xanth 40 - isis orb Read Online Free PDF

altar. Above was something moving. It flashed in the light as it swung back and forth. It was a pendulum! With what looked like a razor sharp bottom edge. It was swinging lengthwise right above him. Worse, it was slowly descending.
    He looked around, as at least his head was free. He saw the outlines of two doors back up above the slide. Both doors had led to the same place! His choice hadn’t made a difference. What did that mean? That the doors were a fake choice, and his real choices were of another nature? He wished he had realized that before he stepped through one.
    He struggled to escape, but the rope held him tight. The deadly pendulum swung a bit lower each time. A few minutes more and it would slice into him lengthwise, slowly cutting him in half. What could he do?
    What else could he do? “Null!” he called. “Stop this Happening!”
    Null appeared in his door frame. “Are you sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure! I don’t want to get sliced in half! “Stop it!”
    “As you wish.” Null gestured, and the pendulum halted in place. It no longer swung and no longer descended. He had been saved.
    “Thank you. Now get me out of here.”
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. You have used me up.”
    “But I can’t untie these ropes myself! My arms are locked into my body.”
    “I’m sorry. I am limited to my job.”
    “You can’t just leave me here!”
    “I can’t free you,” Null said, and turned away.
    Hapless was fuming, but also afraid. This was real mischief! He realized too late that merely stopping the Happening was not enough. He needed to get out of it entirely, but that was not what he had requested. That was the catch, that he realized too late.
    Well, at least he had time to ponder. He would have to appeal to the brother, Void, this time with a more carefully considered request.
    “Void, please Unhappen my entry to this chamber,” he said.
    “Are you sure ?” Void asked, exactly as his brother had.
    That made Hapless pause again. What was the catch to avoiding the whole trap? That question gave him the answer: this was the Third Challenge, and if he avoided it, he wouldn’t get in to see the Good Magician. He would just have to give up and go home, a failure. As usual. After Humfrey had personally come to get him to come here, to undertake the Quest and save five people including two good girls and a bad girl. He didn’t want to do that. But if to get the Quest he had to make it through this Challenge, and he couldn’t do that, what then?
    He could stay here, tied up, until he starved to death. That did not seem like much of an option. Was there other magic he could invoke? “Rope, untie me,” he said.
    The rope did not respond. So much for that.
    Now that he thought about it, he remembered a story from somewhere, about a pit and a pendulum, from which this Challenge was obviously borrowed. What had the person in the story done? Ah, now he remembered: he had somehow gotten rats to gnaw through the rope, freeing him just in time.
    Were there any rats here? “Rats, come gnaw on the rope.”
    If there were any rats, they did not respond. The borrowing did not go that far.
    There had to be a way. But if there was, why was Void standing ready? Void was a prescription for failure. Was it supposed to be easy for him to fail rather than prevail? This did not make much sense to him.
    Think outside the box. Well, this whole pit was a box, and he was hopelessly stuck in it. Unless he quit and went home. That was not a preferred solution.
    Slowly the hint of a vague idea began to glimmer. No bulb flashed over him, but a bit of a tuber glowed. He was thinking either/or: either stay here and rot, or give up and go home. Those were box answers. He needed something else. Something outside. Something he had not considered before. What was that?
    The glow increased. The tuber was trying to grow into a bulb.
    Humfrey had come to ask him to come here, then made it impossible for him to get through. The