Which raised another issue. "You hung around close enough to see all this?"
"All!" Gruesome nodded. "But couldn't stay watch! Queen tell shell men kill friends! Couldn't watch! Shriek, run back, hit!"
"Good troll!" I could just picture Gruesome thundering down on the knights again, bellowing in rage. "I'll bet they pulled back!"
"Yuh, yuh! Shell men run! Goosum put Gibbet and Fish-un in boat!
Queen shout, shell men run back! Hit, hurt! Gibbet and Fish-un wake up! Fish-un make spell, wind come, blow boat into water!" For him, that was a major soliloquy. it wasn't all that bad a job of reporting, either-I'd heard worse on the ten o'clock news. "They left without you?
"No, no! Queen throw fire, Goosum run into water!" He shuddered at the memory, and I could only think that there must have been a lot of fire, considering the troll's fear of water. "Gibbet pull Goosum into boat!"
That must have darn near swamped it, but it sounded like the kind of foolish, gallant thing Gilbert would do. The incongruity struck me. So. They had reached the mainland right enough, but as soon as they had, they'd walked into an ambush. Suettay had looked in her crystal ball, or pool of ink, or whatever, and seen where they were going to land. She'd taken a band of knights and waited for my buddies to show up. When they had, the knights had descended on them, four overwhelming Gilbert while a dozen or so harried Gruesome, who harried them back-but then Suettay, in disguise, threw fireballs at him until he had to run, while a half dozen attacked Frisson. He got two of them with his spells, but the "sorcerer" knocked him out with a magic verse, then recited another one that pulled Angelique's ghost, screaming, into a bottle. No wonder - the sorcerer was Suettay, disguised enough so they wouldn't be able to detect her. She was no doubt outraged to discover that I wasn't with the party, and headed back to her castle with Angelique locked up in the bottle. On the way out, though, she had thoughtfully ordered her soldiers to kill Gilbert and Frisson. That was when Gruesome had flown into a rage and charged from his hiding place, holding off the soldiers just long enough to drag Frisson and Gilbert back to the boat. Apparently the dragging brought Frisson around, reviving him just in time to call up a wind that blew them out to sea. Suettay had come back and thrown fireballs at Gruesome, driving him into his hated enemy element, water - but Gilbert had pulled the troll in at the last second, nearly swamping the boat.
"Wait a minute," I said. "If that all happened on the mainland what're you doing here?"
"Big wind!" Gruesome made whirling motions with his paws.
"Fish-un say queen send! Blew back toward land!"
"The queen conjured up a gale to blow you back to her." I nodded. So did Gruesome, apparently delighted that I'd understood him so easily. I wished he weren't delighted so often - all those shark teeth made me nervous. "But Fish-un make spell! Wind change, blow from land! Goosum look back, see boat sink!" He shuddered. " Goosum see Goosum go into water!"
"It was just an illusion," I said quickly, "like a dream." Gruesome frowned, puzzled; apparently trolls didn't dream.
"Pretend." I struggled to explain a concept. "Something that wasn't real. Like a story, only you could see it happen." His eyes widened, and his mouth formed a saw-toothed O.
"You know it didn't really happen," I pressed the point, "because you're really here. it was just a fake Gruesome that drowned - like a picture."
He nodded, faster and faster, O turning back into a grin. "Then wind blow, land go away. Then wind go away, too. Gilbert push boat.
"I had a sudden vivid vision of Gilbert getting out to walk on the water, pushing the boat in front of him like a wheelbarrow - but of course, Gruesome only meant that Gilbert had rowed the boat.
"Didn't Frisson take a turn?"
Gruesome nodded. "Short."
"No staying power," I agreed, "but I'll bet he got back into shape fast. Didn't he try to raise a wind?"
Gruesome shook his head. "Queen might know," So Frisson had been afraid to whistle up a wind, because Suettay might have detected it and realized they were still alive. I gave him points for foresight, but subtracted them for underestimating his opponent - I wouldn't be surprised to find out Suettay had seen through his illusion. A nasty suspicion occurred to me. "Did a new wind start up?" Gruesome nodded, staring at me in amazement.
"Same thing happened to me," I assured him. "And it blew you here? "
"How know? How know?" Gruesome bleated.
"Just a lucky guess." I had remembered that I had told the wind to take me to Thyme. Apparently, this was where she lived. I had twisted the wind to blow me here, but I needn't have bothered Thyme was keeping an eye out for any boat that came close enough to puff into her trap. My friends' arrival on this island was no accident, either. I had a sudden image of a spider again, but this time, it was a black widow. "So where are they? Frisson and Gilbert, I mean." Gruesome started to answer, then shrugged helplessly and pointed inland. "In woods. In cage."
"Cage?" I stared. Jail? Frisson and Gilbert? A nearly-knight and a nouveau wizard? "How? " Gruesome shrugged. "Woman."
"They were captured by a woman? Okay, I can understand that - I guess. But what kind of spell did she use?"
"No spell." Then Gruesome frowned, reconsidering. "Maybe spell. "
" 'Maybe spell'" I frowned. "How can you have a 'maybe' spell?"
"Fish-un and Gibbet see woman. She smile. Gibbet turn red, start shaking, go hide. Fish-un big-eyed, come to her. She lead him into cage. She chase Gibbet into cage."
So. She hadn't needed any magic, other than her own sweet self - or sweet body, I amended; the self was yet to be determined. Just the ordinary magic that any beautiful woman has naturally, or can learn.
Well, I was armored against it. I'd been worked over by champions and had accumulated some thick layers of scar tissue around my heart in the process. Any time a pretty woman started giving me the come-hither look now, all I had to do was remember what the other ones had done to me, and the beautiful lady suddenly seemed much less enticing. Okay, so maybe I had lost out on a good one that way, but I didn't really think so - experience had shown me that every time I'd fallen in love with a woman who turned out to be good, she tactfully and gently let me know it wasn't mutual. I attracted neurotics and sickles, women who wanted to use me for their own twisted purposes, and the hell with what it did to me.
What can I say? Like will to like? I hated to think that. But if it was true, all the more reason to stay single. Which I had.
"Thyme," I informed Gruesome. "The woman's name is Thyme."
"Time?" Gruesome asked, frowning. "Day? Week?" Well. I hadn't known he had grasped the concept. Apparently the spillover from that spell I'd thrown at Gilbert had done more than I'd known. I felt a chill, wondering just how much else Gruesome knew that I didn't know about. "You might be right," I conceded, "but I thought she was named after an herb. After all, she's a nymph."
"Nimf?" Gruesome screwed up his face in trollish concentration.
"A nature spirit," I explained, "a personification of fertility-or at least sexuality. She's not really human, she's supernatural - and, thank Heaven, can't leave this island. She's tied to the plant whose life energy she embodies."
That was too much for the poor troll. He just shook his head, looking frazzled - or shook the upper part of his torso, anyway. "Like Saw say. We go break cage?"
"We can try," I said slowly, "but that brings up another question. Did you try to break them out? " "Me try break!" Gruesome nodded with vigor-something like bowing. "She touch cage, and cage bite Goosum. Jump back and fall - plants tied around feet."