Vale of the Vole (8 page)

"I'm glad," Chex gasped. By the sound of it, she had been tiring too; her human arms were weak compared to her equine legs.

The rest was routine. Chex made sure Volney was all right, then leaped back across the chasm. Esk got on her back and she made one more leap, carrying him across.

Then they proceeded on through the mountain, and finally emerged into daylight on the south side. Esk knew that his relief was no greater than that of his companions.

Before them stood the castle. It had a moat and a solid outer wall. The drawbridge was down, and on it was a big empty cage.

They stopped just before the moat. "The Good Magician's castle is always beset by challenges," Chex said. "That is because the Magician doesn't want to be bothered by querents who aren't serious. But I don't see what kind of a challenge an empty cage would be."

"I've heard that the challenges are always slanted toward the visitors," Esk said. "Does an empty cage mean something to one of us?"

They exchanged glances. None of them had a notion.

"I suppose we could just go on in," Chex said. "But I distrust this. It is never supposed to be easy to get in, and if it seems so, then that must be a false impression. I would much rather understand the situation before committing myself."

Esk could only agree. "But how are we to understand it, if we don't go farther?"

"Oh, we should be able to reason it out to some degree," she said. "The intellect is always superior to blind action."

"That's not the ogre view," Esk said.

"We have uved vome intellect and vome acvion," Volney said. "If one doev not work now, we can try the other. But I find it odd that we have encountered vo many challengev on the way to the cavtle, and none now that we're here."

"That is strange," Esk agreed. "It's almost as if the challenges were in the wrong place."

"Or were they?" Chex asked, her wings flapping in her excitement. "Could that be the way the Good Magician planned it?"

"But aren't they supposed to be at the castle?"

"We assumed so, but how do we know? The Good Magician makes his own rules! He could have put the challenges anywhere along the route."

"But if they are slanted for particular visitors, how would the right ones be there for the right visitors? There are three of us."

But her excellent centaur mind was operating now. "I think he knew we were coming, and from which directions we were coming, so he could have set things up for each of us that the others wouldn't encounter."

"But he didn't!" Esk pointed out. "We all encountered the little dragons."

She looked at the cage. "Look—there are dragon droppings in there, and the bars are soiled with soot. Those little smokers were in there, but they got out!"

"They were let out," Volney said. "That cage hav a clavp only a human paw could operate. Mine couldn't."

"Why would they be let out before they were used?" Esk asked.

Chex shook her head. "I don't have the answer to that, but let's see if we can work it out. We three arrived together, and we helped each other get here. Does that seem usual?"

"No," Esk said. "I thought it was supposed to be one at a time."

"Well, let's pattern it. If things hadn't gone wrong, who would have come here first?"

"You would. You overshot the intersection; otherwise you would have arrived first, and then me, and finally Volney."

"So it seems reasonable that the Good Magician was setting up for me first. Now what would have been good challenges for me?"

'The mountain!" Esk exclaimed. "You're claustrophobic, so you were afraid to go into the tunnel until you realized that it was all illusion."

"And that could have been my first challenge," she said. 'To figure out the nature of the mountain, as I certainly should have done, because of my dam's map. But I failed that challenge and turned back."

'Then I failed it too, because I was with you."

"But if you had come alone, you would have gone on through the tunnel, because you aren't claustrophobic," she said. "So it wasn't a challenge for you; it didn't matter whether you caught onto its nature."

"But that chasm inside—that would have stopped me, if I didn't fall into it."

"Whereas I had no trouble with that," she said excitedly. "So maybe those were two challenges, one for each of us, set up together because we were likely to arrive so close together that there wasn't time to set up complete alternates. It is making sense!"

"The lake!" Volney said. "I could not crow the water! That wav my challenge! And the chavm too, becauve there was more water below it, ekvending down and down."

"Yes. Because we were with you, we got you across, just as you got us through the mountain. We helped each other past each other's challenges! I doubt we were supposed to."

"But what about the little smokers?" Esk asked. "We did not release them."

She contemplated the open cage. "I think that collection of dragons would have been a formidable challenge for any of us. How could we have gotten by that?"

"I might have," Esk said. "I could have climbed over the cage, and said no to any that tried to grab me through the bars."

"True. So that wasn't your challenge after all. But it would have been much more difficult for me or for Volney, because we don't climb. Just

hanging onto our staffs across the chasm was all he could do. I suppose I might have tied a line to the cage and hauled it out of the way, but he—"

"I fear I would have had to turn back," the vole said. "Unlew I had thought of your idea to uve a raft, then uved the branchev to fill hi the chavm vo I could crow that too."

"But as it happened, someone released those dragons, and we encountered several along the paths," she said. "We really must fathom that mystery before we can make sense of the larger picture."

"Obviously, something is wrong," Esk said. "Those smokers weren't meant to be loose, they were meant to be caged, and only get loose if the challengee messed up. Someone cut off the challenge before it started."

"So it seems," she agreed. "Would the Good Magician himself have done it?"

"I don't see why. If he didn't want the dragons here, he would not have brought them."

"The Gorgon, then?"

"She wouldn't mess up what he set up!"

"I agree," she said. "Could someone else have done it?"

"It doesn't seem likely."

"So we are left with the inexplicable," she concluded. "Perhaps now it is time to enter the castle, expecting the unexpected."

Esk nodded consent, nervously. Volney did not look any more comfortable.

They stepped on the drawbridge. They hauled the empty cage off, then crossed on over.

Suddenly an ogre loomed up before them. The thing was monstrous and hairy and ugly, and both Chex and Volney retreated in alarm.

But Esk's reaction was opposite! "Grandpa!" he exclaimed.

But it was not Crunch Ogre. It was some other male, not quite as ugly, but still quite formidable. It blocked their way.

"We're only coming to talk to the Good Magician," Esk said, strongly suspecting that this would not provoke any reasonable response. "Will you let us by?"

He was correct. The ogre ope'd his ponderous and marbled maw and made a bellow of rage that shook the castle.

How was he to get past with his companions? Esk realized that this was a challenge, and it was his to meet and solve. But almost nothing could make an ogre stand aside; he was in a position to know that. Nothing except—

Except another ogre. There was the key!

But Esk could not invoke his ogre self just because he wanted to. It came of its own accord, when triggered by erratic circumstances.

Still, sometimes it was possible to arrange the trigger. It was risky— but so was standing before an ogre as if ready to be eaten.

"Wish me luck," Esk muttered back to the others. Then he strode forward, directly into the ogre.

For a moment the ogre was startled by this temerity. Then it grabbed for him with a ham hand.

Esk saw that meat hook coming, and his ogre nature reacted. Suddenly he roared, his ogre strength surging. "Go 'way, me say!" he bellowed, and bit at the other's paw.

The other reacted astonishingly. It shrank away, literally; as it retreated, it became smaller, until it looked very much like a man, and Esk towered over it. But Esk, his ogre dander up, wasn't satisfied; he smashed at it with his own ham fist.

Something shattered. Fragments of glass flew out, and the other ogre was gone. Esk stood before a man-sized frame from which jags of glass projected.

"It was a mirror!" Chex exclaimed. "Except—"

Esk's ogre nature left him. As he returned to the human condition, his intelligence increased, and he understood. "A reverse mirror!" he said. "It showed only the other side of me—the side that I wasn't. So when I was a man, it was my ogre self, and when I turned ogre, it turned human. Only I was ogrishly stupid and aggressive, and broke it when I didn't have to."

Chex approached. "I don't think it was just a mirror," she said. "Vol-ney and I saw it too, and it looked and sounded like a real ogre. Your state may have governed it, but it was real enough in its fashion. Like the illusion of the mountain, it was enough to do the job. If you hadn't cowed it—"

Esk shrugged. "Maybe so. Certainly it was my challenge, not anybody else's. This one wasn't let out early!"

"It wasn't alive," she pointed out. "The inanimate challenges remain in place; only the dragons are loose, and maybe whatever other animals were supposed to be used."

"It wasn't alive, so it didn't leave," he agreed, understanding. "So we still don't know whether anyone is in charge of the challenges. I don't like this."

"Neither do I," she said.

"Unlew thiv iv the challenge?" Volney suggested.

Chex paused thoughtfully. "This mystery? This is the true challenge? Meant for all three of us to solve, together?"

"I do not know, I only guew," the vole said.

"It is a most interesting conjecture," she said. "We knew to expect the unexpected, and that's about as unexpected as anything could be. It seems reasonable to conjecture that a more sophisticated challenge would be required to handle three dissimilar querents simultaneously."

"But why should there be three at once?" Esk asked. "We would have come separately, if we hadn't met on the paths."

"True. It does seem largely coincidental." She quivered her wings, pondering. "Is it possible that our missions are linked? That we did not arrive coincidentally, but that the three of us are destined to cooperate in some greater endeavor so that a single answer will serve us all?"

"But you knew nothing of the Kiw-Mee River," Volney protested.

"Yet Esk did encounter the sultry demoness from that region," Chex pointed out. "So his mission may have a common motivation with yours. I confess, however, that my own mission does not seem to connect. I think this is too speculative to be taken as fact, at least at this stage."

"Maybe the Good Magician will tell us soon," Esk said.

"Maybe," she agreed, but she seemed dubious.

They proceeded on into the castle proper. It was silent; no more challenges manifested.

"Halooo!" Esk called. "Anybody home?"

There was no answer.

They passed into the residential section of the castle. This should be beyond the region for challenges, ordinarily, but no one met them. "Maybe they stepped out for a bite to eat?" Esk suggested facetiously, but the humor, if any existed, fell flat.

They walked through chamber after chamber. All were cluttered with artifacts of magic and household existence; none had living folk. In the kitchen was a table with a petrified cheese salad in the process of composition; evidently the Gorgon had been making it when she abruptly departed. The greens were hardly wilted; she could not have left more than a day before. In a bedroom were toys and bins of assorted fruits: evidently the work of the Magician's son Hugo, who Chex had heard could conjure fruits. But no sign of the boy. Upstairs, in a crowded cubby of a study, was a high stool by a table with a huge open book: the Magician's Book of Answers, over which he was said to pore constantly. But no sign of the Magician himself. There was even a marker, showing the particular bit of information he had been contemplating; it seemed to relate to

the aerodynamic properties of the third left central tail feather of the midget roc bird.

"I didn't know there was a midget roc bird!" Esk remarked.

"You're not the Good Magician," Chex reminded him.

"Obviouvly he was juvt finding hiv plave," Volney said. "He wav about to revearch the propertiev of ventaur wingv,"

Chex and Esk stared at him. "That must be right!" Esk said. "To Answer your Question!"

Chex looked stricken. "But why did he go, then? I need that answer!"

"That veemv to be our challenge to divcover."

It was the same situation throughout the castle: everywhere there were evidences of recent and normal activity, but nowhere did any person or creature remain. All servants, if there had been any, had departed; all creatures had been released, in the same manner as the little smokers at the moat. Indeed, they now realized that the moat itself was empty; the moat monsters were gone. That was almost unheard of for a castle. Yet there was no sign of violence; it was as if the Good Magician and his family had simply stepped out for a moment—and not returned. What could account for this?