"So, then." She smiled, and her eyes almost disappeared in folds of fat. "You have the audacity to trespass in my Allustria."
"It is not yours, gross mockery of a woman," Gilbert cried, and I had to stifle an impulse to shush him. "The land belongs unto the people! "
"Then it cannot, of a certainty, belong to you, who come from Merovence." Suettay laughed, a sound like frying bacon. "You are not yet a man - only a beardless youth."
Gilbert flushed; blond beards don't show much.
The queen turned to the row of men behind her. "Counselors, behold a marvel! A boy that speaks like a man! Yet an he were, he would feel desire!"
The hooded forms dutifully laughed, but there was little humor in the sound.
Suettay turned back to me. "The more fool you, to be so cozened into taking a mere boy for to ward you!"
"Oh, he's man enough," I assured her. Bitches always make me mad, and she wasn't the first one I'd run into who'd thought she was a queen. Gilbert looked up at me with surprised gratitude, but it was as much for myself I'd said it as for him - I felt anger growing, just enough to begin countering the fear.
"You twisted the facts," I told Suettay. "But then, you twist everything that's true within your domain, don't you? Or try to leach the life from it, if it won't twist!"
"Indeed, as my dunce of a country sorcerer will yet bleed your troll." Suettay's lip curled.
"What a vile thing is he, that's neither gnome nor rock! What a catastrophe of nature, nay, a perversion of life! Yet you should thank me, corrupted monster, for you owe your life to me."
"Wozzat?" Gruesome's grunt had a dangerous edge.
"Your father was a gnome who strayed out of his hole!" the queen chortled. "I saw, and cast a glamour over a boulder, to make it seem a woman of his own kind, wondrously beautiful in his eyes! For my own amusement, I inflamed him with lust for it! Then, in my crystal, I watched what did ensue, and oh! what delightful-" Gruesome's roar drowned out the rest of her words, as he lunged.
"No, Gruesome!" I cried in panic. "If she can get you mad enough to break the circle-"
The monster stopped with a jolt, his head poking out above the white line. I wondered what could have stopped him, then saw Gilbert down below, ramrod straight, shoulder against Gruesome's chest, straining against Gruesome's bulk - but his feet were plowing up the ground as Gruesome pushed steadily toward the witch, and Gruesome's top had made a hole in my defense screen.
The troll roared, almost managing to make words-but anything he was saying was drowned in a mass shriek, as all the ghosts dove at the hole he'd made in the magical wall.
I leapt up to shout at the monster. "It couldn't be true, Gruesome! Rocks can't have children! Only a mommy troll and a daddy troll can make little trolls!"
The troll's eyes suddenly lost focus, and his brow creased with effort as he tried to figure out the facts of life. He wasn't long on brain power-but the distraction was enough for the squire.
"Back, brave being!" Gilbert shoved harder, and the troll rocked back just enough for its head to clear the white line.
The ghosts' noise rose to a howl as they all tried to jam into the hole, but I shouted out,
The ghosts groaned in disappointment, then roared in rage and began to dash themselves against the invisible circle again. I called out to Gruesome,
He looked up, blinking his huge, glowing, saucer eyes, totally dumfounded, then turned slowly and came hulking back to the campfire. Gilbert breathed a long and shaky sigh of relief.
But Suettay and her boys were laughing themselves silly. "Oh, skillfully done! Skillfully done!" the queen wheezed, between giggles.
"Why not march upon my kingdom, mortal! Do! For you should be mired in your own muddle ere the day is out!"
"Oh, yeah, sure!" I strode up to the circle, anger getting the better of common sense. "We're such total klutzes that you bring yourself and your top twelve henchmen out to try to scare us? Meanwhile, of course, you can't even breach this simple little guarding circle I've set up!"
The queen's laughter chopped off on the instant, and her eyes narrowed to slits with glowing coals behind them. "Enough! Show this foolish impostor what awaits him!"
A scream rent the air-but one that was very much alive, not like the ghosts' mourning wails. This one was filled with terror and was definitely feminine.
The hooded ones threw her sprawling onto the grass between Suettay and the guarding circle. She was young, with long blonde hair and an enchanting figure; I could see it through the rips in her tunic. She scrabbled in the dirt, turning toward Gilbert and Frisson and Gruesome and me, her face filled with horror - a face bruised and battered, with a swollen nose, marks of burns on her breasts and belly, blood still dripping from triple gouges in her skin. "Help me! Please, I beg of you, before I-" Then she broke off into a scream as four hooded forms surrounded her, two of them falling on their hands and knees side by side, the other two catching her thrashing limbs to lift her and swing her up onto the backs of the first two. I almost went right through the guarding circle. All that restrained me was Gilbert's arm - but it had about as much give as granite.
"You cannot help her now, Wizard Saul - you can but break your warding circle!"
"Besides, 'tis like enough that she did put herself into Suettay's power, in hope of preferment," Frisson quavered, staring at the scene in loathing. "The most you can give her now is a quick death and the queen will do that herself."
The woman cried, "I did not-" but her sentence ended in a one of the hooded forms twisted something.
scream, as My mind raced as I stared. The poor victim had been trying to say she hadn't done anything wrong. How could I save her?
Without breaking the guarding circle, of course - that was what Suettay wanted. She was lumbering forward, hitching at her robes and pulling out a long, twisted knife. She held it up in both hands, gloating gaze fixed on the woman's body as she droned out a long chant, overriding the screams.
"It is an invocation," Gilbert told me, "an invocation in the Old Tongue! " It must have been very old indeed - it didn't sound a bit like Latin, or even Greek. I felt a chill prickling outward from my spine - how could I fight spells in a language I couldn't understand?
"She calls on the Devil." Apparently, Gilbert didn't labor under that handicap. "If the woman, in her terror, despairs of salvation and is damned, the queen dedicates the woman's soul to Satan, but asks that her ghost be the queen's slave as long as Suettay endures." I felt my scalp prickle; the woman's screams filled my ears, maddening me. I fought to control myself, to keep from charging out to try to save her, knowing that I couldn't win, that Suettay had chosen the time and the conditions. The knife soared high in Suettay's fists, beginning to glow with the chant as the hooded acolytes joined in. I fought back with the only thing I could think of - a chant of my own. I sang it, of course - that's how I'd learned it.
The girl stared up at me, and Suettay flushed with anger and jerked a nod at one of her acolytes. He reached down and twisted, and the girl screamed.