research. Good Magician Humfrey’s magic indicators never oriented on you before because you are completely camouflaged in Xanth proper; you are like a section of mist in the middle of a cloud. But when you left Xanth, your power manifested, triggering the alarms. Once the indicators had oriented on you, they continued to point you out; maybe your presence makes magic slightly more effective, since Centaur Isle is near the fringe of magic. It’s like a bug on a distant leaf; once you know exactly where it is, you can see it. But you can’t locate it when it sits still and you don’t even know it exists.”
Amolde’s shoulders slumped and his coat seemed to lose luster. He was an appaloosa centaur, with white spots on his brown flank, a natural blanket that made him quite handsome. Now the spots were fading out. “I fear you, are correct. My associates always considered this to be a Mundane island; I thought them mistaken. But oh, what havoc this wreaks on my career! The profession of a lifetime ruined! I can never return to the museum.”
“Do the other centaurs have to know?” Grundy asked.
“I may be contaminated by obscene magic,” Amolde said gravely. “But it is beneath me to prevaricate.”
Dor considered the attitude of the various centaurs he had known. He realized Amolde was right. The archivist could not conceal the truth, and the other centaurs would not tolerate a centaur Magician in their society. They had exiled Herman the Hermit in the past generation, then termed him a hero after he was dead. Some reward!
Dor’s quest had gained him nothing and had destroyed the livelihood and pride of a decent centaur. He felt responsible; he had never wanted to hurt anyone this way.
The moon had been descending into the ocean. Now, just before it got soaked, it seemed to have swelled. Great and round and greenish, its cheese was tantilizingly close. Dor gazed at it, pondering its maplike surface. Could a column of smoke lead all the way up to the moon, and could they use the salve some day to…then he suffered an awful realization. “The curse!” he cried.
The centaur glanced dourly at him. “You have certainly cursed me, King Dor.”
“The magic salve we used to tread the clouds-it had a curse attached. Whoever used it would do some dastardly deed before the next full moon. This is our deed; we have forced you out of your satisfied existence and made you into something you abhor. The curse made us do it.”
“Such curses are a readily avoidable nuisance,” the centaur remarked. “Ass that is required is an elementary curse-counterspell. There are dozens in our archives; we don’t even file them carefully. Ironic that this ignorance on your part should have such a serious consequence for me.”
“Do something, Dor,” Irene said.
“What is there to be done?” Amolde asked disconsolately. “I am rendered at one fell stroke into an exile.”
But Dor, cudgeling his brain under pressure, had a sudden explosion of genius. “You take magic with you anywhere you go,” he said. “Right into Mundania. This relates in all the three ways we were warned. It is certainly a matter I must attend to, for the existence of any new Magician in Xanth is the King’s business. It also could pose a threat to Xanth, for if you go out into Mundania on your own, taking that magic with you, bad people could capture you and somehow use your magic for evil. But most important, somewhere in Mundania is someone we fear is trapped or in trouble, who perhaps needs this magic to escape. Now if I were to take you into Mundania proper-“
“We could rescue my father!” Irene exclaimed, jumping up and down and clapping her hands in the manner of her kind. She bounced phenomenally, so that even the centaur paused to look, as if regretting his species and his age. “Oh, Dor, I could kiss you!” And without waiting for his reaction, she grabbed him and kissed him with joyful savagery on the mouth. In that moment of hyperanimation she became very special, radiant and compelling in the best sort of way; but by the time he realized it, she was already away and talking to the centaur.
“Amolde, if you have to be exiled anyway, you might as well come with us. We don’t care about your magic- not negatively, I mean-we all of us have talents. And think of the artifacts you can collect deep in Mundania; you can start your own museum. And if you help rescue my father, King Trent-“
The centaur was visibly wavering. Obviously he did not like the notion of exile, but could not return to his job on Centaur Isle. “And the centaurs around Castle Roogna are used to magic,” Irene continued apace.
“Chester Centaur plays a magic silver flute, and his uncle was Herman the Hermit. He would be glad for your company, and-“
“I believe I have little alternative,” Amolde said heavily.
“You will help us? Oh, thank you!” Irene cried, and she flung her arms about the centaur’s forepart and kissed him, too. Amolde was visibly startled, but not entirely displeased; his white spots wavered.
Dor suffered a wash of jealousy, thinking of the legend of the origin of the centaurs. Kisses between different species were not necessarily innocent, as that legend showed. But it seemed Irene had convinced the centaur Magician to help, and that was certainly worthwhile.
Then Dor remembered another complication. “We can’t just leave for Mundania. The Council of Elders would never permit it.”
“How can they prevent it?” Irene asked, glancing meaningfully at him.
“But we must at least tell them-“
“Chet can tell them. He has to go home anyway.”
Dor tried to dissemble. “I don’t know -?”
Then Irene focused her stare on him full-force, daring him to attempt to balk her; she was extremely pretty in her challenge, and Dor knew their course was set. She intended to rescue her father, no matter what.
They sailed the two rafts back to Centaur Isle that night. In the process they discovered that Amolde’s ambience of magic extended farthest toward the front, perhaps fifteen paces, and half that distance to the rear. It was least potent to the sides, going hardly beyond the centaur’s reach. It was, in fact, less an isle of magic than an aisle, always preceding the centaur’s march. Thus the second raft was able to precede Amolde’s raft comfortably, or to follow it closely, but not to travel beside it. They had verified that the hard way, having the magic propulsion fail, until Amolde turned to face them.
Once they re-entered the main magic of Xanth, Amolde’s power was submerged. It seemed to make no difference how close he was or which way he faced; there was no enhancement of enchantment near him. But of course they had no way to measure the intensity of magic in his vicinity accurately.
Grundy sneaked in to wake Chet and explain the situation, while Amolde researched in his old tomes for the best and swiftest route to Mundania. He reported that there was the tunnel the sun used to return from the ocean east to its position of rising, drying out and recharging along the way. This tunnel would be suitable by day, when the sun wasn’t using it; they could trot right along it.
“But that would take us west,” Irene protested. “My father left Xanth to the north.”
Dor had to agree. “The standard route to Mundania is across the northwest isthmus. We must go there and hope to pick up traces of his passage. We can’t use the sun’s tunnel. But it’s a long way to the isthmus, and I don’t think we want to make another trip like the one down the coast; we might never get there. Are there any other good notions?”
“Well, tomorrow is destined to have intermittent showers,” Amolde said. “There should be a rainbow. There is a spell in the archives for traveling the rainbow. It is very fast, for rainbows do not endure long. There is some risk-“
“Speed is what we need,” Dor said, remembering his dreamvisions, where there had been a sensation of urgency. “I think King Trent is in trouble and needs to be rescued soon. Maybe not in the next day, but I don’t think we can afford to wait a month.”
“There is also the problem of mounting the rainbow,” Amolde said. Now that he had accepted the distasteful notion of his own magic, his mind was relating to the situation very readily. Perhaps it was because he was trained in the handling of information and knew how to organize it. “Part of the rainbow’s magic, as you know, is that it appears equally distant from all observers, with its two ends touching the ground equally far from them, north and south. We must ascend to its top, then slide down quickly before it fades.”
“The salve!” Grundy said. “We can mount smoke to a cloud, and run across the cloud to the top of the rainbow, if we start early, before the rainbow forms.”
“You just don’t understand,” the centaur said. “It will seem just as far from us when we board the cloud. Catching a rainbow is one of the hardest things to do.”
“I can see why,” Dor muttered. “How can we catch one if it always retreats?”
