Castle Roogna Read online

  Three more boxing gloves struck at him. Dor plunged into the rain. He was instantly soaked again, but fortunately the hailstones were small and light and somewhat mushy. Irene's mocking laughter pursued him.

  Gusts of wind buffeted him savagely and lightning played about the sky. Dor knew he had no business being out in this storm, but he refused to return home. He ran into the jungle.

  "Turn about!" Grundy yelled into his ear. The golem was clinging to his shoulder. "Get under cover!"

  It was excellent advice; lightning bolts could do a lot of harm if they struck too near. After they had lain for a few hours on the ground and cooled off so that they were not so bright, they could be gathered and used for bolting together walls and things. But a fresh one could spear right through a man.

  Nevertheless, Dor kept running. The general frustration and confusion he felt inside exceeded that outside.

  He was not so confused as to blunder into the obvious hazards of the wilderness. The immediate Castle Roogna environs were spelled to be safe for people and their friends, but the deep jungle could not be rendered safe short of annihilation. No spell would tame a tangle tree for long, or subdue a dragon. Instead, certain paths were protected, and the wise person remained on these paths.

  A lightning bolt cracked past him and buried its point in the trunk of a massive acorn tree, the brilliant length of the bolt quivering. It was a small one, but it had three good sharp jags and could have wiped Dor out if it had hit him. The tree trunk was blistering with the heat of it.

  That was too close a miss. Dor ran across to the nearest charmed path, one bearing south. No bolts would strike him here. He knew the path's ultimate destination was the Magic Dust village, governed by trolls, but he had never gone that far. This time--well, he kept running, though his breath was rasping past his teeth. At least the exertion kept him warm.

  "Good thing I'm along," Grundy said in his ear. "That way there's at least one rational mind in the re-"

  Dor had to laugh, and his mood lightened. "Half a mind, anyway," he said. The storm was lightening too, as if in tandem with his mood. The way he interacted with the inanimate, that was entirely possible. He slowed to a walk, breathing hard, but continued south. How he wished he had a big, strong, muscular body that could run without panting or knock the gloves right off shadowboxers, instead of this rather small, slight frame. Of course, he didn't have his full growth yet, but he knew he would never be a giant.

  "I remember a storm we suffered down this way, just before you were born," Grundy remarked. "Your daddy, Bink, and Chester Centaur, and Crombie the soldier in griffin guise--the King transformed him for the quest, you know--and the Good Magician--"

  "Good Magician Humfrey?" Dor demanded. "You traveled with him? He never leaves his castle."

  "It was your father's quest for the source of magic; naturally Humfrey came along. The old gnome was always keen on information. Good thing, too; he's the one who showed me how to become real. Good thing for him, too; he met the gorgon, and you should have seen the flip she did over him, the first man she could talk to who didn't turn to stone. Anyway, this storm was so bad it washed out some of the stars from the sky; they were floating in puddles."

  "Stop, Grundy!" Dor cried, laughing. "I believe in magic, as any sensible person does, but I'm not a fool! Stars wouldn't float in water. They would fizzle out in seconds!"

  "Maybe they did. I was riding a flying fish at the time, so I couldn't see them too well. But it was some storm!"

  There was a shudder in the ground, not thunder. Dor halted, alarmed. "What is that?"

  "Sounds like the tramp of a giant, to me," Grundy hazarded. His talent was translation, and he could interpret anything any creature said, but footfalls weren't language. "Or worse. It just might be--"

  Suddenly it loomed from the gloom. "An ogre!" Dor finished, terrified. "Right on the path! How could the enchantment have failed? We're supposed to be safe on these--"

  The ogre tramped on toward them, a towering hulk more than twice Dor's height and broad in proportion. Its great gap-toothed mouth cracked open horrendously. An awful growl blasted out like the breath of a hungry dragon.

  "What say, lil man--will you give me a han--?" Grundy said.

  "What?" Dor asked, startled almost out of his fright.

  'That's what the ogre says; I was translating."

  Oh. Of course. "No! I need my hands! He can't eat them." Though he was uncertain how the ogre could be stopped from eating anything he wanted. Ogres were great bone-crunchers.

  The ogre growled again. "Me not eat whelp; me seek for help," Grundy said. Then the golem did a double take. "Crunch!" he cried. "The vegetarian ogre!"

  "Then why does he want to eat my hand?" Dor demanded.

  The monster smiled. The expression most resembled the opening of a volcanic fissure. Gassy breath hissed out "You little loudmouthed twerp, hardly bigger than a burp."

  "That's me!" Grundy agreed, answering his own translation. "Good to see you again, Crunch! How's the little lady, she with hair like nettles and skin like mush, whose face would make a zombie blush?"

  "She lovely as ever; me forsake she never," the ogre replied. Dor was beginning to be able to make out the words directly; the thing was speaking his language, but with a foul accent that nearly obliterated meaning. "We have good bash, make little Smash."

  Dor was by this time reassured that the spell of the path had not failed. This ogre was harmless--well, no ogre was harmless, but at least not ravening--and therefore able to mix with men. "A little smash?"

  "Smash baby ogre, "bout like you; now he gone and we too few."

  "You smashed your baby?" Dor asked horrified, Maybe there was something wrong with the path-spell after all.

  "Dodo! Smash is the name of their baby," Grundy explained. "All the ogres have descriptive names."

  "Then why is Smash gone?" Dor demanded nervously. "Troll wives eat their husbands, so maybe ogres eat--"

  "Smash wandered away in drizzle; now we search for he fizzle."

  This recent storm was a mere drizzle to the ogres? That made sense. No doubt Crunch used a lightning bolt for a toothpick. "We'll help you find your baby," Dor said, grasping this positive mission with enthusiasm. Nothing like a little quest to restore spirits! Crunch's search for his little one had fizzled, so he had asked for help, and few human beings ever had such a request from an ogre! "Grundy can ask living things, because he knows all their languages, and I'll ask the dead ones. We'll run him down in no time!"

  Crunch heaved a grateful sigh that almost blew Dor down. Quickly they went to the spot where the tyke had last been seen. Smash had, Crunch explained, been innocently chewing up nails, getting his daily ration of iron, then must have wandered away.

  "Did the little ogre pass this way?" Dor asked a nearby rock.

  "Yes--and he went toward that tree," the rock replied.

  "Why don't you just have the ground tell you warm or cold?" Grundy suggested.

  "The ground is not an individual entity," Dor answered. "It's just part of the whole land of Xanth. I doubt I could get its specific attention. Anyway, much of it is alive--roots, bugs, germs, magic things. They mess up communication."

  "There is a ridge of stone," Grundy pointed out. "You could use it."

  Good idea. "Tell me warm or cold, as I walk," Dor told it, and started to walk toward the tree. Crunch followed as softly as he was able, so that the shuddering of the land did not quite drown out the rock's voice.

  "Warm--warm--cool--warm," the ridge called, steering Dor on the correct course. Dor realized suddenly that he was in fact a Magician; no one else could accomplish such a search. Irene's plant-growing magic was a strong talent, a worthy one, but it lacked the versatility of this. Her green thumb could not be turned to nonbotanic uses. A King, to rule Xanth, had to be able to exert his power effectively, as Magician Trent did. Trent could transform any enemy into a toad, and everyone in Xanth knew that. But Magician Trent was also smart; he used his ta
lent merely to back up his brains and will. What would a girl like Irene do, if she occupied the throne? Line the paths with shadowboxing plants? Dor's talent was far more effective; he could learn all the secrets anyone had except those never voiced or shown before an inanimate object. Knowledge was the root of power. Good Magician Humfrey knew that. He--

  "That's a tangler!" Grundy hissed in his ear.

  Dor's attention snapped back to the surface. Good thing the golem had stayed with him, instead of questioning creatures on his own; Dor had been mindlessly reacting to the ridge's directives, and now stood directly before a medium-sized tangle tree. Which was no doubt why Grundy had remained, knowing that Dor was prone to such carelessness. If little Smash had gone there--

  "I could ask it," Grundy said. "But the tree would probably lie, if it didn't just ignore me. Plants don't talk much anyway."

  Crunch stepped close. "Growrrh!" he roared, poking one clublike finger at the dangling tentacles. The message needed no translation.

  The tangler gave a vegetable keen of fear and whipped its tentacles away.

  Dor, amazed, stepped forward. "Warm," the ridge said. Dor stepped nervously into the circle normally commanded by the tangler. "Cool," the ridge said.

  So the little ogre had steered just clear of the tree and gone on. A close call--for tyke and tree! But now the trail led toward the deep cleft of a nickelpede warren. Nickelpedes would gouge disks out of the flesh of anything, even an ogre. If--but then the trail veered away.

  The ridge subsided, but there were a number of individual rocks in this vicinity, and they served as well, and on the trail went, meandering past a routine assortment of Xanth horrors: a needle-cactus, the nest of a harpy, a poison spring, a man-eating violent flower--fortunately Smash had been no man, but an ogre, so the flower had turned purple in frustration--a patch of spear-grass with its speartips glinting evilly. Plus similar threats, with which the wilderness abounded. Smash had avoided stepping into any traps, until at last the tyke had come to the lair of a flying dragon.

  Dor halted, dismayed. This time there was no doubt: no one passed this close to such a lair without paying the price. Dragons were the lords of the jungle, as a class; specific monsters might prevail against specific dragons; but overall, dragons governed the wilds much as Man governed the tames.

  They could hear the dragon cubs entertaining themselves with some poor prey, happily scorching each potential route of escape. Dragon cubs needed practice to get their scorching up to par. A stationary target sufficed only up to a point; after that they needed live lures, to get their reflexes and aim properly tracked.

  "Smash...is there?" Dor asked, dreading the answer.

  "Hot," the nearest stone agreed warmly. Crunch grimaced, and this time not even an ogress would have mistaken his ire. He stomped up to the scene of the crime. The ground danced under the impact of his footfalls, but the dragon's lair seemed secure.

  The lair's entrance was a narrow cleft that only the narrow torso of a small dragon could pass through. Crunch put one hand at each side of it and sent a brutal surge of power galumphing through his massively muscles. The rock split asunder, and suddenly entrance was ogre-sized. The dragons were exposed, in their conservative nest of diamonds and heat-resistant jewels. The thing about fire-breathing dragons was that ordinary nest material led to burn up or melt or scorch unpleasantly, so diamonds were a dragon's best friend, a little ogre, no larger than Dor himself, stood amid three winged dragonets while the dragonlady glared benignly on. The ogreling was stoutly structured and would probably have been a match for any single dragon his size, but the three were making things hot for him. There were scorch marks all about, though the little ogre seemed as yet unhurt. Dragons did like to play with their food before roasting it

  Crunch did not even growl. He just leaned over and looked at the dragoness--and the smoke issuing from her mouth sank like chill fog to the floor. For Crunch massed as much as she did, and it would be redundant to specify the power-to-mass ratio of ogres. She was not up to this snuff, not even with a belly full of fuel. She never moved a muscle, petrified as if she had locked gazes with a gorgon.

  Now Smash advanced on one dragonet. "Me tweak you tail, you big o'l snail!" he cried gleefully. He hauled on the tail, swung the dragon around, and hurled it carelessly against the far wall.

  The second little dragon opened its mouth and wafted out a small column of fire. Smash exhaled with such force that the flame rammed right back inside the dragon, who was immediately overcome by a heated fit of coughing.

  The third dragonet, no coward, pounced on Smash with all four clawed feet extended. Smash raised one fist. The dragon landed squarely on it, its head and tail whipping around to smack into each other. It fell on the bed of diamonds, stunned.

  Even the littlest ogre was tougher than its weight in dragons, when the odds were evened. Dor had not believed this, before; he had thought it was mere folklore.

  "Now games are through, to home with you," Crunch said, reaching in to lift his son out of the lair by his tough scruff of the neck. With his other fist, Crunch struck the nest so hard that the diamonds bounced out in a cloud, scattering all over the landscape. The dragoness winced; she would have a tedious cleanup chore to do. Without a backward glance at her, they tramped away. Except for Grundy, who couldn't resist putting in a last word: "Good thing for you, you didn't hurt the tyke," he called to the dragon lady. "If you had, Crunch might have gotten angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry."

  Fortunately, Crunch was now in a good mood. "Little man help we; how pay we fee?" the ogre inquired of Dor.

  Abashed, Dor demurred. "We were glad to help," he said. "We have to get home now."

  Crunch considered. This took some time; he was big but not smart. He addressed Grundy: "Golem tell true: what can me do?"

  "Oh, Dor doesn't really need any help," Grundy said. "He's a Magician."

  Crunch swelled up ominously. "Me get mad, when truth not had."

  Daunted, Grundy responded quickly. "Well, the boys around Castle Roogna do tease Dor a little. He's not as big and strong as the big boys, but he has more magic, so they sort of--"

  Crunch cut him off with an impatient gesture. The ogre picked Dor up gently in one huge hand--fortunately not by the scruff of the neck--and carried him north along the path. Such was the ogre's stride, they were very soon at the edge of the Castle Roogna orchard. He set Dor down and stood silently while boy and golem proceeded forward.

  "Thanks for the lift," Dor said weakly. He was certainly glad this monster was a vegetarian.

  Crunch did not respond. Frozen in his hunched-over posture, he most resembled the massive stump of a burned-out gnarlbole tree.

  Awkwardly, Dor went on toward his home, passing near the umbrella tree. As luck would have it, the two bullies were still there. Both jumped up when they saw Dor, and eager for sport, ran out to bar his way. "The little snooper's back!" Horsejaw cried. "What's he doing on a path meant for people?"

  "I wouldn't," Grundy said warningly....For answer, a little snake landed on his head. A sonic boom went off behind Dor. The boys laughed.

  Then the ground shuddered. The bullies looked around wildly, fearing an avalanche from nowhere. There was another shudder, jarring Dor's teeth. It was the ogre tramping forward under full steam.

  Horsejaw's mouth fell open as he saw that monster bearing down on him. He was too startled to move. The other boy tried to run, but the ground shook so violently that he fell on his face and lay there. Several small snakes appeared, squiggled nervously, and vanished; no help there. If there were any more sonic booms, they were drowned out by the violence of the ogre's approach.

  Crunch strode up until he loomed over the small party, his thick torso dwarfing the slender metal trunk of a nearby ironwood tree. "Dor me friend," he thundered distinctly, and the umbrella tree collapsed into shambles with the vibration. "Help he lend." Small cracks opened in the hard ground of the path, and somewhere a heavy branch crashed to the fo
rest floor. "If laugh at lad, me might get mad." And he swung one clublike fist around in a great circle, barely over Horsejaw's head, so that the wind made the bully's hair stand on end. At least, Dor thought it was the wind that did it; the boy looked terrified.

  The ogre's fist smashed into the trunk of the iron-wood tree. There was a nearly deafening clang. A tubular section of iron sprang out, leaving the top of the tree momentarily suspended in air; then it dropped heavily and fell over with a crash that made the ground shake once more. Ironwood was solid stuff! An acrid wisp of smoke wafted up from the stump: the top of it was glowing red with a white fringe, and part of it where the ogre's fist had touched had melted.

  Crunch selected a jagged splinter of iron, picked his teeth with it, and wheeled about. His monstrous horny toes gouged a furrow from the path in the process. He tramped thunderously back south, humming a merry tune of bloodshed. In a moment he was gone, but the vibration of the terrain took a long time to quiet. Away in the palace, there was the tinkling crash of a window shattering.

  Horsejaw stood looking at the iron stump. His eyes flickered momentarily to Dor, then back to the steaming metal. Then he fainted.

  "I don't think the boys will tease you so much any more, Dor," Grundy remarked gravely.

  Chapter 2

  Tapestry

  Dor was not teased much any more. No one wanted to upset his friend. But this hardly eased his unrest. The teasing had not bothered him as much as it had bothered Grundy; Dor had always known he could use his superior magic to bring others into line, if he really had to. It was his general isolation from others that weighed on him, and his new awareness of Millie the ghost. What a difference there was between a brat like Irene and a woman like Millie! Yet Irene was the one Dor was expected to get along with. It wasn't fair.

  He needed to talk with someone. His parents were approachable, but Chameleon varied so much in appearance and intellect that he never could be certain how to approach her, and Bink might not be sympathetic to this particular problem. Besides which, both of them were away on a trip to Mundania, on business for the King. The Land of Xanth was busy establishing diplomatic relations with Mundania, and after the centuries of bad relations this was a touchy matter, requiring the utmost finesse. So Dor's parents were out. Grundy would chat with him anytime--but the former golem was apt to get too cute about other people's problems. Such as calling Irene's green-thumb talent "stinkfinger." Dor hardly blamed her for retaliating violently, inconvenient as it had been for him personally. Grundy cared, all right--that was how he had become a real, living person--but he didn't really understand. Anyhow, he knew Dor too well. Dor's grandfather Roland, whose talent was the stun--the ability to freeze people immobile--was a good man to talk to, but he was at his home in the North Village, a good two days' travel across the Gap.