Piers Anthony - The Source of Magic

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 he 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!"