Isle Of View by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

it would cut off the childhood of that entire species. That was even worse than an ordinary kidnapping, bad as that was. She wasn't sure that anything like that had happened in Xanth before.
    Nada looked grim. She was such a lovely young woman in her human form that she looked terrific even that way! Electra envied her, and had no trouble understanding why Prince Dolph liked her better than Electra. Electra liked Nada better than Electra! She was a princess and a really nice person, too. If Electra could have chosen any woman to compete against, Nada would have been at the very bottom of her list. But for friends, the top of the list.
    “We'd better get moving,” Nada said. She became a giant serpent.
    Electra got on the serpent's back. Nada moved, sinuously gathering speed. There was a certain similarity to the way she walked in the human form, but then it had more effect on the eyeballs of any men in the vicinity: they practically popped out of their sockets. As a matter of fact, the golem's eyes had bulged similarly just now, perhaps because Nada was not wearing her clothing. Grundy had a perfectly lovely wife, Rapunzel, but like all males of any size he liked to stare at whatever else was in sight. He had not given Electra a second glance, and not just because she was clothed. No man gave her a second glance when she was with Nada, as she usually was. She was used to it.
    It was too bad that Nada did not love Dolph the way he loved her. But of course she was five years older than he, now twenty to his fifteen. Nada was a poised young woman, while Dolph—well, even Electra had to admit that he was sort of unpolished. Electra loved him anyway; she couldn't help it, because of the enchantment she had fallen into. She had to love and marry the Prince who had kissed her awake after her thousand year (well, almost) sleep. She had not been the one who was supposed to make that sleep, and she was certainly no princess. But Evil Magician Murphy's curse had fouled everything up, and she had somehow bitten the apple and fallen into the special coffin, and now she was here.
    Actually, Murphy wasn't all that bad, now that he had renounced his claim to the throne of Xanth. He had used his magic to help his son, Grey, get out of his horrible obligation to the evil machine Corn-Pewter. Maybe eight hundred years in the Brain Coral's pool, pickled in brine, had mellowed Murphy and twenty more years in Mundania had finished the job. Electra had forgiven him what he had done to her with his curse. She had sort of had to, because if that hadn't happened, she would have been long since dead and forgotten. Such things made a difference. Still, it wasn't any great situation she was in now: in love with a Prince who loved her best friend instead.
    In fact, she was coming to a crisis. The Good Magician had done some research in the Book of Answers and discovered that there was a time limit to her enchantment. If she didn't marry the Prince by the time she was eighteen years old, she would die anyway. Betrothal could hold her only until she came of age; then she had to perform. If she did not marry him and consummate the marriage before she was eighteen, she would die on the stroke of her birthday.
    It was tricky judging exactly how old she was because of her most-of-a-millennium sleep, but they had figured it out: only her normal life counted. So her aging had halted the moment she fell into the enchanted sleep and resumed when she woke from it. By that reckoning, she would be eighteen next week. Dolph would have to choose. He couldn't avoid it, because if he did nothing she would die, leaving only Nada for him to marry. His parents had laid down the Word: he could not do it by default. He had to Decide, and then marry the one he chose, and it would be done. One way or the other.
    In a way it was good to have this distraction of Che's kidnapping, because it took her mind from her own problem or at least made her remember that she wasn't the only