Yet evidently he had. She searched out the prints. They seemed hesitant at first, as if he had been looking for something. Then they became purposeful and moved straight toward the thickest section of the forest.

Chex followed, her alarm increasing. She had hoped that Che had merely wandered and was somewhere close by, perhaps caught in a bramble and unable to extricate himself. But now she feared something worse: he had gone somewhere, and that could only be because something had lured him. There was unlikely to be any good purpose in that.

In a moment her worst suspicion was confirmed: there were signs of an ambush. Something had been lurking here, waiting for Che, and had captured him. There was a bit of cut vine, evidently used to tie up the foal, and the ground was scuffed. But something had gone over the ground with a brush from a nearby brush bush and wiped out all the tracks. She couldn't tell who or what had kidnapped her foal. All she knew was that it had been accomplished quickly and silently.

She searched all around, but there were no tracks of any kind leading from the ambush area. Yet this was not a spot for flying by any creature large enough to carry a little centaur; the vines were tangled in with the foliage of the trees, with several hangman's nooses just waiting for some unwary dragon or griffin to make their day. It was as if kidnapper and foal had vanished at this spot.

Chex shuddered. That meant magic! Che must have been conjured to some other part of Xanth.

But why? She could understand a predator crunching its prey, awful as that concept was in this case. But to lure Che into a trap and conjure him away? What use could anyone have for a winged centaur foal who couldn't yet fly?

At least it meant he was alive. She had suppressed her fear of the worst, because it was unbearable. But how long would he remain alive? Maybe his captor didn't realize that he couldn't fly, and when it found out—

She had to get help. Che had to be found before anything worse happened to him.

She trotted back to the glade, then spread her wings, flicked herself hard with her tail, and took off. She could make anything light by flicking it with her tail. That was how she got rid of biting flies; the moment her tail touched them, they became too light to remain sitting and were launched into the air, where they had to buzz for some time to get things under control again. When she wanted to make herself light enough to fly, she used her tail on her body, and then it was easy for her wings to carry the reduced weight. When the effect faded and she began to get heavy, she just flicked herself again. But she tried not to do that near the end of a flight, because it could be hard to stay on the ground if a gust of wind came along.