xanth 40 - isis orb (29 page)

“But the Quest would be impossible if it ended in the Void,” Nya said. “There must be a way through, and the path will show it to us.”

“The path will show us the way to the Void Horn,” Quin said. “That’s not the same. Presumably if we capture the Horn, we will be able to move on out of the Void.”

“And exactly what is the Void Horn?” Feline asked. “It doesn’t look like a ravening or seductive monster, but it must be dangerous.”

“Yet still possible to tame,” Zed said. “If we can just figure out how.”

There was half a silence.

“So should we cross?” Hapless asked.

“Is there any other way to complete our Quest?” Faro asked in return.

A furtive glance circulated. It died out before completing the circuit, as if swallowed by the Void.

“As the gorgon said,” Zed said, “It’s a nuisance, but what else is there?”

The others looked at Hapless, prompting him to confirm the decision. He realized that leadership consisted largely in following tacit directions. Then, having used up the other half of the silence, he spoke. “We’ll cross.”

They trekked north, past the village, around the lake, and to the shimmering boundary wall. This was the dread event horizon. The path led directly though it. Hapless nerved himself and stepped through.

There was no sinister chill, no jolt of pain. He simply crossed the line and stood in a pleasant landscape sloping gently down. Flowers grew amidst the greensward. The air was fresh. He turned to tell the others, but discovered he could not take even a single step back; he could go forward or sideways only. But at least he could reach back. He poked one hand through the curtain.

Someone took it. Feline, by the soft feel of it.

Then she stepped though and stood beside him, holding his hand. “I thought maybe you wanted company.”

“Oh, yes,” he said gratefully.

“This doesn’t look so bad.”

“You can’t go back. It’s one way.”

She experimented as he had. “So I see. Well, the others will be along presently. We forgot that you should have crossed last, but I think they know where we are.”

She was right; the path ended with him. It would have vanished behind him. In the tension of the moment it had slipped his mind. But it did extend before him, proceeding to the right side.

The two dragon crossbreeds were next, crossing together. “This is nice,” Nya said appreciatively.

Finally the two centaurs, crossing in step. Their party was complete.

“What now?” Hapless asked.

“Now we trust the path,” Feline said. “We go find the Horn.”

“Somehow I dread that,” Faro said.

“So do we all,” Zed said.

The path meandered around the Region, drawing gradually closer to the downhill side, which might be the dread center. The trees and bushes that grew on the slope seemed to be leaning away from that lower part as if nervous about it. Small wonder; it reminded Hapless of a giant maw.

There was a commotion down the slope, at the edge where it became more like a gulf. They paused cautiously to inspect it from a distance. A jolly jumbuck was caught in a brier patch. No, it was using the patch to keep from sliding down into that maw.

Something was coming. It was the Horn, floating up from below, the letter A prominent on its side. It oriented on the jumbuck, nudged the animal’s haunch, and made a weird keening sound. Air blew in from all directions to disappear into the horn. It was a giant suction. Instead of blowing, the horn was sucking.

And the jumbuck got sucked into the horn and disappeared.

“Now we know what it does,” Feline whispered.

“But the letter in the picture was O,” Zed said.

Hapless checked. The centaur was of course correct. This was not the same megaphone.

Then as they watched the letter A changed to the letter D.

“From Avoid to Devoid,” Zed said. “It may change each time it feeds.”

“So when it feeds on us it will be O?” Faro asked nervously.

“Ovoid. I am not making sense of that.”

The Horn, its appetite satisfied for the moment, floated back down the hill toward the gulf.

They stopped where they were and considered. “We need to understand this thing better,” Zed said. “Evidently the Void Horn has a purpose here, serving the interest of the Void. What would it be?”

“That jumbuck must have wandered in here to graze,” Nya said. “Not realizing that it couldn’t retreat. When it caught on, it clung to the brier patch, trying to escape its fate. Then the Horn came after it, seeming to know it was there.”

“Let’s try this for sense,” Zed said. “Things normally head toward the center of the Void, not because they want to go there but because there’s not much other direction they can go. Some may catch on before the final slide. They can’t retreat, but they can stop sliding. That’s a snag. It may interrupt the normal process of the Void. So it sends the Horn out to relieve the snag.”

“The Horn is an aspect of the Void,” Faro said. “That’s why it can travel against the current. If we capture it, we’ll be able to do the same.”

“That is centaur thinking,” Zed said. It was obviously a sincere compliment.

“But what about those letters?” Feline asked. “Why do they change?”

“They may be an indication of its current state,” Zed said thoughtfully. “A could mean it is hungry. D could mean it is sated. O must mean something else.”

Hapless realized that they were making progress, but he wasn’t sure it was enough. It was obviously dangerous to approach the Horn at any time. He needed to think outside the box.

Then he got a notion. “Chicken music!”

The others looked at him.

“We use music to tame the Totems,” he said. “What kind of music would tame the Horn? Ovoid means egg-shaped. That could mean it could be affected by chicken music. We have to play chicken music when it’s at O.”

“What is chicken music?” Feline asked.

“I don’t know, but maybe Faro does.” He turned to the winged centaur. “Play some chicken music.” He conjured her set of drums.

“This is insane,” she muttered.

“Way outside the box,” Hapless agreed.

She donned the drums and began to beat on them with her hands. At first it was just an interesting syncopation, but then it started animating. It was as if a flock of chickens were pecking up bugs and grain. Pecca! Pecca! Peck peck peck PECK!

“That’s chicken music,” Zed agreed.

“It may ignore music at other times,” Quin said. “But it has a thing for chickens. Maybe a number of them wander in here, so it gets to feed on them often.”

“But the problem remains, how can we be on hand when it is at O?” Faro said, easing up on the drumbeat. “That thing must travel to wherever there is a snag, and we won’t know when it’s at O.”

Feline looked at Hapless. “We need another outside the box idea.”

Hapless concentrated. What would regular folk never think of? That might by some freak work? That seemed to make no sense at all, yet could circle around and work by surprise?

“A play!” he exclaimed almost before the idea bulb flashed.

“What do you mean?” Zed asked.

“A play about love, messed up love. Like maybe a boy with two good girlfriends and a bad girlfriend, and he can’t make up his mind between them, but he really needs to.”

“This is not a play,” Feline said. “It’s personal history.”

“Only this one’s about Void Horns. Boy and girl horns. With letters that change.”

“Hapless …” Feline said as if talking to an idiot with a bomb.

“But it might relate,” Zed said. “We don’t know what kind of social life the Void Horn has, but if the gorgon is any guide, it’s lonely. Such a story might appeal to it.”

“Is it male or female?” Nya asked. “That could make a difference.”

That brought them up short. Hapless had assumed male, but realized that something that took things in could perhaps more readily be female. Unless there were other things to determine gender. “I don’t know.”

“Well, we had better make a determination, or we’ll have no story,” Zed said.

“Um,” Feline said.

Hapless looked at her. “Isn’t that my line?”

“My Totem—Carmen Gorgon—says she can help.”

“Then why not let her?” Zed asked.

“I, um—” she said, evidently torn. “She wants to seduce Hapless.”

“But you control her, don’t you?” Zed asked. “You can forbid it.”

“Not if she gets Hapless to choose her. I don’t control
him
.”

Hapless kept his mouth shut. Feline might not control him, technically, but she had an awful lot of influence on him. Yet he still wore Carmen’s opal. She still wickedly tempted him.

Faro took hold. “Feline, you got your Totem. We all have, except me; I’m the last. We need my Totem to get out of the Void and complete our Quest. I realize that you’re not eager to animate Carmen, whose interest is in fascinating Hapless, but if she can help, we need her. If we reject help that just might maybe could enable the Quest to succeed, then we are all lost.”

“But what if she takes Hapless?” Feline wailed.

“It seems you have a theoretical choice: to risk losing Hapless while enabling completion of the Quest, or to claim Hapless at risk of losing the Quest. That’s the hard equation. You need to make your choice.”

Hapless or the Quest. That was stark.

The others gazed at her. They all knew that they were all lost if they didn’t get out of the Void. Including Feline herself. Including Hapless. There was nothing to be won by giving up the Quest.

“Oh, hairballs!” Feline swore, in tears of frustration.

Then Carmen appeared, nude except for glasses, falling as her tail flailed. Hapless quickly caught her, and found himself clasping her face to face, her phenomenal upper section plastered to him. He was more aware of it with every breath she took. Her snakes curled around her head and his head, drawing his face in toward hers; they seemed friendly now, and not at all scary. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she said, quickly kissing him.

Feline’s fear was justified. About the only thing that prevented Carmen from seducing him this instant was that she was in tails and had no place. Not without legs.

“She’s going to have to make legs,” Faro said. “Otherwise she can’t function here.”

“Do it,” Feline said grimly.

“That will take time,” Carmen said.

They set her up on another rock, and slowly her tail started changing. They harvested clothing from a clothes horse grazing beside the path; the thing was made entirely of clothing, but looked like a horse with clothing on. Carmen donned a blouse and kerchief, both of which filled out impressively. Her tail was now covered by a skirt, except for the tips of her flukes. This partial concealment had the effect of making her look even more fetchingly human, with perhaps a bouffant hairstyle and a super-uplift bra. The males of the party still found her quite interesting.

“How can you help?” Feline asked grimly.

“I am a creature of a Region,” Carmen said. “I know about the Regions. The Void is special in significant ways.”

“Tell us something we don’t already know,” Feline said, her grimness unabated.

“The Void is a kind of black hole, with its event horizon. The question is what happens to the things that are drawn into its singularity. The physical objects are in a kind of stasis, but what about information? As a practical matter, that may be lost.”

“This makes sense,” Zed agreed. “It is a fate we prefer to avoid. But what is the relevance?”

“The Void Horn must have had a past, before it was captured by the Void and put to work here. But we may never know what that past was. Even the Horn probably does not remember.”

“Granted,” Zed said. “But our interest is in capturing it, not in tracing its unfathomable history.”

“That is where you are wrong. It needs a history. History lends identity. Without memory we all flounder.”

“You said you could help us,” Feline reminded her, her grimness starting to curdle. “Get on with it.”

“We can make a history for the Horn that can become as valid as any other, since its prior history was destroyed. A history that facilitates our need.”

“I am not clear how a manufactured history could enable us to capture the Horn,” Zed said.

“You wondered whether the Horn was male or female.” It was clear that Carmen had heard their dialogue. “Change the history to make it male, and it will become male, as there will be nothing to gainsay it.”

“We can make it male,” Zed agreed. “That won’t capture it.”

Carmen smiled. She was even prettier then. “But it may do just that, Zed. Consider the psychology of the guardians of the Regions. Mine, for example. I have immense power in my Region, am virtually immortal, and no denizen dares oppose me. But I am lonely. When a fresh male with some gumption comes into the scene, I am interested. Not to exert my power, as I already have plenty of that, but to abate my loneliness, at least for a while. S*x is fine (even here in the Void a bit of the Conspiracy remained operative), romance is better, but what truly counts in the long haul is companionship. Hapless could make an intriguing companion. I would not be lonely while with him. That provides him considerable appeal that is not based on his appearance or abilities. He would be compatible company. S*x and romance are merely tools to recruit him. His hidden quality of character is what makes him worthwhile.”

“Get on with it,” Feline gritted.

“We have no evidence that the Horn desires company,” Zed said. “In fact it seems eager to swallow anything within range.”

“That is the beauty of the special quality of the Void,” Carmen said. “We can provide him with a history and personality that desires exactly that. Such desire is potent, as my own case illustrates. It can trump common sense. Therein is our potential power over it.”

“Does the Horn have common sense, or any sense at all?” Faro asked. “Or is it just an appetite?”

“At present it’s just an appetite,” Carmen agreed. “But we can give it character, making it become a worthwhile collaborator. Because of the nature of the Void.”

“I am not following this stage,” Zed said. He spoke for all of them.

“We can craft a fictional character to be what we need for the Quest. That is also appealing to an entity that has no character, because of the erasure of the Void. We can make the Horn into that new person. He will accept it because he will crave its definition once he discovers the nature of definition. He will not be able to resist it, any more than a man can resist a seductive woman.” She glanced at Hapless and spread her forming legs under the skirt. That electrified him, though no detail showed.