The Dastard Read Free Page B

make you very happy,” the Dastard said. “How did you discover it?”
    “I was sitting by a pleasant pool, looking at my reflection in the clear water, and I remembered how I had once made a ball of water. Before I thought about it, I did it again. Then I remembered that I couldn't use a talent a second time. I was amazed. So I tried another old talent, and a third one. I discovered that my oldest talents had recovered, but the ones I had used recently were still gone. So I figured it out. I'm really, really pleased. I just had to tell someone, and you're the first person I've seen since it happened. Well, farewell.” She spread her arms and flew away without wings.
    The Dastard went back into place/time travel. He explored until he found the clear pool where the girl had seen her reflection and made her discovery. He went to the time just a few minutes before her arrival there. He scooped up handfuls of mud and stirred them into the water until it was impossible to see any reflection. It would be hours before it cleared. The girl would not see her reflection, and not think the thoughts that had led to her discovery. She would not know what she missed.
    He returned to the present. Another dastardly deed accomplished. This was turning out to be a great day.
    But it was not over. If he hurried, he could nab yet another significant nexus. They were thick and fast, out here in unmolested Xanth. He ran back along the path to the main one, found another side path, and followed that. He encountered a man, an adult of moderate age, and handsome. “Who are you?” he inquired.
    “I am Ho,” the man replied. “I am traveling to see the Princess Ida, hoping she will find my talent useful. I think she will. I might even marry her, if she likes me well enough. Maybe we'll have a child named Idaho who will have a talent with potatoes.”
    Princess Ida was Princess Ivy's twin sister. Her talent was the Idea, and she had whole worlds of ideas. She could make any idea come true. But it had to originate with someone else, who did not know of Ida's talent; Ida could not make her own ideas come true. That was the one limit on an otherwise extraordinary talent.
    “What is your talent?” the Dastard asked Ho.
    “It is selective amnesia. I can make a person forget any particular thing he or she wants to. This would enable Princess Ida to forget the nature of her talent, and it would thus become far more useful to her. I think she should be very pleased.”
    The Dastard nodded. This could make an enormous difference. Probably Ida and Ho would like each other, and would marry, and be happy forever after, and do much good with their new ideas. A wonderful future awaited them. How dastardly it would be to deny them that.
    But as yet he wasn't sure how to do it. Ho was already on his way, and had a clear notion what he wanted; it seemed to be too late to change that. But there had to be a way. Sometimes the intellectual quest was more difficult than the physical one. “What gave you the notion of doing this?” he asked.
    Ho, like most innocent upright decent folk, was glad to answer openly. “It was sheer coincidence. Last month I was walking along the path from my village when I happened to stumble on a stone I didn't see. I didn't fall, but its sharp ridge caught my shoelace and broke it. So I had to replace the lace. So I turned around and went back to the village for a new shoelace from Lacey, the woman who makes them. This time her new husband was there, a man I hadn't met before. So we chatted, and he turned out to be descended from Ghost King Warren, whose talent after he died he said was making ghosts. He inquired about my talent, and I told him, and he said that might be useful for Princess Ida. I had never thought about that, but the more I considered it, the more intriguing it seemed, until finally I decided to do something about it. So here I am, on my way--all because of a broken shoelace.”
    The Dastard didn't wait. He