Man From Mundania

  “Why do we get into such picklements?” Ivy asked rhetorically.

  “It may be the nature of princesses.”

  Ivy had to laugh. Nada was just about the best thing that had happened to her in recent years, because she was indeed a princess, and Ivy's age, with a perfect understanding of all her concerns.

  “How did it happen?” Nada inquired after a moment.

  “I was stuck there in Mundania, and it was so drear, and Grey was so nice. I sort of encouraged him, because I wanted his help, but the more I got to know him the better I liked him. Then when he helped me return to Xanth, and he didn't believe in magic or that I was a princess but still liked me, I just kept liking him more. I knew it was foolish, but I didn't want to give him up. One thing led to another.” She shrugged. “I guess it sort of sneaked up on me. Not very romantic, after all.”

  “It will do,” Nada said with a sigh. “My betrothal was not romantic at all.” For it had been a political liaison.”

  “But I do love him,” Ivy said. “And I know my folks won't let me marry him. Oh, Nada, what am I to do?”

  “Elope?” Nada asked.

  Ivy stared at her. “Do you think it's possible?”

  “Possible, yes. The question is whether it's desirable.”

  “It would mean alienating my folks. I would never get to be king.”

  “But if you don't—”

  “I will lose Grey.” Ivy considered the alternatives. “Oh, Nada, I can't give up either my folks or Grey!”

  Nada just looked at her, understanding.

  In the evening she met Grey for the formal meal. He was with Dolph, of course, so she couldn't kiss him. They were on palace rules. She took his arm, and Dolph hooked up with Nada. Electra seemed satisfied to walk with Donkey.

  “Your brother is most talented,” Grey said as they walked to the dining room. “He has been showing me his forms, and we have talked.”

  Ivy made a wry face. “I hope it wasn't too boring.”

  “No, it was very interesting. He says there is only one thing to do.”

  “Don't say it!” Ivy warned. How like her brother, to blab about the elopement!

  Grey shrugged. “Yes, I told him it was foolish. But he says tomorrow we must all go to your room and verify it with the Tapestry.”

  “Verify?” This sounded odd. Was her brother already planning an escape route for her?

  “He says Donkey and Electra are hot on it, too. They actually believe it will work.”

  “They aren't princesses,” Ivy remarked dryly.

  He glanced at her curiously. “What does that have to do with it?”

  They were in public, so she couldn't answer. Fortunately they were just arriving at the dining room, so she didn't have to. “I'll explain later,” she said.

  But in the evening Nada come to see her. “Oh, Ivy, Electra told me! They could be right!”

  “About eloping? You know that's complicated!”

  “No, about finding a talent for Grey!”

  “Finding a—you mean that's what Grey was talking about?”

  “'Yes! Dolph thought of it, and he told Electra, and she told Donkey. Of course a notion doesn't have to make any sense to thrill Dolph or Electra, but Donkey's a centaur!

  If he thinks it's possible, we'd better take notice. If Grey had a talent, your folks wouldn't be able to oppose your marriage, because he'd be just as good as anybody else.”

  Ivy quelled her hope, knowing it would only hurt her worse if it flew and crashed. “Grey's a Mundane! They have no magic.”

  “Donkey says that all assumptions have to be periodically questioned. For centuries it was thought that centaurs had no talents, but when they questioned it, they discovered that they did have magic, if they just accepted it. The centaurs of Centaur Isle still refuse to believe it, but they are mistaken. So maybe that is also the case with Mundanes.”

  “I don't think so,” Ivy said. “Many Mundanes entered Xanth when Grandpa Trent assumed the throne, and he checked thoroughly but couldn't find a single magic talent in any of them. Their children have talents, but not the original generation. Later he even had me enhance some of them to see if that would make their talents manifest, but it didn't. Mundanes just don't have magic.”

  “Well, it won't hurt to check,” Nada said.

  Ivy didn't argue. But she knew it was a hopeless quest.

  In the morning, after breakfast, they all piled into Ivy's room to view the Tapestry: Grey, Dolph, Donkey, Nada, and Electra. “See, there are some dis, dis—” Dolph started.

  “Discontinuities,” Donkey supplied.

  “In the record,” Dolph continued, excited. “We can't follow you into the gourd, because the Tapestry doesn't register dreams. But we can trace your whole trip in Xanth, if that's okay with you.”

  “Why not?” Ivy said. “But I really don't see what it will prove.” She suspected that her little brother wanted to peek at any mushy stuff she might have had with Grey.

  “So let's go back to the beginning,” Dolph said. “When you switched places with the giant.”

  The Tapestry obligingly showed the picture of Girard Giant, lying with his chin propped on a fist, staring into the tiny gourd. Then he was gone, and Ivy and Grey stood where his head had been.

  They watched as the two of them made their way out of the clearing. They saw Grey blunder into the curse bun-sand then get rid of them.

  “Wasn't that magic?” Dolph demanded. “He nulled them all! Nobody ever did that before!”

  “No such luck,” Grey said. “I merely threatened them with my penknife. If there's any magic, it's in the knife.”

  The picture on the Tapestry froze, becoming mere colored thread. “A magic knife?” Dolph asked. “We should look at that.”

  “How would a Mundane knife be magic?” Donkey asked.

  Grey brought it out. “I pretended it was magic, but that was a bluff. I didn't believe in magic. See, it is just an ordinary penknife.” He unfolded the little blade.

  “We can test it,” Dolph said. “Ivy, enhance it.”

  Ivy took the knife and concentrated on it. Nothing happened. “I think it's dead,” she said. “It's not responding at all.”

  “Let me try it,” Donkey said. “I have tough hooves, so have had to use a magic blade to trim them. They've gotten overgrown since I've been on my own. If this can cut them, it may be magic.”

  The centaur held the knife carefully and bent down to reach his right forehoof, which he set on one of Ivy's chairs. He carved at the edge of the hoof, which was indeed somewhat ragged.

  The knife slid across the hoof without cutting in. Donkey tried again, with greater pressure. This time the blade dug in, but wouldn't cut; it was lodged in its niche. “No magic I can fathom,” Donkey said.

  “Maybe it's not the blade, it's Grey,” Dolph said eagerly. “That's what we're trying to prove, you know. See if Grey can cut your hoof.”

  “Let a nonspecialist cut my hoof?” Donkey asked, appalled.

  “Just to see if he has magic, Don,” Electra said cajolingly.

  The centaur yielded. It was evident that the two had become very close, in the past day. Ivy realized that after three years playing second to Nada, Electra was delighted to have a new friend. This did not affect her betrothal to Dolph, of course; she loved him and would die if she did not marry him. But in other respects she was an ordinary girl, with ordinary feelings. Ivy was not as close to her as she was to Nada, but it was true that Electra brightened Castle Roogna and was a lot of fun.

  Grey took the knife. “You want me to cut a sliver off your hoof?” he asked uncertainly. “My knife is sharp; it should be able to do that.”

  “My hoof is magically hard,” Donkey said. “That's not my talent; my talent is to change the color of my hooves.” He demonstrated, and the brown became green, then red.

  “Oooo!” Ivy and Nada said together, delighted.

  “But then how—?” Dolph asked.

  “All centaurs
have magically hard hooves,” Donkey explained. “It's part of being centaur, like having perfect aim with the bow and superior intellectual abilities. It doesn't count as a talent.”

  “Well, it seems to me that a sharp knife should cut a hoof,” Grey said. “Magic or not. That's the way of knives and hooves.” He put the knife to the hoof and carefully carved.

  A curl of hoof appeared.

  “There!” Dolph exclaimed. “He did it! He's magic!”

  “No I'm not,” Grey said resolutely. “I just know what's what. I knew this knife would cut that hoof.”

  “But that knife wouldn't cut for me!” Donkey protested.

  “Because you thought it wouldn't,” Grey said. “It was psychological. You could cut it if you really tried.”

  Donkey turned grim. Grey had insulted him. But Electra jumped in. She caught the centaur's arm, getting his attention, and drew herself close to his ear. “He's Mundane!” she reminded him. “They don't know about manners.”

  Grey looked up. “Now wait—”

  Nada interceded, approaching Grey in much the same manner. “She means that different things bother different people. Some of us don't like to be called reptilian; others don't like to have their integrity questioned.”

  “Reptilian?” Grey asked, distracted. Indeed, Nada hardly looked the part; she was wearing the kind of dress that would have sagged on Ivy, showing contours that tended to make men stop in their tracks and ponder nature.

  Ivy felt a tinge of possessiveness and jealousy. Then she had another thought, and suppressed it. If Grey could be distracted by someone like Nada, perhaps it was best that it happen. It might be better than the present problem.

  Donkey stepped back in. “I am sure I misunderstood. I apologize for mistaking your meaning.”

  Grey looked at Ivy, alarmed. Ivy remembered the joke she had played on him, using the brassie mode of apology.

  She burst out laughing.

  The others looked puzzled. Then Nada caught on.

  “Brassies …” she said. Then, with mischief: “Did I embarrass you, Grey?”

  “No you didn't!” Ivy cried.

  After that, they all were laughing. Obviously Grey didn't want to be hugged and kissed by the centaur, and Ivy didn't want Nada doing it to him either.

  “What I meant,” Grey said determinedly when they settled down again, “was not any questioning of your integrity, Donkey, but that we all are affected by what we believe. I could not believe in magic for the longest time, because it doesn't exist in Mundania. You can not believe in the sharpness of my knife, because maybe you don't have experience with Mundane steel. But now that you have seen it work, you could do the same yourself.”

  “Let me try it again,” Donkey said, a trifle tightly. He took the knife and carved exactly the way Grey had, holding the blade more firmly to the hoof.

  A similar curl of hoof appeared.

  “You see?” Grey said. “No magic, just sharpness and confidence. You now believe in my knife the way I believe in magic: tentatively.”

  “I take your point,” Donkey said, relaxing. “May I borrow this knife? This is an opportunity I should not let pass by to get my hooves in shape.”

  “Certainly,” Grey said. “But we may have to find a sharpening stone if it gets dull.”

  “There's one in the dungeon!” Electra said eagerly.

  Dolph frowned. “Do you know what you've done, Grey? You've just cherry-bombed my proof that you had magic!”

  Grey shrugged. “That's because I don't have magic. We all know that.”

  “No we don't!” Dolph insisted. “Let's get on with the viewing.” The Tapestry resumed its animation. Ivy noted that with a certain annoyance; her little brother was getting entirely too good at controlling it. He had to have been watching it a great deal during her absence.

  “So your knife is sharp,” Dolph said. “But look how those curse burrs fall! They don't care about sharpness; they stick you no matter what. So—”

  “Well, I cowed them,” Grey said. “They knew I had the knife and was ready to use it, so they gave up. That wasn't magic, that was intimidation.”

  “What?” Dolph asked.

  “He scared them,” Donkey said, translating as he carved his hoof.

  “Oh.” Disgruntled, Dolph returned to the Tapestry.

  They watched the episode of the two-lips tree. One flower kissed Grey, but the others did not. “How about that?” Dolph asked. “He turned them off!”

  Grey smiled ruefully. “Sure. After the first one got a taste of me, the others wanted nothing to do with me. That's not magic, that's B.O.”

  “That's what?”

  “He stunk,” Donkey said, translating again.

  Ivy and Nada managed to keep straight faces, but a titter squeezed out through Electra's hands, clapped over her mouth.

  Dolph, oddly, did not find it funny. He returned grimly to the Tapestry.

  The figures in the scene proceeded to the sandy region. The sandman rose up, assumed the forms of a small ogre, a holy cow, and a nonenti-tree, then collapsed back into a mound when Grey touched it.

  “See? See?” Dolph cried. “He destroyed it! That's magic!”

  “It was an illusion,” Grey said. “When I touched it, it stopped, as illusions do, no credit to me.”

  “No credit to you,” Dolph agreed, displeased.

  The Tapestry figures went to the tangle tree. “It was sated,” Ivy said before Dolph could make a case about its quiescence.

  “Well, I can check that,” Dolph said resolutely. The picture focused on the tree, running backwards. The day brightened and dimmed, and brightened again, and dimmed again. “See—no captures,” Dolph said. “That tree hadn't eaten in days! So—”

  “It could have been dormant—or sick,” Ivy said. “Or maybe the magic didn't work very well around Grey, because he was fresh from Mundania. No proof of magic.”

  Donkey nodded. “It does seem possible. Natives of Xanth relate well to magic, having experienced it all their lives, but Mundanes may have a depressive effect. That won't remain, now that Grey accepts magic.”

  Dolph buzzed the scene forward until the two of them were captured by the goblins. “There's Donkey!” Electra exclaimed.

  They watched as Ivy was put on the isle, and then as Grey waded through the pool to reach her.

  “Isn't that romantic!” Nada breathed as the two embraced on the isle.

  “That's when we became betrothed,” Ivy said, thrilled again by the sight. “It was no hate spring after all, but I was so relieved—”

  “No hate spring?” Dolph asked. “Let me check.”

  “Oh, don't waste more time,” Ivy said. But the scene was already revving back. He was really making that old Tapestry jump! The days and nights flickered by—and abruptly stopped at a variant of the scene.

  “What's that?” Ivy asked.

  “Earlier captives,” Dolph said. “I made it do a Seek on that subject. This must be before Donkey was captured.”

  “It is,” the centaur agreed.

  The scene was of the goblins of the Golden Horde, dragging two captives to the spring. They were elves, male and female. They were brought before the chief. The Tapestry did not make sound, so the words were lost, but it looked as if the elves were a couple who had been traveling together. They were young, and the man was handsome and the maid was pretty, and they stayed close together. Lovers or newly married, going from one elf elm to another, perhaps to visit kin. They would have run afoul of the goblin trails and gotten trapped.

  The goblins did the same thing they had done with Ivy and Grey: they boated the girl to the isle and left her there, then turned him loose at the edge. The man was in obvious distress, as was the girl: should he try to cross to her or leave her? The goblins were gloating, and their big cook pot was boiling.

  The elf decided to call the bluff. He waded into the water crossed—and threw the girl into it. She charged out and attacked him, while the goblins applauded.
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  They watched in horror as the two elves fought. There was no doubt: they now hated each other. Soon the man held the girl under until she drowned, then charged out of the pool to attack the goblins. They hurled spears at him, bringing him down, and dumped his body into the pot.

  They used a line with a hook on it to catch her floating body and haul it out, then dumped clean water over it to clear the hate water, and dumped it into another boiling pot.

  The picture faded into a neutral plaid pattern. The six young folk stared at each other, their eyes and mouths round with horror. There seemed to be no doubt about it: the spring was hate.

  Grey worked his mouth. “I, uh, it didn't do that to us. So maybe it worked on the elves because they believed it would.”

  “In that case it would have worked on Ivy,” Donkey pointed out.

  “No, it didn't work on me because I didn't believe in it, and then she didn't believe in it.”

  But the others were uncertain. “I think it's real—and you had magic to null it,” Dolph said.

  They discussed it, and found themselves in doubt and divided. Had Grey used magic to null the hate spring, or had something else depleted its power? They could not decide.

  In due course the parents were ready to give their verdict. Grey and Ivy stood before them in the throne room, and King Dor said what he had obviously been coached to say:

  “We can not sanction a marriage between a Princess of Xanth who is a Sorceress, and a common man who has no magic. We do not seek to dictate our daughter's choice of a man to marry, and have no personal objection to the one she has chosen, who strikes us as a fine young man.

  But in the interest of Xanth we must insist that she marry either a Prince or a man with a significant magic talent.

  We therefore deliver this ultimatum: demonstrate that this man. Grey of Mundania, is either a recognized Prince or has a magic talent. Until one of these conditions is met, this marriage will not have our sanction.”

  Ivy looked at her father, then at Grey. She could neither defy her parents nor give up her love. She stood there, and her throat was too choked for her to speak, and the tears overflowed her eyes and coursed down her cheeks.

  Grey spoke. “I have come to understand a little about your magic land,” he said. Ivy knew with a sick certainty that he was going to do the decent thing. “I think I could learn to love it, as I love your daughter. I accept your ultimatum as fair. Ivy is not a woman, she is a Princess, and she must do what is best for Xanth. I am neither a Prince nor a Sorcerer, and can never be either. Therefore I—”