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. "h.e.l.lo. I am a visitor from another world."
"h.e.l.lo!" 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 ma.s.s."
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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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, p.r.o.nouncing 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.s 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."
"Maybe someone with the talent of blessing could reverse the curse of the geis-a girl"s compulsion," Ghina said as they moved on.
Another chamber was filled with snakes. "I wish we had the blanket of obscurity now," For-rest said. "Those look poisonous."
Indeed, in a moment they were surrounded by very poisonous looking snakes. The snakes were on the floor, while most of the people were on a wall, but in the confines of the pa.s.sage they were close enough.
"There are too many for me to put to sleep," Ghina said.
"And they could follow if I made another door," Jfraya said.
Forrest couldn"t think of anything intelligent to do, so he tried something stupid: "Take us to your leader!"
The snakes made a path through their number toward a special cave.
Forrest and his party walked the nearest wall in that direction. Here lay a large snake wearing a crown. "It"s the King Cobra," Dawn whispered.
Forrest had another idea, not nearly as stupid as the last one. "O King Cobra, we crave a favor," he said. "We need to proceed quickly to the Red Wizard"s castle."
The king nodded. Several monstrous snakes slithered up. The travelers, including Imbri, climbed onto these snakes, and were carried swiftly onward. They rode at a considerable angle, but the snakes seemed to understand.
Forrest looked back. Sure enough, the King Cobra looked a size larger.
Soon they were at the end of the tunnel. They slid off the snakes, who seemed even larger than before, and moved back out onto the red surface.
Now they were correctly oriented, except for Jfraya. She had to lie on Imbri"s back, because she couldn"t stand on the ground.
It was still night. They proceeded directly to the Red Castle, and Ghina put its guardian monsters to sleep. Except for one. This was an animated angle.
"I recognize that," Eve said. "It"s a guardian angle. It protects folk against math courses."
"But we aren"t math courses," Forrest said.
"Right." She approached the guardian. "Please don"t let any math courses get us," she beseeched it.
The angle nodded its acute point graciously. It would protect them from that threat.
They entered the castle in the same manner as they had the other, and explained things to the red margins inside. The margins agreed to cease operations in two and a half days.
They emerged, and pa.s.sed through a door to a pa.s.sage leading directly to the blue face. This one, however, was not completely deserted. "But there aren"t any really bad folk on it," Eve said, after touching its wall. "Except maybe the cuss today."
"A toad that swears?" Forrest asked.
"Not exactly. It is found in the grounds for divorce. If we avoid the chamber where those grounds are, it shouldn"t bother us."
They avoided that chamber by taking a detour. On the alternate pa.s.sage they encountered a man of many colors. His skin was not blue, red, green, or gray, which explained why he wasn"t walking the surface of Pyramid. Instead it was rainbow colored.
"h.e.l.lo," the man said. "I am Hue Man."
The six of them introduced themselves, then moved on. It wasn"t that there seemed to be anything wrong with Hue Man, who seemed completely human, but that they were in a hurry to complete their mission, and didn"t care to advertise it, lest word get to the Wizards.
It was a long trip to the blue face, and by the time they reached it the night was done. They had to remain in the pa.s.sage. Forrest still had some food in his knapsack, and Ghina had some invisible sandwiches, so they ate lightly and relaxed.
When night arrived, they went out onto another face where they couldn"t walk. This time they tilted the opposite way, but it hardly mattered, their feet still wanted to be slightly above their heads. Jfraya"s feet went the opposite direction from theirs. But again Ghina was able to adjust her flying, and she put the monsters to sleep so that the group could crawl in and alert the margins.
This time they learned something new. The blue margins mentioned that they were able to communicate along their lines. That was how they identified people trapped within the enclosures formed by the lines. So if anyone got in the line of sight of a line, between the margin and the world of Ptero, he or she would be able to talk to the margin generating it. The lines did not become solid barriers until they were close to the surface of Ptero, because there was no sense wasting magic.
Actually, the whole of Pyramid was close to the surface of Ptero, but Forrest understood what they meant. The lines went up to the top of Castle Roogna, then bent at right angles, and came down after another bend to intercept the ground. Only with that last bend did they become actual walls.
So if we climbed to the top of the Wizard"s castle, we could intercept the lines and talk to you," Forrest said, getting it straight.
"Yes. That is how the Blue Wizard does it."
However, it seemed enough of a challenge just to crawl into the dungeon from the ground. Trying to get to the top of the castle seemed pointless.
They got the margins to agree to stop in a day and a half, and crawled back out. One Wizard to go!
Outside, Jfraya cast about uncertainly. "I can"t find a suitable pa.s.sage to open a door to," she complained. "There just don"t seem to be pa.s.sages to the bottom face."
"It wasn"t a place the goblins wanted to go to," Ghina said. "Mother commented about that. It"s all stormy and cold."
"That"s right," Jfraya agreed, remembering. "Because it never gets any direct sunlight, and "s always in shadow. By most accounts, it"s this world"s dullest face.
"But trying to trek all across this face to the edge, and then all across the gray face, would take days," Forrest said. "We have to move faster than that."
"It will have to be on the surface," Jfraya said. "There aren"t any safe pa.s.sages."
"Maybe we could get rides," Dawn suggested.
"On cooperative centaurs," Eve added.
"Can you locate such centaurs, quickly?" Forrest asked, feeling halfway desperate.
"I think so," Dawn said, touching a tree. "They pa.s.s by here often enough."
"And their prints form paths," Eve said, touching the ground.
"So let"s go and ask them a favor," Forrest said.
"Is that wise?" Imbri asked. "We are all smaller than we were."
"If we don"t accomplish the mission, our size won"t much matter," he pointed out.
The others nodded. "I"m sorry I couldn"t find a suitable door to make," Jfraya said. "This seems to be the best alternative."