"Away!" the Count screamed. "Avaunt thee, monsters!"
"Doth he speak to himself, then?"
"What, shall we show him the true shape of his soul?"
"Nay, do not!" the Count cried in panic. "Go leave me! Get thee hence!"
"Why, I have hence, and roosters, too."
"And so have I. Wherefore ought we seek more?"
"To give us eggs."
A pale spheroid flew through the air and struck, breaking open on the Count's head and oozing down over his cheeks. He howled in dismay and turned to run—but he could only run in place.
"There is only one direction in which thou mayest go," Gwen said, her voice hard.
"Any! Any way is good, so that it takes me from these loons!"
"What—a loon, doth he say?"
"A loon he needs, for he doth weave."
"Hath he a woof?"
"Nay, for they did spurn him."
"Then must he have a warp!"
"Aye. Now see him take it."
And the ghost began to diminish, shrinking into the distance as he bumbled away in a limping run; though he stayed in the same place on the dais, he grew smaller and smaller, with his crowd of hecklers hard on his heels, till they all shrank away to nothing, and were gone.
The Gallowglasses were silent, listening.
Faint, ghostly laughter echoed through the castle, but it was hilarity now, not the wicked gloating they had heard before.
"We have won," Magnus whispered, unbelieving.
Rod nodded. "I had a notion we could, if we just kept from being scared. Embedded memories aren't going to hurt you, you see—they can only make you hurt yourself."
"Yet if they're naught but memories, how could we best them?"
"By making new memories to counter them," Gwen explained. "Now, if the Count's wickedness should echo within thy brother's mind, these scenes of humiliation will arise, to make him slink away again. For look you, all that he did truly seek in life were pride and power—pride, gained by shaming those about him; and power, by giving hurt wheresoe'er he could. 'Twas that which was his true pleasure—the sense of power; his fornicating and his cruelty did feed that sense most vividly, for him."
Cordelia's eyes lit. "Yet here, he was himself held up to ridicule, which did shame him unmercifully."
"Aye, and at the hands of a victim, too."
"And he found he had no power, to strike back! Nay, small wonder that he fled, even if 'twas to his just desserts!"
"If 'twas truly his soul." Magnus frowned. "If he was only memories embedded in the stone, brought to seeming fullness by my mind, then what we have seen may have been but illusion."
"And if it was," said Gregory, "his soul's been frying in Hell these two hundred years."
"Gregory!" Gwen gasped, shocked at those words coming from an eight-year-old.
Gregory looked up at her, wide-eyed. "The good fathers do speak such words from the pulpit, Mama. Wherefore may not I?"
Rod decided to save her from an awkward answer. "I think it's time to revive Fess."
"Oh, aye!" Cordelia leaped to the horse's side. "Do, Papa! How can I have not have thought of him!"
"We were a little busy," Rod explained. He stepped up to Fess and felt under the saddlehorn for the reset switch—an enlarged "vertebra." He pushed it over and, slowly, the robot raised its head, blinking away the dullness from its plastic eyes. "I… haddd uh… seizurrre?"
"Yes," Rod said. "Just wait, and it will pass."
"More quickly for me than for a human," the robot said slowly. It looked about at the empty chamber, and the small boy building up the fire again. "The ghosts… are… ?"
"Gone," Rod confirmed. "We embarrassed them so much that they decided to seek out new haunts."
Cordelia winced. "The elfin ghosts have affected thee, Papa."
"Ghosts of… elves?"
Magnus nodded. "I, unwitting, served for thee to bring them forth."
"I? But how could I…"
"The folk hereby do think a seizure's brought by elf-shot," Gregory explained, "so when thou didst seem to be so shot, the elves came forth to seek the slinger."
"But elfin ghosts could be nothing but illusion!"
" 'Tis even as thou sayest," Cordelia agreed, "yet were the Count and his men any more?"
"Yet if the ghosts are but illusion," Geoffrey said, frowning, "how can this battle we have held banish them?"
"By counteracting them," Fess answered. "Believe me, Geoffrey—it is a process with which I am intimately familiar."
Rod looked up, surprised. He had missed the analogy between the computer's program, and the interactive loop between psychometricist and stored emotions—but of course, they were much alike.
"Then Sola's ghost was not truly her soul?"
Gwen spread her hands. "I cannot say. Yet soul or dream, I think she's freed for Heaven."
"Still," Rod mused, "it wouldn't do any harm to have Father Boquilva over for dinner. He understands computers, and he carries holy water."
Faint in the distance, a hoarse, raw masculine scream rang out one last time, diminishing into the fading echo of dying laughter. Then, finally, all was quiet.
"Is it cleansed now?" Gwen asked softly.
Magnus frowned, went to Foxcourt's chair, and grasped the wood firmly with both hands. After a moment, he nodded. "Not even a trace doth linger—naught of him, nor of any old angst or melancholia."
And, suddenly, she was there, radiant in the darkness before him, glowing with faint colors, vibrant, alive, and more beautiful than she had ever been. " 'Tis done—thou hast wrought famously!"
Magnus could only stare, spellbound.
So it was Cordelia who asked, "The wicked lord is fled?"
"Aye." Sola turned to her, glowing in more ways than one. "Foxcourt saw that he would be forever mocked, if he dared to linger here—so he hath fled to try his fate in the afterworld, convinced it cannot be worse."
Rod asked, "Didn't he ever have a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher?"
"Aye, and therefore called a priest, and confessed his sins, when he foresaw his death—yet that part of him that lingered here did seek to turn again to some pale shadow of its old delights."
"Foul!" Geoffrey glared, indignant. "Is there no justice in Heaven, either? Will he not be dealt with as he did deal?"
"Not so." Gwen's hand was on his shoulder. "For, though he may yet be redeemed, he must first come to know his guilt, and to believe in it, in his heart of hearts; then may he make reparation. He shall be long in Purgatory, son—if he doth win to it at all. He may not have been truly repentant when he was shriven."
Geoffrey still didn't look content, but he was silent.
"Justice, I desire," Sola admitted, "yet I'll be content with his wickedness ended. Thanks to thine aid, good folk, none shall ever again suffer from the cruelty of Count Foxcourt. Thou hast proven the worth of my father's death, and my brother's; thou hast given their chivalry meaning, and vindicated my mother's suffering. Thou hast made their fates worthwhile by encompassing the downfall of a villain!"
Rod looked around at his family. "You'll pardon me if I feel a certain sense of satisfaction about that.''
"As well thou shouldst." Sola stepped forward, arms outstretched as though to embrace them. "I thank thee all, most earnestly; thou hast rescued me from ancient suffering." She turned to Magnus. "Yet most greatly I thank thee, good youth, for I do know 'twas thee who did most earnestly press to aid me. 'Tis thou hast ope'd the way for me, that I may leave this mundane sphere, and commence my journey up toward Heaven."
"I… I was honored…"
"As I am honored by thee! Be sure that, if I do gain the Blessed Mede, thou wilt ever have a friend in the hereafter!"