"Let's take another walk around the island," Dor said. "Grundy, you go with Arnolde and talk to the plants and creatures you encounter; ask them how long magic has been here. The rest of us will spread out and wait for Arnolde to approach. If our magic fades out during his absence, and returns when he comes near--"
Grudgingly the centaur cooperated. He set out on a trot around the island, pretty spry for his age, the golem perching on his back.
No sooner were they on their way than Dor's magic ceased. The sunstone no longer shone, and he could no longer talk to the inanimate. It was evident that Irene and Smash were similarly discommoded.
In a few minutes the circuit was complete. They compared notes.
"The magic was with us all along," Grundy reported. "But all the plants and shellfish said it had come only when we were there."
"When he go, me not rhyme," Smash said angrily. "Not even worth a dime."
That was extreme distress for the ogre. Dor had not realized that his rhyming was magic-related. Maybe frustration had flustered him or maybe magic had shaped the lives of the creatures of Xanth far more than had been supposed. Irene's hair, Smash's rhymes...
"My potted petunia would not grow at all," Irene said. "But when the centaur came near, it grew and got roaring drunk."
"And my talent operated only when Arnolde was near," Dor said.
"So my talent seems to be dependent on his presence here, as with the rest of you. Since I am a full Magician, what does that make Arnolde?
"A Magician's Magician," Irene said. "A catalyst for magic."
"But I never performed any magic in my life!" Arnolde protested, still somewhat in shock. "Never!"
"You don't perform it, you promote it," Dor said. "You represent an island of magic, an extension of Xanth into Mundania. Wherever you go, magic is there. This is certainly a Magician’s talent."
"How could that be true, when there was no indication of it in all my prior life? I cannot have changed!"
But now Dor had an answer. "You left Xanth only recently, you said. You came to this Mundane island for research. Good Magician Humfrey's magic indicators never oriented on you before because you are completely camouflaged in Xanth proper; you are like a section of mist in the middle of a cloud. But when you left Xanth, your power manifested, triggering the alarms. Once the indicators had oriented on you, they continued to point you out; maybe your presence makes magic slightly more effective, since Centaur Isle is near the fringe of magic. It's like a bug on a distant leaf; once you know exactly where it is, you can see it. But you can't locate it when it sits still and you don't even know it exists."
Arnolde's shoulders slumped and his coat seemed to lose luster.
He was an appaloosa centaur, with white spots on his brown flank, a natural blanket that made him quite handsome. Now the spots were fading out. "I fear you, are correct. My associates always considered this to be a Mundane island; I thought them mistaken. But oh, what havoc this wreaks on my career! The profession of a lifetime ruined! I can never return to the museum."
"Do the other centaurs have to know?" Grundy asked.
"I may be contaminated by obscene magic," Arnolde said gravely. "But it is beneath me to prevaricate."
Dor considered the attitude of the various centaurs he had known.
He realized Arnolde was right. The archivist could not conceal the truth, and the other centaurs would not tolerate a centaur Magician in their society. They had exiled Herman the Hermit in the past generation, then termed him a hero after he was dead. Some reward!
Dor's quest had gained him nothing and had destroyed the livelihood and pride of a decent centaur. He felt responsible; he had never wanted to hurt anyone this way.
The moon had been descending into the ocean. Now, just before it got soaked, it seemed to have swelled. Great and round and greenish, its cheese was tantalizingly close. Dor gazed at it, pondering its maplike surface. Could a column of smoke lead all the way up to the moon, and could they use the salve some day to. Then he suffered an awful realization. "The curse!" he cried.
The centaur glanced dourly at him. "You have certainly cursed me, King Dor."
"The magic salve we used to tread the clouds--it had a curse attached. Whoever used it would do some dastardly deed before the next full moon. This is our deed; we have forced you out of your satisfied existence and made you into something you abhor. The curse made us do it."
"Such curses are a readily avoidable nuisance," the centaur remarked. "All that is required is an elementary curse-counterspell. There are dozens in our archives; we don't even file them carefully. Ironic that this ignorance on your part should have such a serious consequence for me."
"Do something, Dor," Irene said.
"What is there to be done?" Arnolde asked disconsolately. "I’m rendered at one fell stroke into an exile."
But Dor, cudgeling his brain under pressure, had a sudden explosion of genius. "You take magic with you anywhere you go," he said.
"Right into Mundania. This relates in all the three ways we were warned. It is certainly a matter I must attend to, for the existence of any new Magician in Xanth is the King's business. It also could pose a threat to Xanth, for If you go out into Mundania on your own, taking that magic with you, bad people could capture you and somehow use your magic for evil. But most important, somewhere in Mundania is someone we fear is trapped or in trouble, who perhaps needs this magic to escape. Now if I were to take you into Mundania proper--"
"We could rescue my father!" Irene exclaimed, jumping up and down and clapping her hands in the manner of her kind. She bounced phenomenally, so that even the centaur paused to look, as if regretting his species and his age. "Oh, Dor, I could kiss you!" And without waiting for his reaction, she grabbed him and kissed him with joyful savagery on the mouth. In that moment of hyper-animation she became very special, radiant and compelling in the best sort of way; but by the time he realized it, she was already away and talking to the centaur.
"Arnolde, if you have to be exiled anyway, you might as well come with us. We don't care about your magic--not negatively, I mean--we all of us have talents. And think of the artifacts you can collect deep in Mundania; you can start your own museum. And if you help rescue my father, King Trent--"
The centaur was visibly wavering. Obviously he did not like the notion of exile, but could not return to his job on Centaur Isle. "And the centaurs around Castle Roogna are used to magic," Irene continued apace. "Chester Centaur plays a magic silver flute, and his uncle was Herman the Hermit. He would be glad for your company, and--"
"I believe I have little alternative," Arnolde said heavily.
"You will help us? Oh, thank you!" Irene cried, and she flung her arms about the centaur's forepart and kissed him, too. Arnolde was visibly startled, but not entirely displeased; his white spots wavered.
Dor suffered a wash of jealousy, thinking of the legend of the origin of the centaurs. Kisses between different species were not necessarily innocent, as that legend showed. But it seemed Irene had convinced the centaur Magician to help, and that was certainly worthwhile.
Then Dor remembered another complication. "We can't just leave for Mundania. The Council of Elders would never permit it."
"How can they prevent it?" Irene asked, glancing meaningfully at him.
"But we must at least tell them--"
"Chet can tell them. He has to go home anyway."
Dor tried to dissemble. "I don't know--?"
Then Irene focused her stare on him full-force, daring him to attempt to balk her; she was extremely pretty in her challenge, and Dor knew their course was set. She intended to rescue her father, no matter what.
They sailed the two rafts back to Centaur Isle that night. In the process they discovered that Arnolde's ambience of magic extended farthest toward the front, perhaps fifteen paces, and half that distance to the rear. It was least potent to the sides, going hardly beyond the centaur's reach. It was, in fact, less an isle of magic than an
aisle, always preceding the centaur's march. Thus the second raft was able to precede Arnolde's raft comfortably, or to follow it closely, but not to travel beside it. They had verified that the hard way, having the magic propulsion fail, until Arnolde turned to face them.
Once they re-entered the main magic of Xanth, Arnolde's power was submerged. It seemed to make no difference how close he was or which way he faced; there was no enhancement of enchantment near him. But of course they had no way to measure the intensity of magic in his vicinity accurately.
Grundy sneaked in to wake Chet and explain the situation, while Arnolde researched in his old tomes for the best and swiftest route to Mundania. He reported that there was the tunnel the sun used to return from the ocean east to its position of rising, drying out and recharging along the way. This tunnel would be suitable by day, when the sun wasn't using it; they could trot right along it.
"But that would take us west," Irene protested. "My father left Xanth to the north."
Dor had to agree. "The standard route to Mundania is across the northwest isthmus. We must go there and hope to pick up traces of his passage. We can't use the sun's tunnel. But it's a long way to the isthmus, and I don't think we want to make another trip like the one down the coast; we might never get there. Are there any other good notions?"
"Well, tomorrow is destined to have intermittent showers,” Arnolde said. "There should be a rainbow. There is a spell in the archives for traveling the rainbow. It is very fast, for rainbows do not endure long. There is some risk--"
"Speed is what we need," Dor said, remembering his dream visions, where there had been a sensation of urgency. "I think King Trent is in trouble and needs to be rescued soon. Maybe not in the next day, but I don't think we can afford to wait a month."
"There is also the problem of mounting the rainbow," Arnolde said. Now that he had accepted the distasteful notion of his own magic, his mind was relating to the situation very readily. Perhaps it was because he was trained in the handling of information and knew how to organize it. "Part of the rainbow's magic, as you know, is that it appears equally distant from all observers, with its two ends touching the ground equally far from them, north and south. We must ascend to its top, then slide down quickly before it fades."
"The salve!" Grundy said. "We can mount smoke to a cloud, and run across the cloud to the top of the rainbow, if we start early, be fore the rainbow forms."
"You just don't understand," the centaur said. "It will seem just as far from us when we board the cloud. Catching a rainbow is one of the hardest things to do."
"I can see why," Dor muttered. "How can we catch one If it always retreats?"
"Excise the eyes," Smash suggested, covering his own gross orbs with his gauntleted mitts.
"Of course the monster is right," Arnolde said, not looking at Smash, whom he seemed to find objectionable. "That is the obvious solution."
It was hardly obvious to Dor. "How can covering our eyes get us to the rainbow?"
"It can hardly appear distant If you don't look at it," Arnolde said.
"Yes, but--"
"I get it," Grundy said. "We spot it, then close our eyes and go to where we saw it, and it can't get away because we aren't looking at it. Simple."
"But somebody has to look at it, or it isn't there," Irene protested.
"Chet can look at it," Grundy said. "He's not going on it anyway."
Dor distrusted this, but the others seemed satisfied. "Let's get some sleep tonight and see what happens tomorrow," he said, hoping it all made sense.
They slept late, but that was all right because the intermittent rain wasn't due until midmorning. Arnolde dutifully acquainted the centaur Elders with his situation; as expected, they encouraged him to depart the Isle forever at his very earliest convenience, without directly referring to the reason for his loss of status in their community. A Magician was not wanted here; they could not be comfortable with him. They would let it be known that Arnolde was retiring for reasons of health, so as to preserve his reputation, and they would arrange to break in a new archivist. No one would know his shame.
To facilitate his prompt departure they provided him with a useful assortment of spells and counterspells for his journey, and wished him well.
"The hypocrites!" Irene exclaimed. "For fifty years Arnolde serves them well, and now, suddenly, just because--"
"I said you would not comprehend the nuances of centaur society," Chet reminded her, though he did not look comfortable himself.
Irene shut up rebelliously. Dor liked her better for her feeling, however. It was time to leave Centaur Isle, and not just because they had a new mission.
The intermittent clouds formed and made ready to shower. Dor set up a smudge pot and got a column of smudge angling up to intersect the cloud level. They applied the salve to their feet and hands, invoked the curse-counterspells Arnolde distributed, and marched up the column. Arnolde adjusted to this odd climb remarkably well for his age; he had evidently kept himself in traveling shape by making archaeological field trips.
For a moment they paused to turn back to face Chet, who was standing on the beach, watching for the rainbow. Dor found himself choking up, and could only wave. "I hope to see you again, cousin," Arnolde called. Chet was not related to him; what he referred to was the unity of their magic talents. "And meet your sire." And Chet smiled, appreciating the thought.
When they reached the cloud layer, they donned blindfolds.
"Clouds," Dor said, "tell us where the best path to the top of the rainbow is. Don't let any of us step too near the edge of you."
"What rainbow?" the nearest cloud asked.
"The one that is about to form, that my friend Chet Centaur will see from the ground."
"Oh, that rainbow. It isn't here yet. It hasn't finished its business on the eastern coast of Xanth."
"Well, guide us to where it's going to be."
"Why don't you open your eyes and see it for yourself?" the canny cloud asked. The inanimate was often perverse, and the many folds and convolutions of clouds made them smarter than average.
"Just guide us," Dor said.
"Aw." But the cloud had to do it.
There was a popping sound behind them, down on the ground.
"That's the popcorn I gave Chet," Irene said. "I told him to set it off when he saw the rainbow. Now that rainbow is fixed in place, as long as he looks at it and we don't; we must be almost upon it."
"Are we?" Dor asked the cloud.
"Yeah," the cloud conceded grudgingly. "It's right ahead, though it has no head. That's cumulus humor."
"Rainbow!" Dor called. "Sing out If you hear me!"
Back came the rainbow's song: "Tra-la-la-fol-de-rol!" It sounded beautiful and multicolored.
They hurried over to it. Once they felt its smooth surface projecting above the cloud and climbed upon it, they removed their blindfolds; the rainbow could no longer work its deceptive magic.
The rainbow was fully as lovely as it sounded. Bands of red and yellow, blue and green, extended lengthwise, and sandwiched between them, where ground observers couldn't see them, were the secret riches of the welkin: bands of polka-dot, plaid, and checkerboard. Some internal bands were translucent, and some blazed with colors seldom imagined by man, like fortissimo, charm, phon, and torque. It would have been easy to become lost in their wonders, and Irene seemed inclined to do just that, but the rainbow would not remain here long. It seemed rainbows had tight schedules, and this one was due for a showing somewhere in Mundania in half an hour.
Some magic, it seemed, did extend to Mundania; Dor wondered briefly whether the Mundanes would have the same trouble actually catching up to a rainbow, or whether there it would stay in place regardless how the viewers moved.
Arnolde brought out his rainbow-travel spell, which was sealed in a paper packet. He tore it open--and abruptly they began to slide.
The speed was phenomenal. They zoomed past the clouds, then down into the faintly rainy regi
on below, plunging horrendously toward the sea to the north.
Below them was the land of Xanth, a long peninsula girt by thin islands along the coastlines. Across the center of it was the jagged chasm of the Gap that separated the northern half of Xanth from the southern. It appeared on no maps because no one remembered it, but this was no map. It was reality, as viewed from the rainbow. There were a number of lakes, such as Ogre-Chobee in the south, but no sign of the human settlements Dor knew were there. Man had simply not made much of an impression on Xanth, physically.
"Fun begun!" Smash cried joyfully.
"Eeek--my skirt!" Irene squealed as the mischievous gusts whipped it up, displaying her legs to the whole world. Dor wondered why she insisted on wearing a skirt despite such constant inconveniences; pants of some kind would have solved the problems decisively. Then it occurred to him that she might not want that particular problem solved. She was well aware that her legs were the finest features of a generally excellent body and perhaps was not averse to letting the world know it also. If she constantly protested any inadvertent exposures that occurred, how could anyone blame her for showing herself off? She had a pretty good system going.
Dor and Grundy and Arnolde, less sanguine about violence than the ogre and less modest than Irene, hung on to the sliding arc of the rainbow and stared ahead and down with increasing misgiving.
How were they to stop, once the end came? The descent was drawing close at an alarming velocity. The northern shoreline of Xanth loomed rapidly larger, the curlicues of beaches magnifying. The ocean in this region seemed oddly reddish; Dor hoped that wasn't from the blood of prior travelers of the rainbow. Of course it wasn't; how could he think such a thought?
Then the travel-spell reversed, and they slid rapidly slower until, as they reached the water at the end of the rainbow, they were moving at no more than a running pace. They plunged into the crimson water and swam for the shore to the north. The color was not blood; it was translucently thin, up close. Dor was relieved.
Now that he could no longer see it from the air, Dor remembered other details of Xanth. The length of it was north-south, with the narrowest portion near where his grandfather Elder Roland's village was, in the middle north on the western side. At the top, Xanth extended west, linking to Mundania by the isthmus they were headed for--and somehow Mundania beyond that isthmus seemed huge, much larger than Xanth. Dor decided that must be a misimpression; surely Mundania was about the same size as Xanth, or somewhat smaller. How could a region of so little importance be larger, especially without magic?
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