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A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 0-312-86904-5
First Edition: October 2002
Printed in the United States of America
0987654321
Contents
prolog…………………………………………………………11
1. emulation………………………………………………..15
2. letters …………………………………………………..31
3. challenges ………………………………………………47
4. moons of ida……………………………………………..64
5. zombie world…………………………………………….80
6. souffle serpent………………………………………….97
7. sidestepping …………………………………………….114
8. isle of cats ……………………………………………..129
9. submarine sand witch………………………………….144
10. fauns & nymphs…………………………………………159
11. surprise …………………………………………………174
12. grossclout ……………………………………………..190
13. ogrets…………………………………………………..206
14. com pewter……………………………………………..222
15. Six eager girls………………………………………….238
16. goblin mountain ……………………………………….254
17. dream realm ……………………………………………271
18. consequences …………………………………………..289
19. rorrim…………………………………………………..306
20. decisions………………………………………………..322
author’s note ……………………………………………….341
UP IN A HEAVAL
PROLOG
Demons did not normally assume mortal form or substance, but on rare occasion it was convenient for negotiation. The dialogue between the Demon JU (P/I)TER and the Demoness FO (R/N)AX occurred in neutral territory: the domain of the Demon X (A/N)TH. Jupiter, whose magic was the strong force, animated a nondescript male mortal body crafted for the occasion by Xanth, while Fornax borrowed the semblance of a lesser female demon. Xanth himself was in the humanoid form of Nimby, a donkey-headed dragon.
“What do you want?” Jupiter demanded, employing the cumbersome mortal sonic language so as to adhere to the limitations of the mortal form, “We defeated your last ploy and rescued Demon Earth from your clutch; you have no further influence in this region.”
“I have spot visitation rights,” Fornax replied similarly. “I made a deal with a mortal girl in Demon Earth’s domain. But I want more.”
“We all want more,” Jupiter retorted. “That is why we contest constantly for status at each other’s expense.”
“Exactly. But in this case I want a lesser thing. Having become acquainted with several mortal characters of the Land of Xanth, I find the mortal state intriguing. I wish to take this land to my own galaxy and vivisect it and its creatures.”
“No you don’t!” Xanth protested. “That’s my realm. Your challenge for status is with Jupiter; this is merely the setting for your limited dialogue.”
“Here is the nature of my offer: The stakes are your Land of Xanth against my empty contraterrene equivalent. If I win, I will transform Xanth to CT matter so that I may safely handle it, then vivisect it to discover what is intriguing about it. If Jupiter wins, I will turn over my contraterrene realm to you, so that your mortal characters can animate it and have a vast new realm to play in.”
“Those are fair stakes,” Xanth agreed. “But why contest with Jupiter when you could contest directly with me?”
The form of the demoness assumed enormous beauty and sexiness. “You have already committed your interest to a female creature; I can’t distract you of your representative by employing mortal opposite-gender allure. Jupiter has not committed, so perhaps can be swayed, providing me a reasonable edge.”
“I doubt it,” Jupiter said. “I know your nature, Demoness.”
“Since when did knowledge have any relevance to a male?”
“Males are rational. Females are emotional.”
“Really?” She oriented on Jupiter’s form, slowly drawing up the hem of her skirt. The thighs of the form she had assumed were very firm and well fleshed. His eyeballs locked into place and began to sweat. She had made her point.
“Agreed,” Jupiter said. He did not say that his interest had been aroused, but of course she knew it.
“If you win, I will also visit you in this fleshly form and do whatever you request, provided it is limited to a mortal nature.” She let her decolletage descend slightly.
Jupiter’s mortal breath quickened. He nodded.
“Agreed,” Xanth said. “Now the rules of engagement.”
“The Land of Xanth to be the setting,” Fornax said as she let her hem and neckline drift back into place. “We will select Xanth characters to represent our interests. One must accomplish a particular task, or fail to accomplish it. On that will hinge the decision.”
“Agreed,” Jupiter said, flexing his eyeballs to restore their circulation. “I choose this character I have animated, rendering him apparent for the occasion.”
“But you must not animate him yourself,” Fornax said. “You must set him up and let him proceed without further direction, so that the outcome is not determined by direct Demon power.”
“Agreed. That is standard practice when we employ facsimiles. I will give him the semblance of body, life, and awareness, with a minor talent, and dissolve him when the game is done.”
“The semblance?” Fornax asked. “Why not the reality?”
“We terrene Demons do not have established mortal forms and do not live and die as they do,” Jupiter explained. “We have no direct experience, so must emulate. The real mortals will not know the difference.”
Her form nodded. “Neither do we contraterrene Demons. That is one reason I wish to dissect some mortals, discovering the secret of their living state. I understand they also have souls, which are a deeper mystery.”
“Souls greatly complicate their existence,” Xanth said. “I have been studying them for some time, without yet approaching a sufficient comprehension. It seems a soul is one thing it is necessary to possess in order to appreciate.”
“I would like to borrow and study a soul,” Fornax said.
“So would I,” Jupiter agreed.
“They can’t be taken,” Xanth said. “They must be given.”
“Remarkable,” Fornax said. She reoriented on Jupiter. “Your entity must not know his origin or nature.”
“Emulation can go only so far,” Jupiter said. “If he operates long among genuine mortals, he will inevitably catch on, because he will discover what they can’t: that he is limited in duration.”
“Then herein perhaps we have a basis for our game,” she said. “Give your character a pretext and a chore to accomplish. If he succeeds before he discovers his nature, the victory is yours. If he fails, or realizes before he succeeds, it is mine.”
“Agreed.”
Fornax smiled. “Not quite so simple, Jupiter. I am not satisfied to have a simple task simply accomplished. If your golem possesses a Demon’s single-mindedness, he will forge through and accomplish his task regardless of the consequences elsewhere.”
“Readily fixed,” Demon Xanth said. “We can provide him with a soul emulation, giving him a strong conscience, compassion, and sense of fairness. He can be a surpassingly decent person, not given to single-mindedness at the expense of others.”
“But if he is highly intelligent or talented, he will still accomplish it readily.”
“I will make him of moderate intellect, with a moderate talent,” Jupiter said. “With a store of useless incidental information rather than insight.”
“One more thing: I will utilize this present character, whose purpose will be to prevent your character from accomplishing his mission.”
“But he will never succeed, if a Demon opposes him.”
“I will be indirect, motivating the female whose form I have borrowed, and will not allow her to understand the full nature of the contest. Then I will set her loose, as you will do for yours.”
“You will employ female wiles to distract him,” Jupiter said accusingly.
“Of course. It’s the natural female emotional course.”
“Then my character should have a general appeal for females, as a natural rational male.”
Nobody was fooling anybody, but they liked the sparring. “Granted. Let them be mysteriously drawn to him. The challenge will be fair.”
“Yes, it will be fair,” Jupiter agreed grimly.
They settled down to detail bargaining, crafting a game that each agreed was fair. Occasionally Fornax allowed some interesting flesh to show, reminding Jupiter of the stakes. This was the essence of Demon interaction.
1
EMULATION
It all started, others agreed later, with Umlaut. Because he wasn’t what he seemed to be. His talent was emulation, which was mostly a matter of causing others to see him as he represented himself to be, to a degree. But it might as well have been troublE with a capital E, because of the mischief it led to. It was the teenth of the month, and all the teens were out, but that was only the setting.
At the moment Umlaut was pretending to be a seventeen-year-old girl. The age was right, but not the gender. He was doing it to escape the attention of a real girl who had taken an unwholesome fancy to him. In fact she was chasing him. That might have been all right, for Sherry was pretty enough, except for her talent. That was in her kisses: They were sweeter than wine. Which was fine, up to a point. Unfortunately her first kiss made him feel so pleasant that he wanted more, and three made him tipsy, and last time he had awakened next morning with a dreadful hangover and no memory of the date. But Sherry’s father had warned him that if he did it again, he’d have to marry her. That might not have been so bad, except that what good was an experience if he couldn’t remember it? So he was trying to take it easy, at least until he figured out whether he really wanted to marry a sixteen-year-old girl just yet. She thought he was strong, handsome, and suitable; now he regretted emulating her ideal man quite so thoroughly. It would be impossible to do it continuously, and what would happen when she found out how dully ordinary he really was?
Umlaut rounded a bend and spied a group of teenagers having a party. That seemed ideal; he could merge with them and conceal himself until Sherry gave up the chase. Then he could sneak away, free, and return to his normal, somewhat inadequate self.
He ran up to them, hastily adjusting his emulation to make him seem like one of them. “Sorry I got lost,” he said somewhat breathlessly. “What’s up?”
“We just got a package of Wetti shirts,” the tallest and handsomest boy replied. “We traded a rock hound for them.”
“Rock hound?”
“Don’t you remember? We found it in the old rock mine last week. Friendly dog made of stone.”
“Oh, sure,” Umlaut said. Of course he didn’t remember, because he hadn’t been part of this group. Then, to hide his ignorance, he changed the subject. “What are Wetti shirts?”
“We’re not sure, but they say they’re a lot of fun for girls to wear and great for contests. So why don’t you be the first? Put one on.” He shoved the package at Umlaut. Of course he took Umlaut for a girl, because that was what he was emulating.
At that point Sherry rounded the turn and ran up. She was breathing hard with the effort. She was a fairly full-figured girl, and several of the boys were looking with interest. “Have you seen Umlaut?” she panted.
“Who?”
“A strong, handsome, suitable boy, running down this path.” She paused for a deeper breath, straining a shirt button or two in the process, along with a male eyeball or two.
“No, only another—”
“Try a Wetti shirt,” Umlaut said quickly, shoving the package at her. “They’re great fun for girls and contests.”
“Now wait,” the boy protested. “She’s not one of us.” That got Sherry’s dander up. The dander immediately flew off in search of a flock of deese, but that didn’t stop Sherry. She grabbed the boy by a lapel and planted a kiss on his face. “You were saying?” she demanded, well knowing her power.
The boy looked pleasantly dazed, as if he had just downed a glass of something intoxicatingly sweet. “She’s one of us,” he decided.
Sherry took a shirt from the package and put it on over her blouse. Suddenly a wash of water fell on her, making her scream pleasantly. The new shirt turned transparent and clung to her body, which seemed about twice as fully formed as before. “I like it,” she said. “Who else is in this contest?”
“Contest?” the boy asked, his eyes locked to her front profile. So were the eyes of the other boys in the group, and some of the girls, though there might have been a difference in the girls’ expressions.
“The shirt is for contests,” she reminded him. “How can I win, if nobody else competes?”
“This girl, what’s her name,” the boy said, prying his eyes away and turning to Umlaut.
Oops. Umlaut couldn’t put on one of those shirts. Emulation had its limits, and it would be shattered if his top half got transparently wet. Then the teens would all know he was an impostor, and Sherry would nab him. All she had to do was plant one sweet kiss on him, and he’d linger for another and be lost. Next morning he’d wake up with a headache and married. He simply wasn’t ready for that, apart from the problem of fooling her. Because Sherry, however sweet her kisses and full her body, was not his idea of the perfect wife. Anyway, he was too young to marry,
He bolted. “Hey!” the boy cried. In a moment all of them were chasing him.
Now he was in twice as much trouble as before. Where could he go to escape?
He came up on a young woman who was walking in the same
direction. “Uh, hello,” he said somewhat breathlessly.
She turned to face him. She had an explorer’s cap and a name tag saying Miss Guide. “May I help you?”
“Yes! Please tell me where I can escape a group of pursuing teens!”
“Take the left fork,” she said. “Though you are welcome to dally a bit.”
“Thank you!” He ran on ahead of her. Belatedly he wondered why she might want to dally with another girl.
But before he found a fork, he came up on another young woman. From behind she had a remarkable figure, and from before also, when he passed her. Her name tag said Miss In Form. “Is the left fork the one?” he gasped.
“In Dubitably,” she agreed.
“Thanks!” He ran on.
He overhauled a third young woman, this one wearing a many-feathered bonnet. Her name tag said Miss Chief.
“Is the—?” he started.
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “You’ll make a fine Indian maiden.”
“Thanks!” He ran on. But something was nagging one corner of his mind. Those young women—if their name tags were literal, they might not be the best sources of information. Misguide, Misinform, Mischief…
Then he spied a fork in the path. The left fork was marked CONTEST BEACH and the right fork CASTLE ZOMBIE. Ordinarily Umlaut would have preferred the left, especially if he could have watched all the girls in the group donning Wetti shirts for the contest. But at the moment the right fork seemed better. Nobody much who wasn’t a zombie went there.
Sure enough, the pursuit soon languished. Umlaut knew the teens wouldn’t be too disappointed, because Sherry liked to kiss people, especially boys. But just in case any of the girls followed, he kept running. He let his emulation lapse; he’d run by the castle and then go home.
He almost collided with a group of teen zombie girls. He hadn’t realized that zombies had teens, but of course they would be out today if they existed.
“Ooooz, ughsh!” one cried. “A live bzoy!”
“Who caresz?” another demanded. “He’z male.”
“Say, yesh,” a third said. “Letz kisz him!”
For some reason that escaped him at the moment, Umlaut did not want to be kissed by a group of zombie girlz. So he quickly refurbished his emulation. “I’m notz a boy,” he protested. “I’m an-ozer zombie girzl.”
“Oh, zo you are,” the second girl said, disappointed. “Whatz you got?”
“Wetti shirts,” Umlaut said, realizing that he still carried the package. “They’re good for girls in contests.”
“Letz try them!” the first girl said.
The zombies quickly took the remaining shirts and put them on. In a moment all were thoroughly soaked, their upper bodies showing to disadvantage. What looked great on live girls was somewhat so did on zombie girls.
“Ooooz, ughsh!” they exclaimed, quickly appreciating that tact. “Welookawzful!”
They tried to remove the shirts, but the wet things clung, tangling with the regular clothing underneath, so that the effect became worse. The girls were screaming with frustration as bits of cloth tore and dangled.
“What’s going on here?” It was an irate black girl who appeared to be fully alive.
“Wetzi shirs,” a zombie girl explained. “Contezt.”
“A wet T-shirt contest? Zombies have no business getting into that. Who put you up to this nonsense?”
“Zhee did!” the girls said, pointing to Umlaut.
More mischief! Umlaut tried to shrink away but couldn’t think of a suitable emulation on the spur of the moment; the spur merely jabbed him uncomfortably.
The black girl turned on Umlaut, a small black cloud forming over her head. “I’ll deal with you later,” she said menacingly. “For now, go muck out the dungeon.”
Umlaut decided not to argue; he was in enough trouble already. This was evidently a person of authority. He hurried toward the castle.
He had expected something pretty dingy. He had underestimated the case. Castle Zombie up close was a festering ruin of an edifice. The moat was covered with sludge, and there was slime on the worn stones. The drawbridge was rotten and about to collapse. He did not want to try to cross over it.
“Got a problem?” It was a young man, fully alive.
Umlaut decided to stick with his zombie girl emulation. “Who zhou?”
The man smiled. “I am Justin Tree, master of Castle Zombie. You don’t recognize me?’v
Umlaut thought fast. “Bad eyzs.” ‘
“Of course; I should have realized. And you can’t see the bridge clearly enough to cross.”
“Yez. I waz zent to muck the dunzeon.”
“Oh, yes, Breanna has been meaning to assign a crew for that. The dragon manure is accumulating. Don’t be concerned; that bridge is stronger than it looks. Just walk across and take the first stairway down. You’ll find a spading fork at the dungeon entrance.”
“Zank youz.” Umlaut walked cautiously across, and the bridge did turn out to be solid enough.
So the man was Justin Tree. Umlaut had heard of him. He had married a Black Wave girl a year or so back. That would be the one who had sent him here: Breanna of the Black Wave. They had taken over the castle after the original zombie master had retired. It looked as if they still had a lot of cleaning up to do.
He found the stairway down, as slimy as the rest of it. He made his way below. Now he got nervous: What was this about a dragon? A dungeon was not his idea of fun, and a dungeon and a dragon were definitely worth avoiding. But the only way out was back past the master of the castle. So he went on.
There was the spading fork. He picked it up. If the dragon attacked, maybe he could use the fork to warn it back. That didn’t seem very promising, but what else was there? Maybe he could simply duck into a small, dark passage and hide from it. He might emulate an ogre, but that would set back only a medium to small dragon.
He walked on through cobwebbed passages and chambers, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. It wasn’t pitch dark so much as intensely dim, with wan weak beams of light seeping through crevices in the walls. This dungeon region was huge; he could get lost in it. So he went back to the foot of the stairway, then advanced again, this time scraping a line with a tine of the fork. That would be his sure trail back. It was easier to make a good mark, one that would show up in the dusky recesses, if he walked backward and held it down behind his progress.
It got more difficult, because a layer of mucky manure was building up, thickening as he progressed. He would have a big job to do, once he had his route marked. Where was he supposed to put all this stuff? The odor was awful.
He bumped into something. Startled, he turned. There was a monstrous snout. “The dragon!” he cried and scrambled to escape. But his feet slipped on the solidified stench, and he fell on his rear and slid into a wall. He was done for.
After a moment he realized two things: His bottom was sore from the fall, and the dragon hadn’t eaten him. He climbed to his feet, rubbing his soiled posterior. “Ooo, that smarts,” he said.
The dragon moved. The huge nose nudged a shelf Umlaut hadn’t seen before, and a bottle fell off and rolled toward him. He stooped to pick it up. The crude label said HEALING.
Could that be true? If so, by what mischance had the monster happened to knock that particular bottle down at this time? Good fortune had never been Umlaut’s forte.
Hedecided to try it. He opened the bottle, poured a drop of goo on his hand, and slid the hand down inside his pants to smear the stuff on his rear. Immediately he felt its benefit; not only did his bottom stop smarting, it suddenly felt great. He had gotten a bit tired from the constant bending and pressing on the fork; now his energy had been restored. It truly was healing elixir.
But the mystery remained: How had what he needed been so providently presented to him—by the action of a dragon? Umlaut did not have a lot of belief in coincidences, at least not favorable ones. Normally they just got him into deeper trouble.
Could the dragon have done it intentionally? That seemed incredible, but added to the fact that the creature had not attacked when it could have, it was a possibility. “Did you do that on purpose?” he inquired.
The huge head nodded.
Still, that was not absolute proof. “Are you going to gobble me up as soon as I turn my back on you?'”
The snout moved sidewise in a ponderous no gesture.
This was becoming more interesting. “Do you understand my words?”
The head nodded.
“What is two plus one?”
The head bobbed three times.
“You’re intelligent!” Umlaut exclaimed.
The dragon hesitated.
“For an animal,” Umlaut amended.
The head nodded.
“So you understand me and mean me no harm?”
Another nod.
“Well, that’s fine, because I have come here to muck out your stall. Do you happen to know where I can dump the stuff?”
The dragon turned and slithered away. Umlaut hesitated, then decided that it was best to trust the creature, since he could not get the job done otherwise. He followed.
The dragon led him to a large chamber with a hole in the floor.
“An oubliette!” Umlaut said. “Dump it down there?”
The dragon nodded.
“But there’s a lot of this stuff. Won’t it eventually fill up the oubliette?”
The head shook no.
“Magic? Or fast composting?”
That seemed to be the case. At any rate, the dragon nodded.
“Well, I’d better get started,” Umlaut said. “I think I’ll need more than a fork, though.”
The dragon slithered to another chamber, leading him to a two-wheeled cart. That would help.
Umlaut worked. Soon he forgot how he had come here and just focused on the job. It did need to be done, and no one else was here to do it. He started with the chambers closest to the oubliette and worked slowly outward.
Then the dragon nudged him. Umlaut jumped; he had almost forgotten the creature’s presence, though the dragon was obviously the source of all this manure. “Something wrong?” he asked.
The dragon made a sidewise motion with its snout, then slithered away. Umlaut followed. They went to the foot of the stairs. Breanna of the Black Wave stood there, holding a burning torch. “I think there’s been a mistake,” she said. “We don’t have any record of a zombie girl of your description, and the zombies don’t know you.” She raised the torch. “In fact you don’t look like a zombie at all— or a girl.”
Oops. Umlaut had let his emulation lapse again. Did it matter? “I’m a living boy named Umlaut,” he said. “I got caught up in things.”
“Why didn’t you protest when I sent you to the dungeon? I thought you were a misbehaving zombie girl.”
“It was easier just to go.”
She glanced at the dragon. “I see you are getting along well enough with Drivel.”
“Drivel Dragon? That’s his name?”
“Zombies tend to have descriptive names. He drools.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, come on. We’ll get you cleaned up and give you supper and a bed for the night, and you can go on your way in the morning with our apology for the misunderstanding.”
Umlaut looked at the dragon. “What about Drivel?”
“He won’t fit in the castle. He was here when we took over. We feed him and let him be.”
“This is not a vicious or stupid creature. Why is he confined?”
“We don’t know. The Zombie Master didn’t mention him.”
Umlaut made what he suspected was a foolish decision. “Thanks, no thanks. I’ll stay down here with him. The job’s a long way from being done.”
“But it’s not your job! I mean to get up a cleanup crew, in due course. It’s just taking us time to catch up on everything.”
“Well, I’ll help you catch up. Maybe I can find out why Drivel was locked in here.”
“You can’t find out! There are no records of him. We just have to accept what is.”
Umlaut knew better but just had to make an issue. “I don’t know much about you, Breanna of the Black Wave, but from what I heard, you never put up with ‘what is1 before.”
The woman looked stunned. “You’re right! I’ve become part of the status quo. I’m ashamed.”
Umlaut was surprised by her change. “I guess we all get caught up in things.”
“For sure! You really want to stay down here?”
“Yes. And try to find out what is the case with Drivel. He’s certainly not violent.”
“I’ll bring your food right down.” She handed him the torch, turned, and mounted the steps.
Umlaut turned to the dragon. “Am I being foolish?” he asked.
The dragon shrugged. That was a considerable maneuver, a long ripple along its nearer torso, but the meaning seemed clear enough.
“Here’s the thing: I don’t have much experience with dragons, but it is my understanding that they generally eat people and anything else they catch. Instead you have been friendly to me. That makes me think that you’re not an ordinary dragon. You helped me do my job; maybe I can help you in return. If I can just figure out how.”
Drivel nodded.
“So maybe if I talk enough, and you agree or disagree, I can figure it out. Then maybe we’ll know what’s next.”
The dragon nodded.
“Is there a place I can put this torch?”
Drivel nosed a section of a wall. Umlaut went there and found a notch in a nook. He set the base of the torch in the notch, and the polished indentation of the nook served to reflect the light outward.
Breanna arrived back with a small cart. She paused at the top of the steps. “I’ll toss Drivel’s stakes down, but that won’t work for your supper; you’ll have to come here for it.”
Umlaut went up the steps and found a very nice meal on a tray. Then Breanna tossed down one stake after another. They were evidently from a nearby garden, meat-flavored posts. They smelled like fresh flesh.
“See you in the morning,” Breanna said as she departed.
They ate together, by the flickering light of the torch. Drivel seemed to like his stakes well enough. Umlaut tried a bite of one: yes, exactly like raw meat.
While they ate, they conversed, in their fashion. Umlaut talked and Drivel nodded or negated, and they zeroed in on the story. Soon it came reasonably clear. There were some surprises.
Drivel was not actually a dragon. In fact he was not even male. He—she—was a female water serpent whose name was Sesame. She had been chased by a persistent male of her species whose favor she did not desire, so she had fled to where he would not follow: Castle Zombie.
“Me too!” Umlaut agreed. “In my fashion.”
But the moat had been too unsanitary for her taste, so she had had to make her way into the dungeon. Unfortunately a storm had
come, and the zombies had battened down the hatches, or whatever it was they did, and Sesame had gotten closed in. A real dragon might have burned its way out, but she was merely a stranded sea serpent without fire, smoke, or steam, and without legs or claws. So she was trapped.
“But weren’t you uncomfortable out of the water?” Umlaut asked.
She certainly was. Fortunately the dungeon was dank, and the slime on the walls was damp, and when it rained some water leaked in. She had found basins to collect it, so that she was able to drink and sometimes even to bathe. She had become acclimatized to existing out of the water; after all, many serpents were able to cope on land, and so could she.
“But weren’t you hungry?”
Yes indeed. So she had approached a zombie who was storing something in the dungeon, representing herself as a male dragon, because she didn’t know how close her serpent suitor might be lurking and needed to remain concealed. The zombie had told Breanna, who had assumed that the dragon was supposed to be there and had arranged for food. Stakes and chops from the local meat trees were fine.
“You have my talent!” Umlaut exclaimed.
The dragon/serpent looked at him quizzically.
“I mean you can emulate things. You certainly seemed like a male dragon to me. And I would have seemed like a zombie maiden to you, if I had thought to maintain my emulation.”
It turned out that she had taken him for a zombie girl, then realized that he wasn’t when he had started working and muttering bad words as he got grimed. Girls, of course, didn’t know any bad words.
“So we’re two of a kind,” Umlaut said. “Which is odd, because talents aren’t supposed to repeat,”
Sesame shook her head. Further dialogue established her position: that talents did repeat, as shown with the curse fiends who all had the same talent of cursing, and the flying centaurs, whose talent was flying or making themselves light enough to fly. Also, similar talents could be implemented different ways, as with the centaurs who might fly by having powerful wings, or by lightening magic. But mainly there was no rule about it; folk had just assumed that talents could not repeat, without any proof. It was folklore.
“You’re right,” Umlaut said. “You must have thought about this somewhat.”
She had. She had always been a cerebral sort, which set her apart from others of her kind. It was a frustration, because no other serpents were interested in philosophical questions. They cared mainly about chomping the next fish or unwary human swimmer, and about breeding. She had nothing against either pursuit but did not care to be limited to them when the universe was such a fascinating mystery. So she had been exploring the fringes of the watery domain, including Castle Zombie, when she was spied by a land serpent interested only in breeding and got caught away from the sea.
“Castle Zombie is well beyond the fringe of the sea,” Umlaut protested. “It’s landlocked, in fact junglelocked.”
So she had discovered. She had reached it by swimming up a river, then portaging to its moat. It was a fine, intriguing castle, if only she weren’t locked into it.
“But you don’t need to be locked in anymore. I’m sure they’ll let you go, once they realize it’s a mistake.”
But first she had to verify whether the land serpent remained watching. He could slither faster than she could on land, so she had to be sure not to alert him. She did not want to be subjected to involuntary breeding. But perhaps that was something that Umlaut, a male, would not understand.
Umlaut thought about his relationship with Sherry and decided that he did understand. “Breeding is fine, in its place, at the right time, with the right other person,” he said. “But if any of those factors are wrong, then it’s not fine. I fled a too-ardent girl on my way here.”
He did understand! She was thrilled. It was just about the first time she had encountered anyone else who understood anything halfway obscure. Did he have an obscure mind?
He laughed. “No, just a garden variety human mind.”
She would like to meet more minds like that. She had not realized that human folk had them. But of course she could not go among humans and converse with them, because they wouldn’t trust her not to gobble them, and because she couldn’t talk in their language. She couldn’t explain to them that she really didn’t like to eat human flesh. It smelled bad, no offense, and tasted worse.
Umlaut began to get a glimmer of an inkling of a notion. He pounced on it before it escaped. “Why don’t we travel together? I could talk with the people, and you could listen, and I could ask your questions for you. Then you could meet all the obscure minds you want to.”
Oh, that sounded scrumptious! She could just kiss him, except that she didn’t want to scare him.
“Well, I think I have pretty well come to trust you,” Umlaut said. “You can kiss me if you want to. Just don’t swallow me.”
She would try not to do that. Would he move into deeper shadow with her?
Umlaut began to get nervous. But nothing in their long dialogue indicated that she wished him any harm, so this would be a good test of his trust. If she chomped him, he would know better next time. If there were ever a next time. He followed her away from the torch.
When it was almost quite dark, he stopped moving. “Here I am.” What had he let himself in for? A chomping, or a slavering of drool?
A pretty girl kissed him on the mouth. Startled, he put his arms around her. She was cool and lithe, with a dress made of fine scales. Where had she come from?
Then he caught on. “Sesame!”
She nodded. It was indeed her. The scales were not of her dress, but of her neck, and of course she had no arms or hair. She had emulated a girl, using the darkness to hide her real outline. She had known it wouldn’t work very well in the light, but with only their lips touching, the emulation was effective. Did he like it?
“Yes, actually,” he said. “How did you learn to kiss like a girl?”
Well, she was a girl—a girl serpent. Kissing came naturally with the gender.
“I wonder if I could kiss like a serpent?” he asked. “I never thought to try an emulation like that.”
There was no time like the present, she intimated. She would emulate herself, and he could try being serpentine. She would let him know how well it worked.
Umlaut focused. He had seldom tried animals before, and never a serpent, but the principle should be similar. He thought of himself as a big, powerful, flexing male serpent, looking for a female to kiss. There just happened to be a nice female in range. He shot his head forward and gave her a toothy smooch.
She jerked back, her coils roiling desperately. In a moment she was gone. What had happened?
Then, embarrassed, she returned. He had felt so much like a male serpent that she had thought for a moment that the land serpent had gotten in and was about to force her to breed. She had spooked. She was apologetic.
Umlaut was rather pleased. “I was that good?”
Yes, he had been that good. She would have enjoyed it, had she not spooked.
“When you kissed me, I thought it was a pretty girl,” Umlaut said. “I tried to embrace her, before I realized.”
Exactly, Sesame agreed. When they couldn’t see each other, they could emulate more effectively, because vision did not belie the effect. She had never had occasion to experiment in such a manner before, perhaps because it would not have been safe with a real male serpent.
“Or with a real human girl,” he agreed. “Things could go too far, too fast.”
It struck her that different as they were in form and gender, some things about their lives were very similar.
“Yes,” he agreed. In truth, he had liked Sesame’s kiss better than Sherry’s. Then he thought of something else. “Maybe—I don’t want to be objectionable, but maybe we should try to find out what the limits of our talents are, before we try going out to travel. Suppose I emulate a serpent, and you emulate a girl, and we kiss again? Could we fool each other simultaneously?”
She agreed it would be worthwhile to find out. So they tried it. And it was a disaster. They both recoiled.
“Girls taste awful!” Umlaut exclaimed, wiping off his mouth.
And serpents were fanged and lipless, she agreed.
“Which is exactly what we would discover if we kissed while neither of us was emulating. We are of different kinds, physically.”
Which was of course obvious, she agreed. But didn’t he have better things to do than travel with a serpent?
“Actually, no,” he said thoughtfully. “My life has been pretty much marking time so far. I always thought I’d like to go out and have big adventures in faraway places,’ but I never knew how to get started. Maybe this is the way.”
They decided to see about it in the morning. Then they settled down to sleep. Sesame coiled into the shape of a mattress, and Umlaut lay down on it. It was very comfortable.
Just as he was drifting off to sleep, the girl kissed him again. He kissed her back, knowing who it was. But he was glad it was dark.
2
LETTERS
In the morning they woke to wan light. The torch had guttered out, but day was squeezing through crevices. Sesame showed him where there were several basins of water she had collected, and Umlaut used one to wash up. He took off his clothing and rinsed it and hung it on snags of stone to dry.
“I’d better finish this mucking job before I dress again,” he decided.
Sesame was apologetic. She had not liked soiling the dungeon floor, but no provision had been made for her in that respect. Normally she left her manure in dirt or water. She had just had to make do, with regret. The oubliette was not convenient for her anatomy, or she would have used that, as it was enchanted never to fill up.
“That’s all right,” Umlaut said. “I just want to finish the job I started, before I go.”
He was remarkably decent for his kind, she suggested.
He got to work and made progress. Then, as he was finishing up the chamber where the stairs were, there was suddenly extra light as a door opened. There was Breanna of the Black Wave, with another cartful of food.
And there he stood, with nothing on. He froze, with no idea what to do.
“You’ve got so much muck on you, I can’t even see your clothing,” Breanna remarked. “But really, you didn’t have to continue that chore. I told you it was a mistake.”
He realized that she couldn’t tell that he had no clothing on. What a relief! “Not much farther to go,” he said. “Then I think we should talk.”
“For sure.” She gave them their food and departed.
They ate, meanwhile considering their plans. They would leave the castle and travel together, meeting random people. Umlaut would talk with them, evoking their minds, and if there were any danger, Sesame would handle it. She was, after all, a good-sized serpent, similar to the ones that found employment defending moats. She could handle land as long as they spent the nights near water. It promised to be a fair adventure.
Then Umlaut finished the mucking*, dumped the last of it into the oubliette, went to another basin of water, washed, and donned his mostly dry clothes. He was ready for the next stage. “I guess I’ll have to go up alone to explain things to Breanna and to look around the castle,” he said. “You’ll have to trust me on that.”
She would. He had been trusting her all along, after all. She indicated it was nice to have company with a mind, after a year alone in the dungeon.
It was now about noon, and the light in the dungeon was brighter than it had been. He paused as he was about to mount the stairs. There was something behind them, where he hadn’t had to clean. Curious, he looked.
There was a small window in the wall, letting light in. Below it, inside, was a pile of papers. It looked as if someone had pushed the papers through the slot from outside, and no one had collected them inside. Small wonder—probably nobody had known about them. Sesame hadn’t; she didn’t read and couldn’t write. She understood human talk, a private ability a number of animals had developed, but that was the extent of it.
He picked one up. It was a sealed letter addressed to the Demon Jupiter. Who was that? Umlaut knew about demons; they popped in and out of existence and usually meant mischief to mortal folk. But he hadn’t known they received letters.
“Do you know the Demon Jupiter?” he asked Sesame.
She shook her head. Then she reconsidered. It took a while to fathom what she meant, but in time he had it: She didn’t know of any local demon by that name but understood there was a major Demon in another realm by that title. Maybe that was the one. If so, this could be important.
“I’d better ask Breanna,” he decided. “I’ll take it up with me.”
He mounted the stairs. He paused at the top. “Oh, is it all right if I tell them your real nature? That you’re not a dragon?”
She nodded, trusting him.
He opened the door, which wasn’t locked, and stepped into the brighter light of the real world. He saw a zombie standing guard. “Where is Breanna?”
“Thash,” the zombie said, pointing with a rotten finger.
“Thank you.” Umlaut walked in that direction. When he came to a door, he knocked.
It opened. Breanna stood there. “Oh, yes, I almost forgot. What’s on your mind?”
“First, I’m ready to go. So is the dragon.”
“The dragon!”
“It’s not really a dragon. It’s a serpent. It was trapped in the dungeon.”
“You mean it doesn’t belong there?”
“That’s right. I guess it happened to come just about the time you took over the castle, so you didn’t know.”
“For sure!”
“So we figure to travel together for a while, see the sights, you know? I cleaned out the muck, so it’s reasonably clean now. But maybe if you ever have any other creature down there, you should set up some, uh, sanitary facilities, so it doesn’t have to mess the floor.”
“For sure,” she repeated,
“And we found some letters.”
“Letters?”
“I picked one up. I thought it might be important.” fie handed it to her.
Breanna studied it. “The Demon Jupiter! You bet it’s important! This is from Mundania. How’d it get down in the dungeon?”
“There seems to be a—a mail slot. There’s a pile of letters there. 1 guess you didn’t know about that either.”
“There’s oodles we didn’t know about running this castle,” she agreed. “The Zombie Master didn’t put much in writing, so maybe he didn’t remember everything. At least I can take care of this letter.”
“How can you deliver it? I understand he’s far away.”
“On another planet,” she agreed. “I happen to know him. I’ll forward this to him on the Internet.”
“What kind of net?”
“It’s an extension of the Xanth Xone. I’ve got a Mesh site there. Here, I’ll show you. I’ll send this as an E-mail attachment.” She led the way to another chamber. “Com Pewter set up a station here,” she explained, “so we can connect.”
Umlaut saw some kind of metallic contraption with a glassy screen. Breanna punched some buttons, and the screen showed a series of little boxes and arrows. She punched more buttons, and words appeared: DEMON JUPITER: LETTER FORWARDED BY ATTACHMENT. She fed the envelope into a slot, and it disappeared. In a moment another message appeared: ATTACHMENT: LETTER TO DEMON JUPITER.
“Now I’ll push the Send button and it’s done,” she said. She did so, and the screen showed a letter sprouting wings and flying away. Then it went blank. “Done.”
“That goes to Jupiter?” Umlaut asked dubiously.
“For sure. Now let’s see to your serpent.”
“First I need to check around outside. There may be another serpent lurking.”
“And they don’t get along?”
“You might say that. I need to be sure it’s not there.”
“No problem. I’ll have the zombies do a search.” She went to the zombie standing guard. “Hey, Sludge! Tell Fay Tall to organize a search around the castle. Are there any serpents there?”
“Yeshum,” the zombie agreed and shuffled off.
“Fay Tall is a zombie who appears to be fully alive for half a day at a time,” Breanna explained. “Then he reverts to normal. He hates it.”
“I guess I’d hate to revert to being a zombie,” Umlaut said.
“You got that wrong. It’s the fully alive state he hates. It sets him apart from the other zombies.”
Umlaut was taken aback. He decided not to argue the case. “Anyway, if the way is clear, can you open the dungeon door so Drivel can slither out?”
“For sure. I wish we’d known he didn’t belong. He didn’t say anything.”
Umlaut decided that the serpent’s gender was no business of anyone else’s. “Serpents don’t talk.”
“So how do you know so much about him?”
“He understands human talk. I talked and he agreed or disagreed. In time I got his story.”
“I wish I’d thought of that! I just never realized he didn’t belong there. There’s a lot more to this job than I thought.”
The zombie Sludge returned. “All schlear,” it reported.
“All clear,” Breanna repeated. “Let’s go open the dungeon gate.”
They walked down outside the castle, between the wall and the moat. There was a large door. “We closed this when there was a storm,” Breanna said. “Then never got around to opening it again. Now I feel so stupid; of course that’s when we trapped Drivel inside.” She put her brown hands on a plank and pushed it up, freeing the door.
Umlaut pulled it open. “Drivel!” he called. “It’s all clear. We can leave now.”
The serpent emerged, blinking in the bright light.
“I’m—we—we’re sorry,” Breanna said awkwardly. “I apologize to you for trapping you in there. We just didn’t realize.”
Sesame nodded. Then she glanced at Umlaut.
“He doesn’t care to swim in that moat,” Umlaut said. “No offense. He’s not a zombie. Is it okay to use the bridge?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.” Breanna got out of the way.
Sesame slithered smoothly up the bank and to the drawbridge and on across it. Umlaut followed. “Thanks!” he called as they reached the outer bank.
“We’ll check those other letters,” Breanna said. “Come back in a day or three and we’ll let you know.”
“Okay.” Umlaut walked on, pacing Sesame’s slither. But that reminded him of the letters. “Why don’t we check where they came from?” he suggested. “You can smell the trail?”
She could. She slithered to the side to parallel the moat and soon picked up the scent.
“What it is? Human?”
Sesame tried but was unable to convey what had delivered the letters, except that it was neither human nor serpent. There had been a number of trips, and the scent trail seemed to have existed for at least six months.
“Why would anyone or anything deliver letters from Mundania to Castle Zombie?” Umlaut asked rhetorically.
The serpent had no idea.
The trail bore west through the deepest jungle. Here dragons and other dangerous creatures lurked, but Sesame smelled none of them by the trail. The trail itself was a bit sticky, as if someone had poured noxious goo on the ground to mark it. Maybe that repelled the other creatures.
Then it crossed a small river. They had no trouble with this; they both swam across. There were leathery-backed tooth-mouthed green allegories in it, but they eyed Sesame and decided not to make an issue.
But there was no trail on the other side. The serpent sniffed and sniffed and could not find it.
“It must go lengthwise under the river,” Umlaut said. “It could come out anywhere. We’ll have to search the whole length of it.”
Sesame sighed. They started in, following the river upstream. It wound around, trying to distract them, but they held firm—and did not find the trail.
“I wish we had some magic help,” Umlaut said.
At that point a cat appeared. It was male, reddish, and reasonably plump. It approached them as if it wanted to make their acquaintance.
Umlaut considered, then decided to question the cat in the same manner he had questioned the serpent. “Do you understand me?” he asked.
The cat nodded.
“Are you looking for us?”
Another nod.
“Do you know where the letter trail resumes?”
Another nod.
Well, now. Umlaut focused, questioning the cat in more detail. Suddenly he recognized it: “Sammy Cat!” he exclaimed. “The one who came with Jenny Elf, before she got married and settled down. The one who can find anything.”
Except home, it turned out. It seemed that Sammy Cat had felt a bit out of place among the werewolves—Jenny was now a princess of werewolves—so had decided to go on his own mission. He had changed his mind but was unable to return to the werewolf island and Jenny because that was now home.
“Maybe we can make a deal,” Umlaut suggested. “You help us find the letter trail, and we’ll help you find Werewolf Island.” He glanced at Sesame to make sure she agreed.
Sammy agreed to the deal. Then he headed downstream.
“We were going the wrong way!” Umlaut said ruefully. But of course their choices had been upstream or downstream; they had been as likely to go wrong as right.
They followed the cat as he plunged through the jungle. Sesame had no problem, but Umlaut found it hard to squeeze through cator serpent-diameter holes in the thick foliage. “Urn, could you find a path that I can follow?” he called.
Sammy reappeared. He was sorry. When he searched for something, he just tended to go for it. Jenny Elf had always been crying, “Wait for me!” but he still tended to do it without thinking. But he would try.
Thereafter, the route was easier to follow. Unfortunately it soon led to a tangle tree. “This isn’t safe!” Umlaut cried.
But it turned out that it was safe: The tangle tree had fed recently and was quiescent. They followed its nice path in, skirted the deadly trunk, and followed another path out. The one out was not nearly as nice as the one in. Umlaut appreciated that the tree wanted creatures to come in, not go out, but wasn’t sure how it managed to make the paths that way. There were many things about the Land of Xanth he didn’t properly understand.
Progress downstream” was much quicker than it had been upstream, perhaps because it was downhill. Reasonably soon they reached the sea. Sammy stopped.
“You mean the path never does cross the river?” Umlaut asked, dismayed. “It goes straight on into the sea?”
That was the case.
“But we wanted to see who was delivering the letters.”
Sammy made a stiff-backed circle. That wasn’t what Umlaut had said. He had asked for the trail, not the carrier.
“I guess I wasn’t very clear,” Umlaut admitted. “You’re right. Now we’d better go find Werewolf Island. It must be somewhere along the coast here.”
But then Sammy changed his mind. Home could wait. Would it be all right if he stayed with them for a while, sharing their adventure? One reason he had changed his mind before was the danger; it had seemed as if every predator had a taste for fat cat. But with Sesame along, the danger was much less.
Umlaut exchanged another glance with Sesame. They had come to understand each other pretty well, so that a glance could convey a lot. “Sure. We could use your talent to find interesting things.”
In that case, Sammy indicated, he would show them the letter carrier.
“You can do that? Why didn’t you say so before?”
Sammy gave him a look of patient tolerance. Umlaut hadn’t asked, of course.
They crossed the river. First Sesame swam, with Sammy perched on her head, glaring the colored loan sharks away. Then she swam back to accompany Umlaut as he swam. The sharks looked eager to take one of his arms or legs, but Sesame wouldn’t let them. They were clearly disgusted. Umlaut had come to think of the big serpent as harmless but realized that that was because she was his friend. She remained a formidable predator, probably equivalent to a dragon, only without fire, smoke, or steam.
They followed the river back upstream to the place they had first come to it. Then Sammy settled down for a catnap.
“I guess it’s not time yet,” Umlaut said. “Why don’t we forage for food while we wait? We’re not partial to each other’s food, so maybe we should do it separately, then meet here in an hour or so.”
Sesame agreed and slithered off. Umlaut spied a very nice looking pie tree and picked a pie. He bit into it and almost choked—it was a sweetie pie, revoltingly sweet. He looked at the others and saw that they were similar; this was a sweetie pie tree. So he suppressed his objection and ate it. He had been taught to eat any food he picked rather than waste it. Next time he would be more careful.
In an hour or so Sesame Serpent returned. She was a little thicker in the middle and looked satisfied; she had found her meal. Umlaut did not inquire.
But she looked askance at him. It seemed that he looked and smelled sickeningly sweet. The pie had had its effect. Umlaut was disgusted.
Sammy woke, looked at Umlaut, and turned his back, evincing annoyance.
“I can’t help it!” Umlaut protested. “It was all there was to eat.”
But Sammy had a cure. He sniffed out a nearby path that went north and south. It had a paved surface and a dotted line along its center. All Umlaut needed to do was stand there a moment, and he would no longer be too sweet.
He shrugged and tried it. Suddenly there was the blare of a horn and a demon zoomed toward him at impossible speed. “Watch where you’re going, jerk!” the demon yelled. Umlaut threw himself to one side, just in time, and the demon swerved the other way—and crashed into the sweetie pie tree. Pies flew up, and one landed on the demon. Rather, in the demon, for the thing’s mouth was open to yell another imprecation. There was nothing for the demon to do but swallow it.
“What did you think you were doing, speeding like that?” Umlaut demanded angrily. “You could have run me over!”
The demon extricated himself from the tree. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said with saccharine politeness. “But you know, I am a speed demon. It’s my nature.” Then he got back on the path and bbbrrnzzzpp! he was gone, except for a sweet cloud of smoke.
In a moment another demon zoomed by, stirring up a cloud of dust and leaves. “Those speed demons think they own the forest!” Umlaut griped. Then he saw Sesame and Sammy gazing at him. “What!?”
In third moment it came clear: He was no longer sickeningly sweet. The experience with the speed demons had wiped that right out of him. And the first demon had swallowed a pie and turned sweet. Served him right.
“Okay, you cured me, Sammy,” he said grudgingly. “Now how about the letter carrier?”
Sammy shrugged. Not yet. He settled down for another catnap, assuming the aspect of a speed bump on the speed demons’ path. Sesame settled down for a snooze or two of her own. She had reptilian patience and a full tummy.
Frustrated, Umlaut walked around the area, just in case there was anything interesting. He discovered a tree he didn’t recognize, with small pretzel-twisted fruits. The trunk ascended, then bent down, then rose again, forming a giant letter N. He hesitated, then decided that the fruits were unlikely to be poisonous. He picked one and ate it. It was good, neither too sweet nor sour. He should have eaten this instead of the sweetie pies.
Suddenly he was very angry. He spat out the fruit, and the passion faded. The fruit must have caused his mood.
He tried another. This time he suffered a mental picture of the nearby region of Xanth, as if he could envision it without being blocked by the trees or mountains.
A bulb flashed over his head. “N-vision!” he cried. “It’s an N-tree and has N-shaped fruits. The first one was N-rage.” Then, curious, he tried other fruits and identified N-oble, N-sure, N-trance, N-shroud, and N-joy. Satisfied with that last one, he stopped picking and eating.
Sammy turned to face the river. Its surface was rippling, but it wasn’t an allegory; they were staying well clear. An eye broke the surface, then another. These were followed by eyestalks, then by a glistening hump. Finally it slid entirely out of the water: a huge snail. There was a knapsack on its shell and printed words: MUNDANIA SNAILS.
They all stared as the snail slid grandly on toward Castle Zombie. It completely ignored them. It crossed the speed demon path, paying no heed to the speeding demons, who veered crazily to avoid it. It passed within range of a tangle tree, but the tree’s tentacles recoiled from it, evidently knowing better than to get stuck on it. It was sublimely untouchable, caring about nothing and nobody. It left behind a fresh trail of slime.
“Let’s not inquire further,” Umlaut said, and serpent and cat agreed.
They conferred and decided to return to Castle Zombie to report on their discovery, then decide where to go next. They took another route Sammy showed them, and it was surprisingly easy to follow; they fairly flew along it. That made Umlaut suspicious. “Are you sure this goes where we’re going?” he asked Sammy.
The cat reconsidered and shook his head.
“Then why are we on it?”
Sammy seemed to be unable to answer. He just kept following it, and Sesame and Umlaut went too. It was the easiest thing to do.
Then they came to an identifying sign: PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE.
“Oh, no! This isn’t right!”
But they seemed to be unable to stop. They had to follow the path, because any alternative was more difficult. Sammy had gotten caught when looking for a path to the castle, and they had followed him unthinkingly. It occurred to Umlaut that following anyone unthinkingly was not the best course.
Umlaut looked desperately around for some way to get off the path, because he was sure it would not be healthy to stay on it too long. Where did it lead?
All too soon, he saw: into a dreadful bog with a sign identifying it as DISASTER. They would never get out of that.
He had to find a way to break the spell of the path. But all he saw by the side was a colony of ants. “Help!” he called.
Surprisingly, one of them responded. It was an ant with a huge head. It held up a small paper sign. ARE YOU ADDRESSING ME?
“Yes!” Umlaut cried. “Who are you?”
The ant held up another placard. I AM INTELLIG ANT
Ouch! Puns were inferior things at the best of times, but that one was not the best. But what choice did they have? “If you’re so smart, tell us how to get off this path.”
SEEK THE HELP OF THE RESIST ANTS.
By this time they were past the first ant colony and approaching another, just before the path disappeared into the bubbling bog. That had to be the resist ants. “Help!” he called again.
The ants responded. They charged across the path and linked legs so as to form a living cordon. The three travelers collided with it and bounced back, landing in a pile off the path. They were finally free of its compulsion.
Umlaut picked himself up. “Thanks,” he said. “You saved us from disaster. What can we do for you in return?”
The Intellig Ant approached with a placard. THEY WANT A PORPOISE.
This set him back somewhat. “Seafood? To eat? I don’t think I want to do that.”
LOOK AT THE POOL.
He looked and saw that at the edge of the bog was a section of open water. A creature swam there, restlessly. It was the shape of a loan shark, but different.
THAT IS REASON. HE HAS NO PORPOISE. FIND HIM A PORPOISE.
Oh. Another pun. What else was to be expected along the Path of Least Resistance?
Still, this seemed to be beyond the scope of what they could accomplish. “I’m not sure—”
Sammy Cat took off, bounding across the terrain.
“We’ll do it,” Umlaut said and followed the cat. “Wait for me!”
Sammy led them to another pond. There was a swimming creature similar to the other. “Are you a porpoise?” Umlaut asked it.
It turned out that this was indeed a lady porpoise. Surely a fit companion for Reason.
“We would like you to meet a creature who needs you,” Umlaut said. “We’ll try to make a channel for you to swim.” Indeed, Sesame was already at work on it, jamming her snout through the dirt and muck of the fringe of the bog, gouging out a shallow channel.
In due course they had cut a channel connecting the two pools. The porpoise wriggled along it and joined Reason, who greeted her with delight. Reason and a porpoise—a perfect couple.
Now they felt free to depart. Sammy scouted out another path, a safe one, and they followed cautiously. There were no further problems, and they reached the castle well ahead of the giant snail, unsurprisingly.
Breanna of the Black Wave saw them coming. “Sammy!” she exclaimed, picking up the cat and stroking him. He purred.
“We saw a snail,” Umlaut said. “It’s bringing letters from Mundania.” He preferred not to mention the misadventure with the Path of Least Resistance.
Breanna nodded. “That explains why they are so old. I collected
them from the dungeon, and some of them go back months. We had no idea they were being delivered here.”
“I guess a Mundane snail wouldn’t know the local Xanth addresses,” Umlaut said. “So it brought them to the nearest castle with a mail slot.”
“For sure. They are supposed to go to all manner of residents. We’ll have the zombies deliver them to the people they are addressed to. It will take a while, but they’re already so late it shouldn’t make much difference.”
“Well, 1 think we’ll be on our way now,” Umlaut said. “We want to explore Xanth before Sammy goes home.”
“But he can’t find home,” Breanna said. “I know where it is; I can have a zombie take him there.”
Sammy jumped from her arms. He wasn’t ready to go home yet.
“For sure,” Breanna murmured, seeing the way of it. “I guess all those wolves get tiresome, and Jenny’s signaling the stork.” She looked pensive half a moment. “So am I.”
There was a swirl of smoke in the air before them. It formed into a vaguely human face. “Salubrious,” it said.
“Whatever,” the face said crossly, as a voluptuous body extended downward from it.
“Oh, hello, Metria,” Breanna said. “You know Sammy Cat, and these are Umlaut Human and Drivel Dragon.” She turned to the others. “This is the Demoness Metria.”
The shape was now fully formed, with a drooping decolletage over a very full bosom and lifting skirt over a similarly full bottom. “You don’t look much like a dragon,” she said to Sesame.
The serpent quickly emulated the dragon, having allowed that to lapse. The demoness blinked. “But maybe I mislooked.”
“Mis what?” Umlaut asked somewhat stupidly. He couldn’t manage an intelligent comment at the moment because his own eyes
were locked onto Metria’s illustriously heaving bosom.
“Whatever,” she agreed crossly, taking another heave.
“Cut it out,” Breanna snapped. “We didn’t say anything to Demon Jupiter. All we did was forward a letter to him.”
The demoness started to fade, finally freeing Umlaut’s eyes. “Humfrey will be glad to know that.”
“Hold up a moment,” Breanna said. “What’s with the Demon Jupiter?”
The fading reversed at the top but continued at the bottom, so that the demoness was visible only from the waist up. Umlaut tried to safeguard his eyes before they fell back into her swelling bosom, but lost. “Him? Oh, just some nonsense about a spot.”
“Must be the Red Spot,” Breanna said. “He’s got one. Why does that concern us?”
“He doesn’t seem to want it anymore.”
“Doesn’t want his Red Spot? Why do you think that?”
“Because it seems he just threw it at the Demon Earth.”
“He what?”
“Hurled, cast, tossed, flung, pitched—”
“Stop it!” Breanna snapped. “That spot is no tiny ball, it’s a huge red storm. And Earth is firmly attached to Xanth. If that thing blots out Earth, it’ll blot out Xanth too. This is real mischief! Whatever possessed Jupiter to do that?”
Metria shrugged, yanking Umlaut’s eyes upward with her thorax. “I wouldn’t know. Must have been something in that letter you so nicely forwarded.”
“The letter!” Breanna exclaimed in horror. “It must have insulted him. It’s my fault for forwarding that missive. I should abase myself.”
“Or go to the attic,” Umlaut suggested.
“Attic?”
“The basement is still sort of smelly. So maybe an attic is better than abasement.”
She gave him a strange look, and he realized that he had spoken clumsily, again. “Maybe I should. Now we’re all in deep bleep.”
“Deep what?” the demoness asked.
“Muck, manure, fertilizer, humus, dirt—”
“Poop?”
“Whatever,” Breanna Said crossly. “Hey, now you’ve got me doing it! I mean we’re all in trouble. Because we didn’t know what was in that letter.”
“Interesting. Well, toodle-doo.” This time the demoness faded out too quickly to be stopped.
Breanna shook her head. “What a mess!”
Sesame and Sammy nodded agreement.
3
CHALLENGES
Maybe I shouldn’t have found that letter,” Umlaut said, feeling guilty.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have forwarded it unopened,” Breanna said. “For sure, I’ll check the others first. But right now we have a bad problem. I’ll have to consult with the Good Magician to find out what to do about it. What a thing to happen when I’m still learning the zombie business.”
A moderately dim bulb flashed over Umlaut’s head. “We can do that,” he said.
“Consult with the Good Magician. We can go there, so you won’t have to. We—we have some responsibility in this matter too.”
Breanna considered. “It’s nobody’s fault; it just happened. But we do need to do something. That Demon Jupiter is nobody to fool around with. Okay, if you want to go, then go ahead. But hurry. That spot won’t take long to get here.”
“Well, Sammy can surely find the castle, but it may take us several days to get there by foot.”
“No time for that. I’ll have Roy carry you.”
“Who?”
But she was already hurrying away to find Roy.
Umlaut turned to the other two. “I thought you’d like to see the Good Magician’s castle. But if you’d rather not, I can leave you here and do it myself. I’ll give the answer to Breanna, then we can head out on our own adventure, just as we planned.”
Both serpent and cat shook their heads. They wanted to come along.
“I wonder who Roy is?” Umlaut asked. “Maybe a big horse or unicorn or something, who can run very fast.”
Sammy looked past him and shuddered. Then Sesame did the same.
“Well, maybe with a wagon, so we can ride in it.”
They continued to stare and shudder. Finally Umlaut turned to follow their gazes.
A giant bird was coming to a landing. “A roc!” he exclaimed. “We’re going by air!”
So why were they still shuddering?
Then he saw the bird in more detail. It was a zombie roc. “Oh, no!” he breathed. But it was too late to say no.
The three exchanged another glance. They shrugged. How bad could it be?
There was a wicker cage at the roc’s feet, large enough for them all. They got into it, Sesame curling around the bottom, Umlaut and Sammy sitting on her coils.
There was a blast of foul air as the roc pumped his monstrous wings and lifted off the ground. Roy’s flesh might be a bit rotten, but his flight feathers were evidently sufficient. Umlaut wrinkled his nose, and the two others nodded. None of them were keen on zombie power but had little choice at the moment. Certainly Umlaut was not about to comment openly and perhaps hurt the big bird’s feelings and get dropped.
They saw the Land of Xanth spread below them, like a disjointed carpet, with the blue sea on one side and a huge crevice on another. “What’s that?” Umlaut asked, surprised.
It turned out that Sammy Cat knew, having been there. They played the yes/no question game and gradually got the answer: That was the Gap Chasm, a huge cut across the center of Xanth that had been forgotten for eight hundred years, thanks to a forget spell, but now was generally known. Its sides were sheer, so that creatures who got into it had trouble getting out, and the dread Gap Dragon cruised the bottom, steaming and gobbling what it caught.
“Steaming?” Umlaut asked.
Yes, steaming. Dragons were of three general types: fire breathers, smokers, and steamers. The one in the Gap Chasm was Stanley Steamer. He could cook a creature with a single jet of steam and was one of the most fearsome dragons extant. Except when Princess Ivy was around; then he was tame.
“You know Princess Ivy?” Umlaut asked, amazed.
It turned out that Sammy knew just about everyone who was anyone. Jenny Elf had made many friends before she got married, so the cat had became acquainted with them too. He could find any of them, when he wanted to.
It occurred to Umlaut that this could be a useful contact if they needed to meet any important people. But why would they need to? They were just doing an errand for Breanna of the Black Wave.
The bird angled downward. There was a castle ahead. “That must be the Good Magician,” Umlaut said.
Sammy sent him a superior look: What else could it be?
Roy Roc touched down, bounced, slid, and ground to a spinning halt. It was not a pretty landing, and bits of zombie rot flew out, but they were safely down.
“Thank you so much,” Umlaut said, scrambling out of the somewhat dented wicker cage. Sammy and Sesame were hardly slower about it.
The bird nodded. Then he spread his wings, pumped more rot into the air, and squeezed out a takeoff. In a moment only the stench remained.
“Well, he did get us here quickly,” Umlaut said. “We are surely duly grateful.”
The others agreed. Now they addressed the castle. It looked considerably neater and cleaner than Castle Zombie, which was no surprise. The stone walls were firm, the pennants were bright, the moat was clear, and the drawbridge was down across it and looked firm and healthy. What a change—and what a relief.
But something was wrong. When they approached the castle, it turned out to be made of cardboard. The moat was a painted disk, the walls were interlocked in jigsaw puzzle fashion, and the main gate was painted; it wouldn’t open.
“This is the Good Magician’s Castle?” Umlaut asked Sammy.
Sammy fidgeted. It turned out that he had not invoked his finding power, trusting the roc to know the way. And the roc had landed at the wrong castle.
Umlaut sighed. Then he stepped across the moat and knocked on the painted door, “Anybody home?” he called.
A much smaller door opened inside the big one. A young man’s head popped out. “You like it anyway?”
“It’s cardboard!” Umlaut exclaimed.
“Well, maybe I overreached. You see, my talent is to make any drawn thing become real. So this time I drew the Good Magician’s Castle. But I guess there are limits, because when it got big, it stopped being solid. It’s real, just not quite what I wanted.”
“I guess you have to work on that some more,” Umlaut said. “We’re looking for the real Good Magician’s Castle.”
“Oh that’s just east of here. You can’t miss it.” The door shut.
They walked around the cardboard castle and went east. And came up against a raging river. It was plainly too violent for them to swim across. Even Sesame shrank back.
Umlaut turned to Sammy. “Can you find help?”
The cat bounded north. “Wait for us!” But Sammy wasn’t good at waiting. Fortunately it was not far. They approached two girls who were having a picnic in a glade.
The girls looked up, alarmed. Suddenly a mass of green Stuff appeared and shaped itself into a fence between Umlaut and the girls. He had to stop moving before he crashed into it.
He recognized defensive magic. “We’re not attacking you,” he called. “We’re just looking for help to get across the river. I’m Umlaut, and these are my friends Sesame Serpent and Sammy Cat.”
“Sammy!” one girl cried. The fence dissolved back into Stuff, which then disappeared. Sammy joined the girls and received some heavy petting.
The girls turned out to be Mol and Kel. Mol’s talent was creating; Kel’s was molding. So Mol had created the mass of Stuff, and Kel had shaped it into the fence. Both were more than willing to do Umlaut a favor, now that they knew he was with Sammy.
“Well, uh, if you can make us a bridge across the river, we’d appreciate that.”
“We will,” Mol said, kissing him on the left ear.
“Right away,” Kel added, kissing his right ear.
“Uh, thanks.”
They walked to the river. Mol made a huge mass of blue Stuff, and Kel shaped it into an arch that fell across the river. It was not Xanth’s fanciest bridge, but it sufficed. They climbed carefully across it to the other side of the river. The girls followed, bending down to hang on to the arch with their hands, not awfully careful about how much of their legs showed. Umlaut tried not to look, without success.
“Uh, thanks,” Umlaut said in his usual awkward fashion.
“We can do more than that,” Mol said, kissing his left ear again.
“Much more,” Kel agreed, kissing his right ear again.
Umlaut sort of liked it but knew that he couldn’t dally here. “We, uh, have to get on to the Good Magician’s Castle.”
“Too bad,” Mol said. “Maybe on the way back?”
“Uh, maybe.” He wasn’t sure exactly what they had in mind, but was mightily tempted.
They moved on. Sesame glanced at him sidelong, and he knew why: He was awkward and clumsy and nothing special in his natural state, so why did girls like him? It was a mystery.
They made it without further event to the real Good Magician’s Castle, which looked exactly like the cardboard replica, except that the moat water was real and so, surely, was the stone in the walls.
“Now all we have to do is enter the castle, ask for the Good Magician, and ask him what to do about that Red Spot,” Umlaut said. “How complicated can that be?”
But Sammy Cat stirred restlessly, and Sesame Serpent looked doubtful. What was their problem?
Then he saw that the way across the bridge was blocked by an enormous pile of large jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each piece was painted with black or white squares. Some of the white squares had letters of the alphabet on them, and some had numbers in their corners. “What’s this mess?” he asked.
Sammy Cat started to go into a series of motions and gestures indicating a complicated explanation, but Umlaut cut him off. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s just go around this rubble.”
Still they were doubtful. Sammy was contemplating the puzzle pieces, and Sesame was staring at the moat. Now Umlaut looked at the moat too but saw nothing untoward. “We can swim across; there’s no slime in that water.”
But the moment he stepped toward the water, an array of swimming monsters appeared. He wasn’t sure of their exact types, but they all seemed to have gleaming eyes, sharp fins, and big teeth. “Maybe it’s too cool to swim.”
He decided that he did have time after all to fathom what Sammy had to say. He questioned the cat and soon understood. “You mean this is a challenge? We can’t get inside unless we handle three challenges? That’s ridiculous!”
Yet it seemed to be so. Sammy knew something about the Good Magician’s little eccentricities. He did not like to be bothered by frivolous questions, so he put obstacles in the way of querents (it was a struggle to elicit that obscure term from the cat; it meant people who asked questions) and refused to talk to them unless they got past them. Apparently only a few had the stamina or wit to handle the challenges, so the Good Magician was not bothered too often. So here was a challenge, and they had either to handle it or give up and go away, which might satisfy the magician.
For some reason he couldn’t quite identify, that annoyed Umlaut.
“Here we come to ask a question that may enable us to save Earth and Xanth from destruction or worse, and we have to go through this nonsense.” The others agreed but had no way to bypass the nonsense.
There was something about the pile of puzzle pieces they had to understand or handle, in order to get by them. What could that be? Umlaut was just about annoyed enough to tackle it. If only he could figure out how.
He picked up a white piece with the letter C on it. He turned it over, but it was blank on back. He looked at another, with the letter A. There seemed to be many different letters. What was he supposed to do with them?
He looked at Sammy and Sesame, but they had no better idea than he did.
“Well, maybe if I put them in order,” he said. He laid down the A and searched through the pile for a B, then added the C. He continued until he had the whole alphabet and the numbers 0 through 9. But when it was complete, nothing happened. Also, there were many duplicate letters left in the pile, which hardly seemed diminished. So this did not seem to be the answer.
“Maybe if I made a word or two.” He collected letters and spelled out GOOD MAGICIAN. Still nothing happened.
He had had enough. “What am I going to do with you?”
There was a stir in the air. A cloud formed. A voice issued from it. “What did you have in intellect?”
“In what?”
“Reason, sense, recall, understanding, memory—”
“Mind?”
“Whatever,” the cloud replied crossly.
“Hello, Demoness Metria.”
The cloud shaped into a divinely human figure. Fortunately this time it was covered by a reasonably proper dress that extended from neck to ankles, so Umlaut did not lose control of his eyeballs. “How did you know it was me?”
“I made a wild guess and got lucky. What brings you here?”
“You seemed to be eager to do something, so naturally I came to be a part of it.”
“Why?”
“Because I get dulled by routine.”
“Do you mean bored?”
“That’s not the prescribed format.”
“I’m tired of that kind. Here I’m supposed to figure out what to do with these bleeping blocks, and I hate it.”
“Oooo, what you said!”
“Well, I’m annoyed. Do you have any idea what to do with them?”
She gazed at the pile. “Dump them into the moat?”
Umlaut considered that. He looked at Sammy and Sesame. It was true that they had not yet tried that.
He picked up the A block and tossed it at the water. It sailed around in a loop and landed back on the pile. “Why did I have this nasty suspicion that that wouldn’t work?”
“I have no idea,” the demoness said. “I’m still waiting for you to tell me what you had in mind for me.”
“I don’t have anything in mind for you! I was talking about this confounded pile of pieces.”
“Then it must be time for a diversion.” Her dress shrank a size.
“No it isn’t!” Umlaut said. He was beginning to appreciate why Breanna had been short with the demoness. It was hard to get things done efficiently while she was distracting people.
“Not even one this size?” The dress shrank another size, but the body didn’t; things were getting rather tight.
“No size! Go away!”
“There must be something really interesting going on,” Metria said, looking around. Umlaut realized that he should not have demanded that she depart. It had the effect of stiffening her resolve to remain.
So he tried to make the best of it. “We’re up against some sort of challenge and can’t figure it out. But if we can’t, you can’t either, so you might as well not bother to try.”
“Right. There is no point in trying. Let’s consider storks.” Her dress shrank another size, revealing a bit too much flesh.
He realized that she must have caught on. She wasn’t here to help, anyway. He tried to ignore her, but it was not possible to ignore that exposed flesh. His eyes struggled but soon locked relentlessly into place.
Only his voice remained. “Get your uncovered hide out of here!” he said crossly.
There was a stir by the bridge. The demoness heard it and turned to look. In the process she freed Umlaut’s eyes. He quickly shaded them with his hand so as not to get caught again when she turned back.
“Now that’s interesting,” Metria murmured, gazing at the bridge.
Indeed it was. The puzzle pieces were moving by themselves, forming a tall, slick wall with a display of letters across and downward.
“What’s going on?” he asked, amazed.
“It’s forming a crossword puzzle,” Metria replied. “How did you make it do that?”
“I didn’t. I was just trying to get rid of you, and suddenly it started.”
“No, it had to be you, because you’re the querent. What did you say to it?”
“Nothing! I told you to get your uncovered hide out of here.”
“So you did,” she agreed. “And naturally I was about to respond by uncovering it the rest of the way, like this.”
Umlaut clapped his hand completely across his eyes just in time to shut out the eyeball-gluing sight. Some other time he might have liked to have peeked, but he knew better than to yield at this moment. “So I did nothing. Now you can go.”
“You have to have done article.”
He knew better than this too but couldn’t stop himself. “Done what?”
“Deed, item, being, exploit, procedure—”
“Something?”
“Whatever,” she agreed crossly.
Then a bulb flashed over his head. “Cross! That’s what did it.”
“Did what?”
“Solved the challenge! It’s a crossword puzzle. I said a cross word.”
“But I was cross before you were, and it didn’t do anything.”
“You’re not the one with the challenge.”
She considered a moment. “I think he’s got it. Curses, foiled again.” She was silent.
For a moment Umlaut thought she was still there. Then Sesame nudged him, and he looked. The demoness was gone.
“She was trying to mess me up, and instead she helped me handle the challenge,” he said. “No wonder she was cross.” Then he laughed. It certainly served her right.
They looked at the crossword wall. It had an intricate display of words across and down that interlinked. For example, the word CROSS went across, and the word WORD crossed it going down, using the same O. Umlaut had not seen such a device before and was intrigued. It seemed to be a fairly efficient way to write words, because the sharing of letters meant that more words could be made without expanding the number of letters. Black squares showed where the words ended, and those squares formed a neat pattern across the board. There was a certain crude art to it.
However, the wall still blocked off the drawbridge. (DRAW shared the letter D with BRIDGE.) He was sure he couldn’t go around it. So either there was more to the puzzle than he had solved so far, or this was another challenge. Either way, he had to figure it out.
Now he saw that not all the white spaces had letters. Some were blank. Also, there were words on either side of the puzzle squares. On the left it said Across, and on the right it said Down, and of course those did not manage to share their O, He wondered whether that made them feel unfulfilled.
Sammy nudged his leg. He looked down. The cat walked up to the left-side words and rubbed against them.
Oh. He needed to pay attention to what they said, instead of merely admiring the overall form.
The words turned out to be questions. The first was 1 across: WHO ARE YOU?
“I am Umlaut, of course,” he said. “Does it matter?” But of course it was foolish to talk to a board. He had heard of a king who could talk to inanimate things and make them answer, but that was not his own talent.
So why was this board asking him his name?
Sesame nudged his right arm. He looked, and she moved her snout forward to touch the central portion of the board. There was a series of blanks—one of the missing words.
Once again a bulb flashed. “Maybe my name fits there!”
Now he saw that a few loose blocks remained. He sorted through them, picking out the letters of his name. U LAUT. But the M was missing. How could he fill it in with a letter missing?
Then he cursed himself for a fool. He put the letters into place. The letter M was there, in another word that his name crossed.
The second hint said: 2 down: WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
“Into the Good Magician’s Castle,” he said impatiently. But he saw immediately that that didn’t fit. So he tried again. “On a quest.” That didn’t fit, either.
Sammy nudged him. He looked down. The cat had scratched a bare place on the ground and set a red cherry in the center of it. What was the significance of that?
Then yet another bulb flashed. “Red Spot!” he exclaimed. “I’m on a quest to solve the problem of the Red Spot!”
But that was two words, and there was space for only one word, six letters long. The last letter was T, because it intersected the end of his crosswise name.
But if he jammed them together, it would make one word. Quickly he gathered letters and filled in REDSPOT.
The third hint said 3 down: WHAT IS THIS?
“A bleeping nuisance,” he said with half a smile. But it took him only a moment, or perhaps an instant and a half, to come up with the missing word, because it overlapped the A in his name. He gathered the letters and filled it in. CHALLENGE.
The board flashed. He had solved the second challenge, with the help of his friends.
But it still blocked the way across the bridge. What remained to be done?
“The third challenge,” he muttered. “It must relate to this in some way. What can it be?”
He had no idea. He gazed at the board, pondering. Was there something wrong with it? He didn’t see anything.
He looked at his companions. They had gone to sleep. Sesame had formed a neat coil, with Sammy snoozing on top of it. The serpent’s head rested comfortably on a checkered box. On the box was the word SPELL.
Still another bulb flashed. Umlaut had never had so many go off in such a short time; he was lucky his head wasn’t burning out. “That has to be a spell checker,” he said. “To check the spelling of the puzzle.”
He leaned down, carefully moved Sesame’s head to the side, and picked up the box. It was featureless, aside from the word and design. How was he supposed to use it?
He shook it. It rattled. “Oh, it’s a box,” he said. “There’s something inside.”
Sammy made a Duh! expression.
Umlaut turned the box over. Nothing there. He felt around its sides. He found a panel that felt slightly loose. He pushed it to the side, and it slid across to reveal a button. He pushed the button, and the top of the box sprang open. He had figured it out, mostly by chance, mishap, and blind luck, as was his usual mode. Rather than being a box to check spelling, maybe it was a checkered box holding spells.
Inside were several small objects. They didn’t look like spells, but of course he had no idea what a solid spell looked like. He picked out a pair of two little horns. They expanded in his hands, becoming the size of feet. He tried blowing into one, but it made no sound. So maybe they weren’t horns. In that case, what were they?
He tried putting one on his foot. It fit. It was a shoe! He put the other on, and it fit well enough. But when he tried to walk in them, he tripped. It wasn’t him, it was the shoes; they refused to go anywhere. Something was wrong with them.
He set them aside and took out another object. This one resembled a slice of bread, and it too expanded in his hand to normal size. But when he tried to take a bite of it, he couldn’t; the thing was rubbery and inedible. Maybe it was supposed to be food, but there was something wrong with it, just as was the case with the shoes.
He tried another object. This looked like a statuette of a woman with rather healthy thighs under her skirt. She wore a hat that looked like a lens on top, almost as if it were meant to shine a light. Maybe this was a decorative flashlight. He pointed the lens and squeezed the body, but nothing happened. So maybe this was another broken spell.
Another object looked like a small piece of cake. It expanded in his hand, and now it looked more like a ramp or path, or perhaps a walk. Cake in the shape of a walk? “Cakewalk!” he said. But nothing happened. He had either misunderstood, or this was another broken spell.
“Everything in this box seems to be broken,” he said. “Maybe the challenge is to fix them. But 1 don’t know the first thing about magic, or even the second or third things. How can I fix what I don’t understand?”
Sammy Cat looked at him as if he were being stupid. Cats were good at that, he realized. So how was he being stupid?
“Maybe I’m taking too much on myself,” he said. ‘These challenges must be for all three of us. What do you folk think of this?”
Sesame wriggled, so he went into the nineteen-questions routine with her and learned that she thought he should look for another spell: one to check and fix the others. That could be the challenge; to find out how to use the tool he had.
It did seem to make sense. He checked the other objects and spied one that looked like a checker in the game of checkers. That was bound to be it. A single checker did not make a checker game, so it must be another kind of checker. A spell checker.
He held it in his hand and touched it to a shoe horn. The horn honked with a big bass rumble. He touched the other, and it honked with a delicate ladylike titter. The horns were working now.
He put the shoes on his feet again. This time they walked with him, and with each step they honked. HONK! Honkie. HONK! Hon-kie. It was a wild combination. They certainly were a pair of shoe horns, sounding off as they hit the ground. The spell checker had checked and fixed them.
He touched the checker to the inedible slice of bread. The slice heated and turned dark at the edges. It was toasting! It was a piece of toast.
He was about to try a bite when a toothy fish leaped out of the moat, snapped up the toast, and landed back in the water. “Hey!” Umlaut protested. “You stole my toast!”
But the fish did not get to enjoy its stolen morsel. Another fish bit off half of it before the first fish could swallow it. Then both fish looked stricken. They rolled over on their backs and floated there, dead to the world.
Umlaut stared. Just what kind of toast was this? Was the Good Magician trying to poison him?
Then he laughed, catching on. “It’s coma toast!” he exclaimed. “It puts folk into a coma.”
There was a groan from the moat. Not from the comatose fish but from others around them. They had heard the pun.
Umlaut touched the checker to the statuette light. It abruptly grew into a full-sized woman. “Well, I never!” she said and walked away. Her thighs glowed right through her skirt.
“Cellulight,” Umlaut murmured appreciatively. Another spell had been fixed. There was another groan from the moat.
He touched the checker to the cakewalk. It expanded, extending toward the crossword board and through it. The board disappeared, and the walk went on across the bridge, unrolling like a red carpet.
“I believe we have resolved the third challenge,” Umlaut said. He glanced at the moat. “What does your kind think of that?” But he got no answer; the moat monsters had disappeared.
They followed the red carpet across the moat and into the castle. A young woman met them at the gate. “Hello, Umlaut, Sesame, Sammy,” she said. “I am Wira, the Good Magician’s daughter-in-law. Please come this way.” She turned and walked into the castle.
There was something odd about her. It wasn’t that she knew their names. Humfrey was the Magician of Information, so he knew everything worth knowing; naturally he had their names. It was something about the way she had looked at them.
Sammy nudged him. When he looked at the cat, he put a paw over his face as if he couldn’t see, then pointed the paw at Wira.
“She can’t see?” Umlaut asked, surprised.
“It is true,” Wira said without turning. “I am blind. But I know my way around the castle.”
Umlaut was glad she couldn’t see him blushing. He had forgotten that it wasn’t safe to talk to the animals while a person was listening.
Wira brought them to a pleasant interior chamber. There was a tall veiled woman. “This is the Gorgon, Humfrey’s designated wife this month,” she said. “Mother Gorgon, there are Umlaut, Sesame, and Sammy, here with a question.”
“Of course,” the Gorgon said. “The Good Magician will be with you in a moment.” She proffered a plate of cheese. “Have some Gorgonzola.”
“The one who stones those who see my face,” she finished for him. “Fortunately I wear a veil, as you may have noticed.”
“Uh, yes,” Umlaut agreed, embarrassed again. He was not socially precocious, as someone he couldn’t remember had informed him some time back. Or to put it into words he had less trouble understanding, he could be sort of stupid around people. Maybe that was why he related so well to animals. He took a piece of cheese tasted it. It was very good.
The Gorgon offered the plate to Sammy, who pawed off a piece, and then she fed a piece to Sesame. The woman did not seem to find it odd that two of the visitors were animals.
“Do you understand that the Good Magician requires a year’s service, or the equivalent, from each querent?” the Gorgon asked.
Oops. Umlaut had forgotten about that. He looked at the other two. They shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. It seemed unkind to make them serve when they were only trying to save Xanth from a horrible threat, but the Good Magician had a well-earned reputation for being grumpy and difficult. This was going to interfere with their plan to explore Xanth.
When they finished the cheese, Wira returned. She had faded out without their noticing; she was very quiet. “The Good Magician will see you now.”
They followed her up a winding flight of stairs. Umlaut was interested to see how Sesame’s torso bent to conform to the stairs, in a series of steps She had a marvelously limber body.
They came to a tiny, dingy, dusky study surrounded by books. In the center was a gnomelike man on a high stool, poring over a huge tome. That was the famous Book of Answers, the secret of his power of information. “The querents are here, Father,” Wira said and faded back.
“We want to know how to save Xanth from the Red Spot,” Umlaut said.
The gnome looked up. “Deliver the letters.”
“The zombies are doing that,” Umlaut said. “What about the Red Spot?”
Humfrey didn’t answer. His eyes were back on the tome.
Wira reappeared. “That is the Answer,” she murmured.
“The Answer? It sounds more like the Service.”
“That, too,” Wira agreed. “Now you must go. He gets grumpy when visitors linger too long.”
Soon they found themselves back with the Gorgon, who seemed like a far more reasonable figure compared to the magician. “He didn’t tell us how to stop the Red Spot,” Umlaut complained, “just to deliver the letters. But the zombies are already doing that.”
“It has become your task,” the Gorgon said. “Humfrey’s answers always make sense, once understood. You must do as he says, and it will work out.”
Umlaut saw that this made no more sense to Sammy and Sesame than it did to him. But what else could they do? It hadn’t occurred to him that the worst of the challenges would be to figure out what the Answer meant.
4
MOONS OF IDA
Back at Castle Zombie, Breanna was surprised. “Hum-frey told you to deliver the letters? And that’s the Answer as well as the Service? That’s even crazier than usual for him.”
“For sure,” Umlaut said with a grim smile, borrowing her phrase. “But it seems we have to do it.”
“It seems you do,” she agreed. “We’ll help you however we can. We can locate the folk the letters go to, for one thing.”
“Sammy Cat can do that.”
She nodded. “I forgot about him. Well, I’ll turn the letters over to you. But there’s one thing—”
“We have to read them first,” he said, “so nobody else gets mad enough to hurl anything at us.”
“For sure. There was one addressed to me, so I took it. It was perfectly innocent, congratulating me on my wedding to Justin Tree and wishing us well. Nothing to make me want to throw anything at anybody. But we can’t trust any of them, after the way Demon Jupiter reacted.” She brought him a package of letters. “I guess you can just carry them along with you and make a big circle route, delivering them more efficiently. But this is going to be a big job, regardless, with a whole lot of traveling.”
“Well, we did want to travel,” he said bravely.
“You will certainly do that! Those letters go all over Xanth. Which one will you start on?”
Umlaut was at a loss. “I haven’t thought about that. I don’t even know to whom they go.”
“Maybe just close your eyes and pick one.”
“There should be more design to it than that, I think. Some must be more pressing than others. But which ones?”
Sesame nudged his elbow. He looked at her. “You have an opinion? Let’s have it.”
They went into nineteen questions, and he got her point: The letters were not necessarily important in themselves but as a mechanism to discover how to stop the Red Spot from obliterating Earth and Xanth. So they should look for that letter, not a random one.
“Good point,” Umlaut said. “But I still have no way of judging which the key letter is.”
“Ask Sammy,” Breanna suggested.
He turned to the cat. “Sammy, where is the letter with the Answer?”
But the cat turned his back and settled down on a zombie pillow for a snooze.
“That’s his way of saying he doesn’t know,” Breanna said. “Cats don’t like to admit ignorance. Maybe it’s not in a letter but in something that will be discovered when the letter is delivered.”
“So we’re back to circle one,” Umlaut said morosely.
But Sesame had another idea. After about fourteen questions he got it: “The Zombie Master! He must know, because the letters are being delivered to Castle Zombie. It must be something that got set up before and fell in the crevice.”
A puff of smoke appeared. “Fell in the what?”
“Cleft, chink, slit, flaw, rift—”
“Crack?” the cloud inquired, forming into a head with a face.
The rest of the body formed, heaves and all. “So what are you up to now?”
Umlaut had caught on to her nature. If he tried to pretend it was nothing, she would be assured that it was something. Then she would stay around, exercising his helpless eyeballs until they smoked. So he told the truth, hoping it would bore her so that she would depart. “We’re delivering letters.”
“Why bother?”
“The Good Magician says this will solve the problem of Demon Jupiter’s Red Spot.”
“Oh, that. Utterly drilling.”
“Utterly what?”
“Boring!” Breanna said quickly. “Now if you’re not going to help, why don’t you seduce him and be done with it.”
“Never!” The demoness faded out.
Umlaut stared at her. “You told her to seduce me?”
“You have to know how to handle her. She was trying to do that, so I told her to do it, so she reversed, a victim of her own perversity. But that dodge won’t work again. You’ll have to figure out some other gimmick. Meanwhile, get on your way to Princess Ida.”
“But I thought we had decided to start with the Zombie Master.”
“He’s now residing at his retirement home, Zombie World. That’s the nth Moon of Ida.”
“The whath moon?”
“It’s so far along the chain that we don’t know what number it is in the series. But he set up a shortcut to it, or at least a marked path. Princess Ida will set it up for you. In fact, I think there’s a letter to her in the pile; you can drop two stones with one bird.” She handed him a knapsack. “I put the letters in here. Remember, read each one before you deliver it, just in case.”
“Princess Ida,” he agreed, salvaging what he could of this as he donned the knapsack. “Where is she?”
Sammy launched out of his nap and headed for the horizon.
“Castle Roogna,” Breanna said. “That way.” She pointed after the cat.
“Wait for us!” he cried, running after Sammy. But he was already far behind. How had Jenny Elf ever managed to keep up with this feline?
Sesame slithered beside him, traveling far more readily through the mixed brush. She gave him a look and a nod.
Taking the hint, he emulated a light serpent rider and jumped on her back. His hands clung to her sleek scales, and she formed a niche to hold him in place. Then, sniffing the scent of the disappeared cat, she slithered on at a swift rate.
“Thanks!” he gasped.
They slithered rapidly through glade and forest, o’er hill and dale, and across a river or two. It all went by so rapidly he hardly had time to assimilate it.
Until they came to a third river. There was something swimming in it that Sesame didn’t understand, so she stopped at the bank. She could scare back sharks or allegations, but it wasn’t smart to swim with an unknown menace.
But it turned out to be a boy. He spied them and waded out. He had gills on his neck and fins on his arms and legs, but these faded as he came ashore. “My name’s Kiel,” he said. “I have the talent of adaptation. When I want to swim, I grow gills and fins; when I want to fly, I grow wings.”
“I’m Umlaut, with the talent of emulation. But I can’t take it nearly as far as you can. I just halfway look the part; I’m not real. It is similar with Sesame here.”
“Too bad,” Kiel said. He dived back into the water, forming gills again as he did.
They concluded that the water must be safe and swam across. Umlaut was a bit jealous of those who had more substantial talents than he did, but he didn’t want to say so.
Soon a fancy castle hove into view. This was surely Castle Roogna, famed residence of King Dor and Queen Irene. Umlaut wondered whether there would be three challenges to get into it, but that turned out not to be the case.
Sammy ran right past the snoozing moat monster and into the castle, and Sesame slithered after him. Three little girls appeared, looking to be about six years old. One had a nice green dress, another a brown dress, and the third a red dress, and their hair seemed to match. All three wore cute little crowns.
Sammy tried to run past them, followed closely by Umlaut and Sesame, but one hummed a melody, the second played a harmonica, and the third beat on a little drum. Suddenly a magic web held the three visitors in stasis. This was strong magic.
“Who are you?” the first asked. Then she answered her own question. “Sammy Cat!”
Everybody knew Sammy!
The magic eased, turning them loose. “And I’m Umlaut, and this is Sesame Serpent,” Umlaut said, completing the introduction. “We’re looking for Princess Ida.”
“We’re the three princesses, Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm,” the second child said.
“You don’t want to eat Aunt Ida, do you?” the third asked, looking at Sesame.
“We just want to give her a letter,” Umlaut said quickly. “And visit Zombie World.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” the first princess said. Umlaut thought she must be Melody, because they seemed to speak in turns, as she was the first to have spoken and the first one named.
“She’s nice,” the one who must be Harmony said.
“Next door down,” the one who must be Rhythm said. Sammy took off again.
“Thank you, Princesses,” Umlaut said, hurrying after the cat.
The princesses faded out, literally. Umlaut was sure they weren’t demons, but they evidently had some magic tricks.
The door opened as they reached it. A sensible-seeming adult woman stood there. She wore a conservative crown too. A tiny sphere revolved around her head. “Princess Ida?” Umlaut inquired somewhat breathlessly.
“Indeed,” the woman agreed.
“We—”
“The princesses told me,” Ida said. “Do come in.”
Thus they found themselves in her small chamber. Sesame coiled tightly to fit.
“We have — ” Umlaut began again.
“A letter for me? How nice!”
“Only—”
“You have to read it first? Be welcome.”
Princess Ida seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the situation. Umlaut took off the knapsack and sorted through it until he found the letter addressed to PRINCESS IDA, CASTLE ROOGNA, LAND OF XANTH.
This was embarrassing. He should have looked at the letter before coming here, but somehow there had been no time. “It’s be-
“There can be severe negative reactions,” the princess said. She handed him a simple letter opener.
“Uh, yes.” He slit open the letter and unfolded the single sheet of paper within. “Uh, maybe if I read it aloud.”
“That will be fine,” Princess Ida agreed.
Umlaut remained embarrassed, but there was nothing to do but plow on. He cleared his throat and read:
Dear Princess Ida,
Despite your living in Xanth and me in Mundania, I believe we have a great deal in common.
Around your head orbits Ptero. On that planet is Pyramid, Torus, Cone, Tangle, and who knows how many others.
I too have worlds swirling around, only luckily they are on the inside and not visible. If others were to see them, I would immediately be institutionalized by medical “experts” and labeled as “mentally challenged” (being encouraged to think deeper is a good thing, but the term recently has been given negative connotations). If that didn’t happen, the other probability would result in my being incarcerated in some creepy government scientific laboratory where they would perform numerous unspeakable “tests” on my brain. Using an understated summary: Mundania is weird.
My world is concepts, or complex thoughts and ideas. One of them is called Creative Chaos. Many people live there; some of the most important are named Character, Imagination, Mythology, Dreamer, and Designer. Another world is called Hort City, in which resides all the plant life of this portion of Mundania. One is called Literature. There dwell all the great and mighty words of past centuries, as well as ones that have come to be today. There are many, many more. Vestiges’ of everyone of our realm who ever lived, or ever will exist, are there.’
This all requires a great deal of controlled organization. At times worlds are permitted to merge and run amok. Then a new manifestation is created. This one is called Stress—a very common affliction here in Mundania, yet one to be avoided at all costs.
Though my various worlds are populated by an infinite number of beings, I am thankful that there are no actual real visitors. If others intruded, I fear the Stress Sector would become a dictator state. I admire your coping abilities.
Sincerely, Arjayess
Umlaut looked up. “That’s the whole of it. Seems like a nice enough letter. No cause to hurl anything.”
“Indeed not,” Princess Ida agreed. “Yet I commend your caution, for we certainly don’t want any more mischief thrown our way.”
“You seem like a nice person,” Umlaut said. He realized he was being patronizing. “I mean, for a princess.” That was worse. “Uh—”
Princess Ida laughed. “Thank you. I see you encountered the three mischievous little princesses.”
“Yes,” he said gratefully. She had nicely defused his clumsiness, making it seem as if he had reason to question the niceness of princesses. She was a nice person. “Um, if you don’t mind my asking, just what is your magic talent?”
“Let’s hold that answer in abeyance for the nonce,” she said. “Now you must go on to deliver the Zombie Master’s letter. That will be a bit more complicated.”
“Uh, yes,” he agreed. “The letters were found in Castle Zombie, so we thought maybe he would know something about them.”
“Surely he will,” she agreed. She was a very agreeable person. She glanced at Sammy and Sesame. “With Sammy to locate the Zombie Master or Millie the Ghost once you reach Zombie World, and Sesame to facilitate travel there, you certainly seem to have planned well for this expedition.”
Of course he hadn’t planned it at all; it had just happened. “Well—”
“I don’t wish to bore you, but I need to be certain you understand the refinements of this particular expedition,” Princess Ida continued. “You see, you will not be able to visit that realm physically. Only your three souls will travel there. Your bodies will be safe here, of course, and most of your souls.”
Umlaut wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this. “Most of?”
“There is a series of worlds, each rather smaller than the prior, so less of your soul is required. By the time you reach Zombie World, the amount is almost infinitesimally tiny. So the great majority of your souls will remain with your bodies. But do not be concerned—you will be fully aware and real on Zombie World. When it is time to return, merely concentrate on that, and you will very soon awaken here, your mission accomplished.”
“But if there are so many worlds, how can we ever find our way?”
“Sammy will lead you. Fortunately the Zombie Master prepared a shortcut route for visitors to follow. He felt that necessary because zombies are not necessarily the most alert folk, and he did not want them to become lost. They go there to retire, not to wander endlessly in foreign worlds.”
“Uh, yes.” Umlaut found this more confusing than he cared to admit. “I wouldn’t want to get lost.”
“Wouldn’t it be awful if one lost its way in a comic strip! All those dreadful puns. Zombies don’t have much of a sense of humor; that portion of their brains is among the first to rot out.” She paused reflectively. “I wonder whether that is the problem with those notorious cri-tics? A rotting of their brains. That would account for a lot.”
“I guess,” Umlaut agreed doubtfully. What was a comic strip? What was a cri-tic? Maybe he was better off not knowing.
“Meanwhile I shall settle down to compose a response to Arjayess in Mundania,” Princess Ida said. “She is correct: We do have things in common. It was nice of her to write.”
Umlaut wondered how she knew the letter writer was female, but he didn’t ask. Maybe it had to do with her magic talent, the one she didn’t care to tell him about yet.
Princess Ida had them settle down comfortably, as if for sleep. Umlaut and Sammy Cat lay on Sesame’s resilient coils. Then the princess brought something for them to sniff. First Sammy, whom she cautioned not to race ahead too fast, then Umlaut.
He sniffed and found himself rising out of his sleeping body. It was weird. The body lay there, but he was an ethereal being passing through it, floating in space just above it. It was unconscious, but it had his substance. He was—just his soul.
He looked around and spied a floating blob hovering above the sleeping cat. “Sammy!” he called and had to form a mouth to do it, and a head to support the mouth, and a body to bear the head. He looked down at himself and saw his cloudy substance assuming his natural form; all it took was concentration.
Meanwhile Sammy was forming his own body, converting from blob to cat. He looked at Umlaut and issued a soundless Mew! For there did not seem to be sound here, though it seemed they could hear each other.
A third shape rose, issuing from the coils of Sesame Serpent. The shape was twisting around uncertainly, threatening to tie itself into a knot.
“Here, Sesame!” Umlaut called silently. “Form your image!”
The end part of the stretched-out cloud turned to point at him. Then her body took shape. She was learning how to do it.
Umlaut looked around again, this time beyond their little group. And suffered an odd vision. Princess Ida was sitting there, surprisingly large, gazing blankly through them. She couldn’t see them but knew they were there. She lifted one hand and pointed to the little moon that orbited her head. Ptero, it was called. Where they were going.
He oriented on that moon, and it seemed to swell in size. So did Princess Ida. She was now a giant, and the room about her was astonishingly huge and getting larger.
Oh—they were getting smaller! “Go for the moon!” Umlaut called to the others.
Sammy came to life and bounded for Ptero. How he bounded Umlaut wasn’t sure, as there was nothing to bound on, but the cat was moving well. Umlaut followed, moving his legs in a running motion, and that worked too. Sesame slithered, and that worked as well as the bounding and running did. Umlaut couldn’t feel any ground and knew he was floating in air, yet he was moving just as if there was solidity there.
Planet Ptero looked ever larger. Now it seemed that they were falling toward it, and the reason it looked so big was that they were getting closer. One of the magic things about the Land of Xanth was called perspective, in which distant things made themselves look small, and close things looked large. Now Ptero was doing it too.
Then he saw a trail of glowing footprints in the air. They were somewhat sloppy around the edges, as if the shoe leather was rotting. The Zombie Master’s marked route to the Zombie World! Sammy was bounding along it, but anybody could have followed it.
The trail led right down to the surface of the planet, which was now enormous. The tracks came to touch the land, showing the way to a distant castle. They followed. Umlaut was hardly aware of the scenery, except that it was pretty, with colored fog shrouding the distances.
“Please help!”
That was real sound: a maiden’s voice. Umlaut looked and saw a tangled mess of foliage to the side, and beyond it on a small hill a pretty girl without a lot of clothing on. He paused for a better view. “Who are you? What’s wrong?” he called to her.
“I’m Caitlin,” she called back. “I can’t tell you what’s wrong.”
This was odd. “Why not?”
“Because I have the talent of knowing when, not what. This is the time, but that’s all I know.”
“Then how do you know you need help?”
“This is the time of my crisis. Something awful will happen if I don’t get help. So please help me. It will take only a moment. I earnestly beseech you, kind traveler.”
Umlaut looked at Sammy and Sesame, who had paused when he did. “Can we spare a moment?”
They both looked doubtful. The Zombie Master’s track went forward, not to the side. But Caitlin was so earnestly beseeching him for help it was difficult to refuse. He decided to spare a moment.
He left the trail and walked to the tangled foliage. It was in a strip that extended between him and the maiden. He was about to step into it when Sesame slithered before him, shaking her head.
Umlaut hesitated, for he knew Sesame was trying to look out for his welfare. But then Caitlin made a cute pleading gesture, and his resolve returned. “Why not?” he asked. “She needs help, and it’s only a moment.”
The serpent was insistent, so he played nineteen questions with her and learned that she recognized the area by Princess Ida’s description: It was a comic strip. One of the locations where egregious puns abided. A place to be avoided.
“But there’s no way around,” Umlaut protested. “I have to cross.”
Sesame nevertheless felt that this distraction should not be allowed. They should go on to deliver the letter to the Zombie Master and then help the damsel on the return route if she still needed it. That made sense.
Caitlin leaned forward imploringly. The front of her blouse was a bit low and loose. Umlaut decided that the best thing to do was help her now. He stepped over the serpent and into the tangle.
He found himself standing chest deep in a small field of grain. To one side was a sign identifying a red patch as YOUR GRAIN. To the other side was a green patch marked HIS GRAIN. In front was a scintillating silvery-white patch marked MY GRAIN. That was nice to know; he must be going the right way, though he could no longer see the damsel in distress. Fortunately he had not yet encountered any bad puns.
He tried to push on forward, but the standing grain was too thick. Then he saw another little sign: EAT ME. Maybe he had to eat some in order to get through it. So he took a few silvery-white grains and put them in his mouth.
Immediately there was a shining silvery-white bar before his eyes. He reached out to take it, but his hand passed through it—it was illusion. Then his head began to ache. The ache was awful; in fact it felt as if his head was about to explode. What had brought this on? All he had done was take a mouthful of my grain.
A dim bulb flashed. He had heard of that. It gave folk terrible headaches. He hadn’t swallowed the grain, so he spat it out.
The pain faded. The grain remained, but it no longer was as thick. He had fallen afoul of a dreadful pun but figured it out in time, so it could no longer hurt him. That was just as well, because he would not care to have another headache like that. Ever.
But now he was mired in the comic strip. He looked back, but the grain had closed in solidly behind him. He had to proceed forward. He saw several paths; which one was best for his purpose? They had labels: G, PC, PG-13, R, and X. He had no idea what the labels meant; maybe they referred to whoever had made the
paths. The most open route seemed to be X; it went straight ahead with no artistic diversions. Naturally he took that one. He stepped onto it.
Some cloth appeared, curtaining the path. On it were the words WARNING: POTENTIALLY OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL FOR PRUDES. P TRAP.
“I don’t care what it is,” Umlaut muttered, pushing on by. “I just want to get across this comic strip.”
Beyond the cloth veil the scene changed. He stood amid a group of attractive young women. “Well, now, what have we here?” one murmured dulcetly. She had a rather eye-catchingly full white blouse.
“I’m just passing through, if you please,” Umlaut said. So many pretty girls so close made him a bit nervous, because he was nothing special, and he hadn’t thought to emulate anything special.
“This looks like a teenage boy,” another woman said. She had an eyeball-locking full posterior.
“Who perhaps has not yet joined the Adult Conspiracy,” a third woman said. She had pupil-dilating firm thighs just below a too-short skirt.
“Perhaps we should do him a favor, then,” the first said. She drew open her blouse to show a bra overflowing with gently heaving flesh.
“And overcome the Adult Conspiracy by showing him our P’s,” the second said. She started to draw down her skirt.
Suddenly Umlaut caught on. This was a path of ill repute! They were about to show him things they knew no boy under age eighteen should see.
He turned and lurched back past the cloth veil. Now he recognized its shape: panties! Had they been occupied, he would have freaked out. The P trap wasn’t a prude trap, it was a panty trap. And those women had been about to spring it. What would have happened to him if he had seen panties?
He lunged on back off the path. Now he understood the designations: they were ratings, and X was the forbidden one. He had foolishly blundered right onto it. This was worse than a mere pun; it was dangerous.
He reoriented and this time took the G-rated path. That led him through a pleasant garden and on to a bridge across a ditch. He could see that the ditch was filled with festering puns, beginning with a small offshoot labeled SON OF A DITCH. He did not want to get down into that, so he would cross the bridge. But he was cautious, realizing that everything in this region was a moderate pun, a bad pun, or, worst of all, an egregious pun. He had to be careful where he set his feet, lest he step on a pun and get it all over his shoe. Yuck!
The bridge was labeled CANTILEVER. He had heard of the principle: a vertical post with a horizontal projection, counterbalancing the business end of the bridge. That was all right to use. He could see the damsel in distress on the other side, so he had made progress. Soon he would be with her and able to help.
He set a cautious foot on the bridge. Nothing happened. He took another step. No problem. Still, he didn’t quite trust this. He had encountered no pun, and there was bound to be one. Where was it lurking?
He decided to retreat while he considered. He wanted to figure this out before he got caught, rather than after. He didn’t want to risk another headache, or another panty trap, or worse.
He turned and tried to take a step back. But his feet wouldn’t go that way. He could go forward across the bridge but not back to the side he started on. Had he already fallen into whatever trap it represented?
Then he remembered the name of the bridge. Cantilever. “Can’t I leave her!” he exclaimed. That was the trap.
But he hadn’t actually joined the woman yet, so maybe it hadn’t quite closed on him. He tried another tack: Instead of turning, he simply tried to back off the bridge. And he succeeded! He took two steps backward, and he was off. He had fathomed the pun and avoided mischief.
Or had he? He was still in the comic strip, with no way out of it except the bridge. He certainly wasn’t going to try the ditch. And he hadn’t helped the damsel in distress. So he hadn’t accomplished anything. His seeming victory was hollow.
“Bleep, I’m going to do what I set out to do, and bleep the consequences,” he said. He forged back onto the bridge and across it.
But then Caitlin stepped onto the other side, intercepting him before he cleared the bridge. “Oh, thank you, stranger!” she exclaimed. “You have helped me.” She flung her arms about him and gave him a kiss that lifted his hair halfway off his scalp.
“But I haven’t done anything yet,” he gasped when he had a chance to take a breath. Her extreme affection made him nervous, though her kiss was not sweeter than wine, fortunately.
“Yes you have, You came to help me just at the right when, and now I’ll never have to suffer the wrong what. You deserve your reward.” She kissed him again, with an alarming amount of feeling.
“But—” he gasped, not at all sure what kind of reward she had in mind.
“Let’s lie down right here on the bridge and do it,” she said, glancing down to where a soft mattress had appeared.
This was coming to resemble the panty trap, and that made him even more nervous. “I have to get back to my friends and explain the delay,” he said.
“Can’t,” she said, drawing him down with her.
He tried to resist, but she was very persuasive. “Can’t what?”
“Can’t tell ever. Your friends will never know.” She was unbuttoning his shirt.
“I don’t understand.”
“Didn’t you see the sign? This is the Can’t Tell Ever Bridge. You can never tell what happens here. You don’t think I’d do this otherwise, do you?” She drew him down onto the mattress with her.
This had the punnish ring of truth. “What can’t I tell?”
“How I inducted you into the Adult Conspiracy, of course.” She kissed him again.
Then he heard a rustling. It sounded like the slither of a big
serpent. Sesame was coming to rescue him! “Over here!” he called.
“Curses, foiled again,” the girl muttered and faded away, along with the mattress.
Umlaut got up and stumbled on across the bridge. There were Sammy and Sesame. “Am I glad to see you!”
Both nodded. They were looking at his shirt.
Oh. He buttoned it. An explanation was needed. “I—” But that was as far as he got. He discovered that he couldn’t tell. Ever. The bridge would not allow it.
5
ZOMBIE WORLD
It turned out that Sammy had found a way across the comic strip that wasn’t too arduous and had led Sesame , through. The two had arrived just in time to save Umlaut from a fate worse than—actually it hadn’t seemed worse, or even bad, just different. But it didn’t matter, because it hadn’t happened and anyway he couldn’t tell.
As they walked along the bank just beyond the comic strip, Umlaut looked back. He saw Caitlin, standing where he had first seen her, looking into the ditch as if expecting someone to emerge from it. Didn’t she know that he had already done so? After all, she had joined him on the bridge. She was acting as if none of that had happened.
Well, he wasn’t going to get involved with her again, even off the bridge. She obviously was not what she appeared to be.
Sammy plunged into the comic strip. There was a loud creak, Umlaut wasn’t sure about this, but Sesame followed the cat without concern, so he did too.
The creaking got louder. What in the worlds could it be? Then they came to a small river or stream. No, it was a creek—and it creaked. Oh. Another egregious pun. What had he expected?
Slightly farther along, the creek became a chain. Umlaut paused to verify that, but it was so: The water flowed creakily into interlocking loops, forming the chain. The chain continued over a ridge and turned to water again where the land was low. Oh, that was how the creek got over the ridge, since water generally had a problem flowing upward.
Umlaut touched the chain, curious whether it was solid. The chain drew back with another creak. It evidently did not like to be touched.
Sesame was pausing, looking back at him. “I’m coming,” he reassured her. “Just verifying a chain reaction.”
The serpent dropped her snout in a groan motion, and Umlaut realized he had just fallen into another pun. “Sorry about that,” he muttered.
He ran on. Something stung his ankle. It was an ant. He brushed it off and followed the other two out of the comic strip. They had made it back across, suffering only two awful puns. But somehow he wasn’t happy. In fact he was sad. He sat on the ground and moaned.
Sammy and Sesame looked at him, uncertain what his problem was. “I’m dejected,” he explained unhappily. “Everything seems pointless and miserable. I don’t know why I ever got into this depressing business.”
Then a very dull sad bulb blinked. He hadn’t escaped another pun after all. “That ant that stung me!” he exclaimed. “It was a depress-ant!”
Both animals did their best to groan. The comic strip had struck again.
However, now that he knew what had happened, he was able reluctantly to push it aside and resume traveling. Soon he had left the depression behind. But he intended never to get near a comic strip again.
They encountered an old man wearing an ornate suit, walking with a low, rounded, armored creature. The man hesitated when he saw Sesame, so Umlaut reassured him. “I’m Umlaut, and these are my friends Sesame Serpent and Sammy Cat. We’re not looking for any trouble. We’re on our way to Zombie World.”
“I am Matt A Door, and this is my friend Arme Dillo,” the old man said, looking reassured. “We’re looking for the Good Magician.”
Umlaut did his best to be diplomatic but bungled it as usual. “Aren’t you too old to handle challenges and all that?”
“That’s my problem,” Matt said. “On this world we are whatever age we want to be, except for me. Mine is a long sad story you will surely want to hear in exquisite detail.”
“No, uh, we have to get on to—”
“Magician Humfrey was married to his first wife Dana or Dara Demoness for barely two years, and like many of her kind she was a phenomenally sexy creature when she chose to be. No sooner had the stork delivered his first son, Dafrey, than she gave her soul to the baby and took off, leaving Humfrey a divorce. So he had to remarry the Maiden Taiwan in order to have help raising Dafrey.”
“That’s very interesting,” Umlaut said insincerely. “But we have to—”
“Then Dara discovered that she hadn’t quite succeeded in giving away her whole half soul. She still had a little bit of conscience left, interfering with her demonly freedom. Souls can be awkward for those accustomed to being without them. So she paid another visit to Humfrey by night, pretending to be the Maiden Taiwan, and got him to summon the stork with her again. Then she took off again, and he never knew that the Maiden’s surprising ardency was not really hers. Then when the stork delivered her second son, that was me. My talent is making doors into unobtainable areas.”
“Uh, fascinating. But—”
“Dara dumped the rest of her soul on me and was finally free. She did not take very good care of me, being now without conscience or love, so I set out to find my father, not knowing it was the Good Magician himself. I wandered off the enchanted path and stumbled into a big bird. She was the Roc of Ages. She had a maternal bent and nestled me under her wing. There I slept and aged until accidentally knocked free by Arme Dillo. At that point I discovered that I was no longer a child of two but a man of one hundred and forty-seven. I had slept more than a lifetime under that wing.”
“Horrible,” Umlaut said. “But—”
“So I decided to go see the Good Magician, hoping to find a way to recover my lost youth. But I didn’t know where to find him. So I made a door to this realm, which is unreachable by regular folk who don’t want to leave their bodies behind, and discovered that he’s my real father. Actually I ran into Dara, who told me, though I don’t think she told me everything. All I need to do is find him, but since he is accessible here, my talent won’t help; my magic doors open only on the inaccessible. So I’m searching the old-fashioned way: afoot. Have you seen him?”
“No,” Umlaut said, glad that the recitation was finally done. But then he thought of something he would rather not have realized. “Did you take youth elixir or something, to live so long?”
“No.”
“Then you must have died of old age in your sleep. You are here in soul form. That’s what Dara didn’t tell you. It is too late to get your youth back.”
“You must be right,” Matt said, appalled. “This is awful.” He wandered away, accompanied by Arme.
Umlaut realized belatedly that Matt might have preferred not to learn that he was dead. Somehow he had messed up again. He had good intentions but was such a klutz.
They approached the castle, and it looked just like the real Castle Roogna. Actually, maybe it was real, on its own terms.
Three adult princesses came out to greet them. They looked somehow familiar. One wore green, another brown, and the third red. The second carried a harmonica, and the third a little drum.
Umlaut stared impolitely. Could it be?
“Hello, Sammy!” the first said, picking up the cat and hugging him. “You didn’t forget Melody.”
“Hi, Sesame,” the second said. “I haven’t seen you since I was six years old. I’m glad you didn’t forget Harmony.” She hugged the serpent’s foresection.
“And Umlaut,” the third princess said, giving him a hug. “You seem younger than I remember you. I’m Rhythm.”
“But—but you’re only six years old!” he protested.
All three princesses laughed. “This is your first visit to Ptero, isn’t it,” Melody said.
“Time is different here,” Harmony added.
“We can be any age we choose to be, just by traveling,” Rhythm concluded. “We’re twenty-three at the moment.”
After some further explanations, Umlaut got it straight: On this world, time was geography. When a person traveled east, or “from,” she became younger; west, or “to,” she became older. They moved Castle Roogna around so they could live in it at whatever age they cared to be. It was all perfectly ordinary, they assured him. Six was the only age they couldn’t be, because that was their current year of full mortal existence in Xanth.
“And this is my fiance Anomy,” Melody said, introducing him to a rather ordinary-seeming man. “He was once a real dastard, but he reformed.”
Umlaut couldn’t make sense of this, so he didn’t comment. Probably he had misheard, as a princess would not use a bad word.
“And what brings you three here?” Harmony inquired.
“We are looking for Zombie World,” Umlaut explained. “The Zombie Master’s trail led here.”
“Of course,” Rhythm agreed. “Zombie World is far up the line. We’ll take you to Princess Ida.” She took his arm.
Umlaut was a bit disconcerted. She was a princess, and six years older than he was, and a lovely young woman. He felt indistinctly out of place. But what could he do? He suffered himself to be drawn on into the castle. Melody was carrying Sammy, and Harmony was chatting sociably with Sesame, seeming to understand the serpent’s thoughts more readily than Umlaut did. But of course they had Sorceress-class magic and could do what they chose.
Princess Ida looked seventeen years older but was definitely the same person. Except that her little moon was the shape of a four-sided pyramid. Each triangular side was a different color: red, blue, green, and gray. Umlaut had never heard of a four-colored pyramidal world, but evidently one existed.
“Aunt Ida, these folk are going to Zombie World,” Melody said brightly. “They’re following the Zombie Master’s trail.”
“Naturally,” Ida agreed, as if this happened every day. “No need to leave your bodies for that destination, just focus on the footsteps.”
Now Umlaut saw the Zombie Master’s tracks walking up through the air toward the world of Pyramid, growing smaller as they approached it. Sammy was already climbing the air, following them, growing smaller, and Sesame was slithering after him, her head section becoming smaller than her tail section. So Umlaut spoke a brief thank you to Princess Ida and ran after his friends.
Soon they were slanting down toward the expanding world. It was rotating grandly, showing one side full face and then another. The edges seemed to be quite sharp, with no rounding off; even a river he saw went around the corner in a fold rather than a bend, changing color as it did. Apparently the rules of magic differed on this world, just as they did on Ptero. He had never before realized just how versatile magic was. He had assumed that what he knew in Xanth was the way it was everywhere, except for drear Mundania, where there was very little magic. Did Xanth seem dreary to the inhabitants of these other worlds?
The footprints oriented on the blue face and came to land there. Here everything was in shades of blue: mountains, trees, rivers, animals, buildings. Otherwise it was reasonably familiar.
They came to a blue lake. The footsteps crossed it, so they followed. Apparently this trail was enchanted, so that they could walk it without splashing into the lake. There was a blue isle, and on the isle was a blue ridge, and near that was a blue house. The prints went up to its door.
They knocked, and Princess Ida appeared. She was about the age of the one on Ptero, but all blue, from hair to toes. What appeared to be a doughnut orbited her head. “Uh, we’re going to Zombie World,” Umlaut said awkwardly. “I’m Umlaut, and this is Sesame Serpent, and—’
“Sammy!” she exclaimed, picking him up. The cat had friends everywhere. Then she looked back at Umlaut. “You will want to continue following the tracks. You are fortunate he left the trail, for otherwise your travel would be much complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“You would have to eat and drink and sleep and ask directions. That means interacting with the natives. Asking favors.”
He still didn’t get it. “Favors?”
“On this world, anyone who does a favor gains size. Anyone who receives it loses size. So most prefer to give rather than to receive, for selfish reasons. You are spared that, as the trail conveys you swiftly without the need to pause along the way.”
“Oh. Yes. Thank you for clarifying that.” Then something slightly disturbing occurred to him. “Is that a favor?”
Ida laughed. “No. I have an arrangement with the Zombie Master, to help travelers along their way. He and I settled accounts separately.”
“Accounts?”
“I get to follow the trail myself, when I wish to, and see the other worlds. That’s his return favor to me. I delight in such sightseeing.”
This seemed odd. After a moment he figured out what was bothering him. “You can go to another world—circling your own head?”
“Yes. Isn’t it wonderful? I thought for a long time that I couldn’t, but then I learned that I could, since it is merely soul travel. My body remains here, of course.”
“Uh, yes,” he agreed. Their own bodies remained in Xanth; they were now mere souls, though they seemed much the same. But smaller. He tried to imagine how small, thinking of the sphere of Ptero, then the much smaller Pyramid. And it seemed these were merely the beginning of a long chain. He got dizzy.
“Don’t try to make too much sense of it,” Princess Ida recommended. “It’s one of those things a person must accept on faith, so as to remain sane. Just accept each world on its own terms as you come to it.”
The dizziness began to clear. “I will. Thanks.”
“Remember that each world is unique to itself in custom as well as form. The next one incurs a burden of emotion for favors rendered, rather than size.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One who does a service for another comes to like that person, or even love him. So it is best to be cautious about doing or receiving favors, unless you can arrange to exchange favors. Then they cancel out.”
“We’ll be careful,” Umlaut promised, shaken. Instead of getting accustomed to these new worlds, he was becoming increasingly nervous about them.
“Now you had better follow the trail to Torus.”
“Torus?”
“The doughnut.”
He felt stupid again. “Oh. Thanks.” He saw the tracks proceeding through the air toward the moon, as before.
Princess Ida released Sammy, and he bounded up the trail, becoming rapidly smaller, until he disappeared onto the doughnut world. “Wait for us!” Umlaut called belatedly and followed with Sesame.
“So nice to meet you, Umlaut and Sesame,” Ida called after them. Now she seemed mountainously large.
“Same here,” Umlaut called back, afraid his voice wouldn’t reach that expanding distance.
They landed on the inner surface of Torus and followed the tracks to what turned out to be the Sarah Sea and across it to the isle of Niffen. There were many wild creatures there, but they remained clear of the trail.
