"Imbri! Don't let him dazzle you!" Jordan the Ghost cried in her ear. He was still with her; she had forgotten him during the intense action. "No male is worth it! I know, for I am a worthless male who ruined a good girl, and now suffer centuries of futile remorse. Don't let it happen to you! Xanth depends on you!"
Still she stood, virtually rooted, smelling the compelling scent of the stallion. She knew she was being totally foolish, as females had always been in the presence of virile males. She knew the consequence of her inaction. Yet she could not act. The mating urge was too strong.
The day horse nipped her on the neck. Imbri stood still. There was pain, but it was exquisite equine pain, the kind a mare not only accepted from a stallion but welcomed. He was dominant, as he had to be, to be a worthy stud.
He marched around her, taking his time. This, too, was part of the ritual. He sniffed her here and there and snorted with affected indifference. Oh, he certainly had her under control! The ghost had given up, knowing Imbri was lost. Her glazing eyes were fixed on the box on the floor, the one that had the word PANDORA printed on it. All it would take would be three steps to reach it and strike it with a forehoof, opening it, releasing whatever it contained--but she could not force herself to take those steps.
There was a loud crash from the distant outer wall. The Mundanes had broken in at last. Imbri quivered, trying to break free of her paralysis, but the stallion snorted, quieting her. She simply could not oppose him, though all her reason protested her folly. She had fatally underestimated the compulsion of her own marish nature.
"Hey, General--where are you?" a Mundane called.
The day horse shifted momentarily into his human form. "Here in the throne room!" he called back.
That broke the spell. Imbri jumped, moving like the released mechanism of a catapult, turning on him. But as she faced him, poised for the strike, he converted back to stallion form. He arched his neck, eyeing her with assurance, completely handsome and potent. He tapped the floor with his left forehoof.
Imbri, in the process of freezing again despite her best resolution, saw the brass band on that leg. The band that advertised exactly who and what he was.
She struck out with a forefoot, catching him on that front leg, attacking the band. The blow was not crippling or even very effective; its significance lay in the fact that she was opposing him. His shift of form, and his direct recognition of alliance with the Mundane enemy, had disrupted the equine mood. He was not a horse in the guise of a man, but a man in the guise of a horse. Imbri did not breed with a man in any guise. Now she knew, subjectively as well as objectively, that he was no friend of hers. All she had to do was look at that band, to see him as he was.
The day horse squealed, more in anger than in pain. He stomped his forefoot again. He was as handsome in his ire as in his dominance.
Imbri refused to be captured again. The brass band remained fixed in her mind. Her head swung about, her teeth biting into his neck just behind the furry white ear. She tore out part of his splendid silver mane. Red blood welled up, staining the shining hide.
Now the day horse fought. He squealed and reared, his forehooves striking out--but she reared, too. She was not as large and powerful as he, so was at a disadvantage, but she was driven by pure outrage and the knowledge that she was fighting not only for her pride, her freedom, and her life, but for the welfare of the nine other Kings and for the Land of Xanth itself. She was the King Mare; she had to prevail.
She whirled, her lesser mass giving her greater maneuverability, and launched a rear-foot kick. She scored on his shoulder and felt the bone crumbling under the force of her blow. The day horse stumbled, limping, then righted himself and came at her again. He was indeed a fighting creature and quite unafraid; instead of turning about to orient his powerful hind hooves on her, he used his head. This was the contemptuous nipping approach of the dominant animal.
This time Imbri kicked him in the head.
He collapsed, blood pouring from his nostrils.
Imbri looked at him. Now she was sorry for what she had done, though she knew it was necessary. He had made a fatal tactical error, coming at her in the mode of disciplining rather than in the mode of fighting, and had paid the consequence. Yet the blood on his pretty white coat, gushing over the floor, horrified her.
She knew there was healing elixir in the armory. She could fetch some of that, and in an instant this most beautiful creature could be restored. No stallion should suffer so ignominious a demise!
"Where are you, General?" the Mundane called, approaching the throne room.
Imbri charged for the door, whirled, and caught the man with a hard kick in the chest as he entered. He went down with a broken groan, unconscious or worse.
"Jordan!" she sent. "Will you ghosts help? The Mundanes are said to be superstitious; they're actually afraid of the supernatural. If you show yourselves to them and make threatening gestures, it may scare them away. I've got to protect the dormant Kings while I try to reverse the Horseman's enchantment on them."
"We'll do our best," Jordan said, and floated swiftly and purposefully away.
Imbri returned to the day horse, determined to force him to divulge the secret. She hated all of this, but if she had to, she would taunt him with the healing elixir, holding it back until he acquiesced.
But she discovered that he had changed again. He had reverted to his human form, in a pool of blood--and the Horseman wasn't breathing. The terrible force of her kick had smashed the bones of his head. She knew at a glance that he was dead.
There was now no way to make him talk. She had in her desperation hit him too hard. She had murdered him.
She stared at the awful sight, her agony for the death of the day horse merging with her grief for the coming loss of the Kings of Xanth. What could she do now? She had squandered Xanth's last chance!
Bleak despair overwhelmed her. She and the ghosts might fight off the Mundanes, but what use was that now? The King Mare had brought doom, exactly as should have been anticipated.
"The box!" Jordan prompted, returning. "Maybe it has a counterspell--"
Listlessly, Imbri put her hoof on the box and crushed it. Thin, translucently pink vapor puffed out, expanding into a rather pretty cloud. It encompassed her, for she made no effort to avoid it. For good or evil, she accepted it.
It certainly wasn't evil. She felt invigorated and positive. Somehow she generated confidence that things would work out after all.
"Hope!" Jordan exclaimed in her ear. "It was hope locked in that box! I feel it, too! Now I believe that my own long morbidity will eventually terminate."
Hope. Good Magician Humfrey had mentioned that he had locked up hope. She hadn't realized that it was in the Pandora box. She understood, objectively, that nothing had changed, yet the positive feeling remained. There had to be some way!
Imbri's eye caught the brass circlet on the Horseman's wrist. Something turned over in her mind. Why had he never removed it, though it was an obvious hint of his identity? Surely it had considerable value for him. Could that thing be a magic amulet? Something to enable him to convert from man to horse? No--that conversion was inherent in his nature, just as the Siren's ability to change from legs to tail sprang from her man-mermaid parentage. The Siren needed the dulcimer to do her separate magic.
The band--could it be something like the dulcimer, to amplify or focus his power? If the example of the Siren was valid, these crossbred people did need something extra to bring out their full talents. Part of their magic was their dual nature, so the rest was weaker than it should be. A dulcimer--a thin brass band. The magic of the Horseman could have resided not wholly in him but partly in the amulet.
It was her only remaining chance. She had hope; this could solve the problem of the Kings! She took the brass ring in her teeth and tugged it. It would not pass over his hand, so she used a forehoof to crush the bones of his dead extremity together, pulping the appendage, until there was room for the circlet to pa
ss. Then she took it in her teeth and trotted out of the chamber, to darkness.
"We'll protect the Kings!" Jordan called after her. "As long as we can scare the Mundanes..."
She sent a neigh of thanks and phased through the walls and out of the castle. She saw in passing that the ghosts were indeed doing a good job of holding the remaining Mundanes back; with the Horseman and one of their own number dead, and with the ghosts menacing the rest, these troops would be quite wary of penetrating deeper into the castle by night. They would not realize for some time that the ghosts had no physical power. She hoped the Mundanes would be balked long enough; the Horseman had lost, but Xanth would not win until the Kings had been saved.
She shot out into the night, the brass band still firmly in her teeth. She knew one person who was knowledgeable about brass. "Blythe!" she broadcast as powerfully as she could. "Blythe Brassie!"
As she neared the place where she had left the Gorgon, she heard the brassie girl's dream response. "Here, King Imbri!"
In a moment they were together. "Blythe, I have a ring of brass I took from the Horseman. I think it connects to his power, but I don't know how it works. Can you tell?"
Blythe took the band and examined it closely. "Yes, I believe I have encountered something like this before. Note how short it is; very little depth compared with its mass. It is what we call a short circuit."
"A short circuit? What does it do?"
"It's supposed to make a wrong connection, to divert power from its proper avenue-or something. I'm really not clear about the details."
"Could it divert light?" Imbri asked, her new hope flaring again.
"Yes, I think so. It might make a lightbeam go the wrong way."
"Like from a person's eye to the peephole of a gourd?"
Blythe brightened; "The missing Kings!"
Imbri looked through the loop. All she saw was Blythe, on the other side. But of course it required magic to implement the effect--and that was the Horseman's talent. He had somehow used the short circuit to connect the gaze of each King to a gourd's peephole, causing the King to be confined to the gourd. The ring could be a short circuit to the gourd on one side and to the King's eye on the other. "But how could the connection be broken?" Imbri asked.
"You have to shield the circlet," Blythe said. "Ordinary matter won't do it, though. It has to be magic."
"I don't have any such magic--and very little time," Imbri sent desperately. "How can I abate its power quickly? Should I just break it? I'm sure I could crush it under my hoof with just a stomp or two, or have the ogre chew, it to pieces."
"Oh, no, don't do that!" Blythe said, alarmed. "That could seriously hurt the Kings, sending them back to the wrong bodies or permanently marooning them in the night world." She paused, smiling fleetingly. "Isn't it funny, to speak of anyone being marooned in our world! But, of course, since they don't have their bodies with them--" She shrugged her metal shoulders. "You must interrupt its power without damaging the brass. That's the way such things work. That will have the effect of cutting off the Kings' view through the peephole, harmlessly."
She ought to know, Imbri realized, since she was of the magic brass region. Desperately Imbri cudgeled her mind. What would do it?
Then she had a notion. "The Void!" she sent. "That nullifies anything!"
"Yes, that's where we send hazardous wastes to be disposed of," Blythe agreed. "Things like used brass spittoons. That should work. Nothing ever returns from there."
Imbri took back the band and launched herself north, toward the Void. Then she remembered to veer to the nearest gourd patch. Obviously it did not affect the band to be within the gourd, since the day horse had been there while wearing it and no prisoned King had been released. But the Void was different. Even the creatures of the gourd world had to be careful of it.
She plunged madly through the night world, heedless of all its familiar scenes, and out of the gourd within the dread Void. She suppressed her growing nervousness. After all, Xanth depended on her performance.
Now she ran straight into the most feared region of Xanth--the center of the Void. The land curved down here, like the surface of a huge funnel, descending to its dread central point. For the Void was a black hole from which nothing escaped, not even light. Only Imbri's kind could safely pass the outer fringe of it--and she had to dematerialize for the inner fringe, lest her physical body be sucked in, never to emerge. She was terrified of this depth, for it was beyond where she had ever gone before--but she had to make sure the brass ring was properly placed, that its effect was absolutely shielded. If she set it rolling or sliding down toward the hole, and if it snagged on the way, the Kings could remain captive for an indefinite future time until the ring completed its journey.
She wasn't even sure a direct placement in the hole would break the spell, but it did seem likely, and it was all she had left to try. It was her only hope. If this did not break the chain, then Xanth was doomed to anarchy, for there would be no way to rescue the Kings, and the Mundanes would ravage Xanth unchallenged. The Horseman was gone, but his mischief would remain after him, causing Xanth to suffer grievously.
She came to the bottom of the funnel. She saw the deepest blackness of the black hole. She was immaterial, yet it seemed to suck her in. It had a somber, awesome latent power. She was extremely afraid of it.
She opened her mouth and dropped the brass band. It plummeted as if gaining weight. In an instant it disappeared into nothingness. There was not even a splash, just a silent engulfment. The deed was done.
Imbri tried to turn and depart the funnel. Her feet moved, but her body made no progress. She had approached too close to the dread maw of the Void! Even dematerialized, she could not escape it.
She scrambled desperately up the side of the funnel, but slowly, inevitably, she slid back. Her hooves had no purchase; nothing had purchase here! She had penetrated the region of no return. Her fall accelerated.
With a neigh of purest terror and despair. Mare Imbri fell into the black hole of the Void.
Chameleon seemed to float up, her face and body amazingly ugly, but her spirit beautiful. "Chem! Chem!" she called out over the jungle of Xanth. "Chem Centaur-- where are you?"
"Here I am!" Chem cried. "Here with the Gorgon. Don't worry, she's thoroughly veiled!"
"We need your soul," Chameleon said, drifting down to join them.
"I have only half my soul," the centaur said. "Imbri the night mare has the other half."
"No, you have all of it now. Don't you feel it?"
Chem was surprised. "Why, yes, I do! I feel buoyant?
But how is this possible? I never begrudged Imbri her half, and my half was regenerating. Now I have more than a full soul; it's too much!"
"Imbri fell into the black hole of the Void," Chameleon explained. "She killed the Horseman and carried his magic talisman to the Void, to free the rest of us from the enchantment, but she couldn't escape it herself."
"The Void! Oh, this is terrible! You mean she's dead, after all she did for Xanth?"
"No. We believe one essential part of her survived. She lost her body in the sacrifice she made to break the chain, fulfilling the prophecy, but her soul remained. No soul is subject to the Void. It's the only thing in Xanth that is not vulnerable to the black hole."
"But it reverted to me! It wasn't her own soul, because the creatures of the gourd don't grow their own souls! They have to borrow from those of us who do. I don't want her half soul! I want Imbri to live! After what she did for Xanth, and the kind of person she was-" The centaur filly was crying human tears of frustration and grief.
"So do we all," Chameleon agreed. "That's why Good Magician Humfrey and I, anticipating this, made plans for such a contingency. We could not act while we were confined within the gourd. But the moment Imbri freed us, Humfrey uttered a spell he knew. A Word of Power. An enchantment to keep a special soul discrete, despite its origin."
"Discreet?"
"Discrete. Separate. So
Imbri could live on after her body was lost."
"But how, then--if her soul came back to me--?"
"She came, too. Free her, Chem; the Good Magician's spell enables you to do that, because you have the first claim on that soul."
The centaur concentrated immediately. "Imbri, I love you! I free you! Take your half soul; be yourself!"
Something intangible snapped. Imbri floated free. "Is it true?" she sent. "Am I really alive?"
"Yes, lovely night mare!" Chameleon said. "You are alive in the purest sense. But you have lost your body. You can never again materialize. You are now of the spirit world, like the ghosts."
"But what can I do without my body?" Imbri asked, dismayed. She remembered her awful fall into the Void--and the arrival of Chameleon. Nothing in between.
"That's part of what we arranged," Chameleon said. "Humfrey's spell took care of the paper work, or whatever, so it's all right. We all love you, Imbri, and we all thank you, and we owe our lives and our hopes to you, and we want to be with you often. So you will be a true day mare, carrying daydreams and pleasant evening dreams, much as you have been doing. Only now it is official, and forever. Whenever we daydream, you will be there with your new associates, making sure each dream is properly delivered and enjoyed."
Imbri liked the concept. She no longer liked bad dreams. Still, she was perplexed. "My associates?"
Now several other mares appeared, trotting prettily through the air. They were of pleasant colors--red, blue, green, and orange. "Welcome, black mare," one sent, perking her ears forward in a friendly fashion. "Oh, the Day Stallion will like you! You have such an individual color!"
"The Day Stallion?" Imbri sent, an unpleasant association forming.
A male horse appeared, flying wingless through the air, bright golden as the sun. "I assign the daydreams," he sent. He swished his tail negligently. He was the handsomest stallion Imbri had ever seen. "But you may choose any you like to deliver. We are very informal here and seldom take things very seriously. This present daydream is an example; we're all linked together in it, and we're all helping with it, so as to introduce you to the nature of your new work gently. All the recent Kings of Xanth and their friends are sharing it. Soon they must revert to normal consciousness, to transform the Mundane Wavers back into men, one at a time--King Trent transformed them all to stinkweeds, and the castle smells awful--to see if they're ready to swear allegiance to the present order, and to see about King Trent's retirement so he can spend more time with his wife, and about King Dor's permanent assumption of the throne of Xanth--these things must, after all, be accomplished with the appropriate ceremony--but first they wanted to see you properly established in your own new employment. We have never had a King among our number before."