actually came here. We have to be sure.”
“My evidence is rather tenuous,” Amolde offered. “It seems that the stable hands had difficulty thinking of me as a person of intellect, and spoke more freely in my vicinity than they might otherwise have done. I declined to speak to them, in what I confess might be construed as a fit of pique-“
“Chic pique,’ Smash chuckled.
“And so they did not realize that the magic in your vicinity caused their language to be intelligible to you, or that you had the wit to comprehend it,” Dor put in, pleased. “We could not communicate with them without an interpreter, so it was natural for them to assume you couldn’t either. That, combined with their tending to think of you as an animal-“
“Precisely. My pique may have been fortuitous. So I found myself overhearing certain things that were perhaps not entirely my affair.” He smiled. “In one case, literally. It seems one of the cooks has a continuing liaison with a scullery maid-“ He broke off, grimacing.
“Right beside my stall! It was instructive; they are lusty folk. At any rate, there was at one point a reference to a certain alien King who, it seems, had claimed to be able to perform magic.”
“King Trent!” Dor exclaimed. “My memory was right, then, not a dream! The table did say King Trent was here!”
“I think we always knew it!” Irene agreed, glowering in memory of the betrayal associated with that table.
“The translator knew about the magic of Xanth,” Dor continued.
“But of course no one could do magic here in Mundania, until we discovered you, Amolde. King Trent would have said he could do magic in Xanth, and the qualification got dropped in translation.”
“Certainly,” the centaur agreed. “It seems that King Oary somehow anticipated magic that he thought might greatly enhance his power and was very angry when that magic did not materialize. So he arrested the alien King treacherously and locked him away, hoping to coerce him into performing, or into revealing the secret of his power.”
“Where?” Irene demanded. “Where is my father?”
“I regret I did not overhear more than I have told you. The alien King was not named. I do not believe the people of the stables knew his identity, or believe in his power, or know where he may be confined. They merely gossip. The apparent magic of Smash’s initial display of strength, and the manner we communicated with King Oary, caused a considerable ripple of interest around the castle, and indeed in the entire Kingdom of Onesti, which accounts for the gossip about similar cases. But already this interest is waning, since both strength and communication appeared to have been illusion. It is very easy to attribute phenomena to illusion or false memory when practical explanations are lacking, and Mundanes do this often.” He sanded grimly. “I daresay a new round of speculation has commenced, considering the events of the past hour. Your tangle plant, Irene, was gratifyingly impressive.”
“It sure was!” Grundy agreed enthusiastically. “It was grabbing people right and left, and it ripped the stall apart. But when Amolde left, the tangler sank down dead.”
“Magic plants can’t function without magic, dummy,” Irene said.
“Fortunately,” Amolde agreed. “On occasion it reached for me; then I angled away from it, depriving it of magic, and it desisted. After a time it ceased to bother me.”
“Even a tangler isn’t totally stupid!” Irene laughed.
“At least we have more to go on,’ Dor said. “We can be pretty sure King Oary imprisoned King Trent and Queen his, and that they remain alive. Oary’s experience with us must have enhanced his conviction that anyone from Xanth is hiding magic from him, since we really did have magic, then stopped showing it when he imprisoned us. He probably intended to force us to tell him the secret of magic so he could do it, too, or at least compel the rest of us to perform for them.”
“King Oary strikes me as a pretty cunning old rascal,” Irene said. “Wrongheaded but cunning.”
“Indeed,” Amolde agreed. “From my observation, he runs this Kingdom reasonably well, but unscrupulously. Perhaps that is what is required to maintain the precarious independence from the larger empires on three sides.”
“We still need to locate King Trent,” Dor said. “Amolde, did you hear anything else that might remotely connect?”
“I am not sure, Dor. “There was a reference to King Omen, Oary’s predecessor who disappeared. It seems the common folk liked him and were sorry to lose him.”
“He was King?” Dor asked. “I understood he was underage, so Oary was regent, and Omen never actually became King.”
“I gather in contrast that he was indeed King, for about a year, before he disappeared,” the centaur said. “They called him Good Omen, and believe the Kingdom of Onesti would have prospered under his guidance.”
“Surely it would have,” Dor agreed. He realized that King Oary might have preferred to minimize King Omen’s stature in order to make his own position more secure. If the Kingdom of Onesti was well run, it could have been mostly King Omen’s doing. “A trade agreement with Xanth could help both Kingdoms. Maybe King Omen was arranging that, then got deposed before King Trent arrived. King Oary’s greed has cost him that chance.”
“The peasants suspect that King Omen was illicitly removed,” the centaur continued. “Some even choose to believe that he still lives, that King Oary imprisoned him by subterfuge and usurped power. This may of course be mere wish fulfillment.”
“And just may be the truth,” Irene put in. “If King Oary deceived and imprisoned us and did the same with my parents, why not also with Good King Omen? It certainly fits his pattern.”
“We are indulging in a great deal of supposition,” Amolde said seamingly. “We could encounter disappointment. Yet if I may extend the rationale-it occurs to me that If King Trent and King Omen both survive, they may be confined together. We have already seen that the dungeons of Castle Onesti are not extensive. If there is another castle, and we find one confined there-“
“We find the other!” Irene finished. “And if we rescued them both, Good Omen would be King of Onesti again and all would be well. I’d sure like to depose hoary King Oary!”
“That was the extrapolation of my conjectures,” Amolde agreed. “Yet I reiterate, it is highly speculative.”
“It’s worth a try,” Dor said. “Now let’s plan our strategy. Probably only King Oary knows where King Trent and/or King Omen are incarcerated, and he won’t tell. I could question the stones of the castle, but probably the Kings aren’t here at all, and the stones wouldn’t know anything about other places. If the local servants don’t know anything about it, it probably isn’t known. So the question is, how can we get him to tell?”
“He ought to have a guilty conscience,” Irene said. “Maybe we could play on that.”
“I distrust this,” Dor said. “I encountered some bad people and creatures in another adventure, and I don’t think their consciences troubled them, because they simply didn’t believe they were doing anything wrong. Goblins and harpies-“
“Of course they don’t have consciences,” Irene snapped. “But Oary is a person.”
“Human beings can be worst of all, especially Mundanes,” Dor said. “Many of them have ravaged Xanth over the centuries, and King Oary may contemplate something similar. I just don’t have much confidence in any appeal to his conscience.”
“I perceive your point,” Amolde said. “But I think ‘appeal’ is not the appropriate term. A guilty conscience more typically manifests in the perception of nocturnal specters.”
“Not many specters running around this far from Xanth,” Grundy pointed out.
“We could scare him into giving it away!” Irene exclaimed.
“Tonight,” Dor decided. “We must rest and feed ourselves firsthand hide from King Oary’s troops.”
They had no trouble avoiding the troops. It took Oary’s forces some time to organize, after the devastation Smash had caused during the breakout, and only now, after the long discussion, was any real activity manifesting at the castle. Irene made vines grow, bristling with thorns; in their natural state these had been a nuisance, but now they were a menace. When the magic moved away, the vines died, for they had been extended far beyond their natural limits-but the tangle of thorns remained as a formidable barrier. That, coupled with the Mundanes’ knowledge that the ogre lurked in the forest, kept the guards close to the castle even after they emerged. They were not eager for contact with the creature who had bashed all those holes in the massive walls.
