Roc and a Hard Place

by Anthony, Piers

  Sammy stepped on tippy toes, not making a sound, so as to pass without notice. Metria formed into a haze and surrounded Jenny so she wouldn’t be discovered. There was just no telling how these dogfaces would react to this intrusion on their retreat.

  The forest inshore was filled with dogwood, dog fennel, dogtooth violents, dog mercury, and dog rose, all of which sniffed the air and growled suspiciously. There was also an occasional have of B-gles. Metria knew that the B-haves could be very bad; because their stings affected people’s B-havior.

  In the center of the island was a snowy mountain. Anyone who wanted to sleep warmly there would have to snuggle up with an afghan hound. Dogsleds were being hauled up to the top. On the peak was the robot dog, Dog-Matic, who thought he was reciting fine poetry but only spewed doggerel.

  They forged doggedly through, and finally traversed a dog’s-leg curve leading to a bridge to the far side of the lake, marked “K-9.” They had passed Dog Island without getting chewed. Metria was relieved, because though she had nothing to fear from dogfaces herself, Sammy Cat certainly did.

  Once safely past the island, Sammy plunged on at speed, leaving Jenny behind again. But now the terrain was becoming vaguely familiar. “Oh, no!” Metria muttered. “Not the Region of Madness again! ̶

  But it was. They were approaching it from a different direction, so wouldn’t encounter Desiree Dryad or the White family, which meant that the perils would be unfamiliar. Metria wasn’t sure she would be able to protect cat and elf girl here, because the things of the unexplored madness could be truly freakish. Yet the cat was plowing straight on in.

  “I’ll take over now,” Mentia said. “The worse it gets, the saner I get.”

  Just as well, because it wasn’t long before something weird appeared before them. It was a manlike figure, but it looked like a mummified zombie. It reached for Sammy.

  Mentia stretched out her arm to three times its prior length, and put her hand between the thing and the cat. Its hand touched her hand—and suddenly her hand and arm stiffened. “What are you?” she demanded.

  “I am Rigor Mortis,” the thing replied in ghastly tones. “I make folk stiff.”

  For sure. Mentia stiffened her resolve and shoved the thing to the side so that Jenny Elf could pass. Because demons had no fixed forms, they could not be stiffened for long, but it would be another matter for living folk.

  Then Mentia zoomed ahead, so as to keep the cat in sight. She wondered how the elf had managed not to lose Sammy in the years they had been in Xanth, because the cat seemed to have no regard for Jenny’s convenience.

  Beyond the zombielike creature was a grove of angular trees wherein perched strangely thin birds. Sammy Cat plunged right on through it, but again Mentia was rational and cautious, in contrast to her normal disposition. She wanted to know exactly what these odd birds were.

  So she inquired, because here in the madness, things were often communicative in ways they wouldn’t be normally. “What are you?” she called to the birds.

  “We are minus birds,” they chorused back. “As you can plainly see, because we live here in the geome-trees.”

  “I apologize for my stupidity,” Mentia said, realizing that flattery was probably better than irritation. “Are either you or the trees dangerous to ordinary folk?”

  “No, we don’t care about ordinary folk,” the birds replied. “All we care about is multiplying.”

  “Oh—you get together with plus birds to signal the stork?”

  “No, we can’t find any plus birds, so we multiply by dividing in half.” With that each bird split in half, forming two where each one had perched, each new one twice as thin.

  Jenny Elf caught up. “Oh, what pretty birds!” she exclaimed. The minus birds preened, pleased.

  Mentia jumped ahead again—and was relieved to see an old centaur just making the acquaintance of the cat. Sammy had found Amolde.

  “And what is your oddity, pretty feline?” the centaur asked.

  Mentia caused a flowing ankle-length robe to surround her as she approached. “Arnolde Centaur, I presume?”

  “And a demoness,” the centaur said, surprised. “Make a note, Ichabod: two seemingly normal creatures in as many minutes, which is highly unusual for this region.”

  Now Mentia saw that Arnolde had a companion, an old human man. The man opened his notebook, and several notes popped out, making brief music. “One mundane cat, no apparent magic,” Ich-abod said. “One unusually sober demoness.”

  “That cat’s magic talent is to find anything except home,” Mentia said. “Now he has found you, Arnolde Centaur, and your nonentitious companion. As for me—I am normally slightly crazy, but in the Region of Madness I am slightly sane. I am not certain about you two, however.”

  Arnolde blinked, seeming to actually see her as an individual for the first time. “Are you real?” he inquired. “Not a mere semblance?”

  Mentia’s rationality took hold. “Oh, you think I’m something crazy in the madness? A manifestation, instead of a real creature? That I can appreciate! Yes, I am real, and here comes Jenny Elf, who is also real.” For Jenny was now arriving.

  “I apologize for mistaking you for part of the local fauna,” Arnolde said. “Yes, I am Arnolde Centaur, and this is my friend from Mundania, Ichabod Archivist. We are performing a survey of mad artifacts.”

  “Hello, Arnolde and Ichabod,” Mentia said. “I am the Demoness Mentia, the worser half of the Demoness Metria.”

  The old eyes brightened with recognition. “Metria! She is notorious.”

  “She’s married now, and has half a soul, so has settled down. Now she’s doing an errand for the Good Magician, or for the Simurgh, so she can find out how to get the stork’s attention. Seems there was some business a bit over four centuries ago that annoyed the stork, so it won’t make any further deliveries to her, no matter how hard or often she signals it.”

  “I can imagine,” Arnolde said. “Do you mind showing Ichabod your legs?”

  Mentia knew that the centaur was anything but stupid, even by centaur terms, and she wanted to get his cooperation. So she lifted the hem of the gown and flashed excellent legs at the old man. His eyes immediately glazed over.

  Jenny Elf picked up Sammy. “I guess you won’t need him now, so we can go.”

  “Um, maybe better not to depart right now,” Mentia said. “It might not be safe. Soon we’ll be leaving the madness, and then you can go your way more safely.” She let her gown drop back into place, and the man’s eyes began to recover. It was clear that he had a taste for attractive legs.

  “But this doesn’t seem so bad,” Jenny said. “Not compared to what it was like when I came here with Dug Mundane.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t recommend a little girl like you going alone through this region,” Ichabod said.

  “I’m eighteen, and big for an elf,” Jenny said defensively.

  “An elf? Why, so you are!” Ichabod agreed, surprised. “But not like one I have cataloged before. Your hands are four-fingered and your ears are pointed, and you don’t seem to be associated with an elf elm.”

  “I’m from the World of Two Moons,” Jenny explained.

  “Two Moons?” the man asked blankly. “I am certain I haven’t cataloged that.”

  “It’s a different magic realm. I came to Xanth following Sammy Cat, who found a centaur wing feather here, but then we couldn’t find our way home.”

  “But surely you have but to ask the cat to find some other person or object in your home realm, close to where you know your home to be,” Arnolde said intelligently.

  “No, I tried that, but it didn’t work. I think he can’t find anything anywhere near home, unless he is already at home.”

  “Then give him some reverse wood, so he can’t find anything but home,” Ichabod suggested.

  “No, that didn’t work either,” Jenny said. “The reverse wood just made him unable to find anything he looked for.”

  “Reverse wood is treacherou
s stuff,” Mentia said. “That’s why they never tried to put it in the Golden Horde goblins’ hate spring, to make it a love spring. It might just make everyone hate the water. Same goes for using it to make Com Pewter good instead of evil; it might reverse him in some other way, making him worse.”

  “True,” Ichabod said. “It was hoped that reverse wood would enable a basilisk’s stare to bring dead folk back to life, but it merely caused the basilisk to wipe itself out. They tried to use it to reverse the spell that had transformed people to fish in the Fish River, but instead it turned the fish into water and the water into fish.”

  “I remember when a kid had the talent of giving folk hotseats,” Mentia said, smiling. “Someone slipped reverse wood into his trouser pocket, hoping it would make him give himself a hotseat, but the next time he tried to use his talent, he got wet pants.”

  Jenny laughed. “Served him right!”

  “That time it worked well,” Ichabod agreed. “But not in the expected way. So reverse wood doesn’t seem to be the answer for your search for home.”

  Arnolde frowned, orienting on the intellectual challenge. “Perhaps if you got one of those magic disposal bubbles, and directed it to take you home.”

  “That neither,” Jenny said. “It just wouldn’t go.”

  “It is almost as if your home no longer—” Ichabod started, then stifled it.

  “No longer exists,” Jenny finished firmly. “I recognized that some time ago. But it could be that my family is all right. If the Holt burned, they would move. But there would be no way for me to find the new home from here.”

  “Do you dislike it here?” Arnolde asked.

  “No. I have been here six years now, and I’m not sure I really want to go home any more. I only wish—”

  “That there were others of your particular type,” Arnolde concluded. “I know the feeling, being the only centaur Magician in Xanth. I was exiled from my home of Centaur Isle because of that, and can never return.”

  Jenny looked at him, suddenly warming to him. “Yes!”

  “Or being the only completely unmagical Mundane in a magical land,” Ichabod said. “Fortunately there are some cheering sights here.”

  Mentia realized why Amolde had asked her to show her legs before: for the tonic effect on his friend. She fogged out her gown, showing them again.

  “Why did you seek me out?” Arnolde inquired.

  “My better half’s errand for the Simurgh requires her to round up Jurors for a big trial. Two of them are Mundanes, so—”

  “Mundanes!” Ichabod exclaimed.

  “Dug and Kim,” Mentia agreed. “They visited here three years ago, playing a game, and Kim won a magic talent as a prize. Then they went home to Mundania. Now they are on the list, and must be summoned here to decide Roxanne Roc’s fate.”

  “The big bird in the Nameless Castle?” Arnolde asked. “What did she do?”

  Mentia shrugged. “No one seems to know. But once I get all the people summoned and delivered, maybe we’ll all find out.”

  “So you wish me to take you into Mundania,” Arnolde said. “To find those two Jurors.”

  “Exactly. The summons tokens will indicate the way, but I’m a demoness. I can’t leave the magic realms. But if I can arrange to take magic with me—”

  “And this trial is required by the Simurgh herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it behooves me to facilitate it. I suppose my labor here can wait a while.” Then his eye caught something. It looked like a large fly, but it had several buttons on its body. “There’s a specimen! Note it, Ichabod.”

  Ichabod opened his notebook, and several more notes popped musically out. “One buttoned fly,” he said, marking it in his book.

  “Are they dangerous?” Jenny asked.

  “Only when they get unbuttoned,” Ichabod replied with an obscure smile.

  Mentia changed the subject. “Exactly how long have you been surveying mad artifacts?”

  Arnolde exchanged a glance with Ichabod. “About twenty eight years,” the centaur said. “Ever since I retired from the kingship of Xanth. I went to Mundania and fetched my friend, who wished to retire in Xanth, and whose archivistic skill complements my specialty of alien archaeology. This is a fascinating region, and until last year, it was expanding.”

  “Yes, the Time of No Magic voided a confining spell, and allowed the madness to expand,” Mentia said. “But we fixed that last year, and now the madness is retreating.”

  “You fixed it?” he asked incredulously.

  “Well, it was a joint effort. Mainly Gary Gargoyle, but I helped. We were in Stone Hinge.”

  “That’s a mere ruin, thousands of years old. How could you—”

  “Two thousand years old,” she agreed. “We visited the deep past in a joint vision. It’s a long story.”

  Arnolde shook his head, bemused. “It must be.” He exchanged another glance with his friend. “Are you ready to revisit Mundania, Ich?”

  “In your company, certainly. Without it, I fear I would soon perish of old age.”

  Mentia glanced at Arnolde. “You’re pretty old yourself, centaur, for a mortal. Over a century and a quarter. How is it that you haven’t faded away long since?”

  “We have wondered about that,” Arnolde confessed. “Though I am a Magician, my talent does not relate to age, and of course, Ichabod lacks magic entirely. We conjecture that the ambience of madness has had, if not a rejuvenating effect, a stabilizing one, so that we remain healthy as long as we remain in it. This encourages our continuance of our survey, apart from its value as information.”

  Mentia nodded. “I know some Mundanes who live here, who I think would be dead in Mundania. There’s something about the madness.”

  “It is, after all, Xanth’s most intense magic,” Arnolde pointed out. “It may have effects that normal magic does not. We have not been inclined to question this blessing.”

  “But if you leave the madness—what then?” Jenny asked.

  “Actually I have on occasion stepped outside the madness,” Arnolde said. “I noticed no deleterious effect. My conjecture is that I have become so charged with magic that my aisle in effect extends into Xanth. That is, that I now generate an aisle of madness that keeps me and Ichabod healthy wherever we go. Of course, this could not be expected to last indefinitely, but it will be intriguing to test it in Mundania.”

  “Great!” Mentia said. “We can get Jenny out of the madness, then move on toward the isthmus. We’ll have to step along, as it will take several days for you folk to traverse Xanth, and we don’t have time to spare, but—”

  “We may be able to accelerate it, if you can summon assistance for traveling,” Ichabod said.

  Mentia hadn’t thought of that. “I know a giant who was in the madness last year. Maybe if I can locate him—”

  Sammy leaped from Jenny’s arms and bounded away through the madness. Jenny scrambled after him. “Wait for me!”

  “No!” Mentia cried. “You stay here, Jenny; I’ll follow him, and bring him back.”

  Jenny looked doubtful, but stopped running. Mentia floated rapidly after the cat.

  This was just as well, because Sammy, still not properly familiar with the madness, was getting in trouble. A huge ant with patterns of stripes on its forelegs was blocking the way. “Company—HALT!” the ant bawled.

  Sammy, startled, halted. But Metria didn’t. “What are you?” she demanded of the ant.

  “I am Sarge. I give the orders around here.”

  “Well, Sarge Ant, I rank you, because I am a Cap Tain.” She formed herself into a large floating cap with the word TAIN printed across it.

  “YesSIR! the ant agreed, saluting with a foreleg. “What are your orders, sir?”

  “Carry on, Sarge. Just tell me what threats there might be to a traveling cat in this vicinity.”

  “Just King Bomb, sir.”

  “What’s he King of?”

  “The ticks, sir. He’s a tick.
He has a very short fuse.”

  Mentia considered. She knew that ticks could be bad mischief in real Xanth, and possibly worse here. Still, a short-tempered tick named Bomb didn’t seem too formidable. “What’s his given name?”

  “Time, sir.”

  “How can we tell when we’re near him?”

  “You can hear him ticking, sir.”

  “Thank you, Sarge. Dismissed.”

  The ant went his way. So did Sammy, bounding on through the madness. But he paused just a moment, glancing back. “Wait for me!” Mentia cried, catching the hint. Then the cat forged ahead at full feline velocity.

  But soon Mentia heard an ominous ticking. They were approaching King Bomb! So she zoomed ahead. Sure enough, there was a tick shaped like bloated sphere standing squarely in the path the cat would take. He looked extremely irritable, likely to explode at any moment.

  Mentia came to float directly before him. “Tick King Time Bomb, blow this joint,” she said.

  The King’s tiny eyes glared at her. “Begone yourself, Demoness! I’ll have no truck with thee.” His ticking got louder.

  “That’s what you think, Bomb bast. Get out of here before I set you off.”

  “This is an outrage!” the King declared, growing larger as his ticking intensified.

  Mentia discovered an egg plant growing nearby. She picked an egg and hurled it at the King. It splattered on his metallic torso, the white and yoke drooling down.

  That did it. The King detonated. The explosion blasted a hole in the ground and sent shrapnel into the surrounding treetrunks, but of course, it didn’t hurt Mentia.

  Sammy appeared. He bounded across the smoking crater and went on, unconcerned.

  Mentia followed. Suddenly the cat stopped. He was before a large dent in the forest floor that was shaped like a human posterior. Mentia knew they were in the presence of a monstrous invisible man, who was sitting on the forest floor. The smell was so bad that she abolished her nose. It was as if a garbage factory with indigestion had burned halfway down.

  “Hello, Jethro Giant,” Mentia said. “Remember me? I’m the Demoness Mentia. We met last year.”