Piers Anthony - Xanth 21 - Faun and Games

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FAUN AND GAMES

BY PIERS ANTHONY

Synopsis:

The latest Xanth adventure by the author of more than 20 successive New

York Times bestsellers. For Forrest Faun, a young tree faun searching

for a suitable spirit to save a magical tree, the astonishing

world-within-a-world of the tiny planet Ptero may be the place where he

will find the answer to his quest. Piers Anthony puns his way into

quantum physics in this delightful journey.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously

FAUN & GAMES

portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web: littp://w.tor.corn

TorQ is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging -. ,- Publication Data Anthony, Piers.

Faun and gaines / Piers Anthony.-1st ed.

P. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-312-86162-I acid-free)

I. Title.

PS355l,v3F38 1997 97-19362 813'.54-de2l CIP

First Edition: October 1997 Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Hey, Faun, how about some fun?"

Forrest Faun rubbed what remained of his night's sleep out of his eyes

and looked down to the base of his tree. There stood a fetching nymph

with all the usual nymphly features: pretty face, flowing hair, perfect

figure, and no clothing. But there was something amiss.

"What do you mean'?" he asked as he sat up in a fork, still getting his

bearings.

,.What do you think I mean, Faun? Come down and chase me, the way fauns

always do to nymphs."

Then he had it. "You're no nymph."

"Oh, pooh!" she swore, pouting. She dissolved into smoke and reformed

as a luscious clothed demoness. "I am D. Mentia, out seeking routine

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entertainment or mischief while my better half waxes disgustingly

motherly. What gave me away?"

"If I tell you, will you go somewhere else?" It was usually possible to

get rid of demons if one made a suitable deal with them.

"Yes, if you want me to." Her bright yellow dress fuzzed, showing the

vague outline of her body beneath, with almost a suggestion of a

forbidden panty line.

So there was a catch. "Why wouldn't I want you to?"

"Because I have dreadful information that will puzzle and alarm you and

perhaps change your whole outlook."

That seemed like adequate reason. Forrest, now fully awake, jumped down

to the ground, landing neatly on his hoofs. "What gave you away was

your manner. You were not acting like a nymph. You were way too

forward and intelligent. Much of a nymph's appeal is in her seeming

reticence and lack of intellect. Now what's this dreadful information?"

"Follow me." Mentia whirled in place, so that her body twisted into a

tight spiral before untwisting facing the opposite direction, and walked

away. Her skirt shrank so as to show her legs as far up as was feasible

without running out of limb. But of course Forrest didn't notice,

because nothing a demoness showed was very real.

She led him across the glade to a tree on the far side. "See."

Forrest stared with dismay at the clog tree. It was wilting, and its

clogs were falling to the ground. That could mean only one thing: it

had lost its spirit.

As it happened, the clog tree's spirit was Forrest's friend: Branch

Faun. They had known each other for almost two centuries, because their

two trees were in sight of each other. Almost every day Forrest would

drop out of his sandalwood tree, and join Branch in the glade between

them to dance a J'lg or two. With luck, their 'igging would attract the

fleeting attention of a nymph or three, who would join ill, jiggling.

With further luck, jig and Jiggle would lead to a pleasant chase and

celebration.

But this morning Branch's tree was in a sad state. It wouldn't fade so

soon if its faun were merely absent; fauns and nymphs shared an

awareness with their trees that alerted them instantly if harm came to

either. Let a human forester even come near such a tree with an axe,

and its faun would have a fit. Let a faun split a hoof, and his tree

would shudder. Such reactions were independent of distance; a faun

could run far away from his tree, and still be closely attuned to it.

They felt each other's pain.

"Are you trying to ignore me?" Mentia asked warningly. Demollesses

could handle almost anything except that.

"No. You're right. I am puzzled and alarmed by this dreadful scene. Do

you know anythin, about it?"

"No. I just happened to note it in passing, so I looked for the closest

creature who might be tormented by it."

He glanced at her. "You're one crazy organism."

"Thank you," she said, flushing red with candy stripes. The color

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extended to her clothing and hair, and traces of it radiated into the

air around her.

The clog tree's distress meant that Branch was in serious trouble, if

not dead. What could have happened? Branch had been fine yesterday. In

fact he had encountered a nymph from a lady slipper tree whose slippers

gave her special fleetness, just as the sandals from Forrest's

sandalwood tree gave him excellent footing, and the clogs from Branch's

tree protected his hoofs. They had had quite a merry chase. Because

that was what fauns and nymphs did; they chased each other until they

came together, and then they celebrated in a manner that children were

not supposed to see. Because it did tend to get dull just sitting in

one's tree all the time.

In fact, Forrest now remembered, the nymph, clad only in her slippers,

had led Branch a chase right out of sight. Meanwhile her friend from an

oak tree, named Kara 0ke, had done some very nice singing to background

music of wind through trees, so Forrest had had his own distraction.

Naturally he had chased her, and naturally she had fled, but not too

swiftly, because she was still singing her oak song. So he had caught

her, and they had celebrated in the usual fashion, while she continued

singing. That had been interesting, because she had sung of every

detail of the experience they were sharing, making it a work of musical

art. Then she had returned to her tree, satisfied that her song worked.

There weren't any other nymphs around at the moment, so Forrest had

returned to his own tree and settled down for the night. And now his

friend was gone.

"So what are you going to do about it?" Mentia inquired.

Do? She was right; he probably should be doing something. But what?

"What do you think?"

"I think you will follow their footprints, so you can find out what

happened to them."

"Now that's really sensible," he agreed.

The demoness turned smoky black. "Darn!"

He set off in search of them. He had no trouble following their tracks:

her slipper prints, which were hourglass shaped, in the manner of the

nymph herself, and his clog prints, which were forceful and furred. They

looped around other trees, as she made cute dodges and diversions. It

was the chase that counted; fauns and nymphs loved lo run almost as much

as they loved to dance. The better the chase, the better the

celebration at the end. Forrest remembered a nymph once who had been in

a bad mood, because her tree was suffering a fungus infestation, and had

simply stood there. This was of course a complete turn-off, and no faun

had touched her. Any nymph who wanted nothing to do with any particular

faun had only to refuse to move, and he would leave her alone. Sometimes

a nymph teased a faun, pretending disinterest, then leaping into pursuit

the moment he turned his back. If she caught him, it was her advantage,

and he had to do whatever she wanted. Of course that was exactly the

same as what he wanted, but other fauns would taunt him unmercifully for

getting caught.

Mentia, floating along beside him, was getting bored. "Are you ready

for me to depart?"

"Yes," he agreed absently.

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"Good." She remained where she was. He realized that he should have

urged her to stay-, then she would have been sure that he was up to

nothing interesting.

The tracks veered toward the Void. That was the nearby reion of no

return. Of course every faun and nymph knew better than to enter it,

because there was no way out of it. Anything that crossed the boundary

was doomed. Only special creatures, like the night mares, could escape

it, because they weren't real in the way ordinary folk were. They had

very little substance.

"Don't float too near the Void," Forrest warned the demoness.

She changed course to approach the boundary, then paused. "Say, you are

a cunning one!" she said with admiration. "You knew I'd automatically

do the opposite. It almost worked, too. But I'm only a little crazy.

You have to be a lot crazy to venture into the Void."

"Maybe next time," he muttered.

The nymph was clearly teasing Branch, by passing flirtingly close to the

fringe of the Void. Her prints almost touched the boundary, then moved

away, then came close again. The menace of that drelid region added to

the thrill of the chase. Forrest had done it too, and knew exactly the

steps to take to be sure of never straying across the line.

Then his sandals balked. He stopped, perplexed; what was the matter?

His sandals were magic, and protected his hoofs from harm, and if he

were about to step somewhere harmful, they stopped him. Yet he saw

nothing ahead to be concerned about.

"So what's with you?" Mentia asked. "Tired of walking?"

"I didn't stop," he explained. "My sandals did."

"Say, I'm getting to like you. You're almost as weird as I am."

"That's impossible."

"Thank you." This time her flush of pleasure was purple with green polka

dots, and it extended down her legs and out across the ground around

her. "So why did your sandals stop?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe it was a false alarm."

Still, his sandals had never yet been wrong. So he dropped to his furry

knees and examined the ground before him. It was ordinary. There were a

few smiling gladiolas, the happiest of flowers, and beyond them some

horse radishes were flicking off flies with their tails. He thought of

asking the nearest horse if it knew of anything harmful here, but he

didn't understand plant language very well, and in any event all it

would say would be "neigh." So finally he got up and made a detour

around the place.

"Oh, well," the demoness said, disappointed.

But now he couldn't find the trail. Both sets of tracks were gone. So

he turned back-and that was when he saw it. A splinter of reverse wood

on the ground. He was sure of its identity, because the gladiola

closest to it was drooping sadly. And right across it was a lady

slipper print. The nymph had inadvertently stepped on the splinter. It

hadn't hurt her directly, because it was lying flat. But it must have

affected the fleet magic of her slipper, so that she had lost her sure

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footing.

"You see something," D. Mentia remarked astutely.

Now he saw the clog-print next to it, and realized the awful truth. The

nymph had lost her balance, because of the reversal of her slipper

magic, and teetered on the edge of the boundary of the Void. Branch had

collided with her, caught by surprise by her sudden stop. And the two

had sprawled into the Void.

"Yes. They are gone."

It was a freak accident, the kind that would happen hardly once in a

century. The reverse wood splinter might have been blown there recently

by an errant gust of wind. It would have been harmless, except when it

came into contact with something magical. Then that abrupt reversal

Branch and the nymph were lost. They would never get out of the Void.

And their trees would suffer, for without its spirit a magical tree

slowly lost its magic and became, dreadful destiny, virtually mundane.

It was a fate, many believed, worse than extinction.

"I'm sorry," the demoness said. "That means that you won't be

entertaining me any more."

Forrest had no idea where the nymph's tree was, but knew it was

suffering similarly. He hoped there would be another nymph free to join

it and save it. Meanwhile, he did know where Branch's tree was. But

what could he do? He could not care for two trees; the relationship

didn't work that way. He was bound to his sandalwood tree. He knew of

no fauns looking for trees. There were more trees than amenable fauns

and nymphs, so that some trees that might have flourished magically

became ordinary. It was sad, because the right trees had much to offer

their companion spirits, but true.

Then he thought of something. It was a vanishingly tiny chance, but

marginally better than nothing. "You're a spirit," he said to the

demoness. "How would you like to adopt a tree?"

"You mean, become a tree dryad, so that I would live almost forever and

always protect it?"

"Yes. It's a worthy occupation. It doesn't have to be a nymph. Any

caring spirit will do, if the commitment is there. And the clogs would

protect your feet."

"Commitment. Protected feet." She tried to look serious, but smoke

started puffing out her ears, and finally she exploded into a hilarious

fireball. "Ho ho ho!"

Then again, maybe the notion had been worse than nothing. Demons had no

souls, because they were the degraded remnants of souls themselves. They

cared for nothing and nobody. "Sorry I mentioned It."

Oh, I'm not! That was my laugh for the day." The smoke coalesced into

the extraordinarily feminine female woman distaff luscious shape of

girlish persuasion with the slightly translucent dress. "A tree nymph!

You are a barrel of laughs." She formed into a brown barrel with

brightly colored pancake-shaped laughs overflowing its rim.

Forrest ignored her as well as he could, and headed for his home tree.

How could he have been so stupid as to make such a suggestion to a

demoness?

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file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Anthony,%20Piers%20-%20Xanth%2021%20-%20Faun%20and%20Games.txtFAUNANDGAMESBYPIERSANTHONYSynopsis:ThelatestXanthadventurebytheauthorofmorethan20successiveNewYorkTimesbestsellers.ForForrestFaun,ayoungtreefaunsearchingforasuitablespirittosaveamagicaltree,theastonishingwo...

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