The Witch Doctor

Chapter Ten

It was hard to say whether that moan was of pain or terror-maybe both. But I couldn't ignore it. I stopped. That meant Frisson and Gruesome had to stop, too, or bump into me - but they had stopped already and were frowning into the shadows under the leaves.

"What moves, Master Saul?" Frisson asked.

"Probably nothing," I answered. "From the sound, I'd say whatever made it is too sick to do more than lie there."

Gilbert heard and looked back. He stopped, frowning. " 'Tis not our affair, Master Saul."

"Anybody hurt is my affair," I snapped. " 'No man is an island.' I thought you were a Christian, Gilbert."

"I am indeed!" he cried, offended.

"Then remember the parable of the Good Samaritan."

"The Samaritan," Frisson said nervously, "was in no peril."

"He speaks wisely, Master Saul." Angelique's voice seemed to come from thin air. "There may be danger."

"Can't let a little thing like that stop us." I stepped into the shadows, pushing the branches aside with my quarterstaff-and just incidentally keeping it near the guard position. "Let's see what we'll find. " Leaves rustled as we moved in-then Angelique recoiled.

"Evil!"

I could smell it, too - or maybe it was just the aroma of illness. I reminded myself that this massive hallucination included a guardian angel, and kept going.

The underbrush opened out, and there, hovering near a sheer rock face, were two of the ugliest creatures I had ever seen, with multiple fangs and tusks sticking out of their snouts, under baleful yellow eyes set in red, leathery skin that turned into black as it stretched out into bat wings. Their fingernails were claws, and their feet were cloven hooves. I froze; the mere sight of them struck fear through my vitals-or maybe it was their sulfurous smell, or the aura of evil that hung about them.

They were chuckling and gibbering, jabbing long-nailed fingers at the poor bundle of rags and quivering flesh that huddled against the rock face. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that they were just hallucinations.

The deep breath was a bad idea, though; I caught a whiff of her stench and was almost glad the demons, sulfur smell drowned it out-but it was definitely the same as the trace lingering in the back room of the toll cabin.

She saw me and stretched out a hand in supplication. "Aid! Good traveler, aid!"

The devils turned in instant suspicion, saw me, and dove for me, howling.

Terror damn near immobilized me, but trained reflexes made me leap aside and slam a kick at the nearest one. I yelped; he was hard!

And hot; pain seared through my toes. My boot was charred. The devil snarled and turned, gloating - but Gilbert leapt in front of it, holding his sword up like a cross and crying, "Avaunt! Leave off, in the name of the Christ!" They actually hesitated, and I knew with a sick certainty that the only thing that protected Gilbert right then was his total, idiotic purity and the massiveness of his unquestioning faith. If I had tried it, they'd have torn me limb from limb.

Even Gruesome was cowering back, and Frisson was hiding behind him-but Angelique's ghost drifted to Gilbert, glowing with righteous indignation and purity. "Get thee hence, in the holy name! Avaunt, and begone!"

Now the devils did cower back - but they didn't go. I figured they'd work up their nerve eventually - this was their prey, after all. Which reminded me about the sick one.

I stepped over to the whimpering bundle. "What's the matter?" A claw pulled the hood open enough so that two rheumy eyes blinked out at me. "Oh, the pain!" She pressed one hand to her belly.

"It tears me apart from within! I have cast spells against it, but it eats through even that power! I die!"

The devils surged forward, cackling with glee.

"Avaunt!" Gilbert shoved his cross-hilt in their faces, and I swear he didn't show the slightest trace of fear. Angelique glowed with wrath behind him, and the devils bellowed with anger, but retreated.

"They will take me," the old woman whimpered. "They will haul me to Hell!"

Sympathetic fear wracked me, but I hung on to my composure and said, "No they're not! Not according to the rules! All you have to do is repent! I remember that, because it always seemed like such a cheat to me, that a man could live his whole life making other people miserable and still go to Heaven if he just repented at the last secend!"

"With eons in Purgatory," the witch moaned, "but even as thou sayest ... The tortures would end, someday."

The devils howled with rage and sprang, vaulting around Gilbert and Angelique in two jumps. One of them slammed me back into the dirt, and pain tore through me where his huge hand pressed. His monstrous face was an inch from mine as his jaws gaped wide, and terror jellied my insides - but I heard the old witch scream in horror, and the sound galvanized me.

"Angel!" I cried. "I'm trying to do your work now! It's in your own interest! Get rid of these monsters!"

Thunder cracked, and searing light filled the little clearing.

"Even so!" the angel's voice snapped, echoing all about me. "I am entreated by a mortal who seeks to do God's work! Begone, loathsome fiends!"

The light shrank in on itself just enough to be an anthropoid form, and glowing hands reached out to yank the two devils aside.

" 'Tis the power of God that flows through me to brand you! Get hence, in His name!"

The two demons howled; the angel hurled them away, and they shrank, diminishing, until they were just two black dots that disappeared with a double pop.

I stared, awed, and muttered, "Dealer wins all draws."

The shining form waved a hand at me. "Let thy pain be gone! Now aid the woman!"

And he disappeared. Just like that.

Gilbert looked up at me, awed. "What manner of man are you, Wizard, that even angels will come when you call?"

"A do-gooder busybody," I snapped. I was too busy being amazed to be polite; the burning pain in my chest was gone. I took a quick peek down inside my shirt and didn't see the slightest scar, just a bright pinkness in the shape of a huge clawed hand. It was enough to give me a bad case of the shakes, until the poor lump of rags moaned. I turned to it, trying to remember that this "poor thing" had probably burned peasants and gloated at their pain, in her time, and practiced the rest of the catalog of medieval minor witchcraft, such as making cows go dry and women barren. But I couldn't resist trying to help when she looked so pitiful. "Apologize," I advised. "You know you're going to die - but if you repent, the devils can't have you. Maybe a long, long time in Purgatory, as you said, but not Hell."

"I dare not," the old woman whispered. "The pain is held at bay only by the spells I've cast - and even with their aid, 'tis like to drive me from my senses!"

"And if you repent, you lose your magic powers, so the pain will rip you apart? But remember I tried to recall the rules, as I'd learned them from Dante. "If you suffer the agony patiently here on Earth for the few days you have left, it will take centuries off your tortures in Purgatory."

"I fear the pain too much," she gasped in despair. "I am too far sunk in cowardice!"

I bit back the urge to tell her she deserved what she was getting, then - I'm sure it wouldn't have seemed that way to me, if I'd been the one that was in agony. I frowned; what to do? If she couldn't repent because she was in pain, but the only thing that made her want to repent was that same pain ...

No, it wasn't. It was fear of eternal pain, in Hell.

"If I can make the pain go away," I asked her, "would you still want to repent?"

"Aye, assuredly!" she gasped. "Anything to save me from an eternity of agonies as I've felt now!"

"Probably worse," I reminded her. "Well, let's see what we can do. What kind of pain?"

"A gnawing, a hideous gnawing!" She pointed to her belly.

"Here!"

"Not a burning pain, like a hot coal?l, "Nay! 'Tis as if something did eat me from the inside, with terribly sharp teeth!" Not appendicitis, I guessed-but it did sound like abdominal cancer, and she was sure old enough.

I sat back on my heels, frowning. How do you use magic to cure cancer?

Then I remembered that "cancer" is Latin for "crab," and that the disease was named that way because it felt as if a crab were digging you out inside with its pincers.

So how do you fight an inside crab?

Obviously, bring it outside.

"Gilbert," I called, "come over here with your sword."

"Nay!" the witch shrieked.

"Oh, it's not for you," I said impatiently. "No mercy killing - I'm not about to end your mortal agony by sending you to everlasting torture." Gilbert came up, sword ready, frowning. "What moves, wizard?"

"A crab," I told him. "I'm expecting a giant crab, or something very much like it. If it shows up, stab it. Frisson?

"Aye, Master Saul." The poet edged up, trembling.

"See if you can't cook up a verse for killing shellfish. Okay, folks."

I took a deep breath, tried to ignore the gnawing in my own middle, and reached out for the scrap of parchment Frisson handed me. I read it, chanting,

Nothing happened.

Frisson's face stretched so long I thought it was rubber. "I have failed!"

"No, I don't think it was you." The rules again. "She's in the power of evil now, and our spells are based on goodness, so they can't touch her." Except for spells inducing remorse - I'd found that out with Sobaka.

I wondered if I would have to use them again. "Woman! I cannot cure you unless you repent! You have to open your soul to God's race, or all the good will in the world can't touch you!" She was still a moment, rigid. Then she convulsed around the agony in her middle again, screaming and crying out, "I repent me! Aiiee, even if I die in agony, I will not suffer thus for eternity! I forsake Satan and all his lies!"

Then she screamed, as the king of all pains racked her body again - a souvenir from her boss, no doubt. But the woman had amazing grit; she held on, and when the spasm passed, she went right on where she'd left off, though in a husky whisper. "May God forgive my sins! I forswear my pact with the Devil!"

Then she screamed again.

I started chanting on the instant, repeating the verse:

The witch gave one last shriek ' then fell silent, panting hoarsely as, between Gilbert, Gruesome, myself, and the huddled witch, the air seemed to thicken, growing darker and darker. Then, all of a sudden, it snapped into sharp, clear detail - and a crab three feet wide, with yard-long claws a foot thick, was scuttling straight toward me, its pincers aiming for my throat.

I yelled and jumped back, just as Gilbert shouted, "For Saint Moncaire and for right!" and leapt in, stabbing down. His sword skewered right through the whole crab, pinning it to the forest floor-and he had the sense to jump back. A high-pitched keening pierced my ears, and I fell away, hands pressed over them. Gilbert was staggering, too, fingers in his ears, while the crab scuttled, thrashing about-until it pulled the sword free from the earth and came straight at the squire.

With a bellow that shook the trees, Gruesome leapt. He landed on the monster with both feet; its shell gave with a sickening crunch. Pincers waved wildly, snaking back to snip at Gruesome's feet - but he reached down, catching the claws in huge hands, and straightened up, wrenching them loose. The monster screamed - I heard it even through my hands - then went limp.

The clearing was very quiet.

I looked around and saw Frisson, over at the base of a tree trunk, his lips moving silently.

I sat up, dazed, taking my hands away from my ears, but keeping them close, just in case.

The only sound I heard was the roar of triumph as Gruesome jumped up and down on the shell, then tore open the claw and thrust it toward his mouth ...

"Gruesome, no!" I shouted.

His fangs clashed together but held back, as if he'd just bitten down on a spare auto fender. Then he held off on the claw, looking down at me resentfully. "Hungry!"

"And you certainly deserve a ten-course banquet," I said quickly, stumbling over to him. "I'll conjure one up for you, as soon as we're done helping this poor old lady! But not that meat, Gruesome! Bad for you! Shellfish has parasites! Very bad! Especially since the pieces of this one might pull themselves together inside you and start trying to eat their way out!"

Gruesome stared at the claw as if he'd never seen it before.

"'Tis well spoken," Angelique said. "The monster weakened outside a host's body, and quickly - but would it not regain strength, once within? " Gruesome hurled the claw away with a howl of frustration - but even as he did, it was fading, fading ... and was gone. So was the huge plastron he was standing on, and all the little legs, and the other big claw. Gruesome stared down, dismayed; the lower edge of his huge lipless mouth quivered.

"Shellfish never did stay with me long," I sighed. "Always hungry again in an hour. Don't worry about it, big fella - we'll get you a whole steer, in just a few minutes."

"The witch," Gilbert said softly.

Something in his tone reminded me that without the lash of pain, our witch might not be feeling so remorseful. In fact, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't go back on her repentance.

She was sitting up, staring down at her midriff wide-eyed, pressing experimentally here and there. " 'Tis 'tis gone! I am well! No more hurt! "

"I'd still take it easy for a while, if I were you," I said. "Just because we've got it licked for the time being, doesn't mean it won't come back."

"Nay, it will not, for I saw it torn apart by your huge troll! Amazing, most amazing! Who would have thought there was a crab within? Who would have thought to have conjured it out to fight it with steel?"

"It faded away," I reminded her. "it could reappear inside you - or another one just like it."

"Even if it does not, I may find myself beset by another illness, right quickly." The old woman looked up with tears in her eyes.

"Alas! How comes it, good stranger, that you would help me, who have been so cruel to so many and torn the life from no few?"

"I can't resist a call for help," I said, with some self-disgust.

"I know that makes me a chump, but-"

"Then a 'chump' must be a most excellent thing! Oh, I will sing your praises wherever I go!"

"Mayhap," Gilbert put in, "it would become you more to sing God's praises."

"Aye, indeed!" The witch sank down on her knees, clasped hands upraised. "I repent me of all my sins! I would that I could atone for each and every wrong I have done! Dear Father, forgive me!" Nothing happened, no thunderclap ... but a look of peace swept over her face, and her eyes widened in surprise. "Why ... is it thus?" she whispered.

"The peace of God." Gilbert nodded. "Yet you must seek out a priest, poor woman, as quickly as you may, that your sins may be shriven. "

"Even so! That I shall!" The ex-witch pushed herself to her feet, gathering the rags of her robes about her. "And I must go quickly, for if the queen should discover my betrayal, I shall die quite quickly!"

"And in agony," Gilbert nodded. "Therefore tarry not."

The old woman shrugged. "The agony matters naught; I deserve far worse than ever she could wreak upon me, for all the wrongs I've done. Nay, almost would I welcome it now, that it might ease my burden of guilt. Yet I would not have it for eternity, and therefore will I go hotfoot." She whirled to me, hands upraised in gratitude. "Oh, stranger, I cannot thank you enough for your pity and aid! You have behaved as a true Christian, nay, as a saint would have! May you be blessed forever!"

"Glad I could help," I said, uncomfortably aware of everyone's eyes on me. "Now go your way and try to help others as I've helped you."

"I shall! Oh, I shall! And shall praise your name every night, in my prayers! Farewell!" She turned and hobbled into the woods, and was gone from sight.

"You have wrought well for God this day, Master Saul," Gilbert said softly.

I shrugged impatiently. "I did something good for a human being, out of entirely selfish motives."

"Selfish?" Gilbert frowned. "How so?"

"Because it made me feel good inside." I raised my voice. "Hear that, angel? I'm grateful for your help - but I had it coming, because what I wanted to do was also what you wanted done! I'm not on your side! But I'm not on their side either! Got that?" But I felt a strange, vagrant wave of amusement that almost seemed to blow through me like a breeze, and I had to turn away fast to escape Frisson's long and thoughtful gaze. "Come on, troops. We've still got a long day's hiking ahead of us." But we couldn't have been hiking down that trail for more than ten minutes before the roadway exploded in front of us.

The explosion kicked up a geyser of dust, and there stood the wicked queen herself, shrieking pure venom, her rolls of fat shaking with rage. "Vile invader! Your meddling has cost me five minutes' agony, hot irons searing all through my body! My master has punished me shrewdly for letting another soul escape damnation - and has commanded me to obliterate you and your friends! Yet first, I shall see you suffer as I have suffered!"

But it wasn't me she threw the first whammy at, it was Frisson, stiff-arming a gesture that twisted as it stabbed while she bellowed something I couldn't understand.

Frisson screamed and fell, writhing.

I shouted,

Frisson relaxed with a groan of relief.

"Meddler!" Suettay yelled. "Rogue! Villain!" Yes, I did detect a note of panic there, a note of fear.

Of me?

No, Of her master.

"Mendacious mendicant!" she screeched, then added some syllables in the Latinlike language, winding up to throw me down. I took a deep breath for a counterspell, hoping I'd think of one in thing pressed into my palm.

time-but on the inhalation, I felt some Looking down, startled, I saw some chicken-track lines scrawled on a scrap of foolscap. The misspellings were horrendous, but they were being viewed by a volunteer tutor who had fought his way through many a Freshman English paper, and I managed to catch the gist of it at a glance. I called out,

Suettay began to disappear, from the feet up. She howled in frustration, then lifted her arms to throw another whammy-but they disappeared, too. She screamed in full rage, face darkening and as ugly as I've ever seen, as her hips and abdomen faded. Then, unfortunately, she remembered herself and screamed something in the Old Tongue that made her arms reappear; they wove a quick, unseen symbol as she screamed another verse, and all of her reappeared just as it had gone, but much more quickly. Even as her nether parts were returning, she was winding up another verse that she belted out, hands rolling over and over each other, and a six-foot dragon leapt from them to charge roaring at us.

Gilbert gave a shout of joy and leapt in front of all of us, stabbing in low and jumping back. Ichor spurted from the dragon's chest, and it bellowed in startled pain, swerving to pounce at Gilbert-but the squire leapt aside and chopped horizontally, shearing off a bat wing.

The dragon screamed, whirling and lashing out; steel talons cut through Gilbert's mail, and blood slicked the metal. The squire clenched his jaw and chopped again, a roundhouse swing that clipped the beast's head off its sinewy neck.

We all cheered.

But Suettay was chanting again, gesturing wildly, her volume building toward a crescendo.

I gulped. "It's gonna be a big one."

"Can you not hinder her?" Angelique pleaded.

"Frisson!" I snapped. "Any more verses,"' The poet shook his head, huge-eyed. "Naught but an old song comes to mind, Master Saul-a child's bit of nonsense."

"Try it! Anything, right now!"

"As you will." Frisson shrugged and started singing.

A deep, dull, thrumming sound boomed through the air, and the earth beneath us heaved and settled. Then the sound and the earth tremor came again, and Suettay shrieked in anger and fear. I risked a peek.

A wall of wool blocked out the sun a hundred yards distant, supported on legs that would've shamed a sequoia. I craned my neck back; up, way up there, a hundred fifty feet up, floated a huge head with magnificent, curled horns the size of a highway cloverleaf-and sure enough, there were eagles circling around them. "Must be nesting season."

But Suettay was still shrieking. "What magic is this, that I've heard naught of?"

"Ethnomusicology," I called back.

But her attention was on the ram, and with good reason - it was ambling toward us, and with legs that size, ambling was high-speed.

"What hell-begot monster art thou," Suettay cried, "that comes thundering down on this poor rotted world!"

"Nay, speak not of Hell!" The ram's voice was a rumble in the Earth's crust. "I am begot of the core of the world, a child of magma! What art thou, tedious gnat, that would wake Darby's sleep?" The ram advanced, the earth trembling in sine waves with his footfalls.

"For he who'd wake the ram must die, ere I can sleep again!" Frisson turned pale as milk. it was borne in on me that I had roused an elemental.

"Nay, it was he!" Suettay shrieked, finger spearing toward Frisson.

"Pounce on him, jelly him! For he 'tis who waked you!"

"Is it thee?" The ram swerved a fraction of a degree, glowering down at Frisson. "Aye, for I see in thy face that only now dost thou see the danger thou hast waked!"

Damn good eyesight, I noted; there was maybe three inches of Frisson's head showing, from the ram's angle. But, the hell with the risk-I couldn't do anything cowering, and it was my asking that had nudged Frisson to sing the song. I stepped forward, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in my belly and the way my knees wanted to webble, and claimed the responsibility. "it was I who bade him do it, so it was I who waked you!" I felt a dramatic surge coming on. "Beware, mountain mutton! For I can slay you forever with the breath of a song!

Hey, it sounded good, right?

"Dost thou threaten me?" the ram thundered in enraged disbelief. I bellowed back at him, "Aye, I do threaten! Therefore beware, and do as I bid thee! Slay this foul witch! "

"Eh, would you dare?" Suettay shrieked. "Heed him not, mighty ram, but turn to slay him! For know that I, too, can slay you!" And her hands began to weave an invisible net, while she chanted,

I didn't wait to hear any more. Queen or not, if that witch was going to be fool enough to open up a volcano under the ram, it could kill all of us. I grabbed Gilbert and Frisson and threw them to the ground, yelling at Gruesome, "Duck! And after the boom is over, run for your life!" I was only glad Angelique had no body to hurt. A flue opened, and a jet of ash shot out-but the ram stepped on it. The earth shook a little, and he set another foot down; the earth quieted.

Suettay just stared. Then she let out a screech that had some syllables in it, arms windmilling madly. A sudden whirlwind kicked up a lot of dust and stray ash, then dispersed and settled-and she had disappeared.

"Can we rise now?" Frisson asked around a mouthful of grass blades.

"Uh-yeah! Sure." I stood up slowly, staring at the spot of meadow where Suettay had been.

"Why-she is gone!" Gilbert said, amazed, as he stood up again.

"Yet I remain!" the ram thundered, still quaking toward us.

"Once I am waked, I cannot sleep again till my waker lies buried!"

"Wait a minute!" I barked. "Remember that spell I told you about!"

"Wherefore ought I chance it?" The ram was fifty yards off now, and coming fast. "I shall crush thee ere thy lips can form the words!"

"I wasn't kidding." But I backed up as fast as I could. "I know just the verse for the occasion." But my blood ran cold; I was bluffing.

Frisson stared at me, amazed. "How so, Master Saul? I know the same verse!"

"Then sing it!" I yelled.

"Aye, do so," the ram thundered, only a dozen yards off.

"I hate people who call my bluff." Actually, the verse was "Didn't He Ramble": he rambled till the butchers cut him down." But when it came down to it, I just couldn't stand to see something as majestic as that sheep converted into a mountain of ram chops - not if there was a choice, anyway. So I passed the buck and hoped like fury that Frisson hadn't been bluffing, too. "Frisson! Sing it! Quick!" The poet started chanting,

It was working. The ram towered closer, only twenty feet away, and he filled the world-but his outlines were wavering, and the curls of his wool were blurring together.

He covered ten feet with each stride, though.

Somehow, Frisson kept it soft and lulling.

The ram was a mountain, a McKinley, an Everest-but it faded off into the sunlight at the edges, and its body was growing translucent. And it yawned.

I added my two cents' worth.

Frisson and Gilbert joined me for a chorus:

The great hoof swung up for the last ten feet, growing thinner as it came. It lifted high over my head. I held fast with every thread of determination I had, frantically singing, petrified, rooted to the spot, staring up at the great dark circle that seemed to fill the sky. It poised, then slowly came lower - but I could see the clouds through it quite clearly, it faded to barely an outline as it dropped down, an outline that encircled our heads

And was gone.

And a vast, distant thunder echoed, fading away, half angry bellow, half yawn. it reverberated over the land for what seemed a thousand miles, and was gone.

I let out a very long and very shaky breath, then turned to Frisson.

"Fantastic job, Frisson!"

He was still gazing at the place where the ram had been. "It was, was it not? 'Twas truly my verses that effected this!"

"It sure was." I turned to Gilbert. "How bad is it?"

"Naught but a scratch." He looked very happy, eyes glowing with pride. "I have slain a dragon, Master Saul! A small one, but a dragon natheless! I have actually slain a dragon!"

"You sure did, and we're your witnesses," I affirmed. "You didn't hesitate for a second. If that doesn't prove your worth, what could?" I turned back to Frisson. "But where'd you ever learn that word, magma'?

"Why, the ram himself did say it," the poet answered, "did say he was a 'child of Magma.' Who is she, Wizard?"