“Fair point,” Yukay agreed reluctantly. “Let’s all get out of the water and get dressed and stay dressed.”
“After your clothing dries?” Naomi asked mischievously.
Yukay paused. Evidently she hadn’t thought of that.
“Do you ladies have a problem?”
They turned in the water. There, standing beside Ivan, was a solid, middle-aged man, roughly handsome. “OMG!” Yukay said. “That’s King Emeritus Trent!”
“Who?” Kody asked. “I have heard that name before.”
“Former king of Xanth, now retired,” Yukay said, awed. “Queen Iris’s husband.”
“I must advise you that you are intruding on a private setting,” King Trent said. “This is Illusion Fields.”
The women, all of them, seemed to be too abashed to speak further. Maybe that had something to do with them being naked before a royal man. So it seemed it was up to Kody. “Elysian Fields? Paradise for the dead?”
“Illusion Fields,” Trent said. “Our variation of that theme. A very pleasant place crafted by my wife.”
“Sir, we blundered into it. All we want is to get out of it.”
“You don’t wish to enter the contest?”
“Princess Melody mentioned a contest but wouldn’t tell us about it,” Kody said. “We are sorry we got into it.”
“Ah. You are the Curse party.”
“Yes, sir. It’s my Quest to locate and defuse it. We landed here by accident.”
“Of course. I will help you on your way.”
This was odd. “Sir, you know something of our situation?”
“Only that the princesses were to tell no one of the contest. Not even the Curse Questors. So you were not warned.”
“So that was it,” Yukay said. “We were not supposed to be distracted by it.”
“Or we were supposed to blunder into it and find Ivan and Naomi,” Zosi said.
That made both Kody and Yukay pause. So did Ivan and Naomi.
“I wasn’t looking for a Quest,” Ivan said. “I just wanted to see the mountain.”
“Neither was I,” Naomi said. “The illusion wasn’t much of a danger to me, in my serpent form; I just slithered along. But it was confusing. When I encountered the pool I decided to swim and wash. Then those men peeked at me.” Her blue eyes became stormy gray.
“Not by choice,” Ivan said. “Your appearance made my stomach roil.”
“I can’t say the same,” Kody said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lovelier woman’s body. I couldn’t help looking.”
“Forgiven, both,” Naomi said, the blue returning.
“We don’t have to pick up every incidental person we encounter,” Yukay said. A person who did not know better might have suspected she was slightly jealous of the luscious naga. “We can see them to the edge of Illusion Fields and they can be on their separate ways.”
“Then again, my chances of identifying the naga poachers could be as good with a group as on my own,” Naomi said. “I would be willing to contribute my share to your Quest efforts.”
Kody kept his mouth shut, letting the girls settle this. He didn’t trust himself to make a rational decision while on the verge of freaking out.
“And I have nothing better to do,” Ivan said. “I’d love to join a Quest.”
Yukay opened her mouth, but before she could organize her protest King Trent spoke. “Then that must have been the reason for the ban on publicity. To allow you to complete your roster for your Quests. Now that that has been accomplished, we shall announce the contest far and wide.”
Yukay closed her mouth. What else could she do?
“Sir, this contest,” Kody said. “Who is it for, and what is the prize?”
“It’s a diversion during the Curse. The winners, one man and one woman, will be king and queen for a month here in Illusion Fields, the landscape and themselves rendered beautiful via additional illusion. They will be served by volunteer participants who will also be rendered beautiful for the duration.” Trent’s lips quirked. “That is to say, objectively ugly. But everything here will contribute to the appearance of beauty. It should be a marvelous occasion for all concerned, and a great relief from the Curse.” He glanced at Kody. “We hope that before it finishes, you will have achieved your mission, and things will have returned to normal. Folk have been getting rather edgy recently; we hope this alleviates it somewhat.”
“We will do our best,” Kody said. King Trent impressed him; the man was handsome and competent.
“I’m sure you will. Very well, I will see about providing you with a convenient route out of here. There is a hot pepper bush nearby; your griffin should be able to sniff it out under the illusion. That should help you dry your clothing.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kody said as Trent turned and walked away, soon disappearing into the illusion. Probably his wife had arranged to cover him.
Zap sniffed, and soon oriented on something on the bank. Kody, Yukay, and Zosi waded out of the pool while Naomi swam back for her clothes.
“Maybe we should, um, ignore bodies for the nonce,” Yukay said. “Until we get dry and clothed.”
“Agreed,” Kody said.
Naked, they clustered around the hot pepper bush. Zap had touched and shaken it, and it was now visible, with a number of red peppers. They radiated intense heat. Ivan felt on the ground for fallen twigs and thickened them into useful frameworks to support clothing so that it could dry in the pepper heat. In a surprisingly brief time everything was dry and they were able to get dressed.
“That’s a relief,” Ivan murmured. “Much more nudity and I would have vomited.”
Kody did not comment. He had studiously ignored Yukay and Zosi, but the reaction he feared was not vomiting. He, too, was relieved to see them clothed.
King Trent returned. “I have consulted with my wife, and she believes that a test run would be in order, to be sure we have the right degree of difficulty. Would you mind remaining here for the day, and departing tomorrow? We can provide you with food and a cabin for the night.”
A glance circled around the group and landed on Kody. “We are amenable,” he said. “What do we need to do?”
“There are two illusion tokens hidden in the set. One can be found only by a man, the other by a woman. They are small cardboard cutouts of a man and a woman. See if you can find them. If you cannot, we may have to hide them less deviously.”
“Squawk?”
Trent smiled, having no difficulty understanding the question. “For this purpose, you will count as a man,” he said. “To make two teams of three each.” He looked around. “Are you ready?”
“We are ready,” Kody said, not needing another circulating glance.
“Then behold.”
Suddenly the scene changed. Now they stood in a fantastic garden, and a number of creatures were there. Some were petite dancing nymphs, others were huge lumbering ogres, and still others were dragons.
“All are real in their fashions,” Trent explained. “None are dangerous. But they will not help you look.”
Kody blinked. Because the nymphs were gnarled and ugly, the ogres handsome, and the dragons mixed. The trees were similarly mixed, ranging from aesthetic to ugly.
“Beautiful,” Ivan breathed.
Kody looked where he was looking. It was at a hideous nymph. So the reversal still applied.
Or did it? Why coat the scene with illusion, if they had actors already looking the parts? “I need to check something,” he said.
“You have a search strategy?”
“Maybe.”
“I know it’s illusion,” Ivan said. “But I would love a pretext to get my hands on her.”
Was it really illusion? There was one way to find out. Kody beckoned to the nymph. She smiled horrendously and came to him. “I am looking for something,” he said. “It may be on you.”
She shrugged. “I will neither help you nor hinder you.”
“I will have to pat you down to s
earch for it.”
“Pat me,” she agreed.
Kody put his hands on her shoulders, then her arms, then her body, groping her. She tolerated it without protest.
“Wow,” Ivan murmured. “I may like this search.”
Kody verified several things. One was that the body was solid, but not in the manner the illusion suggested. The nymph was conservatively clothed in reality, while her illusion costume was scanty and highly suggestive. But mainly, under the illusion, she was not malformed; she was a reasonably shapely young woman. Neither beautiful nor ugly, merely in the middle range. Probably a man who was reversed by the Curse, who felt her body, would think she was far better endowed than she was, because of the contribution of the illusion. The illusion was visual, not tactile, but sufficed.
Thus an ordinary girl was rendered by the Curse into an ugly one without changing her form, and by the illusion into an apparently ugly one that the Curse made seem beautiful. One kind of illusion countering another.
“No token on you,” Kody said.
“I could have told you that,” the nymph replied. “But then you would not have gotten such a good feel.”
“It was a good feel,” Kody agreed. “I apologize for putting you through that.” She did not know that he was immune to the Curse, so assumed he had seen her lovely while feeling her. He was not about to correct that impression.
“No need. It was fun.” She laughed. “If you want to do it again after the contest, look me up.”
“I wouldn’t recognize you without the illusion.”
“Oh, he caught on,” she muttered. “But seriously, I would never do this if I weren’t concealed by illusion. It makes me a different creature.” She walked away.
It certainly did, Kody reflected. The Curse and the illusion changed her appearance, and the contest allowed her to be uncharacteristically wanton. It was an interesting situation.
“This search has become more interesting,” Ivan said.
“Go to it,” Kody said.
Zap did not try to pat down people. Instead she checked out trees and objects, verifying what existed under the mask of illusion. Meanwhile the three female members of their party, observing what Kody had done, were groping males and ogres.
But there were hundreds of nymphs, ogres, dragons, and other actors. It would take days rather than hours to search them all.
Time passed without success. None of them found any tokens.
Kody realized that this needed some rethinking. If the tokens were not on the bodies of the actors or on the other objects, where were they? They had to be find-able, and maybe folk with the wit to devise new search strategies had a better chance. It would make sense to set up the contest that way, so that victory did not go to blind luck. Kody himself generally preferred to be thoughtful rather than proceeding blindly.
A bulb flashed over his head. The tokens might be on the bodies, but not where expected.
“Nymph!” Kody called.
She was standing nearby, having faded into the background after he searched her. “You want to grope me again? I am no more likely to yield your token than I was before.”
“And no less likely.”
She shrugged. “I think you just want more free feels.”
“You’re a sharp judge of character.”
“Is it true that I feel different than I look?”
“Yes. Let me feel your purse.” Because all women had purses even if they didn’t show. That was so that they did not have to have bulky pockets ruining their contours.
She smiled. “Nothing there you’d want.” She handed it over.
She was right. It contained only female things, no tokens.
Kody squatted before her. “Now your shoes.”
“You’re a foot fetishist!” But she lifted one foot, in the process flashing a good deal of illusion leg. Unfortunately the illusion made it an ugly leg, so the sight that could have freaked out a normal Xanth man merely made him avert his gaze.
She wore dainty slippers that felt exactly like what they looked like. Kody removed the slipper and ran his fingers inside. Nothing there. He put it back on her. “Now the other.”
She put down her foot and lifted the other, showing even more leg, right up to the pantyline. That had to be deliberate. That meant there might be a reason. A regular man would have freaked out. Kody might have been seriously distracted, had the illusion not been counterproductive. As it was he had no trouble removing the slipper.
He felt inside it. There was something there. He slid it out. It was a thin cardboard image of a man, a paper doll. The token.
He nodded. Then he put it back in the slipper, and put the slipper back on her foot. “Thank you,” he said, standing.
She gazed at him, astonished. “You found it! And you put it back!”
“I’m not a contestant, only testing. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“And you didn’t even feel me this time.”
“You are disappointed?”
“Yes! You never would have gotten down to my shoe if you had let me distract you.”
Now he was curious. “How far would you have let me go, while distracting me?”
“As far as you liked. As long as I kept my shoes on.”
“You are dedicated.”
“It’s my job. Neither to help you nor hinder you, but to distract you.”
“You did it well.” He put his hands on her shoulders, brought her in to him, and kissed her. “Thank you.”
“You’re no ordinary man,” she said as he turned her loose.
“Oh, she caught on,” he muttered, smiling.
“Oh, bleep.” She walked away.
Kody approached another nymph. “I must check your shoes.”
She did not argue. She raised her foot for him, then her other foot, showing him just as much as the first one had.
There in her slipper was another token.
Kody sought Ivan. “You should check their shoes.”
Ivan shrugged and asked a nymph to raise her foot. She obliged, providing him with a clear line of sight to her pantyline. He froze, freaked out. She put down her foot and walked away.
Kody snapped his fingers and Ivan came out of it. “What happened?”
“You saw too far up her leg. Sorry about that.”
“I’ll stick to torsos,” Ivan said.
Kody went to Zosi. “Please, will you check a nymph’s shoes for me?”
She obliged. The selected nymph lifted her leg, and Zosi saw everything but didn’t react. Women were not freaked out by women’s panties. She checked both slippers, but there was nothing there. “There was a point to this?” she asked.
“Yes. When I checked, there was a male token. Now we have verified that it exists only for men. We still have to locate the female token.”
“We have looked everywhere with no luck.”
“Where is the least likely place it would be?”
“In an ogre’s mouth,” she said, laughing.
“Try that.”
“You’re serious!”
“Yes. But you have to do it. I don’t believe it will work for me.”
She approached an ogre. He was about twelve feet tall and broad in proportion. He looked down at her, seeing mainly the gray curl at the top of her head. “Girl, curl,” he rumbled appreciatively.
“Get your ugly face down here and open your mouth.”
The ogre obliged, dropping to the ground with a thud and prying open the ragged crevasse of his mouth. His breath was like a wind from a garbage dump. But Zosi was a zombie at heart, and had no problem. There was a line of huge teeth. Zosi put both hands in and felt each tooth.
And found a token.
“I’ll be knitted and darned,” she said.
“Put it back and check another ogre,” Kody said.
She did so, and found another token. “How did you know?”
“I pondered and figured it out. My token was in the slipper of a nymph. Any nymph.”
“But I don’t see such things as the rest of you do. I didn’t freak.”
“I could get to like you, if you weren’t so ugly.”
“You’re not ugly, and I do like you.”
“What, with Yukay and Naomi nearby?”
“I like all of you.”
“So you have solved their puzzle. What do we do now?”
“We report to King Trent. What do you think about the difficulty of the puzzle?”
She considered. “There will be hundreds here tomorrow trying to solve it. A few of them may be original thinkers, like you. I think it’s about right.”
“So do I.”
They rounded up the others. “Kody has found the tokens,” Zosi announced. “Both of them really. For the man, in the slipper of a nymph, and he has to get past her lifted leg without freaking out to get it. For the woman, she has to peer into an ogre’s mouth without retching. Only a few will do that. We think it’s fair.”
Yukay, Naomi, and Ivan considered. “We agree,” Yukay said. “How about you, Zap?”
“Squawk.”
“So we’re all agreed. We’ll tell King Trent when we see him.”
Kody raised his voice. “King Trent, sir.”
In a generous moment Trent appeared. “Yes?”
“We have solved the puzzle and believe it is fair. Most men won’t think of nymph’s slippers, and few of those who do will have the wit to avoid freaking out. Most women won’t think of ogre’s mouths, and fewer yet will go near them. But some will. The first of those will be your winners.”
“Thank you,” Trent said. “This way to your quarters for the night.”
He ushered them to a nice cabin, big enough for six. “It is stocked; you should have no trouble.”
They entered. Indeed, it was a very fancy cabin with five beds and a mound of straw for Zap. The central table was piled with delicious-looking food that was not illusion. It was evident that royalty knew how to provide for guests.
The three princesses appeared. “We’re sorry we couldn’t tell you about the contest,” Melody said.
“But at least now you know why,” Harmony added.
“We’re glad you figured it out and got your group complete,” Rhythm concluded.
“We understand,” Kody said. “Thank you.”
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