Even Gruesome was cowering back, and Frisson was hiding behind him-but Angelique's ghost drifted to Gilbert, glowing with righteous indignation and purity. "Get thee hence, in the holy name! Avaunt, and begone!"
Now the devils did cower back - but they didn't go. I figured they'd work up their nerve eventually - this was their prey, after all. Which reminded me about the sick one.
I stepped over to the whimpering bundle. "What's the matter?" A claw pulled the hood open enough so that two rheumy eyes blinked out at me. "Oh, the pain!" She pressed one hand to her belly.
"It tears me apart from within! I have cast spells against it, but it eats through even that power! I die!"
The devils surged forward, cackling with glee.
"Avaunt!" Gilbert shoved his cross-hilt in their faces, and I swear he didn't show the slightest trace of fear. Angelique glowed with wrath behind him, and the devils bellowed with anger, but retreated.
"They will take me," the old woman whimpered. "They will haul me to Hell!"
Sympathetic fear wracked me, but I hung on to my composure and said, "No they're not! Not according to the rules! All you have to do is repent! I remember that, because it always seemed like such a cheat to me, that a man could live his whole life making other people miserable and still go to Heaven if he just repented at the last secend!"
"With eons in Purgatory," the witch moaned, "but even as thou sayest ... The tortures would end, someday."
The devils howled with rage and sprang, vaulting around Gilbert and Angelique in two jumps. One of them slammed me back into the dirt, and pain tore through me where his huge hand pressed. His monstrous face was an inch from mine as his jaws gaped wide, and terror jellied my insides - but I heard the old witch scream in horror, and the sound galvanized me.
"Angel!" I cried. "I'm trying to do your work now! It's in your own interest! Get rid of these monsters!"
Thunder cracked, and searing light filled the little clearing.
"Even so!" the angel's voice snapped, echoing all about me. "I am entreated by a mortal who seeks to do God's work! Begone, loathsome fiends!"
The light shrank in on itself just enough to be an anthropoid form, and glowing hands reached out to yank the two devils aside.
" 'Tis the power of God that flows through me to brand you! Get hence, in His name!"
The two demons howled; the angel hurled them away, and they shrank, diminishing, until they were just two black dots that disappeared with a double pop.
I stared, awed, and muttered, "Dealer wins all draws."
The shining form waved a hand at me. "Let thy pain be gone! Now aid the woman!"
And he disappeared. Just like that.
Gilbert looked up at me, awed. "What manner of man are you, Wizard, that even angels will come when you call?"
"A do-gooder busybody," I snapped. I was too busy being amazed to be polite; the burning pain in my chest was gone. I took a quick peek down inside my shirt and didn't see the slightest scar, just a bright pinkness in the shape of a huge clawed hand. It was enough to give me a bad case of the shakes, until the poor lump of rags moaned. I turned to it, trying to remember that this "poor thing" had probably burned peasants and gloated at their pain, in her time, and practiced the rest of the catalog of medieval minor witchcraft, such as making cows go dry and women barren. But I couldn't resist trying to help when she looked so pitiful. "Apologize," I advised. "You know you're going to die - but if you repent, the devils can't have you. Maybe a long, long time in Purgatory, as you said, but not Hell."
"I dare not," the old woman whispered. "The pain is held at bay only by the spells I've cast - and even with their aid, 'tis like to drive me from my senses!"
"And if you repent, you lose your magic powers, so the pain will rip you apart? But remember I tried to recall the rules, as I'd learned them from Dante. "If you suffer the agony patiently here on Earth for the few days you have left, it will take centuries off your tortures in Purgatory."
"I fear the pain too much," she gasped in despair. "I am too far sunk in cowardice!"
I bit back the urge to tell her she deserved what she was getting, then - I'm sure it wouldn't have seemed that way to me, if I'd been the one that was in agony. I frowned; what to do? If she couldn't repent because she was in pain, but the only thing that made her want to repent was that same pain ...
No, it wasn't. It was fear of eternal pain, in Hell.
"If I can make the pain go away," I asked her, "would you still want to repent?"
"Aye, assuredly!" she gasped. "Anything to save me from an eternity of agonies as I've felt now!"
"Probably worse," I reminded her. "Well, let's see what we can do. What kind of pain?"
"A gnawing, a hideous gnawing!" She pointed to her belly.
"Here!"
"Not a burning pain, like a hot coal?l, "Nay! 'Tis as if something did eat me from the inside, with terribly sharp teeth!" Not appendicitis, I guessed-but it did sound like abdominal cancer, and she was sure old enough.
I sat back on my heels, frowning. How do you use magic to cure cancer?
Then I remembered that "cancer" is Latin for "crab," and that the disease was named that way because it felt as if a crab were digging you out inside with its pincers.
So how do you fight an inside crab?
Obviously, bring it outside.
"Gilbert," I called, "come over here with your sword."
"Nay!" the witch shrieked.
"Oh, it's not for you," I said impatiently. "No mercy killing - I'm not about to end your mortal agony by sending you to everlasting torture." Gilbert came up, sword ready, frowning. "What moves, wizard?"
"A crab," I told him. "I'm expecting a giant crab, or something very much like it. If it shows up, stab it. Frisson?
"Aye, Master Saul." The poet edged up, trembling.
"See if you can't cook up a verse for killing shellfish. Okay, folks."
I took a deep breath, tried to ignore the gnawing in my own middle, and reached out for the scrap of parchment Frisson handed me. I read it, chanting,
Nothing happened.
Frisson's face stretched so long I thought it was rubber. "I have failed!"
"No, I don't think it was you." The rules again. "She's in the power of evil now, and our spells are based on goodness, so they can't touch her." Except for spells inducing remorse - I'd found that out with Sobaka.
I wondered if I would have to use them again. "Woman! I cannot cure you unless you repent! You have to open your soul to God's race, or all the good will in the world can't touch you!" She was still a moment, rigid. Then she convulsed around the agony in her middle again, screaming and crying out, "I repent me! Aiiee, even if I die in agony, I will not suffer thus for eternity! I forsake Satan and all his lies!"
Then she screamed, as the king of all pains racked her body again - a souvenir from her boss, no doubt. But the woman had amazing grit; she held on, and when the spasm passed, she went right on where she'd left off, though in a husky whisper. "May God forgive my sins! I forswear my pact with the Devil!"
Then she screamed again.
I started chanting on the instant, repeating the verse: