Isle Of View (5 page)

Jenny looked. “But that's just a little cloud! We have nothing to fear from that.”

“On the contrary! That looks very much like Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the very worst of clouds. He brings mischief to all good folk and even some evil folk.”

“A cloud! Oh, pooh!”

But Che looked extremely worried. “I hope you do not receive more of an education than you desire, Jenny Elf. Perhaps Fracto is merely passing by.”

But the cloud was not passing by. It loomed in close, becoming darker and larger. It seemed almost to have a nebulous face on it, with two big eyes and a bigger mouth. Then the mouth opened, and the cloud blew—and a cold wind rocked the raft.

Waves formed, and they advanced on the raft and rocked it. The cloud swelled up denser and uglier, and thunder rumbled within it. The wind whipped the foliage of the trees, and the first big raindrops spattered against the raft.

“Maybe we had better pole in to shore,” Jenny said, worried. “I don't want to get washed off the raft, with those water moccasins waiting.”

“Perhaps that is best,” Che agreed.

Jenny lifted the pole. But she remained light, while it remained heavy; now it seemed heavier than she was, which made poling awkward. But that was readily solved: Che flicked the pole with his tail, and it became light.

She shoved them toward the shore. But as she did, evil little faces appeared. The goblins!

Hastily she shoved the raft back away. The goblins stood and waved their stubby fists. Some of them had stones, but they did not throw them. There were more than there had been before—six, at least, that she saw. They must have gotten reinforcements.

“We can't go ashore,” she said.

“I fear we can't stay in midstream, either,” Che said. “Maybe it's safe on the other side.” She poled across.

But the water got deeper in the center, making the poling increasingly difficult. The storm intensified, so that the waves washed over the raft. Sammy was not keen on involuntary baths, and jumped up to Jenny's shoulder to hiss at the water.

The raft spun around. Jenny lost her footing and felt herself sliding off. She screamed—but Che caught her arm and prevented her from landing in the water. His four feet gave him a better anchorage; he had his hooves braced against the ridges of the raft.

Still the storm raged. Jenny knew now that Che was right: this was no ordinary cloud, but a magically malign demon of a cloud, out to get them. She couldn't guess why it hated them so, but it was doing its utmost to dump them in the river. She had not believed in the deliberate malignancy of weather, but now she did!

A gust of wind caught the raft and shoved it to the bank Jenny was trying to leave. She tried to stop it with the pole, but the thing caught in the bottom muck and was twisted out of her grasp. She was after all no big human man; she was a little elf girl, not used to this sort of thing.

The waves gathered for one concluding effort. They lifted the raft and tilted it so sharply that elf, cat, and centaur slid off it and into the shallow water. Jenny screamed as she splashed.

But the water moccasins did not clamp onto their toes. It seemed that the storm had scared them too, and they were either stunned or elsewhere. The goblins charged in and grabbed Jenny and Che. In a moment both were hopelessly tied up.

“Find help, Sammy!” Jenny cried desperately, though she feared there was no help to be had.

Sammy jumped past the goblins and disappeared. Maybe he would find help—but how would the help find them? For she knew the goblins wouldn't just leave her by the bank of the With-a-Cookee River. What had she accomplished in her effort to save the foal? Nothing but a delay, she feared. Now she was in just as much trouble as he.

Electra watched Chex fly away with Grundy Golem. She hoped Che was found soon, but she had a bad feeling about it all. The foal had been kidnapped, and that meant that someone was trying to hide him away. He would not turn up innocently wandering through the forest.

Who could want to do such an awful thing? Che was the only winged centaur foal in Xanth. If something happened to him, it would cut off the childhood of that entire species. That was even worse than an ordinary kidnapping, bad as that was. She wasn't sure that anything like that had happened in Xanth before.

Nada looked grim. She was such a lovely young woman in her human form that she looked terrific even that way! Electra envied her, and had no trouble understanding why Prince Dolph liked her better than Electra. Electra liked Nada better than Electra! She was a princess and a really nice person, too. If Electra could have chosen any woman to compete against, Nada would have been at the very bottom of her list. But for friends, the top of the list.

“We'd better get moving,” Nada said. She became a giant serpent.

Electra got on the serpent's back. Nada moved, sinuously gathering speed. There was a certain similarity to the way she walked in the human form, but then it had more effect on the eyeballs of any men in the vicinity: they practically popped out of their sockets. As a matter of fact, the golem's eyes had bulged similarly just now, perhaps because Nada was not wearing her clothing. Grundy had a perfectly lovely wife, Rapunzel, but like all males of any size he liked to stare at whatever else was in sight. He had not given Electra a second glance, and not just because she was clothed. No man gave her a second glance when she was with Nada, as she usually was. She was used to it.

It was too bad that Nada did not love Dolph the way he loved her. But of course she was five years older than he, now twenty to his fifteen. Nada was a poised young woman, while Dolph—well, even Electra had to admit that he was sort of unpolished. Electra loved him anyway; she couldn't help it, because of the enchantment she had fallen into. She had to love and marry the Prince who had kissed her awake after her thousand year (well, almost) sleep. She had not been the one who was supposed to make that sleep, and she was certainly no princess. But Evil Magician Murphy's curse had fouled everything up, and she had somehow bitten the apple and fallen into the special coffin, and now she was here.

Actually, Murphy wasn't all that bad, now that he had renounced his claim to the throne of Xanth. He had used his magic to help his son, Grey, get out of his horrible obligation to the evil machine Corn-Pewter. Maybe eight hundred years in the Brain Coral's pool, pickled in brine, had mellowed Murphy and twenty more years in Mundania had finished the job. Electra had forgiven him what he had done to her with his curse. She had sort of had to, because if that hadn't happened, she would have been long since dead and forgotten. Such things made a difference. Still, it wasn't any great situation she was in now: in love with a Prince who loved her best friend instead.

In fact, she was coming to a crisis. The Good Magician had done some research in the Book of Answers and discovered that there was a time limit to her enchantment. If she didn't marry the Prince by the time she was eighteen years old, she would die anyway. Betrothal could hold her only until she came of age; then she had to perform. If she did not marry him and consummate the marriage before she was eighteen, she would die on the stroke of her birthday.

It was tricky judging exactly how old she was because of her most-of-a-millennium sleep, but they had figured it out: only her normal life counted. So her aging had halted the moment she fell into the enchanted sleep and resumed when she woke from it. By that reckoning, she would be eighteen next week. Dolph would have to choose. He couldn't avoid it, because if he did nothing she would die, leaving only Nada for him to marry. His parents had laid down the Word: he could not do it by default. He had to Decide, and then marry the one he chose, and it would be done. One way or the other.

In a way it was good to have this distraction of Che's kidnapping, because it took her mind from her own problem or at least made her remember that she wasn't the only one in Xanth with something to worry about. Many folk had problems, after all! She knew she was lucky to have come here, and lived these past six years in Castle Roogna with good friends and her great love. Even if it was magical in origin and hopeless, it was still a great wonderful thing in her heart.

She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Why should she be crying, really?

Travel was swift down the magic path, and before long they were there. Electra dismounted, and Nada resumed her human form and donned her dress, panties, and slippers, which Electra had carried in her knapsack. The dress and slippers didn't matter, but it was essential that no male eye see the panties. They were exciting pink, while Electra's were dull white, but no males were supposed to know that. What would Xanth come to, if anything like that happened?

Nada turned to her, as they stood outside the castle moat. “I wish he would marry you," she said.

“I know.” But they both knew that their preferences didn't count. Only Dolph's counted. He would choose, and the one he chose would marry him. That had been understood from the outset, ever since Queen Irene had declared that he could not marry both. One man with two wives? It just wasn't proper, for some reason.

They gazed at the castle. It looked ordinary, but the drawbridge was up. That meant that they couldn't just go in.

They exchanged most of a glance. Good Magician Humfrey wasn't here now, but Grey Murphy was doing his best to substitute in the interim. He had the Book of Answers and all the collections of vials and spells and things, and Ivy to Enhance him when he needed it. He had done well enough, all things considered, these past three years, though Electra understood he sometimes had to scramble for a difficult Answer. He had set up the same rules Humfrey had maintained: any applicant had to pass three challenges to get into the castle and then to give one year's service or the equivalent. That was to weed out those who weren't really serious. Even so, there were quite a number of folk with Questions. Several were sitting by the bank of the moat now, evidently trying to make up their minds whether their Questions were really important enough to warrant the price required for the Answers. That explained why the drawbridge was up; otherwise those folk might simply have walked on in.

Nada nodded, and her gray-brown tresses bobbed prettily. Electra's tresses were brown too, but somehow they never bobbed; they just hung there listlessly, no matter how she tried to fix them. “I think Grey can't afford to play favorites,” she said.

Electra agreed. No favorites! Nada's other best friend was Ivy, and even Ivy got a trifle nervous when Nada got too close to her fiancé, Grey. Why Ivy and Grey were affianced, while Dolph, Nada, and Electra were betrothed, was a question none of them had ever quite worked out. So Grey couldn't afford to let Nada in without challenge, while others watched.

“Maybe I can go in alone,” Electra suggested. “Alone?” Nada's brown-gray eyes were beautifully perplexed. Electra's eyes were forgettable, whether perplexed or excited. Even she could not remember their color, if they had any.

“No one will notice if I go in.”

“ 'Lectra, are you going into another inferiority tizzy?” Nada demanded severely.

“Well—” Electra said guiltily.

“I won't have it! You're a great friend and a great girl, and only an idiot wouldn't notice you!”

“How about Dolph?” Electra asked wryly.

“He is an idiot!”

Then they both laughed, appreciating the painful truth of that.

“Anyway,” Nada said after a moment, “it's not you or me, it's that the drawbridge is up and we can't ask favors. So we'll just have to forge in any way we can, just like anyone else. We do have a Question, after all.”

“Not the one I'd like to ask.”

“Maybe we can get Dolph to ask it.”

“We'd have to dose him with a love potion first!”

Nada paused. “Now I wonder—”

“Forget it! Even if he loved me, he'd still love you too, and you're everything I'm not, so—”

“Now stop it, 'Lectra! Physical appearance isn't everything.”

“Right. There's also the matter of royalty versus peasant, and niceness versus—"

“You're nice, 'Lectra! You're as nice as anyone, and—”

“And I have freckles too.”

“Oh, you're hopeless!” Nada exclaimed in exasperation. She was lovely when exasperated, as Electra wasn't.

“That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

Nada changed the subject. “So we'll both go in. Together. As soon as we figure out how.”

Electra contemplated the moat. She didn't see any moat monsters, but they were surely lurking somewhere. It would not be safe to swim, unless Nada became a bigger monster.

“Suppose you become a giant water serpent, and—”

“My thought exactly! Get on.”

Nada shrugged out of her clothes, handed them over, and became the serpent. Electra stuffed the clothes in her knapsack and bestrode her, as she had when they traveled the magic path. Nada slid into the water and started across. Electra's feet and dress were getting wet, but she wasn't going to let that stop her; they would dry in due course.

There was a stir at the far shore. Electra peered forward. “All I see is shells,” she reported. Then she laughed. “She saw sea shells by the sea shore! Only it's a moat shore.”

There was a bang, and something flew toward them. “Duck!” Electra cried.

Nada ducked, and Electra got dunked. But the object missed, plunking into the water behind them.

Nada surfaced, lifting her head for a hiss.

“I don't know,” Electra said. “It looked like a flying shell with the number point twenty-two painted on it.”

Nada shook her head, unable to make much sense of this. Electra understood her confusion. Since when did shells fly? They normally lay on the beach or under water.

Then there was a bigger bang, and a larger shell came flying. This one had the number .357 on it. “Down!” Electra screamed.

They dived again, and the shell missed.

After a moment they resumed motion—and an even larger shell, marked .45, came flying at them. “Another!” Electra cried, throwing herself aside.

When she came up, something clicked in her head. “It's a challenge!” she gasped. “Those shells are the first line of defense!”

Nada looped around, and they headed back for the outer shore. When they got there, Nada changed to woman form and climbed out. A man farther around the moat fell over; evidently he had gotten too much of an eyeful and was stunned. Electra was sure it wasn't her own bedraggled wet-clothinged body that had done it.

“I never heard of flying shells!” Nada said. "How can we get past, when they keep getting bigger?”

Electra concentrated. “I almost remember something, maybe from when I visited Mundania. Some folk—they like to throw shells at targets, I think. Or at bulls. Something like that. The eyes—it sounds so mean—”

“Bull's-eyes!” Nada exclaimed. “I've heard of that. They aren't really animals, but big painted circles. Maybe if we make one of those, the shells will go for it.”

It seemed worth trying. They scrounged around, and found a giant white pillow from a pillow bush, and a patch of Indian paint brushes. They used one of these to paint Indian designs—it wouldn't paint anything else—in a big circle that looked somewhat like an eye. Then they floated this in the moat, the eye looking up,

Sure enough, the shells went for it. And while the shells were distracted by the target, Nada and Electra quietly swam across and emerged on the castle side. The only one to see was another man beyond the moat, and he promptly went rigid and keeled over the way the first had. Nada did have that effect on men, even without her pink panties.

Nada dressed. Electra's knapsack was watertight, so Nada's dress was nice and dry and fresh, while Electra looked like a damp zombie. But she knew that even if her clothes had been fresh, and Nada's sodden, Nada would have been a sight for sore eyes, while Electra would have been a sight to make eyes sore.

But hardly were they through, when the next challenge was upon them. A swarm of flying red objects charged them. Each was roughly heart-shaped but not properly symmetrical; there were ugly tubes protruding from the tops, and great swollen veins around their bodies. Each pulsed horrendously.

“Oh!” Nada cried daintily as one of the grotesque things whammed into her shoulder. Even when under attack, she was ladylike.

“Yuck!” Electra grunted in unladylike fashion as another sailed at her face.

“What are they?” Nada asked, trying to avoid another that was threatening to splatter her nice dress with juice exactly the color of blood.

“Monsters of the next challenge!” Electra replied, as the thing missed Nada and scored on her own dress. Bright gore dribbled down it and dripped to her feet.

Nada became a big snake and reared up at the next red blob, her dress hanging awkwardly on her new body. In a moment she slithered out of it. She opened her mouth, showing formidable fangs, and hissed. The blob veered to the side—but another splatted her from behind. Her head whirled to snap at that one—whereupon the one in front splatted its gore on her.

“There are too many of them!” Electra cried. “We can't fight them; we'll just get hopelessly gored. We have to figure out the key to this challenge!”

The snake slithered down into the moat to wash off the splat. That left Electra as the main focus of attention. A huge blob smashed into her chest, trying to knock her down.

She grabbed it, and lifted it up, ready to hurl it into the moat. But she knew it would just loop around and attack her again. The thing was slimy with leaking blood, and worse, it was warm and pulsing. Just as if a living heart had been ripped from—

“Aaarrghhhr' she groaned with heartfelt horror. ”It is a heart!"

The snake became Nada in her natural form: a naga, with the body of a serpent and the head of a woman. “A heart attack!” she exclaimed. “I've heard of them, but I never thought it would happen to me!”