'Yes, a major one, inside the Gap. To make the goblins and harpies and cohorts and ilk stop fighting. They-'
Forget spells are permanent, until counterspelled.
'I suppose so, for the ones affected. But-'
You have just rendered the Gap itself forgotten.
'The Gap? But it's not alive! The spell only affects living things, things that remember.'
Therefore all living things will forget the Gap. Stunned, Dor realized it was true. He had caused the Gap to be forgotten by all but those people whose forgetting would be paradoxical. Such as those living adjacent to it, who would otherwise fall in and die. Their deaths would be inexplicable to their friends and relatives, leading to endless complications that would quickly neutralize the spell. Paradox was a powerful natural counterspell! But any people who had no immediate need-to-know would simply not remember the Gap. This was true in his own day- and now he knew how it had come about. He had done it, with his bumbling.
Yet if what he did here had no permanence, how could?? He couldn't take time to ponder that now. 'We have to get back to Castle Roogna. Or at least, we can't stay here. There would be paradox when we caught up to our own time.'
So it would seem. I shall release you from my preservative fluid. The primary radiation of the spell should not affect you; the secondary may. You will not forget your personal identities and mission, but you may forget the Gap once you leave its vicinity.
'I'm pretty much immune to that anyway,' Dor said. 'I'm one of the near-Gap residents. Just so long as I don't forget the rest.'
One question, before I release you. Through what aperture have you and all these other creatures entered my realm? I had thought the last large ring was destroyed fifty years ago.
'Oh, we have a two-inch ring that we expanded to two-foot diameter. We can change it back when we're done with it.'
That will be appreciated. Perhaps we shall meet again-in eight hundred years, the Coral thought at him.
Then Dor popped out of the hoop and dangled by his dragline. Jumper followed.
'I had not anticipated immobility,' the spider chittered ruefully.
'That's all right. We can't all think of everything, all the time.'
Jumper was not affronted. 'True.'
The harpies were visible in the distance, but they paid no further attention to Dor and Jumper. They were milling about in air, trying to remember what they were doing there. Which was exactly what Dor had wanted to happen. The goblins, however, were in sadder state. They too seemed to be milling about-but they had forgotten that sharp dropoffs were hazardous to health, and were falling into the chasm at a great rate. Dor's action had decimated the goblin horde.
'It can not be helped,' Jumper chittered, recognizing his disgust. 'We can not anticipate or control all ramifications of any given course.'
'Yeah, I guess,' Dor agreed, still bothered by the slaughter he had wrought. Would he get hardened to this sort of carnage as he matured? He hoped not.
They climbed to the brim and stood on land again. The goblins ignored them, not remembering them. The forget detonation had evidently been devastating near its origin, wiping out all memories of everything.
Dor spied a glassy fragment lying on the ground. He went to pick it up. It was a shatter from the forget-spell globe. 'You really did it, didn't you!' he said to it.
'That was some blast!' the fragment agreed happily. 'Or was it? I forget!'
Dor dropped it and went on. 'I hope Cedric got clear in time. That spell was more powerful than I expected.'
'He surely did.'
They hurried back toward the Castle, ignoring the wandering hordes.
The battle was not over at Castle Roogna, but it was evident that the tide had turned. As the distance from the forget-spell ground zero lengthened, the effects diminished, until here at the Castle there was little confusion-except that there were only about a third as many goblins and harpies as before, and the ramparts were manned by zombies. The Zombie Master had gotten through!
The defenders spied them, and laid down a barrage of cherry bombs to clear a path to the Castle. Even so, it was necessary to employ sword and hoop to get through, for the goblins and harpies resented strangers getting into their battle. So Dor was forced to slay again. War was hell, he thought.
King Roogna himself welcomed them at the gate. 'Marvelous!' he cried. 'You piped half the monsters off the field and made them forget. Vadne led the Zombie Master in while the goblins were distracted by the flute, and he has been generating new zombies from the battlefield casualties ever since. The only problem is fetching them in.'
'Then there's work for me to do,' Dor said shortly. He found he didn't really want to accept congratulations for doing a job of mass murder.
The King, the soul of graciousness, made no objection, 'Your dedication does you credit.'
Jumper helped, of course. Covered by centaur archers on the ramparts, they went out, located the best bodies, looped them with silk, and dashed back under cover. Then they hauled the corpses in on the lines. They were really old hands at this. When they had a dozen or so, they ferried them in to the Zombie Master's laboratory.
Millie was there, wan and disheveled, but she looked up with a smile when Dor entered. 'Oh, you're
