The Witch Doctor

by Christopher Stasheff

  But I felt a strange, vagrant wave of amusement that almost seemed to blow through me like a breeze, and I had to turn away fast to escape Frisson's long and thoughtful gaze. "Come on, troops. We've still got a long day's hiking ahead of us."

  But we couldn't have been hiking down that trail for more than ten minutes before the roadway exploded in front of us.

  The explosion kicked up a geyser of dust, and there stood the wicked queen herself, shrieking pure venom, her rolls of fat shaking with rage. "Vile invader! Your meddling has cost me five minutes' agony, hot irons searing all through my body! My master has punished me shrewdly for letting another soul escape damnation—and has commanded me to obliterate you and your friends! Yet first, I shall see you suffer as I have suffered!"

  But it wasn't me she threw the first whammy at, it was Frisson, stiff-arming a gesture that twisted as it stabbed while she bellowed something I couldn't understand.

  Frisson screamed and fell, writhing.

  I shouted,

  "For the unquiet heart and brain,

  A use in measured language lies;

  The sad mechanic exercise,

  Like dull narcotics, numbing pain."

  Frisson relaxed with a groan of relief.

  "Meddler!" Suettay yelled. "Rogue! Villain!" Yes, I did detect a note of panic there, a note of fear.

  Of me?

  No. Of her master.

  "Mendacious mendicant!" she screeched, then added some syllables in the Latin-like language, winding up to throw me down.

  I took a deep breath for a counterspell, hoping I'd think of one in time—but on the inhalation, I felt something pressed into my palm. Looking down, startled, I saw some chicken-track lines scrawled on a scrap of foolscap. The misspellings were horrendous, but they were being viewed by a volunteer tutor who had fought his way through many a Freshman English paper, and I managed to catch the gist of it at a glance. I called out,

  "Wicked old queen, come losses or gains,

  Here is the verse to bring you fear:

  Go hand, go foot, till naught remains—

  Gone with the snows of yesteryear!"

  Suettay began to disappear, from the feet up. She howled in frustration, then lifted her arms to throw another whammy—but they disappeared, too. She screamed in full rage, face darkening and as ugly as I've ever seen, as her hips and abdomen faded. Then, unfortunately, she remembered herself and screamed something in the Old Tongue that made her arms reappear; they wove a quick, unseen symbol as she screamed another verse, and all of her reappeared just as it had gone, but much more quickly. Even as her nether parts were returning, she was winding up another verse that she belted out, hands rolling over and over each other, and a six-foot dragon leapt from them to charge roaring at us.

  Gilbert gave a shout of joy and leapt in front of all of us, stabbing in low and jumping back. Ichor spurted from the dragon's chest, and it bellowed in startled pain, swerving to pounce at Gilbert—but the squire leapt aside and chopped horizontally, shearing off a bat wing. The dragon screamed, whirling and lashing out; steel talons cut through Gilbert's mail, and blood slicked the metal. The squire clenched his jaw and chopped again, a roundhouse swing that clipped the beast's head off its sinewy neck.

  We all cheered.

  But Suettay was chanting again, gesturing wildly, her volume building toward a crescendo.

  I gulped. "It's gonna be a big one."

  "Can you not hinder her?" Angelique pleaded.

  "Frisson!" I snapped. "Any more verses?"

  The poet shook his head, huge-eyed. "Naught but an old song comes to mind, Master Saul, a child's bit of nonsense."

  "Try it! Anything, right now!"

  "As you will." Frisson shrugged and started singing.

  "As I went down to Darby town,

  'Twas on a summer's day,

  There I beheld the biggest ram

  That ever was fed on hay!

  That ever was fed on hay!

  That ever was fed on hay!

  When this ram began to bleat, Sir,

  The thunder, it did break!

  When this ram began to walk, sir,

  The earth began to shake!"

  A deep, dull, thrumming sound boomed through the air, and the earth beneath us heaved and settled. Then the sound and the earth tremor came again, and Suettay shrieked in anger and fear. I risked a peek.

  A wall of wool blocked out the sun a hundred yards distant, supported on legs that would've shamed a sequoia. I craned my neck back; up, way up there, a hundred fifty feet up, floated a huge head with magnificent, curled horns the size of a highway cloverleaf—and sure enough, there were eagles circling around them. "Must be nesting season."

  But Suettay was still shrieking. "What magic is this, that I've heard naught of?"

  "Ethnomusicology," I called back.

  But her attention was on the ram, and with good reason—it was ambling toward us, and with legs that size, ambling was high-speed. "What hell-begot monster art thou," Suettay cried, "that comes thundering down on this poor rotted world!"

  "Nay, speak not of Hell!" The ram's voice was a rumble in the Earth's crust. "I am begot of the core of the world, a child of magma! What art thou, tedious gnat, that would wake Darby's sleep?" The ram advanced, the earth trembling in sine waves with his footfalls. "For he who'd wake the ram must die, ere I can sleep again!"

  Frisson turned pale as milk. It was borne in on me that I had roused an elemental.

  "Nay, it was he!" Suettay shrieked, finger spearing toward Frisson. "Pounce on him, jelly him! For 'tis he who waked you!"

  "Is it thee?" The ram swerved a fraction of a degree, glowering down at Frisson. "Aye, for I see in thy face that only now dost thou see the danger thou hast waked!"

  Damn good eyesight, I noted; there was maybe three inches of Frisson's head showing, from the ram's angle. But, the hell with the risk—I couldn't do anything cowering, and it was my asking that had nudged Frisson to sing the song. I stepped forward, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in my belly and the way my knees wanted to wobble, and claimed the responsibility. "It was I who bade him do it, so it was I who waked you!" I felt a dramatic surge coming on. "Beware, mountain mutton! For I can slay you forever with the breath of a song!"

  Hey, it sounded good, right?

  "Dost thou threaten me?" the ram thundered in enraged disbelief.

  I bellowed back at him, "Aye, I do threaten! Therefore beware, and do as I bid thee! Slay this foul witch!"

  "Eh, would you dare?" Suettay shrieked. "Heed him not, mighty ram, but turn to slay him! For know that I, too, can slay you!" And her hands began to weave an invisible net, while she chanted,

  "Earth, give bellow; fire, blast!

  Vomit molten rock and ash!"

  I didn't wait to hear any more. Queen or not, if that witch was going to be fool enough to open up a volcano under the ram, it could kill all of us. I grabbed Gilbert and Frisson and threw them to the ground, yelling at Gruesome, "Duck! And after the boom is over, run for your life!" I was only glad Angelique had no body to hurt.

  A flue opened, and a jet of ash shot out, but the ram stepped on it. The earth shook a little, and he set another foot down; the earth quieted.

  Suettay just stared. Then she let out a screech that had some syllables in it, arms windmilling madly. A sudden whirlwind kicked up a lot of dust and stray ash, then dispersed and settled—and she had disappeared.

  "Can we rise now?" Frisson asked around a mouthful of grass blades.

  "Uh... yeah! Sure." I stood up slowly, staring at the spot of meadow where Suettay had been.

  "Why, she is gone!" Gilbert said, amazed, as he stood up again.

  "Yet I remain!" the ram thundered, still quaking toward us. "Once I am waked, I cannot sleep again till my waker lies buried!"

  "Wait a minute!" I barked. "Remember that spell I told you about!"

  "Wherefore ought I chance it?" The ram was fifty yards off now, and coming fast. "I shall crush thee ere
thy lips can form the words!"

  "I wasn't kidding." But I backed up as fast as I could. "I know just the verse for the occasion." But my blood ran cold; I was bluffing.

  Frisson stared at me, amazed. "How so, Master Saul? I know the same verse!"

  "Then sing it!" I yelled.

  "Aye, do so," the ram thundered, only a dozen yards off.

  "I hate people who call my bluff." Actually, the verse was "Didn't He Ramble": "...he rambled till the butchers cut him down." But when it came down to it, I just couldn't stand to see something as majestic as that sheep converted into a mountain of ram chops—not if there was a choice, anyway. So I passed the buck and hoped like fury that Frisson hadn't been bluffing, too. "Frisson! Sing it! Quick!"

  The poet started chanting,

  "You who were waked

  From a century's sleep,

  In a place dark and timeless,

  Unfathomably deep,

  Return to the slumber

  From which you were waked!

  Return, and go quickly!

  Your blood-thirst is slaked!"

  It was working. The ram towered closer, only twenty feet away, and he filled the world—but his outlines were wavering, and the curls of his wool were blurring together.

  He covered ten feet with each stride, though.

  Somehow, Frisson kept it soft and lulling.

  "Sleep, for your great eyes do close!

  Sleep, as the years and the centuries go!

  Lulled in the magma that rocks you so slow,

  Sleep where only the All-Father knows!"

  The ram was a mountain, a McKinley, an Everest—but it faded off into the sunlight at the edges, and its body was growing translucent. And it yawned.

  I added my two cents' worth.

  "Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,

  Smile while sleeping, never rise.

  Sleep, mighty ram, and make no cry.

  Rock him, rock him, lullaby!"

  Frisson and Gilbert joined me for a chorus: "Rock him, rock him, lullaby!"

  The great hoof swung up for the last ten feet, growing thinner as it came. It lifted high over my head. I held fast with every thread of determination I had, frantically singing, petrified, rooted to the spot, staring up at the great dark circle that seemed to fill the sky. It poised, then slowly came lower—but I could see the clouds through it quite clearly, it faded to barely an outline as it dropped down, an outline that encircled our heads...

  And was gone.

  And a vast, distant thunder echoed, fading away, half angry bellow, half yawn. It reverberated over the land for what seemed a thousand miles, and was gone.

  I let out a very long and very shaky breath, then turned to Frisson. "Fantastic job, Frisson!"

  He was still gazing at the place where the ram had been. "It was, was it not? 'Twas truly my verses that effected this!"

  "It sure was." I turned to Gilbert. "How bad is it?"

  "Naught but a scratch." He looked very happy, eyes glowing with pride. "I have slain a dragon, Master Saul! A small one, but a dragon natheless! I have actually slain a dragon!"

  "You sure did, and we're your witnesses," I affirmed. "You didn't hesitate for a second. If that doesn't prove your worth, what could?" I turned back to Frisson. "But where'd you ever learn that word, 'magma'?"

  "Why, the ram himself did say it," the poet answered, "did say he was a 'child of Magma.' Who is she, Wizard?"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The day passed without any further incidents, thank Heaven, and we set up camp in a nice, wide-open river meadow. The most menacing wildlife in sight was a convention of spiders, and I was getting used to them. They seemed to be more and more abundant the farther we went back into Allustria—sort of a comment on Suettay's housekeeping, I supposed. In fact, there was a web on every bush around the campsite, flickering with the reflections of our firelight. There were circular webs, triangular, strands of gossamer between branches; every sort any arachnid architect ever thought of trying. Their builders ran the gamut, too, from humble little brown things, up through the medium-sized spotted ones, to the huge, wide-as-a-quarter specimens like the one that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. I glowered at them with transferred resentment, but I couldn't really blame them for what one of their mates had done. On the other hand, I didn't have to let them inside my guarding circle, either.

  I suddenly realized that I was beginning to regard them as good company and decided I had definitely been here too long.

  Not that I could do much about it. If this was an LSD trip, it wasn't wearing off—besides, I hadn't been dropping any lately—and if it was a dream, I couldn't figure out how to wake up. I had pretty much decided to take the pragmatic approach to the whole problem of being in a world that couldn't exist. Illusion, dream, hallucination, or altered state of consciousness coming from my maybe being hit by a car and lying in a coma—it didn't matter; I was going to have to treat it as if it were real. Magic might have been only another part of this dreamworld, but within the context of the illusion, it worked, and it could hurt me just as badly as a revolver in my own world. I was going to have to treat it as if it were real.

  Not that I was going to have to work any magic myself, of course. I didn't have to admit its existence that thoroughly—not as long as I had Frisson. Let him write up the spells, let him be the magician. So what if I was the one who read them aloud? That was just oral interpretation.

  Hypocrite? Who, me? I was simply making an emotional adjustment necessary for psychological survival.

  I took first watch, since I didn't feel much like sleeping with all that speculation going through my head. It didn't keep buzzing around very long, though, because Angelique was sitting there, unsleeping, just outside the range of the firelight, her form glowing in the night, her eyes glowing at me. I smiled in return, then closed my eyes, pretending to go to sleep.

  I couldn't, of course. My favorite fantasy had come true; a beautiful young woman was head over heels in love with me, and I couldn't exactly be indifferent to that—couldn't just dismiss it and yawn, even if she wasn't anything more than a part of a very detailed hallucination—and even if she was just a ghost. Of course, pure love shouldn't care about bodies, but I'm afraid mine wasn't all that pure.

  It also wasn't love. At least, I wasn't in love with her... or so I was trying to persuade myself. At least, I knew it wasn't real, just the result of a slip of the tongue, so to speak, a rhyme snapped out without due forethought, in a place where verse had a far more potent effect than it had any right to. And I knew da— darn well that Angelique wouldn't have been in love with me if I hadn't accidentally come up with the wrong spell.

  But what could I do? Tell her that to her face? I couldn't quite summon that much cruelty. Besides which, she probably knew already, but was still in love with me; knowing it was just the result of a binding spell didn't make any difference to the way she felt. No, all I could do was to try to spare her the pain of a phony romance, by not letting her know how I felt—but that was definitely becoming harder, with Angelique sitting there watching me adoringly, looking almost mortal in the darkness.

  Then all of a sudden, she wasn't.

  I mean, she was still watching me—but she was coming apart at the seams. Then even the pieces were coming apart, shredding into a hundred tatters, and her eyes had glazed, no longer seeing, no longer aware.

  It didn't take much to figure out what was happening. I sat bolt upright, calling, "Angelique! Baby! Pull yourself together!" Then I snarled at myself for losing my poise and forgetting to make it rhyme. I racked my brains for an integral verse, but all I could come up with was a variation on "Danny Boy":

  "But come ye back, all bits of ectoplasm!

  Reintegrate, all shreds of lady fair!

  Remain you here, in firelight and shadow,

  One integrated whole, with those who for you care!"

  Okay, so it was doggerel. What do you expect, on the spur of the moment? But i
t helped—a little, at least. The tatters and shreds stopped moving. They hung suspended in midair, so that it seemed as if Angelique had just expanded to take in a bit more volume. I racked my brains again, trying to think of a verse that stressed reintegration and harmony of disparate elements—but a voice behind me called out,

  "Oh, come back together,

  All bits of my bonny lass,

  Pull all together, rejoin and tether!

  Be all of one, in mind and in body!

  Go not to pieces, go not so early!

  Stay!

  With those who care for thee,

  Care for thee rarely!"

  Well, Frisson certainly had learned how to do odd things to rhymes and meters! But it worked; the tatters that were Angelique began to pull themselves back together.

  Astonished, I whirled and saw Frisson sitting up in his blanket roll, sorting frantically through the scraps of verse he'd been scribbling since we pitched camp. I felt stunned—but I forced the feeling down and turned back to the rope in my magical tug-of-war.

  She was looking a little more solid than before... but even as I watched, she was shredding again. Grasping at straws, I called,

  "Tarry, rash lady!

  Am I not thy lord?"

  No, I wasn't, and Angelique wasn't growing any firmer, either. The bits and pieces of her ectoplasm were still drifting away from one another, their form only vaguely resembling a woman's now. After all, the couplet hadn't rhymed—but at least she held steady for a minute.

  Long enough for Frisson to thrust another verse into my hand, I gave it a quick glance, then read it aloud:

  "Thou art too long awaited,

  For thy presence to be 'bated!

  Tarry, lady, stay awhile,