The Witch Doctor

by Christopher Stasheff

  The boat slowed down just in time for me to notice rocks rising up to left and right, but I could see a narrow gap between them. I heaved and pushed at the tiller, just barely managing to slip the boat through without shoaling. Then I realized that there was a pole in the bottom of the boat. I caught it up and fended off the rocks on either side until, amazingly, they were gone.

  I turned and looked ahead to see the beach heaving toward me. I figured it was my boat that was doing the heaving, not the shore, and held on to try to enjoy the ride. Okay, after those rocks took out the worst of it, the surf wasn't anything you'd find on Malibu, but it was still enough to drive my longboat ashore.

  It jammed into sand, and I barely had enough presence of mind left to jump out, wade to the bow, and haul it onto the beach before the backwash could pull it out to sea again. Then another wave came along and pushed, and I gained another yard or two, enough to keep the boat secure from the next tug of receding water. I waited for the next wave. It came, I closed my eyes and threw my weight back against the boat—and it came. Easily.

  Too easily.

  I had to run backward to keep from being bowled over. I opened my eyes to see what had happened and saw a huge pair of hands clamped onto the far side of the boat, pulling. I kept pulling, too, as I followed the hands up arms like hawsers, to a huge and hairy chest with eyes like saucers at the top, looking down at me while a huge mouth curved open into a grin set with shark teeth.

  I stared up as my heart dropped down, trying to hide in my boot tops.

  Then I recognized him—I hoped. "Gruesome!"

  The grin widened even further, and his top half nodded eagerly. "Yuh! Yuh! Goosum!" And the huge arms crunched me up against his stony hide while his basso voice chirped, "Goosum so happy see Saw!"

  It was more of a croak than a chirp, actually, and he stank abominably. I made a mental note to teach him about bathing and squirmed around enough to gasp, "I'm glad to see you, too, Gruesome." And I was, surprisingly—after that stint in the desert and all that ocean, anything familiar looked good. Besides, he had saved my life once or twice, or had at least helped out.

  But that clinch was inching me uncomfortably close to those shark teeth. "Yeah, glad to see you. Uh... how about putting me down, Gruesome?"

  He started to, but hesitated with both huge mitts wrapped around my ribs, holding me up, and I could have sworn I saw a hungry glint in his eye. I was sure about the drops of drool glinting on his canines. They made him swallow, and it sure sounded as if he smacked his lips.

  "Down, Gruesome!"

  "Yuh, yuh! Down!" He finally lowered me till my feet touched sand, and loosened his hold. I twisted the rest of the way out of his grip with a sigh of relief, telling myself that I really hadn't had anything to worry about—but myself wasn't listening too well. "You won't believe this, but I'm really glad to see you. What're you doing here, though? I thought you were still on the mainland!"

  "Mainland?" He scowled.

  I decided that was better than the grin; it showed fewer teeth. "You know—Allustria? The place where I met you? Where we fought Sue... uh, the wicked queen?"

  "Queen! Uh-h-h-h!" He shrank away. "Queen found us! Shell men! Sharp!"

  Us? Had Gruesome somehow found the others? If so, I gathered that they had made it back to the mainland, but Suettay had ambushed them with a dozen or so knights—and panic stirred in my depths, assuming I had any. "Couldn't Frisson make them disappear?"

  "Yuh, yuh!" He nodded. "Got two! But shell men had spell man!"

  "The war party had a sorcerer?"

  "Yuh, yuh! Bad, bad! Stopped Fish-un's spells! Shell men hit him—boom!" He slammed one huge fist into the other for emphasis.

  I braced myself against the shock wave, then said, "You mean a couple of the knights knocked him out?"

  "Yuh, Yuh! Sleep! More shell men hit Gibbet! And me!"

  "I was wondering if you'd done any fighting." Frankly, I had difficulty imagining that he hadn't. I hoped he'd remembered that just because something's in a shell doesn't mean it's fair game for eating. "How many of them did you knock out?"

  "Two! T'ree! Five!" Gruesome held up one combination of fingers after another, and his brow furrowed at the immense task of counting.

  I decided to spare him the trouble. "You knocked out a lot of them, anyway. How come that didn't stop them?"

  "Spell man! Threw fire! Fire sticks! Hurt, hurt!"

  I got the message. The party's sorcerer had thrown lighted torches at Gruesome, thick enough and fast enough to drive him away. But that didn't sound like your garden-variety sorcerer to me. Alarm thrilled through me. "So they captured all of them?"

  "No, no!" Gruesome shook his head most emphatically. "On'y Angel!"

  "Angelique!" I yelped. "How could they capture her? She's a ghost!"

  "Bad spell! Bad, bad spell!" Gruesome shook his head to show how thoroughly he disapproved, scrunching up his whole face. "Held up jug! Skinny jug! Angel go skinny, too, and go in jug... Thhhhhwpp!" He made a sucking noise through pursed lips. "Shriek! Loud!" He clapped his hand over his ears, remembering. "Bad, bad!"

  Now the anger started. "Into a bottle?" I howled. "He said a spell that sucked her into a bottle? And it hurt her?"

  "Yuh, yuh!" Gruesome nodded. "Shriek!"

  Of course, she might have just been scared, but either way, I was mad enough to go turn that sorcerer inside out, even if I did have to work magic to do it—and even if he was more powerful than the average spell-caster. "Which way did he go? Where did he take her?"

  "No 'he'!" Gruesome waved his spread hands back and forth. "Changed! Like lizard skin! Not magic man, magic woman!"

  My heart sank. "Once Angelique's ghost was in the bottle, the sorcerer changed into Sue... into the queen?"

  "Yuh, Yuh!" Gruesome nodded vigorously. "Wanted Saw! Mad, mad!"

  "I'll just bet she was," I growled.

  It all made sense. Suettay had come out in disguise, expecting me to be with the party and knowing that once I saw her, I'd forget about everything else and just get Frisson working on immobilizing her spells. But with your ordinary infantry sorcerer, I would have put him on the back burner and set Frisson to knocking over the knights. Once she saw I wasn't there, she changed herself back into Suettay—especially since, by then, Gilbert and Frisson had been knocked out, and she'd driven Gruesome away.

  Which raised another issue. "You hung around close enough to see all this?"

  "All!" Gruesome nodded. "But couldn't stay, watch! Queen tell shell men kill friends! Couldn't watch! Shriek, run back, hit!"

  "Good troll!" I could just picture Gruesome thundering down on the knights again, bellowing in rage. "I'll bet they pulled back!"

  "Yuh, yuh! Shell men run! Goosum put Gibbet and Fish-un in boat! Queen shout, shell men run back! Hit, hurt! Gibbet and Fish-un wake up! Fish-un make spell, wind come, blow boat into water!"

  For him, that was a major soliloquy. It wasn't all that bad a job of reporting, either—I'd heard worse on the ten o'clock news. "They left without you?"

  "No, no! Queen throw fire, Goosum run into water!" He shuddered at the memory, and I could only think that there must have been a lot of fire, considering the troll's fear of water. "Gibbet pull Goosum into boat!"

  That must have darn near swamped it, but it sounded like the kind of foolish, gallant thing Gilbert would do. The incongruity struck me.

  So. They had reached the mainland right enough, but as soon as they had, they'd walked into an ambush. Suettay had looked in her crystal ball, or pool of ink, or whatever, and seen where they were going to land. She'd taken a band of knights and waited for my buddies to show up. When they had, the knights had descended on them, four overwhelming Gilbert while a dozen or so harried Gruesome, who harried them back—but then Suettay, in disguise, threw fireballs at him until he had to run, while a half dozen attacked Frisson. He got two of them with his spells, but the "sorcerer" knocked him out with a magic verse, then recited another one that pulled
Angelique's ghost, screaming, into a bottle. No wonder; the sorcerer was Suettay, disguised enough so they wouldn't be able to detect her. She was no doubt outraged to discover that I wasn't with the party, and headed back to her castle with Angelique locked up in the bottle. On the way out, though, she had thoughtfully ordered her soldiers to kill Gilbert and Frisson. That was when Gruesome had flown into a rage and charged from his hiding place, holding off the soldiers just long enough to drag Frisson and Gilbert back to the boat. Apparently the dragging brought Frisson around, reviving him just in time to call up a wind that blew them out to sea. Suettay had come back and thrown fireballs at Gruesome, driving him into his hated enemy element, water—but Gilbert had pulled the troll in at the last second, nearly swamping the boat.

  "Wait a minute," I said. "If that all happened on the mainland... what're you doing here?"

  "Big wind!" Gruesome made whirling motions with his paws. "Fish-un say queen send! Blew back toward land!"

  "The queen conjured up a gale to blow you back to her." I nodded.

  So did Gruesome, apparently delighted that I'd understood him so easily. I wished he weren't delighted so often—all those shark teeth made me nervous. "But Fish-un make spell! Wind change, blow from land! Goosum look back, see boat sink!" He shuddered. "Goosum see Goosum go into water!"

  "It was just an illusion," I said quickly, "like a dream."

  Gruesome frowned, puzzled; apparently trolls didn't dream.

  "Pretend." I struggled to explain a concept. "Something that wasn't real. Like a story, only you could see it happen."

  His eyes widened, and his mouth formed a saw-toothed O.

  "You know it didn't really happen," I pressed the point, "because you're really here. It was just a fake Gruesome that drowned—like a picture."

  He nodded, faster and faster, O turning back into a grin. "Then wind blow, land go away. Then wind go away, too. Gibbet push boat."

  I had a sudden vivid vision of Gilbert getting out to walk on the water, pushing the boat in front of him like a wheelbarrow—but of course, Gruesome only meant that Gilbert had rowed the boat. "Didn't Frisson take a turn?"

  Gruesome nodded. "Short."

  "No staying power," I agreed, "but I'll bet he got back into shape fast. Didn't he try to raise a wind?"

  Gruesome shook his head. "Queen might know."

  So Frisson had been afraid to whistle up a wind, because Suettay might have detected it and realized they were still alive. I gave him points for foresight, but subtracted them for underestimating his opponent—I wouldn't be surprised to find out Suettay had seen through his illusion.

  A nasty suspicion occurred to me. "Did a new wind start up?"

  Gruesome nodded, staring at me in amazement.

  "Same thing happened to me," I assured him. "And it blew you here?"

  "How know? How know?" Gruesome bleated.

  "Just a lucky guess." I had remembered that I had told the wind to take me to Thyme. Apparently, this was where she lived. I had twisted the wind to blow me here, but I needn't have bothered—Thyme was keeping an eye out for any boat that came close enough to puff into her trap. My friends' arrival on this island was no accident, either. I had a sudden image of a spider again, but this time, it was a black widow. "So where are they? Frisson and Gilbert, I mean."

  Gruesome started to answer, then shrugged helplessly and pointed inland. "In woods. In cage."

  "Cage?" I stared. Jail? Frisson and Gilbert? A nearly-knight and a nouveau wizard? "How?"

  Gruesome shrugged. "Woman."

  "They were captured by a woman? Okay, I can understand that—I guess. But what kind of spell did she use?"

  "No spell." Then Gruesome frowned, reconsidering. "Maybe spell."

  " 'Maybe spell'?" I frowned. "How can you have a 'maybe' spell?"

  "Fish-un and Gibbet see woman. She smile. Gibbet turn red, start shaking, go hide. Fish-un big-eyed, come to her. She lead him into cage. She chase Gibbet into cage."

  So. She hadn't needed any magic, other than her own sweet self—or sweet body, I amended; the self was yet to be determined. Just the ordinary magic that any beautiful woman has naturally, or can learn.

  Well, I was armored against it. I'd been worked over by champions and had accumulated some thick layers of scar tissue around my heart in the process. Any time a pretty woman started giving me the come-hither look now, all I had to do was remember what the other ones had done to me, and the beautiful lady suddenly seemed much less enticing. Okay, so maybe I had lost out on a good one that way, but I didn't really think so—experience had shown me that every time I'd fallen in love with a woman who turned out to be good, she tactfully and gently let me know it wasn't mutual. I attracted neurotics and sickies, women who wanted to use me for their own twisted purposes, and the Hell with what it did to me.

  What can I say? Like will to like? I hated to think that. But if it was true, all the more reason to stay single. Which I had.

  "Thyme," I informed Gruesome. "The woman's name is Thyme."

  "Time?" Gruesome asked, frowning. "Day? Week?"

  Well. I hadn't known he had grasped the concept. Apparently the spillover from that spell I'd thrown at Gilbert had done more than I'd known. I felt a chill, wondering just how much else Gruesome knew that I didn't know about. "You might be right," I conceded, "but I thought she was named after an herb. After all, she's a nymph."

  "Nimf?" Gruesome screwed up his face in trollish concentration.

  "A nature spirit," I explained, "a personification of fertility, or at least sexuality. She's not really human, she's supernatural—and, thank Heaven, can't leave this island. She's tied to the plant whose life energy she embodies."

  That was too much for the poor troll. He just shook his head, looking frazzled—or shook the upper part of his torso, anyway. "Like Saw say. We go break cage?"

  "We can try," I said slowly, "but that brings up another question. Did you try to break them out?"

  "Me try break!" Gruesome nodded with vigor—something like bowing. "She touch cage, and cage bite Goosum. Jump back and fall—plants tie 'round feet!"

  "The cage bit you?" Then I remembered that was how you explained an electric shock to a toddler. Thyme had touched the cage, and it had given Gruesome a jolt. "Was the cage made of wood?"

  "Yuh! Wood! Sticks!"

  So. Anything made of plants, she could use to work magic. I laid a bet with myself that the "sticks" were still alive, plants that she had just told to grow into a huge box. "And while you weren't looking, the grass tied itself around your legs?"

  "Yuh! Legs! Arms, too, after fell! Try get up, grass pull me down! Roar!"

  He gave a sample, letting loose a bellow that shook some nearby rocks and left waveforms in the sand. I winced and reminded myself to conjure up some mouthwash for him. "How'd you get loose?"

  "Woman tell Goosum go stay near water, watch for Saw. Find him, eat him!"

  "Saul!" I stared. "Me?" How the hell had Thyme known I was coming?

  Exactly. Maybe she had a message from the Other Side.

  Or maybe she had asked Frisson. From what Gruesome said, he was so besotted he would have told her anything. Of course, he also would have told her that the moon was made of green cheese, if that was what she had wanted to hear, but she seemed to have overlooked that possibility.

  Then the rest of what Gruesome had said percolated through to my undernourished brain. Something about if I showed up, he was supposed to have me for dinner. I swallowed thickly and looked up at him. Was that a hungry gleam in his eye, or was I just imagining it?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I wasn't imagining the drop of saliva that hung on his lower lip, but Gruesome was always drooling, anyway... at least, that's what I told myself. Myself wasn't really listening, though—it was paying too much attention to the cold, trickling dread that was pooling in my midsection. I started talking, slowly and soothingly, but getting faster and louder as I went. "Gruesome. This is Saul speaking. You know, Saul
? The nice guy? Your buddy? The one who always lets you have time off to go hunting? Who stopped the nasty sorcerers who were throwing whammies at you?"

  Gruesome nodded, but he still looked hungry. A huge slab of tongue lolled out and smacked around his mouth in a circle, cleaning up the drool with a sucking sound that lanced from my ears straight through my gizzard down to my boot soles. I talked faster.

  "Gruesome," I said. "You remember the fairy folk? The ones who put a spell on you? That you would never eat people again?"

  Gruesome frowned—apparently, it was a less-than-pleasant memory—but he nodded.

  "And remember the spell I laid on you?" I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I had to take the chance.

  "Spell." Gruesome nodded. " 'Member. Yuh."

  "Those spells make sure you can't eat me, or even try to be mean to me," I reminded him.

  "Spells no good no more," he informed me. "Time woman do something. Goosum no feel spells hold him back no more."

  Alarm thrilled through me, five alarms with all the fire trucks already gone. The nymph had something to do with time, indeed. She had reached back into Gruesome's personal past somehow, countering the fairies' compulsion spell and my own binding spell. I started to edge away. "Uh... you aren't really all that hungry, are you, Gruesome?"

  "Plenty hungry," he assured me.

  Frantically, I tried to remember that binding spell.

  "But Goosum no eat Saw," he explained. "Maybe yummy, but friend. Saw save Goosum, Goosum save Saw. If eat, no have friend."

  I heaved a sigh and began to relax a little. Gruesome had realized that you can't have your friends and eat them too. "I—I'm really glad you had that insight, Gruesome."

  Gruesome shrugged, somewhere up above his face. "Food plenty. Friends few. People yummy, but deer yummy, too. And sheep and bunnies. Even fish."

  And, of course, there was no shortage of finny dinners in the vicinity. Cautiously, I asked, "Eaten any good fish lately?"