Jumper stirred. He dropped to the ground to make sure it was safe, then climbed back up to lower Dor. As Dor's foot touched the forest floor, the big spider moved his legs dexterously around him, and the net of web fell away. Dor was free.
Now, suddenly, he felt an urgent call of nature. He retreated to a bush to take care of it. Floating in air was nice, but was limiting in certain ways! He wondered whether real heroes were ever embarrassed by such problems; certainly the subject never came up in the heroic tales of this period.
Jumper chittered as Dor returned. Dor listened, but could make no sense of it. What had happened to his translator?
After a moment he found out: the big spider had removed it when he cut away the net-web. It was a natural error. Dor found a strand of Jumper's own left over silk and put that on his shoulder. "Translate," he ordered it.
" mission, while mine is merely to return to my normal world," Jumper was saying. "So it behooves me to help you complete your mission, so that we can both return."
"Yes," Dor agreed.
"Obviously magic is involved. Some spell has carried me to your world-except that you do not seem overly familiar with it yourself. So it must be a strange aspect of your world. You are here to accomplish something, after which you will be released from your enchantment. So if we stay together-"
"Yes!" Dor agreed. Jumper was one smart arachnid. He must have thought things out during the night, recognizing the seeming change in his size and Dor's ignorance of these surroundings as linked things.
"So the best thing to do is get your job done as fast as possible," Jumper concluded. "If you will indicate where you need to travel-"
"To the Zombie Master," Dor said. But of course that wasn't clear. Also, he had no idea where to find the Zombie Master. This led to a somewhat confused discussion. Finally Dor asked some of the local artifacts; they knew nothing of the Zombie Master, but had heard of King Roogna. It seemed a detachment of the King's army had passed this way.
"King Roogna! Of course!" Dor exclaimed. "He would know! He would know everything! I should talk with him first, and he will tell me how to find the Zombie Master."
Thus it was decided. Dor got general directions from the landscape, and they began their trek toward Castle Roogna. In one part of his mind Dor remained bemused by the fact that this was the tapestry world, and the entire tapestry was inside Castle Roogna. Yet they evidently faced a journey of many days to reach the Castle. It did make sense, somehow, he was sure. As much sense as magic ever did.
He was getting used to this new jungle. Rather, this old jungle. Many of the trees were giant, with voluminously proliferating foliage, but had very little magic. It was as if it took longer for magic to infuse the vegetation than the animals. Sweat gnats were present, and bluebottle flies, their bottle bodies refracting the beams of sunlight they buzzed through. But even these minor insects did not approach Jumper too closely. This was one advantage of traveling with a spider.
"No!" Dor cried suddenly. "Danger!" He pointed. "You're walking into a tangle tree!"
Jumper paused. "I gather there is some threat? All see is the collection of vines."
In the spider's normal, small world there would be no tangle trees, Dor realized. Tanglers were there, to be sure, but they would hardly bother anything as small as a spider. Also, Jumper might have lived all his life in the tapestry room of Castle Roogna, so never encountered any of the jungle threats, regardless of relative sizes. Yet he seemed familiar with trees in general, so he must have spent some time outside.
"I'll show you," Dor said. He picked up a large stick and heaved it at the tree. The tangler's tentacles snatched it out of the air and tore it to splinters.
"I see what you mean," Jumper said appreciatively. "I believe I walked on the foliage of such a tree once in my youth, but it paid me no attention. Now that I am on its scale, it is another condition. I am glad I am keeping your company, weird though your form is."
Which was a decent compliment. Dor inspected the tangler from a safe distance. He had identified it almost too late, because it was of a different subspecies from the ones he had known. It was cruder, more like a mundane tree, with light bark on the tentacles, and it lacked the pleasant greensward and sweet perfume beneath. Tanglers had grown more sophisticated over the centuries as their prey became more wary. For a person attuned to the end product, the cruder ancestral version was hard to identify. He would have to be more careful; there was less magic in the jungle, but what there was just as dangerous to him and Jumper.
They resumed their journey. The Land of Xanth was a peninsula connected to Mundania by a narrow, mountainous isthmus at the northwest extremity. Dor's body appeared to be that of a Mundane who had recently crossed the isthmus; maybe that was why he had been easy for the goblins to trap. It took time to appreciate all the hazards of Xanth, and even a lifetime did not suffice for some people. A Mundane would have all the wrong reflexes, and perish quickly, Which perhaps was why the Mundanes invaded in Waves; there was security in great numbers.
Now they were proceeding toward the center of Xanth, Castle Roogna, in a southerly direction. How they would cross the Gap that cut Xanth in two Dor wasn't certain. In his day the northern wilderness was not as dangerous as the southern wilderness, and since there was less magic now-or rather, less-developed magic-Dor did not anticipate too much trouble this side of the Gap. But the Land of Xanth had a way of fooling people, so he remained on guard.
Castle Roogna. He wondered whether there was a tapestry on its wall, depicting-what? The events another eight hundred years past? Or the present, including himself coming toward the Castle? Intriguing thought!
Jumper paused, raising his two frontmost forelegs, which seemed to be the most sensitive to new things. Dor had noted no ears on the spider; was it possible he heard with his legs? "Something strange," Jumper chittered.
The spider had grown accustomed to the routine strangenesses of this land, so this must be something special. Dor looked. Before them stood a creature vaguely like a small dragon, yet obviously not a dragon. Yet with dragon affinities. It had an irregularly sinuous body, small wings that did not seem functional, claws, tail, and a lizard head, but lacked the formidable teeth and fire of a true dragon. In fact, it did not look very formidable.
"I think it will be safe to circle around it," Dor said. There was a swampy region to the west with malodorous bubbles, and a thicket of glistening brambles to the east, so it was necessary to pass through this creature's territory. "We're not looking for trouble, and maybe it isn't either." Knowing Jumper could hardly understand all that discussion, he set the example by detouring right, to circle the monster at a safe distance without going too near the bubbly swamp.
But the creature extended one leg enormously, so that it stretched way out to block Dor's progress. "You may not pass," it rasped. "This is my domain, my precinct, my territory. I govern."
At least it talked! "We do not seek any quarrel with you," Dor said, remembering adult protocol for such things. "If you let us pass, we will not bother you."
"If you pass, you prevail," the monster said. "I am Gerrymander; I prevail by whatever devious configuration."
Dor knew of no such creature in his own time. This must have been an evolutionary dead end. Gerrymander-who prevailed by changing its shape to block the passage of others? A strange definition of success!