handsome man!'
Chester smiled wryly. 'I suppose it was hard to tell, before. Would that I could wash my face and suffer a similar transformation!' They all laughed, somewhat ill at ease.
'We must pay for your hospitality-and for your help,' Chester said when the laugh subsided fitfully.
'My hospitality I give freely; pay would demean it,' Jewel said. 'My help you seem to be co-opting. There is no pay for slave labor.'
'No, Jewel!' Bink cried, cut to the heart of his emotion. 'I would not force anything on you, or cause you grief!'
She softened. 'I know it, Bink. You drank of the love-water; you would not hurt me. Yet since I must help you find your friends, so they can find the counterspell, and this takes me away from my work-'
'Then we must help you do your work!' Bink said.
'You can't. You don't know the first thing about sorting precious stones, or where they should be set. And if you did, the borer would not work for you.'
'The borer?'
'My steed beast. He phases through the rock to reach where I must set the stones. I alone can control him-and then only when I sing. He works for a song, nothing else.'
Bink exchanged glances with Chester. 'After we eat, we will show you our music,' Chester said.
Jewel's meal was strange but excellent. She served an assortment of mushrooms and fungus-things that grew magically, she explained, without the need of light. Some tasted like dragon steak, and some like potato chips chipped from a hot potato tree, and dessert was very like chocolate pie fresh from the brown cow, so round and soft and pungent it practically flowed off the plate. She also had a kind of chalky powder she mixed with the water to produce excellent milk.
'You know,' Chester murmured aside to Bink, 'you could have found a worse nymph to encounter after your draught.'
Bink didn't answer. After the magic drink, he would have loved a harpy; it wouldn't have mattered how foul she was. The love potion was absolutely heedless of its consequence. Magic without conscience. Indeed, as he had learned to his horror, the history of Xanth had been influenced by just such love springs. The original, mundane species had intermated, producing crossbreeds like the chimeras, harpies, griffins-and centaurs. Who was to say this was wrong? Where would the Land of Xanth be now, without the noble centaurs? Yet Bink's own drink of this water was supremely inconvenient in a personal way. Rationally, he had to stay with his wife, Chameleon; but emotionally-
Chester finished his repast. He concentrated, and the silver flute appeared. It played rapturously. Jewel sat frozen, listening to the silvery melody. Then she began to sing in harmony with it. Her voice could not approach the purity of the flute, but it complemented the instrument nicely. Bink was entranced-and would have been, he told himself, regardless of the potion.
Something grotesque poked into the room. Chester's flute cut off in midnote, and his sword appeared in his hand.
'Stay your hand, centaur!' Jewel cried. 'That is my borer!'
Chester did not attack, but his sword remained ready. 'It looks like a giant worm!'
'Yes,' she agreed. 'He's related to the wiggles and squiggles, but he's much larger and slower. He's a diggle-not very bright, but invaluable for my work.'
Chester decided it was all right. 'I thought I had seen everything in the lexicon, but I missed this one. Let's see whether we can help you work. If he likes my music, and you have any stones to place near the river-'
'Are you kidding?' Jewel asked in her nymphly idiom. 'With half the keg spilled, I have dozens of stones for the river. Might as well start there.'
Under her direction, they boarded the diggle. Jewel bestrode the monster worm near its front end, a basket of precious stones held before her. Bink sat next, and Chester last, his four feet somewhat awkward in this situation. He was used to being ridden, not to riding, though he had done it before with the dragon.
'Now we make music,' Jewel said. 'He will work as long as he likes the sound, and he doesn't require much variation. After a few hours I get tired and nave to stop, but if the centaur's flute-'
The flute appeared. It played. The great worm crawled forward, carrying them along as if they were mere files. It did not scramble or flex, as the dragon did; it elongated and contracted its body in stages, so that the sections they rode were constantly changing in diameter. It was a strange mode of travel, but an effective one. This was a very large worm, and it traveled swiftly.
A flange flexed out from the diggle's front segment, and as he tunneled into the rock, the flange extended the diameter of the phase-tunnel so that the riders could fit through also. It occurred to Bink that this was a variant of the type of magic in the Good Magician's water-breathing pills. The rock, like the water, was not being tunneled through so much as it was being temporarily changed so that they could pass through it without making a hole. Chester had to duck his head to stay within the phase, and his flute was crowded, but it kept playing its captivating melodies. Bink was sure Chester was more than happy to have this pretext to practice his newly discovered talent, after a lifetime of suppression.
'I have to admit, this is a worthwhile service,' the nymph said. 'I always thought centaurs had no magic.,'
'The centaurs thought so too,' Bink said, covertly admiring her form from behind. To hell with the love potion; she had a shape to conjure with. Then the worm lurched, striking a different type of rock, and Bink was thrown forward against the nymph. 'Uh, sorry,' he said, righting himself, though indeed he was not very sorry. 'I, uh-'
'Yes, I know,' Jewel said. 'Maybe you'd better put your arms about my waist, to steady yourself. It does get bumpy on occasion.'
