Faun & Games

by Piers Anthony

  “I am Mare Imbri, from another world. My friends and I need your help to stop the Wizards.”

  “But the Wizards haven't done us any harm,” Jfraya protested.

  “But they are doing others harm, by stealing from another world,” Imbri responded. “We have in our group two people from that world, whose people are sorely suffering.”

  “What makes you think I can help?”

  “Ida of the world of Torus said you could.”

  “Ida? But she's confined to an island on the blue face.”

  “Yes. She's Ida of Pyramid. The Ida I mean is on the world of Torus, which orbits her head.” Imbri made an image of blue Ida and her doughnut shaped moon.

  “This is too complicated to argue,” Jfraya said. “So I suppose I'd better help you.”

  “Very good. I think your world will be better off without raiding other worlds. After all, you wouldn't want other worlds raiding yours.

  “I suppose.”

  Then Imbri introduced the others of their party, in the dreamlet.

  “But why are they all tied together? Are they prisoners?”

  Imbri explained about the difficulty of walking on this face.

  “Oh, I can fix that,” Jfraya said. “Where do you want to go?”

  “To the Green Wizard's castle, first.”

  Jfraya stepped outside her greenhouse. “Open this door,” she said. She brought out a large pen and drew a crude door on the ground, with hinges on one side and a handle on the other. Then she went back into her house to finish watering her plants.

  The group trundled up. Forrest reached down for the drawn handle. To his half surprise, he caught hold of it. He hauled on it, and the door opened, folding out of the ground. Below was a passage slanting down.

  It had a floor, a ceiling, and two sides. There was a faint green glow, so that it did not become dark deeper in. “You know, we could walk on one of the walls,” Forrest said.

  They untied themselves, one by one, and climbed down into the passage.

  Dawn went first, and stood on the slanting wall, which was about right for her orientation. Then Eve joined her. Their upper bodies were pointing slightly downward, so the wall was close to right angles to them. Their four dainty feet were aimed almost directly at Forrest.

  “Say, we'd look good in skirts,” Dawn said.

  “Yes, considering the angle,” Eve agreed.

  Their red jeans fuzzed and became flaring red skirts. Forrest quickly clapped a hand to his eyes before he saw very far beyond their four nice knees. “Stop it!” he cried.

  “Aw,” they said together, laughing.

  “I wish I could do that,” Ghina murmured.

  That intrigued him, though he knew it shouldn't. “Couldn't you, if you put on stockings and panties?”

  “ No. They're too close to my body. They turn invisible. Only the thicker material can retain its opacity.”

  “I'm sure it's for the best,” he said insincerely.

  “Their jeans are back,” she informed him.

  He ventured a look. Sure enough, it was safe. And probably the mischievous girls had not really let anything show. They knew that the mission wouldn't get far if they freaked him out in the middle of it.

  Now he and Ghina climbed down into the hole and stood on the wall.

  Finally Imbri rolled over and in, and they were all there. Fortunately it was a large passage, with room, though there wasn't much clearance for their heads.

  Then Jfraya emerged. “I think my greens have enough water for a few days,” she said. She entered the passage, standing in its floor. This was awkward, because she was about at right angles to them, and their upper bodies were at cross purposes. But they would just have to give her space and make do.

  They walked along the passage, giving each other sufficient room. “This goes to the Wizard's castle?” Forrest asked.

  “It should. But I should warn you that one never can be quite certain what one will find along the way.”

  “But if you made this passage, there shouldn't be anything else along it, should there?”

  “I made the door, not the passage. I made a door into a passage that goes to the Wizard's castle.”

  “Oh.” That meant that they might not be safe, after all. “Are there likely to be dangers?”

  “There could be. But I could make another door, to escape the passage.”

  Eve touched the floor, which was her wall. “This is a goblin tunnel!” she exclaimed.

  “Why yes, so it is,” Ghina said. “I should have recognized it, from my goblin heritage.”

  “But it is deserted,” Dawn said.

  “Good,” Jfraya said. “I tried to pick an empty one.”

  They proceeded onward with greater confidence. In due course the passage opened into a series of galleries. In one some metallic green plants grew, with fierce straight spikes. “A steel plant!” Eve exclaimed. “They make swords from these.” She touched one of the spikes. “Too bad we delicate girls don't know how to use swords.”

  They knew how to use whatever else they had, though, Forrest thought darkly.

  The next chamber was encrusted with green gems. “Now these we might use,” Eve said, touching one. “They are strata-gems, from the stratosphere. They help folk devise plans.”

  Forrest agreed. “Let's harvest some and keep them for use when we need them.”

  So they pried several of the gems free, and each person put one in purse or pack.

  The next chamber was filled with bouncing orange-green balls.

  “Basketballs,” Eve said after checking. “For storage.”

  “Storage?”

  She caught a ball and pulled at its binding. It opened out into a basket. “Put whatever it is inside, then close it up and let it bounce.

  It will keep until you open the basket ball again.”

  “Too bad we don't need to store anything,” Ghina said. She had recovered her red cloak from somewhere and was wearing it, so they could see her general form.

  They moved on. Before long they approached the surface. “No passages actually enter the castle,” Jfraya said. “The Wizard saw to that. But they should exit in sight of it, and I can make a door through the wall.

  But it won't be safe; I understand that the Wizard has monsters and things guarding his premises.”

  “Leave them to me,” Ghina said. “My talent is making folk sleep. When I was young, I thought I was just boring, but then I learned it was magic.”

  “And you will be able to approach them, because they can't see you,”

  Jfraya said. “That's nice.”

  “Actually, they can smell me. But I'll put them to sleep before they can do us any harm.”

  “Still,” Forrest said, “they could give the alarm. So we had better approach carefully.”

  “Let's wait until night,” Dawn suggested. “Then we'll all be halfway invisible.”

  He nodded. “We might as well rest. We don't know exactly what we'll face inside the castle.”

  They foraged for something to eat. The first plant they found had berries like big green toes. “Well, maybe,” Dawn said, touching it.

  “These fruits make a special kind of jam.” She paused. “Toe jam.”

  “Ugh,” Eve said, wrinkling her nose.

  Then they found a sweetie Pi tree, with sweetie pies, and feasted on them. After that they settled down in a chamber to which Jfraya opened a door, and found a number of nice pillows therein. It was wonderful to relax for a while.

  Forrest woke to find himself extraordinarily comfortable. Dawn was stroking his hair, Eve was polishing his hoofs, and Ghina and Jfraya were buffing his fingernails. He couldn't actually see Ghina, for she had evidently doffed her red cloak, but he felt her touch on his right hand.

  “Uh-” he said, intelligently.

  “Oh, you're awake,” Dawn said.

  “Then we had better get on with our mission,” Eve said.

  “Which is to get into the Green Wizard's
castle,” Ghina said.

  “And inform the margins,” Jfraya concluded.

  Then they all laughed. They had had their little joke, making like quadruplets.

  “I didn't mean to sleep,” he said, embarrassed. “Just to rest.”

  Ghina squeezed his hand. “You forget my talent.”

  “We didn't want a male overhearing our Girl Talk,” Jfraya said.

  Oh. Well, at least that demonstrated that her talent was effective.

  It also left him curious about what they had talked about.

  “The magic of fauns,” Dawn said, answering his thought, to his further embarrassment.

  “How they may not look like much, but their touch makes a girl think of long-legged birds.”

  “It's similar to the magic of nymphs,” he said. “Just the sight of them running makes a male think of the same birds.”

  “But the magic of fauns also works on other females,” Ghina said.

  “So does the sight of other women running also work on fauns?” Jfraya asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “As does their soft touch, and their pretty speech.

  So if you girls don't mind-” They laughed again, and let go of his extremities. Their Girl Talk must have established that this one faun was harmless.

  “Yes,” Imbri said, in a private dreamlet. “But they do like you, Forrest.”

  And he liked them. But they all had business to accomplish.

  They organized themselves, then quietly exited the chamber. It was dark outside, but the green castle was illuminated from within, the pale green light spilling out through the green glass of the windows at each story. Several large, ugly, grotesque, and generally unpleasant green monsters patrolled the premises.

  Unfortunately, they still could not stand on the green surface. Their feet wanted to be just slightly higher than their heads. In the ease of walking along the tunnel wall, they had forgotten the problem. Only Jfraya was properly upright.

  “We will just have to crawl,” Forrest decided. “It won't be comfortable, but it will get us there.”

  “Maybe I can fly,” Ghina said. She tried it-and promptly flew sideways, almost colliding with a tree. They couldn't see her, but saw the disturbance in the air.

  “Try flying up at a steep angle, or diving down,” Forrest suggested.

  Ghina experimented, and after a while managed to get the right orientation. “I think I'm flying almost straight up, but I'm really flying more or less level,” she said. “I have room to make mistakes, if I stay high enough.”

  “I don't think I can crawl well enough,” Imbri said. “But I think I can project my dreamlets as far as the castle. Why don't I remain here, and be with you in dreams?”

  “Then we are ready,” Forrest said. He started crawling mostly on his hands, pulling a foot down frequently to give a push. He was getting the clumsy hang of it. The others did similar maneuvers. The twins made intriguing outlines, with their jeans mostly in the air. He noticed that their hair fell to the side, instead of toward the ground.

  It was clearer than ever why few creatures crossed to faces of Pyramid not their own.

  Ghina went first, spreading her invisible red wings and flying toward the nearest monster, which resembled a corpulent tangle tree with tentacle rot. In a moment that monster lay down to sleep; Ghina had exercised her talent.

  In two and a half more moments, another monster lay down. That one was a cross between a huge green slug and a crushed caterpillar. Then the third and fourth, which were too ill-favored to describe. Now the six of them could approach the castle without being challenged.

  But they were careful, because the folk inside the castle were not asleep, and if any of them looked out and saw the sleeping monsters, they might give the alarm. So there was no hurry, so that they would not stumble in the darkness, and no talking; they knew what they were doing. Any communication between them was to be handled by joint dreamlet.

  There was no moat; apparently the Green Wizard believed that the monsters and wall sufficed. They reached the wall, and Forrest put his sensitive ear to it, instead of to the ground where it had been dragging, and listened. There was a faint sound to the side. That should be the margins. Eve touched the wall, and verified it; the little creatures were working inside. They went to the portion of the wall closest to that sound, and Jfraya drew a door. They opened it and stepped inside.

  There were perhaps a dozen little green pyramids with triangular faces, sitting on the stone floor. From several of them green lines projected upward.

  “Are these the margins?” Forrest asked mentally, his thought taking the form of a dreamlet that Imbri shared with the others. “Are they alive?”

  “They are alive,” Dawn replied in her own dreamlet as she touched the nearest pyramid. “But clothed in green stone. They live in the fissures of the stone. They can't move of their own accord, but can be moved by others. The Green Wizard brought them here.”

  “Can you establish contact with them?” he asked Imbri.

  “I think so.” Imbri formed a picture of a green pyramid. “Hello. I am a visitor from another world.”

  “Hello!” several pyramids chorused.

  “Would you tell me what you are doing?”

  “We are marginalizing a segment of Ptero, so as to improve it, and thus gain mass.”

  Dawn & Eve put their hands over their mouths, so as not to exclaim in maidenly indignation.

  “How does marginalizing it improve it?” Imbri asked.

  “There are bad folk there. Marginalizing captures them, and takes away their magic, so they can't do any more harm.”

  Dawn opened her mouth to protest, but Eve stifled her.

  “Who told you this?”

  “The Green Wizard.”

  “Let me show you how it really is,” Imbri said. In the dreamlet, the world of Ptero appeared and expanded. There were happy people all across the human section. Then colored lines appeared, cutting people off, making the others afraid and unhappy. “Those are not bad folk,” Imbri said. “They are good folk. They are being harmed by your margins.”

  “But how can this be so? The Green Wizard said we were doing great favors, and would grow greatly in size.”

  “And have you grown in size?”

  “Not yet. We were wondering-”

  “Yet you know you have captured many folk on Ptero. The change occurs instantly. So you must see that you are not doing favors. It is the Green Wizard who is growing in size-by giving away those stolen talents.”

  “It is true. He has become enormous.”

  “ While you have not. So wouldn't it be better to stop helping him?”

  The pyramids consulted. It seemed that however strong their magic might be, they were not phenomenally smart. “Yes,” they decided. “We'll stop.”

  “Wait!” Forrest cried in his share of the dreamlet. “If the Green Wizard is stopped now, the other Wizards will be warned, and will be on guard. We need to delay it.”

  “It would be better if you waited three days,” Imbri said. “Could you stop then?”

  . “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” Then Imbri thought of something. “What will happen to you, if the Wizard is mad at you?”

  “Nothing. If he bothers us, we'll marginalize him.”

  “Very good,” Imbri said. “We thank you, and the world of Ptero will surely thank you, in due course.”

  They left the dungeon, well satisfied. The four monsters were beginning to twitch. Ghina didn't bother to put them to sleep again; it was better to have them wake and resume their guard duty, with the Green Wizard none the wiser. They were able to crawl fast enough to get clear before any monster actually woke.

  “Well, that part of the mission went well,” Forrest said. “But now we have three days to do the other three Wizards. I hope you can open doors to passages that go there, Jfraya.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then let's do the Red Wizard next; I think that's the closest one.”


  “Actually they are all the same distance from each other,” Eve said.

  “Because each is in the center of its triangle.”

  “But since we're red, we might as well do that one,” Dawn said.

  Jfraya opened a door to a passage slanting to the center of the red face, and they walked along its wall. That was a relief, after their struggle on the surface. This one was unused, like the other, but not perfect. They passed a gallery supported by pillars that resembled feline creatures: cat-l-pillars. There was what appeared to be a prison cell there, wherein was a comely young woman. “Look,” Ghina said. “The goblins left a prisoner behind. We should rescue her.”

  “I don't trust this,” Forrest said. “We had better first find out why they imprisoned her and left her, and why she seems healthy despite this neglect.”

  Eve touched a pillar, learning what it had seen. “That is a geis-a girl,” she said, pronouncing it GAYSH-A. “Anyone who gets close to her may be caught by her geis, and have to do whatever she says.”

  They paused, reconsidering. “That's dangerous,” Forrest said. “We don't know what she might demand. The goblins must have isolated her here deliberately, so she couldn't do them any mischief.”

  “Pretty girls are mischief,” Dawn said.

  “Especially those with strong magic,” Eve added.

  “I think we had better just leave her there,” Forrest said regretfully.

  “We can't risk being diverted from our mission.”

  The others reluctantly agreed. “Uncle Grey Murphy could take away her magic, as punishment, if she did anything wrong on Ptero,” Dawn said.

  “But Uncle Grey is trapped in the margins,” Eve said. “Caught before he could nullify their magic.”

  “Then maybe Mother Electra could use an Outlet to free her when no one else was near,” Dawn suggested.

  “Which is a secret passage only Mother Electra can open,” Eve explained.

  “That's interesting,” Jfraya said. “I'd like to meet your mother.”

  “I don't know if that's possible,” Forrest said. “We of larger worlds can travel to smaller ones by leaving most of our mass behind, but I think it would be more difficult for those of the smaller worlds to go to the larger ones. They would probably be insubstantial, and seem like ghosts.”