Crewel Lye

by Piers Anthony

  One thing was muddily clear, though. I should stay away from Threnody, because she was either crazy or dangerous, possibly both. If Yin was going to marry her, that was his problem, not mine. He was a Magician; maybe he could handle her. I couldn’t see why he would even want to marry a woman like that. Um, no; I could see. To gain King Gromden’s sanction for the succession, and—The dirt in my mind smudged a picture for me of what she might look like without clothes and of what a man might do—well, never mind. I would just go about my business, fetch the object, bring it to Castle Roogna, and then get out of this region before the ship hit the fanny, so to speak. (I think that saying derives from the time someone accidentally sailed his ship into the posterior of a snoozing giant sea monster. That was not a smart thing to do.)

  We made it to the top of the slope by midday, to our immense relief. There was a nice green plain loaded with tall grass and dotted with fruit and nut trees. Here we could relax and fill up, as we so desperately needed to.

  I took three good steps toward the nearest tree—and tripped over another black spell. This one was in the shape of a stone. It flared up darkly.

  I knew what that meant—and if I hadn’t known, I could have guessed, for my foot was turning to black stone. Quickly I kicked the spell so hard it flew out over the edge of the plain and rolled down the embankment toward the sea. There wasn’t much damage it could do there; most of the slope was already stone. It might be awkward for the goblin and harpy in the vicinity, and perhaps the sea monster, but that was all. It wouldn’t catch Pook.

  Then I grabbed for a counterspell, for now my other foot was calcifying, too. Evidently that moment of contact had been enough for the spell to get the measure of me; I hadn’t stopped its progress merely by kicking it away. The stone-to-flesh spell had already been expended, but maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly; the dirt fuzzing my brain could account for that, too. Mostly, I think, I was just too rushed to make any really smart decision. When one feels one’s legs getting stoned, one doesn’t pause too long for reflection.

  I came up with the white doll. That was the bodies-exchange spell, to reverse the black spell of that type; I didn’t need that now. But since the spells were all mixed up, I knew it would be something else. Maybe some other spell would help, crazy as that notion seems, now that I can consider it more objectively. “Invoke!” I cried.

  The doll flashed—and suddenly I had a vision of an arrow pointing east.

  An arrow? What could that be? Oh—this was the needle of the compass of the finder-spell for the object I was to fetch! Now I could find it, since this positive spell was fresher than the negative one I had encountered atop the mountain.

  But that didn’t do me a phenomenal lot of good at the moment, for my legs were still changing to stone, and my thighs too. Maybe getting rid of the black spell had weakened the effect, but I had gotten a good dose, and it looked as if I were going to become a statue. Now what should I do?

  As I hesitated, my hands stiffened, and the hair on my head became brittle and heavy. My face glazed over. My breathing got labored, for stone is not very flexible. I felt myself falling, and felt the thunk as I struck the ground, hard. I hoped my stone body did not hurt the ground too much. Then I faded out, as my brains were stoned, too. This was my third death in the space of a day or two—not what I would call a very positive record.

  Pook watched all this with alarm. He had hardly gotten me to safety when this happened! But he was smart enough to realize that if I could recover from getting smashed at the bottom of the chasm, I might recover from getting stoned, too. Pook’s brains, after all, had not been scrambled. So he nosed me over, hooked a chain under my rigid arms, and dragged me to the shade of the tree I had been headed for. There he let me lie, while he grazed about the tree in a widening circle, keeping one eye on me and the other out for any stray monsters that might pass by.

  Creatures did appear. One was a small feline on the prowl for prey, but Pook stomped a forefoot and it fled, for it was a scaredy cat. A swarm of frisbees flew over, but they were only interested in flowers. They were shaped like little disks and they sort of glided down to a flower, then spun away to the next. A long, dark shape flapped in, its wings leathery, its body like a thin club; it was a baseball bat looking for a baseball. There was none here, as the bases generally held their balls in the evenings, so it flapped on past. Some june-bugs buzzed me; no, they were je-june bugs, comparatively dull and uninteresting. A bird flitted about the tree under which I lay, a brown thrasher, but there was nothing brown here to thrash, so it dropped a dropping on my nose, taking me for a statue, and flew off. Now I understood why sculptures objected to birds!

  Dusk came, creeping guiltily across the plain. Pook stood near me, making sure nothing bothered me. The truth is, very little bothers stone figures, apart from hammers and earthquakes and the aforementioned attentions of birds. But the ghost horse remained as faithful as ever, trusting me to recover in due course.

  His trust was rewarded, for gradually my talent fought the curse of stone and prevailed. My head returned to flesh in the night, and my torso, and I began to breathe again. It was a good thing that Evil Magician Yang hadn’t known about my talent. He thought the stone-spell would finish me, and he was wrong. Had he suspected, he might have arranged to have my statue smashed into little pieces and scattered; I’m not at all sure I could have recovered from that. Certainly it would have taken a long time, and probably by then Yang would have been deemed the winner and crowned King.

  As dawn dawned, I was able to sit up. Pook gave a neigh of pleasure; his faith had been justified! But I was far from well, for my legs and my left arm remained stone, and my skull felt sort of rocky. Usually my healing accelerated as it neared completion; this time it was stalling.

  I realized that my talent had been severely strained. I had been savaged twice in the tarasque’s maze, and killed twice by Threnody’s poison and the fall into the chasm, and this was the fifth bad accident in two days or so. I had never been killed before faster than once a day, and usually not that frequently. Also, these had been pretty thorough killings, not simple to heal. So my talent had at last exhausted itself and was unable to complete the job on my body.

  Well, I couldn’t blame it. In a few hours or days, I was sure my magic would recover its strength and polish off the remaining stone; meanwhile, I would have to function on an as-was basis. In retrospect I conclude that my talent, having expended its last gasp getting me mostly restored, lost track of the job and assumed that I was supposed to be partly stone, for it did not rush to complete the job when it could have. Just as a man coming into a strange house does not realize if a chair is out of place, my reviving talent did not realize that the stone foot and hand were wrong. But this is only conjecture, long after the fact; I don’t really understand magic.

  Pook stood close, and I grabbed onto his chains and hauled myself to my feet. Then I reached up to harvest enough of the fruits and nuts growing on the tree to sustain me. After a while I managed to stand and walk by myself, though my feet remained stone. It was like walking on stilts; I could manage, but for traveling I needed the ghost horse.

  Now the day was fairly on us, and the image of the arrow was in my mind. East—the direction of the object! I had to go there and find it!

  We went east, following the fringe of the monstrous chasm. Odd, I thought, that no one had warned me of this natural hazard; it could hardly be overlooked! And what kind of an object would be hidden here? Well, the arrow was clear in my mind, showing only a little smudge along the shaft, doubtless from the dirt in my head, and I knew I would learn the answer soon. This was, after all, a good time to have invoked the finder-spell; the object was evidently close, so the spell tuned in strongly.

  We approached Threnody’s cabin, perched at the very brink of the chasm. Obviously the object was beyond it, so we turned south to give the cabin wide clearance. But the farther south we went, the more the arrow veered. It was pointing right at the cabin!


  I tried not to believe it, but when we were east of the cabin, the arrow pointed west. There could be no doubt—the object was there.

  I sighed. I would just have to go and get it. I knew Threnody would not be pleased; after all, she had already killed me twice to prevent me from getting the object. Now I would have to take it from under her nose. But I’d have to do it quickly and get away from there before she found some other way to kill me. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to have someone bring her back to Castle Roogna, but I did object to being killed, even if it wasn’t too serious a matter.

  We went to the house, and I dismounted and knocked on the door. I heard music inside, rather pretty; she was playing the stringed instrument I had seen before. When I knocked, the music halted, and in a moment Threnody opened the door. She stood aghast as she recognized me; her mouth fell open and her fair skin paled.

  “Got something to pick up,” I said gruffly. I would have been more curt with her, but she was so pretty I didn’t feel as angry as I should have. This is one sort of foolishness that barbarians are prone to; they tend to believe, despite significant evidence to the contrary, that women are as beautiful inside as they are outside. I knew better; still, the way she had treated me seemed less objectionable than it might have. “I’ll just take it and be gone in a moment; please stand clear.”

  She stepped out of my way, her eyes round and staring, and I brushed by her and rechecked the arrow.

  It pointed back toward Threnody. “Okay, you have it,” I said. “I guess you knew it all the time, but didn’t tell me. Hand it over.”

  “You’re dead!” she gasped.

  “Not any more; I heal fast,” I said gruffly. “Now give it to me.”

  “I—don’t have anything.” She still acted as if she had seen a ghost; maybe she thought the ghost was me.

  “Look, woman—you killed me, so I don’t think I owe you anything. Give me that object, or I’ll take it from you.”

  “I tell you I don’t have it,” she said, losing some of her pallor. “I don’t even know what it is.”

  I had had enough. There are limits to what a barbarian will tolerate from even the prettiest of women, and perhaps some stone remained in my heart. I grabbed her and proceeded to search her, patting her body all over.

  Threnody did not resist. I didn’t find any object on her, but the arrow still pointed to her. “Maybe it’s something you’re wearing,” I said. “Take off your clothing.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the kind!” she exclaimed, recovering her indignity as she got accustomed to the idea of my being alive.

  “Then I’ll do it for you,” I said and began unbuttoning her dress.

  “You barbarian!” she cried.

  “That’s right,” I agreed, pleased.

  She saw I wasn’t bluffing. “Oh, all right, I’ll undress,” she said. “I did undress you before, after all.” She undid the rest of her brown dress and stepped out of it. She wore nothing underneath it. She took off her slippers, too, and stood completely bare. I picked up her clothing and set it in a pile on the bed, then stood between her and it. The arrow pointed directly at her.

  I looked closely at her. There was a lot to look at, but there simply wasn’t any object there. “Maybe you ate it,” I said. “So it’s inside you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped. “I don’t want you cutting me open to verify it isn’t there!”

  I scratched my head. “I just can’t figure it, unless—”

  “Unless I am the object you seek,” she concluded.

  That, of course, was it. Suddenly it made sense. Why fetch an object to win the throne, then go after an unwilling woman to marry? How much simpler to fetch the woman herself!

  And if she didn’t want to come—might, in fact, even kill the one who tried to bring her—well, get an ignorant barbarian to do the job for you.

  I had had a low regard for Magician Yang. Now, abruptly, Magician Yin didn’t seem phenomenally good to me, either.

  Well, I was stuck for it, since I had agreed to undertake this mission. Maybe this was what King Gromden had been trying to warn me about. He hadn’t known—because of the second curse—that Threnody’s return to Castle Roogna would cause it to fall; he just wanted his daughter back, and married to his successor, so that his bloodline would remain in power. But he had known she didn’t want to return and would resist any effort to bring her there with all the forces at her command.

  I could see her point, even though I did not approve of her methods. If I knew that my return to Fen Village would cause it to be destroyed, I would resist that return as strongly as I could. Now I felt guilty about what I had to do—yet I did have to do it. It was not my place to decide on the larger rights and wrongs of the situation; I just had to complete the job I had agreed to do.

  What a pile of mud this assignment was turning out to be!

  Chapter 10. Demon Striation

  Threnody didn’t bother going for her clothes; she leaped for the door. I intercepted her, knowing she would be difficult to catch if she got away, as she was bound to be more familiar with this region than I was. She struck at my face with her small fist, but I fended her off with my left arm. “Ow!” she cried. “What are you made of, oaf?”

  “Stone,” I said. “My feet and left arm, anyway. I ran into a spell.”

  She relaxed. “Sounds like one of Yang’s spells. You turned partway to stone?”

  “More or less,” I said, letting her go.

  She bolted for the door again, this time getting out. But she ran smack into Pook, who had thought to backstop me. She bounced off his hide, and in a moment I caught her again. “I just have to take you back,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I agreed to bring back the object and I will.”

  “I’m no object!” she protested, struggling in my arms, but this time I was smart enough not to release her.

  “Sure you are,” I said. “The object of my mission.”

  “You’ll never take me alive!”

  “Listen, you’ve already killed me,” I told her, still distracted by her motions. If I hadn’t already known that barbarians were often clumsy with women, I’d have suspected it now. “You should know that’s no good.”

  “I’ll kill you again!” she said, trying to bite at my shoulder. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong one and bruised her teeth on the stone.

  “Well, I’d better get you dressed,” I said. I knew it wasn’t right for bare women to be out of the house; the flies would bite them.

  I hauled her into the house, tossed her onto the bed, and held her down while I wrestled the brown dress onto her. It wasn’t easy, because she was punching and kicking at me all the time, but finally I got the dress buttoned.

  “You oaf!” she snorted. “It’s backward!”

  I had, of course, put the buttons in the front, where they belonged, but the fit did look a little awkward. “Does it matter?” I asked innocently.

  “Get off me, you buffoon, and I’ll do it right.”

  I let her go and stepped back. She stood, unbuttoned the dress—now I saw that I hadn’t aligned the buttons properly, so that the buttons ran off the top while the holes ran off the bottom—and took it off. She turned it about—and suddenly leaped for me, the dress stretched between her hands. She wrapped it about my throat and twisted it in back, choking me.

  But some of the stone remained in my neck, too, and the choke was not tight. I struggled for a moment, then let myself relax, feigning unconsciousness. She choked me a while longer, making sure, then let go. “What am I going to do with you?” she muttered rhetorically, supposing me to be beyond hearing. “You’re basically a decent guy, but if I let you live—”

  I grabbed her about the legs and hauled her down again. “You forgot your dress,” I said and spanked her smartly on her bouncy bottom.

  She made a sound as of water dousing an angry fire. “You’re impossible!”

  “I’m barbarian,” I corrected her. “Now if you d
on’t get into that dress, I’ll wrap a sheet around you and take you that way.”

  “This dress is ruined!” she protested. “It’s all twisted up!”

  Because she had used it to choke me. “Well, untwist it.”

  “I’ll get another,” she decided. “And you’d better put something on, too. You look like a zombie.”

  I realized it was true. Clothes don’t heal the way I do. My shirt was a tatter, and my trousers might as well not have bothered. A few dangling leather strips were all that remained of my leather armor.

  “You can have this dress,” she said, jamming it at me.

  Well, it was better than nothing. I would use it until we passed the trouser-tree in her garden. I put it on. I couldn’t button the top because my shoulders were too broad, and the bottom hung halfway to my knees, but it did provide some cover.

  “Backward, again,” she remarked.

  I did not reply. Apparently a dress was backward no matter which way a man put it on.

  Threnody got a gray dress from her closet and donned it and her slippers. She stood before a mirror and brushed out her hair. She had lustrous black tresses, matching her midnight eyes. I had been partial to fair women, but now I realized that the dusky ones could be every bit as appealing, physically. “All right, I’m ready,” she informed me.

  I took her left arm, to lead her outside—and with her right hand she struck at me. She had picked up a knife! The blade dug into my stone hand, harmlessly, its edge chipping. “Oh, I give up!” she cried in disgust. “I forgot about that!”

  I realized that I could not trust her for a moment. I saw some clothesline vine hanging on a hook. I took it down.