Night Mare (10 page)

“Mundane!” the day horse neighed, his nostril’s dilating and white showing around his eyes.

“But he’s a tame Mundane,” the golem continued. “Loyal to Xanth. He doesn’t want to see it despoiled. He likes the wild nymphs too well.”

“What does he do with nymphs?” Imbri asked, curious.

“Mostly he just looks at their legs,” the golem explained. “He’s too old to chase them very fast. I’m not sure he would know what to do with one if he caught her, but he likes to dream. No offense to you, night mare.” Grundy was getting more civil as he became better acquainted with her.

“No offense,” she sent. “That’s not the kind of dream I carry, anyway.”

The day horse was shaking his head and scuffling the floor with his hooves. “I don’t like Mundane men. I know about them. They can’t be trusted.”

“Say, that’s right!” Grundy said. “You came with them! You can tell us all about them. What time and region of Mundania are they from?”

“Time? Region?” The day horse seemed confused.

“Mundania is all times and all places,” Grundy said with assumed patience. “Thousands of years, and more territory than in all Xanth. We need to know when and where you come from so Ichabod can look it up in his moldy tomes and find out how to fight the men.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” the day horse neighed. “All I know is how the Horseman put the bit in my mouth and the spurs to my sides and made me go.” Imbri nickered with sympathy, she understood exactly.

“You’ve got to know!” the golem cried. “How can you spend your whole life among the Mundanes and not know all about them?”

The day horse just looked at him, ears angling back.

Imbri caught on. “Mundane animals are stupid, like Chameleon,” she projected to the golem in a private dreamlet. “He never noticed the details of the Mundane society. He was probably kept in a stable and pasture.”

“That must be it,” Grundy agreed, irked. “He probably couldn’t even talk until he came to Xanth.” Then he brightened, speaking inside the private dreamlet so that the day horse would not overhear. “At least
he
can’t betray us to the Mundanes. He won’t understand our mission either.”

“Yes,” Imbri acknowledged sadly. “He’s such a fine-looking animal, but not a creature of Xanth.” Not like the Night Stallion, who was every bit as intelligent as a human being. It was really too bad.

They returned their attention directly to the mission. “Somehow we’ve got to convince you to help,” Grundy told the day horse. “Otherwise the Mundane Wave may wash right across Xanth. Then you won’t have anywhere to escape to; Mundanes will control everything.”

That daunted the creature. “I don’t want that!”

“Of course, you might hide from them easier if you took off that brass circlet you wear,” the golem said.

The day horse glanced down at his foreleg where the band clasped it. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that!”

“Why not? As long as you wear it, the Horseman knows you’re his horse. If you took it off, he might think you were some other horse, especially if you got your coat dyed black.”

The day horse communicated slowly and with difficulty, but with certainty. “If I take off the circuit and they catch me, they will know I am a deserter and will butcher me for horsemeat. If I leave it on, they may think I only got lost and will not treat me so bad.”

Grundy nodded. “Not a bad effort of logic, for you,” he admitted. “So the band represents, ironically—for all that it’s brass, not iron—a kind of insurance. Because they believe you’re too dumb really to try to escape—and the fact that you don’t remove it confirms that belief.”

The day horse nodded back. He was not, indeed, quite as stupid as he seemed.

“But if you give Ichabod a ride, and then are later caught by the Mundanes, they will believe that you were captured by the other side and had no choice. You did not return to the Mundanes because the enemy wouldn’t let you. That’s insurance, too.”

The day horse considered. Slowly the sense of it penetrated. “Does this renegade Mundane of yours use spurs?”

“No. Ichabod is an old man who has probably never ridden a horse before in his life. A centaur, maybe, because the centaur archivist Arnolde is his closest friend, but that’s not the same. You’d have to step carefully to prevent Ichabod from falling off.”

The day horse digested that. Certainly Ichabod did not sound like much of a threat. “No bit?”

“We don’t use that sort of thing in Xanth. Creatures carry people only when they choose to. Imbri, here, is giving me a ride because she knows I can’t get about the way she can. You don’t see any bit in her mouth, do you?”

In the end, the day horse was swayed by the golem’s persuasion and agreed to carry Ichabod, on condition that there be no direct contact between him and the Mundanes. “I don’t even want to
see
a Mundane,” he insisted. “If I saw them, they might see me, and if they see me, they will chase me, and they might catch me.”

“You could outrun them!” the golem protested.

“Then they would shoot me with arrows. So I don’t want to go near them at all.”

“Fair enough,” the golem agreed.

They departed the tree, picked up the archivist, and headed north. Sure enough, Ichabod was unsteady on horseback and had to hang on to the day horse’s mane to stop from sliding off one side or the other. But gradually he got used to it and relaxed, and the horse relaxed also. The lack of a bit and reins made all the difference. Soon they were able to pick up speed.

Imbri became aware of another aspect of group interaction. She picked up Chameleon without thinking, but realized by the reaction of the day horse that the woman had not been mentioned before. At first the day horse had hesitated; then, when he saw how pretty Chameleon was, he watched her with interest. If it had been Chameleon who had needed the ride, it would have been easier to persuade this animal!

The day horse was a fine runner, making up in brute strength what he lacked in intellect, and Imbri found herself reacting on two levels to him. She liked his body very well, but was turned off by his slow mind. Yet, she reminded herself, she liked Chameleon well enough despite her slowness. Maybe it was that Chameleon was not a potential breeding object.

Yes, there it was. The presence of a fine stallion meant inevitable breeding when Imbri came into season. As a night mare, she had been immortal and ageless and never came into season, or at least not seriously. But as a material animal, she was subject to the material cycle. She would age and eventually die, and so there would be no one to carry on her work and maintain title to her sea of the moon unless she had a foal. Material creatures had to breed, just to maintain their position, and she would breed if she had the opportunity. This was no imposition; she wanted to do it.

But she also wanted to produce a handsome and smart foal. The day horse was handsome but not smart. That boded only half a loaf for the foal. Yet the day horse was probably the only other possible stallion extant in Xanth, in or out of the gourd; without him there would be no breeding at all, unless she searched out one of the winged horses of the mountains. She understood those types hardly ever deigned to associate with earthbound equines, however. That kept the options severely limited and made the decision difficult.

Would there be a decision? When a mare came into season—and this was a cyclical thing not subject to her voluntary control when she was material—any stallion present would breed her. Nature took it out of the province of individual free will, perhaps wisely. Human folk were otherwise; they could breed at any time, and the complexities of their individual natures meant that often they bred at the wrong time, or to the wrong person, or did not breed at all. That probably explained why horses were so much stronger and prettier than human beings. But humans were generally more intelligent, probably because it required a smart man to outsmart and catch a difficult woman, or a smart woman to pick out the best man and get him committed to the burden of a family. The midnight scene in the graveyard had illustrated that! Prince Dor had no doubt played innocent to avoid getting married, but had this time been outmaneuvered. And unless Imbri found a way to control her own breeding, she would have a stupid foal. So if she didn’t want that, she would have to place distance between herself and the day horse when her season came on. Fortunately, that would not occur for a couple of weeks; she would have time.

Soon they arrived at the great Gap Chasm, which separated the northern and southern portions of Xanth. Few people knew about the Gap because of the forget-spell on it; it didn’t even appear on many maps of Xanth. Since they were on the King’s business, they had access to the invisible bridge that spanned it. Most people forgot about the bridge along with the Chasm, but it was there for those who knew how to find it. Imbri, as a night mare, felt very little effect from the forget-spell, so had no trouble.

The day horse, however, was hesitant. “I don’t see any bridge,” he neighed.

“No one can see the bridge,” Imbri projected. In her daydreamlet she made the bridge become visible as a gossamer network of spider-silk cables. In her night dream duty she had not needed to use the bridge, but had known of it and the two others, as well as the devious paths down and through the Gap. She had perfect confidence in all the bridges, and in the charms that kept monsters off the paths, though she would be wary of descending into the Gap when the Gap Dragon was near. No spell ever stopped that monster; it ruled the Chasm deeps. That was another thing normally forgotten, which meant the dragon caught a lot of prey that didn’t know it existed—until too late.

“It’s all right, day horse,” Ichabod said reassuringly. “I have been across it before. I know magic seems incredible to Mundane folk, such as are you and I, but here in Xanth it is every bit as reliable as engineering in our world. I have no fear in crossing.”

Encouraged by that, and by now well aware that Ichabod was Mundane yet harmless but not stupid, the day horse followed Imbri out into midair over the Chasm. “Don’t worry,” Grundy called back. “You can’t fall. It has rails on both sides. Except for the center, where a stupid harpy crashed through them and left a blank stretch.”

The day horse stumbled, horrified, for he was now approaching the center. The golem laughed.

“It’s not true,” Imbri projected immediately. “Don’t listen to the golem. He has an obnoxious sense of humor.”

The day horse recovered his balance. He glared at Grundy, his ears flattening back. He dropped a clod on the bridge, a symbol of his opinion. Grundy had made an enemy, foolishly. It was one of his talents.

They got across without further event and trotted on north. They still had a long way to go, and would not reach the region of the Mundane line this day.

Now the terrain became rougher, for they were traveling cross-country. Northern Xanth was less populated by human folk than was central Xanth, so there were fewer people paths. One good trail led directly to the North Village, where Chameleon’s husband Bink had been raised. But they intended to avoid human settlements, to keep their mission secret; the Mundanes surely had spies snooping near the various villages, Ichabod warned. So they went east of the North Village, threading the jungle between it and the vast central zone of Air in the center of northern Xanth.

The jungle thinned to forest, with clusters of everblues, everyellows, and evergreens, and then diminished to wash and scrub. As if to compensate, the ground became rougher. Their trot slowed to a walk, and the walk became labored. Both horses shone with sweat and blew hot blasts from dilated nostrils. Chameleon and Ichabod, unused to such extended travel, were tired and sore, and even the obnoxious golem was quiet, riding in front of Chameleon where he could hang on to Imbri’s mane. The trouble with travel was that it was wearing.

In addition, it was hungry business. Horses had to eat a lot, and it was hard to graze while trotting. They would have to stop at the next suitable field and spring they found. But there was no suitable spot here; the land was pretty much barren. Certainly there was no spring on the hillside, and no river.

“Maybe we should cut west, toward the North Village,” Grundy mid. “Much better terrain there.”

“But it would delay us, and perhaps expose our mission,” Ichabod protested. “There must be a better alternative.”

Imbri reflected. She had not been to this region recently, because there were very few people in it, and therefore few calls for bad dreams. “There are some lakes scattered through this region, with lush vegetation around them, but I can’t place them precisely,” she projected to the group. “The local plants and animals should know where they are, however.” She gave her mane a little shake, waking Grundy, who, it seemed, had had the indecency to nod off during her reflection.

“Huh?” the golem said. “Oh, sure, I can check that.” He began questioning the bushes they passed. Soon he found a fruitfly who had been seeded at a lake to the north. “But the fly says to beware the sphinx,” the golem reported. “The sphinx got a sunburn and is very irritable this week.”

“Beware the sphinx?” Chameleon asked. “I thought we were to beware the Horseman.”

“That’s a good advice!” the day horse neighed. “How often have I felt that monster’s spurs!”

“You mean like Imbri’s flanks?” the golem asked. “I find it hard to believe anyone would want to poke holes in the hide of a living horse. What kind of a monster is this Horseman?”

The day horse did not like Grundy, but this question mellowed him somewhat. “A human monster.”

“Spurs are an indefensible cruelty,” Icbabod commented. “The typical horse will perform to the best of his ability for his rider. Spurs substitute the goad of pain for honest incentive, to the disadvantage of the animal.”

The day horse nodded, evidently getting to like the archivist better. There was always something attractive about a well-expressed amplification of one’s own opinion.

Imbri agreed emphatically. “And the bit is almost as bad,” she sent.

“I don’t see any scars on your flanks,” Grundy said to the day horse.