Golem in the Gears Read online

  ARMOR-DILLO—A metallic plant with a pickle smell. Although it grows the best armor, it stinks of the brine used to store it.

  ARNOLDE—An Appaloosa bachelor centaur who wears spectacles and was keeper of the records at the centaur museum on Centaur Isle. His specialty is Alien Archaeology. It was discovered, after 90 years, that his talent is the formation of an aisle of magic wherever he goes. The aisle extends 15 paces to the front, and half that distance to the rear. When he uses reverse-wood, he generates a Mundane aisle in Xanth.

  ARROW ELF—Member of the tribe of Flower Elves.

  ARTIS-TREES—Many-splendored trees, with sculptured lines and multicolored leaves, marvels of symmetry.

  ASS—An equine creature named MiKe who assisted in the preparation of this Lexicon. Possibly inspired by the limerick, anonymously authored: “There was a pert lass from Madras,/Who had a remarkable ass;/Not rounded and pink/As you probably think;/It was gray, had long ears, and ate grass.”

  AVARS—Mercenaries from a wild Mundane Turk tribe, the handpicked troops of King Oary, Usurper King of Onesti, Mundania.

  AWL ELF—Member of the Tool Tribe.

  B

  B’s—Larger and more magical than bees, living in a B-Have. They are of many types: B-hold, B-neath, B-wilder, B-foul and so on.

  BAD DREAMS—These are generated within the hypnogourd from the raw materials of people’s fundamental fears: loss, pain, death, shame, and the unknown. They aren’t light fancies; there’s a lot of evil in the world that needs recognition. It’s a lot of work to craft each dream correctly and designate it for the right person at the right time. Such dreams are the realizations of the consequences of evil: a timely warning that all thinking creatures require. They are handled by night mares after the Night Stallion decides where they go.

  BAG OF SPELLS—Given to Jordan by Magician Yin: seven inert spells in the form of little figurines, to be invoked at need: a compass, a shield, a monster, a skull, a stone, a doll, and a tangled vine. Each had a negative version lurking in wait.

  BAOBAB TREE—A monstrous tree towering above the jungle, which grows upside down: the foliage is in the ground and the roots are up in the air. The space around it is clear, for it doesn’t like to be crowded. A few baobabs can also be found in Mundania.

  BARBARIAN—A Code of Conduct honored by all true barbarian warriors, requiring excellent coordination with weapons, closeness to nature, awkwardness with women, common sense, and completion of the mission.

  BASEBALL DIAMOND—A glittering ball the size of Ivy’s two fists, carved with many small facets. It is magically crystallized carbon, very hard, useful for games.

  BASILISK—Called “Little King of the Reptiles,” it emerges from a yokeless egg laid by a rooster and hatched by a toad in the warmth of a dung heap. Because few roosters lay eggs, the creature is rare. It looks like a small winged lizard with the head and claws of a chicken. Its breath is so bad it wilts vegetation, and its gaze causes death. Therefore it doesn’t like mirrors. Periodically all the basilisks gather at the Land of the Basks to hold staring contests. Also called cockatrices, henatrices, and chickatrices.

  BEARS AND BULLS—Strange Mundane stockyard animals who charge heedlessly up and down.

  BEAUREGARD—A bespectacled demon, highly educated. He is working on his doctoral thesis, Fallibilities of Other Intelligent Life in Xanth.

  BED MONSTER—See MONSTER UNDER THE BED

  BEHEMOTH—A creature mostly mouth, who is the door to the Gateway Castle under Lake Ogre-Chobee.

  BERRY-BERRIES—Doubled berries that taste good but slowly cause paralysis and wasting away. In Mundania a similar malady, beri-beri, derives from lack of B’s.

  BIANCA—Roland’s wife and Bink’s mother, whose magic talent is the Replay: the ability to jump back in time five seconds, in a small area.

  BINK—The main character in the first two novels, who seems to have no magic, but is actually the most powerful Magician in Xanth because he cannot be harmed by magic.

  BIRDLAND—Located in north central Xanth, where birds rule.

  BLACK SWORD—A viciously enchanted sword.

  BLOODROOT ELF—An elf of the Flower Tribe.

  BLUE AGONY—A dark and mossy fungus. When eaten it turns the victim’s body blue just before the body melts into a blue puddle that kills what it touches.

  BLUEBELL—An elf maiden of the Flower Tribe who seduces Jordan the Barbarian (no difficult task). Ancestor to Rapunzel.

  BLYTHE BRASSIE—A female inhabitant of the City of Brass, in the hypnogourd. Formerly called Blyght, she’s a nice metal girl.

  BOOK OF ANSWERS—One of the Good Magician’s handy reference tomes.

  BOOT REAR—A rare beverage distilled from the sap of the shoe-fly tree, it is a drink that has a real kick.

  BRAIN CORAL—Living in a preservative fluid with stasis-magic, it operates through other agencies to accomplish its noble task. It cannot control a conscious, intelligent living entity, but rather operates through suggestions that seem like the creatures own notions. A number of creatures are stored in its preservative fluid, for eventual release.

  BRASS CIRCLET—Worn by the werehorse on the left wrist/foreleg, it is a “short circuit” that can connect the gaze of the victim to a peephole in a hypnogourd, causing a serious problem.

  BRASSIES—Residents of the City of Brass in the hypnogourd, they are made of brass. The males wear brassards, the females brassieres. They are activated to work on specific dreams, for their craftsmanship is excellent. To them, life is a fate worse than death, as they are not strictly alive.

  BRONTES—A cyclops, a giant with a huge single eye. He and his brothers Steropes and Arges were once the Powers of the Air, but fell out of favor.

  BUGBEAR—It has multiple bug legs, and wings and feelers and a huge horrible mask of a face, and specializes in scaring naughty children.

  BUGHOUSE—A set in the gourd, crawling with all manner of bugs.

  BURR—Makes whoever touches it very cold.

  C

  CACTUS CAT—One of the guardians at Good Magician Humfrey’s castle. It has a feline face, but its fur is composed of large, stiff thorns, and it has knifelike blades of bone on the front legs.

  CACTUS ELF—Of the tribe of Flower Elves.

  CALLICANTZARI—Race of monsters, like transmogrified goblins, who live underground and undermine important trees. Their muscles may be attached backward and some bones are in the wrong places.

  CANDY GARDEN—A set in the gourd: growing lollipops, licorice weeds, and a chocolate path. A sore temptation to children.

  CASTLE ONESTI—An imposing fortress in Mundania.

  CASTLE ROOGNA—Capital of the human folk, the castle’s theme is harmony with man. Its gardens provide fruits, grains, vegetables, and small game. Although deserted for 400 years after the death of King Gromden, under King Trent it becomes the social and magical center of Xanth. Some of the trees and the zombies are guardians of the castle. Built by centaurs, it’s approximately 100 feet on a side, roughly square, braced by a tower at each corner, with walls 30 feet above the moat.

  CASTOR OIL—A lake of brownish fluid, used to lubricate rolling castors, the bane of all children.

  CASUIS-TREE—An argumentative, hair-splitting plant.

  CATALYST WATER—A substance that facilitates change and may give a person catarrh, catatonia or catalepsy.

  CATAMOUNT—A large reddish feline who guards the Catwalk.

  CATAPULT—A feline creature the size of a small sphinx, crouching in a clearing. For a dose of catnip, it will fling an object forward.

  CATASTROPHE—A trophy of the posterior of a feline.

  CATNIP—A pleasantly scented, mintlike plant with feline furry leaves, growing in a catacomb.

  CATOBLEPAS—A creature with snakelike hair, reptilian scales, four cloven hooves, and a deadly stare.

  C.B.P.—Circa Before Present—a useful concept when traveling to other times.

  CEDRIC—A historical centaur of Xanth.r />
  CENTAUR ISLE—The home of the centaurs of Xanth. An island off the southern tip of the peninsula where magic in centaurs is not tolerated.

  CENTAURS—They date from C.B.P. 1800 when the first man and horse drank from a love spring. They have the body of a horse and the head and upper torso of a man or woman. They are superlative bowmen and spearmen, and are intelligent and honor-bound, but have a deep cultural aversion to magic, which they consider obscene in higher creatures. (Man is not a high enough creature to be considered obscene.)

  CENTURY PLANT—Located in the center of the Date Palm, it has many bright leaves glittering in the sun like golden coins; in its very center is the Thyme plant.

  CENTYCORE—One of the guardians of Good Magician Humfrey’s castle, it is a creature without mercy. It has horse hooves, a monstrous mouth, and a branching antler of ten points projecting from the middle of its face, and the voice of a man.

  CHAMELEON—Bink’s wife, named after a shape-changing lizard, whose intelligence and appearance vary with the time of the month, as is the case with some Mundane women. At one time each of her aspects were named: Dee—normal; Wynn—pretty but stupid; Fanchon—ugly but smart. Dor’s mother.

  CHEM—A centaur, foal of Cherie and Chester: a pretty brown creature with flowing hair and tail and a slender, well-formed human torso. Her talent is that of map projection. It is her mission to map all of the peninsula of Xanth.

  CHERIE—A centaur, Chester’s wife and Chet and Chem’s mother. Her specialty is humanoid history, and she served as Dor’s tutor. Though it is difficult for her to realize it, she has the magic talent of beauty.

  CHERRY TREE—Known for several kinds of cherries, depending on the variety, such as Chocolate or Bomb.

  CHEST OF NUTS—Found on a chest-nut tree, it contains P-nuts, Q-nuts, blue, red, and hazel nuts, soft yellow butter nuts, sandy beach nuts, a cocoa nut, and several bolts and washers for good measure.

  CHESTER—A centaur, Cherie’s husband and nephew of Herman the Hermit. His rear is prettier than his face. He specializes in the study of horsepower and discovers he has a magic talent: the ability to conjure a silver flute that plays beautiful music.

  CHET—A centaur, Chem’s brother, whose magic talent is that of converting large boulders to pebbles by a process he calls calculus. It renders a stone into a calx, that can be used for calculating.

  CHISEL ELF—Member of the tribe of Tool Elves.

  CHOBEES—Mostly harmless and unrelated to other bees, they don’t sting. They have long reptilian bodies with snouts and big, soft imitation teeth, and can be found in Lake Ogre-Chobee.

  CLIO—The Muse of History. She lives on Mt. Parnassus, the home of the arts, sciences and history, and writes magic texts on Xanth.

  CLOUDS—In Xanth, clouds are characters. The most common are the Cumulis, which are good-natured, especially Cumulis Humilis, very humble and fleecy. Some are floating dishes filled with water; when they get tilted, it rains. But some are bad-tempered Thunderheads, or funnel-shaped carnivorous clouds. Some make technicolor hailstorms, and some send down hailstones that are deadly. The worst cloud is Fracto, a perennial troublemaker.

  COCKATRICE—See BASILISK

  CON-PEWTER—A goblet that gives misleading information. Confused with Com-Pewter, a magical thinking machine.

  COPYCAT—A creature like a Mundane cat, that sits on things and purrs and makes copies of them.

  CORAL LAKE—The underground lake whose water is slowly poisonous yet doesn’t kill—merely preserves and suspends creatures in its brine, alive. Presided over by the Brain Coral.

  COWBOYS—Bullheaded men and cow-headed women, led by Ferdinand.

  CRAVEN—A goblin, subchief of the Chasm Clan, father of Glory and Goldy Goblin.

  CREWEL LYE—A magic mix used to clean the Tapestry.

  CROMBIE—A soldier and woman-hater who finally found the one for him: Jewel the Nymph. Father of Tandy. His talent is Direction: he can point to anything. At one point he was changed to a griffin, in order to help seek the source of magic.

  CRUEL LIE—Told by Threnody to Jordan the Barbarian: that she loved him. But the he was a lie.

  CRUNCH—A vegetarian ogre, father of Smash.

  CURSE BURRS—Little balls of irritation that cling tenaciously to any part of the body contacted, and can only be removed by an original curse. Some have spread to Mundania, where they are called sandspurs.

  CURSE FIENDS—Basically of human stock, but all of them have the same magic talent: cursing. They live in Gateway Castle, under Lake Ogre-Chobee, and are expert Thespians.

  CYRUS—Halfling son of the siren and the merman Morris. In water his legs become a tail.

  D

  D-TAILS—Posterior appendages of Bulls and Bears; Mundanes pay special attention to them.

  D-TOUR—A tour that includes the Stock Market (to see the Bulls and Bears) and other oddities.

  DARK HORSE—See NIGHT STALLION

  DARK LANTERN—A lamp that emits impenetrable darkness.

  DATE PALM—In the center of the Century Plant we find the Date Palm, whose fronds represent every day of the year. Each day a day-lily blooms.

  DAY MARES—Counterpart to the night mares, these invisible equines bring pleasant daydreams to people.

  DAY STALLION—Leader of the day mare herd: an invisible (to people) golden wingless flying horse.

  DEADPANS—Creatures who live around cooking fires, associated with slinky copperheads. They are said to have the ugliest faces in nature.

  DEE—See CHAMELEON

  DEMONS—Beings who are eternal and live beneath Xanth’s surface. Some are benign, some evil. Rarely, one will interbreed with a human being.

  DEMON-STRIATION—Threnody’s demonic talent of slow shape-changing, size-changing, and mass-changing.

  DEMON X(A/N)TH—The source of magic. He lives in the deepest cavern, sealed off from intrusion, where he has been for a thousand or more years. His body has leaked a trace amount of magic into his surroundings, and this accounts for all the magic in Xanth. In return for a guarantee of privacy, he has bequeathed “Magician-caliber sorcery” to all Bink’s descendents. He is frustrated by his inability to gain status on other Demons, such as Eth, V{E/N}us, P|L/U|to, JU[P/I]ter, NE*P/T*une or lovely ••SA«T/U»RN••.

  DIGGLE—The largest member of the family of voles, which include also the squiggles and the wiggles. The diggle resembles a giant worm, moving by elongating and contracting his body. He will work for a song.

  DIME—A Mundane silver coin, that causes things to stop on it. Dor once used it to stop Irene—maybe.

  DIMEPEDES—See ’PEDES

  DIPSAS—A little snake whose bite makes the victim unquenchably thirsty. There are few remedies, such as a draught from a healing spring or from the winespring of the wild women of Parnassus.

  DOGWOOD ELF—Of the tribe of Flower Elves.

  DOLLARPEDE—One hundred times the size of a centipede, but without much power, because it’s made of green and gray paper. The face resembles that of a sphinx, while the backside suggests a bird waxing amorous with a shield. Some rare dollarpedes have silver backbones, and feed on things like Principal, Interest, Assets, Liabilities or Budgets.

  DOLPH—The son of Dor and Irene, a Magician, whose talent is instant shape-changing.

  DOR—The son of Bink and Chameleon, a Magician, later King of Xanth. His talent is conversing with the inanimate.

  DRAGONFLIES—Insects that zoom around like little fighter planes jetting fire and strafing their targets. When hit themselves, they go down in smoke and explode as they crash into the ground.

  DRAGON KING—An intelligent leader of dragons who understands the human language and believes it is impolite to toast Magicians. He has iridescent mirror-polished scales which overlap and are as supple as the best warrior’s mail. His great front claws are burnished brass tapering to needlepoints. His snout is gold-plated and his eyes are like full moons. He likes the taste of Mundanes.

  DRAGO
N LADY—A more recent leader, a regal queen of her kind, who reclines in her nest of glittering diamonds while reading Monster Comics.

  DRAGONS—The most varied and dangerous life form in Xanth, with a number of types and subtypes. There are fire-breathers, smokers, steamers and some that are just dragons. There are small, medium and large. There are land, sea, air and tunnel dragons. In general, dragons are the standard against which all other viciousness is measured. Normally they don’t attack men or centaurs because the numbers, weapons, organization and magic of such creatures make them formidable opponents, but it remains true that more men are eaten by dragons than vice versa.

  DREAMS—Dreams don’t just happen in Xanth; a great deal of effort and art is required for their crafting and delivery and presentation. Once presented, they aren’t completely forgotten, but remain in the experience, influencing character. One of the many problems with Mundania is that its dreams lack sufficient authority.

  DREAM EQUINE—See NIGHT MARE

  DRYAD—A tree Nymph who ages with the tree she inhabits, beautiful and immortal as long as her tree survives. One aided in the preparation of this Lexicon.

  DRYING STONE—A stone that emits a warming radiation. It’s a cousin to the sharpening stone, which hones knives.

  DUNE—Sand which preserves by cleaning and securing the bones of assorted creatures so they can be admired millennia hence. Their treasures are called fossils.

  E

  EARTH—See ELEMENTS

  EBNEZ—Magician King responsible for developing Xanth’s shield/shieldstone after the Lastwave invasion, for protection against future Mundane invasions.

  ECLECTIC EEL—The eclectic way is to use anything handy, so it chooses things from everywhere and puts them together in bits and pieces, but does nothing original. It clears flotsam (parts of wrecked ships) and jetsam (things thrown overboard) and uses them for markers.