Luck of the Draw (Xanth) Read online

  “I am Princess Dawn, wife of Picka Bone here. I must explain that I am also a Sorceress. My talent is to immediately know anything about any living thing I touch. Thus I know about you. Bryce, you are freshly from Mundania, a land almost bereft of magic.” She smiled, and the room seemed to brighten. “There are traces of it, such as your rainbows that can be seen only from one side, and perspective, where distant objects hurry to keep up with close ones without actually moving. But aside from such minor effects it is a remarkably drear world. This is the Land of Xanth, which in contrast has magic everywhere. It is for my taste a much preferable place to live.” She grimaced. “Except, perhaps, for the puns. But we are doing what we can to reduce them.”

  “I never was very good at puns,” Bryce admitted. “But my companion, the dog—can you check her too?”

  Dawn knelt before the dog and put her hand on a shoulder. “And you are Rachel, a German short-haired pointer highly trained as a Service Dog. But your master died, and they were going to put you down, so you left. Bryce reminded you of your owner, in that he needed help, and you really like to help, so you befriended him. Now you can talk, or at least say the few words you were trained to obey, but you understand many more.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said.

  “The point is that both of you will find it strange here, especially at first. But you will acclimatize, and you are welcome to remain here in Caprice as our guests until you do.”

  “Until we return to Mundania, as you put it,” Bryce agreed.

  “Until you are ready to live on your own in Xanth. I don’t believe you can return to your own realm. Not by your own choice. You passed through a one-way portal when you spoke the magic words.”

  Bryce was astonished. “You mean those were the magic words the book told me to utter? ‘The magic words’?”

  “Yes. You are unusual in that you did not die first.”

  “That won’t be long,” he said. “A year or two.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “You surely have a good sixty years ahead of you, before you fade out, if you stay clear of dragons and other dangers.”

  He shook his head. “I am eighty years old, and in poor health.” He glanced down at his body. “Or I was, until I mysteriously arrived here. I assume I’m dreaming, and my real body remains a wreck.”

  “You are mistaken. You have been gifted with four magical things, and Rachel with three, and you have no choice but to work through them as well as you can.”

  She seemed very certain, so he didn’t argue further. He ticked them off on his fingers. “A youth potion. Blurred vision. A pass to this magic land. There is another?”

  “A youth potion that makes you age twenty-one, physically,” she agreed. “And healthy. The illnesses you had in Mundania are gone. The blurred vision is actually a magic talent, second sight. You can see, hear, and feel ten seconds into the future with your left side, while your right side is normal. This is nice magic; it could be quite useful on occasion, such as if a dragon were about to pounce. It will give you that time to take evasive action, possibly saving your life. Because you are young, not immortal. All you need to do is take a few days to attune, so it no longer confuses you. You are correct about the pass to Xanth.”

  “So what is the fourth gift?” he inquired skeptically.

  “You have been imprinted with romantic love for my younger cousin, Princess Harmony.”

  Bryce laughed. “I am long beyond love, let alone for a young princess. She must be a teen.”

  “Sixteen,” Dawn agreed.

  “Younger than my youngest granddaughter. Believe me, I know better than to get romantic about a child.”

  Dawn glanced at the skeleton. “Picka, dear, please bring a mirror.”

  A mirror?

  The skeleton got up, walked to a wall, and took down a hanging mirror. He brought it to Bryce. He looked in it, and was amazed.

  It did not reflect his face. Instead it showed a pretty girl with brown hair and eyes, as well as a matching brown dress. “Well, hello Harmony,” he breathed.

  She looked startled. “Who are you?”

  She had heard him! What magic was this?

  “It is a magic mirror, of course,” Dawn said. She raised her voice. “Harmony, this is Bryce from Mundania. He will be courting you.”

  “He will be what?” Harmony asked, astonished and not entirely pleased.

  “I suspect it is a Demon wager to select your ideal man,” Dawn said. “You being the only remaining unattached princess of your generation. It is the most feasible way to account for the rather special effects I have noted associated with Bryce Mundane here. There may be other suitors. We must meet in a few days to consider this.”

  “I’m not courting any teen girl!” Bryce protested.

  “Well, nobody asked you to,” Harmony retorted. “I’m not ready for courting or marriage yet, and certainly not to any Mundane.”

  “But he loves you,” Dawn said.

  “I do not!” Bryce snapped. Then paused, frozen in place.

  Because he did love her. Utterly, hopelessly, eternally. He didn’t know her, but he was overwhelmed with romantic passion for her.

  Dawn had made her point. That was some imprinting.

  Picka removed the mirror and the contact was broken. But Bryce was left with his sudden love.

  “And you, Rachel, seem to have picked up some of the magic because you were with Bryce when he invoked it. You are now young and healthy, you can speak, and you have a more subtle magic talent of finding useful things. You have been imprinted with love for a dog you have not yet met, though your loyalty to Bryce might be considered similar.”

  Bryce exchanged a glance with Rachel. Both of them were confused but impressed.

  “What’s this about a Demon bet?” Picka asked.

  “It is the way they operate,” Dawn explained. “They like to make wagers on random things, such as how a given mortal will react to a particular stimulus. Such as this.”

  “So Bryce may have been summoned from Mundania to compete for the hand of Princess Harmony, who is the only one of that naughty trio who remains unspoken for.”

  “Exactly. Princesses are not expected to remain on the market long.”

  “That’s right,” Picka agreed. “Melody will marry Anomy in due course, and Rhythm will marry Cyrus Cyborg. That was quite a scandal when they got together. She was only twelve.”

  “But we have to give the little twerps some credit,” Dawn said. “They did save Xanth from Ragna Roc.”

  “So Harmony is left,” Picka concluded. “A suitable focus for a Demon contest.”

  Bryce had been tuning out of their dialogue, caught up in the marvel of his sudden love, but this brought him back. “What is a Demon?” Because, oddly, he heard the capital.

  “Demons are immensely powerful spirits associated with assorted galaxies, planets, moons, or substances,” Dawn said. “For example, the whole of the magic land of Xanth derives from the trace leakage of the magic of the Demon Xanth who snoozes deep below the surface. The leakage from the Demon Earth is experienced on that world as gravity. Demons seldom pay attention to the endeavors of mortals, but they do vie for status by making wagers that sometimes involve the unpredictable actions or reactions of mortals. You appear to have become one of those. Your entry to Xanth was facilitated, and you were given certain things you will need, such as youth and a magic talent, plus the imperative of courting Harmony. Your entry at this place was probably to be sure you received some necessary background information promptly, so you would not get eaten by a dragon before you got started. So your presence here is no coincidence. If that is the case, the Demon who selected you will not play any further part in your life. He or She will merely watch, and win or lose based on your performance.”

  “I’m a toy of a supernatural spirit?”

  “Yes, in essence.”

  “But I don’t believe in the supernatural,” he protested.

  Both Dawn and Picka laughed.
“You’ll get over that soon enough,” the skeleton said.

  Indeed, if this was not a dream, there was plenty of evidence for the supernatural, beginning with the animated talking skeleton. “I just realized that it probably was not the yellow box with the three items that changed me,” Bryce said, working it out. “The instructions were merely labels, a protocol signaling my readiness to participate. The youthening, magic talent, and love for Princess Harmony were all done by the Demon when I spoke the magic words. Because Rachel happened to be in the vicinity at that moment, she was affected too, entering Xanth with me, getting youthened to a lesser degree, and getting the magic talent of being able to speak the words she knew.”

  “Exactly,” Dawn said.

  “So assuming that I must participate, regardless of my choice in the matter, what is my best course of action?”

  “You are sensible,” Dawn said. “You both should take a few days to familiarize yourself with Xanth and its local customs, as well as learning to use your talent effectively. Then you should go to see the Good Magician Humfrey, who will advise you how to proceed. I suspect he won’t charge his usual exorbitant fee, considering that this must be a Demon incident.”

  “What exorbitant fee?” Bryce asked warily.

  “He normally charges a year’s service, or the equivalent,” Picka said.

  “A year’s service! I just want to go home!”

  “Do you?” Dawn asked gently.

  And Bryce realized that he had nothing to return to except old age, illness, loneliness, and death. “No. I don’t know what I really want.” He looked at Rachel. “Do you?”

  She wagged her tail. “No.”

  “You want to relive your life, this time making better decisions,” Dawn said. “This is your chance.”

  “I suppose it is,” Bryce agreed, amazed. “Crazy as it seems.”

  “And to do that, you need to remain here in Xanth and perform your Demon-inspired task.”

  Bryce sighed. “This is the kind of channeling I would prefer to avoid. Throughout my mundane life, others made key choices for me: my mediocre residence, my indifferent schooling, my dull job, even really my wife. Oh, she was a good woman, and I loved her, I’m not complaining about that, but I really did not choose her myself. My family thought she’d be good for me and guided me rather forcefully toward her. They were right, but it would have been better if I had been able to make my own decision. Now some Demon is channeling me similarly, and some Good Magician, and some teenaged princess. Who knows, I might have loved her on my own, if I could ever get over the immense disparity in our ages and stations, but I wasn’t given the chance. I was potioned or magicked into artificial love. Where are my choices? What is the point, as far as my personal life is concerned?”

  “He’s got a point,” Picka said. In that moment Bryce found himself liking the skeleton.

  Dawn frowned as if addressing a willful child. “In Mundania, even if you had been granted complete free will, your choices would have been severely limited. You would have had to choose a residence similar to the one you had, and get an education similar to the one you did, and labor at a job similar to the one you got, and you would have had to marry a woman who might not have been as good as the one your family found for you. So if you could live your Mundane life over, what would you do, really?”

  Bryce looked at her. “You don’t come across like the starlet model you resemble. You are making uncomfortable sense.”

  “I have had my own struggles with realism,” she said with a wan smile. “I did manage to break the mold that my royalty and appearance set for me, to a degree. I married for love rather than status, unlike my sister Eve. That’s why I wed Picka.”

  They were married? Oh yes, she had said so before. “If I may ask, is it usual for a princess and a skeleton to marry?”

  “No. And that is the point. The constraints on a princess are considerable, but I managed to find a way to express myself regardless. You can do the same.”

  “I can?”

  “You are faced with a new situation, with new rules. Learn the rules, then discover how you can forge your own way despite them. Isn’t that what real choice is?”

  He nodded. “I suspect it is. And if I understand correctly, the first rule is that I must win the Princess Harmony if I want to remain here in Xanth for any length of time. If I fail, my Demon sponsor will have no further use for me.”

  “There are worse fates than marrying a pretty princess. Once that chore is accomplished, you should be able to choose the rest of your life more freely. Harmony is not a domineering girl, though she can be mischievous. And if you fail, having tried your best, chances are your Demon sponsor will simply leave you where you are, here in Xanth, and forget about you. Then you will truly be able to live your life over. But if you deliberately fail, you could face the wrath of an angry Demon.” She shuddered evocatively.

  It was a persuasive case. “And most of my choices will be more subtle personal ones, such as how I treat others. I am beginning to like this game.”

  “However, Xanth has its darknesses,” she cautioned him. “Do not take anything here for granted until you understand it. You will need guidance.”

  “I surely will,” he agreed. “But I’m not sure who will relish the task of guiding me.”

  “Woofer and Tweeter will show you around,” Dawn said.

  “Who?”

  A large dark mongrel dog entered the room, with a brownish parakeet perched on his head. “Woof!” he said.

  “Tweet,” the bird added.

  Introduction enough. “Hello Woofer, Tweeter. I am Bryce, from Mundania, and this is Rachel.”

  Woofer eyed Rachel. “Woof!”

  Bryce could have sworn that Rachel blushed, and a little heart-shaped dog bone sailed out from her head, though that was of course impossible. Or was it? Woofer must be the dog she had been spelled into love with.

  “They are from Mundania too,” Dawn said.

  “Oh?”

  “They came with a Mundane family, which returned to Mundania. But later they rejoined us here in Xanth. They are among my closest friends.”

  “You will get to understand their speech before long,” Picka said. “They are nice folk. You can trust them.”

  So he was being handed off to animals. But if this was one of the rules of this realm, he could handle it. “I shall. What’s next?”

  “Woof.” The dog turned and dog-trotted out of the chamber, still carrying the bird.

  Bemused, Bryce and Rachel followed. Evidently Rachel had no better notion how to handle her magic love than Bryce did. She was being appropriately diffident. The animals led them to an upstairs chamber where a bed was laid out. Beside it was a plush dog blanket. “Is this for us?” Bryce asked, surprised. Dawn had said he could be a guest here, but he hadn’t thought it would be in the castle proper.

  “Tweet.” It sounded like yes. Was it his imagination?

  “Picka said I would come to understand your speech. Did he mean that literally?”

  “Woof.” That was definitely a yes.

  “And it is evident that you understand me. So where do we go from here?”

  “Tweet.” And this time it sounded like “First shower and change.”

  So he did. Rachel waited, not needing to do those things. There was a very nice bathroom, complete with a well-appointed shower. He stripped and used it, feeling invigorated. When he emerged and toweled himself dry he paused to gaze at himself in the full-length mirror.

  He was a supremely healthy young man, more fit and muscular than he had ever been in real life. But would it last? He decided to take the best possible care of this new body. It did look like him, as he remembered, but better. The Demon had given him an excellent start.

  His old clothing was gone. In its place was a clean bright shirt and trousers, together with shoes. He put them on, and they fit perfectly, including the shoes, which were the most comfortable he could remember in ages. “It must be magic,�
� he said.

  “Woof.”

  He hadn’t realized that the castle dog was right there. But why not? It wasn’t as if he was desperate for privacy. Woofer must have been communing with Rachel.

  He combed his hair, admiring his youthful features in the mirror. “A man could get to like being young,” he murmured.

  “Tweet.”

  “What, you two are youthened too?”

  It turned out that they had indeed grown old in Mundania, but were returned to their young primes when they came back to Xanth. They did understand.

  Woofer conducted him to a banquet hall where an impressive meal was laid out. “I really don’t need anything half this fancy,” Bryce protested. Then he saw the strange man. “Uh, have we met? I’m Bryce from Mundania.”

  The man smiled. “We have met. I am Picka Bone, your host.”

  “But Picka is a walking skeleton!”

  “One of the conveniences of Caprice Castle is that we are able to alternate forms when we choose. Ah, here is Dawn.”

  Bryce turned to meet her—and discovered a female skeleton. “Uh—nice bones,” he said uncertainly.

  “Yes, I am Dawn,” she said, possibly smiling. It was hard to tell with her barefaced skull. “And these are our children.” She indicated a baby carriage containing an infant human baby and a similarly sized skeleton, side by side.

  “My son Piton,” Picka said proudly. “A chip off the old block, as it were.”

  “And my daughter Data,” Dawn said. “A calculating female.”

  Then as Bryce watched, the skeleton boy became fleshly, and the fleshly girl became skeletal.

  “They are learning early,” Picka said.

  So it seemed.

  A very nice repast was invisibly served, the new platters appearing and the used dishes disappearing. Bryce tried to catch it happening, but somehow the changes were always just when he wasn’t looking. Another convenience of the castle. Woofer and Tweeter had dishes of their own, similarly replenished. So did Rachel. Bryce could see that she was trying to mask it, but she loved being near Woofer.

  “You said I would learn to understand Woofer and Tweeter soon,” Bryce said. “I believe it is already happening, unless I am imagining it. They woof and tweet, and I understand whole sentences.”