"Some other time, thanks all the same."
"You have a sarcastic streak. I like that."
"You"re welcome." She plunged on, holding the nickelpede aloft, and finally the combative bat left off, maybe getting too far from its cave. It was probably hard to be aggressive when half of your nature was out of sight.
Now she came to a small but deep and rushing stream. It was probably another section of the mean-tempered river the winged mermaid Nepherina had warned them about, that flowed from the lake that stopped up Mount Pinatuba. She would have to be careful of it.
The thread went right across the stream. The footing on the banks seemed good, so Cube made a good jump across.
Too good. Her effort caused the pouch to be dislodged from her waistband. She grabbed for it, but missed, and it fell into the water as she landed on the far bank. She turned around and threw herself down, reaching for it, but it was already being carried away by the swift current.
Cube scrambled to her feet and along the bank, trying to get in position to catch the pouch. But the thick brush held her back, and she couldn"t quite keep pace. What a situation! She had to recover that pouch.
Then she saw something worse ahead. The river disappeared. It sucked down into the ground, looking like a reverse-flowing spring. The pouch was circling, descending into the small whirlpool. Cube flung herself down, making a final desperate grab. Her hand splashed in the chill water, but didn"t catch the pouch. It vanished into the ground.
Cube sat there, for the moment stunned by the enormity of the disaster. She had lost the pouch! All her Companions were there. She couldn"t summon any of them to help, because they were completely out of reach.
She thought about crying. But she was not the crying type. She knew she had fouled up. She might have forfeited her Quest by this blunder. But worse, she had put all her friends into oblivion. They could not get out unless she brought them out. Their fate was her fault.
She sat with her head in her hands, suffering for a good three moments. Then she summoned her gumption. What could she do? There had to be something.
Maybe the stream emerged from the ground farther along, and would carry the pouch there, so she could recover it. But if so, where? She had no idea. Karia might have carried her high enough so she could see where, but Karia was in the pouch. And even if the stream did emerge, there was no guarantee that the pouch would be with it; it could get stuck anywhere below, or simply sink to the bottom of some unknown and inaccessible underground pool.
Cube realized that she was not competent to recover the pouch by herself. She needed help. But who could--or would--help her, when she wasn"t supposed to let the nature of her Quest be generally known? No one, she feared.
But there had to be something. She couldn"t just give up. So she made her way back to where she had crossed the stream--and saw the thread, leading on. The thread didn"t know she had lost the pouch! What point to follow it now?
Or did it? It had seemed remarkably savvy so far, even when it had led her to seemingly irrelevant places, like Mundania. Was it possible that it still had something for her?
Well, there was one way to find out. She would follow it. If it didn"t lead anywhere, what would she lose? No more than she already had. And if by chance it took her to someone who could help, then maybe she could salvage this Quest after all.
She followed the thread around and about, o"er hill and dale, avoiding dragons, pitfalls, and tangle trees. As it skirted a village she saw a man wandering somewhat uncertainly, as if lost. She knew the feeling, so she paused, leaving the thread briefly to check on him. If he turned out to be a bad man, well, a few nickelpedes would distract him.
"h.e.l.lo," she said. "You look confused."
"I am," he said. "My name is Bruce, and my talent is finger writing in stone."
"I"m Cube, and I can summon nickelpedes. You write in stone?"
"Yes." He demonstrated by lifting a rock and using one finger to make a smiley-face. The surface seemed to be like malleable clay. Then he handed it to her.
Cube touched the stone, expecting it to be soft, but it was rock-hard. "That"s impressive. What"s confusing?"
"That is just about all I remember. I don"t know how I got here, or where I"m going."
Oh. "Did something happen to you?"
"I don"t know," Bruce said. "I just suddenly found myself walking here."
"Maybe you live in that village."
"Maybe. I don"t remember."
This was curious. "Maybe we can retrace your steps, and find out where it happened, whatever it was."
He turned around. "See, there are my footprints in the dirt."
They followed the prints back along the trail. In the distance Cube saw another person coming from the same direction. This was a young woman, small, dark-haired, and cute. Naturally she was cute; just about every woman Cube encountered looked much better than Cube did.
Then the woman paused, looking confused. Cube saw that Bruce"s footprints hesitated there too; they had been going straight, then wavered as if the maker was distracted. Cube and Bruce paused as the woman came hesitantly up to them.
"h.e.l.lo," the woman said. Her hair closed in under her chin, wreathing her cute face. "I am Angela, and my talent is conjuring Mundane objects. Do you happen to know why I am here?"
"We are Cube and Bruce," Cube said. "With talents of summoning nickelpedes and writing in stone. Bruce doesn"t know why he is here either."
"Maybe you live in that village," Bruce suggested.
"I don"t remember."
Then Cube caught on. "A forget whorl!" she said. "There must be one there, and you both walked through it. It took most of your memories, except what is most important: your names and talents."
The two looked at each other. "That must be it," Bruce said. "Maybe we do live at the village, because we were walking toward it."
"Maybe people there will know us," Angela said.
"Maybe we know each other," Bruce said, reacting to her the way men tended to in the presence of cute girls.
"You do now," Cube said. "Why don"t you walk on to that village and inquire? And warn them of the forget whorl on the trail, so others don"t pa.s.s through it. It must have drifted there today."
"All right," Angela said. "Thank you for your insight, Cube; that must be what happened."
"I know what it is like to feel lost," Cube said sincerely.
"Still, we"d like to thank you," Bruce said. "Here is a name stone for you." He picked up a small flat chip of stone and finger painted CUBE on it. He gave it to her.
"And here is a Mundane purse," Angela said as one appeared in her hand. "Since I see you don"t have one." She glanced at it. "I think this is from the Philippines, home crafted." She presented it to Cube.
"Uh, thank you both," Cube said, not wanting to admit that she had no idea what part of Mundania that might be. "I don"t suppose you want some nickelpedes?"
Both shook their heads no, laughing. Then they walked on toward the village, holding hands.
Cube considered the gifts, then put the name stone in the purse and tucked the purse in her waistband where the pouch had been. She would try not to lose this one.
She returned to the thread and began to follow it. Then she stopped. The thread led right to the forget whorl!
She sat on a small boulder, feeling perplexed, then frightened, then angry. If she had followed the thread any farther, she would have lost all memory of her mission, remembering only her name and talent. Then she would have been completely unable to rescue her Companions in the pouch, or to complete her Quest. That thread had tried to wipe her out--and in such a way that no one else would know what happened. They might think she had wandered into a tangle tree and gotten eaten, or perhaps simply given up and gone home.
But the Princesses would never have set it up to do anything like that, and not just because it would cost them perpetual imprisonment in the pouch. So what had happened?
The Demoness Fornax, who didn"t want Counter Xanth to be colonized: this could be her mischief. A series of seeming accidents that stopped the Quest. She must have jogged the pouch loose, so that it would be lost, then changed the thread to make Cube forget her mission. What a dastardly deed!
Well, if that was the way it was, Cube would just have to rescue her friends and complete her mission anyway. But how? She had avoided one trap, but still lost her Companions. What could she possibly do alone?
But if she was so helpless, why had the Demoness bothered to set another trap for her? There must be something she could do. Like return to the Good Magician and tell him what happened. Then he would send someone else on the Quest, trying to get it done, and maybe have a way to locate the lost pouch, so that it could be recovered and Cube could let the others out. So Fornax had tried to prevent that too.
She could hardly be faulted for being balked by a Demoness. Still, it galled Cube to fail. She wanted to succeed, and to become beautiful, and win Ryver for her man. Failure, even with her memory intact, would leave her as she was now: a woman no man noticed with favor, if at all. She had started out well enough, gathering her Companions, and must have been on the way to success, because otherwise the Demoness would not have bothered to interfere.
So was there any way to prevail despite the loss of the pouch? Yet if there was, she wouldn"t want to do it while her Companions remained in limbo. First she had to rescue them, even at the expense of the Quest. She would rather save them than be beautiful, if that was her choice.
It was pretty clear that she wasn"t able to save them on her own. She had to have help. But what help could there be, that wouldn"t mess up the Quest by exposing its nature?
Then it came to her: What about that mysterious couple Kim Mundane had mentioned, Nimby and Chlorine? The donkey-headed dragon and the beautiful woman, who liked to do favors? Maybe they would do Cube a favor. At least she could ask.
They lived in the Nameless Castle, floating on a cloud. What a weird place for a castle! But some folk had weird tastes. It did suggest that they had more than incidental powers of magic. Maybe not Magician or Sorceress level, but maybe enough to enable her to find and recover the pouch. Then she would be able to carry on, on her own. With luck they wouldn"t tell anyone else about her Quest. How could she get to that castle?
She stared at the sky--and saw a cloud. Something sparkled above it, like light glinting from a shiny turret. Could that be it? The cloud seemed to be moving slowly toward the tall cone of Mount Pinatuba. It might even touch that peak before it moved on.
If she could just get up there before the cloud pa.s.sed, she might be able to jump onto that cloud and reach the castle. It was a long shot, but what else was there?
She ran back toward Mount Pinatuba, but quickly realized that she did not have a hope of the ghost of a chance to reach it in time, because of the thickets at its base, and as for climbing it--parts of its cone were sheer smooth rock, too steep to climb. She had to have help just to get up it, let alone in time.
What to do? She was desperate. She knew that no ordinary expedient would do, like locating climbing boots or circling the mountain to find a better route. If only she could bring Karia centaur out! But of course if she could do that, she wouldn"t need to make that climb.
What could make it up that mountain in a hurry? Goaded by that question, she looked around her with a new awareness--and spied a hole in the base of the mountain. Com-Bat"s cave!
Did she dare? She had to. If she could speak their language, she might make a deal. She put her hands to her mouth, forming a magic funnel, and yelled through it. "Hey, Com-Bat, you handsome rascal! Come here, and bring Pete."
In a moment she saw the small flying figure. "What the #### are you up to, you moronic idiot?" he chittered. "You trying to wake my friend?"
"That"s what I"m trying to do, you winged chit." She put her cupped hands up again. "Hey Pete! I"ve got a deal for you!"
"You"re crazy! You can"t outrun Pete. He"s the fastest thing in the thicket."
"That"s what I"m counting on. Does he talk the way you do?"
"No, he can"t chitter. But he understands."
"Then you can translate for me."
"What, after he"s eaten you?"
"Tell him to listen to me first."
"You"re almost as nervy as you are crazy!"
"Thanks." She raised her hands a third time."PETE!"
In no more than a moment and a half there was a faint shudder in the ground, as if something heavy were approaching. Then the huge head of the serpent appeared. The mouth opened and a horrendous hiss issued, like steam from a mountain vent.
"I tried to stop her, Pete!" the bat chittered. "Honest! I tried to protect your sleep."
Cube was terrified. Therefore she performed as if nerveless. "You don"t want to eat me, Pete," Cube said. "I"m not pretty enough to taste good; you can see that. You want to hear my deal."
The huge serpent gazed at her with the sort of look she had seen before: part amazement, part dawning respect. He hissed.
"He says this better be good, human," the bat chittered.
She knew it. "I need to get up that mountain in a hurry. Before that cloud gets there."
If there had been doubt that the serpent understood her, it would have faded as Pete turned his head to view the cloud, then the mountain. There was a hiss.
"Pete says he can make it," the bat chittered. "What"s your deal?"
"My talent is summoning nickelpedes. You"ve seen it, Bat. I"ll summon some to go after the nits and lice and things that bother every big creature. Life will be more comfortable then."
"He"d like that," the bat chittered. "But what"s in it for me, for translating?"
"Some to keep you company in the cave, too, if you like. They"re not tame, but if I tell them to treat a person or creature well, they will."
Pete hissed. "I travel a lot; I can"t carry them with me," the bat chittered for him.
"Yes you can. You can carry them in a purse in your mouth, and let them out when you"re ready for them." She brought out the Mundane purse Angela had given her; this was a good use for it. "And here are the nickelpedes." They were cl.u.s.tering by her feet. She picked up five. "Go with Pete, here, and tackle his vermin when he wants you to. Meanwhile, stay in this purse." They obediently climbed into the purse, and Cube held it up for the serpent. "Try them out, if you wish."
"No, he felt your magic," the bat chittered. "He knows they"ll do it."
The serpent took the purse between his teeth, surprisingly delicately. His long tongue came out, wrapped around the purse, and hauled it into his cheek.
"You"ll have to take me to the cave, so I can leave some for you," Cube told the bat.
Pete hissed. "Get on," Com-Bat chittered.
Cube approached the huge body. She jumped, sprawling across it, then scrambled to get astride. "I"m not sure how I"ll hold on," she said.
"Hold on to the skin," the bat chittered.
She tried, and found there was a halfway loose patch before her. She caught a double handful of it.
Then Pete moved. One moment he was still, the next sliding through the brush with astonishing velocity. Cube had to draw up her legs to avoid getting sc.r.a.ped by the branches. In barely three quarters of a moment they were at the cave.
She dismounted and summoned several more nickelpedes. "This is Com-Bat," she told them. "He is your a.s.sociate. Help him guard the cave, and do not bother him or the serpent." They waved their claws, capable of gouging out nickel-sized disks of flesh, and scuttled into the cave.
Pete hissed. "Get aboard," the bat chittered. "That cloud is getting close."
Cube looked up and saw that the cloud was almost to the cone. That was too close; could they make it? She scrambled onto the serpent"s back and grabbed skin.
"This way," Com-Bat chittered, flying ahead. Pete slithered after him, forging through the thicket, then up the steep slope of the mountain.
Cube hung on. She had a good hold, but now the serpent was really moving, and his undulations flung her from side to side. They were traveling up, and this made her handhold the only secure contact. She clutched it desperately.