#10 Vale of the Vole by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [ANTHONY, PIERS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Xanth (Imaginary place), Fantasy - General, Fiction - Fantasy, General, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy - Series
ISBN: 9780812574968
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Published: 2000-03-02T06:00:00+00:00

"Yes. That's why I couldn't be sure what it was."

"Roes are red," Marrow said. "I thought everyone knew that."

**I happen to be a stranger here," Esk said somewhat shortly.

They came to a potted plant. It was bright blue, and had knobs on the ends of its stems. As they approached, it lifted the knobs menacingly; obviously it intended to punch at anyone who came too close. "What is that?"

"A violent," Marrow said. "Didn't you note the color?"

"Oh, I see," Esk said, irritated. "Roes are red, violents are blue."

"I think he's got it!" Marrow exclaimed.

"Just who are you talking to?"

"The violent, of course. Didn't you hear?"

"I guess I don't speak the local dialect. What does it say?*'

"It says it isn't its fault it got lost. They were planting violents on the median strips between major paths, but they rejected this one and threw it away."

Esk began to have some sympathy for the blue plant. "Why did they

reject it?"

"Because they didn't want any more violents on the media."

"Oh." He should have known that no explanation would make much

sense here.

They continued along the path. In due course they had to pass under a kind of woven vine that seemed to have eyeballs set into it. "Say, isn't that an eye queue?" Esk asked. "My father encountered one of those; it made him very smart for a while. What's it doing here?"

"Maybe I can find out," Marrow said. He reached out, caught the vine, and set it on the top of his skull. "It says it was lost from the Lexicon," he reported.

"The Lexicon? What's that?"

"The eye queue says that some ass from Mundania came through with a secretary and listed all the things of Xanth—except the eye queue vine. So the vine is lost."

'Too bad," Esk said. "Now nobody will be smart."

Marrow stepped out from under the vine, and it fell back into place over the path. Apparently it could not become a part of the skull, probably because there was no brain to enhance.

Farther along was a little squiggly thing, hardly large enough to see. "What's that?" Esk asked.

"A lost vitamin, I think. Let me see." Marrow put out a finger bone to touch the thing. "Yes, vitamin F."

"What's it for?"

"Oh, it has potent F-ect."

"Potent effect?"

"F you make the right F-ort."

"Let's find vitamin X instead," Esk said grimly. "Then maybe we can become X-pert in finding the X-it, if it X-ists."

"X-actly," Marrow agreed, not catching Esk's irony.

They continued past other lost items: a lost fossil bone that Marrow greatly admired, as it was of a species of creature unknown in Xanth or Mundania, whose discovery would revolutionize the understanding of both; a lost band of the rainbow, more wonderful than any other; a lost stream of consciousness; and a lost dire strait. Esk would have found all these things considerably more interesting if he hadn't been so acutely concerned about finding his way out of the gourd before his body got into trouble in Xanth. Suppose a dragon sniffed it out? He could wake up to find himself chomped.

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