Xanth 02 - The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy, Epic, Xanth (Imaginary Place)
ISBN: 9780345350589
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1979-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9. Vortex Fiends

At dawn they emerged from the madness region, each holding a piece of spell-reversal wood. They had traveled tediously, separating Crombie at intervals from his piece of wood, getting his indication of the best immediate route, then returning his chunk to him so that he could perceive threats accurately until the next orientation.

Once they were out, they located a reasonably secure roost in a stork-leg tree, setting their pieces of wood in a circle about its spindly trunks so that no hostile magic could approach them without getting reversed. That was not a perfect defense, but they were so tired they had to make do.

Several hours later Bink woke, stretched, and descended. The centaur remained lodged on a broad branch, his four hooves dangling down on either side; it seemed the tree-climbing experience during the madness had added a nonmagical talent to his repertoire. The Magician lay curled in a ball within a large nest he had conjured from one of his vials. Crombie, ever the good soldier, was already up, scouting the area, and the golem was with him.

“One thing I want to know...” Bink started, as he munched on slices of raisin bread from a loaf Crombie had plucked from a local breadfruit tree. It was a trifle overripe, but otherwise excellent.

Crombie squawked. “...is who destroyed that reverse-spell tree,” Grundy finished.

“You’re translating again!”

“I’m not touching any wood at the moment.” The golem fidgeted. “But I don’t think I’m as real as I was last night, during the madness.”

“Still, there must be some feeling remaining,” Bink said. “It can be like that, approaching a goal. Two steps forward, one back—but you must never give up.”

Grundy showed more animation. “Say, that’s a positive way of looking at it, mushmind!”

Bink was glad to have given encouragement, though the golem’s unendearing little mannerisms remained evident. “How did you know what I was about to ask? About the destruction of—“

“You always come up with questions, Bink,” the golem said. “So we pointed out the location of the subject of your next question, and it matched up with the tree stump. So we researched it. It was a challenge.”

That was an intriguing ramification of Crombie’s talent! Anticipating the answers to future questions! Magic kept coming up with surprises. “Only a real creature likes challenges,” Bink said.

“I guess so. It’s sort of fun, the challenge of becoming real. Now that I know that maybe it’s possible. But I still have this ragtag body; no amount of caring can change that. It just means that now I fear the death that will surely come.” He shrugged, dismissing it “Anyway, the tree was blasted by a curse from that direction.” He pointed.

Bink looked. “All I see is a lake.” Then, startled: “Didn’t the ogre say something about—?”

“Fiends of the lake, who hurled a curse that blasted the whole forest,” Grundy said. “We checked: that is the lake.”

Humfrey descended from the tree. “I’d better bottle some of this wood, if I can get my magic to work on it,” he said.

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