The nymph and faun didn’t seem to notice. They were deep in their discussion of transcendental metabolism.
“Whatever works,” Bryce said to Rachel. They walked on forward.
They came to what looked like a room with a number of letters strewn on the floor. There were high fences around it, and lines painted on the turf which served as the floor. A low net crossed the center, and beside the net was a small tower wherein sat a severe silent woman. Bryce thought to address her, but her glare stifled that unspoken.
“What is this, Wimbledon?” Bryce muttered.
Rachel looked at him.
“Never mind, I merely made an irrelevant connection in my foolish mind. Obviously this is the next Challenge. We need to figure it out, and find a way to get beyond it.”
Rachel wagged her tail, agreeing.
“So do you have any idea what’s what, here?”
Rachel pointed to a chair opposite the grim woman’s tower. Across it lay a woman’s simple white dress.
“You figure that’s a key to the solution?”
Rachel wagged her tail. That was exactly what she figured.
Bryce walked to the chair and picked up the dress. It appeared to be a straight loose-fitting item of apparel, not at all fancy. Did it belong to the woman on the tower? She was already fully clothed, but maybe this was her dress when she went off-duty. “I don’t see what to make of it.”
He picked up one of the strewn letters. It was an S made of plaster, several inches high. Had it fallen from a wall? There was no suitably solid wall nearby.
He picked up another. It was also a big plaster S. So was a third, and a fourth. Finally he had them all piled on the chair beside the dress. There were ten identical S’s. No other letters.
They walked around the edge of the setting, finding nothing. They were confined to this open, netted chamber.
“Whatever the next stage is, let’s have it,” Bryce said, not expecting any response.
Suddenly balls were flying at him. He grabbed an S and used it to fend off the first one, and that worked, but when the ball struck the S, both puffed up in smoke. He grabbed a second S to block the second ball, and again both destroyed each other. The balls kept coming, so he kept using S’s, until all were gone. Then the balls stopped.
“Love Ten,” the woman on the tower said.
Then Bryce got an inspiration. A bulb even flashed over his head. “Ten S’s! Put them together and you get ten esses, or tennis, complete with balls. This is a Tennis Court.”
Rachel just looked at him.
“Well, it’s a step,” he said. “Now I just have to figure out how to win the game so we can get out of it.”
But now his mind was percolating. “If it’s a Court, of any kind, by the crazy reasoning of this realm, there must be a way to win my case. Since I have no racquet I don’t think it’s by actually playing the game. There must be something else. Something fiendishly punny.”
His eye fell on the white dress on the chair. He picked it up and studied it. Now he saw that around the hem of its skirt were letters. He spelled them out. “P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M. Paradigm.” He paused to ponder. “A paradigm is a technical term meaning a set of forms, all of which contain a particular element. What does that have to do with a dress?”
Rachel was unable to help him.
Bryce got another idea. “This dress—it’s a shift. So this is a Paradigm Shift. So maybe it, in proper pun manner, changes the set of ideas that the woman who wears it has. Such as the rules governing a Ten-S Court.”
Rachel wagged her tail. He was making sense to her. She was the one who had pointed out the shift.
“And the woman whose mind I want to change is the one governing this Ten-S game,” Bryce concluded. “She’s here to keep score, but I want her to declare it’s over so we can move on. All I need to do, maybe, is to put this shift on her.”
He looked at the woman, she looked back, glare ready. He knew better than to approach her. She would not change clothing in public.
But he got yet another idea. “Rachel,” he murmured. “Can you growl like distant thunder?”
The dog’s ears perked up. She went to a corner, put her head down, and issued a long, low, rumbling growl.
“Oh, my!” Bryce exclaimed. “I think I hear thunder! We’re going to get rained out! I hope there’s not too much lightning!”
The judge looked around nervously.
Rachel growled again. This time the thunder sounded closer.
“Where there’s thunder, there’s lightning,” Bryce said. “And it generally strikes the highest places first.” He gazed assessingly at the little tower. “I’m getting away from there.”
There was a third peal of thunder, louder and closer yet. Rachel was really getting into it.
The judge scrambled down from her perch. She picked up the shift and flung it over herself. It melded to her form, replacing her existing clothing.
Sure enough, it changed her mind. “What are we doing here?” she demanded. “We have to get under cover!” She hurried to the wall, and a door opened in it. She passed through.
Bryce and Rachel followed immediately after. They didn’t want to get wet either. Or trapped in the S court.
The judge turned to face them. “Very clever,” she said. “You have earned your admittance to the castle. I am Wira, the Good Magician’s daughter-in-law. This way, please.”
“I thought you were a prop for the Challenge,” Bryce said, embarrassed.
“That, too. We were short-handed, so I filled in.”
They entered a comfortable living room. A veiled woman sat there, her attention fixed on several glass beads.
“Mother Gorgon,” Wira said. “They are here.”
The woman looked up. “Already?”
“They found a way to shortcut the last Challenge. This is Bryce Mundane and his companion Rachel Dog, also from Mundania.”
“How are Mundanes getting into Xanth? I thought the realms separated years ago.”
“They did, Mother Gorgon. But this is the result of a Demon contest.”
“Oh, bleep! I wish the Demons would just leave us alone.” The woman’s veil oriented on Bryce and Rachel. “I am the Gorgon, the Designated Wife of the month.”
Bryce was taken aback. “Wives are Designated?”
“And you don’t know about Xanth,” the Gorgon said perceptively.
“We have been learning this past month, staying with Princess Dawn at Caprice Castle. But there always seems to be more to learn.”
“Indeed. The Good Magician Humfrey has five and a half wives. Since he is allowed only one at a time, we alternate months, and it’s my turn.” The veil quirked. “That’s actually about all any one of us can handle. Humfrey is over a century old, and chronically grumpy.”
“You—you are actually a gorgon?” Bryce asked. “With a—a death gaze?”
“Oh yes. You would not care to look at my bare face. It would turn you to stone. Hence the veil. I was just putting a craze on these glass beads, which will be used for decorations. I can do it through the veil at close range.”
“I am at a loss,” Bryce said. “Why would the Good Magician want to marry a—a gorgon?”
“He can nullify my face when he chooses,” she said. “As for the rest—why do you think?” She whipped away her cloak and revealed a luscious body in a bikini. It almost freaked Bryce out. “Actually, I pursued him before he got his prior wives back, and the castle was sadly disorganized. His socks were piled up in smelly mounds.” Her nose wrinkled under the veil. “I put it in order, and he appreciated that. Now tell me more about this Demon contest. I haven’t been paying attention.”
“It seems the Demons are making a wager on which one can provide the best prospective husband for the Princess Harmony. Each is selecting a promising man, and the several suitors will compete for her hand.” He grimaced. “It is not necessarily our choice, or the princess’s choice. I was cleaning out my garage in Mundania when I was a
bruptly brought to Xanth, along with Rachel here. Now I am here to get news of my Quest.”
“But Harmony is a child!” she protested.
Bryce smiled. “My position exactly. I was eighty, in Mundania, an old man. But she is sixteen, and it seems the Demons deem that old enough.”
The Gorgon toted up years on her fingers. “Why, so she is! How quickly time passes when you’re not paying proper attention. Well, what will be, will be. If Harmony chooses you, you will be hers regardless. I wish you well, or ill, whichever you prefer.”
“Thank you.”
“The Good Magician will see you now,” Wira said. She had disappeared during his chat with the Gorgon, and reappeared with the news.
“Then I guess we will see him,” Bryce said.
Wira led the way up a narrow winding stairway to a gloomy cubbyhole of an office. There perched an ancient gnomelike man, poring over a huge tome.
“Father Humfrey, here are Bryce and Rachel Mundane,” Wira said.
The Magician’s spectacles oriented on the dog. “Rachel, you can’t stay,” he said. “You are an accidental participant in this scene. You belong with the one who needs you most, and Bryce no longer does.”
The dog’s tail dropped between her legs. She did not like this news.
“There are two others who do need you, one in Xanth, the other in Mundania. Therein lies the problem, since you can’t be in both places simultaneously. You may have a difficult choice.”
Rachel remained frozen, evidently dreading the verdict.
“However, in consideration for the service you have rendered Bryce, getting him safely into and acclimatized to Xanth, you have been granted a dispensation. You will return to Mundania tomorrow, to be with the one there who needs you most, a woman with a chronic condition, named Mary. You will surely like her. But you will spend the intervening day and night in a state of time dilation, so that for you and your companion Woofer a year will pass. I believe you will enjoy it.”
Rachel remained dubious. “This Mundane—will I be old there?”
The Good Magician seemed unsurprised that she could talk. “You will keep your rejuvenated age, then age normally. But you will not be able to talk in human speech there.”
“And Bryce—will I see him again?”
“Once, before you depart for Mundania.”
Rachel looked at him so forlornly that Bryce got down on his knees and hugged her. “Our association was largely accidental,” he said. “It seems it couldn’t last. But I will always remember you.”
She licked his face, then departed with Wira.
Bryce faced Humfrey. “I want what’s best for her, of course, but I had hoped we would stay together.”
“Your destiny is in Xanth. You can’t return to Mundania at this time. She can.”
And that, it seemed, was it.
“So now what is this Quest I am obliged to go on, to win the hand of a princess I have no intention of marrying?”
The Magician’s mouth almost quirked. “Even as a Mundane, you surely understand that your intentions relate to your destiny only peripherally.”
Bryce found himself liking Humfrey. “I understand you are older than I am, as are Trent and Iris, though they have been rejuvenated. You too, though you don’t look it.”
“Youthened,” Humfrey agreed. “I maintain my physical age at approximately a hundred for convenience. That spares me the foolish passions of youth.”
“Such as being spelled into love for a teen princess.”
“That, too,” the Magician agreed.
“Why are you taking time to talk to me? Your reputation is for unsociable grumpiness.”
“I seldom encounter a person worth socializing with.”
“And why the oblique compliment? Are you setting me up for something awkward?”
“That, too,” Humfrey agreed again. “The future of Xanth is important to me, and Princess Harmony is integral to that future, and you are perhaps the most salient likely influence on her. Therefore you are worth at least a modicum of my attention.”
Bryce had to laugh. “Maybe you had better just tell me what I am supposed to do to acquit myself with sufficient dispatch to be worthy of that modicum.”
The Magician actually smiled. “That is my present purpose. All the suitors will start off together, the Quest being to locate, obtain, and bring back the thing Princess Harmony most needs to govern effectively at such time as she becomes King of Xanth. You will return with your offerings, and she will decide which gift is most fitting, and choose the suitor who has it. That choice will decide the issue, and the Demon who sponsored the winner will gain status accordingly. Thereafter the others will be free to pursue their own lives.”
“She must choose according to the gift? Not from love?”
“A princess marries for advantage, not emotion.”
“Princess Dawn didn’t.”
“Actually she did. She married a male worthy of her, being Xanth’s finest musician. The fact that she loved him was secondary.”
“Not to her.”
“Had he not demonstrated his superior ability, she would have married his rival, Piper. Love was indeed secondary.”
“I don’t like that.”
Humfrey peered over his thick spectacles at him. “You were under the impression that your preferences have more than marginal relevance?”
Bryce was embarrassed. He had been under exactly that evidently foolish impression. But he plowed on. “That’s it? No further guidance?”
The Magician looked at him. “You have met the princess, and come to know her somewhat. You must have a notion what she will most need.”
“Not enough of one. Maturity comes to mind, however.”
“That is not something that can be readily given. What else?”
“She seems to be an apt study. She should be able to choose well.”
“From the offerings presented. It is your Quest to return with the fittest one, that will benefit her the most. If you fail, she will have to choose a lesser one, and perhaps cause Xanth to suffer when she is king. Is that your wish?”
This old man was no fool! He was maneuvering Bryce into an intellectual corner. “No! I just don’t like aspects of the setup. People should not be treated as pawns in a game.”
“We are dealing with Demons here, any one of which could obliterate all of Xanth without even blinking. We must be satisfied to be played as pawns in their game, hoping to survive intact. It is a matter of realism.”
“Realism,” Bryce agreed, seeing it. “You are, I think, suggesting that I look not only for what the princess needs, but for what the other suitors won’t provide. So that she will have a better choice than otherwise. Despite whatever the Demons may have in mind.”
“Sometimes it is possible to play a situation for more than those who devise it intend.”
That did make cunning sense. “I will make my best effort,” Bryce said.
“That may or may not be good enough.” Humfrey’s gaze returned to his giant tome. Bryce realized that he had been dismissed.
He turned away. There was Wira. “I will show you to your room,” she murmured.
He had a room here? “Thank you.”
“I don’t think the Good Magician ever before spent the amount of time on a querent as on you,” Wira said as they walked along dusky halls. “You must be a remarkable person.”
“If I am, it is fate or magic responsible, rather than any inherent merit.”
“Perhaps.”
The castle was surprisingly large, judging by the extent of the passages. But Bryce realized that with magic, literally anything was possible. “How is it I rate a room?”
“All the Suitors will stay the night, and depart together tomorrow,” she explained. “That way you can get to know each other.”
“Is that wise, since we are in competition with each other?”
“You are not competing,” she said. “You are helping each other.”
Bryce d
ecided not to argue the point. Maybe the Good Magician wanted to put a positive face on what could become a savage rivalry.
“Here is your room,” Wira said, pausing at a door. “Your roommate will be along shortly.”
He would have a roommate? Well, why not, considering the free lodging. “Thank you.”
The room had two beds, a lavatory, a mirror, and a desk. It would do. Bryce selected one bed and lay down on it. He was tired, and glad to have the rest.
Another person entered. Bryce sat up. “Hello. I am Bryce Mundane. I—” He broke off, surprised.
“And I am Anna Molly,” she replied.
“You’re a woman!”
“That was my impression,” she agreed, smiling.
“I thought you were my roommate.”
“I believe I am. You have a problem with that?”
“Yes, I have a problem. Unmarried men and women don’t room together.” He reconsidered. “At least they didn’t in my day.”
“Nor in mine,” she said. “Let me explain. My brother was selected as a suitor to the princess, but he’s busy at this time, so I unexpectedly substituted for him. I have no interest in marrying the princess, but I am representing him so that he can marry her if I win.”
“This is unexpected,” Bryce agreed.
“That’s my talent. I cause the unexpected to happen. Sometimes it’s voluntary; sometimes it just happens. So I was assigned to be your roommate. I’m sure we can complain to the management and get it corrected, if you wish.”
Bryce saw the pun, Anna Molly, anomaly. But he was no longer collecting puns. “I did not mean to imply any fault in you,” he said quickly. “It may be that they are crowded and lack rooms for all.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “Certainly it is anomalous, but I have come to expect that. It occurred to me that there could be complications, since I’m sure all the other suitors will be male. I will manage somehow.” But she looked uncertain.
“Stay,” he said. “We’ll manage.”
“Oh, thank you!”
They talked, and he learned that her brother was Justin Kase, who could summon things that might be needed in the future. She had been talking with him when he abruptly received a summons from the Good Magician to become a Suitor.
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