It was evening now, and I was hungry after the day’s adventure. So I foraged for food, finding some fruits for the ogret. I didn’t know what babies ate, but suspected this one would eat anything. After all, if he teethed on chains …
My assumption seemed to be correct. I offered him a banana, and he grabbed it in one hairy mitt, squished it in the center so that the pulp shot out at either end, and jammed the remaining skin into his maw. He took an apple, squeezed it so hard juice spurted, and gulped down the skin and seeds with evident gusto. This sort of eating was messy, but, of course, babies are messy eaters. I gave him a milkweed pod, afraid that he would just squish the milk all over himself, but this one he chose to swallow whole. Finally I gave him a pomegranate, and he really liked that; he knocked the granate on his head, cracking the stone open, then picked out the red, juicy seeds, threw them away, swallowed the stone, and burped up a seed he had overlooked. He was really sort of cute in his horrendous fashion.
Taking care of a baby, it turned out, was no problem at all. My only concern was changing the diaper, but it seemed the ogret hadn’t existed long enough to process food all the way through yet, so the diaper remained clean.
That was just as well, since I wasn’t sure I had the strength to take it away from him for cleaning.
I didn’t worry about Pook, either. He could go off now if he wished to, since I had gotten most of the way to Castle Roogna and he no longer needed me to save him from being taken over by elves or eaten by dragons or whatever. We could get along without each other.
I leaned back against an acorn tree. “What am I going to do with you, ogre baby?” I asked rhetorically, as I held out a fruit-punch. Naturally the ogret punched it. Juice exploded, and the baby crammed the husk into his big mouth. He spat a seed at me that just missed my head and embedded itself in the tree trunk behind me and growled contentedly. The shudder of the seed-shock traveled up the trunk and caused the branches of the tree to shake, dislodging a corn, which thunked into the ground before the ogret. He picked it up and chewed on it.
I saw a sparkle on him. What could it be? I reached for it, but he grabbed for my hand, so I had to let it be. But it was something he wore. What would an undelivered baby wear?
What else except an address tag? I had to see that! But the ogret wasn’t going to turn it over voluntarily.
I fetched another fruit-punch and shoved it at his big mouth. While he punched and chomped on that, I took advantage of his distraction to grab the tag.
It was blank. Of course, I couldn’t read, anyway, and wouldn’t if I could—barbarians take justified pride in being illiterate—but that was a separate problem. How was I to get an address from this?
I turned it over—and it flashed. One side was bright, the other dull. When I turned it again, the brightside dulled and the dullside brightened. When I held it flat, both sides dulled. It was as if the thing were a mirror that reflected light only when properly oriented—except there was no source of light that accounted for the flash, just jungle.
But a magic mirror would use another type of light source.
I smiled. Now I knew in what direction the ogret’s parents were. The flash pointed the way.
I cut off a length of vine and tied it to the ogret’s bag in such a way as to keep the baby inside while allowing him to look and reach out. Then I passed the vine over a sturdy branch and hauled the bundle of joy up about halfway; that kept the baby off the ground, which was no safe place at night even for a tyke as horrendous as this, and prevented him from going anywhere while I slept. As an afterthought, I sliced off a section of ironwood and passed it up. The hairy hand snatched it from my grasp, and the teeth happily gnawed on its end. It was a decent pacifier that should keep the ogret halfway quiet.
I climbed the tree, found a suitable niche, and settled down to sleep. Pook continued to graze below; he wasn’t concerned about the spooks of the darkness, being a ghost horse himself. In fact, the rattle of his chains probably frightened away other spooks.
It was a quiet night, and I woke refreshed. Naturally Pook was gone—but to my surprise, he returned when he heard me stirring. “You mean you’re tame now?” I asked him, as I had before. He snorted derisively, as before, but did not depart.
I found some rock candy and several more milkweed pods for the ogret, and he chomped them up violently and spat seeds at flying bugs, scoring an impressive number of times. I wondered whether the night had soiled his diaper, but it seemed all right. Maybe it was a magic one, self-cleaning. The storks seemed to have deliveries down to a science, if that’s not a meaningless term in Xanth. That is, they are impossibly well organized. In real life, of course, things are never scientific, and it’s foolish to believe that they can be. Only in a place like Mundania would anyone try to hold such a view.
I loaded the bundle of joy back on Pook, not bothering to untie the vine-rope, and mounted. Naturally, the ogret found another section of chain to chew on. Babies are always putting things in their mouth. But it kept him quiet. In ogre country, silence is a special blessing.
We headed in the direction indicated by the tag-flash, which was roughly southeast. We galloped through forest and plain, over hill and valley, past cliff and cave, monster and river. We passed curse-burrs, ant-lions, drifting magic-dust, a colony of fauns and nymphs, harpies, and a mouth-organ tree that tootled a low note of warning at us. It was a pretty dull trip.
We made excellent time, for Pook liked to run, and in the afternoon we reached the region of the ogres. I could tell, because some trees were twisted into knots, others were broken off at the base, and small ironwoods had been bitten off at ground level; ogres liked to play with things. I had heard somewhere that the ogres were migrating north, but this seemed pretty far south to me; maybe they were slow movers. Well, they could take three centuries to move north if they wanted to; no one was going to tell an ogre what to do! Just so long as they never got too near to Fen Village.
I checked the ogret’s tag for reorientation. It was glowing like a little fire; we were very close. But now a problem occurred to me. How was I to hand over the bundle of joy without getting myself clobbered? I didn’t want to defend myself with my sword; what good was it to deliver a baby to a dead mother? But I didn’t want to be pulped and eaten by the ogres, either.
I located the family domicile, which was a pile of trees torn up by the roots and shaped into a crude nest. Ogres never did things carefully when brute power sufficed. I saw the ogress; she was almost twice my height and so ugly that her puss made spots of gook dance before my eyeballs. It was like a cross between the rump of a sick sphinx and a squashed ant-lion. I could hardly look at her, let alone go near her!
I worked up a notion. I suspended the bundle of joy by the vine and swung it around in an arc. The ogret chortled; he liked swinging through the air almost as much as he liked chomping chain. Then I nudged Pook forward.
We came to the ogress. She was ripping a small tangle tree from the ground and chewing on its flailing tentacles. Expectant females were known to have odd tastes!
“Here it comes!” I cried and charged toward her, whirling the ogret. I passed her just out of reach, which was a scary thing, because ogres have phenomenally long reaches. The swinging bundle of joy whomped into her belly, knocking her onto her back, her feet in the air, the bundle atop her. The ogret’s head popped out, and he growled so horrendously that the remaining tentacles of the tanglier she held straightened out stiffly in sheer terror.
The ogress let out an equally horrendous screech of joy and clutched the ogret to her. Mother and son—what awful music they made together! I galloped away, unmolested. The delivery had been made!
Of course the male ogre spied me. He did not appear to be completely pleased about the delivery, or maybe he had simply decided that Pook and I would make an excellent repast. He lumbered after us, making surprising speed because of the length of his stride. He was even uglier than the ogress and ogret put together, incredible as that soun
ds. Small birds, startled by our passage, flew up, glimpsed his gross puss, and fell from the air stunned. Bugs died in clouds where he passed. Trees quaked, their leaves turning yellow around the edges. In the sky a cloud looked down, saw him, and puffed into vapor. We zoomed on; we didn’t want to look at him, either.
When the ogre saw he couldn’t catch us, he paused to rip a boulder out of the ground and hurl it. I saw it coming and had Pook dodge behind a great rock maple tree for shelter. The boulder struck the tree and knocked off its top. We sprang out of there as rocks and sand showered around, for the maple had been shattered. What a brute that ogre was! If this was his reaction to the happy occasion of becoming a father, I’d hate to be near when he was angry! I was sure the ogret would have a happy home life.
We managed to lose ourselves in an intricate pattern of geometrees, and the ogre gave up the pursuit. He wasn’t very smart, for ogres are as stupid as they are strong, and that is the standard against which all other strength and stupidity is measured. He gave up the chase and went back to glower at the bundle of joy.
I hoped that when a stork set out to find Bluebell Elf, it would be able to deliver its bundle with less trouble than this one had been! Certainly I no longer thought that the storks had an easy job. In fact, it is all too easy to believe others have easy times when you don’t know anything about their problems.
We walked back the way we had come, roughly northwest, for I understood that Castle Roogna was somewhere in that region. At this slower pace the journey took a couple of days, and I fought off a few minor threats along the way—griffins, carnivorous plants, giant serpents, hostile centaurs, that sort of thing, purely routine—and I was beginning to get bored when at last the dusky towers of Castle Roogna hove into view.
I had arrived!
Chapter 6. Hero’s Challenge
Actually, Castle Roogna wasn’t the easiest place to approach. It was surrounded by a spreading orchard, and the trees were unusual. I thought it was coincidence or bad maintenance when I found the approach path blocked by a massive branch. I guided Pook around it—only to discover that it interlocked with the extended low branch of another tree. So I guided Pook around the other way, to circle the first tree—and there was another branch tying into another tree. They were too low for Pook to pass under, yet too fluffed out with brush for him to leap over.
I paused and scratched my head. We could get by, of course. But I marveled that the path to the castle could have become so overgrown. Had no one passed this way in the last fifty years? Surely the road to the capital would be kept up! Did this mean the castle was deserted? In Fen Village we had not had direct news from Castle Roogna in a long time, but we assumed this was because we were a minor backwoods hamlet. Now I wondered about the frontwoods region; could it have gone out of business?
Now that I thought of it, I realized I had encountered no men on my long journey here. Goblins, elves, ogres, yes—but these were only distantly related to men. Well, perhaps not too distantly related, in the case of the elves; Bluebell had been most womanlike, divinely feminine, when the adaptation-spell was in force. But where were the regular men and women? I had understood there were human villages scattered all around Xanth. Where were they?
Well, I would just have to get into Castle Roogna and find out. I dismounted, drew my sword, and walked to the center of the path. I picked my spot and used my weapon like an axe, hacking into the wood.
I swear, that whole tree shuddered at my first blow. There was a rain of twigs and leaves, and a groan as if wind were making the trunk shift.
I hacked again, at an angle, so that a wedge of bark and wood flew out. The tree shuddered again, and reddish sap oozed from the cut.
Pook neighed warning. I leaped back—and a solid branch crashed down where I had been standing, the kind they call a widowmaker. It was just as well I had avoided it, since I wasn’t married so couldn’t leave a widow. Apparently I had shaken the tree hard enough to dislodge some deadwood. Apt name for it! I kicked it out of the way and made ready to hack again.
But now, oddly, the branch was lower. In fact, it touched the ground. It would be easy for Pook to step over it. I considered hacking the rest of the way through it, anyway, to clear the path, but dusk was drawing nigh in the creepy way it had, and I wasn’t sure what I would find ahead. Best not to expend more time here now. So I remounted Pook, and we stepped across and proceeded onward.
As we passed under the looming height of another tree, a great rock maple like the one the ogre had shattered, Pook leaped ahead. Behind us, a rock crashed. No ogre was present; the tree itself had bombed us!
I looked ahead. The trees beside the path stood close and threatening, and I didn’t trust them. The things of the vegetable kingdom can be just as bad as those of the animal kingdom when they take a notion to be.
I decided to use Standard Barbarian Approach Number One: the direct threat of mayhem. I drew my sword again. “Listen, you trees!” I yelled. “Whichever one of you drops anything on me will get its branches lapped off or its trunk girdled!”
There was no response. Holding the sword ready and glaring about me like an ogre, I guided Pook forward. His ears were turning this way and that, alert for the sounds of treachery. But nothing happened, and soon we were clear of this region. It seemed that my warning had sufficed; I had cowed the trees. Don’t tell me that violence is the refuge of incompetence! It’s the only language some things understand. Of course, I am a barbarian warrior, so there may be a modicum of self-interest in that statement.
Now the orchard opened out, and Castle Roogna came into view from fairly close range in the light of the setting sun. I was ready to behold and marvel at its glories.
I stifled my disappointment. Castle Roogna was no glowing edifice; it was a mildewed, rundown structure whose gardens were overrun by weeds and whose moat was a mass of brown goo. This was the capital of Xanth? It was more like a witch-hag’s den, or the fabled past residence of the Zombie Master, who had lost his love and turned himself into a zombie four hundred years before. What was wrong?
I rode up to the moat. The water was low, but closer inspection showed that there was not much goo, just brackish stuff. The moat monster was asleep. “Hey, wake up, soursnoot!” I called indignantly to it. “Sleep on your own time!”
The thing opened an eye, flicked its tail, and went back to its slumber. How lax could castle security get?
Disgusted, I crossed the drawbridge, which was down and unattended. The castle was the largest human-constructed edifice I had seen, imposing despite its rundown state, but I was saddened to see the authority of man at such reduced level. I had expected to come to the center of a flourishing empire; instead, it was little more than my home village
A woman appeared at the interior gate. She was middle-aged and dumpy, and her apron was dirty. “Welcome, Hero!” she exclaimed. “Do come in!”
“How do you know I’m a hero?” I demanded, not completely flattered. Oh, I like flattery as well as the next barbarian, but this seemed gratuitous and possibly insincere. Also, flattery is much easier to accept from young, pretty women than from old, dumpy ones.
“The prophecy,” she explained.
“What prophecy?” I asked, somewhat aggrieved because I remembered the one made by the old elfess that I was to be doomed by a cruel lie. I don’t really like such prophecies, so this was one I preferred not to be reminded of.
“King Gromden will have to tell you that. Come on in; we have supper waiting.”
I shrugged and dismounted. It was strange that the trees had tried to prevent my approach to the castle, while people welcomed it. I remained on guard. But the prospect of a good meal was tempting. “What about my horse?” I knew Pook would be interested in the same kind of protection he had had among the elves; he was helping me in the wilderness, and I was helping him in civilization.
“We have a nice stall for him, with magic grain,” the woman said.
Pook’s ears perked up. He whinni
ed. He knew a good thing when he heard it.
Obligingly, the woman led us to a stall set in the wall. Sure enough, there was a pan of grain there, and it looked delicious even to me. Pook went to it and started eating, and I saw that when he took a mouthful, the level in the pan did not drop. It was magic, all right, and evidently the grain was good.
“You’ll be all right?” I asked him. “Remember, we don’t really know these people.” But he ignored me; he was happy. I wondered if he had not gotten too tame. It was not good for an animal—or a barbarian—to be too trusting of strangers, especially civilized strangers. Civilized people did not share the simple values of barbarians and could be very devious.
“That’s pretty concentrated stuff,” I warned him. “If you eat too much, you could get sick—” He snorted, sending oats flying; he knew what he was doing and didn’t appreciate my meddling. I suppose I wouldn’t have appreciated his cautions on women, sword-fighting, and such, either. We human beings can be awfully arrogant in little unconscious ways.
I followed the woman into the human region of the castle. This was in better repair. The floor was clean, and there were attractive tapestries on the walls. We came to the banquet hall, and there a sumptuous repast was laid out.
A man stood at the head of the table. He was old and bald and fat, with straggly white whiskers and sunken eyes. He wore a fancy robe and crown, so I realized he was the King of Xanth. Naturally I greeted him with the respect due his rank. “Hello, King,” I said.
“Hello, Hero,” he replied, batting an eye.
“Um, King, I don’t know about this hero business.”
“It is the prophecy,” he explained. “In our time of need, a young, well-formed man of primitive lineage is to appear, riding a pooka he has tamed. You are evidently that man. Now sit down and eat, before it gets cold.”
“Uh, sure,” I agreed, disconcerted. That prophecy did seem to have me nailed down pretty well, except that Pook claimed he wasn’t really tame. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. But if that prophecy was on target, what about the elven one? I didn’t like that thought, so I flushed it from my mind.