The Witch Doctor

Chapter Sixteen

There was no world and no time, and no sight but light. There were colors swirling about me, but mostly what there was, was Angelique.

I wasn't alone in the mist this time. I was a separate identity, but I was also integrated with Angelique. Somehow, her soul was interleaved with mine, touching me far more intimately than any embrace of bodies could achieve, in contact with me at every point, and the thrill of her touch was ecstasy. I couldn't see her, but I could perceive her, perceive the memories of horror, the aftershocks of agony, but all of it was muted now, numbed and faded, far less important than her joy at having found a man who loved her deeply. Because I couldn't hide that from her, now-our souls were open to each other. The only way I could have hidden my feelings was to have locked her out entirely, and to do that I would have had to become catatonic, completely cutting off perception of everything but myself. But I didn't want to hide my feelings, somehow.

Maybe it was because she couldn't hide anything from me, either, and I could perceive her love for me, ardent and deep. I realized that the spell had only made her see my good qualities before-but now she saw all my faults, too-the temper, the mulishness, the hypocrisy, the sprees, the sordid little affairs, the chip on my shoulder. But my virtues were so important to her, so much of what she needed and admired, so much like her own ideas of what was good and right, that my harshness and abrasiveness seemed unimportant to her. She knew them for the front, the shield, that they were, and knew also that they didn't really matter-but that what they protected, did. As for me, I was a total goner. I'd been able to see beneath the bruises and see in her glowing ghost that her face and body were beautiful, the most beautiful I had ever seen-but I began to realize now that her beauty was only partly physical, that what raised her above every other woman I'd ever known was the sweetness and steadfastness of her soul. Her spirit was far more beautiful than her body could ever have been, than any woman's body could ever have been. My own lack of purity saddened but did not repel her. I could feel, through the beating of her energy field against mine, her urge to heal my soul of the rifts made by the women who had hurt me, the men who had ground at me until I had learned to strike back. Her touch, if the contact of spirit with spirit can be called that, was cool and soothing, then heating, inflaming. It crossed my mind that this beat sex all hollow, until I realized that this was sex, in the ultimate - or rather, that this intimacy was what we poor, fumbling men of clay are trying to achieve, through the use of our physical extensions.

That's when I really began to believe in the soul - and with it, I began to suspect that there might be an afterlife.

Then, suddenly, there was a rude pain - or no, not a pain, really, but a jolting shock that made Angelique cry out soundlessly and made me grapple her to me more tightly, trying to surround her, to shield her, anger kindling against the being who had disrupted our idyll, defaced our Eden. But the anger did no good; a stern voice was echoing all about us, commanding,

With a soundless cry, Angelique disengaged herself from me, breaking apart at the horror of the thought. Raging with anger, I surged up, snapping to alertness, body in fighting stance, eyes open

...

I saw Frisson's face, staring right into mine not six inches away, with a grimness that I hadn't even suspected he had in him. Then the room spun, and so did I, with a dizzy spell unlike anything I'd ever had before. A hand caught me, a hard arm braced me, and as the stars faded from my vision, I saw that Frisson and Gilbert had propped me up between them.

"What ... what happened?" I croaked.

"You did blend your soul with Angelique's ghost," Frisson explained. "In our journey through that realm that is and is not, from one place to another, your soul loosed itself from your body, as it ever does, and clasped Angelique's soul, as your hand did hers - for that was the only way in which you could carry her from one place to another."

"Thank Heaven for small duties," I breathed, "and Heaven it was!"

"Only a small taste of Heaven, if what I suspect of that state of bliss has any truth in it."

"You mean it gets better?" I shuddered in anticipation of unguessable ecstasy. "I'd be glad to spend a whole lifetime being good, if it got me into that state again after I die! In fact, now that I think of it, why bother waiting?"

"There, maiden, is the peril in which you have placed his soul," Frisson said severely.

Angelique lowered her gaze, abashed.

"For shame, maiden!" the poet went on. "Moments more, and you would have made him yearn for death before his time - and the fruit of that yearning is suicide, which would have left him from you for eternity! You have tempted him into ending his life before his worldly tasks were done - and how many would have suffered because of the work he did not do? How many would have perished because he was not there to save them?"

"Hey, that's low and dirty!" I stood up straight, glaring at him.

"Emotional extortion!"

"A new term, but perhaps an apt one," Frisson acknowledged. "Yet the words I've said are true. Bear this in mind - if she did tempt you to take your own life, that would be a great sin upon her soul. How then could you be joined after death?"

"Well ... maybe not in Heaven, but -"

"There is no joining in any other realm." Frisson chopped his hand sideways, in total denial.

"Each suffers alone in Hell; there is no companionship of any kind. The greatest torture there is the total absence of God, and of even the small reminders of his presence that are other souls. " Now, that kind of stubbornness always gets me angry. "How would you know?" I demanded.

"Why, how think you I would?" For the first time, Frisson showed a flash of anger. Only a flash; it was gone in melancholy a moment later as he said, brooding, "I have sought early death more than once, Wizard Saul. A maiden whom I loved with ardent passion spurned me, and in the misery of love unrequited, I yearned for death so greatly that I tied a noose about my neck and hanged myself from a tree. I live to speak only because a wandering monk happened by and cut me down ere I had quite strangled. He spake with me long and earnestly, showing me that lovers' despair is like any other despair, and to give up hope of love is to cease to strive for the touching of souls - which is to say, to cease in striving for Heaven." He turned to me alone. "I have great cause to be thankful to you, Wizard Saul, even though death by hunger would have satisfied my hunger for death - thankful because, in staying alive, I have come to know friendship and the caring of those for whom I care. Though it is not love, it is enough to live for, and to give me hope of greater worth."

"Why ... uh ... thanks, Frisson." I felt outraged and humbled all at once. "I'm glad I did some good. I mean, it would have been ridiculous for a nice guy like you to let himself die, just because he didn't think anybody could ever like him!"

"Yet so would I still believe, had you not taught me how to shift this curse of poetry, by the gift of writing."

"Then you've just paid me back." I sighed. "Well, if it's too soon for the real thing, let's get back to trying to make Heaven on Earth, shall we? Or at least to get rid of Hell." I looked around me, regretfully shouldering the burden of life again.

Sunlight beamed down upon us from some high window, showing us a pool of thick dust over rock. I looked around and saw a large room, a hundred feet across, ceiling just barely visible in the shadows. An old, faded tapestry hung on one wall, showing a maiden in Norse garb gathering golden apples from a tree. There were only a few trestle tables and benches over by the huge, cold black fireplace-but there was nonetheless a feeling of peace to the place, even of coziness. Over at the bottom of the stair was a dark archway, with more steps going downward-but strangely, it didn't seem threatening.

" 'Tis a castle long vacant," Gilbert said. "Praise Heaven! We are free!"

"Be not too quick with your thanks," the Rat Raiser said, but even he was having trouble restraining a smile. "I know this place; 'tis a castle taken from Lord Brace, who could not pay the fullness of his taxes. The queen hath said she will someday set a court here, for we are in her capital of Todenburg."

"The queen take up residence?" Frisson looked about him, wide-eyed and smiling. "Nay, how could she? For the peace of this house doth fill my soul, and the traces of laughter and kindness that emanate from its walls do exalt my spirit!"

"Even so," the Rat Raiser said sourly. " 'Twill be easy enough to desecrate, look you-but until she does that, she cannot bring herself to reside here for any length of time. Therefore has this castle stood thus abandoned these ten years. I came with a troop of clerks to list all goods within, then remove them - and I was sorely tempted to cease my sinning." His face twisted. "As I am now." He turned squarely to me.

"What you would do, I advise you, do quickly, for we are still in Todenburg, not a mile from the queen's stronghold, and she will surely be working divination, even now, to detect our presence."

I looked up in surprise. "That's right, she will, won't she? Quick! Everybody down to the dungeons!" I turned away toward the dark doorway at the foot of the stairs.

The Rat Raiser started, astonished, and Angelique gasped.

"Wherefore the dungeons?"

"Do not ask, milady," Frisson answered. "He knows what he is about - and there is small time to explain." He set off after me.

"Belike we would not comprehend, even if he did lay it all before us." Gilbert offered his arm. "Come! Have faith in the Wizard Saul." Reluctantly, Angelique came with him, though it was an open question whether her hand was on his arm, or in it. They were last in line; the Rat Raiser was scurrying ahead of us.

Fortunately, there were torch butts in the sconces, and Frisson turned out to be carrying flint and steel.

"Wherefore do you not make light with a spell again?" the Rat Raiser fairly howled. "Quickly! The queen will be upon us!"

"That's why I don't want to use magic," I said evenly. "It'd be like a flame in the night, showing her where we are. Besides, the wood's old and dry. See?" I held up a lighted torch. "Thanks, Frisson."

"Oh, 'tis my delight." The poet rose and stamped out his pile of tinder. "May we go, Wizard?"

"Right this way." I led down the curving steps. I stayed close to the wall; there wasn't any guard rail.

Angelique looked about, frowning, as we came out into the middle of a huge underground chamber. "Even here, there is peace, and no aura of misery."

"What would you expect?" The Rat Raiser spat. "Lord Brace kept no prisoners, nor did any of his forebears, and I doubt he even thought of torture! That is why there are no cells!"

"But there is water." I frowned, listening. My companions quieted, and heard the sound of dripping.

"Yon." Gilbert pointed toward an archway.

"Just fine." I headed for the portal.

"Hold, Wizard!" the Rat Raiser rasped. "That way leads to a vault beneath the courtyard!"

"Even better for my purposes." I looked back over my shoulder.

"Come on! Believe me, it's important!"

My friends exchanged baffled glances. Then Frisson shrugged and turned away. "We have followed him thus far; why not farther?"

"Is there peril yon?" Gilbert asked the Rat Raiser.

"None to speak of." The bureaucrat frowned. "Only rats, who will do my bidding. Yet wherefore would he wish a parade ground over him, not a castle?"

"We shall learn, I doubt not." The squire turned toward the archway. "Milady, will you walk?"

"Willingly, good sir."

The Rat Raiser shrugged and followed us.

As they came up to the torchlight, they found me standing by a large puddle, fed by a drip near the wall. The drops had worn a little channel to the center of the vault and formed a small pool. But I wasn't looking at the water; I was frowning around. "Wood ... wood ... " My eye lit on Frisson. "You're wearing wooden shoes!" Frisson looked down at his feet. "Sabots, we call them."

"Then let's try a little sabot-age! Lend me a foot, will you?" The poet stared at me as if I were mad, but he passed over his shoe.

"Okay, everybody grab hold." I knelt and poked the toe of the shoe in the pool underneath the drip from the ceiling.

Gilbert looked at Angelique, then at Frisson. The poet shrugged and knelt, hooking a finger into the sabot. The ghost and the squire sighed, knelt, and took hold. Grumbling, the Rat Raiser knelt at my left and touched the shoe.

"And now?" Gilbert asked.

"Ground the torch," I grated.

"We must not be without light! " Angelique cried.

"Have to. Be brave, folks - it's vital. No, don't drown it! We'll need it later. Just grind it out."

Gilbert looked up, startled, the torch poised over the pool. Then he shrugged and jammed the flame against the stone.

It was totally dark, except for the glow from Angelique. Personally, I couldn't have found a more lovely light, but the darkness bothered her - reminiscent of the grave, no doubt; but it had to be. She was brave, though, and only gave a half sob, then was silent. I reached out to push my hand into an overlap with hers. Her touch was cold, very cold, but she seemed to gain reassurance from mine.

"What do we do now?" Gilbert asked.

"Now we wait," I answered. "Get comfortable, folks. This could take a while."

They waited. Time passed even more slowly than the drips from the ceiling.

Claws clicked on stone, and something furry brushed my calf. Angelique cried out.

The Rat Raiser's voice crooned, "Peace, little one. We shall not disturb thy silence long."

The chamber was silent for a moment. Then the claws sounded again, fading away.

"Be of good heart," the bureaucrat's voice advised us. "They shall not trouble you."

"Thanks," I breathed. "Kind of glad you came along for the ride."

"We are ever pleased to be of service," the Rat Raiser said dryly. A sudden chill touched my spine, and I felt a strange sort of tingling along my scalp. Frisson's head snapped up, eyes widening.

"Hist!" the Rat Raiser rasped. "She comes!" Interesting that he could feel it, too.

"Just hang on," I said, voice low and calm. "As long as you keep touching the shoe, we'll be all right."

Angelique was trembling, and white showed all around Gilbert's irises.

Then the feeling of "presence" was gone, abruptly, totally. I relaxed with a sigh. "Okay, folks. It's over - and she won't be back." I stared straight ahead, murmuring,

The torch burst into flame again.

"How can you be certain?" the Rat Raiser demanded.

"Because I jammed her radar." I straightened up, holding the shoe out to Frisson. "She couldn't see us, because it was dark - so she had to go by feel. She could tell we were here - but she was going by clues, indirect evidence. She knew we were under earth, under stone, and touching wood which was touching water."

"A coffin!" Frisson cried.

"You're quick, mate. Yes, she figured I had somehow transported us all into our graves."

"Then she shall not trouble us further!" Angelique cried. "She will think us dead!" Then she remembered her own state and blushed, which is no mean feat for a ghost.

Gallantly, I affected not to notice - I only nodded. But the Rat Raiser cautioned us, "She will nonetheless seek us now and again, in case she might have guessed wrongly. Yet, all in all, she will cease to concern herself with us."

"It gives us some time, anyway," I said. Slowly, the poet took the wooden shoe and put it back on. "I will the'er question you, Wizard, after the manner in which you freed us."

"Uh, thanks, I guess." I didn't feel entirely comfortable with such faith.

"Praise Heaven she is beguiled!" Frisson sighed, leaning back to look up at the ceiling. "Ought we not to fly, Wizard? You have bought us time by your subterfuge, but it is not by any means the eternity which the queen thinks it to be. We cannot stay in any one place, or Suettay will find us again."

"No, we don't want that," I mused. "I want to find her, instead, but only after I've gathered enough force to restore Angelique to her body, then free that body."

Gilbert glanced at me, troubled. "Beware covetousness!" I shrugged. "Look at it this way - if I can bring her back to life, I can ask her to marry me."

"True," Gilbert allowed, and looked much more comfortable - but Angelique was staring at me, huge-eyed.

"Just ask," I hastened to reassure her. "Nobody's going to force you to say yes."

That brought her out of it. "Wherefore would I need force!" Her insubstantial hand brushed through mine.

"Beware the death wish!" Frisson scolded.

"Aye, and beware the queen," the Rat Raiser said sarcastically. "To free the maiden's body, you must first slay Her Majesty."

I shrugged. "Okay by me."

"Nay, Saul!" Angelique cried. "Must you alright me so? To wish to murder another is to imperil your immortal soul!"

"Not in this instance," Frisson demurred. I nodded. "Wishing to kill a woman who is corrupting a whole kingdom isn't a sin. In fact, if I were able to do it, the amount of good I'd achieve would balance out the evil of the murder." Somehow, when I put it that way, it didn't sound hypocritical. Maybe it was because it was me who was saying it.

Gilbert, of course, looked very happy about the whole thing. The Rat Raiser, though, just stared at me as if I were insane.

"However," I said, "on a more practical level, how could I find enough force to go up against the queen?"

"A telling point," Frisson said, relieved. "We were best to use this time the wizard has bought us to find a deep hole in which to hide."

"Or a vast enough space in which to run." The Rat Raiser looked relieved, too.

"Aye," Gilbert agreed. "Where shall we go to escape her wrath, Wizard? "

"Nice question." I pursed my lips. "Anybody have an idea?" They were all silent, looking at one another in alarm. If the wizard had no idea where to hide, how could any of them know?

Light glinted off a thread of silk. Looking up, I saw a spider, stretching a fan between two layers of the barrel vault. The Rat Raiser followed my gaze. He saw, and his eyes glinted.

"There is a legend, Wizard - one told by prisoners, who know no other life but rats and spiders . . ."

"Aye," Frisson said, with the ring of one who knew the subject, "a tale told of a King of Spiders, who dwells in a land no mortal can discover. " I felt a sudden prickling up the spine and across the scalp, very much like the one Suettay's surveillance had just given me. Angelique shuddered. "What a loathsome thought! To dwell with a vasty spider!"

Frisson grinned. "Nay, milady. He is not himself a spider, but a man, though one in a weird."

"As I am not a rat," the Rat Raiser grunted, and glared at me as if to contradict him.

I didn't answer, because the feeling was stronger than ever, and the spider was one of those big round-as-a-quarter jobs. Who was watching me now?

"And are we, then, to seek him, this Spider King, and walk into his weird, never to return?" Angelique demanded.

The dungeon was silent. Nobody answered her - but they all turned to me, and the look on my face must have been answer enough. Angelique's eyes began to grow wide and frightened. "You cannot truly think it!"

"Why not?" I shrugged. "We're in the dungeon already; we can't go much lower."

"But you can! Are we to step into the underworld, then?"

"Nay," Gilbert said slowly, "for therein dwell Suettay's masters. Yet I, too, have heard of this Spider King, and his kingdom is a realm apart, neither underworld nor afterworld."

I recognized an allusion to an alternate universe. I frowned.

"You're talking about going through another dimension to gain access there. How do we do that?"

They were quiet again. Then Gilbert said, with deference, " 'Tis you are the wizard. if you cannot say how to come to this Spider King, which one of us can? "

"But I've never heard of him before!"

"You had not heard of Suettay, either," Angelique reminded me, "Yet you countered her."

I glanced at her in annoyance. "When did you switch to pushing for this travelogue? All right, I suppose I could work up a longdistance projection spell using this Spider King as the focus Frisson took on a faraway look.

"Write it down," I said quickly.

The poet sighed, coming back down to earth. "If I must - yet 'tis such labor, to carve words with a pen when they are so easily spoken aloud."

"Yeah, but it takes us so long to clean up the mess afterward!"

"As you say," Frisson said, with rue. "Yet we cannot simply spell ourselves a long way to this enchanted realm, Wizard."

"Aye," the Rat Raiser agreed. "The Spider King's realm is said to be everywhere, but nowhere."

"Overlaid on ours like an egg on a flapjack." I nodded. "That's a description of an alternate universe if I've ever heard one!" Gilbert frowned. "Then how can we come there, Wizard, if 'tis all around us, yet beyond our ken?"

"Through another dimension," I explained. "No, don't ask me what a dimension is - you already know. Length, breadth, and depth - those are the three dimensions, and they're all at right angles to one another." The squire frowned. "But there is no other!"

"Yes there is, though we can't perceive it - and not just one, but many. How we go through the fifth dimension in order to come back to the third, though, is a problem I haven't tackled before."

"Then do," the Rat Raiser urged.

I pursed my lips. "Other dimension or not, we won't get there by standing still. We have to start walking somewhere." Gilbert, Angelique, and Frisson glanced around us, perplexed, but the Rat Raiser said slowly, "There do be sewers underlying all this town - huge old drains, small tunnels, left to us from the empire great Rome spread throughout this middle earth."

I nodded. "That'll do. Do you know your way around them?"

"No," the Rat Raiser said, "yet I have friends who do." He made a peculiar kind of squeaking noise, and Angelique let out a very funny, throaty noise, like the sound of a scream being stifled. We men stiffened, hackles rising, as a troop of huge gray rats scampered into the pool of torchlight, coats filthy, fangs gleaming.

The Rat Raiser knelt, holding out a hand and crooning. The rats came up to him, nuzzling his fingers. "Nay, I've no food for you now, little friends," he said with regret, "but there shall be feasting, if you can bring us where we wish to go. Lead us down below ground, yet through tunnels high enough for us to walk without stooping. Lead us down, and bid all like you withdraw, to let us pass." Angelique shuddered.

"Not the most salubrious notion in the world," I agreed, "but it's better than staying here and waiting for Suettay to catch us, isn't it?"

Angelique swallowed and nodded. Gilbert murmured, "Be brave, lass. However long it may be, we shall pass through; it shall end."

"All right, we're ready now," I said to the Rat Raiser, softly.

"Off, little ones!" the bureaucrat commanded with a wave of his hand. He rose as the rats scampered away. "Follow," he said over his shoulder, and stepped off after his pets.

"Ready?" I asked. "Well, we're going, anyway." And I followed the Rat Raiser.

Off we went into the gloom, the poet and squire bunched protectively around the lady's ghost, leading onward and downward, following the wizard-me-who was mumbling some very strange verses indeed as we descended into the lower depths.