Luck of the Draw (Xanth)

by Piers Anthony

“I guess not,” Bryce said. “We’re not fire-walkers.”

  “But we’ll save the buckets,” Piper said. “We might need them again.”

  They returned to their trikes and rode around the rest of the Region of Fire. The next was the Region of Earth. This did not look very much more promising. It was largely barren, with volcanic vents issuing smoke and steam. Except for one section where the ground was relatively flat and calm.

  “Maybe we can cross here to the southern firewall,” Bryce suggested. “If we do it quickly, we may get there before a volcano erupts nearby.”

  Arsenal knelt and touched a finger to the edge of the smooth surface. “I think not. This is quicksand, in the Mundane sense.”

  Bryce didn’t inquire what the Xanth sense of quicksand was. The Mundane sense was bad enough. “Then how do we get across?”

  “I can do it,” Piper said.

  “Not in your present form,” Arsenal said.

  “So you knew,” Piper said.

  “I suspected. I tried to make you change, to confirm it, but Bryce stopped that. Then when you played the Dirge I knew. No little flute-type piccolo could make those sounds. That was an organ!”

  “So it was,” Piper agreed.

  “Okay, if you can do it, then do it,” Arsenal said gruffly.

  “Do what?” Anna asked.

  “Assume my other form,” Piper said. “Before I do, I just want to say I have enjoyed my association with you, and will regret seeing it end. You’re a fine woman.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Anna said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You will,” Piper said grimly. He glanced at Arsenal. “Use the trikes.” Then he started changing.

  Anna stared, horrified. “You’re melting!”

  “You can handle it,” Arsenal told her.

  “His other form is the Music Monster,” Bryce said. “An angry Demon changed him into it. Now he can assume either form. He is still Piper underneath.”

  “But he’s melting!” she repeated.

  “He’s changing. His other form is amorphous. Physically he’s a monster, but you know his human nature.”

  She did not respond. He glanced at her. She was immobile, her eyes fixed.

  She had freaked out.

  “Or maybe not,” Arsenal said.

  “Let him complete the change,” Mindy suggested. “Then wake her.”

  “You knew too?” Bryce asked.

  “Yes. He once lived at Caprice Castle. Dawn spoke of him, when she decided to have him conduct you to visit Castle Roogna. She knew he could protect you.”

  “He could,” Bryce agreed. “He did.”

  The change was complete. The Music Monster stretched out before them like a thick black rug. Thinner than he had been aboard the train, however.

  The rug slid out onto the quicksand. “Look out!” Bryce cried.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Arsenal said.

  So it seemed. The rug thinned further as it moved over the sand, covering it with a black mat. In two and a half moments it was entirely on the sand, floating on it. A vent opened and a note sounded.

  “He’s ready for us,” Mindy said. “Better wake Anna.”

  Bryce snapped his fingers before Anna’s face. “Wake, Anna,” he said.

  She revived. “What happened?”

  “You saw Piper transform to his monster form, and freaked out.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking as if about to freak out again. “He just dissolved into goo!”

  “It’s just a different form. He’s a better musician that way, and a formidable fighter. He can use his music to hurl fireballs at attackers. He protected me from a goblin horde once. He will protect you similarly. He will return to human form in due course.”

  “He’s really—the same person?”

  “He really is,” Bryce assured her. “He was always a person with two forms. He changed this time to help us cross the quicksand.”

  “How can he do that?”

  “Look,” Bryce said, gesturing.

  Arsenal and Mindy were on the mat, sitting on their trikes. They were not sinking into the quicksand. Piper’s trike was parked beside them, and the four buckets.

  “I—I wouldn’t recognize him that way,” Anna said.

  “Think of him as a man who can become a floating rug,” Bryce said. “Now we have to board too, if we want to cross the quicksand.”

  “I—I’m afraid.”

  Maybe it was time for some tough love. “Piper and Arsenal and Mindy are going. So am I. Do you want to wait here for our return?”

  “No!” she cried in fear.

  He took her hand. “Then join us. We will live or die together.”

  “Yes,” she agreed faintly.

  “Get on your trike and ride it on.” Bryce did that himself.

  She joined him, seeming dazed. They rode onto the mat. It gave slightly beneath their wheels, then firmed. Once they were fully on it, the black substance closed on the wheels where they touched it, holding the trikes in place.

  Then the mat moved. It went slowly out into the pool of quicksand, like a low raft. They were crossing.

  But the liquid sand mix did not simply allow them to cross unmolested. It bubbled and frothed angrily. Vents opened, emitting hisses of gas. The pool writhed, forming thick ripples. In fact it quaked, shaking the mat.

  Piper forged on, undismayed.

  Then a hole formed beside the mat, starting to draw it down. “That’s a sinkhole!” Arsenal said, alarmed.

  The mat backed off, getting clear of the hole. But then a larger vent opened on the other side, emitting a thick cloud of gas. The smell was putrid.

  “And that’s a stinkhole,” Bryce said, coughing.

  The sand rose up in a low mound before them. “That stuff is really out to get us,” Arsenal said.

  “We’ve got to help Piper navigate,” Bryce said. “He can’t see well in this form.”

  “I’ll do it,” Anna said suddenly. “Piper! Can you hear me?”

  A small vent blew a small affirmative note.

  “Veer left to avoid mischief ahead.”

  The mat moved left, missing the mound.

  After that it became almost routine. Anna called out the threats and guided Piper to avoid them. It worked perfectly. Bryce and Arsenal kept quiet, letting her do it. She had a certain rapport with the mat.

  They came to the wall of fire. “Throw sand on it,” Anna said. “To make a gap.”

  Bryce and Arsenal got up, took buckets, and dipped quicksand. It was heavy, but when it landed on the wall, the fire hissed and retreated. Soon a hole formed.

  The mat forged through. They found themselves on a burned bank of a rocky landscape, with no fire close by at the moment.

  They got off the mat. Then the mat humped into a glob, and the glob slowly shaped back into the man. Piper had returned, complete with clothing.

  Anna approached him. “I think I owe you an apology.”

  “No, you were great,” he said. “You really helped steer me.”

  “A gourd-style apology.” She put her arms around him. “A real one, this time.” Without waiting for his response, she drew him in and kissed him. Hearts flew out, spinning madly.

  “He won’t mind at all if the princess passes him by,” Arsenal remarked.

  “Hardly at all,” Bryce agreed.

  When the apology was accepted, they organized for the next stage. “Where is the Object?” Arsenal asked.

  Bryce looked around. “Behind you, I think.”

  Arsenal turned around. There was a waist-high rock, with the hilt of a large sword projecting from it.

  “Was that there before?” Arsenal asked.

  “I didn’t notice it, but I can’t be sure it wasn’t,” Bryce said. “But this is surely the Object. There’s a Mundanian legend about a sword in a stone. Only the rightful future king of the land could draw it out.”

  “That will be the one who marries the princess,�
�� Arsenal said. “Or at least, he’ll be her consort. Let’s see what this is.” He put his hand to the hilt and pulled.

  The sword didn’t budge.

  Arsenal tried harder. Still no success. Finally he put both hands on it and heaved with all his might. The sword remained fixed in place.

  “You try it,” he said to Piper, with ill grace.

  Piper tried it, and got nowhere. Then Bryce did. The sword seemed to be part of the rock it projected from.

  “Your turn,” he told Anna, smiling.

  She did try it, with no success, unsurprisingly.

  “This has to be a demonstration sword,” Bryce said. “Which means we get to try it. How can we try it if it’s stuck in the stone?”

  “There must be something wrong,” Mindy said. She walked up, put her small hand on the hilt, and lifted.

  The sword came up in her hand.

  The others stared at her. She stared at the sword. “Does this make sense to anyone?” she asked somewhat plaintively.

  “Maybe it requires a gentle touch, rather than force,” Bryce suggested. “Such as that of a woman.”

  “Then why couldn’t Anna get it?” Piper asked.

  “I think I know,” Anna said. “Mindy is the only member of this party who doesn’t seek an Object. She has nothing to gain by it, so it didn’t resist her. It’s tuned to the contestants.”

  “She’s not a Suitor, or in lieu of a Suitor,” Arsenal said. “That must be it. But now that it’s out, can the rest of us try it?”

  “Let’s find out,” Mindy said. She handed the sword to Anna.

  “But I don’t know the first thing about using one of these,” Anna protested. She gazed at the sword in her hand. “It must be illusion. It’s light as a feather.”

  “Not necessarily,” Piper said. “It’s magic. It may make it easy for its wielder. Try striking something.”

  Anna shrugged. She took a clumsy slice at the edge of the rock the sword had come from.

  A section of stone sliced off and landed on the ground.

  Bryce bent to pick up the slice. It was solid rock. Wordlessly he handed it to Arsenal.

  “Already this is some demonstration,” Arsenal said, hefting the slice, then setting it down. “It may be feather-light for her, but it has full force at the business end. However, a good sword needs more than that. Let’s see what else it can do.”

  Arsenal drew his own sword and advanced on Anna. “Like our demonstrations,” he said. “Only try to block my attack.”

  “I can’t block anything!”

  But when he swung his blade at her, her sword leaped to counter it. There was a clang as his sword was repelled, while hers seemed unaffected. He swung again, and again was readily countered. “It’s doing it,” Anna said. “I don’t even know how.”

  “Try attacking me, instead of just defending yourself,” Arsenal said.

  She aimed a clumsy stroke at him. He readily countered it, but when the two blades touched, his bounced back while hers continued its swing. He had to jump clear to avoid getting cut.

  “It has made you a formidable swordsman,” Arsenal said. “That’s what I wanted to know. Let’s try something else. Suppose you need to pry something open with the point?”

  Anna saw a crack in the original stone. She put the point of the sword to it. The sword shrank into the size of a knife, fitting into the crack. Then when she twisted, the crack widened into a split, and the rock broke apart.

  “This thing is versatile,” Bryce said, amazed.

  “But will it work for anyone else?” Piper asked.

  “Try it,” Anna said, pushing the hilt toward him.

  Piper took it and moved it about. “Feels like a thin needle.” He touched it to one of the sections of the original stone. The point dug in as though the stone were butter.

  Bryce took it next, and was similarly surprised by its extreme lightness. But the moment he moved it, it accelerated far beyond his effort, amplifying his will. He handed the hilt to Arsenal.

  Arsenal practiced with it, doing another swordcraft show. He nicked the stone, and saw chips fly out. “Who else wants the weapon?” he asked.

  There was silence.

  “Then I want it,” Arsenal said. “It’s the finest sword I have encountered, and will serve excellently as a gift for the princess.”

  The sword puffed into smoke. They were left standing on the scorched plain.

  “And now I have to win it,” Arsenal said, satisfied.

  A figure appeared, walking toward them. It was in the shape of a man, but fiery red. And it carried the Sword.

  “A fire demon,” Piper said. “This is mischief.”

  “This is my Challenge,” Arsenal said, drawing his own sword.

  “But that sword is dangerous,” Piper warned. “I doubt that any mortal can defeat it.”

  “There has to be a way, or the Quest is pointless. I just have to fathom it.”

  Arsenal was confident to the point of folly. But Bryce realized that he was right: there had to be a way. They simply needed to figure it out before the man got himself killed.

  The fire demon strode to the place where the sword had been in the stone. Now it was a flat area, marked by a circle of little flames. He waited.

  “That must be the arena,” Arsenal said. “Inside is battle. If I step out I may not be pursued, but neither will I possess the Sword.”

  “Better to step out than lose your head,” Bryce said.

  “Defeat is not in my lexicon.” Arsenal stepped into the ring.

  Immediately the demon attacked. The Sword swung toward Arsenal, threatening to literally take off his head. Arsenal countered, but was pushed off balance by the effort of resisting the awful force of the cut. Immediately the Sword shifted and came at him from another angle, and he seemed to block it barely in time.

  Then Arsenal recovered his balance and attacked the demon. But no matter how swift his motions, the magic sword was always there to nullify them, seemingly without effort.

  “He’s overmatched,” Piper murmured. “That’s a demon sword.”

  “Yet if he can’t stop it, with all his expertise, what hope have we of advising him of any better way?” Bryce asked.

  “There has to be a key,” Anna said.

  The fight continued, and Arsenal was getting the worst of it. He might be able to handle any mortal warrior, but this was a demon with a magical sword. How could anything handle a weapon designed to magically counter any attack?

  Bryce remembered reading a story about a table tennis game wherein one player had a magic paddle that always returned a fair shot, no matter how hard or spinning the ball came. It seemed impossible that the other player could win any point, let alone the game. Yet, in the story, he had.

  How had he done it? Bryce strained his memory. How could any player win a point against an enchanted paddle that could not miss? Yet there had been a way.

  “He’s tiring,” Piper said. “The demon of course is tireless.”

  “He was foolish to get into this,” Anna said. “But I don’t want to sit here and watch him die.”

  Bryce racked his brain. What was he missing?

  Then it came to him. The other player had placed a hard shot to a spot that the one with the magic paddle couldn’t reach in time. The paddle could return anything it touched, but the player had to get it to the point of touching. The paddle could not return what it didn’t touch.

  But this magic sword had a feature the magic paddle lacked: it moved to intercept the opposing blade. No matter where Arsenal attacked, the magic sword was always there in plenty of time, as if anticipating that very ploy. Maybe that was part of its magic. If Arsenal could attack a part of the demon’s body that was out of reach of the Sword, then he could score. But there was no part of the body out of reach. So the table tennis example offered no solution.

  Unless …

  A bulb flashed over Bryce’s head. There was a way!

  “Arsenal,” he said.

/>   “Don’t distract him,” Anna said. “He’s already too hard-pressed.”

  “This distraction is necessary,” Bryce said. “Arsenal, there is a way.”

  “Um,” the man said, acknowledging him.

  “You have knives.”

  “Um.” Arsenal beat off another attempt on his head, but not by much.

  “Take the knives. Two of them. Use them far apart.”

  Arsenal paused. He dodged another thrust, barely avoiding it. Then he dropped his sword and caught up two knives, one in each hand.

  Demons lacked human emotions, unless they happened to have acquired portions of souls. But the fire demon paused, surprised. Maybe he distrusted this ploy, wherein his opponent seemed to be disarming himself. Maybe he was figuring out how to counter it.

  Arsenal gave him no time to ponder. He struck at the demon’s head with his right-hand knife. The Sword rose to counter it. It was successful; it knocked the knife out of Arsenal’s hand.

  Then Arsenal’s left-hand knife plunged into the demon’s rib cage on the other side. Actually it was plunging even as the right-hand knife was being knocked away. The magic sword could not be in two places at once, so had left the other side momentarily undefended.

  The demon did not bleed or crumple. He puffed into smoke and drifted away. The Sword dropped to the ground, landing point first, the hilt raised. Arsenal had won it.

  He put his hand to it and drew it out of the ground. “Mine!” he exclaimed exultantly.

  “Yours,” Bryce agreed, relieved.

  “My thanks to you,” Arsenal said. “You gave me the key.”

  “I’m just glad I figured it out in time,” Bryce said.

  Arsenal nodded. “I will remember.”

  “Now let’s get out of here,” Anna said nervously. “Before there’s another burn.”

  Piper changed into his monster form, becoming the buoyant mat. They boarded not long before a wave of fire swept through the area. They heaved buckets of sand at the firewall, making a temporary hole, and pushed through. Anna directed the mat accurately through the waves and heaves. It seemed easier this time, now that they knew the route. But it was also true that Anna seemed to have a feel for this anomalous guidance. Her talent was coming into play.

  As they achieved the edge of the Region of Earth, Anna leaned down and whispered to the mat. “Good going!” Then she kissed it.