I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare; afterimages danced. I gave my eyes time to adjust to the crimson, then opened them just a little, squinting.
I was still lashed to the rock - but it was surrounded by miles of sand. Heat waves shimmered about me, and the sky was a brazen coin in pitiless blue. There wasn't a cloud in sight, and the heat baked me as if I were in an oven. I could have sworn I could feel the rock heating up below me, and I was already bathed in sweat. Suddenly, the significance of the duke's "five days" hit me - I was supposed to stay bound to this stone bed for a hundred and twenty hours! And the negative suffix was about water!
In panic, I realized Frisson had been right - like it or not, I'd have to try to work magic on my own. Call it working within the frame of reference of the hallucination, call it selling out, call it whatever you like - I was going to have to do it, or die. Preferably without drawing on either the powers of good, or of evil.
I tried to think of some verse that would stop my sweat glands - I was going to need every ounce of water my body held. Then I remembered that without sweat, I would overheat in an hour.
Decisions, decisions!
It was going to be a long day.
I decided it had been a long day already, but the sun was still ominously close to the zenith. My tongue felt like a piece of leather, and my skin felt about right for writing. How long had it really been-an hour? Maybe less?
No matter - I wasn't going to last the day, and I had a notion my body was going to stay there without me for at least twenty-four hours. I had to have water, fast - or something to drink, anyway. What I wouldn't have given now, for a cola ...
Inspiration struck. Commercial jingles! Could I remember one?
Could I ever forget?
Could I talk enough to recite it?
I smacked my lips, or tried to - and found I couldn't get them to open. In desperation, I worked my cheeks, trying to pump up some saliva - but nothing came. Panic began to grow, but I forced it down sternly while I kept working my cheeks ...
Pain lanced through my lower lip. Blast! I'd bitten it again. It hurt, on top of everything else, and I tasted blood ... Blood.
Moisture.
I moved the tip of my swelling tongue against the inside of my lips, pushed hard - and they opened. I took a deep breath ... And the blood dried up.
Quickly, before my mouth could seal up again, I cried,
Something slapped into my palm, something cold and wet. I breathed a sigh of relief and started to bring it to my lips ... My hand wouldn't move, it was tied over my head.
I bit down against anger, and called up a verse:
I felt a writhing about my wrists and ankles that made my innards twist in revulsion. Sternly, I schooled my stomach; it was only the ropes untying themselves - I hoped. I lifted the arm with the soda in it, experimentally ... it lifted. And was instantly filled with a hundred hot needles. I let the arm fall back, groaning with agony. But I had to get at that soda. I lifted again, but the effort made my body roll, and I finished up scraping the can across the stone toward my mouth. I made it, and my teeth closed on aluminum.
Just aluminum. No soda.
I had forgotten to open the can.
I just lay there a second, marveling at my own stupidity. Then, with another groan and a great deal more stabbing pain, this time in the upper arms, shoulders, and chest, I managed to work my way up onto my elbows and achieve the stupendous feat of hooking a finger through the ring. I pulled; the top popped; I bowed my head and lifted, and a splash of soothing, chilly Sass-Pa-Rilla flowed into my mouth. Most of that first shot ran down my chin and sizzled onto the rock, but enough of it sloshed into my mouth to fill me with the blessed, icy taste, burning the cut where I'd bitten my lip. My throat worked, and I felt the trail of cold all the way down into my stomach.
I sighed, lifted the can, and took a real swallow. I had never known a commercial product could taste so good and decided I'd never make a joke about Sass-Pa-Rilla again.
Which was very good because, as I lifted the can, it disappeared. I stared at my cupped and empty hand as if it had betrayed me. Then I curled it into a fist, feeling the anger rise. Not my hand, but somebody else, some person, had betrayed me - and I had a notion who. The duke had decided he didn't want the rules changed. I didn't feel sorry for him; after all, I'd told him I was a wizard before he tried hanging me out to dry. He shouldn't have been so sure I couldn't survive yen though, come to think of it, I wasn't all that sure of it, myself.
But I was also a wizard who was going to need a little help to fight back - and whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to do it quickly, before the spurt of energy from the cold drink wore off. Already, I could feel the searing heat enveloping me again, and the first tendrils of a headache were rising to meet it. Where could I get reinforcements?
Of course! The local spirits. Every little location had them - the nature spirits, the sprites and dryads and nixies and pixies, the spirits of trees and streams and even grass!
Well, Shakespeare would forgive me.
Tendrils of mist started to rise from the ground around me, from the boulders and the sand-mist, where there was no moisture. I breathed a sigh of relief and croaked, "Let's hear it for animism." Then the spirits finished taking form.
There wasn't much of them - just tenuous, smoky-looking, hulking shapes about knee-high. Behind them was a miniature whirlwind filled with sand - a dust devil?
"You have called," one of the rock-faces croaked. "We have come."
"What manner of spirits are you?"
"You have called for the spirits of the land," another boulder-type grated. "We are they - spirits of rock and sand."
"I should have realized," I groaned. "Mineral spirits."
"We will aid you, if we can," the first rock-ghost growled. "How may we do so? "
"Hanged if I know," I muttered. "You wouldn't have anything cool about you, would you?"
"At midday?" hissed the whirlwind. "Nay! We all are heated through and through."
"I figured as much." The rock under me was getting hot even in my shadow. "And none of you have any moisture, do you?"
"You cannot get water from a stone," a boulder grated. The whirlwind drifted closer. "Shall I fan you with my breeze?" The first tendrils of moving air caressed me, and I gasped, drawing back. "Uh, no thanks! I appreciate the intention, but you have all the charm of a furnace!" A horrid notion crossed my mind.
"Uh-what do men call your kind of spirit?"
"A dust devil," the whirlwind answered.
"I thought so." I swallowed, painfully. "You, uh - haven't come hot from Hell, have you?"
"Nay!" The tone was indignant. "You asked what men call me, not what I am!"
I nodded. "I thought so. What's in a name? Not much, in this case. You're no more a part of the Hell crew than-" I broke off, my eyes widening.
"Than what?" the dust devil pressed.
"Than something I learned about in general physics! Of course! If I'm hot and I want to get cool, who should I call for but Maxwell's Demon?"