Castle Roogna (2 page)

       They came up to a pavilion in the Castle Roogna orchard. It had a drying stone set up for just such occasions as this. As they approached it, warm radiation came out, which started the pleasant drying of their clothes. Few things felt as good as a drying stone after a chill soaking! "I really appreciate your service, drier," Dor told it.

       "All part of the job," the stone replied. "My cousin, the sharpening stone, really has his work cut out for him. All those knives to hone, you know. Ha ha!"

       "Ha ha," Dor agreed mildly, patting it. The trouble with talking with inanimate objects was that they weren't very bright-but thought they were.

       Another figure emerged from the orchard, clasping a cluster of chocolate cherries in one hand. "Oh, no!" she exclaimed, recognizing Dor. "If it isn't dodo Dor, the lifeless snooper."

       "Look who's talking," Grundy retorted. "Irate Irene, palace brat."

       "Princess Irene, to you," the girl snapped. "My father is King, remember?"

       "Well, you'll never be King," Grundy said.

       "'Cause women can't assume the throne, golem! But if I were a man-"

       "If you were a man, you still wouldn't be King, because you don't have Magician-caliber magic."

       "I do too!" she flared.

       "Stinkfinger?" Grundy inquired derisively.

       "That's green thumb!" she yelled, furious. "I can make any plant grow. Fast. Big. Healthy."

       Dor had stayed out of the argument, but fairness required his interjection. "That's creditable magic."

       "Stay out of this, dodo!" she snapped. "What do you know about it?"

       Dor spread his hands. How did he get into arguments he was trying to avoid? "Nothing. I can't grow a thing."

       "You will when you're a man," Grundy muttered.

       Irene remained angry. "So how come they call you a Magician, while I am only-"

       "A spoiled brat," Grundy finished for her.

       Irene burst into tears. She was a rather pretty child, with green eyes and a greenish tinge to her hair to match her talent, but her thumbs were normal flesh color. She was a girl, and a year younger than Dor, so she could cry if she wanted to. But it bothered him. He wanted to get along with her, and somehow had never been able to. "I hate you!" she screeched at him.

       Genuinely baffled, Dor could only inquire: "Why?"

       "Because you're going to be K-King! And if I want to be Q-Queen, I'll have to-to-"

       "To marry him," Grundy said. "You really should learn to finish your own sentences."

       "Ugh!" she cried, and it sounded as if she really were about to throw up. She looked wildly about, and spotted a tiny plant at the fringe of the pavilion. "Grow!" she yelled at it, pointing.

       The plant, responsive to her talent, grew. It was a shadowboxer, with little boxing gloves mounted on springy tendrils. The gloves clenched and struck at the shadows formed by distant lightning. Soon the boxer was several feet high, and the gloves were the size of human fists. They struck at the vague shadows of the pavilion's interior. Dor backed away, knowing the blows had force.

       Attracted by his motion, and by the sharper shadow his body made, the plant leaned toward him. The gloves were now larger than human fists, and mounted on vines as thick as human wrists. There were a dozen of them, several striking while several more recoiled for the next strike, keeping the plant as a whole in balance. Irene watched, a small gloat playing about her mouth.

       "How did I get into this?" Dor asked, disgruntled. He didn't want to flee the pavilion; the storm had intensified and yellow rain was cascading off the roof. The booming of its fusillade was unnerving; there were too many hailstones mixed in, and it looked suspiciously like a suitable habitat for tornado wraiths.

       "Well, I don't know for sure," the pavilion answered. "But once I overheard the Queen talking with a ghost, as they took shelter from a small shower, and she said Bink always had been an annoyance to her, and now Bink's son was an annoyance to her daughter. She said she'd do something about it, if it weren't for the King."

       "But I never did anything to them!" Dor protested.

       "Yes you did," Grundy said. "You were born a full Magician. They can't stand that."

       Now the boxing gloves had him boxed in, backed to the very edge of the pavilion. "How do I get out of this?"

       "Make a light," the pavilion said. "Shadowboxers can't stand light."

       "I don't have a light!" One glove grazed his chest, but as he nudged away from it, water streamed down his back. This was a yellow rain; did it leave a yellow streak?

       "Then you'd better run," the pavilion said.

       "Yeah, dodo!" Irene agreed. The plant was not bothering her, since she had enchanted it. "Go bash your head into a giant hailstone. Some ice would be good for your brain."

       Three more boxing gloves struck at him. Dor plunged into the rain. He was instantly soaked again, but fortunately the hailstones were small and light and somewhat mushy. Irene's mocking laughter pursued him.

       Gusts of wind buffeted him savagely and lightning played about the sky. Dor knew he had no business being out in this storm, but he refused to return home. He ran into the jungle.

       "Turn about!" Grundy yelled into his ear. The golem was clinging to his shoulder. "Get under cover!"

       It was excellent advice; lightning bolts could do a lot of harm if they struck too near. After they had lain for a few hours on the ground and cooled off so that they were not so bright, they could be gathered and used for bolting together walls and things. But a fresh one could spear right through a man.

       Nevertheless, Dor kept running. The general frustration and confusion he felt inside exceeded that outside.

       He was not so confused as to blunder into the obvious hazards of the wilderness. The immediate Castle Roogna environs were spelled to be safe for people and their friends, but the deep jungle could not be rendered safe short of annihilation. No spell would tame a tangle tree for long, or subdue a dragon. Instead, certain paths were protected, and the wise person remained on these paths.

       A lightning bolt cracked past him and buried its point in the trunk of a massive acorn tree, the brilliant length of the bolt quivering. It was a small one, but it had three good sharp jags and could have wiped Dor out if it had hit him. The tree trunk was blistering with the heat of it.

       That was too close a miss. Dor ran across to the nearest charmed path, one bearing south. No bolts would strike him here. He knew the path's ultimate destination was the Magic Dust village, governed by trolls, but he had never gone that far. This time-well, he kept running, though his breath was rasping past his teeth. At least the exertion kept him warm.

       "Good thing I'm along," Grundy said in his ear. "That way there's at least one rational mind in the re-"

       Dor had to laugh, and his mood lightened. "Half a mind, anyway," he said. The storm was lightening too, as if in tandem with his mood. The way he interacted with the inanimate, that was entirely possible. He slowed to a walk, breathing hard, but continued south. How he wished he had a big, strong, muscular body that could run without panting or knock the gloves right off shadowboxers, instead of this rather small, slight frame. Of course, he didn't have his full growth yet, but he knew he would never be a giant.

       "I remember a storm we suffered down this way, just before you were born," Grundy remarked. "Your daddy, Bink, and Chester Centaur, and Crombie the soldier in griffin guise-the King transformed him for the quest, you know-and the Good Magician-"

       "Good Magician Humfrey?" Dor demanded. "You traveled with him? He never leaves his castle."

       "It was your father's quest for the source of magic; naturally Humfrey came along. The old gnome was always keen on information. Good thing, too; he's the one who showed me how to become real. Good thing for him, too; he met the gorgon, and you should have seen the flip she did over him, the first man she could talk to who didn't turn to stone. Anyway, this storm was so bad it washed out some of the stars from the sky; they were floating in puddles."

       "Stop, Grundy!" Dor cried, laughing. "I believe in magic, as any sensible person does, but I'm not a fool! Stars wouldn't float in water. They would fizzle out in seconds!"

       "Maybe they did. I was riding a flying fish at the time, so I couldn't see them too well. But it was some storm!"

       There was a shudder in the ground, not thunder. Dor halted, alarmed. "What is that?"

       "Sounds like the tramp of a giant, to me," Grundy hazarded. His talent was translation, and he could interpret anything any creature said, but footfalls weren't language. "Or worse. It just might be-"

       Suddenly it loomed from the gloom. "An ogre!" Dor finished, terrified. "Right on the path! How could the enchantment have failed? We're supposed to be safe on these-"

       The ogre tramped on toward them, a towering hulk more than twice Dor's height and broad in proportion. Its great gap-toothed mouth cracked open horrendously. An awful growl blasted out like the breath of a hungry dragon.

       "What say, lil man-will you give me a han-?" Grundy said.

       "What?" Dor asked, startled almost out of his fright.

       'That's what the ogre says; I was translating."

       Oh. Of course. "No! I need my hands! He can't eat them." Though he was uncertain how the ogre could be stopped from eating anything he wanted. Ogres were great bone-crunchers.

       The ogre growled again. "Me not eat whelp; me seek for help," Grundy said. Then the golem did a double take. "Crunch!" he cried. "The vegetarian ogre!"

       "Then why does he want to eat my hand?" Dor demanded.

       The monster smiled. The expression most resembled the opening of a volcanic fissure. Gassy breath hissed out "You little loudmouthed twerp, hardly bigger than a burp."

       "That's me!" Grundy agreed, answering his own translation. "Good to see you again, Crunch! How's the little lady, she with hair like nettles and skin like mush, whose face would make a zombie blush?"

       "She lovely as ever; me forsake she never," the ogre replied. Dor was beginning to be able to make out the words directly; the thing was speaking his language, but with a foul accent that nearly obliterated meaning. "We have good bash, make little Smash."

       Dor was by this time reassured that the spell of the path had not failed. This ogre was harmless-well, no ogre was harmless, but at least not ravening-and therefore able to mix with men. "A little smash?"

       "Smash baby ogre, "bout like you; now he gone and we too few."

       "You smashed your baby?" Dor asked horrified, Maybe there was something wrong with the path-spell after all.

       "Dodo! Smash is the name of their baby," Grundy explained. "All the ogres have descriptive names."

       "Then why is Smash gone?" Dor demanded nervously. "Troll wives eat their husbands, so maybe ogres eat-"

       "Smash wandered away in drizzle; now we search for he fizzle."

       This recent storm was a mere drizzle to the ogres? That made sense. No doubt Crunch used a lightning bolt for a toothpick. "We'll help you find your baby," Dor said, grasping this positive mission with enthusiasm. Nothing like a little quest to restore spirits! Crunch's search for his little one had fizzled, so he had asked for help, and few human beings ever had such a request from an ogre! "Grundy can ask living things, because he knows all their languages, and I'll ask the dead ones. We'll run him down in no time!"

       Crunch heaved a grateful sigh that almost blew Dor down. Quickly they went to the spot where the tyke had last been seen. Smash had, Crunch explained, been innocently chewing up nails, getting his daily ration of iron, then must have wandered away.

       "Did the little ogre pass this way?" Dor asked a nearby rock.

       "Yes-and he went toward that tree," the rock replied.

       "Why don't you just have the ground tell you warm or cold?" Grundy suggested.

       "The ground is not an individual entity," Dor answered. "It's just part of the whole land of Xanth. I doubt I could get its specific attention. Anyway, much of it is alive-roots, bugs, germs, magic things. They mess up communication."

       "There is a ridge of stone," Grundy pointed out. "You could use it."

       Good idea. "Tell me warm or cold, as I walk," Dor told it, and started to walk toward the tree. Crunch followed as softly as he was able, so that the shuddering of the land did not quite drown out the rock's voice.

       "Warm-warm-cool-warm," the ridge called, steering Dor on the correct course. Dor realized suddenly that he was in fact a Magician; no one else could accomplish such a search. Irene's plant-growing magic was a strong talent, a worthy one, but it lacked the versatility of this. Her green thumb could not be turned to nonbotanic uses. A King, to rule Xanth, had to be able to exert his power effectively, as Magician Trent did. Trent could transform any enemy into a toad, and everyone in Xanth knew that. But Magician Trent was also smart; he used his talent merely to back up his brains and will. What would a girl like Irene do, if she occupied the throne? Line the paths with shadowboxing plants? Dor's talent was far more effective; he could learn all the secrets anyone had except those never voiced or shown before an inanimate object. Knowledge was the root of power. Good Magician Humfrey knew that. He-

       "That's a tangler!" Grundy hissed in his ear.

       Dor's attention snapped back to the surface. Good thing the golem had stayed with him, instead of questioning creatures on his own; Dor had been mindlessly reacting to the ridge's directives, and now stood directly before a medium-sized tangle tree. Which was no doubt why Grundy had remained, knowing that Dor was prone to such carelessness. If little Smash had gone there-