Piers Anthony - Castle Roogna

"Is that so? Well look at that, dumdum!" And the face of the plaque swung open to reveal an interior chamber. Inside was a small box.

Dor reached in and snatched out the box before the plaque caught on to its mistake. "And what have we here?" he inquired gleefully.

"Gimme that back!" the plaque cried. "It's mine, all mine!"

Dor studied the box. On the top was a button marked with the words DON'T PUSH. He pushed it.

The lid sprang up. A snakelike thing leaped out, startling Dor, who dropped the box. "HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!" it bellowed.

The snake-thing landed on the ground, its energy spent. "Jack, at your service," it said. "Jack in the box. You sure look foolish."

"A golem," Grundy said. "I should have known. Golems are insufferable."

"You oughta know, pinhead," Jack retorted. He reached into a serpentine pocket and drew out a shiny disk. "Here is an achievement button to commemorate the occasion." He held it up.

Dor reached down and took the button. It had two faces. On one side it said TRESPASSER. On the other it said PERSECUTED.

Dor had to laugh, ruefully. "I guess I fell for it! That's what I get for seeking the easy way through."

He put the button against his shirt, where it stuck magically, PERSECUTED side out. Then he picked up the Jack, put him back in the box, closed the lid, set the works back inside the plaque's chamber, and closed that, "Well played, plaque," he said. "Yeah," the plaque agreed, mollified. They returned their attention to the moat. "No substitute for my own ingenuity," Dor said. "But this diversion has given me a notion. If we can be tricked by a decoy-"

"I don't see what you're up to," Grundy said. "That triton knows his target."

"That triton thinks he knows his target. Watch this." And Dor squatted by the water and said to it: "I shall make a wager with you, water. I bet that you can't imitate my voice."

"Yeah?" the water replied, sounding just like Dor. "Hey, that's pretty good, for a beginner. But you can't do it in more than one place at a time."

"That's what you think!" the water said in Dor's voice from two places.

"You're much better than I thought!" Dor confessed ruefully. "But the real challenge is to do it so well that a third party could not tell which is me and which is you. I'm sure you couldn't fool that triton, for example."

"That wetback?" the water demanded. "What do you want to bet, sucker?"

"That water's calling you a kind of fish," Grundy muttered.

Dor considered. "Well, I don't have anything you would value. Unless-that's it! You can't talk to other people, but you still need some way to show them your prowess. You could do that with this button." He brought up the TRESPASSER / PERSECUTED button, showing both sides. "See, it says what you do to intruders. You can flash it from your surface in sinister warning."

"You're on!" the water said eagerly. "You hide, and if old three-point follows my voice instead of you, I win the prize."

"Right," Dor agreed. "I really hate to risk an item of this value, but then I don't think I'm going to lose it You distract him, and I'll hide under your surface. If he can't find me before I drown, the button's yours."

"Hey, there's a flaw in that logic!" Grundy protested. "If you drown-"

"Hello, fishtail!" a voice cried from the far side of the moat. "I'm the creep from the jungle!"

The triton, who had been viewing the proceedings without interest, whirled. "Another one?"

Dor slipped into the water, took half a breath, and dived below the surface. He swam vigorously, feeling the cool flow across his skin. No trident struck him. As his lungs labored painfully against his locked throat, he found the inner wall of the moat and thrust his head up.

He gasped for breath, and so did Grundy, still clinging to his shoulder. The triton was still chasing here and there, following the shifting voices. "Over here, sharksnoot! No, here, mer-thing! Are you blind, fish-face?"

Dor heaved himself out. "Safe!" he cried. "You win, moat; here's the prize. It hurts awfully to lose it, but you sure showed me up." And he flipped the button into the water.

"Anytime, sucker," the water replied smugly.

The significance of Grundy's prior comment sank in belatedly. A sucker was a kind of fish, prone to fasten to the legs of swimmers and-but he hoped there were none here.

The decoy voices subsided. The triton looked around, spotting him with surprise. "How did you do that? I chased you all over the moat!"

"You certainly did," Dor agreed. "I'm really breathless."

"You some sort of Magician or something?"

That describes it."

"Oh." The triton swam away, affecting loss of interest

The second challenge was now before them. There was a narrow ledge of stone between the moat and the castle wall. Dor found no obvious entry to the castle. "It's always this way," Grundy said wisely. "A blank wall. Inanimate obstacle. But the worst is always inside."

"Good to know," Dor said, feeling a chill that was not entirely from his soaking clothing. He was beginning to appreciate the depth of the challenge King Trent had made for him. At each stage he was forced to question his ability and his motive: were the risk and effort worth the prize? He had never been exposed to a sustained challenge of this magnitude before, where even his talent could help him only deviously. With the counterspells against things-giving away information, he was forced to employ his magic very cleverly, as with the moat. Maybe this was the necessary course to manhood-but he would much prefer to have a safe route home. He was, after all, only a boy. He didn't have the mass and thews of a man, and certainly not the courage. Yet here he was-and he had better go forward, because the triton would hardly let him go back.

The mass and thews of a man. The notion appealed insidiously. If by some magic he could become bigger and stronger than his father, and be skilled with the sword, so that he didn't have to have an ogre backing him up-ah, then wouldn't his problems be over! No more weaseling about, using tricks to sneak by tritons, arguing with plaques

But this was foolish wishful thinking. He would never be such a man, even when full grown. "Full groan," he muttered, appreciating the morbid pun. Maybe he would have made a good zombie!

They circled the castle again. At intervals there were alcoves with plants growing in them, decorating the blank wall. But they weren't approachable plants. Stinkweeds, skunk cabbages, poison ivy-the last flipped a drop of glistening poison at him, but he avoided it. The drop struck the stone ledge and etched a smoking hole in it. Another alcove held a needle-cactus, one of the worst plant menaces of all. Dor hastened on past that one, lest the ornery vegetable elect to fire a volley of needles at him.

"You climbed a wall of glass?" Dor inquired skeptically, contemplating the blank stone. He was not a good climber, and there were no handholds, steps, or other aids in existence.

"I was a golem then-a construct of string gunk. It didn't matter if I fell; I wasn't real. I exist only to do translations. Today I could not climb that glass wall, or even this stone wall; I have too much reality to lose."

Too much reality to lose. That made sense. Dor's own reality became more attractive as he pondered the possible losing of it. Why was he wishing for a hero's body and power? He was a Magician, probable heir to the throne. Strong men were common; Magicians were rare. Why throw that away-for a zombie?

Then he thought of lovely Millie. To do something nice for her, make her grateful. Ah, foolishness! But it seemed he was also that kind of a fool. Maybe it came with growing up. Her talent of sex appeal-

Dor tapped at the stone. It was distressingly solid. No hollow panels there. He felt for crevices. The interstices between stones were too small for his fingers, and he already knew there were no ledges for climbing. "Got to be in one of those alcoves," he said.