Question Quest Part 10

What was the difference between them? What I needed to do was to find out how to change the troublesome one back into the normal one. I had thought that one might have longer legs or shorter antennae, but they looked the same. Only their actions distinguished them.

Actually, I realized, it wouldn't do any good to fix this one tic. There might be dozens of this variety out there, reproducing their kind, spreading out across Xanth. I couldn't catch them all! I needed a way to nullify every one of them, without having to bring them in to my lab. That meant finding a way to change them back in the field. So I had a greater challenge than I had thought.

I struggled with this problem for days. I a.n.a.lyzed those two tics every which way but loose. Their only real difference seemed to be in personality. Neither of them spoke my language, so I could not reason with the fran-tic and try to get it to change its ways and to persuade others of its kind to do likewise.

Then I started experimenting with elixirs, and this finally gave me the key. I mixed some healing elixir with some mute powder and doused the fran-tic with it. This slowed it down, and it became like the normal tic. I added some multiplier potion, so that it would keep increasing, making more of itself. Then I let the muted fran-tic go. It would a.s.sociate with its own kind, and each time it did so, the other tic would be similarly muted by the multiplying potion. I hoped. It would take time, but in due course all the fran-tics should be quiet.

I went out again. This time I netted a cri-tic. This one was a real trial!

"So you're the nitwit who thinks he's a king," it said. I wished this hadn't been the one to speak my language! "You have been doing a despicable job! Whatever gave you the idea you could govern Xanth?! I could do a better job than you, with three legs and one feeler tied behind me. In fact I don't see why they didn't make me king, as I am so obviously superior to you, you poor excuse for a gnome."

This one really needed stifling! But the former mix of elixirs, powders, and potions had little effect on it. It criticized the mix with disdain. "I could make a better concoction than that!" it said.

"Very well, you do it," I said, giving it the ingredients.

But it refused. "I shall not soil my feet with common labor. In fact, I decline to do anything useful. It is my business to tell all others what incompetents they are, you first among them."

I could get to dislike this creature, if I concentrated. It had an att.i.tude problem. Naturally, it thought it was the rest of Xanth with the problem, and was not about to listen to any contrary view. The only contrary views it tolerated were its own.

I feared I would pop a blood vessel or two before I was able to figure out a formula that would mute this cri-tic. For days it berated me for every evil its devious little mind could imagine. If I hadn't already known that tics are bugs, I would have realized it after being bugged by this one. But I finally fashioned a de-bug potion that turned it from a cri-tic into an an-tic, and that was the best I could do. I let it go, knowing that once the conversion had spread to all its cousins and they encountered people, the would-be cri-tics would perform an-tics instead. That was not ideal, but this had been one hard nut to crack.

Incidentally, I learned years later that some cri-tics had drifted into Mundania before being overtaken by an-tics. There they spread recklessly, and soon the whole of Mundania was infested with them. They had no natural enemies, you see, but they did their best to convert the rest of Mundania to enemies. They were having some success in this effort, the last I heard.

The next tic I caught was a roman-tic. I considered the matter, and finally let it go untreated. Xanth would not be harmed by its influence.

So it went, from tic to tic. There was the poli-tic, who infected those with ambition and the luna-tic, who made folk crazy. The hera-tic, who was concerned with matters of faith, and the dras-tic with its desperate measures. They would none of them be missed! Some were interesting and more or less harmless, like the aqua-tic and elas-tic. The gymnas-tic was one of the nimblest, but the acroba-tic was similar. The hardest one to figure out was the enigma-tic, the most difficult was the problema-tic, and the wildest was the orgias-tic. I was annoyed by the bombas-tic and bored by the pedan-tic. It was useless to argue with the dogma-tic or to try to calm the empha-tic. I managed to turn the spas-tic into a sta-tic. The largest was the gigan-tic, and the most interesting the fantas-tic. Some were nuisances mainly to children, like the arithme-tic and gramma-tic. The op-tic actually enabled folk to see better, so I let it go untreated. I had trouble distinguishing between the clima-tic and the climac-tic, but there was nevertheless a significant difference. I finally had to catch a characteris-tic to help me get them straight. It turned out that one affected the weather and the other affected great events. Sometimes these were similar, but not always.

The more tics I treated, the harder it became to locate and catch the remaining ones. It took me months roaming the countryside to catch up to the rus-tic, and then I didn't treat it, as it was pleasantly harmless. I had to search the upper floors of several houses before netting the at-tic. and that too was wasted effort, as it needed no cure. It merely liked to seek out the highest place of a house and stay there, getting pleasantly hot and dusty and forgotten.

When finally I had dealt with the last one, I danced madly for joy. "Gotcha!" a little voice said.

"What?"

"You missed me. I landed on you instead. I am the ecsta-tic."

I was satisfied to concede that tic's victory.

I checked into the routine of things, and discovered that sixteen years had pa.s.sed. My son, Dafrey, was now seventeen and was serving as an a.s.sistant to E.T. Bram. My wife, Taiwan, had filled out considerably; the trinkets she made in her spare time were now to be found all over Xanth. The Storm Magician was now twenty-two, with his powers at full strength.

It was time to retire. I had never much liked being king, and now there was a legitimate Magician to succeed me.

I went to see the Storm Magician. "You're it," I told him. "I quit!"

He accepted this with excellent grace. Arrangements for the orderly transfer of power were made. He preferred to remain in the North Village, and I had no objection; the only reason I had remained in the South Village was that had I moved home to the Gap Village, no one would have remembered my edicts, because of the-well, I forget why, but I'm sure I had good reason.

I a.s.sumed that the Matron Taiwan would accompany me to anonymity, but discovered otherwise. "But all my friends are here!" she protested. "I couldn't possibly leave them!''

I yielded to the persuasion of her logic, and we severed our marriage. I can't say I was heartbroken; we had gotten along well enough, but we shared few interests, and I no longer had a baby to be cared for.

So it was that I was uncrowned and went my way alone. Well, not quite; Peggy, my winged horse, concluded that I still needed someone to look after me, so she went along. I sincerely appreciated her loyalty; it made traveling so much easier.

Chapter 7: Roogna.

At first I was exhilarated by my freedom from the responsibility of the kingship. This lasted about seven minutes. I was also depressed by my freedom from marriage, for I had become accustomed to the attentions of a woman. This lasted about nine minutes. Then I was bored.

I decided to do something interesting that I had never had time for before: locate the fabulous lost Castle Roogna. It had disappeared from history after King Gromden died and King Yang moved away from it because of his demon love. I now understood rather better than I liked how that sort of mischief happened. The plain fact was that the average man's brain dulled when he saw the average woman, and turned off completely when he saw a beautiful one. He hardly cared what was in her mind, except that he preferred it mostly empty. A demoness could present the most luscious body and emptiest mind of all. I had thought King Gromden to have been a fool, but now I knew that he was merely a man.

It was odd how Castle Roogna had disappeared, after being so prominent. It was almost as if some power didn't want it to be known. But who would object to the knowledge of a castle? Unless there was a concern that it would be pillaged in the absence of an occupying king. Well, I would not pillage it; I merely wanted to see it.

It was somewhere south of the-the-somewhere south of the center of Xanth. Not too far from the West Stockade, as I understood it, because that was where King Yang had gone, and it was said that he had not gone far. But Yang had been the Magician of Spell-crafting, who could have made a spell to jump him all the way across Xanth, so that was not certain.

Something about this chain of thought bothered me, and it was my nature to seek out any such bother because it could be a signal of something interesting. Yang? No, that wasn't it. Far side of Xanth? No. South Xanth? Maybe. South of what? I couldn't remember.

And that was it. I had surveyed all of Xanth. How was it that part of it was blank in my mind? I had no memory of ever being in the center of Xanth, yet surely I had been there many times. In fact I had lived there as a child. How could I have forgotten? Yet it remained blank: I could not remember where I had lived as a child.

"Peggy, fly north," I said to my winged steed.

She turned gracefully in the air and bore north. I continued to ponder, as was my wont. Could my forgetting about the center of Xanth have anything to do with the general forgetting of Castle Roogna?

Soon we came to a huge fissure in the ground. Amazing! How could such a thing be here and I not know it? The thing was hardly new; trees grew at its edge and down in its depths. Why, it would be virtually impossible to travel across Xanth lengthwise with this enormous natural barrier in the way! "Peggy, do you remember this chasm?" I asked.

She snorted no.

But now I was beginning to remember. My home village was on its north side. This was the-the-the Gap Chasm! It had been here forever, or something similar, and it-no one who didn't live here could- there was a Forget Spell on it! Now that I was here, I was recovering my lost knowledge, but when I left it I would forget it again.

Well, I could deal with that. I brought out my notepad and pencil and made a note: Gap Chasm across central Xanth, Forget Spell on. Next time I thought about what I couldn't remember, that note would help.

But now that I remembered, I knew that this was not a.s.sociated with the disappearance of Castle Roogna. The Gap Chasm minded its own business. I added a note: Castle Roogna not in Gap Chasm.

"Turn south again, Peggy," I said, and the horse obligingly did so. Peggy was my only legacy of MareAnn, but a handsome one. I had never sought information about MareAnn after she left me, and that kept my memory of her clean: lovely and innocent. Probably, nineteen years later, she was no longer lovely, and her innocence was somewhat strained. An innocent woman of thirty-eight was not nearly as attractive as one of nineteen, for reasons that most men understood and most women didn't. But I had loved her, and loved her yet, in diminished degree. Had things been otherwise . . .

Where would Castle Roogna most likely be? Well, if it was unknown, it was probably hidden from the air or inaccessible. If Peggy and I canva.s.sed southern Xanth, we should either run across it or discover a region we could not explore. Indeed, something like that must have happened when I surveyed Xanth before. I must have skipped by a region without realizing it. That was the place to investigate in more detail.

We canva.s.sed. Peggy rather enjoyed it, I believe, for she lived for flying. I found it less delightful, for my posterior was getting sore from all the riding, and most of the territory we covered was already familiar.

Peggy curved in flight. Ordinarily I would not have noticed, for I trusted her judgment. But my recent experience with the-the-something or other had alerted me to unnoticeable things, and my attention focused. Why had she curved, when our normal pattern should have carried us straight forward? I saw no storm cloud or dangerous mountain, and no dragon was aloft nearby.

I was about to tell her to straighten out and fly right. But I really didn't feel like arguing the case; there was nothing interesting ahead.

Another warning nag bothered me. I was interested in everything; how could I find any unknown thing uninteresting? My talent was curiosity. This just did not figure.

"Peggy, fly over that boring jungle to the side," I said. She turned with an equine sigh and headed into it-only to turn away again soon.

There was now no doubt: there was an aversion spell here, just as there was a Forget Spell (according to my note) on the Gap Chasm. I had no memory of such a chasm, but trusted my note. An aversion spell would have similar effect: pa.s.sing folk would not remember the region, because they never entered it.

I tried to have Peggy fly into it again, but she began to sweat and her ears turned back, and I knew she was becoming most uncomfortable. She did not have my ornery nature; she was a relatively innocent creature of the wild who stayed out of trouble by avoiding aversive things. It would not be kind to push her further.

"Land, and I will go on alone," I said. "If I do not return, you are free to do as you will. I thank you for your years of loyal a.s.sistance."

She c.o.c.ked an eye at me, not liking this, but descended and let me dismount. She folded her wings and waited.

I a.s.sembled my pack, which Peggy had been carrying. I did not relish the notion of proceeding alone on foot into an aversive jungle, but I hoped that dragons and other monsters would also be avoiding it. "Happy grazing," I told the mare.

She pondered the matter, then lowered her head to the gra.s.s, which was rich here at the edge of the jungle.

She had plenty to eat. That wasn't her concern. She knew I was being foolish, and she felt guilty for letting me do this. But she knew that she would have to let me get my own sc.r.a.pes and learn my own hard lessons. She was a very maternal mare.

I turned and plunged into the jungle. I knew where to go, because it was where I felt least inclined to go. It had been a long time since I had done anything I less wanted to do. Yet, perversely, that was why I wanted to do it.

My orneriness paid off, because after a while the aversion eased. It was like diving into cold water: the first shock was the worst. I still did not like what I was doing, but I could tolerate it. I took things easy and kept going.

Then I saw something interesting. It was a snail. It was racing across a glade. Then I saw another, moving almost as quickly. This was remarkable; I had never seen snails move so rapidly. I realized that this was that rarest of all sports events, a cross-country snail race. Normally folk did not watch one of these from start to finish unless obliged to for some reason, such as punishment. But these swift snails would complete the course in a fraction of the time regular snails would.

The region darkened, and in a moment it was as black as night. There were even stars overhead, sailing along in their courses. They reached the other side of the welkin and came to rest. Then the sun came up again.

Something nagged my mind.

Slowly it came to me: why was everything moving so fast?

And slowly the answer came: because I had slowed down.

I looked down, in the time it took the sun to travel from quarter sky to half sky. Sure enough, I was standing on a patch of sand. That would be slowsand.

The world was proceeding at its normal pace. It seemed rapid to me only because my perspective had changed.

The aversion spell was not stopping me. Now I was encountering another type of magic. Someone had strewn patches of slowsand around, and I had foolishly stepped into one. I could step out of it, of course, but I would be a long time doing it. Meanwhile any other kind of mischief could be approaching.

I could try to step backward out of it or forward. There was three times as much sand in front. That would delay me a long time. But if I retreated, I might still have this barrier to traverse.

Fortunately I had the remedy. I had collected many useful things during my survey of Xanth and during my tenure as king. I had a fair a.s.sortment of them here in my pack.

I reached over my shoulder and fished for a bottle. I wasted no time, but the land darkened and brightened twice more while I did this. I found my quicksand and sprinkled some on my feet. It counteracted the slow-sand, and I was able to step forward out of the patch.

But I had lost three days. Fortunately I wasn't on a schedule, as far as I knew, and I wasn't hungry, because my internal processes had been slowed too. Still, I would have to be more careful.

I now had little doubt that I was in the vicinity of Castle Roogna. I remembered that King Roogna, whose talent was adapting magic to his purpose had adapted many things to the defense of the castle. His talent was similar to that of the later King Ebnez, except that Roogna dealt with living magic while Ebnez adapted inanimate magic. Of course sand needed no adaptation; all it needed was to be there, and it had its effect. How the King had managed to move it here, far from its natural habitat, I hesitated to guess. But it had just about stopped my advance.

Well, onward. Time was not of the essence, but Peggy might be getting impatient for my return. I remembered how, so long ago, MareAnn and I had spent the night in the werehouse and been taken far afield. In fact, all the way across the--the-across somewhere, to the South Village. The poor unicorns must have dutifully returned to discover only a bare patch of ground where the house had been. Had they neighed soulfully, thinking us forever lost? Was Peggy now fretting similarly, having hoped for my return well within three days? I regretted putting her through that.

I brushed by a nondescript bush. There was a faint calling sound-and suddenly my gut boiled up. I grabbed for my trousers and yanked them down barely in time to let me squat. My nether innards blew out their contents.

Then I felt at ease, and I realized what had happened. I had touched a nature bush and been called by it. This was its way of getting fertilizer. A harmless ploy-but had I not reacted quickly, I would have soiled my trousers and been in a rather awkward situation. I had been careless again.

I rea.s.sembled myself and stepped forward again. There were other bushes, but not of the same type. Still, they were unfamiliar, and I preferred to avoid them. There was no telling what kind of magic they might have.

But there was a halfway solid line of them, the leaves of one touching the leaves of its neighbors. I could not pa.s.s without touching them.

So I took a running jump and sailed over them. My excellent health had never abated, and I could clear hurdles that would have been insurmountable in my youth before I fell in the healing spring.

The tip of one stem touched my foot. Suddenly I was spinning in the air, tumbling out of control. I came down turning like a wheel, rolling down a gra.s.sy slope toward a muddy pond. I had touched a tumbleweed!

I managed to stop my roll just before plunging into the mud. I lifted my face-and there was someone's bottom, huge and smelly. I wrinkled my nose against the odor of rotting cheese.

Then I got a better view, and realized that this wasn't a man's bare posterior, but a rounded stone with a vertical crevice. In fact it was a c.h.i.n.k of moon rock, evidently fallen from the moon some time ago, because the green cheese was far from fresh. It had mooned me, as was its nature.

I got up and turned my back on the moonstone. I discovered that I had tumbled farther than I had supposed; I was not only near mud, I was surrounded by it, and beyond it was a ring of open water. In fact I was on an island in a pond! How could I have gotten here without getting wet?

Then I realized that this was another obstacle on the way to the castle. There was an enchantment of some sort that was trying to stop me or turn me back. Now it had dumped me on this island, possibly by flipping me through the air. It wasn't trying to hurt me, just to prevent me from going forward. Probably if I decided to give it up as a bad job, I would have little trouble making my way out.

That explained why the castle had been forgotten: someone wanted it left alone. But who? There weren't any Magicians or Sorceresses in Xanth, except for the Storm King, and no other person would have either the desire for such privacy or the power of magic to enforce it.

I had been more or less bulling through, and more or less not getting anywhere much. It was time to start using my mind, which was a good one when I gave it three quarters of a chance. How could I learn more about this situation so as not to blunder worse? After all, I didn't want to have to face Peggy's "I told you so!" snort.

I sat down on the moon rock, which emitted more strong cheese smell in protest. I took off my pack and rummaged through it for my small magic mirror. I gazed at it for a moment, considering whether to use it. I remembered the problem a.s.sociated with it.

This was an excellent mirror I had found in a deserted graveyard. Most graveyards were deserted, of course; for some reason living folk did not care to spend much time in them. But this one was really deserted: even the ghosts were gone. I wasn't sure what could frighten off a ghost, and had hesitated to pursue the matter despite my curiosity; there was probably excellent reason for the fright. So I had picked up this little mirror.

"What is your nature?" I had asked it first.

"I am a magic mirror who can answer any question put."

Well, this was an excellent find! But I was suspicious of the circ.u.mstance under which I had found it, so I questioned it again. "What are the counter indications of your use?"

"I answer each question less accurately than the last, for each possessor."

That gave me pause. I could see that a living person might have used this mirror repeatedly, not thinking to inquire about its liabilities, and had his good fortune become bad fortune as the mirror gradually shaded from truth to lies. Finally it must have given him an answer that killed him, such as perhaps telling him that there was a fortune here when in fact there had been a ghoul lurking in its favorite place. That would account for the mirror being left in the graveyard.

But could this also account for the vanished ghosts? Yes, because they could have addressed the mirror as it lay on the ground near their graves, and they could have entertained themselves by asking it many questions-and finally it could have told them a ghost story which led them to a ghost town, from which they had been unable to escape.

So I had asked this mirror no more questions. But I had saved it, because it was probably still fairly accurate for me. When it became hopelessly inaccurate I could give it to someone else, with due warning.

I had asked it only two questions. How fast did its accuracy decline? If I asked it how to get safely to Castle Roogna, and it gave me an answer that was mostly good, but omitted news of one deadly threat, what then?

I decided to wait for a situation where the accuracy of the answer would be more evident. There were too many imponderables at the moment. So perhaps I had wasted my time. But that was my nature: to pause every so often and rea.s.sess my situation. It would be better if I did my pausing before getting into trouble so that I could a.s.sess instead of rea.s.sess, but such wisdom and caution came only with hard experience. I was not yet nearly as conservative as I would become in my maturity.

It had been better, actually, when I was married or with a female companion. MareAnn had sort of nudged me in right directions, and Dana had always given me good advice while she had her soul, and Maiden Taiwan had put things together for me very well. Even Peggy, my winged horse, had guided me by significant wiggles of her ears when I threatened to do something of more than ordinary stupidity. It had been a long time since I had been truly on my own, and by an odd coincidence the same time since I had been unusually thoughtless. It was evident that I needed management. In fact, I probably needed another wife. But after one love and two marriages, I was not eager to do it again. Not unless I could have both together. I really wished, in retrospect, that MareAnn had been willing to forgo her innocence and marry me. But she had preserved it, and the last I had heard of her she was in the business of providing mares for villages. She would summon a suitable female horse for a settlement, who would handle its affairs with such extreme discretion that they seemed nonexistent. Unicorns were able to serve only children's settlements, but any other mare could kick things off well enough. It seemed that every village wanted a competent mare. The mare of the West Stockade was said to have real horse sense.

But how could I have that? Where was the woman whom I could both love and marry? Someone who was lovely without being determinedly innocent or of demon origin or dedicated to status rather than the man? Where was the potential great love of my life?

I lifted the mirror, putting it away. I caught the flash of an image in it: the face of a beautiful young woman with a bright red rose in her hair. I quickly straightened out the mirror and looked more closely, but the image was gone. The thing had been teasing me.

Yet this was a question-answering mirror, and it could not do other than answer a question, correctly or incorrectly. I had asked it no question. So how had it flashed me a picture?