Tandy set about her task with determination. It was not that she relished the prospect of such a ride, but that she knew what would happen to her at the hands-or whatever-of the demon if she did not ride. She set up a bolster on two chairs, and practiced on it, pretending it was the back of a horse. She lay on her bed, then abruptly bounced off it and leaped astride the bolster, - grabbing a tassle where the mane should be and squeezing with her legs. Over and over she did this, drilling the procedure into herself until it became fast and automatic. She got tired and her legs got sore, but she kept on, until she could do it in her sleep-she hoped.
This took several days. She practiced mostly when her mother was out setting jewels, so that there would be no awkward questions. The demon did not bother her by day, fortunately, so she was able to snatch some sleep then, too.
When she was satisfied, and also when she dared delay no longer, because of Fiant's boldness and her mother's upcoming overnight journey to set diamonds in a big kimberlite pipe-a complex job-she acted.
She wrote a note to her mother, explaining that she had gone to visit her father and not to worry.
Nymphs tended not to worry much anyway, so it should be all right. She gathered some sleeping pills from the recesses where they slept, put them in her pockets, and lay down. One pill was normally good for several hours before it woke, and she had several; they should keep her in their joint sleep all night.
But as the power of the pills took then- magic effect on her body, drawing her into their slumber, Tandy had an alarming thought: suppose no nightmares came tonight?
Suppose Fiant came instead-and she was locked in slumber, unable to resist him? That thought disturbed her so much that the first nightmare rushed to attend to her the moment she slept.
Tandy saw the creature clearly in her dream: a midnight-colored equine with faintly glowing eyes-there was the demon stigma!-set amidst a flaring forelock. The mane was glossy black, and the tail dark ebony; even the hooves were dusky. Yet she was a handsome animal, with fine features and good musculature. The black ears perked forward, the black nostrils flared, and the dark neck arched splendidly. Tandy knew this was an excellent representative of the species.
'I'm asleep,' she reminded herself. 'This is a dream.' Indeed it was. A bad dream, full of deep undertow currents and grotesque surgings and fear and shame and horror, making her miserable. But she fought it back, nerved herself, and leaped for the dark horse.
She made it. Her tedious rehearsals had served her well. She landed on the nightmare's back, clutched the sleek mane, and clasped its powerful body with her legs.
For an instant the mare stood still, too surprised to move. Tandy knew that feeling. Then the creature took off. She galloped through the wall as if it were nothing - and indeed it felt like nothing, for they had dematerialized. The power of the nightmare extended to her rider, just as the sleeping power of the pills extended to their wearer. Tandy remained asleep, in the dream-state, fastened to her steed.
The ride was a terror. Walls shot by like shadows, and open spaces like daylight, as the mare galloped headlong and tailshort. Tandy hung on to the mane, though the strands of it cut cruelly into her hands, because she was afraid to let go. How hard would she fall, where would she be, if she lost purchase now? This was a worse dream than any before-and the sleeping pills prevented her from waking.
They were already far away from her mother's neat apartment. They cruised through rock and caverns, water and fire, and the lairs of large and small monsters. They galloped across the table where six demons were playing poker, and the demons paused a moment as if experiencing some chill doubt without quite seeing the nightmare. They zoomed by a secret conclave of goblins planning foul play, and these, too, hesitated momentarily as the ambience of bad visions touched them. The nightmare plowed through the deepest recess, where the Brain Coral stored the living artifacts of Xanth, and the artifacts stirred restlessly, too, not knowing what moved them. Tandy realized that when a nightmare passed a waking creature, she caused a brief bad thought. Only in sleep did those thoughts have full potency.
Now Tandy had another problem. She had to guide this steed-and she didn't know how. If she had known how, she still wouldn't have known the way to Castle Roogna. Why hadn't she thought of this before?
Well, this was a dream, and it didn't have to make sense. 'Take me to Castle Roogna!' she cried. 'Then I'll let you go!'
The nightmare neighed and changed course. Was that all there was to it? It occurred to Tandy that the steed was as frightened as Tandy herself was. Such horses weren't meant for riding! So maybe the mare would cooperate, just to be rid of her rider.
They burst out of the caverns and onto the upper surface of Xanth. Tandy was used to strange things in dreams, but was nevertheless awed. Her eyes were open-at least they seemed to be, though this could be merely part of the dream-and she saw the vastness of the surface night. There were spreading trees and huge empty spaces and rivers without cave-canyons, and above was a monstrous ceiling full of pinpoints of light in great patches. She realized that these were stars, which her father had told her about-and she had thought he was making it up, just as he made up tales of the heroic deeds of the men of legendary Xanth's past-and that where there were none was because of clouds. Clouds were like the vapor surrounding waterfalls, loosed to ascend to the heavens. Turn a cloud loose, and naturally it did whatever it wanted.
Then from behind, a cloud came a much larger light, surely the fabled sun, the golden ball that tracked across the sky, always in one direction. No, not the sun, for that chose to travel, for reasons of its own, only during the day.
Jewel had told her that, though Tandy wasn't sure Jewel herself had ever seen the sun. When Tandy had asked her father whether it was true, Crombie had just laughed, which she took to be affirmation of the orb's diurnal disposition. Of course things didn't need sensible reasons for what they did. Maybe the sun was merely afraid of the dark, so stayed clear of night
No, this must be the moon, which was an object of similar size but dimmer because it was made of green cheese that didn't glow so well. Evidently, high-flying dragons had eaten most of it, for only a crescent remained, the merest rind. Still, it was impressive.
The mare pounded on. Tandy's hands grew numb, but her hold was firm. Her body was bruised and
chafed by the bouncing; she would be sore for days! But at least she was getting there. Her bad dream slipped into oblivion for a while, as dreams tended to, fading in and out as me run continued.
Abruptly she woke. A dark castle loomed in the fading moonlight. They had arrived!
Barely in time, too, for now dawn was looming behind them. The nightmare could not enter the light of day. In fact, the mare was already fading out, for regardless of dawn, it was no longer bound when Tandy left the dreamstate. The sleeping pills must have finished their nap, and Tandy had finished hers with them. No-the stones were mostly gone; they must have bounced out one at a time in the course of the rough ride, and now only one was left, not enough to do the job.
In a moment the mare vanished entirely, freed by circumstance, and Tandy found herself sprawled on the ground, battered and wide-eyed.
She was stiff and sore and tired. It had not been a restful sleep at all. Her legs felt swollen and numb from thigh to ankle. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with the cold sweat of nocturnal fear. It had been a horrendous ordeal. But at least she was in sight of her destination.
She got painfully to her feet and staggered toward the edifice as the blinding sun hefted itself ambitiously above the trees. The Land of Xanth brightened about her, and the creatures of day began to stir. Dew sparkled. It was all strangely pretty.
But as she came to the moat and saw that there was the stirring of some awful creature within it, orienting on her, she had a horrible revelation. She knew what Castle Roogna looked like, from descriptions her father had made. He had told her wonderful stories about it, from the time she was a baby onward, about the orchard with its cherry-bomb trees, bearing cherries a person dared not eat, and shoes of all types growing on shoe trees, and all manner of other wonders too exaggerated to be believed. Only an idiot or a hopeless visionary would believe in the Land of Xanth, anyway! Yet she almost knew the individual monsters of the moat by name, and the same for the guardian zombies who rested in the graveyard, awaiting the day when Xanth needed defense. She knew the spires and turrets and all, and the ghosts who dwelt within them. She had a marvelously detailed mental map of Castle Roogna-and this present castle did not conform. This was the wrong castle.
Oh, woe! Tandy stood in dull, defeated amazement. All her effort, her last vestige of strength and hope, and her deviously laid plans to reach her father lay in ruins. What was she to do now? She was lost in Xanth, without food or water, so tired she could hardly move, with no way to return home. What would her mother think?
