“Generated by a centaur.”
The scholar smiled wanly. “I fear you have the advantage of me. You can imagine nonsense faster than I can assimilate it.”
Dor saw that the scholar did not believe him. “I’ll show you my own magic, if you like,” he said. He pointed to the open tome on the table. “Book, speak to the man.”
“Why should I bother?” the book demanded.
“Ventriloquism!”’ the scholar exclaimed. “I must confess you are very good at it.”
“What did you call me?” the book demanded.
“Would you do that again-with your mouth closed?” the scholar asked Dor.
Dor closed his mouth. The book remained silent. “I rather thought so,” the scholar said.
“Thought what, four-eyes?” the book asked.
Startled, the scholar looked down at it, then back at Dor. “But your mouth was closed, I’m sure.”
“It’s magic,” Dor said. “I can make any inanimate object talk.”
“Let’s accept for the moment that this is true. You are telling me that this King you are searching for can also work magic?”
“Right. Only he can’t do it in Mundania, so I guess it doesn’t count.”
“Because he has no magic centaur with him?”
“Yes.”
“I would like to see this centaur.”
“He’s protected by an invisibility spell. So the Mundanes won’t bother us.”
“This centaur is a scholar?”
“Yes. An archivist, like yourself.”
“Then he is the one to whom I should talk.”
“But the spell-“
“Abate the spell! Bring your centaur scholar forth. Otherwise I cannot help you.”
“I don’t think he’d want to do that. It would be hard to get safely out of here without that enchantment, and we have no duplicate invisibility spell.”
The scholar walked back to his cubby. “Mind you, I believe in magic no more than in the revelations of a hallucination, but I am willing to help you if you meet me hallway. Desist your parlor tricks, show me your scholar, and I will work with him to fathom the information you desire. I don’t care how fanciful his outward form may be, provided he has a genuine mind. The fact that you find it necessary to dazzle me with ventriloquism, a lovely costumed girl who vanishes, and a mythological narrative suggests that there is very little substance to your claim, and you are wasting my time. I ask you to produce your scholar or depart my presence.”
“Uh, Amolde,” Dor said. “I know it’ll be awful hard to get out of here without the spells, but maybe we could wait till night. We really need the information, and-“
Abruptly the centaur appeared, facing the scholar’s cubby. The ogre and golem stood behind him. “I agree,” Amolde said.
The scholar turned about. He beamed. “”These are rare costumes, I agree.”
Amolde strode forward, his barrel barely clearing the shelves on either side, extending his hand. “I certainly do not blame you for being impatient with the uninitiate,” he said. “You have excellent facilities here, and I know your time is valuable.”
The scholar shook the hand, seeming more reassured by Amolde’s spectacles and demeanor than confused by his form.
“What is your specially?”
“Alien archaeology-but of course there is a great deal of routine work and overlapping of chores.”
“There certainly is!” the scholar agreed. “The nuisances I have to endure here-“
The two fell into a technical dialogue that soon left Dor behind.
They became more animated as they sized up each other’s minds and information. There was now no doubt they were similar types.
Irene, bored, grew a cocoa plant in the hall, and shared the hot cups of liquid with Dor, Smash, and Grundy. They knew it was important that Amolde establish a good rapport so that they could gain the scholar’s cooperation and make progress on their request.
Time passed. The two scholars delved into ancient tomes, debated excruciatingly fine points, questioned Dor closely about the hints King Trent had given him in both person and vision, and finally wound down to an animated close. The Mundane scholar accepted a mug of cocoa, relaxing at last. “I believe we have it,” he said. “Will I see you again, centaur?”
“Surely so, sir! I am able to travel in Mundania, am fascinated by your comprehensive history, and am presently, as it were, between positions.”
“Your compatriots found your magic as intolerable in you as mine would find a similar propensity in me! I shall not be able to tell any one what I have learned this day, lest I, too, lose my position and possibly even be institutionalized. Imagine conversing with a centaur, ogre, and tiny golem! How I should love to do a research paper on your fantastic Land of Xanth, but it would hardly be believable.”
“You could write a book and call it a story,” Grundy suggested. “And Amolde could write one about Mundania.”
Both scholars looked pleased. Neither had thought of such a simple expedient.
“But do you know where my father is?” Irene demanded.
“Yes, I believe we do,”’ Amolde said. “King Trent left a message for us, we believe.”
“How could he leave a message?” she demanded.
“He left it with Dor. That, and the other hints we had, such as the fact that he was going to a medieval region, in the mountains near a black body of water. There are, my friend informs me, many places in Mundania that fit the description. So we assume it is literal; either the water itself is black, or it is called black. As it happens, there is in Mundania a large body of water called the Black Sea. Many great rivers empty into it; great mountain ranges surround it. But that is not sufficient to identify this as the specific locale we seek; it merely makes it one possibility among many.” Amolde smiled. “We spent a good deal of time on geography. As it happens, there was historically a confluence of A, B, and K people in that vicinity in medieval times-at least that is so when their names are rendered into Xanth dialect. The Avars, the Bulgars, and the Khazars. So it does seem to fit. Everything you have told us seems to fit.”
“But that isn’t enough!” Dor cried. “How can you be sure you have the place, the time?”
“Honesty,” Amolde said. “O N E S T I.” He pointed to a spot on an open book. “This, we believe, is the unique special hint King Trent gave you, to enable you and only you to locate him in an emergency.”
Dor looked. It was an atlas, with a map of some strange Mundane land. On the map was a place labeled Onesti.
“There is only one such place in the world,” Amolde said. “It has to be King Trent’s message to you. No one else would grasp the significance of that unique nomenclature.”
Dor recaped the intensity with which King Trent had spoken of honesty, as if there had been a separate meaning there. He remembered how well aware the King had been of Dor’s kind of spelling. It seemed no one else spelled it the obvious way, onesti.
“But if that’s been there-that name, there in your maps and things -for centuries-that means King Trent never came back! We can’t rescue him, because then the name would go.”
“Not necessarily,” Amolde said. “The place-name does not depend on his presence. We should be able to rescue him without disturbing it. At any rate, we are never certain of the paradoxes of time. We shall simply have to go to that location and that time, circa AD 650, and try to find him.”
“But suppose it’s wrong?” Irene asked worriedly. “Suppose he isn’t there?”
“Then we shall return here and do more research,” Amolde said. “I intend to visit here again anyway, and my friend Ichabod would like to visit Xanth. There will be no trouble about that, I assure you.”
“Yes. You will be welcome here,” the Mundane scholar agreed. “You have a fine and arcane mind.”
“For the first time,” Amolde continued, “I look upon my exile from Centaur Isle and my assumption of an obscene talent with a certain equanimity. I have not, it seems, been excluded from my calling; my horizons have been inordinately expanded.”
