Iris ignored him. "Now if you could only persuade your friend to cooperate," she continued to Chameleon, "you could escape that horrible fate--those dragons really like to chew on pretty limbs--and be beautiful all the time." Iris had claimed not to know Chameleon, but she had evidently figured things out. "I can make you seem as lovely in your off phase as you are right now."

"You can?" Chameleon asked, excited.

"The deceptions of the Sorceress are apt," Trent murmured to Bink, obviously with double meaning.

"The truth is not in her," Bink murmured back. "Only illusion."

"A woman is as a woman seems," Iris told Chameleon. "If she looks lovely to the eye and feels lovely to the touch, she is lovely. That is all men care about."

"Don't listen to her," Bink said. "The Sorceress just wants to use you."

"Correction," Iris said. "I want to use you, Bink. I bear no malice to your girlfriend--so long as you cooperate with me. I am not a jealous woman. All I want is power."

"No!" Bink cried.

Chameleon, following his lead uncertainly, echoed: "No."

"Now you, Magician Trent," Iris said. "I have not been watching you long, but you seem to be a man of your word, at least when it suits your convenience. I could make you a formidable Queen---or I can have the palace guards on the way to kill you in five minutes."

"I would transform the guards," Trent said.

"From longbow range? Perhaps," she said, raising a fair eyebrow skeptically. "But I doubt you could be King after such an incident. The whole land of Xanth would be out to kill you. You might transform a great number--but when would you sleep?"

Telling blow! The Evil Magician had been caught before when he slept. If he were exposed before he could surround himself with loyal troops, he would not be able to survive.

But why should that bother Bink? If the Sorceress betrayed the Evil Magician, Xanth would be secure---through no action of Bink's. His own hands would be clean. He would have betrayed neither his country nor his companion. He should simply stay out of it.

"Well, I might transform animals or people into my own likeness," Trent Said. "It would then be very hard for the patriots to know whom to kill."

"Wouldn't work," Iris said. "No imitation will fool a magic-spotter, once it fixes on its subject."

Trent considered. "Yes, it would be very difficult for me to prevail in such circ.u.mstance. Considering this, I believe I should accept your offer, Sorceress. There are some details to work out, of course..."

"You can't!" Bink cried, shocked.

Trent gazed at him, affecting mild perplexity. "It seems reasonable to me, Bink. I desire to be King; Iris desires to be Queen. There is power enough to share, that way. Perhaps we could define spheres of influence. It would be a marriage of pure convenience, but I have no present interest in any other kind of liaison."

"Well, now," Iris said, smiling victoriously.

"Well nothing!" Bink cried, conscious that his prior decision to stay clear of this matter was being abrogated. "You're both traitors to Xanth. I won't permit it."

"You won't permit it!" Iris laughed indelicately. "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are, you spell-less twerp?"

Obviously, her true att.i.tude toward him had come out now that she had found another avenue for her ambition.

"Do not treat him lightly," Trent told her. "Bink is a Magician, in his fashion."

Bink felt a sudden, well-nigh overwhelming flood of grat.i.tude for this word of support. He fought it off, knowing he could not afford to permit flattery or insult to sway him from what he knew was right. The Evil Magician could spin a web of illusion with mere words that rivaled anything the Sorceress could do with magic. "I'm no Magician; I'm just loyal to Xanth. To the proper King."

"To the senile has-been who exiled you?" Iris demanded. "He can't even raise a dust devil any more. He's sick now; he'll soon be dead anyway. That's why the time to act is now. The throne must go to a Magician."

"To a good Magician!" Bink retorted. "Not to an evil transformer, or a power-hungry, s.l.u.ttish mistress..." He paused, tempted to end it there, but knew that wouldn't be entirely honest. "Of illusion."

"You dare address me thus?" Iris screamed, sounding much like a harpy. She was so angry that her image wavered into smoke. "Trent, change him into a stinkbug and step on him."

Trent shook his head, suppressing a smile. He obviously had no emotional attachment to the Sorceress, and shared a masculine appreciation for the insulting pause Bink had made. Iris had, just now, shown them all how ready she was to sell her illusion-enhanced body for power. "We operate under truce."

"Truce? Nonsense!" Her smoke now became a column of fire, signifying her righteous wrath. "You don't need him any more. Get rid of him."

Again, Bink saw how she would have treated him after he had helped her achieve power and she no longer needed him.

Trent was adamant. "If I were to break my word to him, Iris, how could you trust my word to you?"

That sobered her--and impressed Bink. There was a subtle but highly significant difference between these two magic-workers. Trent was a man, in the finest sense of the word.

Iris was hardly pleased. "I thought your truce was only until you got out of the wilderness."

"The wilderness is not defined solely by the jungle," Trent muttered.

"What?" she demanded.

"That truce would be worthless if I abridged its spirit thus suddenly," Trent said. "Bink and Chameleon and I will part company, and with luck we shall not meet again."

The man was being more than fair, and Bink knew he should accept the situation and depart--now. Instead, his stubbornness drove him toward disaster. "No," he said. "I can't just go away while you two plot to conquer Xanth."

"Now, Bink;" Trent said reasonably. "I never deceived you about my ultimate objective. We always knew our purposes were divergent. Our truce covered only our interpersonal relation during the period of mutual hazard, not our long-range plans. I have pledges to fulfill, to my Mundane army, to Castle Roogna, and now to the Sorceress Iris. I am sorry you disapprove, for I want your approval very much, but the conquest of Xanth is and always was my mission. Now I ask you to part from me with what grace you can muster, for I have high respect for your motive, even though I feel the larger situation places you in error."

Again Bink felt the devastating allure of Trent's golden tongue. He could find no flaw in the reasoning. He had no chance to overcome the Magician magically, and was probably outcla.s.sed intellectually. But morally--he had to be right. "Your respect means nothing if you have no respect for the traditions and laws of Xanth."

"A most telling response, Bink. I do have respect for these things--yet the system seems to have gone astray, and must be corrected, lest disaster overtake us all."

"You talk of disaster from Mundania; I fear the disaster of the perversion of our culture. I must oppose you, in whatever way I can."

Trent seemed perplexed. "I don't believe you can oppose me, Bink. Whatever your strong magic is, it has never manifested tangibly. The moment you acted against me, I should have to transform you. I don't want to do that."

"You have to get within six feet," Bink said. "I could strike you down with a thrown rock."

"See?" Iris said. "He's within range now, Trent. Zap him!"

Yet the Magician desisted. "You actually wish to fight me, Bink? Directly, physically?"

"I don't wish to. I have to."

Trent sighed. "Then the only honorable thing to do is to terminate our truce with a formal duel. I suggest we define the locale of combat and the terms. Do you wish a second?"

"A second, a minute, an hour--whatever it takes," Bink said. He tried to quell the shaking he felt in his legs; he was afraid, and knew he was being a fool, yet he could not back down.

"I meant another person to back you up, to see that the terms are honored. Chameleon, perhaps."

"I'm with Bink!" Chameleon said immediately. She could comprehend only a fraction of the situation, but there was no question of her loyalty.

"Well, perhaps the concept of seconds is foreign here," Trent said. "Suppose we establish an area along the wilderness border, a mile deep into the forest and a mile across. One square mile, approximately, or as far as a man might walk in fifteen minutes. And it shall be until dark today. Neither of us shall leave this area until that time, and if the issue is undecided by then, we shall declare the contest null and separate in peace. Fair enough?"

The Evil Magician seemed so reasonable--and that made Bink unreasonable. "To the death!" he said--and immediately wished he hadn't. He knew the Magician would not kill him unless he were forced to; he would transform Bink into a tree or other harmless form of life and let him be. First there had been Justin Tree; now there would be Bink Tree. Perhaps people would come to rest under his shade, to have picnic lunches, to make love. Except that now it had to be death. He had a vision of a fallen tree.

"To the death," Trent said sadly. "Or surrender." Thus he nearly abated Bink's exaggeration without hurting his pride; he made it seem as if the Magician arranged the loophole for himself, not for Bink. How was it possible for a man so wrong to seem so right?

"All right," Bink said. "You go south, I'll go north, into the forest. In five minutes we'll stop and turn and start."

"Fair enough," the Magician agreed. He held out his hand again, and Bink shook it.

"You should get out of the duel zone," Bink told Chameleon.

"No! I'm with you," she insisted. She might be stupid, but she was loyal. Bink could no more blame her for that than he could blame Trent for pursuing power. Yet he had to dissuade her.

"It wouldn't be fair," he said, realizing that it would be futile to try to scare her by thought of the consequences. "Two against one. You have to go."

She was adamant. "I'm too dumb to go by myself." Ouch! How true.

"Let her go with you," Trent said. "It really will make no difference."

And that seemed logical.

Bink and Chameleon set out, angling into the jungle to the northwest. Trent angled southwest. In moments the Magician was out of sight. "We'll have to figure out a plan of attack," Bink said. "Trent has been a perfect gentleman, but the truce is over, and he will use his power against us. We have to get him before he gets us,"

"Yes."

"We'll have to collect stones and sticks, and maybe dig a pit for a deadfall."

"Yes."

"We have to prevent him from getting close enough to use his power of transformation."

"Yes."

"Don't just say yes!" he snapped. "This is serious business. Our lives are at stake."

"I'm sorry. I know I'm awful dumb right now."

Bink was immediately sorry. Of course she was stupid now--that was her curse. And he might be exaggerating the case; Trent might simply avoid the issue by departing, making no fight at all. Thus Bink would have made his stand, and have a moral victory--and have changed nothing. If so, Bink was the dumb one.

He turned to Chameleon to apologize---and rediscovered the fact that she was radiantly beautiful. She had seemed lovely before, in comparison with Fanchon and Dee, but now she was as he had first met her, as Wynne. Had it really been only a month ago? Now she was no stranger, though. "You're great just the way you are, Chameleon."

"But I can't help you plan. I can't do anything. You don't like stupid people."

"I like beautiful girls," he said. "And I like smart girls. But I don't trust the combination. I'd settle for an ordinary girl, except she'd get dull after a while. Sometimes I want to talk with someone intelligent, and sometimes I want to--" He broke off. Her mind was like that of a child; it really wasn't right to impose such concepts on her.

"What?" she asked, turning her eyes upon him. They had been black in her last beauty phase; now they were dark green. They could have been any color, and she would still be lovely.

Bink knew his chances of surviving the day were less than even, and his chances of saving Xanth worse than that. He was afraid--but he also had a heightened awareness of life right now. And of loyalty. And of beauty. Why hide what was suddenly in his conscious mind, however long it had developed subconsciously? "To make love," he concluded.

"That I can do," she said, her eyes brightening with comprehension. How well she understood, or on what level, Bink hesitated to ponder.

Then he was kissing her. It was wonderful.

"But, Bink;" she said, when she had a chance. "I won't stay beautiful."

"That's the point," he said. "I like variety. I would have trouble living with a stupid girl all the time--but you aren't stupid all the time. Ugliness is no good for all the time--but you aren't ugly all the time either. You are--variety. And that is what I crave for the long-term relationship---and what no other girl can provide."

"I need a spell--" she said.

"No! You don't need any spell, Chameleon. You're fine just the way you are. I love you."

"Oh, Bink!" she said.

After that they forgot about the duel.

Reality intruded all too soon. "There you are!" Iris exclaimed, appearing over their makeshift bower. "Tut-tut! What have you two been doing?"

Chameleon hastily adjusted her dress. "Something you wouldn't understand," she said with purely female insight.

"No? It hardly matters. s.e.x is unimportant." The Sorceress put her hands to her mouth in a megaphone gesture. "Trent! They're over here."

Bink dived for her--and pa.s.sed through her image cleanly. He took a tumble on the forest floor. "Silly boy," Iris said. "You can't touch me."

Now they heard the Evil Magician coming through the forest. Bink looked frantically for some weapon, but saw only the great boles of the trees. Sharp stones might have been used against these trees--therefore all stones had been magically eliminated. Some other area might have potential weapons, but not this highly compet.i.tive wilderness, this fringe near the farms that were always in need of more cleared land.

"I have ruined you!' Chameleon cried. "I knew I shouldn't have--"

Shouldn't have made love? True enough, in one sense. They had wasted vital time, loving instead of warring. Yet there might never be another chance. "It was worth it," Bink said. "We'll have to run."

They started to run. But the image of the Sorceress appeared in front of them. "Here, Trent!" she cried again. "Cut them off before they get away."

Bink realized that they could get nowhere so long as Iris dogged them. There was no place they could hide, no surprise they could prepare, no strategic placement possible. Inevitably Trent would run them down.

Then his eye fell on an object Chameleon still carried. It was the hypnotic gourd. If he could get Trent to look into that unwittingly- Now the Magician came into sight. Bink gently took the gourd from Chameleon. "See if you can distract him until I get close enough to shove this in his face," he said. He held the gourd behind his back. Iris probably did not realize its significance, and she would be able to do nothing once Trent was out of commission.

"Iris," the Magician called loudly. "This is supposed to be a fair duel. If you interfere again, I shall consider our understanding terminated."

The Sorceress started to react with anger, then thought better of it. She vanished.

Trent stopped a dozen paces from Bink. "I regret this complication. Shall we start over?" he inquired gravely.

"We'd better," Bink agreed. The man was so d.a.m.ned sure of himself, he could give away any advantage. Maybe he wanted to wrap it up with a completely clear conscience---such as it was. But by so doing, Trent had unknowingly saved himself from possible disaster. Bink doubted he would have another opportunity to use the gourd.

They separated again. Bink and Chameleon fled deeper into the forest--and almost into the quivering arms of a tangle tree. "If only we could trick him into running into that," Bink said--but found he didn't mean it. He had somehow gotten himself into a duel he really did not want to win--and could not afford to lose. He was as dumb as Chameleon---only somewhat more complicated about it.

They spotted a noose-loop bush. The loops were up to eighteen inches in diameter, but would contract suddenly to a quarter of that when any careless animal put its head or limb through. Their fibers were so tight that only a knife or specific counterspell could alleviate the bind. Even when separated from the bush, the loops retained their potency for several days, gradually hardening in place. Careless or unlucky animals could lose feet or lives, and no creature ever bothered a noose-loop plant twice.