Grundy opened his big mouth, but Dor managed to cover it in time. The golem could only aggravate the situation with his natural penchant for insults.
It was Irene who retained enough poise to alleviate the crisis.
“You just don’t understand a person of education, Smash. He says the Mundane monsters won’t dare bother us while you’re on guard.”
“Oh. So,” the ogre said, mollified.
“Ignorant troglodyte,” the centaur muttered.
That set it off again. “Me know he get the place of Chet!” Smash said angrily, forming his gauntlets into horrendous fists.
So that was the root of the ogre’s ire! He felt Amolde had usurped the position of his younger centaur friend. “No, that’s not so,” Dor started, seeking some way to alleviate his resentment. If their party started fracturing now, before they were fairly clear of Xanth, what would happen once they got deep into Mundania?
“And he called you a caveman, Smash,” Grundy put in helpfully.
“Compliments no good; me head like wood,” the ogre growled, evidently meaning that he refused to be swayed by soft talk.
“Indubitably,” Amolde agreed.
Dor decided to leave it at that; a more perfect understanding between ogre and centaur would only exacerbate things.
They walked along the beach. Sure enough, nothing attacked them. The trees were strange oval-leafed things with brownish inert bark and no tentacles. Small birds flitted among the branches, and gray animals scurried along the ground.
Amolde had brought along a tome of natural history, and he consulted it eagerly as each thing turned up. “An oak tree!” he exclaimed. “Probably the root stock of the silver oak, the blackjack oak, the turkey oak, and the acorn trees!”
“But there’s no silver, blackjacks, or acorns,” Grundy protested.
“Or turkeys,” Irene added.
“Certainly there are, in rudimentary forms,” the centaur said. “Observe a certain silvery aspect to some leaves, and the typical shape of others, primitively suggestive of other, eventual divergencies. And I suspect there are also acorns, in season. The deficiency of magic prevents proper manifestation, but to the trained perception-“
“Maybe so,’ the golem agreed, shrugging. It was evidently more than he cared to know about oak trees.
Dor continued to query the objects along the beach, and the water of the sea, but with negative results. All denied seeing King Trent or Queen Iris.
“This is ridiculous!” Irene expostulated. “I know he came this way!”
Amolde stroked his chin thoughtfully. “There does appear to be a significant discontinuity.”
“Something doesn’t fit,” Grundy agreed.
As the sun set, they made camp high on the beach. Rather than post watches, they decided to trust in magic. Dor told the sand in their vicinity to make an exclamation if anything dangerous or obnoxious intruded, and the sand promised to do so. Irene grew a blanket bush for their beds and set a chokecherry hedge around them for additional protection. They ate beefsteak tomatoes that they butchered and roasted on flame-vines, and drank the product of wine and-rain lilies.
“Young lady, your talent contributes enormously to our comfort,” Amolde complimented her, and Irene flushed modestly.
“Aw, he’s just saying that ‘cause she’s pretty,” Grundy grumbled.
That only made Irene flush with greater pleasure. Dor was not pleased, but could not isolate the cause of his reaction. The hangups of others were easier for him to perceive than his own.
“Especially when her skirt hikes up over her knees,” the golem continued. Irene quickly tugged down her hem, her flush becoming less attractive.
“Actually, there are few enough rewards to a mission like this,” Amolde said. “Had I my choice, I would instantly abolish my own magic and return to my sinecure at the museum, my shame extirpated.”
And there was the centaurs fundamental disturbance, Dor realized. He resented their dastardly deed that had ripped him from his contented existence and made him an exile from his kind. Dor could hardly blame him. Amolde’s agreement to travel with them to Mundania to help rescue King Trent did not mean he was satisfied with his lot; he was merely making the best of what was for him an awful situation.
“Me help he go, with big heave-ho!” Smash offered.
“But we need his magic,” Irene said, verbally interposing herself to prevent further trouble. “Just as we need your strength, Smash.” And she laid her hand on the ogre’s ponderous arm, pacifying him.
Dor found himself resenting this, too, though he understood her motive.
The peace had to be kept.
They settled down for the night-and the sand gave alarm. The monsters it warned of turned out to be sand fleas-bugs so small they could hardly even be seen. Amolde dug a vermin-repulsor spell out of his collection, and that took care of the matter. They settled down again and this time slept. Once more the nightmares were unable to reach them, since the magic horses were bound to the magic realm of Xanth and could not cross the Mundane territory intervening. Dor almost felt sympathy for the mares; they had been balked from doing their duty to trouble people’s sleep for several nights now, and must be very frustrated.
They resumed their march in the morning. But as the new day wore on, the gloom of failure became more pervasive. “Something certainly appears to be amiss,” Amolde observed. “From what we understand, King Trent had to have passed this vicinity-yet the objects here deny it. Perhaps it is not entirely premature to entertain conjectures.”
Smash wrinkled his hairy brow, trying to figure out whether this was another rarefied insult. “Say what’s on your mind, horsetail,” Grundy said with his customary diplomacy.
“We have ascertained that the Queen could not have employed her power to deceive the local objects,” Amolde said didactically.
“Not without magic,” Dor agreed. “The two of them were strictly Mundane-type people here, as far as we know.”
“Could they have failed to come in from the sea?”
“No!” Irene cried emotionally.
“I have queried the sea,” Dor said. “It says nothing like that is in it.” Irene relaxed.
“Could they have employed a completely different route? Perhaps crossed to the eastern coast of Xanth and sailed north from there to intercept another region of Mundania?”
“They didn’t,” Irene said firmly. “They had it all planned, to come out here. Someone had found a good trade deal, and they were following his map. I saw it, and the route passed here.”
“But if you don’t know -“ Dor protested.
“I didn’t know they were going to travel the route, then,” she said. “But I did see the map when their scout brought it in, with the line on it Now I know what it meant. That’s all I saw, but I am absolutely certain this was the way they headed.”
Dor was disinclined to argue the point further. This did seem to be the only practical route. He had told the others all he knew about King Trent’s destination, and this route certainly did not conflict with that information.
“Could they have been intercepted before leaving Xanth?” Arnolde continued, evidently with an intellectual conclusion in mind. “Waylaid, perhaps?”
“My father would have turned any waylayer into a toad,” she said defiantly. “Anyway, inside Xanth, my mother’s illusion would have made them impossible to identify.”
“Then it seems we have eliminated the likely,” Amolde said. “We are thus obliged to contemplate the unlikely.”
“What do you mean?” Irene asked.
“As I intimated, it is an unlikely supposition that I entertain, quite possibly erroneous-“
“Spit it out, brownfur,” Grundy said.
“My dear vociferous construct, a civilized centaur does not expectorate. And my color is appaloosa, not mere brown.”