Night Mare Part 3

"Beware the Horseman."

"Who?"

"The Horseman."

"Is that a centaur?"

"No, he's a man who rides horses."

"But there are no horses in Xanth!"

"There is one now, the day horse. And there are the night mares, like me."

"But then people don't need to fear him. Just horses should fear him."

That might be true; certainly Imbri would never again be careless about the Horseman. But it was irrelevant; she had to get the message through. "That is for the King to decide. You must give him the message."

"What message?"

"Beware the Horseman!" Imbri's image shouted, frustrated.

Chameleon's image looked around nervously. "Where is he?"

What was this? Was the woman a complete idiot? Why had the Night Stallion sent Imbri to such a creature? "The Horseman is west of here. He may be hazardous to the health of Xanth. The King must be warned."

"Oh. When my husband Bink comes home, I'll tell him."

"When will Bink be back?" Imbri inquired patiently.

"Next week. He's up north in Mundania, working out a new trade agreement with Onesti, or something."

"I certainly hope he works on it with honesty," Imbri said. "But next week's too long. We must warn the King tomorrow."

"Oh, I couldn't bother the King! He's seventy years old!"

"But this affects the welfare of Xanth!" Imbri protested, getting frustrated again.

"Yes, Xanth is very important"

"Then you'll warn the King?"

"Warn the King?"

"About the Horseman," the centaur filly said, keeping her tail still and her face straight with an effort.

"But me King is seventy years old!"

Imbri stamped a forefoot angrily, in both her dream form and her real form. "I don't care if he is a hundred and seventy years old! I am! He's still got to be warned!"

Chameleon stared at the filly image. "You certainly don't look that old!"

"I am a night mare. We are immortal, at least until we die. I have a soul now, so I can age and breed and die when I'm material, but I never aged before, once I matured. Now, about the King--"

"Maybe my son Dor can tell him."

"Where is your son now?" Imbri asked warily.

"He's south at Centaur Isle, getting the centaurs to organize for possible war. Because Good Magician Humfrey says there may be a Wave. We don't like it when Waves are made. But I don't think the centaurs believe it."

"A Wave?" It was Imbri's turn to be confused. She knew the woman wasn't talking about the ocean.

"The Nextwave," Chameleon clarified unhelpfully.

Imbri let that go. She had seen the Lastwave, but that had been a long time ago. "When will Dor be back here?"

"Tomorrow night. Just in time for the elopement."

Somehow the woman's ingenuous remarks kept making Imbri react stupidly, too. "Elopement?"

Chameleon might not be smart, but she had a good memory. "Dor and Irene--she's King Trent's daughter, a lovely child with the Green Thumb, only it's really her hair that's green--have been engaged for eight years now, a third of their lives. They could never decide on a date. We think Dor's a little afraid of the responsibility of marriage. He's really a very nice boy." Obviously "nice" meant "innocent" in this connection. Imbri was surprised to learn that any innocent males remained in Xanth; perhaps this was merely the fond fancy of a naive mother. "Irene is twenty-three now, and she's getting impatient. She never was a very patient girl." This seemed to mean that the other woman in Chameleon's son's life was not viewed with entire favor, but was tolerated as a necessary evil. In this att.i.tude. Chameleon was absolutely typical of the mothers of sons. "So she's going to come here at night and take Dor away and marry him in an uncivil ceremony, and then it will be done. Everyone will be there!"

So the pleasure of a wedding ceremony overwhelmed the displeasure of turning her son over to an aggressive girl. This, too, was normal, except-- "For an elopement?" Imbri felt more stupid than ever. Was this a human folk custom she had missed? She had understood that elopements were sneak marriages; certainly she had delivered a number of bad dreams relating to that.

"Oh, they'll all be in costume, of course. So Dor won't know, poor thing. Maybe Irene won't know either. It's all very secret. n.o.body knows except everybody else."

Imbri realized that she bad again been distracted by an irrelevancy and was getting ever more deeply enmeshed in the confusions of Chameleon's outlook. "Two days is too long for my message to wait The Horseman is within range of Castle Roogna now, spying on the Xanth defenses. Anyway, it seems that Prince Dor will be too busy to pay attention to it. You must go to the King first thing tomorrow morning."

"Oh, I couldn't bother the King. He's--"

"Seventy years old. He still needs to know. The Horseman is dangerous!"

The dream Chameleon looked at the dream Imbri with childlike seriousness. "Why don't you tell him, then?"

"I can't My mission here must be confidential."

Then Imbri paused, startled. Confidential? From whom was the secret of her nature to be kept? The Horseman already knew! He had ridden her and intercepted her message and forced her to tell him everything!

"I'll go tell him right now!" Imbri said, cursing her own foolishness.

"But it's night! The King's asleep!"

"All the better. I'm a night mare."

"Oh. That's all right then. But don't give him any bad dreams. He's a good man."

"I won't" Imbri trotted through the rindwall of the cottage, letting Chameleon lapse into more peaceful slumber. She hurried to Castle Roogna, hurdled the moat with one prodigious leap, and phased through the ma.s.sive outer wall. This would be no easy castle to take by storm! She pa.s.sed through the somber, darkened halls and pa.s.sages, until she came to the royal bedchamber.

The King and Queen had separate apartments. Both were safely asleep. Imbri entered the King's chamber and stood over him, exactly as if she were on dream duty.

Even at seventy, which was old for a mortal man, he was a n.o.ble figure of his kind. The lines of his face provided the appearance of wisdom as much as of age. Yet it was clear he was mortal; she detected infirmities of system that would in due course bring him to a natural demise. He had reigned for twenty-five years; perhaps that was enough. Except that if he lacked a competent replacement in Prince Dor...

She entered his mind in dream form, this time a.s.suming the likeness of a nymph, bare of breast and innocent of countenance, symbolic of her intention to conceal nothing from him. "King Trent!" she called.

He had been dreaming he was sleeping; now he dreamed he woke. "What are you doing in my bedroom, nymph?" he demanded. "Are you one of my daughter's playmates? Speak, or I will transform you into a flower."

Startled, Imbri did not speak--and suddenly, in the dream, she was a tiger lily. She growled, baring her petals in a grimace.

"All right--I'll give you another chance." King Trent did not make any gesture, but Imbri was back in nymph form. Even in dreams, the King's magic was formidable!

"I bring you a message," she said quickly through the mouth of the nymph. "Beware the Horseman."

"And who is the Horseman--a kind of centaur?"

"No, sir. He is a man who rides horses. He rode me--" She paused, realizing this statement did not make much sense while she was in nymph image. "I am a night mare--"

"Ah, then this is, after all, a dream! I mistook it for reality. My apology."

Imbri was embarra.s.sed that a King should apologize to a dream image. "But it is real! The dream is only to communicate--"

"Really? Then I had better wake."

The King made an effort and woke. Imbri was amazed; in all her one hundred and fifty years' experience in dream duty, after her youth and apprentices.h.i.+p, she had not seen anyone do this so readily.

"So you really are a mare," King Trent said, studying her in reality. "Not a nymph sent to tempt me into foolish thoughts."

"Yes. Not a nymph," she agreed, projecting a spot dreamlet.

"And you do not fade in my waking presence. Interesting."

"I am spelled to perform day duty," she explained. "To bring my message."

"Which is to beware the Horseman." The King stroked his beard. "I don't believe I know of him. Is he by chance a new Magician?"

"No, sir. I think he is a Mundane. But he is clever and ruthless. He hurt me." She nodded at the sc.r.a.pes on her flanks.

"You could not phase away from him, mare?"

"Not by day. I am now mortal by day."

"Would this relate to the invasion the Mundanes are supposed to be mounting?"

"I think so, sir. The Horseman has two Mundane henchmen and a Mundane horse."

"Where did you encounter this cruel man?"

"Two hours' trot west of here."

"South of the Gap Chasm?"

"Yes, your Majesty. At Faux Pa.s.s."

"That's odd. My scouts should have spotted any crossing of the Chasm, or any sea approach. You are sure of the location?"

"Quite sure. I made a bad misstep there."

"That happens at Faux Pa.s.s."

"Yes." Imbri was embarra.s.sed again.

"Then they must have found a way to sneak in." The King pondered a moment. "Ah--I have it. A quarter century ago, Bink and Chameleon and I entered Xanth below the Gap when we departed from the region of the isthmus, far northwest of here. We somehow traversed in perhaps an hour a distance that should have required a day's gallop by your kind. Obviously there is a magic channel under water. The Horseman must have found it and somehow gotten by the kraken weed that guards it. We shall have to close that off, devious though it may be. There are merfolk in that vicinity; I shall notify them to investigate." He smiled. "Meanwhile, a lone man and two henchmen and a Mundane horse should not present too much of a threat to Xanth."

"The horse is not with them any more, your Majesty. He is the day horse who fled his master and helped me escape."

"Then we must reward that horse. Where is he now?"

"He does not want to meet with human folk," she explained. "He is wary of being caught and ridden again."

Again the King smiled. "Then we shall ignore him. True horses are very rare in Xanth, for there is no resident population. He might be regarded as a protected species. That will help him survive in what might otherwise be a hostile land."

King Trent had a marvelous way of solving problems! Imbri was grateful. "I am also to serve as liaison to the gourd--the realm of the Powers of the Night and to the folk of Xanth," Imbri said in another dreamlet, maintaining her nymph image for the purpose. "And I am to be the steed of Chameleon. But I don't know why; she seems not very smart."

"An excellent a.s.signment!" King Trent said. "Evidently you do not properly comprehend Chameleon's nature. She changes day by day, becoming beautiful but stupid, as she is at the moment, then reversing and turning ugly but intelligent. She is alone because of the exigencies of this presently developing crisis, and that is unfortunate, because someone really should be with her at her nadir of intellect. You can be with her and nudge her from danger. In a few days she will become smarter, and in two weeks she will be so smart and ugly you can't stand her. But she is a good woman, overall, and needs a companion in both phases."

"Oh." Now the Night Stallion's a.s.signment made more sense. It also explained his seeming error: he had shown an image of ugly Chameleon, but meanwhile her aspect had changed.

"Return to her now," King Trent said. "I will have a new a.s.signment for you both by morning."

How thoroughly the King took over, once he tackled something! Imbri trotted through the wall and jumped down to the ground outside. Actually, she landed in the moat, but it didn't matter because she was immaterial; she didn't even disturb the moat monsters. Soon she was back with Chameleon, now understanding this woman better. Appearance and intelligence that varied in a monthly cycle--how like a woman!

Imbri checked in with a rea.s.suring dreamlet, then moved back outside to graze on the excellent local gra.s.s. She slept while grazing, comfortably, suspecting she would need all her energy the next day.

A tiny golem appeared at the cottage in the morning. "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Grundy," Chameleon said. "Do you want a cookie?"

"Yes," the miniature figure said, accepting the proffered delicacy. It was an armful for him, but he chewed bravely into the rim. "But that's not why I'm here. King Trent says you must ride the night mare to Good Magician Humfrey's castle and ask his advice for this campaign."

"But I couldn't bother the Good Magician!" Chameleon protested. "He's so old n.o.body knows!"

"The King says this is important. We have a crisis coming up in the Nextwave and we don't want to misplay it. He says Humfrey should see this mare. Get going within the hour."

Imbri snorted. Who was this little nuisance, to order them about?

The golem snorted back--speaking perfect equine. "I'm Grundy the Golem and I'm on the King's errand, horseface."

"So you can communicate in nonhuman languages!" Imbri neighed. That was quite a talent! She didn't even have to project a dreamlet at him. Still, she didn't like the insulting inflection he had applied to the uninsulting "horseface," so she sent a brief dream of the fires of h.e.l.l at him.

The golem blanched. "That's some talent you have yourself, mare," he concluded. He departed with dispatch.

Chameleon looked at Imbri. "But I don't know how to ride a horse," she said. She seemed very unsure of herself in her stupid phase, but she was certainly an excellent figure of a woman of her age.