Centaur Aisle (33 page)

"I never liked you," she returned in kind. "In fact, I think I hate you."

What was she saying? The double squeeze suggested reversal, the opposite of what she said. Reverse hate? "What would I want with an ugly girl like you anyway?" he demanded.

There was a long pause. Dor stared through the crack, seeing a strand of her hair, and, as he had expected, it had lost its green tint. Then he realized he had forgotten to squeeze. Belatedly he did so, twice.

"Ugly, huh?" She squirmed about, bringing something soft into contact with his palm. "Is that ugly?"

"I'm not sure what it is," Dor said. He squeezed experimentally.

"Eeek!" she yiped, and swatted his hand.

"Ugly as sin," he said, trying to picture female anatomy so as to ascertain what he had pinched. It certainly had been interesting!

"I'll bite your hand," she threatened, in their old game.

"There are teeth there?" he inquired, surprised.

For an instant she choked, whether on mirth or anger he could not quite tell. "With my mouth, I'll bite," she clarified. But only her lips touched his fingers.

"You wouldn't dare."

She kissed his hand twice more.

"Ouch!" Dor cried.

Now she bit him, lightly, twice. He wasn't sure what mood this signified.

It was a new variant of an old game, perhaps no more, but it caused Dor to think about his relationship with Irene. He had known her since childhood. She had always been jealous of his status as Magician and had always taunted him and sicked her plants on him—yet always, too, had been the underlying knowledge that they were destined for each other. He had resisted that as violently as she—but as they grew older, the sexual element had begun to manifest, at first in supposedly innocent games and accidental exposures, then more deviously but seriously. When he had been twelve and she eleven, they had kissed for the first time with feeling, and the experience had shaken them both. Since then their quarreling had been tempered by the knowledge that each could give a new kind of joy to the other, potentially, when conditions were right. Irene's recent development of body had intensified that awareness, and their spats had had a voyeuristic element, such as when they had torn the clothes off each other in the moat. Now, when they could not be sure of their fate, and in the absence of anything else to do, this relationship had become much more important. For the moment, almost literally, all he had was Irene. Why should they quarrel in what might be their last hours?

"Yes, I definitely hate you," Irene said, nipping delicately at the tip of one of his fingers twice, as if testing it for digestibility.

"I hate you, too," Dor said, trying to squeeze but only succeeding in poking his finger into her mouth. His whole being seemed to concentrate on that hand and whatever it touched, and the caress of her lips was excruciatingly exciting.

"I wish I could never see you again," she said, hugging his hand to her bosom.

This was getting pretty serious! Yet he found that he felt the same. He never wanted to leave her. They weren't even squeezing now, playing the game of reversal with increasing intensity and comprehension. Was this merely a reaction to the fear of extinction? He could not be sure—but was unable to resist the current of emotion. "I wish I could . . . hurt you," he said, having trouble formulating a properly negative concept.

"I'd hurt you back!" She hugged his hand more tightly.

"I'd like to grab you and—" Again the problem.

"And what?" she demanded, and once more he found his hand encountering strange anatomy, or something. His inability to identify it was driving him crazy! Was it limb or torso, above or below the waist—and which did he want it to be?

"And squeeze you to pieces," he said, giving a good squeeze. That moat-scene had been nothing, compared with this.

This time she did not make any sound of protest. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man alive," she whispered.

She had upped the ante again! She was talking of marriage! Dor was stunned, unable to respond.

She caressed his hand intimately. "Would you?" she prompted.

Dor had not thought much about marriage, despite his involvement in Good Magician Humfrey's wedding. He somehow thought of marriage as the perquisite of old people, like his parents, and King Trent, and Humfrey. He, Dor, was only sixteen! Yet in Xanth the age of consent coincided with the age of desire. If a person thought he was old enough to marry, and wished to do so, and had a willing bride, he could make the alliance. Thus a marriage could be contracted at age twelve, or at age one hundred; Magician Humfrey had hardly seemed ready even at that extreme!

Did he want to marry? When he thought of the next few hours, perhaps his last, he wanted to, for he had known he would have to marry before his life was out. It was a requirement of Kingship, like being a Magician. But when he thought of a lifetime in Xanth, he wasn't sure. There was a lot of time, and so much could happen in a lifetime! As Humfrey had said: there were positive and negative aspects. "I don't know," he said.

"You don't know!" she flared. "Oh, I hate you!" And she bit his hand, once, and her sharp teeth cut the flesh painfully. Oh, yes, this was getting serious!

Dor tried to jerk his hand away, but she clung to it. "You oaf! You ingrate!" she exclaimed. "You
man!"
And her face pressed against his hand, moistly.

Moistly? Yes, she was crying. Perhaps there was art to it; nevertheless this unnerved Dor. If she felt that strongly, could he afford to feel less?
Did
he feel less?

Then a tidal swell of emotion flooded him. What did it matter how much time there was, or how old he was, or where they were? He did love her.

"I—would not," he said, and tweaked her slick nose twice.

She continued crying into his hand, but now there was a gentler feeling to it. She was no longer angry with him; these were tears of joy.

It seemed they were engaged.

"Hey, Dor," a whisper came. It was from his own cell.

"Grundy!" Dor whispered back. He tried to signal Irene, but she seemed to have fallen asleep against his hand.

"Sorry I was so long," the golem said. "It took time to sleep off that knockout juice, and more time to find a good secret route here without running afoul of the rats. I talked to them—rat language seems to be much the same all over, so I didn't need the magic—but they're mean. I finally made myself a sword out of this big ol' hatpin, and after I struck a few they decided to cooperate." He brandished the weapon, a bent iron sliver; it did look deadly. Poked at a rat's eye, it would be devastating.

"Irene and I are engaged," Dor said.

The golem squinted at him to determine whether this was a joke and concluded it was not. "You are? Of all things! Why did you propose to her now?"

"I didn't," Dor confessed. "She proposed to me, I think."

"But you can't even touch her!"

"I can touch her," Dor said, remembering.

"Not where it counts."

"Yes, where it counts—I think."

The golem shrugged this off as fantasy. "Well, it won't make any difference, if we don't get out of here. I tried to talk to the animals and plants around here, but most of them I can't understand without magic. I don't think they know anything about King Trent and Queen Iris anyway. But I'm sure old King Oary's up to something. How can I spring you?"

"Get Arnolde into range," Dor said.

"That's not easy, Dor. They've got him in a stable, with a bar-lock setup like this, too heavy for me to force, and out of his reach. Crude but effective. If I could spring him, I could spring you."

"But we've got to get together," Dor whispered. "We need magic, and that's the only way."

"They aren't going to let him out," Grundy said. "They've got this fool notion that an army of warrior centaurs is marching here, and they don't want anyone to know there's a centaur in the castle."

Irene woke. "Are you talking to me, dear?" she asked.

"Dear!" Grundy chortled. "Hoo, has she lassoed you!"

"Quiet!" Dor whispered fiercely. "The guard is listening." But he wondered whether that was really his concern.

"Is that the golem?" Irene asked.

"Want to hold hands with me, dear?" Grundy called.

"Go unravel your string!" she snapped back.

"Anything but that," Grundy said, smiling mischievously. "I want to stick around and watch the nuptials. How are you going to make it through the wall?"

"Let me get at that big-mouthed imp!" Irene said. "I'll jam him down the sump headfirst."

"How did you get the poor sucker to accept the knot?" the golem persisted. "Did you scream at him, show him some forbidden flesh, and cry big green tears?"

"The sump is too good for him!" she gritted.

"If you both don't be quiet, the eavesdropping guard will learn everything," Dor warned, ravaged by worry and embarrassment.

Grundy looked at him. "Outside the magic ambience, they can't understand a word we say. How can they eavesdrop?"

Dor was stunned. "I never thought of that!" Had his entire ruse been for nothing?

"How come they fed Smash, then?" Irene demanded, forgetting her fury with the golem as she came to grips with this new question. "How come they heard about the centaur army? Seems to me you said—or did I dream that?"

"I said it, and it's true," Grundy said. "You mean
you
started that story? I overheard it when I was visiting Arnolde; then I could understand the Mundane speech."

"We started it," Dor agreed. "And we gave them the notion that Smash only has super strength when he's angry, and he gets angry when he's hungry. They brought him food very soon. So they must have understood. But how?"

"I think we're about to find out," Grundy said, fading into the shadow. "Someone's coming."

Irene finally let go of Dor's hand, and he drew it back through the wall. His arm was cramped from the hours in the awkward position, but Dor hardly regretted the experience. It was all right being engaged to Irene. He knew her well enough to know she would make a pretty good wife. She would quarrel a lot, but he was used to that, because that was the way his mother Chameleon was when she was in her smart phase. Actually, a smart woman who quarreled was not smart at all, but no one could tell her that. Irene, like her obnoxious mother, had a sense of the proprieties of the office. Queen Iris' mischief was never directed openly at the King. If Dor ever became King in fact as well as in name, Irene would never seek to undermine his power. That was perhaps a more important quality than her physical appearance. But he had to admit that she had acquired a most interesting body. Those touches she had used to tantalize him that Grundy had so acutely noted—they had been marvelously effective. Obviously she had been attempting to seduce him into acquiescence—and she had succeeded. As the Gorgon had intimated, Irene had him pretty well contained. What the Gorgon had not hinted was the fact that such captivity was quite comfortable to the captive, like a warm jacket on a cold day. Good Magician Humfrey was undoubtedly a happy man right now, despite his protestations. In fact, a man's objections to marriage were rather like Irene's objections to people looking at her legs—more show than substance.

Dor's attention was jerked back to the immediate situation by the arrival of the Mundanes. There were three guards, one carrying a crude iron bar. They stopped before Irene's cell and used the bar to pry up the wedged plank that barred it. Without that tool, evidently, the door could not be opened.

One of the guards went in and grabbed Irene. She did not resist; she knew as well as Dor did that this was the expected questioning. She would try to answer in such a way that they would take her to the stable where Arnolde was confined, if only to prove she was lying. Then she could pry up the bar on the centaur's stall, or start some devastating plant growing—

Except that she had no seeds. "Grundy!" he whispered. "Find Irene's seeds! She'll need them."

"I'll try." The golem scrambled through a crevice and was gone.

Now King Oary entered the dungeon. "Rn xnt'qd sgd Jhmf'r cztfgsdq," he said. "Vgzs hr xntq lzfhb?"

"I don't understand you," Irene said.

"His Highness King Oary asks what is your magic," one of the guards said. His speech was heavily accented, but he was intelligible.

"You know Xanth speech?" she asked, surprised. "How can that be?"

"You have no need to know," the guard said. "Just answer the question, wench."

So one of the Mundanes here spoke the language of Xanth! Dor's mind started clicking over. This explained the eavesdropping—but how could the man have learned it, however poorly? He had to have been in contact with people from Xanth.

"Go soak your snoot in the sump," Irene retorted.

Dor winced. She might be playing her role too boldly!

"The King will use force," the man warned. "Better answer, slut."

Irene looked daunted, as perhaps she was, but those insulting references to her supposed status made her angry. "You answer first, toady," she said, compromising.

The guard decided negotiation was the best course. "I met a spy from your country, tart. I am quick with languages; he taught me. Then he went back to Xanth."

"To report to my father, King Trent!" Irene exclaimed. "You promised him a trade agreement, didn't you, rogue, if he would come himself to negotiate it?"

"It is your turn to answer, hussy," the man said.

"Oh, all right, wretch. My magic is growing plants. I can make anything grow from seed to tree in moments."

Dor, peering out, could not see the man's face clearly, but was sure there was a knowing expression on it. The eavesdropper thought he knew better, but didn't want to betray his own secret snooping, so had to translate for the King. "Rgd fzud sgd khd," he said.

"H vzms sgd sqtsg!" Oary snapped.

"His Majesty suspects you are deceiving us," the guard said. "What is your real magic?"

"What does ol' fatso care? I'm not doing any magic now."

"You had magic when you came, trollop. The ogre used unnatural strength to destroy our front gate, and you all spoke our language. Now the ogre is weak and you speak your own language. What happened to the magic?"