"He will cheat."

"But-"

"Fairness is as the Demon says it is. He will give me a chance to gain my objective, if I put my own soul on the line. If I win, I take Rose; if I lose I will be confined here with her. Then he will see that I lose."

"But how can he-"

"Very simply. He will ask me a Question that I as the Magician of Information should be able to answer. It will be about some future event. Then he will see that whatever my Answer, it will happen otherwise. Thus I will lose."

"Then you really have no hope," she said, disturbed.

"I have hope. I have no chance."

"You are throwing your life away for nothing! And even if you should win, you'll still have the problem of two wives. They won't take turns if they are both alive in Xanth."

"Tell me something that isn't obvious."

She shook her head. "This just doesn't make sense."

"So it would seem."

Then she knew that he had a plan. She couldn't imagine what it was, but she had confidence in his information. He would find a way through the rigged contest-if he could only get the Demon's attention. He couldn't tell her his plan, because the Demon might be listening and then would know how to foil it.

Still, she had one more question. "If the Demon X(A/N)th knows you are here, and is ignoring you, why should printing your life story make any difference? Won't he just ignore that too?"

"Only up to a point. My life story is true, though much of it is unknown to all others except the Demon. It must be true; I dare not falsify any part of it. Therefore, it will be difficult for me to relate, in places. Complete honesty is always painful and seldom advisable. But at the point it catches up to the present and starts into the future, its truth will be undefined. I will be able to tell it as I hope it will be."

"'But then you could say that you are going to rescue Rose from h.e.l.l by yourself and return to Xanth!"

"Precisely. I will be able to define my own future. Therefore the Demon must at that point come to meet me and deal with my appeal, lest he lose it by default."

That was a most sophisticated strategy! It was obvious that the Good Magician was much smarter than she was. Still she had a niggling confusion. "Why didn't you tell your story before, instead of waiting all this time?"

"The spoken word lacks the authority of the written word. Until you came, I was unable to transcribe my autobiography to print."

"But why didn't the Demon stop me from coming here, then?"

"I suspect you were too insignificant a detail for him to bother to keep track of. Had you been beautiful or smart or highly talented, as my wives are, he would have seen you coming. Now it is too late; you are here."

"How fortunate that I am so ordinary," she said, with a hint of a mixed feeling.

"You are not ordinary, Lacuna, you are dull. You are almost completely uninteresting. How you got to be a leading character in this story is almost beyond my significant resources to ascertain."

Surely it was true. That was why she had come here.

"Well, we had better get on with it," she said with a certain boring resignation. She focused on the far wall, and the print began to appear: THE STORY OF THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE GOOD MAGICIAN HUMFREY, THE MAGICIAN OF INFORMATION.

Chapter One.

"Oh, don't be so c.u.mbersome!" Humfrey snapped. "Just t.i.tle it Question Quest. And start with Chapter 3; you've already wasted two chapters with your own dreary business, may the Muse of History forgive you."

"Yes, of course," she agreed, properly chastened. "What should the t.i.tle of Chapter 3 be?"

"Oh, anything," he said impatiently. He began to dictate.

Chapter 3. Anything.

I was born of wholesome parents in the year 933. This calendar dates from Xanth's First Wave of human colonization. Some few human folk had settled in Xanth before then, perhaps around the year -2200, but then Xanth became an island; there were not enough of them to maintain the population, and they faded out by -1900. It was probably good riddance. The main evidences of their presence are the crossbreeds they generated: harpies, cowboys, werewolves, mermaids, and similar ilk. Later the isthmus was restored and more humans crossed over, generating the centaurs. But only with the First Wave did human history become continuous, so that was the Year Zero.

Successive Waves of human colonization from Mundania brought shame to Xanth, until after the Fourth Wave, in 228, when Magician Roogna a.s.sumed power, built Castle Roogna, and ushered in Xanth's Golden Age. Castle Roogna was deserted when King Gromden died in 677 and King Yang took over. The human influence in the peninsula slowly declined, ushering in what was called Xanth's Dark Age, had anyone noticed or cared before it was too late.

But this summation becomes tedious. The tabular history of Xanth will be provided in an appendix for those few who are morbidly curious about the dead past.

However, one good thing had happened recently: the year before my birth, Magician-King Ebnez adapted the Deathstone into the Shieldstone, protecting Xanth from further Waves. Magician Roogna had had the power to adapt living magic to his ends, while Magician Ebnez adapted inanimate magic; both were to have significant effect on human events. This was to usher in a period of historical calm. The Twelfth Wave became known as the LastWave, because there were no more Waves until 1042 when King Trent's Mundane army settled peacefully in Xanth.

Thus it was my fortune to live in the most peaceful part of Xanth's Dark Age. Actually, it was rather dull. There is a blessing: "May you live in boring times." I would rather have suffered the curse of interesting times.

I was the youngest of three children. My older brother inherited the farm, and my older sister was incurably bossy. It therefore behooved me to set out alone for far adventures. Unfortunately the only trade I knew was what I had learned at home: tic farming. We grew tics, which constantly twitched, and harvested and bundled them for the clocks of other folk. Once in the clock, the properly ripened tics measured the time. Without them, the clocks had nothing but tocks and were useless, but with them they proceeded in a steady line of tick-tocks and kept good time. There were few clocks in Xanth, because there were few people in Xanth, and my family's farm provided all the tics that were needed. It would have been pointless to start up another such farm. My training was useless in the outside realm.

I had one other liability: I had unmitigated curiosity. That was all. I had no magic talent that I knew of. In those days there was no requirement in that respect; it was the later Storm King who idiotically decreed that every citizen of Xanth had to have a magic talent, however minor. The only real rule at this time was that only a Magician could be king. That dates from the Fourth Wave and has generally worked well, because only a Magician has power to enforce his edicts. So I, as a talentless young man, without athletic ability, small of stature and unhandsome, became one of the nonent.i.ties of Xanth. Others neither knew nor cared what I was doing, as long as I did not bother them.

So I walked from village to village, exploring and looking around, learning all I could about everything I could, un.o.btrusively. Since villages were far apart, most of my time was spent on the paths between them. These paths were unkempt and often dangerous; this was between the times of enchanted paths, other than those set up for special purposes by tangle trees and the like. During the Golden Age paths abounded, and in the contemporary age they do too; that's the advantage of a strong kingship.

I was fifteen years old, and looked twelve. Sometimes folk took me for a gnome. It had always been thus, and I was used to it. In fact it was an advantage at times, because they didn't consider gnomes to be people, and would speak as freely around them as around animals. I perked my ears and closed my mouth and learned their secrets. As a rule these were not worth knowing: who was making a tryst with whose wife, who was stealing from whom, and who had most recently been eaten by the local dragon. But I remembered their names and faces and secrets, because of my insatiable desire to know everything knowable.

I had, as it turned out, an excellent memory, which I b.u.t.tressed by notes I made in my one possession of any value: a notebook. Thus I would mark "Kelvin-slew golden dragon," or "Stile-Blue Adept" or "Zane-Thanatos" or "Darius-Cyng of Hlahtar," and the entire curious history of each person would be recalled when I read each note. Of course these were all inconsequential folk who never made any mark in Xanth and were forgotten by all others. But to me they were interesting. Who might guess what adventures they might have had or what success they might have achieved, if only they could have been delivered into more advantageous situations? For that matter, what might I myself have accomplished had I lived in a culture where curiosity was valued?

So it was that I found myself on the path leading from the Gap Village, where I had lived so far, to the land of the dragons, only I did not know that at the time. I was merely following the path of least resistance. That was foolish, as I was soon to learn, because if the path of least resistance does not lead to the nearest tangle tree, it leads to some equivalent disaster.

I heard a noise ahead. It sounded like a dragon going after prey: a sort of screaming and hissing, followed by a dull thunk. I ducked off the path, knowing better than to be on the scene when a dragon was feeding. But then I saw a shadow and a figure just above the trees. It was a flying dragon, dripping blood. It was evidently done, here.

I resumed my trek. The best direction to travel was opposite that of a dragon, and that was the way I was going anyway. I rounded a turn, entering a glade.

Here I encountered two objects on the ground. One was a unicorn, writhing from a bad injury, thrashing its horn about in pain. The other was a girl.

I wasn't sure what to do about either. Unicorns, like all equines except the centaurs, were rare in Xanth, and I had seen one only twice before, and only fleetingly. Girls were not as scarce, but I had had little more contact with them outside my family, and indeed my experience with my older sister had rather turned me off them. It was hardly ideal, traveling alone, but it was better than being constantly bossed around.

The girl spied me. "Help Horntense!" she cried, gesturing to the animal.

There she was, bossing me already.

Conditioned by a decade and a half of conditioning, I had no choice but to obey. I approached the unicorn. It was a mare who appeared to have broken a foreleg. There was also blood on her horn. I hesitated, because a wounded animal can be as dangerous as a whole one. But I saw that it was pain, not threat, which made her thrash for my attention; she was hoping I could do something for her.

As it happened, I could. I had noticed some boneset herbs growing beside the path a short distance back. "I shall return," I said, and hurried away.

I broke into a run, zooming along until I reached the herbs. I had a spare bag in my knapsack, which I drew forth. I found a good plant, took a stick, and dug carefully around it. I lifted it from the ground with its root and the earth around it, in much the manner I would transplant a tic plant. At least my experience as a farm boy was coming in handy. I set it in the bag carefully.

I carried the bagged herb back down the path. Now I could not run, lest I shake up the plant. Other plants might not care, but a shaken boneset was not good.

I reached the glade. The unicorn was now quiet. The girl had dragged herself over and was cradling the animal's head. She spied me. "Oh! I was afraid you were gone!"

"I was just getting this plant," I explained, somewhat lamely, though in truth the two of them were the lame ones. The unicorn had a foreleg broken, and the girl seemed to have turned an otherwise serviceable ankle; it was beginning to swell.

"Do you know anything about healing?" she asked.

"Not much. But I thought maybe this herb might help." Actually I was quite sure it would help, but something about being near to the unicorn, or maybe the girl, made me less a.s.sertive.

"A stupid plant?" she demanded. "Horntense could make two bites of that!"

"Don't eat it!" I protested, alarmed. "This is bone-set."

"What's that?"

"A magic herb that sets bones. Let me plant it here, so it can operate." I felt more confidence, having discovered that I knew something she didn't.

I used my stick to dig a hole by the animal's broken foreleg. Then I slid the herb into it, and packed the earth around firmly.

"Now if I can touch the leg-" I said, reaching for the unicorn's injured extremity. She did not shy away, so I put my two hands on it and drew it slowly toward the plant. I set it right beside the herb, touching it.

Immediately the boneset's leaves quivered. Its stems reached out and curled over the broken leg. Vines tightened around it. Suddenly they clenched, and there was a m.u.f.fled crack. The unicorn emitted a squeal of agony and jerked her leg away.

"What happened?" the girl cried.

"It set the bone," I explained. "That's the herb's magic."

She looked at the unicorn's leg, which was now unbroken. "It did!" she breathed, barely believing. "The leg is better!"

"No, it's just reset. It will take a few days to heal, if I find the right herbs. The animal shouldn't put much stress on it, meanwhile."

"She's not an animal!" the girl said crossly. "She's a unicorn."

It was no use arguing with a girl, so I didn't try. "A unicorn," I agreed.

"That plant-do you think it would work on my ankle?"

I shrugged. "It should, if it's broken at all."

She turned herself around and put her leg out. I caught it and guided it to the boneset plant. The stems took hold, circling her foot and ankle, tightening. I saw that though her ankle was bruised and swelling, her bare leg was rather nicely shaped, under the dirt.

"Is it going to hurt?" she asked belatedly. Her arms and face were dirty too; she had really sprawled in the dirt.

"For a moment," I said.

"Hold me, then."

I had no experience holding girls, and was awkward.

I sort of kneeled beside her and put my arms around her shoulders. She turned into me as she sat and put her head against my shoulder and her arms around my middle. There was something quite soft about her chest.

The plant tightened. There was a pop. "Oh!" she gasped, her arms clenching around me.

"It's done," I said. "There must have been a small break, but now it's set. But you shouldn't walk much on that foot until it heals."

"It feels less worse already," she said, lifting her head from my shoulder and squeezing the dampness out of her eyes with the bends of her wrists. "But I shall have to walk; I need to fetch food."

"I can fetch food," I said, for no good reason. "I know how to find good things to eat."

"Oh, would you?" she asked eagerly. That made me feel good, for even less reason.

I went out and cast about for things a girl would find edible. I could get by on stewed slugs, having verified that they were easy to catch and nutritious, but I suspected she would not. I was in luck: there was a pie tree nearby and some milkweeds. I brought an armful of pies and pods back.

The unicorn had climbed to its feet and was grazing. She had the sense to keep weight off her hurt leg, and seemed to be managing well enough on three hoofs. The girl was now sitting with her back to an ironwood tree, trying to brush herself off. She had ratty brown hair and eyes to match, but a slender waist and quite full hips. She wore shorts under her skirt; even so her legs were impressive. She was probably a couple of years older than I, and looked five years older.

Not that it mattered. I was only just recently noticing such features in girls, and wasn't sure that the new perspective quite compensated for their bossiness. Anyway, girls only laughed at me, if they noticed me at all. So I might as well ignore them back.

I brought my armful and set it down before her.

"Oooo, wonderful!" she exclaimed, delighted. "This is just perfect!"

Foolishly numbed by this unexpected praise, I said nothing.

"Sit down," she urged. "We must eat this before it spoils."

Why was I so glad to comply?

She started in. The girl had the ability of her kind to eat and talk simultaneously. "We've never been introduced," she said somehow while chewing a chunk of cherry pie. "My name is MareAnn. My talent is summoning equines and making them mind. What's your name and talent?''

"I'm Humfrey. I-I don't seem to have a talent."

"You mean you haven't discovered it yet?"

"That must be what I mean." No one had to have a magic talent, but the great majority of folk did, and I felt somewhat out of sorts.

"Well, it will surely turn up. I'm fifteen. How old are you?"

I gaped. "You're that young?"