Vale of the Vole Part 12

"Yesh," Horace said from behind her.

Ivy woke. "We're here!" she exclaimed. "But how did we get here?"

"We went to sleep in the gourd," Chex said, hardly believing it herself. "I can only surmise that to sleep in the realm of dreams is to wake in the realm of ordinary consciousness."

"I guess maybe we did need a guide," the little girl said.

"I guess maybe we did," Chex agreed, "Gotcha!" Ivy exclaimed. "You spoke my language!"

"After what we just experienced, your language seems easier." Chex hefted herself up. "Is this really Centaur Isle," she asked Horace, "or merely a dream of it?"

"It really ish," he a.s.sured her. "Shorten cut."

So it seemed. Chex decided to accept things as they seemed, and get on with her mission.

Ivy slid off her back. "I gotta feel solid sand under my feet," she said. Chex understood; the experience in the gourd had been unsettling, even for a little Sorceress.

Now she had to cross the water to the Isle. There should be a ferry where the trail arrived. "I'll scout around for the crossing," Chex announced.

"I'll rest here," Ivy said. "It'll be safe enough, with Horace. Anyway, Mom gave me a protective charm."

Chex made sure. "You will wait here for me?" she asked Horace.

"Yesh," he said.

She set off along the beach, trotting east, because the closest approach to the Isle seemed to be in that direction. Soon enough her judgment was confirmed; there was a raft with a sail at a landing.

She trotted up. "Halloo!" she called.

A centaur of middle age emerged from a shelter. "Someone for crossing?" he asked.

"Yes. I need to go to Centaur Isle, and then to return-" She broke off, because the other was staring at her wings.

"Oh, a crossbreed," he said, with deep disgust. "Forget it."

"But I have to talk to the centaur Elders about-"

"We don't talk to crossbreeds," he said curtly. "Now get away from here before someone sees you.*'

"But-"

He reached for his bow.

"Now look!" she protested. "I have a right to be heard!"

The bow was in his hands. "Crossbreeds have no right to exist, let alone be heard," he said. "No one will talk to you. You'd be executed without trial if you set foot on the Isle. Now fly away before I'm put to the trouble of burying your body."

Appalled, Chex realized that he was serious. Her granddam's att.i.tude was merely the echo of the prejudice of the larger community of centaurs. They were unable to tolerate any deviance from their norm.

For a moment she was tempted to stand her ground and put him to that trouble of burying her. But she knew it would not accomplish anything; the position of the centaurs was sealed. As Ivy had said: centaurs were stubborn.

She turned and trotted away, frustrated and disgusted. Now she appreciated why her dam had raised her largely isolated from her own kind. Uncle Chet had been around often, showing her his magic with boulders and pebbles, and some of the hermitlike forest centaurs had visited on occasion, but never any centaurs from either the village north of the Gap or from Centaur Isle. Her education was coming hard. Centaurs were supposed to be the most brilliant and consistent creatures of Xanth, but her belief in this had been shaken. How could a species that was an obvious crossbreed between humanoids and equinoids be so restrictive about further crossbreeding?

Yet, as she considered the matter, she knew. If centaurs accepted unrestricted crossbreeding, as the equines did, they would eventually be fragmented as a species, as the equines were. There were no longer any true horses in Xanth, only in Mundania, where they couldn't interbreed with other species. In Xanth there were night mares and pookas and were-horses and sea-horses and hippogryphs and centaurs and unicorns and flying horses, and the original stock had been crossbred out of existence. Now the centaurs were preserving their variant as a viable species, and were doing what they had to do in that effort.

Still, there were even more crossbreeds involving the human stock than there were of the equine stock, ranging from elves to ogres to multi-mergings like the sphinxes, yet the original stock remained viable. Humans did tend to discourage crossbreeding, but were reasonably tolerant of what did occur. Thus centaurs were welcome at Castle Roogna, and other variants such as the golem and an ogre or two. So the restriction did not have to be absolute.

But, she reminded herself in an effort to retain centaur objectivity, the human stock had a major source of replenishment: Mundania. There had been many Waves of colonization from Mundania, each one adding to the straight human population of Xanth. Centaurs could not be reinforced similarly, for they existed only in Xanth. So the situations were not precisely a.n.a.logous.

All of which did not make her feel much better. She could understand the position of the centaurs, without appreciating it. What she really needed was a species of her own.

She laughed to herself, somewhat bitterly. She was, as far as she knew, the only one of her kind in Xanth. Some species!

She arrived back at the spot where Ivy and Horace waited. "Any luck?" the little girl asked brightly.

"No luck," Chex said heavily. "They will not even talk to me, because I am a crossbreed."

Ivy pursed her lips. "The way Cherie won't?"

"Yes."

"Maybe I could do it-"

Chex considered. Ivy was a child, but she was also the King's daughter, and a Sorceress. The centaurs might give her an audience. But she would have to go to the Isle alone, and that would violate Chex's commitment to guard her. Also, if the centaurs would not even talk to a variant of their own kind, would they help a completely different species, the voles? This was highly doubtful.

"I think we should write this off as a bad job, dear," she said. "I underestimated the resistance of the centaurs to our effort."

Ivy shrugged. "Okay. Maybe we can get help from your sire's folks, instead."

"The winged monsters?" Chex considered, finding this alternative more interesting now that her major hope had been dashed. "Well, certainly I could go to my sire and ask. But he lives closer to central Xanth; we shall have to return to Castle Roogna first, and I can compare notes with Esk and Volney. Perhaps one of them has already found help."

"Urn," Ivy agreed, glancing at her expectantly.

Chex waited, and Ivy waited. Finally Chex surrendered and said.

"Yes," in correction, and Ivy said it with her, then laughed. The odd thing was that this made Chex feel better.

Horace led them into the jungle, following another trail that showed signs of disuse. Chex realized that other creatures tended to avoid the paths used by zombies. Prior to this experience, she would have avoided it too. But after her rebuff by the living centaurs, she found the zombie centaur better company. The zombies were providing what help they could, and indeed, had enabled her to cut many hours off her trip south.

When the trail pa.s.sed through looser forest, she drew up abreast of him. "May I ask you a question, Horace?"

"Yesh."

"How did you come to be a zombie?"

"I zdied."

Evidently he wasn't much for detail! "How did you die?"

"Peopleschooz."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Parzon?"

Not much for social niceties, either. But these could hardly be expected of those whose brains were rotten. "How did you die?" she repeated.

"Zome call it horschschooz."

"I don't understand."

"I think he said horse-" Ivy started.

"Don't say that word!"

"Manure," Ivy finished contritely. "A princess doesn't even know the other word."

"Let's hope not! But how could anything like that account for his death."

"I'm sure he can explain it, if I ask him," Ivy said confidently. "Here, let me ride him."

"I really don't think-"

"Oh, he can hold my weight all right. I talked to him while we were waiting for you. He's nice enough, for a zombie." She leaned across, and Chex had to move close to facilitate the transfer, lest the girl fall between them.

Ivy scrambled across and settled on Horace's back. "Horace, you're pretty strong," she said, and indeed, the zombie seemed to be in better physical condition than before. "You can talk well, too, I just know it."

"Zthank you," Horace said, and his voice did sound better. It was the child's magic, enhancing him.

"How did you die?" Ivy asked.

"People zhooz."

"People shoes!" Ivy exclaimed. "What they call horseshoes in Mundania! Where you throw these metal shoes."

"Yez." The p.r.o.nunciation was less slushy, but still not perfect. There was only so much Enhancement could do, when lips were decayed and teeth missing.

"But how did a game kill you, Horace?" Ivy asked.

"Hit by a boot."

"Oh, an accident!" Chex exclaimed. "One of those hard metal shoes. .h.i.t you on the head!"

"Yez. A heavy people zboot, with hob nailz."

"And then the Zombie Master revived you as a zombie."

"Yez."

"How do you feel, being a zombie?"

"It'z not zbad. But my oldz friendz won't play with me."

"I'm afraid the living aren't too fond of the undead," Chex said. "They're prejudiced." She had just had a good lesson in prejudice.

"Yez."

"But Zora Zombie's nice," Ivy said, transferring back to Chex. "She's almost alive."

"Zora is a friend of yours?"

"Yes. She helped Mom learn about zombies. Then she married Xavier."

"Xavier!" Chex exclaimed. "I know him! He rides Xap!"

"Yes. Xap's great. He's a hippogryph."

"I know. He's my sire."

"Oh!" Ivy squealed with delight. "I didn't realize! That's how you got your wings!"

"That's how," Chex agreed. "I know Xavier because he's been with Xap, but I didn't know he was married. He never mentioned it."

"I guess that's less important to males than to females," Ivy said.

"Unless he was ashamed of having a zombie wife."

"I don't think so," Ivy said. "He always seemed real-really proud of her, when he was with her."

"Then perhaps he was afraid that others would have the wrong picture of her, if they learned she was a zombie without meeting her."

"Maybe. You'd hardly know she's a zombie. That's how I know zombies aren't bad, 'cause she's baby-sitted me and she's great."

Horace veered to the side. "Gourd," he announced.

There was another of the huge variety that grew in dragon dung. Horace plunged into its peephole, and Chex followed.

Inside it seemed exactly the same as it had been on there prior entry. Chex had thought they would be in the region of imaginary numbers that they had left, but they were in the first stage, with the zombie vegetation.

They negotiated the region of knives the same way as before. "I wonder what's beyond those knives?" Ivy asked.

"Perhaps nothing," Chex said. "It may be only a ritual, where a particular action is required to change the setting of the maze. An intruder not knowledgeable about this matter might take the wrong direction."

They came to the buried trap door. "I'd sure like to see what's down there!" Ivy said.

Chex was getting quite curious too; the steps seemed very inviting. But she was sure it was a trap; if she deviated from the route of their guide, she would perhaps be trapped within the gourd.

They reached the numbers, and again lay down and slept-and woke not far beyond Castle Zombie. There was no giant gourd here, just as there had not been at the southern beach; they had emerged by some other mechanism.