A Spell for Chameleon

A Spell for Chameleon Piers Anthony

Chapter 1.

Xanth

A small lizard perched on a brown stone. Feeling threatened by the approach of human beings along the path, it metamorphosed into a stingray beetle, then into a stench-puffer, then into a fiery salamander. Bink smiled. These conversions weren't real. It had assumed the forms of obnoxious little monsters, but not their essence. It could not sting, stink, or burn. It was a chameleon, using its magic to mimic creatures of genuine threat.

Yet as it shifted into the form of a basilisk it glared at him with such ferocity that Bink's mirth abated. If its malice could strike him, he would be horribly dead.

Then abruptly a silent moth hawk swooped down from the sky and caught the chameleon in its beak. There was a thin scream of anguish as the lizard convulsed; then it dangled limply as the hawk ascended. The chameleon, despite all its pretensions, was dead. Even while trying to threaten Bink it had been destroyed by another agency.

This retaliation continued to percolate through Bink's emotion. The chameleon was harmless-but most of untamed Xanth was not. Was this some twisted omen, a small suggestion of a dire fate awaiting him? Omens were serious business; they always came true, but usually were misinterpreted until too late. Was Bink fated to die brutally-or was some enemy of his?

He had, so far as he knew, no enemies.

The golden sun of Xanth shone through the magic shield, striking sparkles from the trees. All plants had their enchantments, but no spell could eliminate the need for light, water, and healthy soil. Instead, magic was used to make these necessities of the vegetable kingdom more available, and to protect the plants from destruction, unless they were overpowered by stronger magic or simple bad luck, like the chameleon.

Bink looked at the girl beside him as she stepped through a slanting sunbeam. He was no plant, but he too had needs, and even the most casual inspection of her made him aware of this. Sabrina was absolutely beautiful-and her beauty was completely natural. Other girls managed to enhance their appearance by cosmetics or padding or specialized spells, but beside Sabrina all other females looked somewhat artificial. She was no enemy!

They came to Lookout Rock. This was not a particularly lofty promontory, but its situational magic made it seem more elevated than it was, so that they could look down on a quarter slice of Xanth. This was a land of multicolored vegetation, small pretty lakes, and deceptively quiet fields of flowers, ferns, and crops. Even as Bink watched, one of the lakes expanded slightly, making itself seem cooler and deeper, a better place for a swim.

Bink wondered briefly about this, as he often did. He had an unruly mind, which constantly pestered him with questions for which there were no ready answers. As a child he had driven parents and friends almost to distraction with his "Why is the sun yellow?" "Why do ogres crunch bones?" "Why can't sea monsters cast spells?" and similarly infantile prattle. No wonder he had soon been hustled away to centaur school. Now he had learned to control his mouth, but not his brain, and so he let it run on in silence.

Animate spells he could understand, such as those of the unfortunate chameleon; they facilitated comfort, survival, or image for living creatures. But why should inanimate things have magic? Did a lake care who swam in it? Well, maybe so; a lake was an ecological unit, and the community of living things within it might have a mutual interest in promoting it. Or a freshwater dragon might be responsible, luring in prey. Dragons were the most varied and dangerous life forms of Xanth; species occupied air, earth, and water, and a number breathed fire. One thing they all had in common: good appetite. Pure chance might not bring in enough fresh meat.

But what about Lookout Rock? It was bare, without even lichen, and hardly beautiful. Why should it want company? And if it did, why not make itself more handsome, instead of remaining gray and drab? People did not come here to admire the rock, but to admire the rest of Xanth. Such a spell seemed self-defeating.

Then Bink stubbed his toe on a sharp fragment of stone. He was standing on a cracked-rock terrace, formed generations ago by the breaking up of a pretty-colored boulder and-

There it was! That other boulder, which must have been close to Lookout Rock and of similar size, had been fragmented to make this path and terrace, losing its identity. Lookout Rock had survived. Nobody would break it up, because it would make an ugly path, and its unselfish magic made it useful as it stood. One minor mystery solved.

Still, there were philosophical considerations, his insatiable mind insisted. How could an inanimate thing think or have feelings? What was survival to a rock? A boulder was merely the fragment of a prior layer of rock; why should it have a personal identity if the bedrock didn't? Still, the same question could be asked of a man: he had been formed from the tissues of the plants and animals he consumed, yet he had a separate-.

"What did you wish to talk to me about, Bink?" Sabrina inquired demurely.

As if she didn't know. But as his mind formed the necessary words, his mouth balked. He knew what her answer had to be. No one could remain in Xanth after his twenty-fifth birthday unless he demonstrated a magic talent. Bink's own critical birthday was barely a month away. He was no child now. How could she marry a man who was so soon to be exiled?

Why hadn't he thought of that before bringing her out here? He could only embarrass himself. Now he had to say something to her, or suffer further embarrassment, making it awkward for her as well "I just wanted to see your-your"

"See my what?" she inquired with an arch lift of eyebrow.

He felt the heat starting up his neck. "Your holograph,'' he blurted. There was much more of her he longed to see, and to touch, but that could come only after marriage. She was that sort of girl, and it was part of her appeal. The girls who had it didn't need to put it on casual display.

Well, not quite true. He thought of Aurora, who certainly had it, yet who-

"Bink, there is a way," Sabrina said.

He glanced sidelong at her, then quickly away, confused. She couldn't be suggesting-

"The Good Magician Humfrey," she continued blithely.

"What?" He had been on quite a different track, no credit to his willful mind.

"Humfrey knows a hundred spells. Maybe one of them-I'm sure he could find out what your talent is. Then everything would be all right."

Oh. "But he charges a year's service for a single spell," Bink protested. "I have only a month." But that was not quite accurate; if the Magician identified a talent for Bink, then he would not be exiled, and he would have a year available. He was deeply touched by Sabrina's faith in him. She did not say what others said: that he had no magic. She did him the immense courtesy of choosing to believe that his magic merely remained undiscovered.

Perhaps it was that faith that had first attracted him to her. Certainly she was beautiful and intelligent and talented, a prize by any definition. But she could have been much less in all categories and still been his-

"A year is not so long," Sabrina murmured. "I would wait."

Bink stared down at his hands, pondering. His right hand was normal, but he had lost the middle finger of his left hand in a childhood accident. It had not even been the result of inimical magic; he had been playing with a cleaver, holding down a stalk of coilgrass while he chopped, pretending it was the tail of a dragon. After all, a boy could not start to practice too early for the serious side of life. The grass had twitched out of grip as he swung, and he had grabbed for it, and the cleaver had come down hard on his extended finger.

It had hurt, but the worst of it was that because he was not supposed to play with the cleaver, he had not dared scream or tell of his injury. He had controlled himself with extreme effort and suffered in silence. He had buried the finger, and managed to hide his mutilation by keeping his hand closed for several days. When the truth finally came out, it was too late for a restorative spell; the finger was rotted and could not be reattached. A strong-enough spell could have attached it-but it would have remained a zombie finger.

He had not been punished. His mother, Bianca, believed he had learned his lesson-and he had, he had! Next time he played with a cleaver on the sly he would watch where his fingers were. His father seemed privately pleased that Bink had shown so much courage and tenacity in adversity, even in his wrongdoing. "The lad's got nerve," Roland had said. "Now if only he had magic-"

Bink jerked his eyes away from the hand. That had been fifteen years ago. Suddenly a year seemed short indeed. One year of service-in exchange for a lifetime with Sabrina. It was a bargain.

Yet - suppose he had no magic? Was he to pay a year of his life to verify the certainty of being thrust into the drear realm of the null-talented? Or would it be better to accept exile, preserving the useless hope that he did have a latent talent?

Sabrina, respecting his flurry of contemplation, began her holograph. A haze of blue appeared before her, hanging over the slope. It expanded, thinning at the edges, intensifying in the center, until it was two feet in diameter. It looked like thick smoke, but did not dissipate or drift.

Now she began to hum. She had a good voice-not a great one, but right for her magic. At the sound, the blue cloud quivered and solidified, becoming roughly spherical. Then she changed her pitch, and the outer rim turned yellow. She opened her mouth, singing the word "girl," and the colors assumed the shape of a young lass in a blue dress with yellow frills. The figure was three-dimensional, visible from all sides with differing perspective.

It was a fine talent, Sabrina could sculpt anything-but the images vanished the moment her concentration stopped, and never had any physical substance. So this was, strictly speaking, useless magic. It did not improve her life in any material fashion.

Yet how many talents really did help their people? One person could make a leaf of a tree wither and die as he looked at it. Another could create the odor of sour milk. Another could make insane laughter bubble up from the ground. These were all magic, no question about it-but what use were they? Why should such people qualify as citizens of Xanth while Bink, who was smart, strong, and handsome, was disqualified? Yet that was the absolute rule: no nonmagical person could remain beyond his quarter-century mark.

Sabrina was right: he had to identify his talent. He had never been able to find it on his own, so he should pay the Good Magician's price. Not only would this preserve him from exile-which really might be a fate worse than death, since what was the point in life without magic?-and win him Sabrina, a fate considerably better than death. It would also redeem his battered self-respect. He had no choice.

"Oh!" Sabrina exclaimed, clapping her hands to her pert derriere. The holograph dissolved, the blue-dressed girl distorting grotesquely before she vanished. "I'm on fire!"

Bink stepped toward her, alarmed. But even as he moved, there was loud juvenile laughter. Sabrina whiffed furiously. "Numbo, you stop that!" she cried. She was one of those girls who was as appealing in anger as in joy. "It's not funny."

It was, of course, Numbo who had given her a magical hotseat, a fiery pain in the posterior. Talk about a useless talent! Bink, his fists clenched so tightly that his thumb jammed into the stub of his missing finger, strode toward the grinning youth standing behind Lookout Rock. Numbo was fifteen, cocky and annoying; he needed a lesson.

But Bink's foot struck a loose rock, which turned his ankle long enough to cost him his balance. It didn't hurt, but it interrupted his forward progress. His hand swung forward-and his fingers touched an invisible wall.

There was another shout of laughter. Bink hadn't crashed headlong into the wall, thanks to the providential stone under his foot, but evidently someone thought he had.

"You too, Chilk" Sabrina said. That was Chilk's talent: the wall. It was a kind of complement to Sabrina's talent; instead of being visible without substance, it had substance without visibility. It was only six feet square; and, like so many talents, it was strictly temporary-but it was hard as steel in the first few moments.

Bink could dodge around it and run the kid down-but he was sure to get caught several times by that re-manifesting wall, and suffer more damage than be could do to the boy. It wasn't worth it. If only he had a talent of his own, such as Numbo's hotseat, he could make the joker sorry regardless of the wall But he didn't, and Chilk knew it. Everyone knew it. That was Bink's big problem. He was fair game for all the pranksters, because he couldn't strike back-not magically, and it was deemed crass to do it physically. Right now he was quite ready to be crass, however.

"Let's get out of here, Bink," Sabrina said. There was disgust in her voice, nominally directed at the intruders, but Bink suspected part of it applied to him. An impotent kind of rage began building up-one he had felt many times before, and had never gotten used to. He had been balked from proposing to her by the lack of a talent, and he could not stay here, for the same reason. Not here at Lookout Rock or here in Xanth. Because he didn't fit.

They walked back down the path. The jokers, getting no further rise from their prey, went in search of other mischief. The landscape no longer seemed so lovely. Maybe he'd be better off away from here. Maybe he should take off now, not waiting to be officially exiled. If Sabrina really loved him, she'd come with him-even Outside, into Mundania.

No, he knew better than that. Sabrina loved him-but she loved Xanth, too. She had such a sweet shape, such kissable lips, that she could find another man much more easily than she could adjust to the rigors of life among the nonmagical. For that matter, he could find another girl more easily than…what he faced. So probably, objectively, he'd be better off going alone. So why didn't his heart agree?

They passed the brown stone where the chameleon had perched, and he shuddered.

"Why don't you ask Justin?" Sabrina suggested as they approached the village. It was dusk, closing in faster here than up at Lookout Rock. The village lamps were coming on.

Bink glanced across at the unique tree she indicated. There were many kinds of trees in Xanth, a number of them vital to the economy. Beerbarrel trees were tapped for drink, and oilbarrel trees for fuel, and Bink's own footwear came from a mature shoe tree east of the village. But Justin Tree was something special, a species never sprouted from seed. Its leaves were shaped like flat hands, and its trunk was the hue of tanned human flesh. This was scarcely surprising, since it had once been human.

In an instant that history flashed across Bink's mind-part of the dynamic folklore of Xanth. Twenty years ago there had been one of the greatest of the Evil Magicians: a young man named Trent. He had possessed the power of transformation-the ability to change any living thing into any other living thing, instantly. Not satisfied with his status of Magician, granted in recognition of the awesome strength of his magic, Trent had sought to use his power to preempt the throne of Xanth. His procedure had been simple and most direct: he transformed anyone who opposed him into something that could not oppose him. The worst threats he converted to fish-on dry land, allowing them to flop until they died. The mere nuisances he changed to animals or plants. Thus several intelligent animals owed their status to him; though they were dragons, two-headed wolves, and land-octopi, they retained the intelligence and perspective of their human origins.

Trent was gone now-but his works remained, for there was no other transformer to change them back. Holographs, hotseats, and invisible wails were qualifying talents, but transformation was of a different order. Only once in a generation did such power manifest in an individual, and it seldom manifested twice in the same form. Justin had been one of Magician Trent's annoyances-no one remembered exactly what he had done-so Justin was a tree. No one had the ability to change him back into a man.

Justin's own talent had been voice projection-not the parlor trick that was ventriloquism, or the trivial talent of insane laughter, but genuine comprehensible utterance at a distance without the use of vocal cords. He retained this talent as a tree, and as he had a great deal of time for thought, villagers often came to this tree for advice. Often it was good advice. Justin was no genius, but a tree had greater objectivity about human problems.

It occurred to Bink that Justin might actually be better off as a tree than he had been as a man. He liked people, but it was said that in his human form he had not been handsome. As a tree he was quite stately, and no threat to anyone.

They veered to approach Justin. Suddenly a voice spoke directly in front of them: "Do not approach, friends; ruffians are lurking."

Bink and Sabrina drew up short. "Is that you, Justin?'' she asked. "Who is lurking?"

But the tree could not hear as well as it could speak, and did not answer. Wood did not seem to make the best ears.

Bink, angry, took a step toward it. "Justin is public scenery," he muttered. "Nobody has a right to-"

"Please, Bink!" Sabrina urged, pulling back on arm. "We don't want any trouble."

No, she never wanted any trouble. He would not go so far as to call this a fault in her, but at times it became annoyingly inconvenient Bink himself never let trouble bar him from a matter of principle. Still, Sabrina was beautiful, and he had caused her trouble enough already tonight. He turned to accompany her away from the tree.

"Hey, no fair!" a voice exclaimed. "They're going away."

"Justin must've tattled," another cried.

"Then let's chop down Justin."

Bink halted again. "They wouldn't!" he said.

"Of course they wouldn't," Sabrina agreed. "Justin is a village monument. Ignore them."

But the voice of the tree came again, a bit misplaced in relation to Bink and Sabrina-evidence of poor concentration. "Friends, please fetch the King quickly. These ruffians have an axe or something, and they've been eating locoberries."

"An axe!" Sabrina exclaimed in sheer horror.

"The King is out of town," Bink muttered. "Anyway, he's senile."

"And he hasn't summoned more than a summer shower in years," Sabrina agreed. "Kids didn't dare make so much mischief when he had his full magic."

"We certainly didn't," Bink said. "Remember the hurricane flanked by six tornadoes he summoned to put down the last wiggle spawning? He was a real Storm King then. He-"

There was the ringing sound of metal biting into wood. A scream of sheer agony erupted from the air. Bink and Sabrina jumped.

"That's Justin!" she said. "They're doing it."

"No time for the King anyway," Bink said. He charged toward the tree.

"Bink, you can't!" Sabrina cried after him, "You don't have any magic."

So the truth came out, in this moment of crisis. She didn't really believe he had a talent. "I've got muscle, though!" he yelled back. "You go for help."

Justin screamed again as the blade struck a second time. It was an eerie wooden noise. There was laughter-the merry mirth of kids out on a lark, having no care at all what consequences their actions might have. Loco? This was mere insensitivity.

Then Bink was there. And-he was alone. Just when he was in the mood for a good fight. The malicious pranksters had scattered.

He could guess their identities-but he didn't have to. "Jama, Zink, and Potipher," Justin Tree said. "Oooo, my foot!"

Bink squatted to inspect the cut. The white wood-wound was clearly visible in contrast to the shoelike bark of the base of the tree trunk. Driblets of reddish sap were forming, very much like blood. Not too serious for a tree this size, but surely extremely uncomfortable.

"I'll get some compresses for that," Bink said. "There's some coral sponge in the forest near here. Yell if anyone bothers you while I'm gone."

"I will," Justin said. "Hurry." Then, as an afterthought: "You're a great guy, Bink. Much better than some who-uh-"

"Than some who have magic," Bink finished for him. "Thanks for trying to spare my feelings." Justin meant well, but sometimes spoke before he thought. It came from having a wooden brain.

"It isn't fair that louts like Jama are called citizens, while you-"

"Thanks," Bink said gruffly, moving off. He agreed completely, but what was the use talking about it? He watched out for anyone lurking in the bushes, waiting to bother Justin when the tree was unprotected, but saw nobody. They were really gone.

Jama, Zink, and Potipher, he thought darkly-the village troublemakers. Jama's talent was the manifestation of a sword, and that was what had chopped Justin's trunk. Anyone who could imagine that such vandalism was funny-

Bink remembered one of his own bitter experiences with that bunch, not so many years ago. Intoxicated by locoberries, the three had lurked in ambush along one of the paths beyond the village, just looking for mischief. Bink and a friend had walked into that trap, and been backed up against the cloud of poison gas that was Potipher's magic talent, while Zink made mirage-holes near their feet and Jama materialized flying swords for them to duck. Some sport!

Bink's friend had used his magic to escape, animating a golem from a stick of wood that took his place. The golem had resembled him exactly, so that it fooled the pranksters. Bink had known the difference, of course, but he had covered for his friend. Unfortunately, though the golem was immune to poison gas, Bink was not. He had inhaled some of it, and lost consciousness even as help arrived. His friend had brought Bink's mother and father-

Bink had found himself holding his breath again as the poison cloud enveloped him. He saw his mother tugging at his father's arm, pointing Bink's way. Bianca's talent was replay: she could jump time back five seconds in a small area. This was very limited but deviously powerful magic, for it enabled her to correct a just-made mistake. Such as Bink's breath of poison gas.

Then his breath had whooshed out again, making Bianca's magic useless. She could keep replaying the scene indefinitely, but everything was replayed, including his breath. But Roland looked, piercingly-and Bink had frozen.

Roland's talent was the stun gaze: one special glance and what he looked at was frozen in place, alive but immobile until released. In this manner Bink had been prevented from breathing the gas a second time, until his rigid body had been carried out.

As the stun abated, he had found himself in his mother's arms. "Oh my baby!" she cried, cradling his head against her bosom. "Did they hurt you?"

Bink came to an abrupt stop by the bed of sponge, his face flushing even now with the keen embarrassment of the memory. Had she had to do that? Certainly she had saved him from an early death-but he had been the laughingstock of the village for an interminable time thereafter. Everywhere he went, kids exclaimed "My baby!" in falsetto, and sniggered. He had his life-at the expense of his pride. Yet he knew he could not blame his parents.

He had blamed Jama and Zink and Potipher. Bink had no magic, but, perhaps for that reason, he was the huskiest boy in the village. He had had to fight as long as he could remember. He was not especially well coordinated, but he had a lot of raw power. He had gone after Jama privately and demonstrated convincingly that the fist was swifter than the magic sword. Then Zink, and finally Potipher; Bink had hurled him into his own gas cloud, forcing him to dissolve it very suddenly. Those three had not sniggered at Bink thereafter; in fact, they tended to avoid him-which was why they had scattered when he charged the tree. Together they could have overcome him: but they had been well conditioned by those separate encounters.

Bink smiled, his embarrassment replaced by grim pleasure. Perhaps his manner of dealing with the situation had been immature, but there had been a lot of satisfaction in it. Down underneath he knew it had been his irritation at his mother that motivated him, displaced to people like Jama-but he did not regret it. He did love his mother, after all.

But in the end his only chance to redeem himself had been to find his own magic talent, a good strong one like that of his father, Roland. So no one would dare to tease him or laugh at him or baby him: ever again. So that pure shame would not drive him from Xanth. And that had never happened. He was known contemptuously as the "Spell-less Wonder."

He stooped to gather several good, strong sponges. These would abate Justin Tree's discomfort, for that was their magic: they absorbed agony and spread a healing comfort. A number of plants and animals-he was not quite sure in which category the sponges fit-had similar properties. The advantage of the sponges was that they were mobile; plucking them would not kill them. They were tough; they had migrated from the water when the corals did, and now thrived on land. Probably their magic healing properties had been developed to facilitate their lives in the new medium. Or maybe before the migration, since coral was cutting stuff.

Talents tended to run in schools, with one overlapping another; thus many variants of each type of magic showed up in the plant and animal kingdoms. But among people, magic varied extremely widely. It seemed that individual personality had more to do with it than heredity, though the strongest magic tended to turn up in particular family lines. As if strength of magic was hereditary, while type of magic was environmental. Yet there were other factors-

Bink could fit a lot of reflection into a passing moment. If reflection were magic, he'd be a Magician. But right now he'd better concentrate on what he was doing, or he'd be in trouble.

Dusk was intensifying. Dismal shapes were rising out of the forest, hovering as if seeking prey. Eyeless and formless, they nevertheless conducted themselves with a disquieting awareness, orienting on Bink-or seeming to. More magic was unexplained than was safely catalogued. A will-o'-the-wisp caught Bink's nervous eye. He started to follow the half-glimpsed light, then abruptly caught himself. The lure of the wisp was sheer mischief. It would lead him into the wilderness and lose him there, prey to the hostile magic of the unknown. One of Bink's childhood friends had followed the wisp and never returned. Warning enough!

Night transformed Xanth. Regions like this one that were innocent by day became horrors as the sun sneaked down. Specters and shades came out, questing for their ghastly satisfactions, and occasionally a zombie ripped free of its grave and marched clumsily about. No sensible person slept outdoors, and every house in the village had repulsion spells against the supernatural. Bink did not dare use the shortcut back to Justin Tree; he would have to go the long way, following the looping but magically protected trails. This was not timidity but necessity.

He ran-not from fear, for there was no real danger on this charmed route, and he knew the paths too well to stray accidentally from them, but in order to reach Justin more swiftly. Justin's flesh was wood, but it hurt every bit as much as normal flesh. How anyone could be so crass as to chop at Justin Tree

Bink passed a field of sea oats, hearing the pleasant swish and gurgle of their oceanic tides. When harvested, they made excellent foamy broth, except that it tended to be rather salty. The bowls could only be filled half-way; otherwise the broth's continuing sea waves slopped over.

He remembered the wild oats he had planted as an adolescent. Sea oats were restless, but their cousins the wild oats were hyperactive. They had fought him savagely, their stems slashing across his wrists as he tried to harvest a ripe ear. He had gotten it, but had been uncomfortably scratched and abraded before getting clear of the patch.

He had planted those few wild seeds in a secret plot behind his house, and watered them every day, the natural way. He had guarded the bad-tempered shoots from all harm, his anticipation growing. What an adventure for a teenaged male! Until his mother, Bianca had discovered the plot. Alas, she had recognized the species instantly.

There had been a prompt family hassle. "How could you?" Bianca demanded, her face flaming. But Roland had labored to suppress his admiring smile. "Sowing wild oats!" he murmured. "The lad's growing up."

"Now, Roland, you know that-"

"Dear, it isn't as if there's any real harm in it."

"No harm!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"It is a perfectly natural urge for a young man-" But her furious expression had halted Bink's father, who feared nothing in Xanth but was normally a peaceable man. Roland sighed and turned to Bink. "I gather you do know what you were doing, son?"

Bink felt excruciatingly defensive. "Well-yes. The nymph of the oats-"

"Bink!" Bianca snapped warningly. He had never seen her so angry before.

Roland held up his hands, making peace. "Dear-why don't you let us work this out, man-to-man? The boy's got a right."

And so Roland had betrayed his own bias; when his man-to-man chat was with Bink, it was with a boy.

Without another word, Bianca had stalked out of the house.

Roland turned to Bink, shaking his head in a gesture that was only nominally negative. Roland was a powerful, handsome man, and he had a special way with gestures. "Genuine wild oats, culled thrashing from the stem, sown by the full moon, watered with your own urine?" he inquired frankly, and Bink nodded, his face at half heat. "So that when the plants mature, and the oat nymph manifests, she will be bound to you, the fertilizer figure?"

Bink nodded grimly.

"Son, believe me, I comprehend the attraction; I sowed wild oats myself when I was your age. Got me a nymph, too, with flowing green hair and a body like the great outdoors-but I had forgotten about the special watering, and so she escaped me. I never saw anything so lovely in my life-except your mother, of course."

Roland had sown wild oats? Bink had never imagined such a thing. He remained silent, afraid of what was coming.

"I made the mistake of confessing about the oats to Bianca," Roland continued. "I fear she became somewhat sensitized on the subject, and you caught the brunt. These things happen."

So his mother was jealous of something that had happened in his father's life before he married her. What a pitful of concepts Bink had stumbled into, unwittingly.

Roland's face became serious, "To a young man, inexperienced, the notion of a lovely, nude, captive nymph may be phenomenally tempting," he continued. "All the physical attributes of a real woman, and none of the mental ones. But, son, this is a juvenile dream; like finding a candy tree. The reality really would not be all you anticipated. One quickly becomes surfeited, tired of unlimited candy, and so it also is with-with a mindless female body. A man can not love a nymph. She might as well be air. His ardor rapidly turns to boredom, and to disgust."

Still Bink dared not comment. He would not have become bored, he was sure.

Roland understood him, too well. "Son, what you need is a real live girl," he concluded. "A figure with a personality, who will talk back to you. It is far more challenging to develop a relationship with a complete woman, and often extremely frustrating." He glanced meaningfully at the door through which Bianca had departed. '"But in the long run it is also far more rewarding. What you sought in the wild oats was a shortcut-but in life there are no shortcuts." He smiled. "Though if it had been up to me, I'd have let you try the shortcut. No harm in it; no harm at all. But your mother-well, we have a conservative culture here, and the ladies tend to be the most conservative-especially the pretty ones. It's a small village-smaller than it used to be-so everybody knows his neighbor's business. So we are circumscribed. Know what I mean?"

Bink nodded uncertainly. When his father laid down the law, however circumspectly, that was final. "No more oats."

"Your mother-well, she was caught by surprise by your growing up. The oats are out-she's probably rooting them up right this instant-but you still have a lot of good experience ahead of you. Bianca might like to think of you as a little boy forever, but even she can't balk nature. Not for more than five seconds! So she'll simply have to go along with it."

Roland paused, but Bink was silent again, unsure of what his father was leading up to.

"There's a girl due to move here from one of the lesser villages," Roland continued. "Theoretically this is for proper schooling, since we have the best centaur schoolmaster in Xanth. But I suspect the underlying reason is that there simply aren't many eligible boys in her village. I understand she has not yet discovered her magic talent, and she's about your age-" He paused to glance meaningfully at Bink. "I think she could use a handsome, healthy young man to show her around and warn her of local hazards. I understand she is extremely smart and pretty, and soft-spoken-a rare combination.''

Then Bink began to understand. A girl-a real girl-for him to get to know. One who would not be prejudiced by his lack of magic. And Bianca would not be able to disapprove, though privately she might dislike the fact of Bink's newly masculine drives. His father had given him a viable option. Suddenly he realized he could do without wild oats.

"Her name is Sabrina," Roland said.

A light ahead brought Bink back to the present. Someone was standing by Justin Tree, holding a magic lamp. "It is all right, Bink," Justin's voice said in the air beside him. "Sabrina brought help, but it wasn't needed. Did you get the sponge?"

"I got it," Bink said.

So his little adventure had been no adventure at all. Just like his life. As Sabrina helped him pack the sponge around Justin's wound, Bink realized that he had decided. He could not go on this way, a nonentity; he would go to see the Good Magician Humfrey and learn what his own magic talent was.

He glanced up. His eyes caught those of Sabrina, glowing by the light of the lamp. She smiled. She was even more lovely now than she had been when he first met her, so many years ago, when they had both been adolescents, and she had always been true to him. There was no question: Bink's father had been correct about the advantages-and frustrations-of a real live girl. Now it was up to Bink to do what he had to do-to become a real live man.

Chapter 2.

Centaur

Bink set off on foot, wearing a stuffed knapsack and bearing a good hunting knife and a home-cut staff. His mother had urged him to let them hire a guide for him, but Bink had had to refuse; the "guide" would really be a guard to keep him safe. How world he ever live that down? Yet the wilderness beyond the village had its hazards for the traveler unfamiliar with it; few people hiked it alone. He really would have been better off with a guide.

He could have had transport on a winged steed, but that would have been expensive, and risky in its own fashion. Griffins were often surly creatures. He preferred to make his own way on the secure ground, if only to prove that he could, despite the fancied snickers of the village youths. Jama wasn't snickering much at the moment-he was laboring under the mortification spell the village Elders had put on him for his attack on Justin Tree-but there were other snickerers.

At least Roland had understood. "One day you'll discover that the opinions of worthless people are worthless," he had murmured to Bink. "You have to do it your own way. I comprehend that, and wish you well-on your own."

Bink had a map, and knew which path led to the castle of the Good Magician Humfrey. Rather, which path had led there; the truth was that Humfrey was a crotchety old man who preferred isolation in the wilderness. Periodically he moved his castle, or changed the approaches to it by magical means, so that one never could be sure of finding it. Regardless, Bink intended to track the Magician to his lair.

The first leg of his journey was familiar. He had spent his whole life in the North Village and explored most of its surrounding bypaths. Hardly any dangerous flora or fauna remained in the immediate vicinity, and those that were potential threats were well known.

He stopped to drink at a water hole near a huge needle cactus. As he approached, the plant quivered, making ready to fire on him. "Hold, friend," Bink said commandingly. "I am of the North Village." The cactus, restrained by the pacification formula, withheld its deadly barrage. The key word was "friend"; the thing certainly was not a friend, but it had to obey the geis laid on it. No genuine stranger would know this, so the cactus was an effective guard against intruders. Animals below a certain size it ignored. Since most creatures had to have water sooner or later, this was a convenient compromise. Some areas had been ravaged occasionally by wild griffins and other large beasts, but not the North Village. One experience with an irate needler more than sufficed as a lesson for the animal lucky enough to survive it.

Another hour's swift march brought him to less-familiar territory, by definition less safe. What did the people of this area use to guard their water holes? Unicorns trained to impale strangers? Well, he would find out soon enough.

The rolling hills and small lakes gave way to rougher terrain, and strange plants appeared. Some had tall antennas that swiveled to orient on him from a distance; others emitted subtly attractive crooning noises, but had branches bearing powerful pincers. Bink walked at a safe distance around them, taking no unnecessary risks. Once he thought he spied an animal about the size of a man, but it had eight spiderlike legs. He moved on rapidly and silently.

He saw a number of birds, but these were of little concern. Since they could fly, they had little need for defensive magic against man, so he had no cause to be wary of them-unless he saw any big birds; those might consider him prey. Once he spied the monstrous form of a roc in the distance, and cowered down, letting it wing on without seeing him. So long as the birds were small, he actually preferred their company, for the insects and bugs were at times aggressive.

In fact, a cloud of gnats formed around his head, casting a mass sweat spell that made him even more uncomfortable. Insects had an uncanny ability to discern those with no magic for defense. Maybe they merely used trial and error, getting away with whatever they could. Bink looked about for bug-repellent weeds, but found none. Weeds were never where one wanted them. His temper was getting short as the sweat streamed down his nose and into his eyes and mouth. Then two little sucker-saps swooped in, sucking up the gnats, and he had relief. Yes, he liked little birds!

He made about ten miles in three hours, and was tiring. He was in good condition generally, but was not used to sustained marching with a heavy pack. Every so often he got a twinge from the ankle he had turned at Lookout Rock. Not a bad twinge, for it turned out to be a minor hurt; just enough to keep him cautions.

He sat on a hillock, first making sure it contained no itch ants, though it did have a needle cactus. He approached this very cautiously, uncertain as to whether it had been tamed by the spell. "Friend," he said, and just to make sure he spilled a few drops of water from his canteen onto the soil for its roots to taste. Apparently it was all right; it did not let fly at him. Even wild things often responded to common courtesy and respect.

He broke out the lunch lovingly packed by his mother. He had food for two days-enough to get him to the Magician's castle under ordinary circumstances. Not that things in Xanth were usually ordinary! He hoped to extend that by staying overnight with some friendly farmer. He would need food for the return trip, too, and in any event did not relish the notion of sleeping outdoors. Night brought out special magic, and it could be ugly. He did not want to find himself arguing cases with a ghoul or ogre, since the case would most likely be the proper disposition of his human bones: whether they should be consumed live, while the marrow was fresh and sweet, or crunched after being allowed to age for a week after death. Different predators had different tastes.

He bit into the cressmato sandwich. Something crunched, startling him, but it was not a bone, just a flavorstem. Bianca certainly knew how to make a sandwich. Roland always teased her about that, claiming she had mastered the art under the tutelage of an old sandwitch. Yet it was unfunny to Bink, for it meant he was still dependent on her-until he finished what she had prepared and foraged for himself.

A crumb dropped and vanished. Bink looked around and spied a chipmouse chewing busily. It had conjured the crumb ten feet, avoiding the risk of close approach. Bink smiled. "I wouldn't hurt you, chip."

Then he heard something: the pounding of hooves. Some big animal was charging, or a mounted man approached. Either could mean trouble. Bink stuffed a chunk of wingcow cheese into his mouth, suffering a brief vision of the cow flying up to graze on the treetops after being relieved of her load of milk. He closed up his pack and shrugged his arms into the straps. He took his long staff in both hands. He might have to fight or run.

The creature came into sight. It was a centaur, the body of a horse with the upper torso of a man. He was naked, in the manner of his kind, with muscular flanks, broad shoulders, and an ornery visage.

Bink held his staff before him, ready for defense but not aggressively so. He had little confidence in his ability to outfight the massive creature, and no hope of outrunning him. But maybe the centaur was not unfriendly, despite appearances-or did not know that Bink had no magic.

The centaur pulled up close. He held his bow ready, an arrow nocked. He looked formidable indeed. Bink had developed a lot of respect for centaurs in school. This was obviously no elder sage, however, but a youthful brute. "You are trespassing," the centaur said. "Move off this range."

"Now wait," Bink said reasonably. "I'm a traveler, following the established path. It's a public right-of-way."

"Move off," the centaur repeated, his bow swinging around menacingly.

Bink was normally a good-natured fellow, but he had a certain ornery streak that manifested in times of stress. This journey was vitally important to him. This was a public path, and he had had his fill of deferring to magical menaces. The centaur was a magical creature, having no existence in the Mundane world beyond Xanth, by all accounts. Thus Bink's aggravation against magic was stirred up again, and he did something foolish.

"Go soak your tail!" he snapped.

The centaur blinked. Now he looked even huskier, his shoulders broader, his chest deeper, and his equine body even more dynamic than before. Obviously he was not accustomed to such language, at least not directed at him, and the experience startled him. In due course, however, he made the requisite mental and emotional adjustments, signaled by an awe-inspiring knotting of oversized muscles. A deep red, almost purple wash of color ascended from the hairy horse base up through the bare stomach and scarred chest, accelerating and brightening as it funneled into the narrower neck and finally dying the head and ugly face explosively. As that inexorable tide of red rage ignited his ears and penetrated to his brain, the centaur acted.

His bow swung about, the nocked arrow drawing back. As it bore on Bink, the arrow let fly.

Naturally, Bink wasn't there. He had had ample opportunity to read the storm signals. As the bow moved, he ducked under. Then he straightened up right under the centaur's nose and brought his staff around in a hard swing. It fetched the creature a smart rap on the shoulder, doing no actual harm. But it had to sting severely.

The centaur emitted a bellow of sheer impassioned rage. He whipped his bow around with his left hand while his right hand dived for the quiver of arrows hanging on his equine shoulder. But now Bink's staff was tangled in his bow.

The creature threw down the bow. The action ripped the staff out of Bink's hands. The centaur made a huge fist. Bink scurried around to the rear as that fist swung at him. But the rear of the centaur was no safer than the front; one leg licked back violently. Through a freak of timing, it missed Bink and clubbed into the trunk of the needle cactus.

The cactus responded with a barrage of flying needles. Even as the hoof struck, Bink threw himself flat on the ground. The needles overshot him and plunked into the handsome posterior of the centaur. Once more Bink had lucked out: he was miraculously untouched by either hoof or needles.

The centaur neighed with truly amazing volume. Those needles hurt; each one was two inches long, and barbed, and a hundred of them decorated the glistening surface, tacking the tail to the donkey, as it were. Had the creature been facing the cactus, he could have been blinded or killed as the barbs punctured his face and neck; he was lucky, too, though he hardly seemed to appreciate his fortune at the moment.

Now there were no bounds to the centaur's anger. An unholy contortion of utter rage ravaged his homely face. He did a massive prance, his hindquarters rising and descending in an arc, bringing his front part abruptly adjacent to Bink. Two crushingly powerful arms shot out, and two horny hands closed about Bink's relatively puny neck. Slowly they tightened, with viselike deliberation. Bink, lifted off the ground so that his feet dangled, was helpless. He knew he was about to be strangled; he could not even plead for mercy, for his air and much of his blood were cut off.

"Chester!" a female voice cried.

The centaur stiffened. This did Bink no good.

"Chester, you put that man down this instant!" the voice said peremptorily. "Do you want an interspecies incident?"

"But, Cherie," Chester protested, his color abating several shades. "He's an intruder, and he asked for it."

"He's on the King's path," Cherie said. "Travelers are immune to molestation; you know that. Now let him go!"

The lady centaur hardly seemed to be in a position to enforce her demand, but Chester slowly bowed to her authority. "Can't I just squeeze him a little?" he begged, squeezing a little. Bink's eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets.

"If you do, I'll never run with you again. Down!"

"Aaaww…" Reluctantly Chester eased off. Bink slid to the ground, reeling. What a fool he had been to tangle with this brute!

The female centaur caught him as he swayed. "Poor thing!" she exclaimed, cushioning his head against a plush pillow. "Are you all right?"

Bink opened his mouth, gagged, and tried again. It seemed that his crushed throat would never unkink. "Yes," he croaked.

"Who are you? What happened to your hand? Did Chester-"

"No," Bink said hastily. "He didn't bite off my finger. That's a childhood injury. See, it's long since healed over."

She inspected it carefully, running her surprisingly delicate fingers over it. "Yes, I see. Still…"

"I-I am Bink of the North Village," he said. He turned his head to face her-and discovered the nature of the pillow he rested against. Oh no, not again! he thought. Will I always be babied by women? Centaur females were smaller than the males, but still stood somewhat taller than human beings. Their humanoid portions were somewhat better endowed. He jerked his head away from her bare front. It was bad enough being babied by his mother, let alone a lady centaur. "I am traveling south to see the Magician Humfrey."

Cherie nodded. She was a beautiful creature, both as horse and as human, with glossy flanks and a remarkable human forefigure. Her face was attractive, only very slightly long of nose in the equine manner. Her brown human hair trailed all the way down to her saddle region, balancing her similarly flowing tail. "And this ass waylaid you?"

"Well-" Bink looked at Chester, again noting the rippling muscle beneath the deadly glower. What would happen when the filly departed? "It was-it was a misunderstanding."

"I'll bet," Cherie said. But Chester relaxed a trifle. Evidently he did not want to tangle with his girlfriend. Bink could readily appreciate why. If Cherie was not the loveliest and spunkiest centaur of the herd, she was surely close to it.

"I'll just be moving on now," Bink said. He could have done this at the outset, allowing Chester to run him off in a southerly direction. He had been as much to blame for the altercation as the centaur. "Sorry about the problem." He held out his hand to Chester.

Chester showed his teeth, which were more like horse's teeth than human ones. He made a big fist.

"Chester!" Cherie snapped. Then, as the centaur guiltily relaxed his fist: "What happened to your flank?"

The male's complexion darkened again, but not precisely with rage this time. He trotted his damaged posterior around to avoid the inquiring gaze of the female. Bink had almost forgotten about the needles. They must still be hurting-and it would hurt more to yank them all out. What a pain in the tail! A most awkward locale to discuss in mixed company. He almost felt sympathy for the surly creature.

Chester suppressed his assorted reactions and with fine discipline took Bink's hand. "I hope everything comes out all right in the end," Bink said, with a smile that became a bit broader than intended. In fact, he feared it resembled a smirk. And abruptly he knew he shouldn't have chosen those particular words or that particular expression on this particular occasion.

Something homicidal reddened the whites of the centaur's eyes. "Quite all right," he gritted through the grinding of clenched teeth. His hand began to squeeze-but his eyes were not yet so bloodshot as to miss the filly's glare. The fingers relaxed unwillingly. Another close call. Bink could have had his fingerbones pulped in that grip.

"I'll give you a lift," Cherie decided. "Chester, put him on my back."

Chester put his hands under Bink's elbows and hoisted him like a feather. For a moment Bink feared he would be thrown fifty feet…but Cherie's fair eye was still on them, and so he landed safely and gently on the lady's back.

"Is that your staff?" she inquired, glancing at the tangled staff and bow. And Chester, without even being directed, lifted the staff and returned it to Bink; who tucked it slantwise between his back and his pack for easy transport.

"Put your arms around my waist, so you won't fall off when I move," Cherie said.

Good advice. Bink was inexperienced at riding, and there was no saddle. Very few honest horses remained in Xanth. Unicorns were very touchy about being mounted, and the winged horses were almost impossible to catch or tame. Once, when Bink was a child, a horsefly had been singed by a dragon, losing its flight feathers, and had had to prostitute itself so far as to give the villagers short rides in exchange for food and protection. The moment it had recovered, it had flown away. That had been Bink's only prior riding experience.

He leaned forward. The staff interfered, preventing him from bending his back sufficiently. He reached back to draw it out-and it fell out of his hands to the ground. There was a snort from Chester that sounded suspiciously like humor. But the centaur picked it up and returned it to him. Bink tucked it under his arm this time, leaned forward again, and hugged Cherie's slender waist, heedless of Chester's renewed glower. Some things were worth the risk-such as getting out of here in a hurry.

"You go to the vet and get those needles out of your-" Cherie began, speaking over her shoulder to the male.

"Right away!" Chester interrupted. He waited for her to start, then turned and cantered off in the direction he had come from, a little awkwardly. Probably each motion inflamed his hindquarters more.

Cherie trotted down the path. "Chester is really a good creature at heart," she said apologetically. "But he does tend to be a bit arrogant, and he gets his tail all knotted up when balked. We've had some trouble with outlaws recently, and-"

"Human outlaws?" Bink asked.

"Yes. Kids from the north, doing mischief magic, gassing our livestock, shooting swords into trees, making dangerous pits seem to appear under our feet, that sort of thing. So naturally Chester assumed-"

"I know the culprits," Bink said. "I had a scrape with them myself. They've been grounded now. If I had known they were coming down here-"

"There just doesn't seem to be much discipline on the range these days," she said. "According to the Covenant, your King is supposed to keep order. But recently-"

"Our King is getting old," Bink explained. "He's losing his power, and there's a lot of trouble cropping up. He used to be a major Magician, a storm brewer."

"We know," she agreed. "When the fireflies infested our oatfields, he generated a storm that rained five days and drowned them all. Of course, it also ruined our crops-but the flies were doing that already. Every day new fires! At least we were able to replant without further molestation. We are not forgetting the help he rendered. So we don't want to make an issue of it-but I don't know how much longer stallions like Chester are going to put up with these annoyances. That's why I wanted to talk with you-maybe when you go home, if you could call things to the attention of the King-"

"I don't think that would work. I'm sure the King wants to keep order; he just doesn't have the power any more."

"Then perhaps it is time for a new King."

"He's getting senile. That means he hasn't got the sense to step down, and won't admit there's any problem.''

"Yes, but problems don't go away by being ignored!" She made a delicate feminine snort. "Something has to be done."

"Maybe I can get some advice from Magician Humfrey," Bink said. "It's a serious business, deposing a King; I don't think the Elders would go for it. He did do good work in his prime. And there's really nobody to replace him. You know that only a great Magician can be King."

"Yes, of course. We centaurs are all scholars, you know."

"Sorry, I forgot. Our village school is run by a centaur. I just wasn't thinking of that, in the wilderness."

"Understandable-though I'd call this range, not wilderness. I specialize in humanoid history, and Chester studies horsepower applications. Others are legal scholars, experts in natural sciences, philosophers-" She broke off. "Now hang on. There's a trench up ahead I've got to hurdle."

Bink had been relaxing, but now he leaned forward again and clasped his hands tightly around her waist. She had a sleek, comfortable back, but it was too easy to slide off. However, if she weren't a centaur, he would never have had the nerve to assume such a position!

Cherie picked up speed, galloping down the hill, and the motion made him bounce alarmingly. Peering ahead under her arm, he saw the trench. Trench? It was a gorge, some ten feet across, rushing up at them. Now he was more than alarmed; he was frightened. His hands became sweaty, and he began to slide off the side. Then she leaped with a single mighty spasm of her haunches and sailed up and across.

Bink slipped further. He had a glimpse of the stony bottom of the trench; then they landed. The jolt caused him to slide around even more. His arms scrambled desperately for a more secure hold-and wandered into distinctly awkward territory. Yet if he let go-

Cherie caught him around the waist and set him on the ground. "Easy," she said. "We made it."

Bink blushed. "I-I'm sorry. I started to fall, and just grabbed-"

"I know. I felt your weight shift as I leaped. If you had done it on purpose, I'd have dropped you into the trench." And in that instant she looked uncomfortably like Chester. He believed her: she could drop a man into a trench if she had reason to. Centaurs were tough creatures!

"Maybe I'd better walk now."

"No-there's another trench. They've been opening up recently."

"Well, I could climb down one side and up the other, carefully. It would take longer, but-"

"No-there are nickelpedes at the bottom."

Bink quailed. Nickelpedes were like centipedes, but about five times as large and considerably more deadly. Their myriad legs could cling to vertical rock faces, and their pincers could gouge out disks of flesh an inch across. They inhabited shadowed crevices, not liking direct sunlight. Even dragons hesitated to walk through ditches known to be infested by nickelpedes, and for good reason.

"The cracks have been opening up recently," Cherie continued as she kneeled to permit Bink to mount her again. He picked up his dropped staff and used it to help him climb. "I'm afraid there's big magic brewing somewhere, spreading throughout Xanth, causing discord in animal, vegetable, and mineral. I'll get you across that next trench; then it's beyond centaur territory.''

It hadn't occurred to him that there would be such barriers. They didn't show on his map. The trail was supposed to be clear and reasonably safe throughout. But the map had been made years ago, and these cracks in the ground were new, Cherie said. Nothing in Xanth was permanent, and travel was always somewhat risky. He was lucky he had obtained the lady centaur's help.

The landscape changed, as if the trench separated one type of place from another. Before it had been rolling hills and fields; now it was forest. The path became narrower, crowded by huge mock-pine trees, and the forest floor was a red-brown carpet of mock needles. Here and there were patches of light green ferns, which seemed to thrive where weeds could not, and regions of dark green moss. A cold wind gusted through, tousling Cherie's hair and mane, carrying strands back against Bink. It was quiet here, and there was a pleasant piney smell. He felt like dismounting and lying down in a bed of moss, just appreciating this peaceful spot.

"Don't do it," Cherie warned.

Bink jumped. "I didn't know centaurs practiced magic!"

"Magic?" she inquired, and he knew she was frowning.

"You read my mind."

She laughed. "Hardly. We do no magic. But we do know the effect these woods have on humans. It's the peace spell the trees make to protect themselves from getting chopped."

"Nothing wrong in that," Bink said. "I wasn't going to chop them anyway."

"They don't trust in your good intentions. I'll show you." She stepped carefully off the beaten trail, her hooves sinking into the soft pine-needle floor. She threaded her way between several dagger-spoked buck-spruce trees, passed a thin snake palm, which didn't even bother to hiss at her, and stopped near a tangle willow. Not too near; everyone knew better than that. "There," she murmured.

Bink looked where her hand pointed. A human skeleton lay on the ground. "Murder?" he asked, shivering.

"No, just sleep. He came to rest here, as you wished to do just now, and never got up the gumption to depart. Complete peace is an insidious thing."

"Yes…" he breathed. No violence, no distress-just loss of initiative. Why bother to work and eat when it was so much easier merely to relax? If a person wanted to commit suicide, this would be the ideal manner. But he had reason to live-so far.

"That's part of why I like Chester," Cherie said. "He'll never succumb to anything like this."

That was a certainty. There was no peace in Chester. Cherie herself would never succumb, Bink thought, though she was considerably more gentle. Bink felt the lassitude, despite the sight of the skeleton, but she was evidently able to resist the spell. Maybe the biology of the centaurs differed enough-or maybe she had savagery in her soul that her angelic form and pleasant words masked. Most likely a bit of both. "Let's get out of here."

She laughed. "Don't worry. I'll see you safely through it. But don't come back this way alone. Travel with an enemy, if you can find one; that's best."

"Better than a friend?"

"Friends are peaceful," she explained.

Oh. That did make sense. He'd never relax under a pine tree if he were with someone like Jama; he'd be too afraid of getting a sword in his gut. But what an ironic necessity: to locate an enemy to accompany one to walk through a peaceful forest! "Magic makes strange companions," he murmured.

This peace spell also explained why there was so little other magic here. The plants did not need individual defensive spells; no one was going to attack. Even the tangle tree had seemed quiescent, though he was sure it would make a grab when it had the chance, since that was the way it fed. Interesting how quickly magic faded when the immediate imperative of survival abated. No-there was magic, strong magic; it was the communal magic of the entire forest, with each plant contributing its modicum. If a person could figure out a way to nullify the effect in himself, perhaps with a countercharm, he could live here in absolute safety. That was worth remembering.

They threaded their way back to the path and resumed travel. Bink almost slid off his perch twice, falling asleep, each time awakening with a shock. He would never have made it out of here alone. He was glad to see the pine forest thin, shifting into hardwoods. He felt more alert, more violent, and that was good. Harder wood, harder feelings.

"I wonder who that was back there," Bink mused.

"Oh, I know," Cherie answered. "He was one of the Last Wave, who got lost, wandered in here, and decided to rest. Forever!"

"But the Lastwavers were savage!" Bink said. "They slaughtered indiscriminately."

"All Waves were savage, when they came, with one exception," she said. "We centaurs know; we were here before the First Wave. We had to fight all of you until the Covenant. You didn't have magic, but you had weapons and numbers and vicious cunning. Many of us died."

"My ancestors were First Wave," Bink said with a certain pride. "We always had magic, and we never fought the centaurs."

"Now don't get aggressive, human, just because I took you out of the peace pines," she cautioned. "You do not have our knowledge of history."

Bink realized that he'd better moderate his tone if he wanted to continue the ride. And he did want to continue; Cherie was pleasant company, and she obviously knew all the local magic, so that she was able to avoid all threats. Last and most, she was giving his tired legs a good rest while bearing him forward rapidly. Already she had taken him a good ten miles. "I'm sorry. It was a matter of family pride."

"Well, that's no bad thing," she said, mollified. She made her way delicately across a wooden trestle over a bubbling brook.

Suddenly Bink was thirsty. "May we stop for a drink?" he asked.

She snorted again, a very horselike sound. "Not here! Anyone who drinks from that water becomes a fish."

"A fish?" Suddenly Bink was twice as glad to have this guide. He surely would have drunk otherwise. Unless she was merely telling him that to tease him, or trying to scare him away from this area. "Why?"

"The river is trying to restock itself. It was cleaned out by the Evil Magician Trent twenty-one years ago."

Bink remained a bit skeptical about inanimate magic, especially of that potency. How could a river desire anything? Still, he remembered how Lookout Rock had saved itself from being broken up. Better to play it safe and assume that some features of the landscape could cast spells.

Meanwhile, the reference to Trent preempted his attention. "The Evil Magician was here? I thought he was a phenomenon of our own village."

"Trent was everywhere," she said. "He wanted us centaurs to support him, and when we balked-because of the Covenant, you know, not to interfere in human business-he showed us his power by changing every fish in this river into a lightning bug. Then he departed. I think he figured that those shocking buggers would force us to change our minds."

"Why didn't he change the fish into a human army, and try to conquer you that way?"

"No good, Bink. They might have had the bodies of men, but their minds would have remained fish. They would have made very wishy-washy soldiers, and even if they had been good soldiers, they would hardly have served the man who had put them under that enchantment. They would have attacked Trent."

"Urn, yes. I wasn't thinking. So he transformed them into lightning bugs and got well away from there so they couldn't shock him. So they went for the next best thing."

"Yes. It was a bad time for us. Oh, those bugs were a pain! They pestered us in clouds, scorching us with their little lightning bolts. I've still got scars on my-" She paused, grimacing. "On my tail." It was obviously a euphemism.

"What did you do?" Bink inquired, fascinated, glancing back to see whether he could locate the scars. What he could see seemed flawless.

"Trent was exiled soon after that, and we got Humfrey to abate the spell."

"But the Good Magician isn't a transformer."

''No, but he told us where to find repellent magic to drive off the flies. Denied our electrocooked flesh, the scourge soon died out. Good information is as good as good action, and the Good Magician certainly had the information."

"That's why I'm going to him?" Bink agreed. "But he charges a year's service for a spell."

"You're telling us? Three hundred head of centaur-one year each. What a job!"

"All of you had to pay? What did you have to do?"

"We are not permitted to tell," she said diffidently.

Now Bink was doubly curious, but he knew better than to ask again. A centaur's given word was inviolate. But what could Humfrey have needed done that he could not do himself via one of his hundred spells? Or at least by means of his good information? Humfrey was basically a divinator; anything he didn't know, he could find out, and that gave him enormous power. Probably the reason the village Elders had not asked the Good Magician what to do about their senile King was that they knew what he would answer: depose the King and install a new, young, fresh Magician instead. That they obviously weren't ready to do. Even if they could find such a young Magician to serve.

Well, there were many mysteries and many problems in Xanth, and it was hardly given to Bink to know of them all or to solve any. He had learned long ago to bow, however ungraciously, to the inevitable.

They were past the river now, and climbing. The trees were closing in more thickly, their great round roots ridging across the path. No hostile magic threatened; either the centaurs had cleaned out the area, the way the villagers had cleaned out Bink's home region, or Cherie knew this path so well that she avoided spells automatically, without seeming to. Probably some of both.

Life itself, he thought, involved many alternate explanations for perplexing questions, and was generally "some of both." Few things were hard and fast in Xanth.

"What was that history you know that I don't?" Bink inquired, becoming bored by the trail.

"About the Waves of human colonization? We have records of them all. Since the Shield and the Covenant, things have quieted down; the Waves were terrors."

"Not the Firstwavers!" Bink said loyally. "We were peaceful."

"That's what I mean. You are peaceful now, except for a few of your young hoodlums, so you assume your ancestors were peaceful then. But my ancestors found it otherwise. They would have been happier had man never discovered Xanth."

"My teacher was a centaur," Bink said. "He never said anything about-"

"He'd have been fired if he had told you the truth."

Bink felt uneasy. "You're not teasing me, are you? I'm not looking for any trouble. I have a very curious mind, but I've already had more trouble than I care for."

She turned her head around to fix him with a gentle stare. Her torso twisted from the human waist to facilitate the motion. The torque was impressive; her midsection was more limber than that of a human girl, perhaps because it was harder for a centaur to turn her whole body around. But if she had a human lower section to match the upper section, what a creature she would be!

"Your teacher didn't lie to you. A centaur never lies. He merely edited his information, on orders from the King, so as not to force on the impressionable minds of children things their parents did not want them to hear. Education has ever been thus."

"Oh, I wasn't implying any slight on his integrity," Bink said quickly. "I liked him, as a matter of fact; he was the only one who didn't get fed up with all my questions. I learned a lot from him. But I guess I didn't ask about history much. I was more preoccupied with something he couldn't tell me-but at least he did tell me about the Magician Humfrey."

"What is your question for Humfrey, if I may ask?"

What difference did it make? "I have no magic," he confessed. "At least, I seem to have none. All through my childhood I was at a disadvantage because I couldn't use magic to compete. I could run faster than anybody else, but the kid who could levitate still won the race. Stuff like that."

"Centaurs get along perfectly well without magic," she pointed out. "We wouldn't take magic if it were offered."

Bink did not believe that, but did not make an issue of it. "Humans have a different attitude, I guess. When I got older, it got worse. Now I will be exiled if I don't show some magic talent. I'm hoping Magician Humfrey can-well, if I do have magic, it means I can stay and marry my girl and have some pride. Finally."

Cherie nodded. "I suspected it was something like that. I suppose if I were in your situation I could choke down the necessity of having magic, though I really think your culture's values are distorted. You should base your citizenship on superior qualities of personality and achievement, not on-"

"Exactly," Bink agreed fervently.

She smiled. "You really should have been a centaur." She shook her head so that her hair flung out prettily. "You have undertaken a hazardous journey."

"Not more hazardous than the one to the Mundane world that will otherwise be forced on me."

She nodded again. "Very well. You have satisfied my curiosity; I'll satisfy yours. I'll tell you the whole truth about the human intrusion into Xanth. But I don't expect you to like it much."

"I don't expect to like the truth about myself much," Bink said ruefully. "I might as well know whatever there is to know."

"For thousands of years Xanth was a comparatively peaceful land," she said, assuming the somewhat pedantic tone he remembered from his school days. Probably every centaur was at heart a teacher. "There was magic, very strong magic-but no unnecessary viciousness. We centaurs were the dominant species, but, as you know, we have absolutely no magic. We are magic. I suppose we migrated here from Mundania originally-but that was so long ago it is lost even to our records."

Something tripped over in Bink's mind. "I wonder if that really is true-about magic creatures not being able to work spells? I saw a chipmouse conjure a crumb of bread-"

"Oh? Are you sure it wasn't a chipmunk? That is a natural creature, according to our taxonomy, so it might work magic."

"You tax animals?" Bink asked, amazed.

"Taxonomy," she repeated with an indulgent smile. "The classification of living things, another centaur specialty.''

Oh. Bink considered, embarrassed. "I thought it was a chipmouse, but I'm not quite certain now."

"Actually, we're not quite certain either," she admitted. "It may be that some magical creatures can work magic. But, as a general rule, a creature either does magic or is magic, not both. Which is just as well-think of the havoc a dragon Magician could make!"

Bink thought of it. He shuddered. "Let's get back to the history lesson," he suggested.

"About a thousand years ago the first human tribe discovered Xanth. They thought it was just another peninsula. They moved in and cut down the trees and slaughtered the animals. There was more than enough magic here to repulse them, but Xanth had never been subjected to such callous, systematic ravage before, and we did not quite believe it. We thought the humans would leave soon.

"But then they realized that Xanth was magic. They saw the animals levitating and the trees moving their branches. They hunted the unicorns and griffins. If you wonder why those big animals hate people, let me assure you they have good reason: their ancestors would not have survived if they'd tried to be friendly. The Firstwavers were nonmagical creatures in a land of spells, and after they got over the initial shock they liked it."

"Now that's wrong!" Bink exclaimed. "Humans have the very strongest magic. Look at all the great Magicians. You yourself told me just now how Evil Magician Trent changed all the fish-"

"Pipe down before I buck you off!" Cherie snapped. Her tail swished menacingly past Bink's ear. "You don't know the quarter of it. Of course humans have magic now. That's part of their problem. But not at the start."

Bink backed down again. It was increasingly easy to do; he liked this centaur lady very well. She was answering questions he hadn't even thought to ask yet. "Sorry. This is new to me."

"You remind me of Chester. I'll bet you're awful stubborn, too."

"Yes," Bink said contritely.

She laughed, and it sounded a bit like neighing. "I do like you, human. I hope you find your"-she pursed her lips distastefully-"magic." Then she flashed a sunny smile, and as quickly sobered. "Those Firstwavers had no magic, and when they found out what magic could do they were fascinated but a bit afraid of it. A number of them perished in a lake that had a drown spell, and some ran afoul of dragons, and when they met the first basilisk-"

"Are there still basilisks?" Bink inquired worriedly, abruptly remembering the omen of the chameleon. It had stared at him in the guise of a basilisk just before it died, as if its spell had backfired. He had yet to be sure of the meaning of that sequence.

"Yes, there are-but not many," she answered. "Both humans and centaurs labored to stamp them out. Their glance is fatal to us too, you know. Now they hide, because they know that the first intelligent creature killed that way will bring an avenging army of mirror-masked warriors down on them. A basilisk is no match for a forewarned man or centaur; it's just a small winged lizard, you know, with the head and claws of a chicken. Not very intelligent. Not that it usually needs to be."

"Say!" Bink exclaimed. "Maybe that's the missing factor-intelligence. A creature can do magic or be magic or be smart-or any two of the three, but never all three. So a chipmouse might conjure, but not a smart dragon."

She turned her head about again to face him. "That's a novel idea. You're pretty smart yourself. I'll have to think about it. But until we verify it, don't go into the central wilderness unprotected; there just might be a smart spell-throwing monster in there."

"I won't go into the wilderness," Bink promised. "At least, I won't stray from the cleared path through it, until I get to the Magician's castle. I don't want any lizards looking death at me."

"Your ancestors were more aggressive," Cherie remarked. "That's why so many of them died. But they conquered Xanth, and formed an enclave where magic was banned. They liked the country and the uses of magic, you see, but they didn't want it too close to home. So they burned the forest there, killed all magical animals and plants, and built a great stone wall."

"The ruins!" Bink exclaimed. "I thought those old stones were from an enemy camp."

"They are from the First Wave," she insisted.

"But I am descended from-"

"I said you wouldn't like this."

"I don't," he agreed. "But I want to hear it. How can my ancestors have-"

"They settled in their walled village and planted Mundane crops and herded Mundane cattle. You know-beans and wingless cows. They married the women they had brought along or that they could raid from the closest Mundane settlements, and had children. Xanth was a good land, even in that region expunged of magic. But then something amazing happened."

Cherie turned to face him again, glancing obliquely in a manner that would have been most fetching in a human girl. In fact, it was fetching in a centaur girl, especially if he squinted so as to see only her human portion: splendidly fetching, despite his knowledge that centaurs lived longer than humans, so that she was probably fifty years old. She looked twenty-a twenty that few humans ever achieved. No halter would hold this filly!

"What happened?" he asked, catering to her evident desire for an intellectual response. Centaurs were good storytellers, and they did like a good audience.

"Their children came up magic," she said.

Aha! "So the Firstwavers were magic!"

"No, they were not. The land of Xanth is magic. It's an environmental effect. But it works much better with children, who are more formative, and it works best with babies conceived and birthed here. Adults, even of long residence, tend to suppress the talents they have, because they 'know better.' But children accept what is. So not only do they have more natural talent, they use it with more enthusiasm."

"I never knew that," he said. "My folks have much more magic than I do. Some of my ancestors were Magicians. But me-" He sobered. "I'm afraid I was a terrible disappointment to my parents. By rights I should have had very strong magic, maybe even have been a Magician myself. Instead…"

Cherie discreetly did not comment. "At first the humans were shocked. But soon they accepted it, and even encouraged the development of special talents. One of the youngsters had the ability to transform lead into gold. They ravaged the hills, searching for lead, and finally had to send a mission to obtain it from Mundania. It was almost as if lead had become more valuable than gold."

"But Xanth has no dealings with the Mundane world."

"You keep forgetting: this is ancient history."

"Sorry again. I wouldn't interrupt so much if I weren't so interested."

"You are an excellent audience," she said, and he felt pleased. "Most humans would refuse to listen at all, because it is not a complimentary history. Not to your kind."

"I'd probably be less open-minded if I didn't face exile myself," he admitted. "About all I have to work with is my brain and body, so I'd better not fool myself."

"A commendable philosophy. You are, incidentally, getting a longer ride than I planned, because you pay such good, responsive attention. At any rate, they got the lead out-but paid a hideous price. Because the Mundanes of Mundania learned about the magic. They were true to their type: greedy and rapacious. The notion of cheap gold sent them into a frenzy. They invaded, stormed the wall, and killed all the First Wave men and children."

"But-" Bink protested, horrified.

"These were the Secondwavers," Cherie said gently. "They saved the Firstwaver women, you see. Because the Second Wave was an all-male army. They thought there was a machine to convert the lead into gold, or an alchemical process organized by a secret formula. They didn't really believe in magic; that was just a convenient term to describe the unknown. So they didn't realize that the lead was converted into gold by the magic of a child-until too late. They had destroyed what they had come for."

"Horrible!" Bink said. "You mean I am descended from-"

"From the rape of a First Wave mother. Yes-there is no other way you can authenticate your lineage. We centaurs had never liked the Firstwavers, but we were sorry for them then. The Secondwavers were worse. They were literal pirates, rapacious. Had we known, we would have helped the Firstwavers fight them off. Our archers could have ambushed them-" She shrugged. Centaur archery was legendary; no need to belabor the point.

"Now the invaders settled," she continued after a pause. "They sent their own archers all over Xanth, killing-" She broke off, and Bink knew how keenly she felt the irony of her kind being prey to the inferior archery of human beings. She gave a little shudder that almost dislodged him, and forced herself to continue. "Killing centaurs for meat. Not until we organized and ambushed their camp, putting shafts through half of them, did they agree to let us alone. Even after that, they did not honor their agreement very well, for they had precious little sense of honor."

"And their children had magic," Bink continued, seeing it now. "And so the Thirdwavers invaded and killed off the Secondwavers-"

"Yes, this happened after several generations, though it was every bit as vicious when it came. The Secondwavers had become tolerably good neighbors, all things considered, by then. Again, only the women were saved-and not many of them. Because they had been in Xanth all their lives, their magic was strong. They used it to eliminate their rapist husbands one by one in ways that could not be directly traced to the women. But their victory was their defeat, for now they had no families at all. So they had to invite in more Mundanes-"

"This is ghastly!" Bink said. "I am descended from a thousand years of ignominy,"

"Not entirely. The history of man in Xanth is brutal, but not without redeeming values, even greatness. The Second Wave women organized, and brought in only the finest men they could locate. Strong, just, kind, intelligent men, who understood the background but came more from principle than from greed. They promised to keep the secret and to uphold the values of Xanth. They were Mundanes, but they were noble ones."

"The Fourthwavers!" Bink exclaimed. "The finest of them all."

"Yes. The Xanth women were widows and victims of rape and finally murderesses. Some were old, or scarred physically and emotionally by the campaign. But they all had strong magic and iron determination; they were the survivors of the cruel upheaval that had wiped out all other humans in Xanth. These qualities were quite evident. When the new men learned the whole truth, some turned about and returned to Mundania. But others liked marrying witches. They wanted to have children with potent magic, and they thought it might be hereditary, so they regarded youth and beauty as secondary. They made excellent husbands. Others wanted the potentials of the unique land of Xanth developed and protected; they were the environmentalists, and magic was the most precious part of the environment. And not all the Fourthwavers were men; some were carefully selected young women, brought in to marry the children, so that there would not be too much inbreeding. So it was a settlement, not an invasion, and it was not rooted in murder but based on sound commercial and biological principles."

"I know," Bink said. "That was the Wave of the first great Magicians."

"So it was. Of course, there were other Waves, but none so critical. The effective dominance of human beings in Xanth dates from that Fourth Wave. Other invasions killed many and drove more into the backwoods, but the continuity was never broken. Just about every truly intelligent or magical person traces his ancestry to the Fourth Wave; I'm sure you do too."

"Yes," Bink agreed. "I have ancestors from the first six Waves, but I always thought the First Wave lineage was the most important."

"The institution of the Magic Shield finally stopped the Waves. It kept all Mundane creatures out and all Xanth creatures in. It was hailed as the salvation of Xanth, the guarantor of utopia. But somehow things didn't improve much. It is as if the people exchanged one problem for another-a visible threat for an invisible one. In the past century Xanth has been entirely free from invasion-but other threats have developed."

"Like the fireflies and the wiggles and Bad Magician Trent," Bink agreed. "Magical hazards."

"Trent was not a bad Magician," Cherie corrected him. "He was an Evil Magician. There's a distinction-a crucial one."

"Urn, yes. He was a good Evil Magician. Lucky they got rid of him before he took over Xanth."

"Certainly. But suppose another Evil Magician appears? Or the wiggles manifest again? Who will save Xanth this time?"

"I don't know," Bink admitted.

"Sometimes I wonder whether the Shield was really a good idea. It has the net effect of intensifying the magic in Xanth, preventing dilution from outside. As if that magic were building up toward an explosion point. Yet I certainly wouldn't want to return to the days of the Waves!"

Bink had never thought of it that way. "Somehow I find it hard to appreciate the problems of the concentration of magic in Xanth," he said. "I keep wishing there were just a little more. Enough for me, for my talent."

"You might be better off without it," she suggested. "If you could just obtain a dispensation from the King-"

"Ha!" Bink said. "I'd be better off living like a hermit in the wilderness. My village won't tolerate a man without a talent."

"Strange inversion," she murmured.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of Herman the Hermit. He was exiled from our herd some years back for obscenity."

Bink laughed. "What could be obscene to a centaur? What did he do?"

Cherie drew up abruptly at the edge of a pretty field of flowers. "This is as far as I go," she said tersely.

Bink realized that he had said the wrong thing. "I didn't mean to offend-I apologize for whatever-"

Cherie relaxed. "You couldn't know. The odor of these flowers makes centaurs do crazy things; I have to stay clear except in real emergencies. I believe Magician Humfrey's castle is about five miles south. Keep alert for hostile magic, and I hope you find your talent.''

"Thanks," Bink said gratefully. He slid off her back. His legs were a bit stiff from the long ride, but he knew she had gained him a day's travel time. He walked around to face her and held out his hand.

Cherie accepted it, then leaned forward to kiss him-a motherly kiss on his forehead. Bink wished she had not done that, but he smiled mechanically and started walking. He heard her hooves cantering back through the forest, and suddenly he felt lonely. Fortunately, his journey was nearly over.

But still he wondered: what had Herman the Hermit done that the centaurs considered obscene?

Chapter 3.

Chasm

Bink stood at the brink, appalled. The path had been sundered by another trench-no, not a trench, but a mighty chasm, half a mile across and seemingly of bottomless depth. Cherie the centaur could not have known of it, or she would have warned him. So it must be of very recent formation-perhaps within the past month.

Only an earthquake or cataclysmic magic could have formed such a canyon so rapidly. Since there had been no earthquakes that he knew of, it had to be magic. And that implied a Magician-of phenomenal power.

Who could it be? The King in his heyday might have been able to fashion such a chasm by using a rigidly controlled storm, a channeled hurricane-but he had no reason to, and his powers had faded too much to manage anything like this now. Evil Magician Trent had been a transformer, not an earthmover. Good Magician Humfrey's magic was divided into a hundred assorted divinatory spells; some of those might tell him how to create such a gross channel, but it was hardly conceivable that Humfrey would bother to do it. Humfrey never did anything unless there was a fee to be earned from it. Was there another great Magician in Xanth?

Wait-he had heard rumors of a master of illusion. It was far easier to make an apparent chasm than a genuine one. That could be an amplification of Zink's pretend-hole talent. Zink was no Magician, but if a real Magician had this type of talent, this was the kind of effect he might create. Maybe if Bink simply walked out into this chasm, his feet would find the path continuing on

He looked down. He saw a small cloud floating blithely along, about five hundred feet down. A gust of cool dank wind came up to brush him back. He shivered; that was extraordinarily realistic for an illusion! He shouted: "Hallooo!"

He heard the echo following about five seconds after: "Allooo!"

He picked up a pebble and flipped it into the seeming chasm. It disappeared into the depths, and no sound of its landing came back.

At last he kneeled and poked his finger into the air beyond the brim. It met no resistance. He touched the edge, and found it material and vertical.

He was convinced, unwillingly. The chasm was real.

There was nothing to do but go around it. Which meant he was not within five miles of his destination, but within fifty-or a hundred, depending on the extent of this amazing crevice.

Should he turn back? The villagers certainly should be advised of this manifestation; On the other hand, it might be gone by the time he brought anyone else back here to see it, and he would be labeled a fool as well as a spell-less wonder. Worse, he would be called a coward, who had invented a story to explain his fear of visiting the Magician and gaining absolute proof of his talentlessness. What had been created magically could be abolished magically. So he had better try to get around it.

Bink looked somewhat wearily at the sky. The sun was low in the west. He had an hour or so of diminishing daylight left. He'd better spend it trying to locate a house in which to spend the night. The last thing he wanted was to sleep outside in unfamiliar territory, at the mercy of strange magic. He had had a very easy trip so far, thanks to Cherie, but with this emergency detour it would become much more difficult.

Which way to turn-east or west? The chasm seemed to run interminably in both directions. But the lay of the land was slightly less rugged to the east, making a gradual descent; maybe it would approach the bottom of the chasm, enabling him to cross it. Farmers tended to build in valleys rather than on mountains, so as to have ready sources of water and be free of the hostile magic of high places. He would go east.

But this region was sparsely settled. He had seen no human habitations along the path so far. He walked increasingly swiftly through the forest. As dusk came, he saw great black shapes rising out of the chasm: vastly spreading leathery wings, cruelly bent beaks, glinting small eyes. Vultures perhaps, or worse. He felt horribly uneasy.

It was now necessary to conserve his rations, for he had no way of knowing how far they would have to stretch. He spotted a breadfruit tree and cut a loaf from it, but discovered the bread was not yet ripe. He would get indigestion eating it. He had to find a farmhouse.

The trees became larger and more gnarled of trunk. They seemed menacing in the shadows. A wind was rising, causing the stiff, twisted branches to sigh. Nothing ominous about that; these effects weren't even magical. But Bink found his heart beating more rapidly, and he kept glancing back over his shoulder. He was no longer on the established trail, so his comparative security was gone. He was going deeper into the hinterland, where anything could happen. Night was the time of sinister magic, and there were diverse and potent kinds. The peace spell of the pines was only an example; there were surely fear spells and worse. If only he could find a house!

Some adventurer he was! The moment he had to go a little out of his way, the instant it got dark, he started reacting to his own too-creative imagination. The fact was, this was not the deep wilderness; there would be few real threats to a careful man. The true wilds were beyond the Good Magician's castle, on the other side of the chasm.

He forced himself to slow down and keep his gaze forward. Just keep walking, swinging the staff over to touch anything suspicious, no foolish-

The end of the staff touched an innocuous black rock. The rock burst upward with a loud whirring noise. Bink scrambled back, falling on the ground, arms thrown up protectively before his face.

The rock spread wings and flapped away. "Koo!" it protested reproachfully. It had been only a stone dove, folded into its rock shape for camouflage and insulation during the night. Naturally, it had reacted when poked-but it was quite harmless.

If stone doves nested here, it was bound to be safe for him. All he had to do was stretch out anywhere and sleep. Why didn't he do just that?

Because he was foolishly terrified of being alone at night, he answered himself. If only he had some magic, then he would feel more secure. Even a simple confidence spell would serve.

He spied a light ahead. Relief! It was a yellow square, nearly certain indication of human habitation. He was almost tearfully pleased. He was no child, no adolescent, but he might as well be, here in the forest and off the bounds of his map. He needed the comfort of human companionship. He hurried toward the light, hoping it would not turn out to be some illusion or trap sponsored by an inimical being!

It was real. It was a farm at the edge of a small village; now he could see other squares of light farther down the valley. Almost joyfully, he knocked on the door.

It opened grudgingly to show a homely woman in a soiled apron. She peered at him suspiciously. "I don't know you," she grumped, edging the door closed again.

"I am Bink of the North Village," he said quickly. "I have traveled all day, and was balked by the chasm. Now I need lodging for the night. I will perform some reasonable service for the favor. I'm strong; I can chop wood or load hay or move rocks-"

"You don't need magic to do those things," she said.

"Not with magic! With my hands. I-"

"How do I know you're not a wraith?" she demanded.

Bink held out his left hand, wincing. "Prick me; I bleed." It was a standard test, for most nocturnal supernatural creatures had no blood, unless they had recently fed on some living creature. Even then they had none that would flow.

"Oh, come on, Martha," a man's gruff voice called from inside. "There hasn't been a wraith in these parts for a decade, and they don't do no harm anyway. Let him in; if he eats, he's human."

"Ogres eat," she muttered. But she cracked the door open far enough for Bink to squeeze through.

Now Bink saw the farm's guardian animal: a small werewolf, probably one of their children. There were no true werewolves or other weres that he knew of; all were humans who had developed the talent. Such changelings were increasingly frequent, it seemed. This one had the large head and flattish face typical of the type. A real werewolf would have been indistinguishable from a canine until it changed; then it would have been a wolfish man. Bink put out a hand as it slunk up to sniff him, then patted it on the head.

The creature metamorphosed into a boy about eight years old. "Did I scare you, huh?" he begged.

"Terrified," Bink agreed.

The lad turned toward the man. "He's clean, Paw," he announced. "No smell of magic on him."

"That's the trouble," Bink murmured. "If I had magic, I wouldn't be traveling. But I meant what I said. I can do good physical work."

"No magic?" the man inquired as the woman poured Bink a steaming bowl of stew. The farmer was in his mid-thirties, as homely as his wife, but possessed of a few deep smile-lines around his mouth and eyes. He was thin, but obviously sturdy; hard physical labor made for tough men. He flexed purple as he talked, then green, his whole body changing color smoothly: his talent. "How'd you make it all the way from North Village in one day, then?"

"A lady centaur gave me a lift."

"A filly! I'll bet she did! Where'd you hang on to when she jumped?"

Bink smiled ruefully. "Well, she said she'd drop me in a trench if I did it again," he admitted.

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" the man brayed. Farmers, being relatively uneducated, tended to have an earthy sense of humor. Bink noticed that the homely wife wasn't laughing, and the boy merely stared uncomprehendingly.

Now the farmer got down to business. "Listen, I don't need no hand labor nowsabout. But I've got a part in a hearing coming up, and I don't want to go. Upsets the missus, you know."

Bink nodded, though he did not understand. He saw the wife nod grim agreement. What sort of thing was this?

"So if you want to work off your lodging, you can stand in for me," the farmer continued. "Won't only take 'bout an hour, no work to it 'cept to agree to anything the bailiff says. Softest job you can find, and easy for you, too, 'cause you're a stranger. Playing opposite a cute young thing-" He caught the grim look of his wife and aborted that line. "How 'bout it?"

"Anything I can do," Bink said uncertainly. What was this about playing opposite a cute young thing? He'd never find out while the wife was present. Would Sabrina object?

"Fine! There's hay in the loft, and a bucket so you won't have to go outside. Just don't snore too loud-the missus don't like it."

The missus didn't like a lot of things, it seemed. How did a man ever come to marry a woman like that? Would Sabrina turn shrewish after marriage? The idea made him uneasy. "I won't," Bink agreed. The stew was not very tasty, but it was filling. Good stuff to travel on.

He slept comfortably in the hay, with the wolf curled up beside him. He did have to use the pot, and it stank all night, having no cover-but that was much better than going into the magic night. After that initial expression of objection to the stew, his innards settled down. Bink really had no complaint.

He had gruel for breakfast, heated without fire. That was the wife's talent, a useful one for a farmstead. Then he reported to the neighbor's house a mile on down along the chasm for the hearing.

The bailiff was a big, bluff man, above whose head a small cloud formed when he concentrated on anything too intently. "Know anything about it?" he inquired after Bink explained.

"Nothing," Bink admitted. "You'll have to tell me what to do."

"Good! It's just a sort of little playlet, to settle a problem without ruining anybody's reputation. We call it surrogate magic. Mind you, don't use any actual magic."

"I won't," Bink said.

"You just agree to whatever I ask you. That's all."

Bink began to get nervous. "I don't believe in lying, sir."

"This ain't exactly lying, boy. It's in a good cause. You'll see. I'm s'prised you folk don't practice it in North Village."

Bink was uneasily silent. He hoped he had not gotten himself into something ugly.

The others arrived: two men and three young women. The men were ordinary, bearded farmers, one young, one middle-aged; the girls ranged from indifferent to ravishing. Bink forced his eyes away from the prettiest one lest he stare. She was the most voluptuous, striking black-haired beauty he had ever seen, a diamond in the mud of this region.

"Now the six of you sit down across from each other at this table," the bailiff said in his official voice. "I'll do the talking when the judge comes. Mind you, this is a play-but it's secret. When I swear you in, it's for keeps-absolutely no blabbing about the details after you get out, understand?"

They all nodded. Bink was becoming more perplexed. He now understood about playing opposite a sweet young thing-but what kind of play was this, with an audience of one, that no one was permitted to report on later? Well, so be it; maybe it was a kind of magic.

The three men sat in a row on one side of the table, and the three girls faced them. Bink was opposite the beautiful one; her knees touched his, for the table was narrow. They were silky smooth, sending a shiver of appreciation up his legs. Remember Sabrina! he told himself. He was not ordinarily swayed by a pretty face, but this was an extraordinary face. It didn't help that she wore a tight sweater. What a figure!

The judge entered-a portly man with impressive paunch and sideburns. "All stand," the bailiff said.

They all stood respectfully.

The judge took a seat at the end of the table and the bailiff moved to the far side. They all sat down.

"Do you three ladies swear to tell no truth other than that presented in this hearing, any time, anywhere, and to shut up about that?" the bailiff demanded.

"We do," the girls chorused.

"And do you three louts swear the same?"

"We do," Bink said with the others. If he was supposed to lie here, but never to talk about it outside, did that mean it wasn't really a lie? The bailiff knew what was true and what was false, presumably, so in effect-

"Now this is the hearing for an alleged rape," the bailiff announced. Bink, shocked, tried to conceal his dismay. Were they supposed to act out a rape?

"Among these present," the bailiff continued, "is the girl who says she was raped-and the man she charges. He says it happened but it was voluntary. That right, men?"

Bink nodded vigorously along with the others. Brother! He would rather have chopped wood for his night's lodging. Here he was, possibly lying about a rape he never committed.

"This is done anonymously to protect the reputations of those involved," the bailiff said. "So's to have an advisory opinion, in the presence of the first parties, without advertising it to the whole community."

Bink was beginning to understand. A girl who had been raped could be ruined, though it was no fault of her own; many men would refuse to marry her for that reason alone. Thus she could win her case but lose her future. A man guilty of rape could be exiled, and a man accused of rape would be viewed with suspicion, complicating his own future. It was almost, he thought grimly, as serious a crime as having no magic. Getting at the truth could be a very delicate matter, not something either party would want to advertise in a public trial. Win or lose, reputations would suffer grievously. Yet how could justice be done if it never came to trial? Thus this private, semianonymous hearing. Would it suffice?

"She says she was walking down by the Gap," the bailiff said, glancing at his notes. "He came up behind her, grabbed her, and raped her. Right, girls?"

The three girls nodded, each looking hurt and angry. The vigorous head motion caused the knee of the girl facing Bink to shake, and another ripple of suggestion traveled up his leg. What an opposite lady, in what a play!

"He says he was standing there and she came up and made a suggestion and he took her up on it. Right, men?"

Bink nodded with the others. He hoped his side won; this was nervous business.

Now the judge spoke. "Was it close to a house?"

"'Bout a hundred feet," the bailiff said.

"Then why did she not scream?"

"He said he'd push her off the brink if she made a sound," the bailiff replied. "She was frozen in terror.

Right, girls?"

They nodded-and each looked momentarily terrified. Bink wondered which of the three had actually been raped. Then he corrected his thought hastily: which one had made the accusation? He hoped it wasn't the one opposite him.

"Were the two known to each other prior to the occasion?''

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Then I presume she would have fled him at the outset, had she disliked him-and that he would not have forced her if she trusted him. In a small community like this, people get to know each other very well, and there are few actual surprises. This is not conclusive, but it strongly suggests she had no strong aversion to contact with him, and may have tempted him with consequence she later regretted. I would probably, were this case to come up in formal court, find the man not guilty of the charge, by virtue of reasonable doubt."

The three men relaxed. Bink became aware of a trickle of sweat on his forehead, generated while he listened to the judge's potential decision.

"Okay, you have the judge's ifso," said the bailiff. "You girls still want to bring it to open trial?"

Grim-faced, looking betrayed, the three girls shook their heads, no. Bink felt sorry for his opposite. How could she avoid being seductive? She was a creature constructed for no other visible purpose than ra-than love.

"Then take off," the bailiff said. "Remember-no talking outside, or well have a real trial, for contempt of court." The warning seemed superfluous; the girls would hardly be talking about this one. The guilty-uh, innocent-man would also shut up, and Bink himself just wanted to get clear of this village. That left only one man who might want to talk-but if he breathed a word, all the others would know who had blabbed. There would be silence.

So it was over. Bink stood and filed out with the others. The whole thing had taken less than the promised hour, so he was well off. He'd had a night's lodging and was well rested. All he needed now was to find a route past the chasm to the Good Magician's castle.

The bailiff emerged, and Bink approached him. "Could you tell me if there is any way south from here?"

"Boy, you don't want to cross the Gap," the bailiff said firmly, the little cloud forming over his head. "Not unless you can fly."

"I'm on foot."

"There's a route, but the Gap dragon…You're a nice boy, young, handsome. You did a good job in the hearing. Don't risk it."

Everybody thought he was so damned young! Only good, strong, personal magic would give him real manhood in the eyes of Xanth. "I have to risk it."

The bailiff sighed. "Well, I can't tell you no then, son. I'm not your father." He sucked in his paunch, which was almost as impressive as that of the judge, and contemplated the cloud over his head momentarily. The cloud seemed about to shed a tear or two. Again Bink winced inwardly. Now he was getting fathered as well as mothered. "But it's complicated. Better have Wynne show you."

"Wynne?"

"Your opposite. The one you almost raped." The bailiff smiled, making a signal with one hand, and his cloud dissipated. "Not that I blame you."

The girl approached, apparently in answer to the signal.

"Wynne, honey, show this man to the southern slope of the Gap. Mind you keep clear of the dragon."

"Sure," she said, smiling. The smile did not add to her splendor, because that was impossible, but it tried.

Bink had mixed emotions. After this hearing, suppose she accused him of…?

The bailiff glanced at him understandingly. "Don't worry about it, son. Wynne don't lie, and she don't change her mind. You behave yourself, difficult as that may be, and there'll be no trouble."

Embarrassed, Bink accepted the girl's company. If she could show him a quick, safe route past the chasm, he would be well ahead.

They walked east, the sun beating into their faces. "Is it far?" Bink asked, still feeling awkward for assorted reasons. If Sabrina could see him now!

"Not far," she said. Her voice was soft, somehow sending an involuntary thrill through him. Maybe it was magic; he hoped so, because he didn't like to think that he could be so easily subverted by mere beauty. He didn't know this girl!

They continued in silence for a while. Bink tried again: "What is your talent?"

She looked at him blankly.

Uh-oh. After the hearing, she could not be blamed for taking that the wrong way. "Your magic talent," he clarified. "The thing you can do. A spell, or…"

She shrugged noncommittally.

What was with this girl? She was beautiful, but she seemed somewhat vacuous.

"Do you like it here?" he asked.

She shrugged again.

Now he was almost certain: Wynne was lovely but stupid. Too bad; she could have made some farmer a marvelous showpiece. No wonder the bailiff had not been concerned about her; she was not much use.

They walked in silence again. As they rounded a bend, they almost stumbled over a rabbit nibbling a mushroom in the path. Startled, the creature jumped straight into the air and hung there, levitating, its pink nose quivering.

Bink laughed. "We won't hurt you, magic bunny," he said. And Wynne smiled.

They passed on under it. But the episode, minor as it was, bothered Bink in retrospect, and for a familiar reason. Why should a common, garden-variety rabbit possess the magic power of floating, while Bink himself had nothing? It simply wasn't fair.

Now he heard the strains of a lovely melody, seeming to punctuate his thoughts. He looked about and saw a lyrebird playing its strings. The music carried through the forest, filling it with a pseudo joy. Ha!

He felt the need to talk, so he did. "When I was a kid they always teased me because I had no magic," he said, not caring whether she understood. "I lost footraces to others who could fly, or put walls in my way, or pass through trees, or who could pop out in one place and in at another place." He had said as much to Cherie the centaur; he was sorry to be stuck in this groove, but some unreasonable part of his mind seemed to believe that if he repeated it often enough he would find some way to alleviate it. "Or who could cast a spell on the path ahead of them, making it all downhill, while I had to cover the honest lay of the land." Remembering all those indignities, he began to feel choked up.

"Can I go with you?" Wynne asked abruptly.

Uh-oh. Maybe she figured he could regale her with more stories indefinitely. The other rigors of travel did not occur to her. In a few miles her shapely body, obviously not constructed for brute work, would tire, and he'd have to carry her. "Wynne, I'm going a long way, to see the Magician Humfrey. You don't want to come along."

"No?" Her marvelous face clouded up.

Still conscious of the rape hearing, and wary of any possible misunderstanding, he phrased it carefully. They were now descending a tortuous path into a low section of the chasm, winding around tufts of clatterweed and clutchroot saplings. He had taken the lead, bracing with his staff, so as to be able to catch her if she lost her footing and fell; when he glanced up at her he caught distracting glimpses of her exquisite thighs. There seemed to be no part of her body that was not perfectly molded. Only her brain had been neglected. "It is dangerous. Much bad magic. I go alone."

"Alone?" She was still confused, though she was handling the path very well. Nothing wrong with her coordination! Bink found himself a bit surprised that those legs could actually be used for climbing and walking. "I need help. Magic."

"The Magician charges a year's service. You-would not want to pay." The Good Magician was male, and Wynne had only one obvious coin. No one would be interested in her mind.

She looked at him in perplexity. Then she brightened, standing upright on the path above him. "You want payment?" She put one hand to the front of her dress.

"No!" Bink yelled, almost dislodging himself from the steep slope. He already visualized a reenactment of the hearing, and a different verdict. Who would believe he had not taken advantage of the lovely idiot? If she showed him any more of her body- "No!" he repeated, more to himself than to her.

"But-" she said, clouding up again.

He was rescued by another distraction. They were near the bottom now, and Bink could see across the base to the more gentle rise of the south slope. No problem about climbing that. He was about to tell Wynne she could go home when there was an uncomfortable sound, a kind of slide-bump. It was repeated-very loud and shuddersome, without being precisely definable.

"What's that?" he asked nervously.

Wynne cupped her ear, listening, though the noise was plainly audible. With the shift in her balance, her feet lost purchase, and she began to slide down. He jumped to catch her, and eased her to the chasm floor. What an armful she was, all softness and resilience and slenderness in miraculous proportions!

She turned her face to him, brushing back her slightly disarrayed hair, as he stood her back on her feet. "The Gap dragon," she said.

For a moment he was confused. Then he remembered that he had asked her a question; now she was answering it, with the single-mindedness of the meager intellect she had.

"Is it dangerous?"

"Yes."

She had been too stupid to tell him before he asked. And he had not thought to ask before he heard it. Maybe if he hadn't been looking at her so much-yet what man would not have looked?

Already he saw the monster coming from the west-a smoking reptilian head, low to the ground, but large. Very large. "Run!" he bawled.

She started to run-straight ahead, into the chasm. "No!" he yelled, sprinting after her. He caught her by one arm and spun her about. Her hair swirled winsomely, a black cloud about her face.

"You want payment?" she asked.

Brother! "Run that way!" he cried, shoving her back toward the northern slope, since it was the closest escape. He hoped the dragon was not a good climber.

She obeyed, moving fleetly over the ground.

But the glaring eyes of the Gap dragon followed her, orienting on the motion. The creature swerved to intercept her. Bink saw she could not reach the path in time. The monster was whomping along at galloping-centaur velocity.

Bink sprinted after her again, caught her, and half hurled her back toward the south. Even in this desperate moment, her body had a limber, appealing quality that threatened to distract his mind. "That way!" he cried. "It's catching up!" He was acting as foolishly as she, changing his mind while doom closed in.

He had to divert the monster somehow. "Hey, steam-snoot!" he bawled, waving his arms wildly. "Look at me!"

The dragon looked. So did Wynne.

"Not you!" Bink yelled at her, "Get on across. Get out of the Gap."

She ran again. No one could be so stupid as not to understand the danger here.

Now the dragon's attention was on Bink. It swerved again, bearing down on him. It had a long, sinuous body and three sets of stubby legs. The legs lifted the torso and whomped it forward, causing it to slide several feet. The process looked clumsy-but the thing was traveling disconcertingly fast.

Time for him to run! Bink took off down the chasm, toward the east. The dragon had already cut him off from the north slope, and he didn't want to lead it in the direction Wynne was going. For all its awkward mode of propulsion, it could run faster than he; no doubt its speed was enhanced by magic. It was, after all, a magical creature.

But what of his theory about no creature having magic and intelligence if it was magical in itself? If that was valid, this thing would not be very smart. Bink hoped so; he'd rather try to outwit a dumb dragon than a smart one. Especially when his life depended on it.

So he ran-but already he knew this course was hopeless. This was the dragon's hunting ground, the factor that stopped people from crossing the chasm on foot. He should have known that a magically constructed chasm would not be left unattended. Someone or something did not want people crossing freely from north Xanth to south Xanth. Especially nonmagical people like him.

Bink was puffing now, out of breath, and a pain was developing in his side. He had underestimated the speed of the dragon. It was not a little faster than he was, it was substantially faster. The huge head snapped forward, and steam gushed around him.

Bink inhaled the stuff. It wasn't as hot as he had feared, and it smelled faintly of burning wood. But it was still uncomfortable. He choked, gasped-tripped on a stone and fell flat. His staff flew out of his hands. That fatal moment of distraction!

The dragon whomped right over him, unable to stop so rapidly. It was so long and low that it couldn't fall. The metallic body shot past, inertia carrying the head beyond range. If magic enhanced the thing's speed, then there was no magic to help it brake, for what that small blessing was worth.

Bink's breath was momentarily knocked out of him by the fall. He was already desperately short of air. He gasped for more, unable to concentrate on anything else at the moment, not even on escape. While he lay, effectively paralyzed, the middle set of legs came down-right at him. They came together as though yoked, ready to heave the heavy body up and forward again. He couldn't even roll aside in time. He would be crushed!

But the massive claws of the right foot landed squarely on the rock that had tripped him. It was a big rock, bigger than it looked, and he had fallen on the lower side after stumbling on its built-up upper side. He was sprawled in a kind of erosion gully. The three claws were splayed by the rock, so that one missed him to the left, another to the right, and the middle one arched right over him, hardly touching the ground. Perhaps a ton of dragonweight on that one foot, none of it touching him, A lucky placement that could never have happened by design!

Now he had some of his breath back, and the foot was gone, already lifted for the next whomp. Had Bink been able to roll aside, he would have been caught squarely by one of the claws, and squished.

But one freak break did not mean he was out of trouble. The dragon was curling around to find him again, steaming back along its own long torso. It was marvelously supple, able to bend in a tight U-turn. Bink would have admired this quality more from a safe distance. Snakelike, the monster could convolute into knots if it had to, reaching him wherever he tried to hide. No wonder it whomped; it had no rigid backbone.

Knowing it was futile, Bink still found himself trying to escape. He dashed under the tree-trunk-thick tail. The head followed him, the nostrils pursuing his scent as accurately as the eyes traced his motion.

Bink reversed course and leaped up over the tail, scrambling for handholds on the scales. He was in luck; some dragons had scales with serrated edges that sliced the flesh of anything that touched them; this one's scales were innocuously rounded. It was probably a survival trait in a chasm like this, though Bink wasn't sure why. Did sharp scales tend to snag on things, slowing the velocity of a low-to-the-ground monster?

He tumbled over the tail-and the dragon's head followed smoothly. No steam now; maybe the monster didn't want to heat up its own flesh. It was already savoring its conquest and repast, playing cat and mouse with him; though he'd never seen a werecat do that; possibly real cats did play that way, though there weren't many of those-or mice-around these days, for some reason.

But he was letting his mind run away with his attention again, and he couldn't afford it. Could he lead the dragon's head such a merry chase around its own body that it actually did tie itself in a knot? He doubted it, but might have to give it a try anyway. It was better than just getting swallowed.

He was back at the rock he had stumbled over. Now its position was changed; the moving weight of the dragon had dislodged it. There was a crack in the ground where it had been: a deep, dark hole.

Bink didn't like holes in the ground; no telling what might lurk in there: nickelpedes, stinglice, hoopworms, lepermud-ugh! But he had no chance at all here amid the coils of the Gap dragon. He jumped feet first into the hole.

The earth crumbled beneath his weight, but not quite enough. He sank in up to his thighs, and stuck.

The dragon, seeing him about to escape, blasted a torrent of steam. But again it was warm vapor, not burning hot, actually little more than coalesced breath. This was not after all a fire dragon, but a pseudo fire dragon. Few people were likely to get close enough to know the difference. The mist bathed Bink, soaking him down thoroughly, and turned the dirt around him to mud. Thus lubricated, he began to move again. Down.

The dragon snatched at him-but Bink popped through the constriction with a sucking sound that complemented the futile clicking of the dragon's teeth. He dropped about two feet, to solid rock. His feet stung, especially the ankle that had been turned, but he was unhurt. He ducked his head down and felt about him in the darkness. He was in a cave.

What luck! But he still wasn't safe. The dragon was clawing at the ground, gouging out huge chunks of dirt and rock, steaming the remainder into rivulets of mud. Gooey chunks splatted against the cave floor. The opening was widening, letting in more light. Soon it would be big enough for the dragon's head. Bink's doom had only been postponed.

This was no occasion for caution. Bink strode ahead, hands touching each other before him, arms bowed in a horizontal circle. If he hit a wall, he would only bruise his forearms. Better a bruise than the crunch of dragon's teeth.

He did not hit a wall. He struck a mud slick instead. His foot shot out from under, and he took a bellyflop. There was water here-real water, not dragon's breath-a trickle wending down.

Down? Down where? Surely to an underground river! That could account for the sudden canyon. The river could have been tunneling for centuries, and suddenly the ground above collapsed, forming the chasm. One phenomenal sinkhole. Now the river was working again-and he would surely drown if he splashed into it, for there was no guarantee that its current was slow or that there was air in its passage. Even if he swam well, he could be consumed by river monsters, the especially vicious kind that frequented dark, cold waters.

Bink clawed his way back up the slope. He found a branching passage leading up, and followed it as rapidly as possible. Soon he saw a shaft of light from above. Safe!

Safe? Not while the dragon still lurked. Bink dared not dig his way out until it left. He would have to wait, hoping the predator didn't dig this far. He hunkered down, trying not to get any more mud on him.

The sounds of the dragon's digging diminished, then ceased altogether. There was silence-but Bink wasn't fooled. Dragons were of the hide-and-pounce variety, generally. At least the landbound ones were. They could move fast when they moved, but could not keep it up long. A dragon would never successfully run down a deer, for example, even if the deer lacked escapist magic. But dragons were very good at waiting. Bink would have to stay low until he actually heard it move off.

It was a long wait, complicated by the cold discomfort of the mud and dark and his prior wetting by the dragon's breath. Plus the fact that he could not be quite sure the dragon was there. This might all be for nothing, and the dragon could be emitting steamy chuckles as it retreated silently-they could be very quiet when they wanted to-and hunted elsewhere.

No! That was what the predator wanted him to think. He dared not emerge, or even move, lest the thing hear him. That was why it was so quiet now; it was listening. Dragons had excellent senses; perhaps that was why they were so common in the wilderness regions, and so feared. They were a survival type. Apparently his scent had suffused the area, issuing from stray vents, so that it did not give away his precise location. The dragon was not about to wear itself out digging up the entire cave system. But sound or sight would do him in.

Now that he was absolutely still, he was cold. This was summer in Xanth, and it really did not get very cold even in winter, for many plants had heat magic, local weather control, or other mechanisms for comfort. But the chasm was sparsely vegetated, and sheltered from much of the sun, and the cool air tended to settle and be trapped. It had taken awhile for the heat of his exertions to dissipate, but now he was shivering. He could not afford to shiver too violently! His legs and feet hurt, becoming cramped. To top it off, he felt a scratchiness in his throat. He was coming down with a cold. This present discomfort would hardly help him to throw that off, and he could not go to the village doctor for a medicinal spell.

He tried to distract himself by thinking of other things, but he did not care to rehearse yet again the assorted indignities of his bitter childhood, or the frustration of having but not being able to hold a lovely girl like Sabrina because of his lack of magic. The notion of lovely girls reminded him of Wynne; he would not be human if he didn't react to her fantastic face and body! But she was so abysmally stupid; and anyway, he was engaged already, so he had no business thinking of her. His efforts at self-distraction came to nothing; it was better to suffer in mental silence.

Then he became aware of something more insidious. It had been in evidence for some time, but he had not been consciously aware of it because of his other concerns. Even unsuccessful distractions did some good.

It was a peripheral, almost subliminal thing. A kind of flickering, which vanished when he looked directly at it, but became insistent at the fringe of his vision. What was it? Something natural-or something magic? Innocent or sinister?

Then he recognized it. A shade! A half-real spirit, ghost, or some unquiet dead, doomed to skulk in shadow and night until its wrongs were righted or its evil exonerated. Because the shades could not go abroad by day, or enter light, or intrude in populous places, they represented no threat to ordinary folk in ordinary circumstances. Most were bound to the place of their demise. As Roland had advised Bink, long ago: "If a shade bothers you, walk away from it." They were easy to escape; this was called "pulling the shade."

Only if an unwary person foolishly slept near the abode of a shade was he in trouble. It took a shade about an hour to infiltrate a living body, and a person could move away at any time and be free of it. Once Roland, in a fit of uncharacteristic ire, had threatened to stun an annoying trespasser and leave him in the nearest shade barrow. The man had quickly departed.

Now Bink was neither stunned nor asleep-but if he moved, the Gap dragon would pounce. If he did not move, the shade would infiltrate his body. That could be a fate worse than death-really!

All because he had tried to rescue a beautiful, vacuous girl from a dragon. In folklore, such a hero always received a most intriguing reward. In reality, the hero was as likely as not to find himself in need of rescue, as now. Well, such was real-life justice in Xanth.

The shade grew bolder, thinking him helpless or inattentive. It did not glow; it was merely a lesser darkness than that of the cave. He could see it fairly well now, by not looking at it: a vague, mannish outline, very sad.

Bink wanted to leap away, but he found the dank wall close behind him, and in any event he could not afford to take a step. No matter how silently he did it, the dragon would hear. He could walk forward, right through the shade, and all he would feel would be a momentary chill, like that of the grave. It had happened on occasion to him before; unpleasant but hardly critical. But this time the dragon would be on him.

Maybe he could run, being fully rested, and get a head start before the dragon woke. The dragon must surely be sleeping, getting its rest, while its keen ears were attuned to the quarry.

The shade touched him. Bink jerked his arm away-and the dragon stirred above. It was there, all right! Bink froze-and the dragon lost him again. The mere jerk had not been quite enough.

The dragon circled, trying to sniff him out. Its huge nose passed over the upper crack; steam jetted down. The shade retreated in alarm. Then the dragon settled in place, giving up the chase for the moment. It knew its prey would give itself away sooner or later. When it came to waiting, the dragon was much better equipped than the human.

One more reptilian twitch-and the end of the tail dropped through the crack, dangling almost to the floor. In order to escape, Bink would have to brush past it. Now what were his chances?

Suddenly Bink had an idea. The dragon was a living, if magical, animal. Why shouldn't the shade take over its body? A shade-dominated dragon would probably have other things on its mind than eating a hiding person. If he could just move over so as to place the dangling tail between him and the shade-

He tried, shifting his balance with tedious slowness, trying to lift one foot so as to put it forward. Silently. But the moment it lifted, it hurt, and he flinched. The dragon's tail twitched, and Bink had to freeze. This was extremely awkward, because his balance in this semi-squatting position was at best tenuous, and now both feet and ankles felt as if they were on fire.

The shade advanced again.

Bink tried to ease his foot farther forward, so as to achieve a more comfortable balance without falling over. Away from the shade! Again agony shot through him, and again the tail twitched; once more he froze, in even more discomfort. And yet again the shade moved in. He could not go on this way.

The shade touched his shoulder. This time Bink steeled himself not to flinch; he would certainly have lost his balance, and then his life. The touch was hideously cool, not cold; it made his skin crawl. What was he to do?

He controlled himself, with continuing effort. It would take an hour or so for the shade to take over his body; he could break the spell at any time before it was complete. The dragon would gobble him down in seconds. Appalling as the notion was, the shade was the better risk; at least it was slow. Maybe in half an hour the dragon would have gone away

Maybe the moon would fall out of the sky and squish the dragon under green cheese, too! Why wish for the impossible? If the dragon did not go, then what? Bink just didn't know. But so far he didn't see much choice.

The shade moved in inexorably, cooling his shoulder through to chest and back. Bink felt the intrusion with barely suppressed loathing. How would it be possible to submit to this invasion of the dead? Yet he had to do it, at least for a while, lest the dragon quickly convert him to a shade himself. Or would that be preferable? At least he would die a man.

The ghastly cool essence impinged slowly on his head. Now Bink was terrified, yet frozen; he could not lean his head away any farther. The horror crept through, and he felt himself sinking, slipping, being blotted up by…and then he was eerily calm.

Peace, the shade said in his mind.

The peace of the pine forest, where the sleepers never woke? Bink could not protest aloud, because of the dragon's ears. But he gathered himself for a final effort, to leap away from this dread possession. He would crash past the dragon's tail before the monster could react, and take his chance with the subterranean river.

No! Friend, I can help you! the shade cried, louder but still silently.

Somehow, insidiously, Bink began to believe. The spirit actually seemed sincere. Perhaps it was just in contrast to the alternatives: consumption by dragon or drowning in river.

Fair exchange, the shade persisted. Permit me, for one hour. I will save your life, then dissipate, my onus abated.

It had the ring of conviction. Bink faced death anyway; if the shade could somehow save him, it would certainly be worth an hour of possession. It was true that shades dissipated once their burden was lifted.

But not all shades were honest. The criminal ones sometimes were recalcitrant, choosing not to atone for their crimes in life. Instead, they added to them in death, under cover of the new identity, ruining the reputation of the unlucky person they controlled. After all, the shade had little to lose; he was already dead. Absolution would merely consign him to oblivion or to his place in the infernal regions, depending on his faith. Small wonder some chose never to die completely.

My wife, my child! the shade pleaded. They go hungry, they sorrow, ignorant of my status. I must tell them where the silver tree grows that I died to locate.

The silver tree! Bink had heard of the like. A tree with leaves of pure silver, incredibly valuable-for silver was a magic metal. It tended to repel evil magic, and armor made from it resisted magic weapons. And, of course, it could even be used as money.

No, it is for my family! the shade cried. That they may never again dwell in poverty. Do not take it for yourself!

That convinced Bink. A dishonest shade would have promised him everything; this one promised only life, not riches. Agreed, Bink thought, hoping he was not making a dreadful mistake. Trust unwisely given-

Wait until merging is complete, the shade said gratefully. I cannot help you until I become you.

Bink hoped it was no deception. But what, really, did he have to lose? And what did the shade have to gain by a lie? If it did not save Bink, it would only share the sensation of being eaten by the dragon. Then they would both be shades-and Bink would be an angry one. He wondered what one shade could do to another. Meanwhile, he waited.

At last it was done. He was Donald, the prospector. A man whose talent was flying.

"We go!" Donald cried through Bink's lips exultantly. He put his arms up as if diving and rose straight up through the crack in the ceiling, with such power that the edges of rock and dirt were flung aside.

The sheer brightness of day blinded them as they emerged. The Gap dragon took a moment to orient on this strange occurrence, then pounced. But Donald made another effort, and shot up so swiftly that the huge teeth snapped on air. He kicked the monster on the snout, hard. "Ha, gaptooth!" he yelled. "Chew on this." And he stomped on the tender portion of the dragon's nose.

The jaws gaped open, and a cloud of steam shot out. But Donald was already zooming out of reach. The dragon had no chance to catch them before they were too high.

Up, up they sailed, straight out of the canyon, above the trees and slopes. There was no effort other than mental, for this was magic flight. They leveled off, proceeding north across Xanth.

In delayed reaction, Bink realized that he had a magic talent. By proxy, certainly-but for the first time in his life he was experiencing what every other citizen of Xanth experienced. He was performing. Now he knew how it felt.

It felt wonderful.

The sun bore down from almost straight overhead, for it was now midday. They were up amid the clouds. Bink felt discomfort in his ears, but an automatic reaction by his other self popped them, making the pain abate before it intensified. He didn't know why flying should hurt his ears; maybe it was because there wasn't enough to hear up here.

For the first time, too, he saw the full upper contours of the clouds. From beneath they were generally flat, but from above they were elegantly if randomly sculptured. What seemed like tiny puffballs from the ground were big masses of fog in person. Donald flew through them with equanimity, but Bink didn't like the loss of vision. He was nervous about banging into something.

"Why so high?" he inquired. "I can hardly see the ground." This was an exaggeration; what he meant was that he could not make out the details he was accustomed to. Also, it would have been nice to have some of the people see him flying. He could buzz around the North Village, astounding the scoffers, qualifying for his citizenship…no, that would not be honest. Too bad the most tempting things were not right to do.

"I don't want to advertise," Donald said, "It could complicate things if people thought I was alive again."

Oh. Perhaps so. There could be renewed expectations, maybe debts to be paid, ones that mere silver would not abate. The shade's business was necessarily anonymous, at least so far as the community was concerned.

"See that glint?" Donald inquired, pointing down between two clouds. "That's the silver oak tree. It's so well hidden it can be spotted only from above. But I can tell my boy exactly where to find it. Then I can rest."

"I wish you could tell me where to find a magic talent,'' Bink said wistfully.

"You don't have one? Every citizen of Xanth has magic."

"That's why I'm not a citizen," Bink said glumly. They both spoke through the same mouth. "I'm going to the Good Magician. It he can't help me, I'll be exiled.''

"I know the feeling. I spent two years exiled in that cave."

"What happened to you?"

"I was flying home, after discovering the silver tree, and a storm came up. I was so excited by the thought of riches that I couldn't wait. I risked the trip in high winds-and got blown into the Gap. The impact was so great I landed in the cave-but I was already dead."

"I didn't see any bones."

"You didn't see any hole in the ground, either. The dirt filled in over me, and then my body got washed away by the river."

"But-"

"Don't you know anything? It's the place of death that anchors the shade, not the place of the corpse."

"Oh. Sorry."

"I hung on, though I knew it was hopeless. Then you came." Donald paused. "Look, you've done me such a favor-I'll share the silver with you. There's enough on that tree for both my family and you. Only promise not to tell anyone else where it is."

Bink was tempted, but a moment's reflection changed his mind. "I need magic, not silver. Without magic, I'll be exiled from Xanth, so I won't be able to share the silver. With magic-I don't care about wealth. So if you want to share it, share it with the tree; don't take all its leaves, but just a few at a time, and some of the silver acorns that drop, so the tree can go on living in health and perhaps reproduce itself. In the long run that will be more productive anyway."

"It was a fortunate day for me when you dropped into my cave," Donald said. He banked into a curve, going down.

Bink's ears popped again as they descended. They dropped into a forest glade, then walked half a mile to an isolated, run-down farm. It took that much motion to completely eliminate the fingering cramps in Bink's legs. "Isn't it beautiful?" Donald inquired.

Bink looked at the rickety wooden fence and sagging roof. A few chickens scratched among the weeds. But to a man who had love invested here, love enough to sustain him two years after violent death, it must be the fairest of ranches. "Um," he said.

"I know it isn't much-but after that cave, it is like heaven itself," Donald continued. "My wife and boy have magic, of course, but it isn't enough. She cures feather fade in chickens, and he makes little dust devils. She brings in barely enough to feed them. But she's a good wife, and lovely beyond belief."

Now they entered the yard. A seven-year-old boy looked up from the picture he was making in the dirt. He reminded Bink briefly of the werewolf boy he had left-was it only six hours ago? But that impression was destroyed when this boy opened his mouth. "Go 'way!" he yelled.

"Better I don't tell him," Donald said slowly, a bit taken aback. "Two years-that's a long time for that age. He doesn't recognize this body. But see how he's grown."

They knocked on the door. A woman answered: plain, in a dingy dress, her hair swept back under a soiled kerchief. In her heyday she might have been ordinary; now hard work had made her old before her time.

She hasn't changed a bit, Donald thought admiringly. Then, aloud: "Sally!"

The woman stared at him with uncomprehending hostility.

"Sally-don't you know me? I'm back from the dead to wrap up my affairs."

"Don!" She exclaimed, her pale eyes lighting at last. Then Bink's arms enfolded her, and his lips kissed hers. He saw her through Donald's overwhelming emotion-and she was good and lovely beyond belief.

Donald drew back, staring into the splendor of her love as he spoke. "Mark this, darling: thirteen miles north-northeast of the small millpond, beside a sharp east-west ridge, there is a silver tree. Go harvest it-a few leaves at a time, so as not to damage it. Market the metal as far away as you can, or get a friend to do it for you. Tell no one the source of your wealth. Remarry-it will make a fine dowry, and I want you to be happy, and the boy to have a father."

"Don," she repeated, tears of grief and joy in her eyes. "I don't care about silver, now that you're back."

"I'm not back! I'm dead, returning only as a shade to tell you of the tree. Take it, use it, or my struggle has been for nothing. Promise!"

"But-" she started, then saw the look on his face. "All right, Don, I promise. But I'll never love any other man!"

"My onus is abated, my deed is done," Donald said. "One more time, beloved." He bent to kiss her again-and dissipated. Bink found himself kissing another man's wife.

She knew it immediately, and jerked her face away. "Oh, sorry," Bink said, mortified. "I have to go now."

She stared at him; suddenly hard-eyed. What little joy remained in her had been wrung out by the brief manifestation of her husband. "What do we owe you, stranger?"

"Nothing. Donald saved my life by flying us away from the Gap dragon in the chasm. The silver is all yours. I will never see you again-"

She softened, comprehending that he was not going to take away the silver. "Thank you, stranger." Then, on obvious impulse: "You could share the silver, if you wanted. He told me to remarry-"

Marry her? "I have no magic," Bink said. "I am to be exiled." It was the kindest way he could think of to decline. Not all the silver of Xanth could make this situation attractive to him, on any level.

"Will you stay for a meal?"

He was hungry, but not that hungry. "I must be on my way. Do not tell your son about Donald; he felt it would only hurt the boy. Farewell"

"Farewell," she said. Momentarily he saw a hint of the beauty Donald had seen in her; then that too was lost.

Bink turned and left. On the way out of the farm he saw a whirling dust devil coming toward him, product of the boy's minor malice toward strangers. Bink dodged it and hurried away. He was glad he had done this favor for the prospector, but also relieved that it was done. He had not properly appreciated before what poverty and death could mean to a family.

Chapter 4.

Illusion

Bink resumed his journey-on the wrong side of the chasm. If only Donald's farm had been to the south!

Strange, how everyone here knew about the chasm and took it for granted-yet nobody in the North Village did. Could it be a conspiracy of silence? That seemed unlikely, because the centaurs didn't seem to know about it either, and they were normally extremely well informed. It had been present for at least two years, since the shade had been there that long, and probably much longer, since the Gap dragon must have spent its whole life there.

It must be a spell-an ignorance spell, so that only those people in the immediate vicinity of the chasm were aware of it. Those who departed-forgot. Obviously there had never been a clear path from the north to the south of Xanth-not in recent years.

Well, that was not his concern. He just had to get around it. He was not going to attempt to cross it again; only a phenomenal series of coincidences had saved his skin. Bink knew that coincidence was an untrustworthy ally.

The land here was green and hilly, with head-high candy-stripe ferns sprouting so thickly that it was impossible to see very far ahead. He had no beaten trail now. He got lost once, apparently thrown off by an aversion spell. Some trees protected themselves from molestation by causing the traveler to veer aside, so as to pass some distance from them. Maybe that was how the silver oak had remained undiscovered so long. If someone got into a patch of such trees, he could be bounced far afield, or even routed in a perpetual circle. It could be difficult indeed to break out of that sort of trap, because it was not at all obvious; the traveler thought he was going where he wanted to go.

Another time he encountered a very fine path going right his way, so fine that natural caution made him avoid it. There were a number of wilderness cannibal plants that made access very attractive, right up until the moment their traps sprung.

Thus it was three days before he made significant progress-but he remained in good form, apart from his cold. He found a few nosegays that helped clear his nose, and a pillbox bush with headache pills. At irregular intervals there were colorfruit trees, bearing greens, yellows, oranges, and blues. He had fair luck finding lodging each night, for he was obviously a fairly harmless type, but he also had to spend some hours in labor, earning his board. The people of this hinterland were minimally talented; their magic was of the "spot on a wall" variety. So they lived basically Mundane lives, and always needed chores done.

At last the land wound down to the sea. Xanth was a peninsula that had never adequately been mapped-obviously! the unmarked chasm proved that!-so its precise dimensions were unknown, perhaps unknowable. In general, it was an oval or oblong stretching north-south, connected to Mundania by a narrow bridge of land on the northwest. Probably it had been an island at one time, and so evolved its distinct type of existence free from the interference of the outside world. Now the Shield had restored that isolation, cutting off the land bridge by its curtain of death and wiping out the personnel of invading ships. If that weren't enough, there was said to be a number of ferocious sea monsters. Offshore. No, Mundania did not intrude any more.

Bink hoped the sea would permit him to get around the chasm. The Gap dragon probably could not swim, and the sea monsters should not come too close to land. There should be a narrow section where neither dragon nor sea monster prevailed. Maybe a beach he could walk across, plunging into the water if the terror of the chasm charged, and onto land if magic threatened from the sea.

There it was: a beautiful thread of white sand stretching from one side of the chasm to the other. No monsters were in sight. He could hardly believe his luck-but he acted before it could change.

Bink hit the beach running. For ten paces everything was fine. Then his foot came down on water, and he fell into the brine.

The beach was illusion. He had fallen for a most elementary trap. What better way for a sea monster to catch its prey than a vanishing beach converting to deep water?

Bink stroked for the real shoreline, which he now saw was a rocky waste upon which the waves broke and spumed. Not a safe landing at all, but his only choice. He could not go back on the "beach" he had come along; it no longer seemed to exist even in illusion. Either he had somehow been borne across the water or he had been swimming without knowing it. Either way, it was not magic he cared to get tangled up in again. Better to know exactly where he was.

Something cold and flat and immensely powerful coiled around one ankle. Bink had lost his staff when the Gap dragon ran him down, and had not yet cut a new one; all he had was his hunting knife. It was a puny resource against a sea monster, but he had to try.

He drew the knife from its sheath, held his breath, and lashed in the vicinity of his ankle. What held him felt like leather; he had to saw at it to sever it. These monsters were tough all over!

Something huge and murky loomed at him under the water, reeling in the tongue he sawed at. Yard-long teeth flashed as the giant jaws opened.

Bink lost what little nerve he had left. He screamed.

His head was underwater. The scream was a disaster. Water rushed into his mouth, his throat.

Firm hands were pressing his back rhythmically, forcing the water out, the air in. Bink choked and hacked and coughed. He had been rescued! "I-I'm okay!" he gasped.

The hands eased off. Bink sat up, blinking.

He was on a small yacht. The sails were of brightly colored silk, the deck of polished mahogany. The mast was gold.

Gold? Gold plate, maybe. Solid gold would have been so heavy as to overbalance the ship.

Belatedly, he looked at his rescuer, and was amazed again. She was a Queen.

At least, she looked like a Queen. She wore a platinum crownlet and a richly embroidered robe, and she was beautiful. Not as lovely as Wynne, perhaps; this woman was older, with more poise. Precise dress and manner made up for the sheer voluptuous innocence of youth that Wynne had. The Queen's hair was the richest red he had ever seen-and so were the pupils of her eyes. It was hard to imagine what a woman like this would be doing boating in monster-infested surf.

"I am the Sorceress Iris," she said.

"Uh, Bink," he said awkwardly. "From the North Village." He had never met a Sorceress before, and hardly felt garbed for the occasion.

"Fortunate I happened by," Iris remarked. "You might have had difficulties."

The understatement of the year! Bink had been finished, and she had given him back his life. "I was drowning. I never saw you. Just a monster," he said, feeling inane. How could he thank this royal creature for sullying her delicate hands on something like him?

"You were hardly in a position to see anything," she said, straightening so that her excellent figure showed to advantage. He had been mistaken; she was in no way inferior to Wynne, just different, and certainly more intelligent. More on a par with Sabrina. The manifest mind of a woman, he realized, made a great deal of difference in her appeal. Lesson for the day.

There were sailors and servants aboard the yacht, but they remained unobtrusively in the background, and Iris adjusted the sails herself. No idle female, she!

The yacht moved out to sea. Soon it bore upon an island-and what an island it was! Lush vegetation grew all around it, flowers of all colors and sizes: polka-dot daisies the size of dishes, orchids of exquisite splendor, tiger lilies that yawned and purred as the boat approached. Neat paths led from the golden pier up toward a palace of solid crystal, which gleamed like a diamond in the sun.

Like a diamond? Bink suspected it was a diamond, from the way the light refracted through its myriad faces. The largest, most perfect diamond that ever was.

"I guess I owe you my life," Bink said, uncertain as to how to handle the situation. It seemed ridiculous to offer to chop wood or pitch animal manure to earn his keep for the night; there was nothing so crude as firewood or animal refuse on this fair island! Probably the best favor he could do her was to remove his soaking, bedraggled presence as rapidly as possible.

"I guess you do," she agreed, speaking with a surprising normality. He had somehow expected her to be more aloof, as befitted pseudo-royalty.

"But my life may not be worth much. I don't have any magic; I am to be exiled from Xanth."

She guided the yacht to the pier, flinging a fine silver chain to its mooring post and tying it tight.

Bink had thought his confession would disturb her; he had made it at the outset so as not to proceed under false pretenses. She might have mistaken him for someone of consequence. But her reaction was a surprise. "Bink, I'm glad you said that. It shows you are a fine, honest lad. Most magic talents aren't worthwhile anyway. What use is it to make a pink spot appear on a wall? It may be magic, but it doesn't accomplish anything. You, with your strength and intelligence, have more to offer than the great majority of citizens."

Amazed and pleased by this gratuitous and probably unjustified praise, Bink could make no answer. She was correct about the uselessness of spot-on-wall magic, certainly; he had often thought the same thing himself. Of course, it was a standard remark of disparagement, meaning that a given person had picayune magic. So this really was not a sophisticated observation. Still, it certainly made him feel at ease.

"Come," Iris said, taking him by the hand. She guided him across the gangplank to the pier, then on along the main path to the palace.

The smell of flowers was almost overwhelming. Roses abounded in all colors, exhaling their perfumes. Plants with sword-shaped leaves were even more common; their flowers were like simplified orchids, also of all colors. "What are those?" he inquired.

"Irises, of course," she said.

He had to laugh. "Of course!" Too bad there was no flower named "Bink."

The path passed through a flowering hedge and looped around a pool and fountain to the elaborate front portico of the crystal palace. Not a true diamond after all. "Come into my parlor," the Sorceress said, smiling.

Bink's feet balked, before the significance penetrated to his brain. He had heard about spiders and flies! Had she saved his life merely to-

"Oh, for God's sake!" she exclaimed. "Are you superstitious? Nothing will hurt you."

His recalcitrance seemed foolish. Why should she revive him, then betray him? She could have let him choke to death instead of pumping the water out of him; the meat would have been as fresh. Or she could have tied him up and had the sailors bring him ashore. She had no need to deceive him. He was already in her power-if that was the way it was. Still

"I see you distrust me," Iris said. "What can I do to reassure you?"

This direct approach to the problem did not reassure him very much. Yet he had better face it-or trust to fate. "You-you are a Sorceress," he said. "You seem to have everything you need. I-what do you want with me?"

She laughed. "Not to eat you, I assure you!"

But Bink was unable to laugh. "Some magic-some people do get eaten." He suffered a vision of a monstrous spider luring him into its web. Once he entered the palace-

"Very well, sit out there in the garden," Iris said. "Or wherever you feel safe. If I can't convince you of my sincerity, you can take my boat and go. Fair enough?"

It was too fair; it made him feel like an ungrateful lout. Now it occurred to Bink that the whole island was a trap. He could not swim to the mainland-not with the sea monsters there-and the yacht's crew might grab him and tie him up if he tried to sail across.

Well, it wouldn't hurt to listen. "All right."

"Now, Bink," she said persuasively-and she was so lovely in her intensity that she was very persuasive indeed. "You know that though every citizen of Xanth has magic, that magic is severely limited. Some people have more magic than others, but their talents still tend to be confined to one particular type or another. Even Magicians obey this law of nature."

"Yes." She was making sense-but what was the point?

"The King of Xanth is a Magician-but his power is limited to weather effects. He can brew a dust devil or a tornado or a hurricane, or make a drought or a ten-day downpour-but he can't fly or transmute wood into silver or light a fire magically. He's an atmospheric specialist.''

"Yes," Bink agreed again. He remembered Donald the shade's son, who could make dust devils, those evanescent swirls of dust. The boy had an ordinary talent; the King had a major one-yet they differed in degree, not type.

Of course, the King's talent had faded with age; perhaps all he could conjure now would be a dust devil. It was a good thing the Shield protected Xanth!

"So if you know a citizen's talent, you know his limitations,'' Iris continued. "If you see a man make a storm, you don't have to worry about him forming a magical pit under you or changing you into a cockroach. Nobody has multiple fields of talent."

"Except maybe Magician Humfrey," Bink said.

"He is a powerful Magician," she agreed. "But even he is restricted. His talent is divination, or information; I don't believe he actually looks into the future, just the present. All his so-called hundred spells relate to that. None of them are performance magic."

Bink did not know enough about Humfrey to refute that, but it sounded correct. He was impressed with how the Sorceress kept up with the magic of her counterpart. Was there professional rivalry among those of strong magic? "Yes-talents run in schools. But-"

"My talent is illusion," she said smoothly. "This rose-" She plucked a handsome red one and held it under his nose. What a sweet smell! "This rose, in reality, is…''

The rose faded. In her hand was a stalk of grass. It even smelled grassy.

Bink looked around, chagrined. "All of this is illusion?''

"Most of it. I could show you the whole garden as it is, but it would not be nearly as pretty." The grass in her hand shimmered and became an iris flower. "This should convince you. I am a powerful Sorceress. Therefore I can make an entire region seem like something it is not, and every detail will he authentic. MY roses smell like roses, my apple pies taste like apple pies. My body-" She paused with half a smile. "My body feels like a body. All seems real-but it is illusion. That is, each thing has a basis in fact, but my magic enhances it, modifies it. This is my complex of talents. Therefore I have no other talent-and you can trust me to that extent."

Bink was uncertain about that last point. A Sorceress of illusion was the last type of person to be trusted, to any extent! Yet he comprehended her point now. She had shown him her magic, and it was unlikely that she would practice any other magic on him. He had never thought of it this way before, but it was certainly true that no one in Xanth mixed types of magic talents.

Unless she were an ogre, using illusion to change her own appearance, too…No. An ogre was a magical creature, and magical creatures did not have magical talents. Probably. Their talents were their existence. So centaurs, dragons, and ogres always seemed like what they were, unless some natural person, animal, or plant changed them. He had to believe that! It was possible that Iris was in collusion with an ogre-but unlikely, for ogres were notoriously impatient, and tended to consume whatever they could get hold of, regardless of the consequence. Iris herself would have been eaten by this time.

"Okay, I trust you," Bink agreed dubiously.

"Good. Come into my palace, and I will tend to all your needs."

That was unlikely. No one could give him a magic talent of his own. Humfrey might discover his talent for him-at the price of a year's service!-but that would be merely revealing what was there, not creating it.

He suffered himself to he led into the palace. It was exquisite inside, too. Rainbow-hued beams of light dropped down from the prismatic roof formations, and the crystal wails formed mirrors. These might be illusion-but he saw his own reflection in them, and he looked somehow healthier and more manly than he felt. He was hardly bedraggled at all. More illusion?

Soft pretty pillows were piled in the corners in lieu of chairs or couches. Suddenly Bink felt very tired; he needed to lie down for a while! But then the image of the skeleton in the pine forest returned to him. He didn't know what to feel.

"Let's get you out of those wet clothes," Iris said solicitously.

"Uh, I'll dry," Bink said, not wanting to expose his body before a woman.

"Do you think I want my cushions ruined?" she demanded with housewifely concern. "You were floundering in salt water; you've got to rinse the salt off before you start itching. Go into the bathroom and change; there is a dry uniform awaiting you."

A uniform awaiting him? As though she had been expecting him. What could that mean?

Reluctantly, Bink went. The bathroom was, appropriately, palatial. The tub was like a small swimming pool, and the commode was an elegant affair of the type the Mundanes were said to employ. He watched the water circle around the bowl and drain out into a pipe below, disappearing as if by magic. He was, fascinated.

There was also a shower; a spray of water, like rain, emerged from an elevated nozzle, rinsing him off. That was sort of fun, though he was not sure he would want it as a regular thing. There must be a big tank of water upstairs somewhere, to provide the pressure for such devices.

He dried with a plush towel embroidered with images of irises.

The clothing was hung on a rack behind the door: a princely robe, and knickers. Knickers? Ah, well-they were dry, and no one would see him here in the palace. He donned the uniform, and stepped into the ornate sandals awaiting him. He strapped his hunting knife on, concealing it beneath the overhang of the robe.

Now he felt better-but his cold was developing apace. His sore throat had given way to a runny nose; he had thought this was merely aggravation by the salt water he had taken in, but now he was dry and it was apparent that his nose needed no external supply of fluid. He didn't want to sniff overtly, but he had no handkerchief.

"Are you hungry?" Iris asked solicitously as he emerged. "I will fetch you a banquet."

Bink certainly was hungry, for he had eaten only sparingly from his pack since starting along the chasm, depending on foraging along the way. Now his pack was soaked with salt water; that would complicate future meals.

He lay half buried in cushions, his nose tilted back so that it wouldn't dribble forward, surreptitiously mopping it with the corner of a pillow when he had to. He snoozed a bit while she puttered in the kitchen. Now that he knew this was all illusion, he realized why she did so much menial work herself. The sailors and gardeners were part of the illusion; Iris lived alone. So she had to do her own cooking. Illusion might make for fine appearance, texture, and taste, but it would not prevent her from starving.

Why didn't Iris marry, or exchange her services for competent help? Much magic was useless for practical matters, but her magic was extraordinary. Anyone could live in a crystal palace if he lived with this Sorceress. Bink was sure many people would like that; appearance was often more important than substance anyway. And if she could make ordinary potatoes taste like a banquet, and medicine taste like candy-oh yes, it was a marketable talent!

Iris returned, bearing a steaming platter. She had changed into a housewifely apron, and her crownlet was gone. She looked less regal and a good deal more female. She set things up on a low table, and they sat crosslegged on cushions, facing each other.

"What would you like?" she inquired.

Again Bink felt nervous. "What are you serving?"

"Whatever you like."

"I mean-really?"

She made a frown. "If you must know, boiled rice. I have a hundred-pound bag of the stuff I have to use up before the rats catch on to the illusory cat I have guarding it and chew into it. I could make rat droppings taste like caviar, of course, but I'd rather not have to. But you can have anything you want-anything at all." She took a deep breath.

So it seemed-and it occurred to Bink that she was not restricting it to food. No doubt she got pretty lonely here on her island, and welcomed company. The local farmers probably shunned her-their wives would see to that!-and monsters weren't very sociable.

"Dragon steak," he said. "With hot sauce."

"The man is bold," she murmured, lifting the silver cover. The rich aroma wafted out, and there lay two broiled dragon steaks steeped in hot sauce. She served one expertly onto Bink's plate, and the other onto her own.

Dubiously, Bink cut off a piece and put it to his mouth. It was the finest dragon steak he had ever tasted-which was not saying much, since dragons were very difficult prey; he had eaten it only twice before. It was a truism that more people were eaten by dragons than dragons eaten by people. And the sauce-he had to grab for the glass of wine she had poured for him, to quench the heat. But it was a delicious burn, converting to flavor.

Still, he doubted. "Uh-would you mind…?"

She grimaced. "Only for a moment," she said.

The steak dissolved into dull boiled rice, then back into dragon meat.

"Thanks" Bink said. "It's still a bit hard to believe."

"More wine?"

"Uh, is it intoxicating?"

"No, unfortunately. You could drink it all day and never feel it, unless your own imagination made you dizzy."

"Glad to hear it." He accepted the elegant glass of sparkling fluid as she refilled it, and sipped. He had gulped down the first too fast to taste it. Maybe it was actually water, but it seemed to be perfect blue wine, the kind specified for dragon meat, full-bodied and delicately flavored. Much like the Sorceress herself.

For dessert they had home-baked chocolate-chip cookies, slightly burned. That last touch made it so realistic that he was hard put to it to preserve his disbelief. She obviously knew something about cooking and baking, even in illusion.

She cleared away the dishes and returned to join him on the cushions. Now she was in a low-cut evening gown, and he saw in more than adequate detail exactly how well-formed she was. Of course, that too could be illusion-but if it felt the same as it looked, who would protest?

Then his nose almost dripped onto the inviting gown, and he jerked his head up. He had been looking a mite too closely.

"Are you unhappy?" Iris inquired sympathetically.

"Uh, no. My nose-it-"

"Have a handkerchief," she said, proffering a lovely lace affair.

Bink hated to use such a work of art to honk his nose into, but it was better than using the pillows.

"Uh, is there any work I can do before I go?" he inquired uneasily.

"You are thinking too small," Iris said, leaning forward earnestly and inhaling deeply. Bink felt the flush rising along his neck. Sabrina seemed very far away-and she would never have dressed like this, anyway.

"I told you-I have to go to the Good Magician Humfrey to find my magic-or be exiled. I don't really think I have any magic, so-"

"I could arrange for you to stay, regardless," she said, nudging closer.

She was definitely making a play for him. But why would such an intelligent, talented woman be interested in a nobody like him? Bink mopped his nose again. A nobody with a cold. Her appearance might be greatly enhanced by illusion, but mind and talent were obviously genuine. She should have no need of him-for anything.

"You could perform magic that everyone would see," she continued in that dismayingly persuasive way of hers, nudging up against him. She certainly felt real-most provocatively so. "I could fashion an illusion of performance that no one could penetrate." He wished she hadn't said that while touching him so intimately. "I can do my magic from a distance, too, so there would be no way to tell I was involved. But that is the least of it. I can bring you wealth and power and comfort-all genuine, non-illusive. I can give you beauty and love. All that you might desire as a citizen of Xanth-"

Bink grew more suspicious. What was she leading up to? "I have a fiance-"

"Even that," Iris agreed. "I am not a jealous woman. You could have her as a concubine, provided you were circumspect."

"As a concubine!" Bink exploded.

She was unshaken. "Because you would be married to me."

Bink stared at her, aghast. "Why should you want to marry a man with no magic?"

"So I could be Queen of Xanth," she said evenly.

"Queen of Xanth! You'd have to marry the King."

"Precisely."

"But-"

"One of the quaint, archaic laws and customs of Xanth is that the nominal ruler must be male. Thus some perfectly capable magical females have been eliminated from consideration. Now the present King is old, senile, and without heir; it is time for a Queen. But first there must be a new King. That King could be you."

"Me! I have no knowledge of governing."

"Yes. You would naturally leave the dull details of government to me."