Piers Anthony - The Source of Magic

She struck at him with both forefeet at once, in a perfect fury. He was affronting her deepest sensitivities, telling her that she herself was obscene. But he was ready, anticipating her reactions, avoiding them. His voice was his sword, and he intended to score with it. He had had too much of delusion, his own especially; he would wipe the whole slate clean. In a way, it was himself he was attacking: his shame at what he had done to Xanth when he freed the Demon. "I challenge you," he cried. "Look at yourself in a lake. See the difference. Your magic is gone!"

Even in her fury, she realized she was not getting anywhere. "All right I'll look!" she cried. "Then I'll kick you to the moon!"

As it happened, they had passed a small pond recently. They returned to it in silence, Bink already starting to be sorry for what he was doing to her, and the lady centaur looked at herself. She was certain what she would find, yet honest enough to have her certainty disrupted by the fact. "Oh, no!" she cried, shocked. "I'm homely, I'm hideous, I'm uglier than Chester!"

"No, you're beautiful-with magic," Bink insisted, wanting to make up for the revelation he had forced on her. "Because magic is natural to you, as it is to me. You have no more reason to oppose it than you do any other natural function, like eating or breeding or-"

"Get away from me!" she screamed. "You monster, you-" In another fit of fury she stamped her hoof in the pond, making a splash. But the water only settled back, as water did, and the ripples quieted, and the image returned with devastating import.

"Listen, Cherie!" Bink cried. "You pointed out that Chester can be rescued. I'm just building on that. I don't dare open Crombie's bottle because the process requires magic, and there is none. Chester must stay in the lake for the same reason, in suspended animation. We need magic. It doesn't matter whether we like it. Without it, Chester is dead. We can't get anywhere as long as you-"

With extreme reluctance, she nodded agreement. "I thought nothing would make me tolerate obscenity. But for Chester I would do anything. Even-" She gulped, and twitched her tail. "Even magic. But-"

"We need a new quest!" Bink said with sudden inspiration as he washed himself in the pond. "A quest to restore magic to the Land of Xanth! Maybe if we all work together, humans and centaurs and all Xanth's creatures, we can find another Demon-" But he petered out, realizing the futility of the notion. How could they summon X(A/N)th or E(A/R)th or any other super-magical entity? The Demons had no interest in this realm.

"Yes," Cherie agreed, finding hope as Bink lost it. "Maybe the King will know how to go about it. Get on my back; I'm going to gallop."

Bink remounted her, and she took off. She did not have the sheer power Chester had, but Bink had to cling to her slender waist to stay on as she zoomed through the forest.

"And with magic, I'll be beautiful again…" she murmured into the wind, wistfully.

Bink, tired, nodded sleepily as Cherie charged on through the desolate wilderness. Then he was almost pitched off as she braked.

They faced a huge shaggy pair of creatures. "Make way, you monsters!" Cherie cried without rancor. They were, after all, monsters. "This is a public easement; you can't block it!"

"We not block it, centaur lass," one monster said. "You give way to let we pass."

"Crunch the Ogre!" Bink exclaimed. "What are you doing so far from home?"

"You know this monster?" Cherie asked Bink.

"I certainly do! What's more, now I can understand him without translation!"

The ogre, who now resembled a brute of a man, peered at Bink from beneath his low skull. "You man we met, the one on quest? Me on gooeymoon with she loved best"

"Gooeymoon?" Cherie murmured.

"Oh, so that's Sleeping Beauty!" Bink said, contemplating the ogress. She was as ugly a creature as he cared to imagine. Yet beneath her hair, which resembled a mop just used to wipe up vomit, and her baggy coarse dress, she seemed to have rather more delicate contours than one might expect in an ogress. Then he remembered: she was no true ogress, but an actress, playing a part in one of the fiend's productions. She could probably look beautiful if she tried. Why, then, was she not trying? "Uh, one question-"

The female, no dummy, caught his gist before he got it out. "True, me once have other face," she told Bink. "Me glad get out of that rat race. Me find man better than any fiend; me like it best, by he be queened."

So the prima donna had found a husband worthy of her attention! After meeting the fiends, Bink found himself in agreement with her choice. She was maintaining the ogress guise, which was in any event merely a physical reflection of her normal personality, while teaching Crunch to speak more intelligibly. One savvy lady fiend, there! "Uh, congratulations," Bink said. Aside, he explained to Cherie. "They married on our advice. Humfrey and Crombie and Chester and the golem and I. Except that Humfrey was asleep. It was quite a story."

"I'm sure," Cherie agreed dubiously.

"Yes, me bash he good," the fair she-ogre said. "He head like wood."

"Ogres are very passionate," Bink murmured.

Cherie, after her initial surprise, was quick to catch on. "How do you keep his love?" she inquired with a certain female mischief. "Doesn't he like to go out adventuring?"

Bink realized she was thinking of Chester, perhaps unconsciously.

"Me let he go, me never say no," the ogress said, full of the wisdom of her sex. "When he come back, me give he crack." She struck the ogre with a horrendous backhand wallop by way of example. Just as well, for Bink had been about to misunderstand the reference. "Make he feel like beast, then give he feast,"

Crunch's face contorted into a smile of agreement. He was obviously well satisfied. And probably better off, Bink thought, than he might have been with a natural ogress, who would have taken his nature for granted. Whatever faults the actress might have, she certainly knew how to handle her male.

"Does the loss of magic interfere with your lifestyle?" Bink inquired. Both ogres looked at him blankly.

"They never noticed!" Cherie exclaimed. "There's true love for you!"

The ogre couple went on its way, and Cherie resumed her run. But she was thoughtful. "Bink, just as a rhetorical example-does a male really like to feel like a beast?"

"Yes, sometimes," Bink agreed, thinking of Chameleon. When she was in her stupid-beautiful phase, she seemed to live only to please him, and he felt extremely manly. But when she was in her smart-ugly phase, she turned him off with her wit as well as her appearance. In that respect she was smarter when she was stupid than when she was smart. Of course now all that was over; she would stay always in her "normal" phase, avoiding the extremes. She would never turn him off-or on.

"And a centaur-if he felt like a real stallion at home-"

"Yes. Males need to feel wanted and needed and dominant, even when they aren't. Especially at home. That ogress knows what she's doing."

"So it seems," Cherie agreed. "She's a complete fake, a mere actress, yet he's so happy he'd do anything for her. But lady centaurs can act too, when they have reason…" Then she was silent as she ran.

Chapter 14

Paradox Wish

Bink, nodding again, was suddenly jolted awake. Cherie was braking so hard he was being crushed against her human back. He threw his arms about her waist, hanging on, careful not to grab too high. "What-?"

"I almost forgot. I haven't nursed Chet in hours,"

"Chet?" Bink repeated dazedly. Oh, the foal.

She signaled to her young one, who promptly came up to nurse. Bink hastily excused himself for another kind of call of nature. Centaurs were not sensitive about natural functions; in fact they could and did perform some of them on the run. Humans were more squeamish, at least in public. It made him realize one reason why Cherie did not seem as lovely now: her breasts were enlarged to the point of ponderosity, so that she could nurse her foal. Little centaurs required a great deal of milk, especially when they had to run as much as this one did.