"Surely we are too heavy for so fragile a path," Angelique demurred.

"Forward," I commanded, "or he'll take the hindmost."

"Can you not make our weight less?"

,oh, all right," I grumped.

"Afoot and hearted I take to the climbing road, Hea Ithy, free, The world before me, dismayed Rising up un Forward the Light Brigade!"

"Volga, mother dear!" the Bear cried, "you have never had such a gift as this!" With that, he swung a huge paw with double eagle's talons at the maiden, to snag her dress. She screamed and shrank back, but the Bull roared in anger and leapt from the pathway, hooves slamming straight toward the Bear.

Ussrus stepped back just in time, and the Bull landed right in front of him, slamming a haymaker into the Bear's jaw. its head rolled back, and its arms came up. "Comrade, please! I come in peace! A truce, I beseech you!"

"Don't trust him!" I called. "Cry no peace with the Bear who walks like a man!"

The Bull only kept his guard up, glowering.

"Bring him up, quickly!" the Gremlin hissed. "We cannot go on without him"' The way ahead was luminescent, glowing with distant fires. I called, "Up, up and away!

For he who fights and runs away, Will live to fight another day!"

he Bull admitted, "yet should I therefore "There is sense in that," t not give him his truce?"

"No!" I bleated.

"Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer, Making his supplications rose Adam-Zad the Bear ...

When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise, When he veils the hate and cunning of his little swinish eyes, When he shows as seeking quarter with paws like hands in prayer, That is the time of peril-The time of the Truce of the Bear!

over and over the story, ending as it began: There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that walks like a man!

"Betrayal!" the Bear cried. "Our plan is discovered!" His huge paw scythed toward the Bull's face, but the claws tangled in the Bull's long hair, just long enough for John to beat away the attack and counterpunch. The Bear recoiled, then came back roaring, with scytheclaws flailing. "Transform the imperialist war into civil war!"

Frisson pressed a piece of paper into my hand. I read it without thinking.

"Raise up our tiring friend!

That we might rise away with him, Up toward our chosen end, Clambering dire to meet the arachnid sire Spiraling higher in a widening gyre!"

The Bull shot up into the air as if a huge hand had grabbed him, then dropped back onto the pathway-but very lightly, as if that same invisible hand was setting him down with the greatest of care.

I began to wonder about Frisson's verse of prayer.

The Bear recovered, its shoulders hunkering down, an ugly gleam coming into its eyes. "Do not set yourself above us! For surely, all history is that of class conflict!"

"The conflict part, I can believe," I said to the Gremlin, "but he totally lacks class."

"Keep walking, Wizard," the monster answered nervously.

"I sense an uprising," Gilbert muttered.

The pathway shuddered under our feet, then pulled itself loose from the ground and drifted upward, curving into a widening spiral that wound up out of sight.

The Bear rose up, both forepaws hammering at the pathway, claws flashing like icicles. "Let us restructure the economy!" He hooked huge talons into the spiral and pulled downward.

The path jolted, and my companions cried out, fighting for balance. Frisson and I fell, but Angelique and Gilbert managed to keep their feet. The Bear dragged the pathway down, roaring, "Scorch the earth and burn the city! Let not a scrap remain to strength the enemy!

It "Too much anachronism is too much," I growled.

"Oh, hear you not the singing of the bugle, wild and free?

And soon you'll know the ringing of the rifle, from the tree!

oh, the rifle, yes the rifle, in our hands will prove no trifle!

Light gleamed along a length of blue steel, and I found myself holding a Kentucky flintlock.

Well, one shot was better than none. I tucked it into my shoulder and sighted.

The Bear dropped the pathway and backed away, arms up high again.

"Brothers, do not shoot!"

The pathway whipped back up, then sank down, then back up, and even Angelique and Gilbert howled as we tumbled. I squeezed the trigger, and the hammer snapped down-but there wasn't even a flash in the pan. I threw the rifle at the Bear with an oath of disgust.

The butt caught Ussrus right across the chops, and he reeled, head spinning.

"Enough of this!" the Gremlin cried, exasperated, and jumped down into the cave of the Bear.

"No!" I cried in alarm, but the Gremlin was muttering something as he dashed in a circle around Ussrus Major.

The Bear suddenly let out a howl. "What are these leaves? What are these-gooseberries?"

"What ails the beast?" Frisson asked, wide-eyed.

"He supposes he is a bush," the Gremlin answered, hopping back up onto the pathway. "But the spell will not endure forever, Wizard.

The Bull must find some way to bring this path up high, where the Bear cannot reach, or he will surely drag us down."

"Right." I pulled myself together, racking my wits for some verse about a rising path. The first thing that came to mind was, "Up and away, Chingachgook' The hunter who follows shall now be shook!"

"I'm out of rhymes!" I shouted. "Take it, Frisson!"

The poet adlibbed as easily as a stream flows: "As we go faster, we slow our pursuer!

The pilgrims rise up, and disdain the lure!"

"Walk!" the Gremlin commanded us, and we scrambled to our feet, swayed a moment in the motion of the rising path, then managed a sort of bowlegged gait, leaning into a hike that had suddenly become a climb, as the path rose up at an angle and kept rising. Below us, the Bear roared in impotent fury, clawing in vain at a curve that had risen so high that it exceeded his grasp. He stood below us, flailing away at those whom he would drag down, until his voice was lost in the mists that rose up to obscure him, mists that rose even higher until they were all about us, then hardened-and we found ourselves walking in an enclosed tunnel once again.

"You have succeeded, Wizard," Frisson whispered.

"Yes, but only because I had a lot of help. The tunnel has changed a lot, though. Are we still on the right path?"

"Aye," the Bull said, "for we have but discovered the way to the Spider King, in spite of all the deceptions with which the Bear sought to enshroud us."

"Yet it seems to differ so," Angelique objected. And it did, for the curve was much sharper, and rose in an incline. We toiled upward through a torus that became a hollow expanding helix, ascending and ascending until it suddenly opened out into a great room, so vast that its ceiling glowed in an opalescent mist, a fabric of gossamer threads.

it had no walls, but columns as numerous as the trunks of a forest, with vistas of hills and meadows and groves visible between them, bathed in sunlight and vividly green. We walked out in wonder, across a floor that was a mosaic of marble so huge that our eyes couldn't even begin to discern the picture it formed.

Directly before us, in an archway, stood a stocky figure with a flowing cloak, silhouetted against the sun.

"Gentlemen and lady," the Bull said, in a hushed, almost reverent tone, "we have attained our goal. We stand in the palace of the Spider King.

Chapter Nineteen.

The dark form came forward. As he left the sun-dazzle, his face became visible. At first glance, he wasn't a terribly prepossessing figure-only a man of middle height, wearing tunic and hose of dark gray broadcloth, a hip-length coat with wide sleeves, and a cap encircled by a band of leaden medallions.

Then I saw the face, as rough as if it had been hewn from stone, with fire in the eyes and a grim set to the lips, and I quailed for a moment.

Only a moment, not even long enough for my natural mulishness to arise-because I looked at his eyes again and decided that if this man told me to follow him into a battle we couldn't win, I probably would.

"Be welcome in my palace," the Spider King said. "If you have found the means to come to me here, the stoutness of heart to win through, you must be good folk."

I glanced around, but nobody else seemed inclined to answer, so cleared my throat.

But Gilbert spoke up first. ,you must be sure indeed of your power, Majesty, to greet so unseemly a crew as we, with no guardsmen or knights about you. The Spider King's lips quirked into a smile, apparently ignoring the element of threat in Gilbert's words-was the squire out of his mind?

He started to answer, but before he could get out a single word, a horrifying apparition came dashing from behind a pillar. He was only a man, but incredibly ugly. His eyes and nose were surrounded by a huge tangle of red hair and beard. His tunic and leggings were of good cloth, but irretrievably rumpled. He ran hunched over, a standing cup of dull white metal in his hands. "The cup, Majesty! The antimony cup! You must drink!"

The king glanced at him, irritated. "Away, Oliver. I have affairs in train.

But, "You must drink!" the shaggy man maintained, and he set himself beside the king like a tree that had suddenly taken root.

The king gave him a look of exasperation, but took the cup and drank off the draught. Then he pushed the cup back and said, "Now begone! I shall summon you at need!"

"As your Majesty pleases." The vagabond bowed and scurried off.

"As you see, I am attended," the Spider King said to Gilbert. The squire had not moved, but somehow gave the impression of having shrunk away in loathing as Angelique had very definitely done, and the rest of us had backed away a pace or two.

"He could repulse a squadron by the mere look of him," Frisson murmured.

"Not that he would have need to." For some odd reason, Gilbert seemed to relax. "We have come in peace, Majesty, to beseech your aid.

"None would come for aught reason else," the king said, with a sardonic smile. "You seek aid against the queen of Allustria, do you nott"' Something clicked in my mind. "Yes, we do," I said slowly, "and I think you know all about it-starting with my being transported to this universe."

"To the universe of Allustria and Merovence," the Spider King corrected me. "We stand between all universes, here. Yet I cannot be certain that I know all your grievances. Therefore, tell me them."

For a moment, Gilbert looked lost. "There is so much . . ."

"I am a poet whose verses wreak evil, Majesty," Frisson said, "even though I intend it not. Yet this wizard . . ." He nodded toward me. ". . . has taught me to write, so that my verses no longer need to be spoken, and no longer wreak havoc."

Gilbert took his cue. "The people of Allustria have suffered at the hands of Queen Suettay, Majesty, and I was of the band of the Order of Saint Moncaire sent to free one good yeoman and his family from her oppression. Yet my general did command me to accompany this Wizard Saul, for he had a vision that showed Saul to be the salvation of Allustria."

i still didn't like the sound of that.

"He wrested me from my prison cell," the Rat Raiser said, "where I had languished for years, since Queen Suettay consigned me there for no crime but fulfilling my function too well."

"And seeking to rise higher?" The Spider King fixed him with a gimlet stare.

The Rat Raiser bore it as long as he could; then he lowered his gaze and muttered, "I was ambitious, aye. Yet I did not seek her throne."

"That would have come," the Spider King assured him. He turned to Angelique. "And yourself, lady? Have you, too, suffered at the hands of this Queen Suettay?"

Angelique straightened, lifting her chin. "She did sacrifice me to evil, majesty, and did attempt to ensnare my ghost to be her slavebut the Wizard Saul did remind me that I had but to repent my sins, and I would be Heaven-bound. He thus freed me from her power-but she kept my body between life and death, so that I must yet linger on this Earth."

The Spider King nodded slowly, eyes still on her. "And 'tis only the trickle of life in your body that holds you here?"

Angelique blushed and lowered her eyes, and I felt a thrill shoot through every limb and extremity. it surpassed anything that was ever brewed in a test tube.

Then the Spider King turned to me with a skeptical lift of the eyebrow. "What say you, 0 Hope of the Oppressed?"

"Uh . . ." I swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. "I just want to find my friend Matthew Mantrell, your Majesty." I was about to add the bit about getting back to my own universe, but I glanced at Angelique, looking so vibrant, alive, and curvaceous, and decided to leave that part out. Honesty, however, compelled me to admit, "I also want to get Angelique's ghost back into her body."

"How shall you do that, with the queen in your way?

I shrugged. "Take the queen out of the way."

"So you are set upon the slaying of a monarch?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way," I admitted, "though I wouldn't mind, now that you mention it-nobody could deserve it more. Besides, her grandmother usurped the throne-she isn't a rightful monarch.

"If she was born to it, it is hers by right," he stated with an air of full authority.

I looked at him narrowly; I've developed this instinct for knowing when a person's trying to snow me. "You don't believe that for a second," I accused. Then pieces pulled themselves together in my mind-the picture of that great fat spider sitting back and laughing at me, after she had just bitten me in Matt's apartment, and all the little arachnids that had been watching me ever since. "You were the one who brought me here in the first place! Maybe you can tell me how I'm going to unseat Suettay! That's what you want, isn't it?"

He stood still for a moment, then smiled. "You are astute, Wizard Saul-and, yes, you are a wizard; your denials are futile. As to deposing the usurper, you are the lodestone to which the forces of opposition will gather, and may have the strongest chance of success-but it is not by any means certain."

I frowned. "Just a minute, there. In the first place, I thought you said Suettay wasn't a usurper."

"Her own actions betray that she is, at least, no rightful monarch," the king said. "Since taking the throne, she has sought for the rightful king; for twenty years she has sought the descendant of the queen her grandmother slew."