"With effects that are comic and tragic," the Gremlin murmured.

"So much the better; you may then make these puffed-up clerks to see their own fallibility, thus restoring to them some measure of humility. " "Mayhap I shall even make them to laugh at the absurdity of their own vanities and strivings after dross!"

"Ah! If you can, if you but can! Then might they see themselves as t hey are, and see how petty are the goals for which they strive!"

"It would destroy them!" the Rat Raiser said, ashen-faced.

"Mayhap; but out of this crushing of the soul, they may emerge with some truer view of life, and greater inclination to labor for the common weal."

"Yet that cannot be," the Rat Raiser said, frowning, "for each clerk, in the end, labors for himself."

The Spider King wheeled toward him. "We have each the need to labor for something greater than ourselves, friend, so that we may feel less alone, and feel our lives to have worth."

But the bureaucrat only frowned, not understanding.

I didn't blame him. I couldn't help thinking that this Spider King had an awfully idealistic view of bureaucracy.

The Gremlin clapped his hands and chuckled. "We shall craft a bureaucrat's bane! Ah, what fun! I have not had so grand a time for eons! I have grown rusty, I have grown stale!"

"We're going to pit entropy against perversity, then?" I asked.

The Spider King nodded. "It may not succeed in great measure, since the one is but an aspect of the other ,Oh, no," I said softly.

"That could be very, very effective."

"Devastating." The Gremlin chuckled. "if an enterprising spirit doth move the confrontation."

"And on this kind of issue, you can be very enterprising, right?"

"Just so!"

"So much for Suettay's ministers." The king dismissed them with a wave of his hand. "They may be rendered benign. Yet how shall you deal with the woman herself?"

That brought me up short. I spread my hands. "Confront her and try to match magics with her, I guess-and hope I've got better verses."

The king shook his head with certainly. "That way lies disaster.

You must enlist a power greater than your own, that together you may be more than the sorceress-queen."

I frowned, instantly suspicious. "How do I do that? Pray?"

"Nay." The King beckoned, and I came over to the archway with him. Looking down, I saw an azure field ringed with green and tan, and with a fleck or two of green in it. With a shock, I recognized the Mediterranean.

"Yon lies the world of Merovence and Allustria," the Spider King murmured.

I wondered how he had locked in the view of that one universe -from this nexus. I began to realize why the man was called "the Spider King."

"There is a man who is bound for sainthood, though he knows it not." The king's arm reached past me, pointing at an island in the Aegean. "There, where Circe beguiled the men of Odysseus, dwells a nymph named 'Thyme'-and the sorceresses of Suettay's guild have kidnapped the saintly man and placed him there, within the bondage of her spell."

"What a way to get to sainthood! I take it he's having a good time?

"Nay. His spirit's sorely tried, and he is racked with the hot irons of desire-for he will not yield to the nymph's blandishments. He knows that no man can serve two masters, and that love is a most demanding one-but he chose Christ for his master long ago. He seeks to do Christ's work, aiding the poor and friendless, and there fore will not yield unto the nymph."

"Wholeness," I murmured. "Integrity. The unity of his spirit."

I1 Even so. Yet from his enduring struggle, his soul has gained strength tenfold-and it was a mighty spirit ere he came there. Folk said that he worked miracles of curing, and of producing food, but he denied it. Yet if any man can give you strength 'gainst Sucttay, it is he. it "A veritable treasure," Gilbert mused behind him. "How shall we know the man?"

"By his sex-he is the only male on the island-and by his habit."

"Habit?" The squire frowned. "Is he a cleric, then?"

"He is-a monk, of the Order of Saint Louis, one Ignatius by name.

And you will find him a source of strength in other conflicts, too; he may even rekindle the ideals of the clerks."

"If he can do that," I murmured, "he can work miracles."

"And so, away!" The Spider King clasped my arm, turning me around and propelling me toward another archway. "Yonder lies your path!

Together, now, and off upon your quest!"

"Hey, wait a minute!" I tried to backpedal, but the king's grip was surprisingly strong, and I found myself gliding over the smooth marble floor in spite of my efforts. "How are we going to get hold of you if we need help?"

"You will not-I will maintain touch with you! Each separate one of you is now at the end of one of my threads; you are all caught within my web! When you doubt it, find a moment in a place of stillness, and you will feel my power! Now, Godspeed! And may your patron saint stand by you!"

I tried to stop, but I skidded through the archway, and my friends came tumbling after me with shouts of alarm, tumbling after me into a warm, clinging darkness that enveloped us, rocked us, soothed us ...

And vanished.

Chapter Twenty-one.

The trees crowded in on us, towering up to form a roof overhead, lowering down with an ominous susurrus. I swallowed against a knot of apprehension deep in my throat and glanced back at my companions.

They were feeling it, too-some lurking presence that did not want us there.

Fortunately, we had the Gremlin along to chase the baddies away.

"Uh-you sure you know where you're going?"

"Of a certainty, I know!" Then why did the monster look worried?

"I am going to the bower of the nymph Thyme!"

"Uh-right." I frowned. "Did you, uh-have any idea what route we were going to take? " "As I told you, we follow the sun. If it is before us in its course as it arcs dawn to dusk, we go aright."

I glanced back at my friends, noting Angelique's apprehension and the Rat Rasier's angry glower. "Right. Say, uh, Gremlin-we haven't been able to see the sun for six hours now. Not since we got kicked out of the Spider King's palace and found ourselves in this forest."

"Do you doubt me?" the Gremlin challenged. "Could I go astray without wishing it?"

"Just what I was going to ask."

"Mayhap the wood itself wishes to mislead you," Angelique suggested quickly.

The Gremlin halted and heaved a huge sigh. "You have said it, maiden, and I think you may have some hint of truth in that saying.

Nay, we have lost our way."

I frowned. "Of course, it couldn't just be that you think it's fun to help travelers get lost."

"Not when I am one of them! I swear, Wizard, 'tis no doing of mine! " I winced and glanced around me. "Please! You swearing anything strikes me as extremely hazardous!"

"We must forge ahead," Gilbert said grimly. "We shall come to naught if we do naught. "There's a certain sort of sense in that," I agreed. "Onward, mes amis! "

"If the way 'onward' doth reveal itself," the Gremlin grumped; but he started forward again.

An hour later, I called a halt again. "Okay-we've been watching the light on the trees, and it has always stayed on their fronts-but I'm sure I recognized that birch tree at least three times!"

"Why," the Gremlin growled, "how can you be sure it is the same tree?

"Because this is a deciduous forest, mostly oak and ash, and that's the only birch tree I've seen. Also because the markings on its bark have twisted themselves into a gloating leer."

Everybody turned and looked at the birch tree. " 'Tis true,"

Gilbert said. "In the center of the trunk, the blackbird marks have shrunk into eyes, and the one beneath has widened into a grinning mouth."

The Gremlin stamped up to the tree. "At what do you laugh, white-face? Do you dare?"

It must have been the wind in the branches. The tree couldn't really have been laughing.

"I submit," I said, "that the queen knows where we are and has placed a spell on this forest to keep us going around in circles."

"But she thinks that we are dead!" Angelique protested.

"She must have developed suspicions and looked in her crystal ball. " "Not likely," the Gremlin said, coming back, "for no crystal can see into the palace of the Spider King, unless he wills it, I would as lief believe the forest was enchanted in antiquity, and all who dwell nearby do know to avoid it."

"Could be." But I glanced aside, distracted. "Frisson, what are you doing?

"Only toying with a stick." Frisson snapped up straight, hands going behind his back.

My scalp prickled. "Why do I get the willies when you start playing around? What's the game, Frisson?"

"oh ... naught but this." Frisson took the stick out from behind his back-three sticks, actually. One was a section of a tree trunk, like a flat table; the other was a peg, going through a hole in the center of the long one.

"What does it do?" I asked suspiciously.

"I recited a verse in praise of the Pole Star," Frisson explained.

"It will always point to the north, now. just an idle amusement, of no worth-" "No worth, he says! He just invented the compass, that's all!" I went around behind the poet. "Lead on, Frisson! As long as that stick is pointing toward us, we're going south!"

Frisson looked up, pleased, then started off into the forest again.

The Gremlin followed at the end of the line, grumbling.

Another hour later, I called a halt again. "Okay. No luck.

We've ight line according to Frisson's compass, but here's that gone in astra blasted birch tree again. I've got half a mind to blast it for real."

A long moan sounded.

I glared at the tree. "That got you, didn't it? Gonna let us go, now? " The moan came again, drawn out and quavering.

"Saul," Angelique said, "it came from our left, and the tree is to our right. " I looked up, frowning, peering off into the underbrush.

Sure enough, the moan came again-but it was coming closer. "Everybody step back!"

The moan came loud and clear, and a gnarled, bent old woman tottered into the clearing, hurrying as fast as she could, glancing over her shoulder in terror.

That bothered me-badly. "What's chasing you?"

"My death!" she cried. "Away, fool! or would you catch the pox that does infest me? Then Death will dog your footsteps, too!"

Everybody edged back, including me-but the rational part of me took over. "You can't run away from Death, lady-you have to stop and fight him."

"Do you think my master would give me power to fight Death?"

she screeched. "Fool, thrice a fool! When Death has taken me, the Devil shall have me! Begone!" And she tottered straight toward me.

Reflex took over. I stepped aside, saying, "If you repent, maybe I c an heal you."

She stopped dead-as it were-in front of me, and those old green eyes pierced me to the marrow. "If you can heal me, do so now!"

"You've sold your soul," I pointed out. "I'm not a priest or an exorcist, just a magician." One of us was, anyway. "My magic can't work on you as long as you're in Satan's grasp."

"Then I repent!" The panic suddenly broke through, and the woman sank to her knees, hands uplifted in prayer. "Lord of Heav ...

of Hea ... Lord above, save me! I know I am unworthy, for all the evil I have done-but let this foolish magician save my raddled hide, and I shall never work evil again!"

Something rattled in the shadows. I glanced at them apprehensively and held out a hand toward Frisson. "Pox."

"I have searched it." Frisson pushed a piece of parchment into my hand.

I held it up and read it.