pell For Chameleon

"All right," she said. "Makes sense. The Shieldstone is at--"

"Traitor!" Bink screamed.

"Remove him," Trent snapped.

Soldiers entered and grabbed him and hustled him out. He had accomplished nothing except to make it harder for himself.

But then he thought of another aspect. What were the chances of another exile coming from Xanth within an hour after him? There couldn't be more than one or two exiles a year; it was big news when anyone left Xanth. He had heard nothing about it, and no second trial had been scheduled.

So-Fanchon was not an exile. She was probably not from Xanth at all. She was an agent, planted by Trent, just as Bink had first suspected. Her purpose was to convince Bink that she was telling Trent the location of the Shieldstone, tricking him into confirming it.

Well, he had figured out the scheme-and so he had won. Do what he might, Trent would not get into Xanth.

Yet there was a nagging uncertainty...

Chapter 9. Transformer

Bink was thrown into a pit. A pile of hay broke his fall, and a wooden roof set on four tall posts shaded him from the sun. Other than that, his prison was barren and bleak indeed. The walls were of some stonelike substance, too hard to dig into with his bare hands, too sheer to climb; the floor was packed earth.

He walked around it. The wall was solid all around, and too high for him to surmount. He could almost touch the top when he jumped and reached up--but a lattice of metal bars across the top sealed him in. He might, with special effort, get high enough to catch hold of one of those bars-but then all he would be able to do would be to hang there. It might represent exercise, but it wouldn't get him out. So the cage was tight.

He had hardly come to this conclusion before soldiers came to stand at the grate, shaking rust onto him. They stood in the shade of the roof while one of them squatted down to unlock the little door set in that grate and swing it up and open. Then they dropped a person through. It was the woman Fanchon.

Bink jumped across, wrapping his arms around her before she hit the straw, breaking her fall. They both sprawled in the hay. The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked.

"Now, I know my beauty didn't overwhelm you," she remarked as they disentangled.

"I was afraid you'd break a leg," Bink said defensively. "I almost did, when they threw me in here."

She glanced down at her knobby knees, showing beneath her dull skirt. "A break couldn't hurt the appearance of either leg."

Not far off the mark. Bink had never seen a more homely girl than this one.

But what was she doing here? Why should the Evil Magician throw his stooge in the den with his prisoner? This was no way to trick the captive into talking. The proper procedure would be to tell Bink she had talked, and offer him his freedom for confirming the information. Even if she were genuine, she still should not have been confined with him; she could have been imprisoned separately. Then the guards would tell each one that the other had talked.

Now, if she had been beautiful, they might have thought she could vamp him into telling. But as she was, not a chance. It just didn't seem to make sense.

"Why didn't you tell him about the Shieldstone?" Bink inquired, not certain with what irony he intended it. If she were a fake, she could not have told--but she also should not have been dumped in here. If she were genuine, she must be loyal to Xanth. But then, why had she said she would tell Trent where the Shieldstone was?

"I told him," she said.

She had told him? Now Bink hoped she was phony.

"Yes," she said, looking him straight in the eye. "I told him how it was set under the throne in the King's palace in the North Village."

Bink tried to assess the ramifications of this statement. It was the wrong location-but did she know this? Or was she trying to trick him into a reaction, a revelation of its real location-while the guards listened? Or was she a true exile, who knew the location and had lied about it? That would account for Trent's reaction. Because if Trent's catapult lobbed an elixir bomb on the palace of Xanth, not only would it fail to disrupt the Shield, it would alert the King-or at least the more alert ministers, who were not fools-to the nature of the threat. The damping out of magic in that vicinity would quickly give it away.

Had Trent actually lobbed his bomb--and had he now lost all hope of penetrating Xanth? The moment the threat was known, they would move the Shieldstone to a new, secret location, so that no information from exiles would be valid. No--if that had happened, Trent would have turned Fanchon into a toad and stepped on her--and he would not have bothered to keep Bink prisoner. Bink might have been killed or released, but not simply kept. So nothing that drastic had happened. Anyway, there had not been time for all that.

"I see you don't trust me," Fanchon said.

A fair analysis. "I can't afford to," he admitted. "I don't want anything to happen to Xanth."

"Why should you care, since you got kicked out?"

"I knew the rule; I was given a fair hearing."

"Fair hearing!" she exclaimed indignantly. "The King didn't even read Humfrey's note or taste the water from the Spring of Life."

Bink paused again. How would she know that?

"Oh, come on," she said. "I passed through your village only hours after your trial. It was the talk of the town. How the Magician Humfrey had authenticated your magic, but the King-"

"Okay, okay," Bink said. Obviously she had come from Xanth, but he still wasn't sure how far he could trust her. Yet she must know the Shieldstone's location-and hadn't told it. Unless she had told it--and Trent didn't believe her, so was waiting for corroboration from Bink? But she had a

So the balance in Bink's mind shifted; now he believed she was from Xanth and she had not betrayed it. That was what the available evidence suggested. How complex could Trent's machinations become? Maybe he had a Mundane machine that could somehow pick up news from inside the Shield. Or-more likely!-he had a magic mirror set up in the magic zone just outside the Shield, so he could learn interior news. No-in that case he could have ascertained the location of the Shieldstone directly. Bink felt dizzy. He didn't know what to think-but he certainly wasn't going to mention the key location.

"I wasn't exiled, if that's what you're thinking," Fanchon said. "They don't yet ban people for being ugly. I emigrated voluntarily."

"Voluntarily? Why?"

"Well, I had two reasons."

"What two reasons?"

She looked at him. "I'm afraid you would not believe either one."

"Try me and see."

"First, the Magician Humfrey told me it was the simplest solution to my problem."

"What problem?" Bink was hardly in a good mood.

She gave him another straight look that mounted to a stare. "Must I spell it out?"

Bink found himself reddening. Obviously her problem was her appearance. Fanchon was a young woman, but she was not plain, not homely, but ugly-the living proof that youth and health were not necessarily beauty. No clothing, no makeup could help her nearly enough; only magic could do it. Which seemed to make her departure from Xanth nonsensical. Was her judgment as warped as her body?

Faced with the social necessity of changing the subject, he fixed on another objection, an aspect of his thought: "But there's no magic in Mundania."