Brown roses? Jess was electrified.
Che smiled as he returned to the deck. “No, those are not Rose of Roogna’s cultivated variety, though they are related. They are a different shade. They merely suppress the magic of bad smells.”
Oh. So there would no siege of Jess’s curse being suppressed. She sighed internally. Eliminating the smell was certainly worthwhile.
They stepped off the craft. The air was warm and redolent of roses and new mown hay, and there was a pleasant breeze. “The ring of filter trees removes any magic-related odors,” Che continued. “Since that includes the worst of the smells, that makes this an oasis. The local creatures can’t stand it; the stench is natural to them. So it’s a passing resort for visitors, a kind of spot paradise in hell. Sim knew of it, of course; few others do.”
“Let’s bring the others out,” Dolph said. “They deserve some respite, too.”
Soon Ula and Dell were with them, and Noe and Nia. There was still no sign of the princesses, so that the Hag would not catch on. Jess noticed that Dell did not look at Nia, though she looked at him. The Sea Hag was looking, Jess corrected herself. If she could tempt him into an embrace and steal his keys . . .
Jess went over. “My turn,” she said, relieving Noe, who went to join Santo. Jess loosened the rope tying the woman’s feet together so that she would be able to walk but not to run, and sat her on the deck. “You know we want to be rid of you, Hag, one way or another,” she said, not caring who else was listening. “Some among us would like to torture you until you depart, but we don’t want to injure our esteemed colleague Nia. So we’ll probably just take you back to the Brain Coral, where you belong, and make sure you never get loose again. That would be my preference.”
“You can’t be serious,” the Hag said via Nia’s mouth.
Jess smiled. “It is my curse not to be taken seriously. But if you reason it out for yourself, you will likely realize that it is not in our interest ever to let you go. We are however curious how and why you got involved in this business. Do you care to tell us?”
“No.”
“As you wish. You may talk or not, as you see fit. But here is the way we see it, which you may or may not consider seriously: somehow you managed to communicate with Ragna Roc, and he promised to make you Queen of Xanth if you just got him out of his imprisonment. You, being greedy for power, of course agreed. It did not occur to your limited intellect that he would more likely simply delete you once he was free, so as to prevent you from ever getting greedy and trying to oppose him. That makes perfect sense, don’t you agree? He already has a human girlfriend, if that is the appropriate term for a subservient minion. This is Em Pathy, who is pretty enough if you like that type, and who has served him loyally for many years and whom he does trust, in contrast to you.”
The Hag was now watching Jess closely. Jess was speaking a language she understood. The others were also listening closely. Jess was discovering to her surprise that she was pretty good at cruel teasing when she didn’t care who took her seriously. She wasn’t sure she liked this capacity, but at the moment it was serving a purpose: to provoke the Hag into doing something revealing or downright foolish.
“In fact Em and Ragna have probably already determined your fate, as they have of so many others,” Jess continued. “Em hardly wants a Sorceress like you competing for his attention. Sooner or later you will try to take Em over, so you’re really her enemy, whatever she may say while they need your services. I doubt you will survive more than a few minutes, once he’s out. And of course once you’re deleted, you won’t be able to take over any more host bodies. You’ll be completely impotent, able only to observe, not to affect. I trust you are looking forward to that.”
Now the Hag spoke. “What makes you think he’ll betray me, once Em Pathy is gone? He has many minions. I would be one of them, using my talent to serve his purposes, as the others do.”
There was the confirmation that the Hag meant to eliminate any competition for the bird’s favor. “It’s the logic of empire,” Jess said. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. He knows that ultimately you serve no purpose but your own. He can’t afford to trust you. You can accomplish a lot independently of his favor. That’s what makes you dangerous to him. His other minions will collapse in minutes without his support. He’s not stupid, any more than you are. He knows you are a natural enemy.”
“You lady wolf!” the Hag spat. “You’ve got me doubting!”
“It’s not because I care half a squished stink horn about you, Hag. It’s that if you release Ragna Roc, he will destroy most of what I value in Xanth. You of course don’t care about that, but when you realize that you will be gone with the rest, you may reconsider doing it. Your own hide, in whatever host, is valuable to you. So you may try to free him and be doomed, or to avoid that and continue on your ugly way, ruining the lives of pretty girls and all they associate with.”
“I may do that,” the Hag said thoughtfully.
“And you may not,” Jess returned. “We can’t afford to take the chance. So it’s off to the Pool with you, as soon as we finish here.”
“You can’t hold me. I can go any time I choose.”
“And we’ll have Nia back, and you can be sure she’ll never let you catch her again. But we still can’t trust you to stay away from Ragna. We’ll have to hunt you down and put you away. You know that.”
“Lots of luck there.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. Just that we’ll do it.”
“You’ll try.”
There was a stir of wings. Sim glided over the trees and landed neatly in the glade. “Squawk!”
“He has wrapped up his immediate business,” Che translated. “Now he can talk with us.”
“All we want to know,” Dolph said, “is how am I supposed to help save Xanth?”
“Squawk.”
Che laughed. “He says he thought it was obvious. You are supposed to put away the Sea Hag.”
“That’s all?” Dolph asked, surprised.
“That’s enough. Without you, this group has one chance in three to accomplish this. With you, it has two chances in three. It’s that simple.”
“Simple as untying an illusory Gourdian Knot,” Dolph muttered.
“Squawk.”
“Sim is now cataloging the assorted odors extant, as this world has a fine selection,” Che said. “Once he has them complete, he will move on. He is quite busy, as there is a lot to learn, and more keeps accumulating.”
“Can he spell out exactly how I am supposed to help these fine folk accomplish their mission and save Xanth?” Dolph asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“Sim can acquire knowledge of everything that exists, but that is largely past history. The present is an ongoing chaos state that can’t be properly defined until it becomes the past.”
“Chaos?”
“A state of utter confusion. Any small influence can make a huge change in the future. It is our fate to dwell perpetually in this ongoing disorder. Knowledge of the past is only one aspect of the larger reality. We can only estimate the chances of any action accomplishing what we wish it to, never guarantee it.”
“Are you saying we’re on our own?” Dolph asked, frustrated.
“Yes, now that you have the odds.”
Dolph glanced at Sim with understandable confusion. “And what do you feel the odds are for other matters? Are there any sure things?”
“Squawk.”
Che smiled. “The odds of a parabola maintaining its form are excellent.”
“A parabola?”
“A plane curve formed by the intersection of a right circular cone with a plane parallel to the generator of the cone.”
“Oh come on now! Tell it in people talk.”
“Think of a line,” Che said. “Think of a
point near that line. Like a fiery fence and a chained dragon. You don’t want to get too close to either, lest you get burned, but you have to pass by them. So you try to stay just as far from the one as from the other as you walk. Your route will be a curve. That curve is a parabola.”
Dolph spread his hands. “Does anybody here understand that?”
“Yes,” Santo said. “It’s a simple mathematical concept, useful when chained dragons have to be passed.”
The others laughed.
“If this is simple, I can see why chaos is complicated,” Noe said.
“It is complicated,” Che agreed.
The Sea Hag cackled. “It is simple. You morons are just ignorant.”
“And how much time have you had to learn to understand it?” Noe asked.
“A bit over three thousand years,” the Hag said. “I have passed many chained dragons in my day.”
“Let’s relax today,” Dell said. “Tomorrow we’ll tunnel back to Xanth and put the Hag into the Brain Coral’s Pool where she belongs, and I will have my dear wife back.”
“Oh, are you lonely?” the Hag asked. “Come to my bed tonight and I will make this fine body perform splendidly, just as I demonstrated in the illusion.”
“The bleep you will!” Jess snapped as Dell looked appalled. The illusion had featured Nia with Magnus, not Dell.
“Caution,” Santo said. “She is trying to make us angry with each other so we’ll make mistakes she can use against us. Divide and conquer.”
The Hag looked at him. “Look who is talking! The one who has no idea what to do with a woman.”
“No idea,” Santo agreed with a smile.
“But I could show you. You just haven’t encountered the right girl.”
“Alas, I never will,” Santo agreed pleasantly.
“See, you can’t goad him,” Noe said smugly.
“And the child-woman who foolishly dotes on him,” the Hag said.
“Listen, you foul-minded harpy!” Noe started. But Santo put his hand on her arm, and she stifled the rest.
“Maybe it’s time to take that creature to a private place,” Dell said tightly. That was to say, where she could not try to sow dissent among the crew members.
“Yes.” Jess got up and guided Nia’s body to the boat, leaving the others outside. The Hag was managing surprisingly well, tied as she was. Maybe she had experienced similar confinement before, in her long ugly history.
They navigated the hatch and went to Jess’s room. “I’ve got to pee,” the Hag said bluntly.
“You can use the toilet. I will pull up your dress and pull down your pants.” Because of course they wanted to take proper care of Nia’s body, for when she got it back. Jess knew better than to give the Hag any more freedom.
They handled that, then settled in chairs. “Are you going to harangue me with more of your garbage about Ragna Roc?”
“Not if you prefer to do the talking. I think you know you are not going to persuade me to let you go.”
“You’ve got spirit, I’ll say that for you, blocked woman. It’s hard to take you seriously, but you’re not slipping up.”
“Thank you,” Jess said dryly. What was the Hag up to? Jess did not trust her at all, especially now that she seemed to be making halfway nice. But she was also quite curious about what motivated this foul creature.
“Well, I’ll talk. I was part of the first human colony in Xanth, around the year minus 2200, give or take a century or two. I may have been the first full Sorceress, though that is not in the record because I had the wit to conceal it. I had a hard childhood; in fact I was married at ten.”
“Ten!”
The face smiled. “So you are paying attention. Yes, it was an arranged marriage, and a bad one. It didn’t matter that I was a child; I was female. The abuse I suffered at home was smoothly transferred to the abuse I suffered from that cruel man. I realized early on that being nice didn’t cut it; doing what I was supposed to only made me miserable. There was far more to be gained by looking out for myself regardless of the effect on others. Do you understand?”
Jess was silent, not wanting to agree.
“Considering your curse, I think you may understand. You are clearly a decent person, and constantly paying the price thereof. If you had a way to nullify it, you surely would.” She paused, but Jess did not speak; she was waiting for the punch line. “When my magic manifested—it didn’t show at first—I realized that I could forever escape the degradation I had suffered. So I got me a young beautiful body, prettiest girl in the village, and made the most of it, and when that host wore out, I got another like it. I escaped my curse. And so it went for about three thousand years. I had a relatively good life. It’s amazing how much a pretty girl can get away with, in contrast to the plain ones.”
Jess could not remain silent longer. “And what of the poor hosts you ruined with your dissolute living? You are notorious for making pretty girls into ugly women.”
“That’s no concern of mine. My only real inconvenience was having to kill my hosts in order to move on to better ones. I finally learned to get around that, and now I can move on without having to die first.”
“I suspect that’s not because you decided to be kind to your hosts.”
“Of course not. It’s because death usually makes a ruckus, while I prefer to be subtle. I would rather have no one know I am among them; that saves me some grief.”
She seemed to be telling the truth, but Jess didn’t trust it. She was up to something.
“Then in more recent times, oh, maybe seventy years ago, I got creative. Instead of searching for the best next host body, I decided to raise it myself. I got this lovely long-haired child, Rapunzel, and raised her in a tower, instilling in her all the things to make her an ideal future host. I kept her sweet and innocent. Then, just as she was ready to be harvested, that idiot Grundy Golem came and absconded with her. All my work was wasted. You may be sure I didn’t make that mistake again.”
Jess knew that the lovely Rapunzel had married a golem, and they had a child named Surprise. There must have been an interesting story there.
The creature continued talking in a monotone. First Jess got bored, and then she got sleepy. It didn’t really matter because she knew that she would come alert the moment the Hag tried to get close to her.
She felt a faint touching, internal rather than external. Then it turned away, not taking her seriously.
Then suddenly she was being called. “Jess Jess! Wake up! Wake up!”
It was Nia’s voice. Jess snapped awake. “Don’t try to fool me by imitating your host!” she said.
“Listen to me!” the Nia voice cried. “The Sea Hag is gone! She left me for another host. Aboard the boat! Don’t let her do it!”
This certainly didn’t sound like the Hag! But how could she be sure it wasn’t a trick? “What happened?”
“She tricked you. Tricked us! She stalled for time until most of you were asleep. Then she changed. A sleeping person can’t resist the way an awake one can. Jess, she’s got someone else!”
Jess lurched to her feet and charged out of the room, leaving the Nia figure tied, just in case. As she ran she realized that the Hag had tried for her, as she nodded, but couldn’t take her seriously as a host. Her curse had saved her!
“Dell! Dell!” she cried, bursting into his room. There he was, snoozing, while Ula snoozed in another chair. “Check on Nia, in my room! You can tell if she’s real or possessed. If she’s real, free her!”
Wordlessly Dell ran for the room. Ula was alarmed. “The Hag is loose?”
“I fear so.” Then Jess got an ugly notion. She grabbed Ula and stared into her frightened face. But there was no sign of possession. “Not you, I think.”
“Not me!” Ula agreed with a twinge of horror. “But who?”
Jess moved in, i
ncreasingly fearing that it was the truth: that the Hag had a new victim. But who, indeed?
She burst into Santo’s room. He was sleeping, with Noe beside him. Jess grabbed the girl and looked into her eyes.
Noe spat into her face, then clawed her shoulder, trying to get free. This was the Hag! Jess struggled to control her, but the girl turned out to be a vicious fighter. When Jess hauled her in close, she got kneed in the belly. Somehow she hung on, turning Noe away from her. And got kicked in the shin.
Then Santo was awake. “Why are you two fighting?” he demanded.
“The Hag!” Jess screamed. “She’s the Sea Hag! The Hag moved!” Would he believe her?
Santo put his hands on the girl’s head and turned her face toward him. He looked into her wild eyes. “She’s possessed,” he agreed. “I know Noe. This is not her.”
“How could you know anything, you perverted excuse for a boy?” the figure demanded. “You never touched her body!”
Together they got the girl tied hand and foot. She glared at them. “You fools will never stop me!”
Then the others arrived. There was Dell with Nia, and Nia was now disheveled but free in more than one sense. Dell looked phenomenally relieved. He had his wife back!
“The Hag tricked us,” Jess gasped. “She waited for us to sleep, then changed hosts.”
Santo quickly translated, to be sure they understood.
“It’s true,” Nia said. “I knew what she planned, but I couldn’t speak at all. She had me completely clamped down.”
“And now she’s got Noe,” Santo said. He had been effective during the fracas, but now that he had time to absorb the implications, he wilted. “Oh, Noe!”
He did love her in his fashion.
“You blubbering fool!” Noe’s mouth said. “You thought you were so smart, but you lost your girlfriend. Now how do you do?”
Santo looked ready to strike her, but of course he couldn’t hit Noe. He had talked of torture to get rid of the Hag, but it was clear he couldn’t do it.
Nia put her arms about him, again. She understood him. She was also, it seemed, back to her old self. Either possession by the Hag was not ultimately harmful, or Nia was supremely tough in her own right. Probably the latter.
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