Cube Route by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

lovely leg high in the air. High enough to show her panties, if she had been wearing any.
        Cube thought about how a man would react to that show. “Oh.”
        “I have lured many men in to my tree,” the dryad confided. “Then I have buried their bones, so as not to alert others. In return my tree protects me and feeds me.”
        “Feeds you what?” Cube asked, horrified. “Leftovers?”
        The girl laughed again, her whole luscious body shaking. “Tangle-fruit.” She reached up, and there was a bright red fruit of some kind, looking like a cross between an apple and a cherry. She plucked it, brought it to her dainty mouth, and bit into it. “Delicious. Of course I could have leftover meat if I wanted it.”
        “How can you betray your own kind like that?”
        “What kind? The prey is human; I'm not.”
        “You look human.”
        “I need to, to lure in the prey.” She did another little dance that was so suggestive that it almost made Cube's eyes glaze, and she was not partial to women in that manner. It would numb a man's dull brain in half an instant.
        Here she was talking, when she needed to get past the tree. How could she do that? Then she had a bright idea.
        “You have an idea,” the dryad said. “I saw the bulb flash over your dull head.”
        Dideveryone have to insult her appearance? “I have a gift for you.”
        The dryad clapped her hands with girlish glee. “I love gifts!”
        “A rear-view mirror.” Cube brought it out, as it had returned to her in the interim since the second Challenge. “I will toss it to you.”
        She tossed, but her aim was bad and it flew high. The tangle tree snapped out a tentacle and caught it, then gave it to the dryad. “Thank you,” she said sweetly. Cube wasn't sure whether the nymph was addressing her or the tree.
        The dryad held the mirror up to her face. “Oh what a divine derriere!”
        “It's yours,” Cube said.
        “Why so it is. I love it.” She switched her hips, making her cute bottom swing. There went another man, if he had been watching, Cube knew. If only she had a bottom like that! But of course that was why she was here: to get such a bottom, and all the rest.
        The nymph gave the mirror to a tentacle. “Save this for me, dear,” she said, and the tentacle carried it away to disappear in the foliage.
        Then the nymph looked at Cube. “But this doesn't mean I'll let you pass by my tree.”
        “I didn't think it did,” Cube said. But she was sure that the dryad was the key to passage, and that there was some kind of price that would persuade her. If the nymph told the tree to let a person pass, it surely would. But how could she persuade the nymph? What could such a creature want?
        She pondered, and slowly a grudging idea came to her. “How are you fixed for companionship, aside from the tree?”
        The dryad didn't answer. That might be significant, because she had had an answer for everything else.
        “How is your social life? Do you have a boyfriend?”
        Still no answer. That meant she was on the right track.
        “You know you can't have a boyfriend if you feed all the good men to the tree. You're going to have to make an exception.”
        “I can make an exception,” the dryad murmured. “For the right man.”
        Ha. “And who is the right man?”
        “Conun,” the dryad whispered.
        “Conan? What would you want with a barbarian?”
        “CoNUN, with the accent on the second syllable. He's no barbarian. He's a drummer. He has such a divine beat.” She gazed dreamily upward. “But he won't even look at me; I could win him if he did. He is another person doing service for the Good Magician, and no girl can win him unless she solves his riddle. I'm not good at riddles.”
        Cube believed that. Nymphs were famous for their