The Witch Doctor

Chapter Six

It was just a little farther along. A chunk of the hillside was raw and ragged, and the gully was filled with weed-tufted dirt, heavily interspersed with boulders. I eyed it with trepidation. "We're supposed to cross on that?"

"It does look infirm," Gilbert agreed, "but the weeds show that it has been here long enough for the rains to settle it somewhat."

"Yeah, too much - it's at least two feet lower in the center." I decided I must have heard another landslide happening.

"I shall essay it first." Gilbert swung down from his horse's back.

"Yet let Thorn carry only his own weight, that his hooves may not sink lower than they must."

I glanced over my shoulder at what was coming up behind and said, "No, I'm the leader of this expedition-or at least, you're here because of me. I'll go first." I stepped out onto the dirt bridge before he could stop me.

"Nay, Wizard Saul! 'Tis my place!" he cried, but I waded on with determination.

And I do mean "waded" - the dirt gave beneath my feet with every step. My stomach started fluttering, and I began to envision a mini-landslide with me in the middle. It was almost enough to make me believe in the magic the people here kept talking about. I tried to remember some stabilizing verses.

"We come," Gilbert called behind me. I took his word for it; my eyes were on the path ahead, if you could call it that. I tried stepping on the larger stones, and that was better; they sank in a little farther, but at least my feet didn't. I was glad I wore boots. Finally I reached the other side. I grabbed hold of the nearest tree and let myself sag against it. Then I turned around so I could watch Gilbert finishing the trek.

He was doing better than I had, possibly because he was walking in my footsteps-had to shorten his stride to do it, but it gave him a firmer surface. His horse followed on the reins, with a lot of snorting, head tossing, and rolling of the eyes-but whenever they rolled back far enough, he saw the troll wallowing along behind him and decided the dirt was the lesser of two evils.

Gilbert guided him up onto firm land, then looked back at the laboring troll with a frown. "Mayhap we ought to help him."

"Are you crazy?" I protested. "The monster that would have gleefully had us for lunch - even without ketchup? Besides, we're trying to get away from him, remember?"

"'Tis so," Gilbert conceded, but his open, honest face looked unhappy about it. "I hate to leave even an adversary so beset."

"You'll get the hang of it," I assured him. "Look, any chance your horse could carry double for a little while? I hate to ask it of him, but I'd feel a lot better if we could put a few miles between Gruesome, there, and us."

"As you wish," Gilbert sighed, "though 'twill do no good. Once under a geas, a living creature will ever press after his duty." He held the horse steady while I mounted. Fortunately, I'd learned a little bit about riding in my one trip to summer camp, so I knew how to get aboard, at least. I hiked myself back behind the saddle, though.

"Nay, Master Wizard! Do you take the saddle!"

"You don't think I'm dumb enough to try to steer this thing, do you? No, you can have the front seat!"

Gilbert gave me a funny look, but he climbed aboard, bending his knee so his foot missed my face-but not by much-then turning the horse's head inland and shaking the reins. The beast started trotting, and I held on for dear life. "Aren't there ... any ... shock absorbers ... on this bus?"

"I do not follow your meaning, Master Wizard, but I'll essay a faster gait." He knocked his heels into the horse's sides. I was about to protest when the ride smoothed out amazingly. I remembered that a canter is less jouncy than a trot-but only by comparison; it was still pretty rough. On top of that, I was discovering why the army adopted the McClellan saddle. I held tight to Gilbert's midriff and glanced back. Sure enough, Gruesome was still wallowing through the dirt and was growing smaller behind us. I relaxed a little, set my teeth, and turned to the front, determined to last it out. After about fifteen minutes of this - just a guess; my watch seemed to have stopped-I said, "That ought to do it. Must have been a couple of miles, at least."

"Aye." Gilbert reined in. "Will that suffice, Master Wizard?"

"Just fine," I said through clenched teeth. I made it through the deceleration trot, then gratefully slid off the rump. "Maybe he'll lose us now. "

"I fear not." Gilbert started to dismount.

"Hey, what're you doing? No reason you should walk!"

"But you are my leader!"

"Not your superior, though, only your senior! You just keep riding. After all, you're the one with the armor."

"'Tis only a mail coat." But he seemed relieved. "Even so, Wizard Saul, 'tis my duty to advise you that distance will not stop a troll, nay, even if he did not labor under a geas," That was doubly less than reassuring. It didn't exactly guarantee that Gruesome was under a geas. Compulsions I could understand, but greed was even more comprehensible.

We strolled along, exchanging biographical notes, and I switched the topic to future aspirations. Gilbert practically glowed as he recounted the glories of knighthood and the potential glories of martyrdom. You can't help liking a guy with that much zeal, but I couldn't help feeling that somebody was playing him for a real sucker. On the other hand, I think Jonah felt that way, too.

The sun was almost overhead, and I was just beginning to think of calling a halt for lunch, when Gilbert looked back and said, "Yonder he comes."

I spun about, staring. Sure enough, there he came, snowshoe feet and turnip shape, grinning from ear to ear with pathetic eagerness. I had to remind myself that I was the one who was likely to be pathetic, not him.

"No help for it," I decided. "Time for lunch, anyway. Let's relax and rest awhile - and if he attacks, he attacks, and we'll deal with it then." I was nowhere nearly as nonchalant as I pretended. The presence of an actual, me - eating troll was incentive enough to get me to working up some good verses, not that I really thought they'd help any.

On the other hand, if my hallucination included trolls and elves, why not magic? Though a troll was hardly the kind of opponent you would expect to start slinging rhymes.

"He will not attack," Gilbert said with blithe unconcern as he dismounted. "He goes under a geas."

Obsessive-compulsive disorders, I could understand-it was just the object of the obsession that worried me. Nonetheless, I let Gilbert lay the fire while I waited, arms akimbo, looking a lot more certain than I felt-but as Huge-and-Ugly came closer, I felt the old, familiar chill within me that seems to come whenever danger looms. I didn't feel fear, because I didn't feel anything. After the crisis was over, I'd turn to jelly-but there'd be time, then.

"Running behind schedule, I see," I commented, as he came up. The troll looked surprised. "Ske-dool?"

That's right-I remembered he'd demonstrated a limited vocabulary.

"Took you awhile to catch up with us." I braced myself and said, "I'd really rather you didn't."

It stared down at me with blank incomprehension.

"Don't catch up with us," I explained. "I don't want you near me. Go. Away. Shoo!"

He stared, grin fading, mouth loosening. "Go?" And, so help me, a huge, fat tear welled up in one eye.

My inner chill almost warmed into remorse for a second, but I focused on the shark teeth inside that woebegone lip and said, "You tried to eat me. I can't trust you. I don't want you along."

"Me come!" he protested, in a voice like a basso chain saw.

"Fairies see! Fairies say! Want only ward you!"

"He speaks truth, Master Wizard," Gilbert said, his voice low and completely calm. "He cannot turn his heart against you now, not under the elf prince's geas."

He sounded very confident, and it occurred to me to wonder how the troll would react if I really did drive him away. if this was anything like a love-hate relationship, I could find myself with a real nemesis on my trail. "Well ... if you're sure The troll's grin came back, and he nodded eagerly. At least, I think it was nodding; it might have been bowing. But Gilbert assured me, "He is your guard and servant now, till the Wee Folk remove the geas." That was the other thing that bothered me. If some enemy magician came along and counteracted this artificial compulsion, I could find myself on the inside real fast, in small pieces. But I didn't really see that I had much choice. I sighed and said, "Okay, Gruesome, you can join us."

The troll looked hugely delighted, then frowned, puzzled.

"Goosum?"

"Gruesome," I amplified. "That's my name for you." Then one of my few moral principles kicked in - I hated infringing on anybody's identity; I knew what it felt like to have people try. "But I'll drop it if you have a name of your own."

"Name?"

So much for that idea. "What do other trolls call you?"

"Odder trolls?"

"They are solitary beings, Master Wizard," Gilbert explained.

"They are never seen together."

I frowned. "They have to now and then, or there would never be any little trolls."

Gilbert blushed. So help me, he blushed. I tried to remind myself he was an adolescent, and a very sheltered one, in some respects.

"All right," I sighed. "If they don't have a social structure, they don't have any need for names."

"Well, there is the secret name," Gilbert said slowly. "Every creature takes the first sound of its own kind that it hears after birth, as the designation for itself. It is this the elf prince used to compel the troll. "

"But it's secret?"

Gilbert nodded.

I'd heard of it. Almost every primitive culture believed that identity was so intimately linked with name that your enemy could use it to work magic against you-so the true name was secret. Everybody had a public name for communication, and a private name for identity. I turned to the troll again. "What is the sound that means you?

"No say!" Gruesome almost looked panicked - and I wasn't an elf prince, with a host of little accomplices that could pinch hard enough to be felt through that igneous hide. So, "No se, indeed," I muttered. I fell back on primitive communication, pointing to the troll's granite chest. "You. Gruesome." Then I pointed at myself. "Me Saul." Then I jabbed a finger at the squire. "Him-Gilbert." I frowned up at the dinner-plate eyes. "Understand?"

"Unner ... ? " He didn't have the concept of understanding.

"Gruesome, go to Gilbert."

His face cleared, and he turned to trot over to the squire. Gilbert braced himself, but he didn't need to - he was still kneeling by the camp fire, and the troll shied away at the sight of flame.

"Gruesome!" I called. "Come to Saul!"

"Gruesome come," he said brightly, and shambled back to me. I nodded, satisfied. "Good. Now, eat." The troll stared, unbelieving.

I suddenly realized what he thought I meant he should eat.

"Gilbert, food! Quickly!"

"Here, Wizard." A round, hard loaf came flying through the air. I caught it and presented it to the troll. "Gruesome eat." The troll frowned down at the loaf, then took it from me between thumb and finger. His lump of nose wrinkled.

"All right, let it go if you want." I said. "But it's all we've got, isn't it?"

"There is a little dried beef." Gilbert held out something that looked like a collection of buckskin thongs. I took them and held them out to Gruesome, but he backed away, shaking his top.

"Well, sorry." I went to sit down by Gilbert. "But we have to eat."

I took another loaf, broke it, handed half to Gilbert, and started munching. He handed me a wineskin; I took a sparing sip, then handed it back.

Three bites later, I happened to notice Gruesome. He was sitting down now, with his hands on his knees, eyeing us hungrily. I told myself it was the food he was eyeing, but I didn't believe me.

"I mistrust his gaze," Gilbert muttered.

"I mistrust this whole geas thing." I frowned at Gruesome. "I'd feel a little safer if it had been my idea."

"An excellent notion!"

"Say what?" I looked up blankly.

"Make a spell of your own! That will hold him doubly!" He looked at me with such total trust that I figured I at least had to go through the motions. "if you say so," I sighed, and turned back toward Gruesome, trying to remember a verse having to do with loyalty. I found it among my boyhood Kipling collection, and tapped my own chest as I recited,

The troll sat bolt-upright, looking very surprised. Its eyes glazed, then cleared, and it turned to me and said, "Saul master of Gruesome. Gruesome guard Saul with life."

He said it with such total conviction that I just couldn't doubt him. I decided that trolls were very suggestible.

Behind me, Gilbert let out a hiss of breath. I turned back, surprised, and the kid was staring at me almost with reverence, "You have done it indeed! All, fortunate am I, to see such spells worked so hard by me!"

"It's pretty hard by me, too," I grunted, "and speaking of hard, let's finish this journey bread."

But Gilbert was looking past me at the troll. "He is your creature now, and woe betide any who seek to hurt you-but he still hungers. "

It occurred to me that Gilbert might be feeling less than Secure.

"Guard Gilbert, too," I ordered Gruesome.

"Gilbert safe from hurt!" the troll assured me, but he still looked hungry.

"He must be fed, with something," Gilbert said, his voice low.

"I'd rather be a little more definite about the 'something,' " I said, and raised my voice. "Gruesome! Go gobble up a billy goat!" The troll looked very surprised for a minute, then grinned, gratified, and scrambled off.

Not believing my luck, I stared after him, then turned to start stuffing the rations back into Gilbert's sack. "Quick! Now's our chance! "

"Chance for what?" Gilbert said blankly.

"To lose that monster! Come on, let's go!"

"It will avail naught," Gilbert protested, but he gathered his gear and mounted up.

We were only a hundred yards down the road when I stopped dead in my tracks. "What's the matter with me!"

"Naught, that I can see," Gilbert said, surprised.

"Nice of you-especially considering what some other people I know might have said for an answer." I turned about and started hiking back, double-quick. "I just realized what I told that fool troll to do!"

"Aye-to dine upon a goat."

"Right! And where do you find goats in a country like this?"

"Why, upon Suddenly, Gilbert's eyes filled with foreboding.

"Upon a farm!"

"Right! And I only told him to guard you - I didn't say anything about any other humans! Come on, let's go!"

"Ride," Gilbert snapped.

His tone riled me, but I had to admit there was no time to debate the issue now. I scrambled up behind him and held on for all I was worth. He kicked the horse into a gallop and went pounding up the hillside.

"There he is!" I pointed.

Gilbert swerved, and the horse leaped the fence.

I wasn't expecting it - I almost went flying. But I managed to hold on tighter, and Gilbert grunted as I gave him an impromptu Heimlich maneuver, Then we were pounding over the meadow grass and swung about in front of a slavering troll just as the goat-herd boy yelled in fright.

"No, Gruesome!" I held up a hand. "Mustn't eat any people."

"Not eat?" Gruesome protested, wounded.

"Not eat people!" I said with conviction. "Only goats! And wolves and bear and deer," I modified, and turned to the goatherd.

"It's okay-he's only after your goats, not you."

"But-but I shall be whipped!" Trembling, he faced us all, crook held slantwise across his body, ready to strike.

I almost invited him to come along right there, he was so brave. I would have, too, if I'd known where I was going. As it was, I just reached in my pocket and fished out a quarter. "I'll buy one goat from you."

He caught the quarter, then held it up, staring at it. "'Tis silver!"

"Will it . . ." I remembered the principles of bargaining and changed the wording. "How big a goat will it buy?"

"The biggest in my herd! But 'tis a most strange coin, gentleman!"

"I'm a foreigner," I explained. "Make it a billy goat, all right?" I glanced at the troll and said, "A gruff one."

"My worst," he said eagerly. In thirty seconds, he had driven out the most ornery billy goat I'd ever seen, who kept turning and trying to butt him. I didn't blame it - if I'd been being driven toward a troll, I would have tried to run, too.

But Gruesome solved the issue by pouncing. There was a startled bleat that ended abruptly, White-faced, the goatherd backed away.

"Gruesome! Come to Saul!" I said sternly, and to Gilbert, "Walk away. " We turned and started walking. I glanced back; Gruesome was following, taking large bites. I winced and turned away. "Crisis over. Do we have to go through this every mealtime?"

"You will find a way," Gilbert said with total confidence. I wished I'd shared it.

I didn't make the same mistake when we set camp for the night - I made a different one. Well, no, maybe not a mistake, really-as soon as I realized Gruesome was eyeing us hungrily, I said, "Hungry enough to eat a bear?"

Gruesome nodded, a huge slab of tongue coming out to slurp over his lips, what there were of them.

"Then go catch one." I said. "If you can catch it, you can eat it."

He nodded brightly, surged up to his feet, and trotted off into the trees.

Gilbert stared after him open-mouthed, then turned to me. "Will he find one?

I shrugged. "Whether he does or not, we'll get an hour or so of worry-free sleep."

Gilbert smiled, a slow grin. "Ingenious, Master Wizard! Nay, let us dine quickly and seek sleep faster! I'll take the first watch." I realized I was dog-tired, so I didn't object. Right after we finished, I rolled up in the cloak Gilbert's commander had sent with the squire.

"Will you not pray first?" Gilbert asked, scandalized.

"No, I don't think so," I told him, then thought better fast. "I meditate while I'm going to sleep."

His face cleared; where he came from, "meditate" meant the same as "pray." He nodded and turned away to watch the night. He woke me some time around midnight and said, "Wake me for the third watch." I bit back a gripe and nodded, rolling up to my knees, watching the landscape, and wishing heartily that this universe had discovered coffee. Much better for my health, I'm sure, but no more pleasant than healthful things usually are. Gilbert was snoring within five minutes. I'd heard that soldiers developed that ability. As my head cleared, I looked around and realized what was missing-the troll. My spirits picked up-maybe the bear had won. I was really getting to be hopeful when I woke Gilbert about six hours later-my watch had gone on the fritz, so I was going by the Little Dipper. He came awake instantly, took one glance at the stars, and said "Master Wizard! You should have waked me sooner! Nay, I've slept through two watches!"

"Six hours for you, six hours for me," I told him. "Comes out even." I didn't mention that mine had been two and two. I decided that the next night, I'd take the first watch.

"Natheless, a knight should be able to keep a vigil!"

"How about we talk about it tomorrow evening?" I suggested. He brightened surprisingly. "Aye, assuredly. Good sleep to you, Wizard! " "Good night to you, squire," I said, puzzled. I was almost asleep before I realized why he'd been so pleased-saying we'd talk about it tomorrow night implied that I was accepting his company. I broke out in cold sweat as I felt the clammy tendrils of commitment gluing themselves onto me. I was going to have to find some way to send Gilbert back to his buddies.

It took me a while to get to sleep.

I woke in the false dawn, to hear a sound like a chain saw eating its way through a stack of garbage cans. I sat bolt upright to see Gilbert standing guard, hand on his sword, casting nervous glances at a huge, gently heaving hulk. I realized it was my pet troll come home, snoring like a railroad car full of scrap steel, swaying on loose tracks. Next to him lay a collection of bones and hide, all of them sizable.

I stared. So the bear hadn't won. I repressed a surge of guilt-better it than me. Or Gilbert.

Then I relaxed - the fact that Gruesome had done as I told him was very reassuring. So was the fact that he could handily defeat a fullgrown bear, muscles like that might come in useful for a stranger in a mighty strange land. I decided I'd keep him for a while. All things considered, I might be safer with him than without him. Unless some enemy sorcerer decided to remove the restraint spell, anyway.

That thought, combined with the dawn's early light, pretty much guaranteed that I wasn't going to get any more sleep. I got up, waved Gilbert to silence, and started rousting up breakfast. If there was one thing I didn't need, it was an ornery, fresh-wakened troll. I took a chance on nudging him with my boot an hour later and told him we were taking off. He rolled up to his feet right away, eager as a puppy dog.

So we set off south, heading into what I hoped was Switzerland, with a squire looking for enough trouble to win him a knighthood, and a half-tame troll eager to find something to protect me from. Understandably, I was nervous. Chapter Seven

Late that day I looked around, frowning and footsore. "Notice anyhing strange?"

"Aye," Gilbert said. "We have come into a barren waste."

"Yeah, but there used to be a lot of trees here-at least, little ones." I pointed at the expanse of four-inch stumps, lopped off so cleanly that you could see the rings. "What was it, a lumber crisis?"

"I ken not." Gilbert looked around nervously. " 'Tis uncanny, though. I would we did not have to stay the night here."

"Yeah," I said, "but it's getting dark. Think we ought to pitch camp pretty soon?"

"It would seem likely," Gilbert said grudgingly. A distant, bloodthirsty moan stopped us in our tracks.

"But not right here," I qualified.

"Mayhap not." Gilbert nudged his horse ahead and drew his sword.

"Hold on!" I protested. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To discover what made that sound," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "If 'tis our enemy, 'tis better that we come upon it, than that it come upon us."

"Now, hold on!" I protested. "If it's going to be that dangerous, you can't go in there alone!"

"I am a squire," he said simply, "a man of arms."

"That's what I mean." I stumbled on ahead. "Whatever it is, it's a long ways off yet."

"We must be silent," he protested. "You should stay here."

"Of course," I said, "not."

"Yuh, not." Gruesome flexed his huge hands, grinning, and padded forward. For all his bulk, he moved more quietly than I did-but then, he wasn't wearing boots.

"See?" I said. "We're coming along, Gilbert. Gilbert?"

"Up here," a voice whispered ahead of me. "For Heaven's sake, be still!"

"Still. Yuh." Gruesome turned to hiss at me. "Still!" Then he turned back without waiting for an answer.

I followed along, wondering what had happened to my usual common sense.

But it was my party - these two were here because of me. I rushed the pace a little, passed Gruesome, and came up level with Gilbert as his horse groped its way along a stony path in the gathering darkness. Gilbert started to protest, but just then the moan burst out again, and I saw a glowing shape drifting toward us through the gloom, its mouth an impossibly wide circle of slavering emptiness, eyes staring and covetous, and its fingers hooked like talons, poised to grab.

Then some stranger jumped out of the dimness, dove past me, and cowered behind a boulder, trembling.

That seemed to be okay with the ghost. It shifted its attentions to me, zooming toward me with a gloating howl.

The fugitive leapt to his feet, turned, ran - and slammed right into the only tree on an otherwise barren hillside. He slumped down, beneath a huge spiderweb with a very large spider in it. The ghost, shifting back to its original quarry, fluttered after its victim, then hesitated, apparently repelled by the spider. I could sympathize, but I knew the specter wouldn't be halted long.

"Hold it right there!" I shouted. I jumped in front of a big boulder, yanking my belt out of the loops and swinging the buckle.

"Cold iron, remember?"

The ghost yelled something that sounded suspiciously like "Yum! " and threw itself on the buckle. I dropped the belt and yanked my hand out of the way just in time, and the ghost bored on into the rock, sinking out of sight. Of my belt, there was no trace. There was also a large hole in the boulder.

Then the ghost veered out of the rock face, swooped out in a circle, and headed back toward me, smacking its lips and drooling. Whatever kind of spook this was, it was a virtual flying appetite. it reminded me of a shark-but it also reminded me of my Kipling. I shouted,

The ghost jolted to a halt with a look of startled shock as its mouth snapped shut and sealed itself. Its checks bulged, and its body ballooned with a huge flapping sound.

"Wizard Saul!" Gilbert pounded up to me, panting. "Beware! 'Tis a hunger ghost!"

"Yuh," Gruesome grunted, scrabbling up behind the squire. "Get 'way! Ghost eat all!"

"It will indeed," Gilbert corroborated. "It will eat anything it encounters - and it is never full!"

"Then I think I've created a first," I said, picking up a stone, "but get ready with some rocks anyway, will you? If it opens its mouth, pitch for the breadbasket."

Gilbert turned to the ghost, then stared. "Opens? But a hunger ghost's mouth is never shut!"

"This one's is," I said. "It's full." Full, and getting fuller - its belly was still stretching, turning it into a perfect globe with stubby limbs sticking out and a bulge of head on top.

"It doth depart," a wondering voice breathed somewhere around my kneecap. I looked down and saw a patched hat with a gaunt face beneath it, all eyes and pointed nose and jawbone, with hollows for cheeks, and more hollows at the back of which eyes glittered.

Well, at least whatever I'd saved was human.

I looked up again just in time to see the ghost drift high enough to catch an updraft and shoot away to the west, shrinking until it was lost in the twilight.

"It must have sped most quickly indeed," Gilbert said, "for 'twas still swelling with thy spell, Wizard Saul."

"Spell?" the man I had saved cried. He looked up at me with a feverish hunger of his own. "Are you a wizard, then?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that," I demurred - but I saw the scandalized look on Gilbert's face and said quickly, "but everybody else here seems to. Why do you ask?"

"If you are a wizard, you can cure me."

Gruesome looked away, humming. That made me uneasy. I stalled.

"How do you know I'm a good guy? Just because I worked, urn, a-" I swallowed heavily and forced it out "-a spell, doesn't say which side I'm on. I could have been an evil sorcerer."

Gilbert stared, appalled, but the famine case shook his head firmly and said, "If you had been a sorcerer, you would have let the ghost have me, and welcome."

"Good thinking," I approved, but I frowned up into the sky. "Do you suppose that thing will burst when it's had too much?"

"Nay, surely," Gilbert said, and the other added, "A hunger ghost can never have had too much."

I was again seized with the unhappy reminder that everybody else in this country seemed to know more about what was going on than I did. To cover it, I said to the man cowering at my feet, "Come on, bucko, up with you!" I caught his arm and helped him stand. "How'd you get that ghost sicced on you, anyway?"

"I think his appearance tells us that," Gilbert said softly. Yes, it was pretty obvious, now that I looked-the tattered coat, the patched leggings, the holes in the shoes, and, above all, the general emaciation. The arm I was clinging to felt like a bone wrapped by a rag, and the man's whole face was pinched with hunger. I remembered a college lecture on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. "Gilbert, could you get a piece of beef jerky out of your saddlebag? And the water skin."

In a second, Gilbert was holding out the tough, leathery strip, and the water skin.

The vagabond snatched the pemmican from him and bit into it then forced his molars down onto it, pulled his jaw open, and bit down again, and again.

"That's it," I soothed. "Don't bite, chew. That meat is so dried that you can't gulp it."

The man gave it a valiant try, I had to admit, but beef jerky takes an awful lot of chewing just to get a bite off the stick, let alone soften it enough to swallow.

"Not much else to eat, I'm afraid," I apologized, and was glad I didn't have to lie. "One swallow of water when you get that bite down, okay? Just one swallow - then another bite of jerky. By the time you finish that strip, maybe we'll have some stew on." I turned to Gilbert. "Now I'll take the first campsite you can find." Fifty yards farther down, the path broadened out onto a twenty-foot wide terrace. Gilbert pronounced it fit, so I arranged a ring of stones and looked around for firewood. "Seen any kindling, Gilbert?"

"Aye." The squire held out an armload of sticks. "I gathered what I found, as we did come down the slope."

"Ah, to have Gilbert's forethought!" I dumped the sticks into my fire ring. "Good thing this path wasn't always above the timberline."

"Aye," our mystery guest said. "This slope bore a few scrub trees, till the Spirit of Famine began to chase me." I swallowed, hard, at the thought of the hunger ghost planing every living thing off the side of the mountain, and put the thought resolutely behind me. "Gilbert, will you do the honors?" The squire stepped up and struck flint against steel. A spark fell, and he breathed it into a small flame. Seconds later, fire bloomed from the kindling.

I looked around for something to skewer the provisions Gilbert had collected along the way.

"Will this serve?" Gilbert held up a three-foot splinter of rock.

"Yeah, just fine." I poked the spear through the three pheasants, rested the ends on the highest two rocks, and sat back to watch. I thought of asking how Gilbert had come by the rock spit, but decided I didn't want to know.

Our guest watched them hungrily, but he didn't leap on the raw flesh. The pemmican had filled him up a bit, especially with the water swelling it in his stomach - and it had taken him so long to chew and swallow it that he'd begun to feel full before he could gobble enough to hurt himself.

"A sword would come in handy for this sort of thing," I said.

"Remind me to make one right after dinner."

Gilbert looked scandalized at the idea, but our hungry guest said obligingly, "Make a sword right after dinner; are they done yet?"

"They've just barely started cooking." I rummaged in Gilbert's saddlebag, pulled out another strip of jerky, and pressed it into the man's hand. "Chew on that while you're waiting, Pavlov. Say, what is your name, anyway?"

"Frisson," the man mumbled through his pemmican. I nodded. "How'd you get into this fix, anyway? No, I don't mean attracting the hunger ghost - I mean getting so close to starvation in the first place?"

"Why," Frisson said, "I am a poet." I just sat still for a minute.

Then I nodded. "Yeah, that explains it, all right. But, I mean, you could have gone after a job. Woodcutter, for instance."

"The very thing," Frisson muttered, nodding as he chewed. "I have been a woodcutter, a plowman, a cooper's prentice, and a chandler's prentice."

I frowned. "Then why were you starving?"

"I could not cease chanting poetry."

Gilbert gasped, covering his mouth in alarm, and Gruesome edged frantically away from our guest.

I frowned around at them. "All right, so maybe his verses weren't the best, but they couldn't have been that bad. Does everybody have to be a critic?"

" 'Tis not that, Wizard Saul," Gilbert said. "For all we know, his verses may have been most excellent. True poetry, mayhap - yet he is not a wizard."

"What difference does that ... ? Oh!"

Frisson watched me, nodding as he chewed, and Gilbert said softly, "Aye, Wizard Saul. A poet's concern is for the words themselves, for the excellence of the verses and the manner in which they fit together to form a whole - not for their effects."

The poet turned to him in surprised, though masticating, approval. I nodded. "And if he doesn't worry about their effects, the images he creates in his verses may come to life as he chants, and-"

"Do untold damage," Gilbert finished for me. He turned to Frisson.

"What hazards did you unfold, poet? A juggernaut of doom rushing down upon the heads of the men in your master's shop? A corpse come to life in the coffin you were building? Wood nymphs slipping out to seduce the passersby, in the wood you had gleaned?"

Frisson hung his head, but he didn't stop chewing.

"The man's a walking catastrophe," I muttered.

"Oh, poor fellow!" Gilbert burst out, showing an unexpectedly sympathetic side to his nature that got the better of his healthy dread. "You have been cast out to roam the wilds alone!" The poet nodded; a tear trembled in his eye. "I have sought to prevent it, good squire. I have broken the meter into odd phrases with the accents reversed; I have used slant rhymes, broken rhymes, and no rhymes - yet all to no avail!"

"Of course not." I groaned. "You concocted new kinds of verse, and just made the magic stronger!"

The poet looked up at me, frightened. "Aye, my lord. The mayor's house did fly apart on the instant; my words did breach the baron's wall. I foreswore my verses; I bit my tongue; I ground my teeth against the words - yet all to no avail! I could not help myself; anon I shouted words aloud! They chased me from the town, they chased me from the parish, they chased me from the province - and anon they chased me from my native land of Merovence, to live or die in this wilderness of Allustria."

"But," I said. "But-but-" Gilbert looked up at me with a frown.

"We have only two pheasant and a partridge, Wizard Saul."

"But!" I shouted in exasperation. "But you don't have to chant your verses out loud!"

Frisson's jaw gelled, and he stared up, appalled. "I'd as lief stop eating, milord." Then he set to work chewing again.

"Write them!" I exploded. "Why don't you just write them down?

Your verses, I mean! Then read them over, and just don't recite anything that looks dangerous!"

Frisson stared up at me; his jaw dropped.

"He has never thought of it," Gilbert murmured.

"Aye, never!" Frisson burst out. "So that is why men learned to write! "

"Well, there were some other little things," I said uncomfortably, "such as grain inventories, and bills of sale, and laws, and history. But it works for poetry, too, yes."

"Can ... can you teach me?" Frisson begged. I just stared at him.

Then I said, "You're a poet-and you don't know how to read and write?"

"I had never thought of a need for it," Frisson confessed.

"Well! I've heard of the oral tradition - but I've also heard of departures." I wondered, uneasily, if I was witnessing the downfall of poetry, or the beginning of its glory. "Sure, I'll teach you to write."

After all, if I could handle two dozen freshmen, surely I could manage one starving poet.

Well, it helped. He understood it instinctively, took to it like a goose quill to ink. More likely, like graphite to paper; fortunately, I carried a pocket notepad and a stub of pencil. I showed him how to draw the letters, and the sound each one made. His eyes went wide with wonder; he snatched the pencil and pad from me, and in half an hour, he was sitting cross-legged by the fire, scribbling frantically in an impossibly small hand. From then on, as long as I knew him, he would be constantly writing in that book - he filled it in a day, but fortunately, one of his first poems was a wish for an endless supply of parchment - he didn't know the word for paper - and my little pocket notebook never ran out. On the other hand, after the first fifty poems, it started producing a much higher quality of writing material.

Nonetheless, sometimes some of his magic leaked out. Writing it down seemed to channel it safely, since he didn't speak it aloud-but when he didn't have time to write and suppressed too much poetry, he thought about it so intensely that the magic started working without his having to say it aloud. Sometimes we'd be hiking down the road, and his eyes would start bulging, and a bat would materialize by the roadside in bright daylight, or a gushing fountain would spring up right smack-dab in the middle of the path, or we would suddenly find ourselves walking on gemstones, and let me tell you, when the soles of your boots get thin, that's no picnic.

The first time it happened, I reined in my temper and turned to him with a sigh. "Frisson, you've got to stop and write it down."

"Eh?" He looked up at me, startled, then saw the glitter on the road. "Oh! My apologies, Master Saul!"

"No problem, no problem. Never can tell when we're going to need a little hard currency. Just So Frisson sat down by the while I knelt down and started you never could tell.

After a while, though, it got never knew when he was going ages. He never did, fortunately, front of us, too quickly for me to keep from smacking into it nose first, was almost as bad as the wolf I saw when I opened it. I slammed it fast. "Frisson! Write it down!

He did, and I showed him how to write as he walked. That helped - but hey, nobody's perfect.

I developed a streak of prudence, though, and I took to going through his day's output every evening, around the campfire; he was pathetically eager to have me read them and tell him how much I liked them - I was careful never to criticize partly because I knew how hard beginners take it, and partly because I just flat out didn't understand what he was trying to do. But I knew from experience that it worked, so I figured he had to be doing something right. I always enthused as I handed them back to him - but I kept the ones that I thought might be particularly useful. With his permission, sit down and write it out, okay?"

roadside and filled his parchment, filling my pockets. As I'd told him, to be a nuisance, especially since I to start using dragons as poetic imbut the door that appeared right in of courser had a notion that infringing copyright could have bad results, in this particular hallucination. I even memorized the ones that looked to have the most potential. As I'd told him, you never know ...

But that first evening, I needed a distraction; the first dozen verses he turned out, and proudly showed me, filled my head with such a clamor of acoustics and clashing of images, that I needed some mental soothing.

Of course, a philosophy student always has a distraction to handreasoning out arguments. It's risky, because sometimes you get so caught up in it that it keys you up even more, but under the circumstances, I figured it was worth a try. So I spent a half hour or so trying to rationalize my way out of having to believe in trolls or fairies, or magical spells that could have anything to do with either. It wasn't much use, of course - I kept coming back to the conclusion that either the evidence of my senses was unreliable, or what I had seen and heard was real.

Of course, it didn't take much to discredit sensory evidence, for a man of my generation. I seriously considered the possibility that I was simply stoned out of my mind, and all this was happening in a fantastic hallucinogenic trip - but I couldn't help remembering that I had sworn off all drugs for final exams - years ago.

Fortunately, there was an alternative. Bishop Berkeley had pretty much discredited the senses for us all, way back in the 1700s, by pointing out that if we don't actually see something, we can't really know it exists - and that even if we do, we could be wrong, because even if our minds perceive it, all they have to go on is the sensory impulses from our eyes and ears and nose and tongue and hands, all of which can be very easily deceived. Optical illusions are the most obvious example, of course, which is why science insists on measurement - but how're you going to prove, logically and completely, that the ruler itself isn't an illusion? He managed all this without knowing about LSD, too.

Of course, to Berkeley, the fact that we can't really know anything was just proof that we had to have faith-but to the rest of us, the idea that things don't exist if they're not perceived, and the corollary, which is that we can't know what's real because of the fallibility of our senses, just means that we have to live in the world as we perceive it, while we're trying to stretch the limits of our perceptions and raises the distinct possibility that hallucinations may just be the perception of an alternate reality, or two, or three.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," as the poet says, and there may be a lot more to the universe than we see, as Hamlet was kind enough to point out to Horatio.

I was faced with the unfortunate conclusion that both ideas applied to my current situation. The world I was perceiving was certainly real to all intents and purposes, and I had to deal with it as if it were, because it was certainly going to deal with me as if I were.

Dr. Johnson claimed he disproved Berkeley by kicking a cobblestone, presumably meaning that if the cobblestone flew away, he did interact with it, and therefore he and the cobble were both in the same frame of reference; what he failed to mention was that his toe hurt.

So did mine-metaphorically, at least. Gruesome would eat me if my spell slipped, and there might be a monster around the next hill who would sneak up on me in the night if Squire Gilbert nodded off while he was on guard duty. it might be an illusion, but it would hurt just as much as if it were real-so I was going to have to treat it as if it were totally authentic, or it might kill me just the same. But I wasn't going to believe in magic. Okay, some unexplainable things had happened, and they did seem to coincide with verses I'd spoken aloud-but coincidence was no doubt what it was, and the events were unexplainable only because I didn't know enough. I made a firm resolution to learn more about this strange-but-familiar world, and not to delude myself into thinking I was practicing magic.

But I decided to save Frisson's verses, just in case. I remember thinking, just before I drifted off to sleep, that I had stubbed my own toe.