Centaur Aisle (32 page)

So King Oary was in fact regent during the true King's absence—much as Dor was, in Xanth. But this King was eager to retain the throne. Had there been foul play by other than the Khazars?

Dor found his head on the table, contesting for space with a pudding. He must have gotten quite sleepy! "What's going on?" he mumbled.

"You've been drugged, you fool, that's what," the table whispered in his ear. "There's more in that rotgut than booze, I'll tell you!"

Dor reacted with shock, but somehow his head did not rise. "Drugged? Why?"

" 'Cause the Imposter King doesn't like you, that's why," the table said. "He always drugs his enemies. That's how he got rid of King Omen, and then that fake Magician King."

Magician King! It was funny, whispering with his head on the table, but fairly private. Dor's nose was almost under the pudding. "Was that King Trent?"

"That's what he called himself. But he couldn't do magic. He drank the drink, all-trusting the way they all are, the fools, and went to sleep just like you. You're all such suckers."

"Smash! Grundy!" Dor cried as loudly as he could, his head still glued to the table. "We've been betrayed! Drugged! Break out of here!"

But now many guards charged into the hall. "Remove this carrion," King Oary commanded. "Throw them in the dungeon. Don't damage the girl; she's too pretty to waste. Put the freak horse in the stable."

Smash, who had gulped huge quantities of the drugged drink, nevertheless had strength to rouse himself and fight. Dor heard the noise, but was facing the wrong way. Guards charged, and screamed, and retreated. "Give it to them, ogre!" Grundy cried, dancing on the table. "Tear them up!"

But then the violence abated. "Hey, don't slow down now!" Grundy called. "What's the matter with you?"

Dor knew what had happened. Smash had wandered outside the magic aisle, and lost his supernatural strength. Now the flagons of drugged drink took their toll, as they would on any normal creature. "Me sleep a peep," Smash said, the last of his magic expended in the rhyme.

Dor knew this fight was lost. "Get out of here, Grundy," he said with a special effort. "Before you sleep, too. Don't let them catch you." The unconsciousness overcame Dor.

Chapter 10. Hate Love

D
or woke with a headache. He was lying on sour-smelling hay in a dark cell. As he moved, something skittered away. He suspected it was a rat; he understood they abounded in Mundania. Maybe that was a blessing; the magic creatures of the night could be horrible in Xanth.

There was the sound of muted sobbing. Dor held his breath a moment to make certain it wasn't himself.

He sat up, peering through the gloom to find some vestige of light. There was a little, which grew brighter as his eyes acclimatized; it seemed to be a candle in the distance. But there was a wall in the way; the light filtered through the cracks.

He oriented on the sobbing. It was from an adjacent chamber, separated from his own by massive stone pilings and huge wood timbers. This must be the lower region of the castle, these cells hollowed out from around the foundations. There were gaps between the supports, big enough for him to pass his arm through but not his body.

"Irene?" he asked.

"Oh, Dor!" she answered immediately, tearfully. "I thought I was alone! What has become of us?"

"We were drugged and thrown in the dungeon," he said. "King Oary must have done the same to your parents, before." He couldn't quite remember where he had gotten that notion, or how he himself had been drugged; his memory was foggy on recent details.

"But why? My father came only to trade!"

"I don't know. But I think King Oary is a usurper. Maybe he murdered the rightful King, and your folks found out. Oary knew he couldn't fool us long, so he practiced his treachery on us, too."

"What do we do now?" she demanded hysterically. "Oh, Dor, I've never felt so horrible!"

"I think it's the drug," he said. "I feel bad, too. That should wear off. If we have our magic, we may be able to get free. Do you have your bag of seeds?"

She checked. "No. Only my clothing. Do you have your gold and gems?"

Dor checked. "No. They must have searched us and taken everything they thought was valuable or dangerous. I don't have my sword either." But then his questing fingers found something small. "I do have the jar of salve, not that it's much good here. And my midnight sunstone; it fell into the jacket lining. Let me see—" He brought it out. "No, I guess not. This has no light."

"Where are the others?"

"I'll check," he said. "Floor, where are my companions?"

There was no answer. "That means we have no magic. Arnolde must be in the stable." He seemed to remember something about that, foggily.

"What about Smash and Grundy?"

"Me here," the ogre said from the opposite cell. "Head hurt. Strength gone."

Now Dor had no further doubt; the magic was gone. The ogre wasn't rhyming, and no doubt Irene's hair had lost its color. Magic had strange little bypaths and side effects, where loss was somehow more poignant than that of the major aspects. But those major ones were vital; without his magic strength, Smash could probably not break free of the dungeon.

"Grundy?" Dor called inquiringly.

There was no answer. Grundy, it seemed, had escaped capture. That was about the extent of their good fortune.

"Me got gauntlets," Smash said.

Include one more item of fortune. If the ogre should get his strength back, those gauntlets would be a big help. Probably the castle guards had not realized the gauntlets were not part of the ogre, since Smash had used them for eating. The ogreish lack of manners had paid off in this respect.

Dor's head was slowly clearing. He tried the door to his cell. It was of solid Mundane wood, worn but far too tough to break. Too tough, too, for Smash, in his present condition; the ogre tried and couldn't budge his own door. Unless the centaur came within range, none of them had any significant lever for freedom.

The doors seemed to be barred by some unreachable mechanism outside: Inside, the slimy stone floor was interrupted only by a disposal sump—a small but deep hole that reeked of old excrement. Obviously no one would be released for sanitary purposes either.

Smash banged a fist against a wall. "Oww!" he exclaimed. "Now me miss centaur!"

"He does have his uses," Dor agreed. "You know, Smash, Arnolde didn't really usurp Chet's place. Chet couldn't come with us anyway, because of his injury, and Arnolde didn't want to. We pretty much forced him into it, by revealing his magic talent."

"Ungh," the ogre agreed. "Me want out of here. No like be weak."

"I think we'll have to wait for whatever King Oary plans for us," Dor said trimly. "If he planned to kill us, he wouldn't have bothered to lock us in here."

"Dor, I'm scared, really scared," Irene said. "I've never been a prisoner before."

Dor peered out through the cracks in his door. Had the flickering candle shadow moved? The guard must be coming in to eavesdrop. Naturally King Oary would want to know their secrets—and Irene just might let out their big one before she realized. He had to warn her—without the guard catching on. They just might turn this to their advantage.

He went to the wall that separated them. "It will be a good idea to plan our course of action," he said. "If they question us, tell them what they want to know. There's no point in concealing anything, since we're innocent." He managed to reach his arm through the crevice in the wall nearest her. "But we don't want them to force us into any false statements."

His hand touched something soft. It was Irene. She made a stifled "Eeek!" then grasped his hand.

"Let me review our situation," Dor said. "I am King during King Trent's absence." He squeezed her hand once. "You are King Trent's daughter." He squeezed again, once. "Arnolde the Centaur is also a Prince among his people." This time he squeezed twice.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "Arnolde's not—" She broke off as he squeezed several times, hard. Then she began to catch on; she was a bright enough girl. "Not with us now," she concluded, and squeezed his hand once.

"If the centaur does not return to his people on schedule, they will probably come after him with an army," Dor said, squeezing twice.

"A big army," she agreed, returning the two squeezes. "With many fine archers and spear throwers, thirsty for blood, and a big catapult to loft huge stones against the castle." She was getting into it now. They had their signals set; one squeeze for truth, two for falsehood. That way they could talk privately, even if someone were eavesdropping.

"I'm glad we're alone," he said, squeezing twice. "So we can talk freely."

"Alone," she agreed, with the double squeeze. Yes, now she knew why he was doing this. She was a smart girl, and he liked that; nymphlike proportions did not have to indicate nymphlike stupidity.

"We have no chance to break out of here ourselves," Dor said, squeezing twice. "We have no resources they don't already know about." Two.

"We don't have magical powers or anything," she agreed with an emphatic double squeeze.

"But maybe it would be better to let them
think
we have magic," Dor said, not squeezing. "That might make them treat us better."

"There is that," she agreed. "If the guards thought we could zap them through the walls, they might let us out."

"Maybe we should figure out something to fool them with," he said, this time squeezing once. "Something to distract them while the centaur army is massing. Like growing plants very fast. If they thought you could grow a tree and burst out the ceiling and maybe make this castle collapse—"

"They would take me out of this cell and keep me away from seeds," she said. "Then maybe I could escape and set out some markers so the centaurs can find us more quickly."

"Yes. But you can't just tell the Mundanes about growing things; it has to seem that they forced it out of you. And you'll need some good excuse in case they challenge you to grow something. You could say the time of the month is wrong, or—"

"Or that I have to do it in a stable," she said. "That would get me out of the heavily guarded area. By the time they realize it's a fake, and that I can't grow anything, I may have escaped."

"Yes." But had they set this up correctly? Would it trick the guards into taking Irene to the stable where Arnolde might be, or would they not bother? This business of deception was more difficult than he had thought.

Then she signaled alarm. "What about Smash? They'll want to know how he tore off the front gate, when he can't do a thing now."

Dor thought fast. "We have to hide from them the fact that the ogre is strong only when he's angry. The guard at the gate insulted Smash, so naturally he tore off the gate. But King Oary gave him a good meal, so he wasn't really angry despite getting drugged. Maybe we can trick a guard into saying something mean to Smash, or depriving him of food or water. When Smash gets hungry, he gets mean. And he has a big appetite. If they try starving him, watch out! He'll blow his top and tear this cellar apart!"

"Yes," she agreed. "That's really our best hope. Ill-treatment. We don't even need to trick anybody. All we have to do is wait. By midday tomorrow Smash will be storming. We'll all escape over the dead bodies of the guards who get in the way. We may not need the centaurs at all!"

Something caught Dot's eye. He squeezed Irene's hand to call her attention to it. The guard was quietly moving. No doubt a hot report was going upstairs.

"You're an idiot," Irene murmured, squeezing his hand twice. "You get these fool notions to fool our captors, and they'll never work. I don't know why I even talk to you."

"Because it's better than talking to the rats," he said without squeezing.

"Rats!" she cried, horrified. "Where?"

"I thought I saw one when I woke. Maybe I was wrong."

"No, this is the kind of place they like." She squeezed his hand, not with any signal. "Oh, Dor—we've got to get out of here!"

"They may take you out pretty soon, to verify that you can't grow plants."

She squeezed his hand warningly. "They already know." Actually, the purpose of the fake dialogue had been to convince their captors that Dor and Irene had no magic. Then if they somehow got the chance to use magic, the guards would be caught completely by surprise. In addition, they had probably guaranteed good treatment for Smash—if their ruse had been effective.

Soon a wan crack of dawn filtered in through the ceiling near what they took to be the east wall. But the angle was wrong, and Dor finally concluded that they were incarcerated against the west wall, above the cliff, with the light entering only by crude reflection; it would have been much brighter on the other side. No chance to tunnel out, even if they had the strength; what use to step off the cliff?

Guards brought Smash a huge basket of bread and a barrel of water.

"Food!" the ogre exclaimed happily, and crunched up entire loaves in single mouthfuls, as was his wont. Then, perceiving that neither Dor nor Irene had been served, he hurled several loaves through to them. Dor squeezed one through the crevice to Irene.

The water was harder to manage. No cups had been provided, but Dor's thirst abruptly intensified, perhaps in reaction to the wine of the day before. He finally borrowed and filled one of the ogre's gauntlets and jammed that through to Irene.

"Tastes like sour sweat," she complained. But she drank it, then shoved the gauntlet back. Dor drank the rest of it, agreeing with her analysis of the taste, and returned the gauntlet to Smash with due thanks. Sweat-flavored water was much better than thirst.

"Give me your hand again," Irene said.

Thinking she had more strategy to discuss, Dor passed his right arm through the crack, gnawing on a loaf held in his left. "That was a mean thing you did, getting me food," she murmured, squeezing twice.

"Well, you know I don't like you," Dor told her, returning the double squeeze. He wasn't sure this mattered to their eavesdropper, but the reversals were easy enough to do.