Crewel Lye (19 page)

Pook stood close, and I grabbed onto his chains and hauled myself to my feet. Then I reached up to harvest enough of the fruits and nuts growing on the tree to sustain me. After a while I managed to stand and walk by myself, though my feet remained stone. It was like walking on stilts; I could manage, but for traveling I needed the ghost horse.

Now the day was fairly on us, and the image of the arrow was in my mind. East--the direction of the object! I had to go there and find it!

We went east, following the fringe of the monstrous chasm. Odd, I thought, that no one had warned me of this natural hazard; it could hardly be overlooked! And what kind of an object would be hidden here? Well, the arrow was clear in my mind, showing only a little smudge along the shaft, doubtless from the dirt in my head, and I knew I would learn the answer soon. This was, after all, a good time to have invoked the finder-spell; the object was evidently close, so the spell tuned in strongly.

We approached Threnody's cabin, perched at the very brink of the chasm. Obviously the object was beyond it, so we turned south to give the cabin wide clearance. But the farther south we went, the more the arrow veered. It was pointing right at the cabin!

I tried not to believe it, but when we were east of the cabin, the arrow pointed west. There could be no doubt--the object was there.

I sighed. I would just have to go and get it. I knew Threnody would not be pleased; after all, she had already killed me twice to prevent me from getting the object. Now I would have to take it from under her nose. But I'd have to do it quickly and get away from there before she found some other way to kill me. I couldn't blame her for not wanting to have someone bring her back to Castle Roogna, but I did object to being killed, even if it wasn't too serious a matter.

We went to the house, and I dismounted and knocked on the door. I heard music inside, rather pretty; she was playing the stringed instrument I had seen before. When I knocked, the music halted, and in a moment Threnody opened the door. She stood aghast as she recognized me; her mouth fell open and her fair skin paled.

“Got something to pick up,” I said gruffly. I would have been more curt with her, but she was so pretty I didn't feel as angry as I should have. This is one sort of foolishness that barbarians are prone to; they tend to believe, despite significant evidence to the contrary, that women are as beautiful inside as they are outside. I knew better; still, the way she had treated me seemed less objectionable than it might have. “I'll just take it and be gone in a moment; please stand clear.”

She stepped out of my way, her eyes round and staring, and I brushed by her and rechecked the arrow.

It pointed back toward Threnody. “Okay, you have it,” I said. “I guess you knew it all the time, but didn't tell me. Hand it over.”

“You're dead!” she gasped.

“Not any more; I heal fast,” I said gruffly. “Now give it to me.”

“I--don't have anything.” She still acted as if she had seen a ghost; maybe she thought the ghost was me.

“Look, woman--you killed me, so I don't think I owe you anything. Give me that object, or I'll take it from you.”

“I tell you I don't have it,” she said, losing some of her pallor. “I don't even know what it is.”

I had had enough. There are limits to what a barbarian will tolerate from even the prettiest of women, and perhaps some stone remained in my heart. I grabbed her and proceeded to search her, patting her body all over.

Threnody did not resist. I didn't find any object on her, but the arrow still pointed to her. “Maybe it's something you're wearing,” I said. “Take off your clothing.”

“I'll do nothing of the kind!” she exclaimed, recovering her indignity as she got accustomed to the idea of my being alive.

“Then I'll do it for you,” I said and began unbuttoning her dress.

“You barbarian!” she cried.

“That's right,” I agreed, pleased.

She saw I wasn't bluffing. “Oh, all right, I'll undress,” she said. “I did undress you before, after all.” She undid the rest of her brown dress and stepped out of it. She wore nothing underneath it. She took off her slippers, too, and stood completely bare. I picked up her clothing and set it in a pile on the bed, then stood between her and it. The arrow pointed directly at her.

I looked closely at her. There was a lot to look at, but there simply wasn't any object there. “Maybe you ate it,” I said. “So it's inside you.”

“Don't be ridiculous!” she snapped. “I don't want you cutting me open to verify it isn't there!”

I scratched my head. “I just can't figure it, unless--”

“Unless I am the object you seek,” she concluded. That, of course, was it. Suddenly it made sense. Why fetch an object to win the throne, then go after an unwilling woman to marry? How much simpler to fetch the woman herself!

And if she didn't want to come--might, in fact, even kill the one who tried to bring her--well, get an ignorant barbarian to do the job for you.

I had had a low regard for Magician Yang. Now, abruptly. Magician Yin didn't seem phenomenally good to me, either.

Well, I was stuck for it, since I had agreed to undertake this mission. Maybe this was what King Gromden had been trying to warn me about. He hadn't known--because of the second curse--that Threnody's return to Castle Roogna would cause it to fall; he just wanted his daughter back, and married to his successor, so that his bloodline would remain in power. But he had known she didn't want to return and would resist any effort to bring her there with all the forces at her command.

I could see her point, even though I did not approve of her methods. If I knew that my return to Fen Village would cause it to be destroyed, I would resist that return as strongly as I could. Now I felt guilty about what I had to do--yet I did have to do it. It was not my place to decide on the larger rights and wrongs of the situation; I just had to complete the job I had agreed to do.

What a pile of mud this assignment was turning out to be!

Threnody didn't bother going for her clothes; she leaped for the door. I intercepted her, knowing she would be difficult to catch if she got away, as she was bound to be more familiar with this region than I was. She struck at my face with her small fist, but I fended her off with my left arm. “Ow!” she cried. “What are you made of, oaf?”

“Stone,” I said. “My feet and left arm, anyway. I ran into a spell.”

She relaxed. “Sounds like one of Yang's spells. You turned partway to stone?”

“More or less,” I said, letting her go.

She bolted for the door again, this time getting out. But she ran smack into Pook, who had thought to back-stop me. She bounced off his hide, and in a moment I caught her again. “I just have to take you back,” I said. “I'm sorry, but I agreed to bring back the object and I will.”

“I'm no object!” she protested, struggling in my arms, but this time I was smart enough not to release her.

“Sure you are,” I said. “The object of my mission.”

“You'll never take me alive!”

“Listen, you've already killed me,” I told her, still distracted by her motions. If I hadn't already known that barbarians were often clumsy with women, I'd have suspected it now. “You should know that's no good.”

“I'll kill you again!” she said, trying to bite at my shoulder. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong one and bruised her teeth on the stone.

“Well, I'd better get you dressed,” I said. I knew it wasn't right for bare women to be out of the house; the flies would bite them.

I hauled her into the house, tossed her onto the bed, and held her down while I wrestled the brown dress onto her. It wasn't easy, because she was punching and kicking at me all the time, but finally I got the dress buttoned.

“You oaf!” she snorted. “It's backward!”

I had, of course, put the buttons in the front, where they belonged, but the fit did look a little awkward. “Does it matter?” I asked innocently.

“Get off me, you buffoon, and I'll do it right.”

I let her go and stepped back. She stood, unbuttoned the dress--now I saw that I hadn't aligned the buttons properly, so that the buttons ran off the top while the holes ran off the bottom--and took it off. She turned it about--and suddenly leaped for me, the dress stretched between her hands. She wrapped it about my throat and twisted it in back, choking me.

But some of the stone remained in my neck, too, and the choke was not tight. I struggled for a moment, then let myself relax, feigning unconsciousness. She choked me a while longer, making sure, then let go. “What am I going to do with you?” she muttered rhetorically, supposing me to be beyond hearing. “You're basically a decent guy, but if I let you live--”

I grabbed her about the legs and hauled her down again. “You forgot your dress,” I said and spanked her smartly on her bouncy bottom.

She made a sound as of water dousing an angry fire. “You're impossible!”

“I'm barbarian,” I corrected her. “Now if you don't get into that dress, I'll wrap a sheet around you and take you that way.”

“This dress is ruined!” she protested. “It's all twisted up!”

Because she had used it to choke me. “Well, untwist it.”

“I'll get another,” she decided. “And you'd better put something on, too. You look like a zombie.”

I realized it was true. Clothes don't heal the way I do. My shirt was a tatter, and my trousers might as well not have bothered. A few dangling leather strips were all that remained of my leather armor.

“You can have this dress,” she said, jamming it at me.

Well, it was better than nothing. I would use it until we passed the trouser-tree in her garden. I put it on. I couldn't button the top because my shoulders were too broad, and the bottom hung halfway to my knees, but it did provide some cover.

“Backward, again,” she remarked.

I did not reply. Apparently a dress was backward no matter which way a man put it on.

Threnody got a gray dress from her closet and donned it and her slippers. She stood before a mirror and brushed out her hair. She had lustrous black tresses, matching her midnight eyes. I had been partial to fair women, but now I realized that the dusky ones could be every bit as appealing, physically. “All right, I'm ready,” she informed me.

I took her left arm, to lead her outside--and with her right hand she struck at me. She had picked up a knife! The blade dug into my stone arm, harmlessly, its edge chipping. “Oh, I give up!” she cried in disgust. “I forgot about that!”

I realized that I could not trust her for a moment. I saw some clothesline vine hanging on a hook. I took it down.

“Oh, no, you don't!” she cried, making another break for the door. But she wasn't very strong, despite being strong for a woman, and I held her and got her hands tied behind her. I picked up several scratches and a bite in the process, but I had expected that. She was a hellkitten! And the dirty truth was, that was every bit as appealing to me as the milk-and-honey type of woman.

Then I took her out and set her on the ghost horse and tied her dainty feet to the chains. Pook seemed disgusted at having to carry her, but he understood. I couldn't trust her on her own two feet.

It was too bad, I reflected, that women weren't more like horses. Horses were so much more reasonable.

“My lute!” she exclaimed. “I need my lute!”

“Your what?”

“My lute, bumpkin! My musical instrument. So I can play and sing.”

But I distrusted her motive. She certainly didn't plan to play music at Castle Roogna, since she believed it would fall when she got there. She wasn't going to play for me, since she was fighting me. “Forget it,” I said.

Her mouth closed in a hard line. She was really angry about this--more so, it seemed, than about getting captured and tied. Women are funny creatures.

“Where is your trouser-tree?” I asked, looking around.

“Forget it!” she snapped.

Ah, well, I should have known. I would simply have to use the dress.

We started off toward Castle Roogna. I didn't want to go through the tarasque's maze or over the flesh mountain, so I went east instead, along the brink of the chasm, I hoping to cut south beyond the range of mountains I had encountered before. Progress was slow, because I had to walk and keep a constant eye on Threnody as well as on the landscape. Traveling in Xanth is not much of a picnic, anyway, and was less so now. My heavy stone feet thunked into the ground like ogres' pads. I had learned to walk, but it remained clumsy.

Threnody, evidently getting bored with riding, started talking. “How did you survive the poison and the fall?” she asked, as if this were a routine matter of curiosity. Perhaps it was for her.

I saw no harm in explaining, since I intended to give her no chance to kill me again. She listened attentively. “So you can not die,” she concluded. “Not to stay.”

“Well, it hasn't happened yet,” I said. Was she mellowing? I didn't trust it. I had had experience with gentle, straightforward, loving women, but never before with a treacherous vixen like this. Maybe she was just trying to figure out how to kill me permanently. So, despite my halfway desire to believe her, I remained cautious.

“Demons can't die either,” she said.

“That's because they're not alive to begin with,” I said.

“Oh, no, they're alive--it's merely a different sort of life. They have feelings and interests, just as human folk do.”

“Only the evil feelings,” I said. “They don't have love and conscience and integrity.”

“Do barbarians?” she asked as if nettled.

“Certainly. We're primitives, closer to nature than civilized folk are. We care about nature and magic and friendship.”

“Do you have any friends?”

“Pook's my friend!”

“A ghost horse!” she sneered.

Pook's ears laid back again, and he made a motion as if to buck her off, but controlled himself. He certainly didn't like this woman!

“As I said,” I said, “we barbarians are close to nature. Pook's a fine animal, and I'm proud to be his friend.” I noted as I spoke that now Pook's ears were blushing.

“What about love?”

“I love my father and mother--”

She rolled her eyes. “Imbecile! I mean man-woman love! Have you ever truly loved a woman--or do you merely use a woman and go your way?”

I pondered. Elsie had been nice, and I liked her--but if I had really loved her, I would not have left her. As for Bluebell Elf--there never had been more to that than the favor I had promised. So the barbarian virtue of integrity forced me to yield the point, grudgingly. “No, I guess it's just a passing thing, so far.”

“In that you do not differ from a demon,” she said, smugly establishing that point.

“But I could love,” I said. “A demon can't.”

“True. But what's the big difference between a person who can't love and one who doesn't love?”

“Listen, I'm no demon!” I protested hotly. “What are you getting at?”

“You are taking me against my will to a castle that will be destroyed by my presence,” she said. “Do you call that an act of conscience?”

This was uncomfortable, because I had already experienced a nudge of guilt about it. “I undertook to perform a mission,” I replied, disgruntled. “My conscience says I must do what I agreed to do, whatever it is.”

“Even when you know it's wrong?”

Now I understood what she was doing. She was trying to talk me out of it. But some of the intelligence from the eye-queue spell remained, despite being filtered through dirt and stone, and I was able to answer her. “How can you talk to me of right and wrong? You treacherously killed me twice over!”

“Well, I told you I was sorry!” she snapped. “I didn't like it, but I had to do it.”

“Well, I don't like doing this,” I retorted, “but I have to do it.”

“Touché,” she murmured. Or something like that. There's only one human language in Xanth, but this sounded like another. She was silent for a bit, then started in again. “You had a normal human barbarian upbringing?”

“Sure. And then I went adventuring.”

“And this is your adventure.”

“Right. Fighting monsters and spells--good old-fashioned sword and sorcery.”

“And kidnapping helpless maidens for a fate worse than death?”

She certainly had a way with a barb! But I could barb back, thanks to that dirt in my mind. “Bringing a murderess in to be married.”

She mulled that over for a while. Finally she said, “It's true I tried to kill you, and you have a right to be perturbed about that. But I knew your mission could cause great harm to Xanth, so I had to stop it. I still have to stop it, any way I can. If I can't kill you, maybe I can reason with you.”

Something about that seemed backward to me, but it did seem better to have her talking than to be coldly silent. “Reason away,” I said. “Barbarians aren't very smart about things like logic.”

“If I employ methods you disapprove of, it's because I am not a barbarian,” she said. “In fact, I'm not precisely human.”

I glanced at her. She was tied to the horse, probably not in the most comfortable position, but she was a beautiful figure of a woman. Barbarians have an excellent eye for that sort of thing. “You look pretty good to me.”

“Thank you.” She made a little curtsy. I don't know how, since she was astride the horse with her feet tied, but she did. Women can be remarkably talented in insignificant little ways. “But not all that looks good is good.”

“Yeah, like the nice little paths leading up to a tangle tree,” I agreed. It happened that there was a tangle tree in the distance, and we were avoiding its too-convenient path. Analogies are easy to come by in Xanth.

“There is something I didn't tell you about my ancestry.”

“You're not the King's daughter?”

“I am his daughter--but the Queen was not my mother. That's why the Queen resented me so much and finally cursed me. She hated me for what I represented and for what I was.”

“Not your mother?” I repeated blankly. “How is that possible?”

“You simpleton, not all offspring derives from marriage! I am a bastard.”

The word appalled me, coming as it did from so lovely a creature. Of course I knew what it meant, but it shocked me to think that she should know it, let alone describe herself by means of it. “You--the King--?”

“The King was seduced by an unscrupulous temptress who cared not a whit for him,” Threnody said. “I was the result. My mother conceived me purely as a challenge; she had no interest in keeping me, only in embarrassing her lover. And that she did--by turning me over to King Gromden and proclaiming my origin.”

“But--but that's inhuman!” I exclaimed.

“Naturally--considering the nature of my mother.”

“No decent woman would--”

“But, you see, my mother was neither decent nor a woman.”

“But--” I skidded to a verbal halt, confused. “You're obviously not a half-breed, like a centaur or harpy or werewolf. You're human!”

“Half human.”

“I don't understand!”

“My mother is a demoness.”

A female demon! Still it did not explain everything. “King Gromden wouldn't--not with a demoness--he's a good man!”

Threnody smiled grimly. “So it would be nice to believe. But the fact is, human beings are sometimes naive and often vulnerable. I love my father and know he's a good man. Therefore I have spent some time rationalizing this matter of my birth. It is necessary to understand that the Queen, my foster mother, was not the most attractive of women and was no longer in her prime, while the King was a virile man. He had married her for practical reasons, to help unify the diverging subcultures of Xanth. She was from a village in the south that had felt neglected, among the so-called curse-fiends, who are actually human but live apart from others. They are said to be great actors. When he married one of their women, it cemented their loyalty to Castle Roogna and strengthened the throne. He really was trying to do what was best for Xanth! But she was barren and, in any event, not much interested in storks.”

“I know about storks,” I murmured.

“Then you know that they do not choose the couples to whom they deliver; they must wait for the couples to summon them. They merely fill those orders that have been properly entered. It is a peculiarity of their nature.”