Chapter 1. Ghost Quest
Five-year-old Princess Ivy is quite bored, having been grounded to the castle for "no reason" and getting no attention since her baby brother Dolph was found in the cabbage patch. As she watches the Tapestry in her room, Jordan the ghost appears and reveals that the Tapestry tells his own history--a tale of adventure, love and his death by a cruel lie. But he can't remember much because the Tapestry is so dirty. Intrigued, Ivy uses a horseshoe dropped by a nightmare to sneak out to Humfrey's castle via the gourds. He's about her size now, and gives her the recipe for crewel lye. The ghosts help her make the substance and clean off the Tapestry, and Jordan begins his story.
Chapter 2. Pooka
Jordan the Barbarian wanted adventure, but his girlfriend Elsie wants him to settle down. In one night she proves how exciting married life could be and he promises to stay, but come morning he changes his mind and sneaks away--a cruel lie. He quickly tires of walking and tries to catch a Pooka. The ghost horse leads him on a long chase through jungle and poison berries, and almost tricks him into going into the void. Still chasing, Jordan saves the Pooka from a Roc, griffins, and loan sharks (good thing his magic talent is healing!) He uses the Pooka's chains to drag it from the muck it was sinking in into the Region of Fire.
Chapter 3. Callicantzari
Before long they are forced to flee the Region of Fire or burn, and Jordan rides Pooka up a mountain. They are attacked by Goblins until they are trapped in a cave, which they travel through until they run into the Callicantzari; foul smelling humanoids that live to undermine great trees. Pooka escapes as Jordan fends them off, but he is eventually overcome, his guts eaten, and his body placed in a pot to be cooked the next morning. He heals during the night and is carried away by the Pooka, who returned after finding a way out.
Chapter 4. Elf Elm
Jordan is still weak as they meet up with the elves. Fortunately, they are welcomed and treated to much entertainment in return for telling their story. Bluebell, a lovely female elf, gives him a map in exchange for a favor: she wants to summon the stork so she can have a halfling. An Accommodation spell makes them the same size for the deed. Afterwards the elven auror predicts that the child will be nothing special, but centuries later a female descendent will consort with the human Kings of Xanth. She also predicts Jordan's end by a cruel lie.
Chapter 5. Bundle of Joy
Pook and Jordan travel on into Dragon territory and encounter an injured Stork who was delivering an ogre. Together they flee past and battle dragons until they meet a dead end: the Gap Chasm (which wasn't on the map, of course.) The stork is killed and eaten but Jordan, Pook and the baby escape down a magic stream that runs down the chasm walls. At the bottom they escape the Gap dragon by taking some old tunnels that finally lead up the other side. They deliver the ogre baby at full gallop to the ugly parents and finally find Castle Roogna.
Chapter 6. Hero's Challenge
To Jordan's disappointment, Roogna is dank and decrepit, and King Gromden is sick and dying. But there is a prophecy that a hero on a tame Pooka will solve their problem: Magicians Yin and Yang have equal and opposite powers and personalities, their talents being the ability to make light or dark spells, and they need a third party to determine who is better. Thus Jordan is to take seven of Yin's spells and fetch a surprise object while Yang uses seven spells against him. The barbarian is eager for the adventure but Gromden is worried. His power is to see and hear the history of any object, and he has discovered that the contest is being held not to figure out who will take the throne, but which magician will serve the other.
Chapter 7. Mountain of Flesh
Jordan and Pook head northwest and go straight up a mountain. After Pook saves his rider from death by illusions caused by the snow of snow-birds, Jordan realizes that he horse stays not because he is tame, but because he is his friend. After a night fighting snow snakes they continue over the mountain crest and encounter the first dark spell: the loser-spell, which makes him forget which direction he was heading for. Jordan counteracts with the white compass, but instead the mountain turns to flesh. Yang switched the spells! Pook and Jordan slide down the quivering hill and narrowly avoid being swept away by melted snow.
Chapter 8. Tarasque
They continue on past dimepedes and sel-fish until forced to take a path enclosed by trees. They fend off dragon flies only to activate the dark monster spell, which summons a Tarasque: a feline-headed, bear-footed, clever dragon! They gallop for it, but the curving path trap slows them down. Jordan activates the white monster spell to banish it, but instead becomes smart. He ambushes the monster and almost wins, but at last the tarasque bites his face off. Pook gets the dragon to chase after him instead, and leads him back to the dimepedes. Pook tosses some ragweed at it, making it sneeze itself into the dimepede cave. The horse returns and rescues Jordan's unconscious body from the dragon flies and carries him away.
Chapter 9. Threnody
Pook takes him to a cabin where a woman named Threnody cleans him up. She tells him that the king's wife and daughter didn't just abandon him; the jealous queen put a curse on her daughter so that Roogna would fall if she remained there. When the king banished his wife, she put a curse on him; that he would forget about his daughter's curse. So the king has declared that the next successor must marry his daughter. As Jordan realizes that he is dying of poison, Threnody reveals that she is the princess, and that she can't and won't return. His body is tossed in the Gap Chasm, yet once again Jordan heals and is helped back up by Pook. They run into the dark stone spell, but the flesh spell has already been used. Jordan kicks the stone spell into the sea and invokes a random spell, which turns out to be the white compass. He heals until his magic is exhausted, leaving him with stone legs and a stone arm. He uses the compass spell to find Threnody, the object he must fetch.
Chapter 10. Demon Striation
Threnody puts up quite a fight, but is eventually tied up and placed on Pook. As they journey she tells him what really happened: a demoness disguised as a beautiful woman slept with the king to bring humiliation to the human kingdom with a halfbreed. Threnody's very presence was destroying the kingdom, and her curse-fiend foster mother cast her own curse to make her realize it. There was no curse on her father; he was just blind to her faults. Threnody claims to have no soul, but Jordan doubts that. They travel around slow sand and wait out a Technicolor hailstorm, but Threnody keeps escaping somehow. It turns out her talent is Demon-striation: she can change form, size, or density, each change taking an hour each.
Chapter 11. Sword and Stone
As they continue on they run into the dark sword spell. Jordan fends off the ferocious sword until Threnody tosses him a spell. It looks like the already expended eye-queue spell, but turns out to be the exchange spell. Jordan and Threnody switch bodies and the girl is immediately hacked to pieces. Jordan calms the sword down with his new feminine touch and, after convincing Pook who he really was, goes for a walk with the sword. After about an hour they are both diffuse, and he/she places the sword in a large stone. Another hour changes them both to solid, with the sword trapped. After tricking a hungry griffoness that he/she is inedible, Jordan drags his healing body down a stairway in a tree.
Chapter 12. Gnobody Gnomes
White Pook ran off to distract the night evils, Jordan and Threnody are captured by the Gnobody Gnomes, who spare their lives on the promise that they will sing to the cowboys. The bull-headed humanoids graze on moss where the gnomes want to mine, but music soothes them. Our heroes learn to sing together and come to appreciate each other's difficulties of being male or female. One of the cowgirls has a magic talent of speech: they ask her to help them escape. The night before the gnomes planned to cook the humans, they escape into the safety of the herd.
Chapter 13. Knightmare
In exchange for their rescue, they agree to be the sacrifices to the Knock-Kneed Knights. The knights stole much of the cowboys' grazing land and demand two cows each year to fight in a tournament: if ever the cows win they will be freed and their land restored. Disguised as cows, Jordan and Threnody enter the tournament but aren't given any weapons! After a tough battle they manage to spook the knight's horse, causing the knight to fall. To their surprise, there is nothing under the armor but air. They are nothing without honor, and they have been fighting dishonorably. They keep their word this time, though, and the humans walk freely to the surface with the knight's horse, a female Pooka. Pook and Peek get along instantly, and Jordan and Threnody return to their proper bodies after finding the dark switching spell.
Chapter 14. Idiocy
They continue on until Peek baulks: ahead is a land of basilisks. Jordan stumbles upon the dark idiocy spell and Threnody capitalizes on his stupidity to convince him to go back. Pook and Peek, disgusted, leave. A stork arrives to ascertain the fate of the dead stork and the ogret. Jordan travels on Threnody, who has changed into a dollarpede, and fends off a Roc with the shield spell. Threnody attempts to seduce him, but as Jordan regains his intelligence he turns them around, even though he's come to love her.
Chapter 15. Cruel Lie
They arrive at Roogna, but the trees, zombies, and moat monster fight to keep them out. Jordan manages to lower the drawbridge, then runs into the last dark spell: death. Threnody chops him to pieces and buries him all around Roogna's garden. Yin tries to convince her to cross the bridge, but she tells him to stop the charade: Yin and Yang are aspects of the same person. She declares Yang the winner, and Yin transforms forever into his dark side. They embrace, gloat, and abandon the castle, which remains unused until Trent finds it centuries later. Jordan's ghost eventually finds true love with a ghost named Renee.
Chapter 16. Caustic Truth
Jordan's story is finished, but Ivy is determined to find his bones and put him together again. Renee knows where they are, and Stanley digs them up. With healing elixir and Ivy's talent combined, Jordan comes back to life, and insists on bringing Renee back too, to her dismay. By rattling chains they summon Pook, who is overjoyed and brings out Peek and Puck, his ghost-colt. Pook still has they unused white spells; the white monster-banishing spell makes Stanley vanish, but the life spell reanimates Renee. She is none other than Threnody. Furious, Jordan tries to bring her into Castle Roogna, causing an earthquake: the curse was real. Jordan lets her go and grieves over his foolishness while Ivy consults Hugo via magic mirror. She relays the answer to Jordan: Threnody really did love him. She pretended to hate him and cut him up so Yang couldn't do worse to his remains. Yin wanted to be Yang, the while quest was a cruel lie. Yang always remained suspicious of his wife, so she could never dig him back up. Eventually she returned near the castle and killed herself. Jordan leaves to make up with his love, and Ivy explains the earthquake and the loss of two castle ghosts to her parents. Baby Dolph is upset because he can't get his magic to work, so Ivy enhances him. He turns out to be a shapeshifter! For the first time, Ivy feels a little love for her new brother.