Castle Roogna (20 page)

       They finished their cider and returned to King Roogna. "This man is indeed a Magician," Murphy announced. "But I deem him no threat to my designs, though he aligns himself with you. He will explain as he chooses."

       The King glanced at Dor inquiringly. "It is true," Dor said. "He has shown me that any help I may try to render you…can have the opposite effect. We don't know that for sure, but it is a risk. So I must remain neutral, to my regret." Dor had surprised himself by making a very adult-sounding statement. Maybe it was Murphy's influence.

       "Very well," the King said. "Murphy is many things, but his integrity is unimpeachable. Since you may not help me, may I help you?"

       "Only by telling me where to find the Zombie Master."

       "Oh, you can't get anything from him," the King assured Dor. "He helps no one."

       "So Magician Murphy informed me. Yet it is vital that I see him, and after that I shall depart this land."

       "Then wait a few days, until I complete the present phase of the Castle. Then I can spare you a guide and guard. I owe you this in deference to your Magician status. The Zombie Master lives east of here, in the heart of the wilderness; it is difficult to pass."

       Dor chafed inwardly at the delay, but felt it best to accede. He and his friends had had too many narrow escapes already. A guide and guard would help.

       They rejoined Millie and Jumper. "The King has given me a job!" Millie exclaimed immediately, bouncing and clapping her hands and swinging her hair in such a full circle that it lapped around her face, momentarily concealing it. "As soon as the Castle is complete."

       "If we have time to wait," Jumper chittered, "I should like to recompense the King's hospitality by offering my service for the duration of our stay here."

       "Uh-" Dor started to protest, realizing that what applied to himself should also apply to the spider.

       "That is most courteous of you," the King said heartily. "I understand from the young lady that you are adept at hoisting and lowering objects. We have dire need of such ability at the moment. Rest tonight; tomorrow you will join my sturdy centaur crew."

       Murphy glanced meaningfully at Dor. The Enemy Magician was satisfied to make this trial of the validity of his conjecture. And Dor had to be satisfied too. Maybe Murphy was wrong, after all. They could not afford to assume he was right, if he were not. So Dor was silent, not wanting to alarm the King or Jumper unnecessarily. Silent, but not at ease.

       The King served them royally enough with pies from a pie tree he had adapted for this purpose: pizza, shepherd's, mince, cheese, and pecan pies, washed down with excellent fruit punch from a punchfruit tree.

       "In my land," Dor remarked, "the King is a transformer. He changes living things into other living things. He can change a man into a tree, or a dragon into a toad. How does this differ from your own talent, Your Majesty?"

       "A transformer," King Roogna murmured. "That's a potent talent! I can not change a man into a tree! I only adapt forms of magic to other purposes-a sleep spell to a truth spell, a chocolate cherry to a cherry bomb. So I would say your King is a more powerful Magician than I am."

       Dor was abashed. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I didn't mean to imply-"

       "You didn't, Dor. I am not competing with your King for status. Nor am I competing with you. We Magicians have a certain camaraderie, as I mentioned; we respect each other's talents. I'd like to meet your King sometime. After I have completed the Castle."

       "Which may be never," Murphy said.

       "Now with him I am competing," the King said good-naturedly, and bit into another piece of pie. Dor said nothing, still having trouble accepting this friendly-rivalry facade.

       In the morning Jumper reported to the Castle construction crew. Dor went along to help translate, since no one else could understand the spider's chittering-and because he was privately concerned about Jumper's possible influence on history. Or lack of it. If anything Dor or Jumper did could affect King Roogna's success-

       Dor shook his head uneasily. King Roogna was busy today, adapting new spells to preserve the roof of the Castle-once the construction reached that stage. The magic, it seemed, had to be built right into the Castle; otherwise it would not endure. This business of adapting spells, such as the one a water dragon used to prevent the water from dousing its flame-converting that to make an unleakable roof-well, that was certainly something a transformer couldn't do! So King Roogna had no reason to be modest. It was very difficult to compare the strength of talents. But if Jumper's offer of help were only to hurt-

       They approached the same centaur supervisor who had brushed them off before. It seemed he had charge of the north wall, the one still under construction. The creature was pacing and fretting about the arrival of additional blocks of stone; it seemed the quarriers had fouled up a spell or two and were running behind schedule.

       "King Roogna would like to have my friend help," Dor said. "He can lift stones into place with his silken lines, or climb sheer walls to-"

       "A giant bug?" the centaur demanded, swishing his tail rapidly back and forth. "We don't want his kind among us!"

       "But he's here to help!"

       Now the other centaur workers were dismounting from the wall and crowding in close. They loomed uncomfortably large. A centaur standing the height of a man actually had about six times the mass of a man, and these stood somewhat taller than Dor-whose present body was a giant among men. "We don't associate with no bugs!" one cried. "Get that weirdo out of here!"

       Nonplused, Dor turned to Jumper. "I-they don't-"

       "I understand," Jumper chittered. "I am not their kind."

       Dor eyed the massed centaurs, who seemed eager for any pretext to take time off from their labors. "I don't understand! You can do so much-"

       "We don't care if he can throw droppings at the big green moon!" one yelled. "Get him out of here before we fetch a fly swatter!"

       Dor got angry. "You shouldn't talk to him like that! Jumper's not a fly; he eats flies! He can keep all the horseflies away-"

       "Bug-lover!" the supervisor snapped. "You're as bad as he is! Now watch I don't pound you both into the ground!"

       "Yeah! Yeah!" the other centaurs agreed, stomping their hooves.

       Jumper chittered. "These creatures are hostile. We shall depart." He started off.

       Dor followed him, but not with docility. With each step he took his anger grew. "They had no right to do that! The King needs help!" Yet at the same time he wondered whether this were not for the best. If Jumper were not allowed to participate, Murphy's curse couldn't operate, could it? They would not change history.

       Soon they were back at the royal tent. The King was outdoors beside a pond, where a small water dragon was captive. The thing was snorting smoke angrily and lashing up a froth with its tail, but Roogna seemed not to be concerned. "Now climb up on this roofing material," he was telling the dragon. "Propinquity facilitates adaptation." Then he looked up and spied Dor and Jumper. "Some problem at the construction site?"

       Dor tried to be civilized, but it burst out of him. "The centaurs won't let Jumper work! They say he's…different!"

       "So I am," Jumper chittered.

       King Roogna had seemed like an even-tempered, harmless sort of man. Now that changed. He stood up straight and his jaw hardened. "I will not have this attitude in my kingdom!" He snapped his fingers, and in a moment a flying dragon arrived: a beautiful creature armored in stainless steel, with burnished talons and a long snout suitable for aiming a jet of fire accurately from a distance. "Dragon, it seems my work crew is getting balky. Fetch your contingent and-"

       Jumper chittered violently. "No, Your Majesty!" the web translated, almost shredding itself in its effort to transmit the force of the spider's conviction. "Do not chastise your workers. They are no more ignorant than my own kind, and they are doing necessary work. I regret I caused disruption."

       "Disruption? By offering to help?" The King's brow remained stormy. "At least I must chastise them with my magic. Centaurs do not have to have such pretty tails, so useful for swishing away flies. I can adapt them to lizards' tails, useful for slinking along between rocks. That will dampen their overweening arrogance!"

       "No!" Jumper still protested. "Do not allow the curse to distort your judgment."

       Roogna's eyes widened. "Murphy! You're right, of course! This is his doing! If alienophobia could interfere, it does interfere!"

       Dor too was startled. That was it, certainly! Magician Murphy had laid a curse on the construction of the Castle, and Jumper's offer had triggered it. The centaurs were not really to blame.

       "You are a sensible, generous creature," the King said to Jumper. "Since you plead the cause of those who wrong you, I must abate my action. I regret the necessity, and the wrong done you, but it seems I cannot take advantage of your kind offer of assistance." He dismissed the flying dragon with a kingly offhand gesture. "The centaurs are allies, not servants; they labor on the Castle because they are most proficient at this sort of construction. I have done return favors for them. I regret that I let my temper slip. Please feel free to use my facilities until I can arrange for your escort. Meanwhile, you are welcome to watch me operate here, though I hope you will not interrupt my concentration with foolish questions."

       They settled down to watch the King. Dor was quite curious about the actual mechanism for adapting a spell. Did the King just command it, as Dor commanded objects to speak, or was it a silent effort of will? But hardly had Roogna gotten the balky water dragon placed before a messenger-imp ran up. "King, sir-there's been a foul-up at the construction site! The wrong spell was on the building blocks, and they're pushing each other apart instead of pulling themselves together."

       "The wrong spell!" Roogna roared indignantly. "I adapted that spell myself only last week!" There followed a brief discussion. It turned out that a full course of blocks had been laid in the wrong place, causing their spells to conflict with those of the next course instead of meshing. Someone had fouled up, and the error had not been caught in time. They were large blocks, each weighing many hundreds of pounds.

       Roogna tore out a few hairs from his rapidly graying head. "The curse of Murphy again! This will cost us another week! Do I have to lay every block with my own frail hands? Tell them to rip out that course and replace it with the correct one."

       The imp scurried off, and the King returned to his task. But just as he was about to work his magic, another imp arrived. "Hey, King-a goblin army is marching from the south!"

       Grimly the King asked: "What is its estimated time of arrival?"

       "ETA zero minus ten days."

       "That's one shoe," the King muttered, and returned to his work. Naturally the water dragon had wandered out of place, and had to be coaxed laboriously back. Murphy's curse operated in small ways, too.

       The King was shortly interrupted by yet another imp. "Roog, old boy-a harpy flight is massing in the north!"

       "Ten days."

       "The other shoe," Roogna said resignedly. "The two forces will converge on this spot, courtesy of Murphy, and by the time they have destroyed each other, the landscape will be in ruins and Castle Roogna in rubble. If we had only been able to complete the breastworks in time-but now that is hopeless. My enemy has done some remarkably apt scheming. I am forced to admire it."

       "He's a smart man," Dor said. "There must be some way to divert those armies, if they're not really after the Castle. I mean, if the goblins and harpies don't care about the Castle at all, but only happen to be fighting here." He was disturbed. It didn't seem that his presence had caused this problem, but he wasn't quite sure. If his encounters with the harpies and goblins had set them both off-

       "Any direct attempt at diversion would cause them both to attack us," Roogna said. "They are extremely intractable creatures. We lack the inclination and means to fend off either of those brute hordes. In your world, Man may be the dominant creature, but here that has not yet been established."

       "If you recruited some more creatures to help you-"

       "I would have to dissipate my magic repaying them for that service-instead of working on the Castle."

       "Your human army-can't you call it back from furlough?"

       "Murphy's curse is especially apt at interfering with organizational messages. I doubt we could summon the full complement back before the monsters arrived. And I'm sure those men need to protect their own homesteads from the advancing monsters. I think it better to defend the Castle with what we have on hand. That's a small chance, but as good as the alternative. I fear Murphy has really checked me, this time."

       Maybe another Magician could help-" Dor interrupted himself with another thought. "The Zombie Master! Would his help make the difference?"

       The King considered. "Yes, it probably would. Because he represents a primary focus of magic, with all its ramifications, and because he is relatively close, with no Gap to navigate in getting here, and because his zombies could man the battlements without number or upkeep: the ideal army in this kind of situation. Just feeding my own army during siege would be a terrific problem; we have supplies only for the crews working here now. But this is useless conjecture; the Zombie Master does not participate in politics."

       "I have to go see him anyway," Dor exclaimed, excited. "I could talk to him, explain what is at stake-" To hell with caution! If the King was about to lose without Dor's help, why not take the risk? He really could do no harm. "Jumper could come along; he's better than I am at lots of things. The worst I could do is fail."