Roc And A Hard Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

would I know?  I'm not innocent.”
    Disgruntled, the hippo waddled off, looking for the child, because it was much easier to tell children what to do than trolls.  She was free to ride on.
    After a further interminable ride and float, they came to a huge green mountain.  It rose from the plain in a series of faceted cliffs, each one glinting brightly.
    “Well, this is it,” Helen said.  “Oaf.  Climb to the top and there will be the Simurgh.  I've done my bit, and will begone.” The cloud vanished in a dirty noise.
    Woe Betide dismounted.  She went to inspect the surface more closely.  It did indeed seem to be pure emerald.  The mountain was one big jewel.
    The sun came out from behind a cloud.  Suddenly all the facets reflected dazzling beams.  One struck Eight Bits.  The horse, startled, fragmented into quarters, and the quarters galloped off in at least four directions.
    Woe Betide sighed.  She was on her own.
    She pondered, and concluded that since she no longer had the quarter horse, she could resume her adult form.  She puffed into smoke, and re-formed as Metria.
    She could simply pop up to the top of the mountain, but she suspected that the Simurgh would not appreciate that.
    The same went for flying up there.  In Xanth, the Simurgh forbade all flying in her vicinity, and it was probably the same here.  So the ascent would have to be done the tedious way.
    Metria formed her hands and feet into big sucker disks.
    Then she applied these to the flat surface of the nearest facet and began to climb.  The suckers popped as she pulled them free, and squished as she placed them higher.  It was another type of magic:  Suckers clung to polished flat surfaces.  At this rate a few hours would get her to the top.  Then she would find out what all this was about.
    She heard a rumble.  She extended her neck, making it swanlike, and rotated her head to look backwards.
    There was a floating shape, and it didn't belong to Helen Back.  It was Fracto Cumulo Nimbus, the worst of clouds.
    She knew this was significant mischief.  Fracto was a demon himself, who had specialized in meteorology, and had a sure nose for trouble.  If someone had a nice picnic, Fracto came to wet on it.  if someone had an important mission requiring him to travel rapidly, Fracto came to turn the forest trails to slush ruts.  If someone camped out on a warm night, Fracto came to bury the landscape in colored snow.  And if someone happened to be climbing a sheer emerald cliff, Fracto came to make the surface slippery and blow that person away.
    Of course, there were ways of dealing with the evil cloud, and Metria understood them well.  She could become a cloud herself, and float impervious to the weather.  She could even generate some lightning bolts of her own to shoot back at him.  But she wasn't sure that wouldn't count as flying, which would annoy the Simurgh.  Fracto, of course, didn't care whom he annoyed—or rather, did care, so as to be as annoying as possible.  But he wasn't here to ask any favors of the big bird.  So that was out.  Once she had turned herself into a stink horn, which had exploded in Fracto's midst, rendering him even more insufferably stinky than usual.  But again, that would require her getting into the air, and it didn't seem to be worth the risk.
    She could avoid the storm entirely by becoming so diffuse that she could float through the substance of the mountain.
    But again, that might be construed as a type of flying.  So the safest course seemed to be to stick to what she was doing, laboriously climbing the slope, hoping she could hang on despite the cloud's worst efforts.
    Fracto was happy to accept this challenge, knowing that she was pinned.  He puffed up voluminously, crackling with lightning and thunder.  His center turned so dark, it was like swirling midnight, and his edges swelled outward like gross blisters.  The whole of him was like a giant face, with two patches of glowing