The Source of Magic (9 page)

Crombie could not support Bink’s weight long on the ground, let alone airborne. “Find an escape!” Bink cried. “Use your talent!”

Surprised, the griffin dropped Bink in a pillow bush and performed his direction-pointing routine in midair. Meanwhile the dragon coughed out several dusty fireballs, sprayed particles of soot, cleared its pipe, and charged after them. Chester galloped beside it, trying to get in another good shot. It was evident that this dragon was too tough for the three of them together.

Crombie’s right wing pointed to the side. “Squawk!” he cried.

Chester looped back and cruised by. “On my back!” he cried.

Bink leaped, and sprawled across the centaur’s rump. He started to slide off, grabbed wildly, caught a handful of mane, and righted himself while the centaur galloped on, head held low. Bink almost tumbled forward, but clasped his knees tightly and held on.

He looked up—and saw the dragon charging headlong at them. The monster must have looped back too! “Chester!” Bink screamed in panic. “It’s in front of us!”

“Front, hell!” the centaur yelled from behind him. “You’re facing backward, dodo.”

Oops. So he was. The dragon was following them, trying to catch up. Bink was holding on to Chester’s handsome tail. No wonder the head had seemed low!

Well, it was a good way to watch the dragon. “The monster’s gaining,” Bink reported. “Where’s Crombie pointing?”

“That’s where I’m going!” Chester called back. “But I don’t know how far it is!” His evident ire was understandable; he did not like fleeing an enemy, even so formidable a one as a dragon. If it weren’t for Bink, the centaur would not have retreated at all.

Crombie had indicated the direction, but could not know whether they would be able to reach the place of safety in time. Suppose the dragon caught them first? Bink feared his talent would have to come into operation again.

“That was the bravest thing I ever saw in a man,” Chester called. Obviously he felt centaurs had elevated standards of bravery. “You stood right in front of the dragon’s mouth, attracting his attention, and you kept absolutely still so I could get a clear shot around you. You could have been fried.”

Or skewered by the centaur’s arrow. But centaurs seldom missed their targets. “That wasn’t bravery,” Bink replied. “I was too terrified to move a muscle.”

“So? And what about when you spiked your sword into old firesnoot’s neck?”

That had resembled bravery. How could Bink explain that the protection provided by his devious talent made such acts easier? Had he really believed he might get killed, he might never have had the nerve. “I only did what you two were doing: attacking. To save my hide.”

Chester snorted derisively and charged on. The dragon continued to gain. Had it been a flying one, they would have been lost—except that the flying dragons were smaller, and consequently less powerful. But
any
dragon was real trouble, unless the one being attacked had nullifying magic.

Now the dragon was coming within torching range. There was dirt on its nose, but its fires remained stoked. It opened its mouth—

Chester dropped into a hole. “Hang on!” the centaur cried belatedly. “It’s a crevice too broad to leap!”

Evidently so. Bink narrowly avoided doing a somersault over Chester’s tail, hung on, and landed with gut-jarring impact. The walls rose up rapidly on either side. They must have approached this chasm obliquely, so that it was easy to rush down inside it. This must be the escape Crombie had indicated. Indeed, the griffin was angling down to join them.

But the dragon followed them into the crack. Its long, sinuous body was well adapted to this type of aperture. There was no crevice a centaur could hide in that would be too narrow for
the dragon. That made Bink uncertain; could this be a diversion, and not the escape route?

Suddenly Chester skidded to a halt. “Don’t stop!” Bink cried. “The monster’s right behind us!”

“Some escape route that featherbrain picked for us,” Chester muttered with disgust. “We’d better fight the dragon.”

“We’ll have to,” Bink said, turning around to face the centaur’s head. “We can’t outrun it—”

Then he saw what had stopped Chester. “Nickelpedes!” he cried with new horror.

The dragon saw the nickelpedes too. It skidded to a halt and tried to turn about—but the crevice was too narrow for effective circling. It might have looped up and over its own body, but that would have meant exposing its neck again, where it had already been stung.

Crombie came to land between them. “This was your way out, birdbrain?” Chester demanded as the nickelpedes scuttled close, forming living barricades wherever there were shadows, cutting off any likely escape.

“Squawk!” the griffin replied angrily. He understood both the language and the insult perfectly, though he could not reply in kind. He stood up, wings furled so they would not bang against the close walls and get smudged. He closed his eyes, whirled awkwardly, and pointed with a forepaw. But the paw was not firm; it wavered across half a circle.

A few bold nickelpedes attacked. Each was girt with about five hundred legs and a single set of pincers, and each had a taste for fresh meat. A single nickelpede could be killed, with a certain amount of effort and unpleasantness; a hundred were insurmountable without extraordinary armor or magic. But the attempt had to be made, for if there was one thing worse than being roasted by a dragon, it was being gouged by nickelpedes.

The dragon youped. A nickelpede had clamped on its smallest front claw and was gouging out a disk of substance nearly an inch across. The dragon’s claws were iron, but the nickel-pede’s pincers were nickel hardened by magic; they could gouge from almost anything. Chester chuckled grimly.

Then the centaur leaped high, emitting a cry like a neigh.
Another nickelpede had scooped out a piece of one hoof. Chester came down, stomping the little monster hard. But the nickelpede scuttled to the side, avoiding the blow—while others attacked Chester’s remaining hooves. And the dragon chuckled.

But their predicament was not funny. The crevice was deep, with a level footing below sheer vertical stone walls. It was too deep for Bink to jump out of. He might have made it by standing on Chester’s back—but how would the centaur himself get out? The dragon could lift its head that high—but not its forefeet. Only the griffin might escape—except that the narrowness of the cleft prevented him from spreading his wings far enough. He had glided into a landing, but taking off required more vigorous action and lift. With Chester’s help he might get high enough—but again, what about Chester? They were trapped as much by the situation as by the walls.

Very soon they would all be food for the swarm, if they didn’t get out of here. Yet the bulk of the dragon blocked the exit. At this stage the dragon was fidgeting about, trying to hoist its body off the ground so that it would not get gouged in a tender place, while the nickelpedes went gleefully for its feet. Chester was performing similarly. So was Crombie, who could not fly at the moment. And Bink himself, whose extremities were the most tender of all. Where was his talent now?

“It’s only the sunlight that holds them back,” Chester said. “When the sun moves over, they’ll all be on us.”

Bink looked at the line of shadow. At the moment the sun was high, and there was only a small shadowed area. But that area was packed with the pinching monsters. Only one nickelpede in a hundred ventured forth into the light, scuttling across to the shadow of someone’s body—but even so, there were a dozen or more coming.

Then Bink had an inspiration. “We must cooperate!” he cried. “All together—before we all get eaten together!”

“Of course,” Chester said. “But how do we get rid of the dragon?”

“I mean cooperate
with
the dragon!”

Chester, Crombie, and the dragon looked at him, mutually
startled. All of them were still dancing in place. “A dragon’s too dumb to cooperate, even if it wanted to,” Chester objected. “Even if there were any point. There’s just a pilot light in the monster’s brain. Why help it eat us?”

“There would have to be a truce,” Bink said. “We help it, it doesn’t eat us. The dragon can’t turn about, it can’t lift its body off the ground for any length of time. So it is vulnerable, just as we are. But it can fight the nickelpedes much better than we can. So if we protect its flank—”

“Flame!” Chester exclaimed. “Nickelpedes hate light—and flame has lots of light!”

“Right,” Bink said. “So if we protect its dark side, and its feet—”

“And its back,” Chester added, glancing at Crombie. “If it will trust us—”

“It has no choice,” Bink said, moving toward the dragon.

“It doesn’t
know
that! Watch out—it’ll scorch you!”

But Bink, protected by his magic, knew he would not get scorched. He walked up to the nose of the dragon and stood before the copper nostrils. Wisps of smoke drifted up from them; there was a little leakage when the system was idle. “Dragon,” he said, “you understand me, don’t you? You can’t talk, but you know we’re all in trouble now, and we’ll all get gouged to pieces and consumed by the nickelpedes unless we help each other fight them off?” And he jumped to avoid the onslaught of another nickelpede.

The dragon did not respond. It just looked at him. Bink hoped that was a good sign. He drew his sword, sighted at the nickelpede between his feet, and impaled it neatly on the point. The thing clicked its pincers as Bink lifted it, undead, and it strove to get at anything gougeable. From this vantage the pincers were circular; a nickelpede normally clamped onto its target with a few hundred legs and scooped inward to cut away a shallow disk of flesh. Horrible!

“I can nullify one nickelpede at a time,” Bink continued, showing his captive to the dragon’s right eye. “I could sit on one of your feet and protect it. My friend the centaur could defend your tail. The griffin is actually a transformed soldier, another
friend; he could watch for enemies dropping on your back, and crunch them in his beak. We can help you—if you trust us.”

“How can we trust
it
?” Chester demanded.

Still the dragon did not react. Was it stupid, or comprehending? As long as it listened, Bink had to assume that all was reasonably well. “Here’s what we have to do,” he continued hurriedly, as the shadow advanced and the nickelpedes grew bolder. Three were coming at Bink’s own feet now; it would be hard to spear them all in time. “The three of us must climb over you to get to your tail and back feet. Crombie will perch on your back. So you will have to let us pass, and tolerate our weight on your body. We’ll do what we can to keep your scales intact. But the main job is yours. Once we get clear, you scorch the whole mass of nickelpedes in the crevice before you. Fry them all! They don’t like light, and will clear out. Then we can all back out of here. Agreed?”

The dragon merely stared at him. Had it really comprehended? Chester took a hand. “Dragon, you know centaurs are creatures of honor. Everyone knows that! I give my word: I will not attack you if you let me past. I know Bink; even though he is a man, he is also a creature of honor. And the griffin—” He hesitated.

“Squawk!” Crombie said angrily.

“Crombie is also a creature of honor,” Bink said quickly. “And we assume you are too, dragon.”

Yet the dragon still stared at him. Bink realized be would have to gamble. The dragon might be too stupid to comprehend the nature of their offer, or it still might not trust them. It was possible it had no way to respond. They would have to gamble on the last alternative.

“I am going to climb over your back,” Bink said. “My friends will follow me. The truce will hold until we all get out of this crevice.”

Truce. He had learned to appreciate this mode of compromise over a year ago, when he and Chameleon had made truce with the Evil Magician. That arrangement had saved them all
from disaster in the wilderness. It seemed no enemy was too awful to deal with in time of sufficient peril.

He addressed the silent dragon again. “If you don’t believe me, scorch us now, and face the nickelpedes alone.”

Bink walked boldly around the dragon’s head to the base of the neck where the front legs projected. The dragon did not scorch him. He saw the wound he had made in the neck, dripping ichor that a nickelpede was greedily eating as it landed. The little monster was gouging disks out of the stone floor to get every last bit of the delicacy puddling there. The nickelpedes had to be the most rapacious monsters for their size in all the Land of Xanth!

Bink sheathed his sword after wiping off the impaled nickelpede, then stretched up his hands and jumped. His head and chest cleared the top of the leg, and he was able to scramble over the scales. Because they were lying flat, they did not cut him—so long as he did not rub them the wrong way. The dragon did not move. “Come on, Chester, Crombie!” he called back.

Prompted by his call and the encroaching nickelpedes, the two creatures followed. The dragon eyed them warily, but held its flame. Soon the three assumed their battle stations. Just in time; the nickelpedes had massed so thickly that the shadowed walls were bright with their highlights. The shadow was advancing inexorably.

“Blast out the passage ahead!” Bink yelled to the dragon. “We’re protecting your flank!” And he drew his sword and speared another nickelpede on the point.

The dragon responded by belching out a tremendous wash of fire. It scorched the whole crevice, obscuring everything in flame and smoke. It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck. Nickelpedes screeched thinly as they fell from the walls, burning, some even exploding. Success!

“Very good,” Bink said to the dragon, wiping his tearing eyes. There had been a fair backlash of hot gas. “Now back out.” But the creature did not move.

“It can’t back,” Chester said, catching on. “Its legs don’t work that way. The dragon never retreats.”

Bink realized it was true. The dragon was limber, and normally it twined about to reverse course. Its legs and feet were structured for forward only. No wonder it had not expressed agreement to Bink’s proposal; it could not perform. Without words, it could not explain; any negation would have seemed to be a refusal of the truce. Even a really intelligent creature would have been in a dilemma there, and the dragon was less than that. So it had shut up.