Centaur Aisle (2 page)

She took a deep breath, inflating herself against him. "I'll scream," she breathed in his ear, taunting him.

But Dor knew how to handle her. "I'll tickle," he breathed back.

"That's not fair!" For she could not scream realistically while giggling, and she was hyperticklish, perhaps because she thought it was fashionable for young ladies to be so. She had heard somewhere that ticklishness made girls more appealing.

Irene's hand moved swiftly, trying to tuck the paper into her bosom, where she knew he wouldn't dare go for it. But Dor had encountered this ploy before, too, and he caught her wrist en route. He finally got his fingers on the essay-paper, for he was stronger than she, and she also deemed it unladylike to fight too hard. Image was almost as important to her as mischief. She let the paper go, but tried yet another ploy. She put her arms around him. "I'll kiss."

But he was ready even for that. Her kisses could change to bites without notice, depending on her mercurial mood. She was not to be trusted, though in truth the close struggle had whetted his appetite for some such diversion. She was scoring on him better than she knew. "Your mother's watching."

Irene turned him loose instantly. She was a constant tease; but in her mother's presence she always behaved angelically. Dor wasn't sure why this was so, but suspected that the Queen's desire to see Irene become Queen after her had something to do with it. Irene didn't want to oblige her mother any more than she wanted to oblige anyone else, and expressing overt interest in Dor would constitute a compromising attitude. The Queen resented Dor because he was a full Magician while her daughter was not, but she was not about to let him make anyone else's daughter Queen. Irene, ironically, did want to be Queen, but also wanted to spite her mother, so she always tried to make it seem that Dor was chasing her while she resisted. The various facets of this cynical game became complex on occasion.

Dor himself wasn't sure how he felt about it all. Four years ago, when he was twelve, he had gone on an extraordinary adventure into Xanth's past and had occupied the body of a grown, muscular, and highly coordinated barbarian. He had learned something about the ways of men and women. Since he had had an opportunity to play with adult equipment before getting there himself, he had an inkling that the little games Irene played were more chancy than she knew. So he stayed somewhat clear, rejecting her teasing advances, though this was not always easy. Sometimes he had strange, wicked dreams, wherein he called one of her bluffs, and it wasn't exactly a bluff, and then the hand of an anonymous censor blotted out a scene of impending fascination.

"Dumbo!" Irene exclaimed irately, staring at the still picture on the wall. "My mother isn't watching us!"

"Got you off my case, though, didn't it?" Dor said smugly. "You want to make like Millie the Ghost, and you don't have the stuff." That was a double-barreled insult, for Millie—who had stopped being a ghost before Dor was born, but retained the identification—was gifted with magical sex appeal, which she had used to snare one of the few Magicians of Xanth, the somber Zombie Master. Dor himself had helped bring that Magician back to life for her, and now they had three-year-old twins. So Dor was suggesting to Irene that she lacked sex appeal and womanliness, the very things she was so assiduously striving for. But it was a hard charge to make stick, because Irene was really not far off the mark. If he ever forgot she was the palace brat, he would be in trouble, for what hidden censor would blot out a dream-turned-real? Irene could be awfully nice when she tried. Or maybe it was when she stopped trying; he wasn't sure.

"Well, you better get that dumb essay done, or Cherie Centaur will step on you," Irene said, putting on a new mood. "I'll help you spell the words if you want."

Dor didn't trust that either. "I'd better struggle through on my own."

"You'll flunk. Cherie doesn't put up with your kind of ignorance."

"I know," he agreed glumly. The centaur was a harsh taskmistress— which was of course why she had been given the job. Had her mate Chester done the tutoring, Dor would have learned much about archery, swordplay, and bare-knuckle boxing, but his spelling would have sunk to amazing new depths. King Trent had a sure hand in delegating authority.

"I know what!" Irene exclaimed. "You need a spelling bee!"

"A what?"

"I'll fetch one," she said eagerly. Now she was in her helpful guise, and this was especially hard to resist, since he did need help. "They are attracted by letter plants. Let me get one from my collection." She was off in a swirl of sweet scent; it seemed she had started wearing perfume.

Dor, by dint of phenomenal effort, squeezed out another sentence. "Everyone In Xanth has his one magic talent; no two are the same," he said as he wrote. Thirteen more words. What a deadly chore!

"That's not true," the table said. "My talent is talking. Lots of things talk."

"You're not a person, you're a thing," Dor informed it brusquely. "Talking isn't your talent, it's mine. I make inanimate things talk."

"Awww . . ." the table said sullenly.

Irene breezed back in with a seed from her collection and an earth-filled flowerpot. "Here it is." In a moment she had the seed planted—it was in the shape of the letter L—and had given it the magic command: "Grow," It sprouted and grew at a rate nature could not duplicate. For that was her talent—the green thumb. She could grow a giant acorn tree from a tiny seed in minutes, when she concentrated, or cause an existing plant to swell into monstrous proportions. Because she could not transform a plant into a totally different creature, as could her father, or give animation to lifeless things, as Dor and the Zombie Master could, she was deemed to be less than a Sorceress, and this had been her lifelong annoyance. But what she could do, she could do well, and that was to grow plants.

The letter plant sent its main stalk up the breadth of a hand. Then it branched and flowered, each blossom in the form of a letter of the alphabet, all the letters haphazardly represented. The flowers emitted a faint, odd odor a bit like ink and a bit like musty old tomes.

Sure enough, a big bee in a checkered furry jacket arrived to service the plant. It buzzed from letter to letter, harvesting each and tucking it into little baskets on its six legs. In a few minutes it had collected them all and was ready to fly away.

But Irene had closed the door and all the windows. "That was my letter plant," she informed the bee. "You'll have to pay for those letters."

"BBBBBB," the bee buzzed angrily, but acceded. It knew the rules. Soon she had it spelling for Dor. All he had to do was say a word, and the bee would lay down its flower-letters to spell it out. There was nothing a spelling bee couldn't spell.

"All right, I've done my good deed for the day," Irene said. "I'm going out and swim with Zilch. Don't let the bee out until you've finished your essay, and don't tell my mother I stopped bugging you, and check with me when you're done."

"Why should I check with you?" he demanded. "You're not my tutor!"

"Because I have to be able to say I nagged you until you got your stupid homework done, idiot," she said sensibly. "Once you clear with me, we're both safe for the day. Got it straight now, knothead?"

Essentially, she was proffering a deal; she would leave him alone if he didn't turn her in for doing it. It behooved him to acquiesce. "Straight, green-nose," he agreed.

"And watch that bee," she warned as she slipped out the door. "It's got to spell each word right, but it won't tell you if you have the wrong word." The bee zoomed for the aperture, but she closed it quickly behind her.

"All right, spelling bee," Dor said. "I don't enjoy this any more than you do. The faster we get through, the faster we both get out of here."

The bee was not satisfied, but buzzed with resignation. It was accustomed to honoring rules, for there were no rules more finicky and senseless than those for spelling words.

Dor read aloud his first two sentences, pausing after every word to get the spelling. He did not trust the bee, but knew it was incapable of misspelling a word, however much it might wish to, to spite him.

"Some can conjure things," he continued slowly, "and others can make a hole, or illusions, or can soar through the air. But in Mundania no one does magic, so it's very dull. There are not any dragons there. Instead there are bear and horse and a great many other monsters."

He stopped to count the words. All the way up to eighty-two! Only eight more to go—no, more than that; his fingers had run out. Twenty-eight to go. But he had already covered the subject. What now?

Well, maybe some specifics. "Our ruler is King Trent, who has reigned for seventeen years. He transforms people into other creatures." There were another seventeen words, bringing the total to—say, it was ninety-nine words! He must have miscalculated before. One more word and he'd be done!

But what one word would finish it? He couldn't think of one. Finally he made a special effort and squeezed out another whole sentence: "No one gets chased here; we fare in peace." But that was nine more words—eight more than he needed. It really hurt him to waste energy like that!

Sigh. There was no help for it. He would have to use the words, now that he had ground them out. He wrote them down as the bee spelled them, pronouncing each carefully so the bee would get it right. He was sure the bee had little or no sense of continuity; it merely spelled on an individual basis.

In a fit of foolish generosity, he fired off four more valuable words: "My tale is done." That made the essay one hundred and twelve words. Cherie Centaur should give him a top grade for that!

"Okay, spelling bee," he said. "You've done your part. You're free, with your letters." He opened the window and the bee buzzed out with a happy "BBBBBB!"

"Now I need to deliver it to my beloved female tutor, may fleas gnaw her coat," he said to himself. "How can I do that without her catching me for more homework?" For he knew, as all students did, that the basic purpose of instruction was not so much to teach young people good things as to fill up all their time unpleasantly. Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.

"Are you asking me?" the floor asked.

Inanimate things seldom had much wit, which was why he hadn't asked any for help in his spelling. "No, I'm just talking to myself."

"Good. Then I don't have to tell you to get a paper wasp."

"I couldn't catch a paper wasp anyway. I'd get stung."

"You wouldn't have to catch it. It's trapped under me. The fool blundered in during the night and can't find the way out; it's dark down there."

This was a positive break. "Tell it I'll take it safely out if it'll deliver one paper for me."

There was a mumble as the floor conversed with the wasp. Then the floor spoke to Dor again. "It's a fair sting, it says."

"Very well. Tell it where there's a crack big enough to let it through to this room."

Soon the wasp appeared. It was large, with a narrow waist and fine reddish-brown color: an attractive female of her species, marred only by shreds of dust on her wings. "WWWWWW?" she buzzed, making the dust fly off so that she was completely pretty again.

Dor gave her the paper and opened the window again. "Take this to the lady centaur Cherie. After that you're on your own."

She perched momentarily on the sill, holding the paper. "WWWWWW?" she asked again.

Dor did not understand wasp language, and his friend Grundy the Golem, who did, was not around. But he had a fair notion what the wasp was thinking of. "No, I wouldn't advise trying to sting Cherie. She can crack her tail about like a whip, and she never misses a fly." Or the seat of someone's pants, he added mentally, when someone was foolish enough to backtalk about an assignment. Dor had learned the hard way.

The wasp carried the paper out the window with a satisfied hum. Dor knew it would deliver; like the spelling bee, it had to be true to its nature. A paper wasp could not mishandle a paper.

Dor went out to report to Irene. He found her on the south side of the castle in a bathing suit, swimming with a contented sea cow and feeding the cow handfuls of sea oats she was magically growing on the bank. Zilch mooed when she saw Dor, alerting Irene.

"Hi, Dor—come in swimming!" Irene called.

"In the moat with the monsters?" he retorted.

"I grew a row of blackjack oaks across it to buttress the wallflowers," she said. "The monsters can't pass."

Dor looked. Sure enough, a moat-monster was pacing the line, staying just clear of the blackjacks. It nudged too close at one point and got tagged by a well-swung blackjack. There was no passing those trees!

Still, Dor decided to stay clear. He didn't trust what Zilch might have done in the water. "I meant the monsters on this side," he said. "I just came to report that the paper is finished and off to the tutor."

"Monsters on this side!" Irene repeated, glancing down at herself. "Sic him, Weedles!"

A tendril reached out of the water and caught his ankle. Another one of her playful plants! "Cut that out!" Dor cried, windmilling as the vine yanked at his leg. It was no good; he lost his balance and fell into the moat with a great splash.

"Ho, ho, ho!" the water laughed. "Guess that doused your fire!" Dor struck at the surface furiously with his fist, but it did no good. Like it or not, he was swimming in all his clothes.

"Hey, I just thought of something," Irene called. "That spelling bee— did you define the words for it?"

"No, of course not," Dor spluttered, frying to scramble out of the water but getting tangled in the tendrils of the plant that had pulled him in. Pride prevented him from asking Irene for help, though one word from her would tame the plant.

She saw the need, however. "Easy, Weedles," she said, and the plant eased off. Then she returned to her subject. "There may be trouble. If you used any homonyms—"