The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony Page B

relief, and his eyes smarted. Zombies did not have much cohesion.
    Bink followed it down, pursing his lips with distaste. A number of zombies were associated with Castle Roogna, and they had been instrumental in making it the palace of the King.But now they were supposed to lie safely in their graves. What ghastly urgency brought them into the party?
    Well, he would notify the King in due course. First he had to see to Millie’s skeleton. He entered the ballroom—and found that the subaquatic motif was gone. The normal pillars and walls had returned. Had the Queen lost interest in her decorations?
    “I’ve got it!” he cried, and the guests collected immediately. “What happened to the water?”
    “The Queen left suddenly, and her illusion stopped,” Chester said, wiping crumbs of green cake from his face. It seemed refreshments had been real enough, anyway. “Here, let me help you with that book.” The centaur reached down with one hand and took it easily from Bink’s tiring grasp. Oh for the power of a centaur!
    “I meant the healing water, the elixir,” Bink said. He knew what had happened to the Queen, now that he thought about it! The King had summoned her.
    “Right here,” Crombie said, bringing it out from under a table. “Didn’t want crumbs to fall in it.” The bucket was now on the floor beside the Anniversary cake.
    “That doesn’t look like a skeleton,” the manticora said.
    “Transformed—or something,” Bink explained. He opened the book while Chester supported it. There was a general murmur of awe. Some magic!
    The spell doctor peered at it. “That’s not a transformation. That’s topology magic. I never saw such an extreme case before.”
    Neither had the others. “What is topology magic?” Crombie asked.
    “Changing the form without changing it,” she said.
    “Old crone, you’re talking nonsense,” Crombie said with his customary diplomacy around the sex.
    “I’m talking
magic
, young squirt,” she retorted. “Take an object. Stretch it out. Squish it flat. Fold it. You have changed its shape but not its nature. It remains topologically similar. This book is a person.”
    “With the spirit squished out,” Bink said. “Where’s Millie?”
    The ghost appeared, silent. She remained under the geas, unable to comment on her body. What a terrible fate she had suffered, all these centuries! Rattened and folded into a book, and prevented from telling anyone. Until the Queen’s charade-contest prize had coincidentally opened the way.
    Coincidentally? Bink suspected his talent was at work.
    “Should the Queen supervise the restoration?” the manticora asked.
    “The Queen is otherwise occupied, and must not be disturbed,” Bink said. Actually it was the King he was protecting. “We’d better proceed without her.”
    “Right,” Chester said, and dumped the book into the bucket.
    “Wait!” Bink cried, knowing it was already too late. He had contemplated a gentle immersion. But perhaps this was best.
    The dunked book shimmered. Millie the ghost made an almost soundless shriek as she was drawn toward the bucket. Then the book inflated, absorbing elixir rapidly, opening and unfolding as its tissues filled out. The pages became human limbs and the heavy jacket a human head and torso, flattened horrendously but already bulging into doll-like features. Grotesquely it convulsed into a misshapen mannikin figure, swelling and firming into the semblance of a woman.
    Millie the ghost, still trying to scream, floated into the mass, her outline merging with that of the forming body. Suddenly the two phased completely. She stood knee deep in the bucket, as lovely a nymph as could be desired, and an astonishing contrast to what they had just seen. “I’m whole!” she exclaimed in wonder.
    “You certainly are,” Chester agreed. “Someone fetch her some clothing.”
    There was a scramble. A form came forward bearing a decayed robe. It was a zombie. Women shrieked. Everyone