Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 (29 page)

The bureaucrat cracked a smile. "I thank you, Wizard. You shall not regret it."

"I hope not-because if I do, you will, too." I gazed into his yellowed eyes a moment longer, then turned back to my friends. "Okay, time to leave, before the posse arrives."

"But who can know?

"Suettay's second in command. I'll bet she had six kinds of magic alarms rigged to our cell. When they find us gone, they're bound to try here. No, don't try to kill her by magic-you'll just trigger some kind of ectoplasmic guardian that will be really rough to handle."

" 'Tis even as he says," Angelique quavered. "I ken not what they may be, but I sense some dark and lingering presence that awaits any threat to her body."

"But I slew her!" Frisson cried.

"Nothing fatal, I'm afraid," I sighed, "which is why the guardian didn't respond. She doesn't keep her heart within her chest. Don't let it worry you, Frisson-you'll get another chance. Remember, the idea right now is to escape-we'll figure out a way to kill her some other day. I1

The poet looked crestfallen, but he squared his shoulders-and his chin.

"Okay," I said, "everybody hold hands, now." I took the Rat Raiser's paw myself-after all, I already had once, hadn't I?

Knowingly or not. Everybody else linked up on my right hand. "Here we go, folks!

Frisson, the parchment, please?"

The poet held up the sheet of foolscap, and I read it, chanting,

"Alas, foul witch, you do us wrong To chain us so unjustly, Where folk have suffered oh, so long, Amusing your foul cruelty. Green grass is my delight, Blue skies are all my joy!

I yearn for freedom with all my heart, in a place of great security!"

The door was opening, and soldiers were bursting into the torture chamber, just as it faded and sank into the void.

There was no world and no time, and no sight but light. There were colors swirling about me, but mostly what there was, was Angelique.

I wasn't alone in the mist this time. I was a separate identity, but I was also integrated with Angelique. Somehow, her soul was interleaved with mine, touching me far more intimately than any embrace of bodies could achieve, in contact with me at every point, and the thrill of her touch was ecstasy. I couldn't see her, but I could perceive her, perceive the memories of horror, the aftershocks of agony, but all of it was muted now, numbed and faded, far less important than her joy at having found a man who loved her deeply. Because I couldn't hide that from her, now-our souls were open to each other. The only way I could have hidden my feelings was to have locked her out entirely, and to do that I would have had to become catatonic, completely cutting off perception of everything but myself. But I didn't want to hide my feelings, somehow.

Maybe it was because she couldn't hide anything from me, either, and I could perceive her love for me, ardent and deep. I realized that the spell had only made her see my good qualities before-but now she saw all my faults, too-the temper, the mulishness, the hypocrisy, the sprees, the sordid little affairs, the chip on my shoulder. But my virtues were so important to her, so much of what she needed and admired, so much like her own ideas of what was good and right, that my harshness and abrasiveness seemed unimportant to her. She knew them for the front, the shield, that they were, and knew also that they didn't really matter-but that what they protected, did. As for me, I was a total goner. I'd been able to see beneath the bruises and see in her glowing ghost that her face and body were beautiful, the most beautiful I had ever seen-but I began to realize now that her beauty was only partly physical, that what raised her above every other woman I'd ever known was the sweetness and steadfastness of her soul. Her spirit was far more beautiful than her body could ever have been, than any woman's body could ever have been. My own lack of purity saddened but did not repel her. I could feel, through the beating of her energy field against mine, her urge to heal my soul of the rifts made by the women who had hurt me, the men who had ground at me until I had learned to strike back. Her touch, if the contact of spirit with spirit can be called that, was cool and soothing, then heating, inflaming. It crossed my mind that this beat sex all hollow, until I realized that this was sex, in the ultimate-or rather, that this intimacy was what we poor, fumbling men of clay are trying to achieve, through the use of our physical extensions.

That's when I really began to believe in the soul-and with it, I began to suspect that there might be an afterlife.

Then, suddenly, there was a rude pain-or no, not a pain, really, but a jolting shock that made Angelique cry out soundlessly and made me grapple her to me more tightly, trying to surround her, to shield her, anger kindling against the being who had disrupted our idyll, defaced our Eden. But the anger did no good; a stern voice was echoing all about us, commanding,

"Maiden, leave that body!

Depart, and leave him breath!

Separate, if you do love!

Would you make him yearn for death?"

With a soundless cry, Angelique disengaged herself from me, breaking apart at the horror of the thought. Raging with anger, I surged up, snapping to alertness, body in fighting stance, eyes open

...

I saw Frisson's face, staring right into mine not six inches away, with a grimness that I hadn't even suspected he had in him. Then the room spun, and so did I, with a dizzy spell unlike anything I'd ever had before. A hand caught me, a hard arm braced me,

and as the stars faded from my vision, I saw that Frisson and Gilbert had propped me up between them.

"What ... what happened?" I croaked.

"You did blend your soul with Angelique's ghost," Frisson explained. "In our journey through that realm that is and is not, from one place to another, your soul loosed itself from your body, as it ever does, and clasped Angelique's soul, as your hand did hers-for that was the only way in which you could carry her from one place to another."

"Thank Heaven for small duties," I breathed, "and Heaven it was!

" "Only a small taste of Heaven, if what I suspect of that state of bliss has any truth in it."

"You mean it gets better?" I shuddered in anticipation of unguessable ecstasy. "I'd be glad to spend a whole lifetime being good, if it got me into that state again after I die! In fact, now that I think of it, why bother waiting?"

"There, maiden, is the peril in which you have placed his soul," Frisson said severely.

Angelique lowered her gaze, abashed.

"For shame, maiden!" the poet went on. "Moments more, and you would have made him yearn for death before his time-and the fruit of that yearning is suicide, which would have reft him from you for eternity! You have tempted him into ending his life before his worldly tasks were done-and how many would have suffered because of the work he did not do? How many would have perished because he was not there to save them?"

"Hey, that's low and dirty!" I stood up straight, glaring at him.

"Emotional extortion!"

"A new term, but perhaps an apt one," Frisson acknowledged. "Yet the words I've said are true. Bear this in mind-if she did tempt you to take your own life, that would be a great sin upon her soul. How then could you be joined after death?"

"Well ... maybe not in Heaven, but-" "There is no joining in any other realm." Frisson chopped his hand sideways, in total denial.

"Each suffers alone in Hell; there is no companionship of any kind. The greatest torture there is the total absence of God, and of even the small reminders of his presence that are other souls. " Now, that kind of stubbornness always gets me angry. "How would you know?" I demanded.

"Why, how think you I would?" For the first time, Frisson showed a flash of anger. Only a flash; it was gone in melancholy a moment later as he said, brooding, "I have sought early death more than once, Wizard Saul. A maiden whom I loved with ardent passion spurned me, and in the misery of love unrequited, I yearned for death so greatly that I tied a noose about my neck and hanged myself from a tree. I live to speak only because a wandering monk happened by and cut me down ere I had quite strangled. He spake with me long and earnestly, showing me that lovers' despair is like any other despair, and to give up hope of love is to cease to strive for the touching of souls-which is to say, to cease in striving for Heaven." He turned to me alone. "I have great cause to be thankful to you, Wizard Saul, even though death by hunger would have satisfied my hunger for death-thankful because, in staying alive, I have come to know friendship and the caring of those for whom I care. Though it is not love, it is enough to live for, and to give me hope of greater worth."

"Why ... uh ... thanks, Frisson." I felt outraged and humbled all at once. "I'm glad I did some good. I mean, it would have been ridiculous for a nice guy like you to let himself die, just because he didn't think anybody could ever like him!"

"Yet so would I still believe, had you not taught me how to shift this curse of poetry, by the gift of writing."

"Then you've just paid me back." I sighed. "Well, if it's too soon for the real thing, let's get back to trying to make Heaven on Earth, shall we? Or at least to get rid of Hell." I looked around me, regretfully shouldering the burden of life again.

Sunlight beamed down upon us from some high window, showing us a pool of thick dust over rock. I looked around and saw a large room, a hundred feet across, ceiling just barely visible in the shadows. An old, faded tapestry hung on one wall, showing a maiden in Norse garb gathering golden apples from a tree. There were only a few trestle tables and benches over by the huge, cold black fireplace-but there was nonetheless a feeling of peace to the place, even of coziness. Over at the bottom of the stair was a dark archway, with more steps going downward-but strangely, it didn't seem

threatening.

" 'Tis a castle long vacant," Gilbert said. "Praise Heaven! We are

free! " "Be not too quick with your thanks," the Rat Raiser said, but even he was having trouble restraining a smile. "I know this place; 'tis a castle taken from Lord Brace, who could not pay the fullness of his

taxes. The queen hath said she will someday set a court here, for we are in her capital of Todenburg."

"The queen take up residence?" Frisson looked about him, wideeyed and smiling. "Nay, how could she? For the peace of this house doth fill my soul, and the traces of laughter and kindness that emanate from its walls do exalt my spirit!"

"Even so," the Rat Raiser said sourly. " 'Twill be easy enough to desecrate, look you-but until she does that, she cannot bring herself to reside here for any length of time. Therefore has this castle stood thus abandoned these ten years. I came with a troop of clerks to list all goods within, then remove them-and I was sorely tempted to cease my sinning." His face twisted. "As I am now." He turned squarely to me.

"What you would do, I advise you, do quickly, for we are still in Todenburg, not a mile from the queen's stronghold, and she will surely be working divination, even now, to detect our presence. I looked up in surprise. "That's right, she will, won't she?

Quick!

Everybody down to the dungeons!" I turned away toward the dark doorway at the foot of the stairs.

The Rat Raiser started, astonished, and Angelique gasped.

"Wherefore the dungeons?"

"Do not ask, milady," Frisson answered. "He knows what he is about-and there is small time to explain." He set off after me.

"Belike we would not comprehend, even if he did lay it all before us." Gilbert offered his arm. "Come! Have faith in the Wizard Saul." Reluctantly, Angelique came with him, though it was an open question whether her hand was on his arm, or in it. They were last in line; the Rat Raiser was scurrying ahead of us.

Fortunately, there were torch butts in the sconces, and Frisson turned out to be carrying flint and steel.

"Wherefore do you not make light with a spell again?" the Rat Raiser fairly howled. "Quickly! The queen will be upon us!"

"That's why I don't want to use magic," I said evenly. "It'd be like a flame in the night, showing her where we are. Besides, the wood's old and dry. See?" I held up a lighted torch. "Thanks, Frisson."

"Oh, 'tis my delight." The poet rose and stamped out his pile of tinder. "May we go, Wizard?"

"Right this way." I led down the curving steps. I stayed close to the wall; there wasn't any guard rail.

Angelique looked about, frowning, as we came out into the middle of a huge underground chamber. "Even here, there is peace, and no aura of misery."

"What would you expect?" The Rat Raiser spat. "Lord Brace kept no prisoners, nor did any of his forebears, and I doubt he even thought of torture! That is why there are no cells!"

"But there is water." I frowned, listening. My companions quieted, and heard the sound of dripping.

"Yon." Gilbert pointed toward an archway.

"Just fine." I headed for the portal.

"Hold, Wizard!" the Rat Raiser rasped. "That way leads to a vault beneath the courtyard!"

"Even better for my purposes." I looked back over my shoulder.

"Come on! Believe me, it's important!"

My friends exchanged baffled glances. Then Frisson shrugged and turned away. "We have followed him thus far; why not farther?"

"Is there peril yon2" Gilbert asked the Rat Raiser.

"None to speak of." The bureaucrat frowned. "Only rats, who will do my bidding. Yet wherefore would he wish a parade ground over him, not a castle?"

"We shall learn, I doubt not." The squire turned toward the archway. "Milady, will you walk?"

"Willingly, good sir."

The Rat Raiser shrugged and followed us.

As they came up to the torchlight, they found me standing by a large puddle, fed by a drip near the wall. The drops had worn a little channel to the center of the vault and formed a small pool. But I wasn't looking at the water; I was frowning around. "Wood ... wood .