Yverne turned ghastly pale, and Fadecourt stood ramrod stiff. Even Narlh scowled and muttered to himself.
Matt stumped back to them, holding out the stick and shaking it. "Do you see this? Do you see it?"
"Aye," Fadecourt said his face frozen. " 'Tis the stick you notched and planted."
"Planted, yeah! And it's grown into a regular nightmare! You know what this proves, don't you?"
"Yeah," Narlh said. "Some sorcerer moved it ahead of us."
"Sorcerer, yes—ahead, no! It stayed put—we did the moving! We came in a full circle! We've been tramping around in the same path all day!"
"But how can that be?" Yverne protested. "We have kept the sun behind us in the morning, and before us after noon!"
"And the wood on our left hand," Fadecourt added. "Can it be a circular wood?"
"Why not? It's a product of sorcery!"
"But the sun!" Fadecourt protested.
Matt nodded. "That proves it—that's the clincher. Gordogrosso twisted space on us, isolating us and those trees from the rest of the universe in a closed loop."
"Twist space?" Yverne gasped, eyes wide, and Fadecourt frowned. "Space is all about us—it is naught but air! How can one twist it?"
Matt started to answer, then scanned their faces and decided it wasn't the time for a lecture on math and physics. "Magic," he explained. "We've known we're up against sorcery—only Gordogrosso's a bit more of a heavyweight than I thought. Believe me, it's possible—here. And he did it." His face suddenly contorted with rage, and he whirled, hurling the stick from him. "Damn that stick!"
Yverne blanched. Fadecourt's face hardened to granite. "Well, then, we have wasted a day, and I doubt not the king has used the time well, to bring his army that much closer to us. Yet it is done, and there's naught we can do to counter it—or is there?"
"No," Matt agreed. "Nothing, until morning—or at least, there's no point in trying. If I come up with a spell that gets us out of here before night, I'll just give King Gordogrosso all the time he needs to come up with something worse. We'd better just find dinner and bed down."
"And make a defense line," the cyclops said grimly. "We shall need a strong one, surely."
Matt stared at him in surprise. Then he said "Why yes, of course. Any special reason?"
But Fadecourt had already turned away, casting about the meadowland in search of a campsite—not that there seemed to be much to choose from. It was perilously close to rudeness, saved only by the fact that Fadecourt had managed to turn away before Matt got his mouth in gear—but it jolted the wizard nonetheless. He turned to Yverne, but she had already slid down off Narlh's shoulders and was walking away, too, dipping down now and then to pick up kindling wood. In desperation, he turned to Narlh. "How come I'm persona non grata all of a sudden?"
"Whadda ya expect, Wizard?" the dracogriff growled. "You just put us all in danger and set yourself up on the side of evil."
Matt stared.
Narlh nodded.
"I must have done it while I wasn't looking, then," Matt said "What did I do?"
"You cursed the stick," Narlh explained.
"Cursed it?"
"Yeah—when you sent it to Hell."
"But I didn't...Oh." Matt's eyes widened. "You mean...when I said, `Damn that stick'?"
Narlh winced at the repetition. "Yeah, yeah! Did ya have to say it again? Look—if you damn something, you send it to Hell—right? You set the worst of curses upon that helpless piece of wood."
"But I didn't mean it that way! It was just a figure of speech!"
Narlh winced. "What you say, can really happen here. And if you heap so much torture on such a poor little innocent object, you've done a lotta wrong."
"But it isn't even alive!"
"Doesn't matter. What the words said is evil—and that means you gave the sorcerer a hole in our defenses, by siding with Hell, no matter how small the issue was."
Matt stared at him, shocked.
Narlh cocked his head to the side, frowning. "So how come you didn't know all about this? You're a wizard, ain't you?"
"Yes," Matt said, "but I still haven't managed to shift my Weltanschauung, my worldview, along with my shift in worlds. You're right—I really should have thought of that."
Narlh started to ask, but Matt suddenly whirled and ran toward the forest, plowing to a halt and casting about frantically. He found the stick and yanked it up out of the grass, cast around again until he'd found three rocks, slapped them together into a rough hearth, then yanked up grass from all around it and pulled out flint and steel. He struck a spark and breathed on it as the grasses crisped around it, breathed the spark into flame, blew gently on it until the stick caught fire, and blew harder and harder until the flames surrounded it Then he sat back on his heels with a sigh and looked up to see Yverne gazing down at him—and she was looking rather bitter.
Matt spread his hands: "Look—no more stick, no more curse."
She stared at him as though he'd lost his wits. "Can you truly think so—and you, a lord of wizardry?"
Matt just stared at her as the flames died down and guttered out, leaving only a small heap of ash. Then he said, "Okay—what basic, elementary fact have I overlooked this time?"
"The stuff of life," she said, "or rather, that life has no stuff. These sticks and rocks about us are but illusions, as are we ourselves; the real world is the spirit's."
Matt stared, horrified. Slowly, he said, "And in that real spirit world, I've condemned this stick to hellfire eternal?"
"You have," she confirmed. "What use is making the stick itself to vanish?"
He had the odd, irrational feeling that she was hoping he would explain some secret of wizardry to her, whereby his cursing the stick would be erased; but he had none to give, and after a moment, the light in her eyes died, her mouth twisted with bitterness again, and she turned away. Matt stared down at the pitiful heap of ashes before him, feeling foolish and, strangely, very, very guilty.
But it was just a stick!
Finally, he hauled himself to his feet and turned to look around and see what his companions had done while he was chasing the wild goose.
The first thing he saw was the dozen sharpened stakes on top of the hillock, leaning outward in an impromptu chevauxde-frise. They made a neat circle around the top of a little hillock—a hillock that Matt hadn't even known was there. He wouldn't ever have, either, if Fadecourt hadn't been busy finding sticks and sharpening them, setting them up in a stockade. The cyclops was still at the task, setting up another sharp point to close the ring. Matt stared at him in silent tribute, shaking his head with a shamed smile.
If there was anything resembling a defense to be found or built, Fadecourt would do both. Matt pushed himself into motion, heading toward his companion. As he came up, he asked, "Anything I can do to help?"
"Aye," Fadecourt said, his attention still on the stake he was setting. "Seek out boulders and roll them back."
Matt accepted the unstated rebuke and turned away to go rock hunting.
Narlh was already on the job, bringing foot-thick rocks back to the hillock—except that he wasn't rolling them, of course, he was just picking them up in his jaws and carrying them back. He spat out the current one and called out, "This is stupid—I can haul 'em a lot faster'n you, Wizard. But it slows me down having to look for 'em. You just hunt 'em out, okay? And wave to me when y' find 'em."
So Matt did—and the dracogriff was right, it did go faster that way. As the sun was setting, they all settled down inside a ring of stone two boulders high, with a stack of eight-foot tree limbs beside them to sharpen and add to the stockade.
The atmosphere had thawed enough for conversation—sinner and klutz though he might be, Matt was on their side. He groused at Fadecourt, "Where'd you learn so much about the military, anyway?"