Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, Fantasy, General, Fiction, Fantasy - General, Fiction - Fantasy
ISBN: 9780345340467
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2010-01-21T15:40:01+00:00

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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.