Night Mare (31 page)

“He reached me,” Imbri sent.

“Then the Gorgon picked me up before I heard from him.
Now
I’m ready.” She waved her wand in the dream, and objects flew about, touched by its power of levitation.

“Magician Humfrey told me to fetch my sister,” the Gorgon explained. “And she told me that we should gather some of her other friends, so we tried. But Fireoak the Hamadryad can’t leave her tree for such a risky venture, and John the fairy is expecting offspring—I don’t think you know these people anyway—and we couldn’t reach Blythe Brassie, and have still to get the word to others like Chem and Tandy—”

“Chem and Tandy are already at Castle Roogna,” Imbri sent, flashing an image of the castle in the background. “And I can fetch Blythe any time if she wants to come. She expressed interest before, and I left a message at the City of Brass for her to be ready.”

“It would be so nice to get together again,” the Siren said. “And to see the ogre again, too; he made it all possible.”

“Chameleon asked me to fetch help to defend Castle Roogna,” Imbri sent. “I can take you there one at a time.”

“No, we’ll use the magic carpet,” the, Gorgon said. “We used a bottled conjure-spell to send the golem back, so we saved the carpet. We can start in the morning and keep whistling it back until all three of us are there. Will that be time enough?”

“It should be,” Imbri agreed. “We expect the Mundanes there in two days. King Irene will grow plants to stop them—”

“King Irene!” the Gorgon exclaimed. “What happened to the Centaur King?”

Imbri quickly updated them on recent developments. “So Chameleon will be the next King,” she concluded.

“This is moving almost too swiftly for me,” the Siren said. “We’ve got to stop losing our Kings!”

“And stop the Nextwave army,” the Gorgon added. “I believe I can do much of that myself, if I can get a good look at them.”

“Yes,” Imbri agreed. “Take care that no Xanth defenders are near.”

The Gorgon nodded. “We certainly shall. You go fetch Blythe; we’ll meet you at Castle Roogna.”

Imbri let them lapse back into dreamless sleep. She trotted out and to the gourd patch and soon was back at the City of Brass.

All the brassies of Blythe’s block were frozen into statue form, which was normal for them when at rest. Imbri pressed the activation button with her nose and they came to life. “Will you come with me to the real world, Blythe?” Imbri asked the pretty brassie girl. “Your friends have asked for you, and you did mention to me—”

“I’d love to!” Blythe exclaimed. “It’s a strange place out there, with all its living things, but I liked the ogre and the girls.”

“I’ll have to clear it with the Night Stallion,” Imbri sent. “But I think it will be all right.”

Blythe mounted her, and they made an arrangement to have the brassie building turned off again after they departed it, then went on to check on the seven Kings.

Imbri received a shock. Now there were nine Kings. Both Irene and Chameleon had been taken.

“Now it is up to you, King Mare,” Chameleon said. “Only you can stop the Horseman.”

“But how did he get to you?” Imbri asked, flustered. Chameleon had warned that things might proceed rapidly, but this was hardly to be assimilated.

Chameleon smiled unpleasantly. “I brought him inside Castle Roogna. My plan worked perfectly.”

“You what?”

“I confirmed my suspicion and lured him into the trap, using myself as bait. The moment he was inside, we sent all other living occupants of the castle outside, and King Irene grew the plants she had set out, and they quietly confined him to the castle while he was occupied with us.” She made that nasty smile again. “For a while he somehow thought Irene found him handsome, but when he realized she was only stalling for time for her plants to complete their growth, he banished her to the gourd. Then I assumed the crown and told him we knew his secret and would never let him escape the castle, and of course he banished me, too. So my tenure as King was very brief: no more than two minutes. He was very angry about being outwitted, particularly by one he had regarded as stupid.”

“But he never met you before!” Imbri protested. “You were in the forest with the day horse when Grundy and Ichabod and I met him!”

“Not precisely. Now you must go and dispatch him, and that will not be easy,” Chameleon concluded.

“It will be easy!” Imbri sent. “I will gladly kick that monster to death!”

Chameleon shook her head. “No, not easy at all. You can’t kill him.”

“Certainly I can, King Chameleon!” Imbri sent hotly.

“Because it may be that only he can abate the enchantment he has put all of us under. You must first make him free us—and he won’t do that voluntarily.”

Of course that was true; they had been over it before. Imbri was letting her equine temper run away with her. “But I can still kick him into submission. Before I finish, he’ll be glad to tell me all.” But uncertainty was gnawing at her.

“Not so,” Good Magician King Humfrey said. “There is an aspect we may have neglected to clarify.”

“You see,” Chameleon continued, “he is the offspring of a stallion and a human woman. The result of a liaison at a love spring. That’s why he calls himself the Horseman. He is a crossbreed, like the centaurs.”

“Like the centaurs?” Imbri asked, confused. “But he’s a man!”

“He is a werehorse.”

Slowly the terrible realization came across Imbri. “The—day horse?”

“The same. His mind could occupy two forms, each one quite natural to him. No one suspected, because no such creature has manifested in recent times.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Imbri sent, appalled. “All this time I—he—”

“I realize that was cruel,” Chameleon said. “But I was not quite sure. If I were wrong, I would have maligned a good and innocent animal. If I were right, it would have been dangerous to inform you, because your reaction could have alerted him and made him avoid our trap. So I had to deceive you, and I regret that.”

“All the time, with us—the Horseman!”

“Whose magic talent is to connect a line of sight between any two places—such as a human eye and the peephole of a gourd, as we surmised. That is how he enchanted all of us. But if you try to kick him
,
he will change into his horse form—and he is more powerful than you.”

“Not by night!” Imbri protested. But she remained appalled. She had thought the day horse was her friend! Now she remembered how the animal had always been in the general vicinity of the Horseman. Certainly this had been so when she had first encountered both of them, the one purporting to be fleeing the other. What a cunning camouflage—and she had been completely deceived. The horse had even freed her from captivity by the man—how could she suspect they were the same? Then, when she, Grundy, and Ichabod had spied on the Mundane army, while Chameleon slept, the Horseman had appeared in the Mundane camp. And the Horseman’s uncanny ability to travel—naturally he had used his stallion form to gallop in hours what might have taken his human form days, while the man form could navigate the special passes and shortcuts that might have balked the animal form. The best of both forms! As the day horse, pretending to be stupid, he had learned the secrets of Xanth—the invisible bridge, the projected lines of Kings—and they had thought him their ally and had told him everything!

Now, too, she understood the shame of the Good Magician. The day horse had been there when Humfrey had set out his spells and explained them to her! Humfrey could have enchanted the Horseman at any time, had he realized what was in retrospect so obvious. Instead he had allowed himself to be caught in that moment when Imbri had been outside, waiting for the day horse to follow; the stallion had changed to the Horseman, ensorcelled the Magician, changed back, and run with Imbri. If Humfrey was mortified, what, then, of Imbri herself. She had indeed been marishly stupid.

It all fitted so neatly together now. She was sickened. It had taken Chameleon, in her nasty smart phase, to put all the clues together and arrive at the proper conclusion. The Horseman, perhaps becoming contemptuous of his opposition, had been fooled himself. Naturally he had gone with her into Castle Roogna there was his chance to eliminate the last two Kings expeditiously and take over.

They were all standing there, waiting for Imbri to come to terms with it. King Dor had his arm around King Irene, and both looked pretty well satisfied to be together again. King Trent had taken the hand of King Iris, a seemingly minor gesture of quarter-century significance. All nine Kings appeared to be well enough off here, for the time being—but their bodies were in Castle Roogna, at the mercy of their enemy, the Horseman. They had figured out the truth, and that was essential, but the end of this crisis was hardly certain yet.

“Best of fortune, King Imbri,” King Trent said solemnly. “Xanth is depending on you.”

Now Imbri appreciated the full magnitude of the challenge. The tenth King
had
to break the chain—and she was that King.

Chapter 13. Breaking the Chain

T
here was no trouble about getting Blythe Brassie released for real-world duty; the Night Stallion had been waiting for the request. Imbri and the brassie girl arrived at Castle Roogna before dawn.

The Gorgon, the Siren, and Goldy Goblin were already there. So were Chem Centaur and Tandy and her ogre husband Smash, who had been faithfully guarding the castle throughout. Other people and creatures had been sent to neighboring villages for their own safety, since it was now known this would be a battle site. The old soldier Crombie had been persuaded by his daughter to march with the others, to protect them on the journey and point the way if any got lost. The truth was, he was no longer in condition to fight Mundanes, but he had indomitable pride. The Siren had organized these things with the tact and sensitivity she possessed.

Blythe was joyed to meet the others. Old friends greeted one another enthusiastically. Then they sobered, knowing that the difficult time was soon to come. Marching from the Gap was one enemy; within the castle was another. Both had to be dealt with—by this pitifully frail-seeming group of females and a single ogre.

“And one golem,” Grundy pointed out with grim pride. Obviously he had not departed with the others, though he should have. What he could do to help wasn’t clear at the moment, but he was ready to do it.

They looked at Imbri, who suddenly realized it was now her place to give directives, for she was King. “Rest, eat,” she sent in a slightly shaky dreamlet. “We don’t expect the Mundanes until another day. You’ll know what to do.”

Imbri faced the castle, a dark silhouette against a sky thinking about brightening. “And I know what I must do first!”

The castle was imposing in a strange new way, as she gradually made out the details. It was almost entirely overgrown by vegetation. Tangle trees braced against its walls, and carnivorous grass sprouted from the crannies. Animate vines dangled from the parapets. Kraken weeds sprouted from the moat, making the normal moat monsters uneasy. King Irene was gone, but her magic remained, and it did indeed seem to be of Magician caliber.

There was no easy way any person could pass in or out of that place. The Horseman certainly was trapped, for a tangler would as quickly gobble a horse as a man. The plants could not invade the interior of the castle, for that was protected by assorted spells that had been in place for centuries, but they certainly lurked for anything outside. Imbri had to enter the castle now, before dawn, or she would not be able to do so until nightfall. Only her immaterial state could pass those savage plants! Chameleon and Irene had certainly set their trap well, and done as much for Xanth in their brief tenures as Kings as any of the prior Kings had.

There was a sound from the north. Chet Centaur came galloping, his fine body sweating from the effort. Imbri marveled at how different the results of crossbreeding could be—a fine centaur on one hoof, the awful Horseman on the other.

“The Mundanes are coming! The Mundanes are coming!” Chet exclaimed breathlessly.

“But we took down the bridge!” Imbri protested.

“I know it. I checked as well as I could without being seen by them. Apparently they sent a man across right after you left. It happened so fast the Gap Dragon didn’t have time to get there—though I’m not sure that poor monster is eager to encounter Mundanes again! The man hauled the invisible bridge back up—it’s netlike, you know—and tied it in place, and they marched across it at night. Now their vanguard is upon us! I would have discovered it earlier, but I was checking other trails.”

“You were on routine night patrol, not expecting anything,” Grundy said. “We all knew the one place they would not cross was at the broken bridge. Or thought we knew.”

“We have all underestimated the Mundanes,” the Siren said. “That’s why the war has gone so badly for us. We keep thinking that people without magic can’t be much of a threat. That’s not true at all; in fact, such people are the most ruthless and depraved, perhaps because of that lack, so are doubly dangerous.”

Imbri realized that the Siren, who had been deprived of her own magic talent for more than twenty years, was in a position to appreciate the deleterious social effects of loss of magic. She was a good woman and had survived and perhaps even improved herself during that hiatus, but lesser people could readily do worse.

Imbri, like the others, had made another serious miscalculation. She had assumed that the Mundanes would remain camped for the night, then forge across the Gap Chasm by day in the manner the other army had crossed a few days before, and camp again on the south side. They had outsmarted her, advancing cleverly and rapidly to rejoin their trapped leader. Now the consequence of this misjudgment was apparent; the siege was on before the defense was ready.

The Horseman would have to wait. Imbri had a battle to organize. The Nextwave could not be allowed to capture Castle Roogna, the last solid symbol of Xanth independence, or to rescue the Horseman. If she went inside to deal with him, she would be trapped there by daylight, unable to phase through walls and plants, and thus be unable to deal with the army outside. She might kill the Horseman but lose the battle, so that Xanth would have nothing at all except barbarians overrunning it. Even a bad leader was probably better than none at all. If she dealt first with the Mundanes, the Horseman would remain trapped, and she could deal with him at her leisure.

But that wasn’t a perfect answer. Suppose the Horseman got angry and started killing the bodies of the Kings? Could she afford to risk that? Imbri wavered again. The burden of decision making was heavy, for a mistake affected the welfare of many other creatures, and perhaps the entire Kingdom.

“Don’t worry,” the Siren said, divining her thought. “The Horseman won’t hurt the Kings. He is holding them hostage. He knows we could send in a flight of harpies or other deadly creatures to wipe him out, if we weren’t concerned about our own people in there. Meanwhile, the Kings are no threat to him. He has everything to gain by taking good care of them—until the Mundanes win this battle and free him. If the Mundanes lose, he’ll try to use the Kings as bargaining chips to win his own freedom.”

That made sense, Imbri hoped. “We must organize quickly,” she sent. “The Gorgon must be where only the enemy can see her, but not where they can shoot arrows at her.”

“Fear not,” the Gorgon said. “I will remove my veil only in the presence of a Mundane. I can hide behind a tree and peek out—”

“But the others will see what happens to the first,” the Siren said. “The Mundanes are very quick to perceive and act against threats to their welfare. But I can help. Magician Humfrey restored my magic dulcimer before he became King; I have it now, and my power has returned. Let me lure them—”

“First we must get all Xanth males clear of the area,” Imbri sent.

“Aw, we know about the Gorgon,” Grundy protested. “We won’t look her in the puss.”

“All males must be clear,” Imbri insisted. “Beyond hearing, so you won’t be lured in by the Siren. You go out and warn them, in the name of the King. Get far away and don’t return until one of us finds you and tells you it’s safe.”

“Oops—Smash went on another patrol through the jungle,” Tandy said. “To make sure no Mundanes were sneaking in from any other directions.”

“We have to do it, golem,” Chet said. “She’s the King Mare. And she’s right. We must warn everyone as fast as we can, catching any stragglers and getting well away from here ourselves. We can intercept Smash and warn him off.”

“We’ll give you as much time as possible,” Imbri sent. “This is a battle only females can fight, because they are immune to the Siren’s song.” She turned quickly to the Siren. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” the Siren agreed. “My power is related to that of Millie the Ghost—projected sex appeal. I suppose a male Siren could summon females.”

“That would serve them right!” Grundy exclaimed. The Gorgon turned toward him, lifting one hand to her veil. Hastily he mounted Chet, and they galloped off while the Siren chuckled. The Gorgon would not really have lifted that veil!

Imbri remained uneasy. They certainly had an excellent weapon, or combination of weapons, in these two sisters, since the Mundane army was all male. If only they had had more time to work out a really solid defense!

In hurried moments, they set up a crude arrangement, the best they could manage with the disadvantage of their situation. As the sun hauled itself up out of the forest to the east, singeing the leaves of the adjacent trees, the head of the Mundane column marched upon the castle. Light glinted from the Punic shields and helmets as the dread Wave crested a ridge.

Chem Centaur concealed herself in a hollow old beerbarrel tree and projected a large map of what she saw. This identified the position of all the Mundanes in the area in a way that every defender could see. The Punics could see it, too—but no Xanth positions were marked on it, so it didn’t help the enemy. The Mundanes peered about, trying to spot the origin of the map, but there were a hundred fat old trees in the vicinity, none of whom cared to help the enemy, and many other features of the terrain to baffle the intruders. So the Mundanes spread out, poking their spears at each tree and getting peppered by supposedly accidental falls of deadwood. Soon they would discover the right one.

But Goldy Goblin, using the projected map for orientation, waved her magic wand. A Mundane flew up in the air, involuntarily, with a startled cry. He sailed in a high arc over the jungle, then plunged, screaming out of sight.

The Mundanes oriented on this new menace, for the moment forgetting the map. They located Goldy, perched high in a you-call-yptus tree. They shot arrows at her, but the tree called out a warning, as was its nature, and moved its branches to intercept them.

The Mundanes stared, thinking this another coincidence, blaming the movement on the wind. But as the breeze died, and the tree kept balking their shots, they realized that it, too, was a combatant. All the trees around Castle Roogna could move, within reasonable limits, and they were guardians of the castle. But they could not do much unless the Mundanes came within reach, and the enemy soldiers were careful to stay clear.

The Mundanes charged the yptus tree. Goldy used her wand to loft another and another over the jungle and into the nearest lake, where hungry goozlegizzard monsters lurked, but there were too many for her to stop. They reached the base of the tree and started climbing.

Then Blythe Brassie went into action. She was perched on a lower branch and had a basket of cherry bombs harvested from the local cherry tree. She dropped these singly on each ascending helmet. The bombs detonated as they struck, splattering cherry juice in the enemy faces and making the helmets clang. The climbing Mundanes fell out of the tree and out of the fight.

The other Mundanes shot arrows at Blythe. They were so close that the tree’s branches were unable to react fast enough to protect her. But the arrows clanged off her brass body harmlessly. Well, almost harmlessly, each one left a dent, and she was very sensitive about dents. Furious, she hurled more cherries at the archers, blasting them out.

Angered in turn, the Punics formed a kind of phalanx, overlapping their shields above their heads, so the cherry bombs had little effect, and marching to the base of the tree. Then they used their swords to hack at the trunk.

“OooOooO!” the tree groaned with a sound like that of wind sighing through its branches. It certainly was hurting.

Blythe dropped down on the top of the phalanx and knelt to locate crevices. Through these she squeezed more cherry bombs. The explosions in the confined space of the formation caused the overlapping shields to jump and fall apart. Smoke poured out, assisted by the coughing and hacking of the people inside the enclosure. Blythe lost her perch and fell down into the phalanx.

Now the Punics whose bodies remained intact grabbed the brassie girl. Blythe struggled, but they were too many and too strong for her. “Look what we’ve got here!” one gloated. “A golden nymph.”

“We know what to do with that kind!” another exclaimed. “Hold her arms and legs—”

Imbri, seeing this from deeper in the jungle, galloped across to where the Siren hid. “They’ve got Blythe!” she sent the moment she came within range. “They’re chopping Goldy’s tree! Now it’s time for you!”

The Siren nodded. She put her hands to her dulcimer and began to play. Music sprang out magically, filling the air. Then she sang. Her voice merged oddly with the notes of the instrument, forming an unusual but compelling melody. The magic was not entirely in the dulcimer and not entirely in her voice, but together the two formed a powerful enchantment. The sound floated out over the battlefield, suffusing the environment.

The Mundane men reacted in quite a different manner than the Xanth females. The soldiers straightened up, listening, pausing in whatever they were doing. Some had arrows nocked to strings; some were chopping at the you-call tree; some were advancing on the castle; and some were holding Blythe Brassie spread-eagled, preparing for some heinous male act. All froze a moment, then turned and faced the music. Blythe, battered and dented but otherwise undaunted, dropped to the ground; the men had no further interest in her.

There was no formation now, only a somnambulistic shuffling toward the unseen Siren. For almost twenty-five years the merwoman’s power had been blunted by the loss of her magic instrument; now it burst forth again in its fantastic compulsion. The Mundane men crowded toward the source of the sound, jostling one another discourteously. They clogged like drifting garbage at the narrow entrance to the glade where the Siren sang and shoved blindly to enter—and of course got shoved back. Everything about the Mundanes was brutish. But slowly the clog cleared, and they funneled in.

Beside the Siren stood the Gorgon. As each man approached, she lifted aside her veil and looked him in the face. He turned instantly to stone, a statue in place. The man following him was not concerned; he simply went around and was in turn converted to stone.