"So do I!" Chex agreed fervently. "So it is up to us to find a way to make that possible. Now Cheiron will not relent until Che is home with us. While Godiva—"

"It's not her, really," Jenny said. "I mean, it was, maybe, because she started it by foal-napping Che. But she gave him his choice, after we met Gwenny. He could have gone home then. But."

"But Gwendolyn would have died, in due course," Chex said. "So it was Che's decision, even if you made it. He wanted someone older and more objective than he was to make it, so he could be sure it was right. And perhaps it was right, for him. So now it is Che on the other side. We have one male centaur against another, and we as females must find a way to resolve it."

"But how can we?" Jenny asked plaintively. "Che has to be either with you or with Gwenny."

"Unless we went to join him in Goblin Mountain!" Chex said, with a short and not very mirthful laugh.

"You wouldn't fit in there," Jenny said, with a trace less unmirth. "But you know, Che can visit you. Once he gave his word—"

"True. But he would have to return, and it is obvious that he will have to spend a lot of time with Gwendolyn, because any slip would be disastrous. Cheiron wants him free of Goblin Mountain entirely, because there is a great deal of education he must have. There simply isn't time to accommodate both Che's centaur heritage and full-time companionship with Gwendolyn."

"I guess not," Jenny agreed sadly. "Unless she could come along."

"Come along?"

"And be with him while he learned," she said. "She wants to get out and see things, only she can't. She's never been out of Goblin Mountain. Because she can get by in her room, alone, or maybe in a tunnel where she knows exactly where everything is. But outside it would be hopeless."

"Unless she had a competent companion." Chex sighed. "I do see the problem."

"Of course, with Che she could do it, because he would tell her what to see. Only he wouldn't tell her, he'd have some sort of signals only a centaur could memorize, that nobody else knew about. That's why it has to be a centaur; they have mental powers others don't."

"True," Chex said. "I could do it. But of course a grown centaur wouldn't. We have other business. So does Che, actually."

"Other business?"

"He is destined to change the course of the history of Xanth. That's why he has to be free, even if he wasn't a centaur and our foal. We cannot allow the goblins to interfere with that. Indeed, we feared that his abduction was a plot to prevent his destiny from being achieved."