Irene held her little girl snugly before her as they rode the centaur. They were approaching Castle Zombie, and she didn’t want any problems about sliding off. Ivy, only three years old, had not encountered a zombie before and might react in an unfortunate manner.
Suddenly Irene experienced a terrible vision. She screamed and almost fell off the centaur herself.
Chem Centaur spun her front section about, trying to catch woman and child before they fell. Simultaneously, Chet jumped close, reaching out to steady them. “What happened?” he asked, his free hand reaching for the bow slung over his shoulder. “I didn’t see anything.”
“You didn’t; I did,” Irene told the centaur, recovering. They had been friends for a long time. “A vision. It appalled me.”
King Dor, riding Chet, glanced obliquely at Irene. He evidently did not know how serious this might be, so he limited his comment to practicalities. “Let’s get on inside the castle. Then you can tell us about it.” He didn’t say so, but he might have been nervous about having his daughter riding with a person who screamed without apparent reason, for he reached across and lifted Ivy from Irene’s arms. Irene stifled a flash of anger and embarrassment, but did not resist the transfer. She could hardly explain her reaction herself.
They rode on in slightly awkward silence, the two centaurs choosing the path. Irene glanced at her husband and child. Dor had been young and gangling when she had arranged to become engaged to him, and still somewhat unprepossessing when she had finally managed to marry him five years ago, even though he was a full Magician. She remembered their nuptials with a certain fondness; they had been in the zombie graveyard at Castle Roogna. Most of those zombies were gone now, having perished at the brutal hands of the invading Mundanes. It was difficult for a zombie to die, since it wasn’t really alive, but it could be hacked to pieces. However, the newer zombies here at the Zombie Master’s own castle in the uncharted wilderness of southern Xanth had not been subjected to such indignity.
She closed off that subject in her mind, as she was not partial to zombies, useful and loyal though they might be. She returned her thought to Dor. The assumption of the throne of Xanth had abruptly matured him, at least in her eyes, and the arrival of their darling child two years later had matured him again. Now, at age twenty-nine. Dor seemed quite solid and respectable. In a few more years he might even look kingly!
Ivy, in contrast, was a bundle of squiggle. She was large and agile for her age, with fair hair that bore just a tinge of green and eyes with more than that. She was insatiably curious about the whole of Xanth. That was natural with any child, of course; Irene’s parents, who had ruled Xanth before Dor, had remarked on her own propensities for mischief at an early age. Irene’s magic talent was for growing plants, which was probably why her own hair was green, and it seemed that talent had manifested early. Before she had learned to talk, she had caused all manner of weeds to sprout around Castle Roogna. Blue roses were all right, but skunk cabbages were awkward, particularly when they got upset.
Ivy’s talent, though, was of a different nature. They had had to readjust palace life when she was around, because–
“Halsh!” It was a zombie centaur guarding the approach to the castle of the Zombie Master. Zombies came in all varieties; most were–or had once been–human, but some were animal or crossbreed. The Zombie Master could reanimate any dead creature, giving it perpetual half-life. This one’s hide was mottled with mold and its face was rotting out, but otherwise it was in fair condition.
“We are here for the twins’ debut,” King Dor said, just as if he were addressing a living creature. “Please let us pass.”
“Ssurre,” the zombie said. Evidently it had been told to be accommodating for this very special occasion. Zombies had rotten brains, but could comprehend and remember simple instructions.
They moved on toward the castle. It was a truly grotesque specimen of its kind. It had a moat filled in with thick, greenish sludge, populated by corrupt monsters. Its stones were degenerating slimestone. It looked centuries old, though it had been built less than a decade ago. That was the way the zombies liked it. They had made it, and their ichor stained every surface.
The Zombie Master’s twin children were alert. Both hurried out to meet the incoming party. They were just sixteen, lanky and fair-haired, about the same height and almost identical from a distance. But as they approached, their distinctions manifested. Hiatus was male, with developing shoulders and the first traces of a beard; Lacuna was female, her hair framing a rounder face and her clothing arranged to set off contours that were evidently not entirely to her satisfaction. Irene smiled to herself; some girls filled out early, as she herself had done, while others were late. Lacuna would get there in due course.
“Welcome to Castle Zombie, your Majesties,” Hiatus said formally. The two were on their good behavior; no mischievous magic occurred.
“Good to be here,” Dor responded. The truth was, the King had come on business; the twins’ debut was merely a pretext so that citizens of Xanth would not be concerned that something was wrong. For something was indeed wrong, and this was to be a significant meeting. It was perhaps the first genuine crisis since Dor had assumed the throne on a regular basis, and Irene worried that he might mishandle it. Her father, King Trent, had been fully competent to deal with anything–but Trent had retired and moved to the North Village so as not to interfere with the policies of his successor. Irene would have preferred to have her father closer by, just in case. She loved Dor, and always had, especially when she was furious with him, but knew he was not the man her father was. Of course, she never displayed that sentiment in public; her mother Iris had long since impressed on her that it was not politic to be too open about the inadequacies of men, particularly husbands, especially those who also happened to be kings. It was better to run things behind the scenes, the old-fashioned way. That was where the real power was.
“We cleaned up the zombies for you,” Lacuna said shyly.
Irene glanced at the zombie centaur, which had followed after them as a kind of honor guard. Gobbets of decayed flesh fell from its body as it moved and plopped sickeningly to the ground. But the creature had a bright red ribbon in its tail. “We can see that,” she said diplomatically. “That was very nice of you.” Zombies did take some getting used to, but they were, in their putrescent fashion, decent folk. It was hardly their fault that they had died and been reanimated as walking dead.
They crossed the moat, using the warped wooden drawbridge. Irene couldn’t help glancing down into the green fluid coated by slime and wrinkling her nose against the terrible smell. No enemy in his right mind would storm this sewer!
A zombie water monster lifted its largely defunct head, but did not bother them; it was used to the frequent passages of the lively twins. Such a creature would not be very good for real defense because it had lost most of its teeth, but naturally it would not be polite for a visitor to remark on that. Zombie monsters, like husbands, required careful management.
The interior of the castle was quite different, for this was where Millie the Ghost held sway. The stone floor was clean, and pleasant draperies covered the walls. The zombie centaur did not go inside, and no other zombies were in evidence.
Millie stepped forward to welcome them. She was dressed in a soft pink gown that fitted her very well. She had been in her teens for eight hundred years, as a ghost in Castle Roogna, but since then had had another twenty-nine years of real life, just about tripling her mortal age. She had been an amazingly supple creature, as Irene well remembered, and Irene had always been secretly jealous of that. But now Millie was plumping out in the manner of a pampered housewife.
She still had her magic talent, though; Irene could tell by the way Dor reacted. She felt a stronger tinge of jealousy. Millie had been Dor’s first love, in a fashion, for she had been his governess while his parents were away for extended periods. But Millie affected every man that way–and Millie’s own love was only for her husband the Zombie Master. So Irene’s jealousy was mainly a perfunctory thing, and she controlled it rigorously. She had come to know Millie better in adult life, and liked her personally. Millie was really very sweet and permanently innocent. How she managed to be so after bearing and raising two children was a minor mystery, and Irene was also a bit jealous of that.
There was a small commotion outside, and the twins dashed out to get in on the action. In a moment they escorted Arnolde Centaur to the interior. Arnolde, no zombie, was much older than Chet and Chem and showed it; he walked with a certain stiffness and wore spectacles, and parts of his hide were turning gray. He was a Magician, which magic had gotten him banished from his original home on Centaur Isle, but his talent did not manifest in Xanth itself. He was also highly educated and intelligent, and this did manifest. He had, briefly, been King of Xanth during the NextWave crisis, and it was generally conceded that his special insights into the situation had been the critical factor in turning the course of the war to Xanth’s favor. Irene liked Arnolde; because of him, she herself had been, even more briefly. King of Xanth.
Irene smiled to herself. Xanth custom prohibited any reigning Queen, but did not specifically bar a female King. That had been part of Arnolde’s insight, bless him.
After the polite greetings, Chet and Chem went out with the twins to tour the grounds, taking Ivy along, and the Zombie Master made his appearance. He remained as cadaverous as ever, but was neatly dressed in a black, mundane suit, and was actually fairly handsome in his fashion.
There was a pause. Dor turned to Irene. “The vision?” he inquired gently.
The vision! She had almost forgotten it! Now it came back in its horror. “It–it was a picture, or a still-life scene. A statue. Two statues. And danger.”
The Zombie Master’s head turned gravely. “Danger–here?”
“She suffered a vision as we approached the castle,” Dor explained. “I thought it better to wait for privacy before examining it, as sometimes these things are important.”
“Indeed they can be,” Arnolde agreed. “There are aspects of the magic of Xanth that remain obscure to us. The predictive visions are a prime example.”
“I don’t know that it’s predictive,” Irene said. “It may be just my foolishness.”
“This is the best possible, occasion to find out,” Dor said. “If we can’t figure it out. Good Magician Humfrey surely will when he arrives.” He reached across and took her hand. “You saw statues?”
“One was Imbri the Day Mare–the statue we made after she saved Xanth from the Horseman.”
“Of course,” Dor agreed reassuringly. “We all honor Mare Imbrium.”
“The other–seemed to be a dragon. On a pedestal.”
Dor squeezed her hand. He could be very comforting when he tried. “And that frightened you?”
“No, not exactly. Not the statues. They were just stone.”
The Zombie Master’s thin lips quirked. “Perhaps the Gorgon is involved.”
“I don’t think so,” Irene said. “But between them–“
She paused, having difficulty formulating what she had seen. “The Void?” Dor suggested helpfully. “Mare Imbri fell into it, and it remains a danger–“
“Not the Void. But something just as terrible. I don’t know what.”
Dor shrugged, not understanding. But now Arnolde stepped in, applying his fine centaur intellect to the problem. “Why would possible peril to two statues frighten you?”
“It wasn’t to the statues,” Irene said. “Or from them. They were just markers, I think.”
“So there is a specific locale–if we can but fathom it,” Arnolde said. “Not here at Castle Zombie?”
“Not here,” Irene agreed. “Not anywhere I know of. But definitely a place of danger.”
“Is there peril to any of us here?” the centaur asked, shifting to a new line of investigation.
“I don’t think so. Not directly.”
“To whom, then?”
“I’m not sure,” Irene said, feeling her face clouding up.
“I suspect you do know,” Arnolde persisted. “If not peril to us, or to yourself, perhaps to someone you love–“
“Ivy!” Dor exclaimed.
That was it. “Between the statues,” she agreed heavily.
“Your little daughter, between the statues,” Arnolde said. “Was she hurt?”
“No. Just there. She seemed almost happy. But it terrified me. I just knew something awful–that Ivy would–I don’t know. It was all in together, in that one scene.”
“Night mare, dragon, and child,” Arnolde said. “Together in danger. Perhaps that is sufficient warning to enable you to avoid that situation.”
“We’ll keep her away from statues,” Dor said reassuringly.
It all seemed foolish now. The vision didn’t necessarily mean anything, and if it did, it wasn’t the statues that were responsible. They were just there. Mare Imbri would never bring harm to Ivy, not even a bad dream, and the dragon–that one resembled the Gap Dragon, for it had six legs, but seemed smaller. Such a dragon would be dangerous, for any dragon was dangerous–but how could a dragon statue harm anyone? And why would anyone make a statue of a dragon? It made no sense!
Irene relaxed. Now four Magicians were present, and they could settle down to the business of planning the party for the twins’ debut.
Which business they promptly ignored. Millie had worked out the plans privately and in an hour would stage a splendid display, buttressed by such props as talking objects and fantastic plants, courtesy of the talents of Dor and Irene.
“Wasn’t Humfrey supposed to join us by this time?” Dor inquired, his tone showing mild annoyance.
“Hugo,” Irene said succinctly. Hugo was the retarded son of the Magician Humfrey and the Gorgon, his name a combination of theirs: Humfrey and Gorgon. Well, Irene corrected her thought, maybe “retarded” was too strong a term for Hugo. Certainly the boy was slow, and his magic virtually useless, and Humfrey kept him largely confined to the castle–but perhaps he would improve with age. Humfrey was, after all, well over a century old and so might have had difficulty fathering a completely healthy child, unkind as it might be to think of it that way. Or perhaps Hugo was merely a slow developer; who could tell what he might be when he was eighty or ninety years old?
“Things do tend to go wrong when Hugo is along,” Dor remarked. “The boy is a born bungler. Humfrey did mention that he planned to bring Hugo so he could meet the other children here. The Gorgon will be in charge of Humfrey’s castle for the day.”
‘The other children?” Irene asked, lifting an eyebrow. Her brows were modestly green, like her hair, and she had cultivated just the right arch to make the expression effective. Volumes could be conveyed by the small motion of an eyebrow, if one had the talent. “The twins are sixteen, and Ivy is three. Hugo is eight. With whom does he play?”
“We asked Humfrey to bring the boy,” the Zombie Master said. “They very kindly shared their castle with us for a decade, but when Hugo arrived, it was time for us to make room. They bore with our children; we can bear with theirs.”
“For a few hours,” Millie said, smiling from the doorway. Irene had forgotten she was present; Millie still had a certain ghostlike quietness at times!
“We can proceed without him,” Dor decided. He was, after all, the King; he could not afford to twiddle his thumbs indefinitely. “Humfrey will know all the details when he arrives. He has already advanced some advice, though we are not sure what it means.”
“Which is typical of his advice,” Irene murmured. “It’s about as clear as a vision is.”
“Good enough,” the Zombie Master agreed. “The situation is this: a dragon–“
“–seems to have moved into this general region and is terrorizing the populace. We have set out the usual warners, and my zombies are currently patrolling, but this is a singularly ornery creature that refuses to be bound by normal conventions. Therefore, stronger measures are in order.”
Irene relaxed again. This did not seem to be the dragon of her vision.
“We do have strong spells in the Castle Roogna arsenal,” Dor said. “But the Good Magician sent word not to bring any weapon-grade enchantments. That’s what mystifies us. Why not use something effective against a rogue dragon?”
“I could conjecture–” Arnolde began.
They were interrupted by a terrible roar that stiffened Irene again. It resounded throughout the castle, making the very stone shake.
Millie the Ghost jumped up. “Oh, I told the children not to tease the monster under the bed!” she exclaimed, almost floating out in her haste to attend to the matter.
“Teasing a monster?” Irene inquired, raising another fine green eyebrow. That roar had really given her a start!
The Zombie Master grimaced apologetically. “There are monsters under every child’s bed, but ours is more sensitive than most. The poor thing gets quite upset. The children like to dangle their feet down barely within its range, then yank them up just as its hairy mitt grabs for them. Or they squirt perfume at it. That sort of thing. It really isn’t nice to do that. We want them to treat magic creatures with the respect they deserve.”
Irene suppressed an illicit smirk. She had always been afraid of the monster under the bed and, in childhood, had tended to leap into bed, not from any joy of sleeping, but to avoid the ankle-grabbing mitt. The monster had disappeared when she grew up, and she came to doubt that it had ever existed, but recently Ivy had claimed to have seen it. When Irene had checked, there had been nothing there, so she knew Ivy was imagining it. Probably the monster had died of old age. The strangest thing was that, though her monster had definitely been real when Irene herself was small, her own parents had pretended not to see it. Why had adults refused to see her genuine monster, while now her child pretended to see it when it wasn’t there? Regardless, she had no sympathy for the thing. Monsters under the bed were a species of creature; like dragons and nickelpedes, that she felt Xanth would be happier without.
“Can’t it reach to the top of the bed?” Arnolde asked, interested. “Centaurs do not use beds, so I am not conversant with this particular monster.”
“That is not the nature of bed monsters,” the Zombie Master explained. “They can not depart their lair. It is too bright above, you see. Their domain terminates where the shadow does. They have to travel at night, but only the gravest emergency will lure a bed monster from its lair even then. They just don’t feel secure in the open.”
Irene could appreciate why. If she ever caught such a monster in the open, she would take a broom to it! “You were about to conjecture about Humfrey’s motive,” Irene reminded Arnolde.
“Ah, yes,” the centaur Magician agreed. “The Good Magician always has excellent reason for his actions or inactions. If there were some special quality about this particular dragon, it would be unwise simply to slay it. We might thereby do irreparable harm to Xanth.”
“By eliminating a rogue dragon?” Irene asked incredulously. “Dragons are common in Xanth!”
“But there are different types of dragons,” the centaur pointed out. “Just as there are different types of humanoids, ranging from the giants to the elves. Some dragons are intelligent.”
“Not this one,” the Zombie Master said. “Or if it is, it doesn’t care to show it. It just blunders along, rampaging randomly.”
“Strange,” the centaur said. “I suppose we shall just have to wait for the Good Magician to enlighten us. Is it usual for him to be so late to a meeting?”
“Nothing is unusual for Humfrey,” Dor said with a smile. “He does things his own way and can neglect or forget routine details.”
“Such as meeting with other Magicians of Xanth to work out a program to deal with a crisis,” Irene said wryly. “A crisis that has been exacerbated by his refusal to let us use effective measures.”
“I understand he had some errands to attend to on the way,” the Zombie Master said mildly. “Some magic potions he can harvest in this vicinity. He is always collecting magic artifacts.”
“Well, he ought to know where they are,” Irene said. “He is the Magician of Information.”
Dor twiddled his fingers against his knee, obviously impatient with the delay. “Should we make our decision without him? We can’t wait too long, or the children will–“
There was a crash, followed by horrendous mixed noise. “Speak of the devils!” the Zombie Master said. “Now they’re playing their music box.”
“That’s music?” Irene inquired, both brows raised.
“It’s some sort of Mundane device called a jerk box,” he explained. “Teenagers associate with it.”
“Juke box,” Arnolde corrected him gently. “My friend Ichabod the Mundane arranged to import it, and Humfrey found a spell to make it operate here. I am not certain they exercised good judgment in this instance.”
“If that’s Mundane music, I’m glad I live in Xanth,” Irene muttered.
“Wasn’t there another problem?” Dor inquired of the Zombie Master.
The dour man nodded. “Yes. People have been turning up at the castle with amnesia.”
“Amnesia?”
“They have forgotten who they are and where they’re going,” the Zombie Master explained. “It is as if they have just been born–but they possess all their faculties. We can’t send them home, because we don’t know where they belong. Animals, too–they just wander aimlessly.”
“That sounds like a forget-spell,” Arnolde said.
“Like the one on the Gap Chasm?” Dor asked.
“No,” the Zombie Master said. “That spell makes people forget that the Gap exists, once they depart from it. It doesn’t make them forget who they are themselves.”
“It hardly makes them forget the Gap itself, these days,” Irene put in. “We are all able to remember the Gap now.”
“Still, this could be a spell,” Arnolde said. “It is unfortunate the affected people are unable to remember what happened to them.”
“Did anyone follow their tracks back?” Irene asked;
“Yes, of course,” the Zombie Master said. “We have several excellent zombie hounds. We traced the tracks some distance through the forest–but there seemed to be nothing of significance. The tracks just wandered randomly. We did trace a couple back to their origins; one came from the South Village, and his wife recognized him–but he neither remembered her nor was able to say what had happened to him. There was no evidence of misplay anywhere along his route. It seemed he had gone out to fetch a pine needle for his wife to sew with and never returned. We retraced his route several times, narrowing down the region where his progress became aimless, but there was nothing. No one else was affected, and there was no sign of the passage of any unusual animal or plant.”
“At least he was able to rejoin his family,” Irene said.
The Zombie Master smiled briefly. “Fortunately, she is an attractive woman, or he might not have chosen to exercise that option.” He waved a thin hand in a gesture of negation. “But a number of other cases remain unsolved, and in any event, we don’t want this complaint to spread. Especially not while a dragon is rampaging.”
“Good Magician Humfrey will have the Answers,” King Dor said. “He always does.”
“Take care he doesn’t charge us each a year’s service for it,” Arnolde said with a faint smile. Humfrey normally did not charge other Magicians, as a matter of propriety or caution, but the Good Magician was often absent-minded. All the other Magicians of the senior generation had retired, but Humfrey seemed eternal. Irene wondered what his secret was. She also wondered if they had not become too dependent on him for Answers. How would they manage if the Good Magician were no longer around to give advice? That was not a pleasant thought, but it would be foolish not to prepare.
Millie reappeared. “I had to pack them off outside,” she said. “But we had better finish the meeting soon, or they’ll be in trouble again.”
“All we need is the Good Magician,” Arnolde said. “We have defined the problems; he must define the Answers.”
“It’s not like him to be this late,” the Zombie Master said. “Not when the matter is important. He doesn’t like to leave his castle, but he keeps a pretty strict schedule once he does; Perhaps I should send a zombie out–“
“He could be traveling by magic carpet,” Irene pointed out. “Or by direct conjuration. He wouldn’t bother with a footpath.”
A zombie in a ragged tuxedo appeared at the door. “Yes, Jeeves?” the Zombie Master inquired. It seemed there were a few indoor zombies, performing necessary chores.
“Carpish ashoy,” the creature announced, spitting out a decayed tooth in the effort of speech.
“Well, open a window,” the Zombie Master said.
The zombie dropped a chunk of sodden flesh from somewhere on its anatomy within the tux and went to a window. After some struggle, since its muscles were mostly rotten, it got the window open. Then it shuffled out.
Just in time! A flying carpet glided in, supporting two figures. The Good Magician had at last arrived.
The carpet landed on the floor with a bump. Humfrey and his son sat there. The Good Magician was a small, wrinkled gnome of a man with a bare pate and thick-lensed glasses. Hugo was evidently following the pattern of his father; though his skin was smooth, his head fair-haired, and his face innocent, he was very small for his age and already somewhat gnarled. By no stretch of euphemism could he be called handsome, and he was all too likely to grow into a man no prettier than Humfrey.
Too bad, Irene thought, that Hugo had not taken after his mother, for the Gorgon was as tall, stately, and good-featured as a human being came. Of course, few people ever gazed on the Gorgon’s features, and those who did were likely to pay a rather severe consequence. There were still a number of statues of Mundane invaders placed around Castle Roogna, souvenirs of the Gorgon’s part in that last great battle.
There was over a century between the ages of Humfrey and Hugo, but they were obviously two of a kind, physically. Alas, not mentally! Humfrey was a special kind of genius, while the boy–
“Come and sit down,” the Zombie Master said, rising to welcome the Good Magician. “We have been waiting for you.”
“I am sitting, Jonathan,” Humfrey grumped. As he spoke, the wrinkles around and across his face seemed almost to ripple. “I had other business.”
“Hugo can join the other children,” Irene said diplomatically. She knew the adults would not talk freely while the boy was present, though Hugo was unlikely to comprehend anything significant.
“No, we have another chore, and I’m behind schedule,” Humfrey said. “Your problems are these: the Gap Dragon is ravaging the country; you must not hurt it, for it is necessary to the welfare of the Gap, especially now that the spell is breaking up.”
“Spell?” King Dor asked.
“The forget-spell, of course,” Humfrey said, as if impatient with dullness. He probably had a lot of practice with that, traveling with his son. “It received a fatal jolt in the Time of No Magic twenty-nine years ago, and now is fragmenting and mutating. Forget-whorls are spinning off and causing mischief; they can incite partial or complete amnesia. Spray each whorl with this liquid to neutralize it temporarily, then move it out of Xanth to the Mundane regions where it has no effect.” He grimaced, remembering something. “Not much effect, at any rate; it does cause the Mundanes to forget that magic works–not that that is very much loss for them.” He handed the Zombie Master a small bottle of translucent fluid with a nozzle and pneumatic bulb on it. “Take it up, Hugo.”
The carpet lurched into the air toward the wall. “No, out the window, idiot!” the Good Magician snapped, out of patience before he started. “Straighten out and fly right!”
“Wait!” Dor cried. “How can we spray and move–“
The carpet straightened out, wobbled, then sailed through the window. The Good Magician was gone.
“–a forget-whorl we can’t even see, hear, or feel?” Dor finished, frustrated.
The others exchanged glances. “So much for our business meeting,” Irene said. “We got the business.”
“The amnesia,” the Zombie Master said. “So it is from the Gap’s forget-spell! Mutated–I never thought of that! No wonder we couldn’t trace the source of the problem; the whorls would be undetectable and leave no trace except the wipeout of memory!”
“That was my question,” Dor said. “Invisible, silent, no smell–how will we know one is near, until it is too late?”
“That is indeed a problem,” Arnolde agreed. “It had not occurred to me that such a fragmentation would be so undisciplined, but I suppose that if the forget-spell now lacks its primary object–“
“Undisciplined,” Dor said. “That describes the Gap Dragon, too! The breakup of the spell must have enabled it to remember a way out of the Gap, and it doesn’t have any limit to its marauding, up here in regular Xanth.”
“But to follow it to its secret exit,” the Zombie Master said. “That will be dangerous. The Gap Dragon is one of the largest and most savage creatures we know, and no person in its vicinity is safe.”
“We shall have to plan a strategy of procedure,” Dor said. “We must deal with both the dragon and the forget-whorls, somehow.”
“At least now we know the cause of our problems,” Arnolde said. “Humfrey was not here long, but he did cover the essence. Perhaps we should proceed to the twins’ party before they become more restive, so that we are freed from that distraction. Then we can meet again and try to work out–“
He was interrupted by commotion and screaming from outside. Something dramatic was going on!
“I fear they are already restive,” the Zombie Master said wryly.
They hurried to the window the Good Magician had used. It offered a fair view of the moat and the surrounding countryside. Irene saw a cloud of smoke approaching through the forest. “I’m not sure the children are doing that,” she said. No, it wasn’t smoke, exactly. It was steam, or condensing water. It was puffing from–
“The Gap Dragon!” Arnolde Centaur exclaimed. “It is raiding here!”
“And we’re not supposed to hurt it,” Dor said with disgust. “What does Humfrey expect us to do–tie a yellow ribbon on its tail and follow it home?”
“The children!” Irene exclaimed, appalled. “The children are outside!” She charged through the castle and out the front portal, oblivious to all else. Her vision, the dragon–“Ivy! Ivy!” she cried.
Lacuna was sitting by the edge of the moat, forming words, sentences, and paragraphs on the slimy surface of the water. That was her talent; she could cause print to form on anything and could change it at will. She was so engrossed in her composition that she was obviously unaware of the approaching menace. “Ivy’s all right, your Majesty. She’s enhancing the zombies. They like her.”
“The Gap Dragon’s here!” Irene cried. But even as she spoke, the monster appeared, a great cloud of steam enclosing it.
Irene tried to run along the moat bank to get at Ivy, but the child was on the other side. So was the Gap Dragon. It was bearing down on them.
Irene screamed. Ivy looked up and saw her. The child was facing away from the dragon.
Then one of the zombies saw the dragon. For a long moment it paused, a thought churning through its sloppy cranial matter, while the dragon steamed rapidly closer. The thought was lucky; it made it through to the zombie’s action-command center.
The zombie picked up the child and lumbered along the moat, out of the dragon’s path. It was an act of remarkable relevance for this type of creature.
The dragon steamed right up to the moat–and hunched its fore-section across it. A large moat monster attacked, being too far gone to harbor either fear or common sense, but its teeth were mostly caries and could not make an impression on the steel-hard scales of the Gap Dragon. The dragon shook off the zombie and plowed into the outer wall of the castle, snoot-first. Such was its impact that the stone crumbled inward.
The dragon stalled at last, head buried in the wall. But it wasn’t trapped; it wrenched its head up, and a larger section of the wall crumbled out. Slimestone simply had not been designed to stand up to treatment like this!
Zombies rushed up to defend the castle, bearing rusty swords and rank clubs. They sliced and bashed ineffectively at the dragon’s side and back. Irritated by this nonsense, the dragon brought its head about and issued a blast of steam that entirely obscured the zombies.
When the cloud cleared, the zombies were in a sorry state. Portions of their decaying flesh had melted away, leaving steamed bones, and much of what remained was too cooked to function well. Zombies were generally immune to physical damage, other than being cut to pieces, but there were limits. These ones staggered and fell into the moat, annoying the other moat denizens but enriching it with their substance.
The dragon, having breached the castle defenses, seemed to lose interest. It turned toward Irene.
The Gap Dragon was low-slung, with a triple pair of legs, exactly as in her vision. Its metallic scales shone green in the shade and iridescent in the sunlight. One ear perked up; the other was merely a stub, evidently the casualty of one of its many battles. Indeed, there were scars all over its tree-trunk thick torso. Its eyes were bright with the malevolent delight of the rampage.
Now Irene became aware of her own peril. She had been standing more or less transfixed by the action, oblivious to personal danger. The Gap Dragon was one of the most formidable monsters of Xanth. Ordinarily it was no threat to people outside the Gap Chasm. That hardly mattered now!
The dragon took a step toward her, as if deciding whether she was worth going after. It was time to act.
Irene brought out a pincushion seed. “Grow!” she directed it and tossed it in front of the dragon.
The plant sprouted immediately, forming a button that swelled into a cushion that sprouted a score of sharp pins, their points jutting sharply out.
The dragon paused to sniff at it. A pin stuck in its nose. The monster shot out a jet of steam, but the pins didn’t melt. The cushion continued to grow.
The pin in the nose tickled. The dragon sneezed. That sent pins and steam flying out from the cushion. The steam floated up into the sky, while the pins rained down into the moat, sticking the moat monsters. Pins didn’t bother zombies, but there was an angry squeal from the denuded cushion.
The Gap Dragon, of course, had not been hurt. It was armored against swords; pins were beneath its notice. It peered again at Irene, still trying to decide whether she was worth the trouble of gobbling. She did not wait any undue time for its decision. She reached for another seed.
The dragon decided to explore in the opposite direction. It turned about and moved off. Ironically, Irene found herself angry; wasn’t she good enough to eat?
More zombies rushed up, armed with pickled stink bombs. Evidently the Zombie Master was getting his defenses organized. The zombies lofted these bombs at the Gap Dragon, who snapped the first out of the air with easy contempt and crunched it into a foul mass.
Now the Gap Dragon made a sound that resembled its initials. It was not particularly intellectual, but there was nothing wrong with its perception of smell or taste. It could distinguish a foul stench quite as readily as could the next creature. It coughed out another cloud of steam, but the odor clung to its teeth.
Really irritated now, the Gap Dragon lunged and snapped up a zombie. But the rotten creature didn’t taste much better than the stink bomb. The Gap Dragon spat it out with another utterance of its initials.
At last, with poor grace, the dragon gave it up as a bad job and humped back across the moat and galumphed away into the jungle. The raid was over.
“You would have done better chomping me!” Irene called after the dragon snidely. “I don’t taste like a stink bomb!”
She breathed a sigh of relief nonetheless–then remembered Ivy. She was the object of the danger in the vision! Where had the zombie taken her?
Irene hurried across the drawbridge and around the outside of the moat, following the route she had seen the zombie take. She tuned out most of everything else, intent on this one thing. Along the way she saw the devastation left by the Gap Dragon, with broken trees and pieces of zombie, but not the thing she most sought: her darling daughter. Where was Ivy?
In moments others joined her, searching the entire area. “Which zombie took her?” the Zombie Master asked. “I can question that one.”
“I don’t know one zombie from another!” Irene replied, the ugly clutch of apprehension tightening about her rib cage. That vision was becoming more real!
“Then I will question them all,” the Zombie Master decided. He brought out a battered horn and blew a blast that sounded like the final wail of a dying buzzard.
Immediately the zombies converged from the entire area, shuffling up so hurriedly that they left pieces of themselves all over the premises. It was amazing the number that appeared; soon there was a dense and grotesque crowd of the things. Irene knew that each one was a person who had died and been reanimated; a lot of people had died in the past few years!
And would one more die in the next day? No! she cried mentally. She could not even think of that!
“Which one of you carried Ivy?” the Zombie Master demanded of the motley throng.
There was no answer.
“Which one of you knows who carried Ivy?” he asked next.
Three fetid hands hoisted.
“Tell me who carried Ivy,” the Zombie Master said, pointing to one of them. Irene realized that it took a special technique to question zombies; they reacted literally, like inanimate things.
“Zzussch,” the indicated zombie replied, losing part of its lip in the effort of speech.
“Zush, where are you?” the Zombie Master called.
Another zombie shuffled forward.
“Where did you take Ivy?”
The zombie shrugged, dropping a piece of bone from its shoulder.
“I fear it does not remember,” Arnolde said. “Perhaps a forget-whorl…”
“But then Ivy–” Irene began, horrified. The horror of the vision–had it been forgetfulness? That would explain its undefined nature.
“May be lost in the jungle–without her memory,” the centaur concluded for her.
Now everyone understood. There was an appalled silence. Into what league of incapacity and peril had Ivy been thrown?
