Night Mare Read online

"You don't trust me, I can see," the man said. "Indeed, you have no reason to. But trust must begin somewhere, mustn't it? Try me this time, and if I betray you, you are no worse off than otherwise. All you are really gambling is some information that won't change anything now. I simply want to profit from a past mistake. I try never to make the same error twice. Since it profits me nothing if the Punics destroy you and your scholarly friend, I am not gambling much either. We each stand to lose if we do not cooperate, regardless of our opinion of each other. I'd rather have you loose and living, so that there is hope to capture you fairly at some future date. My education for your freedom, no other obligation. I don't see how I can proffer a more equitable deal than that."

  "What should I do?" Imbri queried Grundy in a dreamlet.

  "This is bad," the golem replied therein. "This character is insidious! He's trying to get you to trust him. That's the first step to making you his steed for real, to convert you to his side and betray Xanth. Think of the damage he could do if he could phase through walls at night on your back! So you can't afford to trust him."

  "But if he tells Hasbinbad my nature, I'll be trapped and Ichabod will be sacrificed to Baal Hammon!"

  "That's bad, all right," Grundy agreed. "I guess you'll have to go along with him. Just don't trust him! Beware the Horseman!"

  Imbri decided she would have to accept the deal. She stood to lose too much otherwise, and her friends would suffer as well, and her mission would be a failure and Xanth would pay the consequence. "The day horse freed me," she sent reluctantly to the Horseman, hating him for what he was making her do.

  "Ha! So he was close by all the time? What did he do?"

  "He--doused the fire."

  "But a horse has no hands! He can't carry water. He--" The Horseman paused. Then he laughed. "Oh, no! He didn't!"

  "He did."

  "That animal is smarter than I thought, for sure! Must have been the presence of a fine mare that spurred him to his finest performance. He never paid such attention to any ordinary mare, I'm sure. So you ran off with him--but I gather you did not stay with him. Where is he now?"

  "I don't have to tell you that!" Imbri sent, simultaneously angry at the way the Horseman had made her reveal a secret and flattered at his assessment of the day horse's opinion of her. Any female was delighted at the notion that an attractive male found her interesting. Even if she wasn't sure she wanted anything to do with him, she still wanted to be considered worthwhile by him. It gave her a certain social advantage.

  The Horseman frowned. "No, I suppose you don't. That wasn't part of our deal, this time. But I'm sure that stallion didn't do such a risky favor just from the equine goodness of his heart. Women make fools of men, and mares make fools of stallions! He must have been attracted to you even then, and surely more so now."

  Better and better! But Imbri was careful not to react.

  "So if you're here, he can't be far distant. You probably see each other often, and maybe travel together. That way you repay him for helping you, and he gets shown where to graze and how to survive on his own in Xanth. That's why I wasn't able to find him, and why he didn't return from sheer hunger and thirst. It was probably just chance that the Punics caught you instead of him."

  The man was uncomfortably sharp! Imbri did not respond.

  "Very well," the Horseman said. "You have answered my question, perhaps more completely than you intended, and I believe you. I will leave you in peace. We shall surely meet again." He turned and walked away.

  Imbri hardly dared relax. "Do you think he will keep his bargain?" she sent to Grundy.

  "We'll find out," the golem replied. "I can see why you fear him; he's a keen, mean basilisk of a man! But in his arrogance, he just might be sincere. His perverted standard of honor may mean more to him than the opinion of one mare, and he does hope to use you to locate the day horse. He'll probably try to follow you when you escape. At least he doesn't know about me. I can untie the ropes and scramble out of the pen and probably free you even if they light fires."

  "Save that for the last resort," she suggested. "If the Horseman honors his word, for whatever reason, I won't need it."

  "But I can go scout out where they have Ichabod," the golem said. "That will facilitate things, so we can act fast when night comes."

  "Yes," she agreed, her confidence beginning to recover from the bruising the Horseman had given it. "But we must play dumb until then."

  "Oh, sure." But though the golem lay like a limp doll, he used his special skill to interrogate the plants and creatures nearby. There was a blade of grass growing at the edge of the pen that had somehow escaped the attention of whatever horse had been penned here before. Grundy told it that he would have his friend the mare chomp it off flat if it didn't answer his question, and the grass was intimidated. Grundy was forcing it to cooperate the same way the Horseman had used leverage against her. That made her wonder whether there was really any difference between them in ethics, and she was distressed but did not protest.

  The blade of grass told Grundy all it knew of the Mundanes of the Nextwave--which was not very much. They had camped here two days ago, and called themselves Punics, though they were mostly recruits from Iberia and Morocco, wherever those places were. Many of them had sore feet from their arduous march through the mountains, so were resting now.

  Grundy questioned a spider who had a small web against the wall of the pen. The spider said the Mundanes had carried Mundane lice and fleas along with them, and that these parasites were fairly fat and sassy and made pretty good eating. The spider had made it a point to learn the language of its prey, so as to be able to lure the bugs into its web; thus it had picked up some of the Mundane-bug gossip.

  The trek over the mountains had been truly horrendous. It seemed the Mundane seasons were more rigorous than those of Xanth, and the high mountain passes were covered with magic masses of ice called glaciers that made the passage treacherous. They had started with twelve hundred men and nine elephants; they had lost a third of the men and two-thirds of the elephants. Hasbinbad, for payroll reasons (whatever a payroll might be; none of them could guess), refused to acknowledge the missing men. They had also started with two hundred horses, of which only fifty remained, and some of those had run away when they came to Xanth.

  "The day horse," Imbri projected.

  "Yes, one of a number," Grundy agreed. "The spider doesn't know the horses by name, of course, but that fits the pattern. The day horse was smart for a Mundane animal, so must be doing better than the other escapees. Most of them are probably inside dragons by now."

  That saddened Imbri, but she knew it was likely. "What do the soldiers think of Xanth?"

  Grundy questioned the spider. "They grumble a lot," he reported in due course. "They have not been paid, so they must plunder. Paid--hey, that must be what the payroll is! What Hasbinbad owes the soldiers! Many of them have died as they blundered into tangle trees, dragon warrens, and monster-infested waters. Some have been transformed to fish because they drank from an enchanted river; the spider got that from a flea who jumped off a man just in time. Others pursued nymphs into the jungle and were never seen again. Perhaps two hundred have been lost to the hazards of Xanth. So now they are proceeding very carefully, and doing better. They have slain several dragons and griffins and roasted and eaten them. But they are nervous about what else may lie ahead."

  "Justifiably," Imbri sent. "They have antagonized all creatures of Xanth by their carnage. They should march back out of Xanth before they do any more damage."

  "They won't as long as there is plunder to be had," Grundy said. "The spider confirms what we have seen ourselves: these are tough creatures, dragons in human guise, with a cunning and ornery leader. Only force will stop them. That's the way Mundanes are."

  "Except for Ichabod," Imbri qualified.

  "He's not a real Mundane," the golem said, irked at having been caught in an unwarranted generalization. "He's greedy for information, and his head always was
full of fantasy, and he has an eye out for nymphs, too."

  A Mundane guard came and dumped an armful of fresh-cut hay into Imbri's pen. Hay was best when properly cured, but naturally the ignorant Mundanes didn't know that, and this was better than nothing. She munched away, like the stupid animal she was supposed to be. Then she snoozed on her feet, patiently awaiting the fall of night.

  At dusk, when deepening shadows offered concealment, Grundy the Golem slipped out to scout the region. His ability to converse with all living things enabled him to get information wherever he went.

  By the time it was dark enough for Imbri to phase through her confinement and free herself, Grundy was back. "I've found him," he whispered. "I'll show you where." He jumped onto her back--and fell right through her to the ground.

  Oops. She was insubstantial. She phased back to solidity, let him mount, then phased out again, taking him with her. Then she followed his directions to find Ichabod.

  The scholar was in a separate pen, guarded by an alert swordsman. The area was lighted; Imbri could not safely go in.

  "I'll distract the guard," Grundy said. "You go in solid, pick him up, and charge out. It'll be chancy, and they'll be after us--but they can't do a thing when you're phased out."

  Imbri was not sanguine about this, but saw no better course. Soon they would discover her absence from her own pen and be after her anyway, so she had to hurry. "Go ahead," she projected. The golem jumped down, turning solid as he left her ambience, and made his way behind the guard.

  "Hey, roachface!" Grundy called from a region not far back. His tone was exquisitely insulting.

  The man glanced about, but could not spy the hidden golem. "Who's there? Show yourself."

  "Go show your own self, snakenose," Grundy replied. Cheap insults were his forte; he was surely enjoying this.

  The soldier put his hand on his sword. "Come out, miscreant, or I'll bring you out!"

  "You can hardly bring out your own sloppy dank tongue, monstersnoot!" Grundy retorted.

  The man whipped out his sword and stalked the sound. He was as vain about his appearance as any true monster, with as little justification. The moment his back was turned, Imbri walked quietly into the pen. "Get ready!" she sent to Ichabod in a dream.

  The scholar had been snoozing uncomfortably. Now, in his dream, he reacted with startled gladness. "My hands are tied," he said. "I can't mount."

  Imbri applied her teeth to the rope binding his hands and chewed. She had good teeth, and soon crunched through it. But the delay was fatal; the guard turned around and spied them.

  "Ho!" he bellowed, charging forward with sword elevated. "Prison break!"

  Ichabod jumped onto Imbri's back. She leaped away, avoiding the descending sword. But she remained in the lighted enclosure, still solid, and therefore vulnerable.

  Grundy ran up. "Move out, mare!" he cried, leaping to her neck and clutching her mane.

  The soldier swung his sword again, clipping a few hairs from her tail. Imbri leaped over the wall of the pen, escaping him.

  But the Mundane's cry had roused the camp. Hundreds of torches were converging, lighting the area, preventing Imbri from phasing out. She had to gallop in the one direction that remained open, east.

  "Shoot them down!" a voice commanded. It sounded like Hasbinbad himself.

  Arrows sailed toward them. Ichabod jumped and groaned. "I'm hit!"

  "Keep going!" Grundy cried. "We're doomed if we stop now!"

  Imbri kept going. The torches fell behind. Those soldiers were afoot, not having had time to get to their own horses, so they could not keep the pace. But the pattern of lights was such that she still could not veer south to rejoin Chameleon and the day horse. So she raced on east. As she got beyond the torchlight, she phased into unsolid form, so that the arrows could no longer hurt them, and became invisible to the Mundanes. But they retained a fair notion where she was, and the pursuit continued. Since she was pure black, she tended to disappear in darkness anyway, and they probably assumed this was why they couldn't actually see her. Some of them were now on horses and could keep the equine pace.

  But a night mare in dream form could outrun any ordinary equine. Imbri left them behind and ran on into the night, through trees and small hills, getting as far clear as she could.

  "How are you doing?" she sent to Ichabod.

  There was no answer. She phased back to solid and queried him again, in case he hadn't heard her in the phased-out state. Now she felt the warm blood on her back. The man was losing blood and was unconscious; only the fact that he had no more mass in the phased-out state than Imbri herself did enabled him to remain mounted. He had sunk so far he no longer dreamed. This was worse than she had feared!

  "We've got to get magical help for him," the golem said, worried. "Fast, before he sinks entirely. Some healing elixir."

  "We don't have any," Imbri sent.

  "I know that, mareface!" he snapped. "We'll have to take him to a spring, or to Castle Roogna, where they have some stored."

  "Too far. He may be dead before we get there."

  "Find a closer place, then!"

  "Maybe the Siren has some," Imbri suggested. "She lives in the water wing, and we're not far from it"

  "Move!" Grundy said. "Get him there before it's too late! He's no young squirt, you know."

  She knew. She moved. She came to the wall that confined the water wing and plunged through. Beyond it was water, a sea of it, with a storm raining thickly down to add to the total. It was one of the seven natural wonders of Xanth, though creatures could not agree just which the seven were. But the water passed through them as Imbri galloped along the surface. She wished there had been a gourd patch handy so that she could use the gourd network in this emergency. But of course there were no gourds in the lake. The water wing was all water.

  Fortunately, she was able to travel at maximum velocity across the sea. In a much shorter time than any ordinary horse could manage, she reached the home region of the Siren.

  It was night, but the merfolk colony was awake, nightfishing. Several of them had strings of nightfish already. "Where is the Siren?" Imbri sent in a broadband dreamlet.

  A mermaid swam up. "Hello, Grundy," she called. "Why do you seek me?"

  The golem jumped off Imbri's back, turning solid and splashing into the water, where the buxom creature picked him up. "My friend Ichabod is wounded and dying. My friend the night mare brought him here. Have you any healing elixir?"

  "We do," the Siren said. "Carry him to land at the edge of the wing; Morris will bring the elixir."

  Imbri trotted to the shore. The Siren got the elixir from her husband, then emerged from the water, her tail splitting into two well-fleshed legs. She sprinkled a few drops on Ichabod.

  To Imbri's dismay, there was no immediate effect. "It's not working!" she projected.

  "This is a dilute elixir," the Siren explained. "We don't have any really potent springs here in the water wing. They're under the water, you see, so it's hard to capture the essence. But this will work in a few hours--faster, if he can drink some."

  They set the unconscious man up and poured a few drops in his mouth. Then Ichabod stirred. His eyes opened and he groaned.

  "He lives!" Grundy exclaimed joyfully. "I was really worried about the old codger."

  "Get that arrow out of his back!" Morris called from the lake. He was a full merman, so could not go on land. "The healing can't be complete with the arrow in him!"

  That was obvious; they had been so concerned about the bleeding that they had not paid attention to the wound. But this remained a problem. The arrow was barbed, and they could not dislodge it without inflicting terrible new pain and damage that might kill the man despite the elixir. Magic did have its limits.

  "Maybe if you phase it out--" Grundy suggested.

  Imbri tried this. She took the shaft of the arrow in her teeth, then phased into insubstantiality and backed away. The arrow phased with her, and the spaced-out head of it moved
without resistance through the man's body until it was free. She hurled the arrow away, gratified; she had removed it without hurting Ichabod at all!

  Now the gaping wound started visibly healing. All they had to do was wait.

  In half an hour, Ichabod was whole once more. "I hope I never have to go through that particular experience again!" he said. "Thank you, lovely maiden, for your timely help."

  The Siren smiled, pleased. She was middle-aged, and evidently appreciated being called a maiden.

  "She's no maiden," Grundy said, with his customary etiquette. "She's the Siren."

  "The Siren?" Ichabod asked, growing if anything more interested. "But does she lure sailors to their doom?"

  "Not any more," the Siren said with a frown. "A centaur smashed my magic dulcimer, and that depleted my power."

  "Oh." Ichabod pondered. "You know, if you had your power again, you could do a lot of good for Xanth. You could lure the Mundanes--"

  "I really don't want to harm people, not even Mundanes," she said. "I'm a family woman now. Here is my son Cyrus." She introduced a small boy who smiled shyly, then dived into the lake, his legs changing in mid-dive to the tail of a triton.

  "Nobody likes killing, of course," Ichabod said. "But perhaps you could lure them to some isolated island in waters infested by sea monsters so that they could not do anyone any harm."

  "Yes, that would be all right," she agreed. "Or lure them to my sister the Gorgon, who could change them to stone. Such statues can be restored with the right magic, or when returned to Mundania, where the spell would be broken, so it's not quite the same as death." She shrugged. "But I fear my power is gone forever, as only the Good Magician knows how to restore the instrument, and he wouldn't do it even if I were willing to pay his fee of one year's service. So it really doesn't matter. I think I'm much happier now than I ever was when I had my power, frankly." But she looked pensive, as if aware of the enormous ability she had lost.

  Ichabod spread his hands. "One can never tell. I am on good terms with Good Magician Humfrey, having provided him with a number of excellent Mundane research tomes, and perhaps I can broach the matter. I suspect you have just saved me at least a year of life by your assistance. At any rate, I certainly appreciate what you did for me." He turned to Imbri. "And you and Grundy, of course. Now we really must rejoin Chameleon."