Piers Anthony - The Source of Magic

"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 out right 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. Bink'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.