playing with stray bones-“
But the zombie didn’t seem concerned. The maggots squirmed alertly in its sunken eyes as it turned to depart. Maybe it was fun to have children play with one’s bones.
Meanwhile, the daily chores continued. Another case concerned a sea monster invading a river and terrorizing the fish there, which caused a slack harvest. Dor had to travel there and make the ground in the vicinity rumble as if shaken by the passage of a giant. The inanimate objects went to it with a will; they liked conspiring to frighten a monster. And the sea monster, none too smart and not re ally looking for trouble, decided it was more at home in the deep sea, innocently gobbling down shipwrecked sailors and flashing at voyeuristic Mundane investigators of the supernatural. It made a “You’ll be sorry when you don’t have C. Monster to kick around any more!” honk and departed.
Again Dor relaxed weakly. This device would not work against a smart monster; he had been lucky. He was highly conscious of the potential for some colossal foulup, and felt it was only a matter of time before it occurred. He knew he didn’t have any special talent for governing.
At night he had nightmares, not the usual kind wherein black female Mundane-type horses chased him, but the worse kind wherein he thought he was awake and made some disastrous decision and all Xanth went up in magic flames, was overrun by wiggle-worms, or, worst of all, lost its magic and became like drear Mundania. All somehow his fault. He had heard it said that the head that wore the crown was uneasy. In truth, not only was that crown wearing a blister into his scalp, making him quite uneasy; that head was terrified by the responsibility of governing Xanth.
Another day there was a serious theft in a northern village, Dor had himself conjured there; naturally Castle Roogna had a resident conjurer. The problem village was in central Xanth, near the Incognito territory largely unexplored by man, where dragons remained unchastened, and that made Dor nervous. There were many devastating monsters in Xanth; but as a class, the dragons were the worst because there were many varieties and sizes of them, and their numbers were large. But actually, it turned out to be a pleasant region, with most of the modern magic conveniences like soda-water springs and scented soapstones for laundry. This was fur-harvesting country, and this year there had been a fine harvest from the local stand of evergreen fur trees. The green furs had been seasoning in the sun and curing in the moon and sparkling in the stars, until one morning they were gone without trace.
Dor questioned the platform on which the furs had been piled, and learned that a contingent from another village had sneaked in and stolen them. This was one time his magic talent was superior to that of King Trent-the gathering of information. He then arranged to have the furs conjured back. No action was taken against the other village; those people would know their deed had been discovered, and would probably lie low for some time.
Through all this Irene was a constant nag. She resented Dor’s ascension to the throne, though she knew it was temporary, and she kept hoping he would foul up. “My father could have done it better,” she muttered darkly when Dor solved a problem and was hardly mollified when he agreed. “You should have punished that thieving village.” And Dor wondered whether he had in fact been wishy washy there, taking the expedient route instead of the proper one.
Yet what could he do, except whatever seemed best at the time of decision? The crushing responsibility for error made him painstakingly cautious. Only experience, he suspected, could provide the necessary confidence to make excellent decisions under pressure. And that was exactly what King Trent, in his own experienced wisdom, had arranged for Dor to obtain here. Dor, to his surprise, did not quite foul up. But the variety of problems he encountered strained his ingenuity, and the foreboding grew that his luck had to turn. He counted the passing days, praying that no serious problem would arise before King Trent returned. Maybe when Dor was Trent’s age he’d be competent to run a kingdom full time; right now it was such nervous business it was driving him to distraction.
Irene, at length perceiving this, flipflopped in girlish fashion and started offering support. “After all,” she said consolingly, “it’s not forever, even though it seems like it. Only two more days before the danger’s over. Then we can all faint with relief.” Dor appreciated the support, though he might have preferred a less pointed summation of his inadequacy.
He made it. The day of King Trent’s return came, to Dor’s immense relief and Irene’s mixed gratification and subdued dismay. She wanted her father back, but had expected Dor to make more of a mess of things. Dor had escaped more or less unscratched, which she felt was not quite fair.
Both of them dressed carefully and made sure the Castle Roogna grounds were clean. They were ready to greet the returning royalty in proper style.
The expectant hours passed, but the King and Queen did not appear. Dor quelled his nervousness; of course it took time to travel, especially if a quantity of Mundane trade goods was being moved.
Irene joined Dor for a lunch of number noodles and milk shakes; they tried to divert themselves by spelling words with numbers, but the milk kept shaking so violently that nothing held together. That fitted their mood.
“Where are they?” Irene demanded as the afternoon wore on. She was really getting worried. Now that she had a genuine concern, so that she wasn’t concentrating her energy to embarrass Dor, she manifested as the infernally pretty girl she could be. Even the green tint of her hair was attractive; it did match her eyes, and after all, there was nothing wrong with plants.
“Probably they had stuff to carry, so had to go slow,” Dor said, not for the first time. But a qualm was gnawing at him. He cuffed it away, but it kept returning, as was the nature of its kind.
Irene did not argue, but the green was spreading to her face, and that was less pretty.
Evening came, and night, without Trent and Iris’s return. Now Irene turned to Dor in genuine apprehension. “Oh, Dor, I’m scared! What’s happened to them?”
He could bluff neither her nor himself. He put his arm about her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m scared, too.”
She clung to him for a moment, all soft and sweet in her anxiety.
Then she drew away and ran to her own apartment. “I don’t want you to see me cry,” she explained as she disappeared.
Dor was touched. If only she could be like that when things were going well! There was a good deal more to her than mischief and sexual suggestion, if she ever let it show.
He retired and slept uneasily. The real nightmares came this time, not the sleek and rather pretty equines he had sometimes befriended, but huge, nebulous, misshapen creatures with gleaming white eyes and glinting teeth; he had to shake himself violently awake to make them leave. He used the royal chambers, for he was King now-but since his week was over, he felt more than ever like an imposter. He stared morosely at the dark hoofprints on the floor, knowing the mares were waiting only for him to sleep again. He was defenseless; he had geared himself emotionally for relief when the week expired, and now that relief had been negated. If the King and Queen did not return today, what would he do?
They did not return. Dor continued to settle differences and solve problems in the Kingly routine; what else could he do? But a restlessness was growing in the palace, and his own dread intensified as each hour dragged by. Everyone knew King Trent’s vacation had been scheduled for one week. Why hadn’t he returned?
In the evening Irene approached Dor privately. There was no mischief about her now. She was conservatively garbed in a voluminous green robe, and her hair was in disorder, as if overrun by weeds. Her eyes were preternaturally bright, as if she had been crying more than was good for her and had used vanishing cream to make the signs of it disappear. “Something’s happened,” she said. “I know it. We must go check on them.”
“We can’t do that,” Dor said miserably.
“Can’t? That concept is not in my lexicon.” She had grown so used to using fancy words, she now did it even when distracted. Dor hoped he never deteriorated to that extent. “I can do anything I want, except-“
“Except rule Xanth,” Dor said. “And find your parents.”
“Where are they?” she demanded.
She didn’t know, of course. She had not been part of the secret.
He saw no way to avoid telling her now, for she was, after all, King Trent’s daughter, and the situation had become serious. She did have the right to know. “In Mundania.”
“Mundania!” she cried, horrified.
“A trade mission,” he explained quickly. “To make a deal so Xanth can benefit. For progress.”
“Oh, this is twice as awful as I feared. Oh, woe! Mundania! The awfullest of places! They can’t do magic there! They’re helpless!”
