Roc and a Hard Place Read online

  “Yes,” MareAnn agreed. “But she will be bound not to do it for this mission.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the child said, looking truly woeful.

  MareAnn snapped her fingers, and smoke formed. It swirled before her. “Am I released?” it inquired.

  “After you accompany horse and rider safely to the Simurgh,” Wira said.

  The smoke oriented on the pair. “That’s no horse—that’s four quarters. And that’s no child—that’s—”

  “Woe Betide,” MareAnn and Wira said firmly together.

  The smoke sighed mistily. “So it’s like that. Okay, let’s hit the trail.”

  Woe Betide squeezed the horse’s sides with her precious little legs. “Go, Eight Bits,” she said.

  And suddenly they were off, in a cloud of dust that left the two standing women coughing.

  2

  SIMURGH

  The quarter horse ran like the wind, but there was evidently a long way to go. The Land of Xanth whizzed by in the manner land did, moving back magically fast nearby and slowly farther out, because distant regions felt less urgency about such things. Woe Betide didn’t know enough geography to tell what direction they were going, and was too young to really care.

  “I wish I had a lollipop,” she said.

  The cloud of smoke appeared, floating beside her and keeping the pace. “What flavor?”

  “Mustard gas.”

  A hand formed, bearing a yellow pop that was giving off vile yellow fumes. “Done.”

  The child snatched it and sniffed its fumes. She coughed and retched, and her darling little face turned blotchy purple. “Perfect!” she wheezed. “This stuff would smother an army.”

  “So what did you ask the Good Magician?” the cloud inquired. “Not that I care.”

  “How to make a signal the stork will heed,” Woe Betide said as her voice crept back into her ravaged throat.

  The horse’s ears twitched. Fracture lines appeared along his body, as if he were about to come unglued.

  “Because when I grow up in an umpteen million years, I’ll need to know!” Woe Betide exclaimed. “Of course, right now I’m still a cute innocent little child, so am protected by the Adult Conspiracy, and wouldn’t ever even dream of knowing anything like that. So the Good Magician hasn’t Answered me yet, but when the time comes, he will.”

  Eight Bits relaxed, and the fracture lines faded. All creatures of Xanth knew the importance of maintaining the Adult Conspiracy; no child could be allowed to learn the secret of summoning the stork so that it would bring a baby. Or the Words of Evil Power that would scorch vegetation and burn maidenly ears red. Or anything that was Too Interesting for a child’s own good. Of course, children didn’t much like the Conspiracy, but such was the magic of its nature that the instant they grew up, they joined it. Demons honored few rules of decent behavior, but they liked conspiracies.

  The cloud of smoke that was Helen Back seemed to find the situation amusing. “Are you sure you’re a child?” she inquired. “It seems to me that I almost remember you in some other form, much older—”

  “And what did you ask Humfrey?” Woe Betide asked quickly.

  “Where to find a summer salt,” Helen answered. “I collect exotic salts, and I have winter, spring, and fall salt, but could never find summer salt. I looked all over, from here to—” She paused. “But of course, I can’t use that word before an innocent little child.”

  And Metria couldn’t reveal her true status while riding the quarter horse, lest he sunder into fourths. The demoness was teasing her as only such an infernal creature could, trying to trick her into betraying her age. Fortunately she already knew about such travels: The demoness had gone from here to Helen Back. And she always brought what was most needed, at the least opportune time. Or what was least needed, at exactly the right time. Woe Betide had tried to mess that up, by asking for a horrible flavor of lollipop, but it hadn’t worked, and she had had to eat the awful thing.

  “So after you finish with me, the Good Magician will tell you where to find that salt,” Woe Betide said. “Then you can sit below the salt and be a creature for all seasons.”

  “Something like that,” Helen agreed. A face formed in the cloud. “You certainly seem mature for an itty bitty innocent child.”

  “It’s all illusion. I’m not what I seem.”

  Helen couldn’t argue with that. They continued for a while in silence as the scenery went by. Far mountains shifted grandly, showing first one side, then another. Forests sprang up, grew tall, then quit. For a while they followed a paved road. Every time it came to an intersection with another road, it puffed itself up into double the size, trying to impress them. But it didn’t work, because the other roads did the same. Sometimes the crossing roads contested for power, throwing out masses of curving lanes. The object seemed to be to touch the other road where it couldn’t touch back, but evidently the roads had been at this contest for a long time, because every lane connected. Some intersections looked like diamonds, and some like cloverleaves, and some like masses of spaghetti. Sometimes a road chickened out and tunneled under the other, or bridged over it, but often there were still confusingly outflung lanes trying to score.

  Helen got bored with this, so resumed dialogue. “What does the Good Magician have to do with the Simurgh?”

  “Wish I knew. Where exactly does she live?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. She lives in Qaf.”

  Woe Betide was puzzled. “In what?”

  “Qaf. It’s a mountain range that encircles the Earth.”

  “A mountain of earth?”

  “Not exactly. It’s made of a single emerald. It’s pretty.”

  “I suppose so. The Simurgh must like pretty things.”

  “The Simurgh likes the whole of everything. But since she already has everything she needs or wants, what could you do for her?”

  “I wish I knew,” Woe Betide admitted. “Maybe she’s getting ready to replace the universe again.”

  Now the cloud was startled. “What—with all of us in it?”

  “Well, maybe it gets dull for her, after a while. Or dirty. She might prefer a fresh new one.”

  “But what would happen to all of us?”

  “Maybe we’d all be squished into nothingness. Does it matter?”

  Helen considered. “Probably not. But the human folk might mind.” Then the cloud stretched. “I’m going to take half a snooze. Wake me if anything interesting appears.” The cloud settled into a featureless blob.

  Woe Betide was left to her own thoughts. This really was a pretty easy trip. In fact, it hadn’t been all that hard to get into the Good Magician’s castle. True, Humfrey had grumped at her, but he had always been grumpy. Had it been too easy?

  The more she pondered, the more the suspicion grew: Humfrey had wanted her to get in to ask her Question. Because he had something for her to do. Maybe he owed the Simurgh a favor. Maybe the Simurgh had asked for the services of a demoness. So Metria was it.

  She sighed. So be it. She would do what she had to do, so she could prevail on the stork to deliver a baby to her. It was probably a fair deal.

  The horse slewed to a halt. There was a massive chain across the road, so that they could not pass. Woe Betide was tempted to float over it, but feared the horse wouldn’t understand. So she dismounted and stepped forward to inspect the nearest links.

  Each one was in a flat oblong shape, with printing on it. In fact, each had a single letter of the alphabet. Woe Betide walked along beside the chain, reading the letters. They spelled out: THIS IS A CHAIN LETTER. IT HAS BEEN THREE TIMES AROUND THE WORLD. BREAK THE CHAIN AND YOU WILL BE SORRY. JOE SCHMOE BROKE THE CHAIN AND NEXT DAY HE CAME DOWN WITH CROTTLED GREEPS. JANE DOE PRESERVED THE CHAIN, AND SHE WON GREAT WONDERFULS. REMEMBER, YOU MUST PASS THIS CHAIN MAIL ON WITHIN 48 HOURS, OR ELSE.

  Woe Betide considered. Was this interesting enough to wake Helen for? The demoness would be really annoyed if she missed something good.
This seemed good. So she decided to let Helen sleep.

  Still, she needed to get past this chain. She didn’t have anything against it, but it was in her way, and she had a mission to attend to.

  Could she go around it? She looked to either side, but the chain extended as far as she could see. That was because it went around the world three times. Could she climb over it? Maybe so, but Eight Bits couldn’t. Could she squeeze under it? Again, she might, but the quarter horse would probably fragment with the effort.

  She shrugged. She doubted that a chain belonged across the road anyway, whatever it might claim. She also doubted that this was one of the Good Magician’s challenges. It was probably just routine mischief. So she would break it. She formed her little hands into big firm pincers and clamped them on half a link. She concentrated her demon strength. The key was to use the magic of narrowness: a really thin edge could cut through the most solid substance, if pushed hard enough.

  The letters on the links changed. Now they said OOOOOWWW!! But she continued her pressure, until she crunched through her link.

  Then she went after the other half link. It tried to wiggle away, but she cuffed it hard enough to stun it. Cuff links: She remembered that advice from somewhere. She set her pincers and started crunching.

  YOU’LL BE SORRY! the letters spelled, WHO BREAKS THE CHAIN IS DOOMED. AAAAAAHH!!

  The half link snapped, and the chain fell apart. The way was clear.

  “What’s this?”

  Woe Betide jumped. There was the cloud, with a horrendous head of hair on it. “Nothing interesting,” she said. “What are you wearing?”

  “My Hell Toupee, of course. I picked it up on one of my trips to—never mind. I saw what you did: you broke the chain. You had better put on protective headgear too, before that chain gets organized to dump a century’s worth of bad luck on you.”

  “What kind of toupee?” the child inquired, interested.

  The cloud did a hasty reconsideration. “A Heck Toupee. That’s what I said, I’m sure.”

  “Let’s just get out of here,” Woe Betide said, knowing she had put Helen on the defensive. As long as she remained in this child form, the other demoness was at a disadvantage. That was wonderful!

  She mounted Eight Bits and zoom! they were off again. She glanced back and saw the chain writhing angrily, but it couldn’t catch up with them. She had broken the chain and gotten away with it. That gave her demonly satisfaction.

  They passed a big fisin’ plant by a river, surrounded by electrici trees. The plant was busy hauling old-dim and nuclear fish from the river and using them to fertilize the trees. Some of the trees extended out across her route, so she slowed. They hummed with power, and that made her a bit nervous; what were they up to?

  She saw a huge fat boxlike creature trundling along beneath the trees. She sought to guide her mount past it, but it blocked her way. “Child, you are too small to be riding a big horse like that,” it said from its monstrous peg-toothed mouth. “You should go home.”

  “Why don’t you go home?” Woe Betide asked boldly, because there was something about this creature she didn’t much like.

  “Because I never follow my own advice. I’m a hippo-crate. I tell others how to run their lives, but none of that applies to my own life.”

  That confirmed her dislike. She wanted to get away from the creature, but it still balked her. Then she saw a smaller animal hopping along. It had long legs and was extremely furry. She recognized it as a hare. They were very popular with bald folk. So she extended one arm infinitely long and grabbed it. She plopped it on her head, so that it made her aspect entirely different. In fact, it made her look like a hairy little troll.

  The hippo-crate had been looking around. Now it looked back at her, and did a double take. “What happened to the innocent little girl I was lecturing?” it asked.

  “How would I know? I’m not innocent.”

  Disgruntled, the hippo waddled off, looking for the child, because it was much easier to tell children what to do than trolls. She was free to ride on.

  After a further interminable ride and float, they came to a huge green mountain. It rose from the plain in a series of faceted cliffs, each one glinting brightly.

  “Well, this is it,” Helen said. “Qaf. Climb to the top and there will be the Simurgh. I’ve done my bit, and will begone.” The cloud vanished in a dirty noise.

  Woe Betide dismounted. She went to inspect the surface more closely. It did indeed seem to be pure emerald. The mountain was one big jewel.

  The sun came out from behind a cloud. Suddenly all the facets reflected dazzling beams. One struck Eight Bits. The horse, startled, fragmented into quarters, and the quarters galloped off in at least four directions.

  Woe Betide sighed. She was on her own.

  She pondered, and concluded that since she no longer had the quarter horse, she could resume her adult form. She puffed into smoke, and re-formed as Metria.

  She could simply pop up to the top of the mountain, but she suspected that the Simurgh would not appreciate that. The same went for flying up there. In Xanth, the Simurgh forbade all flying in her vicinity, and it was probably the same here. So the ascent would have to be done the tedious way.

  Metria formed her hands and feet into big sucker disks. Then she applied these to the flat surface of the nearest facet and began to climb. The suckers popped as she pulled them free, and squished as she placed them higher. It was another type of magic: Suckers clung to polished flat surfaces. At this rate a few hours would get her to the top. Then she would find out what all this was about.

  She heard a rumble. She extended her neck, making it swanlike, and rotated her head to look backwards.

  There was a floating shape, and it didn’t belong to Helen Back. It was Fracto Cumulo Nimbus, the worst of clouds.

  She knew this was significant mischief. Fracto was a demon himself, who had specialized in meteorology, and had a sure nose for trouble. If someone had a nice picnic, Fracto came to wet on it. If someone had an important mission requiring him to travel rapidly, Fracto came to turn the forest trails to slush ruts. If someone camped out on a warm night, Fracto came to bury the landscape in colored snow. And if someone happened to be climbing a sheer emerald cliff, Fracto came to make the surface slippery and blow that person away.

  Of course, there were ways of dealing with the evil cloud, and Metria understood them well. She could become a cloud herself, and float impervious to the weather. She could even generate some lightning bolts of her own to shoot back at him. But she wasn’t sure that wouldn’t count as flying, which would annoy the Simurgh. Fracto, of course, didn’t care whom he annoyed—or rather, did care, so as to be as annoying as possible. But he wasn’t here to ask any favors of the big bird. So that was out. Once she had turned herself into a stink horn, which had exploded in Fracto’s midst, rendering him even more insufferably stinky than usual. But again, that would require her getting into the air, and it didn’t seem to be worth the risk.

  She could avoid the storm entirely by becoming so diffuse that she could float through the substance of the mountain. But again, that might be construed as a type of flying. So the safest course seemed to be to stick to what she was doing: laboriously climbing the slope, hoping she could hang on despite the cloud’s worst efforts.

  Fracto was happy to accept this challenge, knowing that she was pinned. He puffed up voluminously, crackling with lightning and thunder. His center turned so dark, it was like swirling midnight, and his edges swelled outward like gross blisters. The whole of him was like a giant face, with two patches of glowing eye-clouds and a huge round mouth which blew out icy drafts. “Iiiii’ve gooot yoooou!” he howled, blowing smoke at her.

  Rain splatted on the cliff, and water coursed down past her. It was cold, and soon would turn icy. Her sucker hold was firm, but how would she be able to make any progress up the slippery rest of it?

  Now Fracto huffed and puffed, and blew a gale at her. It was tinged wi
th sleet. She pulled in her head so as to protect it, but then couldn’t see where to go.

  This was no good. Before long Fracto would succeed in dislodging her, and then she’d be falling, and she would either have to fly or crash. She couldn’t actually be physically hurt by a fall, but it would be an embarrassment that would hardly be kind to her pride. She had to find a way to nullify the ill wind.

  She glanced again at the inky depths of the center of the storm, and got a notion. What she needed was a light—a night light. The kind that folk used when they wanted to conceal their nefarious activities.

  She extended her head and formed it into a lamp with a dark bulb. She turned on the bulb, and darkness radiated out from it. Her night light was in operation.

  She turned up the power. The darkness expanded. Soon it covered the entire facet of the mountain she was on. She was hidden within its obscurity.

  Fracto realized what was happening. The storm turned furious. But Fracto could no longer see her, so didn’t know precisely where to blow most fiercely. Oh, he was getting frustrated!

  The cloud tried another ploy. He turned the draft so cold that the coursing water became a sheet of ice, overlaid by slush. But under the cover of her night light she formed her nose into a prehensile snout similar to that of the mythical Mundane elephant monster and made a hard hammer at its end. She tapped at the ice and cracked it away, making a clear place for her sucker foot. Now the wetness didn’t hurt; in fact, it made the seal secure. The cloud couldn’t hear her tapping, because of the almost continuous rumble of thunder.

  She made it to the edge of the facet and crossed the slight bend to the next. The storm still raged, but her night light protected her. When a gust of wind touched her she hunkered down and waited for it to pass, then resumed her tapping and moving. Fracto could not stop her.

  At last the evil cloud got disgusted and stormed away. She had beaten him, again, and it was just as much of a pleasure as ever. She dissolved her night light into smoke, and resumed better progress.