Jest Right

by Piers Anthony

  Kadence had saved Xanth. But since she did not yet exist, technically, she had to go, and Cyrus was banished for violating the Adult Conspiracy. But Rhythm still loved him, and when she became of age, she married him, and Kadence came to be. Aria herself came to be about the same time, the daughter of Princess Melody, and they became firm playmates and friends.

  Now it was the twentieth anniversary of that great event, and Kadence was to be honored for her vital role. Aria was to sing the story for all to hear, which was why she had studied it and knew it so well. They had overstayed their visit to the past, and had to depart suddenly when they remembered.

  Only to discover disaster. Somehow Ragna Roc had escaped, and come secretly to Castle Roogna, lurking. Then as the three princesses and Kadence and Aria took the stage, the big bird appeared.

  SQUAWK!

  “Now you will pay!” a woman cried. “I am Em Pathy, and I am Ragna Roc’s minion, translator, and chief of staff. The princesses will be deleted, but others can save themselves by swearing immediate fealty to your new ruler, the Roc of Ages.”

  There was pandemonium as the people saw the huge bird and realized that the ultimatum was no bluff.

  They had no chance to consider. “Squawk!”

  “Starting with the arch-traitoress Kadence,” Em translated.

  The bird’s huge eyes focused on Kadence.

  “No!” her mother Rhythm cried, leaping to interpose herself between Kadence and the bird.

  Rhythm became ghostly, her substance gone. She had been deleted.

  “Get out of here, girls, both of you!” Melody called. “We’ll handle this.”

  Aria and Kadence hesitated. This was too awful for them to assimilate instantly.

  “Go!” Melody cried.

  Then she turned ghostly. She, too, had been deleted.

  King Ivy strode to center stage. “You can’t do this!” she shouted at Ragna.

  Ivy was deleted.

  “Grandma!” Kadence cried, horrified anew.

  “Come on,” Aria told Kadence, grabbing her arm. “We know what to do!”

  Aunt Harmony intercepted them. “I hate this, but I must go with you!” she said. “I am Queen now, by default, and must protect myself.”

  So she was; Harmony had long been designated the next King of Xanth. “This way,” Aria said.

  The three of them fled the chamber. The big bird saw them. “Squawk!”

  “After them!” Em cried. “They must not escape!”

  But it seemed that only Ragna Roc and Em Pathy were active. All the rest were members of the established order. They had no idea what to do, and confusion reigned.

  The entire section of the castle ahead of them winked into non--existence. The stone above crashed down, no longer supported. Ragna had deleted the ground floor.

  But this was an advantage of a kind. “Run through it,” Aria cried. “The dust and illusion will hide us!”

  So it did. They ran into the illusion of the first floor, which now concealed the reality of the fallen second floor. The two were distinguishable at close range, since they knew what to look for. They dodged around piles of real, not illusory rubble and made their way out of the castle.

  And there was the moat. The moat monster lifted up its head, astonished.

  “Over here!” Em called, emerging from the rubble. She had kept her eye on them, dismayingly competent.

  Ragna, flying over the rubble, landed. His head turned, seeking his targets.

  The moat monster recognized the bird as an enemy. It lunged, jaws gaping.

  And became illusionary, only its outline remaining.

  “Run around him!” Aria said. “He can’t see us up close!”

  They ran around and under Ragna’s huge tail feathers, while the roc tried to twist in place to catch them. But of course they couldn’t keep that up long.

  “Hide in that rubble, where he can’t see us!” Aria cried, while shaking her head no. “This way!” She ran for the rubble while the big bird was still turning in place.

  But the moment they reached the cover of the rubble, Aria dodged to the side, pausing only to throw her voice to the other side. That was one of the audio tricks she had developed, at first for its novelty, then for its mischief, and finally as a means of self defense. The ability to throw her song to a far corner, so that she could seem to be coming or going while staying put.

  Ragna finally oriented, his beak pointing to the rubble where Aria’s voice was sounding. There was a crash as more rubble above dropped where the lower rubble had been deleted.

  But Aria, Kadence, and Aunt Harmony were going in the other direction. “Under the drawbridge,” Aria whispered. “Don’t let him see you.”

  They clambered into the service ramp below the upper surface, where workmen stood to make repairs on the superstructure. Kadence and Harmony crossed while Aria sang another refrain, this time projecting it deeper into the rubble of the castle. Then she whirled and ran across herself while catching her breath.

  She rejoined them at the far side. “Get into the orchard!” she said. “But stay behind trees. Make your way to the plaque for Zombie Pie.”

  “What?” Harmony asked. “This is no occasion for joking.”

  “She means it, Aunt,” Kadence said. “That’s where we hid the escape.”

  “But no one goes there except zombies,” Harmony said. “It’s some sort of shrine for them. Even the picture of the pie is rotting.”

  “Yes.”

  Then Harmony did a double-take. “Which would be the perfect place to hide something!”

  “We’d better go there separately,” Aria said. “So that we can’t all be caught together.”

  The others nodded grimly. One might be deleted, or two, but chances were the third would make it.

  They separated and flitted from trunk to trunk, hiding from the direction of the castle. In little more than a moment and a half, Aria had little idea where the other two were. Good.

  Now that she was alone, she had time to catch up on the horror of what had happened. Her mother and grandmother had been deleted! Much of the castle had been destroyed. The moat monster was gone. The kingdom was in peril. Could it get any worse?

  There was something else she had to do: warn the folk of the past. So that maybe they could stop this disaster before it happened. She focused on zipping back to the past, to her host there—

  And found herself with Squid. In her desperate haste she had gotten the wrong one. She could stay only about a moment and a half before the wrongness cast her out, as it had before. But she didn’t have time to do it again, correctly, so she did what she could. She dumped the vision of horror on Squid and labeled it for delivery to Jess, who perhaps would know what to do.

  Was that enough? She feared it wasn’t. So she added information about who might help them: “Great Uncle Dolph is supposed to save Xanth. This must be where he does it. Go to him.” But even as she sent it, she was wrenched back to her own time. How much of that message had gotten through? She didn’t know.

  “They’re not here,” she heard Em Pathy call. “They must have escaped to the orchard. We must get them before they reach the forest beyond; we’ll never find them there.”

  There was a blast of wind as the big bird spread his wings and flew over the moat. He looked as if he were about to crash into the trees of the orchard, but just before he landed, they dissolved into illusion, leaving him a cleared landing field.

  Aria hoped that neither of her companions had happened to be in the deleted section. She also hoped that enough of her message to the past had gotten through. But she couldn’t dwell on any of that at the moment. She continued flitting from trunk to trunk, now making sure to hide from the roc. Fortunately the orchard was large, surrounding the castle, so searching it all was a big chore.

  Aria sent an
other song out behind her, and was rewarded by another blast of deletion.

  “We have to be careful,” Em cautioned Ragna. “If we delete indiscriminately, we won’t know when we get them, and could waste a lot of energy uselessly.”

  That woman was entirely too smart.

  Aria continued flitting, and in due course reached the plaque. Was she the only one? She went to it, looking around.

  Kadence appeared. “You made it!” she said.

  “But what about Aunt Harmony?”

  “Present,” the woman said, stepping from behind a trunk. “Now what do you girls have here that I never knew about?”

  “No one knew about it, Aunt,” Kadence said. “We had to keep it secret, or it might be useless.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s a tunnel,” Aria said. She reached down to catch the edge of the rotten zombie pie, and the plaque came up in her hand, opening like a trapdoor. Which it was. Below it was a narrow stairway descending into darkness.

  “It is safe?” Harmony asked.

  Kadence snapped her fingers, and dim lights came on to illuminate the stairs.

  “Magic is happening!” Em cried. “I sense it! Over in the other part of the orchard. They must be there!”

  “Bleep that woman!” Aria swore. “Hurry!”

  Kadence led the way down the stairs. Harmony followed. Aria took several steps, then turned to carefully close the trapdoor lid behind her. It wouldn’t stop Ragna long, but any delay at all was valuable.

  The passage leveled off. Ahead was a tunnel leading to a special destination. They hurried along it.

  “But won’t Ragna simply fly to its other end and nab us there?” Harmony asked.

  Both girls laughed. “No,” Kadence said. “It goes to another world.”

  “Another world!”

  “It was a very special project,” Aria said.

  “Who made it?”

  “The children of Fibot,” Kadence said. “Mainly Santo and me.”

  “Squid helped,” Aria said.

  Harmony was silent, perhaps not wanting to express burgeoning confusion. She probably wasn’t easy trusting her welfare to two ten-year-old nieces to begin with.

  “About them,” Aria said. “I sent a message back. I hope it was enough.”

  “You sent a message back in time?” Harmony asked. “That’s dangerous, because of paradox.”

  “Because this is dangerous,” Aria said. “We do need to change history.”

  Harmony was silent again. That seemed to be her way of agreeing.

  They came to the end of the tunnel. Aria opened another zombie pie plaque, and they emerged into light.

  “The sky is plaid!” Harmony exclaimed. “Whatever world is this?”

  “The World of Three Moons,” Aria answered.

  “Three Moons! Isn’t that where Princess Jenny visits?”

  “Yes. We have friends here.”

  Harmony turned back to face the plaque. “Suppose the minions of Ragna follow us here? I realize the tunnel is too small for the big bird, but Em could use it, and other people.”

  “The zombies maintain it,” Kadence said.

  Now Harmony laughed, though it was a trifle strained. “And who is going to use a zombie tunnel?”

  “Ragna can’t get here,” Aria said. “The royals here will welcome you to set up the Xanth government in exile, so that you can direct the resistance in safety.”

  “You planned this ahead? How did you know Ragna would escape?

  “We hoped he wouldn’t,” Kadence said. “But we prepared in case he did.”

  Harmony looked at the plaque again. “When did you do this?”

  “Nine years ago,” Aria said.

  “When you were babies!?”

  “We had help,” Kadence said. “Look, we’ll tell you all about it, but let’s get ourselves settled here first. You need to meet Noe’s folks.”

  “Who?”

  “Noe is my host of nine years ago,” Aria said. “When she was eleven.”

  Harmony shut up again. They took the path through the jungle and walked the short distance to Noe’s house. “Aunt Noleta!” Aria called.

  Noe’s mother emerged. “Do I know you?”

  “I’m Princess Aria. Noe hosted me before, but now I’m here in person. We used the tunnel.” She sang a fragment of an aria.

  “Aria,” Noleta agreed, recognizing her voice. “But why? That tunnel is only for dire emergency.”

  “This is that emergency,” Aria said. Then she introduced her companions and quickly summarized their situation.

  “Oh, my, yes,” Noleta agreed. “Do come in.”

  “Where is Noe now?” Aria asked after they had cleaned up and been served some pie.

  “She is twenty, and orienting on the dating scene. There are some nice young men, and she is attractive. Only—”

  “Only she still likes Santo,” Aria said.

  “And he likes her,” Noleta agreed. “Only not in that way.”

  “And if they do go their ways,” Aria said, “they will have to officially break up. They don’t want to do that.”

  “Emotions can be complicated, for the young,” Noleta said. She turned to Harmony. “You will want to go to the palace and govern from there. I’m sure they will help you.”

  “Yes,” Queen Harmony agreed. “But first I want to discover whether Bryce escaped. I can’t focus on anything until I know.”

  “Bryce?”

  “My beloved. It’s another story.”

  “Emotions are complicated for the mature folk, too,” Noleta said. She glanced at the two princesses. “And you?”

  Aria exchanged a glance with Kadence. “We don’t know,” she said.

  “You have no idea what to do, now that you have escaped deletion?”

  “None,” Kadence said. “It is almost as if we have been rendered illusory after all.”

  “Uh-oh,” Harmony said. “I think I smell paradox after all. What you have to do is in the past, to prevent Ragna Roc from ever escaping. You have to act there, not here.”

  “Yes!” Aria said, seeing the light where a bulb hadn’t quite flashed. “We’ll go back now.”

  “Yes,” Kadence agreed.

  They focused on their hosts in the past. Nothing happened.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Aria asked.

  “I think I know,” Noleta said. “It is because paradox is harder to achieve than it may seem. You can’t go back with the intention of changing your own present situation here. That would be paradox.”

  “Someone else has to make the key decisions,” Harmony said, agreeing. “When you went back before, you were just entertaining yourselves, not changing history. But with the advent of Ragna Roc, that has changed. It is no longer incidental. I may be subject to the same stasis, since I am involved with you.”

  “But we have to do something!” Kadence wailed.

  “Great Uncle Dolph!” Aria said. “He’s the one who can do it. I did tell them that. I think. I hope.”

  “He would be the key,” Harmony agreed. “If your friends in the past go to him, they can save Xanth. You can probably help them do it if they decide to; you just can’t make decisions affecting your own timeline.”

  “Keep trying to return,” Noleta said. “If you find an avenue, stay there. We’ll take care of your bodies here.”

  “Keep trying,” Kadence said. “It may be our only hope.”

  They kept trying. Then, suddenly, they made it.

  “And that is why we were absent for a time,” Aria concluded. “You must have decided to go to Prince Dolph, and that freed us to return.”

  “Your message to Squid did it,” Jess said. “And the vision you sent me.”

  “How could she do that then, and not
thereafter?” Magnus asked.

  “You must have been in flux, Aria,” Nia said. “Able to do just a little before paradox shut you down.”

  “But it was Aria’s message that enabled us to make the decision that removed the paradox,” he protested. “Isn’t that paradox itself?”

  “Maybe the fringe of it,” Nia said. “As it was, it was a close call, and we still don’t know the outcome. There must be decisions yet to be made, actions to be taken. Like that tunnel to the World of Three Moons you are about to make.”

  “I think my head is starting to swell,” Jess said. But of course nobody took her seriously.

  “There remains another matter,” Magnus said. “The switching of the stallions. We need to know whether this is part of our quest, or irrelevant to it. It’s too important simply to guess. It could mess up everything if we get it wrong.”

  They considered, and concluded that they did need to know. Now, while they were traveling, seemed to be the time. “In fact, I believe we should pause in our travels,” Magnus said. “Because there is no point in heading for Prince Dolph if the matter of the stallion is only going to mess it up. We need to be clear before we broach him.”

  The others agreed. Win anchored the boat high in the air, invisible, so that it would not be disturbed while they pondered. Win, Tata, and the peeve came below.

  They talked to the two mares. “Did either of you go to your stallion and ask about the switch?” Nia asked.

  Win and Myst, hosting the two mares, shook their heads. “A night mare does not question her stallion,” Imbri said in her speech quotes. “A mare merely does as the stallion directs.”

  “True for day mares, too,” Mairzy said in her speech quotes. They appeared above Myst’s head. “Besides, it’s the wrong stallion.”

  “No mare questioned a stallion?” Nia asked.

  Win and Myst shook their heads, speaking for the mares they hosted.

  “Well, we should do it,” Nia said. “There might be a simple answer.”

  “Oh, we couldn’t,” Mairzy said. “No mare would do that.”

  Jess saw Nia suppress a sigh of exasperation. “Well, maybe you should carry a couple of folk who will,” she said. When the mares did not object, not questioning any authority, Nia looked around. “Who should ride the mares into the dream realms?”