The Source of Magic (24 page)

“Was I?” Grundy asked, startled. “I never realized. I guess translation
is
my talent, so …” He faded out, considering. “I know! I’m not translating now. I’m speaking for myself!”

And there was the answer. “Well, keep that wood away from me,” Bink said. “I don’t trust it.”

“No. I have to bring it close to you. Put your hand on it, Bink.”

“I will not!” Bink exclaimed.

Grundy jerked the reins to one side, kicked the flanks of the fish, and leaned forward. The fish swerved, reared, and accelerated right at Bink. “Hey!” he protested as it grazed his hand.

But at that moment his outlook changed. Abruptly the stars were mere stars, and the stairs—were the branches of a latticework tree. Above him the others were near its summit, about to step onto the thinning twigs that could not support their weight. Crombie was already supporting much of his mass by flapping his wings, and Chester—

Bink shook his head in amazement. A centaur climbing a tree!

Then the fish buzzed out of range, and the madness returned. Bink was on the translucent stairway again, climbing toward the glowing constellations. “It’s crazy, I know!” he cried. “But I can’t help myself. I have to go on up!”

The golem guided his fish in close again. “You can’t throw it off even when you
know
it’s doom?”

“It’s mad!” Bink agreed, suffering a measure of sanity as the wood passed near again. “But true! But don’t worry about me—I’ll survive. Go get Chester off that branch before he kills himself!”

“Right!” Grundy agreed. He spurred his mount and buzzed upward. Bink resumed his climb, cursing himself for his foolishness.

The fish disappeared in the night. Only the caged star—that Bink now knew was nothing more than a glowberry—showed Grundy’s location. That light moved up near the centaur.

“Good grief, golem!” Chester exclaimed. “What the horse-feathers am I doing in a tree?”

Bink could not hear Grundy’s side of the conversation, but could guess its nature. After a moment Chester started backing down the stairway steps.

“Hey, oaf!” the Magician cried. “Get your ass’s rear out of my face!”

“Go down,” the centaur cried. “This is no stair, it’s a tree. We’re climbing to our doom.”

“It’s information. Let me by!”

“It’s madness! Grundy, take your wood to him.”

The light descended. “Great galloping gizzards!” Humfrey cried. “It
is
a tree! We’ve got to get down!”

But now the centaur was climbing again. “I haven’t finished my business with that constellation centaur,” he said.

“You equine fool!” Humfrey exclaimed. “Desist!”

The fish zoomed down toward Bink. “I can’t handle them both,” Grundy cried. “I’ve only got the single piece of wood, and there are four of you.”

“The griffin can fly; he’ll be all right for now,” Bink said. “The stair—I mean the tree—is narrow. Give Chester the wood; no one can pass him. Then you search for more wood.”

“I had already thought of that,” the golem said. The fish zoomed off. In a moment Chester reversed his course again. The Good Magician cursed in most unMagicianlike vernacular, but was forced to retreat in the face of the centaur’s rear. Soon they were right above Bink—and he too cursed as his ascent was balked.

The constellations, seeing the retreat, exploded in rage. “***!!” the sky centaur cried silently. At his summons, the other monsters of the heavens gathered: the dragon, the hydra, the serpent, the winged horse, the giant, and in the river the whale.

The madness remained upon him, but Bink no longer wanted to climb the stairway. The monsters were converging, clustering about the top of the stair-spiral. The serpent was starting down, its sinuous body coiling along the spiral, while the winged ones flew down. Bink was not certain whether they
were real or illusion or something in between—but remembering the arrow-strike at the dogwood tree, he was disinclined to gamble. “We’ve got to get under cover!” he cried.

But Crombie, highest on the stair and unaffected by the spell-wood, flew up to do battle with the winged horse. “Squawk!” he cried. “Neigh!” the horse replied.

Grundy buzzed by on his steed. “Oooh, what they said!”

Wings spread, griffin and horse faced off, claws swiping, hooves striking. Contact was made, but Bink couldn’t tell from the whirling, flapping silhouettes which creature was prevailing.

Then the serpent arrived. Chester could not use his bow effectively, since no arrow would travel a spiral path, so waited with his sword. Bink wondered what the centaur saw, since he had the wood and so perceived reality—or something. Probably it was not a serpent, but an equivalent threat. Meanwhile Bink had to interpret it as he saw it.

As the huge snake-head came close, the centaur bellowed a warning and struck it across the nose. Blade met fang. The serpent’s teeth were large, reflecting starlight, and they gleamed with what might be poison. There were two projecting ones, and they moved with the precision of a fencer. Chester was compelled to retreat, since he had only one sword.

Then Chester took a cue from the winged horse, and used his front hooves. He bashed the serpent on the nose, one-two, one-two, while dazzling it with the sword. His front feet did not have the power of his rear ones, but his hooves had sharp fighting edges and a cumulative impact that could splinter bark from a tree, or scales from a serpent.

What would happen, Bink wondered, if the wood were to touch the serpent? Would it give the serpent a different view of reality? Would the centaur then seem to be something else? How could anyone be sure what magic was real, and what false?

The serpent hissed and gaped its jaws so widely that its mouth became as tall as the centaur. Its sinuous tongue snaked out to wrap around Chester’s sword arm, immobilizing it, but Chester shifted his weapon to his other hand, and efficiently
lopped off the tongue. The serpent made a hissing howl of agony and snapped its mouth closed, the tusks clanging against each other. Chester took a moment to unwrap the segment of tongue from his arm, then resumed slashing at the nose. He was holding his own.

The dragon arrived. It zoomed in at the Good Magician. Humfrey might be captive to the madness, but he was not a fool. His hand dived into his jacket and came out with a vial. But so swift was the dragon’s onslaught that there was no time to open the container. Instead, Humfrey flipped it into the opening mouth. The dragon snapped at it automatically. The vial crunched under its bite. Vapor exploded, expanding into a cloud that jetted out between the dragon’s teeth and coalesced about its head. But it did not form into anything else—no demon, no smoke screen, not even a sandwich. It just clung there in hardening gobs.

“What is it?” Bink cried. “Did the vial misfire?”

“I had to grab randomly,” Humfrey replied. “It’s—I believe it is foaming insulation.”

“Slavering what?”

“Foaming insulation. It foams up, then hardens in place to keep things warm—or cold.”

Bink shook his head. The Magician was mad all right.

How could anything act to keep things hot
or
cold? It either had to be like fire, heating, or like ice, cooling. And why would anyone bother with such magic?

The dragon, however, was not taking it with equanimity. It flexed in midair, and shook its head violently from side to side, trying to rid itself of the clinging stuff. It chewed and gulped, seeking to eliminate the foam. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Humfrey told it.

The dragon ignored him. It roared. Then it huffed and puffed, working up a head of fire in its belly. It looped about, its flapping wings throwing off chunks of hardened foam. Then it oriented on the Magician and blasted out its terrible fire.

Only a thin jet of flame emerged. Then, surprisingly, the dragon’s body began inflating. It swelled up like a balloon,
until only the legs, tail, wing tips and snout projected from the ball.

“What—?” Bink asked, amazed.

“The insulation hardens in place immediately in the presence of heat,” Humfrey explained. “Thus the dragon’s own fire had solidified it. Unfortunately that particular type of insulation is also—”

The dragon exploded. Stars shot out in every direction, scorching the jungle foliage below, zooming by Bink to the side, and making a fine display above.

“—explosively flammable when ignited,” Humfrey finished.

They watched the upward-flying stars rise to their heights, then explode in multicolored displays of sparks. The whole night sky became briefly brighter.

“I tried to warn that dragon,” Humfrey said without sympathy. “One simply does not apply open flame to flammable insulation”

Bink, privately, hardly blamed the dragon for misunderstanding that caution. He would have made the same mistake as the dragon had. If his talent permitted it. But this did impress on him one thing: should he (perish the thought!) ever have a serious disagreement with the Good Magician, he would have to watch out for those magic bottles! There was no telling what might come out of them.

Now a monster found Bink. It was the hydra. It had no wings, and could not have used the stairs because they were blocked by the serpent. The hydra seemed to have descended by hanging from the thread—but no such thread was visible.

Bink swung at the monster with his sword. He was in excellent form; he caught the nearest of the seven heads cleanly, just behind the horns, and it flew off. Gore spouted out of the neck with such force that the jet separated into two channels. If this was all it took to beat this monster, Bink would have no trouble!

The two jets coagulated in midair, forming into twin lumps still attached to the neck. As more gore emerged, it splashed over these lumps, hardening, enlarging them. Excrescences developed, and the color darkened, until—

The lumps became two new heads! Each was smaller than the original, but just as vicious. Bink had only succeeded in doubling the menace he faced.

This was a problem. If each head he cut off converted into two, the longer and better he fought, the worse off he would be!! Yet if he did not fight well, he would soon be consumed in seven—no, eight chunks.

“Catch, Bink!” Chester called, throwing something. Bink didn’t appreciate the interruption to his concentration, but grabbed for it anyway. In the dark his sweeping fingers merely batted it aside. In the moment it touched him, his sanity returned. He saw himself on a branch of the tree, pointing his sword at—

But then the reverse-spell wood bounced out of range, and the madness resumed its grip on him. He saw the chunk fly toward the hydra—and one of the heads reached out to gulp it down.

In that instant Bink suffered a rapid continuation of his prior line of thought. What would spell-reversal do
inside
an imaginary monster? If the hydra form were wholly a product of Bink’s distorted perception—his madness, which he shared with his friends—it should be nullified—no, the wood had to be near him, to nullify the monsters he perceived. But since his friends saw the monsters too, and the wood could not be near them all at once—it had to be that the wood would
not
affect the monster, unless that monster had objective reality. Even then, the wood would not affect the form of the hydra, but only its talent—if the hydra had a talent. Most magical creatures did not have magic talents; their magic consisted of their very existence. So—nothing should happen.

The hydra screamed from all its eight mouths. Abruptly it dropped to the ground. It landed heavily and lay still, its stars fading out.

Bink watched it, openmouthed. The hydra had not changed form—it had suffered destruction. What had happened?

Then he worked it out. The hydra had a magic talent after all: that of hanging by an invisible thread. The spell-reversal wood had nullified that magic, causing the monster to plummet
forcefully down to its death. Its invisible thread had not disappeared; it had acted to draw the creature
down
as powerfully as it had drawn it
up
before. Disaster!

But now the wood was gone. How were they to escape the madness?

Bink looked up. The Good Magician’s foaming agent had destroyed the dragon, and Chester’s hooves and sword had beaten back the serpent. Crombie’s fighting spirit had proved to be too much for the winged horse. So the individual battles had been won. But the war remained unpromising.

A number of constellations had remained in the sky. The centaur, giant, and whale had not been able to descend, because they lacked wings or flying magic, and the stairway had been pre-empted by the serpent. Now, seeing the fate of their companions, these three bellowed their rage from the safety of the nocturnal welkin. Novas and ringed planets and miniature lightning bolts and curly-tailed comets radiated from their mouths in confusing profusion and wonderful foulness, with the whale spouting obscene curlicues.

“Oh, yeah?” Chester bawled. “We’ll come up there and do the same to you! You’re the cowards who started it all!” And Crombie and Humfrey and Bink closed in about him as well as they were able.

“No, stop!” Grundy screamed from his flying fish, zooming in a circular holding pattern. “You’ve all seen the nature of your madness. Don’t yield to it again! Pass the wood around, restore your perspectives, get your feet on the ground again! Don’t let the spooks lure you to destruction!”

“He’s right, you know,” Humfrey muttered.

“But I dropped the wood!” Bink cried, “I dropped our sanity!”

“Then go down and fetch it!” the golem cried. “And you, horserear—you threw it to him. You go down and help him.”

“Squawk!” Crombie exclaimed. “And birdbeak says he’s going up alone to grab all the glory for himself.”

“Oh no he doesn’t!” Chester roared.

“Right!” the golem agreed. “You have to go together, to be fair about it. You real creatures place great store by fairness,
don’t you? Or is honor a foreign concept to you, birdbeak? You don’t want horserear’s competition, because you know he’d show you up if you didn’t have a head start?”

“Squawk! Squawk!” Bink almost thought he saw a comet spew from Crombie’s mouth.

“Right! So you prove you can match him anywhere, anytime—by getting down there and finding that wood before he does. And take the gnome with you. Horserear can take the washout with him.”