Highlights from Bring Me The Head Of Prince Charming by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley Last read on December 18, 2023
Highlights from this book
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The central Pit was hot enough to strip atoms of their electrons, and there were occasional gusts that could melt a proton. Not that that much heat or cold was needed. It was overkill; overharass, actually. Humans, even when dead and cast into the Pit, have very narrow ranges (speaking on a cosmic scale) of tolerance. Once past the comfort zone in either direction, humans soon lost the ability to discriminate bad from worse. What good was it subjecting a poor wretch to a million degrees Celsius if it felt the same as a mere five hundred degrees? The extremes only tormented the demons and other supernatural creatures who tended the damned. Supernatural creatures have a far wider range of sensation than humans; mostly to their discomfort, but sometimes to their exceeding pleasure. But it is not seemly to talk about pleasure in the Pit.
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"I guess I'm lucky to be getting out at all. Thanks for the tip. Are you a lawyer?"
"Not by training," Azzie said. "But all of us down here have a little lawyer in us."
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"I have a certain enterprise afoot. I can't say much about it now, but it has to do with the upcoming Millennial celebrations. I need the felixite and your jewels, because without money a demon can do nothing. If I get the backing I expect from the High Evil Powers, I will be able to repay you tenfold."
"But I was planning to take these home and add them to my heap," Rognir said. He stooped down and began to pick up his jewels.
"You probably have a pretty big heap already, haven't you?"
"Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of," Rognir said, with the complacency of a dwarf whose heap could bear comparison with the best.
"Then why not leave these stones with me? Your heap at home is plenty big already."
"That doesn't stop me from wanting it to be bigger!"
"Of course not. But if you add them to your heap, your money won't be working for you. Whereas if you invest this with me, it will."
"Money working for me? What a curious concept! I hadn't known money was supposed to work."
"It is a concept from the future, and it makes very good sense. Why shouldn't money work? Everything else has to."
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The demons were camped in a little hollow between the great marble sarcophagus of Romulus and the more recent tomb of Pompey. They were in a small grove surrounded by a circle of ilex trees. Although they had been there no more than a few hours, the area already showed the signs of chaos and squalor which characterize demon gatherings. Huge vats of ichor had been brought in for refreshment. There were fires here and there, and kitchen familiars roasted people-parts of many different nations over hot charcoal.
Azzie was soon made welcome by the other demons. "Light meat or dark?" a succubus asked him. But Azzie had no time to eat, delicious though the young humans appeared to be, all golden brown from the spit.
"Where's the game?" he asked.
"Right over there," the succubus told him. She was an Indian demon, as Azzie could tell by the ring in her nose and the fact that her feet were turned backward. She smiled at him seductively. She was indeed beautiful, but Azzie had no time for dalliance right now, nor the appetite, because gambling fever was raging in his veins, and he hastened toward the circle.
The card-playing demons were gathered in a circle lit by balefires and tallow candles made of unsavory waxy substances. There was also an outer circle of demons, gathered to watch and comment on the action. As Azzie came to the circle a big hand was in progress. In the pot were a scattering of gold coins, some silver denarii, and a human torso, worth plenty since blood was still dripping from the stumps of its arms and legs. The final bet was made, and a small, potbellied demon with skinny arms and legs and a great long nose (a Laplander, to judge from his reindeer sweater) won it and raked it all in.
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"Let's see how these legs spent their last day."
A young prince marching off in defense of his father's castle. A fair young man he was, and well set up for the warrior trade. He marched at the head of his troop of men, and they were a brave sight, their banners of scarlet and yellow fluttering finely in the summer breeze. Then, ahead, they saw another body of men, and the prince pulled his mount to a halt and called up his seneschal.
"There they are," the prince said. "We have them fairly now, between a rock and a hard lump of ice, as they say in Lapland."
This much Azzie saw. And then the vision faded.
"Can you read what fate befell him?" Azzie asked.
Hermes sighed, closed his eyes, lifted his head.
"Ah," he said, "I have tuned in on the battle, and what a fine engagement of armed men it is! See how furiously they come together, and hear the well- tempered swords singing! Yes, they clash, they are all brave, all deft. But what is this . . . One of the men has left the circle. Not even wounded, but giving retreat already! It is the former owner of these legs."
"Poltroon!" cried Azzie, for it was as though he could see the engagement.
"Ah, but he gets not off unscathed. A man is following, his eyes red with the blood fury, a huge man, a berserker, one of those whom the Franks have been fighting for hundreds of years, whom they call the madmen from the north!"
"I don't like the northern demons much, either," Azzie said.
"The berserker is running down the cowardly prince. His sword flashes - a sidewise blow struck with an uncanny combination of skill and fury."
"Difficult to strike such a blow," Azzie commented.
"The blow is well struck-the poltroon prince is cloven in twain. His upper half rolls in the dust. But his cowardly legs are still running, they are running now from death. Relieved of the weight of his upper body, they find it easy to run, though it is true they are running out of energy. But how much energy does it take for a pair of legs to drive themselves, when no one else is attached? Demons are pursuing these running legs, because they have already passed the boundaries of the normal, already they run in the limitless land of possibilities that is the preternatural. And now, at last, they totter a last few steps, turn, sway, and then crash lifeless to the ground."
"In short, we have here the legs of a coward," Azzie said.
"A coward, to be sure. But a sort of divine coward who would run from death even in death, so afraid was he that what had in fact happened would happen."
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Belial, an old rival of Azazel's, pounded with his hoof on the table and said, in mincing words, "The right honorable member is sufficiently talented to expand a single demonic intrusion into an onslaught by a sewer warfare gang. I see no gang: only a single rather foolish-looking demon. I would also point out that sanctum is more correct than sanctorum in this case, which the honorable member would know if he had ever mastered the dear old mother tongue, Latin."
Azazel's eyes smoldered, little wisps of blue smoke came out of his snout, corrosive acid dripped from his nose and ate holes in the ironwood table. "I'll not be mocked," he said, "by a jumped-up nature spirit who has been made a demon rather than born one and who, because of his ambiguous ancestry, cannot be relied upon to understand the true nature of evil."
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Dragons voted universally to give up their time-old pursuits of Hoarding and Guarding in favor of the new disciplines of Ducking and Dodging. Don't just stand around guarding treasure, they announced to each other. Fade into the landscape, live at the bottoms of rivers - for many dragons were able to live underwater - gilled dragons, they were called, that fed on sharks and killer whales and mahimahi. The land dragons had to adopt a different strategy. Land-based dragons learned to conceal themselves as small mountains, hills, even as clumps of trees.
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Skander's hide with its overlapping scales was able to withstand the blow of an avalanche, and he thought nothing of `swords unless they were backed up with really powerful spells. But humans were sneaky; they'd seem to be aiming at a shoulder, and then, pow, you'd get an arrow in the eye. Somehow dragons, despite their extreme intelligence and centuries of experience, were prone to getting arrows in the eye. They never fully caught on to the trick that men used, of pretending to shoot in one direction and then actually shooting in another. It wasn't according to dragon practice, and went against their idea of a warrior's ethics.
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"Hail, Great One," Azzie said. "Hi there, Little One," Hermes said. "What seems to be the trouble?" Azzie related his difficulties with Charming. Hermes said, "You made an error in telling him about the Princess, Azzie. You assumed that things happen in real life as they do in fairy tales, and that Prince Charming would fall madly in love with Princess Scarlet from one look at the miniature."
"Isn't that how it happens?"
"Only in fairy tales."
"But this is a fairy tale!"
"Not yet it isn't," Hermes said. "After it is all over and retold by a bard, then it becomes a fairy tale. But for right now, that condition has not been met. You can't simply show a young man a picture and expect him to fall in love with it. You must use psychology."
"Is that a special spell?" Azzie asked.
Hermes shook his smoky head. "It is what we call a science. It is the science of human behavior. There's nothing like it in the world yet. That's why everyone is so wonky. No one knows why they do what they do because there's no psychology."
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"You seem to have forgotten that the deal was for a year," Azzie said. "The time's not up. You're doing well. When the time runs out you'll get your capital back."
"I've been thinking this over, and I've decided that I don't trust the notion of putting one's capital out to work this way. It seems it might do something terrible to the working classes - like us dwarves. You know, a jewel in the sack is worth two or three on some foreign market that might go bust."
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"I see you have a Fairly Lucky Sword."
"I do," Charming said, drawing it and holding it out. "Nice, isn't it?"
"Nice," Parsifal agreed, "but of course it's not an Enchanted Sword like mine." He drew his own and showed it to Charming.
"I don't suppose," Charming said, "a sword like mine would be much good against a sword like yours."
"No, in all honesty, I don't think so," Parsifal said. "Fairly Lucky Swords aren't bad, but you can't expect much of them against a real Enchanted Sword."
"I didn't think so. Look, do we really have to fight?"
"I'm afraid we do," Parsifal said, and attacked.
Prince Charming jumped out of the way and swung his Fairly Lucky Sword. The two swords clanged together with an uncanny sound. This was succeeded by an even more uncanny sound when Prince Charming's blade broke. "I win!" cried Parsifal, swinging up his Enchanted Sword for the death stroke. "Gawg!" Charming thought he was finished, so he used his final seconds to think over his memories, which in his case didn't take very long. But Charming's time on Earth was not quite up. Since his sword had been Fairly Lucky, and a very good example of its kind, it happened that when it broke, a single bright shard of metal had flown upward, penetrating Parsifal's throat, where the gorget revealed a fraction of an inch of flesh. This was the cause of the "Gawg!" Parsifal voiced, before he fell to the earth with a thunderous sound.
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Charming walked down a line of shops on Main Street in Glass Mountain Village. Many of the shops specialized in glass- mountain-climbing equipment. Glass is a tough substance to scale. To hear the townspeople talk you'd think the glass changed qualities every time a cloud came over the sun. The mountain boasted every kind of glass to be found: Swift Glass and Devious Glass, Tricky Glass and Swamp Glass. There was High Mountain Deadly Glass and Low Plain Bed Glass. Each kind of glass (and Glass Mountain was said to be composed of all of these kinds and more) had its own difficulties, and booklets were available at the shops dealing with the remedies for every variety.
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"Frike, you were practically a father to me. How can you do this?" "Well, I'm playing a pretty traditional role," Frike said. "The crippled servant who is slightly sympathetic but still has a fatal bias toward evil.