Luck of the Draw (Xanth) (28 page)

The crossing seemed interminable. Bryce realized there was a headwind, slowing them. The small carpets lacked power, and were well loaded, so now they were barely making progress. Bryce peered ahead, trying to spot the far edge of the Gap.

That was when he saw the other cloud. Oh, no! That looked like Fracto, the mean-spirited storm they had escaped when they went underground. Would Fracto recognize them? Would he remember? Would he hold a grudge?

Yes, yes, and yes. The cloud swelled up before them. In fact it was the source of the headwind, stopping them from getting safely across.

“We need to turn back,” Bryce said tersely. “Drift with the wind, get back to land.”

Whereupon the wind stopped. Fog was forming behind them as Fracto flung out misty tentacles to surround them.

“What’s happening?” Mindy asked through clenched teeth.

“Weather,” Bryce said. Then, to the others: “Then we can descend, and wait it out.”

But the wind returned, rocking the carpets. They might get dumped before they could land.

“There’s a mesa!” Piper said. “On a mountain.”

“In the Gap Chasm?” Piper asked. “How can it be here?”

“It’s an anomaly,” Anna said.

Oh. Her talent was working for them. They dropped to a landing on the flat surface just before the rain started. Mindy opened her eyes, relieved, and got up off her carpet.

A large snake slithered close. Before they could react, it transformed into a lovely nude young woman. Bryce realized that transformations were hard on clothing unless it was built into the magic. “I am Nara Naga, chief of the Noway Naga,” she said. “Who are you and what brings you to Menace Mesa?”

“The storm,” Bryce said. “We were flying across when Fracto caught us. We had to land suddenly. I am Bryce, this is Piper, and these are Anna and Mindy. We’re on a Quest that takes us south. We’ll move on as soon as we can.”

“That’s all right,” Nara said. “These things happen. Come into our parlor.” She gestured, and a door appeared in the ground. A sloped ramp led down into a cave. “Quickly, before we all get drenched.” She led the way down and in.

They followed, encouraged by the thickening rain. Another naga maiden appeared and closed the door behind them, shutting out the rain just as it was getting heavy. They had escaped Fracto again, barely. Literally bare, for the naga.

“You must be hungry after your flight,” Nara said. “We’ll feed you.”

“Well, actually—” Bryce started, because they had had a good breakfast and it was not yet noon.

“We insist on demonstrating our hospitality,” Nara said. “Have some sweet cakes.” She showed them to a table that was spread with small cakes of assorted colors.

“Goblin cakes,” Mindy said. “However did you get those? Usually the goblins won’t share them.”

“We live in the upper section of the mountain,” Nara said, standing behind the table. She took a breath. She was very good at breathing; possibly it had something to do with her lack of a shirt. Had she worn a bra she would have freaked out the men; as it was she came close. “There is a goblin colony in the lower section. We trade with them. We trade similarly with the harpy roost nearby, and the nickelpede nest on the surface.”

“That’s interesting,” Piper said, observing that breathing. “Usually goblins, harpies, and naga are deadly enemies, and nickelpedes have no friends at all.”

“We are isolated here in the mountain,” Nara explained. Bryce remembered that she had called it Menace Mountain. He was not entirely easy with that. “We are out of contact with our own kind, and the goblins are similarly separated from theirs. We make the best of it.”

“That’s nice,” Anna said, nibbling on a green cake.

“Very nice,” Mindy agreed, trying a blue cake.

What could they do? Bryce and Piper picked up red and black cakes while gazing involuntarily at Nara’s impressive torso. The pastries were truly tasty, perhaps rendered more so by the conducive context.

“I will show you to your chamber,” Nara said, turning in a manner that displayed her side and back, which were just as good as her front.

“Oh, we’re not staying,” Bryce protested. “We only came in out of the rain.”

“Perhaps,” Nara said. She opened a door to a room with two bunks and a barred window. “This should do.”

“But there’s no need—” Bryce said.

Nara stepped up and kissed him on the mouth. Bryce froze in place, surprised both by the kiss and its potency. It was not the same as a gourd apology kiss, he thought, as there was nothing apologetic about it, but it had its own authority. “Perhaps you and I will tryst tonight,” she murmured.

“Oh, I wouldn’t—”

She caught his hand and set it on her finely sculpted bare bottom. That was when he freaked out despite her lack of panties.

“Wake!” Piper said.

Bryce stirred woozily. He was lying on a bunk. “I think I freaked out. That naga woman—”

“She drugged us,” Piper said. “Fool that I was, I never suspected. I should have known she was not flashing that luscious body for nothing. She distracted us while she fed us that tainted food.”

Bryce began to make sense of it. “That bare body, that breathing. That bottom. She was preventing me from doing any serious thinking, until the cake took effect.”

“Exactly,” Piper said. “I have encountered that type before, but wasn’t alert. We’re in trouble.”

“I wasn’t distracted by her body,” Mindy said. “But I suspected nothing. Why did she do it? We were no threat to her folk.”

“Where is Anna?” Piper asked.

They looked around. There were only the three of them in the room. “Trouble,” Bryce agreed.

“Go to the window,” Nara said. She was standing outside the door, which Bryce now saw was a barred gate. This was a prison cell!

They went to the window. It looked out from the sheer cliff of the side of the mountain. There was no purchase above, below, or to the sides, and the drop to the floor of the chasm was horrendous. The cell seemed to be inside a U-shaped curve, so that they could see that cliff curving near the open section of the U.

Enough time had passed so that Fracto had given up the siege. That was not necessarily encouraging.

“We’re prisoners,” Mindy said, appalled. “But why? We’re not criminals. We’ve done nothing to deserve this.”

“Precisely,” Nara said. “You are innocent travelers of exactly the kind we favor. We are, incidentally, not a normal tribe of naga. We were banned because of our special tastes. Keep watching, and you will see your companion being displayed.”

“Displayed?” Bryce asked, staring at her. He did not like the implications at all.

“For the goblins, harpies, and nickelpedes,” Nara said. “I told you how we trade with them. We do it by providing them with live raw meat, which they greatly appreciate. That prevents them from coming after
us
for such treats.”

“Raw meat?” Piper asked. “
Anna
?”

“We normally start with the most innocently appealing specimen,” Nara said. “But never fear, your turns will come.”

Piper was still peering out the window. “There’s Anna! They’re suspending her from a pole!”

Bryce went to look. There was Anna in a harness, hanging below a horizontally projecting pole. She was evidently just now waking up from the drugging, not yet fully aware of her situation.

Now Piper turned to face Nara. “What is the mechanism of this display?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” the naga said. She remained nude, but somehow Bryce did not find her as attractive as before. “First to come will be the harpies, who will pluck out her eyes and tongue and anything else they fancy. Some of them have necklaces of eyeballs. Next the male goblins will arrive, to poke into the parts of her body they fancy. By the time they are sated, the nickelpedes will get there to consume the rest. At that point she will finally die. We all love to hear the screaming.”

“I was not angry until this moment,” Piper murmured grimly. “Bryce, distract her. Mindy, direct me.”

He was going to change into monster form! But he needed to conceal it so that the naga did not understand what was happening.

Bryce went to stand directly in front of Nara, blocking her view of the window. “You said we might tryst tonight,” he said. “Did you mean it?”

“That depends,” she said, eying him appraisingly. “Exactly how cooperative can you be?”

He knew that no appeal to her good nature would be effective. So he appealed to her bad nature. “To guarantee that I’m the last one displayed? I can be pretty ardent. Maybe I can persuade you to spare me entirely.”

“You would have to be. I like truly lusty men.”

“I can be lusty.” Then, realizing that she might react to his body similarly to the way he had reacted to hers, he took off his shirt.

She was interested. “More.”

He took off his trousers and stood in his underpants. She focused intently on them, but did not freak out. Maybe that was because she was only half humanoid. “Yes, I think you will do,” she said, and turned away. “Until tonight,” she said, making a flirt of her bottom that half stunned him. In another moment she was gone.

Bryce turned to face the others, hoping he had given Piper time. “You did,” Mindy said from the window. “Piper is on his way.”

“I am disgusted as well as appalled,” Bryce said. “That naga has absolutely no conscience. She was talking of a tryst while setting us up for torture and death.”

“Piper will rescue Anna.”

“Yes. Then we’ll have to break out of here.”

“Maybe you can draw a device.”

“Maybe I can,” he agreed. “A crowbar, or a jack.”

“Or a pineapple.”

“Explosive,” he agreed. “Blast us out.” Then he thought of something. “But that will replace our carpets.”

“We can make new ones once we escape.”

Now they both peered out the barred window. The black monster was sliding across the cliff wall toward Anna, but was going low. “Move up slightly,” Mindy called. Piper did, and now was headed directly toward Anna.

There was a cry in the sky. “The harpies are coming!” Bryce said. “And Piper’s not there yet.”

“Piper!” Mindy called. “The harpies are coming. They’re out beyond the U. Can you see or hear them?”

There was a note from a vent. “He can,” she said. “But he’ll need our help for pinpoint accuracy.”

“I can do that,” Bryce said. “You direct him to Anna; I’ll spot the harpies for him.”

“Anna’s about a hundred feet ahead of you,” Mindy called. “Make sure you don’t bomb her!”

“A harpy squadron is coming in,” Bryce called. “At about nine o’clock, range three hundred feet.”

The monster issued a harsh series of notes. A flicker of magic flew out. Then a fireball exploded just ahead of the harpies.

There was a collective squawk of dismay as the harpies drew up short. Then they reorganized and flew on toward Anna. Apparently they thought the fireball was a fluke.

“Look at those eyes!” one screeched. “Dibs on the blue one!”

“Dibs on the brown one,” another harpy screeched.

That was right: Anna had different-colored eyes.

“Dibs on the tongue!” a third screeched. It seemed that their normal mode of communication was the screech.

“What horror,” Mindy murmured, shuddering.

“Ten o’clock, range two hundred feet,” Bryce called.

This time the fireball burst in the middle of the squadron. The dirty birds were blasted out of the sky, feathers burning.

“You’re about fifty feet from her,” Mindy called.

Then Bryce saw a door open just over the pole, where it stuck in the wall. Goblin males swarmed out and scrambled along the pole toward Anna. “I got first poke!” the lead goblin cried. He reached the end of the pole and started shimmying down the rope toward Anna.

“Second poke!” the next goblin cried, starting down after him.

Now Bryce shuddered. It seemed that the goblins were going to swarm over Anna as she hung, intent on gang rape she could not flee.

“Goblins on pole,” Bryce called. “About to get on her.” How could Piper blast them without also blasting Anna?

The first goblin reached Anna. He clung to her body, ripping away handfuls of her clothing. But she did not give him the satisfaction of screaming. She was one brave girl.

Harsh music sounded. The first goblin stiffened and fell, screaming as he plunged toward the distant ground. The second clung for an instant and a half, then also fell, also screaming. Those were obviously not the screams they had sought.

“He can paralyze with his music,” Mindy murmured.

Oh. Of course. “But what of Anna?”

“She’s paralyzed too, but she’s tied in her harness. Only the goblins are loose.”

Ah. The monster had more tricks than Bryce had realized.

But the goblins, intent on rapine, were slow to get the message. More of them were scrambling along the pole. And were getting stunned, and falling, as more harsh notes sounded.

Then the monster reached the pole. That cut off the goblin approach.

But now a third menace manifested. The face of the cliff scintillated with reflections off moving shells.

“The nickelpedes,” Mindy said, horrified anew. “They are excellent climbers.”

But Piper had already picked up on them. Ichor welled from his body and flowed across the wall. It intercepted the nickelpedes. There was a sizzling as they curled up and died, burned by the acid.

Piper had single-handedly wiped out all three attacking hordes. “My hero!” Anna cried.

“But how can he get her safely down?” Mindy asked. “He can’t safely reach her.”

“Maybe there’s a way,” Bryce said. Then he called to Piper: “Nullify your acid. Make your body sticky!” And to Anna: “Swing!”

Anna swished her legs back and forth, and began swinging. She sailed out from the cliff, then in toward it. Out, in, swinging higher. Soon she managed to bang into the monster’s body.

And stuck there.

A pseudopod reached out and touched the rope over her head. The rope separated, burned through. That left Anna sticking to Piper. She was nothing loath.

The monster was rescuing the maiden. There was the singular anomaly of this adventure. Which meant that however helpless Anna had seemed, her talent had been working for her.