"How shall we attain these walls, Lord Wizard?" the princess demanded.
"How indeed?" Sir Guy seconded. " Be wary of your magic, for I see many more midnight robes and a host of gray."
"Yeah, they do look heavier in the magic arm. Well, sometimes there's nothing like good, old-fashioned violence. Stegoman, can you breathe out fire without letting it flame?"
"How mean you?" The dragon turned his head back to look at his rider. "I only know 'tis anger that sets flame."
"Okay, then, imagine you're angry-just pretending. And breathe out through your mouth ... Yeah, that's right."
The dragon's jaw lolled open; a steady hissing sounded. The horses shied off, and Matt wasn't surprised; he could scent the odor himself. It was faint, but it was also redolent of decay. Methane, probably.
"Good." Matt nodded. "Just keep it up, now-pump out as much dragon-breath as you can."
Stegoman sucked in air and exhaled again. Matt recited:
"The foeman now has little care; Let him have some moving air, Wafting from the eastern trees, With dragon's breath upon its breeze."
The air stirred about them, then settled into a steady breeze blowing against their backs. Stegoman kept hissing; the wind carried his fumes out toward the enemy. The dragon took time between breaths to demand, "How is this, that I grow not giddy?"
"It's the flame that does it," Matt explained, not quite accurately; it would take too long to explain what combustion products were.
"Wizard," Alisande said nervously, "will you do nothing?"
"Not for a while, your Highness." Matt wished for a wrist watch. "Stegoman's gotta pump out enough breath to cover most of the army between us and the gate." He leaned back, drumming his fingers on Stegoman's fin and whistling through his teeth.
About ten minutes later, he said, "Max?"
"Aye, Wizard?" asked the dot of light.
"Max, by this time, most of the army directly ahead of us ought to be blanketed with a kind of air that burns. Touch off a spark in the middle of it, will you?"
"Gladly," the arc spark murmured and winked out.
Matt leaned forward, keying himself up. "Ready, now. As soon as we see the flash, we ride."
The others looked up, surprised. Then they turned, bracing themselves in the saddles, but not without some trepidation.
A gout of flame exploded in the middle of the army, enveloping the whole march between the convent and the valley edge in flame.
"A triumph!" Stegoman roared with a six-foot flame. "Oh, wondroush wizhard!"
Matt bellowed, "Ride!"
Stegoman rumbled downhill like a beer wagon. The rest of the party followed out of faith.
The fire in the air damped and died in seconds, the methane spent; but everywhere it had touched, organics burned-grass, leaves, clothing, and hair. The army was in chaos, men running toward the nearest vat of water or wine, swatting out flames on each others' clothing, and bawling at the sorcerers to do something.
Into this melee charged a wall of drunken dragon, blasting fire all about him with a grand lack of discrimination. Howls doubled in front of him, and soldiers scrambled back out of his way. Stegoman scarcely had to slow as he cut his way through to the gates. A sorcerer did pop out to try a quick spell, but he seemed to have sudden difficulty moving his arms, and a second later, Stegoman converted him into a torch.
"Hoy!" Alisande stood in her stirrups, waving at the top of the wall. "Open! Travelers seeking sanctuary! Ho! I cry the hospitality of the house!"
A black-robed figure leaned out from the battlements, long veil flowing down across coif and shoulders, white band across the forehead. Then it disappeared; a moment later, the gates swung open. "Enter!" a voice commanded; but Stegoman was already in, and the others halfway through. The gates swung shut behind them, and the company found themselves in a narrow tunnel, with slit-windows in the walls. Barbed steel points bristled from the slits, and another gate walled them off ahead.
"Who called for sanctuary?" demanded a harsh, stern voice; it sounded like an old-maid schoolteacher.
Alisande tossed back her long blond hair. "I am Alisande, Princess of Merovence. My companions are Sir Guy Losobal; Matthew, Lord Wizard; and the penitent Sayeesa, who wishes to try her vocation in this House of Cynestria!"
"The vile witch of the moor?" The unseen speaker had nothing of censure in her voice; she sounded excited.
Sayeesa nodded. "So I was, till these good folks broke the enchantment that enslaved me and brought me to a priest. I repent my former ways; I reject Satan and all his works. Knowing my own poor, weak nature, I wish to shelter within your walls for the strengthening of my resolution."
"Attend a moment," the voice commanded. "We must speak to one another's faces."
Sayeesa sat waiting as if she were about to enter a throne room, seeming to strain toward the inner gate as if her saddle were holding her back from flying.
The gates swung open, and huge chains clanked as a portcullis rose. Three nuns waited, the tallest a step in front.
Sayeesa touched her heels to her horse's flanks, rode up to the portcullis, and swung down to kneel before the tall old lady.
"What seek you here?" the abbess demanded severely; but delight underlay her gorgon mask. She was tall and slender, with a long face that tapered to a pointed chin, a thin blade of a nose, and large, black, snapping eyes. Her mouth was a thin line amidst a net of wrinkles. Matt could find the traces of great beauty still lingering; but the beauty itself was dust, and any tenderness that might once have accompanied it seemed to have been burned out of the gaunt old frame.
"What seek you here?" she demanded again; and Sayeesa answered, "To try my vocation among you, Mother."
It was a repetition, but necessary; before, it had been for information; now, it was spiritual.
"Hold up your head!" the crone commanded, and Sayeesa's head snapped back as if a string had been pulled. Her face was humbled, filled with remorse - and a loneliness of a kind Matt had never seen before.
The abbess scanned Sayeesa's face intently; but if she found anything there, her own face gave no sign of it. "Why should you think you have a vocation?"
"I have sinned," Sayeesa answered in low and quavering tones, "so deeply that all folk of any conscience shun the sight of me. I have repented and been shriven. I've wandered, lost, alone, and near despair, though tended by these three good people. Yet when I saw these walls rise up before me, my heart turned glad; I began to feel that all my life led to your gates."
The abbess seemed halfway satisfied with that answer. "So you found your vocation when you saw our walls. And how came you here?"
Sayeesa's voice was scarcely audible. "I was sent here."
The old woman stiffened. "By whom? Tell me the manner of it!"
Sayeesa hesitated.
The abbess's voice softened amazingly. "Nay, child, speak, and fear not to say the whole of it. None will blame or sneer, for there's not a one of us within these walls that could not tell a tale to sicken your heart with loathing."
Sayeesa looked up, her eyes filling with tears. The abbess waved the other nuns away; they slipped back into the shadows beyond the portcullis. Then the abbess knelt before Sayeesa, caught her hands, and looked deeply into her eyes. "Now, speak!"
Sayeesa began to tell it in a low and trembling voice, a phrase at a time at first, then more freely, till she was pouring her heart out. The abbess knelt like a stone, hands clasped tightly around Sayeesa's, her face grave. Matt couldn't hear what passed; but finally Sayeesa sank back on her heels, head bowed low, hair fallen forward to hide her face, a sob shuddering through her frame.