Jumper tugged, and Dor swung across, feeling guilty for his surreptitious experimentation. He could have lost a finger that way. Well, maybe not; he had seen the King's fingers disappear and reappear unharmed. "Let's check and see if the goblins are clear," Dor said. He had not played the flute for a while.
The spider scurried up the wall to peek over with two or three eyes, keeping the rest of his body low. "They are there in masses," he chittered. "I believe they are pacing the harpies-who are pacing us."
"Oh, no! Murphy strikes again! We can't get clear of the Gap, if they follow us!"
"We should be clear of the forget radius now," Jumper chittered consolingly.
"Then so are the goblins and harpies! That's no good!" Dor heard himself getting hysterical.
"Our effort should have distracted a great number of the warring creatures," Jumper pointed out reasonably. "Our purpose was to distract them so that the Zombie Master could penetrate to Castle Roogna. If he succeeded, we have succeeded."
"I suppose so," Dor agreed, calming. "So it doesn't really matter if the harpies and goblins don't get forget-spelled. Still, how are we ever going to get out of here? It is too late to turn off the spell."
"Perseverance should pay. If we continue until night-" Jumper cocked his body, lifting his two front legs so as to hear better. "What is that?"
Dor tried to fathom what direction the spider was orienting, and could not. Damn those ubiquitous eyes! "What's what?"
Then he heard it. "Nine hundred eighty-three, nine hundred eighty-four, close to the hundredth door; nine hundred eighty-five-"
A harpy was carrying the spell toward them-and it was about to detonate! "Oh, Murphy!" Dor wailed. "You really nabbed us now!"
"What's the big secret about this talking ball?" the harpy screeched.
"Nine hundred ninety-two, buckle the bag's shoe," the spell said.
"Stop counting!" Dor yelled at the spell.
"Countdown can't be stopped once initiated," the spell replied smugly.
"Quick," Jumper chittered. "I will fasten the draglines so we can return. We must escape through the magic hoop."
"Oh, no!" Dor cried.
"It should be safe; I saw you testing it."
"Nine hundred ninety-seven, nine hundred ninety-eight," the spell continued inexorably. "Now don't be late!"
Jumper scrambled through the hoop. Dor hesitated, appalled. Could they return? But if he remained here-
"One thousand!" the spell cried gleefully. "Now at last I can say it!"
Dor dived through the hoop. The last thing he heard was "Deto-"
He arrived in darkness. It was pleasant, neutral. His body seemed to be suspended without feeling. There was a timelessness about him, a perpetual security. All he had to do was sleep.
You are not like the others, a thought said at him.
"Of course not," Dor thought back. Whatever he was suspended in did not permit physical talking, because there was no motion. "I am from another time. So is my friend Jumper the spider. Who are you?"
"I am the Brain Coral, keeper of the source of magic.
"The Brain Coral! I know you! You're supposed to be animating my body!"
"When?"
"Eight hundred years from now. Don't you remember?"
"I am not in a position to know about that, being as yet a creature of my own time.
"Well, in my time you-uh, it gets complicated. But I think Jumper and I had better get out of here as soon as the forget spell dissipates."
You detonated a forget spell?
"Yes, a major one, inside the Gap. To make the goblins and harpies and cohorts and ilk stop fighting. They-"
Forget spells are permanent, until counterspelled.
"I suppose so, for the ones affected. But-"
You have just rendered the Gap itself forgotten.
"The Gap? But it's not alive! The spell only affects living things, things that remember."
Therefore all living things will forget the Gap. Stunned, Dor realized it was true. He had caused the Gap to be forgotten by all but those people whose forgetting would be paradoxical. Such as those living adjacent to it, who would otherwise fall in and die. Their deaths would be inexplicable to their friends and relatives, leading to endless complications that would quickly neutralize the spell. Paradox was a powerful natural counterspell! But any people who had no immediate need-to-know would simply not remember the Gap. This was true in his own day-and now he knew how it had come about. He had done it, with his bumbling.
Yet if what he did here had no permanence, how could ? He couldn't take time to ponder that now. "We have to get back to Castle Roogna. Or at least, we can't stay here. There would be paradox when we caught up to our own time."
So it would seem. I shall release you from my preservative fluid. The primary radiation of the spell should not affect you; the secondary may. You will not forget your personal identities and mission, but you may forget the Gap once you leave its vicinity.
"I'm pretty much immune to that anyway," Dor said. "I'm one of the near-Gap residents. Just so long as I don't forget the rest."
One question, before I release you. Through what aperture have you and all these other creatures entered my realm? I had thought the last large ring was destroyed fifty years ago.
"Oh, we have a two-inch ring that we expanded to two-foot diameter. We can change it back when we're done with it."
That will be appreciated. Perhaps we shall meet again-in eight hundred years, the Coral thought at him.
Then Dor popped out of the hoop and dangled by his dragline. Jumper followed.
"I had not anticipated immobility," the spider chittered ruefully.
"That's all right. We can't all think of everything, all the time."
Jumper was not affronted. "True."
The harpies were visible in the distance, but they paid no further attention to Dor and Jumper. They were milling about in air, trying to remember what they were doing there. Which was exactly what Dor had wanted to happen. The goblins, however, were in sadder state. They too seemed to be milling about-but they had forgotten that sharp dropoffs were hazardous to health, and were falling into the chasm at a great rate. Dor's action had decimated the goblin horde.
"It can not be helped," Jumper chittered, recognizing his disgust. "We can not anticipate or control all ramifications of any given course."
"Yeah, I guess," Dor agreed, still bothered by the slaughter he had wrought. Would he get hardened to this sort of carnage as he matured? He hoped not.
They climbed to the brim and stood on land again. The goblins ignored them, not remembering them. The forget detonation had evidently been devastating near its origin, wiping out all memories of everything.
Dor spied a glassy fragment lying on the ground. He went to pick it up. It was a shatter from the forget-spell globe. "You really did it, didn't you!" he said to it.