Fire Sail

by Piers Anthony

  “We have come to see King Ivy,” Kadence said boldly. “Tell her that her granddaughter is here, with a mission from the Robot Realm.”

  The guard responded to the clear voice of authority. He disappeared into the castle. He returned in an undefined number of moments with an older woman. She looked to be about eleven years younger than Grania, which was still pretty senior.

  “Kadence!” the woman exclaimed, sweeping the child into a fond embrace. “I thought I wouldn’t see you for another decade.”

  Kadence burst into tears.

  Now Dell saw that the woman wore a small gold crown. This was King Ivy!

  “She was nervous about meeting you,” Nia said. “Something about a scandal with her parents.”

  Ivy looked at the child. “And she thought she was to blame?” she asked in a tone that forever banished the notion.

  “Uh, well, maybe,” Dell said awkwardly. “I’m Dell, and this is Nia, and this is Rosie Robot.”

  “Oh, I thought she was your girlfriend.”

  The awkwardness was intensifying. “That, too, maybe,” Dell said.

  Ivy laughed. “Teasing,” she said. “There’s something about you that invites it. Come on inside; we can’t stay out here forever embarrassing the moat monster.” She let Kadence go.

  Soon they were in a comfortable audience chamber. “Most of the others are out on business,” Ivy said. “I’m here pretty much alone. I’m glad to have some company.” Then she addressed Kadence. “Dear, you need to understand that you and your parents risked your very existences to save Xanth from dire peril, and we are forever grateful. We might take some issue with the manner they tried to do it, the girls being only twelve at the time, but the fact that they did do it means that we are here today to discuss it. You are an honored part of that effort, and I am glad to see you at any time. But how is it that you are here now? I am a bit concerned about paradox.”

  “No paradox, Grandma,” Kadence said. “I am visiting from when I am nine years old, borrowing a host, not messing with my own time line, so I can visit with other children who understand, because they are from a farther future themselves.”

  “The children Astrid Basilisk rescued,” Ivy agreed. “That was indeed a noble effort, and we commended her for it. Are you visiting with them now?”

  “Yes. They’re in the invisible boat.”

  “We can’t leave them unattended. Bring them here.”

  “I’ll do that,” Nia said quickly. She hurried out.

  Ivy turned to Dell. “And you, Dell—how is your mission for the Good Magician proceeding?”

  She was remarkably knowledgeable. But of course she was the King, with sources of information. “We, uh, are still looking for the rightful proprietors. So far there has been no sign of them. But we’ll keep looking.”

  “I should think you would be tempted to take the remarkable boat for yourselves.”

  “Oh no, ma’am!” he protested. “We’d never do that.”

  She reached across and patted his hand. She looked quite ordinary, but that physical touch conveyed the immense power of her magic. She was a Sorceress. “Teasing, again,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t. Humfrey picked the best personnel he could find.”

  Nia returned with the three other children. “This is King Ivy,” she said.

  “Grandma, these are Santo, Squid, and Win,” Kadence said. Her diffidence had been replaced by confidence from the moment Ivy touched her; she must have quietly Enhanced Kadence’s princessly abilities. “Santo makes holes through anything to anywhere. Win always has the wind at her back. And Squid, well, she’s a squid.”

  “Oh, I know,” Ivy said. “Now it is time for eye scream, boot rear, and hayberry cake.” She clapped her hands, and a servant brought out a huge platter of all of them. The children were immediately mesmerized.

  Kadence looked longingly at the marvelous dessert, but stayed put. She had a duty to attend to.

  “Oh, go ahead and join them, dear,” Ivy said. “You have done your part. We adults can manage for a while on our own.”

  Kadence went gladly to join the party.

  Now Ivy focused on Rosie. “Let me hear your case, please.”

  “The Robot Realm wants to establish formal relations with the human kingdom,” Rosie said. “Dell brought me out of the dream realm to serve as a robot liaison and template for the distaff of the species, as I am better acquainted with the human kind than the males are. We now burn coal rather than wood, so do not represent a threat to the trees. We are not interested in conquest. We just want to get along. We can mine gems and rare minerals for trade in return for well, acceptance.”

  “Then let’s do it, by all means,” Ivy said. “You will of course be the Queen Robot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must have a crown and scepter.” Ivy clapped her hands again, and a servant brought a pillow in which rested a crown and wand. “These are magic, of course, dear. The crown will enable you to know the general mental state of those who approach you, and the scepter will enable you to project your will to them, so as to have proper command of the situation. These can be useful to a monarch.”

  Rosie was taken aback. “But I’m only a machine!”

  “And Queen of the Machine Kingdom,” Ivy agreed. “I assure you that these tools will be as effective with robots as with living folk. Try them and see.” She lifted the crown and set it on Rosie’s head, where it fit perfectly. Then she put the scepter into her hand.

  Rosie stood there, looking preternaturally regal. Dell had never seen her more beautiful. He wished he could take her to bed this instant. Of course he would never say that.

  Rosie looked at him and blushed. That was surely hard for a machine to do, but she managed it.

  The crown! She was reading his mind. Now he was blushing too.

  A quarrel broke out among the children. Squid and Win, tipsy on boot rear, each wanted the largest piece of cake.

  “Share it evenly, without fuss,” Rosie said, gesturing with the scepter.

  The children immediately did so.

  The scepter worked too.

  “You saw us coming!” Rosie said.

  “And now you are reading my mind,” Ivy said, laughing. “Yes, of course we did. We are not particularly partial to surprises.”

  The rest was routine. A schedule of royal visits each way was set up, and the banns, as it were, were set up to be published: mutual recognition. The mission was a success.

  But back on the boat, returning to the robot realm, Rosie was pensive. That night, alone with Dell, she tearfully made her case. “I truly want to be with you, and to be your girlfriend, and to marry you,” she said. “But now that I really am a queen, that takes precedence. I must play the role perfectly. Both the robots and the humans will be depending on me. Since I know you can’t stay with me in the Robot Realm, because your mission takes precedence for you, we can’t be an item. I must marry the king. I must bid you adieu.”

  Bleep! She was right. They could not be together.

  “But we do have this night,” she continued. “At least I can give you what you were thinking of, and more; I know the route. It will be my farewell gift to you.”

  But he couldn’t do it. It would leave her un-pristine as a queen. It would also leave him hopelessly in love with her.

  “And me with you,” she said.

  “We can’t do it,” he said with deepest regret.

  “We can’t,” she agreed. “I’m so sorry.”

  So they slept together and apart, holding hands, but nothing more.

  Yet again his most promising prospect for a relationship had turned to nothing. Not because of bad faith on anyone’s part, but because of the larger situation.

  Bleep.

  Chapter 14

  D Mure

  “This one is the wor
st yet,” Dell told Nia that afternoon, after they had delivered Queen Rosie to the Robot Realm. “She’s a machine, but she was perfect for me. When will it end?”

  “It will end when you finally find the right one.”

  “But how many must I go through before I come to that one?”

  “Maybe we can get an answer,” she said. He suspected that she was casting about desperately to prevent him from dissolving into sludge.

  “How?” he asked despairingly. Was it sludge or mush?

  “We’ll ask Tata.”

  They asked the computer dogfish. “How many girls must Dell go through before he finds the right one? That is, which one will be The One?”

  Tata’s screen flickered as he went through his data banks. Lo, there was an answer: #12

  “Number twelve?” Dell asked. “How many have there been so far?”

  “Let’s count them,” Nia said quickly, happy to distract him for the moment. “There was Zephyr Zombie.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, remembering. “But she was just testing me.”

  “Not at the end. She said you could return to her if you needed to.”

  He nodded. “She would do. So she’s number one.”

  “Then Merrie Mermaid.”

  “Number two,” he agreed, feeling a retrospective twinge of loss.

  “Then Nan O’Tech.”

  “But she was way out of my class.”

  “But if she’d crooked her little finger at you, you’d have gone with her anyway. That counts.”

  “I guess it does. Make her number three.”

  “Then Kadence.”

  “But she’s a child!”

  “Sh. That’s what Cyrus said of Princess Rhythm. Give her time.”

  “I suppose,” he said reluctantly. “But really, she’s out of my class too, regardless of age. She a princess and a Sorceress. I was amazed when she exercised her power.”

  “This is only a count,” Nia said. “It may be imprecise. Let’s call her number four.”

  “Number four,” he agreed.

  “Then there was Princess Froma.”

  “But she was just trying to get the boat! She never cared about me.”

  “Never trust a woman,” she agreed. “Especially a princess. But she did make an impression on you.”

  He sighed. “She did, sucker that I am. Call her number five.”

  “And Jill.”

  “The girl in the pot. But she soon latched on to Jack.”

  “What counts for this is not how the scheming women felt about you, but about how you felt about them. If Jill had been constant, you’d have accepted her.”

  He pictured the bare girl in the pot. “Number six,” he agreed.

  “And Giant Tess.”

  “She was no schemer!”

  “She really was a nice girl,” Nia agreed. “Just a bit large for you.”

  He had to smile. “Just a bit. Bleep, I wish—”

  “I know. Sometimes relationships just aren’t fated.”

  “Number seven.”

  “Then came Ann Noy of the Sea Kingdom.”

  “She had the body, but she was a bad girl.”

  Nia merely looked at him.

  “Number eight.”

  “And Rosie Robot, now seen in perspective.”

  “With a fire in her belly.” He sighed. “Number nine.”

  “That suggests two more before The One.”

  Dell sighed again. “Two more! I’ve already had about eight too many.”

  “So you have run three quarters of the course, if our count is right. You can make it, Dell.”

  “I’m not sure my heart can take two more savagings.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You’re tough. You’ll make it.”

  “Maybe as long as you’re there to pick up the hurting pieces.”

  “Of course. You were there for me, similarly.”

  “If Tata knows the number, maybe he’ll know the person. It would really help if I knew from the outset.”

  “We can but ask.” She turned to Tata. “Who is number twelve? The One?”

  Could that actually work? Dell held his breath.

  The screen flickered. #12 IS NOT THE ONE. NOT YET.

  They looked at each other. “Not yet?” Dell asked.

  “That almost sounds like—”

  “Like a half-grown child.”

  “Who knows already what she wants.”

  “Like Kadence,” he said. “In ten years.”

  “Our count is haphazard,” she reminded him. “It certainly could be someone else.”

  He winced. “Let’s not tell the others.”

  “Let’s not,” she agreed.

  But, oddly, their discussion did ease his pain. He still felt the loss of Rosie, but knew he would survive it. Now he was pretty sure there was a girl for him, and that he would find her before too much longer. Maybe after they delivered the boat.

  Meanwhile, where was the clue to the next spot mission and maybe girlfriend? It was time for it to turn up.

  In the evening he washed and dried himself, not caring whether Nia watched. She was like family.

  Something caught his eye. There was a word printed on the towel. He flattened it out and looked at it. DEMONESS.

  “Nia, could this be—”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t there when I put that towel out for you,” she said. “It must be the Clue.”

  “But demons don’t need the boat.”

  “It may not be the boat this time. It may be the girlfriend.”

  “A demoness!” Yet he remembered that there had been a zombie (in a manner), a mermaid, a princess, a giantess, and a robot. He had had some unusual contacts. And, actually, a kind of Demoness. Was Nan O’Tech returning?

  A dark cloud formed before him. It stretched out arms, legs, and a head, forming into an extremely shapely nude demoness. “Well, now,” she said, eyeing Dell’s bare anatomy.

  “Metria!” he exclaimed, hastily wrapping the towel about him.

  “Wrong by one third. I’m D Mentia, the slightly crazy version.” Clothing formed, ineffectively covering the curves.

  Now he remembered. “Stepped on by a sphinx, fragmented into three.”

  “That’s it. You dealt with Metria before. Now I’m being slightly crazy and coming here on my own. You helped Metria with her friend; maybe you can help me with mine.” It was clear she had no speech impediment.

  The clue had said DEMONESS. Here she was. “Maybe we can,” he said guardedly.

  “Here is the capsule background story. For centuries I’ve enjoyed the company of D Mure, who is all the things I’m not: shy, sweet, polite. She never flashes anatomy at passing mortals.” Her décolletage sagged, exposing a dangerous amount of cleavage. “Never teases.” Her skirt paled into translucence, so that the outline of taut panties showed. “Never is anything but proper.” Her torso quivered, causing ripples in the cleavage. “They say opposites attract, and we are certainly opposites, and close friends. But now she’s in trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Nia asked. “But demons don’t get into awkward situations unless they want to.”

  “Sometimes they do,” Mentia said seriously. “Unlikes can attract romantically, too, at least partially. Last month D Saster, whose propensity is being attracted to disaster scenes, courted D Mure. She was horrified, being modestly repelled by disasters, and totally rejected his suit. He was infuriated, saying that if he couldn’t have her, nobody could, and laid a curse on her: She could no longer conjure herself farther than arm’s length. Of course that severely limited her freedom, as we demons normally pop off to far places at the rise of a hat. I tried to help her; I offered to seduce him and grind his key digit into stink horn powder if he didn’t lift the curse, but she’s so nice she would
have none of that either. She’s entirely too forgiving! But that severely limits her options.”

  Stink horn powder. Dell repressed a smile. “I’m not clear how we can help. My magic does not relate to demon curses.”

  “But your nature does. It is a law of curses that there has to be a natural way to abate them. In this case, it is that only the love of a mortal man can break the curse. I understand that you are looking for a girlfriend.”

  “Uh, yes,” Dell said tentatively. “But—”

  “But juxtaposing those two elements may be considered slightly crazy?”

  That was indeed his thought. But it was also indeed her nature.

  “She would be perfect for you. There is no nicer person, either demon or mortal. But there is a catch.”

  “There always is,” Nia muttered.

  “The moment she wins the love of a mortal man, she will spurn him. Thus the breaking of the curse is at the expense of the breaking of his heart. This is why others are reluctant to do it.”

  Dell was taken aback. “Why do you think I would want to get my heart broken?”

  Mentia gave him an unnerving glance. “You have lost, what is it, nine girlfriends in a row? Of twelve? Why wouldn’t you want to get the next one out of the way knowingly, so as to get closer to the permanent one?”

  Now he said it. “You’re right! You are a little crazy!”

  “Thank you. I try to be. But I also care about my friend. Now I will bring Mure.” She puffed out of sight.

  “Now wait a—” he started.

  D Mentia returned with her friend, setting her on the floor in the manner of a statue. Indeed, she was as pretty as a work of art. “Dell, this is D Mure. Mure, this is Dell. You may or may not be perfect for each other. Bye.” She vanished.

  “Please, I want you to know this wasn’t my idea,” the demoness said plaintively. “My friend is slightly crazy.”

  “So we noticed,” Nia said. “Hello. I’m Nia.”

  “Maybe you should just drop me off at the nearest port,” Mure said, flustered. “So I won’t be a further burden.”

  Dell and Nia exchanged a glance of rueful understanding. “We can’t do that,” Dell said. “It wouldn’t be nice.”