Heaven Cent

  It required some time to reach land, because they had to go around the storm, but in due course Chex settled on the beach and opened the net. "Kick me," Marrow told her. "And kick the sail."

  Chex understood; she was an old friend of Marrow's. They had met when Esk brought Marrow from the gourd, and had traveled together when she went to talk with her sire, Xap, at the top of the mountain of winged monsters. She booted the side of the boat with a forehoof, then booted the fallen sail.

  Marrow and Grace’l landed, reformed, almost together, Dolph's knapsack between them. "Well," Chex said, "I see you have a lady friend, and she has really nice bones."

  It was of course impossible for skeletons to blush, but both Marrow and Grace’l gave it their best effort. Marrow hastily introduced skeleton to centaur and explained about their mission to find the Heaven Cent and a viable gourd for Grace’l’s return. "But a merwoman abducted Dolph," he concluded. "Now we must rescue Dolph. His mother would never speak to me again if I let him be permanently lost."

  "You could be correct," Chex agreed, with a quarter smile. She was a fine figure of a centaur filly, with full bare breasts, and great gray wings, and flowing brown hair and tail. Even her eyes were esthetic, being the same shade of gray as her wings, which were almost the color of bone. Marrow found that flesh was not hideous when it was where it obviously belonged.

  "So we must rescue him," Dolph concluded.

  "Are you sure he needs it?" Chex asked.

  Both Marrow and Grace’l looked at her with surprise. "Of course he needs it!" Marrow said. "He's captive!"

  "But I think not in danger."

  "Of course he's in danger! Why would you think otherwise?"

  "Because his mother and sister are surely keeping track of him via the Tapestry, and they will act the moment they believe he is in serious peril. Since they appear not to have acted, we can assume that he is not in peril."

  Marrow had not thought of that, but it did make sense. Of course, centaurs always made more sense than other folk did. "But wouldn't they act to prevent him from remaining captive?" he asked. "Surely they don't want a prince of Xanth held forever under the sea!"

  "I think they would not act quickly," Chex said. "They would prefer either to leave him in a safe place where he could not stray until he became thoroughly bored with his adventure and was quite ready to return home without complaint, or to have him make his own escape, so that he could gain necessary experience and prestige as a prince."

  "Oh—and then help him if he got in trouble while trying to escape?"

  "Yes. But of course he may not try."

  "May not try! Why wouldn't he try?"

  "Let me explain," she said in the practical manner of one who has evidently thought a matter through more thoroughly than others had. This manner was another centaur trait, the more maddening because it was usually justified. "Merwomen keep their youthful appearance much longer than do mermen, and while the men become very little interested in romance, the women retain what is said to be a very lively libido. Thus they are all too often in search of extramarital affairs of the heart. Since they are uncomfortable on land, though they do have the ability to shape legs and go ashore, they seek solace mainly from the men of the sea: sailors, fishermen, and visitors. Once one of them fixes on a particular man, she will not rest until she has him. When she does get him, she treats him very well. They are highly proficient in the arts that please men. Indeed, it is said that there is hardly a better fate than for a man to be captured by one of these, and that many reported drownings are nothing of the kind; the man simply does not want to leave his lover in the sea. Now, since you know that Prince Dolph was taken by such a creature, how can you be sure he is not quite satisfied to remain where he is?"

  "He is only nine years old," Marrow said succinctly.

  "Merwomen are kind to children, too; many wilderness nymphs are. Children have been known to mature surprisingly quickly, in the company of such creatures. In the interim, she could give him many things he likes, such as toys and candy and uncritical attention. She could show him a side of the female persuasion that he has not before appreciated. No, children are not immune to such blandishments; they are more receptive to them than are adults."

  "But Dolph was on a mission!" Marrow protested. "He was in quest of the Heaven Cent!"

  "The what?" she inquired, frowning.

  Marrow explained about the cent. "So you see, he would not want to leave that unfinished."

  "I suppose that's true," Chex agreed, not entirely pleased to have had to learn something from a noncentaur person. "So he should have motivation to continue his search. Perhaps it would be best simply to wait and see what happens."

  Marrow pondered. His hollow skull was ill-equipped to debate policy with the sharp mind of a centaur, yet he was not satisfied to accept her suggestion. Why wasn't he?

  Finally he got it straight. "I don't think so. I must go to rescue Dolph."

  Chex arched an eyebrow at him. "Oh? Why?"

  "Because he is a child, and is not expected to make mature judgments on things. I am his adult companion; it is my job to provide the judgment he lacks. If he does not have the sense to try to escape from the merwoman, I must exercise that sense for him. Otherwise there is no point in my presence."

  "Even if he does not want to escape?"

  "Especially if he does not want to escape! That would mean the merwoman has corrupted him, and it is my duty to counter that corruption. When he is an adult, he may stay with a merwoman if he wants to, but as a child this is an option I must deny him."

  Chex looked at Grace’l, who had not said a word during this discussion. "How do you feel about it?"

  "It is not my business to interfere," Grace’l said. "I am only along until we find a gourd, so I can go home."

  "As it happens, I saw a gourd as we were coming in for a landing here," Chex said. "It should be quite close; let me check." She spread her wings, flicked herself with her tail, and took off.

  Marrow had mixed emotions. This was a rare experience, for skeletons were not phenomenally emotional, and seldom had more than one emotion at a time. On the one bone hand, he was glad that Grace’l would have her wish; on the other, he would have liked to have her company longer. He had not been aware of how much he missed the companionship of his own kind until he met her.

  "How are you going to rescue Dolph?" Grace’l inquired.

  "I had not thought about that. I suppose I shall have to walk under the sea and search for the merwoman's lair, and take him out."

  "That may not be easy."

  "I must at least make the effort."

  She nodded. She seemed to be thinking her own hollow thoughts.

  Soon Chex returned. "Yes, I found it. We can reach it very quickly. At least one problem can be readily solved."

  "No," Grace’l said.

  "What?" Marrow asked.

  "I have changed my mind. I will take another gourd home,"

  "Why?" Chex asked.

  "Because if Marrow is responsible for Prince Dolph, then I am responsible too. They were helping me look for a gourd, and I was helping them look for the Heaven Cent. I was part of the craft on the water that let Dolph get captured by the merwoman. I must at least help rescue Dolph, so that he can continue his mission. Then I can return to my realm."

  "So the two of you are going to attempt to rescue Dolph, no matter what I say?" Chex asked.

  "Yes," Marrow said, and Grace’l nodded agreement.

  Chex smiled. "I am glad to hear it. Let me help you plan the rescue."

  "But you are against the rescue!" Marrow protested.

  Chex laughed. "Hardly! There was no way I was going to let Prince Dolph remain in the clutches of that merwoman."

  "But you argued—"

  "The other side. Of course. It is always best to be conversant with both sides of an issue before taking action. It was also important that I ascertain the extent of your commitment to the rescue, as it may be difficult and
will require close coordination."

  Marrow's skull seemed filled with fuzz. "You have no obligation to rescue Dolph! You came to rescue me!"

  "I know the royal family," Chex said. "I took Princess Ivy on a trip to Centaur Isle, not long after I met you. I became responsible for helping Dolph the moment I learned about his predicament. I am sure that one reason his parents delayed their action was because they knew I was on the way. I suspect they are watching us now, via the Tapestry, to be sure that we are not leaving Dolph to his fate."

  Marrow realized that was true. If the Tapestry had been oriented on Dolph before, it must still be watching him, and another part of it would be watching Marrow. Queen Irene had not expected Dolph to get beyond the Good Magician's castle, but had insisted on an adult companion, just in case. That "in case" had happened. Now she was surely keeping nervous track, just in case worse happened. She was trying to allow her son as much freedom and adventure as he was competent to handle, and not half a whit more.

  "But you said the Queen would not rescue Dolph unless he was in real danger," Grace’l said.

  "She would naturally prefer him to make his own escape, in the princely way," Chex said. "But failing that, she would want him rescued by his friends. If that also failed, then she would have to take action and make the King do something. Certainly she will not let him be lost to a merwoman. The fact that she has not yet taken action only means that Dolph is in no immediate danger, that allows time for him or the rest of us to do something."

  Marrow thought about Queen Irene. He concluded that Chex was right. That was the way the Queen operated. She would stay in the background if she could, just as she did when King Dor was making policy, but she would see that things worked out. It would be better to make sure mat she never had to act.

  "We had better get started, then," he said. "What was wrong with my prior plan?"

  "I did not criticize it," Chex protested.

  "But you are a centaur. Your analytical mind criticizes everything."

  "True. But I did not hear it, so I could not have critiqued it."

  Now he remembered: he had mentioned his plan to Grace’l while Chex was looking for the gourd. "I intend to walk under the sea, search for the merwoman's lair, and take Dolph out. What is wrong with that?"

  "Everything!" the centaur exclaimed. "First, your walk under the sea will be very slow, because of the resistance of the water. Second, it will take you forever to locate the merwoman's lair, because it could be anywhere in this vicinity of the sea. Third, if you do locate it, the merwoman will surely see you coming and will act to prevent you from approaching. She would send dogfish against you to chew your bones, or a kraken to pull them asunder. Fourth, if you did reach her lair, you would not be able to take Dolph from it without drowning him, because merfolk have water-breathing magic that operates only in their-presence or in their lairs. Fifth, if you managed to get around that, he still might not want to go, and might refuse to go with you. You could not make him go against his will, because he would change into some monstrous form you could not budge. Thus your effort would be doomed."

  Marrow pondered. Those seemed like pretty good objections. But he knew how to get around them. "How can we counter these things?" For a centaur seldom posed questions to which that centaur did not already know the answers. That quality derived from their generations of experience as tutors.

  "I'm so glad you asked," Chex said with a half smile. "The first and second problems may be tackled together. You must locate the lair from above the water, then descend quickly to it. That also minimizes the third problem, because it provides the merwoman very little time to spot you or to act against you. You can alleviate the fourth problem by taking air down with you, for Dolph to breathe. I believe there should be some air plants growing in this area; one or two of them should do nicely. The fifth problem will depend on your verbal skills: you may have to persuade Dolph to leave. I hope you are up to it."

  "I think you would be better at that," Marrow said.

  "Indubitably. But I can not go below the water. The pressure of the deep water would crush me, if I were able to get down there at all. Only you, with your tough bare bones, can do it."

  "How can we locate the lair?" Grace’l asked.

  "I thought I might fly over the water, as the weather clears, and see what I can see. Certainly I can carry you to the site, if we locate it."

  "I got a look at that water, when we capsized," Grace’l said. "Even below the roiling surface, it was dark; I could not see to the bottom."

  Chex nodded. "I am afraid I had not thought that aspect through. Certainly the merwoman would not have her lair in any obvious place, anyway; she would adapt a cave or use other concealment. We shall have to devise some other way."

  Marrow picked up Dolph's knapsack. "Maybe the magic mirror will help."

  "You have a magic mirror?" Chex asked. "That should be just what we need!"

  Marrow brought out the little hand mirror. "I am not sure. Few mirrors can actually locate things; they must communicate with known sites."

  "That is true," Chex said. "But it is my thought that with this one we can communicate with Castle Roogna, where they will know Dolph's location—" She broke off.

  "And they won't want to get involved," Marrow concluded, remembering. "Because they want Dolph to make his own escape, or at least to have his friends help him. Still, we might look at the Tapestry."

  He directed the mirror to tune in on Castle Roogna. Sure enough, there was the Tapestry, and there was Dolph with the merwoman. They were eating a meal, and by the distasteful expression on the boy's face, it was a nutritious one. She was evidently not plying him with sea candy, which might be a tactical error on her part.

  "How pretty!" Grace’l exclaimed, noting the colored stones and circles of gold. "She has excellent taste."

  Marrow's gaze was on the merwoman. He had not seen her at all well during the storm, but now it was clear that she was as robustly endowed as Vida Vila. Were he a mortal man, he would be quite impressed. Dolph was a child, but it might not be wise to leave him too long to the blandishments of such a creature. It had been evident that Vida Vila was beginning to make an impression on him, and the merwoman seemed to have similar potential.

  "That is under a canopy," Chex said. "See, the sea trees arch up to close overhead. That lair will be invisible from above, even if the water is absolutely clear."

  "And there seem to be no hints as to its location," Grace’l said. "We shall have to find another way."

  Chex considered. "Perhaps we could use one of the local plants to help us orient. If there is some witch hazel—"

  "But we can't speak the language of plants," Marrow protested.

  "Even so, we can learn something from them. If we give the witch hazel something of Prince Dolph's to smell, its leaves will orient on him, and we can tell the direction from that."

  "How clever!" Grace’l exclaimed. "But how can we tell how far in that direction the lair is?"

  Chex glanced appreciatively at her. "I can tell you weren't constructed yesterday. We shall have to find two witch hazels, set some distance apart, and use the generalized magic of triangulation to find the distance.”

  Marrow knew of that. Triangulation was another fundamental type of magic that was said to extend even to Mundania, in the manner of insult magic or rainbows. It was odd how some magic was everywhere, and some was only in Xanth; the rules seemed to be inconsistent.

  They explored the region, and finally managed to find a witch hazel plant. They gave it the pack to sniff, and sure enough, soon its leaves twisted about to orient toward the sea, as if the sun were shining from that region. Marrow drew a line in the dirt and sand, showing the direction.

  Then they looked for another witch hazel plant—and could not find it. They searched both north and south, as far as was feasible: no other plants. This was most frustrating. Was their effort to founder on this mischance?

  They looked in the mirror again,
as darkness closed, and saw that Dolph was still being well treated. The merwoman had made him a floating bed of pillows, and he was sleeping comfortably among them. At least they knew that he wasn't in any immediate trouble—but that itself was another kind of trouble, because it would make him increasingly satisfied to remain with the merwoman. He was at an impressionable age.

  "We shall simply have to resume our search in the morning," Chex said unhappily. "I had hoped to handle this more expeditiously."

  "What else have you to do?" Grace’l inquired.

  "The Monsters of the Air are going to have a ceremony atop Mount Rushmost, and I don't want to be late.”

  "Isn't Prince Dolph's welfare more important than a ceremony?" Marrow inquired.

  "Yes, of course it is," she replied, flushing passingly. The color passed across her face and breasts and disappeared into her equine hide, like a cloud casting its shadow briefly across the landscape. "Still, I hope we can effect the rescue in the morning."

  Chex foraged for some fruit, while the two skeletons simply lay on the ground, needing no food. They did not need rest either, but since Chex did, it seemed only courteous to do it.

  The centaur slept on her feet, her wings furled, one ear cocked to the wind. Obviously no one would sneak up on her during the night.

  Then it occurred to Marrow that he could put the nocturnal hours to better use by searching for that second witch hazel plant. So he lifted his bones quietly—and discovered Grace’l doing the same thing. She had had the same thought!

  Wordlessly they separated, searching north and south. They could see fairly well in the dark, because they did not use inefficient living eyeballs.

  As dawn approached, Marrow returned, having found nothing. Soon Grace’l appeared. She touched his arm bone and tapped once: she had found something! Then they both lay down in the places they had left, so as to be there undisturbed when Chex woke.

  In due course she stirred. She plucked some more fruit, ate it, attended to the other natural functions mat living creatures were afflicted with, and was ready to resume me search. "There must be something!" she said.