Seven

INIGO ALLOWED Fezzik to open the door, not because he wished to hide behind the giant's strength but, rather, because the giant's strength was crucial to their entering: someone would have to force the thick door from its hinges, and that was right up Fezzik's alley.

"It's open," Fezzik said, simply turning the knob, peering inside.

"Open?" Inigo hesitated. "Close it then. There must be something wrong. Why would something as valuable as the Prince's private zoo be left unlocked?"

"It smells of animals something awful in there," Fezzik said. "Did I get a whiff!"

"Let me think," Inigo said; "I'll figure it out," and he tried to do his best, but it made no sense. You didn't leave diamonds lying around on the breakfast table and you kept the Zoo of Death shut and bolted. So there had to be a reason; it was just a matter of exercising your brain power and the answer would be there. (The answer to why the door happened to be unlocked was really this: it was always unlocked. And the reason for that was really this: safety. No one who had entered via the front door had ever survived to exit again. The idea basically belonged to Count Rugen, who helped the Prince architect the place. The Prince selected the location—the farthest corner of the castle grounds, away from everything, so the roars wouldn't bother the servants—but the Count designed the entrance. The real entrance was by a giant tree, where a root lifted and revealed a staircase and down you went until you arrived at the fifth level. The false entrance, called the real entrance, took you down the levels the ordinary way, first to second, second to third, or, actually, second to death.)

"Yes," Inigo said finally.

"You figured it out?"

"The reason the door was unlocked is simply this: the albino would have locked it, he would never have been so stupid as not to, but, Fezzik, my friend, we got to him before he got to it. Clearly, once he was done with his wheelbarrowing, he would have begun locking and bolting. It's quite all right; you can stop worrying; let's go."

"I just feel so safe with you," Fezzik said, and he pulled the door open a second time. As he did it, he noticed that not only was the door unlocked, it didn't even have a place for a lock, and he wondered should he mention that to Inigo, but decided against it, because Inigo would have to wait and figure some more and they had done enough of that already, because, although he said he felt safe with Inigo, in truth he was very frightened. He had heard odd things about this place, and lions didn't bother him, and who cared about gorillas; they were nothing. It was the creepers that made him squeamish. And the slitherers. And the stingers. And the ... and the everything, Fezzik decided, to be truthful and honest. Spiders and snakes and bugs and bats and you name it—he just wasn't very fond of any of them. "Still smells of animals," he said, and he held the door open for Inigo, and together, stride for stride, they entered the Zoo of Death, the great door shutting silently behind them.

"Quite a bizarre place," Inigo said, moving past several large cages in which were cheetahs and hummingbirds and other swift things. At the end of the hall was another door with a sign above it saying, "To Level Two." They opened that door and saw a flight of stairs leading very steeply down. "Careful," Inigo said; "stay close to me and watch your balance."

They started down toward the second level.

"If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh at me or mock me or be mean to me?" Fezzik asked.

"My word," Inigo nodded.

"I'm just scared to pieces," Fezzik said.

"Be sure it ceases," Inigo said right back.

"Oh, that's a wonderful rhyme—"

"Some other time," Inigo said, making another, feeling quite bright about the whole thing, sensing the pleasure in having Fezzik visibly relax as they descended, so he smiled and clapped Fezzik on his great shoulder for the good fellow he was. But deep, deep inside, Inigo's stomach was knotting. He was absolutely appalled and astonished that a man of unlimited strength and power would be scared to pieces; until Fezzik spoke, Inigo was positive that he was the only one who was genuinely scared to pieces, and the fact that they both were did not bode well if panic time came. Someone would have to keep his wits, and he had assumed automatically that since Fezzik had so few, he would find retaining them not all that difficult. No good, Inigo realized. Well, he would simply have to do his best to avoid panic situations and that was that.

The staircase was straight, and very long, but eventually they reached the end of it. Another door. Fezzik gave it a push. It opened. Another corridor lined with cages, big ones though, and inside, great baying hippos and a twenty-foot alligator thrashing angrily in shallow water.

"We must hurry," Inigo said, picking up the pace; "much as we might like to dawdle," and he half ran toward a sign that said, "To Level Three." Inigo opened the door and looked down and Fezzik peered over his shoulder. "Hmmm," Inigo said.

This staircase was different. It was not nearly as steep, and it curved halfway, so that whatever was near the bottom of it was quite out of sight as they stood at the top preparing to go down. There were strange candles burning high on the walls out of reach. The shadows they made were very long and very thin.

"Well, I'm certainly glad I wasn't brought up here," Inigo said, trying for a joke.

"Fear," Fezzik said, the rhyme out before he could stop it.

Inigo exploded. "Really! If you can't maintain control, I'm going to send you right back up and you can just wait there all by yourself."

"Don't leave me; I mean, don't make me leave you. Please. I meant to say 'beer'; I don't know how the f got in there."

"I'm really losing patience with you; come along," Inigo said, and he started down the curving stairs, Fezzik following, and as the door closed behind them, two things happened:

(1) The door, quite clearly, locked.

(2) Out went the candles on the high walls.

"DON'T BE FRIGHTENED!" Inigo screamed.

"I'M NOT, I'M NOT!" Fezzik screamed right back. And then, above his heartbeat, he managed, "What are we going to do?"

"S-s-s-simple," said Inigo after a while.

"Are you frightened too?" asked Fezzik in the darkness.

"Not ... remotely," Inigo said with great care. "And before, I meant to say 'easy'; I don't know how the 's-s-s-s-' got in there. Look: we can't go back and we certainly don't want to stay here, so we just must keep on going as we were before these little things happened. Down. Down is our direction, Fezzik, but I can tell you're a bit edgy about all this, so, out of the goodness of my heart, I will let you walk down not behind me, and not in front of me, but right next to me, on the same step, stride for stride, and you put an arm around my shoulder, because that will probably make you feel better, and I, so as not to make you feel foolish, will put an arm around your shoulder, and thus, safe, protected, together, we will descend."

"Will you draw your sword with your free hand?"

"I already have. Will you make a fist with yours?"

"It's clenched."

"Then let's look on the bright side: we're having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are."

They moved down one step. Then another. Then two, then three, as they got the hang of it.

"Why do you think they locked the door behind us?" Fezzik asked as they moved.

"To add spice to our trip, I suspect," replied Inigo. It was certainly one of his weaker answers, but the best he could come up with.

"Here's where the turn starts," said Fezzik, and they slowed, making the sharp turn without stumbling, continuing on down. "And they took away the candles for the same reason—spice?"

"Most likely. Don't squeeze me quite so hard—"

"Don't you squeeze me quite so hard—"

By then they knew they were for it.

There has been, for many years, a running battle among jungle zoologists as to just which of the giant snakes is the biggest. The anaconda men are forever trumpeting the Orinoco specimen that weighed well over five hundred pounds, while the python people never fail to reply by pointing out that the African Rock found outside Zambesi measured thirty-four feet, seven inches. The argument, of course, is silly, because "biggest" is a vague word, having no value whatever in arguments, if one is serious.

But any serious snake enthusiast would admit, whatever his schooling, that the Arabian Garstini, though shorter than the python and lighter than the anaconda, was quicker and more ravenous than either, and this specimen of Prince Humperdinck's was not only remarkable for its speed and agility, it was also kept in a permanent state just verging on the outskirts of starvation, so the first coil came like lightning as it dropped from above them and pinioned their hands so the fist and sword were useless and the second coil imprisoned their arms and "Do something—" Inigo cried.

"I can't—I'm caught—you do something—"

"Fight it, Fezzik—"

"It's too strong for me—"

"Nothing is too strong for you—"

The third coil was done now, around the upper shoulders, and the fourth coil, the final coil, involved the throat, and Inigo whispered in terror, because he could hear the beast's breathing now, could actually feel its breath, "Fight it ... I'm ... I'm..."

Fezzik trembled with fear and whispered, "Forgive me, Inigo."

"Oh, Fezzik ... Fezzik..."

"What...?"

"I had such rhymes for you...."

"What rhymes?..."

Silence.

The fourth coil was finished.

"Inigo, what rhymes?"

Silence.

Snake breath.

"Inigo, I want to know the rhymes before I die—Inigo, I really want to know—Inigo, tell me the rhymes" Fezzik said, and by now he was very frustrated and, more than that, he was spectacularly angry and one arm came clear of one coil and that made it a bit less of a chore to fight free of the second coil and that meant he could take that arm and bring it to the aid of the other arm and now he was yelling it out, "You're not going anywhere until I know those rhymes" and the sound of his own voice was really very impressive, deep and resonant, and who was this snake anyway, getting in the path of Fezzik when there were rhymes to learn, and by this time not only were both arms free of the bottom three coils but he was furious at the interruption and his hands grabbed toward the snake breath, and he didn't know if snakes had necks or not but whatever it was that you called the part that was under its mouth, that was the part he had between his great hands and he gave it a smash against the wall and the snake hissed and spit but the fourth coil was looser, so Fezzik smashed it again and a third time and then he brought his hands back a bit for leverage and he began to whip the beast against the walls like a native washerwoman beating a skirt against rocks, and when the snake was dead, Inigo said, "Actually, I had no specific rhymes in mind; I just had to do something to get you into action."

Fezzik was panting terribly from his labors. "You lied to me is what you're saying. My only friend in all my life turns out to be a liar." He started tromping down the stairs, Inigo stumbling after him.

Fezzik reached the door at the bottom and threw it open and slammed it, with Inigo just managing to slip inside before the door crashed shut.

It locked immediately.

At the end of this corridor, the "To Level Four" sign was clearly visible, and Fezzik hurried toward it. Inigo pursued him, hurrying past the poisoners, the spitting cobras and Gaboon vipers and, perhaps most quickly lethal of all, the lovely tropical stonefish from the ocean outside India.

"I apologize," Inigo said. "One lie in all these years, that's not such a terrible average when you consider it saved our lives."

"There's such a thing as principle" was all Fezzik would answer, and he opened the door that led to the fourth level. "My father made me promise never to lie, and not once in my life have I even been tempted," and he started down the stairs.

"Stop!" Inigo said. "At least examine where we're going."

It was a straight staircase, but completely dark. The opening at the far end was invisible. "It can't be as bad as where we've been," Fezzik snapped, and down he went.

In a way, he was right. For Inigo, bats were never the ultimate nightmare. Oh, he was afraid of them, like everybody else, and he would run and scream if they came near; in his mind, though, hell was not bat-infested. But Fezzik was a Turkish boy, and people claim the fruit bat from Indonesia is the biggest in the world; try telling that to a Turk sometime. Try telling that to anyone who has heard his mother scream, "Here come the king bats!" followed by the poisonous fluttering of wings.

"HERE COME THE KING BATS!" Fezzik screamed, and he was, quite literally, as he stood halfway down the dark steps, paralyzed with fear, and behind him now, doing his best to fight the darkness, came Inigo, and he had never heard that tone before, not from Fezzik, and Inigo didn't want bats in his hair either, but it wasn't worth that kind of fright, so he started to say "What's so terrible about king bats" but "What" was all he had time for before Fezzik cried, "Rabies! Rabies!" and that was all Inigo needed to know, and he yelled, "Down, Fezzik," and Fezzik still couldn't move, so Inigo felt for him in the darkness as the fluttering grew louder and with all his strength he slammed the giant on the shoulder hollering "Down" and this time Fezzik went to his knees obediently, but that wasn't enough, not nearly, so Inigo slammed him again crying, "Flat, flat, all the way down," until Fezzik lay on the black stairs shaking and Inigo knelt above him, the great six-fingered sword flying into his hands, and this was it, this was a test to see how far down the ninety days of brandy had taken him, how much of the great Inigo Montoya remained, for, yes, he had studied fencing, true, he had spent half his life and more learning the Agrippa attack and the Bonetti defense and of course he had studied his Thibault, but he had also, one desperate time, spent a summer with the only Scot who ever understood swords, the crippled MacPherson, and it was MacPherson who scoffed at everything Inigo knew, it was MacPherson who said, "Thibault, Thibault is fine if you fight in a ballroom, but what if you meet your enemy on terrain that is tilted and you are below him," and for a week, Inigo studied all the moves from below, and then MacPherson put him on a hill in the upper position, and when those moves were mastered, MacPherson kept right on, for he was a cripple, his legs stopped at the knee, and so he had a special feel for adversity. "And what if your enemy blinds you?" MacPherson once said. "He throws acid in your eyes and now he drives in for the kill; what do you do? Tell me that, Spaniard, survive that, Spaniard." And now, waiting for the charge of the king bats, Inigo flung his mind back toward the MacPherson moves, and you had to depend on your ears, you found his heart from his sounds, and now, as he waited, above him Inigo could feel the king bats massing, while below him Fezzik trembled like a kitten in cold water.

"Be still!" Inigo commanded, and that was the last sound he made, because he needed his ears now, and he tilted his head toward the flutter, the great sword firm in his right hand, the deadly point circling slowly in the air. Inigo had never seen a king bat, knew nothing of them; how fast were they, how did they come at you, at what angle, and how many made each charge? The flutter was dead above him now, ten feet perhaps, perhaps more, and could bats see in the night? Did they have that weapon too? "Come on!" Inigo was about to say, but there was no need, because with a rush of wings he had expected and a high long shriek he had not, the first king bat swooped down at him.

Inigo waited, waited, the flutter was off to the left, and that was wrong, because he knew where he was and so did the beasts, so that meant they must have been preparing something for him, a cut, a sudden turn, and with all control left to his brain he kept his sword just as it was, circling slowly, not following the sound until the fluttering stopped and the king bat veered in silence toward Inigo's face.

The six-fingered sword drove through like butter.

The death sound of the king bat was close to human, only a bit higher pitched and shorter, and Inigo was only briefly interested because now there was a double flutter; they were coming at him from two sides and one right, one left, and MacPherson told him always move from strength to weakness, so Inigo stabbed first to the right, then drove left, and two more almost human sounds came and went. The sword was heavy now, three dead beasts changed the balance, and Inigo wanted to clear the weapon, but now another flutter, a single one, and no veering this time, straight and deadly for his face and he ducked and was lucky; the sword moved up and into the heart of the lethal thing and now there were four skewered on the sword of legend, and Inigo knew he was not about to lose this fight and from his throat came the words, "I am Inigo Montoya and still the Wizard; come for me," and when he heard three of them fluttering, he wished he had been just a bit more modest but it was too late for that, so he needed surprise, and he took it, shifting position against the beasts, standing straight, taking their dives long before they expected it, and now there were seven king bats and his sword was completely out of balance and that would have been a bad thing, a dangerous thing, except for one important aspect: there was silence now in the darkness. The fluttering was done.

"Some giant you are," Inigo said then, and he stepped over Fezzik and hurried down the rest of the darkened stairs.

Fezzik got up and lumbered after him, saying, "Inigo, listen, I made a mistake before, you didn't lie to me, you tricked me, and father always said tricking was fine, so I'm not mad at you anymore, and is that all right with you? It's all right with me."

They turned the knob on the door at the bottom of the black stairs and stepped onto the fourth level.

Inigo looked at him. "You mean you'll forgive me completely for saving your life if I completely forgive you for saving mine?"

"You're my friend, my only one."

"Pathetic, that's what we are," Inigo said.

"Athletic."

"That's very good," Inigo said, so Fezzik knew they were fine again. They started toward the sign that said, "To Level Five," passing strange cages. "This is the worst yet," Inigo said, and then he jumped back, because behind a pale glass case, a blood eagle was actually eating what looked like an arm. And on the other side there was a great black pool, and whatever was in it was dark and many armed and the water seemed to get sucked toward the center of the pool where the mouth of the thing was. "Hurry," Inigo said, and he found himself trembling at the thought of being dropped into the black pool.

They opened the door and looked down toward the fifth level.

Stunning.

In the first place, the door they opened had no lock, so it could not trap them. And in the second place the stairs were all brightly lit. And in the third place the stairs were absolutely straight. And in the fourth place, it wasn't a long flight at all.

And in the main place, there was nothing inside. It was bright and clean and totally, without the least doubt, empty.

"I don't believe it for a minute," Inigo said, and, holding his sword at the ready, he took the first step down. "Stay by the door—the candles will go out any second."

He took a second step down.

The candles stayed bright.

A third step. The fourth. There were only about a dozen steps in all, and he took two more, stopping in the middle. Each step was perhaps a foot in width, so he was six feet from Fezzik, six feet from the large, ornate green-handled door that opened onto the final level. "Fezzik?"

From the upper door: "What?"

"I'm frightened."

"It looks all right though."

"No. It's supposed to; that's to fool us. Whatever we've gotten by before, this must be worse."

"But there's nothing to see, Inigo."

Inigo nodded. "That's why I'm so frightened." He took another step down toward the final, ornate green-handled door. Another. Four steps to go. Four feet to go.

Forty-eight inches from death.

Inigo took another step. He was trembling now; almost out of control.

"Why are you shaking?" Fezzik from the top.

"Death is here. Death is here." He took another step down.

Twenty-four inches to dying.

"Can I come join you now?"

Inigo shook his head. "No point in your dying too."

"But it's empty."

"No. Death is here." Now he was out of control. "If I could see it, I could fight it."

Fezzik didn't know what to do.

"I'm Inigo Montoya the Wizard; come for me!" He turned around and around, sword ready, studying the brightly lit staircase.

"Now you're scaring me," Fezzik said, and he let the door close behind him and started down the stairs.

Inigo started up after him, saying "No." They met on the sixth step.

Seventy-two inches from death now.

The green speckled recluse doesn't destroy as quickly as the stonefish. And many think the mamba brings more suffering, what with the ulcerating and all. But gram for gram, nothing in the universe comes close to the green speckled recluse; among other spiders, compared with the green speckled recluse, the black widow was a rag doll. Prince Humperdinck's recluse lived behind the ornate green handle on the bottom door. She rarely moved, unless the handle turned. Then she struck like lightning.

On the sixth stair, Fezzik put his arm around Inigo's shoulder. "We'll go down together, step by step. There's nothing here, Inigo."

To the fifth step. "There has to be."

"Why?"

"Because the Prince is a fiend. And Rugen is his twin in misery. And this is their masterpiece." They moved to the fourth step.

"That's wonderful thinking, Inigo," Fezzik said, loud and calmly; but, inside, he was starting to go to pieces. Because here he was, in this nice bright place, and his one friend in all the world was cracking from the strain. And if you were Fezzik, and you hadn't much brainpower, and you found yourself four stories underground in a Zoo of Death looking for a man in black that you really didn't think was down there, and the only friend you had in all the world was going quickly mad, what did you do?

Three steps now.

If you were Fezzik, you panicked, because if Inigo went mad, that meant the leader of this whole expedition was you, and if you were Fezzik, you knew the last thing in the world you could ever be was a leader. So Fezzik did what he always did in a panic situation.

He bolted.

He just yelled and jumped for the door and slammed it open with his body, never even bothering with the niceties of turning that pretty green handle, and as the door gave behind his strength he kept right on running until he came to the giant cage and there, inside and still, lay the man in black. Fezzik stopped then, relieved greatly, because seeing that silent body meant one thing: Inigo was right, and if Inigo was right, he couldn't be crazy, and if he wasn't crazy, then Fezzik didn't have to lead anybody anywhere. And when that thought reached his brain, Fezzik smiled.

Inigo, for his part, was startled at Fezzik's strange behavior. He saw no reason for it whatsoever, and was about to call after Fezzik when he saw a tiny green speckled spider scurrying down from the door handle, so he stepped on it with his boot as he hurried to the cage.

Fezzik was already inside the place, kneeling over the body.

"Don't say it," Inigo said, entering.

Fezzik tried not to, but it was on his face. "Dead."

Inigo examined the body. He had seen a lot of corpses in his time. "Dead." Then he sat down miserably on the floor and put his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth like a baby, back and forth, back and forth and back.

It was too unfair. You expected unfairness if you breathed, but this went beyond that. He, Inigo, no thinker, had thought—hadn't he found the man in black? He, Inigo, frightened of beasts and crawlers and anything that stung, had brought them down the Zoo unharmed. He had said good-by to caution and stretched himself far beyond any boundaries he ever dreamed he possessed. And now, after such effort, after being reunited with Fezzik on this day of days for this one purpose, to find the man to help him find a plan to help him revenge his dead Domingo—gone. All was gone. Hope? Gone. Future? Gone. All the driving forces of his life. Gone. Snuffed out. Beaten. Dead.

"I am Inigo Montoya, the son of Domingo Montoya, and I do not accept it." He sprang to his feet, started up the underground stairs, stopping only long enough to snap commands. "Come, come along. Bring the body." He searched through his pockets for a moment, but they were empty, from the brandy. "Have you got any money, Fezzik?"

"Some. They pay well on the Brute Squad."

"Well I just hope it's enough to buy a miracle, that's all."

WHEN THE KNOCKING started on his hut door, Max almost didn't answer it. "Go away," he almost said, because lately it was only kids come to mock him. Except this was a little past the time for kids being up—it was almost midnight—and besides, the knocking was both loud and, at the same time, rat-a-tatty, as if the brain was saying to the fist, "Hurry it up; I want to see a little action."

So Max opened the door a peek's worth. "I don't know you."

"Aren't you Miracle Max that worked all those years for the King?" this skinny guy said.

"I got fired, didn't you hear? That's a painful subject, you shouldn't have brought it up, good night, next time learn a little manners," and he closed the hut door.

Rat-a-tat—rat-a-tattt.

"Get away, I'm telling you, or I call the Brute Squad."

"I'm on the Brute Squad," this other voice said from outside the door, a big deep voice you wanted to stay friendly with.

"We need a miracle; it's very important," the skinny guy said from outside.

"I'm retired," Max said, "anyway, you wouldn't want someone the King got rid of, would you? I might kill whoever you want me to miracle."

"He's already dead," the skinny guy said.

"He is, huh?" Max said, a little interest in his voice now. He opened the door a peek's worth again. "I'm good at dead."

"Please," the skinny guy said.

"Bring him in. I'm making no promises," Miracle Max answered after some thought.

This huge guy and this skinny guy brought in this big guy and put him on the hut floor. Max poked the corpse. "Not so stiff as some," he said.

The skinny guy said, "We have money."

"Then go get some great genius specialist, why don't you? Why waste time messing around with me, a guy who the King fired." It almost killed him when it happened. For the first two years, he wished it had. His teeth fell out from gnashing; he pulled the few loyal tufts from his scalp in wild anger.

"You're the only miracle man left alive in Florin," the skinny guy said.

"Oh, so that's why you come to me? One of you said, 'What'll we do with this corpse?' And the other one said, 'Let's take a flyer on that miracle man the King fired,' and the first one probably said, 'What've we got to lose; he can't kill a corpse' and the other one probably said—"

"You were a wonderful miracle man," the skinny guy said. "It was all politics that got you fired."

"Don't insult me and say wonderful—I was great—I am great—there was never—never, you hear me, sonny, a miracle man could match me—half the miracle techniques I invented—and then they fired me...." Suddenly his voice trailed off. He was very old and weak and the effort at passionate speech had drained him.

"Sir, please, sit down—" the skinny guy said.

"Don't 'sir' me, sonny," Miracle Max said. He was tough when he was young and he was still tough. "I got work to do. I was feeding my witch when you came in; I got to finish that now," and he lifted the hut trap door and took the ladder down into the cellar, locking the trap door behind him. When that was done, he put his finger to his lips and ran to the old woman cooking hot chocolate over the coals. Max had married Valerie back a million years ago, it seemed like, at Miracle School, where she worked as a potion ladler. She wasn't, of course, a witch, but when Max started practice, every miracle man had to have one, so, since Valerie didn't mind, he called her a witch in public and she learned enough of the witch trade to pass herself off as one under pressure. "Listen! Listen!" Max whispered, gesturing repeatedly toward the hut above. "Upstairs you'll never guess what I got—a giant and a spick."

"A giant on a stick?" Valerie said, clutching her heart; her hearing wasn't what it once was.

"Spick! Spick! A Spanish fella. Scars and everything, a very tough cookie."

"Let them steal what they want; what do we have worth fighting over?"

"They don't want to steal, they want to buy. Me. They got a corpse up there and they want a miracle."

"You were always good at dead," Valerie said. She hadn't seen him trying so hard not to seem excited since the firing had all but done him in. She very carefully kept her own excitement under control. If only he would work again. Her Max was such a genius, they'd all come back, every patient. Max would be honored again and they could move out of the hut. In the old days, the hut was where they tried experiments. Now it was home. "You had nothing else pressing on for the evening, why not take the case?"

"I could, I admit that, no question, but suppose I did? You know human nature; they'd probably try getting out without paying. How can I force a giant to pay if he doesn't want to? Who needs that kinda grief? I'll send them on their way and you bring me up a nice cup of chocolate. Besides, I was halfway through an article on eagles' claws that was very well written."

"Get the money in advance. Go. Demand. If they say no, out with them. If they say yes, bring the money down to me, I'll feed it to the frog, they'll never find it even if they change their mind and try to rob it back."

Max started back up the ladder. "What should I ask for? I haven't done a miracle—it's what, three years now? Prices may have skyrocketed. Fifty, you think? If they got fifty, I'll consider. If not, out they go."

"Right," Valerie agreed, and the minute Max had shut the trap door, she clambered silently up the ladder and pressed her ear to the ceiling.

"Sir, we're in a terrible rush, so—" this one voice said.

"Don't you hurry me, sonny, you hurry a miracle man, you get rotten miracles, that what you want?"

"You'll do it, then?"

"I didn't say I'd do it, sonny, don't try pressuring a miracle man, not this one; you try pressuring me, out you go, how much money you got?"

"Give me your money, Fezzik?" the same voice said again.

"Here's all I've got," this great voice boomed. "You count it, Inigo."

There was a pause. "Sixty-five is what we've got," the one called Inigo said.

Valerie was about to clap her hands with joy when Max said, "I never worked for anything that little in my life; you got to be joking, excuse me again; I got to belch my witch; she's done eating by now."

Valerie hurried back to the coals and waited until Max joined her. "No good," he said. "They only got twenty."

Valerie stirred away at the stove. She knew the truth but dreaded having to say it, so she tried another tack. "We're practically out of chocolate powder; twenty could sure be a help at the barterer's tomorrow."

"No chocolate powder?" Max said, visibly upset. Chocolate was one of his favorites, right after cough drops.

"Maybe if it was a good cause you could lower yourself to work for twenty," Valerie said. "Find out why they need the miracle."

"They'd probably lie."

"Use the bellows cram if you're in doubt. Look: I would hate to have it on my conscience if we didn't do a miracle when nice people were involved."

"You're a pushy lady," Max said, but he went back upstairs. "Okay," he said to the skinny guy. "What's so special I should bring back out of all the hundreds of people pestering me every day for my miracles this particular fella? And, believe me, it better be worthwhile."

Inigo was about to say "So he can tell me how to kill Count Rugen," but that didn't quite sound like the kind of thing that would strike a cranky miracle man as aiding the general betterment of mankind, so he said, "He's got a wife, he's got fifteen kids, they haven't a shred of food; if he stays dead, they'll starve, so—"

"Oh, sonny, are you a liar," Max said, and he went to the corner and got out a huge bellows. "I'll ask him," Max grunted, lifting the bellows toward Westley.

"He's a corpse; he can't talk," Inigo said.

"We got our ways" was all Max would answer, and he stuck the huge bellows way down into Westley's throat and started to pump. "You see," Max explained as he pumped, "there's different kinds of dead: there's sort of dead, mostly dead, and all dead. This fella here, he's only sort of dead, which means there's still a memory inside, there's still bits of brain. You apply a little pressure here, a little more there, sometimes you get results."

Westley was beginning to swell slightly now from all the pumping.

"What are you doing?" Fezzik said, starting to get upset.

"Never mind, I'm just filling his lungs; I guarantee you it ain't hurting him." He stopped pumping the bellows after a few moments more, and then started shouting into Westley's ear: "WHAT'S SO IMPORTANT? WHAT'S HERE WORTH COMING BACK FOR? WHAT YOU GOT WAITING FOR YOU?" Max carried the bellows back to the corner then and got out a pen and paper. "It takes a while for that to work its way out, so you might as well answer me some questions. How well do you know this guy?"

Inigo didn't much want to answer that, since it might have sounded strange admitting they'd only met once alive, and then to duel to the death. "How do you mean exactly?" he replied.

"Well, for example," Max said, "was he ticklish or not?"

"Ticklish?" Inigo exploded angrily. "Ticklish! Life and death are all around and you talk ticklish!"

"Don't you yell at me," Max exploded right back, "and don't you mock my methods—tickling can be terrific in the proper instances. I had a corpse once, worse than this fella, mostly dead he was, and I tickled him and tickled him; I tickled his toes and I tickled his armpits and his ribs and I got a peacock feather and went after his belly button; I worked all day and I worked all night and the following dawn—the following dawn, mark me— this corpse said, 'I just hate that,' and I said, 'Hate what?' and he said, 'Being tickled; I've come all the way back from the dead to ask you to stop,' and I said, 'You mean this that I'm doing now with the peacock feather, it bothers you?' and he said, 'You couldn't guess how much it bothers me,' and of course I just kept on asking him questions about tickling, making him talk back to me, answer me, because, I don't have to tell you, once you get a corpse really caught up in conversation, your battle's half over."

"Tr ... ooooo ... luv..."

Fezzik grabbed onto Inigo in panic and they both pivoted, staring at the man in black, who was silent again. " 'True love,' he said," Inigo cried. "You heard him—true love is what he wants to come back for. That's certainly worthwhile."

"Sonny, don't you tell me what's worthwhile—true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that."

"Then you'll save him?" Fezzik said.

"Yes, absolutely, I would save him, ifhe had said 'true love,' but you misheard, whereas I, being an expert on the bellows cram, will tell you what any qualified tongue man will only be happy to verify—namely, that the f sound is the hardest for the corpse to master, and that it therefore comes out vuh, and what your friend said was 'to blove,' by which he meant, obviously, 'to bluff'—clearly he is either involved in a shady business deal or a card game and wishes to win, and that is certainly not reason enough for a miracle. I'm sorry, I never change my mind once it's made up, good-by, take your corpse with you."

"Liar! Liar!" shrieked suddenly from the now open trap door.

Miracle Max whirled. "Back, Witch—" he commanded.

"I'm not a witch, I'm your wife—" she was advancing on him now, an ancient tiny fury—"and after what you've just done I don't think I want to be that anymore—" Miracle Max tried to calm her but she was having none of it. "He said 'true love,' Max—even I could hear it—'true love,' 'true love.'"

"Don't go on," Max said, and now there was pleading coming from somewhere.

Valerie turned toward Inigo. "He is rejecting you because he is afraid—he is afraid he's done, that the miracles are gone from his once majestic fingers—"

"Not true—" Max said.

"You're right," Valerie agreed, "it isn't true—they never were majestic, Max—you were never any good."

"The Ticklish Cure—you were there—you saw—"

"A fluke—"

"All the drowners I returned—"

"Chance—"

"Valerie, we've been married eighty years; how can you do this to me?"

"Because true love is expiring and you haven't got the decency to tell why you don't help—well I do, and I say this, Prince Humperdinck was right to fire you—"

"Don't say that name in my hut, Valerie—you made a pledge to me you'd never breathe that name—"

"Prince Humperdinck, Prince Humperdinck, Prince Humperdinck—at least he knows a phony when he sees one—"

Max fled toward the trap door, his hands going to his ears.

"But this is his fiancée's true love," Inigo said then. "If you bring him back to life, he will stop Prince Humperdinck's marriage—"

Max's hands left his ears. "This corpse here—he comes back to life, Prince Humperdinck suffers?"

"Humiliations galore," Inigo said.

"Now that's what I call a worthwhile reason," Miracle Max said. "Give me the sixty-five; I'm on the case." He knelt beside Westley. "Hmmm," he said.

"What?" Valerie said. She knew that tone.

"While you were doing all that talking, he's slipped from sort of to mostly dead."

Valerie tapped Westley in a couple of places. "Stiffening," she said. "You'll have to work around that."

Max did a few taps himself. "Do you suppose the oracle's still up?"

Valerie looked at the clock. "I don't think so, it's almost one. Besides, I don't trust her all that much anymore."

Max nodded. "I know, but it would have been nice to have a little advance hint on whether this is gonna work or not." He rubbed his eyes. "I'm tired going in; I wish I'd known in advance about the job; I'd have napped this afternoon." He shrugged. "Can't be helped, down is down. Get me my Encyclopedia of Spells and the Hex Appendix."

"I thought you knew all about this kind of thing," Inigo said, starting to get upset himself now.

"I'm out of practice, retired; it's been three years, you can't mess around with these resurrection recipes; one little ingredient wrong, the whole thing blows up in your face."

"Here's the hex book and your glasses," Valerie puffed, coming up the basement ladder. As Max began thumbing through, she turned to Inigo and Fezzik, who were hovering. "You can help," she said.

"Anything," Fezzik said.

"Tell us whatever's useful. How long do we have for the miracle? If we work it—"

"When we work it," Max said from his hex book. His voice was growing stronger.

"When we work it," Valerie went on, "how long does it have to maintain full efficiency? Just exactly what's going to be done?"

"Well, that's hard to predict," Inigo said, "since the first thing we have to do is storm the castle, and you never can be really sure how those things work out."

"An hour pill should be about right," Valerie said. "Either it's going to be plenty or you'll both be dead, so why not say an hour?"

"We'll all three be fighting," Inigo corrected. "And then once we've stormed the castle we have to stop the wedding, steal the Princess and make our escape, allowing space somewhere in there for me to duel Count Rugen."

Visibly Valerie's energy drained. She sat wearily down. "Max," she said, tapping his shoulder. "No good."

He looked up. "Huh?"

"They need a fighting corpse."

Max shut the hex book. "No good," he said.

"But I bought a miracle," Inigo insisted. "I paid you sixty-five."

"Look here—" Valerie thumped Westley's chest—"nothing. You ever hear anything so hollow? The man's life's been sucked away. It'll take months before there's strength again."

"We haven't got months—it's after one now, and the wedding's at six tonight. What parts can we hope to have in working order in seventeen hours?"

"Well," Max said, considering. "Certainly the tongue, absolutely the brain, and, with luck, maybe a little slow walk if you nudge him gently in the right direction."

Inigo looked at Fezzik in despair.

"What can I tell you?" Max said. "You needed a fantasmagoria."

"And you never could have gotten one of those for sixty-five," Valerie added, consolingly.

There is some action stuff which I cut, which I never did anywhere else, and here's my logic: Inigo and Fezzik have to go through a certain amount of derring-do in order to come up with the proper ingredients for the resurrection pill, stuff like Inigo finding some frog dust while Fezzik is off after holocaust mud, this latter, for example, requiring, first, Fezzik's acquiring a holocaust cloak so he doesn't burn to death gathering the mud, etc. Well, it's my conviction that this is the same kind of thing as the Wizard of Oz sending Dorothy's friends to the wicked witch's castle; it's got the same 'feel,' if you know what I mean, and I didn't want to risk, when the book's building to climax, the reader's saying, 'Oh, this is just like the Oz books.' Here's the kicker, though: Morgenstern's Florinese version came before Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, so in spite of the fact that he was the originator, he comes out just the other way around. It would be nice if somebody, maybe a Ph.D. candidate on the loose, did a little something for Morgenstern's reputation, because, believe me, if being ignored is suffering, the guy has suffered.

One last thing: Hiram, my editor, felt the Miracle Max section was too Jewish in sound, too contemporary. I really let him have it on that one; it's a very sore point with me, because, just to take one example, there was a line in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch said, I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals,' and one of my genius producers said, 'That line's got to go; I don't put my name on this movie with that line in it,' and I said why and he said, 'They didn't talk like that then; it's anachronistic.' I remember explaining, 'Ben Franklin wore bifocals—Ty Cobb was batting champion of the American League when these guys were around—my mother was alive when these guys were alive and she wore bifocals.' We shook hands and ended enemies but the line stayed in the picture.

"YOU MEAN, THAT'S it?" Inigo said, appalled.

"That's it," Max nodded proudly. He had not been up this long a stretch since the old days, and he felt terrific.

Valerie was so proud. "Beautiful," she said. She turned to Inigo then. "You sound so disappointed—what did you think a resurrection pill looked like?"

"Not like a lump of clay the size of a golf ball," Inigo answered.

"I USUALLY GIVE them a coating of chocolate at the last minute; it makes them look a lot better," Valerie said.

"It must be four o'clock," Max said then. "Better get the chocolate ready, so it'll have time to harden."

Valerie took the lump with her and started down the ladder to the kitchen. "You never did a better job; smile."

"It'll work without a hitch?" Inigo said.

Max nodded very firmly. But he did not smile. There was something in the back of his mind bothering him; he never forgot things, not important things, and he didn't forget this either.

He just didn't remember it in time....

AT 4:45 PRINCE Humperdinck summoned Yellin to his chambers. Yellin came immediately, though he dreaded what was, he knew, about to happen. As a matter of fact, Yellin already had his resignation written and in an envelope in his pocket. "Your Highness," Yellin began.

"Report," Prince Humperdinck said. He was dressed brilliantly in white, his wedding costume. He still looked like a mighty barrel, but brighter.

"All of your wishes have been carried out, Highness. Personally I have attended to each detail." He was very tired, Yellin was, and his nerves long past frayed.

"Specify," said the Prince. He was seventy-five minutes away from his first female murder, and he wondered if he could get his fingers to her throat before even the start of a scream. He had been practicing on giant sausages all the afternoon and had the movements down pretty pat, but then, giant sausages weren't necks and all the wishing in the world wouldn't make them so.

"All passages to the castle itself have been resealed this very morning, save the main gate. That is now the only way in, and the only way out. I have changed the lock to the main gate. There is only one key to the new lock and I keep it wherever I am. When I am outside with the one hundred troops, the key is in the outside lock and no one can leave the castle from the inside. When I am with you, as I am now, the key is in the inside lock, and no one may enter from the outside."

"Follow," said the Prince, and he moved to the large window of his chamber. He pointed outside. Below the window was a lovely planted garden. Beyond that the Prince's private stables. Beyond that, naturally, the outside castle wall. "That is how they will come," he said. "Over the wall, through my stables, past my garden, to my window, throttle the Queen and back the way they came before we know it."

"They?" Yellin said, though he knew the answer.

"The Guilderians, of course."

"But the wall where you suggest is the highest wall surrounding all of Florin Castle—it is fifty feet high at that point—so that would seem the least likely point of attack." He was trying desperately to keep himself under control.

"All the more reason why they should choose this spot; besides, the world knows that the Guilderians are unsurpassed as climbers."

Yellin had never heard that. He had always thought the Swiss were the ones who were unsurpassed as climbers. "Highness," he said, in one last attempt, "I have not yet, from a single spy, heard a single word about a single plot against the Princess."

"I have it on unimpeachable authority that there will be an attempt made to strangle the Princess this very night."

"In that case," Yellin said, and he dropped to one knee and held out the envelope, "I must resign." It was a difficult decision—the Yellins had headed enforcement in Florin for generations, and they took their work more than seriously. "I am not doing a capable job, sire; please forgive me and believe me when I say that my failures were those of the body and mind and not of the heart."

Prince Humperdinck found himself, quite suddenly, in a genuine pickle, for once the war was finished, he needed someone to stay in Guilder and run it, since he couldn't be in two places at once, and the only men he trusted were Yellin and the Count, and the Count would never take the job, being obsessed, as he was these days, with finishing his stupid Pain Primer. "I do not accept your resignation, you are doing a capable job, there is no plot, I shall slaughter the Queen myself this very evening, you shall run Guilder for me after the war, now get back on your feet."

Yellin didn't know what to say. "Thank you" seemed so inadequate, but it was all he could come up with.

"Once the wedding is done with I shall send her here to make ready while I shall, with boots carefully procured in advance, make tracks leading from the wall to the bedroom and returning then from the bedroom to the wall. Since you are in charge of law enforcement, I expect you will not take long to verify my fears that the prints could only be made by the boots of Guilderian soldiers. Once we have that, we'll need a royal proclamation or two, my father can resign as being unfit for battle, and you, dear Yellin, will soon be living in Guilder Castle."

Yellin knew a dismissal speech when he heard one. "I leave with no thought in my heart but to serve you."

"Thank you," Humperdinck said, pleased, because, after all, loyalty was one thing you couldn't buy. And in that mood, he said to Yellin by the door, "And, oh, if you see the albino, tell him he may stand in the back for my wedding; it's quite all right with me."

"I will, Highness," Yellin said, adding, "but I don't know where my cousin is—I went looking for him less than an hour ago and he was nowhere to be found."

The Prince understood important news when he heard it because he wasn't the greatest hunter in the world for nothing and, even more, because if there was one thing you could say about the albino it was that he was always to be found. "My God, you don't suppose there is a plot, do you? It's a perfect time; the country celebrates; if Guilder were about to be five hundred years old, I know I'd attack them."

"I will rush to the gate and fight, to the death if necessary," Yellin said.

"Good man," the Prince called after him. If there was an attack, it would come at the busiest time, during the wedding, so he would have to move that up. State affairs went slowly, but, still, he had authority. Six o'clock was out. He would be married no later than half past five or know the reason why.

AT FIVE O'CLOCK, MAX and Valerie were in the basement sipping coffee. "You better get right to bed," Valerie said; "you look all troubled. You can't stay up all night as if you were a pup."

"I'm not tired," Max said. "But you're right about the other."

"Tell Mama." Valerie crossed to him, stroked where his hair had been.

"It's just I been remembering, about the pill."

"It was a beautiful pill, honey. Feel proud."

"I think I messed up the amounts, though. Didn't they want an hour? When I doubled the recipe, I didn't do enough. I don't think it'll work over forty minutes."

Valerie moved into his lap. "Let's be honest with each other; sure, you're a genius, but even a genius gets rusty. You were three years out of practice. Forty minutes'll be plenty."

"I suppose you're right. Anyway, what can we do about it? Down is down."

"The pressures you been under, if it works at all, it'll be a miracle."

Max had to agree with her. "A fantasmagoria." He nodded.

THE MAN IN black was nearly stiff when Fezzik reached the wall. It was almost five o'clock and Fezzik had been carrying the corpse the whole way from Miracle Max's, back street to back street, alleyway to alleyway, and it was one of the hardest things he had ever done. Not taxing. He wasn't even winded. But if the pill was just what it looked like, a chocolate lump, then he, Fezzik, was going to have a lifetime of bad dreams of bodies growing stiff between his fingers.

When he at last was in the wall shadow, he said to Inigo, "What now?"

"We've got to see if it's still safe. There might be a trap waiting." It was the same part of the wall that led, shortly, to the Zoo, in the farther corner of the castle grounds. But if the albino's body had been discovered, then who knew what was waiting for them?

"Should I go up then?" Fezzik asked.

"We'll both do it," Inigo replied. "Lean him against the wall and help me." Fezzik tilted the man in black so he was in no danger of falling and waited while Inigo jumped onto his shoulders. Then Fezzik did the climbing. Any crack in the wall was enough for his fingers; the least imperfection was all he needed. He climbed quickly, familiar with it now, and after a moment, Inigo was able to grab hold of the top and say, "All right; go on back down," so Fezzik returned to the man in black and waited.

Inigo crept along the wall top in dead silence. Far across he could see the castle entrance and the armed soldiers flanking it. And closer at hand was the Zoo. And off in the deepest brush in the farthest corner of the wall, he could make out the still body of the albino. Nothing had changed at all. They were, at least so far, safe. He gestured down to Fezzik, who scissored the man in black between his legs, began the arm climb noiselessly.

When they were all together on the wall top, Inigo stretched out the dead man and then hurried along until he could get a better view of the main gate. The walk from the outer wall to the main castle gate was slanted slightly down, not much of an incline, but a steady one. There must be—Inigo did a quick count—at least a hundred men standing at the ready. And the time must be—he estimated closely—five after five now, perhaps close to ten. Fifty minutes till the wedding. Inigo turned then and hurried back to Fezzik. "I think we should give him the pill," he said. "It must be around forty-five minutes till the ceremony."

"That means he's only got fifteen minutes to escape with," Fezzik said. "I think we should wait until at least five-thirty. Half before, half after."

"No," Inigo said. "We're going to stop the wedding before it happens—that's the best way, at least to my mind. Before they're all set. In the hustle and bustle beforehand, that's when we should strike."

Fezzik had no further rebuttal.

"Anyway," Inigo said, "we don't know how long it takes to swallow something like this."

"I could never get it down myself. I know that."

"We'll have to force-feed him," Inigo said, unwrapping the chocolate-colored lump. "Like a stuffed goose. Put our hands around his neck and kind of push it down into whatever comes next."

"I'm with you, Inigo," Fezzik said. "Just tell me what to do."

"Let's get him in a sitting position, I think, don't you? I always find it's easier swallowing sitting up than lying down."

"We'll have to really work at it," Fezzik said. "He's completely stiff by now. I don't think he'll bend easy at all."

"You can make him," Inigo said. "I always have confidence in you, Fezzik."

"Thank you," Fezzik said. "Just don't ever leave me alone." He pulled the corpse between them and tried to make him bend in half, but the man in black was so stiff Fezzik really had to perspire to get him at right angles. "How long do you think we'll have to wait before we know if the miracle's on or not?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Inigo said. "Get his mouth as wide open as you can and tilt his head back a little and we'll just drop it in and see."

Fezzik worked at the dead man's mouth a while, got it the way Inigo said, tilted the neck perfect the first time, and Inigo knelt directly above the cavity, dropped the pill down, and as it hit the throat he heard, "Couldn't beat me alone, you dastards; well, I beat you each apart, I'll beat you both together."

"You're alive!" Fezzik cried.

The man in black sat immobile, like a ventriloquist's dummy, just his mouth moving. "That is perhaps the most childishly obvious remark I have ever come across, but what can you expect from a strangler. Why won't my arms move?"

"You've been dead," Inigo explained.

"And we're not strangling you," Fezzik explained, "we were just getting the pill down."

"The resurrection pill," Inigo explained. "I bought it from Miracle Max and it works for sixty minutes."

"What happens after sixty minutes? Do I die again?" (It wasn't sixty minutes; he just thought it was. Actually it was forty; only they had used up one already in conversation, so it was down to thirty-nine.)

"We don't know. Probably you just collapse and need tending for a year or however long it takes to get your strength back."

"I wish I could remember what it was like when I was dead," the man in black said. "I'd write it all down. I could make a fortune on a book like that. I can't move my legs either."

"That will come. It's supposed to. Max said the tongue and the brain were shoo-ins and probably you'll be able to move, but slowly."

"The last thing I remember was dying, so why am I on this wall? Are we enemies? Have you got names? I'm the Dread Pirate Roberts, but you can call me 'Westley.'"

"Fezzik."

"Inigo Montoya of Spain. Let me tell you what's been going on—" He stopped and shook his head. "No," he said. "There's too much, it would take too long, let me distill it for you: the wedding is at six, which leaves us probably now something over half an hour to get in, steal the girl, and get out; but not before I kill Count Rugen."

"What are our liabilities?"

"There is but one working castle gate and it is guarded by perhaps a hundred men."

"Hmmm," Westley said, not as unhappy as he might have been ordinarily, because just then he began to be able to wiggle his toes.

"And our assets?"

"Your brains, Fezzik's strength, my steel."

Westley stopped wiggling his toes. "That's all? That's it? Everything? The grand total?"

Inigo tried to explain. "We've been operating under a terrible time pressure from the very beginning. Just yesterday morning, for example, I was a hopeless drunk and Fezzik toiled for the Brute Squad."

"It's impossible," Westley cried.

"I am Inigo Montoya and I do not accept defeat—you will think of something; I have complete confidence in you."

"She's going to marry Humperdinck and I'm helpless" West-ley said in blind despair. "Lay me down again. Leave me alone."

"You're giving in too easily, we fought monsters to reach you, we risked everything because you have the brains to conquer problems. I have complete and absolute total confidence that you—"

"I want to die," Westley whispered, and he closed his eyes. "If I had a month to plan, maybe I might come up with something, but this..." His head rocked from side to side. "I'm sorry. Leave me."

"You just moved your own head," Fezzik said, doing his best to be cheery. "Doesn't that up your spirits?"

"My brains, your strength and his steel against a hundred troops? And you think a little head-jiggle is supposed to make me happy? Why didn't you leave me to death? This is worse. Lying here helpless while my true love marries my murderer."

"I just know once you're over your emotional outbursts, you'll come up with—"

"I mean if we even had a wheelbarrow, that would be something," Westley said.

"Where did we put that wheelbarrow the albino had?" Inigo asked.

"Over by the albino, I think," Fezzik replied.

"Maybe we can get a wheelbarrow," Inigo said.

"Well why didn't you list that among our assets in the first place?" Westley said, sitting up, staring out at the massed troops in the distance.

"You just sat up," Fezzik said, still trying to be cheery.

Westley continued to stare at the troops and the incline leading down toward them. He shook his head. "What I'd give for a holocaust cloak," he said then.

"There we can't help you," Inigo said.

"Will this do?" Fezzik wondered, pulling out his holocaust cloak.

"Where...?" Inigo began.

"While you were after frog dust—" Fezzik answered. "It fit so nicely I just tucked it away and kept it."

Westley got to his feet then. "All right. I'll need a sword eventually."

"Why?" Inigo asked. "You can barely lift one."

"True," Westley agreed. "But that is hardly common knowledge. Hear me now; there may be problems once we're inside—"

"I'll say there may be problems," Inigo cut in. "How do we stop the wedding? Once we do, how do I find the Count? Once I do, where will I find you again? Once we're together, how do we escape? Once we escape—"

"Don't pester him with so many questions," Fezzik said. "Take it easy; he's been dead."

"Right, right, sorry," Inigo said.

The man in black was moving verrrrrry slowly now along the top of the wall. By himself. Fezzik and Inigo followed him through the darkness in the direction of the wheelbarrow. There was no denying the fact that there was a certain excitement in the air.

BUTTERCUP, for her part, felt no excitement whatsoever. She had, in fact, never remembered such a wonderful feeling of calm. Her Westley was coming; that was her world. Ever since the Prince had dragged her to her room she had spent the intervening hours thinking of ways to make Westley happy. There was no way he could miss stopping her wedding. That was the only thought that could survive the trip across her conscious mind.

So when she heard the wedding was to be moved up, she wasn't the least upset. Westley was always prepared for contingencies, and if he could rescue her at six, he could just as happily rescue her at half past five.

Actually, Prince Humperdinck got things going even faster than he had hoped. It was 5:23 when he and his bride-to-be were kneeling before the aged Archdean of Florin. It was 5:24 when the Archdean started to speak.

And 5:25 when the screaming started outside the main gate.

Buttercup only smiled softly. Here comes my Westley now, was all she thought.

IT WAS NOT, in point of fact, her Westley that was causing the commotion out front. Westley was doing all he could to simply walk straight down the incline toward the main gate without help. Ahead of him, Inigo struggled with the heavy wheelbarrow. The reason for its weight was that Fezzik stood in it, arms wide, eyes blazing, voice booming in terrible rage: "I AM THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS AND THERE WILL BE NO SURVIVORS." He said that over and over, his voice echoing and reverberating as his rage increased. He was, standing there, gliding down through the darkness, quite an imposing figure, seeming, all in all, probably close to ten feet tall, with voice to match. But even that was not the cause of the screaming.

YELLIN, FROM HIS position by the gate, was reasonably upset at the roaring giant gliding down toward them through the darkness. Not that he doubted his hundred men could dispatch the giant; the upsetting thing was that, of course, the giant would be aware of that too, and logically there must somewhere in the dimness out there be any number of giant helpers. Other pirates, anything. Who could tell? Still, his men held together remarkably staunchly.

It was only when the giant got halfway down the incline that he suddenly, happily, burst into flame and continued his trip saying, "NO SURVIVORS, NO SURVIVORS!" in a manner that could only indicate deadly sincerity.

It was seeing him happily burning and advancing that started the Brute Squad to screaming. And once that happened, why, everybody panicked and ran....