Five Portraits Read online

  She tried the next, Congregate. It slammed shut also.

  She tried the others. Each shut her unkindly out.

  It seemed she had not, after all, solved the Challenge, merely one part of it.

  She returned to Ann, who remained busy with her robots. The translator remained where she could take it. She picked it up in her mouth. “I figured out the gates. Each of their names is a prelude to Gate. But they still won’t let me pass.”

  “Perhaps the naming scheme is only part of the Challenge.”

  “Yes. But I have yet to figure out the rest of it. Are you sure you’re not part of it?”

  “I am merely part of the setting.”

  Then a second bulb flashed. The answer would be part of the setting.

  “I saw that flash,” Ann said.

  “You’re not the Challenge, you’re the solution,” Astrid said. “You’re here for a reason.”

  Ann shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “Those gates are obviously self-willed. That means they are machines. Robots. And you make robots. You must have made the gates.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And you can control them. You can let me through.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I have figured it out, and you are a nice person, the kind I would like to be, and I am asking.”

  Ann laughed. “There is something about your phrasing that appeals to me. Select a gate.”

  “No, please, you select one. I want the one you choose for me.”

  Ann nodded. “You know, you’re smarter than the average basilisk, and a good deal nicer. Take the Mitigate.”

  “Thank you.” Astrid set down the translator and went to the Mitigate. This time it did not slam on her snoot. She entered the castle.

  A woman met her inside. “Welcome, Astrid. I am Wira, the Good Magician’s daughter-in-law. He will see you now.”

  Just like that, Astrid was in the Magician’s cramped study. He was there, poring over a huge tome. “Basilisk, I can change your form but not your nature. I can make your form human, but you will still be a deadly creature whose very nearness is death to most others. Are you sure this is what you want?”

  Astrid was not at all sure, but neither did she want to return to her natural haunts. So she nodded. She wanted the change.

  “There is another thing. Has it occurred to you to wonder why I am bothering with you, considering that you are a deadly animal most folk seek to exterminate?”

  That had not occurred to her, but now that he mentioned it, she did wonder.

  “It is because you are no ordinary animal. You have a soul.”

  That had never even attempted to occur to her. How was this possible? Everyone knew that only human beings or those deviously related to them had souls. She was sure she had absolutely no human lineage.

  “A night mare was transporting a lost soul to the dream realm when she got distracted by an idea for a truly horrendous bad dream and dropped it. It rolled into a hole and landed on you, were you were sleeping in your burrow. That put it beyond her recovery and she had to move on, chastened. Souls are immeasurably precious, at least to those who have them. Thereafter you were a souled creature, though you did not know it. That is why you became dissatisfied with your normal life. That is why you finally concluded that you would rather be human than lizard. You already had the essence of humanity. Your soul would not let you rest in peace.”

  Astrid gazed at him with hooded eyes so as not to hurt him. What he said explained so much! She was indeed too gentle to be a good basilisk. “But souls don’t accept just anybody,” she protested. “That soul should have bounced off me and waited for a better host. I’m a basilisk!”

  “You are correct. Souls can be quite choosy. But evidently this one saw in you the potential for it to achieve its full flowering, so it accepted you. It may even have sought you out.”

  “Sought a basilisk?”

  “A dubious business, to be sure. Let’s hope it didn’t make a mistake.”

  “I will try to live up to its expectation,” she said humbly.

  “So I must facilitate your conversion to humanity,” the Good Magician concluded. “Now you know why.”

  She did indeed. What a revelation!

  “MareAnn will give you a potion,” he said. “You will still owe me a Service.”

  She nodded again, accepting the terms.

  “This way,” Wira said, leading her back down the dusky spiral stairway to the ground floor.

  They came to a comfortable family room. A woman vaguely reminiscent of a pony met them there. “I am MareAnn, Designated Wife of the Month. Are you sure you want that potion? It will enable you to speak, if you know our language, and Ann Droid says you do, but—”

  Astrid nodded without looking directly at her. MareAnn presented her with a sealed vial. Astrid took it between her front paws, nipped off the cap, and gulped it down.

  The change was immediate. Her proportions shifted, with her limbs stretching out and her torso condensing, becoming distinctly lumpy. Her tail shrank until it no longer seemed to exist. Her snoot shrank into her face. Her scales faded out. What a disaster!

  “Now your form is human,” MareAnn said. “You should be able to stand on your hind feet if you try. But first put this hood on over your head.”

  Astrid understood why. She took the hood, which was translucent so she could see out but would distort her gaze so that she would not accidentally kill someone with her stare. Then she slowly and awkwardly climbed to her feet. Her balance was precarious, but she was able to maintain it.

  “You are a remarkably pretty semblance of a woman,” MareAnn said. “The potion changes forms, but keeps the peripheral aspects. You were a very pretty basilisk.”

  “Thank you,” Astrid said. And she paused, realizing that she had just spoken her first human words aloud.

  “You see, you can do it,” MareAnn said encouragingly. “However, there will still be a lot more for you to learn before you can safely go out among humans. We’ll give you a room to yourself and I will help you all I can.”

  And so it was. MareAnn had a thing for animals, especially equines, but also for others, and she made sure that Astrid was comfortable and well treated. She spent many hours and days talking with Astrid, acquainting her with human conventions and foibles. One of these was clothing. Basilisks didn’t use it, but humans did, so she had to wear a loose robe when she remembered to. It hardly mattered here, because no one entered this castle casually.

  Most importantly, MareAnn became Astrid’s first human friend. Astrid had never had one before, and found that she liked it very well.

  “The Good Magician says that you will need three best friends to fulfill your mission in life,” MareAnn said. “I am the first, but I am not enough.”

  “You seem like enough to me,” Astrid said. “I am only newly acquainted with friendship, and don’t know what a best friend would be. Also, I have no idea of a mission in life.”

  “With luck you will learn.”

  Then one night MareAnn came to her with a mission. “You have an opportunity to perform your Service for the Good Magician in what I hope is a compatible manner. A man has come who will be going out on a perhaps dangerous mission. He will need a bodyguard: someone who can readily dispatch a monster or attacking human when that is necessary.”

  “I can do that,” Astrid agreed. “But a human man—I would not know how to comport myself in his presence.”

  “True. Fortunately he has a female companion, though he doesn’t know it. She will guide you.”

  “That would help. But why doesn’t he know it?”

  “Because she is a wooden board by day. It’s a curse put on her by a wishing well. Well, not actually a curse; rather it’s a devious way of granting her wish. But it seems much like a curse. So she
animates mostly at night, when he is asleep.”

  “I’m not sure I would be adept at handling a situation like this.”

  “Please, Astrid. This is your chance to go out among the human kind with some appropriate guidance. Kandy is the one who can best help you. She can be your friend. At least come to meet her.”

  Astrid couldn’t refuse, so she went to meet the board woman. Who turned out to be quite nice, once she got over the shock of meeting a basilisk. She agreed to have Astrid join their mission, but insisted on much more formal clothing such as a bra, panties, and a dress. Astrid didn’t know about such superfluous things but had to trust the woman’s human judgment. She chose a dress with lovely reptilian sequins that reminded her of scales; it was the only one she could really be comfortable in. MareAnn was not easy with it, because the sequins were magic, but let it be.

  Thus it was that Astrid joined the Quest to eliminate the anti-pun virus. The dress turned out to be a devious asset, because whenever a sequin fell off it turned translucent, which for some reason made the man, Ease, freak out, and when the sequin was restored, it jumped them to a new location that might or might not be convenient. So it became quite an adventure. Along the way they added others to the Quest, including the machine Com Pewter, the girl in the tower Tiara, the long-haired man Mitch, and Art, an artist who was immune to poison. He promptly became Astrid’s boyfriend, because he could kiss her and be with her without suffering, though he was careful not to meet her gaze; there were limits. His ambition was to paint portraits of beautiful women, especially her.

  But most important of all, Kandy became Astrid’s second and best friend. That truly sustained her. They managed to complete their mission with the help of Merge, a remarkable five-part woman, but still had some mopping up to do.

  “And that is how I came to associate with these wonderful people,” Astrid concluded. “I am indeed a basilisk, and my direct gaze is instant death, but I am comfortable in this group, and we accept each other as we are.”

  “That’s so romantic,” Ginger Goblin said.

  “And remarkable,” Truman Troll added. “I am glad to have heard it. But who is your third best friend?”

  “I have no idea,” Astrid confessed. “Nor what my mission in life is. I’m just trying to help these good folk accomplish their mission to exterminate the pun virus and restore Xanth to its natural state.”

  “I am not quite finished here,” Pewter said. “Your narrative has not quite filled out the chapter. You must have left something out.”

  “Oh!” Astrid exclaimed, surprised, and half a bulb flashed over her head.

  “Our appreciation surprises you?” Truman asked.

  “Speaking of Art and his Portraits reminded me,” Astrid said. “MareAnn said something about portraits that didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but now it is beginning to.”

  “Portraits?” Ginger asked.

  “MareAnn said that the Good Magician was in half a dither because though the Book of Lost Answers had been reassembled—I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s a sort of companion to the Book of Answers that is the huge musty tome he constantly pores over—there was an Answer left over and he didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “Obviously it belongs in the Book of Answers, since it’s not lost,” Pewter said.

  “Apparently not,” Astrid said. “The Book of Answers also has the Questions, but this one has no attached question. So it is the Question that is lost. That confuses, befuddles, and perplexes him. So he’s grumpy, and that annoys the Wives, who find him difficult enough to deal with already. That’s why they swap out every month, getting time to recover from his moods. They need to find the Question so that things can settle down to the normally irritating routine.”

  “What is the Answer?” Ginger asked.

  “Five Portraits.”

  “Five Portraits?”

  “Yes. That’s all. I just realized that there are five beautiful women in our party, and Art means to paint them all when there is pausing time. So those could be the Answer.”

  “And what is the Question?” Truman asked.

  “I don’t know. But doesn’t having the Answer evoke the Question, in human events? It must be hovering close by.”

  The several assembled folk circled a somewhat haphazard glance. If the Question was near, they did not perceive it.

  “We shall keep an eye out for a lost Question,” Tiara said. “With luck we’ll know it when we see it.”

  It seemed that would have to do.

  “Got it,” Pewter said, gratified.

  “The Question?” Astrid asked.

  “The lock. I have nulled it.” And with that he swung the barred gate open.

  “Oh, we could kiss you!” Ginger said as the goblin girls stepped out.

  “Kindly desist with your threats,” Pewter said. But he was too late; the three pretty girls kissed him on both ears and his nose.

  “On with the exchange,” Truman said. “Then at last we can end the truce, which is becoming burdensome.”

  “That’s right,” Ginger said. “You trolls can’t do a thing to us as long as the truce holds.” Then the three kissed the three trolls, who were helpless to resist, all over their faces, severely denting their ugliness. Ginger even had the temerity to kiss Truman directly on the mouth. A truce was a fearsomely powerful force.

  The weird thing was, neither Pewter nor the trolls seemed really to mind.

  Chapter 3:

  Fornax

  The rest of the incident was routine. The trolls carried Astrid and the goblins to the goblin mound, where the troll captives were waiting, bound and chained to stakes. The female troll in particular was disheveled but otherwise seemingly undamaged, except for her wrathful pride. All were glad to be rescued.

  “Thank you especially, Astrid,” Ginger said as the three goblin girls walked to the mound. “We owe our miraculous rescue to you. I never even dreamed that my freedom or my life would rest on the goodwill of a basilisk.”

  “You’re welcome,” Astrid said, moderately embarrassed.

  “I doubt we’ll ever meet again, but if we do, I will remember.”

  “So will I,” Truman said, not in a threatening manner. “I’m glad we were able to come to terms instead of combat. It gave us both gains instead of losses.” He looked at his watch, which surprised Astrid because she hadn’t known that trolls had watches. “I would offer you a lift back to your companions, but our purpose has been accomplished and the truce is perilously close to expiration. It would not be safe.”

  “I understand,” Astrid said. “I will make my own way back.”

  “We will go pick up Truculent’s body. There’s no point in wasting perfectly good meat.”

  “No point,” Astrid agreed. After all, Truculent had planned to eat her. Not that he would have found her edible; he would have died of poisoning. Still, his fate was deserved.

  Then the six trolls forged away through the brush and forest. Astrid efficiently stripped, evoking crude wolf whistles from the goblin males, reverted to her natural form, which evoked only dead silence, and scooted sinuously through the other brush and forest toward the cave.

  “Good riddance, both!” the goblin chief called after them, honoring the spirit of the occasion.

  In due course, Astrid rejoined the others and resumed human form, putting on her clothing so that Ease could stop trying to freak. Then the group of them made their way back to their original campsite. It had been a busy morning.

  She settled down in the tent she shared with Art, who was interested in two things, the other being his painting. She was happy to accommodate him, and soon put him to sleep in the normal manner. She had feared that she could never have a normal human relationship with a man, but with him it was possible, and she loved it. Her new life seemed complete.

  Then Kan
dy got a message from the Demoness Fornax. That reminded Astrid how the Demoness had wanted Kandy to be her intermediary in the Land of Xanth, because Fornax associated with antimatter and could not touch any normal matter without both going up in mutual annihilation. Kandy had been doubtful, but made the deal instantly when Astrid was falling to her likely death, to save Astrid. She had been a true friend in the crisis. Now she was serving that role for Fornax.

  Then Kandy looked at Astrid. “I wonder.”

  “Have I made an error in my costume?” Astrid asked.

  “No, not at all. Something has come up.”

  “You heard from Fornax,” Astrid agreed. “I understand.”

  “This time it was different. This is awkward.”

  “Awkward?”

  “The Demoness has observed how you and I became friends, and how we both seem happier for it.”

  Astrid felt a hot chill. That was the worst kind. “She resents our friendship?”

  “No. The opposite.”

  “I am not following this.”

  “Fornax asked me to be her friend.”

  “Well, you are a food friend, and you did agree to represent her in Xanth.”

  “Yes. That’s the problem. My association with her is business. I fear that a friendship with her would be a conflict of interest. I’m supposed to represent her objectively. I can’t let any possible distortion prejudice me, because I am dealing with mind-bendingly powerful Demons who insist on absolute clinical neutrality. So I had to tell her no.”

  Astrid nodded. “That seems right.”

  “But I felt bad about it. Remember, Fornax enabled me to save you from death in the Gap Chasm. I feel I sort of owe her, even though what I’m doing for her now is payment for that. So I looked for an alternative. For someone else to possibly be her friend.”

  “That’s sensible,” Astrid agreed.

  “You.”

  The pause was so significant that it almost knocked Astrid down. “Um—”

  “Astrid, I’m your friend, and I would not do anything to hurt you or make you uncomfortable. But it seems to me that you could make her a better friend than I could, because you know about isolation. You could understand her, to a degree I could not.”