Anthony, Piers - Xanth 18 - Geis of the Gargoyle

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GARY GAR

The demoness formed into smoke, and then into an

insidiously lovely (if you like that type) human-

style woman. Her face was unutterably fair, her hair

flowed like honey, her bosom was so full and well-formed

that it was probably sinful just to look at it, and the rest of

her was moreso. But there was something odd about her

apparel.

She eyed the creature sitting in the dry riverbed, who

was about as opposite from her as it was possible to be.

"My, you're an ugly customer," she remarked.

"Thank you," the thing replied gruffly.

"You can speak!" she said, surprised.

"Only when I make the effort."

She walked around it. Her dainty delicate feet did not

quite touch the ground, but the ground here was so

scabbed and messy that this was just as well. She peered

closely at every detail. "You have a face like a cross be-

tween a lion and an ape, with the worst features of each,

and with an extremely big mouth formed into a perpet-

ual 0. You have a grotesque compact body with an inane

PIERS ANTHONY

tail and four big clumsy feet. And you have a pair of re-

ally ugly stumpy leathery wings. Overall I can't imagine a

worse-looking creature."

"Thank you. You, in contrast, are unconscionably aes-

thetic."

"I'm what?" she asked, frowning.

"Disgustingly pretty."

"Oh. Thank you."

"My statement was not a compliment."

"Well, neither was mine! I have just three questions to

ask of you, monster."

"Then will you go away?"

She shook a fine firm finger. "Answer mine, then I'll

answer yours, you refugee from a horror house. What are

you?"

"I am a gargoyle."

"Who are you?"

"Gary Gar."

"And what are you doing, Gary Gargoyle?"

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"I am performing according to my geis."

"What's a gaysh?"

"Forget it, demoness! You promised to answer mine af-

ter three of yours."

She frowned prettily. "Very well, Gary Garble. Ask your

stupid question." A large mug appeared in her hand.

"Would you like a drink from Ein Stein first?"

"What's tha—" he started to ask, but caught himself al-

most barely in time. She was trying to trick him into wast-

ing his stupid question. "No. I don't know what that is, so

I won't risk it."

'Too bad," she said. "One drink from this would have

made you Xanth's smartest creature, capable of concluding

that Eeee equals Emcee squared." The mug disappeared.

"I can live without that Conclusion," he said. "Who are

you?"

She fidgeted, beginning to lose definition. "That's awk-

ward to answer."

GEIS OF THE GARGOYLE____3

"Well, make the effort, smokeface."

Her features reformed, lovelier than before. "I'm

D. Mentia, but that's only a half-truth."

"What's the other half of the truth?"

"I'm the alter ego of the Demoness Metria. She did

something disgusting, so I'm sailing out on my own."

"What did she do?"

"She got married, got half a soul, and fell in love, in

that order. Now she's so nice I can't stand her."

"Do demons marry?"

"Forget it, gargle. I answered three already. Now it's my

turn again. What's a gaysh?"

"A misspelling of geis."

"How can you tell it's misspelled when I'm speaking

it?"

"I am long familiar with the word. You're pronouncing

it as it sounds."

She grimaced. "Sorry about that. So what is it?"

"An obligation of honor."

"What does an ugly character like you know about a

fair concept like honor?"

"That's your fourth question. Mine first: Why are you

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wearing a skirt upside and a blouse downside?"

Mentia glanced down at herself. The clothing faded out,

leaving a body so barely luscious that any ordinary man

who spied it would freak out in half a moment. 'That's

hard to explain."

"Make another effort, bareface," Gary said, looking

slightly bored though her face was the least of her bare-

ness.

"Well, my better nature—that is, D. Metria—has a cer-

tain problem with words. For example she would say you

really don't look properly volant, and you would say—"

"Properly what?"

"And she would say feathers, uplift, flapping, sky,

winging—"

"Flightworthy?"

PIERS ANTHONY

"And she would say Whatever, crossly."

"That's what volant means?"

"Uh-uh, Garfield. I answered three. What's this about

honor?"

Gary sighed. It was a good effort, because his stone

body was mostly hollow. "From time vaguely memorial

on, my family of gargoyles has been in charge of this

river, the Swan Knee, which flows from drear Mundania

into Xanth, as you can see." He gestured with a wing. Sure

enough, to the north the dry channel wound unhappily

through truly dreary terrain. The line where the magic of

Xanth took effect was marked by increasingly magical

vegetation, such as shoe trees, lady slippers, and acom

trees. The Mundane equivalents were sadly deficient.

"Normally the water flows south, and it has been our geis

to guarantee its purity, so that Xanth is not stained by

Mundanian contaminants. Normally the water was mostly

clean, so this was no problem, but in recent decades it has

become sullied, until it was virtually sludge. It was awful,

cleaning it up! But now there's a drought, and there's no

water at all, which is worse yet. I hope that when the rains

return, and the flow resumes, that it will be cleaner, so that

it doesn't leave such a foul taste in my mouth. But regard-

less, I will do it, because my line is honor bound to guar-

antee the quality of this water. No wading swans will get

their knees dirty in this river."

"Now that's interesting," Mentia said, looking about as

bored as he had been when she had lost her clothing. "But

why are you wasting your time here, when you could get

the job done without all that fuss?"

Now the gargoyle began to show some feeling. "What

do you mean, wasting my time? This is my job, demon-

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ess.

"So it's your job. But why not do it the easy way?"

"Because it's the only way I know." He paused, count-

ing. "That's three questions I've answered. My turn.

What's this easy way?"

GEIS OF THE GARGOYLE_______5

"How should I know, spoutface?"

"You don't know how?"

"That's right, gamishee."

Gary paused, realizing that two of his questions were al-

ready gone, by her slightly crazy rules. He had already

failed to learn why her clothing had been confused, and he

didn't want to fail to leam how to do his job the easy way.

So he phrased his question carefully. "What gives you the

idea that there is an easy way to do my job?"

Mentia shrugged, making ripples all across her front and

down her arms. "There has to be, because if you went to

ask the Good Magician about it, he would have the an-

swer."

The Good Magician! He had never thought of that. But

he realized that this was not a wise course for him. "I

couldn't go to ask him, because the moment it rains, the

river will resume its flow, and I shall have to be here to

clarify it. Anyway, I understand he's extremely grumpy.

And I don't know the way there."

"Why don't you make a dam, so the water can't pass

until you return to process it? And what's so bad about

grumpiness, if it frees you from a lifetime's geis? And

why not ask me to show you the way there?"

Three more questions. Gary pondered, then answered

them. "I could make such a dam. A few minutes of

grumpiness seem a bargain, when I think of it that way.

And I won't ask you to show me the way there because

you're a demoness who surely has mischief in mind."

She considered that. "It's your turn for questions. Why

don't you ask me if I mean to lead you astray?"

He became interested. "Do you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I have a defect of demonly character: I'm

slightly crazy. That's why my clothing was mixed up." Her

blouse and skirt reappeared, correctly placed. "I share this

with my better half: I like to be entertained, and you prom-

PIERS ANTHONY

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ise to be entertaining. I don't care about you personally, of

course, but I hate being bored."

That seemed to be a fair answer. So Gary gambled and

asked the expected question: "Will you guide me safely to

the Good Magician's castle?"

"Yes."

"Very well. I shall make the dam."

He got to work. There were some wallflowers not far

distant, and he was able to transplant several to the river

bed. But there was a problem: they needed water in order

to flower, and he had none.

"Well, find some water lilies or water melons or water

cress," Mentia suggested impatiently. Her body was aimed

away from him, but this didn't matter because her head

was now on backwards; she had gotten confused again.

"There aren't any in sight," he pointed out. "I know

only the plants that are in sight, because I have been

bound to my post in the river for the past century or so."

"Oh for illness sake!" she exclaimed. "I'll find some."

Her lower section fuzzed and formed into a peculiar

wheeled vehicle.

"What's that?" Gary asked, surprised.

"Haven't you seen a snit before?" Then a dirty noise

pooped out of the thing's tailpipe, its wheels spun, and 'it

zoomed away at magical speed. She was departing in a

snit.

Then it zoomed backward, just as rapidly, coming to

park just under his nose. "Just be thankful it isn't a snot,"

the demoness said, and was gone again.

Gary was duly thankful. He had not had a lot of expe-

rience with demons, but this one seemed tolerable despite

being rather too pretty for his taste.

Soon she was back, bearing a boxlike object. "That

doesn't look like a water plant," Gary said dubiously.

"Naturally not," she agreed, setting it in the river

bed beside some of the rocklike pillows there. "It's a

closet."

GEIS OF THE GARGOYLE____7

"What good is a closet? We need water."

"A water closet," she clarified. She opened the door,

and a flood of bright blue liquid poured out.

"That's polluted!" Gary cried. He jumped down and

placed himself in the path of the flow. He sucked up the

water, then spouted it out. "Oh—it's water color."

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"Whatever," she agreed. "It will do, won't it?"

He considered, tasting more of the water as it changed

to red and then to green. Already some of it was sinking

into the ground around the wallflowers, and they were

growing. "Yes, as long as it doesn't flow away from here."

"So make another little damn."

"A what?"

"To divert the curse."

In a short moment he figured it out. A dam to divert the

course of the flow. Mentia might be her self's worse half,

but she did seem to suffer from a bit of her better half's

problem with vocabulary. He hastily scraped dirt and rocks

across the path of the stream, causing it to puddle. That

left it nowhere to flow but into the ground around the

flowers. These responded by developing blue, red, green

and other colored walls, depending on the color of the wa-

ter. The walls walled off the main riverbed. The job was

done.

"Let's be off," the demoness said, floating up. She had

resumed her full human form, and was correctly garbed.

But Gary hesitated. "I'm not sure this is appropriate."

She floated over him, becoming even more lovely in her

moderate pique. "Why not, garlic?"

"Because my powers of flight are limited. I weigh con-

siderable, being lithic."

"Being what?"

"Being made mostly of stone, so I can fly only when

aided by a steep slope or a gale-force breeze. I shall have

to proceed along the ground."

"So why not proceed, garnet? That doesn't mean / have

to be landbound."

PIERS ANTHONY

"I think it does."

"Why, garland?"

"Because from down here I think I can see your pan-

ties."

She exploded into roiling smoke. Flames licked around

the roils. Her voice emerged, tinged with soot. "You aren't

supposed to look, garget!"

"I didn't look. But I suspect that if I did—"

"Oh." The cloud sank to the ground, coalescing into her

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luscious human form—this time in red jeans. "Point made,

garden. I'll walk when you do. Thanks for not looking."

"Thanks for getting my name straight."

She paused, fuzzing briefly before firming again. "Got

it, Gary Gar." She glanced speculatively at him. "It occurs

to me you're not quite as stupid as you look."

"I don't look stupid, I look properly grotesque. It occurs

to me that you're not quite as careless as you seem."

"You know, if you were less ugly, I could almost be

tempted to think about possibly starting to get to like you."

"If you were less pretty, I might be tempted not to dis-

like you."

Once more she fuzzed. "You like ugly!" she exclaimed.

"How fining!"

"I'm a gargoyle. We're the ugliest creatures in Xanth,

and righteously proud of it."

"What about the ogres?"

Gary pondered. "I suppose you could call them ugly, if

you dislike that type," he concluded grudgingly.

"Maybe we'll encounter some along the way, and see."

Then she thought of something else. "You're no more hu-

man than I am. Why should you care about panties?"

"I don't. But you evidently do."

"Well, when I emulate the human form there are codes

of conduct to be observed, or the emulation is imperfect.

But that does give me a notion." She fuzzed, and reap-

peared as a female gargoyle, horrendously ugly. "How do

you like me now, Gary?"

GEIS OF THE GARGOYLE____9

He studied her. "I wish you were real. I'd be glad to

spout water with you."

"Ha! You mean I can tempt you in this form, and end-

lessly frustrate you? This promises to be entertaining after

all."

"Let's be on our way," he said shortly.

"On down the riverbed," she said. "It will take us south

to the gulf."

"But I can't swim," he protested. "I would sink right to

the bottom."

"Then we won't enter the water. We'll proceed along

the shore. Except—" She broke off, evidently waiting for

his query.

"Except what?" he dutifully inquired.

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"Except for the whatever. You'll have trouble navigat-

ing that." Then she brightened. "But maybe I can figure

out a way. Onward!"

"Onward," he agreed, determined not to oblige her by

asking again.

They set off down the riverbed, bound by bound, using

their little wings to steer the bounds and keep them within

bounds. It was the gargoyle way.

Before long the dry riverbanks changed color, turn-

ing yellow. Gary paused. "What's the matter with the

ground?"

Mentia looked. "Nothing. It's just doing its thing."

"But it's all sickly yellow!"

"No it isn't." She raked a claw across the dirt. Golden

coins rolled down into the channel. "This bank is pay dirt.

And there's a mint." She pointed to a plant with odd ob-

long greenbacked leaves and round golden flowers with

serrated edges. "This is the bank where the money comes

from, is all."

"Money? What good is it?"

"No good that I know of. But I understand they love it

in Mundania."

"They do?"

"They say that the love of money is the root of all evil."

GEIS OF THE GARGOYLE 11

PIERS ANTHONY

She looked at the mint's roots, which did look bad, if not

actually evil.

"But doesn't that mean that they think it's bad?"

"No, Mundania is such an awful place that they must

love evil."

Gary nodded. "That does make sense."

"Pennies and cents," she agreed.

They bounded on. They came to a sign:

WHEN PASSING THIS BOG BEWARE OF THE DOG

"I don't see any bog," Gary said.

"I don't see any dog either. But maybe it doesn't matter;

that's just doggerel."

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A new kind of tree appeared along the bank. There was

the sound of barking. "Dogwoods," Mentia explained.

'They're harmless if you don't try to rub against their

bark, which is worse than their bite."

But then real dogs appeared. "I thought Xanth had no

dogs," Gary said.

"This is close to the border; a pack must have crossed

over, and the dogs haven't yet had time to turn magic. It

happens."

The dogs converged, growling. "They don't seem to be

friendly," Gary remarked.

"Who cares? They can't hurt us. I'm a demoness and

you're mostly mythic."

"Lithic."

"Whatever." So they bounded on, ignoring the dogs.

But the animals pursued doggedly.

It got worse. Ahead was a solid line of canines. It was

impossible to bound through them. So they stopped before

the large female in the center. "Who are you and what do

you want?" Gary asked, hardly expecting an answer.

"I am Dogma," she replied. "I want your dog tags."

"We don't have anything like that."

"Then we'll have to eat you."

"Just because we don't have something you want?" he

asked incredulously.

"I'm a real bitch," she reminded him.

"Then we'll just have to fight you," Gary said with re-

gret, for he was a peaceful creature. "Have you ever been

chomped by stone teeth?"

Dogma reconsidered. "I'm really not dogmatic. Just

what kind of a monster are you?" she demanded.

"I'm a gargoyle. I purify the water coming along this

river, but I'm trying to find a better way to do it."

"Doggone it," she complained. "Why didn't you say so?

We thought you were pretending to be a dog."

"Why would anyone want to be a dog?" Mentia de-

manded.

Dogma turned to the others. "Let them go, dogfaces,"

she growled. "We don't have a problem with gargoyles,

and we don't want our river to get spoiled. The swans

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would go away."

The dogs looked disgusted, but gave way, and the two

moved on down the river channel. But they had hardly

cleared the dog region before they encountered worse.

"More dogs?" Gary asked, seeing the creatures ap-

proaching.

"No. Wolves."

"What's the difference? Aren't wolves just wild dogs?"

"Not in Xanth."

They stopped as the wolves closed in. "What do you

creatures want?" Gary demanded. He was getting impa-

tient with these delays; at this rate it would be hard to ac-

complish his business with the Good Magician and return

before nightfall.

"We are the Wolf clan," the lead female said, changing

to human form. "I am Virginia Wolf."

"You—werewolves!" Gary exclaimed, surprised.

"We still are wolves," she said. "We were wolves yes-

terday and will be so tomorrow."

"I mean you change form," he said, flustered.

She looked around. "We do? Where?"

GEIS OF THE GARGOYLE 13

PIERS ANTHONY

"Right here."

"Here, there, everywhere; what's the difference where

wolves are?" More wolves were assuming human form.

"I mean you're magical. You're not true wolves."

Virginia shook her head. "Never cry wolf," she cau-

tioned him.

"She's teasing you," Mentia said.

Gary was catching on to that. "I'm the gargoyle who

purifies -the Swan Knee water. I want to get a better way

to honor my geis from the Good Magician."

"We suspected as much," she said. "Otherwise the dog

pack wouldn't have let you through. But you know you

have a long road to run."

"I do? How far is it?"

"Several days plus the Gap Chasm."

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file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Anthony,%20Piers%20-%20Xanth%2018%20-%20Geis%20Of%20The%20Gargoyle.txt1GARYGARThedemonessformedintosmoke,andthenintoaninsidiouslylovely(ifyoulikethattype)human-stylewoman.Herfacewasunutterablyfair,herhairflowedlikehoney,herbosomwassofullandwell-formedthatitwasprobably...

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