Shea found himself sweating. He poked at the stone before him. It seemed solid enough. He was sure, now, that this T had appeared in the passage after he passed it, about halfway to where he had gone.
He set off to the right. If Artegall had gone this way, he should catch up with him. An impulse made him stop to look back. The leg of the T had already disappeared.
He ran back. There was nothing but solid stone on both sides.
His skin crawled as if a thousand spiders were scuttling over it. He ran till he began to puff. The passage bent slightly, one way, then another. There was no end to it.
When he rounded a corner and came on a human being, his nerves seemed to explode all at once.
The person shrieked. Shea recognized Belphebe. «Harold!» she cried.
«Darling!» Shea spread his arms — torch, épée, and all. She threw herself into them.
But almost immediately she pulled loose. «Marry, I’m but a weak woman and forgot my pledged word! Nay, dear Harold, dispute me not. What’s done is done.» She backed away determinedly.
Shea sagged. He felt very tired. «Well,» he said with a forced smile, «the main thing’s getting out of this damned maze. How did you get down here?»
«I sprained my ankle in my fall this morning. And Busyrane’s minions —»
«Hah, hah, hah!» Dolon, large as life, stepped through the side of the wall. «The two mice who would kill cats!»
Shea crouched for a flиche. But Dolon made a pass towards him. Something wrapped around his legs, like an invisible octopus. He slashed with his épée, but met no resistance.
«Nay, there shall be a new Chapter,» continued Dolon, «with my own peerless presence as archimage. First, I shall prove my powers on your bodies — a work worthy of my genius, doubt it not!»
Shea strained at the invisible bonds. They crept up his body. A tentacle brushed his swordarm.
He snatched his arm out of the way, reversed his grip on the hilt and threw the weapon point-first at Dolon, his whole strength in the movement. But the épée slowed up in midair and dropped with a clang to the floor.
His hands were still free. If Belphebe was set on marrying this guy Timias, what did it matter if he got squirted back by the rocket effect of a magicostatic charge?
He dropped the torch and raced through the spell. Dolon, just opening his mouth for another pontifical pronouncement, abruptly looked horrified. He shrieked, a high womanish scream, and dissolved in a mass of tossing yellow flame. Shea caught Belphebe’s wrist with his right hand to snatch her back from the blaze.
Pfmp!
Walter Bayard and Gertrude Mugler jumped a foot. One minute they had been alone in Harold Shea’s room, the former reading Harold Shea’s notes and the latter watching him do it.
Then, with a gust of air, Shea was before them in a battered Robin Hood outfit, and beside him was a red-haired girl with freckles, wearing an equally incongruous costume.
«Wh-where’s Doc?» asked Bayard.
«Stayed behind. He liked it there.»
«And who.»
Shea grinned. «My dream-girl. Belphebe, Dr. Bayard. And Miss Mugler. Oh, damn!» He had happened to glance at his hands, which showed a lot of little blisters. «I’m going to be sick for a few days, I guess.»
Gertrude showed signs of finding her voice. She opened her mouth.
Shea forestalled her with; «No, Gert, I won’t need a nurse. Just a quart of calamine lotion. You see, Belphebe and I are getting married the first chance we get.»
Gertrude’s face ran through a spectrum of expressions, ending with belligerent hostility. She said to Belphebe: «But
— you —»
Belphebe said with a touch of blithe defiance: «He speak no more than truth. Find you aught amiss with that?» When Gertrude did not answer, she turned to Shea. «What said you about sickness, my love and leman?»
Shea drew a long breath of relief. «Nothing serious, darling. You see, it was poison ivy I tied the broom with.»
Belphebe added: «Sweet Harold, now that I am utterly yours, will you do me no more than one service?»
«Anything,» said Shea fondly.
«I lack still the explanation of those strange words in the poem wherewith you bested the Blatant Beast!»