The Witch Doctor

Chapter Seventeen

I wasn't entirely sure where the cave in the dungeon wall had come from-I could have sworn it hadn't been there when we had come down-but I wasn't about to object. If the rats knew where it was, it had to be real-at least, assuming the rats themselves were real; which made me begin to wonder about the Rat Raiser.

While I was wondering, we were going downhill; I couldn't help but think of Hellmouth in the old mystery plays, and wonder if this was its throat. It was certainly dark enough - and growing warmer; and the aromas rising were anything but life-giving. Trickles of water glittered in the torchlight here and there, becoming broader as we descended deeper.

Time to start the active part. I took a deep breath-and regretted it - and began to recite:

We moved down, our pool of torchlight coming with us, until water glistened below, black water, and the Rat Raiser whispered, "We have come into the sewers. Carefully, now, children - the water is deep, and the way is narrow."

He turned to the left, following his pets. I saw a spark off to the side and frowned, glancing at it; then I glanced again. There were two sparks, a pair, and, as I watched, another pair appeared, and another.

"We are regarded," Gilbert said, indicating a bank of little jewel-eyes glowing at the edge of our torchlight.

Angelique gave a strangled gasp, but the Rat Raiser crooned, "Gently, children, gently. 'Tis only the small ones who dwell hereand, no matter what you think of them, they will not hurt you while I am here."

It was a gentle reminder of who held the power at the moment, and I didn't trust it. I thought up a protecting verse and held it ready on my tongue. I also glanced at Angelique, to make sure she was okay - then glanced again.

She was solid!

Apparently, her incorporeality was right in phase with whatever nonexistent realm of nonreality we were in.

My lord, that woman was beautiful! None of the bruises or wounds showed on her ghost - only a hollowness of the cheek, a darkness around the eye, that spoke of the harrowing experience she had been through. Even that enhanced her beauty, rather than diminished it - or was I so much the captive of my own binding spell, so much in love with her, that nothing could lessen her beauty in my eyes?

I shook off the notion with a shudder and turned away. Women were for enjoying, nothing more - and since you couldn't just enjoy them without hurting their hearts, I was determined not to notice them. Never mind that Angelique already knew my true feelings for her - that didn't mean I had to let them show. I resolutely turned my back and followed the Rat Raiser into the unknown - and surely that couldn't have been a small, very self-satisfied smile I had glimpsed on her lips as I had turned away, could it?

We paced the narrow path, scraping the stone wall on our left, with a host of bright beady eyes watching us. To our right, torchlight reflected off thickened, tainted water. The aroma had become almost unbearable; we breathed through our mouths, but I could have sworn I was tasting the air.

The surface heaved, and a huge clawed hand broke through with a long, scaly, tooth-filled snout behind it. The hand groped toward us, and the Rat Raiser shrank back with a squeal that had the ring of command - but also of fright; and his pets answered him with a squealing and skittering as they disappeared into the darkness.

But I was already chanting.

The questing talons paused, wavered, then withdrew, slowly sinking out of sight.

"I thank you, Wizard." The Rat Raiser sighed. "I had not known such a monstrous being might rise from this stew."

"Always pays to be ready." I didn't tell him what I'd been ready for. "Frisson, do you think you could hold that verse ready to chant?

And no improvements, mind you! I have another spell to recite."

"Aye, Master Saul," the poet said grudgingly. "But be mindful, I am no wizard."

"Don't worry, I am." Okay, so it was a little white lie - but they needed the reassurance, just then. "I'll join in and chant with you, as soon as I can drop the other verse. But my reaction time will be slow, and I think yours will be fast."

"Be sure of it," Gilbert muttered.

"I shall." The poet sighed.

"Well enough." The Rat Raiser pulled himself together and stepped forth, making little squeaking noises interspersed with words. "Where have you gone, sweetings? Nay, come back, little friends - the monster has fled, and we have need of your guidance.

Slowly, a couple of huge, ragged rats appeared at the edge of the torchlight.

The Rat Raiser nodded with satsifaction. "Lead on, then - we shall follow."

We did - not that we had much choice.

I watched the Rat Raiser's back, gauging him. The man hadn't been quite the abject coward I had expected him to be - but then, he couldn't have been short on nerve, to have dared the climb within Suettay's organization. Sense, maybe, but not nerve.

I started reciting my navigation spell again, with a touch of the frantic. At the end, I repeated, "Turn, turn, turn!" with perhaps excessive force.

Excessive, because the Rat Raiser was just warning us, "Slowly, now, and warily - for this ledge was made only for guardsmen from the castle, who knew its ways. Strongholds have been taken by parties raiding through the sewers, look you, and -" He broke off with a gasp - because the water was dwindling, showing blank stone to either side.

"Keep walking," I grated, and went back to mumbling my verse. The Rat Raiser stumbled as the walkway disappeared, and he cried out. His rats echoed him, squealing with horror and fleeing away; but the sludge had dwindled to a mere trickle, and I demanded, "Go on!"

"Nay, I am no longer master here," the Rat Raiser panted, white showing all around his eyes. " 'Tis you must lead now." I shoved past him with a mutter of impatience. The Rat Raiser fell in behind me, staring incredulously at the stone underfoot. it was completely dry now, but curved, in the middle as much as at the sides. "We are no longer in the sewers!"

"Praise Heaven!" Angelique sighed. "I may breathe again!"

"Yet where are we, then?" Gilbert demanded.

"In the wizard's realm," Frisson answered. "Be patient, my friends, and trust our guide; surely he knows where he goes!"

"Then he must know where we are." The squire had to shift his gait as the tunnel curved to our right. "Ho, Wizard! What place is this?"

"A torus." My voice sounded remote even to me, unconcerned with this mundane reality; but the roof rolled over us, and the tunnel's curve had become permanent. We were walking inside a granite doughnut. Yet not granite either, for it was seamless, and slightly resilient underfoot. What it was, I couldn't have said. My friends muttered behind me, afraid of the unknown-but they followed. I wasn't really perceiving my surroundings all that well - as busy muttering, concentrating on what the next development should be, so intent on where I was going that I wasn't really aware of where I was.

Shadows loomed about us, just outside the circle of torchlight. Then the shadows parted ahead, and I saw two tubes, branching in a fork. I bore to the left with complete assurance, not even thinking about it - almost as if I hadn't even noticed the split - and my companions followed me, mute with astonishment.

After a few minutes, the way branched again, then again.

"Are you sure of your course?" the Rat Raiser husked, but I only nodded once briefly and paced ahead, mumbling.

Then, suddenly, the tunnel ended. We halted, facing a blank, curving wall. My companions muttered with overtones of fear, but I just frowned at the wall, shaking my head, irritated, and turned back, retracing my steps. My companions made way for me, then hurried to fall in behind again-but Gilbert demanded, "Wizard, where are we?"

"In a maze," I answered.

They fell silent again, and I could almost feel their dread. I didn't want to - I had enough of my own. My skin was trying to raise hair where there wasn't any.

"Do you know the way?" the Rat Raiser whispered. I came to a halt, head cocked at a thought. Slowly, I turned back to the Rat Raiser. "Maybe you should take the lead again, come to think of it. Rats are very good at running mazes."

"I am not a rat!" the ex-bureaucrat stammered. "And none of my little friends are here!"

I just gazed at him with an abstracted frown, then sighed and turned away. "Guess it's up to me, all right. Come on, folks." They did.

The tunnel branched, and I chose a way. It branched again, and I took the arm that curved back the way we'd come. Another fork, and I turned to my right, but muttered to the Rat Raiser, "Try and call your pets, will you?"

The Rat Raiser sighed and let out a series of squeaks. We waited.

Finally, the Rat Raiser shook his head. "There are none near us, Wizard. Whatever place this may be that you have taken us to, it has no rats."

Gilbert frowned. "What manner of human place is this, that it has none?"

My attention caught on the word "human"; it sent prickles down my spine. "Good question. Should we maybe ask, instead - what does live here?"

My friends exchanged quick, apprehensive glances.

"Saul," Angelique said, "if you can lead us through this maze, I pray you, do so quickly!"

"You can, can you not?" Gilbert asked with a worried frown.

"Given enough time, yes," I said slowly. "I was always pretty good at solving mazes when I was a kid, sick in bed. But I think we may need faster action than that, right now."

"Indeed!" Gilbert agreed. "Bring us out, Wizard!"

"Patience, friend," Frisson counseled. "He is only human, after all, as lost as any among us."

"We could wander here till we die of thirst!" the Rat Raiser cried, appalled.

"Oh, come on!" I protested. "I can always conjure up a good meal, you know."

The tunnel was silent.

Then Frisson said, delicately, "That is not entirely reassuring, Wizard Saul."

"What, because you think it's really going to take that long?" I shrugged. "Look - you knew this wasn't a morning's jaunt. Even without the maze, this could be a long journey."

They looked at one another, and I could feel the apprehension growing. Finally I capitulated. "All right, all right! I'll see if I can't summon a guide who can take us out of this mess!"

"What manner of spirit would that be?" Gilbert still looked wary.

"One good at figuring out mazes, of course." I frowned. "Which means one who could understand how a straight, direct path could become twisted and convoluted."

"Why, I am able to ken that," the Rat Raiser said.

"Yes, you would be, wouldn't you? Any good bureaucrat would. But I had in mind the one who's good at coping with bureaucratsone who knows how to weave in and out of the red tape, how to go around the runaround, how to keep from losing his way in a paper storm." I frowned, rubbing my chin. "Let's see ..."

There was a flash of light, so bright as to dazzle us all with afterimages - but a gravelly voice was calling, "What? Where? How came I here?"

In a panic, I blinked and rubbed, trying to clear my eyes before the creature I had summoned could turn on us.

Too late - it was howling, "What benighted son of a sorcerer and a witch has brought me into so bleak a place as this?"

"Guilty!" I shouted. "It's my fault, not theirs! But have the courage to wait until I can see you, you . . . "

"Then clear your eyes!" the newcomer snorted; and suddenly, I could see again. I blinked, asking, "What kind of creature can ... Oh." My friends gasped with shock. The "creature" looked up from the neighborhood of my belt buckle, arms akimbo and his other two arms folded under his shoulder blades, tapping the forward-facing foot while he balanced on the backward-facing one and took aim at my shin with the third. His noseless face glowered up at me in indignation, huge saucer eyes glowing an angry yellow while he twiddled the tentacles on top of his head. Overall, he looked like a mauve cucumber whose vines had decided to turn into legs and arms and prehensile hair. He wore pointed shoes with curling toes and a wide belt loaded with every sort of tool imaginable, plus a few that I couldn't.

And he wasn't happy.

I swallowed. "Hi! I'm Saul, urn, a wizard. And who are you?"

"Who did you expect?" the gravelly voice growled. Yes, its lips moved.

"Just somebody who understands the illogical well enough to get us out of here. Uh-who are you? "

"I," said the little monster, "am the Gremlin."

I stared.

"Saul," Angelique quavered, "what is a Gremlin?"

"An imaginary creature whose goal in life is making things go wrong," I told her. "If anybody can understand the kind of realm we're in, he can."

"But will he aid us?" Frisson breathed.

"Unlikely," the little monster grated. "I delight in foiling and frustrating, not aiding - especially to folk who yank me unceremoniously from my home!"

"My apologies," I said, "but there really wasn't any way I could ask you ahead of time. The Gremlin unlimbered an arcane tool from his belt. "I'm minded to send you back in that time you speak of, to give you space to learn your manners."

"No, please! We really do need your help. We're stuck in this maze, see, and we need to get through it fast. There's a whole kingdom that needs our help."

"What's your kingdom to me, or I to it?"

"You could be its rescuer," I said, "and it's a goodly land that's being laid waste by black sorcery. Forests are being blighted - trees and animals are being twisted out of their natural forms . . ."

"How foul!" the Gremlin cried, outraged. "That is my work, though I would rather work it through machinery, and the more complicated, the better. What bastard of spirits usurps my prerogative in such fashion?"

"Her name is Suettay," I explained, "and her grandmother seized the throne three generations ago. They've been ruining the land ever since."

The Gremlin shook his fists, hopping mad-literally. "So many years? Have my tasks been usurped for so long as that? Why has no one told me of it before?"

I sensed an opening. "Because they didn't know how. I mean, even with me, it was as much accident as intention."

"But you did at least bring word!" The Gremlin stilled, scowling.

"Surely I shall help you, if it will bring me a chance to annihilate this usurper! What do you wish of me?"

"Well, we're trying to get to the Spider King, see - we're hoping that maybe he -"

"The Good Bourgeois King?" The Gremlin stared. "Aye, most surely he could aid you! But how think you to come to him?"

"That's why we're trying to get through this maze, see. I recited a spell that should take us to the Spider King."

"A spell?" The Gremlin rounded on me, looking me up and down.

"Art a sorcerer, or a warlock?"

"Neither, really - I think I'm a wizard. But I don't believe in magic, see, and the spell didn't take us right to him, so ..."

"A wizard who works magic that he does not believe in!" the Gremlin crowed. "Why, this is too delightful! How shall I bollix work for you, mortal? By making your spells all work aright? Oh, this is priceless!" I exhaled a shaky breath. "Surely you wouldn't do anything so perverse."

The Gremlin eyed me shrewdly. "I think you know me by repute, and too well to think there is anything too perverse for me. So you wish to come to the Spider King, eh? "

"Yeah, but my spells haven't been working, and-"

"Nay, I should think not! His realm is too closely guarded, to come at him unawares!"

"Unawares?" I looked at the tunnel about me. "You mean this whole thing is his early warning system?"

"He will know of you when you arrive, aye." The Gremlin tilted his head to the side, looking me up and down. "This much I will do for you - I will lead you back through this maze, whence you've come."

"Nay!" Angelique cried. "We must go on!" The Gremlin looked up, surprised.

" 'Tis the salvation of the land we speak of," Gilbert explained.

"Besides," I said," you don't know what's waiting for us back there."

"Tell me," the Gremlin coaxed.

"Oh, all right." I sighed. "An evil queen and a torture chamber, not to mention a dungeon."

"You have reason to wish to go on," the Gremlin admitted. "Yet 'tis not so simply done as that. There are greater dangers than this maze, look you."

"If you think they're bad, you should see what we left behind us."

"I have." The monster leered. "Or ones much like them. So you think, then, that you are on the road to his palace, this Spider King?"

"Well, to his kingdom, maybe."

The Gremlin shook what passed for his head, with certainty.

"His kingdom runs throughout the heart of the continent between the Northern and the Middle seas; it overlies your own, like a saucer on a plate. You seek his palace, not his kingdom alone. I will take you there, for I'll need his aid against this woman who usurps my prerogatives." He grinned. "And, too, I'm minded of the mischief you will wreak in Allustria, if the Spider King lends his strength to your cause."

I didn't remember mentioning a cause - and I certainly didn't remember mentioning Allustria. The prickling feeling moved over my shoulders and the back of my head again, as I began to feel the tendrils of a conspiracy waft around me. The worst of it was that I suspected that I might be part of the conspiracy, not just its object - but I wasn't exactly in a position to be picky. "Then you will help us?"

"And gain a chance to help confound the self-important and harshruling ones? Aye, and gladly!" The Gremlin leapt to the fore.

"Follow me!" He strode off into the darkness. "Do You follow close!"

I hurried after him, and the gang followed, but I don't think any of us was convinced that it was entirely a good idea.

Lead us the Gremlin did. How, I couldn't have said - but every time my sense of direction told me I should zig, the Gremlin zagged, and every time I thought we should turn left, the Gremlin turned right. Archways and corners swooped past us in dizzying array, for the little monster never faltered. How he could tell where to go, I couldn't guess, but I wasn't about to argue.

Then, finally, the tunnel opened out. I looked up, with a notion of what I might see - and I was halfway right, at least. I saw a convex wall curving up and away from me, continuing onward in a great circle. It was as if we stood in the center of a doughnut.

But what was above that doughnut was a surprise.

"Wizard," Angelique said softly, "what is that darkness all about?"

It was dead black, flat, total darkness, without the slightest hint of light. It seemed to dim everything near it.

"The void," I answered. "That's what lies outside of space and time."

"Then what," Frisson said, "is that great curve that rises above us", it was like a huge corkscrew, rising up over the rim of the doughnut, slanting upward into the void and out of sight.

"Yonder lies your path," the Gremlin informed him. Angelique frowned. "Yet how are we to come to there,"'

"Through yonder gate." The Gremlin pointed. On the far side of the circle, the wall curved inward, forming the mouth of another tunnel.

"If we must, we must," Gilbert growled. "Lead on."

"Even so," the monster murmured; but he had taken scarcely one step when a huge roar sounded, a roar that shook the very walls, a roar that pained our ears and hit us with almost physical force.

"There are impediments," the Gremlin murmured. Forth it came from the darkness of the tunnel mouth - a monster who stood upright on hooves and switched an oxtail, whose body swelled into the deep, muscular chest of a bull, merging into huge, human arms and shoulders. The mouth opened and loosed another closely, I realized there was no muzzle, but only a great russet beard roar; I thought, at first, that it was a lion's head. Then, looking more and mustache, and that the face was human, though with a huge mane of tawny hair.

But those were fangs inside that human mouth - fantastically elongated canines.

Angelique moaned and shrank back against me; I reached out a protective arm.

"Wizard," Gilbert said, "what manner of creature is that?"

"He is the Bull," the Gremlin answered, "and he is set to slay any who come herein."