A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth 1) (38 page)

Trent looked about. "Where are the stones?"

"Here. I've collected a pile." The centaur showed the way. "I knew I couldn't handle it myself, so I sent out will-o'-the-wisps to summon help."

Suddenly Bink recognized the centaur: Herman the Hermit. Exiled from the centaur community for obscenity almost a decade ago. Amazing that he had survived, here in the deepest wilderness--but centaurs were hardy folk.

Trent did not make the connection. The episode had happened after his exile. But he well knew the horror the wiggles represented. He picked up two good rocks from Herman's cache and strode toward the north quadrant.

Bink followed. He had to help too. If even one wiggle got away, there would at some later date be another swarming, perhaps not stopped in time. He caught up to the Magician. "Woof! Woof!" he barked urgently.

Trent looked straight ahead. "Bink, if I transform you here and now, the others will see, and know me for what I am. They may turn against me--and the siege against the wiggles will be broken. I think we can contain the swarm with our present creature-power; the centaur has organized the effort well. Your natural form would not be better equipped to wage this war than your present form. Wait until this is over."

Bink was not satisfied with all the arguments, but he seemed to have no choice. So he determined to make himself useful as he was. Maybe he could smell out the wiggles.

As they came up to their designated quadrant, a griffin gave a loud squawk and keeled over. It resembled the one they had directed here; it must have lost sight of its guiding will-o'-the-wisp. But all griffins looked and smelled pretty much alike to Bink. Not that it mattered, objectively; all creatures here had a common purpose. Still, he felt a certain identification. He ran to it, hoping the injury was not critical. The creature was bleeding from a mortal wound. A wiggle had holed it through its lion's heart.

Wiggles traveled by sudden rushes along wiggle-sized magic tunnels they created. Then they paused to recuperate, or perhaps merely to contemplate philosophical matters; no one really knew the rationale of a wiggle. Therefore the killer wiggle that had gotten the griffin should be right about here. Bink sniffed and picked up its faint putrid odor. He oriented on it, and saw his first live wiggle.

It was a two-inch-long, loosely spiraled worm, hovering absolutely still in midair. It hardly looked like the menace it was. He barked, pointing his nose at it.

Trent heard him. He strode across with his two rocks. "Good job, Bink," he cried. He smashed the rocks together on the wiggle. As they came apart, the squished, dead hulk of the tiny monster dropped. One down!

Zzapp! "There's another!"
Trent cried. "They tunnel through anything--even air--so we hear the collapse of the vacuum behind them. This one should be right about--there!" He smashed his stones together again, crunching the wiggle.

After that it was hectic. The wiggles were zapping determinedly outward, each in its own pattern. There was no way of telling how long they would freeze in place--seconds or minutes--or how far they would zap--inches or feet. But each wiggle went in the precise direction it had started, never shifting even a fraction, so it was possible to trace that line and locate it fairly quickly. If someone stood in front of a wiggle at the wrong time, he got zapped--and if the hole were through a vital organ, he died. But it was not feasible to stand behind a wiggle, for the closer in toward the source of the swarm one went, the more the wiggles were present. There were so many wiggles that a creature smashing one could be simultaneously holed by another. It was necessary to stand at the outer fringe of expansion and nab the leaders first.

The wiggles really seemed to be mindless, or at least indifferent to external things. Their preset wiggle courses holed anything--anything at all--in the way. If a person didn't locate a wiggle fast, it was too late, for the thing had zapped again. Yet it could be tricky to find a still wiggle, for it looked like a twisted stem from the side and a coiled stem from the end. It had to move to attract attention to itself--and then it might be too late to nab it.

"This is like standing in a firing range and catching the bullets as they pass,"
Trent muttered. That sounded like another Mundane allusion; evidently Mundane wiggles were called bullets.

The invisible giant operated beside Bink on the right, as his nose plainly told him. TRAMP!--and a wiggle was crushed out of existence. Maybe a hundred wiggles at once. But so was anything else that got underfoot. Bink didn't dare point out wiggles for Bigfoot; it would be his own death warrant. For all he knew, the giant was stomping randomly. It was as good a way as any.

On the left side, a unicorn operated. When it located a wiggle, it either crushed it between horn and hoof or closed its mouth over it and ground it to shreds with its equine teeth. This seemed to Bink to be a distasteful and hazardous mode of operation, because if it mistimed a wiggle--

Zzapp! A hole appeared in the unicorn's jaw. Blood dripped out. The creature made a single neigh of anguish--then trotted along the path of the zap. It located the wiggle and chomped down again, using the other side of its jaw.

Bink admired the unicorn's courage. But he had to get on with his own job. Two wiggles had just zapped within range. He pointed out the nearest for
Trent, then ran to the other, afraid
Trent would not reach it in time. His hound's teeth were made for cutting and tearing, not chewing, but maybe they would do. He bit down on the wiggle.

It squished unpleasantly. Its body was firm but not really hard, and the juices squirted out. The taste was absolutely awful. There was some sort of acid--yecch! But Bink chewed carefully several times, to be sure of crushing it all; he knew that any unsquished fragment would zap away as a tiny wiggle, just as dangerous as the original. He spat out the remains. Surely his mouth would never be the same again.

Zzapp! Zzapp! Two more wiggles nearby.
Trent heard one and went after it; Bink sought out the other. But even as they both oriented, a third zzapp! sounded between them. The pace was stepping up as the great internal mass of wiggles reached the perimeter. There were too many wiggles to keep up with! The complete swarm might number a million.

There was a deafening bellow from above. "OOAAOUGH!'

Herman the centaur galloped by. Blood trailed from a glancing wiggle-wound in his flank. "Bigfoot's hit!" he cried. "Get out of the way."

"But the wiggles are breaking out,"
Trent said.

"I know! We're taking heavy losses all around the perimeter. It's a bigger swarm than I thought, more dense in the center. We can't hold them anyway. We'll have to form a new containment circle, and hope that more help arrives in time. Save yourselves before the giant falls."

Good advice. A huge print appeared in Bink's territory as Bigfoot staggered. They got out of there.

"AAOOGAHH!" the giant bawled. Another print appeared, this time in toward the center of the circle. A wash of air passed as he fell, heavy-laden with the giant-aroma. "GOUGH-OOOAAAA--" The sound arched down from a fifty-foot elevation toward the center of the wiggle swarm. The crash was like that of a petrified pine felled by magic. WHOOMP!

Herman, who had taken refuge behind the same jellybarrel tree as Trent and Bink, wiped a squirt of jelly out of his eye and shook his head sadly. "There goes a big, big man! Little hope now of containing the menace. We're disorganized and short of personnel, and the strength of the enemy is sweeping outward. Only a hurricane could get them all, and the weather's dry." Then he looked again at
Trent. "You seem familiar. Aren't you--yes. Twenty years ago--"

Trent raised his hand. "I regret the necessity--" he began.

"No, wait, Magician," Herman said. "Transform me not. I will not betray your secret. I could have bashed your head in with my foot just now, had I intended you ill. Know you not why I was exiled from my kind?"

Trent paused. "I know not, for I do not know you."

"I am Herman the Hermit, punished for the obscenity of practicing magic. By summoning will-o'-the-wisps. No centaur is supposed to--"

"You mean centaurs can practice magic?"

"They could--if they would. We centaurs have existed so long in Xanth we have become a natural species. But magic is considered--"

"Obscene,"
Trent finished, voicing Bink's thought. So magic intelligent creatures could do magic; their inability was cultural, not genetic. "So you became a hermit in the wilderness."

"Correct. I share your humiliation of exile. But now we have a need more important than privacy. Use your talent to abolish the wiggle menace!"

"I can't transform all the wiggles. I must focus on one at a time, and there are too many--"

"Not that. We must cauterize them. I had hoped my wisps would lead in a salamander--"

"A salamander,"
Trent exclaimed. "Of course! But even so, the fire could not spread fast enough to bum out all the wiggles, and if it did, the fire itself would then be unstoppable, a greater menace than the wiggles. We'd merely exchange one devastation for another."

"Not so. There are certain restrictions on salamanders, and with foresight they can be controlled. I was thinking of--"

Zzapp! A hole appeared in the trunk of the tree. Jelly oozed out like purple blood. Bink dashed out to crunch the wiggle, who fortunately had passed between them and injured no one. Yuch! That taste!

"They're inside the trees,"
Trent said. "Some are bound to land within things. Impossible to catch those ones."

Herman trotted over to a nondescript bush. He yanked several vines from it. "Salamander weed," he explained. "I have become a fair naturalist in my years of isolation. This is the one thing a salamander can't burn. It represents a natural barrier to the fire; eventually the flames are stopped by proliferating weeds. If I make a harness of this, I can carry a salamander around in a great circle just beyond the infestation--"

"But how to stop the fire before it destroys most of Xanth?"
Trent asked. "We can't wait on the chance of the weeds; half of the wilderness could be ravaged before it burns itself out. We can't possibly clear a firebreak in time." He paused. "You know, that must be why your wisps summoned no salamanders. This thick forest would naturally have a salamander-repulsion spell to keep them away, because such a fire would quickly prejudice this whole environment. Still, if we start a fire--"

Herman held up one strong hand in a halt gesture. He was an old centaur, but still strong; the arm was magnificently muscled. "You know how salamander fire burns only in the direction it starts? If we form a circle of inward-burning magic fire--"

"Suddenly I comprehend!"
Trent exclaimed. "It will burn itself out at the center." He looked around. "Bink?"

What else? Bink did not relish being a salamander, but anything was better than yielding Xanth to the wiggles. No person or creature would be safe if the swarms got out of control again. He came up.

Suddenly he was a small, bright amphibian, about five inches from nose to tail. Once more he remembered the omen he had seen back at the outset of this adventure: the chameleon lizard had also become a salamander--before being swallowed up by the moth hawk. Had his time finally come?

The ground he stood on burst into flame. The underlying sand would not burn, but all the material on top of it was fuel. "Climb in here," Herman said, holding a pouch he had cleverly formed of vines. "I will carry you in a great left circle. Be sure you direct your fire inward. To the left." And to make quite sure Bink understood, he pointed with his left hand.

Well, such a limit wouldn't be much fun, but--

Bink climbed into the net. The centaur picked it up and dangled it at arm's length, as well he might, for Bink was hot. Only the frustrating salamander-weed vines prevented him from really tearing loose.

Herman galloped. "Clear out! Clear out!" he cried with amazing volume to the straggling, wounded creatures still trying to stop the wiggles. "We're burning them out. Salamander!" And to Bink: "To the left! To the left!"

Bink had hoped he'd forgotten about that restriction. Ah, well, half a burn was better than none. From him a sheet of flame erupted. Everything it touched burst up anew, burning savagely. Branches, leaves, whole green trees, even the carcasses of fallen monsters--the flame consumed all. That was the nature of salamander fire--it burned magically, heedless of other conditions. No rainstorm could put it out, for water itself would burn. Everything except rock and earth--and salamander weed. Curse the stuff!

Now a hasty exodus developed. Dragons, griffins, harpies, goblins, and men scrambled out of the path of the terrible fire. Every movable form cleared out--except the wiggles, which proceeded as mindlessly as ever.

The flames spread hungrily up the great trees, consuming them with awesome rapidity. A tangle tree writhed in agony as it was incinerated, and the smell of burning beer and jelly spread. Already a swath of scorched earth was developing, sand and ashes marking the path they had traveled. Glorious!

Zzapp! Bink dropped to the ground. A wiggle, striking with the luck of the mindless, had holed Herman's right hand. Good. Now Bink could get out of the net and really go to work, setting the most magnificent blaze in all salamander history.

But the centaur looped about and grabbed the net with his left hand. The flames touched his fingers momentarily, and the tips shivered into ash, but he hung on with the stubs. Damn the courage of the Hermit! "On!" Herman cried, resuming forward speed. "To the left."

Bink had to obey. Angrily he shot forth an especially intense flame, hoping the Hermit would drop him again, but it didn't work. The centaur galloped on, widening the circle a bit, since the wiggle radius had evidently expanded further. It was useless to burn where the wiggles had been, or where they would be; the flame had to be where they were now. Any that zapped past the sheet of flame and paused in an already burned spot would survive. That made it a tricky calculation. But it was their only chance.