"You have wrought well for God this day, Master Saul," Gilbert said softly.

I shrugged impatiently. "I did something good for a human being, out of entirely selfish motives."

"Selfish?" Gilbert frowned. "How so?"

"Because it made me feel good inside." I raised my voice. "Hear that, angel? I'm grateful for your help-but I had it coming, because what I wanted to do was also what you wanted done! I'm not on your side! But I'm not on their side either! Got that?"

But I felt a strange, vagrant wave of amusement that almost seemed to blow through me like a breeze, and I had to turn away fast to escape Frisson's long and thoughtful gaze. "Come on, troops.

We've still got a long day's hiking ahead of us."

But we couldn't have been hiking down that trail for more than ten minutes before the roadway exploded in front of us.

The explosion kicked up a geyser of dust, and there stood the wicked queen herself, shrieking pure venom, her rolls of fat shaking with rage. "Vile invader! Your meddling has cost me five minutes'

agony, hot irons searing all through my body! My master has punished me shrewdly for letting another soul escape damnation-and has commanded me to obliterate you and your friends! Yet first, I shall see you suffer as I have suffered!"

But it wasn't me she threw the first whammy at, it was Frisson, stiff-arming a gesture that twisted as it stabbed while she bellowed something I couldn't understand.

Frisson screamed and fell, writhing.

I shouted, "For the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain."

Frisson relaxed with a groan of relief.

"Meddler!" Suettay yelled. "Rogue! Villain!" Yes, I did detect a note of panic there, a note of fear.

Of me?

No, Of her master.

"Mendacious mendicant!" she screeched, then added some syllables in the Latinlike language, winding up to throw me down.

I took a deep breath for a counterspell, hoping I'd think of one in thing pressed into my palm.

time-but on the inhalation, I felt some Looking down, startled, I saw some chicken-track lines scrawled on a scrap of foolscap. The misspellings were horrendous, but they were being viewed by a volunteer tutor who had fought his way through many a Freshman English paper, and I managed to catch the gist of it at a glance. I called out, ,wicked old queen, come losses or gains, Here is the verse to bring you fear: Go hand, go foot, till naught remainsGone with the snows of yesteryear!"

Suettay began to disappear, from the feet up. She howled in frustration, then lifted her arms to throw another whammy-but they disappeared, too. She screamed in full rage, face darkening and as ugly as I've ever seen, as her hips and abdomen faded. Then, unfortunately, she remembered herself and screamed something in the Old Tongue that made her arms reappear; they wove a quick, unseen symbol as she screamed another verse, and all of her reappeared just as it had gone, but much more quickly. Even as her nether parts were returning, she was winding up another verse that she belted out, hands rolling over and over each other, and a six-foot dragon leapt from them to charge roaring at us.

Gilbert gave a shout of joy and leapt in front of all of us, stabbing in low and jumping back. Ichor spurted from the dragon's chest, and it bellowed in startled pain, swerving to pounce at Gilbert-but the squire leapt aside and chopped horizontally, shearing off a bat wing.

The dragon screamed, whirling and lashing out; steel talons cut through Gilbert's mail, and blood slicked the metal. The squire clenched his jaw and chopped again, a roundhouse swing that clipped the beast's head off its sinewy neck.

We all cheered.

But Suettay was chanting again, gesturing wildly, her volume building toward a crescendo.

I gulped. "It's gonna be a big one."

"Can you not hinder her?" Angelique pleaded.

"Frisson!" I snapped. "Any more verses,"' The poet shook his head, huge-eyed. "Naught but an old song comes to mind, Master Saul-a child's bit of nonsense."

"Try it! Anything, right now!"

"As you will." Frisson shrugged and started singing.

"As I went down to Darby town, 'Twas on a summer's day, There I beheld the biggest ram That ever was fed on hay!

That ever was fed on hay!

That ever was fed on hay!

When this ram began to bleat, Sir, The thunder, it did break!

When this ram began to walk, sir, The earth began to shake!"

A deep, dull, thrumming sound boomed through the air, and the earth beneath us heaved and settled. Then the sound and the earth tremor came again, and Suettay shrieked in anger and fear. I risked a peek.

A wall of wool blocked out the sun a hundred yards distant, supported on legs that would've shamed a sequoia. I craned my neck back; up, way up there, a hundred fifty feet up, floated a huge head with magnificent, curled horns the size of a highway cloverleaf-and sure enough, there were eagles circling around them. "Must be nesting season."

But Suettay was still shrieking. "What magic is this, that I've heard naught of?"

"Ethnomusicology," I called back.

But her attention was on the ram, and with good reason-it was ambling toward us, and with legs that size, ambling was high-speed.

"What hell-begot monster art thou," Suettay cried, "that comes thundering down on this poor rotted world!"

"Nay, speak not of Hell!" The ram's voice was a rumble in the Earth's crust. "I am begot of the core of the world, a child of magma!

What art thou, tedious gnat, that would wake Darby's sleep?" The ram advanced, the earth trembling in sine waves with his footfalls.

"For he who'd wake the ram must die, ere I can sleep again!"

Frisson turned pale as milk. it was borne in on me that I had roused an elemental.

"Nay, it was he!" Suettay shrieked, finger spearing toward Frisson.

"Pounce on him, jelly him! For he 'tis who waked you!"

"Is it thee?" The ram swerved a fraction of a degree, glowering down at Frisson. "Aye, for I see in thy face that only now dost thou see the danger thou hast waked!"

Damn good eyesight, I noted; there was maybe three inches of Frisson's head showing, from the ram's angle. But, the hell with the risk-I couldn't do anything cowering, and it was my asking that had nudged Frisson to sing the song. I stepped forward, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in my belly and the way my knees wanted to webble, and claimed the responsibility. "it was I who bade him do it, so it was I who waked you!" I felt a dramatic surge coming on. "Beware, mountain mutton! For I can slay you forever with the breath of a song!

Hey, it sounded good, right?

"Dost thou threaten me?" the ram thundered in enraged disbelief.

I bellowed back at him, "Aye, I do threaten! Therefore beware, and do as I bid thee! Slay this foul witch! " "Eh, would you dare?"

Suettay shrieked. "Heed him not, mighty ram, but turn to slay him!

For know that I, too, can slay you!" And her hands began to weave an invisible net, while she chanted, "Earth, give bellow; fire, blast!

Vomit molten rock and ash!"

I didn't wait to hear any more. Queen or not, if that witch was going to be fool enough to open up a volcano under the ram, it could kill all of us. I grabbed Gilbert and Frisson and threw them to the ground, yelling at Gruesome, "Duck! And after the boom is over, run for your life! " I was only glad Angelique had no body to hurt.

A flue opened, and a jet of ash shot out-but the ram stepped on it. The earth shook a little, and he set another foot down; the earth quieted.

Suettay just stared. Then she let out a screech that had some syllables in it, arms windmilling madly. A sudden whirlwind kicked up a lot of dust and stray ash, then dispersed and settled-and she had disappeared.

"Can we rise now?" Frisson asked around a mouthful of grass blades.

"Uh-yeah! Sure." I stood up slowly, staring at the spot of meadow where Suettay had been.

"Why-she is gone!" Gilbert said, amazed, as he stood up again.

"Yet I remain!" the ram thundered, still quaking toward us.

"Once I am waked, I cannot sleep again till my waker lies buried!"

"Wait a minute!" I barked. "Remember that spell I told you about! " "Wherefore ought I chance it?" The ram was fifty yards off now, and coming fast. "I shall crush thee ere thy lips can form the words!"

"I wasn't kidding." But I backed up as fast as I could. "I know just the verse for the occasion." But my blood ran cold; I was bluffing.

Frisson stared at me, amazed. "How so, Master Saul? I know the same verse!"

"Then sing it!" I yelled.

"Aye, do so," the ram thundered, only a dozen yards off.

"I hate people who call my bluff." Actually, the verse was "Didn't He Ramble": he rambled till the butchers cut him down." But when it came down to it, I just couldn't stand to see something as majestic as that sheep converted into a mountain of ram chops-not if there was a choice, anyway. So I passed the buck and hoped like fury that Frisson hadn't been bluffing, too. "Frisson! Sing it! Quick!"

The poet started chanting, "You who were waked from a century's sleep, in a place dark and timeless, unfathomably deep, Return to the slumber from which you were waked!

Return, and go quickly! Your blood-thirst is slaked!"

It was working. The ram towered closer, only twenty feet away, and he filled the world-but his outlines were wavering, and the curls of his wool were blurring together.

He covered ten feet with each stride, though.

Somehow, Frisson kept it soft and lulling.

"Sleep, for your great eyes do close!

Sleep, as the years and the centuries go!

Lulled in the magma that rocks you so slow, Sleep where only the All-Father knows!"

The ram was a mountain, a McKinley, an Everest-but it faded off into the sunlight at the edges, and its body was growing translucent.

And it yawned.

I added my two cents' worth.

"Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Smile while sleeping, never rise.

Sleep, mighty ram, and make no cry.

Rock him, rock him, lullaby!"

Frisson and Gilbert joined me for a chorus: "Rock him, rock him, lullaby!

The great hoof swung up for the last ten feet, growing thinner as it came. it lifted high over my head. I held fast with every thread of determination I had, frantically singing, petrified, rooted to the spot, staring up at the great dark circle that seemed to fill the sky.

It oised, then slowly came lower-but I could see the clouds through p it quite clearly, it faded to barely an outline as it dropped down, an outline that encircled our heads And was gone.

And a vast, distant thunder echoed, fading away, half angry bellow, half yawn. it reverberated over the land for what seemed a thousand miles, and was gone.

I let out a very long and very shaky breath, then turned to Frisson.

"Fantastic job, Frisson!"

He was still gazing at the place where the ram had been. "It was, was it not? 'Twas truly my verses that effected this!"

"It sure was." I turned to Gilbert. "How bad is it?"

"Naught but a scratch." He looked very happy, eyes glowing with pride. "I have slain a dragon, Master Saul! A small one, but a dragon natheless! I have actually slain a dragon!"

"You sure did, and we're your witnesses," I affirmed. "You didn't hesitate for a second. If that doesn't prove your worth, what could?"

I turned back to Frisson. "But where'd you ever learn that word, magma'?

"Why, the ram himself did say it," the poet answered, "did say he was a 'child of Magma.' Who is she, Wizard?"

Chapter Eleven.

The day passed without any further incidents, thank Heaven, and we set up camp in a nice, wide open river meadow. The most menacing wildlife in sight was a convention of spiders, and I was getting used to them. They seemed to be more and more abundant the farther we went back into Allustria-sort of a comment on Suettay's housekeeping, I supposed. In fact, there was a web on every bush around the campsite, flickering with the reflections of our firelight. There were circular webs, triangular, strands of gossamer between branchesevery sort any arachnid architect ever thought of trying. Their builders ran the gamut, too, from humble little brown things, up through the medium-sized spotted ones, to the huge, wide-as-a-quarter specimens like the one that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. I glowered at them with transferred resentment, but I couldn't really blame them for what one of their mates had done. On the other hand, I didn't have to let them inside my guarding circle, either.

I suddenly realized that I was beginning to regard them as good company and decided I had definitely been here too long.