Geis of the Gargoyle (58 page)

Surprise crossed her eyes, exactly as she had in childhood.
 
"Why it's a cache of reverse wood in powder form!" she said, surprised.
 
"Someone long ago mixed a potion consisting of equal parts magic dust and ground reverse wood and sealed it in a jar.
 
After three thousand years or so the seal is beginning to leak, so it affected the exercise of my talent.
 
It did not reverse it, merely distorted it, because the potion has odd magical properties."

"Why would someone make such a potion?" Mentia asked, a demonly light of excitement showing in her eyes.

"I conjecture that it is for some specialized purpose," Surprise replied.

A new barrage of arrows came.
 
These ones glowed.
 
One stuck in the end of the wits wall, setting fire to it.
 
"Incendiaries," Iris said, alarmed.
 
"At my wits' end."

Gayle went out beyond the wall, came at it from the other side, caught the shaft of me arrow in her stone teeth, and jerked it out.
 
The burning stopped.

Flares went off.
 
The sky beyond the wall lit up with fancy silent explosions of light.
 
There were beautiful red, blue, green, and yellow streaks across the sky.

"Can you lead us to that jar?" Mentia asked.
 
"Or tell me exactly where it is, so I can fetch it?"

"I can take you there," Surprise said.

"But you shouldn't waste your magic on some stupid potion," Hiatus protested.

"I think this may be important," Mentia said.
 
"Look at how the philter is trying to distract us from it."

Hiatus nodded.
 
"Point made.
 
It doesn't want us to have that jar."

"We'll hold the fort here," Gary said.
 
"You two fetch that jar."

The flares became so bright and dense that the entire landscape and sky were intolerably bright.
 
Now there was noise, a kind of roaring moaning, as of a fierce north wind with its toe stuck in a grinder.
 
The philter was certainly alarmed-or wanted them to think it was.

Mentia formed herself into an impervious transparent sheet.
 
She wrapped herself around Surprise.
 
Surprise walked around the stone hinge and disappeared into the seeming forest.

"Let's distract the philter, if we can," Hiatus said.
 
He patted the ground with his hand, feeling for things to throw.
 
He evidently found something, though it was invisible because of the overlay of illusion.

Gary and Iris did the same, and Gayle sniffed the ground.
 
Soon they found a number of throwable stones.
 
They heaved these out toward the source of the fireworks.
 
Gary doubted that this would have much effect, but in one and a half moments there was a crash, and a section of the sky went blank.
 
Apparently they had scored on a source of illusion.

Then the color faded.
 
There was a clucking sound, and a squat bird walked toward the wall.

"What's that?" Hiatus asked.

"It looks like a hen," Iris said.

"Do hens have scales?" Gayle asked.

There was something familiar about it.
 
Gary focused his memory, trying to place the creature.
 
Then he had it:

"That's a drag-hen!" he exclaimed.
 
"Stay away from it!"

"Why?" Hiatus asked.

Then the hen opened her beak.
 
A jet of flame shot out and splashed against the wall.

"Now I know why," Hiatus said.

Fortunately the wall was solid and most of the henfire was illusory, so not much got through.

Mentia and Surprise returned.
 
Surprise was holding a glassy jar about a quarter full of a gray powder.
 
"The lid was loose," she said.
 
"I screwed it tight, so there's no more leakage.
 
But I thought we'd never get through to it; the illusions were horrendous."

"So the philter really didn't want us getting that jar," Gary said.

"It really didn't," Mentia agreed.
 
"But all it had was illusion and a smattering of substance, and those weren't enough to stop us."

"But we still don't know why it fears the jar."

"I can divine that," Surprise said.

"I think you should," Mentia said.
 
"Then you should return to your natural age.
 
We wouldn't want you to get stuck in this age."

"That would be horrible," Surprise agreed.
 
She crossed her eyes, then looked surprised.
 
"They used this for the original conjuration of the Interface! It's the main ingredient.
 
It allows the conjuration to change the nature of existing magic."

"You mean-?" Mentia asked, her eyes growing so large she looked like an insect.

"Yes.
 
It will enable us to bind the philter into the Interface without otherwise disturbing it.
 
It should all have been used up before, so they threw the jar away.
 
They didn't realize that it wasn't empty.
 
That some was left over, which should have been used to harness the philter."

"But why-"

"Because the philter made an illusion that the jar was empty.
 
To conceal the fact that it had avoided incorporation in the Interface.
 
They thought they had done the job properly.
 
When they let go of the jar, the philter covered it with illusion so that it could not be found again, so the error could not be corrected.
 
And it got itself a threethousand-year rest-at Xanth's expense."

"And now we shall end that rest," Gary said.

Surprise crossed her eyes.
 
Suddenly she was small again.
 
But the makeup remaining on her face made her look uncannily mature.

"You did well, dear," Iris said.

The child clouded up.
 
"But I used up more of my magic.
 
I won't ever be able to do those things again." A tear fell from her eye.

"In a good cause," Iris said soothingly.
 
"Now, if you can transform my wits back so I can have them again-"

"Oh.
 
Yes.
 
I can do that, now that the jar's sealed." The child crossed her eyes, and the wit-blocks dissolved into whitish specs that zipped back into Iris' head.

'That feels so much better," Iris said gratefully.
 
"I shall try not to lose them again."

They plowed on through the massed illusions, countering them one by one and two by two and three by three.
 
When an army of ogres tromped toward them.
 
Iris made an army of giants to oppose them.
 
The result was a battle so horrible to watch that they quickly fled its carnage.
 
When flying dragons appeared.
 
Iris made land dragons to counter them, with more awful battle.
 
When foul harpies flew in, dropping their explosive eggs, foul goblins with slingshots came to strike those eggs with stones and explode them before they were dropped.
 
All manner of monsters were met by all manner of other monsters, and annihilation was continuous.

They followed a hi-way, the low road, and a bye-way, saying hello to the first, cheer up to the second, and farewell to the third.
 
When a giant appeared with a BB gun that fired slinging B's from a B-have at them, they countered with an AA gun that Aced out the B's.

They came at last to the null magic circle.
 
Here the effects diminished, but they knew that the worst was to come.
 
For they would have to brave the philter in the very heart of the strongest, maddest magic of all.

Gary was surprised to see that it was now night.
 
The rock stars were out: bright stones in the sky, rocking with the music of the spheres and cubes.

They waded and swam through the pool and reached the central island.
 
There there was light, as the great central cone of intense magic fed down to bathe what they now knew was the philter's hiding place in some of Xanth's most powerful magic.
 
It shimmered with seeming malignancy.
 
It was mentally and physically daunting.

"But I can help you handle it," Gayle said.
 
"I'm used to its intensity.
 
Just grab hold of my fur."

They did so, and it did help.
 
They moved as a group inside the enclosure to the pedestal where the gargoyle had squatted for three thousand years.
 
It was empty, of course, but now shimmered with the hint of an illusion.

In a moment the illusion became more than a hint.
 
The copy of the warrior maiden Hannah appeared.
 
"So you think you have won!" she spat at them.
 
The spit made weird contortions in the air before landing in the channel around the pedestal.
 
"But you don't have the nerve to harness me!"

Mentia turned to Surprise.
 
"We can support you, but you are the one who must actually take and hold the philter.
 
Can you handle it?"

The child looked stricken.
 
"I can do the magic I need.
 
But nerve isn't magic, is it?"

"No, dear," Iris said.
 
"It is a quality of character."

"I'm too young to have such character," Surprise said, a tear forming at one eye or the other.

"I have learned to use my messed-up magic in a new way," Hiatus said.
 
"Maybe you can use yours in a new way too, to get what you need."

"Gee, I can? How?"

"Well, can you orient on what you need, as you did to find the jar of potion?"

"No, I can't do any magic twice."

"But you can do similar magic.
 
Suppose you could make things become visible, so-"

"Sure." Surprise crossed her eyes.

Suddenly the chamber was littered with things.
 
Gary looked around, trying to figure out what they were.
 
It looked like so much garbage.

"Talents'" Mentia said.
 
"Those are individual talents made visible!"

"She has the talent of seeing the talent of others," Iris said.
 
"In fact, she's given that talent to all of us."

"Sorry," Surprise said.
 
'The magic is so strong here that it turned out a whole lot stronger than I expected."

"And of seeing talents as individual entities," Hiatus said.
 
"See-you look like an illusion.
 
Iris."

"And you look like a cluster of twisted roots," Iris retorted.
 
"But you do have a point.
 
Gary looks like a horrendous stone gargoyle surrounded by pure water."

"You're beautiful," Gay Ie told Gary.

"But we must not be diverted from our need," Mentia said sensibly.
 
"I would love to collect all these talents and figure out what each one is.
 
This one, for example." She picked up a little ball of whirling whatevers-and puffed into psychedelic smoke.
 
Gary felt seasick, watching it, and he saw Surprise getting wild.
 
Even Gayle seemed quite nervous.
 
Hiatus was waving his arms in some insane pattern.