Centaur Aisle Read online

  Actually, Cherie Centaur had interrupted the struggle; otherwise there was no guessing where it might have led. For one of the few times in his life, Dor was thankful, in retrospect, for Cherie's intervention. Perhaps the King knew that, too.

  "Uh, thanks, I mean, yes, sir," Dor agreed weakly. This was almost too much understanding; the Queen would certainly have dealt with him more harshly than this. Yet he knew the King had not been joking about the cactus; easygoing as he seemed, he tolerated absolutely no insubordination from anyone--which was of course one of his prime qualities of Kingship.

  Unfortunately, Dor's own talent was not that forceful. He could not transform those who opposed him. If he gave an order, and someone refused to obey, what would he do? He had no idea.

  "At any rate, you will work it out," King Trent said. "I am depending on you to carry through despite whatever hazards my daughter interposes."

  "Yes, sir," Dor agreed without enthusiasm. "Do you really have to go?"

  "We do have to go, Dor. I feel this can be an excellent opportunity for continuing trade. Mundania has vast and largely unexploited resources that would do us a great deal of good, while we have magic abilities that could help them equivalently. To date, our trade with Mundania has been sporadic, owing to difficulties of communication.

  We require a reliable, private connection. But we must exercise extreme caution, for we do not want the Mundanes invading Xanth again. So we are deliberately dealing with a small Kingdom, one unlikely to be able to mount such an offensive, should it ever choose to."

  Dor could appreciate that. Xanth had a long history of being invaded by waves of Mundanes, until preventive measures had been taken. Actually, there was no firm route from Mundania to Xanth; Mundanian time seemed to be different, so that contacts were haphazard. Any Xanth citizen, in contrast, could go to Mundania merely by stepping beyond the region of magic. If he kept close track of his route, he could theoretically find his way back. That was academic, however; no one wanted to leave Xanth, for he would leave his magic talent behind.

  No, Dor had to qualify that thought. His mother Chameleon had once sought to leave Xanth, before she met his father Bink, to eliminate her changes of phase. Also, the Gorgon had spent some years in Mundania, where her face did not turn people to stone. Perhaps there had been others. But that was a strategy of desperation. Xanth was so obviously the best place to be that very few would leave it voluntarily.

  "Uh, suppose you get lost, Your Majesty?" Dor asked worriedly.

  "You forget, Dor, I have been to Mundania before. I know the route."

  "But Mundania changes! You can't go back to where you were!"

  "Probably true. Certainly I would not take the Queen to the site of my first marriage." The King was silent a moment, and Dor knew there was a secret side to Trent who once had a wife and child whom he preferred not to discuss. Living In Mundania, but they had died, so he had returned to Xanth and become King. Had his family lived, Trent would never have come back to Xanth. "But I believe I can manage."

  Yet Dor was nervous. "Mundania is a dangerous place, with bears and horses and things."

  "So your essay advised me. I do not pretend this trip is entirely without risk, Dor, but I believe the potential benefits make the risk worthwhile. I am an excellent swordsman and did have twenty years to perfect survival techniques, based on other things than magic. But I must confess that I do miss Mundania somewhat; perhaps that is the underlying motive for this excursion." The King pondered again, then broached a new aspect. "More tricky is the nature of the interface. You see, when we step through to Mundania, we may find our selves at any point in its history. Until very recently, we could not select the point; this much has been chance. The Queen believes she has found a way to alleviate this problem. That is one reason I must negotiate a trade agreement personally. I can trust no one else to handle the vagaries of the transition. We may fail to reach our target Kingdom, or may reach it and return empty-handed; in that case I will have no one to blame except myself."

  "But if you don't know where you'll arrive in Mundania, how do you know there's an opportunity? I mean, you might land somewhere else entirely."

  "As I said, I do have a hint. I believe the time is now propitious to enter Mundania's medieval age, and the Queen has studied the matter and believes she can, as it were, fine-tune our entry to match the particular place/time our scout scouted. This spot should have copious natural resources like wood and cloth that we can work by magic into carvings and clothing they can't match. Perhaps something else will offer. Perhaps nothing. I believe a week will suffice to explore the situation. We cannot afford to stand still; we must keep working to improve our situation. Magic is not enough to keep Xanth prosperous; the land also requires alert administration."

  "I guess so," Dor agreed. But it seemed to him he would never be able to do the job King Trent was doing. Xanth was indeed doing well now, and the improvement had been steady from the time of Trent's ascension to power. The Kingdom was well disciplined and well ordered; even the dragons no longer dared to maraud where men had staked their territory. Dor had a morbid fear that at such time as he, Dor, became King, the golden age would deteriorate. "I wish you well in Mundania, sir."

  "I know you do, Dor," King Trent said affably. "I ask you to bear in mind this before all else--honesty."

  "Honesty?"

  "When you are in doubt, honesty is generally the best course. Whatever may happen, you will not have cause for shame If you adhere scrupulously to that."

  "I'll remember," Dor said. "Honesty."

  "Honesty," King Trent repeated with peculiar emphasis. "That's it."

  In an instant, it seemed, the dread day came. Dor found himself huddled on the throne, feeling terribly alone. King Trent and Queen Iris had announced their vacation and disappeared into a cloud.

  When the cloud dissipated, they were gone; Iris' power of illusion had made them invisible. She had always liked dramatic entrances and exits.

  Dor gritted his teeth and got into it. Actually, the business of governing was mostly routine. There was a trained palace staff, quite competent, whose members Dor had always known; they did whatever he asked and answered any questions he had. But they did not make important decisions--and Dor discovered that every decision, no matter how minor, seemed vitally important to the people it concerned. So he let the routine handle itself and concentrated on those areas that demanded the decision of the King, hoping his voluminous royal robe would conceal any tremor of his knees.

  The first case concerned two peasants who had a difference about a plantation of light bulbs. Each claimed to be entitled to the brightest bulbs of the current crop. Dor questioned their wooden belt buckles and got the straight story, while both peasants stood amazed at this magic. Dor did this deliberately so they could see that he was, indeed, a Magician; they respected that caliber of magic and would be more likely to pay attention to him now.

  Peasant A had farmed the field for many years with indifferent success; it belonged to him. Peasant B had been hired to help this season--and the field had brightened into the best crop in years, so that it never saw darkness. To whom, then, did the first choice of bulbs belong?

  Dor saw that some diplomacy was called for here. He could of course make an arbitrary decision, but that would surely leave one party unsatisfied. That could lead to future trouble. He didn't want any of his decisions coming back to haunt King Trent in future months. "Peasant B obviously has the special touch that made this crop of bulbs glow so well," he said. "So he should be given his choice of the best, as many as he wants. After all, without him the crop would not be worth much." Peasant B looked pleased. "However, Peasant A does own the field. He can hire whomever he wants next year, so he can get to keep more of his crop." Peasant A nodded grim agreement. "Of course," Dor continued blithely, "Peasant A won't have much of a crop, and Peasant B won't have a job. The bulbs won't grow elsewhere, and won't brighten as well for anyone else, so both peasants will lose. To
o bad. It would have been so simple to share the best bulbs equally, taking turns selecting each bulb, sharing the profit of the joint effort, and setting up for an even better future season..." Dor shrugged sadly.

  The two peasants looked at each other, a notion dawning. Wasn't it, after all, more important to share many future harvests than run off with the best of only one? Maybe they could work this out themselves.

  They departed, discussing the prospects with animation. Dor relaxed, his muscles unknotting. Had he done it the right way? He knew he could not make everyone happy in every case, but he did want to come as close as possible.

  Dor woke next morning to discover a ghost standing beside the royal bed. It was Doreen, the kitchen maid. There had been half a dozen recognizable ghosts on the premises, each with his or her sad story, but most were close-mouthed about their living pasts. Dor had always liked Doreen because of the coincidence of names--Dor, Doreen--though apart from that they had little in common. Maybe he had been named after her, since she was a friend of Millie the Ghost, who had been his nursemaid during his early years. No one had seen fit to tell him, and the local furniture didn't know. There were many moderate little mysteries like that around this castle; it was part of its atmosphere. At any rate, Doreen was middle-aged and portly and often snappish, not having much to do with the living. Thus it was a surprise to find her here. "What can I do for you, Doreen?" he asked.

  "Sir, Your Majesty King Dor," she said diffidently.

  Dor smiled. Doreen always found it hard to pinpoint the point.

  "Out with it, blithe spirit."

  "Well, we, you know we haven't really quite seen very much of Millie since she passed on--"

  To the ghosts, Millie's return to life was passing on. She had been one of their number for several centuries, and now was mortal again.

  "You miss her?"

  "Yes, certainly, in a way we do, Your Majesty. She used to come see us every day, right after she, you know, but since she got herself in the matrimonial way she hasn't--has she--?"

  Millie had married the Zombie Master and gone to share the castle now possessed by Good Magician Humfrey. It had been the Zombie Master's castle, eight hundred years before. "You'd like to see her again," Dor finished.

  "Yes, sir, Your Majesty. You were her friend in life, and now that you're in the way of being the Royal King--"

  "She hardly needs the King's approval to visit her old companions." Dor smiled. "Not that such approval would ever be withheld, but even if it were, how could anyone stop a ghost from going any where?"

  "Oh, sir, we can't go anywhere!" Doreen protested. "We are for ever bound by the site of our cruel demise, until our, you might say, to put it politely, our onuses are abated."

  "Well, If you'd tell me your onuses, maybe I could help," Dor suggested.

  It was the first time he had ever seen a ghost blush. "Oh, no, no, never!" she stammered.

  Evidently he had struck a sensitive area. "Well, Millie can certainly come to see you."

  "Just she never, she doesn't, she won't seem to come," Doreen wailed. "We have heard, had information, we believe she became a mother--"

  "Of twins," Dor agreed. "A boy and a girl. It was bound to happen, considering her talent."

  Prudish Doreen let that pass. "So of course, naturally she's busy. But If the King suggested, intimated, asked her to visit--"

  Dor smiled. "Millie was my governess for a dozen years. I had a crush on her. She never took orders from me; it was the other way around. Nobody who knows me takes me seriously." As he spoke, Dor feared he had just said something significant and damaging or damning; he would have to think about that in private.

  "But now that you're King--" Doreen said, not debating his point.

  Dor smiled again. "Very well. I will invite Millie and her family here for a visit so you can meet the children. I can't guarantee they'll come, but I will extend the invitation."

  "Oh, thank you, Your Majesty, sir!" Doreen faded gratefully out.

  Dor shook his head. He hadn't realized the ghosts liked children.

  But of course one of them was a child, Button, so that could account for it. Millie's babies were only three years old, while Button was six--but of course in time the twins would grow to his age, while the ghost would not change. He had been six for six hundred years. Children were children. Dor had not met Millie's twins himself; a visit should be interesting. He wondered whether Millie retained her talent of sex appeal, now that she was happily married. Did any wife keep up with that sort of thing? He feared that by the time he found out, it would be too late.

  Later that day, perhaps by no coincidence, Dor was approached by a zombie. The decrepit creatures normally remained comfortably buried in their graveyard near the castle, but any threat to the castle would bring them charging gruesomely forth. This one dropped stinking clods of earth and goo as it walked, and its face was a mass of pus and rot, but somehow it managed to talk. "Yhoor Mhajustee--" it pleaded loathsomely, spitting out a decayed tooth.

  Dor had known the zombies well in his day, including zombie animals and a zombie ogre named Egor, so they no longer repulsed him as badly as they might have done. "Yes?" he said politely. The best way to deal with a zombie was to give it what it wanted, since it could not be killed or discouraged. Theoretically, it was possible to dismember one and bury the pieces separately, but that was hardly worth the trouble and still was not guaranteed effective. Besides, zombies were all right, in their place.

  "Ohur Masssterr--"

  Dor caught on. "You have not seen the Zombie Master in some time. I will ask him to visit here so you can get together and rehash old times. Must be many a graveyard you've patronized with him. I can't promise he'll come--he does like his privacy--but I'll make the effort."

  "Thaaanks," the zombie whistled, losing part of its moldy tongue.

  "Uhh remember--he has a family now. Two little children. You might find them scooping sand out of graves, playing with stray bones--"

  But the zombie didn't seem concerned. The maggots squirmed alertly in its sunken eyes as it turned to depart. Maybe it was fun to have children play with one's bones. Meanwhile, the daily chores continued. Another case concerned a sea monster invading a river and terrorizing the fish there, which caused a slack harvest. Dor had to travel there and make the ground in the vicinity rumble as if shaken by the passage of a giant. The inanimate objects went to it with a will; they liked conspiring to frighten a monster. And the sea monster, none too smart and not really looking for trouble, decided it was more at home in the deep sea, innocently gobbling down shipwrecked sailors and flashing at voyeuristic Mundane investigators of the supernatural. It made a "You'll be sorry when you don't have this Monster to kick around any more!" honk and departed. Again Dor relaxed weakly. This device would not work against a smart monster; he had been lucky. He was highly conscious of the potential for some colossal foul-up, and felt it was only a matter of time before it occurred. He knew he didn't have any special talent for governing.

  At night he had nightmares, not the usual kind wherein black female Mundane-type horses chased him, but the worse kind wherein he thought he was awake and made some disastrous decision and all Xanth went up in magic flames, was overrun by wiggle-worms, or, worst of all, lost its magic and became like drear Mundania. All somehow his fault. He had heard it said that the head that wore the crown was uneasy. In truth, not only was that crown wearing a blister into his scalp, making him quite uneasy; that head was terrified by the responsibility of governing Xanth.

  Another day there was a serious theft in a northern village, Dor had himself conjured there; naturally Castle Roogna had a resident conjurer. The problem village was in central Xanth, near the Incognito territory largely unexplored by man, where dragons remained unchastened, and that made Dor nervous. There were many devastating monsters in Xanth; but as a class, the dragons were the worst because there were many varieties and sizes of them, and their numbers were large. But actually, it turned out
to be a pleasant region, with most of the modern magic conveniences like soda-water springs and scented soapstones for laundry. This was fur-harvesting country, and this year there had been a fine harvest from the local stand of evergreen fur trees. The green furs had been seasoning in the sun and curing in the moon and sparkling in the stars, until one morning they were gone without trace.

  Dor questioned the platform on which the furs had been piled, and learned that a contingent from another village had sneaked in and stolen them. This was one time his magic talent was superior to that of King Trent--the gathering of information. He then arranged to have the furs conjured back. No action was taken against the other village; those people would know their deed had been discovered, and would probably lie low for some time.

  Through all this Irene was a constant nag. She resented Dor's ascension to the throne, though she knew it was temporary, and she kept hoping he would foul up. "My father could have done it better," she muttered darkly when Dor solved a problem and was hardly mollified when he agreed. "You should have punished that thieving village." And Dor wondered whether he had in fact been wishy washy there, taking the expedient route instead of the proper one.

  Yet what could he do, except whatever seemed best at the time of decision? The crushing responsibility for error made him painstakingly cautious. Only experience, he suspected, could provide the necessary confidence to make excellent decisions under pressure. And that was exactly what King Trent, in his own experienced wisdom, had arranged for Dor to obtain here.

  Dor, to his surprise, did not quite foul up. But the variety of problems he encountered strained his ingenuity, and the foreboding grew that his luck had to turn. He counted the passing days, praying that no serious problem would arise before King Trent returned. Maybe when Dor was Trent's age he'd be competent to run a kingdom full time; right now it was such nervous business it was driving him to distraction.

  Irene, at length perceiving this, flip-flopped in girlish fashion and started offering support. "After all," she said consolingly, "it's not forever, even though it seems like it. Only two more days before the danger's over. Then we can all faint with relief." Dor appreciated the support, though he might have preferred a less pointed summation of his inadequacy.