Free Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony Page A

wasted it all, then had nothing better to do than settle down and watch their children turn magic, whereupon some new Wave of no-magic barbarians would invade and victimize them. So a Wave could be several generations in duration. The boldest of these, for reasons we won't go into now, was the Fourth Wave. The greatest of the ancient Magicians lived then: King Roogna, who built Castle Roogna; his archenemy and dinner companion, Magician Murphy; and the Zombie Master, whom you will interview. Plus lesser talents like the neo-Sorceress Vadne. How you will elicit the formula from the Zombie Master I don't know; he was something of a recluse, not sociable the way I am."
           Grundy snorted derisively.
           "Thank you," Humfrey said. He seemed to thrive on insult. "Sit down, Dor-right there will do." Dor, too disoriented to protest, sat down on the decorated carpet he had been standing on, Grundy beside him. The texture of it was luxuriant; he was comfortable.
           "But the main problem is the time frame. The Zombie Master can not come to you, so you must go to him. The only presently feasible way to do that is via the tapestry."
           "The tapestry?" Dor asked, surprised by this familiar item. "The Castle Roogna tapestry?"
           "The same. I shall give you a spell to enable you to enter it. You will not do so physically, of course; your body is much too big to be in scale. The spell will accommodate a reasonably close match, but you are hundreds of times too massive. So you will animate the body of one of the players already depicted there. We shall have to make an arrangement for your present body-ah, I know! The Brain Coral! I owe it a favor, or it owes me one-no difference. The Coral has always wanted to taste mortality. It can animate your body during your absence, so no one will know. The golem will have to help cover for you, of course."
           "I've been doing that all along," Grundy said complacently.
           "Now the carpet will take you to the Coral, then to the tapestry. Don't worry; I have preprogrammed it. Here, better take something to eat along the way. Gorgon!"
           The gorgon hurried in with three vials. "You didn't wash your feet!" she cried to the Magician, appalled.
           Humfrey took a white vial from her hand, "I had her fix this earlier, so if it turns your stomach to stone, blame her, not me." He almost chuckled as he handed the stoppered container to Dor. "Grundy, you better hang on to the spell. Remember, it's in two parts: the yellow puts him into the tapestry, the green puts the Coral into his body. Don't confuse them!" He gave the golem two tiny colored packets. "Or is it the other way around? Well, on with you. I don't have all day," He clapped his hands together with a sharp report-and the carpet on which Dor sat took off.
           Too surprised to protest, Dor grabbed for the edges and hung on. "You don't have clean feet either," he heard the gorgon saying indignantly to Humfrey as the carpet looped the room, getting its bearings. "But I brought two dry-cleaning spells, one for each foot, so-"
           Dor missed the rest. The carpet sailed out of the room, through several other chambers, banked around a corner, angled up an interminably coiling stair, and shot out of a high turret window whose sides almost scraped skin off Dor's tight knuckles. Suddenly the ground was far below, and getting farther; already the Magician's castle seemed small.
           "Hey-I think I'm scared of heights!" Dor cried, his vision recoiling.
           "Nonsense," Grundy retorted. "You made it up here okay, didn't you? What are you going to do, jump?"
           "Noooo!" Dor cried, horrified. "But I might quietly fall."
           "What you need is a good meal to settle your stomach during the boring flight," Grundy said. "Let's just get this white bottle open-"
           "I'm not hungry! I think I'm