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       "Like the fireflies and the wiggles and Bad Magician Trent," Bink agreed. "Magical hazards."

       "Trent was not a bad Magician," Cherie corrected him. "He was an Evil Magician. There's a distinction-a crucial one."

       "Urn, yes. He was a good Evil Magician. Lucky they got rid of him before he took over Xanth."

       "Certainly. But suppose another Evil Magician appears? Or the wiggles manifest again? Who will save Xanth this time?"

       "I don't know," Bink admitted.

       "Sometimes I wonder whether the Shield was really a good idea. It has the net effect of intensifying the magic in Xanth, preventing dilution from outside. As if that magic were building up toward an explosion point. Yet I certainly wouldn't want to return to the days of the Waves!"

       Bink had never thought of it that way. "Somehow I find it hard to appreciate the problems of the concentration of magic in Xanth," he said. "I keep wishing there were just a little more. Enough for me, for my talent."

       "You might be better off without it," she suggested. "If you could just obtain a dispensation from the King-"

       "Ha!" Bink said. "I'd be better off living like a hermit in the wilderness. My village won't tolerate a man without a talent."

       "Strange inversion," she murmured.

       "What?"

       "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of Herman the Hermit. He was exiled from our herd some years back for obscenity."

       Bink laughed. "What could be obscene to a centaur? What did he do?"

       Cherie drew up abruptly at the edge of a pretty field of flowers. "This is as far as I go," she said tersely.

       Bink realized that he had said the wrong thing. "I didn't mean to offend-I apologize for whatever-"

       Cherie relaxed. "You couldn't know. The odor of these flowers makes centaurs do crazy things; I have to stay clear except in real emergencies. I believe Magician Humfrey's castle is about five miles south. Keep alert for hostile magic, and I hope you find your talent.''

       "Thanks," Bink said gratefully. He slid off her back. His legs were a bit stiff from the long ride, but he knew she had gained him a day's travel time. He walked around to face her and held out his hand.

       Cherie accepted it, then leaned forward to kiss him-a motherly kiss on his forehead. Bink wished she had not done that, but he smiled mechanically and started walking. He heard her hooves cantering back through the forest, and suddenly he felt lonely. Fortunately, his journey was nearly over.

       But still he wondered: what had Herman the Hermit done that the centaurs considered obscene?

   Chapter 3.

   Chasm

       Bink stood at the brink, appalled. The path had been sundered by another trench-no, not a trench, but a mighty chasm, half a mile across and seemingly of bottomless depth. Cherie the centaur could not have known of it, or she would have warned him. So it must be of very recent formation-perhaps within the past month.

       Only an earthquake or cataclysmic magic could have formed such a canyon so rapidly. Since there had been no earthquakes that he knew of, it had to be magic. And that implied a Magician-of phenomenal power.

       Who could it be? The King in his heyday might have been able to fashion such a chasm by using a rigidly controlled storm, a channeled hurricane-but he had no reason to, and his powers had faded too much to manage anything like this now. Evil Magician Trent had been a transformer, not an earthmover. Good Magician Humfrey's magic was divided into a hundred assorted divinatory spells; some of those might tell him how to create such a gross channel, but it was hardly conceivable that Humfrey would bother to do it. Humfrey never did anything unless there was a fee to be earned from it. Was there another great Magician in Xanth?

       Wait-he had heard rumors of a master of illusion. It was far easier to make an apparent chasm than a genuine one. That could be an amplification of Zink's pretend-hole talent. Zink was no Magician, but if a real Magician had this type of talent, this was the kind of effect he might create. Maybe if Bink simply walked out into this chasm, his feet would find the path continuing on

       He looked down. He saw a small cloud floating blithely along, about five hundred feet down. A gust of cool dank wind came up to brush him back. He shivered; that was extraordinarily realistic for an illusion! He shouted: "Hallooo!"

       He heard the echo following about five seconds after: "Allooo!"

       He picked up a pebble and flipped it into the seeming chasm. It disappeared into the depths, and no sound of its landing came back.

       At last he kneeled and poked his finger into the air beyond the brim. It met no resistance. He touched the edge, and found it material and vertical.

       He was convinced, unwillingly. The chasm was real.

       There was nothing to do but go around it. Which meant he was not within five miles of his destination, but within fifty-or a hundred, depending on the extent of this amazing crevice.

       Should he turn back? The villagers certainly should be advised of this manifestation; On the other hand, it might be gone by the time he brought anyone else back here to see it, and he would be labeled a fool as well as a spell-less wonder. Worse, he would be called a coward, who had invented a story to explain his fear of visiting the Magician and gaining absolute proof of his talentlessness. What had been created magically could be abolished magically. So he had better try to get around it.

       Bink looked somewhat wearily at the sky. The sun was low in the west. He had an hour or so of diminishing daylight left. He'd better spend it trying to locate a house in which to spend the night. The last thing he wanted was to sleep outside in unfamiliar territory, at the mercy of strange magic. He had had a very easy trip so far, thanks to Cherie, but with this emergency detour it would become much more difficult.

       Which way to turn-east or west? The chasm seemed to run interminably in both directions. But the lay of the land was slightly less rugged to the east, making a gradual descent; maybe it would approach the bottom of the chasm, enabling him to cross it. Farmers tended to build in valleys rather than on mountains, so as to have ready sources of water and be free of the hostile magic of high places. He would go east.

       But this region was sparsely settled. He had seen no human habitations along the path so far. He walked increasingly swiftly through the forest. As dusk came, he saw great black shapes rising out of the chasm: vastly spreading leathery wings, cruelly bent beaks, glinting small eyes. Vultures perhaps, or worse. He felt horribly uneasy.

       It was now necessary to conserve his rations, for he had no way of knowing how far they would have to stretch. He spotted a breadfruit tree and cut a loaf from it, but discovered the bread was not yet ripe. He would get indigestion eating it. He had to find a farmhouse.

       The trees became larger and more gnarled of trunk. They seemed menacing in the shadows. A wind was rising, causing the stiff, twisted branches to sigh. Nothing ominous about that; these effects weren't even magical. But Bink found his heart beating more rapidly, and he kept glancing back over his shoulder. He was no longer on the established trail, so his comparative security was gone. He was going deeper into the hinterland, where anything could happen. Night was the time of sinister magic, and there were diverse and potent kinds. The peace spell of the pines was only an example; there were surely fear spells and worse. If only he could find a house!