“I don't know. I'm still learning how to use my talent. Maybe you can find out for me.”
“Sure thing.” He lifted one foot and brought it down hard on the smear wall. “Ouch! It's strong enough.” Then he looked beyond the truck. “But how can you float a boat without water?”
“I hope to erase the land and form a channel, and maybe the swamp water will fill it.”
He nodded. “It works for me.” He looked around. “Not much I can do here. Maybe I'll scout ahead, see if I can find Xanth.”
Kim looked up. “How will you know, without magic?'‘
“I'll go with him,” Jenny Elf said. “When I change form, we'll know.”
“Go,” Kim said, returning to her work. Woe Betide knew why: They couldn't afford to waste any time. If they didn't get to Xanth soon, it would be too late for half the party.
The two set off, and soon disappeared into the forest ahead. “Don't you worry about your boyfriend and your friend?” Woe Betide asked.
“'No. Jenny Elf was my Companion in the game. I know her. And I know Dug.”
Answer enough. “Do you think we're close enough to Xanth to make it in time?”
“We have to be. According to my map, we're just about at the Florida border, which for us is Xanth. It must be within a mile or so. And the fringe of magic must extend out beyond it. So any further headway we can make is bound to help.”
But she looked worried Woe Betide knew why. Maps might be wrong, or the party might not be as far along as they thought. A small error could make a big difference. They just had to hope they were close enough.
The boat was forming, but its shape showed their problem:
The front was broader than the rear, because in the time it took Kim to erase the connecting truck, the aisle was shrinking. Now it was almost touching the centaur at the sides.
Kim also seemed to be working harder, as if the strength of the aisle was weakening as it shrank. Time was really getting short.
Dug and Jenny returned. “We found it!” he called. “Less than a mile ahead. Maybe closer, because it doesn’t thin out all at once.”
“Thank God!” Kim breathed. Woe Betide saw the suppressed tension leaving her. Then the girl smiled and faced Dug. “Of course,” she said, as if there had never been any doubt.
“We've marked out the easiest route,” Dug continued. “I mean, there's no point in erasing healthy trees or nice scenery.”
“How do I love thee,” Kim murmured. “Let me count the ways.” Metria was struck by the utter sincerity of her words; under the banter and insults and shin-kicks there was a solid core of real love. Then, louder, “Let's do it. We've got to work fast.”
Dug walked around behind what remained of the truck, his feet sinking into the muck. “Must be a rope here,” he said. “Or a chain. Got it.” He pulled forth a chain from under the truck bed. “I'll just hook this to the boat, and haul it along. Soon as there's a channel.”
Kim faced forward. The ground now came right up to the edge of the boat, because the front of the truck had been erased. She brushed her hand across the ground, and it disappeared, leaving-a dark hole. She stroked her hands back, and the hole spread. She wiped it out to the sides, and now some water seeped in.
She reached farther forward, but couldn't erase the land there; the aisle was now too short. So she did what she could close to the boat, while Dug tried to hook the chain on.
“Need a hole,” he muttered. So Kim wiped one finger there, and made a hole. He passed the chain through, then tried to tie it.
“Here,” Kim said. She erased part of one link, set the end of the chain there, and unerased the link. Now the chain was firmly anchored.
Dug looked at that. “That's a more versatile talent than I thought.”
“It's close to Sorceress level, properly exploited,” Woe Betide said.
Dug braced himself and hauled on the chain, but couldn't budge the boat. “Too much weight on it,” Kim said, stepping off, “And not enough pull. I'll help.” She joined Dug.
“You know, a fellow could get to like you, if he tried,” Dug remarked.
“Don't get fresh, just pull,” Kim retorted, smiling,
But though the boat wavered, it didn't actually move.
Jenny joined them, but still it didn't work. It seemed to be caught on something below.
“I can help,” Woe Betide said. She turned smoky, sank through the boat, and spread out into a sheet immediately below it. She could do this because she was still close to Arnolde, within the aisle. In fact, she could now resume full volume and be Metria again. She felt the snags on the bottom of the boat, where Kim had not been able to reach, and solidified her substance around them, smoothing them out.
Then she turned her bottom side slippery.
Suddenly the boat lurched forward. It splashed into the erased hole before it—then out of it and onto the land. Metria had made it so slippery that it moved readily, no longer actually needing a water channel.
The others did not question a good thing. They kept hauling on the chain, and so Metria maintained the slippery bottom, and the craft fairly whizzed along over the ground. It left the peculiar wreckage of the truck behind. Years later, perhaps, Mundanes would discover it, and wonder whether a monster had chomped a boat-shaped bite out of it. They would surely never guess the truth.
The trees passed, and the forest thickened. The boat sloshed in irregular curves as it followed the route Dug and Jenny had prescribed. Progress gradually slowed, because the haulers were getting tired, and because Metria was beginning to tingle on her underside. She thinned her body, but knew that soon she would have to withdraw to the top of the boat or lose her substance. That would make it that much harder to haul. Were they losing their race against time after all?
Then the tingling faded. Was she turning numb? If so, she had to quit right now. But it didn't seem like that. It seemed almost as if she was gaining strength. How could that be?
Well, as long as it lasted, she would do as much as she could.
She made her undersurface even more super slippery, and felt the boat pick up speed. The others were pulling harder, doing their last-gasp bit too.
Arnolde lifted his head. “What is going on?” he inquired.
Metria poked a mouth up through the boat. “We're hauling you to Xanth,” she said. “Before you poop out entirely.”
“Poop shit? I was just resting. You don't need to haul me anywhere.”
“Yes we do, because—”
“Look at Jenny's ears!” Dug exclaimed. “They're pointed.”
“We're in Xanth!” Kim cried. “Oh, I'm so glad, I could kiss someone!”
“Well, if you feel that wa—” But he was cut off by her hurtling kiss.
Metria floated up through the boat. She extended an arm cautiously to the side. She reached beyond the prior limit, and felt no tingle. It was true: They were now surrounded by magic.
“I could kiss someone too,” she said. She floated to Ichabod, who was just beginning to stir. “I think I'll wake the sleeping prince.” She put her head down, solidified her face, and planted Xanth's most poignant kiss on his mouth.
The man came awake as if electrified. He seemed to float.
“I thought I was dying,” he said. “Now I'm in heaven.”
“Would you settle for Xanth?” she asked.
“Same thing.”
Dug and Kim and Jenny closed in. “You made it possible, Met,” Dug said. “We couldn't budge that thing, until you iced it. You were the difference.”
“You're a great person,” Kim said, and Jenny nodded agreement.
Metria opened her mouth to say something clever, but it dissolved instead. She had never anticipated such a reaction.
She melted into a puddle.
They crossed the Interface and were back in Xanth proper.
Sammy found them a pie tree, and they feasted. It was such a relief to be back in Xanth! Even the animals seemed to like it; Sammy lived to find t
hings magically, and Bubbles was becoming more lively than she had been. Evidently she, like the centaur, needed magic to restore her vitality.
“Now we must organize,” Kim said. “Arnolde and Ichabod need to return to the Region of Madness, and Dug and I and Jenny have to get to this Nameless Castle, and you, Metria, have your other summonsees to summons. Do we just split up and go our separate ways?”
“No,” Metria said immediately. “It's my job to get all the summonsees there safely, so I can't just turn you loose.
And I should make sure that Arnolde and Ichabod get to the madness safely too, because it was to help me fetch you that they left it, at great discomfort and risk to themselves.”
“Then perhaps we should travel together for a while longer,” Arnolde said, seeming undispleased.
“It works for me,” Dug agreed, similarly satisfied.
“Maybe the rest of us can help her fetch in the remaining summonsees.”
“If my new talent can be useful—“ Kim said.
Metria laughed. “It was your talent that saved us! It can surely help again.”
“But without Arnolde's aisle of magic, I couldn't have used it,” Kim said.
“And I couldn't have existed,” Metria added.
“There is enough credit to go around,” Arnolde said. “I think it is fair to say that we have come to respect each other, by profiting from the abilities each brought to the mission.
Ichabod provided the house, truck, and knowledge of Mundania, without which the effort would have foundered. Dug and Jenny explored for the most expeditious route and provided most of the hauling strength. Each person's contribution was vital at some point.”
The others passed a glance around. The centaur did have a point. Suddenly they all felt better about themselves.
“Then let's travel,” Kim said briskly.
Dug shook his head. “You're a bit hyper, know that? All the rest of us are tired from physical exertion, or wrung out from a siege of low magic. And you are too, if you had the wit to know it. We need to rest, or we'll blunder into real mischief. Xanth isn't all that safe for distracted or dull folk.
Tomorrow we can find an enchanted path and travel well. Today we'd better just recover.”
Another glance circulated. It was another valid point.
“I'm sorry,” Kim said. “I'm being pushy again. Yes, I'm tired too, and sort of dazed about being back in Xanth. I never thought I'd get here outside of the game. But it's great. I'll shut up.”
“That's the way I like my women,” Dug said. “Quiet and submissive.” He dodged her first kick. “And beautiful.”
That stalled her second kick in midair. She lost her balance and fell into him, so he kissed her soundly. Actually Kim wasn't beautiful in the standard sense, but it seemed that Dug knew a bit about girlfriend management too.
“I'd better check on Veleno,” Metria said, remembering her husband for some irrelevant reason. “Will you folk be okay here for a while?”
“We should be,” Arnolde said. “This close to the edge of magic, there shouldn't be any bad monsters.”
“And we can simply step back through the Interface if there are,” Jenny said. “We can go where they can't.”
So Metria popped off home, where Veleno was just beginning to run out of delirious happiness. It had been, after all, more than a day. She bustled him back to the bedroom and dosed him with another day's worth. She would have liked to stay longer, but she had an obligation to the traveling group to see it safely to its destinations. Her new conscience was a strict mistress, but she didn't mind.
When she returned, the group was relaxing under a weeping willow tree, cheering it by their company. Arnolde was discoursing on some of the problems of archivism. “Old documents are invaluable,” he was saying. “Even those deemed to be of little worth by their perpetrators. A scribbled note to stay out of the honey pot informs us that they did have honey pots in those days, and that they had writing.
Unfortunately some key documents have been lost to history.
As a centaur, I naturally know the list of the human Kings of Xanth, but there are some distressing lacunae.”
“Lacuna,” Metria said. “She's still around. She was retroactively married, and—” She paused, seeing their stares.
“Did I say something stupid?”
Arnolde smiled. “No, of course not, my dear. I was merely using the word in its linguistic capacity, meaning a gap or omission. Perhaps we expected you to say, 'A distressing what?' and we could then have had the dubious pleasure of redefining the term.”
“Oh. Whatever.” She still felt out of sons.
“At any rate, I was going on too long,” Arnolde said. “I wish there were some forgotten tome listing all the missing Kings, felicitously turning up. But of course. Good Magician Humfrey would have found it already if any such existed.”
“Unless it got lost during his distraction of wives,” Ichabod said. “Then he might have overlooked it.”
“Say,” Dug said. “I wonder if Sammy could find such a tome.”
The cat had been snoozing beside Bubbles, but suddenly woke and set off running. Jenny Elf scrambled after him.
“Wait for me!”
“Now look what you've done, idiot!” Kim told Dug.
“I'll track him!” Metria said, glad for something to do to make up for her conversational gaffe. She floated rapidly after the cat.
It turned out to be no long chase. Sammy ran up to a small structure bearing a plaque with the words BOOK STORE. Metria lifted its lid and peered in. It turned out to be a solidly constructed box wherein books were stored. The top one was a tome titled BOOK OF KINGS. So she took that out, set the lid back in place, and opened it. She was holding it backward, so she saw the last page first. There was a crude scrawled entry: STOLN BY TH OGRE ACHEVER, OGRE AN OGRE AGIN.
She considered. That did look like the writing of an ogre.
Ogres were justifiably proud of their stupidity. But how could any ogre have stolen such a (presumably) important book once, let alone over and over again? Even an overachiever among ogres would have trouble stealing a book, few ogres even knew what a book was.
Still, this one obviously did. He was actually a literate ogre, perhaps the only such in the mottled history of ogredom. So he had evidently done it, and was proud enough of his achievement to record it in the very book he had stolen.
She turned back another page. This one listed Magician Aeolus, the Storm King, assuming the throne in the year 971.
That was all. The rest of the page was blank. No other Kings were listed.
Since there had indeed been Kings thereafter—she could think of Magician Trent the Transformer, Magician Dor who talked with the inanimate, and about eight brief others in between—she knew that this book had been stolen during the Storm King's reign. That wasn't surprising, since the Storm King had become rather dim in his declining years, able to blow up hardly more than a breath of wind, and not much stronger intellectually. He had probably lost or forgotten the book, and the ogre achiever had found it, and given himself credit for stealing it. Thus all that it contained had been lost to Xanth history.
Assuming that it contained anything much. So she turned some more pages, and saw that more Kings were indeed listed. In fact, they went right back to the beginning of Xanth Kings. This book must have been passed down from King to King over the centuries, each one filling in the end date for his predecessor and his own year of ascension.
Good enough. She closed the book and carried it back to the waiting group. “I think this is it,” she said, presenting the tome to Arnolde.
“Why, so it may be,” the centaur said, amazed. He opened the book and read its title page. “Human Magician Kings of Xanth.” He looked up. “Astonishing! Where did Sammy find this?”
“In a book store.”
“A book store—in Xanth?” Kim asked. “Did you have to buy it?”
“No, it's just a box where books are stored.”
“There are other books?” Ichabod asked alertly. “If they are of similar rarity and quality, that may be an informational fortune! We must examine them.”
“Sure,” Metria said. “Right this way.”
But when she returned to the place she had found the box, there was nothing there. There did not seem ever to have been anything there, either; it was just an undisturbed rocky region in the forest.
“Maybe Sammy—?” Dug said.
But this time the cat was indifferent. “I don't think there's anything to find,” Jenny said. “He can find anything but home, except when there isn't anything. Then he just ignores it.”
“But there was a box!” Metria protested.
Ichabod cogitated. “Perhaps it moved—and the cat is unable to find a given object a second time, that being, as it were, a home base, something already found. I think we shall have to relinquish any notion of finding those other books.”
“Oh, fudge!” Metria swore. “I did it again! I should have grabbed them all.”
“You are not a scholar,” Ichabod said, excusing her. But a cloud of disappointment hovered near him.
The ogre achiever had stolen it over and over again, she remembered. Did that mean that each time the book store disappeared, he hunted it down again? Or that he had finally hidden it in this foolishly obvious place, and it had turned out to be a better hiding place than it seemed? If so, they had caught the book store just at the right time, before it moved. That made her feel a smidgen less worse.
They returned to Arnolde, who was engrossed in the Book of Kings. “This is absolutely fascinating!” he exclaimed. “I can vouch for its accuracy by the entries relating to what I already know. But there are many more. This is indeed an invaluable lost tome of information.”
“What's so exciting about a list of Kings?” Kim asked.
“I mean, that's what makes British history so absolutely, totally, completely boring, not to mention dull.”
“Well, there are also the dates of the Kings,” Ichabod said, looking over his friend's shoulder.
“Maybe I didn't make myself quite clear,” Kim said grimly. “If there's one thing worse than lists of names, it's lists of dates. Not only are they boring and dull, they're impossible to remember, and you flunk if you make a simple little mistake, like putting the wrong name with the right dates.”
Roc and a Hard Place Page 19
