Dor was not teased much any more. No one wanted to upset his friend. But this hardly eased his unrest. The teasing had not bothered him as much as it had bothered Grundy; Dor had always known he could use his superior magic to bring others into line, if he really had to. It was his general isolation from others that weighed on him, and his new awareness of Millie the ghost. What a difference there was between a brat like Irene and a woman like Millie! Yet Irene was the one Dor was expected to get along with. It wasn’t fair.
He needed to talk with someone. His parents were approachable, but Chameleon varied so much in appearance and intellect that he never could be certain how to approach her, and Bink might not be sympathetic to this particular problem. Besides which, both of them were away on a trip to Mundania, on business for the King. The Land of Xanth was busy establishing diplomatic relations with Mundania, and after the centuries of bad relations this was a touchy matter, requiring the utmost finesse. So Dor’s parents were out. Grundy would chat with him anytime—bat the former golem was apt to get too cute about other people’s problems. Such as calling Irene’s green-thumb talent “stinkfinger.” Dor hardly blamed her for retaliating violently, inconvenient as it had been for him personally. Grundy cared, all right—that was how he had become a real, living person—but he didn’t really understand. Anyhow, he knew Dor too well. Dor’s grandfather Roland, whose talent was the stun—the ability to freeze people immobile—was a good man to talk to, but he was at his home in the North Village, ft good two days’ travel across the Gap.
There was only one person Dor could approach who was human, competent, mature, discreet, male, and an equivalent Magician. That was the King. He knew the King was a busy man; it seemed the trade arrangements with Mundania were constantly complex, and of course there were many local problems to be handled. But King Trent always made time for Dor. Perhaps that was one root of Irene’s hostility, which had spread to the Queen and the palace personnel in insidious channels. Irene talked to her father less than Dor did. So Dor tried not to abuse his Magician’s privilege. But this time he simply had to go.
He picked Grundy up and marched to the palace. The palace was actually Castle Roogna. For many years it had been a castle that was not a palace, deserted and forlorn, but King Trent had changed that. Now it was the seat of government of Xanth, as it had been in its youth.
Crombie the soldier stood guard at the drawbridge across the moat. This was mainly to remind visitors to stay clear of the water, because the moat-monsters were not tame. One would think that was evident, but every few months some fool wandered too close, or tried to swim in the murky water, or even attempted to feed some tidbit to a monster by hand. Such attempts were invariably successful; sometimes the monster got the whole person, sometimes only the hand.
Crombie was asleep on his feet. Grundy took advantage of this to generate some humor at the soldier’s expense. “Hey, there, birdbeak; how’s the stinking broad?”
One eye cracked open. Immediately Grundy rephrased his greeting. “Hello, handsome soldier; how’s the sweet wife?”
Both eyes came open, rolling expressively. “Jewel is well and cute and smelling like a rose and too worn oat to go to work today, I daresay. I had a weekend pass.”
So that was why the soldier was so sleepy! Crombie’s wife lived in underground caverns south of the Magic Dust village; it was a long way to travel on short notice. But that was not exactly what Crombie meant. He had the royal travel-conjurer zap him to the caverns, and back again when his pass expired, Crombie’s fatigue was not from traveling.
“A soldier really knows how to make a pass,” Grundy observed, with a smirk he thought Dor wouldn’t understand. Dor understood, more or less; he just didn’t see the humor in it.
“That’s for sure!” Crombie agreed heartily. “Women—I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, but my wife’s a Jewel of a nymph.”
That had special meaning too. Nymphs were ideally shaped female creatures of little intellect, useful primarily for man’s passing entertainment. It was strange that Crombie had married one. But he had been under an omen of marriage, and Jewel was said to be a very special nymph, with unusual wit for the breed, who had an important job. Dor had asked his father about Jewel once, since none of the local artifacts knew about her, but Bink had answered evasively. That was part of the reason Dor didn’t want to ask his father about Millie. Millie was nymphlike at times, and evasions were disquieting. Had there been something between—? No, impossible. Anyway, this sort of information could not be elicited from inanimate objects; they did not understand living feelings at all. They were purely objective. Usually.
“Watch out for the moat-monsters,” Crombie warned dutifully. “They’re not tame.” Slowly his eyelids sank. He was asleep again.
“I’d sure like to watch one of his passes in a magic mirror,” Grundy said. “But it’d break the glass in the pattern of an X.”
They went on into the palace. Suddenly a three-headed wolf stalked out before them, growling fiercely. Dor paused. “Is that real?” he murmured to the floor.
“No,” the floor responded in an undertone.
Relieved, Dor walked right into the wolf—and through it. The monster was mere illusion, a construct of the Queen. She resented his presence here, and her illusions were so proficient that there was no direct way to tell them from reality except by touch—which be dangerous if something happened not to be an illusion. But his magic had nullified hers, as it usually did; she could never fool him long. “Sorceresses shouldn’t mess with Magicians,” Grundy observed snidely, and the wolf growled in anger as it vanished.
It was replaced by an image of the Queen herself, regal in robe and crown. She always enhanced her appearance for company; she was sort of dumpy in real flesh. “My husband is occupied at the moment,” she said with exaggerated formality. “Kindly wait in the upstairs drawing room.” Then, under her breath, she added: “Better yet, wait in the moat.”
The Queen did not conceal her dislike of him, but she would not dare misrepresent the position of the King. She would inform Dor when the King was free. “Thank you, Your Highness,” Dor replied as formally as she had addressed him, and walked to the drawing room.
Actually, the drawing room did not contain any drawings, only one huge tapestry hung on the wall. This had once been a bedroom; Dor’s father mentioned sleeping in it once, back before Castle Roogna was restored. In fact Dor himself had slept in it, earlier in life; he remembered being fascinated by the great tapestry. Now the bed had been replaced by a couch, but the tapestry remained as intriguing as ever.
It was embroidered with scenes from the ancient past of Castle Roogna and its environs, eight hundred years ago. In one section was the Castle, its battlements under construction by a herd of centaurs; in other sections were the deep wilderness of Xanth, the awful Gap dragon, villages protected by stockades— such defenses were no longer used—and other castles. In fact there were more castles than there were today.
The more Dor looked at it, the more he saw—for the figures in the tapestry moved when watched. Since everything was more or less in proportion, the representations of men were tiny; the tip of his little finger could cover one of them over. But every detail seemed authentic. The whole lives of these people were shown, if one cared to watch long enough. Of course, their lives proceeded at the same rate contemporary lives did, so Dor had never seen a whole life pass; he would be an old man before that happened. And of course the process had to have some reasonable cessation, because otherwise the tapestry would long since have passed beyond the Castle Roogna stage and gotten right up to the present. So there were aspects of this magic Dor had not yet fathomed; he just had to accept what he saw. Meanwhile, the tapestry figures worked and slept and fought and loved, in miniature.
Memories flooded Dor. What adventures he had seen, years ago, riveted to this moving picture. Swordsmen and dragons and fair ladies and magic of every type, going on and on! But all in baffling silence; without words, much of the action became meaningless. Why did this swordsman battle this dragon, yet leave that other dragon alone? Why did the chambermaid kiss this courtier, and not that one, though that one was handsomer? Who was responsible for this particular enchantment? And why was that centaur so angry after a liaison with his filly? There was so much of it going on at once that it was hard to fathom any overall pattern.
He had asked Millie about it, and she had gladly told him the valiant tales of her youth—for she had been young at the time of Castle Roogna’s construction. But though her tales were more cohesive than those of the moving pictures of the tapestry, they were also more selective. Millie did not enjoy healthy bloodshed or deadly peril or violent love; she preferred episodes of simple joy and family accommodation. That sort of thing could get dull after a while.
Also, she never talked about herself, after she had left her native stockade. Nothing about her own life and loves, or how she became a ghost. And she wouldn’t tell how she had come to know the zombie Jonathan, though this could have happened quite naturally in the course of eight centuries of lonely association in Castle Roogna. Dor wondered whether, if he should ever happen to be a ghost for eight hundred years, zombies might begin to look good to him. He doubted it. At any rate, his thirst for knowledge had been frustrated, and he had finally given it up.
Why hadn’t he simply made the tapestry itself talk to him, answering his questions? Dor didn’t remember, so he asked the tapestry: “Please explain the nature of your images.”
“I cannot,” the tapestry replied. “They are as varied and detailed as life itself, not subject to interpretation by the likes of me.” There it was: when performing its given function, the tapestry was painstakingly apt; but when speaking as a piece of rug, it lacked the mind to fathom its own images. He could learn from it whether a fly had sat on it in the past hour, but not the motive of an eight-hundred-years-gone Magician.
Now, as Dor contemplated the images, his old interest in history resurged. What a world that had been, back during the celebrated Fourth Wave of human colonization of Xanth! Then adventure had reigned supreme. Not dullness, as in the present.
A giant frog appeared. “The King will see yon now, Master Do-oo-or,” it croaked. It was of course another illusion of Queen Iris’; she was forever showing off her versatility,
“Thanks, frogface,” Grundy said. He always knew when he could slip in a healthy insult without paying for it. “Catch any good flies in that big mouth of yours recently?” The frog swelled up angrily, but could not protest lest it step—or hop—out of character. The Queen disliked compromising her illusions. “How’s your mother, the toad?” the golem continued blithely, the malice hardly showing in his tone. “Did she ever clean up those purple warts on her—“
The frog exploded. “Well, you didn’t have to blow up at me,” Grundy reproved the vanishing smoke. “I was only being sociable, frogbrain.” Dor, with superhuman effort, kept his face straight. The Queen could still be watching, in the guise of a no-see-‘em gnat or something. There were times when Grundy’s caustic wit got him into trouble, but it was worth it.
The King’s library was also upstairs, just a few doors down. That was where the King was always to be found when not otherwise occupied—and sometimes even when he was. It was not supposed to be generally known, but Dor had pried the news out of the furniture: sometimes the Queen made an image of the King in the library, at the King’s behest, so he could interview some minor functionary when he was busy with more important things elsewhere. The King never did that with Dor, however.
Dor proceeded directly to the library, noting a ghost flitting across the dusky hall farther down. Millie had been one of half a dozen ghosts, and the only one to be restored to life; the others still hovered about their haunts. Dor rather liked them; they were friendly but rather shy, and were easily spooked. He was sure each had its story, but like Millie they were diffident about themselves.
He knocked at the library door. “Come in, Dor,” the King’s voice answered immediately. He always seemed to know when Dor came calling, even when the Queen was not around to inform him.
Dor entered, suddenly shy. “I—uh—if you’re not too busy—“
King Trent smiled. “I am busy, Dor. But your business is important.”
Suddenly it hardly seemed so. The King was a solid, graying man old enough to be Dor’s grandfather, yet still handsome. He wore a comfortable robe, somewhat faded and threadbare; he depended on the Queen to garb him in illusion befitting whatever occasion occurred, so needed of real clothes. At the moment he was highly relaxed and informal, and Dor knew this was intended to make Dor himself feel the same. “I, uh, I can come back another time—“
King Trent frowned. “And leave me to pore over the next dull treaty amendment? My eyes are tired enough already!” A stray bluebottle fly buzzed him, and absentmindedly the King transformed it into a small bluebottle tree growing from a crevice in the desk. “Come, Magician—let us chat for a while. How are things with you?”
“Well, we met a big frog—‘” Grundy began, but silenced instantly when the King glanced his way.
“Uh, about the same,” Dor said. The King was giving him an opening; why couldn’t he speak his mind?
“Your cottage cheese still sound?”
“Oh, yes, the house is doing fine. Talks back quite a bit, though.” Inanity!
“I understand you made friends with Crunch the ogre.”
Did the King know everything? “Yes, I helped find his child, Smash.”
“But my daughter Irene doesn’t like you.”
“Not much.” Dor wished he had stayed at home. “But she—“ Dor found himself at a loss for a polite compliment. Irene was a pretty girl; her father surely knew that already. She made plants grow—but she should have been more powerfully talented. “She—“
“She is young, yet. However, even mature women are not always explicable. They seem to change overnight into completely different creatures.”
Grundy laughed. “That’s for sure! Dor’s sweet on Millie the ghost!”
“Shut up!” Dor cried in a fury of embarrassment
“An exceptional woman,” King Trent observed as if he had not heard Dor’s outcry. “A ghost for eight centuries, abruptly restored to life in the present. Her talent makes her unsuitable for normal positions around the palace, so she has served admirably as a governess at your cottage. Now you are growing up, and must begin to train for adult responsibilities.”
“Adult?” Dor asked, still bemused by his shame. It was not the Queen-frog who had the big mouth; it was Grundy!
“You are the heir apparent to the throne of Xanth. Do not be concerned about my daughter; she is not Magician level and cannot assume the office unless there is no Magician available, and then only on an interim basis until a Magician appears, preserving continuity of government. Should I be removed from the picture in the next decade, you will have to take over. It is better that you be prepared.”
Suddenly the present seemed overwhelmingly real. “But I can’t—I don’t—“
“You have the necessary magic, Dor. You lack the experience and fortitude to use it properly. I would be remiss if I did not arrange to provide you with that experience.”
“But—“
“No Magician should require the services of an ogre to enforce his authority. You have not yet been hardened to the occasional ruthlessness required.”
“Uh—“ Dor knew his face was crimson. He had just received a potent rebuke, and knew it was justified. For a Magician to give way to the likes of Horse-jaw—
“I believe you need a mission, Dor. A man’s quest. One whose completion will demonstrate your competence for the office you are coming to.”
This had taken an entirely different tack than Dor had anticipated. It was as if the King had made his decision and summoned Dor for this directive, rather than merely granting an audience. “I—maybe so.” Maybe so? For certain so!
“You hold Millie in respect,” the King said. “But you are aware that she is not of your generation, and has one great unmet need.”
“Jonathan,” Dor said. “She—she loves Jonathan the zombie!” He was almost indignant.
“Then I think the nicest thing anyone could do for her would be to discover a way to restore Jonathan to full life. Then, perhaps, the reason she loves him would become apparent.”
“But—“ Dor had to halt. He knew that Grundy’s remarks were only the least of the ridicule that would be directed at him if he ever expressed any serious ideas of his own about Millie. She was an eight-hundred-year-old woman; he was just a boy. One way to stifle all speculation would be to give her what she most wanted: Jonathan, alive. “But how—?”
The King spread his hands. “I do not know the answer, Dor. But there may be one who does.”
There was only one person in the Land of Xanth who knew all the answers: the Good Magician Humfrey. But he was a sour old man who charged a year’s service for each Answer. Only a person of considerable determination and fortitude went to consult Good Magician Humfrey.
Suddenly Dor realized the nature of the challenge King Trent had laid down for him. First, he would have to leave these familiar environs and trek through the hazardous wilderness to the Good Magician’s castle. Then he would have to force his way in to brace the Magician. Then serve his year for the Answer. Then use the Answer to restore Jonathan to life— knowing that in so doing, he was abolishing any chance that Millie would ever—
His mind balked. This was no quest; this was disaster!
“Ordinary citizens have only themselves to be concerned about,” Trent said. “A ruler must be concerned for the welfare of others as much as for himself. He must be prepared to make sacrifices—sometimes very personal ones. He may even have to lose the woman he loves, and marry the one he doesn’t love—for the good of the realm.”
Give up Millie, marry Irene? Dor rebelled—then realized that the King had not been talking about Dor, but about himself. Trent had lost his wife and child in Mundania, and then married the Sorceress Iris, whom he never professed to love, and had a child by her—for the good of the realm. Trent asked nothing of any citizen he would not ask of himself.
“I will never be the man you are,” Dor said humbly.
The King rose, clapping him on the back so that Grundy almost fell off his shoulder. Trent might be old, but he was still strong. “I was never the man I am,” he said. “A man is only the man he seems to be. Inside, where no one sees, he may be a mass of gnawing worms of doubt and ire and grief.” He paused reflectively as he showed Dor firmly to the doorway. “No challenge is easy. The measure of the challenge a man rises to at need is the measure of the man. I proffer you a challenge for a Magician and a King.”
Dor found himself standing in the hall, still bemused. Even Grundy was silent
Good Magician Humfrey’s castle was east of Castle Roogna, not far as the dragon flew, but more than a day’s journey through the treacherous wilderness for a boy on foot. There was no enchanted path to Humfrey’s retreat, because the Magician abhorred company; all paths led away only. Dor could not be sent there instantly by spell, because this was his quest, his private personal challenge, to accomplish by himself.
Dor started in the morning, using his talent to solve part of the problem of travel. “Stones, give me a warning whistle whenever I approach anything dangerous to me, and let me know the best route to the Good Magician’s castle.”
“We can tell you what is dangerous,” the rocks chorused. There were no stony silences for him! “But we don’t know where the Good Magician’s castle is. He has strewn little forget-spells all over.”
He should have known. “I’ve been there,” Grundy offered. “It’s not far south of the Gap. Bear north toward the Gap, then east, then south to his castle.”
“And if I’m off, and miss it, where will I wind up?” Dor inquired sourly.
“In the belly of a dragon, most likely.”
Dor bore north, heeding the whistles. Most citizens of Xanth did not know of the Gap’s existence, because it had been enchanted into anonymity, but Dor had lived all his life in this neighborhood and visited the chasm several times. Warned by his talent, he steered clear of diversions such as dragon runs, tangle trees, ant-lion prides, choke nettles, saw grass, and other threats. Only his father Bink could traverse the wilderness alone with greater equanimity, and maybe King Trent himself. Still, Grundy was nervous. “If you don’t live to be King, I’ll be in big trouble,” he remarked, not entirely humorously.
When they got hungry, the stones directed them to the nearest breadloaf trees, soda poppies, and jelly-barrel trunks. Then on, as the day waned.
“Say!” Grundy exclaimed. “There are one-way paths from Humfrey’s castle to the Gap. We’re bound to cross one. The stones will know where such a path is, because they will have seen people walking along them. The forget spells are just about the location of the Magician’s castle, not about stray people, so we can bypass them.”
“Right!” Dor agreed. “Stones, have any of you seen such travel?”
There was a chorus of no’s. But he kept checking as he progressed, and in due course found some stones that had indeed observed such travelers. After some experimentation, he managed to get aligned with the path, and took a step toward the chasm. There it was, suddenly: a clear path leading to a bridge that seemed to span the full width of the Gap. But when he faced the other way, there was only jungle. Fascinating magic, these paths!
“Maybe if you walked backward—“ Grundy suggested.
“But then I’d stumble into all sorts of things!”
“Well, you walk forward, and I’ll face backward and keep an eye on the path.”
They tried that, and it worked. The stones gave general guidance, and Grundy warned him whenever he drifted to one side or another. They made good progress, for of course the path was charmed, with no serious hazards in its immediate vicinity. But it had taken some time to find it, and when dark closed in they were still in the wilderness. Fortunately they located a pillow bush and fashioned a bed of multicolored pillows, setting out sputtering bugbombs from a bug-bomb weed to repel predatory insects. They didn’t worry about rain; Dor called out to a passing cloud, and it assured him that the clouds were all resting tonight, saving up for a blowout two days hence.
In the morning they feasted on boysengirls berries, the seeds like tiny boys a bit strong, and the jelly girls a bit sweet, so that they had to be taken together for full enjoyment. They washed the berries down with the juice from punctured coffee beans and took up the march again. Dor felt somewhat stiff; he wasn’t used to this amount of walking. “Funny, I feel fine,” Grundy remarked. He, of course, had ridden Dor’s shoulder most of the way.
Another friendly cloud advised them when the Magician’s castle was in sight. Humfrey had not thought to put forget spells on the clouds, or perhaps had found it impractical, since clouds tended to drift constantly. As it was, Dor realized he was fortunate these were good-natured cumulus clouds, instead of the bad-tempered thunderheads. By midmorning they were there.
The castle was small but pretty, with round turrets stretching up beyond the battlements, and a cute blue moat. Within the moat swam a triton: a handsome man with a fish’s tail, carrying a wicked triple-tipped spear. He glared at the intruders.
“I think our first hurdle is upon us,” Grundy remarked. “That merman is not about to let us pass.”
“How did you get past, when you came to ask a Question?” Dor asked.
“That was a dozen years ago! It’s all been changed. I snuck by a carnivorous seaweed in the moat, and climbed a slippery glass wall, and outsmarted a sword swallower inside.”
“A sword swallower? How could he hurt you?”
“He burped.”
Dor thought about that, and smiled. But the golem was right: past experience was no aid to the present. Not while the Good Magician’s defenses kept changing.
He put a foot forward to touch the surface of the water. Immediately the triton swam forward, head and arm raised, trident poised. “It is only fair to warn you, intruder, that I have five notches on my spear shaft.”
Dor jerked back his foot. “How do we get past this monster?” he asked, staring into the moat.
“I’m not allowed to tell you that,” the water replied apologetically. “The old gnome’s got everything counterspelled.”
“He would,” Grundy grumbled. “You can’t out-gnome a gnome in his own home.”
“But there is a way,” Dor said. “We just have to figure it out. That’s the challenge.”
“While the Magician chortles inside, waiting to see if we’ll make it or get speared. He’s got a sense of humor like that of a tangle tree.”
Dor made as if to dive into the moat. The triton raised his trident again. The merman’s arm was muscular, and as he supported his body well out of the water the points of his weapon glinted in the sun. Dor backed off again.
“Maybe there’s a tunnel under the moat,” Grundy suggested.
They walked around the moat. At one point there was a metallic plaque inscribed with the words TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
“I don’t know what that means,” Dor complained.
“I’ll translate,” Grundy said. “It means: keep out.”
“I wonder if it means more?” Dor mused. “Why should Humfrey put a sign out here, when there’s no obvious way in anyway? Why say it in language only a golem understands? That doesn’t seem to make sense—which means it probably makes a lot of sense, if you interpret it correctly.”
“I don’t know why you’re fulminating about a stupid sign, when you need to be figuring out how to cross the moat.”
“Now, if there were a tunnel that the Magician could use without running afoul of his own hazards, he’d need a marked place for it to emerge,” Dor continued. “Naturally he wouldn’t want anyone else using it without his permission. So he might cover it over and put a stay-away spell on it. Like this.”
“You know, I think you’ve got a brain after all,” Grundy admitted. “But you’d have to have a counter-spell to get it open, and it’s not allowed to tell you that secret.”
“But it’s only a stone. Not too bright. We might be able to trick it.”
“I get you. Let’s try a dialogue, know what I mean?” They had played this game before.
Dor nodded, smiling. They stepped up close to the plaque. “Good morning, plaque,” Dor greeted it.
“Not to you, it ain’t,” the plaque responded. “I ain’t going to tell you nothing.”
“That’s because you don’t know nothing,” Grundy said loudly, with a fine sneer in his voice.
“I do not know nothing!”
“My friend claims you have no secrets to divulge,” Dor told the plaque.
“Your friend’s a dun.”
“The plaque says you’re a dun,” Dor informed Grundy.
“Yeah? Well the plaque’s a dumdum.”
“Plaque, my friend says you’re a—“
“I am not!” the plaque retorted angrily. “He’s the dumdum.” What feelings objects had tended to be superficial. “He doesn’t have my secret.”
“What secret, dodo?” Grundy demanded, his voice even more heavily freighted with sneer than before.
“My secret chamber, that’s what! He doesn’t have that, does he?”
“Nobody has that,” Grundy cried, scowling. “You’re just making that up so we won’t think you’re the granitehead you really are!”
“Is that so? Well look at that, duh!” And the face of the plaque swung open to reveal an interior chamber. Inside was a small box.
Dor reached in and snatched out the box before the plaque caught on to its mistake. “And what have we here?” he inquired gleefully.
“Gimme that back!” the plaque cried. “It’s mine, all mine!”
Dor studied the box. On the top was a button marked with the words DON’T PUSH. He pushed it.
The lid sprang up. A snakelike thing leaped out, startling Dor, who dropped the box. “HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!” it bellowed.
The snake-thing landed on the ground, its energy spent. “Jack, at your service,” it said. “Jack in the box. You sure look foolish.”
“A golem,” Grundy said. “I should have known. Golems are insufferable.”
“You oughta know, pinhead,” Jack retorted. He reached into a serpentine pocket and drew out a shiny disk. “Here is an achievement button to commemorate the occasion.” He held it up.
Dor reached down and took the button. It had two faces. On one side it said TRESPASSER. On the other it said PERSECUTED.
Dor had to laugh, ruefully. “I guess I fell for it! That’s what I get for seeking the easy way through.”
He put the button against his shirt, where it stuck magically, PERSECUTED side out. Then he picked up the Jack, put him back in the box, closed the lid, set the works back inside the plaque’s chamber, and closed that.
“Well played, plaque,” he said.
“Yeah,” the plaque agreed, mollified. They returned their attention to the moat.
“No substitute for my own ingenuity,” Dor said. “But this diversion has given me a notion. If we can be tricked by a decoy—”
“I don’t see what you’re up to,” Grundy said. “That triton knows his target.”
“That triton thinks he knows his target. Watch this.” And Dor squatted by the water and said to it: “I shall make a wager with you, water. I bet that you can’t imitate my voice.”
“Yeah?” the water replied, sounding just like Dor.
“Hey, that’s pretty good, for a beginner. But you can’t do it in more than one place at a time.”
“That’s what you think!” the water said in Dor’s voice from two places.
“You’re much better than I thought!” Dor confessed ruefully. “But the real challenge is to do it so well that a third party could not tell which is me and which is you. I’m sure you couldn’t fool that triton, for example.”
“That wetback?” the water demanded. “What do you want to bet, sucker?”
“That water’s calling you a kind of fish,” Grundy muttered.
Dor considered. “Well, I don’t have anything you would value. Unless—that’s it! You can’t talk to other people, but you still need some way to show them your prowess. You could do that with this button.” He brought up the TRESPASSER / PERSECUTED button, showing both sides. “See, it says what you do to intruders. You can flash it from your surface in sinister warning.”
“You’re on!” the water said eagerly. “You hide, and if old three-point follows my voice instead of you, I win the prize.”
“Right,” Dor agreed. “I really hate to risk an item of this value, but then I don’t think I’m going to lose it You distract him, and I’ll hide under your surface. If he can’t find me before I drown, the button’s yours.”
“Hey, there’s a flaw in that logic!” Grundy protested. “If you drown—”
“Hello, fishtail!” a voice cried from the far side of the moat. “I’m the creep from the jungle!”
The triton, who had been viewing the proceedings without interest, whirled. “Another one?”
Dor slipped into the water, took half a breath, and dived below the surface. He swam vigorously, feeling the cool flow across his skin. No trident struck him. As his lungs labored painfully against his locked throat, he found the inner wall of the moat and thrust his head up.
He gasped for breath, and so did Grundy, still clinging to his shoulder. The triton was still chasing here and there, following the shifting voices. “Over here, sharksnoot! No, here, mer-thing! Are you blind, fish-face?”
Dor heaved himself out. “Safe!” he cried. “You win, moat; here’s the prize. It hurts awfully to lose it, but you sure showed me up.” And he flipped the button into the water.
“Anytime, sucker,” the water replied smugly.
The significance of Grundy’s prior comment sank in belatedly. A sucker was a kind of fish, prone to fasten to the legs of swimmers and—but he hoped there were none here.
The decoy voices subsided. The triton looked around, spotting him with surprise. “How did you do that? I chased you all over the moat!”
“You certainly did,” Dor agreed. “I’m really breathless.”
“You some sort of Magician or something?”
“That describes it.”
“Oh.” The triton swam away, affecting loss of interest
The second challenge was now before them. There was a narrow ledge of stone between the moat and the castle wall. Dor found no obvious entry to the castle. “It’s always this way,” Grundy said wisely. “A blank wall. Inanimate obstacle. But the worst is always inside.”
“Good to know,” Dor said, feeling a chill that was not entirely from his soaking clothing. He was beginning to appreciate the depth of the challenge King Trent had made for him. At each stage he was forced to question his ability and his motive: were the risk and effort worth the prize? He had never been exposed to a sustained challenge of this magnitude before, where even his talent could help him only deviously. With the counterspells against things giving away information, he was forced to employ his magic very cleverly, as with the moat. Maybe this was the necessary course to manhood—but he would much prefer to have a safe route home. He was, after all, only a boy. He didn’t have the mass and thews of a man, and certainly not the courage. Yet here he was—and he had better go forward, because the triton would hardly let him go back.
The mass and thews of a man. The notion appealed insidiously. If by some magic he could become bigger and stronger than his father, and be skilled with the sword, so that he didn’t have to have an ogre backing him up—ah, then wouldn’t his problems be over! No more weaseling about, using tricks to sneak by tritons, arguing with plaques ...
But this was foolish wishful thinking. He would never be such a man, even when full grown. “Full groan,” he muttered, appreciating the morbid pun. Maybe he would have made a good zombie!
They circled the castle again. At intervals there were alcoves with plants growing in them, decorating the blank wall. But they weren’t approachable plants. Stinkweeds, skunk cabbages, poison ivy—the last flipped a drop of glistening poison at him, but he avoided it. The drop struck the stone ledge and etched a smoking hole in it. Another alcove held a needle-cactus, one of the worst plant menaces of all. Dor hastened on past that one, lest the ornery vegetable elect to fire a volley of needles at him.
“You climbed a wall of glass?” Dor inquired skeptically, contemplating the blank stone. He was not a good climber, and there were no handholds, steps, or other aids.
“I was a golem then—a construct of string gunk. It didn’t matter if I fell; I wasn’t real. I existed only to do translations. Today I could not climb that glass wall, or even this stone wall; I have too much reality to lose.”
Too much reality to lose. That made sense. Dor’s own reality became more attractive as he pondered the possible losing of it. Why was he wishing for a hero’s body and power? He was a Magician, probable heir to the throne. Strong men were common; Magicians were rare. Why throw that away—for a zombie?
Then he thought of lovely Millie. To do something nice for her, make her grateful. Ah, foolishness! But it seemed he was also that kind of a fool. Maybe it came with growing up. Her talent of sex appeal—
Dor tapped at the stone. It was distressingly solid. No hollow panels there. He felt for crevices. The interstices between stones were too small for his fingers, and he already knew there were no ledges for climbing. “Got to be in one of those alcoves,” he said.
They checked the alcoves, carefully. There was nothing. The noxious plants grew from stone planters sitting on the rampart; there was no secret entrance through their dirt.
But the niche of the needle-cactus seemed deeper. In fact it curved into darkness beyond the cactus. A passage!
Now all he had to do was figure out how to pass one of the deadliest of the medium-sized plants of Xanth. Needle-cactuses tended to shoot first and consider afterward. Even a tangle tree would probably give way to a needler, if they grew side by side. Chester the centaur, a friend of Dor’s father, still had puncture scars marring his handsome rump where a needler had chastened him.
Dor poked his head cautiously around the corner. “I don’t suppose you feel like letting a traveler pass?” he inquired without much hope.
A needle shot directly at his face. He jerked violently back, and it hissed on out to land in the moat There was an irate protest from the triton, who didn’t like having his residence littered.
“The needler says no,” Grundy translated gratuitously.
“I could have guessed.” How was he going to pass this hurdle? He couldn’t swim under this cactus, or reason with it, or avoid it. There was barely room to squeeze by it, in the confined alcove.
“Maybe loop it with a rope, and haul it out of the way,” Grundy suggested dubiously.
“We don’t have a rope,” Dor pointed out. “And nothing to make one with.”
“I know someone whose talent is making ropes from water,” Grundy said.
“So he could pass this menace. We can’t. And if we did have rope, we’d get needled the moment we hauled the cactus out into the open.”
“Unless we yanked it right into the moat.” Dor chuckled at the thought. Then he got serious. “Could we fashion a shield?”
“Nothing to fashion it from. Same problem as the rope. This ledge is barren. Now if cacti don’t like water at all, maybe we can scoop—“
“They can live without it, but they like it fine,” Dor said. “They get rained on all the time. Just so long as it doesn’t flood too much. Splashing won’t do any good, unless—“ He paused, considering. “If we could send a lot of water flowing through there, flood out the cactus, wash the dirt from its pot, expose the roots—”
“How?”
Dor sighed. “No way, without a bucket. We just aren’t set up to handle this cactus.”
“Yeah. A firedrake could handle it. Those plants don’t like fire: it burns off their needles. Then they can’t fight until they grow new ones, and that takes time. But we don’t have any fire.” He shook a few drops from his body. “Sometimes I wish you had more physical magic, Dor. If you could point your finger and paralyze or stun or burn—“
“Then the Good Magician would have had other defenses for his castle, that those talents would be useless against. Magic is not enough; you have to use your brain.”
“How can a brain stop a needler from needling?” Grundy demanded. “The thing isn’t smart; you can’t make a deal with it.”
“The cactus isn’t smart,” Dor repeated, an idea forming. “So it might not grasp what would be obvious to us.”
“Whatever you’re talking about is not obvious to me, either,” the golem said.
“Your talent is translation. Can you talk cactus language too?”
“Of course. But what has that to do with—“
“Suppose we told it we were dangerous to it? That we were salamanders, burning hot, about to burn it down?”
“Wouldn’t work. It might be scared—but all it would do would be to fire off a volley of needles, to kill the salamander before the creature could get close.”
“Hm, yes. But what about something that wasn’t threatening, but was still sort of dangerous? A fireman, maybe, just passing through with flame on low.”
Grundy considered. “That just might work. But if it failed—“
“Doom,” Dor finished. “We’d be pincushions.”
Both looked back at the moat. The triton was watching them alertly. “Pincushions either way,” Grundy said. “I sure wish we were heroes, instead of golems and boys. We’re not cut out for this sort of thing.”
“The longer we stand here, the more scared I get,” Dor agreed. “So let’s get on with it before I start crying,” he added, and wished he hadn’t phrased it quite that way.
Grundy looked at the needle-cactus again. “When I was really a golem, a little thing like a needler couldn’t hurt me. I wasn’t real. I felt no pain. But now—I’m too scared to know what to say.”
“I’ll say it. It’s my quest, after all; you don’t have to participate. I don’t know why you’re risking yourself here anyway.”
“Because I care, you twit!”
Which had to be true. “Okay. You just translate what I say into cactus talk.” Dor nerved himself again and walked slowly toward the vegetable monster.
“Say something! Say something!” Grundy cried, as needles oriented on them visibly, ready to fly off their handles.
“I am a fireman,” Dor said uncertainly. “I—I am made of fire. Anything that touches me gets burned to a crisp. This is my firedog, Grundy the growler. I am just taking my hot dog for a walk, just passing through, chewing idly on a firecracker. I love crackers!”
Grundy made a running series of scrapes and whistles, as of wind blowing through erect cactus needles. The needler seemed to be listening; there was an alert quiver about its needles now. Could this possibly work?
“We are merely passing through,” Dor continued. “We aren’t looking for trouble. We don’t like to burn off needles unless we really have to, because they scorch and pop and smell real bad.” He saw some needles wilt as Grundy translated. The message was getting through! “We have nothing against cactuses, so long as they keep their place. Some cactuses are very nice. Some of Grundy’s best friends are cactuses; he likes to—“ Dor paused. What would a firedog do with a compatible cactus? Water it down, of course— with a stream of fire. That wouldn’t go over very well, here. “Uh, he likes to sniff their flowers as he dogtrots by. We only get upset if any needles happen to get in our way. When we get upset, we get very hot. Very very hot. In fact we just get all burned up.” He decided not to overdo it, lest he lose credibility. “But we aren’t too hot right now because we know no nice cactus would try to stick us. So we won’t have to burn off any inconvenient needles.”
The cactus seemed to withdraw into itself, giving them room to pass without touching. His ploy was working! “My, these firecrackers are good. Would you like a cracker, cactus?” He held out one hand.
The cactus gave a little keen of apprehension, much as the tangler had when Crunch the ogre growled at it. The needles shied away. Then Dor was past it, penetrating into the alcove passage. But he was still within range of the needler, so he kept talking. After all, if the thing caught on to his ruse, it would be a Very angry cactus.
“Sure was nice meeting you, cactus. You’re a real sharp creature. Not like the one I encountered the other day, who tried to put a needle in my back. I fear I lost my temper. Tempering takes a lot of heat. I fired up like a wounded salamander, and I went back and hugged that poor cactus until all its needles burst into flame. The scorch marks are still on it, but I’m happy to say that it will probably survive. Lucky it was a wet day, raining in fact, so my heat only cooked its outer layers some instead of setting the whole thing on fire. I’m sorry I did that; I really think that needle in the back was an accident. Something that just slipped out. I just can’t help myself when I get hot.”
He rounded the curve in the passage, so that he was no longer in view of the needler. Then he leaned against the wall, feeling faint.
Grundy’s translation came to an end. “You’re the best liar I’ve ever seen,” he said admiringly.
“I’m the scaredest liar you’ve ever seen!”
“Well, I guess it takes practice. But you did well; I could hardly keep up with those whoppers! But I knew if I cracked a smile, I’d really get needled.”
Dor pondered the implications. He had indeed achieved his victory by lying. Was that the way it should be? He doubted it. He made a mental resolution: no more lying. Not unless absolutely necessary. If a thing could not be accomplished honestly, probably it wasn’t worth accomplishing at all.
“I never realized what a coward I was,” Dor said, changing the subject slightly. “I’ll never grow up.”
“I’m a coward too,” Grundy said consolingly. “I’ve never been so scared since I turned real.”
“One more challenge to handle—the worst one. I wish I were man-sized and man-couraged!”
“Me too,” the golem agreed.
The passage terminated in a conventional door with a conventional door latch. “Here we come, ready or not,” Dor muttered.
“You’re not ready,” the door replied.
Dor ignored it. He worked the latch and opened the door.
There was a small room paneled in bird-of-paradise feathers. A woman of extraordinary perfection stood watching them. She wore a low-cut gown, jeweled sandals, a comprehensive kerchief, and an imported pair of Mundane dark glasses. “Welcome, guests,” she breathed, in such a way that Dor’s gaze was attracted to the site of breathing, right where the gown was cut lowest yet fullest.
“Uh, thanks,” Dor said, nonplused. This was the worst hazard of all? He needed no adult-male vision to see that it was a hazard few men would balk at.
“There’s something about her—I don’t like this,” Grundy whispered in his ear. “I know her from somewhere—“
“Here, let me have a look at you,” the woman said, lifting her hand to her glasses. Dor’s glance was drawn away from her torso to her face. Her hair began to move under her kerchief, as if separately alive.
Grundy stiffened. “Close your eyes!” he cried. “I recognize her now. Those serpent locks—that’s the gorgon!”
Dor’s eyes snapped closed. He barged ahead, trying to get out of the room before any accident caused him to take an involuntary look. He knew what the gorgon was; her glance turned men to stone. If they met that glance with their own.
His blindly moving feet tripped over a step, and Dor fell headlong. He threw his arms up to shield his face, but did not open his eyes. He landed jarringly and lay there, eyelids still tightly screwed down.
There was the swish of long skirts coming near. “Get up, young man,” the gorgon said. Her voice was deceptively soft.
“No!” Dor cried. “I don’t want to turn to stone!”
“You won’t turn to stone. The hurdles are over; you have won your way into the castle of the Good Magician Humfrey. No one will harm you here.”
“Go away!” he said. “I won’t look at you!”
She sighed, very femininely. “Golem, you look at me. Then you can reassure your friend.”
“I don’t want to be stone either!” Grundy protested. “I had too much trouble getting real to throw it away now. I saw what happened to all those men your sister the siren lured to your island.”
“And you also saw how the Good Magician nullified me. There is no threat now.”
“That’s right! He—but how do I know the spell’s still on? It’s been a long time since—“
“Take this mirror and look at me through the reflection first,” she said. “Then you will know.”
“I can’t handle a big mirror! I’m only inches tall, only a—oh, what’s the use! Dor, I’m going to look at her. If I turn to stone, you’ll know she can’t be trusted.”
“Grundy, don’t—“
“I already have,” the golem said, relieved. “It’s all right, Dor, you can look.”
Grundy had never deceived him. Dor clenched his teeth and cracked open an eye, seeing the lighted room and the gorgon’s nearest foot. It was a very pretty foot, with fluorescently tinted toenails, topped by a shapely ankle. Funny how he had never noticed ankles before! He got to his hands and knees, his eyes traveling cautiously up her marvelously molded legs until the view was cut off by the hem of her gown. It was a shapely gown, too, slightly translucent so that the suggestion of her legs continued on up to—but enough of this stalling. He forced his reluctant eyes to travel all the way up past her contours until they approached her head.
Her hair, now unbound, consisted of a mass of writhing little snakes. They were appealingly horrible. But the face—was nothing. Just a vacuum, as if the head were a hollow ball with the front panel removed.
“But—but I saw your face before, all except the eyes—“
“You saw this mask of my face,” she said, holding it up. “And the dark glasses. There was never any chance for you to look into my true face.”
So it seemed. “Then why—?”
“To scare you off—if you lacked the courage to do what is necessary in order to reach the Good Magician.”
“I just closed my eyes and ran,” Dor said.
“But you ran forward, not back.”
So he had. Even in his terror, he had not given up his quest. Or had he merely run whichever way he happened to be facing? Dor wasn’t sure. He considered the gorgon again. Once he got used to the anomaly of her missing face, he found her quite attractive. “But you—what is a gorgon doing here?”
“I am serving my year’s fee, awaiting my Answer.”
Dor shook his head, trying to get this straight. “You —if I may ask—what was your Question?”
“I asked the Good Magician if he would marry me.”
Dor choked. “He—he made you—serve a fee, for that?”
“Oh, yes. He always charges a year’s service, or the equivalent. That’s why he has so much magic around the castle. He’s been in this business for a century or so.”
“I know all that! But yours was a different kind of—“
She seemed to smile, behind her invisibility. “No exceptions, except maybe on direct order from the King. I don’t mind. I knew what to expect when I came here. Soon my year will be finished, and I will have my Answer.”
Grundy shook his little head. “I thought the old gnome was nuts. But this—he’s crazy!”
“By no means,” the gorgon said. “I could make him a pretty good wife, once I learn the ropes. He may be old, but he’s not dead, and he needs—“
“I meant, to make you work a year—why doesn’t he just marry you, and have your service for life?”
“You want me to ask him a second Question, and serve another year for the Answer?” she demanded.
“Uh, no. I was just curious. I don’t really understand the Good Magician.”
“You and everyone else!” she agreed wryly, and Dor began to feel an affinity for this shapely, faceless female. “But slowly I’m learning his ways. It is a good question you raise; I shall have to think about it, and maybe I can figure out that answer for myself. If he wants my service, why would he settle for a year of it when he could readily have it all? If he doesn’t want my service, why not send me out to guard the moat or something where he won’t have to see me every day? There has got to be a reason.” She scratched her head, causing several snakes to hiss warningly.
“Why do you even want to marry him?’ Grundy asked. “He’s such a gloomy old gnome, he’s no prize for a woman, especially a pretty one.”
“Who said I wanted to marry him?”
Grundy did a rare double take. “You distinctly— your Question—“
“That is for information, golem. Once I know whether he will marry me, I’ll be able to decide whether I should do it. It’s a difficult decision.”
“Agreed,” Grundy said. “King Trent must have labored similarly before marrying Queen Iris.”
“Do you love him?” Dor inquired.
“Well, I think I do. You see, he’s the first man who ever associated with me without . . . you know.” She nodded her head toward the corner. There was the statue of a man, carved beautifully in marble.
“That’s—?” Dor asked, alarmed.
“No, I really am a statue,” the stone answered him. “A fine original work of sculpture.”
“Humfrey won’t let me do any real conversions,” the gorgon said. “Not even for old times’ sake. I’m just here to identify the foolish or to scare off the fault-hearted. The Magician won’t answer cowards.”
“Then he won’t answer me,” Dor said sadly. “I was so scared—“
“No, that’s not cowardice. Being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done—that’s courage. The one who feels no fear is a fool, and the one who lets fear rule him is a coward. You are neither. Same for you, golem. You never deserted your friend, and were willing to risk your precious flesh body to help him. I think the Magician will answer.”
Dor considered that. “I sure don’t feel very brave,” he said at last. “All I did was hide my face.”
“I admit it would have been more impressive had you closed your eyes and fenced with me blind,” she said. “Or snatched up a mirror to use. We keep several handy, for those who have the wit to take that option. But you’re only a boy. The standards are not as strict.”
“Uh, yes,” Dor agreed, still not pleased.
“You should have seen me when I came here,” she warmly. “I was so frightened, I hid my face— just as you did.”
“If you didn’t hide your face, you’d turn everyone to stone,” Grundy pointed out
“That too,” she agreed.
“Say,” Grundy demanded. “It was twelve years ago when you met the Good Gnome. I was there, remember? How come you’re just now asking your Question?”
“I left my island at the Time of No Magic,” she said frankly. “Suddenly no magic worked at all in the whole Land of Xanth, and the magic things were dying or turning mundane, and all the old spells were undone. I don’t know why that was—“
“I know,” Grundy said. “But I can’t tell, except to say it won’t happen again.”
“All my former conquests reverted to life. There were some pretty rowdy men there, you know—trolls and things. So I got all flustered and fled. I was afraid they would hurt me.”
“That was a sensible fear,” Grundy said. “When they didn’t catch you, they went back to the Magic Dust village where most of them had come from, and I guess they’re still there. Lot of very eager women in that village, after all that time with all their men gone.”
“But when the magic came back, the Magician’s spell on my face was gone. It was one of the one-shot variety, that carried only until interrupted. A lot of spells are like that, mine included. So I had my face again, and I—you know.”
Dor knew. She had started making statues again.
“By then, I knew what was happening,” she continued. “I had been pretty naive, there on my isolated island, but I was learning. I really didn’t want to be that way. So I remembered what Humfrey had said about Mundania, where magic doesn’t ever work— that certainly must be a potent counterspell laid on that land—and I went there. And he was right. I was a normal girl. I had thought I could never stand to leave there, but the Time of No Magic showed me that maybe I could stand it after all. And when I tried, I could. It was sort of strange and fun, not nearly as bad as I had feared. People accepted me, and men—do you know I’d never kissed a man in Xanth?”
Dor was ashamed to comment He had never kissed a woman other than his mother, who of course didn’t count. He thought fleetingly of Millie. If—
“But after a while I began to miss Xanth,” the gorgon continued. “The magic, the special creatures— do you know I even got to miss the tangle trees? When you’re born to magic you can’t just set it aside; it is part of your being. So I had to come back. But that meant—you know, more statues. So I went to Humfrey’s castle. By that time I knew he was the Good Magician—he never told me that when we met! —and that he wasn’t all that approachable, and I got girlishly nervous. I knew that if I wanted to be with a man in Xanth, I mean man-to-woman, it would have to be one like him. Who had the power to neutralize my talent. The more I thought about it—well, here I am.”
“Didn’t you have trouble getting into the castle?”
“Oh, yes! It was awful. There was this foghorn guarding the moat, and I found this little boat there, but every time I tried to cross that horn blasted out such columns of fog that I couldn’t see or hear anything, and the boat always turned around and came back to shore. It was a magic boat, you see; you had to steer it or it went right back to its dock. I got all covered in fog, and my hair was hissing something awful; it doesn’t like that sort of thing.”
Her hair, of course, consisted of myriad tiny snakes or eels. They were rather cute, now that he was getting used to the style. “How did you get across the moat, then?”
“I finally got smart. I steered the boat directly toward the foghorn, no matter how bad the fog got. It was like swimming through a waterfall! When I reached the horn—I was across. Because it was inside, not outside.”
“Oops—the gnome cometh,” Grundy said.
“Oh, I must get back to work!” the gorgon said, hastily tripping out of the room. “I was in the middle of the laundry when you arrived; he uses more socks!” She was gone.
“Gnomes do have big dirty feet,” Grundy remarked. “Sort of like goblins, in that respect.”
The Good Magician Humfrey walked in. He was, indeed, gnomelike, old and gnarled and small. His feet were big and bare and, yes, dirty. “There’s not a clean pair of socks in the whole castle!” he grumped. “Girl, haven’t you done that laundry yet? I asked for it an hour ago!”
“Uh, Good Magician—” Dor said, moving toward him.
“It isn’t as if socks are that complicated to wash,” Humfrey continued irritably. “I’ve shown her the cleaning spell.” He looked around. “Where is that girl? Does she think the whole Land of Xanth is made of stone, merely waiting on her convenience?”
“Uh, Good Magician Humfrey,” Dor said, trying again. “I have come to ask—“
“I can’t stand another minute without my socks!” Humfrey said, sitting down on the step. “I’m no barefoot boy any more, and even when I was, I always wore shoes. I spilled an itching-powder formula here once, and it gets between my toes. If that fool girl doesn't—”
“Hey, old gnome!” Grundy bawled deafeningly.
Humfrey glanced at him in an offhand way. “Oh, hello, Grundy. What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you how to become real?”
“I am real, gnome,” Grundy said. “I’m just speaking your language, as is my talent. I’m here with my friend Dor, showing him how to get a Magician’s attention.”
“Dor doesn’t need a Magician’s attention. He’s a Magician himself. He needs a quest. He ought to go find the secret of making zombies human, so he can please Millie the ghost. Besides, I’m not dressed for company. My socks—“
“To hell with your socks!” Grundy exclaimed. “The boy’s come all the way here to ask you how to get that secret, and you have to give him an Answer.”
“To hell with my socks? Not before they’re clean! I wouldn’t be caught dead in dirty socks.”
“AH right, gnome, I’ll fetch your socks,” Grundy said. “You stay right here on this step and talk to Dor, okay?” He jumped down and scurried from the room.
“Uh, I’m sorry—“ Dor began hesitantly.
“It did take Grundy some time to get the message, but the cranial capacity of golems is very small. Now that he has left us alone, I can convey private reflections.”
“Oh, I don’t mind Grundy—”
“The fact is, Dor, you are slated to be the next King of Xanth. Now I suppose I could charge you the usual fee for my Answer, but that might be impolitic if you were to become King before I died. My references suggest that will be the case. One can never be absolutely sure about the future, of course; the future-history texts misrepresent it almost as much as the past history texts do the past. But why gamble foolishly? You are a full Magician in your own right, with power as great as mine, and of a similar genre. Given time, you will know as much as I. It becomes expedient to deal with fellow Magicians on an equal basis. Besides which, a year out of your life at this stage might in some devious way pose a threat to the welfare of your father, Bink, who cares greatly for you, and that would be an unconscionable mischief. I remember when I was attempting to fathom his talent, and the invisible giant came marching by with a tread worse than an ogre’s and almost shook down the castle. But that’s another matter. In this case I cannot provide your full Answer anyway, because there is an ambiguity in the record. It seems it is a trade secret kept by another Magician. Are you willing to make a deal?”
“I, uh—“ Dor said, not overwhelmed, but verging on it. Future history? Kingship in the foreseeable future? His father’s mysterious talent? Another Magician?
“Very good. What you want is the Elixir of Restoration. What I want is historical information about a critically vague but important Wave of Xanth. The elixir is similar to the Healing Elixir that is common enough today, but is of a distinct variant formula adapted to zombies. Only the Zombie Master of the Fourth Wave knows the formula. If I enable you to interview him, will you render me a complete accounting of your adventures in that realm?”
“The—the Fourth Wave? But—“
“Then it’s agreed!” Humfrey said. “Sign your name to this release form, here, so I can tie my history text into the spell.” He shoved a quill into Dor’s flacid hand and a printed parchment under it, and Dor almost automatically signed. “So good to do business with a reasonable Magician. Ah, here are my socks at last. High time!” For the golem had reappeared, staggering under the huge burden.
Humfrey leaned forward and began squeezing his big feet into the socks. It was no wonder, Dor thought, that they got dirty so rapidly! The Magician wasn’t bothering to wash his feet before donning the socks.
“The problem with the Fourth Wave of human colonization of Xanth is that it occurred circa eight centuries ago. I trust you are familiar with Xanth history? The centaur pedagogue gave you the scoop? Good. So I don’t need to remind you how the people came in brutal Waves of conquest, killing and stealing and ravaging until they wasted it all, then had nothing better to do than settle down and watch their children turn magic, whereupon some new Wave of no-magic barbarians would invade and victimize them. So a Wave could be several generations in duration. The boldest of these, for reasons we won’t go into now, was the Fourth Wave. The greatest of the ancient Magicians lived then: King Roogna, who built Castle Roogna; his archenemy and dinner companion, Magician Murphy; and the Zombie Master, whom you will interview. Plus lesser talents like the neo-Sorceress Vadne. How you will elicit the formula from the Zombie Master I don’t know; he was something of a recluse, not sociable the way I am.”
Grundy snorted derisively.
“Thank you,” Humfrey said. He seemed to thrive on insult. “Sit down, Dor—right there will do.” Dor, too disoriented to protest, sat down on the decorated carpet he had been standing on, Grundy beside him. The texture of it was luxuriant; he was comfortable.
“But the main problem is the time frame. The Zombie Master cannot come to you, so you must go to him. The only presently feasible way to do that is via the tapestry.”
“The tapestry?” Dor asked, surprised by this familiar item. “The Castle Roogna tapestry?”
“The same. I shall give you a spell to enable you to enter it. You will not do so physically, of course; your body is much too big to be in scale. The spell will accommodate a reasonably close match, but you are hundreds of times too massive. So you will animate the body of one of the players already depicted there. We shall have to make an arrangement for your present body—ah, I know! The Brain Coral! I owe it a favor, or it owes me one—no difference. The Coral has always wanted to taste mortality. It can animate your body during your absence, so no one will know. The golem will have to help cover for you, of course.”
“I’ve been doing that all along,” Grundy said complacently.
“Now the carpet will take you to the Coral, then to the tapestry. Don’t worry; I have preprogrammed it. Here, better take something to eat along the way. Gorgon!”
The gorgon hurried in with three vials. “You didn’t wash your feet!” she cried to the Magician, appalled.
Humfrey took a white vial from her hand, “I had her fix this earlier, so if it turns your stomach to stone, blame her, not me.” He almost chuckled as he handed the stoppered container to Dor. “Grundy, you better hang on to the spell. Remember, it’s in two parts: the yellow puts him into the tapestry, the green puts the Coral into his body. Don’t confuse them!” He gave the golem two tiny colored packets. “Or is it the other way around? Well, on with you. I don’t have all day,” He clapped his hands together with a sharp report— and the carpet on which Dor sat took off.
Too surprised to protest, Dor grabbed for the edges and hung on. “You don’t have clean feet either,” he heard the gorgon saying indignantly to Humfrey as the carpet looped the room, getting its bearings. “But I brought two dry-cleaning spells, one for each foot, so—“
Dor missed the rest. The carpet sailed out of the room, through several other chambers, banked around a corner, angled up an interminably coiling stair, and shot out of a high turret window whose sides almost scraped skin off Dor’s tight knuckles. Suddenly the ground was far below, and getting farther; already the Magician’s castle seemed small.
“Hey—I think I’m scared of heights!” Dor cried, his vision recoiling.
“Nonsense,” Grundy retorted. “You made it up here okay, didn’t you? What are you going to do, jump?”
“Noooo!” Dor cried, horrified. “But I might quietly fall.”
“What you need is a good meal to settle your stomach during the boring flight,” Grundy said. “Let’s just get this white bottle open—”
“I’m not hungry! I think I’m heightsick!”
The golem hauled at the cork, and it popped out. Fine smoke issued, swirled, and coalesced into two fine sandwiches, a brimming glass of milk, and a sprig of parsley. Dor had to grab at everything before the wind whipped it away.
“We’re really traveling in style!” Grundy said, crunching his little teeth on the parsley. “Drink your milk, Dor.”
“You sound just like Millie.” But Dor gulped his milk. It was very good, obviously fresh from the pod, and the milkweed must have been grown in chocolate soil.
“I hear that in Mundania they squeeze milk out of animals,” Grundy observed. That made Dor’s stomach do another roil. They really were barbarians in Mundania.
Then he started in on a sandwich, as he had either to eat it or continue holding it, and he wanted his hands free to clutch the carpet again. It was a door-jam and turnip sandwich, his favorite; obviously the Good Magician had researched his tastes and prepared for this occasion before Dor ever arrived at the castle. The second one was a red potato soup sandwich, somewhat squishy but with excellent taste. The gorgon had a very nice touch.
Dor thought about the anomaly of so formidable a creature as the gorgon reduced to being a common maid at the Magician’s castle while she waited to learn whether Humfrey would marry her. Yet wasn’t this the lot of the average woman? Maybe the Magician was merely showing her what she could expect if she married. That could be more important than his actual Answer. Or was that part of the Answer? The Good Magician had his peculiarities, but also a devious comprehension of the real situation. He had obviously known all about Dor himself, yet allowed him to struggle through the rigors of entry into the castle. Odd competence!
The carpet angled forward, causing Dor to suffer another spasm of vertigo. Yet his seat seemed secure. The material of the carpet seemed to hold him firmly yet comfortably, so that he did not slide off even when it tilted. Wonderful magic!
Now the carpet banked, circling for a landing— but it didn’t land. It plunged at frightening speed directly toward a deep crevasse in the ground. “Where are we going?” Dor cried, alarmed.
“Into the teeth of a tangler!” Grundy replied. “A big one!” He pointed ahead, and for once he seemed less than cocksure.
“Right!” the rug agreed, still accelerating.
It was indeed a big tangle tree—one not even an ogre could cow. Its massive trunk grew from the base of the chasm, while its upper tentacles overlapped the rim. What a menace that must be to travelers seeking to cross the cleft!
The carpet banked again, accelerated again, and buzzed the crest of the tree. The tentacles reached up hungrily. “Has this rug gone crazy?” Dor demanded. “Nobody tangles with a full-sized tangler!”
“Oh, a big sphinx might get away with it,” Grundy suggested. “Or the old invisible giant. Or a cockatrice.”
The carpet banked yet again, sending Dor’s hair flying to the side, and looped around for another nervy pass at the top of the tree. This time the tentacles were ready; they rose up in a green mass to intercept it. “Doom!” Grundy cried, covering his eyes. “Why did I ever turn real?”
But the carpet plunged directly below the tentacles, zooming right past the bared and scowling trunk of the tangler and into the ground at its base. Except that the ground opened into a small crevice transfixed by a root—and the carpet dropped into this hole.
Down, down—the horror of the heights had been abruptly replaced by the horror of the depths! Dor cowered, expecting to smash momentarily into a wall. But the carpet seemed to know its harrowing route; it never touched a wall.
There began to be a little light—a sustained glow from the walls. But this only showed how convoluted this region was. Chamber after chamber opened and closed, and passages branched at all angles. Yet the carpet sped unerringly along its programmed route, down into the very bowels of Xanth.
Bowels. Dor wished his thought hadn’t phrased it that way. He still felt nervously sick. This harebrained ride—
The carpet halted abruptly beside a somber subterranean lake. In this faint illumination the water itself assumed a glow, revealing murky depths suggestive of mind-boggling secrets. The carpet settled to the cavern floor and became limp. “This must be our station,” Grundy observed.
“But there’s nothing here!” Nothing living, he meant.
I am here, something thought in his mind. I am the Brain Coral—here beyond your sight beneath the lake. You bear the stigma of the Good Magician and are accompanied by his golem. Have you come to abate his debt to me?
“I am my own golem!” Grundy protested. “And I’m not a golem any more. I’m real!”
“He said it was your debt to him,” Dor answered the Brain Coral nervously. This was an uncomfortable place, and there was disquieting power in the mental voice, and an alien quality. This was a creature of Magician-class magic, but not at all human. “I think.”
Same thing, the voice thought. Perhaps it was the thought voicing. What is the offer?
“You—if you would care to animate my body while my spirit is away—I know it’s not much of a body, just a juvenile—“
Done! the Coral replied. Go work your spells; I will be there.
“Uh, thank you. I—“
Thank you. I have existed a thousand years, storing mortals in my preservative lake, without ever enjoying the sensations of mortality myself. Now at last I shall experience them, however fleetingly.
“Uh, yes, I guess. You do understand that I will want my body back, when—“
Naturally. Such spells are always self-limiting; there will be no more than a fortnight before it reverts. Time enough.
Self-limiting? Dor hadn’t known that. What a good thing the Good Magician had set it up. Had Dor tried to work such a spell by himself, he could have been stuck forever in the tapestry. The best spells were fail-safe.
The carpet took off without warning. “Farewell, Coral!” Dor cried, but there was no answer. Either the Brain Coral’s communications range was short, or it had ceased to pay attention. Or it objected to inane courtesies.
The return trip was similar to the descent, with its interminable convolutions, but now Dor felt more secure, and his stomach stayed pretty much in place. He had new confidence in the Good Magician’s planning and in the carpet’s competence. He hardly winced as they shot up out of the crack into the bosom of the tangle tree, though he did have a qualm as the tentacles convulsed. The carpet merely dodged the embrace, allowing the Tangier to catch nothing but the qualm, and zoomed along the base of the crevasse. When well clear of the tree, it rose smoothly out of the chasm and powered into the sky. The afternoon was blindingly bright, after the gloom of the caverns.
Now they flew north. Dor looked down, trying to spot the Magic Dust village, but all he saw was jungle, One area was dark, as if burned out, but no village. Then, all too soon, Castle Roogna hove in view. The carpet circled it once, getting its bearings as was its wont, then slanted down and into a window, through a hall, and into the tapestry room.
“Here’s the first spell,” Grundy said, lifting the yellow package.
“No, wait!” Dor cried, abruptly afraid of the magnitude of what he contemplated. He had supposed he would only have to search out some hidden spring in the contemporary world, and now faced a far more significant undertaking. To actually enter a picture— “I need time to uncramp my legs, to—“ To decide whether he was really up to this challenge. Maybe—
But Grundy had already torn open the wrapping. Yellow mist spread out, diffusing into the air, forming a little cloud.
“I don’t even know what body in the tapestry to—”
Then the expanding mist encompassed him. Dor felt himself swaying, falling without falling. For a moment he saw his body standing there stupidly, tousle-haired and slack-jawed. Then the great tapestry was coming at him, expanding hugely. There was a bug on it, then this too fuzzed out. He glimpsed a section of woven jungle, with a muscular young man standing with a huge sword, at bay against—