Five Portraits

  That was it, of course. They were expecting a special show.

  There was a billboard: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

  Astrid stared at it, trying to make sense of it. Shrews were tiny creatures; who would want to tame one?

  And there in the center was Tiara with Win. The woman’s leg was tied to a stake by a stout vine. Astrid recognized the fastening in the vine: a Gourdian Not. One that would take months or years to untie, if it could be done at all. It must have been conjured there.

  Tiara saw them. “Go away! It’s a trap!” she cried. Indeed, the gate swung closed with a clank behind them.

  “Not without you,” Mitch said, running to her.

  “You can’t free me! You can only get yourself caught. You must—”

  She was cut off by his kiss.

  There was a stir in the audience. It seemed that many of the aliens had not before observed a genuine native smooch. They evidently found it a remarkable and slightly distasteful gesture.

  “You’re real,” Mitch said as he released her.

  “Real?”

  “There was a fake version of you in the house,” he said. “Timothea.”

  “Oh, that lady wolf. She’s a pain in the posterior.”

  Meanwhile Astrid was gazing around the arena. There had to be more to this than they had seen so far.

  “I’ll take care of that knot,” Mitch said. He squatted beside it, focusing.

  Astrid knew his hope was futile.

  Then the knot untied.

  “I sent it an idea that it was tired of being knotted up,” Mitch explained. “Win thought of it. In fact she thought of doors unlocking. She’s one savvy girl.”

  Win smiled, clearly glad to have assisted.

  So he did have the power to unlock doors and untie knots, by sending them thoughts, even though they were inanimate. But the audience seemed unalarmed by this step toward escape. Why?

  Unless the woman and child were only bait for the real target. Fornax had remarked on the chance that the real target might be a basilisk. To be publicly bred.

  Uh-oh.

  Fornax appeared, to her alone. “I have a further irrelevant thought I will share. Some time back there was a fight between two ogres. One ogre, for reasons of complication of plot, had only half a soul. When he fought the other, he was at a disadvantage, and the other ogre pounded him into the ground. But then his girlfriend lent him her soul. Buoyed by that, he returned to the fray, and this time pounded the other ogre and won. All because of the imbalance of souls. It was a curious business. Who would have thought that a soul could make such a difference?”

  “Ogres have souls,” Astrid agreed. “They are variants of human stock. I don’t see how that applies to me. I may be the only one of my kind ever to have a soul, and it’s a whole soul, not half a soul. And I’m not looking to fight an ogre, not that I’d even need do; I’d simply Stare him into submission.”

  “Yes, it’s obviously irrelevant,” Fornax agreed. “I am sorry I bothered you.” She faded.

  There had to be immediate relevance, but Astrid was at a loss to fathom it. Just as she did not understand the sign about the shrew. The problem with deliberately obscure references was that they were hard to figure out. The Good Magician’s Answers had a similar reputation. They always made sense, but only after it made no difference. It was frustrating.

  “Time to get out of here,” Mitch said. “Can you haul me on your hair, Tiara?”

  “Yes, I have far more floating power than I used to,” Tiara said. “That’s why they tied me down. Get on my hair and we’ll take off.”

  “Astrid, too,” he said.

  “Yes, we can take her too, of course.” Tiara’s hair spread out into a mat.

  There was a loud bong. Astrid looked to see the gate open to admit another creature. It seemed to be some kind of big lizard.

  Then suddenly it all made awful sense. It was a cockatrice. Naturally his primary interest would be to breed a nubile basilisk. Her. She was the “shrew,” to be tamed, not so much an animal as a willful female. And the audience was here to witness the rare act of forceful mating of ferocious native beasts. It would not be pretty.

  “Get out of here!” Astrid said tersely to the others.

  Mitch hesitated.

  “Now!” Astrid snapped. “If you want to survive.”

  Mitch nodded grimly, understanding the danger. He fished something from his hair and tossed it to her: the ball of her clothing. Then he joined Tiara and Win. They lifted as Win’s wind blew. The aliens did not even try to stop them; their part in this play was done.

  “Hey!” Timothea exclaimed, appearing. “They’re escaping!” She went to intercept them, but Mitch stiff-armed her. They sailed up and over the wall, the demoness still protesting. Maybe she had not gotten the word.

  Meanwhile Astrid got efficiently into her clothing, including the Sequins of Events dress. But before she could invoke a sequin, the cockatrice caught up to her. And became a naked human man. “Well, now, pretty bask,” he said. “Why get dressed when you’ll have to strip again so soon?”

  So he could change forms. She hadn’t known any other of her kind could. “Not for you, ugly cock,” she said through her teeth.

  “You are Astrid,” he said. “I have known of you for some time. I heard a tale of how you bullied a young cockatrice into submission, making him a virtual plaything of goblin girls. That could have been my son, had I been there to rape his mother. You are clearly my ideal female. I am Cocksure Cockatrice. I anticipate many happy matings in both forms. Two shows a day, in fact, maybe one in each form. That’s why I arranged to have you come here. The zoo proprietors were most cooperative. Timothea too, but doing it with a demoness can’t compare to doing it with a basilisk. Especially with an appreciative audience.”

  So the demoness had been entertaining him in the interim, her way. And he wanted to humiliate Astrid before an audience. This stirred her ire. As it was surely supposed to. He wanted her to fight him, as it seemed this was the way of their species.

  What choice did she have except to oblige him in that respect? Certainly she was not going to submit to rape without a fight. Astrid lifted her glasses and Stared him, but he met her deadly gaze without concern. He was after all her kind.

  Tiara, Mitch, and Win should be safely away by now. It was time for Astrid to depart also. She reached for a sequin.

  Cocksure’s hand swooped to intercept hers before it touched the sequin. “I know about that dress, too,” he said. “We can do without it.”

  This was real trouble. He was larger than she, and immune to her nature. If he got her dress away from her, she would be captive. So she fought him, pushing back against his hand. He of course pushed harder. He was bound to overcome her. If cockatrices weren’t capable of raping basilisks, the species would have died out long ago. That was the ugly reality she was up against. It was why he was so infernally confident.

  Astrid couldn’t help herself. Blinded by outrage, she played his game, furiously fighting him. The alien audience was rapt; this was what they had come for. Desperate sexual combat.

  Then a look of surprise crossed his face. “How can you be so strong?”

  Strong? She was tough for a human woman, but not for her own kind. Yet she did seem to be fending him off. She put more effort into it, and pushed his arm away from her.

  Cocksure swung his other arm, with a fist, aiming for her head. Obviously when mating wasn’t on his mind, violence was. He would happily beat her into submission. She caught the fist in her open hand and pushed it back. He pushed harder, angry. So did she, as angry. He struggled to push her off her feet. She resisted. He tried to hurl her away. She held him close, knowing that if they separated, he would merely pounce on her again. Cat and mouse, part of the fun.

  Gradually it came to her: she was stronger than he was. She did not look it, but their actual contact was demonstrating it.

  Then the si
gnificance of Fornax’s remark registered: Astrid had a soul. Cocksure did not. Ordinarily she dealt with souled humans, and he dealt with unsouled creatures, so there was no contrast. Now it was soul against unsoul, and her soul lent her strength. Just as it had for the ogre. It made a difference only when they were in direct contact, but of course they had to be for combat or mating, or the combination.

  She shook her glasses loose so that they fell down around her chin and Stared him in the face from point-blank range. He fell back, stunned. Her Stare was stronger too! As long as they were in contact so that her soul had play.

  She let him drop to the floor, unconscious. Then she plucked a sequin at random, saw her dress go translucent, making some humanoid aliens freak out, and pinned it back on. The setting changed.

  She was in a castle courtyard. She recognized it: Caprice Castle! She had forgotten it was zeroed in on a sequin. Then the castle traveled around, but evidently the sequin tracked it.

  “Hey, who are you?”

  Astrid looked. There stood two three-year-old children. She hastily pulled her glasses back up. “I’m Astrid Basilisk,” she replied. “And you are Piton and Data, Princess Dawn’s children. We’ve met.”

  The children exchanged a juvenile glance, remembering. “Welcome to Caprice Castle,” Data said.

  “Thank you. It was just chance.”

  A woman appeared. “Astrid! What brings you here? You’re all mussed up.” It was Princess Dawn.

  “It’s a long story,” Astrid said.

  “May I touch you?”

  “Of course.” It was Dawn’s talent to know everything about any living thing she touched.

  Dawn touched her arm. “Oh, my! That monster was going to rape you, but you fought him off!”

  “It was an ugly scene,” Astrid agreed.

  “What was he going to do?” Piton asked.

  Oops, the Adult Conspiracy was cutting in. “He wanted to kiss me,” Astrid said.

  “Yuck!” both children said together.

  “It was a horrible threat,” Dawn agreed with a third of a smile. “Come, Astrid, you must relax with us, after your bad experience.”

  “I really should get home,” Astrid demurred. “So they won’t worry about me.”

  The princess nodded. “True. We’ll have them all in for a pleasant visit while we catch up.”

  “But they are far away.”

  “You forget the nature of this castle. This way, please.”

  Bemused, Astrid accompanied Dawn to the castle’s front gate. There outside stood Astrid’s friends, and the children, looking faintly surprised.

  Now Astrid remembered. It was a traveling castle. “Thank you,” she said faintly.

  “Come in!” Data called to the children.

  “We’ve got eye scream!” Piton called. That of course decided it.

  Soon Kandy was hugging Astrid. Then Tiara and Win. “You made it!” Astrid said. “I feared the demoness would stop you.”

  “Win had this idea that Timothea didn’t really want to stop our escape,” Mitch said. “I relayed it to the demoness. She didn’t realize it wasn’t her own thought. Win really helped me, again. She’s such a great kid.”

  The little girl blushed with pleasure.

  That was a pretty savvy child, as Mitch had said. The two of them had worked together as fruitfully as Tiara and Win had, in another way. They would make a great family. And that, of course, was what this was all about.

  All suddenly seemed well.

  Chapter 15:

  Myst

  Princess Dawn was of course a fine hostess. They had a fine meal, and caught up on their assorted adventures, while the children got to know Pita and Data, admiring each other’s talents. The Caprice Castle children could assume either skeletal or human form, and loved playfully switching back and forth.

  “In the course of our travels we have noted areas where the pun virus still rampages,” Dawn said.

  “Then we must go there,” Merge said. “All of it must be eliminated.”

  “Yes. Then we will seed back stored puns so that Xanth will be normal again.”

  “That will be a relief,” Kandy said.

  In due course they departed the castle, well fed and rested, and found that they were in a totally different part of Xanth. Right where they were needed: the signs of dead puns were all around.

  They plunged in, as they normally did, each with a jar of anti-virus elixir. The children participated, holding jars of their own. They spread out in a line, efficiently wetting down the foliage and ground so that no virus could remain. Merge split into her five components, distributed along the line so that the others could get refills without losing their places and accidentally leaving any spot undoused. The children had learned to ignore the bare aspects; they had seen it happen when Astrid changed form, and knew despite the Adult Conspiracy that there was nothing naughty about it. At least not when among sensible friends.

  The terrain was uneven, and soon Astrid was separated from the main group by a sloping forest. She ran out of elixir and had to backtrack to find an aspect of Merge. So she shifted to her natural form so she could scurry through brush without wasting time, wearing only her dark glasses and hauling her jar along behind her by a cord. She found Brown, so named from her rich brown hair. Brown tilted her endlessly pouring urn to refill Astrid’s jar, and Astrid returned to her place.

  She circled a large tree-trunk, and paused. There was a handsome young man snoozing against a boulder, right in the section she needed to douse. Should she wake him? Her clothing was farther back; he would probably freak out. But if she circled around him, that section would not get doused, and the pun virus might spread from it, reinfecting the rest. That would make her effort pointless.

  So she fetched a leaf from a nearby fig tree and used it to cover her bareness somewhat. “Sir!” she called.

  The man snapped awake. “Why hello, pretty maiden,” he said, smiling. “I am Jon. Who, if I may inquire, are you, and what is your business here in my bailiwick?”

  “I am Astrid. I am spreading elixir to eliminate any remaining pun virus,” she said. “I need to cover the section where you are. Could you move to one I have already doused?”

  “Certainly, Astrid,” he agreed. “I apologize for being in your way.”

  “Uh, I am without my clothing at the moment, Jon. I will have to set aside this fig leaf in order to work. You will need to avert your gaze.”

  “I have no need of that, miss. Perhaps I can help you in your worthy effort. I have missed the puns since they got wiped out here.”

  No need? He didn’t know about freaking out? She lacked time and patience to educate him right now. So she dropped the leaf and picked up her jar.

  Jon took a good look at her fully exposed body. “I must say you are a shapely one.”

  Astrid paused. She wasn’t wearing panties, but even so, the sight of her nudity should have freaked him out. “Thank you.” Then curiosity got the better of her. “How is it that you are unaffected by the sight of me?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jon said. “But the essence is, I have been rendered immune to freaking out from the sight of female flesh, even such flesh as yours. Now how may I help you?”

  Immune? He was a most unusual man. “If you really want to help, we can use you. I can set you up with a jar of anti-pun-virus elixir to spread about.”

  “I do want to help. This is my home and I want it restored to its former silly comfort.”

  “Are you a faun?” she asked. Because fauns, like nymphs, tended to be flighty, and thus unreliable.

  “By no means. I am a regular mortal man.”

  “Then come this way.” Astrid turned around and started back to where Brown was.

  Jon, having been treated to a good view of her bare backside, took it in stride. “If I may ask, why do you wear those dark glasses, and nothing else?”

  “I am a basilisk in human fo
rm. My direct stare would kill you.”

  “Ah. I appreciate the courtesy of your caution.” Then, after half a moment: “You intrigue me. Are you romantically available?”

  “No. I will soon marry my boyfriend, who is immune to poisons.”

  “Good for him. I am looking for a serviceable woman.”

  Serviceable? She let that pass. “If you are interested in only one thing, you will not find such a woman in our party.”

  Jon laughed. “I am interested in that one thing. Every man is. But not only that. I wish to find a woman who can be a good partner in the long haul.”

  “Good in what way?”

  “She should be physically attractive, have an even temper, and be interested in making a family. I objectively assess any available woman I meet, and believe I will know when I encounter such a one.”

  Was he rational, or hopelessly arrogant? There was one way to find out. “Then maybe you should meet Merge.”

  “She is a member of your party?”

  “Yes. Here is an aspect of her now.” For Brown had just come into view.

  The sight of this perfectly formed bare girl did not freak him out either. “An aspect?”

  “She is one of five young women whose complete form is a mergence of the five. If you like one, you should like them all.”

  “Certainly the notion is intriguing,” Jon agreed.

  Brown paused as they approached her. “This is Jon,” Astrid said. “He has volunteered to help. We need to provide him with a jar of elixir.”

  “We have a spare,” Brown said, producing a filled jar.

  “Jon is looking for an attractive, even-tempered woman who is interested in making a family.”

  “Well, now,” Brown said, eying Jon up and down. “What is your talent, Jon?”

  “I can summon things from the dream realm, one at a time.”

  “Like a walking skeleton or a night mare?”

  “Yes, if I tried. But generally I go for simple objects, because the Night Stallion becomes annoyed if any of his animate creatures goes astray.”