He turned up his bill. "Most can. It's the rare dilemma that can't find resolution with a quick disemboweling."
"If you'd care to go and disembowel yourself," suggested Gwurm, "go right ahead. We'll just stand here and watch."
"I don't see you coming up with any solutions."
Gwurm shrugged. "Alas, I'm mostly a problem basher myself."
Newt grinned smugly, finding vindication in Gwurm's admission.
Soulless Gustav may have finally come up with a trial to end my quest. I pondered if death by effigy qualified as horrible. I didn't think so, but there was an undeniable awfolness to the paradox the sorcerer had put us in. We could either sit here forever or go and meet our deaths.
"You're the witch," said Newt. "You're supposed to handle obstacles of this sort. Don't you have any ideas?"
"Perhaps I do. Stay here."
"Where are you going?" asked Newt and Wyst simultaneously.
"To have a talk with myself."
I walked forward, and my effigy moved to meet me in the center of our arena. When she got closer, I observed a flatness in her. She seemed not quite three-dimensional, and when we came within scant feet, I noticed a shiny quality, almost as if she were made of colored glass.
Penelope slipped from my hand. She angled a threatening tilt at her duplicate.
I greeted my effigy with a slight smile. "Hello."
She remained expressionless. "You should never have come. You should have left Fort Stalwart to die." She didn't possess my voice. Hers was a dry monotone, neither high nor deep, and lacking anything in the way of character.
"Is that me or Soulless Gustav speaking?" I asked.
"You. Or rather the you that finds reflection in me."
"If you are me in any fashion, then you know I couldn't do that."
"I am more you than even Soulless Gustav intended." And she smiled though only for a moment.
It made perfect sense. The sorcerer's power was at its most dangerous but also its most vulnerable. My effigy was so well constructed that it carried some of my own magic. Once again, his false world was tainted with reality.
"But I was still made to kill or be killed," she said, "and I must do what I was made for."
"That, I know. But I also expect that as my effigy, you know how I can destroy you."
"I do, but why do you think I would tell you?"
"Because witches don't lie, and I think you are enough my duplicate that you don't either."
She looked into the angry sky in a slight display of independent movement. "But we often don't tell the whole truth."
"Yes, but it is a witch's trade to offer wisdom."
"Even to her enemies?"
"Especially to her enemies."
We shared a chuckle, even if hers was a lifeless, empty chortle.
"The answer is obvious," she said.
"Most answers are."
"You know the solution already."
"I expect I do since you do. But your counsel would be appreciated."
"And if I should trick you?" she asked.
"Then I would perish with pride for what could be a greater accomplishment for any witch than to be tricked by herself?"
She smiled. "But yours is to be a horrible death."
"One doesn't necessarily exclude the other."
We turned away from one another.
"We are made to die, and we die easily." My effigy arched an eyebrow. I assume she did, since I did. "Beneath the right hands."
Penelope returned to my hand. "Thank you."
"No need for that. You have only yourself to thank. And Soulless Gustav for being perhaps too great a sorcerer."
I returned to my companions, and she, to hers.
"Well?" asked Newt.
"I think I told myself what we must do."
"You think? You aren't certain?"
"Certainty is for death and fools."
I'd used the line before, but I felt it appropriate to the situation and worth repeating. Then I explained what we were to do.
Newt was skeptical. "That's it? That's all?"
"Yes."
"But we'll still be killing them."
"No. We'll be destroying them. We may be reflections of one another, but we are true while the effigies are false. Even in this land of glass and shadow, the magic knows the difference."
"And if you're wrong?"
"We die."
A flutter filled my chest. I didn't fear death, but I wasn't ready to face my end quite yet. I glided to Wyst's side. He was so intent on the effigies, he didn't notice. I reached up and put a palm against his dark face. And I kissed him. On the cheek. As close to his lips as I dared.
Newt gasped.
Wyst pulled away from me. Only a step. He placed fingers where I'd kissed him. He didn't smile, but he didn't frown either.
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I might be wrong."
I almost apologized, but I didn't regret it. Neither did Wyst, I thought. Though the mark on his forehead dimmed momentarily, his chastity remained intact. The kiss hadn't damaged his virtue. White Knights lived by a strict code, but even his enchantment couldn't fault him for a kiss he hadn't asked for.
I led my companions forward, and we stood before our effigies. We drew close, but we didn't touch. The first contact between us would free our doubles to move on their own and begin a battle we couldn't win.
Newt lowered his head and eyed his double. "How are we going to test this theory of yours?"
My reply was a swift, hard kick to his rear. The effigies duplicated the maneuver among themselves. Newt popped into the air and landed on his back. His effigy exploded in a puff of feathers.
Newt, the true Newt, remained whole, though with bruises to his bottom and ego.
It had worked. The effigies were intentionally fragile phantoms, but they could only be killed by the hands of their originals. Yet they could be undone by turning the sorcery that had created them against itself. The pile of feathers around an agape bill was proof of that.
"Are you mad?" Newt growled. "What if you'd been wrong? You could've killed me."
"You are my familiar. It's your duty to die for me."
"That's true, but it's supposed to be a bloody, violent death. Not demise by booting."
"That's not your choice to make."
"I'd prefer it."
"I'll see what I can do."
Their weakness exposed, the effigies were simple to undo. The could only mimic whatever actions we performed, and they expired easily. The only curiosity was that each passed in its unique fashion.
Penelope smacked Gwurm between the eyes barely hard enough to be felt. The troll's effigy's head caved in like a hollow rind and its entire body shriveled into a wrinkled skin. Wyst nicked his horse along the shoulder. The effigy dissolved into a watery gray puddle with bits of fur floating atop. I bent Penelope with light force. My double snapped her broom and shattered the effigy into crystalline shards.
The last two, Wyst and mine, were to destroy themselves together. Wyst put his sword to my belly in preparation.
I turned to my effigy. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. This is what I was made for, and though my existence was brief, at least I knew its purpose."
Wyst drove his blade through my abdomen at the same moment I struck a hard slap across his cheek. His duplicate's head popped off. The decapitated body fell over, leaking a putrid white puss from the neck, and with a wide, unwitchly grin, my effigy dissolved into nothing.
"I still don't understand how that was different from killing them," said Newt.
"You don't need to understand. Would you mind, Wyst?"
He pulled his sword from my stomach. A foot higher and an inch to the right, he would've pierced my heart. But the hole in my belly, even delivered by the man I loved, was a minor ache to my undead flesh.
Wyst wiggled his jaw. He'd known my slap was coming, and I suppose that made it honorable. Honorable enough to leave a small discoloration on his cheek.