“Why, sure. Princess,” Hiatus said, starting to step forward.
“Nuh-uh,” Mentia said, extending an arm to restrain him. “There's demon substance in that battery.”
“You won't take my battery?” Electra asked, looking extremely innocent.
“You're an enemy illusion,” Iris said grimly. “We don't trust you.”
“Then you must accept the other thing I have for you,”
Electra said, setting down the battery. “Assault.” And she sprouted fangs and pounced on Surprise.
But Gayle moved more swiftly, leaping to intercept her.
The gargoyle knocked the woman to the side, so that the child was never touched. The image of Electra dissolved into an irritated cloud.
“Gee, thanks,” Surprise said, curiously unconcerned.
Maybe she thought the attack had been another harmless illusion. She stepped forward to investigate the battery.
Mentia formed into a bright metal shield and jumped between the child and the battery. And the battery exploded. Shards of metal flew out, some bouncing off the shield. One struck Gary, but it didn't hurt him, being illusion. But it was clear that there was substance in the ones that struck the shield, because it clanged loudly with their impact.
Iris kneeled down before Surprise. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.
“Sure.” But now the child looked shaken. “Why did that nice lady try to hurt me?”
“Because you are evidently now the leading threat to the freedom of the philter,” Mentia said, reforming from the shield. “The rest of us were threats when we were figuring out how to locate and control it, but now we know how to do that, so we no longer matter to it. We will need your magic for the actual conjuration, so it seeks to destroy you first.”
“How do you know that?” Gary asked, surprised.
“Because the philter is a cold, logical demon without a lot of direct physical substance or energy to waste. It wouldn't attack her physically unless it feared her.”
The others nodded. The demoness had proved to be the most sensible of them all, again.
“We shall have to be specially protective toward her,” Iris said.
“I will carry her,” Gayle said. She lay down before the child, and Surprise climbed up onto the stone back and grabbed on to the stone fur. “This is fun!” she announced.
“A gargle ride!”
“A gargle ride,” Gary agreed, though he winced internally. They had to keep the child safe, and happy as well, if they could manage it.
Already something new was developing. A group of creatures was advancing from the castle. “Centaurs!” Iris said. “Beware their expert archery.”
“But if the arrows are illusion—” Gary began.
“Whatever flies at Surprise won't be,” Mentia said.
“Any more than the fragments of the battery that flew at her were.”
“Then we had better take evasive action,” Gary said, appreciating the point. “But it's hard to flee when we can't see the real terrain.”
“I can't abolish the philter's illusion, but I can recognize it,” Iris said. “There's an avenue through the city, that way.” She pointed to the thickest section of the orchard surrounding the castle. “We can run along that with fair safety.”
“And it looks completely impassable,” Mentia said.
“Suggesting that that's the way the philter least wants us to go.”
They were still searching for they knew not what. Gary remained doubtful, but had no better alternative to suggest, so he kept his mouth shut. In this Region of Madness, maybe the maddest notions were appropriate.
So Gary ran, trusting her perception, and the others followed him. It looked as if he were heading directly into a thicket of needle cacti, but there was nothing there. It reminded him of Desiree's magic path, invisible to those not on it. But this one remained invisible while they were on it.
However, the centaurs changed course to pursue. Several nocked arrows to their bows as they galloped within range. Mentia formed into another shield, this one with legs, and ran directly behind Gayle and Surprise, protecting them. But at the rate the centaurs were overhauling them, they'd soon get around that.
“We can't outrun those illusions,” Hiatus said, puffing.
“There's a real hinged stone column here,” Iris gasped, pointing to the left. “Hide behind that.”
Gary swerved into what looked like a mud puddle, and glanced off the side of the stone column. Ouch! But he found the corner of it, and gestured to the others. They whipped around it and clustered behind its protection, the illusion-invisible stone at their backs.
Mentia formed into a metallic tube with wheels.
“What's that?” Gary asked.
“A cannon,” a mouth on the tube said. “When the centaurs appear, touch this flame to my rear.” A thin torch appeared.
Gary took the torch. When the centaurs slued around the corner, he touched the flame to the back of the cannon.
There was a muffled boom, and smoke flew out of the mouth. A big ball plowed through the centaurs, knocking them down.
“So that's what a cannon is,” Hiatus said, impressed.
The remaining centaurs took positions behind other stone hinges. The stones looked like trees, but Iris identified them for what they were. The cannon would not reach the centaurs beyond those columns.
“But neither can their arrows reach us,” Gary said with some satisfaction.
Then an arrow sailed around the corner, just missing him. It struck a projection of stone and fell with a death rattle.
“One of those centaurs can shoot around corners,” Hiatus said, awed.
“These special effects in madness are stretching my imagination,” Mentia said, resuming her usual shape and squeezing her ballooning head back together. But stretch marks remained on her forehead.
More arrows squealed around the corner, striking all around them. Only one was real, and that one struck Gayle's shoulder and was shattered. But it remained nervous business, because the arrows appeared so swiftly that they could not tell which ones were real until after they struck. One of them passed right through Iris' nose—and though that one was illusory, it did have some effect.
“Oh, I'm losing my wits!” Iris cried, as a shower of whitish glowing blips sprayed out from her head. “I'm just not used to taking my own medicine!” She grabbed ineffectively for the blips.
“I'll help,” Surprise said eagerly. She crossed her eyes.
The wits expanded to building block size, and lay tumbled about, their glow now suffusing the area. “Oops—that worked wrong.”
“Wait—we can use those as they are,” Mentia said.
“Stack them up before us to make a safe mental haven.”
She grabbed a big wit and set it on the ground before Surprise.
Gary picked up another wit and set it beside the first, and Hiatus joined in. Soon they had formed a wall as high as they were, and the arrows could no longer get through.
“But why are some of these brighter than others?” Hiatus asked, pointing to the uneven glowing of the wall.
Gary shrugged. “Some are dim wits.”
“Thank you so much,” Iris said caustically.
“I have a more serious question,” Mentia said. “Why did Surprise's talent misfire? She was trying to collect the wits, and instead she made them large.”
“She's a child,” Gary said. “She doesn't have perfect control yet.”
“Yes I do,” Surprise said. “Except when we first got into the madness, but now I allow for that. Something messed me up.”
“Are you sure, dear?” Iris asked. She had recovered her wits. They weren't in her head, but they were right before her and well organized into the wall, so she seemed to be all right now. “Couldn't you have gotten confused in the excitement?”
“No,” the child said with certainty. “Something interfered.”
“The philter?” Mentia asked. “If it can change yo
ur magic, we have more of a challenge than we thought.”
“No, it can read my mind but it can't change it—or my talent,” Surprise said.
“We don't need to hassle the child about something unimportant,” Hiatus said. “She's doing her best.”
“You don't believe me,” Surprise said accusingly.
“It's not that,” Hiatus said, taken aback. “It's just that—”
“You think I'm too young to know what's what!”
“Please, dear, don't get fussed up,” Iris said, alarmed.
“And you do too! You all think I'm confused.”
“Well, you are young,” Gary said. “But that's no disparagement.”
“Well, I'll show you!” Surprise flared. “I'll make myself old!”
“No, don't waste your magic!” Mentia cried. But her voice of reason was too late.
Surprise crossed her eyes. Suddenly she was a grown woman. Fortunately her clothing had grown along with her. She was now an attractive lady of perhaps thirty, though she looked unfinished in some undefined way. “I am now adult,” she said. “I apologize for my erstwhile childishness. But I assure you that some force outside myself or the philter distorted my prior effort of magic. I had intended to draw the wits magnetically into my hands, and instead they expanded and solidified.”
“Oh, you are lovely, but you need a finishing touch,” Iris said. She reached into a pocket and brought something out.
“What is that?” Surprise asked.
“Makeup. It's a secret illusion girls use that boys don't know about. It makes girls who are too young look older, and women who are too old look younger.” She touched Surprise's mature face with powder and sticks of color, and sure enough, soon the woman came into better focus.
The others exchanged most of a glance. Surprise did seem to be a credible witness. “What do you suppose caused that distortion?” Mentia inquired.
“I have no idea. But I can orient on it, if you wish.”
“Perhaps you should, as it may be important for us to know what is influencing us.”
Then Gary realized what Mentia was after. That mysterious thing they might need to complete their job, that the philter was trying to hide from them: they might be near it. But the demoness was being cautious, lest this be merely a false lead made by the philter.
Surprise crossed her eyes, exactly as she had in childhood. “Why it's a cache of reverse wood in powder form!” she said, surprised. “Someone long ago mixed a potion consisting of equal parts magic dust and ground reverse wood and sealed it in a jar. After three thousand years or so the seal is beginning to leak, so it affected the exercise of my talent. It did not reverse it, merely distorted it, because the potion has odd magical properties.”
“Why would someone make such a potion?” Mentia asked, a demonly light of excitement showing in her eyes.
“I conjecture that it is for some specialized purpose,” Surprise replied.
A new barrage of arrows came. These ones glowed. One stuck in the end of the wits wall, setting fire to it. “Incendiaries,” Iris said, alarmed. “At my wits' end.”
Gayle went out beyond the wall, came at it from the other side, caught the shaft of me arrow in her stone teeth, and jerked it out. The burning stopped.
Flares went off. The sky beyond the wall lit up with fancy silent explosions of light. There were beautiful red, blue, green, and yellow streaks across the sky.
“Can you lead us to that jar?” Mentia asked. “Or tell me exactly where it is, so I can fetch it?”
“I can take you there,” Surprise said.
“But you shouldn't waste your magic on some stupid potion,” Hiatus protested.
“I think this may be important,” Mentia said. “Look at how the philter is trying to distract us from it.”
Hiatus nodded. “Point made. It doesn't want us to have that jar.”
“We'll hold the fort here,” Gary said. “You two fetch that jar.”
The flares became so bright and dense that the entire landscape and sky were intolerably bright. Now there was noise, a kind of roaring moaning, as of a fierce north wind with its toe stuck in a grinder. The philter was certainly alarmed—or wanted them to think it was.
Mentia formed herself into an impervious transparent sheet. She wrapped herself around Surprise. Surprise walked around the stone hinge and disappeared into the seeming forest.
“Let's distract the philter, if we can,” Hiatus said. He patted the ground with his hand, feeling for things to throw. He evidently found something, though it was invisible because of the overlay of illusion.
Gary and Iris did the same, and Gayle sniffed the ground. Soon they found a number of throwable stones.
They heaved these out toward the source of the fireworks.
Gary doubted that this would have much effect, but in one and a half moments there was a crash, and a section of the sky went blank. Apparently they had scored on a source of illusion.
Then the color faded. There was a clucking sound, and a squat bird walked toward the wall.
“What's that?” Hiatus asked.
“It looks like a hen,” Iris said.
“Do hens have scales?” Gayle asked.
There was something familiar about it. Gary focused his memory, trying to place the creature. Then he had it:
“That's a drag-hen!” he exclaimed. “Stay away from it!”
“Why?” Hiatus asked.
Then the hen opened her beak. A jet of flame shot out and splashed against the wall.
“Now I know why,” Hiatus said.
Fortunately the wall was solid and most of the henfire was illusory, so not much got through.
Mentia and Surprise returned. Surprise was holding a glassy jar about a quarter full of a gray powder. “The lid was loose,” she said. “I screwed it tight, so there's no more leakage. But I thought we'd never get through to it; the illusions were horrendous.”
“So the philter really didn't want us getting that jar,” Gary said.
“It really didn't,” Mentia agreed. “But all it had was illusion and a smattering of substance, and those weren't enough to stop us.”
“But we still don't know why it fears the jar.”
“I can divine that,” Surprise said.
“I think you should,” Mentia said. “Then you should return to your natural age. We wouldn't want you to get stuck in this age.”
“That would be horrible,” Surprise agreed. She crossed her eyes, then looked surprised. “They used this for the original conjuration of the Interface! It's the main ingredient. It allows the conjuration to change the nature of existing magic.”
“You mean—?” Mentia asked, her eyes growing so large she looked like an insect.
“Yes. It will enable us to bind the philter into the Interface without otherwise disturbing it. It should all have been used up before, so they threw the jar away. They didn't realize that it wasn't empty. That some was left over, which should have been used to harness the philter.”
“But why—”
“Because the philter made an illusion that the jar was empty. To conceal the fact that it had avoided incorporation in the Interface. They thought they had done the job properly. When they let go of the jar, the philter covered it with illusion so that it could not be found again, so the error could not be corrected. And it got itself a three thousand-year rest—at Xanth's expense.”
“And now we shall end that rest,” Gary said.
Surprise crossed her eyes. Suddenly she was small again. But the makeup remaining on her face made her look uncannily mature.
“You did well, dear,” Iris said.
The child clouded up. “But I used up more of my magic. I won't ever be able to do those things again.” A tear fell from her eye.
“In a good cause,” Iris said soothingly. “Now, if you can transform my wits back so I can have them again—”
“Oh. Yes. I can do that, now that the jar's sealed.” The child crossed her eyes, and th
e wit-blocks dissolved into whitish specs that zipped back into Iris' head.
“That feels so much better,” Iris said gratefully. “I shall try not to lose them again.”
They plowed on through the massed illusions, countering them one by one and two by two and three by three.
When an army of ogres tromped toward them. Iris made an army of giants to oppose them. The result was a battle so horrible to watch that they quickly fled its carnage.
When flying dragons appeared. Iris made land dragons to counter them, with more awful battle. When foul harpies flew in, dropping their explosive eggs, foul goblins with slingshots came to strike those eggs with stones and explode them before they were dropped. All manner of monsters were met by all manner of other monsters, and annihilation was continuous.
They followed a hi-way, the low road, and a bye-way, saying hello to the first, cheer up to the second, and farewell to the third. When a giant appeared with a BB gun that fired slinging B's from a B-have at them, they countered with an AA gun that Aced out the B's.
They came at last to the null magic circle. Here the effects diminished, but they knew that the worst was to come. For they would have to brave the philter in the very heart of the strongest, maddest magic of all.
Gary was surprised to see that it was now night. The rock stars were out: bright stones in the sky, rocking with the music of the spheres and cubes.
They waded and swam through the pool and reached the central island. There, there was light, as the great central cone of intense magic fed down to bathe what they now knew was the philter's hiding place in some of Xanth's most powerful magic. It shimmered with seeming malignancy. It was mentally and physically daunting.
“But I can help you handle it,” Gayle said. “I'm used to its intensity. Just grab hold of my fur.”
They did so, and it did help. They moved as a group inside the enclosure to the pedestal where the gargoyle had squatted for three thousand years. It was empty, of course, but now shimmered with the hint of an illusion.
In a moment the illusion became more than a hint. The copy of the warrior maiden Hannah appeared. “So you think you have won!” she spat at them. The spit made weird contortions in the air before landing in the channel around the pedestal. “But you don't have the nerve to harness me!”