Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 (27 page)

love Angelique.

But I would still desire her-and what might I do to her then, with

no conscience and no empathy?

"No," I said. "if I sold my soul, then I'd be placing her completely in your power-there would be no one left to shield her."

"A curse upon the spirit that has told you that!" Suettay snarled.

I suddenly realized where all these inspirations had been coming from. "Won't work. He's curse-proof."

Suettay's eyes narrowed. "Then I'll proffer you another bargain. Cease your hold on this world, and I shall let the girl's ghost go free."

Panic again, at the thought of leaving Angelique-but the logic of it made me hesitate. Sure, if Suettay could augment her power by converting a wild card of a wizard to her side, it would make her that much stronger, and her enemies that much weaker-but if she couldn't subvert me, she could at least get rid of me. That would give her one less thing to worry about.

A return to my own world was what I wanted anyway, right? Except that I was trying to find Matt-but I'd sure found out where he had gone, and there was no particular reason to think he wasn't alive and well. If I really wanted to find out, all I had to do was go back to my own world, find the parchment he had used, and read whatever spell it contained-it would take me to him. Nice double cross for Suettay, too.

But what would happen to my friends in the meantime?

I summoned all my nerve and said, "No."

"That was my final kindness, fool!" Suettay screamed. "Why do you disdain it?"

"Because," I said, "as soon as I'm out of the way, you'll go ahead and sacrifice Angelique, then start in on my friends."

"But you would have no knowledge of that! You would not care!"

"Oh, I would care," I assured her, "very much." Her eyes narrowed to glitters of malice. "Then we shall remove all

the sources of that care-by simple murder! I am loath to waste oh

jects of pleasure in quick killing-but if it will speed you hence, I shall do it! Guards! Slay-" "No!" I shouted. "You kill them, and I'll hang on in this universe just to get revenge on you!" She broke off, looking up at me with a strange, malicious smile.

'Tis tempting-for revenge is sinful, and in letting yourself be consumed with hatred and the desire for vengeance, you would succumb to the lure of evil, and be subsumed in it."

My heart sank.

"Sweet though that would be," she said regretfully, "it would be of no aid to me, myself-and might hinder me, in your rebellion." I saw my chance. "Yeah! And the sinfulness of my revenge might even be balanced by the good I did in getting rid of you!"

'Tis even so." Her eyes were back to the nasty glitters again.

"So it would seem that you must join me, or die." I felt my stomach drop down to the bottom of the shaft, but I set my jaw and said, "Death. Definitely death." And I tried to sneak in one more spell:

"He took the Wine and blessed it, He blessed and broke the Bread

"Enough!" Suettay screamed. "Silence him!" A hard hand backhanded me across the mouth. I saw stars, and wondered if I'd need a dentist or an orthodontist.

"To the dungeons with them!" Suettay ranted. "The wench shall remain imprisoned in this flask, till I incorporate her to watch his final agonies! Let them rot in my most dreary cell, while I begin preparations for a revenge dealt in a manner that will most please my master! " Then I was running to try to keep from falling as the apprentice torturers hustled the three of us down the hallway and into a cell.

My skin crawled with apprehension. Somehow, I didn't think the

"master" Suettay had referred to was anyone human. I had a nasty, sneaking suspicion that I knew how high up in the nonhuman hierarchy that individual was-and what kind of revenge he would find most pleasing.

We landed sitting down-hard, and it hurt. The door boomed shut behind us.

Oddly, my initial impression was one of peace. It was so nice and cool after the heat of the torture chamber, and the darkness was soothing, especially since it was relieved by the dim glow through the little barred window in the door.

My second impression was one of amazing satisfaction. I had put a long-term crimp in Suettay's plans; there was no telling how long the queen would be tied up trying to figure out a way to cancel my existence. Apparently I was an odd enough customer that she would have to do it carefully. For a moment, I was tempted to believe it was the overwhelming strength of my "spells," the legacy of my nearly completed English major-but skepticism got the better of ego, and I realized that it probably had more to do with who had brought me into this cockamamy universe, than with me, myself.

if I ever met that guy ...

I chopped off that line of thought as a new suspicion dawned. if I was such a delicate article, no wonder Suettay had tried to deal!

Which raised the possibility that she might try to bargain again; I decided I'd better get busy figuring out a new set of counterspells. if she had any brains, she'd gag Frisson at the outset. or kill him ...

I mumbled a quick charm to clear my head; I knew I couldn't concentrate through the pain. Then Gilbert swore, with loathing.

"What's the matter?" All other concerns were instantly forgotten.

"Something with warmth and fur did brush my thigh!"

"Don't try to hit it if you can't see it!" I had a sinking certainty that I knew what it was.

Then I heard a dry, high-pitched chuckle from the depths of the lightless hole.

I froze and hissed, "Everybody stay still!" Then, aloud, "Who's there?

The chuckle came again, with a nasty edge to it.

It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "I warn you, I'm a wizard-and the queen herself has just found out to her sorrow that I'm not without power even here, within the realm of evil!

Answer! Who are you?"

The chuckler was still. Then a rasping voice came out of the darkness. "Have you hurt the queen, then?"

"Not really," I said, "but I do seem to have snafued her system."

"I do not know that spell," the voice said. "Tell me, does it cause her humiliation?"

"Because she can't fix it? Yeah, I'd say so-and frustration. But nothing compared to what I'm feeling! Are you going to tell me who you are, or do I have to come over there and drag it out of you?" The day's woes suddenly boiled over. I shoved myself to my feet and strode toward the voice.

There was a scrabbling in the darkness ahead of me, and the voice hissed, "Beware! Or my pets shall have you!" There was something sinister in the way he said "pets" that made me halt, in spite of the loss of pride it entailed. "Blast! We need some light in here!"

"Nay!" the voice cried, but I chanted,

"Oh, light was the world that he held in his hands, And light shall bloom here, to show us this man!"

A torch flame flared in the darkness, and I saw a fat, bald man with a wrinkled, chinless face, deathly pale from being too long in darkness. His clothes were filthy rags, but they had once been fine robes. He flinched back from the light, baring long, yellow teeth. Half a dozen huge rats scrabbled back with him, lips writhing in snarls, long, stained incisors bared. A couple of them burrowed into his robes.

I swallowed. 'I see your point." I cleared my throat and said,

"Odd choice of associates, don't you think?"

"There's little enough else by me here," the bald man snarled,

/land they are better company than most folk I have known." That was a signal, if I had ever heard one. I stilled inside, and inquired, "People done you wrong?"

The bald man laughed, a hissing series of expelled breaths. "Who among them has not? Yet I must own there was a rightness to it-for I did them harm, as oft as I might. Is not this the way of the world?"

"Nay," Gilbert croaked.

"Aye," Frisson contradicted. "Yet that's not to say it should be."

"Should be!" the bald man spit. "A pox upon your 'should be'! I will abide with what is, not with what 'should be'!"

"As you always have?" I murmured.

"Aye! There's at least some slight honesty to it! Your 'should be' is hypocrisy! " "Not if we look for the better world," Frisson said softly.

"if all could behave as they should, look you, the world would become a far better place," Gilbert insisted.

"Yet your 'all' will not do so, not even a moiety!" the bald man declared. "Nay, I shall abide by my 'is'!"

"After all," I said, "it's done so well for you." The glare the bald man gave me was pure hate. "It did well indeed for me, young man, for three dozen years! Ever did I rise higher through the ranks of the queen's clerks, till I stood above them all as chancellor, with a dozen desks 'neath my sway, and twenty scriptoriums to each! Directly below the queen's privy chamber I stood, and would have risen to a post within it, had not misfortune intervened!"

"The queen's privy?" Frisson murmured. "I should think that an unfortunate position."

The bald man's eyes narrowed again. "Mock if you will! But those who are the queen's most senior servants have power indeed, because they are privy to her counsel!"

"So you were the top man in the second level of the bureaucracy," I interpreted.

The bald man frowned, peering keenly at me. " 'Bureacracy'? What is that? " "Literally, 'government by desks,' " I answered. "It's the organization of clerks who actually run the country." The bald man held my gaze for a moment, then slowly nodded.

"Aye. 'Tis oddly said, but 'tis how Suettay doth govern."

"And," I inferred, "you made a little mistake in your climb to the top?"

"Aye, a small mistake only," the bald man grated, "and one that I should have seen would be so-for I did bethink me of a means toward greater power for the queen, believing she would create a new chancellery for it and for me, and raise me to the privy chamber. Yet she saw, and clearly, that such power might give me some chance to move against her, and therefore sent me here."

I nodded. "You did your job just a little too well. She realized the true scope of your ability, so she made haste to Put you where you couldn't do her any harm."

"Would she had slain me instead!" the bald man hissed.

"That would have been nicer," I agreed. "Trouble is, it might not have made you enough of an example for ambitious young men who show too much initiative and do more than they're told. How many times has she pulled you out to parade before her clerks?"

The bald man frowned. "Twice, o'er the years-and, as you say,

'twas before her clerks assembled. Yet 'twas to demand of me the scope of my chancellery, matters which my successor had forgotten." I nodded. "And, conveniently, on the inauguration of the new chancellor, each time-just as a little warning to him. The bald man's eyes widened, burning. " 'Tis even as you say!

What a fool was I not to have seen it! I1

"Understandable." I shrugged. "You fell victim to the bureaucrat's big weakness-you started caring about the job itself and forgot it was just supposed to be a means of personal advancement." The glittering gaze held for a minute, before the bald head nodded slowly. "Aye. Fool that I was, I thought that excellence of work would raise me up by itself."

'The race is not always to the swift I1 I quoted, "nor advancement to the most able-at his job, at least. It is to the most able, at

currying favor and influence. Of course, if he can't do the job, he gets fired.

Gilbert shuddered. "Woe to Allustria! If it is to be governed by such willful incompetence!"

No, it is competence," I corrected, "but only competence." I turned to the bald man. "And you let the queen see that you could actually excel. " The long teeth bared in a mirthless smile. "Aye, fool that I was."

"Then you hit the midlife crisis." I lifted an eyebrow. "I take it your chancellery had something to do with the fall of Allustria The bald man grinned. "You may say that if you will. Certain it is that Queen Graftus, the queen unseated by Suettay's grandmother,

became greedy and boosted the taxes-but then, at the recommends tion of her chief adviser, began to try to be sure the taxes were collected. First she had a complete list of all possessions made up, then verified the taxes each person owed and, when they were paid, checked them against the record-all under the direction of her chief adviser, of course. In cases of underpayment, she dispatched a squad or more of royal knights with a clerk, to collect. When recalcitrant dukes managed to resist, her adviser recommended magic, and went herself, with a small army, to work sorcery against the reluctant dukes."

"Let me guess," I said softly. "The chief adviser was Suettay." The bald man frowned. "Nay, her grandmother, the Chancellor Reiziv. We speak of events two hundred years gone, young man. How old do you think the queen to be? " I exchanged a quick glance with Frisson, but only said, "Sorry. I guess I'm just overly impressed by Her Majesty. I take it Queen Graftus was happy with her sorceress-adviser?"

"Aye; the stratagem was so successful that the queen allowed Reiziv to recruit junior sorcerers, and no baron dared to resist again. Queen Graftus thus became very wealthy and very powerful."

"Very," I agreed. "How long did it take her to realize her chief adviser Reiviz really held the reins of power?"

"Never, till she waked in the middle of the night with a knife in her throat, and the sorceress' laugh of glee ringing in her ears, all the way down to Hell. Then did the sorceress become queen, and all the people did witness the power of sorcery."

"Yes, of course-after all, it had won, hadn't it? So you grew up

"Aye." A shadow crossed the bald man's face. "Yet I was found wanting to become a sorcerer."

wanting in talent. Therefore did I turn with zeal to becoming a clerk.

"Next most profitable career, I guess. What was your dazzling improvement on the system?"

The bald man's gaze darkened with self-contempt. "Oh, 'twas a marvelous scheme, to be sure, and so simple! 'Twas only the posting of a junior clerk to each town, to oversee all transactions and judgments, and to undertake whatever actions the queen would think good! " "With a junior sorcerer to guard him, of course," I murmured.