"Ride that roc bird out," the rock replied.
"But the roc's wings are broken!"
"So sprinkle it with some elixir, idiot!"
Dor stopped dead in his tracks. So obvious! "I am an idiot!" he exclaimed.
"That's what I said," the stone agreed smugly.
Dor ran up to the roc, got his jugs, and ran to the Spring. "Mind if I take some of your elixir?" he inquired rhetorically.
"Yes, I mind!" the Spring replied. "All you creatures come and steal my substance, that I labor so hard to enchant, and what recompense do I get for it?"
"What recompense!" Dor retorted. "You demand the stiffest price of all!"
"What are you talking about? I never made any demands!"
Something was wrong. Then Dor caught on. Again, that eight-hundred-year factor. The Spring had not yet developed its compensatory enchantment. Well, maybe Dor could do it a favor. "Look, Spring, I intend to pay you for your substance. Give me these two jugs full of elixir, and I will tell you how to get fair recompense from all other takers."
"Done!" the Spring cried.
Dor dipped the jugs full, noting how the bruises vanished from his body as he touched the water. This was the Spring, all right! "All you need is a supplementary enchantment, requiring that anyone who benefits from your elixir cannot thereafter act against your interests. The more your water is used, the more your power will grow."
"But suppose someone calls my bluff?"
"It will be no bluff. You will take back your magic. It will be as if he never was healed by you."
"Say, yes--I could do that!" the Spring said excitedly. "It would take a while, maybe a few centuries, to build that extra spell, but since it's just a refinement of the original magic, a termination clause as it were--yes, it will work. Oh, thank you, thank you, stranger!"
"I told you I would repay you," Dor said, gratified. Then he thought of something else. "Uh--I'm only a visitor to this land, and what I do may fade out after I leave. So you'd better get right on that spell, so you don't lose it once I'm gone."
"How long do I have?"
Dor did a quick calculation. "Maybe ten days."
"I'll fix it in my mind," the Spring said. "I'll memorize it so hard that nothing can shake it loose."
"That's good," Dor said. "Farewell!"
"I'm not a well, I'm a spring!" But it was a good-natured correction.
"Maybe you're a wellspring," Dor suggested. "Because you make creatures well again."
"Bye," the Spring said, dismissing him.
Dor returned to the roc and sprinkled elixir from his jar on its wings. Immediately they healed; in fact, they were better than they had been. But they remained zombie wings, dead flesh. There were, after all, limits; the elixir could not restore the dead to life.
Which was why he was on this quest. Only the Zombie Master could do what needed to be done. Meanwhile, he had to get back to Jumper soon, lest the spider also require restoration from the dead.
Dor boarded, tied the jugs, and hung on. "Home, roc!" he cried.
The roc taxied about to face the channel forged by its crash landing, worked its legs to accelerate, flapped its wings, and launched violently into the air. This takeoff was far more precipitous than the first one had been; it was all Dor could do to hang on. The elixir had given the wings new power. Fortunately there were a few droplets remaining on his hands, and these healed the feathers to which he clung. Now they were great long fluffy colorful puffs of plumage suitable for ladies' hats, easy to grasp.
The roc wheeled in the sky, then stroked powerfully for the Zombie Master's castle. The landscape fairly whizzed by below. They reached their destination in half the time it had taken to make the outbound trip. No wonder the Magician wanted the elixir; his zombies would be twice as good now!
But a new problem manifested. From above, Dor could see that the Mundanes had rallied, and now were laying siege to the castle. There were many of them; their whole advance army must have gathered for this effort. They evidently were not cowards; they had been panicked by the ferocity of the zombies' attack, but now they were angry at the three deaths and sought revenge. Also, they probably thought that any castle so well guarded must conceal enormous riches, so their greed had been invoked. In helping his friend Jumper, Dor had brought serious mischief to the Zombie Master. Dor was sure his father would have had more sense than that; it was yet another reminder of his own youth and inexperience and thoughtlessness. When, oh when, would he ever grow up and be adult?
The roc dived, hawklike, banked, and plopped into place in the courtyard. The landing was heavy, for the bird's feet had not been healed; the sound carried throughout the castle.
The Zombie Master and Millie rushed up. "You got it!" Millie cried, clapping her hands.
"I got it," Dor agreed. He handed one jug to the Magician, keeping the other for himself. "Take me to Jumper."
Millie guided him to the guest room. The big spider lay there, ichor leaking from his stumps. The variegated fur face on the back of his abdomen seemed to be making a grimace of distress. His eyes, always open, were filmed with pain. He was conscious again, but so weak he could chitter only faintly. "Good to see you again, friend! I fear the injuries have been too extensive. Legs can be regrown, but internal organs have been crushed too. I cannot--"
"Yes you can, friend!" Dor cried. "Take that!" And he poured a liberal dose of elixir over Jumper's shuddering body.
Like magic--unsurprisingly--the spider was whole again. As the liquid coursed over the fur-face, the green and white and black brightened until they shone. As it touched each stump, the legs sprouted out, long and hairy and strong. As it was absorbed, the internal organs were restored, and the body firmed out. In a moment there was no sign that Jumper had ever been injured.
"It is amazing!" he chittered. "I did not even need to have my original legs returned! I have not felt so good since I was hatched! What is this medicine?"
"Healing elixir," Dor explained. "I knew where there was a Spring of it--" He broke off, overcome by emotion. "Oh, Jumper! If you had died--" And he embraced the spider as well as he could, the tears once more overflowing his eyes. To hell with being adult!
"I think it was worth the torture," Jumper chittered, one mandible moving against Dor's ear. "Watch I don't nip your antenna off."
"Go ahead! I have plenty more healing elixir to use to grow a new ear!"
"Besides which," Millie added, "human flesh tastes awful. Maybe even worse than goblin meat."
The Zombie Master had followed them. "You are human, yet you hold this alien creature in such esteem you cry for him," he remarked.
"And what's wrong with that?" Millie demanded.
"Nothing," the Magician said wanly. "Absolutely nothing. No one ever cried for me."
Even in the height of his relief, Dor perceived the meaning of the Zombie Master's words. The man had been alienated from his own kind by the nature of his magic, rendered a pariah. He identified with Jumper, another alien. That was why he had agreed to take care of Jumper. More than anything else, the Magician must want people to care for him the way Dor and Millie cared for Jumper.
"Will you help King Roogna?" Dor asked, disengaging from his friend.
"I do not indulge in politics," the Zombie Master said, the coldness returning.
Because the King was no pariah. This Magician might assist those who showed him some human compassion, but King Roogna had not done that. "Would you at least come to meet the King, to talk with him? If you helped him, he would see that you received due honor--"
"Honor by fiat? Never!"
Dor found he could not argue with that. He would not have wanted that sort of honor either. If there were such a thing as dishonorable honor, that would be it. He had made another stupid error of approach, and squelched his chances--again. Some emissary he was proving to be!
But there was another problem. "You know the Mundanes of the Fifth Wave are getting ready to attack this castle?"
&nb
sp; "I do know," the Zombie Master agreed. "My zombie eye-flies report there are hundreds of them. Too many to overcome with my present force. I have sent the roc out to round up more bodies, to shore up my defenses. To facilitate this, the roc will not even land here at the castle; it will drop the bodies in the courtyard and proceed immediately for more."
"The Mundanes are mad at us," Dor said, "because we killed three of them. Maybe if we leave--"
"My zombies helped you," the Zombie Master pointed out. "You can gain nothing other than your own demises by departing now. The Mundanes have this castle surrounded. To them, it is a repository of unguessable riches; no reasonable demurral will change their fixed minds."
"Maybe if they saw us leave," Dor said. "The roc could carry us out. Oh--the roc's away for the duration."
"It seems we must remain, at least for a time,"
Jumper cluttered. "Perhaps we can assist in the defense of the castle."
"Uh, yes, we'd better," Dor agreed. "Since we seem to have brought this siege down upon it." Then, for no good reason, he found himself making another appeal: "Uh, Magician--will you reconsider the matter of the zombie restorative elixir? This is not a political matter, and--"
The Zombie Master glanced at him coldly. Before the Magician could speak, Millie put her sweet little hand on his lean arm. "Please," she breathed. She was excruciatingly attractive when she breathed that way. Yet she could not know that it was as a favor to herself, of eight hundred years later, that Dor was obtaining this precious substance.
The Zombie Master's coldness faded. "Since she asks, and you are a good and loyal man, I do reconsider. I will develop the agent you require." But it was evident that most of the responsibility for his change of heart was Millie's. And her breathing.
Dor knew victory of a sort--yet it was incomplete. He was succeeding in his private personal mission, while failing in his mission for the King. Was that right? He didn't know, but had to take what he could. "Thank you, Magician," he said humbly.
Chapter 7
Siege
The siege was serious. The Mundanes were reasonably apt at this sort of thing, since they were an army. Motivated by vengeance and greed and the knowledge that at least one measurelessly pretty girl was inside the castle, they knew no decent limits. They closed in about the castle and readied their assault.
At first the Mundanes simply marched across the rickety drawbridge and up to the blasted main gate. But the zombie ogre came charging out, much of his strength restored by the healing elixir, and tossed them into the moat, where the restored bog-monster chomped them. It did not actually eat them, because zombies had no appetite, but its chomping was effective. After that the Mundanes were more cautious.
"We have to clear the junk out of that moat," Dor said. "They can just about wade across, as it is now, and the monster can't get them all. If we do it now, while they're recovering from the shock of meeting Egor Ogre--"
"You have the makings of an excellent tactician," the Zombie Master said. "By all means handle it. I am working out your zombie restorative formula, which is devious in detail."
So Dor took a squad of zombies out. "I am mortal, so should not expose myself," he told them as he eyed the bog-monster. It had been trained not to attack other zombies, but that did not help him. "Arrows cannot kill you. So I will stand watch from the ramparts and call down directions. You will go down into the moat and start hauling armfuls of garbage out." He felt less than heroic in this role, but knew it was the expedient course. The Mundanes were surely excellent archers. He was here to get the job done, after all, not to make himself look good.
The zombies marched down. They milled about uncertainly. They did not have very good minds, their brains being mostly rotten. The healing elixir worked wonders with their bodies, but could not restore the life and intellect that had once made them men and animals. Dor found his original revulsion for their condition giving way to sadness. What zombie ever knew joy?
"You with the skullhead," Dor called. "Scoop up those water weeds and dump them on the shore." The zombies started in, laboriously. "You with the scarred legs--haul that log out and bring it to the front gate. We can use it to rebuild the door." It was almost pointless to explain such things to zombies, but he couldn't help himself. It was part of his process of self-justification.
If what he did had no permanence in this tapestry world, what of this present situation? But for him, the Mundanes would not have laid siege to the castle of the Zombie Master. If the Magician were killed, would he be restored after Dor departed the scene? Or was the siege inevitable, since the Fifth Wave had already been headed this way? It was a matter of history, but Dor could not recall the details, assuming he had ever learned them. There were aspects of history the centaur pedagogues did not teach their human pupils, and Dor had not been a terrifically attentive pupil anyway. He would remedy that when he got home again.
If he got home again...
A few arrows came from the forest to plunk into the zombie workers, but with no effect. That evidently gave the Mundanes pause for thought. Then a party of warriors advanced with swords drawn, intending to cut the zombies into pieces too small to operate. Dor used a bow he had picked up from the castle armory, ancient and worn but serviceable. He was no expert at this, but his body had evidently been trained to this weapon too; it was very much the complete warrior. He fired an arrow at a Mundane but struck the one beside his intended target. "Good shot!" Millie exclaimed, and Dor was ashamed to admit the truth. No doubt if he had let the body do the whole thing itself, it would have scored properly, but he had tried to select his own target. He had better stick to swords in future.
But it sufficed to discourage the attack, since this was just an offhand Mundane gesture, not a real assault on the castle. Also, they didn't know that there was only a single archer on the wall. The Mundanes retreated, and the moat-clearing continued. Dor was pleased: he was accomplishing something useful. It would be ten times as hard to storm the castle with that moat deep and clear. Well, maybe eight times as hard.
Meanwhile, Jumper was climbing about the rafters and inner walls of the castle, routing out vermin--which he gobbled with glee--and shoring up weak spots. He lashed subsiding members with silk cords, and he patched small holes, using wood and chinks of stone fastened in place by sticky masses of silk. Then he strung alarm lines across the embrasures to alert him to any intrusions there. This was a small castle, somewhat haphazardly constructed, with a single peaked roof, so in a short time the spider was able to accomplish much.
Millie went over the living and cooking facilities. The Zombie Master, a bachelor, had a good store of provisions but evidently survived mainly on those that required least effort to prepare: cheese balls, fried eggs from the friers that nested on the rafters, hot dogs from the dogwood that grew just inside the moat, and shrimp from the shrimp plants in the courtyard. The courtyard was south of the roofed region, so that the sunlight could slant in over the south wall to reach the ground inside; a number of plants and animals existed there, since the zombies did not bother them.
Millie set about making more substantial meals. She found dried fruits in the cellar, and dehydrated vegetables, all neatly spelled to keep them from spoiling, and cooked up a genuine handmade mashed peach and potato cobblestone stew. It was amazing.
And the Zombie Master, after due experimentation in his laboratory, produced for Dor a tiny vial of life-restorative elixir, brewed from the healing water by the art of his talent. "Do not mislay this, or use it incautiously," he cautioned. "The dosage suffices only for one."
"Thank you," Dor said, feeling inadequate. "This is the whole reason I came to this--this land. I can't tell you how important this vial is to me."
"Perhaps you could offer me a hint, however," the Magician said. "Since we are about to sustain a determined siege, from which we may not emerge--I admit a certain curiosity."
Delicately put! "I'm sorry about that," Dor said. "I know you prefer living alone,
and if I'd known we'd cause all this trouble--"
"I did not say I objected to either the company or the trouble," the Zombie Master said. "I find I rather enjoy both. You three are comparatively simple people, not given to duplicity, and the mere presence of a challenge to survival evokes an appreciation for life that had been lacking."
"Uh, yes," Dor said, surprised. The Magician was becoming quite sociable! "You deserve to know." Dor was feeling generous now that he had this much of his mission accomplished, and the Zombie Master's candor was nice to receive. "I am from eight hundred years in your future. There is a zombie in my time I wish to restore to full life as a favor to--to a friend." Even in this moment of confidence, he could not quite confess his real interest in Millie. This vial would make her happy, and himself desolate, but the thing had to be done. "You are the only one who knows the formula for such restoration. So, by means of enchantment, I came to you."
"A most interesting origin; I am not certain I believe it. For whom are you doing this favor?"
"A--a lady." The thought of letting Millie learn of her eight-hundred-year fate appalled him, and he resolved not to utter her name. He had not had much luck in keeping such resolutions before, but he was learning how. What horror would this knowledge wreak on so innocent a maid, who screamed and flung her hair about and kicked her feet so fetchingly at the slightest alarm? Far better that she not know!
"And who is the zombie?" the Magician prodded gently. "I do not mean to pry into what does not concern me--but zombies do concern me, for surely every zombie existing in your day is a product of my magic. I have a certain consideration for their welfare."
Dor wanted to balk, but found that, ethically, he could not deny the Zombie Master this knowledge. "She--the lady calls him Jonathan. That's all I know."
The man stiffened. "Ah, the penalty of idle curiosity!" he breathed.
"You know this zombie?"
"I--may. It becomes a lesson in philanthropy. I never suspected I would be doing such a favor for this particular individual."