“What can I do?” Dor asked plaintively. The horror of King Trent’s unexplained absence was closing in on him, threatening to overwhelm his tenuous equilibrium.
“You can get some good advice.”
Dor considered. “You mean Good Magician Humfrey?”
“I do. He can tell you which course is best, and If you must make this trip, he can serve in your stead as King.”
“I don’t think he’ll agree to that,” Dor said.
“I’m sure he won’t,” Irene agreed.
“There must be a Magician on the throne of Xanth. Ask Humfrey to arrange it, should he approve your excursion.”
That was putting the Good Magician on the spot! “I will.” Dor looked around, trying to organize himself. “I’d better get started. It’s a long walk.”
“You’re the King, Dor. You don’t have to walk there any more than you had to walk here. Have yourself conjured there.”
“Oh. Yes. I forgot.” Dor felt quite foolish.
“But first get the rest of us safely back to Castle Roogna,” Irene told him, nibbling on another cookie. “I don’t want to have to cross over the Gap Chasm on the invisible bridge’ and have the Gap Dragon looking up my skirt.” She held the cookie up by the pin while she chewed around the wheel, delicately.
Dor did not arrive inside Magician Humfrey’s castle. He found himself standing just outside the moat. Something had gone wrong!
No, he realized. He had been conjured correctly-but the Good Magician, who didn’t like intrusions, had placed a barrier-spell in the way, to divert anyone to this place outside. Humfrey didn’t like to talk to anyone who didn’t get into the castle the hard way. Of course he wasn’t supposed to make the King run the gauntlet-but obviously the old wizard was not paying attention at the moment. Dor should have called him on a magic mirror; he hadn’t thought of it, in his eagerness to get going. Which meant he deserved what he had gotten-the consequence of his own lack of planning.
Of course, he could probably yell loud enough to attract the attention of someone inside the castle so he could get admitted without trouble. But Dor had a slightly ornery streak. He had made a mistake; he wanted to work his way out of it himself. Rather, into it. He had forced his way into this castle once, four years ago; he should be able to do it now. That would prove he could recover his own fumbles-the way a King should.
He took a good look at the castle environs. The moat was not clear and sparkling as it had been the last time he was here; it was dull and noisome. The shape of the castle wall was now curved and slanted back, like a steep conical mountain. It was supremely unimpressive-and therefore suspect.
Dor squatted and dipped a finger in the water. It came up festooned with slime. He sniffed it. Ugh! Yet there was a certain familiarity about it he could not quite place. Where had he smelled that smell before?
One thing was certain: he was not about to wade or swim through that water without first ascertaining exactly what lurked in it. Magician Humfrey’s castle defenses were intended to balk and discourage, rather than to destroy-but they were always formidable enough.
Generally it took courage and ingenuity to navigate the several hazards. There would be something in the moat a good deal more unpleasant than slime.
Nothing showed. The dingy green gook covered the whole surface, unbroken by any other horror. Dor was not encouraged.
“Water, are there any living creatures lurking in your depths?” he inquired.
“None at all,” the water replied, its voice slurred by the goop. Yet there was a tittery overtone; it seemed to find something funny in the question.
“Any inanimate traps?”
“None.” Now little ripples of mirth tripped across the glutinous surface.
“What’s so funny?” Dor demanded.
The water made little elongated splashes, like dribbles of spoiled mucus. “You’ll find out.”
The trouble with the inanimate was that it had very shallow notions of humor and responsibility. But it could usually be coaxed or cowed. Dor picked up a rock and hefted it menacingly. “Tell me what you know,” he said to the water, “or I’ll strike you with this stone.”
“Don’t do that!” the water cried, cowed. “I’ll squeal! I’ll spill everything I know, which isn’t much.”
“Ugh!” the rock said at the same time. “Don’t throw me in that feculent sludge!”
Dor remembered how he had played the Magician’s own defenses against each other, last time. There had been a warning sign, TRESPASSERS WILL BE PERSECUTED-and sure enough, when he trespassed he had been presented with a button with the word TRESPASSER on one side, and PERSECUTED on the other. The living history tome that had recorded the episode had suffered a typo, rendering PERSECUTED into PROSECUTED for the sign, but not for the button, spoiling the effect of these quite different words.
These things happened; few people seemed to know the distinction, and Dor’s spelling had not been good enough to correct it. But this time there was no sign. He had to generate his own persecution. “Get on with it,” he told the water, still holding the rock.
“It’s a zombie,” the water said. “A zombie sea serpent.”
Now Dor understood. Zombies were dead, so it was true there were no living creatures in the moat. But zombies were animate, so there were no inanimate traps either. It made sudden sense-for Dor remembered belatedly that the Zombie Master was still here. When the Zombie Master appeared in the present Xanth, there had been a problem, since Good Magician Humfrey now occupied the castle the Zombie Master had used eight hundred years ago. The one had the claim of prior tenancy, the other the claim of present possession.
Neither wanted trouble. So the two Magicians had agreed to share the premises until something better was offered. Evidently the Zombie Master had found nothing better. Naturally he helped out with the castle defenses; he was not any more sociable than Humfrey was.
As it happened, Dor had had experience with zombies. Some of his best friends had been zombies. He still was not too keen on the way they smelled, or on the way they dropped clods of dank glop and maggots wherever they went, but they were not bad creatures their place. More important, they were hardly smarter than the inanimate objects Dor’s magic animated, because their brains were literally rotten. He was confident he could fool a zombie.
“There should be a boat around here,” he said to the rock. “Where is it?”
“Over there, chump,” the rock said. “Now will you let me go?”
Dor saw the boat. Satisfied, he let the rock go. It dropped with a satisfied thunk to the ground and remained there in blissful repose.
Rocks were basically lazy; they hardly ever did anything on their own.
He went to the boat. It was a dingy canoe with a battered double paddle-exactly what he needed. Dor walked away.
“Hey, aren’t you going to use me?” the canoe demanded. Objects weren’t supposed to talk unless Dor willed it, but they tended to get sloppy about the rules.
“No. I’m going to fetch my friend the zombie.”
“Oh, sure. We see lots of that kind here. They make good fertilizer.”
When Dor was out of sight of the castle, he stopped and stooped to grub in the dirt. He smeared dirt on his face and arms and over his royal robes. Naturally he should have changed to more suitable clothing for this trip, but of course that was part of his overall carelessness. He had not planned ahead at all.
Next, he found a sharp stone and used it to rip into the cloth of the robe. “ooooh, ouch!” the robe groaned. “What did I ever do to you that you should slay me thus?” But the sharp stone only chuckled. It liked ripping off clothing.