'Oh,' Bink said, abashed. He preferred more conventional magic.
The magic lift stopped. The door slid open. They stepped out into another hall, and in due course came to the chambers of the lord of the manor.
He was, to Bink's surprise, a man, garbed richly in silver cloth and diamonds, but with the same foolish slippers his servant wore. 'So you proffer service for a night's lodging,' he said briskly.
'This is our custom,' Bink said.
'And ours too!' the lord agreed heartily. 'Have you any special talents?'
Bink couldn't tell his own, and didn't know Chester's. 'Uh, not exactly. But we're strong, and can do work.'
'Work? Oh my heavens no!' the lord exclaimed. 'People do not work here!'
Oh? 'How do you live, then?' Bink asked. 'We organize, we direct-and we entertain,' the lord said. 'Have you any entertainment abilities?' Bink spread his hands. 'I'm afraid not.'
'Excellent! You will make an ideal audience.'
'Audience?' Bink knew that Chester was as perplexed as he. The mirror had shown him watching a play-yet that could hardly be a service!
'We send our troupes out to entertain the masses, accepting payment in materials and services. It is a rewarding profession, esthetically and practically. But it is necessary to obtain advance audience ratings, so that we can gauge our reception precisely.'
This innocuous employment hardly jibed with the local reputation! 'To be an audience-to watch your shows-that's all you require? It hardly seems equitable! I'm afraid we would not be able to present an informed critical report-'
'No necessity! Our magic monitors will gauge your reactions, and point up our rough edges. You will have nothing to do but react, honestly.'
'I suppose we could do that' Bink said dubiously. 'If you really are satisfied.'
'Something funny here,' Chester said. 'How come you have a reputation as fiends?'
'Uh, that's not diplomatic,' Bink murmured, embarrassed.
'Fiends? Who called us fiends?' the lord demanded. 'The ogre,' Chester replied. 'He said you blasted a whole forest with a curse.'
The lord stroked his goatee. 'The ogre survives?'
'Chester, shut up!' Bink hissed. But the centaur's unruly nature had taken control. 'All he was doing was rescuing his lady ogre, and you couldn't stand to have him happy, so-'
'Ah, yes, that ogre. I suppose to an ogre's way of thinking, we would be fiends. To us, crunching human bones is fiendish. It is all in one's perspective.'
Apparently the centaur had not antagonized the lord, though Bink judged that to be sheer luck. Unless the lord, like his troupe, was an actor-in which case there could be serious and subtle trouble. 'This one is now a vegetarian,' Bink said. 'But I'm curious: do you really have such devastating curses, and why should you care what an ogre does? You really don't have cause to worry about ogres, here under the lake; they can't swim.'
'We do really have such curses,' the lord said. 'They constitute group effort, the massing of all our magic. We have no individual talents, only individual contributions toward the whole.'
Bink was amazed. Here was a whole society with duplicating talents! Magic did repeat itself!
'We do not employ our curses haphazardly, however. We went after the ogre as a professional matter. He was interfering with our monopoly.'
Both Bink and Chester were blank. 'Your what?'
'We handle all formal entertainments in southern Xanth. That bad actor blundered into one of our sets and kidnapped our leading lady. We do not tolerate such interference or competition.'
'You used an ogress for a leading lady?' Bink asked.
'We used a transformed nymph-a consummate actress. All our players are consummate, as you shall see. In that role she resembled the most ogrelike ogress imaginable, absolutely horrible.' He paused, considering. 'In fact, with her artistic temperament, she was getting pretty ogrelike in life. Prima donna?'
'Then the ogre's error was understandable.'
'Perhaps. But not tolerable. He had no business on that set. We had to scrub the whole production. It ruined our season.'
Bink wondered what reception the ogre would encounter, as he rescued his ideal female. An actress in ogress guise, actually from the castle of the fiends!
'What about the reverse-spell tree?' Chester asked.
'People were taking its fruit and being entertained by the reversal effects. We did not appreciate the competition. So we eliminated it.'
Chester glanced at Bink, but did not speak. Perhaps these people really were somewhat fiendish. To abolish all rival forms of entertainment-
'And where did you say you were traveling to?' the lord inquired.
'To the source of magic,' Bink said. 'We understand it is underground, and that the best route leads through this castle.'
