Golem in the Gears Read online

  First he had to explain things to Ivy. He suspected that would not be easy—and he was correct.

  “You want to take Snortimer?!” she demanded indignantly. “He’s my monster!”

  “But all you do is ignore him or tease him,” Grundy pointed out.

  “That’s beside the point,” she said, assuming her Little Lady manner. “He belongs under my bed, nowhere else.”

  “But the Good Magician says I have to ride the Monster Under the Bed to the Ivory Tower, and he’s the only Monster Under the Bed I know well enough to ask.”

  “The Ivory Tower?” she asked with a mercurial shift of mood. “That’s where Rapunzel lives!”

  Grundy hadn’t thought of that. Rapunzel was Ivy’s pun-pal, who sent her periodic boxes of puns in exchange for the mundane scraps Ivy sent. It had always seemed to Grundy that Ivy had much the best of the bargain, and he wondered why Rapunzel continued with the arrangement. But what could Rapunzel have to do with the missing dragon? Surely she would have notified Ivy if Stanley had turned up there!

  But he decided it was better not to raise such issues with Ivy; no good could come of it. “Do you want Stanley back or don’t you?” Grundy demanded gruffly.

  “Oh, pooh!” she said. “Go do it, then. But if anything happens to Snortimer, I’ll never forgive you!”

  So Grundy went to talk to Snortimer, the Monster Under Ivy’s Bed. Such monsters were an interesting species, because only children and credulous folk could see them at all; normal adults didn’t even believe in them. Since Grundy was small, he had no trouble perceiving the monster—and because he was small, he had always stayed well out of reach. Now, with some trepidation, he approached Snortimer’s lair.

  “Snortimer,” he called from a safe distance.

  Something twitched in the dusky recesses beneath the bunk.

  “Snortimer, I know you understand me,” Grundy called. “I’m speaking your language. Come out from under there; I need your help.”

  A big, hairy hand poked out from the deep shadow, as if questing for something to grab. That was of course the speciality of the species: grabbing children’s ankles. Some mean children would dangle their feet down and snatch them away just before getting grabbed, but most children were properly terrified.

  “Listen, Snortimer, I have a Quest. I need your help.”

  At last the monster spoke. “Why should I help you?”

  “ ’Cause the Good Magician says I have to ride you to the Ivory Tower to rescue Stanley.”

  Snortimer considered. “It’ll cost you, golem.”

  Grundy sighed. He should have known that nothing about this Quest would be easy. “What will it cost?”

  “I want romance.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been eight years under this bed, grabbing at Ivy’s ankles and hiding from her mother. The same old grind, day after day. There must be more to life than this!”

  “But that’s what Monsters Under the Bed do!” Grundy protested. “They have no other purpose than to grab at children’s ankles and hide from parents.”

  “Then why am I supposed to help you?”

  Snortimer had a point. Obviously there was more to such a monster’s life than ankles. “Um, just what do you mean by romance?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll know it when I find it.”

  “Why don’t you just crawl off to another bed and find a, uh, female of your species, and—?”

  “That isn’t how it’s done. No Bed Monster shares territory. I have to find someone who isn’t yet committed to a bed.”

  “Where would that be?”

  The big ugly hand made a gesture of ignorance. “I have no idea. I suppose I just have to travel about until somewhere I find her.”

  “Well, I plan to travel,” Grundy said. “If you will be my steed, you’d get to cover quite a bit of the country.”

  “Sounds good,” Snortimer agreed. “I’ll be your steed—but only till I find romance.”

  Grundy realized that that could get him stranded somewhere far away, perhaps in the midst of Uncommitted Monster Country. But half a loaf was better than none. “Agreed. Let’s start right away. Come on out of there.”

  “I can’t,” Snortimer said.

  “But you said—”

  “I said I’d be your steed; I didn’t say I’d do the impossible. I can’t come out until dark.”

  “But I was planning on traveling in the daytime!”

  “Not with me, you’re not! Light would destroy me instantly. Why do you think we Bed Monsters never climb up on top of the bed to grab at ankles? We’re confined to the deepest shadows.” He pondered a moment. “Which is unfortunate. There’s a lot more than ankles up there.”

  “Why don’t you go up and grab when the lights are out?”

  The hand spread in a what-can-you-do? gesture. “Against the rules. There has to be some limitation, or all the Bed Monsters would take over the uppersides and put the children underneath. We can’t bother anything we can’t grab when the light’s on.”

  “But you can travel from your bed, at night?”

  “Some. As long as I don’t bother anyone.”

  “I see. But why don’t you go out and look for romance at night, on your own, then?”

  “I wouldn’t dare do it alone! Suppose I got trapped by a sudden light, and couldn’t make it back to my bed before dawn?”

  “What happens if you get caught away from your bed?”

  “Extinction!” Snortimer replied with deepest dread.

  “But then how can you be my steed and travel to the farthest reaches of Xanth in quest of romance?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” the monster said.

  Baffled, Grundy returned to Ivy. He explained the problem. “But there must be a way,” he concluded, “or the Good Magician wouldn’t have told me to do it.”

  “I’ll ask Hugo,” she said. She had evidently become reconciled to the temporary loss of her monster. Grundy suspected that little girls didn’t really like having their ankles grabbed when they went to bed, whatever they might say to the contrary. “C’mon.”

  They went to the Magic Mirror and Ivy summoned Hugo, the Good Magician’s son. Hugo was becoming a halfway handsome boy of thirteen. He listened to the problem and, at Ivy’s urging, came up with the solution: “He’ll just have to take the bed along.”

  Ivy turned to Grundy. “See? Easy as pie. Just take—” Then she did a doubletake. “Hey, that’s my bed!”

  “We all have to make sacrifices,” Grundy said, suppressing an obnoxious smile.

  But Ivy surprised him with another change of attitude. “Oh, I was tired of that bed anyway! You can take it with you. I’ll sleep on cushions. They’re comfortabler.”

  Grundy doubted that, but did not see fit to argue. Perhaps, for Ivy, it would become true.

  He returned to Snortimer. “Problem solved,” he announced. “We’ll just take the bed along.”

  “How?” the monster asked.

  Good question! Obviously if Snortimer were to be his steed, he couldn’t also carry a bed, assuming he could move it at all. But Ivy had disappeared on some other errand, and Grundy knew he couldn’t make Hugo answer questions the way Ivy could, if only because the boy was usually rather stupid. He would have to figure out something on his own.

  “I think we’ll have to get help,” Grundy said. This was certainly becoming complicated!

  “Let me know when you do,” Snortimer said. “Meanwhile I’ll snooze.” In a moment there was the sound of snoring from the shadow.

  Grundy wandered around Castle Roogna, trying to decide on a suitable person to ask for help. It had to be someone big and strong enough to carry the bed, and stupid enough not to ask why. Someone like Smash Ogre. But Smash was married now, and his wife Tandy kept him on a short leash; no hope there.

  Well, maybe someone not stupid, but not important, either. Someone who had nothing better to do than carry beds around the countryside. Who would that be?r />
  Suddenly he had a bright answer. He knew just the person!

  Thus it was that he came to talk with Ivy’s other grandfather, Bink. Bink had little to do with the activities of Castle Roogna and every month, when his wife Chameleon got smart and ugly, he tended to make excursions around Xanth on his own. Maybe he’d be willing to take a bed along.

  “Why not?” Bink inquired amiably. He was about sixty years old now, but still hearty, and a pretty solid man. “But even a small bed would get heavy soon enough; I’ll ask my friend Chester to help.”

  “But I’m not sure we should make a big production of this,” Grundy said. “I was thinking of a quiet Quest.”

  Bink looked at him, smiling. “If I know my granddaughter, she’s into mischief, and if I know you, you’re trying to keep her out of it—and you’re not allowed to tell.”

  “Something like that,” Grundy agreed uncomfortably.

  “Well, then, we won’t tell. No one will miss us anyway.”

  “You’re very understanding, sir,” Grundy said. Bink might not seem like much, but he was a former King of Xanth, which meant he had Magician-class magic, though that wasn’t evident. It seemed to Grundy that he had once known more about it, but he seemed to have forgotten.

  “It’s been a long time since Chester and I have had a decent adventure,” Bink said.

  That evening Bink and Chester showed up at the Castle. “Our wives aren’t too keen on this,” Bink confessed. “They’re letting us go, but only for two weeks. That means one week out and one week back. Do you think you can complete your Quest in that time?”

  “I hope so,” Grundy said. He had no idea how long it would take to reach the Ivory Tower, especially since he didn’t know where it was. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with Quests, you know.”

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” Bink said. He carried a hefty coil of rope. Chester waited outside, while Bink marched in and upstairs, Grundy on his shoulder.

  It seemed to Grundy that someone should have shown up to inquire what in Xanth they were doing, such as Ivy’s mother Irene, who normally had supersensitive hearing and curiosity to match. But luckily no one was disturbed, and they reached Ivy’s room undetected.

  Ivy was awake, of course, though in her nightie. She almost flew to Bink’s arms. “Ooo, Grandpa Bink, how exciting!” she exclaimed. “Are you going to steal my bed now?”

  “That’s right, sweetie,” Bink agreed. And methodically he opened the largest window wide, tied his rope to the bed, and lifted it up.

  Snortimer scooted away, startled. “Not so fast, monster!” Grundy said, dropping down. “You’re my steed, remember?”

  It was dark in the room, so he really couldn’t see Snortimer very well, but the monster seemed to consist of five or six big hairy arms and hands and nothing else. Somewhat diffidently, Grundy climbed aboard, and found a fairly comfortable seat at the juncture of the arms. Snortimer was not a large monster, for he had to fit under the small bed, but he was a good size for Grundy.

  Bink heaved the bed out through the window and let it down with the rope. It swung and bumped against the stones of the wall, generating an awful clatter, but still no one seemed to notice. What phenomenal luck!

  When the bed scraped its way to the base, Chester Centaur caught hold of it with his powerful arms and set it on his back. They had rigged a harness for him so that he could carry it without having to use his hands, and its weight was no problem at all for him.

  They bade farewell to Ivy, who remained thrilled at this secret adventure and perhaps a little jealous that she wasn’t going along, but she knew as well as they did that there was no way her mother would let her get involved in something like this. And of course it was for the best of causes: the rescue of Stanley Steamer.

  They went down and out, still without stirring up any commotion in the castle, and rejoined Chester. Quietly they walked away from the wall and crossed the moat and entered the main orchard. The trees rustled their branches, wondering what was going on, but did not interfere.

  They wended their way on through the darkness, unspeaking. Grundy was able to see very little, but Snortimer had no trouble. The monster was of course a creature of the dark, completely at home in it. Grundy began to appreciate the wisdom of selecting a steed like this, though he remained uncertain whether the Good Magician’s advice was good for the long term. He still had no idea where to find the Ivory Tower.

  They came to a spot in the forest that Chester knew, where several great trees clustered to form a leafy bower. They stopped. “We can talk here,” Chester said. “No one will overhear us. Where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t know,” Grundy confessed. “I’m supposed to go to the Ivory Tower, but the Good Magician didn’t tell me where it is. If one of you happens to know—”

  “Not me,” Chester said, and Bink agreed.

  Grundy sighed. “I suppose we’ll just have to search for it. I can ask the plants and things as we go along.”

  “The Good Magician must have had a reason to have you ride the Bed Monster,” Bink said. “Maybe you had better just give the monster its head and see where it takes you.”

  “I suppose so.” Then Grundy thought of something else. “I thought no adults could see the monster, or believe in it.”

  “We haven’t seen it yet,” Chester growled. “It’s dark.”

  “But people become more childlike as they grow older,” Bink said. “Maybe there comes a time when they believe in that particular monster again.”

  “Okay, Snortimer,” Grundy said. “Go where you have a mind, and let’s see if it’s the Ivory Tower.”

  “I have no idea where to go either,” Snortimer protested. Grundy could understand him perfectly, but the others could not speak the language, so couldn’t participate.

  “Isn’t that great!” Grundy exclaimed. “Four of us here—and not one of us has any notion how to proceed!”

  “Perhaps we should ask someone, then,” Bink suggested mildly.

  “Who would possibly know?” Grundy demanded dispiritedly.

  “The female Gap Dragon,” Chester suggested. “At least she has a motive to find Stanley.”

  “But she would gobble us up in a moment!” Grundy protested.

  “Not if you presented our case clearly,” Bink said. “I’m sure it will work out.”

  The man was certainly a fool! But Chester agreed with him, and Grundy was dependent on them to carry the bed. He had no choice. “I guess that’s what we’ll do, then,” he agreed reluctantly.

  “First let’s get a good night’s sleep,” Bink said. “We’ll have some heavy traveling coming up.”

  “But we have to travel by night!” Grundy protested.

  “That’s true,” Bink agreed. “I had forgotten. Well, let’s get a good night and day’s sleep, and be fresh for tomorrow night.”

  Grundy chafed at the delay. Then he remembered Stella Steamer, the lady Gap Dragon, and decided that delay was no bad thing. What a bad beginning for this Quest!

  Grundy worried that someone from Castle Roogna would discover them, as they were not very far from it, but still their luck held. That was gratifying, of course, yet still he felt out of sorts. This was supposed to be his Quest, but the others seemed to be running things pretty much their way. He was still just a golem, the least consequential of creatures.

  The following evening, well-rested, they started off. Grundy rode Snortimer, and had to admit that the monster got around quite well. The only problem was the wan moonlight; Snortimer would not venture into even that dim illumination, and plowed through the densest brush to avoid it. Since the magic path tended to be open, quite a lot of it was moonlighted, so Grundy spent half his time off the path. However, Snortimer’s big hairy hands grasped the brush with sure grips and seemed unbothered by even the thickest tangles, and soon Grundy stopped being concerned.

  After an hour or so, they came to a surprise: a detour. A dark sign blocked the path. Grundy approached
it until he was able to make out the print, even in the shadow. It said:

  “CONSTRUCTION: D-Tails @ Shopping Centaur.”

  “That’s odd,” Bink remarked. “I hadn’t heard about work on the magic paths.”

  “Well, we might as well go learn the details,” Chester said. “They seem to be at a good place.”

  He was a centaur; naturally he saw nothing odd about the location. But Grundy didn’t like this.

  They took the indicated side trail. They had been proceeding north, toward the Gap Chasm; the detour took them east. The path seemed all right, but Grundy remained uneasy. He had never heard of a magic path being closed off for construction.

  Soon they came to the shopping centaur. This turned out to be not a place but a creature: a lady centaur carrying a huge shopping bag. She carried a lamp, which made Snortimer scurry to cover in the shadows off-trail, so that Grundy did not hear her dialogue with Bink and Chester.

  In a moment she continued on her way, and Grundy was able to rejoin the others. “She says the tails belong to the Bulls and Bears, and to be careful,” Bink said. “The Bulls always go up, while the Bears go down, and it can get violent.”

  “What are Bulls and Bears?” Grundy asked.

  “Mundane animals. Some must have strayed.” Bink evidently wasn’t worried.

  They moved on. The detour continued roughly east, evincing no intention of turning north. Grundy’s discomfort increased. He wasn’t eager to encounter the Gap Dragoness, but this eastward drift was only wasting time and effort.

  As the first wan light of dawn threatened ahead of them, Snortimer got nervous, and they had to make camp. They found an open field, and Chester pitched the bed there, and the Bed Monster scooted under it just before the light brightened.

  Chester and Bink went foraging for food. Grundy, tired, simply lay down on the bed and slept. That aspect was very convenient; he would always have a comfortable place to retire.

  Grundy woke abruptly. The sun was shining down slantingly, and creatures were all around him. At first he thought Bink and Chester had returned, but this was not the case; instead, a herd of huge four-footed, hooved creatures were milling around the bed. They seemed to be heedless of the bed’s presence, and Grundy was afraid they would knock it over and thus expose Snortimer’s retreat to the direct sunshine. That would be disaster!