Free Night Mare by Piers Anthony Page A

dream.
    “Spriggan?”
    “Giant ghosts who haunt old castles and megalithic structures. They are destructive in nature; that’s why old structures eventually collapse. The spriggan keep shoving at columns and pulling at cross pieces, until there is a collapse.”
    “But why right now?” Chameleon asked, since Imbri hadn’t directly answered her own question. A creature had to make things quite clear for this woman.
    “To stop us from proceeding farther. Don’t you remember the nature of Magician Humfrey’s castle?”
    “Oh, yes. I had to ask him a Question once, before I married Bink, and it was just awful getting in! But not like this.”
    “His castle is different each time a person comes to it. I’ve seen it on my way to deliver dreams. Never the same.”
    “Yes, I remember,” she agreed. “He must spend a lot of time getting it changed.”
    “So this is Humfrey’s castle
now.
A megalithic structure. We have passed two hazards and are encountering the third—the spriggan. They are preventing us from advancing by shoving the stones down in our path.”
    “Oh.” Chameleon was not entirely reassured. “But we don’t have a Question. We’re on the King’s business.”
    “Yes, I understand the Good Magician is not supposed to charge for official business. He must not have realized we were coming.”
    “But he’s supposed to know everything!”
    “But he’s old and absent-minded and set in his ways,” Imbri’s dream image reminded her. Still, she was not pleased at having to run this gauntlet. “So we must find out how to get past the ghosts,” Imbri concluded. “Then we will be able to consult the Magician despite his forgetfulness.”
    “The ghosts at Castle Roogna are friendly,” Chameleon said, evidently not liking the spriggan.
    “No doubt. I am supposed to convey greetings from the ghosts of the haunted house in the gourd to one of the ghosts of Castle Roogna. I haven’t yet had the opportunity.”
    “Who?”
    “One named Jordan. Do you know him?”
    “Not well. He keeps mostly to himself. But I do know Millie, who is not really a ghost any more. They’re all pretty nice, I think, except for the six-year-old ghost, who—” She hesitated, not wishing to speak evil of the dead.
    “Who is a brat?” Imbri supplied helpfully.
    “I suppose. But the others are nice.”
    “Spriggan are not. They are to nice ghosts as ogres are to elves.”
    “That’s awful!”
    Evidently Chameleon was not going to be much help on this one. Imbri skirted the fallen stone and started forward once more. There was another groan, this one to the left. Imbri shied right—and the column there began to crumble threateningly.
    “Oh, I don’t like this!” Chameleon cried.
    Imbri paused. She didn’t like this either. But there had to be a way through. There always was. This was the nature of the Good Magician’s defenses. He did not like to be bothered by frivolous intrusions, so he set up challenges; only smart, determined, and lucky petitioners could get through. Imbri knew King Trent would not have sent them here if the matter had not been important, so they had to conquer the challenges. Too bad the smoke had dissipated so she could no longer phase them through solid obstacles. That would have made it easy. But already the shadows were lengthening; soon it would be dusk, and that would solve her problem. All she had to do was keep from getting squished under a rock before then. She really would have been smarter to wait for night before trying to enter the castle, but now she was in it and would carry through with marish stubbornness.
    She thought about the spriggan. They were distantly related to night mares, being both material and immaterial. In their natural forms they were invisible, but they could solidify their mouths to issue groans, and their hands to shove stones. They never touched living creatures directly, however; contact with warm flesh discombobulated them, and it took them a long