Shea gave back, almost slipping on a spot of blood. Busyrane came leaping nimbly after, slashing. The big sword, half seen, whirled in a continuous snaky blur. Shea parried, parried, backed, parried, and parried. The wall was against him.
There was no time even for ripostes against this demoniac attack. Shea took the last refuge of an outmatched fencer; leaped into a corps-а-corps and grabbed Busyrane around the waist with his free arm.
The magician seemed made of rubber and piano-wire. One hand clawed at Shea’s face. Shea ducked and buried his face in Busyrane’s cloak, trying to trip him. The magician fumbled for a dagger. Shea reflected that the weapon was probably poisoned.
But just at this moment Busyrane was jerked backward, dragging Shea to his knees after him. Shea threw himself back and up. Then he saw what was the matter with Busyrane. Around the archimage’s neck was clasped a pair of large, knobby hands. Just that and nothing more. Around the room, above, flitted a dozen more pairs of those disembodied hands, swooping at the throats of the enchanters.
Shea lunged. But Busyrane was made of stern stuff. He got the hands loose, his own sword up, and came back with a low cut. Shea lunged again. The magician, groggy from that strangling grip, had strength enough left to beat off Shea’s remises and one-twos. Shea tried a coupé and one-two and felt his point go home. He held his lunge, stabbing and stabbing.
Down went Busyrane. Shea looked around, The windows of the hall were jammed with the bats and owls and things into which the magicians had changed themselves. They were beaten. The knobby hands clustered around them, tearing off wings and wringing necks with fine impartiality. The lights flared up again. It was all over. Dead and dying monsters about the great hall changed back into men. Cambell, Artegall, and Britomart picked themselves up from the floor, slowly and with effort. Cambina drooped against the service door, almost fainting.
Artegall’s deep voice boomed: «Ha! Lives one yet?» Shea turned to see him kick over a table and swing back the big blood-dripping sword. He gave a leap and clutched the arm in time.
«Thank you, Harold,» said Chalmers from the floor where the table had been. Florimel was beside him. He was squeezing the neck of a bottle in both hands. The large joints of those hands were familiar. Shea realized that the disembodied pairs that had wrought such havoc among the enchanters were outsize copies of his partner’s.
«Nice work, Doc,» remarked Shea. To Artegall he said; «Don’t. He’s on our team.»
Chalmers gave a hand to Florimel. «You observe,» he remarked, «the improvement in my technique, although, goodness gracious! I didn’t expect the hands to be quite as efficacious as that!» He looked round the room, where nearly half the corpses showed marks of strangulation.
* * *
Cambell carried his wife to a seat and supported her. He said: «’Twill pass. She is much fordone with the labour of defeating those enchanters’ spells, and ’tis well she did so or we were all dead men.»
Artegall growled: «Master Harold has slain this Busyrane, a good end for as bad a man as drew breath; and Master Reed has slain more than any two of us with his own magic.»
«Said I not they were true and gallant gentlemen?» said Britomart.
«True, my sweet.» He wiped the sword on the skin of an enchanter’s robe. «Kneel, sirs!»
Shea and Chalmers went to their knees, but Cambell plucked at their sleeves. «Nay, on one knee only.»
Artegall tapped each on the shoulder. «I dub you knights. Be brave, honest, and true in the name of our gracious majesty. Rise, Sir Harold; rise, Sir Reed.»
Shea’s irrepressible grin broke out as he stood up. «How does it feel to be named official racket buster, Doc?»
«Quite. uh. normal, I assure you. The really important fact about this evening’s work is that I’ve discovered the secret of quantitative control. Frege’s definition of number solves the problem with relation to the calculus of classes.»
«‘The number of things in a given class is the class of all classes that is similar to the given class’?»
«Precisely. By treating numbers as classes — that is, the number two as the class of all pairs, the number three as the class of all triples, we can —»
«Say!» cried Shea. «Where’s Belphebe?»
«I don’t recall having seen the young woman. As I was saying, once the problem of introducing a quantitative element —»
«But I’ve got to find Belphebe! Busyrane caught her this morning. He must have brought her here.»
Nobody else had seen her. Florimel offered: «There be gruesome great dungeons below. Mayhap —»
«How do you get to them?»
Chalmers said: «Before you go searching, Harold, I have a spell against magicians that you really must learn.»
«To hell with that! She may be down there now!»
«I know. But Duessa and Dolon certainly escaped this. uh. holocaust, and there may be others.»
«Be warned,» rumbled Artegall. «The rash falcon strikes no game, Sir Harold. We shall need all and more than all the protection we can get to prowl those passages.»
Cambell spoke up: «Cambina, I greatly fear, can do no more for the present, gentle sirs.»
«Okay, okay,» groaned Shea. «Why didn’t you use this spell before, Doc?»
«Why,» said Chalmers, innocently, «it would have blown me back into my own universe! And I have too much to live for here.» He exchanged beams with Florimel. «You see, Harold, the casting of a spell produces on both the caster and the. uh. castee an effect analogous to that of an electrostatic charge. Ordinarily this has no particular effect and the charge dissipates in time. But when a person or thing has passed from one space-time vector to another, he or it has broken a path in extradimensional space-time, creating a permanent. uh. line of weakness. Thereafter the path is easier for him — or it — to follow. If I accumulated too much magicostatic charge at one time, it would, since this charge is unbalanced by the fact that I am at one end of this space-time path. uh. it would by reaction propel —»
«Oh, for God’s sake! Let’s have the spell now and the Lecture later.»
«Very well.» Chalmers showed Shea the spell, relatively simple in wording for calling for complex movements of the left hand. «Remember, you’ve been doing spells, so you probably have a considerable charge at present.»
* * *
They left Florimel and Cambina with Cambell and divided into two parties. Artegall went with Shea.
Smooth stone changed to rough ashlar as they went down. Their torches smoked, throwing long shadows.
The passage turned and twisted until Shea had no idea where he was. Now and then they stopped to listen — to their own breathing. Once they thought they beard something, and cautiously crept to peer around a corner.
The sound was made by water dripping down a wall. They went on. Shea could not help glancing over his shoulder now and then. Artegall, his iron shoes echoing, paused to say: «I like this not. For half an hour we have followed this passage into nothing.»
A side passage sprang away. Shea proposed: «Suppose you go a hundred steps ahead, and I’ll go the same distance this way. Then we can both come back and report.»
Artegall growled an assent and set off. Shea, gripping his épée, plunged into the side passage.
At a hundred paces the passage was the same, receding into blackness ahead of him.
He returned to the T. It seemed to him that he reached it in less than half the time it had taken him to leave it. There was no sign of Artegall, just black emptiness inclosed in rough stone.
«Artegall!» he called.
There was no answer.
He yelled: «Sir Artegall!» The tunnels hummed with the echo, then were silent.