Esrever Doom

  “Knees together? How will that keep me safe?”

  Dara hesitated, so Kody answered. “So nasty goblins can’t peek under your skirt and maybe see your panties.”

  “Oh!” Zosi said, and clamped her knees together though she was standing.

  “Maybe we can adapt your talent,” Dara said. “There are different kinds of peanut butter, and different jellies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think I do,” Kody said. “What about jellied gasoline?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Just conjure one,” Dara said. “Carefully.”

  Zosi’s face tightened in concentration. A sandwich appeared in her hand.

  Kody sniffed. “I smell gasoline. Set it down. Carefully.”

  She did so, putting it on the ground, and backed off.

  “Can you make a fire?” Kody asked Dara. “To emulate a dragon?”

  “Yes.” The demoness pointed at the sandwich. Her arm dissolved into smoke. A small jet of fire shot from it to the sandwich.

  There was an explosion, and they were peppered with flying peanuts and balls of butter. Black smoke roiled upward to form a barrel-sized mushroom cloud, surely not from mushroom jelly.

  “That was gasoline,” Kody agreed. “It would have blown apart the mouth of any dragon that tried to eat it.”

  “I never realized,” Zosi said, taken aback.

  “And the right kind of pee-nuts would make it a real stinker,” Dara said. “If you just wanted to repel a stray monster. I think you can defend yourself, Zosi.”

  “Maybe I can,” the girl agreed in wonder.

  “It is just a matter of learning to make the best use of your talent,” Dara said. “Many people don’t realize what they are capable of. I understand that in Mundania someone figured out how to make colored spots appear and disappear on a screen, and it became a whole entertainment industry.”

  “Television,” Kody agreed. “Illusion magic, to you.”

  “I have so much to learn,” Zosi said. “It really was easier being a zombie. I did not have to use my mind much.”

  “Many living girls don’t use their minds much either,” Dara said. “Why bother, when the boys aren’t using theirs?”

  Was she teasing him? “Now, about locating the Bomb,” Kody said. “It seems we will have to do a lot of traveling. That will take time.”

  “I believe you have a traveling device that will serve.”

  “The chessboard! I had forgotten about that. How did you know?”

  “The Good Magician knows everything he cares to. He mentioned it.”

  Kody brought out the packet and unfolded it. “It’s a regular game board. You have to look at it in a special way to evoke the pictures.”

  “Of course,” Dara agreed. “Simple folk see only the jumping women or carved cheese. The pictures seem to cover a wide sampling of Xanth. You can begin by trying them randomly, then orient on the direction of greatest contrast.”

  “How will we judge the contrast?”

  “You will need to view people or scenes. You will see them as they are, but Zosi will be most avidly repelled by the most attractive. You may need to develop a system of ratings to determine the intensity.”

  “Let’s do that now. Zosi, on a scale of zero to ten, with ten being the most appealing, how do you rate Dara?”

  Dara stood up straight, posing. Her hair whirled about her in a dark cloud and her figure threatened to burst out of its inadequate restraints.

  Zosi was abashed. “Oh, I wouldn’t say a thing like that.”

  “Be honest,” Dara said. “We do know about the Curse. That’s what Kody’s here to solve.”

  The girl gulped and said it. “One. You look repulsive.”

  “Which would be a nine in ordinary times,” Dara said. “Do you agree, Kody?”

  “Yes, a nine. You’re a fine-looking woman.” He was aware that a demoness could look any way she chose, and those who associated with human beings preferred to resemble starlets, but it was true.

  “But if we were closer to the Bomb, you would have to go beyond ten, and Zosi would have to go into negative numbers. There’s your scale.”

  “There’s our scale,” Kody agreed. “So we can travel to a random site on the board, and rate someone, and judge whether we are closer to the Bomb.”

  “You’ve got it,” the demoness agreed.

  “I remain unsatisfied,” Kody said. “I don’t like depending on the chessboard to travel. Suppose I lose it?”

  Dara eyed him again. “You’re hard to satisfy.”

  “Thank you.”

  She laughed. “I’ve been around a few centuries. Let me ask a friend. Some demon is bound to know the answer.” She faded out.

  “She’s very helpful,” Zosi said.

  “I suspect it is to make up for the gruff obscurity of the Good Magician. Someone needs to be sure the querents are able to use the Answers they get.” He still didn’t much like the word, but it seemed that that was what they were: folk who questioned the Good Magician.

  “Yes.” She took a breath. “May I confess something?”

  Confess? “What is on your mind?”

  “All this is so new and different to me, I’m sure I would mess it up on my own and fail in my mission. I’m glad you will be with me. You seem to have more sense than I do.”

  “But you’re the one who knows Xanth, Zosi! I’m just here in a dream. I’m depending on you.”

  Now she laughed, weakly. “We’re depending on each other.”

  “Perforce,” he agreed. “Maybe it’s not coincidence. The Good Magician knew we’d need each other, to succeed at either mission.”

  “That must be it,” she agreed.

  Dara reappeared. “Let’s see that bored.”

  “That what?” Kody asked.

  “Blase, uninteresting, tired, world-weary, lumbering, plank, timber—”

  “Board?”

  “Whatever,” she agreed crossly.

  “You’re welcome, Metria.”

  The demoness puffed into smoke. “Free Fudge and Popsicles! What gave me away?”

  “Just a lucky guess,” Kody said. “I thought you weren’t allowed in the castle.”

  “This isn’t the castle. This is the open courtyard.”

  So she had found a loophole. “What are you doing here, Metria?”

  The smoke shaped into dusky lusciousness in a halter that would have been eye-popping if there had been enough of it to assess. “I am insatiably attracted to anything interesting, especially if it’s anything I’m not supposed to know about. What’s this about the board?”

  “It’s a magic artifact I was given that enables me to jump to different sections of Xanth. But I worry about losing it and maybe getting stuck somewhere I wouldn’t like.”

  “Like the embrace of a tangle tree?”

  “What’s a tangle tree?”

  She re-formed into a small tree whose foliage consisted of green tentacles. “Touch it and it grabs you, and…”

  Curious, Kody touched it. “And?”

  “And gobbles you down.” The tentacles whipped to wrap around him and haul him in to the trunk. Before he could resist the trunk formed lips and gave him a smacking kiss on the mouth. “Fortunately I’m not a real tangler.”

  “Fortunately,” Kody echoed weakly.

  “Oops, gotta go.” The tree turned smoky and dissipated.

  Dana appeared. “I smell brimstone. What happened?”

  “Demoness Metria was here, emulating you,” he said, rubbing his mouth.

  “And you kissed her?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “Because if you thought it was me, you had no business kissing a married woman.”

  “No business,” Kody agreed.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Zosi said. “She became a tangle tree and hauled him in.”

  “You kissed a tangler? This is not normally considered a safe thing to do.”

&n
bsp; “I appreciate that,” Kody said.

  She smiled. “You’re fun. Now here’s the word on the board. It has a few extra pieces, checkers, pawns, go-markers, or whatever. Take one of those and rub it into your palm. Then the board will know where you are at all times.”

  “But if I lose it, I will need to know where it is, not the other way around.”

  “Not so. You may simply summon it and it will come to you. So you can’t really lose it.”

  Kody nodded. “I like that. But how do I get a pawn when it’s only an image?”

  “Just take it.”

  Kody set the board down on a table. The chess pieces appeared, properly set up for the game. To the side, he now saw, were two spare pawns, one white, one black. He put his thumb on the white one. “Come to me.”

  He felt nothing, but when he lifted his thumb, there was the picture of the pawn on it, smelling faintly of cheese. He pressed it into his other palm. It transferred there, then faded out.

  He left the board on the table and walked away. “Come to me,” he repeated.

  Something nudged his hand. It was the board packet, tightly folded. The magic worked. He had bonded with the board.

  “That must be wonderful,” Zosi said enviously.

  “Take the other pawn,” Kody said. “That way you will be able to summon it too.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t!”

  “If we are to work together, we need to be sure we can’t get separated from each other without recourse,” Kody said. “This board can protect us from that. Take the pawn.” He proffered the board.

  She did not protest further. She opened it out and set it on the table. She put her thumb to the black pawn. In half a moment she had it, and in the other half moment it was sinking into her other palm.

  “Test it,” Kody said.

  She walked away from the board, as he had, then paused. “Come to me.”

  The board quickly folded itself and flew to her hand.

  “I believe that does it,” Dara said. “You may spend the night here, and start on your missions tomorrow morning. I wish you every success in abolishing the Curse.” She grimaced prettily. “So that Humfrey does not wince when I kiss him.”

  They all laughed.

  “Oh, one other thing,” Dara said. “Sometimes when there’s a difficult Quest, there is Demon involvement. You need to be aware of that, just in case.”

  “What’s with the capital D?” Kody asked.

  “There are two primary levels of demons. The great majority are lowly garden-variety types, like Metria and me. But a few are supreme types, like Demon Xanth, from whose incidental body radiation all the magic of Xanth derives. Demon Earth governs Mundania, providing the magic of gravity, and others like Demon Mars and Demoness Venus have their own domains. They are incalculably more powerful than anything else. Their interest is mainly in vying with each other for status points. Sometimes they levy wagers on random things, such as whether a given mortal will do a certain thing. They don’t normally intervene, they just watch. But you can never be sure. So keep in mind that your Quest just might be a Demon bet, rather than a routine chore. It might make a difference.”

  “But if these super-powerful things don’t intervene, what’s the difference?”

  “Perhaps none. But there could be special aspects that make no sense unless it is a stricture set by a Demon. In any event, do not take any Demon’s name in vain; there could be consequences.”

  “Like disrespecting an ugly little cloud?”

  Dara smiled. “Exactly. Only infinitely more so.”

  “I will be properly respectful.”

  “That is best.” Dara faded out.

  So it seemed they were ready to go. But Kody remained doubtful. Were they really equipped to tackle such formidable missions? Surely there were dozens of other folk better qualified than a dreamer and a living zombie. Unless some Demon had a twisted sense of humor.

  Well, no matter. They were the ones who had been assigned, and they would do their best, hoping it was good enough.

  5

  ZAP AND YUKAY

  Kody had a pleasant, quiet night alone, glad to catch up on sleep. This remarkable realm just kept throwing new things at him, and he needed time to assimilate them. He had pretty much given up wondering why he needed to sleep when he was already in a dream state.

  In the morning he joined Zosi for breakfast. She looked nice, with her gray hair neatly brushed, and she kept her knees together. She was relearning the living mode. Then, armed with knapsacks full of knickknacks, they departed the castle. “I hope you have a forthright notion how to begin,” Zosi said.

  “I was hoping you did.”

  She smiled ruefully. “It has been some time since I was alive, and I’ve never been on a Quest. But I understand there’s always a Protagonist and several Companions, plus lots of challenging Adventures. So maybe we should start by seeking some Companions. Maybe they’ll have better ideas how to proceed.”

  “Why do we need Companions? Won’t they just slow things down?”

  “I think it’s mostly Tradition. But there must be a reason. I suppose Quests are more likely to be favorably resolved if there are more people along.”

  Kody shrugged. “We can keep an eye out for some.”

  At that moment, as if summoned, two dark unicorns trotted into view, heading toward the castle. They saw Kody and Zosi in the path, and paused.

  “Hello, unicorns,” Kody said.

  Suddenly he saw a little picture of the two people meeting the two unicorns. A speech balloon appeared over the head of one unicorn. “Hello, humans.”

  Kody was taken aback. “Did you just answer me? Or was I imagining it?”

  The picture reappeared. Now the speech balloon said, “Yes.”

  Then Zosi caught on. “They are projecting dreamlets! Because they can’t talk with their regular mouths.”

  “True, human female,” the balloon said. “We are Moonshine and Moonshadow, unicorn/night mare crossbreeds, and we inherit some abilities from each parent. We can phase out in darkness, heal injuries, purify springs, and yes, project little dreams.”

  “Thank you for that explanation,” Kody said. “I am Kody, and my companion is Zosi.” He did not add either Mundane or Zombie, uncertain what impression such terms would make. “We have just been to see the Good Magician, and are now on a Quest.” Should he ask the unicorns to join them? He wasn’t sure how Zosi would feel about it, or whether unicorns would make good Companions. He had really been thinking of human Companions.

  “We are going there now,” Moonshine said. “Not to see the Good Magician; we are friends of Dara Demoness.”

  “We wish you well,” the balloon by Moonshadow said. Then the two unicorns trotted forward to the moat, ran across the water, and through the castle wall.

  Kody exchanged a glance with Zosi. “I don’t think they would have wanted to become Companions,” he said.

  “No,” she agreed.

  Another person was approaching the castle. Kody was coming to appreciate how busy it was. No wonder the Good Magician tried to set limits.

  This one was a medium-age woman. “Hello,” Kody said.

  The woman bleated. Then she paused, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. I forgot what form I was in. I’m Annie Mal. I can become any animal.” She demonstrated by becoming a sheep, then reappeared as human, clothes and all.

  “Kody Mundane.” He was concluding that it was best after all to establish his alien origin, so that people would know why he made social mistakes.

  “Zosi Zombie.” She was evidently coming to a similar conclusion about her nature. If that turned people off, well, it was best done at the outset.

  “Verynicetomeetyouboth,” Annie said rapidly. “I’llbeonmy way.” She became a rabbit and bounded away.

  Kody shook his head. “I guess a Mundane and a Zombie made her nervous.”

  “Yes. But if we want Companions, they will have to know.”

  “I agree. So mayb
e we had better continue to be open about our dark origins. So as to scare away folk before we get into things like Quests, if they’re going to scare.”

  “Yes,” she agreed unhappily.

  She needed cheering. “But just so you know, I think you’re a pretty girl and a nice person, Zosi. I’m even getting to like gray hair.”

  “Oh!” she said faintly. “I wish…”

  “If it’s anything I can help with, let me know.”

  “You’re so nice to me,” she said. “Even though you know I’m a zombie.” She took a breath. “I wish … I could kiss you again.”

  Oops. That had not been the kind of thing he meant. But what could he do? “Okay.” He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  There was a soft explosion of something. She was surprisingly nice to kiss, but that wasn’t really it.

  “Oh look!” she explained as he let her go. “A heart!”

  Now he saw it. A little red heart was orbiting them. “That came from us?”

  She nodded, blushing. “It means we like each other.”

  So that, too, was literal, here in the magic land. There had been no heart when Princess Dawn kissed him, but there had been no prospect of romance there.

  That made him pause. There was such a prospect here? That seemed unlikely. “Maybe we do,” he agreed. “Though of course we won’t be associating long.”

  “Yes.” She was sad again, and the heart faded out.

  Time to change the subject. “Now let’s see what the chessboard offers.” He brought the board out and unfolded it.

  “I am not clear on exactly how it works,” Zosi said. “All I see are check hers pieces. It’s a naughty game.”

  “Those are there too. Can you play chess?”

  She shook her gray curls. “Chess is too complicated for zombies. We don’t have good minds.”

  “There is another set of images,” he said. “We didn’t go into that with Dara, as she already knew. You have to refocus your eyes to look through them and see the pictures beyond. Each square has a different one.”

  Zosi concentrated, frowning. “It’s not working for me.”

  “Just keep trying. Once you catch it, you’ll know how. I had practice with 3-D pictures in Mundania.”

  “With what?”