"This is ridiculous!" I snapped. "Don't you know satire when you hear it? Now stop this silliness this instant, and start breathing again! "
He turned blue instead.
"You don't have to obey the queen!" I shouted. "Besides, she never said anybody had to have a license to breathe! I made it up!" His face grew darker, and I realized with a shock that it wasn't just that he wouldn't breathe - he conldn't breathe. I had made the argument sound too sensible, and he had something like a posthypnotic command going that compelled him to obey the queen's will-or whatever he even thought of as her will!
But that was impossible - hypnotism couldn't make people do something they were dead set against, I knew that.
It followed that the reeve wasn't set against being dead. It hit me like a ton of bricks. She had linked a posthypnotic command to his death wish! "Frisson! Praise life!" The poet held up a scrap of paper in front of my eyes. I read it aloud, and quickly.
I remembered a Drayton couplet, and added it in:
And, just so Tennyson wouldn't feel left out-but I made a few modifications:
The reeve's body convulsed with a huge, shuddering breath, and his complexion lightened. I went almost as limp as he did.
"You ... you have saved me!" He looked up at me, staring, wide eyed.
"Darn right I have! Another minute, and you would have been at Hell's door!" I suddenly realized an implication. "That's right-being a civil servant to a sorceress-queen, you must have sold your soul to the Devil, too, didn't you?"
"Aye! Yet I have gazed at the fiery portal! 'Tis no children's tale, but truth!" He looked shaken, but even so, his eyes were narrowing, and he was beginning to look at me as if estimating how much torture I could take before dying. I decided the view of Hell hadn't been enough for him. "Frisson, do you have a verse for empathy - feeling what other people feel?"
There was a quick riffle of papers behind me, and the reeve shook himself, glaring over my shoulder. "Is he your scribe?"
"With his handwriting? Not a chance!" I reached for the slip of parchment Frisson was handing me - but the reeve started to chant in that confounded ancient language, so I snapped out a Shakespeare verse that had been tugging at my memory:
The reeve froze in midsyllable, a stricken look on his face. So far, so good. I held up Frisson's verse and read it.
The gathering malice in the reeve's face suddenly dissipated. His eyes widened, then turned into pools of misery. He bent over, as if there were a pain inside him. "Aiiee! What have you done! I remember every cruelty I've wrought; I feel the pain of those I've injured! How have you done this thing to me!"
"By poetry," I answered. "That's one of the things it's supposed to do - make you aware of what someone else is feeling."
"I ache, I burn! Oh, how could I have done such vile things! Curse you for having given me a conscience! Never again shall I be able to smite down an innocent!" A single large tear formed at the inside corner of his eye. "How can I ever make amends for those I have wronged?"
"Well," I said gently, "You could start by repenting."
"I do, I do! I repent me of my sins! Alas the day that ever I swore allegiance to the Devil, and banished my conscience! Ah, I ken not who to hate the more-he for having taken it, or you for having given it back!" The reeve groaned. "Oh, where is there a priest? For I must confess my sins, I must be shriven!"
I stared at him a long minute; then I said, "I have a notion you know better than I do-if there are any priests hiding out in your shire, you've got a strong suspicion where they are. You just haven't gotten around to hanging them yet-too many other things to do, like whipping peasants into paying another tax."
" 'Tis even so." He managed to get his feet under him and stood, bracing himself against his saddle. "I shall find such a one, I shall confess! I must know that G ... that Go ... that I am forgiven by the Most High!" But his body convulsed like a whiplash as he said it, as if the mere attempt to speak of something sacred had resulted in intense pain. He set his teeth and pressed on in spite of it. "I forswear my pact with Satan! I shall turn to G ... to Go ... "
"Keep trying," I urged, "You'll get it out eventually." One of the soldiers screamed and charged his mount at the reeve, his sword swinging.
Gruesome took two steps and picked them up, both horse and rider, gave them a hard shake, and threw them away. The man struck his head against a stone and lay still. The horse scrambled to its feet and bolted.
The other soldiers backed away with a moan.
"I take it that was your second-in-command?" I asked. The reeve nodded. "He would have become reeve in my place, if he had smitten me down for treachery to the Devil and the queen. Another will do so soon enough, I doubt not, but I shall have made some amends for the harm I've done."
I looked at his glossy black hair and realized it was no longer glossy. In fact, I was definitely seeing a gray hair or two. "Uh ... if you don't mind my asking, how old are you"'
"Ninety-seven," he answered. "I have preserved life and youth by black magic-and ahhh!" He almost screamed, back arching in pain.
"What I did to bring about that spell, the number of those I bled! Nay, 'tis only justice if all my years come upon me now!" They were doing just that - he was aging even as I watched. The black magic that had kept him alive and relatively youthful was gone, now that he had rejected his bargain with Satan, and his debt of years was pressing to be paid.
"Find that priest," I suggested, "and quickly, while you still can."
"I shall!" He scrambled back onto his horse and clutched at the pommel grimly. To his men, he said, "Get thee back to my castle, with word that I shall never return! Say also that even my witchcraft succumbed to that of this stranger! I bid thee repent, for the hegemony of evil is passing!"
Frisson, pale-faced, pressed another slip of parchment into my hand. Surprised, I gave it a quick once-over, then nodded emphatic approval and muttered,