Castle Roogna (38 page)

       Finally his nerve broke. "Are you ready?" he called. And the goblins, loosed momentarily from their relentless press forward, eased up-and the jam did break. Dor fumbled for his sword, knowing he could never fight off the inimical mass, yet-

       But what was he thinking of? It was the magic ring he should use. Cedric had left it with him. He picked it up and held it before him. The first goblin dived right at him. Dor almost dropped the hoop, fearing the creature would smash into him-but as it passed through the ring, it vanished. Right before his face, as if it had struck an invisible wall and been shunted aside. Potent magic!

       "Ready!" Jumper chittered from below. Just in time, for three more goblins were charging, and Dor wasn't certain he could get them all neatly through the hoop. More likely they would snag on the rim, and their weight would have carried him back over the cliff. "Jump!"

       Dor trusted his friend. He jumped. Backward off the cliff. He sailed out into the abyss, escaping the grasp of the surging goblins, swinging down and side-wise, for Jumper had providently rigged the lines so that Dor would not whomp directly into the wall. The spider always thought of these things before Dor did, anticipating what could go wrong and abating it first. Thus Murphy's curse had little power over him. That was why Jumper had taken so much time just now, despite knowing that Dor was in a desperate strait at the brink of the canyon; he had been making sure that no mistake of his would betray Dor.

       And there it was, of course: the answer to the curse. Maturity. Only a careless or thoughtless person could be trapped by the curse, giving it the openings to snare Mm.

       Now the vampires and harpies swarmed down, though the majority of them were fighting with the goblins above. "Snatch! snatch!" they screamed. A perfect characterization.

       Dor found himself swinging back. He held the hoop before him, sweeping through the ugly flock-and where the ring passed, no harpies remained. But they clutched at him from the sides-

       Then Jumper hauled him in against the wall, so that he could set his back to its protective solidity and hold the hoop before him. Dor saw now that the brink of the chasm was not even; the spider had skillfully utilized projections to anchor the framework of lines, so that Dor had room to swing clear of the wall. A remarkable feat of engineering that no other type of creature could have accomplished in so brief a time.

       "Give me the ring!" Jumper chittered. "You play the flute!"

       Right. They had to call as many creatures to this spot as possible. Dor yielded the hoop and put the flute to his lips. Jumper maneuvered deftly, using the hoop to protect them both.

       Now the harpies dived in with single-minded intent, compelled by the music. They swooped through the hoop; they splatted into the wall around it, knocking themselves out and falling twistily down into the chasm, dirty feathers flying free. The vampires were no better off.

       Then the goblins and trolls started dropping down from the ledge above, also summoned by the flute.

       Dor broke off. "We're slaughtering them! That wasn't my intent! It's time to set off the forget spell!"

       "We would be trapped by it too," Jumper reminded him. "Speak to it."

       "Speak to it? Oh." Dor held out the glassy ball. "Spell, how are you detonated?"

       "I detonate when a voice commands me to," the ball replied.

       "Any voice?"

       "That's what I said."

       Dor had his answer. He set the sphere in a niche in the cliff. "Count to one thousand, then order yourself to detonate," he told it.

       "Say, that's clever!" the spell said. "One, two, three-four-five-"

       "Slowly!" Dor said sharply. "One number per second."

       "Awww-" But the spell resumed more slowly. "Seven, eight-what a spoilsport you are!-nine, ten, a big fat hen!"

       "What?" a nearby harpy screeched, taking it personally. She dived in, but Jumper snagged her with the hoop. Another potential foul-up defused.

       "And don't say anything to insult the harpies," Dor told the spell.

       "Ah, shucks. Eleven, twelve-"

       Jumper scurried away to the side, fastened the other end of a new line he had attached to Dor, and hauled him across. This was not as fast as running on level land, but it was expedient.

       They moved steadily westward, away from the spell sphere. Dor continued playing the flute intermittently, to keep the goblins massing at the brink without allowing too many to fall over. He heard the spell's counting fading in the distance, and that lent urgency to his escape. The problem was now one of management; he and Jumper had to get far enough away to be out of the forget range, without luring the goblins and harpies beyond range too. Inevitably a good many monsters would escape, but maybe the ones fazed by the forget detonation would lend sufficient confusion to the array to inhibit the others from returning to the Castle. There seemed to be no clear-cut strategy; he just had to fudge through as best he could, hoping he could profit enough to give Castle Roogna the edge. It had worked well with the Mundane siege of the Zombie Master's castle, after all.

       How much nicer if there were simple answers to all life's problems! But the closer Dor approached adulthood, the less satisfying such answers became. Life itself was complex, therefore life's answers were complex. But it took a mature mind to appreciate the convolutions of that complexity.

       "One hundred five, one hundred six, pick up a hundred sticks!" the spell was chanting. "One hundred seven, one hundred eight, lay all hundred straight!" Now there was a simple mind!

       Dor wondered again how wide a radius the detonation would have. Would the chasm channel it? Then the brunt would come along here, instead of out where the goblins were. Maybe he and Jumper should climb over the rim before the spell went off, and lie low there, hoping to be shielded from the direct effect. But they couldn't come up too close to the goblins, who were milling about near the brink. The harpies were still dive-bombing him, forcing Jumper to jump back with the hoop. Fortunately, the bulk of their attention was taken by the goblins, their primary enemy; Dor and Jumper were merely incidental targets, attacked because they were there. Except when Dor played the flute, as he continued to do intermittently.

       "Three hundred forty-seven, three hundred forty-eight, now don't be late," the spell was saying in the fading distance. As long as he could hear it, he had to assume he was within its forget radius.

       "Can we go faster?" Dor asked nervously. He had thought they were traveling well, but the numbers had jumped with seeming suddenness from the neighborhood of one hundred to the neighborhood of three hundred. Unless the spell was cheating, skipping numbers-no, the inanimate did not have the wit to cheat Dor had just been preoccupied with his own efforts and gloomy thoughts.

       "Not safely, friend," Jumper chittered.

       "Let me take back the hoop," Dor suggested to the spider. "Then you can string your lines faster."

       Jumper agreed, and passed back the hoop.

       Another harpy made a screaming dive. Dor scooped her into the hoop, and she was gone without recall or recoil. What happened to the creatures who passed through it? Harpies could fly, goblins could climb; why couldn't either get out? Was it an inferno on the other side, killing them instantly? He didn't like that.

       Jumper was ahead, setting the anchor for the next swing. Dor had a private moment. He poked a finger into the center of the hoop, from the far side, watching it disappear from his side. He saw his finger in cross section, as if severed with a sharp sword: the skin, the little blood vessels, the tendons, the bone. But there was no pain; his finger felt cool, not cold; no inferno there, and no freezing weather either. He withdrew it, and found it whole, to his relief. He poked it from the near side, and got the same effect, except that this time he could not see the cross section. It seemed that either side of the ring led to wherever it led. A different world?

       Jumper tugged, and Dor swung across, feeling guilty for his surreptitious experimentation. He could have lost a finger that way. Well, maybe not; he had seen the King's fingers disappear and reappear unharmed. "Let's check and see if the goblins are clear," Dor said. He had not played the flute for a while.

       The spider scurried up the wall to peek over with two or three eyes, keeping the rest of his body low. "They are there in masses," he chittered. "I believe they are pacing the harpies-who are pacing us."

       "Oh, no! Murphy strikes again! We can't get clear of the Gap, if they follow us!"

       "We should be clear of the forget radius now," Jumper chittered consolingly.

       "Then so are the goblins and harpies! That's no good!" Dor heard himself getting hysterical.

       "Our effort should have distracted a great number of the warring creatures," Jumper pointed out reasonably. "Our purpose was to distract them so that the Zombie Master could penetrate to Castle Roogna. If he succeeded, we have succeeded."

       "I suppose so," Dor agreed, calming. "So it doesn't really matter if the harpies and goblins don't get forget-spelled. Still, how are we ever going to get out of here? It is too late to turn off the spell."

       "Perseverance should pay. If we continue until night-" Jumper cocked his body, lifting his two front legs so as to hear better. "What is that?"

       Dor tried to fathom what direction the spider was orienting, and could not. Damn those ubiquitous eyes! "What's what?"

       Then he heard it. "Nine hundred eighty-three, nine hundred eighty-four, close to the hundredth door; nine hundred eighty-five-"

       A harpy was carrying the spell toward them-and it was about to detonate! "Oh, Murphy!" Dor wailed. "You really nabbed us now!"

       "What's the big secret about this talking ball?" the harpy screeched.

       "Nine hundred ninety-two, buckle the bag's shoe," the spell said.

       "Stop counting!" Dor yelled at the spell.

       "Countdown can't be stopped once initiated," the spell replied smugly.

       "Quick," Jumper chittered. "I will fasten the draglines so we can return. We must escape through the magic hoop."

       "Oh, no!" Dor cried.

       "It should be safe; I saw you testing it."

       "Nine hundred ninety-seven, nine hundred ninety-eight," the spell continued inexorably. "Now don't be late!"

       Jumper scrambled through the hoop. Dor hesitated, appalled. Could they return? But if he remained here-

       "One thousand!" the spell cried gleefully. "Now at last I can say it!"

       Dor dived through the hoop. The last thing he heard was "Deto-"

       He arrived in darkness. It was pleasant, neutral. His body seemed to be suspended without feeling. There was a timelessness about him, a perpetual security. All he had to do was sleep.

       You are not like the others, a thought said at him.

       "Of course not," Dor thought back. Whatever he was suspended in did not permit physical talking, because there was no motion. "I am from another time. So is my friend Jumper the spider. Who are you?"

       "I am the Brain Coral, keeper of the source of magic.

       "The Brain Coral! I know you! You're supposed to be animating my body!"

       "When?"

       "Eight hundred years from now. Don't you remember?"

       "I am not in a position to know about that, being as yet a creature of my own time.

       "Well, in my time you-uh, it gets complicated. But I think Jumper and I had better get out of here as soon as the forget spell dissipates."

       You detonated a forget spell?

       "Yes, a major one, inside the Gap. To make the goblins and harpies and cohorts and ilk stop fighting. They-"

       Forget spells are permanent, until counterspelled.

       "I suppose so, for the ones affected. But-"

       You have just rendered the Gap itself forgotten.

       "The Gap? But it's not alive! The spell only affects living things, things that remember."

       Therefore all living things will forget the Gap. Stunned, Dor realized it was true. He had caused the Gap to be forgotten by all but those people whose forgetting would be paradoxical. Such as those living adjacent to it, who would otherwise fall in and die. Their deaths would be inexplicable to their friends and relatives, leading to endless complications that would quickly neutralize the spell. Paradox was a powerful natural counterspell! But any people who had no immediate need-to-know would simply not remember the Gap. This was true in his own day-and now he knew how it had come about. He had done it, with his bumbling.

       Yet if what he did here had no permanence, how could…? He couldn't take time to ponder that now. "We have to get back to Castle Roogna. Or at least, we can't stay here. There would be paradox when we caught up to our own time."

       So it would seem. I shall release you from my preservative fluid. The primary radiation of the spell should not affect you; the secondary may. You will not forget your personal identities and mission, but you may forget the Gap once you leave its vicinity.

       "I'm pretty much immune to that anyway," Dor said. "I'm one of the near-Gap residents. Just so long as I don't forget the rest."

       One question, before I release you. Through what aperture have you and all these other creatures entered my realm? I had thought the last large ring was destroyed fifty years ago.

       "Oh, we have a two-inch ring that we expanded to two-foot diameter. We can change it back when we're done with it."

       That will be appreciated. Perhaps we shall meet again-in eight hundred years, the Coral thought at him.

       Then Dor popped out of the hoop and dangled by his dragline. Jumper followed.

       "I had not anticipated immobility," the spider chittered ruefully.