Centaur Aisle x-4

by Piers Anthony

  “No, it is a medieval one,” Dor said. “Uh, that is-well, King Trent is in another time, we think.”

  The scholar paused thoughtfully. “The Kingdom you are re-creating, of course. I believe I understand.” He looked again at Irene. “Females certainly have adequate limbs in that realm.”

  “What’s he saying?” Irene demanded.

  “That you have nice legs,” Dor told her with a certain mild malice.

  She ignored that. “What about my father?”

  “Not listed in this book. I think we’ll have to try another tack.”

  The scholar’s eyes shifted from Irene’s legs to Dor’s face. “This is very odd. You address her in English, and she seems to understand, but she replies in an other tongue.”

  “It’s complicated to explain,” Dor said.

  “I’d better check with Amolde,” Irene said, and vanished.

  The Mundane scholar removed his spectacles and cleaned them carefully with a bit of tissue paper. He returned them to his face just in time to see Irene reappear. “Yes, that’s definitely better,” he murmured.

  “Amolde says we’ll have to use some salient identifying trait to locate my father or mother,” Irene said. “There may be a historical reference.”

  “Exactly what language is that?” the scholar asked, again fixing on Irene’s legs. He might be old and academic, but he evidently had not forgotten what was what in female appearance.

  “Xanthian, I guess,” Dor said. “She says we should look for some historical reference to her parents, because of special traits they have.”

  “And what would these traits be?”

  “Well, King Trent transforms people, and Queen Iris is mistress of illusion.”

  “Idiot!” Irene snapped. “Don’t tell him about the magic!”

  “I don’t quite understand,” the scholar said. “What manner of transformation, what mode of illusion?”

  “Well, it doesn’t work in Mundania,” Dor said awkwardly.

  “Surely you realize that the laws of physics are identical the world over,” the scholar said. “Anything that works in the young lady’s country will work elsewhere.”

  “Not magic,” Dor said, and realized he was just confusing things more.

  “How dumb can you get?” Irene demanded. “I’m checking with Amolde.” She vanished again.

  This time the scholar blinked more emphatically. “Strange girl!”

  “She’s funny that way,’ Dor agreed weakly.

  The scholar walked to the spot Irene had vacated. “Tabhf jmmvtjpo?” he inquired.

  Oh, no! He was outside the magic aisle now, so the magic no longer made his language align with Dor’s. Dor could not do anything about this; the centaur would have to move. Irene reappeared right next to the scholar. Evidently she hadn’t been paying attention, for she should have been able to see him while within the magic ambience. “Oh-you’re here!” she exclaimed.

  “Bnbajohl” the scholar said. “J wtu jorvjsf-“

  Then the centaur moved. Irene vanished and the scholar became comprehensible. “. . . exactly how you perform that trick.” He paused. “Oops, you're gone again.”

  Irene reappeared farther down the hall. “Amolde says we’ll have to tell him,” she announced. “About the magic and everything. Thanks to your bungling.”

  “Really, this is amazing!” the scholar said.

  “Well, I’ll have to tell you something you may find hard to believe,” Dor said.

  “At this stage, I’m inclined to believe in magic itself!”

  “Yes. Xanth is a land of magic.”

  “In which people disappear and reappear at will? I think I would prefer to believe that than to conclude I am losing my sight.”

  “Well, some do disappear. That’s not Irene’s talent, though.”

  “That’s not the young lady’s ability? Then why is she doing it?”

  “She’s actually stepping in and out of a magic aisle.”

  “A magic aisle?”

  “Generated by a centaur.”

  The scholar smiled wanly. “I fear you have the advantage of me. You can imagine nonsense faster than I can assimilate it.”

  Dor saw that the scholar did not believe him. “I’ll show you my own magic, if you like,” he said. He pointed to the open tome on the table. “Book, speak to the man.”

  “Why should I bother?” the book demanded.

  “Ventriloquism!”’ the scholar exclaimed. “I must confess you are very good at it.”

  “What did you call me?” the book demanded.

  “Would you do that again-with your mouth closed?” the scholar asked Dor.

  Dor closed his mouth. The book remained silent. “I rather thought so,” the scholar said.

  “Thought what, four-eyes?” the book asked.

  Startled, the scholar looked down at it, then back at Dor. “But your mouth was closed, I’m sure.”

  “It’s magic,” Dor said. “I can make any inanimate object talk.”

  “Let’s accept for the moment that this is true. You are telling me that this King you are searching for can also work magic?”

  “Right. Only he can’t do it in Mundania, so I guess it doesn’t count.”

  “Because he has no magic centaur with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would like to see this centaur.”

  “He’s protected by an invisibility spell. So the Mundanes won’t bother us.”

  “This centaur is a scholar?”

  “Yes. An archivist, like yourself.”

  “Then he is the one to whom I should talk.”

  “But the spell-“

  “Abate the spell! Bring your centaur scholar forth. Otherwise I cannot help you.”

  “I don’t think he’d want to do that. It would be hard to get safely out of here without that enchantment, and we have no duplicate invisibility spell.”

  The scholar walked back to his cubby. “Mind you, I believe in magic no more than in the revelations of a hallucination, but I am willing to help you if you meet me hallway. Desist your parlor tricks, show me your scholar, and I will work with him to fathom the information you desire. I don’t care how fanciful his outward form may be, provided he has a genuine mind. The fact that you find it necessary to dazzle me with ventriloquism, a lovely costumed girl who vanishes, and a mythological narrative suggests that there is very little substance to your claim, and you are wasting my time. I ask you to produce your scholar or depart my presence.”

  “Uh, Amolde,” Dor said. “I know it’ll be awful hard to get out of here without the spells, but maybe we could wait till night. We really need the information, and-“

  Abruptly the centaur appeared, facing the scholar’s cubby. The ogre and golem stood behind him. “I agree,” Amolde said.

  The scholar turned about. He beamed. “”These are rare costumes, I agree.”

  Amolde strode forward, his barrel barely clearing the shelves on either side, extending his hand. “I certainly do not blame you for being impatient with the uninitiate,” he said. “You have excellent facilities here, and I know your time is valuable.”

  The scholar shook the hand, seeming more reassured by Amolde’s spectacles and demeanor than confused by his form.

  “What is your specially?”

  “Alien archaeology-but of course there is a great deal of routine work and overlapping of chores.”

  “There certainly is!” the scholar agreed. “The nuisances I have to endure here-“

  The two fell into a technical dialogue that soon left Dor behind.

  They became more animated as they sized up each other’s minds and information. There was now no doubt they were similar types.

  Irene, bored, grew a cocoa plant in the hall, and shared the hot cups of liquid with Dor, Smash, and Grundy. They knew it was important that Amolde establish a good rapport so that they could gain the scholar’s cooperation and make progress on their request.

  Time passed. The two sch
olars delved into ancient tomes, debated excruciatingly fine points, questioned Dor closely about the hints King Trent had given him in both person and vision, and finally wound down to an animated close. The Mundane scholar accepted a mug of cocoa, relaxing at last. “I believe we have it,” he said. “Will I see you again, centaur?”

  “Surely so, sir! I am able to travel in Mundania, am fascinated by your comprehensive history, and am presently, as it were, between positions.”

  “Your compatriots found your magic as intolerable in you as mine would find a similar propensity in me! I shall not be able to tell any one what I have learned this day, lest I, too, lose my position and possibly even be institutionalized. Imagine conversing with a centaur, ogre, and tiny golem! How I should love to do a research paper on your fantastic Land of Xanth, but it would hardly be believable.”

  “You could write a book and call it a story,” Grundy suggested. “And Amolde could write one about Mundania.”

  Both scholars looked pleased. Neither had thought of such a simple expedient.

  “But do you know where my father is?” Irene demanded.

  “Yes, I believe we do,”’ Amolde said. “King Trent left a message for us, we believe.”

  “How could he leave a message?” she demanded.

  “He left it with Dor. That, and the other hints we had, such as the fact that he was going to a medieval region, in the mountains near a black body of water. There are, my friend informs me, many places in Mundania that fit the description. So we assume it is literal; either the water itself is black, or it is called black. As it happens, there is in Mundania a large body of water called the Black Sea. Many great rivers empty into it; great mountain ranges surround it. But that is not sufficient to identify this as the specific locale we seek; it merely makes it one possibility among many.” Amolde smiled. “We spent a good deal of time on geography. As it happens, there was historically a confluence of A, B, and K people in that vicinity in medieval times-at least that is so when their names are rendered into Xanth dialect. The Avars, the Bulgars, and the Khazars. So it does seem to fit. Everything you have told us seems to fit.”

  “But that isn’t enough!” Dor cried. “How can you be sure you have the place, the time?”

  “Honesty,” Amolde said. “O N E S T I.” He pointed to a spot on an open book. “This, we believe, is the unique special hint King Trent gave you, to enable you and only you to locate him in an emergency.”

  Dor looked. It was an atlas, with a map of some strange Mundane land. On the map was a place labeled Onesti.

  “There is only one such place in the world,” Amolde said. “It has to be King Trent’s message to you. No one else would grasp the significance of that unique nomenclature.”

  Dor recaped the intensity with which King Trent had spoken of honesty, as if there had been a separate meaning there. He remembered how well aware the King had been of Dor’s kind of spelling. It seemed no one else spelled it the obvious way, onesti.

  “But if that’s been there-that name, there in your maps and things -for centuries-that means King Trent never came back! We can’t rescue him, because then the name would go.”

  “Not necessarily,” Amolde said. “The place-name does not depend on his presence. We should be able to rescue him without disturbing it. At any rate, we are never certain of the paradoxes of time. We shall simply have to go to that location and that time, circa AD 650, and try to find him.”

  “But suppose it’s wrong?” Irene asked worriedly. “Suppose he isn’t there?”

  “Then we shall return here and do more research,” Amolde said. “I intend to visit here again anyway, and my friend Ichabod would like to visit Xanth. There will be no trouble about that, I assure you.”

  “Yes. You will be welcome here,” the Mundane scholar agreed. “You have a fine and arcane mind.”

  “For the first time,” Amolde continued, “I look upon my exile from Centaur Isle and my assumption of an obscene talent with a certain equanimity. I have not, it seems, been excluded from my calling; my horizons have been inordinately expanded.”

  “And mine,” Ichabod agreed. “I must confess my contemporaneous existence was becoming tiresome, though I did not recognize this until this day.” Now the scholar sounded just like Amolde.

  Perhaps some obscure wrinkle of fate had operated to bring these two together. Did luck or fate really operate in Mundania? Perhaps they did, when the magic aisle was present. “The prospect of researching in a completely new and mystical terrain is immensely appealing; it renovates my outlook.” He paused. “Ah, would there by any chance be individuals of the female persuasion remotely resembling . . . ?” His glance ticked guiltily to Irene’s legs.

  “Nymphs galore,” Grundy said. “A dime a dozen.”

  “Oh, you employ contemporaneous currency?” the scholar asked, surprised.

  “Currency?” Dor asked blankly.

  “A dime is a coin of small denomination here.”

  Dor smiled. “No, a dime is a tiny object that causes things passing over it to come to a sudden stop. When it has functioned this way twelve times, its enchantment wears out. Hence our saying-“

  “How marvelous. I wonder whether one of my own dimes would perform similarly there.”

  “That’s the idea,” Grundy said. “Toss it in front of a troupe of gamboling nymphs, and grab the first one it stops. Nymphs don’t have much brains, but they sure have legs.” He moved farther away from Irene, who showed signs of kicking.

  “Oh, I can hardly wait to commence research in Xanth!” the scholar exclaimed. “As it happens, I have a dime ready.” He brought out a tiny silver coin, his gaze once again touching on Irene’s limbs.

  “I wonder.”

  Irene frowned. “Sometimes I wonder just how badly I really want to rescue my folks. I’ll be lucky if my legs don’t get blistered from all the attention.” But as usual, she did not seem completely displeased. “Let’s be on our way; I don’t care what, you do, once my father is back in Xanth.”

  Amolde and Ichabod shook hands, two very similar creatures. On impulse, Dor brought out one of the gold coins he had so carefully saved from the pirate’s treasure. “Please accept this, sir, as a token of our appreciation for your help.” He pressed it on the scholar.

  The man hefted the coin. “That’s solid gold!” he exclaimed. “I believe it is a genuine Spanish doubloon! I cannot accept it.”

  The centaur interceded. “Please do accept it, Ichabod. Dor is temporary King of Xanth; to decline would be construed as an offense to the crown.”

  “But the value-?

  “Let’s trade coins,” Dor said, discovering a way through. “Your dime for my doubloon. Then it is an even exchange.”

  “An even exchange!” the scholar exclaimed. “In no way can this be considered-“

  “Dimes are very precious in Xanth,” Amolde said. “Gold has little special value. Please acquiesce.”

  “Maybe a nymph would stop on a doubloon, too,” Grundy suggested.

  “She certainly would!” Ichabod agreed. “But not because of any magic. Women here are much attracted to wealth.”

  “Please,” Irene put in, smiling beguilingly. Dor knew she only wanted to get moving on the search for her father, but her intercession was effective.

  “In that case, I will exchange with you, with pleasure, King Dor,” the scholar agreed, giving Dor his dime. “I only meant to protest that your coin was far too valuable for whatever service I might have provided, when in fact it was a pleasure providing it anyway.”

  “Nothing’s too valuable to get my father back,” Irene said. She leaned forward and kissed Ichabod on the cheek. The man froze as if he had glimpsed the Gorgon, an astonished smile on his face. It was obvious he had not been kissed by many pretty girls in his secluded lifetime.

  It was now early evening. Ichabod delved into assorted cubbies and produced shrouds to conceal the bodies of the centaur and ogre.

  Then Amolde and Smash walked
out of the library in tandem, looking like two big workmen in togas, moving a covered crate between them. It turned out to be almost as good concealment as the in visibility spell; no one paid attention to them. They were on their way back to Xanth.

  They did not go all the way back home. They trekked only to the northwest tip of Xanth, where the isthmus connected it to Mundania.

  Once they were back in magic territory, Irene set about replenishing her stock of seeds. Smash knocked down a jellybarrel tree, consumed the jelly, and fashioned the swollen trunk into a passable boat. Arnolde watched the terrain, making periodic forays into Mundania, in just far enough to see whether it had changed. Dor accompanied him, questioning the sand. By the description of people the sand had recently seen, they were able to guess at the general place and time in Mundania.

  For the change was continuous. Once a person from Xanth entered Mundania, his framework was fixed until he returned; but anyone who followed him might enter a different aspect of Mundania.

  This was like missing one boat and boarding the next, Amolde explained; the person on the first boat could return, but the person on land could not catch a particular boat that had already departed.

  “Thus King Trent had gone, they believed, to a place called “Europe,” in a time called “Medieval.” Dor’s party had gone to a place called “America,” in a time called “Modern.” The shifting of places and times seemed random; probably there was a pattern to the changes that they were unable to comprehend. They simply had to locate the combination they wanted and pass through that “window” before it changed. Amolde concluded, from their observations, that any given window lasted from five minutes to an hour, and that it was possible to hold a window open longer by having a person stand at the border; it seemed the window couldn’t quite close while it was in use. Perhaps it was like the revolving door in the Mundanian library, whose turning could be temporarily stopped by a person in it until some other person needed to use it.

  On the third day it became tedious. Irene’s seed collection was complete and she was restive; Smash had finished his boat and stocked it with supplies. Grundy had made himself a nest in the bow, from which he eavesdropped on the gossip of passing marine life. Arnolde and Dor walked down the beach. “What have you seen lately?” Dor inquired routinely of the same-yet-different patch of sand.