The stone shuddered. "Oh, the poison!" it wailed, and fragmented into gravel.
"That must have been some poison!" Dor exclaimed.
"It was," the gravel agreed, and fractured into a mound of sand.
"What would poison do to a zombie?" Jumper inquired.
"Nothing, I think. How can you kill a thing that is already dead?"
"Then we can ignore the hornworm." Startled, Dor had to agree. "Except we must post a warning for Millie and the Zombie Master, so they know to send a zombie ahead." He walked back and emplaced a magic marker of the WARNING type. When they saw that, they would send Egor Ogre ahead to spring the trap. If the hornworm was smart, it would scoot right out of there!
The valley spread into a field of grassy growth dotted with Mundanish trees. It was pretty scenery-but all of this country was lovely, and improving as they went. If only he had watched more carefully when he rode the dragon horse! One missed a lot by riding swiftly.
Then he recognized the vegetation. "Roats!" he exclaimed happily. "If there are any mature ones-"
"What are roats?" Jumper cluttered. "A cereal. Soak old roats in water or milkweed, and they transform into excellent porridge." He shook some stems, obtaining the flat kernels. "And those are primitive mixed-nut trees."
"Nuts grow on trees?" the spider inquired dubiously. "With magic, all things are possible." Dor went to a tree and took hold of a cluster of nuts, drawing it down. They clung to the branch. "These are tough nuts!" he said. Then the cluster let go, and he staggered back. The branch snapped up, and a small hail of nuts fell about him. One shot by his nose, and he coughed. Others came, and he coughed again. "Oh, no-some of them are cough drops!" he said, retreating.
But he had his old roats and mixed nuts. "Now all I need is water."
The field dropped down to a river, its liquid crystalline but not, fortunately, crystal. Catfish swam in it, meowing hopefully as they spied Dor, then stalking away as well as their flukes permitted when they saw there was no red meat. A pack of sea dogs sniffed up, but soon spied the cats and went baying after them. Obviously this water was wholesome.
Dor dipped his double handful of substance into a pothole, and abruptly had a doughy mass of food. He offered some to Jumper, but the spider declined, preferring to fish the river for crabs. So Dor ate his pot-roats himself, enjoying it immensely.
However, this seemingly excellent route was cut off by the same river they had looked for. The stream was small but deep; no trouble for Jumper and Dor to cross, but disaster for the marching zombies, who would never emerge from it intact. Wading in the quiet moat had been one thing; swimming across the current was another.
It would be possible to fell some trees to form a crude bridge across the water, but this would take time and possibly alert hostile magic. So they followed the river down a way, looking for a better fording place. It was never possible to anticipate what lay ahead; there could be some natural bridge just out of sight.
There was not. There was a hill. The river flowed merrily up over it and down the other side. Dor and Jumper contemplated this, wondering what to do. A river that flowed up as well as down was unlikely to be tractable. "I could make a silk sling to swing them across one by one," Jumper chittered.
"That would wear you out and take forever," Dor objected. "And we would have to wait here until the zombies arrive, instead of scouting out the dangers ahead. We need a bridge or a ford."
They followed the river over the hill. "I wonder whether we could divert it temporarily," Jumper chittered.
"We'd still have to get the zombies across it some-where," Dor pointed out. "Unless we could turn it back on itself-and that hardly seems reasonable."
At the top of the hill, a cockfish crowed. "Oh, shut up," Dor told it. But it was alive, so did not obey him.
At the foot of the other side of the hill was an ore: a huge fat water monster with teeth overflowing its mouth. The water flowed over and around it; no point in trying to cross the stream here!
They returned to the top of the hill. "I'd hate to backtrack all the way and try to scout a new route," Dor said. "This is an excellent route for the zombies-up until this point. We've got to figure out a way across!"
"What makes it flow uphill?" the spider inquired.
"Magic, of course. Something in the ground here that makes it seem to fall, when actually it is rising."
"I note a different texture of stone, here. Would that be it?"
"Could be. Enchanted stone. The magic can't be in the water itself, or it would be floating right up into the sky. I think." Now Dor wondered how water did get into the sky, to make it rain. Maybe there were streams that fell upward. So much of the magic of Xanth was unexplained! "But if we moved the stone, the river would merely change channels, and then that ore would get dry and come looking for us. The only thing madder than a wet hen is a dry ore. We need to cross the river, not move it."
"Still, we might experiment." Jumper poked a leg into the water, shifting stones. The water responded by rising higher, forming a little arc in air, then dropping back into its channel.
"Say-if we could make it jump high enough, we could pass right under it!" Dor exclaimed. He plunged in, helping Jumper to move the enchanted stones.
The river rose higher and higher. At last an arch formed, leaving the riverbed clear for several feet. "If we can lift it just a little higher, so they can walk under it without ducking-" Dor said eagerly. He moved another handful of stones.
"Perhaps we should refrain from-" Jumper warned.
"Nonsense! It's working beautifully. We don't want the zombies to touch the water at all, because they would get washed out, and they're too stupid to duck properly." Dor scooped some more.
And, abruptly, the river overturned. Instead of arcing forward, it arced backward, forming a loop in the air. It splashed to the ground at the base of the hill, then continued on up and over.
"Oh, no!" Dor cried ruefully. For of course now there was no arch. The river landed beside its original channel, then flowed back into it at the top of the hill and on as before. Instead of fashioning a bridge of water, they had doubled the course of the stream. "We'll have to move it again."
"No," Jumper chittered. "We might create further difficulties. We can cross it this way." And he showed Dor how there was a narrow channel between the parallel slopes of the river as it spiraled through the air. The water was rising in the west and falling in the east, crossing overhead. It was in fact a variant of the original arch; now the passage across went north-south instead of east-west.
Dor had to agree. He placed a magic marker at the loop, and they went on. What a remarkable feature of the landscape they were leaving for the zombies to find!
Just as they departed, there was a surprised "Oink!" as a seahog was carried through the loop. Dor chuckled.
The landscape beyond the river remained pleasant. It was the nicest region he had seen. He was really enjoying this trek, a complete change of pace from the violence just past, and hoped Jumper was enjoying it too. All too soon they would arrive at the Castle, completing their mission, and after that it would be time to go home. Dor really wasn't eager to return so soon. The best path curled down into the deeper valley, where the river meandered across to form a handsome lake. Dor marveled at this; in his own day this entire section between the Good Magician's castle and Castle Roogna was deep jungle. How could it have changed so extensively? But he reminded himself yet again that there was no accounting for magic.