"Careful," Nada murmured.
Kim looked. She had almost walked into a pool, because she had been looking at the moon instead of where she was going. The water was dark and looked almost slimy, as if pus had oozed into it and turned it to jelly. Ugh! Where had she gotten a notion like that?
There was something under the water. Kim peered—and saw bones. And perhaps pieces of attached flesh. As she looked, they seemed to move. Double ugh! She averted her gaze and walked on.
They crested a hill and saw a sinister valley. In the most dismal depths of it squatted a truly ugly castle. The moon, by the alchemy of this region, was now setting behind that edifice, illuminating it so that every facet of its misshapen structure showed clearly. There was of course a moat, and high ramparts, and a portcullis, and turrets and embrasures. But somehow instead of seeming delightfully medieval, it seemed frightening.
As she got closer, Kim saw that it was worse than she had thought. The castle was not made out of wood or stone; it was made of bones. Big bones framed the front gate, and little bones filled in the crevices, and sharpened bones topped the walls. A rotting flag hung from a spire, showing a skull and crossbones. The portcullis was actually a giant skull with pointed fangs.
"Maybe the prize is not in there," Kim whispered.
But the moment she tried to turn away, she discovered that there were palisades encroaching from either side, channeling her in toward the castle. She looked directly back, and saw a foul fog swirling up over the crest of the hill, rendering visibility zero and harboring who knew what. If she tried to go back through that fog, she would probably stumble into the corpse-filled water. There was no place to go but forward. Of course.
The closer she got, the larger the castle seemed, until it loomed impossibly high. The big bones seemed to have been carved by a cleaver to fit their assignments, and the smaller ones seemed to have been chewed on. Some were split lengthwise. This was the kind of castle a brute ogre would fashion when in an ill mood.
The fluid of the moat looked even worse than the pond water. Even Bubbles shied away from it. Something stirred within its noisome depths, but Kim didn't care to see what it was. Instead she scrunched up most of her remaining nerve and set foot on the bone planks of the drawbridge. One of them rolled under her foot, causing her to lose her balance and almost pitch into the murky water.
She righted herself and took another step—and another bone rolled, trying to send her off to the side. So she got down on her hands and knees—and felt the slickness of the surface of the bones, as if they had only recently been stripped of their flesh. She gritted her teeth and moved forward—this time feeling a string or something. She looked, and saw it was a tendon, not quite separated from the joint. Triple ugh!
She made it across the moat, with Bubbles crawling along beside her. She stood on the bone pavement, which seemed to have been formed of hipbones embedded in bone fragments, and gazed at the awful entry. Would that giant fanged upper portcullis jaw crash down on her as she tried to enter? Surely it would; that was what it was for.
She heard something rumble behind her. She jumped and looked back. The drawbridge was lifting! Gross tendons were hauling it up until it was vertical, leaving no escape from the castle. Now she really couldn't change her mind.
"Everything about the place seems to be one-way," Nada noted. “The fog, the fencing, the bridge. You aren't allowed to change your mind."
"It's victory or defeat," Kim agreed. "And I guess victory is better."
"Of course it is," Nada said warmly. "What is the point in playing the game, if not to win the prize?"
What use to explain about human feelings to a princess? "I suppose so," Kim agreed. "But I sort of liked just being in Xanth."
"You will be able to return. And with the magic talent you win as the prize, you'll be able to play longer and better."
Kim realized that she was right. Since she couldn't have her true heart's desire, she might as well have the prize. "Yes. Let's get on with it."
She took a step toward the portcullis. Bubbles whined.
Kim stopped. As far as she knew, the dog had no magic. She wasn't like Jenny's cat Sammy, who could find anything. That didn't mean that Bubbles wasn't worthwhile, just that her reactions to magic effects might not be wholly accurate. Still, she generally had reason for her concerns. "What is it, Bubbles?" Kim inquired, putting a hand on the dog's back.
Bubbles looked up at the deadly fangs of the portcullis, and her tail dropped low.
Oh—naturally the dog did not want to enter the mouth of a monster!
Kim took another step. Bubbles yelped as if someone had trodden on her tail.
"Something's wrong here," Kim said. "You think that big mouth is going to close on us?" As she said it, she realized it was true: that was what a portcullis was. A gate that came crashing down to shut out intruders. Maybe down on them, if they moved slow. "It is going to come down on us! It's one more way to be wiped out." A wipeout here would be just as final as a wipeout in Xanth proper, even if this was the dream realm.
"It must be," Nada agreed. "Maybe there's another way into the castle."
They walked to the side, but the moat quickly closed in, squeezing the ground out until there was no break between the water and the bonewall. There was no other entry.
"So it has to be the portcullis," Kim said. "Maybe we can put a block on it, so the fangs can't come down on us."
But there was nothing to use as a block. "Maybe we can climb the wall to a window," Nada suggested. "I can climb in serpent form."
Kim tried to get a handhold on a projecting bone, but it was slippery, and there was no good bone to grab above it. Even if she could climb the wall, Kim knew she would grow faint before she reached any height, and probably fall off. And how could the dog ever climb it? So that was out.
She sighed. "I think we'll just have to go through the main entrance. I'll bet it has to be fast. And right together, three abreast. That portcullis has to take a moment to get started. So it should crash down behind us."
"It should," Nada agreed.
They lined up. "Ready, set, go!" Kim cried, and they took off.
They crossed the line of the gateway—and the portcullis came crashing down. Wham! the fangs plunged into the floor at their heels. The retreat was closed. But they had made it through unscathed.
Only then did Kim wonder what would have happened if they had not been in perfect alignment. Suppose the dog had lagged behind, and gotten trapped outside? Or, worse, chomped? Suppose the dog had run ahead, and triggered the drop too soon, so that it crunched the two people? This had been a very risky ploy!
Kim resolved to be more careful from now on. She looked ahead, and saw a dark hall leading into the center of the castle. Its walls were polished bones, tightly interwoven. She wasn't sure how bones could be woven, but these were. There was barely enough light for them to see.
Well, the hall must lead somewhere. Kim started to walk down it—and Bubbles whined.
Magic or no magic, she was coming to trust the dog's judgment. There was something fishy about this passage.
Kim looked around. There was a chink in a corner, and a bone fragment on the floor beneath it. In due course some skeleton crew would come by and use bone paste to fasten the chip back into place.
Bubbles went over to sniff the fragment. That didn't mean anything; the dog sniffed everything. It was her way of getting acquainted. But it reminded Kim that there was always a way through, in the game, and usually a hint about that way through. That fallen chip of bone was the only unusual thing here. Was it a hint?
Kim went to pick it up. It seemed quite ordinary. She tried to return it to its place in the wall, but it wouldn't stay. She didn't have any paste with which to fasten it there. She couldn't make the repair.
Then she thought of something else. This was Xanth, and one of the commonest forms of magic here was illusion. Things could seem to be what they were not. Or could not seem to be what they were.
Kim took the chip of bone and sent it sliding down the hall. The floor was smooth, because the bones were shored by plaster or cement. It was like sending a puck down a shuffleboard alley.
Then the chip disappeared. Kim smiled. "I think we've found what's wrong with this hall," she said.
She got down on her hands and knees again and crawled carefully forward. Bubbles joined her. When she came to the place where the chip had disappeared, she reached forward—and felt nothing. The floor was gone. There was a pit there. The floor looked continuous, but it was illusion, covering the trap.
Kim nudged up to the edge and felt deeper. There seemed to be no bottom to the pit. It would have been a bad fall, probably a wipeout.
But how was she going to get across it? Kim pondered. "I'm going to gamble," she said. She fished in her pack and found a spare pair of socks. She separated them, and rolled each one up into a ball. Then she tossed one ahead about four feet. It landed and rolled on along the hall, finally fetching up at the entrance to the next chamber. "So there is a continuation," she said, satisfied. "No more invisible pits. She tossed die second sock about three feet. It, too, landed and rolled.
But Kim couldn't reach across the pit; her questing fingers found nothing. So it couldn't be much under three feet. Still, three feet was jumpable.
"This is like the portcullis," she said. "We'll have to jump. But I think we can do it singly." She removed her pack and set it at the edge of the pit. "This is where the jump starts. I'll go first." She looked at the dog. "You wait." She hoped Bubbles would understand.
She walked to the front end of the hall. Then she ran down it, reached the pack, and leaped. She landed cleanly and slowed to a stop.
"Now you, Bubbles," she called.
The dog ran down the hall, leaped at the pack, and landed where Kim had. She was old and solid and barely made it, but her spirit was there.
"Now mark the place and toss over the pack," Kim said to Nada. "Then jump over yourself."
In this manner they traversed the hall and came to the central chamber of the castle. It was huge. Portals opened out around it in about nine directions, and more opened out from the balcony levels. In the center was a big ball of bright red string.
As they stepped into the chamber, the door to the passage slammed shut with a bone-rattling jar.
"I think I have this figured," Kim said. "Somewhere in this castle is the prize. I have to search to find it. And any door I pass through will be closed after me, so I can't go back. But maybe some of those chambers have several doors. So I'll mark my trail with string, so I'll know if I've passed that way before. If I find the prize before I lock myself into a dead-end chamber, I'll win."
“There must be dangers along the way, too," Nada said. "Judging by what we've seen so far."
"Yes. So this will be dicey. But winnable if I'm smart enough and lucky enough." Kim considered as she went carefully to fetch the string. "Bubbles, you're the most cautious about danger. You lead the way." She wasn't sure the dog would understand, but it was worth a try.
Bubbles sniffed around, then headed for one of the portals. She paused at the entrance to the chamber, waiting for Kim.
Kim tied the end of the string to a projecting bone and strung the line out behind as she went to join the dog. "Okay, Bubbles, you lead, but be careful."
The dog entered the chamber, but did not proceed to the center. She went to the side. As she did so, something came down from the high ceiling. It swung back and forth. It was a pendulum. A big sharp-edged bone on a long tendon, and it crossed the full chamber. But it shouldn't be hard to pass, if they timed it for when it was at one end of the chamber.
Then a second pendulum came down, with another knife bone. It swung opposite to the first, reaching the other end, so that there was no chance to pass; both ends were covered. However, when the two sharp bones were at the edges of their swings, it should be possible to run through the center.
And a third pendulum descended, timed to swing across the center while the other two were outside. But maybe they could pass a bit to the side, opposite that third, while the first and second were still out. And a fourth, going opposite to the third. Now everything was covered. The chamber was a crisscrossing pattern of swinging bones. There was no clearance at the edges; the blades almost touched the walls.
Nada shook her head. "I think we had better try another chamber."
Kim turned back—and saw that the door had quietly closed behind them. Again, they couldn't retreat.
"Maybe we could leap over them?" Kim asked. But then she realized that the swinging tendons were almost as dangerous as the sharp bones. They could catch a person, and tangle her, so that one of the other knives would swing back and cut her apart. The only safe course was to avoid the pendulums entirely.
Already Kim's eyes were glazing. No matter where she looked, a pendulum was passing or about to pass. There just seemed to be no way to cross safely.
Yet there had to be a way. If she could just figure it out. Some way to get through without blindly gambling.
Kim shut her eyes, closing out the bewildering array. There were only two sets of pendulums, swinging oppositely. While one set touched the edges, the other passed the middle. She judged that each single pendulum took two seconds to complete its swing from one side to the other, and that a person needed one second to get safely across the covered zone. With just two pendulums, that second would be available in the center or at the edge. But with the four, only half a second. Not safe.
She opened her eyes and studied the pattern again. This time she looked at one edge, and counted seconds. She discovered to her surprise that a blade came near one wall every second, not every half second. How could this be?
She sketched a diagram in the dust of the floor, and realized that she had made an error. Each single pendulum did take two seconds to swing across—and two more to swing back. That was a four-second cycle. So four pendulums reduced it to one-second cycles. She could make it! She had almost allowed herself to be dazzled by the crisscrossing blades, so that she was ready to give up when she didn't need to.
"Okay," she said. "We'll go through singly. It's going to be close but possible."
"But those blades—" Nada protested, alarmed.
"Are passing any given spot at one-second intervals, I think. So all we have to do is pick a spot, like maybe the center, and dash through there right after a pair of blades has passed. In fact, I think the thing to do is aim for the crossing blades. They'll be moving out of the way as we come, and the other two will just be starting in. So it should be clear for that second."
Nada still looked extremely doubtful.
"I'll go first," Kim said. "And this time I'll carry Bubbles, but I don't know how to explain to her how to time it, and I don't want to risk any confusion. Then you can pass, carrying the ball of string. Come on, Bubbles." She squatted, put her arms around the dog, heaved her up, and stood herself. Oh, Bubbles was heavy! And how did the game make her feel that weight, when this was all just animation on a screen? It didn't matter. She just had to be sure not to lose her timing.
Kim went up to the crisscrossing blades. She felt the breeze of their passing. She started counting, timing them. "One, two, one, two," as the first and second sets of pendulums passed the center. Then she retreated a step, nerved herself, and lumbered across, trying to time it to come just barely after "two."
She made it. She lowered the dog to the floor, feeling faint. She didn't like such nervous business!
Nada timed it similarly and came across. Whereupon the four pendulums slowed, stopped, and withdrew into the ceiling. "Just like 'The Pit and the Pendulum,' " Kim remarked. No explanation, no follow-up, they just quit when they got outsmarted.
They went to the next chamber. This one had a pit across its center, too wide to jump. There was a ladder-bridge formed of bones on the far side, that evidently could be lowered in the manner of a drawbridge. On the near side was a length of cord hanging from a ceiling beam
. That was all.
Kim pondered the situation. She should be able to use the cord to snag the ladder and pull it down across the pit so they could cross. But the cord was firmly tied, and would not come loose. She might cut it—but she could not reach high enough to cut off enough to use for this purpose. She might grab hold of it and try to swing across the pit, but she was afraid it wasn't strong enough to hold her weight. That also prevented her from trying to climb it to the beam; it could break anywhere, ruining it. So what use was it?
Then her lightbulb flashed. She removed her pack, which was not heavy enough to break the cord, and tied it to the end. Then she swung the pack across the pit, getting the feel of it. It banged into the upright ladder. She swung it again, this time to one side, and it swung around behind the ladder, hooking it, and snagged. But the ladder did not fall.
Now she was in trouble. The cord was out of reach. How could she get hold of it?
Then she took her ball of string. She lofted that up over the near end of the cord and caught it. The string was not heavy, but it was strong enough to pull the cord down just within reach of her hand. Then she pulled on the cord until the snagged pack brought it crashing down across the pit. Now they could cross.
The next chamber was worse. The moment they tried to enter it, the ceiling started descending and the floor ascended. Both surfaces had knife-pointed bones sticking out. Pity the poor person who tried to scramble through there!
When they backed off, the floor and ceiling stopped moving, then retreated, ready to trap the next unwary person. Kim wondered why they didn't just keep going until they met halfway up and closed off the chamber.
Could that be a clue? Could it be that the way wasn't closed until the person was actually caught between those jaws?
She took her pack and set it on the edge of the chamber floor. The floor rose, and the ceiling dropped. Just before they crunched the pack, Kim pulled it away.
She ducked down and peered under the floor. It had been pushed up by a column of bones. She could see right by that column to the next chamber. There was her way through—under the floor!