Question Quest

by Piers Anthony

  I had to write a letter and powder it with magic dust and send it to the main office, which the letter could reach only because there was nowhere else for it to go. In it I explained the problem, and urged that the forgotten directory be remembered and issued.

  The snail moved as slowly as ever, but in a year my advice was heeded, and Mundania came back into find-ability. Sofia was finally able to make her visit home. The odd thing was, she reported on her return, that nobody in Mundania seemed to have been aware of the missing time. Apparently that world had been suspended, and resumed only with the appearance of the new directory. What a strange business!

  Iris had left at age seven, in the year 1008. When she was the maidenly age of seventeen, she returned. This time she was ready to do service for an Answer on her own behalf. She wanted to know where she could go to have everything her own way. That was, for a teenage girl, a reasonable wish.

  I looked it up in the Book of Answers. There was such a place. It was an isle off the east coast of Xanth, about half way down, just beyond the place where the the—well, I forget what, but anyway, where it intersected the ocean. Few folk ever went there, yet it was a nice enough place. All it needed was some fixing up—which Iris could readily do, by means of her illusion.

  So she went there, and named it the Isle of Illusion. She crafted the entire island into one big illusion, which she changed at her whim. Everything there was indeed all her own way. There she remained for some time, gradually discovering that what a person most desires is not necessarily what she really wants.

  In 1021, at the age of twenty-four, Magician Trent grew tired of waiting for the aging Storm King to blow out, and started organizing to take over the throne directly. I was in favor of this effort, but could not say so; I had to maintain overt support of the existing regime. Trent did not consult me, which I appreciated; I remained aloof from the politics of the day. But I used my spells to watch events closely.

  Trent decided that he needed to have a major constituency, so as to have a base from which to move against the King and force his abdication. He chose the centaur community of central Xanth. (The centaurs of Centaur Isle were out of the question; they would not touch human politics, considering it almost as dirty as human magic. They had a point.) But they refused to join him.

  He made a demonstration of power: he went to Fish River and changed all its fish into lightning bugs. This was an amazing feat, because that was a magic river which guarded its waters and sought to nullify any threat against it. Only an extremely powerful and versatile Magician could have overcome that river.

  But centaurs are ornery folk—some say stubborn— and do not yield readily to demonstrations. So Trent proceeded to the second part of his program. He sent those lightning bugs to harass the centaurs. He did this by changing gnats to huge rocs, and requiring the birds to anchor themselves to the ground and flap their wings, generating a wind to blow the lightning bugs into the centaur village. The birds did it because it was the only way they could get changed back to gnats; after they blew the lightning bugs, Trent did change them back.

  The lightning bugs, irritable at finding themselves flying in air instead of swimming in the river, descended on the centaurs in a raging mass. They hurled their little lightning bolts at any flesh they found. When the centaurs tried to swat them, they made a flanking attack, and really zapped those flanks. The centaurs smashed at them with their tails, but there were so many clouds of bugs that it did little good. Trent no doubt figured that the centaurs would yield, then, but he had misjudged them. Instead they came to me, asking for some way to get rid of this scourge. Their leader, Alpha Centauri, made his way through my castle challenges and put their Question.

  Now I did not want to get involved in this, because of the political background, so I set a price I thought would make them balk: one year's service for each centaur my advice rid of the scourge. That would be three hundred centaur years, an unimagined total. But they amazed me by agreeing!

  So I told Alpha to go to the hate spring in north Xanth, dip out a single drop if it, dilute it with a thousand parts of regular water, and spray the mix on the herd. Hate elixir is dangerous to the user, but highly diluted it merely makes the user detestable for a while. The lightning bugs couldn't stand the sprayed flesh, and could neither shock it into submission nor feed on it, and soon died out.

  Now I had three hundred centaurs committed to work for me one year. What was I going to have them do?

  Well, I found things. I had one crew build some bridges across the—the—well, anyway, some useful bridges. One was one-way and another was invisible so not just anyone could use them. They required fine design, craftsmanship, and workmanship, and these were centaur strong points. This was a real service to the community, though no one remembered it.

  The main crew worked on renovating my castle. There had always been a certain rotten odor about it, dating from the zombie time, and that distressed Sofia. So we replaced much of it, and converted it to a very special design: a simple command could cause the rooms and walls to shift position, and the moat to change its shape and depth (Soufflé almost sailed into the air in alarm, the first time that happened), and the trees around it to assume new positions. The access paths could change and change again, and the entire aspect of the castle could alter. In short, it was like having a completely different castle, outside and in, in about two and a half moments. That made spring cleaning a delight for Sofia; she could change everything to be almost unrecognizable. It was a woman's dream come true.

  The centaurs completed their labors exactly on schedule, one year after the deal had been made, and departed. I made a note: not to try to bluff out a centaur next time.

  Meanwhile Trent, now called the Evil Magician, had lost his ploy to enlist the support of the centaurs. But he was stubborn too. He plowed ahead anyway. He marched on the North Village, employing the simple expedient I had taught him: he transformed anyone who tried to interfere into something that couldn't interfere. If someone tried to kill him, he transformed that man into a fish and let him flop in the ground until he found water or died. Mere nuisances he changed to harmless animals or plants. A man named Justin got in Trent's way, and was converted to a tree in the middle of the village. Some folk became odd creatures: pink dragons, two-headed wolves, land octopi, or moneypedes. One girl tried to give him wrong directions; he transformed her into a winged centaur filly. She was an attractive specimen of her kind—but the only one of her kind. Chagrined, she fled to the Brain Coral and begged for sanctuary in its pool. It was granted, of course, and she was soon forgotten. Others saw the way of it, and decided to join the Evil Magician. There was a revolution developing and gaining force.

  The Storm King had to use his talent in his own defense. He summoned a phenomenal storm. But he was now seventy-three years old, and his powers were failing. The storm turned out to be hardly more than wind and rain and a few hailstones.

  It looked as if nothing could stop the Evil Magician from cornering the Storm King and turning him into a rooster roach. But the king was cunning. He bribed one of Trent's trusted associates to cast a sleep spell on him.

  This was effective, and Trent fell asleep in the midst of his final advance.

  His friends hastily bore the body away. Now the supporters of the King became bold in a way they had not been before, and pursued. The only way to save the sleeping Magician was to get him out of Xanth. The keeper of the gate at the Shield decided to let him through; it was, after all, one way to be quite sure he would never return.

  Indeed, it seemed that he would not. The affairs of Mundania are largely opaque to ordinary folk, and it was only twenty years later that we were to learn his fate there. He settled, married, had a son—and then lost both to an evil Mundane plague. This was to have a significant consequence for Xanth, which is why I mention it. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.

  So the revolution was ended, and the Storm King was victorious. I know I was not the only one who reg
retted that. Xanth was destined to continue its mediocrity.

  Things continued in their petty pace another dozen years or so. Then Sofia, now about sixty-five years old, decided she preferred to return to Mundania to die. I tried to dissuade her, pointing out that I was a hundred and two, but that did not change her mind. So I had to let her go, after thirty-five years of marriage, with regret. She had been a very fine sock sorter, and it really wasn't her fault that our son went wrong.

  Thereafter things were pretty quiet at the castle. My son was long gone, my wife was gone, and I was even more grumpy alone man in limited company. I had thought that all I wanted was to be left alone with my studies in magic, but I found, that this was too much of a good thing. And my socks were piling up horrendously.

  A young woman came. Her name was Starr, because she twinkled like a double star; that seemed to be her magic. At this time I was lonely enough so that I was glad to see anyone, even someone with a Question, so I let her m with only token challenges. Her Question was what could she do with three hummingbirds she had befriended? Her family objected to the constant music as the birds hummed in chorus, so she had to get rid of them. But she couldn't just cast them out into the jungle. For one thing, they always flew back to her. Where could she leave them where they would be happy and not follow Her home?

  For this she was willing to undertake a year's service? Yes, it seemed she was. She really cared about those birds.

  I took Starr and the birds to the little rose garden in the back. The roses were magic, dating from my blanked-out period, and were always red and sweet. Near them were other flowers, more seasonal but still nice. The hummingbirds were delighted; they hovered near the roses, humming a very pretty melody. "They will like it here," I said. "There is plenty to keep them fed and happy."

  "Oh, thank you!" the young woman said. "Now what is my service?"

  "How are you at sorting socks?"

  Starr wasn't great at that, but she learned, and the mountain of socks began to be reduced. She also fixed me meals, which was just as well, because I had forgotten to eat for several days and needed reminding. Good health could go only so far, at my age.

  The three hummingbirds turned out to be good company themselves. Their names were Herman, Helen, and Hector, and they delighted in humming in three-part harmony for any person willing to listen. The flowers seemed to like them too. I felt almost guilty, making Stair do a year's service, because she had really done me a favor by bringing those birds. But I had no one else to sort my socks, so I said nothing.

  I had been answering Questions as a kind of burden, because they distracted me from my studies. But now I looked forward to visits, because they distracted me from my loneliness. The greater the problem, the more interesting it was for me.

  One case almost stumped me. This was a centaur who felt somewhat ambivalent. He called himself AmbiGus. He said he felt as if his personality wanted to split. I checked everything about him, and he seemed normal. It would be bad form not to provide an Answer; I had a reputation to maintain, for what little it was worth. What was wrong with this creature? Was it a mere complex of the type that Mundanes experienced?

  Mundanes. I tried one more thing. I took Gus to the border and spelled us through the Shield. Sure enough, when he walked away from the magic ambience of Xanth, he separated into the basic centaur components: a man and a horse. That was why he felt like splitting: his talent was to split, in the absence of magic.

  Unfortunately he could not do it in Xanth. So his choice was either to reside apart in Mundania or together in Xanth. He thought about it while performing his year's service for me.

  One case was interesting for another reason: who it was. It was Trojan, the Horse of Another Color, otherwise known as the Night Stallion. He governed the realm of bad dreams, which was accessible only through a hypnogourd. He came to me in a dream, as he was not comfortable outside the gourd. But he had a legitimate Question: what was a suitable bad dream for writers who wrote about the dream realm? Such folk were almost immune to ordinary bad dreams, because they were constantly devising bad stories themselves and were jaded. But they could not be allowed to mess with the dream realm, because that could dilute the potency of the dreams.

  I sweated over that one, partly because our dialogue was in the form of a bad dream. But finally I came up with a satisfactory formula: the guilty writer would be taken into a dream which seemed like reality, so that he did not know he was dreaming. In that dream he would be led into the Night Stallion's very own study and shown a lion. This was not a fearsome lion, for writers wrote about that kind all the time, seeming to enjoy the crunch of bones and splatter of blood. No, this was an old ill lion, its pride gone. Its teeth were so worn and weak that it could survive only on a diet of soggy puns. The writer was required to produce such puns, to the satisfaction of a grim person called Eddie Tor, lest he be guilty of letting the lion die. If the lion died, there would be a real stink. But if he failed to make Eddie Tor's unreasonable standards, Eddie would do beastly things to his prose, putting him farther behind. There was also a cursed block on his desk, which constantly interfered with his vision so that he could not concentrate. Somehow he had to get around that writer's block before he was faced with the dead lion.

  The Night Stallion was pleased. He was sure this would torment any writers enough to prevent them from messing with any more dream stories. In fact, it might drive some of them out of the trade entirely. It was an excellent punishment. He repaid me by granting me a bye on future bad dreams for myself, no matter how much I might deserve them. After that I did sleep easier.

  So my life went in its petty pace for about seven years. Then the Muses of Parnassus started writing volumes of history of Xanth, apparently just as a matter of record, and my life became infernally complicated.

  Chapter 13

  Bink

  Trouble came in the form of a seemingly innocent young man of about twenty-five. He trudged up to the castle, having somehow managed to cross the—the—to get through a difficult section of Xanth and avoid the inherent dangers of the countryside. He evidently had a Question, so I had AmbiGus spread the word and retire. I really didn't want to be bothered at this time.

  But the man was determined. He rode the hippocampus through the moat, refusing to be bucked off by the water horse or to lose his nerve and quit. The hippocampus had not been trying too hard, of course, and had he succeeded in throwing the man, he would have arranged to not-quite trap him in the water, allowing him to beat a hasty escape. But the man had prevailed. That spoke for his stamina.

  Then the man explored the huge facade door and found the little door set within it, and climbed in through that. AmbiGus had carefully crafted the inner door to be invisible but to yield readily to a push, its panel falling out. The man located it quickly. That spoke for his intelligence.

  Finally he encountered the manticora, which was a creature the size of a horse with the head of a man, body of a lion, wings of a dragon, and a huge scorpion's tail. The monster had come to me to ask whether it, being only partly human (there must have been quite a gathering at a love spring when he came to be!), had a soul. I told him that only those who had souls were concerned about them. Satisfied with that obvious Answer, he was now serving his term of service, his instructions being to scare visitors without actually hurting them. If he could scare them off, good enough; if he could not, he had to arrange some un-obvious way of letting them pass. The visitor passed, which spoke for his courage.

  Well, I would have to see what he wanted. Sometimes I knew well ahead of time, but this one was curiously opaque, with no reference in the Book of Answers; I would just have to ask him. But I wasn't pleased at the prospect. I had produced too many love potions for country hicks and beauty potions for girls who hardly needed them, and this certainly seemed to be more of the same. How I wished a real challenge would appear, instead of these nothings!

  The oaf yanked on the bell cord. DONG-DONG, DONG-DONG! As if I wasn't
already on my way. And I still didn't know his name. I didn't want to ask it; I didn't want to admit that I, the Magician of Information, had not found it listed in my references. "Who shall I say is calling?" I inquired.

  "Bink of the North Village."

  Ha! Name and origin in one breath, both about as unheroic as it was possible to be. Naturally someone this dull wouldn't be named Arthur or Roland or Charlemagne! But I remained annoyed, so I pretended to mishear. "Drink of what?"

  "Bink!" he said, getting annoyed himself. Good. "B-I-N-K."

  I looked up at him, for this disgustingly healthy young man stood about twice my century-gnarled height. I was healthy too, but the years had gradually twisted me, and I never had been tall or handsome in the way he was. What conceivable problem could he have that might ameliorate the dullness of my existence for a moment?

  "What shall I say is the business of your master Bink?" I asked, still needling the hayseed.

  He clarified that he was Bink, and was looking for a magical talent. He was ready to deliver a year's service. "It's robbery, but I'm stuck for it," he confided, not yet catching on to my identity; he assumed I was a servant. This was getting better as it went! "Your master gouges the public horrendously.”

  This was actually beginning to be fun. I played it for another laugh. "The Magician is occupied at the moment; can you come back tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow!" he exploded in a manner that warmed my heart. "Does the old bugger want my business or doesn't he?"

  He had dug himself in deep enough. It was time to wrap it up. I led him up to my cluttered study and seated myself at my desk. "What makes you think your service is worth the old gouging bugger's while?"