Centaur Aisle

by Piers Anthony

  The sea monster, seeing her hard-won meal escape, vented one terrible honk of outrage that caused the smoke to waver. This shook their entire apparatus. The sound reverberated about the welkin, startling pink, green, and blue birds from their island perches and sending sea urchins fleeing in childish tears.

  "I can't even translate that," Grundy said, awed.

  The honk had one other effect. It attracted the attention of the nest of Wyverns. The empty nest flew up, a huge mass of sticks and vines and feathers and scales and bones. "What's this noise?" it demanded.

  Oh, no! Dor's talent had to be responsible for this. He had been under such pressure, his magic was manifesting erratically. "The sea monster did it!" he cried, truthfully enough.

  "That animated worm?" the nest demanded. "I'll teach it to disturb my repose. I'll squash it!" And it flew fiercely toward the monster.

  The sea monster, justifiably astonished, ducked her head and dived under the water. Xanth was the place of many incredible things, but this was beyond incredibility. The nest, pursuing the monster, landed with a great splash, became waterlogged, and sank "I'm all washed up!" it wailed despairingly as it disappeared.

  Dor and the others stared. They had never imagined an event like this. "But where are the Wyverns?" Chet asked.

  "Probably out hunting," Grundy answered. "We'd better be well away from here when they return and find their nest gone."

  They had by this devious route made their escape from the sea monster. As time passed, they left the monster far below. Dor began to relax again--and his torch guttered out. These plants did not burn forever, and this one had expended all its smoke.

  "Smoke alert!" Dor cried, waving the defunct torch. They were now so high in the air that a fall would be disastrous even without an angry monster below.

  "So close to the clouds!" Chet lamented, pointing to a looming cloudbank. They had almost made it.

  "Grow the rope some more," Grundy said. "Make it reach up to those clouds."

  Irene complied. A new vine grew up, anchored in the basket. It penetrated the lowest cloud.

  "But it has no salve," Chet said. "It can't hold on there."

  "Give me the salve," Grundy said. "I'll climb up there." He did so. Nimbly he mounted the rope-vine. In moments he disappeared into the cloud, a blob of salve stuck to his back.

  The supportive smoke column dissipated. The basket sagged, and Dor swung about below it, horrified. But it descended only a little; the rope-vine had been successfully anchored in the cloud, and they were safe.

  There was no way the rest of them could climb that rope, though.

  They had to wait suspended until a vagary of the weather caused a new layer of clouds to form beneath them, hiding the ocean. The new clouds were traveling south, in contrast to the westward-moving higher ones.

  When the positioning was right, they stepped out and trod the billowy white masses, jumping over the occasional gaps, until they were safely ensconced in a large cloudbank. In due course this cleared away from the higher clouds, letting the sky open. The winds at different levels of the sky were traveling in different directions, carrying their burdens with them; this wind was bearing south. Since the basket was firmly anchored to the higher cloudbank, they had to unload it quickly so they would not lose their remaining possessions.

  They watched it depart with mixed emotions; it had served them well.

  They sprouted a grapefruit tree and ate the grapes as they ripened.

  It was sunny and warm here atop the clouds; since this wind was carrying them south, there was no need for the travelers to walk. Their difficult journey had become an easy one.

  "Only one thing bothers me," Chet murmured. "When we reach Centaur Isle--how do we get down?"

  "Maybe we'll think of something by then," Dor said. He was tired again, mentally as well as physically; he was unable to concentrate on a problem of the future right now, however critical that problem might be.

  They smeared salve on their bodies so they could lie down and rest. The cloud surface was resilient and cool, and the travelers were tired; soon they were sleeping.

  Dor dreamed pleasantly of exploring in a friendly forest; the action was inconsequential, but the feeling was wonderful. He had half expected more nightmares, but realized they could not reach him up here in the sky. Not unless they got hold of some magic salve for their hooves.

  Then in his dream he looked into a deep, dark pool of water, and in its reflection saw the face of King Trent. "Remember the Isle," the King told him. "It is the only way you can reach me. We need your help, Dor."

  Dor woke abruptly, to find Irene staring into his face. "For a moment you almost looked like--" she said, perplexed.

  "Your father," he finished. "Don't worry; it's only his message, I guess. I must use the Isle to find him."

  "How do you spell that?"

  Dor scratched his head. "I don't know. I thought--but I'm not sure. Island. Does aisle make sense?"

  "A I S L E?" she spelled. "Not much."

  "I guess I'm not any better at visions than I am at adventure," he said with resignation.

  Her expression changed, becoming softer. "Dor, I just wanted to tell you--you were great with the smoke and everything."

  "Me?" he asked, unbelieving. "I barely scrambled through! You and Chet and Grundy did all the--"

  "You guided us," she said. "Every time there was a crisis and we froze or fouled up, you called out an order and that got us moving again. You were a leader, Dor. You had what it took when we really had to have it. I guess you don't know it yourself, but you are a leader, Dor. You'll make a decent King, some day."

  "I don't want to be King!" he protested.

  She leaned down and kissed him on the lips. "I just had to tell you. That's all."

  Dor lay there after she moved away, his emotions mixed. The kiss had been excruciatingly sweet, but the words sweeter yet. He tried to review the recent action, to fathom where he might have been heroic, but it was all a nightmare jumble, despite the absence of the nightmares. He had simply done what had to be done on the spur of the moment, sometimes on the very jagged edge of the moment, and had been lucky.

  He didn't like depending on luck. It was not to be trusted. Even now, some horrendous unluck could be pursuing them. He almost thought he heard it through the cloudbank, a kind of leathery swishing in the air. Then a minor kind of hell broke loose. The head of a dragon poked through the cloud, uttering a raucous scream.

  Suddenly the entire party was awake and on its feet. "The Wyverns!" Chet cried. "The ones whose nest we swamped! They have found us!"

  There was no question of avoiding trouble. The Wyverns attacked the moment they appeared. In this first contact, it was every person for himself.

  Dor's magic sword flashed in his hand, stabbing expertly at the vulnerable spots of the wyvern nearest him. The Wyvern was a small dragon, with a barbed tail and only two legs, but it was agile and vicious. The sword went unerringly for the beast's heart, but glanced off the scales of its breast. The dragon was past in a moment; it was flying, while Dor was stationary, and contact was fleeting.

  There were a number of the Wyverns, and they were expert flyers.

  Smash was standing his own, as one ogre was more than a match for a dragon of this size, but Chet had to gallop and dodge madly to avoid trouble. He whirled his lasso, trying to snare the Wyvern, but so far without success.

  Irene was in the most trouble. Dor charged across to her. "Grow a plant!" he cried. "I'll protect you!"

  A Wyvern oriented on them and zoomed in, its narrow lance of fire shooting out ahead. Cloud evaporated in the path of the flame, leaving a trench; they had to scramble aside.

  "Some Protection!" Irene snarled. Her complexion was turning green; she was afraid.

  But Dor's magic sword slashed with the uncanny accuracy inherent in it and lopped off the tip of a dragon's wing. The Wyvern squawked in pain and rage and wobbled, partly out of control, and finally disappeared into the c
loud. There were sputtering sounds and a trail of smoke fusing with the cloud vapor where the dragon went down.

  It was a strange business, with Dor's party standing on the puffy white surface, the dragons passing through it as If it were vapor which of course it was. The dragons had the advantage of maneuverability and concealment, while the people had the leverage of a firm anchorage. But Dor knew the Wyverns could undercut the people's footing by burning out the clouds beneath them; all the dragons needed to do was think of it. Fortunately, Wyverns were not very smart; their brains were small, since any expendable weight was sacrificed in the interest of better flight, and what brains they had were kept too hot by the fire to function well. Wyverns were designed for fighting, not thinking.

  Irene was growing a plant; evidently she had saved some salve for it. It was a tangler, as fearsome a growth as the kraken seaweed, but one that operated on solid land--or cloud. In moments it was big enough to be a threat to all in its vicinity. "Try to get the tree between you and the dragon," Irene advised, stepping back from the vegetable monster.

  Dor did so. When the next Wyvern came at him, he scooted around behind the tangler. The dragon, hardly expecting to encounter such a plant in the clouds, did a double take and banked off. But the tangler shot out a tentacle and hooked a wing. It drew the Wyvern in, wrapping more tentacles about it, like a spider with a fly The dragon screamed, biting and clawing at the plant, but the tangler was too strong for it. The other Wyverns heeded the call.

  They zoomed in toward the tangler. Chet lassoed one as it passed him; the dragon turned ferociously on him, biting into his shoulder, then went on to the plant. Three Wyverns swooped at the tangler, jetting their fires at it. There was a loud hissing; foul-smelling steam expanded outward. But a tentacle caught a second dragon and drew it in. No one tangled with a tangler without risk!

  "We'd better get out of here," Irene said. "Whoever wins this battle will be after us next."

  Dor agreed. He called to Grundy and Smash, and they went to join Chet.

  The centaur was in trouble. Bright red blood streamed down his left side, and his arm hung uselessly. "Leave me," he said. "I am now a liability."

  "We're all liabilities," Dor said. "Irene, grow some more healing plants."

  "I don't have any," she said. "We have to get down to ground and find one; then I can make it grow."

  "We can't get down," Chet said. "Not until night, when perhaps fog will form in the lower reaches, and we can walk down that."

  "You'll bleed to death by night!" Dor protested. He took off his shirt, the new one Irene had made for him. "I'll try to bandage your wound. Then--we'll see."

  "Here, I'll do it," Irene said. "You men aren't any good at this sort of thing. Dor, you question the cloud about a fast way down."

  Dor agreed. While she worked on the centaur, he interrogated the cloud they stood on. "Where are we, in relation to the land of Xanth?"

  "We have drifted south of the land," the cloud reported.

  "South of the land! What about Centaur Isle?"

  "South of that, too," the cloud said smugly.

  "We've got to get back there!"

  "Sorry, I'm going on south. You should have disembarked an hour ago. You must talk to the wind; if it changed--"

  Dor knew it was useless to talk to the wind; he had tried that as a child. The wind always went where it wanted and did what it pleased without much regard for the preferences of others. "How can we get down to earth in a hurry?"

  "Jump off me. I'm tired of your weight anyway. You'll make a big splash when you get there."

  "I mean safely!" It was pointless to get mad at the inanimate, but Dor was doing it.

  "What do you need for safely?"

  "A tilting ramp of clouds, going to solid land."

  "No, none of that here. Closest we have is a storm working up to the east. Its turbulence reaches down to the water."

  Dor looked east and saw a looming thunderhead. It looked familiar. He was about to have his third brush with that particular storm.

  "That will have to do."

  "You'll be sor-ree!" the cloud sang. "Those T-heads are mean ones, and that one has a grudge against you. I'm a cumulus humius myself, the most humble of fleecy clouds, but that one--"

  "Enough," Dor said shortly. He was already nervous enough about their situation. The storm had evidently exercised and worked up new vaporous muscle for this occasion. This would be bad--but what choice did they have? They had to get Chet down to land--and to Centaur Isle--quickly.

  The party hurried across the cloud surface toward the storm. The thunderhead loomed larger and uglier as they approached; its huge damp vortex eyes glared at them, and its nose dangled downward in the form of a whirling cone. New muscle indeed! But the slanting sunlight caught the fringe, turning it bright silver on the near side.

  "A silver lining!" Irene exclaimed. "I'd like to have some of that!"

  "Maybe you can catch some on the way down," Dor said gruffly.

  She had criticized him for saving the gold, after all; now she wanted silver.

  A Wyvern detached itself from the battle with the tangler and winged toward them. "Look out behind; enemy at six o'clock!" Grundy cried.

  Dor turned, wearily drawing his sword. But this dragon was no longer looking for trouble. It was flying weakly, seeming dazed. Before it reached them it sank down under the cloud surface and disappeared. "The tangler must have squeezed it," Grundy said.

  "The tangler looks none too healthy itself," Irene pointed out. She was probably the only person in Xanth who would have sympathy for such a growth. Dor looked back; sure enough, the tentacles were wilting. "That was quite a fight!" she concluded.

  "But if the tangler is on its last roots," Dor asked, "why did the Wyvern fly away from it? It's not like any dragon to quit a fight unfinished."

  They had no answer. Then, ahead of them, the Wyvern pumped itself above the cloud again, struggling to clear the thunderstorm ahead. But it failed; it could not attain sufficient elevation. It blundered on into the storm.

  The storm grabbed the dragon, tossed it about, and caught it in the whirling cone. The Wyvern rotated around and around, scales flying out, and got sucked into the impenetrable center of the cloud.

  "I hate to see a storm feeding," Grundy muttered.

  "That thing's worse than the tangler!" Irene breathed. "It gobbled that dragon just like that!"

  "We must try to avoid that cone," Dor said. "There's a lot of vapor outside it; if we can climb down that, near the silver lining--"

  "My hooves are sinking in the cloud," Chet said, alarmed.

  Now they found that the same was happening to all their feet. The formerly bouncy surface had become mucky. "What's happening?"

  Irene demanded, her tone rising warningly toward hysteria.

  "What's happening?" Dor asked the cloud.

  "Your salve is losing its effect, dolt," the thunderhead gusted, sounding bluffed.

  The salve did have a time limit of a day or so. Quickly they applied more. That helped--but still the cloud surface was tacky. "I don't like this," Grundy said. "Maybe our old salve was wearing off, but the new application isn't much better. I wonder if there's any connection with the wilting tangler and the fleeing wyvern?"

  "That's it!" Chet exclaimed, wincing as his own animation shot pain through his shoulder. "We're drifting out of the ambience of magic! That's why magic things are in trouble!"

  "That has to be it!" Dor agreed, dismayed. "The clouds are south of Xanth--and beyond Xanth the magic fades. We're on the verge of Mundania!"

  For a moment they were silent, shocked. The worst had befallen them.

  "We'll fall through the cloud!" Irene cried. "We'll fall into the sea! The horrible Mundane sea!"

  "Let's run north," Grundy urged. "Back into magic!"

  "We'll only come to the edge of the cloud and fall off," Irene wailed. "Dor, do something!"

  How he hated to be put on the spot like that! But he already
knew his course. "The storm," he said. "We've got to go through it, getting down, before we're out of magic."

  "But that storm hates us!"

  "That storm will have problems of its own as the magic fades," Dor said.

  They ran toward the thunderhead, who glared at them and tried to organize for a devastating strike. But it was indeed losing cohesion as the magic diminished, and could not concentrate properly on them.

  As they stepped onto its swirling satellite vapors, their feet sank right through, as if the surface were slush. The magic was certainly fading, and very little time remained before they lost all support and plummeted.

  Yet as they encountered the silver lining, Dor realized there was an unanticipated benefit here. This slow sinking caused by the loss of effect of the salve was allowing them to descend in moderate fashion, and just might bring them safely to ground. They didn't have to depend on the ambience of the storm.

  They caught hold of each other's hands, so that no one would be lost as the thickening winds buffeted them. Smash put one arm around Chet's barrel, holding him firm despite the centaur's useless arm. They sank into the swirling fog, feeling it about them like stew.

  Dor was afraid he would be smothered, but found he could breathe well enough. There was no salve on his mouth; cloud was mere vapor to his head.

  "All that silver lining," Irene said. "And I can't have any of it!"

  The swirl of wind grew stronger. They were thrown about by the buffets and drawn into the central vortex--but it now had only a fraction of its former strength and could not fling them about as it had the wyvern. They spiraled down through it as the magic continued to dissipate. Dor hung on to the others, hoping the magic would hold out long enough to enable them to land softly. But If they splashed into deep water After an interminably brief descent, they did indeed splash into deep water. The rain pelted down on them and monstrous waves surged around them. Dor had to let go of the hands he held, in order to swim and let the others swim. He held his breath, stroked for the surface of the current wave and, when his head broke into the troubled air, he cried, "Help! Spread the word!"