A Nameless Witch

I whispered instructions to Penelope. She twitched her understanding, and then the trial began.

The ogre chimera charged Gwurm, but trolls are twice as strong as ogres. Gwurm hefted his opponent high in the air and slammed it to the ground. The chimera shifted into a monstrous bull. Gwurm held tight to the bucking beast.

Wyst and the serpent circled each other warily. The chimera snapped and snarled. The White Knight stabbed at it. Neither had drawn blood yet.

I was able to watch all this because my own magic had reduced the earth to sucking mud beneath the bear- thing's feet. It sank into the ground, screeching and howling. One bladed arm was the last to disappear. It wasn't defeated. I was merely guiding it into a more acceptable form.

The earth rumbled, and a giant centipede burst forth at my feet. It towered over me, clicking its mandibles and hissing. It snatched me up in its blades, whipping me from side to side, and sliced me in two at the waist. My lower half fell away, but the centipede grabbed me in a dozen short arms. It changed colors, from bright green to dull orange. Mucus dripped from its wriggling mouth. Then it hacked into my neck. There was the gush of blood, the pain of tearing flesh, and my head bounced to the ground where it came to a rolling stop.

The chimera, unable to hold its centipede form, melted and shifted once again. It became a large, two-legged toad with a face that was all mouth. It opened its jaws, showing rows of jagged teeth.

I could feel my body, but it was as if my neck was a thousand miles long. Giving direction to my limbs was a distant, deliberate affair. I was largely helpless. Penelope was not.

The toad pounced at my head only to be swatted down by my broom. The chimera shook its head clear and screeched at her. She moved in small circles before striking again in a full, wide arc. The force cracked her handle and sent the chimera tumbling away. It jumped to its feet, already shifting again. It sprouted feathers and a single enormous eye. Penelope shot forward and speared it in that eye. The chimera collapsed, very dead.

My broom wasted no time. She tugged free of her opponent and floated to my side. She swept my head back to my torso. It took a few moments for me to get my hands to shove my head back into place. The flesh of my neck knit back together, but even my powers of regeneration were limited so that it was a loose fit. A hard nod or a sudden jerk and it would fall off again.

I pushed myself up and studied the fight. Gwurm's chimera was now a thing with dozens of tentacles. The troll struggled, but he was wrapped in its smothering coils. He gasped just before his body surrendered to the pressure and fell apart. The troll pieces slipped from the chimera's hold. The beast became a badger with a peacock tail and kicked around Gwurm's parts, looking for a vulnerable portion.

I found a stone and threw it at the beast. It whirled, slobbering, teeth bared, and scrambled in my direction. The badger shape grew roughly human as it seized me in clawed hands. It expanded to tremendous size and parted its jaws to swallow me whole. At which point, I shoved an arm down its gullet. My curse gives me a knack for tearing flesh, and the malleable flesh of the chimera proved vulnerable. I punched through the back of its mouth and wrapped my fingers around something squishy and warm and hopefully vital. Although with chimera, this was mostly a matter of chance. The monster bit off my arm just as I squeezed. The chimera gurgled, staggered, and fell over. I was buried beneath its enormous form.

With only one arm and no way of freeing myself, I lay beneath the chimera and listened as Wyst battled the last one. There was a lot of grunting and shrieking, and this went on for some time. Finally, there was one last bubbling screech.

Then silence.

The beast atop me swayed. I thought it might still be alive, but then it rolled over. Wyst of the West knelt beside me. Multicolored blood coated his shirt. Sweat glimmered on his dark skin. He wrapped tender arms around me and leaned me against the chimera's corpse.

'Are you hurt?'

'Hurt, but not harmed,' I replied. 'How is Gwurm?'

'I'm fine, but I lost an eye. Watch for it.'

Wyst fetched my legs, and by the way he was walking, I could see he was injured. His White Knight invulnerability must have failed him in some way. Some of the blood on his side was his own.

As I fished around the monster's slackened jaws to retrieve my arm, Wyst retrieved my sack. I reached in for some needle and thread to stitch myself together and instead found Newt. Like all lost things, he was in the last and most obvious place I looked.

19

Our first triat behind us, and none of us being in traveling condition, we camped beside the chimera corpses. Only Newt had escaped injury, and that was only because he'd missed the battle. This annoyed him. He would have rather taken part and been killed than lose an opportunity to fight. He sulked as the rest of us tended our wounds.

My injuries were the least pressing. I'd stitched myself together and within a few hours, I was restored. I liked the way the thick thread felt around my neck, and I imagined I looked quite horrible. But such was my curse that my flesh rejected the intrusive stitching. I was disappointed when it fell out.

Gwurm wasn't hurt much either, but after he'd been reassembled, we'd discovered some missing parts. An ear and a finger were nowhere to be found. He was fortunate enough to have a surplus of fingers in his pouch, but there was no replacement ear. He accepted the loss with his usual good nature, noting that while two ears were better, one would do fine.

Both Penelope and Wyst of the West required my attentions. My broom was very much a living thing now, and her handle would mend itself in time, providing she got enough dust to eat. I merely bound her with some torn cloth so she would heal straight.

Wyst's wound was the most serious. He'd suffered a deep slash to his side by the chimera's tusks. If I'd been able to use magic, it would have been easily treated. But my magics slid off the White Knight, and I had to rely on mundane methods. I wrapped the wound in a poultice to prevent infection. That he had to remove his shirt for treatment proved less distracting than I'd expected. Ghastly Edna had trained me well. Wyst was not a man. He was a patient. Touching his firm flesh, running my fingers across his lean, muscled body meant nothing to me.

Well, perhaps it meant something. But I concentrated on the wound and finished the task without surrendering to carnal impulses. Only after, did I realize the heat built up within me, especially warm in my lips, breast, loins, and, oddly, ears. I limped to the other side of our small camp to clear my head, pretending to study the dead chimera.

Death had merely slowed their shape-shifting pace. The corpses assumed various deceased forms every ten minutes or so, each smaller than the last. I expected them to eventually become dead bugs, then things too small to be seen, then nothing altogether. It seemed a perfectly natural state of decay for such creatures. Presently, the corpses were that of a hare, a wolf with antlers, and a three-armed man.

Newt beheaded the hare with a kick. 'They weren't so dangerous. None of you were killed.'

'We're all very hard to kill,' I replied.

There was truth to Newt's observation. The chimera, terrible monsters in their own right, had never been a serious threat. The sorcerer who'd sent them must have known that. Their purpose had been to delay us, perhaps even kill one of us with some luck, and to take our measure.

'How did they know where to find you anyway?' Newt asked.

'No doubt, the sorcerer told them.'

'How did he know?'

'Most likely, the magic told him. Just as it tells me where to find him.'

'I thought the magic was on our side.'

'Magic doesn't take sides. It mostly watches and waits for something interesting to happen and sometimes, especially when witches and sorcerers find themselves at cross-purposes, it encourages the most interesting things.'

'Sounds as if the magic should find itself a hobby.'

'Perhaps that is what we are.'

Dusk approached. Gwurm went gathering wood, and Newt went hunting for dinner. Though Wyst and I had