xanth 40 - isis orb

by Anthony, Piers

  “And you thought there wasn’t a reason for you to lead the Quest?” Feline asked. “You’re the one who figured out the snapshot technique.”

  Hapless shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

  “Maybe.”

  They went on, openly admiring the castle. “The goddess must be really good with magic, to make such a castle,” Myst said brightly.

  The castle loomed close, just as impressive as it was from a distance. The front entrance was (seemingly) solid stone, with a massive glass door in which they could see their reflections. As illusions went, it was impressive, because it meant it was interacting with them instead of being fixed in place.

  Hapless stepped up and tapped on the door. The glass rang, making a kind of chime. Then the door slowly opened. They were being admitted.

  An ornate hallway led to a grandiose chamber whose walls were sparkling glass through which sunlight filtered, forming prismatic bands of color. There was a fountain, and there the beams curled into rainbows. It was artistic and delightful. But the snapshot showed light leaking in through cracks in the walls and ceiling, and the fountain was a bucket of water.

  In the center was a mighty throne of pure diamond. On it sat the Goddess Isis, wearing an ankle-length white linen dress expertly pleated with alternating horizontal and vertical patterns, as if patched together in sections, but each “patch” was of exquisitely artistic design. Her head and neck were covered by a finely wrought leopard skin mantle, and she wore a crown consisting of a pair of cow horns, between which was a bright circular plate as big as her head: the solar disk. But her feet were bare.

  The snapshot showed her on her wooden throne, in halter and shorts, as in the box. The only thing that didn’t change was her beauty of face and figure. It seemed that she didn’t need illusion there.

  “And who may you be?” the Goddess inquired. Her voice was mellow yet authoritative.

  Hapless stepped forward. “I am Hapless, leader of this Quest. These are my Companions and companions.”

  “And I am the Goddess Isis, mistress of my domain. What is your Quest?”

  “We have wishes to be granted. We need the Orb to grant them.”

  “And what are these wishes?”

  Hapless reeled them off. “Feline wishes to be loved for something other than her curves. Zed wants to find true love. Nya wants to find her purpose. Quin wants to find out how to become human. Faro wants to get over her fear of heights. And I want to find a musical instrument I can play.”

  “These are garden variety wishes. You hardly needed to undertake a Quest to achieve them.”

  That was the uncomfortable truth they couldn’t admit without putting their whole Quest into doubt. “We understand the Orb can grant them.”

  “The Orb is potentially the most powerful force in your realm. To invoke it for such minor favors is like conjuring a fire-breathing dragon to light your candle. You can’t be serious.”

  Hapless was getting nettled despite her beauty. “We are serious. Lend us the Orb, grant our wishes, and we’ll depart.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Hapless nerved himself to say it. “Then we shall have to take it from you.”

  The Goddess pursed her lovely lips. “That you can’t do.”

  “I think we can. But we’d rather settle with you peacefully than have to fight you.”

  “It seems you do not appreciate the complexity of the challenge. Perhaps your Good Magician is making sport with you by sending you on an impossible mission.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Hapless said stoutly, though he was beginning to wonder.

  “Perhaps this will dampen your unbelief. Do any among you recognize untruth when you encounter it?”

  “You mean when someone’s lying?” Myst asked. “I can tell.”

  Merge nodded. “She can. She senses the atmosphere.”

  “I smell the air,” Myst agreed.

  Isis did not laugh. “Truth can come out of the months of babes. Very well, attend to me child, and tell your associates whether I am speaking the truth.” She paused, took a breath, and said: “The reason you can’t take the Orb is because at present it does not exist. I alone can make it exist, and I am not inclined to do that.”

  Myst turned to the others. “She’s telling the truth.”

  The others looked at her, surprised and dismayed.

  Myst fidgeted. “But it’s not the whole truth.”

  “Clever girl,” the Goddess said. “Tell me, child, can you tell the truth about things as well as people?”

  “Sure. Like this fancy castle is just a wooden shack with a tin roof, and you’re in shorts instead of a royal gown.”

  An expression crossed Isis’s face that was somewhere between surprise, admiration, and pure fury. But the Goddess quickly erased it. “So it seems we have no secrets here. All of you knew?”

  “We knew,” Hapless said.

  “And what else don’t I know about you that relates?”

  She would know soon enough anyway. “We have the five Totems.”

  Isis glanced at Myst. “True,” the child said. “They went into the Regions and got them, ’cause they knew they’d need them to make the Orb work.”

  Isis contemplated Hapless with a new appreciation. Her gaze was disquieting. “It seems you came prepared.”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “But can you actually use them?”

  Hapless looked at the others. “Maybe a very brief demonstration?”

  Feline smiled, but not in a very nice way. “Merge, Myst, go join Hapless. This will be rough around the edges.”

  Mother and daughter came to hold Hapless’s hands.

  “Maybe three seconds, on my mark?” Feline asked. The others nodded. “Three, two, one, mark.”

  At that point Feline spurted a blast of water toward the Goddess, Nya sent a jet of fire, Quin emitted an explosive blast of air, Zed made the ground shake with a small earthquake, and Faro’s Horn sucked in the Goddess’s wooden throne as she hastily leaped clear. It was all over in three seconds.

  The chamber was in a shambles, in illusion and reality. Isis herself was both wet and scorched; her halter was askew, and her hair was a mess.

  “You did ask,” Hapless said, his eyes starting to crystallize.

  “I did,” the Goddess agreed, as she righted her halter, surely to Feline’s relief. Hapless’s eyes resumed motion. She was clearly impressed but not affrighted.

  “So what’s the whole truth?” Hapless asked.

  “To understand that, you would have to know more about me.”

  Hapless glanced at Myst, who nodded. More truth.

  “Then tell us more about you,” Hapless said.

  “You might find it dull.”

  Hapless looked at the others. Then he spoke again. “Tell us anyway.”

  “As you wish. Make yourselves comfortable in a convenient crater.”

  They found places to settle down, Myst went to sleep on Merge’s lap, and Isis began to speak. Maybe she used an illusion assist, because Hapless found himself almost in the scene, sharing her perspective.

  “I was born (confusion, in a moment sorting itself into a scene of the internal Stork Works) about eight thousand years ago, along with my brother Osiris. We loved each other from the start.” Indeed, the baby girl was kissing the baby boy. In fact it soon went farther than that; they seemed not to be bound by the Adult Conspiracy. Of course this was a long time ago, and not in Xanth.

  “We grew up together, and in due course I married my brother, and was true to him. We were satisfied. But we had not reckoned with the jealousy of other siblings. Our sister Nephthys loved Osiris too, and one night made herself look like me so he thought he was with me, and they made love. I was furious when I learned of it, but what could I do without alerting my husband to the deception? So I was silent, but saw to it that my sister never had access to him again.”

  Hapless wasn’t sure what else she could have done. Osiris had been a faithful husba
nd, as far as he knew.

  “Worse was our brother Typho, Nephthys’s husband, who was jealous of Osiris’s power and possibly of his wife’s infidelity with Osiris, and wanted to kill him. But how could he? Osiris was stronger than he, and I was constantly alert against further mischief. But Typho was cunning. He managed to get Osiris’s measurements, then made a chest of that exact size and brought it to the banqueting room to show it off. It was richly ornamented and beautiful; he promised to give it to anyone who fit it. All the others tried lying down in it, but none fit perfectly. The last to try it was Osiris himself, and he lay down in it. Whereupon the conspirators rushed in and clapped the cover on, and nailed it down and poured melted lead over to seal it. Then they carried it away to the Nile River and on to the sea, where it floated away and was lost amidst the waves.” There was that coffin, disappearing into the sea.

  When Isis heard the news, she cut off one of the locks of her hair, and put on a mourning gown, and searched the whole country for the chest. Because it was her power to restore life to the dead, and she wanted to revive Osiris if only she could find him. But for years she was unsuccessful, catching only fleeting rumors that turned out to be false. Until at last she received news from demons that the chest had floated to the coast of the city of Byblos and gently lodged in the branches of a bush by the shore. In a short time, buoyed by the ambiance of the chest and the body within it, the bush had grown up into a large and beautiful tree, which grew around the chest on every side and hid it from outside view.

  Furthermore, the King of Byblos saw the tree and was amazed by its unusual size. So he had the tree cut down, and made that part of the trunk into a pillar to support the roof of his house. Isis traveled to Byblos and settled herself down by the side of a fountain, refusing to speak to anyone except the queen’s maids. The townsfolk marveled at the sight of this lovely woman, whom they did not know to be a goddess. When the queen’s maids came, she saluted and caressed them in the kindest manner, and plaited their hair, and imbued them with a wonderful perfume that issued from her own body.

  When they returned to their mistress the Queen Astarte, she marveled at the loveliness of their hair and fragrance of their bodies, and wanted to meet this remarkable stranger. Thus the anonymous Isis was brought into the presence of the Queen, who conversed with her briefly, was charmed, and made her a nurse to one of her sons.

  Isis fed the child by giving him her finger to suck instead of the breast, and such was her power that this fed him well. She also every night put him into the fire, in order to consume his mortal part, replacing it with immortal flesh. She kept watch over him by transforming herself into a swallow and hovering around the pillar and bemoaning her sad fate. But one night the queen stood watching her, saw the child all in flame, cried out in protest, and that deprived him of the immortality he would otherwise have had. But he was otherwise uninjured, and the queen realized that it was no ordinary nurse who took care of him. She was sorry she had interfered.

  Then Isis identified herself, and asked that the pillar that supported the roof be given to her. This was done, and they replaced it with another. Isis cut it open, took out the chest, then wrapped the remainder of the trunk in fine linen, poured perfumed oil on it, and returned it to the king and queen. Then she threw herself upon the chest, making such a loud and terrible lamentation that the younger of the king’s sons was frightened out of his life. But the elder son, whom she had cared for, survived, and she took him with her when she set sail for Egypt. When the river sent forth a rough breeze she was angry, and dried up its current. Even natural things learned not to mess with the Goddess.

  She conveyed the chest to a desert place, and thinking herself to be alone, she opened the chest and laid her face upon her dead husband’s face. She embraced the corpse, weeping bitterly. But the little boy had sneaked up behind her and saw what happened. In her sudden anger she gave him so stern a look that he died of the affright. Then she hid the chest in a secret place, for it would take time and preparation for her to develop the magic to bring her beloved back to life. But Typho discovered it, and tore the body into fourteen pieces. That forced Isis to make another search for the pieces, using a boat made of papyrus to maneuver through the fen. When a crocodile threatened her she gave it such a look that ever since no crocodile has ever attacked a papyrus boat. In time she found all the pieces of the body but one: the privy member. She needed that to generate a son who would avenge the murder of his father. So she made an imitation member, and reanimated her beloved for a while, all she could do in the circumstance, and used that to (signal the stork) and beget her son, Orus. She raised him, and his father visited him from the other realm and instructed him in arms and gave him the incentive for vengeance.

  In due course Orus, grown, challenged Typho, and they fought for many days until Orus got the better of him and made him prisoner. He turned Typho over to Isis for safekeeping while he rested. And Isis, the giver of life, discovered she could not deliberately kill her brother, despite what he had done. She loosed his hands and set him free.

  When Orus learned of this, he was so angry that he laid hands on his mother, pulled off her royal headdress, and cut off her head. He transformed the head into that of a cow, and put it back on her body. So she lived, but not in a nice manner. She had become a cowgirl.

  “But the greatest indignity was when the Christians came,” Isis concluded. “They were a recent sect that borrowed my history, but put the name of the Virgin Mary on me, and the name Jesus on my son Orus. Thereafter few knew who I was; my identity had been stolen by the newcomers. They even took over our sacred holidays, renaming them to be Christian. That religion spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire and continued after its demise; it was very popular, of course, but I myself had become anonymous.”

  She shrugged. “And that is my ancient history. I was betrayed by my sister, and my brother, and then by my son, and finally by my worshipers, after five thousand years of doing my utmost for them. It leaves a sour taste, and has rankled for a thousand years.”

  Hapless, expecting to oppose the Goddess, found himself in deep sympathy with her plight. To suffer identity theft, and see the credit that should have gone to her, taken by another—that was maddening and humiliating. She was older than she looked, by about six or eight thousand years, but she had a case.

  “Now we know your background,” Zed said. “But that is only the preparation for us to understand your whole truth. How does this relate to our use of the Orb?”

  Isis nodded. “Now you understand why I am disenchanted with what you call Mundania. I tried my best to help my worshipers and the men in my life, but in the end I was betrayed, by all except my beloved Osiris, who was similarly betrayed, and died. That realm has nothing left for me. So I looked for a new realm, and a new start.”

  She took a breath. “This time I would leave the faithful suffering wife and mother bit behind, so as not to get bleeped again. This time I would focus on just one thing: my own selfish desires. I would stop being the good girl, who is a patsy, and start being the bad girl, who knows what’s what and how to get what she wants.”

  Hapless could not refute her logic. She had certainly given the positive role its chance. But he was sorry it hadn’t worked out for her.

  “I searched for centuries,” Isis continued. “I checked all the alternate mythologies. But they tended to be misogynistic, reducing women to serfs or worse, and with limited roles for aspiring queens. Until recent times, when new kinds of fantasy developed. And I rather liked the look of Xanth. It had plenty of magic, and a population in need of religion. So I applied to the relevant Demons, Earth and Xanth: where I came from, where I wanted to go. They allowed me to move to Xanth only if I performed a significant service for them, so I was constrained to agree.”

  “Service?” Zed asked.

  “To guard the magic Earth had won from Xanth, and see that no one stole it. Because it remained in the Land of Xanth, where Demon Earth himself could no
t guard it. He wanted one of his own for the role, and the Demon Xanth had to agree.”

  “The Orb!” Hapless exclaimed.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Now you’re getting evasive again!”

  Myst was awake now, having slept through anything that might have strained the Adult Conspiracy. “No, she’s near the Whole Truth now. It’s complicated.”

  Isis smiled stunningly. “Thank you, child.”

  “So what is it, exactly?” Zed asked, no more patient with this circularity than Hapless was.

  “The magic could not be handled by a regular mortal,” Isis said. “It required someone with formidable magic of her own. That meant a sorceress, demoness, or a goddess. Sorceresses are mortal, and demons can’t be trusted. That left me. But neither Earth nor Xanth completely trusted me. They feared I had ambition for power.”

  “And don’t you?” Zed asked.

  “Of course I do! What’s the point of coming to a new realm, if not to rule it? But they begrudged me that favor. In fact they set it up so that there were formidable constraints that effectively prevented me from achieving it. Not completely, because then I would have spurned the deal; there had to be a chance. It was a compromise. There is a route, but it is devious in the extreme. I had no choice but to accept the deal; otherwise I would not have gotten into Xanth at all. I am not pleased.” She frowned, and the nearest potted plant wilted.

  “Constraints?” Zed asked.

  “First, I was confined to the idiotic comic strip. That is normally limited to the first World of Ida, Ptero, but I managed to disrupt the flow slightly so that a section got loose and landed on Xanth proper. Second, I was allowed to employ only illusion for my personal use. Hence this castle, which is more apparent than real, as you have discovered. Back home in Egypt I could have made it real. Third I could not touch the cache of magic directly; it could be drawn on only through the control mechanism of the Orb. The Orb bears about the same relation to the magic as your Totems do to their Regions: they can draw on their power, but don’t change the nature of the Regions. Fourth, I could not use the Orb myself; only some third party can do that. Fifth, even that third party can control the Orb only via the combined powers of the Totems.”