pell For Chameleon - iers Anthony

"He's not fooling about making you beautiful," Bink said. "He can-"

"It wouldn't work"

"No, Trent's talent-"

"I know his talent. But it would only aggravate my problem-even if I were willing to betray Xanth."

This was strange. She did not want beauty? Then why her extraordinary sensitivity about her appearance? Or was this some other ploy to get him to tell the location of the Shieldstone? He doubted it. She obviously was from Xanth; no Outsider could have guessed about his experience with the water of the Spring of Life and the senile King.

Time passed. Evening came. Fanchon suffered no ill effects, so Bink ate and drank his share of the meal.

At dusk it rained. The water poured through the lattice; the roof provided some shelter, but enough slanted in to wet them down thoroughly anyway. But Fanchon smiled. "Good," she whispered. "The fates are with us tonight."

Good? Bink shivered in his wet clothing, and watched her wonderingly. She scraped with her fingers in the softening floor of the pit. Bink walked over to see what she was up to, but she waved him away. "Make sure the guards don't see," she whispered.

Small danger of that; the guards weren't interested. They had taken shelter from the rain, and were not in sight. Even if they had been close, it was getting too dark to see.

What was so important about this business? She was scooping out mud from the floor and mixing it with the hay, heedless of the rain. Bink couldn't make any sense of it. Was this her way of relaxing?

"Did you know any girls in Xanth?" Fanchon inquired. The rain was slacking off, but the darkness protected her secret work-from Bink's comprehension as well as that of the guards.

It was a subject Bink would have preferred to avoid. "I don't see what-"

She moved over to him. "I'm making bricks, idiot!" she whispered fiercely. "Keep talking-and watch for any lights. If you see anyone coming, say the word 'chameleon.' I'll hide the evidence in a hurry." She glided back to her corner.

Chameleon. There was something about that word-now he had it. The chameleon lizard he had seen just before starting on his quest to the Good Magician-his omen of the future. The chameleon had died abruptly. Did this mean his time was come?

"Talk!" Fanchon urged. "Cover my sounds!" Then, in conversational tone: "You did know some girls?"

"Uh, some," Bink said. Bricks? What for?

"Were they pretty?" Her hands were blurred by the night, but he could hear the little slaps of mud and rustle of hay. She could be using the hay to contribute fiber to the mud brick. But the whole thing was crazy. Did she intend to build a brick privy?

"Or not so pretty?" she prompted him.

"Oh. Pretty," he said. It seemed he was stuck with this topic. If the guards were listening, they would pay more attention to him talking about pretty girls than to her slapping mud. Well, if that was what she wanted-"My fianc e, Sabrina, was beautiful-is beautiful-and the Sorceress Iris seemed beautiful, but I met others who weren't. Once they get old or married, they-"

The rain had abated. Bink saw a light approaching. "Chameleon," he murmured, again experiencing inner tension. Omens always were accurate-if understood correctly.

"Women don't have to get ugly when they marry," Fanchon said. The sounds had changed; now she was concealing the evidence. "Some start out that way."

She certainly was conscious of her condition. This made him wonder again why she had turned down Trent's offer of beauty. "I met a lady centaur on my way to the Magician Humfrey," Bink said, finding it difficult to concentrate even on so natural a subject as this in the face of the oddities of his situation. Imprisoned in a pit with an ugly girl who wanted to make bricks! "She was beautiful, in a statuesque kind of way. Of course she was basically a horse--" Bad terminology. "I mean, from the rear she--well, I rode her back-" Conscious of what the guards might think he was saying-not that he should even care what they thought-he eyed the approaching light. He saw it mainly by reflections from the bars. "You know, she was half equine. She gave me a ride through centaur country."

The light diminished. It must be a guard on routine patrol. "False alarm," he whispered. Then, in conversational tone: "But there was one really lovely girl on the way to the Magician. She was-her name was..." He paused to concentrate. ''Wynne. But she was abysmally stupid. I hope the Gap dragon didn't catch her."

"You were in the Gap?"

"For a while. Until the dragon chased me off. I had to go around it. I'm surprised you know of it; I had thought there was a forget spell associated with it, because it was not on my map and I never heard of it until I encountered it. Though how it is that I remember it, in that case-"

"I lived near the Gap," she said.

"You lived there? When was it made? What is its secret?"

"It was always there. There is a forget spell-I think the Magician Humfrey put it there. But if your associations are really strong, you remember. At least for a while. Magic only goes so far."

"Maybe that's it. I'll never forget my experience with the dragon and the shade."

Fanchon was making bricks again. "Any other girls?"

Bink had the impression she had more than casual interest in the matter. Was it because she knew the people of the chasm region? "Let's see-there was one other I met. An ordinary girl. Dee. She had an argument with the soldier I was with, Crombie. He was a woman-hater, or at least professed to be, and she walked out. Too bad; I rather liked her."

"Oh? I thought you preferred pretty girls."

"Look-don't be so damned sensitive!" he snapped. "You brought up the subject. I liked Dee better than-oh, never mind. I'd have been happier talking about plans to escape."

"Sorry," she said. "I-I knew about your journey around the chasm. Wynne and Dee are-friends of mine. So naturally I'm concerned."

"Friends of yours? Both of them?" Pieces of a puzzle began to fit together. "What is your association with the Sorceress Iris?"

Fanchon laughed. "None at all. If I were the Sorceress, do you think I would look like this?"

"Yes," Bink said. "If you tried beauty and it didn't work, and you still wanted power and figured you could somehow get it through an ignorant traveler-that would explain why Trent couldn't tempt you with the promise of beauty. That would only ruin your cover-and you could be beautiful any time you wanted to be. So you might follow me out in a disguise nobody would suspect, and of course you would not help another Magician take over Xanth-"

"So I'd come right out here into Mundania, where there is no magic," she finished. "Therefore no illusion.''

That gutted his case. Or did it? "Maybe this is the way you actually look; I may never have seen the real Iris, there on her island."

"And how would I get back into Xanth?"

For that Bink had no answer. He responded with bluster. "Well, why did you come here? Obviously the nonmagic aspect has not solved your problem."

"Well, it takes time-"

"Time to cancel out magic?"

"Certainly. When dragons used to fly out over Mundania, before the Shield was set up, it would take them days or weeks to fade. Maybe even longer. Magician Humfrey says there are many pictures and descriptions of dragons and other magic beasts in Mundane texts. The Mundanes don't see dragons any more, so they think the old texts are fantasy--but this proves that it takes a while for the magic in a creature or person to dissipate."

"So a Sorceress could retain her illusion for a few days after all," Bink said.

She sighed. "Maybe so. But I'm not Iris, though I certainly wouldn't mind being her. I had entirely different and compelling reasons to leave Xanth."

"Yes, I remember. One was to lose your magic, whatever it was, and the other you wouldn't tell me."

"I suppose you deserve to know. You're going to have it out of me one way or another. I learned from Wynne and Dee what sort of a person you were, and-"

"So Wynne did get away from the dragon?"

"Yes, thanks to you. She-"

A light was coming. "Chameleon," Bink said.

Fanchon scrambled to hide her bricks. This time the light came all the way to the pit. "I trust you have not been flooded out down there?" Trent's voice inquired.

"If we were, we'd swim away from here," Bink said. "Listen, Magician-the more uncomfortable you make us, the less we want to help you."

"I am keenly aware of that, Bink. I would much prefer to provide you with a comfortable tent-"

"No."

"Bink, I find it difficult to comprehend why you should be so loyal to a government that treated you so shabbily."

"What do you know about that?"

"My spies have of course been monitoring your dialogues. But I could have guessed it readily enough, knowing how old and stubborn the Storm King must be by now. Magic manifests in divers forms, and when the definitions become too narrow-"

"Well, it doesn't make any difference here."

The Magician persisted, sounding quite reasonable in contrast to Bink's unreason. "It may be that you do lack magic, Bink, though I hardly think Humfrey would be wrong about a thing like that. But you have other qualities to recommend you, and you would make an excellent citizen."

"He's right, you know," Fanchon said. "You do deserve better than you were given."

"Which side are you on?" Bink demanded.

She sighed in the dark. She sounded very human; it was easier to appreciate that quality when he couldn't see her. "I'm on your side, Bink. I admire your loyalty; I'm just not sure it's deserved."

"Why don't you tell him where the Shieldstone is, then-if you know it?"

"Because, with all its faults, Xanth remains a nice place. The senile King won't live forever; when he dies they'll have to put in the Magician Humfrey, and he'll make things much better, even if he does complain about the time it's wasting him. Maybe some new or young Magician is being born right now, to take over after that. It'll work out somehow. It always has before. The last thing Xanth needs is to be taken over by a cruel, Evil Magician who would turn all his opposition into turnips."

Trent's chuckle came down from above. "My dear, you have a keen mind and a sharp tongue. Actually, I prefer to turn my opponents into trees; they are more durable than turnips. I don't suppose you could concede, merely for the sake of argument, that I might make a better ruler than the present King?"

"He's got a point, you know," Bink said, smiling cynically in the dark.

"Which side are you on?" Fanchon demanded, mimicking the tone Bink had used before.

But it was Trent who laughed. "I like you two," he said. "I really do. You have good minds and good loyalty. If you would only give that loyalty to me, I would be prepared to make substantial concessions. For example, I might grant you veto power over any transformations I made. You could thus choose the turnips."

"So we'd be responsible for your crimes," Fanchon said. "That sort of power would be bound to corrupt us very soon, until we were no different from you."

"Only if your basic fiber were not superior to mine," Trent pointed out. "And if it were not, then you would never have been any different from me. You merely have not yet been subjected to my situation. It would be best if you discovered this, so as not to be unconscious hypocrites."

Bink hesitated. He was wet and cold, and he did not relish spending the night in this hole. Had Trent been one to keep his word, twenty years ago? No, he hadn't; he had broken his word freely in his pursuit of power. That was part of what had defeated him; no one could afford to trust him, not even his friends.

The Magician's promises were valueless. His logic was a tissue of rationalization, designed only to get one of the prisoners to divulge the location of the Shieldstone. Veto power over transformations? Bink and Fanchon would be the first to be transformed, once the Evil one had no further need of them.

Bink did not reply. Fanchon remained silent. After a moment Trent departed.

"And so we weather temptation number two," Fanchon remarked. "But he's a clever and unscrupulous man; it will get harder."

Bink was afraid she was right.

Next morning the slanting sunlight baked the crude bricks. They were hardly hard yet, but at least it was a start. Fanchon placed the items in the privacy cubicle so that they could not be seen from above. She would set them out again for the afternoon sun, if all went well.

Trent came by with more food: fresh fruit and milk. "I dislike putting it on this footing," he said, "but my patience is wearing thin. At any time they might move the Shieldstone routinely, rendering your information valueless. If one of you does not give me the information I need today, tomorrow I shall transform you both. You, Bink, will be a cockatrice; you, Fanchon, a basilisk. You will be confined in the same cage."

Bink and Fanchon looked at each other with complete dismay. Cockatrice and basilisk-two names for the same thing: a winged reptile hatched from a yolk-less egg laid by a rooster and hatched by a toad in the warmth of a dungheap. The stench of its breath was so bad that it wilted vegetation and shattered stone, and the very sight of its face would cause other creatures to keel over dead. Basilisk-the little king of the reptiles.

The chameleon of his omen had metamorphosed into the likeness of a basilisk-just before it died. Now he had been reminded of the chameleon by a person who could not have known about that omen, and threatened with transformation into-- Surely death was drawing nigh.

"It's a bluff," Fanchon said at last. "He can't really do it. He's just trying to scare us."

"He's succeeding," Bink muttered.

"Perhaps a demonstration would be in order," Trent said. "I ask no person to take my magic on faith, when it is so readily demonstrable. It is necessary for me to perform regularly, to restore my full talent after the long layoff in Mundania, so the demonstration is quite convenient for me." He snapped his fingers. "Allow the prisoners to finish their meal," he said to the guard who reported. "Then remove them from the cell." He left.

Now Fanchon was glum for another reason. "He may be bluffing-but if they come down in here, they'll find the bricks. That will finish us anyway."

"Not if we move right out, giving them no trouble," Bink said. "They won't come down here unless they have to."

"Let's hope so," she said.

When the guards came, Bink and Fanchon scrambled up the rope ladder the moment it was dropped. "We're calling the Magician's bluff," Bink said. There was no reaction from the soldiers. The party marched eastward across the isthmus, toward Xanth.

Within sight of the Shield, Trent stood beside a wire cage. Soldiers stood in a ring around him, arrows nocked to bows. They all wore smoked glasses. It looked very grim.

"Now I caution you," Trent said as they arrived. "Do not look directly at each other's faces after the transformation. I can not restore the dead to life."

If this were another scare tactic, it was effective. Fanchon might doubt, but Bink believed. He remembered Justin Tree, legacy of Trent's ire of twenty years ago. The omen loomed large in his mind. First to be a basilisk, then to die...

Trent caught Bink's look of apprehension. "Have you anything to say to me?" he inquired, as if routinely.