Vale of the Vole (26 page)

She ate some fruit from her pack, then donned her knapsack and bow and quiver. "It can't be far now," she said.

"It is not," Marrow agreed. "They are just beyond the next crest."

"How do you know that?"

*'I can feel the quiver of the ground as they land."

Skeletons were evidently very sensitive to quivers of the ground! "Good enough! I'll go make my pitch."

"Pitch? You plan to fashion another ramp?"

"Ramp? Not unless there's another jump!"

"Pitch is the inclination of a declivity."

"It is also the inclination of a presentation."

"Amazing."

They crested this portion of the mountain. The lofty plateau opened out, and there were the winged monsters.

They were of all types: griffins, dragons, rocs, sphinxes and assorted less common creatures, such as the hippogryph.

Xap stepped forward. He squawked.

"I understand," Chex said. "I had to make it on my own, or they would not listen to me. Will they listen now?"

He squawked affirmatively.

"O winged monsters," Chex said. "I come on behalf of the voles of the

Vale. The demons have straightened the Kiss-Mee River and turned it ugly and mean, and prevent the voles from restoring it to its natural meandering. Will you help hold off the demons so that the river can be restored?"

There was a babble of squawks and hisses and growls. Then Xap squawked.

"They will decide tomorrow," Chex repeated.

Xap squawked again.

"I must meet Cheiron?" she asked. "You mentioned him before. Sire, you know I have trouble with centaurs! My granddam refuses even to talk to me, and the centaurs of the Isle would not let me address them."

The hippogryph shrugged and dropped the subject. He helped her forage for her supper and showed her to a suitable place to spend the night. Marrow, who needed no sleep, spent the night walking around and making the acquaintance of the various monsters. "A number of these would do well in bad dreams," he remarked, impressed.

In the morning Xap explained the mechanism of the decision. Because language was a problem with many of the monsters, and so was logic, they would abide by a presentation made by champions. She would represent the cause of the voles, and Cheiron would represent the cause of the winged monsters. The cause that was most persuasive would win.

Chex realized that she, in her fatigue of the prior day, had blundered. She had rejected an introduction to the centaur, and now Cheiron was angry, and she had to oppose him formally. She was confident that she could have made her case successfully against one of the bird-brained monsters, but a centaur was a different matter. Now she had to go up against an intellect comparable to her own.

Well, what was done was done. Perhaps Cheiron would appreciate the plight of the voles despite his private affront. She would just have to do the best presentation she could.

But when she stepped out to meet Cheiron, there was only a great wash of darkness hovering over the plain. It was as though a storm cloud had moved in. "What is this?" she asked, perplexed.

Xap squawked.

"Light and darkness^" she repeated. "I am the light, he the dark? How can I make my presentation?"

Xap squawked again.

"With my mind?" Yes, that was it. She had assumed that the presentation would be verbal and logical; now she realized that it was not merely a matter of having champions to make the presentations; the presentations themselves had to be in a form intelligible to the less sophisticated

monsters. Thus light and darkness; flying creatures were good at determining shades.

The winged monsters were positioned in a circle covering the plateau. All of them faced in toward the center. They were as still as statues, waiting.

She thought of the Vale of the Vole as Volney had described it, in its original state: verdant, peaceful, pleasant, the Kiss-Mee River caressing it with its meanders. Of how any creatures that drank from it became suffused with good will and affection, though not compelled into embarrassing or awkward romantic relationships as happened with love springs. Light flared around her, diminishing the darkness above, and at the interface between the two the contrasts formed a picture that showed her vision.

Then she thought of the way the demons had come, channelizing the river, replacing its soft curves with hard, straight lines. The picture shifted to show the meanness of the present Vale, where vegetation was dying and creatures shunned each other, and the motto was Kick Mee or even Kill Mee.

Finally she made her plea. The images of flying monsters manifested in the picture, swooping down on the shapes of the demons, harrying them, driving them out of the Vale. Vole shapes appeared, tunneling through the dikes and walls, letting the captive water out, so that the Kiss-Mee could return to its natural state and nourish the Vale of the Vole again.

Now Cheiron's countercase developed. The flying monsters descended on the demons, but the demons fought back, dematerializing and reforming behind the monsters, throwing rocks at them, stabbing them, pulling the feathers from their wings. Soon the poor monsters were in a big pile on the ground, wounded and dying, while the voles remained unable to do their work on the dikes. Then the demons piled brush on the pile of injured creatures and set fire to it.

When Chex had made her presentation, the light about her had expanded, until the whole plateau was illuminated, and the darkness above had diminished. When Cheiron made his response, the darkness grew, reaching down, squeezing out the light. Even the fire in the picture blazed darkly, with the smoke roiling up like a bad dream of the gourd and merging with the darkness. The light remained strong only around Chex herself; she had lost ground.

She tried again. She thought of the way Esk was going to see the ogres, who were his ancestors just as the winged monsters were hers, to ask for the help that his human kind refused to extend. She thought of Volney Vole, tunneling down to visit the most dreaded of his kin, the wiggles, on

a similar mission. If either of these agreed to help, then the winged monsters would not be alone, and might after all be able to prevail against the formidable demons.

As she thought, her light brightened and pushed back the darkness, farther than before, and the images in the picture glowed. The marching ogres seemed almost noble, and the demons looked affrighted as the forces of both ground and air advanced. Victory was possible!

Cheiron's return sally came. The darkness swelled against the bright picture, and the picture grew smaller, as if retreating, until it was tiny and far away. What did the winged monsters care what the land-bound monsters did? The demons were no threat to the creatures of the air!

Chex did not wait for that case to be complete. She surged back with an impromptu thesis of emotion. The winged monsters did care, they had to care, for what harmed one part of Xanth harmed all parts, and what harmed the monsters of the land also harmed those of the air. Human beings might be callous about the problems of a nonhuman region, and centaurs might be indifferent to noncentaur matters, but surely the winged monsters wanted to have a better rapport with other creatures than this!

As she projected those thoughts, the light rallied and pushed back the darkness. But the darkness forged back. There was no point in having the winged monsters be as foolish as the ground-borne monsters; all of them could perish on this foolish quest.

But Chex would not abide that. Even if the quest were hopeless, still it was a worthy one. The deed should be done because it was worth doing, without regard to possible failure. Other creatures might mask their cowardice with expressions of indifference, but this should not be the way of the boldest of all creatures, the winged monsters! Better to die in such an honorable quest, than to live in the dishonor of noninvolvement, the way the humans and centaurs were. Human folk did not seem to care about the plight of volish folk, but other animals should.

Her light brightened and spread with every point, beating back the darkness, until little was left of it except a small cloud. Now secondary sources of light were starting up, like flames ignited by flying sparks. These were from the monsters that rimmed the plateau; they agreed with her!

The dark cloud shrank, until at last the figure hovering within it became visible. And suddenly Chex felt faint.

Cheiron was a winged centaur/

Of course she should have realized that before! She had correctly identified his name as typical of centaurs, but had failed to connect this with

the fact that every creature on this plateau was winged. The path she had taken up had been little used, and there had been no centaur prints showing on it. The only way Cheiron could have come here was by flying. This should have been obvious to her instantly; she had blundered personally as well as tactically. She had alienated the only other creature of her precise kind.

The last of the darkness above dissipated, and the sun shone down. But in Chex's heart new darkness was welling. How could she have been so wrongheaded!

Cheiron flew down toward her, and the sunlight highlighted his silver wings and his golden hooves. He was the handsomest centaur she had even seen! He appeared to be of mature age, certainly older than she, well muscled and sleekly structured. And he could fly!

He landed before her and folded his wings, but she was too chagrined to meet his gaze. "I like your spirit, filly," he said. "You fought your way up here, and you fought your way through the darkness I spread. Your sire was right about you: you are worthy not only because you are the only other of my kind in Xanth. I came here from afar when I heard of you, hoping you were worthwhile."

Timidly, flushing in the atrocious human manner, she looked at him. He was smiling. "You—you are not angry that I did not meet you before?"

"Furious," he said. "But you are young yet, and cannot be expected to have mastery of all social graces, especially when most centaurs shun you. I know how that is; believe me, I know! At least it gave me the pretext to try your mettle. The winged monsters will travel to the Vale of the Vole; you have persuaded them. And I—"

She gazed at him, smitten the manner of any adolescent in the presence of wonder. What a creature he was! "And you—?"

"I will welcome you—when you fly to me." He turned, spread his wings, and took off, leaving her in the downblast of air that was scarcely more tumultuous than her emotions.

She had to learn to fly!

Chapter 11. Ogre

1 hey walked along the path to Castle Roogna. Chex had promised Princess Ivy that she would send Esk in for a report once she found him, and Ivy had promised in return to dig out something else to help them get help for the Kiss-Mee River. As it was turning out, little Ivy was doing almost as much good for them as her parents might have.

"Who is Ivy?" Bria inquired.

Esk explained, for of course Bria had very little information about the normal Xanth hierarchies.

"Oh, she's Irene's daughter!" Bria exclaimed. "My mother Blythe knew Irene."

"She did?" Esk asked, startled. "How could that be?"

"After your ogre father tore up Marrow's folk, he went on to tear up the brassies, and he abducted Blythe to this world. There she got to know several interesting people, including your mother Tandy, and later she came to help Mare Imbri rescue your kings."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked.

"I didn't think it was relevant. Besides, a girl has to be careful around ogres. Your father put a dent in my mother."

"He wouldn't do a thing like that! He's always been loyal to my mother!"

"Are you saying it's not true? You embarrass me."

Esk paused. This promised to become complicated. "Uh, no, I'm not saying that."

"Then what are you saying?"

"Just that there must be some misunderstanding."

"Oh." She seemed disappointed. "Anyway, later she married my father, but I think she missed the outside world some. I grew up very curious about it. That's how I got lost; I was looking for a way out."

Esk smiled. "Well, you found a way out!"

"No, you found it. I'm not really out, though; I'm trapped here the same way you were trapped inside."

"You mean your body is still there on the Lost Path?"

"No. But I'm not really out, either, because the moment you go back into the gourd, I'll go back too, or fade out, or something—I don't know exactly what happens, but it isn't good. What I need is a way to get stabilized, so I don't get into trouble here."

"Chex found a physical way into the gourd!" Esk exclaimed. "Through the zombie gourd! Maybe if you went back in through that—"

"Going in won't do me any good."

"But I thought—"

She glanced at him appraisingly. "You shouldn't try to think, Esk. It's bad for ogres."

"Well, maybe you could go back in with me, and then go out through that big gourd. Then you'd be out on your own, and not dependent on me."

"That won't work either. I'm on the Lost Path, remember."

"Yes, but if we find someone who enters the gourd at your home region, then that person can take you back in, and you won't be lost anymore."