Luck of the Draw (Xanth) Read Free

reasonably well.
    “I can’t explain how I came here,” Bryce said candidly. “I was riding a recumbent tricycle, and suddenly we were in an unfamiliar setting.”
    “I’ll ask Dawn,” the skeleton said. “She will know. Please come this way.” He turned and departed the chamber.
    This was weird, but it was easier to continue playing along. Bryce and Rachel followed the skeleton out the door, up the stone steps, and into a rather more ornate section of the castle.
    Soon they were met by an astonishingly beautiful young woman. She had bright red hair, green eyes, and a figure a movie starlet could only dream of. She must be Dawn; indeed, her presence was like the rising of the morning sun.
    Dawn approached Bryce and touched him. “Ah,” she said. “This will require some explaining. Please come this way.”
    Bryce and the skeleton followed her to a pleasant family room. They sat opposite her. Dawn talked.
    “I am Princess Dawn, wife of Picka Bone here. I must explain that I am also a Sorceress. My talent is to immediately know anything about any living thing I touch. Thus I know about you. Bryce, you are freshly from Mundania, a land almost bereft of magic.” She smiled, and the room seemed to brighten. “There are traces of it, such as your rainbows that can be seen only from one side, and perspective, where distant objects hurry to keep up with close ones without actually moving. But aside from such minor effects it is a remarkably drear world. This is the Land of Xanth, which in contrast has magic everywhere. It is for my taste a much preferable place to live.” She grimaced. “Except, perhaps, for the puns. But we are doing what we can to reduce them.”
    “I never was very good at puns,” Bryce admitted. “But my companion, the dog—can you check her too?”
    Dawn knelt before the dog and put her hand on a shoulder. “And you are Rachel, a German short-haired pointer highly trained as a Service Dog. But your master died, and they were going to put you down, so you left. Bryce reminded you of your owner, in that he needed help, and you really like to help, so you befriended him. Now you can talk, or at least say the few words you were trained to obey, but you understand many more.”
    “Yes,” Rachel said.
    “The point is that both of you will find it strange here, especially at first. But you will acclimatize, and you are welcome to remain here in Caprice as our guests until you do.”
    “Until we return to Mundania, as you put it,” Bryce agreed.
    “Until you are ready to live on your own in Xanth. I don’t believe you can return to your own realm. Not by your own choice. You passed through a one-way portal when you spoke the magic words.”
    Bryce was astonished. “You mean those were the magic words the book told me to utter? ‘The magic words’?”
    “Yes. You are unusual in that you did not die first.”
    “That won’t be long,” he said. “A year or two.”
    “No,” she said firmly. “You surely have a good sixty years ahead of you, before you fade out, if you stay clear of dragons and other dangers.”
    He shook his head. “I am eighty years old, and in poor health.” He glanced down at his body. “Or I was, until I mysteriously arrived here. I assume I’m dreaming, and my real body remains a wreck.”
    “You are mistaken. You have been gifted with four magical things, and Rachel with three, and you have no choice but to work through them as well as you can.”
    She seemed very certain, so he didn’t argue further. He ticked them off on his fingers. “A youth potion. Blurred vision. A pass to this magic land. There is another?”
    “A youth potion that makes you age twenty-one, physically,” she agreed. “And healthy. The illnesses you had in Mundania are gone. The blurred vision is actually a magic talent, second sight. You can see, hear, and feel ten seconds into the future with your left side, while your right side is normal. This is nice magic; it could be quite