The Source of Magic (11 page)

As they came to the moat, the nature of the new guardian became apparent. Monster? Monsters! The water teemed with serpentine loops, some white, some black, sliding past each other interminably.

“But where are the heads, the tails?” Chester inquired, perplexed. “All I see are coils.”

The three of them stood by the moat, pondering. What could a whole fleet of sea serpents have wanted to ask the Good Magician, needing his Answer so badly that all were willing to pay
the fee? How had they gotten here? It seemed it was not for Bink and his friends to know.

Fortunately, this was not a hazard he had to brave. Bink was on the King’s business, and would be admitted to the castle as soon as he made his presence known. “Magician Humfrey!” he called.

There was no response from the castle. Doubtless the Good Magician was buried in a good book of magic, oblivious to outside proceedings. “Magician, it is Bink, on a mission for the King!” he called again.

Still no response. “The old gnome must be hard of hearing,” Chester muttered. “Let me try.” He cupped his hands before his mouth and bellowed: “MAGICIAN: COMPANY!”

The bellow echoed and re-echoed from the battlements, but the castle was silent. “He should be at home.” Bink said. “He never goes anywhere. Still, we can check. Crombie, where is the Good Magician?”

The griffin went through his act and pointed—directly toward the castle. “Must be beyond it,” Chester said. “If your talent’s not on the blink again.”

Crombie squawked, his blue hackle-feathers rising again. He stood on his hind feet and made boxing motions with his front feet, challenging the centaur to fight. Chester seemed quite ready to oblige.

“No, no!” Bink cried, diving between them. “We don’t want to make a bad impression!”

“Hell, I wanted to make a good impression—on his feathery face,” Chester grumbled.

Bink knew he had to separate the two combative creatures. “Go around to the other side of the castle and get another fix on the Magician,” he told Crombie.

“Triangulate,” Chester said.

Triangulate? Bink, accustomed to his friend’s surly manner, had forgotten how educated centaurs were. Triangulation was a magical means of locating something without going there directly. Chester had a good mind and a lot of background information, when he cared to let it show.

The griffin decided that the word was not, after all, a
scatological insult, and flew to one side of the castle and pointed again. Toward the castle. No question about it: the Magician was home.

“Better fly in and notify him we’re here,” Bink said. “We don’t want to mess with those moat-monsters.”

Crombie took off again. There was a small landing area between the moat and the castle, but no opening in the wall, so the griffin mounted to the high turrets. But there seemed to be no entry there for a creature of that size, so after circling the tower twice the griffin flew back.

“I remember now,” Bink said. “The windows are barred. A small bird can get through, but not a griffin. We’ll just have to brave the moat after all.”

“We’re here on the King’s business!” Chester exclaimed angrily. His unhandsome face was excellent for scowling. “We don’t have to run the gauntlet!”

Bink was piqued himself. But he knew he could make it through, because of his talent. “It is my responsibility. I’ll see if I can navigate the castle obstacles and get his attention, then he’ll let you in.”

“We won’t let you brave that moat alone!” Chester protested, and Crombie squawked agreement. These two might have their rivalry, but they knew their ultimate loyalty.

This was awkward. They had no magical protection. “I’d really rather do it alone,” Bink said. “I am smaller than you, and more likely to slip through. If I fall in the moat, you can lasso me and haul me out, quickly. But I could never haul
you
out, if—”

“Got a point,” Chester admitted grudgingly. “Crombie can fly across the water, but we already know he can’t get in. Too bad he’s not strong enough to fly with you.”

Crombie started to bridle again, but Bink cut in quickly. “He could carry your rope to me, in an emergency. I really think it is best this way. You can help me most by figuring out what type of monsters are in that moat. Is there anything in the centaur’s lexicon about headless serpents?”

“Some—but the coils don’t match the pattern. They look more like pieces of a—” Chester broke off, staring. “It
is
! It’s an ouroboros!”

“An ouroboros?” Bink repeated blankly. “What’s that—a fleet of sea monsters?”

“It is all one monster, a water dragon, clutching its own tail between its teeth. Half of it white, half black. The symbolism is—”

“But there are a score or more segments, all over the moat! Some are in toward the castle, and some out near the edge. Look—there’s three lined up parallel. They can’t be pieces of the same monster!”

“Yes they can,” Chester said wisely. “The ouroboros loops entirely around the castle—”

“But that would account for only a single-file line of—”

“Loops several times, and its head plunges below its own coils to catch the tail. A little like a mobius strip. So—”

“A what?”

“Never mind. That’s specialized magic. Take my word: that thing in the moat is all one monster—and it can’t bite because it won’t let go of its tail. So if you’re good at balancing, you can walk along it to the castle.”

“But no segment shows above the water more than five feet! I’d fall in, if I tried to jump from segment to segment!”

“Don’t jump,” Chester said with unusual patience, for him. “Walk. Even coiled several times around the loop, the thing is too long for the moat, so it has to make vertical convolutions. These can never straighten out; as soon as one subsides, another must rise, and this happens in a progressive undulation. That’s how the ouroboros moves, in this restricted locale. So you need never get wet; just follow one stage of the thing to the end.”

“This makes no sense to me!” Bink said. “You’re speaking in Centaurese. Can’t you simplify?”

“Just jump aboard the nearest loop and stay there,” Chester advised. “You’ll understand it once you do it.”

“You have more confidence in me than I do,” Bink said dubiously. “I hope you know what I’m doing.”

“I trusted you to get us out of the nickelpede crevice Crombie got us into,” Chester said. “Now you trust me to get you
across that moat. It isn’t as if you’ve never ridden a monster before.”

“Squawk!” Crombie cried, pointing a wing at the centaur. Bink smiled; he
had
been riding the centaur. Score one for the soldier.

“Just don’t fall off,” Chester continued evenly. “You’d get crushed by the coils.”

“Um,” Bink agreed, sobering. Even with his talent backing him up, he didn’t like this. Walking the back of a moving sea monster? Why not walk the wings of a flying roc, while he was at it!

He cast his gaze about, as he tended to do when he sought some escape from what he knew he could not escape—and spotted another mound of earth. Angrily he marched a few paces and stepped on it, pressing it down.

But when a convenient loop offered, Bink jumped across to it, windmilling his arms in the fashion of a mill-tree to regain his balance. The segment of monster sank somewhat beneath his weight, then stabilized pneumatically. Though glistening with moisture, the white skin was not slippery. Good; maybe this walk was possible after all!

The flesh rippled. The section in front of him subsided into the water. “Turn about!” Chester called from the bank. “Stay with it!”

Bink turned, windmilling again. There, behind/before him, the loop was extending. He stepped along it, hurrying as the water lapped at his heels. This was like a magic highway, opening out ahead of him, closing behind him. Maybe that was the basic principle of such one-way paths; they were really the backs of monsters! Yet though the serpent seemed to be moving toward Bulk’s rear, the loop stayed in place, or drifted slightly forward. So he was walking fairly swiftly, to make rather slow progress. “I’ll never get across this way,” he complained. “I’m not even walking toward the castle.”

“You’ll get there,” Chester called. “Keep your feet going.”

Bink kept walking, and the centaur and griffin moved slowly around the moat to keep pace. Suddenly a loop developed between
him and his friends. “Hey, I’ve crossed to an inner loop—and I never left this one!” Bink exclaimed.

“You are spiraling inward,” Chester explained. “There is no other way to go. When you get to the inner bank, jump off.”

Bink continued, rather enjoying it now that he had his sea legs and understood the mechanism. There was no way he could avoid reaching the other shore, so long as he kept his place here. Yet what an ingenious puzzle it was; could he have solved it without Chester’s help?

Abruptly the segment narrowed. He was coming to the end of the tail! Then the head of the ouroboros came in sight, its teeth firmly clamped to the tail. Suddenly nervous again, Bink had no alternative but to tread on that head. Suppose it decided to let go the tail, just this once, and take him in instead? The big dragon eyes stared briefly at him, sending a chill through his body.

Then the head was past, continuing its undulation into the water, and Bink was treading the massive neck, broad as a highway after the slender tail. Apparently this dragon, serpent, or whatever was independent of air; it could keep its head submerged indefinitely. Yet how did it eat, if it never let go of its tail? It couldn’t be eating itself, could it? Maybe that had been its Question for the Magician: how could it let go of its tail, so it could consume the idiots who walked along its length? No, if it had the answer to that, it would have gobbled up Bink as he passed.

“Jump, Bink!” Chester called.

Oops—had the serpent changed its mind, let go, and come to gobble? Bink looked back, but saw nothing special. Then he looked ahead—and discovered that the body was twisting down and under the adjacent leg of the spiral. No more highway! He leaped to shore as his footing ended.

Now he was at the outer rampart of the castle. He looked for the great doorway he had encountered on his first approach to this castle, back before Trent was King—and found a waterfall.

A waterfall? How had
that
gotten here? He traced it upward and saw a ledge; the water issued from somewhere out of sight, to course down over the frame of the door.

Was there an aperture behind the sheet of water? Bink did not relish getting wet here, after traversing the whole moat dry, but he would have to look. He removed his clothing and set it aside, so that it would not get soaked, then nudged cautiously into the waterfall.

The water was cool but not chill. There was a small air space behind it. Then the wood facing of the door. He explored the surface with his hands, pushing here and there, but found no looseness anywhere. There was no entrance here.

He backed out of the fall, shaking his head to clear it of drip. Where could he go from here? The ledge circled the castle, but he knew the wall was solid stone throughout. There would be no access to the interior.

Nevertheless, Bink made the circuit, verifying his suspicion. No access. What now?

He suffered a surge of anger. Here he was on the King’s business; why should he have to go through all this nonsense? The old gnome-Magician thought he was so clever, putting a maze around himself! Bink had just about had it with mazes. First the Queen’s, then the nickelpede crevice, now this.

But at heart Bink was a practical man. In due course the pressure of his anger ceased, like the steam of a relaxing dragon. He came to look at the waterfall again. This was no mountain, with natural drainage. The water had to be raised by mundane or magical means to an upper level, then poured out. Surely it was a circulatory system, drawn from the moat and returning to it. Could he swim in where the water was sucked up?

No. Water could go where he could not. Such as through a sieve. He could drown, if his body got stuck in the water channel. Not worth the risk.

The only other direction was up. Could he climb?

Yes he could. He now noted little handholds in the wood at the edge of the waterfall. “Here I come,” he muttered.

He climbed. As his head poked over the sill, he froze. There on the roof squatted a gargoyle. The water issued from its grotesque mouth.

Then he realized that this monster, like the ouroboros, should not be dangerous if he handled it properly. The gargoyle,
assigned to water-spouting duty, would be unlikely to chase him.

Bink clambered to the surface of the small roof. He surveyed the situation from this firmer footing. The gargoyle was about his own height, but it was mostly face. The body was so foreshortened as to represent no more than a pedestal. The head was so distorted that Bink could not tell whether it was a man, animal, or other. Huge eyes bulged, the nose was like that of a horse, the ears flared out enormously, and the mouth took up fully a third of the face. With the water pouring out like a prolonged regurgitation.

Behind the monster the wall of the castle resumed. There were no handholds, and even if he could scale it, he saw only barred apertures above. No particular hope there.

Bink contemplated the gargoyle. How had it gotten up here? It had no real hands or feet to use to climb the way Bink had. Was there a door behind it? That seemed reasonable.

He would have to move the monster away from that door. But how? The thing had not attacked him, but its attitude might change if he molested it. The gargoyle was more massive than he; it might shove him right off the roof. Too bad he didn’t have his sword to defend himself; that was with his clothing, back beside the moat.

Should he climb back down to get it? No, he was sure that would not be wise; it would give away his intent. The gargoyle could move over and crunch his fingers as he ascended with the weapon.

Maybe he could bluff it. “Move over, foulface; I am on a mission for the King.”

The gargoyle ignored him. That was another thing that was getting to Bink: being ignored. “Move, or I’ll move you myself!” He stepped toward the monster.

No reaction. How could he back down now? Trusting his talent to protect him, Bink moved in beside the gargoyle, staying clear of the river of water spouting from its mouth, and applied his hands to its surface. The grotesque face felt like stone, completely hard. It was heavy, too; shove as he might, he could not budge it.