Sherlock stuck out his hand. "I think we got a deal."
Curtis took it. "I was sure we would." He brought out a little bottle "Oops, this one"s almost empty; there"s only enough for two bubbles left." He fished in his pocket for another.
"May I have that one?" Jenny asked. "I know someone who could use it."
Curtis shrugged and gave it to her. He brought out another for Sherlock. "This will make several hundred bubbles, if used carefully. Simply blow a bubble with this bubble-ring, and have a person step into it in the first minute before it sets. Then tell it where to go. Don"t touch it from outside until it gets there. We"ll have a man waiting at Lake Ogre-Chobee to pop the first one; after that you can handle them yourselves."
Sherlock turned to Dug. "It seems that my quest is done. I"ll be going back to the isthmus with this bottle, as soon as I know you are okay."
"I will blow a bubble to carry you to the isthmus, as soon as you are ready," Curds said.
"You might as well go now," Dug said. "You have been a great help to me, and you don"t owe me anything."
"No, I want to see it through. If my solution was here, yours must be too. We just have to find it."
"Well, we might ask a magic mirror," Jenny suggested.
"I will fetch one," Ida said, hurrying off.
"That"s one nice young woman, even if she is a princess," Curtis said. "I came here to explain my mission, hoping that the answer would be here, and she was very positive. I had this idea that maybe I"d find some colonists today, and she agreed. She must have known you were coming."
"We didn"t know we were coming here," Dug said. "It was an accident." Then he remembered how the Demoness Metria had tricked them. "I think."
Ida returned with an ordinary mirror. "Ask this," she said to Dug. "You don"t have to rhyme, but it helps."
Dug pondered rhymes. "Mirror, mirror, in my hand- where is Kim in this land?"
A picture formed: a green melon. That was all.
"She"s in a melon?" Dug asked, perplexed.
"That"s a gourd!" Jenny said. "She"s gone to the hypnogourd. Oh, that"s an adventure."
"I"ve heard references to some kind of gourd," Dug said. "But how can a person be in one?"
"It"s a whole nother realm," Jenny explained. "You just look in the peephole, and you"re there. I"ll go with you, and Sammy will find Kim. But I warn you, this will be a weird adventure."
"Weirder than what I"ve seen already?" Dug asked disbelievingly. "Weirder than having a nine-tailed a.s.s make an a.s.s of me?"
"Much." She looked at Sherlock. "So I guess you don"t need to wait any longer. We"ll get gourds here, and that will be it."
"You sure?" Sherlock asked.
"Oh, yes. Obviously the prize is in the gourd realm, so she"ll either win it or lose it, and her game will be over."
"Okay." Sherlock extended his hand, and Dug shook it. "It"s been great knowing you, Dug, and if you"re ever traveling around Lake Ogre-Chobee-"
"I"ll drop by," Dug said, suddenly sorry to see the man go. "I just want to say-"
"I know." Sherlock wasn"t any more for emotional display than Dug was.
"We do have gourds in a garden near the castle," Ida said. "We shall bring three in for you and Jenny and Sammy."
"Thanks," Dug said. His mouth felt dry.
Chapter 15: PRIZE.
Kim looked around. The place she least wanted to enter was the boneyard, so this was surely where the prize was hidden. So she nerved herself and marched forward.
Bubbles stayed right with her, nervously close. The dog shared her apprehension about this place. Kim knew that there really wasn"t anything to fear from bones; they were dead, so were no more dangerous than stones or chips of wood. Even with magic they shouldn"t be fearsome, because they formed into characters like Marrow. In any event, this was the dream realm, where nothing was truly physical. A dream, in a fantasy land, in the game, which was all imaginary to begin with. Still she felt a superst.i.tious chill. She was glad she had Bubbles and Nada for company.
Marrow had disappeared, but she knew he would turn up again, and in a guise intended to repel her. She braced herself for the show.
Meanwhile the landscape was bad enough. It was dark, and growing darker. A monstrous gibbous moon emerged from behind a cloud-and the moon was bone white, with bony pocks. In fact, it looked like one big bone. That very word, gibbous, had always made her flinch, though she knew that all it meant was rounded, more than half full. It had nothing to do with gibbons, which weren"t bad animals anyway. But the moon was always gibbous when something awful was going to happen, such as a poor girl getting murdered or a vampire striking.
"Careful," Nada murmured.
Kim looked. She had almost walked into a pool, because she had been looking at the moon instead of where she was going. The water was dark and looked almost slimy, as if pus had oozed into it and turned it to jelly. Ugh! Where had she gotten a notion like that?
There was something under the water. Kim peered-and saw bones. And perhaps pieces of attached flesh. As she looked, they seemed to move. Double ugh! She averted her gaze and walked on.
They crested a hill and saw a sinister valley. In the most dismal depths of it squatted a truly ugly castle. The moon, by the alchemy of this region, was now setting behind that edifice, illuminating it so that every facet of its misshapen structure showed clearly. There was of course a moat, and high ramparts, and a portcullis, and turrets and embrasures. But somehow instead of seeming delightfully medieval, it seemed frightening.
As she got closer, Kim saw that it was worse than she had thought. The castle was not made out of wood or stone; it was made of bones. Big bones framed the front gate, and little bones filled in the crevices, and sharpened bones topped the walls. A rotting flag hung from a spire, showing a skull and crossbones. The portcullis was actually a giant skull with pointed fangs.
"Maybe the prize is not in there," Kim whispered.
But the moment she tried to turn away, she discovered that there were palisades encroaching from either side, channeling her in toward the castle. She looked directly back, and saw a foul fog swirling up over the crest of the hill, rendering visibility zero and harboring who knew what. If she tried to go back through that fog, she would probably stumble into the corpse-filled water. There was no place to go but forward. Of course.
The closer she got, the larger the castle seemed, until it loomed impossibly high. The big bones seemed to have been carved by a cleaver to fit their a.s.signments, and the smaller ones seemed to have been chewed on. Some were split lengthwise. This was the kind of castle a brute ogre would fashion when in an ill mood.
The fluid of the moat looked even worse than the pond water. Even Bubbles shied away from it. Something stirred within its noisome depths, but Kim didn"t care to see what it was. Instead she scrunched up most of her remaining nerve and set foot on the bone planks of the drawbridge. One of them rolled under her foot, causing her to lose her balance and almost pitch into the murky water.
She righted herself and took another step-and another bone rolled, trying to send her off to the side. So she got down on her hands and knees-and felt the slickness of the surface of the bones, as if they had only recently been stripped of their flesh. She gritted her teeth and moved forward-this time feeling a string or something. She looked, and saw it was a tendon, not quite separated from the joint. Triple ugh!
She made it across the moat, with Bubbles crawling along beside her. She stood on the bone pavement, which seemed to have been formed of hipbones embedded in bone fragments, and gazed at the awful entry. Would that giant fanged upper portcullis jaw crash down on her as she tried to enter? Surely it would; that was what it was for.
She heard something rumble behind her. She jumped and looked back. The drawbridge was lifting! Gross tendons were hauling it up until it was vertical, leaving no escape from the castle. Now she really couldn"t change her mind.
"Everything about the place seems to be one-way," Nada noted. "The fog, the fencing, the bridge. You aren"t allowed to change your mind."
"It"s victory or defeat," Kim agreed. "And I guess victory is better."
"Of course it is," Nada said warmly. "What is the point in playing the game, if not to win the prize?"
What use to explain about human feelings to a princess? "I suppose so," Kim agreed. "But I sort of liked just being in Xanth."
"You will be able to return. And with the magic talent you win as the prize, you"ll be able to play longer and better."
Kim realized that she was right. Since she couldn"t have her true heart"s desire, she might as well have the prize. "Yes. Let"s get on with it."
She took a step toward the portcullis. Bubbles whined.
Kim stopped. As far as she knew, the dog had no magic. She wasn"t like Jenny"s cat Sammy, who could find anything. That didn"t mean that Bubbles wasn"t worthwhile, just that her reactions to magic effects might not be wholly accurate. Still, she generally had reason for her concerns. "What is it, Bubbles?" Kim inquired, putting a hand on the dog"s back.
Bubbles looked up at the deadly fangs of the portcullis, and her tail dropped low.
Oh-naturally the dog did not want to enter the mouth of a monster!
Kim took another step. Bubbles yelped as if someone had trodden on her tail.
"Something"s wrong here," Kim said. "You think that big mouth is going to close on us?" As she said it, she realized it was true: that was what a portcullis was. A gate that came crashing down to shut out intruders. Maybe down on them, if they moved slow. "It is going to come down on us! It"s one more way to be wiped out." A wipeout here would be just as final as a wipeout in Xanth proper, even if this was the dream realm.
"It must be," Nada agreed. "Maybe there"s another way into the castle."
They walked to the side, but the moat quickly closed in, squeezing the ground out until there was no break between the water and the bonewall. There was no other entry.
"So it has to be the portcullis," Kim said. "Maybe we can put a block on it, so the fangs can"t come down on us."
But there was nothing to use as a block. "Maybe we can climb the wall to a window," Nada suggested. "I can climb in serpent form."
Kim tried to get a handhold on a projecting bone, but it was slippery, and there was no good bone to grab above it. Even if she could climb the wall, Kim knew she would grow faint before she reached any height, and probably fall off. And how could the dog ever climb it? So that was out.
She sighed. "I think we"ll just have to go through the main entrance. I"ll bet it has to be fast. And right together, three abreast. That portcullis has to take a moment to get started. So it should crash down behind us."
"It should," Nada agreed.
They lined up. "Ready, set, go!" Kim cried, and they took off.
They crossed the line of the gateway-and the portcullis came crashing down. Wham! the fangs plunged into the floor at their heels. The retreat was closed. But they had made it through unscathed.
Only then did Kim wonder what would have happened if they had not been in perfect alignment. Suppose the dog had lagged behind, and gotten trapped outside? Or, worse, chomped? Suppose the dog had run ahead, and triggered the drop too soon, so that it crunched the two people? This had been a very risky ploy!
Kim resolved to be more careful from now on. She looked ahead, and saw a dark hall leading into the center of the castle. Its walls were polished bones, tightly interwoven. She wasn"t sure how bones could be woven, but these were. There was barely enough light for them to see.
Well, the hall must lead somewhere. Kim started to walk down it-and Bubbles whined.
Magic or no magic, she was coming to trust the dog"s judgment. There was something fishy about this pa.s.sage.
Kim looked around. There was a c.h.i.n.k in a corner, and a bone fragment on the floor beneath it. In due course some skeleton crew would come by and use bone paste to fasten the chip back into place.
Bubbles went over to sniff the fragment. That didn"t mean anything; the dog sniffed everything. It was her way of getting acquainted. But it reminded Kim that there was always a way through, in the game, and usually a hint about that way through. That fallen chip of bone was the only unusual thing here. Was it a hint?
Kim went to pick it up. It seemed quite ordinary. She tried to return it to its place in the wall, but it wouldn"t stay. She didn"t have any paste with which to fasten it there. She couldn"t make the repair.
Then she thought of something else. This was Xanth, and one of the commonest forms of magic here was illusion. Things could seem to be what they were not. Or could not seem to be what they were.
Kim took the chip of bone and sent it sliding down the hall. The floor was smooth, because the bones were sh.o.r.ed by plaster or cement. It was like sending a puck down a shuffleboard alley.
Then the chip disappeared. Kim smiled. "I think we"ve found what"s wrong with this hall," she said.
She got down on her hands and knees again and crawled carefully forward. Bubbles joined her. When she came to the place where the chip had disappeared, she reached forward-and felt nothing. The floor was gone. There was a pit there. The floor looked continuous, but it was illusion, covering the trap.
Kim nudged up to the edge and felt deeper. There seemed to be no bottom to the pit. It would have been a bad fall, probably a wipeout.
But how was she going to get across it? Kim pondered. "I"m going to gamble," she said. She fished in her pack and found a spare pair of socks. She separated them, and rolled each one up into a ball. Then she tossed one ahead about four feet. It landed and rolled on along the hall, finally fetching up at the entrance to the next chamber. "So there is a continuation," she said, satisfied. "No more invisible pits. She tossed die second sock about three feet. It, too, landed and rolled.
But Kim couldn"t reach across the pit; her questing fingers found nothing. So it couldn"t be much under three feet. Still, three feet was jumpable.
"This is like the portcullis," she said. "We"ll have to jump. But I think we can do it singly." She removed her pack and set it at the edge of the pit. "This is where the jump starts. I"ll go first." She looked at the dog. "You wait." She hoped Bubbles would understand.
She walked to the front end of the hall. Then she ran down it, reached the pack, and leaped. She landed cleanly and slowed to a stop.
"Now you, Bubbles," she called.
The dog ran down the hall, leaped at the pack, and landed where Kim had. She was old and solid and barely made it, but her spirit was there.
"Now mark the place and toss over the pack," Kim said to Nada. "Then jump over yourself."
In this manner they traversed the hall and came to the central chamber of the castle. It was huge. Portals opened out around it in about nine directions, and more opened out from the balcony levels. In the center was a big ball of bright red string.
As they stepped into the chamber, the door to the pa.s.sage slammed shut with a bone-rattling jar.
"I think I have this figured," Kim said. "Somewhere in this castle is the prize. I have to search to find it. And any door I pa.s.s through will be closed after me, so I can"t go back. But maybe some of those chambers have several doors. So I"ll mark my trail with string, so I"ll know if I"ve pa.s.sed that way before. If I find the prize before I lock myself into a dead-end chamber, I"ll win."
"There must be dangers along the way, too," Nada said. "Judging by what we"ve seen so far."
"Yes. So this will be dicey. But winnable if I"m smart enough and lucky enough." Kim considered as she went carefully to fetch the string. "Bubbles, you"re the most cautious about danger. You lead the way." She wasn"t sure the dog would understand, but it was worth a try.
Bubbles sniffed around, then headed for one of the portals. She paused at the entrance to the chamber, waiting for Kim.
Kim tied the end of the string to a projecting bone and strung the line out behind as she went to join the dog. "Okay, Bubbles, you lead, but be careful."
The dog entered the chamber, but did not proceed to the center. She went to the side. As she did so, something came down from the high ceiling. It swung back and forth. It was a pendulum. A big sharp-edged bone on a long tendon, and it crossed the full chamber. But it shouldn"t be hard to pa.s.s, if they timed it for when it was at one end of the chamber.
Then a second pendulum came down, with another knife bone. It swung opposite to the first, reaching the other end, so that there was no chance to pa.s.s; both ends were covered. However, when the two sharp bones were at the edges of their swings, it should be possible to run through the center.
And a third pendulum descended, timed to swing across the center while the other two were outside. But maybe they could pa.s.s a bit to the side, opposite that third, while the first and second were still out. And a fourth, going opposite to the third. Now everything was covered. The chamber was a crisscrossing pattern of swinging bones. There was no clearance at the edges; the blades almost touched the walls.
Nada shook her head. "I think we had better try another chamber."
Kim turned back-and saw that the door had quietly closed behind them. Again, they couldn"t retreat.