Finally the creature gave up. It flopped to the inner gate and lay still while Bink dismounted. He had conquered the first hurdle.
"Thank you, Hip," he said, making a little bow to the seahorse. It snorted and splashed quickly out of reach.
Now Bink faced a giant wooden door. It was closed, and he pounded on it with one fist. It was so solid that his hand hurt, and the sound was minimized: dink-dink-dink!
He drew his knife and rapped with the handle, since he had lost his new staff in the moat-with no better result. If a hollow partition made the most noise, this was indubitably solid. There was no way to force it.
Maybe the Magician was out? There should still be servants attending to the castle.
Bink was getting angry. He had made a long, hazardous journey to get here, and he was ready to pay the exorbitant price for one piddling bit of information-and the damned Good Magician lacked the courtesy even to answer the door.
Well, he would get in despite the Magician. Somehow. He would demand his audience.
He studied the door. It was a good ten feet tall and five feet wide; it seemed to have been made of hand-hewn eight-by-eight posts. The thing must weigh a ton-literally. It had no hinges, which meant it had to open by sliding to one side--no, the portals were solid stone. Lifted out of the way? There were no connecting ropes to haul it up, no pulleys that he could see. There might be hidden screws set into the wood, but that seemed a lot of trouble and somewhat risky. Screws sometimes let go at inopportune moments. Maybe the whole door dropped into the floor? But that, too, was stone. So it seemed the whole mass simply had to be removed every time someone wanted access.
Ridiculous! It had to be a phony, a dummy. There would be a more sensible aperture for routine use, either magical or physical. All he had to do was find it.
In the stone? No, that would be unmanageably heavy; if it were not, it would represent a weakened place where an enemy could force entry. No point in building a substantial castle with such a liability. Where, then?
Bink ran his fingers over the surface of the huge mock-door. He found a crack. He traced it around in a square. Yes. He placed both hands against the center and shoved.
The square moved. It slid inward, and finally dropped inside, leaving a hole just big enough for a man to crawl through. Here was his entry.
Bink wasted no time. He climbed through the hole.
Inside was a dimly illuminated hall. And another monster.
It was a manticora--a creature the size of a horse, with the head of a man, body of a lion, wings of a dragon, and tail of a scorpion. One of the most ferocious magical monsters known.
"Welcome to lunch, little morsel," the manticora said, arching its segmented tail up over its back. Its mouth was strange, with three rows of teeth, one inside another-but its voice was stranger. It was something like a flute, and something like a trumpet, beautiful in its fashion but difficult to comprehend.
Bink whipped out his knife. "I am not your lunch," he said, with a good deal more conviction than he felt.
The manticora laughed, and now its tones were the sour notes of irony. "You are not anyone else's lunch, mortal. You have climbed nimbly into my trap."
He had indeed. But Bink was fed up with these pointless obstacles, and also suspected that they were not pointless, paradoxical as it might seem. If the Magician's monsters consumed all callers, Humfrey would never have any business, never obtain any fees. And by all accounts the Good Magician was a grasping man who existed principally to profit himself; he needed those exorbitant fees to increase his wealth. So probably this was another test, like those of the seahorse and the door; all Bink had to do was figure out the solution.
"I can walk back out of this cage any time I want to," Bink said boldly. He willed his knees not to knock together with his shivering. "It isn't made to hold people my size; it holds in monsters your size. You're the prisoner, molar-face."
"Molar-face!" the manticora repeated incredulously, showing about sixty molars in the process. "Why, you pipsqueak mortal, I'll sting you into a billion-year suffering sleep!"
Bink made for the square portal. The monster pounced, its tail stabbing forward over its head. It was horribly fast.
But Bink had only feinted; he was already ducking forward, directly at the lion's claws. It was the opposite direction from that which the monster had expected, and the thing could not reverse in midair. Its deadly tail stabbed into the wood of the door, and its head popped through the square hole. Its lion's shoulders wedged tightly against it, unable to fit through the hole, and its wings fluttered helplessly.
Bink could not resist. He straightened up, turned, and yelled: "You didn't think I came all the way here just to back out again, did you, you half-reared monster?'' Then he planted a swift hard kick on the creature's posterior, just under the lifted tail.
