I took the cookie and bit into it. It was perfect.

"Want a different kind?" Trent asked. "I can make it any kind I know."

I held the bitten-into cookie. "What about a gla.s.s of milk?"

He pointed. Suddenly the plant was a milkweed, with several full ripe pods. "I can't make gla.s.ses," he said. "Only living things."

"That is good enough," I said, suitably impressed. I was satisfied that he was a Magician of Transformation of living creatures. "So you have come to find out how to become king without getting killed first."

"Right."

I heard Sofia returning. "Spot lesson in diplomacy," I said. "Don't mention cookies; just accept hers."

"Okay."

Sofia had brought a plateful of cookies. Trent thanked her and took one. He was evidently a quick learner. That was good.

"I do not have an easy Answer for you," I said. "There are only two ways you can safely become king. One is to wait until the Storm King dies-"

"But that'll be forever!" he protested.

"And the other is to prepare yourself so that you can take power, displacing him. But you will have to be well trained, and adult, because such displacement is not a gentle matter."

"Oh." He looked disappointed. "You mean I have to pay a year's service to you, for that?"

"In the course of that service, you will learn how to prepare yourself," I said. "I would not, of course, advise you to bother the legitimate king, but I will teach you how to be alert and defend yourself."

"Oh." His disappointment was fading. As I said, he was a bright boy.

So it was that Trent did a year's service for me, moving into a spare room in the castle, and I taught him how best to use his power. The strategy was simple: to transform any menace to something that was not a menace. When a mosquito came to suck his blood, he changed it into a harmless purple fly. When a dragon reared up before him, he transformed it to a dragonfly. When a tangle tree grabbed at him, he transformed it to an acorn tree. The key was to rehea.r.s.e things so that he could handle any living thing and not be surprised. Some creatures could hurt him from a distance, while he had to be within arm's reach to transform them, so he had to figure ways to nullify them from afar. Usually it was possible to transform some nearby creature into one which was a natural enemy of the attacking creature. But some natural enemies were also enemies of man. So if a dragon were about to blast out a long tongue of flame, he wouldn't transform a nearby worm into a monstrous fireproof serpent, because that serpent would find him easier prey than the dragon. But he could transform that worm into a huge sphinx, which wouldn't care about a man but would object strenuously to having its hide scorched by the dragon.

I also showed him how to sleep safely by transforming something into a mock tangle tree. Then he could sleep in the branches of that tree, while other creatures did not know it was harmless. Because he had to be on guard at all times, if he wanted to tackle a resentful king. Even so, I urged him not to do it-knowing that he would not follow this advice. We understood each other.

Between sessions, we discussed philosophical matters. "It has occurred to me that the Shield is a mixed blessing," I remarked.

"Is it? But doesn't it protect us from invasion by the Mundanes? It stopped the Waves!

"It stopped the Waves," I agreed. We were referring to the series of wavelike invasions made by the Mundanes, which had wrought much havoc until halted by the deadly Shield King Ebnez had adapted. "But it also stopped colonization from Mundania. There are actually more human people in Mundania than in Xanth, and the Waves served to renew the human stock here. Without that irregular renewal, our species has been dwindling in Xanth. Today the villages are smaller and farther apart, and there are fewer magic paths between them, making travel more hazardous. We need more people-and we can only get them if that Shield comes down."

"But the Mundanes are terrible folk!" he said, repeating the standard lore. Children were frightened into good behavior by threats that the Mundanes would get them.

"Is Sofia terrible?" I asked.

Sofia had been very nice to him throughout. She had come to understand as well as I the importance of a potential future king of Xanth, and had treated him royally. "No. But-"

"She is from Mundania."

He gaped at me. This subject had not come up before. This was the beginning of a change in his att.i.tude.

Never again did he speak ill of Mundanes. In fact, the time would come when he would marry one, as I had. But I made one mistake in training him. I did not sufficiently stress the importance of integrity. I a.s.sumed that he already understood it, and I was preoccupied by practical matters. That error, as with the one I made by neglecting my son, was to cost us all dearly. How late we learn wisdom!

Another visit was from a harried woman. The Book of Answers cut short the challenges again, though she was no Sorceress. Why? I had to interview the woman to find out.

"It's my daughter," she said. "She's six years old, and it's impossible to discipline her or anything. She's out of control! I'm at my wit's end!"

I could see that. Normally folk were right in the middle of their wits, but she was off to the end of hers. "She talks back?" I asked.

"No, she doesn't have to. She just uses her illusion."

"She has illusions? Many girls do."

"Not like this! Iris has illusions that-oh, how can I describe them? They're so real!"

I began to get a glimmer. The Book of Answers knew something about this, and it warned me only when there was Magician-cla.s.s magic involved. "Do you mean she makes illusions you can't penetrate?"

"Well, not exactly. But it's so difficult, we just can't-it's so easy to be fooled-"

Gradually I got the story from her, and I understood what was happening. Her daughter Iris was Sorceress of Illusion. A Sorceress was the same as a Magician, only female. There was this foolish distinction, making it allowable only for a Magician (and therefore a man) to be king. That was one of the things about Xanth that needed changing, and that the current King wasn't changing.

I knew what I had to do. "Send her here to do your year's service for you. We shall teach her how to use her power beneficially and return her to you with better manners."

"Oh thank you, Good Magician!" she exclaimed tearfully.

So it was that six-year-old Iris came to spend a year with us, a year after Trent left. Crombie was a year younger than Iris, but kept mostly to himself; we did not know then how he had found comfort with the demoness, and he and Metria were careful never to let us find out. So there was not much interaction between the two children. Iris discovered early that Crombie had ways of getting back at her if she teased him with her realistic illusions, and she left him alone. I believe she crafted an illusion of a dragon coming to eat him up, and that night she climbed into bed only to discover a gushy meringue pie there first. It was no illusion. She had to wash the stuff off her feet and change the sheets. She didn't even tell the adults, sharing the Juvenile Conspiracy. So only now, in distant retrospect, can I say that probably it was Metria who placed that pie. Who says the demoness never did anyone a favor? It taught Iris manners in a hurry.

Iris did have a wondrous talent. She could make anything appear and be believably realistic, complete with sound and smell. Only touch was missing; if you walked into the illusion, you went right through it. But who would just walk into a fire-breathing dragon, on the chance that it wasn't real? Who would do it if the chances were only one in ten it was real? But for those who liked to play the odds, she could make a counter trap: by placing the illusion of a dragon over a deep pit. Thus if someone walked into it, he would fall in the pit and be in as much trouble as ever. In fact, she could cover the pit with the illusion of innocent level ground. Or she could cover a real dragon with that illusion of level ground. So a person could not be safe by avoiding the apparent illusions. Anything could be an illusion, and that meant that anything could be dangerous in an unexpected way.

But we did not have trouble with Iris, for two powerful reasons. First, we were delighted with her talent. This was the second Magician-cla.s.s talent I had encountered in two years; was a trend commencing? Even if she could never be king, she could be a power in Xanth. So while her family had been driven to distraction by the illusions, we delighted in them, and Iris was flattered by the attention. Flattered girls are generally not difficult girls. Second, I knew a good deal about magic myself, having studied at the University of Magic and collected spells all my life. I could not be fooled the way others could. I could tell illusion from reality immediately. I proved this early: Iris made illusion duplicates of herself, and little girls ran all around the castle, screaming. But I always spoke only to the true one. She did not know that I had had to take a potion to enable me to do this. She was impressed. Children respect adults they can't fool.

So I taught her new ways to use her talent, and how to craft ever more glorious illusions. When she came, she could make a realistic dollhouse; when she left, she could craft a realistic castle. At the start she could make a miniature storm cloud that seemed to rain on the rug, to Sofia's distress. At the end she could make a storm that wailed all around the castle. And perhaps most important, she learned to make real food that was dull look and taste like the most elegant meal. The feel of a gla.s.s of water was cool liquid; so was the feel of exotic wine. So she could get around her limitation, deceiving even herself. She could drink nothing but green and orange tsoda popka, and share it with the rest of us-yet it was only water. She could eat spicy dragon steak, yet it might be mere fruit from a stake plant. Best of all, she could forget to brush her hair, yet have it look eloquently coifed.

I explained to her how she could do even more than that, when she grew up. She could be as slovenly as she wished in person, yet always appear beautiful and well dressed to others. Then she showed me how well she was learning, for she became a beautiful adult woman with a low decolletage. Then her dress dissolved, and she was bare breasted. "Am I s.e.xy now, Good Magician?" she inquired coyly.

"No," I informed her.

She pouted. "Why not? Aren't my bosoms big enough?''

"The term you intend is breast," I said. "You are showing two b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Only one bosom." This discussion would have been chancy for a boy, but not for a girl, as it covered Necessary Information and so was partially exempt from the Adult Conspiracy. There was a portion of male anatomy that was similarly proscribed for girls.

"Whatever," she said. That gave me pause for just a moment, but of course this was not the wily Metria. It was a coincidental use of the term. "How big do they have to be?"

"There is no actual correct size," I said. "The problem is that yours lack nipples." This time the air clouded and there was a distant rumble, for that word was really pushing the limit of what the Conspiracy allowed. But again I was able to plead Necessity. Things can be uttered in the guise of Education which can not be even thought of elsewhere.

Iris looked down at her illusion. "Oh." Two nipples abruptly sprouted.

Then there was the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the entire illusion vanished, leaving the girl in her ordinary dress. "Tell me more about the illusion of beauty, Good Magician," Iris said brightly as Sofia entered with sandwiches. By that token I knew that she understood well enough the limits of the Conspiracy. Sofia, despite being Mundane, would have called a foul instantly, had she seen what I had seen. The Adult Conspiracy extends wide and far, and few truly comprehend its intricacies, but the mothers of children come close.

So in due course we sent Iris home, and she was by then a perfectly behaved little girl of seven. I had impressed on her that there was more to be gained by pleasing others than by teasing them. Instead of putting up walls of illusion to avoid taking her castor oil, she could thank her mother and make it taste like vanilla syrup. I knew that her family would be most pleased with her improved att.i.tude.

Sofia decided to visit her folks in Mundania, so I gave her a Shield-pa.s.sing spell and took her to the border. I expected her to return with a new appreciation of Xanth, having been reminded just how dreary Mundania is. But she surprised me by returning almost immediately, excited.

"It's gone!" she exclaimed.

"Mundania? It can't be."

"Yes it is! There's just a nothingness there."

So I had to go look. She was right; where Mundania had been, across the isthmus, there was a mere void. Mundania had disappeared.

Now of course this could not be considered much of a loss. n.o.body likes Mundania anyway, especially the Mundanes who have to stew in it all the time. Depression is rife among them, which they seek to ameliorate by taking all manner of mind-zonking drugs. But Sofia was adamant: her homeland had been lost, and I would have to find it. So I sighed and got to work on the problem.

It turned out that the various parts of the geography of Mundania were defined by peculiar numbers called "zip codes." Every year or so a new directory of zip codes was made. This year someone in their arcane Post Orifice, whose mascot was a fierce big snail, had forgotten. Thus there was no longer any way to find anywhere, and Mundania had disappeared into formless glop. No one in Xanth had noticed the difference in the neighboring realm, of course, a.s.suming there was one.

I had to write a letter and powder it with magic dust and send it to the main office, which the letter could reach only because there was nowhere else for it to go. In it I explained the problem, and urged that the forgotten directory be remembered and issued.

The snail moved as slowly as ever, but in a year my advice was heeded, and Mundania came back into find-ability. Sofia was finally able to make her visit home. The odd thing was, she reported on her return, that n.o.body in Mundania seemed to have been aware of the missing time. Apparently that world had been suspended, and resumed only with the appearance of the new directory. What a strange business!

Iris had left at age seven, in the year 1008. When she was the maidenly age of seventeen, she returned. This time she was ready to do service for an Answer on her own behalf. She wanted to know where she could go to have everything her own way. That was, for a teenage girl, a reasonable wish.

I looked it up in the Book of Answers. There was such a place. It was an isle off the east coast of Xanth, about half way down, just beyond the place where the the-well, I forget what, but anyway, where it intersected the ocean. Few folk ever went there, yet it was a nice enough place. All it needed was some fixing up-which Iris could readily do, by means of her illusion.

So she went there, and named it the Isle of Illusion. She crafted the entire island into one big illusion, which she changed at her whim. Everything there was indeed all her own way. There she remained for some time, gradually discovering that what a person most desires is not necessarily what she really wants.

In 1021, at the age of twenty-four, Magician Trent grew tired of waiting for the aging Storm King to blow out, and started organizing to take over the throne directly. I was in favor of this effort, but could not say so; I had to maintain overt support of the existing regime. Trent did not consult me, which I appreciated; I remained aloof from the politics of the day. But I used my spells to watch events closely.

Trent decided that he needed to have a major const.i.tuency, so as to have a base from which to move against the King and force his abdication. He chose the centaur community of central Xanth. (The centaurs of Centaur Isle were out of the question; they would not touch human politics, considering it almost as dirty as human magic. They had a point.) But they refused to join him.

He made a demonstration of power: he went to Fish River and changed all its fish into lightning bugs. This was an amazing feat, because that was a magic river which guarded its waters and sought to nullify any threat against it. Only an extremely powerful and versatile Magician could have overcome that river.

But centaurs are ornery folk-some say stubborn- and do not yield readily to demonstrations. So Trent proceeded to the second part of his program. He sent those lightning bugs to hara.s.s the centaurs. He did this by changing gnats to huge rocs, and requiring the birds to anchor themselves to the ground and flap their wings, generating a wind to blow the lightning bugs into the centaur village. The birds did it because it was the only way they could get changed back to gnats; after they blew the lightning bugs, Trent did change them back.

The lightning bugs, irritable at finding themselves flying in air instead of swimming in the river, descended on the centaurs in a raging ma.s.s. They hurled their little lightning bolts at any flesh they found. When the centaurs tried to swat them, they made a flanking attack, and really zapped those flanks. The centaurs smashed at them with their tails, but there were so many clouds of bugs that it did little good. Trent no doubt figured that the centaurs would yield, then, but he had misjudged them. Instead they came to me, asking for some way to get rid of this scourge. Their leader, Alpha Centauri, made his way through my castle challenges and put their Question.

Now I did not want to get involved in this, because of the political background, so I set a price I thought would make them balk: one year's service for each centaur my advice rid of the scourge. That would be three hundred centaur years, an unimagined total. But they amazed me by agreeing!

So I told Alpha to go to the hate spring in north Xanth, dip out a single drop if it, dilute it with a thousand parts of regular water, and spray the mix on the herd. Hate elixir is dangerous to the user, but highly diluted it merely makes the user detestable for a while. The lightning bugs couldn't stand the sprayed flesh, and could neither shock it into submission nor feed on it, and soon died out.

Now I had three hundred centaurs committed to work for me one year. What was I going to have them do?

Well, I found things. I had one crew build some bridges across the-the-well, anyway, some useful bridges. One was one-way and another was invisible so not just anyone could use them. They required fine design, craftsmanship, and workmanship, and these were centaur strong points. This was a real service to the community, though no one remembered it.

The main crew worked on renovating my castle. There had always been a certain rotten odor about it, dating from the zombie time, and that distressed Sofia. So we replaced much of it, and converted it to a very special design: a simple command could cause the rooms and walls to shift position, and the moat to change its shape and depth (Souffle almost sailed into the air in alarm, the first time that happened), and the trees around it to a.s.sume new positions. The access paths could change and change again, and the entire aspect of the castle could alter. In short, it was like having a completely different castle, outside and in, in about two and a half moments. That made spring cleaning a delight for Sofia; she could change everything to be almost unrecognizable. It was a woman's dream come true.

The centaurs completed their labors exactly on schedule, one year after the deal had been made, and departed. I made a note: not to try to bluff out a centaur next time.

Meanwhile Trent, now called the Evil Magician, had lost his ploy to enlist the support of the centaurs. But he was stubborn too. He plowed ahead anyway. He marched on the North Village, employing the simple expedient I had taught him: he transformed anyone who tried to interfere into something that couldn't interfere. If someone tried to kill him, he transformed that man into a fish and let him flop in the ground until he found water or died. Mere nuisances he changed to harmless animals or plants. A man named Justin got in Trent's way, and was converted to a tree in the middle of the village. Some folk became odd creatures: pink dragons, two-headed wolves, land octopi, or moneypedes. One girl tried to give him wrong directions; he transformed her into a winged centaur filly. She was an attractive specimen of her kind-but the only one of her kind. Chagrined, she fled to the Brain Coral and begged for sanctuary in its pool. It was granted, of course, and she was soon forgotten. Others saw the way of it, and decided to join the Evil Magician. There was a revolution developing and gaining force.

The Storm King had to use his talent in his own defense. He summoned a phenomenal storm. But he was now seventy-three years old, and his powers were failing. The storm turned out to be hardly more than wind and rain and a few hailstones.

It looked as if nothing could stop the Evil Magician from cornering the Storm King and turning him into a rooster roach. But the king was cunning. He bribed one of Trent's trusted a.s.sociates to cast a sleep spell on him.

This was effective, and Trent fell asleep in the midst of his final advance.

His friends hastily bore the body away. Now the supporters of the King became bold in a way they had not been before, and pursued. The only way to save the sleeping Magician was to get him out of Xanth. The keeper of the gate at the Shield decided to let him through; it was, after all, one way to be quite sure he would never return.

Indeed, it seemed that he would not. The affairs of Mundania are largely opaque to ordinary folk, and it was only twenty years later that we were to learn his fate there. He settled, married, had a son-and then lost both to an evil Mundane plague. This was to have a significant consequence for Xanth, which is why I mention it. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.

So the revolution was ended, and the Storm King was victorious. I know I was not the only one who regretted that. Xanth was destined to continue its mediocrity.

Things continued in their petty pace another dozen years or so. Then Sofia, now about sixty-five years old, decided she preferred to return to Mundania to die. I tried to dissuade her, pointing out that I was a hundred and two, but that did not change her mind. So I had to let her go, after thirty-five years of marriage, with regret. She had been a very fine sock sorter, and it really wasn't her fault that our son went wrong.

Thereafter things were pretty quiet at the castle. My son was long gone, my wife was gone, and I was even more grumpy alone man in limited company. I had thought that all I wanted was to be left alone with my studies in magic, but I found, that this was too much of a good thing. And my socks were piling up horrendously.

A young woman came. Her name was Starr, because she twinkled like a double star; that seemed to be her magic. At this time I was lonely enough so that I was glad to see anyone, even someone with a Question, so I let her m with only token challenges. Her Question was what could she do with three hummingbirds she had befriended? Her family objected to the constant music as the birds hummed in chorus, so she had to get rid of them. But she couldn't just cast them out into the jungle. For one thing, they always flew back to her. Where could she leave them where they would be happy and not follow Her home?

For this she was willing to undertake a year's service? Yes, it seemed she was. She really cared about those birds.

I took Starr and the birds to the little rose garden in the back. The roses were magic, dating from my blanked-out period, and were always red and sweet. Near them were other flowers, more seasonal but still nice. The hummingbirds were delighted; they hovered near the roses, humming a very pretty melody. "They will like it here," I said. "There is plenty to keep them fed and happy."

"Oh, thank you!" the young woman said. "Now what is my service?"

"How are you at sorting socks?"

Starr wasn't great at that, but she learned, and the mountain of socks began to be reduced. She also fixed me meals, which was just as well, because I had forgotten to eat for several days and needed reminding. Good health could go only so far, at my age.

The three hummingbirds turned out to be good company themselves. Their names were Herman, Helen, and Hector, and they delighted in humming in three-part harmony for any person willing to listen. The flowers seemed to like them too. I felt almost guilty, making Stair do a year's service, because she had really done me a favor by bringing those birds. But I had no one else to sort my socks, so I said nothing.

I had been answering Questions as a kind of burden, because they distracted me from my studies. But now I looked forward to visits, because they distracted me from my loneliness. The greater the problem, the more interesting it was for me.

One case almost stumped me. This was a centaur who felt somewhat ambivalent. He called himself AmbiGus. He said he felt as if his personality wanted to split. I checked everything about him, and he seemed normal. It would be bad form not to provide an Answer; I had a reputation to maintain, for what little it was worth. What was wrong with this creature? Was it a mere complex of the type that Mundanes experienced?

Mundanes. I tried one more thing. I took Gus to the border and spelled us through the Shield. Sure enough, when he walked away from the magic ambience of Xanth, he separated into the basic centaur components: a man and a horse. That was why he felt like splitting: his talent was to split, in the absence of magic.

Unfortunately he could not do it in Xanth. So his choice was either to reside apart in Mundania or together in Xanth. He thought about it while performing his year's service for me.

One case was interesting for another reason: who it was. It was Trojan, the Horse of Another Color, otherwise known as the Night Stallion. He governed the realm of bad dreams, which was accessible only through a hypnogourd. He came to me in a dream, as he was not comfortable outside the gourd. But he had a legitimate Question: what was a suitable bad dream for writers who wrote about the dream realm? Such folk were almost immune to ordinary bad dreams, because they were constantly devising bad stories themselves and were jaded. But they could not be allowed to mess with the dream realm, because that could dilute the potency of the dreams.

I sweated over that one, partly because our dialogue was in the form of a bad dream. But finally I came up with a satisfactory formula: the guilty writer would be taken into a dream which seemed like reality, so that he did not know he was dreaming. In that dream he would be led into the Night Stallion's very own study and shown a lion. This was not a fearsome lion, for writers wrote about that kind all the time, seeming to enjoy the crunch of bones and splatter of blood. No, this was an old ill lion, its pride gone. Its teeth were so worn and weak that it could survive only on a diet of soggy puns. The writer was required to produce such puns, to the satisfaction of a grim person called Eddie Tor, lest he be guilty of letting the lion die. If the lion died, there would be a real stink. But if he failed to make Eddie Tor's unreasonable standards, Eddie would do beastly things to his prose, putting him farther behind. There was also a cursed block on his desk, which constantly interfered with his vision so that he could not concentrate. Somehow he had to get around that writer's block before he was faced with the dead lion.

The Night Stallion was pleased. He was sure this would torment any writers enough to prevent them from messing with any more dream stories. In fact, it might drive some of them out of the trade entirely. It was an excellent punishment. He repaid me by granting me a bye on future bad dreams for myself, no matter how much I might deserve them. After that I did sleep easier.

So my life went in its petty pace for about seven years. Then the Muses of Parna.s.sus started writing volumes of history of Xanth, apparently just as a matter of record, and my life became infernally complicated.

Chapter 13: Bink.