“You miss her?”
“Yes, certainly, in a way we do, Your Majesty. She used to come see us every day, right after she, you know, but since she got herself in the matrimonial way she hasn’t-she-“
Millie had married the Zombie Master and gone to share the castle now possessed by Good Magician Humfrey. It had been the Zombie Master’s castle, eight hundred years before. “You’d like to see her again,” Dor finished.
“Yes, sir, Your Majesty. You were her friend in life, and now that you’re in the way of being the Royal King-“
“She hardly needs the King’s approval to visit her old companions.” Dor smiled. “Not that such approval would ever be withheld, but even if it were, how could anyone stop a ghost from going any where?”
“Oh, sir, we can’t go anywhere!” Doreen protested. “We are for ever bound by the site of our cruel demise, until our, you might say, to put it politely, our onuses are abated.”
“Well, If you’d tell me your onuses, maybe I could help,” Dor suggested.
It was the first time he had ever seen a ghost blush. “Oh, no, no, never!” she stammered.
Evidently he had struck a sensitive area. “Well, Millie can certainly come to see you.”
“But she never, she doesn’t, she won’t seem to come,” Doreen wailed. “We have heard, had information, we believe she became a mother-“
“Of twins,” Dor agreed. “A boy and a girl. It was bound to happen, considering her talent.”
Prudish Doreen let that pass. “So of course, naturally she’s busy. But if the King suggested, intimated, asked her to visit-“
Dor smiled. “Millie was my governess for a dozen years. I had a crush on her. She never took orders from me; it was the other way around. Nobody who knows me takes me seriously.” As he spoke, Dor feared he had just said something significant and damaging or damning; he would have to think about that in private.
“But now that you’re King-“ Doreen said, not debating his point.
Dor smiled again. “Very well. I will invite Millie and her family here for a visit so you can meet the children. I can’t guarantee they’ll come, but I will extend the invitation.”
“Oh, thank you, Your Majesty, sir!” Doreen faded gratefully out.
Dor shook his head. He hadn’t realized the ghosts liked children.
But of course one of them was a child, Button, so that could account for it. Millie’s babies were only three years old, while Button was six but of course in time the twins would grow to his age, while the ghost would not change. He had been six for six hundred years. Children were children. Dor had not met Millie’s twins himself; a visit should be interesting. He wondered whether Millie retained her talent of sex appeal, now that she was happily married. Did any wife keep up with that sort of thing? He feared that by the time he found out, it would be too late.
Later that day, perhaps by no coincidence, Dor was approached by a zombie. The decrepit creatures normally remained comfortably buried in their graveyard near the castle, but any threat to the castle would bring them charging gruesomely forth. This one dropped stinking clods of earth and goo as it walked, and its face was a mass of pus and rot, but somehow it managed to talk. “Yhoor Mhajustee-“ it pleaded loathsomely, spitting out a decayed tooth.
Dor had known the zombies well in his day, including zombie animals and a zombie ogre named Egor, so they no longer repulsed him as badly as they might have done.
“Yes?” he said politely. The best way to deal with a zombie was to give it what it wanted, since it could not be killed or discouraged. Theoretically, it was possible to dismember one and bury the pieces separately, but that was hardly worth the trouble and still was not guaranteed effective. Besides, zombies were all right, in their place.
“Ohur Masssteff-“
Dor caught on. “You have not seen the Zombie Master in some time. I will ask him to visit here so you can get together and rehash old times. Must be many a graveyard you’ve patronized with him. I can’t promise he’ll come-he does like his privacy-but I’ll make the effort.”
“Thaaanks,” the zombie whistled, losing part of its moldy tongue.
“Just remember-he has a family now. Two little children. You might find them scooping sand out of graves, playing with stray bones-“
But the zombie didn’t seem concerned. The maggots squirmed alertly in its sunken eyes as it turned to depart. Maybe it was fun to have children play with one’s bones.
Meanwhile, the daily chores continued. Another case concerned a sea monster invading a river and terrorizing the fish there, which caused a slack harvest. Dor had to travel there and make the ground in the vicinity rumble as if shaken by the passage of a giant. The inanimate objects went to it with a will; they liked conspiring to frighten a monster. And the sea monster, none too smart and not re ally looking for trouble, decided it was more at home in the deep sea, innocently gobbling down shipwrecked sailors and flashing at voyeuristic Mundane investigators of the supernatural. It made a “You’ll be sorry when you don’t have C. Monster to kick around any more!” honk and departed.
Again Dor relaxed weakly. This device would not work against a smart monster; he had been lucky. He was highly conscious of the potential for some colossal foulup, and felt it was only a matter of time before it occurred. He knew he didn’t have any special talent for governing.
At night he had nightmares, not the usual kind wherein black female Mundane-type horses chased him, but the worse kind wherein he thought he was awake and made some disastrous decision and all Xanth went up in magic flames, was overrun by wiggle-worms, or, worst of all, lost its magic and became like drear Mundania. All somehow his fault. He had heard it said that the head that wore the crown was uneasy. In truth, not only was that crown wearing a blister into his scalp, making him quite uneasy; that head was terrified by the responsibility of governing Xanth.
Another day there was a serious theft in a northern village, Dor had himself conjured there; naturally Castle Roogna had a resident conjurer. The problem village was in central Xanth, near the Incognito territory largely unexplored by man, where dragons remained unchastened, and that made Dor nervous. There were many devastating monsters in Xanth; but as a class, the dragons were the worst because there were many varieties and sizes of them, and their numbers were large. But actually, it turned out to be a pleasant region, with most of the modern magic conveniences like soda-water springs and scented soapstones for laundry. This was fur-harvesting country, and this year there had been a fine harvest from the local stand of evergreen fur trees. The green furs had been seasoning in the sun and curing in the moon and sparkling in the stars, until one morning they were gone without trace.
Dor questioned the platform on which the furs had been piled, and learned that a contingent from another village had sneaked in and stolen them. This was one time his magic talent was superior to that of King Trent-the gathering of information. He then arranged to have the furs conjured back. No action was taken against the other village; those people would know their deed had been discovered, and would probably lie low for some time.
Through all this Irene was a constant nag. She resented Dor’s ascension to the throne, though she knew it was temporary, and she kept hoping he would foul up. “My father could have done it better,” she muttered darkly when Dor solved a problem and was hardly mollified when he agreed. “You should have punished that thieving village.” And Dor wondered whether he had in fact been wishy washy there, taking the expedient route instead of the proper one.
Yet what could he do, except whatever seemed best at the time of decision? The crushing responsibility for error made him painstakingly cautious. Only experience, he suspected, could provide the necessary confidence to make excellent decisions under pressure. And that was exactly what King Trent, in his own experienced wisdom, had arranged for Dor to obtain here. Dor, to his surprise, did not quite foul up. But the variety of problems he encountered strained his ingenuity, and the foreboding grew that his luck had to turn. He counted the passing days, praying that no serious problem would arise before King Trent returned. Maybe when Dor was Trent’s age he’d be competent to run a kingdom full time; right now it was such nervous business it was driving him to distraction.