The Witch Doctor

Chapter Thirteen

I took as deep a breath as I could and spat out:

My knees suddenly flexed, and my hands relaxed at my sides. I tried a step and managed it-but slowly and painfully. Well, you couldn't expect a cheap spell like that to work wonders ... But Suettay hadn't wasted the time. She was back on the ground, the silver noose still hanging above her head, and was finishing up another chant, her hands pantomiming yanking something up from the earth.

And four lions leapt out of nowhere, straight at me, roars shaking the plain.

But a greater roar drowned theirs out, blasting from behind me and Gruesome thudded past me, straight at the lions!

They hit the brakes, plowing up sod with iron claws and terrified howls-or three out of four did. The fourth bellowed all the louder and leapt straight at the troll. I couldn't help thinking that this was how evolution put an upward limit on courage.

Gruesome was very direct; he slammed in an uppercut. His timing was just right; he caught the lion under the jaw. It went flipping up over his head and down in an arc, its head flopping at an unnatural angle.

The other three decided their initial instinct had been right, and fled out across the plain with howling yips of fright.

Suettay's hands flew; crooked syllables clanked off her tongue. Gruesome turned slowly toward me, a hungry glint in his eye.

"What's the matter?" I backed away. "Look, I didn't mean to get you into this!"

"Juicy." Gruesome's slab of tongue came out and smacked around his chops. "Taste good."

I yelped and whirled to run; Suettay had canceled the fairies' antihuman-eating spell.

Gruesome's feet pounded behind me, coming closer, and I knew that, though his legs were much shorter in relation to his body, they were longer than mine, since he was so much bigger-and he could move them faster, no matter what he looked like. I wasn't going to get out of this by running-just by talking. Or rhyming, rather. I swerved around behind the biggest boulder I could find in that barren land and started chanting.

A huge fist came down and smashed the boulder to smithereens. Gruesome loomed up, huge eyes lit with glee, mouth spread in a horrible, drooling grin, upraised hands hooked to pounce, and I turned to run. Huge nails clawed my back, and I howled with pain, tripping and falling. I rolled to my feet, and I was just in time to see the glee dim from his eyes as his mouth puckered in confusion. "Wizard? What I do?"

"Nothing." I went limp with relief. "You chased away some lions for me, Gruesome. Thanks."

But beyond his bulk, I saw Suettay, hunkered down on her knees, belt over diagrams she was drawing in the dirt, and intoning a long, diconing chant.

My heart sank. Whatever she was whopping up, it was big - if symbolic gestures increased magical power, symbolic drawing would be even worse!

Then full inspiration hit me, and I realized that a sword can cut both ways, no matter how clumsy. "Gruesome!" I cried. "There's another one!" I pointed at Suettay.

" 'Nother one what?" the troll rumbled, turning to look. I chanted quickly,

Slant rhyme again, but I hoped it would work.

It did. Gruesome let out one gusty "Yum!" and started running straight at Suettay.

The sorceress looked up, startled. Then she sprang aside with a howl of fear, in the nick of time - Gruesome thundered by, plowing up her diagrams with his great taloned toes. Suettay howled in rage and frustration - and I seized the moment, my mind shifting into high gear. I knew better than to waste a single second by this time. While she was on the run, I chanted,

I ripped a thread loose from my shirt, frantically tying knots in it as I went on:

The sorceress collapsed, falling back on the ground with a howl of anger and fear.

Gruesome bellowed victory and stooped for the kill.

I shouted.

Gruesome froze.

Then his face wrinkled, and he turned away in disgust. "Yugh! Sorceress! Tough! Sour!"

Suettay stared, not knowing whether to be insulted or relieved. The fear spell was still on her, but she started muttering anyway.

Gruesome whipped about, looking from side to side in total bewilderment. "Where goody,' Where juicy piglet?" So that was what he had seen, instead of Suettay.

"It got away," I said quickly. "Why don't you go back to the camp fire and see if Gilbert has any leftovers from dinner?"

"Deer haunch." Gruesome nodded sagely and turned away. "Yom!"

I pulled out my clasp knife, snapped it open, and stepped up to touch the point against Suettay's throat. "Cut it," I snapped, "or I will!"

The last syllables of the chant died in the sorceress' throat as she read the conditional sentence in my eyes. But she saw something else, too, and a slow, mocking smile spread over her face. "You believe you have beaten me, then?"

"I did sort of have that impression, yes." Privately, I wondered how long I could hold the knife still.

"Slay me, then." Suettay smiled, showing teeth. I stared.

I clamped my jaw, narrowed my eyes. She was mocking me, riding a bluff. She should have known better; it only made sense for me to kill her. I braced myself for the thrust-and stayed braced. Suettay's eyes danced, mocking me.

I ground my teeth and tried to summon up the resolution for the fatal blow. "Start a spell."

Suettay shook her head, grin widening.

"Damn"' I whirled away, plunging the knife into the earth. Suettay laughed, a mocking bray. "I congratulate you on your ... honor, Wizard."

I swung about, fuming.

"Aye, slay the helpless old woman," the sorceress jeered.

"When you rendered me defenseless, Wizard, you bound your own hands."

"Nothing," I ground out, "gripes me more than someone who takes advantage of someone else's good nature."

"I could not be more pleased with your ... virtue." Suettay made the word an insult.

I spun away, burning, taking a deliberate step away from the woman so I wouldn't do something I'd feel sorry for in the morning. Behind me, the sorceress sang out a rhyme in that ancient language I didn't know. I spun about in alarm. She was stretching luxuriously.

"Thank you for affording me a moment to recite my counterspell, Wizard. Be assured, I'll not return the favor." Her hands started weaving.

I snatched up the knife and turned back to her, shifting from side to side, coming in low. Of course, she could have blocked that with three words, so I chanted,

Suettay stared, alarmed, then broke off her chant to cry, "Hist!" She held up a hand, turning her head a little to the side and frowning, as if listening to a distant sound.

Then she turned back to me, snarling, "How you have worked your vile spells, Wizard, I do not know - but I grant You've been far more formidable than I had thought you would be."

A truce? I wondered if it was wrong of me to feel relieved.

"I would I could stay and finish what we've so lately begun," Suettay spat, "but sudden, urgent affairs have arisen, which require my Personal attention - blast that monk and his obstinancy! We shall meet again, be certain - yet I must own, I've gained some respect for you. When next I see you, 'twill be with an army at my back."

Yes, I decided, wanting a truce was wrong. I screwed down my mercy and began reciting.

Suettay looked up in amused surprise. I set my teeth and went on:

Suettay cocked her head to the side suddenly, as if she were again listening for something.

Trying to distract me, I thought. I focused tightly on her face, chanting:

Suettay turned back to me with a long, gloating laugh that ended abruptly in a shouted, unintelligible phrase as she swung her arms in opposing circles.

I shouted.

Suettay disappeared.

I finished. "Damn. too!"

Then I started wondering what she had been laughing about. Probably just trying to distract me, as I'd thought ... but ... How about if she had seen some trouble coming for me and my companions?

On a wide-open plain? In the dead of night? Ridiculous! After an act like that, what trouble could make any difference?

Then I heard the clank of arms, Gilbert's shouting, and Frisson's howl, faint but clear across the plain. Gruesome roared, and a crowd of voices answered him. Metal clashed on metal.

"She sent an ambush party while she had me out of the way!" I cried. But I didn't answer; I was already running, and trying to figure out how I could get there faster.

Faster? I skidded to a halt. I was a wizard, wasn't I? At least, that's what they kept telling me. I could get to any place I wanted, instantly - at least, within this hallucination. All it took was the right spell.

There was a sudden rush of giddiness-then my head stopped swimming, and I looked up at mud-and-thatch walls, crude plank furniture, and dirty, unkempt people in ragged, dun-colored home spun.

The man of the house looked up, startled, from his place at the table. He had a long beard and a large axe.

I stared. What had gone wrong?

Terminology. I'd said "by the fire," but I hadn't specified which one. And I had said "across the plain" - so here I was, in a peasant hut presumably on the far side of the plain.

I gave the denizens a toothy grin and tipped an imaginary hat.

"Sorry about the intrusion, folks. Just semantics, that's all." The man's lips writhed back in a snarl as he came up from the table, hefting his axe.

Obviously a grammarian. I adlibbed,

And I had a good excuse,

The axe swung down - and I was suddenly in the midst of bright moonlight again. I turned around, totally confused - and saw a bright spot on the horizon. Dimly, I heard clashing and yelling. I sighed. Overshot again! Well, I hadn't exactly had time to get specific.

But my friends were in a jam. I had to come up with a spell while I made it to them.

Suddenly, fog rose up from the ground, getting thicker and thicker as it climbed. In two minutes, it had hidden the stars - and the distant clash of arms was liberally interspersed now with shouts of surprised and angry pain, and cursing.

That would hold them for a while. I dredged up an orientation verse:

There was that moment of disorientation again - then things steadied, and I found myself staring at the coals of our camp fire. I whirled about to see Gruesome tossing soldiers like Indian clubs. Gilbert was laying them about him with his broadsword, and Frisson crouched by the fire, reading scraps of paper aloud. Angelique flitted here and there, trying to scare enemy soldiers, and not terribly worried by their weapons.

But I was - because the fog suddenly lifted. Only ten feet or so, but that was enough for the soldiers to see where we were and turn to center on us with some very nasty oaths.

If their field sorcerer could disperse my fog, he might be able to trap Angelique! I had to find some way to bust up his party.

A huge unseen hand seemed to slap back and forth in the middle of the raiding party, and troopers went flying. That left only a man in a gray robe and pointed cap, frantically dodging the unseen force. He was going to be confused for a few minutes, and I decided to make it worse.

The fog came down again, all the way to the ground - and among the moans of the soldiers, I heard a tenor cursing. I grinned; that should keep this junior sorcerer confused for a few minutes.

But he'd pick up the pieces pretty quickly. I needed something a scare the symbols off his robe - and little more enduring, that would scare his soldiers, too.

And I knew just the thing. I grinned with anticipation as I took a deep breath and recited, with my best attempt at the original pronunciation,

Night thickened around them, and I took off, following the crashing Gruesome was making. On my third step, I slammed into something hard and furry. A roar resounded around me, and a huge, clawed hand reached down through the darkness toward me. Far above, two little red eyes gleamed. I howled, ducked around the giant shin, and ran.

Grendel apparently wasn't about to change course for so small an irritation, because the crashing of boulders being ground into pebbles behind me, and I didn't think that was just because was going away he was running so fast. A yell of horror confirmed it, followed by the rattle and clash of suits of armor being jumbled together. I slowed and looked back, but all I could see was a black cloud with a horse arcing above it and a sorcerer beyond, sawing the air frantically with his hands. The horse landed on its hooves, by some miracle, and streaked off in a panic - but the sorcerer had to stand his ground and keep trying. I didn't think he'd have much luck when he couldn't even tell what the monster was - especially since I didn't think the man knew Middle English. Too bad the Dark Age bards hadn't left a few verses with a wider range of applications - but their interests had seemed to be rather narrow.

Wide enough for current purposes, however. I noticed that the crashing seemed to have stopped. So did the sorcerer - he was frozen with his arms half-raised, looking uncommonly as if he were surrendering to a Wild West sheriff. Then he whipped about and disappeared back into the pass. The black cloud drifted after him, leaving huge, clawed, vaguely anthropoid footprints.

I didn't really care about the sorcerer, but I couldn't leave a scourge like that to prowl the countryside. I tried to remember how the fight had gone, decided to be a little more humane, and improvised a different ending:

The black cloud kept moving up toward the pass-but as it moved, it thinned until, by the time it reached the top, it was almost gone. A vague outline hung in the air for a second, huge and gross, like a monstrous parody of the human form-or was it reptilian?-then was gone, so quickly that I wondered if I'd really seen it. I sighed and turned away-there had been something heroic about the monster, after all.

Gilbert was glancing warily up toward the hilltop, then back to the place where his opponents had been. There was only a dust cloud there now.

I looked at it, surprised. "What did you do - knock them all the way back to the mountains?"

"Nay. They saw that black fog you raised, and turned tail. They fled, and I came near to fleeing after them."

"Near! If I'd had a clear field, I would've been flying out of here so fast, my backwash would have knocked you over!"

"Me, too!" The troll actually looked shaken. "Goosum go, fast!" I looked up at Gruesome, frowning. "I thought trolls weren't scared of anything."

"One." Gruesome nodded vigorously. "Found it."

"And you banished it, Wizard. Gilbert looked up at me, the whites still showing all around his eyes. "Nay, you have certainly cleared our pathway! Have you disbanded them so quickly, then?"

" 'Dismembered' may be more like it," I answered. "You'll pardon me if I don't go back to check."

"Aye, Certes." Angelique looked down from where she wafted around Gruesome's shoulders, eyes huge. "And what monstrous apparition was that which you did raise against them, Wizard Saul?" Being a ghost, she had a professional interest in the question.

"That's a long story." I sighed. "And a very old one. I'll tell it to you some time - but right now, I think we'd better reset the guarding circle that Gruesome broke when he came out to help me-thanks, old monster .

"Help you?" Angelique looked up, ready to fibrillate.

"That's another story," I said quickly. "I thought you wanted to hear the one about the monster while we wait for daylight."

"Aye, but I pulled out my can of talcum powder."

"Then we'd better get busy" and stepped over to the break in the circle. Angelique drifted after me anxiously, but by the time she caught up, I was deep in, mumbling the spell. When I finished, I looked up brightly and said, "Okay. Anybody want to hear?"

Angelique's protest was drowned out by noisy concurrence from Frisson and Gilbert. I glanced around and saw that even the troll was looking mildly interested. I relaxed and took a deep breath. "Okay. Now, once, long ago and very far away, a hero named Hrothgar built him a hall, hight Heorot . . ."

And they sat up around the camp fire listening for what was left of the night, eyes growing larger and larger as they listened to the wondrous tale of the hero Beowulf.

What with one thing and another, we weren't in the world's greatest shape for traveling when we broke camp and buried our fire the next morning. We made it until noon, but when we saw the gleaming castle in the distance, sitting on top of its mound in the middle of the plain with bright banners flying from its turrets and the midday light glistening off the white stone of its curtain wall, I couldn't resist it.

"Just a little farther," I coaxed my friends. "We'll ask for hospitality there, and if they say yes, we'll be able to rest in peace and security.

"Aye," Angelique said, "for surely no one evil could live in so fair a fortress!"

But Gilbert didn't look convinced, and Frisson said, "Can any who are not evil hold a castle in Allustria?"

But Gruesome grinned from one side of his face to the other and chortled, "Food!"

"Yeah, but just grain, okay?" I looked up at him nervously. "No gobbling up the castle horses, now - we don't want to eat out our welcome."

"Goosum be good," he promised, and we pressed on to our new short-term goal with renewed vigor.

As we came up the slope, though, I frowned. "Odd. Drawbridge down, banners flying-but not a soul in sight."

"Mayhap they are all gathered in the bailey for some purpose," Frisson ventured.

"Surely they would have left sentries at the walls!" Gilbert expostulated.

"Well, we'll find out soon enough." We had come up to the drawbridge's edge. I called out to the little slit windows in the gatehouse, "Is anybody home?"

A face with a steel cap showed at one of the windows. "What wish you? " I let out a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

"Hospitality. We are wayfarers who seek a night's lodging - and we are of gentle blood."

The face looked up a little above my head. "He is not." I looked around. "Who, Gruesome? No, he's a troll, but he's friendly. "

"I doubt the castellan would countenance his entrance," the porter called back. "He must stay without until the lord of the castle has spoken - but the rest of you may enter."

I stood rigid for a moment, then hissed to my friends, "Maybe we'd better look for a different campground."

"Mayhap," Gilbert said. But Angelique, unseen, said, "You could do well with a soft bed and a strong wall about you for a night, gentlemen, and the troll will not fret."

"Goosum hunt!" the troll averred.

"Well . . ."

Frisson's eyes were feverish. "A real kitchen, with true food!

A dinner of any other thing but journey rations!" He turned to Gruesome. "Surely you would not feel neglected, would you, good monster?"

Gruesome shook his head - or the whole top half of his body, whichever way you wanted to look at it. "Goosum no trouble!" Well now, that could have meant that he wouldn't be any trouble if we took him into the castle, or it could have meant that it wouldn't trouble him to be left outside, but I chose the latter interpretation. "Okay, Gruesome, you wait out here. Go hunt a boar or something. We'll see you in the morning - sooner, if the lord of the castle has a change of heart."

Gruesome nodded affably and turned away toward the nearest woods.

Somehow it bothered me, having him out of sight, but I reminded myself that I was probably safer that way, anyway. "Okay, he's taking a hike," I called up to the soldier in the little window. "Can we come in now?

"Aye! The drawbridge is down, and the keep awaits you!" he called back, and disappeared.

I turned to my companions. "Shall we, friends?" We went through the gatehouse, Angelique glowing visibly in its shadow-and the skin on the back of my neck prickled, expecting a volley from the little windows all along both sides of the passage. But nothing happened, and we came into the bailey.

" 'Tis fair enough," Frisson said.

It was. The courtyard was bare in the center but with a broad fringe of grass, where a few horses were grazing contentedly. They wore only bridles, but they were big-knights' mounts. Smoke came from some of the buildings against the wall, with cooking odors from the kitchen range and the steady clang of metal from the smithy. Both of them relaxed me a little more, though it still seemed odd not to see anybody around.

"No doubt they are all inside." Frisson sniffed the delicious aromas and smacked his lips. "Come, friends! To the keep! Must we not present our compliments to the lord and his lady?"

"Yeah, I guess that's the correct protocol." But this time, I let Frisson take the lead.

We walked across the courtyard to the tall, round building that was the keep and went through the doors at its base-into total gloom, in which Angelique shone brightly again. Frisson stopped with an exclamation, and Gilbert came through last, looked about him, and growled.

" 'Tis a ruin!" Frisson cried.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far." I prowled past him, looking around.

"Structurally, it's in good shape."

"But 'tis filthy, with the dust and dirt of a century at least!" Angelique protested.

It was. A little light came in from two small windows high up on the walls, enough illumination to show us a huge round room with fat pillars holding up the ceiling - and huge cobwebs that stretched everywhere there was a right angle. A few of them were new, with active spinners busily mending tears or rolling flies, but the others were lank and ropy, thick with dust. The floor wasn't much better, coated with humus that had once been moldering straw. Broken benches and tables poked up here and there, and I could see the remains of a few camp fires, where wanderers had spent the night.

"But how could it be?" Frisson protested, visions of a good supper fleeting away. "The outside is so fair, so well kept and well tended!"

"Wherefore would they neglect the keep?" Gilbert looked about him, frowning. "Do not the lord and lady live here?" The answer hit me like a thunderbolt. "No, they don't, and they haven't for fifty years or more! The place is deserted! Somebody just tidied up the outside to lure us in!"

"But who would go to such great labor?" Gilbert cried.

"What great labor? It just took a little magic! And I'll give you three guesses who uses magic on that scale! Out of here, folks!" I turned and headed for the door. just a second too late. A howling war cry cut loose all around us, waking echoes that the old hall hadn't even known it had.