Question Quest (20 page)

Rose remembered the Sea Hag's (for it seemed now that the name the fishfolk used for her was apt) parting words: she was horrible, but would be much better as soon as she killed herself. Whatever could that mean? Was the woman deranged? Why would anyone want to kill herself, and how would that make her feel better? Why would she want to trap another woman just before then?

There was a sob. Rose thought it was her own, then realized that it wasn't. It had come from across the pool. There must be another ledge there.

“Who is there?” she called.

“Me,” a voice replied.

That was not phenomenally helpful. She realized that the other person could be young, and therefore thoughtless. “Please tell me your name.”

"Dread,” the answer came.

“Dred? Are you a boy?”

“Dread Redhead, because I have red hair and I dread the darkness. I'm a ten-year-old boy.”

Rose was much relieved to discover that she had company, yet horrified to learn that another person was similarly trapped. “Did Peril lure you in here too?” she asked.

“Sure she did,” the boy replied. “Yesterday. But now she's got you, I guess she'll just let me die.”

“What does she want with me?” Rose asked.

“”You mean you don't know?"

“I have no idea. I was only trying to help her carry her bag of ivory, and she led me here and left me. She said something peculiar as she left.”

“You sure don't know!” Dread said. “Well, let me tell you: the Sea Hag is a Sorceress who lives forever, because every time her body gets old, she kills it and her spirit takes over another body. Usually she takes a young woman, but if she can't find one, she'll take a boy. That's why she trapped me. But she'd rather have a woman, even an older one like you; that gives her a few more years to find a young one. So now she's got you, and in an hour or two she'll take it.”

Rose was appalled. “But I don't want my body to be taken! How can she do that?”

“She traps a woman so she can't flee, and then her spirit just comes in. That's her magic. You can't stop her. You have to get far away, so her spirit can't catch you. That's the only way to escape.”

Rose realized that she was in twice as much trouble as she had thought. But rather than dwell on that awfulness, she focused on the boy. “What is your talent?” she asked, hoping that it was something that could help them.

“I pipe open doors. Even when there aren't doors.”

“You mean you can make doors to places that don't have them?"

“Sure. With my hornpipe. It's fun, usually. I can get in or out of anything.”

“But then why didn't you open a door out of here?”

“Because my doors open on the level, not up or down, and there's no light down here.”

“No light? Why should that stop you?”

“I'm afraid of the dark.”

“But it's already dark here!”

“Yes, and that terrifies me. But there's a spot of light from the hole in the tree, and I can watch that. But if I opened a door, it would be to an underground tunnel, and it would be dark. I can't leave the light!"

Rose began to get an idea. “Many children are afraid of the dark. But only when they are alone. They are never afraid when they are with their mothers.”

“My mother isn't here,” he pointed out with a certain accuracy.

“But I’m here! And I'm old enough to be your mother. I am a mother of another child. If I went with you, you wouldn't have to be afraid, no matter how dark it is.”

“Say, maybe so,” he said.

Her heart beat faster. He was accepting her logic! “Can you open a door in your wall?”

“Sure. Come over here and I'll do it.”

Rose did not waste time. She slid into the water and swam across. She found a similar sloping ledge on the other side and climbed out. “Do it,” she said breathlessly.

Music sounded. How lucky that Dread had his hornpipe with him! There was a creaking, as of a door opening.

Rose felt in the darkness. Sure enough, there was a door, with a dark passage beyond. “Come on!” she said. “Maybe this tunnel intersects a cave, and we can follow it to the surface where it's light.” The tunnel was heading directly away from the sea, but that was fine; that was also away from the Sea Hag.

“You first,” Dread said.

She didn't argue. She knew he would follow, rather than be left alone. She felt her way into the tunnel, proceeding on hands and knees. She heard the scuffle of the redheaded boy following.

The tunnel went straight ahead, on the level. She was afraid it went nowhere, but then it came to a faintly glowing underground stream. Her eyes had become adjusted to the gloom, and now this faint light was quite bright enough to see the path of the river.

It was breathtakingly beautiful. The rock surrounding it was crystalline, and each small stone at the bottom was a rough-cut gem, and above it hung stalactites of glossy sardonyx. Now there was sound, too: the stream sang as it wended its way through and around these crystals. At the bottom of the stream small plants were growing, and these plants produced tiny fruits, and there were fish eating the fruits.

But they could not linger to enjoy the scene. “We must move on,” Rose said. “There seems to be no way out from here. Open another door.”

Dread raised his pipe to his mouth and played. A new door opened in the wall. They entered the new tunnel, leaving the lovely river behind. This tunnel was tall enough for them to walk upright, which was a relief, but soon it narrowed so that they had to go single file. The darkness became complete again; Rose could not see anything in front of her. She had to stop, yielding to the primitive fear of banging her face into something disfiguring.

Now the boy squeezed ahead of her and began cursing. His curses lit up the dark and dim pockets of the cave. Rose, about to object to such language, realized that it was better to stifle her ladylike sensibility for the nonce; they needed this bit of light. Yet how was it that the boy had not thought to do this before and so escape before she arrived?

“We're almost there,” Dread said confidently.

“Almost where?” Rose asked. But before she could inquire further, she heard a screech echoing down the tunnel. The Sea Hag!

As one, they charged down the tunnel. Now there was a glow from another wall. Dread whipped out his hornpipe and played another brief melody, and another door opened.

But if the Sea Hag had killed herself so that her spirit was coming after them, how could there be a screech? That was the Hag's living voice!

“Hurry!” the boy cried urgently, taking her arm. He jumped through the door, hauling her after him.

They were on a water slide. It carried them down and around through more darkness. Then they landed in some kind of—well, it felt like a basket. A huge wicker basket, with a high arching handle. It was swinging from a rope tied to that handle. As they landed in it, it started moving, swinging down into yet further deep depths.

“What is this?” Rose cried, alarmed. “Where are we going?”

“This is a handbasket,” the boy replied. “We are going to Hell.”

“Please don't swear anymore,” she reproved him. “It offends my matronly sensibilities. Where are we really going?”

“To Hell,” he repeated. “I am a demon from there. It is a dull place, so we decided we needed some pretty flowers, but they won't grow. Your talent is making roses grow, and they are nice flowers, so we are bringing you there.”

Rose was upset and bewildered. “But the Sea Hag! What about her?”

“Oh, she was going to take your body, all right. That's why we had to act quickly. Some talents go with the souls, and some with the bodies. Yours goes with your body, so your soul would have been no good to us, and anyway, it is far too good for us. So we had to have your body, and get it before the Sea Hag did. We had only a few hours before she killed herself and came for you.”

“But it took only minutes to flee her cave!”

“Yes, we couldn't let you stop to think too long, or you might have found a way to escape. But now you are in the handbasket to Hell, and we have you.”

She stared at him in the growing light of the flames that were appearing outside the basket. “You're no more an innocent boy than the Sea Hag is an innocent woman! You were out to trap me too!”

“And succeeded,” he agreed, well satisfied.

She peered down over the side of the big basket. There was nothing but licking flames and roiling smoke there. She could not escape.

Rose sighed. This was just not a good day!

I returned late from Castle Roogna. Our own reconditioned castle was quiet. Rose was not there. Where was she?

Then I saw a parchment on the table. It was in my wife's hand. It was a letter from Rose! I read it wonderingly.

Dearest Husband Humfrey,

Where are you, my beloved? If you do not rescue me soon from this Hell, I fear for the consequences. Each day I walk the Castle Walk, in the lonely Silver Rain, from the Sand Castle Inn to the Castle in the Sky, but you do not appear. I told the demon in charge of this Hell that at long last I am prepared to give anything to see you and love you one more time. I have talked to the trees here and they whisper that my banishment from Xanth will not be one times nine years, or two times nine years, but ten times nine years, unless you rescue me immediately. Why have you not come? I have only one more Day of Grace, and then I am locked here for the full term.

Oh my love, everywhere I walk Forget-Me-Nots in thyme spring up to cover my footprints of blood in the white snowsand. My soul is being tugged from me; it will be encased in rose quartz in the rose garden of Castle Roogna unless you rescue me today! It shames me to confess it, but I have bribed a demon with a kiss to deliver this letter to our home. I beg you, if you love me as I love you, come take me away from all this before it is too late!

Rose of Roogna

As soon as I finished reading it, the letter burst into flame. It was a missive from Hell, all right! It was gone.

I glanced at the calendar an ogre had left. I remembered the date on Rose's letter. I had evidently gotten more deeply embroiled in the research at Castle Roogna man I had realized. Four days had passed.

I was one day past Rose's deadline. I had already missed my chance to rescue her. I could not redeem her from Hell. I was the Magician of Information, not of Power, and I knew I lacked the power to bring her from that infernal region. Maybe if I had been able to learn more—but she had been helping me to learn, and without her I knew I could not research well enough to find out how to free her, assuming that there was a way. So she was lost.

I could not live with that. I would have to kill myself and join her in Hell. I knew I would not mind it much, in her company.

I started to put the castle in order for my departure. My vials of potions, my collected spells, my almost-complete Book of Answers—it would not do for these to be left out for any passerby to take! Suppose they fell into evil hands? But where could I put them where they would be safe?

Castle Roogna, of course. So I carried the flying carpet out to the landing place beside the moat and began loading it.

Soufflé lifted his head from the water. He had moved here from Castle Roogna when we did, because it was pointless to defend an empty castle that needed no additional defense, he claimed. Actually, it was because he liked Rose. She looked good enough to eat.

I gazed into the monster's eyes. How could I face that Rose was gone and that I would be too? I remembered that I had commitments here that I could not simply desert. For one thing, I had to be ready in case I was needed as king again, much as I loathed the thought. The arrogant Storm King had put in a law that all human citizens of Xanth had to demonstrate a magic talent by age twenty-five or be exiled. That was foppish, and unfair. If I didn't want to be king again myself, I had at least to keep looking for another Magician and train him, so that when he became king he would abolish that law.

No, I could not desert my post, even for Rose. Yet I could not endure without her. I couldn't even find my socks, alone! I would need a woman for that—and how could I marry again, loving Rose as I did? The answer was that I couldn't. Not as long as I remembered my love for her.

There was only one thing remaining to do. I stepped to the cupboard and fetched my vial of Lethe elixir. There was enough in here to make a man forget something for eighty years. By that time I should be safely dead and with Rose in Hell. For this potion affected only the living mind, not the dead mind. It was ideal.

“Rose!” I cried, naming the thing I had to forget, and lifted the vial to my mouth. I drank down the whole of it.

I looked around, bewildered. What was I doing here? I stood in the middle of an arcane study with a vial in my hand. The last thing I remembered was discovering Castle Roogna. I had been approaching the ramparts, and I had seen a moat monster. Then—nothing.

Was I inside the castle, having hit my head during the entry? No, I had no bruise, and anyway, this wasn't Castle Roogna; the smell of it was different. This was somewhere else. More must have happened than simple entry; somehow I had been transported elsewhere.

Maybe that was the castle's last defense: it used magic to move anyone who entered to a different castle. Maybe the—a memory glimmered from the fog—the Nameless Castle. The castle of which I had not heard, which ignorance had cost me a good grade. Somewhere, sometime. But I could not remember more of that matter. I seemed to have forgotten a lot.

I peered more closely at the vial. Now I saw a label on it: LETHE.

I had just drunk the elixir of forgetfulness! Whatever had possessed me to do that?

Slowly I figured it out: there was a period of my life missing. I must have entered Castle Roogna, then traveled here and set things up to suit myself, and then taken a drink of potion to forget it all. Why?

I didn't know but was sure that if I had done it voluntarily there had to have been excellent reason. So my best course was not to inquire into the matter. In due course the elixir would wear off—there was no telling how much had been in the bottle—and then I would remember. Meanwhile, I should go about my business, awaiting that revelation.

Just how much time had been wiped out by the elixir? I looked at the calendar again, this time checking the year. My mouth fell open. It was the Year 1000! It had been 971 before. I had lost twenty-nine years of my life! Instead of being thirty-eight years old and fresh from my stint as king of Xanth, I was now sixty-seven years old and not fresh at all. Indeed, the weight of those extra decades now came down on my shoulders, and I felt stooped.

But there was no sense groaning over squished milk pods. I would simply have to make the best of it, hoping that it wasn't unbearably bad. It had obviously been bad enough to make me take Lethe, though.

I explored the castle, which turned out to be not the Nameless Castle, but the ancient Castle Zombie. I must have discovered this in my travels, after leaving Castle Roogna, and decided to patch it up and live in it. But it was too well kept; there seemed to be a woman's hand in this. I must have had a servant maid. What had happened to her? She was certainly not here now. Whoever she was, she had been highly competent, because everything was in far better order than I was capable of managing.

I located the bed chamber, and found therein only one bed, large enough for two. On one side were my things, such as a lost sock; on the other were a woman's, such as the perfume of roses. Obviously we had been close.

I spied a magic mirror on the wall. “What woman was here?” I demanded of it.

“You told me not to answer that, Magician, before you took the Lethe elixir,” it replied.

“Well, now I'm telling you to answer,” I said shortly. I tended to be shorter now than before being shortened by those extra twenty-nine years.

“But then you were in command of your faculties,” it responded with a sneer. “None of the magic items here will answer you now.”

I realized that it was true. I would not have taken Lethe if I had wanted to remember what I was trying to forget.

I also discovered in a closet a fat tome labeled BOOK OF ANSWERS. Now this was interesting. Where had I gotten this? But as I turned the pages, I recognized the handwriting: it was my own, with cross-references by some other party, evidently an assistant.

Well, maybe this would help me. I needed a woman to find my socks; where was she? I tried to use it to ascertain what woman had been here, but it balked me, as I had expected. I had been routinely thorough, before, as befitted me. But I should be able to use this and the other magic items in other ways so that I could get on with my life.

I thumbed through the pages. Soon I located WOMAN.

There were pages of types, but there was no SOCKS subheading. Too bad. So I checked for the next best thing, and there it was: WIFE.

I discovered that this was a spelled entry: it changed as I watched it, listing names and descriptions of marriageable females. I could fix it on any one who interested me by touching the entry with my finger; when I removed my finger, the entries started rotating again.

But I didn't want to choose randomly. So I tested its resources. “I want the best sock finder available,” I said, and stabbed my finger down without looking. If this worked the way it should, that name would be the one.

And there it was: SOFIA SOCK SORTER. Her description was ordinary, and she lived in—

Oops! This was a problem. She lived in Mundania.

Well, either I wanted the best or I didn't. Of what mettle was I made, today? I decided to go fetch Sofia, regardless.

I packed those spells I recognized from my early days of collecting. I found a magic carpet I seemed to have acquired in my missing years. I carried it outside, looking for a suitable place to launch it.

There was the moat monster, whose name, I had learned, was Soufflé Serpent. No doubt because that was what he would make of any intruder. “I am going to find a woman,” I announced. “I shall return. Guard the premises well."

Soufflé nodded and settled back into the water.

I unrolled the carpet, set my things on it, sat on it myself, and gave it the standard takeoff command. It lifted smoothly; it was a good piece of work.

I flew north and slightly west—and soon discovered below a monstrous chasm. Where had that come from? I remembered nothing of the sort in Xanth! I fetched up my notepad—and there was a note: GAP CHASM-FORGET SPELL ON. Oh. That explained it. I admired the scenery, continuing my flight across the varied landscape of Xanth until I reached the isthmus. There I landed and hid the carpet away in a tree, putting a routine invisibility spell on it from my collection. Then I used a temporary neutrality spell on the Shield that enclosed Xanth, and walked safely through it. It was evident that my hiatus of lost memory had not impaired my routine skills; I seemed to be about as good as ever, apart from being older.

There was a peculiar thing I remembered about Mundania: it had little if any magic. However, I had found a vial of magic dust I had gotten from somewhere, and that would enable me to do such magic as I required, if I didn't waste it.

I set out on foot across drear Mundania. It would be pointless to recount my experience there; no one cares to learn any more about that boring and backward place than the absolute minimum. I shall just say that I found Sofia the sock sorter at the mundane company she worked for. She was about thirty years old and plain, but her hands sorted socks of all types with marvelous dexterity.

I sprinkled some magic dust and then used certain other spells, to set up the interview. This made me imperceptible to other Mundanes and made my words intelligible to Sofia. Take my word: such steps are necessary when operating in such a region, silly as they may seem to ordinary folk.

“I have come to take you away from all this to a realm of magic,” I told her.

She considered a moment. “Okay,” she agreed in the Mundane way.

So we walked back to Xanth, chatting as we went, and got to know each other as well as was necessary. We passed back through the Shield and I fetched the carpet. We sat on it, and it lifted.

Sofia screamed and almost jumped off. “What's the matter, woman?” I demanded with justified irritation.

“It's magic!” she cried.

“Of course it is. I told you this was a land of magic.”

“But I didn't believe you.”

“Then why did you come with me?”

“Because anything is better than being an old maid in Mundania."

She had a point. “Well, you will just have to learn to live with magic, because I am a Magician.” I had found a scroll attesting to my degree from the demon's University of Magic, so knew that in my missing years I had become a certified Magician. In fact, when I saw that, I remembered an entire year-long episode with Professor Grossclout, Beauregard, and Metria. The demoness had for some reason wanted to seduce me, but had failed (which was even less explicable), and I had completed my studies. That was good.

Sofia decided that she would live with it. But she seemed quite nervous about the height and exposure of the carpet, until I uncorked a relaxation spell and she relaxed.

We came to the castle. “Oh, it's beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Just like a fairy tale!”

“No fairies here,” I corrected her. “They live elsewhere in the forest.”

She glanced at me, then laughed, though I wasn't sure what she found funny.

She seemed somewhat in awe of the castle, especially its appurtenances like the moat monster, until she saw my mound of unsorted socks. “Now that I understand!” she exclaimed. “There's enough here to keep me busy for years!”

Precisely.

We settled into what she termed a common-law marriage. She was good in the kitchen, once she learned how to use simple spells and how to harvest ripe pies from the garden. She was good with clothing, once she learned about shoe trees and such. She discovered a rose garden in back, and tended to it carefully, for the flowers were similar to those she knew at her home. Actually, that rose garden seemed to be magic, flourishing with no care, but the roses bloomed more readily when someone paid attention to them.

But she did have one problem. It seemed that she felt I should at some point break off my study of the fascinating Book of Magic and do something with her on the bed. It seemed to be some sort of custom in her land.

Perplexed, I went to a magic mirror, one which gave straight answers. It showed a flying stork.

“Oh, you want to summon the stork!” I exclaimed.