I looked about me, taking in the shattered glassware on the top of a table that was surely the alchemist's equivalent of a lab bench, the array of powders and miscellaneous ingredients racked on shelves against one wall-some of which I was sure I wouldn't want identified - the fire under the caldron and the stench arising from it, the long table against the other wall, with Angelique on it ... Angelique!
She lay strapped down on the table, the marks of torture still upon her, dress ripped open, the clotted blood still dark in the center of her poor bruised bosom. The instruments of torture lay ready, thumbscrews by each hand, the boot open and waiting near her foot, and it wasn't a table she was strapped onto, it was a rack!
By her head was a small, clear bottle, within which churned a mint-green mist. My stomach fell - could that be her soul, the ghost with whom I was so ardently in love?
"We've got to get her out of there!" I was by her side in an instant, fumbling with the straps on her wrists, but they were riveted, not buckled. Exasperated, I pulled out my clasp knife and started sawing. "How do we get her spirit back into her body, Frisson? " The poet pulled out his sheaf of newest poems and leafed through them, frowning. He pulled one out and recited,
Nothing happened.
"Nice try, but no cigar." I sawed at a leather bond. "What else have you got?"
Frisson flipped through his scraps and pulled out another one.
He looked up from the verse and stared.
Nothing happened. The body lay still, the mint mist churned inside its bottle.
"Pull the cork," the Rat Raiser suggested.
"Of course!" I slapped my forehead with the heel of my hand, then grabbed the bottle.
It wouldn't move.
"A spell!" I stepped over to the bottle. But I wasn't about to waste time trying to break it - it didn't matter where the bottle was, as long as the ghost could get out. I twisted the cork.
It wouldn't twist.
I stuck the tip of my knife in it and levered. Nothing, not even a chip.
" 'Tis enchanted," Frisson opined. "What luck with her straps?"
"None at all; the knife doesn't even scar the leather." I looked Up, frowning. "You mean .. ."
Doors slammed open, front and back, and guardsmen boiled in, hard hands reaching for us, pikes stabbing, and behind them, Suettay slammed the door closed, crowing, "Taken! Taken in my trap, like the rats they are! Slay them, slay them out of hand!"
I grabbed up the boot and threw it at the nearest guardsman; he fell. The Rat Raiser snapped out of his horrified trance and caught up broken glassware off the lab table, hurling it at the soldiers. I fell into fighting stance with my knife, my stomach sinking, knowing I didn't have a chance, but Frisson was flipping through his anthology, pulling out a scrap, and chanting,
"Right here!" a muffled voice shouted on the other side of the door, and the wood turned to powder. A dot of light shot in, so brilliant that it hurt my eyes, and a voice straight out of a synthesizer sang, "A rescue! A rescue, friend to friend!"
"Demon!" I cried in delight.
Behind it came Gilbert! And behind him, the Black Knight I'd seen from a low angle just after I'd turned into a rat. After him strode the knight with the long blonde hair and the golden circlet - I was shocked anew to realize she was a woman! - and the blue-robed knight who had been on the dragon. Outside, a roar filled the antechamber with flames.
The guardsmen inside cried out in fear.
"It cannot come in!" Suettay sawed the air frantically with her hands, chanting.
"We are in already!" the Blue Knight snapped, sword stabbing out at her midriff - but one of her guards snapped out of his funk and beat down the blade.
All about, the knights were taking on the footmen, chopping down halberds and smiting down enemies. Sure, there were only three of them and one squire, but they wore armor. And that confounded dot of light was swooping from one soldier to another, and each one it touched just fainted.
"Loose the corpse!" the Blue Knight shouted, and the spark swerved off to settle on Angelique's bonds.
The Blue Knight disposed of Suettay's bodyguard with a chop and a thrust, beat him off, and spun to Suettay again, chanting,
Suettay froze.
The Blue Knight spun to me. "That won't hold her for long, but just enough to - Paul!"
I knew the voice, and a second later, the visor snapped up, and I knew the face. "Matt! What the ... What are you doing here?"
"Saving your bacon, and just incidentally wiping out a depraved and vicious usurper! My queen had a vision telling her to go help the Witch Doctor, because he could cure Allustria of witchcraft!"
"Great! Can you find him? The cackling laugh of gloating triumph snapped me out of my sentimental reunion. I whirled, to see Suettay holding Angelique's freed corpse by the arm while she pulled a pink flask out of her robes.
"Fool! 'Twas a captive sprite in the bottle, not the girl's spirit! Her soul is here - and is now gone!"
"Max!" Matt yelled. "Stop her!"
"How?" the arc-spark sang, but Suettay was chanting something in that obscene arcane language, making lewd gestures and turning transparent.
So was Angelique's body.
Frisson shouted out,
The witch queen disappeared.
Her soldiers cried out in despair, stepped back, and threw down their weapons. "Mercy! Quarter! Quarter!"
I howled.
"I am sorry, sorry!" Frisson cried, "could think of at that moment!"
"I had to act, and 'twas all I ..."
"You did very well," Matt assured him. "There wasn't exactly time for a literature search; at least we know where she is."
"Do we?" The blonde woman stepped up, looking severe. Her voice was a rich alto. "There are four towers. How shall we know to which she has gone?"
"Bind them!" the Black Knight snapped to Gilbert, who set about lashing soldiers with a will. The Black Knight stepped over to us.
"There are four towers, and four of us. Do we each seek out one turret! Matthew, take the east - your Majesty, the west, and I'll take the south." He turned to me. "To you lies the north. Farewell!"
"Right!" Matt charged out the door, with the other two right be hind him.