Castle Roogna (The Magic of Xanth, No. 3)
Piers Anthony
Language: English
Pages: 329
ISBN: 0345350480
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Millie, a ghost for 800 years wants only one man--Jonathan, and he's a zombie. To prove himself, Magician Dor volunteers to get the potion that can restore Jonathan to full life. But he has to go back through time to do it, to a peril-haunted, ancient Xanth, where danger lurks at every turn....
present, and Dor shook his huge bony hand, cautiously. That was it. Dor was no more adept at partings than at greetings. They walked away from the Castle, across the deserted, blasted battlefield—and into a vicious patch of saw grass at the edge. Jumper, more alert than Dor, drew him back from the swipe of the nearest saw just barely in time. They were back in the jungle. The visible, tangible wilderness, where there was little subtlety about evil. Somehow it seemed like home. Yet as they
into the nearest eye of the monster spider. He saw his own reflection in the green depth: a large, flat, bearded man’s face, wholly unlike his real face. Even after allowing for the distortion of the lens. “Uh, thanks,” he said. Then both goblins at the front dived for him. Their little gnarly legs propelled them with surprising power, perhaps because their bodies were so small and light. They sailed right at his head. The body’s mighty arm flexed. The sword swistled joyfully across in an arc,
courtyard. A monstrous zombie bird roosted there. Dor stared. This was a roc! The largest of all birds, restored to pseudo-life by the talent of this Magician. The entire world of the dead was under the power of this man! “Carry this man where he will,” the Zombie Master directed the roc. “Return him safely with his burden to this spot.” “Uh, I’ll need a jug or something—” Dor said. The Magician produced two jugs: one for each of them. Dor climbed onto the stinking back of the roc, anchored
fetchingly at the slightest alarm? Far better that she not know! “And who is the zombie?” the Magician prodded gently. “I do not mean to pry into what does not concern me—but zombies do concern me, for surely every zombie existing in your day is a product of my magic. I have a certain consideration for their welfare.” Dor wanted to balk, but found that, ethically, he could not deny the Zombie Master this knowledge. “She—the lady calls him Jonathan. That’s all I know.” The man stiffened. “Ah,
only for whatever man she might encounter,” Jumper opined. “She will no doubt re-form for the next traveler.” “That will likely be a zombie.” Saying that, Dor felt humor bubbling up inside him, until it burst out his mouth in a laugh. “A zombie lover!” Then he remembered Millie’s lover of his own time, Jonathan, and sobered. It wasn’t funny at all! They went on. The glade opened into a rocky valley. The rocks were irregular, some of fair mass, with cuttingly sharp edges: a disaster for zombies.