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The author thanks Jerome Brown for the notion of the “Spelling Bee” used in the first chapter, and the many other fans whose letters of encouragement have caused the Xanth trilogy to be expanded. May those who feel Xanth is sexist have pleasure in this novel, wherein Mundania is shown to be worse.

Dor was trying to write an essay, because the King had decreed that any future monarchs of Xanth should be literate. It was an awful chore. He knew how to read, but his imagination tended to go blank when challenged to produce an essay, and he had never mastered conventional spelling.

“The Land of Xanth,” he muttered with deep disgust.

“What?” the table asked.

“The title of my awful old essay,” Dor explained dispiritedly. “My tutor Cherie, on whom be a muted anonymous curse, assigned me a one-hundred-word essay telling all about Xanth. I don’t think it’s possible. There isn’t that much to tell. After twenty-five words I’ll probably have to start repeating. How can I ever stretch it to a whole hundred? I’m not even sure there are that many words in the language.

“Who wants to know about Xanth?” the table asked. “I’m bored already.”

“I know you’re a board. I guess Cherie, may a hundred curseburrs tangle in her tail, wants to know.”

“She must be pretty dumb.”

Dor considered. “No, she’s infernally smart. All centaurs are. That’s why they’re the historians and poets and tutors of Xanth. May all their high-IQ feet founder.”

“How come they don’t rule Xanth, then?”

“Well, most of them don’t do magic, and only a Magician can rule Xanth. Brains have nothing to do with it-and neither do essays.”

Dor scowled at his blank paper.

“Only a Magician can rule any land,” the table said smugly. “But what about you? You’re a Magician, aren’t you? Why aren’t you King?”

“Well, I will be King, some day,” Dor said defensively, aware that he was talking with the table only to postpone a little longer the inevitable struggle with the essay. “When King Trent, uh, steps down. That’s why I have to be educated, he says.” He wished all kinds of maledictions on Cherie Centaur, but never on King Trent.

He resumed his morose stare at the paper, where he had now printed THU LANNED UV ZANTH. Somehow it didn’t look right, though he was sure he had put the TU’s in the right places.

Something tittered. Dor glanced up and discovered that the hanging picture of Queen Iris was smirking. That was one problem about working in Castle Roogna; he was always under the baleful eye of the Queen, whose principal business was snooping. With special effort, Dor refrained from sticking out his tongue at the picture.

Seeing herself observed, the Queen spoke, the mouth of the image moving. Her talent was illusion, and she could make the illusion of sound when she wanted to. “You may be a Magician, but you aren’t a scholar. Obviously spelling is not your forte.”

“Never claimed it was,” Dor retorted. He did not know what the word “forte” meant-perhaps it was a kind of small castle-but whatever it meant, spelling was not there. He did not much like the Queen, and the feeling was mutual, but both of them were constrained by order of the King to be reasonably polite to one another.