Castle Roogna (8 page)

       Grundy snorted derisively.

       "Thank you," Humfrey said. He seemed to thrive on insult. "Sit down, Dor-right there will do." Dor, too disoriented to protest, sat down on the decorated carpet he had been standing on, Grundy beside him. The texture of it was luxuriant; he was comfortable.

       "But the main problem is the time frame. The Zombie Master can not come to you, so you must go to him. The only presently feasible way to do that is via the tapestry."

       "The tapestry?" Dor asked, surprised by this familiar item. "The Castle Roogna tapestry?"

       "The same. I shall give you a spell to enable you to enter it. You will not do so physically, of course; your body is much too big to be in scale. The spell will accommodate a reasonably close match, but you are hundreds of times too massive. So you will animate the body of one of the players already depicted there. We shall have to make an arrangement for your present body-ah, I know! The Brain Coral! I owe it a favor, or it owes me one-no difference. The Coral has always wanted to taste mortality. It can animate your body during your absence, so no one will know. The golem will have to help cover for you, of course."

       "I've been doing that all along," Grundy said complacently.

       "Now the carpet will take you to the Coral, then to the tapestry. Don't worry; I have preprogrammed it. Here, better take something to eat along the way. Gorgon!"

       The gorgon hurried in with three vials. "You didn't wash your feet!" she cried to the Magician, appalled.

       Humfrey took a white vial from her hand, "I had her fix this earlier, so if it turns your stomach to stone, blame her, not me." He almost chuckled as he handed the stoppered container to Dor. "Grundy, you better hang on to the spell. Remember, it's in two parts: the yellow puts him into the tapestry, the green puts the Coral into his body. Don't confuse them!" He gave the golem two tiny colored packets. "Or is it the other way around? Well, on with you. I don't have all day," He clapped his hands together with a sharp report-and the carpet on which Dor sat took off.

       Too surprised to protest, Dor grabbed for the edges and hung on. "You don't have clean feet either," he heard the gorgon saying indignantly to Humfrey as the carpet looped the room, getting its bearings. "But I brought two dry-cleaning spells, one for each foot, so-"

       Dor missed the rest. The carpet sailed out of the room, through several other chambers, banked around a corner, angled up an interminably coiling stair, and shot out of a high turret window whose sides almost scraped skin off Dor's tight knuckles. Suddenly the ground was far below, and getting farther; already the Magician's castle seemed small.

       "Hey-I think I'm scared of heights!" Dor cried, his vision recoiling.

       "Nonsense," Grundy retorted. "You made it up here okay, didn't you? What are you going to do, jump?"

       "Noooo!" Dor cried, horrified. "But I might quietly fall."

       "What you need is a good meal to settle your stomach during the boring flight," Grundy said. "Let's just get this white bottle open-"

       "I'm not hungry! I think I'm heightsick!"

       The golem hauled at the cork, and it popped out. Fine smoke issued, swirled, and coalesced into two fine sandwiches, a brimming glass of milk, and a sprig of parsley. Dor had to grab at everything before the wind whipped it away.

       "We're really traveling in style!" Grundy said, crunching his little teeth on the parsley. "Drink your milk, Dor."

       "You sound just like Millie." But Dor gulped his milk. It was very good, obviously fresh from the pod, and the milkweed must have been grown in chocolate soil.

       "I hear that in Mundania they squeeze milk out of animals," Grundy observed. That made Dor's stomach do another roil. They really were barbarians in Mundania.

       Then he started in on a sandwich, as he had either to eat it or continue holding it, and he wanted his hands free to clutch the carpet again. It was a door-jam and turnip sandwich, his favorite; obviously the Good Magician had researched his tastes and prepared for this occasion before Dor ever arrived at the castle. The second one was a red potato soup sandwich, somewhat squishy but with excellent taste. The gorgon had a very nice touch.

       Dor thought about the anomaly of so formidable a creature as the gorgon reduced to being a common maid at the Magician's castle while she waited to learn whether Humfrey would marry her. Yet wasn't this the lot of the average woman? Maybe the Magician was merely showing her what she could expect If she married. That could be more important than his actual Answer. Or was that part of the Answer? The Good Magician had his peculiarities, but also a devious comprehension of the real situation. He had obviously known all about Dor himself, yet allowed him to struggle through the rigors of entry into the castle. Odd competence!

       The carpet angled forward, causing Dor to suffer another spasm of vertigo. Yet his seat seemed secure. The material of the carpet seemed to hold him firmly yet comfortably, so that he did not slide off even when it tilted. Wonderful magic!

       Now the carpet banked, circling for a landing-but it didn't land. It plunged at frightening speed directly toward a deep crevasse in the ground. "Where are we going?" Dor cried, alarmed.

       "Into the teeth of a tangler!" Grundy replied. "A big one!" He pointed ahead, and for once he seemed less than cocksure.

       "Right!" the rug agreed, still accelerating.

       It was indeed a big tangle tree-one not even an ogre could cow. Its massive trunk grew from the base of the chasm, while its upper tentacles overlapped the rim. What a menace that must be to travelers seeking to cross the cleft!

       The carpet banked again, accelerated again, and buzzed the crest of the tree. The tentacles reached up hungrily. "Has this rug gone crazy?" Dor demanded. "Nobody tangles with a full-sized tangler!"

       "Oh, a big sphinx might get away with it," Grundy suggested. "Or the old invisible giant. Or a cockatrice."

       The carpet banked yet again, sending Dor's hair flying to the side, and looped around for another nervy pass at the top of the tree. This time the tentacles were ready; they rose up in a green mass to intercept it. "Doom!" Grundy cried, covering his eyes. "Why did I ever turn real?"

       But the carpet plunged directly below the tentacles, zooming right past the bared and scowling trunk of the tangler and into the ground at its base. Except that the ground opened into a small crevice transfixed by a root-and the carpet dropped into this hole.

       Down, down-the horror of the heights had been abruptly replaced by the horror of the depths! Dor cowered, expecting to smash momentarily into a wall. But the carpet seemed to know its harrowing route; it never touched a wall.

       There began to be a little light-a sustained glow from the walls. But this only showed how convoluted this region was. Chamber after chamber opened and closed, and passages branched at all angles. Yet the carpet sped unerringly along its programmed route, down into the very bowels of Xanth.

       Bowels. Dor wished his thought hadn't phrased it that way. He still felt nervously sick. This harebrained ride-

       The carpet halted abruptly beside a somber subterranean lake. In this faint illumination the water itself assumed a glow, revealing murky depths suggestive of mind-boggling secrets. The carpet settled to the cavern floor and became limp. "This must be our station," Grundy observed.

       "But there's nothing here!" Nothing living, he meant.

       I am here, something thought in his mind. I am the Brain Coral-here beyond your sight beneath the lake. You bear the stigma of the Good Magician and are accompanied by his golem. Have you come to abate his debt to me?

       "I am my own golem!" Grundy protested. "And I'm not a golem any more. I'm real!"

       "He said it was your debt to him," Dor answered the Brain Coral nervously. This was an uncomfortable place, and there was disquieting power in the mental voice, and an alien quality. This was a creature of Magician-class magic, but not at all human. I think."

       Same thing, the voice thought. Perhaps it was the thought voicing. What is the offer?

       "You-if you would care to animate my body while my spirit is away-I know it's not much of a body, just a juvenile-"

       Done! the Coral replied. Go work your spells; I will be there.

       "Uh, thank you. I-"

       Thank you. I have existed a thousand years, storing mortals in my preservative lake, without ever enjoying the sensations of mortality myself. Now at last I shall experience them, however fleetingly.

       "Uh, yes, I guess. You do understand that I will want my body back, when-"

       Naturally. Such spells are always self-limiting; there will be no more than a fortnight before it reverts. Time enough.

       Self-limiting? Dor hadn't known that. What a good thing the Good Magician had set it up. Had Dor tried to work such a spell by himself, he could have been stuck forever in the tapestry. The best spells were fail-safe.

       The carpet took off without warning. "Farewell, Coral!" Dor cried, but there was no answer. Either the Brain Coral's communications range was short, or it had ceased to pay attention. Or it objected to inane courtesies.

       The return trip was similar to the descent, with its interminable convolutions, but now Dor felt more secure, and his stomach stayed pretty much in place. He had new confidence in the Good Magician's planning and in the carpet's competence. He hardly winced as they shot up out of the crack into the bosom of the tangle tree, though he did have a qualm as the tentacles convulsed. The carpet merely dodged the embrace, allowing the Tangier to catch nothing but the qualm, and zoomed along the base of the crevasse. When well clear of the tree, it rose smoothly out of the chasm and powered into the sky. The afternoon was blindingly bright, after the gloom of the caverns.

       Now they flew north. Dor looked down, trying to spot the Magic Dust village, but all he saw was jungle, One area was dark, as if burned out, but no village. Then, all too soon, Castle Roogna hove in view. The carpet circled it once, getting its bearings as was its wont, then slanted down and into a window, through a hall, and into the tapestry room.

       "Here's the first spell," Grundy said, lifting the yellow package.

       "No, wait!" Dor cried, abruptly afraid of the magnitude of what he contemplated. He had supposed he would only have to search out some hidden spring in the contemporary world, and now faced a far more significant undertaking. To actually enter a picture-"I need time to uncramp my legs, to-" To decide whether he was really up to this challenge. Maybe-

       But Grundy had already torn open the wrapping. Yellow mist spread out, diffusing into the air, forming a little cloud.

       "I don't even know what body in the tapestry to-"

       Then the expanding mist encompassed him. Dor felt himself swaying, falling without falling. For a moment he saw his body standing there stupidly, tousle-haired and slack-jawed. Then the great tapestry was coming at him, expanding hugely. There was a bug on it, then this too fuzzed out. He glimpsed a section of woven jungle, with a muscular young man standing with a huge sword, at bay against-

       Dor stood at bay, his trusty blade unmasked. The goblins in front of him faded back, afraid, before he could get a close look at them. He hadn't seen goblins in the flesh before. They were small, twisted, ugly creatures with disproportionately large heads and hands and feet.

       Goblins? Of course he hadn't seen them before! There had been few goblins on the surface of Xanth in daylight for centuries! They hid in the caverns beneath the surface, afraid of light.

       Oh-this was no longer the present! This was the tapestry, depicting the world of eight hundred years ago. So there could be goblins here-bold ones, un-cowed by light.

       But he, himself-what of him? What body-oh, yes, the huge-thewed, giant young man. Dor had never before experienced such ready power; the massive sword felt light in his hands, though he knew that in his real body he would barely have been able to swing it two-handed. This was the kind of body he had daydreamed about!

       Something stung him on the head. Dor clapped his hand there, knocking himself momentarily dizzy, but whatever it was, was gone. It had felt, however, like a louse or flea. He had no antifleas spell with him. Already the penalties of the primitive life were manifesting.

       The jungle was close. Great-leaved branches formed a seemingly solid wall of green. There were fewer magic plants than he was used to; these more closely resembled Mundane trees. Which, again, made sense; the Land of Xanth was closer to Mundania in nature than it would be in Dor's day. Evolution-the pedagogue centaur had taught him about that, how magic things evolved into more magical things, to compete and survive better.

       Something entered the periphery of his vision as he looked around. Dor whirled-and discovered that it had not been his sword that made the goblins retreat. Behind him stood a spider-the height of a man. Dor forgot all about the lurking goblins. He lifted the great sword, feeling the facility with which his body handled it. This was a trained warrior whose muscles had been augmented by experience and skill-which was fortunate, because Dor himself was no swordsman. He could have sliced himself up, if this body hadn't possessed good reflexes.

       The spider reacted similarly. It carried no sword, but hardly needed to. It had eight hairy legs and two huge green eyes-no, four eyes, two large and two small-no, there were at least six, scattered about its head. Two sharp fangs projected inward from the mouth parts, and two mouth-legs fitted outside. Overall, the creature was as horrible as Dor could imagine. Now it was preparing to pounce on him.

       On top of that, the thing was chittering at him, making a series of clicking sounds that could only be some sort of threat. Grundy the golem could have translated instantly-but Grundy was eight hundred years or so away, now. The spider's two larger forelegs were raised; though they had neither fingers nor claws, they looked formidable. And those mandibles behind them, and those eyes-