Night Mare (9 page)

Dor fumbled the moonstone onto the designated finger. “We’re married now,” Irene said. “Now you can kiss me.”

Dor did so, somewhat uncertainly. The audience broke into applause.

The remaining illusion faded, revealing the zombies and people standing throughout the graveyard. Irene’s gaze swept across the crowd. “Mother!” she exclaimed indignantly. “This is your mischief!”

“Refreshments are served in the Castle Roogna ballroom,” Queen Iris said, controlling a catlike smirk. “Come, dears—mustn’t keep the King waiting.”

Dor came out of his trance. “You made King Trent fetch refreshments?”

“Of course not, Dor,” Queen Iris said. “I supervised that chore myself yesterday. My husband refused to participate in this little charade, the spoilsport. But I know he’ll want to congratulate you.”

“He should congratulate
me,
” Irene said. “
I
landed Dor, after all these years.”

“In the whole castle, one honest person,” Dor muttered. But he did not seem unhappy. “I knew the King would not betray me.”

“Well, you’re married now,” Queen Iris said. “At last. Now come on in before the food spoils.”

The zombies stirred. They liked the notion of spoiled food.

Soon all the living people were across the moat, where sleepy moat monsters made only token growls of protest, and inside Castle Roogna, where food and drink had been set out Imbri found herself near the beverage table. Since she did not drink human-style drinks, and did not much care for human-style treats, she was satisfied to watch.

Ichabod, still beside her, felt otherwise. “I love to eat,” he confided. “It is my inane ambition eventually to become obese.” He took a buttercup filled with a sparkling brown liquid. “This looks suitably calorific.” He tilted it to his mouth.

As the liquid passed his lips, Ichabod made a funny little jump. Brown fluid splashed over his face. “I say!” he sputtered. “Why did you do that, mare?”

“Do what?” Imbri projected.

“Kick me!”

“I did not kick you!” she protested.

“I distinctly felt a boot in my posterior!” Then he cocked his head, looking at her feet. “But you don’t wear boots!”

“If I kicked you, you would have a map of the moon on your rump,” Imbri sent.

Ichabod rubbed the affected portion. “True. It must have been an hallucination.” He tipped the remaining liquid to his mouth.

Again he jumped. “Someone
did
kick me!” he exclaimed. “But there was no one to do it”

Imbri got a notion. “Let me sniff your drink,” she sent.

Ichabod held down the cup for her. Imbri sniffed—and felt a slight shove at her tail. “I thought so. This is the rare beverage Boot Rear, distilled from the sap of the shoe-fly tree. It’s the drink that gives you a real kick.”

“Boot Rear,” Ichabod repeated thoughtfully. “I see.” He picked up another cup. “Perhaps this differs. It seems effervescent, but colorless.” He put it cautiously to his lips, paused, and when no suggestion of a kick manifested, gulped it quickly down.

Shining bars formed about him, enclosing him so tightly that he yelped with discomfort. “Let me out!” be cried.

Imbri quickly put a hoof on a nether bar and used her nose to shove the higher bars apart. In a moment Ichabod was able to squeeze out, his suit torn, abrasions on his body.

“I suppose that was the result of the drink, too?” he asked irritably.

Imbri sniffed the empty cup. “Yes. That’s Injure Jail, a concoction of incarcerated water,” she reported.

“I should have guessed.” But the man hadn’t given up. He took a third drink, sipped it with extreme caution, paused, took a deeper sip, waited, and finally swallowed the rest. “This is excellent.”

Then he fidgeted. He reached inside his jacket and drew out a card. “Where did this come from?” He found another up his sleeve, and a third dropped out of his pant leg.

Imbri sniffed the cup. “No wonder. This is Card Hider,” she reported.

“This begins to grow tiresome,” Ichabod said. “Imbri, would you do me the immense favor of locating me a safely sedate beverage?”

Imbri obliged, sniffing her way along the table. “Seam Croda,” she sent “Poot Frunch. June Pruice.”

“I’ll take that last,” Ichabod said. “That sounds like my style. I think it is presently June in my section of Mundania.”

Chameleon came to join them. “Wasn’t that a wonderful wedding?” she asked, delicately mopping her eyes. “I cried real tears.” She picked up a drink.

“Wait!” Imbri projected and Ichabod cried together. It was an unclassified beverage.

But Chameleon was already sipping it. It seemed she had to replace the fluid lost through her tears. Then her feet sank into the floor. “Oh, my—I’m afraid I took a Droft Sink!” she exclaimed. “I’m sinking!”

Imbri and Ichabod managed to haul her back to floor level. “I wouldn’t want to seem to criticize the Queen, who I am sure put a great deal of attention into this spread of refreshments,” Ichabod said. “But in some quarters it might be considered that certain types of practical jokes become, shall we say, tiresome.”

Now the Queen herself approached. “Have you taken any of these drinks?” she inquired brightly. She had clothed herself in a fantastically bejeweled royal robe that was perhaps illusory. “I trust you find them truly novel and not to be taken lightly or soon forgotten. I want this occasion to make a real impression on the guests.”

Mutely, the three nodded. The drinks were all that the Queen described.

Queen Iris picked one up herself and sipped delicately.

Then she spit it out again, indelicately. Her pattern of illusion faltered, revealing a plain housedress in lieu of her robe. “What’s this?’ she demanded.

“A truly novel beverage that makes a real impression and is not soon forgotten,” Ichabod murmured.

“Don’t get flip with me, Mundane!” the Queen snapped, a miniature thundercloud forming over her head. “What’s in this cup?”

Imbri sniffed. “Drapple ink,” she projected.

“Drapple ink!” the Queen exclaimed, her gems reforming and glinting furiously. “That’s meant for signing official documents indelibly! What’s it doing on the refreshment stand?”

Ichabod picked up another cup of Boot Rear. “Perhaps this one is better, your Majesty,” he suggested, offering it to her. “It certainly made an impression on me.”

The Queen sniffed it. She took a step forward, as if shoved from behind. “That’s not what I ordered!” she cried, and now her gems shot little lances of fire. “Some miscreant has switched the drinks! Oh, wait till I get my claws on that chef!”

So Queen Iris had not been responsible for the joke. Chameleon looked relieved.

The Queen paused, turning back. “Oh—Chameleon,” she called. “I really came to ask if you had seen my husband the King. He doesn’t seem to be here. Would you look for him for me, please?”

“Of course, your Majesty,” Chameleon agreed. She turned to Imbri. “Will you help me look, please? He might be in a dark room, meditating.”

“And we have another message to give him,” Imbri reminded her, remembering. “Beware the Horseman, or break the chain.”

“If only we knew what chain.” Chameleon sighed. “I haven’t seen any chains.”

“I’ll help, too,” Ichabod said. “I do love a mystery.”

They looked all through the downstairs castle, but could not find the King. “Could he be upstairs, in the library?”

Ichabod asked. “That’s a very nice room, and he is a literate man.”

“Yes, he is often there,” Chameleon agreed.

They went upstairs, going to the library. A ghost flitted across the hail, but was gone before Imbri could send a dreamlet to it. If she ever had a moment when she wasn’t busy, she would catch up to a ghost and inquire where Jordan was, so she could give him the greeting from the ghosts of the haunted house in the gourd world.

The library door was closed. Ichabod knocked, then called, but received no answer. “I fear he is not in,” he opined. “I do not like to enter a private chamber unbidden, but we should check.”

The others agreed. Cautiously they opened the door and peeked in. The room was dark and quiet.

“There is a magic lantern that turns on from a button near the door,” Chameleon said, fumbling for it. In a moment the lantern glowed, illuminating the room.

There was King Trent, sitting at the table, an open book in front of him.

“Your Majesty!” Chameleon cried. “We have to tell you—.”

“Something is wrong,” Ichabod said. “He is not moving.”

They went to the King. He sat staring ahead, taking no notice of them. This was odd indeed, for King Trent was normally the most alert and courteous person, as men of genuine power tended to be.

Imbri projected a dream to the King’s mind. But his mind was blank. “He’s gone!” she sent to the others, alarmed. “He has no mind!”

The three stared at one another with growing dismay. Xanth had lost its King.

Chapter 5. Sphinx and Triton

B
y morning the new order had been established. King Trent had been retired to his bedroom for the duration of his illness, and Prince Dor had assumed the crown and mantle of Kingship and sat momentarily on the throne, making it official. For Dor was the designated heir, and Xanth had to have a King. He had vaulted in one strange night from single Prince to married King.

If there was to be a visible transformation in the young man, it had not yet materialized. He called a meeting of selected creatures after breakfast. The golden crown perched somewhat askew on his head, and the royal robes hung on him awkwardly. These things had been fitted for King Trent, who was a larger man, and it seemed King Dor preferred to wear them unaltered, so that they could be returned when King Trent recovered.

The shadows of Dor’s eyes showed that he had not slept. Few of them had; the joy of the elopement had shifted without pause to the horror of involuntary abdication. Indeed, King Trent had lost his mind while the others were celebrating in the zombie graveyard. It was hard not to suspect that the two events were linked in some devious way. The new Queen Irene evidently thought they were; she had lost a father while in the process of gaining a husband.

“We have a crisis here at Castle Roogna,” King Dor said, speaking with greater authority than his appearance suggested. Queen Irene stood at his side, poised as if ready to catch him if he fell. Her eyes were dark and red, and not from any artifice of makeup or magic. How well she knew that it was the misfortune of her father that had catapulted her to replace her mother as Queen; this was hardly the way she had wanted it. Former Queen Iris was upstairs with King-emeritus Trent, watching for any trifling signal of intelligence. No one knew what had happened to him, but with the Mundane invasion, they could not wait for his recovery.

The King turned to a blackboard that his ogre friend had harvested from the jungle. On it was a crudely sketched map of Xanth, with the several human folk villages marked, as were Centaur Isle and the great Gap Chasm that severed the peninsula of Xanth but that few people remembered. “The Mundanes have crossed the isthmus,” Dor said, pointing to the northwest. “They are bearing south and east, wreaking havoc as they progress. But we don’t know what type of Mundanes they are, or how they are armed, or how many there are. King Trent was developing that information, but I don’t know all of what he knew. I will consult with the Good Magician Humfrey, but that will take time, as we don’t have a magic mirror connecting to his castle at the moment. The one we have is on the blink. We shall try to get it fixed; meanwhile, we’re on our own.”

That reminded Imbri. “Your Majesty,” she sent in a dreamlet. “We have Magician Humfrey’s message for the King. In the excitement we forgot—”

“Let’s have it,” Dor said tiredly.

“It was ‘Beware the Horseman’—which we had already told King Trent. And ‘Break the chain.’ That was his other message.”

Dor’s brow wrinkled. He had a full head of intermediate-shade hair that was handsome enough when disciplined, but it was now a careless mop. Were it not for the crown, he would have been easy to mistake for some weary traveler. “I don’t understand.”

“Maybe my father would have understood,” Irene murmured. “He could have had dialogue with the Good Magician. Maybe there’s a chain in the armory whose magic will be released when it is broken.”

“Sometimes Humfrey’s obscure Answers are more trouble than they are worth,” Dor grumbled. “Why can’t he just come out and say what he means?”

“I can perhaps explain that,” the Mundane Ichabod said. “First, he may believe he is speaking plainly, since he knows so much more than others do. Second, prophecy tends to negate itself when made too obvious. Therefore it has to be couched in terms that become comprehensible only when conditions for fulfillment are proper.”

“Maybe so,” Dor said. “Or maybe Humfrey is getting too old to give relevant Answers any more. If we don’t find a chain in the armory, we’ll just have to wage this war ourselves. The first thing we have to do is get good, recent information. I’ll have to send a party I can trust to scout the Mundanes—”

“I’ll go,” Chameleon said.

King Dor smiled. “Even a King does not order his own mother into danger. Especially when she is as pretty as mine.” Imbri exchanged a glance with Ichabod, aware that what Dor really meant was that Chameleon was well into her stupid phase, a probable disaster on a reconnaissance mission. “At any rate, I doubt you could travel fast enough to—”

“I mean with Imbri,” Chameleon said. “Anyone is safe with her.”

“Ah, the night mare.” Dor considered. “Is it true, mare, that you can move as fast as thought itself?”

“Yes, King,” Imbri replied. “When I use the gourd. But that’s only at night”

“And can you keep my mother safe, even by day?”

“I think so.”

King Dor paced the floor, the oversized robe dragging. “I don’t like this. But I’ve got to have better information, and my mother is one person I trust absolutely. I think I’d better send Grundy the Golem along, too, to question the plants and animals. I’d go myself, to question the stones, if—”

“You must stay here and rule,” Irene said, holding his arm possessively.

“Yes. I really wish we could include an expert in the party who would know exactly what to look for. It’s so important that we know precisely what we’re up against. Mundanes are not all alike.”

Ichabod coughed. “Your Majesty, I fancy myself something of an expert in Mundane matters, since I am of Mundane persuasion myself. I should be glad to go and identify the invading force for you.”

Dor considered. “Ichabod, I have known you for eight years, intermittently. You have done excellent research on the magic of Xanth, and your information has been invaluable when we have needed to research Mundania. You enabled us to locate and rescue King Trent when he was captive in Mundania. I do trust you, and value your information, and know King Trent felt the same. That’s why he gave you free acess to all the things of Xanth and allowed you to research in the castle library. But you
are
Mundane; I can not ask you to spy on your own people.”

“My people do not ravage and pillage and slaughter wantonly!” Ichabod protested. “Do not judge all Mundanes by the transgressions of a few.”

“Those few may be enough to destroy Xanth,” King Dor said. “Yet you make a good case. But you would need a steed to keep up with the night mare, and I do not think any of our available creatures are suitable. A centaur might help, but most of them are down at Centaur Isle, organizing for the defense of their Isle. I should know; I just returned from there! So—”

“The day horse might help,” Imbri projected.

“The day horse?” King Dor asked.

“I met him in the forest. He was Mundane steed for the Horseman, but he escaped and helped me escape. He doesn’t like the Mundanes. He might be willing to carry Ichabod, though, if no bit or spurs were used, if he knew Ichabod was not one of the enemy Mundanes.” Imbri twitched her skin where her own sore flanks were healing. “I am to meet him at the baobab tree at noon.”

King Dor considered briefly. “Very well. I don’t like organizing such an important mission so hastily, but we can’t defend Xanth at all unless we get that information. If you meet this day horse, and if he agrees to help, Ichabod can ride him. But you, Mother, will be in charge of the mission. Only please listen to Grundy—”

Chameleon smiled. “I have been stupid since before you were born, Dor. I know how to get along. I will listen to Grundy.”

Now the golem appeared. He was as tall as the length of a normal hand and resembled the wood and rag he had originally been fashioned from, though now he was alive. Most people of Xanth had magic talents; he was a talent that had become a person. “We’ll get along fine,” he said. “I care about Chameleon.”

“I know you do,” King Dor said.

“I was Dor’s guide when he wasn’t even a Prince,” Grundy said, asserting himself. “I know Chameleon from twenty-five years back. Can’t say the same for this nag, though.”

Imbri’s ears flattened back in ire. She sent a dreamlet of a thousand-toothed monster chomping the golem.

“Then again,” Grundy said, shaken as he had been the last time they clashed, “maybe I’ve met her in my dreams.”

Chameleon smiled in an inoffensive way. “Night mares are very scary in dreams, but nice in person.”

“Take care of yourselves,” King Dor said gravely. He seemed quite different from his petulance and indecision of the prior evening, as if the responsibility of leadership had indeed brought out a new and superior facet of his character. “There is not one of you I would care to lose.” He smiled, to show there was a modicum of humor there, though it wasn’t really necessary.

“We must say good-bye to Queen Iris,” Chameleon said. She led the way upstairs, and Imbri and Grundy followed, not knowing what else to do.

The King’s bedroom had become an enormous dark cave, with stony stalactites depending from the domed ceiling and deep shadows shrouding the walls. Muted wailing sounded in the background. Fallen King Trent had the aspect of phenomenal grandeur, while Queen Iris was garbed in the foulest rags. The setting was illusion, courtesy of the Queen’s talent, but the sentiment was real.

“I just wanted to say, your Majesty, that we miss the King and will try our best to help,” Chameleon said, standing on a rocky escarpment.

Queen Iris looked up. She saw how lovely Chameleon was, and knew what it meant. “Thank you, Chameleon. I’m sure your son will make a good King,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly so the woman would understand. Of course there was no assurance that Dor would be able to handle the job, let alone the Mundanes, but this was not the occasion for the expression of such doubts.

“I’m going north now with Mare Imbri and Grundy and Ichabod maybe, to spy on the Mundanes.”

“I’m sure you will spy well.” Queen Iris’s gaze dropped; her politeness was almost exhausted.

“Good-bye, your Majesty,” Chameleon said.

The Queen nodded. Then the visitors left the gloomy cave and found the stairs leading down.

They grabbed some supplies, reviewed the map, selected a promising daytime route, and moved out. Imbri galloped ahead to the baobab tree, for it was coming on to noon and she didn’t want to miss the day horse. She carried Grundy, who could talk to any living thing and would not seem like a human person. Ichabod and Chameleon followed more slowly on foot.

The baobab was a monstrous tree. It towered above the jungle, its apex visible from far away. The oddest thing about it was the fact that it grew upside down. Its foliage was on the ground, and its tangled roots were in the air. A space around it was clear, for the baobab didn’t like to be crowded, and used hostile spells to drive away competitive plants.

Imbri poked her nose in the foliage. Was the day horse here? He hadn’t specified which day; he might be elsewhere this noon.

The golem made a windy, whispering sound. The tree replied similarly. “Bao says the horse’s waiting inside,” Grundy reported.

Imbri nosed her way to the tremendous, bulbous trunk. There was a split in it wide enough to admit a horse. She entered cautiously.

Inside it was like a cathedral, with the dome of the tree rising high above. Wooden walls convoluted down to a tesselated wooden floor. From inside, the tree looked right side up. Perhaps that was illusion.

There in the center stood the handsome day horse, shining white. His mane and tail were silken silver, and his hooves gleamed. His small ears perked forward alertly on either side of his forelock. He was almost the prettiest sight she had seen.

“Now there’s a horse you can call a horse,” Grundy murmured appreciatively. “No fish-tail, no unicorn-horn, no shady colors, no bad dreams. The Mundanes may not be good for much, but they certainly know how to grow horses!”

Imbri could only agree, despite the golem’s obliquely derogatory reference to herself—the implication that Xanth could not grow good horses. The only male of her species she had known before was the Night Stallion, who was her sire. The dark horses had been closely interbred for millennia, but now they seldom bred at all because the relationship was too close. New blood was needed—but what was she thinking of? This was a Mundane horse, not really her kind. Her new solidity was giving her new sorts of reaction.

The day horse made a nicker. “He says come forward so he can see you in the light, black mare,” Grundy translated unnecessarily. Of course Imbri understood equine talk! She stepped forward. She hadn’t seen the day horse more than fleetingly by day before and was now as skitterish as a colt. The sheer masculinity of him had a terrific impact on her.

“You are lovely as the night,” the day horse nickered.

“You are handsome as the day,” Imbri nickered back. Oh, what a thrill to interact with such a stallion!

“I just hate to interrupt this touching dialogue,” Grundy cut in with a certain zest. “But you do have business, you know.”

Imbri sighed. The confounded golem was right. Quickly she projected a dream of explanation, describing what she wanted from the day horse.

He considered. “I don’t like going near Mundane human folk,” he said in the dream. “They might capture me again.” He stomped his left foot nervously, making the brass circlet on it glint. “Then I would never get away.”

Imbri well understood. Once he was tethered, he would not be able to phase away by night, as Imbri could, for he was not magic. Like the Mundane human beings, he was limited to Mundane devices. This was the terrible curse of all Mundanes.
They could not do magic.
Most of them did not even believe in magic, which might be a large part of their problem. Fortunately, their offspring in Xanth soon became magical. That was why the Mundane conquests never lasted more than a generation or so; the intruders stopped being Mundane.

“You don’t have to go near them,” Grundy said in equine language. “All you have to do is carry Ichabod close enough so
he
can look at them. He’s Mundane himself, so he knows—”