Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 (14 page)

"Eh?" He looked up at me, startled, then saw the glitter on the road. "Oh! My apologies, Master Saul!"

"No problem, no problem. Never can tell when we're going to need a little hard currency. Just So Frisson sat down by the while I knelt down and started you never could tell.

After a while, though, it got never knew when he was going ages. He never did, fortunately, front of us, too quickly for me to keep from smacking into it nosefirst, was almost as bad as the wolf I saw when I opened it. I slammed it fast. "Frisson! Write it down!

He did, and I showed him how to write as he walked. That helped-but hey, nobody's perfect.

I developed a streak of prudence, though, and I took to going through his day's output every evening, around the campfire; he was pathetically eager to have me read them and tell him how much I liked them-I was careful never to criticize partly because I knew how hard beginners take it, and partly because I just flat out didn't understand what he was trying to do. But I knew from experience that it worked, so I figured he had to be doing something right. I always enthused as I handed them back to him-but I kept the ones that I thought might be particularly useful. With his permission, sit down and write it out, okay?"

roadside and filled his parchment, filling my pockets. As I'd told him,

to be a nuisance, especially since I to start using dragons as poetic imbut the door that appeared right in

of courser had a notion that infringing copyright could have bad results, in this particular hallucination. I even memorized the ones that looked to have the most potential. As I'd told him, you never know ...

But that first evening, I needed a distraction; the first dozen verses he turned out, and proudly showed me, filled my head with such a

clamor of acoustics and clashing of images, that I needed some men tai soothing.

of course, a philosophy student always has a distraction to handreasoning out arguments. It's risky, because sometimes you get so caught up in it that it keys you up even more, but under the circumstances, I figured it was worth a try. So I spent a half hour or so trying to rationalize my way out of having to believe in trolls or fairies, or magical spells that could have anything to do with either. It wasn't much use, of course-I kept coming back to the conclusion that either the evidence of my senses was unreliable, or what I had seen and

heard was real.

Of course, it didn't take much to discredit sensory evidence, for a man of my generation. I seriously considered the possibility that I was simply stoned out of my mind, and all this was happening in a fantastic hallucinogenic trip-but I couldn't help remembering that I had sworn off all drugs for final exams-years ago.

Fortunately, there was an alternative. Bishop Berkeley had pretty much discredited the senses for us all, way back in the I700s, by pointing out that if we don't actually see something, we can't really know it exists-and that even if we do, we could be wrong, because even if our minds perceive it, all they have to go on is the sensory impulses from our eyes and ears and nose and tongue and hands, all of which can be very easily deceived. Optical illusions are the most obvious example, of course, which is why science insists on measurement-but how're you going to prove, logically and completely, that the ruler itself isn't an illusion? He managed all this without knowing about LSD, too.

Of course, to Berkeley, the fact that we can't really know anything was just proof that we had to have faith-but to the rest of us, the idea that things don't exist if they're not perceived, and the corollary, which is that we can't know what's real because of the fallibility of our senses, just means that we have to live in the world as we perceive it, while we're trying to stretch the limits of our perceptionsand raises the distinct possibility that hallucinations may just be the perception of an alternate reality, or two, or three.

"Heaven lies about

us in our infancy," as the poet says, and there may be a lot more to the universe than we see, as Hamlet was kind enough to point out to Horatio.

I was faced with the unfortunate conclusion that both ideas applied to my current situation. The world I was perceiving was certainly real to all intents and purposes, and I had to deal with it as if it were, because it was certainly going to deal with me as if I were.

Dr. Johnson claimed he disproved Berkeley by kicking a cobblestone, presumably meaning that if the cobblestone flew away, he did interact with it, and therefore he and the cobble were both in the same frame of reference; what he failed to mention was that his toe hurt.

So did mine-metaphorically, at least. Gruesome would eat me if my spell slipped, and there might be a monster around the next hill who would sneak up on me in the night if Squire Gilbert nodded off while he was on guard duty. it might be an illusion, but it would hurt just as much as if it were real-so I was going to have to treat it as if it were totally authentic, or it might kill me just the same. But I wasn't going to believe in magic. Okay, some unexplainable things had happened, and they did seem to coincide with verses I'd spoken aloud-but coincidence was no doubt what it was, and the events were unexplainable only because I didn't know enough. I made a firm resolution to learn more about this strange-but-familiar world, and not to delude myself into thinking I was practicing magic.

But I decided to save Frisson's verses, just in case. I remember thinking, just before I drifted off to sleep, that I had stubbed my own toe.

Chapter El(jht

Guardsmen were shoving me roughly, trying to push me into a cell, and one of them was saying something about things being wrong. I turned to him with sullen resentment, and was surprised to see that he had a troll's head.

I stared at the troll, then looked quickly about me and saw the campfire with Gilbert lying on his side asleep, soles of his feet toward the coals, Frisson across from him, curled around the warmth. I realized I'd been dreaming. I looked up and, sure enough, the troll's head was still there-but now I recognized it. "Time for my watch again?"

Gruesome shook his head, looking agitated. "Wrong! Wrong!" He pointed out toward the darkness in several different directions. I frowned. "What's the problem, then?"

"Dunno." The troll twitched, raising his head to look out into the

night. "Feel wrong, wrong!"

"Just a hunch?"

Gruesome nodded and held up his huge mitts. I backed off in alarm, but he only wiggled his inside talons. "Feel pinches!

Trouble,

trouble! " I1 'By the pricking of my thumbs,' " I quoted, but remembered, in the nick of time, not to finish the verse: lisomething wicked this way comes." I rolled up to my feet. "I'm never one to scoff at intuition-at least, not in this world. Want to wake up the broke off, staring.

With my usual paranoia, I had decided to set up a barrier against

supernatural attackers-there had been too many things that had gone bump last night, though that could have just been Frisson dreaming in verse. We hadn't gone very fast today, out of deference to his weakened condition, and we were still in pretty open country, though there were a lot of scrub trees about.

So I had conjured up some talcum powder, sprinkled it around our campsite in a circle, and chanted the tail end of Shakespeare's dirge from Cymbeline, with a few adjustments:

"No sorcerer shall harm thee!

Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

Evil ghosts forbear thee!

Nothing ill come near thee!

Safe shall we be within this sign, For nothing ill shall cross this line!"

I'd figured if anything spooky had tried to get too close, that verse ought to keep it outside our perimeter-and it seemed I'd been right.

Just outside the circle of white powder, a blob of formless mist was rising from the ground, thickening and coalescing into a human form-but a mangled human form. Its face was bruised and swollen, one eye socket empty, thumbs dangling, one foot twisted almost backward, and its tunic ripped open to show dark smudges against its chest and abdomen.

"It is a ghost," Gilbert murmured from his place by the fire. Apparently, Gruesome and I hadn't been as quiet as we'd thought. The squire sounded excited, fascinated. "It is the shade of one who died by torture. " I was glad he could take such a detached interest in it. For myself, I felt rather queasy and thoroughly sickened in my heart. The specter flitted from point to point about the circle, moaning. Chains, attached to the fetters on its wrists, clanked and rattled.

"Bewa-a-a-re!" it cried. "Oh, foolish mortals, bewa-a-a-re!

Flee! Hide yourselves away! " I summoned my courage and called out,

"Having you hang around just outside the perimeter doesn't exactly imbue me with a great desire to go exploring!"

"Heart of stone, who would mock a soul in torment!" the ghost cried. "O kindred of my fate, arise! Up, all ye who died by torture!

Spirits bound to this world in unquiet slavery to a sorcerer's will, come now to school this foolish mortal!"

I had to turn to follow its progress, and I muttered out of the corner of my mouth, "Keep an eye on the place it came from, Gruesome." The troll moaned in answer-but I figured he'd fight all the harder if he were scared. Either that, or run.

I wished I could.

Moans began to fill the night in horrendous discord, faint, but growing louder; and dim forms, drifting here and there, swam out of the darkness.

"Abandon your ill-advised escape!" the ghost cried. "Return whence you came! For know that, if you do persist in opposing Queen Suettay, you shall become as I-a shadow of a soul who died in agony unspeakable!"

I felt the blood draining from my face. I remembered Gilbert's commander warning me about the evil sorceress-queen of this country. How the Hell had I attracted her attention?

How the Hell?

No. Couldn't be. just a figure of speech.

But I spoke up bravely. Unfortunately, it sounded more like a croak. "So I'm to be deterred by the thought of a horrible death, a punishment for even thinking about leaving Allustria, or raising my hand against the queen?" Not that I had ...

"Even that!" the spirit cried over the chorus of moans and wails behind it. "I gave the queen my fullest measure of obedience-yet she had me rent apart, while still alive, for her mere pleasure! Chortled with delight at all my screams! And as I died, despairing, she seized my soul, to chain it in eternal slavery to her will!" Now I began to tremble inside. I scolded myself harshly, if silently, and reminded myself this was all impossible.

"It is true." Gilbert came to his feet. "Suettay tortures folk for mere amusement, daily."

A sadist. I was being pitted against a sadist of the worst kind-and for what?

To get home. Preferably, alive.

I steeled myself to the piteous cries around me and called out,

"Go! The afterworld is huge-you don't have to stay around here!

The queen loses power over you when you die!"

"Foolish mortal, how little you know!" Another specter swam up beside the first, a ghost like an illustration from an anatomy text, muscles and ligaments naked to the night. "She whose power comes from Satan can petition her master for dominion over others who have turned their hearts toward the Evil One!"

"But you only fall into the Devil's power through your own fault!"

"And so we did," the phantom sneered. "I myself sought poweralways power. While yet a boy, I swore to do whatever deed the Devil wished, if he would give me power-and I gained dominion over peasant folk, then over soldiers. Yet Suettay plucked me out for her fell mirth, and I died in agony, crying to my master Satan for power against this corrupted sorceress-and as I cried out to evil, Suettay wove her spell about me to capture my soul! At the last instant, I cried out in despairing repentance, but it was too late. Suettay had claimed me, and I am bound to her!"

I suppressed nausea. I mean, I really felt sorry for them, even if they had been total vipers when they'd been alive. If ever I'd heard a sound reason for being good, this was it. Unfortunately, I was aware of my own enormous failings and knew I wasn't in the world's greatest shape for combatting evil.

"Be of good heart, Wizard Saul," Gilbert counseled. "They cannot touch you here, within your enchanted circle."

I turned, welcoming the change of topic with zeal. "You're right. So why did Suettay sic them on us? just to make sure we don't sleep and are so weak tomorrow that we'll fall into her hands? I can't really believe that! " "I doubt it, also," Gilbert answered. "It may be that they seek to frighten you into joining their foul cause."

"That's crazy." I turned back to the spooks, debating within myself. I could only wonder how Suettay had come to know I was here. Crystal balls? Ink pools?

It didn't matter. "Go tell your mistress that it will take worse than you to scare me!"

The ghosts' moans turned into roars, and they came swooping against the invisible barrier like moths to the chimney of a hurricane lamp, anger and outrage in their faces.

I turned back to the squire. "Has to be more than just a try at scaring me."

"It must," Gilbert agreed. "Otherwise, when they saw you were not daunted, they would have fled."

" Yeah." I gestured to the barrier of specters. "You'd swear they were trying to attack us, but it's obvious they can't get in."

"Obvious indeed," the squire said, turning toward the perimeter, but not looking all that sure, himself. "Yet there's this, too--if they cannot come in, it is equally true that we cannot go out." I could feel my eyes widen. "But that means somebody's trying to keep us here, to make sure we haven't gone anywhere until A gout of greenish flame ripped the night, lighting all the hillside with an eerie light. The ghosts moaned in terror as the light dwindled. The residual chartreuse glow flickered on a dozen hooded forms, and lighted from below the face of the huge, grossly fat woman who stood before them, swathed in brocaded robes, rings glittering on her fingers, an elaborate crown on her head.