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After that, the drive became boring. Jim-Dad was driving fast, trying to get where he was going before
the madness made it impossible. There was no other traffic on the road, which helped, but still it wasn't
the safest mode of travel. The children were settling down to normal fidgeting, while Sean was oddly
subdued, as if he had suffered some great forgotten adventure of his own. Midrange tuned all of it out
and catnapped.
He woke when the RV swerved. No wonder: the flying dragons were back. They were swooping down
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to strafe the vehicle, and Jim-Dad was trying to dodge their reaching flames. But a flame caught it
anyway-and did no harm.
"Illusions!" Jim-Dad said, disgusted. "Trying to trick me into swerving off the road. Because it's still
enchanted, and they can't really attack us here." After that he drove straight ahead, even when a dragon
came right down to smash into the windshield, and there was nothing.
Midrange sat up and watched, because this was getting interesting. Suppose one of those dragons turned
out to be real, and Jim-Dad didn't dodge it? If maybe there were a flaw in the enchantment, letting one
monster through. But soon the phantom dragons gave up, probably because it was no fun when the
vehicle wouldn't be bluffed.
Then there was a sign: JUNK SHUN. "What do you suppose that means?" Jim-Dad asked rhetorically.
"I don't remember it from before."
It soon turned out to be a crossroads where there was a huge pile of garbage, refuse, and junk. Was it
real-or more illusion? A lot of that junk was in the middle of the road; the vehicle could suffer damage if
it plowed into it at speed.
"Delay is disaster," Jim-Dad muttered, and maintained speed. He won: they passed through the junk
without contact.
After that there were various weird images in the sky and on the ground. At times it looked as if the sky
was solid, with mountains growing on it, while the land was gaseous, with birds flying through it. The
road was a ribbon of asphalt winding between them, now tunneling through the hills and then floating
on water. At one point it headed straight out into space, with the ground showing far below. But Jim-
Dad just forged on, ignoring all the effects, and in the end prevailed. His natural Mundane disbelief in
magic was helping him reject the illusions. As dusk threatened, they reached the turnoff to Imp Erial.
As they pulled carefully into the village, they saw that the imps were desperate. They were still working,
but they looked haggard. Piles of boxes and bags of gems sat on the walks, not yet carried to safety.
Obviously they were not going to make it.
The RV drew to a stop. Quieta appeared, her nice dress sweat-sodden, her nice hair in disarray. "But we
thought you were safely out of Xanth by this time," she cried.
"We came to help you complete your job," Jim-Dad said. "Tell us how to do that."
Quieta wasted no time on amazement. "You can carry those piles of gems to the cave. Ersonal will show
you the way."
They trooped out, not bothering with the accommodation spell this time. Each of the humans, including
Nimby, picked up a pile and carried it carefully. Each load was perhaps ten times what an imp might
have carried. They followed Imp Ersonal along a path that was really too small for full humans, but it
had to do, because if they reduced to imp size, they wouldn't be able to carry their burdens.
They came to the cave. It looked like a rathole, so small that even the imps had to crawl into it. They set
down their burdens and returned to the village.
Midrange watched, as did Woofer and Tweeter. They weren't fit for carrying, but they could still help.
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When the humans returned, each animal showed some of them to a new pile. That way the imps didn't
have to carry the piles to the staging region; they could be picked up directly from the buildings. When
the imps saw that, they increased their efforts to get their wares out on the steps. There were barrels of
beryls, each gem of which was a miniature barrel that would cause anyone who invoked it to bare all.
Men liked to give these to innocent women, the imps explained. There were lapfuls of lapis, which
would cause people to wee-wee unexpectedly; Midrange presumed those were for unfriends or those
with certain bodily complications. There were pails of fire opals, which were little 0-shaped pails that
would safely carry fire. There were chairs loaded with citrines, which were gems that caused folk to sit,
and if they then took up a la-trine, they would sing, and more. There were collections of topaz, which
were toe-shaped candies, yellow, peach, white, and blue. There were tiger eyes, through which one
could catch a view of a tiger. In fact, there were so many kinds of gems that Midrange lost interest long
before assimilating them all.
"What kind of goofy creature are you?" an imp demanded.
Midrange stared at the imp, who was no larger than Midrange himself. "You must be Olite," he
remarked in animal language, not expecting to be understood.
"How did you guess, caterwaul?" the imp asked rudely. "Now, get your carcass out of my way so I can
set these 0-nix stones down where your fat rump is."
Onyx. To be sure. Midrange got out of the way. It was good to know that not all the imps were sickly
sweet in the manner of Quieta.
As David came to pick up the collection here, two more imps passed by. "You know. End, those huge
humans have really helped us," one said. "Too bad this is only the beginning of Xanth's mischief."
"You're right, Asse," the other replied. "They have enabled us to save our wares in time, for which we
are deeply grateful, but the fate of the rest of Xanth seems worse."
"I hope that when we emerge from our safe cave, enough of Xanth remains to make existence [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]