The Witch Doctor

by Christopher Stasheff

  "The Ghost in the Machine," the breezy voice agreed. "Wherefore did you resent me?"

  "Not you," I said, "just having to prove that you didn't exist, when something inside me told me you did!"

  "Indeed I do, but only in this realm that defies all logic," the Ghost agreed.

  "Oh," I said. "So that's why you thought I'd come here some day."

  "Indeed," the Ghost agreed. "Do you still rail against reason, even as you practice it?"

  "Not really," I said with a smile. "Kant got me out of that."

  "Even so," said the large, egg-shaped guy who came strolling up. I looked closer and realized he really was an egg. " 'Tis even as I've said about words—only a matter of whether they will master you, or you will master them."

  "Right." I nodded. "Logic's just a tool. You can't let it run your life by itself." But I was bothered by the implication of his knowing my inner thoughts so well—was I really as much of a fence sitter as he was?

  Yes. I had that sense of balance.

  In the distance, I heard a long and mournful whistle, and a locomotive chuffed by drawing a train around a circular track, with so many cars that the engine was both pulling the tender and pushing the caboose, which was pulling it. I didn't have to look; I knew it had no driver. It was going faster and faster the longer it ran, and I looked away. "Say, you wouldn't know where I can find the Dinganzich, would you?"

  "It is not here," the Ghost lamented.

  "We have only its shadow among us," the Demon said.

  "No," I said with regret, "I was looking for the real thing. Next dimension, huh?"

  "Nay; beyond them," the Demon commiserated. "I fear, mortal, that what you truly seek is not here."

  "And probably not anywhere," I sighed, "except inside me after all."

  "Or in Heaven," one of the monks spoke up.

  I frowned, looking up at him. "Thought you guys didn't believe in that state."

  "It has many names," the monk explained.

  "Look, I gave up on trying to find God a long time ago."

  The monk shook his head. "Foolish. You must seek while you live, if you would find Him after death."

  But that had a false ring to it. "Next thing I know, you'll be telling me the Ultimate Buddha is in Heaven along with Jehovah."

  "Nay," the monk contradicted. "They are Heaven, and they are one."

  "One what?" I asked, then felt a chill pass over my back and into my vitals. I tried to chase it by saying, "You would think that way," but I shivered and turned to the Demon. "I think maybe I'd better get out of here. I'm not ready for this."

  "Will you ever be?" the cat mocked.

  But the Ghost said, "He may be, if he never leaves off seeking."

  "Yet for now, you have the right of it," the Demon told me. "Back to your Ordeal, mortal. Are you refreshed?"

  "Enough to last," I told him. "Could you send me back to just before sunrise at the end of the fifth night after you found me?"

  "Gladly," the Demon said. "Prepare yourself."

  "Hey, just a minute!" I said. "I almost forgot. This other guy in that universe—the one that you said knew about you, too. Who is he?"

  "He is Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. Do you wish to go to him?"

  It was tempting—but there was Angelique, and the need to get her body back. "No," I said slowly, "I'm just glad to know he's alive and well."

  "He is," the Demon assured me. "Now let us see to yourself. Lie back and relax, mortal."

  I did, closing my eyes.

  "Awake," the Demon's hum said right next to my ear. I opened my eyes and sat up—and realized I could sit up. Of course; I had spelled away the ropes. No reason to think they would have come back, was there?

  "Thanks, Demon," I said. "I won't forget you for this."

  I could feel an impulse to laughter somewhere around me, and the Demon's voice hummed, "I am rewarded in your mere existence, mortal, so long as you seek to remain poised on the cusp of paradox. Farewell, for the sun is rising."

  I looked toward the east just as the first ray pierced the lightened sky. "Goodbye, Demon," I said into the roseate glory of the new morning. "And thanks."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  They appeared as black dots on the face of the rising sun, then expanded hugely, seeming to zoom out of the ruddy disk: the duke, with a dozen of his men behind him. Most of the men carried shovels, but one of them was nice enough to be carrying a big water skin—probably for them, not for me.

  I debated whether I should play desiccated semicorpse, or just be sitting up obviously alive, well, and nonchalant. That last sounded suspiciously like bragging, but what the Hell, it was the truth, so I went with it.

  They loomed dark and darker until they were close enough to begin seeing features. That's when I sat up.

  They shied off like elephants confronting a lemming, and the duke took time for some loudly intoned verses in his archaic language, with a few mystic passes. I just sat there and watched, studying his technique—but I didn't feel anything, so he must have been working on de-ghosting a risen corpse. Wouldn't have any effect on me, of course, since I was still alive and in my body...

  The duke finished his gestures and chants, and his eyes widened when I didn't disappear or even waver. He came closer, very carefully, as if I were a rattlesnake that might strike any minute, the whites showing all around his irises. He edged up near enough for a close inspection, reached out toward me as if he were going to prod me to make sure I was really there, but said instead, "You live!"

  "That's my main occupation," I agreed.

  "He should be dried!" one of the boys in the back row muttered, with a quaver that would have done credit to a vibraphone. "He should be leather!"

  "I'm not feeling too chipper," I admitted. "But I'm still juicy."

  " 'Tis not unknown." You could see the duke was doing a quick revision on his estimates. "Yet those few who have endured till the second morn were feverish, seeing sights that mortal eyes seldom view..."

  I felt a chill; that sounded uncomfortably like the Demon's home. "They told you about that, did they?"

  "Some one or two who endured to reclaim life," the duke admitted. "Most have not lived to see a third dawn, no matter how gently we tend them, for they are the chattels of the god, look you..."

  The god? Suddenly I realized why this man's magic seemed to be halfway between good and evil—he was a pagan, and didn't realize the source of the powers he was drawing on!

  "...and surely none can speak of the holy sights they have seen, when we find them, for their tongues are swollen." A look of foreboding came over his face. "How is it yours is not?"

  I didn't see any reason to lie. "I conjured up something to drink."

  "That, I did sense—and did seek to block! How is it you were able to go around my wall, and without my knowing of it?"

  I wondered where he thought I'd brought that drink from—and I began to see what he was afraid I'd been doing. "I went away. I called up some friendly spirits, and one of them took me to one of those places your victims see, but can't tell you about. He and his friends took care of me and sent me back as you see me." I didn't figure I needed to tell him about the time shift; that would just have complicated matters.

  The man in the back row spoke up again, his voice trembling. "What spirits are these he can call upon?"

  "Be silent!" the duke snapped, so viciously that I knew he must be scared—and overawed, or he would have thrown a whammy at me. "In truth," he said to me, "you must be a far more puissant wizard than I had thought."

  I caught the subtext: he was afraid I was more powerful than he was. Maybe I could play on that. "I guess so," I agreed. "Things being as they are, maybe you'll go a step further than just letting me live, the way you promised."

  "What step is that?" He was braced for the worst.

  "A boat," I said. "Nothing elaborate—just a one-man craft, with a sail and a rudder. Say, about twenty feet long."

  He loo
ked startled, and another anonymous voice from the ranks muttered, "What will he conjure up to sail it for him?"

  Now, that was a thought. For a moment, I toyed with asking Sir Francis Drake or Christopher Columbus in for an excursion, but I decided they might be otherwise occupied. "I'll manage," I assured the duke. "You might put in a few goodies, too—say, a week's worth of journey rations. And water."

  "Oh, aye!" He nodded his head, most emphatically. "For one who has survived the Ordeal? Oh, most surely."

  You bet he thought it was a good idea. Get me out of his hair, for only a longboat and a week's worth of rations? Cheap at the price. For all he knew, I might have been sore enough to turn against him. Which wasn't that bad an idea, now that I thought of it—but I didn't have time; I had bigger fish to spear.

  "And speaking of water..." I glanced suggestively at the water skin.

  The duke snapped his fingers, and the water carrier hurried to the front with the skin. He started to hand it to me, then thought better of it and shoved it at his boss. Let him take the risks.

  "All praise to he who has survived the Ordeal," the duke said, presenting the skin as if it were a trophy.

  By extreme self-control, I managed not to snatch it; I only took it from his hands slowly, popped the cork, and shot a jet from it into my mouth, reflecting on the irony of cool wetness tasting so good, so soon after I had almost hoped I would never have to see another drop of it. I was going to have to be careful what I wished for.

  A couple of men-at-arms were very willing to push the boat into the waves for me, saving my legs from wetness at the cost of their own dousing. I could have done it myself easily enough, but if they wanted to honor me, I was willing to let them. I was beginning to realize the value of status and prestige in a world like this one. Besides, it helped them feel as if they were doing something to get rid of me. I let go of an oar long enough to wave bye-bye, then managed to catch it again before it had quite slipped away into the next wave. It was going to take me a while to get used to having just a couple of pegs for an oarlock.

  Nonetheless, I did manage to get the boat through the breakers and out beyond the bar—I could almost hear the soldiers snickering at my lack of seamanship, all the way out here. After all, on a little island like this, every able-bodied man must have started out as a fisherman or a sailor, even if he later became a soldier. They'd make fantastic marines.

  Out into the swells, I shipped the oars and hoisted canvas. I'd learned to sail in the summers, out of sheer boredom—when you grow up near the Great Lakes, you have all sorts of opportunities for water sports. So I managed to get the sail up and catch a breeze without capsizing. My wake began to foam, and I was off.

  Very quickly the wind picked up. I frowned, shivering and wishing I'd thought to ask the duke for a cloak, then glanced up at the sun.

  There wasn't much of it there.

  I glared up at the clouds, willing them away—but I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. The day had dawned clear and sunny, very sunny. If it was clouding up so soon, it could just be a storm front moving in... or it could be Suettay, out to have another try at drowning me. If I had another storm blow up, there wouldn't be any Frisson around to hand me magic verses. I'd have to try to lull it by myself—and I hated working magic on my own. It felt like surrender, somehow. Besides, I wasn't all that sure I could succeed.

  None of that! I reminded myself sternly. Defeatist attitudes wouldn't help. Besides, I didn't really need to make the storm go away—just manage to get safely to shore.

  Safely?

  A nasty suspicion budded in my head and blossomed into the full-grown conviction that the storm dying down just where it did hadn't been completely my doing. Suettay could have seen that I was going to win that round and kept wrestling just long enough to drive us onto the island, hoping that its xenophobic duke would do her dirty work for her, conveniently killing us off before we could do her any more damage. Maybe I hadn't won such a great victory, after all. Maybe it had really been a very deliberate conjuration by a very nasty sorceress.

  Of course, she might have been doing me a favor; as a ghost, I could no doubt have had a much better time with Angelique than I could as a—

  I clamped down on that thought, hard. That way lay suicide, and losing all hope of getting Angelique completely free of Suettay's machinations.

  Careful, there, boy, I warned myself. You're coming perilously close to admitting that magic works in the here-and-now.

  No. Absolutely impossible. A philosophical absurdity. Which, of course, was the point—magic was completely illogical.

  Completely?

  I reined in my thoughts, exasperated. When would I ever learn to stop making sweeping generalizations? They always had exceptions.

  Okay—so maybe this universe was one of the exceptions?

  I backed up against that one like a Missouri mule against an overloaded wagon. Somehow, I was constitutionally unable to accept the notion that magic might work, outside of a massively detailed hallucination. Possibly because if I allowed that it did, I would find it very hard to come up with a reason to avoid committing myself to one side or the other.

  Or to Angelique?

  Well, now, that was the advantage to being in love with a ghost. The vow, after all, reads, "Till death do us part," and death already had parted us—before we even got together.

  Somehow, that sounded pretty thin, but I held onto it.

  All right. Try something else then. And hurry, stupid—those clouds have grown awfully thick and awfully low, and that breeze has a definite taste of rain to it.

  Okay. I decided to suppose, just suppose, magic really did work in this world. How would I work my way out of this storm?

  All right, so I was cheating. I put that issue aside and decided to deal with it when I had time.

  Actually, I wasn't all that sure I wanted to get rid of the storm. Drifting without any wind at all wasn't exactly my idea of a picnic, either. If I could throttle it down, maybe, or direct it...

  Or both. After all, the nymph Thyme was supposedly nearby, on one of these Mediterranean islands. I decided to work from that.

  "So blow, ye winds, heigh-ho!

  To Thyme I wish to go!

  I've stayed no more

  On the Ordeal's shore,

  So let the music play!

  I'm off with the morning's gain,

  To cross the raging main!

  I'm off to see Thyme

  With a pack of rhyme,

  So many miles away!"

  The wind veered. I knew, because my sail swung about almost ninety degrees. It creaked as the strength of the wind bellied it out to its limit, and the wind sang in the stays—sure enough, the music played! I noticed that, just as a burst of spray drenched my back and shoulders. I yelped—it was cold! But that didn't matter, because just then a giant kettledrum boomed overhead and rolled all about me, and its owner pulled the plug. Rain sluiced down, not bothering with individual drops, and I was soaked to the skin. Shivering, too, and my canvas sail groaned. I hitched around, alarmed, to lower it—and my feet sloshed through a few inches of water. I stared down, feeling the first faint fingers of fear take hold as I realized I might ship enough water to sink.

  All of a sudden, I was in favor of half measures. A little thunderstorm can be a blast, when you can revel in the wildness of the wind and the power of the storm—but when it's all directed right at you, it can be a little unnerving. Scaled down, mind you, I would probably have loved it... if I'd had a sou'wester.

  What harm could it do? I tried.

  "So blow, ye winds, heigh-how,

  But not so hard as now!

  I've need of speed,

  But less, indeed,

  So slacken your gale-force blasts!

  My sail can't stand the strain!

  Slow down your wind and rain!

  I can wait for the tide,

  And Thyme can bide.

  Be a good stiff breeze that lasts!"

>   The thunder cracked and growled, and I could have sworn it cursed. But it faded even as it snarled, and the wind slackened. My sail groaned with relief, and the rain toned down to a heavy soaker with headstrong winds. I shivered and sneezed. Landing near Thyme's hideout wouldn't do me much good if I was dead of pneumonia when I got there, or even just delirious with fever. I thought of trying for that sou'wester, then rebuked myself for being greedy, not to say soft. What was a little rain, anyway? After all, yesterday I would have given anything for this. I gritted my teeth and held on.

  Over the waves that gale blew me. I lashed the line around a thwart and held on to the tiller for dear life. It wasn't too bad for the first hour, but then I began to get tired. It didn't help that I couldn't see too far in front of me, either—but after the second hour, my eyelids were drooping so much that it didn't matter terribly, either. How far could it be to Thyme's island, anyway? I thought these Mediterranean mountaintops came in archipelagoes.

  Finally, the sky lightened. The last thunderclap sounded far behind me, and the rain lightened to a drizzle. Not that I stopped shivering, though. Fortunately, the wind was still strong enough to keep my boat going into the waves, instead of veering crosswise; unfortunately, it was also hard enough to keep my teeth from chattering.

  Then I realized there was a dark blob on the skyline ahead of me.

  My spirits lifted amazingly. I tightened my weary grip on the tiller and grinned into the salt spray that doused me in the face. Relief was in sight.

  Relief swelled up mighty fast, too, the blob growing into something that filled most of the horizon. Almost too late, I realized that the wind behind the boat was going to keep driving me until I was right up on the shore—which would be just fine if there weren't any rocks in the way, but I heard a suspicious booming, dead ahead. I managed to pry my fingers loose, pulled my right hand off the tiller, and just barely got the knot loose in time. Then I hung on as the rope sizzled through my fingers so that the sail would collapse, not blow away. I yelped as the rough hemp burned me, then reflected that it was the first heat I'd had in hours. First too much heat and dryness, then too much heat and coldness! I longed for a happy medium.