Dal quavered.

This bandit was a withered old coot who looked vaguely familiar for some reason. Had I perhaps done a poor job of killing him at some point too like Lomo? "I ain't sorry about a bloomin' thing!" he declared.

Lomo cuffed him into the ashes at the edge of the fire. "You wanted to confess. Now get on with it!"

"My-mail!" I wheezed at Gerta, fingers wrenching vainly at the buckle. "Get it off!"

Her eyes widened. "Now?"

The bandit picked himself up and brushed at the new smudges on his ragged trousers. "Well, I suppose I could say I'm sorry about impersonating a goatherd last night so I could sprinkle your magic shrinking potion on Hallah Iron-Thighs' mail."

"That was very wicked of you!" Lomo said and then the two of them guffawed.

I recognized him now, as the scene before me was being rapidly blotted out by swirling darkness of impending unconsciousness due to lack of air. He was the smelly lout who kept hovering behind my back at the tavern. Magic, I thought weakly. Lomo had used one of his bandits to magick me, the rotten b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I could feel my veins bulging, my face turning purple. My fingers wrenched at the buckle, but it must have been jammed in the fall I'd taken earlier and wouldn't give.

"Hallah, they're going to hear you!" Gerta whispered disapprovingly.

"Yes, ducks." Lomo walked around the boulder. "You really should be more careful."

"Don't worry, Hallah!" Gerta sprang to her feet. "I'll save a few for you to kill!"

The first buckle finally gave and my mail popped open down to the second buckle, giving me a bit more room to breathe, though not nearly enough.

Gerta charged, but her balance was off, courtesy no doubt of the lump on her head. Lomo thrust out his foot, then turned to me as she went down like a poleaxed buffalo. "What about you, ducks? Is there something you'd like to confess before we throw you into that convenient bottomless crevice over there?

It's best to go out with a clean conscience, you know."

With a creak, the second buckle opened. I gulped air into my straining lungs. Gerta was sprawled on the ground at Perchis Dal's feet, a new lump on her head beside the earlier one, making a matched set. I was outnumbered thirty to one. Lomo had my horse and my sword. Even my trusty mail, veteran of years of fighting, had let me down. Maybe thiswas the Change of Life after all and I'd worked too long at this exhausting, dangerous business. Maybe it was time to hang up my- "Can I go now?" Dal ducked his head. "You can keep the donkeys and hymnals."

Lomo whirled and shoved him to the ground beside Gerta's limp form. "Get on with the confessions!"

Dal's head hit Gerta's scabbard with a sharp crack. His eyes fluttered, then he sagged like a windless sail. The bandits surged forward, aghast. "Lomo, you killed our priest!" one of them cried. "Now, howare we going to confess?"

My fingers wrenched desperately at the last buckle and finally with a squeak, it gave. My mail split open along the side seam and I drew in a blessed full breath.

"You promised us hymns and sermons and confession!" A hulking brute seized Lomo's shirt and hauled him up onto his toes. "Otherwise, we'd never have followed you. Now, we've finally caught something at least close to a priest, after all these months, and you bash his blinkin' head in. I think we need us a new king!"

A chorus of a.s.sent went up on all sides. Lomo looked decidedly nervous.

"First, though," the tall brute said, "throw that meddling Iron-Thighs broad down the crevice. We was doing fine until she showed up!"

"Yeah!" They advanced on me, a reeking, unkempt mob, unsatisfied repentance blazing in their eyes.

I raised my chin, remembering whose daughter I was. No bunch of priest-deprived bandits was going to take me down! A true warrior is never without resources. If they wanted a sermon- "Brethren!" I cried. "We find ourselves brought together by fate tonight, out here, underneath these brilliant and, I can a.s.sure you, all-seeing stars!"

They paused, slack-jawed.

"Some of you have not always led, shall we say, admirable lives," I said with as much authority as I could muster. "Of that I think we can be certain."

One of the worthless band whimpered.

"Down on your knees, dogs!" I crossed my arms and looked uncompromising. "It's time to make amends!"

Three of the closest knelt. "Wait a minute!" Lomo cried, still hanging by his shirt from the brute's fist.

"She's not a priest!"

"You never take presents to your mothers, do you?" I tapped my foot.

Two more dropped to their knees. Their eyes looked suspiciously red. "This is stupid," Lomo broke in.

"Don't lis-"

His captor rammed him facefirst to the ground, then knelt, folding his hands piously. Lomo sprawled limply and barely breathing in the fire's dancing shadows.

"You slurp your soup and eat with your mouths open! You curse and burp and never ever share!"

Five more knelt, openly sobbing.

Gerta stirred. I put my foot in the middle of her back to hold her in place. "Raise your eyes to the stars and confess all the nasty, dirty, rotten things you've ever done!" The holdouts knelt along with the rest of my congregation and commenced airing their dirty laundry. It was a loud and most enthusiastic list. I eased my foot off Gerta's back. "Get up!" I whispered urgently.

"We have to go!"

Her hand twitched.

"Now would be a real good time!" I said.

The confessing faltered and the bandits' feral eyes once again glittered at me in the firelight. I whirled back to them. "Do you call those sins?" I cried. "By all the powers above, you are a pathetic bunch! I thought you were men! Mygrandmother has committed worse crimes than that!"

They raised their eyes and went back to it with a vengeance. I shuddered at the transgressions mentioned; by all accounts, they had been a very naughty lot.

Gerta groaned, then hitched herself away from the fire, one agonizingly slow bit at a time. I reached down and slipped a hand through Dal's belt and dragged him out of the light. "Find the horses," I told Gerta. "I'll collect our swords."

She nodded groggily and lurched off into the darkness. I put my hands on my hips and strode through the crowd. One of the appropriated hymnals lay open close to the fire and I picked it up and examined the inside cover. Oh, ho! I thought. If we ever got back to the lowlands, both King Mytch.e.l.l the Extremely Picky of Damery and King Bentley the Culinary of Alowey would findthis very interesting! I shoved the volume into my belt.

Then I recognized Gerta's sword, Gut-Spiller, on the hip of a rugged blond fellow. "Slackers!" I cried.

"Put your backs into it!" I whacked the yellow-headed thief across the shoulders and sent him reeling, at the same time deftly filching the sword. My nose wrinkled as I turned away. By his pungent odor, he apparently hadn't bathed since birth.

"Do you think confession works if you mumble?" I said. "I can'thear you!" The noise level climbed another notch. "Straighten up, you lily-livered wuss!" I told another. "You look like a leaking sack of feed!" I spotted my sword, thrust through Lomo's belt. He was lying across it. d.a.m.nation! I worked my way around the babbling throng until I was looming over him. "Fall on your faces, worms! Beg forgiveness of the almighties!"

Most of them did, but several, including Lomo's attacker, hesitated. "What we got to do that for?" he asked, as all around him confessions were shouted into the dirt. "I never heard of no priest saying 'Fall on your face!' "

I could fight him, of course, but then I'd have to take on all thirty of them, not a practical choice at the moment. "Say," I said, dropping my voice into a honeyed lower register and leaning closer. "You are a big one, aren't you? I could go for a fine full-sized fellow like you."

The light in his eyes changed from petulance to vanity. He flexed his bicep and winked. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," I murmured throatily, then turned sideways and gave him a sharp elbow on the point of his jaw.

He toppled like a felled hundred-year oak. "That's the spirit, brother!" I cried, then glared at the remaining two bandits. They hurriedly buried their faces in the dirt.

Keeping an eye on my parishioners, I rolled Lomo's unconscious body over, freed Esmeralda from hisworn belt, then glanced around for Gerta. She signalled me from the other side of the camp. Fortunately, she'd found the strength to hoist the hymnal merchant over Slasher's saddle like a deer carca.s.s. The confessions were growing ever more hoa.r.s.e and insignificant. The bandits were now down to episodes of dog kicking and flower trampling; we were almost out of time.

"All right," I said, "enough confessing. It's time for a rousing chorus of-of-" I searched for an appropriate song.

"What about 'Oh Come All Ye Druids'?" one tear-stained bandit suggested timorously. "I always find that so uplifting."

"Splendid!" I hauled the newly confessed miscreant to his feet. "I'm appointing you choirmaster. Lead on!"

As off-key strains of the chosen song violated the clear mountain night air, I vaulted into Corpsemaker's saddle. Gerta mounted Slasher behind the merchant's body, then we gave the horses their heads so they could pick their way down the winding rock-strewn trail in the darkness.

Behind us, the abysmal singing went on for a long, long time.

"I thought you two were supposed to be the best!" Dal said the next day, as we began our descent into the kingdom of Damery. His swollen nose was still beet-red and he talked thickly as though he had a cold. "You lost all my stock and didn't kill a single bandit!"

I pulled out the battered hymnal I'd picked up the night before and opened the cover. I squinted, then held it out to him. "Funny, I don't see an Alowey tax stamp anywhere in this book." I pressed the volume to my chest. "Merchant Dal, have you perhaps been dealing with those renegade cut-rate monks down beyond the Brimford frontier? You know, the ones who don't believe in lawful taxes?"

"Of course not!" Dal averted his bloodshot eyes.

"That's good," I said. "Because we all know how King Mytch.e.l.l the Extremely Picky feels about tax evaders running goods across his border. I believe the last twenty or so were boiled in apple vinegar and then fed to the royal swine."

Dal flushed and stared down at his knotted fingers. "You know, I've been thinking of emigrating across the channel to Doria. The weather is so much better there and the population is known for having perfect pitch, just the place for a hymnal salesman to get ahead."

"Really?" I said. According to Gerta, who'd been born across the channel, Doria was so far north, they thought summer was when it sleeted instead of snowed. "That does sound like a pleasant change."

"What about our fee?" Gerta asked glumly. Golden wisps of hair had escaped her braids, her black eye was swollen shut, and she didn't look nearly as valiant as usual. "No doubt you want a refund."

I leafed through the illicit hymnal, then hummed a few bars of that old standard, "Cairn of Ages, Cleft for Me."

"Keep your fee!" Dal squeaked. "You earned it! I wouldn't dream of asking for a refund!" He swallowed hard. "Can I, um, have my hymnal back?" "Yeah." I tossed it to him. "I suppose it does have a certain sentimental value."

Dal tore the pages out as we rode and threw them surrept.i.tiously along the trail behind us, but otherwise kept blessedly quiet for the rest of the journey.

Two nights later, we dumped Dal off at the infamous Inn of the Second Wart at the foot of the mountain and then ate freshly roasted piglet out underneath the dazzling sweep of stars.

"Surprising that someone would be so careless about marking their stock," Gerta was saying. "Are you sure that pig wasn't marked?"

Not after I whacked its ears off, I thought. "Not a mark anywhere," I said. I wiped pork grease off my hands, then picked up my poor magicked mail. It was now so small, it fit in the palm of my hand, no bigger than a doll's shirt and shrinking ever more quickly as time went by. At this rate, it would be flea-sized by morning. "I will have to order new mail when we get to town, but at least it won't be because I'm getting old."

Gerta turned over on her back and stared up at the sky. "I'm afraid you are in for a change, though.

Surely you've heard that, once you've been magicked, you're much more sensitive to spells and potions and such."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "That's just an old wives' tale."

"No, I swear it's true," Gerta said earnestly. "It happened to my cousin, Ernelda. This lovesick dolt in the next village bought a cheap spell and cast it on her. As soon as the wedding was over and she regained her senses, she beat him to a pulp, but now she can't even pa.s.s one of those stupid street magicians without feeling obliged to turn cartwheels and sing charming little ditties."

"Gee," I said, "something to look forward to."

"Well," Gerta said as her blue eyes sagged shut, "it did turn out to be a nice source of extra income.

People are always throwing coins at her feet these days. I expect you'll get used to it."

And that, I reflected, was the most depressing prospect of all.

About the Authors

For a guy no one's ever heard of,Pierce Askegren has written a fair amount of fiction, for most of which he's gotten paid. He co-wrote a three book series of Spider-Man novels with famous comics guys Fingeroth and Fein, and he wrote two more Marvel novels on his own. He also cranked out five short stories for various Marvel anthologies, and a novel based on the popularTraveller role-playing game.Sometime after the Earth cooled but before the continents moved apart, he wrote stories that n.o.body remembers for Warren comics magazines-Creepy, the originalVampirella , etc. These days, by day, he writes business proposals and such for government contractors, as well as accepting the occasional technical writing or editing a.s.signment. Pierce lives in northern Virginia in a frighteningly cluttered apartment with about a zillion G.o.dzilla figures to keep him company.

Robin Wayne Baileyis the author of twelve novels, including theBrothers of the Dragon series from Roc Books,Shadowdance , and most recentlySwords Against the Shadowland from White Wolf Books. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including the popularThieves World series,Future Net, s.p.a.ce Opera and others. He's been a planetarium lecturer, musician, and martial arts instructor. An avid collector of books and oldtime radio plays, his hobbies also include weight-lifting, bicycling, and soccer. He resides in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Diana, and their cat, Topper.

Stories like "A Case of Prince Charming" represent the more harmless manifestations of his twisted sense of humor. Ask the editor.

Margaret Balllives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two children. She has a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas. After graduation, she taught at UCLA and then spent several years developing her fantasy writing skills by designing computer software and writing proposals for defense department contracts.

After obtaining a degree in wildlife ill.u.s.tration and environmental education,Doranna Durgin spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures (which would explain the skull collection and all those unusual home-tanned skins). Doranna has a handful of fantasy novels out and four more in production, along with a smattering of anthology stories. She lives with two irrepressible Cardigan Welsh Corgis, Carbon Unit (Kacey) & Jean-Luc Picardigan. And if that's not entirely too much information already, go to www.doranna.net for all the latest news.

Karen Eversonis a Jane-of-Most-Trades, including writer, artist, owner of "Moongate Designs,"

Mommy, and belly-dancer, though not exclusively nor in that order. She has a Master's degree in mythology but has never let that stop her from putting her nose into Byzantine history or anything else she finds interesting. Her published writings include numerous essays and a novel,The Last Voyage Of Odysseus (available through "Moongate Designs" and shameless self-promotion). "Incognito, Ergo Sum"

marks her return to fiction. She lives in Canton, Michigan, with husband, Mark, daughter, Caitlyn, and her faithful cat, Topaz (a.k.a. furball with an att.i.tude).

Eric Flintis the author of six novels, several of them in collaboration with David Drake. Born in California in 1947, Flint received his BA and MA in history from UCLA. He spent most of his adult life working as a machinist until he began writing in 1993. He currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife, Lucille.

Esther M. Friesner, editor and creator of the popular CHICKS anthology series, lives in suburban Connecticut. This gives her great inspiration to continue with her writing career (i.e. "If I stop doing this, I'll have to get a real estate license or open an antiques store. It's the Law."). She has had thirty-odd books published, some odder than others, and over a hundred short stories. Of the latter, two have won the Nebula Award. She would like to live long enough to find out if success, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and the adoration of millions will spoil her. She rather hopes it will.

Nina Kiriki Hoffmanhas been pursuing a writing career for eighteen years and has sold more than 150 stories, two short story collections, several novels (The Thread That Binds the Bones, The Silent Strength of Stones, both from Avon,A Red Heart of Memories , from Ace, andPast the Size of Dreaming , also from Ace, due out in January 2001), several novellas, and a collaborative young adult novel with Tad Williams (Child of an Ancient City, Atheneum, re-released in ma.s.s-market size from Tor). She also collaborated on a Star Trek novel with Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, Star Trek Voyager 15: Echoes . She frequently sells short stories to DAW and Bruce Coville anthologies, and recently toF&SF Magazine and elsewhere. Hoffman lives in Eugene, Oregon, with many dolls, cats, and a growing anime collection.