A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth 1) (29 page)

"That thing's a huge, long snake," Fanchon said. "It could reach right down into the cave, or coil right around the rocks. We can't escape it in this form."

"I could change you into poisonous jellyfish that the serpent would not eat,"
Trent said. "But you might get lost in the shuffle. It also may not be wise to be transformed more than once a day; I have not been able to verify this during my exile, for obvious reasons, but I am concerned that your systems may suffer a shock each time."

"Besides which, the monster could still eat you," Fanchon said.

"You have a very quick mind,"
Trent agreed equably. "Therefore, I shall have to do something I dislike--transform the monster."

"You don't want to transform the sea serpent?" Bink asked, surprised. The thing was now quite close, its small red eyes fixed on the prey; saliva dripped from its giant teeth.

"It is merely an innocent creature going about its business,"
Trent said. "We should not enter its waters if we do not wish to participate in its mode of existence. There is a balance of nature, whether magical or mundane, that we should hesitate to interfere with."

"You have a weird sense of humor," Fanchon said sourly. "But I never claimed to understand the nuances of evil magic. If you really want to protect its life style, transform it into a little fish until we get to shore, then transform it back."

"And hurry!" Bink cried. The thing was now looming over them, orienting on its specific targets.

"That would not work,"
Trent said. "The fish would swim away and be lost. I must be able to identify the particular creature I mean to transform, and it must be within six feet of me. However your suggestion has merit."

"Six feet," Bink said. "We'll be inside it before we get that close." He was not trying to be funny; the monster's mouth was much longer than it was wide, so that as it opened to its full aperture the upper front teeth were a good twelve feet from the lower teeth.

"Nevertheless, I must operate within my limits,"
Trent said, unperturbed. "The critical region is the head, the seat of identity. When I transform that, the rest naturally follows. If I tried it when only the tail was within range, I would botch the job. So when it tries to take me in its mouth, it comes into my power."

"What if it goes for one of us first?" Fanchon demanded. "Suppose we're more than six feet from you?"

"I suggest you arrange to be within that radius,"
Trent said dryly.

Hastily Bink and Fanchon splashed closer to the Evil Magician. Bink had the distinct impression that even if
Trent had had no magic, they would have been in his power. He was too self-assured, too competent in his tactics; he knew how to manage people.

The sea monster's body convulsed. Its head struck down, teeth leading. Spittle sprayed out from it in obscene little clouds. Fanchon screamed hysterically. Bink felt an instant and pervading terror. That sensation was becoming all too familiar; he simply was no hero.

But as the awful jaws closed on them, the sea serpent vanished. In its place fluttered a glowing, brightly colored insect.
Trent caught it neatly in one hand and set it on his own hair, where it perched quiveringly.

"A lovebug,"
Trent explained. "They are not good fliers, and they hate water. This one will stay close until we emerge from the sea."

Now the three swam for shore. It took them some time, for the sea remained choppy and they were tired, but no other creatures bothered them. Apparently no lesser predators intruded on the fishing territory of the sea monster. An understandable attitude--but probably within hours a host of aggressive forms would converge if the sea monster did not return. As
Trent had remarked, there was always a balance of nature.

The phosphorescence became stronger in the shallows. Some of it was from glowing fish, flashing in colors to communicate with their respective kinds; most of it was from the water itself. Washes of pale green, yellow, orange--magic, of course, but for what purpose? There was so much Bink saw, wherever he went, that he did not understand. At the bottom he saw shells, some lighted around the fringes, some glowing in patterns. A few vanished as he passed over them; whether they had become truly invisible or merely doused their lights he could not tell. Regardless, they were magic, and that was familiar. Belatedly he realized that he was glad to be back among the familiar threats of Xanth!

Dawn was coming as they reached the beach. The sun pushed up behind the clouds over the jungle and finally burst through to bounce its shafts off the water. It was a thing of marvelous beauty. Bink clung to that concept, because his body was numb with fatigue, his brain locked onto the torture of moving limbs, over and over, on and on.

At last he crawled upon the beach. Fanchon crawled beside him. "Don't stop yet," she said. "We must seek cover, lest other monsters come, from the beach or jungle..."

But
Trent stood knee-deep in the surf, his sword dangling from his handsome body. He was obviously not as tired as they were. "Return, friend," he said, flicking something into the sea. The sea monster reappeared, its serpentine convolutions much more impressive in the shallow water.
Trent had to lift his feet and splash back out of the way, lest he be crushed by a hugely swinging coil.

But the monster was not looking for trouble now. It was extremely disgruntled. It gave a single honk of rage or of anguish or of mere amazement and thrashed its way toward deeper pastures.

Trent walked up the beach. "It is not fun to be a defenseless love bug when you are accustomed to being the king of the sea," he said. "I hope the creature does not suffer a nervous breakdown."

He was not smiling. There was something funny, Bink thought, about a man who liked monsters that well. But of course
Trent was the Evil Magician of the contemporary scene. The man was strangely handsome, mannerly, and erudite, possessed of strength, skill, and courage--but his affinities were to the monsters more than to the men. It would be disastrous ever to forget that.

Odd that Humfrey, the Good Magician, was an ugly little gnome in a forbidding castle, selfishly using his magic to enrich himself, while
Trent was the epitome of hero material. The Sorceress Iris had seemed lovely and--sexy, but was in fact nondescript; Humfrey's good qualifies were manifest in his actions, once a person really got to know him. But
Trent, so far, had seemed good in both appearance and deed, at least on the purely personal level. If Bink had met him for the first time in the kraken's cave and hadn't known the man's evil nature, he would never have guessed it.

Now
Trent strode across the beach, seeming hardly tired despite the grueling swim. The nascent sunlight touched his hair, turning it bright yellow. He looked in that instant like a god, all that was perfect in man. Again Bink suffered fatigued confusion, trying to reconcile the man's appearance and recent actions with what he knew to be the man's actual nature, and again finding it so challenging as to be virtually impossible. Some things just had to be taken on faith.

"I've got to rest, to sleep," Bink muttered. "I can't tell evil from good right now."

Fanchon looked toward
Trent. "I know what you mean," she said, shaking her head so that her ratty hair shifted its wet tangles. "Evil has an insidious way about it, and there is some evil in all of us that seeks to dominate. We have to fight it, no matter how tempting it becomes."

Trent arrived. "We seem to have made it," he said cheerfully. "It certainly is good to be back in Xanth, by whatever freak of fortune. Ironic that you, who sought so ardently to prevent my access, instead facilitated it!"

"Ironic," Fanchon agreed dully.

"I believe this is the coast of the central wilderness region, bounded on the north by the great Gap. I had not realized we had drifted so far south, but the contour of the land seems definitive. That means we are not yet out of trouble."

"Bink's an exile, you're banished, and I'm ugly," Fanchon muttered. "We'll never be out of trouble."

"Nevertheless, I believe it would be expedient to extend our truce until we are free of the wilderness," the Magician said.

Did
Trent know something Bink didn't? Bink had no magic, so he would be prey to all the sinister spells of the deep jungle. Fanchon had no apparent magic--strange, she claimed her exile had been voluntary, not forced, yet if she really had no magic she should have been banished too; anyway, she would have a similar problem. But
Trent--with his skills with sword and spell, he should have no reason to fear this region.

Fanchon had similar doubts. "As long as you're with us, we're in constant danger of being transformed into toads. I can't see that the wilderness is worse."

Trent spread his hands. "I realize you do not trust me, and perhaps you have reason. I believe your security and mine would be enhanced if we cooperated a little longer, but I shall not force my company on you." He walked south along the beach.

"He knows something," Bink said. "He must be leaving us to die. So he can be rid of us without breaking his word."

"Why should he care about his word?" Fanchon asked. "That would imply he is a man of honor."

Bink had no answer. He crawled to the shade and concealment of the nearest tree and collapsed in the downy sward. He had been unconscious during part of the last night, but that was not the same as sleep; he needed genuine rest.

When he woke it was high noon--and he was fixed in place. There was no pain, only some itching--but he couldn't lift his head or hands. They were fastened to the ground by myriad threads, as if the very lawn had--

Oh, no! In the numbness of fatigue, he had been so careless as to lie in a bed of carnivorous grass! The root blades had grown up into his body, infiltrating it so slowly and subtly that it had not disturbed his sleep--and now he was caught. Once he had happened on a patch of the stuff near the
North
Village
with an animal skeleton on it. The grass had consumed all the flesh. He had wondered how any creature could have been so stupid as to be trapped by such a thing. Now he knew.

He was still breathing, therefore he could still yell. He did so with a certain gusto. "Help!"

There was no response.

"Fanchon!" he cried. "I'm tied down. The grass is eating me up." Actually that was an exaggeration; he was not hurt, merely bound to the ground. But the tendrils continued to grow into him, and soon they would start to feed, drawing the life proteins from his flesh.

Still nothing. He realized she would not or could not help him. Probably something had put a sleep spell on her. It was obvious, in retrospect, that there were plenty of deadly threats right here at the edge of the beach; she must have fallen into another. She might be dead already.

"Help! Anybody!" he screamed desperately.

That was another mistake. All around him, in the forest and along the beach, things were stirring. He had advertised his helplessness, and now they were coming to take advantage of it. Had he struggled with the grass in silence, he might have managed in time to work his way free; he had awakened before it was ready for the kill, luckily. Maybe he had tried to turn over in his sleep, and his body had objected to the resistance strongly enough to throw off the stasis spell the grass was applying. If he struggled and failed, his demise at least would have been fairly comfortable--just a slow sinking into eternal sleep. Now by his noise he had summoned much less comfortable menaces. He could not see them, but he could hear them.

From the nearby tree came a rustle, as of meat-eating squirrels. From the beach came a scrape, as of hungry acid crabs. From the sea came a horrible kind of splashing, as of a small sea monster who had sneaked into the territory of the big sea monster
Trent had transformed. Now this little one struggled to get out of the water and cross to the prey before it was gone. But the most dreadful sound of all was the pound-pound-pound of the footfalls of something deep in the forest, large and far away but moving extremely rapidly.

A shadow fell on him. "Hi!" a shrill voice cried. It was a harpy, cousin to the one he had met on the way back to the
North
Village
. She was every bit as ugly, smelly, and obnoxious--and now she was dangerous. She descended slowly, her talons reaching down, twitching. The other harpy had seen him healthy, so had stayed well out of reach--though she might have descended had he actually drunk from the Spring of Love. Ugh! This one saw him helpless.

She had a human face and human breasts, so was in that sense female, like the mermaids. But in lieu of arms she had great greasy wings, and her body was that of a gross bird. And she was a dirty bird; not only were her face and breasts grotesquely shaped, grime was caked on them. It was a wonder she could fly at all. Bink had not had the opportunity--or desire--to appreciate the qualifies of the prior harpy at close range; now he had a really excellent nether view. Double agh! The mermaids had represented much that was lovely in the female form; this harpy was the ugly aspect. She made Fanchon look halfway decent in comparison; at least Fanchon was clean.

She dropped on him, claws clutching and unclutching in air, in anticipation of the glob of entrails they were about to rip out of his exposed gut. Some of the nails were broken and jagged. He caught the odor of her, a stink like none he remembered. "Oooh, you big handsome hunk of meat!" she screeched. "You look good enough to eat. I can hardly choose what to take first." And she burst into maniacal laughter.