Dragon on a Pedestal (36 page)

The drake took off and swooped somewhat erratically along through the mist, inhaling deeply. His control system remained ravaged by the currants, but he was recovering. He managed to come to roost on the nearest island, almost crashing; his belly plowed a furrow in the turf, and a plume of smoke went up from his tail, but he squealed to a halt intact. There he rested, licking himself off.

Stanley hurried down to the shore, where he dipped his snout in the water and refilled his supply. He would have plenty of fuel for steam here!

Ivy dashed up to Stanley. “We must leave!” she cried. “Before the drake recovers!”

But Stanley shook his head no. He was tired, and his hind-section was scorched, and he still limped, but he wanted to finish the fight.

“Talk to him, Hugo!” Ivy pleaded imperiously. “Make him go!”

Hugo considered. “That may not be wise.”

“What?” Ivy had trouble assimilating the notion that Hugo could side with the dragon against her.

“I think I understand Stanley’s position,” Hugo said, for he retained the smartness Ivy had perceived in him before. “He knows the drake will come after us as soon as he recovers, and will attack us from the air. As long as the drake has control of the air, we’re vulnerable. So we have to stop him now, while he’s in trouble. Only then can we travel safely.”

Stanley nodded agreement. He had a certain insight into the ways of dragons, being of that persuasion himself.

“But you can’t reach the drake,” Ivy protested directly to Stanley. “He’s on the island.”

Stanley slid into the water and swam. Firedrakes didn’t like to swim, but a steam dragon had to be at home in water. His body floated low, only the top ridge of scales projecting from the surface, along with his eyes and the tip of his snout.

But there was a stirring elsewhere in the lake. “Look out!” Ivy cried. “I spy an allegory!”

Sure enough, the allegory had mistaken the swimming dragon for another of its kind and was hastening to make a comparison. Ivy had seen a picture of an allegory in her magic coloring book; it was green and had a long snout filled with teeth, and it lived in the water, but it wasn’t a dragon. It was—well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it was.

Stanley’s head lifted and turned. He saw the allegory and blew out a worried puff of steam. He evidently did not know how to deal with a thing like this; indeed, few living creatures knew how to handle an allegory in its element. It was known that an allegory could turn a situation inside out without even touching it; that was this entity’s magic.

“Get away from it!” Hugo cried.

Stanley obeyed, swerving toward the shore. But a relevant was just coming up to drink. The relevant was huge, with four trunklike legs and a nose so long it reached right down to the ground. Naturally, that creature liked to poke that nose in other people’s business. Stanley wanted no part of it and swerved again.

But now he was traveling toward a hypotenuse who was basking in shallow water. The hypotenuse was enormously fat, with a huge mouth that opened into a triangle. When Stanley had turned and proceeded at an angle, and then turned to proceed at another angle, he had taken a line right toward the hypotenuse.

“Poor Stanley,” Ivy cried. “Hugo, you must
do
something!”

Hugo obediently cudgeled his brain again. “I don’t know what fruit can stop monsters like these!”

To make things worse, the drake had now recovered. He took off and circled, ready to fire down at Stanley’s head. Stanley would be able to duck under the water, but he would not be able to stay down long, and the moment he came up that lance of fire would be coming at him. Ivy was not at all sanguine about the situation. After all, it was her dragon on her pedestal who was at risk. What would she do if anything really awful happened to him?

“Hurry up!” she cried at Hugo. “Only you can save him! Do something fantastic!” She knew he could, because that was the nature of Nights in Shiny Armor.

Prodded by that, Hugo concentrated and produced—a bunch of grapes.

Ivy had terrific confidence in Hugo, but even she had to harbor a small and unfortunate doubt about this. “Grapes?”

“These are the grapes of wrath,” Hugo said proudly. “I never was able to conjure them before. But they’re dangerous to use. Are you sure—?”

The drake was diving toward Stanley, and the allegory and hypotenuse were closing in. “Use them! Use them!” Ivy cried.

“We may be sorry,” Hugo said and hurled the bunch of grapes into the lake just as the drake was starting a lance of fire toward Stanley’s nose.

Stanley ducked his head, avoiding the jet. But the fire passed through one of the bands of mist. The mist ignited, converting to flame.

The flame jumped to another patch of mist, then another. In a moment, there were columns of flame all across the lake.

The drake flapped awkwardly, trying to avoid the flame that appeared in front of him. The dragon breathed fire, but his wings were not fireproof. He dodged the nearest flaming cloud but had to continue swerving to avoid the other flames. The drake was no longer concerned with Stanley; he had his own hide to protect.

The other creatures were now in trouble, too. The hypotenuse quickly submerged, hiding from the fire, and the allegory swam swiftly away. The relevant trumpeted in fear and charged away from the lake.

A parody was just flying in. It had green wings and a squat, down-curving beak. “Wots this wots this?” it squawked and retreated in haste. “Polly wanna crackup!” This was not parody country at the moment.

But the rage of the mists was only the beginning. As the grapes of wrath sank into the water, the water became furiously agitated. It seethed and boiled. The surface became rough, ripples of emotion traveled across it, and soon it was making waves. The waves slapped at the fiery mists, and the mists heated the waves, turning their fringes to steam. This interplay only disturbed both forces further, and their angry efforts increased.

“Those are strong grapes,” Ivy remarked, impressed.

“They come from a mean vintage,” Hugo agreed. “I had to be sure to get the right ones, because if I conjured sour grapes by mistake, it wouldn’t have worked out very well.”

“Stanley’s in trouble!” she said. “The waves—”

“I told you it was risky! I don’t know any fruit that would help.”

“Then find something else!” she cried.

Hugo looked around. “Ah—there are some string beans growing on the bank. We can use them.”

“You’re brilliant, Hugo,” she said. And of course he was, now.

They harvested a number of beans and unraveled them. Each was formed of a balled length of tough string—too tough to be cut by any normal knife or bitten through by any normal teeth. They twined the strings into a longer, even sturdier cord and paid it out into the water. Hugo used a beanpole to push this cord toward Stanley, who clamped his teeth on it. Then they reeled him in, and the fierce waves couldn’t interfere.

Stanley was all right, for he had been able to duck under most of the fires, but he was very tired. The day was now hot, because of all the fire, so they retreated from the raging, burning lake and sought shade beyond the next hill to rest in.

It was comfortable here beneath the spreading acorn tree, and no immediate threats manifested, so Ivy didn’t even need to suggest a rest break. They all simply lay down and snoozed. Ivy lay with her head against Stanley’s warm side, feeling most secure there. “You’re a wonderful dragon for my pedestal,” she told him. “You’re just perfect.” And Stanley got all steamed up with pleasure. Ivy was only echoing the kind of sentiment she had been exposed to in her own family, but her power extended it in a rather wonderful way.

Time passed quietly, like the calm before the storm.

Zzapp!

Ivy woke with a start. Something had passed close by, disturbing her, but she didn’t see anything.

She got up. She
knew
there had been something, probably only a buzzing bottle fly, but she couldn’t rest until she had placed it. This was her childish curiosity in operation, perhaps foolish, but quite compelling. After all, some of those flying bottles could be very pretty.

Zzapp!
The sound was near the tree. She hurried to it—and discovered a small hole through its trunk. Odd—she didn’t remember that! She could see daylight through it, for the hole was perfectly straight, or at least only a little wavy.

She went to the other side. There, an arm’s length beyond the trunk, hung a little, loosely spiraled worm. She had seen similar things before, usually in the ground or in spoiled fruit, so she passed her hand above it to
intercept the invisible thread on which it hung. But nothing happened. She checked all around it, to see if there were sidewise strands suspending it, but there were none of these either. What held it in place?

She poked the worm with her finger. It was medium-hard and fixed in place, not moving from her pressure. This was more curious yet! She got down to put her eye near it.

Zzapp!
The worm was gone. She looked where the sound of it had seemed to go, away from her, and in a moment found the little worm again, hovering in midair farther out from the tree.

Ivy went back and woke Hugo, “You’re smart,” she said. “Come and tell me what I found.”

Hugo grimaced. He would have preferred to sleep a little longer; being intelligent was not all that much fun when he had to keep using his brain to solve difficult problems. That was very much like work. But he got up and followed her to the place the worm hovered.

Zzapp!
The worm was gone.

Hugo stared. His irritation ripened into horror. “My father said they were extinct!” he exclaimed.

“That cute little worm!” Ivy asked. She identified with cute things, quite properly.

“That’s no cute little worm!” he said emphatically. “That’s a wiggle! There must be a swarm.”

“A wiggle?” Ivy asked blankly, wiggling her torso experimentally.

“The most terrible menace in Xanth,” Hugo explained. “They destroy everything. See, this one has holed the acorn tree already! Don’t stand in front of a wiggle, or it will hole you, too. We’ve got to get rid of it!”

“Stanley can steam it,” Ivy said, unworried.

Stanley was now awake and had joined them. He sniffed the wiggle in its new location. The thing looked like no more than a tiny, twisted piece of stem, difficult to see at all from any distance.

“Steam it!” Hugo cried. “Destroy it!”

The little dragon shrugged and jetted out hot steam. The vapor surrounded the wiggle, cooking it in place. After a moment, the worm dropped to the ground, dead.

“That’s a relief,” Hugo said. “My father says it’s been thirty years since the last wiggle swarm, and he hoped there would never be another. He says if the wiggles ever get out of hand, it won’t be safe for any other creature in Xanth. I’ve got to tell him—” He paused, crestfallen. “But he’s a baby now! He can’t do anything!”

“But what do wiggles do?” Ivy asked, not quite understanding. She had not been around for the last wiggle swarming.

“Nothing. I mean, all they do is swarm. They just travel until they get where they’re going, and then they swarm again, and everything has holes in it.”

“Oh.” Ivy didn’t want her friends to be holed. “But we killed it, so it’s all right.”

“I don’t think so,” Hugo said “Wiggles always come in swarms, and—” He paused, listening.

Zzapp! It
was the sound of another wiggle.

There was a swarm, all right. Xanth was in trouble.

D
oes your husband swear?” Chem asked Irene as they walked on toward the Cyclops’ cave.

Irene was glad to take her mind from the goblin and harpy action just finished. “Dor swear? As in bad words? Of course not! Why do you ask?”

“Something the Muse mentioned. Clio is in charge of history, and she told me how she writes the official history books that cover all of what goes on in Xanth. But she said there’s a lot to do, and because history doesn’t remain still, she can never quite catch up. So when the time came to proofread the volume on Dor’s visit to the time of King Roogna, she had another Muse do it. Then, later, when Clio looked at the book herself, she discovered errors—typographical mistakes that weren’t obvious, so the other Muse hadn’t realized. Only Clio, who was conversant with the material, perceived those errors—but by then the volume had been finalized, as she put it, and it was too late. Once a volume has been finalized in Parnassus, it can never be changed, even if it’s wrong.”

Irene had not realized that such a volume existed; Dor had never spoken of it, though she had known about his visit to Xanth’s past. “And the book said Dor swore?”

“Not exactly. It was on—I think she said page sixty, about ten lines from the top—she’s very fussy about such details—where Dor was talking to his sword. He was using this big Mundane body, you know—that was how he got into the past, by entering the tapestry-figure that was there—”

“I know about the tapestry,” Irene exclaimed. “I’d like to see that book!”

“Why, there’s a copy of it at home,” the Gorgon said. She had at last removed the hood and was using her regular veil again. “Humfrey keeps a complete file. I read it when it was new. Fascinating story, full of barbarian violence and sex and gross stupidities. I love that sort of book!”

“Hmm,” Irene murmured. “I begin to comprehend why my husband did not tell me about this. I believe I’ll visit you after our search is over, so I can read that story.”

“Dor’s in trouble!” Grundy singsonged gleefully.

“I read them all as they appear,” the Gorgon continued. “There was one about your journey to Mundania, and another about the ogres, and of course there was one about Mare Imbri. I can hardly wait to see how this present business is written up! And Humfrey mentioned getting an advance notice about a future volume that tells of Jordan the Ghost and his own visit to the tapestry, or something—”

“Hey, I know Jordan!” Grundy said. “He helped Imbri beat the Horseman in the Nextwave siege.”

“What about Dor’s swearing?” Irene asked, faintly nettled. She had thought she knew most of what was important about her husband.