They arrived at Castle Roogna without further significant event, in the afternoon. The King was highly gratified by their tidings. “So you persuaded the Zombie Master! How did you do that?”
“Actually, Millie did it,” Dor said, remembering the possible limitations of his own actions. “She is marrying the Zombie Master.”
“That must have been some effort you people put forth!”
“It was.” Better to omit the details.
“How soon will the zombies arrive?”
“It should be within a day of us, if nothing goes wrong.” Then Dor put his hand to his mouth. “But we marked the route so that nothing can go wrong!”
“Let’s hope so,” the King said dryly. “We had better establish regular communication. That will be a problem, because the goblin forces control the ground and the harpy forces control the air. I did not summon my troops home because their passage through monster-controlled territory would have been unconscionably hazardous. So I have no military couriers. Let me see.” He pondered briefly, while Dor suffered a bad qualm: no troops to defend Castle Roogna! “Too bad there’s not a river flowing between us. We’ll have to use the ground.”
“The dragon-horse!” Dor exclaimed.
“No, I let my dragons go, too, to defend their own homesites, which are more vulnerable than this tall Castle. Let’s see what sort of fish we have.”
“Fish?” Dor asked blankly. “But they can’t—“
The King led the way to the royal fishpond, while Dor’s prior qualm grew into a full-fledged funk. No troops, no dragons—and now the King planned to depend on fish?
King Roogna netted a bright goldfish. “Let me see,” he said, concentrating.
The fish turned blue; ice formed on the water. “Oops—I made it into a coldfish,” Roogna said. “That’s no help.” He concentrated again. The fish became a fiery red, and the water boiled with the thrashing of the creature’s tail. “No, that’s a boldfish. I am having a difficult time!”
Dor merely watched. The King was performing significant magic, his misses more potent than any lesser person’s wildest successes.
The King concentrated again. The fish turned brown, its skin wormlike. “Ah! There’s my groundfish!” he exclaimed, satisfied. He scribbled a note, wadded it into a ball, and inserted it in the fish’s mouth. He spoke to it: “Go check on the zombie army and report back here with the Zombie Master’s reply.”
The fish nodded, then swam through the net and into the wall of the pond, disappearing. “Now let’s see what else offers,” the King said. He moved to the Royal Aviary and netted a bird shaped like a ball. Its wings were so stubby it could hardly fly, and its beak and claws projected only marginally. “This round dove really isn’t much use in this form.” He concentrated.
Suddenly a great ugly strap appeared, constricting the dove’s body. “No, no!” the King said, annoyed. “Must Murphy’s law foul me up even on minor details? Not a bound dove. I want a ground dove!” And the bird turned the color of the groundfish. “There! Now you wait here until I have a message to send; then you fly through the ground and deliver it.”
He returned his attention to Dor. “You are a comparative stranger to me, Magician, yet I have faith in you, and in your friend Jumper. I am extremely short of personnel at the moment. Will you accept a position in my service?”
Dor was taken aback. “Your Majesty, I am only visiting here. Soon, very soon, I must go home.”
The King smiled grimly. “I would offer you transportation, as I did before. But I am short of that, too, and the goblins have closed in about the Castle. Your only egress is toward the castle of the Zombie Master, and even that is uncertain now. I would prefer that you weather the siege here at Castle Roogna, even if you choose not to participate.”
“Another siege. I was just in one!”
“This one will be worse, I assure you. We have greater resources than the Zombie Master did, but the situation is more complicated. I would rather oppose Mundanes than goblins and harpies.”
The Dragon King had suggested the same thing. Worse than what they had gone through at the Zombie Master’s castle? Dor still could not believe that. He had fought goblins and harpies and found them revolting but not that devastating. And the enemy forces were not actually attacking Castle Roogna; they just happened to be staging their own private war here. Still, it would be pointless to try to travel through the midst of those hordes. “Well, I have a few days yet. Might as well be of what help I can.”
“Excellent! I shall put you in charge of the north ramparts. You will have to keep strong rein on the centaurs there, but they’ll mind you if they respect you. They must be kept working on the wall as long as possible; every stone laid in place augments our security.”
“Oh, I’m not a leader!” Dor protested. “I’m only—“
“My roadrunners kept me informed of your progress, before enemy forces closed hi. It is true that you are not yet an experienced leader, but you seem to have good potential. You responded excellently during the Mundane attack on the Zombie Master’s castle.”
“Your spies saw that? I thought you had no knowledge of what happened there!”
The King laughed. “It is wise for a King to have greater information than he allows others to be aware of. My spies could not approach near the battle itself. But there were reports of a man answering your description making a deal with monsters, and something about green sashes, and of course the message I received from the Dragon King. I inferred that you knew what you were doing. I really do not have firsthand information, however—which is why I was eager to have your report.”
But the King had pretty good secondhand information! King Roogna resembled King Trent in certain fundamental ways. Perhaps all kings had an inherent similarity. There was something about them. Perhaps it was a special aspect of maturity.
“One day you will understand, Dor,” Roogna said. “It is evident that your land is grooming you for the office, and in this way I can to a certain extent repay you for your services to me. You should make a creditable king, with proper experience.”
Dor doubted that, but didn’t argue. He didn’t follow how doing another service for King Roogna constituted Roogna’s repayment to him for a prior service. If this were adult logic, he certainly fell short of it.
The groundfish poked its head out of the ground at their feet. The King reached down to take the wadded paper from its mouth. “Thank you, courier,” he said. “You may return to your pond for some refreshment now.” He spread out the paper, frowning. “This is from the Zombie Master himself. Your marked path is good, but they are now surrounded by goblins and cannot proceed.”
“How far are they?”
“Just beyond the antenna grove.”
An image of himself fighting his dearest friend came to him. What a horror! “If any goblins bother the center of that grove—“
“They are too canny for that. They are waiting for the zombies to clear the grove, before taking any action.”
“Why do the goblins care about the zombies? It’s the harpies they’re fighting, isn’t it?”
“An excellent point. The zombies should be able to march on unmolested. Unless something is wrong.”
“And obviously something is wrong,” Dor said. “I’m beginning to get annoyed at Magician Murphy.”
“I have been wrestling with this sort of thing since our contest began. Do you suppose I normally require several efforts to adapt magic to my specific purpose? Yet it is a good exercise in discipline.”
“Yes,” Dor agreed. “After this, I will be much more careful about everything I do, because I know things don’t have to go right just by themselves.”
The King looked east, though the problem was too far away to see. “Quite likely the antenna forest is annoyed by the presence of so many troops, so has put the notion into the goblins’ minds that zombies are enemies.”
“But if the goblins have stayed out of that forest—“
“Their army has. But their advance scouts would naturally poke into everything, exactly as you did. If a scout brought back news of an enemy force—“
“We’ll have to rescue them!” Dor cried.
“We really lack the personnel,” the King said regretfully. “All we have are the centaurs, who must remain at work on the wall. That is in fact why we need the zombie help. It is uncertain that we have enough force to protect the unfinished Castle, and we dare not deplete our resources further.”
“But the zombies are coming to help you! Without them you may lose anyway!”
“Yes. It is a problem whose solution I have not yet fathomed. Murphy’s curse is taking hold very powerfully, blocking all my efforts.”
“Well, I didn’t go to all this trouble only to get the Zombie Master and Millie captured by goblins!” Dor said hotly. “I’ll go out myself and bring them in.”
“I would prefer that you not risk yourself,” Roogna said, frowning. “It is not that I am insensitive to their fate; it is that I am sensitive to the fate of the greater number. We can help them best from Castle Roogna— if we can help them at all.”
Dor started a hot retort—then remembered how Jumper had controlled his reactions in the antenna forest, and saved the situation. Logic had to prevail, not emotion! “How can we do this?”
“If it were possible to bring a squadron of harpies to that vicinity—“
“Yes!” Dor cried. “Then they’ll fight the goblins, and neither side will have a chance to worry about zombies. But how can we do this? The harpies will hardly honor any request we might make.”
“The problem, as I see it, is the lure. We need to attract them to the region, without sacrificing any of our own personnel.”
“No problem at all!” Dor said excitedly. “Do you have a catapult?”
“I do. However, harpies will not pursue flying rocks.”
“They just might—after I’ve spelled those rocks. Let me talk to the ammunition.”
“There is a unit on the north wall. Where I had thought to place you anyway.”
“What, is something going right?” Dor asked, smiling.
“This is a complexly developing situation. Murphy cannot cover every detail of every contingency. His talent, like mine, is being stretched to its utmost. We shall soon know who is ultimately the more powerful Magician.”
“Yes, I guess so. And we have several Magicians on our side.”
“However, a single bad foul-up could foil all our efforts. In that sense, Murphy can match any number of Magicians.”
“I’d better get to that catapult. Do we have the location of the harpy forces?”
“The centaurs are conversant. They have no love for harpies or for goblins, and their senses are keen.” The King turned. “I will send a message to the Zombie Master, asking him to move forward as soon as the harpies appear.”
Dor hurried to the north wall. Incomplete as it was, it was still far more substantial than the walls of the Zombie Master’s castle. It was hard to imagine little goblins successfully storming such a massive rampart, especially when they were actually fighting harpies. Narrow stairs led around and up through the interior of the wall, until they debouched on the level upper ramp.
The centaurs were nervously pacing the rampart. They were neither the scholars of Dor’s day nor the warriors of another day; they were comparatively simple workers not well equipped for war. Each carried a bow and quiver of arrows, however; centaurs always had been fine archers.
The crew was supposed to be engaged in construction, but the big stone blocks lay where they had been hauled, unplaced, while the centaurs looked out over the terrain.
“The King has put me in charge of this wall,” Dor announced, attracting their attention. “We have three things to do. First, we must complete the construction of this wall as far as we can before the fighting starts. Second, we must defend it when the monsters arrive. And third, we have a special mission. I am going to put a spell on the shot for this catapult, and—”
“Who are you?” a centaur demanded. It was the first one Dor had met—the one who had refused to tell him where King Roogna was, and who had incited the other centaurs against Jumper. What a foul break, to have to work with this particular creature and crew! Foul break? It was a Murphy break! That curse was getting stronger, not weaker, as the end approached. The supposedly good break of having the catapult right where Dor had been assigned anyway was no good break at all. This was his worst possible location.
But he had to fight that curse. After all, he was a Magician too, and if that meant anything—
“Centaur, I am the Magician Dor,” he said coldly. “You will address me with the respect my status requires.”
“The bug lover!” the centaur exclaimed. He put his hands on his front hips. He was a large, muscular brute, taller than Dor’s body. Dor was sure that his body’s facility with the sword would give him a physical advantage over this creature, but he hardly wanted this to degenerate to a common brawl.
Now that the centaur had called his bluff, defying him, what was Dor to do next? This was no occasion for nicety of expression, and there was no time to win the centaur’s confidence or respect slowly. Dor had to get to the heart of the matter in minutes. So—he would have to use his talent. “Come aside with me, centaur,” he said. “What I have to say to you is private.”
“Aside with you, bug lover?” the creature demanded incredulously. He strode forward and made as if to swing his fist—and Dor’s sword pointed at his throat. Dor’s body had done it after all, acting before thought. But in this case it was an appropriate response.
The centaur blinked. He had been impressively countered. That gleaming blade could have pierced his arteries before he drew back—and could still do so. He decided to accede to the private talk, at least until he could get his hooves into fighting position.
Dor sheathed his sword abruptly and turned his back, as if completely unconcerned about any action the centaur might take. And of course if the centaur struck now, it would be an act of cowardice in full view of his crew. He followed Dor to a separate place on the wall, where the catapult stood behind a battlement.
Dor turned and looked at the centaur’s work harness. “What is his name?” he asked it.
“Cedric Centaur,” the harness replied. The centaur jumped, startled but unspeaking.
“What is his real problem?” Dor asked.
“He’s impotent,” the harness responded.
“Hey, you can’t—“ Cedric started. But it was too late for him to conceal his secret.
This was a thing Dor did not properly understand —and he needed to in this case. “What is impotent?”
“He is.”
“I mean, what does impotent mean?”
“Impotence.”
“What?”
“You should have said ‘What is impotence?’” the harness said.
“Never mind!” the centaur exclaimed, agitated. “I’ll work the catapult!”
“I’m not trying to tease you,” Dor told him. “I’m trying to solve your problem.”
“Ha!” the harness said derisively.
“No smart remarks from you!” Dor snapped at it. “Just explain what is impotence.”
“This stallion can’t stallion. Every time he tries to—‘”
“Enough!” Cedric cried. “I told you I’d work the catapult, or any other chore! And I won’t call you bug lover any more! What more do you demand?”
Dor was getting a notion of the problem. It was similar to what his body felt when he stopped it from responding to Millie or to an inviting nymph. “I’m not demanding anything. I’m just—“
“Put him with a filly, he’s a gelding,” the harness quipped. “You never saw anything so—“
Cedric put his hands to the harness and ripped it off by brute strength, his face purple-red.
“That will do,” Dor said. “I just want to have harmony among us. I won’t tell anyone else about this.” He addressed the broken harness. “You may be broken, but you can still talk.”
“Oh, I’m hurting!” the harness groaned.
“Now you understand how Cedric feels. It is not nice to make fun of anyone’s incapacities.” Dor was thinking of the way the bigger boys had made fun of him, back in his own time.
“It sure isn’t!” the centaur agreed.
“What is responsible for Cedric’s Impotence?”
“A spell, of course,” the harness said, chastened.
Now the centaur was startled. “A spell?”
“What spell?” Dor asked.
“An impotence spell, dummy!”
“Don’t you talk to the Magician like that!” the centaur exclaimed, giving his harness a shake. “I mean, how does it operate?”
“It reverses the normal urges at the critical moment, so—“
“So the stronger the urge, the stronger the hang-up,” Dor said, remembering his experience in the antenna forest. That was a mean sort of spell!
“So when he gets close to his sexy dapplegray filly, he—“
“I’m going to burn this harness!” Cedric cried. But he did not seem wholly displeased. He must have believed his condition was a fault of his own, and the discovery that an external spell caused it was good news.
“How may that spell be abolished?” Dor asked.
“I wouldn’t know that,” the harness said. “After all, I’m only an item of apparel. I only know what I have observed.”
“Then how do you know about this spell?”
“This oaf was asleep when the spell was cast, but I wasn’t. I never sleep.”
“How can you sleep when you’re not alive?” Cedric demanded, some of his natural belligerence returning.
“Who cast that spell?”
But the harness did not answer him. “Was it my rival Fancyface? I’ll boot his tail through his snout!”
“Who cast it?” Dor asked.
“Celeste did it,” the harness replied smugly.
“That’s my filly!” Cedric cried. “Why would she—“ He paused, his unhandsome face working. “Why that little bitch of an equine! No wonder she was so understanding! No wonder she always made such a point of being true to me! She knew why I couldn’t—“
“I’m sorry I can’t discover the cure,” Dor said.
“Don’t bother about that, Magician!” Cedric said. “Centaurs don’t work magic; she had to have gotten the spell from some human witch. All I need to do is go to a shyster warlock and buy a counterspell. But I won’t tell Celeste—“ He smiled with grim lust. “Oh, no, I won’t tell her! I’ll just let her lead me on as usual, teasing me, and I’ll fake it until—oh, is she going to get a surprise!”
They returned to the crew. “How’s the bug lover doing?” one of the other centaurs called, neighing.
Cedric turned to fix the other with a steely stare. “I’m doing just great,” he said. “So is the Magician. We’re going to help him all we can, and do just exactly what he says, aren’t we.” It was not a question.
Dor affected not to notice the chagrin of the other centaurs. They had been brought in line, without doubt! “Where is there a harpy flight, within catapult range?” he asked.
A centaur at the parapet cocked his head. “That way,” he said, pointing north.
“That way, sir!” Cedric corrected him, delivering a swift cuff on the flank. “You address the Magician with proper respect.”
“Uh, just call me Dor,” Dor said. He had made an issue of respect, but now was disinclined.
“They’re coming in from the Gap, Sir Dor,” the parapet centaur said.
“Can you drop a shot to the southwest of them?”
“I can drop a shot down the leader’s beakface, Dor!” Cedric said. “Right in her craw.”
“Well, I really want it to their southwest.”
Cedric shrugged “Colt’s play.” The centaurs gathered about the catapult, cranking it back and fastening its boom and lifting a hefty rock into its sling. They oriented the device toward the northeast and adjusted the elevation.
“Now repeat after me, until you strike ground,” Dor said to the stone. “Harpies are birdbrained stinkers!”
“Harpies are birdbrained stinkers!” the rock repeated gleefully.
“Fire,” Dor said.
Cedric fired. The arm of the catapult sprang up. The missile arced over the forest, and the rock cried out: “Harpies are birrr—“ and was lost to Dor’s hearing.
“Now we want to lob the next one southeast of that,” Dor said. “Until we have a chain of them leading the harpies to our due east, near the antenna forest.”
“I understand, Magician,” Cedric said. “Then what?”
“Then they’ll encounter the goblin band in that region.”
The centaur smiled. “I hope they wipe each other out!”
Dor hoped so too. If there were too few harpies, the goblins would still block the zombies’ route; but if there were too many harpies, they would block the zombies’ route. And the ploy might be too late. Already reports were coming in of tremendous goblin armies advancing from the south, and the harpy flights from the north were swelling voluminously. Castle Roogna was still the focus of the war, thanks to the continuing and dire power of Murphy’s curse.
“Magician,” a dulcet voice said behind Dor. He turned to find a mature woman standing on the ramparts. “I am neo-Sorceress Vadne, come to assist the defense of this wall. How may I be of service?”
“Neo-Sorceress?” Dor asked with undiplomatic blankness. He remembered Murphy saying something about a Sorceress who was helping the King, but the details had fogged out.
“My talent is judged to be shy of Sorceress level,” she said, her mouth quirking.
“What is your talent?” Dor realized he was being too direct, but he simply had not yet mastered the social graces of adults.
“Topology.”
“What?”
“Topology. Shape-changing.”
“You can change your shape? Like a werewolf?”
“Not my own shape,” she said. “Other shapes.”
“Like making rocks into pancakes?”
“No, my talent is limited to animate shapes. And I can’t change their natures.”
“I don’t understand. If you changed a man into a wolf—“
“He would look like a wolf in outline, but would still be a man. No heavy fur, no keen wolf nose. Topology is not true transformation.”
Dor thought of King Trent, who could change a man into a wolf—a wolf who could do everything a real wolf could, and who would produce wolf offspring. That was a superior talent, much greater than this mere shape-changing. “I guess you’re right. You’re not a Sorceress.” For some reason he didn’t know, there were no female Magicians, only Sorceresses. “Still, it sounds like good magic.”
“Thank you,” she said distantly.
“We won’t know how you can help here until we see what side attacks, if either side does. The goblins will have to scale the wall, so we can push off their ladders as they hook them over, but the harpies will fly in. Can you top—topol—can you perform at a distance?”
“No. Only by touch,” she said.
“That’s not much help.” He pondered, oblivious to her grimace. “Maybe you better stand at the rim and change goblins into the shape of rocks as they come over the top.”
“We can use them for catapult shot!” Cedric exclaimed.
“Good idea!” Dor agreed. “Now I’ll make the stone of the ramparts talk, to distract enemies, so don’t any of you be fooled. The object is to make the enemy creatures attack the wrong things, breaking their weapons or their heads and giving you time to handle them. Of course we hope they won’t try to storm this castle, since they really have no reason to, but you know Murphy’s curse. If the goblins and harpies leave us alone, we’ll leave them alone. Meanwhile, you centaurs get as many blocks placed on the wall as possible; a single one could make the difference.”
The centaurs went to work with a will. Stones were emplaced and mortared rapidly. This was a good work crew, when it wanted to be.
In due course, the King summoned Dor and Vadne to a staff meeting. Jumper was there too; he had been given charge of the east-wall defense. Magician Murphy was also present, to Dor’s surprise.
“The goblins have sent an envoy,” King Roogna said. “I thought all of you should be present for this meeting.” As he spoke, a typically gnarled goblin entered. He wore short black pants, a small black shirt, and enormous shoes. He had the usual goblin scowl.
“We require your castle for a camping base,” the goblin said, showing his discolored and jagged teeth. “We give you one measly hour to clear out.”
“I appreciate your courtesy,” King Roogna said. “But this Castle is as yet incomplete. I doubt it would be of much use to you.”
“You deaf, or just stupid?” the goblin inquired. “I said clear out.”
“I regret we are not disposed to do that. However, there is some nice level ground to the east that you might use—“
“Useless against flying monsters. We need elevation, battlements, shelter—and great supplies of food. We come in one hour. If you are not gone, we shall eat you.” The goblin spun awkwardly about on his ponderous feet and departed.
“Now we have the envoy from the harpy forces,” the King said, half-concealing a quirky smile. The oldest and croniest of harpy hens flapped in.
“I saw that goblin!” she screeched. “You are consorting with the enemy. Your gizzards will bleed for this!”
“We declined to let the goblins use our premises,” King Roogna said.
“I should think so! We will use your premises!” she screeched. “We need roosting space, cells for captives, kitchens for raw meat!”
“I regret we cannot make our facilities available to you. We are not choosing sides.”
That was for sure, Dor thought. Both sides were repulsive.
“We’ll claw you into quivering chunks!” she screeched. “Making deals with goblins! Treason! Treason! Treason!” She flapped out.
“So much for the amenities,” King Roogna said. “Are the ramparts ready?”
“As ready as possible,” Jumper chittered. “The situation is not ideal.”
“Agreed.” The King frowned. “The rest of you may not appreciate the full gravity of the situation. Goblins and harpies are very difficult creatures to deal with. They are more numerous than humans, and have massed themselves, while our kind is dispersed all across the Land of Xanth. We cannot reasonably expect to withstand siege by their forces without the aid of the zombies, and even then it will be difficult. The Zombie Master has been delayed—“ He glanced at Magician Murphy. “But is on the move again.” He glanced at Dor. “The question is, will he arrive in time?”
“An excellent question,” Murphy said. “Shall we agree that if the Zombie Master fails to arrive before the battle commences—?”
The King glanced at the others questioningly.
Dor visualized the battlements. The goblins would have to scale some thirty feet of wall buttressed by the square corner towers and round midwall towers, after fording the deep moat. He couldn’t see how they could be a serious immediate threat. The harpies normally struck by picking people up and carrying them away. The centaurs were too heavy to be handled that way. Why, then, was the King so grave? Even unfinished, Castle Roogna should be proof against these threats. A long siege seemed unlikely, because the besiegers would be killing each other off, and running out of food.
“What happens if the zombies don’t arrive before the battle starts?” Dor asked.
“It would be a shame to have damage done to this fine edifice, perhaps loss of human life,” Murphy explained. “It is only sensible to abate the curse before the situation gets untoward.”
“You mean you can call off the whole goblin-harpy battle, this whole siege, just like that?”
“Not just like that. But I can abate it, yes.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Dor said. “Those armies are already well on their way. They aren’t just going to turn around and go home just because you—“
“The King’s talent is shaping magic to his own ends. Mine is shaping circumstance to interfere with others’ designs. Alternate faces of similar coins. All we have to determine is whose talent shall prevail. Destruction and bloodshed are no necessary part of it. In fact I deplore and abhor—“
“There has already been bloodshed!” Dor exclaimed angrily. “What kind of macabre game is this?”
“A game of power politics,” Murphy responded, unperturbed.
“A game where my friend was tortured by Mundanes, and it’s life threatened, and the two of us were pitted against each other,” Dor said, his anger bursting loose. “And Millie must marry the Zombie Master to—“ He cut himself off, chagrined.
“So you have an interest in the maid,” Vadne murmured. “And had to give her up.”
“That’s not the point!” But Dor knew his face was red.
“Shall we be fair?” Murphy inquired meaningfully. “Your problem with the maid is not of my making.”
“No, it isn’t,” Dor admitted grudgingly. “I—I apologize, Magician.” Adults were able to apologize with grace. “But the rest—“
“I regret these things as much as you do,” Murphy said smoothly. “This contest with the Castle was intended to be a relatively harmless mode of establishing our rights. I would be happy to remove the curse and let the monsters drift as they may. All this requires is the King’s acquiescence.”
King Roogna was silent.
“If I may inquire,” Jumper chittered, Dor’s web translating for all to hear. “What would be the long-range consequence of victory by Magician Murphy?”
“A return to chaos,” Vadne replied. “Monsters preying on men with impunity, men knowing no law but sword and sorcery, breakdown of communications, loss of knowledge, vulnerability to Mundane invasions, decrease of the importance of the role of the human species in Xanth.”
“Is this desirable?” Jumper persisted.
“It is the natural state,” Murphy said. “The fittest will survive.”
“The monsters will survive!” Dor cried. “There will be seven or eight more Mundane Waves of conquest, each with awful bloodshed. The wilderness will become so dense and horrible that only spelled paths are safe for people to travel. Wiggles will ravage the land. There will be fewer true men in my day than there are in yours—“ Oops. He had done it again.
“Magician, exactly where are you from?” Vadne demanded.
“Oh, you might as well know! Murphy knows.”
“And did not tell,” Murphy said.
“Murphy has honor, once you understand his ways,” Vadne said, glancing at the Magician obliquely. “I once sued for his hand, but he preferred chaos to an organized household. So I am without a Magician to marry.”
“You sought to marry above your station,” Murphy told her.
Vadne showed her teeth in a strange crossbreed of snarl and smile. “By your definition, Magician!” Then she returned to Dor. “But I let my passion override me. Where did you say you were from, Magician?”
Dor suddenly understood her interest in him—and was glad he could prove himself ineligible. It would be as easy to deal with Helen Harpy as with this woman, and for similar reason. Vadne was no soft and sweet maid like Millie; she was a driven woman on the prowl for a marriage that would complete the status she craved. “I am from eight hundred years hence. So is Jumper.”
“From the future!” King Roogna exclaimed. He had stayed out of the dialogue as much as possible, giving free rein to the expression of the others, but this forced his participation. “Exiled by a rival Magician?”
“No, there is no other Magician in my generation. I am on a quest. I—I think I’m going to be King, eventually, as you surmised before. The present King wants me to have experience.” Obviously King Roogna had not discussed Dor’s situation with anyone else, letting Dor present himself in his own way. More and more, Dor was coming to appreciate the nuances of adult discretion. It was as significant as much in what it did not do as in what it did do. “I’m only twelve years old, and—“
“Ah—you are in a borrowed body.”
“Yes. It was the best way for me to visit here, using this Mundane body. Another creature animates my own body, back home, taking care of it during my absence. But I’m not sure that what I do here has any permanence, so I don’t want to interfere too much.”
“So you know the outcome of the Roogna-Murphy wager,” the King said.
“No. I thought I did, but now I see I don’t. Castle Roogna is complete in my day—but it stood deserted and forgotten for centuries. Some other King could have completed it. And there have been all those Waves I mentioned, and all the bad things, and the decline of the influence of Man in Xanth. So Murphy could have won.”
“Or I could have won, and held off the onset of chaos for a few more decades,” Roogna said.
“Yes. From my vantage, eight hundred years away, I just can’t tell whether the chaos started in this year or fifty years from now. And there are other things that don’t match, like the absence of goblins on the surface in my day, and the relative scarcity of harpies—I just don’t know how they all fit in.”
“Well, what will be, will be,” Roogna said. “I suppose from that vantage of history, what we do here has little significance. I had hoped to set up a dynasty of order, to keep Xanth wholesome for centuries, but that does not seem fated to be. It is a foolish vanity, to believe that a man’s influence can extend much beyond his own time, and I shall be well rid of it. Still, I hope to do what good I can within this century, and to leave Castle Roogna as a monument to my hope for a better Xanth.” He looked around at the others, “We should make our decision according to our principles.”
“Then we should fight to preserve order—for as long as it can be preserved!” Dor said. “For a decade, for a year, or for a month—whatever we can do is good.”
Murphy spread his hands. “We shall in due course discover whether even a month is feasible.”
“I believe the consensus is clear,” King Roogna said. “We shall defend the Castle. And hope the Zombie Master gets here in time.”
They returned to their stations. Almost immediately the trouble arrived. From the south the dusky banners of the great goblin army came, marching in a gathering tread that shook the Castle foundations. Dor stood atop the northeast corner tower and looked over the ramparts to spy it in the distance. Drums beat, horns tooted, keeping the cadence. Like a monstrous black carpet the army spread across the field beyond the Castle. Light sparkled from the points of the goblins’ small weapons, and a low half-melody carried under the clamor, like muted thunder: the goblins were chanting, “One two three four, Kill two three four, One two three four, Kill two three four,” on and on endlessly. There was not much imagination to it, but plenty of feeling, and the effect expanded cumulatively, hammering into the mind.
They had allies, too. Dor spied contingents of gnomes, trolls, elves, dwarves, ghouls, and gremlins, each with its own standard and chant. Slowly a gnarly tapestry formed, a patchwork of contingents, the elves in green, dwarves in brown, gnomes red, trolls black, marching, marching. There seemed to be so many creatures they could bury the Castle under the sheer mass of their bodies, stretching the grisly fabric of their formation across the ramparts. Yet of course they could not; mere numbers could not scale a vertical wall.
Then from the north flew the harpies and their winged minions, casting a deep shadow across land and Castle, blotting out the sun. There were contingents of ravens and vampires and winged lizards and other creatures Dor didn’t recognize, in their mass resembling gross storm clouds darkening the sky in segments, the light permitted to penetrate at the perimeters only to delineate the boundaries. Thus the shadows traversed the ground in large squares, an ominous parallel advance.
The point of convergence, of course, was Castle Roogna. The two armies might indeed obliterate each other—but they would wreak havoc on the Castle in the process—if they ever got inside it. Suppose the battle took a long time? The inhabitants of the Castle could starve, waiting for it to end, even if the walls were never breached. And if the goblins had siege machinery or used the larger, trolls to batter the walls, while the harpies and vampires ravaged the upper reaches—
Now Dor was coming to appreciate how unpleasant this siege could get. The Mundanes had made only sporadic assaults against the castle of the Zombie Master, but the goblins and harpies were here in such great numbers that their attack would be unremitting. There would be inevitable attrition of the Castle defenders, until no further defense was possible, and the Castle was overrun. They had to have renewable defenders. That was the key role the Zombie Master played: as long as the battle continued, there would be raw material for new zombies, who would protect the ramparts from intrusion by living creatures.
As yet there was no sign of the zombies. Even if they appeared at this moment, there would not be time for them to shuffle to the Castle before the goblins closed in about it. The Zombie Master was too late. Had Dor’s ploy with the talking catapult stones failed? Or been insufficient? He should have had the King check on that with his ground-fish.
Magician Murphy walked by. He seemed to have complete freedom of the premises. “Tut. It really is too bad. Sensible people would spare themselves the awkwardness of the curse.”
Cedric Centaur glowered. “Were you not a Magician, I might call you an illegitimate snot-winged dung-fly.”
Dor kept quiet. The centaur had put it aptly enough. Dor spied a boomerang in the arms rack on the wall of the center brace-tower. “Are you magic?” he asked it.
“Naturally. I always return to the sender’s hand.”
Magician Murphy shook his head, shrugged, and departed. His curse seemed to operate independently of his presence; he had just been poking around.
“Well,” Dor said to the boomerang, “take a look and see if you can spy the zombie army.” He hurled the boomerang out over the landscape to the northeast. He was conscious of the anomaly of calling two hundred fifty creatures an army, when the harpies evidently had thousands and the goblins tens of thousands. But the zombies were renewable; they could become an army of thousands, in due course.
The boomerang spun far out, flashing in the dwindling patch of sun remaining before the harpy force, describing a tilting circle. Soon it smacked back into Dor’s hand.
“Many goblins,” it reported. “No zombies.”
Dor sighed. “We’ll just have to hold out until they come.” But he was pessimistic. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the magnitude of this confrontation. There were so many monsters! Once the goblins closed about the Castle, how could the zombies ever get through?
First things first. There were harpy forces to deal with. They were looming much faster, like an ugly storm, already about to break over the north wall. “Cease construction. Ready bows,” Dor ordered the feverishly laboring centaurs. They obeyed with alacrity. But immediately he saw that there were more flying monsters than there were arrows in all the centaurs’ quivers; this would be no good.
“Do not shoot,” he told them. “Let me speak first to any arrow that you fire.”
A squadron of vampires bore down on them, their huge leathery wings repulsive, their glistening fangs horrifying. “Repeat after me,” Dor told the first arrow Cedric had ready. “Neighbor, you couldn’t puncture a rotten tomato!”
The arrow repeated it. Objects really enjoyed simple insults. “Keep saying it,” Dor said, and nodded to the centaur to fire. “Over their heads,” he told Cedric. Cedric looked surprised, but didn’t argue. He raised his elevation and let the shaft go.
They watched as the arrow flew high. It missed the forward rank of vampires and sailed over their heads. Dor knew the other centaurs thought this was a wasted effort. Why fire an arrow intended to miss?
Suddenly there was a disturbance in the forward ranks. “Oh yeah?” a vampire cried—at least his shriek sounded very much like that—and spun in air to sink his long fangs into his neighbor’s wing tip. The victim reacted angrily, sinking his own fangs into the nearest other wing tip available, thus involving a third vampire. The formation was so tight that in a moment the whole configuration was messed up, with vampires fighting each other in an aerial free-for-all, milling about and paying little further attention to the castle or the goblins beyond it.
“That was a neat ploy, Magician,” Cedric said. Dor was glad he had taken the trouble to convert the surly creature, instead of fighting him. Jumper had shown him that. If there were any way to make friends with the goblins and harpies—
Could it be done, at this late date? Suppose the goblin females could be convinced to appreciate the best of the males, instead of the worst? And the harpies—if they had males of their own species again? All it would take was some sort of mass enchantment for the goblins, and the generation of at least one original harpy male from the union of a human with a vulture. There was a love spring north of the Gap—
And no way to get to it, now. Anyway, the thought was plausible, but it revolted him. What human and what vulture would volunteer to—? In any event, it would be too late to save the Castle for it took time for any creature to be conceived and birthed and grown. Years to produce a single male harpy, even if everything were in order. They needed something to abate this battle right now—and Dor knew that no matter what he tried, Murphy’s curse would foul it up, as it had the effort to parlay with the two sides. Castle Roogna would just have to weather the storm.
Now a horde of goblins charged from the east, surrounding the castle. The goblin army had advanced from the south, but spread out so far to east and west that they had been able to view the wings plainly from the corners of the north wall. At this stage it was closing in like water flowing around a rock in a stream. There was no longer any disciplined marching or measured tread or beat of drums; the army had reverted to its natural horde state. The goblin allies must be attacking the other walls; here in the north there were only pure goblins, and Dor feared they would be the most determined opponents.
The disorganized cloud of vampires was now impinging on the ramparts. Quickly Dor walked the battlement, addressing the projecting stones of the completed portions. “Repeat after me: Take that, fang-face! My arrows are trained on you! Here comes a fire arrow!” Soon he had a medley of such comments from the wall, calculated to faze the vampires as they came close. Dor hoped the vampires were too stupid to realize there were no archers there. This allowed him to concentrate his centaurs on the incomplete section of the wall, which still lacked its battlements.
The centaurs on the east wall threw cherry bombs to disrupt the onslaught. Bang! and a goblin flipped over and collapsed. Bang! and another went. But there were more goblins than cherry bombs available. Then Boom! as a pineapple blasted a crater, hurling bodies outward like straw dolls.
But the goblins did not even pause; they charged through the smoking hole, over the fresh corpses of their comrades, right up to the moat. The moat-monsters rose up to meet them, snatching goblins from the back and gulping them down whole. But still the goblins came, forging into the water.
“I didn’t know goblins could swim,” Dor remarked, surprised.
“They can’t,” Vadne said.
The goblins surrounded the moat-monsters, clawing, punching, and biting them. The monsters snapped quickly, gorging themselves. And while each could consume a dozen or so goblins, there were thousands crowding in. The monsters retreated to deeper water, but the goblins splashed after them, clinging like black ants, pinching like nickelpedes. Many were shaken loose as the moat-monsters thrashed, and these sank in the murky depths, while others came on over them.
“What point in that?” Dor asked incredulously. “Aren’t they going to try to build bridges or something? They’re dying pointlessly!”
“This whole war is pointless,” Vadne said. “Goblins aren’t builders, so they don’t have bridges.”
“They don’t seem to have ladders, either,” Dor remarked. “So they can’t scale the wall. This is completely crazy!”
On and on the goblins came, sinking and drowning in droves, until at last the moat itself filled with their bodies. The water overflowed the plain. Now there was a solid mass of flesh across which the horde poured. The moat-monsters had been stifled in that mass; there was no remaining sign of them. The goblins advanced to the base of the wall.
There was no great strategy in their approach; they simply continued scrambling over each other in their effort to mount the vertical rampart. Dor watched with morbid fascination. The goblin-sea tactic had filled in the moat and gotten the survivors across—but that could not carry them straight up the stone wall!
The goblins did not stop. The hordes behind kept shoving forward, refusing to recognize the nature of the barrier. As the first ones got trampled down, the next ones got higher against the wall. Then the third layer formed, and the forth. The wall here was not complete, yet there were some thirty feet from moat to top even at this lowest point; did the foolish creatures think they could surmount that by trampling the bodies of their comrades? It would take thirty layers of crushed goblins!
Amazingly, those layers formed. Each layer required a greater number of bodies, because it sloped farther back across the moat. But the creatures kept coming. Five layers, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,—already they were a third of the way up, building an earthwork of their own dead and dying.
Cedric stood beside Dor, looking down at this horror. “I never thought I’d feel sorry for goblins,” he said. “We’re not killing them, they’re killing themselves— just to get up over a wall of a castle they don’t need!”
“Maybe that’s the difference between men and goblins,” Dor said. “And centaurs.” But he wondered. The Mundanes, who were after all true men, had stormed the castle of the Zombie Master with as much determination and little reason as this, and the centaur crew had not shown any particular enlightenment prior to Dor’s private session with Cedric. When the fever of war got into a society...
Still the goblin tide rose. Now it was halfway up, and still progressing. It was no longer possible to tell where the moat had been; there was only a monstrous ramp of bodies slanting far out from the wall. The goblins charged in and up from their seemingly limitless supply, throwing their little lives away. There did not even seem to be any conscious self-sacrifice in this; it was plain lack of foresight, as they encountered the barrier and were ground down by those still shoving from behind. Those below chomped savagely on the feet of those above, before the increasing press of weight killed them. Maybe the goblin chiefs behind the lines knew what they were doing, but the ordinary troops were just obeying orders. Maybe there was a “charge forward” spell on them, overriding the selfish self-preservation goblins normally evinced.
With horror that mounted as the mass of goblins mounted, Dor watched. Against such a tide, what defense did they have! Arrows and cherry bombs were pointless; they would only facilitate the manufacture of bodies to use as support for the next layer. Now at last Dor understood why the King had been so concerned about this threat. Goblins were worse than Mundanes.
Meanwhile the harpy forces were regaining some semblance of order. Dor had prepared a number of arrows, and these had fooled the dull vampires for some time. The speaking battlements had helped considerably. But now the harpies themselves were massing for a charge. They had nearly human intelligence, and would hardly be fooled long by inanimate devices. They seemed to be progressing toward an assault timed for just about the moment the goblins would finally overflow the wall. Probably this was neither coincidence nor Murphy’s curse; the dirty birds merely wished to make certain that the goblins did not capture the Castle.
Dor and the centaurs would be jammed to death the same way the moat-monsters had been. The worst of it was, there did not seem to be anything they could do about it. The enemy forces were too numerous, too mindless.
“This is where I come in,” Vadne said, though she was tight about the mouth. “I can stop the goblins— I think.”
Dor hoped so. He glanced nervously around at what he could see of the other walls. They were higher, and had more explosive armament, so seemed to be in less difficulty. He wondered how Jumper was doing; he could not see the spider from here. Even the arachnid’s great facility with silk could hardly stop these myriad goblins.
The first goblin hand hooked over the rim of the battlement, or rather the place where the battlement had not yet been constructed. Vadne was ready. She touched the hand—and the goblin became a ball that rolled down the slope of piled bodies.
Another hand appeared. She balled the second goblin. Then a host of hands came, keeping her moving. The layers were piling up to either side of the low spot, now, so that she had to jump to one side and then to the other to catch them. Soon she would be overwhelmed. She could not hold the wall alone; no one could.
“Let the harpies come in,” Dor cried to the archers, who had been selectively shooting the leaders of any potential charge, delaying that aspect somewhat.
As the arrows stopped, the harpies and vampires swarmed in. The vampires were not bright, but they had caught on that they were being manipulated, and now were bloodthirsty. But the most obvious enemy was the goblin horde. The flying creatures fell upon the goblins, literally, and plunged fangs and claws into them. The goblins fought back viciously, jabbing fists into snouts and stubby fingers into eyes, and wringing necks. They seemed to have lost what weapons they had, in the course of the scramble upward, or maybe they just preferred to meet their enemies on the most basic level of animosity.
It was a respite of sorts for the Castle defenders— but now the bodies piled up even faster, higher and higher, mounding as tall as the rampart. Soon the goblins would be able to roll down into the castle, and Vadne’s magic would be largely ineffective. No sense getting buried in balls!
“Can you make them smaller—like grains of sand?” Dor yelled over the noise of battle.
“No. Their mass is the same, whatever shape I give them. I can’t stop the mounding.”
Too bad. King Trent could have stopped it, by changing them into gnats, so small they would never mound up over the wall. Or he would have changed a centaur into a salamander, and used it to set the bodies on fire, reducing them quickly to ashes. Vadne really was less than a Magician. Not that Dor was doing any better; he had helped hold them off for a while, but could not stop them now.
Then he had an inspiration. “Make them into blocks!” he cried.
She nodded. She got near the gap in the battlement, while Dor protected her flank with his sword. Suddenly the goblin blocks began appearing. These were much smaller than the big stone blocks used in the construction of the Castle, but larger than ordinary bricks. The centaurs shoved them into position on the wall, shaping it crudely higher. The goblin blocks were now holding back the tide of goblins!
“Now there’s what I call a good goblin,” Cedric exclaimed. “A blockhead!”
But even good blockheads weren’t enough. They tended to wiggle and sag, though Vadne made some with interlocking edges. They were not as dense as stone, or as hard, and squished down somewhat as the weight of other blocks went on top. As Vadne had suggested: a goblin in the shape of a block was still a goblin, not much good for anything.
Again Dor scavenged his brain for an answer. How could Castle Roogna be defended against this horrible mass of attackers? Even the corpses were enough to bury it!
A ground dove poked its head out of the floor. Dor took the message from its beak, while continuing to slash about with his sword, protecting Vadne’s back. HOW GOES IT? the paper inquired.
“Repeat after me, continuously until the King hears,” Dor told the paper. He could not afford to take his attention off the goblins and harpies long enough to write a note. “We can hold out only five minutes more. Situation desperate.” He put the repeating paper back in the dove’s beak and watched it swim, or rather fly, down out of sight through the stone. He didn’t like making such a bleak report, but had to be realistic. He and Vadne and the centaurs had done everything they could, but it was not enough. If this wall fell, the castle would fall. The attack was more than ever like a savage storm, with the tide of goblins on the surface and the clouds of harpies in the air, and now there was no way they could halt the sheer avalanche of creatures. Could even the zombies have abated this menace?
Yes, they could have, Dor decided. Because the Zombie Master would change the piled-up bodies to zombies, who would then hurl the live goblins and many of the dead ones back away from the ramparts. If only the Zombie Master were here!
In moments the King himself was at the wall. “Oh my goodness!” Roogna exclaimed. “I had no idea it was this bad! The two wings of the goblin horde must have converged here on the far side of their thrust, and doubled the pileup. On the other walls it is only halfway up. You should have summoned me before.”
“We were too busy fighting goblins,” Dor said. Then he shoved the King, moving him out of the way as a harpy divebombed him. She missed, cursing.
“Yes, this is definitely the region of greatest crisis,” the King said, as several goblin balls rolled across the wall and dropped off inside the Castle courtyard. He bent to peer at a goblin block, and it peered back, balefully cubic, “The highest tide, the lowest wall. You have done well.”
“Not well enough,” Dor said, skewering another diving harpy. “We are about to go down under their charge.” As if that was not obvious!
“I have some emergency enchantments in the arsenal,” Roogna said. “They are hazardous to health, so I have not wished to employ them, but I fear the occasion has arisen.” He ducked a vampire.
“Get them!” Dor cried, growing desperate at this delay. Why hadn’t the King told him there was more magic available? “Your Majesty!”
“Oh, I brought them with me, just in case.” The King brought out a vial of clear fluid. “This is concentrated digestive juice of stomach of dragon. It must be dispensed upwind of the target, downwind of the user. If any drifts—“ He shook his head dolefully. “Murphy’s curse could cost us one King. Seek cover, please.”
“Your Majesty!” Vadne protested. “You can’t risk yourself!”
“Of course I can,” the King reproved her. “This is my battle, for which all the rest of you are risking yourselves. If we lose it, I am lost anyway.” He wet a finger and held it to the wind. “Good; it is blowing west. I can clear the wall. But don’t get near until it clears.” He went to the northeast corner.
“But the curse will make the wind change!” Dor protested.
“The curse is stretched to its limit,” the King said. “This magic will not take long, and I don’t think the wind can shift in time.”
The goblins were now scrambling over the wall, being met by screaming harpies. Dor and Vadne and the centaurs drew back to the inner surface of the wall, and crowded toward the eastern end, upwind of the proposed release.
The King opened his vial. Yellowish smoke puffed out, was caught by the wind, and strewn across the rim of the wall. It sank down upon swarming goblins —and they melted into black goo. They did not even scream; they just sank into the nether mass. They dissolved off the wall, flowed across the stone, coursed in rivulets through the crannies, and dripped out of sight. Harpies snatched at dissolving goblins, got caught by the juice, and melted into juice themselves. A putrid stench rose from the fluid: the odor of hot vomit.
The wind gusted sidewise, carrying a wisp of magic smoke back across the wall. “The curse!” Dor cried in horror. The closest centaurs danced back, trying desperately to avoid it, but with the evil humor of the curse it eddied after them. One got his handsome tail melted away. “Fan it from you!” Dor cried. “We need fans!”
Vadne touched the nearest goblin. It became a huge fan. Dor grabbed it from her hands and used it to set up a counterdraft. Vadne made another, and another, and the centaurs took these. Together they set up a forced draft. The yellow smoke reared up as if trying to get around, horrible in its mindless determination.
“Where are you going?” Dor cried at it.
“I’m drifting east another six feet, then north over the wall,” it replied. “The best pickings are there.”
They scrambled out of its projected path. The smoke followed its course, then was gone.
“Ah, Murphy,” Vadne said. “It took Magician’s magic to foil you, but we foiled you.”
Dor agreed weakly. King Roogna, narrowly missed by the smoke, stepped away from the parapet. “It tried to go wrong, but could not. Quite.”
Dor peered over the wall. There, below, was a bubbling, frothing ocean of glop, subsiding as the effect penetrated to the bodies underneath. A sinking tide, it ebbed along the rampart and sucked down into the moat, liquefying everything organic. Before long, there was nothing on the north side except the black sea.
“More of that on the other walls will abate the whole goblin army!” Dor remarked to the King, his knees feeling weak and his stomach weaker.
“Several problems,” King Roogna said. “First, the wind is wrong for the other sides; it would do as much damage to us as to the enemy. Second, it is not effective against the airborne harpy forces, since it tends to sink and they are flying above it. Third, this vial is all I had. I deemed it too dangerous to store in greater quantity.”
“Those are pretty serious problems,” Dor admitted. “What other magic is in your arsenal?”
“Nothing readily adaptable, I regret. There is a pied-piper flute I fashioned experimentally from a flute tree: it plays itself when blown, and creatures will follow it indefinitely. But we don’t need to lead the goblins or harpies here; we want to drive them away. There is also a magic ring: anything passing through it disappears forever. But it is only two inches in diameter, so only small objects can be passed. And there is a major forget spell.”
Dor considered. “Could you reverse the flute, so that it drives creatures away?”
“I might, if the curse didn’t foul it up. But it would drive us away, too.”
“Um. There is that. Could Vadne stretch out the ring to make it larger?”
The King searched in a pocket. “One way to find out.” He brought out a golden ring and passed it to Vadne.
“I really am not skilled with inanimate things,” she said. But she took it and concentrated. For a moment nothing happened; then the ring expanded. It stretched out larger and larger, but at the same time the gold that composed it was thinning. At last it was a hoop some two feet in diameter, fashioned of fine gold wire. “That’s the best I can do,” she said. “If I try to stretch it any farther, it will break.” She looked washed out; this had evidently been a real effort.
“That should help,” Dor said. He picked up the body of a goblin and shoved it through the hoop. It failed to emerge from the other side. “Yes, I think we have something useful, here.” He returned it to the King, whose fingers disappeared as he took it. But they reappeared when the King changed grips, so it seemed the hoop was not dangerous to handle.
“And the forget spell,” Dor continued. “Could it make the goblins and harpies forget what they are fighting about?”
“Oh, yes. It is extremely powerful. But if we detonated it here at the Castle, we would all forget why we are here, even who we are. Thus Magician Murphy would have his victory, for there would be no completion of the Castle. And the goblins and harpies might continue to fight anyway; creatures of that ilk hardly need reason to quarrel. They do it instinctively.”
“But Magician Murphy himself would forget too!”
“No doubt. But the victory would still be his. He is not vying for power for himself; he is trying to prevent it from accruing to me.”
Dor looked out at the barren north view, and at the battle still raging elsewhere around the Castle. A pied-piper flute, a magic ring-hoop, and a forget spell. A lot of excellent and potent magic—that by the anomaly of the situation could not seem to be used to reverse the course of this predicament.
“Murphy, I’m going to find a way,” he swore under his breath. “This battle is not over yet.” Or so he hoped.