Golem in the Gears (31 page)

"That's because he's not supposed to fool with com- mon girls," the third said. "But until he finds a suitable royal bride from another Elm—"

The second rubbed her rear. "Some day I'm going to 'accidentally* drop a plate of glop on his foot!"

"That's what I'm saying," the first said. "Late last night when I replaced the candles in his chamber, I thought sure he'd try to grab me the way he usually does, but he just sort of stared at me, seeming confused. I asked him if he was all right, but he just told me gruffly to get on about my business. He sounded strange. I thought maybe he had some royal indisposition, but I was just glad to get out of there without a struggle. Now, after this dragon business, I wonder."

"He grabs, but he's nice," the third said. "I never heard of him harming a friendly creature, before."

Then an elven matron entered the chamber, and the three shut up and concentrated on their sewing. Grundy moved on up, though he was sure no one suspected his

presence.

So the Prince was acting strangely. But his action with Rapunzel was not strange. Obviously he had found a bet- ter woman to pinch. Grundy burned at the notion and kept climbing.

The shaft narrowed and finally debouched at what had

once been a broken branch. A door cunningly Grafted to resemble healed-over wood opened onto a network of branches clothed with leaves.

Grundy stood there, looking about, trying to decide what to do next. He remained almost dead tired and hadn't located the Princely chambers. Had all this been for noth- ing?

Then he heard voices below. He was above a chamber. He squatted down, then lay flat, parting the leaves with his hands, carefully. The voices became clearer—and now he recognized them. Rapunzel and Prince Gimlet!

He managed to arrange the leaves so that he could see them, without being seen. He hated to imagine it, but if Rapunzel liked the Prince's attentions, then she was not being forced, and it would be Grundy's duty to let her be. He could descend quietly, rejoin Stanley, and return to Castle Roogna to complete his Quest. The fact that his love would be lost would have no bearing on the matter. It wouldn't count at all to anyone but him. But he had to be fair.

He hoped she hated the Prince.

As it happened, nothing much was happening. They were evidently completing a meal, a fairly sumptuous repast. Rapunzel, for all her dainty figure, had a good appetite. The smell of the food reminded Grundy that he had not eaten today. How he would like to have some of those leftover scraps!

"My dear, I like you," the Prince said, wiping his mouth with a fancy napkin. "I think I'll marry you."

"But I don't love you!" Rapunzel protested, amazed.

"What does love have to do with it? I am in need of a proper consort, who can not be from this Tree, and I believe you will do."

"But I love another!"

His gaze narrowed. "Oh? Who?" "Grundy Golem," she confessed. "But he is not of elven stock. You must marry within

your culture."

"Why?" she asked, with that delightful innocence she

had.

"Because that's the way it is. Now I'll just declare that

you are to be my bride, and the elven banns will be pub- lished, and then in a couple of weeks—"

"No!" she cried.

"You prefer to marry the golem?" he asked incredu- lously.

"Yes."

Grundy's delight at this assertion was nullified by Gim- let's next words. "Then know, oh damsel, that the golem is even now our prisoner, and if you do not acquiesce with proper grace to this union, I will have him killed."

"Oh, no!" she wailed.

"Oh, yes," he said grimly. "Do you agree to marry me

now?"

This was too much for Grundy. "No she doesn't!" he

yelled.

"Grundy!" Rapunzel cried, delighted.

"How did you get up here?" Gimlet demanded, furious. He drew his weapon, which was a steel rod, with a handle set across the end like the horizontal stroke of a T, and a twisted point that looked wicked indeed. He strode across the chamber and rammed the gimlet up, trying to spear

Grundy.

Rapunzel screamed. Grundy, surprised, slipped off his branch and fell down through the ceiling. But he grabbed the Prince's raised arm as he dropped, and clung to it, trying to wrest away the weapon.

Immediately he knew he was in trouble. Not only was

he still very tired, but the Prince had the elven strength, strongest here within the foliage of the Elm. He held his arm aloft, Grundy upon it, and caught the golem by the scruff of the neck with his other hand. He ripped Grundy free as if he were a rag doll—as perhaps he once had been. Grundy was helpless.

The Prince readied the gimlet. "Now I shall run you through, as I should have done before," he said.

"No!" Rapunzel cried.

"No?" the Prince inquired, holding the point near Grundy's stomach. "And why should I desist, damsel?"

Rapunzel was stricken, knowing what he wanted. But if she gave him that, she would lose Grundy in another sense.

Grundy could not urge her to either course. She would lose him either way. She had to make her own decision.

"Spare him," she said brokenly. "And I will—will m- marry you." Then she sank to the floor, sobbing.

The Prince smiled. "So it seems you are some use to me after all, Golem. I never thought that would be the case, when I fought you in the Tower. But of course I was not using you properly. Why kill you and have the damsel kill herself, when I can have complete control over her merely by threatening you? So you shall live, but you shall not be free." He turned to face the entrance, which was a hole in the center of the floor. "Guards!"

Tower? Suddenly Grundy suffered a horrendous real- ization. "The Sea Hag!" he cried.

The Prince grimaced. "Curses! I shouldn't have let that slip. Well, it makes no difference. Once I marry her, I'll suicide this body and she will be Queen of the Elves, and I will assume her body."

"She'll never agree to that!" Grundy cried.

"Won't she—with your life still at stake?"

Grundy realized that Rapunzel would indeed give in again—to save him. Her love was true, and that was her undoing. He had been a fool to believe that the Hag had given up, merely because she had not been willing to sting Rapunzel to death when she had been a Queen B. She had merely sought another avenue—and now she had

found it.

The guards arrived. "Confine this wretch in a cage,"

the Hag commanded. "This time watch him. See that he

does not escape."

"Don't do it!" Grundy cried. "This isn't your Prince.

It's the Sea Hag!"

"He's crazy as well as scrawny," the Hag said. "As

you can see, I am unchanged."

"He's changed! He's changed!" Grundy cried. "You know how he's changed in the last day—since the Hag took over his body. This is an imposter, not your Prince

at all!"

The guards hesitated. Obviously they had heard the

gossip, and knew the Prince was different. But they weren't ready to defy him. They came toward Grundy.

"Would your Prince ever have poisoned a friendly

dragon?" Grundy demanded.

At this, Rapunzel's head came up. "What?" "They poisoned Stanley!" Grundy told her. "And threw

me in a dank cell!"

"Oh, I must flee this place!" she cried, in her distress changing to human-size. In this form she seemed practi- cally to fill the chamber, and her weight bore the branches

of the floor down somewhat.

"You do, and he dies," Prince Hag said evenly, touch- ing Grundy's belly with the point of the gimlet.

"Oh!" she repeated, horrified anew. She reverted to

elf-size.

"Don't yield to the Hag!" Grundy yelled at her. "She'll kill me anyway, once she has your body! Go now, save yourself. Go down to Stanley and ride back to Castle Roogna! He knows the way!"

But this logic was too cruel for her maidenly heart to bear. She sank again to the floor, swooning.

"Now lock him up," the Hag told the guards. "I will see to the damsel."

"But that's not your Prince!" Grundy cried desperately. "Ask anybody! Ask the serving girls! You know he's changed. No elf acts the way he does, threatening inno- cent folk with death!"

Again the guards hesitated, knowing that he had a point. They had known the Prince a long time and recognized the change in him; now Grundy was providing an expla- nation.

"Obey," the Hag told them, "or I'll run you through!"

"That does it," one guard said. "I think the golem's right."

"Wretch!" the Hag cried, aiming the gimlet at him.

But the guards drew their weapons, which were a screwdriver and a trowel. Metal gleamed. They were as strong as the Prince, here. "The issue is in doubt," the other guard said. "We must schedule a trial."

"Over my dead body!" the Hag screamed, and now the Prince's face did in a way resemble that of the Hag of the Ivory Tower.

The two guards stood unflinching, weapons ready, not responding. It was evident that the elves were an inde- pendent breed who did not tolerate what they knew to be wrong, even when it seemed that their Prince ordered it. They had had time to ponder the business of poisoning a tame dragon and violating a sanctuary after it had been granted, and they were not having any more of it.

The Hag saw that she had overstepped her bounds and was only getting herself into trouble. She was not a natural elf and could not long fool true elves once their suspicion was aroused. She would lose all credibility if this contin- ued.

"Then let there be a trial," she said, assuming an aspect

of abrupt reasonableness. "A trial of right by strength— the golem and I. The survivor gets the girl."

The guards nodded. "That seems the best way," Trowel agreed. "We will schedule it for tomorrow—you against

the golem."

Grundy could not protest, because his alternative was

to get killed outright, here. But how could he hope to beat the horrible strength of the Hag in elven-form? He feared that he had only postponed the reckoning.

But Rapunzel brightened. "Oh, Grundy, I just know you can do it! Then everything will be all right!"

Or all wrong. But at least it gave her a night of hope, and that was worth something.

Chapter 16. Trial

In the morning Grundy found himself stiff from the prior day's exertion and still somewhat tired. They had locked him in a leafy chamber for the night, alone, but the elven maidens had brought him food and a cham- ber pot and had rubbed healing salve into his blistered

hands. He couldn't complain; if he seemed like a prisoner, still it protected him from the malice of the Hag, who was similarly isolated. He knew that Rapunzel was protected from contact with either litigant, until the decision was reached. The elves were, indeed, fair, in their rigorous fashion.

A guard, called Lathe, came to conduct him to the site of the trial. "Golem, you are not of our culture," Lathe said, touching the instrument that gave him his name. It was a kind of wooden framework with wheels mounted on it, used to rotate things that were being evenly shaped. Evidently he liked to be sure that a situation was properly shaped, too. "Do you understand the rules of the trial?"

"No."

"You have challenged the Prince's identity, and the Prince denies your charge. As we are unable to judge the merits of the case objectively, we are submitting it to trial by combat. Because you made the charge against the Prince, he has the choice of type of contest. He has chosen Lines and Boxes."

"Lines and Boxes?" Grundy demanded incredulously. He remembered the game he had played with the ant lion, back at the Good Magician's castle. But that was no duel- to-the-death! Well—not from the game itself. The con- sequence of losing, however, was death.

"You swing on the lines to the boxes, and cut the lines behind you. When you trap your opponent in a box, you dump him into the loop."

Evidently this was not the game he had played, though it seemed to have some similarities. Could similar strat- egies be followed? "I don't think I have done that before," Grundy said cautiously.

"Naturally not. It's an elven specialty that negates dif-

ferentials in size and strength. You do, however, need to be agile, and some cleverness helps."

This was sounding better. "What is this loop you men- tion?"

"It is an ancient artifact we have had in our Elm for centuries. Anything that passes through it, never returns, unless it is attached to something on this side, so that it can be drawn back quickly."

"Sounds like the Void," Grundy said, shuddering.

"The what?"

It seemed that the elves of this tree did not know about the geography of Northern Xanth. "A black hole that never yields what it takes in."

"Perhaps so," Lathe agreed. "Certainly whichever one of you falls through the loop will not return."