Centaur Aisle (6 page)

"Now this is a secret," Dor explained. "King Trent is lost in Mundania, and I must run the Kingdom until he returns."

"Xanth is in trouble!" Grundy exclaimed.

"That's why I need your help. I don't know how much longer I'll have to be King, and I don't want things to get out of control. You generally have good information—"

"I snoop a lot," Grundy agreed. "Very well; I'll snoop for you. First thing I have to tell you is that the whole palace is sniggering about a certain essay someone wrote for a certain female tutor—"

"That news I can dispense with," Dor said.

"Then there's the gossip about how a certain girl went swimming in her birthday suit, which suit seems to have stretched some since her birth, along with—"

"That, too," Dor said, smiling. "I'm sure you comprehend my needs."

"What's in it for me?"

"Your head."

"He's King, all right," the golem muttered. One of the walls chuckled.

Irene brought in Chet. He was a centaur a little older than Dor, but he seemed younger because centaurs matured more slowly. He was Cherie's son, which meant he was highly educated but very cautious about showing any magic talent. For a long time centaurs had believed they lacked magical talents, because most creatures of Xanth either
had
magic or
were
magic. Modern information had dissipated such superstitions. Chet did have a magic talent; he could make large things small. It was a perfectly decent ability, and many people had fine miniatures he had reduced for them, but it had one drawback; he could not reverse the process. His father was Chester Centaur, which meant Chet tended to be ornery when challenged, and was unhandsome in his human portion. When he reached his full stature, which would not be for some years yet, he would be a pretty solid animal. Dor, despite the maledictions he heaped on the race of centaurs while sweating over one of Cherie's assignments, did like Chet, and had always gotten along with him.

Dor explained the situation. "Certainly I will help," Chet said. He always spoke in an educated manner, partly because he was unconscionably smart, but mostly because his mother insisted. Technically, Cherie was Chet's dam, but Dor refrained from using that term for fear Cherie would perceive the "n" he mentally added to it. Dor had sympathy for Chet; it was probably almost as hard being Cherie's son as it was trying to be King. Chet would not dare misspell any words. "But I am uncertain how I might assist."

"I've just barely figured out decent answers to the problems I've already dealt with," Dor said earnestly. "I'm bound to foul up before long. I need good advice."

"Then you should apply to my mother. Her advice is irrefutable."

"I know. That's
too
authoritative."

Chet smiled. "I suspect I understand." That was as close as he would come to criticizing his dam.

Later in the day Irene managed to bring in Smash. He was the offspring of Crunch the Ogre, and also not yet at full growth—but he was already about twice Dor's mass and strong in proportion. Like all ogres, he was ugly and not smart; his smile would spook a gargoyle, and he could barely pronounce most words, let alone spell them. That quality endeared him to Dor. But the ogre's association with human beings had made him more intelligible and sociable than others of his kind, and he was loyal to his friends. Dor had been his friend for years.

Dor approached this meeting diplomatically. "Smash, I need your help."

The gross mouth cracked open like caked mud in a dehydrated pond. "Sure me help! Who me pulp to kelp?"

"No one, yet," Dor said quickly. Again like all ogres, Smash was prone to rhymes and violence. "But if you could sort of stay within call, in case someone tries to pulp
me—
"

"Pulp me? Who he?"

Dor realized he had presented too convoluted a thought. "When I yell, you come help. Okay?"

"Help whelp!" Smash agreed, finally getting it straight.

Dor's choice of helpers proved fortuitous. Because they were all his peers and friends, they understood his situation better than adults would have and kept his confidences. It was a kind of game—run this Kingdom as if King Trent were merely dallying out of sight, watching them, grading them. It was important not to foul up.

A basilisk wandered into a village, terrorizing the people, because its stare caused them to turn to stone. Dor wasn't sure he could scare it away as he had the sea monster, though it was surely a stupid creature, for basilisks had exceedingly ornery personalities. He couldn't have a boulder conjured to squish it, for King Trent decreed the basilisk to be an endangered species. This was an alien concept the King had brought with him from Mundania—the notion that rare creatures, however horrible, should be protected. Dor did not quite understand this, but he was trying to preserve the Kingdom for Trent's return, so did it Trent's way. He needed some harmless way to persuade the creature to leave human villages alone—and he couldn't even talk its language.

But Grundy the Golem could. Grundy used a helmet and periscope— that was a magic device that bent vision around a corner—to look indirectly at the little monster, and told it about the most baleful she-bask he had ever heard of, who was lurking somewhere in the Dead Forest southeast of Castle Roogna. Since the one Grundy addressed happened to be a cockatrice, the notion of such a henatrice appealed to it. It was no lie; there was a palace guard named Crombie who had the ability to point to things and he had pointed toward that forest when asked where the most baleful female basilisk resided. Of course, sex was mostly illusion among basilisk, since each was generated from the egg of a rooster laid in a dungheap under the Dog Star and hatched by a toad. That was why this was an endangered species, since very few roosters laid eggs in dungheaps under the Dog Star—they tended to get confused and do it under the Cat Star—and most toads had little patience with the seven years it normally required to hatch the egg. But like human beings, the basilisks pursued such illusions avidly. So this cock-bask took off in all haste—i.e., a fast snails pace—for the Dead Forest, where the lonesome hen basked, and the problem had been solved.

Then there was an altercation in the Barracks—the village set up by the old soldiers of Trent's erstwhile Mundane army, dismantled when he came to power. Each had a farmstead, and many had Mundane wives imported to balance the sexual ratio. They could not do magic, but their children had talents, just like the real citizens of Xanth. The old soldiers entertained themselves by setting up a war-games spectacular, using wooden swords and engaging in complex maneuvers. King Trent allowed this sort of exercise, so long as no one was hurt; soldiers unable to stifle their murderous propensities were issued genuine bayonets from bayonet plants cultured for the purpose and were assigned to dragon-hunting duty. They went after those dragons who insisted on raiding human settlements. This tended to eliminate some of the dragons and most of the violent soldiers. It all worked out. But this time there was a difference of opinion concerning a score made by the Red team on the Green team.

The Reds had set up a catapult and fired off a puffball that puffed into lovely smoke at the apex of its flight. In the games, soldiers were not permitted to hurl actual rocks or other dangerous things at each other, to their frustration. The Reds claimed a direct score on the Greens' headquarters tent, wiping out the Green Bean and his Floozie of the Day. The Greens insisted that the Reds' aim had been off, so that they had not, after all, puffed Bean and Floozie. Since the Floozie was the brains of the outfit, this was a significant distinction. The Reds countered that they had surveyed in the positions of their catapult and the target tent, allowed for windage, humidity, air pressure, and stray magic, double-checked the azimuth, elevation, and charge with their Red Pepper and his Doll of the Day, and fired off the mock-shot in excellent faith. The victory should be theirs.

Dor had no idea how to verify the accuracy of the shot. But Chet Centaur did. Lower, middle, and higher math had been pounded into his skull by the flick of a horsewhip at his tail. He reviewed all the figures of the survey, including the Floozie and Doll figures, spoke with the military experts about corrected azimuths and trigonometric functions—which made Dor nervous; it wasn't nice to talk dirty in public—and concluded that the shot had been off-target by seven point three lengths of the Red Pepper's left foot. Presented with formal protests, he engaged in a brief debate in which obscure mathematical spells radiated like little whirlpools and nebulae from his head to clash with those of the Reds. A purple tangent spun into a yellow vector, breaking it in two; an orange cosine ground up a dangling cube root. The Red surveyors, impressed by Chet's competence, conceded the point. However, since the target tent had been twelve Pepper-foots in diameter, it was recognized that the probability of a glancing strike was high, even with due margin for error. The Greens were adjudged to have lost the services of the Floozie, and therefore to be at a serious disadvantage in the engagement. The maneuvers resumed, and Chet returned to Castle Roogna, problem solved.

Then a huge old rock-maple tree fell across one of the magic paths leading to Castle Roogna. This was a well-traveled path, and it was not safe to leave it, for beyond its protection the nickelpedes lurked. No one would risk setting foot into a nickelpede nest, for the vicious little creatures, five times the size and ferocity of centipedes, would instantly gouge out nickels of flesh. The tree had to be cleared—but the rock was far too heavy for any ordinary person to move.

Smash the Ogre took a hammer, marched down the path, and blasted away at the fallen trunk. He was as yet a child ogre, not more than half again as tall as Dor, so possessed of only a fraction of his eventual strength, but an ogre was an ogre at any age. The hummer clanged resoundingly, the welkin rang, the stone cracked asunder, dust flew up in clouds that formed a small dust storm wherein dust devils played, and fragments of maple shot out like shrapnel. Soon the little ogre had hewn a path-sized section through the trunk, so that people could pass again. The job had been simple enough for him, though as an adult, he would not have needed the hammer. He would merely have picked up the whole trunk and heaved it far away.

So it went. Another week passed—and still King Trent and Queen Iris did not return. Irene's nervousness was contagious. "You've got to
do
something, Dor!" she screamed, and several ornamental plants in the vicinity swelled up and burst, responding to her frustration.

"The Elders won't let me go after him," he said, as nervous as she.

"You do something right now, Dor, or I'll make your life completely miserable!"

Dor quailed anew. This was no empty bluff. She could make him miserable on her good days; how bad would it be when she really tried? "I'll consult with Crombie," he said.

"What good will that do?" she demanded. "My father is in Mundania; Crombie can't point out his location beyond the realm of magic."

"I have a feeble notion," Dor said.

When Crombie arrived, Dor put it to him: how about pointing out something that would help them locate King Trent? Crombie could point to anything, even an idea; if there were some device or some person with special information—

Crombie closed his eyes, spun about, flung out one arm, and pointed south.

Dor was almost afraid to believe it. "There really is something that will help?"

"I never point wrong," Crombie said with certainty. He was a stout, graying soldier of the old school, who had a wife named Jewel who lived in the nether caves of Xanth, and a daughter named Tandy of whom no one knew anything. Jewel had been a nymph of the rock; it was her job to salt the earth with all the diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, opals, spinels, and other gemstones that prospectors were destined eventually to find. She was said to be a lovely, sweet, and tolerant woman now, satisfied to see Crombie on those irregular occasions when he got around to visiting her. Dor understood that Jewel had once loved his father Bink, or vice versa— that had never been made quite clear—but that Crombie had captured her heart with a wish-spell. Love had transformed her from nymph to woman; that process, too, was not quite within Dor's comprehension. What was the distinction between a nymph and a girl like Irene? "Sometimes people interpret it wrong, but the point is always right," Crombie finished.

"Uh, do you have any idea how far it is?"

"Can't really tell, but pretty far, I think. I could triangulate for you, maybe." He went to another room of the castle and tried again. The point remained due south. "Too far to get a proper fix. Down beyond Lake Ogre-Chobee, I'd say."

Dor knew about that lake; it had been part of the geography Cherie Centaur had drilled into him. A tribe of fiends lived beneath it, who hurled curses at anyone who bothered them; they had driven off most of the ogres who had once resided on its shores. A number of those displaced ogres had migrated north, settling in the Ogre-fen-Ogre Fen; woe betide the curse-fiend who tried to follow them there! He didn't want to go to that lake; anything that could drive away a tribe of ogres was certainly too much for him to handle.

"But you're sure it will help us?" Dor asked nervously. "Not curse us?"

"You hard of hearing, Your Majesty? I said so before." Crombie was a friend of Dor's a father and of King Trent; he did not put up with much nonsense from youngsters who had not even existed when he was sowing his wild oats. All he sowed now were tame oats; Jewel saw to that.

"How
will it help us?" Irene asked.

"How should I know?" Crombie demanded. He was also a woman hater; this was another aspect of his personality whose consistency eluded Dor. How could a tamely married man hate women? Evidently Irene had changed, in Crombie's eyes, from child to woman; indeed, there was something in the way the old soldier looked at her now that made Irene tend to fade back. She played little games of suggestion with a harmless person like Dor, but lost her nerve when confronted by a real man, albeit an old one like Crombie. "I don't define policy, I only point the way."