Yon Ill Wind (16 page)

“They're all over.  Fire-breathers, smokers, and steamers; winged, land, and water; big, larger, and huge.  They're always hungry.  They're sort of the top of the food chain.

Best thing is to stay away from them.”

So Midrange had already gathered.  But now they had to stop talking, because they were coming to a cave.  The trail entered it.  He even caught the faint perfume of the bleep who had lured Woofer in.  Thanks to Snarl's help, it had taken him only another five minutes.  Now he had five more minutes to assess the situation and summon Nimby.

“Is there another way into this cave?” he asked the dog.

“Probably.  I'll sniff out one.” The little canine circled to the right, sniffing.

So Midrange circled to the left.  Soon he found a winding aperture just about right for slinking through.  So he slunk through it.  It was dark inside, but he was comfortable with that.  It was another of the myriad ways in which cats were superior to other creatures.

He sniffed, and smelled Woofer.  That helped him navigate the various side crevices, coming ever closer without going directly there.  Because there still could be more trouble than he wanted, if He got discovered.

Then he heard a yip.  That was Snarl!  The dog must have entered by another passage.  Why had he given himself away?

Midrange slunk closer, until he could see into the central chamber.  There were Woofer and Tweeter, just lying and perching there.  They weren't even trying to escape, though nothing held them.

Snarl slunk in to join them, his tail between his legs.

He was definitely unhappy, but he was obeying someone.

Yet there was no one there.  Just a pile of metallic junk in the center of the cave, faintly glowing.

Then Snarl spoke.  “I did not come alone.  There is a cat who is coming to rescue the other dog and bird.”

Why, the little traitor!  He was blabbing the mission!

Had Midrange trusted a spy?

“The cat is coming in another way,” Snarl said.  “In fact, he is crouching behind you.”

That did it.  Midrange leaped up, tiger fashion.  “Woofer! Tweeter!  Get out of here!” he cried.  “I'll pounce on it.”

Something swiveled around to face him.  It was a TV screen, with icons on it.  One picture expanded:  a cat going splat against an invisible wall in midair.

SPLAT!  Midrange suited action to picture, and fell to the floor in a heap.

Outraged, he gathered himself together for another pounce.  But a picture appeared on the screen, showing a cat wading through supersticky dense glue, and he found he could move only excruciatingly slowly.

A picture of a dog talking appeared.  With that.  Woofer began to speak.  “This is a machine called Sending, who was originally a program animating Magician Grey Murphy's Mundane computer.  He helped Grey and Princess Ivy go to Xanth, provided they took him along.  Now he is scheming to conquer Xanth.  This will take time—a few thousand years—but he is patient.  He is in the process of assembling a group of creatures and things to do his bidding.  The recent influx of magic dust has enabled him to act more strongly.  Thus he was able to lure me into his cave, though he failed with Karen.  That's all right; he'll get her and the other humans when the magic intensifies enough.”

“But how does he do it?” Midrange asked.

“Sending has the power to change reality in his immediate vicinity,” Woofer said.  “Just as his sire.  Com-Pewter, does.  Pewter prints whatever he wishes reality to be, and it is then true, near him.  Only Sending works better with icons, which he expands into pictures when he wants to invoke them.  So he has made us captive by luring us into his ambiance, then invoking magic icons to control us.  It is not possible to oppose his will, because he defines will here.”

“That's why I had to blab about your mission,” Snarl said.  “The icon made me.  I'm sorry.”

Now that Midrange had been snared by Sending, he understood how it was.  “You had no choice,” he said.  But he realized that he, Midrange, had better exert some choice, because otherwise the wicked machine could force him to blab about Nimby coming to the rescue.  He had to distract Sending a few more minutes.  Maybe the machine was subject to flattery.  “I thought I would find Woofer and Tweeter and rescue them.  I guess I was pretty foolish.”

An icon expanded into a picture of a clown laughing.

Sending thought it was very funny.  “But instead I just got caught myself,” he continued.  “But I'm curious about one thing:  how did you get those wraiths to help you, by luring folk into your cave?  They were running far beyond your ambiance.” Midrange was sure of that, because otherwise Sending would simply have changed reality for miles around, and made all creatures and people serve him.

The talking dog picture appeared again.  “He explained that to us while we waited for others to try to rescue you, and thus to fall into his power,” Woofer said.  “He made a deal with the wraiths, that if they helped him achieve power, he would enable them to achieve solid form again.

They are eager to gain some substance, so they cooperate.”

“Substance?” Midrange asked.  “How is that possible?”

“It is our substance they will be given,” Woofer said sadly.  “The wraiths will inhabit us and take over our bodies and minds.”

“But this is barbaric!” Midrange protested.

The laughing clown appeared on the screen.

Then there was a sound outside.  A wraith hurried in.

“A damsel and a dragon!” it cried silently.  “She's lovely, but it has a donkey head.  It forged right to this cave.

They're coming in!”

The screen faced Midrange.  A picture of a cat talking appeared.

Suddenly Midrange was compelled to tell all he knew.

“It is Chlorine and the dragon ass called Nimby,” he blabbed.  “They are coming to nullify you and rescue us.

I have been stalling, to give them time to get here unobserved.  They have two pieces of reverse wood.”

The screen flickered violently.  Evidently the mention of reverse wood bothered the machine.  Then the image of a door slamming closed appeared.

Too late.  A wooden ball rolled into the cave and came to rest before the screen.

A picture showed dogs, cat, and bird hastily shoving the ball out of the cave.  But before they could act, the ball fell into two parts.  And Sending's screen went dim.

“Let's get out of here before he recovers,” Midrange said.  The four of them, freed from the machine's power, charged out of the cave.

There was the striped dragon, with the lovely young woman.  She was still leaning forward, evidently just having rolled the ball into the cave.  “Hi, fellows,” she said brightly.  “The two pieces of reverse wood nullified each other.  But when they fell apart, they nullified Sending.  He'll be helpless until that wood gets moved out of his cave—which will be hard to do.  Now we must hurry, because the moving house is about to start moving.”

They hurried.  All of them ran, following the dragon, who knew where they were going.  Snarl came along too.

They made it to the road, panting.  There was the RV, just starting to move.  The water had all drained away, leaving the surface drivable.  “They don't see us!” Chlorine gasped.

Nimby snapped up a piece of wood, held it between his donkey teeth, lifted his head, and gave what sounded like a whistle in ducktalk.  It was an awful noise.  But it worked, the vehicle slowed.

“Nimby—you can talk!” Chlorine cried as they raced up to it.  But the dragon shook his head, and Midrange knew why:  he had made a sound, but it wasn't talking.

The whistle had been artificial, because of air blown past the piece of wood, and meaningless, except in the sense that it signaled the whistler's presence.  It was just noise, not talk.

Chlorine realized that after two-thirds of a moment.

“You made it, but it wasn't you.  I should have realized.”

She smiled.  “So I'm not a whistler's mother.  I'll survive.”

They got there, and Nimby changed back to his manform.  Woofer and Tweeter scrambled into the RV, and Chlorine followed.  But Midrange paused.  “What about you.  Snarl?” he asked the dog.

Snarl hesitated.  “Nobody here needs a companion?” he asked plaintively.

The dog had helped Midrange accomplish his mission in time.  Generosity was not really Midrange's forte, but there was an implied deal:  companionship for help.  “Get on in,” he told the dog.  “We'll figure something out.”

Nimby had paused.  Now he picked up Snarl, whose legs were too short to navigate the steep step up, and set him on the floor inside.  Then Midrange bounded in, and Nimby came last.

“You did it!” David cried, picking Midrange up and hugging him.  “You rescued them.  I knew you could!

'Cause you're my cat.”

Disgusting display of sentiment, but somehow Midrange wasn't entirely displeased.  He extricated himself after a moment.  He had indeed done the job, though perhaps some small credit should be given to the catatonic medicine, and to Snarl, and to Nimby also.

The RV was moving, gathering speed.  Snarl was in Chlorine's lap, peering out a window, fascinated by this magic vehicle.  Suddenly he barked.  “It's her!”

What now?  Midrange looked out.  There was a disconsolate dark-haired girl walking by the edge of the road.

She seemed to be looking for something.  “Who is 'her'?” Midrange asked the dog.

“My ideal companion!  The girl whose hair formed me.

Maybe she's looking for me.”

Midrange wasn't sure about that, but it was worth a try.

He ran up to the front, where Jim-Dad was driving.

“Meop!” he said, in as plain human as he could muster.

Jim-Dad looked at him.  “You want me to pick up that girl?  We don't have room for—”

“Mneo,” Midrange said.  “Meust meop.” He wished his cat tongue could form the clumsy human words better.

He was trying to say, “No—just stop.”

Jim-Dad sighed and braked the vehicle.  He came to a stop by the girl, who paused to stare at the RV in astonishment.  Obviously she had never seen a monster like this before.  But at least she wasn't running away from it.

Snarl leaped to the floor and charged for the front, his stubby legs slipping on the unfamiliar surface.  He arrived just as the girl was answering Jim-Dad's question.  “I'm Ursa.  I'm just looking for my dog.  I was distracted and lost him, and I can't find him anywhere.  I'm afraid he'll be hurt by the madness if I don't find him and take him home quickly.  Have you seen—?”

Then Snarl launched himself out the door.  Ursa saw him and plucked him out of midair.  “Snarl!  You're here! You're safe!” She hugged him joyfully, and his stubby little tail wagged ferociously.

So Snarl would not be traveling farther with them; he had found his ideal companion.  Midrange looked out the window as the RV resumed motion.  The girl waved, and Snarl barked.  Then they were gone.  Karen wiped away a tear, and Midrange's own eyes were wet, but of course, that was because of the lingering effect of the Crimea River.

After that, the drive became boring.  Jim-Dad was driving fast, trying to get where he was going before the madness made it impossible.  There was no other traffic on the road, which helped, but still it wasn't the safest mode of travel.  The children were settling down to normal fidgeting, while Sean was oddly subdued, as if he had suffered some great forgotten adventure of his own.  Midrange tuned all of it out and catnapped.

He woke when the RV swerved.  No wonder:  the flying dragons were back.  They were swooping down to strafe the vehicle, and Jim-Dad was trying to dodge their reaching flames.  But a flame caught it anyway—and did no harm.

“Illusions!” Jim-Dad said, disgusted.  “Trying to trick me into swerving off the road.  Because it's still enchanted, and they can't really attack us here.” After that he drove straight ahead, even when a dragon came right down to smash into the windshield, and there was nothing.

Midrange sat up and watched, because this was getting interesting.  Suppose one of those dragons turned out to be real, and Jim-Dad didn't dodge it?  If maybe there were a flaw in the enchantment, letting one monster through.  But soon the phantom dragons gave up, probably because it was no fun when the vehicle wouldn't be bluffed.

Then there was a sign:  JUNK SHUN.  “What do you suppose that means?” Jim-Dad asked rhetorically.  “I don't remember it from before.”

It soon turned out to be a crossroads where there was a huge pile of garbage, refuse, and junk.  Was it real—or more illusion?  A lot of that junk was in the middle of the road; the vehicle could suffer damage if it plowed into it at speed.

“Delay is disaster,” Jim-Dad muttered, and maintained speed.  He won:  they passed through the junk without contact.

After that there were various weird images in the sky and on the ground.  At times it looked as if the sky was solid, with mountains growing on it, while the land was gaseous, with birds flying through it.  The road was a ribbon of asphalt winding between them, now tunneling through the hills and then floating on water.  At one point it headed straight out into space, with the ground showing far below.  But Jim-Dad just forged on, ignoring all the effects, and in the end prevailed.  His natural Mundane disbelief in magic was helping him reject the illusions.  As dusk threatened, they reached the turnoff to Imp Erial.

As they pulled carefully into the village, they saw that the imps were desperate.  They were still working, but they looked haggard.  Piles of boxes and bags of gems sat on the walks, not yet carried to safety.  Obviously they were not going to make it.

The RV drew to a stop.  Quieta appeared, her nice dress sweat-sodden, her nice hair in disarray.  “But we thought you were safely out of Xanth by this time,” she cried.

“We came to help you complete your job,” Jim-Dad said.  “Tell us how to do that.”

Quieta wasted no time on amazement.  “You can carry those piles of gems to the cave.  Ersonal will show you the way.”

They trooped out, not bothering with the accommodation spell this time.  Each of the humans, including Nimby, picked up a pile and carried it carefully.  Each load was perhaps ten times what an imp might have carried.  They followed Imp Ersonal along a path that was really too small for full humans, but it had to do, because if they reduced to imp size, they wouldn't be able to carry their burdens.