"No," the King said firmly. "The Queen is not my love, but she is my legal spouse. I will not cheat her-or any other member of my kingdom, in this or any other respect."
And there was the essence of his nobility! Yet the Queen might cheat him, if she saw her opportunity, and knew him to be impotent. Bink didn't like that notion. He had seen King Trent's reign as the onset of a Golden Age; how fraught it was with liabilities, from this vantage!
Then Bink had another inspiration. "Your memory of your wife-it isn't just your memory of her you are preserving, it is your memory of yourself. Yourself when you were happy. You can't make love to another woman, or let another woman look like her. But if two other people made love-I mean, the Queen and a man who did not resemble you-no memories would be defiled. So if the Queen changed your appearance-"
"Ridiculous!" the King snapped.
"I suppose so," Bink said. "I shouldn't have mentioned it."
"I'll try it."
"Sorry I bothered you. I-" Bink broke off. "You will?"
"Objectively I know that my continuing attachment to my dead wife and son is not reasonable," the King said. "It is hampering me in the performance of my office. Perhaps an unreasonable subterfuge will compensate. I will have Iris make me into the likeness of another man, and herself another woman, and as strangers we shall make the attempt. Do you just indulge in the courtesy of maintaining the secret, Bink."
"Yes, of course, by all means," Bink said, feeling awkward. He would have preferred to have the King devoid of human fallibility's, while paradoxically respecting him for those weaknesses. But he knew this was a side of the King no other person saw. Bink was a confidant, uncomfortable as the position might be at times.
"I-uh, I'm supposed to locate Millie's bones. They should be somewhere in this library."
"By all means. Continue your pursuit; I shall seek out the Queen." And the King rose abruptly and departed.
Just like that! Bink was amazed again at the alacrity with which the man acted, once he had come to a decision. But that was one of the qualities that made him fit to rule, in contrast to Bink himself.
Bink looked at the books. And suddenly realized: Millie's skeleton could have been transformed into a book; that would account for its neglect over the centuries, and for Millie's frequent presence here. She hovered often by the south wall. The question was-which book?
He walked along the packed shelves, reading titles from the spines of the tomes. This was an excellent library, with hundreds of texts; how could he choose among them? And if he found the proper one, somehow, how could it be restored? It would have to be transformed first back into the skeleton-and that was Magician-class magic. He kept running into this: too much magic was involved here! No inanimate transformer was alive today, as far as he knew. So Millie's quest looked hopeless after all. Yet why, then, had the Good Magician told her to use mere healing elixir? It made no sense!
Still, he had promised to try, though it complicated his personal situation. First he had to find the book; then he could worry about the next step.
The search took some time. Some texts he could eliminate immediately, such as The Anatomy of Purple Dragons or Hailstones: Magic vs. Mundane. But others were problematical, like The Status of Spirits in Royal Abodes or Tales for Ghosts. He had to take these out and turn over the pages, looking for he knew not what.
More time passed. He was not getting anywhere. No one else came here; apparently he was the only one following this particular lead. His guess about the books must have been wrong. There was another room above this one, in a turret, and Crombie's line intersected it too. Maybe there-
Then he spotted it. The Skeleton in the Closet. That had to be it!
He took down the book. It was strangely heavy. The cover was of variegated leather, subtly horrible. He opened it, and a strange, unpleasant odor wafted up, as of the flesh of a zombie too long in the sun. There was no print on the first page, only a melange of color and wash suggestive of the remains of a flattened bug.
Quickly he closed the book. He no longer had any doubt.
The bucket of elixir was downstairs in the ballroom. Bink clasped the book in both arms-it was too heavy to hold in one arm for any length of time-and started down.
He met another zombie, or perhaps the same one as before. It was hard to tell them apart! It was coming up the stairs. This one he knew was real, because the Queen had not extended the masquerade illusion inside the palace, and no illusion at all upstairs. Now Bink suspected the one in the garden had been real too. What were the zombies doing out of their earthy resting places?
"Back off!" Bink cried, protecting the book. "Get out of the palace! Return to your grave!" He advanced menacingly on the zombie, and it retreated. A healthy man could readily dismember a zombie, if he cared to make the attempt. The zombie stumbled on the stair and fell, toppling with grisly abandon down the flight. Bits of bone and goo were scattered on the steps, and dark fluid soaked into the fine old wood. The smell was such as to make Bink's stomach struggle for sudden relief, and his eyes smarted. Zombies did not have much cohesion.
Bink followed it down, pursing his lips with distaste. A number of zombies were associated with Castle Roogna, and they had been instrumental in making it the palace of the King. But now they were supposed to lie safely in their graves. What ghastly urgency brought them into the party?
Well, he would notify the King in due course. First he had to see to Millie's skeleton. He entered the ballroom-and found that the subaquatic motif was gone. The normal pillars and walls had returned. Had the Queen lost interest in her decorations?
"I've got it!" he cried, and the guests collected immediately. "What happened to the water?"
"The Queen left suddenly, and her illusion stopped," Chester said, wiping crumbs of green cake from his face. It seemed refreshments had been real enough, anyway. "Here, let me help you with that book." The centaur reached down with one hand and took it easily from Bink's tiring grasp. Oh for the power of a centaur!
"I meant the healing water, the elixir," Bink said. He knew what had happened to the Queen, now that he thought about it! The King had summoned her.
"Right here," Crombie said, bringing it out from under a table. "Didn't want crumbs to fall in it" The bucket was now on the floor beside the Anniversary Cake.
"That doesn't look like a skeleton," the manticora said.
"Transformed-or something," Bink explained. He opened the book while Chester supported it. There was a general murmur of awe. Some magic!
The spell doctor peered at it "That's not a transformation. That's topology magic. I never saw such an extreme case before."
Neither had the others. "What is topology magic?" Crombie asked.
"Changing the form without changing it," she said.
"Old crone, you're talking nonsense," Crombie said with his customary diplomacy around the female sex.
"I'm talking magic, young squirt," she retorted. "Take an object. Stretch it out. Squish it flat Fold it. You have changed its shape but not its nature. It remains topologically similar. This book is a person."
"With the spirit squished out," Bink said. "Where's Millie?"
The ghost appeared, silent. She remained under the geas, unable to comment on her body. What a terrible fate she had suffered, all these centuries! Flattened and folded into a book, and prevented from telling anyone. Until the Queen's charade-contest prize had coincidentally opened the way.