Dragon on a Pedestal

by Piers Anthony

  "Teasing a monster?" Irene inquired, raising another fine green eyebrow. That roar had really given her a start!

  The Zombie Master grimaced apologetically. "There are monsters under every child's bed, but ours is more sensitive than most." The poor thing gets quite upset. The children like to dangle their feet down barely within its range, then yank them up just as its hairy mitt grabs for them. Or they squirt perfume at it. That sort of thing. It really isn't nice to do that. We want them to treat magic creatures with the respect they deserve."

  Irene suppressed an illicit smirk. She had always been afraid of the monster under the bed and, in childhood, had tended to leap into bed, not from any joy of sleeping, but to avoid the ankle-grabbing mitt. The monster had disappeared when she grew up, and she came to doubt that it had ever existed, but recently Ivy had claimed to have seen it. When Irene had checked, there had been nothing there, so she knew Ivy was imagining it. Probably the monster had died of old age. The strangest thing was that, though her monster had definitely been real when Irene herself was small, her own parents had pretended not to see it. Why had adults refused to see her genuine monster, while now her child pretended to see it when it wasn't there? Regardless, she had no sympathy for the thing. Monsters under the bed were a species of creature; like dragons and nickelpedes, that she felt Xanth would be happier without.

  "Can't it reach to the top of the bed?" Arnolde asked, interested. "Centaurs do not use beds, so I am not conversant with this particular monster."

  "That is not the nature of bed monsters," the Zombie Master explained. "They can not depart their lair. It is too bright above, you see. Their domain terminates where the shadow does. They have to travel at night, but only the gravest emergency will lure a bed monster from its lair even then. They just don't feel secure in the open."

  Irene could appreciate why. If she ever caught such a monster in the open, she would take a broom to it! "You were about to conjecture about Humfrey's motive," Irene reminded Arnolde.

  "Ah, yes," the centaur Magician agreed. "The Good Magician always has excellent reason for his actions or inactions. If there were some special quality about this particular dragon, it would be unwise simply to slay it. We might thereby do irreparable harm to Xanth."

  "By eliminating a rogue dragon?" Irene asked incredulously. "Dragons are common in Xanth!"

  "But there are different types of dragons," the centaur pointed out. "Just as there are different types of humanoids, ranging from the giants to the elves. Some dragons are intelligent."

  "Not this one," the Zombie Master said. "Or if it is, it doesn't care to show it. It just blunders along, rampaging randomly."

  "Strange," the centaur said. "I suppose we shall just have to wait for the Good Magician to enlighten us. Is it usual for him to be so late to a meeting?"

  "Nothing is unusual for Humfrey," Dor said with a smile. "He does things his own way and can neglect or forget routine details."

  "Such as meeting with other Magicians of Xanth to work out a program to deal with a crisis," Irene said wryly. "A crisis that has been exacerbated by his refusal to let us use effective measures."

  "I understand he had some errands to attend to on the way," the Zombie Master said mildly. "Some magic potions he can harvest in this vicinity. He is always collecting magic artifacts."

  "Well, he ought to know where they are," Irene said. "He is the Magician of Information."

  Dor twiddled his fingers against his knee, obviously impatient with the delay. "Should we make our decision without him? We can't wait too long, or the children will--"

  There was a crash, followed by horrendous mixed noise. "Speak of the devils!" the Zombie Master said. "Now they're playing their music box."

  "That's music?" Irene inquired, both brows raised.

  "It's some sort of Mundane device called a jerk box," he explained. "Teenagers associate with it."

  "Juke box," Arnolde corrected him gently. "My friend Ichabod the Mundane arranged to import it, and Humfrey found a spell to make it operate here. I am not certain they exercised good judgment in this instance."

  "If that's Mundane music, I'm glad I live in Xanth," Irene muttered.

  "Wasn't there another problem?" Dor inquired of the Zombie Master.

  The dour man nodded. "Yes. People have been turning up at the castle with amnesia."

  "Amnesia?"

  "They have forgotten who they are and where they're going," the Zombie Master explained. "It is as if they have just been born--but they possess all their faculties. We can't send them home, because we don't know where they belong. Animals, too--they just wander aimlessly."

  "That sounds like a forget-spell," Arnolde said.

  "Like the one on the Gap Chasm?" Dor asked.

  "No," the Zombie Master said. "That spell makes people forget that the Gap exists, once they depart from it. It doesn't make them forget who they are themselves."

  "It hardly makes them forget the Gap itself, these days," Irene put in. "We are all able to remember the Gap now."

  "Still, this could be a spell," Arnolde said. "It is unfortunate the affected people are unable to remember what happened to them."

  "Did anyone follow their tracks back?" Irene asked;

  "Yes, of course," the Zombie Master said. "We have several excellent zombie hounds. We traced the tracks some distance through the forest--but there seemed to be nothing of significance. The tracks just wandered randomly. We did trace a couple back to their origins; one came from the South Village, and his wife recognized him--but he neither remembered her nor was able to say what had happened to him. There was no evidence of misplay anywhere along his route. It seemed he had gone out to fetch a pine needle for his wife to sew with and never returned. We retraced his route several times, narrowing down the region where his progress became aimless, but there was nothing. No one else was affected, and there was no sign of the passage of any unusual animal or plant."

  "At least he was able to rejoin his family," Irene said.

  The Zombie Master smiled briefly. "Fortunately, she is an attractive woman, or he might not have chosen to exercise that option." He waved a thin hand in a gesture of negation. "But a number of other cases remain unsolved, and in any event, we don't want this complaint to spread. Especially not while a dragon is rampaging."

  "Good Magician Humfrey will have the Answers," King Dor said. "He always does."

  "Take care he doesn't charge us each a year's service for it," Arnolde said with a faint smile. Humfrey normally did not charge other Magicians, as a matter of propriety or caution, but the Good Magician was often absent-minded. All the other Magicians of the senior generation had retired, but Humfrey seemed eternal. Irene wondered what his secret was. She also wondered if they had not become too dependent on him for Answers. How would they manage if the Good Magician were no longer around to give advice? That was not a pleasant thought, but it would be foolish not to prepare.

  Millie reappeared. "I had to pack them off outside," she said. "But we had better finish the meeting soon, or they'll be in trouble again."

  "All we need is the Good Magician," Arnolde said. "We have defined the problems; he must define the Answers."

  "It's not like him to be this late," the Zombie Master said. "Not when the matter is important. He doesn't like to leave his castle, but he keeps a pretty strict schedule once he does; Perhaps I should send a zombie out--"

  "He could be traveling by magic carpet," Irene pointed out. "Or by direct conjuration. He wouldn't bother with a footpath."

  A zombie in a ragged tuxedo appeared at the door. "Yes, Jeeves?" the Zombie Master inquired. It seemed there were a few indoor zombies, performing necessary chores.

  "Carpish ashoy," the creature announced, spitting out a decayed tooth in the effort of speech.

  "Well, open a window," the Zombie Master said.

  The zombie dropped a chunk of sodden flesh from somewhere on its anatomy within the tux and went to a window. After some struggle, since its
muscles were mostly rotten, it got the window open. Then it shuffled out.

  Just in time! A flying carpet glided in, supporting two figures. The Good Magician had at last arrived.

  The carpet landed on the floor with a bump. Humfrey and his son sat there. The Good Magician was a small, wrinkled gnome of a man with a bare pate and thick-lensed glasses. Hugo was evidently following the pattern of his father; though his skin was smooth, his head fair-haired, and his face innocent, he was very small for his age and already somewhat gnarled. By no stretch of euphemism could he be called handsome, and he was all too likely to grow into a man no prettier than Humfrey.

  Too bad, Irene thought, that Hugo had not taken after his mother, for the Gorgon was as tall, stately, and good-featured as a human being came. Of course, few people ever gazed on the Gorgon's features, and those who did were likely to pay a rather severe consequence. There were still a number of statues of Mundane invaders placed around Castle Roogna, souvenirs of the Gorgon's part in that last great battle.

  There was over a century between the ages of Humfrey and Hugo, but they were obviously two of a kind, physically. Alas, not mentally! Humfrey was a special kind of genius, while the boy--

  "Come and sit down," the Zombie Master said, rising to welcome the Good Magician. "We have been waiting for you."

  "I am sitting, Jonathan," Humfrey grumped. As he spoke, the wrinkles around and across his face seemed almost to ripple. "I had other business."

  "Hugo can join the other children," Irene said diplomatically. She knew the adults would not talk freely while the boy was present, though Hugo was unlikely to comprehend anything significant.

  "No, we have another chore, and I'm behind schedule," Humfrey said. "Your problems are these: the Gap Dragon is ravaging the country; you must not hurt it, for it is necessary to the welfare of the Gap, especially now that the spell is breaking up."

  "Spell?" King Dor asked.

  "The forget-spell, of course," Humfrey said, as if impatient with dullness. He probably had a lot of practice with that, traveling with his son. "It received a fatal jolt in the Time of No Magic twenty-nine years ago, and now is fragmenting and mutating. Forget-whorls are spinning off and causing mischief; they can incite partial or complete amnesia. Spray each whorl with this liquid to neutralize it temporarily, then move it out of Xanth to the Mundane regions where it has no effect." He grimaced, remembering something. "Not much effect, at any rate; it does cause the Mundanes to forget that magic works--not that that is very much loss for them." He handed the Zombie Master a small bottle of translucent fluid with a nozzle and pneumatic bulb on it. "Take it up, Hugo."

  The carpet lurched into the air toward the wall. "No, out the window, idiot!" the Good Magician snapped, out of patience before he started. "Straighten out and fly right!"

  "Wait!" Dor cried. "How can we spray and move--"

  The carpet straightened out, wobbled, then sailed through the window. The Good Magician was gone.

  "--a forget-whorl we can't even see, hear, or feel?" Dor finished, frustrated.

  The others exchanged glances. "So much for our business meeting," Irene said. "We got the business."

  "The amnesia," the Zombie Master said. "So it is from the Gap's forget-spell! Mutated--I never thought of that! No wonder we couldn't trace the source of the problem; the whorls would be undetectable and leave no trace except the wipeout of memory!"

  "That was my question," Dor said. "Invisible, silent, no smell--how will we know one is near, until it is too late?"

  "That is indeed a problem," Arnolde agreed. "It had not occurred to me that such a fragmentation would be so undisciplined, but I suppose that if the forget-spell now lacks its primary object--"

  "Undisciplined," Dor said. "That describes the Gap Dragon, too! The breakup of the spell must have enabled it to remember a way out of the Gap, and it doesn't have any limit to its marauding, up here in regular Xanth."

  "But to follow it to its secret exit," the Zombie Master said. "That will be dangerous. The Gap Dragon is one of the largest and most savage creatures we know, and no person in its vicinity is safe."

  "We shall have to plan a strategy of procedure," Dor said. "We must deal with both the dragon and the forget-whorls, somehow."

  "At least now we know the cause of our problems," Arnolde said. "Humfrey was not here long, but he did cover the essence. Perhaps we should proceed to the twins' party before they become more restive, so that we are freed from that distraction. Then we can meet again and try to work out--"

  He was interrupted by commotion and screaming from outside. Something dramatic was going on!

  "I fear they are already restive," the Zombie Master said wryly.

  They hurried to the window the Good Magician had used. It offered a fair view of the moat and the surrounding countryside. Irene saw a cloud of smoke approaching through the forest. "I'm not sure the children are doing that," she said. No, it wasn't smoke, exactly. It was steam, or condensing water. It was puffing from--

  "The Gap Dragon!" Arnolde Centaur exclaimed. "It is raiding here!"

  "And we're not supposed to hurt it," Dor said with disgust. "What does Humfrey expect us to do--tie a yellow ribbon on its tail and follow it home?"

  "The children!" Irene exclaimed, appalled. "The children are outside!" She charged through the castle and out the front portal, oblivious to all else. Her vision, the dragon--"Ivy! Ivy!" she cried.

  Lacuna was sitting by the edge of the moat, forming words, sentences, and paragraphs on the slimy surface of the water. That was her talent; she could cause print to form on anything and could change it at will. She was so engrossed in her composition that she was obviously unaware of the approaching menace. "Ivy's all right, your Majesty. She's enhancing the zombies. They like her."

  "The Gap Dragon's here!" Irene cried. But even as she spoke, the monster appeared, a great cloud of steam enclosing it.

  Irene tried to run along the moat bank to get at Ivy, but the child was on the other side. So was the Gap Dragon. It was bearing down on them.

  Irene screamed. Ivy looked up and saw her. The child was facing away from the dragon.

  Then one of the zombies saw the dragon. For a long moment it paused, a thought churning through its sloppy cranial matter, while the dragon steamed rapidly closer. The thought was lucky; it made it through to the zombie's action-command center.

  The zombie picked up the child and lumbered along the moat, out of the dragon's path. It was an act of remarkable relevance for this type of creature.

  The dragon steamed right up to the moat--and hunched its fore-section across it. A large moat monster attacked, being too far gone to harbor either fear or common sense, but its teeth were mostly caries and could not make an impression on the steel-hard scales of the Gap Dragon. The dragon shook off the zombie and plowed into the outer wall of the castle, snoot-first. Such was its impact that the stone crumbled inward.

  The dragon stalled at last, head buried in the wall. But it wasn't trapped; it wrenched its head up, and a larger section of the wall crumbled out. Slimestone simply had not been designed to stand up to treatment like this!

  Zombies rushed up to defend the castle, bearing rusty swords and rank clubs. They sliced and bashed ineffectively at the dragon's side and back. Irritated by this nonsense, the dragon brought its head about and issued a blast of steam that entirely obscured the zombies.

  When the cloud cleared, the zombies were in a sorry state. Portions of their decaying flesh had melted away, leaving steamed bones, and much of what remained was too cooked to function well. Zombies were generally immune to physical damage, other than being cut to pieces, but there were limits. These ones staggered and fell into the moat, annoying the other moat denizens but enriching it with their substance.

  The dragon, having breached the castle defenses, seemed to lose interest. It turned toward Irene.

  The Gap Dragon was low-slung, with a triple pair of legs, exactly as in her vision. Its metallic scales shone g
reen in the shade and iridescent in the sunlight. One ear perked up; the other was merely a stub, evidently the casualty of one of its many battles. Indeed, there were scars all over its tree-trunk thick torso. Its eyes were bright with the malevolent delight of the rampage.

  Now Irene became aware of her own peril. She had been standing more or less transfixed by the action, oblivious to personal danger. The Gap Dragon was one of the most formidable monsters of Xanth. Ordinarily it was no threat to people outside the Gap Chasm. That hardly mattered now!

  The dragon took a step toward her, as if deciding whether she was worth going after. It was time to act.

  Irene brought out a pincushion seed. "Grow!" she directed it and tossed it in front of the dragon.

  The plant sprouted immediately, forming a button that swelled into a cushion that sprouted a score of sharp pins, their points jutting sharply out.

  The dragon paused to sniff at it. A pin stuck in its nose. The monster shot out a jet of steam, but the pins didn't melt. The cushion continued to grow.

  The pin in the nose tickled. The dragon sneezed. That sent pins and steam flying out from the cushion. The steam floated up into the sky, while the pins rained down into the moat, sticking the moat monsters. Pins didn't bother zombies, but there was an angry squeal from the denuded cushion.

  The Gap Dragon, of course, had not been hurt. It was armored against swords; pins were beneath its notice. It peered again at Irene, still trying to decide whether she was worth the trouble of gobbling. She did not wait any undue time for its decision. She reached for another seed.

  The dragon decided to explore in the opposite direction. It turned about and moved off. Ironically, Irene found herself angry; wasn't she good enough to eat?

  More zombies rushed up, armed with pickled stink bombs. Evidently the Zombie Master was getting his defenses organized. The zombies lofted these bombs at the Gap Dragon, who snapped the first out of the air with easy contempt and crunched it into a foul mass.

  Now the Gap Dragon made a sound that resembled its initials. It was not particularly intellectual, but there was nothing wrong with its perception of smell or taste. It could distinguish a foul stench quite as readily as could the next creature. It coughed out another cloud of steam, but the odor clung to its teeth.