious ball of feathers materialized with a squawk. It could have been the chicken the villagers had given Shea the day before— except that bird, feet still firmly tied, was digging bugs out of the weeds not twenty feet away.

Chalmers jerked around and stared down at the chicken he had conjured. He squawked louder than it had.

Harold Shea shook his head and turned Sancho Panza loose. The little squire had lost interest in flattening Chalmers. With a bewildered expression on his face, he looked one final time at the mysterious chicken, then hurried to his master's side. Shea watched him.

Panza tapped Quixote on the shoulder, spoke to him, shook him lightly—and finally wrung his hands and stared at the ancient, scrawny man who had once been a knight.

Don Quixote did not seem to know that Sancho was even there. The one-time knight stood in frozen silence, staring down at himself. He's in shock, Harold Shea thought. The emaciated old man slowly reached up and lifted the dented washbasin off of his head, and held it in front of his face. In the first faint light of dawn, Shea could see the glimmering wetness of tears that etched their way down the furrows of the old man's cheeks. He watched as Quixote studied his decrepit steed, Rosinante, then turned his attention to his skinny arms and gnarled hands. He watched as the old man, head hanging, shoulders stooped, mounted the swaybacked horse with arthritic caution, and began to ride away from his squire and the two psychologists, further into the hills.

Harold Shea felt as if he had witnessed the vandalism of a magnificent cathedral, and its replacement with a concrete block service station. Pity wrenched his heart. "By God," he swore softly, "I would not have you any other way than as the greatest knight in the world, on the greatest horse alive, whether Chalmers was right or not."

Lightning flashed again, and thunder cracked. A sheet of light enveloped the old man, and inside, forms flickered—and out of the light rode none other than the great Don Quixote on his mighty warsteed.

The knight pulled his steed in and held out one gauntleted hand. He looked long and hard at the horse and its gleaming trappings. Then without warning, he leveled his lance at Chalmers and charged. "Traitorous enchanter!" he yelled. "Two-faced fiend, who would magick me even while I fought as your champion! Now you shall reap your just reward!" The point of the lance dipped lower, aimed for Chalmers' middle.

Sancho Panza was a statue, wide-eyed with amazement. Reed Chalmers froze, and his face drained of color. Quixote galloped across the uneven field before Shea could even cry out a protest. The point of the great knight's lance closed the space to its target, crashed with thunderous impact into Chalmers belly—

—And shattered like glass into a thousand shards that rained shrapnel across the hillside. Rosinante flew backward onto his hindquarters from the force of the impact, and for the second time that morning, the knight Quixote was unhorsed.

Reed Chalmers looked down at his abdomen, ran his fingers over the unmarked surface, and whispered, "It didn't touch me." Then he fainted.

Now I'm in shock, Harold Shea thought bemusedly, while the world spun around him in fuzzy, loopy little circles. What just happened?

Quixote staggered to his feet and raised one mailed fist to the heavens. "After what this scoundrel has done to me, God, you cannot keep me to my oath!"

"OH, YES I CAN," a disembodied kettledrum voice thundered. "I HAVE A PERSONAL INTEREST IN THIS CASE."

Yipes, Shea thought, divine intervention comes home. And I wish it hadn't. He found the thought of a personally interested deity who made housecalls unnerving. It made agnosticism a hard line to hold.

Shea hurried to Chalmers' side, and knelt next to the unconscious man. He checked for a pulse. Chalmers had one—it was a bit fast, but strong and regular. Shea sighed with relief, until a pair of armored legs moved into his field of vision. Shea looked up ... and up, into the scowling face of the knight. "God will not permit me to break my oath by killing him," Quixote said, "but I will aid him no more. My squire packs our belongings, and we shall leave you when he is done."

Harold Shea bit his lip and nodded. Without Quixote, finding Florimel was going to be tougher. Still, he couldn't blame the knight for being upset. "I understand," he told the knight. "And I'm sorry."

"As indeed am I. You are a man of arms and action like myself, Geraldo de Shea, and I have heard you call upon the name of God, and seen God answer." Quixote clasped his gauntleted hands together. "In truth, it is only by your prayer that I am once again myself. You have my thanks."

Shea looked at the ground. "Don't mention it."

The knight nodded. "Nor shall I again. But if you ever leave this vile serpent, I would welcome your arm at my side in any great adventure."

Panza finished packing. "We can go now, your worship," he yelled from his place next to the horses.

Quixote glanced over his shoulder at his squire. Then he looked down the path the way the foursome had come the night before, shading his eyes against the sun. "Very well. It is time. Señor Geraldo, may God be with you and may your fair lady look upon you with favor." Without even waiting for a reply, he strode, clanking, to his horse.

He mounted with a grace Shea found hard to believe. Harold Shea had, at various times in his recent career, worn plate mail. He knew from experience the stuff weighed a ton—there were times when he had wished someone could have winched him onto the back of the horse, rather than making him climb on board. Yet Quixote vaulted, lithe and graceful as you please, into the saddle in defiance of all physical laws—which of course, Shea reflected, was the crux of the matter.

The knight waved a hand. Sancho Panza wheeled his Arab mare about, Quixote spurred Rosinante forward, and knight and squire broke into an easy canter—which made the crash as Quixote hit the invisible wall sound all the more like a dozen trash cans dropped from the top of a ten-story building.

"God!" Quixote bellowed, "I didn't kill him! What more do you demand of me?

God thundered, "ONLY THAT YOU MEET THE TERMS OF YOUR AGREEMENT, SIR KNIGHT"

I really wish God wouldn't keep butting in that way, Shea thought. The disembodied voice made his skin crawl. Wisely, he did not express his opinion out loud.

Quixote stood, admittedly with some difficulty this time, and crossed his arms over his chest. "Which terms?" he demanded. Quixote showed no fear in dealing with God—a fact Harold Shea noted with admiration. Shea was perfectly willing to admit that he was scared silly.

"SEE IF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR—HEAR ME, LORD IN HEAVEN,'" God mimicked in a very Quixote-like voice. "I SWEAR I WILL GIVE MY AID AND MY ARM TO ASSIST IN THIS JUST CAUSE FOR THE GLORY OF MY OWN FAIR DULCINEA, THOUGH IT COST ME MY LIFE, MY ESTATES, AND EVEN MY OWN GOOD NAME. NOR WILL I EAT, NOR SLEEP, NOR PARTAKE OF WINE OR SONG OR OTHER BATTLE UNTIL HIS LADY IS RECOVERED UNTO HIM—YOU REMEMBER SAYING ANYTHING OF THAT SORT, QUIXOTE?" God stopped and waited. Quixote said nothing.

"WHEN YOU ASKED ME TO HEAR YOU, I HEARD YOU," God pointed out. "IF YOU'D PREFER, I COULD QUIT LISTENING FROM NOW ON."

"Then you intend, Lord in Heaven, for me to continue to lend my might and my honor to that enchanter?" Quixote pointed melodramatically at Chalmers, who chose that moment to open his eyes. "Even though he is a heretical miscreant and a back-stabbing scoundrel as well?!"

"YOU'RE CATCHING ON," God thundered.

"Who was that?" Chalmers whispered groggily to Shea.

"That was God," Shea said.

Chalmers gave the information an instant's thought. Then he fainted again.

Quixote, meanwhile, did not intend to give in. "It is your command, then, O God, that I must stay my hand for worthier causes—a maiden in distress, or perhaps a downtrodden servant—in favor of this fiend who serves the Evil One?"

"MY WAYS ARE INSCRUTABLE" God snapped. "AND ABOVE THE QUESTIONING OF MORTALS. BESIDES," He added, "A DEAL IS A DEAL."

When God's voice stopped booming around the hills, Sancho Panza remarked to Quixote, quite loudly, "If your worship will just hold him still for me, I'll kill him. I didn't promise God anything."

Shea thought for just an instant, from the expression on Quixote's face, that he was going to take Sancho Panza up on his offer. Hut then the Knight of the Sad Countenance sighed. "As God said, 'A deal is a deal.' I shall meet my obligations as a knight, no matter the unfairness of the burden God has placed on me." He stared long and hard at the unconscious form of Chalmers, and added, softly, "Nevertheless, my good squire, if he turns me into that doddering old man again, you may act as your heart leads you."

The atmosphere during the morning meal would have strained a sloth's composure. Chalmers and Sancho Panza exchanged murderous looks, Quixote was pointedly praying at Chalmers, and Harold Shea felt in incipient ulcer brewing.

The meal took place amid dead silence, broken only by the twin cluckings of the chickens—which served as an unfortunate reminder of all that had gone before. Harold spent the time desperately trying to remember exactly what it was he had promised God He thought it was patently unfair, somehow, that God had a flawless memory, and he did not. Shea also felt it a bit unfair to find that God had not only been listening—but also paying attention. He sincerely hoped that in the heat of battle, he had not gone for a really gaudy oath.

On the other hand, he was not quite ready to up and ask God for the sort of instant replay the Almighty had given Quixote. Shea had a dark suspicion that if he did, he would not like what God would say.

After breakfast, while Reed Chalmers finished stuffing his few belongings into his pack, Shea gave some thought to the problem of transportation. Quixote had not offered them horses—and after the disastrous events of the morning, Shea didn't think he ever would. But Harold hated the idea of tromping on foot over half of Spain through the dust Quixote's and Panza's horses kicked up. Neither Chalmers nor Shea had any local currency—and he doubted that the peasants or the Church of Catholic Spain would look too kindly on men riding magic brooms.

He eyed the two chickens. He certainly did not want to eat them. Perhaps—seeing his magic was working well enough—he could turn them into usable mounts.

Surreptitiously he yanked a few hairs from the tail of Panza's horse. Then he grabbed both chickens—no great feat when their legs were bound—and trotted around the side of the hill and out of sight.

First he had to come up with a spell. Catholic saints ought to meet the requirements for the Law of Heroic Namedropping, he decided. He tried to think of a few who would be appropriate. George was the patron saint of Boy Scouts—and probably, Shea thought, of knights who fought dragons. Not awfully useful, but he was the first saint that came to mind. Shea pondered a bit longer. There was Francis of Assisi. He had something to do with beasts, didn't he? Or was Antony the patron saint of animals? Christopher was travel—or had he been disbarred? Probably not in Quixote's time, Shea finally decided.

Enough saints. He developed his incantation, deciding to incorporate the Laws of Contagion and Similarity into the spell as well as the Namedropping Law, on the theory that every little bit might help. Then he settled the trussed chickens in the dirt and draped a horse hair over the back of each. Around each bird he scratched the outline of a horse in the dirt. He winced as he studied his outlines—it was a pity he had never been better at art. Oh, well. He shrugged and took a deep breath.

He recited:

The air around the chickens blasted outward, flinging dust into Shea's eyes. When he could open them enough to see his results, he groaned. His reputation as a conjurer of singular monsters was not going to be hurt one bit by this pair. He looked the two of them over from front to back, trying to figure out what they were and where his spell had gone wrong. He decided he had probably gone awry with his insistence that they "form to his plan." He was going to have to learn how to draw.

His prospective steeds still had feathers—and little, lumpish wings. He supposed he could see how the spot in the dirt where his stick had joggled would suggest wings. Their faces were long and rather anteater-ish. Their legs were horselike enough, although covered with little slick feathers clear down to the hooves. The tails were very horselike, too. They didn't have manes, though—instead their head feathers draped in crests that, on closer inspection, proved to mimic his drawings very closely.

He had sketched bridles onto the beasts in his pictures. The chicken-steeds wore bridles. He had forgotten to draw saddles, and there were no saddles anywhere to be seen.

"This isn't what I had in mind," he muttered.

"IF YOU WANTED HORSES, WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY HORSES?" God asked.

If Harold Shea could have jumped out of his skin, he would have. "Don't do that!" he yelped. The—well, the whatever-they-were—stared placidly, as unaffected by the booming voice of God as they were by their sudden creation in the middle of the hot Spanish hills.

Harold took a long, slow breath and said, "Okay, God, can I have horses?"

"NOT NOW, YOU CAN'T." Harold noted that God sounded peeved. "THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR I GAVE YOU WHAT YOU ASKED FOR."

"Right," he said. He saw no sense in annoying God. The chicken-steeds were better than nothing. Instead, he grabbed both beasts' reins and led them back around the side of the hill.

Chalmers had Harold's gear packed as well as his own by the time Harold got back with the beasts. Sancho Panza hurriedly crossed himself when he saw the monstrosities, while Quixote pretended not to notice them at all.

Chalmers' eyebrows merely rose.

"What in the world, Harold?" the older psychologist asked.

"The end result of concision without precision," Shea growled and pressed the reins from one of the creatures into Chalmers' hand. "Take one—it will he better than walking, I suppose."

Chalmers harrumphed. "Yes, I suppose it will. What is this thing, anyway?"

"It's a shurdono."

"A shurdono?"

"Right. Because I sure don't know," Shea snapped. He picked up his pack, slipped it over his shoulders, and vaulted onto the middle of his steed's back, just behind the wings. The creature's spine jabbed him in the groin. Harold gasped and inched forward until he rested on the relative padding of the wing muscles. These creatures were not going to be comfortable for long bareback rides. He crouched on his animal in silence and discomfort, sulking. Why hadn't he mentioned the word "horse" somewhere in his spell? He should have been able to fit a one-syllable word like that into the poem. He was a far better poet than Chalmers—for all that his results were about as erratic.

Chalmers struggled onto his beast—the expression on his lace told Shea his shurdono was not the only one with too many bones in bad places. "These will serve as long as we don't run into any monks of the Dominican Order," Chalmers remarked. "I'll remind you that the Spanish Inquisition is in full swing right now. I don't doubt they'd be fascinated by the heresy involved in riding—shurdonos."

Shea ran his fingers through the soft feathers at the nape of his beast's neck and sighed. How could anyone forget the Spanish Inquisition? He tapped his heels lightly into the beast's flank. It lurched into a tooth rattling trot. Pain shot through parts of his body that, at that moment. Shea would just as soon have forgotten existed. The Spanish Inquisition couldn't be much worse, he concluded.

Quixote and Panza rode in front, Quixote carrying a fresh lance as if he wished he could run Chalmers through with it, and Panza equipped with the final spare. Chalmers and Shea kept well back. Neither party spoke to the other. They were well out of the high hills, and wending their way over rolling countryside dotted with small farms and the occasional village.

Chalmers was in a foul mood. He had stared at the spot between Quixote's shoulderblades so long Shea was surprised the back of the knight's armor did not melt and puddle. "That old lunatic doesn't need to hold such a grudge," Chalmers growled. "I'm not holding it against him that he tried to spit me on his lance."

"You turned him into a decrepit old man, Doc," Shea answered. "You stopped him from defeating Malambroso and humiliated him—and in spite of that, God won't let him out of the oath he swore to find Florimel for you." Shea wriggled into a new position for the umpteenth time, trying to find one place on his anatomy that was not terminally bruised by the shurdono's sharp spine. "You can't expect him to be happy with you."

Chalmers snorted. "I'm still not convinced that Quixote's change was my doing. I think in the heat of battle, he could have suddenly snapped out of his delusional state. Still, I suppose I can't expect him to look at it that way." Chalmers pulled some of the bread from the morning meal out of his pack and calmly chewed away at it. "On the other hand, I should be furious with you."

"With me?"

Chalmers took a long swig from the wineskin he had appropriated from Panza. He did not offer any to Shea. "Certainly. Quixote was cured. If my theory is correct, this universe reverted to its normal state when that happened. Given enough time, I'm sure I could have developed a workable spell for defeating Malambroso and rescuing Florimel. At least we could have made a syllogismobile to get us to more familiar territory. However, you returned Quixote to his delusional state before I had time to ascertain the precise rules of mathematics and magic in effect—and now we are back to your madman's chaotic magic of confusion."

Harold Shea frowned. "That would be true if your theory were correct—but I'm not convinced that it is, Reed." When the senior psychologist gave him a frosty glare, Shea swallowed and said, "I think we may be dealing with the complete separation of Quixote's universe from the universe Cervantes described—perhaps we are in the world to which Cervantes' Quixote, the madman Quixiana, was actually attuned."

Chalmers snort was derisive. "The universe is not a Chinese puzzlebox, Harold. Universes of fictions within fictions are improbable to the point of ludicrousness and—"

"Monstrous and diabolical crew!" Don Quixote bellowed. "Release immediately the noble princesses whom you are forcibly carrying off in that coach or prepare to receive instant death as the just punishment for your misdeeds."

Chalmers stopped lecturing, and Shea looked down the load to see what Quixote was making such a racket about. Two men in dark robes carrying sunshades, their faces covered by masks, rode ahead of a black carriage of immense proportions. "I remember this incident," Chalmers whispered. "They're the Benedictines. Harmless monks—in the book, they were just riding in front of the carriage—had nothing to do with it—"

One of the two masked men called out, "Sir Knight, we are but poor, harmless monks of St. Benedict, travelling about our business. We don't know a thing about princesses."

"See? Now he's going to charge and they're going to run," Chalmers predicted.

Sure enough, Quixote cried, "No fair speeches for me, for I know you, perfidious scoundrels!" Then he dropped his lance into position and charged.

The Benedictine monks, however, did not flee as Chalmers had guessed. Instead, one of the two drew patterns in the air with his hands, while the second chanted something and threw a handful of powder toward the charging knight. Instantly, a giant thicket that glittered with thorns grew across the road.

Quixote waved his lance and called out a promise to his lady Dulcinea in his ringing battle-voice, and the thicket smoked and burst into flames and cleared itself out of his way.

Behind the thicket lay a sea. The disguised enchanters and the giant coach had vanished. "Hah!" Quixote roared, and touched the water with his lance. It hissed and drew back, and Rosinante cantered across the path between the two towering walls of water. With every foot the knight won, the sea shrank, until knight and horse reached the other side—and nothing was left of the sea but a puddle, rapidly evaporating in the heat of the day.

The enchanters were busily at work, building yet another spell. Quixote galloped nearer.

"Freston, you carrion rot—I know your handiwork! I'll have your head, by God and all that is fair!" The knight waved his lance.

Sancho Panza kept back, behind the line where the magical thicket once blocked the road, crossing himself vigorously and praying loudly for deliverance from the evil wizards.

Shea slipped off his shurdono, grateful for the respite from the beast's hideously uncomfortable back. He watched the magical attacks and feints of the knight and the two enchanters, and as he did, the irksome insistence that he was missing something important began to grow on him.

Say, Doc," he said, "didn't Quixote have some kind of clause in his agreement with God about not fighting for any other purpose until he won Florimel's freedom?"

Chalmers, watching Quixote, said, "Um-m-m—I think so."

Shea forced himself to get back on the shurdono. "Then if this were not a battle for Florimel, he wouldn't be able to fight it."

"He's fighting Freston, one of his delusions," Chalmers said. An expression of envy flickered across his face, though, as Quixote turned one of the two enchanters into a small green bird. "Why can't I do that?" he muttered.

The transformed enchanter turned himself back into a man, and stretched his hands, clawlike, at the knight. Something disgustingly slimy and sticky-looking shot from his fingertips and enmeshed Quixote.

"There are two enchanters over there. Doc. What if Freston and Malambroso have joined forces? Couldn't Florimel be in the carriage?"

Panza took a moment from his prayers to give the two of them an indignant glare. "Certainly the Lady Florimel is in the carriage—why else have we come this way to meet the enchanters? Why else does the great knight Don Quixote fight?"

Shea and Chalmers exchanged glances.

Chalmers grimaced. "Harold, I must register my protest toward your getting involved with this fight. I feel if you had not returned Quixote to his delusional state, Florimel would be with us and we would be home by now." The psychologist twisted his shurdono's reins between his fingers. "If you stay out of this, Quixote may once again snap back to rationality. If, however, you feed his delusions by participating in them, we will certainly loose any chance of that happening—and I may never find Florimel."

Harold Shea raised an eyebrow, then slowly shook his head. "Quixote didn't snap out of his delusional state. You transformed him into Señor Quixiana. Think about this. Heed. I postulate that this situation illustrates your theory of delusional states perfectly— except that we're in the universe Quixiana tapped into, and not in the universe he inhabited."

Chalmers' face reddened, and he asked, "But if we are in a genuine magic-based universe, why doesn't my magic work?"

Shea's attention drifted to the battle between Quixote and the enchanters. Amazing things were happening. The booming of oaths and counter-oaths filled the air. Fires flickered and vanished, thunderheads formed and unformed. One of the enchanters conjured a cloud of giant bats, and Quixote quickly changed them into roses, which fell to the ground and littered the plain like the tribute of invisible maidens. Quixote sent a giant lizard at the wizards—it became a little yapping lap-dog.

"Sometimes your magic does work," Harold Shea said. "Just try to remember what you were doing when it did." He drew his saber and kicked his shurdono into action. He was jouncing painfully toward the fight when an idea occurred to him. "By God and my lady," he yelled, "if I can't have a horse, I want a saddle for this thing!" A weirdly shaped, wonderfully comfortable saddle appeared between Shea and the shurdono's bony back. He sighed happily and urged the chicken-steed into a lumbering gallop.

Shea was always terrified at the beginning of a battle—but the terror wore off quickly, as the practical issue of survival pushed the fear from his mind. As he assessed the ongoing battle, he grew calmer.

Quixote's second lance had broken early on, and he was lighting close in and on horseback with a heavy, double-edged straight blade. Rosinante, Shea noted, was as much a weapon as Quixote's sword. The ineffable horse leapt and kicked with deadly accuracy; his schooled moves were as perfectly executed as any Shea had seen the famous Lippezan stallions perform in his own world.

Quixote saw Harold ride up and yelled, "I must defeat Malambroso, on my oath and honor. Do you then take on that despoiler, Freston?"

Harold Shea, armed with his saber and riding the effable shurdono, was not sure how much help he was going to be. Still, he thought, I made a difference with the giants. "I will, sir knight!" he answered.

He raised his saber, keeping a close eye on Freston, who was trying to get behind Quixote to bespell him. "By Belphebe and God, I'm going to pound you into the ground, Freston!" Shea swore. He urged the shurdono forward. The shurdono, sensing danger, balked. Shea kicked, he pled, he smacked the shurdono's rump with the flat of his blade, and finally he snarled at the heavens, "By God and the saints and Belphebe and the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, I want a good fighting horse, and I want him NOW!"

The sheet lightning that surrounded him left him seeing stars and smelling ozone—but the horse beneath him, huge as Rosinante, lunged at Freston with minimal urging.

Freston saw trouble coming. He waved his hand over his mule. "By Satan's spawn, I'll ride a tiger to your doom, you spineless outlander." Freston's mule became a mammoth orange Bengal tiger that roared and pounced.

"Aaagh!" Shea yelled, and then yelped, "Flame, sword, by God!" The tiger made for Shea's horse's throat, the horse made a fancy little dressage side step out of the tiger's way, and Shea, a good rider but certainly no master horseman, found that the horse had stepped completely out from under him, and he was riding air—with a blazing sword in his hand and a tiger coming directly at him.

His rump hit the dirt with a painful thump. Still, he brandished the sword, and the tiger laid its ears back and snarled. Freston, astride the tiger, was starting into another curse. Meanwhile, the wizard's big cat crouched, close enough that Shea could smell his breath, and the cat's tail twitched restlessly. His eyes never left Shea's throat. When Harold saw the tiger's rump wiggle in the same way housecats did just before they attacked, he panicked. "Yah!" he shouted, and straightened his arm and lunged. The flaming blade nicked the tiger's nose and singed his fur, and the giant cat leapt back and to one side; as quickly as that, Freston landed in the dirt. The tiger, with one backward snarl, padded toward the hills.

Meanwhile, Quixote, freed of the concerns of keeping watch on two enchanters at a time, began getting the better of Malambroso. The knight was still on horseback, while the evil enchanter had been unseated. Malambroso was sending magical beasts against Quixote, but the knight parried them with bursts of light and sound, and the attacks failed.

Malambroso tired visibly. The monsters he conjured became smaller and less frightening. He began backing, losing ground.

At the same time, Shea pressed his attack on Freston. The Spanish wizard's eves darted from Shea to Malambroso and hack to Shea. He kept retreating, and under his breath he muttered another curse. "By hell's dominion, swing a sword no more—but find you hold a snake in hand."

Shea's saber melted under his fingers, and writhed. Shea found himself swinging a king cobra. "Yaaagh!" he howled, and then his eyes narrowed and he grinned maniacally. "On my lady's honor, let's have some more snakes—snakes in Freston's cloak, snakes in Freston's hood, snakes up Freston's sleeves and down his boots and in his underwear—if he's wearing any—"

Freston's clothing writhed horribly, and the enchanter paled and shrieked, "Aaaie! Devil take me— but not the clothes! Not the clothes!" Red puffs of smoke shot out of his clothing, and abruptly the empty monk's robes fell to the ground.

Almost empty, Shea amended, watching the clothing squirm on its own. "No more snakes, O Lord in Heaven," he said. His cobra reverted to saber form, and he sheathed it gratefully. He whistled to his horse, and the warsteed trotted over. Shea mounted and looked to Don Quixote.

Quixote had Malambroso backed against the coach. The coachman on top cowered well out of the way of the knight and the wizard. "Surrender!" Quixote shouted. "You're done for, wretch!"

"By the legions of Hell, I'll never surrender—but for now, I and mine will take our leave—and what's not mine, I'll hide in Hell. Find it if you can!" Malambroso waved an arm, and puffs of red smoke appeared in his place—and from the top of the coach where the driver had crouched, and trailing in wisps from the coach's half-opened door.

When Shea charged down the road to help Quixote, Chalmers sat on his shurdono and watched, feeling miserable. He twitched under Sancho Panza's suspicious glare, and he longed to attack Malambroso and Freston with a few well-crafted, clever spells. He would bet they had never seen anything like the disembodied strangling hands with which he'd once bested the enchanters of Faerie. Now he could not successfully bespell a chicken. He felt useless, and worse yet, he felt especially useless in that one area where his talents usually shone—magic. It nettled him that Harold Shea, who had lost none of his ability at sword-fighting and other physical feats, seemed, in Quixote's world, to have acquired the magical ability that should rightfully have belonged to Chalmers.

For a man who was used to effecting events on a grand scale, it was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow.

Chalmers watched Shea fighting alongside Quixote, mixing feats of magic with strength of arms, and envy gnawed in his belly. Incompetence was misery. "Oh, Hell ..." he swore, softly.

He became aware, gradually, of a sense of general expectancy in the air. Around him, the light took on shimmer and weight, and hung electrically, sending shivers through his skin. He looked over his shoulder, trying to see what had changed, worrying that what he sensed was the phenomena of lightning preparing to strike—or something akin to that. However, he could see nothing that might be causing his skin to crawl and his hair to stand on end.

The silence stretched on, crackling, until his nerves quivered and sweat beaded in the palms of his hands.

A deep, throbbing voice finally shredded the silence. "YES ...?" it asked from the air around him. "YOU CALLED?"

The shurdono bucked, and Chalmers heart pounded itself into the back of his throat. "G-G-G-God?" he squeaked. He looked all around, hoping to catch sight of the speaker.

He could see nothing out of the ordinary. The invisible speaker sniffed indignantly. "DON'T BE INSULTING."

Reed Chalmers felt that voice vibrating in the base of his spine. "Th-th-th-then who?" he asked. He noticed that Sancho Panza crossed himself and muttered prayers. The squire never took his eyes off the psychologist who talked to empty air.

"FENWICK, THIRD DEMON IN COMMAND OF THE LEGIONS OF HELL, AT YOUR SERVICE. YOU DID CALL ON HELL ..."

Chalmers felt the universe begin to spin around him. Little white dots circled just within his peripheral vision, and he noted that everything was turning gray and fuzzy. He heard a sound closely related to the roar of the ocean—and recognized, just in time, the symptoms of fainting. He lowered his head to the shurdono's back, and took long, slow breaths that smelled strongly of musty chicken. Fenwick, he thought. A devil—at my service.

The world gradually stopped whirling, and Chalmers sat up again. He jutted his chin and squared his shoulders and made a conscious effort to control any quaver in his voice. "I've only called on God," he said primly. "Any reference to Hell was merely accidental profanity."

Fenwick, Third Demon in command of the Legions of Hell, digested this in long silence. Then, in stunned tones, he asked, "YOU HONESTLY CALLED ON HEAVEN? WHATEVER FOR?"

He sounded sincere. For some reason, Chalmers felt this was a bad sign. "Because," he answered, hoping to talk his way out of an increasingly uncomfortable situation, "the magic system in this universe appears to be based on spells that utilize oaths to God and promises to various saints and loved ones—"

The voice interrupted with a rude cackle. "YOU MORON," it said, wheezing with laughter. "THAT'S EXACTLY THE SYSTEM—IF YOU'RE A KNIGHT. BUT YOU AREN'T A KNIGHT. YOU'RE AN ENCHANTER. ALL ENCHANTERS DRAW THEIR POWERS FROM HELL."

"I'm not an evil enchanter. I'm a good enchanter," Chalmers sniffed.

"HE-HE-HE!" Fenwick giggled. "AND I'M A SAINT HE-HE-HE! A GOOD ENCHANTER. BOY, JUST WAIT TIL I TELL THE GUYS IN MARKETING: SO, MR. GOOD ENCHANTER DID YOU WANT SOMETHING OR DID YOU JUST CALL FOR THE HELL OF IT—HE-HE-HE-HE!"

Reed Chalmers felt that he was reaching the end of his patience. "Did I want something? Let me tell you what I want. I want a horse instead of this razor-spined monstrosity. I want magic to work for me. I want my wife back and I want to go home."

"HM-M-M-M." Fenwick pondered, then said, "WELL, THE MOST APPROPRIATE FORM FOR THAT IS BY SATAN AND HIS MINIONS'—"

"Listen, dammit—" Chalmers interrupted.

"YEAH, THAT WILL DO TOO," Fenwick agreed, "BUT TECHNICALLY SPEAKING, IT'S PRETTY RUDE."

Without further warning, Chalmers found himself astride a very fine horse, appropriately saddled and bridled. He discovered, as well, that he abruptly understood the magical system of Quixote's universe. But Florimel was nowhere evident, and he most definitely wasn't home.

"What about Florimel?" he asked. He felt a bit better. He felt a sort of warm, tingly happiness toward the whole of creation. Magic had once again worked for him, irreproachably. He understood why it worked, and this gave him a comforting feeling of control. He also realized that with every second he was not sitting on that miserable shurdono's back, being gouged in the groin by the beast's nightmarish spine, his happiness increased by another degree.

"I CAN'T GIVE YOU FLORIMEL," Fenwick said. He sounded contrite. "AN ENCHANTER WITH A HIGHER RANKING HAS CLAIMED THE SERVICES OF THE SECOND DEMON IN COMMAND OF THE LEGIONS OF HELL, AND THE TWO OF THEM HAVE LEGAL POSSESSION OF HER SORRY." He coughed once, diffidently. "AND YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GET YOURSELF HOME. ITS OUT OF MY TERRITORY"

"Malambroso again!" Chalmers clenched his fists and glared at the fight going on near the coach. "Damn him!"

Fenwick's voice became irrepressibly and annoyingly cheerful, as he said, "OH, THAT WOULD BE REDUNDANT, REED CHALMERS. HE'S ALREADY AN ENCHANTER."

The deeper implications of that statement sunk in, and Chalmers shivered in spite of the heat, as full realization hit him. Heaven and Hell in Quixote's universe were not only real, but picked their teams according to profession—at least where his profession was concerned. He thought about what he had come to know from Fenwick's infusion of magical understanding. A corrupt knight would still fight under God's banner—while the most benign magician—himself, for example—would automatically be consigned to the ranks of Hell. Thus Harold Shea, who functioned well as a man-at-arms in these backwater universes, had been able to open a magical account with God—metaphorically speaking—while he, Chalmers, a superb theoretician and first water magician, was stuck banking with the Devil.

What he withdrew from the Devil's bank, he'd have to pay back. He had, thanks to Fenwick, a sudden and appallingly clear grasp of the mathematics involved. When he concentrated, he could see, on a glowing screen in his mind's eye, the tab he had run up with the Devil. He had acquired one giant chicken on his account, and one regular one—and the transformation of a knight into a lunatic. Quixote, in this universe, really was the mighty hero he appeared to be. Chagrined, Chalmers studied that part of his account with Hell and tried to figure out how he was going to apologize. Last but not least, of course, there was the replacement of the shurdono with a very good horse. He checked the price on that, and groaned. He had not realized how good pain had been for his soul.

Down the road, Quixote and Shea combined on final attack, and the two magicians and the coachman vanished in a puff of garish red smoke. Shea gave Chalmers a thumbs-up sign. Then he and Quixote rode to the abandoned coach and opened the doors.

It's a good thing Shea's proving adept at magic in this world, Chalmers thought, because now that I know what I have to pay to use magic, I don't think I'll dare. He tapped his horse lightly with his heels and trotted down the road toward the coach.

Harold Shea reached out to pull the coach door open, then stopped. The coach hulked over him, huge and menacing, exuding danger, and his nerves tingled at the slightest idea of looking inside. It was ridiculous, but he found the big black coach with its four stamping, snorting black horses more terrifying than the tiger had been.

"I like this not at all," Quixote said out of the blue. He stood beside Shea, looking at the door which still hung partway open. "This unseemly coach stinks with the taint of enchanters."

Shea would have felt better if he had been the only one experiencing a bout of nerves. "Florimel," he called. "Are you in there?" He noted a higher-than-usual pitch of his voice and winced. Piano-wire nerves—ugh!

Only silence answered from inside the coach.

"Perforce, we must enter," Quixote said. "I shall essay the first advance." He drew his sword and tapped the door open with the point of it. A carrion stink roiled out, laced with the faintest whiff of sulfur.

Shea's eyes tried to adjust to the darkness inside the carriage, and could not. The inside admitted no light at all. Almost unconsciously, he drew his saber.

Shea heard Chalmers ride up behind him and dismount. "I don't think Florimel is going to be in there," the older psychologist said. "Malambroso's deal with the Devil here has apparently given him legal rights to her in this universe."

Shea kept staring into the unremitting blackness of the coach's interior. It seemed impossible to him that he could make out no detail inside the coach, despite the light from the brilliant Mediterranean sun that blazed down on everything.

"Light, by God," Quixote demanded, and his sword glowed with pure silvery brilliance. He shoved the sword through the coach's doorway, and both he and Shea edged closer. Inside was still a featureless void— except for a narrow, crooked trail that began at the doorway and led downward, as far as the glow of the light could illuminate, and then, Shea thought gloomily, probably for an infinity or two further.

He sighed, and Don Quixote nodded. "Even so," the knight said softly. "Señor Geraldo, you have been a most brave and stalwart companion, yet I fear me this is a path only God's sworn knights dare take. Do you then pray for my soul whilst I descend—for I fear much that this is none other than the very road to Hell."

Shea's jaw jutted out in defiance of his screaming nerves and all common sense, and he heard himself saying, "Don Quixote, I was knighted once by Sir Campbell, and was a Companion of Gloriana's court in the land of Faerie"—common sense intruded, and he added, with a quick glance to his side—"as was Sir Chalmers here."

Quixote's eyes went round and his mouth fell open. "For two reasons, Geraldo, this cannot be. In the first instance, did you not tell me even after we fought those loathsome giants of Freston's that you were proof against the requirements of knights and gentlemen, because you were not one? I mind me you said it was for that reason you could strike the blackguards from behind."

Shea winced. "It was a technicality. I was knighted in Gloriana's universe, hut nobody in this universe had ever knighted me. I was just guessing that there wouldn't be reciprocity."

(Quixote frowned, and mouthed the word "reciprocity". "From what manner of world came you, Sir Geraldo, that you would think a knight in one world would not be such in any other?"

Shea sighed. "It's a long story—and you really couldn't understand unless you'd been to Cleveland."

"Perhaps not. These Clevelands are terrible things, no doubt, to make a brave knight such as yourself doubt his honor." Quixote's eyes narrowed, then, and he said, "But there is the second matter. How, if that one is a knight also"—and he pointed at Chalmers— "how can it be that he is in league with the Devil?"

"I'd hardly say he was in league with the Devil," Shea protested. "He's just having a little trouble getting his magic to work—"

"In fact, Harold—" Chalmers interrupted, "Don Quixote is quite correct. By the rules of this universe. I am indeed in league with the Devil—at least every time I utilize magic. You see," he added, turning to Quixote, "while I was knighted for my services to Gloriana's government, which consisted, coincidentally, of ridding the land of an enchanters' guild, I never served in the capacity of man-at-arms. I was and still am primarily an enchanter. Therefore, despite my good intentions, I find myself lumped in the same category as all other enchanters and most uncomfortably allied." Chalmers frowned and stared at the tops of his shoes.

"Thus the answer to the mystery of God's willingness to let one of his own serve a servant of the Devil. He was not such in his own world." Don Quixote steepled his fingers and stared over them at Chalmers.

"Well, then, fellow knights, let us to arms and assail the Devil in his summer home."

Chalmers started backing away, shaking his head, hands up. "I'm not going to Hell, Harold. My tab down there is too big right now—somebody might decide to collect."

"Florimel's down there. Doc," Shea said.

Chalmers stopped backing. "Why do you say that?"

"Malambroso, just before he vanished, said that whatever he had that wasn't his, he was going to hide in Hell. He told us to find it if we could. That had to mean Florimel." Shea magicked light onto his own blade and peeked back into the coach. The road to Hell did not look any better than it had a minute ago.

"Help us, someone," he heard a faint, feminine voice calling from down in the stygian gloom.

"Did you hear that?" Shea asked.

Quixote said, "I heard, Sir Geraldo—maidens in need of rescue, pleading for help. A knightly duty is that, and what an honor it will be to test my arm against the Devil himself. Sancho Panza will hold our horses. Sancho!" he yelled. "Wait for us here."

"It will be my pleasure," Sancho called back.

Quixote smiled. "He is ever a faithful and willing squire, who, out of obedience and love for me, abstains at all times from garnering glory for himself. Someday, for his obedience, I shall make him governor of an island." The Knight of the Woeful Countenance sighed. "If I live to give him that honor. But for now, it is of no matter. Let us go to Hell."

So saying, Quixote caused the light on his blade to burn even brighter. He leapt to the coach's threshold and made to step down onto the road to Hell. As he tried to cross the threshold, however, he was stopped fast—held in place by an invisible wall. "Ho, what magic is this?" he shouted, and slashed his sword against the unseen barrier. "By God's own right hand, let me pass," he roared.

"IT IS BY GOD'S OWN RIGHT HAND THAT YOU CANNOT, QUIXOTE" God said. "YOUR OATH PREVENTS IT."

Quixote started and stared up at the heavens. "But I seek to fulfill my oath by rescuing the Lady Florimel from Hell."

Thunder rumbled and the ground shook as God spoke again. "YOU CANNOT. SHE'S NOT THERE— AND YOU CANNOT INVOLVE YOURSELF WITH OTHER KNIGHTLY DUTIES UNTIL YOU ARE FREED OF YOUR OATH TO SIR CHALMERS"

"Who, then, cried out for help?" Quixote asked.

"A LITTLE FLOCK OF PRINCESSES, ABDUCTED FROM A NEARBY CASTLE BY FRESTON AND KEPT IN THIS COACH UNTIL MALAMBROSO CONSIGNED THEM TEMPORARILY TO HELL"

Shea leaned over and spoke softly into Chalmers' ear. "Even if he can't help us, we can't just leave them down there, you know."

Chalmers looked green. He swallowed hard and tried to put his hands in the nonexistent pockets of the tunic. "Perhaps we could ride to the castle from which they were abducted and tell the inhabitants we know their whereabouts.

Shea raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.

Chalmers harrumphed. "Perhaps not. Well, I just hoped—" He fixed Shea with a sudden fierce glare, and Shea heard an unexpected urgency in his voice. "I wasn't kidding about owing Hell. If I go in, there isn't any way I'm going to get out. I have a fair amount of magic left on my balance before total disaster hits— but..."

"What do you have to do to pay on your balance?" Shea asked. "Any idea?'

Chalmers chewed on his upper lip and nodded.

"Hell in this universe apparently offers enchanters either a sort of cash-on-delivery plan, or the installment plan. If the loan officer decides you're on the C.O.D. plan, a devil is sent to collect your soul as soon as you've used up the magical credit you were allotted." Chalmers peeked into the coach and stared gloomily down the long, dark road into Hell. "Fortunately for me, I apparently qualified for the installment plan—which may stave off the inevitable long enough for me to figure a way out of this mess. In the meantime ..."

"Yes," Shea said. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Chalmers from under lowered brows. "In the meantime, what do you have to do to make your payments?"

"Well, I could sacrifice a virgin ... ah, steal a few infants from their mothers ..." Chalmers stared off into space, avoiding Shea's eyes. "Or make the village cows go dry, or start a plague—anything of that sort."

"I assume you're planning on defaulting on your payments."

Chalmers snorted. "No matter what I do, there's going to be hell to pay. I dare not enter Hell, Quixote cannot, and if you go alone, you won't have much chance of success. But the princesses must be rescued." He stood, thinking hard. Shea noticed a sly smile stealing across the other man's face. "Of course," he whispered, "I may have a few useful cards to play. Fenwick! Get up here, by damn!"

Fenwick's giggle echoed through the rolling hills. "CHALMERS, IM SO GLAD I WAS ASSIGNED TO YOUR ACCOUNT. I HAD THE GUYS IN MARKETING ROLLING IN THE AISLES WITH YOUR GOOD ENCHANTER LINE. A GOOD ENCHANTER! HE-HE-HE! BEST JOKE THEY EVER HEARD—SO WHAT YOU WANT, OH GOOD ENCHANTER? HE-HE-HE. he.'

Chalmers smiled cheerfully. "Oh, I thought we'd discuss my account. What would it cost me to give every peasant in this part of Spain a nice new milk cow?"

Fenwick's giggling took on a strained quality. "CHALMERS, YOU ARE A VERY FUNNY MAN, BUT PLEASE—NO MORE—IT GIVES ME INDIGESTION."

"I really want to know," Chalmers insisted. "What would it cost."

Fenwick stopped laughing. "HELLS ENCHANTERS DO NOT GIVE PEASANTS MILK COWS," he said haughtily. "UNLESS THE MILK WERE POISONOUS—" He sounded hopeful. "DID YOU MEAN POISONOUS MILK COWS, REED CHALMERS?"

"Nope. Nice, normal, healthy milk cows."

"THEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BLESSINGS." Fenwick was clearly appalled. "HELL'S MINIONS DON'T BLESS. WHY—HALF A MILLION COWS AT ONE BLESSING PER COW, AND ONE NEGATIVE CREDIT PER BLESSING—ACCOUNTING WOULD HAVE MY HORNS IF I LET YOU PUT THAT ON YOUR LEDGER"

Chalmers squatted in the dirt and began drawing out the set-and-subset diagram again, and chanting under his breath.

Quixote and Panza came over and looked over his shoulder. Quixote asked Shea, "What is Sir Chalmero doing?"

"Giving a cow to every campesino in Spain," Shea said.

"My wife would like a cow," Panza said, looking more interested in the dirt scratchings. "She would have liked the chicken, too," he added thoughtfully.

"DON'T DO THIS," Fenwick pleaded. "THE OTHER DEMONS SERVE ENCHANTERS WHO STEAL THE SOULS OF YOUNG CHILDREN, AND DRIVE KNIGHTS MAD, AND DRINK BABIES' BLOOD. IF YOU GO AROUND GIVING OUT COWS, WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL EVERYONE?"

"Not my problem," Chalmers said, "but I'll tell you what. You have a couple of princesses down there that don't actually belong to you folks. If you accidentally misplace them back to their home, safe and sound and happy, I won't put half a million milk cows on my account."

"THAT WOULD BE A KINDNESS—YOU WANT ME TO DO A KINDNESS? WOULDN'T YOU RATHER CURSE SOMEONE? OR HAVE YOUR OWN CASTLE IN THE HILLS, FILLED WITH GOLD AND GUARDED BY DRAGONS?"

Chalmers raised both hands and, still squatting, began rocking back and forth. In a high-pitched, nasal voice, he started his incantation. "I swear by Hell and all its minions, by hoof and horn, give every peasant—"

Fenwick shrieked. "NO! I'VE DONE IT! THE PRINCESSES ARE HOME! DON'T DO THE COW SPELL!

Chalmers closed his eyes and called up his account sheet. There, with its amount in neither the debit column nor the credit column, but in a new third column, he read, "Rescued, three virgin princesses— from the bowels of Hell." The amount in the third column was almost as high as the collected amounts of all his other spells. He noticed how that entry seemed to glow and shift. Strange, he thought.

"Well, I suppose that means Teresa won't be getting a cow," Panza said. "I'm not surprised. The blessings of the rich are always the curse of the poor."

"We must go," Quixote said, suddenly.

"Why so, your worship?" Panza asked.

"I can once again feel the presence of the evil Malambroso, and Florimel with him. That way," he pointed, further down the road the four had been travelling.

The four travellers cantered up to a spot about a hundred yards from the moat and drawbridge of a massive castle and reined in. Chalmers rode over beside Shea and the two sat quietly for a moment, studying the huge edifice.

"Looks like Saracen design, probably twelfth century," Chalmers told Shea. The older psychologist rubbed his hands together and Shea noted the delight on his face. Chalmers pointed to some holes built into the arch of the gate. "See the machicolations up there? In a fight, the castle defenders can pour boiling oil through them onto the attackers."

Shea eyed the innocent-looking holes warily. "Lovely," he said.

Chalmers missed the irony. "Isn't it? Fine piece of architecture."

Shea found it hard to get excited by machicolations or Saracen architecture. A home that did not need to be defended by boiling oil and men-at-arms, where he and Belphebe and their future children could live in peace and quiet, seemed very alluring—and very far away. He felt a stab of homesickness.

Quixote led them up to the outer gate, where a mail-clad guard with a light helmet leaned against the wall. Music and the sounds of revelry emanated from inside. Gaudy pennants flew from the peak of every tower and banners decorated the gate and draped from the narrow windows high overhead. The guard wore a beaming expression and greeted the knight and his companions with boozy, cheery bonhomie. "Hi-i-i-i, Don Quixote de la Mancha—and all your friends. Welcome to the castle of Don Tibon de Salazar. Wanna go in?"

"We would," Quixote said sternly. "But first I would know— what celebration leaves the watchman drank at his post and the gates thrown wide open?"

"I'm not—drunk!' the guard protested. He became confiding. "Well, maybe just a little—but our princesses came home today. An enchanter stole them from us, and we thought we would never see them again, but all of a—sudden, they appeared in a cloud of bright red smoke. So—" he concluded, smiling triumphantly, "we're having a party. Good one, too. Lots of food, lots of wine, an' even a talking ape and a puppet show later. G'wan in." He leaned back against the wall of the guardhouse and waved across the drawbridge. "I'll letcha announce yourselves."

Shea, Chalmers, Panza, and Quixote rode across the drawbridge, through the barbican, and into the outer bailey. The grounds were filled with milling people who danced and shouted and drank healths to their Don and his returned daughters; with fiddlers and guitar players wailing away; with dark-eyed gypsy girls in blight skirts of red and yellow and blue who clattered their castanets and swirled and stamped. Along the inner wall, fat, middle-aged campesinas served slabs of meat from a roasted ox, and cheeses and bits of chicken and fish and goat. Liveried servants poured a mediocre red wine for the peasants and a better one for the nobility. Shea and Chalmers, introduced by Quixote as knights of a foreign land, got some of the good stuff.

The lord of the castle, Don Tibon de Salazar, got word Quixote had showed up for his party and made a personal appearance. He was short and obviously well-fed, and he had the same glow of alcohol about him Shea had seen on the guard.

"Noble knight," he yelled, hugging the armor-clad Quixote as best he could and kissing both his cheeks. "You heard about my daughters? How good of you to come! Please, come in out of the heat.

Quixote smiled. "We three, Sir Reed de Chalmero, Sir Geraldo de Shea, and I, Don Quixote de la Mancha. freed your daughters from Hell. Sir Shea is a knight, and Sir Chalmero," he indicated the psychologist, "is a good enchanter."

"How, then—?" The little Don looked wide-eyed at Chalmers. He smiled nervously and edged back a pace. "A good enchanter, heh, heh!" Then his eyes went trustingly toward Quixote. "But come, you saved my daughters? They knew not the method of their rescue—only that the devils who held them were suddenly lured away while the girls were spirited back here in the blinking of an eye." He smiled. "Come in, do come in, and tell us all your tale.

The party went on, and on, and on. Shea found himself recounting the rescue of the princesses to all manner of happy drunks, sometimes several times in a row. As the day progressed into night, and he continued to partake of his host's free food and wine, he began to feel a little warm and fuzzy inside himself. He noticed that the guests were getting wittier and the jokes were getting funnier. It was, he decided, a very good party—even better because he got to be one of the heroes.

When the evening entertainment began, he found himself seated front row and center with the lord of the castle, facing a makeshift stage. Chalmers and Quixote and the princesses—who were uniformly short and round and giggly—took up the rest of the first row.

A liveried servant walked out onto the stage, bowed, and announced, "Master Peter and his talking ape, who knows all the past and all the present."

The man who followed the servant onto the stage was ugly in the extreme. Master Peter's long, pointed nose drooped at the tip so that it looked as if it were dying to touch the wart in the center of his sharp chin. He had a hunchback and limp and greasy gray hair that trailed down to his shoulders. His ape shambled at his side, a big, raggedy chimpanzee with a silly grin on his face. The chimp waved to the crowd and everyone stamped and whistled.

Don Tibon de Salazar leaned over and whispered, "We must ask our questions to the ape, who will whisper the answers in his master's ear. It's a grand ape by all accounts. Master Peter is a rich man because of the puppet show and the ape."

Master Peter settled himself onto a low stool and rested one hand on his ape's shoulder. The man's beady-eyed gaze darted from one corner of the audience- to the other, and settled with unnerving intensity on the princesses and their rescuers. "Greetings, good folk" he rasped. "Who would ask my ape a question?"

Sancho Panza called out, "Tell me what will happen tomorrow."

Master Peter answered for his ape. "He cannot tell the future, but only past and present."

Panza snorted. "I swear I wouldn't give a farthing to be told what happened to me in the past—I know that well enough myself. But tell me then, excellent ape, what is my wife Teresa Panza doing now?"

The ape grinned at Panza, then ran to Master Peter's side and stretched up and gibbered in its master's ear for an interminable time.

Suddenly, Master Peter gave the group in the front row a startled look, and flung himself prone on the floor. "Glorious reviver and flower of knight-errantry," he cried. "Don Quixote de la Mancha, and noble squire Sancho Panza, best of all possible squires to the best of all possible knights, I embrace you! Oh that I have lived to see this day!" He glanced up, added, "Your wife Señor Panza, is cooking dinner while she drinks wine out of a cracked blue pitcher."

Panza gasped. "That's what she does every night," he whispered.

Master Peter then stared at Chalmers and Shea, and ground his face into plank floor of the stage again. "Oh, mighty swordsman Geraldo de Shea, and knight-enchanter Reed de Chalmero, heroes of far-off places, I kiss the ground, so happy am I to find myself in your presence."

Quixote was visibly flattered. Shea, still warm and happy from the wine, thought Master Peter's homage was a fair tribute to someone who had done all the great things he had. He swelled with pride. He ignored the rest of the questions and answers, instead allowing himself to bask in the delicious warmth of praise.

By the time the ape had been led offstage and the puppetmaster's sets were in place, however, Harold Shea became aware that Don Quixote was muttering to Sancho Panza. He caught the tail end of the conversation. "—And thus, if he could not tell the future, his prophecies had to come from the Devil, for while God knows all the seasons of tomorrow, the Devil can only guess at that which comes past today."

Shea had no interest in Quixote's philosophies. The puppet show was beginning.

Trumpets blared, kettledrums beat, and a small boy called out: "Now see the true tale of the lord Sir Galiferos who freed his wife Melisendra, who was captive of the Moors."

The show started with the puppet of Sir Galiferos playing backgammon in the square, until his father-in-law, King Charlemagne, came and told his idle son-in-law to go rescue his daughter. Shamed, Galiferos got his horse and armor and charged off for the Moorish city, found his wife, and, in broad daylight, carried off a daring rescue right under the nose of King Marsilio.

Shea was enjoying the play greatly until he suddenly realized that there was something wrong about the puppets. He stared, watching the tiny characters move about the stage, and it dawned on him that no matter how hard he looked, he could not see the strings that animated the marionettes. "Doc," he whispered. "Can you see the strings on the puppets?"

Chalmers leaned forward on the bench and squinted. "No," he said finally. "What's more, Melisendra looks just like Florimel, and Galiferos looks like Malambroso." Chalmers then tapped Quixote on the shoulder and whispered something to him, and Shea saw the knight lean forward and stare, too.

The play had just gotten to the part where the Moorish cavalcade, led by King Marsilio, streamed out of the city after Galiferos, when Quixote leapt to his feet. "I know you now, Freston," he shouted at Master Peter, "and you as well, knavish Malambroso." He stood and drew his sword and pointed it at the stage. "Hand over to us the Lady Florimel, or all will go ill for you!"

The stage seemed to grow, along with the characters in it, until horses, actors, and the Moorish city backdrop were all life-sized. Shea loosed his saber in its scabbard and charged to his feet. Chalmers ran beside him, while Sancho Panza dropped back and looked for a safe place to hide.

"Florimel!" Chalmers shouted.

Florimel, seated ahead of Malambroso on his horse, looked at her husband with dazed and uncomprehending eyes. "She can hear you, Chalmers, but she doesn't know you," Malambroso snarled. "All she can think of is me." The sorcerer bared his teeth in a hideous parody of a grin, and pressed his knife against the base of Florimel's neck. "If I slit her throat right now, she'd die loving me for it," he added.

Florimel turned her head enough that she could look at the sorcerer, and her rapt expression seemed to bear his brag out. Chalmers snarled, "I'll kill him. I swear I will."

Shea said, "Only if I don't do it first, Doc. He and Quixote charged the sorcerer with weapons drawn, and Chalmers ran behind, trying hard to come up with a spell to destroy the two evil enchanters.

But the Moors, who had been so vigorously pursuing Malambroso in his guise as Galiferos, arrived and surrounded Quixote, Shea, and Chalmers instead. Most of the horde aimed their weapons at their three captives. A few of the Moorish warriors dismounted and bound the captives' wrists. Quixote was separated from Shea and Chalmers by force, and made to mount a saddled ass backwards. Shea and Chalmers, apparently judged less of a threat, but also less worthy of humiliation, were chained together at the waist and inarched at spear point to face Malambroso. Quixote, backwards on the donkey, was brought beside them an instant later. And just minutes after that, the Moors dragged Sancho Panza, kicking and biting, from his hiding place, knocked on the head and draped over another donkey.

"Now I have you all. Bound, you cannot use weapons against me," Malambroso gloated. "And as for magic, by all the demons of Hell and their servants on Earth, you shall cast no evil spell against Freston or against me." Malambroso waved to the Moorish warriors and bellowed, "Bring them back to the city, and tonight we shall feast on the livers of our enemies."

Their captors let out a cheer.

Freston, no longer in the guise of the puppeteer, cantered through the throng, straight up to Quixote. "I don't want your liver, sir knight. I intend to eat your heart."

Quixote smiled gently, and said. "A coward can derive no greatness from eating the heart of a great man. My heart will only poison you with envy, that you are puny and despicable and without honor."

Freston reddened and spat in the knight's face. "Brave words. You'll repent of them soon enough."

The Moors, with wild ululations, started their captives marching toward the nearby city. The prisoners, surrounded, marched helplessly.

Shea tried an easy spell against Malambroso, just to see if it would work. Nothing happened. He groaned and leaned back slightly to whisper to Chalmers, who was tied behind him, "We're doomed, Doc. I tried a spell to make Malambroso sneeze—and nothing happened,"

"Don't worry. I have a spell I think will work," Chalmers said. He whispered a bit of doggerel to Shea, and grinned. "Well—?"

Shea shook his head. "That's sweet of you, Doc, but I don't see the point."

Chalmers chuckled softly. "Trust me. All you have to do is remember the words and repeat them with me."

Harold shrugged. "I guess it can't hurt."

"Precisely, my dear boy. Precisely." Chalmers laughed, and said, "Begin."

"By God and all the angels, and all that is good—" Shea intoned.

"And by Satan and all his minions, and all the dark powers of hell—" Chalmers seconded.

"That's vile poetry, Reed," Shea said after they'd finished. "Pointless, too."

Chalmers snickered. "Hardly. Just watch."

Shea watched. Behind the two sorcerers, little clumps of flowers were springing up. Harold Shea rolled his eyes. "Aw, how sweet. Malambroso has posies trailing in his wake. I hate to say this, Doc, but I think you've gone round the bend."

"The flowers were just to let us know the spell was working. Give it a few minutes for the rest of it to fall into place," Chalmers insisted, but refused to say any more.

Shea looked around. Nothing seemed to be happening, except that the road started looking like the Moorish Ladies Home and Garden Club had gotten hold of it. And then he happened to rest his eyes on a Moorish warrior just as that warrior's clothes changed. They ceased to be threadbare and ragged, and became rather nice—well-cut and of good cloth. Odd, Shea thought. An instant later, that same warrior's horse became a considerably better horse of similar appearance. Startled, Shea looked around at the other warriors. All of them were becoming progressively better and better dressed, but always in tiny increments. He looked down at his own clothes, and found that they were of the finest linen, beautifully embroidered and quilted. As he watched, they changed again, and he caught the glimmer of jewels and gold in amongst the silk threads. The rope around his wrists suddenly untied itself and fell to the ground. He looked at Don Quixote, and saw that the knight was now riding face-forward, unbound, and on Rosinante. Prudently, he kept quiet.

"See," Chalmers whispered. "Isn't this nice?"

"Very," Harold agreed. "I think I see what you were aiming for."

"Not yet. You will very soon now, though. You must realize that the effects of our little spell are being felt, not only here, but all over this planet—perhaps even all over this universe."

Harold Shea shrugged. "I'm sure everyone is thrilled."

Chalmers snickered again. "No, I don't imagine everyone is."

A supernatural wail split the air.

"Someone has just checked the books," Chalmers said. Shea looked puzzled.

"FRESTON, YOU HAVE OVERDRAWN YOUR ACCOUNT BY MORE THAN A MILLION PERCENT!" the demonic voice roared. "ALL IN GOOD WORKS. YOU HAVE NO CHANCE OR HOPE OF REPAYING WHAT YOU OWE—THEREFORE, WE ARE COLLECTING YOUR SOUL NOW!"

Freston abruptly ceased to exist.

"There's nothing deadlier than an angry accountant," Chalmers said with a bright laugh.

An instant later, the same demonic voice screamed, "WHAT IS THIS? MAIAMBROSO, YOU ALSO HAVE OVERDRAWN YOUR ACCOUNT BY MORE THAN A MILLION PERCENT, AND IN TOTALLY NON-TRANSFERABLE GOOD WORKS! AAAGH! HOW HAVE YOU DONE THIS?—NO MATTER, I'LL HAVE YOUR SOUL NOW—" Malambroso did not vanish the way Freston had, however. There was a moment of silence, and then the voice returned. The invisible speaker was obviously in a snit. "I'VE BEEN INFORMED THAT YOU ARE FROM A UNIVERSE OUTSIDE OF THIS ONE. APPARENTLY, BECAUSE OF THAT, I CAN'T CLAIM YOUR SOUL IN LIEU OF PAYMENT—BUT I CAN BANISH YOU AND EVERYTHING OF YOURS FROM THIS UNIVERSE FOR ALL OF ETERNITY. I DO SO NOW!"

Malambroso vanished. Florimel went with him.

"NO!" Reed Chalmers screamed. "Fenwick, dammit, bring her back here!

Fenwick answered. "REED CHALMERS—YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT PLAGUE OF GOODNESS. YOU HAVE TOTALLY RUINED MY REPUTATION, AND EVEN SATAN IS PISSED AT ME!" The demon snarled. "I'M REVOKING YOUR ACCOUNT AND BANISHING YOU."

Chalmers grabbed Shea's arm and held on. Light began to swirl around them, howling assaulted their ears, and the world of Don Quixote dribbled away as if it had been buried in a deep fog. The last sound the two psychologists heard was Fenwick, squawking, "I'M SENDING YOU WHERE WE SENT MALAMBROSO—AND I HOPE HE FINDS YOU!"

"I hope so, too," Chalmers said.

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