The Source of Magic (7 page)

Quickly he closed the book. He no longer had any doubt.

The bucket of elixir was downstairs in the ballroom. Bink clasped the book in both arms—it was too heavy to hold in one arm for any length of time—and started down.

He met another zombie, or perhaps the same one as before. It was hard to tell them apart! It was coming up the stairs. This one he knew was real, because the Queen had not extended the masquerade illusion inside the palace, and no illusion at all upstairs. Now Bink suspected the one in the garden had been real too. What were the zombies doing out of their earthy resting places?

“Back off!” Bink cried, protecting the book. “Get out of the palace! Return to your grave!” He advanced menacingly on the zombie, and it retreated. A healthy man could readily dismember a zombie, if he cared to make the attempt. The zombie stumbled on the stair and fell, toppling with grisly abandon down the flight. Bits of bone and goo were scattered on the steps, and dark fluid soaked into the fine old wood. The smell was such as to make Bink’s stomach struggle for sudden relief, and his eyes smarted. Zombies did not have much cohesion.

Bink followed it down, pursing his lips with distaste. A number of zombies were associated with Castle Roogna, and they had been instrumental in making it the palace of the King.
But now they were supposed to lie safely in their graves. What ghastly urgency brought them into the party?

Well, he would notify the King in due course. First he had to see to Millie’s skeleton. He entered the ballroom—and found that the subaquatic motif was gone. The normal pillars and walls had returned. Had the Queen lost interest in her decorations?

“I’ve got it!” he cried, and the guests collected immediately. “What happened to the water?”

“The Queen left suddenly, and her illusion stopped,” Chester said, wiping crumbs of green cake from his face. It seemed refreshments had been real enough, anyway. “Here, let me help you with that book.” The centaur reached down with one hand and took it easily from Bink’s tiring grasp. Oh for the power of a centaur!

“I meant the healing water, the elixir,” Bink said. He knew what had happened to the Queen, now that he thought about it! The King had summoned her.

“Right here,” Crombie said, bringing it out from under a table. “Didn’t want crumbs to fall in it.” The bucket was now on the floor beside the Anniversary cake.

“That doesn’t look like a skeleton,” the manticora said.

“Transformed—or something,” Bink explained. He opened the book while Chester supported it. There was a general murmur of awe. Some magic!

The spell doctor peered at it. “That’s not a transformation. That’s topology magic. I never saw such an extreme case before.”

Neither had the others. “What is topology magic?” Crombie asked.

“Changing the form without changing it,” she said.

“Old crone, you’re talking nonsense,” Crombie said with his customary diplomacy around the sex.

“I’m talking
magic
, young squirt,” she retorted. “Take an object. Stretch it out. Squish it flat. Fold it. You have changed its shape but not its nature. It remains topologically similar. This book is a person.”

“With the spirit squished out,” Bink said. “Where’s Millie?”

The ghost appeared, silent. She remained under the geas, unable to comment on her body. What a terrible fate she had suffered, all these centuries! Rattened and folded into a book, and prevented from telling anyone. Until the Queen’s charade-contest prize had coincidentally opened the way.

Coincidentally? Bink suspected his talent was at work.

“Should the Queen supervise the restoration?” the manticora asked.

“The Queen is otherwise occupied, and must not be disturbed,” Bink said. Actually it was the King he was protecting. “We’d better proceed without her.”

“Right,” Chester said, and dumped the book into the bucket.

“Wait!” Bink cried, knowing it was already too late. He had contemplated a gentle immersion. But perhaps this was best.

The dunked book shimmered. Millie the ghost made an almost soundless shriek as she was drawn toward the bucket. Then the book inflated, absorbing elixir rapidly, opening and unfolding as its tissues filled out. The pages became human limbs and the heavy jacket a human head and torso, flattened horrendously but already bulging into doll-like features. Grotesquely it convulsed into a misshapen mannikin figure, swelling and firming into the semblance of a woman.

Millie the ghost, still trying to scream, floated into the mass, her outline merging with that of the forming body. Suddenly the two phased completely. She stood knee deep in the bucket, as lovely a nymph as could be desired, and an astonishing contrast to what they had just seen. “I’m whole!” she exclaimed in wonder.

“You certainly are,” Chester agreed. “Someone fetch her some clothing.”

There was a scramble. A form came forward bearing a decayed robe. It was a zombie. Women shrieked. Everyone scrambled to avoid it.

Crombie charged forward, scowling. “You rotters can’t come in here! Out, out!”

The zombie retreated, backing toward the Anniversary cake. “Not that way!” Bink cried, again too late. The zombie came within range of the picklepuss, who snarled.

There was a
zoop!
and the zombie was pickled. Squirting putrid juices, it fell into the cake. The picklepuss struck again, pickling the entire cake as the zombie disappeared into it. Pickled icing flew outward explosively, spattering the guests. The picklepuss broke free of its leash and bounded onto the refreshment table, pickling everything it passed. Women screamed again. It was one of the foolish, enchanting mannerisms they had.

“What is going on here?” a strange young man demanded from the main doorway.

“Stand back!” Bink snapped. “The damn Queen’s damn pickler is on the loose!” Now he saw a comely young woman behind the stranger. They were evidently gate-crashers.

Crombie was dashing up. “I’ll get those idiots out of the way!” he cried, drawing his sword.

The picklepuss preferred to introduce itself, and to clear its own way. It bounded directly at the strangers. There was a zap—but this time it was the puss who was pickled, in a fashion. It landed on the floor, surprised, then flapped its wings and took off. It had become a deerfly, a delicately winged miniature deer.

“My cake!” the strange young woman cried.

Then Bink caught on. “The Queen!”

“And King!” Crombie agreed, appalled. “In illusion-costume.”

What had Bink called the Queen, in his distraction? And Crombie had drawn his sword against the King.

But Queen Iris was already at the cake. “Pickled—with a zombie in it! Who did this thing?” In her outrage she let her illusion slip. She appeared before the crowd in her natural form, and revealed the King in his. Both were in dishabille.

Crombie the woman-hater nevertheless suffered a seizure of gallantry. He sheathed his sword, whipped off his jacket, and put it about the Queen’s shoulders, concealing her middle-aged torso. “It is cool here, Highness.”

Bink hastily proffered his own jacket to the King, who accepted as if this were a quite ordinary occasion. “Thanks, Bink,” he muttered.

Millie stepped out of the bucket, gloriously naked and not cold at all. “I fear I did it, Your Majesties. The zombie came to help me, and the picklepuss got loose—”

The Queen gazed for a long moment on Millie’s splendor. Then she glanced down at herself. Abruptly King and Queen were clothed royally again, she rather resembling Millie, he in his natural likeness, which was handsome enough. Bink knew, as did everyone present, that both were in borrowed jackets, with embarrassing portions of their anatomy uncovered, but now there was no sign of this. And, in another moment, Millie was also clothed in illusion, garbed like the chambermaid she was, yet still very pretty.

Bink nodded to himself. It seemed his suggestion about the King changing his own image for lovemaking had been effective. Except that the commotion surrounding Millie’s restoration had interrupted it.

The Queen surveyed the ruin of the refreshments. Then she glanced obliquely at the King. She decided to be gracious. “So it worked! You are no longer a ghost!” She studied Millie again, appraisingly. “But you should be dressed for the occasion; this is not a workday for you.” And Millie appeared in a fetching evening gown, glassy slippers, and a sparkling tiara. “Who found your skeleton?”

Millie smiled radiantly. “Bink rescued me.”

The Queen looked at Bink. “Your nose seems to be into everything,” she murmured. Then, more loudly: “Then Bink gets the prize. The first date with—”

She broke off, as well she might. Behind her, the pickled zombie had risen out of the cake. Even pickling could not kill a zombie; they were half pickled by nature. Clots of briny flesh dropped along with the pickled cake. One amorphous glob had dropped on the Queen’s shoulder, passing right through the illusion-dress and lodging who-knew-where. This was the cause of the interruption in her speech.

Furious, the Queen whirled on the zombie. “Get out of the palace, you hunk of decay!” She shot a look at the King. “Trent, transform this monster! It ruined my cake!”

But King Trent was thoughtful. “I think the zombie will
depart of its own volition, Iris. Procure another date for Millie; I have need of Bink’s services in another capacity.”

“But Your Majesty—” Millie protested.

“Make the substitute look like Bink,” the King murmured to the Queen. “Bink, come to the library.”

In the library, King Trent spoke his mind. “Here in Xanth we have a hierarchy of magic. As the most powerful Magician, I am King, and the most powerful Sorceress is my consort. The Good Magician Humfrey is our eldest statesman. But you, Bink—you are anonymous. You have equivalent magic, but it is secret. This means you don’t have the status your talent deserves. Perhaps this constitutes a threat to your welfare.”

“But there is no danger—”

“Not true, Bink. Whoever sent that sword constitutes a threat to you, though probably not a great one. However, your talent is powerful, not smart. It protects you from hostile magic, but has a problem with intangible menaces. As we know, your situation at home is not ideal at the moment, and—”

Bink nodded. “But as we both also know, that will pass, Your Majesty.”

“Agreed. But your talent is not so rational, perhaps. So it procured for you what it deemed to be a better woman—and I fault its ethics, not its taste. Then it balked when you realized the mischief this would cause. So it stopped you from having your date with Millie. The reanimation of the zombie was part of this. Probably the zombie was supposed to help you locate the skeleton, but then it had to reverse its initiative. There is no knowing what mischief might have resulted if Millie and the Queen had insisted on completing your date; but we do know the havoc would have seemed to be coincidental, because that is the way your talent operates. We might have had the whole palace collapse on our heads, or some unfortunate accident might have rendered Millie into a ghost again.”

“No!” Bink cried, horrified.

“I know you would not wish that on so nice a creature. Neither would I. This is the reason I interceded. We must simply accept the fact that you can not date Millie, though your talent
brought her back to life. I believe I have solved that problem for the nonce. It is obvious that Millie’s talent is sex appeal; that accounts for her original untimely demise in ghost-generating circumstances. She shall not lack for male company—other than yours.”

“Sex appeal!” Bink exclaimed. “That was why the spell doctor was so amused! She knew what sort of trouble there would be when she restored the spell! And that’s why I was so tempted by her offer, despite—”

“Precisely. I felt it too—and I had just completed my liaison with the Queen, thanks to your suggestion. Here, your jacket.” And the King gravely handed it back.

“It’s my fault all the palace will know—”

“That I am virile as well as Kingly,” Trent finished. “This is no shame. Now Iris will never know the weakness I might otherwise have shown. Obviously at such a moment, I should not have felt any attraction to another woman. I did feel it near Millie. So I knew magic was involved. But you, with a difficult home situation, and Millie’s evident desire for you—Bink, I think we need to get you out of this region for the duration, at least until we get Millie settled.”

“But Chameleon—I can’t leave her alone—”

“Have no concern. I shall invite her to the palace, to be attended by my own staff. In fact I think Millie herself would be an excellent maid for her, until we find a better situation. All we need to do is remove you from the stress and temptation that necessarily attend your presence here. Because your talent is powerful but disruptive to palace life, I am providing it guidance. Bink, I am directing you to commence your royal mission: to locate the source of the magic of Xanth.”

King Trent paused, and Bink waited. Nothing happened. “I think my talent concurs,” Bink said at last.

“Good,” the King said, relaxing visibly. Only he knew the peril in trying to go against Bink’s talent. “I shall assign you any facilities you require. Someone to protect you, since you may have to intrude on hazardous territory and face unmagical threats, and someone to guide you—” He snapped his fingers. “Chester the Centaur! His situation is very like yours, and you
are friends. You can ride him, and you could not have a finer ally in danger.”

“But the centaurs are not men; he may not choose to go.”

“It is true that my power becomes nominal, in the case of the centaurs. I can not order him to accompany you. But I think he will go as far as Good Magician Humfrey’s castle.”

“Why?” Bink asked, perplexed.

“Because only Humfrey can tell him what his magic talent may be.”

The King certainly kept up on things! “But that Answer would cost him a year’s service!”

The King shrugged. “No harm in talking with Humfrey, though. Chester may go along with you, just to keep you company, and incidentally chat with the Good Magician while you are there.”

Slowly Bink smiled. “And Cherie Centaur would never need to know!”