“This would seem to be it,” Trent said. “I will clear the way for you.”

  “Uh,” Nolan said uncertainly. The monster was far bigger than his serpent form, which would be the same mass as his human form. Ancestral forms tended to be more limited than magical transformations.

  “Precisely.” Trent faced the moat monster. “My friends need to cross this water. You had best turn tail and splash to the far side of the castle to provide them safe access. Do you understand me, snootface?”

  The monster clearly understood. It gaped its cavernous maw and plunged toward the Magician, who would make barely one gulpful.

  Trent made a gesture with one hand. The monster abruptly shrank into a harmless worm. It fell at the edge of the water and hastily delved into the safety of the muck.

  The Transformer had made his case. The way ahead was now clear.

  “Hello, love,” a female voice said, startling them. Apoca, distracted by the transformation, had not seen the woman approach. She was of middle age but quite handsome.

  “Hello, Iris,” Trent said. He opened his arms, and she stepped into them. They hugged and kissed, briefly. Then he spoke to Apoca. “It was a marriage of mutual convenience, but in time it became real love. This sort of thing can happen.” It was as if he knew of her caution about committing to Nolan. Maybe he remembered from their future.

  “And what brings us here out of context?” Iris inquired.

  “Nolan and Apoca are on a Quest, and seem to be in a simulation that requires our assistance. They have already met Bink and Chameleon, and now the two of us. It would seem to be your turn next, dear.”

  Iris turned to them. “Have we met? My memory is vague.”

  “We seem to be of a later age than you,” Apoca said. “But we remember you. You’re the Sorceress of Illusion.”

  “I am.” Her features shifted, briefly mirroring Apoca’s own. There was no doubt of her ability. But why would they need such high-powered illusion?

  “We want to eliminate a problem in our time,” Apoca explained. “All our babies are being delivered with the same talent, that of summoning pies of any kind, including mud pies. To do that we need to talk with the Dwarf Demon of Talents. This setting seems to be a bypath on the way there.”

  Iris nodded. “Mortals don’t normally mess with Demons, unless the mortals are the objects of some monstrous Demon game. But the same talent for every child? That’s appalling. Of course I’ll help.”

  “The way this scene is going,” Nolan said, “there will be something that only you can help us with.”

  There was a stirring on the surface of the water of the moat. Shapes rose out of the water. They were the heads of some kind of animal.

  Apoca suffered a horrible realization. She had seen similar heads before. “Look away! Those look like basilisks or cockatrices! The female and the male of the species. Their gaze is lethal.”

  “I remember Astrid Basilisk,” Iris said. “She assumed human form and was a really nice person. I believe there is a statue of her. But she had to be constantly veiled, lest she wipe out her friends.”

  “But that does not make much sense,” Nolan said. “The moat monster would not have tolerated such creatures in its area. They would have been a constant threat to it. Anyway, they aren’t swimmers.”

  “So they must be illusions,” Iris said. “Either the changed appearances of fish in the water, or completely imaginary.”

  Apoca was not much reassured. “I don’t want to meet their gazes regardless. Even the illusion might be stunning.”

  “It might be,” Iris agreed. “But this falls into the area of my expertise.”

  “Handling basilisks?” Nolan asked.

  “Handling illusions. I will change them into more compatible images.” She faced the moat and concentrated.

  Apoca couldn’t help looking, though she squinted, just in case. The ugly faces converted into lovely mermaids in burstingly tight halters, together with handsome mermen.

  “I’m impressed,” Nolan said.

  By the apparent transformation, or the halters? Apoca decided not to comment.

  “Go ahead and cross,” Iris said. “My daughter Irene will help you next.”

  And there was another woman, with lovely green hair that matched her green skirt. “Hello, travelers,” Irene said as she got into the rowboat. “Thanks, Mom.” Iris was already departing.

  They got in behind Irene, and Nolan took the oars and stroked the boat out toward the merfolk. He was facing backward, but Apoca knew he would get plenty to see as they passed the figures.

  It was time for introductions again. “We are from your future,” she told Irene. “I am Apoca Lips—my tribe can kiss men into abject subjugation—and he is Nolan Naga, who can assume the three forms of his ancestry. We are on a mission to save the children of our time from the fate of all having the same talent. This appears to be a simulated setting we must navigate with the help of you earlier folk.”

  Nolan was silent as he rowed, but not from the effort of moving the boat. The mermaids were swimming in on either side and flashing him with their buxom torsos.

  “I am Irene. My talent is to make plants grow. I’m not sure how this will help you, but I will do what I can.”

  “There must be something,” Apoca said. “This is clearly a contrived setting.”

  They looked back to see what the merfolk were up to. The maids were taking off their halters, while the men were making muscle poses for the women in the boat. Irene shook her head. “Too bad they’re only illusion.”

  Apoca could only agree. But they could have looked like basilisks and cockatrices without Iris’s intercession.

  They reached the inner bank and stepped onto land. The merfolk evinced disgust and sank back under the water, turning tail, as it were.

  But now they faced a seemingly bottomless cleft in the ground, too wide to safely jump across. It was another Challenge.

  “Oh look, a little Symmetree,” Irene said, peering at a tiny flower.

  Apoca knew that her specialty was plants, so she found this interesting. “Uh, yes, it’s pretty.” It seemed best to be polite.

  Irene smiled. “Observe.” She pointed to the plant. “Grow.”

  The symmetree responded by expanding rapidly. Its six crystalline branches became long planks that spread symmetrically across the landscape and also the cleft. Irene got on one and walked across without a problem.

  Oh. Apoca followed her, and so did Nolan. How easy it was to handle the Challenges with the kind of help they had!

  “Ah, there’s Dor,” Irene said, and went to hug and kiss him.

  Apoca had not seen the man arrive, but that was par for this course.

  They separated. “This is my husband, Dor,” Irene said. “The son of Bink and Chameleon. His talent is to talk to the inanimate, and it answers.” She squeezed his hand. “Of course, there can be disadvantages.”

  “You said it, sister!” a rock near her foot exclaimed. “I can see up your leg, and that’s not all. I can see right up to your—”

  Irene lifted her foot and stomped on the rock. It shut up.

  “Rocks aren’t very smart,” she explained. “But a bit of discipline helps.”

  It occurred to Apoca that Nolan’s talent of seeing and interacting with the imaginary might be similar to Dor’s dialogue with the inanimate. The two men might have liked to compare notes, were the setting different.

  There was a roar. They looked and saw an awful ogre forging toward them, about twelve feet tall and big in proportion.

  “Bogey ahoy!” the rock cried.

  “Me Oboe Ogre,” the creature said with an oddly musical voice. “Who you?”

  “You’re as ugly and stupid as they come,” the rock said.

  The ogre paused, surprised. “Thank you.”

  “Ogres are justifiably proud of their stupidity,” Dor explained. “Not to mention their ugliness and strength.”

  “Your voice is funny,” the rock said, catching on to the way to annoy it.

  The ogre began to swell.

  Apoca smiled at Oboe. “Please, Mr. Ogre, may we pass by? We have to see the Good Magician.”

  The creature swelled up even larger. “Me smash she!”

  Apoca realized that she had been foolish. Of course the ogre’s job was to prevent them from passing. She had just asked it to mess up its mission.

  “Stomp her!” the rock cried gleefully.

  Apoca was coming to appreciate what Irene had meant about disadvantages. She wanted to stomp the rock herself, but that would give it a good view of her own leg under her skirt, up to wherever. She might tease Nolan about that view, but not a loudmouthed stone.

  “I think this is a job for our son Dolph,” Dor said grimly.

  Then somehow Dor was gone and another man had taken his place. “Oh, an ogre,” Dolph said. “Their job is to tie small trees in knots and teach young dragons the meaning of fear.”

  Oboe smiled horrendously and put his ham hands on a nearby sapling about as thick as a man’s wrist, then readily tied it into a knot. Then he looked about for a dragon to teach. Finding none he oriented on Nolan and Apoca. He smiled again.

  Apoca remembered that as bad as an ogre’s smile was, an ogress’s smile was worse. She was supposed to be able to curdle milk with it. Once, an actress had played the role of an ogress so well that she had even curdled water.

  “Stand back,” Dolph murmured.

  What did he have in mind? They stood back.

  Dolph changed into a roc, the kind of bird that could pick up a Mundane elephant in its talons and fly away with it. Suddenly the stones were singing, loudly and violently. Rock music, Apoca realized.

  The roc spread his enormous wings, leaped into the air, and snatched the ogre as he launched up, up, and into the sky. Oboe made a musical note of surprise as he was carried to the atmosphere. The big bird flew to a nearby lake. There was a horrendous splash as he dropped the ogre into the water. Then he flew back, landed, and reverted to his human form.

  “Thank you,” Apoca said a bit weakly.

  There came dreadful screaming from the lake, mixed with musical notes, as of creatures in abject terror.

  “That wasn’t nice,” Apoca said, though she was not too sorry for the ogre.

  “Yes. I didn’t think of the loan sharks there,” Dolph said. “They must have tried to take an arm and a leg, and he didn’t let them. Now he’s teaching them the meaning of fear.”

  Oh. The screams were from the sharks. They should have known not to mess with an ogre.

  “Hey, I’m back,” Nimbus said. “So is Aurora. We have been unsilenced.”

  “That’s a relief. I much prefer your company. The Challenges, such as they were, must be over.”

  “A formidable creature is approaching, Aurora says.”

  Now the way was clear to the castle’s front gate. A heavily veiled woman with a thick bandanna over her head emerged. “Welcome, visitors,” she called. “Do come in.”

  Dolph had faded out. The rocks were silent. Apparently the Challenges were over. They went to join the woman.

  “We are Nolan and Apoca, of a later time,” Apoca said. “Together with our friends Nimbus Nickelpede and Aurora Ant. We seem to have been put in this rather timeless Limbo for a reason we don’t yet properly understand.”

  “My husband, Humfrey, the Good Magician, will surely clarify it for you. I am the Gorgon. I mean you no harm; my veil will protect you from my direct gaze. You will not get stoned.”

  “The Gorgon!” Apoca exclaimed, amazed. “The Designated Wife?”

  “Not exactly. That’s in the future, when Humfrey goes to Hell to rescue me, and winds up also with his five former wives who are residing there, though they are nice folk. Then we will have to take turns, as Xanth permits a man only one wife at a time.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” Apoca had for the moment forgotten that bit of history.

  In three and a third moments they were ensconced in a comfortable living room. Nolan had spoken of the Good Magician’s daughter-in-law, Wira, but she was not here. This was evidently before her time.

  “Hello also, Nimbus and Aurora,” the Gorgon said as she removed her bandanna to reveal her snaky hair. The little serpents hissed with pleasure at being freed. “I confess to being surprised by your friendly presence, but this is an unusual setting.”

  “This is an unusual situation,” Nimbus said.

  “MareAnn was the Designated Wife when I visited here before,” Nolan said. “I mean, later in history.”

  “I understand,” the Gorgon said. “I like her. I remember how we off-wives will confab when not on duty. We do have things in common.” She smiled under her veil. “Humfrey is not the easiest person to get along with.” Her headful of snakes hissed agreement.

  “I like her hair,” Nimbus said. “She plainly understands vicious creatures.” That was a compliment.

  “How did you come to marry him?” Apoca asked the Gorgon.

  “My talent and my curse is to turn anyone who meets my gaze to stone. I hated it, but was locked into it. Until the Magician Humfrey came. He used his magic to make my face invisible for a time, freeing me of the curse. I fell in love with him at that moment. So I pondered a while, then made the excursion to his castle to ask him a Question. My Question was ‘Will you marry me?’ He made me serve a year as his assistant before he gave me his Answer: Yes.”

  “He what?” Nolan asked incredulously.

  “A year’s service is his standard fee for an Answer.”

  “But—”

  “Be at peace, naga prince. It did make sense. By the time I completed that year I knew him far better than I had before. I could have changed my mind at any time and gone my way. He was in fact giving me a chance to break it off. But I chose to marry him with full knowledge of his grumpy nature, and I never regretted it.”

  Nolan spread his hands. “I suppose it did make sense.”

  “The Good Magician’s strictures always do, once you understand them.”

  “It seems we have a spot mission here,” Apoca said. “Which we are about to learn. But I am perplexed by the parade of early Xanth characters. They are all nice, and certainly helpful, but they seem to be just passing through. Is there a reason?”

  “There is. You are dealing with a Dwarf Demon whose reliability and honesty have been questioned. The rules of Demon interaction will be enforced, but there might be ways in which the DD could still manage to cheat. He will foil you if he can, because he doesn’t want to return to his duty. This show is not for your benefit so much as to remind him that a full Demon is watching.”

  Apoca was surprised. “Oh. I thought my interaction with the Demon Chaos was essentially over. At least, after this follow-up mission, whatever it is.”

  “Not exactly.” The Gorgon’s eyes were covered, but even so something showed in them. Something resembling disciplined chaos. It was very like half the universe lurking under the veil.

  That, actually, was reassuring. Just as Squid’s kiss had impressed the Demon, his kiss had impressed Apoca. He could have made her his love slave, had he chosen. His sheer power was exhilarating. She was glad to have him along, however veiled. “Uh, thank you.”

  “Now you will see the Good Magician Humfrey.”

  In perhaps one point three moments they were in his presence. The gnome-like eyes looked up from his giant Book of Answers. “The four of you will rescue Mnemonica.” The eyes returned to the page. So he knew of the bugs.

  Back in the living room they felt free to speak again. “Who the bleep is Mnemonica?” Nolan demanded.

  “I will look her up for you,” the Gorgon said. She went to the bookshelf Apoca hadn’t noticed before—had it even been there?—and heaved down a tome, Xanth Character Database. She opened it and found the place. “Mnemonica, daughter of Nolan Naga and Apoca Lips.”

  They stared at her. “But we aren’t even married yet!” Apoca exclaimed. “How can we have a daughter?”

  The Gorgon nodded. “Remember, this is a sequence in timeless Limbo. Time is not linear here. The presumption is that once you come to know each other well enough, as I came to know Humfrey, you will elect to marry and signal the stork for her. Because that is in your future, you are free to change your minds and eliminate her, sight-unseen. In that event, your memories of her will fade; she will become an alternate character existing somewhere on Ida’s moons.”

  Apoca exchanged a pained glance with Nolan. Eliminate their daughter? Without even giving her a chance? What a horror!

  “If we are to rescue her,” Nolan said, “we will come to know her, here in Limbo. So we could change our minds if we didn’t like her.”

  “And she would never suffer rejection,” the Gorgon agreed. “Because she would never exist, except as a might-have-been. I understand there are a considerable number of them residing on the moons of Ida. She should be in excellent company.” Her veil quirked. “It occurs to me that your Demon friend is giving you a unique opportunity.”

  “It is nevertheless a horror,” he said firmly. “We are not child slayers.”

  Apoca knew in that instant that they would marry and signal for Mnemonica. This was a key point of agreement between them. They would not sacrifice their prospective daughter.

  “We feel the compatibility between you,” Nimbus said.

  “The name,” Apoca said after approximately a moment. “It does not echo either of ours.”

  The Gorgon nodded again. “Men usually have sons, and women have daughters, as signaled by their alliterative names. But you will reside in the Queendom of Thanx, according to my future memory, where women have an independent streak. The girl surely reflects that. Her name signals assisted memory. Perhaps it reflects a special memory ability. She could be a historian.”