Centaur Aisle (30 page)

It was now early evening. Ichabod delved into assorted cubbies and produced shrouds to conceal the bodies of the centaur and ogre. Then Arnolde and Smash walked out of the library in tandem, looking like two big workmen in togas, moving a covered crate between them. It turned out to be almost as good concealment as the invisibility spell; no one paid attention to them. They were on their way back to Xanth.

Chapter 9. Onesti's Policy

T
hey did not go all the way back home. They trekked only to the northwest tip of Xanth, where the isthmus connected it to Mundania. Once they were back in magic territory, Irene set about replenishing her stock of seeds. Smash knocked down a jellybarrel tree, consumed the jelly, and fashioned the swollen trunk into a passable boat. Arnolde watched the terrain, making periodic forays into Mundania, just far enough to see whether it had changed. Dor accompanied him, questioning the sand. By the description of people the sand had recently seen, they were able to guess at the general place and time in Mundania.

For the change was continuous. Once a person from Xanth entered Mundania, his framework was fixed until he returned; but anyone who followed him might enter a different aspect of Mundania. This was like missing one boat and boarding the next, Arnolde explained; the person on the first boat could return, but the person on land could not catch a particular boat that had already departed. Thus King Trent had gone, they believed, to a place called "Europe," in a time called "Medieval." Dor's party had gone to a place called "America," in a time called "Modern." The shifting of places and times seemed random; probably there was a pattern to the changes that they were unable to comprehend. They simply had to locate the combination they wanted and pass through that "window" before it changed. Arnolde concluded, from their observations, that any given window lasted from five minutes to an hour, and that it was possible to hold a window open longer by having a person stand at the border; it seemed the window couldn't quite close while it was in use. Perhaps it was like the revolving door in the Mundanian library, whose turning could be temporarily stopped by a person in it—until some other person needed to use it.

On the third day it became tedious. Irene's seed collection was complete and she was restive; Smash had finished his boat and stocked it with supplies. Grundy had made himself a nest in the bow, from which he eavesdropped on the gossip of passing marine life. Arnolde and Dor walked down the beach. "What have you seen lately?" Dor inquired routinely of the same-yet-different patch of sand.

"A man in a spacesuit," the sand replied. "He had little antennae sprouting from his head, like an ant, and he could talk to his friends without making a sound."

That didn't sound like anyone Dor was looking for. Some evil Magician must have enchanted the man, perhaps trying to create a new composite-species. They turned about and returned to Xanth. This surely was not their window.

The sea changed color frequently. It had been reddish the first time they came here, and reddish when they returned, for they had been locked into that particular aspect of Mundania. But thereafter it had shifted to blue, yellow, green, and white. Now it was orange, changing to purple. When it was solid purple, they walked west again. "What have you seen lately?" Dor asked once more.

"A cavegirl swimming," the sand said. "She was sort of fat, but oooh, didn't she have—"

They walked east again, depressed. "I wish there were a more direct way to do this," Arnolde said. "I have been striving to analyze the pattern, but it has eluded me, perhaps because of insufficient data."

"I know it's not much of a life we have brought you into," Dor said. "I wish there had been some other way—"

"On the contrary, it is a fascinating life and a challenging puzzle," the centaur demurred. "It is akin to the riddles of archaeology, where one must have patience and fortune in equal measure. We merely must gather more data, whether it takes a day or a year."

"A year!" Dor cried, horrified.

"Surely it will be shorter," Arnolde said reassuringly. It was obvious that he had a far greater store of patience than Dor did.

As they re-entered Xanth, the sea turned black. "Black!" Dor exclaimed. "Could that be—?"

"It is possible," Arnolde agreed, reining his own excitement with the caution of experience. "We had better alert the remainder of our company."

"Grundy, get Smash and Irene to the boat," Dor called. "We just might be close."

"More likely another false alarm," the golem grumbled. But he scampered off to fetch the other two.

When they reached their usual spot of questioning, Dor noticed that there was a large old broad-leaved tree that hadn't been there before. This was certainly a different locale. But that in itself did not mean much; the landscape did shift with the Mundane aspects, sometimes dramatically. It was not just time but geography that changed; some aspects were flat and barren, while others were raggedly mountainous. The only thing all had in common was the beach line, with the sea to the south and the terrain to the north. Arnolde was constantly intrigued by the assorted significances of this, but Dor did not pay much attention. "What have you seen lately?" he asked the sand.

"Nothing much since the King and his moll walked by," the sand said.

"Oh." Dor turned to trek back to the magic section.

The centaur paused. "Did it say—?"

Then it sank in. Excitement raced along Dor's nerves. "King Trent and Queen Iris?"

"I suppose. They were sort of old."

"I believe we have our window at last!" Arnolde said. "Go back and alert the others; I shall hold the window open."

Dor ran back east, his heart pounding harder than warranted by the exertion. Did he dare believe? "We've found it!" he cried. "Move out now!"

They dived into the boat. Smash poled it violently forward. Then the ogre's effort diminished. Dor looked, and saw that Smash was striving hard but accomplishing little.

"Oh—we're out of the magic of Xanth, and not yet in the magic aisle," he said. "Come on—we've all got to help."

Dor and Irene leaned over the boat on either side and paddled desperately with their hands, and slowly the boat moved onward. They crawled up parallel to the centaur.

"All aboard!" Dor cried, exhilarated.

Arnolde trotted out through the shallow water and climbed aboard with difficulty, rocking the boat. Some sea water slopped in. The craft was sturdy, as anything crafted by an ogre was bound to be, but still reeked of lime jelly, especially where it had been wet down.

The centaur stood in the center, facing forward; Irene sat in the front, her fair green hair trailing back in the breeze. It had faded momentarily when they were between magics, just now; perhaps that had helped give Dor the hint of the problem. It remained the easiest way to tell the state of the world around them.

Dor settled near the rear of the boat, and Smash poled vigorously from the stern. Now that they were within the magic aisle, the ogre's strength was full, and the boat was lively. The black waves coursed rapidly past.

"I wish I had known this was all we had to do to locate King Trent," Dor said. "We could have saved ourselves the trip into Modern Mundania."

"By no means," Arnolde protested, swishing his tail. "We might have discovered this window, true; but each window opens onto an entire Mundane world. We should soon have lost the trail and ourselves and been unable to rescue anyone. As it is, we know we are looking for Onesti and we know where it is; this will greatly facilitate our operation." The centaur paused. "Besides which, I am most gratified to have met Ichabod."

So their initial excursion did make sense, after all. "What sort of people do you see here?" Dor asked the water.

"Tough people with baggy clothes and swords and bows," the water said. "They're not much on the water, though; not the way the Greeks were."

"Those are probably the Bulgars," Arnolde said. "They should have passed this way in the past few decades, according to Ichabod."

"Who are the Bulgars?" Irene asked. Now that they were actually on the trail of her lost father, she was much more interested in details.

"This is complex to explain. Ichabod gave me some detail on it, but I may not have the whole story."

"If they're people my father met—and if we have to meet them, too—I want to know all about them." Her face assumed her determined look.

The boat was moving well, for the ogre's strength was formidable. The shoreline stretched ahead, curving in and out, with inlets and bays. "We do have a journey of several days ahead of us," the centaur said. "Time will doubtless weigh somewhat ponderously on our hands." He took a didactic breath and started in on his historical narrative, while the ogre scowled, uninterested, and Grundy settled down in his nest to sleep. But Dor and Irene paid close attention.

In essence it was this: about three centuries before this period, there had been a huge Mundane empire in this region, called—as Dor understood it—Roam, perhaps because it spread so far. But after a long time this empire had grown corrupt and weak. Then from the great inland mass to the east had thrust a formerly quiescent tribe, the Huns, perhaps short for Hungries because of their appetite for power, pushing other tribes before them. These tribes had overrun the Roaming Empire, destroying a large part of it. But when the Hungry chief, Attaboy, died of indigestion, they were defeated and driven partway back east, to the shore of this Black Sea, the very color of their mood. They fought among themselves for a time, as people in a black mood do, then reunited and called themselves the Bulgars. But the Buls were driven out of their new country by another savage tribe of Turks—no relation to the turkey oaks—called the Khazars. Some Buls fled north and some fled west—and this was the region the western ones had settled, here at the western edge of the Black Sea. They couldn't go any farther because another savage tribe was there, the Avars. The Avars had a huge empire in eastern Europe, but now it was declining, especially under the onslaught of the Khazars. At the moment, circa Mundane AD 650—the number referred to some Mundane religion to which none of these parties belonged—there was an uneasy balance in this region between the three powers, the Avars, Bulgars, and Khazars, with the Khazars dominant.

Somehow this was too complex for Dor to follow. All these strange tribes and happenings and numbers—the intricacies of Mundania were far more complicated than the simple magic events of Xanth! Easier to face down griffins and dragons than Avars and Khazars; at least the dragons were sensible creatures.

"But what has this to do with my father?" Irene demanded. "Which tribe did he go to trade with?"

"None of the above," the centaur said. "This is merely background. It would be too dangerous for us to deal with such savages. But we believe there is a small Kingdom, maybe a Gothic remnant, or some older indigenous people, who have retained nominal independence in the Carpathian Mountains, with a separate language and culture. They happen to be at the boundary between the Avars, Bulgars, and Khazars, protected to a degree because no one empire can make a move there without antagonizing the other two, and also protected by the roughness of the terrain. Hence the A, B, K complex King Trent referenced—a valuable clue for us. This separate region is the Kingdom of Onesti. It is ensconced in the mountains, difficult to invade, and has very little that others would want to take, which may help account for its independence. But it surely is eager for peaceful and profitable trade, and Ichabod's Mundane reference suggests that it did have a trade route that has been lost to history, which enabled the Kingdom to prosper for a century when their normal channels appeared to be blocked. That could be the trade route to Xanth that King Trent sought to establish."

"Yes, that does make sense," Irene agreed. "But suppose one of those other tribes caught my father, and that's why he never returned?"

"We shall trace him down," the centaur said reassuringly. "We have an enormous asset King Trent lacked—magic. All we need to do is go to Onesti and query the people, plants, animals, and objects. There will surely be news of him."

Irene was silent. Dor shared her concern. Now that they were on the verge of finding King Trent—how could they be certain they would find him alive? If he were dead, what then?

"Are we going to have to fight all those A's, B's, and K's?" Grundy asked. Apparently he had not been entirely asleep.

"I doubt it," Arnolde replied. "Actual states of war are rarer than they seem in historical perspective. The great majority of the time, life goes on as usual; the fishermen fish, the blacksmiths hammer iron, the farmers farm, the women bear children. Otherwise there would be constant deprivation. However, I have stocked a friendship-spell for emergency use." He patted his bag of spells.

They went on, the ogre poling indefatigably. Gradually the shoreline curved southward, and they followed it. When dusk came they pulled ashore briefly to make a fire and prepare supper; then they returned to the boat for the night, so as not to brave the Mundane threats of the darkness. There were few fish and no monsters in the Black Sea, Grundy reported; it was safe as long as a storm did not come up.

Now Arnolde expended one of his precious spells. He opened a wind capsule, orienting it carefully. The wind blew southwest, catching the small squat sail they raised for the purpose. Now the ogre could rest, while the boat coursed on toward their destination. They took turns steering it, Grundy asking the fish and water plants for directions, Dor asking the water, and Irene growing a compass plant that pointed toward the great river they wanted.

That reminded Dor of the magic compass. He brought it out and looked, hoping it would point to King Trent. But it pointed straight at Arnolde, and when Arnolde held it, it pointed to Dor. It was useless in this situation.

Sleep was not comfortable on the water, but it was possible. Dor lay down and stared at the stars, wide awake; then the stars abruptly shifted position, and he realized he had slept;
now
he was wide awake. They shifted again. Then he was wide awake again—when Grundy woke him to take his turn at the helm. He had, it seemed, been dreaming he was wide awake. That was a frustrating mode; he would almost have preferred the nightmares.