Question Quest (29 page)

“Of course she cares for me, the idiot!” I snapped. “She's a better wife than I deserve. Always was. Always will be.”

“But then—”

“Because I don't want her to see my ignominious doom. My wife will perform better if not handicapped by hope.”

“That is a cruel mechanism,” the dream woman said as the mare carried me into the eye of a gourd for rapid transit.

“No more cruel than the dreams of night mares,” I retorted. But of course Imbri herself had lost that meanness; that was why she was no longer a night mare by profession.

We arrived at Castle Roogna. I made clear to Queen Iris that Bink was to be the next king after me. His talent of not being harmed by magic might be useless against the Mundanes, but he was a full Magician, and that was what counted. After that, I informed her, it would be Arnolde Centaur.

“And after him?” Iris asked tightly.

“If the full chain of future kings were known,” I pointed out, “our hidden enemy might nullify them in advance.”

“What can I do to help save Xanth?” she asked. She evidently thought I was getting senile.

“Bide your time, woman. In due course you will have your reward: the single thing you most desire.” For so that too was written, though I had forgotten what it was she most desired.

Then I took a nap. and Mare Imbri trotted out to the zombie graveyard to graze.

Later we went to the place of my ignominy: the baobab tree. There I met Imbri's friend the Day Horse, a handsome white stallion. And there it was I performed my most colossal act of folly: I failed to recognize my enemy when I saw him. For the Day Horse was the equine aspect of the Horseman, and he connected my vision to the gourd, and I was gone.

I found myself locked in the realm of bad dreams, instead of passing through it as I had when riding Mare Imbri. I was in a castle chamber, which was pleasantly appointed with tables, chairs, and beds. There were Kings Trent, Dor, and Jonathan the Zombie Master.

“So good to see you again, Humfrey,” Trent said. “What's the news?”

I was taken aback. How could he be so casual? Then he laughed, and I knew he was teasing me in his fashion. I shook hands with him and Jonathan, and then with Dor, who was no longer a child at age twenty-four and had served honorably as king. He seemed slightly taken aback, which gratified me. We were all now recent kings, with a certain morbid camaraderie.

“The wives are mourning,” I reported. Dor had just been married to Irene, after a betrothal of eight years duration; they had not seen fit to rush things. Irene had finally taken a hand and tricked him into the ceremony. But she had played it too close; the sudden duties of the kingship had occupied him in the crisis, and they had had no wedding night. “I told Iris that Bink and Arnolde Centaur were to follow me as king. Meanwhile, I failed to recognize the Horseman when I met him.” Actually I'm not quite certain now exactly when I figured out the identity of the Horseman; it was some time ago. But the scene was something like that, I'm sure.

“Didn't we all!” Jonathan agreed.

I caught them up on the recent events of the battle against the LastWave, and they nodded. All of us were wise too late.

Then we settled down to a game of poker, a game Trent had picked up in Mundania. One might think that this consisted of poking a nymph, but this was not the case. It consisted of dealing out cards and bluffing about the values of our holdings. It was a fitting occupation for kings. Dor, being of a younger generation, merely watched. We used our closest approximations to Mundane value, as this was a Mundane game: lettuce, clams, and bucksaws, all provided by the dream realm. We were of course, all sharing a sustained dream; our bodies were lying in their various places, comatose, being tended by our assorted women. We knew that if we were not rescued in a few days, our bodies would die, and then we would have no escape from this realm, except perhaps into the neighboring realm of Hell. It seemed best not to dwell on that; the decision was out of our hands.

We were comfortable enough, aside from the boredom. We did not feel the discomforts of our bodies. Our bodies seemed solid here, because we were all spirits, none of us having any more solidity than the others. The Night Stallion checked in on us every so often and provided anything we wanted within reason. But he could not provide us with our freedom.

In due course Bink showed up. We welcomed him, especially his son, Dor, acquainted him with our situation, and learned the latest details of the battle of Xanth. Bink had met the enemy leader Hasbinbad in single combat, and was getting the better of it, but they had had to break off because of darkness. So they had made a truce for the night and retired. Then Hasbinbad had treacherously attacked in the darkness, but Bink had been ready for him, avoiding the trap, then pursued him to the brink of the Gap Chasm. We were all able to remember that cleft, now, because the Forget Spell worked on our physical bodies, not our souls. He had been wounded, but had forced Hasbinbad into the Gap, where he had fallen to his death. Then a white horse had come, and the Horseman had locked Bink into the gourd.

“But you cannot be harmed by magic!” Trent protested.

“I wasn't harmed by magic,” Bink pointed out.

“But if we all die here—” Dor said, worried.

“We are unlikely to,” I said. “If Bink's talent allowed him to join us, we must be safe.”

The others nodded agreement. We were all comforted.

Then Mare Imbri showed up. The Night Stallion gave her a tail-lashing for her tardiness and brought her in to us. She projected her communication dreamlet, and the pretty young woman in black informed us how King Arnolde had performed a truly centaurian series of interpretations of Xanth human law, concluding that the distinction between Magicians and Sorceresses was purely cosmetic, and that the definition of king did not necessarily indicate male. Thus he was able to designate Queen Iris and her daughter, Princess Irene, as the next two kings in the line of succession. Queen Iris had been somewhat antagonistic to the centaur, but for some reason had suffered a swift change of sentiment. And now it was clear to me what my reference had written: what Iris desired most was to rule Xanth, and now she was very likely to have her chance.

Then Mare Imbri departed—but returned later with a visitor. It was Irene. “You can't skip out on me this time!” she told Dor. “We started our marriage in a graveyard, and we'll consummate it in a graveyard.”

“The skeletons won't like that,” he demurred, perhaps awed by the prospect, as has sometimes been the case with men.

“The skeletons don't have to participate,” she assured him.

But the Night Stallion had prepared for them a separate chamber filled with pillows. When last seen, before the door closed, they had a full-scale pillow fight going. I had a suspicion that it wouldn't last the night. Indeed, there came a silence for a time, and I suspect a stork took notice, if the signal was able to get out of the realm of the gourd. Then later still they emerged, both looking satisfied, and started throwing pillows at the rest of us. Soon we were all in it: the Pillow Fight of Kings. I had forgotten, in the course of the last hundred and twenty years or so, what fun pillow fights could be. Too bad the Gorgon wasn't here; I was sure she could handle a pillow well.

Then Arnolde joined us. He had sent out a contingent of fifty centaurs from Centaur Isle to fight the Mundanes, and they had fought a great battle and greatly reduced the strength of the Wave, and then the Horseman had taken him out too. Iris was now King of Xanth.

But all too soon King Iris herself showed up. She had crafted a horrendous army of monsters and tricked the Mundanes into walking into the Gap Chasm, decimating their number again, and taunted the Horseman via her illusion image—and he had made a gesture at that illusion and taken her out. “What a fool I was!” she said.

“Join the throng,” her husband, Trent, said.

Irene was now king.

“How long can this continue?” Iris asked.

“Through ten kings,” I said, remembering what I had read. “The chain is to be ten kings long.”

“And I was number seven,” Iris said ruefully. “Irene is number eight. But who next? We are out of Magicians and Sorceresses.”

Then King Irene arrived, having tried to lull the Horseman while her plants encircled Castle Roogna and sealed him in. But he had caught on too soon and banished her to the gourd. She had designated Chameleon as her successor—but in only two minutes more, King Chameleon arrived too. She was in her smart-ugly phase, and had planned a course of action to destroy the Horseman. She had designated as the final king-Mare Imbri.

And the King Mare killed the Horseman and destroyed his magic ring of power by throwing it into the Void. That freed us all. But she lost her body in the process, for the Void took her too. Fortunately she retained the half soul she had gotten from Chem Centaur, and that maintained her existence. She became a day mare, bringing pleasant daydreams to folk.

After that King Trent retired, turning over the throne to King Dor. The rest of us faded back into our quiet existences. I returned to my castle and to the Gorgon, who had performed well in battle, stoning a number of Mundanes. It was good to revert to normal.

The stork brought Ivy to King Dor and Queen Irene in 1069, two years after their marriage and their assumption of the throne. She was a Sorceress, thanks to the continuing largess of the Demon X(A/N)th's gift to Bink, and therefore in line to become king of Xanth someday. I made a note in my references, for it behooved me to keep track of all Magician-class magic. As it happened, Ivy was to have an impact on my quiet life almost from the start of her career.

Her talent was Enhancement. She could increase the power of the magic of any creature. But that was only part of it. The creature itself tended to become what Ivy chose to believe it was. If she thought an ogre was gentle, that ogre would be gentle; if she thought a mouse was vicious, beware of that mouse! Thus she had an insidious effect on those around her. Indeed, her mother, Irene, had been classified as Neo-Sorceress, her talent of growing plants not being of Magician caliber. But after Ivy arrived, (or perhaps before; I lose track) Irene was recognized as a full Sorceress, by no coincidence; her daughter perceived her that way, and so she was.

It occurred to me that Ivy's magic could be useful in my business. Suppose she Enhanced all my spells? Suppose she met my son Hugo, and perceived his talent as strong instead of marginal? He might then be able to conjure fresh fruit instead of rotten fruit. That would do wonders for the smell of our castle. Hugo was also a bit slow—some said retarded—and if little Ivy happened to see him as smart, that too would be nice. So I looked for a pretext to meet her, without being obvious. She was a cute, bright child, by her perception and therefore in reality, so that even at the age of three was impressive.

So it was that I elected to make a personal appearance at a function to which Ivy was invited. That was the debut of the Zombie Master's twins, Hiatus and Lacuna, then just sixteen. Actually there was business too, because the dread Gap Dragon, the terror of the chasm, had somehow found a way out of the Gap and was menacing the neighborhood of southern Xanth. Perhaps this was a result of the fragmentation of the Forget Spell on the chasm. That spell had been detonated by Dor in his youth, when he visited King Roogna, to make the goblins and harpies forget their war and not overrun Castle Roogna. It had been permanent—until the Time of No Magic. That had shaken the spell, and indeed had abolished most of it. But it had been soaking into the chasm for eight hundred years, and now that residual forgetting was sifting out and drifting away in whorls and eddies, causing any creatures who walked through them to suffer amnesia. This represented more mischief. And my tomes suggested that a wiggle swarm was about due. Wiggles were always trouble, because they zapped through anything in their path, leaving wiggle-sized holes. Actually there was evidence that we misunderstood the nature of the wiggles, but I had not yet gotten around to researching that. In addition, I had run out of youth elixir, and the Gorgon had hinted that it was time to get more. So I planned to make a side trip to the Fountain of Youth, which was in easy carpet distance from the new Castle Zombie, and refresh my stock. I think, all in all, there was enough business to justify a few hours away from my tomes, though I remain uncertain about that.

Thus it was that my wife stayed home to tend the castle, and I took Hugo, then eight years old, on the carpet to New Castle Zombie. Little did I know the mischief that would result from that excursion!

Somehow it is impossible to start any trip on time; there seems to be a hostile spell which prevents it. Thus we were an hour late taking off. We were flying somewhat slow and uncertain, because I was trying to teach Hugo how to operate the carpet. Then we encountered some unfriendly clouds and an adverse wind, and were further delayed in the air. I picked up a suitable eddy current near the ground and zoomed along it. But there was a dragon obstructing the current, and I had to slow until it got out of the way. Always some idiot making a left turn when you're in a hurry! So we were well behind schedule by the time we reached New Castle Zombie.

Well, I would just have to condense things. So we flew into the window where Dor, Irene, the Zombie Master, and Arnolde Centaur were gathered. “We have another chore,” I told them. Then I spelled out the problems: the Gap Dragon had to be contained but not hurt, for it was necessary to the welfare of the Gap; and the forget whorls had to be sprayed with fixative and moved out to Mundania where they would do less damage. “Take it up, Hugo,” I said. And, narrowly missing the wall, we lurched up and sailed out of the window.

In retrospect, I fear I was too brief with them. The Gap Dragon bore down on the castle, and in the resultant confusion little Ivy got lost in the jungle beyond the castle. I should have warned them about the proximity of the dragon, but forgot. It's hard to keep every detail in mind when you're in a hurry.

We flew on to the Fountain of Youth, landing a short distance from it. It had once been a full fountain, but had worn down into a more ordinary spring over the course of centuries, or perhaps the rocks around it had youthened into sand. The Zombie Master had known its location and informed me, and I had found it useful. But naturally I did not tell others about it. What would Xanth come to, if everyone used this elixir to stave off old age, and so no one ever died? I had never used it myself, until the Gorgon suggested it, and gave me reason to want to be younger.

I left Hugo and the carpet a safe distance away, because it wouldn't do to have him reduced in age, or it accidentally youthened into a doily. I brought out a disk, freed a catch, and it sprang out into a ten-foot pole suitable for touching unpleasant things. Why anyone should want to touch ten feet I'm not sure, but I did need a good long shaft.

I tramped to the edge of the spring. It wasn't actually a fountain in the sense of water sailing up; the water merely welled out continuously, always young and fresh. The vegetation at the verge of the pool was of course very small, mere seedlings, becoming older only with distance. Any animal who came to drink here departed considerably younger than it came. Most were smart enough to sip; those who drank deeply had to start their lives over.

I fixed a bottle to the end of the pole, and extended it, dipping carefully from the spring. When it was full, I twitched it so that its flip-top lid snapped into place. I shook it dry, then brought it in and wrapped it in cloth. I retreated from the spring. Someone watching me might have thought my exaggerated care foolish, but youth elixir is dangerous. I returned to the carpet and handed the wrapped bottle to Hugo, with an admonition, so that I could condense my pole to packable length. It resisted in the manner of the inanimate, but finally I got it back into cylinder form and then into its original disk, and put it in my pocket.

There was a sudden roar, and the ground shook. I looked up—and there was the Gap Dragon steaming toward us. It must have continued to run after visiting Castle Zombie. My spells were on the carpet with Hugo. I would have to get my portable dragon net and fling it over the monster, subduing it. “Hugo!” I cried. “Toss me my bag of spells!”

But Hugo fluffed it. He grabbed at the fringe of the carpet instead, and it mistook the gesture as a command and took off. Hugo, unbraced, rolled off. The carpet sailed into the air, carrying my bag of spells with it. I was suddenly without my magic, except for the compressed ten-foot pole, and the dragon was still bearing down on us. That pole was too clumsy to serve as a weapon, and the dragon could probably steam us from beyond its length anyway.

Then I saw the wrapped bottle of elixir. It had fallen beside Hugo. “Hugo!” I called. “I'll distract the dragon. You unwrap that bottle, lift the cap, and sprinkle some elixir on its tail.” For the youth elixir did not have to be imbibed; it would work on any body it touched, in the manner of the healing elixir. We could make the dragon young enough to be harmless. No younger than necessary, of course, because it was needed in the Gap Chasm. Perhaps even trace youthening would confuse it, so it would leave us alone.

Hugo, never clever with his hands, struggled to get the bottle unwrapped and the lid off, while I dodged about as briskly as I could, avoiding the steam-snorts of the dragon. There were larger dragons than this one, and there were flying dragons, while this one had only vestigial wings, and there were fire breathers and smokers who were frightening to see in action. But this was nevertheless one of the most ornery and fearsome creatures of Xanth, because it normally hunted in the Gap Chasm and its prey could not escape it. That steam could cook prey where it stood. Worse, this dragon could not be spooked or frightened; it pursued its prey relentlessly until catching it. I had to neutralize it in some fashion or, it would steam and eat us both.

I glanced back at the fountain. Could I lead the dragon to that? No, it was between me and the pool. It had to be the elixir from the bottle. “Hurry, Hugo!” I yelled. I was in excellent health for my age, but my age was old.

The boy finally fumbled the bottle out and the lid open. But in his haste he did not pour a few drops on the dragon's tail; he held the bottle and made a throwing motion that sent an arc of elixir flying toward the dragon and me.

“No!” I cried, too late. The elixir scored all too well. It wet down the dragon solidly, and some of it also splattered against my skin.

Disaster! The dragon youthened rapidly, becoming smaller, with brighter green scales. But so did I. We were both overdosed, and were losing a century or more of age. As it happened, we were both over a century old; otherwise we might have dwindled all the way into pre-delivery. But it was bad enough. The dragon became a baby dragon, and I became a baby man.

I saw us both changing rapidly, and I saw Hugo gaping at the sight. I tried to call out something to him, but my youthening prevented me from making much sense, even to myself. Perhaps I was even speaking backwards.

Hugo, dismayed and confused, began to cry. The baby dragon shook itself, then scooted away, evidently as alarmed as I. But I could do nothing, for I was now too young to talk.

Then abruptly I was back at the castle. The Gorgon had evidently been watching us in the magic mirror, seen the disaster, and used the emergency conjure spell to bring me home. Unfortunately it, like the mirror, was tuned to me only, and she did not know how to retune them. That meant that Hugo remained out in the wilderness, alone.

The following years are a bit vague for me. I aged at the normal rate, except when Zora Zombie, whose talent was accelerated aging, came to baby-sit me. My wife managed somehow, and worked with Queen Irene to keep things in order. But it was three-year-old Ivy who did the most. It seems that she, lost in that region of the jungle, encountered the Gap Dragon and used her talent to tame it. Then she met Hugo, and her talent made him a virtual night in shiny armor, as she put it. The three had a great adventure, and in the end even managed to help Glory Goblin, the youngest, prettiest, and sweetest of Gorbage Goblin's daughters, unite with her lover Hardy Harpy, and also to defuse a wiggle swarming.

Then, when Ivy was five, she came to ask me a Question. She had, she felt, been Grounded, for no reason at all. Actually she had gotten into such mischief that the entire chapter of that volume of the Muse of History's record had been censored out. The missing chapter turned up years later in a Visual Guide to Xanth, where no one would notice it. These things happen, in Xanth. All children got into mischief, but Ivy could Enhance mischief to an excitingly new level. Now she was compounding it by sneaking out to visit me.

I had managed to age rapidly, and was now about seven years old, physically, and the same actual size as she was. Ivy had had considerable effect on me, because she Enhanced Zora's aging talent, enabling me to age much faster than otherwise. However, I was now old enough to remember my principles, so I made her go through the challenges.

Ivy used stepping stones to step across the moat. She used a dark lantern to get through a region of intolerable brightness. She nullified a flying kitty hawk by intensifying its hawk and kitty aspects until the two got into a fight with each other, and the fur and feathers really flew. Then she encountered a headstone who sounded the alarm so that she would get the brush-off, and that huge flying brush really terrified her. But she buried a dead moth by the headstone, so that it become silent like a moth, and could not alert the brush. So she won through, as I had known she would. I couldn't turn her in, of course; that would have been in violation of the Juvenile Conspiracy, to which I technically belonged until I got old enough to rejoin the Adult Conspiracy.

“Okay, okay, what's your Question?” I inquired graciously.

"I need something to clean up the Magic Tapestry so Jordan the Ghost can remember.”

Another person might have had difficulty grasping this, but I was the Magician of Information. I knew that she referred to a ghost of Castle Roogna who had died in the year 677, and been dead for 397 years, approximately, and who was now trying to tell her the story of his life to alleviate her boredom while she was Grounded. They were using the Tapestry to show pictures and refresh his memory, but the Tapestry was somewhat dirty after 838 years, approximately, and its crewel stitchery needed cleaning by caustic lye. So I gave her the recipe for the crewel lye, and she took it back to use the caustic on the yarn. The Tapestry brightened immediately, and Jordan the Ghost was at last able to tell his sad tale of an unkind untruth. It was replete with Swords and Sorceries and Goods and Evils and Treacheries and Thud and Blunder, and Ivy of course loved it, even though some of the juicier parts got censored out. After she heard it, Ivy managed to get Jordan restored to life, and then his girlfriend Threnody, who was half demon (I knew the type). Everyone was happy, except maybe for Stanley Steamer, her pet little Gap Dragon, who had gotten accidentally banished by a misinvoked spell.

So naturally that led to more mischief. Ivy was going to send her shape-changing little brother, Dolph, out to find the dragon. But Dolph was only three years old when she decided this. To stave this off, Grundy Golem did something unusually caring, and volunteered to go on this search himself. And of course the first thing he did was come to me for an Answer.