"Now arriving at Lake Ogre-Chobee," announced the conductor.
Mentia and Jenny exited the train together and stood upon the shores of the lake. Castle Vortex, the home of the Curse Fiends of Xanth and Jenny's destination, lay beneath the waters of the lake. And just a few meters offshore grew a thick tangle of hypnogourd vines – the gateway to Mentia's destination.
"We're here," Jenny breathed in relief, stretching arms and legs long cramped from sitting in the train of thought for so long. "Now to find a way down to the castle…"
"Something's up with Anakin."
Jenny turned, startled, to look at Mentia. "What?"
"What, you didn't notice?"
Jenny shook her head. "No, I didn't, actually. But why are you bringing it up now?"
Mentia shrugged, her shoulders raising past her ears. "Didn't cross my mind until now."
"So what do you think is up?"
"I dunno. He just gets this funny look on his face once in awhile, like a poor sap cornered by the Gap Dragon. And it only happens when Luke's around."
Jenny frowned. "Last time we played the game together, I couldn't see Anakin's face, so I don't know if that's normal or not. Still, it could mean something. Maybe he knows something about the quest that we don't. After all, he spent more time talking about the Horsemen and Crypt Keeper with Kenya than the rest of us…"
"Or it could mean he's a…"
"Of course he's not, Mentia! He could have let Luke lose the game a long time ago, and he hasn't. If he's a False Companion, then I'm a harpy."
Mentia shrugged. "Whatever."
Jenny pointed at the hypnogourds. "C'mon, let's hurry with our parts of the quest so we can meet the others."
Mentia humphed. She didn't like being roped into this quest in the first place. She wanted to be off teleporting around Xanth, seducing naïve young village lads, pulling pranks on the unsuspecting, popping in unannounced on her better half Metria, and in general raising havoc – not traipsing around with the weirdest collection of freaks she'd ever seen. True, it had been great fun at first, especially as there had been two halfway-good-looking unattached men in the group. But now she was thoroughly bored with this whole saving-Xanth business and just wanted it over with.
"Go on, look in the gourd," Jenny encouraged.
"I don't wanna," she whined. "I don't fancy getting stuck in the dream realm forever…"
"It won't be forever," Jenny replied. "When I get back from Castle Vortex, I'll cover the gourd and break the trance for you. How does that sound?"
"Horrible," Mentia replied. "But if Xanth gets destroyed, I won't have anywhere to wreak chaos, so I suppose I'd better go."
"That's the spirit." From the strain in the elf's voice, it was taking all her willpower to maintain her sunny disposition and avoid falling into uncharacteristic sarcasm.
Mentia kicked a gourd so that the peephole was visible…
"Lady, get off the set!"
She looked around, startled. What was this place? It sure wasn't Xanth. Looking into the hypnogourd was always a gamble, for it dumped you into a randomly selected portion of the dream realm. And this randomly selected portion of the dream realm was enough to boggle even her half-crazed demoness mind.
Several dozen men and women were bustling about a spacious room, managing bulky equipment and stepping carefully over black wires that tangled about the floor like overly amorous snakes. Several large cannon-shaped machines (obviously primitive Mundanian cameras of a sort) were aimed at a cluster of costumed men who stood before a huge window. Beyond the window, rather than a view of the outside world, was a deep blue screen. Whatever was going on here was beyond her, but then, Mundanians were strange creatures.
"What is this hole?" Mentia demanded. "And who the bleep are you guys?"
The men in costume just stared. Most of them looked like overgrown imps, clad in white armor that gleamed in the bright lights. But dead center in the group was a being in glossy black, a majestic cloak lending him a regal air and a truly beastly mask glowering at her with the dignity of a sorcerer. Mentia looked him up and down appreciatively. Broad shoulders, deep chest, nice biceps, a truly demonic sense of style when it came to fashion… had she not been here on a mission, she might have propositioned this man on the spot.
"Who the bleedin' 'ell are you?" the man in black demanded in a strange accent.
"Hey, I asked first!" Mentia retorted.
"Lady, get off the set!" an obnoxious voice repeated. "We're trying to film a movie here!"
"Well, for your information, I'm here on an important mission!" she screeched in return. "We're assembling an army to fight the Crypt Keeper and Four Horsemen, and you fellas can either shape up and help us out, or I'll tell you where you can stick your stupid cameras!"
One of the white-armored men pointed to the side of his helmet and made a snide remark to his friends. They tittered with laughter.
"That's it," the obnoxious voice grumbled. "Security!"
"All right, all right, I'm goin'," she humphed, and took great pains to flounce off the set in as suggestive a manner as possible. When she passed the black-armored man, however, she gave him a wink and a pinch in the posterior. He jumped – which was quite a sight in itself – and backed away as if she were a zombie.
Waltzing out the door, she found herself in another bizarre location of the dream realm, though she at least knew about this one – the Dune Sea. Wave after wave of green-blue sand rose like rows of jagged teeth against the pink-tinged sky, and fish leaped and wriggled through the fine grains as easily as they would through water. Mentia flopped down on a dune and sighed, picking up a handful of sand and letting the aqua-colored material slip through her fingers. What good was coming here going to do if the dream realm's inhabitants didn't even listen to her?
"Miss?"
She turned. One of the men in white had followed her out of the studio.
"Whaddaya want?"
"Look, I'm sorry for the way we treated you back there," he said sincerely, having a seat beside her. "It's just that… you startled us, appearing out of thin air like that."
"What, never seen a demoness before?"
"Actually, no," he replied with a chuckle. "Read about them, though. I'm a big fan of Xanth, though I must admit Star Wars is my first love." He extended a hand. "Name's Douglas."
"Demoness Mentia," she replied, ignoring the hand and instead planting a huge wet kiss on the side of his helmet. "So what kind of dream creature are you? You're obviously not a night mare, so you must be a ghost or skeleton or brassie under that armor…"
He hesitated, then nodded. "I forgot to explain. The hypnogourd did something highly unusual when it transported you to the dream realm. Rather than take you to the place where dreams are actually constructed and prepared for delivery, it took you to a dream in progress. In short, you're intruding on my dream."
She blinked. "I'm in a Mundanian's dream?"
"Yup. Xanth and Mundania may be separated by the Interface, but their dream realms tend to overlap, sometimes a great deal." He laughed. "Actually, you're in a recurring nightmare of mine."
"If the night mares keep having to bring you the same dream, you obviously haven't learned your lesson from it."
Douglas laughed again. "I don't think there's a lesson in it. It's one of those good-dream-gone-bad kind of dreams, actually."
"Oh, those. Like when you dream that you and a beautiful woman meet at a love spring, but when the two of you drink the first thing she sees is your horse, or when you dream that you've found a stash of gold in the trunk of a tree, but when you reach in to claim it you discover the tree's a tangle tree."
"Yes, I hate those. I'd rather have a straight-out nightmare than this." He gestured to his chestplate. "In my dream, I'm cast as an extra in 'The Empire Strikes Back.' I get to rub elbows with some of the big actors, including my all-time favorites Dave Prowse and Anthony Daniels. But when I go to see the movie with my friends, all of us psyched about seeing me on the screen, we discover my big scene has been cut from the movie." He made a chopping motion with one hand. "I swear, I woke up with the shakes the first night I had that nightmare…"
"That's not even a horrible dream!" she protested.
"Lady, everyone has their definition of horrible," Douglas pointed out.
True, as far as that went. "But now I've gone and interrupted your dream. Now what?"
He shrugged. "I guess I wait until I wake up. In the meantime…"
She inhaled, making her bosom swell invitingly. "Yes?" she breathed.
"You mentioned a Crypt Keeper?"
She sighed, and her bosom deflated. Men who just wanted all talk, no action were boring. "I'm here in the dream realm to round up volunteers to fight the Crypt Keeper and his cronies, the Four Horsemen. The Crypt Keeper wants to bring down the Interface and let Xanth and Mundania mix. The Four Horsemen are helping him because they want Xanth destroyed, and they think destroying the Interface will do the trick."
Douglas gaped as well as one could gape through a mask. "The Crypt Keeper… wants to bring down the…" He reached up and rubbed the front of his helmet with both hands. "Good gravy…"
"What's your problem?" demanded Mentia. "This isn't your quest, why are you getting worked up over it…"
He looked at her gravely. "I know the Crypt Keeper, Mentia. We went to high school together."
It was her turn to gape. "WHAT!"
"He hated his name," he went on quietly. "He changed it to the Crypt Keeper – legally, too, it's on his birth certificate now. He and I shared a lot of interests – fantasy, science fiction, computers, cheap Mexican food. We hung out a lot, and we always joked about someday going to Xanth, taking on Com Pewter with our own know-how about his kind, maybe hitting it off with one of the hot princesses or demonesses… you know, having a good time!" He stared at his hands. "He died about a year ago… brain tumor… he was only twenty, damn it…"
"He didn't die, he came to Xanth!" shrilled Mentia. "And he's gonna destroy it if we don't stop him!"
Douglas shook his head. "He wouldn't destroy Xanth… he loved it too much…"
She grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard until his helmet rattled. "Don't you get it, you ogre-brain? You can't have Xanth and Mundania in one shot! They can't mix! One's gotta destroy the other! I really don't want Xanth destroyed, because then where will I go to flash my panties and torture innocent mortals? And if Mundania's destroyed, what's gonna happen to you and your kind, huh? Ever think about that? You may think it's a hunky-dory thing for the Interface to come down…"
"Leggo of me!" he exclaimed, wrenching free of her grip. "Okay, I think you've made your point."
"So are you in or out?" she demanded. "You gonna come with us to defeat the Crypt Keeper?"
He shook his head. "No. I can't. My involvement in Xanth is limited to the dream realm." He sighed deeply. "What I can do is give you the Crypt Keeper's true name."
"And what's that gonna do?"
"Names can have a certain power over an individual," Douglas replied. "Demons, for example, can be summoned just by speaking their names. You probably won't be able to summon the Crypt Keeper, but you can probably use his name as a weapon of its own. After all, if you know the name he's tried to hide all these years, what other information of his might you be harboring?"
She considered that. It wasn't exactly an army of dream creatures, but it was better than nothing. "Okay, tell me his stupid name."
Douglas leaned forward and whispered.
"Oh, c'mon, nobody has that dumb a name!"
"Believe it, lady," Douglas replied.
"Well, no wonder he changed it." She sighed again. "Well, I guess that's all I'm going to get out of my part of the quest, so there's nothing else to do but wait for the elf."
Douglas shrugged. "Might as well wait with you until I wake up."
She flashed him a smile. "While we're waiting…"
Douglas gulped nervously.
Break…Jenny paced about the shore of Lake Ogre-Chobee, wondering just how she was going to descend to its depths. She hadn't a talent that would let her breathe underwater or transform into a sea creature, and she saw no boat or submersible that could transport her. She had to get to Castle Vortex, but how?
"Sammy, find a way to Castle Vortex," she ordered.
The cat meowed, happy to comply, and trotted off into a nearby field of pillow bushes. The Curse Fiends grew their crops on the shores of Lake Ogre-Chobee, and here one could find everything from shoetrees to jellybean vines to everything in between. But one pilfered from these fields at their own peril – Curse Fiends weren't called Curse Fiends for use of foul language, after all.
Sammy halted at the base of a crab-apple tree, licking his paws. Jenny gazed up into the branches.
"Hello up there!"
The crabs perched on the branches snapped their claws like an orchestra made up entirely of castanets, disturbed at her shout. Someone up in the tree yelped and swore, causing some of the crabs to steam and turn red as if cooked. Seconds later a man dropped down from the branches, hands bruised from where some of the crabs had pinched him mercilessly.
"Sorry," Jenny said regretfully. "I was wondering…"
"Are you Jenny Elf?" the man interrupted, eyes wide.
Taken aback but not wanting to be rude, she nodded.
"Jenny Elf!" He grabbed her hand and shook it enthusiastically. "So glad to meet you! I'm Carter Curse Fiend, and I welcome you… but I'm rambling." He picked up a thick bag that writhed with freshly picked crabs. "You must come to Castle Vortex with me. The masters must meet you! And your little cat too, of course."
Jenny and Sammy exchanged puzzled looks. Sammy gave a mewl that seemed to say "I don't know what he's talking about either."
Finally Jenny just shrugged and followed Carter. Well, if this was the way to Castle Vortex…
The path to the Castle turned out to be an airtight wooden barge that was raised and lowered by means of a pulley system. The Curse Fiends, unlike most of Xanth's humans, all had the same talent – that of throwing curses. That meant that they relied on more… mundane means of traveling and going about their daily business most of the time. But this didn't make them inferior to other Xanth humans by any means. On the contrary, Curse Fiends were superb actors and playwrights, and their plays and operas were much-loved all over Xanth.
With great fanfare Carter hustled Jenny out of the barge and into the castle, past throngs of gaping Curse Fiends and to the office of the Curse-Fiend leader. The man had a sour-looking face that made Jenny want to turn around and leave at once, but once he laid eyes on her his expression brightened immensely.
"Jenny Elf, welcome to Castle Vortex!" he exclaimed, leaning over his desk to shake her hand. "This is a momentous occasion. Please, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Would you like something to drink?"
Still shaken by her unexpected but not unwelcome newfound celebrity, she took a seat. "Thank you, sir. Um… water would be fine, and I think Sammy would like some milk…"
The items were fetched instantly, and she took a grateful sip of her water. Sammy purred ecstatically over his milkweed pod.
"Now Jenny, I know you must be very confused at the moment," the leader of Castle Vortex said, folding his hands before him. "After all, I'm sure Carter didn't give you an explanation at all…"
"I must admit I'm rather confused," Jenny replied. "But I actually came to Castle Vortex to ask the Curse Fiends' aid in a battle against the Four Horsemen."
The grin faded from his face. "A war with the Horsemen?"
"Yes, and it's urgent. All Xanth is in danger."
He nodded, face grave. "Of course. Of course, we will have the Curse-Fiend Council discuss this immediately. In return…" He gave her a hopeful look. "In return for us offering aid, however, I was wondering if we may ask one small favor?"
She shrugged. "Depends on the favor."
"Ah, splendid! I was hoping you wouldn't turn me down flat, my girl… now then, your adventures in Xanth, especially those concerning those visitors Luke and Vader… you see, we find them fascinating. So fascinating, in fact, that several of us have put together a play to honor them."
She couldn't help but laugh. Herself, a character in a play?
"Don't laugh, child, I'm quite serious. This play is set to tour Xanth in a few weeks, and we want to make sure it's spot-on. Could we, by any chance, ask you to view this play and help us fine-tune it a bit? I'd hate to think we misrepresented any of your friends or their escapades."
She nodded. "I could do that."
He smiled broadly. "That would be marvelous! Thank you, Jenny!"
"And look for me onstage!" Carter beamed.
A few minutes later, Jenny found herself the lone occupant of a theater, facing the stage. She cradled Sammy in her lap and waited nervously. Herself in a play! This was something she would never have dreamed possible, either in Xanth or on the World of Two Moons…
The curtains drew back, revealing a stage separated into three parts. The center of the stage had been heavily decorated with Xanth's native foliage, and here two actresses lingered – a petite young girl meant to represent Jenny, and a stunningly attractive woman who was obviously Metria. On the left and right sides of the stage sat computers, and as Jenny watched a man in painstakingly detailed Vader armor took a seat at the left-hand computer, while a handsome young man meant to be Luke sat down at the right-hand computer.
/This is going to be interesting/ was all Jenny could think.
Break…"So how did you like it?" asked Carter eagerly as she left the theater. "How'd I do?"
"The play was very good," Jenny said. "It was almost as accurate as the real thing. One thing, though – Darth Vader doesn't walk that stiffly. He kind of… glides. I'm not sure how to describe it, really. But at least try to loosen up. It'll look much better."
Carson nodded. "Loosen up, try to glide. Got it."
"Other than that, you made a great Vader," she told him. "Keep it up."
The leader of Castle Vortex approached at that moment, wearing a sober expression. Jenny's heart sank. The answer had to be…
"I'm sorry, Jenny, but the general consensus among the Council is that a war against the Four Horsemen would put Castle Vortex at too great a risk."
"But this is to save Xanth…" pleaded Jenny.
"I know, and I greatly regret that this is all we can do to help." He handed her a covered bucket. "These will help you defeat the army of the Horsemen."
She pried back the lid and peeked inside. "Why, they're seeds!"
"Trust me, child, they will help you. I'm sorry, but that is all I can do. Carter will escort you back to the shore."
Jenny sat numbly in her seat aboard the barge on the journey back. She had so hoped… the Curse Fiends would have been such an asset… and what did these seeds do anyhow?
Mentia was still hunched over the hypnogourd plant when she and Sammy found her again. Jenny bent over and placed her hand over the peephole, and Mentia shuddered as she returned to her body.
"What'd you do that for? I was about to summon the stork…"
"Did you have any luck?" Jenny interrupted sternly. If the demoness had spent the entire time trying to seduce a dream creature…
"No, I didn't. All I got was the Crypt Keeper's real name."
Jenny frowned. "That's odd."
"It's supposed to help us. But how, I dunno."
"A name and a bucket of seeds," Jenny mused. "Well, the Good Magician sent us here, so he must have known this would be what we found. They should help us. I hope."