“I’ll have to tell your father,” Grundy said, nettled.
Suddenly Dor had pause to reconsider. This was the daughter of the King!
“I’ll tell him myself, you wad of string and clay!” Irene snapped. “Did you find him?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell a bad girl like you.”
“Maybe I should grow a large flytrap plant and feed you to it,” Irene replied.
That fazed the golem. “I found them all. In three cells, the way the three of you were, one in each cell. Queen Iris, King Trent, and King Omen.”
Irene sat up abruptly, disengaging from Dor. “Are they all right?”
Grundy frowned. “The men are. They have been through privation before. The Queen is not pleased with her situation.”
“She wouldn’t be,” Irene agreed. “But are they all right physically? They haven’t been starved, or anything?”
“Well, they were a bit close-mouthed about that,” the golem said. “But the Queen seems to have lost weight. She was getting fat any way, so that’s all right, but I guess she hasn’t been fed much. And I saw a crust of bread she left. It was moldy. The flies are pretty thick in there, too; must be a lot of maggots around.”
Irene got angry. “They have no right to treat royalty like that!”
“Something else I picked up,” Grundy said. “The guard who feeds them-it seems he eats what he wants first, and gives them the leavings. Sometimes he spits on it, or rubs dirt in it, just to aggravate them.
“They have to cat the stuff anyway or starve. Once he even urinated in their water, right where they could see him, to be sure they knew what they were drinking. He doesn’t speak, he just shows his contempt by his actions.”
“I have heard of this technique,” Amolde said. “It is the process of degradation. If you can destroy a person’s pride, you can do with him what you will. Pride is the backbone of the spirit. Probably King Oary is trying to get King Omen to sign a document of abdication, just in case there is ever any challenge to King Oary’s legitimacy.”
“Why is he keeping the others alive, then?” Dor asked, appalled by both the method and the rationale. Mundanes played politics in an ugly fashion.
“Well, we have seen how he operates. If he lets the three spend time together and become friends, then he can use the others as leverage against King Omen. Remember how you told me he was going to torture Irene to make you talk?”
“He’s going to torture my parents?” Irene demanded, aghast.
“I dislike formulating this notion, but it is a prospect.”
Irene was silent, smoldering. Dor decided, regretfully, to tackle the problem of freeing the prisoners. “I hoped King Trent could use his power to break out, but I’m not sure how transformation of people can unlock doors. If we can figure out a way-“
“Elementary,” Amolde said. “The King can transform the Queen to a mouse. She runs out through a crevice. Then he transforms her back, and she opens the cells from the outside. If there are guards, he can transform her to a deadly monster to dispatch them.”
So simple! Why hadn’t he, Dor, thought of that?
Irene shifted gears, in the manner of her sex, becoming instantly practical. “Who is in the cell closest to the wall?”
“The Queen.” The golem frowned. “You know, I think she’s the only one the magic aisle can reach. The wall’s pretty thick in that region.”
“So my father probably can’t transform anyone,” Irene said.
Trouble! Dor considered, trying to come up with an alternate suggestion. “The Queen does have powerful magic. It should be possible for her to free them by means of illusion. She can make them see the cells as empty, or containing dead prisoners, so that the guards open the gates. Then she can generate a monster to scare them away.”
“There are problems,” Amolde said. “The aisle, as you know, is narrow. The illusion will not operate outside it. Since two cells are beyond-“
“The Queen’s illusion will have very limited play,” Dor concluded.
“We had better warn her about that. She should be able to manage, if she has time to prepare.”
“I’m on my way,” Grundy said. “I don’t know how this expedition would function without me!”
“There isn’t one of us we can do without,” Dor said. “We’ve already seen that. When we get separated, we’re all in trouble.”
As the night closed, they moved to the castle, trying to reach the spot nearest the Queen’s cell as described by the golem. Again there was no moat, just a glacis, so that they had to mount a kind of stone hill leading up to the wall. Dor could appreciate how thick that wall might be, set on a base this massive.
Castle Ocna was alert, fearing the invasion of the Khazars; torches flickered in the turrets and along the walls. But Dor’s party was not using the established paths and remained unobserved. People who lived in castles tended to be insulated from events outside, and to forget the potential importance of the exterior environment. It occurred to Dor that this also applied to the whole land of Xanth; few of its inhabitants knew anything about Mundania, or cared to learn.
Trade between the realms, hitherto a matter of erratic chance, should be established, if only to facilitate a more cosmopolitan awareness.
King Oary was evidently not much interested in trade, to the detriment of his Kingdom; he regarded the Xanth visitors as a threat to his throne. As indeed they were-since he was a usurper.
“Now we can’t plan exactly how this will work,” Dor said in a final review. “I hope the Queen will be able to make an illusion that will cause the guards to release her, and then she can free the others.”
“She’d love to vamp a guard,” Irene said. “She’ll make herself look like the winsomest wench in all Mundania. Then when he comes close, she’ll turn into a dragon and scare him to death. Serve lift right.”
Dor chuckled. “I think I know how that works.”
She whirled on him in mock anger. “You haven’t begun to see how it works!” But she couldn’t hold her frown. She kissed him instead.
“The lady appears to have given fair wanting,” Amolde remarked. “You won’t see the dragon until you are securely married.”
“He knows that,” Irene said smugly. “But men never learn. Each one thinks he’s different.”
Amolde set himself against the wall, changing his orientation by small degrees so that the aisle swung through the castle. “Grundy will have to report whether we intercept the Queen,” he said. “I cannot perceive the use of the aisle.”
“If anything goes wrong,” Irene said, “Smash will have to go into action, and I’ll grow some plant to mess them up.”
They waited. The centaur completed a sweep through the castle without event. He swept back, still accomplishing nothing. “I begin to fear we are, after all, beyond range,” he said.
Smash put one cauliflower ear to the watt. “Go down for crown.”
“Of course!” Dor agreed. “They are in the dungeon! Below ground level. Aim down.”
With difficulty, Amolde bent his forelegs, leaving his hindlegs extended, tilting his body down. He commenced another sweep. This was quite awkward for him, because of the position and his injury.
Smash joined him, lifting him up and setting him down at a new angle, making the sweep easier.
“But if they are too far inside for the aisle to reach-“ Irene murmured tensely.
“Grundy will let us know,” Dor said, trying to prevent her from becoming hysterically nervous. He knew this was the most trying time for her-this period when they would either make contact or fail. “We may catch Queen Iris, then sweep on past, and it will take a while for the golem to relay the news.”
“That could be it,” she agreed, moving into the circle of his arm.