A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth 1) by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

river is trying to restock itself. It was cleaned out by the Evil Magician Trent twenty-one years ago."
    Bink remained a bit skeptical about inanimate magic, especially of that potency. How could a river desire anything? Still, he remembered how Lookout Rock had saved itself from being broken up. Better to play it safe and assume that some features of the landscape could cast spells.
    Meanwhile, the reference to Trent preempted his attention. "The Evil Magician was here? I thought he was a phenomenon of our own village."
    " Trent was everywhere," she said. "He wanted us centaurs to support him, and when we balked--because of the Covenant, you know, not to interfere in human business--he showed us his power by changing every fish in this river into a lightning bug. Then he departed. I think he figured that those shocking buggers would force us to change our minds."
    "Why didn't he change the fish into a human army, and try to conquer you that way?"
    "No good, Bink. They might have had the bodies of men, but their minds would have remained fish. They would have made very wishy-washy soldiers, and even if they had been good soldiers, they would hardly have served the man who had put them under that enchantment. They would have attacked Trent."
    "Urn, yes. I wasn't thinking. So he transformed them into lightning bugs and got well away from there so they couldn't shock him. So they went for the next best thing."
    "Yes. It was a bad time for us. Oh, those bugs were a pain! They pestered us in clouds, scorching us with their little lightning bolts. I've still got scars on my--" She paused, grimacing. "On my tail." It was obviously a euphemism.
    "What did you do?" Bink inquired, fascinated, glancing back to see whether he could locate the scars. What he could see seemed flawless.
    " Trent was exiled soon after that, and we got Humfrey to abate the spell."
    "But the Good Magician isn't a transformer."
    ''No, but he told us where to find repellent magic to drive off the flies. Denied our electrocooked flesh, the scourge soon died out. Good information is as good as good action, and the Good Magician certainly had the information."
    "That's why I'm going to him?" Bink agreed. "But he charges a year's service for a spell."
    "You're telling us? Three hundred head of centaur--one year each. What a job!"
    "All of you had to pay? What did you have to do?"
    "We are not permitted to tell," she said diffidently.
    Now Bink was doubly curious, but he knew better than to ask again. A centaur's given word was inviolate. But what could Humfrey have needed done that he could not do himself via one of his hundred spells? Or at least by means of his good information? Humfrey was basically a divinator; anything he didn't know, he could find out, and that gave him enormous power. Probably the reason the village Elders had not asked the Good Magician what to do about their senile King was that they knew what he would answer: depose the King and install a new, young, fresh Magician instead. That they obviously weren't ready to do. Even if they could find such a young Magician to serve.
    Well, there were many mysteries and many problems in Xanth, and it was hardly given to Bink to know of them all or to solve any. He had learned long ago to bow, however ungraciously, to the inevitable.
    They were past the river now, and climbing. The trees were closing in more thickly, their great round roots ridging across the path. No hostile magic threatened; either the centaurs had cleaned out the area, the way the villagers had cleaned out Bink's home region, or Cherie knew this path so well that she avoided spells automatically, without seeming to. Probably some of both.
    Life itself, he thought, involved many alternate explanations for perplexing questions, and was generally "some of both." Few things were hard and fast in Xanth.
    "What was that history you know that I don't?" Bink inquired, becoming bored by the trail.
    "About the Waves of human colonization? We have