Board Stiff (Xanth) (39 page)

“That does sound like fun,” Glower agreed. It was clear that his daughter took after him, and he was proud of that.

“So is our business in this Event done?” Pewter asked.

“I will try a sequin,” Tiara said. She did, but it wouldn’t take. “No, not yet.”

Mitch sighed. “So it seems we must brave the Chasm after all.”

In the morning they trekked back to the Gap Chasm. It looked as formidable as before, a yawning gulf they would have to cross without apparent support.

Tiara was distinctly anxious. “I wonder if anything down there will look up and see under our skirts.”

“We’ve all been naked more than once,” Mitch reminded her.

“That’s not the same. Sneak peeks are worse than nudity.”

Actually, Kandy knew, Tiara was just nervous about venturing out into seeming space unprotected. Kandy would have felt the same way, before she became an almost invulnerable board.

“Worse,” Astrid said. “I see a cloud on the horizon, coming this way, and it looks like Fracto.”

“How could he know we would be here?” Mitch asked.

“He’s a demon,” Pewter said. “He knows things. Obviously he feels there remains a score to settle.”

“That could be the danger Mexine predicted,” Tiara said. “If we have to cross, we should do it quickly, before the cloud arrives.”

“Unless it is better to wait until he passes,” Mitch said. “Maybe he’ll make such a deluge that it will fill the Chasm and we can sail across.” He smiled, hinting that this was possibly humor.

There was a sound behind them. “That is the growl of a hungry dragon,” Pewter said. “Coming this way. It will not be safe here for long enough.”

“The sequins are putting us through their paces,” Mitch said. “So it seems we’d better cross now. How do we find the bridge?”

“We feel for it,” Pewter said. He walked along the brink of the gulf, touching the edge with his toe. “Here.” He stepped out over the edge.

The others stared. Pewter was walking in mid air. The bridge was truly invisible.

“So be it,” Mitch said, following. He, too, stood seemingly unsupported. “Ah, there’s a hand rail. That helps.”

“Yes,” Pewter said. “The bridge is safe, provided there is not an external problem.”

Tiara came next. The slight wind tugged at her dress, as if to make sure something below could see under it. “This is weird.”

Ease stepped out. “But fun.”

Finally Astrid followed. Her dress also flexed in the breeze, flashing her legs. “Just so long as a sequin doesn’t fall off.”

“Don’t scare us!” Mitch said.

They moved along, a procession of five people in seeming space. The cloud rumbled angrily; Fracto saw them, and knew he would not be able to reach them before they completed their crossing.

“Something else,” Astrid said. “Dragons. Three of them, approaching swiftly.”

“Oh, no!” Mitch said. “Fracto enlisted help!”

“I will deal with them,” Astrid said, removing her dark glasses. “Keep moving.”

The dragons rapidly loomed larger, definitely orienting on the exposed party. “Can you tell what type they are?” Mitch asked nervously.

“A fire breather. A steamer. A smoker. All are dangerous. But all I have to do is meet their gaze.”

“I do not like this at all,” Mitch said.

“Just keep moving,” Pewter said. “We can’t retreat.”

They kept moving. The dragons kept coming. They were flying in a line, aiming for the crossing party.

Kandy saw Astrid turn her head as she walked, focusing.

The first dragon emitted a jet of fire, then veered crazily and plunged into the void below. Soon they heard the crash and explosion as it struck the ground. A plume of debris flew up and spread. Astrid had scored.

The second dragon swelled like a blimp, then popped like a punctured balloon, its steam forming a swirling cloud as it too dropped below. Two down.

The third dragon shook in the air, but was too close; it collided with Astrid as smoke burgeoned explosively. It was done for, but like a suicide bomber, it had taken out its object.

Astrid screamed as she dropped out of the expanding ball of smoke and plummeted toward the ground.

Kandy was not conscious of even thinking about it before she acted. FORNAX!

The scene froze, the four people in mid stride, the ball of smoke in mid expansion, and Astrid below it, all in a fixed tableau.
Yes, Kandy
.

SAVE ASTRID AND I WILL BE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE IN XANTH.

Done.

Then the action resumed. Astrid continued to fall, but now there was a new figure in the air. A giant roc bird appeared. It swooped down, caught Astrid with a talon, circled, climbing, and deposited her back on the invisible bridge.

“Oh!” she said. “Thank you, Roxanne.”

The bird squawked and departed. The line halted as the others stared. This rescue had been yea close to unbelievable.

“Roxanne?” Mitch asked.

“She mind talked to me as we flew,” Astrid said. “She is Roxanne Roc, who was and may still be the guardian of Sim Bird, the son of the Simurgh. It is his duty to learn everything in the universe, and he’s working on it, with Che Centaur tutoring him; he’s a very smart bird. Roxanne protects him and ferries him from place to place. She spent five hundred years egg-sitting for the Simurgh until Sim hatched, so she’s experienced. She was flying past on routine business when she spied me falling. She recognized me as a land monster and rescued me, as she is a winged monster herself. It was a courtesy call, really. I am fortunate that Roxanne was in the vicinity; otherwise I would not have fared well.”

“Fortunate is not the applicable term,” Pewter said. “That was beyond coincidence.”

“Actually I saw the roc and sent her a thought,” Ease said. “That Mitch relayed. She was glad to oblige.”

Had they done that? Kandy had been too distracted to prompt him.

“Still beyond coincidence,” Pewter said. “Roxanne is a busy bird; she does not have slack time.”

“She saved Astrid,” Tiara said. “Why should we question it?”

“Because if there is magic involvement, we could be in trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“Demon trouble.”

“What are you talking about?” Ease asked. “There’s no Demon here.”

Then the tableau froze again. A donkey-headed dragon appeared, floating in the air beside the bridge. “What happened here?”

“Demon Xanth,” Pewter said. “We hope we can explain.”

“I smell an alien,” Xanth said. “Fornax. She intervened here.”

Uh-oh. She
had
intervened, and that was a Demon no-no here in Xanth’s territory.

Kandy sent a signal the put Ease to sleep. He sagged between the rails. Kandy manifested. “I did it,” she said.

The donkey head oriented on her. “You?”

“My friend Astrid was falling to her likely death. I had to save her. I appealed to Fornax. I agreed to be her emissary here in Xanth if she saved Astrid.”

Astrid looked at her, startled. “You did that?”

“I had to. You’re my friend, Astrid. I love you. I couldn’t let you die.”

“But Kandy, you put yourself in peril!”

“I had to,” she repeated.

“Clarify,” the donkey said.

“Fornax is contra-terrene, CT, antimatter, whatever. She has trouble interacting with terrene Demons,” Kandy said. “And she needs to, to contest for Points. So she needs an interface, someone who won’t go up in total conversion of matter to energy the moment she touches anything terrene. So she asked me to be her representative here in Xanth, to receive her thoughts and relay them to you when the occasion requires it. Nothing to harm the Land of Xanth or anyone or anything in it. Merely to be a mode of communication. I told her I would think about it. But then when Astrid was falling I had no time to consider. I called Fornax and told her I would do it if she saved my friend. And she saved her. I was the one at fault; Fornax did not come until I called her, and she did only what I asked her to do. She did not interfere in Xanth in any other way.”

“This is interesting.”

“Now, as my first act of representation, I am pleading with you to accept this role for me. I believe it is a necessary thing that someone has to do, if not me, than someone else. You may not care about me or Fornax, but this is a convenience you should have. For one thing, it will keep Fornax from messing with Xanth just to get your attention. You will not have to deal directly with her at all, just me. That should simplify things for you.”

“Done,” Xanth said, and vanished.

But then he reappeared. “My mortal wife says I need to do you a small favor or two in return for your sacrifice and service. She must be humored. Accordingly, I will.” He vanished again.

A small favor? Or two? For a Demon that could be anything from a matchstick to a world, immediately or in a century. “Thank you,” Kandy said, relieved mainly that her role had been accepted, and that Fornax was not in trouble for her part.

“Well done,” Pewter said. “Now please let us complete our crossing before the rogue cloud gets here.”

Kandy sent a wake-up thought to Ease. He woke, and she became the board. The group resumed the crossing without further comment, and reached the other side just before Fracto got there. The cloud raged, but then blew over.

“You know, I had the funniest daydream,” Ease said.

“It was real,” Astrid said. “Roxanne Roc rescued me after you sent her a thought.”

“That, too. It was weird. I think Fornax sent me the notion, so Mitch could send it on. But I also dreamed that my dream girl was here. She--”

“We know nothing about that,” Pewter said gruffly. “If she’s a nymph, she can visit your dreams at any time.”

Ease let it go, satisfied that the others didn’t believe him.

But that night, when Ease’s sleep was natural, Astrid came to Kandy. “What you did--”

“What else could I do? I’m your friend.”

“You certainly are! Hold your breath; I’m going to kiss you.”

Kandy dutifully held her breath, and Astrid kissed her. Then the ordinary routine of the night commenced.

Chapter 16:

Hair

In the morning they tried a sequin again, sure that it would work. It didn’t. It connected to the dress, but nothing happened.

“We
can’t
be incomplete on the Event,” Tiara wailed.

“There must be something else,” Mitch said. “This is a different kind of balk from before. Before, the sequins would not connect at all.”

“Let’s think of reasons,” Astrid said. “Maybe we can figure it out.”

“Maybe the dress is tired of having the same person do the sequins,” Tiara said, looking guilty.

“Then let me try,” Ease said. He squatted and removed a sequin. The dress became translucent, showing panties, and he promptly freaked out.

Pewter took the sequin from his hand and connected it. The dress went opaque, but the scene did not change. “It does not seem to be that.”

Astrid snapped her fingers, and Ease revived. “Nothing happened,” he said.

“What reason do you suggest?” Pewter asked him.

“Maybe they got wet too often and shorted out.”

“They worked after the Troll cave and the Island.”

Ease shrugged. “Not that, then.”

“Could there have been a time limit, and we are now past it?” Astrid asked.

“Possibly, but there has been no indication of such a limit,” Pewter said.

“How many sequins are there on the dress?” Mitch asked.

“Fourteen,” Astrid answered.

“And how many Events have we triggered?”

They considered and came up with the answer: fourteen.

“So maybe we have used up all the Events.”

“But we have not completed our Quest!” Astrid protested.

“I am thinking of something,” Pewter said. “But it is unkind.”

“Out with it, machine,” Astrid said.

“It is that our last event related in the end to the Demoness Fornax. Is it possible that she provided the dress and sequins to the Good Magician for the purpose of locating a representative, and once that was accomplished, she let the magic fade?”

Astrid looked stricken. “It certainly is possible! The dress got in the pile by accident, we thought, but I was strangely attracted to it and insisted on wearing it. Then it took us to Alpha Centuri where Fornax was, and to Galaxy Fornax itself. Then it put me in such danger that—somebody--had to intercede by giving the Demoness what she wanted.”

“What are you talking about?” Ease asked.

Astrid smiled. “Your dream girl.”

Ease shut up, thinking he was being mocked.

“And, its purpose completed, it turned off,” Pewter said. “Does this make sense to the rest of you?”

The others nodded. “It is the way Demons work, it seems,” Astrid said. “All that is left is the translucence magic, which may be a property of the dress rather than the sequins.”

“So now, it seems, we are on our own,” Mitch said. “We thought the sequins were helping us with our Quest, but they had another agenda. But we still do have our mission, and should pursue it to the end. So what now?”

“Look,” Ease said. “I don’t know or care about this business of someone making a deal with Fornax. All we know is that we have to merge the hair, and that the man who made the Virus has descendants. So why doesn’t Pewter key in his data banks and figure out where they are? We can maybe get what we need from them.”

“I lack that information,” Pewter said.

“Well, look anyway.”

Pewter looked, humoring him. “Amazing! I found an overlooked data file that has the information. Those descendants live in the South Village.”

“Maybe a Demon added it,” Tiara said. “So we’ll stop being a nuisance.”

“That is possible,” Pewter agreed.

“So now we trek to the South Village,” Ease said. “There’ll be an enchanted path.”

“Connecting to the invisible bridge,” Mitch agreed. “In fact we are on it now.”

They started walking. There were road signs at each intersection of paths, identifying where they went, and South Village was one destination. They were on their way.

That night they camped at a legitimate campsite, one guaranteed to have no untoward elements. The girls went to one section of the local pond, suddenly shy about exposure, and the men went to another. There was a hot furnace bush to dry their washed clothing, and plenty of pies and drinks. Then they retired, Mitch and Tiara taking one cabin, the others taking another. All of them seemed far more relaxed than they had been before.