Anthony, Piers Xanth 13 Isle of View

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frowning mouth region. He blew out a wet gale, trying to mess her up.
"Try that again, cabbage-breath!" Grundy called.
Oh, no! The golem just couldn't resist hurling a good insult. Grundy had battled Fracto before, and they
had a long-standing feud. Now the cloud would try even harder!
Indeed Fracto did. Bubblelike excrescences formed on his surface, indicating the fury of his turbulence.
"Keep at it, toad-face!" Grundy called encouragingly. "You going to wet on somebody next?"
"Don't aggravate him!" Chex gasped as she tried desperately to climb out of reach.
"Aw, it's better to work him up," Grundy said. "Then he loses what little wit he has and is even easier to
outsmart."
Fracto evidently heard that, because he sent out such a gust of sleet-speckled wind that Chex almost did
a somersault.
"Is that your best shot, smog-rear?" Grundy demanded. "What made you think you could blow up
anything more than a teakettle? Better go back for training-or training pants!"
"Grundy, I wish you wouldn't-" Chex started. But she was cut off by the cloud's furious blast of snow.
For a moment she was blinded and wasn't sure which way was up.
Then her head emerged from it, and she discovered that she was higher than before. "It lifted us!" she
exclaimed.
"That's the idea," Grundy said. "Might as well use Fracto's energy instead of yours." Then, to the cloud:
"Is that what you call a squall? Even a dumb anvil head can do better than that!"
But Fracto was finally catching on. Instead of blowing again, he simply concentrated on building up his
mass, higher and higher. The air was not thin, but Chex still couldn't get over the storm.
"What a view!" Grundy exclaimed.
Chex looked down. The panoply of Xanth lay beneath them, just like one of her dam's maps. Chem
Centaur's magic talent was map projection, and she had explored most of Xanth in the course of
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perfecting her maps. Now the long coastal outline showed clearly, except where Fracto's grotesque
burgeoning mass blotted it out and the nebulous region to the north where it was possible to cross into
Mundania. Not that any sensible person would want to do a thing like that. The sea extended out,
featureless except for the bits of cloud floating above it. Part of the great Gap Chasm showed, and it did
resemble cleavage, just as the ghost writer had noted. The overall scene was beautiful. She should have
done this before, just to enjoy the view. But of course she had remained mostly landbound, because Che
couldn't yet fly. What an experience awaited him, when his wings formed well enough for the heights!
"I guess we'll have to stop at the moon," Grundy said, sounding not too regretful. "Well, I've always
wanted to visit the big cheese."
Chex had had no intention of visiting the moon-not without Cheiron! But she seemed to be stuck for it.
She was getting dangerously fatigued and had to rest; she doubted she could even get down to the
ground without Fracto blowing her into the sea. So she angled to the side and flew straight toward it.
Fortunately she was now higher than the moon, so the effort of reaching it was not great.
Fracto saw what she was doing and tried to stop her. But he couldn't grow fast enough to block both
Mount Rushmost and the moon, and knew that she would zip past him and fly south if he gave her the
chance. So he could only blow snow at her.
There was a crack of thunder. Then a lightning bolt zapped past her. Oops-Fracto had more than snow to
hurl!
"You missed, sizzle-snoot!" the golem cried gleefully.
"Grundy!" Chex hissed.
"Don't worry, old diaper-bottom couldn't hit anything smaller than Xanth itself, and half the time he
misses that too," the golem said reassuringly.
Then a bolt zapped just past his head, singeing his hair. "Lucky shot, vapor-brain!" he yelled, but his
confidence seemed slightly shaken. He kept quiet while Chex winged on toward the moon.
The moon was somewhat larger than it appeared from the ground, because of the special inanimate
magic called perspective. Each object and part of the landscape liked to think it was larger than it was,
so it pretended that everything else was smaller, and the farther away anything was, the smaller it could
safely be considered. Thus some quite large objects were made to seem quite small by those far enough
away to get away with such belittling. The moon was at a serious disadvantage in this respect, because it
was far away from everything else, so had no supporters. It got even by pretending that the whole of
Xanth was small. The moon was actually big enough to walk and run on, and a number of flying
centaurs could camp on it-if there only had been more than two to do it. But in time there would be Che-
Chex had a horrible thought. When Che got old enough to mate, who would there be? Certainly he could
not do it with a sister! Before Chex, there had been only Cheiron, and Chex herself derived from mixed
ancestry. Well, maybe mere could be another mixed mating, to produce another winged centaur. But it
seemed doubtful, because Chem had been unusually liberal for her kind, and perhaps no other centaur
would consider crossbreeding. Unless one happened to run afoul of a love spring...
"Watch it, mare!" Grundy cried.
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