Alisande and Sir Guy were there, chained to the left wall, their arms manacled over their heads. Sir Guy was stripped to his shirt and hose, and Alisande to her shift. One of the huge guards was approaching with a six-foot branding iron, but they looked untouched, so far.
Sayeesa stood at the side, but she whirled as Matt and Stegoman burst in. Her eyes widened in terror, but she swung to seize the branding iron. "Now, Lady!" she screamed at Alisande. "Command them to stand fast, or you shall know the taste of hot iron!"
"I obey no foul minion of Evil," Alisande snapped.
The branding iron stabbed out. Matt bellowed, and Stegoman charged, roaring fire. Sayeesa dropped the iron and jumped as the flame seared the guards around her. Matt leaped down and ran toward the princess.
"Who movezh," Stegoman rumbled, "diezh!"
Sayeesa froze as Matt slid to a halt near Alisande, swinging his axe over his head.
"You come late, sir," the princess said. She moved her wrist along the wall, stretching out the six inches of chain.
Matt took a deep breath and chopped. The chain parted with a snap, and he circled to the opposite side. He chopped the second chain off. "Yeah, sorry I couldn't come sooner. I had a pressing engagement."
"And I know well what you were pressing," Alisande said between her teeth.
Sayeesa was screaming at her troops as Matt turned to free Sir Guy, and they were forming up again. Matt wasted no time in chopping through the chains that held the Black Knight.
"Late come - but well come," Sir Guy said. He turned to Sayeesa. "And now, what of the witch?"
"Witch?"
"Aye. What else could you think her?" Alisande had picked up the branding iron and was swinging it tentatively. "A foul lust-witch, who inflames men with desire - to their ruin. Already she has ended the lives of half a hundred, draining them of all energy." She glared at Sayeesa.
Sayeesa returned the glare with bitterness. Her voice rose. "Guards! Out upon them!"
The guards started forward, while Sir Guy snatched a poker from the fire. But Stegoman thundered, "Hold!" He scored the stone floor with fire in front of the ranks.
"Go! Upon them!" Sayeesa screamed. "Will you let them ruin all?"
Matt began chanting.
The irons twisted, growing and flattening into slender swords. Sir Guy grinned and cut at the air. Alisande threw a glance at Matt and turned to Sayeesa.
The witch shrank back. "Kill them now! Attack or I'll return you to nothingness!"
Despair washed over the faces of the soldiers, to be replaced by hopeless determination.
Stegoman let out a blast, sweeping the lines. But when his fire winked out as he paused for breath, they charged forward, pikes and swords slashing. Alisande and Sir Guy met them back to back, threshing death all about them.
But Sayeesa's threat to return the men to nothingness touched a response in Matt's memory. He chopped a guard aside and sprang to join the princess and the knight, laying about with the axe and crying, "They're only illusions. They seem solid, but they're made from nothing!"
"Then this illusion will have your head," a soldier howled. "Make me vanish, if you can!"
"Nothing easier," Matt shouted, blocking the blow.
Sayeesa gave a long-drawn-out wail of heartbreak, and other voices caught it up, keening in unison, as everything about them began to waver and ripple. Colors faded; shapes flowed and merged into the rippling. The rippling itself faded, until it was a cloud of mist that thinned and disappeared, leaving only a heat haze.
Even that faded and was gone.
Matt's axe fell from numbed fingers. He stood in an empty crater with a causeway thrust in from the edge. At the lip of the crater, a double line of youths and occasional girls stood shivering, looking about them uncertainly. A few still forms lay among them, very still. Around the crater stretched a blasted heath. And in the center, Sayeesa knelt in a plain tunic and cloak, doubled over with grief, sobbing her heart out.
Suddenly she screamed and yanked a knife from her robe. She swung it high, then slashed it down toward her heart.
Matt leaped and caught her wrist, just as the knife grazed her flesh. Sir Guy grabbed her from behind in a bear hug and pinioned her arms, and Matt twisted the knife free.
Sayeesa loosed one last ear-piercing scream and collapsed, slumped in Sir Guy's arms and sobbing. "Let me die! I am damned beyond saving. My sins are too terrible ever to be shriven. Let me die!"
"Nay. You still have a part to play." Alisande strode up grimly. "For your sins you must atone." She yanked Matt's sash loose. He gave a startled squawk, holding his robe shut.
"Oh, try me not with your mockery of modesty!" she snapped. "Bind her hands." Sir Guy held Sayeesa's arms, and Matt began pinning her wrists together behind her back. The princess cut a ragged strip from Sayeesa's homespun gown and bound the witch's feet. Sir Guy let the girl down gently upon the scorched earth.
Alisande was gazing at the muddle of young people near the causeway. Matt followed her gaze. "Where did they come from?"
"Her victims. Lured to her and bedazzled by pleasures untold. Tales are recounted of the vile degradations she heaped upon them, till they were drained and could no longer please her. Then she turned them to stone statues-monuments to what she no doubt thought of as her 'power of womanhood'." The princess's mouth was tight.
"And now they've come alive again - most of them." Matt frowned at the milling group. "It seems impossible that I could have broken so many spells with only one verse."
"Ah, but you broke the master-spell on her," Sir Guy explained.
"A spell on her?" Matt's eyebrows raised.
"Aye, or so rumor has it." Alisande stood glaring at the sobbing woman. "She was naught but a simple peasant wench once, though of much beauty and charm - and far too much sensuality."
Sir Guy nodded. "She was a lass for all men, though 'tis said she was goodhearted withal. She was a lass for all men, seeking always to give more, until she ceased to have self."
"You don't mean that promiscuity destroyed her identity, do you?" Matt asked. "Maybe that was her identity."
"The identity goatish men wished for her!" Alisande glared at him. "She tried to be what they wanted, thereby losing what she was. Her sinning gave Evil power over her, so that an ancient, depraved sorcerer could cast a spell to transform her into the lust-witch you met - for his own pleasure, no doubt. He died in flames shortly after, but she still had power over men, and the power to cast the glamours that arise out of desire."
"Then all these illusions and powers - her fairy palace and her servants - were only outgrowths of the sorcerer's spell?"
Sir Guy nodded.
"What about her door guards?"
"Mandrake plants," Alisande said, with a trace of contempt. "Did you not recognize them, Wizard?"