The Warlock Insane

Chapter Fourteen

If anyone was following him, they were smart enough to stay hidden. He trekked through snow-bound country for three days, building campfires when his toes grew numb and building brush huts when the sun went down. Roast partridge wasn't bad as rations went, and neither was the odd rabbit. Rod drew the line at deer, though—he couldn't possibly have eaten one before it spoiled.

Then the game became scarce, the occasional homesteads began to look very run-down, and Rod began to suspect he was in country that the sorcerer had milked dry.

So, replete with chilblains and chapped lips, but strangely refreshed, Rod came to the eastern shore, and found himself looking up at the sorcerer's castle atop a sea cliff.

It wasn't hard to tell it was a sorcerer's castle—the clouds turned dark and thick as they came swirling behind its turrets, and emitted bolts of lightning that always struck the battlements but, strangely, never did any damage. Rod worked his way up the cliff face, climbing higher and higher into constant thunder. Not for the first time, he began to wish he had Fess along or, better yet, Modwis.

Then the first dragon attacked.

It wasn't much for size, only a couple of meters long, but it roared with great verve, and its two-foot tongue of flame was very impressive.

"Shoo!" Rod shouted, trying to bat it away with one hand while the other clung to a fingerhold. The dragon shied away, and Rod yelped, shaking his hand—that beast was hot't If it was an illusion, it was a very vivid one.

The dragon circled and came roaring back. Rod drew his sword, sighted along it at the dragon's mouth, and cried, "£>i brochette!"

Unfortunately, the beast didn't know French. It slammed into Rod full tilt, the sword ramming straight into its brain. It died on the instant, plummeting down the height—and dragging Rod's sword with it. He gritted his teeth and yanked back, knowing he'd be lost without the sword—but his poor numb fingers slipped from their hold, and sea reeled about him into the sky as he fell, howling in horror. It took the sight of the rocks shooting up at him to remind him he could levitate. He thought how repulsive the rocks looked and, sure enough, they repulsed him, slowing his fall, stopping him two feet from their hungry, jagged teeth, then raising him slowly back up. With a sigh of relief, he settled onto his former footholds, felt himself start to grow limp, and sternly reminded his body that it had a task to complete. It complied with protest, pulling itself back into semblance of firmness, and started climbing on up the cliff—at which point, his brain came into play and sneeringly reminded him that, if he could levitate to save himself, he could also levitate to get to the top more easily. Astounded, Rod stood still for a minute, then smiled, stepped off into space, thinking Up! and silently drifted toward the base of the keep.

Then the next dragon hit.

It came roaring down like a V-l rocket, flaming out of a darkening sky like a reminder of doom. Rod swooped aside, but the monster changed course and came flaming up his backside. Rod whooped, did a backflip, and landed just behind the lizard's batwings, shouting, "Hi-yo, Iguanodon!" The dragon took umbrage at the epithet and tried to twist back on itself enough to scorch Rod. Unfortunately, it succeeded; fortunately, he managed to lean aside just enough for the flame to miss him. Its heat fanned his arm—and he twitched a little farther away—a little bit too much. He tumbled sideways with a shout, knees still locked on the dragon's ribs, perforce twisting it with him. It bellowed butane, trying to twist itself back upright, and the upshot was a downshot, the two of them twirling and tumbling down through the air toward the jagged rocks below.

This won't do, Rod thought dizzily, and managed to catch the beast under the jaw. The flame cut off with a burp, and the beast fought wildly—but followed its head. Rod managed to get its nose pointed upward and rode, swooping and swirling, back toward the battlements, clinging for dear life, and trying to hold on to his dinner. Rugged cliff face gave way to granite blocks with a five-foot ledge between masonry and precipice; Rod felt a surge of panic as he had a sudden mental image of himself rising up above the battlements and turning into a pincushion as the sentries gleefully took the chance for a little target practice. Inspiration struck, and so did the dragon, as Rod turned its head toward the castle. It roared toward the granite full tilt and slammed headfirst into the wall. Rod jumped off and sagged against the wall as the dragon flipped backward, its eyes rolling and wings fluttering, to coast spiraling down. Rod didn't worry; it was only stunned, and would probably recover before it hit the rocks.

On the other hand, if it did, it might come back for him.

It behooved him to find some way to get into the castle before then. He shoved off and rose once more, then remembered his vision of skewering archers, and decided to settle down to exploring. He cast along the base of the wall, searching for some sort of opening—and, not surprisingly, came to the drawbridge.

However, he did feel surprised to find it down. Rod frowned up at the gate towers. "Got to be sentries," he muttered. "If they're going to be anywhere, they're going to be here."

But there was no sign of a single mortal sentry; the gate towers looked to be completely deserted, not to say ruined…

A single mortal sentry…

Rod shivered. This was Granclarte; what kinds of sentry might a sorcerer employ?

Well, there was only one way to find out—but with great caution. Rod stepped out onto the drawbridge, then carefully let his weight down onto the planks.

The wood crumbled away.

Rod drew back, heart thumping as he watched chunks of rotten wood splash into the greenish oily waters of the moat. Yes, definitely there was more to this drawbridge than met the eye—more threat, less substance. He thought of floating, felt his heels leave the ground, and stepped out onto the drawbridge again, pretending to walk, though he really drifted across. But he let his toes touch the wood for appearance's sake.

Something cold slapped around his ankle and yanked.

Rod toppled off the drawbridge, saw the waters coming up at him, then a long, rubbery arm reaching up from the scum to his ankle. He thought repulsive thoughts in a panic and began to float up, the tentacle drawing out straight. Apparently it didn't like the resistance; it yanked again; hard. Rod was caught off balance and slammed down into the water. He just managed to catch a deep breath before the waters closed over his head, and he reached for his sword.

Something cold coiled around his wrist.

Another one slapped around his waist.

Revulsion filled him, and he thought Up! frantically, but the tentacle-owner was ready, and pulled down harder as he pulled up. His chest ached—this was taking too long. In a panic, Rod thought of water boiling into vapor inside a skin.

The tentacle on his wrist exploded.

Rod snapped his sword out and slashed through the manacle around his ankle as something huge hooted in pain and wrath beneath him, its voice filling all the watery world. Fear and horror battled inside him, and he chopped at the tentacle around his waist. Blood spurted from it, deepening the reddish cast of the water. He chopped again, saw another tentacle slamming down out of the murk and slashed at it, then chopped one more time at the arm around his waist. It fell free and he rocketed upward, agonized hooting echoing about him.

Rod shot out of the moat twenty feet into the air before he managed to contain his emotions enough to level off. Then the guilt hit, because the whole crag echoed with the agonized hoots coming from under the water. At least he could put the poor beast out of its misery.

So he did; he opened his mind, searching, winced at the pain coming from under the water but zeroed in on it, and poured every ounce of mental energy into a sudden searing stab.

Three arms lanced out of the water, straight and stiff, then went limp and fell back.

Rod floated in the air, shaken but relieved; the hooting had died, and so had the monster. The air and water were quiet once more. Rod sighed, then turned his attention to the gate before him. Shadows clustered there; below the iron teeth of the portcullis, it was dark and filled with gloom.

Rod screwed his courage to the sticking place and floated on in.

Darkness enveloped him, darkness filled with eerie moans. Not just one, mind you, but a dozen—first one, then another, then a third, then a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, a tenth, a twelfth, each on a different pitch, in a different voice, one dying as another began. Each voice held a different emotion, but the spectrum wasn't narrow—anger, lust for revenge, agony, horror, remorse—filling the whole castle with a droning, heartsick chord.

Something glowed in front of Rod, quickly becoming clear—the gowned form of a young woman with a bare skull beneath long, flowing hair, jaws parted in a wail of despair. Before Rod could shrink back, she faded, and a man appeared off to the side, a man with a sinister, scarred, malevolent face, and a skeletal body clothed in rags. He lifted a hand as though to strike, but faded even as he swung. A third spectre appeared opposite him, cloaked and hooded, baleful eyes glowing from the shadows within, a bony hand reaching out toward Rod.

He stepped right through it. There was a deep chill as the ghost's hand passed through his arm; then it was fading behind him. The next ghost appeared, but Rod drifted straight ahead, ignoring the fear that clamored within him—he was used to ghosts.

Not that he was ruling out a booby trap in phantom's guise, mind you. He was also drifting six inches off the floor, in case of sudden trapdoors or bear traps.

Finally, he grew tired of the phantoms and remembered his will-o'-the-wisp. With an impatient mental shrug, he made the ball of light appear in his hand. It gave off enough light to show him the stone walls and the arch-way beyond, but not enough to banish the ghosts; they kept appearing and disappearing before him as he moved toward the Great Hall, flanked by an honor guard of phantoms. The fear was still there, but it was contained by a feeling of irritation—after all the strain of getting in, he had expected something more than a trip through the Fun House.

Then he went through the archway, and found it.

The dais at the end of the hall was lighted by fireballs. Between them, on a tall, skinny throne, sat a bald man in a long red robe.

"Who comes against the sorcerer Brume?" demanded a deep and cavernous voice.

It was spooky, considering that the old man's lips hadn't moved; but Rod rechanneled the spurt of additional fear into irritation. He frowned. "Against you? Why do you automatically think I'm against you?"

The sorcerer sat immobile for a minute, nonplussed (Rod hoped), then answered, "None would come nigh Brume with goodwill. What seekest thou?"

"My right mind," Rod said instantly. "You cast a spell of madness on me, sorcerer. Take it off."

The man's lips peeled back from pointed teeth, and shrill, manic laughter filled the hall. Even though he was braced, Rod was shaken.

"Come closer," the deep voice commanded, though the laughter still echoed. "I would see the worm that dares command Brume."

Rod narrowed his eyes and marched right up to the dais—and wished he hadn't. Here, he could see the man's eyes. They were bloodshot, staring, and unfocused—mad.

Now the sorcerer spoke through his own lips, and his voice was like the wind through a thin reed. "Why dost thou think 'tis I that have laid madness on thee?"

"Who else would?" Rod countered.

"Hast no enemies?" the sorcerer demanded. "Are there none else who would wish thee ill?"

"There are a few," Rod admitted. Privately, he was beginning to wonder to whom the deep voice had belonged.

"Ask of those who have fought thee, then," the sorcerer commanded, and the deep voice proclaimed, "Thou art naught to Brume, mortal man. Why should he care for thee, he who hath ranked demons at his command?"

"Not the only thing that's rank," Rod growled. "As to the 'why,' I think you know who I am, and what I'm capable of. I tell you again: remove your spell!"

"I tire of this game," the sorcerer snapped, and fire blazed up between them, a sheet of flame that quickly ran in a circle around Rod, then began pressing in.

Smoke rose from his cloak, and Rod yelped at the burn. Hallucination or not, this was entirely too convincing for comfort. He fought to concentrate, managed a semi-trance where he thought of an ice cube crunching in on itself at absolute zero—and the flames died down.

The sorcerer stared.

"You mean you didn't know who I was?" Rod set a foot on the step up to the dais. "Now, about that spell…"

"Avaunt!" Brume threw a lightning ball.

Rob hopped aside, drawing his sword, dropped to one knee, and leaned the sword against the dais. The lightning ball swerved toward him, hit the sword, and grounded out with a huge explosion.

The sorcerer's eyes bulged.

Rod tapped the charred remnant of sword, frowning, to see if it was too hot to touch. He thought of the ice cube again, then picked up the sword, envisioning a yard-long rapier. The blade renewed itself, taking on the sheen of good steel once more. Rod nodded, satisfied, and looked up at Brume. "I get it. You really are a magic-worker—in Gramarye, I mean; there, you're an esper. A pyrotic."

"What fool's words are these!" the huge voice boomed, and a spear detached itself from the wall and shot toward Rod.

Rod sidestepped, parrying with the sword. "Okay, so you're a telekinetic, too! Want me to show you what / can do?"

The sorcerer's eyes narrowed and, suddenly, Rod was floating off the floor, turning upside down. "Hey, look! You already showed me you were a TK! Okay for vow!" He dove at Brume, pushed with his own mind. He felt the thrust of force that tried to deflect him, but bored on through it. The sorcerer shouted in alarm and shot out of his chair, dodging aside from Rod in the nick of time.

Rod sank into a crouch on the side of the throne, turning to follow Brume with his eyes, belatedly remembering that Gramarye warlocks couldn't accomplish telekinesis—it was a sex-linked trait. Only he and his boys were exceptions. So where was Brume getting that ability?

Fantasy, obviously. That part was Granclarte.

"Blasphemer!" the huge voice tolled. "Who art thou to so profane the castle of the great sorcerer!"

"It's pretty profane already, really." Rod lifted the point of the sword toward Brume. "If you want to get rid of me, just remove the spell."

But Brume's eyes suddenly flared red, swelling and growing until they filled Rod's whole field of vision, as the grandfather of all aches split his head. Dimly, he realized he'd just been hit with the most powerful blast of projective telepathy he'd ever experienced. He tried to strike back with a mental stab of his own, but his whole head seemed to be burning, and all he could see was red haze, filling the whole Great Hall, obscuring the sorcerer, the dais, the fireballs, and Rod's own sense of who and where he was, filling the whole universe so that there was nothing there but red mist and burning pain, in a present that had no past and no future, but existed and endured without hope of cessation.

But it did cease, finally; it slackened, the pain receding to only a normal headache, splitting Rod's head anew with every beat of his pulse, the red mist fading until he could see again. His ears gave him a hollow boom followed by a metallic grating and clunk, then a gloating laugh fading away into the distance. Sight, though, seemed to be limited to afterimages in brilliantly colored geometric patterns. Finally, he began to be able to make out stripes of orange through the afterimages. Then the colors darkened down to purple and blue, and through them, he could see the stone blocks that the orange stripes revealed. He frowned, turning his head, and saw a rectangle of orange light across from the stripes, a rectangle that was itself striped with black lines.

Iron bars.

He was in a dungeon again.

Rod let himself go limp. He might be in eventual mortal peril, but he was safe for the instant. He found himself wondering why he was still alive. If the sorcerer had been able to knock him out long enough to put him down here, why hadn't he just killed Rod outright?

"Because he wants to use you for bargaining."

Rod frowned, looking up, staring through the darkness, trying to see to whom he was talking.

It wasn't hard. The person in question provided his own glow—a very ruddy glow. He had a black moustache and goatee, with red horns and a barbed red tail. All of him was red, actually, except his black cloak, and he looked very familiar.

"Ready to think about that contract now?"

Rod sank back with a groan, and braced himself to resist a sales pitch. He made a valiant try to forestall it. "I think I'll hold out a while longer, thanks."

The devil shrugged. "It's your choice. Take him, boys!"

With a howl, a dozen demons swooped down at Rod, batwinged, scarlet-skinned, and horned. Rod yelped, "No fair!" and thought of an invisible shield.

The air glimmered in front of him.

The foremost demon splattered against an invisible win-do wpane, lay spread-eagle for a second, then peeled off backward and fell.

"What in hell do you think you're doing?" the debonair devil cried.

"Wrong origin." Rod tried to think holy thoughts. Who was the appropriate saint in charge of this sort of situation? Saint Vidicon? Saint Jude?

The other demons put on the brakes, but they didn't quite make it; they piled into Rod's invisible barrier like a stack of animated dominoes.

"All right, remember your duty!" the devil called. "Let's get about the torturing now!"

"But, boss," one little demon said, "how can we torture him if we can't get at him?"

"Think of something! Find a way!"

"I thought that was your department."

At a guess, Rod decided, none of them was particularly long on brainpower.

"Yes, it is." The big devil scowled. Then he grinned a devilish grin. "I have it! You can't reach him—but he can see you and hear you."

"So?"

"Tell him about himself." The grin widened, revealing shark teeth. "Start with the truth."

"The truth?'" the little devils cried, appalled.

"You heard me, truth!" the big devil snarled. "You want to hurt him, don't you? Tell him about his real self!"

Of course, Rod reminded himself quickly, the big devil could have been lying.

Not a moment too soon, either. The first little devil pranced up to the unseen barrier, eyes alight with malice. "You've got a vicious temper, you know that? Oh, you're slow to boil, but when you do, you don't care who you burn!"

"I know that," Rod growled, but even so, he winced within.

The demon ignored him; it turned to one of its fellows, whose form had melted into something approximating a female in skirt and bodice. "Gwen, you're vile! Always after me, always nagging, never giving me a moment's peace!"

"Me after you!" the female demon shrilled. "Who came after who in the first place, huh? You think I made all these brats by myself? Let me tell you, monster…"

Rod kept a stony face on it, but inside, he was quailing. He didn't really think that about Gwen, did he? And he hoped she didn't think that about him. Though she had reason enough, Lord knew.

Then the "female" demon pranced aside, and the others stepped back into the shadows, leaving the one who was impersonating Rod—and looking more and more like him all the time—alone in the darkness.

Eyes open, yellow and glowing. Something snarled in the night.

"Oh, no!" the demon cried. "Get me outa here! Somebody help me!" His knees began to knock, and the trembling spread to his whole body. "I'm scared, damn it! He-e-e-e-1-p!" He turned to run, but more yellow eyes blinked open, and he backed up, moaning. "Oh-h-h-h— what'm I gonna do?"

Rod lifted his head in indignation. Whatever he was, he wasn't a coward. Fearful, yes, there were a lot of things that scared him—but he didn't run from them.

They'd just catch up with him, anyway.

"I'm gonna kill 'em!" the demon wailed, and it whipped out its sword. "If I can't run from 'em, I'll cut out their hearts!"

"They might be innocent," the big devil suggested. '' They might be harmless."

"They will be when I get through with em!"

Rod emptied out inside. They had him pegged; he realized, with a sick sense of certainty, that the charge was true. He did strike out from fear—and, frequently, out of all proportion.

The Rod-demon seemed to shrivel as his clothes shredded into rags, darkening with filth. His shoulders slumped, his knees bent, and he moved toward the real Rod with a dispirited shuffle. He lifted his head and Rod saw rheumy, bloodshot eyes and a dirty, unshaven face. An icicle seemed to impale Rod.

The beggarman clasped the shreds of his cloak about him with his left hand and held out his right, cupped. "Got a coin, bo? Anything'll do… Alms, goodman! Alms!"

A prosperous couple brushed past, and the beggar swiv-eled toward them, hand out. "Spare me a penny, kind sir!"

Somewhere, someone was moaning.

The lady gave him a furtive glance, then turned to her escort, but he rumbled, "He isn't worth it, my dear. If he was, he wouldn't be begging."

"If you say so…"

Another prosperous gentleman pushed past him with a snarl. "Out of my way, human garbage!"

Someone was moaning, and Rod realized it was himself.

"Worthless," sneered another passerby. "Not worth a damn."

"No-o-o-o!" Rod howled. "It's not true! Not a bit! I am good! I do work! I am worthwhile!"

But the prosperous passersby were gathered around him now, pointing and gesticulating, sneering and spitting, and laughing with malice and sarcasm, laughing, laughing, and Rod was shouting now, wailing, "No-o-o-o-o! No, no No-o-o-o…"

"NO!" a deep voice bellowed, and the word stretched out into an inarticulate roar of anger. Something small swelled hugely as it swooped toward them, roaring down on them like an express train, hollow eyes narrowed in rage, mouth a circle of thundering wrath, bulking huge over the little demons. They fled screaming, and the apparition turned on the big devil, who stuttered in fear and turned to flee, but the spirit of wrath seized it in huge ham-hands, tore it in shreds, and threw it yammering away. Its wails faded; the devil and his demons were gone, and Rod cowered in abject terror as the huge spirit turned toward him.

Then he froze, unable to believe his eyes. He reached out toward the spirit and whispered:

"Big Tom."