The Witch Doctor

Chapter Thirty-Two

"Look," I said, "you didn't have to show up as a hippie. Who do you think you're kidding, anyway?"

I caressed Angelique's hand while I said it, though. She sat beside me in the courtyard-anything to get away from the stench of that laboratory - eyes glowing, head resting on my shoulder. She'd been in a great deal of pain when she "woke" - not the sharp pains she'd headed off, thank Heaven, but the of present torture, which were aches of old ones. it was enough to make me mad at Suettay all over again, and ...

"I shouldn't be glad she's suffering," I told the angel. "Suettay, I mean. But I am - after what she did to my Angelique." I was able to say "my" with only a passing qualm, somehow.

"You should be above such sentiments," the angel murmured.

"I know," I said, "but I can't help how I feel - and it's better to be honest about your feelings. Hey, man, I'm human, too!"

"Yeah, you are," the angel acknowledged. "But you're a good human." I frowned. "I said, you don't have to look and talk like a hippie. I know you for what you really are, man."

"Yeah, sure," the angel said, "but if I didn't look like this, you couldn't sit there and call me 'man.' " I took a deep breath. "Okay, so it sets me more at ease, and I can relate to you better. But there are times when it's more important to be looking up to an angel, than to be comfortable."

"True, true - and when those times come, I'll be glad to show up the way you expect, halo and wings and all. But for the moment, I think we need to be able to get down and clear a little more."

"The way I expect?" I looked at him sharply. "What's your true form?"

"I don't have one," he said right back. "I'm a spirit, remember?"

"Okay," I said impatiently, "how would you look to me if I were a spirit, too?"

"Like whatever you expected, man."

I bit down on my temper. Angelique reached over with her other hand, stroking mine. I know she meant it to be soothing, but it was anything but. it did serve as a nice distraction, though, and I couldn't remember to keep being angry.

The angel smiled, proudly-and that irked me all over again.

"Look, I'm not a good man! So don't go smirking line that. "No, you are," he contradicted. "At least, you're a I decent and humane man. For example, you wouldn't really want Suettay to suffer for eternity, would you?"

That gave me pause. I stopped to consider, consulting my inner feelings. "No," I said at last. "A good long time, yes - long enough for justice. But not forever."

Angelique stirred beside me, nestling a little more firmly against my arm.

"You'll have to stop distracting me," I told her, "or I won't be in any shape to talk to an angel."

She looked up to give me a heavy-lidded, pinfeather smile, then closed her eyes, looking very content.

"So what happens now?" I asked the angel. "What do I do?" He shrugged. "Whatever you want - and, I hope, whatever you really believe is right. I don't run your life, Paul."

"Saul," I grated.

"I only try to shield you from the Temper and sway you back to God."

"You've been doing pretty well so far," I admitted. "Anybody who can keep me on the straight and narrow . . ."

" '. . doesn't really have all that hard a job," he finished. "Ask your friend Matt."

"I'm asking you!"

"But there isn't any more need for me to stick around - at least, not so you can see me. So long - but remember, I'm with you for life!" And he disappeared.

"Cop-out," I snarled after him, then thought about the term. He was sort of a Heavenly cop ...

"Your friend gone?" Matt came clanking up. I should ask I looked up at him. "In a manner of speaking. He says YOU."

"Anything." Matt clapped me on the shoulder, looking straight into my eyes with a grin. "But there are some boys over there who have a question for you."

"Boys?" I looked around the courtyard, frowning. Queen Alisande's knights were cleaning up the castle, rounding up evil stragglers, with a dozen of Matt's junior sorcerers along to help. We head honchos could take the weight off our feet for a while.

Not a very long while, though. A hundred yards away stood a small army of heavy dragoons - at least five hundred. I winced at the thought, hoping there were more still alive - if "alive" was really the term for a magical construct. I certainly owed them. I went over to see what they wanted. "Good afternoon, Sergeant. What can I do for you? "

"More work for us, Guy?"

I remembered looking up toward the dragoon's back trail during the battle, seeing their dead lying fallen, fading even as I watched, disappearing.

"No," I decided. "Return to quarters." The dragoon saluted and whirled his horse, turning back to his fellows, bawling orders. I chanted after him,

A heat haze seemed to spring up, enveloping the dragoons, thickening to mist, then London fog. When it cleared, they were gone, leaving behind them only a cowering wreckage of moaning men-at-arms and fallen knights.

"As if they'd never been," Matt whispered.

"Retired," I corrected. "Maybe not to Heaven, but to one heck of a Limbo!" I turned to him and caught his hand. "You found me in the nick of time."

"I knew when you'd arrived in this world," he said, squeezing back. "I talked Alisande into moving out the next day." I was amazed at how firm his clasp was - amazed at his having enough strength to walk around in all that armor, in fact.

"You've put on a lot of muscle in the last three days."

"Three days to you." He turned, strolling back to Angelique and the seats we'd found, by the wall of the keep. "Four years, for me." I stared. "Four years?"

"Time moves at a different rate here, I guess," he said, "or there's a differential between our two universes." I just stared at him for a moment, as he sat down, right where the angel had been - or still was, for all I knew. The thought gave me a chill, but I shook it off and said, "So what's been happenin', man?" He started telling me. It took a while.

When he was done, I just sat there, dazed.

" 'Tis a Most amazing tale," Angelique murmured by my shoulder.

"We had heard some echo of it, we folk in Allustria, but not all."

"You wouldn't," I said. "Suettay wouldn't have wanted it known that evil sorcerers and usurpers could be beaten." Then, to Matt: "So that tall blonde with the crown is the queen of Merovence - and your wife?"

"Finally," Matt affirmed.

"Yeah, after she kept you waiting three years." I felt indignation for my old friend, but I tried to assure myself that long engagements just meant more - solid marriages. "So you're the king?"

"No, just the royal consort - and Her Majesty's Wizard. She was very insistent about that. So was I, in fact."

"Yeah, I wouldn't want that much responsibility, either." Angelique looked up at me, shocked.

"That doesn't mean I won't accept any," I hastened to assure her, and she relaxed with her smug, lazy smile again.

"So how'd you get here, Paul?"

I grinned. "You first."

Matt returned the grin. "TOO much studying. I started concentrating on that piece of parchment so much that it began to make sense - and when I looked up, here I was."

"Same thing," I said. "I got worried about you, and I couldn't find any trace, so ... "

He flushed. "Sorry, man."

"Hey, it's okay, it's okay - now. I ran out of leads, so I started studying the new parchment that showed up . . ."

"New parchment?" He sat up straight, frowning, "What new parchment? "

"You know, the one that said, 'Hey, Paul, drop me a line'.

"That one?" The frown deepened to a scowl. "I just wrote that out when I was feeling homesick one night. When I went to throw it in the wastebasket the next morning, it was gone. How'd it get to you?"

"Don't know," I said slowly, "but I could make a guess. There were an awful lot of spiders in your apartment. One of them bit me while I was translating the parchment. I blacked out, and woke up here. "

"The Spider King!" He stared. "I thought he was just a legend!"

"Oh, he's real, all right, and he lives in some sort of dimensional nexus. I think he wanted to clean up the situation here in Allustria, so he . . ." I broke off as Matt's gaze drifted, his eyes brooding.

"What's the matter?"

"The Archbishop," Matt said slowly. "A spider bit him, and he fell ill. I had to go cure him - and while I was working on him, he grabbed my sleeve and demanded to know if I had ever met a single man who had a genuine sense of integrity."

I stared in horror. "You didn't give him my name!"

"Well, yeah," Matt said uncomfortably. "Funny thing is, when he got well, he didn't remember a bit of it - not surprising, the temperature he had."

"But I'm not a saint! I'm not a good guy!"

"No," Matt said slowly, "but you have a sense of self that won't quit. You won't let anybody infringe on you, in any way. Makes you pretty abrasive sometimes, in fact."

Angelique moved a little away from me, eyeing me warily again.

"Not true," I assured her. "He always did have too high an opinion of me."

"No," she said, "he did not." I turned and frowned deeply into her eyes. "Then how come I'm in love with you?"

"I ken not." She gazed back, and her eyes seemed to be all there was in the world. "But I rejoice."

Then she broke the gaze, and her spell, by turning to Matt. "Can you not explain this, Lord Wizard?"

"Only by logic," he said slowly, "which has its limits - but if he is compulsively true to himself, and has nonetheless developed an obsession for you, then there must be something about you that fulfills some element of himself. Probably more than one."

"You traitor," I growled at him - but Angelique had gone heavylidded and self-satisfied again, cuddling up to me, so I didn't really mean it.

Matt knew that; he only smiled. "Don't blame me, Paul. It's not my fault if you have an instinctive sense of psychic balance, some gut drive for keeping the harmony between all the parts of your personality."

"Yeah," I admitted. "You claimed that was why I was attracted to Zen. I kept telling you that it was Zen and Taoism that gave me that sense of balance, not the other way around."

Matt shrugged. "Cause, effect, or a positive reinforcing cycle, it doesn't matter. You've got it, and when it's threatened, you lash out at whoever does the threatening." He nodded to Angelique. "Take care, mademoiselle. He gets mean sometimes. He mellows out pretty quickly, though."

"I thank you." But her equanimity didn't seem at all disturbed.

"I shall be mindful of it."

I think I might have felt a little easier if she'd seemed worried.

"So you've got the instinct for walking the ethical tightrope," Matt summarized.

"Yeah," I said with chagrin. "Gave my guardian angel enough grief with that. He kept trying to get me to commit myself to the side of the angels, and whenever he did, I went out and committed a sin."

"At least, a sin by his rules," Matt amended. "I don't think you ever really did anything all that bad."

I glared at him. "I keep telling you, I'm not a saint!"

"Yeah, and some day you'll get yourself to believe it, too. No, no, I take it back." He held up a palm. "Let's just say you're only a fundamentally decent, honest, and caring individual." I was just beginning to get really sore about that, when Gruesome came waddling up, grinning from ear to ear - well, from side to side.

"We won, huh?"

Matt scrambled back fast.

"No, no, he won't hurt you," I assured him. "This is Gruesome."

"He sure is!"

"No, that's what I nicknamed him. He's my friend." I was startled to hear myself say it, but I guessed I was right. "If he has a name in Trollish, I can't pronounce it."

"He doesn't." Matt still looked very nervous. "They don't have enough intelligence."

"Oh, he has a name all right. Some fairies used it to enchant him so that he wouldn't eat people anymore," I assured him, "and by the time a nymph named Thyme removed the spell, he'd started thinking of us as friends instead of snacks." I turned to Gruesome. "Tell you what, old fellow - I can transport you back to the bridge where I met you, and you'll fit in with your fellow trolls again."

"No! No!" Gruesome shook his head - well, upper half - from side to side rapidly. "Goosum no like trolls no more! Well, maybe females," he added as an afterthought, "but only for little while, now in' then. Goosum like people!"

"That's what I'm afraid of," Matt muttered.

"Goosum like people for friends! Goosum want stay with Saw Fish'un!"

"I think that can be arranged," I said slowly, trying not to let him see I was touched. "But you'll have to let me renew your anti-peopleeating spell now and then."

"Sure, sure! Goosum no like sojer-taste, anyway!" He made spitting noises.

I wondered how he had found out.

"I think," Matt said slowly, "that he has really begun to think of you and your companions as friends."

I nodded. "All I have to do is broaden the scope, extend the feeling to all mankind."

"I dunno," Matt said dubiously. "it hasn't worked on people."

"Yeah, but he's a little more direct," I said. "Somehow, his trollish nature's been modified. He's basically pretty decent now."

"As are you," Angelique murmured sleepily. I bridled, then remembered that I didn't exactly want her to think differently. "Fundamentally, maybe-but it's buried pretty deep."

"Then I shall delve," Angelique answered. I turned to her. "I thought that was my job." Matt began.

"Hey, that's what we were taught when we were kids, right? At least, in our universe."

"Oh," Matt said brightly. "You've figured out this is all real, eh?"

I backed fast. "Well, that's what the Spider King said. I still think it makes more sense to declare this all to be one huge, massive, hallucination."

"If it is," Matt said, "your subconscious is a great one for details."

"I have run into a few things I didn't know about," I admitted. "That doesn't mean this is all real."

"No," said Matt, "but that isn't the question that matters."

I frowned. "Then what is?"

"Can you return to our native universe? If you can, then this could

She blushed.

"If that's your idea of a sin all be a dream-but if you can't, then you're stuck here, and whether it's real or not, you're going to have to behave as if it were, or you're going to collect a lot of pain."

"Good point," I said, frowning, "but it's true of our own universe, too. No, the real question is: Do I want to go back?"

Angelique stirred against me, in just the wrong way. I turned to her. "What do you think, Prime Distraction?"

For answer, she reached up and pulled my face down to hers, giving me that long, long kiss I'd been dying for, but had been embarrassed to go after in public. I sat stiff for a moment, taken by surprise - but then I recovered, loosened up, and began to do a proper job of it. Finally, we came up for air, and I heard somebody whistling. I glanced over and saw Matt surveying the courtyard, entirely too casual about it.

Gruesome, though, was more direct, as usual. He was watching us and grinning like a watermelon.

I turned back to Angelique, and her glowing eyes became my entire universe again. Suddenly all that mattered was whether or not she was real.

"Never leave me," she breathed, her voice husky but imperious.

"Never leave me, while I hold breath!"

"or Maybe not even after," I agreed. "I wouldn't even think of it again. "

She smiled and turned her face up for another kiss. Some time later, I lifted my face an inch or so away from hers, breathing hard and ignoring Gruesome's chuckling. "I warn you, though - I'm not going to put up with any nonsense about postponing the wedding for any three years."

"Neither," she said, "will I." And her lips drifted up toward mine, parting, drawing mine down toward them ...

Just then, a trumpet blew.

We got up, turning to look.

Queen Alisande was standing over Gilbert with a drawn sword and he was kneeling, with his head bowed. Threat! I leapt for them, my heart in my mouth.

But Matt clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Easy, easy. She means honor, not harm."

I hesitated - and in the delay, the Black Knight, next to the Queen, cried out, "Know ye all that this squire, hight Gilbert, of the Order of Saint Moncaire, hath proven himself in combat! By striving and arduous campaigning, he hath given evidence of his tenacity, of his virtue, and of his dedication to goodness and God! Therefore on this day, here in the place of battle, the queen of Merovence shall do him honor!"

Alisande laid the sword on his left shoulder, then on his right, intoning, in that clear alto voice that made me realize what Matt saw in her, "I hereby dub thee knight!" Then she lifted the sword and slugged him with a quick left hook. His head rocked, but he held still.

I didn't. I almost leapt for her right then. Fortunately, Matt still had hold of my shoulder - because she went on to cry out, "Rise, Sir Gilbert! " My erstwhile squire rose, flushed with pleasure and honor, and bowed low to his queen.

I relaxed and joined in the cheering.

When it slackened, the queen beckoned - and Frisson stepped up!

"Until we can find the last legitimate scion of your last legitimate monarch," Queen Alisande called out, "I shall be your queen!"

A huge massed cheer went up.

I wondered how long they would feel that way. What was the dividing line between liberation and conquest, anyway?

"Yet I cannot stay to govern you in person!" she cried.

"Therefore I shall appoint for you a viceroy, to rule in my place, and the place of your own king - one who has proved his wisdom in this long struggle to displace the usurper, and proved his steadfastness and loyalty to right. I give you the Viceroy Frisson!" This time the yell was even more heartfelt than before. Frisson looked about him, damn near panicking - then saw me and gave me the most doleful, pleading look of his life. I smiled, nodding, hoping I looked as reassuring as I intended, trying to make him realize I'd stand by him - and it must have worked, because he relaxed, just a little, recovered his composure, and turned to wave at the crowd. In fact, I saw him straightening and seeming to grow larger and more poised, even as they cheered.

The shouting died, Frisson stepped aside - with alacrity, if it must be told - and Friar Ignatius stepped forward. He raised his hands, crying, "Let the infirm of body, but affirmed of heart, step forward!" Everybody drew back, no one wanting to get in the way of the sick ex-witches. They tottered forward and knelt.

"I shall hear all your sins and shrive you all one by one," Friar Ignatius declared, "but for fear that some might die even while I spoke, I conferred upon you all conditional absolution. Yet now we must heal your bodies, that your pain may cease. Master Saul, come forward!"

"What? Me? What for?" I demanded.

"Why, to heal them, of course!"

"Oh, yeah, sure! Come on, Frisson!"

I stepped forward - and the witches cheered, then began to chant,

The crowd took it up.

"The Witch Doctor! The Witch Doctor!"

I just stared, thunderstruck. "Not me!"

Matt frowned at me. "You mean you didn't know?" And then he began to laugh.