Vale of the Vole Part 7

"It was a mirror!" Chex exclaimed. "Except-"

Esk's ogre nature left him. As he returned to the human condition, his intelligence increased, and he understood. "A reverse mirror!" he said. "It showed only the other side of me-the side that I wasn't. So when I was a man, it was my ogre self, and when I turned ogre, it turned human. Only I was ogrishly stupid and aggressive, and broke it when I didn't have to."

Chex approached. "I don't think it was just a mirror," she said. "Volney and I saw it too, and it looked and sounded like a real ogre. Your state may have governed it, but it was real enough in its fashion. Like the illusion of the mountain, it was enough to do the job. If you hadn't cowed it-"

Esk shrugged. "Maybe so. Certainly it was my challenge, not anybody else's. This one wasn't let out early!"

"It wasn't alive," she pointed out. "The inanimate challenges remain in place; only the dragons are loose, and maybe whatever other animals were supposed to be used."

"It wasn't alive, so it didn't leave," he agreed, understanding. "So we still don't know whether anyone is in charge of the challenges. I don't like this."

"Neither do I," she said.

"Unlew thiv iv the challenge?" Volney suggested.

Chex paused thoughtfully. "This mystery? This is the true challenge? Meant for all three of us to solve, together?"

"I do not know, I only guevv," the vole said.

"It is a most interesting conjecture," she said. "We knew to expect the unexpected, and that's about as unexpected as anything could be. It seems reasonable to conjecture that a more sophisticated challenge would be required to handle three dissimilar querents simultaneously."

"But why should there be three at once?" Esk asked. "We would have come separately, if we hadn't met on the paths."

"True. It does seem largely coincidental." She quivered her wings, pondering. "Is it possible that our missions are linked? That we did not arrive coincidentally, but that the three of us are destined to cooperate in some greater endeavor so that a single answer will serve us all?"

"But you knew nothing of the Kivv-Mee River," Volney protested.

"Yet Esk did encounter the sultry demoness from that region," Chex pointed out. "So his mission may have a common motivation with yours. I confess, however, that my own mission does not seem to connect. I think this is too speculative to be taken as fact, at least at this stage."

"Maybe the Good Magician will tell us soon," Esk said.

"Maybe," she agreed, but she seemed dubious.

They proceeded on into the castle proper. It was silent; no more challenges manifested.

"Halooo!" Esk called. "Anybody home?"

There was no answer.

They pa.s.sed into the residential section of the castle. This should be beyond the region for challenges, ordinarily, but no one met them. "Maybe they stepped out for a bite to eat?" Esk suggested facetiously, but the humor, if any existed, fell flat.

They walked through chamber after chamber. All were cluttered with artifacts of magic and household existence; none had living folk. In the kitchen was a table with a petrified cheese salad in the process of composition; evidently the Gorgon had been making it when she abruptly departed. The greens were hardly wilted; she could not have left more than a day before. In a bedroom were toys and bins of a.s.sorted fruits: evidently the work of the Magician's son Hugo, who Chex had heard could conjure fruits. But no sign of the boy. Upstairs, in a crowded cubby of a study, was a high stool by a table with a huge open book: the Magician's Book of Answers, over which he was said to pore constantly. But no sign of the Magician himself. There was even a marker, showing the particular bit of information he had been contemplating; it seemed to relate to the aerodynamic properties of the third left central tail feather of the midget roc bird.

"I didn't know there was a midget roc bird!" Esk remarked.

"You're not the Good Magician," Chex reminded him.

"Obviouvly he was juvt finding hiv plave," Volney said. "He wav about to revearch the propertiev of ventaur wingv,"

Chex and Esk stared at him. "That must be right!" Esk said. "To Answer your Question!"

Chex looked stricken. "But why did he go, then? I need that answer!"

"That veemv to be our challenge to divcover."

It was the same situation throughout the castle: everywhere there were evidences of recent and normal activity, but nowhere did any person or creature remain. All servants, if there had been any, had departed; all creatures had been released, in the same manner as the little smokers at the moat. Indeed, they now realized that the moat itself was empty; the moat monsters were gone. That was almost unheard of for a castle. Yet there was no sign of violence; it was as if the Good Magician and his family had simply stepped out for a moment-and not returned. What could account for this?

One region remained to be checked: the dungeon. That was said to be the region of major activity for some castles. Could they have gone down to check something there, and somehow gotten trapped below?

But the stair down was not blocked, and no door was locked. It could not have been any simple entrapment.

"If something happened down there," Chex said nervously, "it could remain dangerous. If, for example, he had a demon there-"

That sent a chill down Esk's back. "A demon could account for it," he agreed. "Some of them are just nuisances, like the one I encountered, but I understand that some are truly terrible. If he meant to keep it confined, but it got out-"

"Then it could have rampaged through the castle and smashed everything and everyone in it," Chex finished.

"Exvept there wav no rampage," Volney pointed out. "No vign of violenve."

"Not all demons are violent," Chex said. "Some are merely mischievous. They a.s.sume other forms, and tempt mortal folk into trouble. If the demon became a damsel in distress, right outside the castle, they all might have hurried out to help, and-"

"The Good Magician should never have been fooled by a demon," Esk protested. "He's the Magician of Information. He knows everything!"

She sighed. "I agree; it's a weak hypothesis. Let's gird ourselves and see what's down there."

They descended the stone stair. There was no sign of disturbance on the nether level either, and no sign of anything intended to confine a demon. Small vials crowded the shelves of storage chambers, all of them carefully stoppered; any severe activity should have shaken some vials so that they fell to the floor. This level was the same as the others: normal for its nature.

Except for one small chamber behind a closed door. Chex peered through the tiny barred window. "Activity," she murmured tersely.

Esk felt that cold shiver again. "What is it?"

"It seems to be a-an experiment of some sort," she said. "It's hard to make it out properly. There's a container on a hearth, and it's boiling, and the vapors are overflowing across the floor."

"He must have been cooking up a potion," Esk said, "and forgot to turn it off when he left."

"Then we had better turn it off," she said. "There is no sense letting it boil away to nothing."

Volney sniffed the air. "Beware," he said. "That vmellv like . . ."

When he did not continue, Chex prompted him. "Like what?"

"What?" the vole asked in return.

"What does it smell like?"

"What doev what vmell like?"

"That potion!" she said impatiently.

"Povion?"

"The one you just smelled!" she said. "How could you have forgotten it already?"

"I-forget," Volney said, seeming confused. "What am I doing here?"

"What are you-!" she repeated indignantly. "Volney, this is no time for games!"

"For what?"

Suddenly Esk caught on. "An amnesia ambrosia!" he exclaimed. "Volney's nose is more sensitive than ours, and he's closer to the floor. Those fumes must be spreading out and leaking under the door, so he got the first dose!"

"Amnesia!" she cried, alarmed. "We must get away from here!"

"Come on, Volney," Esk said. "We are going back upstairs!"

"Where?" the vole asked.

"Up! Up! To get out of the fumes, before they get us all!"

The vole balked. "Who are you?" he asked.

"He's forgetting everything!" Chex said. "We've got to get him out!"

"We're friends!" Esk said. "We must talk-upstairs! come with us!"

The vole hesitated, but remembered nothing contrary, so followed them up. They slammed every door behind them, and wedged strips of cloth from the sewing room under the last, to halt the creep of the vapor.

"Now I think we know what happened to the Magician and his family," Chex said. "That concoction got out of hand, and they forgot what they were doing!"

"But the magician was upstairs," Esk said. "Those vapors sink; how could they have reached him there? They haven't even left the dungeon yet, and would have been less extensive a day ago."

She nodded. "True, true. I was thinking carelessly. Those fumes are a consequence of his departure, not a cause, probably. But we had better turn that pot off!"

They were agreed on that. But how were they to do it?

"Maybe there's a counterpotion," Esk said. "Something we can mix up and pour into the dungeon that will neutralize it. The Book of Answers might list it."

They hurried up and checked the book. "What would it be listed under?" Esk asked, turning the ancient pages.

"M for memory, perhaps," Chex said.

He found the Ms. "Magic," he read. "What a lot there is on that subject!" He turned more pages. "Ah, here: Memory." But he frowned as he tried to read the detail. "I can't understand this! It's so technical!"

"Technical?" Chex asked.

"Yes. What does 'mnemonic enhancement enchantment' mean?"

She pursed her lips. "It's technical, all right," she agreed. "Probably only the Good Magician can interpret it; that's why he is the Magician."

"We don't have time," he said. "We need something we can understand right now."

"We need a sudden bright idea," she agreed.

"I know little about magic," Volney said, evidently recovering from his whiff of amnesia. "But ivn't there a kind of wood that changev the magic polev?"

"Magic poles?" Esk asked blankly.

"Vo that whatever it iv, it iv not, and vive verva."

"Whatever it is, it is not," Chex said, piecing it out.

"And vice versa," Esk concluded. "I don't know-"

"I think it'v called reverve wood."

"Reverse wood!" Esk and Chex exclaimed together. "That's it!" one or the other added.

They hurried downstairs, checking shelves. "Found it!" Esk called, as he opened a kitchen cupboard. "The Gorgon must have used it for cooking, so that everything she looked at wouldn't be stoned." He fetched down the chip of wood.

"But are you sure it's the right kind?" Chex asked.

"We can test it," he said. "Come toward me. If it reverses my magic-"

"I understand." She strode toward him.

He held up the chip. "No," he said as she drew close.

She leaped at him. Suddenly her rather soft front was pinning him against the wall.

"Oops," she said, backing off. "I didn't mean to do that."

"I told you 'no' on your advance," he gasped. "But you accelerated it."

"So it is reverse wood!" she said.

"I hope it's enough." He looked at the chip, thinking of the chamberful of amnesia fumes below.

"It will have to be," she said firmly.

They took it down to the sealed door, unsealed the door, and hesitated. "We need to get it in the pot, I think," she said. "But if we get close, we'll forget."

"Not vo," Volney said. "Who holdv the wood-"

"Will reverse the amnesia!" Esk exclaimed. "I'll do it!" He hurried down the steps, holding the chip ahead of him. When he reached the bottom, he strode to the closed chamber, wrenched open the door, waded through the pooling vapors, and dumped the chip of wood in the boiling pot.

The effect was dramatic. Not only did the amnesia reverse, as he could tell by his abruptly sharpened memory; the pot halted its boiling and froze.

He returned to the residential floor. "Mission accomplished," he announced.