Night Mare Read online

  Night Mare

  Piers Anthony

  CONTENT

  Chapter 1

  To See the Rainbow

  Chapter 2

  The Day Horse

  Chapter 3

  Centycore et Cetera

  Chapter 4

  Forging the Chain

  Chapter 5

  Sphinx and Triton

  Chapter 6

  The Nextwave

  Chapter 7

  The First Battle

  Chapter 8

  The Zombie Master

  Chapter 9

  Good King Humfrey

  Chapter 10

  Magic Tricks

  Chapter 11

  Centaur Input

  Chapter 12

  King Queen

  Chapter 13

  Breaking the Chain

  Chapter 1

  To See the Rainbow

  The stork glided to a landing before Stunk's residence and squawked for attention.

  "No, it can't be!" the goblin cried in panic. "I'm not even married!"

  " 'Snot that," the stork said through his long bill. "In the off-season I deliver mail." He produced an official-looking letter.

  "Off-season for what?" the goblin demanded.

  "You wouldn't understand. Take the missive. I have other idiots to bug."

  "But I can't read!" Stunk protested, his panic shifting to embarrassment. Few goblins could read, but like most illiterates, they didn't like this advertised.

  "I will read it to you, bulbnose." The stork opened the envelope and oriented an eye on the document inside. "Greetings."

  "Same to you, birdbrain," Stunk said politely. Goblins had excellent manners, though for some reason other creatures seemed unable to appreciate them.

  "Don't answer back, dolt," the stork said. "I'm reading the letter, not talking to you. Don't you know what 'Greetings' means?"

  Stunk didn't answer.

  "Hey, stupid, I asked you a question," the stork said, irritated.

  "I thought you were reading the letter, needlebeak, so I didn't answer back. I'm trying to be polite to one not worth the effort. Of course I know what it means. It's an ungoblinish salutation."

  "Salutation, ha! You dope, it means you have been drafted!"

  "What? I wasn't aware of any draft. It's a very quiet day; no breeze at all."

  "Abducted into the army, moron! Caught by the official press gang. Your happy civilian life is over."

  "No!" Stunk cried, appalled. "I don't want to fight. Not that way, with weapons and rules and things. Tell me it isn't true!"

  "I'll bet you wish you'd had the baby instead, huh, goblin!" the stork gloated, cradling the letter with his wings.

  "Why would I be summoned to war? We're at relative peace with the dragons and the griffins!"

  "It's the Mundane invasion, oaf. The Nextwave of conquest. The horrible Mundanes are coming to make dragon stew and goblins too."

  "No! No!" Stunk screamed, his horror growing by stumbles and lurches and faltering footsteps. "I don't want to be goblin stew! I'm only a young, ignorant lout! I have my whole ornery life ahead of me! I won't go!"

  "Then you are a draft evader or a deserter," the stork said, licking his beak with an orange tongue. "Do you know what they do to deserters?"

  "I don't want to know!"

  "They feed them to dragons." The stork was gloating; waves of gloat radiated out from him like ripples on a greasy puddle. Behind him a dragon loomed, snorting up little warm-up snorts of purple smoke.

  "They'll never get me alive!" Stunk cried, working up to a superior degree of cowardice. He charged out of his hole in the wall, fleeing the draft notice. But already the dragon was pursuing him hungrily, pumping up extra-purple smoke, the kind that not only roasted goblins, but smelled pretty bad, too. Salivary smoke.

  Stunk fled screaming, feeling the monster's fire hot at his back. He paid no attention to where his feet were going. He was beginning to outdistance the dragon, but knew he was not yet out of its range; that tongue of flame could reach him any time.

  Suddenly he was at the brink of a ledge, unable to stop. His horror doubled as he fell off. He saw the hard rock of the bottom of a canyon rushing up at him as his stubby arms windmilled futilely. Better the dragon than this, and better the draft than the dragon--but now it was too late for either.

  It was too much. Bawling out his terror, be woke.

  Imbri leaped through the wall, phasing into intangibility. She had misjudged the client's reaction to the dream and had almost been caught visible. It was very bad form for any night mare to be seen by a waking person, even one as insignificant as a goblin. She galloped out into the night, leaving only a single hoofprint behind as a signature. That signature was important; Imbri was a perfectionist, and liked to put her personal stamp on every bad dream she delivered.

  Dawn was threatening. Fortunately, this was her last call; now she could go home and relax and graze for the day. She galloped across the land, passing through trees and bushes, until she came to a patch of hypnogourds. Without pause she dived into a ripe gourd--a feat that would have surprised anyone who was not conversant with magic, as horses were much larger than gourds--and was instantly in an alternate world.

  Soon she was on the dusky plain, with the other mares of the night mare herd converging, all returning from duty. Their hoofprints bore maps of the moon, with its green cheese and holes, and the names of the individual mares highlighted thereon. MARE HUMERUM, MARE NUBIUM, MARE FRIGORIS, MARE NECTARIS, MARE AUSTRALE--all her old immortal friends, all with seas of the moon named after them, in honor of their nocturnal performance over the centuries.

  Another mare galloped up to intercept Imbri. It was Crisium, serving as temporary liaison to the Night Stallion. She projected a dreamlet the moment she came within range. It was the scene of an elf, waving his arms in animated speech. "Imbri!" the elf exclaimed. "Report to Trojan right away!" The brief dream faded.

  A summons from the Dark Horse himself? That was not to be ignored! Imbri whirled on a hoof and charged across the plain, heading for the stable. Her relaxation would have to wait.

  The Night Stallion was awaiting her. He stood huge and handsome, midnight black of hide and mane and tail and hoof in the same fashion as all the mares, but on him it was more impressive. Any male was impressive in the realm of equus, for the real power lay with the few stallions.

  Trojan projected a dream set in a lush human edifice chamber, in which Imbri took the form of an elegant human person lady, and he was a gray-haired human creature King.

  "You are not doing well, Mare Imbrium!" the Horse King said. "You have lost that special spark that truly terrifies. I am dissatisfied."

  "But I just drove a goblin to distraction!" Imbri-Lady protested.

  "After hauling in the dragon and the unforeshadowed cliff," Trojan retorted. "You should have had him terrified into oblivion before he ever left the house. Dream dragons must not be brought in promiscuously, or the dreamers will become acclimated to them and desensitized. That ruins it for the other mares. You must avoid overexposure of emergency elements."

  Imbri realized it was true. The nucleus of the dream had been the horror of the draft that was supposed to chill the spine of the client and make him shiver. She had lost her competitive edge and made clumsy what should have been precise. "I will try to do better," her lady form said penitently.

  "That is not enough," he replied. "The edge is not entirely a matter of trying. It is inherent. Once you lose it, it's gone. I'm going to have to trade you, Mare Imbrium."

  "But this is the only work I know!" she protested, stricken. She felt as the goblin had when receiving a dread notice. After more than a century of dream duty, during which time she bad earned and held her designated moon sea, s
he wasn't ready for anything else.

  "You can learn new work. There are daydreams--"

  "Daydreams!" she repeated with contempt.

  "I believe you have the inclination."

  "Inclination?" She was stunned. "I never--"

  "You were recently caught and ridden by a client," he said firmly. "No night mare can be caught unless she tacitly acquiesces."

  "But--"

  "Why would you accede to being caught by a client?" The King held up a hand to forestall her protest. "I will tell you why. You saw, in the memory of another client long ago, the image of a rainbow. You were fascinated by this vision; you wanted to see the reality for yourself. But you knew you could never do that as a night mare, for the rainbow shuns the night. It is a phenomenon of day."

  "Yes..." she agreed, realizing it was true. The vision of the multicolored rainbow had haunted her for years. But no night mare could go abroad by day; the radiation of the sun caused her kind to fade rapidly. So it had always been a futile notion, and she had been quite foolish to let it distract her.

  "As it happens, you possess half a soul," the Stallion continued. "You carried an ogre out of the fringe of the Void and accepted in payment half the soul of a centaur, when all you really wanted was the chance to see a rainbow. Logic has never been the strong point of females."

  She remembered it well. The ogre had wanted to do her a return favor, but she had not felt free to converse with him in dreamlet fashion and had been unable to convey her interest in the rainbow to him otherwise. He had been a decent sort, for an ogre and for a male. The two concepts overlapped significantly.

  "As it happens," the Dream King continued, "that soul has further dulled your edge, interfering with your dream performance. It is difficult to be truly brutal when you have a soul; that is contrary to the nature of souls."

  "But it's only a half soul," Imbri protested. "A mere fillet of soul. I thought it wouldn't hurt."

  "Any portion of a soul hurts in this business," he said. "Are you ready to give it up now?"

  "Give up my soul?" she asked, appalled for a reason she could not define.

  "As you know, most mares who earn half souls soon turn them in to me for storage, so that their edge will not be dulled, and they receive bonus-credit for extraordinary service to the cause. Souls are extremely valuable commodities, and we grasp and hold any we can. You alone retained your share of soul, passing up the advantage you could have had by cashing it in. Why?"

  "I don't know," Imbri admitted, ashamed.

  "I do know," Trojan said. "You are a nice personality, and you have grown nicer over the decades. You don't really enjoy causing people misery. The soul enhances that liability."

  "Yes..." she agreed sadly, knowing that she was confessing a guilty secret that could indeed wash her out as a bearer of bad dreams. "I have drifted along an errant path."

  "This is not necessarily wrong."

  Her ears perked forward--an incongruous thing, since she remained in lady image in the dream. "Not wrong?"

  "It relates to your destiny. It will one day enable you to see the rainbow."

  "The rainbow!"

  "You are a marked mare, Imbrium, and you will set your mark on Xanth, That time is near."

  Imbri stared at him. The Night Stallion knew more than any other creature in the World of Night, but seldom told it. If he perceived a pattern in Imbri's incapacities, he was surely correct. But she dared not inquire about it, directly.

  "Imbrium, I am transferring you to day mare duty. A more horrendous mare will assume your night duties."

  "But I can't go into day!" she protested with fearful hope. She knew how brutal and awful some mares were, with wild eyes and wilder manes; they had absolutely no mercy on sleepers. It bothered her to think of her clients being placed in the power of such a creature.

  "One of the distinctions between night mares and day mares is the possession of souls. The creatures of night have no souls; those of day have no bodies. You will actually be a halfway creature, with half a soul and a half-material body. I shall enchant you to be able to withstand the light of the sun."

  "I can go abroad in the real world by day?" The hope became less fearful, for when the Stallion neighed, all mares believed.

  "You will serve as liaison between the Powers of the Night and the powers of day during the crisis."

  "Crisis?" Imbri thought she was confusing the term with her friend Mare Crisium.

  "It is essential that the enemy not know your nature, or enormous peril may arise. They must perceive you as a simple horse."

  "Enemy?"

  "It was in the dream you delivered. You have become careless about such details."

  Imbri tried to review the details of the last dream, but before she could make progress, the Dark Horse continued. "Therefore you will report to Chameleon, to be her steed."

  "To whom? To be what?"

  "She is the mother of Prince Dor, Xanth's next King. She is part of the key to Xanth's salvation. She will need transportation and the kind of guidance and assistance only a night mare can provide. Guard her, Imbrium; she is more important than anyone suspects. You will also bear her this message for King Trent: BEWARE THE HORSEMAN."

  "But I don't understand!" Imbri exclaimed, the dream background shaking.

  "You aren't meant to."

  "I don't even know Chameleon or King Trent! I've never had to take a dream to either of them! How can I deliver a message?"

  "Your present image is that of Chameleon," the Stallion said, producing a mirror from air so she could look at herself in the dream. Imbri was not a phenomenal judge of human appearance, but the image appeared quite ugly. Chameleon was an awful crone. "Use your dreamer-locator sense; it will operate by day as well as by night. And if you need to meet King Trent directly--he is my present image." The Stallion's dream form was handsome in an aged sort of way--the very model of a long-reigning King.

  "But I understand so little!" Imbri protested. "This is like a bad dream."

  "Granted," the Stallion said. "War is very like a bad dream. But it does not pass with the night, and its evil remains long after the combat has abated. War is no warning of ill; it is the ill itself."

  "War?"

  But the Stallion's kingly eyes flashed, and the dream faded. Imbri found herself standing at the edge of the broad grazing plain, alone. The interview was over.

  Imbri traveled the realm of the night, making her farewells to its denizens. She went to the City of Brass, threading her way between the moving buildings, meeting the brass folk. Brassies were just like human folk, only made of metal. The males wore brassards and the females wore brassieres. The brass folk were activated when particular dreams had to be mass-produced; they were very good at mechanized manufacturing. Imbri had been here often before to pick up specialized dreams, and they were always well crafted.

  One brassie girl approached Imbri. "You do not know me, mare," she said. "I understand you are going dayside. I was dayside once."

  Imbri remembered that a brassie had briefly joined the party of the ogre. "You must be Blyght!" she sent.

  "I am Blythe. I changed my name. I envy you, mare; I wish I could visit dayside again. The light doesn't hurt me, and some of the people are very nice."

  "Yes, they are. If I ever have occasion to bring a brassie there, it will be you, Blythe," Imbri promised, feeling a kind of camaraderie with the girl. Perhaps Blythe, too, wanted to see the rainbow.

  Imbri went on to bid farewell to the paper folk and the ifrits in their bottles and the walking skeletons of the graveyard shift and the ghosts of the haunted house. All of them contributed their special talents to the manufacture of frightening dreams; it was a community effort.

  "Say hello to my friend Jordan," one of the ghosts told her. "He haunts Castle Roogna now."

  Imbri promised to relay the message. She went finally to mix with her friends, the other mares, with whom she had worked so closely for so many years. This was the saddest of her par
tings.

  Now it was time to go. Imbri had used up the day and grazed the night, preparing for the awful transition. She did like her work as a bearer of bad dreams, even if she was no longer good at it. It was exciting to contemplate going into day, but awful to think of leaving the night. All her friends were here, not there!

  She trotted out toward the rind. No creature could escape the gourd unaided except a night mare. Otherwise all the bad stuff of dreams would escape and ravage Xanth uncontrolled--a natural disaster. So the gourd had to be limited, a separate world of its own, except for those whose business it was to deliver its product. Some few people foolish enough to attempt to glimpse its secrets by peeking into the peephole of a gourd found themselves trapped there for an indefinite period. If one of their friends interfered with their gaze at the peephole, then they were freed--and seldom peeked again. It was always wisest not to peek at what concerned one not, lest one see what pleased one not.

  The Stallion was right: Imbri had lost her touch with the dreams. She carried them, she delivered them--but the goblin's draft notice had not been her first clumsy effort. She no longer had the necessary will to terrify, and it showed. It was indeed best that she go into another line of work, difficult as the transition might be.

  She focused on the positive side of it. She would at last get to see Xanth by day. She would see the rainbow at last! That would be the fulfillment of her fondest suppressed ambition.

  And after that, what? Could the sight of the rainbow be worth the loss of her job and her friends? That seemed a little thin now.

  She came to the rind and plunged through it. She didn't need to will herself immaterial; that came automatically. In a moment she was out in the night of Xanth.

  The moon was there, exactly like one of her hoofprints, its sea and craters etched on the surface of its cheese. She paused to stare at it, spotting her namesake, Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rains. Some called it the Sea of Tears; she had always taken the name as a punnish play on concepts. The Land of Xanth was largely fashioned of puns; they seemed to be its fundamental building blocks. Now, with her half soul and her new life ahead, the Sea of Tears seemed to have more significance.