Question Quest Read Online Free PDF Page B

who pestered him with Questions at his castle. He was being served as he served others. Probably he would not appreciate having that pointed out, so she stifled whatever remark she might have been tempted to make.
    “How will he avoid granting your appeal, if he has to play fair?” she asked.
    “He will cheat.”
    “But—”
    “Fairness is as the Demon says it is. He will give me a chance to gain my objective, if I put my own soul on the line. If I win, I take Rose; if I lose I will be confined here with her. Then he will see that I lose.”
    “But how can he—”
    “Very simply. He will ask me a Question that I as the Magician of Information should be able to answer. It will be about some future event. Then he will see that whatever my Answer, it will happen otherwise. Thus I will lose.”
    “Then you really have no hope,” she said, disturbed.
    “I have hope. I have no chance.”
    “You are throwing your life away for nothing! And even if you should win, you'll still have the problem of two wives. They won't take turns if they are both alive in Xanth.”
    “Tell me something that isn't obvious.”
    She shook her head. “This just doesn't make sense.”
    “So it would seem.”
    Then she knew that he had a plan. She couldn't imagine what it was, but she had confidence in his information. He would find a way through the rigged contest—if he could only get the Demon's attention. He couldn't tell her his plan, because the Demon might be listening and then would know how to foil it.
    Still, she had one more question. “If the Demon X(A/N)th knows you are here, and is ignoring you, why should printing your life story make any difference? Won't he just ignore that too?”
    “Only up to a point. My life story is true, though much of it is unknown to all others except the Demon. It must be true; I dare not falsify any part of it. Therefore, it will be difficult for me to relate, in places. Complete honesty is always painful and seldom advisable. But at the point it catches up to the present and starts into the future, its truth will be undefined. I will be able to tell it as I hope it will be.”
    “'But then you could say that you are going to rescue Rose from Hell by yourself and return to Xanth!"
    “Precisely. I will be able to define my own future. Therefore the Demon must at that point come to meet me and deal with my appeal, lest he lose it by default.”
    That was a most sophisticated strategy! It was obvious that the Good Magician was much smarter than she was. Still she had a niggling confusion. “Why didn't you tell your story before, instead of waiting all this time?”
    “The spoken word lacks the authority of the written word. Until you came, I was unable to transcribe my autobiography to print.”
    “But why didn't the Demon stop me from coming here, then?”
    “I suspect you were too insignificant a detail for him to bother to keep track of. Had you been beautiful or smart or highly talented, as my wives are, he would have seen you coming. Now it is too late; you are here.”
    “How fortunate that I am so ordinary,” she said, with a hint of a mixed feeling.
    "You are not ordinary, Lacuna, you are dull. You are almost completely uninteresting. How you got to be a leading character in this story is almost beyond my significant resources to ascertain.”
    Surely it was true. That was why she had come here.
    “Well, we had better get on with it,” she said with a certain boring resignation. She focused on the far wall, and the print began to appear:
    THE STORY OF THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE GOOD MAGICIAN HUMFREY, THE MAGICIAN OF INFORMATION.

Xanth 14 - Question Quest
    Chapter One.
    “Oh, don't be so cumbersome!” Humfrey snapped. “Just title it Question Quest. And start with Chapter 3; you’ve already wasted two chapters with your own dreary business, may the Muse of History forgive you.”
    “Yes, of course,” she agreed, properly chastened. “What should the title of Chapter 3