Dragon on a Pedestal (20 page)

“I’m sure it is,” Irene agreed, getting more curious about this notorious bird.

“We have to approach slowly, by foot, so the Simurgh has time to study us and see that we are not raiders but serious visitors.”

“Parnassus seems very choosy,” Irene commented.

“Yes. A select and strange group of creatures abides there. We have to follow their rules, or we will get nowhere. That’s why the witch Xanthippe could not go herself; the Simurgh would know her for what she is and would never let her get near the Tree of Seeds.”

“It is not a mission I would have chosen myself,” Irene admitted grimly. “But we must do what we must do.”

They set off on the final stretch to Parnassus, as delineated on Chem’s map. Zora rode behind Xavier on Xap again, while Irene and Grundy remained on Chem. They trotted southeast, but with more certain impetus, for Chem had traveled this route before. Xap now stayed on the ground, and not because he was tired. Whether he wished to avoid the attention of the Simurgh even this far away, or simply to keep Chem company, Irene wasn’t sure. But she suspected the latter.

Those two semi-equines must have had quite a night of it, Irene reflected. Xap spoke only in squawks, but Chem seemed to understand him perfectly now, and he understood her. Irene remained surprised that Chem should show such interest in a non-centaur, yet human beings were non-centaurs, too, and she associated with them all the time. Was a human person any more worthy than a hippogryph person? A smart centaur certainly ought to be able to judge. But Irene suspected that Chem’s dam Cherie would not entirely approve. What would the Furies have said to Chem?

In due course they came to the base of Mount Parnassus. The jungle halted as if in deference to the great mountain, so the view was clear. There were indeed two peaks; on each one, half hidden in mists, was a large and spreading tree. They would avoid the Tree of Immortality on the north peak; too much mischief had already been wreaked by the water of the Fountain of Youth, which was surely related magic.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Grundy said.

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Chem said. “I want to talk to the Simurgh—nothing else. And Irene wants to get those seeds.”

They crossed the channel at the foot of the mountain. This was a dry creekbed filled with rounded stones. It wasn’t comfortable footing for
hooves, so Xap spread his wings and leaped across, risking this tiny bit of flight, while Chem picked her way carefully. Even so, the stones tended to turn under her feet, slowing her down further.

“Here, tenderfoot, I’ll find you a solid path!” Grundy said impatiently. He jumped down and began shoving at stones, testing for solidity.

Something struck at the golem. Grundy jumped back. “It bit me!” he exclaimed indignantly as a small snake slithered quickly away.

“Hardly the Python,” Irene said. The golem was touching his little leg, but did not seem to be crippled.

Chem stiffened, her four hooves firmly in place. “That snake looked very much like a dipsas. I hope that’s a misperception.”

“The cursed thing bit me!” Grundy repeated, pressing at the flesh of his leg. “I’m not a true golem any more, you know; I’m flesh now. I hurt!”

That was true. Grundy, like Millie the Ghost, had for some time been fully alive, because of very special magic. The Furies had known. Too bad, Irene thought, that no similar magic was available to restore Zora Zombie! But Good Magician Humfrey had been involved in the other case, and he was no longer available.

But she had better concentrate on the immediate problem. “What’s a dipsas?” she asked Chem, who was now picking her way forward again.

“Cursed thing,” the centaur mused. “Maybe not just a figure of speech.”

“I don’t understand,” Irene said, annoyed.

“Hey, got anything to drink?” the golem asked.

“It
was
a dipsas!” Chem said, horrified. “I hoped I was wrong or that the snake’s reputation was exaggerated. Its bite makes a person unquenchably thirsty.”

“Curse,” Irene repeated, catching on. “The Furies’ curse of misfortune!”

“Yes,” the centaur agreed. “You told me how the Furies came while Xap and I were away and how Grundy caught their curse. This bite of the dipsas does seem to fit the description. Perhaps if you had caught the curse, you would have been the one bitten—or me, if I had been there to meet the Furies. I was certainly vulnerable.”

All too true! “Zora has my curse,” Irene said. “She did not get bitten, so I think this one was intended specifically for Grundy.”

“I’m starving of thirst!” Grundy exclaimed. “Find me a lake, somebody!”

Irene looked around. “There’s a beer-barrel tree behind us.” She dismounted, picked her way through the treacherous stones of the riverbed, keeping a nervous eye out for snakes, and went to the huge, swollen barrel of the tree. Now she realized why the streambed was dry—the magic snake had caused all creatures here to drink until the water was gone. Too bad that had not been obvious before!

She used her knife to punch a hole in the bark. Yellow beer spouted out. This might not be the best liquid for the golem to drink, but there was plenty of it, enough to quench the thirst of a hundred golems.

Grundy hurried up and put his little mouth to the stream of beer. He gulped the stuff down insatiably.

Irene watched with growing amazement as the golem swallowed more than his own mass in beer and kept on drinking. The stream seemed to be flowing into a bottomless hole. His body swelled up like a watermelon, but still he drank.

Finally the barrel ran dry and the flow stopped. “More! More!” Grundy cried, though he was bursting out of his clothing. Irene had never seen a smaller, fatter man. “I’m ravenous with thirst. Hic!”

Irene glanced again at the dry stream, then at the empty tree. This thirst was truly ferocious! Mere liquid obviously wouldn’t abate it. “I don’t know where there’s more.”

“I’m drying up!” Grundy cried, popping a button. “I wish I were dead!”

That was another aspect of the curse, of course. “What we need is not more liquid, but a cure,” she said. “Otherwise Grundy will drink until he explodes.”

Chem had made her way across the riverbed and was now safely on Mount Parnassus. “As I recall, the only natural cure is a draught from a healing spring, and I don’t know where—”

Xap squawked.

“He says the winespring of the maenads quenches all thirst,” the centaur said. “That’s fairly close.”

“But that spring must be—”

“On the north slope of Parnassus,” Chem said grimly.

“The very place we don’t want to go.” Irene sighed. “Yet Grundy is dying of dehydration, or of swelling. We can’t ignore that!” Indeed, the golem was chewing up the local vegetation, trying to squeeze water out of the leaves.

Irene dropped a seed and ordered it to grow. In a moment a water hyacinth sprouted, bursting with water. The golem grabbed its leaves and flowers and crammed them into his mouth. But plants couldn’t hold him long. Already his swollen limbs looked shrunken, as if dehydrating. He had the worst of both conditions.

“I’d like to have Fracto the Cloud here now,” Irene muttered. “Grundy would swallow him whole.”

“Maybe Xap and me can take him to the winespring,” Xavier offered.

“But Xap doesn’t dare fly here,” Chem protested, concerned for the welfare of the hippogryph.

“Yeah, but he can gallop good.”

“True,” Chem agreed, with one of her obscure smiles. “Perhaps we should separate, and rejoin farther up the mountain when Grundy is cured.” She projected her map. “The spring should be about here,” she said, making it glow in the picture. She had really learned a lot of geography from the hippogryph! “If you follow this route—” The dotted line progressed to intersect the glow. “—you can rejoin us farther up the mountain—here.” The line intersected the line of their route to the southern peak.

“I really don’t like breaking up our party,” Irene said. “But I suppose we have little choice at the moment. We can’t let Grundy die of thirst, or whatever, and Xap is best able to avoid the maenads.”

So it was reluctantly decided. Zora got down from the hippogryph, and Grundy took her place. Xap galloped away, around the northern curve of the mountain.

“There go three fairly brave and foolish males,” Chem murmured as Zora mounted behind Irene.

“Let’s hope we fairly sensible and timid females can complete our mission,” Irene said.

They moved up the slope. Parnassus was not a smooth mountain; it was riddled with ridges, gullies, crevices, and caves, and the vegetation was odd. Strange seeds had sprouted, probably from the Tree of Seeds. There was a proliferation of paper trees and ink plants, and secretary-birds zipped among them in seemingly pointless activity. Irene wondered what natural place a community like this had in the larger scheme of Xanth, for things generally interrelated, but she could see nothing worthwhile. Parnassus seemed pretty much wrapped up in its own concerns, which hardly related to those of the world beyond.

There was a loud and sinister hiss ahead. Chem skidded to a halt, all four hooves making grooves in the dirt. The path ran through a small gorge here, with sliding rubble on the slopes, so it was not at all convenient to change the route—but she didn’t trust what was ahead. Chem unslung her bow from her shoulder and nocked an arrow; like all centaurs, she was an excellent archer. She walked slowly forward.

There, around a curve, was a monstrous serpent. Its head was half the size of Irene’s body, carried at human height, and its sinuous body extended back and around another curve.

“The Python!” Irene whispered in horror. “What is it doing here?”

“I am the nemesis and the delight of females everywhere,” the serpent hissed. “I made the first woman blush and feel shame for the desire I aroused in her. I will possess the last woman ever to bear a child. Bow down before me, you vulnerable creatures!”

This was more than a mere snake! Irene tried to protest, but the Python’s terrible gaze transfixed her. Chem fidgeted on her hooves, caught by the
same stare. There seemed to be all the sinister masculine wisdom of eternity in those huge eyes, together with all the masculine promise and threat and a desire, as insatiable as the golem’s thirst, that would destroy them long before it was sated; yet neither Irene nor Chem could break the connection.

The Python slid forward sinuously, holding them with his hypnotic gaze. His pale red tongue flicked out. Soon that awful mouth would gape, showing the cruel fangs—

“Wwhaashh?” Zora asked, shedding some epiglottis, as she tended to do when expressing herself with some force. When Irene didn’t answer, the zombie craned her neck to peer blankly ahead of the centaur.

Then Zora half scrambled, half slid to the ground, righted herself, and shuffled forward. She took her place in front of Chem just as the head of the Python arrived. “Ffiieee, sschnaake!” she cried.

For a moment, zombie and Python were eye to eye. Now it was the serpent who froze, for the direct gaze of an aroused zombie was a sickening thing.

Irene and Chem snapped out of their trances. The gaze of the Python had been interrupted by Zora, freeing the other two. Irene was appalled and repelled by the memory of her fascination of a moment ago, yet there had been a certain insidious appeal as well. She had not, while caught in the stare of the snake, quite wanted to break it, though she knew it meant doom. Did she have an urge for self-destruction, or was that merely part of the thing’s spell?

The centaur spun about so rapidly that Irene had to grab the slender humanoid waist before her to remain mounted. Chem’s large rear end swung around to bang into both zombie and Python, knocking them into the rocky bank.

“Grab Zora!” Irene cried, seeing the zombie staggering.

Chem reached out and caught Zora by an arm and hauled her in. Half carrying, half dragging her, the centaur moved down the path, away from the menace. Behind them, the huge serpent thrashed, starting a rockslide that threatened to bury its low body.

Irene knew the monster snake would soon be after them. The Python had been balked, not defeated; it was impossible for mere females to win over him. She felt in her bag of seeds, seeking something that would delay the reptile. She had a tangle tree seed, but that would take too long to grow—Ah! Here was a hedgehog plant seed. She threw it to the ground.

“Grow!”

The hedgehog sprouted, sending out quills that pointed in every direction. It was like an oversized pincushion. That would be awkward to pass in any hurry!

But when she glanced back, shielding her eyes with her hand so as to cut off any meeting of the reptile’s deadly stare, she saw the Python sliding smoothly past the hedgehog. The plant hadn’t had time to grow big enough to block the whole channel.

Hmm. She fetched out two more seeds. The first was false hops; when she sprouted it, it fragmented into a dozen miniature kangaroos who started hopping madly about. They were not real, of course; kangaroos were mythical beasts not found in Xanth. When the Python snapped at one, he encountered only leaves and stem. But this was a distraction that slowed the aggressive reptile.

Next she tossed an alumroot. It wasn’t much to look at, but with luck, the snake would snap it up, too, just to get it out of the way.

The Python did. The alumroot was ripped out of the ground and crunched to pieces, its juices squirting. Irene was reminded with horror of the way the bonnacon had crunched Zora. Then the serpent paused, just as the bonnacon had.

Irene smiled. Alum had a special magical effect on living flesh. It was astringent.

The Phyton’s mouth shrank as the soft tissues of it drew together. But the hard tissues, such as the teeth, did not shrink. In moments the head was quite distorted, the flesh tightening about the bone. Startled, the Python jerked his head back and tried to spit out the root, but could not get it past his purse-string-tight mouth. Desperate, the reptile tried the other route and swallowed the root.

Irene’s smile broadened. Alum was an emetic, too. In a moment the big snake was vomiting as well as it could through its constricted throat and mouth. Bubbles started coming out of its ear slits. The worst thing it could have done was to swallow the alum!