"You would not wish to send us toward Hell, would you?" Frisson asked.

The ghost seemed to droop. "Nay, I would not."

"You see," I said carefully, "you've become a crucial element in the future of this country. There seems to be some sort of a campaign kick out the queen and all her ministers, and the evil going on, to that they serve. You were apparently her trump card, her ace in the hole, her secret weapon to give her more power to repel the invaders and the rebellious barons. Now that your sacrifice failed, the Devil and the lords will all drop her as having become too weak-too weak to be of any use to the Devil, too weak to defeat her barons if they rebel. That means that all the nobles will be jockeying for power, each one trying to prove to the Devil which of them is most evil and most ruthless, so that the Prince of Bullies will choose him to be the next king."

Angelique's ghost began to grow brighter, then dimmer, then brighter again, throbbing with anxiety. "But I am only a poor, simple maid of the common folk!"

"Maybe that's why you're so important," I said softly. "Really good people are hard to find, in any age." I should know; I'd been looking for a good woman for years.

"But you must not endanger yourselves for my sake!" she wailed.

"We're already nicely endangered, thank you," I told her. "Why do you think the queen brought you to us? No, I'd already made trouble for her before you came."

Angelique stared, wide-eyed. "Wherefore? 'Tis folly of the worst sort to antagonize her with no cause!"

"She wants me to leave, if I won't serve her cause," I grated, "and to me, that's reason enough to go back in. I'm not about to knuckle under to authority, unless it has won my respect and confidence. I'm going to do what I think is right, no matter what the rules say! And something tells me that trying to get your body away from the queen, and back to you, is right!"

Suddenly the chill within me stabbed all the way to my vitals, accompanying a sudden total sense of the rightness of what I had said.

With a sinking heart, I wondered if I had played into the hands of somebody else-the angels. Especially mine.

"I shall accompany you, then," Angelique said slowly, "for there is merit in what you say, and I perceive that you are a good man."

But the way she was looking at me said more, much more, and I went into panic. "No, I'm not! I'm a sour old cynic who's bitter about human nature in general and women in particular! I think religion was invented by priests for their own self-interest, and I scorn its rules!

I'm an agnostic and a secular humanist, and by the standards of this universe, I'm thoroughly despicable!"

I ran out of gas and stood glaring around at them all, panting.

Angelique shrank back, but not much, and just hovered there, staring at me out of those huge, worshipful eyes. Frisson and Gilbert exchanged judicious looks, lips pursed, and finally nodded.

Gruesome, of course, just sat blandly by the fire, looking vaguely interested. Why should he care?

Right.

"And what are you two snickering about?" I growled at Gilbert and Frisson.

"That you lack faith may be true, Master Saul," Gilbert said slowly, "but we have seen your works."

I frowned. "My works?"

"You do not have it within you to turn away from a soul in need,"

Frisson explained.

I glared at him, but what could I say? It's my biggest failing.

It gets me taken for a chump, time and again. Emotional leeches latch onto me like piglets to a sow, and I let them take and take and take before I finally get mad enough to tell them to bug off. I'm a sucker for a hard-luck story and a gloomy face.

Gilbert delivered the final verdict. "You are a good man, and we will follow you to the death."

The chill hit again, and I snapped up a palm like a stop sign.

"Now, wait a minute. Who elected me leader?"

"Why," Frisson said, "who else has the slightest idea as to what we should do, or where we should go?"

It was a good question. But I sure as heck didn't.

I was still trying to figure it out as I rolled up in my cloak, to try to eke out a little sleep from what was left of the night. But Angelique was right in my line of sight-deliberately, I was sure, the way she was gazing fondly at my battered, hairy face-and just knowing she was there played hob with my concentration. Every few minutes, I found myself opening my eyes just a little, to drink in the sight of all that lush feminine beauty, that lovely face, those wondrous curves that showed as hints through her long, gauzy gown every time she moved a little, and even when she didn't. I might not have been in love with her, but I sure got a charge out of looking.

Unfortunately, she seemed to have the same problem with me; every time I peeked, she was still gazing adoringly at me.

Suddenly, it hit me with a shock, and I went rigid, fighting to keep my eyes shut. That blasted binding song had worked both ways!

I.

was just as much subject to it as she was! Like it or not, reality or il lusion, I was in love!

My mind reeled, trying to adjust to the facts, trying to understand romantic love as a magical spell-not just the product of a spell, but the spell itself. My mind went over and over that idea, around and around it like a squirrel in a cage, until insight struck again, and I realized what the literature had always said love was-magic.

I relaxed, just a little. Of course, I'd been hearing that since I was a kid, from every adventure novel with a love interest, and half the popular songs on the radio.

Nonetheless, the reality was something of a shock.

On the other hand, I'd come to believe some time before that love was nothing but an illusion. I remembered that and got back some peace of mind.

But not much.

We were up with the morning star for a cold breakfast. I longed for a cup of coffee and was tempted to believe in magic long enough to conjure some up-but I turned mulish at the last second. Sunlight and morning had put me back into skeptical mode, and I was discounting all the spells I had worked as being part of the hallucination. Besides, nobody else there needed caffeine.

So we were off as the sun rose, following our shadows down the road to the west, not that I really expected to get very far. After about an hour, though, we climbed to the top of a ridge and stopped short, seeing the telltale shingled roof of an official toll station.

"I don't mind paying for the use of the road," I said to Gilbert and Frisson. "Where there's verse, there's gold. But I'm not exactly up for a session of arguing."

"There is no avoiding it," Frisson told me, "and I have wandered far enough to know. Even were we to slip into the high grass or the woods to bypass the hut, the witch within would know of our presence by her spells."

"Magical border alarm system," I grunted, thinking of electric eyes and radar. "Well, if we have to brazen it out, we might as well do it with style." So I strode up to the doorway and knocked.

My friends stared, then ran after me frantically, but they skidded to a stop as I knocked a second time, their faces sinking as they realized there was no help for it now.

But by the third knock, they were beginning to look puzzled.

"Nobody home," Gruesome grunted, disappointed; I think he'd been hoping for a quick snack.

"A border station, unmatched?" Gilbert stared. "Surely not!

'Tis unthinkable! " "Then how come you just thought of it?" I turned to Angelique. "I hate to take advantage of your special nature, but do you suppose ... ?"

"Surely, Master Saul." She was only an outline in sunlight, a gossamer strand or two-but she drifted through the cabin door as if it hadn't been there.

We waited. I tried my best to look impatient and annoyed.

Gruesome just looked hungry, and Frisson looked apprehensive. Gilbert, though, stood like stone with his hand on his sword hilt.

Angelique slipped back out, scarcely more substantial than birdsong. "There is no one within."

I stared. "No one?"

"None," she confirmed.

"But that cannot be!" Gilbert protested, and Frisson seconded him.

"No witch who was stationed to guard a road would dare leave her post while she lived, mademoiselle."

We fell silent at that, exchanging glances. I put it into words.

"But if she's dead, where's the body?"

"There are signs of haste," Angelique said helpfully.

"Let me see." I pushed at the door, but it was locked.

"Lemme." Gruesome hipped me aside-his shoulders were too high-took the door by the handle, and yanked. Wood cracked and splintered; the door came loose, leather hinges flapping. Gruesome grunted and tossed it aside.

"Uh-yes." I eyed the dismembered door and cleared my throat.

"Direct, aren't we? Well, let's have a look." I went in.

it wasn't in the world's best condition, that was true, but it wasn't all that bad, either-sort of like somebody had stopped doing the housekeeping a month ago; that rotten smell must have been the dirty dishes in the kitchen. At least, I assumed that was what the curtained doorway in the back wall led to; this part of the house just had a central fire pit under a hole in the roof, shielded by a louver, and a desk with a huge book beside an inkwell with a quill in it. I stepped closer and peered in; there was still liquid in the pot, but you could see the thick line above that showed it had evaporated. There was a fine coating of dust on the book, not all that obvious unless you looked; I guessed it had been a week or so since it had been used.

I looked up at that curtain hanging across the doorway. Something inside me balked and protested, wanting to leave well enough alone, but curiosity drew me on. Had to be curiosity, right? Couldn't have been anything else.

I pushed the curtain aside and looked in. The smell got a lot worse, and I wrinkled my nose. I couldn't pretend it was just rotting food any more-it was the stench that goes with sickness, bad sickness.

Angelique had been right, though-there was no one there, certainly not in the bed. it wasn't made, though, and the dishes were piled up on the table. This was where the toll-witch lived-but where was she now?

I went back out, shaking my head. "You called it, Angelique.

No one home."

Frisson clapped his hands with a smile of delight. "Most excellent!

Let us go on past!"

"Yeah," I said slowly, "let's."

But it nagged at me, as we went by the tollhouse. I didn't like unsolved puzzles and I liked even less the idea that somebody might be lying around sick, with nobody to take care of him. However, there was every chance that the duty-witch had been taken in for an overhaul, and that her replacement just hadn't arrived yet, so I pushed my misgivings aside and followed Gilbert into the woods.

Then I heard the moan from the other side of the trail.

Chapter Ten.

it was hard to say whether that moan was of pain or terror-maybe both. But I couldn't ignore it. I stopped. That meant Frisson and Gruesome had to stop, too, or bump into me-but they had stopped already and were frowning into the shadows under the leaves.

"What moves, Master Saul?" Frisson asked.

"Probably nothing," I answered. "From the sound, I'd say whatever made it is too sick to do more than lie there."

Gilbert heard and looked back. He stopped, frowning. " 'Tis not our affair, Master Saul."

"Anybody hurt is my affair," I snapped. " 'No man is an island.'

I thought you were a Christian, Gilbert."

"I am indeed!" he cried, offended.

"Then remember the parable of the Good Samaritan."

"The Samaritan," Frisson said nervously, "was in no peril."

"He speaks wisely, Master Saul." Angelique's voice seemed to come from thin air. "There may be danger."

"Can't let a little thing like that stop us." I stepped into the shadows, pushing the branches aside with my quarterstaff-and just incidentally keeping it near the guard position. "Let's see what we'll find. " Leaves rustled as we moved in-then Angelique recoiled.

"Evil!"

I could smell it, too-or maybe it was just the aroma of illness.

I reminded myself that this massive hallucination included a guardian angel, and kept going.

The underbrush opened out, and there, hovering near a sheer rock face, were two of the ugliest creatures I had ever seen, with multiple fangs and tusks sticking out of their snouts, under baleful yellow eyes set in red, leathery skin that turned into black as it stretched out into bat wings. Their fingernails were claws, and their feet were cloven hooves. I froze; the mere sight of them struck fear through my vitals-or maybe it was their sulfurous smell, or the aura of evil that hung about them.

They were chuckling and gibbering, jabbing long-nailed fingers at the poor bundle of rags and quivering flesh that huddled against the rock face. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that they were just hallucinations.

The deep breath was a bad idea, though; I caught a whiff of her stench and was almost glad the demons, sulfur smell drowned it out-but it was definitely the same as the trace lingering in the back room of the toll cabin.

She saw me and stretched out a hand in supplication. "Aid! Good trave er, ai !"

The devils turned in instant suspicion, saw me, and dove for me, howling.

Terror damn near immobilized me, but trained reflexes made me leap aside and slam a kick at the nearest one. I yelped; he was hard!