Then Amolde’s magic aisle caught up, and the King became intelligible.
“. . . before I have you all thrown in the dungeon!”
“Hello,” Dor said. “I am Dor, temporary King of Xanth while King Trent is away.” Of course, the Zombie Master was temporary-temporary King now, while Dor himself was away, but that was too complicated to explain at the moment. “He came here on a trading mission, I believe, less than a month ago, and has not returned. So I have come to look for him. What’s the story?”
The King scowled. Suddenly Dor knew this approach had been an wrong, that King Trent had not come here, that the people of Onesti knew nothing about him. This was all a mistake.
“I am King Oary of Onesti,” the King said from out of his glower, “and I never saw this King Trench of yours. Get out of my Kingdom.”
Despair struck Dor-but behind him Amolde murmured: “That person is prevaricating, I believe.”
“On top of that, he’s lying,” Irene muttered.
“Glib fib,” Smash said. He set one hamhand down on the banquet table gently. The bowls of pudding jumped and quivered nervously.
King Oary considered the ogre. His ruddy face paled. His righteous anger dissolved into something like guilty cunning. “However, I may have news of him,” he said with less bellicosity. “Join my feast, and I will query my minions.”
Dor didn’t like this. King Oary did not impress him favorably, and he did not feel like eating with the man. But the puddings looked good, and he did want Oary’s cooperation. He nodded reluctant assent.
The servants hurried up with more chairs for Dor, Irene, and Smash.
Grundy, too small for a chair, perched instead on the edge of the table. Arnolde merely stood. More puddings were brought in, together with flagons of beverage, and they all pitched in.
The pudding was thick, with fruit embedded, and surprisingly tasty. Dor soon found himself thirsty, for the pudding was highly spiced, so he drank-and found the beverage a cross between sweet beer and sharp wine from indifferent beerbarrel and winekeg trees.
He hadn’t realized that such trees grew in Mundania; certainly they did not grow as well. But the stuff was heady and good once he got used to it.
The others were eating as happily. They had all developed quite an appetite in the course of their trek up the mountain river, and had not paused to grow a meal of their own before approaching the castle. Smash, especially, tossed down puddings and flagons of drink with an abandon that set the castle servants gaping.
But the drink was stronger than what they were accustomed to.
Dor soon found his awareness spinning pleasantly. Grundy began a little dance on the table, a routine he had picked up from a Mundane immigrant to Xanth. He called it the Drunken Sailor’s Hornpipe, and it did indeed look drunken. King Oary liked it, applauding with his fat hands.
Arnolde and Irene ate more diffidently, but the centaur’s mass required plenty of sustenance, and he was making good progress.
Irene, it seemed, loved puddings, so she could not hold back long.
“Zrne vgn lhfgs wt ad, ezhq czlrdk?” King Oary asked Irene pleasantly. oops-they were seated along the table, with the King at the end.
The King was beyond the aisle of magic. But Amolde grasped the problem quickly, and angled his body so that he now faced the King.
That would extend the magic far enough.
Irene, too, caught on. “Were you addressing me, Your Majesty?” she asked demurely. Dor had to admit she was very good at putting on maidenly ways.
“Of course. What other fair damsels are in this hall?”
She colored slightly, looking about as if to spy other girls. She was getting more practiced at this sort of dissemblance. “’Thank you so much, Your Majesty.”
“What is your lineage?”
“Oh, I’m King Trent’s daughter.”
The King nodded sagely. “I’m sure you are prettier than your mother.”
Did that mean something? Dor continued eating, listening, hoping Irene could get some useful information from the obese monarch.
There was something odd here, but Dor did not know how to act until he had more definite information.
“Have you any news of my parents?” Irene inquired, having the wit and art to smile fetchingly at the King. Yet again Dor had to suppress his unreasoning jealousy. “I’m so worried about them.” And she pouted cutely. Dor hadn’t seen her use that expression before; it must be a new one.
“My henchmen are spying out information now,” the King reassured her. “Soon we should have what news there is.”
Amolde glanced at Dor, a fleeting frown on his face. He still did not trust Oary.
“Tell me about Onesti,” Irene said brightly. “It seems like such a nice little Kingdom.”
“Oh, it is, it is,” the King agreed, his eyes focusing on what showed of her legs. “Two fine castles and several villages, and some very pretty mountains. For centuries we have fought off the savages; two thousand years ago, this was the heartland of the battle-axe people, the Cimmerians. Then the Scyths came on their horses, driving the footbound Cimmerians south. Horses had not been seen in this country before; they seemed like monsters from some fantasy land.”
The King paused to chew up another pudding. Monsters from a fantasy land-could that refer to Xanth? Dor wondered. Maybe some nightmares found a way out, and turned Mundane, and that was the origin of day horses. It was an intriguing speculation.
“But here at the mountains,” the King resumed, wiping pudding crust from his whiskers, “the old empire held. Many hundreds of years later the Sarmatians drove out the Scyths, but did not penetrate this fastness.”
He belched contentedly. “Then came the Goths-but still we held the border. Then from the south came the horrible civilian Romans, and from the east the Huns.”
“Ah, the Huns,” Irene agreed, as if she knew something about them.
“But still Onesti survived, here in the mountains, unconquered though beset by barbarians,” the King concluded. “Of course we had to pay tribute sometimes, a necessary evil. Yet our trade is inhibited. If we interact too freely with the barbarians, there will surely be mischief. Yet we must have trade if we are to survive.”
“My father came to trade,” Irene said.
“Perhaps he got sidetracked by the dread Khazars, or their Magyar minions,” King Oary suggested. “I have had some dealings with those; they are savage, cunning brutes, always alert for spoils. I happen to speak their language, so I know.”
Dor decided he would have to do some searching on his own, questioning the objects in this vicinity. But not right now, while the King was watching. He was sure the King was hiding something.
“Have you been King of Onesti for a long time?” Irene inquired innocently.
“Not long,” Oary admitted. “My nephew Omen was to be King, but he was underage, so I became regent when my brother died. Then Omen went out hunting-and did not return. We fear he strayed too far and was ambushed by the Khazars or Magyars. So I am King, until we can declare Omen officially dead. There is no hope of his survival, of course, but the old council moves very slowly on such matters.”
So King Oary was in fact regent during the true King’s absence-much as Dor was, in Xanth. But this King was eager to retain the throne. Had there been foul play by other than the Khazars?
Dor found his head on the table, contesting for space with a pudding. He must have gotten quite sleepy? “What’s going on?” he mumbled.
“You’ve been drugged, you fool, that’s what,” the table whispered in his ear. “There’s more in that rotgut than booze, I’ll tell you!”
Dor reacted with shock, but somehow his head did not rise.
“Drugged? Why?”
“’Cause the Imposter King doesn’t like you, that’s why,” the table said. “He always drugs his enemies. That’s how he got rid of King Omen, and then that fake Magician King.”
Magician King! It was funny, whispering with his head on the table, but fairly private. Dor’s nose was almost under the pudding.
