Centaur Aisle

by Piers Anthony

  "Good enough," she agreed. She planted several seeds. "Grow."

  "But what does it do?" Grundy asked plaintively.

  "Well, it relates to the psychology of the ignorant spectator," Arnolde explained. "Anyone who comprehends its properties soon penetrates the illusion. That is why I feel it will be more effective against Mundanes than against citizens of Xanth. Thus we should be able to deceive them and nullify the pursuit without violence, a distinct advantage. All we have to do is respond appropriately to their overtures, keeping our own expectations out of it."

  "What expectations?" the golem demanded, frustrated.

  Dor took a hand. "You see, resurrection fern makes figures seem like--"

  "Refrain!" Smash whispered thunderingly. "Mundane!" Ogres' hearing was also excellent.

  They waited by the growing fern. In a moment three Onesti soldiers came into view, their torches flashing between the trees, casting monstrous shadows. They were peering to either side, alert for their quarry.

  Then the three spied the five. The soldiers halted, staring, just within the magic aisle. "Grandfather!" one exclaimed, aghast, staring at Smash.

  The ogre knew what to do. He roared and made a threatening gesture with one hamfist. The soldier dropped his torch and fled in terror.

  One of the remaining soldiers was looking at Irene. "You live!" he gasped. "The fever spared you after all!"

  Irene shook her head sadly. "No, friend. I died."

  "But I see you!" the man cried, in an agony of doubtful hope. "I hear you! Now we can marry--"

  "I am dead, love," she said with mournful firmness. "I return only to warn you not to support the usurper."

  "But you never cared for politics," the soldier said, bewildered.

  "You did not even like my profession--"

  "I still don't," Irene said. "But at least you worked for Good King Omen. Death has given me pause for thought. Now you work for his betrayer. I will never respect you, even from the grave, if you work for the bad King who seeks to send Good King Omen to his grave."

  "I'll renounce King Oary!" the soldier cried eagerly. "I don't like him anyway. I thought Good Omen dead!"

  "He lives," Irene said. "He is in the dungeon at Castle Ocna."

  "I'll tell everyone! Only return to me!"

  "I cannot return, love," she said. "I am resurrected only for this moment, only to tell you why I cannot rest in peace. I am dead; King Omen lives. Go help the living." She moved back to hide behind the centaur, disappearing from the soldier's view.

  "Beautiful," Arnolde whispered.

  "I feel unclean," she muttered.

  The third man focused on Grundy. "My baby son--returned from the Khazars!" he exclaimed. "I knew they could not hold you long!"

  The golem had finally caught on to the nature of resurrection fern: it resurrected the memories of important figures in the viewers' lives.

  "Only my spirit escaped," he said. "I had to warn you. The Khazars are coming! They will besiege Onesti, slay the men, rape the women, and carry the children away into bondage, as they did me. Warn the King! Fetch all troops into the castle! Barricade the access roads! Don't let more families be ravaged. Don't let my sacrifice be in vain! Fight to the last--"

  Dor nudged the golem with his foot. "Don't overdo it," he murmured. "Mundanes are ignorant; they aren't necessarily stupid."

  "Let's move out," Irene whispered. "This should hold them for a while."

  They moved out cautiously. The two soldiers remained by the fern, absorbed by their thoughts. Before rounding a curve in me path, Dor glanced back--and saw a giant, pretty spider, of the kind that ranged about rather than forming a web. The decorations on its body resembled a greenish face, and it had eight eyes of different sizes.

  "Jumper!" he exclaimed--then stifled himself. Jumper had died of old age years ago. He had been Dor's closest friend, when the two had seemed to be the same size within the historical tapestry of Castle Roogna, but their worlds were different. The spider's descendants remained by the tapestry, and Dor could talk to them If he arranged for translation, but it wasn't the same. They seemed like interlopers, taking the place of his marvelous friend. Now he saw Jumper himself.

  But of course it was only a resurrection, not the real friend. As Dor reminded himself of that, the image reduced to the standing soldier. How Dor wished it could have been genuine! This new separation, albeit from a phantom, was painfully poignant.

  "So the fern resurrects precious memories," Grundy said as they got clear. "The person looking sees what is deepest--etched in his experience. He really should know better."

  "Oh, what do you know about it?" Irene said irritably. "It's an awful thing to do to a person, even a Mundane."

  "You looked back, too?" Dor asked.

  "I saw my father. I know he isn't dead, but I saw him." She sounded choked. "What a torment it would have been if that were all I would ever see of him."

  "We'll soon find him," Dor said encouragingly. This, too, he found he liked about her--her human feeling and loyalty to her father, who had always been a large figure in Dor's own life.

  She flashed him a grateful smile in the moonlight. Dor understood her mood; his vision of his long-gone friend had wrenched his emotion. How much worse had it been for the Mundanes, who lacked knowledge of the mechanism? It was indeed a dastardly thing they had done; perhaps the violence of ogre and sword would have been gentler.

  Soon, however, they heard the commotion of pursuit. The resurrection fern had perished, or at least had become inactive after the magic aisle left it; there would be no more visions there. The stories of the three affected soldiers would spread alarm, but there would also be many who still followed their orders to capture Dor's party.

  They stepped from the path, hiding in the brush--and the troops rushed on past. A snatch of their dialogue Rung out: "...Khazars coming. It seemed the golem's information had been taken to heart!

  "I think they've forgotten us," Irene said as they stepped back on the path. "The resurrections gave them other things to think about. Now they aren't even looking for us. So maybe we can travel to Ocna safely."

  "It was a good move we made, strategically," Dor said. "A dirty one, perhaps, and I wouldn't want to do it again, but effective."

  "First we must pass Castle Onesti," Arnolde reminded them.

  They got past Onesti by following the directions the path gave.

  There was a detour around that castle, for peasants had fields to attend to, wood to fetch, and hunting to do well beyond the castle, and the immediate environs were forbidding.

  This path angled down below the clifflike western face of the peak the castle stood on, wending its way curvaceously through pastures and forest and slope. Several parties of soldiers passed them, but were easily avoided. It seemed these people took the Khazars seriously!

  Beyond the castle the way grew more difficult. This was truly mountainous country, and there was a high pass between the two redoubts. Dor and the others were not yet fully rested from their arduous climb to Onesti of a day or so ago; now the stiffness of muscles was aggravated. But the path assured them there was no better route. Perhaps that was its conceit--but they had no ready alternative. So they hauled themselves up and up, until near midnight they came to the highest pass. It was a narrow gap between jags.

  It was guarded by a select detachment of soldiers. They could not conveniently circle around it, and knew the soldiers would not let them through unchallenged.

  "What now?" Irene asked, too tired even to be properly irritable.

  "Maybe I can distract them," Dor said. "If I succeed, the rest of you hurry through the pass."

  They worked their way as close to the pass as they could without being discovered. Arnolde oriented himself so that the magic aisle was where they needed it. Then Dor concentrated, causing the objects to break into speech.

  "Ready, Khazars?" an outcropping, of rock cried.

  "Ready!" came a chorused response from several loose rocks.<
br />
  "Sneak up close before firing your arrows," the outcropping directed. "We want to get them all on the first volley."

  "Save some for our boulder!" the upper face of the cleft called.

  "We have a perfect drop here!"

  The Onesti soldiers, at first uneasy, abruptly vacated the cleft, glancing nervously up at the crags. It seemed impossible for anyone to have a boulder up there, but the voice had certainly been convincing. They charged the rocks, swords drawn. "Move out!" Dor cried.

  Arnolde and Grundy charged for the pass. Smash and Irene hesitated. "Go on!" Dor snapped. "Get through before the magic ends!"

  "But what about you?" Irene asked.

  Dor concentrated. "Retreat, men!" the outcropping cried.

  "They're on to us!" There was the sound of scrambling from the rocks.

  "I'm not going without you!" Irene said.

  "I've got to keep them distracted until the rest of you safely clear the pass!" Dor cried, exasperated.

  "You can't keep on after--"

  Then the voices stopped. The magic aisle had passed.

  "After Arnolde gets out of range," she finished lamely.

  The soldiers, baffled by the disappearance of the enemy, were turning about. In a moment they would spy the two; the moonlight remained too bright for effective concealment in the open.

  "I grew a pineapple while we waited," Irene said. "I hate to use it on people, even Mundanes, but they'll kill us If--"

  "How can a magic pineapple operate outside the aisle?" he demanded, knowing this argument was foolish, but afraid If they moved that the soldiers would spy them.

  She looked chagrined. "For once you're right! If cherry bombs are uncertain, so is this!"

  Smash was standing in the cleft. "Run!" he cried.

  But the soldiers were closing in. Dor knew they couldn't make it through in time. He drew his sword. Without its magic, it felt heavy and clumsy, but it was the best weapon he had. He would be overwhelmed, of course, but he would die fighting. It wasn't the end he would have chosen, had he a reasonable choice, but it was better than nothing. "Run to Smash," he said. "I'll block them off."

  "You come, too!" she insisted. "I love you!"

  "Now she tells me," he muttered, watching the soldiers close in.

  Irene threw the pineapple at them. "Maybe that'll scare them," she said.

  "It can't. "They don't know what--"

  The pineapple exploded, sending yellow juice everywhere. "It detonated!" Dor exclaimed, amazed.

  "Come on!" Arnolde called, appearing behind the ogre. Suddenly it made sense; the centaur had turned about and come back when they hadn't followed. That had returned the magic to the vicinity, just in time.

  They ran to the cleft. The Mundanes were pawing at their eyes, blinded by pineapple juice. There was no trouble.

  "You were so busy trying to be heroes, you forgot common sense," Arnolde reproved them. "All you needed to do was follow me while the Mundanes' backs were turned. They would never have known of our passage."

  "I never was strong on common sense," Dor admitted.

  "That's for sure," Irene agreed. "That juice won't hold them forever. We'll have to move far and fast."

  "They did just that, their fatigue dissipated by the excitement. Now the path led downhill, facilitating progress somewhat. But it was treacherous in the darkness at this speed, for the mountain crags and trees shadowed it, and it curved and dropped without fair warning.

  Soon the soldiers were in pursuit.

  But Dor used his talent, making the path call out warnings of hazards, so that they could proceed more rapidly than other strangers might. His midnight sunstone helped, too, casting just enough light to make pitfalls almost visible. But he knew they couldn't remain on the path long, because the soldiers were more familiar with it, and had their torches, and would surely catch up. They would have to run off and hide--and that might not be enough, this time. There was too little room for concealment, and the soldiers would be too wary.

  Then disaster loomed. "The bridge is out!" the path warned.

  "What bridge?" Dor panted.

  "The wooden bridge across the cut, dummy!"

  "What happened to it?"

  "The Onesti soldiers destroyed it when they heard the Khazars were coming."

  So Dor's party had brought this mischief on itself! "Can we cross the cut some other way?"

  "See for yourself. Here it is."

  They halted hastily. There, shrouded by darkness and fog, was a gap in the mountain--a fissure four times the furthest reach of a man, extending from the clifflike face of the peak above down to the deep valley below, shrouded in nocturnal fog. Here the moonlight blazed down, as If eager to show the full extent of the hazard.

  "A young, vigorous centaur could hurdle that," Arnolde said. "It is out of the question for me."

  "If we had the rope--" Irene said. But of course Chet had that, wherever he was now.

  Ascent of the peak seemed virtually impossible, and there was no telling what lay beneath the fog. The bridge had been the only practical crossing--and only fragments of that remained. This had become a formidable natural barrier--surely one reason the Khazars had been unable to conquer this tiny Kingdom. Any bridge the enemy built could readily be hacked out or fired.

  But now the torches of the garrison of the upper pass were approaching. That was the other pincer of this trap. A few men could guard that pass, preventing retreat. The slope was steep here, offering little haven above or below the path. If the soldiers didn't get them, nature would.

  "The salve," Irene said. "See the fog--we've got to use the salve!"

  "But the curse--we've lost the counterspell!" Dor protested.

  "We'll have to do some dastardly deed!"

  "Those soldiers will do some dastardly deed to us if we don't get away from here fast," she pointed out.

  Dor looked at her, standing in the moonlight, wearing his jacket, her fine-formed legs braced against the mountain. He thought of the soldiers doing a dastardly deed to her, as they had started to do in the dungeon. "We'll use the salve," he decided.

  They scrambled down the steep slope to reach the level of the mist. They had to cling to trees and saplings, lest they slide into the cleft involuntarily.

  Dor felt in his pocket for the jar--and found the dime he had obtained from Ichabod in Modern Mundania. He had forgotten that; it must have slipped into another crevice if his pocket and been over looked. It was of course of no use now. He fumbled farther and found the jar.

  Quickly they applied the salve to their feet. The supply was getting low; this was just about the last time they would be able to use it.

  Then they stepped cautiously out onto the fog.

  "Stay close to Arnolde," Dor warned. "And in line. Anyone who goes outside the magic aisle will fall through."

  Now the soldiers reached the cut. They were furious when they discovered no victims there. But almost immediately they spied the fugitives. "Cnvm adknv!" one cried. "Sgdx'qd rim sgd bknto." Then he did a double take.

  For a moment the soldiers stared. "Sgdx can't do that!" one protested as the rear of the magic aisle swung around to intersect him.

  But their leader found the answer. "They're sorcerers! Spies sent by the Khazars. Shoot them down!"

  Numbly responsive to orders, the soldiers nocked arrows to their bowstrings. "Run!" Dor cried. "But stay with Arnolde!"

  "This time I'll bring up the rear, just to be sure," the centaur said. "Lead the way, the rest of you."

  It made sense. The main part of the magic aisle was ahead of the centaur, and this way Arnolde could angle his body to keep them all within it. Dor and Irene and Smash charged forward as the first volley of arrows came at them. Grundy rode the centaur; it was the best way to keep him out from underfoot. They crossed the fog-filled cut, coming to the dense forest at the far side.

  "Aaahh!" Arnolde screamed.

  Dor paused to look back. An arrow had struck the centaur in the rump. Ar
nolde was crippled, trying to move forward on three legs.

  Smash was leading the way. He reached out to grab the branch of a tree that projected through the fog. He ripped that branch out of its trunk and hurled it uphill and across the cut toward the soldiers.

  His aim was good; the soldiers screamed and flung themselves flat as the heavy branch landed on them, and one almost fell into the chasm.

  Then Smash charged back across the cloud. He ducked down, grabbed the centaur by one foreleg and one hindleg, and hefted him to shoulder height. "Oh, I say!" Arnolde exclaimed, amazed despite his pain.

  But within the ambience of magic, there was no strength to match that of the ogre. Smash carried Arnolde to the slope and set him down carefully where the ground rose out of the fog. This place was sheltered from the view of the soldiers; there would be no more shooting.

  "But the arrow," the centaur said bravely. "We must get it out!"

  Smash grabbed the protruding shaft and yanked. Arnolde screamed again--but suddenly the arrow was out. It had not been deeply embedded, or the head would have broken off.

  "Yes, that was the appropriate way to do it," the centaur said, and fainted.

  Irene was already sprouting a seed. They had lost their healing elixir with Arnolde's bag of spells, but some plants had curative properties. She grew a balm plant and used its substance on the wound. "This won't cure it all the way," she said. "But it will deaden the pain and start the healing process. He should be able to walk."

  Smash paced nervously. "Yet--Chet," he said. "Mundane, the pain--"

  Dor caught on to the ogre's concern. "We don't know that a Mundane wound will always become infected the way Chet's did. That was probably Chet's bad luck. Also, he was bitten by a wyvern, so there might have been poison, while Arnolde was struck by an arrow. This is a different situation--I think." Still, the coincidence of a second centaur getting wounded bothered Dor. Could it be part of the salve's curse? The centaurs had had to use twice as much salve, since they had four feet, and perhaps that made them more susceptible to the curse.

  Arnolde soon woke and agreed that the agony of the wound was much abated. That was a relief, for at least two reasons. Nevertheless, Dor decided to camp there for the remainder of the night.