There was an uneasy laugh. Was she joking--or serious? As far as Bink knew, the King could transform anything living into any other thing living--of the same sex. But he never used his talent capriciously. So it must be humor.
"But what about the food?" Chester demanded.
"That's it!" she decided, "The women have already proved their superiority, so they'll be barred from the treasure hunt. They'll start in on the refreshments while the men go look for--" But she saw Chester swelling up, and realized she was going too far. "Oh, all right, the men can eat too, even those with appetites like horses. But don't touch the Anniversary cake. The King will serve that--when the treasure hunt is over." She looked momentarily pensive, which was unusual for her; was she sure the King would perform?
The cake was magnificent: tier on tier of scintillating icing embroidered with a huge number 1, crowned with a magically lifelike bust of King Trent. The Queen always promoted the King's glory, because her own glory was a reflection of it. Some poor chef had spent a lot of effort organizing the magic for this ornate pastry!
"Picklepuss, stand guard over that cake, and pickle anybody who durst touch it," the Queen said, fastening the end of the puss's leash to the leg of the cake's table. "Now, men--on with the treasure hunt!"
Roland shook his head. "Skeletons in closets are best left undisturbed," he remarked. "I believe I will go congratulate your mother." He glanced at Bink. "You will have to represent our family in the treasure hunt. You don't have to search too hard." He made a little gesture of parting and moved off through the glowing currents of the sea.
Bink stood in place a moment, reflecting. It was evident his father knew there was something wrong, but was not commenting directly.
And what was wrong? Bink knew he had a good life, now, with a fine if variable wife and the favor of the King. Why did he dream of adventures in far places, of using the sword whose art he had been studying, of danger and even death, though he knew his talent would protect him from all genuine threats? What was the matter with him? It somehow seemed he had been happier when his future was in doubt--and that was ridiculous.
Why wasn't Chameleon here? She was near term, but she could have attended the Ball if she had wanted to. There was a magic midwife on the palace staff.
He decided. On with the treasure hunt! Maybe he could prove himself by locating that skeleton in the closet!
Chapter 2
Treasure Hunt
Now he had a challenge, however superficial. He had to start with his brain. Millie was not necessarily in a closet per se. Her bones had to be somewhere in the palace demesnes, because her ghost was here--but that could be anywhere within the castle, the moat or even the garden. Away from the regularly traveled sections. Unless the bones were buried under a floor or between walls. That seemed unlikely; the structure of the palace was quite solid, buttressed by durability spells; it would be a major undertaking to breach any floor or wall. Presuming that Millie had died suddenly, under suspicious circumstances (otherwise she would not have become a ghost), the murderer would have had to hide her body quickly, surreptitiously. No rebuilding of walls to conceal it! Old King Roogna would not have tolerated such a thing.
Where could a body have been hidden in minutes--so well as to withstand the scrutiny of centuries? The King's renovations had covered every part of Castle Roogna, converting it to the royal palace of the present kingdom; the restorative artisans could not have missed anything like this. So the feat seemed mechanically impossible. There could be no skeletons in these closets.
Bink saw that other men were already busy rummaging in all the closets. No use to compete directly with them, even if the skeleton were there.
Mechanically impossible--ah, there was the due! Not magically impossible! The bones must have been transformed to something else, something innocuous, misleading. The question was, what? There were a thousand artifacts in the palace, and any one could be it. Yet transformation was major magic, and what Magician would be fooling around with a mere chambermaid? So her bones might after all remain in their natural state, or perhaps dissolved in solvent or ground up into powder. Regardless, there should be some clue to their identity, if only it could be correctly fathomed. Yes, a most intriguing puzzle!
Bink walked up to the refreshment table. There were tarts and donuts and cookies and cakes and pies and assorted beverages. Chester was stuffing himself. Bink circled the table, searching for something interesting. As he neared the Anniversary cake, the picklepuss hissed at him warningly. It was cat-bodied, with a snout that was green and prickly like a pickle, and its eyes were moist with brine. For a moment he was tempted to advance on it, to try his magic against its magic. He could not be harmed by magic, yet surely the feline would try to pickle him. What would happen?
No--he was not a juvenile daredevil compelled to prove himself by foolish exploits. Why force his talent to labor unnecessarily?
He spotted a smiling-face cookie and picked it up. As he brought it to his mouth, the smile became an O of horror. Bink hesitated, knowing this was merely another of the Queen's illusions, but loath to bite anyway. The cookie screwed its face in anticipation of the awful end; then when the bite did not come, slowly reopened one icing-dab eye.
"Here, puss--you take it," Bink said, extending the cookie to the leashed creature. There was a faint zoop! and the cookie was pickled, one of its eyes opened, the other closed. Now it reeked of brine. He set it down on the floor, and the picklepuss slunk forward and took the pickle-cookie in its mouth. Bink no longer felt hungry.
"Your spell is ailing," said a woman beside him. It was the old spell doctor, enjoying her unexpected participation in the proceedings. The party was theoretically open to all, but few garden-variety citizens had the nerve to attend. "But it is too potent for me to fix. Are you a Magician?"
"No, just a strongly talented nonentity," Bink said, wishing that were as facetious as it was intended to sound.
She concentrated. "No, I am mistaken. Your spell is not sick, just balked. I think it suffers from lack of exercise. Have you used it in the last year?"
"Some," Bink said, thinking of his recent escape from the moat-monsters. "Not much."
"You have to use magic, or you lose it," she said wisely.
"But what if there is no occasion to use it?"
"There is always an occasion for magic--in Xanth."
That hardly seemed true, for him, here in the palace. His talent protected him from most harm--but so did the favor of the King. So his talent got little exercise, and might indeed be getting flabby. His fight with the animated sword had been the first real occasion for his talent to manifest in some time, and he had sought to avoid invoking his magic there. So his moat dunking was about it. He remained a little wet, but the undersea decor concealed that. Would he have to seek danger, to keep his talent healthy? That would be ironic.
The woman shrugged and moved on, sampling other delicacies. Bink looked about--and caught the ghostly eye of Millie.
He went to her. "How is it proceeding?" he inquired politely.
At close range, the ghost was audible. Perhaps the movement of her white lips helped. "It is so exciting!" she exclaimed faintly. "To be whole again!"
"Are you sure being mortal is worth it?" he asked. "Sometimes when a person achieves his dream, it sours." Was he really addressing her--or himself?
She gazed at him with sympathy. He could see the other guests milling about beyond her, for she was translucent. Milling through Millie! It was slightly hard to focus on her. Yet she was beautiful in a special way: not merely her face and figure, but her sheer niceness and concern for others. Millie had helped Chameleon a lot, showing her where things were, what fruits were edible and what were dangerous, explaining castle protocol. It was Millie who had inadvertently shown Bink himself another facet of the Magician Trent, back when Bink had believed the man to be evil. "It would be so nice if you found my bones," Millie said. Bink laughed, embarrassed. "Millie, I'm a married
/> "Yes," she agreed. "Married men are best. They are--broken in, experienced, gentle, durable, and they do not talk gratuitously. For my return to life, for the first experience, it would be so nice--"
"You don't understand," Bink said. "I love my wife, Chameleon."
"Yes, of course you are loyal," Millie replied. "But right now she is in her ugly phase, and in her ninth month with child, and her tongue is as sharp as the manticora's stinger. Right now is when you need relief, and if I recover my life--"
"Please, no more!" Bink exclaimed. The ghost was striking right on target.
"I love you too, you know," she continued. "You remind me of--of the one I really loved, when I lived. But he is eight hundred years dead and gone." She gazed pensively at her misty fingers. "I could not many you, Bink, when I first met you. I could only look and long. Do you know what it is like, seeing everything and never participating? I could have been so good for you, if only--" She broke down, hiding her face, her whole head hazing before his eyes.
Bink was embarrassed and touched. "I'm sorry, Millie, I didn't know." He put his hand on her shaking shoulder, but of course passed right through it. "It never occurred to me that your life could be restored. If I had--"
"Yes, of course," she sobbed.
"But you will be a very pretty girl. I'm sure there are many other young men who--"
"True, true," she agreed, shaking harder. Now her whole body was fogging out. The other guests were beginning to stare. This was about to get awkward.
"If there is anything I can do--" Bink said. Millie brightened instantly, and her image sharpened correspondingly. "Find my bones!"
Fortunately that was not easily accomplished. "I'll look," Bink agreed. "But I have no better chance than anyone else."
"Yes, you do. You know how to do it, if only you put your marvelous mind to it. I can't tell you where they are, but if you really try--" She looked at him with ardent urgency. "It's been so many centuries. Promise me you'll try."
"But I--what would Chameleon think if--"
Millie put her face in her hands. The stares of the other guests hardened as the ghost's outline softened. "All right, I'll try," Bink promised. Why hadn't his talent protected him from this? But he knew the answer: his magic protected him from physical, magical harm. Millie was magical but not physical--and what she intended for him when she became physical would not ordinarily be construed as harm. His talent had never concerned itself with emotional complications. Bink would have to solve this triangle by himself.
The ghost smiled. "Don't be long," she said, and drifted off, her feet not touching the floor.
Bink spotted Crombie and joined him. "I begin to comprehend your view," he said.
"Yes, I noticed her working you over," Crombie agreed. "She's had her secret eye on you for sometime. A man hardly has a chance when one of those vixens starts in on him."
"She believes I can locate her bones first--and now I have to try. Really try, not just dawdle."
"Child's play," Crombie remarked. "They're that way." He closed his eyes and pointed upward at an angle.
"I didn't ask for your help!" Bink snapped.
"Oops, sorry. Forget where I pointed."
"I can't! Now I'll have to look there, and sure as hell her bones will be there. Millie must have known I'd consult you. Maybe that's her talent: knowing things ahead of time."
"Why didn't she skip out before she was murdered, then?"
Good question. "Maybe she was asleep, when--"
"Well, you're not asleep. You could skip out. Someone else will find her, especially if I give him the hint"
"Why don't you find the bones?" Bink demanded. "You could follow your finger and do it in an instant."
"Can't. I'm on duty." Crombie smiled smugly. "I have woman problems enough already, thanks to you."
Oh. Bink had introduced the woman-hater to his former fiancée, Sabrina, a talented and beautiful girl Bink had discovered he didn't love. Apparently that introduction had led to an involvement Now Crombie was having his revenge.
Bink set his shoulders and followed the direction indicated. The bones had to be somewhere upstairs. But maybe they still would not be obvious. If he did his honest best but could not locate them--
Yet would it be so bad, that date with Millie? All that she had said was true; this was a very bad time for Chameleon, and she seemed fit only to be left alone. Until she phased into her beautiful, sweet aspect, and had the baby.
No, there lay ruin. He had known what Chameleon was when he married her, and that there would be good times and bad. He had only to tide through the bad time, knowing it would pass. He had done it before. When there was some difficult chore or problem, her smart phase was an invaluable asset; sometimes they saved up problems for her to work on in that phase. He could not afford to dally with Millie or any other female.
He oriented on the room that lay on the line Crombie had pointed. It was the Royal Library, where the lore of centuries was stored. The ghostly skeleton was there?
Bink entered--and there sat the King. "Oh, sorry, Your Majesty. I didn't realize--"
"Come in, Bink," King Trent said, fashioning a warm smile. He looked every bit the monarch, even when half slumped over the table, as now. "I was meditating on a personal problem, and perhaps you have been sent to provide the answer."
"I lack the answer to my own dilemma," Bink said, somewhat diffidently. "I am ill-equipped to comment on yours,"
"Your problem?"
"Chameleon is difficult, and I am restless, and someone is trying to kill me, and Millie the ghost wishes to make love to me."
King Trent laughed--then stopped. "Suddenly I perceive that was not a joke," he said. "Chameleon will improve and your restlessness should abate. But the others--who seeks your life? I assure you there is no royal sanction for that!"
Bink described the episode with the sword. Now the King was thoughtful, "You and I know that only a Magician could actually harm you by such means, Bink--and there are only three people of that class in Xanth, none of whom wishes you ill and none of whom possesses the talent of animating swords. So you are not really in danger. But I agree, this could be very annoying. I shall investigate. Since you made the sword captive, we should be able to trace down the root of its imperative. If someone has co-opted one of the weapons of my arsenal--"
"Uh, I think that is where it came from," Bink said. "But Chester Centaur spotted it and took it--"
"Oh. Well, let's let that aspect drop, then; the alliance of the centaurs is important to me, as it has been to every King of Xanth throughout history. Chester can keep the sword, though I believe we shall turn off its self-motivating property. But it occurs to me that there is a certain similarity here to your own magic: whatever opposes you is hidden, using other magic than its own to attack you. The sword is not your enemy; it was merely the instrument of the hostile power."
"Magic like my own..." Bink repeated. "I suppose that could be. It would not be identical, since magic never repeats in Xanth, but similar--" He looked at the King, alarmed. "That means I can expect trouble anywhere, from anything, all seeming coincidental!"
"From a zombie, or a sword, or moat-monsters, or a ghost," the King agreed. "There may be a pattern here." He paused, considering. "Yet how could a ghost--?"
"She is to be restored, once I find her skeleton--and that may be in this room. What bothers me most is that I find myself tempted."
"Millie is a very fetching figure of a slip of a woman," King Trent said. "I can well understand the temptation. I suffer temptation myself; that is the subject of my present meditation."
"Surely the Queen can fulfill any, uh, temptation," Bink said cautiously, unwilling to betray how freely palace speculation had dwelt on this very subject. The King's private life should be private. "She can make herself resemble any--"
"Precisely, I have not touched the Queen or any other woman, since my wife died." To King Trent, the word "wife" meant only the woman he had married in Munda
nia. "Yet there is pressure on me to provide an heir to the throne of Xanth, by birth or adoption, in case there should be no suitable Magician available when that time comes. I sincerely hope there is a Magician! I feel obliged to make the attempt, nevertheless, since this was one of the implied stipulations I agreed to when assuming the crown. Ethically this must involve the Queen. So I shall do it, though I do not love her and never shall. The question is, what form shall I have her assume for the occasion?"
This was a more personal problem than Bink felt prepared to cope with. "Any form that pleases you, I should think." One big advantage the Queen had was the ability to assume a new form instantly. If Chameleon had been able to do that--
"But I do not wish to be pleased. I want to accomplish only what is necessary."
"Why not combine them? Let the Queen assume her most provocative illusion-form, or transform her to it yourself. When there is a heir--, change her back. There is no wrong in enjoying your duty, is there?"
The King shook his head, "Ordinarily, this would be true. But mine is a special case. I am not sure I would be potent with a beautiful woman, or any woman--other than one who closely resembled my wife."
"Then let the Queen resemble your wife," Bink said without thinking.
"My concern is that this would degrade the memory I cherish."
"Oh, I see. You mean if she was too much like your wife, she might seem to replace her, and--"
"Exactly"
That was an impasse. If the King could only be potent with his dead wife, and could not abide any other woman resembling her physically, what could he do? This was the hidden aspect of the King that Millie had shown Bink, way back when: his continuing devotion to his prior family. It had been hard, after that, to think of such a man as evil; and indeed, King Trent was not evil. He was the finest Magician and perhaps the finest man in Xanth. Bink would be the last to wish to disrupt that aspect of King Trent's being.
Yet the problem of an heir was a real one. No one wanted a repetition of the shambles resulting from lack of a well-defined royal line. There had to be an heir to serve until a suitable Magician appeared, lending continuity to the government.