“Because that’s the way it is. Now I’ll just declare that you are to be my bride, and the elven banns will be published, and then in a couple of weeks—”
“No!” she cried.
“You prefer to marry the golem?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
Grundy’s delight at this assertion was nullified by Gimlet’s next words. “Then know, oh damsel, that the golem is even now our prisoner, and if you do not acquiesce with proper grace to this union, I will have him killed.”
“Oh, no!” she wailed.
“Oh, yes,” he said grimly. “Do you agree to marry me now?”
This was too much for Grundy. “No she doesn’t!” he yelled.
“Grundy!” Rapunzel cried, delighted.
“How did you get up here?” Gimlet demanded, furious. He drew his weapon, which was a steel rod, with a handle set across the end like the horizontal stroke of a T, and a twisted point that looked wicked indeed. He strode across the chamber and rammed the gimlet up, trying to spear Grundy.
Rapunzel screamed. Grundy, surprised, slipped off his branch and fell down through the ceiling. But he grabbed the Prince’s raised arm as he dropped, and clung to it, trying to wrest away the weapon.
Immediately he knew he was in trouble. Not only was he still very tired, but the Prince had the elven strength, strongest here within the foliage of the Elm. He held his arm aloft, Grundy upon it, and caught the Golem by the scruff of the neck with his other hand. He ripped Grundy free as if he were a rag doll—as perhaps he once had been. Grundy was helpless.
The Prince readied the gimlet. “Now I shall run you through, as I should have done before,” he said.
“No!” Rapunzel cried.
“No?” the Prince inquired, holding the point near Grundy’s stomach. “And why should I desist, damsel?”
Rapunzel was stricken, knowing what he wanted. But if she gave him that, she would lose Grundy in another sense.
Grundy could not urge her to either course. She would lose him either way. She had to make her own decision.
“Spare him,” she said brokenly. “And I will—will m-marry you.” Then she sank to the floor, sobbing.
The Prince smiled. “So it seems you are some use to me after all, Golem. I never thought that would be the case, when I fought you in the Tower. But of course I was not using you properly. Why kill you and have the damsel kill herself, when I can have complete control over her merely by threatening you? So you shall live, but you shall not be free.” He turned to face the entrance, which was a hole in the center of the floor. “Guards!”
Tower? Suddenly Grundy suffered a horrendous realization. “The Sea Hag!” he cried.
The Prince grimaced. “Curses! I shouldn’t have let that slip. Well, it makes no difference. Once I marry her, I’ll suicide this body and she will be Queen of the Elves, and I will assume her body.”
“She’ll never agree to that!” Grundy cried.
“Won’t she—with your life still at stake?”
Grundy realized that Rapunzel would indeed give in again—to save him. Her love was true, and that was her undoing. He had been a fool to believe that the Hag had given up, merely because she had not been willing to sting Rapunzel to death when she had been a Queen B. She had merely sought another avenue—and now she had found it.
The guards arrived. “Confine this wretch in a cage,” the Hag commanded. “This time watch him. See that he does not escape.”
“Don’t do it!” Grundy cried. “This isn’t your Prince! It’s the Sea Hag!”
“He’s crazy as well as scrawny,” the Hag said. “As you can see, I am unchanged.”
“He’s changed! He’s changed!” Grundy cried. “You know how he’s changed in the last day—since the Hag took over his body. This is an imposter, not your Prince at all!”
The guards hesitated. Obviously they had heard the gossip, and knew the Prince was different. But they weren’t ready to defy him. They came toward Grundy.
“Would your Prince ever have poisoned a friendly dragon?” Grundy demanded.
At this, Rapunzel’s head came up. “What?”
“They poisoned Stanley!” Grundy told her. “And threw me in a dank cell!”
“Oh, I must flee this place!” she cried, in her distress changing to human-size. In this form she seemed practically to fill the chamber, and her weight bore the branches of the floor down somewhat.
“You do, and he dies,” Prince Hag said evenly, touching Grundy’s belly with the point of the gimlet.
“Oh!” she repeated, horrified anew. She reverted to elf-size.
“Don’t yield to the Hag!” Grundy yelled at her. “She’ll kill me anyway, once she has your body! Go now, save yourself. Go down to Stanley and ride back to Castle Roogna! He knows the way!”
But this logic was too cruel for her maidenly heart to bear. She sank again to the floor, swooning.
“Now lock him up,” the Hag told the guards. “I will see to the damsel.”
“But that’s not your Prince!” Grundy cried desperately. “Ask anybody! Ask the serving girls! You know he’s changed. No elf acts the way he does, threatening innocent folk with death!”
Again the guards hesitated, knowing that he had a point. They had known the Prince a long time and recognized the change in him; now Grundy was providing an explanation.
“Obey,” the Hag told them, “or I’ll run you through!”
“That does it,” one guard said. “I think the golem’s right.”
“Wretch!” the Hag cried, aiming the gimlet at him.
But the guards drew their weapons, which were a screwdriver and a trowel. Metal gleamed. They were as strong as the Prince, here. “The issue is in doubt,” the other guard said. “We must schedule a trial.”
“Over my dead body!” the Hag screamed, and now the Prince’s face did in a way resemble that of the Hag of the Ivory Tower.
The two guards stood unflinching, weapons ready, not responding. It was evident that the elves were an independent breed who did not tolerate what they knew to be wrong, even when it seemed that their Prince ordered it. They had had time to ponder the business of poisoning a tame dragon and violating a sanctuary after it had been granted, and they were not having any more of it.
The Hag saw that she had overstepped her bounds and was only getting herself into trouble. She was not a natural elf and could not long fool true elves once their suspicion was aroused. She would lose all credibility if this continued.
“Then let there be a trial,” she said, assuming an aspect of abrupt reasonableness. “A trial of right by strength—the golem and I. The survivor gets the girl.”
The guards nodded. “That seems the best way,” Trowel agreed. “We will schedule it for tomorrow—you against the golem.”
Grundy could not protest, because his alternative was to get killed outright, here. But how could he hope to beat the horrible strength of the Hag in elven-form? He feared that he had only postponed the reckoning.
But Rapunzel brightened. “Oh, Grundy, I just know you can do it! Then everything will be all right!”
Or all wrong. But at least it gave her a night of hope, and that was worth something.
16
Trial
In the morning Grundy found himself stiff from the prior day’s exertion and still somewhat tired. They had locked him in a leafy chamber for the night, alone, but the elven maidens had brought him food and a chamber pot and had rubbed healing salve into his blistered hands. He couldn’t complain; if he seemed like a prisoner, still it protected him from the malice of the Hag, who was similarly isolated. He knew that Rapunzel was protected from contact with either litigant, until the decision was reached. The elves were, indeed, fair, in their rigorous fashion.
A guard, called Lathe, came to conduct him to the site of the trial. “Golem, you are not of our culture,” Lathe said, touching the instrument that gave him his name. It was a kind of wooden framework with wheels mounted
on it, used to rotate things that were being evenly shaped. Evidently he liked to be sure that a situation was properly shaped, too. “Do you understand the rules of the trial?”
“No.”
“You have challenged the Prince’s identity, and the Prince denies your charge. As we are unable to judge the merits of the case objectively, we are submitting it to trial by combat. Because you made the charge against the Prince, he has the choice of type of contest. He has chosen Lines and Boxes.”
“Lines and Boxes?” Grundy demanded incredulously. He remembered the game he had played with the ant lion, back at the Good Magician’s castle. But that was no duel-to-the-death! Well—not from the game itself. The consequence of losing, however, was death.
“You swing on the lines to the boxes, and cut the lines behind you. When you trap your opponent in a box, you dump him into the loop.”
Evidently this was not the game he had played, though it seemed to have some similarities. Could similar strategies be followed? “I don’t think I have done that before,” Grundy said cautiously.
“Naturally not. It’s an elven specialty that negates differentials in size and strength. You do, however, need to be agile, and some cleverness helps.”
This was sounding better. “What is this loop you mention?”
“It is an ancient artifact we have had in our Elm for centuries. Anything that passes through it, never returns, unless it is attached to something on this side, so that it can be drawn back quickly.”
“Sounds like the Void,” Grundy said, shuddering.
“The what?”
It seemed that the elves of this tree did not know about the geography of Northern Xanth. “A black hole that never yields what it takes in.”
“Perhaps so,” Lathe agreed. “Certainly whichever one of you falls through the loop will not return.”
So this was, indeed, a duel to the death, or the equivalent. Whoever passed through the loop would be finished, certainly. If he dumped the Hag through, Rapunzel would be forever free of that terrible threat. If, on the other hand, the Hag dumped him through …
Lathe conducted him to the site of the trial. This was outside the Elm; in fact, right beside it. A number of thin lines descended from the foliage, dangling down to near the ground. A smaller number of platforms were perched on poles rising from the ground. The poles were slender, and reached about halfway up the trunk of the tree, so that the little platforms swayed gently in the breeze. Grundy saw that there was a framework of slats about each platform, so that a person standing on one could have handholds. Still, it looked precarious. He would prefer to trust himself to a line, assuming that his abraded hands remained strong enough to hold on. The salve had done a marvelous job, so that the skin was now intact, but scars remained.
He peered to the ground, a dizzying distance below. There, within the ring of poles, was a large funnel that glistened; probably it had been greased. In the center was a small dark hole: the loop.
Lathe handed him a knife. It was small, suitable for his hand, and the blade was honed to a feather edge on either side. “One slash will sever a line,” the elf explained. “Several slashes will be required to cut through a pole. However, either action takes time, and therefore sacrifices mobility.”
Why was he saying that? Grundy shrugged, studying the layout to see whether any strategy suggested itself.
There were six boxes, and four lines dangled near the comers of each. The circle of boxes was tight enough so that it looked possible to swing from any one of them to any other; but they were still far enough apart so that any attempt to jump between them was bound to be futile. His challenge was to isolate the Hag in a box, and then dump her into that funnel below. Could he do it? He had to!
Now Rapunzel appeared, surrounded by elven maids. She remained elf-sized, but was still phenomenally beautiful despite her brief hair. She had to remain on a branch separate from the arena, where she could watch without interfering.
“Oh, Grundy!” she cried. “My premonition has come true! I wish we had not come to this place!”
He wished so too! His effort to provide her fair exposure to the elven culture had proven disastrous. But now she was apt to become a part of it, in the worst way.
And Prince Gimlet arrived. He was in brief athletic clothes and had exchanged his gimlet for a double-edged knife like Grundy’s, only larger. The Prince had the advantage of size and strength, but those would not count for much as long as the two contestants did not touch each other, and might even be to his disadvantage on the precarious boxes. So this might indeed be a fair trial.
“Are the litigants ready?” one of the elves inquired.
“Ready,” the Hag said with confidence.
“Uh, yes,” Grundy mumbled. He hoped he was!
“Begin.”
The Prince caught hold of the line closest to him and swung in to the nearest platform. Grundy found a line just within his reach, and did the same. He felt the stiffness in his arms anew, but had no real trouble. The contest was on!
The Prince took another line, and launched himself directly across the circle. Grundy hadn’t expected this and stood and stared for a moment. Then he realized that the Prince’s blade was aimed right at him, as the elf swung one-handed. He could be dispatched by the knife directly, then tossed into the loop! What difference did it make how he died?
He grabbed almost blindly at a line to the side and jumped off. His aim was bad, and he missed the adjacent platform. He swung erratically across to the one beyond—but already the elf was pursuing him, knife still extended.
This time Grundy got more of his wits about him. He hung onto the line he had, set his feet against the edge of the box, and shoved violently off. He sailed across the circle to the opposite platform, landed on it, then quickly cut the line he had used so that it would not swing back to the elf. He was learning!
But the elf merely took another line, and came after him again. Grundy didn’t dare go across the center, when the elf was doing it; they would meet, and Grundy would be the one stabbed, for the elf’s reach was twice his own. He had to move off to the side.
The elf pursued him in this manner all about the circle, and as they moved more of the lines were cut, until Grundy discovered that there had been a pattern in the pursuit. He was now trapped on a platform from which all the lines had been lost—but he had let go of his incoming line before realizing that. He couldn’t get away!
He turned and braced himself, expecting the elf to come at him blade-first, but that wasn’t the case. That would have meant a suggestion of a fighting chance. Instead, the elf handed himself down the line and swung down below, catching at the pole on which Grundy’s box was perched. Then he sawed at it with the knife.
That had to be stopped! Grundy leaped out desperately, catching the upper section of the line that was supporting the elf. He couldn’t swing it anywhere, because it was now anchored below, but he hoped to jerk it out of the elf’s grasp and strand him on the pole.
It didn’t work. The elf was far stronger than he was, and easily retained control of the line while continuing to saw at the pole. If Grundy slid down the rope, that knife would finish him; if he did not, his pole would soon fall, and he would be stuck right here, waiting for the elf to climb up and get him.
Then he had a desperate notion. If he could exert a sudden, hard shock to the line—
He reached up and sliced through the line above him. Suddenly he was falling. He hung on to his severed segment of the line, knowing that his weight would jerk at the elf when the slack was taken up.
Abruptly, it happened. The elf screamed as he was wrenched off the pole, and he fell toward the funnel.
Then the flaw in his plan occurred to Grundy. He was falling too! Somehow he had overlooked that when the seemingly brilliant strategy came to him. They were both descending to their doom!
Grundy’s feet struck the funnel first, and he flipped involuntarily, absorbing the shock, and rolled toward the center.
The elf landed more heavily, but there was some give in the funnel, and no bones were broken. Both of them slid down the greased slope to the loop.
Grundy heard Rapunzel’s scream of horror. It had probably been issued some time ago, and was only just now catching up with him. Then he plunged through the dark hole of the loop.
He seemed to be in an opaque tunnel, falling yet floating. Then he found himself standing on a cavern floor, unharmed. In a moment the Hag landed beside him.
“Wretch!” she screamed. “Look what you’ve done!”
“I took you with me,” Grundy said with a certain satisfaction. “Now you won’t get Rapunzel’s body.”
The Hag looked around. “We’ll see. The Brain Coral sometimes releases its acquisitions, if they have something to offer in exchange.”
“The Brain Coral?”
“Didn’t you recognize the loop, Golem? It’s one of the entrances to the realm of the Coral. Nothing returns because the Coral keeps what it gets, until it decides to release it.”
Now Grundy remembered. Long ago, he had been in the nether region of Xanth, with Bink and Chester Centaur and Crombie the Soldier and Good Magician Humfrey. Horrendous things had happened. They had encountered the Demon X(A/N)th, who was the source of magic, and for a time there had been no magic in Xanth. He didn’t care to go through that again! He had been a true golem, then, and when the magic had departed, so had his animation, leaving him as a tangle of cloth and wood. Only when the magic returned had he revived—with one awful headache.
But the residence of the Brain Coral was under a black lake whose water slowly pickled anything in it and stored creatures in a half-dead state indefinitely. There was no water here. Instead there was a spacious dry chamber whose far wall was—
“Oh-oh,” Grundy murmured, shivering.
“Maybe if I give you to the Brain Coral, it will let me go,” the Hag said. “Or I might give it this elf-prince body, and take yours, and return to claim Rapunzel. She would do anything for you, without even questioning it. Then—”
“This isn’t the Brain Coral’s residence,” Grundy said.
Golem in the Gears Page 23
