“Do you happen to know where to find the philter?” Iris inquired.
“No, Mother,” the child said.
“Can you do some magic that might locate it? Such as whirling around and pointing your finger in the correct direction?” That was the talent old Crombie the Soldier had.
“Sure.” Surprise spun around and extended one hand.
Iris looked in that direction. “This seems to be toward the pool. We have already been there. But it surely is a suitable place for such a device.”
They walked in that direction. They soon came to the edge of the pool. “But it will be difficult to search under the water,” Iris said. “Can you move the water out of the way for a while?”
“Sure.” Surprise concentrated, and the water humped, jiggled, and formed into a huge doughnut-shaped bubble that floated up out of the pool bed. It hovered there, flexing gently.
“Is it safe to go below it?” Iris asked.
“Oh, sure,” the child said. “I think.”
Iris decided to take that on faith. The child's magic was erratic, but was certainly powerful. She was using it with greater caution and control now, which was also good. If they found the philter, the slight depletion of the child's remaining talents would be justified.
They walked into the basin of the pool. There were pebbles there, and chips of stone, and rock fragments, and pieces of mineral, and some rubble. Also some Mundane coins. How could they have gotten here? They wouldn't have moved themselves, and no one would have thrown them in the pool, because Mundanes were notoriously tightfisted with their money. But no philter. “Maybe it's on the island,” Iris said.
They walked onto the island, and into the enclosure.
There was the pedestal on which the gargoyle rested, but Gayle Goyle was gone. “She's with Gary,” Surprise said.
“Well, at least that means that she's not the philter,” Iris said, forcing a laugh. She hadn't thought of that until this moment, but the realization was a relief. She understood that the lady gargoyle was a nice creature. It would have been horrible if Surprise had pointed her out as the demon.
It might have made sense, because a gargoyle was indeed a variety of filter, and Gayle had been doing that job here.
They kept looking, but the island was bare. There was nothing that looked remotely like a filter.
Then Iris remembered the problem with Crombie's talent: it didn't show how far. They had been wasting time here, when the philter was probably well beyond this place.
They walked on out the other side. The water doughnut still hovered. “You can let the water go now, dear,” Iris said.
“Okay.” SPLAT! The water sloshed down into its cavity. The splash drenched them both. “Oopsie,” Surprise said. “I'll dry us.” A barred vent opened in the ground beneath them, and hot air wafted up, lifting their skirts. Iris could feel the drying action.
“That's very nice, dear.” Iris said, hastily pressing down her skirt with her hands. Unfortunately the jet of air was so strong that this was mostly ineffective; it was all she could do to keep her panties from showing. It was a good thing there were no men in the vicinity. Then again, maybe that wouldn't be so bad, because she was back in her twenty-three-year-old body. A lot could be accomplished in the way of male motivation by a supposedly accidental exposure of the right material. “But you really should save your talents unless there is pressing need.”
“Oh, yes,” Surprise said, chagrined.
When they were dry, they walked on in the direction indicated. They came to the train station. There was a train of thought sitting there. It bore a sign saying PAST.
Iris was surprised. “Do you suppose you were pointing to this train?” she asked.
“I guess,” the child said.
“I wonder whether the indication is literal or figurative.”
“What?”
“Whether the philter is on this train, or whether thinking about the past can tell us where it is.”
“Oh. Let's ride the train. It's fun.”
Iris shrugged. That seemed to be as good an approach as any.
They boarded the nearest coach and sat together on one of the seats. They looked out the window as the train began to move. Iris knew that this was the work of the philter demon, because it wasn't hers. The train was illusion, of course; they had merely entered a stone enclosure and were now watching screen images beyond it. But she didn't want to spoil the effect for Surprise, who still possessed the invaluable asset of childish wonder. Iris remembered how that had been, eighty-seven years before when she had been that age.
The city of Hinge passed behind them, and they proceeded through attractive countryside. This reminded Iris of the travels of her youth, and the nostalgia pressed in on her, bringing a tear to one eye.
Then they passed a lake with an island shrouded in mist.
That reminded her of the misty Isle of Illusion, where she had resided so long, alone. She had had everything her own way, but it had been so lonely. The past was painful.
“This is dull,” Surprise said, tiring of the scenery.
“That is perhaps because you have less past than I do,” Iris said with mixed emotions.
“Yes, I've been in Xanth only one year,” the child agreed. “You've been here for ever and ever. What was it like way, way back when you were really as young as you look?”
“Oh, you would not be interested in that.”
“Well, it can't be duller than this.”
Point made. “I will tell you. But you don't have to listen when you get bored.”
“Okay. Maybe I'll just fall asleep.”
Iris started speaking, remembering an episode in her distant past: the first time she had been twenty-three years old, and possessed of a far greater store of innocence than she was ever to enjoy thereafter. As she spoke, she seemed to live that life again, with all its early naive feeling.
After she settled on the Isle of Illusion, the isolation and loneliness almost drove her off the edge into madness. She had been so sure she would like it here, with nobody to bother her or object to her constructions of illusion. Here she had things exactly her own way, with a beautiful palace and gardens and fountains and everything. She had strengthened her power and control by practice, going over each aspect repeatedly until she could readily get it exactly right. But somehow, after the fun of Grafting it all in wonderful detail, she discovered that the thrill was gone. Instead of creating an ideal residence, she had locked herself into nothingness.
But Iris was a woman of firm resolve. So she did something about it. She gathered herself together with sufficient supplies and went to see the King.
“Please, your majesty,” she pleaded after explaining her dissatisfaction. “Give me something to do. Anything. I am a Sorceress, and can surely be useful somewhere.”
The Storm King was gracious, “Iris, the only way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“I don't understand. I never did anything for anyone else when I didn't have to.”
“Precisely. Therefore, because I am a merciful and not completely dull king I hereby grant your request. I am sending you on a sacrificial underground undercover mission.”
Iris was not absolutely sure she liked this. “Under covers I can handle. But there are goblins and things underground.”
The Storm King looked at her as if she were a trifle stupid, which seemed to be an accurate assessment. “There is an immoral, illegal, dirty, despicable, revolting, and generally reprehensible slave trade in Xanth,” he said. “In fact I don't especially approve of it, and want to shut it down.
So I want you to use your powers of illusion to persuade these human cockroaches that although you are an experienced intelligent adult woman of a certain age, you are nevertheless a peach ripe for the picking.”
“A peach,” Iris repeated, clothing herself with the body of a huge peach.
The King frowned. “Perhaps I did not make myself perfectly clear. I ap
ologize.” But he didn't look apologetic.
“In other words you will change your aspect to appear young, beautiful, naive, and fresh from the virgin islands.”
Oops. Iris had great powers of illusion, but she would never be able to visit those islands. Not after that episode three years before when she had—never mind. “I—”
“The operative word is 'appear,'“ he reminded her sternly. “I think your illusion should be adequate to generate such an appearance, challenging as it may be.” He frowned. “But I must advise you that this mission is risky.
You might lose your life, your love, or your very soul.
Sign here.” He put a parchment before her.
That seemed like a heavy price to pay for easing loneliness. But she knew that her sacrifice could not be as great as the King feared, because she had no love to lose.
So she signed the release form.
There followed some reasonably dull events it was easy to skim over. It was enough to say that in due course her great effort of virginal illusion was successful, and she was captured by pirates and sold to the slavers. She found herself in the company of young women and children, all of whom were stunned by their fate. She was marched with the rest of the luckless captives from the ship's gangplank through the Three Sisters dunes to the Black Heath to the central plaza of a stony city in ruins covered with twisting whispering vines of kudzu. The ancient city appeared to have gray, silvery, stony gargoyles of every known size, shape, and degree of ugliness squatting everywhere. She stared one of the grotesque stone monsters in the snoot, and it required every ounce of her feeble and waning courage not to scream with fear and revulsion. Those eyes of stone seemed to strip away her veils of illusion. Did the monsters know her secret identity?
She saw the dread Blacksmith Anvil in the center of the Black Heath. She had learned that when a slave was sold, he or she was “married over the anvil”: new, permanent collars of iron were forged, with metal loops for the chains to connect to. If she were bound in that manner, none of her illusions would free her. But she couldn't escape yet, and not merely because of the manacle on her left wrist that bound her to the others in her miserable group. Because she had not yet learned the identity of the Master Slaver. If she identified that man, and told the King, the man would be taken out and the entire slave industry would collapse. But if she failed to identify him, slavery would continue. So her mission was not complete until she had learned what no other agent of the King had. She was bound by her mission as much as by the chains.
They marched past a massive stone block. There were dark stains on it: the remnant of countless beheadings of slaves who had tried to rebel, or who had been too weak or lazy to work as hard as they were supposed to, or who had simply been unlucky. She fancied she could see dents in the dust where their heads had bounced. “Long live Xanth,” she whispered inaudibly, to squeeze a tiny fragment of a bit of battered courage into her system. Truly, she thought, vengeance was the heart of justice. She hoped one day to see the Master Slaver himself stretched across that terrible block.
They were brought to the steep face of a barren mountain wall where several dark caves showed. They were separated into chains of four or five and pushed unceremoniously inside, two chains to a cave. Ironwood grates were clanged into place, shutting them in. This was their lodging for the night.
Iris found dirty straw on the floor, and shaped some of it into a mattress. She lay on it, sharing it with her chainmates, who were three girls below Adult Conspiracy age, and mended their tears as well as she could. She gave the straw the illusion of soft warm down, and the children relaxed and slept, not knowing the source of their comfort.
None of them knew the fate they faced on the morrow.
But she was neither beheaded nor sold immediately. It seemed that she was part of a group that was being held for a later event. She was not even abused, probably because that would spoil the delicate beauty of her illusion aspect. The slavers thought she would fetch an excellent price, if properly marketed, and so they took their time.
And the Master Slaver did not make an appearance. So life proceeded in a halfway or third-way manner for the nonce.
One day she sat with several others at a small, cold, gray stone table in the dark blue shade of a sweet-smelling eucalyptus tree in front of the kitchen cases facing the Black Heath plaza. Iris sat with her chainmate children drinking tsoda popka flavored with the juice of fresh sublime. In reality it was just water, but the children had learned not to reveal or question the illusions that made their lives bearable. Iris never made any obvious illusions, and never made any kind when a slavemaster was near or watching, and no one ever hinted that their lives were anything but drudge. It was a faint conspiracy of silence.
The hot sun was just up, and the day was showing that golden flash of green that Iris enjoyed so much, and if she enhanced it with illusion, any slave who noticed pretended to ignore it. “One day at a time,” she whispered to herself.
“Take one day at a time.” And hope that she got to identify the Master Slaver before any of them were sold.
For although she seemed to be taking her ease, looking around with interest at the red rocks, moody blues, and golden sands of the slave camp, she was far from feeling relaxed or happy. After doing only three weeks of undercover work for the King of Xanth, she knew that if things went wrong it would be undercover work in more than one way. She had seen the slaver men eying her, hoping that some flaw would turn up to make her unsalable so they could take her for themselves. Sometimes they left branches or stones in the path, seemingly by accident, that she might trip on in the dark. A fall could mar her face, dropping her value. Actually it had worked once; she had fallen and scraped her cheek. But she covered it with illusion so that they never knew. Now she was careful to make the illusion of a darklight whose radiance could be seen only through the illusion of special contact lenses, so that she could see her way in the darkness.
She was already homesick for the misty Isle of Illusion and the cool green seas that pounded on her sandy beach.
She was also footsore from the original forced march to this hidden slave camp and the constant running around she had to do to serve the slavemasters and keep the children out of trouble. She had traded the lack of company for the lack of comfort. Well, not entirely; she remembered that summer when she had visited Fire Island and been swarmed by fire ants. She had managed to put out the fire with copious wet sand, but had suffered second-degree burns on her feet and first-degree burns on her legs. For weeks she had hobbled along on blistered soles, unable to conceal the pain from herself though of course she covered it with three and a half layers of illusion. Her feet weren't in that much trouble, here in the slave camp, but overall it was about as bad because of the fatigue of the rest of her body and the humiliation of her situation.
She got up to fetch another small drink of water, because illusion could not actually quench her thirst. The children followed in lockstep, because that was the best way to keep the chain from yanking on them. They limped across the black square, using illusion to make the walk seem natural to others, toward the beautiful “Gothic” fountain. She didn't know what kind of creature a Goth was, but it must have been fearsome, because the fountain was lovingly endowed with several unlovable hideous frozen-in-stone gargoyles playing in its golden center.
Surely it had required a powerful spell to lock such creatures there.
Beside the fountain a scarred, blue-faced, leather-and chain, grungy, armored mercenary subhuman male was flirting with a fiery fox-haired feminine feline neohuman creature. She seemed amenable, as she was talking freely and acting very kittenish. Iris had seen her around, and knew her name was Katka. Like all camp followers, Katka, though scantily clad, covered one eye with the black shawl she wore over her hair. This was a very strange thing, and Iris really would have taken note, had she ever been in the mood to think about it. Why should a woman cover her head better than her torso? The slaver, however,
seemed satisfied with that mode of dress, and was inspecting it closely.
But Iris' only thought was her wish to jump into that silvery blue cool pool of water and to let the healing streams of liquid spouting from the faucet-mouths of the diamond-eyed, dragon-headed, stone-faced creatures pour over her head, hands, and fiery feet. Unable to resist, she leaned over and splashed water across her face.
“You there!” the mercenary shouted. “That is forbidden!”
Quickly she and the children filled their cups and hurried away. How she wished the Master Slaver would make an appearance, so she could identify him and make her escape and get this entire sordid operation forever shut down. But whether from canniness or indifference, he remained absent.
That night, hot and miserable. Iris moaned in her restless sleep and dreamed a dream:
By the hot and humid noon, in a dale of dragons, Almost lifeless, a golden arrow in my breast, I lay;
Smoking mirrors rose all around me, and scarlet Drops of blood ran over my breast and dripped away.
I lay upon the golden burning sands alone.
The sheer precipices of the seven devils made no sound, The kettenhund (watch-dog) lay panting in the sun, And I scorched too, near the River of No Return, on the ground.
I dreamt I heard an infant crying in the light.
The Demon struck; there in the sand, my lover's body lay;
Steam rose from hell's canyon's Oh-No hot springs, The blood ran cold and down and out of it, and dripped away.
She woke, wondering what it meant. She had never been struck by an arrow, especially not a golden one, or had a lover suffering like that. Yet the dream seemed much like a memory. Surely it had special significance.