Luck of the Draw (Xanth) (14 page)

“Well, let’s see what offers here. As I understand it, there will be three Challenges we have to navigate. Only if we make it into the castle proper will I discover what my Quest is to be.”

Bryce marched toward the castle, and Rachel paced him. There was a path between brambles, so they used it. It led through a decorative arch within a patch of bamboo trees. Beyond was a pleasant garden area with pretty flowers, shaped cacti, and a fountain feeding into a small stream.

“This is a Challenge?” Bryce asked.

Then his foot caught on a root and he stumbled into a cactus. Several thorns stuck in his arm. “Ouch!” He had to stop to pull them out one by one. “I guess I wasn’t looking where I was going. My own fault.”

Rachel wagged her tail, agreeing. It caught on another cactus, and she got painful needles in it too.

“Ouch for you too,” Bryce said. “Let me help you there.” He squatted to remove them, but one foot slipped and he lost his balance and sat down on the path. Where there were stickers.

He got to his feet and felt behind him—and his thumb jammed against another thorn. “A sandspur!” he exclaimed. “No wonder it hurt! Just my luck to sit on a patch of them.”

It took a while to get all the thorns, needles, and spurs out. Then they started forward again.

Bryce’s foot caught again, and he stumbled into the fountain, soaking the other foot. “Bleep!” Probably he could have uttered a real cuss-word, but he had gotten into the habit of bleeping bad words out.

Rachel tried to help him get clear, but she slipped too, and fell in with a splash.

“We’re both suddenly amazingly clumsy,” Bryce said as they picked themselves up. “What’s got into us? This is more than mere nulling of our magic.”

A bulb flashed over Rachel’s head. That harmless magic remained. “Rrouff!”

“This is a challenge,” he agreed. “A challenge of sheer clumsiness.”

They resumed motion, this time being excruciatingly careful. But Bryce’s foot came down on a pod that looked like a brown stone. It made a foul-smelling noise and a brown stench wafted out menacingly. “Uh-oh. I think that was something they warned us about: a stink horn. Just our luck to run afoul of it. We need to get away from it fast.”

They hastily retreated, while the vapor pursued them. The mere edge of it smelled like badly spoiled poop dipped in vomit. They fled back around the fountain and to the bamboo patch. The cloud roiled up but did not enter the bamboo. It seemed it was limited to the garden.

“Bad luck?” Bryce asked. “The whole garden is bad luck.
That’s
our challenge.”

Rachel wagged her tail, agreeing.

“So we have to find a way to get through it despite knowing that we’ll suffer prohibitively bad luck. In fact we need to nullify that bad luck. Mindy told me there’s always a way to pass a challenge, if a person can only figure it out.”

Rachel agreed.

“Maybe there’s a way around it.”

They walked around the edge of the garden. There was a narrow but serviceable path. They didn’t slip or bang into anything. Could it be this simple?

The path led to a small footbridge across the stream started by the fountain. It was pretty, but neither of them trusted it. Bryce checked all around and under it, but it seemed solid. Rachel sniffed the timbers and ground, finding no problem. It was the only way to cross the stream, because everywhere else was a dense thicket of thorns.

“I guess we just have to cross over it and hope for the best,” Bryce said.

They walked up onto the bridge.

Something came flying toward them. They both hastily retreated, and the object thunked into the bridge and broke open. It was a mess of garbage and feces. Had they remained on the bridge, it would have struck them, befouling them.

“I am getting a notion,” Bryce said. “The path and bridge are fine, but they are the only way around the unlucky garden. Something is hurling stinky dirty refuse at the bridge, so it will strike anyone who tries to cross. More bad luck for us.”

They tested it again. Rachel set a paw on the bridge while Bryce watched closely in the direction the garbage had come from. That worked; it did evoke another bolus, and Bryce was able to spot where it came from.

It was a giant toilet tank.

Bryce groaned. “The pun is almost worse than the garbage! It’s a tank that fires refuse. And with our bad luck, we can’t avoid it. It is zeroed in on that bridge we have to cross.”

Rachel looked at him, agreeing. They wended their way back to the bamboo stand.

“So do you have any bright notions?” Bryce asked. “I suspect there is a simple, obvious answer, but my brain is balky at the moment.”

Rachel pondered. Then she pointed.

Bryce looked. “You’re pointing at the bamboo? But we can’t stay here; we have to leave it to get through the garden, one way or another.”

The dog went and picked up a fallen length of bamboo. What was she up to?

Rachel carried the bamboo out into the garden. “Watch out,” Bryce warned. “You’ll stir up more bad luck.”

But she didn’t. She walked along the path, past the fountain, and to the far side without a misstep.

“Well I’ll be darned,” Bryce said. “You’re immune.” He looked at the bamboo. “This must be lucky bamboo, so it counters the bad luck of the rest of the garden.”

He fetched another piece, a length suitable for a staff, and ventured out into the garden.

He had no trouble. Rachel had somehow fathomed the solution and gotten them through.

“How did you figure that out, girl?” he inquired as he joined her. But of course she couldn’t answer directly. He concluded that she must have realized that if one part of the garden was unlucky, the other part must be lucky. It was elementary, in retrospect.

Now they came to a set of wire-mesh chambers. They were side by side, mounted on concrete slabs. Within each was a creature. One appeared to be a faun, furry, with small horns and goat legs and hoofs. The other was a nymph, with waist-length hair and a shapely bare human body.

Except—there was something wrong. It was the faun that was shapely and female, and the nymph that was male despite the long hair.

“My expertise in Xanth fauna and flora is hardly complete,” Bryce murmured. “But I don’t think this is correct. What do you think, Rachel?”

The dog shook her head. This didn’t make much sense to her either.

“But the two chambers and adjacent bars seem to block off our access to whatever is beyond,” Bryce continued. “I see a set of doors in each, front and back. Presumably we need to pass through one chamber or the other. And to do that I suspect we will need the cooperation of their occupants, because those doors are locked from the inside.”

Would the faun and nymph cooperate and let them through? Bryce was pretty sure they would not. That was after all another Challenge.

Well, maybe they could ask. Bryce stepped up close to the male nymph. “Hello. I am Bryce Mundane, and this is Rachel Dog.”

“Nyet Nymph here,” the male said sourly. “What’s it to you?”

“We are two folk seeking to enter the Good Magician’s Castle. Is this a Challenge?”

“You bet your bootees it is,” Nyet said.

Would the nymph actually give answers? “What do we have to do to pass it?”

“You have to fulfill my wildest dream.”

“But you’re not a visitor, you’re a Challenge!”

“That’s the challenge, dodo.”

Just so. “What is your wildest dream?”

“To get together with my beloved and celebrate.”

Bryce glanced at the other chamber. “And your beloved is the—the female?”

“Duh! That’s Fauna Faun.”

“And you can’t simply open your doors and be together?”

“Duh again.”

“Why not?”

“Because the moment one of our doors opens in front, the other’s front door is locked shut. Only the back door will open, leaving us on opposite sides of the wall. We can’t get together.”

Bryce considered the chambers. That would bar them, certainly. But how was he to change a fixed setting that they could not? To hide his lack of an idea, he asked another question. “How did you get into this situation? I mean, of course this is a setup for the Challenge, but surely you have a cover story?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nyet agreed. “It’s that we’re two freaks. The storks somehow got confused when they delivered us, and I got placed with the nymphs. But they wanted nothing to do with me, because I’m male. The only males they’ll have anything to do with are fauns. I didn’t have horns, fur, hooves. I look effeminate to them. So they booted me. I spent years wandering, until finally a giant caught me and put me in this cage. It seems I’m a collector’s item: the only male nymph in Xanth. Meanwhile there was my opposite number, a female faun, who got delivered to the fauns. They didn’t want to have anything to do with Fauna either, because while she was female, she wasn’t a nymph, and all they wanted to do was chase and catch nymphs and celebrate with them. So she was outcast too. Finally the giant caught her, and caged her beside me, as two unique specimens. But that’s all we are to the giant: zoo animals, here to be ogled and that’s all. So we look at each other, we talk, and we have fallen in love. But we can’t be together, unless some traveler comes and figures out a way to unify us.”

“That’s remarkable,” Bryce said, impressed. He glanced across at Fauna. “Is that how you see it too?”

“No.”

That took him a moment to assimilate. “No?”

“I was a regular faun, catching nymphs and celebrating with them every five minutes, all day. But I ran into a transformation spell, and it changed me into a female. I was so ashamed that I fled before any others saw me, and diligently hid. All I want is to find another transformation spell so I can change back to the way I was.”

“But what about getting together with Nyet, then?”

“He says he knows where such a spell is. He’ll take me there if we get out of here.”

Bryce had private doubts about that, but did not voice them. This was after all only a setting. “So I need to figure out how the two of you can get out on the same side, so that then he can lead you on.” Then he amended it. “To the transformation spell.”

“You have it,” she agreed.

Rachel sniffed around the base of the chambers. Something interested her.

Bryce inspected the chambers. “These seem to be mounted on circular pedestals.”

“They do,” Fauna agreed.

“So?” Nyet inquired derisively.

“I wonder if they rotate.”

Neither person replied. That gave him a hint that he was on the right track. He put his hands on the wire mesh of Nyet’s front wall and pushed. The wall moved. He continued pushing, and it continued moving. It was traveling in a circle, around the axis of the base.

“Well I’ll be bleeped,” Nyet remarked as the slow motion carried him along.

“Not if I get out first,” Fauna said.

Bryce pushed until the front wall became a side wall. Then he did the same for the other chamber, pushing it in the same direction.

“But that’s moving my front door away from his,” Fauna protested.

“Precisely,” Bryce said. “It is your back door that needs to abut his front door.”

She nodded, startled.

When the quarter turn was complete, Bryce stood back. “Now open your doors, and you can be together.”

“So we can,” Nyet said. He opened his front door, and Fauna opened her back door. Now there was a portal between the two chambers.

Bryce was really curious what the two would do next. Would they really celebrate in public?

Nyet stepped through. Fauna met him with a smile.

“Shall we resume where we left off?” Nyet asked as he sat down on her bed.

“By all means,” she agreed, joining him.

“As I recall, we were discussing transcendental metabolism.”

“Mind over matter,” she agreed.

“A tough concept to digest.”

“This is how you celebrate?” Bryce asked.

“Oh, we have plenty of time for that between Challenges,” Nyet said. “Now we are continuing our interrupted discussion.”

“But what about us? Your chambers still block our way.”

Fauna shrugged. “That’s your problem.”

Annoyed, Bryce took hold of Nyet’s chamber wall and yanked it around the opposite way from before. It spun around until the door faced forward again. “Come on, Rachel,” he said.

The two of them entered the empty chamber. Bryce closed the door behind them. Then he walked across to the back door. He opened it. They stepped out on the other side. They were through.

The nymph and faun didn’t seem to notice. They were deep in their discussion of transcendental metabolism.

“Whatever works,” Bryce said to Rachel. They walked on forward.

They came to what looked like a room with a number of letters strewn on the floor. There were high fences around it, and lines painted on the turf which served as the floor. A low net crossed the center, and beside the net was a small tower wherein sat a severe silent woman. Bryce thought to address her, but her glare stifled that unspoken.

“What is this, Wimbledon?” Bryce muttered.

Rachel looked at him.

“Never mind, I merely made an irrelevant connection in my foolish mind. Obviously this is the next Challenge. We need to figure it out, and find a way to get beyond it.”

Rachel wagged her tail, agreeing.

“So do you have any idea what’s what, here?”

Rachel pointed to a chair opposite the grim woman’s tower. Across it lay a woman’s simple white dress.

“You figure that’s a key to the solution?”

Rachel wagged her tail. That was exactly what she figured.

Bryce walked to the chair and picked up the dress. It appeared to be a straight loose-fitting item of apparel, not at all fancy. Did it belong to the woman on the tower? She was already fully clothed, but maybe this was her dress when she went off-duty. “I don’t see what to make of it.”

He picked up one of the strewn letters. It was an S made of plaster, several inches high. Had it fallen from a wall? There was no suitably solid wall nearby.

He picked up another. It was also a big plaster S. So was a third, and a fourth. Finally he had them all piled on the chair beside the dress. There were ten identical S’s. No other letters.