Some magic, it seemed, did extend to Mundania; Dor wondered briefly whether the Mundanes would have the same trouble actually catching up to a rainbow, or whether there it would stay in place regardless how the viewers moved.
Amolde brought out his rainbow-travel span, which was sealed in a paper packet. He tore it open-and abruptly they began to slide.
The speed was phenomenal. They zoomed past the clouds, then down into the faintly rainy region below, plunging horrendously toward the sea to the north.
Below them was the land of Xanth, a long peninsula girt by thin islands along the coastlines. Across the center of it was the jagged chasm of the Gap that separated the northern half of Xanth from the southern. It appeared on no maps because no one remembered it, but this was no map. It was reality, as viewed from the rainbow. There were a number of lakes, such as Ogre-Chobee in the south, but no sign of the human settlements Dor knew were there. Man had simply not made much of an impression on Xanth, physically.
“Fun begun!” Smash cried joyfully.
“Eeek-my skirt!” Irene squealed as the mischievous gusts whipped it up, displaying her legs to the whole world. Dor wondered why she insisted on wearing a skirt despite such constant inconveniences; pants of some kind would have solved the problems decisively. Then it occurred to him that she might not want that particular problem solved. She was well aware that her legs were the finest features of a generally excellent body and perhaps was not averse to letting the world know it also. If she constantly protested any inadvertent exposures that occurred, how could anyone blame her for showing herself off? She had a pretty good system going.
Dor and Grundy and Amolde, less sanguine about violence than the ogre and less modest than Irene, hung on to the sliding are of the rainbow and stared ahead and down with increasing misgiving.
How were they to stop, once the end came? The descent was drawing close at an alarming velocity. The northern shoreline of Xanth loomed rapidly larger, the curlicues of beaches magnifying. The ocean in this region seemed oddly reddish; Dor hoped that wasn’t from the blood of prior travelers of the rainbow. Of course it wasn’t; how could he think such a thought?
Then the travel-spell reversed, and they slid rapidly slower until, as they reached the water at the end of the rainbow, they were moving at no more than a running pace. They plunged into the crimson water and swam for the shore to the north. The color was not blood; it was translucently thin, up close. Dor was relieved.
Now that he could no longer see it from the air, Dor remembered other details of Xanth. The length of it was north-south, with the narrowest portion near where his grandfather Elder Roland’s village was, in the middle north on the western side. At the top, Xanth extended west, linking to Mundania by the isthmus they were headed for-and somehow Mundania beyond that isthmus seemed huge, much larger than Xanth. Dor decided that must be a misimpression; surely Mundania was about the same size as Xanth, or somewhat smaller. How could a region of so little importance be larger, especially without magic?
Now they came to the shallows and waded through the dark red water to the beach. That crimson bothered him as the color intensified near the tideline; how could the normally blue water change color here, in the Mundane quadrant? What magic could affect it here, where no magic existed?
“Maybe some color leaked from the rainbow,” Irene said, following his thought.
Well, maybe. Of course there was the centaur aisle of magic now, so that wherever they were was no longer strictly Mundane. Yet the red water extended well beyond the area of temporary enchantment.
It seemed to be a regular feature of the region.
They gathered on the beach, dripping pink water. Grundy and Smash didn’t mind, but Dor felt uncomfortable, and Irene’s blouse and skirt were plastered to her body. “I’m not walking around this way, and I’m not taking off my clothes,” she expostulated. She felt in her seedbag, which she had refilled at Centaur Isle, and brought out a purple seed. It seemed the bag was waterproof, for the seed was dry. “Grow,” she ordered it as she dropped it on the sand.
The thing sprouted into a heliotrope. Clusters of small purple flowers burst open aromatically. Warm dry air wafted outward. This plant did not really travel toward the sun; it emulated the sun’s heat, dehydrating things in the vicinity. Soon their clothing was dry again.
Even Smash and Grundy appreciated this, since both now wore the special jackets given them by the centaurs. Smash also shook out his gauntlets and dried them, and Irene spread her silver-lined fur out nearby.
“Do we know where we go from here?” Irene asked once she had her skirt and blouse properly fluffed out.
“Did King Trent pass this way?” Dor inquired of the landscape.
“When?” the beach-sand asked.
“Within the past month.”
“I don’t think so.”
They moved a short distance north, and Dor tried again. Again the response was negative. As the day wore into afternoon and on into evening, they completed their traverse of the isthmus-without positive result. The land had not seen the King.
“Maybe the Queen still had an illusion of invisibility enchantment,” Grundy suggested. “So nothing could see them.”
“Her illusion wouldn’t work here in Mundania, dummy,” Irene retorted. She was still miffed at the golem because of the way Grundy had caused her to lose half her seeds to the eclectic eel. She carried a little grudge a long time.
“I am not properly conversant with King Trent’s excursion,” Arnolde said. “Perhaps he departed Xanth by another route.”
“But I know he came this way!” Irene said.
“You didn’t even know he was leaving Xanth,” Grundy reminded her. “You thought he was inside Xanth on vacation.”
She shrugged that off as irrelevant. “But this is the only route out of Xanth!” Her voice was starting its hysterical tremor.
“Unless he went by sea,” Dor said.
“Yes, he could have done that,” she agreed quickly. “But he would have come ashore somewhere. My mother gets seasick when she’s in a boat too long. All we have to do is walk along the beach and ask the stones and plants.”
“And watch for Mundane monsters,” Grundy said, still needling her. “So they can’t look up your-“
“I am inclined to doubt that countermagical species will present very much of a problem,” Amolde said in his scholarly manner.
“What he know, he hoofed schmoe?” Smash demanded.
“Evidently more than you, you moronic oaf,” the centaur snapped back. “I have been studying Mundania somewhat, recently, garnering information from immigrants, and by most reports most Mundane plants and animals are comparatively shy. Of course there is a certain margin for error, as in all phenomena.”
“What dray, he say?” Smash asked, perplexed by the centaur’s vocabulary.
“Dray!” Amolde repeated, freshly affronted. “A dray is a low cart, not a creature, you ignorant monster. I should thank you to address me by my proper appellation.”
“What’s the poop from the goop?” Smash asked.
Dor stifled a laugh, fuming it into a choking cough. In this hour of frustration, tempers were fraying, and they could not afford to have things get too negative.