Centaur Aisle

by Piers Anthony

  "Meanwhile, I'll start my stunflower," Irene said.

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence." But Dor couldn't blame her; he had had success before in tricking monsters with his talent, but it depended on the nature and intelligence of the monster. He hadn't tried it on the water dragon, knowing that effort would be wasted.

  This sea nettle was a largely unknown quantity. It certainly didn't look smart.

  He concentrated on the water near the nettle. "Can you do imitations?" he asked it. The inanimate often thought it had talent of this nature, and the less talent it had, the more vain it was about it. Once, years ago, he had caused water to imitate his own voice, leading a triton a merry chase.

  "No," the water said.

  Oh. "Well, repeat after me: 'Sea nettle, you are a big blob of blubber.'"

  "Huh?" the water asked.

  He would have to encounter a stupid quantity of water! Some water was volatile in its wit, with cleverness flowing freely; some just lay there in puddles. "Blob of blubber!" he repeated.

  "You're another!" the water retorted.

  "Now say it to the sea nettle."

  "You're another!" the water said to the sea nettle.

  The others of Dor's party smiled. Irene's plant was growing nicely.

  "No!" Dor snapped, his temper shortening. "Blob of blubber."

  "No blob of blubber!" the water snapped.

  The sea nettle's spines wiggled. "It says thank you," Grundy reported.

  This was hopeless. In bad temper, Dor desisted.

  "The flower is almost ready," Irene said. "It's a bit like the Gorgon; it can't stun you if you don't look at it. So we'd better all line up with our backs to it--and don't look back. There'll be no returning this way; once a plant like this matures, I can't stop it."

  They lined up. Dor heard the rustle of rapidly expanding leaves behind him. This was nervous business!

  "It's blossoming," Grundy said. "It's beginning to feel its power. Oh, it's a bad one!"

  "Sure it's a bad one," Irene agreed. "I picked the best seed. Start wading into the channel. The flower will strike before we reach the sea nettle, and we want the nettle's attention directed this way."

  They waded out. Dor suddenly realized how constrictive his clothing would be in the water. He didn't want anything hampering him as he swam by the nettle. He started removing his apparel. Irene, apparently struck by the same thought, quickly pulled off her skirt and blouse.

  "Dor's right," Grundy remarked. He was riding Chet's back. "You do have nice legs. And that's not all."

  "If your gaze should stray too far from forward," Irene said evenly, "it could encounter the ambience of the stunflower."

  Grundy's gaze snapped forward. So did Chet's, Smash's, and Dor's. But Dor was sure there was a grim smirk on Irene's face. At times she was very like her mother.

  "Hey, the flower's bursting loose!" Grundy cried. "I can tell by what it says; it has a bold self-image. What a head on that thing!"

  Indeed, Dor could feel a kind of heat on his bare back. The power of the flower was now being exerted.

  But the sea nettle seemed unaffected. It quivered, moving toward them. Its headpart was gilled like a toadstool all around. Driblets of drool formed on its surface.

  "The nettle says it will sting us all so hard--oooh, that's obscene!" Grundy said. "Let me see If I can render a properly effective translation--"

  "Keep moving," Irene said. "The flower's incipient."

  "Now the flower's singing its song of conquest," Grundy reported, and broke into the song: "I'm the one flower, I'm the Stunflower!"

  At the word "stun" there was a burst of radiation that blistered their backs. Dor and the others fell forward into the channel, letting the water cool their burning flesh.

  The sea nettle, facing the flower, stiffened. Its surface glazed. The drool crystallized. The antennae faded and turned brittle. It had been stunned.

  They swam by the nettle. There was no reaction from the monster.

  Dor saw its mass extending down into the depths of the channel with huge stinging tentacles. That thing certainly could have destroyed them all, had it remained animate.

  They completed their swim in good order, Chet and Grundy in the lead, then Dor, Smash, and finally Irene. He knew she could swim well enough; she was staying back so the others would not view her nakedness. She wasn't actually all that shy about it; it was mainly her sense of propriety, developing apace with her body, and her instinct for preserving the value of what she had by keeping it reasonably scarce. It was working nicely; Dor was now several times as curious about her body as he would have been had he seen it freely. But he dared not look; the stunning radiation of the stunflower still beat upon the back of his head.

  They found the shallows and trampled out of the water. "Keep going until shaded from the flower," Irene called. "Don't look back, whatever you do!"

  Dor needed no warning. He felt the heat of stun travel down his back, buttocks, and legs as he emerged from the water. What a monster Irene had unleashed! But it had done its job, when his own talent had failed; it had gotten them safely across the channel and past the sea nettle.

  They found a tangle of purple-green bushes and maneuvered to put them between their bodies and the stunflower. Now Dor could put his clothing back on; he had kept it mostly dry by carrying it clenched in his teeth, the magic sword strapped to his body.

  "You have nice legs, too," Irene said behind him, making him jump. "And that's not all."

  Dor found himself blushing. Well, he had it coming to him. Irene was already dressed; girls could change clothing very quickly when they wanted to.

  They moved on south, but it was a long time before Dor lost his nervousness about looking back. That stunflower...

  Chet halted. "What's this?" he asked.

  The others looked. There was a flat wooden sign set in the ground.

  On it was neatly printed NO LAW FOR THE LOIN.

  It was obvious that no one quite understood this message, but no one wanted to speculate on its meaning. At last Dor asked the sign: "Is there any threat to us nearby?"

  "No," the sign said.

  They went on, each musing his private musings. They had come to this island naked; could that relate? But obviously that sign had been there long before their coming. Could it be a misspelling? he wondered. But his own spelling was so poor, he hesitated to draw that conclusion.

  Now they came to a densely wooded marsh. The trees were small but closely set; Dor and Irene could squeeze between them, but Smash could not, and it was out of the question for Chet.

  "Me make a lake," Smash said, readying his huge hamfist. With the trees gone, this would be a more or less open body of murky water.

  "No, let's see if we can find a way through," Dor said. "King Trent never liked to have wilderness areas wantonly destroyed, for some reason. And if we make a big commotion, it could attract whatever monsters there are."

  They skirted the thicket and soon came across another sign: THE LOIN WALKS WHERE IT WILL. Near it was a neat, dry path through the forest, elevated slightly above the swamp.

  "Any danger here?" Dor inquired.

  "Not much," the sign said.

  They used the path. As they penetrated the thicket, there were rustlings in the trees and slurpings in the muck below. "What's that noise?" Dor asked, but received no answer. This forest was so dense there was nothing inanimate in it; the water was covered with green growth, and the path itself was formed of living roots.

  "I'll try," Grundy said. He spoke in tree language, and after a moment reported: "They are cog rats and skug worms; nothing to worry about as long as you don't turn your back on them."

  The rustlings and slurpings became louder. "But they are all around us!" Irene protested. "How can we avoid turning our backs?"

  "We can face in all directions," Chet said. "I'll go forward;

  Grundy can ride me facing backward. The rest of you can look to either side."

  They did so
, Smash on the left, Dor and Irene on the right. The noises stayed just out of sight. "But let's get on out of this place!" Irene said.

  "I wonder how the loin makes out, since this seems to be its path," Dor said.

  As if in answer to his question, they came upon another sign: THE LOIN IS LORD OF THE JUNGLE. Obviously the cog rats and skug worms didn't dare bother the loin.

  "I am getting more curious about this thing," Irene said. "Does it hunt, does it eat, does it play with others of its kind? What is it?"

  Dor wondered, too, but still hesitated to state his conjectures. Suppose it wasn't a misspelling? How, then, would it hunt, eat, and play?

  They hurried on and finally emerged from the thicket--only to encounter another sign. THE LOIN SHALL LIE WITH THE LAMB.

  "What's a lamb?" Irene asked.

  "A Mundane creature," Chet said. "Said to be harmless, soft, and cuddly, but stupid."

  "That's the kind the loin would like," she muttered darkly.

  Still no one openly expressed conjectures about the nature of this creature. They traveled on down to the southern tip of this long island. The entire coastline of Xanth, Chet explained, was bordered by barrier reefs that had developed into island chains; this was as good and safe a route as they could ask for, since they no longer had a boat. There should be very few large predators on the islands, since there was insufficient hunting area for them, and the sea creatures could not quite reach the interiors of the isles. But no part of Xanth was wholly safe. All of them were ready to depart this Isle of the Loin.

  As they came to the beach, they encountered yet another sign: A PRIDE OF LOINS. And a roaring erupted behind them, back along the path in the thicket. Something was coming--and who could doubt what it was?

  "Do we want to meet a pride of loins?" Chet asked rhetorically.

  "But do we want to swim through that?" Grundy asked.

  They looked. A fleet of tiger sharks had sailed in while Dor's party stood on the beach. Each had a sailfin and the head of a tiger. They crowded in as close to the shore as they could reach, snarling hungry welcome.

  "I think we're between the dragon and the dune again," Grundy said.

  "I can stop the tiger sharks," Irene said. "I have a kraken seaweed seed."

  "And I still have the hypno-gourd; that should stop a loin," Chet said. "Assuming it's a case of misspelling. There is a Mundane monster like the front half of a tiger shark, called a--"

  "But there must be several loins in a pride," Grundy said. "Unless it's just one loin standing mighty proud."

  "Me fight the fright," Smash said.

  "A pride might contain twenty individuals," Chet said. "You might occupy half a dozen, Smash--but the remaining dozen or so would have opportunity to eat up the rest of us. If that is what they do."

  "But we don't know there are that many," Irene protested uncertainly.

  "We've got to get out of here!" Grundy cried. "Oh, I never worried about my flesh when I was a real golem!"

  "Maybe you weren't as obnoxious then," Irene suggested. "Besides which, you didn't have any flesh then."

  But the only way to go was along the beach--and the tiger sharks paced them in the water. "We can't escape either menace this way," Irene said. "I'm planting my kraken." She tossed a seed into the water. "Grow, weed!"

  Chet held forward the hypno-gourd that he had retained through all their mishaps, one palm covering the peephole. "I'll show this to the first loin, regardless."

  Smash joined him. "Me reckon the secon's" he said, his hamfists at the ready. "An' nerd the third."

  "You're the Magician," Grundy told Dor. "Do something."

  Dor made a wild attempt. "Anything--is there anyway out of here?"

  "Thought you'd never ask," the sand at his feet said. "Of course there's a way out."

  "You know a way?" Dor asked, gratified.

  "No."

  "For goodness' sake!" Irene exclaimed. "What an idiot!"

  "You'd be stupid, too," the sand retorted, "If your brains were fragmented mineral."

  "I was referring to him!" she said, indicating Dor. "To think they call him a Magician! All he can do is play ventriloquist with junk like you."

  "That's telling him," the sand agreed. "That's a real load of sand in his eyes."

  "Why did you say there was a way out if you don't know it?" Dor demanded.

  "Because my neighbor the bone knows it."

  Dor spotted the bone and addressed it. "What's the way out?"

  "The tunnel, idiot," the bone said.

  The sound of the pride of loins was looming louder. The tiger sharks were snarling as the growing kraken weed menaced them.

  "Where's the tunnel?" Dor asked.

  "Right behind you, at the shore," the bone said. "I sealed it off, took three steps, and fell prey to the loins."

  "I don't see it," Dor said.

  "Of course not; the high tide washes sand over it. Last week someone goosed the tide and it dumped a lot more sand. I'm the only one who can locate the tunnel now."

  Dor picked up the bone. It resembled the thighbone of a man.

  "Locate the tunnel for me."

  "Right there, where the water laps. Scrape the sand away." It angled slightly in his hand, pointing.

  Dor scraped, and soon uncovered a boulder. "This seals it?" he asked.

  "Yes," the bone said. "I hid my pirate treasure under the next island and tunneled here so no one would know. But the loins--"

  "Hey, Smash," Dor called. "We have a boulder for you to move."

  "Oh, I wouldn't," the bone cautioned. "That's delicately placed so the thieves can't force it. The tunnel will collapse."

  "Well, how do we get in, then?"

  "You have to use a sky hook to lift the boulder out without jarring the sides."'

  "We don't have a sky hook!" Dor exclaimed angrily.

  "Of course you do!. That was my talent, when I was alive. No one but me could safely remove that boulder. I had everything figured, except the loin."

  As the bone spoke, the Kraken weed, having driven back the tiger sharks, was questing toward the shore. Soon it would be more of a menace to them than the tiger sharks had been.

  "Any progress?" Chet asked. "I do not want to rush you, but I calculate we have thirty seconds before the loins, whatever they are, burst out of the forest."

  "Chet!" Dor exclaimed. "Make this boulder into a pebble But don't jar anything."

  The centaur touched the boulder, and immediately it shrank. Soon it was a pebble that fell into the hole beneath it. The passage was open.

  "Jump in!" Dor cried.

  Irene was startled. "Who, me?"

  "Close enough," Grundy said. "Want to stand there and show off your legs to the loins?"

  Irene jumped in. "Say, this is neat!" she called from below, her voice echoing hollowly. "Let me just grow something to illuminate it--"

  "You next," Dor said to Chet. "Try not to shake the tunnel; it's not secure." Chet jumped in with surprising delicacy, Grundy with him.

  "Okay, Smash," Dor said.

  "No go," the ogre said, bracing to face the land menace. "Me join the loin." And he slammed one huge fist into a hammy palm with a sound like a crack of thunder.

  Smash wanted to guard the rear. Probably that was best. Otherwise the loins might pursue them into the tunnel. "Stand next to the opening," Dor said. "When you're ready, jump in and follow us.

  Don't wait too long. Soon the kraken will reach here; that will stop the loins, I think. Don't tangle with the kraken; we need it to stand guard after you rejoin us."

  The ogre nodded. The bellow of the loins became loud. Dor jumped in the hole. He found himself in a man-sized passage, leading south, under the channel. The light from the entrance faded rapidly. But Irene had thoughtfully planted starflowers along the way, and their pinpoint lights marked the progress of the tunnel. Dor paused to unwrap his midnight sunstone; its beam helped considerably.

  As Dor walked, he heard the approach of the pride of
loins outside. Smash made a grunt of surprise. Then there was the sound of contact. "What's going on?" Dor cried, worried.

  "The ogre just threw a dandyloin to the kraken," the pebble in the mouth of the tunnel said. "Now he's facing up to their leader, Sir Loin Stake. He's tough and juicy."

  "Smash, come on!" Dor cried. "Don't push your luck!"

  The ogre's reply was muffled. All Dor heard was "...luck!"

  "oooo, what you said!" the pebble exclaimed. "Wash out your mouth with soapstone!"

  In a moment Smash came lumbering down the tunnel, head bowed to clear the ceiling. A string of kraken weed was strewn across his hairy shoulder. Evidently he had held off the loins until the kraken took over the vicinity. "Horde explored, adored the gourd," he announced, cracking a smile like a smoking cleft in a lightning-struck tree. Those who believed ogres had no sense of humor were obviously mistaken; Smash could laugh with the best, provided the joke was suitably fundamental.

  "What did the loins look like?" Dor asked, overcome by morbid curiosity.

  Smash paused, considering, then uttered one of his rare nonrhyming utterances. "Ho ho ho ho ho!" he bellowed--and the fragile tunnel began to crumble around them. Rocks dislodged from the ceiling and the walls oozed moisture.

  Dor and the ogre fled that section. Dor was no longer very curious about the nature of the loins; he just wanted to get out of this tunnel alive. They were below the ocean; they could be crushed inexorably If the tunnel support collapsed. A partial collapse, leading to a substantial leak, would flood the tunnel. Even an ogre could not be expected to hold up an ocean.

  They caught up to the others. "There was no crash behind them; the tunnel had not collapsed. Yet.

  "This place makes me nervous," Irene said.

  "No way out but forward," Chet said. "Quickly."

  The passage seemed interminable, but it did trend south. It must have been quite a job for the pirate to excavate this, even with his sky hook to help haul out the refuse. How ironic that the loin should be his downfall, after he had finished the tunnel! They hurried onward and downward, becoming more nervous as the depth deepened.

  To heighten their apprehension, the bottom of the tunnel became clammy, then slick. A thin stream of water was flowing in it--and soon it was clear that this water was increasing.