He just hoped none of the men were having an identity crisis. Of course, they were probably all just illusions, too… All the ugly men gave a chorused single squawk of outrage that diminished rapidly as they faded, shredded, blew away.
Except for one. Matt frowned at him. “Scat! Scoot! Go on! Get away!” He underscored it with shooing motions. “Get away yourself,” rasped the survivor. ‘This is my castle!“
Matt stared. “Oh! Sorry.” He tried to recover his aplomb and not stare-but really, the little old man looked as imaginary as any of the other monsters-scrawny, yellow-eyed, his beard grungy from lack of washing…
Matt frowned and looked more closely. He wasn’t really that old, actually-more like middle-aged. He just looked old, because of the white beard, and the white hair flowing down around his shoulders-only it wasn’t yellowed from lack of washing. That was its natural color. And he wasn’t really short or little or stooped with age-his shoulders were hunched up defensively, his head pulled down to glare. Sure, he was holding his staff in both hands, but he wasn’t really leaning on it-he was ready to wave it like a magic wand, which it probably was. He had to have done all that deliberately, to look like less of a menace than he really was. Didn’t he? But those yellow eyes were huge, with the whites showing all around them, and glittering with malice. His garments were soiled and faded, but they were sumptuous, or had been once-brocade and velvet.
Matt couldn’t help thinking that they were just the right thing for the climate; the only thing that would have been even better was a raincoat. The owner jabbed a finger at him and shouted something unintelligible, and Matt suddenly felt an irresistible interior urge, one that would ordinarily have sent him on a frantic search for the garderobe, only he was sure he didn’t have time, and besides, it was all just an illusion anyway, so he called out,
The urge went away, but the yellow eyes sparked with anger, and the staff snapped out as its owner spat another indecipherable verse. Sparks glittered all over the floor and turned into cockroaches, scurrying toward Matt; he could almost hear them thinking, Yum! He wondered what they thought he was-but while he was wondering, he was chanting.
For a moment he blushed with shame-how could he be so gauche as to mention Raid around a cockroach? But if the insects had noticed, they gave no sign-only turned and ran toward the lord of the castle. The old man cursed, then spent a few minutes in an anticockroach spell of his own. Matt used the time to think up an all-purpose antidisgustant verse-but when the bugs had coruscated and effervesced into nothingness, the yellow eyes turned back to Matt with undisguised loathing and said, “I shall not be rid of you so easily, shall I?”
“I don’t think you’ll be rid of me at all,” Matt said, “except maybe by asking me nicely to leave.”
“Will you not leave?”
Matt sighed. “Well, that’s not quite what I meant by ‘nicely,’ but I guess it will have to do. Okay, I’ll walk out-but I would appreciate answers to a few questions first.”
“I give nothing to any man!” The grubby one raised his staff as if to strike and began to recite something in that confounded antiquated tongue again. Matt got his counter in fast and first.
The owner’s voice ran down into a croak and stopped. He stood poised, staff raised to strike, but unable to as his body turned grayish. “Well, now, that’s a bit better attitude!” Matt strolled up to go slowly around the man, inspecting him from every angle. “Actually, that posture isn’t really the best attitude in the world, but it could be worse.”
“You could not!” The man’s voice had an undertone of gravel. “Loose me, Wizard, or it shall be the worse for you!”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Matt said casually. “You’re a wand slinger, see, so I doubt any verse you come up with will have much effect without that stick to direct it-and what little power your spells might have, I’m sure I can counter.”
The yellow eyes gleamed with fury, and the sorcerer began to recite again. “Everything considered,” Matt said quickly, “it would be a lot easier for you just to answer a few questions for me. Then I could unfreeze you and go away.”
The sorcerer paused in mid-syllable. “Of course, if you do manage to do something lethal to me,” Matt pointed out, “I won’t be here to unfreeze you.”
“I can deal with that myself!”
“Sure. You could unfreeze somebody you had turned to stone,” Matt said, “but could you counter a spell of mine?”
The sorcerer just gave him a very black look. “Let’s start with: how did you get here?” Matt asked. “The king sent you, for openers.”
“Openers indeed! I was the first-but only the first of a dozen! And there shall be more!”
Matt nodded. “Makes sense. However, what the king didn’t explain to me, before he blasted me here, was why he didn’t just execute anybody who wouldn’t come to heel. You know, off with their heads, then burn the body just to make sure. Why not?‘
“He did that with the worst of them,” the sorcerer grated, “they who sought to overthrow him.”
“But you were no threat to him personally? You just didn’t want to stop torturing your peasants?”
“Something of the sort,” the sorcerer admitted. “I had no designs upon the throne.”
“Yes, I noticed it wasn’t terribly ornate. I thought Boncorro was tolerant, though. All you had to do was live by his laws.”
“And cease to slay priests?” the sorcerer demanded. “Cease to despoil nuns? Cease to seek to bring about the misery of every soul near me, that I might send them to Hell? What use would there be in living, then?”
“So. You were incorrigible and unreformable.” That put in a thought. “Did the king even try to reform you?”
“Oh, aye. He bade me mend my ways three times. At the last, his fool of a reeve shrank quaking from my sight, so I knew ‘twas not he who told the king how I had amused myself with the peasant lass-so I know that King Boncorro must have had other spies within my castle, perhaps even the cat I had bought to attend to his other spies.”
Matt decided he did not like this man. “He appeared in my hall with the sound of thunder and with fires gushing away from him-the showy fool! ‘What?’ I said. ‘Will you send me to a monastery?’ ‘Nay, nor even presume to tell you to renounce your pact with Satan,’ said he, ‘for your soul is your own affair, and no reform will affect your Afterlife save that which you work yourself.’ ”
Matt listened closely. This didn’t sound like the atheist the king professed to be. “Sounds like common sense.”
“The more fool he, to presume to find laws that govern the consequences of the soul’s deeds! He commanded me to forgo my pleasures, though, ‘For what you do to my subjects,’ he said, ”is my concern.‘ The conceited prat! I spat in his face. It was for that he sent me here.“
“Three strikes and you’re out of his kingdom.” Matt nodded. “In fact, out of his whole world. Interesting that he still honors the number three.”