Crewel Lye Read online

  I sat down, and the woman served us both. It seemed to be dragon steak and fruit salad, with foaming brew from a beer-barrel tree. Standard fare, except for the dragon meat; I wondered how they had come by that. But on occasion dragons suffered mishaps, and men were able to snatch the bodies before some other creature did. I was good and hungry, so I went to it.

  “You’re really supposed to wait till King Gromden starts,” the woman murmured in my ear as she poured the beer.

  I paused, mouth full. “Mf mmf?” I asked.

  “Quite all right,” the King said quickly, taking a mouthful himself.

  So we ate, and it was an excellent meal. The King didn’t eat much, so I polished off most of it, tucking a spare dragon steak in my pocket for future consumption. Then we settled back to talk. “You may not know it, King, but I’m just a barbarian warrior,” I said, burping vigorously and wiping my mouth on the tablecloth.

  “That is surprising,” he remarked gravely.

  “What’s this hero business? I mean, so there’s a prophecy, but what do you need a hero for?”

  “It would seem that we have a problem,” Gromden said. “We do need a hero, and evidently you are it.”

  “Well, it’s true I’m looking for adventure, King. What can I do for you?”

  “You can undertake the Hero’s Challenge.”

  “Sure, King. Just tell me where to go and what to do.” I yawned, as it had been a long day.

  “Tomorrow,” Gromden decided. “You are obviously tired from your journey.”

  “Suits me, King,” I agreed politely.

  And so the maid woman showed me to an upstairs room, complete with a fine big bed, mirror, and chamber pot. I’d never had a room with such modern sanitary facilities before! Soon I flopped on the bed and slept, snoring roundly. I know I snored, because I heard the echoes off the walls. I really preferred the forest, but I’m adaptable; I can make do with civilized fixings when I have to.

  In the morning I woke to a peremptory knocking. I bounced off the bed, set my hand on my sword, and went to the door.

  It was only the serving woman. “Something has come up,” she said hastily. “I won’t be able to fix your breakfast, but you can forage in the orchard.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “What’s come up?”

  “Well—” She looked pained. “His Majesty is indisposed.”

  “Oh. You mean the old boy doesn’t want to talk today? Well, I guess I can wait.”

  She didn’t answer. She just turned quickly away. Women can be funny that way.

  I used the chamber pot and dumped it out the window, then went down and out to the orchard. Pook was already there, grazing. He looked satisfied; that load of grain had done him good. “How come you haven’t run away?” I asked him. “You’ve been sticking with me when you don’t have to, and you even served as part of the prophecy. Are you sure you’re not tame?”

  He snorted derisively, as he always did, and continued to graze. It occurred to me that even ghost horses might get lonely, or maybe tired of rattling chains at night. While he was with me, he had company and was admitted to the territories of elves and men, where there was good eating. Maybe it made sense to be tame, or to seem to be.

  I found plenty of ripe fruits on the trees and soon fashioned myself a sandwich from slices of breadfruit and cheesefruit. I saw snapdragon bushes, and so the mystery of the dragon steaks was abated; it wasn’t real dragon meat. I didn’t mind; it tasted the same, as far as I knew. I could see that this had once been a well-kept grove, but now it was clogged by weeds. There just didn’t seem to be much doing here at Castle Roogna. I remained disappointed, though I hoped the King had a good adventure for me.

  When I went back inside, I decided to check on the old boy. I found King Gromden’s door with a crown painted on it, so I pounded on that. There was no answer, so I pushed it open and went in. “You here, King?” I called politely. I didn’t want anyone to think I was just barging in.

  There was a muffled sound from the bed, so I went there. King Gromden was lying on his back and he didn’t look well at all. “Hey!” I exclaimed. “You’re really sick, King!”

  His eyes ground open. “Astute observation,” he whispered.

  “Hey, look, Grom, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. The wench just said you weren’t talking. Is it something you ate? Can I help?”

  “I am old,” he confessed, as if that weren’t obvious. “I won’t live out the year. Perhaps not the month. My wife and child deserted me years ago. You can help by undertaking the challenge.”

  “Sure, King,” I said. “I told you I would yesterday. What is it?”

  “It is—” He paused for a labored breath. Last the year or the month? I wasn’t sure he’d last the hour! He had seemed okay the night before, but I guess these things come and go when you’re old. “It is the challenge for the succession.”

  “The what?”

  “The succession. When I die, there must be a new King. The best Magician in the land. But there’s a problem I lack the strength to resolve—”

  He faded out. “Yes, King?” I prompted, prodding him with a thumb. “You say you have to do something before you croak?”

  “So there must be a contest,” he whispered. “A contest of magic, and—”

  I waited, but he seemed to have lost consciousness. Too bad; I really wondered what he had been trying to tell me. A contest of magic sounded pretty interesting, but I didn’t see how I fitted in. I was, after all, just a barbarian; I didn’t know much about strong magic.

  I went back to my room. There was the maid, looking flushed. “Where have you been?” she asked severely. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “I was talking to the old boy,” I said.

  “You bothered the King?” she demanded as if shocked. Women get shocked by the littlest things. “He’s ill!”

  “He sure is,” I agreed. “You should have told me. Don’t you have a pill or spell for him?”

  “It’s past that stage,” she snapped. “Now you go downstairs; Magician Yin is here to see you in the audience chamber.”

  “Who?”

  “Magician Yin. You’ll see Magician Yang tomorrow; they refuse to come together. They’re very competitive.”

  I shrugged amiably. “Sure, I’ll talk to anyone. I hope the old boy feels better soon. Maybe he’s constipated; if you give him some prune juice—” But she was already bustling away. I suppose she was one of those people who didn’t take kindly to good advice.

  So I went downstairs and found Magician Yin. I remembered that the elves had said someone with a name like that made the canned spells that could be so handy. He turned out to be a medium-sized, medium-aged man in white who really didn’t look like much. Naturally I told him so; barbarians believe in straight talk.

  He smiled, for some reason reminding me of the way the King had reacted to some of my comments. I just don’t understand the attitudes of civilized folk, I suppose; it’s as if they are piped in to some other kind of awareness that passes me by. Women are like that, too.

  “Let me show you what I do,” Yin said. He reached into a bag he carried and brought out a small globe. He handed it to me. “Set it somewhere and invoke it,” he said.

  “Oh, you mean it’s a spell,” I said.

  “Yes, I make spells.”

  I set it on the table. “I invoke you, spell,” I said.

  Instantly the globe glowed. The light from it brightened the whole room. “Say, that’s pretty good,” I said, turning my eyes away from its brightness. “How long does it burn?”

  “Until nullified,” he said.

  “You mean till I tell it to quit?”

  “No, you can not un-invoke my spells; they are permanent. It requires a counterspell to nullify it—one equal and opposite. Some of my spells do lose strength as time passes, though; it depends on their nature and complexity.”

  “Okay, let’s have a darkness spell,” I said.

 
“I don’t make negative spells,” Yin said.

  “Oh? Who does?”

  “My twin brother, Magician Yang.”

  “You mean there are two of you?” Now that Yin-Yang reference was clarifying.

  “Equal and opposite.”

  “Say!” I exclaimed, catching on. “You and he—the contest? To see who’s best?”

  “Correct,” Yin agreed. “One of us must be King after Gromden expires. The strongest Magician. But we haven’t been able to determine which of us that is.”

  “But how do I fit in?”

  “Obviously Yang and I can’t just throw spells at each other; they’d simply nullify one another and it would be even. We need to discover whose magic is more effective in practice. So we need a third party to use the spells for some practical purpose. Then we can ascertain whose spells are best.”

  “A third party,” I said. “That must be me!”

  “Correct,” Yin agreed. “You will go on a quest, using my magic to assist you and to facilitate your mission, while Yang’s magic opposes you. If you succeed, I will win and be designated the next King of Xanth; if you fail—”

  “Um, what happens to me if I fail?” I asked.

  “Well, it is simply a matter of fetching an object. If you don’t bring it back, then Yang wins and becomes the next King. But I’m sure my spells will enable you to succeed.”

  “I guess so,” I agreed uncertainly. Equal and opposite—it seemed to me the spells would still cancel one another out, leaving no advantage for either side. But I was the first to concede that a barbarian is not the one to comprehend the nuances of magical interplay. “How do I get the spells?”

  “This bag is for you,” he said. “Our agreement is that I provide seven spells to assist you. Yang will set the opposite seven spells to oppose you. Mine you can carry with you; his will intercept you without warning. You merely have to nullify his evil spells with my good ones and complete the mission.”

  “Seems simple enough,” I said, disappointed. I had hoped for news of some dark tower defended by monsters with a fair damsel to rescue and magic to blow up the monsters and scale the tower wall. Ah, well; a mundanish adventure is still an adventure, I suppose.

  “It should be,” he agreed, with a certain subtle civilized nuance of the type I have already remarked on.

  I looked into the bag of spells. It was filled with objects: little white shield, a figure of a monster, a skull, a stone, doll, a tangled length of vine, and a magic compass. “But these are toys!” I protested.

  Yin laughed. “Hardly! They are inert representations. When you invoke them, they become full-sized and potent.”

  I lifted out the little Skull. “I don’t need a full-sized skull!”

  “Allow me to explain. Because all Yang’s spells and mine are equal and opposite, they have similar forms in many cases. King Gromden decided on the seven spell-sets that would be used in this contest; he wanted to allow fair trial of magic, without endangering bystanders. Thus we are permitted no deadly explosive spells, or basilisk spells, or noxious contagious-disease spells. The seven are fairly straightforward, and you should not have trouble understanding them. His negative spells are black; my positive ones are white. So when you encounter his black skull, you must invoke my white skull. The black skull brings death; the white one brings just the opposite, life. They don’t complete their effects instantly; you will have a minute or so to invoke the life-spell when you feel the death-spell taking hold.”

  “Oh.” I reached into the bag for another spell. “Maybe you better explain them all for me so I know exactly what to do in my minute, each time.” I brought out the little white shield. “What about this?”

  “The white shield counters the black sword. A sword, of course, is negative; it exists for one purpose only, to cut and kill. A shield exists to preserve limb and life, and this shield, when invoked, will preserve yours.”

  It certainly made sense. I looked forward to seeing that magic black sword; that was the kind of sword and sorcery I understood. Maybe I’d take it on with my own sword before I invoked the shield, just to see how good it really was. I brought out the twisted vine. “This?”

  “That is a representation of an eye-queue vine; note the eyeballs braided into it.” I had thought those were beads, but now I saw that the tiny dots were pupils. “In nature, the eye-queue dispenses temporary or even illusory intelligence; the victim thinks he is far smarter than he is. But my vine is real; put that on your head and you will become far smarter than you are now, and the effect will last for several days, slowly fading. Most spells don’t work well on the brain; that’s why it can’t be a permanent enhancement. But you don’t want to use it before you encounter the black idiocy vine Yang has crafted, for you want it at full potency to counter his. The two are even at the start, but if you use mine two days before his strikes you, you will be somewhat duller than you are now, for several days, because the negative one will be fresher.”

  “I see the point!” I agreed. “I’m just a backwoods barbarian, none too smart to begin with; I can’t afford to be any worse than I am.”

  “Precisely,” Yin acknowledged politely.

  I brought out the compass. “Now I’ve heard of these magic gimmicks,” I said. “Their little arrows always point north. But I already know where north is, and if I don’t, I can find it by garden-variety backwoods magic, such as the moss that grows on the north sides of trees. Why do I need this?”

  “This compass doesn’t necessarily point north,” he explained. “It points to the object you need to find and bring back to Castle Roogna. This spell you must invoke first, so you will know where to go.”

  “And Yang’s compass will point the wrong way?” I asked. “I’ll simply ignore it.”

  “Yang’s compass will make this one point the wrong way,” he clarified.

  “Well, I’ll just remember the direction, then. I have a good sense of direction, once I get my bearings; all barbarians do.”

  “Unfortunately, the object may move about, so you can not track it without the compass until you know its nature. Also, it is not merely the compass needle that points; it acts on your mind, so that you know in which direction to go. The black compass will prevent you from knowing where to go, even if you don’t look at it.”

  “Oh,” I said, getting slightly confused. “Then if the two compasses cancel each other, how do I find the object?”

  “You must try to avoid the black compass until you find the object. After that, the black compass can’t hurt you.”

  “How can I do that? If I know where Yang’s spells are, I’ll avoid them all!”

  “Unfortunately, again, you can’t; they will be placed in your path so that you will intercept them all in turn.”

  “I’ll change my route!”

  “No, your route has been divined by magic; Yang will place the spells in your way. But nothing can be totally predetermined. If you are alert, you will be able to spot them and nullify them with mine before they cause you unredeemable mischief. I am trusting you to do that.” He smiled thinly.

  “Well, I’ll certainly try,” I agreed. “Will his spells be out in the open?”

  “Yes and no. He will place them in such a way as to try to confuse you, so that you are likely to overlook them until you come into range. Your mere presence will invoke them. So you must be alert at all times. The key here is not avoidance, since you can not avoid them, except perhaps the black compass, but your readiness to nullify them promptly. If you spy a black spell from a distance, you can approach it deliberately with the white counterspell in hand. So your state of readiness will be critical.”

  “I will be ready. Barbarians are always alert to their surroundings.” I was getting to like this challenge, after all.

  I drew out the monster figurine. “This?”

  “Yang’s spell will summon a horrendous monster, one that will surely destroy you if not dealt with promptly. My spell will banish that monster, so you won’t
have to fight it at all.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I like fighting monsters.”

  “I assure you, you won’t like this one,” he said. “It’s the tarasque.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said disdainfully.

  “Just keep an eye out for the black spell, and keep this white one handy. Don’t use it on any routine monster.”

  I brought forth another spell, the doll. “This?”

  “That particular set is one of the most insidious. Yang’s spell will exchange your identity with that of the person or creature nearest you at the moment it is invoked. It won’t hurt either of you specifically, but I doubt you’d be pleased if it wasn’t nullified. For example, if the nearest creature is a fruit fly, you would find yourself in the body of the fruit fly, and it would have your man’s body. My spell will restore both of you to your original bodies—provided you make sure they are adjacent when you invoke it.”

  “Um, yes, I wouldn’t want to be a fruit fly,” I agreed. I fished out the last spell, the stone. “And this falls on my head?”

  “Not exactly. The black stone spell will cause you to become stone; the white one will return the stone to flesh. Both have a substantial overkill factor.”

  “Huh?”

  “This one is powerful enough to turn several barbarians and their horses to stone, if allowed to run unchallenged. So the other can convert a large amount of stone to flesh.”

  “How does it know the difference between natural stone and converted stone?” I asked. “Is the type of stone different?”

  “The spell merely acts on the closest stone to it. Since you will be invoking it as you are turning to stone, that will be you. Only you can invoke the white spells; that is a necessary safeguard.”

  I pictured a mimic-bird flying by, squawking, “Invoke! Invoke!” and bringing to life my entire bag of spells at once. I nodded; it was indeed a necessary safeguard. They had worked out the details of this challenge pretty well.