Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 (30 page)

. . " My eye lit on Frisson. "You're wearing wooden shoes!" Frisson looked down at his feet. "Sabots, we call them."

"Then let's try a little sabot-age! Lend me a foot, will you?" The poet stared at me as if I were mad, but he passed over his shoe.

"Okay, everybody grab hold." I knelt and poked the toe of the shoe in the pool underneath the drip from the ceiling.

Gilbert looked at Angelique, then at Frisson. The poet shrugged and knelt, hooking a finger into the sabot. The ghost and the squire sighed, knelt, and took hold. Grumbling, the Rat Raiser knelt at my left and touched the shoe.

"And now?" Gilbert asked.

"Ground the torch," I grated.

"We must not be without light! " Angelique cried.

"Have to. Be brave, folks-it's vital. No, don't drown it! We'll need it later. just grind it out."

Gilbert looked up, startled, the torch poised over the pool. Then he shrugged and jammed the flame against the stone.

It was totally dark, except for the glow from Angelique. Personally, I couldn't have found a more lovely light, but the darkness bothered her-reminiscent of the grave, no doubt; but it had to be. She was brave, though, and only gave a half sob, then was silent. I reached out to push my hand into an overlap with hers. Her touch was cold, very cold, but she seemed to gain reassurance from mine.

"What do we do now?" Gilbert asked.

"Now we wait," I answered. "Get comfortable, folks. This could take a while."

They waited. Time passed even more slowly than the drips from the ceiling.

Claws clicked on stone, and something furry brushed my calf. Angelique cried out.

The Rat Raiser's voice crooned, "Peace, little one. We shall not disturb thy silence long."

The chamber was silent for a moment. Then the claws sounded again, fading away.

"Be of good heart," the bureaucrat's voice advised us. "They shall not trouble you."

"Thanks," I breathed. "Kind of glad you came along for the ride."

"We are ever pleased to be of service," the Rat Raiser said dryly. A sudden chill touched my spine, and I felt a strange sort of tingling along my scalp. Frisson's head snapped up, eyes widening.

"Hist!" the Rat Raiser rasped. "She comes!" Interesting that he could feel it, too.

"Just hang on," I said, voice low and calm. "As long as you keep touching the shoe, we'll be all right."

Angelique was trembling, and white showed all around Gilbert's irises.

Then the feeling of "presence" was gone, abruptly, totally. I relaxed with a sigh. "Okay, folks. It's over-and she won't be back." I stared straight ahead, murmuring,

"Suns that set may rise in glareSo if we lose this torch's light,

We won't be in perpetual night.

Our brand once more will flare!"

The torch burst into flame again.

"How can you be certain?" the Rat Raiser demanded.

"Because I jammed her radar." I straightened up, holding the shoe out to Frisson. "She couldn't see us, because it was dark-so she had to go by feel. She could tell we were here-but she was going by clues, indirect evidence. She knew we were under earth, under stone, and touching wood which was touching water."

"A coffin!" Frisson cried.

"You're quick, mate. Yes, she figured I had somehow transported us all into our graves."

"Then she shall not trouble us further!" Angelique cried. "She will think us dead!" Then she remembered her own state and blushed, which is no mean feat for a ghost.

Gallantly, I affected not to notice-I only nodded. But the Rat Raiser cautioned us, "She will nonetheless seek us now and again, in case she might have guessed wrongly. Yet, all in all, she will cease to concern herself with us."

"It gives us some time, anyway," I said. Slowly, the poet took the wooden shoe and put it back on. "I will the'er question you, Wizard, after the manner in which you freed us."

"Uh, thanks, I guess." I didn't feel entirely comfortable with such faith.

"Praise Heaven she is beguiled!" Frisson sighed, leaning back to look up at the ceiling. "Ought we not to fly, Wizard? You have bought us time by your subterfuge, but it is not by any means the eternity which the queen thinks it to be. We cannot stay in any one place, or Suettay will find us again."

"No, we don't want that," I mused. "I want to find her, insteadbut only after I've gathered enough force to restore Angelique to her body, then free that body."

Gilbert glanced at me, troubled. "Beware covetousness!" I shrugged. "Look at it this way-if I can bring her back to life, I can ask her to marry me."

"True," Gilbert allowed, and looked much more comfortable-but Angelique was staring at me, huge-eyed.

"Just ask," I hastened to reassure her. "Nobody's going to force you to say yes."

That brought her out of it. "Wherefore would I need force!" Her insubstantial hand brushed through mine.

"Beware the death wish!" Frisson scolded.

"Aye, and beware the queen," the Rat Raiser said sarcastically.

"To free the maiden's body, you must first slay Her Majesty." I shrugged. "Okay by me."

"Nay, Saul!" Angelique cried. "Must you alright me so? To wish to murder another is to imperil your immortal soul!

"Not in this instance," Frisson demurred. I nodded. "Wishing to kill a woman who is corrupting a whole kingdom isn't a sin. In fact, if I were able to do it, the amount of good I'd achieve would balance out the evil of the murder." Somehow, when I put it that way, it didn't sound hypocritical. Maybe it was because it was me who was saying it.

Gilbert, of course, looked very happy about the whole thing. The Rat Raiser, though, just stared at me as if I were insane.

"However," I said, "on a more practical level, how could I find enough force to go up against the queen?"

"A telling point," Frisson said, relieved. "We were best to use this time the wizard has bought us to find a deep hole in which to hide."

"Or a vast enough space in which to run." The Rat Raiser looked relieved, too.

"Aye," Gilbert agreed. "Where shall we go to escape her wrath, Wizard? " "Nice question." I pursed my lips. "Anybody have an idea?" They were all silent, looking at one another in alarm. If the wizard had no idea where to hide, how could any of them know?

Light glinted off a thread of silk. Looking up, I saw a spider, stretching a fan between two layers of the barrel vault. The Rat Raiser followed my gaze. He saw, and his eyes glinted.

"There is a legend, Wizard-one told by prisoners, who know no other life but rats and spiders . . ."

"Aye," Frisson said, with the ring of one who knew the subject, "a tale told of a King of Spiders, who dwells in a land no mortal can discover. " I felt a sudden prickling up the spine and across the scalp, very much like the one Suettay's surveillance had just given me. Angelique shuddered. "What a loathsome thought! To dwell with a vasty spider!"

Frisson grinned. "Nay, milady. He is not himself a spider, but a man, though one in a weird."

"As I am not a rat," the Rat Raiser grunted, and glared at me as if to contradict him.

I didn't answer, because the feeling was stronger than ever, and the spider was one of those big round-as-a-quarter jobs. Who was watching me now?

"And are we, then, to seek him, this Spider King, and walk into his weird, never to return?" Angelique demanded.

The dungeon was silent. Nobody answered her-but they all turned to me, and the look on my face must have been answer enough. Angelique's eyes began to grow wide and frightened. "You cannot truly think it!"

"Why not?" I shrugged. "We're in the dungeon already; we can't go much lower."

"But you can! Are we to step into the underworld, then?"

"Nay," Gilbert said slowly, "for therein dwell Suettay's masters. Yet I, too, have heard of this Spider King, and his kingdom is a realm apart, neither underworld nor afterworld."

I recognized an allusion to an alternate universe. I frowned.

"You're talking about going through another dimension to gain access there. How do we do that?"

They were quiet again. Then Gilbert said, with deference, " 'Tis you are the wizard. if you cannot say how to come to this Spider King, which one of us can? " "But I've never heard of him before!"

"You had not heard of Suettay, either," Angelique reminded me,

"Yet you countered her."

I glanced at her in annoyance. "When did you switch to pushing for this travelogue? All right, I suppose I could work up a longdistance projection spell using this Spider King as the focus Frisson took on a faraway look.

"Write it down," I said quickly.

The poet sighed, coming back down to earth. "If I must-yet 'tis such labor, to carve words with a pen when they are so easily spoken aloud. " "Yeah, but it takes us so long to clean up the mess afterward!"

"As you say," Frisson said, with rue. "Yet we cannot simply spell ourselves a long way to this enchanted realm, Wizard."

"Aye," the Rat Raiser agreed. "The Spider King's realm is said to be everywhere, but nowhere."

"Overlaid on ours like an egg on a flapjack." I nodded. "That's a description of an alternate universe if I've ever heard one!" Gilbert frowned. "Then how can we come there, Wizard, if 'tis all around us, yet beyond our ken?"

"Through another dimension," I explained. "No, don't ask me what a dimension is-you already know. Length, breadth, and depth-those are the three dimensions, and they're all at right angles to one another." The squire frowned. "But there is no other!"

"Yes there is, though we can't perceive it-and not just one, but many. How we go through the fifth dimension in order to come back to the third, though, is a problem I haven't tackled before."

"Then do," the Rat Raiser urged.

I pursed my lips. "Other dimension or not, we won't get there by standing still. We have to start walking somewhere." Gilbert, Angelique, and Frisson glanced around us, perplexed, but the Rat Raiser said slowly, "There do be sewers underlying all this town-huge old drains, small tunnels, left to us from the empire great Reme spread throughout this middle earth."

I nodded. "That'll do. Do you know your way around them?"

"No," the Rat Raiser said, "yet I have friends who do." He made a peculiar kind of squeaking noise, and Angelique let out a very funny, throaty noise, like the sound of a scream being stifled. We men stiffened, hackles rising, as a troop of huge gray rats scampered into the pool of torchlight, coats filthy, fangs gleaming.

The Rat Raiser knelt, holding out a hand and crooning. The rats came up to him, nuzzling his fingers. "Nay, I've no food for you now, little friends," he said with regret, "but there shall be feasting, if you can bring us where we wish to go. Lead us down below ground, yet through tunnels high enough for us to walk without stooping. Lead us down, and bid all like you withdraw, to let us pass." Angelique shuddered.

"Not the most salubrious notion in the world," I agreed, "but it's better than staying here and waiting for Suettay to catch us, isn't it?"

Angelique swallowed and nodded. Gilbert murmured, "Be brave, lass. However long it may be, we shall pass through; it shall end."

"All right, we're ready now," I said to the Rat Raiser, softly.

"Off, little ones!" the bureaucrat commanded with a wave of his hand. He rose as the rats scampered away. "Follow," he said over his shoulder, and stepped off after his pets.

"Ready?" I asked. "Well, we're going, anyway." And I followed the Rat Raiser.

i L

off we went into the gloom, the poet and squire bunched protectively around the lady's ghost, leading onward and downward, following the wizard-me-who was mumbling some very strange verses indeed as we descended into the lower depths.

I wasn't entirely sure where the cave in the dungeon wall had come from-I could have sworn it hadn't been there when we had come down-but I wasn't about to object. If the rats knew where it was, it had to be real-at least, assuming the rats themselves were real; which made me begin to wonder about the Rat Raiser.

While I was wondering, we were going downhill; I couldn't help but think of Hellmouth in the old mystery plays, and wonder if this was its throat. It was certainly dark enough-and growing warmer; and the aromas rising were anything but life-giving. Trickles of water glittered in the torchlight here and there, becoming broader as we descended deeper.

Time to start the active part. I took a deep breath-and regretted it-and began to recite:

"Where Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Turn, to where there's naught but rest!

Turn, to find the spider's nest!

Through all the worlds his web he spins, Catching prey by hidden sins!

Turn, to pierce his secret ring!

Turn, to find the Spider King!"

We moved down, our pool of torchlight coming with us, until water glistened below, black water, and the Rat Raiser whispered, "We have come into the sewers. Carefully, now, children-the water is deep, and the way is narrow."

He turned to the left, following his pets. I saw a spark off to the side and frowned, glancing at it; then I glanced again. There were two sparks, a pair, and, as I watched, another pair appeared, and another.

"We are regarded," Gilbert said, indicating a bank of little jeweleyes glowing at the edge of our torchlight.

Angelique gave a strangled gasp, but the Rat Raiser crooned,

"Gently, children, gently. 'Tis only the small ones who dwell hereand, no matter what you think of them, they will not hurt you while I am here."

It was a gentle reminder of who held the power at the moment, and I didn't trust it. I thought up a protecting verse and held it ready on my tongue. I also glanced at Angelique, to make sure she was okay-then glanced again.

She was solid!

Apparently, her incorporeality was right in phase with whatever nonexistent realm of nonreality we were in.

My lord, that woman was beautiful! None of the bruises or wounds showed on her ghost-only a hollowness of the cheek, a darkness around the eye, that spoke of the harrowing experience she had been through. Even that enhanced her beauty, rather than diminished it-or was I so much the captive of my own binding spell, so much in love with her, that nothing could lessen her beauty in my eyes?