Heaven Cent (31 page)

“Murphy's curse!” the Sorceress said, looking faint. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong! It's happening already!”

“We must hurry!” the Princess said. “Let me take out my apple—”

But as she removed the apple from its box, a gust of wind whipped through the chamber, caught up the coverlet, and wrapped it about her head. She screamed and dropped the apple, clawing at the coverlet.

Electra ran to close the stone door, humming the key note that made it work. That cut off the nasty wind, but the roaring of the approach of the funnel cloud still grew louder. She pounced on the rolling apple and picked it up. She hurried over to the Sorceress. “Here it is!” she said, holding out the apple."

“Not to me, child!” the Sorceress protested. “To the Princess. Give me the Heaven Cent!”

“Oh.” Embarrassed about her miscue, which was not at all her normal type of confusion, Electra used her free hand to lift the cent from her breast. She tried to draw the chain over her head, but it snagged on her ears.

“Be careful, child, lest you invoke it!” the Sorceress said, trying to help her.

“Oh, I wouldn't invoke the Heaven Cent!” Electra protested.

The cent flared, releasing its accumulated energy in a single flash as its plating disappeared. With shock, Electra realized that by an incredible blunder she had done just that. The cent was made to respond to the words “I invoke the Heaven Cent” when held in the hand; it recognized no other words, such as “wouldn't.” She knew this, but in her confusion of the moment she had slipped. Twice in as many instants she had blundered. She, who tried so hard to do things right!

She backed away, horrified. The backs of her knees struck the low coffin, and she tumbled into it. Her flailing arm folded in at the elbow, and the apple her hand held struck her open mouth. Her jaws closed involuntarily, and her teeth bit out a piece. She tried to scream, but already the paralysis gripped her. Frightened, horrified, and immensely chagrined, she sank into the sleep that had been intended for the Princess, sent by the magic of the Heaven Cent that had been intended for the Sorceress.

Yet even then she knew that it had not really been her fault. The terrible magic of Magician Murphy's curse had made it happen. Anything that could go wrong, had gone wrong, and all three of them, and perhaps Millie too, had had their hopes and plans destroyed by this single awful surge of bad luck. An inadequate child was being sent a thousand years into the future, and she would bleed and die if she did not marry the Prince who woke her.

It seemed but an instant before she felt the kiss. She knew immediately that it was the Prince. She was a child, and ridden with guilt for the thing she had inadvertently done, but she could not help herself. The magic of the completion of the spell suffused her, and she leaped into love with her rescuer.

Then she opened her eyes and saw him. He was a boy, a child even younger than herself! “Oh! Who are you?” she exclaimed.

The boy cried something incomprehensible. Then some one said something indecipherable behind him. She looked, and saw a human skeleton.

She screamed and scrambled out of the coffin. “Help! It's a monster!” she cried as she hid behind the coffin lid.

“That's no monster!” the boy retorted. “That's Marrow!”

She peeked out, realizing that if the boy was not frightened, she shouldn't be either. “You're talking sense now,” she said. “You kissed me awake. Who are you?”

“I am Prince Dolph,” he replied. “Who are you?”

He continued to speak, but she was overcome by the realization that the magic had indeed worked. A true Prince had kissed her awake. “I am Electra,” she babbled. “I love you. Will you marry me?” For whatever evil curse had brought her here, she had to marry him, or die.

“But I am already betrothed!” he protested.

Then she knew she was doomed. The curse still functioned, even after all this time.

The skeleton asked her about the Heaven Cent, and she tried to explain, though stunned by her doom. Not one of the four of them had escaped any part of Murphy's curse! Not the Sorceress, or the Princess, or Electra, or—well, maybe Millie had gotten away in time, but she wasn't even sure of that. What a terror that man was!

“Then I'll marry you,” the Prince said. “In a few years, when I'm old enough. If you'll make the Heaven Cent.”

Then she realized that the other part of the magic was functioning too: the Heaven Cent had sent her here, where she was most needed. She wouldn't die after all! She flung her arms around the Prince, who was exactly her own size.

A shape loomed at the entrance. There was a scream of terror, and Electra realized that it was not her own; there was a fourth person in the tomb, a lovely nude woman. What was she doing here?

Electra's consciousness was spinning from the suddenness of the developments, though a thousand years (or most of it) had passed in the middle of them. But she gathered that the woman was not supposed to be here, and the huge horse-shape was going to destroy her. Suddenly the woman's flesh puffed away, leaving only a standing skeleton. But Prince Dolph jumped between the stallion and the skeleton. “I forbid this thing!” he cried. “Grace’l is a good person! I will help her!”

Now wasn't that just like a Prince! He was trying to save another damsel, even though that damsel had already been pretty garishly killed, so that only her bones remained.

“As you wish,” the stallion said. Then Electra found herself standing on the beach outside the tomb, with the male skeleton beside her. Only the tomb was gone; indeed, the whole house was gone. There was nothing but sand, and a few trees, here on the shore of what was evidently the mainland near the Isle of View. More magic!

She turned—and there behind her was the Prince, seated on the sand, staring into a gaze-gourd. Beside him was a serpent with the head of a woman, watching him. This grew stranger yet!

“Princess Nada, this is Princess Electra,” the skeleton said.

“Oh, I'm no princess!” Electra protested. “I'm just—” Suddenly it all became too complicated, and she started crying.

The serpent-woman changed to human form and comforted her. Electra sobbed out as much of her story as she could manage, explaining about the curse and the apple and the cent and how they had all interacted to bring her here. “So I love Prince Dolph, and must marry him,” she concluded.

“But you don't even know him!” Marrow the skeleton protested.

“What has that got to do with it? I know it was supposed to be the Princess, but the magic took me, and that's the way it is. I have no choice in the matter.”

Then the serpent woman, Nada Naga, explained how Prince Dolph and two animated skeletons and herself had come here. That was similarly amazing.

“Then you're his betrothed!” Electra exclaimed. “How much you must love him!”

“No, I don't love him at all,” Nada said sadly. “It is a political betrothal.”

“Then you don't want to marry him?”

“I do want to marry him,” Nada explained. “I just don't love him.”

“But I—I do love him! And I have to marry him, or I'll die! How can you marry him, when you are of another species and you don't even love him?”

“Because I am a Princess, and I must do what is best for my folk. They will suffer grievously unless I marry the Prince and gain the help of his folk against the goblins.”

“How can he marry two of us?”

Nada nodded. “I think we have a problem, Electra. But that may be academic, if Prince Dolph doesn't prevail against the Night Stallion.”

Electra looked at the boy, who looked just like the one who had kissed her awake. “What happens if he doesn't?”

Marrow replied to that. “His body will remain, but his mind will be gone. His body will be an empty shell. I would have stopped him from this folly, but—”

“Maybe our problem can wait,” Electra said. “First he has to win; then he can decide between us.” She liked Princess Nada, but it seemed to her that her own need was greater.

They settled down to wait, eating some pumpkinseed pie together, and talked of many things.

The coffin was gone. The chamber had changed. Dolph found himself standing beside Grace’l in a room that was empty and featureless except for two doors. The door on the left was white, with the word YES printed in blue on it. The door on the right was black, with the word NO printed on it in red. Between the two was printed a question: WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING UNPLEASANT TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING GOOD?

Dolph glanced at Grace’l, who retained her natural bone form. “Where is the Night Stallion? I thought he was going to put us on trial.”

“He has his ways,” she said. “He toys with folk before destroying them. He locks them in the worst of dreams and gives them the illusion they can save themselves. We are doomed no matter what we do.”

“I don't know. My father Dor always said the Night Stallion was a fair-minded creature.”

“But ruthless. I have done wrong, and he will make me suffer and destroy myself—and you too, now that you have taken my part. You should not have done that.”

“I don't think you did wrong,” Dolph said more bravely than he felt. “Nada told me about Tristan Troll and how you messed up his dream. I know the Night Stallion has a different idea, but I think Tristan was right to let that little girl go, and you were right to spoil the bad dream.”

“But you didn't have to put yourself in peril because of that!” she protested. “Most people are very free in judging right and wrong, but they aren't so foolish as to get into trouble about it.”

“Well, I'm just a child and I guess I don't know any better. You helped me get the Heaven Cent, and I had to help you get out of this.”

“But you don't have the Heaven Cent!”

“But Electra said she would make it for me.”

“Only if you married her—and you are already betrothed.”

Dolph smiled ruefully. “I guess I'm not very smart with snap decisions.”

Their dialogue lapsed. Nothing had happened; they remained alone in the little room. Apparently the stallion wasn't going to come after them.

Dolph turned around. There was a third door behind them, green and unmarked. He tried the knob, but the door would not open. They could not go back the way they had come, if that was the way they had come. It was hard to tell, in the gourd.

He reread the print on the wall. Would he do something unpleasant, to accomplish something good? It seemed he had been doing that all along, on his Quest to get the Heaven Cent! He had just sort of gotten in trouble wherever he went, and had to struggle out of it. But at least now he had the cent, almost!

“Might as well try a door,” he said. He went to the YES door and turned the handle.

The door opened readily, to a room just like the first. “Stay with me, Grace’l” he said, grasping her hand as he stopped through. That hand now felt exactly like bare bones; the Night Stallion had stripped away every aspect of the illusion. “They might try to separate us, and then I don't know how I could help you.” Actually, he had no idea anyway, but it did not seem wise to advertise that at the moment.

The far wall had two doors, white and black, marked with the blue YES and red NO as before. But there was no question between them.

The door behind closed after they entered. Then a new question appeared on the opposite wall: WOULD YOU EAT A LIVE BASILISK TO SAVE A HUMAN LIFE?

Dolph shook his head in dismay. “I don't know if I could eat a live basilisk! I mean, they can kill with a glance, and their breath is poisonous.”

“I can't eat at all,” Grace’l said.

“But I couldn't just let someone die, if I could save that person,“ Dolph concluded. ”So I guess I'd try to eat the basilisk. Ugh!"

He opened the YES door. They stepped together into the next chamber.

The door closed behind them, and the next question showed: WOULD YOU BETRAY YOUR KIND TO SAVE A HUMAN CHILD?

They stared at it for a time without speaking. There was something about this variant of the question that seemed familiar, but Dolph couldn't quite place it.

Then Grace*! spoke. “That's what Tristan Troll did! He betrayed the trolls, to let the little girl live! That was why he was being punished by the bad dream!”

That made it easier to relate to. “I think Tristan Troll was right. He saved the human family a lot of grief.”

“But he's a troll! They aren't supposed to do decent things!”

Dolph found the thinking hard, but he managed to forge through it. “Maybe Tristan was wrong, because of his culture, but I'm not a troll. It wouldn't be wrong for me. So I guess I would do it.”

“I messed up Tristan's dream, so I guess I would do it too.”

Dolph opened the YES door, and they stepped through.

The next room's wall said: WOULD YOU WIPE OUT A HUMAN VILLAGE TO SAVE A TROLL CHILD?

They stopped again, considering the implications. “We said we'd betray our kind, to save a human child,” Grace’l said uncomfortably. “Isn't this pretty much the same?”

“But human beings are better than trolls!” Dolph protested. “To destroy a whole village, just to—” He faltered, recognizing the harsh parallel. Did he want to do what was right for just human beings, or for everything?

Still, even if humans were equal to trolls (ugh!), it would be wrong to wipe out a whole village just for one. He could not answer yes to this cruel question.

“Tristan Troll put his whole village in danger, because it had no other food,” Grace’l said. “I thought he was right, but now I'm not sure.”

“I guess the Night Stallion thought you were wrong,” Dolph said. “But that little girl—”

“That little girl,” she agreed. “I think of a skeletal child, and I just can't let that living one be killed or eaten.”

“Well, I guess these are only questions,” he said. “We're answering the best we can. We have to answer this one no.”

She nodded, but her bone face looked pale, and her eyes hollower than usual.

He opened the NO door. The next room's question was:

WOULD YOU WIPE OUT A TROLL VILLAGE TO SAVE A HUMAN CHILD?

“We already answered that,” Grace’l said faintly. “I guess we did,” Dolph agreed, feeling miserable He opened the NO door. The next was as cruel: WOULD YOU KILL A HUMAN CHILD TO SAVE A TROLL VILLAGE?

Dolph felt the tears starting. He knew that this was just the other side of the last question, but it was even more painful. If the troll village needed to kill the child to survive, what was right? His certainty had been shaken. But he just couldn't say yes.

He opened the NO door. WOULD YOU KILL A TROLL CHILD TO SAVE A HUMAN VILLAGE?

Grace’l put her face in her bone hands. “I just can't do any of this!”

“I hate this!” Dolph confessed. “These are terrible questions! Why can't we have any good ones?”

“The Night Stallion never makes things easy on those who oppose him,” Grace’l said. “This will just get worse and worse, until we beg him for mercy, and then we won't get it.”

“Then I won't ask for it,” Dolph said, fending off his own tears. “I'll just say no, until we get a better question.” He opened the NO door.

WOULD YOU KISS A HARPY TO SAVE ALL XANTH?

Dolph gaped. Here was a question he could agree to! He hated harpies, but still— He paused on the way to the YES door. Did the principle differ from that of the other rooms? It wasn't as bad to kiss a harpy as to kill a child, but it was a thing he would not ordinarily do. If he said yes, he could be back in the worse choices, just as he had been when he answered yes to the first question about doing something unpleasant to accomplish something good. That led only to trouble!

“I remember my grandfather Trent saying something about ends and means,” he said, thinking hard. “He said—he said the ends did not—did not justify the means. I never knew what he meant. But now—”

“Is it right to do something wrong, to accomplish something good?” Grace’l asked, phrasing it more neatly than he had been able to. “I always thought it was, but now I mink maybe it isn't. I messed up that bad dream—-”

“No!” Dolph cried. “The Night Stallion is making you think his way, to think he's right to punish you, and I know that can't be right, because what you did was nice. I'm not going to say it’s bad to be nice!”

“But maybe—”

“No! I won't do this any more! These are bad doors!”

Dolph turned and wrenched at the handle of the door behind him, the green one without a YES or NO. To his surprise, it opened. “Come on!” he said, grasping Grace’l’s bone fingers. “We're getting out of here!”

They returned to the prior room, and Dolph crossed to the green door. It opened. He hauled the skeleton through.

Before long they were back in the first chamber. Dolph tried its green door, the one that had been stuck before— and it remained stuck.

His flurry of hope collapsed. They could not after all escape this way.

But he refused to admit defeat. “These doors are bad!” he proclaimed. “They all ask—ask the wrong questions. They all make us do something bad for something good, and that's wrong. The—the end does not justify the means!”

He tried the green door again, wrenching at the handle, expecting failure—and this time it opened without resistance. “Come on!” he cried, delighted by this surprise. He took Grace’l hand again and hauled her through.

Before them was a vast chamber, filled with creatures. Dolph blinked, unable to assimilate it all at a glance.

“The court is now in session,” a voice boomed. It was the Night Stallion, speaking from a lofty desk at one end of the chamber. He wore a black cloak that covered all of his body below the head, and looked impressively sinister. “The participants will take their places.”

He glanced to the side. “Defendant,” the Night Stallion said.

Grace’l stepped forward. “Grace’l Ossian,” she said faintly. She took her seat at the separate table the stallion indicated for her.

“Counsel for the defense.”

No one stepped forward. The stallion's eye fell on Dolph, and suddenly Dolph realized that this was his job. He stepped up. “Prince Dolph,” he said as boldly as he could manage, and sat at Grace’l’s table.

“Members of the jury: introduce yourselves and stand for challenges.”

A line of creatures came from the central throng. The first was a dragon. “Draco Dragon of Mt. Etamin,” he growled clearly, then shuffled onward to find a place in the jury box. This was an enclosed platform with a dozen places, suspended by four stout cables at the corners so that it hung from the ceiling. It was only a human handspan above the floor, and swung gently as the dragon's weight came on it.

Dolph was amazed. How could Draco be here, and how could he speak the human language? Then he realized mat this was the gourd, the realm of dreams; anything could happen here. Draco was probably here in dream form, just as Dolph himself was. In dreams folk could speak and understand whatever the dream said they could; it didn't have to make sense.

“Counsel for the prosecution has approved all the members of the jury,” the judge said. “Counsel for the defense may challenge now. Half are from Xanth, and half from the realm of dreams; that ratio will be maintained regardless of challenges.”

Oh. Dolph wondered who was handling the prosecution.

But now he had to be sure the jury was fair. He knew just enough about the process of justice to know how important this was. So he bad to question the prospective jurors and object if any were too bad.

He was surprised that Draco was a juror, but that could be all right. He didn't worry much about logic, just about making sure of the dragon's neutrality. “Draco, you remember how Marrow Bones saved your gems at great risk to himself, because he was a decent person. You must understand how important it is to be that way.“ The dragon nodded, interested; he certainly valued his gems! ”Well, Grace’l is Marrow's friend, and she is a lot like him. She did a thing at great risk to herself, because she is a decent person. She saved Tristan Troll from being tormented because of the decent thing He did, and then she came back to the gourd to help me complete my Quest, and she got caught, because of me. Do you think a person who helps me like that should be punished?"

Draco nodded no. One down. “No challenge.”

The next creature swam up. It was a small silvery fish, almost round in outline. “Perrin Piranha,” he announced, and swam to the next place in the jury box.

Dolph remembered that fish! He was the leader of the water guardians near Draco's nest! He might be satisfactory as a guardian, and he had helped Marrow fight the goblins, but how could he serve on a jury here?

Then he realized that the little fish would know nothing of Grace’l or her crime. Therefore he, like Draco Dragon, was an objective party. He would learn about Grace’l in the course of this trial. But how would a bloodthirsty fish react to the messing up of a bad dream? Dolph was worried. This was, after all, a hanging jury; the jury box turned slowly, slowly in the air as the weight in it shifted.

A little bird was next in line. No, it was a bat. “Brick Bat, and what's it to you?” he snapped as Dolph glanced at him, and sailed smoothly to the third place in the box.

Worse yet! Brick Bat might have been a good cave guardian for the dragon's nest, but he was a mean creature who could decide against a nice person like Grace’l just for spite. Who had selected this jury? Unfortunately, he knew: the Night Stallion, who was also the judge. This boded ill indeed!

“Perrin Piranha and Brick Bat, Marrow Bones helped you to save the gems from the goblins. Grace’l Ossian would have done the same. Can you blame her for being that way?” The little fish and the little bat looked thoughtful; they might not be convinced, but they were doubtful. That was good enough; their savage little minds were not closed. “No challenge.”

Next came a surly-looking goblin. “Itchlips Goblin,” he gritted, and stomped to the box. Dolph did not know this one, but he knew that any goblin was bad news, for anything. If this had been one of the goblin horde who had raided the dragon's nest and taken Marrow apart—and, considering the other jurors from that engagement, this seemed likely—he would have a grudge against all skeletons, especially any who were close to Marrow.

“Itchlips, if the trolls raided your stronghold and abducted someone dear to you, wouldn't you want it to be someone like Tristan?” the goblin looked startled; he hadn't thought of it quite that way. “And if Grace’l! is punished for being nice to Tristan Troll, then no one else will dare to do what he did. So your loved one—” Dolph made a throat-slicing motion. The goblin flinched; he was having a second thought. “No challenge.”