Piers Anthony - Castle Roogna

"Now there's what I call a good goblin," Cedric exclaimed. "A blockhead!"

But even good blockheads weren't enough. They tended to wiggle and sag, though Vadne made some with interlocking edges. They were not as dense as stone, or as hard, and squished down somewhat as the weight of other blocks went on top. As Vadne had suggested: a goblin in the shape of a block was still a goblin, not much good for anything.

Again Dor scavenged his brain for an answer. How could Castle Roogna be defended against this horrible mass of attackers? Even the corpses were enough to bury it!

A ground dove poked its head out of the floor. Dor took the message from its beak, while continuing to slash about with his sword, protecting Vadne's back. HOW GOES IT? the paper inquired.

"Repeat after me, continuously until the King hears," Dor told the paper. He could not afford to take his attention off the goblins and harpies long enough to write a note. "We can hold out only five minutes more. Situation desperate." He put the repeating paper back in the dove's beak and watched it swim, or rather fly, down out of sight through the stone. He didn't like making such a bleak report, but had to be realistic. He and Vadne and the centaurs had done everything they could, but it was not enough. If this wall fell, the castle would fall. The attack was more than ever like a savage storm, with the tide of goblins on the surface and the clouds of harpies in the air, and now there was no way they could halt the sheer avalanche of creatures. Could even the zombies have abated this menace?

Yes, they could have, Dor decided. Because the Zombie Master would change the piled-up bodies to zombies, who would then hurl the live goblins and many of the dead ones back away from the ramparts. If only the Zombie Master were here!

In moments the King himself was at the wall. "Oh my goodness!" Roogna exclaimed. "I had no idea it was this bad! The two wings of the goblin horde must have converged here on the far side of their thrust, and doubled the pileup. On the other walls it is only halfway up. You should have summoned me before."

"We were too busy fighting goblins," Dor said. Then he shoved the King, moving him out of the way as a harpy divebombed him. She missed, cursing.

"Yes, this is definitely the region of greatest crisis," the King said, as several goblin balls rolled across the wall and dropped off inside the Castle courtyard. He bent to peer at a goblin block, and it peered back, balefully cubic, "The highest tide, the lowest wall. You have done well."

"Not well enough," Dor said, skewering another diving harpy. "We are about to go down under their charge." As if that was not obvious!

"I have some emergency enchantments in the arsenal," Roogna said. "They are hazardous to health, so I have not wished to employ them, but I fear the occasion has arisen." He ducked a vampire.

"Get them!" Dor cried, growing desperate at this delay. Why hadn't the King told him there was more magic available? "Your Majesty!"

"Oh, I brought them with me, just in case." The King brought out a vial of clear fluid. "This is concentrated digestive juice of stomach of dragon. It must be dispensed upwind of the target, downwind of the user. If any drifts-" He shook his head dolefully. "Murphy's curse could cost us one King. Seek cover, please."

"Your Majesty!" Vadne protested. "You can't risk yourself!"

"Of course I can," the King reproved her. "This is my battle, for which all the rest of you are risking yourselves. If we lose it, I am lost anyway." He wet a finger and held it to the wind. "Good; it is blowing west. I can clear the wall. But don't get near until it clears." He went to the northeast corner.

"But the curse will make the wind change!" Dor protested.

"The curse is stretched to its limit," the King said. "This magic will not take long, and I don't think the wind can shift in time."

The goblins were now scrambling over the wall, being met by screaming harpies. Dor and Vadne and the centaurs drew back to the inner surface of the wall, and crowded toward the eastern end, upwind of the proposed release.

The King opened his vial. Yellowish smoke puffed out, was caught by the wind, and strewn across the rim of the wall. It sank down upon swarming goblins-and they melted into black goo. They did not even scream; they just sank into the nether mass. They dissolved off the wall, flowed across the stone, coursed in rivulets through the crannies, and dripped out of sight. Harpies snatched at dissolving goblins, got caught by the juice, and melted into juice themselves. A putrid stench rose from the fluid: the odor of hot vomit.

The wind gusted sidewise, carrying a wisp of magic smoke back across the wall. "The curse!" Dor cried in horror. The closest centaurs danced back, trying desperately to avoid it, but with the evil humor of the curse it eddied after them. One got his handsome tail melted away. "Fan it from you!" Dor cried. "We need fans!"

Vadne touched the nearest goblin. It became a huge fan. Dor grabbed it from her hands and used it to set up a counterdraft. Vadne made another, and another, and the centaurs took these. Together they set up a forced draft. The yellow smoke reared up as if trying to get around, horrible in its mindless determination.

"Where are you going?" Dor cried at it.

"I'm drifting east another six feet, then north over the wall," it replied. "The best pickings are there."

They scrambled out of its projected path. The smoke followed its course, then was gone.

"Ah, Murphy," Vadne said. "It took Magician's magic to foil you, but we foiled you."

Dor agreed weakly. King Roogna, narrowly missed by the smoke, stepped away from the parapet. "It tried to go wrong, but could not. Quite."

Dor peered over the wall. There, below, was a bubbling, frothing ocean of glop, subsiding as the effect penetrated to the bodies underneath. A sinking tide, it ebbed along the rampart and sucked down into the moat, liquefying everything organic. Before long, there was nothing on the north side except the black sea.

"More of that on the other walls will abate the whole goblin army!" Dor remarked to the King, his knees feeling weak and his stomach weaker.

"Several problems," King Roogna said. "First, the wind is wrong for the other sides; it would do as much damage to us as to the enemy. Second, it is not effective against the airborne harpy forces, since it tends to sink and they are flying above it. Third, this vial is all I had. I deemed it too dangerous to store in greater quantity."

"Those are pretty serious problems," Dor admitted. "What other magic is in your arsenal?"

"Nothing readily adaptable, I regret. There is a pied-piper flute I fashioned experimentally from a flute tree: it plays itself when blown, and creatures will follow it indefinitely. But we don't need to lead the goblins or harpies here; we want to drive them away. There is also a magic ring: anything passing through it disappears forever. But it is only two inches in diameter, so only small objects can be passed. And there is a major forget spell."

Dor considered. "Could you reverse the flute, so that it drives creatures away?"

"I might, if the curse didn't foul it up. But it would drive us away, too."

"Urn. There is that. Could Vadne stretch out the ring to make it larger?"

The King searched in a pocket. "One way to find out." He brought out a golden ring and passed it to Vadne.

"I really am not skilled with inanimate things," she said. But she took it and concentrated. For a moment nothing happened; then the ring expanded. It stretched out larger and larger, but at the same time the gold that composed it was thinning. At last it was a hoop some two feet in diameter, fashioned of fine gold wire. "That's the best I can do," she said. "If I try to stretch it any farther, it will break." She looked washed out; this had evidently been a real effort.