Part 41 (2/2)
”I am allowed to attend the wedding, as it is a zombie function. Thereafter I will cease to exist.”
She hugged him. ”I'll do something,” she promised. But she had no idea what. She herself had no magic, and was not going to be in Xanth beyond the wedding, either. She felt tearfully helpless.
”Fascinating mortal foolishness,” Fornax remarked.
”Oh, shut up! You're no help at all.”
”Perhaps. Would you like to play a game?”
”What?”
”A Demon game, whose rules are set and whose outcome is unknown.”
”I'm not a Demon! I'm not even a little d demon. I'm just an ordinary Mundane girl. How can I play any such thing? Anyway, I don't like what you did with my body.”
”Then you will not like this game. I want to borrow your body again.”
”Borrow my body! You tried to use it to seduce Justin Tree!”
”To corrupt the Demon Earth, to win the game. I will accept reasonable limitations in this instance. This is not really a game so much as a supplementary adjunct to a potential full Demon game, somewhat as was your case in the prior one.”
Despite her horror, Jaylin was curious. ”Why in the universe would you want to borrow my body again?”
”To have a base to visit Demon Earth.”
”He doesn't want anything to do with you.”
”That is an exaggeration. I succeeded in intriguing him. Perhaps I can complete the seduction.”
”With my body? No way!”
”I will agree to leave your body unseduced.”
”I don't understand.”
”The emotions engendered by the Swell Foop are fading. They could have been devastating, had they not been filtered through mortal bodies. Even so, they were moving. It was the dire threat of such emotions that caused me to agree to the game that cost me my captive; the Foop could have ruined me.”
”Ruined you? Those emotions just seemed to be frosting on the cake; you could have played your game without them.”
”But I would not have. The Demon Earth was in my power, and would have had to join me. I had no intention of risking that advantage on a wild gamble.”
”But you played the game!”
”Precisely. The Swell Foop was like a-” Fornax paused to fish a suitable a.n.a.logy from Jaylin's mind. ”A cannon pointed at my head. It could have given me the unfettered emotion of grief, so that I wished to expire, or of love, so that I would have done anything for those who controlled it. The Foop's active presence doomed me.”
”Then why didn't the other Demons just use it on you, to win without having to risk two more of their own number?”
”Because if they destroyed me, they would also have destroyed Demon Earth, who was in my power. They needed his gravity.”
It was slowly coming clear. ”So they offered you good stakes in a fair game, and you accepted.”
”I accepted,” the Demoness agreed. ”And lost. But not as much as I would have lost otherwise. As it is, I have now directly felt the power of emotion, and have become interested in mortal affairs. But I cannot intrude on another Demon's terrain hereafter without a normal-matter landing site. I want you to be that site.”
”So you can yank me out of my Mundane life and drag me off to your galaxy?”
”I will undertake to leave you in your familiar setting. In any event, I may not utilize your site in this century.”
”This century!”
”Or I may. Time is largely meaningless to Demons. I want the right to use it.”
”No!”
”You have not heard what I offer in return.”
”What?” Jaylin demanded rebelliously.
”The life of your zombie horse.”
Jaylin froze. ”You can save Putre?”
”I can arrange it, with the cooperation of other Demons.”
”Why the bleep should they cooperate with you?”
”They will if I face them with a worse alternative, as they did with me before.”
Jaylin suffered a complete and surely foolish reversal. ”You do that, and I'll make your deal. You can visit my body, provided you don't misuse it. I'll want another Demon to forge the agreement-the rules of the game. So I don't get scr-cheated.”
”Agreed.” Fornax sent out a mental signal, and Sim Bird joined them.
”Squawk?”
”Jupiter, as an experienced game player, and to facilitate a conclusion to the present situation, forge a fair objective agreement between me and this mortal girl.”
A monstrous mind-bending ma.s.s of information flowed between them. ”Squawk.”
It was done. Jaylin didn't have to ask; she had felt the exchange, and knew beyond any doubt that a tight Demonly agreement had been forged and would be honored. They had used at least another one percent of their joint attention; there were surely clauses that were well beyond her potential comprehension, protecting her. Demons did not bend the rules of any game in any trifling respect; they were absolute. She was quite safe.
After that, things went rapidly. All of the Demons remained at Castle Zombie to watch Breanna marry Justin. Jaylin now understood that this was not because they truly cared, but because they were waiting for their emotions to fade so that they could safely desert the mortal filters. ”She is a good girl,” Fornax remarked. ”She deserves him.”
”But you were trying to take him from her!”
”Only for the game. He is, after all, a mortal.”
”But he managed to resist your blandishments.”
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