“Cottonwood,” she said, indicating a small tree covered with white puffs. “One of the most useful trees in the forest. In the spring yew can harvest cotton balls from it; in the summer, cotton candy. In the fall, cotton socks. And in winter yew can burn the wood and get cute little puffs of white smoke.”
Beside the tree grew tall reeds. “Fen-fen, from the Ogre-fen-Ogre fen. The ogres eat it to lose weight, but now they find it is causing heart attacks. Not even ogres much like getting pelted by flying hearts. Apparently they are guardians of the fen.”
Sitting on a branch of the tree was an oddly shaped collection of fruit. Olive tried to touch it, but it suddenly spread wings and flew away.
“That’s a fruit bat,” Wenda explained. “It was afraid yew’d eat it.”
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“Getting in is supposed to be a challenge?” Maeve asked. “This looks easy. Nothing but harmless plants.”
“Don’t you believe it, maenad,” Olive said. “I have heard about this castle. The Good Magician is a recluse who hates to have his time wasted by folk demanding favors, so he makes it hard for them to get in, and then he demands a year’s ser vice or the equivalent in exchange for an Answer few can figure out anyway. So it really isn’t worth it, unless you’re desperate.”
“I am desperate,” Maeve said. “If that stork catches me, I’ll be, as Haughty would put it, sc****d.”
“No, that’s backwards,” Phanta said. “The stork comes after the sc***ing.”
“Scraping?” Wenda asked, stifling half a smile.
“Scalping,” Haughty said, suppressing a chortle.
“Scheming,” Olive said.
They looked at Jumper. “Scalding?” he asked.
They all laughed. “Just keep that bleeping bird away from me,”
Maeve said. “Anyway, I’m game. I’ll go on in, and the rest of you can take your turns after you see how it goes.”
Olive shrugged. “Try it your way.”
Maeve set forth. The others followed, with Wenda continuing to admire the special plants. She seemed to know them all. Jumper realized that the rest of them weren’t actually trying to follow; they were standing in place. But somehow they remained close to the maenad. Indeed, this garden wasn’t quite as innocent as it appeared.
“Weird,” Haughty said. She spread her wings and tried to fly back, but nothing happened. “What the h**l!”
“Haul, I think,” Wenda said. They missed Maeve’s translation.
“We’re being hauled along after her.”
“Another detail,” Olive said. “Querents
can’t use their talents.
Haughty can’t fly, and it seems Maeve can’t separate from us. We must be slated to tackle the challenges as a group, though I haven’t heard of that before.”
“So the first challenge is already upon us,” Jumper said. “And we are learning the rules.”
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“Maybe you are,” Maeve called back. “I’m not good at rules.” She plowed determinedly on, and they paced her, involuntarily.
“There’s a soul food plant,” Wenda said. “That’s a rare one. Normally it grows only near the Black Wave Village, where they guard it carefully.”
“That one?” Phanta asked, reaching for a brown horn.
“Dew knot touch that!” Wenda cried, alarmed. “No, the soul food is the other side of the path.”
A goblin stepped out onto the path ahead of Maeve. He was bigheaded, big-footed, knobby between, and ugly, as all goblin men were.
“Well now, sweet maiden,” he said. “So nice of you to visit.”
“Beware,” Olive murmured. “Goblin males are never polite. It has to be sarcasm.”
“What the bleep do you want, knobhead?” Maeve demanded politely. The goblin laughed nastily. “Take off your clothing and I’ll show you, cutie.”
Maeve considered. “If I do, will you get out of my way?” Obviously she was trying to handle this peacefully, though it plainly went against her nature.
“Har har har!” he laughed. “Maybe after I’m done with you, you luscious little piece.”
“Uh-oh,” Olive murmured. “She’s getting annoyed.”
“That is not good enough,” Maeve said, small sparks glinting in her eyes. “You have to promise.”
“Har har har! Enough flirtation, you hot little package. Get ’em off now or I’ll rip ’em off. I’d like that.”
“That does it,” Maeve snapped. She quickly stepped out of her clothing, unbound her wild hair, threw off her gloves, and spat out her wax teeth. Then she leaped at the goblin, her pointed teeth snapping, her uncovered claws raking.
And suddenly a whole clot of goblins appeared. It was a trap. Maeve took a bite out of the first goblin, and he screamed in pain. But the others laid hands on her arms, legs, and torso. They jammed a sponge into her mouth so she couldn’t bite and held her spread-eagled. 039-40892_ch01_4P.qxp 7/30/09 12:35 PM Page 57
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“So we’ve got us a maenad,” their leader said zestfully. “Oh, won’t this be fun!”
“They’re going to sc**w her!” Haughty exclaimed. “We have to do something.”
Jumper realized he might be about to find out what the word really meant, but this wasn’t the way he wanted to learn it. He started forward, about to tackle the goblins.
“Wait!” Wenda stooped beside the path and picked something up. It looked like a discarded animal horn. In fact it was the plant she had warned Phanta against touching. She hurled it forward. It arced onto and into the crowded goblins, landed on the ground, and broke open. Brown mist puffed out.
“Hold yewr noses,” Wenda said. “Dew knot breathe if yew can help it.”
“What are you talking about?” Phanta demanded. Then she caught a whiff. “Oh, no!” She grabbed her nose.
“Gas attack,” Olive said, grabbing her own nose. Then Jumper smelled it: the foulest imaginable stench. It reeked of rotten excrement mixed with spoiled vomit, shaken, not stirred, plus less attractive substances. And he was only at the edge of the expanding cloud.
The goblins were at the center. Already they were turning ghastly green as they tried desperately to scramble out of range, but they had been coated with the vapor. They were doomed.
“Stink horn,” Wenda said with satisfaction. “A forest plant. I can knot think why it is knot more pop u lar.”
She glanced at the others. “Hold yewr breaths and hurry through before it dissipates and the goblins return.”
They needed no second warning, as the gut-wrenching stench was thickening. They gulped foul air and ran forward. Jumper spied Maeve gasping helplessly on the ground. He picked her upper section up with two legs and ran with the other six, dragging her feet along. When he had her well clear of the stench, he set her down and turned to go back for her clothes. But the vile brown cloud rose up menacingly, oozing feculence, and he reconsidered. 039-40892_ch01_4P.qxp 7/30/09 12:35 PM Page 58 58
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“Don’t bother,” Maeve gasped. “I wouldn’t want those clothes anyway.”
Then they saw another figure coming down the path. It was a cloaked person . . . no, a tall bird . . . no, it was the stork! It was coming after Maeve, having spotted her in her natural state. It carried a bundle. Then it got into the cloud, and abruptly it was coughing and turning green. The bundle did the same. The bird retreated, looking as if it was about to be very sick.
Maeve laughed. “Serves it right!” she gasped. “By the way, Jumper, thanks for rescuing me. What a smell! Rotten carrion is sweet in comparison.”
“You are welcome,” he said. “But won’t the stork catch you, now that it knows where you are?”
“Not if I get to the Good Magician first and get my problem solved.”
“S
o we had better move on before that noxious gas clears.”
“We had better,” she agreed, struggling to her feet. “But it may be hours before that stork tries again to pass it. I’m just lucky I have a tolerance for decayed flesh.” Even so, she looked distinctly sick. Jumper made a mental note to stay away from stink horns. They rejoined the others, who were waiting a bit farther from the rampaging cloud of stench.
“I think we have navigated the first Challenge,” Haughty said. “By invoking Xanth’s worst f**t.”
“Fret,” Maeve said. “Something that truly disturbs people. Like that gas.”
Phanta choked back something that might in better times have resembled a laugh. Was that really the word the harpy had used? They came up to the moat. The moat monster lifted its head from the water and surveyed them hungrily. Snappish little fish crowded close to the bank, hoping for tasty flesh to bite. No crossing there; it was hard enough just to wash the remaining stink off. Fortunately they could use the drawbridge.
But when they approached the drawbridge, they discovered that there was a woody curtain hanging across its near end. A number of 039-40892_ch01_4P.qxp 7/30/09 12:35 PM Page 59
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lengths of wood were bound together to make a flexible barrier. Jumper was about to draw it aside so they could pass, but Wenda stopped him.
“Dew knot touch it! That’s bamboo.”
“Isn’t that a type of wood?” Olive asked. “That should be harmless.”
“Knot bamboo,” Wenda said. “It is dangerous. I’ll show yew.” She picked up a small stone and flipped it at the curtain. The wood struck one piece, and it detonated. BAM! The explosion rocked the whole heavy curtain and blew out a blast of hot air that pushed them back. Wenda was right: they did not want to touch it.
“But we can throw more stones, and make it all explode,” Olive said. “Then it won’t be in our way.”
“Knot bamboo,” Wenda repeated. “Watch.”
In a moment, maybe even half a moment, BOOM! and the fragmented section of bamboo regenerated and was whole again. They would never be able to detonate all the pieces fast enough to get past them before they were dangerous again.
“Again, your expertise has identified a woodland project we need to know about,” Olive said. “We’re lucky this environment didn’t nullify your knowledge as well as your magic.”
“By the way, what is your magic?” Haughty asked.
“Being hollow yet animated,” Wenda said. “I could knot function this way if I weren’t magic. So yew could call it my talent. I call it my curse.”
“So we can’t cross the drawbridge,” Jumper said. “We need to find some other way across the moat.”
“As I understand it,” Olive said, “there is normally some way at hand to handle the Challenges. Just as there was a stink horn, waiting for Wenda to recognize it and use it. We just have to find the key to getting across the moat.”
“Let’s walk around it,” Jumper suggested. “And see if we can find that key.”
They started walking. There was a parklike strip outside the moat, with a con ve nient path through it. This must be what they were supposed to do. If they circled all the way around the castle without finding 039-40892_ch01_4P.qxp 7/30/09 12:35 PM Page 60 60
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the key, that might signal their failure. Then they wouldn’t get to see the Good Magician, and would be stuck with their assorted fates. Not to mention a wasted prophecy. So they needed to be alert. A woman came running toward them, laughing. They gave her room, and she ran right on by, still laughing. But something odd happened: each person she passed burst into similar laughter. Soon they were all collapsing in spasms of mirth, even Jumper, who didn’t know what was so funny.
After a while they gradually subsided. So he inquired: “What was so funny, to make us all laugh like that? I didn’t even know spiders could laugh.”
“Nothing,” Haughty said seriously. “I seldom laugh. Yet I was overcome.”
“It’s as though it spread from her to us,” Phanta said. “That’s weird.”
“Infectious laughter!” Olive said. “That’s her magic!”
Haughty shook her head. “So it must be. But how is that relevant to our need to cross the moat, either as help or hindrance? Because everything is relevant, isn’t it?”
“It is supposed to be,” Olive agreed. “Maybe if we were smarter, we could figure out how it relates.”
They went on, nonplussed if not nonminussed. And soon another person came running, this one a man. He looked as if he were about to be sick. They let him pass— and choked up, feeling ill in the throat, unable to speak. After a few uncomfortable minutes they recovered. None of them had actually upchucked, but all had been silenced.
“And what was that?” Haughty wheezed.
“A running gag,” Olive said. It seemed she was good at puns. The others groaned, and not because they found it very funny. In fact they were not amused. They got up and resumed their walk around the moat.
They came across a small group of people at the bank of the moat. Two were children, a boy and a girl, plainly unhappy, while the third was a merman trying to console them.
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Jumper, leading the way, paused. It bothered him to see anyone unhappy, especially a child. “What is the matter?” he inquired. If the children were surprised to be addressed by a big talking spider, they didn’t show it. “I am Mercury,” the merman said. “My talent is to change the temperature of water. I can make it hot, cold or comfortable in my vicinity.” He swished his tail in the water. “These children also have talents relating to water, but they aren’t happy with them. I am trying to encourage them, but they don’t believe me.”
“Any talent surely has some use,” Olive said to the children. “What are yours?”
“I am Caitlin,” the little girl said. “I can turn wine to water. But nobody likes me to do that. They say it would be better if I could turn water to wine, and I can’t.”
“Have you tried it with reverse wood?” Olive asked. The girl’s mouth fell open. “Do you think that would do it?”
“I think it might,” Olive said. “Reverse wood reverses most things. Of course you can never be sure how it reverses them, so you just have to try it and see. But it might work.”
“I’ll try it,” Caitlin said, pleased.
“And what is yours?” Olive asked the boy.
“I am Ian,” he said. “My talent is pushing water away from my body. People say that’s no use at all.”
That obviously set Olive back. Reverse wood might just get him soaked. She looked helplessly at the others. They shrugged, not able to offer anything.
“There must be something,” Olive said at last, defeated. “If we think of it, we’ll let you know. Meanwhile, would a kiss cheer you somewhat?”
Ian considered. He was a child, but there were some pretty girls here. Maeve, bare, was especially fetching, but Phanta was quite pretty too. “Maybe.”
“Choose one of us,” Olive said.
“Her,” Ian said, pointing at Haughty.
Haughty almost fell over with surprise. “But I’m a harpy! No one wants to be kissed by a harpy.”
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“I think harpies are great,” Ian said. “They have all these bad words.”
Oh. Boys did tend to be naughty.
“Well, I’m not saying a bad word to a child,” Haughty said. Ian started to cloud up.
“Oh, h**l,” Haughty said, disgusted.
“Heel,” Maeve murmured too faintly for the boy to hear. As a result, he imagined a much worse word.
“Great!” Ian exclaimed. “H**l! I love it.”
“You’re welcome,” Haughty said, touched. She flew across and kissed the top of his head as she passed over him.
“She touched me!” Ian exclaimed. “I
probably got dirty! Great!”
“You folk seem to have a certain talent with children,” Mercury said. “You have cheered them as I could not.” He slid back into the water and swam away. They walked on. They might have cheered the children, but they were no closer to solving their own problem. They encountered a man walking the opposite way. “Hello,” Jumper said.
The man paused. “I never met a big talking spider before,” he remarked.
“I was given the gift of tongues,” Jumper explained. “Otherwise all you would hear would be mandible clicks. Do you have a talent?”
“I do indeed,” the man said proudly. “I can transform my arms into anything.” He demonstrated by changing them into wings, then giant claws, then longer arms, and finally into lengths of rope. “I can do just about anything I want to.”
“Can you help us get across the moat?” Jumper asked.
“Well, I can form paddles.” He did so. “But the moat monster and those piranha fish would eat me up, and anyone with me. So I don’t think I can help you there.”
That had been Jumper’s impression. “Thank you.”
The man moved on, and so did they. Soon they encountered another man. He had large insect eyes. “Hello,” Jumper said.
“I see you are a transformed spider with the gift of tongues,” the man said. “That’s interesting.”
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“How do you know all that?” Jumper asked.
“I am Todd. I have the Eye of the Bee-holder. I can see things from more than one angle. You are obviously a normal spider, except for your size, and I see a bit of the tongues plant in the corner of your mouth.”
Jumper was impressed. “Do you see a way for us to cross over the moat?”
Todd shook his head. “I see no way for you to do that. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” Jumper said regretfully. For a moment he had had hope.
They moved on. “There are people with many talents here,” Olive remarked. “But none of them seem to relate well.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Haughty said. “Somewhere here there’s one who can help us, but we can’t find him or her in this welter of irrelevant talents.”