“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “Well, good-bye, then.”
She settled down next to me in our shelter. “Jordan, I need you with me; the episode of the roc shows that. You’re powerful and brave and you’re a good guy—even when you’re stupid. And I think you need me with you, too, for my talent complements yours. We must travel together, and I don’t want to have an argument about the direction at the brink of that chasm, with the rocs closing in on us.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I could see how that would be awkward. And she was so absolutely beautiful in the waning light that I could not take my eyes off her.
“But you want to go to Castle Roogna, and I want to go home. We have a fundamental conflict.”
“I must complete my mission,” I said, realizing that it had been an error to say good-bye to her; I couldn’t let her go.
“Is there no way I can persuade you to come with me?” she asked.
But I was still stupid enough to hang onto my mission. “I must take you to Castle Roogna, or die in the attempt,” I said. “Like the stork, I must deliver.”
“Even though you can be with me forever, possessing all that I have to offer, if you come with me now?” she asked, nudging closer. “Even though you will lose me to Magician Yin if you take me to Castle Roogna, and the castle itself will fall?”
I felt miserable and every bit as stupid as I was. “Yes.”
“You are too damn incorruptible for your own good, barbarian!”
“Yes.”
She turned her face away for a moment. Then she turned back. “You are the man I want to marry, Jordan, not Magician Yin! You are bold and strong and honest and nice, while he is more devious than you can grasp. Please, please, come with me!”
Now she had spoken openly of marriage between us. Temptation took me like the wind from a storm. She was all that I ever wanted in a woman—or so I thought at the time—yet I could not see my way clear to do what she asked. I was no thief—not even of love. I did not answer.
“I will show you!” she said, almost savagely. She halfway flung herself on me, and hugged me to her, and kissed me and stroked me. I had occupied her body, and knew the difference in attitude between man and woman, but now she was as aggressive as a man.
And I, like the idiot I was, did not think to ask why, or to reflect on the unnaturalness of her attitude. Scarcely any woman flings herself on a man she doesn’t plan to marry. But because I was stupid, and she had timed her effort with that stupidity in mind, I lacked the proper suspicion. I was overwhelmed by her urgency. I reacted as she intended me to and I knew that I loved her, absolutely and eternally, whatever else might come.
Greater folly has no man than this.
Early in the morning, before dawn, she woke me. “Jordan, I must begin my change,” she said. “I love you. Do you love me?”
I was smarter than I had been—but that no longer mattered. “Yes,” I said.
“Will you come with me?”
My heart felt as if it were cracking in two. “No.”
“There is no way I can turn you from the course you have set?”
“No.”
She sighed. “Then I must go with you, though it be disaster for us both.” So I had won. Why did I feel so miserable?
She proceeded to change, stage by stage, and three hours later, as dawn peeked shyly into the gloomy chasm, she was ready. She had become a giant snail, with a shell the size of a small house.
I climbed up on the shell, keeping the shield and the two swords tied to me, and took firm hold of the corrugations. The bag with the few remaining spells dangled from my waist. Nothing could dislodge me—I hoped.
The snail crawled forward toward the chasm. It quested along the lip until it found a rounded part, then slid over that and down onto the face of the cliff itself.
Now I had to hold on tight! The depth of the chasm yawned beneath us awesomely; if I fell, I would be smashed to death on the rock below—and this time had no ghost horse to scrape up the pieces. If Threnody’s sticky undersurface became unstuck, she, too, would fall—with no hope at all of revival. I could understand why she did not want any arguments about direction at this stage. I became nervous.
But her surface held, and we slid slowly down into the chasm and east along its face. If she had decided to turn about and go west, I could not have stopped her, but she had agreed to go east and she was doing it. I knew now that I had never had any chance to bring this creature to Castle Roogna without her acquiescence. She had used love to persuade me to go her way; instead it had persuaded her to go my way. Or so I believed then, in my idiocy.
I heard a noise and looked down. Far below, I saw a huge, six-legged dragon pacing us, evidently hoping we would fall. It was so eager for our flesh that puffs of steam drifted up from it.
Then I heard another noise and looked up—and saw a little roc. The big birds had found us at last!
The roc swooped down, and I knew doom was upon us, for even a little roc is a giant creature. I hated being helpless before this predator; I felt the way I had when I occupied Threnody’s body and faced the griffin.
Something nagged the slow molasses of my brain. Didn’t griffins and rocs have something in common? Some weakness, or at least some kind of finickiness? How had I stopped the griffin?
Desperation once again lent me a stupid kind of genius. “Yuck!” I cried, making a grotesque face. Rocs were big, but their eyesight and hearing were excellent. “This snail tastes awful. Gunky! Putrid! It’s just a shell full of pus!”
It was a little roc; did it understand what I was saying? Would it be fooled? A mature one might be too canny, but …
The roc veered off, the wind from its wings almost tearing us off the wall. We clung, sliding down helplessly—and the bird departed. My ploy had worked! Some snails did taste bad, so maybe the roc had been ready to believe. Actually, those birds, being roc-headed, weren’t the smartest creatures in Xanth. But a young roc surely tried eating anything that moved, at first, so had many bad experiences and would be eager to avoid more of them. Maybe this one had once gulped a shell full of pus.
Threnody managed to skid to a halt on the wall, then continued her slow slide to the east, and in due course she crossed over the lip of the chasm and onto level land. The quicksand was behind; now we could safely proceed south.
I let go of the shell, but my arms were locked into position from the long clutch and had to be unkinked joint by joint. Threnody was so tired she just slumped in her shell. But we had made it.
Ahead, had I but known, was the cruel lie.
Chapter 15. Cruel Lie
After a while Threnody changed back to her human form, looking somewhat wasted. I fetched her food and water, and she kissed me, and we rested there a time, just appreciating each other’s company.
“A shell full of pus?” she asked wryly.
“Well, it worked,” I said, embarrassed.
“I would never have forgiven you if it hadn’t worked,” she said. “Well, let’s get moving again.”
“But you are tired. Let me carry you, now. Change to something small.”
She smiled. “I’ll simply diffuse; that will take less time.”
She did so. When she was smoky-thin, looking indeed like the demoness she derived from, she put her vaporous arms around me, and I marched south, carrying her along with me without effort. When a passing wyvern thought to take a bite of us, Threnody simply floated up and breathed, “Booo!” and the poor creature took off as if it had seen a ghost. I wasn’t worried anyway; my sword and shield and stupidity—the “Three S’s,” as Threnody put it—made me practically invulnerable to attack. But it was true that our two talents complemented each other, making safe travel possible and easy. We were a good team.
We made excellent progress that day and camped for the night not far from Castle Roogna. Threnody densified, resuming her natural and lovely solidity, and embraced me. “This may be our last night together, Jordan,” she said soberly.
“That thought had crossed my mind,” she confessed. “When you deliver me there, Yin will win, and be the next King of Xanth, and surely he will be good for the land. But if he rejects me, and sends me away, the castle will not fall, and I can be yours. But—”
“But?” I asked. The plan seemed quite feasible to me.
“But there is also Yang,” she said reluctantly. “Yang is evil. He cares nothing for anything decent, including the fact that I now belong to another man; he might choose to take me for that reason.”
“But you don’t want to go with Yang!” I protested.
“Jordan, I may not have much choice.” She kissed me again, lingeringly. “You have seen the power of his spells. No ordinary person can stand against the power of a Magician, good or evil; that’s why a Magician is always King. If you bring me near Castle Roogna, but not all the way there, then Yang will win and be King, and he, more than Yin, may want the aspect of legitimacy conferred by marriage to the daughter of the prior King. Sometimes the least worthy folk crave legitimacy the most. I will no longer be able to threaten to throw myself into the—the—whatever; I will not be able to escape.” She took me by the hand and gazed into my eyes. “But whatever happens, Jordan, remember that I love you.”
“And I love you!” I said.
Then she began singing, in her low, sad way, and her voice was so eerily beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. As I listened to her, it seemed that some terrible tragedy was in the offing. But I was too dull to grasp what that could be, or to wonder how she could know what was to come.
“I’m sorry I did not let you bring your lute,” I told her.
She paused to put her fair hand on mine. “I forgive you, Jordan.” There were tears in her eyes, too.
In the morning we set out for Castle Roogna on foot, as we were. It was not that far, and Threnody wanted there to be no doubt about her identity so that there could be no misunderstanding as to the success of my mission. We held hands, and it was a sad rather than a joyous occasion. But what could I do? A good barbarian always completes his mission.
We saw the highest spire of the old castle, poking above the trees to the south. Threnody paused to kiss me. “I love you, Jordan,” she said again. I, total fool, believed her. Yet even now, seeing it in the picture of the tapestry, I find it hard to believe that she could have been false; everything about her signaled the sorrow of love about to be lost. Almost, I wish—but of course, I am not now the idiot I was then. Experience has been an exceedingly cruel teacher.
We came to the ring of gnarled old trees surrounding the castle. They still didn’t like me. Branches descended to bar our progress. I drew my sword. “I told you before, trees, that I’d lop off any branch opposing me,” I said. “I have to deliver this object to the castle, and that I shall do. Now clear the way!”
But this time they did not yield the right of way. Angry, I hacked at the branches, making good my threat, and the afflicted trees groaned woodenly with the pain and dripped colored sap, but still would not give over. They were stupidly loyal to their perceived cause, as was I.
“They know,” Threnody said. “They remember the curse of my return. They don’t care who is to be King of Xanth; they merely protect the castle from ruin. Jordan, believe me, only tragedy can come of this delivery.”
“I promised to deliver you, and I will,” I grunted, hacking away.
She shook her head with resignation. “If only your loyalty were rightly fixed, what a hero you would be!”
I didn’t know what she meant by that, so I ignored it. Forcing a way through the trees took time, but I was barbarianishly determined, and I cleared a channel through the resistant forest. We emerged to the inner orchard, with its marvelous array of fruits and nuts.
I was hungry after my exertion, so I reached for a big red apple—and it jerked away. I blinked, then reached for another—and it, too, avoided me.
“Now this is pushing it!” I snapped, not so dull as not to realize I was being snubbed. “I’m going to have some fruit, or do some cutting here!” I walked around the tree, stalking the evasive fruit.
A cherry dropped near me from a neighboring cherry tree. The thing exploded as it touched the ground, blasting dirt at my legs. I jumped away—and almost collided with a pineapple tree. “Look out!” Threnody cried.
A pineapple dropped, but I managed to reach out and catch it and hurl it away before it detonated. The explosion shook the orchard, and fruits dropped all around us. Several more cherries went off around me, but my shield alertly blocked off the shrapnel of juice and cherry pits. “They know,” Threnody repeated.
I shook my sword at the cherry tree, but dared not try to chop it down, because the cherries would have blown me to bits. In Mundania it may be possible to chop down cherry trees, but not in Xanth. And as for pineapples—I have heard, but naturally do not believe, that they don’t even grow on trees in Mundania they supposedly grow directly from the ground, one pineapple to a plant. Ludicrous! Next thing we’ll be expected to believe is that Mundane cherries and pineapples don’t explode.
We went on to the plain surrounding the castle. There stood a truly motley assembly: dozens of zombies. Dirt sifted from their sodden shoulders, showing that they had recently disinterred themselves. Gobbets of rotten flesh festooned their spindly bones. Each skull stared out with maggoty sockets.
“The zombies rise when Castle Roogna is threatened,” Threnody said. “They know that the moment I set foot in the castle, it will fall. I remember, when I was a girl, a rogue dragon came, and the zombies marched against it. The creature was covered with slime and rot before it gave up the attempt. Are you sure you want to—”
“I have a mission,” I said sullenly. I may have mentioned the oinkheadedness of barbarians, particularly stupid ones. I drew my sword and held my magic shield high and marched into the awful throng.
The zombies were no cowards; I’ll say that for them! They threw themselves on me as if not caring for their own lives at all. My shield moved about, fending them off, and my sword hacked off arms, legs, and heads with abandon. Pieces of zombie soon littered the landscape. Threnody had to use the almost empty bag of spells to shield herself from flying rot; for some reason, she didn’t seem to like getting it in her hair or down her front or in her slippers. Women do tend to be fussy at times. Finally the last of the zombies had been cut to grotesque pieces, and the way was clear to the castle.
I took Threnody by the hand and led her onward. She remained reluctant, but did not resist.
We came to the moat. The drawbridge was up, and the moat monsters were on full alert, in contrast to their prior attitude. Well, I had fought monsters before.
I needed to get that drawbridge lowered so Threnody could cross. I wasn’t going to drag her through the moat! Then she would be at Castle Roogna, and my mission would be successfully accomplished, despite all Yang’s machinations. Then, and only then, could I relax. Perhaps I would recover Threnody; perhaps not. Either way, it would be done.
“Wait here,” I told her. Then I jumped down into the moat. Naturally the nearest monster pounced on me, its huge fangs spearing for my head.
My shield hefted up to intercept the strike, and the fangs clamped down onto it. There the monster’s maw froze, two fangs projecting down inside the shield, dripping saliva, while the eyes of the monster stared at me, startled. I lifted my trusty sword and brought the blade down, cutting off the end of the snout, including the fangs. The monster gave a squeal of pain and jerked back, blood and spittle flying. I suspect it was none too pleased. Monster-fighting can be a messy business at times.
“Look, monster,” I said. “I’ve got a job to do, same as you do. I’m crossing this moat and letting down the drawbridge. I’m a barbarian warrior, none too smart at the moment, and cutting up monsters is m
y profession. Either you can let me operate in peace, or you can get yourself hacked to pieces. It’s your choice.”
And I waded on across the clogged waterway without waiting for the monster’s response. That’s the way you have to deal with monsters—firmly and fairly.
The monster considered. It was an old one, long past its prime, unable to mount the savagery of its youth, and I’d given it a painful wound. It probably hadn’t gulped down a maiden in years. By the time it decided to attack again, I was across.
I climbed to the drawbridge mechanism. No one was there; this castle no longer had human guards, which was part of its problem. There was only so much that trees and zombies and monsters could do, without competent human support. Modern battle is an integrated matter, each aspect dependent on the others. Had the human element been present, I would not have been able to storm Castle Roogna, an edifice that had withstood attack for four hundred years. When Magician Yin became King, surely he would upgrade the defenses, assuming the castle was still standing. I cranked the chain and lowered the bridge until it fell into place with a heavy thunk.
I walked out on it. “Now you can cross,” I called to Threnody.
She approached reluctantly, and I went to meet her. Just this short distance across the moat, and it would be done.
“Maybe it will count if I don’t actually get off the bridge and touch the castle itself,” Threnody said. “If my father the King sees that you have completed your mission.”
“Maybe so,” I agreed. I really didn’t want Castle Roogna to fall.
Threnody paused, picking up something at the edge of the planking. “What’s this?” she asked. “It looks like—”
I reached for it. It was a small black ball. As I took it in my hand, I saw its other side. There were two squarish sockets and a grinning set of teeth.
“That’s the black skull!” I exclaimed, trying to throw it away.
Too late. The evil Skull flashed—and I fell dead.
“Jordan!” Threnody cried as I dropped from the edge of the bridge to the ground beyond the moat. She tried to catch me, but there was nothing she could do for me; I was already deceased. There was the counterspell in the bag, but we didn’t know which one that was, and only I could invoke it—and as a dead man, I couldn’t even do that. The evil spell had operated much more rapidly than it was supposed to.
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