Piers Anthony - The Source of Magic

Jewel drew away from him. "Let me go clean up, Bink," she said. At the moment she smelled of nothing.

Of nothing? "Make a smell," Bink said, grabbing her arm again.

"Bink, let me go!" she cried, pulling toward the exit.

"Make a smell!" he growled, twisting her arm behind her back.

Suddenly he held a tangle tree. Its vines twisted to grab him, but they lacked the strength of a real tangler, even a dwarf species. Bink clamped both his arms about the tree, squeezing the tentacles in against the trunk, hard.

The tree became a squat sea serpent. Bink hunched his head down and continued squeezing. The serpent became a two-headed wolf whose jaws snapped at Bink's ears. He squeezed harder; he could afford to lose an ear in order to win the battle. The wolf became a giant tiger lily, snarling horrendously, but Bink was crushing its stem.

Finally it got smart. It changed into a needle cactus. The needles stabbed into Bink's arms and face-but he did not let go. The pain was terrible, but he knew that if he gave the monster any leeway at all it would change into something he couldn't catch, or his talent would arrange some coincidental break for it. Also, he was angry: because of this creature, he had cut down an innocent nymph, whose only fault was loving him. He had assumed that jinxes had canceled out when his mis-thrown sword cut her down, but that had not been the case. What an awful force his talent could be! His hands and face were bleeding, and a needle was poking into one eye, but Bink squeezed that cactus-torso with the passion of sheer hate until it squirted white fluid.

The thing dissolved into foul-smelling goo. Bink could no longer hold on; there was nothing to grasp. But he tore at the stuff with his hands, flinging gobs of it across the arena, and stomped the main mass flat. Could the monster survive dismemberment, even in this stage?

"Enough," the Demon said, "You have beaten it." He gestured negligently, and abruptly Bink was fit and clean again, without injury-and somehow he knew his talent was back to normal. The Demon had been testing him, not his talent. He had won-but at what cost?

He ran to Jewel-the real Jewel-reminded of the time Chameleon had been similarly wounded. But the Evil Magician had done that, while this time Bink himself had done it. "You desire her?" the Demon asked. "Take her along." And Jewel was whole and lovely, smelling of gardenias, just as if she had been dunked in healing elixir. "Oh, Bink!" she said-and fled the arena.

"Let her go," Cherie said wisely. "Only time can heal the wound that doesn't show."

"But I can't let her think I meant to-"

"She knows you didn't mean to hurt her, Bink. Or she will know, when she thinks it out at leisure. But she also knows that she has no future with you. She is a creature of the caverns; the openness of the surface world would terrify her. Even if you weren't married, she could not leave her home for you. Now that you're safe, she has to go."

Bink stared the way Jewel had gone. "I wish there were something I could do."

"You can leave her alone," Cherie said firmly. "She must make her own life."

"Good horse sense," Grundy the golem agreed.

"I will permit you to perform the agreed task in your fashion," the Demon said to Bink. "I hold no regard for you or your welfare, but I do honor the conditions of a wager. All I want from your society is that it not intrude on my private demesnes. If it does, I might be moved to do something you would be sorry for-such as cauterizing the entire surface of the planet with a single sheet of fire. Now have I conveyed my directive in a form your puny intellect can comprehend?"

Bink did not regard his intellect as puny, compared to that of the Demon. The creature was omnipotent, not omniscient: all-powerful, not all-knowing. But it would not be politic to remark on that at the moment. Bink had no doubt that the Demon could and would obliterate all life in the Land of Xanth, if irritated. Thus it was in Bink's personal interest to keep the Demon happy, and to see that no other idiots like him intruded. So his talent would extend itself toward that end-as X(A/N)th surely was aware. "Yes."

Then Bink had a bright flash. "But it would be easier to ensure your privacy if there were no loose ends, like lost Magicians or pickled centaurs-"

Cherie perked up alertly. "Bink, you're a genius!"

"This Magician?" Xanth inquired. He reached up through the ceiling and brought down a gruesome skeleton. "I can reanimate him for you-"

Bink, after his initial shock, saw that this skeleton was much larger than any Humfrey could have worn. "Uh, not that one," he said, relieved. "Smaller, like a-a gnome. And alive."

"Oh, that one," X(A/N)th said. He reached through a wall and brought back Good Magician Humfrey, disheveled but intact.

"About time you got to me," Humfrey grumped. "I was running out of air, under that rubble."

Now the Demon reached down through the floor. He brought back Chester, encased in a glistening envelope of lake water. As he set the centaur down, the envelope burst; the water evaporated, and Chester looked around.

"So you went swimming without me!" Cherie said severely. "Here I stay home tending your colt while you gad about-"

Chester scowled. "I gad about because you spend all your time with the colt!"

"Uh, there's no need-" Bink interposed.

"Stay out of this," she murmured to him with a wink. Then, to Chester, she flared: "Because he is just like you! I can't keep you from risking your fool tail on stupid, dangerous adventures, you big dumb oaf, but at least I have him to remind me of-"

"If you paid more attention to me, I'd stay home more!" he retorted.

"Well, I'll pay more attention to you now, horse-head," she said, kissing him as the arena dissolved and a more cozy room formed about them. "I need you."

"You do?" he asked, gratified. "What for?"

"For making another foal, you ass! One that looks just like me, that you can take out for runs-"

"Yeah," he agreed with sudden illumination. "How about getting started right now!" Then he looked about, remembering where he was, and actually blushed. The golem smirked. "Uh, in due course."

"And you can run some with Chet, too," she continued. "So you can help him find his talent." There was no hint of the discomfort she must have suffered getting the word out.

Chester stared at her. "His-you mean you-"

"Oh, come on, Chester," she snapped. "You're wrong ten times a day. Can't I be wrong once in my life? I can't say I like it, but since magic seems to be part of the centaur's heritage, I'll simply have to live with it. Magic does have its uses; after all, it brought you back." She paused, glancing at him sidelong. "In fact, I might even be amenable to a little flute music,"

Startled, Chester looked at her, then at Bink, realizing that someone had blabbed. "Perhaps that can be arranged-in decent privacy. After all, we are centaurs."

"You're such a beast," she said, flicking her tail at him. Bink covered a smile. When Cherie learned a lesson, she learned it well!

"Which seems to cover that situation sufficiently, tedious as it has been," the Demon said. "Now if you are all quite ready to depart, never to return-"

Yet Bink was not quite satisfied. He did not trust this sudden generosity on the part of the Demon. "You're really satisfied to be forever walled off from our society?"

"You can not wall me off," the Demon pointed out. "I am the source of magic. You will only wall you off. I will watch and participate anytime I choose-which will probably be never, as your society is of little interest to me. Once you depart, I forget you."

"You ought at least to thank Bink for freeing you," Cherie said.

"I thank him by sparing his ridiculous life," X(A/N)th said, and if Bink hadn't known better he might have thought the Demon was nettled.