Centaur Aisle

“Hey, Dor,” a whisper came. It was from his own cell.

“Grundy!” Dor whispered back. He tried to signal Irene, but she seemed to have fallen asleep against his hand.

“Sorry I was so long,” the golem said. “It took time to sleep off that knockout juice, and more time to find a good secret route here without running afoul of the rats. I talked to them-rat language seems to be much the same all over, so I didn’t need the magic-but they’re mean. I finally made myself a sword out of this big ol’ hatpin, and after I struck a few they decided to cooperate.” He brandished the weapon, a bent iron sliver; it did look deadly. Poked at a rat’s eye, it would be devastating.

“Irene and I are engaged,” Dor said.

The golem squinted at him to determine whether this was a joke and concluded it was not. “You are? Of all things! Why did you propose to her now?”

“I didn’t,” Dor confessed. “She proposed to me, I think.”

“But you can’t even touch her!”

“I can touch her,” Dor said, remembering.

“Not where it counts.”

“Yes, where it counts-I think.”

The golem shrugged this off as fantasy. “Well, it won’t make any difference, if we don’t get out of here. I tried to talk to the animals and plants around here, but most of them I can’t understand without magic. I don’t think they know anything about King Trent and Queen Iris anyway. But I’m sure old King Oary’s up to something. How can I spring you?”

“Get Amolde into range,” Dor said.

“That’s not easy, Dor. They’ve got him in a stable, with a bar-lock setup like this, too heavy for me to force, and out of his reach. Crude but effective. If I could spring him, I could spring you.”

“But we’ve got to get together,” Dor whispered. “We need magic, and that’s the only way.”

“They aren’t going to let him out,” Grundy said. “They’ve got this fool notion that an army of warrior centaurs is marching here, and they don’t want anyone to know there’s a centaur in the castle.”

Irene woke. “Are you talking to me, dear?” she asked.

“Dear!” Grundy chortled. “Hoo, has she lassoed you!”

“Quiet!” Dor whispered fiercely. “The guard is listening.” But he wondered whether that was really his concern.

“Is that the golem?” Irene asked.

“Want to hold hands with me, dear?” Grundy called.

“Go unravel your string!” she snapped back.

“Anything but that,” Grundy said, smiling mischievously. “I want to stick around and watch the nuptials. How are you going to make it through the wall?”

“Let me get at that big-mouthed imp!” Irene said. “I’ll jam him down the sump headfirst.”

“How did you get the poor sucker to accept the knot?” the golem persisted. “Did you scream at him, show him some forbidden flesh, and cry big green tears?”

“The sump is too good for him!” she gritted.

“If you both don’t be quiet, the eavesdropping guard will learn everything,” Dor warned, ravaged by worry and embarrassment.

Grundy looked at him. “Outside the magic ambience, they can’t understand a word we say. How can they eavesdrop?”

Dor was stunned. “I never thought of that!” Had his entire ruse been for nothing?

“How come they fed Smash, then?” Irene demanded, forgetting her fury with the golem as she came to grips with this new question.

“How come they heard about the centaur army? Seems to me you said-or did I dream that?”

“I said it, and it’s true,” Grundy said. “You mean you started that story? I overheard it when I was visiting Amolde; then I could understand the Mundane speech.”

“We started it,” Dor agreed. “And we gave them the notion that Smash only has super strength when he’s angry, and he gets angry when he’s hungry. They brought him food very soon. So they must have understood. But how?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” Grundy said, fading into the shadow. “Someone’s coming.”

Irene finally let go of Dor’s hand, and he drew it back through the wall. His arm was cramped from the hours in the awkward position, but Dor hardly regretted the experience. It was all right being engaged to Irene. He knew her well enough to know she would make a pretty good wife. She would quarrel a lot, but he was used to that, because that was the way his mother Chameleon was when she was in her smart phase. Actually, a smart woman who quarreled was not smart at all, but no one could tell her that. Irene, like her obnoxious mother, had a sense of the proprieties of the office. Queen lris’ mischief was never directed openly at the King. If Dor ever became King in fact as well as in name, Irene would never seek to undermine his power. That was perhaps a more important quality than her physical appearance. But he had to admit that she had acquired a most interesting body. Those touches she had used to tantalize him that Grundy had so acutely noted-they had been marvelously effective. Obviously she had been attempting to seduce him into acquiescence-and she had succeeded. As the Gorgon had intimated, Irene had him pretty well contained. What the Gorgon had not hinted was the fact that such captivity was quite comfortable to the captive, like a warm jacket on a cold day. Good Magician Humfrey was undoubtedly a happy man right now, despite his protestations. In fact, a man’s objections to marriage were rather like Irene’s objections to people looking at her legs-more show than substance.

Dor’s attention was jerked back to the immediate situation by the arrival of the Mundanes. There were three guards, one carrying a crude iron bar. They stopped before Irene’s cell and used the bar to pry up the wedged plank that barred it. Without that tool, evidently, the door could not be opened.

One of the guards went in and grabbed Irene. She did not resist; she knew as well as Dor did that this was the expected questioning. She would try to answer in such a way that they would take her to the stable where Amolde was confined, if only to prove she was lying. Then she could pry up the bar on the centaur’s stall, or start some devastating plant growing Except that she had no seeds. “Grundy!” he whispered. “Find Irene’s seeds! She’ll need them.”

“I’ll try.” The golem scrambled through a crevice and was gone.

Now King Oary entered the dungeon. “Rn wfqd sgd Jhmfr cztfgsdq,’ he said. “Vgzs hr wtq herb?”

“I don’t understand you,” Irene said.

“His Highness King Oary asks what is your magic,” one of the guards said. His speech was heavily accented, but he was intelligible.

“You know Xanth speech?” she asked, surprised. “How can that be?”

“You have no need to know,” the guard said. “Just answer the question, wench.”

So one of the Mundanes here spoke the language of Xanth! Dor’s mind started clicking over. This explained the eavesdropping-but how could the man have learned it, however poorly? He had to have been in contact with people from Xanth.

“Go soak your snoot in the sump,” Irene retorted.

Dor winced. She might be playing her role too boldly! “The King will use force,” the man warned. “Better answer, slut.” Irene looked daunted, as perhaps she was, but those insulting references to her supposed status made her angry. “You answer first, toady,” she said, compromising.

The guard decided negotiation was the best course. “I met a spy from your country, tart. I am quick with languages; he taught me. Then he went back to Xanth.”

“To report to my father, King Trent!” Irene exclaimed. “You promised him a trade agreement,, didn’t you, rogue, if he would come himself to negotiate it?”

“It is your turn to answer, hussy,” the man said.

“Oh, all right, wretch. My magic is growing plants. I can make anything grow from seed to tree in moments.”

Dor, peering out, could not see the man’s face clearly, but was sure there was a knowing expression on it. The eavesdropper thought he knew better, but didn’t want to betray his own secret snooping, so had to translate for the King. “Rgd fzud sgd khd,” he said.

“H vzms sgd sqtsgl” Oary snapped.

“His Majesty suspects you are deceiving us,” the guard said. “What is your real magic?”

“What does ol’ fatso care? I’m not doing any magic now.”

“You had magic when you came, trollop. The ogre used unnatural strength to destroy our front gate, and you all spoke our language. Now the ogre is weak and you speak your own language. What happened to the magic?”

The language! Dor cursed himself for overlooking that detail. Of course that had given away their secret! King Trent would have used an interpreter-probably this same man-and the ability of Dor’s party to converse directly would have alerted cunning King Oary immediately. He had known they had operative magic and now wanted to discover the mechanism of it.

“Well, if you bring me some seeds, thug, maybe I can find out,” Irene said. “I’m sure I can grow plants, if I just find the right place.”

Bless her! She was still trying to get to the stable, where she really could perform.

But the Mundanes thought they knew better. “If the King says you lie, you lie, strumpet,” the guard said. “Again I ask: what is your real magic? Can you speak in tongues, and cause others to do the same?”

“Of course not, villain!” she said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t need you to translate to His Lowness King Puddingbelly here, would we? Plants are all I can enchant.”

“Rgd vhkk mns sdkk,” the guard said to the King.

“Vd rgzkk lzjd ghl sdkk,” the King responded. “Snqstqd gdq hm eqnms timeghl.”

The other two guards grabbed Irene’s arms and hauled her a few steps down the hall until they were directly in front of Dor’s cell.

“Prince Dor,” the translator called. “You will answer our questions or see what we shall do.”

Dor was silent, uncertain what to do.

“Qho nee gdq bknsgdr,” the King ordered.

The two guards wrestled Irene’s jacket and silver-lined fur off her body, while she struggled and cursed them roundly. Then the translator put his hand on her neckline and brutally ripped downward. The blouse tore down the front, exposing her fine bosom. Irene, shocked at this sudden physical violence, heaved with her arms, but the two men held her securely.

“Vdkk, knnj zs sgzs!” the King exclaimed admiringly. “H sgntfgs innkx gdq kdfr vdqd fnne!”

Dor could not understand a word of the language, but he grasped the essence readily enough. King, translator, and both guards were all gawking at Irene’s revealed body. So was Dor. He had thought Irene did not match the Gorgon in general architecture, but Irene had filled out somewhat since he had last looked. He had had the chance to see during the quarrel in the moat, but there had been other distractions then. During the journey south to Centaur Isle, Irene had kept herself fairly private, and perhaps her excellent legs had led his attention away from her other attributes. Now he saw that she was no longer reaching for bodily maturity; she had achieved it.

At the same time, he was furious with the King and his henchmen for exposing Irene in this involuntary manner. He determined not to tell them anything.

“Gd khjdr gdq, knt snke Id,” the King said. “H bzm rdd vgx! Sgqdzsdm gdq zme gd’kk szkj.”

The King was plotting something dastardly! Dor hardly dared imagine what he might do to Irene. He couldn’t stand to have her hurt!

The translator stood in front of Irene and formed a fist. He drew back his arm, aiming at her belly.

“Stop!” Dor cried. “I’ll tell-“

“Shut up!” Irene snapped at him. One of her knees jerked up, catching the translator in the groin. The man doubled over, and the surprised guards allowed Irene to tear herself free, leaving shreds of cloth in their hands. Bare-breasted as any nymph, she ran a few steps, stooped to pick up the door-opening bar, and whirled to apply it to Dor’s door.

“Run!” Dor cried. “Don’t waste time on me!”

But it was already too late. Both guards had drawn their flat swords and were closing on Irene. She turned, raising the bar defensively, determined to fight.

“No!” Dor screamed, his voice breaking. “They’ll kill you!”

But now there was a new distraction. Smash, snoozing before, had become aware of the situation. He rattled his door angrily. “Kill!” he bellowed.

Both guards and the King blanched. They believed the ogre’s fantastic strength stemmed from his anger. If they hurt Irene while Smash watched… The translator was beginning to recover from his injury; it probably had been a glancing blow. “Gdqc gdq hmsn gdq bdkk,” he gasped to the other two guards. Then, to Irene: “Girl-go quickly to your cell and they won’t hurt you.”

Irene, realizing that she could not hope to escape the two swordsmen and knowing that the bluff of Smash’s strength should not be called, edged toward her cell. The two guards followed cautiously.

Smash watched, still angry, but with the sense not to protest as long as the guards were holding off. Then Irene stepped into her cell, the guards slammed the door shut and barred it, and the crisis was over.

“You should have run out of the dungeon!” Dor said with angry relief.

“I couldn’t leave you,” she replied. “Where would I find another like you?” Dor wasn’t certain quite how to take that; was it a compliment or a deprecation?

King Oary himself seemed shaken. “Sgzs fhqkr mns tnnkx adztshetk, rgd gzr ehfgshmf rohqhs,” he said. “Cwn’s gtqs gdq; H Itrs ehme z trd enq gdq.” He turned about and marched out of the dungeon, followed by his henchmen. The translator, though still uncomfortable, had to remain where he thought he was just out of sight, to eavesdrop some more. The dungeon settled back into its normal gloom.

They were plotting something worse, Dor knew, but at least Irene had escaped unhurt, and the secret of their magic had been preserved, at least in part. The Mundanes knew the prisoners had magic, but still had not fathomed its mechanism. It was a temporary respite, but much better than nothing.

“I think we’d better get out of here soon,” Irene said as the Mundanes departed. “Give me your hand.”

What was she contemplating this time? Dor passed his hand through the crevice.

She took it in her own and kissed it. That was nice enough, though he found himself obscurely disappointed. She had lost her jacket and blouse She took his wrist in her hand and had him spread his fingers.

Then she put something into his hand. Dor almost exclaimed with surprise, for it was hard and cold and heavy.

It was the iron bar.

Of course! In their confusion, the guards had forgotten that Irene retained the bar she had picked up. Now Dor had this useful tool or weapon. Maybe he could lever open his door from the inside.

But a guard was in the hall, probably the translator, though there could have been a change. Dor didn’t dare try the door now; he would have to wait. In fact, he could not risk prying at any other part of the cell, for the noise would alert the guard and call attention to his possession of the bar. So, for now, they had to wait-and there were things he wanted to tell Irene.

“You were awfully brave,” he said. “You faced up to those thugs-“

“I was scared almost speechless,” she confessed. That was surely an overstatement; she had traded jibes with the translator quite neatly.

“But I knew they’d hurt you if-“

“Hurt me! It was you they-“

“Well, I worry about you, Dor. You wouldn’t be able to manage without me.”

She was teasing him-maybe. “I like your new outfit,” he said. “But maybe you’d better take my jacket.”

“Maybe so,” she agreed. “It’s cool here.”

Dor removed his centaur jacket and squeezed it through the crevice. She donned it, and was quite fetching in it, though it tended to fall open in front. Or perhaps that was why he found it so fetching.

At least the jacket would protect her from the cold and from the attack of instruments like swords or spears, because it was designed to resist penetration. And it wouldn’t hurt to have her body concealed from the lecherous eyes of the King and his henchmen; Dor’s jealousy of such things remained in force.

Grundy reappeared. “I got a seed,” he said. “The bag’s in the King’s chamber, along with the magic sword. I knew it was safe to sneak in there, because the King was down here. But I couldn’t carry the whole bag. Couldn’t find the magic compass at all; they must have thrown that away. So I picked out what looked like a good seed.”

“Give it here,” Irene said eagerly. “Yes-this is a tangler. If I could start it and drop it in the hall-“

“But you can’t,” Dor said. “Not without-“ He caught himself, for the eavesdropper was surely eavesdropping.

“I have an idea,” Dor said. “Suppose we brought a part of you-know-who here-would it have a little magic, enough to start one seed?”

Irene considered. “A piece of hoof, maybe. I don’t know. It’s worth a try.”

“I’m on my way,” Grundy said.

“I always thought girls were supposed to be timid and sweet and to scream helplessly at the mere sight of trouble,” Dor said. “But you-those guards-“

“You saw too much of Millie the Ghost. Real girls aren’t like that, except when they want to be.”

“You certainly aren’t! But I never thought you’d risk your life like that.”

“Are you disappointed?”

Dor considered. “No. You’re a lot more girl-more woman than I thought. I guess I do need you. If I didn’t love you before, I do now. And not because of your looks-though when it comes to that-“

“Really?” she asked, sounding like an excited girl.

“Well, I could be overreacting because of our imprisonment.”

“I liked it better unqualified,” she said.

“Oh, sure. Uh, I think you’re beautiful. But-“

“Then we’d better check again after we get out of this, to see if we feel the same. No sense being hasty.”

Dor was shaken. “You have doubts?”

“Well, I might meet a handsomer man.”

“Uh, yes,” Dor said unhappily.

She laughed. “I’m teasing you. Girls are smarter about appearances than boys are. We go for quality rather than packaging. I have no doubt at all. I love you, Dor. I never intended to marry anyone else. But I refuse to take advantage of you when you’re unsettled. Maybe when you get older you’ll change your mind.”

“You’re younger than I am!”

“Girls mature faster. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Now Dor laughed. “Just today, I noticed!”

She kissed his hand again. “Well, it’s all yours, when.”

When. Dor Considered the ramification of that, and felt warm all over.

She had a body, true-but what pleased him most was the loyalty implied. She would be with him, she would support him, whatever happened. Dor realized he needed that support; he really would foul up on his own. Irene was strong, when not jarred by an acute crisis; she had nerve he lacked. Her personality complemented his, shoring up his weakness. She was the one who had gotten them going on this rescue mission; her determination to rescue her father had never relented. With her at his side, he could indeed be King.

His reflections were interrupted by the return of the golem. “I got three hairs from his tail,” he whispered. “He’s very vain about his tail, like all his breed; it’s his best feature. Maybe they’ll be enough.”

Did some magic adhere to portions of the centaur that were removed from his body? Dor brought out his midnight sunstone gem and held it close to the hairs. Almost, he thought, he saw a gleam of light, deep within the crystal. But maybe that was a reflection from the wan illumination of the cell.

“Take them in to Irene,” Dor said, hardly allowing himself to hope.

Grundy did so. Irene set the seed down on the tail hairs and leaned close. “Grow,” she breathed.

They were disappointed. The seed seemed to try, to swell expectantly, but could not grow. There was not enough magic.

“Maybe if I took it back to Amolde,” Grundy said.

Irene was silent, and Dor realized she was stifling her tears. She had really hoped her magic would work.

“Yes, try that,” Dor told the golem. “Maybe the seed has been started. Maybe it just needs more magic now.”

Grundy took the seed and the tail hairs and departed again. Dor reached through the crevice to pat Irene on the shoulder. “It was worth the try,” he said.

She clutched his hand. “I need you, Dor. When I collapse, you just keep on going.”

There was that complementary aspect again. She would soon recover her determination and nerve, but in the interim she needed to be steadied.

They remained that way for what seemed like a long time, and despite the despair they both felt, Dor would not have traded it. Somehow this privation enhanced their personal liaison, making their love bum more fiercely and reach deeper. What would happen after this day he could not know, but he was certain he had been changed by this experience of emotion. His age of innocence, in a fundamental and positive sense, had passed.

Then a commotion began in the distance. The sound electrified them. Was it possible-?

Grundy burst in on them. “It worked!” he cried. “That seed started growing. The moment I got it in the magic aisle, it heaved right out of its shell. It must have been primed by your command, in that bit of magic with the tall hairs. I had to throw it down outside the stall-“

“It worked!” Irene cried jubilantly. “I always knew it would!”

“I told Amolde where we are, just in case,” Grundy continued excitedly. “That tangler will rip apart his stall!”

“But can he get through all the locked doors?” Irene asked, turning worried. Her moods were swinging back and forth now. “He can’t do magic himself, and there’s no one with him to-“

“I’m way ahead of you, doll,” the golem said. “I scouted all around. He can’t get through those doors, but he can get out the gate that Smash ripped off, ‘cause they haven’t fixed that yet, and there's a small channel outside the castle wall, and these cells are against the wall. Unless the outside wall is over his aisle-depth-“

“And if it is?” she prompted, as if uncertain whether to go into a scream of jubilation or of despair.

“I’m sure the wall isn’t,” Grundy said. “It’s not more than six of your paces thick, and his aisle reaches twice that far forward. But we’ll soon find out, because he’ll soon be on his way.”

The clamor continued. “I hope Amolde doesn’t get hurt,” Dor said. “King Oary took our supply of healing elixir, too.”

“Probably dumped it down a sump,” Grundy said. “Make all the sick maggots healthy.”

“Stand by the outer wall,” Irene told him. “When you can talk to it, Dor, we’ll know the centaurs here.”

“I’ll go check on his progress,” Grundy said, and scurried away again.

“That tangler should be almost full-grown now,” Irene said. “I hope Amolde has the sense to stay away from its tentacles.” Then she reconsidered. “But not so far away the lack of magic kills the tree. He’s got to keep it in the aisle until it does its job. Once he leaves, it will die.”

“Speak to me, wall,” Dor said, touching the stone. There was no response.

“What’s up?” Smash inquired from the next cell.

“Grundy took a sprouted tangler seed to Amolde,” Dor explained. “We hope the centaur’s on his way here.”

“At length, me strength,” the ogre said, comprehending.

“Hey-you rhymed!” Dor cried. “He must be here!”

“Me see,” Smash said. He punched his fist through the wall near Dor.

“You’ve got it!” Dor said. “Go rip open your door! Then you can free Irene and me!”

The ogre tramped to the front of his cell and gleefully smashed at his front door. “Ooo, that hurt!” he grunted, shaking his gauntleted fist. The door had not given way.

“His strength is gone again!” Irene said. “Something’s wrong!”

Dor cudgeled his brain. What could account for this partial recovery? “Where is the centaur now?” he asked his back wall, fearing it would not answer.

“Right outside Irene’s cell,” it replied. “Clinging to a narrow track above a chasm, terrified.”

Dor visualized the centaur’s position. “Then he can’t face directly into the castle?”

“He can only turn a little,” the wall agreed. “Any more and he’ll fall off. Soldiers are getting ready to put arrows in his tail, too.”

“So his magic aisle slants in obliquely,” Dor concluded. “It covers this wall, but not the front of our cells.”

“Anybody can see that, idiot,” the wall agreed smugly.

Dor used his sunstone to verify the edge of the aisle. The gem flashed and darkened as it passed outside the magic. The line was only a few handspans inside Dor’s wall, projecting farther into Smash’s cell.

“Hey, Smash!” Dor cried. “The magic’s only at this end. Bash out the outer wall to let Amolde in.”

“Right site,” Smash agreed. He aimed his huge, horny, gauntleted hamfist.

“Don’t hit me!” the wall cried. “I support the whole castle!” But it was too late; the fist powered through the brick and stone. “Oooo, that smarts!”

The wall turned out to be double: two sections of stone, with a filling of rubble between. Smash ripped out the loose core, then pulverized the outer barrier, gaining enthusiasm as he went. In moments bright daylight shone through the cloud of dust.

The ogre ripped out more chunks, widening the aperture. Beyond was the back of the mountain, falling awesomely away into a heavily wooded valley.

“Good to see you, brute!” Amolde’s voice came. “Clear an entrance for me before these savages attack!”

Smash leaned out. He grabbed a stone. “Duck, cluck,” he warned, and hurled his missile.

There was a thud and scream as someone was knocked off the ledge. “What did you do?” Irene cried, appalled.

Then Amolde’s front end appeared in the gap in the wall. Centaur and ogre embraced joyously. “I think he knocked off an enemy,” Dor said.

Irene sounded weak with relief. “Oh. I guess they’re friends now.”

“We need both magic and power,” Dor agreed. “Each is helpless without the other. They have come to understand that.”

“We have all come to understand a lot of things,” she agreed, smiling obscurely.

Now Amolde faced the front door, putting it within the aisle, and Smash marched up and lucked it off its moorings. Then he took hold of the front wall and tore it out of the floor. Debris crashed down from the ceiling. “Don’t bring the whole castle down on us!” Dor warned, while Irene choked on the voluminous dust.

“Me wrestle this castle,” the ogre said, unworried. He hoisted one paw to the ceiling, and the collapse abated.

There was a stray guard in the hall. The man watched the progress of the ogre a few moments in silence, then fainted.

Grundy reappeared. “Troops coming,” he reported. “We’d better move.”

They moved. Doors and gates were locked, but Smash smashed them clear like so much tissue. When they encountered a wall, he burst right through it. They emerged into an inner court, where flowers grew. “Grow! Grow! Grow!” ]Irene ordered, and the plants exploded upward and outward.

“Where is our safest retreat?” Dor asked the next wall.

“The other side of me, dolt,” it replied.

Smash opened another hole and they trooped out into a section of forest. Soon they had hidden themselves well away from the castle. They were together again and free, and it felt wonderful.

They paused, catching their breaths, assessing their situation. “Everybody all right?” Dor asked around. “No serious injuries?” There seemed to be none.

“So have you reconsidered?” Irene inquired. “You know how I abhor you.”

He looked at her. She was still wearing his jacket over her bare upper torso, her hair was tangled, and dirt smudged her face. She seemed preternaturally lovely. “Yes,” he said. “And the answer comes out the same. I still hate you.” He took her in his arms and kissed her, and she was all eager and yielding in the manner of her kind-when her kind chose to be.

“If that be hate,’ Amolde remarked, “I would be interested in witnessing their love.”

“The idiots are engaged to each other,” Grundy explained to the others. “It seems they saw the light in the darkness, or something.”

“Or something,” the centaur agreed dubiously.

“Now we have arrived,” Dor said, taking charge after reluctantly disengaging from Irene. “But we have not accomplished our mission. I believe this is the place King Trent and Queen Iris came to. I think the table told me they were here, just before I passed out from King Oary’s drug. But I might have dreamed that; the memory is very foggy. Have we any solid proof?”

“Apart from the henchman who speaks the language of Xanth?” Grundy asked.

“That’s circumstantial,” Irene said. “It only proves he had contact with the Xanth scout, not that King Trent actually came here. We have to be sure.”

“My evidence is rather tenuous,” Amolde offered. “It seems that the stable hands had difficulty thinking of me as a person of intellect, and spoke more freely in my vicinity than they might otherwise have done. I declined to speak to them, in what I confess might be construed as a fit of pique-“

“Chic pique,’ Smash chuckled.

“And so they did not realize that the magic in your vicinity caused their language to be intelligible to you, or that you had the wit to comprehend it,” Dor put in, pleased. “We could not communicate with them without an interpreter, so it was natural for them to assume you couldn’t either. That, combined with their tending to think of you as an animal-“

“Precisely. My pique may have been fortuitous. So I found myself overhearing certain things that were perhaps not entirely my affair.” He smiled. “In one case, literally. It seems one of the cooks has a continuing liaison with a scullery maid-“ He broke off, grimacing.

“Right beside my stall! It was instructive; they are lusty folk. At any rate, there was at one point a reference to a certain alien King who, it seems, had claimed to be able to perform magic.”

“King Trent!” Dor exclaimed. “My memory was right, then, not a dream! The table did say King Trent was here!”

“I think we always knew it!” Irene agreed, glowering in memory of the betrayal associated with that table.

“The translator knew about the magic of Xanth,” Dor continued.

“But of course no one could do magic here in Mundania, until we discovered you, Amolde. King Trent would have said he could do magic in Xanth, and the qualification got dropped in translation.”

“Certainly,” the centaur agreed. “It seems that King Oary somehow anticipated magic that he thought might greatly enhance his power and was very angry when that magic did not materialize. So he arrested the alien King treacherously and locked him away, hoping to coerce him into performing, or into revealing the secret of his power.”

“Where?” Irene demanded. “Where is my father?”

“I regret I did not overhear more than I have told you. The alien King was not named. I do not believe the people of the stables knew his identity, or believe in his power, or know where he may be confined. They merely gossip. The apparent magic of Smash’s initial display of strength, and the manner we communicated with King Oary, caused a considerable ripple of interest around the castle, and indeed in the entire Kingdom of Onesti, which accounts for the gossip about similar cases. But already this interest is waning, since both strength and communication appeared to have been illusion. It is very easy to attribute phenomena to illusion or false memory when practical explanations are lacking, and Mundanes do this often.” He sanded grimly. “I daresay a new round of speculation has commenced, considering the events of the past hour. Your tangle plant, Irene, was gratifyingly impressive.”

“It sure was!” Grundy agreed enthusiastically. “It was grabbing people right and left, and it ripped the stall apart. But when Amolde left, the tangler sank down dead.”

“Magic plants can’t function without magic, dummy,” Irene said.

“Fortunately,” Amolde agreed. “On occasion it reached for me; then I angled away from it, depriving it of magic, and it desisted. After a time it ceased to bother me.”

“Even a tangler isn’t totally stupid!” Irene laughed.

“At least we have more to go on,’ Dor said. “We can be pretty sure King Oary imprisoned King Trent and Queen his, and that they remain alive. Oary’s experience with us must have enhanced his conviction that anyone from Xanth is hiding magic from him, since we really did have magic, then stopped showing it when he imprisoned us. He probably intended to force us to tell him the secret of magic so he could do it, too, or at least compel the rest of us to perform for them.”

“King Oary strikes me as a pretty cunning old rascal,” Irene said. “Wrongheaded but cunning.”

“Indeed,” Amolde agreed. “From my observation, he runs this Kingdom reasonably well, but unscrupulously. Perhaps that is what is required to maintain the precarious independence from the larger empires on three sides.”

“We still need to locate King Trent,” Dor said. “Amolde, did you hear anything else that might remotely connect?”

“I am not sure, Dor. “There was a reference to King Omen, Oary’s predecessor who disappeared. It seems the common folk liked him and were sorry to lose him.”

“He was King?” Dor asked. “I understood he was underage, so Oary was regent, and Omen never actually became King.”

“I gather in contrast that he was indeed King, for about a year, before he disappeared,” the centaur said. “They called him Good Omen, and believe the Kingdom of Onesti would have prospered under his guidance.”

“Surely it would have,” Dor agreed. He realized that King Oary might have preferred to minimize King Omen’s stature in order to make his own position more secure. If the Kingdom of Onesti was well run, it could have been mostly King Omen’s doing. “A trade agreement with Xanth could help both Kingdoms. Maybe King Omen was arranging that, then got deposed before King Trent arrived. King Oary’s greed has cost him that chance.”

“The peasants suspect that King Omen was illicitly removed,” the centaur continued. “Some even choose to believe that he still lives, that King Oary imprisoned him by subterfuge and usurped power. This may of course be mere wish fulfillment.”

“And just may be the truth,” Irene put in. “If King Oary deceived and imprisoned us and did the same with my parents, why not also with Good King Omen? It certainly fits his pattern.”

“We are indulging in a great deal of supposition,” Amolde said seamingly. “We could encounter disappointment. Yet if I may extend the rationale-it occurs to me that If King Trent and King Omen both survive, they may be confined together. We have already seen that the dungeons of Castle Onesti are not extensive. If there is another castle, and we find one confined there-“

“We find the other!” Irene finished. “And if we rescued them both, Good Omen would be King of Onesti again and all would be well. I’d sure like to depose hoary King Oary!”

“That was the extrapolation of my conjectures,” Amolde agreed. “Yet I reiterate, it is highly speculative.”

“It’s worth a try,” Dor said. “Now let’s plan our strategy. Probably only King Oary knows where King Trent and/or King Omen are incarcerated, and he won’t tell. I could question the stones of the castle, but probably the Kings aren’t here at all, and the stones wouldn’t know anything about other places. If the local servants don’t know anything about it, it probably isn’t known. So the question is, how can we get him to tell?”

“He ought to have a guilty conscience,” Irene said. “Maybe we could play on that.”

“I distrust this,” Dor said. “I encountered some bad people and creatures in another adventure, and I don’t think their consciences troubled them, because they simply didn’t believe they were doing anything wrong. Goblins and harpies-“

“Of course they don’t have consciences,” Irene snapped. “But Oary is a person.”

“Human beings can be worst of all, especially Mundanes,” Dor said. “Many of them have ravaged Xanth over the centuries, and King Oary may contemplate something similar. I just don’t have much confidence in any appeal to his conscience.”

“I perceive your point,” Amolde said. “But I think ‘appeal’ is not the appropriate term. A guilty conscience more typically manifests in the perception of nocturnal specters.”

“Not many specters running around this far from Xanth,” Grundy pointed out.

“We could scare him into giving it away!” Irene exclaimed.

“Tonight,” Dor decided. “We must rest and feed ourselves firsthand hide from King Oary’s troops.”

They had no trouble avoiding the troops. It took Oary’s forces some time to organize, after the devastation Smash had caused during the breakout, and only now, after the long discussion, was any real activity manifesting at the castle. Irene made vines grow, bristling with thorns; in their natural state these had been a nuisance, but now they were a menace. When the magic moved away, the vines died, for they had been extended far beyond their natural limits-but the tangle of thorns remained as a formidable barrier. That, coupled with the Mundanes’ knowledge that the ogre lurked in the forest, kept the guards close to the castle even after they emerged. They were not eager for contact with the creature who had bashed all those holes in the massive walls.

At night, rested, Dor’s party made its play. Grundy had scouted the castle, so they knew which tower contained the royal suite. King Oary was married, but slept alone; his wife couldn’t stand him. He ate well and consumed much alcoholic beverage; this facilitated his sleep.

They had fashioned a platform that Smash carried to the base of the outer wall nearest the royal tower, which happened to be on the forest side. Amolde mounted this, bringing his magic aisle within range of the King.

Irene had scouted for useful Mundane seeds and had assembled a small collection. Now she planted several climbing vines, and in the ambience of magic they assumed somewhat magical properties. They mounted wall and platform vigorously, sending their little anchortendrils into any solid substance they found, quickly binding the platform firmly in place. Amolde had to keep moving his legs to avoid tendrils that swiped at his feet, until the growing stage passed that level. The plants ascended to the embrasure that marked the King’s residence, then halted; the magic aisle extended more inward than upward.

Grundy used the sturdy vines to mount to that embrasure. He scrambled over, found himself a shrouded corner, and called quietly down: “I can see inside some, but I don’t dare get close enough to cover the whole room.”

“Talk to the plant,” Irene said in her don’t-be-dumb tone. She no longer used that on Dor, mute recognition of their changed situation, but obviously she retained the expertise.

“Say, yes,” the golem agreed. “There’s a vine that reaches inside.”

He paused, talking to the plant. “It says Oary’s not alone. He’s got a doxy in his bed.”

“He would,” Irene grumped. “Men like that will do anything.”

It occurred to Dor that this could be the reason the translator had persisted in addressing Irene as “slut” and “strumpet.” This was the type of woman King Oary nominally associated with. But Dor decided not to mention this to Irene; she already had reason enough to hate Oary.

Dor climbed the vines, finding a lodging against the watt just beneath the embrasure. “Describe the room,” he murmured to Grundy. “I’ve got to know exactly what’s in it, and where.”

The golem consulted with the plant. “There is this big feather bed to the right, two of your paces in from this wall. A wooden bench straight in from the embrasure, six paces, with her dress strewn on it. A wooden table to its left, one pace-and there’s your sword on it, and Amolde’s bag of spells.”

“Ha!” Dor exclaimed quietly. “I need that sword. Too bad it’s not the variety that wields itself; I could call it right to me.”

The golem continued describing the room, until Dor was satisfied he had the details properly fixed in his mind. He was able to picture it now-everything just so. “I hope my mind doesn’t go blank,” he called down.

“Don’t you dare!” Irene snapped. “Save your fouling up for some other time. Do I have to come up there and prompt you?”

“That might help,” Dor confessed. “You see, I can’t make things say specific things. They only answer questions, or talk in response to my words. Usually. And the inanimate is not too bright, and sometimes perverse. So I may indeed foul it up.”

“For pity’s sake!” Irene took hold of the vines and began climbing. “And don’t look up my skirt!” she said to Amolde.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” the centaur said equably. “I prefer to view equine limbs, and never did see the merit in pink panties.”

“They’re not pink!” she said.

“They’re not? I must be colorblind. Let me see-“

“Forget it!” She joined Dor, gave him a quick kiss, wrapped her skirt closely about her legs, and settled in for the duration. Dor had worried about the strength of the vines, with all this weight on them, but realized she would have a better notion than he how much they could hold.

“Well, start,” she whispered.

“But if I talk loud enough for the things to hear me, so will King Oary.”

She sighed. “You are a dumbbell at times, dear. You don’t have to talk aloud to objects; just direct your attention to them. That’s the way your magic works. As for King Oary-if that snippet with him knows her trade, he won’t be paying any attention to what's outside the castle.”

She was right. Dor concentrated, but still couldn’t quite get it together. He was used to speaking aloud to objects. “Are they really not pink?” he asked irrelevantly.

“What?”

“Your-you-knows.”

She laughed. “My panties? You mean you never looked?”

Dor, embarrassed, admitted that he had not.

“You’re entitled now, you know.”

“But I wasn’t, back when I had a chance to see.”

She released her grip on the vine with one hand and reached over to tweak his cheek, in much the manner the Gorgon had. “You’re something sort of rare and special, Dor. Well, you get this job done right, and I’ll show you.”

“Will you get on with it?” Grundy demanded from above.

“But she says not till after this job’s done,” Dor said.

“I was referring to the job!” the golem snapped. “I’ll tell you what color her-“

“I will wring your rag body into a tight little knot!” Irene threatened, and the golem was silent.

Prompted by this, Dor concentrated on the magic sword on the King’s table. Groan, he ordered it mentally. Obediently, the sword groaned. Naturally it hammed it up.

“Groooaan!” it singsonged in an awful key.

“The doxy just sat up straight,” Grundy reported gleefully as the vine rustled the news to him. “Oh, she shouldn’t have done that. She’s stark, bare, nude naked!

“Skip the pornography, you little voyeur!” Irene snapped. “It’s the King we want to rouse.” She nudged Dor. “You know the script we worked out. ‘Let me free, let me free.”

Dor concentrated again. Sword, I have a game for you. If you play your part well, you can scare the pants off bad King Oary.

“Hey, great!” the sword exclaimed. “Only they’re already off him. Boy, is he fat!”

No. Don’t talk to me! Talk to the King. Groan again and say, “Let me free, let me free!” The idea is you’re the ghost of Good King Omen, coming back to haunt him. Can you handle that, or are you too stupid?

“I’ll show you!” the sword exclaimed. It groaned again, with hideous feeling. It was definitely a ham.

“There’s someone here!” the doxy screamed.

“There can’t be,” the King muttered. “The guards prevent anyone from getting through. They know I don’t want to be disturbed when I’m conducting affairs of state.”

“Affairs of state!” Irene hissed furiously.

“Affair, anyway,” Dor said, trying to calm her.

“Let me free, let me free,” the sword groaned enthusiastically.

“Then who’s that?” the doxy demanded, hiding under the feathers.

“I am the ghooost of Goood King ooomen,” the sword answered. Dor no longer needed to prompt it.

The doxy emitted a half-stiffed squeak and disappeared entirely into the feathers, according to Grundy’s gleeful play-by-play report.

The King clutched a feather quilt about him, causing part of the doxy to reappear, to her dismay.

“You can’t be!” Oary retorted shakily, trying to see where the voice came from. The lone candle illuminating the room cast many wavering shadows, the plant reported, making such detection difficult.

“Coming back from the graaave to haaunt you!” the sword continued, really getting into it.

“Impossible!” But the King looked nervous, Grundy reported.

“He’s a tough one,” Irene murmured. “He should be terrified, and he’s only worried. We’re only scaring the doxy, who doesn’t matter. Girls can be such foolish creatures!” Then she reconsidered. “When they want to be.”

Dor nodded, worried himself. If this ruse didn’t work “Yooou killed me,” the sword said.

“I did not!” Oary shouted. “I only locked you up until I figured out what to do with you. I never killed you.”

The doxy’s face reappeared, replacing the rounder portion of her that had showed before. “You locked up Good Omen?” she asked, surprised.

“I had to, or I never would have gotten the throne,” the King said absently. “I thought he would foul up as King, but he didn’t, so there was no way to remove him legitimately.” As he talked, he hoisted his porcine torso from the bed, wrapped the quilt about it, and stalked the voice he heard. “But I didn’t kill him. I am too cautious for that. It is too hard to undo a killing, if anything goes wrong. So this can’t be his ghost.”

“Then whose ghost is it?” the doxy demanded.

“No ghost at all,” the King said. “”There's no one there.” He picked up the sword. “Just this sword I took from the Xanth Prince. I thought it was magic, but it isn’t. I tried it out, and there’s nothing remarkable about it except a fine edge.”

“That’s not true!” the sword cried. “Unhand me, varlet!”

Unnerved at last, the King hurled it out the embrasure. “The thing talks!” he cried.

“Well, that’s one way to recover my weapon,” Dor murmured.

“Try for my bag of seeds,” Irene suggested. “I can do a lot with genuine magic plants.”

Grundy had located the seeds, carelessly thrown in a corner; no doubt Oary had been disappointed when he discovered the bag did not contain treasure, though he should have been satisfied with the gold and diamonds Dor had carried. Greed knew no restraint! “You can’t get rid of me that way,” the seedbag said as Dor mentally prompted it. “My ghost will haunt you forever.”

“I tell you, I didn’t kill you!” Oary said, looking for the new voice that sounded seedy. “You’re just making that up.”

“Well, I might as well be dead,” the seedbag said. “Locked up here alone-it’s awful.”

“What do you mean, alone?” Oary demanded. “The Xanth King is in the next cell, and the sharp-tongued Xanth Queen in the third. They wanted to know what had happened to you, and wouldn’t deal with me, so now they know.”

Irene’s free hand clutched Dor’s shoulder. “Confirmation!” she whispered, thrilled.

Dor was equally gratified. The talking objects had hardly terrorized Oary, but they had evoked his confession nevertheless. Dor continued to concentrate. But you’re way out in nowhere, he thought to the bag.

“But we’re way out in nowhere,” the bag dutifully repeated. Dor was getting better at this as he went. He had never before used his talent in quite this way; it was a new aspect.

“Nowhere?” The King pounced on the bag and shook it. “You’re in the Ocna dungeon! The second biggest castle of the Kingdom! Plenty of company there! I’d be proud to be in that dungeon myself! Out, you ungrateful bag!” And he hurled it out the embrasure.

“What?” the doxy demanded. She had evidently heard only the last few words.

“Out, you ungrateful bag,” the table repeated helpfully. “That’s what he said.”

“Well, I never!” the doxy said, flushing wrathfully.

“Don’t tell me you never,” the feather quilt she had retained said. “I was right here when you-“

The doxy slapped the quilt, silencing it, then wrapped it about her and stalked out. “Help!” the quilt cried. “I’m being kidnapped by a monster?” Then it was beyond the magic aisle and said no more.

“Guards!” the King bellowed. “Search the premises! Report anything remarkable.”

There was a scream from the hall, and the sound of someone being slapped. “He said premises, not mistresses!” the doxy’s voice cried.

There was a guttural laugh. “But we do have something remarkable to report.”

“He’s seen it before!” she retorted. Her footfalls moved on away.

Guards charged into the room. Quickly they ascertained that no one except the King was in the tower. Then they spied the tip of the vine that had grown into the embrasure. They investigated it-while Dor and Irene scrambled down the wall. Grundy leaped from above them, dropping to the centaur’s back. “Take off!” he cried.

Amolde in turn launched himself from the platform, landing with heavy impact on the dark ground and galloping off. The platform was shoved violently by the back thrust of his hooves, so that the vines holding it in place were wrenched from the wall. Suddenly Irene was failing, her support gone, while Dor dangled tenuously from his vine, his grip slipping.

But Smash the Ogre was there below. He snatched Irene out of the air and whirled her around, absorbing the shock of her fall. Her skirt flew out and up-and now at last Dor saw her panties. They were green. Then Smash deposited her gently on the ground while Dor slid down as quickly as he could, weak with relief. “I’m glad you were there!” Dor gasped.

“Me glad centaur was still near,” Smash said. “He out of range now.”

Which meant that the ogre’s magic strength was gone again. Irene had fallen in those few seconds that the rear extension of the aisle remained. Now Smash's nonrhyming showed that the Mundane environment had closed in.

“Someone’s out there!” King Oary cried from the embrasure. “After him!” But the guards had no good light for the purpose, and seemed loath to pursue a magic enemy in the moonlight.

“You sword,” Smash said, pressing it into Dor’s hand. “You seeds,” he said to Irene, giving her the bag he had rescued.

“Thanks oodles, Smash,” she said. “Now let’s get away from here.”

But as they moved out, a small gate opened in the castle wan and troops poured forth bearing torches. “Oary must have caught on that it was our magic,” Dor said as they scrambled away.

Soon they caught up to the centaur, who had stopped as soon as he realized what was happening. Dor felt no different as they re-entered the magic aisle, but Smash’s panting alleviated; his strength had returned.

Quickly Dor summarized their situation. “We’re together; we have our magic things, except for Amolde’s spells, and we know King Trent, Queen Iris, and King Omen are alive in Castle Ocna. Oary’s troops are on our trail. We had better hurry on to rescue the three, before the troops catch us. But we don’t know the way.”

“Every plant and rock must know the way to Ocna,” Grundy said. “We can ask as we go along.”

The guards were spreading out and combing through the forest.

Whatever virtues King Oary lacked, he evidently compelled obedience when he really wanted it. Dor’s party had to retreat before them. But there were two problems: this section of forest was small, so that they could not remain concealed long; and they were being herded the wrong way. For it turned out that Ocna was half a day’s walk northwest of Onesti, while this forest was southeast. They were actually moving toward the village settlement, where the peasants who served the castle dwelt. That village would, in the course of centuries, expand into the town of Onesti, whose designation on the map had given them the hint where to find King Trent. They didn’t want to interfere with that!

“We’ve got to get on a path,” Irene said. “We’ll never make it to Ocna tonight traveling cross-country. But the soldiers will be patrolling the paths.”

“Maybe there’s a magic seed for this,” Grundy suggested.

“Maybe,” Irene agreed. “Another tangler would do-except I don’t have one. I do have a cherry seed-“

“The kind that grows cherry bombs? That would do it!”

“No,” Amolde said.

“What’s the matter, horsetail?” the golem demanded nastily. “You’d rather get your rump riddled with arrows than throw a few cherries at the enemy?”

“Setting aside the ethical and aesthetic considerations-which process I find objectionable-there remain practical ones,” the centaur said. “First, we don’t want a pitched battle; we do want to elude these people, if possible, leaving them here in a fruitless search while we proceed unchallenged to Ocna. If we fight them, we shall be tied down indefinitely, until their superior numbers overwhelm us.”

“There is that,” Dor agreed. Centaurs did have fine minds.

“Second, we must keep moving if we are to reach Ocna before dawn. A half-day’s march for seasoned travelers by day, familiar with the route, will be twice that for us at night. A cherry tree can’t travel; it must be rooted in soil. And since it is magic-“

“We’d have to stay with it,” Irene finished. “It’d die the moment we left. Anything magic will be no good away from the magic aisle.”

“However,” the centaur said after a moment, “it might be possible to grow a plant that would distract them, even if it were dead. Especially if it were dead.”

“Cherry bombs won’t work,” Grundy said. “They don’t exist in Mundania. They wouldn’t explode outside the aisle.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Irene said defensively. “Once they are mature and ready to detonate, it seems to me they should be able to explode anywhere. I’d be willing to try them, certainly.”

“Possibly so,” the centaur said. “However, I was thinking of resurrection fern, whose impact would extend beyond the demise of the plant itself.”

“I do have some,” Irene said. “But I don’t see how it can stop soldiers.”

“Primitives tend to be superstitious,” the centaur explained. “Especially, I understand, Mundanes, who profess not to believe in ghosts.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Dor protested. “Only a fool would not believe in ghosts. Some of my best friends are-“

“I’m not certain all Mundanes are fools,” Amolde said in his cautious way. “But these particular ones may be. So if they encountered resurrection fern-?”

“It could be quite something, for people who didn’t know about it,” Irene agreed.

“And surely these Mundanes don’t,” Amolde said. “I admit it is a bit of a dastardly deed, but our situation is desperate.”

“Dastardly deed,” Dor said. “Are you sure that counterspell we used with the salve worked?”

The centaur smiled. “Certainly I’m sure! We do not have to do such a deed, but we certainly can if we choose to.”

Irene dug out the seed. “I can grow it, but you’ll have to coordinate it. The wrong suggestion can ruin it.”

“These primitives are bound to have suffered lost relatives,” the centaur said. “They will have repressed urgings. All we shall have to do is establish pseudo-identities.”

“I never talked with resurrection fern,” Grundy complained. “What’s so special about it? What’s this business about lost relatives?”

“Let’s find a place on a road,” Amolde said. “We want to intercept the Mundanes, but have easy travel to Ocna. They will pursue us when they penetrate the deception.”

“Right,” Irene agreed. “I’ll need time to get the fern established so it can include all of us.”

“Include us all in what?” the golem demanded.

“Resurrection fern has the peculiar property of-“ the centaur began.

“Near here!” Smash called, pointing. Ogres had excellent night vision.

Sure enough, they had found a path, a bit worn by the tread of peasants’ feet and horses’ hooves.

“Do you go to Ocna?” Dor asked the path.

“No. I merely show the way,” it answered.

“Which way is it?”

“That way,” the section of path to their west said. “But you’ll have trouble traveling there tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because there is something wrong with me. I feel numb, everywhere but here. Maybe there’s been a bad storm that washed me out.”

“Could the path be aware of itself beyond the region of magic?” Irene asked Dor.

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so-but then, it does know it goes to Ocna, so maybe it does have some awareness. I’m not used to dealing with things that straddle magic and nonmagic; I don’t know all the rules.”

“I believe it is reasonably safe to assume the path is animate only within the aisle,” Amolde said. “In any event, this is probably as good a place for our purpose as any. The soldiers are surely using this path, and will circle around here. It is better to meet them in a manner of our choosing than to risk an accidental encounter. Let us begin our preparations.”

“Right,” Irene said. “Now the fern will grow in the dark, but needs light to activate its magic. The soldiers will have torches, so it should be all right.”

“I have the sunstone,” Dor reminded her. “That can trigger the fern, If necessary. Or we could clear out some trees to let the moonlight in.”

“Good enough,” she agreed. She planted several seeds. “Grow.”

“But what does it do?” Grundy asked plaintively.

“Well, it relates to the psychology of the ignorant spectator,” Arnolde explained. “Anyone who comprehends its properties soon penetrates the illusion. That is why I feel it will be more effective against Mundanes than against citizens of Xanth. Thus we should be able to deceive them and nullify the pursuit without violence, a distinct advantage. All we have to do is respond appropriately to their overtures, keeping our own expectations out of it.”

“What expectations?” the golem demanded, frustrated.

Dor took a hand. “You see, resurrection fern makes figures seem like-‘

“Refrain!” Smash whispered thunderingly. “Mundane!” Ogres’ hearing was also excellent.

They waited by the growing fern. In a moment three Onesti soldiers came into view, their torches flashing between the trees, casting monstrous shadows. They were peering to either side, alert for their quarry.

Then the three spied the five. The soldiers halted, staring, just within the magic aisle. “Grandfather!” one exclaimed, aghast, staring at Smash.

The ogre knew what to do. He roared and made a threatening gesture with one hamfist. The soldier dropped his torch and fled in terror.

One of the remaining soldiers was looking at Irene. “You live!” he gasped. “The fever spared you after all!”

Irene shook her head sadly. “No, friend. I died.”

“But I see you!” the man cried, in an agony of doubtful hope. “I hear you! Now we can marry-“

“I am dead, love,” she said with mournful firmness. “I return only to warn you not to support the usurper.”

“But you never cared for politics,” the soldier said, bewildered. “You did not even like my profession-“

“I still don’t,” Irene said. “But at least you worked for Good King Omen. Death has given me pause for thought. Now you work for his betrayer. I will never respect you, even from the grave, if you work for the bad King who seeks to send Good King Omen to his grave.”

“I’ll renounce King Oary!” the soldier cried eagerly. “I don’t like him anyway. I thought Good Omen dead!”

“He lives,” Irene said. “He is in the dungeon at Castle Ocna.”

“I’ll tell everyone! Only return to me!”

“I cannot return, love,” she said. “I am resurrected only for this moment, only to tell you why I cannot rest in peace. I am dead; King Omen lives. Go help the living.” She moved back to hide behind the centaur, disappearing from the soldier’s view.

“Beautiful,” Amolde whispered.

“I feel unclean,” she muttered.

The third man focused on Grundy. “My baby son-returned from the Khazars!” he exclaimed. “I knew they could not hold you long!”

The golem had finally caught on to the nature of resurrection fern: it resurrected the memories of important figures in the viewers’ lives.

“Only my spirit escaped,” he said. “I had to warn you. The Khazars are coming! They will besiege Onesti, slay the men, rape the women, and carry the children away into bondage, as they did me. Warn the King! Fetch all troops into the castle! Barricade the access roads! Don’t let more families be ravaged. Don’t let my sacrifice be in vain! Fight to the last-“

Dor nudged the golem with his foot. “Don’t overdo it,” he murmured. “Mundanes are ignorant; they aren’t necessarily stupid.”

“Let’s move out,” Irene whispered. “This should hold them for a while.”

They moved out cautiously. The two soldiers remained by the fern, absorbed by their thoughts. Before rounding a curve in me path, Dor glanced back-and saw a giant, pretty spider, of the kind that ranged about rather than forming a web. The decorations on its body resembled a greenish face, and it had eight eyes of different sizes.

“Jumper!” he exclaimed-then stifled himself. Jumper had died of old age years ago. He had been Dor’s closest friend, when the two had seemed to be the same size within the historical tapestry of Castle Roogna, but their worlds were different. The spider’s descendants remained by the tapestry, and Dor could talk to them if he arranged for translation, but it wasn’t the same. They seemed like interlopers, taking the place of his marvelous friend. Now he saw Jumper himself.

But of course it was only a resurrection, not the real friend. As Dor reminded himself of that, the image reduced to the standing soldier. How Dor wished it could have been genuine! This new separation, albeit from a phantom, was painfully poignant.

“So the fern resurrects precious memories,” Grundy said as they got clear. “The person looking sees what is deepest-etched in his experience. He really should know better.”

“Oh, what do you know about it?” Irene said irritably. “It’s an awful thing to do to a person, even a Mundane.”

“You looked back, too?” Dor asked.

“I saw my father. I know he isn’t dead, but I saw him.” She sounded choked. “What a torment it would have been if that were all I would ever see of him.”

“We’ll soon find him,” Dor said encouragingly. This, too, he found he liked about her-her human feeling and loyalty to her father, who had always been a large figure in Dor’s own life.

She flashed him a grateful smile in the moonlight. Dor understood her mood; his vision of his long-gone friend had wrenched his emotion. How much worse had it been for the Mundanes, who lacked knowledge of the mechanism? It was indeed a dastardly thing they had done; perhaps the violence of ogre and sword would have been gentler.

Soon, however, they heard the commotion of pursuit. The resurrection fern had perished, or at least had become inactive after the magic aisle left it; there would be no more visions there. The stories of the three affected soldiers would spread alarm, but there would also be many who still followed their orders to capture Dor’s party.

They stepped from the path, hiding in the brush-and the troops rushed on past. A snatch of their dialogue Rung out: “. . . Khazars coming . . .”

It seemed the golem’s information had been taken to heart!

“I think they’ve forgotten us,” Irene said as they stepped back on the path. “The resurrections gave them other things to think about. Now they aren’t even looking for us. So maybe we can travel to Ocna safely.”

“It was a good move we made, strategically,” Dor said. “A dirty one, perhaps, and I wouldn’t want to do it again, but effective.”

“First we must pass Castle Onesti,” Amolde reminded them.

They got past Onesti by following the directions the path gave.

There was a detour around that castle, for peasants had fields to attend to, wood to fetch, and hunting to do well beyond the castle, and the immediate environs were forbidding.

This path angled down below the clifflike western face of the peak the castle stood on, wending its way curvaceously through pastures and forest and slope. Several parties of soldiers passed them, but were easily avoided. It seemed these people took the Khazars seriously!

Beyond the castle the way grew more difficult. This was truly mountainous country, and there was a high pass between the two redoubts. Dor and the ethers were not yet fully rested from their arduous climb to Onesti of a day or so ago; now the stiffness of muscles was aggravated. But the path assured them there was no better route. Perhaps that was its conceit-but they had no ready alterative. So they hauled themselves up and up, until near midnight they came to the highest pass. It was a narrow gap between jags.

It was guarded by a select detachment of soldiers. They could not conveniently circle around it, and knew the soldiers would not let them through unchallenged.

“What now?” Irene asked, too tired even to be properly irritable.

“Maybe I can distract them,” Dor said. “If I succeed, the rest of you hurry through the pass.”

They worked their way as close to the pass as they could without being discovered. Amolde oriented himself so that the magic aisle was where they needed it. Then Dor concentrated, causing the objects to break into speech.

“Ready, Khazars?” an outcropping, of rock cried.

“Ready!” came a chorused response from several loose rocks.

“Sneak up close before firing your arrows,” the outcropping directed. “We want to get them all on the first volley.”

“Save some for our boulder!” the upper face of the cleft called. “We have a perfect drop here!”

The Onesti soldiers, at first uneasy, abruptly vacated the cleft, glancing nervously up at the crags. It seemed impossible for anyone to have a boulder up there, but the voice had certainly been convincing. They charged the rocks, swords drawn. “Move out!” Dor cried.

Amolde and Grundy charged for the pass. Smash and Irene hesitated. “Go on!” Dor snapped. “Get through before the magic ends!”

“But what about you?” Irene asked.

Dor concentrated. “Retreat, men!” the outcropping cried.

“They’re on to us!” There was the sound of scrambling from the rocks.

“I’m not going without you!” Irene said.

“I’ve got to keep them distracted until the rest of you safely clear the pass!” Dor cried, exasperated.

“You can’t keep on after-“

Then the voices stopped. The magic aisle had passed.

“After Amolde gets out of range,” she finished lamely.

The soldiers, baffled by the disappearance of the enemy, were turning about. In a moment they would spy the two; the moonlight remained too bright for effective concealment in the open.

“I grew a pineapple while we waited,” Irene said. “I hate to use it on people, even Mundanes, but they’ll kill us if-“

“How can a magic pineapple operate outside the aisle?” he demanded, knowing this argument was foolish, but afraid if they moved that the soldiers would spy them.

She looked chagrined. “For once you’re right! If cherry bombs are uncertain, so is this!”

Smash was standing in the cleft. “Run!” he cried.

But the soldiers were closing in. Dor knew they couldn’t make it through in time. He drew his sword. Without its magic, it felt heavy and clumsy, but it was the best weapon he had. He would be overwhelmed, of course, but he would die fighting. It wasn’t the end he would have chosen, had he a reasonable choice, but it was better than nothing. “Run to Smash,” he said. “I’ll block them off.”

“You come, too!” she insisted. “I love you!”

“Now she tells me,” he muttered, watching the soldiers close in.

Irene threw the pineapple at them. “Maybe it’ll scare them,” she said.

“It can’t. They don’t know what-“

The pineapple exploded, sending yellow juice everywhere. “It detonated!” Dor exclaimed, amazed.

“Come on!”’ Amolde called, appearing behind the ogre. Suddenly it made sense; the centaur had turned about and come back when they hadn’t followed. That had returned the magic to the vicinity, just in time.

They ran to the cleft. The Mundanes were pawing at their eyes, blinded by pineapple juice. There was no trouble.

“You were so busy trying to be heroes, you forgot common sense,” Amolde reproved them. “All you needed to do was follow me while the Mundanes’ backs were turned. They would never have known of our passage.”

“I never was strong on common sense,” Dor admitted.

“That’s for sure,” Irene agreed. “That juice won’t hold them forever. We’ll have to move far and fast.”

They did just that, their fatigue dissipated by the excitement. Now the path led downhill, facilitating progress somewhat. But it was treacherous in the darkness at this speed, for the mountain crags and trees shadowed it, and it curved and dropped without fair warning.

Soon the soldiers were in pursuit.

But Dor used his talent, making the path call out warnings of hazards, so that they could proceed more rapidly than other strangers might. His midnight sunstone helped, too, casting just enough light to make pitfalls almost visible. But he knew they couldn’t remain on the path long, because the soldiers were more familiar with it, and had their torches, and would surely catch up. They would have to pun off and hide-and that might not be enough, this time. There was too little room for concealment, and the soldiers would be too wary.

Then disaster loomed. “The bridge is out!” the path warned.

“What bridge?” Dor panted.

“The wooden bridge across the cut, dummy!”

“What happened to it?”

“The Onesti soldiers destroyed it when they heard the Khazars were coming.”

So Dor’s party had brought this mischief on itself! “Can we cross the cut some other way?”

“See for yourself. Here it is.”

They halted hastily. There, shrouded by darkness and fog, was a gap in the mountain-a fissure four times the full reach of a man, ex tending from the clifflike face of the peak above down to the deep valley below, shrouded in nocturnal fog. Here the moonlight blazed down, as if eager to show the full extent of the hazard.

“A young, vigorous centaur could hurdle that,” Amolde said. “It is out of the question for me.”

“If we had the rope-“ Irene said. But of course Chet had that, wherever he was now.

Ascent of the peak seemed virtually impossible, and there was no telling what lay beneath the fog. The bridge had been the only practical crossing-and only fragments of that remained. This had become a formidable natural barrier-surely one reason the Khazars had been unable to conquer this tiny Kingdom. Any bridge the enemy built could readily be hacked out or fired.

But now the torches of the garrison of the upper pass were approaching.

That was the other pincer of this trap. A few men could guard that pass, preventing retreat. The slope was steep here, offering little haven above or below the path. If the soldiers didn’t get them, nature would.

“The salve,” Irene said. “See the fog-we’ve got to use the salve!”

“But the curse-we’ve lost the counterspell!” Dor protested. “We’ll have to do some dastardly deed!”

“Those soldiers will do some dastardly deed to us if we don’t get away from here fast,” she pointed out.

Dor looked at her, standing in the moonlight, wearing his jacket, her fine-formed legs braced against the mountain. He thought of the soldiers doing a dastardly deed to her, as they had started to do in the dungeon. “We’ll use the salve,” he decided.

They scrambled down the steep slope to reach the level of the mist. They had to cling to trees and saplings, lest they slide into the cleft involuntarily.

Dor felt in his pocket for the jar-and found the dime he had obtained from Ichabod in Modern Mundania. He had forgotten that; it must have slipped into another crevice if his pocket and been over looked. It was of course of no use now. He fumbled farther and found the jar.

Quickly they applied the salve to their feet. The supply was getting low; this was just about the last time they would be able to use it.

Then they stepped cautiously out onto the fog.

“Stay close to Amolde,’ Dor warned. “And in line. Anyone who goes outside the magic aisle will fall through.”

Now the soldiers reached the cut. They were furious when they discovered no victims there. But almost immediately they spied the fugitives. “Cnvm adknvl” one cried. “Sgdx’qd rim sgd bknto.” Then he did a double take.

For a moment the soldiers stared. “Sgdx can’t do that!” one protested as the rear of the magic aisle swung around to intersect him.

But their leader found the answer. “They’re sorcerers! Spies sent by the Khazars. Shoot them down!”

Numbly responsive to orders, the soldiers nocked arrows to their bowstrings. “Run!” Dor cried. “But stay with Amolde!”

“This time I’ll bring up the rear, just to be sure,” the centaur said. “Lead the way, the rest of you.”

It made sense. The main part of the magic aisle was ahead of the centaur, and this way Amolde could angle his body to keep them all within it. Dor and Irene and Smash charged forward as the first volley of arrows came at them. Grundy rode the centaur; it was the best way to keep him out from underfoot. They crossed the fog-filled cut, coming to the dense forest at the far side.

“Aaahh!” Amolde screamed.

Dor paused to look back. An arrow had struck the centaur in the ramp.

Amolde was crippled, trying to move forward on three legs.

Smash was leading the way. He reached out to grab the branch of a tree that projected through the fog. He ripped that branch out of its trunk and hurled it uphill and across the cut toward the soldiers.

His aim was good; the soldiers screamed and flung themselves flat as the heavy branch landed on them, and one almost fell into the chasm.

Then Smash charged back across the cloud. He ducked down, grabbed the centaur by one foreleg and one hindleg, and hefted him to shoulder height. “Oh, I say!” Amolde exclaimed, amazed despite his pain.

But within the ambience of magic, there was no strength to match that of the ogre. Smash carried Amolde to the slope and set him down carefully where the ground rose out of the fog. This place was sheltered from the view of the soldiers; there would be no more shooting.

“But the arrow,” the centaur said bravely. “We must get it out!”

Smash grabbed the protruding shaft and yanked. Amolde screamed again-but suddenly the arrow was out. It had not been deeply embedded, or the head would have broken off.

“Yes, that was the appropriate way to do it,” the centaur said-and fainted.

Irene was already sprouting a seed. They had lost their healing elixir with Amolde’s bag of spells, but some plants had curative properties. She grew a balm plant and used its substance on the wound. “This won’t cure it all the way,” she said. “But it will deaden the pain and start the hearing process. He should be able to walk.”

Smash paced nervously. “Yet-Chet,” he said. “Mundane, the pain-“

Dor caught on to the ogre’s concern. “We don’t know that a Mundane wound will always become infected the way Chet’s did. That was probably Chet’s bad luck. Also, he was bitten by a wyvern, so there might have been poison, while Amolde was struck by an arrow. This is a different situation-I think.” Still, the coincidence of a second centaur getting wounded bothered Dor. Could it be part of the salve’s curse? The centaurs had had to use twice as much salve, since they had four feet, and perhaps that made them more susceptible to the curse.

Amolde soon woke and agreed that the agony of the wound was much abated. That was a relief, for at least two reasons. Nevertheless, Dor decided to camp there for the remainder of the night.

Their chance of approaching Castle Ocna secretly was gone anyway, and the recovery of their friend was more important. After all, the centaur’s aisle of magic was essential to their welfare in Mundania.

In midday, weary but hopeful, they reached Castle Ocna. This was less imposing than Castle Onesti, but still formidable. The outer wall was far too high for them to scale, “Me bash to trash,” Smash offered confidently.

“No,” Dor said. “That would alert the whole castle and bring a hundred arrows down on us.” He glanced at Amolde, who seemed to be doing all right; no infection was in evidence. But they wanted no more arrows! “We’ll wait until night and operate quietly. They’ll be expecting our attack, but won’t know exactly what form it will take. If we can bring the magic aisle to cover King Trent, hell be able to take it from there.”

“But we don’t know where in the castle he is,” Irene protested anxiously.

“That’s my job,” Grundy said. “I’ll sneak in and scout about and let you know by nightfall. Then we’ll wrap this up without trouble.”

It seemed like a good idea. The others settled themselves for a meal and a rest, while the golem insinuated his way into the castle.

Amolde, perhaps more greatly weakened by his injury than he showed, slept. Smash always conked out when he had nothing physical to do. Dor and Irene were awake and alone again.

It occurred to Dor that bringing the magic aisle to bear on King Trent might not necessarily solve the problem. King Trent could change the jailor to a slug-but the cell would still be locked. Queen Iris might make a griffin seem to appear-but that would not unlock the cells. More thinking needed to be done.

They lay on the slope, in the concealment of one of the huge ancestral oaks, and the world was deceptively peaceful. “Do you really think it will work?” Irene asked worriedly. “The closer I get, the more I fear something dreadful win happen.”

Dor decided he couldn’t afford to agree with her. “We have fought our way here,” he said. “It can’t go for nothing.”

“We have had no omens of success-?” She paused. “Or have we? Omen-King Omen-can he have anything to do with it?”

“Anything is possible with magic. And we have brought magic to this Kingdom.”

She shook her head. “I swing back and forth, full of hope and doubt. You just keep going on, never suffering the pangs of uncertainty, and you do generally get there. We’ll make a good match.”

No uncertainty? He was made of uncertainty! But again, he didn’t want to undermine what little confidence Irene was grasping for.

“We have to succeed. Otherwise I would be King. You wouldn’t want that.”

She rolled over, fetching up next to him, shedding leaves and grass. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. “I’d settle for that, Dor.”

He looked at her, startled. She was disheveled and lovely. She had always been the aggressor in their relationship, first in quarreling, more recently in romance. Did he really want it that way?

He grabbed her and pulled her back down to him, kissing her savagely. At first she was rigid with surprise; then she melted. She returned his kiss and his embrace, becoming something very special and exciting.

It would have been easy to go on from there. But a note of caution sounded in Dor’s mind. In the course of assorted adventures he had come to appreciate the value of timing, and this was not the proper time for what offered. “First we rescue your father,” he murmured in her ear.

That brought her up short. “Yes, of course. So nice of you to remind me.”

Dor suspected he had misplayed it, but as usual, all he could do was bull on. “Now we can sleep, so as to be ready for tonight.”

“Whatever you say,” she agreed. But she did not release him. “Dear.

Dor considered, and realized he was comfortable as he was. A strand of Irene’s green-tinted hair fell across his face, smelling pleasantly of girl. Her breathing was soft against him. He felt that he could not ask for a better mode of relaxation.

But she was waiting for something. Finally he decided what it was.

“Dear,” he said.

She nodded, and closed her eyes. Yes, he was learning! He lay still, and soon he slept.

“Now aren’t we cozy!” Grundy remarked.

Dor and Irene woke with a joint start. “We were just sleeping together,” she said.

“And you admit it!” the golem exclaimed.

“Well, we are engaged, you know. We can do what we like together.”

Dor realized that she was teasing the golem, so he stayed out of it.

What did it matter what other people thought? What passed between himself and the girl he loved was their own business.

“I’ll have to tell your father,” Grundy said, nettled.

Suddenly Dor had pause to reconsider. This was the daughter of the King!

“I’ll tell him myself, you wad of string and clay!” Irene snapped. “Did you find him?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell a bad girl like you.”

“Maybe I should grow a large flytrap plant and feed you to it,” Irene replied.

That fazed the golem. “I found them all. In three cells, the way the three of you were, one in each cell. Queen Iris, King Trent, and King Omen.”

Irene sat up abruptly, disengaging from Dor. “Are they all right?”

Grundy frowned. “The men are. They have been through privation before. The Queen is not pleased with her situation.”

“She wouldn’t be,” Irene agreed. “But are they all right physically? They haven’t been starved, or anything?”

“Well, they were a bit close-mouthed about that,” the golem said. “But the Queen seems to have lost weight. She was getting fat any way, so that’s all right, but I guess she hasn’t been fed much. And I saw a crust of bread she left. It was moldy. The flies are pretty thick in there, too; must be a lot of maggots around.”

Irene got angry. “They have no right to treat royalty like that!”

“Something else I picked up,” Grundy said. “The guard who feeds them-it seems he eats what he wants first, and gives them the leavings. Sometimes he spits on it, or rubs dirt in it, just to aggravate them.

“They have to cat the stuff anyway or starve. Once he even urinated in their water, right where they could see him, to be sure they knew what they were drinking. He doesn’t speak, he just shows his contempt by his actions.”

“I have heard of this technique,” Amolde said. “It is the process of degradation. If you can destroy a person’s pride, you can do with him what you will. Pride is the backbone of the spirit. Probably King Oary is trying to get King Omen to sign a document of abdication, just in case there is ever any challenge to King Oary’s legitimacy.”

“Why is he keeping the others alive, then?” Dor asked, appalled by both the method and the rationale. Mundanes played politics in an ugly fashion.

“Well, we have seen how he operates. If he lets the three spend time together and become friends, then he can use the others as leverage against King Omen. Remember how you told me he was going to torture Irene to make you talk?”

“He’s going to torture my parents?” Irene demanded, aghast.

“I dislike formulating this notion, but it is a prospect.”

Irene was silent, smoldering. Dor decided, regretfully, to tackle the problem of freeing the prisoners. “I hoped King Trent could use his power to break out, but I’m not sure how transformation of people can unlock doors. If we can figure out a way-“

“Elementary,” Amolde said. “The King can transform the Queen to a mouse. She runs out through a crevice. Then he transforms her back, and she opens the cells from the outside. If there are guards, he can transform her to a deadly monster to dispatch them.”

So simple! Why hadn’t he, Dor, thought of that?

Irene shifted gears, in the manner of her sex, becoming instantly practical. “Who is in the cell closest to the wall?”

“The Queen.” The golem frowned. “You know, I think she’s the only one the magic aisle can reach. The wall’s pretty thick in that region.”

“So my father probably can’t transform anyone,” Irene said.

Trouble! Dor considered, trying to come up with an alternate suggestion. “The Queen does have powerful magic. It should be possible for her to free them by means of illusion. She can make them see the cells as empty, or containing dead prisoners, so that the guards open the gates. Then she can generate a monster to scare them away.”

“There are problems,” Amolde said. “The aisle, as you know, is narrow. The illusion will not operate outside it. Since two cells are beyond-“

“The Queen’s illusion will have very limited play,” Dor concluded.

“We had better warn her about that. She should be able to manage, if she has time to prepare.”

“I’m on my way,” Grundy said. “I don’t know how this expedition would function without me!”

“There isn’t one of us we can do without,” Dor said. “We’ve already seen that. When we get separated, we’re all in trouble.”

As the night closed, they moved to the castle, trying to reach the spot nearest the Queen’s cell as described by the golem. Again there was no moat, just a glacis, so that they had to mount a kind of stone hill leading up to the wall. Dor could appreciate how thick that wall might be, set on a base this massive.

Castle Ocna was alert, fearing the invasion of the Khazars; torches flickered in the turrets and along the walls. But Dor’s party was not using the established paths and remained unobserved. People who lived in castles tended to be insulated from events outside, and to forget the potential importance of the exterior environment. It occurred to Dor that this also applied to the whole land of Xanth; few of its inhabitants knew anything about Mundania, or cared to learn.

Trade between the realms, hitherto a matter of erratic chance, should be established, if only to facilitate a more cosmopolitan awareness.

King Oary was evidently not much interested in trade, to the detriment of his Kingdom; he regarded the Xanth visitors as a threat to his throne. As indeed they were-since he was a usurper.

“Now we can’t plan exactly how this will work,” Dor said in a final review. “I hope the Queen will be able to make an illusion that will cause the guards to release her, and then she can free the others.”

“She’d love to vamp a guard,” Irene said. “She’ll make herself look like the winsomest wench in all Mundania. Then when he comes close, she’ll turn into a dragon and scare him to death. Serve lift right.”

Dor chuckled. “I think I know how that works.”

She whirled on him in mock anger. “You haven’t begun to see how it works!” But she couldn’t hold her frown. She kissed him instead.

“The lady appears to have given fair wanting,” Amolde remarked. “You won’t see the dragon until you are securely married.”

“He knows that,” Irene said smugly. “But men never learn. Each one thinks he’s different.”

Amolde set himself against the wall, changing his orientation by small degrees so that the aisle swung through the castle. “Grundy will have to report whether we intercept the Queen,” he said. “I cannot perceive the use of the aisle.”

“If anything goes wrong,” Irene said, “Smash will have to go into action, and I’ll grow some plant to mess them up.”

They waited. The centaur completed a sweep through the castle without event. He swept back, still accomplishing nothing. “I begin to fear we are, after all, beyond range,” he said.

Smash put one cauliflower ear to the watt. “Go down for crown.”

“Of course!” Dor agreed. “They are in the dungeon! Below ground level. Aim down.”

With difficulty, Amolde bent his forelegs, leaving his hindlegs extended, tilting his body down. He commenced another sweep. This was quite awkward for him, because of the position and his injury.

Smash joined him, lifting him up and setting him down at a new angle, making the sweep easier.

“But if they are too far inside for the aisle to reach-“ Irene murmured tensely.

“Grundy will let us know,” Dor said, trying to prevent her from becoming hysterically nervous. He knew this was the most trying time for her-this period when they would either make contact or fail. “We may catch Queen Iris, then sweep on past, and it will take a while for the golem to relay the news.”

“That could be it,” she agreed, moving into the circle of his arm.

He turned to kiss her and found her lips eager to meet his own. Once she had declared her love, she made absolutely no secret of it. Dor realized that even if their mission failed, even if they perished here in Mundania, it was privately worth it for him in this sense. He had discovered love, and it was a universe whose reaches, pitfalls, and potential rewards were more vast than all of Mundania. He held the kiss for a long time.

“Is this how you behave when unchaperoned?” a woman’s voice demanded sharply.

Dor and Irene broke with a start. There beside them stood the Queen.

“Mother!” Irene cried, half in relief, half in chagrin.

“Shamefully embracing in public!” Queen Iris continued, frowning. She had always been the guardian of other people’s morals. “This must come to the attention of-?”

The Queen vanished. Amolde, timing as well as he could to face her image, had thereby shifted the magic aisle away from Iris’ cell, so that the Queen’s magic was interrupted. She could no longer project her illusion-image.

“Beg pardon,” the centaur said. He shifted back.

Queen Iris reappeared. Before she could speak again, Irene did so.

“That’s nothing, Mother. This afternoon Dor and I slept together.”

“You disreputable girl!” Iris exclaimed, aghast

Dor bit his tongue. He had never really liked Queen his and could hardly have thought of a better way to prick her bubble.

The centaur tried to reassure her. “Your Majesty, we all slept. It-“

“You, too?” Iris demanded, her gaze surveying them with an amazing chill. “And the ogre?”

“We’re a very close group,” Irene said. “I love them all.”

This was going too far. “You misunderstand,” Dor said. “We only-?” Irene tromped his toe, cutting him off. She wanted to continue baiting her mother. But Queen Iris, no fool, had caught on. “They only saw up your skirt, of course. How many times have I cautioned you about that? You have absolutely no sense of-“

“We bring the King?” Smash inquired.

“The King!” Iris exclaimed. “By all means! You must march in and free us all.”

“But the noise-“ Dor protested. “If we alert the soldiers-“

“You forget my power,” Queen Iris informed him. “I can give your party the illusion of absence. No one will hear you or see you, no matter what you do.”

Such a simple solution! The Queen’s illusion would be more than enough to free them all. “Break in the wall, Smash,” Dor caged. “We can rescue King Trent ourselves!”

With a grunt of glee, the ogre advanced on the wall. Then he disappeared. So did the centaur. Dor found himself embracing nothing. He could neither see nor feel Irene, and heard nothing either-but there was resistance where he knew her to be. Experimentally he shoved.

Something shoved him back. It was like the force of inertia when he swung around a corner at a run, a force with no seeming origin.

Irene was there, all right! This spell differed from the one the centaur had used; it made the people within it undetectable to each other as well as to outsiders. He hoped that didn’t lead. to trouble.

A gap appeared in the wall. Chunks of stone fell out, silently. The ogre was at work.

Dor kept his arm around the nothingness beside him, and it moved with him. Curious about the extent of the illusion, he moved his hand. Portions of the nothingness were more resilient than others.

Then he found himself stumbling; a less resilient portion had given him another shove. Then something helped steady him; the nothingness was evidently sorry. He wrapped his arms about it and drew it in close for a kiss, but It didn’t feel right. He concluded he was kissing the back of her head. He grabbed a hank of nothingness and gave it a friendly tug.

Then Irene appeared, laughing. “Oh, am I going to get even for that!” Then she realized she could perceive him in the moonlight.

She wrapped the jacket about her torso-it had fallen open during their invisible encounter-and drew him forward. “We’re getting left b-“ She vanished and silenced.

They had re-entered the aisle. Dor kept hold of her nothing-hand and followed the other nothings into the hole in the wall.

For a moment they all became visible. Amolde was ahead, negotiating a pile of rubble; Smash had broken through to the lower level, but the path he made was hardly smooth. The centaur, realizing that the aisle had shifted away from the Queen, hastily corrected his orientation. They all vanished again.

Castle personnel appeared, gaping at the rubble, unable to fathom its cause. One stepped into the passage-and vanished. That created another stir. As yet the Mundanes did not seem to associate this oddity with an invasion.

The ogre’s tunnel progressed apace. Soon enough it broke into the Queen’s cell, then into King Trent’s and finally King Omen’s. At that point the parties became visible again. There was ambient light, courtesy of the Queen’s illusion. Dor was uncertain at what point illusion became reality, since light was light however it was generated, but he had learned not to worry unduly about such distinctions.

Irene lurched forward and flung herself into King Trent’s arms.

“Oh, daddy!’ she cried with tears of joy.

Now Dor experienced what he knew to be his most unreasonable surge of jealousy yet. After all, why should she not love her father?

He glanced about-and saw Queen Iris watching her husband and daughter with what appeared to be identical emotion. She, too, was jealous-and unable to express it.

For the first time in his life, Dor felt complete sympathy with the Queen. This was one shame he shared with her.

The King set Irene down and looked about. Suddenly it was incumbent on Dor to make introductions and explanations. He hurried up. “Uh, we’ve come to rescue you, King Trent. This is Amolde the Centaur-he’s the one who made the magic aisle-that’s his talent-and this is Smash the Ogre, and Irene-“

King Trent looked regal even in rags. “I believe I know that last,” he said gravely.

“Uh, yes,” Dor agreed, flustered, knowing he was really fouling it up. “I- uh-“

“Do you know what he did, father?” Irene asked King Trent, indicating Dor.

“I did not!” Dor exclaimed. Teasing the Queen was one thing; teasing the King was another.

“Anyway, Dor and I are-“ Irene’s voice broke off as she spied the third prisoner.

He was a stunningly handsome young man who radiated charisma, though he, too, was dressed in rags. “King Omen,” King Trent said with his customary gravity. “My daughter Irene.”

For the first time Dor saw Irene girlishly flustered. King Omen strode forward, picked up her limp hand, and brought it to his lips.

“Ravishing,” he murmured.

Irene tittered. Dor felt a new surge of jealousy. Obviously the girl, so ardent toward Dor a moment ago, was now smitten by the handsome Mundane King. She was, after all, fifteen years old; constancy was not her nature. Yet it hurt to be so suddenly forgotten.

Dor turned his eyes away-and met the gaze of the Queen. Again there was a flash of understanding.

“Now we have business to accomplish,” King Trent said. “My friend King Omen must be restored to his throne. To make that secure, we must separate the loyal citizens of Onesti from the disloyal.”

Dor forced his mind to focus on this problem. “How can anyone in this castle be loyal? They kept their King prisoner in the dungeon.”

“By no means,” King Omen said resonantly. “Few were aware of my presence. We were brought in manacled and hooded, and the only one who sees us is a mute eunuch who is absolutely loyal to Oary the Usurper. No doubt the castle personnel were told we were Khazar prisoners of war.”

“So only the mute knew your identity?” Dor asked, remembering Grundy’s description of the man’s activities. But the golem sometimes exaggerated for effect. “At least he brought you food.”

“Food!” the Queen cried. “That slop! Irene, grow us a pie tree! We haven’t had a decent meal since this happened.”

Irene wrenched her eyes off King Omen long enough to dig out and sprout a seed. Quickly the plant grew, leafing out in the illusion of daylight and developing big circular buds that burst into assorted fruit pies.

King Omen was amazed. “It’s magic!” he exclaimed. “What an ability!”

Irene flushed, pleased. “It’s my talent. Everyone in Xanth does magic.”

“But I understood no magic would work here in the real world. How is it possible now?”

Evidently Dor’s introduction of Amolde had not been sufficient for one who was completely unused to magic. “That’s the centaur’s talent,” he explained. “He’s a full Magician. He brings magic with him in an aisle. In that aisle, everyone’s talent works. That’s why we were able to come here.”

King Omen faced King Trent as they bit into their pies. “I apologize, sir, for my nagging doubt about your abilities. I have never believed in magic, despite the considerable lore of our superstitious peasants. Now I have seen the proof. Your lovely wife and lovely daughter have marvelous talents.”

Irene flushed again, inordinately thrilled.

“King Omen is really a fine young man,” Queen Iris remarked to no one in general.

Dor felt cold. The Queen’s favor was not lightly gained; she had extremely strict and selfish notions of propriety, and these were focused largely on her daughter. Queen Iris had evidently concluded that King Omen was a suitable match for Irene. Of course the final opinion was King Trent’s; if he decided on King Omen, Dor was lost.

But King Trent had always supported Dor before.

Suddenly a huge fat man burst upon them. His eyes rounded with amazement as he spied the visitors in the dungeon and the pie tree.

Then he drew his sword. He charged upon King Omen.

Irene screamed as the man passed near her father. Then the Mundane turned into a purple toad, his sword clattering to the floor. King Trent had transformed him.

“Who was that?” Dor asked, his startlement subsiding raggedly.

“The mute eunuch guard,” King Omen said, picking up the fallen sword. “We bear him no love.” He considered the toad speculatively. It was covered with green warts. “Yes, your magic is impressive! Will he remain that way?”

“Until I transform him again,” King Trent said. “Or until he leaves the region of magic. Then, I believe, he will slowly revert to his normal state. But that process may take months and be uncomfortable and awkward, if someone does not take him for a monster and kill him before it is complete.”

“A fitting punishment,” King Omen said. “Let him begin it.” He urged the toad on out of the magic aisle by pricking it with the point of the sword.

“Now let’s consider prospects,” King Trent said. “We have achieved a significant breakthrough here, regaining our magic. But very soon the usurper’s picked private troops, comprised largely of Avar mercenaries, will lay siege to us here, and we have no magic that will stop a flight of arrows. We are certain that the general populace will rally gladly to King Omen, once they realize he is alive; but most of the people are outside the castle, and we are in danger of being wiped out before that realization prevails. We must plan our strategy carefully.”

“I must advise you that the magic associated with me is in a fairly narrow aisle,” Amolde said. “It extends perhaps fifteen paces forward, and half that distance back, but only two to either side. Therefore the Queen’s illusion will be limited to that ambience, and any person outside it will be immune.”

“But a lot can be done within the aisle,” Dor said. “When Irene and I lagged outside the aisle, we reappeared-but the rest of you remained invisible to us. We weren’t immune to the illusion, just outside it. So the Queen can keep us all from the perception of the Mundanes. That’s a considerable asset.”

“True.” the centaur agreed. “But now that they know about our magic, we cannot prevent them from firing their arrows into this region in a saturation pattern that is bound to wipe us out. I have already had experience with this tactic.” He rubbed his flank ruefully. The healing had continued nicely, but he still walked slightly stiffly.

“We must take cover, of course,” King Trent agreed. “There is now plenty of rubble to shield us from arrows. But we cannot afford to remain confined here. The problem will be the elimination of the enemy forces.”’

“Maybe we can lure them in here and ambush them,” King Omen suggested. “We now have two swords, and I am impressed with the ogre’s strength.”

“No good,” Grundy said. He had reappeared during their feast on the pies and now took a small pie for himself. “The Avar commander is a tough, experienced son of a blizzard who knows you have magic. He is heating a cauldron of oil. Soon he’ll pour it down the dungeon steps. Anyone hiding here, with or without magic, win be fried in oil.”

“Impossible to fill this chamber with oil,” Queen Iris said. “It would all leak out.”

“But it will cover the whole floor first,” Grundy said. “You’ll all get hotfeet.”

Dor looked down at his sandals nervously. He did not like the notion of splashing through a puddle of boiling oil.

Trent considered. “And an ambush waits outside the dungeon?”

“Sure thing,” Grundy agreed. “You don’t think they let you sit here and gorge on pies just because they like you, do you?”

“Turn us all into birds, father,” Irene suggested. “We’ll fly out before they know it.”

“Two problems, daughter,” King Trent said. “You will have trouble when you fly outside the magic aisle. I’m not sure how you will function, but probably poorly, as you won’t be able to change back, yet the magic will be gone. Also, I cannot transform myself.”

“Oh-I forgot.” She was chagrined, since the rescue of her father had been her whole purpose.

“We have to get you safely out of here, sir,” Dor said. “The Land of Xanth needs you.”

“I have every present intention of returning,” King Trent said with a smile. “I am now merely pondering mechanisms. I can deal with the Avars readily enough, provided I can get close enough to them with my magic power intact. That means I shall have to remain with Magician Amolde.”

“And with me,” Queen Iris said. “To keep you invisible. And the ogre, to open doors.”

“And me,” Irene said loyally.

“You I want safely out of the way,” her father said.

There was a bubbling noise. “The oil!” Grundy cried. “We’ve got to move!”

Smash went into action. He started bashing out a new channel.

They became invisible. But Dor had a mental picture of where each person was; King Trent, Amolde, and the Queen were near the ogre, ready to follow in his new tunnel and avoid the spilling on. But Irene and the golem were on the far side of the chamber. The oil was already flowing between them and the ogre. They would be trapped-and as the centaur moved away, they would become visible and vulnerable, even if they avoided oil.

Dor ran across to pick up a fragment of rubble. He tossed it into the flowing oil. He grabbed more chunks and tossed them, forming a dam. But it wasn’t enough; he wasn’t sure Irene could make it through.

Then the pieces started flying into place at double the rate he was throwing them. Someone else was helping. Dor could not tell who, or communicate directly; he simply continued tossing stones, damming off the hot oil. Soon it formed a reluctant pool. Dor filled in the crevices of the dam with sand, and the way was clear. The oil ploy had been abated, and Irene could cross to safety.

Now a troop of guards charged down the steps, swords drawn.

They wore heavy boots, evidently to protect them from the oil they thought would be distracting their quarry. It should have been a neat double trap. They didn’t know the quarry had departed.

Still, the Avars could use their bows to fire arrows up the new tunnel, doing much harm. Dor leaped across to guard the tunnel entrance, trusting that the others had by now safely passed through it.

An invisible guardian could hold them off long enough, perhaps.

Then he saw his own arms. The magic aisle had left him vulnerable!

The soldiers spied him in the torchlight. They whirled to attack him.

Another sword flashed beside him. King Omen! He was the other person who had helped dam the hot oil!

No words were exchanged. They both knew what had to be done; they had to guard this entrance from intrusion by the enemy until King Trent could handle his task.

The ogre’s new passage was too narrow to allow them to fight effectively while standing inside, and the dungeon chamber was too broad; soldiers could stand against the far wall, out of sword range, and fire their arrows down the length of the tunnel. So Dor and Omen moved out into the chamber, standing back to back near the wilting pie tree, and dominated the entire chamber with their two swords. Dor hoped King Omen knew how to use his weapon.

The Avars, no cowards, came at them enthusiastically. They were of a wild Turk nomad tribe, according to Amolde’s secondhand information, dissatisfied with their more settled recent ways, and these mercenaries were the wildest of the bunch. Their swords were long, single-edged, and curved, made for vigorous slashing, in contrast with Dor’s straight double-edged sword. Here in the somewhat confined region of the dungeon, the advantage lay with the defenders.

Omen cut great arcs with his curved blade, keeping the ruffians at bay, and Dor stabbed and cut, severing an Avar’s hand before the soldiers teamed respect. Dor’s sword was not magic now; he had to do it all himself. But he had been taught the rudiments of swordplay, and these now served him well.

Several bats shot out of the tunnel and flew over the heads of the Avars, who mostly ignored them. One bat, as if resentful of this neglect, hovered in the face of the Avar leader, who sliced at it with his sword. The bat gave up and angled out of the chamber.

But swordplay was tiring business, and Dor was not in shape for it. His arm soon felt leaden. Omen, too, was in a poor way, because of his long imprisonment. The Avars, aware of this, pressed in harder; they knew they would soon have the victory.

One charged Dor, blade swinging down irresistibly. Dor tried to step aside and counter, but slipped on blood or oil and lost his footing; the blade sliced into his left hip. Dor fell helplessly headlong.

“Omen!” he cried. “Flee into the tunnel! I can no longer guard your back!”

“Xnt zqd gtqs!” Omen exclaimed, whirling.

The Avars, seeing their chance, charged. Omen’s blade flashed in another circle, for the moment daunting them, while Dor fought off the pain of his wound and floundered for his lost sword. His questing fingers only encountered something mushy; a spoiled chocolate pie from the dead pie tree.

Two Avars stepped in, one countering King Omen while the other ducked low to slice at Omen’s legs. Dor hefted the pie and smashed it into the Avar’s face. It was a perfect shot; the man dropped to his knees, pawing at his mud-filled eyes, while the stink of rotten pie filled the chamber.

King Omen, granted this reprieve, dispatched the remaining Avar.

But already another was charging, and Dor had no other pie within reach. Omen hurled his sword at the bold enemy, skewering him, then bent to take hold of Dor and haul him back to the tunnel.

“This is crazy!” Dor cried. Despite the peril of their situation, he noticed that Omen, too, had been wounded; a slash on his left shoulder was dripping bright blood, and it was mixing with the gore from Dor’s own wound. “Save yourself!”

Then the Avars were closing for the final assault, knowing they faced two unarmed and injured men, taking time to aim their cuts.

Even if Omen got them to the tunnel, he would be doomed. He had been a fool to try to save Dor-but Dor found himself rather liking the man.

Suddenly a dragon shot out of the tunnel, wings unfurling as it entered the dungeon chamber. It snorted fire and hovered in the air, raising gleaming talons, seeking prey. The Avars fell back, amazed and terrified. One made a desperate slash at the monster-and the sword passed right through the dragon’s wing without resistance or damage.

Illusion, of course! The magic had returned, and now the Queen was fighting in her spectacular fashion. But the moment the Avars realized that the dragon had no substance, it worked the opposite way. The Avar, discovering that he could not even touch the dragon, screamed and fled the chamber. He was far more afraid of a spiritual menace than of a physical one.

King Omen, too, stared at the dragon. “Where did that come from?” he demanded. “I don’t believe in dragons!”

Dor smiled. “It’s an illusion,” he explained. They were able to converse again, because of the ambience of magic. “Queen Iris is quite an artist in her fashion; she can generate completely credible images, with smell and sound and sometimes touch. No one in all the history of Xanth has ever been able to do it better.”

The dragon spun to face them. “Why, thank you, Dor,” it said, dissolving into a wash of color that drifted after the departing Avars.

Now Irene appeared, as the Avars scrambled to escape the dragon. “Oh, you’re hurt!” she cried. Dor wasn’t sure whether she was addressing him or Omen.

“King Omen saved my life,” he said.

“You were the only one with sense enough to dam off the oil to save the girl,” Omen replied. “Could I do less than help?”

“Thanks,” Dor said, finding himself liking this bold young King more than ever. Rival he might be, but he was a good man. They shook hands. Dor didn’t know whether this was a Mundane custom, but King Trent had evidently explained Xanth ways.

“Now our blood has mingled; we are blood brothers,” Omen said gravely.

Irene and Iris were tearing up lengths of cloth from somewhere, fashioning bandages. Irene got to Omen first, leaving Dor for her mother. “I suspect I underestimated you, Dor,” the Queen murmured as she worked efficiently on his wound, cleaning and bandaging it after applying some of the plant healing extract. “But then, I also underestimated your father.”

“My father?” Dor asked, bewildered.

“That was a long time ago, before I met Trent,” she said. “None of your business now. But he did have mettle in the crunch, and so do you.”

Dor appreciated her compliment, but regretted that her modification of attitude had come too late. Irene had focused on King Omen.

He tried to stop himself from glancing across to where Irene was working on the Mundane King, but could not help himself.

The Queen caught the glance. “You love her,” she said. “You did not before, but you do now. That’s nice.”

Was she taunting him? “But you endorse King Omen,” Dor said, his emotion warring within himself.

“No. Omen is a fine young man, but not right for Irene, nor she for him. I support your suit, Dor; I always did.”

“But you said-“

She smiled sadly. “Never in her life did my daughter do what I wished her to. Sometimes subtlety is necessary.”

Dor stared at her. He tried to speak, but the thoughts stumbled over themselves before reaching his tongue. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

“Let’s get you on your feet,” the Queen said, helping him up. Dot found that he could stand, though he felt dizzy; the wound was not as critical as it had seemed, and already was magically healing.

King Trent appeared. “You did good work, men. Thanks to your diversion, I was able to get close to the majority of the Avar soldiers. I turned them into bats.”

So that was the origin of the bats Dor had seen! One bat had tried to warn the remaining Avars, without success.

“But the Avars are not the only enemies,” King Omen said. “We need to weed out the other collaborators, lest assassins remain among us.”

“Magic will help there,” Ying Trent said. “Iris and Dor will see to it.”

“We will?” Dor asked, surprised.

“Of course,” the Queen said. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t know,” Dor said. His feelings about Irene’s mother had just been severely shaken up, and it would take some time for them to settle into a new pattern. He stepped forward experimentally, and she gripped his arm and steadied him. He half wished it were Irene lending him support.

The Avars, however, had discovered that the dragon did not follow beyond the dungeon. They were not yet aware that their backup contingent had been eliminated. Now they charged back into the chamber.

“They’re catching on to the illusion,” Grundy said. “We’d better get out of here.”

True enough. The Avars were stopping just outside the magic aisle and nocking arrows to strings. They had found the way to fight magic.

Smash went back into action. He ripped a boulder out of the foundation and hurled it at the Avars. His strength existed only within the aisle, but the boulder, once hurled, was just as effective beyond it as the arrows were within it. The troops dived out of the way.

The party moved back up the tunnel, Dor limping. Dragons flew ahead and behind, a ferocious honor guard.

In due course they reached the main hall of Castle Ocna. A number of the castle personnel were there, huddled nervously at one end.

The Avars had spread out and used other routes, and now were ranged all around the hall. The castle staff were afraid of the Avars, and did not yet know King Omen lived. Thus the castle remained in King Oary’s power despite King Omen’s release.

“The ogre and I will guard King Omen,’ King Trent said. “Irene, grow a cherry tree; you and the golem win be in charge of defensive artillery. Magician Centaur, if you please, stand in the center of the hall and turn rapidly in place several times as soon as I give the signal. Iris and Dor, your powers reach farther than mine; you will rout out the lurking Avars.”

“You see, I know how my husband’s mind works,” Queen Iris murmured. “He’s a genius at tactics.”

“But the Avars are beyond the magic aisle!” Dor protested. “And they know about your illusions. They’re pretty smart, in their fashion. We can’t fool them much longer.”

“We don’t need to,” Iris said. “All you have to do is have any stones in the magic aisle call out the position of any lurking Avars. The rest of us will take it from there.”

“Ready, Irene?” Trent inquired.

Irene’s tree had grown rapidly, and now had a number of bright red cherries ripening. “Ready, father,” she said grimly.

Dor was glad King Trent was a good tactician, for he, Dor, had only the haziest notion what was developing. When Amolde turned, it might bring some Avars within the magic aisle, but most would remain outside. How could those others be stopped before they used their bows?

“Now it gets nervy,” King Trent said. “Be ready, ogre. King Omen, it’s your show.”

King Omen mounted a dais in the center of the hall. He was pale from loss of blood, and carried his left arm awkwardly, but still radiated an aura of Kingliness. Irene picked several of the ripe cherries, giving some to Grundy, who stood beside a pile of them. Smash lifted a solid wooden post to his shoulder.

Amolde, in response to Trent’s signal, began turning himself about in place. Dor concentrated, willing the stones in the hall to cry out if any Avars were hiding near them. Queen Iris fashioned an illusion of extraordinary grandeur; the dais became a solid gold pedestal, and King Omen was clothed in splendid royal robes, with a halo of light about his body.

“Hearken to me, minions of Castle Ocna and loyal citizens of the Kingdom of Onesti,” the King declaimed, and his voice resonated throughout the chamber. “I am King Omen, your rightful monarch, betrayed and imprisoned by the usurper Oary. Now my friends from the magic Land of Xanth have freed me, and I call upon you to renounce Oary and resume your rightful homage to me.”

“Mknn jkol” the Avar leader cried in his own language. “Ujqqy jko fqyp!”

An arrow flew toward King Omen. Smash batted it out of the air with his stake. “Ow!” the arrow complained. Dor’s talent was operating too effectively. “I was only doing my duty.”

As Amolde turned, the magic aisle rotated, reaching to the farthest extent of the hall. “Here’s an Avar!” a stone cried as the magic engaged it. “He shot that arrow!”

“Shut up, you invisible tattletaler!” the Avar snapped, slapping at what he assumed was there.

Now a winged dragon launched toward the Avar, belching forth fire. “You, too, you fake monster!” the man cried. He drew his sword and slashed at the dragon.

Irene threw a cherry. It struck the floor at the Avar’s feet and exploded. The man was knocked back against the watt, stunned and soaked with red cherry juice.

Amolde had hesitated, facing the action. Now he resumed his turning. Another stone cried out: “There’s one behind me!” The dragon, flying in the moving aisle, sent out another column of flame, rich and red. This time Irene timed her throw to coincide, and the cherry bomb detonated as the dragon’s apparent flame struck. That made the dragon seem real, Dor realized.

“All of you-shoot your ettqyu!” the Avar leader called as the magic aisle passed by him. “Vjg oqpuvgtu etg lwuy knnwukqpu!”

But his men hesitated, for two of their number had been stunned by something that was more than illusion. The cherry bombs did indeed detonate outside the ambience of magic; maybe there were, after all, such things in Mundania.

Amolde continued to turn, and the stones continued to betray the Avars. The lofted cherries commanded respect among the Avars that King Omen did not. The ogre’s bat prevented their arrows from scoring, and the Queen’s illusions kept them confused. For the flying dragon became a giant armored man with a flashing sword, and the man became a pouncing sphinx, and the sphinx became a swarm of green wasps. Thunder sounded about the dais, the illusion of sound, punctuating King Omen’s speech. Soon all the remaining Avars had been cowed or nullified.

“Now the enemy troops are gone,” King Omen said, his size increased subtly by illusion. “Loyal citizens of the Kingdom of Onesti need have no fear. Come before me; renew your allegiance.” Stars and streamers floated down around him.

Hesitantly, the castle personnel came forward. “They’re afraid of the images,” Grundy said.

The Queen nodded. Abruptly the monsters vanished, and the hall became a region of pastel lighting and gentle music-at least within the rotating aisle. Heartened, the people stepped up more boldly. “Is it really you, Your Majesty Good Omen?” an old retainer asked. “We thought you dead, and when the monsters came-“

“Hold!” a voice called from the archway nearest the castle’s main entrance.

All turned. There stood King Oary, just within the aisle. Dor realized the man must have ridden to Castle Ocna by another route, avoiding the path with the bridge out. Oary had figured out where Dor’s party was heading, had known it meant trouble, and hastened to deal with the situation before it got out of control. Oary had cunning and courage.

“There is the usurper!” King Omen cried. “Take him captive!”

But Oary was backed by another contingent of Avar mercenaries, brought with him from the other castle. The ordinary servitors could not readily approach him. He stood just at the fringe of the magic aisle, so that his words were translated; he had ascertained its width.

He could step out of it at any moment.

“Fools!” Oary cried, his voice resounding throughout the hall. “You are being deluded by illusion. Along to me and destroy these alien intruders.”

“Alien intruders!” King Omen cried, outraged. The stars exploded around him, and gloriously indignant music swelled in the background. “You, who drugged me and threw me into the dungeon and usurped my throne-you dare call me this?”

The people of the castle hesitated, looking from one King to another, uncertain where their loyalty should lie. Each King was imposing; Oary had taken time to garb himself in full regalia, his royal cloak, crown, and sword rendering his fat body elegant. King Omen was enhanced by Queen Iris’ magic to similar splendor. It was obviously hard for the ordinary people to choose between them, on the basis of appearance.

“I call you nothing,” Oary roared, with the sincerity of conviction that only a total scoundrel could generate. “You do not even exist. You died at the hands of Khazar assassins. You-“

The stars around Omen became blinding, and now they hissed, sputtered, and roared with the sound of the firmament being torn asunder. The noise drowned out Oary’s words.

“Nay, let the villain speak,” King Omen said. “It was ever our way to let each person present his case.”

“He’ll destroy you,” Queen Iris exclaimed. “I don’t trust him. Don’t give him a chance.”

“It is Omen’s choice,” King Trent said gently.

With that, the illusion stopped. Not in the slightest way did Queen Iris ever oppose her will to King Trent’s-at least in public. There was only the Mundane court, silent and drab, with its huddled servants facing the knot of Avars.

“You are no more than an illusion,” Oary continued boldly, grasping his opportunity. “We have seen how the aliens can fashion monsters and voices from nothing; who doubts they can fashion the likeness of our revered former King?”

Queen Iris looked pained. “Master stroke!” she breathed. “I knew we shouldn’t have let that cockatrice talk!”

Indeed, the castle personnel were swayed. They stared at King Omen as if trying to fathom the illusion. The very facility of Queen Iris’ illusions now worked against King Omen. Who could tell reality from image?

“If King Omen somehow returned from the dead,” King Oary continued, “I would be the first to welcome him home. But woe betide us all if we proffer loyalty to a false image!”

King Omen stood stunned by the very audacity of Oary’s ploy. In their contest of words, the usurper had plainly scored a critical point.

“Destroy the impersonator!” Oary cried, seizing the moment. The people started toward King Omen.

Now King Omen found his voice. “How can you destroy an illusion?” he demanded. “If I am but a construct of air, I will laugh at your efforts.”

The people paused, confused again. But once more Oary rushed into the gap. “Of course there’s a man there! He merely looks like King Omen. He’s an imposter, sent here to incite you to rebellion against your real King. Then the ogre can rule in my stead.”

The people shuddered. They did not want to be ruled by an ogre.

“Imposter?” King Omen exclaimed. “Dor, lend me your sword!” For in the confusion Dor had recovered his sword, while King Omen had lost his.

“That will settle nothing,” King Trent said. “The better swordsman is not necessarily the rightful King.”

“Oh, yes, he is!” Omen cried. “Only the royalty of Onesti are trained to fine expertise with the sword. No peasant imposter could match Oary. But I am a better swordsman than the usurper, so can prove myself no imposter.”

“Not so,” Oary protested. “Well I know that is an enchanted sword your henchman has given you. No one can beat that, for it makes any duffer skilled.”

The man had learned a lot in a hurry! It had never occurred to Dor that King Oary would be so agile in debate. Evidently his head was not filled with pudding.

Omen glanced at the sword, startled. “Dor did not evince any particular skill with it,” he said with unconscious disparagement of Dor’s technique.

“It is nevertheless true,” King Trent said. “Dor was outside the magic aisle when he used it.”

“That’s right,” Dor agreed reluctantly. “In the aisle, with that sword, anyone could beat anyone. Also, the Queen’s illusion could make King Trent look like you, King Omen-and he is probably a better swordsman than you are.” Dor wondered just after he said it whether he had made that comparison because he smarted from Omen’s disparagement of his own skill. Yet King Trent was the finest swordsman in Xanth, so his point was valid.

“You fools!” Queen Iris expostulated. “Victory in your grasp, and you squander it away on technicalities!”

“It’s a matter of honesty,” Dor said. “O N E S T I.”

King Omen laughed, able to grasp the spelling pun within the centaur’s range. “Yes, I understand. Well, I will fight Oary outside the magic aisle.”

“Where your wound will weaken you, and you will have the disadvantage of using a straight sword when you are trained to a curved one,” Queen his said. “If those aren’t enough, the imposter’s Avars will put an arrow in your back. Don’t be even more of a fool than you need to be. Oary’s trying to maneuver you into a position where his treachery can prevail. I tell you, I know the type.”

Dor was silent. The Queen knew the type because she was the type. That made her a good adviser in a situation like this.

“But how can I prove my identity?” King Omen asked somewhat plaintively.

“Let the castle personnel come to you and touch you and talk with you,” King Trent suggested. “Surely many of them know you well. They will be able to tell whether you are an imposter.”

Oary tried to protest, but the suggestion made too much sense to the castle personnel. King Trent’s ability to maneuver had foiled Oary’s stratagems. Non-Avar guards appeared, reaching for their weapons, and they were more numerous than the Avars. It seemed that news of this confrontation had spread, and the true Onesti loyalists were converging.

Seeing himself losing position, Oary grudgingly agreed. “I will join the line myself!” he declared. “After all, I should be the first to welcome King Omen back, should he actually return, since it is in his stead I hold the throne of Onesti.”

Queen Iris scowled, but King Trent gestured her to silence. It was as if this were a game of moves and countermoves, with limiting rules. Oary was now going along with King Trent’s move, and had to be accommodated until he made an open break. Dor noted the process; at such time as he himself had to be King for keeps, this might guide him.

“Come, King,” King Trent said, taking Omen by the arm. “Let us all set aside our weapons and form a receiving line.” Gently he took the magic sword and passed it over to Queen Iris, who set it carefully on the floor.

Oary had to divest himself of his own weapon, honoring this new move. His Avars grumbled but stayed back. Smash the Ogre moved nearer them, retaining his post. This encouraged them to keep the peace.

The line formed, the palace personnel coming eagerly forward to verify the person of King Omen. The first was an old man, slow to move but given the lead because of the respect of the others.

“Hello, Borywog!” King Omen said, grasping the man’s frail arm. “Remember what a torment I was when a child, and you my tutor? Worse than my father was! You thought you’d never teach me to spell! Remember when I wrote the name of our Kingdom as HONESTY?”

“My Lord, my Lord!” the old man cried, falling to his knees. “Never did I tell that abomination to a soul! It has to be you, Your Majesty!”

The others proceeded through the line. King Omen knew them all. The case was becoming conclusive. King Trent stood behind him, smiling benignly.

Suddenly one of the men in the line drew a dagger and lunged at Omen. But before the treacherous strike scored, the man became a large brown rat, who scurried away, terrified. A palace cat bounded eagerly after it. “I promised to stand bodyguard,” King Trent said mildly. “I have had a certain experience in such matters.”

Then Oary was at the head of the line. “Why, it is Omen!” he exclaimed in seeming amazement. “Avars, sheathe your weapons; our proper king has returned from the dead. What a miracle!”

King Omen, expecting another treachery, stood openmouthed. Again King Trent stepped in. “So nice to have your confirmation, King Oary-we always knew you had the best interests of the Kingdom of Onesti at heart. It is best to resolve these things with the appearance of amicability, if possible. Dor, why don’t you conduct King Oary to a more private place and work out the details?”

Now Dor was amazed. He stood unspeaking. Grundy appeared, tapping Dor on the leg. “Take him into an anteroom,” the golem whispered. “I’ll get the others.”

Dor composed himself “Of course,” he said with superficial equilibrium. “King Oary, shall we adjourn to an anteroom for a private discussion?”

“By all means,” Oary said, the soul of amicability. He seemed to understand the rules of this game better than Dor did.

They walked sedately to the anteroom, while King Omen continued to greet old friends and the Avars fidgeted in their isolated mass. Without Oary to command them, the Avars were ineffective; they didn’t even speak the local language.

Dor’s thoughts were spinning. Why had Oary welcomed Omen, after trying to deny him and have him assassinated? Why did he pretend not to know where Omen had been? And why did King Trent, himself a victim of Oary’s treachery and cruelty, go along with this?

Why, finally, had King Trent turned the matter over to Dor, who was incompetent to understand the situation, let alone deal with it?

Irene, Smash, and Amolde joined them in the anteroom. Oary seemed unperturbed. “Shall we speak plainly?” the Mundane inquired.

“Sure,” Irene retorted, drawing her jacket close about her. “I think you stink!”

“Do you folk comprehend the situation?” Oary asked blithely.

“No,” Dor said. “I don’t know why King Trent didn’t turn you into a worm and step on you.”

“King Trent is an experienced monarch,” Oary said. “He deals with realities, rather than emotions. He goes for the most profitable combination, rather than simple vengeance. Here is reality: I have one troop of Avars here who could certainly create trouble. I have more at the other castle. It would take a minor civil war to dislodge those mercenaries, whose captains are loyal to me-and that would weaken the Kingdom of Onesti at a time when the Khazar menace is growing. It would be much better to avoid that nuisance and keep the Kingdom strong. Therefore King Omen must seek accommodation with me-for the good of Onesti.”

“Why not just-“ Irene started, but broke off.

“You are unable to say it,” Oary said. “That is the symptom of your weakness, which you will have to eliminate if you hope to make as effective a Queen as your mother. Why not just kill me and be done with it? Because your kind lacks the gumption to do what is necessary.”

“Yeah?” Grundy demanded. “Why didn’t you kill King Omen, then?”

Oary sighed. “I should have, I suppose. I really should have. But I liked the young fool. No one’s perfect.”

“But you tried to have him killed just now,” Dor said.

“A desperate measure,” Oary said. “I can’t say I’m really sorry it failed. The move came too late; it should have been done at the outset, so that Omen never had opportunity to give proof of his identity. Then the game would have been mine. But that is the measure of my own inadequacy. I didn’t want to retain my crown enough.”

Dor’s emotions were mixing. He knew Oary to be an unscrupulous rascal, but the man’s candor and cleverness and admission of civilized weakness made it hard to dislike him totally. “And now we have to deal with you,” Dor said. “But I don’t see how we can trust you.”

“Of course you can’t trust me!” Oary agreed. “Had I the option, I would have you right back in the dungeon, and your horse-man would be touring the Avar empire as a circus freak.”

“Now see here!” Amolde said.

“If we can’t kill him, and can’t trust him, what can we do with him?” Dor asked the others.

“Throw him in the same cell he threw King Omen,” Irene said. “Have a sadistic mute eunuch feed him.”

“Smash destroyed those cells,” Grundy reminded her. “Anyway, they aren’t safe. One of his secret henchmen might let him out.”

“But we’ve got to come up with a solution for King Omen!” Dor said. “I don’t know why this was put in my hands, but-“

“Because you will one day be King of Xanth,” Oary said. “You must learn to make the hard decisions, right or wrong. Had I had more experience before attaining power, I would have acted to avoid my present predicament. Had Omen had it, he would never have lost his throne. You have to learn by doing. Your King Trent is one competent individual; it was my misfortune to misjudge him, since I thought his talk about magic indicated a deranged mind. Usually only ignorant peasants really believe in sorcery. By the time you are King, you will know how to handle the office.”

This made brutal sense. “I wish I could trust you,” Dor said. “You’d make an excellent practical tutor in the realities of governing.”

“This is your practical tutoring,” Oary said.

“There are two customary solutions, historically,” Amolde said. “One is mutilation-the criminal is blinded or deprived of his extremities, so he can do no further harm-“

“No!” Dor said, and Irene agreed. “We are not barbarians.”

“You are not professional either,” Oary said. “Still you balk at expedient methods.”

“The other is banishment,” the centaur continued. “People of your species without magical talents used to be banished from Xanth, just as people of my species with such talents are banished. It is a fairly effective device.”

“But he could gather an army and come back,” Dor protested. “King Trent did, way back when he was banished-“

“But he did not conquer Xanth. The situation had changed, and he was invited back. Perhaps in twenty years the situation will be changed in Onesti, and Oary will be needed again. At any rate, there are precautions. A selective, restricted banishment should prevent betrayal while keeping him out of local mischief. It would be advisable not to call it banishment, of course. That would suggest there was something untoward about the transfer of power, instead of an amicable return of a temporarily lost King. He could be assigned as envoy or ambassador to some strategic territory-“

“The Khazars!” Grundy cried.

“Hey, I don’t want to go there!” Oary protested. “’Those are rough people! It would take all my wit just to survive.”

“Precisely,” the centaur said. “Oary would be something of a circus freak in that society, tolerated but hardly taken seriously. It would be his difficult job to maintain liaison and improve relations with that empire, and of course to advise Onesti when any invasion was contemplated. If he did a good enough job for a long enough period, he might at length be pardoned and allowed to retire in Onesti. If not-?

“But the Khazars are bound to invade Onesti sooner or later,” Oary said. “How could I prevent-”

“I seem to remember that at this period the Nordic Magyars were nominally part of the Khazar empire,” Amolde said. “They remained, however, a discrete culture. Oary might be sent to the Magyar court-“

“Where he would probably ferment rebellion against the Khazars!” Dor said. “Just to keep the action away from Onesti. It would take constant cunning and vigilance-“

“What a dastardly deed!” Irene exclaimed gleefully.

Surprised, they all exchanged glances. “A dastardly deed,” Dor repeated.

“We were cursed to do it,” Irene said. “Before the moon got full-and it’s very nearly full now. Let’s go tell the others how Ambassador Oary is going to the Magyars.”

“Purely in the interest of serving the Kingdom I love so well, to promote the interests of my good friend and restored liege, King Omen,” Oary said philosophically. “It could have been worse. I thought you’d flay me and turn me loose to beg naked in the village.”

“Or feed you to the ogre,” Grundy said. “But we’re soft-headed, and you’re too clever to waste.”

They trooped out. “Oary has graciously consented to be your ambassador to the Magyar court of the Rhazar empire,” Dor told King omen, who had finally completed the receiving line. “He wants only what is best for the Kingdom of Onesti.”

“Excellent,” King Omen said. He had evidently been briefed in the interim. “And who will be Xanth’s ambassador to Onesti?”

“Amolde Centaur,” King Trent said promptly. “We realize that his enforced absence from his home in Centaur Isle is a personal sacrifice for him, but it is evident we need a certain amount of magic here, and he is uniquely qualified. He can escort specially talented Xanth citizens, such as my daughter, when trade missions occur.”

Amolde nodded, and Dor saw how King Trent was facilitating things for the centaur, too. Amolde had no future at Centaur Isle anyway; this put a different and far more positive face on it. Naturally Amolde would not spend all his time here; he would have time to visit his friend Ichabod in the other aspect of Mundania, too. In fact, he would be able to do all the research he craved. There was indeed an art to governance, and King Trent was demonstrating it.

“Ah, your daughter,” King Omen said. “You told me about her, during our long days of confinement, but I took it for the fond imaginings of a parent. Now I think it would be proper to seal the alliance of our two Kingdoms by a symbolic personal merger.”

Dor’s heart sank. King Omen certainly wasn’t reticent! He moved boldly to obtain what he wanted-as a King should. Dor doubted that he himself would ever be that type of person. The irony was that he could not oppose King Omen in this; he liked the man and owed him his life, and Irene liked him, too, and was probably thrilled at the notion. The alliance did seem to make sense, politically and personally.

If there were benefits to being in line for the Kingship, there were also liabilities; Dor had to give way to what was best. But he hated this.

King Trent turned to Irene. “How do you feel about it? You do understand the significance.”

“Oh, I understand,” Irene agreed, flushing becomingly. “It makes a lot of sense. And I’m flattered. But there are two or three little points. I’m young-“

“Time takes care of that,” King Omen said. It was evident that her youth did not repel him, any more than the youthfulness of the doxy had repelled King Oary. “In fact, women age so quickly, here in Onesti, that it is best to catch them as young as possible, while they remain attractive.”

Irene paused, as if tracking down an implication. In Xanth, women remained attractive a long time, with the aid of minor magic.

“And I would have trouble adjusting to a life with no magi-“ she continued after a moment.

“A Queen does not need magic!” King Omen said persuasively. “She has power. She has authority over the entire kitchen staff.”

Irene paused again. “That much,” she murmured. It was evident that men dominated the society of Onesti, while in Xanth the sexes were fairly even, except for the rule about who could be King.

Dor thought of living the rest of his life in Mundania, unable to utilize his own magic or participate in the magic of others. The notion appalled him. He doubted Irene could stand it long either.

“And I’m in love with another man,” Irene finished.

“But the girl’s love has nothing to do with it!” King Omen protested. “This is a matter of state.” His eyes traveled along the length of her legs.

King Trent considered. “We conduct such matters differently in Xanth, but of course compromise is essential in international relations. If you really desire my daughter-“

“Father!” Irene said screamingly.

“Now don’t embarrass your father,” Queen Iris said. Irene reacted with a rebellious frown that she quickly concealed. It was the old syndrome; if her mother pushed something, Irene did the opposite. Dor’s secret ally had struck again. Bless the Queen!

King Trent’s gaze passed across them all, finishing with the Queen, who made the slightest nod. “However,” he continued, “I understand that in some societies there is a certain premium on the, shall we say, pristine state-“

“Virginity,” Irene said clearly.

“But we never-“ Dor started, just before she stomped on his toe.

King Omen had caught the motion. “Ah, I did not realize it was you she loved, blood brother! You came all the way here at great personal risk to help restore my throne; I cannot-“

“Yet a liaison would certainly be appropriate,” King Trent mused.

“Father!” Irene repeated sharply. Queen Iris smiled somewhat smugly in her daughter’s direction. It was strange, Dor reflected, how the very mannerisms that had annoyed him in the past now pleased him. Irene would never go with King Omen now.

“Yet there is that matter of pristinity,” King Omen said. “A Queen must be above-“

“Do you by chance have a sister, King Omen?” King Trent inquired. Dor recognized the tone; Trent already knew the answer to his question. “Dor might-“

‘What?” Irene screeched.

“No, no sister,” Omen said, evidently disgruntled.

“Unfortunate. Perhaps, then, a symbolic gesture,” King Trent said. “If Prince Dor, here, is taking something of value to King Omen, or perhaps has already compromised the value-“

“Yes,” Irene said.

“Shame!” Queen Iris said, glaring at Dor with only the tiniest quirk of humor twitching at one lip.

“But-“ Dor said, unwilling to confess falsely.

“Then some token of recompense might be in order,” King Trent concluded. “We might call it a gift, to preserve appearance-“

“The midnight sunstone!” Dor exclaimed. After an, it was just about midnight now. Without waiting for King Trent to take the matter further, Dor drew it from his pocket. “King Omen, as a sincere token of amity between the Kingdom of Xanth and the Kingdom of Onesti and of my appreciation for the manner you saved my life, allow me to present you with this rarest of gems. Note that it shines in the presence of magic-but turns dull in the absence of magic. Thus you will always know when magic is near.” He gave the gem to King Omen, who stepped out of the magic aisle, then back in, fascinated by the manner the gem faded and flashed again.

“Oh, yes,” King Omen agreed. “I shall have this set in my crown, the most precious of all my treasures!”

But now Irene was angry. “I will not be bought for a gem!” she exclaimed.

“But-“ Dor said helplessly, stepping toward her. Right when he thought things had fallen into place, they were falling out again.

“Stay away from me, you slaver!” she flared, retreating.

“I think I am well off,” King Omen murmured, smiling.

Dor did not want to chase her. It was undignified and hardly suited to the occasion. Also, he could not move rapidly; his fresh wound inhibited him. Yet he was in a sense on stage; he could not let her walk out on him now.

Then he remembered the dime. He had a use for it after all! He clutched it out of his pocket and threw it at her moving feet.

Irene came to an abrupt stop, windmilling her arms and almost falling.

“What-“ she demanded.

Then Dor caught up to her and took her in his arms.

“The dime!” she expostulated. “You made me stop on a dime! That’s cheating!”

Dor kissed her-and found an amazingly warm response.

But even amidst the kiss, he realized that Amolde was facing in another direction. Irene had been outside the magic aisle when she stalled on the dime. “But-“ he began, his knees feeling weak.

She bit lightly on his ear. “Did the Gorgon let go of Magician Humfrey?” she asked.

Dor laughed, somewhat nervously. “Never.”

“Another dastardly deed performed in the light of the midnight sunstone,” Grundy said. And Dor had to hold Irene delightfully tight to prevent her from kicking the golem.