Question Quest

by Piers Anthony

  I opened an eye. "Go away," I said politely.

  "But I need an Answer," he said.

  "I am no longer giving Answers." I had to get rid of him quickly.

  But he persisted. "How can I void the service I owe to Com-Pewter?" he demanded.

  Suppose the Demon chose this moment to check the anteroom? I had to get back! "I'll give your Answer when I'm done here."

  "How long will that be?"

  "If you want an Answer," I said with enormous patience, "serve me until I return."

  "But I must serve Com-Pewter!" he protested.

  "After you complete your service to me." I pointed out the obvious.

  "But how can I serve you if you're asleep?"

  Would he never give over? "Go to my castle. You will find a way."

  Finally he lowered the lid, and I zipped back to the antechamber. What a relief: there was no trace of the Demon's recent presence. I had not missed him.

  I had, of course, given Grey Murphy his Answer. It was his destiny to be my apprentice. His magic was the nullification of magic, which was not at all the same as information, but my own status as Magician derived from something other than inherent talent too. He could do the job, if he put his mind to it and blundered through. He would have Ivy to Enhance him, and that counted for a lot. So he would be the Good Magician pro-tern, until I finished my business here. He did not have to worry about the service Com-Pewter demanded of him, because his service to me took precedence. Thus he could remain in Xanth until I returned, whereupon I would tell him how to vacate his commitment to Com-Pewter. It was simple enough.

  He did go to my castle, and finally did manage to catch on, thanks in large part to the effect of his father's curse. His father had returned to Xanth after renouncing any claim to the Xanth throne, and his talent was to make anything go wrong that could go wrong. He cursed Com-Pewter's effort, with the result that it did go wrong in the most devious way, and Grey Murphy escaped the onus of having to serve an entity hostile to the welfare of Xanth. That also, incidentally, made Ivy happy, for she had every intention of marrying Grey.

  So it was that Ivy brought my replacement, and occupied my castle herself. That was her greatest impact on my existence, and actually it was not a bad one.

  The history of Xanth continued apace. Three years later Prince Dolph married Electra and gave Princess Nada Naga her freedom, which was the decent thing to do. At the same time a new character came to Xanth: twelve-year-old Jenny Elf, from the World of Two Moons. She helped rescue Che Centaur, the winged foal of Cheiron and Chex, and joined that family as a guest child, along with Gwendolyn Goblin. Great things were getting ready to happen in the goblin realm, and I realized that it would really be better if I returned to take a hand. Grey Murphy meant well, but was relatively inexperienced and might bungle it. So I hoped the Demon X(A/N)th would come soon, so I could settle with him. But that belongs in the next chapter.

  Chapter 16

  Memory

  So at last I come to my departure from the normal realm of Xanth in 1080. I confess it was a surprise, for I had completely forgotten a section of my life, by no coincidence.

  The day started normally, which was to say, all fouled up. There is an endemic curse on households called snafu that accounts for this; one simply learns to live with it.

  I was working in my study, of course, poring over my treasured tomes. The Gorgon was in the kitchen making gorgonzola cheese by staring at milk through her veil. I had not rendered her face invisible again, after the action of the NextWave invasion; we had decided that a heavy veil, spelled to remain in place, sufficed. Hugo, now sixteen years old, was supervising the placement of a cage of little dragons on the drawbridge over the moat. There was an elf doing his service, today setting up a holy smoke generator. I would use that smoke in a future challenge; the querent would have to figure out that he could get through it only by stepping through one of the holes in it. The holes could lead anywhere, but in this case would lead to the inside of the castle. The person who fled the smoke would not get inside, and that would save me the burden of yet another Answer.

  I had the magic mirror tuned to Hugo, knowing that he would foul up at some point. Only when he was with Ivy did he become truly competent, because Ivy had never quite lost her image of him as a night in shiny armor. How I wished we could borrow a bit of her talent and permanently Enhance our son, so that he would be all that he sometimes was with her. My tomes said that Hugo had a good destiny and that he would find special happiness and do something really nice for another person; we just had to wait for that to occur. I knew that sometimes the most promising of children went astray, and that at other times the least promising turned out well. Time and hope would show the way.

  But it wasn't Hugo who fouled up this time. It was the elf. I missed it because I wasn't watching him. Hugo finished with the dragons and retired to his room to practice conjuring his fruits, and the mirror remained on him. The Gorgon finished making her cheese and started on a petrified cheese salad which also used some of Hugo's fruits. Because the fruits were of all types but tended to be overripe, a bit of petrifaction improved them. All was reasonably well, there, as it was with assorted other creatures working around the premises. But not with the elf.

  Holy smoke is tricky to handle. It is best made in small quantities and bottled; then the bottles can be opened separately, keeping the amount measured. When it is actually being manufactured, there has to be a strict containment spell, similar to those used to confine summoned demons. The elf forgot that. He simply set a chunk of knothole wood in the brazier and ignited it with a lightning bug. He assumed it would burn slowly, allowing him to siphon the smoke into the bottles.

  Instead, the entire chunk of wood burst into flame. Suddenly there was a rapidly expanding billow of smoke. The elf should have doused it immediately with a bucket of unholy water, but he panicked and retreated, coughing. He was afraid the smoke would surround him and send him through a hole, and the holes were not yet defined. He could wind up anywhere in Xanth!

  The smoke expanded, filling the chamber. It was enjoying this. The inanimate is always perverse, but holy smoke is more perverse than most, with more power of mischief than most. It was out to catch the elf and send him through that hole regardless.

  The smell of the smoke reached the Gorgon's sensitive nose. She perked up, sniffing. She recognized the smell and screamed warning to me.

  Now I reoriented the mirror and saw what was happening. I hurried down to deal with it. Hugo came down, bearing a bunch of blue-speckled bananas he had just conjured.

  The smoke did not wait on our convenience. It doubled its effort and coursed from chamber to chamber, filling them all, hot on the trail of the fleeing elf. We converged, meeting the elf, who gesticulated wildly as he explained. "The wood—it all caught fire at once— the smoke chased me out—"

  "Cease babbling, elf!" I snapped, justifiably annoyed. I searched through my memory for a smoke containment spell, but naturally couldn't remember the formula at the moment.

  Meanwhile, the smoke, with inanimate cunning, circled around to fill the chamber behind us. I couldn't remember my free-breathing tunneling spell either. A curse on my aging mind! There was nothing to do but step into the one remaining clear chamber, to give me a breather while I cudgeled my memory for the spell I knew was at the tip of my brain.

  We clustered in the center of the chamber. The smoke, knowing it had us trapped, encircled us in a smiling wreath. Then it expanded inward, filling the room. I focused on the errant spell, about to remember it. I did a brief exercise to enhance my memory. In a moment I would have us free and the smoke under control.

  That was when the Lethe wore off. It had been wearing thin anyway, and my effort of memory banished the last of it. "Rose!" I cried, stricken.

  "I have a banana, not a rose," Hugo replied.

  "The Love of my Life!"

  The Gorgon turned to me. "What?" she inquired with somewhat more than ordinary in
terest as the smoke swirled up to enclose us in a constricting bubble of air.

  "My third wife. She's in Hell!"

  "Don't you mean your first wife, the demoness?"

  "No. Rose was human. A princess. I must go to her!"

  "If you go, I go too," the Gorgon said firmly. I can't think why she was interested.

  "Hey, don't leave me behind!" Hugo protested.

  Now the smoke was filling in the last of the air around us. But that was no problem. I uttered a spell to orient the nearest hole. Then I took hold of my wife's hand and my son's hand, and we stepped through. What was to be one of the great temporary mysteries of Xanth was commencing: our abrupt disappearance from the scene.

  We stood on a nearly barren terrain. Nearby we heard the surge of ocean breakers. There were a few trees and a great many weeds. Ahead was a tumbledown shack.

  The Gorgon peered around. Her vision was not good, because she had to look through her thick veil. "Where are we?"

  "The Isle of Illusion," I said. "It is fallow, since the Sorceress Iris left to become queen.

  "Her fabulous residence? No more than this?"

  "No more than this, when stripped of its illusion. I sent her here long ago, and she used her talent to make it a region of wonder."

  "But you were going to see your third wife! Is she here?"

  "I have come here to have a suitable place for my body," I explained. "It has to be well hidden, so that I will not be disturbed while I'm in Hell."

  "I don't want to go to Hell!" Hugo protested.

  "Nobody asked you to, son," I pointed out. "You are free to return to the castle or to go anywhere else you choose."

  He looked disgruntled.

  "Let me make sure I have this straight," the Gorgon said. "You are going to sequester your body here and send your soul to Hell?"

  "Precisely."

  "To be reunited with your third wife, who died some time ago?"

  "Rose didn't die. She went to Hell in a handbasket in the year 1000. I lacked the means to rescue her from Hell, so I took my full supply of Lethe, which happened to be eighty years worth. I assumed I would be dead before it wore off."

  "It seems you miscalculated," she noted. "Do you have the means to rescue Rose now?"

  That set me back. "Not exactly. But I have more experience now, and should be able to figure out a way."

  "And if you bring her back to life, and she is your wife again, what of me?"

  I began to get her drift. "Why, you are my wife too! I wouldn't give you up."

  "That's nice to learn," she remarked to no one in particular.

  "The two of you can divide the tasks. One can cook while the other sorts the socks."

  "A fair division," she agreed, but she seemed to lack conviction.

  "But that can be settled at the time," I said. "First I must recover Rose."

  "Perhaps Hugo and I will wait for you elsewhere," she said. "We do not care particularly for Hell."

  "It's too hot," Hugo agreed. "Fruit must spoil very quickly there."

  He had a point. "Perhaps we can make a deal with the Night Stallion to fashion a nice dream for you, until my return."

  "Perhaps," the Gorgon agreed doubtfully. I realized that she might not consider the dreams of the gourd to be very pleasant. "How long do you expect to be?"

  I hadn't considered that. "Perhaps a day," I opined.

  "We can survive a bad dream for a day," she said. She looked around. "We shall have to find a sheltered place. Then we shall have to devise a strategy."

  "A strategy?"

  "Dearest husband, dealing with the Night Stallion is one thing; he does owe you a favor or two. But Hell is not strictly part of the dream realm. It is, I understand, administered directly by the Demon X(A/N)th. He owes you no favors."

  She had another point. "I shall just have to reason with him. Surely we can make a deal."

  "What kind of a deal? You know he isn't much interested in the affairs of lesser creatures like us."

  "Don't pester me, woman!" I snapped with righteous ire. "I will figure that out on the way down there."

  She knew better than to argue with me. "Very well. Let's find a place to sleep, and then we shall see the Night Stallion. Once Hugo and I are comfortable, you will be free to proceed without worrying about us."

  "Exactly." She had always been a bit quicker to formulate my thoughts than I was.

  So we cast about on the isle, and to our surprise found a sheltered place with a collection of coffins. Evidently the Sorceress Iris had used them to form the walls of her residence when she lived here before becoming queen. Her power of illusion would have made the structure seem like a palace or anything else she wished; it didn't matter what she used in the real world, as long as it was solid enough to last.

  "Why all the boxes?" Hugo asked.

  I had never thought to do a survey of this island, or any other, so I didn't know. But I could conjecture. "Evidently I am not the only one to regard this as a suitably private spot. Someone must be storing coffins here." Indeed, they seemed quite solid and were evidently resistant to weathering, because they remained in good condition.

  Hugo tried to lift the lid of one, but it was nailed on. "There may be someone in it," the Gorgon said, with her veil suggesting a smile. Her facial expressions were evident when one learned to interpret the configurations of the veil; she could even wink. She had been able to do that while her face was invisible, too, though I can't be quite certain how it showed.

  Hugo hastily left the coffin alone. He was no more eager than others to peer into the face of a dead person.

  "There should be some empty ones," I said.

  We found several, together with their lids. We dragged them to a separate spot, packed them with pillows from a pillow bush, and tried them out for size. They were suitable. "Now the two of you don't have to do this," I reminded them. "I expect to take only a day or so. You may wait here or return to the castle—"

  "While you go to Hell to fetch your former wife," the Gorgon said. Somehow I could tell she was going to be unreasonable about this. "I shall go along, at least as far as the dream realm.”

  "Me too," Hugo said.

  "Then I shall put you both to sleep with a spell, and take it myself," I said. "It will endure until I invoke the antidote spell. But I really doubt it is necessary, for such a brief time. This is a very powerful spell, and I dislike wasting such magic when—"

  The Gorgon only stared at me through her veil, and I felt the tingle of her power. Sure enough, she was being unreasonable. I ceased arguing. It was better than getting slowly stoned.

  They got into their coffins and made themselves comfortable. I invoked the sleep spell, and they sank down in it. Not only would it keep them asleep, it would maintain them at the same age as now, no matter how long it endured, without the need of food or water. It suspended their animation, leaving only their minds free to dream. I used this spell because I knew it would enable me to go as far in the dream realm as required, and there was no sense in using a different one on them.

  I set the lids on their coffins, so that they would be protected in case it rained. They would not need to breathe either, so it was fine if the lids were tight.

  Then I climbed into my own. Just before I invoked the spell on myself, I had a thought. I got out and traced a message in the dust on the outside of my coffin: DO NOT DISTURB. I muttered a spell which caused the words to sink into the hard wood, becoming permanent. Then I climbed in again, hauled up the lid, let it settle down into place, and uttered the sleep spell.

  I found myself standing in a pavilion. My wife and son were waiting for me. "If this is the dream realm, it is much the same as the waking one," the Gorgon remarked.

  "Only superficially," I said. "There should be a path leading to the other aspects."

  As I spoke, it appeared: a gold brick road. I could have wished that the dream realm have something more innovative than that, but of course I did not run the dream realm. I s
uppose most folk who spent a lot of time here were not interested in working very hard.

  We set off down it. But it wound around interminably, extending far beyond where the island had originally been; we were no longer on an island. "I wish I had my magic carpet along," I said impatiently.

  The carpet appeared before us. We were all startled. Then Hugo caught on. "You can do anything you want to in a dream," he said. "I wish I could conjure a perfect fruit."

  Suddenly there appeared in his hand a perfect apple. He bit into it. It was evidently good. But when his attention went elsewhere, the apple faded out. Dreams had only seeming substance. It might not be safe to ride this carpet.

  "I wish we were already there," the Gorgon said.

  Suddenly we were there. Her practicality had simplified things again.

  Where we were was at the edge of a rather pleasant village. The road went through the center, and the houses were pretty colors with nice little gardens around them, with flowers and fruits and decorative shrubs. There were people, too, and in a moment they spied us.

  "Oh, newcomers!" a girl exclaimed happily. She hurried up to meet us. She was about ten years old, with pigtails and freckles. "Hello, I'm Electra. Who are you?"

  "I am Good Magician Humfrey," I said, surprised that she did not know of me. I might be a recluse, but I understood that everyone in Xanth knew about the wizened old gnome who gouged the public horrendously. "And this is my wife the Gorgon, and my son Hugo."

  "Is he a prince?" Electra asked.

  "No, merely a boy," I said.

  She studied Hugo. "You must be close to my age."

  Hugo was startled. "I'm older than I look," he said gruffly. "I'm sixteen."

  "Oh, I thought you were thirteen. I'm older than I look, too; I'm twelve, in real time. I know how it is. Wira's sixteen. Would you like to meet her?"

  "I'm looking for Hell," I said. "Tell me where that is, then introduce him to Wira."

  "Okay," the girl said brightly. "You have to take the handbasket." She pointed, and there was a huge basket swinging along on the end of a rope which faded out somewhere above. "But usually only dead folk go down there; it's really not part of the dream realm."