I looked up at Gruesome, frowning. "I thought trolls weren't scared of anything."
"One." Gruesome nodded vigorously. "Found it."
"And you banished it, Wizard." Gilbert looked up at me, the whites still showing all around his eyes. "Nay, you have certainly cleared our pathway! Have you disbanded them so quickly, then?"
" 'Dismembered' may be more like it," I answered. "You'll pardon me if I don't go back to check."
"Aye, certes." Angelique looked down from where she wafted around Gruesome's shoulders, eyes huge. "And what monstrous apparition was that which you did raise against them, Wizard Saul?" Being a ghost, she had a professional interest in the question.
"That's a long story." I sighed. "And a very old one. I'll tell it to you some time—but right now, I think we'd better reset the guarding circle that Gruesome broke when he came out to help me. Thanks, old monster..."
"Help you?" Angelique looked up, ready to fibrillate.
"That's another story," I said quickly. "I thought you wanted to hear the one about the monster while we wait for daylight."
"Aye, but..."
"Then we'd better get busy." I pulled out my can of talcum powder and stepped over to the break in the circle. Angelique drifted after me anxiously, but by the time she caught up, I was deep in, mumbling the spell. When I finished, I looked up brightly and said, "Okay. Anybody want to hear?"
Angelique's protest was drowned out by noisy concurrence from Frisson and Gilbert. I glanced around and saw that even the troll was looking mildly interested. I relaxed and took a deep breath. "Okay. Now, once, long ago and very far away, a hero named Hrothgar built him a hall, hight Heorot..."
And for what was left of the night, they sat up around the camp fire listening, eyes growing larger and larger as they heard the wondrous tale of the hero Beowulf.
What with one thing and another, we weren't in the world's greatest shape for traveling when we broke camp and buried our fire the next morning. We made it until noon, but when we saw the gleaming castle in the distance, sitting on top of its mound in the middle of the plain with bright banners flying from its turrets and the midday light glistening off the white stone of its curtain wall, I couldn't resist it.
"Just a little farther," I coaxed my friends. "We'll ask for hospitality there, and if they say yes, we'll be able to rest in peace and security."
"Aye," Angelique said, "for surely no one evil could live in so fair a fortress!"
But Gilbert didn't look convinced, and Frisson said, "Can any who are not evil hold a castle in Allustria?"
But Gruesome grinned from one side of his face to the other and chortled, "Food!"
"Yeah, but just grain, okay?" I looked up at him nervously. "No gobbling up the castle horses, now—we don't want to eat out our welcome."
"Goosum be good," he promised, and we pressed on to our new short-term goal with renewed vigor.
As we came up the slope, though, I frowned. "Odd. Drawbridge down, banners flying... but not a soul in sight."
"Mayhap they are all gathered in the bailey for some purpose," Frisson ventured.
"Surely they would have left sentries at the walls!" Gilbert expostulated.
"Well, we'll find out soon enough." We had come up to the drawbridge's edge. I called out to the little slit windows in the gatehouse, "Is anybody home?"
A face with a steel cap showed at one of the windows. "What wish you?"
I let out a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Hospitality. We are wayfarers who seek a night's lodging—and we are of gentle blood."
The face looked up a little above my head. "He is not."
I looked around. "Who, Gruesome? No, he's a troll, but he's friendly."
"I doubt the castellan would countenance his entrance," the porter called back. "He must stay without until the lord of the castle has spoken—but the rest of you may enter."
I stood rigid for a moment, then hissed to my friends, "Maybe we'd better look for a different campground."
"Mayhap," Gilbert said.
But Angelique, unseen, said, "You could do well with a soft bed and a strong wall about you for a night, gentlemen, and the troll will not fret."
"Goosum hunt!" the troll averred.
"Well..."
Frisson's eyes were feverish. "A real kitchen, with true food! A dinner of any other thing but journey rations!" He turned to Gruesome. "Surely you would not feel neglected, would you, good monster?"
Gruesome shook his head—or the whole top half of his body, whichever way you wanted to look at it. "Goosum no trouble!"
Well now, that could have meant that he wouldn't be any trouble if we took him into the castle, or it could have meant that it wouldn't trouble him to be left outside, but I chose the latter interpretation. "Okay, Gruesome, you wait out here. Go hunt a boar or something. We'll see you in the morning. Sooner, if the lord of the castle has a change of heart."
Gruesome nodded affably and turned away toward the nearest woods.
Somehow it bothered me, having him out of sight, but I reminded myself that I was probably safer that way, anyway. "Okay, he's taking a hike," I called up to the soldier in the little window. "Can we come in now?"
"Aye! The drawbridge is down, and the keep awaits you!" he called back, and disappeared.
I turned to my companions. "Shall we, friends?"
We went through the gatehouse, Angelique glowing visibly in its shadow—and the skin on the back of my neck prickled, expecting a volley from the little windows all along both sides of the passage. But nothing happened, and we came into the bailey.
" 'Tis fair enough," Frisson said.
It was. The courtyard was bare in the center but with a broad fringe of grass, where a few horses were grazing contentedly. They wore only bridles, but they were big—knights' mounts. Smoke came from some of the buildings against the wall, with cooking odors from the kitchen range and the steady clang of metal from the smithy. Both of them relaxed me a little more, though it still seemed odd not to see anybody around.
"No doubt they are all inside." Frisson sniffed the delicious aromas and smacked his lips. "Come, friends! To the keep! Must we not present our compliments to the lord and his lady?"
"Yeah, I guess that's the correct protocol." But this time, I let Frisson take the lead.
We walked across the courtyard to the tall, round building that was the keep and went through the doors at its base—into total gloom, in which Angelique shone brightly again. Frisson stopped with an exclamation, and Gilbert came through last, looked about him, and growled.
" 'Tis a ruin!" Frisson cried.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far." I prowled past him, looking around. "Structurally, it's in good shape."
"But 'tis filthy, with the dust and dirt of a century at least!" Angelique protested.
It was. A little light came in from two small windows high up on the walls, enough illumination to show us a huge round room with fat pillars holding up the ceiling—and huge cobwebs that stretched everywhere there was a right angle. A few of them were new, with active spinners busily mending tears or rolling flies, but the others were lank and ropy, thick with dust. The floor wasn't much better, coated with humus that had once been moldering straw. Broken benches and tables poked up here and there, and I could see the remains of a few camp fires, where wanderers had spent the night.
"But how could it be?" Frisson protested, visions of a good supper fleeting away. "The outside is so fair, so well kept and well tended!"
"Wherefore would they neglect the keep?" Gilbert looked about him, frowning. "Do not the lord and lady live here?"
The answer hit me like a thunderbolt. "No, they don't, and they haven't for fifty years or more! The place is deserted! Somebody just tidied up the outside to lure us in!"
"But who would go to such great labor?" Gilbert cried.
"What great labor? It just took a little magic! And I'll give you three guesses who uses magic on that scale! Out of here, folks!" I tu
rned and headed for the door.
Just a second too late. A howling war cry cut loose all around us, waking echoes that the old hall hadn't even known it had.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Soldiers came charging out from behind the pillars. Around the edges of the room, knights stepped out from doorways, clanking down on our little group.
Gilbert's sword was out before I'd noticed. He swung it with a bloodthirsty howl, as I snapped my staff up to guard. The squire chopped into a helmet, used the rebound to slash at a belly, and snapped the sword straight ahead to fend off the oncoming soldier. But a huge net fell from the rafters to enshroud him. Gilbert roared and flailed at the net with his sword. He managed to cut a few strands, but more of them entangled the sword.
I howled in anger, yanked out my knife, and sawed at the mesh, trying to free my friend—but soldiers crowded me from either side, and I had to turn to dodge a halberd and lunge at its owner. The soldier yelled with pain and went down under the feet of his comrades, and a pike head jabbed at me from the side. I managed to parry, then remembered I was supposed to be a wizard and frantically tried to think of a verse. Difficult, because I was also dancing around the guardsmen, trying to leap in to cut at them and get out before a sword or halberd hit me. Worse, I was distracted by the sight of Angelique, almost a whirlwind of gauze, swishing across a trooper's eyes long enough for Frisson to thwack him with his staff.
Angelique undulated in front of another trooper long enough to make him stop in his tracks. The man behind him jarred into him, and the two of them turned to fighting each other with shouts of anger. Angelique sped away, flitting through the attackers, causing havoc.
Frisson fought gamely with a staff, though he was clearly getting the worst of it.
A bellow split the air, and the soldiers drew back in fright, for a behemoth strode into the fight with teeth and claws. "Gruesome!" I shouted with relief. The monster must have heard the sounds of the fight and come running back to get in on the pounding.
Then some sixth sense warned me, and I spun around. Someone had managed to get behind me, and a weighted club was swinging down toward my sinuses with a fully armored knight behind it. I took a breath to rattle off a verse, but the club swooped down to fill the world, a huge pain exploded at the side of my head, and I didn't get to see how the fight came out.
The murk cleared enough for me to see something gleaming. I blinked, focused, and saw shining, pale-yellow teeth curving upward in a grin. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head—and immediately regretted it; pain wreathed my brain in fire. I groaned, clutching my poor fevered pate and squeezing my eyes shut.
Something nudged my shoulder, none too gently. "Look up, Wizard! Ere I cut your lids from your eyes!"
There was a certain gloating quality to the words, one that made me think the speaker would just love an excuse to carry out her threat. I gritted my teeth and forced my eyes open. The murk, mercilessly, had fled, forcing me to see the smile in context—and the context was pretty repulsive. In fact, it was Suettay's face.
I winced and turned away, hoping for a better alternative.
There was an alternative, all right, but whether it was better or not was decidedly moot. We were in a dank stone chamber, filled with wicked-looking instruments that I vaguely recognized: an iron maiden, thumbscrews, and beside me, several racks. On one lay Frisson, bound hand and foot. Beside him, Gilbert, who was awake but groggy, and sitting up. Gruesome was missing. Oddly, I felt a spurt of relief—at least one of us had escaped the ambush. Then anxiety reawakened in the wake of the thought, and I hoped the troll wouldn't be so fanatically loyal as to try to rescue us. After all, what could he do?
On the other hand, I was a bit more anxious about Angelique.
In fact, she was my prime worry, because she was here, too—in the flesh! Although now that I looked at it, the body's chest was still, none of the gashes were bleeding, and it was deathly pale.
Deathly...
Suettay had put her corpse in with us.
Outrage hit me. How dare Suettay save Angelique's mortal clay like a trophy?
Or was it for some other purpose?
Suddenly, I remembered what the witch-queen had said about preserving Angelique's body, and why. I found myself really hoping my favorite ghost wasn't in that room with us... but I was very much afraid she was, and in some condition I couldn't detect.
No way around it—I decided I'd have to recognize that we were in real, genuine, bona-fide predicament, and no matter how ugly it was, I was going to have to face it. I turned back to Suettay.
The queen saw my resignation and laughed, a sound like a truck trying to roll with a broken bearing. I sighted and reevaluated her—when you got right down to it, the queen was a very ordinary-looking fat woman, if you didn't count the cruel glint in her eye or the gloating, eager smile on her glistening lips.
A scream scoured the air. I turned frantically to my companions, and was hugely relieved to see that none of them had made the noise. It did, however, jerk Frisson rudely back to consciousness, staring about in instant panic. Suettay laughed again.
I turned to look at her and was amazed to see that the queen wasn't looking back. In fact, she was looking off to my right with rapt fascination, nodding slowly and grunting. "Good, good. Again, again!"
Sure enough, the scream split the air once more, and Suettay's eyes glistened like a connoisseur regarding a Picasso—or, I revised it, like a voyeur watching a pornographic movie. I turned to follow Suettay's gaze, puzzled.
I turned away again, as quickly as I could. I could tell from the sounds that my companions had made the same mistake.
Suettay, apparently, watched torture for fun.
Fortunately, the victim wasn't anybody I knew. I wondered if the poor man had done anything to deserve torture, or if Suettay's soldiers had just grabbed the nearest passerby.
The queen turned toward me, grinning from ear to ear. "Do you not find this pastime amusing, Wizard?" She said the last two words with so much sarcasm that they might have cracked under the load.
But I was in no condition to notice; I was fighting a rising gorge. "Uh, no thanks, Your Majesty. That's more like my idea of work."
The torturer giggled as he turned some minuscule device, and the prisoner screamed again.
Suettay's face reddened on the instant, engorging with rage. "Do you think yourself so much better than me, then? Torturer!" She waved at the official. "Release the prisoner! We will save the rest of his agony for a time of proper leisure!" Then, to two apprentices standing by in leather loincloths and black masks, "Seize this churl and lay him on the table!"
In the middle of the apprentices' giggles and my friends' cries of outrage, all I could think, as they unstrapped me and hustled me over to the table, was that at least I'd spared the poor peasant some pain.
"Fight, Wizard Saul!" Gilbert shouted. "Do not let them doom you without a struggle!"
But I didn't have any time to fight—I was too busy thinking up verses.
The torturers slapped me down on the table. Very effective; it knocked the breath out of me long enough for them to put the shackles on. Then the main torturer advanced, grinning over a glowing branding iron. I tried to forget it was for me and started to mutter—but the torturer nodded at an apprentice, who stabbed the ball of my thumb with a fat pin. I yelped, the verse going completely out of my mind. But it reminded me of another one:
"By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes!
Open locks, whoever knocks!"
The shackles sprang loose with a clatter, and I bounded up, stiff-arming the torturer as I passed. "Sorry, but I don't really have time today, I have an appointment with—"
Gilbert and Frisson shouted approval, but the queen stared, appalled; whatever she'd been expecting from me, that hadn't been it. Her face darkened then, and she barked, "Seize him!"
Two guards jumped me and slammed me back down on the table. Suettay gave a
curt nod toward the rest of the captives, and other guards backhanded them both across the mouths. Frisson reeled back down, and Gilbert recoiled.
Anger filled me, for which I was thankful. I glared at the queen, who laughed with vindictive pleasure as the torturer came back with the heated iron, its glow dulled to a sullen red. He moved it slowly toward my forehead, his gloating grin growing again.
I stared at the horrid, glowing pentacle, as fascinated as I was horrified, trying for the life of me to think of a verse—and I did.
" 'Tears are for the craven,
Pleading for the clown,
Halters for the silly neck
That cannot keep a crown.'
He was taken prisoner,
He was cast in thrall,
Iron, cold iron,
Is master of them all!"
The iron star cooled amazingly, its glow dimming to blackness as it neared. The torturer cried out—was that fear, or just disappointment?—but Suettay's hands moved in some odd pattern while she snarled something with a heavy meter in a tongue I didn't know. The star glowed into brightness again, not just red, but white-hot. The torturer's grin grew back with it, and I just had time to realize that Suettay had been expecting some sort of cooling spell, before the heat of the iron seared my whole face, then passed beyond my sight, and pain, bright liquid pain, worse than any I had ever known, shot outward from the center of my forehead, drowning out all other sensations—my friends' shouts of horror, Suettay's victorious crowing, my own scream.
Gradually, the pain diminished until the things I saw could register again, though my whole head was still wrapped in agony, and my whole spirit quailed in total, abject, gibbering fear. I could hear Suettay soothing, "Softly, softly. Pain on pain will yield no gain; he will not feel the pins, while he's curled in agony from the iron."
Good advice, and I realized the smart thing would be to keep screaming and pretending I was delirious—but I saw Angelique's bruised corpse; Gilbert, a bruise darkening on his cheek; and Frisson, crumpled against his rack, blood trickling from the hand cupped over his mouth.
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