"But there is a way," Dor said. "We just have to figure it out. That's the challenge."
"While the Magician chortles inside, waiting to see if we'll make it or get speared. He's got a sense of humor like that of a tangle tree."
Dor made as if to dive into the moat. The triton raised his trident again. The merman's arm was muscular, and as he supported his body well out of the water the points of his weapon glinted in the sun. Dor backed off again.
"Maybe there's a tunnel under the moat," Grundy suggested.
They walked around the moat. At one point there was a metallic plaque inscribed with the words TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
"I don't know what that means," Dor complained.
'Til translate," Grundy said. "It means: keep out."
"I wonder if it means more?" Dor mused. "Why should Humfrey put a sign out here, when there's no obvious way in anyway? Why say it in language only a golem understands? That doesn't seem to make sense-which means it probably makes a lot of sense, if you interpret it correctly."
"I don't know why you're fulminating about a stupid sign, when you need to be figuring out how to cross the moat."
"Now, if there were a tunnel that the Magician could use without running afoul of his own hazards, he'd need a marked place for it to emerge," Dor continued. "Naturally he wouldn't want anyone else using it without his permission. So he might cover it over and put a stay-away spell on it. Like this."
"You know, I think you've got a brain after all," Grundy admitted. "But you'd have to have a counter-spell to get it open, and it's not allowed to tell you that secret."
"But it's only a stone. Not too bright. We might be able to trick it."
"I get you. Let's try a dialogue, know what I mean?" They had played this game before.
Dor nodded, smiling. They stepped up close to the plaque. "Good morning, plaque," Dor greeted it.
"Not to you, it ain't," the plaque responded. "I ain't going to tell you nothing."
"That's because you don't know nothing," Grundy said loudly, with a fine sneer in his voice.
"I do not know nothing!"
"My friend claims you have no secrets to divulge," Dor told the plaque.
"Your friend's a dumdum."
"The plaque says you're a dumdum," Dor informed Grundy.
"Yeah? Well the plaque's a dumdum."
"Plaque, my friend says you're a-"
"I am not!" the plaque retorted angrily. "He's the dumdum." What feelings objects had tended to be superficial. "He doesn't have my secret."
"What secret, dodo?" Grundy demanded, his voice even more heavily freighted with sneer than before.
"My secret chamber, that's what! He doesn't have that, does he?"
"Nobody has that," Grundy cried, scowling. "You're just making that up so we won't think you're the granitehead you really are!"
"Is that so? Well look at that, dumdum!" And the face of the plaque swung open to reveal an interior chamber. Inside was a small box.
Dor reached in and snatched out the box before the plaque caught on to its mistake. "And what have we here?" he inquired gleefully.
"Gimme that back!" the plaque cried. "It's mine, all mine!"
Dor studied the box. On the top was a button marked with the words DON'T PUSH. He pushed it.
The lid sprang up. A snakelike thing leaped out, startling Dor, who dropped the box. "HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!" it bellowed.
The snake-thing landed on the ground, its energy spent. "Jack, at your service," it said. "Jack in the box. You sure look foolish."
"A golem," Grundy said. "I should have known. Golems are insufferable."
"You oughta know, pinhead," Jack retorted. He reached into a serpentine pocket and drew out a shiny disk. "Here is an achievement button to commemorate the occasion." He held it up.
Dor reached down and took the button. It had two faces. On one side it said TRESPASSER. On the other it said PERSECUTED.
Dor had to laugh, ruefully. "I guess I fell for it! That's what I get for seeking the easy way through."
He put the button against his shirt, where it stuck magically, PERSECUTED side out. Then he picked up the Jack, put him back in the box, closed the lid, set the works back inside the plaque's chamber, and closed that, "Well played, plaque," he said. "Yeah," the plaque agreed, mollified. They returned their attention to the moat. "No substitute for my own ingenuity," Dor said. "But this diversion has given me a notion. If we can be tricked by a decoy-"
"I don't see what you're up to," Grundy said. "That triton knows his target."
"That triton thinks he knows his target. Watch this." And Dor squatted by the water and said to it: "I shall make a wager with you, water. I bet that you can't imitate my voice."
"Yeah?" the water replied, sounding just like Dor. "Hey, that's pretty good, for a beginner. But you can't do it in more than one place at a time."
"That's what you think!" the water said in Dor's voice from two places.
"You're much better than I thought!" Dor confessed ruefully. "But the real challenge is to do it so well that a third party could not tell which is me and which is you. I'm sure you couldn't fool that triton, for example."
"That wetback?" the water demanded. "What do you want to bet, sucker?"
"That water's calling you a kind of fish," Grundy muttered.
Dor considered. "Well, I don't have anything you would value. Unless-that's it! You can't talk to other people, but you still need some way to show them your prowess. You could do that with this button." He brought up the TRESPASSER / PERSECUTED button, showing both sides. "See, it says what you do to intruders. You can flash it from your surface in sinister warning."
"You're on!" the water said eagerly. "You hide, and if old three-point follows my voice instead of you, I win the prize."
"Right," Dor agreed. "I really hate to risk an item of this value, but then I don't think I'm going to lose it You distract him, and I'll hide under your surface. If he can't find me before I drown, the button's yours."
"Hey, there's a flaw in that logic!" Grundy protested. "If you drown-"
"Hello, fishtail!" a voice cried from the far side of the moat. "I'm the creep from the jungle!"
The triton, who had been viewing the proceedings without interest, whirled. "Another one?"
Dor slipped into the water, took half a breath, and dived below the surface. He swam vigorously, feeling the cool flow across his skin. No trident struck him. As his lungs labored painfully against his locked throat, he found the inner wall of the moat and thrust his head up.
He gasped for breath, and so did Grundy, still clinging to his shoulder. The triton was still chasing here and there, following the shifting voices. "Over here, sharksnoot! No, here, mer-thing! Are you blind, fish-face?"
Dor heaved himself out. "Safe!" he cried. "You win, moat; here's the prize. It hurts awfully to lose it, but you sure showed me up." And he flipped the button into the water.
"Anytime, sucker," the water replied smugly.
The significance of Grundy's prior comment sank in belatedly. A sucker was a kind of fish, prone to fasten to the legs of swimmers and-but he hoped there were none here.
The decoy voices subsided. The triton looked around, spotting him with surprise. "How did you do that? I chased you all over the moat!"