this situation. He pushed her away gently, the action requiring far more effort than he cared to show. 'What happened?' he asked again.
'It-it banged,' she said.
He had to remind himself that her diminishing mentality was the other face of her curse. Now it was easier to hold off her lush body. A body without a mind did not appeal to him. 'What banged?'
'The cherry.'
'The cherry?' This was the first he had heard about the new fruit. But after patient questioning, he elicited the story.
'Those are cherry bombs!' he exclaimed, comprehending. 'If you had actually eaten one-':
She was not yet so stupid as to misunderstand that. 'Oh, my mouth?'
'Oh, your head! Those things are powerful. Didn't Milly warn you?' Milly was the chambermaid ghost.
'She was busy.'
What would a ghost be busy with? Well, this was no time to explore that. 'After this don't eat anything unless a ghost tells you it's okay.'
Chameleon nodded dutifully.
Bink picked up a cherry cautiously and considered it. It was just a hard little red ball, marked only where its stem had broken off. 'Old Magician Roogna probably used these bombs in warfare. He didn't like war, as I understand it, but he never let his defenses grow soft. Any attackers-why, one man on the ramparts with a slingshot could decimate an army, lobbing these cherry bombs down. No telling what other trees there are in the arsenal. If you don't stop fooling around with strange fruits-'
'I could blow up the castle,' she said, watching the dissipating smoke. The floor was scorched, and a table had lost a leg.
'Blow up the castle?' Bink echoed, suddenly thinking of something. 'Chameleon, why don't you bring in some more cherry bombs? I'd like to experiment with them. But be careful, very careful; don't knock or drop any.'
'Sure,' she said, as eager to please as any ghost. 'Very careful.'
'And don't eat any.' That was not quite a joke.
Bink gathered cloth and string, and made bags of assorted sizes. Soon he had bag-bombs of varying power. He planted these strategically around the castle. One bag he kept for himself.
'I think we are ready to depart Castle Roogna,' he said. 'But first I have to talk with Trent. You stand here by the kitchen door, and if you see any zombies, throw cherries at them.' He was sure no zombie had the coordination to catch such a bomb and throw it back; wormy eyes and rotting flesh necessarily had poor hand-eye integration. So they would be vulnerable. 'And if you see Trent come down, and not me, throw a cherry into that pile. Fast, before he gets within six feet of you.' And he pointed to a large bomb he had tied to a major support column. 'Do you understand?'
She didn't, but he drilled her on it until she had it straight. She was to throw a cherry at anything she saw-except Bink himself.
Now he was ready. He went up to the library to speak with the Evil Magician. His heart beat loudly within him, now that the moment of confrontation had come, but he knew what he had to do.
A ghost intercepted him. It was Milly, the chambermaid, her white sheet arranged to resemble her working dress, her black-hole eyes somehow having the aspect of once-sultry humanity. The ghosts had become shapeless from sheer neglect and carelessness in the course of the past few centuries of isolation, but now that there was company they were shaping up into their proper forms.
Another week would have them back into people outlines and people colors, though of course they would still be ghosts. Bink suspected Milly would turn out to be a rather pretty girl, and he wondered just how she had died. A liaison with a castle guest, then a stabbing by the jealous wife who discovered them?
'What is it, Milly?' he asked, pausing. He had mined the castle, but he bore no malice toward its unfortunate denizens. He hoped his bluff would be effective, so that it would not be necessary to destroy the home of the ghosts, who really were not responsible for its grandiose mischief.
'The King-private conference,' she said. Her speech was still somewhat windy, as it was hard for an entity with so little physical substance-hardly any ectoplasm-to enunciate clearly. But he could make it out.
'Conference? There's nobody here but us,' he objected. 'Or do you mean he's on the pot?'
Milly blushed as well as she was able to. Though as chambermaid she had been accustomed to the chore of collecting and emptying out the chamberpots, she felt that any reference to a person's actual performance on them was uncouth. It was as if the substance were completely divorced from the function. Perhaps she liked to believe that the refuse appeared magically overnight, untouched by human intestine. Magic fertilizer! 'No.'
'Well, I'm sorry, but I'll have to interrupt him,' Bink said. 'You see, I don't recognize him as King, and I am about to depart the castle.'
'Oh.' She put one foggily formed hand to her vague face in feminine misgiving. 'But seee.'
'Very well.' Bink followed her to the little chapel room adjacent to the library. It was actually an offshoot from the master bedroom, with no direct access to the library. But it had, as it turned out, a small window opening onto the library. Since the gloom of the unlit chapel was deeper than that of the other room, it was possible to see without being seen.
Trent was not alone. Before him stood a woman of early middle age, still handsome though the first flush of beauty had faded. Her hair was tied back and up in a functional, fairly severe bun, but there were smile lines around her mouth and eyes. And beside her was a boy, perhaps ten years old, who bore a direct
