"No. He--" But Bink knew better. A love spell provided an overriding compulsion. He remembered his experience with the love spring by the chasm, from which he had almost drunk, before seeing the griffin and the unicorn in their embrace. There had been a harpy there. He shuddered reminiscently.
"Have you ever been tempted by an attractive mermaid? Or a lady centaur?" Trent persisted.
"No!" But an insidious memory picture of the elegant firm mermaid breasts came to him. And Cherie, the centaur who had given him a lift during the first leg of his journey to see the Magician Humfrey-when he touched her, had it really been accidental? She had threatened to drop him in a trench, but she hadn't been serious. She was a very nice filly. Rather, person. Honesty compelled his reluctant correction. "Maybe."
"And surely there were others, less scrupulous than you," Trent continued inexorably. "They might indulge, in certain circumstances, might they not? Just for variety? Don't the boys of your village hang around the centaur grounds on the sly, as they did in my day?"
Boys like Zink and Jama and Potipher, bullies and troublemakers, who had caused ire in the centaur camp. Bink remembered that too. He had missed the significance before. Of course they had gone to see the bare-breasted centaur fillies, and if they caught one alone-Bink knew his face was red. "What are you getting at?" he demanded, trying to cover his embarrassment.
"Just this: Xanth must have had intercourse with-sorry, bad word!-must have had contact with Mundania long before the date of our earliest records. Before the Waves. Because only in Mundania is the human species pure. From the time a man sets foot in Xanth, he begins to change. He develops magic, and his children develop more magic, until some of them become full-fledged Magicians--and if they remain, they inevitably become magic themselves. Or their descendants do. Either by breaking down the natural barriers between species, or by evolving into imps, elves, goblins, giants, trolls-did you get a good look at Humfrey?"
"He's a gnome," Bink said without thinking. Then: "Oh, no!'
"He's a man, and a good one-but he's well along the route to something else. He's at the height of his magical powers now-but his children, if he ever has any, may be true gnomes. I dare say he knows this, which is why he won't marry. And consider Chameleon-she has no direct magic, because she has become magic. This is the way the entire human populace of Xanth will go, inevitably-unless there is a steady infusion of new blood from Mundania. The Shield must come down! The magic creatures of Xanth must be permitted to migrate outside, freely, there to revert slowly and naturally to their original species. New animals must come in."
"But-" Bink found himself fumbling with the horrors of these concepts. "If there was always--always an interchange before, what happened to the people who came thousands of years ago?"
"Probably there was some obstruction for a while, cutting off migration; Xanth could have been a true island for a thousand years or so, trapping the original prehistoric human settlers, so that they merged entirely with the existing forms and gave rise to the centaurs and other sports. It is happening again, under the Shield. Human beings must-"
"Enough," Bink whispered, fundamentally shocked. "I can't listen to any more."
"You will defuse the cherry bombs?"
Like a bolt of lightning, sanity returned. "No! I'm taking Chameleon and leaving-now."
"But you have to understand-"
"No." The Evil Magician was beginning to make sense. If Bink listened any more, he would be subverted-and Xanth would be lost. "What you suggest is an abomination. It can not be true. I can not accept it."
Trent sighed, with seemingly genuine regret. "Well, it was worth a try, though I did fear you would reject it. I still cannot permit you to destroy this castle--"
Bink braced himself to move, to get out of transformation range. Six feetTrent shook his head. "No need to flee, Bink; I shall not break the truce. I could have done that when I showed you the pictures, but I value my given word. So I must compromise. If you will not join me, I shall have to join you."
"What?" Bink, whose ears were almost closed to the Evil Magician's beguiling logic, was caught off guard.
"Spare Castle Roogna. Defuse the bombs. I will see you safely clear of these environs."
This was too easy. "Your word?"
"My word," Trent said solemnly.
"You can make the castle let us go?"
"Yes. This is another facet of what I have learned in these archives. I have only to speak the proper words to it, and it will even facilitate our departure."
"Your word," Bink repeated suspiciously. So far Trent had not broken it-yet what guarantee was there? "No tricks, no sudden change of mind."
''My word of honor, Bink."
