The Source of Magic (33 page)

“Same here,” Chester said. “Conjure yourself back into the bottle, and let us rescue the bottle and release you in our power. Then if you can repeat that statement, I’ll listen.”

“No.”

“That is what I thought,” Chester said. “I undertook this mission as a service to you, Magician, but I have never collected my Answer from you. I can quit your service anytime I want. But I shall not renounce this quest merely because some hidden monster has scared you into changing your mind.”

“Your position is comprehensible,” Humfrey said with surprising mildness. “I do not, as you point out, have any present call on your service. But I am obliged to advise you both that if we can not prevail upon your reason, we must oppose you materially.”

“You mean you would actually fight us?” Bink asked incredulously.

“We do not wish to resort to force,” Humfrey said. “But it is imperative that you desist. Go now, give up your quest, and all will be well.”

“And if we don’t quit?” Chester demanded belligerently, eyeing Crombie. Obviously the centaur would not be entirely loath to match his prowess against that of the griffin. There had been a kind of rivalry between them all along.

“In that case we should have to nullify you,” Humfrey said gravely. Small he was, but he remained a Magician, and his
statement sent an ugly chill through Bink. Nobody could afford to take lightly the threat of a Magician.

Bink was torn between unkind alternatives. How could he fight his friends, the very ones he had struggled so hard to rescue? Yet if they were under the spell of the enemy, how could he afford to yield to their demand? If only he could get at the brain coral, the enemy, and destroy it, then his friends would be freed from its baleful influence. But the coral was deep under the poison water, unreachable. Unless—

“Jewel!” he cried. “Send the diggle down to make holes through the coral!”

“I can’t, Bink,” she said sadly. “The diggle never came back after we sent it after the bottle. I’m stuck here with my bucket of gems.” She flipped a diamond angrily into the water. “I can’t even plant them properly, now.”

“The worm has been sent away,” Humfrey said. “Only the completion of your quest can destroy the coral—along with all the Land of Xanth. Depart now, or suffer the consequence.”

Bink glanced at Chester. “I don’t want to hurt him. Maybe if I can knock him out, get him out of range of the coral—”

“While I take care of birdbeak,” Chester said, nominally regretful.

“I don’t want bloodshed!” Bink cried. “These are our friends, whom we must rescue.”

“I suppose so,” Chester agreed reluctantly. “I’ll try to immobilize the griffin without hurting him too much. Maybe I’ll just pull out a few of his feathers.”

Bink realized that this was as much of a compromise as Chester was prepared to make. “Very well. But stop the moment he yields.”

Now he faced Humfrey again. “I intend to pursue my quest. I ask you to depart, and to refrain from trying to interfere. It grieves me even to contemplate strife between us, but—”

Humfrey rummaged in his belt of vials. He brought one out. “Huh-
uh
!” Bink cried, striding across. Yet his horror at practicing any kind of violence against his friends held him back, and he got there too late. The cork came out and the vapor issued.
It formed into … a green poncho, which flapped about in the air before settling to the floor.

“Wrong bottle,” the Magician muttered, and uncorked another.

Bink, momentarily frozen, realized that he could not subdue the Magician until he separated the man from his arsenal of vials. Bulk’s talent might have helped Humfrey to confuse the bottles, but that sort of error could not be counted on after the first time. Bink drew his sword, intending to slice the belt from the Good Magician’s waist—but realized that this seemed like a murderous attack. Again he hesitated—and was brought up short by the coalescing vapor. Suddenly thirteen black cats faced him, spitting viciously.

Bink had never seen a pure cat before, in the flesh. He regarded the cat as an extinct species. He just stood there and stared at this abrupt de-extinction, unable to formulate a durable opinion. If he killed these animals, would he be re-extincting the species?

Meanwhile, the centaur joined battle with the griffin. Their encounter was savage from the outset, despite Chester’s promises. His bow was in his hands, and an arrow sizzled through the air. But Crombie, an experienced soldier, did not wait for it to arrive. He leaped and spread his wings, then closed them with a great backblast of air. He shot upward at an angle, the arrow passing beneath his tail feathers. Then he banked near the cavern ceiling and plummeted toward the centaur, screaming, claws outstretched.

Chester’s bow was instantly replaced by his rope. He swung up a loop that closed about the griffin’s torso, drawing the wings closed. He jerked, and Crombie was swung about in a quarter-circle. The centaur was about three times as massive as his opponent, so was able to control him this way.

A black cat leaped at Bink’s face, forcing him to pay attention to his own battle. Reflexively he brought his sword around—and sliced the animal cleanly in half.

Bink froze again in horror. He had not meant to kill it! A rare creature like this—maybe these cats were all that remained in
the whole Land of Xanth, being preserved only by the Magician’s magic.

Then two things changed his attitude. First, the severed halves of the cat he had struck did not die; they metamorphosed into smaller cats. This was not a real cat, but a pseudo-cat, shaped from life-clay and given a feline imperative. Any part of it became another cat. Had a dog been shaped from the same material, it would have fractured into more dogs. So Bink hardly needed to worry about preservation of that species. Second, another cat was biting him on the ankle.

In a sudden fury of relief and ire, Bink laid about him with his blade. He sliced cats in halves, quarters, and eighths—and every segment became a smaller feline, attacking him with renewed ferocity. This was like fighting the hydra—only this time he had no spell-reversal wood to feed it, and there was no thread to make it drop. Soon he had a hundred tiny cats pouncing on him like rats, and then a thousand attacking like nickelpedes. The more he fought, the worse it got.

Was this magic related to that of the hydra? That monster had been typified by seven, while the cats were thirteen, but each doubled with each strike against a member. If there were some key, some counterspell to abolish doubling magic—

“Get smart, Bink!” Chester called, stomping on several cats that had wandered into his territory. “Sweep them all into the drink.”

Of course! Bink stooped low and swung the flat of his sword sidewise, sweeping dozens of thumbnail-sized cats into the lake. They hissed as they splashed, like so many hot pebbles, and then thrashed to the bottom. Whether they were drowning or being poisoned he could not tell, but none emerged.

While he swept his way to victory, Bink absorbed the continuing centaur-griffin engagement. He could not observe everything, but was able to bridge the gaps well enough. He had to keep track, because if anything happened to Chester, Bink would have another enemy to face.

Crombie, initially incapacitated by the rope, bent his head down and sheared his bond cleanly with one crunch of his sharp beak. He spread his wings explosively, made a defiant
squawk, and launched a three-point charge at Chester’s head: beak, claw, and talon.

The centaur, thrown off balance by the abrupt slackening of the rope, staggered. He had better stability than a man, but he had been hauling hard. His equine shoulder thudded against a stalagmite and broke it off as the griffin made contact. Bink winced—but as it turned out, the stalagmite was more of a problem to Crombie than to Chester. The pointed top fell across the griffin’s left wing, weighing it down, forcing Crombie to flap his other wing vigorously to right himself.

Chester rose up, one talon slash down the side of his face where the griffin’s strike had missed his eye. But his two great hands now grasped the griffin’s two front legs. “Got you now, birdie!” he cried. But in this position he could not use his sword, so he tried to bash the griffin against the broken base of the stalagmite.

Crombie squawked and brought his hind legs up for a double slash that would have disemboweled the centaur’s human portion had it scored. Chester hastily let go, throwing Crombie violently away from him. Then he grabbed for his bow and arrow again. The griffin, however, spread his wings to brake his flight, looped about, and closed in again before the arrow could be brought to bear. Now it was hand-to-claw.

Bink had cleared his area of little cats—but the Good Magician had had time to organize his vials and open the next. This coalesced into a mound of bright-red cherry bombs. Oh, no! Bink had had experience with these violent little fruits before, as there was a tree of them on the palace grounds. In fact, these were probably from that same tree. If any of them scored on him—

He dived for Humfrey, catching the Magician’s arm before he could throw. Humfrey struggled desperately against Bulk’s superior strength. Bink still held back, hating this violence though he saw no alternative to it. Both of them fell to the floor. The Magician’s belt tore loose, and a collection of vials rumbled across the stone. Some of their corks popped out. The cherry bombs were dislodged; they rolled away and dunked
into the lake, where they detonated with harmless thuds and clouds of steam. One rolled into Jewel’s bucket of gems.

The explosion sent precious stones flying all over the cavern. Diamonds shot by Bink’s ears; a huge pearl thunked into the Magician’s chest; opals got under Chester’s hooves. “Oh, no!” Jewel cried, horrified. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be done! Each has to be planted in exactly the right place!”

Bink was sorry about the gems, but he had more pressing problems. The new bottles were spewing forth a bewildering variety of things.

The first was a pair of winged shoes. “So that’s where I left them!” Humfrey exclaimed. But they flew out of reach before he could grab them. The second vial loosed a giant hour-glass whose sands were running out—also harmless in this instance. The next was a collection of exotic-looking seeds, some like huge flat fish eyes, others like salt-and-pepper mix, others like one-winged flies. They fluttered out and littered a wide patch, crunching underfoot, rolling like marbles, squishing and adhering like burrs. But they did not seem to be any direct threat.

Unfortunately, the other vials were also pouring out vapors. These produced a bucket of garbage (so that was how the Magician cleaned his castle: he swept it all into a vial!), a bag of supergrow fertilizer, a miniature thunderstorm, and a small nova star. Now the seeds had food, water, and light. Suddenly they were sprouting. Tendrils poked out, bodies swelled, pods popped, leaves burst forth. Roots gripped the rock and clasped items of garbage; stems shot up to form a dense and variegated carpet. Diverse species fought their own miniature battles over the best fertilizer territory. In moments Bink and the Magician were surrounded by an expanding little jungle. Vines clung to feet, branches poked at bodies, and leaves obscured vision.

Soon the plants were flowering. Now their species were identifiable. Lady slippers produced footwear of a most delicate nature, causing Jewel to exclaim in delight and snatch off a pair for herself. Knotweeds formed the most intricate specialized knots: bow, granny, lanyard, clinch, hangman, and half-hitch. Bink had to step quickly to avoid getting tied up. That would cost him the victory right there!

Meanwhile, the Magician was trying to avoid the snapping jaws of dog-tooth violets and dandelions, while a hawkweed made little swoops at his head. Bink would have laughed—but had too many problems of his own. A goldenrod was trying to impale him on its metallic spire, and a sunflower was blinding him with its effulgence. The nova star was no longer needed; the cave was now bright as day, and would remain so until the sunflower went to seed.

Bink ducked just in time to avoid a flight of glinting arrowheads—but his foot slipped on a buttercup, squirting butter out and making him sit down hard—ooomph—on the squishy head of a skunk cabbage. Suddenly he was steamed in the nauseating fragrance.

Well, what had he expected? He had very little protective talent now; the enemy brain coral had canceled out his magic. Bink was on his own, and had to make his own breaks. At least Humfrey was no better off; at the moment he was being given a hotfoot by a patch of fireweed. He snatched up a flower from a water lily and poured its water out to douse the fire. Meanwhile, several paintbrushes were decorating him with stripes of red, green, and blue. Stray diamonds from the nymph’s collection were sticking to his clothes.

This was getting nowhere! Bink tore his way out of the miniature jungle, holding his breath and closing his eyes as a parcel of poppies popped loudly about his head. He felt something enclosing his hands, and had to look: it was a pair of foxgloves. A bluebell rang in his ear; then he was out of it. And there was the Magician’s belt with its remaining vials. Suddenly he realized: if he controlled this, Humfrey would be helpless. All his magic was contained in these vials!

Bink stepped toward it—but at that moment the Magician emerged from the foliage, plastered with crowfeet. Humfrey brushed them off, and the feet scampered away. A lone primrose turned its flower away from this gaucherie. Humfrey dived for his magic belt, arriving just as Bink did.

Bink laid his hands on it. There was a tug-of-war. More vials spilled out. One puffed into a kettle of barley soup that spilled across the floor and was eagerly lapped up by the questing
rootlets of the jungle. Another developed into a package of mixed nuts and bolts. Then Bink found a steaming rice pudding and heaved it at the Magician—but Humfrey scored first with a big mince pie. Minces flew out explosively, twenty-four of them, littering a yet wider area. Bink caught the brunt of it in his face. Minces were wriggling in his hair and down his neck and partially obscuring his vision. Bink fanned the air with his sword, trying to keep the Magician back while he cleared his vision. Oddly, he could perceive the neighboring battle of centaur and griffin better than his own, at this moment.