Night Mare Part 6

"Here is where the Mundanes are invading," Humfrey said, pointing to the northwestern isthmus. "They have not yet penetrated far, but they are well organized and tough and determined, and the auspices are murky. Divination doesn't work very well on Mundanes, because they are nonmagical creatures. But it seems the Nextwave of conquest is upon us. It will be the end of Xanth as we know it, unless we take immediate and effective measures to protect our land."

"The Nextwave!" Chameleon repeated, horrified.

"We knew there would be another Wave sometime," the Gorgon said. "All through the history of Xanth there have been periodic Waves of conquest from Mundania. All human inhabitants derive from one Wave or another, or did until very recently. But each Wave sets Xanth back immeasurably, for the Mundanes are barbaric. They slay whatever they do not understand and they understand very little. If this Wave succeeds in conquering Xanth, it will be a century before things return to normal."

"But how do we stop it?" Chameleon asked.

"I told you," Humfrey snapped. "Break the chain."

Imbri exploded with full night marish ferocity. Storm clouds roiled in her dream image, booming hollowly as they fired out fierce jags of lightning. "This is no time for cute obscurities! We need a straight Answer to a serious problem! Do you have an Answer or don't you?" A jag struck near Humfrey.

Humfrey gazed soberly at her, one hand idly swatting away the jag of lightning, though it was only a dreamlet image. "There are no simplistic Answers to a complex problem. We must labor diligently to piece together the best of all possible courses, or at least the second best, depending on what is available."

The mare backed off. She did realize that some answers could not be simple or clear. Magic often had peculiar applications, and predictive magic was especially tricky, even when Mundanes weren't involved.

"Night nears," the Gorgon said gently. Indeed, the cluttered sc.r.a.p of a window showed near-blackness outside. "You will be able to travel more freely then. We must let Magician Humfrey labor in peace." She led them to another room, where there was a couch. "You will want to rest first. I will wake you at midnight."

That was good enough. There were sanitary facilities and a pleasant bed of straw. Imbri lay down and slept. She could rest perfectly well on her feet, but suspected the Gorgon would worry about hoofprints and droppings and such, so lying down was best. Actually, there was hardly any place in Xanth that could not be improved by a nice, fertilizer-rich dropping, but human beings tended not to understand that.

A night mare visited her, of course. Imbri recognized her instantly. "Mare Crisium!" she exclaimed in her dream. "How is everything back home?"

"The Dark Horse is worried," Crises said. She, like Imbri, could speak in the human language in the dream state. "He says the menace advances, and you are the only one who can abate it, and you have fallen into the power of the enemy."

"I did, but I escaped," Imbri replied. "I delivered the message to King Trent. Now I'm on a mission for him."

"It is not enough. The King is about to be betrayed. You must tell him to beware the Horseman."

"I told you, I told him that!" Imbri flared.

"You must tell him again."

Imbri changed the subject. "Where's Vapors?" She had a special affinity for both Crises and Vapors, for those two mares had picked up half souls at the time Imbri got hers. But the others had not retained them. Their halves had been replaced by the halves from a demon, cynical and cruel, which gave them a certain compet.i.tive edge: their bad dreams were real terrors, and they got the most challenging a.s.signments. Even so, they had not been satisfied and had finally turned the half souls into the central office. So Imbri was now the only night mare with any part of a soul. But still, she felt closer to those other two; they understood the impact a soul could have.

"Vapors is with Chameleon. In a moment the woman will wake screaming; then you both must go and warn the King."

Imbri started to protest, but then Chameleon's scream sounded, and both woman and mare were jolted rudely awake. Instantly Vapors and Crises bolted, leaving only their signature hoofprints. Imbri was saddened; she was now considered a mortal creature, who was not permitted to see a night mare in the waking state. That wrenched at her, for she had spent most of her long life in the profession. How quickly the prerogatives and perquisites of employment were lost, once a creature retired! But that was the price she paid for the chance to see the rainbow.

She went to Chameleon, who clutched at her hysterically. "Oh, it was awful, Imbri! Such a bad dream! Is that really what you used to do?"

"Not that well," Imbri sent, with a tinge of regret. Obviously Mare Vaporum retained the terrifying touch that Imbri had lost. "What did you dream?"

"I dreamed King Trent was close to death, or something almost as awful! We must go right back and warn him!" She was still breathing raggedly, her lovely hair in disarray.

A simple premonition of danger to another person--and the client was in shambles. Imbri realized that she had retired none too soon; she would have had to bring in a firebreathing sea monster to achieve a similar effect. She was just too softhearted.

"Get on my back, woman," Imbri projected. "We'll ride immediately."

The Gorgon appeared, carrying a lighted candle that illuminated her empty head oddly, showing the snakelets that were her hair from the inside surface. "Midnight," she said. "Time to--oh, I see you're ready. Do come again soon!"

"We will!" Chameleon called, her mood lightening because of the contact with the familiar facelessness of a friend. Then Imbri plunged through the wall and they were off.

This time there was no trouble from the spriggan, centycore, or nix, Imbri was in her night mare form, phasing through everything, and Chameleon phased with her because that was the nature of night mare magic. They galloped in a straight line toward Castle Roogna, pa.s.sing blithely through trees and rocks and even a sleeping 'dragon without resistance. Chameleon was pleasantly amazed; she was a good audience for this sort of thing, and that made Imbri's mood improve.

"Oh, no!" Chameleon exclaimed suddenly. "I forgot the elopement!"

That was right--this was the scheduled night for the marriage of Prince Dor. Chameleon was the mother of the victim; of course she wanted to attend. "We can make it," Imbri sent.

"No, we can't," Chameleon said tearfully. "It was to happen at midnight, and we're hours away, and it's past midnight now!"

Imbri hated to have this lovely and innocent woman unhappy. "We can travel faster--but it's a route you may not like."

"Anything!" Chameleon exclaimed. "If we can even catch the end of it--my poor baby boy--I know he'll be so happy!"

Imbri had a certain difficulty following the woman's thought processes this time, but decided Chameleon had mixed feelings about her son and his marriage. Mothers were notorious for that sort of thing. "Then hold on tight and don't be afraid of anything you see." Imbri galloped into a patch of hypnogourds and plunged into a gourd.

It was dark as they phased through the rind and became part of the gourd world. Of course they were not part; they were alien visitors who normally would have found access only by looking through a peephole, instead of pa.s.sing physically through. This was a gray area of magic, possible only because of Imbri's special status as an agent of liaison.

Then they were in a graveyard. "Oh, are we there already?" Chameleon asked. "The zombie cemetery?"

"Not yet," Imbri projected. "Stay on me!" For if the woman ever set foot inside the world of the gourd alone, she would not readily get free. That was the nature of the region of night.

A walking skeleton appeared. It reached for Chameleon, its hollow eye sockets glinting whitely. "Go away!" the woman cried, knocking the bony arm away. "You're no zombie. You're too clean." Startled, the skeleton retreated.

"They are a lot more cautious about visitors since an ogre pa.s.sed through and intimidated them," Imbri sent. It had taken weeks after the ogre's departure for the skeletons to get themselves properly organized, since their bones had been hopelessly jumbled together. Probably some of them were still wearing the wrong parts.

Imbri charged into the haunted house. A resident ghost loomed, flaring with awesome whiteness at Chameleon.

"Are we back at Castle Roogna already?" she asked. "I don't recognize this ghost." Disgusted, the ghost faded out, thinking it had lost its touch. Imbri knew the feeling; there were few things as humiliating as having one's efforts unappreciated when one's business was fear.

Now Imbri shot out the front wall of the house. She galloped along a short walkway, then out through the decorative hedge. She emerged into a bleak moor. The ground became soggy, opening dark mouths to swallow intruders, but the night mare hurdled them handily. The terrors of the World of Night were for others, not herself. She might be retired, but she was not yet that far out of it.

She pa.s.sed on to a mountain shaped like a burning iceberg, galloping up its slope. Amorphous shapes loomed, reaching for Chameleon with multiple hands and hungry snouts. Misshapen eyes glared.

Now the woman was frightened, for she had had no prior experience with this type of monster. Zombies and ghosts were familiar, but not amorphous monsters. She hunched down and hid her face in Imbri's mane. That was another trait of human folk: they tended to fear the unfamiliar or the unknown, though often it was not as threatening to them as the known.

Then they were out through the rind of another gourd, their shortcut through the World of Night completed. They emerged from a gourd patch much nearer Castle Roogna.

Night mares could travel almost instantly anywhere in Xanth, simply by using the proper gourds. This route was not available to Imbri by day, since she was solid then; fortunately, it was now night.

Chameleon's fright eased as she saw that she was back in the real world of Xanth. "Is that really where you live?" she asked. "Among the horrors?"

"Daytime Xanth seems far more hazardous to me," Imbri projected. "Tangle trees and solid boulders and the Mundanes--those are monsters enough!"

"I suppose so," Chameleon agreed doubtfully. "Are we near the cemetery?"

"Very near." Imbri veered to head directly toward it.

"Wait!" Chameleon cried. "We must go in costume!"

"Costume?" What was this creature thinking of now?

"We must look like zombies so no one will know." Evidently so. Imbri humored her, since it was difficult to argue with a person of such low intelligence and sweet personality. They stopped, and the woman found stinkvines and ink pots, which she used to make each of them look and smell rotten. Her artistry was reasonably good; Chameleon did indeed resemble a buxom, flesh-loose zombie more than the lovely older woman she really was. Imbri looked like a half-dead nag.

Now they continued to the cemetery, where it lurked in the lee of Castle Roogna. The zombies were up and about in strength. Not many things stirred them, but marriage was in certain ways akin to death in its finality and disillusion. "We conspired with the Zombie Master," Chameleon whispered to one of Imbri's perked furry ears. "He roused his minions for the occasion, though he could not attend himself. One of the zombies is a justice of the peace. I don't know what that is, but it seems he can marry them." She was all excited with antic.i.p.ation.

Zombies were loosely formed creatures, so naturally would have a justice of the piece, Imbri realized. It was not too great a stretch of the rationale to extend the authority to restore lost pieces of zombie to the union of full creatures of flesh. Marriage, in Xanth, was whatever one made of it, anyway; the real test of it would be the acceptance by the partners in it and by the wider community, rather than any single ceremony.

As they stepped onto the graveyard grounds, things changed. Suddenly the zombies were twice as ghastly as before, dressed in tuxedos and gowns that concealed much of their decay but made the parts that showed or fell off more horrible in contrast. All were standing quietly between the gravestones, facing the largest and dankest crypt at the north end, where an especially revolting zombie stood with a tattered book in his spoiled hands.

A female zombie came up. Her eyeb.a.l.l.s were sunken, and parts of her teeth showed through her worm-decimated cheek. Her low decolletage exposed b.r.e.a.s.t.s like rotten melons. "Are you a centaur?" she inquired in a surprisingly normal voice.

"I'm Chameleon, your Majesty," Chameleon said, dismounting, evidently recognizing the voice. "And this is the mare Imbri, who brought me back in time for the wedding. Have we missed anything?"

"Wonderful, Chameleon!" Queen Iris cried, embracing her with a sound like funguses squis.h.i.+ng. "Take your place in the front row, by the chancel; you're the mother of the groom, after all. You haven't missed a thing; these events always run late."

"And you're the mother of the bride," Chameleon said, happy at the way this was working out.

The Queen Zombie turned to Imbri, her rotten body rotating at differing velocities. Her illusion was a morbid work of art! "You really are a mare?" she asked. "Yes, I see you are. Since you're not related to the princ.i.p.als, you should stand in back."

"But Imbri's my friend!" Chameleon protested loyally.

"I'll stand in back," Imbri projected quickly. She knew little about human folk ceremonies and much preferred to be out of the way.

"Oh, my, that's interesting magic!" the Queen said. "Almost like my illusion, only yours is all inside the head, or do I mean all in the mind? I didn't know animals could do magic."

"I am a night mare," Imbri clarified.

"Oh, that explains it, of course." The Queen turned away, going to greet other arrivals.

Chameleon went dutifully to the front, while Imbri made her way back. She came to stand between two zombies. It seemed the lucky couple for whom this ceremony was waiting had not yet arrived, so there was time to talk.

"h.e.l.lo," she projected to the one on the left.

The answer was an awful mora.s.s of foulness, resembling a blood pudding riddled with maggots. This was a true zombie, who might have been dead for centuries; she had just glimpsed its actual brain. Imbri was not unduly finicky, for every monster was allowed its own style in Xanth, but she was accustomed to the clean bones of the walking skeletons in the gourd. She tried not to shy away from this person, for that would be impolite, but she did not attempt to communicate with it again.

Imbri tried the figure on the right. "Are you a zombie, too?" she sent tentatively.

This person was alive but startled. "Did you address me, or was I dreaming?"

"Yes," Imbri agreed.

He turned to peer more closely at her. "Are you a person or a horse?"

"Yes."

"I'm afraid I'm not used to this concentration of magic," he said. "I may have made a faux pas."

"No, that's west of here," Imbri corrected him.

"It's true! You are a horse, and you did address me!"

"Yes. I am the night mare Imbrium."

"A literal nightmare? How original! One never knows what to expect next in Xanth! I am Ichabod the Archivist, from what you term Mundania. My friend the centaur Arnolde--he is currently in Mundania, as that's his office, liaison to that region--brought me here so I could do research into the fantastic and, ahem, pursue a nymph or two."

"That is what nymphs are for," Imbri agreed politely. She knew it was a very popular human entertainment. But his reference to Mundania alarmed her; was he one of the enemy?

"Oh, no, I'm no enemy!" Ichabod protested, and Imbri realized she had forgotten to separate her private thought from the formal dreamlet. She would have to be more careful about that, now that she was among waking people. "Mundania is many things--you might say, all things to all people. It seems Mundania has extremely limited access to Xanth, while Xanth has virtually unlimited access to Mundania. This includes all the historical ages of our world. Therefore Xanth is but an elusive dream to the Mundanes, most of whom do not believe in it at all, while Mundania is a prodigious reality to Xanthians, who are very little interested in it. Am I boring you?"

He was doing that, of course, but Imbri had the equine wit not to say so. "I deal in dreams, and I am elusive, so I am certainly a creature of Xanth."

"Really? You mean you are a dream yourself? You're not really there?" He reached out a hand, tentatively, to touch her shoulder.

"Not exactly." She phased out, and his hand pa.s.sed through her.

"Fabulous!" he exclaimed. "I must put you in my notebook. You say your name is Imbrium? As in the Sea of Rains on the visible face of the moon? How very intriguing!"

He might be Mundane, but she saw that he was not entirely ignorant. "Yes. They named the Sea of Rains after my grandam, who lived a long time ago. I inherit my signature from her and the t.i.tle to that portion of the moon." She phased back to solid and stamped a forehoof, making a moonmap imprint with her own name highlighted.

"Oh, marvelous!" Ichabod cried. "I say, would you do that on a sheet of my notebook? I would love to have a direct record!"

Imbri obligingly stamped his page. The map showed up very clearly on the white paper, since of course there was a coating of good, rich, cemetery dirt on her hoof.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" the Mundane exclaimed, admiring the print. "I have never before encountered a genuine nightmare--not in the flesh, so to speak. It is not every Mundane who receives such an opportunity! If there is any return favor I might possibly do you--"

"Just tell me who is here and how the ceremony is to proceed. I have never attended an elopement."

"I shall be delighted to, though my own understanding is far from perfect. It seems that Prince Dor and Princess Irene--their t.i.tles are similar but have different derivations, as he is the designated heir to the throne, while she is merely the daughter of the King--both of whom I met eight years ago in Mundania, are at last to achieve nuptial bliss, or such reasonable facsimile thereof as is practicable."

Imbri realized that Mundanes had a more complex manner of speaking than did real people; she c.o.c.ked one ear politely and tried to make sense of the convolutions.

"But he seems not yet to be aware of this, and she is supposedly not aware that virtually everyone in Castle Roogna or a.s.sociated with it is attending. It is supposed to be an uncivil ceremony, performed in the dead of night by a dead man--i.e., a zombie. A most interesting type of creature, incidentally. Queen Iris has cloaked all visitors with illusion--she does have the most marvelous facility for that--so they seem to be zombies, too, and she has mixed them in with the real zombies so that no one not conversant with the ruse is likely to penetrate it. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! That is a Mundane quotation from--"

He broke off, for there was a stir to the south. Just in time, for he had been about to bore Imbri again. He did seem to have a formidable propensity for dullness. All the zombies, real and fake, hushed, waiting.

The pale moonlight showed a young woman of voluptuous proportion stepping through the fringe of the Castle Roogna orchard, hauling along a handsome young man. "We'll just cut through the zombie graveyard," she was saying. "We're almost there."

"Almost where?" he demanded irritably. "You're being awfully secretive, Irene. I'm tired; I have just come back from Centaur Isle, where I couldn't make much of an impression; I've consulted with King Trent about the Nextwave incursion and how to contain it; and now I just want to go home and sleep."

"You'll have a good sleep very soon, I promise you," Irene said. "A sleep like none before."

A rock chuckled. "It'll be long before you sleep, you poor sucker!" it said.

"Shut up!" Irene hissed at the rock. Then, to Dor: "Come on; we're almost there."

"Almost where?"

"Don't trust her!" the ground said. "It's a trap!"