A Spell for Chameleon_The Parallel Edition... Simplified by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345536440
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Chase

At night they piled up the bricks. Some crumbled, for the sunlight had not been hot enough to bake them all the way through, but on the whole they were pretty sturdy. Bink listened carefully for the guards, waiting until they took what they called a break. Then he stepped to the top of the brick pile, braced his hands against the grate, and shoved.

As his muscles tightened, he suddenly realized that this was Fanchon’s real reason for wanting the curtain. It had not been to hide her body but to hide the bricks so they would be saved for this escape. He had never caught on.

The thought gave him strength. He shoved hard, and the grate rose with surprising ease. Fanchon scrambled up beside him and jammed the privy pot under the lifted edge.

Ugh! Maybe some year someone would make a pot that smelled of roses!

But it did the job. It held up the grate as he let it go. Now there was room to scramble out. Bink gave her a boost, then pulled himself out. No guards saw them. They were free.

“The null-magic mixture is on that ship,” Fanchon whispered, pointing into the darkness.

“How do you know that?” Bink asked.

“We passed it on our way to the transformation. It’s the only thing that would be guarded so carefully. And you can see the catapult on board.”

She had kept her eyes open. Ugly she might be, but she was smart. He hadn’t thought to look over the area so closely.

“Now, getting the mixture will be a problem,” she went on. “I think we’d better take the whole ship. Can you sail?”

“I’ve never been on anything bigger than a rowboat in my life, except Iris’s ship, and that wasn’t real. I’d probably get seasick.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. “We’re landlubbers. So they’ll never look for us there. Come on.”

Well, it was better than being changed into a cockatrice.

They crept down to the beach and entered the water. Bink looked back nervously and saw a light moving toward the pit. “Hurry!” he whispered. “We forgot to put the grate back down. They’ll know right away that we’re gone.”

At least they were both fairly good swimmers. They took off their clothing and swam silently for the sailboat some distance out. Bink was alarmed by the dark water. What type of monsters were in Mundane seas?

The water was not cold, and swimming helped warm him, but in a while Bink tired and felt chilled. Fanchon suffered also. The ship had not seemed this far from land.

Then the cry went up back at the prison pit. Lights flared everywhere, moving around like fireflies. Bink felt new strength. “We’ve got to get there fast,” he said, gasping for air.

Fanchon didn’t answer. She was too busy swimming.

The swim seemed to take forever. It drained strength from Bink, making him become gloomy. But at last they came up to the ship. A sailor was standing on the deck, a shadow in the light of the moon, peering at the shore.

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