The Witch Doctor

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by Christopher Stasheff


  "An odd choice of terms." The Spider King frowned. "Yet they are nearly as true as to say that the men of God guide us away from the road to Hell and seek to set our feet on the path to Heaven. And as they do for men and women, so may they do for the government by clerks."

  "A spiritual adviser for a bureaucracy?" I frowned. "I'll have to think about that, Your Majesty. I'm not convinced a bureaucracy has a conscience."

  "Why, then, 'tis a beast, and not a soul, and may be purged and goaded without compunction! You have but to find your emetic and your prod."

  "Now wait a minute!" I held up a hand. "It's made of human beings, after all!"

  "Who need to be governed in their own right," the king returned, "and justice meted out, even to those who mete out justice."

  "Who shall watch the watchers?" I hazarded.

  "Nay," Frisson said. " 'Who shall govern the government?' "

  "Be mindful!" The king raised a forefinger. "If they are humans, may not another human be their conscience? For is not a 'conscience,' after all, but the wisdom to preserve one's own soul?"

  "Recognizing one's ultimate good, even if it means a temporary or apparent loss?" I frowned. "Interesting notion. But even human consciences need to be made aware of the pain and disaster that befall those who stray."

  "Then make them so aware! Find some device that will punish the clerk who strays, and will make his plans of malice go awry!"

  "Why," the Gremlin chuckled, "that can I do."

  The Spider King bent his frowning gaze upon the monster. "I am sure that you can—but have you the self-denial to withhold your mischief when a clerk does rightly?"

  I stared. "You two know each other?"

  The king looked up, amused. "Whence did you think he came, Wizard?"

  "We are both outside the universes," the Gremlin explained, "and flit from one to another, as need or inclination dictates."

  I found myself wondering about the forms of angels—or disguises.

  "What is this?" Gilbert demanded. "What shall the monster then do?"

  "Why, as I will," the Gremlin answered. "Does a clerk write out a writ of foreclosure? I shall make it go astray. Does a reeve set out a warrant? I'll make sure the writing's changed ere the bailiff comes unto the victim. Does the chancellor seek to withhold reward from one who has toiled long? Does he seek to imprison one whose only fault is aiding those in danger? Does the king himself seek to draw and quarter one who would resist him, or to exile a saint on a desert isle, for no offense but that of lending comfort to souls in misery? In a sieve I'll thither sail!"

  "And, like a rat without a tail," Frisson murmured, "he'll do, and he'll do, and he'll do!"

  I clapped a hand over the vagabond's mouth. "Hold it, boy! You were coming perilously close to poetry!"

  "Let him versify; he cannot cause havoc here, where we are beyond the laws of any universe," the Spider King said.

  I took my hand away, and Frisson beamed with glee.

  "Yet before he speaks," the king said hastily, "we must confer on ways of confounding your vile tyrant. The Spirit of Disorder will beset his clerks..."

  "With effects that are comic and tragic," the Gremlin murmured.

  "So much the better; you may then make these puffed-up clerks to see their own fallibility, thus restoring to them some measure of humility."

  "Mayhap I shall even make them to laugh at the absurdity of their own vanities and strivings after dross!"

  "Ah! If you can, if you but can! Then might they see themselves as they are, and see how petty are the goals for which they strive!"

  "It would destroy them!" the Rat Raiser said, ashen-faced.

  "Mayhap; but out of this crushing of the soul, they may emerge with some truer view of life, and greater inclination to labor for the common weal."

  "Yet that cannot be," the Rat Raiser said, frowning, "for each clerk, in the end, labors for himself."

  The Spider King wheeled toward him. "We have each the need to labor for something greater than ourselves, friend, so that we may feel less alone, and feel our lives to have worth."

  But the bureaucrat only frowned, not understanding.

  I didn't blame him. I couldn't help thinking that this Spider King had an awfully idealistic view of bureaucracy.

  The Gremlin clapped his hands and chuckled. "We shall craft a bureaucrat's bane! Ah, what fun! I have not had so grand a time for eons! I have grown rusty, I have grown stale!"

  "We're going to pit entropy against perversity, then?" I asked.

  The Spider King nodded. "It may not succeed in great measure, since the one is but an aspect of the other..."

  "Oh, no," I said softly. "That could be very, very effective."

  "Devastating." The Gremlin chuckled. "If an enterprising spirit doth move the confrontation."

  "And on this kind of issue, you can be very enterprising, right?"

  "Just so!"

  "So much for Suettay's ministers." The king dismissed them with a wave of his hand. "They may be rendered benign. Yet how shall you deal with the woman herself?"

  That brought me up short. I spread my hands. "Confront her and try to match magics with her, I guess—and hope I've got better verses."

  The king shook his head with certainly. "That way lies disaster. You must enlist a power greater than your own, that together you may be more than the sorceress-queen."

  I frowned, instantly suspicious. "How do I do that? Pray?"

  "Nay." The King beckoned, and I came over to the archway with him. Looking down, I saw an azure field ringed with green and tan, and with a fleck or two of green in it. With a shock, I recognized the Mediterranean.

  "Yon lies the world of Merovence and Allustria," the Spider King murmured.

  I wondered how he had locked in the view of that one universe from this nexus. I began to realize why the man was called "the Spider King."

  "There is a man who is bound for sainthood, though he knows it not." The king's arm reached past me, pointing at an island in the Aegean. "There, where Circe beguiled the men of Odysseus, dwells a nymph named 'Thyme'—and the sorceresses of Suettay's guild have kidnapped the saintly man and placed him there, within the bondage of her spell."

  "What a way to get to sainthood! I take it he's having a good time?"

  "Nay. His spirit's sorely tried, and he is racked with the hot irons of desire, for he will not yield to the nymph's blandishments. He knows that no man can serve two masters, and that love is a most demanding one—but he chose Christ for his master long ago. He seeks to do Christ's work, aiding the poor and friendless, and therefore will not yield unto the nymph."

  "Wholeness," I murmured. "Integrity. The unity of his spirit."

  "Even so. Yet from his enduring struggle, his soul has gained strength tenfold—and it was a mighty spirit ere he came there. Folk said that he worked miracles of curing, and of producing food, but he denied it. Yet if any man can give you strength 'gainst Suettay, it is he."

  "A veritable treasure," Gilbert mused behind him. "How shall we know the man?"

  "By his sex—he is the only male on the island—and by his habit."

  "Habit?" The squire frowned. "Is he a cleric, then?"

  "He is—a monk, of the Order of Saint Louis, one Ignatius by name. And you will find him a source of strength in other conflicts, too; he may even rekindle the ideals of the clerks."

  "If he can do that," I murmured, "he can work miracles."

  "And so, away!" The Spider King clasped my arm, turning me around and propelling me toward another archway. "Yonder lies your path! Together, now, and off upon your quest!"

  "Hey, wait a minute!" I tried to backpedal, but the king's grip was surprisingly strong, and I found myself gliding over the smooth marble floor in spite of my efforts. "How are we going to get hold of you if we need help?"

  "You will not—I will maintain touch with you! Each separate one of you is now at the end of one of my threads; you are all caught within my web! When you doubt it, find a momen
t in a place of stillness, and you will feel my power! Now, Godspeed! And may your patron saint stand by you!"

  I tried to stop, but I skidded through the archway, and my friends came tumbling after me with shouts of alarm, tumbling after me into a warm, clinging darkness that enveloped us, rocked us, soothed us...

  And vanished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The trees crowded in on us, towering up to form a roof overhead, lowering down with an ominous susurrus. I swallowed against a knot of apprehension deep in my throat and glanced back at my companions.

  They were feeling it, too—some lurking presence that did not want us there.

  Fortunately, we had the Gremlin along to chase the baddies away. "Uh... you sure you know where you're going?"

  "Of a certainty, I know!" Then why did the monster look worried? "I am going to the bower of the nymph Thyme!"

  "Uh... right." I frowned. "Did you, uh... have any idea what route we were going to take?"

  "As I told you, we follow the sun. If it is before us in its course as it arcs dawn to dusk, we go aright."

  I glanced back at my friends, noting Angelique's apprehension and the Rat Raiser's angry glower. "Right. Say, uh, Gremlin? We haven't been able to see the sun for six hours now—not since we got kicked out of the Spider King's palace and found ourselves in this forest."

  "Do you doubt me?" the Gremlin challenged. "Could I go astray without wishing it?"

  "Just what I was going to ask."

  "Mayhap the wood itself wishes to mislead you," Angelique suggested quickly.

  The Gremlin halted and heaved a huge sigh. "You have said it, maiden, and I think you may have some hint of truth in that saying. Nay, we have lost our way."

  I frowned. "Of course, it couldn't just be that you think it's fun to help travelers get lost."

  "Not when I am one of them! I swear, Wizard, 'tis no doing of mine!"

  I winced and glanced around me. "Please! You swearing anything strikes me as extremely hazardous!"

  "We must forge ahead," Gilbert said grimly. "We shall come to naught if we do naught."

  "There's a certain sort of sense in that," I agreed. "Onward, mes amis!"

  "If the way 'onward' doth reveal itself," the Gremlin grumped; but he started forward again.

  An hour later, I called a halt again. "Okay, we've been watching the light on the trees, and it has always stayed on their fronts... but I'm sure I recognized that birch tree at least three times!"

  "Why," the Gremlin growled, "how can you be sure it is the same tree?"

  "Because this is a deciduous forest, mostly oak and ash, and that's the only birch tree I've seen. Also because the markings on its bark have twisted themselves into a gloating leer."

  Everybody turned and looked at the birch tree. " 'Tis true," Gilbert said. "In the center of the trunk, the blackbird marks have shrunk into eyes, and the one beneath has widened into a grinning mouth."

  The Gremlin stamped up to the tree. "At what do you laugh, white-face? Do you dare?"

  It must have been the wind in the branches. The tree couldn't really have been laughing.

  "I submit," I said, "that the queen knows where we are and has placed a spell on this forest to keep us going around in circles."

  "But she thinks that we are dead!" Angelique protested.

  "She must have developed suspicions and looked in her crystal ball."

  "Not likely," the Gremlin said, coming back, "for no crystal can see into the palace of the Spider King, unless he wills it, I would as lief believe the forest was enchanted in antiquity, and all who dwell nearby do know to avoid it."

  "Could be." But I glanced aside, distracted. "Frisson, what are you doing?"

  "Only toying with a stick." Frisson snapped up straight, hands going behind his back.

  My scalp prickled. "Why do I get the willies when you start playing around? What's the game, Frisson?"

  "Oh... naught but this." Frisson took the stick out from behind his back—three sticks, actually. One was a section of a tree trunk, like a flat table; the other was a peg, going through a hole in the center of the long one.

  "What does it do?" I asked suspiciously.

  "I recited a verse in praise of the Pole Star," Frisson explained. "It will always point to the north, now. Just an idle amusement, of no worth—"

  "No worth, he says! He just invented the compass, that's all!" I went around behind the poet. "Lead on, Frisson! As long as that stick is pointing toward us, we're going south!"

  Frisson looked up, pleased, then started off into the forest again. The Gremlin followed at the end of the line, grumbling.

  Another hour later, I called a halt again. "Okay. No luck. We've gone in a straight line according to Frisson's compass, but here's that blasted birch tree again. I've got half a mind to blast it for real."

  A long moan sounded.

  I glared at the tree. "That got you, didn't it? Gonna let us go, now?"

  The moan came again, drawn out and quavering.

  "Saul," Angelique said, "it came from our left, and the tree is to our right."

  I looked up, frowning, peering off into the underbrush. Sure enough, the moan came again... but it was coming closer. "Everybody step back!"

  The moan came loud and clear, and a gnarled, bent old woman tottered into the clearing, hurrying as fast as she could, glancing over her shoulder in terror.

  That bothered me—badly. "What's chasing you?"

  "My death!" she cried. "Away, fool! Or would you catch the pox that does infest me? Then Death will dog your footsteps, too!"

  Everybody edged back, including me—but the rational part of me took over. "You can't run away from Death, lady, you have to stop and fight him."

  "Do you think my master would give me power to fight Death?" she screeched. "Fool, thrice a fool! When Death has taken me, the Devil shall have me! Begone!" And she tottered straight toward me.

  Reflex took over. I stepped aside, saying, "If you repent, maybe I can heal you."

  She stopped dead—as it were—in front of me, and those old green eyes pierced me to the marrow. "If you can heal me, do so now!"

  "You've sold your soul," I pointed out. "I'm not a priest or an exorcist, just a magician." One of us was, anyway. "My magic can't work on you as long as you're in Satan's grasp."

  "Then I repent!" The panic suddenly broke through, and the woman sank to her knees, hands uplifted in prayer. "Lord of Heav... of Hea... Lord above, save me! I know I am unworthy, for all the evil I have done—but let this foolish magician save my raddled hide, and I shall never work evil again!"

  Something rattled in the shadows. I glanced at them apprehensively and held out a hand toward Frisson. "Pox."

  "I have searched it." Frisson pushed a piece of parchment into my hand.

  I held it up and read it.

  "Smallpox, cowpox, all are healed!

  French pox, East pox, marks annealed!"

  That inspired me; I added a couplet Frisson couldn't have known about:

  "Spirochetes be rent asunder!

  Germs of raddles, be plowed under!"

  Whatever was rattling in the shadows stopped.

  The ex-witch looked up, amazement lighting her face—and even as we watched, the hideous marks of the disease were fading. " 'Tis true! I can feel the sickness leave me, feel the fever abate, my strength reviving!"

  "It might not last," I said, "if you don't get to confession. You're out of Satan's power, but not very far out."

  "Aye! I must seek out a priest without delay!" She scrambled to her feet and headed off into the forest, her thank-you floating behind her. "I cannot bless, for I am too sodden with evil—but I thank you, kind strangers!"

  A sudden inspiration hit, and I leapt after her. "Which way to the nearest priest?"

  "South! He lives in a village in the plain beyond these woods!"

  "Follow that witch!" I shouted to my friends, and we all pelted off through the forest.

  The sun was nea
ring the horizon as we came out of the forest and saw the plain, rolling away under a huge expanse of sky. Even from the edge of the forest, we could see the roofs of three little villages. Between, the flatland was a jigsaw puzzle of small fields, divided by hedges.

  The nearest town was maybe half a mile away. Sunlight glistened off whitewashed adobe houses. "The priest lives yon!" The old witch pointed toward the smallest hovel in town. "Oh, how deeply I rejoice that I put off and put off the bearding of him, and the slaying of him for the queen!"

  So she had been an official. A nasty thought occurred to me. "You didn't maybe put a spell on that forest so that anybody trying to get through it would get lost, did you?"

  "Aye. It protected me from those who sought to hurt me; they could not find my cottage. Farewell, kind strangers! When I am shriven, I shall bless you! I shall sing your praises throughout the land!"

  I felt the old familiar chill again. "I'd really rather you didn't. I'm working on a low profile here, you see, and—"

  "Ever shall I trumpet your virtues!" she cried. "So wise and merciful a wizard is deserving of glory! And when I'm shriven, I shall bless you with my every breath!" She went tottering off to find a priest, and absolution.

  I turned to the Gremlin. "Narrow thing, that. You wouldn't have had anything to do with her catching the pox, would you?"

  The monster grinned, showing a lot of snaggled teeth. "I did not happen by here so many years ago as that, Wizard."

  "Just wondering. By the way, which way to the nymph's house now?"

  "Yon." The Gremlin pointed due south.

  "Yon it is." I sighed. "But only until sunset. We're still in hostile territory, and we'll need some time to pitch camp."

  "Shall we never leave Suettay's country?" Angelique sighed. "It was so great a blessing to be free of her, in the palace of the Spider King!"

  "I'm afraid she knows we're still alive now," I said with chagrin. "I shouldn't have cured that last witch."

  "Nay, you should have," she said quickly, but her eyes were huge with trepidation in the shadows.

 

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