tended to be insulated from events outside, and to forget the potential importance of the exterior environment. It occurred to Dor that this also applied to the whole land of Xanth; few of its inhabitants knew anything about Mundania, or cared to learn.
Trade between the realms, hitherto a matter of erratic chance, should be established, if only to facilitate a more cosmopolitan awareness.
King Oary was evidently not much interested in trade, to the detriment of his Kingdom; he regarded the Xanth visitors as a threat to his throne. As indeed they were-since he was a usurper.
“Now we can’t plan exactly how this will work,” Dor said in a final review. “I hope the Queen will be able to make an illusion that will cause the guards to release her, and then she can free the others.”
“She’d love to vamp a guard,” Irene said. “She’ll make herself look like the winsomest wench in all Mundania. Then when he comes close, she’ll turn into a dragon and scare him to death. Serve lift right.”
Dor chuckled. “I think I know how that works.”
She whirled on him in mock anger. “You haven’t begun to see how it works!” But she couldn’t hold her frown. She kissed him instead.
“The lady appears to have given fair wanting,” Amolde remarked. “You won’t see the dragon until you are securely married.”
“He knows that,” Irene said smugly. “But men never learn. Each one thinks he’s different.”
Amolde set himself against the wall, changing his orientation by small degrees so that the aisle swung through the castle. “Grundy will have to report whether we intercept the Queen,” he said. “I cannot perceive the use of the aisle.”
“If anything goes wrong,” Irene said, “Smash will have to go into action, and I’ll grow some plant to mess them up.”
They waited. The centaur completed a sweep through the castle without event. He swept back, still accomplishing nothing. “I begin to fear we are, after all, beyond range,” he said.
Smash put one cauliflower ear to the watt. “Go down for crown.”
“Of course!” Dor agreed. “They are in the dungeon! Below ground level. Aim down.”
With difficulty, Amolde bent his forelegs, leaving his hindlegs extended, tilting his body down. He commenced another sweep. This was quite awkward for him, because of the position and his injury.
Smash joined him, lifting him up and setting him down at a new angle, making the sweep easier.
“But if they are too far inside for the aisle to reach-“ Irene murmured tensely.
“Grundy will let us know,” Dor said, trying to prevent her from becoming hysterically nervous. He knew this was the most trying time for her-this period when they would either make contact or fail. “We may catch Queen Iris, then sweep on past, and it will take a while for the golem to relay the news.”
“That could be it,” she agreed, moving into the circle of his arm.
He turned to kiss her and found her lips eager to meet his own. Once she had declared her love, she made absolutely no secret of it. Dor realized that even if their mission failed, even if they perished here in Mundania, it was privately worth it for him in this sense. He had discovered love, and it was a universe whose reaches, pitfalls, and potential rewards were more vast than all of Mundania. He held the kiss for a long time.
“Is this how you behave when unchaperoned?” a woman’s voice demanded sharply.
Dor and Irene broke with a start. There beside them stood the Queen.
“Mother!” Irene cried, half in relief, half in chagrin.
“Shamefully embracing in public!” Queen Iris continued, frowning. She had always been the guardian of other people’s morals. “This must come to the attention of-?”
The Queen vanished. Amolde, timing as well as he could to face her image, had thereby shifted the magic aisle away from Iris’ cell, so that the Queen’s magic was interrupted. She could no longer project her illusion- image.
“Beg pardon,” the centaur said. He shifted back.
Queen Iris reappeared. Before she could speak again, Irene did so.
“That’s nothing, Mother. This afternoon Dor and I slept together.”
“You disreputable girl!” Iris exclaimed, aghast
Dor bit his tongue. He had never really liked Queen his and could hardly have thought of a better way to prick her bubble.
The centaur tried to reassure her. “Your Majesty, we all slept. It-“
“You, too?” Iris demanded, her gaze surveying them with an amazing chill. “And the ogre?”
“We’re a very close group,” Irene said. “I love them all.”
This was going too far. “You misunderstand,” Dor said. “We only-?” Irene tromped his toe, cutting him off. She wanted to continue baiting her mother. But Queen Iris, no fool, had caught on. “They only saw up your skirt, of course. How many times have I cautioned you about that? You have absolutely no sense of-“
“We bring the King?” Smash inquired.
“The King!” Iris exclaimed. “By all means! You must march in and free us all.”
“But the noise-“ Dor protested. “If we alert the soldiers-“
“You forget my power,” Queen Iris informed him. “I can give your party the illusion of absence. No one will hear you or see you, no matter what you do.”
Such a simple solution! The Queen’s illusion would be more than enough to free them all. “Break in the wall, Smash,” Dor caged. “We can rescue King Trent ourselves!”
With a grunt of glee, the ogre advanced on the wall. Then he disappeared. So did the centaur. Dor found himself embracing nothing. He could neither see nor feel Irene, and heard nothing either-but there was resistance where he knew her to be. Experimentally he shoved.
Something shoved him back. It was like the force of inertia when he swung around a corner at a run, a force with no seeming origin.
Irene was there, all right! This spell differed from the one the centaur had used; it made the people within it undetectable to each other as well as to outsiders. He hoped that didn’t lead. to trouble.
A gap appeared in the wall. Chunks of stone fell out, silently. The ogre was at work.
Dor kept his arm around the nothingness beside him, and it moved with him. Curious about the extent of the illusion, he moved his hand. Portions of the nothingness were more resilient than others.
Then he found himself stumbling; a less resilient portion had given him another shove. Then something helped steady him; the nothingness was evidently sorry. He wrapped his arms about it and drew it in close for a kiss, but It didn’t feel right. He concluded he was kissing the back of her head. He grabbed a hank of nothingness and gave it a friendly tug.
Then Irene appeared, laughing. “Oh, am I going to get even for that!” Then she realized she could perceive him in the moonlight.
She wrapped the jacket about her torso-it had fallen open during their invisible encounter-and drew him forward. “We’re getting left b-“ She vanished and silenced.
They had re-entered the aisle. Dor kept hold of her nothing-hand and followed the other nothings into the hole in the wall.
For a moment they all became visible. Amolde was ahead, negotiating a pile of rubble; Smash had broken through to the lower level, but the path he made was hardly smooth. The centaur, realizing that the aisle had shifted away from the Queen, hastily corrected his orientation. They all vanished again.
Castle personnel appeared, gaping at the rubble, unable to fathom its cause. One stepped into the passage- and vanished. That created another stir. As yet the Mundanes did not seem to associate this oddity with an invasion.
The ogre’s tunnel progressed apace. Soon enough it broke into the Queen’s cell, then into King Trent’s and finally King Omen’s. At that point the parties became visible again. There was ambient light, courtesy of the Queen’s illusion. Dor was uncertain at what point illusion became reality, since light was light however it was generated, but he had learned not to worry unduly about such distinctions.
Irene lurched forward and flung herself into King Trent’s arms.
“Oh, daddy!’ she cried with tears of joy.
Now Dor experienced what he knew to be his most unreasonable surge of jealousy yet. After all, why should she not love her father?
