Dragon on a Pedestal (6 page)

“You wanted me to come in?” Irene demanded. “You knew it was me? Then why didn’t you turn off the castle defenses? I may have ruined them all!”

“I couldn’t! Only Humfrey can do that!”

Irene was in no mood for games, not even with so formidable a figure as the Gorgon. “Why didn’t he, then? The last thing I wanted to do was waste time!”

“Oh, it’s terrible! I don’t know what to do! I wish I could change it, but I can’t!”

“Change what?” Irene snapped.

“Oh, you don’t know, of course,” the Gorgon said distractedly. “You couldn’t know!”

“Know what?” This was not only annoying, it was getting peculiar, for the Gorgon was normally the most sensible and self-possessed of women.

“Here, I’ll have to show you. Come to the playroom.”

“The playroom? Look, Gorgon, my child is—”

“So is mine.” The Gorgon was already leading the way. Frustrated, Irene followed.

The playroom was nicely set up with padded floor and walls and brightly colored toys. A diapered baby sat in the middle, chewing on a dragon doll. He seemed to be about a year old.

“I didn’t know you had another child,” Irene said, surprised.

“I don’t,” the Gorgon responded grimly.

“But that’s obviously Humfrey’s offspring! There is the same—” She hesitated.

“The same gnomelike features?” the Gorgon asked.

“Well—”

“You have no need to be embarrassed. I loved Humfrey from the first for what he was. His physical appearance was never important to me. But his mind, his talent—there has never been another like him in Xanth!”

“Yes, of course,” Irene agreed, discomfited. “No reason not to have another—”

“That is not my baby.”

“Not—?” Irene felt a slow flush creeping rebelliously along her neck. Had Humfrey sired a baby by another woman and turned it over to his wife to raise? No wonder the Gorgon was beside herself! “I just can’t believe—” She found she couldn’t even utter the suspicion. “Humfrey’s too brilliant and honest to—that’s why I came to see him—”

“You have seen him.”

“I have to get his advice!” Irene flared. “Why are you showing me his baby?” Then she bit her tongue; she hadn’t meant to say that!

Yet the Gorgon hardly reacted. “That’s not Humfrey’s baby. I assure you, he would never step out on me.”

Not if he wanted to remain flesh instead of stone!
Was that what had happened? No, it couldn’t be!

Irene’s brow furrowed. This was too much for her. “What are you saying?”

“That’s Humfrey.”

Irene laughed. Then she stopped, perceiving the serious expression under the Gorgon’s thick veil. “I must be misunderstanding all this in several crazy ways!”

“Let the mirror show you.” The Gorgon fetched a magic mirror and propped it up against a wall. “Replay the scene,” she directed it.

A picture formed in the mirror. It became, as it were, a window to a jungle scene. There was a deep spring in a hollow, the water not flowing out but rather keeping to itself. By the spring’s edge there was only sand; vegetation appeared in a peculiar concentric progression outward from it, becoming larger the farther away it was, until at a fair distance the trees were full grown. It occurred to Irene that someone or something must have taken a lot of trouble to trim this region, clearing the spring, but now the
vegetation was growing back. Odd that it was not growing fastest nearest the water, however.

A man tramped into view, old and gnarled and small. “Humfrey!” Irene exclaimed. “When is he coming back to the castle? I must talk to him in a hurry!” All manner of nasty private suspicions were allayed by the sight of him, as hale and healthy as a gnome his age could be. But she was aware that this picture did not jibe with what the Gorgon had just told her. What was the explanation?

“Just watch,” the Gorgon said tersely.

Humfrey approached the spring with exaggerated caution. He extended a bottle fixed on the end of a pole, carefully dipping from the spring. When it was full, he shook it so that the flip-top lid on it snapped closed.

“Poison!” Irene exclaimed. “The opposite of healing elixir—”

“Not so,” the Gorgon said.

His sample complete, the Good Magician shook it dry, then brought the bottle in to himself and wrapped it in a voluminous cloth. He retreated from the spring, and the view of the mirror followed him.

Now he came to the magic carpet. There sat his son Hugo, looking as dull as usual, a pile of soggy fruit before him. It was really a pity, Irene thought, about the boy’s inferior talent; a really excellent talent could have redeemed most of his other inadequacies. Hugo tried, but simply couldn’t conjure decent fruit. As it was, Hugo had to be a severe disappointment to his illustrious parents. Small, ugly, stupid, and without useful magic—what was there to say?

Humfrey took time to put away his pole. He handed the wrapped bottle to Hugo with a warning—the picture conveyed no sound, but none was needed—in order to free his hands for the job. His bag of spells was resting on the carpet beside the boy. Humfrey toted spells around the way Irene toted seeds.

The pole, evidently supposed to telescope into a smaller form, balked. With a grimace of irritation, Humfrey braced its base against the ground, took a two-handed grip, and shoved down. Reluctantly, the pole contracted. Irene knew that if her husband Dor had been doing that, the pole would have complained loudly about getting shafted. The inanimate was always as perverse as it thought it could get away with. Humfrey took a new grip, forcing the shaft to shorten again. He was getting there.

The job took him some time, for he was small and old, while the pole exhibited a splendid diversity of resistances. It tried to bow and twist out of the man’s grip, and it made itself slippery, and it tried to spring back to full extension while Humfrey was taking a new grip. But finally he got it compressed into a cylinder, and then to a disk resembling a Mundane coin, and put the disk in his pocket.

There was a shaking of the ground. Hugo covered his ears, reacting to some horrible sound. Good Magician Humfrey whirled about to face the sudden threat. The view in the mirror swung to bring into sight—

“The Gap Dragon!” Irene exclaimed in horror. Her memory of that monster was fresh from her own recent encounter. “That’s where it went after it left Castle Zombie! While I was looking for Ivy—”

The dragon bore down on Humfrey and Hugo, steam jetting from its nostrils. Words were shouted, still silent in the mirror, and the magic carpet abruptly took off. Hugo, sitting unbraced, lost his balance and fell off. The carpet sailed into the sky, carrying Humfrey’s bag of spells away. In a moment it was out of sight.

“Oh, no!” Irene exclaimed. “He’s lost his magic!”

The Gorgon nodded grimly. “I should have been there,” she said, touching her veil meaningfully. “Men are so inadequate by themselves. But someone had to tend the castle while he went for the water from the Fountain of Youth.”

Irene suffered another shock. “The Fountain of—!”

“Oh, I shouldn’t have let that slip!” the Gorgon fussed. “It’s a secret.”

In the mirror, the action continued. The Gap Dragon bore down on the man and boy. “A secret?” Irene asked, distracted by the significance of the Fountain despite the horror of the scene. Actually, it wasn’t a fountain, just a pool or spring; perhaps it only fountained at certain hours of the day or when the water level dropped and needed replenishing. Many people, over the centuries, had looked for the Fountain; maybe its poollike aspect had caused them to miss it. Anyone who happened on it unaware and drank deeply, not knowing its property, would have been put out of business by an overdose of youth. “Don’t you realize what that water could do for the people of Xanth? My father—”

The Good Magician was yelling at his son. Hugo fumbled stupidly with the wrapped bottle he held. The sequence seemed to take forever: dragon advancing, blowing steam, man retreating, boy extricating bottle.

“Don’t you see, it has to be secret,” the Gorgon was explaining. “Humfrey uses it judiciously, to keep himself not much over a century old, and the Zombie Master uses it to improve the performance of his zombies—he knew about it in the old days, in his prior life, and told Humfrey. It used to be a literal fountain, but it wore down over the centuries—but if it were available generally in Xanth, no one would ever die of old age, and some things have to—soon things would be so crowded—”

Irene tuned her out, watching the mirror. Finally the boy got the bottle out and the lid off. Responding to instructions, he swung the bottle in an arc so that its magic water flung out toward the dragon in a spreading stream.

“Watch out!” Irene cried uselessly, realizing what such an undisciplined splash could do.

The water struck the charging dragon, who immediately began to shrink into youth. It also doused the man.

Irene watched, dumbfounded. The water of Youth was a weapon, for an overdose would rob a creature of all its adult powers. It seemed that it did not have to be imbibed; the mere touch of it on a person’s skin sufficed. But a weapon could be turned against friend as well as foe. Both dragon and Magician were helplessly youthening.

The Gap Dragon became a smaller monster, with brighter green scales and thicker steam. The Good Magician became a halfway handsome gnome of age fifty or so, with a straighter body and a solid head of hair. But the trend did not stop there. Both progressed, or regressed, to childhood.

“They both OD’d,” the Gorgon said. “I suppose we’re lucky they didn’t youthen into nothing. Both are over a century old; that’s probably all that saved them. I used the emergency spell Humfrey left me to conjure him back—”

The baby Magician disappeared from the image. Irene quelled her shock, realizing that this was not youthening into nonexistence, but simply the operation of the conjuration-spell. Humfrey vanished from the scene in the mirror because he had appeared here in his castle.

Hugo, dismayed and confused, began to cry. The baby dragon shook itself, looked about, spread its fledgling wings, and scooted away, terrified.

The mirror image faded out. Irene turned to look again at the baby in the playroom. “It really
is
Humfrey!” she breathed.

The Gorgon sighed. “It really is. And Hugo is still out there. He didn’t seem to get any of the water on himself, but that’s about the only bright spot. I can’t tune in on him with the mirror, because it is set on Humfrey and I don’t know how to retune it. As soon as it realized Humfrey was gone from the scene, it quit the image. I can’t even go out to search for my lost son, because—”

Irene realized that the Gorgon was crying under her veil. She had been devastated in the last hour and needed help. Irene knew exactly how that felt—but was surprised to discover that the Gorgon, older and more experienced than Irene and the most formidable woman in Xanth when she lifted her veil, was in fact less well equipped to handle such calamity than was Irene herself. Physical or magical power did not serve as well at this moment as did emotional stability.

“Come, sit down, and we’ll work this out,” Irene said, taking the Gorgon by the elbow. “My child is out there, too. That’s why I came here.” But
obviously her mission had been in vain; there would be no help from Humfrey now.

The Gorgon suffered herself to be guided. Soon they were in the kitchen, the most comfortable place for married women, sharing cups of T sweetened by the product of B’s.

Irene eyed a plate of cheeses. One piece was huge, with a mottled rind, and when she reached for it, it growled menacingly. “Don’t take that,” the Gorgon warned. “It’s monster cheese, reserved for muensters—I mean monsters. Try this instead.” She turned the plate to present another type.

Irene took a piece and chewed delicately. “It’s good. What kind is it?”

“Gorgon-zola. I make it myself. I stare at it through my veil until it’s half petrified.”

Irene had to smile. This was a useful incidental aspect of the Gorgon’s dread talent.

Now they got down to business. “First we must get a good baby-sitter for Humfrey. Uh, is there any known cure for magic youthening?”

“Only time—the same as for the victim of a love spring,” the Gorgon said sadly. “But I’m willing to wait, knowing that in due course he will regain his full powers and be in the prime of life. But what a wait that will be, even if I get hold of some Fountain of Youth water myself so I can rejoin him in middle age. And who will fill the role he does for Xanth?”

The outlook did look dismal. “Usually there is some countercharm,” Irene said. “If there were some substance or spell to reverse the effect, to age him more rapidly—”

“Only Humfrey would know where to find that,” the Gorgon said. “And he is the one who
doesn’t
know, now.”

It was an unfortunate irony. Irene shrugged and chewed her cheese, unable to offer any other suggestions.

“But I’ve got to rescue Hugo!” the Gorgon exclaimed. “Did you say someone could come here and care for Humfrey while I’m going out to find my son?”

“Lacuna, the Zombie Master’s daughter, will do nicely. She’s just sixteen and good with children.” Irene suffered a retroactive regret that the twins’ debut had been so rudely shattered; instead of a party, there had been disaster.

“Oh, yes, I know Lacuna. A perfect imp of a child. She used to print messages all over the castle. Things like NEVER PUT OFF TILL TOMORROW WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY. It seems funny in retrospect, but it was annoying at the time.”

Irene’s brow furrowed. “Annoying?”

“It was printed on the toilet.”

Irene swallowed her chuckle. “I won’t even inquire what Hiatus did to the bathroom.” Hiatus’ talent was growing eyes, ears, noses, and mouths from walls and other places. “Lacuna was taking care of Ivy, and I believe it was no fault of hers that Ivy got lost. The Gap Dragon—” It was hard to speak so objectively, but it was necessary; time was of the essence. “Lacuna lived here as a child; she surely knows how to stay out of trouble and where the facilities are. She won’t poke into the Magician’s spells.” Irene had divided the Good Magician, in her mind, into two aspects: the century-plus old man he used to be, and the baby who now existed. The presence of the old Humfrey would always be felt here, no matter how long he was away. “You can give her any special pointers she needs; the rest will come naturally. That will free you to go out and fetch Hugo with a clear conscience.”