Read Online Dragon on a Pedestal by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online Page A

their fingers, and she had to shake them all.
    At length she drew away, resolving to be more careful thereafter. She started toward a somewhat vague bush. “What’s that?”
    “Don’t go near that one!” the yak warned. “That’s a trance plant. It doesn’t belong here at all.”
    “Why not?”
    “It grows elsewhere. Probably someone carried it here and set it on the ground and it rooted. Anyone who gets too close to it gets dazed.”
    Ivy considered. She was a pretty smart little girl when she tried to be, especially when she thought she was. Her father’s friend Smash the Ogre had said she might have had an Eye Queue vine fall on her head; Smash knew about jungle vines. But that was their secret. Smash took her for walks sometimes, and he had been quick to discover that she was smarter than she seemed, sometimes, because he was that way himself, but he had promised not to tell her folks so she wouldn’t get in trouble. In fact, it was because of Smash that she wanted to explore the jungle; he had told her how fascinating it was. Now she had her chance! “How did they carry the trance plant?”
    The yak paused. “Why, I never thought of that! Anyone carrying it would have gone into a trance. Yet I happen to know that all trance plants grow elsewhere, and are moved to new locations. It seems to be their lifestyle. They must have some additional magic to enable them to travel.” He looked ahead. “Ah, there’s a foot-ball.”
    As he spoke, the foot-ball rolled into view. It was a sphere formed of feet. Every kind of extremity showed in it—dragon talons, bird claws, griffin paws, human feet, centaur hooves, insect legs, and so on. The feet tramped down a path wherever it rolled, so that it was easy to tell where the ball had been, but not where it was going. With so many feet, it was able to travel quite swiftly and was soon out of sight.
    However, the path it left made their route easier, since there were no brambles or pitfalls in it. It didn’t matter to Ivy where it led, as long as there were interesting things along it.
    Ivy spotted a glittering glassy ball the size of her two fists, not round but carved with many small, flat facets. She strayed from the path long enough to pick it up. Beams of light coruscated from it as she held it in a stray shaft of sunlight. “What is this?”
    “That is a very precious stone, one of the gems distributed by Jewel the Nymph,” the yak said. “Crystallized carbon in spherical form: a very hard ball. Specifically, a baseball diamond.”
    “What’s it for? It’s pretty.”
    “People play stupid games with it. I understand the main game is very tedious—a bunch of players spread themselves out around the diamond and simply wait, and someone else throws the ball, and another stands with a stick resting on his shoulder and watches the ball go by him three or four times, and then either he gets mad and quits trying, or he runs around the diamond. Then they start over.”
    Ivy’s smooth little brow furrowed in a fair emulation of her mother’s expression at times like this. “That’s no fun! Who does that?”
    “Mundanes, mostly. They are strange creatures and, I suspect, not too bright. Otherwise they would take more of an interest in magic, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. What can you say about a person who refuses to believe in magic?”
    “That he deserves his own dullness.”
    “That’s a most astute remark!” The yak glanced ahead, hearing something. “Hark! I think I hear a game now!”
    They walked on toward the sound. Two centaurs were doing something. “No, that’s not a baseball diamond they’re throwing. It must be some other game.”
    Indeed it was. Two wooden stakes had been pounded into the ground, and the centaurs were taking turns hurling shoes from a nearby shoe tree at them. They were the type of shoes human folk used, with shoelaces and all. One shoe would land leaning up against a stake, but the next one would knock it