A Spell for Chameleon

  "Yes, actually, I do. Xanth is overdue for a new Wave of colonization, and such a Wave would benefit it as the prior ones did."

  "The Waves were murder and rapine and destruction! The curse of Xanth."

  Trent shook his head. "Some were that, yes. But others were highly beneficial, such as the Fourth Wave, from which this castle dates. It was not the fact of the Waves but their mismanagement that made trouble. On the whole they were essential to the progress of Xanth. But I don't expect you to believe that. Right now I'm merely trying to persuade you to spare this castle and yourself; I'm not trying to convert you to my cause."

  Something about this interchange was troubling Bink increasingly. The Evil Magician seemed too mature, too reasonable, too knowledgeable, too committed. Trent was wrong--he had to be--yet he spoke with such verisimilitude that Bink had difficulty pinpointing that wrongness. "Try to convert me," he said.

  "I'm glad you said that, Bink. I'd like you to know my logical rationale. Perhaps you can offer some positive critique."

  That sounded like a sophisticated intellectual ploy. Bink tried to perceive it as sarcasm, but he was sure it was not. He feared the Magician was more intelligent than he, but he also knew what was right. "Maybe I can," he said guardedly. He felt as if he were walking into the wilderness, picking the most likely paths, yet being inevitably guided to the trap at the center. Castle Roogna--on the physical and intellectual levels. Roogna had lacked a voice for eight hundred years, but now it had one. Bink could no more fence with that voice than he could with the Magician's keen sword--yet he had to try.

  "My rationale is dual. Part of it relates to Mundania, and part to Xanth. You see, despite certain lapses in ethics and politics, Mundania has progressed remarkably in the past few centuries, thanks to the numbers of people who have made discoveries and spread information; in many respects it is a far more civilized region than Xanth. Unfortunately, the Mundanes' powers of combat have also progressed. This you will have to take on faith, for I have no way to prove it here. Mundania has weapons that are easily capable of eradicating all life in Xanth, regardless of the Shield."

  "That's a lie!" Bink exclaimed. "Nothing can penetrate the Shield!"

  "Except perhaps the three of us," Trent murmured. "But the main restriction of the Shield is against living things. You could charge through the Shield--your body would penetrate it quite readily--but you would be dead when you got there."

  "Same thing."

  "Not the same thing, Bink! You see, there are big guns that throw missiles which are dead to begin with, such as powerful bombs, like your cherry bombs but much worse, preset to explode on contact. Xanth is a small area, compared to Mundania. If the Mundanes were determined, they could saturate Xanth. In such an attack, even the Shieldstone would be destroyed. The people of Xanth can no longer afford to ignore the Mundanes. There are too many Mundanians; we can't remain undiscovered forever. They can and will one day wipe us out. Unless we establish relations now."

  Bink shook his head in disbelief and incomprehension.

  But Trent continued without rancor. "Now, the Xanth internal aspect is quite another matter. It poses no threat to Mundania, since magic is not operative them. But it does pose an insidious but compelling threat to life as we know it in Xanth itself."

  "Xanth poses a threat to Xanth? This is nonsense on the face of it."

  Now Trent's smile was a bit patronizing. "I can see you would have trouble with the logic of recent Mundanian science." But he sobered before Bink could inquire about that. "No, I am being unfair to you. This internal threat of Xanth is something I learned just in the past few days from my researches in this library, and it is important. This aspect alone justifies the necessity of preserving this castle, for its accumulated ancient lore is vital to Xanth society."

  Bink remained dubious. "We've lived without this library for eight centuries; we can live without it now."

  "Ah, but the manner of that life?' Trent shook his head as if perceiving something too vast to be expressed. He got up and moved to a shelf behind him. He took down a book and riffled carefully through its creaking old pages. He set it down before Bink, open. "What is that picture?"

  "A dragon," Bink said promptly.

  Trent flipped a page. "And this?"

  "A manticora." What was the point? The pictures were very nice, though they did not coincide precisely with contemporary creatures. The proportions and details were subtly wrong.

  "And this?"

  It was a picture of a human-headed quadruped, with hoofs, a horse's tail, and catlike forelegs. "A lamia."

  "And this?"

  "A centaur. Look--we can admire pictures all day, but--"

  "What do these creatures have in common?" Trent asked.

  "They have human heads or foreparts--except the dragon, though the one in this book has an almost human shortness of snout. Some have human intelligence. But--"

  "Exactly! Consider the sequence. Trace a dragon back through similar species, and it becomes increasingly manlike. Does that suggest anything to you?"

  "Just that some creatures are more manlike than others. But that's no threat to Xanth. Anyway, most of these pictures are out of date; the actual creatures don't look quite like that any more."

  "Did the centaurs teach you the Theory of Evolution?"

  "Oh, sure. That today's creatures are evolved from more primitive ones, selected for survival. Go back far enough and you find a common ancestor."

  "Right. But in Mundania creatures like the lamia, manticora, and dragon never evolved."

  "Of course not. They're magic. They evolve by magic selection. Only in Xanth can--"

  "Yet obviously Xanth creatures started from Mundane ancestors. They have so many affinities--"

  "All right!" Bink said impatiently. "They descended from Mundanes. What has that got to do with your conquering Xanth?"

  "According to conventional centaur history, man has been in Xanth only a thousand years," Trent said. "In that period there have been ten major Waves of immigration from Mundania."

  "Twelve," Bink said.

  "That depends on how you count them. At any rate, this continued for nine hundred years, until the Shield cut off those migrations. Yet there are many partially human forms that predate the supposed arrival of human beings. Does that seem to be significant?"

  Bink was increasingly worried that Chameleon would foul up, or that the castle would figure out a way to neutralize the cherry bombs. He was not certain that Castle Roogna could not think for itself. Was the Evil Magician stalling to make time for this? "I'll give you one more minute to make your case. Then we're going, regardless."

  "How could partially human forms have evolved--unless they had human ancestors? Convergent evolution doesn't create the unnatural mishmash monsters we have here. It creates creatures adapted to their ecological niches, and human features fit few niches. There had to have been people in Xanth many thousands of years ago."

  "All right," Bink agreed. "Thirty seconds."

  "These people must have interbred with animals to form the composites we know--the centaurs, manticoras, merfolk, harpies, and all. And the creatures crossbred among themselves, and the composites interbred with other composites, producing things like the chimera--"

  Bink turned to go. "I think your minute is up," he said. Then he froze. "They what?"

  "The species mated with other species to create hybrids. Man-headed beasts, beast-headed men--"

  "Impossible! Men can only mate with men. I mean with women. It would be unnatural to--"

  "Xanth is an unnatural land, Bink. Magic makes remarkable things possible."

  Bink saw that logic defied emotion. "But even if they did," he said with difficulty, "that still doesn't justify your conquering Xanth. What's past is past; a change of government won't--"

  "I think this background does justify my assumption of power, Bink. Because the accelerated evolution and mutation produced by magic and interspecies miscegenation is changing Xan
th. If we remain cut off from the Mundane world, there will in time be no human beings left--only crossbreeds. Only the constant influx of pure stock in the last millennium has enabled man to maintain his type--and there really are not too many human beings here now. Our population is diminishing--not through famine, disease, or war, but through the attrition of crossbreeding. When a man mates with a harpy, the result is not a manchild."

  "No!" Bink cried, horrified. "No one would--would breed with a filthy harpy."

  "Filthy harpy, perhaps not. But how about a clean, pretty harpy?" Trent inquired with a lift of his eyebrow. "They aren't all alike, you know; we see only their outcasts, not their fresh young--"

  "No!"

  "Suppose he had drunk from a love spring, accidentally--and the next to drink there was a harpy?"

  "No. He--" But Bink knew better. A love spell provided an overriding compulsion. He remembered his experience with the love spring by the chasm, from which he had almost drunk, before seeing the griffin and the unicorn in their embrace. There had been a harpy there. He shuddered reminiscently.

  "Have you ever been tempted by an attractive mermaid? Or a lady centaur?" Trent persisted.

  "No!" But an insidious memory picture of the elegant firm mermaid breasts came to him. And Cherie, the centaur who had given him a lift during the first leg of his journey to see the Magician Humfrey--when he touched her, had it really been accidental? She had threatened to drop him in a trench, but she hadn't been serious. She was a very nice filly. Rather, person. Honesty compelled his reluctant correction. "Maybe."

  "And surely there were others, less scrupulous than you," Trent continued inexorably. "They might indulge, in certain circumstances, might they not? Just for variety? Don't the boys of your village hang around the centaur grounds on the sly, as they did in my day?"

  Boys like Zink and Jama and Potipher, bullies and troublemakers, who had caused ire in the centaur camp. Bink remembered that too. He had missed the significance before. Of course they had gone to see the bare-breasted centaur fillies, and if they caught one alone--

  Bink knew his face was red. "What are you getting at?" he demanded, trying to cover his embarrassment.

  "Just this: Xanth must have had intercourse with--sorry, bad word!--must have had contact with Mundania long before the date of our earliest records. Before the Waves. Because only in Mundania is the human species pure. From the time a man sets foot in Xanth, he begins to change. He develops magic, and his children develop more magic, until some of them become full-fledged Magicians--and if they remain, they inevitably become magic themselves. Or their descendants do. Either by breaking down the natural barriers between species, or by evolving into imps, elves, goblins, giants, trolls--did you get a good look at Humfrey?"

  "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 feet--

  Trent 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?

  Chapter 14

  Wiggle

  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 ar
e 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.