Part 11 (1/2)

I cogitated a bit, realizing that there was a missing element here. By and by I ran it down: I had been thinking of my ideal woman. I had been holding the magic mirror in my hand. The thing must have flashed me a picture of that woman.

What the mirror wanted, of course, was to tempt me into asking a question. The more questions it could make me ask, the less accurate it would become, until it became useless to me. This was its way of getting rid of me, either by giving me bad answers or by getting given away.

”It won't work,” I said. ”I won't fritter away what accuracy remains in you by asking an irrelevant question. Once I locate Castle Roogna and am satisfied, then I can look for that woman. I don't want to know about her now, when the information may be at the expense of something I may need to know to save my life. So stop trying to distract me, you too-bright piece of gla.s.s.”

Bold words. But in fact that glimpse had struck through to my heart, and I wanted to know who that woman was. Would I really meet her at some time in the future, or was this a false image? I was tempted to give up this foolish quest for Castle Roogna and go in search of the woman. What mischief that mischievous mirror had done to my fancy!

Well, on. Thinking was not doing me much good after all. I fished out a repulsive spell that would protect me from attack by serpents, allegories, basilisks, dragons, and anything else of the reptilian persuasion, I found another that guarded against insects of every type. Another that made fish lose their appet.i.te. And one to wilt plants, from innocent poke berries to the huge deadly kraken weed. One more that would cause mammals below the humanoid level to retreat in disgust. That would spare me the awkwardness of b.u.mping into a hypotenuse or worse. Finally, a spell to spook birds, from the cutest little hummingbirds through the ugliest big roc. The thing was, I could not know what threats lurked in the deep mud and water and did not care to find out the hard way. So I guarded against them all. It was a shame to expend so many spells at once when perhaps none were necessary, but it would be foolish to gamble with my life.

I took off my clothes, wadded them into my pack, held it high, and waded into the mud. I was prepared for any creature that might wish to molest me in the water. Of course elves, gnomes, trolls, ghouls, and ogres were humanoid, but I hadn't seen any of these in this vicinity, and I did have other spells that would be effective against them. This was the advantage of collecting magic things. It had occurred to me that some of them might eventually be useful.

The mud sucked up around my feet and ankles, and then pulled back with a disgusted sizzle. The repulsive spells were affecting the small creatures lurking within it and the reaching roots of plants. I continued slowly, giving the whole mud puddle time to spread the word, satisfied that most creatures would prefer to get out of my way before I got to them.

My leading foot came down into a sudden hole, and suddenly I was waist deep in mud. Yes, that was a standard ploy of mud puddles; they tried to look shallow, then they would snare someone who believed it.

But it did this wallow no good, because nothing would touch me.

I forged on through the mud until it thinned and became muddy water. I was now chest deep, and my toes were sliding along the bottom. With luck I wouldn't encounter another hole; I hoped this muck had learned the futility of that device. So I could slowly forge through and out and finally scramble onto the far bank and be on my way toward the castle, which probably wasn't very far away now.

For somewhere in the course of my pondering a background thought had been percolating, and now it was rising slowly to the surface of my mind where it could be seen. It was this: it might be the castle itself that was trying to keep folk out. King Roogna had adapted a lot of living magic around the castle, and in the course of several centuries that magic could have coalesced into a halfway unified effort. Without King Roogna to tell it no, it had decided that any person who was not him was to be kept out. It had gotten quite effective, and I might be the first person to overcome it. That would be very nice.

Then something caught my ankle and pulled. What was this? My a.s.sorted spells should keep all enemies at bay!

I looked down, but could see nothing in the swirling opacity. This water was clear as mud, by no coincidence.

Now something was tugging on my other ankle. It did not feel like a tentacle. It was more like a webbed foot.

Then I realized what it was. My spells had not included the amphibians. This was an under-toad! A water-dwelling toad that crept along the bottom and hauled waders under. Here I was with my hands occupied holding up my packful of clothes and spells which I didn't want to get wet, and this thing was out to draw me down and drown me!

I tried to get away, but when I lifted one foot, the other was jerked out and I plopped down. I held the pack straight aloft and kicked my feet violently, managing to get one down onto reasonably firm muck. My head broke the brown surface, matted with bits of seeweed that must have gotten lost in this pond. Normally seeweed kept a sharp eye out for the sea, and draped itself over seesh.e.l.ls.

”Help!” I gasped involuntarily as there was another tug on my foot. The under-toad was only playing with me; soon it would get serious and drag me down for longer than a mere dunk. A lot longer.

A man appeared at the bank. He was purple. He caught an overhanging branch with one hand and extended the other to me. He caught me by a wrist and drew me toward him. Just in time, for my feet were going out again.

The toad hauled harder, not understanding why I wasn't going down. The purple man continued to pull me to the sh.o.r.e. In a moment he was joined by a green man, and the two of them got me up and out of the water, forcing the toad to let go lest it be brought to the surface. I had escaped with my pack undunked, my collection of spells complete.

”Thank you!” I gasped. ”I needed that.”

”Anything to help another colored person,” the purple man said.

There I realized who my benefactors were. There were some folk whose colors were different from others, and those of the rarer hues tended to seek their own company, because the majority sometimes made fun of them. They had evidently mistaken me for one of them, because I was now mud and seeweed colored. How would they react when they learned that I wasn't? That I was not one of the guardians of this region but someone trying to sneak in?

I thought about it for a third of a moment and concluded as usual that honesty was best, though they would probably throw me back in the pond. ”I'm not-”

”Look! There's a beach head!” Green exclaimed.

Purple and I looked to the side. There indeed was a head forming in the sand. This might be little more than a mud puddle, but it seemed to have a number of oceanic attributes.

”Quick! Fetch a beach comber!” Purple cried.

They charged into the jungle, foraging for combers. I had to admit that the beach head's hair was rather messy, so it was appropriate to comb it out. It was just my luck that the head had manifested right at this time.

I decided that three would be a crowd, as far as beach head combing was concerned. I marched on in the direction I hoped the castle was.

Interesting that there were human beings here. For colored people were human, despite the claims of some; they differed only in their hues. Apparently these ones had had trouble getting along elsewhere, so had accepted work here in the region that other folk avoided. It was too bad that they were not given the equal chance they deserved.

I squeezed through some foliage-and was abruptly facing a young blue woman. I remembered that I remained naked; my clothes remained in my pack. Fauns might run unclothed, but I was no faun, and this was no nymph. She was fully clothed.

I opened my stupid mouth. ”I, uh-”

”Where is the beach head?” she inquired. ”I have combs!”

”That way,” I said, pointing to my rear. Let me rephrase that: I pointed back the way I had come.

”Thank you, Brown,” she said, and dashed on.

I started to breathe a sigh of relief. But I had gotten no further than si before Blue paused, glancing back. Her gaze flicked to my midsection. She opened her pretty mouth.

”By the pond,” I clarified. ”Purple and Green are already there.”

She nodded and ran on. I breathed my gh, completing my sigh.

Then I looked down at myself. I was not as exposed as I had thought. Several thick strands of seeweed were hanging from the region the woman had been looking at, like a codpiece.

Perhaps I should get dressed now. But my body remained caked with mud, and that would ruin my clothes. There seemed to be no suit-able trees nearby, so I could not get a new suit. I decided to compromise by fas.h.i.+oning the seeweed (I wondered just what it was looking at) into a minimum loinpiece. That would have to do until I found water in which to wash.

But now night was closing in around me, and soon it would catch me. I would have to find a place to sleep. I was too tired to struggle on through darkness. My repulsive spells would protect me through the night, but I still needed somewhere comfortable to lie down.

I was in luck again: I spied bedrock. A nice big section of it, projecting from the ground. I went and touched it with one hand. It was genuine, no illusion, and wondrously soft. It was perfect. There was even a blanket tree nearby, with a fine heavy blanket just waiting to be harvested. That would ward away the chill of evening nicely.

I fished in my pack for a meal ticket, as I had not eaten all day. I tore the ticket in half, and the pieces formed into a fine loaf of bread and a flask of drink. I popped the cork and lifted the flask to my mouth. It turned out to be soft drink, which was fine; I did not care to tackle hard drink right now, because that had the side effect of making it hard for a person to keep his balance.

I completed my meal and lay on the bedrock. I bounced a little, enjoying the feel of the inner springs. Probably they contained more soft drink, but I preferred to let them be. If I bounced too hard, they might squirt out, and the bedrock would lose some of its softness. I relaxed.

Then the image of that face in the mirror returned to me. I knew that the mirror had no certain obligation to show the truth, especially since I had not actually asked it a question. It might have been the image of the most beautiful woman the mirror had seen in the past fifty years, and she could now be buried in that cute little graveyard where I had found the mirror. I suspected that the mirror didn't like me, so this might be its cruel joke. It was probably just trying to bug me, to deprive me of my peace of mind until I had to play its game and ask about the woman. I had known that ail along. But if that was its game, it was working.

But I refused to give the mirror the satisfaction of knowing how effective its ploy had been. I simply let that image be in my mind, enjoying it. I knew that there was a whole lot more to know about a woman than just her face, and I hated being so moved so foolishly, but in this respect I was a typical man. So I would complete my present mission, locate Castle Roogna, then see what to do about that woman, a.s.suming she existed. Then I slept.

In the morning I got up, used another meal ticket- they were quite handy when camping out-looked for water again, but only blundered into another nature bush. Thus I did not complete the particular function I had sought. I would just have to get clean when the opportunity came.

Before me was a dense forest of large trees. Now at last I was in familiar territory, as it were, for I knew that Castle Roogna was surrounded by just such trees. If these moved their branches to intercept an intruder- I stepped forward. The trees on either side of the avenue I was going toward swung their branches around to bar the way. There was no doubt of it now: this was what I was looking for.

Excellent. I had come prepared for this. I had not known that there were other defenses around the castle, but the orchard was part of the history that E. Timber Bram had written up. In fact it was his history that had reminded me of this missing aspect of Xanth and aroused my ever-ready curiosity.

I retreated, removing my pack. I brought out a vial of elixir and anointed myself with it. This was a familiar potion: it made the wearer smell familiar. Since trees neither saw nor heard very well as a rule, they depended on ambience: the general odor and att.i.tude of the creature who approached. If they smelled cold iron in the possession of an evil-smelling man, they became defensive, because the thing they hated most was the axe.