"Are you supposed to be Mayor McCheese?"
Kyle rolled his eyes for the dozenth time. "No, it's a historical --"
"Oh, I know! You're one of those saucer-head people from that old TV show about drugs." Other convention attendees streamed around them, hurrying off to panels or going to the hotel's main hall.
"No. Look. The convention is called Xanadu, so this" -- he gestured to his outfit of PVC pillars dangling from a bamboo roof of a hat -- "is based on the summer palace of Kublai Khan."
The man in the rainbow pony costume scratched his head. "Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm going to go check out the dealers' tables."
Kyle grumbled and made his way into the main convention hall. Nobody had understood his costume. Kublai Khan actually had two capitals, emphasizing his combined Mongol/Chinese empire, and in the summer capital he had a sort of mobile tent with a fusion of architectural styles, fit for arguably the richest man in the world. Somehow, nobody appreciated this fascinating history. Instead, everybody else in the hall was dressed in costumes without any theme at all. There was a Pikachu with a trainer, robots, a dragon, elves, spacemen, superheroes, and so on. Kyle would have preferred a costume contest with a clearer aesthetic sense.
The man in charge of Xanadu was about to give a speech. Kyle edged closer. The pillars dangling from his big hat rustled and clicked as he moved through the crowd.
The speaker got into the convention's spirit by putting on a raven mask, the only bit of ornament he had on.
Light flashed through the convention hall. Kyle staggered, then passed out.
When he woke up, his vision was blurry, but he seemed to be standing. Kyle tried to look around. He didn't turn his head so much as open his eyes in a way that seemed... split, oddly angled, hard to describe. The Xanadu convention hall had been burned and smashed and looted, probably in that order, judging from the craters in the floor and the shattered chandeliers and charred curtains. A terrorist attack! He tried to run, but he couldn't move. Paralyzed.
"Help!" he called out. His voice echoed in the huge, empty hall. No -- he seemed to be speaking in chorus. "Hello? Anyone there?" He tried to turn his head and instantly, his perspective shifted to a different angle, with no movement in between.
Someone yelped and ran from behind him, dressed as a medieval bard. Kyle said, "Wait! Who are you?" Kyle saw a silk rope below him, tripping the man.
The minstrel staggered upright, turned around, and gaped. "The tent!" He stared several feet up to meet Kyle's eye level.
"I... what?" said Kyle.
"I get it! You're a Mage's Magnificent Mansion, cast by a high-level wizard! Or possibly one of the variant classes from the eastern lands sourcebook. The voices must be coming from the built-in Unseen Servant spells, though this seems more like a Magic Mouth effect."
This explanation didn't help. Kyle said, "What are you going on about?"
"Oh, man, you don't know? Everybody transformed. Turned into their costumes or something like that. My new bardic knowledge says you're one of those magic mansion spells. I got a couple of spells of my own." He strummed a chord on a silver lyre, and a spray of colors shot out from the instrument to splatter like flowers against the far wall. For an encore he conjured some dancing lights that hovered around him.
Kyle stared. "Magic?" Whatever had happened here, had knocked a hole in one wall the size and shape of a hulking ogre, or possibly the Incredible Hulk. He'd seen people in costumes resembling both. Some shining crystals dangled from the ceiling; he was sure those were new. Between those and the bard's supposed spells, Kyle had to wonder if this medieval rock star was on to something.
Kyle said, "I can't move. What do you see? Not in Dungeons and Dragons terms."
The bard stopped with his mouth open and one hand raised, as though about to wax poetic. "Uh. You turned into a big tent with a bamboo roof. I mean, really big. I woke up in there and --"
"You were inside me?!"
"Come on, tent-man, don't make it sound dirty. I must've taken shelter in there when all the crazy stuff happened. Woke up inside. I'm seeing a bunch of dragon sculptures on the pillars, and you're talking through them."
Marco Polo had described the Pleasure Dome as having carved dragons worked into the columns, supporting the bamboo half-trunks that formed a shingled circular roof. Kyle had seen a modern architect's proposal for how it was built, but had imagined that the dragons were shaped to alternately face inward and outward. Suddenly Kyle's view shifted and he saw down from a high place inside a tent that had cushions and low tables for hundreds of people. In the room's center stood a firepit with a collection of metal woks and a stack of plates and chopsticks.
"I can see inside," said Kyle, staring at everything, rapidly switching between inside and outside views of the place as though from many cameras. "I can't move."
"Even with those dragon arms?"
Kyle couldn't see any of the dragon sculptures. He tried to focus on one and move the arms from the architectural drawings. They hadn't been part of his costume; he wasn't nuts enough to make it that detailed. Still he felt little claws stretching, barely in his field of view. "I feel like a T-rex."
The bard shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Don't be sad about this. It's kind of cool. Better than that guy who turned into a mouse and got eaten, anyway, or the zombies." He shuddered.
"Zombies?"
"That's why I hid inside... uh, the tent."
"It's the Cane Palace of Kublai Khan."
"
You're the Cane Palace of Kublai Khan," the bard said, as though he'd always wanted to use that as an insult comeback. "Where's your sacred river and demon lovers and caves of ice?"
Kyle felt himself sighing from many dragon mouths. "Coleridge's poem is barely based on the history. It was a drug trip, mostly. The real thing was a place for entertaining and dining in between hunting parties and actual imperial business."
"Dining! You show up as a Mage's Magnificient Mansion spell to my powers. Can you make food?"
"I don't exactly have hands."
"I mean by magic."
"I have no idea how..." Kyle thought of the woks. He
felt the woks, and his vision zoomed in on them from several dragon vantage points. He concentrated, and slabs of meat and baskets of vegetables appeared from nowhere to start frying in a burst of flaming oil and spices.
The bard said, "Hey, Mongolian food!" and ran inside Kyle.
"Did I say you could --"
"Never mind that. Look, you've got food magic! And what's this stuff?" He watched the food frying and hefted a mug of some white drink.
"That'd be fermented horse milk. Very historically authentic."
"Oh, wow, if you can generate food like that, then you could make all kinds of money as a restaurant."
Kyle would have shuddered if he could. The initial shock was wearing off. He might be stuck this way, immobile, a freak. What would he even do with money? "Will this wear off?"
"So far it hasn't," the bard said.
"Then use your magic to fix it! Or find me a wizard or something with a curse removal spell."
"You're really upset about this?"
"I'm a freaking historical landmark! No, not even that, I'm a temporary shelter meant to be packed away for nine months a year."
The musician considered, and strummed his harp. "Maybe I can help. Bardic knowledge, right? Maybe... okay, I've got an idea. How do you feel about long distance travel?"
#
The man with a ferret's fur-mask and tail smiled for the camera. "How are you feeling, Kyle?"
Kyle floated. There wasn't much else he could do while hurtling around the Earth. "As well as can be expected for having been taken apart and put back together."
It'd taken some convincing to get Kyle to agree. The bard had hooked him up with another Xanadu attendee, Ethan Musk, who'd been inspired to start an aerospace company called X-Space. It took multiple rocket launches to get all of Kyle's pillars and bamboo into orbit. Kyle had fallen unconscious at some point in the disassembly process, repeating to himself that he had faith in his own historical accuracy. The mobile palace was designed to be taken down and moved, so the thing he'd become had the same ability. He'd woken back up to feel astronauts finalizing the installation of airlocks and handholds and velcro all over him. Fortunately his "canvas" sides, roof and floor seemed as impervious to radiation and other space threats as they were to the worst storms of the Mongolian steppe. The palace as he'd imagined it was always warm and not at all stuffy, so his new interior was just as pleasant without having to install air scrubbers and heat radiators.
Result: orbital Mongolian restaurant / magic space station.
Ethan Mask said, "You're going to do great things for humanity, Kyle. Now that you're installed, we have a free source of food, air and pressurized living space. We are going to the stars, and we're going to eat delicious stir-fried beef and vegetables on the way."
Kyle flew over Kazakhstan and China, watching the sun rise. If the great Khan's palace was going to be the headquarters of a campaign to bring cultures together and conquer the stars in the name of a Great Blue Heaven, he was proud to be part of that. It was entirely historically appropriate.
Based on the "Xanadu" story setting by Bryan Derksen and Xodiac.
