The Mistress of Illusions

by Michael D. Resnick

  “And it’s this way?” said Raven, pointing off to his right.

  Enoch shook his head. “It’s to the left.”

  “But that’s where the guards came from.”

  Enoch smiled. “But we know something the remaining guards don’t know.”

  “Oh?” said Little John.

  “We know these two are dead. They didn’t have time to scream or shout.”

  “Why does that make a difference?”

  “Because it means we won’t run into one or two stray soldiers in the corridor,” said Enoch. “If we’re quiet, we’ll walk right out past their inquiry room and their quarters.”

  “You clearly know something we don’t know,” said Raven. “Before we walk blindly into a troop of soldiers, why don’t you share it with us?”

  “All right,” said Enoch. Suddenly he smiled. “McGillicuddy roams those corridors.”

  “McGillicuddy?”

  Enoch nodded. “He’s a leopard.”

  “There aren’t any leopards in England,” said Raven.

  “The sheriff’s dear friend, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, captured him as a cub on a hunting trip to Africa five years ago,” replied Enoch. “Now he roams the prison at night. He knows not to attack the armed guards, but woe betide any prisoner who has the misfortune to escape from his cell.”

  “Interesting,” said Raven. “But you don’t seem especially worried.”

  “McGillicuddy’s my friend,” answered Enoch.

  “Explain, please.”

  “He eats meat. Where do you think they get it?” Enoch tapped his chest with his thumb. “I raise the tastiest cattle in the country. And since no one quite trusts McGillicuddy, I toss him his food almost every day.”

  “So do you plan to toss him me or Robin?” asked Little John gruffly.

  “We have the warriors’ swords,” answered Enoch. “Let’s just cut off an arm or a leg, carry it along with us, and when McGillicuddy races up out of the darkness, as he is inclined to do, we’ll toss it to him and continue on our way while he’s busy eating.”

  Little John turned to Raven. “You know,” he said, “it makes sense.”

  “Certainly more sense than any alternative,” agreed Raven. “Chop off an arm and let’s get going before they notice that the guards haven’t reported back.”

  Little John picked up a sword and bent to his grisly task, gave the severed arm to Enoch, and a moment later the three of them entered the long, darkened corridor.

  Raven couldn’t believe that it was going to be this easy—or that he had reached the point where he actually considered “easy” an applicable term, but five minutes later he had come face to face with McGillicuddy, mere seconds after that the leopard was happily chewing on its gruesome trophy, and another few minutes found the three of them walking unmolested and even unnoticed out the door and headed for the safety of Sherwood Forest.

  14

  “Well, look who’s back!” said a loud booming voice after they were almost a mile into the thick forest.

  Raven looked ahead and saw a bearded man in a dark robe and sandals standing in the middle of the trail they’d been traversing. “And you even brought Little John and a peasant with you!”

  I must know him, thought Raven, but who the hell is he?

  “I hope you have some food handy, Friar Tuck,” said Little John. “We haven’t eaten for days.”

  “Days?” asked Friar Tuck, arching an eyebrow.

  “Well, hours, anyway.”

  “Well, we’re delighted to have you back,” answered Friar Tuck. “It saves us the trouble of rescuing you. Although Maid Marian was sure you could do it without our help.”

  “Where is she?” asked Raven, hoping that when she appeared she would actually be Lisa.

  “Right here,” said a familiar voice, as Lisa stepped out from between two ancient trees. “I’m glad you’re back, Robin. I knew no jail could hold you.”

  If you’re the Mistress of Illusions, thought Raven, you probably arranged it all—the jail, the capture, the jailbreak. I just wish I knew why.

  “Hello, Marian,” he said, fighting the urge to call her Lisa. “You’re well, I hope?”

  She smiled. “I haven’t been cooped up in the sheriff’s jail, or hunting for an exit with a leopard for a companion.”

  He returned her smile. “I wish I could say the same.”

  “Did you get a layout of the prison?” asked Friar Tuck. “Might come in handy.”

  “Are you planning on getting captured?” asked Little John with a laugh.

  “No,” said Friar Tuck. “But if we’re going to invade the sheriff’s stronghold, that might be the way they’ll least expect us.”

  “Makes sense,” agreed Raven.

  Friar Tuck turned and began walking, the others fell into step behind him, and Raven maneuvered until he was walking alongside Maid Marian.

  “You’re Lisa, right?” he whispered.

  “You know who I am,” she answered softly.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” he asked.

  “Staying free and planning to overthrow the Sheriff of Nottingham, of course.”

  “I mean us,” said Raven. “As in you and me.”

  “It’s all preparation,” she said.

  “For what?”

  She gave him a mysterious smile. “For what lies ahead for you, of course.”

  “For me, not for us?”

  “Don’t ask too many questions, Eddie. It’ll just make your head hurt.”

  “You called me Eddie.”

  She sighed. “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I hate to use the word ‘hideout,’” she said. “Let’s say that we’re going to our sanctuary.”

  “And nobody’s objected?”

  “Why should they? You’re Robin Hood.”

  “But you’re not part of this milieu,” said Raven. “You’re here because of me.”

  She smiled. “How do you know you’re not here because of me?” she replied. “After all, I am the Mistress of Illusions.”

  Raven exhaled deeply. “I hate to ask it, but if you really are the Mistress of Illusions, and after the last couple of months I have no reason to doubt it, why do you even have an interest in a normal, everyday, totally unexceptional guy like me?”

  She stared into his eyes. “Because you’re much more than that, Eddie. Entire worlds depend on you. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “I keep getting tossed into them,” he answered, “but I sure as hell haven’t seen anything depending on me.”

  The trace of a smile played across her lips. “To put it in your vernacular, Eddie, this is spring training.”

  “For what?” he insisted.

  “For what lies ahead,” she answered, and increased her pace.

  Suddenly two men stepped out of the heavy cover and blocked their path. Raven turned questioningly to Lisa.

  “Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale,” she whispered. “They’re on our side.”

  The group came to a halt, and Will Scarlet, tall, lean, deeply sun-bronzed, stepped forward.

  “Been looking for you,” he said directly to Raven. “Word has reached us that the sheriff is really enraged that you escaped his prison, and he’s sent out a troop of sixty men to find and kill you.” He paused. “Well, you and Little John and the peasant, but I assume he means all of us.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Friar Tuck.

  “We can’t outmuscle them,” answered Lisa, “so we’ll have to outsmart them.”

  “Fine,” said Raven. “How?”

  Think, Eddie, came the thought from Lisa. You weren’t the biggest dress merchant, or the best, but you always managed to make ends meet and come out ahead.

 
And as he concentrated on her message, a notion began taking shape.

  “Give me half a minute,” he said, closing his eyes and concentrating.

  The rest of the Merry Men stood in absolute silence, waiting for their leader to make his pronouncement.

  Finally Raven looked up. “What’s the one thing the soldiers will expect?” he said.

  “That we’ll be waiting for them in heavy cover,” said Little John.

  “Makes the most sense,” agreed Friar Tuck.

  “I know,” said Raven. “That’s why we’re not going to do it. They probably have half a dozen methods of penetrating the forest and getting to us, and if they need more men they can always get them.”

  “Then what do you plan to do?” asked Alan-a-Dale.

  Raven smiled. “They’re going to be protecting their men, and their position, and every inch of the forest that they penetrate.” He paused. “So what’s the one thing they won’t be protecting with their full force?”

  They all stared at him, frowning.

  “What if I were to tell you that if we succeed, we can probably double our number and present a true challenge to the sheriff?”

  Suddenly Lisa smiled. “Oh, of course!”

  The others just kept staring in puzzlement.

  “The prison!” cried Raven. “While they’re throwing most of their resources into the forest, we’ll capture the prison, and I’m sure just about every prisoner will be more than happy to join us in exchange for his freedom.”

  “You know,” said Friar Tuck, “it makes sense!”

  “I like it!” said Little John.

  “Quick, kill some small animal first,” said Lisa.

  “For practice?” asked Little John sardonically.

  “For McGillicuddy,” she answered.

  “Damn me, she’s right!” shouted Little John.

  “Enoch, get your ass over here!” yelled Friar Tuck.

  “I ain’t going back into that prison!” growled Enoch the peasant.

  “Okay, stay here alone—and good luck to you.”

  Enoch stepped forward. “Okay,” he grumbled. “I’m with you.”

  “Which way are they coming?” asked Raven.

  “South and southwest,” answered Will Scarlet.

  Raven turned to Lisa. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where the prison is, I don’t know one direction from another. What do I do?”

  She smiled at him. “The answer is obvious.”

  And suddenly it was.

  “Little John,” he announced, “you spent longer in that prison than any of us. I think you should have the honor of leading us to its downfall.”

  “With great pride and pleasure!” roared Little John. “Follow me!”

  And with that he headed off in what Raven assumed was the direction of the prison, or more explicitly, in such a manner that there was no chance they would run into any stragglers from the prison approaching from the south or southwest.

  Raven and Lisa fell into step behind the rest of their troops, and made their way through the forest in relative silence.

  “You think this’ll work?” he asked her softly.

  “Of course it will work,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m putting a lot of lives at risk, lives that trust in me.”

  “It will work,” she insisted. “Not because you’re Robin Hood, but because you’re Eddie Raven. Or at least, that’s what we’re calling you now.”

  “We?”

  “Me, Rofocale, some others you may have briefly met and will certainly encounter again in the future.”

  “I wish I knew what the hell this is all about,” muttered Raven.

  “Telling you now wouldn’t help at all,” she replied. “When the time comes, you’ll know—and you’ll know without anyone having to tell you anything.”

  He stopped walking and stared at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “You’re frightening me.”

  “You’re misinterpreting your emotions,” said Lisa. “Eddie Raven can’t be frightened.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “Hey, come on, Robin!” yelled Alan-a-Dale. “Or there won’t be any of these bastards left for you to kill.”

  Raven increased his pace, and soon caught up with the rest of the Merry Men. A few moments later they broke cover and found themselves facing the huge stone prison.

  “Where’s the town?” Raven whispered to Lisa. “All I see is the jail.”

  “Beyond the next hill,” she said. “They didn’t want it too close to the populace.”

  “So, Robin,” said Friar Tuck, “do we take it now?”

  “Why not?” said Raven, still unused to giving orders.

  “Okay,” said Little John. “You all heard Robin. Now, no battle cries, no screams of any kind. We want to be at the castle before the sheriff’s men know we’re there.”

  He waved his sword and began running toward the prison, and all of the Merry Men fell into step behind him.

  “You should be proud, Eddie,” said Lisa. “They’re charging it on your say-so.”

  “Somehow I felt safer as a Munchkin,” admitted Raven.

  “You’ll get over it,” she replied. “If there’s one person who should feel unsafe now, it’s the sheriff.”

  The first of their men broke down the door, and suddenly there were shouts, screams, and the clanging of swords.

  “I keep thinking I’m going to blink my eyes, and when I open them I’ll be back in the Garment District, and everything I think has happened since then will have been a dream.”

  “Ask them if this is a dream,” she said, pointing to one of their men and two of the prison guards writhing on the ground, blood spurting from their wounds.

  Raven broke into a run and reached the door, followed closely by Lisa, just as the bulk of the prison guards and warriors came racing back from the forest.

  “Lock the door!” shouted Friar Tuck.

  Raven shook his head. “Waste of time. We broke it down. Surely they can do so too.” He looked around. “Quick! Check the closest rooms. Find some trash and bring it here.”

  Just under a minute later, as the returning guards were almost upon them, Raven had piled the trash to fill up the doorway, and set fire to it just before the guards could pass through it.

  “Good thinking, Robin!” cried Will Scarlet. “I hope to hell there’s another way out of here, so we don’t have to fight our way back through the whole damned contingent of them.”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” answered Raven. “Hunt up Enoch and ask him—and while I’m thinking of it, watch out for that damned leopard.”

  “Not to worry,” came Little John’s voice from down the main corridor. “He’s happily chewing on his lunch.”

  “Okay,” said Raven. “Little John, you, Will, and half a dozen others, stay here and guard the entrance. Anybody who knows anything about locksmithing or lock-picking, start going up and down the cell rows letting every prisoner out.”

  “Even if they’re loyal to King John and the sheriff?” asked Alan-a-Dale.

  “They’re locked away in what you call a prison and I’d call a dungeon!” snapped Raven. “How the hell loyal can they be?”

  “Right,” said Alan-a-Dale, signaling half a dozen men to follow him as he went into the interior of the building.

  “Tuck!” said Raven.

  “Yes, Robin?”

  “This can’t be the only way in and out of this damned building. Take some men and start hunting up other means of ingress. When you find them, booby-trap them as best you can.”

  Friar Tuck frowned. “Booby-trap?” he repeated.

  “Find ways—very painful, even fatal ways—to prevent the guards, and probably the army by n
ow, from entering the prison.”

  “Ah!” said Friar Tuck with a grin. “I understand. You just used a term I’d never heard before.” He signaled to the closest half-dozen men. “Follow me!”—and a moment later all six were racing down the nearest cell block.

  Raven turned to Lisa. “This may work for an hour, or an afternoon, or even all through the night, but there’s no way we can hold off the whole damned army, and that’s surely what the sheriff’s going to send once he learns what’s been going on.”

  “Then you’ll just have to think of something, won’t you?” she said calmly.

  “None of this bothers you,” he said, frowning.

  “As I said, you’re being tested,” replied Lisa. “It will bother me if you fail.”

  “It’ll do more than bother you,” he shot back. “It’ll kill the pair of us. If you’ve got any ideas, any powers I’m not aware of, anything at all, this would be a good time to share them with me.”

  She offered him a bittersweet smile. “I’m not the one who’s being tested, Eddie.”

  “But you can be killed, can’t you?”

  “Under some circumstances,” she said noncommittally.

  “But not these?” he persisted.

  “I didn’t say that,” replied Lisa.

  “But you meant it?”

  “You’re concentrating on the wrong things, Eddie,” she said. “First of all, you have to survive. Second, your men are depending on you. You can’t let them down.”

  He stared at her for a moment. Then a scream of agony from one of the corridors permeated the area and brought his attention back to the situation at hand.

  “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  He began walking in the direction of the scream, and found Will Scarlet and three of his men standing over the corpses of another of his men and a prison guard.

  “Have we released all the prisoners?” asked Raven.

  “I think so,” said Will. “All we could find, anyway.”

  “Has anyone seen the leopard?”

  “He’s not far away,” answered Will. “The scream attracted his attention, and the smell of blood has kept him here.”

  “Okay,” said Raven. “Leave the corpse here, and let the leopard get to him. It’ll keep him busy for fifteen or twenty minutes, and at least we’ll know where he is.”