Esrever Doom (Xanth) by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

information passing from him to the giant.
    “You are an interesting one indeed,” Intella remarked. “So you are tackling the reversal Curse. Possibly you will succeed in nullifying it.”
    “I will try, at least.”
    “And you are less real here than you appear to be. In fact this stay in Xanth is your dream.”
    “Yes, so it seems.”
    “One thing you need to get clear. You may be dreaming, but the rest of us are not. You did not imagine Xanth. You merely visit it via the mechanism of the dream. What you accomplish here will endure for the rest of us, even if it has no permanent effect on you.”
    “Uh, thank you for that clarification,” Kody said uncertainly.
    “And though you are dreaming, you can be hurt here. If a monster chomps you to death, your dream will end in death. That is one permanent effect on yourself you can accomplish. So it behooves you to take care.”
    Kody had pretty much assumed that death here would simply eject him from the dream, but this made uncomfortable sense. He was in surgery; if something went wrong …
    “I wish I could get a CAT scan or something, so I’d know my condition,” Kody said. “Not that that relates to Xanth.”
    “Oh, but it does,” the giant said. “There is a magic cat who can tell exactly how healthy a person is. Unfortunately it’s not around here at the moment.”
    Yet another pun. Kody sighed internally.
    “We are trying to convey him safely to the Good Magician’s Castle,” Hadi said.
    “Which is close by,” Intella said. “Fortunately. So we don’t have to discuss the prose and cons of the route.”
    “Prose and cons?” Kody asked, wondering how he could hear the spelling.
    “Prose is ordinary dull unpoetic language,” Intella explained patiently. “Cons is short for conventions, where fans of particular enterprises go for camaraderie. Writers attend prose and cons. You can afford to bypass this.”
    Kody wasn’t sure how much of this was humor. “Thank you. I’m sure that’s best for the time being.”
    “No, the Time Being is more of a scientist,” the giant said. “He doesn’t attend Fan Cons because he can’t stay long enough to get to know anyone well.”
    Kody shut up.
    The giant set them down on the blue-lined path where it resumed, and they traveled on. Soon there was a fork in the line, with one marked PROSE & CON . There were notebooks and kegs of beer lining it. “That’s the writer’s convention,” Kody said. “We can skip that.”
    They did, and a few steps farther was a castle. The Good Magician’s Castle.
    “We have arrived,” Hadi said. “Now you must proceed alone. There will be three punnish Challenges for you to navigate before you can enter. Good luck!”
    “Thank you,” Kody said, a bit weakly.
    “Come on, Guy,” Hadi said warmly. “Let’s go catch that convention before all the beer is gone.” The two of them moved back along the path.

 
    3
    C ASTLE
    Kody walked down toward the Good Magician’s Castle. He knew he was on his own, and wasn’t at all certain he was up to the mission. There was just so much wild and punny magic in this Land of Xanth!
    The castle had a moat, with a drawbridge crossing it. He headed for the bridge. There was a path through the tall foliage leading up to it. He rounded a corner.
    “Savvy, stranger!”
    Kody jumped, surprised; he had not seen anyone here. It was a dusky young woman holding a rounded mass of fur. “What kind of stranger?” he asked before realizing how stupid that must sound.
    “Discernment, appreciation, recognition, salutation, greeting—”
    “Hello?” he asked.
    “Whatever,” she agreed crossly.
    “Hello,” he repeated. “I’m Kody Mundane, come to see the Good Magician. Who are you?”
    “Who do you think I am? Philip who fills things up? Nora Nosnoora who stops anyone from snoring? Onomatopoeia, who makes the sounds she writes so others can hear them? I M Bigbucks, the man made of money?”
    Kody refused to play this ludicrous