Anthony, Piers - Xanth 04 - Centaur Aisle

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CENTAUR AISLE
BY PIERS ANTHONY
Synopsis:
A Xanth fantasy. Prince Dor must rescue King Trent from of all places.
Mundania! The only way he can do this is to travel to Centaur Isle and
find the magician calliber centaur, no easy task since centaurs abhorr
magic and would never admit to possessing it. Poor prince Dor could
have saved himself a lot of trouble if he could have looked at the title
of the book c e n t a u r a i s l e but then Prince Dor has a terrible
time with spelling at the best of times and certainly could be forgiven
for a i s l e and i s l e. Will Mundania as we all know and despise it
survive this magical group?
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright 1981 by Piers Anthony
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The author thanks Jerome Brown for the notion of the "Spelling Bee" used
in the first chapter, and the many other fans whose letters of
encouragement have caused the Xanth trilogy to be expanded. May those
who feel Xanth is sexist have pleasure in this novel, wherein Mundania
is shown to be worse.
Dor was trying to write an essay, because the King had decreed that any
future monarchs of Xanth should be literate. It was an awful chore. He
knew how to read, but his imagination tended to go blank when challenged
to produce an essay, and he had never mastered conventional spelling.
"The Land of Xanth," he muttered with deep disgust.
"What?" the table asked.
"The title of my awful old essay," Dor explained dispiritedly. "My
tutor Cherie, on whom be a muted anonymous curse, assigned me a
one-hundred-word essay telling all about Xanth. I don't think it's
possible. There isn't that much to tell. After twenty-five words I'll
probably have to start repeating. How can I ever stretch it to a whole
hundred? I'm not even sure there are that many words in the language.))
"Who wants to know about Xanth?" the table asked. "I'm bored already."
"I know you're a board. I guess Cherie, may a hundred curseburrs tangle
in her tail, wants to know."
"She must be pretty dumb."
Dor considered. "No, she's infernally smart. All centaurs are.
That's why they're the historians and poets and tutors of Xanth. May
all their high-IQ feet founder."
"How come they don't rule Xanth, then?"
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"Well, most of them don't do magic, and only a Magician can rule Xanth.
Brains have nothing to do with it-and neither do essays."
Dor scowled at his blank paper.
"Only a Magician can rule any land," the table said smugly. "But what
about you? You're a Magician, aren't you? Why aren't you King?)$
"Well, I will be King, some day," Dor said defensively, aware that he
was talking with the table only to postpone a little longer the
inevitable struggle with the essay. "When King Trent, uh, steps down.
That's why I have to be educated, he says." He wished all kinds of
maledictions on Cherie Centaur, but never on King Trent.
He resumed his morose stare at the paper, where he had now printed THU
LANNED UV ZANTH. Somehow it didn't look right, though he was sure he
had put the TU's in the right places.
Something tittered. Dor glanced up and discovered that the hanging
picture of Queen Iris was smirking. That was one problem about working
in Castle Roogna; he was always under the baleful eye of the Queen,
whose principal business was snooping. With special effort, Dor
refrained from sticking out his tongue at the picture.
Seeing herself observed, the Queen spoke, the mouth of the image moving.
Her talent was illusion, and she could make the illusion of sound when
she wanted to. "You may be a Magician, but you aren't a scholar.
viously spelling is not your forte."
"Never claimed it was," Dor retorted. He did not know what the word
"forte" meant-perhaps it was a kind of small castle-but whatever it
meant, spelling was not there. He did not much like the Queen, and the
feeling was mutual, but both of them were constrained by order of the
King to be reasonably polite to one another.
"Surely a woman of your extraordinary talents has more interesting
things to do than peek at my stupid essay," he said. Then, grudgingly,
he added: "Your Majesty."
"Indeed I do," the picture agreed, its background clouding. She had of
course noted the pause before he gave her title; it was not technically
an insult, but the message was clear enough. The cloud *m the picture
had become a veritable thunderstorm, with jags of Ughtning shooting out
like sparks. She would get back at him somehow.
"But you would never get your homework done If not supervised."
Dor grimaced into the surface of the table. She was right on target
there!
Then he saw that ink had smeared all across his essay-paper, ruining it.
With an angry grunt he picked it up-and the ink slid off, pooled on the
surface of the table, bunched together, sprouted legs, and scurried
away. It leaped off the table like a gross bug and puffed into
momentary vapor. It had been an Musion. The Queen had gotten back at
him already. She could be extraordinarily clever in ugly Ettle ways.
Dor could not admit being angry about being fooled-and that made him
angrier than ever.
"I don't see why anyone has to be male to rule Xanth," the picture said.
That was of course a chronic sore point with the Queen. She was a
Sorceress fully as talented as any Magician, but by Xanth law/custom no
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woman could be King.
"I live in the Land of Xanth," Dor said slowly, voicing his essay as he
wrote, ignoring the Queen with what he hoped was insulting politeness.
"Which is distinct from Mundania in that there is magic in Xanth and
none in Mundania." It was amazing how creative he became when there was
a negative aspect to it. He had twenty-three words already!
Dor cracked an eyelid, sneaking a peek at the picture. It had reverted
to neutral. Good; the Queen had tuned out. If she couldn't bug him
with crawling illusions, she wasn't interested.
But now his inspiration dehydrated. He had an impossible one hundred
whole words to dO, EiX times his present total. Maybe five times; he
was not particularly apt at higher mathematics either. Four more words,
if he counted the title. A significant fraction of the way through, but
only a fraction. What a dreary chore!
Irene wandered in. She was King Trent and Queen Iris's daughter, the
palace brat, often a nuisance-but sometimes not. It griped Dor to admit
it, but Irene was an extremely pretty girl, getting more so, and that
exerted an increasing leverage upon him. It made fighting with her
awkward. "Hi, Dor," she said, bouncing experimentally.
"What are you doing.?"
Dor, distracted momentarily by the bounce, lost track of the sharp
response he had planned. "Oh, come on," he grumped. "You know your
mother got tired of snooping on me, so she assigned you to do it
instead."
Irene did not deny it. "Well, somebody has to snoop on you, dummy. I'd
rather be out playing with Zilch."
Zilch was a young sea cow that had been conjured for her fifteenth
bkffiday. Irene had set her up in the moat and used her magic to
promote the growth of sturdy wallflowers to wall off a section of water,
protecting Zilch from the moat-monsters while she grazed. Dor regarded
Zilch as a great blubbery slob of an animal, but anything that
distracted Irene was to some extent worthwhile. She took after her
mother in certain annoying ways.
"Go ahead and play with the cow," Dor suggested disparagingly.
"I won't ten."
"No, a Princess has to do her duty." Irene never spoke of duty unless it
was something she wanted to do anyway. She picked up his essay-paper.
"Hey, give that backl" Dor protested, reaching for it.
"You heard him, snit!" the paper agreed. "Give me backl"
That only made Irene omery. She backed away, hanging on to the paper,
her eyes scanning the writing. Her bosom heaved with barely suppressed
laughter. "Oh, say, this is something! I didn't think anybody could
misspell 'Mundania' that badly!"
Dor leaped for her, his face hot, but she danced back again, putting the
paper behind her. This was her notion of entertainmentteasing him,
making him react one way or another. He tried to reach around her-and
found himself embracing her, unintentionally.
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Irene had always been a cute girl and socially precocious. In recent
years nature had rushed to endow her generously, and this was quite
evident at close range. Now she was a green-eyed,
green-tinthaired-occurring naturally; she did not color her hair-buxom
beauty. What was worse, she knew it, and constantly sought new ways to
use it to her advantage. Today she was dressed in a green blouse and
skirt that accentuated her figure and wore green slippers that enhanced
her fine legs and feet. In short, she had prepared well for this
encounter and had no intention of letting him write his essay in peace.
She took a deep breath, inflating herself against him. "I'll scream,"
she breathed in his ear, taunting him.
But Dor knew how to handle her. "I'll tickle," he breathed back.
"That's not fair!" For she could not scream realistically while
giggling, and she was hyperticklish, perhaps because she thought it was
fashionable for young ladies to be so. She had heard somewhere that
ticklishness made girls more appealing.
Irene's hand moved swiftly, trying to tuck the paper into her bosom,
where she knew he wouldn't dare go for it. But Dor had encountered this
ploy before, too, and he caught her wrist en route. He finally got his
fingers on the essay-paper, for he was stronger than she, and she also
deemed it unladylike to fight too hard. Image was almost as important
to her as mischief. She let the paper go, but tried yet another ploy.
She put her arms around him. "I'll kiss."
But he was ready even for that. Her kisses could change to bites
without notice, depending on her mercurial mood. She was not to be
trusted, though in truth the close struggle had whetted his appetite for
some such diversion. She was scoring on him better than she knew. "Your
mother's watching."
Irene turned him loose instantly. She was a constant tease; but in her
mother's presence she always behaved angelically. Dor wasn't sure why
this was so, but suspected that the Queen's desire to see Irene become
Queen after her had something to do with it. Irene didn't want to
oblige her mother any more than she wanted to oblige anyone else, and
expressing overt interest in Dor would constitute a compromising
attitude. The Queen resented Dor because he was a full Magician while
her daughter was not, but she was not about to let him make anyone
else's daughter Queen. Irene, ironically, did want to be Queen, but
also wanted to spite her mother, so she always tried to make it seem
that Dor was chasing her while she resisted.
The various facets of this cynical game became complex on occasion.
Dor himself wasn't sure how he felt about it all. Four years ago, when
he was twelve, he had gone on an extraordinary adventure into Xanth's
past and had occupied the body of a grown, muscular, and highly
coordinated barbarian. He had learned something about the ways of men
and women. Since he had had an opportunity to play with adult equipment
before getting there himself, he had an inkling that the little games
Irene played were more chancy than she knew.
So he stayed somewhat clear, rejecting her teasing advances, though this
was not always easy. Sometimes he had strange, wicked dreams, wherein
he called one of her bluffs, and it wasn't exactly a bluff, and then the
hand of an anonymous censor blotted out a scene of impending
fascination.
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"Dumbo!" Irene exclaimed irately, staring at the still picture on the
wall. "My mother isn't watching us!"
"Got you off my case, though, didn't it?" Dor said smugly. "You want to
make like Millie the Ghost, and you don't have the stuff."
That was a double-barreled insult, for Millie-who had stopped being a
ghost before Dor was born, but retained the identification-was gifted
with magical sex appeal, which she had used to snare one of the few
Magicians of Xanth, the somber Zombie Master. Dor himself had helped
bring that Magician back to life for her, and now they had
three-year-old twins. So Dor was suggesting to Irene that she lacked
sex appeal and womanliness, the very things she was so assiduously
striving for. But it was a hard charge to make stick, because Irene was
really not far off the mark. If he ever forgot she was the palace brat,
he would be in trouble, for what hidden censor would blot out a
dream-turned-real? Irene could be awfully nice when she tried. Or
maybe it was when she stopped trying; he wasn't sure.
"Well, you better get that dumb essay done, or Cherie Centaur will step
on you," Irene said, putting on a new mood. "I'll help you spell the
words If you want."
Dor didn't trust that either. "I'd better struggle through on my
oy,,n."
"You'll flunk. Cherie doesn't put up with your kind of ignorance."
"I know," he agreed glumly. The centaur was a harsh taskmistress -which
was of course why she had been given the job. Had her mate Chester done
the tutoring, Dor would have learned much about archery, swordplay, and
bare-knuckle boxing, but his spelling would have sunk to amazing new
depths. King Trent had a sure hand in delegating authority.
"I know what!" Irene exclaimed. "You need a spelling bee!"
"A what?"
"I'll fetch one," she said eagerly. Now she was in her helpful guise,
and this was especially hard to resist, since he did need help.
"They are attracted by letter plants. Let me get one from my
collection." She was off in a swirl of sweet scent; it seemed she had
started wearing perfume.
Dor, by dint of phenomenal effort, squeezed out another sentence.
"Everyone in Xanth has his one magic talent; no two are the same," he
said as he wrote. Thirteen more words. What a deadly chore!
"That's not true," the table said. "My talent is talking. Lots of
things talk."
"You're not a person, you're a thing," Dor informed it brusquely.
"Talking isn't your talent, it's mine. I make inanimate things talk."
"Aw . . ." the table said sullenly.
Irene breezed back in with a seed from her collection and an
earth-filled flowerpot. "Here it is." In a moment she had the seed
planted-it was in the shape of the letter Land had given it the magic
command: "Grow." It sprouted and grew at a rate nature could not
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duplicate. For that was her talent-the green thumb. She could grow a
giant acorn tree from a tiny seed in minutes, when she concentrated, or
cause an existing plant to swell into monstrous proportions. Because
she could not transform a plant into a totally
different creature, as could her father, or give animation to lifeless
things, as Dor and the Zombie Master could, she was deemed to be less
than a Sorceress, and this had been her lifelong annoyance. But what
she could do, she could do well, and that was to grow plants.
The letter plant sent its main stalk up the breadth of a hand. Then it
branched and flowered, each blossom in the form of a letter of the
alphabet, all the letters haphazardly represented. The flowers emitted
a faint, odd odor a bit like ink and a bit like musty old tomes.
Sure enough, a big bee in a checkered furry jacket arrived to service
the plant. It buzzed from letter to letter, harvesting each and tucking
it into little baskets on its six legs. In a few minutes it had
collected them all and was ready to fly away.
But Irene had closed the door and all the windows. "That was my letter
plant," she informed the bee. "You'R have to pay for those letters."
"BBBBBB," the bee buzzed angrily, but acceded. It knew the rules. Soon
she had it spelling for Dor. All he had to do was say a word, and the
bee would lay down its flower-letters to spell it out.
There was nothing a spelling bee couldn't spell.
"All right, I've done my good deed for the day," Irene said. "I'm going
out and swim with Zilch. Don't let the bee out until you've finished
your essay, and don't tell my mother I stopped bugging you, and check
with me when you're done."
"Why should I check with you?" he demanded. "You're not my tutor!"
"Because I have to be able to say I nagged you until you got your stupid
homework done, idiot," she said sensibly. "Once you clear with me,
we're both safe for the day. Got it straight now, knothead?"
Essentially, she was proffering a deal; she would leave him alone if he
didn't turn her in for doing it. It behooved him to acquiesce.
"Straight, greermose," he agreed.
"And watch that bee," she warned as she slipped out the door.
"It's got to spell each word right, but it won't tell you if you have
the, wrong word." The bee zoomed for the aperture, but she closed it
quickly behind her.
"All right, spelling bee," Dor said. "I don't enjoy this any more than
you do. The faster we get through, the faster we both get out of here."
The bee was not satisfied, but buzzed with resignation. It was
accustomed to nonoring rules, for there were no rules more finicky and
senseless than those for spelling words.
Dor read aloud his first two sentences, pausing after every word to get
the spelling. He did not trust the bee, but knew it was incapable of
misspelling a word, however much it might wish to, to spite him.
"Some can conjure things," he continued slowly, "and others can make a
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hole, or illusions, or can soar through the air. But in Mundania no one
does magic, so it's very dull. There are not any dragons there. Instead
there are bear and horse and a great many other monsters."
He stopped to count the words. All the way up to eighty-two!
Only eight more to go-no, more than that; his fingers had run out.
Twenty-eight to go. But he had already covered the subject. What now?
Well, maybe some specifics. "Our ruler is King Trent, who has reigned
for seventeen years. He transforms people into other creatures." There
were another seventeen words, bringing the total tosay, it was
ninety-nine words! He must have miscalculated before.
One more word and he'd be done!
But what one word would finish it? He couldn't think of one. Finally
he made a special effort and squeezed out another whole sentence: "No
one gets chased here; we fare in peace." But that was nine more
words-eight more than he needed. It really hurt him to waste energy
like that!
Sigh. There was no help for it. He would have to use the words, now
that he had ground them out. He wrote them down as the bee spelled
them, pronouncing each carefully so the bee would get it right. He was
sure the bee had little or no sense of continuity; it merely spelled on
an individual basis.
In a fit of foolish generosity, he fired off four more valuable words:
"My tale is done." That made the essay one hundred and twelve words.
Cherie Centaur should give him a top grade for thatl "Okay, spelling
bee," he said. "You've done your part. You're free, with your
letters." He opened the window and the bee buzzed out with a happy
"BBBBBB!"
"Now I need to deliver it to my beloved female tutor, may Reas gnaw her
coat," he said to himself. "How can I do that without her catching me
for more homework?" For he knew, as all students did, that the basic
purpose of instruction was not so much to teach young people good things
as to fiu up all their time unpleasantly. Adults
had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had
suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and
innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature,. An adult was
essentially a broken-down child.
"Are you asking me?" the floor asked.
Inanimate things seldom had much wit, which was why he hadn't
asked any for help in his spelling. "No, I'm just talking to myself."
"Good. Then I don't have to tell you to get a paper wasp."
"I couldn't catch a paper wasp anyway. I'd get stung."
"You wouldn't have to catch it. It's trapped under me. The fool
dered in during the night and can't find the way out; it's dark
down there."
This was a positive break. "Ten it I'll take it safely out if it'll
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deliver one paper for me."
There was a mumble as the floor conversed with the wasp. Then the floor
spoke to Dor again. "It's a fair sting, it says."
"Very well. Tell it where there's a crack big enough to let it through
to this room."
Soon the wasp appeared. It was large, with a narrow waist and fine
reddish-brown color: an attractive female of her species, marred only by
shreds of dust on her wings. "WWWWWW?" she buzzed, making the dust fly
off so that she was completely pretty again.
Dor gave her the paper and opened the window again. "Take this to the
lady centaur Cherie. After that you're on your own."
She perched momentarily on the sill, holding the paper.
"WWWWWW?" she asked again.
Dor did not understand wasp language, and his friend Grundy the Golem,
who did, was not around. But he had a fair notion what the wasp was
thinking of. "No, I wouldn't advise trying to sting Cherie.
She can crack her tail about like a whip, and she never misses a fly."
Or the seat of someone's pants, he added mentally, when someone was
foolish enough to backtalk about an assignment. Dor had learned the
hard way.
The wasp carried the paper out the window with a satisfied hum.
Dor knew it would deliver; like the spelling bee, it had to be true to
its nature. A paper wasp could not mishandle a paper.
Dor went out to report to Irene. He found her on the south side of the
castle in a bathing suit, swimming with a contented sea cow and feeding
the cow handfuls of sea oats she was magically growing on the bank.
Zilch mooed when she saw Dor, alerting Irene.
"Hi, Dor-come in sm%ming!" Irene called.
"In the moat with the monsters?" he retorted.
"I grew a row of blackjack oaks across it to buttress th,, wallflowers,"
she said. "The monsters can't pass."
Dor looked. Sure enough, a moat-monster was pacing the line,
staY 9 just c e of the blac a s
and'ngot taggledar ki ek . It nudged too close at one point
those trees! by a well-swung blackjack. There was no passing Still,
Dor decided to stay clear. He didn't trust what Zilch might have done
in the water. "I meant the monsters on this side," he said.
"I just came to report that the paper is finished and off to the tutor."
"Monsters on this side!" Irene repeated, glancing down at herself.
"Sic him, Weedles!"
A tendril reached out of the water and caught his ankle. Another one of
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her playful plants! "Cut that out!" Dor cried, windmilling as the vine
yanked at his leg. It was no good; he lost his balance and fell into
the moat with a great splash.
"Ho, ho, ho!" the water laughed. "Guess that doused your fire!"
Dor struck at the surface furiously with his fist, but it did no good.
Like it or not, he was swimming in all his clothes.
"Hey, I just thought of something," Irene called. "That spelling
bee-did you define the words for it?"
"No, of course not," Dor spluttered, trying to scramble out of the water
but getting tangled in the tendrils of the plant that had pulled him in.
Pride prevented him from asking Irene for help, though one word from her
would tame the plant.
She saw the need, however. "Easy, Weedless" she said, and the
plant eased off. Then she returned to her subject. "There may be
trouble. If you used any homonyms-"
"No, I couldn't have. I never heard of them." Weedies was no longer
attacking, but each time Dor tried to swim to the bank, the plant moved
to intercept him. He had antagonized Irene by his monsters crack, and
she was getting back at him mercilessly. She was like her mother in
that respect. Sometimes Dor felt the world would be better off If the
entire species of female were abolished.
"Different words that sound the same, duncel" she said with maidenly
arrogance. "Different spellings. The spelling bee isn't that smart; if
you don't tell it exactly which word-2'
"Different spellings?" he asked, experiencing a premonitory chill.
"Like wood and would," she said, showing off her vocabulary in
the annoying way girls had. "Wood-tree, would-could. Or isle and
aisle, meaning a bit of land in a lake or a cleared space between ob
jects. No connection between the two except they happen to sound
the same. Did you use any of those?"
Dor concentrated on the essay, already half forgotten. "I think I
mentioned a bear. You know, the fantastic Mundane monster."
"Itll come out bare-naked!" she exclaimed, laughing. "That bee
may not be smart, but it wasn't happy about having to work for its
letters. Oh, are you ever in trouble, Dor! Wait'll Cherie Centaur
reads that paper!"
"Oh, forget it!" he snapped, disgruntled. How many homonyms
had he used?
"Bear, bare!" she cried, swimming close and tugging at his cloth ing.
The material, not intended for water, tore readily, exposing half
his chest.
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"Bare, bare, bare!" he retorted furiously, hooking two fingers into
the top of her suit and ripping it down. This material, too, came
apart with surprising ease, showing that her body was fully as devel
oped as suggested by the contours of her clothing. Her mother the
Queen often made herself pretty through illusion; Irene needed no
such enhancement.
"Eeeeek!" she screamed enthusiastically. "I'll get you!" And she
ripped more of his clothing off, not stopping at his shirt. Dor retal
iated, his anger mitigated by his intrigue with the flashes of her that
showed between splashes. In a moment they were both thoroughly
bare and laughing. It was as if they had done in anger something they
had not dared to do by agreement, but had nevertheless wanted to
do.
At this point Cherie Centaur trotted up. She had the forepart of a
remarkably full-figured woman, and the rear-part of a beautiful
horse. It was said that Mundania was the land of beautiful women
and fast horses, or maybe vice versa on the adjectives; Xanth was the
land where the two were one. Cherie's brown human hair trailed
back to rest against her brown equine coat, with her lovely tail
matching. She wore no clothing, as centaurs did not believe in such
affectations, and she was old, despite her appearance, of Doris fa
ther's generation. Such things made her far less interesting than
Irene. "About this paper, Dor-" Cherie began.
Dar and Irene froze in place, both suddenly conscious of their
condition. They were naked, half embraced in the water. Weedles
was idly playing with fragments of their clothing. This was definitely
not proper behavior, and was bound to be misunderstood.
But Cherie was intent on the paper. She shook her head, so that her
hair fell down along her breasts-a mannerism that indicated something
serious. "If you can interrupt your sexplay a moment," she said, "I
would like to review the spelling in this essay." Centaurs did not
really care what human beings did with each other in the water; to them,
such interaction was natural. But If Cherie reported it to the
Queen"Uh, well-" Dor said, wishing he could sink under the water.
"But before I go into detailed analysis, let's obtain another opinion."
Cherie held the paper down so Irene could see it.
Irene was fully as embarrassed by her condition as Dor was about his.
She exhaled to decrease her buoyancy and lower herself in the water, but
in a moment she was gasping and had to breathe againwhich caused her to
rise once more, especially since her most prominent attributes tended to
file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Anthony,%20Piers%20-%20Xanth%2004%20-%20Centaur%20Aisle.txt (10 of 235) [1/19/03 8:44:45 PM]
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file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Anthony,%20Piers%20-%20Xanth%2004%20-%20Centaur%20Aisle.txtCENTAURAISLEBYPIERSANTHONYSynopsis:AXanthfantasy.PrinceDormustrescueKingTrentfromofallplaces.Mundania!TheonlywayhecandothisistotraveltoCentaurIsleandfindthemagiciancallibercentaur,noeasytasksincecentaursabhorr...

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