pell For Chameleon

"I am going to see the Magician Humfrey," she said contritely. "I need a spell to make me well."

Again Bink and Crombie exchanged glances. Dee had drunk the magic water; she was well. Therefore she had no need to see the Good Magician on that score. She had to be lying. And if she were lying, what was she concealing from them?

She must have picked this particular destination because she knew Bink was going there. Yet this was still conjecture. It could be pure coincidence-or she could be an ogre in female form-a healthy ogre!-waiting for the expedient moment to strike.

Crombie, seeing Bink's indecision, made a decision of his own. "If you let her go with you, then I'm coming too. With my hand ever on my sword. Watching her-all the time."

"Maybe that's best," Bink agreed reluctantly.

"I bear you no malice," Dee protested. "I would do nothing to hurt you, even were I able. Why don't you believe me?"

Bink found it too complicated to explain. "You can travel with us if you want to," he said.

Dee smiled gratefully, but Crombie shook his head grimly and fingered the hilt of his sword.

Crombie remained suspicious, but Bink soon discovered he enjoyed Dee's company. She had no trace of the personality of the Sorceress. She was such an average girl that he identified with her to a considerable extent. She seemed to have no magic; at least, she evaded that subject. Perhaps she was going to the Magician in the hope of finding her talent; maybe that was what she had meant by needing a spell to make her well. Who was in good shape in Xanth without magic?

However, if she were the Sorceress Iris, her ruse would quickly be exposed by the divination of the Magician. So the truth wound be known.

They stopped at the Spring of Life to refill their canteen, traveled half a day, then got caught by a technicolor hailstorm. It was magic, of course, or magic-augmented. The colors gave it away. Which meant that there would not be any great melting or runoff. All they had to do was take shelter from it until it passed.

But they happened to be on a barren ridge: no trees for miles around, no caves, no houses. The land went up and down, cut away by erosion gullies, strewn with bounders-but there was nothing to shield them effectively from the storm.

Pelted by increasingly large hailstones, the three scurried in the direction Crombie's magic pointed: the route to safe shelter. It came into view behind a bounder: a monstrously spreading tentacular tree.

"That's a tangler!" Bink exclaimed in horror. "We can't go there."

Crombie was brought up short, peering through the hail. "So it is. My talent never pointed wrong before."

Except when it accused Dee, Bink thought. He wondered just how reliable the soldier's magic really was. For one thing, why hadn't it pointed out the soldier's danger to himself, before he got stabbed in the back and left to die? But Bink did not say that out loud. There were often complexities and confusion in magic, and he was sure Crombie meant well.

"There's a hephalumph there," Dee cried. "Half eaten."

Sure enough, the huge carcass lay near the trunk orifice of the tree. Its posterior was gone, but the front end was untouched. The tree had evidently caught it and consumed as much as it could-but a hephalumph was so big that even a tangle tree could not polish it off in one meal. Now the tree was sated, its tentacles dangling listlessly.

"So it's safe after all," Bink said, wincing as an egg-sized red hailstone just missed his head. The hail was puffy and light, but it still could hurt. "It will be hours before the tree revives enough to become aggressive. Maybe even days--and even then, it'll start on the lumph first."

Still Crombie balked, understandably. "Could be an illusion, that carcass," he warned. "Be suspicious of all things--that's the soldier's motto. A trap to make us think the tree's docile. How do you think it tempted the hephalumph in there?"

Telling point. Periodic hailstorms on the ridge to drive prey to cover, and seemingly ideal cover waiting-beautiful system. "But we'll be knocked silly by hail if we don't get to cover soon," Bink said.

"I'll go," Dee said. Before Bink could protest, she plunged into the territory of the tree.

The tentacles quivered, twitching toward her-but lacked the imperative to make a real effort. She dashed up and kicked the hephalumph in the trunk-and it was solid. "No mirage," she cried. "Come on in."

"Unless she's a shill," Crombie muttered. "I tell you, she's a threat to you, Bink. If she shilled for the tangler, she could trick dozens of people into its clutches-"

The man was paranoid. Perhaps this was another useful quality for soldiers-though again, it didn't seem to have kept him out of trouble before. "I don't believe it," Bink said. "But I do believe this hailstorm! I'm going in." And he went.

He passed the outer fringe of tentacles nervously, but they remained quiescent. A hungry tangler was not a subtle plant; it normally grabbed the moment its prey was grabable.

Finally Crombie followed. The tree shuddered slightly, as if irritated by its inability to consume them, and that was all, "Well, I knew my talent told the truth. It always does," he said, somewhat weakly.

It was actually very nice here. The hailstones had grown to the size of clenched fists, but they bounced off the tree's upper foliage and piled up in a circle around it, caught by a slight depression. Predator trees tended to sit in such depressions, formed by the action of their tentacles while cleaning brush and rocks out of the way in order to have an attractive lawn for passing creatures. The refuse was tossed beyond in a great circle, so that in the course of years the land surface rose. The tangle was a highly successful type of tree, and some of them formed wells whose rims were fashioned from buried bones of past prey. They had been cleaned out near the North Village, but all children were instructed in this menace. Theoretically, a man pursued by a dragon could skirt a tangler, leading the dragon within range of the tentacles--if he had both courage and skill.

Within the shielded area there was a fine greensward rising in soft hillocks, rather like the torso of a woman. Sweet perfume odors wafted through, and the air was pleasantly warm. In short, this was a seemingly ideal place to seek shelter-and that was by design. It had certainly fooled the hephalumph. Obviously this was a good location, for the tangler had grown to enormous girth. But right now they were here rent-free.

"Well, my magic was right all the time," Crombie said. "I should have trusted it. But by the same token..." He glanced meaningfully at Dee.

Bink wondered about that. He believed in the soldier's sincerity, and the location magic was obviously functional. Had it malfunctioned in Dee's case, or was she really a bad if obscure threat? If so, what kind? He could not believe she meant him harm. He had suspected her of being Iris the Sorceress, but now he didn't believe that; she showed no sign of the temperament of the mistress of illusion, and personality was not something that magic could conceal for very long.

"Why didn't your magic warn you of the stab in the back?" Bink asked the soldier, making another attempt to ascertain what was reliable and what was not.

"I didn't ask it," Crombie said. "I was a damned fool. But once I see you safely to your Magician, I'll sure as hell ask it who stabbed me, and then..." He fingered the blade of his sword meaningfully.

A fair answer. The talent was not a warning signal; it merely performed on demand. Crombie had obviously had no reason to suspect danger, any more than Bink had reason to feel threatened now. Where was the distinction between natural caution and paranoia?

The storm continued. None of them were willing to sleep, because they did not trust the tree to that extent, so they sat and talked. Crombie told a tough story of ancient battle and heroism in the days of Xanth's Fourth Wave. Bink was no military man, but he found himself caught up in the gallantry of it, and almost wished he had lived in those adventurous times, when men of no magic were considered men.