Electra wanted to ask what was wrong with the man, but he was already upon them. "A greeting, Sorceress Tapis,” he said gravely, evincing nuances of excellent breeding.
"What in tarnation do you want with me, Murphy?" the Sorceress inquired politely, though mere was a hint that she was not pleased with this visit.
"Please, please, let us be properly introduced before we proceed to business," the man said expansively. "I see that you have here a bevy of truly lovely maidens."
Princess, maid, and Electra essayed two and a half fetching blushes. Electra's was the half; she had not yet perfected this art. But the Sorceress frowned. "If we must. Murphy, these are the Princess, Millie the maid, and Electra, all having business with me. Girls, this is Magician Murphy, whose talent is making things go wrong.”
The Princess paled, Millie screamed in a somewhat unfetching manner, and Electra backed away. Maidenliness was forgotten in the face of this threat. They had all heard of the Evil Magician Murphy, the scourge of order; wherever he went, disasters developed from nothing. No wonder the Sorceress was displeased!
"Ah, I perceive that my reputation precedes me," the Magician said. "Have no concern, gentle ladies; I have no business with you. I have merely come to broach a matter to me Sorceress.”
"I'm not interested!" the Sorceress snapped, her smile for once forgotten.
"Ah, but you should be. Shall we talk privately?**
"No." Electra had never heard the Sorceress so curt.
"Then I shall broach it now," the Magician said, just as if he had received the most gracious of responses. "I have come to solicit your support, Tapis.'*
"You shall not have it!"
"Ah, but hear me out, grand lady. You see, I wish to assume the throne of Xanth. However, there is an impediment."
"King Roogna," the Sorceress agreed curtly.
"The same; how perceptive of you. Since there are only four Magician-class persons extant, each one is important in a case like this. It is evident that the Zombie Master will not take sides; he is nonpolitical. King Roogna and I are on opposite sides. That leaves only you, Sorceress Tapis. Your support would significantly enhance my endeavor. How may I obtain it?"
"You can't. Now that is settled, please go far and quickly away."
"I am prepared to be appropriately generous. Would you care to name your price?"
"I have no price. I don't want you as king. Roogna was selected, and unless some grief comes to him, he is the legitimate monarch, and I support him. Certainly I will not act to undermine him."
"Suppose I were to marry you? That would provide you unprecedented status without responsibility."
The Sorceress choked and went into a coughing fit. When she recovered, she wheezed: "Taunt me no more, Murphy. I am an old woman, of your mother's generation, soon to die. I have no interest in being Queen, and less in marrying you. Kindly desist embarrassing these maidens with your presence. The answer is no, no, nine hundred times no, forever no, and if you persist in this insanity I may have to become negative."
Murphy frowned, and that frightened Electra. The man was too certain of his power; his slightest malice carried horrific implication. "I trust you realize that if you are not for me, I must assume that you are against me," he stated flatly.
"I would really prefer not to be involved with you at all!" the Sorceress said. "Nor to have these gentle maidens corrupted by your presence. But if I must choose sides, then I am against you. Now, I beg of you with understated loathing, will you please go away?"
The Magician sighed with apparently genuine regret. "I shall in that case do so. But I must leave with you the curse of my nature. I had hoped it would not come to this. Are you certain you will not reconsider?"
The Sorceress looked stricken, but her words were firm. "I am certain, Magician," she wheezed.
Without further word, Magician Murphy turned and departed. The three girls breathed sighs of relief.
"The siege has just begun," the Sorceress said. "That man has laid his curse on us, and we shall surely rue it."
"But things go wrong all the time," the Princess protested. "You just have to be careful, and fix them when that isn't enough. We are forewarned." Electra and Millie nodded agreement.
"I see you do not yet understand," the Sorceress said heavily. "Then listen, my young friends, and harken to my warning, for I know whereof I speak. That man is a Magician, and his power is insidious; only another Magician could hope to oppose it, and I am too old and frail. Even in my more vigorous years I was never truly his match; that is one reason I never married. Murphy solicited a tapestry from me, to forward his evil cause, and I refused, and then there came a fluke circumstance that caused my betrothed to desert me for another woman. Then I made for Murphy a tapestry that opened onto an inferno, and sent it to him; had he used it he would have died. Thereafter he left me alone, respecting my power. But in the decades since his power has waxed while mine has waned, and my art can no longer threaten him. This we both of us know. Now he has chosen to eliminate me, so that I can not help King Roogna. Surely I am lost, but I shall do what I can to protect the three of you from this disaster.”
She looked at Millie the maid. "My dear, you have been a good and loyal assistant, and you have fine qualities of domestic service. I shall write for you a fine recommendation so that you may obtain excellent other employment. I suggest you seek to take service with King Roogna, who is a good man and a fine Magician; he is unmarried, and his new castle will have serious need of care. Go now, this day, so that you may escape the environs of this curse."
"But Tapis—" Millie protested.
"And take with you the tapestry hanging in your room; I always intended for it to be yours. It will help you to depart without hindrance, and to travel hereafter. You have but to reach back into it after you step through it, and pull it through after you. Thereafter you will have to carry it by hand to a new location, so that you can use it again, but you know how to do this. My blessing on you, girl; you are beautiful inside and out, and will surely make some good man deliriously happy, if this misfortune does not touch you. Farewell; time is of the essence, as the curse coalesces."
Millie, dismayed, turned and walked slowly toward the house.
"And you, Princess," the Sorceress said. "I regret giving you an incomplete coverlet, but believe me, it is now necessary. You must undertake your sleep this very hour, if you are to escape; already the evil magic is coalescing. By the time you wake it will be long dissipated, so you will not suffer from it. Let us go to your coffin and be about this business."
"As you wish, Tapis," the Princess agreed, shaken.
They walked slowly toward the house. "And you, Electra," the Sorceress continued, "I regret I can not dispense with your service this moment; you will have to help me set the lid on the coffin, so as to protect the Princess. Then I will take the Heaven Cent and use it, for it is almost complete, and you may depart forthwith. The tapestry in your cottage is yours; use it and take it with you, and never return to this cursed site."
Electra did not reply; she was too busy crying. How awful to have this wonderful existence so abruptly terminated!
They fetched the incomplete coverlet, and went to the chamber where the Princess' coffin rested. This chamber was of stone, strongly constructed, spelled to be resistant to all manner of calamities, for it had to endure for a thousand years. The coffin itself would sink right out of Xanth and into Mundania after it was sealed, so that no magic could touch it prematurely. The Princess had explained it all: there was a package of precise magic associated with the coffin. It guaranteed that her body would be preserved exactly as it was, so that she would age not a single whit, and no wrinkles would form, and all her dreams would be sweet. Only a young, handsome, unmarried Prince could find and open the coffin, and only his kiss could wake her. This would occur within a thousand years; it had to, or the spell would expire. That was the one nervous aspect: if something happened to the Prince, she would fade away, for the magic could no
t protect her entirely from the leaching of vitality. But the Prince would come; the spell would see to it. She would wake instantly, all her faculties complete. Then she would marry the Prince and live happily ever after.
"But suppose the Prince doesn't want to marry you?" Electra had inquired from childish curiosity.
"That is unthinkable!" the Princess had exclaimed. "He has to marry me, because that is the nature of the magic. Should he even think about being the smallest bit reluctant (as is known to occur with some men, unfortunately), I will charm him with all the virtues I have so diligently mastered. I shall clap my hands and bounce my torso, and fling my hair about, and he will soon answer to my will, for that is the magic of these things. We shall be married with suitable pomp and ceremony, and then we shall consider summoning the stork, for palaces are fine places for children to play."
"But what if you do all these things, and he still doesn't marry you?" Electra persisted. She, as a child, had few of the assets of the Princess, and fewer of those of Millie the maid. Her hair was barely long enough to fling properly, and was neither the golden hue of Millie's nor the quality dark chocolate of the Princess. She could not bounce in the right way no matter how hard she jumped up and down. Her scream was too piercing, hardly the dulcet little cry of the others. She was afraid that if she tried these arts on a real man, he would laugh. That prospect bothered her, so she sought ways to capture a man that did not depend entirely on physical endowments. This was a foolish quest, she knew, for men had no other interests, but still she hoped. If she could somehow manage to find a man who liked a lively girl, or a smart one, or who needed her talent—well, there was at least a remote chance, wasn't there?
The Princess grew serious. "I must marry him, for if I do not, I will die," she said. "The apple I bite is poison. Its first effect is to put me into a deep sleep, so deep I do not even breathe. But after I wake, that apple remains in me, and it can only be abolished by true love and marriage. So I will love the Prince who wakes me, instantly and completely, and that will suppress the poison, for love is greater than death when it is new and strong. But if he does not love me back, and does not marry me, my heart will break, and it will bleed, and I will slowly weaken and die, and it will be a most distressing tragedy. I mean, what is the point of sleeping a thousand years, if you don't marry a Prince?"
Electra had to agree that this was persuasive. And surely the Prince would love the Princess, for she was very attractive and knew exactly what she wanted.
But as they put the coverlet in the coffin, to the side so the Princess could draw it over her when she entered, there was a shudder. A stiff gust of wind was catching at the house.
Electra hurried out of the chamber and looked out a window. There over the sea was a monstrous whirling cloud whose bottom stretched down in a tightening tube to suck up water. Usually such clouds drank briefly and then drew their tubes back into themselves, their thirst sated, but sometimes they were hungry and came ashore for some sand. This one, by freak luck, was headed right for the house!
She dashed back into the chamber. "A funnel cloud is coming!" she cried.
"Murphy's curse!" the Sorceress said, looking faint. "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong! It's happening already!"
"We must hurry!" the Princess said. "Let me take out my apple—"
But as she removed the apple from its box, a gust of wind whipped through the chamber, caught up the coverlet, and wrapped it about her head. She screamed and dropped the apple, clawing at the coverlet.
Electra ran to close the stone door, humming the key note that made it work. That cut off the nasty wind, but the roaring of the approach of the funnel cloud still grew louder. She pounced on the rolling apple and picked it up. She hurried over to the Sorceress. "Here it is!" she said, holding out the apple."
"Not to me, child!" the Sorceress protested. "To the Princess. Give me the Heaven Cent!"
"Oh." Embarrassed about her miscue, which was not at all her normal type of confusion, Electra used her free hand to lift the cent from her breast. She tried to draw the chain over her head, but it snagged on her ears.
"Be careful, child, lest you invoke it!" the Sorceress said, trying to help her.
"Oh, I wouldn't invoke the Heaven Cent!" Electra protested.
The cent flared, releasing its accumulated energy in a single flash as its plating disappeared. With shock, Electra realized that by an incredible blunder she had done just that. The cent was made to respond to the words "I invoke the Heaven Cent" when held in the hand; it recognized no other words, such as "wouldn't." She knew this, but in her confusion of the moment she had slipped. Twice in as many instants she had blundered. She, who tried so hard to do things right!
She backed away, horrified. The backs of her knees struck the low coffin, and she tumbled into it. Her flailing arm folded in at the elbow, and the apple her hand held struck her open mouth. Her jaws closed involuntarily, and her teeth bit out a piece. She tried to scream, but already the paralysis gripped her. Frightened, horrified, and immensely chagrined, she sank into the sleep that had been intended for the Princess, sent by the magic of the Heaven Cent that had been intended for the Sorceress.
Yet even then she knew that it had not really been her fault. The terrible magic of Magician Murphy's curse had made it happen. Anything that could go wrong, had gone wrong, and all three of them, and perhaps Millie too, had had their hopes and plans destroyed by this single awful surge of bad luck. An inadequate child was being sent a thousand years into the future, and she would bleed and die if she did not marry the Prince who woke her.
It seemed but an instant before she felt the kiss. She knew immediately that it was the Prince. She was a child, and ridden with guilt for the thing she had inadvertently done, but she could not help herself. The magic of the completion of the spell suffused her, and she leaped into love with her rescuer.
Then she opened her eyes and saw him. He was a boy, a child even younger than herself! "Oh! Who are you?" she exclaimed.
The boy cried something incomprehensible. Then some one said something indecipherable behind him. She looked, and saw a human skeleton.
She screamed and scrambled out of the coffin. "Help! It's a monster!" she cried as she hid behind the coffin lid.
"That's no monster!" the boy retorted. "That's Marrow!"
She peeked out, realizing that if the boy was not frightened, she shouldn't be either. "You're talking sense now," she said. "You kissed me awake. Who are you?"
"I am Prince Dolph," he replied. "Who are you?"
He continued to speak, but she was overcome by the realization that the magic had indeed worked. A true Prince had kissed her awake. "I am Electra," she babbled. "I love you. Will you marry me?" For whatever evil curse had brought her here, she had to marry him, or die.
"But I am already betrothed!" he protested.
Then she knew she was doomed. The curse still functioned, even after all this time.
The skeleton asked her about the Heaven Cent, and she tried to explain, though stunned by her doom. Not one of the four of them had escaped any part of Murphy's curse! Not the Sorceress, or the Princess, or Electra, or—well, maybe Millie had gotten away in time, but she wasn't even sure of that. What a terror that man was!
"Then I'll marry you," the Prince said. "In a few years, when I'm old enough. If you'll make the Heaven Cent."
Then she realized that the other part of the magic was functioning too: the Heaven Cent had sent her here, where she was most needed. She wouldn't die after all! She flung her arms around the Prince, who was exactly her own size.
A shape loomed at the entrance. There was a scream of terror, and Electra realized that it was not her own; there was a fourth person in the tomb, a lovely nude woman. What was she doing here?
Electra's consciousness was spinning from the suddenness of the developments, though a thousand years (or most of it) had passed in the middle of them. But she gathered that the woman was not supposed to be here, a
nd the huge horse-shape was going to destroy her. Suddenly the woman's flesh puffed away, leaving only a standing skeleton. But Prince Dolph jumped between the stallion and the skeleton. "I forbid this thing!" he cried. "Grace’l is a good person! I will help her!"
Now wasn't that just like a Prince! He was trying to save another damsel, even though that damsel had already been pretty garishly killed, so that only her bones remained.
"As you wish," the stallion said. Then Electra found herself standing on the beach outside the tomb, with the male skeleton beside her. Only the tomb was gone; indeed, the whole house was gone. There was nothing but sand, and a few trees, here on the shore of what was evidently the mainland near the Isle of View. More magic!
She turned—and there behind her was the Prince, seated on the sand, staring into a gaze-gourd. Beside him was a serpent with the head of a woman, watching him. This grew stranger yet!
"Princess Nada, this is Princess Electra," the skeleton said.
"Oh, I'm no princess!" Electra protested. "I'm just—" Suddenly it all became too complicated, and she started crying.
The serpent-woman changed to human form and comforted her. Electra sobbed out as much of her story as she could manage, explaining about the curse and the apple and the cent and how they had all interacted to bring her here. "So I love Prince Dolph, and must marry him," she concluded.
"But you don't even know him!" Marrow the skeleton protested.
"What has that got to do with it? I know it was supposed to be the Princess, but the magic took me, and that's the way it is. I have no choice in the matter."
Then the serpent woman, Nada Naga, explained how Prince Dolph and two animated skeletons and herself had come here. That was similarly amazing.
"Then you're his betrothed!" Electra exclaimed. "How much you must love him!"
"No, I don't love him at all," Nada said sadly. "It is a political betrothal."
"Then you don't want to marry him?"
"I do want to marry him," Nada explained. "I just don't love him."
"But I—I do love him! And I have to marry him, or I'll die! How can you marry him, when you are of another species and you don't even love him?"