Centaur Aisle

by Piers Anthony

  Now they came to the shallows and waded through the dark red water to the beach. That crimson bothered him as the color intensified near the tideline; how could the normally blue water change color here, in the Mundane quadrant? What magic could affect it here, where no magic existed?

  "Maybe some color leaked from the rainbow," Irene said, following his thought.

  Well, maybe. Of course there was the centaur aisle of magic now, so that wherever they were was no longer strictly Mundane. Yet the red water extended well beyond the area of temporary enchantment. It seemed to be a regular feature of the region.

  They gathered on the beach, dripping pink water. Grundy and Smash didn't mind, but Dor felt uncomfortable, and Irene's blouse and skirt were plastered to her body. "I'm not walking around this way, and I'm not taking off my clothes," she expostulated. She felt in her seedbag, which she had refilled at Centaur Isle, and brought out a purple seed. It seemed the bag was waterproof, for the seed was dry. "Grow," she ordered it as she dropped it on the sand.

  The thing sprouted into a heliotrope. Clusters of small purple flowers burst open aromatically. Warm dry air wafted outward. This plant did not really travel toward the sun; it emulated the sun's heat, dehydrating things in the vicinity. Soon their clothing was dry again.

  Even Smash and Grundy appreciated this, since both now wore the special jackets given them by the centaurs. Smash also shook out his gauntlets and dried them, and Irene spread her silver-lined fur out nearby.

  "Do we know where we go from here?" Irene asked once she had her skirt and blouse properly fluffed out.

  "Did King Trent pass this way?" Dor inquired of the landscape.

  "When?" the beach-sand asked.

  "Within the past month."

  "I don't think so."

  They moved a short distance north, and Dor tried again. Again the response was negative. As the day wore into afternoon and on into evening, they completed their traverse of the isthmus--without positive result. The land had not seen the King.

  "Maybe the Queen still had an illusion of invisibility enchantment," Grundy suggested. "So nothing could see them."

  "Her illusion wouldn't work here in Mundania, dummy," Irene retorted. She was still miffed at the golem because of the way Grundy had caused her to lose half her seeds to the eclectic eel. She carried a little grudge a long time.

  "I am not properly conversant with King Trent's excursion," Arnolde said. "Perhaps he departed Xanth by another route."

  "But I know he came this way!" Irene said.

  "You didn't even know he was leaving Xanth," Grundy reminded her. "You thought he was inside Xanth on vacation."

  She shrugged that off as irrelevant. "But this is the only route out of Xanth!" Her voice was starting its hysterical tremor.

  "Unless he went by sea," Dor said.

  "Yes, he could have done that," she agreed quickly. "But he would have come ashore somewhere. My mother gets seasick when she's in a boat too long. All we have to do is walk along the beach and ask the stones and plants."

  "And watch for Mundane monsters," Grundy said, still needling her. "So they can't look up your--"

  "I am inclined to doubt that countermagical species will present very much of a problem," Arnolde said in his scholarly manner.

  "What he know, he hoofed schmoe?" Smash demanded.

  "Evidently more than you, you moronic oaf," the centaur snapped back. "I have been studying Mundania somewhat, recently, garnering information from immigrants, and by most reports most Mundane plants and animals are comparatively shy. Of course there is a certain margin for error, as in all phenomena."

  "What dray, he say?" Smash asked, perplexed by the centaur's vocabulary.

  "Dray!" Arnolde repeated, freshly affronted. "A dray is a low cart, not a creature, you ignorant monster. I shall thank you to address me by my proper appellation."

  "What's the poop from the goop?" Smash asked.

  Dor stifled a laugh, turning it into a choking cough. In this hour of frustration, tempers were fraying, and they could not afford to have things get too negative.

  Grundy opened his big mouth, but Dor managed to cover it in time. The golem could only aggravate the situation with his natural penchant for insults.

  It was Irene who retained enough poise to alleviate the crisis. "You just don't understand a person of education, Smash. He says the Mundane monsters won't dare bother us while you're on guard."

  "Oh. So," the ogre said, mollified.

  "Ignorant troglodyte," the centaur muttered.

  That set it off again. "Me know he get the place of Chet!" Smash said angrily, forming his gauntlets into horrendous fists.

  So that was the root of the ogre's ire! He felt Arnolde had usurped the position of his younger centaur friend. "No, that's not so," Dor started, seeking some way to alleviate his resentment. If their party started fracturing now, before they were fairly clear of Xanth, what would happen once they got deep into Mundania?

  "And he called you a caveman, Smash," Grundy put in helpfully.

  "Compliments no good; me head like wood," the ogre growled, evidently meaning that he refused to be swayed by soft talk.

  "Indubitably," Arnolde agreed.

  Dor decided to leave it at that; a more perfect understanding between ogre and centaur would only exacerbate things.

  They walked along the beach. Sure enough, nothing attacked them. The trees were strange oval-leafed things with brownish inert bark and no tentacles. Small birds flitted among the branches, and gray animals scurried along the ground.

  Arnolde had brought along a tome of natural history, and he consulted it eagerly as each thing turned up. "An oak tree!" he exclaimed. "Probably the root stock of the silver oak, the blackjack oak, the turkey oak, and the acorn trees!"

  "But there's no silver, blackjacks, or acorns," Grundy protested.

  "Or turkeys," Irene added.

  "Certainly there are, in rudimentary forms," the centaur said. "serve a certain silvery aspect to some leaves, and the typical shape of others, primitively suggestive of other, eventual divergencies. And I suspect there are also acorns, in season. The deficiency of magic prevents proper manifestation, but to the trained perception--"

  "Maybe so," the golem agreed, shrugging. It was evidently more than he cared to know about oak trees.

  Dor continued to query the objects along the beach, and the water of the sea, but with negative results. All denied seeing King Trent or Queen Iris.

  "This is ridiculous!" Irene expostulated. "I know he came this way!"

  Arnolde stroked his chin thoughtfully. "There does appear to be a significant discontinuity."

  "Something doesn't fit," Grundy agreed.

  As the sun set, they made camp high on the beach. Rather than post watches, they decided to trust in magic. Dor told the sand in their vicinity to make an exclamation If anything dangerous or obnoxious intruded, and the sand promised to do so. Irene grew a blanket bush for their beds and set a chokecherry hedge around them for additional protection. They ate beefsteak tomatoes that they butchered and roasted on flame-vines, and drank the product of wine and rain lilies.

  "Young lady, your talent contributes enormously to our comfort," Arnolde complimented her, and Irene flushed modestly.

  "Aw, he's just saying that 'cause she's pretty," Grundy grumbled.

  That only made Irene flush with greater pleasure. Dor was not pleased, but could not isolate the cause of his reaction. The hang-ups of others were easier for him to perceive than his own.

  "Especially when her skirt hikes up over her knees," the golem continued. Irene quickly tugged down her hem, her flush becoming less attractive.

  "Actually, there are few enough rewards to a mission like this," Arnolde said. "Had I my choice, I would instantly abolish my own magic and return to my sinecure at the museum, my shame extirpated."

  And there was the centaurs fundamental disturbance, Dor realized. He resented their dastardly deed that had ripped him from his cont
ented existence and made him an exile from his kind. Dor could hardly blame him. Arnolde's agreement to travel with them to Mundania to help rescue King Trent did not mean he was satisfied with his lot; he was merely making the best of what was for him an awful situation.

  "Me help he go, with big heave-ho!" Smash offered.

  "But we need his magic," Irene said, verbally interposing herself to prevent further trouble. "Just as we need your strength, Smash." And she laid her hand on the ogre's ponderous arm, pacifying him.

  Dor found himself resenting this, too, though he understood her motive. The peace had to be kept.

  They settled down for the night--and the sand gave alarm. The monsters it warned of turned out to be sand fleas--bugs so small they could hardly even be seen. Arnolde dug a vermin-repulsor spell out of his collection, and that took care of the matter. They settled down again and this time slept. Once more the nightmares were unable to reach them, since the magic horses were bound to the magic realm of Xanth and could not cross the Mundane territory intervening. Dor almost felt sympathy for the mares; they had been balked from doing their duty to trouble people's sleep for several nights now, and must be very frustrated.

  They resumed their march in the morning. But as the new day wore on, the gloom of failure became more pervasive. "Something certainly appears to be amiss," Arnolde observed. "From what we understand, King Trent had to have passed this vicinity--yet the objects here deny it. Perhaps it is not entirely premature to entertain conjectures."

  Smash wrinkled his hairy brow, trying to figure out whether this was another rarefied insult. "Say what's on your mind, horsetail," Grundy said with his customary diplomacy.

  "We have ascertained that the Queen could not have employed her power to deceive the local objects," Arnolde said didactically.

  "Not without magic," Dor agreed. "The two of them were strictly Mundane-type people here, as far as we know."

  "Could they have failed to come in from the sea?"

  "No!" Irene cried emotionally.

  "I have queried the sea," Dor said. "It says nothing like that is in it."

  Irene relaxed.

  "Could they have employed a completely different route? Perhaps crossed to the eastern coast of Xanth and sailed north from there to intercept another region of Mundania?"

  "They didn't," Irene said firmly. "They had it all planned, to come out here. Someone had found a good trade deal, and they were following his map. I saw it, and the route passed here."

  "But if you don't know--" Dor protested.

  "I didn't know they were going to travel the route, then," she said.

  "But I did see the map when their scout brought it in, with the line on it Now I know what it meant. That's all I saw, but I am absolutely certain this was the way they headed."

  Dor was disinclined to argue the point further. This did seem to be the only practical route. He had told the others all he knew about King Trent’s destination, and this route certainly did not conflict with that information.

  "Could they have been intercepted before leaving Xanth?" Arnolde continued, evidently with an intellectual conclusion in mind.

  "Waylaid, perhaps?"

  "My father would have turned any waylay into a toad," she said defiantly. "Anyway, inside Xanth, my mother's illusion would have made them impossible to identify."

  "Then it seems we have eliminated the likely," Arnolde said. "We are thus obliged to contemplate the unlikely."

  "What do you mean?" Irene asked.

  "As I intimated, it is an unlikely supposition that I entertain, quite possibly erroneous--"

  "Spit it out, brownfur," Grundy said.

  "My dear vociferous construct, a civilized centaur does not expectorate. And my color is appaloosa, not mere brown."

  Irene was catching on to her power over the centaur, and over males in general. "Please, Arnolde," she pleaded sweetly. "It's so important to me to know anything that might help find my lost father--"

  "Of course, dear child," Arnolde agreed quickly, adopting an avuncular pose. "It is simply this: perhaps King Trent did not pass this region when we suppose he did."

  "It had to be within this past month," she said.

  "Not necessarily. That is the extraordinary aspect of this supposition. He may have passed here a century ago."

  Now Dor, Irene, and Grundy peered at the centaur intently to see whether he was joking. Smash, less interested in intellectual conjectures, idly formed sandstone by squeezing handfuls of sand until the mineral fused. His new gauntlets evidently enabled him to apply his power in ways that were beyond his natural abilities before, since even ogre's flesh was marginally softer than stone. A modest sandstone castle was developing.

  "You happen to sleep with your head underwater last night?" the golem inquired solicitously.

  "I have, as I have clarified previously, engaged in a modicum of research into the phenomena of Mundania," Arnolde said. "I confess I know only the merest fraction of what may be available, and must be constantly alert for error, but certain conclusions are becoming more credible. Through history, certain anomalies have manifested in the relationship between continuums. There is of course the matter of linguistics--it appears that there exist multiple languages in Mundania, yet all become intelligible in Xanth. I wonder if you properly appreciate the significance of--"

  Irene was growing impatient. She tapped her small foot on the ground. "How could he have passed a century ago, when he wasn't even born then?"

  "It is this matter of discontinuity, as I was saying. Time seems to differ; there may be no constant ratio. There is evidence that the several Waves of human colonization of Xanth originated from widely divergent subcultures within Mundania, and, in fact, some may be anachronistic. That is to say, the last Wave of people may have originated from a period in Mundania preceding that of the prior Wave."

  "Now wait!" Dor exclaimed. "I visited Xanth of eight hundred years ago, and I guess that was a kind of time travel, but that was a special case. Since there's no magic in Mundania, how could people get reversed like that? Are their times mixed up?"

  "No, I believe their framework is consistent in their world. Yet If the temporal sequence were reversed with respect to ours--"

  "I just want to know where my father is!" Irene snapped.

  "He may be in Mundania's past--or its future," the centaur said.

  "We simply do not know what law governs transfer across the barrier of magic, but it seems to be governed from Xanth's side. That is, we may be able to determine into what age of Mundania we travel, whereas the access of Mundania to Xanth is random and perhaps in some cases impossible. It is a most intriguing interface. It is as if Xanth were a boat sailing along a river; the passengers may disembark anywhere they choose, merely by picking their port, or a specific time on the triptych, so to speak, but the natives along the shores can take only that craft that happens to pass within their range. This is an inadequate analogy, I realize, that does not properly account for certain--"

  "The King can be anywhen in Mundania?" Irene demanded skeptically.

  "Marvelously succinct summation," Arnolde admitted.

  "But he told me 'medieval,'" Dor protested.

  "That does narrow it," the centaur agreed. "But it covers an extraordinary range, and if he was speaking figuratively?"

  "Then how can we ever find him?" Irene demanded.

  "'That becomes problematical. I hasten to remind you that this is merely a theory, undocumented, perhaps fallacious. I would not have introduced it for consideration, except--"

  "Except nothing else fits," Irene said. "Suppose it's right. What do we do now?"

  "Well, I believe it would expedite things if we located research facilities in Mundania. Some institution where detailed records exist, archives--"

  "And you're an archivist!" Dor exclaimed.

  "Precisely. This should enable me to determine at what period in Mundania's history we have intruded. Since, as King Dor says, King Trent referred to a med
ieval period, that would provide a frame of reference."

  "If we're in the wrong Mundane century," Irene said, "how do we get to him?"

  "We should be required to return to Xanth and undertake a new mission to that century. As I mentioned, it seems feasible to determine the temporal locale from Xanth, and once in that aspect of Mundania, we would be fixed in it until returning to Xanth. However, this procedure is fraught with uncertainties and potential complications."

  "I should think so," Dor said. "If we figured it wrong, we might get there before he did."

  "Oh, I doubt that would happen, other than on the macroscopic scale, of course."

  "The what?" Dor asked.

  "I believe the times are consistent in particular circumstances.

  That is to say, within a given age, we could enter Mundania only with an elapsed period consonant with that of Xanth. Therefore--"

  "We might miss by a century, but not by a day," Grundy said.

  "'That is the essence, golem.' The particular channels appear to be fixed--"

  "So let's go find the century!" Irene said, brightening. "Then all we'd need is the place."

  "With appropriate research, the specific geography should also be evident."

  "Then let's go find your archives," she said.

  "Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of this period," Arnolde reminded her. "We are hardly likely to locate a suitable facility randomly."

  "I can help there," Dor said. "It should be where there are a lot of people, right?"

  "Correct, King Dor."

  "Uh, better not call me King here. I'm not, really, and people might find it strange." Then Dor addressed the sand. "Which way to where most people live?"

  "How should I know?" the sand asked.