Castle Roogna (41 page)

       Dor questioned. Millie had come in, approached a basin, looked at her pretty but tired face in a mundane mirror-and Vadne had entered the room. Vadne had doused the Magic Lantern. In the darkness Millie had screamed with surprise and dismay, and there had been a swish as of hair flinging about, and a tattoo on the floor as of feet kicking. That was all.

       Vadne had departed the room alone. The light had remained doused until morning-when there was no sign of Millie.

       Vadne was edging toward the door. Jumper threw a noose and snared her, preventing her escape. "So you were the one!" the Zombie Master cried. His gaunt face was twisted with incredulous rage, his eyes gleaming whitely from their sockets.

       "I only did it for you," she said, bluffing it out. "She didn't love you anyway; she loved Dor. And she's just a garden-variety maid, not a Magician-caliber talent. You need a-"

       "She is my betrothed!" the Zombie Master cried, his aspect wild. Dor echoed the man's passion within himself. The Zombie Master did love her-as Dor did. "What did you do with her, wretch?"

       "I put her where you will never find her!" Vadne flared.

       "This is murder," King Roogna said grimly.

       "No it isn't!" Vadne cried. "I didn't kill her. I just-changed her."

       Dor saw the strategy in that. The Zombie Master could have reanimated her dead body as a zombie; as it was, he could do nothing.

       Jumper peered down the drainage sump with his largest eye. "Is it possible?" he inquired.

       "We'll rip out the whole sump to find her!" the King cried.

       "And if you do," Vadne said, "what will you do then? Without me you can't change her back to her stupid sex-appeal form."

       "Neo-Sorceress," King Roogna said grimly. "We are mindful of your considerable assistance in the recent campaign. We do not relish showing you disfavor."

       "Oh, pooh!" she said. "I only helped you because Murphy wouldn't have me, and I wanted to marry a Magician."

       "You have chosen unwisely. If you do not change the maid back, we shall have to execute you."

       She was taken aback, but remained defiant. "Then you'll never get her changed, because talents never repeat."

       "But they do overlap," Roogna said.

       "In the course of decades or centuries! The only way you can save her is to deal on my terms."

       "What are your terms?" the King asked, his eyes narrow.

       "Let Dor marry Millie. She likes him better anyway, the stupid slut. I'll take the Zombie Master."

       "Never!" the Zombie Master cried, his hands clenching.

       Vadne faced him. "Why force on her a marriage with a man she doesn't love?" she demanded.

       That shook him. "In time she would-"

       "How much time? Twenty years, when she's no longer so sweet and young? Two hundred? I love you now?'

       The Zombie Master looked at Dor. His face was tight with emotional pain, but his voice was steady. "Sir, there is some truth in what she says. I was always aware that Millie-if you had-" He choked off, then forced himself to continue. "I would prefer to see Millie married to you, than locked in some hideous transformation. If you-"

       Dor realized that Millie was being offered to him again. All he had to do was take her, and she would be restored and Castle Roogna would be safe. He could by his simple acquiescence nullify the last desperate aspect of Murphy's curse.

       He was tempted. But he realized that this transformation was the fate that had awaited her throughout. If he took Millie now, he could offer her…nothing. He was soon to return to his own time. Vadne evidently didn't believe that, but it was true. If he eschewed Millie, she would remain enchanted, a ghost for eight hundred years. A dread but fated destiny.

       If he interfered now, he really would change history. There was no question of that, for this was personal, his immediate knowledge. He would fashion a paradox, the forbidden type of magic-and by the devious logic of the situation, Murphy would win. The curse had at last forced Dor to nullify himself by changing too much.

       Yet if he turned down Vadne's terms, King Roogna would lose anyway, as the Zombie Master turned against him. Either way, Magician Murphy prevailed.

       What was he, Dor, to do? Since either choice meant disaster, he might as well do what he believed to be right, however much it hurt.

       "No," Dor said, knowing he was forcing Millie to undergo the full throes of ghosthood. Eight centuries long-and what reward awaited her there? Nursemaid to a little boy! Association with a zombie! "She goes to her betrothed-or to no one."

       "But I am her betrothed!" the Zombie Master cried. "I love her-and because I love her, I yield her to you! I would do anything rather than permit her to suffer!"

       "True love," King Roogna said. "It becomes you, sir."

       "I'm sorry," Dor said. He understood now that his love for Millie was less, because he chose to let her suffer. He was knowingly inflicting terrible grief upon them all. Yet the alternative was the sacrifice of what they had all fought to save, deviously but certainly. He had no choice. "What's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong. I-" He spread his hands, unable to formulate his thought.

       The Zombie Master gazed somberly at him. "I believe I understand." Then, surprisingly, he offered his hand.

       Dor accepted it. Suddenly he felt like a man.

       "If you will not restore her," the King said angrily to Vadne, "you shall be passed through the hoop."

       "You're bluffing," Vadne said. "You won't throw away your Kingdom just to get at me."

       But the King was not bluffing. He gave her one more chance, then had the hoop brought.

       "I'll change it back to its original size," she threatened. "Then you won't be able to use it."

       "You are very likely to go through it anyway," the King said, and there was something in his expression that cowed her. She stepped through the hoop and was gone.

       The King turned to the Zombie Master. "It is a matter of principle," he explained. "I cannot allow any subject to commit such a crime with impunity. We shall ransack this Castle to locate Millie in whatever form she may be, and shall search out every avenue of magic that might restore her. Perhaps periodically we can recall Vadne from storage to see if she is ready to restore the maid. In time-"

       "Time…" the Zombie Master repeated brokenly. They all knew the project could take a lifetime.

       "Meanwhile, I apologize to you most abjectly for what has occurred, and will facilitate your return to your castle in whatever manner I can. I hope some year we will meet again in better circumstances."

       "No, we shall not meet again."

       Dor did not like the sound of that, but kept quiet

       "I understand," King Roogna said, "Again, I apologize. I would not have asked you to bring your zombies here, had I known what form the curse would take. I am sorry to see them go."

       "They are not going," the Zombie Master said.

       Dor felt gathering dread. What was the Zombie Master about to do, in his betrayal and grief? He could destroy everything, and there was no way to stop him except by killing him. Dor held his arms rigid, refusing to touch his sword.

       "But nothing holds you here now," King Roogna said.

       "I did not buy Millie with my aid, I did not bargain for her hand!" the Zombie Master cried. "I came here because I realized it would please her, and I would not wish to displease her even in death by changing that. My zombies will remain here as long as they are needed, to see Castle Roogna through this crisis and any others that arise. They are yours for eternity, if you want them."

       Dor's mouth dropped open.

       "Oh, I want them!" the King agreed. "I will set aside a fine graveyard for them, to rest in comfort between crises. I will name them the honored guardians of Castle Roogna. Yet-"

       "Enough," the Zombie Master said, and turned to Dor. But he did not speak. He gave Dor one enigmatic glance, then walked slowly out of the room.

       "Then I have lost," Murphy said. "My curse worked, but has been overwhelmed by the Zombie Master's loyalty. I cannot overcome the zombies." He, too, walked away.

       That left Dor, Jumper, and the King. "This is a sad victory," Roogna said.

       Dor could only agree. "We'll stay to help you clean up the premises, Your Majesty. Then Jumper and I must return to our own land,"

       They made their desolate way to the dining room, but no one cared to finish breakfast. They went to work on the cleanup chore, burying unzombied bodies outside, removing refuse from inside, putting away fallen books in the library. The main palace had not yet been built, but the library stood as it would be eight hundred years hence, apart from details of decor. One large tome had somehow strayed to the dumbwaiter; Dor held the volume for a moment, struck by a nagging emotion, then filed it on the shelf in the library.

       In the afternoon they found the Zombie Master hanging from a rafter. He had committed suicide. Somehow Dor had known-or should have known-that it could come to this. The man's love had been too sudden, his loss too unfair. The Zombie Master had known Millie would die, known what he would do. This was what he had meant when he told the King they would not meet again.

       Yet when they cut him down, the most amazing and macabre aspect of this disaster manifested: the Zombie Master was not precisely dead. He had somehow converted himself into a zombie.

       The zombie shuffled aimlessly out of the Castle, and was seen no more. Yet Dor was sure it was suffering-and would suffer eternally, for zombies never died. What awful punishment the Zombie Master had wreaked upon himself in his bereavement!

       "In a way, it is fitting," King Roogna murmured. "He has become one of his own."

       The lesser personnel of the Castle, whom the King had sent away for the crisis, were now returning. The maids and the cooks, the steeds and dragons. Activity resumed, yet to Dor the halls seemed empty. What a victory they had won! A victory of grief and regret and hopelessness.

       Finally Dor and Jumper prepared to depart, knowing the spell that placed them here in the tapestry world would soon bring them home. They wanted to be away from Castle Roogna when it happened. "Rule well, King Roogna," Dor said as he shook the monarch's hand for the last time.

       "I shall do my best, Magician Dor," Roogna replied. "I wish you every success and happiness in your own land, and I know that when your time comes to rule-"

       Dor made a deprecating gesture. He had learned a lot, here-more than he cared to. He didn't want to think about being King.

       "I have a present for you," Jumper said, presenting the King with a box. "It is the puzzle-tapestry the Zombie Master gave to me. I am not able to take it with me. I ask you to assemble it at your leisure and hang it from the wall of whatever room you deem fit. It should provide you with many hours of pleasure."

       "It shall have a place of honor, always," the King said, accepting it.

       Then Dor thought of something. "I, too, have an important object I can't take with me. But I can recover it, after eight hundred years, if you will be so kind as to spell it into the tapestry."

       "No problem at all," King Roogna said. Dor gave him the vial of zombie-restorative elixir. "I shall cause it to respond to the words "Savior of Xanth.'"

       "Uh, thanks," Dor said, embarrassed.

       He went up to the ramparts to bid farewell to the remaining centaurs. Cedric was not there, of course, having returned home. But Egor Ogre was present, and Dor shook his huge bony hand, cautiously.

       That was it. Dor was no more adept at partings than at greetings. They walked away from the Castle, across the deserted, blasted battlefield-and into a vicious patch of saw grass at the edge. Jumper, more alert than Dor, drew him back from the swipe of the nearest saw just barely in time.

       They were back in the jungle. The visible, tangible wilderness, where there was little subtlety about evil. Somehow it seemed like home.

       Yet as they sloughed methodically through the forest, avoiding traps, skirting perils, and nullifying hazards in dull routine fashion, Dor found himself disturbed by more than human-related grief. He mulled it over, and finally had it.

       "It is you, Jumper," he said. "We are about to return home. But there I am a boy, and you are a tiny spider. We'll never see each other again! And-" He felt the boyish tears emerging. "Oh, Jumper, you're my best friend, you've been by my side through the greatest and awfulest adventure of my life, and-and-"

       "I thank you for your concern," the spider chittered. "But we need not separate completely. My home is by the tapestry. There are many fat lazy bugs trying to eat into the fabric, and now I have special reason to keep them from it. Look for me there, and you will surely find me."

       "But-but in three months I'll only be an older boy-and you'll be dead!"

       "It is my natural span," Jumper assured him. "I will live as much in that time as you do in the next thirty years. I will tell my offspring about you. I am thankful that chance has given me this opportunity to learn about your frame of reference. I would never otherwise have realized that the giant species have intelligence and feelings too. It has been a great and satisfying education for me."

       "And for me!" Dor exclaimed. Then, spontaneously, he offered his hand.

       The spider solemnly lifted a forefoot and shook Dor's hand.

       "One moment Dor was swinging on spider silk across a minor chasm; the next he was standing on the floor of the Castle Roogna drawing room before the tapestry.

       "Is that you, Dor?" a familiar voice inquired.

       Dor looked around and spied a tiny, humanoid figure. "Of course it's me, Grundy," he told the golem. "Who else would it be?"