Read Online Jumper Cable by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online

right!” she gasped. “By the way, Jumper, thanks for rescuing me. What a smell! Rotten carrion is sweet in comparison.”
    “You are welcome,” he said. “But won’t the stork catch you, now that it knows where you are?”
    “Not if I get to the Good Magician first and get my problem solved.”
    “So we had better move on before that noxious gas clears.”
    “We had better,” she agreed, struggling to her feet. “But it may be hours before that stork tries again to pass it. I’m just lucky I have a tolerance for decayed flesh.” Even so, she looked distinctly sick. Jumper made a mental note to stay away from stink horns. They rejoined the others, who were waiting a bit farther from the rampaging cloud of stench.
    “I think we have navigated the first Challenge,” Haughty said. “By invoking Xanth’s worst f**t.”
    “Fret,” Maeve said. “Something that truly disturbs people. Like that gas.”
    Phanta choked back something that might in better times have resembled a laugh. Was that really the word the harpy had used? They came up to the moat. The moat monster lifted its head from the water and surveyed them hungrily. Snappish little fish crowded close to the bank, hoping for tasty flesh to bite. No crossing there; it was hard enough just to wash the remaining stink off. Fortunately they could use the drawbridge.
    But when they approached the drawbridge, they discovered that there was a woody curtain hanging across its near end. A number of
    lengths of wood were bound together to make a flexible barrier. Jumper was about to draw it aside so they could pass, but Wenda stopped him.
    “Dew knot touch it! That’s bamboo.”
    “Isn’t that a type of wood?” Olive asked. “That should be harmless.”
    “Knot bamboo,” Wenda said. “It is dangerous. I’ll show yew.” She picked up a small stone and flipped it at the curtain. The wood struck one piece, and it detonated. BAM! The explosion rocked the whole heavy curtain and blew out a blast of hot air that pushed them back. Wenda was right: they did not want to touch it.
    “But we can throw more stones, and make it all explode,” Olive said. “Then it won’t be in our way.”
    “Knot bamboo,” Wenda repeated. “Watch.”
    In a moment, maybe even half a moment, BOOM! and the fragmented section of bamboo regenerated and was whole again. They would never be able to detonate all the pieces fast enough to get past them before they were dangerous again.
    “Again, your expertise has identified a woodland project we need to know about,” Olive said. “We’re lucky this environment didn’t nullify your knowledge as well as your magic.”
    “By the way, what is your magic?” Haughty asked.
    “Being hollow yet animated,” Wenda said. “I could knot function this way if I weren’t magic. So yew could call it my talent. I call it my curse.”
    “So we can’t cross the drawbridge,” Jumper said. “We need to find some other way across the moat.”
    “As I understand it,” Olive said, “there is normally some way at hand to handle the Challenges. Just as there was a stink horn, waiting for Wenda to recognize it and use it. We just have to find the key to getting across the moat.”
    “Let’s walk around it,” Jumper suggested. “And see if we can find that key.”
    They started walking. There was a parklike strip outside the moat, with a con ve nient path through it. This must be what they were supposed to do. If they circled all the way around the castle without finding
    the key, that might signal their failure. Then they wouldn’t get to see the Good Magician, and would be stuck with their assorted fates. Not to mention a wasted prophecy. So they needed to be alert. A woman came running toward them, laughing. They gave her room, and she ran right on by, still laughing. But something odd happened: each person she passed burst into similar laughter. Soon they were all collapsing in spasms of mirth, even Jumper, who didn’t know what was so