Hasbinbad had by now dispatched the zombie serpent. Now the Nextwave started across the bridge, single file.
Chet nocked an arrow, aimed, and let fly. The shaft arced across the gulf, then thunked into the face of the leading Mundane. The man collapsed and fell into the Chasm.
The second Nextwaver elevated his shield to protect his face. The centaur's second arrow struck him on the exposed thigh. The man screamed, lost his balance, and fell.
The third Nextwaver held his shield low, but waited until the centaur aimed, watching closely. When the arrow flew at his head, he used his shield to intercept it--and got caught by Chets second arrow, aimed at his leg.
In this manner, Chet methodically dispatched six Mundanes, using as many arrows on each as were necessary to do the job. Then he ran out of arrows.
Now the Mundanes double-timed across the bridge, one after the other. They had taken the unavoidable losses and finally were charging to victory. Their depth of numbers, so feared by the Zombie Master, was taking effect.
"The bridge!" the Zombie Master snapped.
Chet brought out his sword and hacked at the cables that supported the bridge. They severed, but the walk held, so he chopped into that, too.
"Hold!" the first Mundane bawled, seeing what was happening. Of course Chet continued desperately chopping. Chem swung her rope, looping the first Mundane just before he reached solid ground, and yanked him off the walkway.
Still the tough planks of the bridge resisted Chet’s sword. This was a job for an axe, and they had none. Imbri wished that Smash the Ogre were here--but he had been delegated to defend Castle Roogna itself, in case of complete disaster, since the palace guard of zombies was no longer there. The Zombie Master had been warned about the missing reserve force of Mundanes, which might even now be circling to take Castle Roogna from the rear. The ogre was also on the lookout for whoever or whatever lurked in the vicinity, enchanting the Kings. So it was a necessary post, and Smash could not be spared for action farther a field.
The next Nextwaver leaped across the opening crevice in the bridge--only to be met by the Zombie Master's own sword. Stabbed neatly through the heart, he died, falling headlong on the ground.
The Zombie Master bent to touch the dead man--and this Mundane revived. He stood up, blood dripping from his chest. "Master!" he rasped.
"Guard this bridge," the Zombie Master ordered him. "Let no living creature pass."
The new zombie faced the Chasm, sword in hand, while Chet continued chopping. As the next Mundane came across, the zombie drove fiercely at him with that sword.
"Hey!" the next one cried. "You're on our side!"
"No more," the zombie Mundane grunted, and slashed again. The other warrior danced aside, startled--and stepped off the bridge.
Now at last Chet got through the final board. The weight of the crossing soldiers snapped the remaining tie. The bridge pulled away from its mooring and flopped down into the Gap Chasm. Screaming, a dozen Mundanes fell with it.
Hasbinbad stood at the far side. "That won't stop me!" he bawled. "I'll cross anyway and wipe you out! You're finished. King Zombie!"
Imbri swished her tail in fury, but the Zombie Master turned away. "My proper business is reanimating the dead, not killing the living," he said. "I have been responsible for destroying more lives this day than ever elsewhere in my life. I concede the necessity but detest the reality. Pray that the Chasm holds them back, sparing us further malice."
"We'll have to watch them, though," Grundy said. "To be sure. I don't trust Hasbinbad."
"My minions will watch." The Zombie Master walked away from the Chasm. "But we shall be near to reinforce them, until we know the Nextwavers have given up."
Imbri looked back. Hasbinbad the Carthaginian still stood at the brink of the Chasm, yelling and shaking his fist. "...take you out, too, Zombie King!" his voice came faintly. "Just like the Transformer and Firetalk Kings..."
So the attacks on the Kings were definitely connected to the Mundane invasion! But how? Until they had the answer, they could not even take reasonable precautions against it.
They found a tent in the forest near the Chasm that a large tent caterpillar had left. This was the very best natural shelter available, fashioned of the finest silk; tent caterpillars made themselves very comfortable before they magically transformed themselves to winged form and took off. The King retired for necessary sleep, as he had not rested the prior night. Chet and Grundy stood guard by the tent, beating a path around it in a circle, watching for any possible sign of intrusion, while Chem galloped back toward Castle Roogna with news of the battle.
Imbri found a forest glade close by that had good pasturage. She grazed and slept, for it had been long since she had eaten and rested properly, and this constant physical existence was wearing. No wonder the material creatures soon aged and died; they simply wore out!
After an hour's munching and cogitation--grazing was always the best time to chew on concepts, between snoozes--Imbri became aware of the approach of another animal. It was the day horse. She nickered to him gladly, discovering that she had missed him these past two hectic days. "Where have you been?" she projected.
"Staying well away from the Mundanes," he replied in the dream. "They have been coming south, frightening me; I think they are chasing me down."
"You're beautiful, but not bold," she informed him. "We had two battles with them, and have halted them only at the Gap Chasm."
"I know. I heard the clamor. Have you really stopped them?"
"I think so. We cut the main bridge across the Chasm, and they don't know about the invisible bridge to the east. If they try to climb down through the Gap, the Gap Dragon will get them. They've already lost about forty more men today."
"Xanth won't be safe until all of them are gone, especially the Horseman."
Imbri remembered the double warning to beware the Horseman, and understood the horse's personal concern. She had felt those spurs herself! Still, she wasn't sure he was the worst threat. For one thing, there had been no sign of him among the Mundanes recently; he must be with the reserve force, way up in northern Xanth, so was no present threat. "Especially Hasbinbad, too," she amended.
"He's just a brute man. He drives straight ahead and hacks away at anything. But the Horseman is devious and clever; he is the true leader and your real enemy."
The day horse certainly was hung up on that! "But we haven't seen him since we escaped the Punics."
"That means he's up to something. Until you nullify him, you'll never sleep securely."
Imbri didn't argue further. If the Night Stallion and Good Magician Humfrey both felt the Horseman was the real danger, he probably was. But in what way? That wasn't clear at all. What could even the smartest, least scrupulous Mundane do to harm a Kingdom of magic?
They grazed together for an hour. Then, as night came on, the day horse departed, traveling south, away from the Mundanes, seeking his safe haven. Imbri snorted indulgently to herself. He was excellent company, but he had his idiosyncrasies. The Mundanes couldn't get him as long as they were north of the Chasm. And if they came south of it by some infernal miracle, all he had to do was run; no man afoot could gain on a healthy horse, and the trees of the jungle would block an attack by bows and arrows.
Imbri returned to the Zombie Master's tent at night, phasing through trees and hillocks. She found Grundy alert; he spotted her the moment she returned to material form. "You don't catch me sleeping on the job, mare!" he said, smirking. "Though if you stayed invisible, I'd have a problem. I'll admit that much."
"Perhaps I should maintain invisible guard," Imbri sent.
"No, you have to graze and rest yourself," the golem said, perhaps not wanting to share the honor of guarding the King.
"I could check invisibly every hour or so."
"Well--" Then Grundy had a notion. "Could I go with you when you do?"
"Certainly. You would be invisible, too."
"Goody! Let's check now."
Imbri let him jump on her back. Then she phased out of sight and walked through the tent wall. The Zombie Master was sleeping peacefully. Imbri sent a dream into his mind. "Hello, your Majesty," she said in her dream form, this time a reasonably well-preserved female zombie. "It's only Mare Imbrium. Are you comfortable?"
"Quite comfortable, thank you, mare," the King replied. "Except that I miss my family. Do you think you could put them in this dream?"
"Certainly," Imbri said, her zombie image shedding a hank of moldy hair in approved fashion. She concentrated, and in a moment Millie the Ghost appeared, somewhat faintly, but quite beautiful, radiating sex appeal.
"Oh, Jonathan!" Millie said. "I love you so much!" She opened her arms to him.
"Now this is what I call a good dream!" the Zombie Master exclaimed, encompassing her. Their love had endured the eight hundred years while he was a zombie and she a ghost; evidently the flesh had not weakened it. Imbri, having recently made the transition to mortality herself, could understand this better than she might have before she left dream duty. There was a special intensity to physical existence that insubstantial creatures could not experience.
Then an eye popped open in the nearby wall. Print appeared beside it. MUSH! MUSH! YUCK!
"Go to your room, children!" the Zombie Master snapped. "Go make your own dreams!"
Cowed, the eye and print faded. The Zombie Master kissed his wife, who responded passionately. If there was one thing Millie was really good at, it was passion.
Then the Magician's eyes went blank. He froze in place.
"Jonathan," Millie asked, alarmed, "what's the matter?"
But the Zombie Master did not respond. He simply stood there, staring through her.
Imbri was abruptly out of the dream--for there was no longer a mind to receive it. "He's been taken!" she sent to Grundy. "Right while he was dreaming!"
"But no one's here but us!" the golem protested. "Imbri, you didn't--?"
"No! I don't do that to people! I can't. And wouldn't if I could. This was not the work of any night mare. I would have recognized any who came, and none came, anyway!"
"I'll investigate this," Grundy said. "Make us solid, quickly."
She materialized, there in the tent. Grundy jumped down. He made a whispering, rustling sound, talking to a patch of grass within the tent. "The grass didn't see anything," he said.
"Maybe outside the tent--"
Grundy lifted up the flap and scrambled out. Imbri phased through the wall and trotted to Chet. "The King's been ensorcelled!" she sent to the centaur. "Just now!"
"But Grundy was on guard!" he cried, snapping alert.
"So was I. But the King went from right under my nose--in the middle of a dream I sent!"
"Hey, I've got it!" Grundy cried from the tent area. "This tree says there was a man here a moment ago. He climbed in the tree, then jumped down and ran away."
Chet galloped over to the golem. "Who was it? Anyone we know?"
"The tree can't identify him," Grundy said. "All men look alike to trees. Anyway, it was dark, and he seems to be a stranger to this glade. He could be anyone, Xanthian or Mundane."
"He must be Xanthian," Imbri sent. "Obviously he has magic: he threw a spell to blank out the King, then ran away."
"Why didn't it blank us out, too?" Grundy asked.
"We weren't material. The spell must have passed right through us."
"Or it was aimed specifically at the King, as the other spells were," Chet said. "I agree; it has to be Xanthian. Someone with the power to cloud men's minds. A traitor among us, taking out our Kings in the midst of a crisis so we can't organize a good defense against the Nextwave."
"Exactly as Hasbinbad threatened," Imbri sent. “This is no coincidence; this is enemy action."
Grundy was pursuing the trail, questioning grass, bushes, and trees. But soon the path crossed a rocky region that led into a river, and was lost. "King Dor could have handled this; he talks to the inanimate. But--"
"But King Dor has already been taken," Chet finished. "Oh, we're in terrible trouble! What will we say to the others?"
"The truth," Grundy said. "We were watching the King, instead of the surroundings, and we got skunked. We need a new King--again."
"I'll go!" Imbri sent. "I can reach Castle Roogna quickly. The Queens must be told."
"Take me with you," Grundy said, leaping onto her back. "Chet, you notify the zombies. They'll have to defend the Gap Chasm as well as they can without their master."
"Yes," the centaur agreed. "I fear the Punics will pass the Chasm. But we should have a few days to prepare for their next onslaught." He looked at the fallen King. "And I'll carry him back to Castle Roogna."
This was becoming almost commonplace, this disposition of the Kings of Xanth! Imbri felt the shock, but not as hard as it had been when King Trent and King Dor were taken.
Imbri phased out and charged through the night toward the nearest gourd patch. She knew the location of most of the hypnogourds of Xanth, since the night mares used them for exits. "Brace yourself for a strange environment," she warned the golem.
"It can't be worse than what we know now in Xanth," Grundy muttered.
Imbri feared he was right. The Kings were being taken faster now; where would it end? How could the loyal defenders of Xanth stop it, when the sorcery could happen right while they were watching?
Chapter 9
Good King Humfrey
Queen Iris met them at Castle Roogna. "Somehow I knew it," she said. "Every time we get our defense going well, we lose our King. I have been mourning for my husband when I should have been protecting his successors. You two go directly to Good Magician Humfrey; he must be the next King. Don't let him put you off; the old curmudgeon can't refuse this time! I'll send word to Millie the Ghost, if a regular night mare hasn't beaten me to it, and will organize things here at the castle. Tell Humfrey this is preemptive; he's the last male Magician of Xanth and must assume the office immediately, and no gnomish grumbling."
Imbri realized that the old Queen still had considerable spirit and competence. Now that the crisis was deepening, she was putting aside her personal grief and shock to do what needed to be done. She was providing some leadership during the vacuum. Grundy had commented with innocent malice on the uselessness of the Queen, whom King Trent had married mainly out of courtesy; now Imbri knew directly that there was much more to it than that. Queen Iris's grief was genuine, but so was her mettle.
Fortunately, Imbri's century and a half of night labors had inured her somewhat to busy nights. The golem remounted and they galloped for the Good Magician's castle.
She used the same gourd patches she had taken with Chameleon, but her rider was different and so the gourd terrain differed. This time they charged through a region of carnivorous clouds that reached for them with funnel-shaped, whirling, sucking snouts and turbulent gusts. They whistled with rage when unable to consume this seeming prey. Clouds tended to be vocally expressive.
Then there was a forest of animate trees whose branches clutched at them and whose leaves slurped hungrily, but these, too, failed. Finally they threaded through a field of striking weapons--swords, clubs, and spears moving with random viciousness, nooses tightening, and metallic magic tubes belching fire, noise, and fragments. Yet again they passed through safely, for Imbri was long familiar with this region. The world of the gourd had to supply everything that was required for bad dreams, and weapons were prominent.
"This is a fun scene you have in your gourd," Grundy remarked, relaxing once he realized they were safely through.
They emerged near the Good Magician's castle and charged through its walls and into its halls. Humfrey was in his study, as usual poring over a huge tome. He looked up glumly as Imbri and Grundy materialized. "So it has come at last to this," he muttered. "For a century I have avoided the onerous aspect of politics, and now you folk have bungled me into a corner."
"Yes, sir," Grundy said. The golem was half
way respectful, for Humfrey had enabled him to become real, long ago when he had been unreal. Also, Humfrey was about to come into considerably more power. "You have to bite the bullet and be King."
"Xanth has no bullets," Humfrey grumped. "That's a Mundane anachronism." He scowled as his old eyes scanned a shelf on which sat a row of magic bullets, giving him the lie. "I'm not the last Magician of Xanth, you know."
"Arnolde Centaur doesn't count," Grundy said. "His talent only works outside Xanth, and anyway, he's not human."
"Both arguments are specious. His turn will come. But first must come Bink; he will be King after me."
"Bink?" the golem cried incredulously. "Dor's father? He has no magic at all! King Trent had to cancel the rule of magic for citizenship, just so Bink could stay in Xanth."
"Bink is a Magician," Humfrey insisted. "Possibly the most potent one alive. For the first quarter century of his life, no one knew it; for the second quarter, only a select few knew it. Now all Xanth must know it, for Xanth needs him. Bear that in your ugly little mind, golem, for you will have to pass the word. Perhaps Bink will break the chain."
"Breaking the chain!" Imbri sent. "That's your advice for saving Xanth from the Nextwave!"
"Yes, indeed," Humfrey agreed. "But it is proving hard to do. I shall not succeed, and I am unable to prophesy beyond my own doom. But I think Bink is the one most likely to break it--or perhaps his wife will."
Golem and mare exchanged a glance. Had the Good Magician lost what few wits remained to him?
The Gorgon appeared in the doorway. A heavy opaque veil covered her face completely. "I have packed your spells and your lunch, my love," she murmured.
"And my socks?" Humfrey snapped. "What about my spare socks?"
"Those, too," she said. "I might forget a spell, but never something as important as your spare socks." She smiled wryly under the veil and set a tied bag before him on the desk.
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