Zelazny, Roger - (With Robert Sheckley) Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (v1.0)

by Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming [lit]

  One of the knights took aim with his lance and came charging.

  It was only at this moment of extremity that his salvation came. He did not know whether it was natural, or induced somehow by Azzie. Where before the air had been still, now a wind rose up. Not just a little wind, but a full-blown gale, bearing drops of icy water and a scattering of hail.

  On all sides, the foliage blew into wild disarray, making his movements undetectable.

  The leading knight missed him by five feet. The second wasn't even close. The knights spread apart, trying to contain him within their circle. But Charming easily slipped between them and hurried down to the limestone shelf. This he was able to traverse without leaving a trace. When he stopped, the wind had died again, and there were no sounds of pursuit. He realized he had eluded the demons.

  Chapter 7

  Prince Charming ran until his legs grew numb and his lungs fiery. At some point, he collapsed and slept.

  When he awoke, he saw himself to be in a sunlit meadow. At the far end of it a mountain rose into the sky, a gigantic Matterhorn of the Imagination, a dream mountain of multicolored glass. In front of the mountain, and block­ing further access to it, was a dense forest of what looked like metal trees. Charming advanced upon the strange forest and regarded it. The trees were made of thorned stovepipe, and the tallest of them was not over seven feet in height. As he approached, the trees began to emit a yellowish gas which quickly caught fire, sparked by igniters located below-ground.

  Prince Charming might not have known what these were, save that he recalled seeing Azzie studying a slip of paper which he later left lying upon his desktop. Curious, Charming had looked at it. It proved a receipt from the All Spiritual Regions Gas Company for payment for gas to power flame trees.

  If Uncle Azzie "was indeed paying the bill to fuel the trees - and Charming could draw no other inference from the evi­dence- then the signs of manipulation were unmistakable. He felt strange now when he considered the ramifications. It made him feel as if he were painted cardboard, a cutout figure pinned to the background. This was frightening, but it came at a time when there was an urgent need to get on through the place. So he saved it for later consideration and moved ahead.

  If the things could be turned on, they could be turned off. He sought for the better part of an hour before he located the valve in a ditch. The trees went out when he turned it. How very strange, to set up a thing like this in the first place.

  He passed among them.

  And so he came to Glass Mountain Village, final base camp and source of provender, sustenance, and souvenirs for those who would climb to the sun-dazzled summit of the great moun­tain, where, it was said, stood the enchanted castle within which lay the sleeping Princess Scarlet.

  The principal industry of the town was to serve those who sought to climb the Glass Mountain. Here came explorers and glass-mountain climbers from all over. The lure of the thing was irresistible.

  Charming walked down a line of shops on Main Street in Glass Mountain Village. Many of the shops specialized in glass-mountain-climbing equipment. Glass is a tough substance to scale. To hear the townspeople talk you'd think the glass changed qualities every time a cloud came over the sun. The mountain boasted every kind of glass to be found: Swift Glass and Devious Glass, Tricky Glass and Swamp Glass. There was High Mountain Deadly Glass and Low Plain Bed Glass. Each kind of glass (and Glass Mountain was said to be composed of all of these kinds and more) had its own difficulties, and booklets were available at the shops dealing with the remedies for every variety.

  Although some believed that this Glass Mountain was the only place of its kind in the world, unique and unduplicatable, there were intellectuals who insisted that the perennial human custom of climbing glass mountains could only be accounted for by deep historical memories, practically universal to the race of man, of doing so countless times and places in the past. These theorists would have it that Glass Mountain was an archetype of human experience whose physical corroboration was always taking place on innumerable levels, from the first moment of the beginning of the past to the last instant of the furthest unrolling of the future.

  The bookstores of Glass Mountain Village were also filled with technical books on how glass mountains had been climbed in this year or that. There were histories, guidebooks, books of interviews with climbers and theorists. There were several shops in town that sold nothing but crampons of all types and descriptions, including diamond-studded ones.

  The matter of whether or not to use horses to climb Glass Mountain called up some controversy in the town. In general, it is much more difficult for a horse to climb a glass mountain than it is for a man. Horses' legs don't go in the right ways. They are noble beasts, excellent on plains and prairies, agile in forests and pretty fair even in semidense jungle, but just not good at climbing glass mountains. So the custom had sprung up of riding up the mountain on goatback.

  To traditionalists, this was unacceptable. Everyone expects Prince Charmings to scale the Glass Mountain on horseback. Generations of illustrators, some of them claiming to be au­thorized by high spiritual powers, had shown horses climbing glass mountains with Prince Charmings on their backs. The fact is, as learned societies have never tired of pointing out, even if a horse could manage the mountain, it would leave him damaged in spirit and weak in the wind. Despite this, no one liked the idea of goats.

  Charming was like everyone else. "Are you kidding?" he said, when told about riding a goat. "No way!"

  "In that case," they told him, "you'll have to wear crampons and try to get up the mountain yourself."

  "Me wear crampons?" He had the common superstitious awe of these useful objects.

  "They are what all the climbers wear."

  "No thanks. You're not going to get those things on me."

  "If you don't wear them, you'll never get to the top. It's all glass, you know. Slippery."

  Charming, like so many young men in those days, had prejudices against both goats and crampons. Sighing, he chose at last what seemed the lesser evil.

  "So all right already, saddle me up a goat!"

  * * *

  Not even all the goats make it up Glass Mountain. That must be understood by those who think a goat is all it takes to win a princess. It's just that you need to use a goat even to get into the running. If at the very end, you want to substitute a horse for your goat, after the feat is accomplished, and have your portrait painted that way-well, a horse looks better than a goat, and it can be arranged.

  And so it was that at last Prince Charming found himself racing upward on goatback until he came to the entranceway to a great castle whose battlements rose high into the air. Ahead of him was a staircase. He knew he had arrived when he saw the cardboard sign on an iron stanchion. It read, YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT THE ENCHANTED CASTLE. THE SLEEPING PRINCESS IS IN THE FIRST CHAMBER TO THE RIGHT AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS. CONGRATULATIONS.

  With a tremulous feeling in his thumbs, Prince Charming performed the final climb over the barbican, endured the icy swim across the moat, and then, dripping wet, went down the gallery and through the turret passageways, and finally through the outer rooms where ensorcelled servitors snoozed, to the staircase with upward curves of great cruelly, to the flagstones of the outer chamber.

  He opened the door and took two steps inside. In the middle of the room he saw the bed, a high four-poster. Lying on it, eyes closed, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was the one whose miniature he had fallen in love with. But in person she was incomparably more lovely than her painted representation.

  Chapter 8

  Any eyes would have sufficed to see her beauty. But Prince Charming's dragon's eyes saw something more. They saw through Azzie's scheme and under­stood the snare that the demon had planned. The dragon's eyes saw that he, Charming, wore the hated face of Scarlet's seducer. What would she do when she saw that face? The dragon's eyes could see the shadow of disaster here. But Charming ignored the warning, ben
ding low over the Princess.

  This was the moment Azzie had been working toward since he had thought up the plan in the first place.

  The kiss! The fatal kiss!

  Azzie had already positioned the poisoned dagger on the little bedstand, close to Scarlet's hand. This was what Scarlet would use when she opened her eyes and recognized who had kissed her-the despised seducer!

  Azzie, from behind the curtain where he had stationed himself, addressed the great unseen audience watching the drama unfold.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, beings of Light and Darkness, fellow demons, rival angels! I bring you now the conclusion of the most ancient and edifying drama of Prince Charming and Princess Scarlet. Behold, the awakening kiss and its outcome!"

  Even while his words died away, Prince Charming, with his dragon's eyes, continued to regard Azzie's scheme, and he spoke of it, thus:

  "A-ha," he soliloquized, "it's obvious to me I am a nothing, a mere congeries of disparate parts, and that my so-called uncle Azzie, a demon indeed despite his ingratiating ways, gave me the face of Scarlet's seducer when putting me together, for the purpose of being sacrificed by Scarlet when I awaken her. Well then, if that's so, let it be. Kill me, pretty Princess, if that's what will content you. But though I am a nothing man, constructed of odds and ends and brought to life by a fiend, yet a true heart beats in my breast, and I can only say, I am yours, Princess, do with me what you will."

  Scarlet felt the touch of a man's lips. Her eyes opened, but at first she saw nothing due to the nearness of the young man kissing her. Her first thought was, What bliss to be so awak­ened!

  Then she saw his face. That face! O Gods! She recognized it instantly. This was the face of the man who had seduced her and abandoned her.

  Her eyes widened. One white hand fluttered to her breast like one of the lost doves of Hera. He! It is he! Her hand groped behind her and encountered the haft of the dagger lying on the little nightstand. She lifted it. ...

  Azzie had calculated this part with precision. He knew how the dagger would slide into her hand as if of its own volition. The audience, invisible but present, would lean for­ward. The members of the Awards Committee would see Scar­let's hand pull back, then plunge the dagger into his back, through to the heart! And then, with Charming expiring on the floor of her chamber, Azzie himself would step forward. "Alas, little princess," he would say (the speech long rehearsed), "you've killed the only man you could ever love, the man in whom was bound your salvation!" And after that, Azzie thought it would make a pretty ending if Scarlet turned the dagger on herself, thus ensuring herself an eternity of pain in the Pits of deepest Hell. He had even considered bringing Charming back to life long enough to watch Scarlet die, in order to tempt him into uttering blasphemies so great as to ensure his own eternal damnation. A good ending for one who likes to tie up loose ends.

  So sure of all this was Azzie that he appeared before Scarlet now, saying, with heavy irony, "Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love; but the world is not thy friend nor thy world's law."

  People argued for a long while afterward as to why this plan was not successful. In Azzie's opinion, simple reciprocity should have guided Scarlet's fingers to the dagger, and the dagger to the unprotected back of the young Prince. But life, with its healthy habit of indeterminacy, would not have it so.

  Azzie had miscalculated the effect of Scarlet's eyes. Though they had not the ability to see the truth, as had those of Charm­ing, yet the eyes could see triviality and artifice, and these they perceived as she considered the tableau she made, she and Prince Charming, and the poisoned dagger. Her artist's eyes saw the artificiality of it: this was not a good subject for one who paints from life. She rebelled for artistic reasons from plunging home the knife, and then, later, her sensibilities fol­lowed her aesthetic judgment.

  Scarlet said, "What are you talking about?"

  "You shouldn't have killed him," Azzie said. "You've doomed yourself to an eternity of infernal torments, young lady."

  Scarlet burst out laughing.

  "Laugh at me? I'll show thee - "

  Another voice joined in the laughter. It was Charming, standing beside her, his arm around her waist. Charming, up-dead! The dagger had not been employed for its fell purpose! Azzie stepped back in confusion.

  They were alive, those two, and somehow love had won out over the ancient predestination of Azzie's curse. Seeing these beautiful young people together, the audience of angels and demons was moved; there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

  "This isn't what I meant!" Azzie cried. "This isn't what I meant at all!"

  But this was what he had produced: a merry little tale of love and redemption which caught everyone's fancy and en­sured that Good, not Evil, would win the destiny of men's souls for the next thousand years.

  Chapter 1

  Ylith's slim fingers went tap tap tap on the door that led into Azzie's alchemical lab.

  "Azzie? I know you're in there."

  No answer. Babriel, standing at her side, said, "I guess we'd better try again." Ylith did so.

  "Azzie! Come on! Let me in! It's me and Babriel here. We know you had a serious disappointment. We're your friends. We want to be near you."

  There "was a harsh grating sound. The steel rod that served as the door bolt was withdrawn. The beamed wooden door of the alchemical lab opened a few inches. Frike's long-nosed face appeared.

  "Is the master here, Frike?" Ylith asked.

  "Oh, yes, miss. He's inside. But I wouldn't go near him right now. He's in a rather foul mood. It's not impossible he would do somebody a mischief at this time."

  "Nonsense!" Babriel said. "Let me speak with him!"

  He pushed his way in through the door.

  Azzie was seated on a little throne he had set up in one corner of the laboratory. He lounged there in his purple cloak, with an orange tam o'shanter pulled over one eye. He looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot. Tankards and bottles of ichor were strewn around the floor. There were other bottles on nearby shelves, jocund in their fullness, within easy reach.

  "Come now, Azzie!" Babriel said. "You've put up a very good contest. Remember, it's not winning or losing that counts, it's how you play the game."

  "You've got that entirely wrong," Azzie said. "What counts is winning. How you play the game counts for nothing."

  Babriel shrugged. "Well . . . Different rules, different di­vine imperatives, I suppose. But you really should stop drinking now, old man. Here, let me help you up."

  He extended an arm to Azzie. Azzie gripped it with one hand and tried to claw it with the other. Babriel deftly fended him off and helped him to his feet.

  "After all, old man," Babriel said, "what does it matter who wins, really?"

  Azzie stared at him. "Am I hearing you correctly?"

  "Well, yes, of course. I mean, as Creatures of Light and Darkness we must take the long view. We all serve life and death, intelligence, and all the other supernal forces."

  "I shouldn't have lost," Azzie said. "It's because I got no cooperation from the Powers of Darkness. You yourself, Ba­briel, my opponent, were more help than people on my own side. That's the trouble with evil. It's not cooperative, not even with itself."

  "Don't take it so hard," Babriel said. "Come with us, Azzie. We'll all go to the Awards Dinner and have a few laughs."

  "Oh, yeah, sure," Azzie said. "The damned Awards Din­ner. All right. I'll be there in a bit. You go on ahead, though. I've got a few little things I have to do first. How's the Gothic whatchamacallit coming?"

  "They're just finishing the bell tower," Babriel replied.

  As they departed Babriel said to Ylith, "You know, we really ought to do something nice for Charming, for the won­derful way he managed his part."

  "What a fine idea," she replied.

  Azzie gnashed his teeth.

  When they were gone, he summoned Frike.

  "Did you ever hear anything like that?" he asked him.

  "Like what,
master?"

  "Like those two sappy-faced so-called friends of mine. Did you hear them talking on the way out? Such nonsense! Can you imagine? They want to reward Charming for a job well done."

  "Yes, master," Frike said. "Very funny, ha-ha."

  "I thought so, too," Azzie said. "Well, I think we will give Master Charming a little acknowledgment of the part he's played in screwing up my drama by taking from him the life that was my gift to him. I can't kill him myself, though. Not directly. There are rules. Stupid rules, but rules all the same, that prohibit a demon from savaging and killing a human being for no reason at all."

  "Oh, that's too bad, master," Frike said.

  "Yes, I've always thought that, too," Azzie said. "But I believe we can get around it."

  "Oh, master, how will we do that?"

  "Frike," Azzie said, "how would you like to be an avenging warrior for a change instead of a cringing servitor?"

  "Sounds nice," Frike said. "How do we do that, master?"

  "We've got plenty of body parts left over," Azzie said, "and I'm a master at the art of human sculpture. Come with me. Lie down on yonder marble slab."

  "Master, I'm not sure this is such a wonderful idea."

  "Shut up," Azzie said. "Don't argue with me. Remember, I can replace your personality as easily as I can change your body."

  "Yes, master, of course." Frike lay down on the table. Azzie found a scalpel and sharpened it on his heel.

  "Will it hurt?" Frike asked.

  "Of course it will hurt," Azzie told him. "Anesthesia hasn't been invented yet."

  "What did you say hasn't been invented yet, master? Ana-something?"

  "Never mind. Bite down hard on your lip. I'm going to begin cutting."

  Chapter 2

  Prince Charming was leaning out of one of the high win­dows of the Enchanted Castle. He was in a good mood, lazy and well pleased. Love does that to a man, at least for a while, and Charming was in the first rush of it.