It all made sense. Suettay had come out in disguise, expecting me to be with the party and knowing that once I saw her, I'd forget about everything else and just get Frisson working on immobilizing her spells. But with your ordinary infantry sorcerer, I would have put him on the back burner and set Frisson to knocking over the knights.

Once she saw I wasn't there, she changed herself back into Suettayespecially since, by then, Gilbert and Frisson had been knocked out, and she'd driven Gruesome away.

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 T.

two of them with his spells, but the "sorcerer" knocked him out with a magic verse, t hen 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 mainlandwhat'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 0.

"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, 0 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 botheredThyme 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, loo ing 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."

"The cage bit you?" Then I remembered-that was how you explained an electric shock to a toddler. Thyme had touched the cage, and it had given Gruesome a jolt. "Was the cage made of wood?"

"Yuh! Wood! Sticks!"

So. Anything made of plants, she could use to work magic. I laid a bet with myself that the "sticks" were still alive, plants that she had just told to grow into a huge box. "And while you weren't looking, the grass tied itself around your legs?"

"Yuh! Legs! Arms, too, after fell! Try get up, grass pull me down!

Roar! " He gave a sample, letting loose a bellow that shook some nearby rocks and left waveforms in the sand. I winced and reminded my self to conjure up some mouthwash for him. "How'd you get loose?

" "Woman tell Goosum go stay near water, watch for Saw. Find him, eat him! " "Saul!" I stared. "Me?" How the hell had Thyme known I was coming?

Exactly. Maybe she had a message from the Other Side.

Or maybe she had asked Frisson. From what Gruesome said, he was so besotted he would have told her anything. Of course, he also would have told her that the moon was made of green cheese, if that was what she had wanted to hear, but she seemed to have overlooked that possibility.

Then the rest of what Gruesome had said percolated through to my undernourished brain. Something about if I showed up, he was supposed to have me for dinner. I swallowed thickly and looked up at him. Was that a hungry gleam in his eye, or was I just imagining it?

Chapter Twenty-five.

I wasn't imagining the drop of saliva that hung on his lower lip, but Gruesome was always drooling, anyway-I told myself. Myself wasn't really listening, though-it was paying too much attention to the cold, trickling dread that was pooling in my midsection. I started talking, slowly and soothingly, but getting faster and louder as I went.

"Gruesome. This is Saul speaking. You know, Saul,' The nice guy?

Your buddy? The one who always lets you have time off to go hunting?

Who stopped the nasty sorcerers who were throwing whammies at you?"

Gruesome nodded, but he still looked hungry. A huge slab of tongue lolled out and smacked around his mouth in a circle, cleaning up the drool with a sucking sound that lanced from my ears straight through my gizzard down to my boot soles. I talked faster.

"Gruesome," I said. "You remember the fairy folk? The ones who put a spell on you? That you would never eat people again?"

Gruesome frowned-apparently, it was a less-than-pleasant memory-but he nodded.

"And remember the spell I laid on you?" I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I had to take the chance.

"Spell." Gruesome nodded. " 'Member. Yah."

"Those spells make sure you can't eat me, or even try to be mean to me," I reminded him.

"Spells no good no more," he informed me. "Time woman do something. Goosum no feel spells hold him back no more."

Alarm thrilled through me, five alarms with all the fire trucks already gone. The nymph had something to do with time, indeed. She had reached back into Gruesome's personal past somehow, countering the fairies' compulsion spell and my own binding spell. I started to edge away. "Uh-you aren't really all that hungry, are you, Gruesome?"

"Plenty hungry," he assured me.

Frantically, I tried to remember that binding spell.

"But Goosum no eat Saw," he explained. "Maybe yummy, but friend.

Saw save Goosum, Goosum save Saw. If eat, no have friend."

I heaved a sigh and began to relax a little. Gruesome had realized that you can't have your friends, and eat them, too. "I-I'm really glad you had that insight, Gruesome." Gruesome shrugged, somewhere up above his face. "Food plenty. Friends few. People yummy, but deer yummy, too. And sheep and bunnies. Even fish."

And, of course, there was no shortage of finny dinners in the vicinity. Cautiously, I asked, "Eaten any good fish lately?"

"Yuh!" The tongue came out to slurp again. "Big fish, big as Goosum! Fin in middle back, pointy nose, teeth like Goosum.

Yummy!"

A shark? He had fought a shark and won? Talk about eat or be eaten!

And it had only made one lunch?

I decided to make sure Gruesome was with me if I wanted to go wading.

I looked up at the big guy, studying him closely. Yes, the hungry gleam was there, but so was something else-some deep-seated, total trust, some light of admiration. It hit me with a shock-Gruesome had me on a pedestal. To him, I could do no wrong.

I felt shaken. I also felt like running for the hills. When someone is that loyal to you, you have to be loyal to him, too.

Friendship means responsibility. Friends mean commitment. I felt as if the quicksands were running, sucking me down.

Then I remembered that I was here because of a friend.

With a shock, I realized that, somewhere along the line, I had let myself become committed. Okay, Matt might not have thought so, but apparently I had.

Well, no, it wasn't complete commitment. If I'd been mad at him, I wouldn't have hesitated to run out on him-if he weren't in trouble.

Of course, Matt never made any demands on me when he wasn't in trouble, except for company, which was mutually agreeable. Come to that, he hadn't made any demands when he was in trouble, either this little excursion had been my own idea.

Suddenly, I realized that this big, ugly troll saw more virtue in me than I did-but I wasn't about to tell him his mistake. Instead, I felt humbled and unworthy, simply because a living creature could value me more than his own strongest instincts.

I was touched.

So, of course, I couldn't let him know about it. I stepped closer in spite of the rank aroma, reached up to slap his stony hide, and said, @'Come on. I hereby release you from any compulsion to patrol the seacoasts looking for me. After all, you've found me, so that order doesn't apply anymore. Let's go find our friends."

But he balked. "Saw?"

"Yes, Gruesome?"

"Could make spell 'gain? Don't like hunger for friend."

I swallowed, and agreed very quickly. I rattled off the spell-after all, if he wanted temptation removed, I wasn't about to argue.