Fire Sail

by Piers Anthony

  “Well, read it.”

  “Like me you are a spraint on the riverbank, understand and your halfway there.” He looked up. “What’s a spraint?”

  Nia laughed. “Otter poop.”

  “I’m poop?”

  “Maybe it means you aren’t important, just as a turd by a river isn’t.”

  “Maybe it does,” he agreed. “I’m halfway where?”

  Nia shook her head. “I can understand the two of us being spraints, that is supremely unimportant folk. We are. But I don’t see why understanding that makes us halfway anywhere. I suspect it’s nonsense.”

  Dell peered at it again. “Your,” he said. “The note says ‘your.’ Is that right? Shouldn’t it be ‘you’re’?”

  “Maybe whoever wrote it down was careless. It might even have been a joke message, forgotten when the joke was done. Maybe we should just forget it.”

  “I guess,” he agreed, pocketing the paper.

  They settled down on their beds of hay. “Well, now.”

  “Now?” he asked sleepily.

  “I found a paper of my own, under the hay.”

  “Another lost note!”

  “Perhaps. Let me see.” She peered closely at it. “It’s a poem,” she said, surprised. “Titled ‘Evil Whispers.’ No capitals in the main text. That’s weird. But it does rhyme.”

  “Well, read it,” he said, echoing her tone.

  Nia cleared her throat and read aloud.

  follow me now, through this world of dreams

  listen closely to the mournful screams

  each dark corner, just around each bend

  shadows of evil, each step closer to the end

  I’ve led you astray, so many nights long past

  trembling and weak, hiding in the shadows I cast

  so follow me now, but hide me well my dear

  look not into my eyes, for

  “I think the end of it is missing,” Dell said. “What is in its eyes?”

  “We should be able to guess it,” Nia said. “But I just can’t think of the obvious continuation, as if magically balked. That spooks me.”

  “That’s the way I feel when I’m alone at night,” Dell said, shuddering. “Spooky.”

  “Me too, though I never cared to show it. It’s not becoming in a person my age.”

  “You know, these two papers we found seem relevant,” he said. “As if they are not coincidences, but messages to us. Mysteries to tease us. Does that make sense?”

  “It may,” she said thoughtfully. “The Good Magician might have seen us coming, as it were, and left them for us to find.”

  “But why? We’re just—”

  “Just spraints,” she finished. “And nervous about what we face.”

  “So why should he bother?”

  “This may be laughable. But is it possible we are more important than we think?”

  “I’d be embarrassed even to think that.”

  “So would I. So they must have been lost by travelers. So let’s forget it and go to sleep.”

  “Unless that minstrel, Cool Hand Lute, left them where she knew we would find them.”

  “Now that’s an idea! Maybe she’ll laugh her cool hand off when we actually show to bother the Good Magician.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, embarrassed for what was bound to happen.

  “Now it’s overtime to sleep. Good night.”

  Dell fidgeted. “I—I don’t know if I should say this, but—”

  “What?” she asked a little too politely. She was plainly tired and growing impatient with him, and struggling not to show it.

  “Those messages. They make me even more nervous than I was before. Could—”

  “Spit it out,” she said with suppressed ire.

  “Could I sleep closer to you? Maybe even hold your hand?” He was blushing furiously in the dark, expecting her derision for his childishness.

  She laughed. “I thought you’d never ask. I feel it too. Come on over.”

  Relief flooded through him. She had not ridiculed him! In fact she supported his feeling. “Thank you,” he breathed as he picked up his bundle of hay and brought it to her side of the shelter. He lay down on it.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking his hand. “It’s okay for young folk to be nervous. Older folk are supposed to know better. So for the record, I am comforting you.”

  She was implying that she needed this reassurance as much as he did. He wasn’t sure whether that was true, but was phenomenally grateful for the support. No one before had made him feel as much at ease in such a short time as she had. Certainly not his real grandmother. “You are,” he agreed.

  They slept. He dreamed of seeing spots of otter dung along a riverbank, and of being afraid of them. He woke, found her hand still holding his, and was reassured. After that his dreams were easier.

  In the morning they took turns with natural functions, harvested more pies, then set off for the Good Magician’s Castle, which was on a separate path.

  But there was an obstruction, or rather, construction. Large ants were busily working on a highway that crossed the path. It was guarded by enormous GI ants who looked too ferocious to challenge. They were supervised by belligerent Tyr Ants with noncommissioned Sarge ants marshaling the aggressive Milit Ants troops. Some were adult, Long P Ants while others were younger, Short P Ants, and some quite young, Inf Ants. Ten Ants were settling in at decimal intervals. Mut Ants initiated new ideas and methods of construction, but Err Ants made repeated mistakes. Some were even Tru Ants constantly going astray, while Devi Ants flatly refused to follow orders.

  Dell looked at Nia, and she looked back at him. Both of them were taken aback. Meanwhile, a squadron of Milit Ants was heading for them.

  “I believe these are Domin Ants. But this is an enchanted path,” Nia murmured. “They can’t actually hurt us.”

  “That helps.”

  The Tyr Ant arrived. Dell faced it. “Please, sir. We are just travelers heading for the Good Magician’s Castle. We don’t want to interrupt your work, which we can see is formidable, but are uncertain how to pass without doing that.”

  The ant wiggled its antennae. Then it set out across the construction site. They followed at a respectful distance. Soon they came to the other side. “Thank you,” Nia said.

  The Tyr Ant departed.

  “They let us through,” Dell breathed, relieved.

  “All it took was treating them with due respect,” Nia said. “Not everybody does.”

  They walked on. They came to a minor building with a large impressive facade that made it look far more formidable than it was. A sign said LIE BRARY. CHECK OUT HIGH-QUALITY LIES, USE, RETURN.

  “Thanks, no thanks,” Dell said. They walked on by.

  Soon they spied it, nestled within its moat, with the moat monster on guard. Its turrets reached toward the sky, where a high flat blade scraped out clouds: a sky scraper. The path led right to the drawbridge, which was down. It looked almost as if there were spraints on the moat bank.

  “I see them too,” Nia said. She took his hand briefly and squeezed it. “Here’s a wicked notion we rejected before, that maybe makes more sense by the light of day: Could the Good Magician have seen us coming, and planted those notes for us to find?”

  He realized that she was repeating this for the benefit of the Good Magician, who might be listening, now that they were on his property. So he played along. “Why? It makes no more sense than it did last night. We’re just spraints on the riverbank.”

  “And nervous about our own shadows. You’re right. It still doesn’t make sense to me either. We’re probably just seeing what’s on our minds.”

  “Poop. Confusion. Do we have dirty ignorant minds?”

  “Maybe so.”

  There was no response from the cast
le. That didn’t mean the Magician wasn’t listening. So maybe their little recital wasn’t wasted. Maybe. Still, it was a huge assumption to think that they mattered at all to him. They were spraints!

  And yet those messages hadn’t come from nowhere. Each indicated some serious thought and feeling. Was it safe to assume that they were meaningless?

  Dell looked at the path leading so invitingly down. “We just walk right in?”

  “It can’t be that easy,” Nia said. “I have heard from many who tried to visit the Good Magician. Few of them ever got in; the triple challenges were too severe.”

  “And I don’t expect to make it,” he said seriously. “But I have to try.”

  “Yes, same here. I would rather fail here than not try at all.”

  So they were decided. “Do we go together, or separately?” He hoped she would elect to do it together, because he felt far more competent in her presence.

  Nia shrugged. “Should we try it together and see what happens?”

  “Well, I guess we can find out.” Dell was relieved again. Yes, he much preferred company. He strode along the path. She paced him.

  Chapter 2

  Challenges

  Dell found himself in some kind of chamber. It was long and not too wide, with wooden benches along the sides, and windows behind the seats. A number of people were sitting on the benches, looking bored, and others were standing and holding on to handles that descended from the ceiling.

  Then the chamber started to move, with a lurch. Dell grabbed a hanging handle so as not to stumble. He saw lights moving beyond the windows. No, the lights were stationary; it was the room that was moving. It was a vehicle of some sort!

  Grania was nowhere in view. That meant that the Challenges were supposed to be individual. Okay. She must be in some other scene, or maybe another moving chamber. He was on his own.

  A seated woman crossed her legs. They were nice legs, and—

  Dell discovered himself hanging by the strap. He must have blanked out momentarily and lost his balance. He glanced back at the legs. They were bare, and—

  A jolt snapped him alert. What was happening?

  He looked out of the nearer line of windows and saw lights whizzing by. The chamber was moving rapidly now, and he didn’t remember it accelerating. There were signs outside, facing the—he realized that it was something he had heard about, in Mundania: a subway train. One sign said CLOTHING, the letters stretched along beside the platform along the tracks so that they could be read as the train zoomed past.

  What was he doing on a Mundane subway?

  Then he put it together. This wasn’t really Mundania, and it wasn’t a real train. It was a Challenge! He had to get past it, and past two more Challenges, before he could enter the Good Magician’s Castle.

  Where was the train going? Surely not where he wanted to go. Probably it zoomed along in an endless loop. His problem was to get safely off it, and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t just stop to let him exit.

  He looked around the interior again. Now he saw something he had somehow missed before. There were men and women standing and sitting, all perfectly ordinary. Except that they wore no trousers. Just briefs and—

  Another jolt shook him out of it. Now he knew what was happening: he was seeing the women’s panties, and freaking out. He had to stop looking!

  The woman across from him started to uncross her legs. Dell’s eyes started to travel of their own accord.

  Uh-uh. It was Nia’s voice in his head.

  That froze him. His eyes lifted like reluctant anvils to fix unfocused on her face instead of her revealed panties. He felt dizzy, but he did not freak out. “Thanks, Nia,” he murmured.

  Obviously he had to get out of this train; it wasn’t going anywhere he wanted. But how? That was the challenge, especially since he couldn’t even look at the women without losing his mind.

  He closed his eyes to prevent mind-bending distractions and thought. He didn’t know much about Challenges, but understood that there was always a way through them, if a person could just figure it out. There were usually hints, and things that could be used. The Challenges weren’t so much tests of courage or knowledge, as of practical application. Of on-the-spot understanding.

  He wasn’t going to figure much out if he couldn’t look around to see what hints there were, and he couldn’t look because all around him were women showing their panties. He had to get them out of those panties! Um, wrong direction. Get them into more covering clothing. Which really wouldn’t happen until he solved the puzzle. That was another loop.

  He opened his eyes and cranked them around to the nearest window, the only safe place to look. There was the lighted CLOTHING sign again, indicating that the train had already completed at least one loop. He was wasting time. Was there a limit, or could he remain here indefinitely, until he starved to death on the traveling train?

  Clothing. As if that related.

  Then a bulb flashed over his head. Maybe it did relate! That clothing store should have pants and skirts: exactly what was needed. If only he could get at it.

  And how could he do that? There must be a hint, if only he could find it. He would have to look around, somehow.

  He let go of the strap and faced the interior of the car. He looked at the ceiling. Nothing there. He lowered his gaze.

  Uh-uh.

  Right. He kept his gaze locked above waist level. Now he saw the people, male and female, all perfectly ordinary, except that they lacked pants. He was the only one with pants on. None of them were looking back at him. He realized that they were really mock-ups, props for the setting; he was the only live actor in this play.

  He walked along the length of the car, keeping his eyes high. He came to the end if it, where there was a closed door to another car, one that was rocking savagely around. He opened the door and stepped into the chamber that connected the two cars. Now he saw that they were both rocking violently, as he stood on the screen-like section between them; it was only his perspective that made the other one seem worse than the one he was on. At least there were no distracting bare legs or whatever here. Through the holes in the screen he could see the rapidly passing trestles of the train tracks below the floor. Both cars were zooming over those tracks, and irregularities in the connections were responsible for the constant rocking. The irregularities weren’t rocking; it was the interaction between them and the train. Was that a workable analogy for the human condition, reacting violently to things that didn’t care? He was not enough of a philosopher to know.

  He spied a box marked EMERGENCY—Break Glass. He lifted its glass lid, not caring to actually break it since it was not an emergency, and saw several metallic rods or bolts. One was marked Fan C. Another was Lightening, another Enlightening. What were they for? He had always been intrigued by the nature of objects, and these ones surely had immediate relevance.

  He drew out the Fan C rod and squeezed its handle. Suddenly it opened out into a really fancy fan. Okay, if it got hot here he would use it to fan himself. He tucked it under his belt for the moment.

  There was a Flashlight labeled Heavy. That made sense; heavy went together with light. He took it and put it in a pocket.

  He touched the Enlightening bolt. Suddenly his mind sharpened. He was enlightened! Now he saw a good use for the other bolt.

  He picked up the Lightening Bolt and squeezed its handle. It became light in his hand. He drew it out of the box and touched it to the floor of the train.

  Nothing happened. But his new enlightenment gave him a reason: he had not broken the glass, so it did not consider this an emergency. But it was not the one at risk of washing out of the Challenge; he was. So he lifted the rod and smashed it down on the glass lid, shattering it. Then he touched the floor again.

  The train got light and lifted off the tracks. He felt it and saw it through the floor screen. It was
still moving, because of the magic of inertia, but no longer had the stabilizing connection to the tracks. It still had mass, because he wasn’t floating; his feet remained firmly on the floor. Would it crash?

  That sobered him. What had he done?

  Alarmed, he went back into the car. The people still stood and sat there, unconcerned, their legs still bare. Uh-uh. He halted his eyes before they went astray. They were indeed automatons, not real folk, but that did not seem to weaken the power of the female panties. They did not care if the train crashed.

  Well, he cared! This might all be a mock-up for a Challenge, but it deserved to be treated prudently. He needed to save the train.

  He strode to the place he had started, by the window. He swung the rod at the window, breaking it. Then he took the Fan C fan, put it out the window, and waved it. It caught the passing air with surprising force.

  He adjusted its orientation, fanning forward, and through the magic of Reaction it pushed him backward. Since he was braced against the broken window of the train, it slowed the whole train. Clumsy, maybe, but necessary to prevent the crash.

  And there ahead was the clothing store. He angled his fan, drawing the train to a stop right there. “We are at the Store,” he announced. “Passengers will enter it, don new pants, and return to the train.”

  They did so, not having the minds to question a direct order. Soon all of them were fully clothed. He no longer had to avoid looking below their waists. Now he could appreciate the cross-legged woman without freaking out.

  He brought out the flash-heavy and shone it on the train. The train settled slowly back down on the tracks. Now it could safely resume motion.

  But what of himself? Dell realized what he had almost missed: he had stopped the train. Now he could get safely off it. He quickly did so, then watched as it drew away and disappeared down its tunnel. He had navigated the Challenge, hadn’t he?

  He walked along the platform until he found a door labeled OUT. He opened it and stepped outside the station.

  He was at what appeared to be a formal dance. The men were in black coats with long tails and the women wore elaborate gowns. But there was something amiss.