Esrever Doom (Xanth) Read Free

to do it. The Good Magician Humfrey says that only a person unaffected by the spell has any chance to nullify it. But all residents of Xanth are similarly affected, at least to some degree.”
    Kody’s head was trying to spin. “This is not a literal change? Just one of perception?”
    “Correct,” Picka said. “I see Dawn as I always have. But now I am repulsed. That complicates our relationship.”
    “So it’s really a mood reversal,” Kody said. “Your sight has not changed, just your appreciation of what you see.” Esrever doom, he thought: mood reverse. It was almost starting to make odd sense.
    “Exactly,” Picka agreed. “Even when she assumes skeletal form, I see her nice bones as ugly sticks.”
    “I don’t like being seen as ugly,” Dawn said candidly. “No woman does.”
    “While I, being Mundane, am not affected,” Kody said, getting it straight.
    “Not exactly,” Dawn said.
    “I’m not exactly here, yes, as it seems I am dreaming. But apart from that, I see things as they are.”
    “Not exactly,” Dawn repeated.
    “I’m not following you.”
    “I think I need to demonstrate.” She glanced at Picka. “With your acquiescence, dear.”
    The skeleton shrugged. “Of course.”
    She faced Kody. “Stand.”
    Data got off his lap, knowing what was coming. He stood, perplexed.
    She came to him, put her arms around him, drew him close, and kissed him. He felt almost as if he were floating off the floor. Her wonderful bosom was pressing into his chest, his hands were somehow on her marvelous bottom, and the contact of their lips was sheer rapture. She was an utterly mesmerizing creature. In that moment he loved her, despite knowing that she was not and would never be his. Not only was she a magic princess, far beyond his station, she was a thoroughly married mother of two. He had no business reacting romantically to her.
    She drew back, knowing how well she had impressed him. Now it was no mystery how she had conquered a walking skeleton. She could seduce the dead, if she tried. “You liked that.”
    “God help me, I did,” he admitted, shaken. “Please don’t do it again.”
    “So you are reversed.”
    Now he appreciated her point. “I guess I am.”
    “Reversed?” Picka asked. “He’s a perfectly normal man.”
    “Indeed he is,” Dawn agreed.
    Picka and the two children looked at her, puzzled.
    Kody changed the subject. “So it may be that I am here for a reason: to get this spell of reversal turned off. So that Mood Reverse is no longer Esrever Doom.”
    “It may be,” Dawn agreed. “The Good Magician will know.”
    “Who is this Good Magician?” Kody asked.
    “He is Xanth’s most respected Magician of Information,” Picka said. “Anyone who really needs to know something can go to ask the Good Magician. But it isn’t easy.”
    “Not easy?”
    “He doesn’t much like to be bothered,” Picka said. “He is chronically Grumpy, so much so that he has five and a half wives who rotate month by month, a new one stepping in when the old one is worn down. He makes his castle difficult to get into, so that most querents are discouraged and go away without entering. And when he does Answer a Question, he charges the person a year’s service, or an equivalent service. Even then, his Answers are seldom obvious; it takes time to figure them out.”
    “That does seem to be discouraging,” Kody agreed. “Obviously I don’t want to ask him anything.”
    “Yet you must,” Dawn said. “The welfare of Xanth may depend on it.”
    The welfare of a purely imaginary magic land he was dreaming about. Yet she surely knew it better than he did. What could he do, but agree? “I must.”
    “We will have you here as our guest for a few days,” Dawn said. “You need time to acclimatize, to get to know more about Xanth. Then we will send you to the Good Magician’s Castle.”
    “But if I am here only a few days, there won’t be time for me to do anything, regardless.”
    “You