Finally, the sky lightened. The last thunderclap sounded far behind me, and the rain lightened to a drizzle. Not that I stopped shivering, though. Fortunately, the wind was still strong enough to keep my boat going into the waves, instead of veering crosswise; unfortunately, it was also hard enough to keep my teeth from chattering.
Then I realized there was a dark blob on the skyline ahead of me. My spirits lifted amazingly. I tightened my weary grip on the tiller and grinned into the salt spray that doused me in the face. Relief was in sight.
Relief swelled up mighty fast, too, the blob growing into something that filled most of the horizon. Almost too late, I realized that the wind behind the boat was going to keep driving me until I was right up on the shore-which would be just fine if there weren't any rocks in the way, but I heard a suspicious booming, dead ahead. I managed to pry my fingers loose, pulled my right hand off the tiller, and just barely got the knot loose in time. Then I hung on as the rope sizzled through my fingers so that the sail would collapse, not blow away. I yelped as the rough hemp burned me, then reflected that it was the first heat I'd had in hours. First too much heat and dryness, then too much heat and coldness-I longed for a happy medium. The boat slowed down just in time for me to notice rocks rising up to left and right, but I could see a narrow gap between them. I heaved and pushed at the tiller, just barely managing to slip the boat through without shoaling. Then I realized that there was a pole in the bottom of the boat. I caught it up and fended off the rocks on either side until, amazingly, they were gone.
I turned and looked ahead to see the beach heaving toward me. I figured it was my boat that was doing the heaving, not the shore, and held on to try to enjoy the ride. Okay, after those rocks took out the worst of it, the surf wasn't anything you'd find on Malibu, but it was still enough to drive my longboat ashore.
It jammed into sand, and I barely had enough presence of mind left to jump out, wade to the bow, and haul it onto the beach before the backwash could pull it out to sea again. Then another wave came along and pushed, and I gained another yard or two, enough to keep the boat secure from the next tug of receding water. I waited for the next wave. It came, I closed my eyes and threw my weight back against the boat - and it came. Easily.
Too easily.
I had to run backward to keep from being bowled over. I opened my eyes to see what had happened and saw a huge pair of hands clamped onto the far side of the boat, pulling. I kept pulling, too, as I followed the hands up arms like hawsers, to a huge and hairy chest with eyes like saucers at the top, looking down at me while a huge mouth curved open into a grin set with shark teeth.
I stared up as my heart dropped down, trying to hide in my boot tops.
Then I recognized him - I hoped. "Gruesome!" The grin widened even further, and his top half nodded eagerly.
"Yuh! Yoh! Goosum!" And the huge arms crunched me up against his stony hide while his basso voice chirped, "Goosum so happy see Saw!
"It was more of a croak than a chirp, actually, and he stank abominably. I made a mental note to teach him about bathing and squirmed around enough to gasp, "I'm glad to see you, too, Gruesome." And I was, surprisingly-after that stint in the desert and all that ocean, anything familiar looked good. Besides, he had saved my life once or twice, or had at least helped out.
But that clinch was inching me uncomfortably close to those shark teeth. "Yeah, glad to see you. Uh-how about putting me down, Gruesome? " He started to, but hesitated with both huge mitts wrapped around my ribs, holding me up, and I could have sworn I saw a hungry glint in his eye. I was sure about the drops of drool glinting on his canines.
They made him swallow, and it sure sounded as if he smacked his lips.
"Down, Gruesome!"
"Yuh, yuh! Down! " He finally lowered me till my feet touched sand, and loosened his hold. I twisted the rest of the way out of his grip with a sigh of relief, telling myself that I really hadn't had anything to worry about-but myself wasn't listening too well. "You won't believe this, but I'm really glad to see you. What're you doing here, though? I thought you were still on the mainland!"
"Mainland?" He scowled.
I decided that was better than the grin - it showed fewer teeth.
"You know-Allustria? The place where I met you? Where we fought Sue ... uh, the wicked queen?"
"Queen! Uh-h-h-h!" He shrank away. "Queen found us! Shellmen! Sharp!"
Us? Had Gruesome somehow found the others? If so, I gathered that they had made it back to the mainland, but Suettay had ambushed them with a dozen or so knights - and panic stirred in my depths, assuming I had any. "Couldn't Frisson make them disappear?"
"Yuh, yuh!" He nodded. "Got two! But shell men had spell man!"
"The war party had a sorcerer?"
"Yuh, yuh! Bad, bad! Stopped Fish-un's spells! Shell men hit himboom!" He slammed one huge fist into the other for emphasis. I braced myself against the shock wave, then said, "You mean a couple of the knights knocked him out?"
"Yuh, Yuh! Sleep! More shell men hit Gibbet! And me!"
"I was wondering if you'd done any fighting." Frankly, I had difficulty imagining that he hadn't. I hoped he'd remembered that just because something's in a shell doesn't mean it's fair game for eating.
"How many of them did you knock out?"
"Two! Tree! Five!" Gruesome held up one combination of fingers after another, and his brow furrowed at the immense task of counting. I decided to spare him the trouble. "You knocked out a lot of them, anyway. How come that didn't stop them?"
"Spell man! Threw fire! Fire sticks! Hurt, hurt!" I got the message. The party's sorcerer had thrown lighted torches at Gruesome, thick enough and fast enough to drive him away. But that didn't sound like your garden-variety sorcerer to me. Alarm thrilled through me. "So they captured all of them?"
"No, no!" Gruesome shook his head most emphatically. "On'y Angel!"
"Angelique!" I yelped. "How could they capture her? She's a ghost!
"Bad spell! Bad, bad spell!" Gruesome shook his head to show how thoroughly he disapproved, scrunching up his whole face. "Held up jug! Skinny jug! Angel go skinny, too, and go in jug ... Thhhhhw-pp!" He made a sucking noise through pursed lips. "Shriek! Loud!" He clapped his hand over his ears, remembering. "Bad, bad!" Now the anger started.
"Into a bottle?" I howled. "He said a spell that sucked her into a bottle? And it hurt her?"
"Yuh, yuh!" Gruesome nodded. "Shriek!" Of course, she might have just been scared, but either way, I was c out, even if I did have to mad enough to go turn that sorcerer inside work magic to do it - and even if he was more powerful than the average spell-caster. "Which way did he go? where did he take her?"
"No, the'!" Gruesome waved his spread hands back and forth.
"Changed! Like lizard skin! Not magic man, magic woman!" My heart sank. "Once Angelique's ghost was in the bottle, the sorcerer changed into Sue ... into the queen?"
"Yuh, Yoh! Gruesome nodded vigorously. "Wanted Saw! Mad, mad!"
"I'll just bet she was," I growled.
It all made sense. Suettay had come out in disguise, expecting me to be with the party and knowing that once I saw her, I'd forget about everything else and just get Frisson working on immobilizing her spells. But with your ordinary infantry sorcerer, I would have put him on the back burner and set Frisson to knocking over the knights. Once she saw I wasn't there, she changed herself back into Suettay, especially since, by then, Gilbert and Frisson had been knocked out, and she'd driven Gruesome away.