Man From Mundania

by Piers Anthony

  “Wait!” Dolph cried from behind.

  Queen Irene's eyes snapped to him. “This is not your decision,” she said tightly. “You have your own decision to make.”

  “But it is my business!” Dolph said rebelliously. “Because Ivy's my sister and I love her and I think you're wrong about Grey! I think he has magic, I don't care where he's from. I want to find that magic!”

  Irene glanced at Dor, who shrugged. “Allow me to point out, son,” she said with a certain parental emphasis that bode ill for his future freedom, “that there is no time limit on this ultimatum. Grey has as long as he needs to find magic; it is merely that he may not have our approval to marry Ivy until he does, any more than you may marry before you clarify your own situation.”

  “Yes! So Grey should not break the Betrothal until we get this straight! I think he has a talent, and I know how he can find it!”

  “If you are referring to the episode of the hate spring,” Irene said evenly, “the evidence is inconclusive. We have no way of judging the potency of that spring at the time they were there. It may have variable potency, depending on the season or other factors.”

  “No! I mean he has to have magic, because of the Heaven Cent!”

  Now everyone was interested, even Ivy herself. What wild notion had her little brother come up with this time?

  “The Heaven Cent appears to have been fouled by Murphy's curse,” Irene said. “We have noted the alignment of the names; it is indeed the kind of thing that can happen when magic goes wrong. The cent will have to be recharged before the search for the Good Magician is resumed.”

  “I don't think it fouled up,” Dolph said. “I think the cent worked. It sent Ivy to the place she was most needed:

  Mundania, where Grey needed her. We thought the Good Magician needed her most, because of his message to me, but maybe that wasn't so. Or maybe Grey is supposed to help find the Good Magician. So he must have the magic we need to do that!”

  Ivy gazed at him, astonished. Dolph's crazy notion might just be right! She saw that the others were just as surprised.

  “So we should take him to Parnassus to ask the Muse of History what talent is listed for him,” Dolph concluded triumphantly.

  Again Irene exchanged a glance with Dor. Again he shrugged.

  “Grey may go to Parnassus to inquire,” Irene said after a moment. “Certainly we bear him no malice, and stand ready to facilitate any effort he wishes to make on his behalf. We shall arrange suitable transportation for him. But you. Prince Dolph, will remain here. You have not yet resolved your own dilemma.”

  “Awwww—”

  Irene's hair seemed to turn a darker shade of green. “Ooo, you've done it now, you impertinent boy!” one of the thrones said. “You'll never—” Irene's kick cut it off.

  But Ivy was looking at Grey for the first time with genuine hope. She would go with him, of course. Maybe the Muse really did have a talent listed for him! After all, if the Heaven Cent had not fouled up and this was part of the good Magician's plan, Grey might indeed …

  She was not even aware of the termination of the audience. She was too busy hugging Grey, wild with hope.

  Chapter 10

  Parnassus

  Grey was torn. He loved Ivy and wanted to stay in this magic land, but knew he didn't qualify. The decent thing to do was to call it off with Ivy and return to drear Mundania and the horror of Freshman English. He knew he didn't have any magic. But now, with Ivy holding him and Dolph so excited about proving he did have magic, he found it all too easy to go along. At least it would mean some more time with her.

  What was this Parnassus? There had been some kind of assignment relating to that in school, but he had just skimmed over it without comprehension, as usual. Something Greek, a mountain in Greece, where people went to see the oracle. That was all he could dredge up.

  Ivy set about organizing it. Dolph could not go, but his two fiancées would: the cute child Electra and the lovely Nada. That promised to be an interesting trip: Grey and the three girls.

  Next day they started off. It was a good thing he now believed in magic, because he would have been in trouble otherwise. Ivy had somehow called in two winged centaurs and a horse with the head and wings of a giant bird, and these were to be their steeds for the trip.

  “But there are four of us,” Grey said. “I don't think it's smart to ride double—not if we're flying.”

  “We won't ride double, exactly,” Ivy said. “Nada will be with me.”

  “But Nada weighs as much as you do!” he protested.

  Indeed, Nada weighed more, and in all the right places.

  Ivy just smiled. “Let me introduce you,” she said, leading the way to the new arrivals.

  The first was the handsome centaur male, like a muscular man from the waist up, and like a horse below and behind, with huge wings. This was Cheiron. The second was Cheiron's mate, Chex, whose long brown hair merged into her mane, and at whose ample bare breasts Grey tried not to stare. The third was Xap, a golden yellow hippogryph, Chex's sire, who spoke only in squawks that the others seemed to understand.

  Grey was to ride Cheiron. Ivy rode Xap, and Electra rode Chex. Nada approached with Ivy—and abruptly became a small snake. Ivy put the snake in a pocket and mounted. So that was the secret! He had forgotten that Nada was a naga, a human-serpent crossbreed, able to assume either form. She had seemed so emphatically human! She had made herself small so that her weight did not become a burden, knowing that her friend Ivy would not let her fall.

  Grey looked at Cheiron. “Uh, I've ridden a centaur before, but not a winged one. Your wings, uh—”

  “Sit behind them,” Cheiron said. “And hold on tightly. My magic enables me to fly not by powerful wingstrokes, but by lightness of body, and you will be lightened too. You could bounce off if not prepared.”

  “Uh, yes.” He walked to the side, but Cheiron stood taller than Donkey, and there were no stirrups. How could he get on?

  Chex came up. “I will help you.” She reached down, put her hands under Grey's arms, and lifted him up. He flailed, surprised, and felt his back brush something soft. Then he was over Cheiron's back and settling into place.

  He leaned forward and got a double handful of mane as the great wings spread. Suddenly he felt light-headed and light bodied; indeed it seemed he might bounce off!

  Cheiron leaped and pumped his wings, and they were airborne. Grey felt as if he were floating. There was definitely magic operating, but it was good magic.

  He looked to the side. There was Xap, flying strongly with Ivy, his bird's beak seeming to cut right through the air. Behind him Chex was lifting too, with Electra gleefully aboard. With each stroke of the centaur's wings, her breasts flexed. Now Grey knew what he had brushed as he was lifted.

  Electra saw him looking, and waved. He took the risk of releasing one handful of mane in order to wave back. How could he be afraid when the child wasn't?

  “It's hard to believe that she's two years older than Chex,” Cheiron remarked, turning his head briefly so that his words were not lost in the wind.

  “What?” Grey asked, confused.

  “Ivy and Nada are seventeen. Electra is fifteen. Chex is thirteen. But our foal Che is now a year old, being tended by his granddam Chem. It can be awkward to judge by appearances.”

  Grey looked again at the pair. Electra remained a child, and Chex a very mature figure of both horse and woman.

  “No offense, but I find that difficult to believe,” Grey said. But now he was remembering something Ivy had said about that; it had faded from his memory because it was part of the magic he had not then accepted.

  “I thought you would; that is why I mentioned it. Chem was part of the party that went to find Ivy when she was lost as a child of three. It was on that journey that Chem met Xap. There was no male centaur she found suitable, and Xap as you can see is a fine figure of a creature. So she bred with him, and in the following year Chex was birthed.”

  “
I, uh, am surprised that you discuss it so openly,” Grey said, somewhat at a loss.

  “We centaurs are more advanced, and therefore more discriminating about proprieties than are human folk,” Cheiron explained. “We treat natural functions as what they are: natural. We reserve our foibles for what counts: intellectual application.”

  “Uh, sure. But Chex—I thought centaurs aged at the same rate as human beings.” Now he realized what his problem was: the same as the one with buxom Nada. Nada looked and acted too human to be credible as a serpent until she actually changed, and Chex looked and acted too mature to be credible as an adolescent. He was coming to accept magic, intellectually, but there were aspects of it that his deeper belief still resisted.

  “Ordinarily they do. But animals age faster. Since Xap is an animal, Chex was blessed with the natural consequences of the crossbreeding: wings and faster maturity.

  She grew at a rate between that of her two parents, and reached sexual maturity at age six, rather than age three or age twelve. Her dam, aware of this, tutored her intensively so that her intellect kept pace. Thus it was that she was a fit mate for me at age ten, though I was more than twice her chronological age. For that I am duly grateful, for winged centaurs are rare.”

  “Uh, how rare are they?”

  “We two, and our foal, are the only ones in Xanth.”

  Grey had to laugh. “That is rare!” He looked once more at Chex. “She looks so, so human, uh, in front, it's still hard to believe she can be so young.”

  “You will find her young in no respect other than chronological,” Cheiron assured him. “It may be more convenient for you to think of her as my age, ignoring the chronology.”

  “Uh, yes, that seems best.” So he really wouldn't have to make the adjustment that was giving him trouble.

  They flew southeast, down toward what on the Florida map would have been Lake Okeechobee. From this height he really would not have known this was Xanth instead of Florida; the trees and fields and lakes seemed similar.

  Then he spied a cloud ahead. It did not resemble any Mundane cloud. It had a puny, angry face. “I've seen that cloud before!” Grey exclaimed.

  “That is Fracto, the worst of clouds,” Cheiron said.

  “Wherever there is mischief to be done in the air, there he is to be found. Apparently he tunes in magically. We shall have to take evasive action before he gets up a charge.”

  “But he was—was in the gourd!” Grey said. “I thought there was no contact between there and here. I mean, that's the realm of bad dreams, isn't it?”

  “Correct. That would have been the dream Fracto; this is the real one. Their natures are identical.”

  The trio angled down toward land. The cloud tried to extend himself below to intercept them, but was not fast enough. Fracto could not catch them in the air, and would have to settle for raining on them.

  But the three flying figures did not actually land. They brushed by the treetops as if searching for a suitable region—and kept on going. Before the cloud realized it, they were beyond, and lifting once more into the sky. Fracto tried to turn about and go after them, but there was a fairly stiff wind that prevented him. He turned a deep mottled gray and skulked off, seeking other mischief.

  “Serves you right, soggy-bottom!” Electra called back nastily.

  “She has been associating with Grundy Golem,” Cheiron said. “That is one of his old insults.”

  Maybe so. But Grey was satisfied with it. He didn't like Fracto.

  By evening they were approaching a feature of the landscape that definitely was not part of the Mundane peninsula: a mountain. At its jagged peak grew a monstrous tree, and on the tree perched a mind-bogglingly monstrous bird.

  “Mount Parnassus,” Cheiron said unnecessarily. “We may not fly all the way to it, because the Simurgh does not appreciate clutter in her airspace. We shall set you down at the base of the mountain, and wait there for your return.”

  They glided to a camping site Xap knew about close to Parnassus. Ivy brought out the little snake and set it on the ground, and suddenly Nada was there again, just as lovely as before. She was nude, but Ivy had her clothes ready, and in a moment all was in order. There were blanket and pillow bushes nearby, and a beerbarrel tree that was filled with boot rear. “Oh, I love it!” Electra exclaimed.

  Grey remembered Ivy's warning, in the mock Castle Roogna atop the dream mountain. Did the stuff really work? He could not resist trying some and finding out for himself. So while the others settled for water from the nearby stream, he and Electra drew foaming cups of boot rear from a spigot set in the bulging trunk.

  “Bottom's up!” Electra said, and took a swig. Then she jumped into the air. “What a boot!”

  Grey just didn't believe it. He sipped his own drink, while Electra waited expectantly.

  Nothing happened.

  “Maybe you didn't drink enough,” she said, disappointed.

  Grey tilted the cup and swallowed a big mouthful. There was no effect. It seemed just like root beer.

  “Let me taste yours,” Electra said suspiciously.

  Grey gave her his cup. She sipped, then drank, and did not jump. “It's a dud!” she said. “Yours must have gone flat! Mine gave me a good boot!” Grey tried hers, but with no effect, and after that it didn't work for her either. “The whole tree's gone flat!” she said. “I must have gotten the only sip that was fresh enough.” But she remained perplexed.

  They returned to the camp, where the others had gathered a nice collection of fruits, nuts, and bolts. They had even found a gravy train and a hot potato collection, so had potatoes and gravy.

  The more he experienced of Xanth, the better Grey liked it. Its ways really were better than those of Mundania, once he got used to them, even if some, like the boot rear, were overrated.

  They slept individually, with the three four-footed creatures spaced around the outside of the camp, sleeping on their feet. Grey had a suspicion that Xap the hippogryph would be aware of any danger, and would deal with it swiftly. That beak looked wicked!

  In the morning, after breakfasting on eggs from an eggplant, fried on a hotseat, along with green and orange juice from nearby greens and oranges, they set out afoot for the heights of Mount Parnassus. They had to cross a stream at its base; rather than risk wading through it, they located a narrow place and jumped across.

  “Now we'll be all right if we can avoid the Python and the Maenads,” Ivy said.

  Grey could guess why a python might be awkward, but the other wasn't clear. “What—?”

  “Wild Women,” she clarified.

  That sounded intriguing, but he knew better than to say so. “Suppose one of them comes upon us?”

  “That depends. Electra can shock the first one, but then she has to recharge for a day. Nada could become a big serpent and bite one, but she would be no match for the Python. I can do a certain amount by judicious Enhancement. I could also use the magic mirror to call home, if there was time. But of course my snoopy little brother will be watching us on the Tapestry, and he'll alert someone if there's trouble. Xap has been here, and could run in to carry a couple of us away. But he really doesn't like being limited to the ground. It will probably be best if we get through without running into any of those creatures. Since Clio will know we're coming and why, that should be possible. She wouldn't wish any harm to us.”

  “Clio?”

  “The Muse of History. Weren't you listening when we planned this trip?”

  “Uh, I hadn't caught her name.”

  Ivy smiled. “I was teasing. Grey. I don't expect you to know everything about Xanth yet. Not today.”

  “But just wait till tomorrow!” Electra put in, laughing.

  There was a clear path up the mountain. Electra led the way, full of juvenile energy. Ivy was next, and then Grey, with Nada bringing up the rear. They all had walking sticks they had found at the campsite, and these were a great help, because they walked briskly on their own, hauling the living fo
lk along.

  They came to a fork in the path. Electra halted. “I can't tell which one is right,” she said.

  “Let me check,” Nada said. She became a long black snake and slithered up past them. She paused at the fork, putting her head to one side and then the other, her tongue flickering in and out. Then she became human again. “The right one. The left one smells of Maenad, fairly fresh. Let's move on quickly.”

  Grey would have liked to loiter, so as to catch a glimpse of one of the Wild Women. Did they wear clothing? But the others were evidently alarmed, so he moved along with them.

  The path became steep. Even Electra was breathing hard. Nada gave her walking stick to Grey and assumed her natural form: a serpent with her human head, unchanged except that the hair was shorter. Obviously she didn't want her hair to drag on the ground. Just as he had tried without perfect success not to stare at Chex's bare bosom, and not to stare at Nada's barely clothed contours in the human state, he now tried not to stare at her incongruous juxtaposition of human and reptilian parts. It was a good thing he now believed in magic!

  He offered the extra walking stick to Ivy, but she declined. “I have enhanced my own endurance,” she explained. Indeed, she looked relatively cool and rested.

  Electra was satisfied with her single stick, scrambling athletically over rocks and roots, evidently regarding the climb as a challenge. So he took a stick in each hand, and was propelled along by them. It was as if he had a second set of legs.

  The slope of the mountain became almost sheer, but the path cut its ledge cleverly through it, and led them without mishap to the home of the Muses. This was an ornate building set into the steep slope, girt by stone columns and arches and guarded by carved stone creatures. Grey had learned enough of Xanth to realize that those statues just might come alive and attack, if intruders misbehaved.