Crewel Lye (13 page)

In the cold morning we ate again and resumed our journey. The pieces of snowsnake near the fire had melted, of course; there was nothing left of them. It really hadn't been much of an adventure, just an inconvenience; I would rather have had undisturbed sleep. Maybe I just didn't have the right attitude.

Another cutting wind came up; that kind of wind seemed to like the upper reaches. I wrapped my cloak tightly about me for warmth and kept my gloved hands in toward my belly. Mainly, I depended on Pook for heat; I couldn't have made this trek without him.

By noon we reached the crest. Not the peak; there was no point in going right over that, as we weren't interested in height, just in getting past. We headed for the lowest notch in the ridge that ran from peak to peak in this range. Wind cut through it with extra effort, stirring up powdered snow; I was reminded of the snow-birds' snow and shuddered, but I knew it wasn't that. I would be glad when we got down to good old-fashioned garden-variety tangle trees and hypnogourds again!

But as we passed through the pass, I saw something lying in the snow, black against white. I got down and picked it up. It was a black compass, just like the white one I had in my bag of spells. It flashed.

Suddenly I felt dizzy. “Where am I going?” I asked plaintively. “What am I looking for?”

But in a moment I remembered. “I'm looking for an object to settle a claim for the new King of Xanth. But I have absolutely no idea where it is. The loser-spell has nullified my sense of location.”

And then I said: “Now's the time to invoke the finder-spell so I can restore my sense of location. Or whatever. That way I'll know where I'm going.”

Pook did not protest, so I decided that made sense. That black compass had really reamed out my mind, leaving me fundamentally uncertain. I don't like having my mind messed with.

I dug in the bag and brought out the white compass. “Invoke!” I quavered at it.

Something strange happened. The snow on which I stood began to melt. Well, no, not exactly melt, but it was turning slushy. No, not exactly that, either. The ground beneath the snow was softening.

How could that be? I scraped away the snow and saw that it was bare rock below and that the rock had become pale pink flesh. Was this mountain in fact a monster creature? It couldn't be; I knew the nature of mountains, and this was definitely a mountain. Yet the rock below me had become flesh.

The flesh spread rapidly outward. I saw the snow sinking in an expanding ripple, marking the progress of the transformation. The whole mountain was turning to living flesh!

Pook neighed nervously. He was balancing on the spongy surface uncomfortably and wanted to get off it. But I retreated cautiously from the fringe of the conversion, wanting to understand this phenomenon to whatever extent my primitive barbarian mind was able, so I wouldn't fall into some trap of magic. Why should the mountain turn to flesh just when I was invoking unrelated magic?

I looked down at the white compass I had invoked, only to discover that both it and the black one had disappeared, expended. But I still had no idea where the object was. Then I reached into the spell-bag and pulled out the white stone. Wasn't that the spell that was supposed to turn stone back to flesh? Then why had it happened with the compass?

I wasn't bright, but I wasn't completely dull, either. “Yang!” I exclaimed. “He switched the spells!”

Pook neighed again. He was right; we had to get off this mountain of blubber! “I don't know where we're going, but maybe you do!” I cried. “Go for it!” I jumped onto his back and hung on.

He started off down the mountain's north slope. His hooves skidded as the snow made the flesh beneath slippery. I saw that the transformation had now reached to the peak, and it was quivering like jelly. Indeed, the whole mountain was quivering, as its solid bedrock turned soft. Magician Yin had not been kidding about overkill on the spells; this one was strong enough to convert a hundred men and horses to--that is, to reconvert--well, anyway, it was one hideously powerful piece of magic. And it was being wasted, doing me no good at all.

Pook's hooves slid as the slope steepened; he was having real trouble keeping his footing, what with the heaving of the mountain itself. “Just sit down and slide,” I suggested. “It's probably safer and faster.”

He tried it. We slid down, on cold posteriors, and it was indeed faster--but maybe not safer. We soon got up formidable speed, and there was still a long way to go.

If Yin's spell was strong enough to convert a mountain to flesh, how strong was Yang's spell, the one that turned flesh to stone? They were equal and opposite, weren't they? What would happen when I triggered the Evil Magician's spell--and had nothing to counter it? Would it turn me to stone--and Pook, and everything near us? My talent was good, but I couldn't handle that! If we were doomed to encounter the black stone, that meant we were doomed indeed--by the cruel lie Yang had made of this contest!

Yang had suggested that I give up this quest, letting him win. That seemed like good advice, in retrospect! Wouldn't it be better to abort the mission now and at least salvage my life?

But as I said, the oink-headedness of barbarians is legendary, and justly so. Even though it now seemed pointless, I was determined to push on. I had agreed to undertake this mission and I always did what I said I would do if I could, even if it made no sense at the time. And who could tell; maybe my talent would heal me from being stoned. Of course, that might take a few years...

We slid to the snow line. The flesh had not reached here yet, and the mountain below remained stable. Pook got to his feet, swished his tail about to dislodge the snow sticking to his rear, and moved on down, not eager to have the rock turn mushy under his hooves again. Horses don't go for that mushy stuff. Actually, I wasn't sure that would happen; there had to be some limit to the effect, or all of Xanth would become flesh.

Indeed, the mountain seemed to stabilize above the snow line. If the conversion was continuing, it had slowed; there was just too much rock in the mountain for the magic to digest, if that was the proper word.

Once we were safely below the region of flesh, we paused to eat and graze. Our slip-sliding had taken some time and more energy, and we were tired and hungry. Horses, I had discovered, had to eat a lot! I had somehow supposed that a man with a steed could travel long distances at high speed; now I knew it wasn't so. But, of course, Pook had become more to me than mere transportation. Much more. Maybe his companionship was more important than his average velocity.

So we took time to fill our bellies in our separate fashions, foraging for grass and leaves and fruits, and scouted around for a suitable campsite. We were below the level of the snowsnakes, but what about the snow-birds? I didn't want to have my mind zonked out again by their snow job.

However, a completely different threat materialized. We had ignored the mountain of flesh because we were beyond its range, we thought. That turned out to be overly optimistic.

The ground shuddered. At first I thought it was an earthquake--a magical tremor that was very unsettling to experience, resembling as it did the heavy tread of an ogre, but not too dangerous in the open. But then I realized that it emanated from the mountain of flesh above us. The stuff was shaking with increasing violence, as if trying to get free.

Of course it wanted to be free! Here it was, abruptly waking as a huge mass of living tissue--with no eyes or ears or nose, no way to discover where it was or what it was doing there. So it was doing the only thing it could--bashing its way out. If I were blindfolded and deaf and tied down, I'd struggle too!

Snow crashed down beyond the snow line, heading for us. The shaking flesh had started an avalanche! There wasn't enough snow to do real harm, but I did not feel easy. Sure enough, pretty soon the rocks on the fringe of the flesh-zone were shaken loose and they started rolling down. Those could harm us!

“I think maybe this is not our best place to camp,” I told Pook.

He agreed. I mounted, and we started on down.

But now it was getting dark, and the struggles of the mountain increased. The violence was such that the welkin was jarred, and an early-showing star was jostled out of its socket. It fell nearby, tracing a fiery path across the sky, and set the dry brush aflame. More trouble!

The mountain heaved again and shook the Firmament. Other stars fell, starting other fires; they really weren't very well anchored when they first came out. Soon there were sizable conflagrations, and we smelled the smoke. But we couldn't hurry, because the footing was treacherous in the gloom, and we had to be alert for more rolling stones.

The mountain peak belched. A mass of gas burst out, soiling the sky. Several stars coughed, and a comet sneezed so hard its tail flew off. Bad business!

We traveled as well as we could, but it was nervous business, with fires blazing on either side, boulders rolling down from above, and clouds of the mountain's stomach gas hovering in the night sky. The scene was very like my private picture of hell, and I was not eager to remain there long.

The conversion of stone to flesh had not melted the snow; apparently it was cold flesh. But the fires raging up the slope were now heating the upper reaches, and water was beginning to flow from the fringe of snow.

We came to a cul-de-sac. Ahead was a section so steep as to be clifflike, while the fires closed off the escape to the sides. We did not want to retreat back up the mountain, but did not want to stay in place, either. The ground was still shuddering with the motions of the tortured flesh, threatening to dislodge us from our perch. Behind, we heard the increasing sibilance of rushing water. We could soon be washed on down the cliff, becoming part of the waterfall!

There is something about personal hazard that sharpens my native cunning. “Diversion!” I exclaimed. Pook cocked an ear at me questioningly, perhaps fearing I was losing what little wit I possessed. “I'll show you!”

I dismounted and scrambled to the side, near the fire. I used my boot to scuff a channel in the ground, and my sword to cut through the brush in the way. Quickly I extended the channel upward at a slant, forming a bank on its lower side. I took advantage of whatever natural declivities there were, so that my channel curved but was reasonably deep. Pook was perplexed, but helped me excavate through a small ridge by bashing it with a hoof.

Naturally we struck a buried boulder, too big either to circle or to pry out. Now was the time for my reserve equipment! There was very little time for excavating around the boulder, so I poked a hole with the point of my sword and dropped in a cherry bomb. The explosion blew out a much bigger hole. Then I tossed in a pineapple and dived clear.

This explosion blew the top off the boulder. It crunched into a tree in the fire-zone; lucky for us it hadn't gone the other way! Now my channel was complete; all I had to do was touch it up where the explosion had messed it up.

Just in time! The trickle of water was becoming a river, and now this coursed down my sluice. I stood by to free any clogs that developed. Soon there was a torrent, and the water deepened the channel itself and sought to overflow it; hastily I shored up my embankment. I wasn't perfectly successful, but most of the water did stay on course. This meant that only a little of it swirled around our feet and poured on over the cliff, and most flowed down into the rising blaze. We had saved ourselves from being washed away and had diverted the water to the more useful employment of fighting the nearest fire.

There was a continuous angry hiss as the water intruded on the fire's domain, and a cloud of steam puffed up. My new channel ended at the fire's edge, so there the water spread out, coursing over a much broader area. Soon the fire was gone from there, and a swath of blackened but unburning terrain appeared, leading down the mountain.

“And this is our route down!” I said, pleased with the success of my strategy. I mounted Pook, and he stepped into the channel, walking carefully to prevent the moving water from interfering with his footing.

Thus we made it off the mountain. It wasn't easy or comfortable, but the farther from the mountain of flesh we got, the less severe the effects were. Finally, near dawn, we felt secure enough to rest. We doubted any wild creatures would be bothering us; they were all terrified by the strange events of this night, and most had fled the scene.

As I settled down to sleep beside a nice, solid boulder,

I pondered the significance of what had happened. So Yang had switched the spells; he must have done that while handling them in my presence. Of course he had known what they were; he had pretended ignorance so as to have a pretext to touch each one. He had distracted me with talk of the futility of my mission so that I would not catch on to the real nature of his skullduggery. His attempt to bribe me had not been serious; why bribe me when he already had the situation in hand? He had indeed deceived me, obliquely. Not for nothing had he remarked on my bumpkinishness! He had proved it.

He had, ironically, spoken the truth when he said he was convinced that I would fail. He had ensured that by cheating. Yin and the King thought this was a straightforward spell-vs.-spell contest set in the field; Yang knew it was an ignorant barbarian trotting blithely into disaster. Yin's spells were now just about as dangerous to me as Yang's!

Maybe the King had caught on, and had been about to warn me not to let Magician Yang touch those spells. I had been too quick to dismiss his effort. Talk of blundering fools! I had just done the cause of Barbarian Public Relations a singular disservice, by being precisely as oafish as charged.

How could I hope to complete this quest when I had no idea where the object was or what it was? I had climbed the mountain, back when I had some notion; was it because the object was up there? Should I go back to the fleshy peak? I could not be sure, but since I hadn't seen anything up there except snow, I concluded that wasn't it. Could the thing be on one of the other peaks of this range, and I had been about to check them all until I found it? Again I couldn't be sure. The black compass had somehow nullified my brain in this respect, so that I could not even decide where to search. The only confidence I had was that whatever I decided to do would be wrong, because of that hostile magic.