Board Stiff (Xanth) (21 page)

“No!”

“Proffer me a sensible rather than an emotional reason, and I will let you be.”

Kandy scrounged mentally for a moment, then had it. “The centaurs! You treated them abominably.”

“I did not. I merely took over their colony planet, as a ploy to interfere with Xanth.”

“They were starving!”

“They refused to work when I took over, though I did not interfere in any way with their society. I merely cut off their communication with Xanth so that their hostage status would become evident. When they ran out of food, I provided replacements magically, but they refused to touch them. They were staging a de facto hunger strike. They could have prospered, but were amazingly obstinate about their freedom. Which they knew they would recover, once Xanth paid their ransom. I’m glad to be rid of them.”

“They were chained!”

“Not until the rescue ship arrived. Then I had to keep them under tighter control, for appearances.”

Kandy disliked admitting that this was persuasive. “But when the rescue party landed, you said you would torture them all.”

“A threat without substance. I was merely trying to cow them into submission.”

“Then when Arnolde Centaur stood up to you, you developed fangs and claws and dragon wings.”

“My warrior persona. I manifested it before I joined the centaurs, as you may remember. You will remember also that you had just walloped my backside, leaving a welt. There are protocols.”

“I—I--” Kandy realized that the Demoness had a case. It was after all a valid offer. “How much time can I have to consider it?”

“Shall we say a year? You can consult with your friends, and with the Demon Xanth. This can be an open public deal if you wish, though that might mark you among mortals in a way you would not like.”

“I—I think I would prefer a private deal,” Kandy said. She had already had more than enough experience being marked for attention. “If I make it at all. Meanwhile I would rather have you entirely out of my life.”

“Done,” Fornax said, and vanished.

Kandy shook her head, bemused. Just like that! But what had she agreed to?

Chapter 9:

Pyramid

The demoness Mentia reappeared. “She banished me, but only from this chamber; now she’s gone, and I can resume my diversion.” She glanced down. “But now he’s asleep, and you’re in your ghost form. I doubt you want to do it with me, though that would indeed be crazy for you.”

“She wants to recruit me to be her representative in the terrene realm,” Kandy said. “Not to harm anyone. To relay her messages to terrenes, because it’s hard for her to handle our kind of matter personally. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does to me. She doesn’t want to explode into total conversion. But I’m not quite sane. Better check with the others.”

Yet this demoness seemed more sensible than her alter ego. “I need to think,” Kandy said. “Wake Ease and do what he wants.”

“As you wish.” Mentia snapped her toes—she was indeed a little crazy—and Ease woke as if coming out of a freak. Kandy was the board again. She tuned out the activity, suppressing her jealousy as well as she could, and pondered. The last thing she had expected was a reasonable offer to her from Fornax. She would have to discuss it with the others, as Mentia recommended, and trust their judgment. But she already knew one thing: if this stopped Fornax from seducing Ease, now or in the future, she had to take it seriously. His wandering eye for other women bothered her for more than one reason, but most terrene women would not corrupt him the way Fornax would.

She couldn’t help tuning in to what was going on. She had to face it: she wanted Ease’s wandering eye to fix on her alone, and she wanted to be doing what Mentia was doing with him. She couldn’t blame him for being with other women, since he didn’t even know about Kandy. She just had to hope that in due course she would get past the enchantment and be able to freak him out and seduce him herself. At least she could be honest with herself about that.

Meanwhile she had discovered one useful thing: that she could not only wake Ease, she could put him to sleep. That meant she could talk with the others at any time she really needed to.

Some time later, she did just that, putting Ease to sleep so she could talk with the others. She had a lot to discuss with them.

To her surprise, they agreed with Mentia. “There may be advantages to having regular contact with a Demon or Demoness,” Pewter said. “You can gain a great deal of power in your bailiwick.”

“I don’t want power,” Kandy protested. “I just want Ease.” She glanced at the man’s sleeping form.

“Then take him, when you can,” Tiara said. “He’ll be worth it,” She glanced obliquely at Mitch.

“Take him,” Mitch echoed. “He’ll be glad of it.”

Kandy looked at Astrid. “I agree,” the basilisk said. “If I had the right man, I would take him.”

“I wonder what the three princesses would say,” Kandy mused.

The three appeared. “It seems fair,” Melody said seriously.

“Provided you insist that she not use you to do anyone harm,” Harmony continued thoughtfully.

“But naughty is okay,” Rhythm concluded with a giggle. The three vanished.

Yet Kandy wasn’t quite satisfied. “You’re all saying that my connection with the Demoness Fornax could enable me to win the man I want, because I could simply ask her for that. I’m not sure that’s the way I would want to do it.”

Tiara’s hair wavered. “You’re crazier than my alter!”

That gave Kandy an idea. “Maybe a child could be more objective. May I ask Woe Betide?”

And there among them stood a cute little girl with a sad face. She looked at Kandy. “Hi, ghost,” she said shyly.

“Woe Betide,” Kandy said. “I’m not really a ghost, just a woman in the form of a board.”

The child found that hilarious. “You can whack folk!”

“Suppose I had the chance to win the man of my dreams, but only if I made a deal with a Demoness?” Kandy asked.

The child was confused. “Men are icky. Why would you want one?”

She had to get down to the child’s level. “So I could freak him out with my panties.”

“Yes!”

“Even if I had to make a deal with a Demoness?”

Woe Betide considered. “She could give you all the candy you wanted, hee hee!” That was evidently the definitive answer, apart from being a pun on her name.

Kandy sighed inwardly. She would have to make up her own mind, in due course. “Thank you, Woe Betide.”

“Can I whack something with you? When you’re a board?”

“I’m sorry, no. Only Ease can whack things with me.”

The child’s eyes welled up with tears. “Oh, fudge!”

“But maybe your alters will let you watch when Ease whacks something.”

The tears evaporated, literally. “Say yes!” Then Woe Betide vanished.

“Now we should get on with our mission,” Pewter said. “Whatever part of it we are supposed to accomplish here.”

“I think we have done that,” Astrid said. “It was the Demoness’s offer to Kandy, that could enable her to accomplish our mission immediately.”

“But she’s not yet accepting it,” Pewter grumped.

“Oh, shut up, or I’ll kiss you,” Astrid told him.

Pewter shut up. He had no fear of her deadly power; it had to be because he didn’t want her kiss. Was he afraid it would corrupt him?

“Kandy is the one person among us who has some ethical conscience,” Astrid said to the others. “She wants to do the right thing, and is taking her time to figure it out. We want to complete our Quest successfully, yes, but we need to have a care how we do it.”

Kandy stared at her, amazed. How could there be such sensitivity in a basilisk?

“You’re right,” Tiara said, nodding.

“I am embarrassed for not seeing it before,” Mitch said.

“Conscience is fine in its place,” Pewter said. “But our first priority must be the accomplishment of the quest.”

“I think that is a debate for another time,” Astrid said. “Shall we move on to our next Event?”

“In the morning,” Mitch said. “We have had a fair day here, and need to rest.”

“Yes,” Tiara agreed, coloring slightly.

They settled down for the night. Kandy found herself no closer to a decision than she had been before the dialogue.

*

In the morning Tiara removed a sequin from Astrid’s dress. The men’s eyes started to glaze. She replaced the sequin.

They were in space falling toward the weirdest planet Kandy might have imagined. For one thing, it was not round but sharply angular. “What is that?” Mitch asked.

“That is Pyramid,” Pewter said. “One of the worlds of Ida.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Tiara said.

“The planet Ptero orbits the head of Princess Ida,” Pewter explained. “It appears to be very small, and it was once thought that folk of Xanth could visit it only by leaving their bodies behind and condensing their souls to assume their forms on it. That later turned out to be a misapprehension; Ptero merely seems small because it is distant, a victim of the magic of perspective. It is where all the characters who might have made it to Xanth proper exist. There is another Princess Ida thereon, and about her head orbits the planet of Pyramid, appearing much smaller yet, but it too is a full size world. It seems that this is the setting for our next event.”

“But we’ll crash and go splat!” Mitch protested.

“No, there is a protocol for approaching these worlds,” Pewter said. “We’ll land safely. Merely focus on slowing your descent.”

They tried it, and it worked; they moved more slowly. Relieved, they viewed the approaching planet. It was indeed a pyramid, grandly rotating. Each face of it was triangular, colored blue red, green, and gray below. They saw each side in turn as it turned, covered with mountains, lakes, forests and plains, all of the same color. They would be landing on one of the triangles, but which one? The steady rotation made it difficult to tell.

How could they breathe, out here in space? Kandy wondered. Apparently that was just part of the magic of this realm.

Then they dipped as if about to fly under the planet. They were going toward the shadowy nether face, the gray one, where it seemed the sun never shone directly. Assuming there was a sun; Kandy saw the light but did not see any orb.

“One other thing,” Pewter remarked. “Each world has its own laws of magic. Pyramid connects magnitude to generosity. Neither a giver nor a receiver be, unless you wish to change your size, because the giver gains in physical stature while the receiver diminishes.”

“Then how can people interact?” Mitch asked. “Are they constantly changing size?”

“Yes. But mostly they arrange for even trades.”

They came under the gray face and re-oriented, their heads pointing away from it. Now it seemed to be below them, and they were dropping. Tiara’s hair flared, acting like a magic parachute. The others spread their arms. They all landed reasonably gently.

They were on a gray hill with gray trees, foliage, and ground. Except that the ground looked level.

“This is weird,” Tiara said. “My eyes say I’m on level ground, but my body says it’s a slope.”

“We are near the edge of the gray face,” Pewter said. “Although the ground is flat, it is angling away from the center, so it has the effect of a slope.”

“I would not be able to make sense of that,” she said, “if I had not seen the planet as we came in. The edges and points of the faces do rise, in effect.”

“That should straighten out as we move toward the center,” Mitch said.

“I don’t think so,” Astrid said.

“No?”

“We are standing not far from the Good Magician’s Castle. That must be where our Event takes place.”

The others looked. It was true: there, in naturalistic shades of gray, was a stone castle surrounded by a moat. A pennant flying from a turret bore the letters GMC. The Good Magician’s Castle.

“But that can’t be here,” Tiara said. “It’s on Xanth.”

“The worlds can duplicate any feature of Xanth,” Pewter said. “Also any people. Including the Good Magician and his demesnes.”

“But what do we want with the Good Magician?” Mitch asked. “He charges a year’s service or the equivalent for his Answer to a Question. We’re already on a Quest; we can’t complicate that.”

“Obviously we need to ask where the pun virus antidote is,” Pewter said. “The Good Magician of Xanth was unable to give us specific directions, but perhaps the one here will be able to. He may not charge us a further service, since we are already on a mission for him. It may be that the Magician here did not get his Book of Answers messed up.”

That seemed to make sense. “We certainly aren’t making much progress on our own,” Astrid said. “We have been to all manner of places while gleaning only small hints.”

“Alpha Centauri, Fornax, Pyramid,” Mitch agreed. “As well as some unusual settings in Xanth.”

“So let’s brave the challenges,” Ease said. “I got through them once; it should be easier the second time.”

“You are assuming the challenges will be the same as the ones you encountered before,” Pewter said. “That is unlikely.”

“Oh.” Obviously that hadn’t occurred to Ease.

“Next question,” Mitch said. “Do we select a member of our party to approach the castle, or do we go as a group?”

“Just so long as I’m with you,” Tiara said.

Mitch looked around. “Any volunteers to try it alone?”

“Sure,” Ease said. “I’ll go.”

A glance circled around the others. “We are a group,” Astrid said. “I believe we should remain a group. We can’t be sure what would happen if we separated.” She was being diplomatic. The others were not fully confident that Ease was equipped to tackle it alone, even with the board.

Ease shrugged. “Group, then.”

“Assuming the Good Magician accepts us as a group,” Pewter said.

“He’d better, or we’ll bypass him,” Mitch said.

The others smiled; that obviously was not much of a threat. The Good Magician normally did his best to discourage visitors of any kind.

They walked toward the castle. But as they moved, groups of soldiers converged from the left and right sides, emerging from the cover of trees. Some were dark gray, the others light gray, and all were brandishing weapons. It seemed they were about to stage a battle. The Quest party was caught right where the two armies would meet.