X26 Up in a Heaval by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 0312869045
Publisher: New York : Tor, 2002.
Published: 2008-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11: SURPRISE

Umlaut snapped out of it as Sesame nudged him. How long had he been out this time? He should have known better than to watch that nymph bounce on the bed. But his eyes tended to go where they wished, almost as if wanting to freak out.

A horse and cart were approaching them from beyond the bed. This must be what the centaur had promised. The horse was a magnificent beast, with its head held high and its hooves touching the ground smartly. But the cart it hauled was more remarkable. It seemed to be made of large chunks of flesh. Each chunk had what looked like a fingernail on one side. Taken as a whole, it was one weird vehicle.

Maybe the animals understood this, having paid more attention to Epi's description than he had. He went into a quick dialogue with Sesame, who was glad to clarify the matter for him: It was a high horse drawing a toe truck. They would take the party to Grundy Golem on the trollway.

A toe truck: A truck made out of toes, getting toed, or towed. The toes were fastened to wheels and dug into the ground to get traction. He should have known. "But what's this about a trollway?"

That, it seemed, was a paved road maintained by the trolls. It went the length of Xanth, from the southern tip to the northern marshes, and was excellent for rapid transit.

"The whole way? Then we must have crossed it coming here, unless we went under it."

No, Sesame explained in Serpentine, they probably wouldn't have seen it even if they had stayed on the surface, because it was limited access.

"You mean they let only a few people on it?"

Not exactly.

"Is it limited in some other way?"

The Void.

"What does the Void have to do with a trollway?"

It was that the Void was an extremely potent hole in the Land of Xanth and caused the land near it to wrinkle so that there was more of it, but not all of it was accessible at the same time. The trollway ran along one of the creases.

"Then how can we get to it?"

Here the serpent's powers of explanation via emulation dialogue broke down. It seemed this was a more devious concept.

"Maybe it fades in and out, like the isles," Umlaut concluded. That seemed to cover it. Claire probably could have clarified it but didn't care to bother.

The horse and toe wagon halted by the bed. A ramp let down in back so that Para could waddle up and in. Then the four of them jumped, slithered, and climbed on. "Farewell, Snortimer!" Umlaut called as they started moving. The bed responded with a poke in the center of the mattress.

That reminded Umlaut: "I never actually saw Snortimer. What does he look like?"

Claire responded this time, as she knew the answer. She always knew the answer, but he was too dull to ask her most times, and she did not deign to volunteer information for dullards. Snortimer, like many bed monsters, was all hands.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.