Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

before the plaque caught on to its mistake. "And what have we here?" he inquired gleefully.
           "Gimme that back!" the plaque cried. "It's mine, all mine!"
           Dor studied the box. On the top was a button marked with the words DON'T PUSH. He pushed it.
           The lid sprang up. A snakelike thing leaped out, startling Dor, who dropped the box. "HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!" it bellowed.
           The snake-thing landed on the ground, its energy spent. "Jack, at your service," it said. "Jack in the box. You sure look foolish."
           "A golem," Grundy said. "I should have known. Golems are insufferable."
           "You oughta know, pinhead," Jack retorted. He reached into a serpentine pocket and drew out a shiny disk. "Here is an achievement button to commemorate the occasion." He held it up.
           Dor reached down and took the button. It had two faces. On one side it said TRESPASSER. On the other it said PERSECUTED.
           Dor had to laugh, ruefully. "I guess I fell for it! That's what I get for seeking the easy way through."
           He put the button against his shirt, where it stuck magically, PERSECUTED side out. Then he picked up the Jack, put him back in the box, closed the lid, set the works back inside the plaque's chamber, and closed that, "Well played, plaque," he said. "Yeah," the plaque agreed, mollified. They returned their attention to the moat. "No substitute for my own ingenuity," Dor said. "But this diversion has given me a notion. If we can be tricked by a decoy-"
           "I don't see what you're up to," Grundy said. "That triton knows his target."
           "That triton thinks he knows his target. Watch this." And Dor squatted by the water and said to it: "I shall make a wager with you, water. I bet that you can't imitate my voice."
           "Yeah?" the water replied, sounding just like Dor. "Hey, that's pretty good, for a beginner. But you can't do it in more than one place at a time."
           "That's what you think!" the water said in Dor's voice from two places.
           "You're much better than I thought!" Dor confessed ruefully. "But the real challenge is to do it so well that a third party could not tell which is me and which is you. I'm sure you couldn't fool that triton, for example."
           "That wetback?" the water demanded. "What do you want to bet, sucker?"
           "That water's calling you a kind of fish," Grundy muttered.
           Dor considered. "Well, I don't have anything you would value. Unless-that's it! You can't talk to other people, but you still need some way to show them your prowess. You could do that with this button." He brought up the TRESPASSER / PERSECUTED button, showing both sides. "See, it says what you do to intruders. You can flash it from your surface in sinister warning."
           "You're on!" the water said eagerly. "You hide, and if old three-point follows my voice instead of you, I win the prize."
           "Right," Dor agreed. "I really hate to risk an item of this value, but then I don't think I'm going to lose it You distract him, and I'll hide under your surface. If he can't find me before I drown, the button's yours."
           "Hey, there's a flaw in that logic!" Grundy protested. "If you drown-"
           "Hello, fishtail!" a voice cried from the far side of the moat. "I'm the creep from the jungle!"
           The triton, who had been viewing the proceedings without interest, whirled. "Another one?"
           Dor slipped into the water, took half a breath, and dived below the surface. He swam vigorously, feeling the cool flow across his skin. No trident struck him. As his lungs labored painfully against his locked throat, he found the inner wall of the moat and thrust his head up.
           He gasped for breath, and so did Grundy, still clinging to his shoulder. The triton was still chasing here and there, following