Up In A Heaval (4 page)

Sammy gave him a look of patient tolerance. Umlaut hadn't asked, of course.

They crossed the river. First Sesame swam, with Sammy perched on her head, glaring the colored loan sharks away. Then she swam back to accompany Umlaut as he swam. The sharks looked eager to take one of his arms or legs, but Sesame wouldn't let them. They were clearly disgusted. Umlaut had come to think of the big serpent as harmless but realized that that was because she was his friend. She remained a formidable predator, probably equivalent to a dragon, only without fire, smoke, or steam.

They followed the river back upstream to the place they had first come to it. Then Sammy settled down for a catnap.

“I guess it's not time yet,” Umlaut said. “Why don't we forage for food while we wait? We're not partial to each other's food, so maybe we should do it separately, then meet here in an hour or so.”

Sesame agreed and slithered off. Umlaut spied a very nice looking pie tree and picked a pie. He bit into it and almost choked—it was a sweetie pie, revoltingly sweet. He looked at the others and saw that they were similar; this was a sweetie pie tree. So he suppressed his objection and ate it. He had been taught to eat any food he picked rather than waste it. Next time he would be more careful.

In an hour or so Sesame Serpent returned. She was a little thicker in the middle and looked satisfied; she had found her meal. Umlaut did not inquire.

But she looked askance at him. It seemed that he looked and smelled sickeningly sweet. The pie had had its effect. Umlaut was disgusted.

Sammy woke, looked at Umlaut, and turned his back, evincing annoyance.

“I can't help it!” Umlaut protested. “It was all there was to eat.”

But Sammy had a cure. He sniffed out a nearby path that went north and south. It had a paved surface and a dotted line along its center. All Umlaut needed to do was stand there a moment, and he would no longer be too sweet.

He shrugged and tried it. Suddenly there was the blare of a horn and a demon zoomed toward him at impossible speed. “Watch where you're going, jerk!” the demon yelled. Umlaut threw himself to one side, just in time, and the demon swerved the other way—and crashed into the sweetie pie tree. Pies flew up, and one landed on the demon. Rather, in the demon, for the thing's mouth was open to yell another imprecation. There was nothing for the demon to do but swallow it.

“What did you think you were doing, speeding like that?” Umlaut demanded angrily. “You could have run me over!”

The demon extricated himself from the tree. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” he said with saccharine politeness. “But you know, I am a speed demon. It's my nature.” Then he got back on the path and bbbrrnzzzpp! he was gone, except for a sweet cloud of smoke.

In a moment another demon zoomed by, stirring up a cloud of dust and leaves. “Those speed demons think they own the forest!” Umlaut griped. Then he saw Sesame and Sammy gazing at him. “What!?”

In third moment it came clear: He was no longer sickeningly sweet. The experience with the speed demons had wiped that right out of him. And the first demon had swallowed a pie and turned sweet. Served him right.

“Okay, you cured me, Sammy,” he said grudgingly. “Now how about the letter carrier?”

Sammy shrugged. Not yet. He settled down for another catnap, assuming the aspect of a speed bump on the speed demons' path. Sesame settled down for a snooze or two of her own. She had reptilian patience and a full tummy.

Frustrated, Umlaut walked around the area, just in case there was anything interesting. He discovered a tree he didn't recognize, with small pretzel-twisted fruits. The trunk ascended, then bent down, then rose again, forming a giant letter N. He hesitated, then decided that the fruits were unlikely to be poisonous. He picked one and ate it. It was good, neither too sweet nor sour. He should have eaten this instead of the sweetie pies.

Suddenly he was very angry. He spat out the fruit, and the passion faded. The fruit must have caused his mood.

He tried another. This time he suffered a mental picture of the nearby region of Xanth, as if he could envision it without being blocked by the trees or mountains.

A bulb flashed over his head. “N-vision!” he cried. “It's an N-tree and has N-shaped fruits. The first one was N-rage.” Then, curious, he tried other fruits and identified N-oble, N-sure, N-trance, N-shroud, and N-joy. Satisfied with that last one, he stopped picking and eating.

Sammy turned to face the river. Its surface was rippling, but it wasn't an allegory; they were staying well clear. An eye broke the surface, then another. These were followed by eyestalks, then by a glistening hump. Finally it slid entirely out of the water: a huge snail. There was a knapsack on its shell and printed words: MUNDANIA SNAILS.

They all stared as the snail slid grandly on toward Castle Zombie. It completely ignored them. It crossed the speed demon path, paying no heed to the speeding demons, who veered crazily to avoid it. It passed within range of a tangle tree, but the tree's tentacles recoiled from it, evidently knowing better than to get stuck on it. It was sublimely untouchable, caring about nothing and nobody. It left behind a fresh trail of slime.

“Let's not inquire further,” Umlaut said, and serpent and cat agreed.

They conferred and decided to return to Castle Zombie to report on their discovery, then decide where to go next. They took another route Sammy showed them, and it was surprisingly easy to follow; they fairly flew along it. That made Umlaut suspicious. “Are you sure this goes where we're going?” he asked Sammy.

The cat reconsidered and shook his head.

“Then why are we on it?”

Sammy seemed to be unable to answer. He just kept following it, and Sesame and Umlaut went too. It was the easiest thing to do.

Then they came to an identifying sign: PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE.

“Oh, no! This isn't right!”

But they seemed to be unable to stop. They had to follow the path, because any alternative was more difficult. Sammy had gotten caught when looking for a path to the castle, and they had followed him unthinkingly. It occurred to Umlaut that following anyone unthinkingly was not the best course.

Umlaut looked desperately around for some way to get off the path, because he was sure it would not be healthy to stay on it too long. Where did it lead?

All too soon, he saw: into a dreadful bog with a sign identifying it as DISASTER. They would never get out of that.

He had to find a way to break the spell of the path. But all he saw by the side was a colony of ants. “Help!” he called.

Surprisingly, one of them responded. It was an ant with a huge head. It held up a small paper sign. ARE YOU ADDRESSING ME?

“Yes!” Umlaut cried. “Who are you?”

The ant held up another placard. I AM INTELLIG ANT

Ouch! Puns were inferior things at the best of times, but that one was not the best. But what choice did they have? “If you're so smart, tell us how to get off this path.”

SEEK THE HELP OF THE RESIST ANTS.

By this time they were past the first ant colony and approaching another, just before the path disappeared into the bubbling bog. That had to be the resist ants. “Help!” he called again.

The ants responded. They charged across the path and linked legs so as to form a living cordon. The three travelers collided with it and bounced back, landing in a pile off the path. They were finally free of its compulsion.

Umlaut picked himself up. “Thanks,” he said. “You saved us from disaster. What can we do for you in return?”

The Intellig Ant approached with a placard. THEY WANT A PORPOISE.

This set him back somewhat. “Seafood? To eat? I don't think I want to do that.”

LOOK AT THE POOL.

He looked and saw that at the edge of the bog was a section of open water. A creature swam there, restlessly. It was the shape of a loan shark, but different.

THAT IS REASON. HE HAS NO PORPOISE. FIND HIM A PORPOISE.

Oh. Another pun. What else was to be expected along the Path of Least Resistance?

Still, this seemed to be beyond the scope of what they could accomplish. “I'm not sure—”

Sammy Cat took off, bounding across the terrain.

“We'll do it,” Umlaut said and followed the cat. “Wait for me!”

Sammy led them to another pond. There was a swimming creature similar to the other. “Are you a porpoise?” Umlaut asked it.

It turned out that this was indeed a lady porpoise. Surely a fit companion for Reason.

“We would like you to meet a creature who needs you,” Umlaut said. “We'll try to make a channel for you to swim.” Indeed, Sesame was already at work on it, jamming her snout through the dirt and muck of the fringe of the bog, gouging out a shallow channel.

In due course they had cut a channel connecting the two pools. The porpoise wriggled along it and joined Reason, who greeted her with delight. Reason and a porpoise—a perfect couple.

Now they felt free to depart. Sammy scouted out another path, a safe one, and they followed cautiously. There were no further problems, and they reached the castle well ahead of the giant snail, unsurprisingly.

Breanna of the Black Wave saw them coming. “Sammy!” she exclaimed, picking up the cat and stroking him. He purred.

“We saw a snail,” Umlaut said. “It's bringing letters from Mundania.” He preferred not to mention the misadventure with the Path of Least Resistance.

Breanna nodded. “That explains why they are so old. I collected them from the dungeon, and some of them go back months. We had no idea they were being delivered here.”

“I guess a Mundane snail wouldn't know the local Xanth addresses,” Umlaut said. “So it brought them to the nearest castle with a mail slot.”

“For sure. They are supposed to go to all manner of residents. We'll have the zombies deliver them to the people they are addressed to. It will take a while, but they're already so late it shouldn't make much difference.”

“Well, I think we'll be on our way now,” Umlaut said. “We want to explore Xanth before Sammy goes home.”

“But he can't find home,” Breanna said. “I know where it is; I can have a zombie take him there.”

Sammy jumped from her arms. He wasn't ready to go home yet.

“For sure,” Breanna murmured, seeing the way of it. “I guess all those wolves get tiresome, and Jenny's signaling the stork.” She looked pensive half a moment. “So am I.”

There was a swirl of smoke in the air before them. It formed into a vaguely human face. “Salubrious,” it said.

“What?” Umlaut asked.

“Greeting, welcome, accosting, addressing, heralding—”

“Salutation?”

“Whatever,” the face said crossly, as a voluptuous body extended downward from it.

“Oh, hello, Metria,” Breanna said. “You know Sammy Cat, and these are Umlaut Human and Drivel Dragon.” She turned to the others. “This is the Demoness Metria.”

The shape was now fully formed, with a drooping décolletage over a very full bosom and lifting skirt over a similarly full bottom. “You don't look much like a dragon,” she said to Sesame.

The serpent quickly emulated the dragon, having allowed that to lapse. The demoness blinked. “But maybe I mislooked.”

“Mis what?” Umlaut asked somewhat stupidly. He couldn't manage an intelligent comment at the moment because his own eyes were locked onto Metria's illustriously heaving bosom.

“Misinformed, misbegotten, mistaken, misapprehended—”

“Never mind,” Breanna said somewhat curtly. “What brings you here, Metria?”

“Oh, that,” the demoness said. “There's a message from Magician Humfrey.”

“The Good Magician? What's he want with us?”

“He wants to know what the inferno you said to Demon Jupiter.”

“What the what?” Umlaut asked, still locked onto her bosom, heave by heave.

“Hades, purgatory, pandemonium, underworld, perdition—”

“Blazes?” Umlaut asked.

“Whatever,” she agreed crossly, taking another heave.

“Cut it out,” Breanna snapped. “We didn't say anything to Demon Jupiter. All we did was forward a letter to him.”

The demoness started to fade, finally freeing Umlaut's eyes. “Humfrey will be glad to know that.”

“Hold up a moment,” Breanna said. “What's with the Demon Jupiter?”

The fading reversed at the top but continued at the bottom, so that the demoness was visible only from the waist up. Umlaut tried to safeguard his eyes before they fell back into her swelling bosom, but lost. “Him? Oh, just some nonsense about a spot.”

“Must be the Red Spot,” Breanna said. “He's got one. Why does that concern us?”

“He doesn't seem to want it anymore.”

“Doesn't want his Red Spot? Why do you think that?”

“Because it seems he just threw it at the Demon Earth.”

“He what?”

“Hurled, cast, tossed, flung, pitched—”

“Stop it!” Breanna snapped. “That spot is no tiny ball, it's a huge red storm. And Earth is firmly attached to Xanth. If that thing blots out Earth, it'll blot out Xanth too. This is real mischief! Whatever possessed Jupiter to do that?”

Metria shrugged, yanking Umlaut's eyes upward with her thorax. “I wouldn't know. Must have been something in that letter you so nicely forwarded.”

“The letter!” Breanna exclaimed in horror. “It must have insulted him. It's my fault for forwarding that missive. I should abase myself.”

“Or go to the attic,” Umlaut suggested.

“Attic?”

“The basement is still sort of smelly. So maybe an attic is better than abasement.”

She gave him a strange look, and he realized that he had spoken clumsily, again. “Maybe I should. Now we're all in deep bleep.”

“Deep what?” the demoness asked.

“Muck, manure, fertilizer, humus, dirt—”

“Poop?”

“Whatever,” Breanna Said crossly. “Hey, now you've got me doing it! I mean we're all in trouble. Because we didn't know what was in that letter.”

“Interesting. Well, toodle-doo.” This time the demoness faded out too quickly to be stopped.

Breanna shook her head. “What a mess!”

Sesame and Sammy nodded agreement.

“Maybe I shouldn't have found that letter," Umlaut said, feeling guilty.

“Maybe I shouldn't have forwarded it unopened,” Breanna said. “For sure, I'll check the others first. But right now we have a bad problem. I'll have to consult with the Good Magician to find out what to do about it. What a thing to happen when I'm still learning the zombie business.”

A moderately dim bulb flashed over Umlaut's head. “We can do that,” he said.

Distracted, Breanna didn't understand immediately. “Do what?”

“Consult with the Good Magician. We can go there, so you won't have to. We—we have some responsibility in this matter too.”

Breanna considered. “It's nobody's fault; it just happened. But we do need to do something. That Demon Jupiter is nobody to fool around with. Okay, if you want to go, then go ahead. But hurry. That spot won't take long to get here.”

“Well, Sammy can surely find the castle, but it may take us several days to get there by foot.”

“No time for that. I'll have Roy carry you.”

“Who?”

But she was already hurrying away to find Roy.

Umlaut turned to the other two. “I thought you'd like to see the Good Magician's castle. But if you'd rather not, I can leave you here and do it myself. I'll give the answer to Breanna, then we can head out on our own adventure, just as we planned.”

Both serpent and cat shook their heads. They wanted to come along.

“I wonder who Roy is?” Umlaut asked. “Maybe a big horse or unicorn or something, who can run very fast.”

Sammy looked past him and shuddered. Then Sesame did the same.

“Well, maybe with a wagon, so we can ride in it.”

They continued to stare and shudder. Finally Umlaut turned to follow their gazes.

A giant bird was coming to a landing. “A roc!” he exclaimed. “We're going by air!”

So why were they still shuddering?

Then he saw the bird in more detail. It was a zombie roc. “Oh, no!” he breathed. But it was too late to say no.

The three exchanged another glance. They shrugged. How bad could it be?

There was a wicker cage at the roc's feet, large enough for them all. They got into it, Sesame curling around the bottom, Umlaut and Sammy sitting on her coils.

There was a blast of foul air as the roc pumped his monstrous wings and lifted off the ground. Roy's flesh might be a bit rotten, but his flight feathers were evidently sufficient. Umlaut wrinkled his nose, and the two others nodded. None of them were keen on zombie power but had little choice at the moment. Certainly Umlaut was not about to comment openly and perhaps hurt the big bird's feelings and get dropped.

They saw the Land of Xanth spread below them, like a disjointed carpet, with the blue sea on one side and a huge crevice on another. “What's that?” Umlaut asked, surprised.

It turned out that Sammy Cat knew, having been there. They played the yes/no question game and gradually got the answer: That was the Gap Chasm, a huge cut across the center of Xanth that had been forgotten for eight hundred years, thanks to a forget spell, but now was generally known. Its sides were sheer, so that creatures who got into it had trouble getting out, and the dread Gap Dragon cruised the bottom, steaming and gobbling what it caught.

“Steaming?” Umlaut asked.

Yes, steaming. Dragons were of three general types: fire breathers, smokers, and steamers. The one in the Gap Chasm was Stanley Steamer. He could cook a creature with a single jet of steam and was one of the most fearsome dragons extant. Except when Princess Ivy was around; then he was tame.

“You know Princess Ivy?” Umlaut asked, amazed.

It turned out that Sammy knew just about everyone who was anyone. Jenny Elf had made many friends before she got married, so the cat had became acquainted with them too. He could find any of them, when he wanted to.

It occurred to Umlaut that this could be a useful contact if they needed to meet any important people. But why would they need to? They were just doing an errand for Breanna of the Black Wave.

The bird angled downward. There was a castle ahead. “That must be the Good Magician,” Umlaut said.

Sammy sent him a superior look: What else could it be?

Roy Roc touched down, bounced, slid, and ground to a spinning halt. It was not a pretty landing, and bits of zombie rot flew out, but they were safely down.

“Thank you so much,” Umlaut said, scrambling out of the somewhat dented wicker cage. Sammy and Sesame were hardly slower about it.

The bird nodded. Then he spread his wings, pumped more rot into the air, and squeezed out a takeoff. In a moment only the stench remained.

“Well, he did get us here quickly,” Umlaut said. “We are surely duly grateful.”

The others agreed. Now they addressed the castle. It looked considerably neater and cleaner than Castle Zombie, which was no surprise. The stone walls were firm, the pennants were bright, the moat was clear, and the drawbridge was down across it and looked firm and healthy. What a change—and what a relief.

But something was wrong. When they approached the castle, it turned out to be made of cardboard. The moat was a painted disk, the walls were interlocked in jigsaw puzzle fashion, and the main gate was painted; it wouldn't open.

“This is the Good Magician's Castle?” Umlaut asked Sammy.

Sammy fidgeted. It turned out that he had not invoked his finding power, trusting the roc to know the way. And the roc had landed at the wrong castle.

Umlaut sighed. Then he stepped across the moat and knocked on the painted door, “Anybody home?” he called.

A much smaller door opened inside the big one. A young man's head popped out. “You like it anyway?”

“It's cardboard!” Umlaut exclaimed.

“Well, maybe I overreached. You see, my talent is to make any drawn thing become real. So this time I drew the Good Magician's Castle. But I guess there are limits, because when it got big, it stopped being solid. It's real, just not quite what I wanted.”

“I guess you have to work on that some more,” Umlaut said. “We're looking for the real Good Magician's Castle.”

“Oh that's just east of here. You can't miss it.” The door shut.

They walked around the cardboard castle and went east. And came up against a raging river. It was plainly too violent for them to swim across. Even Sesame shrank back.

Umlaut turned to Sammy. “Can you find help?”

The cat bounded north. “Wait for us!” But Sammy wasn't good at waiting. Fortunately it was not far. They approached two girls who were having a picnic in a glade.

The girls looked up, alarmed. Suddenly a mass of green Stuff appeared and shaped itself into a fence between Umlaut and the girls. He had to stop moving before he crashed into it.

He recognized defensive magic. “We're not attacking you,” he called. “We're just looking for help to get across the river. I'm Umlaut, and these are my friends Sesame Serpent and Sammy Cat.”

“Sammy!” one girl cried. The fence dissolved back into Stuff, which then disappeared. Sammy joined the girls and received some heavy petting.

The girls turned out to be Mol and Kel. Mol's talent was creating; Kel's was molding. So Mol had created the mass of Stuff, and Kel had shaped it into the fence. Both were more than willing to do Umlaut a favor, now that they knew he was with Sammy.

“Well, uh, if you can make us a bridge across the river, we'd appreciate that.”

“We will,” Mol said, kissing him on the left ear.

“Right away,” Kel added, kissing his right ear.

“Uh, thanks.”

They walked to the river. Mol made a huge mass of blue Stuff, and Kel shaped it into an arch that fell across the river. It was not Xanth's fanciest bridge, but it sufficed. They climbed carefully across it to the other side of the river. The girls followed, bending down to hang on to the arch with their hands, not awfully careful about how much of their legs showed. Umlaut tried not to look, without success.

“Uh, thanks,” Umlaut said in his usual awkward fashion.

“We can do more than that,” Mol said, kissing his left ear again.

“Much more,” Kel agreed, kissing his right ear again.

Umlaut sort of liked it but knew that he couldn't dally here. “We, uh, have to get on to the Good Magician's Castle.”

“Too bad,” Mol said. “Maybe on the way back?”

“Uh, maybe.” He wasn't sure exactly what they had in mind, but was mightily tempted.

They moved on. Sesame glanced at him sidelong, and he knew why: He was awkward and clumsy and nothing special in his natural state, so why did girls like him? It was a mystery.

They made it without further event to the real Good Magician's Castle, which looked exactly like the cardboard replica, except that the moat water was real and so, surely, was the stone in the walls.

“Now all we have to do is enter the castle, ask for the Good Magician, and ask him what to do about that Red Spot,” Umlaut said. “How complicated can that be?”

But Sammy Cat stirred restlessly, and Sesame Serpent looked doubtful. What was their problem?

Then he saw that the way across the bridge was blocked by an enormous pile of large jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each piece was painted with black or white squares. Some of the white squares had letters of the alphabet on them, and some had numbers in their corners. “What's this mess?” he asked.

Sammy Cat started to go into a series of motions and gestures indicating a complicated explanation, but Umlaut cut him off. “We don't have time for this. Let's just go around this rubble.”

Still they were doubtful. Sammy was contemplating the puzzle pieces, and Sesame was staring at the moat. Now Umlaut looked at the moat too but saw nothing untoward. “We can swim across; there's no slime in that water.”

But the moment he stepped toward the water, an array of swimming monsters appeared. He wasn't sure of their exact types, but they all seemed to have gleaming eyes, sharp fins, and big teeth. “Maybe it's too cool to swim.”

He decided that he did have time after all to fathom what Sammy had to say. He questioned the cat and soon understood. “You mean this is a challenge? We can't get inside unless we handle three challenges? That's ridiculous!”

Yet it seemed to be so. Sammy knew something about the Good Magician's little eccentricities. He did not like to be bothered by frivolous questions, so he put obstacles in the way of querents (it was a struggle to elicit that obscure term from the cat; it meant people who asked questions) and refused to talk to them unless they got past them. Apparently only a few had the stamina or wit to handle the challenges, so the Good Magician was not bothered too often. So here was a challenge, and they had either to handle it or give up and go away, which might satisfy the magician.

For some reason he couldn't quite identify, that annoyed Umlaut.

“Here we come to ask a question that may enable us to save Earth and Xanth from destruction or worse, and we have to go through this nonsense.” The others agreed but had no way to bypass the nonsense.

There was something about the pile of puzzle pieces they had to understand or handle, in order to get by them. What could that be? Umlaut was just about annoyed enough to tackle it. If only he could figure out how.

He picked up a white piece with the letter C on it. He turned it over, but it was blank on back. He looked at another, with the letter A. There seemed to be many different letters. What was he supposed to do with them?

He looked at Sammy and Sesame, but they had no better idea than he did.

“Well, maybe if I put them in order,” he said. He laid down the A and searched through the pile for a B, then added the C. He continued until he had the whole alphabet and the numbers 0 through 9. But when it was complete, nothing happened. Also, there were many duplicate letters left in the pile, which hardly seemed diminished. So this did not seem to be the answer.

“Maybe if I made a word or two.” He collected letters and spelled out GOOD MAGICIAN. Still nothing happened.

He had had enough. “What am I going to do with you?”

There was a stir in the air. A cloud formed. A voice issued from it. “What did you have in intellect?”

“In what?”

“Reason, sense, recall, understanding, memory—”

“Mind?”

“Whatever,” the cloud replied crossly.

“Hello, Demoness Metria.”

The cloud shaped into a divinely human figure. Fortunately this time it was covered by a reasonably proper dress that extended from neck to ankles, so Umlaut did not lose control of his eyeballs. “How did you know it was me?”

“I made a wild guess and got lucky. What brings you here?”

“You seemed to be eager to do something, so naturally I came to be a part of it.”

“Why?”

“Because I get dulled by routine.”

“Do you mean bored?”

“That's not the prescribed format.”

“I'm tired of that kind. Here I'm supposed to figure out what to do with these bleeping blocks, and I hate it.”

“Oooo, what you said!”

“Well, I'm annoyed. Do you have any idea what to do with them?”

She gazed at the pile. “Dump them into the moat?”

Umlaut considered that. He looked at Sammy and Sesame. It was true that they had not yet tried that.

He picked up the A block and tossed it at the water. It sailed around in a loop and landed back on the pile. “Why did I have this nasty suspicion that that wouldn't work?”

“I have no idea,” the demoness said. “I'm still waiting for you to tell me what you had in mind for me.”

“I don't have anything in mind for you! I was talking about this confounded pile of pieces.”

“Then it must be time for a diversion.” Her dress shrank a size.

“No it isn't!” Umlaut said. He was beginning to appreciate why Breanna had been short with the demoness. It was hard to get things done efficiently while she was distracting people.

“Not even one this size?” The dress shrank another size, but the body didn't; things were getting rather tight.

“No size! Go away!”

“There must be something really interesting going on,” Metria said, looking around. Umlaut realized that he should not have demanded that she depart. It had the effect of stiffening her resolve to remain.