Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 (51 page)

I frowned. "What kind of rain is that? It looks yellow-no, brown, when there's enough of it! And it foams "Ale!" Frisson cried. The sorcerer fled, pursued by foot soldiers who stopped every few paces to dip up the puddles he left behind him.

But they were already growing smaller in the gazing pool; the field dwindled, forests leaning in from the sides to hide it. Then the treetops began to look like waves in a pool as they shrank away, and kept shrinking. A patchwork quilt of farmland moved in around the edges, still shrinking until it became a plain flat area of yellowish green with dark-green masses of forest and clots of dots that were towns made of houses. The blue shimmer of the Baltic appeared at the top of the pool, with the white beard of the Alps below. Ribbons of blue marked the boundaries, and I found myself looking down at Germany as I knew it. But the picture kept on expanding, including Austria, Hungary ...

"The Holy Roman Empire," I whispered.

"Holy no longer," Friar Ignatius said grimly, and 'tis odd that you should couple the empire with Rome, for Hardishane refused to accept the crown the pope would have given him. He did revere the pope and his bishops, for he was a man of faith-but he held that the churchmen should no more partake of governance, than he should of ministry, and that 'twould be as great a catastrophe for the one as for the other."

I whistled. "Brave words, for the time! How did he avoid being excommunicated?

Brother Ignatius shrugged, and Gilbert said softly, "Who would have dared excommunicate Hardishane?

I took it that Hardishane was this universe's answer to Charlemagne, and had been just a little more deft than the Frankish king-or a little more paranoid. I decided I wanted to learn more about him-but now wasn't quite the time.

An area of the map was growing in the screen-the southeast, here the Alps gave some security to the smaller kingdoms and principalities that would someday be Switzerland, in my universe.

We seemed to be going in for a close look at the sector that would have been the Dauphin-the bridge between France and Germany. I wondered why-but as the view swelled, we saw a long dark line snaking out of the mountains into Allustria. The line was moving-and as it swelled, I could make out the gleams of armor and spear heads, then individual knights and soldiers. It was an army on the move.

"The army of Merovence!" Gilbert cried. "Praise Heaven!" But the view went past them, a pair of mountains swelling, then their tops flanking the screen. There the view steadied, and I saw soldiers in the same colors as the marchers below standing on crags, bows in hand. Among them stood men in homespun tunics, looking as hard as the rocks they stood on, bearded and booted against the cold.

"The montagnards have thrown in with Merovence!" Gilbert cried,

"and the Free Folk with them!"

"The Free Folk?" I frowned.

"Behind the soldiers," Friar Ignatius prompted. I looked, and realized that the gray-green wall I had taken for rock had a head and a tail-and wings! So help me, it was a dragon!

But it was growing smaller in the pool, and the scene blurred as we swept along the line of the army. It steadied again, and a dragon floated by, filling the pool for a moment, its wingspan vast but still nowhere near enough to support such a huge body. Was magic in the air, here?

Yes, of course. If Friar Ignatius was right, raw magical power filled all of space, like the hypothetical ether of early electronics. I mentally kicked myself-I had known that! And if there were a magic field that surrounded the whole Earth, why wouldn't life-forms have evolved to take advantage of it?

I resolved to keep a closer eye on the local fauna. But the view was narrowing again, the individual soldiers growing larger as the view swept on to the head of the file-and I saw a sight that stung like a slap in the face. At the head of the column rode a knight whose long blonde hair streamed out from under a steel cap with a crown around it.

" 'Tis Queen Alisande!" Gilbert yelped. "The queen of Merovence herself! " My heart leapt into my throat. "Isn't that a little dangerous?"

"Nay." Gilbert pointed. "See who rides beside her." On the lady's right hand rode a man in midnight blue, emblazoned with stars and crescent moons and comets, though he wore a steel cap instead of a pointed one. "A sorcerer?"

"Nay, the Lord Wizard!"

"I notice he's riding a dragon," I said. "Thought you said they were the Free Folk."

"They are, and the fabled Stegoman is the Lord Wizard's friend, not his slave. And, see! " Gilbert pointed; on the other side of the Queen rode a knight all in black, on a midnight charger.

"Sir Guy de Toutarien!" Gilbert crowed. "I know his blank shield."

"Black armor and a blank shield are pretty anonymous," I demurred.

"Aye, but what other Black Knight would ride beside Queen Alisande of Merovence? Nay, all do know of that blank-shield knight, Wizard Saul! 'Tis he who aided the Lord Wizard to overthrow the vile usurper Astaulf and his sorcerer Malingo, to set Queen Alisande again upon her ancestral throne!"

I could see there was a lot of old news I was going to have to catch up on.

"Thereafter," Frisson said, his eyes glowing, "they two worked among the folk of lbile and shook the throne so sorely that Queen Alisande could ride in, depose the false sorcerer who had taken the crown, and restore the rightful heir."

I was beginning to see a pattern here. "Who is the rightful heir to the throne of Allustria?"

"None," Frisson mourned. "Suettay's ancestor slew them all, root and branch, when she usurped the throne."

"All?" I stated. That didn't equate with the medieval tradition.

"You sure there wasn't maybe a baby hidden someplace? Raised as a peasant, possibly?"

"Three, but the sorcerer-queen found them all out and slew them in cold blood. Then her daughter slew her mother before the whole court, took the throne, and sent knights straightaway after the last babe of the cadet branch, and his mother."

"So. No heirs." I frowned. "That gives us a problem, doesn't it?"

"We shall find a fit monarch," Friar Ignatius said with certainty. I wished I'd shared his confidence.

The scene dwindled, and the Alps sank out of the picture. A long river swam to the center of the pool, then grew larger until we saw a battle going on at the eastern end of a bridge. The space around the bridge grew larger and larger as the invaders pushed back the defenders, and a steady stream of reinforcements poured across the span. In the thick of the fighting rode a silver knight with a golden circlet about his helm.

"King Rinaldo of lbile!" Gilbert cried. But the battle was already shrinking; soon we were watching a blur of greenery speed by. it steadied and swelled; we found ourselves watching a thread of brown emerge from the mass of leaves, growing until we saw a road through a forest, blocked by a tollgate. There were five carts drawn up, waiting to get through, but four of the drivers were gone, and the fifth walked the line, soothing the mules. Then the other four men came out of the tollhouse, shaking their heads. Together, all five men put their shoulders to the tollgate, heaved, and forced it up. Then they mounted their carts and drove on through.

"How is this?" Gilbert frowned. "Have they overpowered the witch-clerk and gone their way? How so? And know they not what will hap to them when they are caught?"

"Nothing," Frisson said slowly, "if the witch-clerk was gone." I stared, then remembered the sick toll-witch I'd cured.

"Shall not bandits fall upon them?" Gilbert asked. The trees blurred, but the road remained clear; we were looking at something happening farther down-a cloud of dust, with struggling men and swords and staves dimly visible though it, slamming and hacking in rage at one another.

"Two mobs of bandits!" Gilbert cried. "They fight to see who shall have the right to despoil the merchants!"

"And they're making enough noise so travelers will have sense enough to stay away." I nodded. "The winner will probably be so weakened that he won't try to ambush any five who have sense enough to band together."

"But do they not fear the magistrate?" Frisson asked. The scene shifted to show a magistrate's house with a dozen men standing about impatiently, waiting for the door to open. Finally, they knocked, then knocked again, then pounded incessantly.

"Magistrate's not home," I said.

"Is he out hunting bandits?" Frisson wondered.

"Nay," Gilbert answered, "for his stables are full, and his men stand idle."

I looked at the area behind the courthouse. Sure enough, there were a dozen men in leather armor, shooting at big round targets and taking halfhearted swipes at one another with oaken staves.

"How shall the merchants resolve their disputes now?" Friar Ignatius murmured.

Apparently, the merchants were wondering that, too, because they were talking among themselves with a lot of gesturing. Finally, they gave up and walked away, discussing matters among themselves. They sat down in the village square, ten of them watching while two stood up and began to argue.

"They have set up their own court!" Frisson cried.

"Sure," I said. "Who needs the magistrate, anyway?"

"Only the queen," Gilbert murmured.

The pool showed us a few more such scenes-borders with people crossing freely, ignoring the watch house nearby; farmers selling produce off the back of their carts, with no tax-gatherer in sight; a mob breaking into a courthouse and burning the records. All these official buildings were empty.

"Where are the clerks?" Frisson breathed. There they were, stumbling down the road, propping themselves up with staffs, meeting one another and going along in company, holding one another up.

"They are all sick!" Friar Ignatius said.

"So many of them, all at once?" Frisson was wide-eyed.

"Of course!" I crowed. "The Gremlin-he's an expert at disrupting systems! He spread a plague among them, that attacks only bureaucrats!

" So it seemed. Half the witches in the land had gone off, sick and stumbling. Their skin was yellow, their faces disfigured with pustules and pockmarks, their hands with open sores.

"Why aren't they staying in bed?" I asked.

"To wait for death and Hell?" Friar Ignatius shook his head.

"Better to force themselves to search."

"Search?" I asked. "What are they looking for?" The file of witches in the pool suddenly paused, everyone straightening. Then they were pelting pell-mell down the road, or rather, hobbling as fast as they could. The ones in front fell at the feet of a tinker who had been coming toward them, ragged and clattering with pots hung about him. The impact of two or three people bumping onto his shins and grabbing at his cloak was enough to knock off his broad-brimmed straw hat ...

And to reveal his tonsure.

"He is a priest!" Friar Ignatius breathed, "a holy man who goes in disguise, for fear of the queen and her men!"

"Her men have found him," I said. "Apparently, they know the signs. " But they weren't arresting him-they were babbling, gesticulating.

The priest recovered from his shock, his face turning from frightened to grave, and he held up a hand. The sick ones fell silent, and he pulled out a piece of cloth four inches wide and six feet long-a stole, the priest's badge of office. He hung it about his neck, then stepped around to the far side of the cart, beckoning to the first witch. The woman hobbled after him.

The others began to line up in front of the improvised confessional. There was some struggling for place, but it was rather halfhearted. They just didn't have the energy.

"They don't think he can cure them, do they?" I asked.

"He can cure their souls," Friar Ignatius answered. "They may suffer for hundreds of years in Purgatory, mayhap even thousands, through all the tortures they have wrought in this world, and more; they may burn in fires as hot as those of Hell-but some day, they shall be released, purified, to rise to Heaven. They will not e damned for eternity, when the priest has heard their confessions and given them God's forgiveness of their sins."

"Ironic," I said, "when you stop to think that these very men and women were probably hunting him only yesterday."

Then I heard the echo of my own words and stilled, amazed, as I realized how much courage that wandering priest must have. He had been going about secretly ministering the Sacraments for years, knowing he might be arrested any day, taken away to die in torture. But he had kept on, because the few good souls there still depended on him.

He needed that courage more than ever, now. He was rocking back and forth as if he were receiving punch after punch, but he held on to the side of the cart, grimly hearing the long tale of the witch's sins.

"What's hurting him?" I asked.

"Devils unseen," Friar Ignatius said, lips thin. "They will not give

up their prey easily."

The confessing witch began to jerk about with blows from unseen hands, too-and talons; streaks of red began to appear on her cheeks and hands. On the other side of the cart, the line of witches was beginning to rock, too.

"We must aid them." Friar Ignatius joined his hands, bowing his head and closing his eyes.

"What ... ?" I started to ask, but Frisson touched my arm, and I fell silent.

In the pool, the invisible punches stopped. The witches cowered together, looking about them, wide-eyed.

"Angels fight the devils," Frisson murmured. Friar Ignatius made the sign of the cross and looked up.

"The angels won," I said.

"Of course," Friar Ignatius answered with a glowing smile. On the far side of the cart, the priest was able to finish hearing confession in peace. He bowed his head in prayer, then made the sign of the cross over the penitent, no longer a witch. The woman rose and tottered away, face upraised-and transfigured, shining with relief and joy.

"Now she may die with a lighter heart," Friar Ignatius murmured. I stared at him. "Pretty heavy-duty magic you worked there, Friar! " But Ignatius only shook his head. "No magic at all, Wizard Saul.