At dawn they emerged from the madness region, each holding a piece of spell-reversal wood. They had traveled tediously, separating Crombie at intervals from his piece of wood, getting his indication of the best immediate route, then returning his chunk to him so that he could perceive threats accurately until the next orientation.
Once they were out, they located a reasonably secure roost in a stork-leg tree, setting their pieces of wood in a circle about its spindly trunks so that no hostile magic could approach them without getting reversed. That was not a perfect defense, but they were so tired they had to make do.
Several hours later Bink woke, stretched, and descended. The centaur remained lodged on a broad branch, his four hooves dangling down on either side; it seemed the tree-climbing experience during the madness had added a nonmagical talent to his repertoire. The Magician lay curled in a ball within a large nest he had conjured from one of his vials. Crombie, ever the good soldier, was already up, scouting the area, and the golem was with him.
“One thing I want to know...” Bink started, as he munched on slices of raisin bread from a loaf Crombie had plucked from a local breadfruit tree. It was a trifle overripe, but otherwise excellent.
Crombie squawked. “...is who destroyed that reverse-spell tree,” Grundy finished.
“You’re translating again!”
“I’m not touching any wood at the moment.” The golem fidgeted. “But I don’t think I’m as real as I was last night, during the madness.”
“Still, there must be some feeling remaining,” Bink said. “It can be like that, approaching a goal. Two steps forward, one back—but you must never give up.”
Grundy showed more animation. “Say, that’s a positive way of looking at it, mushmind!”
Bink was glad to have given encouragement, though the golem’s unendearing little mannerisms remained evident. “How did you know what I was about to ask? About the destruction of—“
“You always come up with questions, Bink,” the golem said. “So we pointed out the location of the subject of your next question, and it matched up with the tree stump. So we researched it. It was a challenge.”
That was an intriguing ramification of Crombie’s talent! Anticipating the answers to future questions! Magic kept coming up with surprises. “Only a real creature likes challenges,” Bink said.
“I guess so. It’s sort of fun, the challenge of becoming real. Now that I know that maybe it’s possible. But I still have this ragtag body; no amount of caring can change that. It just means that now I fear the death that will surely come.” He shrugged, dismissing it “Anyway, the tree was blasted by a curse from that direction.” He pointed.
Bink looked. “All I see is a lake.” Then, startled: “Didn’t the ogre say something about—?”
“Fiends of the lake, who hurled a curse that blasted the whole forest,” Grundy said. “We checked: that is the lake.”
Humfrey descended from the tree. “I’d better bottle some of this wood, if I can get my magic to work on it,” he said. “Never can tell when it might be useful.”
“Cast a spell hurling it away from your bottle,” Chester suggested from the tree. He, too, dropped to the ground, after some awkward maneuvering that put his handsome posterior in jeopardy. Centaurs really did not belong in trees.
The Magician set up his vial and wood and uttered an incantation. There was a flash, a puff of smoke, and a gradual clearing of the air.
There sat the vial, corked. There sat the wood. The Good Magician was gone.
“Where did he go?” Bink demanded.
Crombie whirled and pointed his wing. Directly toward the bottle.
“Oh, no!” Bink cried, horrified. “His spell reversed, all right! It banished him to the bottle!” He dashed over and picked it up, jerking out the cork. Vapor issued forth, expanding and swirling and coalescing and forming in due course into the Good Magician. There was a fried egg perched on his head. “I forgot I was keeping breakfast in that one,” he said ruefully.
Grundy could hold back his newfound emotion no longer. He burst out laughing. He fell to the ground and rolled about, guffawing. “Oh, nobody gnomes the trouble he’s seen!” the golem gasped, going into a further paroxysm.
“A sense of humor is part of being real,” Chester said solemnly.
“Just so,” Humfrey agreed somewhat shortly, “Good thing an enemy did not get hold of the bottle. The holder has power over the content.”
The Magician tried again—and again. Eventually he found the proper aspect of reversal and managed to conjure the wood into the vial. Bink hoped the effort was worth it. At least he knew, now, how the Good Magician had assembled such an assortment of items. He simply bottled anything he thought he might need.
Then Bink encountered another pile of earth. “Hey, Magician!” he cried. “Time to investigate this thing. What is making these mounds? Are they all over Xanth, or just where we happen to be?”
Humfrey came over to contemplate the pile. “I suppose I’d better,” he grumped. “There was one on the siren’s isle, and another at our bone-camp.” He brought out his magic mirror. “What thing is this?” he snapped at it.
The mirror clouded thoughtfully, then cleared. It produced the image of a wormlike creature.
“That’s a wiggle!” Bink exclaimed, horrified. “Are the wiggles swarming again?”
“That’s not a wiggle,” Chester said. “Look at the scale. It’s ten times too large.” And in the mirror a measuring stick appeared beside the worm, showing it to be ten times the length of a wiggle. “Don’t you know your taxonomy? That’s a squiggle.”
“A squiggle?” Bink asked blankly. He did not want to admit that he had never heard of that species. “It looks like an overgrown wiggle to me.”
“They are cousins,” Chester explained. “The squiggles are larger, slower, and do not swarm. They are solitary creatures, traveling under the ground. They are harmless.”
“But the piles of dirt—“
“I had forgotten about that,” Chester said. “I should have recognized the castings before. They eject the dirt from their runnels behind them, and where they touch the surface it forms into a pile. As they runnel on, the further castings plug up the hole, so there is nothing left except the pile.”
“But what do they do?”
“They move about, make piles of earth. That’s all.”
“But why are they following me? I have nothing to do with squiggles.”
“Could be coincidence,” Humfrey said. He addressed the mirror. “Is it?”
The mirror’s unhappy baby face showed.
“Someone or something is setting the squiggle to spy on us, then,” Humfrey said, and the mirror smiled. “The question is, who?”
The mirror turned dark. “The same as the source of magic?” Humfrey demanded. The mirror denied it. “Bink’s enemy, then?” And the smiling baby returned.
“Not the same as the fiends of the lake?” Bink asked.
The baby smiled.
“You mean it is the same?”
“Don’t confuse the mirror with your illogic,” the Magician snapped. “It agreed it was not the same!”
“Uh, yes,” Bink said. “Still, if our route takes us past the fiends, we have a problem. With the enemy spying on us all the way, and throwing obstacles in our way, he’s sure to excite the fiends into something dire.”
“I believe you are correct,” Humfrey said. “It may be time for me to expend some more of my magic.”
“Glory be!” Chester exclaimed ironically.
“Quiet, horserear!” Humfrey snapped. “Now let me see. Do we have to pass the fiends of the lake to reach our destination?” The mirror smiled.
“And the fiends have curse-magic sufficient to blast forests?”
The mirror agreed.
“What’s the most convenient way to pass without trouble?”
The mirror showed a picture of Bink watching a play.
Humfrey looked up. “Can any of you make sense of this?”
Crombie squawked. “Where am I?” Grundy translated.
“Let me rephrase that question,” Humfrey said quickly. “Where is Crombie while Bink is watching the play?”
The mirror showed one of the Magician’s vials. The griffin went into an angry medley of squawks. “Oh come off it, beakbrain!” the golem said. “You know I can’t repeat words like that in public. Not if I want to become real.”
“Beakbrain’s concern is understandable,” Chester said. “Why should he be banished to a bottle? He might never get out.”
“I’m supposed to do the translations!” Grundy complained, forgetting his prior reluctance.
Humfrey put away the mirror. “If you won’t pay attention to my advice,” he informed Crombie, “then do it your own way.”
“You temperamental real people are at it again,” Grundy said. “The rational thing to do is listen to the advice, consider the alternatives, discuss them, and form a consensus.”
“The little imp is making uncommon sense,” Chester said.
“Which little imp?” Grundy demanded.
“I suspect,” the Magician said grimly, “that the garrulous golem would be best off in a bottle.”
“We’re fighting again,” Bink said. “If the mirror says we can pass the fiends most conveniently by traveling in bottles, I’d rather gamble on that than on the sort of thing we’ve just been through.”
“You don’t have to gamble,” Grundy pointed out. “You have to go watch a dumb play.”
“I have faith in my mirror,” Humfrey said, and the mirror blushed so brightly there was a faint glow through his jacket. “To prove it, I will submit to bottling myself. I believe the one Beauregard used is pleasantly upholstered and huge enough for two. Suppose Crombie and Grundy and I enter that bottle and give it to Bink to carry? Then he can ride Chester to the play.”
“I’m willing,” Bink said. He wondered privately whether the Good Magician would take all his other bottles with him into the bottle. That seemed a bit paradoxical, but no doubt was possible. “But I don’t know exactly where the fiends are, and I’d rather not barge in on them unexpectedly. If we approach carefully, circumspectly, they may be less fiendish.”
Crombie pointed to the lake.
“Yes, I know. But where at the lake? At the edge? On an island? I mean, before I innocently walk into a tree-blasting curse—“
Crombie squawked and spread his wings. His proud colors flashed as he flew up and made for the lake.
“Wait, featherbrain!” Chester cried. “They’ll see you by air! That will give us all away!” But the griffin ignored him.
They watched Crombie wing handsomely out over the water, his plumage flexing red, blue, and white. “I have to admit the ornery cuss is a beautiful animal,” Chester murmured.
Then the griffin folded his wings and plummeted toward the surface of the lake, spinning in the air. “A curse!” Bink cried. “They shot him down with a curse!”
But then the figure straightened out, regained altitude, and winged back. Crombie seemed to be all right.
“What happened?” Bink demanded as the griffin landed. “Was it a curse?”
“Squawk!” Crombie replied. Grundy translated: “What curse? I merely did my turnabout to get a closer fix on the fiends. They reside under the water.”
“Under the water!” Bink cried. “How can we go there?”
Humfrey brought out another vial and handed it to Bink. “These pills will do the trick. Take one every two hours while submerged. It will—“
“There’s a mound starting!” Chester cried. “A spy!”
Humfrey whipped out yet another vial, uncorked it, and aimed it at the upwelling dirt. A jet of vapor shot out, striking the mound. Crystals of ice formed. The mound froze.
“Fire extinguisher,” the Magician explained. “Very cold. That squiggle is frozen stiff in its tunnel.”
“Let me kill it while I can catch it!” Chester said eagerly.
“Wait!” Bink said. “How long will the freeze last?”
“Only a couple of minutes,” Humfrey said. “Then the squiggle will resume activity with no impairment”
“And no memory of the missing minutes?” Bink asked.
“It should not be aware of the lapse. Squiggles aren’t very smart.”
“Then don’t kill it! Get out of its observation. It will be convinced this was a false alarm, that we were never here. It will so report to its master, throwing the enemy off the track.”
The Magician’s brow lifted. “Very intelligent, Bink. You are thinking more like a leader now. We shall hide in the bottle, and you and Chester can carry it with you. Quickly, before the freeze abates.”
The griffin remained uncertain, but acquiesced. The Magician set the vial, performed his incantation, and man, griffin, and golem vanished.
“Grab the bottle, get on my back, hang on!” Chester cried. “Time’s almost up!”
Bink snatched up the lone vial remaining, jumped on Chester’s back, and hung on. The centaur took off. In a moment his hooves were splashing through the shallow water.
“Gimme a pill!” Chester cried.
Bink fumbled out a pill from the bottle, praying he would not spill the works as he bounced around. He popped one into his mouth and handed the other forward to Chester’s raised hand. “I hope these work!” he cried.
“That’s all we need—another wrong bottle!” Chester exclaimed. “Gobble a foaming insulation pill...”
Bink wished the centaur hadn’t thought of that. Insulation, or freezing extinguisher—ouch!
He glanced back. Was it his imagination, or was the dirt mound growing again? Had they gotten away in time? Suppose the squiggle saw their footprints?
Then Chester hit a dropoff, and they plunged underwater. Bink choked involuntarily as the liquid covered his mouth—but the water was just like air to his breathing. In fact, it was like air to his whole body, except for its color. They could breathe!
This experience reminded him of something. In a moment he had it: the Queen’s anniversary party! That had been illusory underwater scenery, while this was genuine. Unfortunately, the Queen’s version had been prettier. Here things were murky and dull.
Chester plodded on, picking his way carefully through the unfamiliar aquatic environment. Dusky clouds of sediment stirred up around his legs. Curious fish looked the pair over. Chester now held his bow in his hands, in case they should encounter a sea monster. Apart from the tension, it was soon rather dull going.
Bink drew out the bottle that held the Magician and put his eye to the side. Vaguely he made out the shapes of a tiny griffin and tinier man. They were in a carpeted room like that of a palace, and were looking at moving pictures in the magic mirror. It seemed very comfortable. Much nicer, in fact, than forging through the murk toward fiends.
Another ugly thought came. Suppose he had grabbed the wrong bottle himself, and popped the Magician into his mouth in lieu of a water-breathing pill? Such things were very scary right now.
Bink put the vial in his pocket, reassured that his friends were secure. He wondered what would happen if he shook the bottle violently, but resisted the urge to experiment. “Let’s go visit the fiends,” he said with false cheer.
Shortly they approached a splendid marine castle. It was formed from seashells—which meant it was probably magical, since few seashells formed in lakes without the aid of magic. Little whirlpools ascended from its turrets, apparently bringing air down to the inhabitants. Instead of a moat, the castle had a thick wall of seaweed, patrolled by vigilant swordfish.
“Well, let’s hope the fiends are kind to travelers,” Bink said. There were no bubbles as he spoke; the pill had fully acclimatized him.
“Let’s hope the Magician’s mirror knew its business,” the centaur responded grimly. “And that the fiends don’t connect the fool griffin with us, if they saw him.”
They marched up to the main gate. A behemoth rose out of the muck, mostly mouth.
“Hooold!” the behemoth bellowed. “Whoo goooes there?” It was very proficient and resonant on the long O’s; the sound reverberated across the reaches of the cavernous maw.
“Chester and Bink, travelers,” Bink said with some trepidation. “We’d like lodging for the night.”
“Soooo?” the monster inquired. “Then goooo!” Its month gaped even more horrendously.
“Go?” the centaur repeated aggressively. “We just came!”
“Soo gooo!” the behemoth reverberated, its orifice gaping so widely that the centaur could have ridden right into it without ducking his head.
Chester reached for his sword.
“Uh, hooold—I mean hold,” Bink murmured. “I remember—the gargoyle—I think it means to go inside. Inside the mouth.”
The centaur peered into the monster’s tunnel-like throat. “Damned if I’ll cooperate in my own consumption!”
“But that’s the entrance to the castle!” Bink explained. “The behemoth itself.”
Chester stared. “Well I’ll be gelded!” And without further hesitation he galloped in.
Sure enough, the throat continued on into the castle. Lights appeared at the end of the tunnel, and soon they emerged into a palatial receiving hall. Intricately woven tapestries covered the walls, and the floor was done in fancy wooden squares.
A handsome, almost pretty young man walked up to greet them. He had ornate curls about his ears and a neat mustache. His costume was a princely robe embroidered with brightly colored threads, and he wore soft slippers with pointed toes. “Welcome to Gateway Castle,” he said. “May I inquire your identities and the purpose of this visit?”
“You may,” Chester said.
There was a pause. “Well?” the man said, a bit nettled.
“Well, why don’t you inquire?” Chester said. “I gave you permission.”
Small muscles quirked about the man’s mouth, making him less pretty. “I so inquire.”
“I am Chester Centaur, and this is my companion Bink. He’s human.”
“So I noted. And your purpose?”
“We seek the source of magic,” Bink said.
“You have lost your way. It is at the amazon village, some distance north. But the direct route is hazardous to your sanity.”
“We have been there,” Bink said. “That is not the ultimate source, but merely the upwelling of magic dust. What we seek lies below. According to our information, a more convenient route passes through this castle.”
The man almost smiled. “Oh, you would not care for that route!”
“Try us and see.”
“This is beyond my cognizance. You will have to talk with the lord of the manor.”
“Good enough,” Bink said. He wondered what sort of a fiend this lord would be, who had such a docile human servant.
“If you would be good enough to come this way.”
“We’re good enough,” Chester said.
“But first we must do something about your hooves. The floor is teak parquet; we do not wish it scratched or dented.”
“Why put it on the floor, then?” Chester demanded.
“We do not apply it to the floor of our stable,” the man said. He produced several disks of furry “Apply these to your hooves; they will adhere, and muffle the impact.”
“How about wearing one of these on your mouth?” Chester demanded.
“It’s a small concession,” Bink murmured. Chester’s hooves were sound, since the healing elixir had eliminated all damage to the centaur’s hind end, but they were hard enough to leave an imprint. “Humor the poor man. The fiends are probably very strict about such things, and punish their servants for violations.”
With imperfect grace, Chester pressed his hooves one at a time onto the felt disks. The material clung to them, and it made the centaur’s footfalls silent.
They moved through an elegant hall, descended carpeted steps, and entered a small chamber. There was barely room for Chester to stand. “If this is your main hall—“ he began.
The man touched a button. The door slid closed. Then, abruptly, the room moved.
Bink flung out his hands, startled, and Chester kicked a hole in the rear wall.
“Easy, visitors,” the man said with a small frown. “Haven’t you ridden an elevator before? It is inanimate magic, a chamber that rises or sinks when occupied. Saves wear on stairs.”
“Oh,” Bink said, abashed. He preferred more conventional magic.
The magic lift stopped. The door slid open. They stepped out into another hall, and in due course came to the chambers of the lord of the manor.
He was, to Bink’s surprise, a man, garbed richly in silver cloth and diamonds, but with the same foolish slippers his servant wore. “So you proffer service for a night’s lodging,” he said briskly.
“This is our custom,” Bink said.
“And ours too!” the lord agreed heartily. “Have you any special talents?”
Bink couldn’t tell his own, and didn’t know Chester’s. “Uh, not exactly. But we’re strong, and can do work.”
“Work? Oh my heavens no!” the lord exclaimed. “People do not work here!”
Oh? “How do you live, then?” Bink asked.
“We organize, we direct—and we entertain,” the lord said. “Have you any entertainment abilities?”
Bink spread his hands. “I’m afraid not.”
“Excellent! You will make an ideal audience.”
“Audience?” Bink knew that Chester was as perplexed as he. The mirror had shown him watching a play—yet that could hardly be a service!
“We send our troupes out to entertain the masses, accepting payment in materials and services. It is a rewarding profession, esthetically and practically. But it is necessary to obtain advance audience ratings, so that we can gauge our reception precisely.”
This innocuous employment hardly jibed with the local reputation! “To be an audience—to watch your shows—that’s all you require? It hardly seems equitable! I’m afraid we would not be able to present an informed critical report—“
“No necessity! Our magic monitors will gauge your reactions, and point up our rough edges. You will have nothing to do but react, honestly.”
“I suppose we could do that,” Bink said dubiously. “If you really are satisfied.”
“Something funny here,” Chester said. “How come you have a reputation as fiends?”
“Uh, that’s not diplomatic,” Bink murmured, embarrassed.
“Fiends? Who called us fiends?” the lord demanded.
“The ogre,” Chester replied. “He said you blasted a whole forest with a curse.”
The lord stroked his goatee. “The ogre survives?”
“Chester, shut up!” Bink hissed.
But the centaur’s unruly nature had taken control. “All he was doing was rescuing his lady ogre, and you couldn’t stand to have him happy, so—“
“Ah, yes, that ogre. I suppose to an ogre’s way of thinking, we would be fiends. To us, crunching human bones is fiendish. It is all in one’s perspective.”
Apparently the centaur had not antagonized the lord, though Bink judged that to be sheer luck. Unless the lord, like his troupe, was an actor—in which case there could be serious and subtle trouble. “This one is now a vegetarian,” Bink said. “But I’m curious: do you really have such devastating curses, and why should you care what an ogre does? You really don’t have cause to worry about ogres, here under the lake; they can’t swim.”
“We do really have such curses,” the lord said. “They constitute group effort, the massing of all our magic. We have no individual talents, only individual contributions toward the whole.”
Bink was amazed. Here was a whole society with duplicating talents! Magic did repeat itself!
“We do not employ our curses haphazardly, however. We went after the ogre as a professional matter. He was interfering with our monopoly.”
Both Bink and Chester were blank. “Your what?”
“We handle all formal entertainments in southern Xanth. That bad actor blundered into one of our sets and kidnapped our leading lady. We do not tolerate such interference or competition.”
“You used an ogress for a leading lady?” Bink asked.
“We used a transformed nymph—a consummate actress. All our players are consummate, as you shall see. In that role she resembled the most ogrelike ogress imaginable, absolutely horrible.” He paused, considering. “In fact, with her artistic temperament, she was getting pretty ogrelike in life. Prima donna...”
“Then the ogre’s error was understandable.”
“Perhaps. But not tolerable. He had no business on that set. We had to scrub the whole production. It ruined our season.”
Bink wondered what reception the ogre would encounter, as he rescued his ideal female. An actress in ogress guise, actually from the castle of the fiends!
“What about the reverse-spell tree?” Chester asked.
“People were taking its fruit and being entertained by the reversal effects. We did not appreciate the competition. So we eliminated it.”
Chester glanced at Bink, but did not speak. Perhaps these people really were somewhat fiendish. To abolish all rival forms of entertainment—
“And where did you say you were traveling to?” the lord inquired.
“To the source of magic,” Bink said. “We understand it is underground, and that the best route leads through this castle.”
“I do not appreciate humor at my expense,” the lord said, frowning. “If you do not wish to inform me of your mission, that is certainly your privilege. But do not taunt me with an obvious fabrication.” Bink had the impression that obviousness was a worse affront than fabrication, to this person.
“Listen, fiend!” Chester said, bridling in most obvious fashion. “Centaurs do not lie!”
“Uh, let me handle this,” Bink said quickly. “There is surely some misunderstanding. We are on quest for the source of magic—but perhaps we have been misinformed as to its access.”
The lord mellowed. “That must be the case. Below this castle lies only the vortex. Nothing that goes that route ever returns. We are the Gateway; we straddle the vortex, protecting innocent creatures from being drawn unwittingly into that horrible fate. Who informed you that the object of your quest lay in such a direction?”
“Well, a Magician—“
“Never trust a Magician! They are all up to mischief!”
“Uh, maybe so,” Bink said uneasily, and Chester nodded thoughtfully. “He was very convincing.”
“They tend to be,” the lord said darkly. Abruptly he shifted the subject. “I will show you the vortex. This way, if you please.” He led the way to an interior panel. It slid aside at his touch. There was a glistening wall of glassy substance. No, not glass; it was moving. Fleeting irregularities showed horizontally. Now Bink could see through it somewhat vaguely, making out the three-dimensional shape. It was a column, perhaps twice his armspan in diameter, with a hollow center. In fact it was water, coursing around in circles at high speed. Or in spirals, going down—
“A whirlpool!” Chester exclaimed. “We are looking at the nether column of a whirlpool!”
“Correct,” the lord said with pride. “We have constructed our castle around it, containing it by magic. Substances may pass into it, but not out of it. Criminals and other untoward persons are fed into its maw, to disappear forever. This is a most salutary deterrent.”
Surely so! The mass of moving fluid was awesome in its smooth power, and frightening. Yet it was also in its fashion luring, like the song of the siren, or the madness.
Bink yanked his gaze away. “But where does it go?”
“Who would presume to know?” the lord inquired in return, quirking an eyebrow expressively. He slid the panel across and the vision of the vortex was gone.
“Enough of this,” the lord decided. “We shall wine and dine you fittingly, and then you will audience our play.”
The meal was excellent, served by fetching young women in scant green outfits who paid flattering attention to the travelers, especially Chester. They seemed to admire both his muscular man-portion and his handsome equine portion. Bink wondered, as he had before, what it was girls saw in horses. The siren had been so eager to ride!
At last, stuffed, Bink and Chester were ushered to the theater. The stage was several times the size of the chamber for the audience. Apparently these people did not like to watch as much as they liked to perform.
The curtain lifted and it was on: a gaudily costumed affair replete with bold swordsmen and buxom women and funny jokers. The staged duels were impressive, but Bink wondered how proficient those men would be with their weapons in a real battle. There was a considerable difference between technical skill and combat nerve! The women were marvelously seductive—but would they be as shapely without the support of their special clothes, or as wittily suggestive minus the memorized lines?
“You do not find our production entertaining?” the lord inquired.
“I prefer life,” Bink replied.
The lord made a note on his pad: MORE REALISM.
Then the play shifted to a scene of music. The heroine sang a lovely song of loss and longing, meditating on her faithless lover, and it was difficult to imagine how any lout, no matter how louty, could be faithless to such a desirable creature. Bink thought of Chameleon again, and longed for her again. Chester was standing raptly beside him, probably thinking of horsing around with Cherie Centaur, who was indeed a fetching filly.
Then the song was augmented by a hauntingly lovely accompaniment. A flute was playing, its notes of such absolute quality and clarity that the lady’s voice was shamed. Bink looked toward that sound— and there it was, a gleaming silver flute hanging in the air beside the heroine, playing by itself. A magic flute! The lady ceased singing, surprised, but the flute played on. Indeed, freed of the limitations of her voice, it trilled on into an aria of phenomenal expertise and beauty. Now the entire cast of players stood listening, seeming to find it as novel as Bink did.
The lord jumped to his feet “Who is performing that magic?” he demanded.
No one answered. All were absorbed in the presentation.
“Clear that set!” the lord cried, red-faced. “Everybody out out out!”
Slowly they cleared, fading into the wings, looking back at the solo instrument The stage was empty— but still the flute played, performing a medley of melodies, each more lovely than the one preceding.
The lord grabbed Bink by the shoulders. “Are you doing it?” he demanded, seeming about ready to choke.
Bink tore his attention from the flute. “I have no magic like that!” he said.
The lord hauled on Chester’s muscular arm. “You —it must be yours, then!”
Chester’s head turned to face him. “What?” he asked, as if coming out of a reverie. In that instant, flute and music faded.
“Chester!” Bink exclaimed. “Your talent! All the beauty in your nature, suppressed because it was linked to your magic, and as a centaur you couldn’t—“
“My talent!” Chester repeated, amazed. “It must be me! I never did dare to—who would have believed—“
“Play it again!” Bink urged. “Make beautiful music! Prove you have magic, just as your hero-uncle Herman the Hermit did!”
“Yes,” Chester agreed. He concentrated. The flute reappeared. It began to play, haltingly at first, then with greater conviction and beauty. And strangely, the centaur’s rather homely face began to seem less so. Not so strange, Bink realized: much of Chester’s brutality of expression stemmed from his habitual snarl. That snarl had abated; he had no need of it any more.
“Now you don’t owe the Magician any service,” Bink pointed out. “You found your talent yourself.”
“What abominable mischief!” the lord cried. “You accepted our hospitality on the agreement that you would render service as an audience. You are not an audience—you are a performer. You have reneged on your agreement with us!”
Now a portion of Chester’s familiar arrogance reasserted itself. The flute blew a flat note. “Manfeathers!” the centaur snapped. “I was only playing along with your heroine’s song. Bring your play back; I’ll watch it, and accompany it.”
“Hardly,” the lord said grimly. “We tolerate no non-guild performances in our midst. We maintain a monopoly.”
“What are you going to do?” Chester demanded. “Throw a fit? I mean, a curse?”
“Uh, I wouldn’t—“ Bink cautioned his friend.
“I’ll not tolerate such arrogance from a mere half-man!” the lord said.
“Oh, yeah?” Chester retorted. With an easy and insulting gesture he caught the man’s shirtfront with one hand and lifted him off the floor.
“Chester, we’re their guests!” Bink protested.
“Not any more!” the lord gasped. “Get out of this castle before we destroy you for your insolence!”
“My insolence—for playing a magic flute?” Chester demanded incredulously. “How would you like that flute up your—“
“Chester!” Bink cried warningly, though he had considerable sympathy for the centaur’s position. He invoked the one name that had power to restrain Chester’s wrath: “Cherie wouldn’t like it if you—“
“Oh, I wouldn’t do it to her!” Chester said, reconsidered. “Not with a flute—“
All this time the centaur had been holding the lord suspended in air. Suddenly the man’s shirt ripped, and then fell ignominiously to the floor. More than ignominiously: he landed in a fresh pile of dirt.
Actually, this cushioned his impact, saving him from possible injury. But it multiplied his rage. “Dirt!” the lord cried. “This animal dumped me in dirt!”
“Well, that’s where you belong,” Chester said. “I really wouldn’t want to dirty my clean silver flute on you.” He glanced at Bink. “I’m glad it’s silver, and not some cheap metal. Shows quality, that flute.”
“Yes,” Bink agreed hastily. “Now if we can leave—“
“What’s dirt doing on my teak parquet?” the lord demanded. There was now a crowd of actors and servants about him, helping him up, brushing him off, fawning.
“The squiggle,” Bink said, dismayed. “It found us again.”
“Oh, so it’s a friend of yours!” the lord cried, proceeding dramatically from rage to rage. “I should have known! It shall be the first to be cursed!” And he pointed one finger, shaking with emotion, at the pile. “All together now. A-one, a-two, a-three!”
Everyone linked hands and concentrated. At the count of three the curse came forth, like a bolt of lightning from the lord’s finger. Ball lightning: it formed into a glowing mass the size of a fist, and drifted down to touch the dirt. At contact it exploded—or imploded. There was a flash of darkness and a momentary acrid odor; then the air cleared and there was nothing. No dirt, no squiggle, no flooring, in that region.
The lord glanced at the hole with satisfaction. “That’s one squiggle that will never bother us again,” he said. “Now for you, half-man.” He raised his terrible finger to point at Chester. “A-one, a-two—“
Bink dived across, knocking the man’s arm aside. The curse spun off and smashed into a column. There was another implosion of darkness, and a chunk of the column dissolved into nothingness.
“Now see what you’ve done!” the lord cried, becoming if possible even more angry than before. Bink could not protest; probably his talent had been responsible for the seemingly random shot. The curse had to destroy something, after all.
Bink himself would be immune—but not Chester.
“Let’s get out of here!” Bink said. “Give me a ride out of range of those curses!”
Chester, about to draw his sword, reconsidered in mid-motion. “That’s right—I can take care of myself, but you’re just a man. Come on!”
Bink scrambled to straddle the centaur’s back, and they leaped away just as the lord was leveling another curse. Chester galloped down the hall, his feet oddly silent because of the hoofpads. The fiends set up a howl of pursuit
“Which way is out?” Bink cried.
“How should I know? That’s birdbeak’s department. I’m only a former guest of the fiends.”
Good old Chester! All prickle and performance.
“We’re somewhere upstairs,” Bink said. “Except they don’t use stairs. We could break out a window and swim—” He reached into his pocket, feeling the bottle that contained Crombie, Grundy, and the Magician. He fumbled until he found the one containing the water-breathing-spell pills; couldn’t afford a mistake now! “We’d better take new pills; it’s been over two hours.”
They gulped their pills on the run. Now they were ready for the water—if they could find it They had left the pursuit behind for the moment; no man on foot could match the speed of a centaur.
Bink had a second thought “We don’t want to go out—we want to go down. Into the nether region, to the source of magic.”
“Where they tried to scare us away from,” Chester agreed. He spun about as neatly as he had when dodging exploding pineapples, his two front feet down so that fore and hind sections rotated about the axis. Then he cantered back the way they had come.
“Hold up!” Bink screamed. “This is suicidal! We don’t even know where the entrance to the vortex is!”
“The vortex has to be in the center of the castle; matter of architectural stability,” Chester said. “Besides which, I have a fair directional sense of my own; I know roughly where it is from here. I am prepared to make my own entrance.” Bink tended to forget that behind the brutal facade lay a fine centaur mind Chester knew what he was doing.
They rounded a corner—and plowed into the charging fiends. People went tumbling every which way—but a massive curse rose up from the jumble and sailed after Chester.
Bink, glancing nervously back, spied it. “Chester-run!” he cried. “There’s a curse on your tail!”
“On my tail!” Chester cried indignantly, and leaped forward. He didn’t mind threats to his homely face, but his beautiful behind was sacred.
The curse, oriented on its target, pursued with determination. “This one we can’t avoid,” Bink said. “It’s locked onto us, as the other was locked onto the ogre.”
“Should we swear off crunching bones?”
“I never was much for human bones anyway!”
“I think the vortex is ahead,” Chester said. “Hang on—I’m going in!”
He leaped—directly at a blank wooden panel. The wood shattered under the impact of his forehooves, and the two of them crashed directly into the vortex.
Bink’s last thought as the awful swirl engulfed him, hauling him brutally around and around and down and down, providing one terrifying glimpse of its dark center shaft, was: what would happen to the curse that followed them? Then he spiraled into oblivion.