"He's a gnome," Bink said without thinking. Then: "Oh, no!'
"He's a man, and a good one-but he's well along the route to something else. He's at the height of his magical powers now-but his children, if he ever has any, may be true gnomes. I dare say he knows this, which is why he won't marry. And consider Chameleon-she has no direct magic, because she has become magic. This is the way the entire human populace of Xanth will go, inevitably-unless there is a steady infusion of new blood from Mundania. The Shield must come down! The magic creatures of Xanth must be permitted to migrate outside, freely, there to revert slowly and naturally to their original species. New animals must come in."
"But-" Bink found himself fumbling with the horrors of these concepts. "If there was always--always an interchange before, what happened to the people who came thousands of years ago?"
"Probably there was some obstruction for a while, cutting off migration; Xanth could have been a true island for a thousand years or so, trapping the original prehistoric human settlers, so that they merged entirely with the existing forms and gave rise to the centaurs and other sports. It is happening again, under the Shield. Human beings must-"
"Enough," Bink whispered, fundamentally shocked. "I can't listen to any more."
"You will defuse the cherry bombs?"
Like a bolt of lightning, sanity returned. "No! I'm taking Chameleon and leaving-now."
"But you have to understand-"
"No." The Evil Magician was beginning to make sense. If Bink listened any more, he would be subverted-and Xanth would be lost. "What you suggest is an abomination. It can not be true. I can not accept it."
Trent sighed, with seemingly genuine regret. "Well, it was worth a try, though I did fear you would reject it. I still cannot permit you to destroy this castle--"
Bink braced himself to move, to get out of transformation range. Six feetTrent shook his head. "No need to flee, Bink; I shall not break the truce. I could have done that when I showed you the pictures, but I value my given word. So I must compromise. If you will not join me, I shall have to join you."
"What?" Bink, whose ears were almost closed to the Evil Magician's beguiling logic, was caught off guard.
"Spare Castle Roogna. Defuse the bombs. I will see you safely clear of these environs."
This was too easy. "Your word?"
"My word," Trent said solemnly.
"You can make the castle let us go?"
"Yes. This is another facet of what I have learned in these archives. I have only to speak the proper words to it, and it will even facilitate our departure."
"Your word," Bink repeated suspiciously. So far Trent had not broken it-yet what guarantee was there? "No tricks, no sudden change of mind."
''My word of honor, Bink."
What could he do? If the Magician wanted to break the truce, he could transform Bink into a tadpole now, then sneak up on Chameleon and transform her. And-Bink was inclined to trust him. "All right."
"Go and defuse your bombs. I will settle with Roogna."
Bink went. Chameleon met him with a glad little cry-and this time he was quite satisfied to accept her embrace. "Trent has agreed to get us out of here," he told her.
"Oh, Bink, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed, kissing him. He had to grab her hand to make sure she didn't drop the cherry bomb she still held.
She was growing lovelier by the hour. Her personality was not changing much, except as her diminishing intelligence caused her to be less complex, less suspicious. He liked that personality-and now, he had to admit, he liked her beauty, too. She was of Xanth, she was magic, she did not try to manipulate him for her private purposes-she was his type of girl.
But he knew that her stupidity would turn him off, just as her ugliness during the other phase had. He could live with neither a lovely moron nor an ugly genius. She was attractive only right now, while her intelligence was fresh in his memory and her beauty was manifest to his sight and touch. To believe otherwise would be folly.
He drew away from her. "We have to remove the bombs. Carefully," he said.
But what about the emotional bombs within him?
The three of them walked out of Castle Roogna without challenge. The portcullis was raised; Trent had found the hoisting winch, oiled it, and cranked it up with the aid of the magic inherent in its mechanism. The ghosts appeared to bid them all fond adieu; Chameleon cried at this parting, and even Bink felt sad. He knew how lonely it would be for the ghosts after these few days of living company, and he even respected the indomitable castle itself. It did what it had to do, much as Bink himself did.
They carried bags of fruits from the garden, and wore functional clothing from the castle closets, stored for eight hundred years without deterioration by means of the potent ancient spells. They looked like royalty, and felt like it too. Castle Roogna had taken good care of them!
The gardens were magnificent. No storm erupted this time. No trees made threatening gestures; instead, they moved their limbs to be touched gently in the gesture of parting friendship. No vicious animals appeared-and no zombies.
In a surprisingly short time, the castle was out of sight. "We are now beyond Roogna's environs," Trent announced. "We must resume full alertness, for there is no truce with the true wilderness."
"We?" Bink asked. "Aren't you going back to the Castle?"
"Not at this time," the Magician said.
Bink's suspicion was renewed. "Just exactly what did you say to that castle?"
"I said: 'I shall return-as King. Roogna shall rule Xanth again.' "
"And it believed that?"
Trent's gaze was tranquil. "Why should it doubt the truth? I could hardly win the crown while remaining confined in the wilderness."
Bink did not respond. The Evil Magician had never said he'd given up his plot to conquer Xanth, after all. He had merely agreed to see Bink and Chameleon safely out of the castle. He had done this. So now they were back where they had been--operating under a truce to get them all safely out of the remainder of the wilderness. After that-Bink's mind was blank.
The untamed forest did not take long to make its presence felt. The trio cut through a small glade girt with pretty yellow flowers--and a swarm of bees rose up. Angrily they buzzed the three, not actually touching or stinging, but sheering off abruptly at short range.
Chameleon sneezed. And sneezed again, violently. Then Bink sneezed too, and so did Trent.
"Sneeze bees!" the Magician exclaimed between paroxysms.
"Transform them!" Bink cried.
"I can't-achoo!-focus on them, my eyes are watering so. Achoo! Anyway, they are innocent creatures of the ah, aahh, ACHOOO!"
"Run, you dopes!" Chameleon cried.
They ran. As they cleared the glade, the bees left off and the sneezes stopped. "Good thing they weren't choke bees!" the Magician said, wiping his flowing eyes.
Bink agreed. A sneeze or two was okay, but a dozen piled on top of one another was a serious matter. There had hardly been time to breathe.
Their noise had alerted others in the jungle. That was always the background threat here. There was a bellow, and the sound of big paws striking the ground. All too soon a huge fire-snorting dragon hove into view. It charged right through the sneeze glade, but the bees left it strictly alone. They knew better than to provoke any fire sneezes that would burn up their flowers.
"Change it! Change it!" Chameleon cried as the dragon oriented on her. Dragons seemed to have a special taste for the fairest maidens.
"Can't," Trent muttered. "By the time it gets within six feet, its fire will have scorched us all into roasts. It's got a twenty-foot blowtorch."
"You aren't much help," she complained.
"Transform me!" Bink cried with sudden inspiration.
"Good idea." Abruptly Bink was a sphinx. He retained his own head, but he had the body of a bull, wings of an eagle, and legs of a lion. And he was huge-he towered over the dragon. "I had no idea sphinxes grew this big," he boomed.
"Sorry-I forgot again," Trent said. "I was thinking of the legendary sphinx in Mundania."
"But the Mundanes don't have magic."
"This one must have wandered out from Xanth a long time ago. For thousands of years it has been stone, petrified."
"Petrified? What could scare a sphinx that size?" Chameleon wondered, peering up at Bink's monstrous face.
But there was business to attend to. "Begone, beastie!" Bink thundered.
The dragon was slow to adapt to the situation. It shot a jet of orange flame at Bink, scorching his feathers. The blast didn't hurt, but it was annoying. Bink reached out with one lion's paw and swiped at the dragon. It was a mere ripple of effort, but the creature was thrown sideways into a tree. A shower of rock nuts dropped on it from the angry tree. The dragon gave a single yelp of pain, doused its fire, and fled.
Bink circled around carefully, hoping he hadn't stepped on anyone. "Why didn't we think of this before?" he bellowed. "I can give you a ride, right to the edge of the jungle. No one will recognize us, and no creature will bother us!"
He squatted as low as possible, and Chameleon and Trent climbed up his tail to his back. Bink moved forward with a slow stride that was nevertheless faster than any man could run. They were on their way.
But not for long. Chameleon, bouncing around on the sphinx's horny-skinned back, decided she had to go to the bathroom. There was nothing to do but let her go. Bink hunched down so she could slide safely to the ground.
Trent took advantage of the break to stretch his legs. He walked around to Bink's huge face. "I'd transform you back, but it's really better to stick with the form until finished with it," he said. "I really have no concrete evidence that frequent transformations are harmful to the recipient, but it seems best not to gamble at this time. Since the sphinx is an intelligent life form, you aren't suffering intellectually."
"No, I'm okay," Bink agreed. "Better than ever, in fact. Can you guess this riddle? What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?"
"I shall not answer," Trent said, looking startled. "In all the legends I've heard, some sphinxes committed suicide when the correct answers to their riddles were given. Those were the smaller type of sphinx, a different species-but I seem to have muddled the distinctions somewhat, and would not care to gamble on the absence of affinity."
"Uh, no," Bink said, chagrined. "I guess the riddle was from the mind of the sphinx, not me. I'm sure all sphinxes had a common ancestor, though I don't know the difference between one kind and another."
"Odd. Not about your ignorance of Mundane legends. About your riddle memory. You are the sphinx. I didn't move your mind into an existing body, for the original creatures have all been dead or petrified for millennia. I transformed you into a similar monster, a Bink-sphinx. But if you actually have sphinx memories, true sphinx memories--"
"There must be ramifications of your magic you don't comprehend," Bink said. "I wish I understood the real nature of magic-any magic."
"Yes, it is a mystery. Magic exists in Xanth, nowhere else. Why? What is its mechanism? Why does Xanth seem to be adjacent to any Mundane land, in geography, language, and culture? How is this magic, in all its multiple levels, transmitted from the geographic region to the inhabitants?"
"I have pondered that," Bink said. "I thought perhaps some radiation from the rock, or nutritional value of the soil-"
"When I am King I shall initiate a study program to determine the true story of Xanth's uniqueness."
When Trent was King. The project was certainly worthwhile--in fact, fascinating-but not at that price. For a moment Bink was tempted: with the merest swipe of his mighty forepaw he could squash the Evil Magician flat, ending the threat forever.
No. Even if Trent were not really his friend, Bink could not violate the truce that way. Besides, he didn't want to remain a monster all his life, physically or morally.
"The lady is taking her sweet time," Trent muttered. Bink moved his ponderous head, searching for Chameleon. "She's usually very quick about that sort of thing. She doesn't like being alone." Then he thought of something else. "Unless she went looking for her spell-you know, to make her normal. She left Xanth in an effort to nullify her magic, and now that she's stuck back in Xanth, she wants some kind of counter-magic. She's not very bright right now, and-"
Trent stroked his chin. "This is the jungle. I don't want to violate her privacy, but-"
"Maybe we'd better check for her."
"Umm. Well, I guess you can stand one more transformation,'' Trent decided. "I'l1 make you a bloodhound. That's a Mundane animal, a kind of dog, very good at sniffing out a trail. If you run into her doing something private--well, you'll only be an animal, not a human voyeur."
Abruptly Bink was a keen-nosed, floppy-eared, loose-faced creature, smell-oriented. He could pick up the lingering odor of anything-he was sure of that. He had never before realized how overwhelmingly important the sense of smell was. Strange that he had ever depended on any lesser sense.
Trent concealed their supplies in a mock tangle tree and faced about. "Very well, Bink; let's sniff her out." Bink understood him well enough, but could not reply, as this was not a speaking form of animal.
Chameleon's trail was so obvious it was a wonder Trent himself couldn't smell it. Bink put his nose to the ground-how natural that the head be placed so close to the primary source of information, instead of raised foolishly high as in Trent's case-and moved forward competently.
The route led around behind a bush and on into the wilderness. She had been lured away; in her present low ebb of intelligence, almost anything would fool her. Yet there was no consistent odor of any animal or plant she might have followed. That suggested magic. Worried, Bink woofed and sniffed on, the Magician following. A magic lure was almost certainly trouble.
But her trace did not lead into a tangle tree or guck-tooth swamp or the lair of a wyvern. It wove intricately between these obvious hazards, bearing generally south, into the deepest jungle. Something obviously had led her, guiding her safely past all threats-but what, and where-and why?
Bink knew the essence, if not the detail: some will-o'-the-wisp spell had beckoned her, tempting her ever forward, always just a little out of reach. Perhaps it had seemed to offer some elixir, some enchantment to make her normal-and so she had followed. It would lead her into untracked wilderness, where she would be lost, and leave her there. She would not survive long.
Bink hesitated. He had not lost the trail; that could never happen. There was something else.
"What is it, Bink?" Trent inquired. "I know she was following the ignis fatuus-but since we are close on her trail we should be able to--" He broke off, becoming aware of the other thing. It was a shuddering in the ground, as of some massive object striking it. An object weighing many tons.
Trent looked around. "I can't see it, Bink. Can you smell it?"
Bink was silent. The wind was wrong. He could not smell whatever was making that sound from this distance.
