Night Mare Part 30

"A short circuit? What does it do?"

"It's supposed to make a wrong connection, to divert power from its proper avenue--or something. I'm really not clear about the details."

"Could it divert light?" Imbri asked, her new hope flaring again.

"Yes, I think so. It might make a lightbeam go the wrong way."

"Like from a person's eye to the peephole of a gourd?"

Blythe brightened; "The missing Kings!"

Imbri looked through the loop. All she saw was Blythe, on the other side. But of course it required magic to implement the effect--and that was the Horseman's talent. He had somehow used the short circuit to connect the gaze of each King to a gourd's peephole, causing the King to be confined to the gourd. The ring could be a short circuit to the gourd on one side and to the King's eye on the other. "But how could the connection be broken?" Imbri asked.

"You have to s.h.i.+eld the circlet," Blythe said. "Ordinary matter won't do it, though. It has to be magic."

"I don't have any such magic--and very little time," Imbri sent desperately. "How can I abate its power quickly? Should I just break it? I'm sure I could crush it under my hoof with just a stomp or two, or have the ogre chew, it to pieces."

"Oh, no, don't do that!" Blythe said, alarmed. "That could seriously hurt the Kings, sending them back to the wrong bodies or permanently marooning them in the night world." She paused, smiling fleetingly. "Isn't it funny, to speak of anyone being marooned in our world! But, of course, since they don't have their bodies with them--" She shrugged her metal shoulders. "You must interrupt its power without damaging the bra.s.s. That's the way such things work. That will have the effect of cutting off the Kings' view through the peephole, harmlessly."

She ought to know, Imbri realized, since she was of the magic bra.s.s region. Desperately Imbri cudgeled her mind. What would do it?

Then she had a notion. "The Void!" she sent. "That nullifies anything!"

"Yes, that's where we send hazardous wastes to be disposed of," Blythe agreed. "Things like used bra.s.s spittoons. That should work. Nothing ever returns from there."

Imbri took back the band and launched herself north, toward the Void. Then she remembered to veer to the nearest gourd patch. Obviously it did not affect the band to be within the gourd, since the day horse had been there while wearing it and no prisoned King had been released. But the Void was different. Even the creatures of the gourd world had to be careful of it.

She plunged madly through the night world, heedless of all its familiar scenes, and out of the gourd within the dread Void. She suppressed her growing nervousness. After all, Xanth depended on her performance.

Now she ran straight into the most feared region of Xanth--the center of the Void. The land curved down here, like the surface of a huge funnel, descending to its dread central point. For the Void was a black hole from which nothing escaped, not even light. Only Imbri's kind could safely pa.s.s the outer fringe of it--and she had to dematerialize for the inner fringe, lest her physical body be sucked in, never to emerge. She was terrified of this depth, for it was beyond where she had ever gone before--but she had to make sure the bra.s.s ring was properly placed, that its effect was absolutely s.h.i.+elded. If she set it rolling or sliding down toward the hole, and if it snagged on the way, the Kings could remain captive for an indefinite future time until the ring completed its journey.

She wasn't even sure a direct placement in the hole would break the spell, but it did seem likely, and it was all she had left to try. It was her only hope. If this did not break the chain, then Xanth was doomed to anarchy, for there would be no way to rescue the Kings, and the Mundanes would ravage Xanth unchallenged. The Horseman was gone, but his mischief would remain after him, causing Xanth to suffer grievously.

She came to the bottom of the funnel. She saw the deepest blackness of the black hole. She was immaterial, yet it seemed to suck her in. It had a somber, awesome latent power. She was extremely afraid of it.

She opened her mouth and dropped the bra.s.s band. It plummeted as if gaining weight. In an instant it disappeared into nothingness. There was not even a splash, just a silent engulfment. The deed was done.

Imbri tried to turn and depart the funnel. Her feet moved, but her body made no progress. She had approached too close to the dread maw of the Void! Even dematerialized, she could not escape it.

She scrambled desperately up the side of the funnel, but slowly, inevitably, she slid back. Her hooves had no purchase; nothing had purchase here! She had penetrated the region of no return. Her fall accelerated.

With a neigh of purest terror and despair. Mare Imbri fell into the black hole of the Void.

Chameleon seemed to float up, her face and body amazingly ugly, but her spirit beautiful. "Chem! Chem!" she called out over the jungle of Xanth. "Chem Centaur-- where are you?"

"Here I am!" Chem cried. "Here with the Gorgon. Don't worry, she's thoroughly veiled!"

"We need your soul," Chameleon said, drifting down to join them.

"I have only half my soul," the centaur said. "Imbri the night mare has the other half."

"No, you have all of it now. Don't you feel it?"

Chem was surprised. "Why, yes, I do! I feel buoyant?

But how is this possible? I never begrudged Imbri her half, and my half was regenerating. Now I have more than a full soul; it's too much!"

"Imbri fell into the black hole of the Void," Chameleon explained. "She killed the Horseman and carried his magic talisman to the Void, to free the rest of us from the enchantment, but she couldn't escape it herself."

"The Void! Oh, this is terrible! You mean she's dead, after all she did for Xanth?"

"No. We believe one essential part of her survived. She lost her body in the sacrifice she made to break the chain, fulfilling the prophecy, but her soul remained. No soul is subject to the Void. It's the only thing in Xanth that is not vulnerable to the black hole."

"But it reverted to me! It wasn't her own soul, because the creatures of the gourd don't grow their own souls! They have to borrow from those of us who do. I don't want her half soul! I want Imbri to live! After what she did for Xanth, and the kind of person she was--" The centaur filly was crying human tears of frustration and grief.

"So do we all," Chameleon agreed. "That's why Good Magician Humfrey and I, antic.i.p.ating this, made plans for such a contingency. We could not act while we were confined within the gourd. But the moment Imbri freed us, Humfrey uttered a spell he knew. A Word of Power. An enchantment to keep a special soul discrete, despite its origin."

"Discreet?"

"Discrete. Separate. So Imbri could live on after her body was lost."

"But how, then--if her soul came back to me--?"

"She came, too. Free her, Chem; the Good Magician's spell enables you to do that, because you have the first claim on that soul."

The centaur concentrated immediately. "Imbri, I love you! I free you! Take your half soul; be yourself!"

Something intangible snapped. Imbri floated free. "Is it true?" she sent. "Am I really alive?"

"Yes, lovely night mare!" Chameleon said. "You are alive in the purest sense. But you have lost your body. You can never again materialize. You are now of the spirit world, like the ghosts."

"But what can I do without my body?" Imbri asked, dismayed. She remembered her awful fall into the Void--and the arrival of Chameleon. Nothing in between.

"That's part of what we arranged," Chameleon said. "Humfrey's spell took care of the paper work, or whatever, so it's all right. We all love you, Imbri, and we all thank you, and we owe our lives and our hopes to you, and we want to be with you often. So you will be a true day mare, carrying daydreams and pleasant evening dreams, much as you have been doing. Only now it is official, and forever. Whenever we daydream, you will be there with your new a.s.sociates, making sure each dream is properly delivered and enjoyed."

Imbri liked the concept. She no longer liked bad dreams. Still, she was perplexed. "My a.s.sociates?"

Now several other mares appeared, trotting prettily through the air. They were of pleasant colors--red, blue, green, and orange. "Welcome, black mare," one sent, perking her ears forward in a friendly fas.h.i.+on. "Oh, the Day Stallion will like you! You have such an individual color!"

"The Day Stallion?" Imbri sent, an unpleasant a.s.sociation forming.

A male horse appeared, flying wingless through the air, bright golden as the sun. "I a.s.sign the daydreams," he sent. He swished his tail negligently. He was the handsomest stallion Imbri had ever seen. "But you may choose any you like to deliver. We are very informal here and seldom take things very seriously. This present daydream is an example; we're all linked together in it, and we're all helping with it, so as to introduce you to the nature of your new work gently. All the recent Kings of Xanth and their friends are sharing it. Soon they must revert to normal consciousness, to transform the Mundane Wavers back into men, one at a time--King Trent transformed them all to stinkweeds, and the castle smells awful--to see if they're ready to swear allegiance to the present order, and to see about King Trent's retirement so he can spend more time with his wife, and about King Dor's permanent a.s.sumption of the throne of Xanth--these things must, after all, be accomplished with the appropriate ceremony--but first they wanted to see you properly established in your own new employment. We have never had a King among our number before."

"But I'm not King any more!" Imbri protested. "Now that the real Kings have been freed--"

"You will retain the honorary t.i.tle, King Mare Imbrium," King Trent said with a smile. "You are the one who saved Xanth. We shall fas.h.i.+on a statue in your likeness and never forget you."

There was a murmur of agreement from all the others in the collective daydream--her friends.

Suddenly Imbri knew she was going to like this duty. With that realization, she looked up and saw that it was day. Time had pa.s.sed between her descent into the Void, the final breaking of the chain of Kings, and her reanimation as a soul-horse. Now the sun was up, but there was a light shower, as if the clouds were shedding tears of joy at the salvation of Xanth. Perhaps it was some weather overlapping from her region of the moon, the Sea of Rains.

There, in the bright misty sky, was the many-colored rainbow she had always longed to see, spanning her horizon.