Free xanth 40 - isis orb by Piers Anthony Page A

small d demonesses and big D Demonesses. You don’t want to mess with her. Your stupid bandana won’t protect you from her panties.”
    She had known. She must have wanted him to see without quite freaking.
    “You wanted him to see!” Feline said accusingly.
    “Well, I didn’t come down on the last sunbeam, pussy. Nobody has panties like mine. What use are they if no one remembers them?”
    “Point made,” Feline said thoughtfully.
    “Just what kind of mischief is Isis?” Hapless asked. He already knew something about the goddess, but if he was destined to tangle with her, he wanted to know as much as he could.
    “She likes to make men her love slaves,” Metria answered. “Then she can make them do whatever she wants. Oh, to have power like that! I’d conquer Xanth.”
    “You want to conquer Xanth?”
    The demoness considered briefly. “Maybe not actually conquer it; ruling it would be too much responsibility. But to have my panties recognized as supreme—that would be fun. All the men would have eyes like pink polka dots.”
    “Isis could do that?”
    “Yes, if she wanted to. I’m not sure what motivates her. If she wanted to be queen, she could have used the Orb to grant her wish. Instead she just keeps it without actually using it. That’s odd.”
    “It is,” Hapless agreed. “What does she look like?”
    “Anything she wants to. But always beautiful and sexy. They say there’s no man she can’t seduce in minutes without even showing her panties. I’d like to see her in action; I might learn what little I don’t already know about that.” The hem of her skirt lifted on its own until it almost, but not quite, showed her panties. She evidently had excellent control.
    “Well, we’re bound to see her, in due course.”
    Metria shrugged. “She wouldn’t need anything special to deal with you. I wouldn’t learn anything. Well, toodle-oo.” She faded out.
    “Why am I annoyed?” Hapless inquired rhetorically.
    “Because she obviously dismisses you as too easy for a hint,” Feline said. “But she raised a good question: why does Isis keep the Orb if she’s not using it?”
    “Maybe she wants folk like us to come for it, like a special flower to attract bees.”
    She nodded. “The next question is, then what does she want with us?”
    “I have another: why would the Good Magician send us to her?”
    “That’s another good one,” she agreed. “Are we mere pawns in some larger game? I don’t like the smell of that.”
    “I thought it was Demons who made pawns of people.”
    “Well, then, could this be a Demon bet?” she asked. “I heard it was one of those that got Princess Harmony her suitors.”
    “If I really thought it was a bet, I’d do my best to mess it up.”
    “You can’t mess up a Demon bet. They take all that into consideration. You really can’t do anything about it; one Demon wins and one loses, whichever way it turns out.”
    “So I guess we’d better ignore that chance.”
    “That’s easiest,” she agreed.
    The path soon debouched into a larger track. There in the center of it was a kind of wheeled wagon labeled CENTAUR STAGE COACH.
    They paused. “Is that a pun on center stage, or on stage coach?” Hapless asked.
    “Both,” a centaur answered, appearing from behind the coach. “Get in.”
    “But we’re on a Quest,” Feline protested. “We can’t just ride randomly.”
    “This isn’t random,” the centaur said. “It’s available for those on centaur business. Since you’re on a temporary centaur trail, you must qualify.”
    Hapless looked at Feline. “Does this make sense?”
    “It must. He’s a centaur. They always make sense.”
    “It couldn’t be a fake centaur, designed to get us off the enchanted path and into mischief?”
    She paused, considering. Then she addressed the centaur. “If I asked you whether you are a fake, what would you say?”
    “Of course not. Centaurs don’t do fake.”
    “Then thank you for the ride.” She