Castle Roogna

  Then the goblins and trolls started dropping down from the ledge above, also summoned by the flute.

  Dor broke off. "We're slaughtering them! That wasn't my intent! It's time to set off the forget spell!"

  "We would be trapped by it too," Jumper reminded him. "Speak to it."

  "Speak to it? Oh." Dor held out the glassy ball. "Spell, how are you detonated?"

  "I detonate when a voice commands me to," the ball replied.

  "Any voice?"

  "That's what I said."

  Dor had his answer. He set the sphere in a niche in the cliff. "Count to one thousand, then order yourself to detonate," he told it.

  "Say, that's clever!" the spell said. "One, two, three-four-five-"

  "Slowly!" Dor said sharply. "One number per second."

  "Awww--" But the spell resumed more slowly. "Seven, eight--what a spoilsport you are!--nine, ten, a big fat hen!"

  "What?" a nearby harpy screeched, taking it personally. She dived in, but Jumper snagged her with the hoop. Another potential foul-up defused.

  "And don't say anything to insult the harpies," Dor told the spell.

  "Ah, shucks. Eleven, twelve--"

  Jumper scurried away to the side, fastened the other end of a new line he had attached to Dor, and hauled him across. This was not as fast as running on level land, but it was expedient.

  They moved steadily westward, away from the spell sphere. Dor continued playing the flute intermittently, to keep the goblins massing at the brink without allowing too many to fall over. He heard the spell's counting fading in the distance, and that lent urgency to his escape. The problem was now one of management; he and Jumper had to get far enough away to be out of the forget range, without luring the goblins and harpies beyond range too. Inevitably a good many monsters would escape, but maybe the ones fazed by the forget detonation would lend sufficient confusion to the array to inhibit the others from returning to the Castle. There seemed to be no clear-cut strategy; he just had to fudge through as best he could, hoping he could profit enough to give Castle Roogna the edge. It had worked well with the Mundane siege of the Zombie Master's castle, after all.

  How much nicer if there were simple answers to all life's problems! But the closer Dor approached adulthood, the less satisfying such answers became. Life itself was complex, therefore life's answers were complex. But it took a mature mind to appreciate the convolutions of that complexity.

  "One hundred five, one hundred six, pick up a hundred sticks!" the spell was chanting. "One hundred seven, one hundred eight, lay all hundred straight!" Now there was a simple mind!

  Dor wondered again how wide a radius the detonation would have. Would the chasm channel it? Then the brunt would come along here, instead of out where the goblins were. Maybe he and Jumper should climb over the rim before the spell went off, and lie low there, hoping to be shielded from the direct effect. But they couldn't come up too close to the goblins, who were milling about near the brink. The harpies were still dive-bombing him, forcing Jumper to jump back with the hoop. Fortunately, the bulk of their attention was taken by the goblins, their primary enemy; Dor and Jumper were merely incidental targets, attacked because they were there. Except when Dor played the flute, as he continued to do intermittently.

  "Three hundred forty-seven, three hundred forty-eight, now don't be late," the spell was saying in the fading distance. As long as he could hear it, he had to assume he was within its forget radius.

  "Can we go faster?" Dor asked nervously. He had thought they were traveling well, but the numbers had jumped with seeming suddenness from the neighborhood of one hundred to the neighborhood of three hundred. Unless the spell was cheating, skipping numbers--no, the inanimate did not have the wit to cheat Dor had just been preoccupied with his own efforts and gloomy thoughts.

  "Not safely, friend," Jumper chittered.

  "Let me take back the hoop," Dor suggested to the spider. "Then you can string your lines faster."

  Jumper agreed, and passed back the hoop.

  Another harpy made a screaming dive. Dor scooped her into the hoop, and she was gone without recall or recoil. What happened to the creatures who passed through it? Harpies could fly, goblins could climb; why couldn't either get out? Was it an inferno on the other side, killing them instantly? He didn't like that.

  Jumper was ahead, setting the anchor for the next swing. Dor had a private moment. He poked a finger into the center of the hoop, from the far side, watching it disappear from his side. He saw his finger in cross section, as if severed with a sharp sword: the skin, the little blood vessels, the tendons, the bone. But there was no pain; his finger felt cool, not cold; no inferno there, and no freezing weather either. He withdrew it, and found it whole, to his relief. He poked it from the near side, and got the same effect, except that this time he could not see the cross section. It seemed that either side of the ring led to wherever it led. A different world?

  Jumper tugged, and Dor swung across, feeling guilty for his surreptitious experimentation. He could have lost a finger that way. Well, maybe not; he had seen the King's fingers disappear and reappear unharmed. "Let's check and see if the goblins are clear," Dor said. He had not played the flute for a while.

  The spider scurried up the wall to peek over with two or three eyes, keeping the rest of his body low. "They are there in masses," he chittered. "I believe they are pacing the harpies--who are pacing us."

  "Oh, no! Murphy strikes again! We can't get clear of the Gap, if they follow us!"

  "We should be clear of the forget radius now," Jumper chittered consolingly.

  "Then so are the goblins and harpies! That's no good!" Dor heard himself getting hysterical.

  "Our effort should have distracted a great number of the warring creatures," Jumper pointed out reasonably. "Our purpose was to distract them so that the Zombie Master could penetrate to Castle Roogna. If he succeeded, we have succeeded."

  "I suppose so," Dor agreed, calming. "So it doesn't really matter if the harpies and goblins don't get forget-spelled. Still, how are we ever going to get out of here? It is too late to turn off the spell."

  "Perseverance should pay. If we continue until night--" Jumper cocked his body, lifting his two front legs so as to hear better. "What is that?"

  Dor tried to fathom what direction the spider was orienting, and could not. Damn those ubiquitous eyes! "What's what?"

  Then he heard it. "Nine hundred eighty-three, nine hundred eighty-four, close to the hundredth door; nine hundred eighty-five--"

  A harpy was carrying the spell toward them--and it was about to detonate! "Oh, Murphy!" Dor wailed. "You really nabbed us now!"

  "What's the big secret about this talking ball?" the harpy screeched.

  "Nine hundred ninety-two, buckle the bag's shoe," the spell said.

  "Stop counting!" Dor yelled at the spell.

  "Countdown can't be stopped once initiated," the spell replied smugly.

  "Quick," Jumper chittered. "I will fasten the draglines so we can return. We must escape through the magic hoop."

  "Oh, no!" Dor cried.

  "It should be safe; I saw you testing it."

  "Nine hundred ninety-seven, nine hundred ninety-eight," the spell continued inexorably. "Now don't be late!"

  Jumper scrambled through the hoop. Dor hesitated, appalled. Could they return? But if he remained here--

  "One thousand!" the spell cried gleefully. "Now at last I can say it!"

  Dor dived through the hoop. The last thing he heard was "Deto--"

  He arrived in darkness. It was pleasant, neutral. His body seemed to be suspended without feeling. There was a timelessness about him, a perpetual security. All he had to do was sleep.

  You are not like the others, a thought said at him.

  "Of course not," Dor thought back. Whatever he was suspended in did not permit physical talking, because there was no motion. "I am from another time. So is my friend Jumper the spider. Who are you?"

  "I am the
Brain Coral, keeper of the source of magic.

  "The Brain Coral! I know you! You're supposed to be animating my body!"

  "When?"

  "Eight hundred years from now. Don't you remember?"

  "I am not in a position to know about that, being as yet a creature of my own time.

  "Well, in my time you--uh, it gets complicated. But I think Jumper and I had better get out of here as soon as the forget spell dissipates."

  You detonated a forget spell?

  "Yes, a major one, inside the Gap. To make the goblins and harpies and cohorts and ilk stop fighting. They--"

  Forget spells are permanent, until counterspelled.

  "I suppose so, for the ones affected. But--"

  You have just rendered the Gap itself forgotten.

  "The Gap? But it's not alive! The spell only affects living things, things that remember."

  Therefore all living things will forget the Gap. Stunned, Dor realized it was true. He had caused the Gap to be forgotten by all but those people whose forgetting would be paradoxical. Such as those living adjacent to it, who would otherwise fall in and die. Their deaths would be inexplicable to their friends and relatives, leading to endless complications that would quickly neutralize the spell. Paradox was a powerful natural counterspell! But any people who had no immediate need-to-know would simply not remember the Gap. This was true in his own day--and now he knew how it had come about. He had done it, with his bumbling.

  Yet if what he did here had no permanence, how could...? He couldn't take time to ponder that now. "We have to get back to Castle Roogna. Or at least, we can't stay here. There would be paradox when we caught up to our own time."

  So it would seem. I shall release you from my preservative fluid. The primary radiation of the spell should not affect you; the secondary may. You will not forget your personal identities and mission, but you may forget the Gap once you leave its vicinity.

  "I'm pretty much immune to that anyway," Dor said. "I'm one of the near-Gap residents. Just so long as I don't forget the rest."

  One question, before I release you. Through what aperture have you and all these other creatures entered my realm? I had thought the last large ring was destroyed fifty years ago.

  "Oh, we have a two-inch ring that we expanded to two-foot diameter. We can change it back when we're done with it."

  That will be appreciated. Perhaps we shall meet again--in eight hundred years, the Coral thought at him.

  Then Dor popped out of the hoop and dangled by his dragline. Jumper followed.

  "I had not anticipated immobility," the spider chittered ruefully.

  "That's all right. We can't all think of everything, all the time."

  Jumper was not affronted. "True."

  The harpies were visible in the distance, but they paid no further attention to Dor and Jumper. They were milling about in air, trying to remember what they were doing there. Which was exactly what Dor had wanted to happen. The goblins, however, were in sadder state. They too seemed to be milling about--but they had forgotten that sharp dropoffs were hazardous to health, and were falling into the chasm at a great rate. Dor's action had decimated the goblin horde.

  "It can not be helped," Jumper chittered, recognizing his disgust. "We can not anticipate or control all ramifications of any given course."

  "Yeah, I guess," Dor agreed, still bothered by the slaughter he had wrought. Would he get hardened to this sort of carnage as he matured? He hoped not.

  They climbed to the brim and stood on land again. The goblins ignored them, not remembering them. The forget detonation had evidently been devastating near its origin, wiping out all memories of everything.

  Dor spied a glassy fragment lying on the ground. He went to pick it up. It was a shatter from the forget-spell globe. "You really did it, didn't you!" he said to it.

  "That was some blast!" the fragment agreed happily. "Or was it? I forget!"

  Dor dropped it and went on. "I hope Cedric got clear in time. That spell was more powerful than I expected."

  "He surely did."

  They hurried back toward the Castle, ignoring the wandering hordes.

  The battle was not over at Castle Roogna, but it was evident that the tide had turned. As the distance from the forget-spell ground zero lengthened, the effects diminished, until here at the Castle there was little confusion--except that there were only about a third as many goblins and harpies as before, and the ramparts were manned by zombies. The Zombie Master had gotten through!

  The defenders spied them, and laid down a barrage of cherry bombs to clear a path to the Castle. Even so, it was necessary to employ sword and hoop to get through, for the goblins and harpies resented strangers getting into their battle. So Dor was forced to slay again. War was hell, he thought.

  King Roogna himself welcomed them at the gate. "Marvelous!" he cried. "You piped half the monsters off the field and made them forget. Vadne led the Zombie Master in while the goblins were distracted by the flute, and he has been generating new zombies from the battlefield casualties ever since. The only problem is fetching them in."

  "Then there's work for me to do," Dor said shortly. He found he didn't really want to accept congratulations for doing a job of mass murder.

  The King, the soul of graciousness, made no objection, "Your dedication does you credit."

  Jumper helped, of course. Covered by centaur archers on the ramparts, they went out, located the best bodies, looped them with silk, and dashed back under cover. Then they hauled the corpses in on the lines. They were really old hands at this. When they had a dozen or so, they ferried them in to the Zombie Master's laboratory.

  Millie was there, wan and disheveled, but she looked up with a smile when Dor entered. "Oh, you're safe, Dor! I was so worried!"

  "Worry for your fiance," he said shortly. "He's doing the work."

  "He certainly is," Vadne said. She was moving the bodies into position for him by converting them to great balls that were easily rolled, then returning them to their regular shapes. As a result, he was evidently manufacturing zombies at triple the rate he had at his own castle. Time was consumed mainly in the processing, not the actual conversion. "He's making an army to defend this Castle!"

  "Dor's doing a lot too!" Millie said stoutly. Flattered despite himself, Dor realized that Millie still had feeling for him, and still might--But he had to suppress that. It was not only that his time in this world was limited, and that if he interfered with this particular aspect of history and it stayed put, he would paradoxically negate his whole original mission. It was that Millie was now betrothed to another man, and Dor had no right to--to do what he wished he could.

  "We're all doing what we can, for the good of the Land of Xanth," he said, somewhat insecurely, considering his thought. How much better it would be for him, if he could find some girl more nearly his own age and status, and--

  "I wish I had full Magician-caliber talent like yours," Vadne said to the Zombie Master as she shape-changed another corpse. Dor saw that she was able to handle living things, and once-living things, and inanimate things like the magic ring: a fair breadth of talent, really.

  "You do have it," the Zombie Master said, surprised.

  "No, I am only a neo-Sorceress."

  "I would term your topological talent as Magician-caliber magic," he said, rendering the corpse into a zombie.

  She almost glowed at the compliment, which carried even more impact because it was evident that he had made it matter-of-factly, unconscious of its effect. She looked at the Zombie Master with a new appraisal, What potency in a compliment, Dor thought, and filed the information in the back of his mind for future reference.

  Dor went out to fetch more bodies. Jumper helped, as always. They kept working until daylight waned, and slowly the goblin and harpy forces dwindled while the zombie forces increased. Harpy zombies were now waging the defense in the air--greatly easing that situation.

  Yet this left Dor unsatisfied. He had entered the
tapestry for one mission, the acquisition of the elixir to restore a zombie to full life. But by the time he had that, he had been enmeshed in another mission, the conversion of the Zombie Master to King Roogna's cause. Now he had accomplished that also--and was casting about for yet another quest. What was it?

  Ah, he had it now. This foolish war between the goblins and harpies--was it possible to do something about it, instead of preserving Castle Roogna by wiping out both sides? Why not simply abate the problems that had caused the war?

  He had gone over this before, in his mind, and had no answer. But then time Had been too much of a factor. Now the Castle was prevailing, now there was time, and he knew more about the magic available. The magic hoop, for example, leading into the Brain Coral's somber storage lake--

  'That's it!" he exclaimed.

  Jumper cocked four or five eyes at him. "There is something I missed?"

  "Anchor me, so I can't fall in. I have to go through the hoop to talk with the Brain Coral."

  The spider did not argue or question. He fastened a stout dragline to Dor. Dor propped the magic hoop against a wall and poked his head through.

  "Brain Coral!" he thought, again rending it impossible to breathe or speak in the preservative fluid. This stuff was not mere water; it had stasis magic. "This is Dor of eight hundred years from now, again."

  What is your concern? the Coral inquired patiently.

  "Have you a male harpy in storage?"

  Yes. An immature one, exiled three hundred years ago by a rival for the harpy throne.

  "A royal male?" Dor thought, startled.

  By harpy law a royal person cannot be executed like a commoner. So he was put safely away, and the access ring destroyed thereafter.

  "Will you release him now? It would make a big difference to our present situation."

  "I will release him. Bear in mind you owe me a favor.

  "Yes. I will talk to you again in eight hundred years." Dor removed his head from the Coral's realm. His head had been in stasis, but the rest of his body was responsive.

  In a moment a bird-shape popped out of the hoop. "Greetings, Prince," Dor said formally.