I fought down the urge to leap out of the circle and start kicking.
I couldn't win alone.
Alone?
"All right, angel!" I yelled. "Now's your chance! You want to make me believe? Then give me a hand - or an idea! Nothing physical, mind you, just inspire me! Fill my mind with a way to rescue this poor victim!"
And, confound me, it was there - the knowledge that the woman didn't deserve this fate and, moreover, was human and worth any help that I could give, and my mouth was moving, a voice booming out of it that didn't seem to have anything to do with my thoughts, but had a very familiar ring.
But the knife was slashing down, and the woman was screaming. Screaming, "My God, forgive me my sins and save-" Then there was only a gurgle, for her throat had been cut, and the knife slashed downward through her heart. Her whole body convulsed once and was still.
"Rise and obey!" Suettay thundered.
She didn't.
Well, she rose, all right - at least a shred of her, a wraith. It was her ghost, and it floated over toward the white chalk line of my guarding circle as if a breeze were blowing it.
Suettay screamed like a spoiled brat seeing a box of candy being snatched away. "Vile interloper! Ball of slime, thatch of dung! She should have despaired in that last instant and been bound for Hell, whereupon my master would have given her soul into my power! But you have interfered, curse you, and her soul is lost to me! She was innocent of all but the smallest sins, and her spirit will flee to Heaven! " Then, suddenly, she fell silent, eyes bulging, a depraved grin spreading over her face. "Not yet! Not if I act quickly!" She whirled to the corpse, hands spread wide and going through gestures whose meanings I shuddered to consider while she chanted some racheting verse in a language I didn't understand. A glow sprang up around the body, like the phosphoresence around decaying vegetable matter in a swamp, then died away, and Suettay spun about to me with a crow of triumph. "I have bound her to Earth! As long as her body lives, her soul is bound here, for I have cast a spell that has preserved her mortal coil."
"Why, you filthy bitch!" I swore.
"How dare you!" she shrieked, and her hands clutched something unseen and threw it at me while she snapped out a quick, incomprehensible rhyme. Energy lanced from her fingertips in purple streamers-and dashed itself to sparks on my shield.
This time, though, the queen didn't scream. She only glared at me, her eyes gleaming malevolently in the midst of her slab of pitted face.
"See to the purifying of your own soul, Wizard, for if you do not, you shall fall into my power - and you shall meet the same fate as the girl. Maiden, come!" she snapped at the wavering spirit. But the girl's ghost had drifted across the line into my circle, and now she cowered away from the wicked queen, eyes wide and frightened, shaking her head.
"You have stolen her!" Suettay screamed. "You have taken from me my rightful-" But her voice was drowned out by a long, shuddering moan that filled the air, rebounding from ghost to ghost, the specters' eyes widening and filling with hope.
"I did repent!" one cried.
"I, too, with my last breath!" another answered.
"God forgive my sins!" a third cried.
One by one, they remembered their final moment of repentance, wailed their appeals for salvation - and, one by one, they winked out, like candles snuffed.
I stared. "You mean all that was holding them here was their own belief in the queen's magic?"
"It would seem so," Frisson said, huge-eyed. "They lost faith - but you have restored it."
That hadn't exactly been one of my prime goals in life. On the other hand, it hadn't exactly been me speaking, either. But a new moan filled the air, a moan of dread, as the hooded acolytes shrank back from the bleeding corpse, huddling together, terror-filled faces turned up to watch the ghosts depart. And Suettay was turning to me with a gaze filled with more malice and hatred than I had ever seen before, a glare of berserk fury. She strode forward, arms uplifted, striding straight at my guarding circle, intoning a chant in the Old Tongue.
"She summons a devil!" Gilbert cried.
"Angel!" I yelped. "She's breaking the rules! You can protect us!" Blue sparks leapt at the queen's fingers with crackles like gunshots. She shrank back with one of the foulest curses I had ever heard, then turned to me and my companions, eyes just slits in fat, hands weaving a symbol I didn't know, bellowing,
Her hands snapped out, all fingers pointing at us. A coruscation of sparks filled the air over the white line. A wave of nausea swept me, and my knees gave way, but Gilbert held me up, and my legs strengthened again as my stomach settled.
"Cowards!" Suettay screamed. "Pusillanimous pests! Come out to battle!
"We ... we battled," I managed.
"You shall, you must, soon or late! Then shall I be revenged upon you! Then shall I see your flesh fry from your bones, your eyes drop from their sockets!"
I was feeling a little bolder and said the only counterspell I could think of.
With a shriek of frustration, Suettay disappeared. Green fire thundered inward on itself, seeming to consume the huddled, hooded forms. It died away, and the night was quiet and dark again. And clean. Even the corpse was gone.
For some reason, that bothered me.
But I didn't have long to think about it - my head suddenly swam, and my knees gave way again.
"Now, now, buck up! You did marvelously!" Frisson assured me.
"Heroes are made of sterner stuff, Wizard Saul!" Gilbert chided.
"You must not collapse as soon as the battle's over!"
"It's better than ... melting while ... it's still going on," I gasped.
"That is true, and there is no shame in it, so long as he does wait until the battle's over," Frisson allowed. He propped me up against Gruesome's side and began chafing my hands. "Really, you were masterful - you came only moments from death, and a horrible one at that."
"Huh?" I blinked, the thrill of dread pulling my mind back into focus. "You mean I almost blew it when I started to charge out?"
"You did indeed. That whole affair with the poor peasant lass served one purpose, and one only - to induce you to leave your magic circle in an attempt to save her."
"Yeah." I swallowed thickly. "Yeah, I knew that's what I was doing as soon as I heard her scream. I knew it, but it almost worked on me anyway-and on Gruesome. Thanks, Gilbert. You saved his life - and all of us."
"Surely, Wizard Saul," the squire said, blushing with pleasure at the compliment. "It was little enough I could do."
"It was enough all right. Thanks again, Gilbert."
"My pleasure," he said, then frowned. "Yet there's another you should thank, whose aid was greater than mine."
I frowned ' looking around me. "Who ... ? Oh. Yeah." I remembered my guardian angel. "Well, I'll give him my warmest, next time he shows up."
The night was awfully quiet.
Then Frisson cleared his throat, and Gilbert looked away, abashed. I looked around, frowning. "What's the matter?" Neither of them answered.