Dor trusted his friend. He jumped. Backward off the cliff. He sailed out into the abyss, escaping the grasp of the surging goblins, swinging down and side-wise, for Jumper had providently rigged the lines so that Dor would not whomp directly into the wall. The spider always thought of these things before Dor did, anticipating what could go wrong and abating it first. Thus Murphy's curse had little power over him. That was why Jumper had taken so much time just now, despite knowing that Dor was in a desperate strait at the brink of the canyon; he had been making sure that no mistake of his would betray Dor.
And there it was, of course: the answer to the curse. Maturity. Only a careless or thoughtless person could be trapped by the curse, giving it the openings to snare Mm.
Now the vampires and harpies swarmed down, though the majority of them were fighting with the goblins above. 'Snatch! snatch!' they screamed. A perfect characterization.
Dor found himself swinging back. He held the hoop before him, sweeping through the ugly flock-and where the ring passed, no harpies remained. But they clutched at him from the sides-
Then Jumper hauled him in against the wall, so that he could set his back to its protective solidity and hold the hoop before him. Dor saw now that the brink of the chasm was not even; the spider had skillfully utilized projections to anchor the framework of lines, so that Dor had room to swing clear of the wall. A remarkable feat of engineering that no other type of creature could have accomplished in so brief a time.
'Give me the ring!' Jumper chittered. 'You play the flute!'
Right. They had to call as many creatures to this spot as possible. Dor yielded the hoop and put the flute to his lips. Jumper maneuvered deftly, using the hoop to protect them both.
Now the harpies dived in with single-minded intent, compelled by the music. They swooped through the hoop; they splatted into the wall around it, knocking themselves out and falling twistily down into the chasm, dirty feathers flying free. The vampires were no better off.
Then the goblins and trolls started dropping down from the ledge above, also summoned by the flute.
Dor broke off. 'We're slaughtering them! That wasn't my intent! It's time to set off the forget spell!'
'We would be trapped by it too,' Jumper reminded him. 'Speak to it.'
'Speak to it? Oh.' Dor held out the glassy ball. 'Spell, how are you detonated?'
'I detonate when a voice commands me to,' the ball replied.
'Any voice?'
'That's what I said.'
Dor had his answer. He set the sphere in a niche in the cliff. 'Count to one thousand, then order yourself to detonate,' he told it.
'Say, that's clever!' the spell said. 'One, two, three-four-five-'
'Slowly!' Dor said sharply. 'One number per second.'
'Awww-' But the spell resumed more slowly. 'Seven, eight-what a spoilsport you are!-nine, ten, a big fat hen!'
'What?' a nearby harpy screeched, taking it personally. She dived in, but Jumper snagged her with the hoop. Another potential foul-up defused.
'And don't say anything to insult the harpies,' Dor told the spell.
'Ah, shucks. Eleven, twelve-'
Jumper scurried away to the side, fastened the other end of a new line he had attached to Dor, and hauled him across. This was not as fast as running on level land, but it was expedient.
They moved steadily westward, away from the spell sphere. Dor continued playing the flute intermittently, to keep the goblins massing at the brink without allowing too many to fall over. He heard the spell's counting fading in the distance, and that lent urgency to his escape. The problem was now one of management; he and Jumper had to get far enough away to be out of the forget range, without luring the goblins and harpies beyond range too. Inevitably a good many monsters would escape, but maybe the ones fazed by the forget detonation would lend sufficient confusion to the array to inhibit the others from returning to the Castle. There seemed to be no clear-cut strategy; he just had to fudge through as best he could, hoping he could profit enough to give Castle Roogna the edge. It had worked well with the Mundane siege of the Zombie Master's castle, after all.
How much nicer if there were simple answers to all life's problems! But the closer Dor approached adulthood, the less satisfying such answers became. Life itself was complex, therefore life's answers were complex. But it took a mature mind to appreciate the convolutions of that complexity.
'One hundred five, one hundred six, pick up a hundred sticks!' the spell was chanting. 'One hundred seven, one hundred eight, lay all hundred straight!' Now there was a simple mind!
Dor wondered again how wide a radius the detonation would have. Would the chasm channel it? Then the brunt would come along here, instead of out where the goblins were. Maybe he and Jumper should climb over the rim before the spell went off, and lie low there, hoping to be shielded from the direct effect. But they couldn't come up too close to the goblins, who were milling about near the brink. The harpies were still dive- bombing him, forcing Jumper to jump back with the hoop. Fortunately, the bulk of their attention was taken by the goblins, their primary enemy; Dor and Jumper were merely incidental targets, attacked because they were there. Except when Dor played the flute, as he continued to do intermittently.
'Three hundred forty-seven, three hundred forty-eight, now don't be late,' the spell was saying in the fading distance. As long as he could hear it, he had to assume he was within its forget radius.
'Can we go faster?' Dor asked nervously. He had thought they were traveling well, but the numbers had jumped with seeming suddenness from the neighborhood of one hundred to the neighborhood of three hundred. Unless the spell was cheating, skipping numbers-no, the inanimate did not have the wit to cheat Dor had just been preoccupied with his own efforts and gloomy thoughts.
