Castle Roogna (34 page)

       "Actually, Millie did it," Dor said, remembering the possible limitations of his own actions. "She is marrying the Zombie Master."

       "That must have been some effort you people put forth!"

       "It was." Better to omit the details.

       "How soon will the zombies arrive?"

       "It should be within a day of us, if nothing goes wrong." Then Dor put his hand to his mouth. "But we marked the route so that nothing can go wrong!"

       "Let's hope so," the King said dryly. "We had better establish regular communication. That will be a problem, because the goblin forces control the ground and the harpy forces control the air. I did not summon my troops home because their passage through monster-controlled territory would have been unconscionably hazardous. So I have no military couriers. Let me see." He pondered briefly, while Dor suffered a bad qualm: no troops to defend Castle Roogna! "Too bad there's not a river flowing between us. We'll have to use the ground."

       "The dragon-horse!" Dor exclaimed.

       "No, I let my dragons go, too, to defend their own homesites, which are more vulnerable than this tall Castle. Let's see what sort of fish we have."

       "Fish?" Dor asked blankly. "But they can't-"

       The King led the way to the royal fishpond, while Dor's prior qualm grew into a full-fledged funk. No troops, no dragons-and now the King planned to depend on fish?

       King Roogna netted a bright goldfish. "Let me see," he said, concentrating.

       The fish turned blue; Ice formed on the water. "Oops-I made it into a coldfish," Roogna said. "That's no help." He concentrated again. The fish became a fiery red, and the water boiled with the thrashing of the creature's tail. "No, that's a boldfish. I am having a difficult time!"

       Dor merely watched. The King was performing significant magic, his misses more potent than any lesser person's wildest successes.

       The King concentrated again. The fish turned brown, its skin wormlike. "Ah! There's my groundfish!" he exclaimed, satisfied. He scribbled a note, wadded it into a ball, and inserted it in the fish's mouth. He spoke to it: "Go check on the zombie army and report back here with the Zombie Master's reply."

       The fish nodded, then swam through the net and into the wall of the pond, disappearing. "Now let's see what else offers," the King said. He moved to the Royal Aviary and netted a bird shaped like a ball. Its wings were so stubby it could hardly fly, and its beak and claws projected only marginally. "This round dove really isn't much use in this form." He concentrated.

       Suddenly a great ugly strap appeared, constricting the dove's body. "No, no!" the King said, annoyed. "Must Murphy's law foul me up even on minor details? Not a bound dove. I want a ground dove!" And the bird turned the color of the groundfish. "There! Now you wait here until I have a message to send; then you fly through the ground and deliver it."

       He returned his attention to Dor. "You are a comparative stranger to me, Magician, yet I have faith in you, and in your friend Jumper. I am extremely short of personnel at the moment. Will you accept a position in my service?"

       Dor was taken aback. "Your Majesty, I am only visiting here. Soon, very soon, I must go home."

       The King smiled grimly. "I would offer you transportation, as I did before. But I am short of that, too, and the goblins have closed in about the Castle. Your only egress is toward the castle of the Zombie Master, and even that is uncertain now. I would prefer that you weather the siege here at Castle Roogna, even if you choose not to participate."

       "Another siege. I was just in one!"

       "This one will be worse, I assure you. We have greater resources than the Zombie Master did, but the situation is more complicated. I would rather oppose Mundanes than goblins and harpies."

       The Dragon King had suggested the same thing. Worse than what they had gone through at the Zombie Master's castle? Dor still could not believe that. He had fought goblins and harpies and found them revolting but not that devastating. And the enemy forces were not actually attacking Castle Roogna; they just happened to be staging their own private war here. Still, it would be pointless to try to travel through the midst of those hordes. "Well, I have a few days yet. Might as well be of what help I can."

       "Excellent! I shall put you in charge of the north ramparts. You will have to keep strong rein on the centaurs there, but they'll mind you if they respect you. They must be kept working on the wall as long as possible; every stone laid in place augments our security."

       "Oh, I'm not a leader!" Dor protested. "I'm only-"

       "My roadrunners kept me informed of your progress, before enemy forces closed in. It is true that you are not yet an experienced leader, but you seem to have good potential. You responded excellently during the Mundane attack on the Zombie Master's castle."

       "Your spies saw that? I thought you had no knowledge of what happened there!"

       The King laughed. "It is wise for a King to have greater information than he allows others to be aware of. My spies could not approach near the battle itself. But there were reports of a man answering your description making a deal with monsters, and something about green sashes, and of course the message I received from the Dragon King. I inferred that you knew what you were doing. I really do not have firsthand information, however-which is why I was eager to have your report."

       But the King had pretty good secondhand information! King Roogna resembled King Trent in certain fundamental ways. Perhaps all kings had an inherent similarity. There was something about them. Perhaps it was a special aspect of maturity.

       "One day you will understand, Dor," Roogna said. "It is evident that your land is grooming you for the office, and in this way I can to a certain extent repay you for your services to me. You should make a creditable king, with proper experience."

       Dor doubted that, but didn't argue. He didn't follow how doing another service for King Roogna constituted Roogna's repayment to him for a prior service. If this were adult logic, he certainly fell short of it.

       The groundfish poked its head out of the ground at their feet. The King reached down to take the wadded paper from its mouth. "Thank you, courier," he said. "You may return to your pond for some refreshment now." He spread out the paper, frowning. "This is from the Zombie Master himself. Your marked path is good, but they are now surrounded by goblins and cannot proceed."

       "How far are they?"

       "Just beyond the antenna grove."

       An image of himself fighting his dearest friend came to him. What a horror! "If any goblins bother the center of that grove-"

       "They are too canny for that. They are waiting for the zombies to clear the grove, before taking any action."

       "Why do the goblins care about the zombies? It's the harpies they're fighting, isn't it?"

       "An excellent point. The zombies should be able to march on unmolested. Unless something is wrong."

       "And obviously something is wrong," Dor said. "I'm beginning to get annoyed at Magician Murphy."

       "I have been wrestling with this sort of thing since our contest began. Do you suppose I normally require several efforts to adapt magic to my specific purpose? Yet it is a good exercise in discipline."

       "Yes," Dor agreed. "After this, I will be much more careful about everything I do, because I know things don't have to go right just by themselves."

       The King looked east, though the problem was too far away to see. "Quite likely the antenna forest is annoyed by the presence of so many troops, so has put the notion into the goblins' minds that zombies are enemies."

       "But if the goblins have stayed out of that forest-"

       "Their army has. But their advance scouts would naturally poke into everything, exactly as you did. If a scout brought back news of an enemy force-"

       "We'll have to rescue them!" Dor cried.

       "We really lack the personnel," the King said regretfully. "All we have are the centaurs, who must remain at work on the wall. That is in fact why we need the zombie help. It is uncertain that we have enough force to protect the unfinished Castle, and we dare not deplete our resources further."

       "But the zombies are coming to help you! Without them you may lose anyway!"

       "Yes. It is a problem whose solution I have not yet fathomed. Murphy's curse is taking hold very powerfully, blocking all my efforts."

       "Well, I didn't go to all this trouble only to get the Zombie Master and Millie captured by goblins!" Dor said hotly. "I'll go out myself and bring them in."

       "I would prefer that you not risk yourself," Roogna said, frowning. "It is not that I am insensitive to their fate; it is that I am sensitive to the fate of the greater number. We can help them best from Castle Roogna-if we can help them at all."

       Dor started a hot retort-then remembered how Jumper had controlled his reactions in the antenna forest, and saved the situation. Logic had to prevail, not emotion! "How can we do this?"

       "If it were possible to bring a squadron of harpies to that vicinity-"

       "Yes!" Dor cried. "Then they'll fight the goblins, and neither side will have a chance to worry about zombies. But how can we do this? The harpies will hardly honor any request we might make."

       "The problem, as I see it, is the lure. We need to attract them to the region, without sacrificing any of our own personnel."

       "No problem at all!" Dor said excitedly. "Do you have a catapult?"

       "I do. However, harpies will not pursue flying rocks."

       "They just might-after I've spelled those rocks. Let me talk to the ammunition."

       "There is a unit on the north wall. Where I had thought to place you anyway."

       "What, is something going right?" Dor asked, smiling.

       "This is a complexly developing situation. Murphy cannot cover every detail of every contingency. His talent, like mine, is being stretched to its utmost. We shall soon know who is ultimately the more powerful Magician."

       "Yes, I guess so. And we have several Magicians on our side."

       "However, a single bad foul-up could foil all our efforts. In that sense, Murphy can match any number of Magicians."

       "I'd better get to that catapult. Do we have the location of the harpy forces?"

       "The centaurs are conversant. They have no love for harpies or for goblins, and their senses are keen." The King turned. "I will send a message to the Zombie Master, asking him to move forward as soon as the harpies appear."

       Dor hurried to the north wall. Incomplete as it was, it was still far more substantial than the walls of the Zombie Master's castle. It was hard to imagine little goblins successfully storming such a massive rampart, especially when they were actually fighting harpies. Narrow stairs led around and up through the interior of the wall, until they debouched on the level upper ramp.

       The centaurs were nervously pacing the rampart. They were neither the scholars of Dor's day nor the warriors of another day; they were comparatively simple workers not well equipped for war. Each carried a bow and quiver of arrows, however; centaurs always had been fine archers.

       The crew was supposed to be engaged in construction, but the big stone blocks lay where they had been hauled, unplaced, while the centaurs looked out over the terrain.

       "The King has put me in charge of this wall," Dor announced, attracting their attention. "We have three things to do. First, we must complete the construction of this wall as far as we can before the fighting starts. Second, we must defend it when the monsters arrive. And third, we have a special mission. I am going to put a spell on the shot for this catapult, and-"

       "Who are you?" a centaur demanded. It was the first one Dor had met-the one who had refused to tell him where King Roogna was, and who had incited the other centaurs against Jumper. What a foul break, to have to work with this particular creature and crew! Foul break? It was a Murphy break! That curse was getting stronger, not weaker, as the end approached. The supposedly good break of having the catapult right where Dor had been assigned anyway was no good break at all. This was his worst possible location.

       But he had to fight that curse. After all, he was a Magician too, and if that meant anything-

       "Centaur, I am the Magician Dor," he said coldly. "You will address me with the respect my status requires."

       "The bug lover!" the centaur exclaimed. He put his hands on his front hips. He was a large, muscular brute, taller than Dor's body. Dor was sure that his body's facility with the sword would give him a physical advantage over this creature, but he hardly wanted this to degenerate to a common brawl.

       Now that the centaur had called his bluff, defying him, what was Dor to do next? This was no occasion for nicety of expression, and there was no time to win the centaur's confidence or respect slowly. Dor had to get to the heart of the matter in minutes. So-he would have to use his talent. "Come aside with me, centaur," he said. "What I have to say to you is private."

       "Aside with you, bug lover?" the creature demanded incredulously. He strode forward and made as if to swing his fist-and Dor's sword pointed at his throat. Dor's body had done it after all, acting before thought. But in this case it was an appropriate response.

       The centaur blinked. He had been impressively countered. That gleaming blade could have pierced his arteries before he drew back-and could still do so. He decided to accede to the private talk, at least until he could get his hooves into fighting position.

       Dor sheathed his sword abruptly and turned his back, as if completely unconcerned about any action the centaur might take. And of course if the centaur struck now, it would be an act of cowardice in full view of his crew. He followed Dor to a separate place on the wall, where the catapult stood behind a battlement.