Read Online Yon Ill Wind by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online Page A

came to the bank of the moat.  Now, where was that dock and boat she had seen?  She saw the boat, but now it was perched on muck, and between her and it was the biggest, hugest, hairiest, awfulest spider she could remember encountering.  It wasn't big enough to gobble her down in a single bite, but three or four bites would do it.  Actually spiders, as she remembered, didn't gobble prey down whole; they trussed them up in spiderwebs and sucked the juice out.  But she didn't want to be juiced, either, no matter how juicy her current luscious body was.
    Chlorine was retreating as she pondered; it seemed to be the expedient thing to do.  The spider did not follow.  In fact, it had disappeared—and there was the dock she had seen before.  So she reversed course, trying to reach the dock before the spider returned—and the spider reappeared.  And the dock was gone.
    Something was definitely odd.  The spider wasn't blocking her view of the dock; she could see handily around it.
    There simply was no dock.  Was she up against illusion?
    In which case, which was the illusion:  the spider or the dock?  It made a difference.
    She retreated a step, this time watching the spider.  And the spider disappeared—and the dock reappeared.  They were changing into each other!  This was a dock spider.
    Her fine mind began to take hold.  This was definitely a challenge, and she surely wouldn't be able to handle it by writing the word SPIDER on her pad and changing the SP to c.  Even if that worked, what good would it do her, since she didn't want cider, she wanted that dock so she could get in the boat without muddying her pretty little feet.  She needed to get to that dock without it changing into the spider.  How could she do that?
    What was the stupidly simple answer?  Immediately it came to her:  bribe the spider.  But what would it want, aside from a long session sucking her succulence?  What else did she have that might appeal to it?
    The magic marker!  She no longer needed it, but maybe the spider would like it.  If she made a good enough case for it, in spider terms.
    She stepped toward the spider, though she was prepared to backpedal at a furious rate if she had to.  “Hey, handsome creature!” she called.  “How would you like something nice?”
    The spider wiggled its mandibles, and a drop of slaver fell to the ground, where it smoked quietly as it digested an unfortunate little poul-tree that hadn't even yet grown its first chick, let alone the roc bird it might have made at maturity.  Chlorine felt sorry for it, but knew she couldn't help the tree.
    “No, you can't have me,” she said quickly.  “Under this pretty exterior I'm just a plain and rather tasteless person anyway.  But I have something that may appeal to you more:  a magic marker.” She held it up.  “This marker can change things.  For example, you could use it to change a lug to a bug.  Here, I'll demonstrate.” She looked around and spied a lug, which was a kind of nut from a nuts-and-bolts tree.  She picked it up and set it in front of her.  Then she wrote LUG on her notepad, and crossed out the letter L and replaced it with the letter B.  And the lug became a bug.
    “See—just the kind of magic you have always wanted,” she said enthusiastically.  “Think what you could do with a big lug!  You could turn it into Xanth's biggest juiciest bug.  And feast on it, snug as a lug in a rug.”
    The spider slavered some more.  It liked the notion.
    “And I will trade you this fine magic implement for one favor,” she continued persuasively.  “All you have to do is become the dock and let me get on board that boat.  Then you can have the magic marker and my pad of paper, so that you can—” She hesitated, paused by an awkward thought.  “You do know how to write?”
    But the spider shook its head no.
    This was a problem.  But her fine mind rose to meet it.
    “Well; can you draw?  Let me see if this works with