"She did not," the hhoop said acerbically. "No on has been through me since you stuck your fool head through and brought out the harpy Prince. When are you going to have me changed back to my normal size? I'm uncomfortable, stretched out like this."
"Later," Dor told it, experiencing relief. Then his relief reversed. If Millie had gone through there, at least she would be alive and safe and possibly recoverable. As it was, the mystery remained, growing more critical every moment
"Query the flute," Jumper suggested. "If someone played it and lured her somewhere-"
Dor queried the pied-piper flute. It, too, denied any involvement. "Could it be lying?" Vadne asked.
"No," Dor answered shortly.
They crossed the Castle again, but gained nothing on their original information: Millie had left the Zombie Master in the evening, going toward her room-and never gotten there. Nothing untoward had been seen by anyone or anything.
Then Jumper had another notion. "If she is the victim of malodorous entertainment-"
"What?" Dor asked.
"Foul play," the web said, rechecking its translation, "Can't expect me to get the idiom right every time."
Dor smiled momentarily. "Continue."
Jumper chittered again. " victim of smelly games, then some other person is most likely responsible. We must ascertain the whereabouts of each other living person at the time of her disappearance."
"You have an uncommonly apt perception," King Roogna told the spider. "You approach things from new directions."
"It comes from having eyes in the back of one's head," Jumper said matter-of-factly.
They checked for the others. The centaurs had remained on the ramparts, backing up the zombies. Dor and Jumper and King Roogna had slept. The Zombie Master had worked till the wee hours, then gone to the male room and thence to his sleeping cot. Magician Murphy had taken an innocent tour of the premises, also stopped at the male room, and slept. Neo-Sorceress Vadne had assisted the Zombie Master, but gone to the female room shortly before Millie was dismissed. She had returned to work late with the Zombie Master, then gone to her own room to sleep. Nothing there.
"What occurs in the female room?" Jumper inquired.
"Uh, females have functions too," Dor said.
"Excretion. I comprehend. Did Millie go there?"
"Often. Young females have great affinity for such places."
"Did she emerge on the final occasion?"
The men stared. "We never checked there!" Dor cried.
"Now don't you men go snooping into a place like that!" Vadne protested. "It's indecent!"
"We will merely ask straightforward questions," the King assured her. "No voyeurism."
Vadne looked unsatisfied, but did not protest further. They repaired to the female room, where Dor inquired somewhat diffidently of the door: "Did Millie the maid enter here late last night?"
"She did. But I won't tell you what her business was," the door replied primly.
"Did she depart thereafter?"
"Come to think of it, she never did," the door said, surprised. "That must have been some business!"
Dor looked up to find one of Jumper's green eyes bearing on him. They had located Millie! Almost.
They entered. The female room was clean, with several basins and potties and a big drainage sump for disposal of wastes. In one corner was a dumbwaiter for shipment of laundry and sundry items upstairs. Nothing else.
"She's not here," Dor said, disappointed.
"Then this is her point of departure," the King said. "Question every artifact here, if you have to, until we discover the exact mode of her demise. I mean, departure," he amended quickly, conscious of the presence of the somber Zombie Master.
Dor questioned. Millie had come in, approached a basin, looked at her pretty but tired face in a mundane mirror-and Vadne had entered the room. Vadne had doused the Magic Lantern. In the darkness Millie had screamed with surprise and dismay, and there had been a swish as of hair flinging about, and a tattoo on the floor as of feet kicking. That was all.
Vadne had departed the room alone. The light had remained doused until morning-when there was no sign of Millie.
Vadne was edging toward the door. Jumper threw a noose and snared her, preventing her escape. "So you were the one!" the Zombie Master cried. His gaunt face was twisted with incredulous rage, his eyes gleaming whitely from their sockets.
"I only did it for you," she said, bluffing it out. "She didn't love you anyway; she loved Dor. And she's just a garden-variety maid, not a Magician-caliber talent. You need a-"
"She is my betrothed!" the Zombie Master cried, his aspect wild. Dor echoed the man's passion within himself. The Zombie Master did love her-as Dor did. "What did you do with her, wretch?"
"I put her where you will never find her!" Vadne flared.
"This is murder," King Roogna said grimly.
"No it isn't!" Vadne cried. "I didn't kill her. I just-changed her."
Dor saw the strategy in that. The Zombie Master could have reanimated her dead body as a zombie; as it was, he could do nothing.
Jumper peered down the drainage sump with his largest eye. "Is it possible?" he inquired.
"We'll rip out the whole sump to find her!" the King cried.
"And if you do," Vadne said, "what will you do then? Without me you can't change her back to her stupid sex-appeal form."
"Neo-Sorceress," King Roogna said grimly. "We are mindful of your considerable assistance in the recent campaign. We do not relish showing you disfavor."
"Oh, pooh!" she said. "I only helped you because Murphy wouldn't have me, and I wanted to marry a Magician."
"You have chosen unwisely. If you do not change the maid back, we shall have to execute you."
She was taken aback, but remained defiant. "Then you'll never get her changed, because talents never repeat."
"But they do overlap," Roogna said.
"In the course of decades or centuries! The only way you can save her is to deal on my terms."
"What are your terms?" the King asked, his eyes narrow.
"Let Dor marry Millie. She likes him better anyway, the stupid slut. I'll take the Zombie Master."
"Never!" the Zombie Master cried, his hands clenching.
Vadne faced him. "Why force on her a marriage with a man she doesn't love?" she demanded.
That shook him. "In time she would-"
"How much time? Twenty years, when she's no longer so sweet and young? Two hundred? I love you now?'
The Zombie Master looked at Dor. His face was tight with emotional pain, but his voice was steady. "Sir, there is some truth in what she says. I was always aware that Millie-if you had-" He choked off, then forced himself to continue. "I would prefer to see Millie married to you, than locked in some hideous transformation. If you-"
Dor realized that Millie was being offered to him again. All he had to do was take her, and she would be restored and Castle Roogna would be safe. He could by his simple acquiescence nullify the last desperate aspect of Murphy's curse.
He was tempted. But he realized that this transformation was the fate that had awaited her throughout. If he took Millie now, he could offer her nothing. He was soon to return to his own time. Vadne evidently didn't believe that, but it was true. If he eschewed Millie, she would remain enchanted, a ghost for eight hundred years. A dread but fated destiny.