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be?”
    “Oh, anything,” he said impatiently. He began to dictate.

Xanth 14 - Question Quest
    Chapter 3. Anything
    I was born of wholesome parents in the year 933. This calendar dates from Xanth's First Wave of human colonization. Some few human folk had settled in Xanth before then, perhaps around the year -2200, but then Xanth became an island; there were not enough of them to maintain the population, and they faded out by —1900. It was probably good riddance. The main evidences of their presence are the crossbreeds they generated: harpies, cowboys, werewolves, mermaids, and similar ilk. Later the isthmus was restored and more humans crossed over, generating the centaurs. But only with the First Wave did human history become continuous, so that was the Year Zero.
    Successive Waves of human colonization from Mundania brought shame to Xanth, until after the Fourth Wave, in 228, when Magician Roogna assumed power, built Castle Roogna, and ushered in Xanth's Golden Age. Castle Roogna was deserted when King Gromden died in 677 and King Yang took over. The human influence in the peninsula slowly declined, ushering in what was called Xanth's Dark Age, had anyone noticed or cared before it was too late.
    But this summation becomes tedious. The tabular history of Xanth will be provided in an appendix for those few who are morbidly curious about the dead past.
    However, one good thing had happened recently: the year before my birth, Magician-King Ebnez adapted the Deathstone into the Shieldstone, protecting Xanth from further Waves. Magician Roogna had had the power to adapt living magic to his ends, while Magician Ebnez adapted inanimate magic; both were to have significant effect on human events. This was to usher in a period of historical calm. The Twelfth Wave became known as the LastWave, because there were no more Waves until 1042 when King Trent's Mundane army settled peacefully in Xanth.
    Thus it was my fortune to live in the most peaceful part of Xanth's Dark Age. Actually, it was rather dull. There is a blessing: “May you live in boring times.” I would rather have suffered the curse of interesting times.
    I was the youngest of three children. My older brother inherited the farm, and my older sister was incurably bossy. It therefore behooved me to set out alone for far adventures. Unfortunately the only trade I knew was what I had learned at home: tic farming. We grew tics, which constantly twitched, and harvested and bundled them for the clocks of other folk. Once in the clock, the properly ripened tics measured the time. Without them, the clocks had nothing but tocks and were useless, but with them they proceeded in a steady line of tick-tocks and kept good time. There were few clocks in Xanth, because there were few people in Xanth, and my family's farm provided all the tics that were needed. It would have been pointless to start up another such farm. My training was useless in the outside realm.
    I had one other liability: I had unmitigated curiosity. That was all. I had no magic talent that I knew of. In those days there was no requirement in that respect; it was the later Storm King who idiotically decreed that every citizen of Xanth had to have a magic talent, however minor. The only real rule at this time was that only a Magician could be king. That dates from the Fourth Wave and has generally worked well, because only a Magician has power to enforce his edicts. So I, as a talentless young man, without athletic ability, small of stature and unhandsome, became one of the nonentities of Xanth. Others neither knew nor cared what I was doing, as long as I did not bother them.
    So I walked from village to village, exploring and looking around, learning all I could about everything I could, unobtrusively. Since villages were far apart, most of my time was spent on the paths between them. These paths were unkempt and often dangerous; this was between the times of enchanted paths, other than those set up for special