Centaur Aisle

by Piers Anthony

  Their chance of approaching Castle Ocna secretly was gone anyway and the recovery of their friend was more important. After all, the centaur's aisle of magic was essential to their welfare in Mundania.

  In midday, weary but hopeful, they reached Castle Ocna. This was less imposing than Castle Onesti, but still formidable. The outer wall was far too high for them to scale, "Me bash to trash," Smash offered confidently.

  "No," Dor said. "That would alert the whole castle and bring a hundred arrows down on us." He glanced at Arnolde, who seemed to be doing all right; no infection was in evidence. But they wanted no more arrows! "We'll wait until night and operate quietly. They'll be expecting our attack, but won't know exactly what form it will take.

  If we can bring the magic aisle to cover King Trent, he'll be able to take it from there."

  "But we don't know where in the castle he is," Irene protested anxiously.

  "That's my job," Grundy said. "I'll sneak in and scout about and let you know by nightfall. Then we'll wrap this up without trouble."

  It seemed like a good idea. The others settled themselves for a meal and a rest, while the golem insinuated his way into the castle.

  Arnolde, perhaps more greatly weakened by his injury than he showed, slept. Smash always conked out when he had nothing physical to do. Dor and Irene were awake and alone again.

  It occurred to Dor that bringing the magic aisle to bear on King Trent might not necessarily solve the problem. King Trent could change the jailer to a slug--but the cell would still be locked. Queen Iris might make a griffin seem to appear--but that would not unlock the cells. More thinking needed to be done.

  They lay on the slope, in the concealment of one of the huge ancestral oaks, and the world was deceptively peaceful. "Do you really think it will work?" Irene asked worriedly. "The closer I get, the more I fear something dreadful will happen."

  Dor decided he couldn't afford to agree with her. "We have fought our way here," he said. "It can't go for nothing."

  "We have had no omens of success--?" She paused. "Or have we? Omen--King Omen--can he have anything to do with it?"

  "Anything is possible with magic. And we have brought magic to this Kingdom."

  She shook her head. "I swing back and forth, full of hope and doubt. You just keep going on, never suffering the pangs of uncertainty, and you do generally get there. We'll make a good match."

  No uncertainty? He was made of uncertainty! But again, he didn't want to undermine what little confidence Irene was grasping for.

  "We have to succeed. Otherwise I would be King. You wouldn't want that."

  She rolled over, fetching up next to him, shedding leaves and grass. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. "I'd settle for that, Dor."

  He looked at her, startled. She was disheveled and lovely. She had always been the aggressor in their relationship, first in quarreling, more recently in romance. Did he really want it that way?

  He grabbed her and pulled her back down to him, kissing her savagely. At first she was rigid with surprise; then she melted. She returned his kiss and his embrace, becoming something very special and exciting.

  It would have been easy to go on from there. But a note of caution sounded in Dor's mind. In the course of assorted adventures he had come to appreciate the value of timing, and this was not the proper time for what offered. "First we rescue your father," he murmured in her ear.

  That brought her up short. "Yes, of course. So nice of you to remind me."

  Dor suspected he had misplayed it, but as usual, all he could do was bull on. "Now we can sleep, so as to be ready for tonight."

  "Whatever you say," she agreed. But she did not release him. "Dear."

  Dor considered, and realized he was comfortable as he was. A strand of Irene's green-tinted hair fell across his face, smelling pleasantly of girl. Her breathing was soft against him. He felt that he could not ask for a better mode of relaxation.

  But she was waiting for something. Finally he decided what it was.

  "Dear," he said.

  She nodded, and closed her eyes. Yes, he was learning! He lay still, and soon he slept.

  "Now aren't we cozy!" Grundy remarked.

  Dor and Irene woke with a joint start. "We were just sleeping together," she said.

  "And you admit it!" the golem exclaimed.

  "Well, we are engaged, you know. We can do what we like together."

  Dor realized that she was teasing the golem, so he stayed out of it.

  What did it matter what other people thought? What passed between himself and the girl he loved was their own business.

  "I'll have to tell your father," Grundy said, nettled.

  Suddenly Dor had pause to reconsider. This was the daughter of the King!

  "I'll tell him myself, you wad of string and clay!" Irene snapped. "Did you find him?"

  "Maybe I shouldn't tell a bad girl like you."

  "Maybe I should grow a large flytrap plant and feed you to it," Irene replied.

  That fazed the golem. "I found them all. In three cells, the way the three of you were, one in each cell. Queen Iris, King Trent, and King Omen."

  Irene sat up abruptly, disengaging from Dor. "Are they all right?"

  Grundy frowned. "The men are. They have been through privation before. The Queen is not pleased with her situation."

  "She wouldn't be," Irene agreed. "But are they all right physically? They haven't been starved, or anything?"

  "Well, they were a bit close-mouthed about that," the golem said.

  "But the Queen seems to have lost weight. She was getting fat anyway, so that's all right, but I guess she hasn't been fed much. And I saw a crust of bread she left. It was moldy. The flies are pretty thick in there, too; must be a lot of maggots around."

  Irene got angry. "They have no right to treat royalty like that!"

  "Something else I picked up," Grundy said. "The guard who feeds them--it seems he eats what he wants first, and gives them the leavings. Sometimes he spits on it, or rubs dirt in it, just to aggravate them. "They have to eat the stuff anyway or starve. Once he even urinated in their drinking water, right where they could see him, to be sure they knew what they were drinking. He doesn't speak, he just shows his contempt by his actions."

  "I have heard of this technique," Arnolde said. "It is the process of degradation. If you can destroy a person's pride, you can do with him what you will. Pride is the backbone of the spirit. Probably King Oary is trying to get King Omen to sign a document of abdication, just in case there is ever any challenge to King Oary's legitimacy."

  "Why is he keeping the others alive, then?" Dor asked, appalled by both the method and the rationale. Mundanes played politics in an ugly fashion.

  "Well, we have seen how he operates. If he lets the three spend time together and become friends, then he can use the others as leverage against King Omen. Remember how you told me he was going to torture Irene to make you talk?"

  "He's going to torture my parents?" Irene demanded, aghast.

  "I dislike formulating this notion, but it is a prospect." Irene was silent, smoldering. Dor decided, regretfully, to tackle the problem of freeing the prisoners. "I hoped King Trent could use his power to break out, but I'm not sure how transformation of people can unlock doors. If we can figure out a way--"

  "Elementary," Arnolde said. "The King can transform the Queen to a mouse. She runs out through a crevice. Then he transforms her back, and she opens the cells from the outside. If there are guards, he can transform her to a deadly monster to dispatch them."

  So simple! Why hadn't he, Dor, thought of that?

  Irene shifted gears, in the manner of her sex, becoming instantly practical. "Who is in the cell closest to the wall?"

  "The Queen." The golem frowned. "You know, I think she's the only one the magic aisle can reach. The wall's pretty thick in that region."

  "So my father probably can't transform anyone," Irene said.

  Trouble! Dor considered, trying
to come up with an alternate suggestion. "The Queen does have powerful magic. It should be possible for her to free them by means of illusion. She can make them see the cells as empty, or containing dead prisoners, so that the guards open the gates. Then she can generate a monster to scare them away."

  "There are problems," Arnolde said. "The aisle, as you know, is narrow. The illusion will not operate outside it. Since two cells are beyond--"

  "The Queen's illusion will have very limited play," Dor concluded.

  "We had better warn her about that. She should be able to manage, if she has time to prepare."

  "I'm on my way," Grundy said. "I don't know how this expedition would function without me!"

  "There isn't one of us we can do without," Dor said. "We've already seen that. When we get separated, we're all in trouble."

  As the night closed, they moved to the castle, trying to reach the spot nearest the Queen's cell as described by the golem. Again there was no moat, just a glacis, so that they had to mount a kind of stone hill leading up to the wall. Dor could appreciate how thick that wall might be, set on a base this massive.

  Castle Ocna was alert, fearing the invasion of the Khazars; torches flickered in the turrets and along the walls. But Dor's party was not using the established paths and remained unobserved. People who lived in castles tended to be insulated from events outside, and to forget the potential importance of the exterior environment. It occurred to Dor that this also applied to the whole land of Xanth; few of its inhabitants knew anything about Mundania, or cared to learn.

  Trade between the realms, hitherto a matter of erratic chance, should be established, if only to facilitate a more cosmopolitan awareness.

  King Oary was evidently not much interested in trade, to the detriment of his Kingdom; he regarded the Xanth visitors as a threat to his throne. As indeed they were--since he was a usurper.

  "Now we can't plan exactly how this will work," Dor said in a final review. "I hope the Queen will be able to make an illusion that will cause the guards to release her, and then she can free the others."

  "She'd love to vamp a guard," Irene said. "She'll make herself look like the winsomest wench in all Mundania. Then when he comes close, she'll turn into a dragon and scare him to death. Serve him right."

  Dor chuckled. "I think I know how that works."

  She whirled on him in mock fury. "You haven't begun to see how it works!" But she couldn't hold her frown. She kissed him instead.

  "The lady appears to have given fair warning," Arnolde remarked. "You won't see the dragon until you are securely married."

  "He knows that," Irene said smugly. "But men never learn. Each one thinks he's different."

  Arnolde set himself against the wall, changing his orientation by small degrees so that the aisle swung through the castle. "Grundy will have to report whether we intercept the Queen," he said. "I cannot perceive the use of the aisle."

  "If anything goes wrong," Irene said, "Smash will have to go into action, and I'll grow some plant to mess them up."

  They waited. The centaur completed a sweep through the castle without event. He swept back, still accomplishing nothing. "I begin to fear we are, after all, beyond range," he said.

  Smash put one cauliflower ear to the watt. "Go down for crown."

  "Of course!" Dor agreed. "They are in the dungeon! Below ground level. Aim down."

  With difficulty, Arnolde bent his forelegs, leaving his hindlegs extended, tilting his body down. He commenced another sweep. This was quite awkward for him, because of the position and his injury.

  Smash joined him, lifting him up and setting him down at a new angle, making the sweep easier.

  "But if they are too far inside for the aisle to reach--" Irene murmured tensely.

  "Grundy will let us know," Dor said, trying to prevent her from becoming hysterically nervous. He knew this was the most trying time for her--this period when they would either make contact or fail. "We may catch Queen Iris, then sweep on past, and it will take a while for the golem to relay the news."

  "That could be it," she agreed, moving into the circle of his arm.

  He turned to kiss her and found her lips eager to meet his own. Once she had declared her love, she made absolutely no secret of it. Dor realized that even if their mission failed, even if they perished here in Mundania, it was privately worth it for him in this sense. He had discovered love, and it was a universe whose reaches, pitfalls, and potential rewards were more vast than all of Mundania. He held the kiss for a long time.

  "Is this how you behave when unchaperoned?" a woman's voice demanded sharply.

  Dor and Irene broke with a start. There beside them stood the Queen. "Mother!" Irene cried, half in relief, half in chagrin.

  "Shamefully embracing in public!" Queen Iris continued, frowning. She had always been the guardian of other people's morals.

  "This must come to the attention of--?"

  The Queen vanished. Arnolde, turning as well as he could to face her image, had thereby shifted the magic aisle away from Iris' cell, so that the Queen's magic was interrupted. She could no longer project her illusion-image.

  "Beg pardon," the centaur said. He shifted back.

  Queen Iris reappeared. Before she could speak again, Irene did so.

  "That's nothing, Mother. This afternoon Dor and I slept together."

  "You disreputable girl!" Iris exclaimed, aghast

  Dor bit his tongue. He had never really liked the Queen and could hardly have thought of a better way to prick her bubble.

  The centaur tried to reassure her. "Your Majesty, we all slept."

  "You, too?" Iris demanded, her gaze surveying them with an amazing chill. "And the ogre?"

  "We're a very close group," Irene said. "I love them all."

  This was going too far. "You misunderstand," Dor said. "We only--?" Irene tromped his toe, cutting him off. She wanted to continue baiting her mother.

  But Queen Iris, no fool, had caught on. "They only saw up your skirt, of course. How many times have I cautioned you about that? You have absolutely no sense of--"

  "We bring the King?" Smash inquired.

  "The King!" Iris exclaimed. "By all means! You must march in and free us all."

  "But the noise--" Dor protested. "If we alert the soldiers--"

  "You forget my power," Queen Iris informed him. "I can give your party the illusion of absence. No one will hear you or see you, no matter what you do."

  Such a simple solution! The Queen's illusion would be more than enough to free them all. "Break in the wall, Smash," Dor said. "We can rescue King Trent ourselves!"

  With a grunt of glee, the ogre advanced on the wall. Then he disappeared. So did the centaur. Dor found himself embracing nothing. He could neither see nor feel Irene, and heard nothing either, but there was resistance where he knew her to be. Experimentally he shoved.

  Something shoved him back. It was like the force of inertia when he swung around a corner at a run, a force with no seeming origin.

  Irene was there, all right! This spell differed from the one the centaur had used; it made the people within it undetectable to each other as well as to outsiders. He hoped that didn't lead to trouble.

  A gap appeared in the wall. Chunks of stone fell out, silently. The ogre was at work.

  Dor kept his arm around the nothingness beside him, and it moved with him. Curious about the extent of the illusion, he moved his hand. Portions of the nothingness were more resilient than others.

  Then he found himself stumbling; a less resilient portion had given him another shove. Then something helped steady him; the nothingness was evidently sorry. He wrapped his arms about it and drew it in close for a kiss, but It didn't feel right. He concluded he was kissing the back of her head. He grabbed a hank of nothingness and gave it a friendly tug.

  Then Irene appeared, laughing. "Oh, am I going to get even for that!" Then she realized she could perceive him in the moonlight.

  She wrapped the jacket a
bout her torso--it had fallen open during their invisible encounter--and drew him forward. "We're getting left behind!" She vanished and silenced.

  They had re-entered the aisle. Dor kept hold of her nothing-hand and followed the other nothings into the hole in the wall.

  For a moment they all became visible. Arnolde was ahead, negotiating a pile of rubble; Smash had broken through to the lower level, but the path he made was hardly smooth. The centaur, realizing that the aisle had shifted away from the Queen, hastily corrected his orientation. They all vanished again.

  Castle personnel appeared, gaping at the rubble, unable to fathom its cause. One stepped into the passage--and vanished. That created another stir. As yet the Mundanes did not seem to associate this oddity with an invasion.

  The ogre's tunnel progressed apace. Soon enough it broke into the Queen's cell, then into King Trent's and finally King Omen's. At that point the parties became visible again. There was ambient light, courtesy of the Queen's illusion. Dor was uncertain at what point illusion became reality, since light was light however it was generated, but he had learned not to worry unduly about such distinctions.

  Irene lurched forward and flung herself into King Trent's arms.

  "Oh, daddy!" she cried with tears of joy.

  Now Dor experienced what he knew to be his most unreasonable surge of jealousy yet. After all, why should she not love her father?

  He glanced about--and saw Queen Iris watching her husband and daughter with what appeared to be identical emotion. She, too, was jealous--and unable to express it.

  For the first time in his life, Dor felt complete sympathy with the Queen. This was one shame he shared with her.

  The King set Irene down and looked about. Suddenly it was incumbent on Dor to make introductions and explanations. He hurried up. "Uh, we've come to rescue you, King Trent. This is Arnolde the Centaur--he's the one who made the magic aisle--that's his talent, and this is Smash the Ogre, and Irene--"

  King Trent looked regal even in rags. "I believe I know that last," he said gravely.

  "Uh, yes," Dor agreed, flustered, knowing he was really fouling it up. "I--uh--"

  "Do you know what he did, father?" Irene asked King Trent, indicating Dor.