The Witch Doctor

Chapter Twenty-Eight

We saw a mob of peasants beating up a squad of soldiers in a village square. It was unbelievable, until the pool showed us just one villager swinging a cudgel down at a soldier. The men-at-arms stabbed at him with a pike-but the peasant's cudgel whacked right on the haft behind the head, and the shaft broke.

"The Gremlin!" I breathed. After all, our perverse friend specialized in making things break down at the crucial moment. Admittedly, he was better with high-tech devices-the more complicated they are, the more things can go wrong - but he was managing pretty well with what he had.

The battle disappeared, and another army swam into view - but in this one, the soldiers were fighting among themselves. A knight rode about the fray, trying to knock combatants apart with a mace, but his horse tripped, and he disappeared into a melee of flailing arms. The images grew larger and larger, floating out past the edges of the pool, till I could see an overturned kettle next to the ashes of a campfire. The kettle was empty. Then the fighting soldiers swam back in, growing smaller and smaller until I was looking at an overhead view of the churning mass of soldiers. Suddenly they streaked past me, and the images expanded again, until I found myself looking down into a trio of farm wagons. They were filled with hay. Apparently, the quartermaster had bollixed up the order, sending horse food instead of people food, and the soldiers were starving.

"The Gremlin!" Gilbert breathed.

"Maybe," I said, "but I think he's getting expert advice." The fight dimmed and faded, and another picture grew in its place. A peasant, wearing a green tunic with yellow hose and a tall cap, was going from door to door, looking very confused as he scooped gold pieces out of a bag and handed them to the peasants. The recipients stared, unbelieving, then broke into huge smiles and heaped thanks on the donor-but he was already turning away toward the next cottage, looking very frazzled.

"He is a tax collector." Gilbert frowned. "Wherefore does he give money, rather than take it?"

It almost seemed as if the pool had heard him; it clouded up, then cleared again, showing us a view of a big room. We were looking at it from high up on the wall, and we saw a mob of men in rich-looking robes milling about half a dozen tables with checkerboard tops. There was a lot of gesturing, and I could imagine the noise. It looked like one of those television news shots of the New York Stock Exchange just before closing time on a bad day.

" 'Tis the exchequer," Friar Ignatius murmured. Oh. So that was where the word "checker" came from. Now that he mentioned it, I could see colored disks on some of the checkerboards, like beads on an abacus, and serving the same purpose. This was a counting room, and these men were clerks. "What are they arguing about?"

I shouldn't really have asked; I knew the answer as soon as I'd thought of the question. They were blaming one another, of course, trying to pass the buck before one of them got caught with it. The pool seemed to have heard me, though - as if in answer, it magnified the big desk in the center of the room, the one without a checkerboard, where a man with a gold chain around his neck was scribbling furiously on slips of parchment and handing them to the nearest of a group of boys, who twisted their way between furiously arguing clerks to hand the slips to men who were still sitting at their counting tables, moving stones about frantically, trying to look busy. As one boy carried his parchment, it swelled till it filled the pool, and we could all read, "Take two pennies from each peasant." But even as we watched, the words "Take" and "from" were blurring, the pen strokes writhing into new forms that made the message say, "Pay two pennies to each peasant."

"What spell is this?" Frisson stared, amazed.

"The Gremlin again," I said, "though I think he might be getting some advice from the Rat Raiser."

The scene rippled and disappeared, and another one steadied in it, place. This one looked a lot like the first, except that the tables didn't have checkerboards inlaid into them, and the men milling about wore richer and more colorful clothing-mostly doublet and hose; I only saw one or two real robes. Most of them were also wearing mail shirts that gleamed at the necks of their tunics and showed between belt and hose.

"'Tis the command post of an army!" Gilbert exclaimed, staring.

"And judging from the quality of the clothing, this is the high command," I agreed. "it looks a lot like the other room."

"'Tis in the queen's castle," Brother Ignatius breathed. Gilbert frowned. "How is this? Knights and lords, scribbling on parchments?

"It's called centralized command," I said. "They put their orders in writing, and couriers run them to the generals in the field."

"They fear the field will come to them," Gilbert said, "and shortly, or they would not be wearing mail."

I hoped he was right.

A general finished dictating to a clerk, who was scribbling on a parchment. He poured sand on it, dumped the sand, made sure the sheet was dry, and handed it to a courier who headed for the door, slipping it into a pouch as he went-but not quite quickly enough to keep the pool from magnifying it, and we watched it change from "Conscript five male peasants from each village" to "Discharge five male peasants to each village." Then the parchment slipped into the dispatch case and was gone from sight - but even as it did, the scene rippled and changed to a view from up high, showing a long stretch of dirt road with twenty or thirty soldiers ambling along with their pikes over their shoulders, laughing and slapping one another on the back.

"Men released from arms?" Gilbert cried. "in the midst of a war?"

"Seems Queen Suettay made a mistake by turning her commanders into bureaucrats," I said. "She made them vulnerable to the Gremlin - and the Rat Raiser, of course."

"The Rat Raiser! Can this soft-handed clerk best even knights in the field?"

"Not in the field," I corrected him. "Only before they get there."

The scene rippled again and changed to a paneled room with a richly dressed man sitting behind an elevated table on top of a dais. Before him stood a bruised man in rags and chains, flanked by two well-fed men in green and brown.

"Foresters," Gilbert breathed, "and a county magistrate."

"A courtroom?" I asked.

"A knight's court, mayhap," he said, "though a simple knight can scarcely be termed to hold court."

"Well, it certainly is serving the purpose." I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor peasant in front of the bench. "What did this guy do, to deserve being arrested?"

"The two men to either side of him are forest keepers," Frisson said. "I warrant the peasant was caught a-poaching." He sounded as if he spoke from experience.

I caught my breath. I'd always thought the medieval forest laws were unfair, even though I had to admit the game laws of my own day and age made no sense. Still, making sure deer and pheasants aren't hunted to extinction was a far cry from making sure they were reserved only for the aristocracy's tables and amusement.

This time, however, justice seemed to be adhering to the spirit rather than the letter; the knight was gesturing, and the foresters stared, aghast. The knight pounded on the table, getting red in the face, and the foresters reluctantly turned to strike off the peasant's irons. He stood, dumbstruck, staring at his reddened but naked wrists; then a forester gave him a shove toward the door. He stumbled, but turned the stumble into a run and got out of there before the knight could change his mind.

The knight, for his part, was still red-faced, only now he was glowering at a parchment that lay beside him on his high table.

"The Rat Raiser again!" I grinned. "He told the Gremlin how to louse up the judicial system - from Suettay's standpoint, anyway."

"Aye." Frisson smiled. "Merely dispense actual justice." The scene rippled again, and we found ourselves looking down from overhead at two long battle lines stretched out across a meadow, facing each other. At the head of each rode a man in armor, with a whole squadron of silver lobsters behind him on heavy-duty Percherons.

" 'Tis the duke of Degmaburg!" Gilbert cried. "I know his arms!"

"Only a duke?" I frowned. "Not a minister of some sort?"

"Nay. He was too strong to depose, though not to corrupt. He is one of the few of the old nobility who has held his station under the sorcerers' reigns."

"And now he sees his chance to reestablish the old line," I breathed, "meaning himself."

Even as I said it, the duke's horse began to canter forward. His squad of heavy armor heaved into a trot right behind him, and the peasantry leveled their pikes and began to move forward. But Gilbert was frowning. "How is this? The queen's knights are far behind the line of men-at-arms! What can they do there"' He was about to find out-for just before the duke and his knights struck, the peasant line opened up like a gate, and the horsemen hurtled through. Suettay's armored division snapped their lances down and tried to work up to a quick trot-apparently they hadn't planned on having to fight. But the duke and his men were going too fast to stop; they slammed into the royal knights, unhorsing a few, then dropping their lances and grabbing for maces and broadswords. It turned into a melee after that, with the knights chopping one another to filings.

Meanwhile, back on the front lines, one of the noncoms lowered his pike and held out a wineskin. The advance wavered; then the duke's troopers dropped their pikes, reached for the wineskins, and pulled out some hardtack. In a few minutes, they were laughing and chatting with their opposite numbers, having a regular party while they watched the lobsters open one another's shells.

"How can they think they will not be punished?" Gilbert wondered.

"Nice question." I pointed to the silver melee. "Here come their masters."

The knights were riding back full-tilt, and those broadswords rose and flailed down at their own men. They hit ...

And broke.

Snapped clean across, just as if each sword had been a brittle antique. The knights stared at the remnants of blade attached to their hilts, then roared and pulled out their maces.

The heads flew off on the first swing.

The tankers' arms shot up, presumably with a cheer; then their pikes raised and stabbed, some finding chinks in armor, some jabbing between saddle and tin pants, levers to tip knights out of saddles, which they did. Then each knight disappeared in a cluster of soldiers, and pikes rose and fell.

Gilbert was pale-faced. "Soldiers striking down their own knights!" It was the ultimate threat to him.

"Suettay's harvest," I told him, knowing it would be reassuring.

"She's trained her army to get everything they can for themselves and prey upon the weaker, killing off anybody who gets in their way. She forgot that she might not always be the stronger." But the queen's side hadn't dispensed with all its strong-arms yet; a sorcerer in a midnight robe banded with gray stood up, waving his arms.

"A man of the second rank." Frisson frowned. "This may be their undoing, poor devils."

"Maybe not," I said. "Don't underestimate the Gremlin's capacity for making things go wrong," Suddenly, a rain fell - a very localized rain; it seemed to envelop only the sorcerer. He clutched his hat and ran, but the storm followed him.

I frowned. "What kind of rain is that? It looks yellow-no, brown, when there's enough of it! And it foams "Ale!" Frisson cried. The sorcerer fled, pursued by foot soldiers who stopped every few paces to dip up the puddles he left behind him.

But they were already growing smaller in the gazing pool; the field dwindled, forests leaning in from the sides to hide it. Then the treetops began to look like waves in a pool as they shrank away, and kept shrinking. A patchwork quilt of farmland moved in around the edges, still shrinking until it became a plain flat area of yellowish green with dark-green masses of forest and clots of dots that were towns made of houses. The blue shimmer of the Baltic appeared at the top of the pool, with the white beard of the Alps below. Ribbons of blue marked the boundaries, and I found myself looking down at Germany as I knew it. But the picture kept on expanding, including Austria, Hungary ...

"The Holy Roman Empire," I whispered.

"Holy no longer," Friar Ignatius said grimly, and 'tis odd that you should couple the empire with Rome, for Hardishane refused to accept the crown the pope would have given him. He did revere the pope and his bishops, for he was a man of faith - but he held that the churchmen should no more partake of governance, than he should of ministry, and that 'twould be as great a catastrophe for the one as for the other."

I whistled. "Brave words, for the time! How did he avoid being excommunicated?"

Brother Ignatius shrugged, and Gilbert said softly, "Who would have dared excommunicate Hardishane?

I took it that Hardishane was this universe's answer to Charlemagne, and had been just a little more deft than the Frankish king - or a little more paranoid. I decided I wanted to learn more about him - but now wasn't quite the time.

An area of the map was growing in the screen - the southeast, here the Alps gave some security to the smaller kingdoms and principalities that would someday be Switzerland, in my universe.

We seemed to be going in for a close look at the sector that would have been the Dauphin - the bridge between France and Germany. I wondered why - but as the view swelled, we saw a long dark line snaking out of the mountains into Allustria. The line was moving - and as it swelled, I could make out the gleams of armor and spear heads, then individual knights and soldiers. It was an army on the move.

"The army of Merovence!" Gilbert cried. "Praise Heaven!" But the view went past them, a pair of mountains swelling, then their tops flanking the screen. There the view steadied, and I saw soldiers in the same colors as the marchers below standing on crags, bows in hand. Among them stood men in homespun tunics, looking as hard as the rocks they stood on, bearded and booted against the cold.

"The montagnards have thrown in with Merovence!" Gilbert cried, "and the Free Folk with them!"

"The Free Folk?" I frowned.

"Behind the soldiers," Friar Ignatius prompted. I looked, and realized that the gray-green wall I had taken for rock had a head and a tail - and wings! So help me, it was a dragon!

But it was growing smaller in the pool, and the scene blurred as we swept along the line of the army. It steadied again, and a dragon floated by, filling the pool for a moment, its wingspan vast but still nowhere near enough to support such a huge body. Was magic in the air, here?

Yes, of course. If Friar Ignatius was right, raw magical power filled all of space, like the hypothetical ether of early electronics. I mentally kicked myself - I had known that! And if there were a magic field that surrounded the whole Earth, why wouldn't life-forms have evolved to take advantage of it?

I resolved to keep a closer eye on the local fauna. But the view was narrowing again, the individual soldiers growing larger as the view swept on to the head of the file - and I saw a sight that stung like a slap in the face. At the head of the column rode a knight whose long blonde hair streamed out from under a steel cap with a crown around it.

" 'Tis Queen Alisande!" Gilbert yelped. "The queen of Merovence herself! " My heart leapt into my throat. "Isn't that a little dangerous?"

"Nay." Gilbert pointed. "See who rides beside her." On the lady's right hand rode a man in midnight blue, emblazoned with stars and crescent moons and comets, though he wore a steel cap instead of a pointed one. "A sorcerer?"

"Nay, the Lord Wizard!"

"I notice he's riding a dragon," I said. "Thought you said they were the Free Folk."

"They are, and the fabled Stegoman is the Lord Wizard's friend, not his slave. And, see! " Gilbert pointed; on the other side of the Queen rode a knight all in black, on a midnight charger.

"Sir Guy de Toutarien!" Gilbert crowed. "I know his blank shield."

"Black armor and a blank shield are pretty anonymous," I demurred.

"Aye, but what other Black Knight would ride beside Queen Alisande of Merovence? Nay, all do know of that blank-shield knight, Wizard Saul! 'Tis he who aided the Lord Wizard to overthrow the vile usurper Astaulf and his sorcerer Malingo, to set Queen Alisande again upon her ancestral throne!"

I could see there was a lot of old news I was going to have to catch up on.

"Thereafter," Frisson said, his eyes glowing, "they two worked among the folk of lbile and shook the throne so sorely that Queen Alisande could ride in, depose the false sorcerer who had taken the crown, and restore the rightful heir."

I was beginning to see a pattern here. "Who is the rightful heir to the throne of Allustria?"

"None," Frisson mourned. "Suettay's ancestor slew them all, root and branch, when she usurped the throne."

"All?" I stated. That didn't equate with the medieval tradition.

"You sure there wasn't maybe a baby hidden someplace? Raised as a peasant, possibly?"

"Three, but the sorcerer-queen found them all out and slew them in cold blood. Then her daughter slew her mother before the whole court, took the throne, and sent knights straightaway after the last babe of the cadet branch, and his mother."

"So. No heirs." I frowned. "That gives us a problem, doesn't it?"

"We shall find a fit monarch," Friar Ignatius said with certainty. I wished I'd shared his confidence.

The scene dwindled, and the Alps sank out of the picture. A long river swam to the center of the pool, then grew larger until we saw a battle going on at the eastern end of a bridge. The space around the bridge grew larger and larger as the invaders pushed back the defenders, and a steady stream of reinforcements poured across the span. In the thick of the fighting rode a silver knight with a golden circlet about his helm.

"King Rinaldo of lbile!" Gilbert cried. But the battle was already shrinking; soon we were watching a blur of greenery speed by. it steadied and swelled; we found ourselves watching a thread of brown emerge from the mass of leaves, growing until we saw a road through a forest, blocked by a tollgate. There were five carts drawn up, waiting to get through, but four of the drivers were gone, and the fifth walked the line, soothing the mules. Then the other four men came out of the tollhouse, shaking their heads. Together, all five men put their shoulders to the tollgate, heaved, and forced it up. Then they mounted their carts and drove on through.

"How is this?" Gilbert frowned. "Have they overpowered the witch-clerk and gone their way? How so? And know they not what will hap to them when they are caught?"

"Nothing," Frisson said slowly, "if the witch-clerk was gone." I stared, then remembered the sick toll-witch I'd cured.

"Shall not bandits fall upon them?" Gilbert asked. The trees blurred, but the road remained clear; we were looking at something happening farther down-a cloud of dust, with struggling men and swords and staves dimly visible though it, slamming and hacking in rage at one another.

"Two mobs of bandits!" Gilbert cried. "They fight to see who shall have the right to despoil the merchants!"

"And they're making enough noise so travelers will have sense enough to stay away." I nodded. "The winner will probably be so weakened that he won't try to ambush any five who have sense enough to band together."

"But do they not fear the magistrate?" Frisson asked. The scene shifted to show a magistrate's house with a dozen men standing about impatiently, waiting for the door to open. Finally, they knocked, then knocked again, then pounded incessantly.

"Magistrate's not home," I said.

"Is he out hunting bandits?" Frisson wondered.

"Nay," Gilbert answered, "for his stables are full, and his men stand idle."

I looked at the area behind the courthouse. Sure enough, there were a dozen men in leather armor, shooting at big round targets and taking halfhearted swipes at one another with oaken staves.

"How shall the merchants resolve their disputes now?" Friar Ignatius murmured.

Apparently, the merchants were wondering that, too, because they were talking among themselves with a lot of gesturing. Finally, they gave up and walked away, discussing matters among themselves. They sat down in the village square, ten of them watching while two stood up and began to argue.

"They have set up their own court!" Frisson cried.

"Sure," I said. "Who needs the magistrate, anyway?"

"Only the queen," Gilbert murmured.

The pool showed us a few more such scenes-borders with people crossing freely, ignoring the watch house nearby; farmers selling produce off the back of their carts, with no tax-gatherer in sight; a mob breaking into a courthouse and burning the records. All these official buildings were empty.

"Where are the clerks?" Frisson breathed. There they were, stumbling down the road, propping themselves up with staffs, meeting one another and going along in company, holding one another up.

"They are all sick!" Friar Ignatius said.

"So many of them, all at once?" Frisson was wide-eyed.

"Of course!" I crowed. "The Gremlin - he's an expert at disrupting systems! He spread a plague among them, that attacks only bureaucrats!

"So it seemed. Half the witches in the land had gone off, sick and stumbling. Their skin was yellow, their faces disfigured with pustules and pockmarks, their hands with open sores.

"Why aren't they staying in bed?" I asked.

"To wait for death and Hell?" Friar Ignatius shook his head.

"Better to force themselves to search."

"Search?" I asked. "What are they looking for?" The file of witches in the pool suddenly paused, everyone straightening. Then they were pelting pell-mell down the road, or rather, hobbling as fast as they could. The ones in front fell at the feet of a tinker who had been coming toward them, ragged and clattering with pots hung about him. The impact of two or three people bumping onto his shins and grabbing at his cloak was enough to knock off his broad-brimmed straw hat ...

And to reveal his tonsure.

"He is a priest!" Friar Ignatius breathed, "a holy man who goes in disguise, for fear of the queen and her men!"

"Her men have found him," I said. "Apparently, they know the signs. " But they weren't arresting him - they were babbling, gesticulating.

The priest recovered from his shock, his face turning from frightened to grave, and he held up a hand. The sick ones fell silent, and he pulled out a piece of cloth four inches wide and six feet long - a stole, the priest's badge of office. He hung it about his neck, then stepped around to the far side of the cart, beckoning to the first witch. The woman hobbled after him.

The others began to line up in front of the improvised confessional. There was some struggling for place, but it was rather halfhearted. They just didn't have the energy.

"They don't think he can cure them, do they?" I asked.

"He can cure their souls," Friar Ignatius answered. "They may suffer for hundreds of years in Purgatory, mayhap even thousands, through all the tortures they have wrought in this world, and more; they may burn in fires as hot as those of Hell - but some day, they shall be released, purified, to rise to Heaven. They will not be damned for eternity, when the priest has heard their confessions and given them God's forgiveness of their sins."

"Ironic," I said, "when you stop to think that these very men and women were probably hunting him only yesterday."

Then I heard the echo of my own words and stilled, amazed, as I realized how much courage that wandering priest must have. He had been going about secretly ministering the Sacraments for years, knowing he might be arrested any day, taken away to die in torture. But he had kept on, because the few good souls there still depended on him.

He needed that courage more than ever, now. He was rocking back and forth as if he were receiving punch after punch, but he held on to the side of the cart, grimly hearing the long tale of the witch's sins.

"What's hurting him?" I asked.

"Devils unseen," Friar Ignatius said, lips thin. "They will not give up their prey easily."

The confessing witch began to jerk about with blows from unseen hands, too - and talons; streaks of red began to appear on her cheeks and hands. On the other side of the cart, the line of witches was beginning to rock, too.

"We must aid them." Friar Ignatius joined his hands, bowing his head and closing his eyes.

"What ... ?" I started to ask, but Frisson touched my arm, and I fell silent.

In the pool, the invisible punches stopped. The witches cowered together, looking about them, wide-eyed.

"Angels fight the devils," Frisson murmured. Friar Ignatius made the sign of the cross and looked up.

"The angels won," I said.

"Of course," Friar Ignatius answered with a glowing smile. On the far side of the cart, the priest was able to finish hearing confession in peace. He bowed his head in prayer, then made the sign of the cross over the penitent, no longer a witch. The woman rose and tottered away, face upraised - and transfigured, shining with relief and joy.

"Now she may die with a lighter heart," Friar Ignatius murmured. I stared at him. "Pretty heavy-duty magic you worked there, Friar! " But Ignatius only shook his head. "No magic at all, Wizard Saul. Only prayer."

"Only," I echoed dryly.

The shriven witch was shuffling slowly down the road now, joined by a second. A third rose from confession and joined them.

"Where are they going now,"' I asked.

"To seek a physician, I doubt not," Friar Ignatius answered.

"Their souls being healed, they shall seek a cure for the ills of the body."

"So they won't go back to their jobs?"

"Certainly not, Wizard. They cannot do so without once again selling their souls."

Which pretty well did in the bureaucracy - at least for a few days, until Suettay could find new recruits. But by that time, the combined revolution and invasion would be over, and there might be no Suettay to do the recruiting, The line of witches and the toiling priest were already shrinking, the map blurring, until a band of bright blue showed at the bottom of the pool - the Mediterranean. A belt of greenery began to grow, separating into individual trees at the edge of a meadow, then a silver line grew into a brook - with four men and a troll at its edge, staring down at something.

"Why, that is ourselves!" Frisson cried.

"Hold on," I said. "I think we're about to get our marching orders." Because the scene was shrinking again, the blue band of sea disappearing. The forest swam across our gazing pool and down, and we found ourselves looking at the line of a road that swam up through what I thought of as Yugoslavia. Little black dots were converging on the road, black dots that resolved into men in homespun as the scene expanded again - homespun tunics, with scythes and flails over their shoulders.

"An ambush?" Gilbert frowned, tensing.

"No," I said. "I think they're recruits." They were. We found it out even while we were in the forest. We followed the trail around a huge old oak - and suddenly they were there, a dozen peasants in green and brown, with bows and daggers instead of scythes.

"Outlaws!" Gilbert scowled, reaching for his sword.

"Hold on." I caught his hand and held the sword in its sheath.

"I think they want to parley."

They did; the leader came forward, hard-faced and wary. "We wish to return to our homes," he said, "but we cannot, whiles this brutal queen and her henchmen rule."

"We could change that," I told him, "maybe."

"And what is it that may be?"

"An army," I said. "If we get enough men, we'd stand a very good chance. The Spider King is helping us, and he's getting advice from some experts."

So we went on down the road, but with a dozen armed men at our back.

A little farther on, an old hag suddenly broke through onto the trail and came tottering toward us, just barely keeping herself upright with a makeshift crutch, one clawed and spotted hand reaching out. The outlaws shouted, "The Witch of the Rock!" and leapt into defensive positions.

"I am Suettay's clerk no longer," the old woman wheezed as she came closer. Then she erupted in a spasm of coughing. I caught a whiff, and recoiled - what had she been eating for breakfast? Silage?

And she was tottering toward me! I backed off, fast.

"Oh, withdraw not from me!" she cried, staggering forward a few more steps. Then she went into another coughing fit, overbalanced, and fell on her knees. That didn't stop her, though; she kept coming on her kneecaps, hands uplifted, imploring. "Heal me! For are you not he who dares to heal a witch?"

"Uh ... I've been known to do it." I glanced at Friar Ignatius.

"But only when the witch is ready to repent and abjure her witchcraft. I mean, my cures don't work as long as you're sworn to the Devil's service. Besides, what point is there in my healing a person who's going to turn around and throw a whammy at me the next minute?"

"Oh, I would not do so! She had to break off to cough again, deep racking barks that shook her whole body. They passed, and she wheezed. "I would the'er repay good with ill!"

"Then you're not much of a witch-"

"I am not! I wish to be no longer! I fear the gaping mouth of Hell, with its leaping flames!" She coughed again, then turned to Friar Ignatius. "Are you not a priest? Then shrive me, I pray! That even if I die ere he doth cure me, my soul will not burn in Hell for eternity!"

Friar Ignatius gazed at her for a long moment, then nodded. "Come aside," She tried to get up to her feet to come after him, but ran into another coughing spell and didn't make it. She fell back, and his face turned somber. He waved the rest of us away and drew a stole out of a pocket in his sleeve. Draping it around his neck, he went over to the pitiful sobbing heap and knelt down by it. He made the sign of the cross and recited, "In nomine Patris, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus. What would you confess, my child?"

The word "child" rattled me - and so did the stole. I sidled over to Frisson and said, "Guess he's more than a brother, eh?"

"He never said he was not a priest," the poet returned, low-voiced.

"What illness does this witch have, Wizard?" I studied the woman, who was muttering a mile a minute to Friar Ignatius, between coughing spells. "Hard to say without asking her and thumping her chest - but at a guess, I'd say it's tuberculosis. Could be pneumonia, but I don't think she'd be able to move this much if it were."

"Would not her demonic master give her wards against such?"

"Only if he had a good reason for keeping her alive - and she's just an underling, not one of those who set policies that make thousands miserable and tempted to resort to evil. Why prolong her life? This way, he gets her soul that much sooner."

At least, that made the kind of sense Frisson could understand. Me, I didn't believe any of it - not the bit about the Devil, nor the stuff about magic. But he did, and I needed to communicate in his terms. "Her lungs are filled with fluid," I said, "and there are tiny creatures in there that are making her body malfunction to keep the goo pouring in. Think you could craft a verse that would kill them off and dry up their habitat?"

Frisson's eyes lost focus. After a few moments, he pulled out parchment and quill. I obligingly turned my back to give him a writing surface and said, "Say it while you write it out-I think we need quick work, here."

He began to mutter while he scribbled. I couldn't quite catch the words, except for "sere" and "see" and just plain "dry" now and then - but I could see what was happening to the hag.

The racking coughs that kept interrupting her confession grew fewer, and even as I watched, her skin began to regain some color. The feverish glint faded from her eyes, but they didn't fade to dullness - they brightened, with good health. She didn't begin to gain weight, of course - that would take a few good meals. Every day. For a couple of weeks.

Finally, she stopped talking and bowed her head, trembling. By this time, she was looking so healthy that I figured the trembling had to be remorse-or fear, that Friar Ignatius might withhold forgiveness. And he did look severe. No wonder, if half of the things he'd heard were as bad as I was guessing. But he nodded slowly and began a softvoiced dialogue with the witch. She nodded, answering him in monosyllables, seeming to wilt even more with each answer. At last, satisfied, he nodded and began a short monologue. I couldn't hear any of it, but I guessed he was telling her what she had to do as penance. Give her credit, she didn't even wince. In fact, when he was done, she looked up in surprise; then, at his admonition, she began to mutter a prayer. Friar Ignatius closed his eyes, tilting his head back, and muttered his own prayer. It lasted just a little longer than hers; then he spoke a few final words, making the sign of the cross toward her and, so help me, she made it, too, crossing herself from forehead to abdomen, then from shoulder to shoulder. She bowed, saying something, then pushed herself to her feet, turning away ... And tottered.

Gilbert was there to catch her by the arm. "Stand still a moment; let your limbs grow used to keeping you upright again."

"They do!" She stared, amazed. "I knew confession was good for the soul - but for the body, too?" Then she realized what she had said and turned to me. " 'Twas you, was it not? You healed my body as he healed my soul!"

"Not this time", I said, and gestured toward Frisson. "This is the man you want to thank."

"I do, oh, I do!" She threw herself at Frisson's feet. "Thank you a thousand times, good master, a thousand thousand! You have given me back my life; you have given me a chance to atone!"

"I ... I rejoice," Frisson stammered, "yet 'twas done at his behest!" He pointed to me. "I would never have thought of the manner of it by myself! Praise Master Saul!"

"I shall, I shall!" She swiveled to me, salaaming, and I had to move fast to get my boot out of kissing range. "I cannot thank you enough, nor praise you enough! Oh, how can I ever repay you?"

"By helping other people," I said automatically. "Go through the countryside as long as you can, and look for poor people to help."

"But I have no magic to aid them with! Ah, would that I did!"

"No magic, no," I said, "but you may find that simple labor is enough. Certainly you can listen to people's troubles and try to comfort them. And if you meet any other witches, you might mention how much better you feel for abjuring witchcraft."

The former witch looked up in surprise, then stood slowly, her face firming with resolution. "Even so, then. While life and breath remain, I shall do what little I may. Farewell, physician! Every night and morn, I shall praise you in prayer!"

She turned away, moving off down the road, standing much straighter than she had, and seeming to gain strength with every step. Friar Ignatius stepped up beside me, watching her go. "That was well done, Master Saul. You have wrought well this day."

I shrugged. "I just don't like seeing somebody in pain, if I can do something about it, Reverend. But you seem to have done pretty well, too."

"Only the duties of my office." Friar Ignatius folded his stole and put it away, shaking his head. "It was the fear of damnation that brought her to me. Like so many, she had never really thought of the tortures of Hell, never let them seem real to her, until she was nigh death."

"Whereupon she came to me to prolong her life, to stave off Hell."

"Aye, but once having thought of Hell as real, she knew the fear would never leave her, for she would come to the flames and demons someday." He shook his head. " 'Tis not the best of reasons for abjuring Satan and witchcraft, but 'twill serve."

"You'd rather she wanted to confess out of sheer remorse, eh?"

"Aye - so I was at pains to remind her that Purgatory is just like Hell. The fire is the same the agony is the same but the soul in Purgatory will one day be freed and rise to Heaven, whereas the soul in Hell will never have an end to his tortures. There is no hope in Hell."

That reminded me of Dante's Hellmouth, with the slogan over the door, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" - but it also reminded me of Dante's version of Purgatory, which was much less drastic than Friar Ignatius'. Either way, though, was better than torture that never, never ended.

"I could understand why a witch would definitely prefer Purgatory," I said, "no matter how long she had to stay there."

"A witch, or any sinner." Friar Ignatius nodded. "And all those who govern this land, and all those who are their underlings, are either witches or sinners."

I winced at the thought of all the people I would be sending to Hell in the process of trying to stay alive myself. "All of a sudden, I hope you become very busy, Reverend."