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still needs to be plugged."
Dolph looked at the Void. He knew he shouldn't believe her, but what she said did seem to make sense.
He couldn't help Che by getting lost himself. Still, if Che was in there...
"You fool!" she exclaimed. "You're still thinking about stepping across that line!"
"Well-"
She became canny. "If you agree to go the other way, I might forget to keep my panties hidden."
He was sure she was lying. She probably never wore any panties anyway. But the notion was
demonishly tempting, regardless. "All right. Show me your hole."
She paused for just half a moment, and he realized that she must have found something funny in what he
said. Then she lifted from the ground. "It's south."
They zoomed back through the four regions until they were just south of the Region of Air and west of
the territory of the flies. The demoness dropped down into the jungle. There did seem to be an odd
section, between trees. "See, a monster has come through already," she said, pointing.
Indeed, there was something there. It looked a little like an ogre and less like a man. It seemed to have
been patched together from scraps of people, with pegs holding the pieces fast at the joints, and a couple
more pegs holding the head together. It was marching around in a wobbly circle.
Dolph landed before the thing and assumed his natural form. "What are you?" he asked. "Where are you
from?"
The jaw hinges cranked open. "I'm the monster," it rasped. "I'm looking for my master, Frankenstein."
"Well, he's not here," Dolph said. "He must be on the other side of the hole. Why don't you go back and
look for him?"
Without further word the thing turned and marched into the hole. This was a shimmering ragged circle
just above the ground, with flickering darkness inside. From above it had looked like a line, but from the
ground it looked like a tear in the scenery-which was probably what it was. The demoness had been
telling the truth, maybe.
The thing disappeared beyond the hole, as if it had never existed. But Metria was right: they didn't want
any more such things coming through.
"How do we plug the hole?" he asked.
"I wouldn't know."
"But you brought me here for this! What was the point, if you can't tell me what to do about it?"
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"I brought you here because you're interesting in your assorted naivete's and idiocies, and it amuses me
to watch you tackle things you know nothing about," she said. "I'll be as satisfied to show you the way
of stork summoning, because I know you'll make fumbles and blunders never before dreamt of in your
kind's philosophy, and that will be more entertaining than anything else I could think of at the moment.
But you don't want to play, so this is next best. I don't much care which problem you care to tackle first."
She was baiting him again. The question was, how much was true and how much false? Was this really
a hole in Xanth or just some odd natural effect she was using to confuse him?
"Maybe I should go on over to the With-a-Cookee River and help rescue Che," he said, hoping he could
learn something from her response.
"Yes, that might be best," she agreed. "I understand it's getting pretty messy there, and your Betrothees
are headed right into trouble."
"Nada and 'Lectra?" he asked, alarmed.
"Who else?" she said carelessly. "They went and asked the Good Magician where Che was, and he-" She
broke into a chuckle.
"What's so funny about that? I think it made sense to ask him, in case the rest of us didn't find the foal."
"But he thought they were going to ask a different Question," she said, still jiggling with the mirth of it.
"What Question?" he demanded, knowing that if she responded, he wouldn't like the answer.
"How to resolve the problem of your betrothals."
He stared at her. Of course Grey would think that! Why else would the two young women come to him a
week before Electra's eighteenth birthday? This business with Che's foal-knapping had come up so
suddenly that Grey Murphy had probably been working on something else and never heard about it. The
real Good Magician, Humfrey, would not have been caught unawares like that, but Grey tacked age and
experience. Also, he had Ivy pestering him all the time; that would drive anyone crazy. Dolph knew that
from long experience as her brother.
"So how did he answer, then?"
"He got an indentured ghost to check around and spy the foal," Metria said. "But he couldn't tell them
exactly, just approximately. So they're probably going to get captured by the goblins too. That's a bad
region, you know; that's where the Goblinate of the Golden Horde hangs out."
Dolph knew. The Horde liked to torture and cook captives. He and Ivy had once had a run-in with them.
If they caught Nada and Electra...
"I'll get right over there!"
"Aren't you forgetting something, Prince?" the demoness inquired.
"Yes, the hole in Xanth! But you're probably lying about that."
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"How do you know I'm not lying about your Betrothees?"
That brought him up short. It was impossible to tell when she spoke truth. "If you are, I'll-"
"You'll what?" she asked, interested.
That was a problem. She was a demoness. He could not touch her unless she wanted to be touched, and
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