pell For Chameleon

Dawn was coming as they reached the beach. The sun pushed up behind the clouds over the jungle and finally burst through to bounce its shafts off the water. It was a thing of marvelous beauty. Bink clung to that concept, because his body was numb with fatigue, his brain locked onto the torture of moving limbs, over and over, on and on.

At last he crawled upon the beach. Fanchon crawled beside him. "Don't stop yet," she said. "We must seek cover, lest other monsters come, from the beach or jungle..."

But Trent stood knee-deep in the surf, his sword dangling from his handsome body. He was obviously not as tired as they were. "Return, friend," he said, flicking something into the sea. The sea monster reappeared, its serpentine convolutions much more impressive in the shallow water. Trent had to lift his feet and splash back out of the way, lest he be crushed by a hugely swinging coil.

But the monster was not looking for trouble now. It was extremely disgruntled. It gave a single honk of rage or of anguish or of mere amazement and thrashed its way toward deeper pastures.

Trent walked up the beach. "It is not fun to be a defenseless love bug when you are accustomed to being the king of the sea," he said. "I hope the creature does not suffer a nervous breakdown."

He was not smiling. There was something fu

Odd that Humfrey, the Good Magician, was an ugly little gnome in a forbidding castle, selfishly using his magic to enrich himself, while Trent was the epitome of hero material. The Sorceress Iris had seemed lovely and-sexy, but was in fact nondescript; Humfrey's good qualifies were manifest in his actions, once a person really got to know him. But Trent, so far, had seemed good in both appearance and deed, at least on the purely personal level. If Bink had met him for the first time in the kraken's cave and hadn't known the man's evil nature, he would never have guessed it.

Now Trent strode across the beach, seeming hardly tired despite the grueling swim. The nascent sunlight touched his hair, turning it bright yellow. He looked in that instant like a god, all that was perfect in man. Again Bink suffered fatigued confusion, trying to reconcile the man's appearance and recent actions with what he knew to be the man's actual nature, and again finding it so challenging as to be virtually impossible. Some things just had to be taken on faith.

"I've got to rest, to sleep," Bink muttered. "I can't tell evil from good right now."

Fanchon looked toward Trent. "I know what you mean," she said, shaking her head so that her ratty hair shifted its wet tangles. "Evil has an insidious way about it, and there is some evil in all of us that seeks to dominate. We have to fight it, no matter how tempting it becomes."

Trent arrived. "We seem to have made it," he said cheerfully. "It certainly is good to be back in Xanth, by whatever freak of fortune. Ironic that you, who sought so ardently to prevent my access, instead facilitated it!"

"Ironic," Fanchon agreed dully.

"I believe this is the coast of the central wilderness region, bounded on the north by the great Gap. I had not realized we had drifted so far south, but the contour of the land seems definitive. That means we are not yet out of trouble."

"Bink's an exile, you're banished, and I'm ugly," Fanchon muttered. "We'll never be out of trouble."

"Nevertheless, I believe it would be expedient to extend our truce until we are free of the wilderness," the Magician said.

Did Trent know something Bink didn't? Bink had no magic, so he would be prey to all the sinister spells of the deep jungle. Fanchon had no apparent magic-strange, she claimed her exile had been voluntary, not forced, yet if she really had no magic she should have been banished too; anyway, she would have a similar problem. But Trent-with his skills with sword and spell, he should have no reason to fear this region.

Fanchon had similar doubts. "As long as you're with us, we're in constant danger of being transformed into toads. I can't see that the wilderness is worse."

Trent spread his hands. "I realize you do not trust me, and perhaps you have reason. I believe your security and mine would be enhanced if we cooperated a little longer, but I shall not force my company on you." He walked south along the beach.

"He knows something," Bink said. "He must be leaving us to die. So he can be rid of us without breaking his word."

"Why should he care about his word?" Fanchon asked. "That would imply he is a man of honor."

Bink had no answer. He crawled to the shade and concealment of the nearest tree and collapsed in the downy sward. He had been unconscious during part of the last night, but that was not the same as sleep; he needed genuine rest.

When he woke it was high noon-and he was fixed in place. There was no pain, only some itching--but he couldn't lift his head or hands. They were fastened to the ground by myriad threads, as if the very lawn had-Oh, no! In the numbness of fatigue, he had been so careless as to lie in a bed of carnivorous grass! The root blades had grown up into his body, infiltrating it so slowly and subtly that it had not disturbed his sleep-and now he was caught. Once he had happened on a patch of the stuff near the North Village with an animal skeleton on it. The grass had consumed all the flesh. He had wondered how any creature could have been so stupid as to be trapped by such a thing. Now he knew.

He was still breathing, therefore he could still yell. He did so with a certain gusto. "Help!"

There was no response.

"Fanchon!" he cried. "I'm tied down. The grass is eating me up." Actually that was an exaggeration; he was not hurt, merely bound to the ground. But the tendrils continued to grow into him, and soon they would start to feed, drawing the life proteins from his flesh.

Still nothing. He realized she would not or could not help him. Probably something had put a sleep spell on her. It was obvious, in retrospect, that there were plenty of deadly threats right here at the edge of the beach; she must have fallen into another. She might be dead already.

"Help! Anybody!" he screamed desperately.

That was another mistake. All around him, in the forest and along the beach, things were stirring. He had advertised his helplessness, and now they were coming to take advantage of it. Had he struggled with the grass in silence, he might have managed in time to work his way free; he had awakened before it was ready for the kill, luckily. Maybe he had tried to turn over in his sleep, and his body had objected to the resistance strongly enough to throw off the stasis spell the grass was applying. If he struggled and failed, his demise at least would have been fairly comfortable-just a slow sinking into eternal sleep. Now by his noise he had summoned much less comfortable menaces. He could not see them, but he could hear them.

From the nearby tree came a rustle, as of meat-eating squirrels. From the beach came a scrape, as of hungry acid crabs. From the sea came a horrible kind of splashing, as of a small sea monster who had sneaked into the territory of the big sea monster Trent had transformed. Now this little one struggled to get out of the water and cross to the prey before it was gone. But the most dreadful sound of all was the pound-pound-pound of the footfalls of something deep in the forest, large and far away but moving extremely rapidly.

A shadow fell on him. "Hi!" a shrill voice cried. It was a harpy, cousin to the one he had met on the way back to the North Village. She was every bit as ugly, smelly, and obnoxious-and now she was dangerous. She descended slowly, her talons reaching down, twitching. The other harpy had seen him healthy, so had stayed well out of reach-though she might have descended had he actually drunk from the Spring of Love. Ugh! This one saw him helpless.