Okra lifted the seed. "Slow her to three quarters of our speed, " she said.
The bird"s wing beats slowed. She lost elevation faster than she wanted to. She had to pump harder to avoid crashing into the ground. Even in a dream, that might hurt. "What have you done to me?" she squawked.
Even her words were slow.
"I used the seed of Thyme to slow you to three-quarter speed," Okra replied. "I can slow you further, if you don"t behave."
The roc landed b.u.mpily on the ground and hopped toward them. Her hops were slow, and she seemed to hang longer in the air than she should. It would be easy to avoid her. "What is this seed of Thyme?" she asked, still speaking in a somewhat measured manner.
"The Simurgh gave it to me, to give to you. But you must free your captives and not try to eat them."
"And you must give us the egg," Jenny called.
"Never!" Roxanne cried. "The Simurgh sent me to egg-sit, and I must protect that egg until it hatches."
"But we need it," Jenny said.
"You can"t have it! I know the Simurgh would never have given it to you."
It did seem odd to Okra that the Simurgh would send a roc bird to protect the great crystal egg, then allow it to be taken to a mountain of goblins. "Why do you have to have it?" she asked the elf.
"Because Gwenny Goblin has to fetch what is between a roc and a hard place, or she won"t get the chance to be the first female goblin chief.
And the egg is what"s between the roc and the hard stone nest."
"You can"t have it!" Roxanne repeated.
Okra realized that there might be something else here.
"Is the egg the only thing in the nest?"
"It must be," Jenny said. "We saw it."
"Yes, that"s all I allow in the nest," Roxanne agreed.
"What about stray feathers?" Okra asked.
Jenny looked at her, astonished. "Why that would count, too! Maybe we don"t need the egg!"
"Still, you tried to steal the egg," Roxanne said. "So I must eat you."
"But you can"t eat Che Centaur," Okra said. "No winged monster can."
"n.o.body ever told me that, " Roxanne said. "As far as I"m concerned, he"s a thief, too, and deserves to be eaten."
"But if we took only a feather, and promised never to return," Jenny said. "Then-"
"No. You tried to take the egg."
"But suppose we gave you the seed of Thyme?" Okra asked. "Would that make you change your mind?"
"I don"t want to slow myself to three-quarter speed!" Roxanne said.
"But with it you could make yourself any speed-or anything else any speed," Okra said. "It is a very powerful thing. That is why I am able to stop you. I just change your speed to something that can"t hurt me.
If you had it, you-" She paused, realizing the roc-sized significance of it. "You could speed up the egg until it hatches, and you would be free!"
"Free!" Roxanne exclaimed, excited.
"And all you have to do is let them go, with a feather," Okra said.
"Will you do that?"
It was evident that even a firmly mind-set roc had her price. "If that is all, yes."
"Then let"s get out of this dream and fetch that feather," Jenny said.
But Okra was more cautious. "Truce?" she asked the roc.
"Truce," the bird agreed. "But if you try to steal the egg again, I"ll eat you."
Jenny clapped her hands, creating her own distraction, and the dream vanished. They were all back in the roc"s chamber. They could no longer talk with Roxanne, but the bird understood them well enough.
"I"ll go get the feather," Mela said. "You don"t want to get in range, Okra, just in case."
That made sense. Mela walked to the egg. Roxanne approached it also, but did not try to attack. Actually she was still at three-quarter speed, which helped.
Mela looked in the nest. "There"s no feather here," she said.
"Oh, there must be!" Jenny cried in anguish.
"Maybe something else?" Okra asked.
"Nothing but an old shed claw," Mela said.
"A claw will do, if it"s been between the roc and the hard place," Okra said.
Mela hauled out the claw. It was as long as she was, a talon like a long sword. "Come to think of it, this must always have been between the roc and hard places, because every time she lands on a mountain or the floor or the nest, or picks up a stone or a bone, this claw was between her and it. Once she lost it, it"s been in the nest.
She faced Roxanne. "Is it all right to take this?"
The bird nodded. It wasn"t as if she didn"t have plenty of other talons.
"Then will you let us go, if we give you the seed of Thyme?" Okra asked.
Reluctantly, the bird nodded again.
"And you know that if you break this agreement, you"ll be in trouble with the Simurgh?" Okra asked. "Because she"s the one who sent us here?"
Roxanne jumped. It was obvious that she didn"t want that. The Simurgh had given her a way to get free whenever she chose; why should she throw it away by angering the Simurgh anew?
So Mela hauled the talon away, struggling with its weight, and Okra walked to the nest and put the seed of Thyme in it. Immediately the time became normal for all of them; her commands no longer applied. "All you have to do is hold it and tell it what to speed up or slow down," she said. "Maybe you had better test it before we go, to make sure it understands you."
Roxanne came to the nest, reached inside it with her beak, and brought up the seed. She tucked it under a wing feather, and squawked.
Suddenly she was a blur of motion. Light flooded into the chamber. The bird had activated the seed and speeded up, or made the rest of them slow. They were now at her mercy.
Then things returned to normal motion. Mela, Jenny, and Okra stood unharmed. The bird had not taken advantage of her power over the seed to eat them. She had only tested it. Fortunately.
"Then we"ll go now," Okra said.
Roxanne nodded.
They climbed back down through the hole, and then walked out through the open castle. Okra carried the talon, which was too heavy for Mela to haul for long. Soon they came to the front gate and crossed the drawbridge, which was now down for them. Roxanne had opened everything during her trial with the seed.
Okra had wound up helping Jenny Elf, too. Okra hoped she would not regret this foolishness. It was unogreish, for one thing. And it still didn"t help her achieve her desire to become a major character.
Che was amazed at recent developments. One moment he had been in the cage; the next he had been in the downstairs chamber with his friends, facing a buxom merwoman with legs, a surprisingly small and unugly ogress, and a young woman whose ident.i.ty he had almost mistaken. But he had been able to reorient rapidly, as was proper for a centaur, because he had seen two of them in the tapestry. They were Mela Merwoman and Okra Ogress.
Even as he placed them, they were introducing themselves and the third, who turned out to be Ida Human. They had been sent by the Simurgh to save Gwenny Goblin"s party, for the Simurgh was the original winged monster who had declared that Che would someday change the history of Xanth and should be protected. To facilitate that, the ogress had brought Roxanne Roc a seed of Thyme.
That had proved to be a bit complicated, but now it was done, and all six of them were on their way back to Goblin Mountain. Because Che, realizing that they could get there in time only with the help of the other three, had used juvenile logic to persuade them. He would not be able to get away with that when he grew to be an adult, but he wasn"t there yet. Except for the business about the Adult Conspiracy, which perhaps he could pretend to forget for a few more years. It really didn"t apply when centaurs weren"t with humans or crossbreed humans, so was of limited concern. Centaurs preferred to fetch their progeny directly, not trusting innocent babies to the carelessness of storks.
Now they stood at the edge of the cloud, the Nameless Castle behind them. The day was waning, and circ.u.mstantial evidence indicated that it was their second day of this quest; they had perhaps an hour to get back to Goblin Mountain. He hoped their new companions could enable them to do it.
"Will all of us fit in the rocket seed?" Mela asked.
She wore what Che recognized as a Freudian slip, which tried to slide around to reveal a peek at a truly intriguing panty. She also wore Freudian slippers, which tended to set her feet down where her legs showed a bit too much.
There was surely an interesting story behind her attire.
"Surely we will," Ida said optimistically. "It"s such a big seed!"
Now Che saw the seed to which she referred. It was a big cylinder with translucent sides and a panel. It lay on the edge of the cloud. He doubted it would hold six folk.
In any event, what was the point? They didn"t need to cram into a seed, they needed to travel swiftly.
The ogress went to the seed and hauled it up so that it pointed toward the sky. "Pile in," she said gruffly. Che could see that she was not enormously pleased about this a.s.sociation, and she especially did not seem to like Jenny Elf. Well, she had reason. It was a real irony that the Simurgh should have required the ogress to help rescue the elf. Did the Simurgh have a mean streak?
They piled into the big seed, and lo, it turned out to be even larger inside than out, and they all did fit. Then the ogress slid the side panel shut. She did something-and fire and smoke billowed all around the seed and hurled it up off the cloud. Now the fire and smoke seemed to be coming from the base of the seed, blasting out and down as if eager to get away from it. Well, that was better than having it try to burn up the seed! Maybe that was why the seed was moving so swiftly: to escape the fire.
Jenny and Gwenny were hugging each other, terrified, but Mela and Ida were taking it in stride. Che looked at the ogress, and saw that she was looking at a panel on which were several pictures. One picture was glowing: a messy pocked rubble heap of a hill. That would be Goblin Mountain!
He looked out through the transparent side. The seed leveled off, then zoomed across Xanth, headed inland. Che peered down, realizing that though he still seemed to be standing upright with the others, all them were actually lying flat with respect to Xanth. This was most interesting magic!
The cloud bearing the Nameless Castle had evidently traveled a fair distance during their stay on it, because they were not traveling west, but northwest. He saw the Isle of Illusion, and the Gap chasm, and dragon country. Ahead was the smoke of the Element of Fire. But that was beyond their destination; was the ogress overshooting the mark?
Then the rocket seed dropped down, already arriving at Goblin Mountain.
They were going to be there on time!
It came right at the mountain, frightening the goblins on it; Che almost laughed as he saw them scatter into their holes.
The seed came to rest in sight of the mountain. Okra slid the panel open. They were there.
Gwenny got over her fright. "Oh, how wonderful!" she exclaimed as they piled out and stood beside the seed.
"You have done me such a favor!"
"We did it because of the Good Magician," Mela said.
"And Nada Naga and her brother, Naldo, and the Simurgh. We are each supposed to have our Questions answered when we"re done. So now we"ll go back to find Naldo, and hope that he makes good on his word."
"Oh, Naldo will," Gwenny said. "He came to help us when the goblins fought the winged monsters, because of the alliance. He doesn"t like goblins at all, in fact his people and ours have been at war for centuries, but he did it. He"s the very best creature."
Okra made a wheezing sound.
Chapter 15.
Che glanced at her. "What"s the matter?"
"Just my asthma," Okra wheezed. "I must have changed alt.i.tude too swiftly. It will pa.s.s in a moment."
But Che was alarmed. "You mean you have an illness?" Okra coughed weakly. "It comes and goes. It makes my breath clog up so I lose my strength. I"ve been lucky recently, and hardly felt it at all, but now it has caught up with me."
"We must get a cure for you," Che said.
"No, it will pa.s.s," she repeated. "I"m surprised it hasn"t caught me more often since I left home. Maybe I"ve just been moving around so much that it hasn"t been able to keep up. So maybe it just lay in wait for me here, and caught me." She coughed again, wheezingly. "You must get on to the mountain with your prize." She laid down the roc"s talon, which now seemed to be too heavy for her to carry.
Che didn"t like this, but knew she was right: Gwenny had to get promptly to Goblin Mountain. "I hope you get better soon," he said. "You have been a real help to us."
"I"m sure you"ll think of a way to get rid of it," Ida said with her characteristic optimism.
"That would be nice," Okra agreed, making an effort to smile.
Mela and Ida and Okra climbed back into the seed and pulled the panel closed. Che and the girls quickly retreated, knowing that the fire and smoke would come again. Goblins were reappearing at their holes, and Gwenny waved them back.
But nothing happened. The seed capsule just lay there.
After a while the ogress slid open the panel. "It won"t go," she reported gruffly. She still looked weak and worn, and her voice was faint.
"Maybe you are not yet done with us," Che suggested.