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  His brow furrowed. "Are you addressing me?"

  Jenny borrowed a notion from the foal's mother. "I think we had better start over. Let's introduce ourselves. You are.?"

  "Che Centaur of the winged monsters of Xanth," he replied promptly.

  "Che? I thought it was Chay! I'm sorry."

  "Quite all right. And you are.?"

  "Jenny of the World of Two Moons. Where I come from the sand is made of crushed rock or something; we can't eat it."

  "Crushed sugar crystal," he said. "From the big Rock Candy Mountains, I believe. I gather you are not a local elf. Where is your elm?"

  "What's all this business about elms?" she demanded. "I never saw an elm!"

  "But all elves are associated with elf elms," he said. "They never stray far from them, because their vitality is inversely proportional to their distance from their home elm. If you are far from yours, you must be feeling quite weak now."

  "I'm not associated with any elm!" she said. "No elves I know are! I'm tired, yes, but not weak because of any tree!"

  He pondered. "I assumed your land of two moons was merely one that my dam had not yet educated me about. Do you mean to say it is beyond Xanth? In another land where there are doubled moons?"

  "Yes. My world is nothing like this one! I never heard of Xanth before, and I find it impossibly strange. All these magic things like cherries that explode and man-animals that fly—" She paused. "Oh, no offense."

  "None taken. Centaurs derive from the stock of the human folk and the horse folk—and of course my kind derives also from bird folk, ultimately. My grandsire was a hippogryph."

  "A what?"

  "You would call it a horse with the head of a bird."

  Jenny shook her head. "If I weren't right here talking to you, I think I wouldn't believe any of this. But I did see your mother fly."

  "Yes, my dam makes herself light by flicking her body with her tail; then she can fly. But my wings are as yet insufficiently formed for that, so I have to content myself with leaps when necessary."

  "You can make yourself light?" she asked, surprised.

  "I can make anything light," he said. "But of course I don't do it indiscriminately. That would not be polite."

  "I wish you could make me light!" she said. "Then maybe I wouldn't be so tired!"

  "As you wish." Che flicked her shoulder with the tip of his tail.

  Immediately Jenny felt quite light. She got up—and almost sailed off the raft! "I really am light!" she exclaimed.

  "Certainly. But be careful, because I cannot make you heavy again. My magic is one-way. But the effect slowly fades."

  Jenny felt her mind spinning, and not because her head was light. There really was magic here, practiced by ordinary folk instead of High Ones, and it worked on her! That explained a great deal.

  "I remain unclear how you came to Xanth if you are from a foreign region," Che said.

  "I'm unclear on that myself! I was following Sammy, and when he found what he was looking for—which was one of your feath-ers—we were here."

  "Oh, that explains it. Sammy's a magic creature."

  "No, he just has an uncanny ability to find whatever he looks for."

  "Isn't that magic?"

  Jenny reconsidered. "I suppose it is. Certainly it is now, because he's finding things much faster and better than he used to."

  "Do you have a magic talent of your own?"

  "Me?" She laughed. "I can hardly do regular things, let alone magic ones! I'm fortunate just to see straight, thanks to these nice spectacles your mother gave me."

  "Do you mean to say you have not tried?"

  Jenny was intrigued. "You mean you really think I might have some magic? Like making things light or heavy or something?"

  "It seems possible. Human folk all have talents, and some other creatures have them too, if they have human lineage. Elves as a general class seem to be content with their tribal magic associated with their elms, but if you are not of that type, perhaps you conform to the human mode."

  "I wonder what mine could be?" For the first time she had found a really positive reason to be here in this weird world.

  "Oh—I forgot. Mundanes don't have magic. Only folk made in Xanth."

  "What's a Mundane?"

  "A person or animal originating in the dreary nonmagic realm beyond Xanth. My dam does not like to speak of it."

  "But I'm not from there! Does Mundania have two moons?"

  "I don't think so. Just one moon, like ours, only its green cheese has calcified into inedible rock."

  "A moon made of green cheese?"

  "And honey on the other side. My sire and dam went to the honey moon, where they conceived me. Perhaps that is where I obtained my taste for sweets."

  "So if I'm not from Xanth or Mundania, then we don't know whether I have magic," Jenny concluded. "But if Sammy has magic, maybe I do too."

  "Perhaps it is true," Che said doubtfully.

  "Why did the goblins kidnap you?"

  "I assume they wished to eat me."

  "Eat you!" she exclaimed, horrified. "But that would be mean, cruel, and awful!"

  "True. That is the nature of goblins. Yet I confess to bewilderment that they did not slaughter me immediately. They seem to be saving me for some future occasion."

  "They certainly had you all tied up!" she agreed.

  "They seemed to be taking me somewhere. The men are brutes, of course, but Godiva kept them from mistreating me. Goblin women are much nicer than goblin men, of course. The fact that she was put in charge of the party suggests that something other than incidental mayhem is involved. It is quite odd."

  "How did they get you? Didn't you know to stay away from goblins?"

  "Certainly I knew! But they tempted me with the smell of baking pastry and I couldn't help myself. If you think sugar sandies are good, you should taste fresh pastry! Then a horrible fog surrounded me, and suddenly I was all trussed up and the captive of goblins. I think they had a one-way path."

  "A one-way path? But all paths go both ways!"

  "By no means! Magic paths typically are unidirectional, and some can be used only once. I suspect that the goblins used theirs to convey me a distance from my home glade, so that my dam would not be able to follow my tracks. Now they have exhausted their path spell and must proceed in more ordinary fashion. But they seem not to be local goblins, for they do not know the local terrain. Godiva was exploring the region ahead when you came upon me."

  Jenny decided not to argue about the directions of paths; when she saw a one-way path, then she would believe it, not before. "It's funny that they ran into such trouble. I would have thought they would just take you straight back where they came from."

  "That was my conjecture. But apparently something malfunctioned, because when they stepped off the magic path, they seemed bewildered. They were supposed to be on the east side of the Elements, and instead they were on the west side."

  "But a path can't just change where it goes!"

  "Ordinarily they don't, but that is by no means fixed. Because this was a speed path, the scenery around it was blurred; they must have assumed that they were going in the right direction. We walked for perhaps half an hour before coming to the end, and then of course we had to get off, and it was gone. When Godiva saw where we were, she said something almost unladylike, which is unusual for a gobliness."

  "She didn't sound ladylike to me!" Jenny said stoutly. "I heard her calling the men stupid, and worse."

  "No, she was addressing them by their names: Moron, Idiot, and Imbecile. Stupid did not come on this mission."

  "Goblins have funny names!" Jenny said, laughing.

  He smiled. "I understand they consider our names to be odd, too." Then he glanced up. "Oh, I fear trouble!"

  Jenny looked. "But that's just a little cloud! We have nothing to fear from that."

  "On the contrary! That looks very much like Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the very worst of clouds. He brings mischief to all good fo
lk and even some evil folk."

  "A cloud? Oh, pooh!"

  But Che looked extremely worried. "I hope you do not receive more of an education than you desire, Jenny Elf. Perhaps Fracto is merely passing by."

  But the cloud was not passing by. It loomed in close, becoming darker and larger. It seemed almost to have a nebulous face on it, with two big eyes and a bigger mouth. Then the mouth opened, and the cloud blew—and a cold wind rocked the raft.

  Waves formed, and they advanced on the raft and rocked it. The cloud swelled up denser and uglier, and thunder rumbled within it. The wind whipped the foliage of the trees, and the first big raindrops spattered against the raft.

  "Maybe we had better pole in to shore," Jenny said, worried. "I don't want to get washed off the raft, with those water moccasins waiting."

  "Perhaps that is best," Che agreed.

  Jenny lifted the pole. But she remained light, while it remained heavy; now it seemed heavier than she was, which made poling awkward. But that was readily solved: Che flicked the pole with his tail, and it became light.

  She shoved them toward the shore. But as she did, evil little faces appeared. The goblins!

  Hastily she shoved the raft back away. The goblins stood and waved their stubby fists. Some of them had stones, but they did not throw them. There were more than there had been before—six, at least, that she saw. They must have gotten reinforcements.

  "We can't go ashore," she said.

  "I fear we can't stay in midstream, either," Che said.

  "Maybe it's safe on the other side." She poled across.

  But the water got deeper in the center, making the poling increasingly difficult. The storm intensified, so that the waves washed over the raft. Sammy was not keen on involuntary baths, and jumped up to Jenny's shoulder to hiss at the water.

  The raft spun around. Jenny lost her footing and felt herself sliding off. She screamed—but Che caught her arm and prevented her from landing in the water. His four feet gave him a better anchorage; he had his hooves braced against the ridges of the raft.

  Still the storm raged. Jenny knew now that Che was right: this was no ordinary cloud, but a magically malign demon of a cloud, out to get them. She couldn't guess why it hated them so, but it was doing its utmost to dump them in the river. She had not believed in the deliberate malignancy of weather, but now she did!

  A gust of wind caught the raft and shoved it to the bank Jenny was trying to leave. She tried to stop it with the pole, but the thing caught in the bottom muck and was twisted out of her grasp. She was after all no big human man; she was a little elf girl, not used to this sort of thing.

  The waves gathered for one concluding effort. They lifted the raft and tilted it so sharply that elf, cat, and centaur slid off it and into the shallow water. Jenny screamed as she splashed.

  But the water moccasins did not clamp onto their toes. It seemed that the storm had scared them too, and they were either stunned or elsewhere. The goblins charged in and grabbed Jenny and Che. In a moment both were hopelessly tied up.

  "Find help, Sammy!" Jenny cried desperately, though she feared there was no help to be had.

  Sammy jumped past the goblins and disappeared. Maybe he would find help—but how would the help find them? For she knew the goblins wouldn't just leave her by the bank of the With-a-Cookee River. What had she accomplished in her effort to save the foal? Nothing but a delay, she feared. Now she was in just as much trouble as he.

  Chapter 3. Electra's Exam

  Electra watched Chex fly away with Grundy Golem. She hoped Che was found soon, but she had a bad feeling about it all. The foal had been kidnapped, and that meant that someone was trying to hide him away. He would not turn up innocently wandering through the forest.

  Who could want to do such an awful thing? Che was the only winged centaur foal in Xanth. If something happened to him, it would cut off the childhood of that entire species. That was even worse than an ordinary kidnapping, bad as that was. She wasn't sure that anything like that had happened in Xanth before.

  Nada looked grim. She was such a lovely young woman in her human form that she looked terrific even that way! Electra envied her, and had no trouble understanding why Prince Dolph liked her better than Electra. Electra liked Nada better than Electra! She was a princess and a really nice person, too. If Electra could have chosen any woman to compete against, Nada would have been at the very bottom of her list. But for friends, the top of the list.

  "We'd better get moving," Nada said. She became a giant serpent.

  Electra got on the serpent's back. Nada moved, sinuously gathering speed. There was a certain similarity to the way she walked in the human form, but then it had more effect on the eyeballs of any men in the vicinity: they practically popped out of their sockets. As a matter of fact, the golem's eyes had bulged similarly just now, perhaps because Nada was not wearing her clothing. Grundy had a perfectly lovely wife, Rapunzel, but like all males of any size he liked to stare at whatever else was in sight. He had not given Electra a second glance, and not just because she was clothed. No man gave her a second glance when she was with Nada, as she usually was. She was used to it.

  It was too bad that Nada did not love Dolph the way he loved her. But of course she was five years older than he, now twenty to his fifteen. Nada was a poised young woman, while Dolph—well, even Electra had to admit that he was sort of unpolished. Electra loved him anyway; she couldn't help it, because of the enchantment she had fallen into. She had to love and marry the Prince who had kissed her awake after her thousand year (well, almost) sleep. She had not been the one who was supposed to make that sleep, and she was certainly no princess. But Evil Magician Murphy's curse had fouled everything up, and she had somehow bitten the apple and fallen into the special coffin, and now she was here.

  Actually, Murphy wasn't all that bad, now that he had renounced his claim to the throne of Xanth. He had used his magic to help his son, Grey, get out of his horrible obligation to the evil machine Com-Pewter. Maybe eight hundred years in the Brain Coral's pool, pickled in brine, had mellowed Murphy and twenty more years in Mundania had finished the job. Electra had forgiven him what he had done to her with his curse. She had sort of had to, because if that hadn't happened, she would have been long since dead and forgotten. Such things made a difference. Still, it wasn't any great situation she was in now: in love with a Prince who loved her best friend instead.

  In fact, she was coming to a crisis. The Good Magician had done some research in the Book of Answers and discovered that there was a time limit to her enchantment. If she didn't marry the Prince by the time she was eighteen years old, she would die anyway. Betrothal could hold her only until she came of age; then she had to perform. If she did not marry him and consummate the marriage before she was eighteen, she would die on the stroke of her birthday.

  It was tricky judging exactly how old she was because of her most-of-a-millennium sleep, but they had figured it out: only her normal life counted. So her aging had halted the moment she fell into the enchanted sleep and resumed when she woke from it. By that reckoning, she would be eighteen next week. Dolph would have to choose. He couldn't avoid it, because if he did nothing she would die, leaving only Nada for him to marry. His parents had laid down the Word: he could not do it by default. He had to Decide, and then marry the one he chose, and it would be done. One way or the other.

  In a way it was good to have this distraction of Che's kidnapping, because it took her mind from her own problem or at least made her remember that she wasn't the only one in Xanth with something to worry about. Many folk had problems, after all! She knew she was lucky to have come here, and lived these past six years in Castle Roogna with good friends and her great love. Even if it was magical in origin and hopeless, it was still a great wonderful thing in her heart.

  She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Why should she be crying, really?

  Travel was swift down the magic path, and before long they w
ere there. Electra dismounted, and Nada resumed her human form and donned her dress, panties, and slippers, which Electra had carried in her knapsack. The dress and slippers didn't matter, but it was essential that no male eye see the panties. They were exciting pink, while Electra's were dull white, but no males were supposed to know that. What would Xanth come to, if anything like that happened?

  Nada turned to her, as they stood outside the castle moat. "I wish he would marry you," she said.

  "I know." But they both knew that their preferences didn't count. Only Dolph's counted. He would choose, and the one he chose would marry him. That had been understood from the outset, ever since Queen Irene had declared that he could not marry both. One man with two wives? It just wasn't proper, for some reason.

  They gazed at the castle. It looked ordinary, but the drawbridge was up. That meant that they couldn't just go in.

  They exchanged most of a glance. Good Magician Humfrey wasn't here now, but Grey Murphy was doing his best to substitute in the interim. He had the Book of Answers and all the collections of vials and spells and things, and Ivy to Enhance him when he needed it. He had done well enough, all things considered, these past three years, though Electra understood he sometimes had to scramble for a difficult Answer. He had set up the same rules Humfrey had maintained: any applicant had to pass three challenges to get into the castle and then to give one year's service or the equivalent. That was to weed out those who weren't really serious. Even so, there were quite a number of folk with Questions. Several were sitting by the bank of the moat now, evidently trying to make up their minds whether their Questions were really important enough to warrant the price required for the Answers. That explained why the drawbridge was up; otherwise those folk might simply have walked on in.

  Nada nodded, and her gray-brown tresses bobbed prettily. Electra's tresses were brown too, but somehow they never bobbed; they just hung there listlessly, no matter how she tried to fix them. "I think Grey can't afford to play favorites," she said.

  Electra agreed. No favorites! Nada's other best friend was Ivy, and even Ivy got a trifle nervous when Nada got too close to her fianc , Grey. Why Ivy and Grey were affianced, while Dolph, Nada, and Electra were betrothed, was a question none of them had ever quite worked out. So Grey couldn't afford to let Nada in without challenge, while others watched.