Ogre Ogre

"I'll tell him," Chet agreed. "Where is it?"

Smash turned to Fireoak, who sat listlessly on the ground. "Where is your tree?"

The hamadryad made a feeble motion with her hand.

"This is no good," Chet said. "Chem, let's use your map."

The filly walked over to Fireoak. "Show me on my picture," she said.

An image formed between them. It was a contour map of the Land of Xanth, a long peninsula with the Gap Chasm across its center and the ocean around it. "Show me where the tree is," Chem repeated.

Fireoak looked, slowly orienting on the scene. "There," she said, pointing to a region near the northern rim of the Gap.

Chem nodded. "There is a human village there, just setting up. That's already on my chart." She looked at her brother. "Got it, Chet?"

"Got it, Chem," the male centaur replied. "You always do make the scene. Smash, the moment you're down in the Gap, I'll gallop back and tell the King. I'm sure he'll handle the business about the tree. But it will take me a couple days to get there, so you'll have to protect the tree until then." He glanced about.

"Was there any other message? It seems there should be more than one."

The people looked around at each other. Finally Tandy said, "I'd like to send a greeting to my father Crombie, if that's all right."

Chet tapped his head, making a mental note. "One greeting to Crombie from daughter. Got it." He looked more carefully at Tandy. "He always bragged he had a cute daughter. I see he was correct."

Tandy blushed. She hadn't known her father had said that about her.

They tied the rope to the trunk of a steelwood tree. Chem insisted on going down first. "That will prove the rope is safe," she explained. "Even Smash doesn't weigh more than I do." Of course she was correct, for though her human portion was girlishly slender, her equine portion was as solid as a horse.

She backed down, her four hooves bracing against the steep side of the chasm. The rope looped once about her small human waist, just below her moderate bosom, and she used her hands to give herself slack by stages. When she got down to where the slope leveled out enough to enable her to stand, she released the rope.

The Siren went down next, having less trouble because she had so much less mass. Then Tandy,

followed by the fairy, who fluttered her wings to make herself even lighter than she was. Smash then made a harness out of the end of the rope, set Fireoak in it, and stood on the brink to lower her carefully to Chem's waiting arms.

Finally Smash himself descended, merely applying one gauntlet to the rope and sliding rapidly down.

Chet undid the upper end from the steelwood tree and dropped it into the chasm. They would need the rope again on the north slope.

"I'm on my way with one and a half messages," Chet called, and galloped off. "Remember: two days."

The slope continued to level, until they stood at the base. Here grass grew, but no trees. It was pleasant enough, and the north slope was visible a short distance away. They walked across, studying the rise for the most suitable place to ascend.

It certainly wasn't good for climbing with a party of girls. The ground sloped gently up to a comer; from there the cliff went almost straight up a dizzying height, beyond the reach of the rope, even if there were any place or way to anchor it.

"We must do what-we started to do before," the Siren said. "Spread out and look for a suitable place to climb."

"I believe there are paths here and there," Chem said. "I don't have them on my map, because few people remember the Gap Chasm; it has an enduring forget-spell on it. But there has been enough travel in Xanth so that people have to have crossed it, and not just at the magic bridges."

"A forget-spell," the Siren said. "How interesting. That accounts for Fireoak's forgetting it. And I'm sure Smash has been here before, too. I hope that's the extent of the spell."

"What do you mean?" Tandy asked.

"Oh, I'm just a worrier over nothing."

"I don't think so," Tandy said. "If there's any danger, you should warn us."

The Siren sighed. "You're right. Yet if there is danger here, it's too late for us to avoid it, since we're already here. It's only that once I heard something about a big dragon in a chasm-and this is a chasm. It would be hard to escape a monster here. But of course that's far-fetched."

"Let's look for good hiding places, too," Tandy said. "Just in case."

"Just in case," John agreed, overhearing. "Oh, suddenly I don't really like this place!"

"So we must try to get out of this chasm as fast as we can," Smash said, though the prospect of danger did not bother him. There really had not been much violence on this journey.

Chem trotted east, while Smash lumbered west, since these were the two fastest movers of the group.

The girl, Siren, and fairy spread out in between. They left the hamadryad in the shade of a bush, since she was now too weak to walk.

The cliff face changed, sloping at different angles and different heights, but Smash found nothing that would really help. It looked as if he would have to bash out a stairway of sorts, tedious as that would be.

But could he get the party up that way within two days, let alone in time to save the hamadryad and her tree?

There was a commotion to the east. Chem was galloping back, her lovely brown hair-mane flinging out, tail swishing nervously. "Dragon! Dragon!" she cried breathlessly.

The Siren's concern had been justified! "I'll stop it," Smash said enthusiastically, charging east.

"No! It's big. It's the Gap Dragon!"

Now Smash remembered. The Gap Dragon ranged the Gap Chasm, trapping and consuming any

creatures foolish enough to stray here. The forget-spell had deceived him again. The monster really profited from that spell, since no one remembered the danger. But it was coming back to him now. This was a formidable menace.

The Siren, Tandy, and John were running west. Behind them whomped the monster. It was long and low, with a triple pair of stubby legs. Its scales were metallic, glistening in the sunlight, and clouds of steam puffed out of its nostrils. Its body was the thickness of a good-sized tree trunk, but exceedingly limber. It moved by elevating one section and whomping it forward, then following through with another, because its legs were too short for true running. But the clumsy-seeming mechanism sufficed for considerable velocity. In a moment the Gap Dragon would overtake the Siren.

Smash lumbered to the fray. He stood much taller than the dragon, but it reached much longer than he.

Thus they did not come together with a satisfying crash. The dragon scooted right under Smash, intent on the nymphlike morsel before it.

The ogre screeched to a stop, literally, his calloused hamfeet churning up mounds of rubble. He bent forward and grabbed the dragon's tail as it slid westward. He lifted it up, holding it tightly in both hands.

This would halt the monster!

Alas, he had underestimated the dragon. The creature whomped onward. The tail lost its slack-but such was the mass and impetus of the monster that it wrenched the ogre into a somersault. He flipped right over, hanging on to that tail, and landed with a whomp of his own on his back-on the dragon's tail.

But Smash's own mass was not inconsiderable. The shock of his landing traveled along the body of the dragon in a ripple. When the ripple passed a set of legs, they were wrenched momentarily off the ground; when it arrived at the head, the mouth snapped violently. The jaws, reaching close to the desperately fleeing Siren, fell short.

Now Smash had the Gap Dragon's baleful attention. The dragon let out a yowl of discomfort and

whipped its head around. Its tail, pinned under the ogre, thrashed about, so that Smash had trouble regaining his feet.

The dragon's neck curved in a sharp U-turn, bonelessly supple. The head traveled smoothly back along the length of the body. The monster hardly needed its legs for this sort of maneuver. In a moment the spreading jaws were at Smash's own head, ready to take it in.

The ogre, still flat on his back, stabbed upward with a gauntleted fist. The jaws closed on it, but the fist continued inexorably, punching past the slurp-wet tongue and into the back of the throat. The dragon's head was so large that Smash's whole arm was engulfed-but that strike in the throat caused the monster to gag, and the jaws parted again. Smash recovered his arm before it got chomped.

The ogre sat up, but remained in the midst of the coils of the dragon. The two grotesque heads of ogre and dragon faced each other, snout to snout. Smash realized that this time he had gotten himself into an encounter whose outcome he could not know. The Gap Dragon was his match.

Delightful! For the first time since attaining his full strength, Smash could test his ultimate. But at the moment they were all tangled up in an ineffective configuration, unable to fight decisively.

Smash made a face, bulging his eyes and stretching his mouth wide open. "Yyrwil!" he yyrwiled.

The Gap Dragon made a face back, wrinkling up its snout horrendously and crossing its eyes so far that the pupils exchanged places. "Rrooarw!" it rrooarwed.

Smash made a worse face, swallowing his nose and part of his low forehead. "Ggrummf!" he ggrummffed.

The dragon went him one better, perhaps two better, swallowing its snout up past the ears and partway down its neck. "Ssstth!" it ssstthed.

The monster was outdoing him. Petulantly, Smash bit into a rock and spit out a stream of grave! The dragon's teeth were pointed, so it could not match that. Instead, it hoisted a petard of steam at him, the greasy ball of vapor curling the hairs of his face and clogging his nostrils.

So much for the niceties. Now the real action commenced. Smash threw himself into the sheer joy of combat, the fundamental delight of every true ogre. It had been some time since he had crunched bones in earnest. Of course, this dragon was mostly boneless, but the principle remained.

He punched the dragon in the snout. This sort of punch could put a fist-sized hole in an ironwood tree, but the dragon merely gave way before the force of it and was only slightly bloodied. Then the dragon struck back, snapping sidewise at Smash's arm. That sort of bite could lop a mouthful of flesh from a behemoth, but the gauntlet extended back far enough to catch the edge of the bite and strike sparks from the teeth.

Then Smash boxed the dragon's right ear with his left fist-and the ear squirted right off the skull and flew out of sight. The dragon winced; that smarted! But the monster hardly needed that ear, and came

back with a blast of steam that cooked the outer layer of the ogre's head. Smash's thick skull stopped the heat from penetrating to the Eye Queue-corrupted brain-more was the pity, he thought.

So much for the second exchange of amenities. Smash had had slightly the better of it this time, but the fight was only warming up. Now the pace intensified.

Smash took hold of the dragon's upper jaw with one hand, the lower jaw with another, and slowly forced the two apart. The dragon resisted, and its jaw muscles were mighty, well leveraged, and experienced, but it could not directly withstand the full brute force of a concentrating ogre. Slowly the jaws separated.

The dragon whipped its body about. In a moment the sinuous length of it was wrapped about the ogre's torso, engulfing him anew. While Smash forced open the jaws, the dragon tightened its coils,

constricting him.

All this was in slow motion, yet it was a race. Would Smash rip the head apart first, or would the dragon squeeze the juice out of him? The answer was uncertain. Smash was having trouble breathing; he was beginning to lose strength. It seemed to him that this should not be happening, or at least not this fast.

But the dragon's jaws were now quite far apart, and should soon break.

Neither ogre nor dragon would give. They remained, their strength in balance. The jaws were on the verge of breaking, the torso on the verge of smothering. Who would succumb first? It occurred to Smash that he might break open the dragon's jaw, but be unable to extricate himself from its convulsed coils and smother because he couldn't breathe. Or the dragon might crush him-but suffer a broken jaw in Smash's dying effort. Both could lose this encounter.

In the good old days before the Eye Queue vine had fallen on him. Smash would not have wasted

tedious thought on such a thing; he would merely have bashed on through, to kill and/or be killed, hardly caring which. Now he was cursed with the notion of meaning. To what point was this violence if neither participant survived?

It was discomfiting and un-ogrish, but Smash found he had to change his tactic. This one had little promise of success, since it would not free him from the serpent's toils. He was in a dire strait, and bulling ahead would only worsen it.

He drew the dragon's head forward, toward his own face. The dragon thought this meant Smash was weakening, and went forward eagerly. In a moment, the dragon believed, it could chomp the ogre's face off. Its breath steamed out, its woodsmoke fragrance toasting Smash's skin. He tried to sneeze, but was unable to inhale because of the constriction in which he was held.

Sure of victory now, the dragon cranked its jaws marginally closer together and lunged. Smash deflected the thrust as much as he could and jerked his head to the side. The dragon's head plunged down as Smash's hands let go-and the huge wedge-teeth chomped savagely on the uppermost coil. This was a device Smash had used on the tangle tree with good effect.

It took the Gap Dragon a moment to catch on. Meanwhile, it chewed. It surely felt the bite, but did not yet realize that this was its own doing, or that its teeth had not contacted ogre flesh. It took a while for the difference in taste to register. The dragon wrenched its supposed prey upward, driving the teeth in deeper. The coil loosened, giving Smash half a gasp of breath.

Then at last the dragon realized what it was doing. Its jaws began to open, to free itself from its own bite and to emit a honk of sheer pain and frustration-but Smash's two gauntleted hamhands came down on

either side of it, clasping the snout, pressing it firmly closed on the meat. The jaw muscles were weaker this way; the dragon could not release its bite. Still, the ogre could not use his hands for further attack, for the moment he let go, the jaws would open. It was another position of stalemate.

Blood welled out around the dragon's lower fangs and dripped off its chin, coating Smash's gauntlet. The fluid was a deep purple hue, thick and gooey, smelling of ashes and carrion. It probably had caustic properties, but the gauntlet protected Smash's flesh, as it had when he held the basilisk. The centaur gifts were serving him well.

Now it was the dragon's turn to scheme. Dragons were not the brightest creatures of Xanth; but, as with ogres, their brains were largely in their muscles, and they were cunning fighters. The dragon knew it could get nowhere unless it freed itself from its own bite, and knew that its own coils anchored the ogre in place so that he could put his clamp on that bite. By and by, it realized that if it released the ogre, the ogre would lack anchorage and could then be thrown off. So the dragon began laboriously uncoiling.

Smash held on, gasping more deeply as the constriction abated. His strategy was getting him free-but it would free the dragon, too. This fight was a long way from over!

At last the coils were gone. The dragon wrenched its forward section away-and Smash's lower hand slipped on the blood coating it, and he lost his hold.

Now they faced each other again, the dragon with bloodied jaw and little jets of purple goo spurting from the deep fang-holes in its body, the ogre panting heavily from sore ribs. On the surface Smash had had the better of this round, but inside he doubted it. His rib cage was made of ogre's bones; nevertheless, it was hurting. Something had been bent if not broken. He was no longer in top fighting condition.

The dragon evidently had found the ogre to be stiffer competition than anticipated. It made a feint at Smash, and Smash raised a fist. Then the dragon dived abruptly back, as if fleeing. Suspicious, Smash paused-then saw that the dragon was going after Fireoak the Hamadryad, who was still lying helplessly on the ground.

This was very bad form. It suggested that Smash was no longer worth noticing as an opponent. His temper heated and bent toward the snapping point.

Chem Centaur leaped to Fireoak's defense, intercepting the dragon before Smash reoriented. She reared, her forehooves flashing in the air, striking at the dragon's snout. But she could not hope to balk such a monster for long. The Siren and John were running up to help, but Smash knew they could only get themselves in trouble.

He grabbed the dragon's tail again, this time bracing himself firmly against the rocky ground so as not to be flipped over. The moving body took up the slack again with a heavy shock that transmitted straight to the ogre's braced feet. The feet plowed into the ground, throwing up wakes of dirt and stones, then driving down deeper. When the dragon finally halted, Smash was braced knee-deep at an angle in the ground. He was strong, but the dragon had mass that mere strength couldn't halt instantly.

The dragon's nose had stopped a short distance from the hamadryad. Infuriated at this balk, the creature turned again, lunging at the ogre.

Smash exploded out of the ground, kicking dirt in the dragon's snoot. He reached for the jaws, but this time the dragon was wise enough to keep its mouth shut; it wanted no more prying open! It drove at the

ogre with sealed jaws, trying to knock him down before taking a bite.

Smash boxed at the head, denting the metal scales here and there and rebloodying the smashed ear-socket, but could do no real damage. The dragon weaved and bobbed, presenting a tricky target, while gathering itself for some devastating strike.

The ogre looked toward the assembled girls. "Get away from here!" he bellowed. He wanted no more distractions from the main event; one of them was sure to get incidentally gobbled by the dragon.

From the other side Tandy called, "I've found a ledge! It's out of reach of the dragon! We can use the rope to climb to it while Smash destroys the dragon!"

She had boundless confidence in his prowess! Smash knew he was in the toughest encounter of his life.

But he could proceed with greater confidence the moment he knew the girls were safe. He looked where Tandy pointed and saw the ledge, about halfway up the steep slope. There was a pining tree on it, its mournful branches drooping greenly, the sad needles hanging down. They would be able to loop the rope about the trunk of this tree and haul themselves up to it.

Then the dragon, taking advantage of Smash's distraction, leaped at him. The ogre ducked, throwing up a fist in his standard defensive ploy, but the dragon's mass bore him down. The huge metal claws of the foremost set of feet raked at his belly, attempting to dismember him. Smash had to fall on his back to avoid them-and the weight of the dragon landed on him. Now the stubby legs reached out on either side, the claws clutching the earth, anchoring the long body. Smash was pinned.

He tried to get up, but lacked leverage. He reached out to grab a leg, but the dragon cunningly moved it out of reach. Meanwhile, the sinuous body was moving elsewhere along its line, bringing another set of legs to bear. These would soon attack the pinned ogre. It would be easy for these free claws to spear through his flesh repeatedly, and sooner or later they would puncture a vital organ.

But Smash had resources of his own. He reached up to embrace the serpentine segment. He was just able to complete the circuit, his fingers linking above it. Now he had his leverage. He squeezed.

Ogres were notorious for several things: the manner in which their teeth crunched bones into toothpicks, the way their fists pulverized rocks, and the power of their battle embrace. A rock-maple tree would have gasped under the pressure Smash now applied. So did the Gap Dragon. It let out a steam-whistle of anguish.

But its body was flexible and compressible. When it had been squeezed down to half its original diameter, Smash could force it no farther without taking a new grip-and the moment he released his present one, the body would spring out again. His compression was not enough. The dragon was in pain, but still able to function; now it was again bringing its other claws into play. That would be trouble, for the outsides of Smash's arms were exposed. They could be clawed to pieces.

He drew on another weapon-his teeth. They did not compare with those of the dragon, but they were formidable enough in their own fashion. He pretended the underbelly before him was a huge, tasty bone and started in.

The first chomp netted him only a mouthful of scales. He spit them out and bit again. This time he reached the underlayer of reptilian skin, still pretty tough, but no match for an ogre's teeth. He ripped out a section, exposing the muscular layer beneath. He sank his teeth into that.

Again the monster whistled with pain. It struggled to draw back-but Smash's embrace held it firm. The compression made it worse; the ogre's teeth could take in twice as much actual flesh with each bite.

The dragon's claws ripped out of the ground. It humped its midsection, lifting Smash into the air. The huge head swung around, blasting forth steam. Now the ogre had to let go, for the back of his neck could not withstand much steam-cooking. He dropped off, spitting out a muscle. It would have been nice to chew the thing up and swallow it, but he needed his teeth clear for business, not pleasure.

The dragon was doubly bloodied now, yet still full of fight. It snorted a voluminous and slightly blood-flecked cloud of steam, charged Smash-and sheered off at the last moment, leaving the ogre smiting air with his fists. The serpentine torso whizzed by faster and faster, until the tail struck with a hard crack against Smash's chest.

It was quite a smack. Smash was rocked back. But his orange centaur jacket was made to protect him from physical attack and it withstood the lash of the sharp tail. Otherwise Smash could have been badly gashed, or even cut in half. The tail, at its extremity. Was long and thin, like a whip, with edges like a feathered blade. Smash wanted no more of that. He spied a boulder half buried in the ground. He ripped it from its mooring and hurled it at the dragon. The dragon dodged, but Smash threw another, and a third. Eventually he was bound to score, and the dragon knew it.

The dragon ducked behind a small ridge of rock and disappeared. Smash lobbed a boulder at it without effect. Cautiously he moved up and peered behind the ridge-and found nothing. The dragon was gone.

He bent to study the ground. Ah-there was a hole slanting down-a tunnel the diameter of the dragon. The monster had fled underground!

He dislodged a larger boulder and rolled it to cover the hole. That would seal in the' dragon, at least until Tandy and the others could vacate the Gap Chasm. It was too bad he hadn't been able to finish the fight, but it had been an excellent one, and such ironies did occur in the wilds of Xanth.

Then two sets of claws came down from behind him. The dragon had emerged from another hole and ambushed him from the rear! That was what came of getting careless in the enemy's home territory.

Smash tried to turn, but the claws landed on his shoulder and hauled him backward to the opening jaws.

This time he could not attack those jaws with his hands; he could not reach them. He was abruptly doomed.

Tandy appeared beside the boulder. "Look out, Smash!" she cried unnecessarily.

"Get away from here!" Smash shouted as he felt the dragon's steam on the back of his neck.

But Tandy's face was all twisted up in terror or horror or anger; her eyes were squeezed almost shut, and her body was stiff. She paid no attention to him. Then her arm moved as she threw something invisible.

Smash, realizing her intent almost too late, dropped to his knees, though the talons dug cruelly into his shoulder.

The tantrum brushed over his head, making his fur stand on end. The dragon caught the full brunt of it in the snoot and froze in place, half a jet of steam stuck in one nostril.

Smash turned and stood. The Gap Dragon's eyes were glazed. The monster had been stunned by the tantrum. "Quick, run!" Tandy cried. "It won't hold that dragon long!"

Run? That was hardly the way of an ogre! "You run; I shall bind the dragon."

"You lunkhead!" she protested. "Nothing will hold it long!"

Smash picked up the dragon's whiplike tail. He threaded the tip of it into the smash-ruined ear, through the head, and out the other ear, drawing a length of it through. Then he used a finger to poke a hole in the boulder, and a second hole angling in to meet the first inside the stone. He passed the tail tip in one hole and out the other, exactly as if this were another dragon-head. Then he fashioned an ogre hangknot and tied the tail to itself. "Now I'll go," he said, satisfied.

They walked to the cliff face. Behind them the Gap Dragon revived. It shook its head to clear itself of confusion-and discovered it was tied. It tried to draw back - and the tail pulled taut against the boulder.

"A little puzzle for the dragon," Smash explained. Privately, he was nettled because he had had to have help to nullify the monster; that was not an ogre's way. But the infernal common sense foisted on him by the Eye Queue reminded him that without an ogre the girls would have very little chance to survive and the hamadryad's tree would be cut down. So he beat down his stupid pride and proceeded to the next challenge.

Chem, John, Fireoak, and the Siren rested on the ledge. The rope dangled down carelessly.

"All right, girls, it's over," Tandy called. "Ready for us to come up?"

No one answered. It was as if they were asleep.

"Hey, wake up!" Tandy cried, irritated. "We have to be on our way, and there's a long climb ahead!"

The Siren stirred. "What does it matter?" she asked dolefully.

Smash and Tandy exchanged glances, one cute girl glance for one brute ogre glance. What was this?

"Are you all right. Siren?" Smash called.

The Siren got to her feet, standing precariously near the edge of the ledge. "I'm so sad," she said, wiping a tear, "Life has no joy."

"No joy?" Tandy asked, bewildered. "Smash tied the dragon. We can go on now. That's wonderful!"

"That's nothing," the Siren said. "I will end it all." And she stepped off the ledge.

Tandy screamed. Smash leaped to catch the Siren. Fortunately, she was coming right toward him; all he had to do was intercept her fall and swing her about and set her safely on her feet.

"She tried to kill herself!" Tandy cried, appalled.

Something was definitely wrong. Smash looked up at the pining tree. The other three sat drooping, like the tree itself.

Then he caught on. "The pining tree! It makes people pine!"

"Oh, no!" Tandy lamented. "They've been there too long, getting sadder and sadder. Now they're suicidal!"

"We must get them down from there," Smash said.

The Siren stirred. "Oh, my-I was so sad!"

"You were near the pining tree," Tandy informed her. "We didn't realize what it did."

The Siren mopped up her tear-stained face. "So that was it! That's a crying shame."

"I'll climb up and carry them down," Smash said.

"Then you'll get sad," Tandy said. "We don't need a suicidal ogre failing on our heads."

"It does take a while for full effect," the Siren said. "The longer I sat, the sadder I got. It didn't strike all at once."

"That's our answer," Tandy said. "I'll go up and push people off the ledge, and Smash can catch them.

Quickly, before I get too sad myself."

"What about Chem?" the Siren asked. "She's too heavy for Smash to catch safely."

"We'll have to lower her on the rope."

They decided to try it. Tandy climbed the rope, picked up the weeping John, and threw her down. Smash caught the fairy with one hand, avoiding contact with her delicate wings. Then Tandy pushed Fireoak on the ledge. Finally she tied the end of the rope about the centaur's waist, passed the rope behind the tree, and forced her to back down while Smash played out the other end of the rope gradually. It was slow, but it worked.

Except for one thing. Tandy remained beside the tree, since the rope was now taken up by the centaur, and the tree was getting to her. She wandered precariously near the edge, her tears flowing. Then she stepped off.

If Smash moved to catch her, he would let Chem fall. If he did not -

He figured it out physically before solving it mentally. He held the rope in his right hand while jumping and reaching out with his left hand. He caught Tandy by her small waist and drew her in to his furry body without letting Chem slip.

Tandy buried her face in his pelt and cried with abandon. He knew it was only the effect of the pining tree, but he felt sorry for her misery. All he could do was hold her.

"That was a nice maneuver, Smash," the Siren said, coming up to take the girl from his arm.

"I couldn't let her fall," he said gruffly.

"Of course you couldn't." But the Siren seemed thoughtful. It was as if she understood something he didn't.

Now they were all down and safe-but unfortunately at the bottom of the Gap Chasm. The Gap Dragon was still twitching, trying to discover a way to free itself without pulling out either its brains or its tail.

Which was more important wasn't clear.

John revived. "Oh, my, that was awful!" she exclaimed. "Now I feel so much better, I could just fly!"

And she took off, flying in a loop.

"Well, she can get out of the chasm," the Siren said.

Smash looked at the fairy, and at the dragon, and at the pining tree. There was a small ironwood tree splitting the difference between the pining tree and the top of the cliff wall. He had an idea. "John, can you fly to the top of the chasm carrying the rope?"

The fairy looked at the rope. "Way too heavy for me."

"Could you catch it and hold it if I hurl the end up to you?"

She inspected it again. "Maybe, if I had something to anchor me," she said doubtfully. "I'm not very strong."

"That ironwood tree."

"I could try."

Smash tied an end of the rope to a rock, then hurled the rock up past the ironwood tree. John flew up and held the rope at the tree. Now Smash walked over to the Gap Dragon, which was still trying to free itself from the boulder without hurting its head or its tail in the process. Smash knocked it on the head with a fist, and it quieted down; the dragon was no longer in fighting condition and couldn't roll with the punch.

Smash untied the tail, disconnected it from the boulder, unthreaded the head, and tied the tip of the tail to the nether end of the rope. Then he dragged the inert dragon to the base of the chasm wall and placed its tail so that it reached well up toward the top.

"Now drop that stone." he called.

The fairy did so. The rock pulled the slack rope up and around the ironwood trunk. When it began to draw on the dragon's tail, the weight of the rope wasn't enough. The fairy flew down and sat on the rock, adding weight, and it dropped down farther. Finally Smash was able to jump and catch hold of it.

John flew back to the ground while Smash hauled the dragon up by the tail. But soon the weight was too much; instead of hauling the dragon up. Smash found himself dangling. This was a matter of mass, not strength.

"We can solve that," Chem said, shaking off her remaining melancholy. She had received a worse dose of pining than the others, perhaps because of her size and because she had been closest to the tree. "Use the boulder for ballast."

Smash rolled the boulder over. He hooked a toe in the hole he had punched in it, then drew on the rope again. This anchorage enabled him to drag the dragon farther up the slope. When it got to the point where both ogre and boulder were dangling in the air, Chem added her considerable weight to the effort by balancing on the boulder and clinging to Smash. "I'll bet you've never been hugged like this before,"

she remarked.

Smash pondered that while he hauled on the rope, trying to get the dragon up. Actually, he had embraced his friend Chet, her older brother, and Amolde the Archivist, the middle-aged centaur who was now in charge of liaisons with Mundania. But those had been males, and his recent company had attuned him somewhat more to the difference of females. Chem was not of his species, of course, but she was clinging to him with extraordinary constriction because it was hard for her human arms to support her equine body. She was pleasant to be close to; her present hug was almost like that of an ogress.

All these girls were pleasant to be close to, he realized as the Eye Queue curse enabled him to think the matter through. Each had her separate female fashion, sort of rounded and soft, structured for holding.

But it seemed best not to let them know that he noticed. They allowed themselves to get close to him only because they regarded him as a woolly monster who had no perception of their nonedible attributes.

He hauled on the rope, bringing the dragon up another notch. Now Smash was approaching the limit of his strength, for the dragon was a heavy monster and there was a long way to haul. When the job got near the end, ogre, boulder, and centaur were all getting light; any more and they would be swinging in the air.

But at last it was done. Now the Gap Dragon was suspended by its tail from the ironwood tree, its snout just touching the level ground at the base of the chasm. Smash climbed the rope to the tree, caught the trailing tip of the dragon's tail, and knotted it about the tree. Then, clinging to the tree, he untied the rope and flung it upward over the tip of the cliff. He had had the foresight to leave Chem and the boulder anchoring the rope at ground level before doing this.

John flew up and caught the rope. She dragged the end to a tree beyond the chasm and tied it firmly with a fairy knot. Smash climbed the rest of the way up and stood at last on the northern side of the Gap Chasm. Now they had their escape route.

"Climb the dragon, climb the rope," he called down. His voice echoboomed back and forth across the chasm, but finally settled down to the bottom, where they could hear it.

Tandy came up, placing her feet carefully against the dragon's metal scales, which tended to fold outward because of its inverted position, making the footing better. The Siren followed, not quite as agile.

Chem and Fireoak were more of a problem. The centaur' had let herself down readily enough, but lacked the muscle either to climb the dragon vertically or to haul herself up along the rope to the top. And the hamadryad was too weak even to make the attempt.

Smash could handle that. He slid down the rope and dragon, picked up the dryad, and carried her to the top. Then he returned for the centaur. He had her hold on to him again, circling her arms about his waist while he hauled himself up by hands and feet. Progress was slow, for her hooves could not grip the 'dragon's scales comfortably, but eventually they made it to the ironwood tree.

At this point the nature of the problem changed. The rope went straight up to the overhanging lip, and Smash doubted Chem could hold on to him while he climbed that. Also, he was tiring, and might be unable to haul himself and her up, using only his arms. So he parked her, wedged between the ironwood trunk and the cliff, while he rested and considered.

But he was not provided much time for either. The Gap Dragon, quiescent until now, stirred. It was a tough animal, and even a punch in the head by the fist of an ogre could not put it to sleep indefinitely. It twisted about, trying to discover what was happening.

"I think you had better climb back up your rope now," Chem said.

"Tie the end about your waist; I will draw you up from above."

"I will make a harness," she decided. She looped the rope around her body in various places. "This way I can defend myself."

Smash clambered up the taut rope while the dragon thrashed about with increasing vigor. As Smash crossed the cliff lip, he saw the dragon's head mining back up along its body, toward the centaur filly.

That could certainly be trouble!

Atop the cliff, Smash took hold of the rope and drew it up. The weight was great, but the rope was magically strong. He had to brace carefully, lest he be pulled back over the cliff. Again he was reminded that strength alone was not sufficient; anchorage was at times more important. He solved the problem by looping the rope about his own waist so that he could not be drawn away from the tree and could exert his full force.

John was hovering near the lip. "That dragon has spotted Chem," she announced with alarm. "It's reaching up. I don't know whether it can..."

Smash kept on hauling. He could go only so fast, since he had to take a fresh grip each time and tense for the renewed effort. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he was tiring more rapidly. What had become of his ogre endurance?

"Yes, the dragon can reach her," John reported. "It's lunging, snapping. She's fending it off neatly with her hooves, but she's swinging around without much leverage. She can't really hurt it. It's trying again-you'd better lift her up higher, Smash!"

Smash was trying, but now his best efforts yielded only small, slow gains. His giant ogre muscles were solidifying with fatigue.

"Now the dragon is trying to climb its own tail, to get higher, so it can chomp the rope apart or something," the fairy said. "This time she won't be able to stop it. Pull her up quickly!"

But try as he might, Smash could not. The rope began to slip through his exhausted hands.

The Siren leaped up. "I have a knife!" she cried. "I'll go down and cut off the dragon's tail so it will drop

to the bottom of the chasm, out of reach!"

"No!" Tandy protested. "You'll have no way to get up again!"

"I'll do it!" John said. "Quick-give me the knife!"

The Siren gave her the knife. The fairy dropped out of sight beyond the ledge. Smash tried to rouse himself to resume hauling on the rope, but his body was frozen into a deathlike rigor. He could only listen.

The Siren lay on the bank, her head over the cliff, looking down. "The dragon's head is almost there,"

she reported. "John is down near the tree. She's afraid of that monster; I can tell by the way she skirts it.

But she's approaching the tied tail. Now she's sawing on it with the knife. She's not very strong, and those scales are tough. The dragon doesn't see her; it's orienting on Chem. Oops - now it sees John. That knife is beginning to hurt it as she digs through the scales. It's slow work! The dragon is turning its head about, opening its jaws. Chem is slipping down farther. She's kicking at the dragon's neck with her forefeet, trying to distract it. Now she's throwing dirt at it from the chasm wall. John is still sawing at the tail. I think she's down to real flesh now. The dragon is really angry. It's blasting out steam-Oh!" She paused, horrified.

"What happened?" Tandy demanded, her face pale with strain.

"The steam-John-" The Siren took a ragged breath. "The steam shriveled her wings, both of them.

They're just tatters. John's clinging to the tree trunk. Still sawing at the tail. What awful courage she has!

She must be in excruciating pain."

The fairy had lost her newly recovered wings and was suffering terribly-because of Smash's failure. In an agony of remorse, he forced strength through his frozen muscles and hauled again on the rope. Now it came up, its burden seeming lighter, and soon the centaur was over the lip of the chasm and scrambling to safety. But what of John?

"There goes the dragon!" the Siren cried. "She did it! She cut through the tail! There's dragon blood all over her and she's lost the knife, but the dragon's bouncing down the slope in a cloud of dust and steam.

Now the monster's rolling at the base. It's galumphing away!"

"What of John?" Tandy cried.

"She's sitting there by the ironwood tree. Her eyes are closed. I don't think she quite comprehends what has happened. Her wings-"

Tandy was fashioning the rope into a smaller harness. "Lower this to her. We'll draw her up!"

Smash merely stood where he was, listening. His brief surge of strength had been exhausted; now he could do nothing. He felt ashamed for his weakness and the horrible consequence of it, but had no further resource. John had thought she would be safe in the company of an ogre!

Chem drew the fairy up. Smash saw John huddled in the harness. Her once-lovely wings, with the blossoming flower patterns, were now melted amorphous husks, useless for flying. Would they ever grow back? It seemed unlikely.

"Well, we crossed the chasm," Tandy said. She was not happy. None of them was. One of their number had lost her invaluable wings, another was too wasted to stand, and Smash was too tired to move. If this

was typical of the hazards they faced, traversing central Xanth, how would they ever make it the rest of the way?

"Well, now," a new voice declared. Smash turned his head dully to view the speaker. It was a gnarled, ugly goblin-at the head of a fair-sized troop of goblins.

Goblins hated people of any type. The strait had become yet more dire.

Chapter 7. Lunatic Fringe

If you fight, we'll shove you all over the brink without your rope," the goblin leader said. He was a stunted black creature about John's height, with a huge head, hands, and feet. His short limbs seemed twisted, as if the bones had been broken and reset many times, and his face was similarly uneven, with one eye squinting, the other round, the nose bulbous, and the mouth crooked. By goblin standards, he was handsome.

The goblins spread out to surround the party. They peered at the ogre, centaur, hamadryad, fairy. Siren, and girl as if all were supreme curiosities. "You crossed the Gap?" the leader asked.

Tandy took it upon herself to answer. "What right have you to question us? I know your kind from the caves. You don't have any useful business with civilized folk."

The leader considered her. "Whom do you know in the caves, girl-thing?"

"Everybody who is anybody," she retorted. "The demons, the Diggle-worm, the Brain Coral-"

The leader seemed fazed. "Who are you?"

"I am Tandy, daughter of Crombie the Soldier and Jewel the Nymph. You know who sets out those black opals you goblins steal to give to your goblin girls! My mother, that's who. Without her there wouldn't be any gems of any kind to find anywhere."

There was a muttering commotion. "You have adequate connections," the goblin leader grudged. "Very well, we won't eat you. You may go, girl-thing."

"What of my friends?" Tandy asked suspiciously.

"They have no such connections. Their mothers don't plant gems in the rocks. We'll cook them tonight."

"Oh, no, you won't! My friends go with me!"

"If that's the way you want it," the goblin said indifferently.

"That's the way I want it."

"Come this way, then. You'll all go in the pot together."

"That's not what I meant!" Tandy cried.

"It isn't?" The goblin seemed surprised. "You said you wanted to be with your friends."

"But not in the pot!"

The goblin shook his head in confusion. "Females change their minds a lot. Exactly what do you want?"

"I want us all to continue our trip north through Xanth," Tandy said, enunciating clearly. "I can't do it alone. I don't know anything about surface Xanth. I need the ogre to protect me. If he weren't worn out from fighting the Gap Dragon and hauling us all up out of the Gap, he'd be cramming all of you into the pot!"

"Nonsense. Ogres don't use pots."

Tandy huffed herself up into the resemblance of a tantrum. But before she completed the process, a goblin lieutenant sidled up to whisper in the leader's ear. The leader nodded. "Maybe so," he agreed. He turned back to Tandy. "You are five females, guarded by the tired ogre?"

"Yes," Tandy agreed guardedly.

"How many others has he eaten?"

"None!" Tandy responded indignantly. "He doesn't eat friends!"

"He can't be much of an ogre, then."

"He beat up the Gap Dragon!"

The goblin considered. "There is that." He came to a decision. "My name is Gorbage Goblin. I control this section of the Rim. But I have a daughter, and we are exogamous."

"What?" Tandy asked, bewildered.

"Exogamous, twit. Girls must marry outside their home tribes. But there is no contiguous goblin tribe; we are apart from the main nation of goblins. The dragons extended their territory recently, cutting us off." He scowled. "The other goblins keep forgetting us, the slugbrains. I don't know why."

Smash knew why. It was the forget-spell laid on the Gap Chasm. These goblins lived too close to it, so suffered a peripheral effect.

"So my daughter Goldy Goblin must cross to another tribe," Gorbage grumbled. "But travel beyond our territory is now hazardous to the health. She needs a guard."

Tandy's face lighted with eventual comprehension. "You want us to take your daughter with us?"

"To the next goblin tribe, north of here. Beyond the dragons, in the midst of the five forbidden regions, near the firewall. Yes."

Five forbidden regions? Firewall? Smash wondered about that. It didn't sound like the sort of territory to help at all if they happened on another dragon. Maybe he just needed a good meal and a night's sleep.

Yet it had never before taken him so long to recover from exertion. He suspected something was wrong,

but he didn't "know what.

They came to the region of hypnogourds. The vines sprawled abundantly, and gourds were all about.

Smash stared at them, half mesmerized. He had thought his soul lost when the Siren smashed the other gourd-but was it possible that the gourd had been a mere window on the otherworld reality? His Eye Queue was crazy enough to think this was so. Could he use another gourd to return to that world and fight for his soul?

He felt small hands on his arm. "What is it. Smash?" Tandy asked. "I'm deathly afraid of those things, but you seem fascinated. What's with you and those awful gourds?"

He answered, not fully conscious of his situation. "I must go fight the Night Stallion."

"A Dark Horse?"

"The ruler of the nightmares. He has a lien on my soul."

"Oh, no! Is that how you rescued my soul?"

Smash snapped out of it. He hadn't meant to say anything about the lien to Tandy. "I'm gibbering. Ignore it."

"So that's why you wanted another gourd," the Siren said. "You had unfinished business there! I didn't realize..."

Now the goblin girl approached. "The ogre's been into a gourd? I've seen that happen before. Some people escape unscathed; some lose their souls; some get only halfway free. We lost a lot of goblins before we caught on. Now we use those gourds as punishment. Thieves are set at a peephole for an hour; they usually escape with a bad scare and never thieve again. Murderers are set there for a day; they often lose their souls. It varies; some people are cleverer than others, and some luckier. The lien is like a delayed sentence; a month or two and it's all over."

"A lien!" the Siren said. "How long for you. Smash?"

"Three months," he replied glumly.

"And you said nothing!" she cried indignantly. "What kind of a creature are you?" But she answered herself immediately. "A self-sacrificing one. Smash, you should have told us."

"Yes," Tandy agreed faintly. "I never realized-"

"How can a person nullify such a lien?" the Siren asked, getting practical.

"He has to go back in and fight," Goldy said. "If he doesn't, he just gets weaker, bit by bit, as the Stallion calls in the soul. It's too late to fight, once the lien is due. He has to do it early, while he has most of his strength."

"But a person can redeem himself if he goes in early?" the Siren asked.

"Sometimes," the goblin girl said. "Maybe one out of ten. One of our old goblins is supposed to have done it a long time ago in his youth. We're not sure we believe him. He mumbles about trials of fear and

pain and pride and such-like, making no sense at all. But it is theoretically possible to win."

"So that's why Smash has gotten so weak," the Siren said. "He was using his strength as if he had plenty to spare, but he has an illness of the soul."

"I know about that," Fireoak breathed.

"I didn't know!" Tandy said, clouding up. "Oh, it's all my fault! I never would have taken my soul back if-"

"I didn't know, either," the Siren said, calming her. "But I should have suspected. Maybe I did suspect; I just didn't pursue the thought fast enough. I forgot that Smash is no longer a simple-minded ogre; he has the devious Eye Queue contamination, making him react more like human folk."

"The curse of human intellect, replacing the primeval beastly innocence," Tandy agreed. "I, too, should have realized-"

"Tandy, we've got to help Smash destroy that lien!"

"Yes!" Tandy agreed emphatically. "We can't leave him to the law of the lien."

Smash almost smiled, despite the seriousness of the situation. During his travels with Prince Dor, he had encountered the law of the loin; was this related?

"I'll help," Goldy said.

The Siren frowned. "What is your interest? Your tribe was going to eat us all."

"How can I get to another goblin tribe if I don't have a strong ogre to clear the way? I do know a little bit about the matter."

"I suppose you do have a practical interest," the Siren agreed. "We all need the ogre, until we find our own individual situations. What do you know about the gourds that might help?"

"Our people have reported details of the gourd geography. It's the same for every gourd; they're all identical inside. But each person enters at a different place, and it's possible to get lost. So it is best to carry a line of string to mark the way."

"But a person is out the moment his contact with the peephole is broken! How can he get lost?"

"It's not that sort of lost," Goldy said. "There's a lot of territory in there, and some pretty strange effects.

Some talk of graves, others of mirrors. A person always returns to the spot he left, and the time he left, no matter how long he's been away from it; a break in the sequence is only an interruption, not a change.

If he's lost in gourdland, he's still lost when he returns there, even if he's been a long time out of his gourd. He doesn't know where he's going because he doesn't know where he's been. But if he strings the string, it'll mark where he's been, and he'll know the moment he crosses his trail. And that's the secret."

Smash was getting quite interested. He had been out of his gourd for some time, but apparently could still return. "What secret?"

"The Night Stallion is always in the last place a person looks, in the gourd," the goblin girl explained.

"So all you have to do to reach him is always look in a new place-never in a place you've been before; that's a waste of time and effort. You are apt to get caught in an endless loop, and then you are really lost. You may never find him if you rehash your old route."

"You do know something about it!" Tandy agreed. "But suppose Smash threads the maze, finds the Night Stallion-and is too weak to fight him?"

"Oh, it's not that sort of strength he needs," the goblin girl said. "We've had physically strong goblins go in, and physically weak ones, and the weak ones do just as well. All kinds lose in the gourd. Physical strength may even be a liability. Destroying the facilities does not destroy the commitment. Only defeating the Stallion does that, on the Stallion's own terms."

"What are the Stallion's terms?"

Goldy shrugged. "No one knows. Our one surviving goblin refuses to tell, assuming he knows. He just sort of turns a little grayer. I think there is no way to find out except to face the creature."

"I think we have enough to go on," Tandy said. "Let's take a gourd along. We have to get to the fireoak tree before the lunatic-fringe-spell gives out." She went to harvest a gourd, her concern for Smash overriding her fear of the thing.

"I think the peephole is a lunatic fringe," the Siren muttered.

They moved on. Smash pondered what the goblin girl had said. If physical strength was not important in the struggle with the Night Stallion, why was it important to join this contest early, before weakness progressed too far? Was that a contradiction or merely a confusion? He concluded that it was the latter.

There was weakness of the body and of the spirit; both might fade together, but they were not identical.

Smash was physically weak now because he had overextended himself; otherwise it should have taken him three months to fade. His soul had probably suffered relatively little so far. But if he waited till the end of the lien term to meet the Stallion, then his soul would be weak, and he would lose the nonphysical contest. Yes, that seemed to make sense. Things didn't have to make sense, with magic, but it helped.

They arrived at a pleasant glade. Within it was a crazy sort of shimmer that made Smash feel a little crazy himself; he turned his eyes away.

"My tree!" the hamadryad cried, suddenly reviving. Smash set her down.

"Where?"

"There! Behind the lunatic fringe!" She seemed to grow stronger instant by instant and in a moment pranced into the glade. Her body wavered and vanished.

"I guess the spell is still holding," Tandy said. She followed Fireoak, carrying the gourd, and disappeared similarly. The others went the same route.

When Smash contacted the fringe, he felt a momentary surge of dizziness; then he was through. There before him was the tree, a medium-large fireoak, its leaves blazing in the late afternoon sunlight. The hamadryad was hugging its trunk in ecstasy, her body almost indistinguishable from it, and her color was returning. She had rejoined her soul. The tree, too, seemed to be glowing, and leaves that had been wilting were now forging back into health. Evidently it had missed her also. There was something very touching about the love of nymph and tree for each other.

Tandy approached him, her blue eyes soulful. "Smash, if I had known-" She choked up. She shoved the gourd at him.

"We'll let you go into it until the lunatic fringe fades and the people attack this tree," the Siren said.

"Maybe you'll have time to conquer the Night Stallion and regain your full strength." She produced a ball of string that the hamadryad must have had stored in her tree. "Use this so you won't get lost in there,"

"But first eat something," Chem said, bringing an armful of fruits. "And get a night's sleep."

"No. I want to settle this now," Smash said.

"Oh, please do at least eat something 1" Tandy pleaded. "You can eat a lot in a hurry."

True words-and he was hungry. Ogres were usually hungry. So he crammed a bushel of whole fruits into his mouth and gulped them down, ogre-fashion, and drank a long pull of water from the spring at the base of the tree.

As the sun dropped down behind the forest, singeing the distant tips of trees. Smash took leave of the six females as if setting out on a long and hazardous trek. Then he settled down against the trunk of the tree, put the gourd in his lap, and applied his right eye to the peephole.

Instantly he was back in the gourd world. He stood before the crypt, having just gotten up from his snooze. Tandy was not there; for a moment he had feared that she would be locked into this adventure with him, since she had been here before, but of course she was free now.

A chill wind cut around the stonework, ruffling his fur. The landscape was bleak: all gravestones and dying weeds and dismal dark sky. "Beautiful!" he exclaimed. "I would like to stay here forever."

Then his Eye Queue, in its annoying fashion, forced him to amend his statement mentally. He would like to stay here forever after he rescued his soul from the lien and regained his full strength and saved the hamadryad's tree and had gotten Tandy and all the others to wherever they were going and found his Answer from the Good Magician. After these details, then this paradise of the gourd would be a nice retirement spot.

He had been afraid he would find himself somewhere else and be unable, after all, to pursue his quest to its close. Despite what the goblin girl had said, this was a different gourd, and might not know where his adventure in the last gourd had ended. Now he was reassured, and confident that he could locate the Night Stallion and abate the lien. After all, he was an ogre, wasn't he?

He held his ball of string, since he had willed it to accompany him, but again he had forgotten to bring his gauntlets or orange jacket. He backtracked to the back of the haunted house and anchored one end of the string to a post, then crossed the graveyard to the far gate, letting the string unravel behind. It was a good-sized ball, so he was confident he would have plenty to mark his way.

A skeleton came out to see what was going on; Smash made a horrendous face at it, and the thing fled so fast its bones rattled. Yes, the bone-folk remembered him here!

Beyond the gate was a broad, bleak, open plain illuminated by ghastly, pale white moonlight. Black, ugly clouds scudded horrendously across the dismal sky, forming dark picture-shapes that resembled trolls, goblins, and ogres. Naturally the other creatures were fleeing before the ogre-shapes. Smash was delighted; this was an even better scene than the last! Whoever had set up this gourd world had had ogre tastes in mind.

Where should he go now? It was not his purpose to dally amidst the delights of the terrain, but to locate the Night Stallion. Yet he knew that he would have to cover a lot of territory before he reached the last place to look. So he had better move rapidly anywhere, getting the ground covered.

He tromped forth, straight across the beautifully barren plain. The cracked ground shuddered pleasantly under the impact of his feet. He was regaining his strength. Yet now he knew, thanks to the goblin girl, that physical strength was not necessarily what it took to prevail here. He had used it to cow the voice in the coffin, forcing it to release Tandy's soul-but had suffered the compromise of his own soul. Probably the coffin had given him nothing that had not already been allocated; he had fooled himself, thinking an ogre's power would scare the dead. The curse of the Eye Queue was making him see uncomfortable truths!

Yet perhaps he should not take this revelation on faith, either. He could go back and rattle the coffin some more, and determine just how much it feared his violence. After all, the skeletons now fled from him. No-that was a temptation to be avoided, for it would cause him to back-track his own trail, the one thing he needed to avoid doing. Smash continued resolutely forward.

Black dots appeared on the bleak horizon. Quickly they expanded, racing toward him on beating hooves.

The nightmares! This was where they stayed by day-here, where night was eternal.

The mares were handsome animals, absolutely black, with flaring manes, flying tails, and darkly glowing eyes. Their limbs were sleekly muscular, and they moved with the velocity of thought. In moments they surrounded him, galloping around him in a circle, squealing warningly. They did not want him going the way he was going. But since the Night Stallion did not seem to be among them, he had to proceed.

Smash ignored their warning. He tromped onward-and their circle stayed with him despite his speed.

Experimentally he dodged to one side, and the circle remained centered on him. He leaped, and the circle leaped with him. Just as he had thought, these were magical creatures, orienting magically; the feet of a dream-horse had no essential connection with the ground. Prince Dor had once mentioned escaping the nightmares by sleeping on a cloud, beyond their reach, but probably Prince Dor had not had any bad dreams scheduled that night. The mares could go anywhere, and Smash could not escape their circle by running.

Not that he wanted to. He liked these fine, healthy animals. They were an ogre's type of creature. He remembered how one of them had given Tandy a ride to the Good Magician's castle-which had perhaps been a better destination for her than the one she had sought. The Good Magician had provided Tandy a home for a year, and a solution to her problem-maybe. Her father Crombie, the soldier at Castle Roogna, might not have been much help. Smash knew the man casually. Crombie was getting old, no longer the fighter he used to be. He was also a woman hater who might not have taken his daughter's problem seriously. But if he had taken it seriously-what could he have done, without leaving his post at Castle Roogna?

And the nightmares-one had helped Tandy travel, but then had put in for a lien on her soul, causing her awful grief. Some help that had been! Maybe these nightmares needed to feel the weight of an ogre's displeasure.

Still he did not know enough to act. What was Tandy's problem that the Magician had answered? She had never quite said. Did it relate to that nightmare lien on her soul? But she had incurred that lien in order to reach the Good Magician. That hardly seemed profitable. Also, she had not been aware of the lien, so she would not have put a Question about it.

How would traveling with an ogre abate her problem? Had it been the Magician's intent that Smash redeem that girl's lost soul with his own? That was possible-but his understanding of the Magician's mode of operations argued against it. Humfrey did not need to fool people about the nature of their payments for their Answers. He should not pretend the service was merely protection duty when, in fact, it was soul substitution. So that, too, remained an enigma.

So far, Tandy had recruited fellow travelers with abandon, and now there were six females in the party.

That was probably as unlikely a group as existed at the moment in Xanth. Normally such maidens fled ogres, and for good reason-ogres consumed such morsels. Were it not for Smash's commitment not to indulge his natural appetites because of the service he owed the Good Magician-He shook his head, flinging loose a few angry fleas. No, he could not be sure of his motive there. His father Crunch was a vegetarian ogre, married to a female of human derivation, so Smash had been raised in an atypical ogre home. His folks had been permitted to associate with the people of Castle Roogna as long as they honored human customs. Smash himself had not operated under the restriction of oath or of human taste-but had always known he would be banished from human company if he ever reverted to the wild state. Anyone who made trouble for King Trent ran the risk of being transformed to a toad or a stinkbug, for Trent was the great transformer. It had been easy to conform. So Smash had not actually crunched many human bones, and had carried away no delicious human maidens. Perhaps he had been missing something vital but he remained unwilling to gamble that one good meal would be more satisfying than the human friendships he had maintained. So perhaps it was more than the Good

Magician's service that protected Tandy and the others.

Ogres weren't supposed to need companionship, but the curse of the Eye Queue showed him that he was, to that extent, atypical of his kind. Like the Siren, he now knew he would be lonely alone.

Smash suddenly realized that the ring of mares was only half the diameter it had been. While he tromped forward, thinking his slew of un-ogrish thoughts, they had been constricting their loop. Soon they would be almost within reach of him.

And if they closed on him all the way-what then? Mere horses could hardly hurt an ogre. Each weighed about as much as he did, but they were only mares, with the foreparts of sea horses and the rear parts of centaurs. They were basically pretty and gentle. True, their ears were flat back against their skulls, and their manes flared like dangerous spikes, their tails flicked like weapons, their teeth showed white in the moonlight, and their eyes stared slantwise at him as if he were prey instead of monster-but he knew he could throw any of them far out across the plain, if he chose, when he had his normal ogre strength.

Why should they want to come within his reach?

In a moment he had the answer. These were standard nightmares, used to carry bad dreams to their proper dreamers. They had not been cursed with the Eye Queue; they had no super-equine intelligence.

They were giving him the standard treatment, crowding him, trying to scare him-Smash burst out laughing. Imagine anything scaring an ogre!

The mares broke ranks, startled. This was not S. 0. P. The victim was not supposed to laugh. What was wrong?

Smash was sorry. "I didn't mean to mess up your act, mares," he said apologetically. "Circle me again, and I'll pretend to be frightened. I don't want you to get in trouble with your Stallion. In fact, I'd like to meet him myself. I don't suppose you could take me to him?"

Still the mares milled about. Their formation was in a shambles. They were not here to play a game, but to terrify. Since that had failed, they had other business to attend to. After all, night had been drawing nigh when he entered the gourd. The group began breaking up. Probably they would be all over Xanth within the next hour, bearing their burdensome dreams.

"Wait!" Smash cried. "Which of you gave Tandy a ride?"

One mare hesitated, as if trying to remember. "A year ago," Smash said. "A small human girl, brown hair, throws tantrums."

The black ears perked forward. The mare remembered!

"She sends her thanks," Smash said. "You really helped her."

The mare nickered, seeming interested. Did these creatures really care about the welfare of those on whom they visited the bad dreams? Yet his Eye Queue warned him that it was not safe to judge any creature by his or her job. Some ogres did not crunch bones; some mares might not hate girls.

"Did you mean to destroy her?" he asked. "By taking a lien on her soul?"

The mare's head lifted back, nostrils flaring.

"You didn't know?" Smash asked. "When she wandered into the gourd, the coffin-creep stole her soul, on the pretext she owed it for the ride."

The mare snorted. She hadn't known. That made Smash feel better. Life was a jungle inside the gourd as well as in Xanth, with creatures and things grasping whatever they could get from the unwary. But some were innocent.

"She might visit here again," he continued. "You might see her following my string." He pointed to the line he had laid out behind him. "If you like, you could give her another ride and sort of explain things to her. It would help her catch up to me quickly. But no more liens!"

The mare snorted and pawed the ground. She was not interested in giving rides.

"Maybe I can make a deal with you," Smash said. "I don't want Tandy getting in trouble in here." Not at the risk of her soul, certainly! "Is there anything I can do for you, outside?"

The mare considered. Then she brightened. She licked her lips.

"Something to eat?" Smash asked, and the mare nodded. "Something nice?" She agreed again. "Rock candy?" She neighed nay.

Smash played the guessing game, but could not quite come up with the correct item. All the other mares had departed, and this one was fidgeting; he could not hold her longer. "Well, if I find it, maybe I'll know it," Smash said. "Maybe Tandy will know, and bring it with her, if she comes. You keep in touch, okay?"

The nightmare nodded, then turned and trotted off. No doubt she was going to pick up her load of unpleasant dreams for delivery to her clientele of sleepers. Maybe some of them were his friends at the fireoak tree. "Good luck!" Smash called after her, and she flicked her tail in acknowledgment.

Alone again, he wondered whether he had been foolish. What business did he have with nightmares?

What would a nightmare want from a person, that the mare could not pick up for herself on her rounds?

He was an ogre who loved violence and horror, and he was here on a personal mission. Yet somehow he felt it was best to get along with any creature he could; perhaps something would come of it.

This confounded Eye Queue! Not only did it set him to trying un-ogrish things, it rendered him confused about the meaning of these things and full of uncomfortable selfdoubt. What a curse it was!

He faced resolutely forward and resumed his tromping. He saw something new on the horizon and proceeded toward it. Soon it manifested as a building-no, as a castle-no, larger yet, an entire city, enclosed by a forbidding wall.

As he drew close, he discovered the city was solid gold. Every part of it scintillated in the moonlight, shades of deep yellow. But when he drew closer yet, he found that it was not gold but brass-just as shiny, but not nearly as precious. Still it was a marvel.

The outer wall was unbroken, riveted metal, gleaming at every angle. The front gate was the same, so large it dwarfed even Smash's monstrous proportions. This was the sort of city giants would inhabit!

Smash considered that. The little knobs of the haunted house had shocked him; how much worse would this one be? He was not at all sure he could rip this door from its moorings; it was big and strong, and he was now relatively weak. This was not a situation he liked to admit, but he was no longer properly stupid about such things.

He pondered, drawing on the full curse of the Eye Queue. What he needed was insulation-something to protect him from shock. But there was nothing near; the city wall rose out of sand. He might use his orange jacket-but he was not wearing it, here in the gourd. All he had was the string, and that wasn't suitable.

No help for it. He would have to touch the metal. Actually, there might be a metal floor inside that he would have to walk on; if he were going to get shocked, it would happen with every step. Might as well find out now. He extended a hamfinger and touched the knob.

There was no shock. He grasped and turned the knob. It clicked, and the door swung inward. It wasn't locked!

There was a bright metal hall leading from the gate into the city. Smash walked down it, half expecting the door to slam shut behind him. It did not. He continued through the hall, his bare, furry soles thumping on the cool metal.

He emerged into an open court with a paving of brass, the moonlight bearing down preternaturally. All was silent. No creatures roamed the city.

"Ho!" Smash bellowed, loud enough to disturb the dead, as seemed appropriate in this realm.

No dead were disturbed. If they heard, they were ignoring him. The city seemed to be empty. There was an eerie quality to this that Smash liked. But he wondered who had made this city and where those people had gone. It seemed like far too interesting a place to desert. If ogres built cities, this was the sort of city they would build. But of course no ogre was smart enough to build a single building, let alone a city, certainly not a lovely city of brass.

He tromped through it, his big, flat feet generating a muted booming on the metal street. Brass buildings rose on either side, their walls making blank brass faces at precise right angles to the street. He looked up and saw that the tops were squared off, too. There were no windows or doors. Of course that didn't matter to the average ogre; he could always bash out any windows when and where he wanted. All was mirror-shiny; he could see his appalling reflection in every surface that faced him. Brass ogres paced him to either side, and another walked upside down under the street.

Smash remembered the story his father Crunch had told of entering a sleeping city and discovering the lovely mushfaced ogress who had become Smash's mother. This city of brass was pleasantly reminiscent of that. Was there an ogress here for him? That was an exciting prospect, though he hoped she wasn't made of brass.

He traversed the city, but found no entrance to any building. If an ogress was sleeping here, she was locked away where he couldn't reach her. Smash banged on a wall, making it reverberate; but though the sound boomed pleasantly throughout the city, no one stirred. He punched harder, trying to break a hole in the wall. It was no good; he was too weak, the brass was too strong, and he lacked his protective gauntlets. His fist smarted, so he stuck it in his mouth.

Smash was beginning to be bothered. Before there had been halfway interesting things like walking skeletons, electrified doors, and nightmares. Now there was just brass. What could he accomplish here?

He invoked the curse of the Eye Queue yet again and did some solid thinking. So far, each little adventure within the gourd had been a kind of riddle; he had to overcome some barrier or beat some sort of threat before he could continue to the next event. So it was probably not enough just to enter this empty city and depart; that might not count. He had to solve the riddle, thus narrowing the options, reducing the remaining places for the Night Stallion to hide. Straight physical action did not seem to be the requirement here. What, then, was?

There must be a nonphysical way to deal with this impassive place, perhaps to bring it to life so it could be conquered. Maybe a magical spell. But Smash did not know any spells, and somehow this city seemed too alien to be magical. What else, then?

He paced the streets, still unreeling his string, careful never to cross his own path. And, in a little private square directly under the moon, he discovered a pedestal. Significant things were usually mounted on pedestals directly under the moon, he remembered. So he marched up to it and looked.

He was disappointed. There was only a brass button there. Nothing to do except to press it: There might be serious consequences, but no self-respecting ogre worried about that sort of thing. He turned his big hamthumb down and mashed the button. With luck, all hell would break loose.

As it happened, luck was with him. Most of hell broke loose.

There was a pleasantly deafening klaxon alarm noise that filled all this limited universe with vibrations.

Then the metal buildings began shifting about, moving along the floor of the city, squeezing the streets and the court. In a moment there would be no place remaining for him to stand.

This was more like it! At first Smash planned to brace himself and halt the encroaching buildings by brute ogre strength. But he lacked his full power now, and anyway, it was better to use his brain.

Perhaps the Eye Queue was gradually subverting him, causing him to endorse its nature; already it seemed like less of a curse, and he knew-because, ironically, of the intelligence it provided him - that this was a significant signal of corruption. Mental power tended to corrupt, and absolute intelligence tended to corrupt absolutely, until the victim eschewed violence entirely in favor of smart solutions to stupid problems. Smash hoped he could fight off the curse before it ever ruined him to that extent! If he stopped being stupid, brutal, and violent, he would no longer be a true ogre.

Nevertheless, the expedience of the moment forced him to utilize his mind. He knew that a block that moved one way had to leave a space behind it, unless it happened to be expanding rapidly. He zipped between buildings, emerging from the narrowing aisle just before the two clanged together. Sure enough, there was a new space where a building had stood. It was perfectly smooth brass except for a cubic hole where the center of the building had been. Probably that was the anchoring place, like part of a lock mechanism; a heavy bolt would drop down from the building to wedge in that hole and keep the building from sliding about when it wasn't supposed to. When he had pressed the brass button, the lock bolts had lifted, freeing the buildings. Buildings, like clouds, bashed about all over the place when given the freedom to do so. The klaxon had sounded to warn all crushable parties that motion was commencing, so they could either get out of the way or pick their favorite saiiishin-snot. It all made a sort of violent sense, his Eye Queue informed him. He liked this city better than ever.

Now the building blocks were bouncing back, converging on him. Smash moved again, avoiding what could be a crushing experience. He found himself in a new open space, with another anchorage slot.

But the blocks were moving more quickly now, as if getting warmed up. Because they were big, he needed a certain amount of time to run between them. If they speeded up much more, he would not have time to clear before they clanged. That could be awkward.

"Well, brain, what do you say to this?" he asked challengingly. "Can you outsmart two buildings that plan to catch me and squish me flat?"

His vine-corrupted brain, thus challenged, rose to the occasion. "Get in the pit," it told him.

Smash thought this was crazy. But already the brass was moving, sounding off with its tune of

compression, and he had to act. He leaped into the pit as the blank metal face of the building charged him.

Too late, it occurred to him, or to his Eye Queue-it became difficult at times to distinguish ogre-mind from vine-mind-that he could be crushed when the bolt dropped down to anchor the building. But that should happen only when the building was finished traveling and wanted to settle down for a rest. He would try to be out by then. If he failed-well, squishing was an ogrish kind of demise.

It was dark there as the metal underbody of the building slid across. He felt slightly claustrophobic-another weakness of intelligence, since a true ogre never worried about danger or consequence. What would happen if the building did not move off?

Then light flashed down from above. Smash blinked and discovered that the center of the building was hollow, glowing from the inner walls. He had found his way inside!

He scrambled up and stood on the floor, still holding his ball of string. The building was still moving, but there was no way it could crush him now. The building floor covered everything except the square where the anchorage hole would be when it lay at anchor, so he could simply ride along with it.

He looked about-and spied an army of brass men and women, each individual fully formed, complete with brass facial features, hair, and clothing-the men fully clothed, the women less so. But they were statues, erected on platforms that, like the floor, moved with the building. Nothing here was of interest to an ogre. He knew brass wasn't good to eat.

Then he spied another brass button.

Well, why not? Maybe this one would make the building stop moving. Of course, if this one stopped and the other buildings did not, there would be a horrendous crash. Smash jammed his thumb down on the button.

Instantly the brass statues animated. The metal people spied the ogre and converged on him. And Smash-Found himself leaning against the fireoak tree. Tandy stood before him, holding the gourd. She had broken his line of vision to the peephole. "Are you all right, Smash?" she asked with her cute concern.

"Certainly!" he grumped. "Why did you interrupt me? It was just getting interesting."

"The lunatic fringe is tearing," she said worriedly. "The human villagers are in the area and will soon discover the tree."

"Well, bring me back when they do," Smash said. "I have metal men to fight inside."

"Metal men?"

"And women. Solid brass."

"Oh," she said, uncomprehending. "Remember, you're in there to fight for your soul. I worry about you.

Smash."

He guffawed. "You worry about me! You're human; I'm an ogre!"

"Yes," she agreed, but her face remained drawn. "I know what it's like in there. You put your soul in peril for me. I can't forget that. Smash."

"You don't like it in there," he pointed out. "I do. And I agreed to protect you. This is merely another aspect." He took the gourd back and applied his eye to the peephole.

The brass people were converging, exactly where they had been when he left. They seemed not even to be aware of his brief absence. The building was moving, too-but it had not moved in the interim. His Eye Queue-cursed brain found all this interesting, but Smash had no time for that nonsense at the moment. The brassies were almost on him.

The first one struck at him. The man was only half Smash's height, but the metal made him solid. Smash hauled him up by the brassard and threw him aside. Smash still lacked the strength to do real damage, but at least he could fight weakly. In his strength he would have hurled the brass man right through the brass wall of the building.

A female grabbed at him. Smash hooked a forefinger into her brassiere and hauled her up to his eye level. "Why are you attacking me?" he asked, curious rather than angry.

"We're only following our program," she said, kicking at him with a pretty brass foot.

"But if you fight me, I shall have to fight you," he pointed out. "And I happen to be a monster."

"Don't try to reason with me, you big hunk of flesh; I'm too brassy for that." She swung at him with a metal fist. But he was holding her at his arm's length, so she could not reach him.

Something was knocking at his knee. Smash looked down. A man was striking at him with his brass knuckles. Smash dropped the brass girl on the brass man's brass hat, and the two crashed to the floor in a shower of brass tacks. They cried out with the sound of brass winds.

Now a half-dozen brassies were grabbing at Smash's legs, and he lacked the strength to throw them all off at once. So he reached down to pluck them off one at a time-He was under the tree again. He saw the problem immediately. Half a dozen brassies-no, these were men and women of the human village-were converging on the tree, bearing wicked-looking axes. The hamadryad was screaming.

Smash had no patience with this. He stood up, towering over the villagers, ogre-fashion. He roared a fine ogre roar.

The villagers turned and fled. They didn't know Smash was short of strength at the moment. Otherwise they could have attacked him and perhaps put him in difficulty, in the same way the brassies were doing in the gourd. He had replaced the illusion of the lunatic fringe with the illusion of his own formidability.

The hamadryad dropped from her tree, her hair glowing like fire, catching him about the neck. She was now a vibrant, healthy creature. "You great big wonderful brute of a creature!" she exclaimed, kissing his furry ear. Smash was oddly moved; as the centaur had noted, ogres were seldom embraced or kissed by nymphs.

He handed the hamadryad back into her tree, then settled down for another session in the gourd. None of them had anywhere to go until the King got the news and acted to protect the tree permanently, and he wanted to wrap up this gourd business.

"Wake me at need," he said, noting that the shimmer of the lunatic fringe was now almost gone. If trees had ogres to protect them instead of cute but helpless hamadryads, very few trees would be destroyed.

Of course, ogres themselves were prime destroyers of trees, using them to make toothpicks and such, so

he was in no position to criticize. He applied his left eye to the peephole this time, giving his right orb a rest.

He stood in an alley between buildings. What was this? The sequence was supposed to pick up exactly where it had left off. What had gone wrong?

The two buildings slid toward him, forcing him to scoot out of the way. Smash emerged into a new space-and saw his line of string. He was about to cross his own path! But he couldn't retreat; the buildings were clanging behind him.

Still, his cursed Eye Queue wouldn't let him leave well enough alone. It wanted to know why the gourd scene had slipped a notch. Was the gourd getting old, beginning to rot, breaking down its system? He didn't want to be trapped in a rotting gourd.

The buildings separated, starting to converge on a new spot. The alley reopened, the string he had just set out running down its length-and stopping.

Smash ran to the end of it. The string had been severed cleanly; it ended at the point he had re-entered the vision.

But as the buildings separated. Smash saw another cut end of string. That must be where he had been before, just a little distance away. He had jumped no farther than he could have bounded by foot. But he hadn't jumped physically; he had left the scene, then returned to it slightly displaced. Why?

The buildings reversed course and closed on him again. They certainly wasted no time pondering questions! Smash ran back, his mind working. And suddenly it came to him-he had switched eyes! His left eye was a little apart from his right eye-and though that distance was small in the real world of Xanth, it was larger in the tiny world of the gourd. So there had been a shift, and a break in his string.

Well, that had freed him of the brass folk. But Smash couldn't accept that. He didn't want to escape, he wanted to win, to conquer this setting and go on to the next, knowing he had narrowed the Night Stallion's options. He wanted to do his job right, leaving no possible loophole for the loss of his soul. So he had to go back to the place he had left off, and resume there.

He followed his prior line, dragging his new line behind him. He found the square pit as the building moved off it, and he got down into it. The building swung back, and the interior light came on. Smash climbed out and ran to the end of his string.

The brass folk saw him and came charging in. Smash tied the two ends of string together, making his line complete, then stood as half a dozen people grabbed him. This was where he had left off; now it was all right.

He resumed plucking individual brass folk off. One of them was the girl in the brassiere. "You again?"

he inquired, holding her up by one finger, as he had done before. It was really the best place, since she was flailing all her limbs wildly. "Do I have to drop you again?" "Don't you dare drop me again!" she flashed, her brass surface glinting with ire. She took an angry breath-which almost dislodged her, for she had a full brassiere and his purchase on it was slight. "I have a dent and three scratches from the last time, you monster!" She pointed at her arms. "There's a scratch. There's another. But I won't show you the dent."

"Well, you did kick at me," Smash said reasonably, wondering where the dent was.

"I told you! We have to-"

Then he was back in Xanth again. Smash saw the problem immediately; a cockatrice was approaching the tree. The baby basilisk had evidently been recently hatched and was wandering aimlessly-but remained deadly dangerous.

"Put me down, you lunk!"

Startled, Smash looked at the source of the voice. He was still holding the brass girl, dangling by her brassiere hooked on his finger. She had been brought out of the gourd with him!

Hastily Smash set her down, carefully so she would not dent. He had a more immediate matter to attend to. How could he get rid of the cockatrice?

"Oh, look," the brass girl said. "What a cute chick!" She stepped over to the terrible infant, reaching down.

"Don't touch it!" the Siren cried. "Don't even look at it!"

Too late. The brass girl picked up the baby monster. "Oh, aren't you a sweet one," she cooed, turning it in her hand so she could look it in the snoot.

"No!" several voices cried.

Again they were too late. The brass girl stared deeply into the monster's baleful eyes. "Oh, I wish I could keep you for my very own pet, along with my other pets," she said, touching her pert nose to its hideous schnozzle. "I don't have anything like you in my collection."

The chick hissed and bit-but its tiny teeth were ineffective against the brass. "Oh, how nice," the girl said. "You like me, don't you!"

Apparently the little monster's powers were harmless against the metal girl. She was already harder than stone.

"Uh, miss-" the Siren said.

"I'm called Biyght," the brass girl said. "Of Building Four, in the City of Brass. Who are you?"

"I'm called the Siren," the Siren said. "Biythe, we would appreciate it if-"

"Biyght," the girl corrected her brassily.

"Sorry. I misheard. Biyght. If you would-"

"But I think I like Biythe better. This place is so much softer than I'm used to. So you can use that, Sim."

"Siren. Two syllables."

"That's all right. I prefer one syllable, Sim."

"You can change names at will?" John asked incredulously.

"Of course. All brassies can. Can't you?"

"No," the fairy said enviously.

"Biythe, that animal-" the Siren broke in. "It's deadly to us. So if you would-"

Smash had been looking around to see if there were any other dangers. At this point his eye fell on the gourd-and even from a distance his consciousness was drawn into the peephole, and he was back among the brassies. This time he stood within the building, but apart from the crowd, and his string had been interrupted again. He was using his right eye.

The brass folk spied him and charged. This was getting pointless. "Wait!" he bellowed.

They paused, taken aback. "Why?" one inquired.

"Because I accidentally took one of your number out of the gourd, and if anything happens to me, she'll be forever stranded there."

They were appalled, almost galvanized. "That would be a fate worse than death!" one cried. "That would be-" He paused, balking at the awful concept.

"That would be-life," another brass man whispered. There was a sudden hush of dread.

"Yes," Smash agreed cruelly. "So I have to fetch her back. And I will. But you'll have to help me."

"Anything," the man said, his brass face tarnishing.

"Tell me how to get out of here, on my own."

"That's easy. Take the ship."

"The ship? But there's no water here!"

Several brassies smiled metallically. "It's not that kind of ship. It's the Luna-fringe-shuttle. You catch it at the Luna triptych building."

"Show me to it," Smash said.

They showed him to a brass door that opened to the outside. "You can't miss it," they assured him. "It's the biggest block in the city."

Smash thanked them and stepped out. The buildings were still moving, but now he had the experience and confidence to travel by their retreating sides, avoiding collisions. He glanced back at the building he had left and saw the number 4 inscribed on the side, but there was no sign of the door he had exited by.

Apparently it was a one-way door that didn't exist from this side.

Soon he spied a building twice the size of the others. That had to be the one. He ducked into an anchor hole as the building approached, and m a moment was inside.

There was the fringe-shuttle, like a monstrous arrowhead standing on its tail. It had a porthole in the side big enough to admit him, so he climbed in.

He found himself in a tight cockpit that the cock seemed to have vacated. There was only one place to sit comfortably, a kind of padded chair before a panel full of dinguses. So he sat there, knowing he could bash the dinguses out of the way if they bothered him. There was another brass button on the panel, and he punched it with his thumb.

The porthole clanged closed. A wheel spun itself about. Air hissed. Straps rose up from the chair and wrapped themselves around his body. A magic mirror lit up before his face. An alarm klaxon sounded.

The ship shuddered, then launched upward like a shot from a catapult, punching through the roof.

In moments the mirror showed clouds falling away ahead. Then the moon came into view, growing

larger and brighter each moment. It was now a half-circle. Of course-that was why the lunatic fringe no longer shrouded the fireoak tree-not enough moon left to sustain it. But the half that remained seemed solid enough, except for the round holes in it. Of course, cheese did have holes; that was its nature.

Now it occurred to him that the brassies might have misconstrued his request. They had shown him the way out of the City of Brass-but not out of the gourd. Well, nothing to do now but carry this through.

Maybe the ship could get him back to the fireoak tree.

He didn't really want to go to the moon, though the view of all that fresh cheese made him hungry. After all, it had been at least an hour since he had eaten that bushel of fruit. So he checked the panel before him and found a couple of projecting brass sticks. He grabbed them, wiggling them about.

The moon veered out of the mirror-picture, and Smash was flung about in his chair as if tossed by a storm. Fortunately, the straps held him pretty much in place. He let go of the sticks-and after a moment the moon swung back into view. Evidently he had messed up the ship's program. His Eye Queue curse caused him to ponder this, and he concluded that the sticks controlled the ship. When they were not in use, the ship sailed where it wanted, which was evidently a hole in the cheese of the moon. Maybe this Luna shuttle was the mechanism by which the moon's cheese was brought to Xanth, though he wasn't sure what use metal people would have for cheese.

Smash took hold of the sticks again and wiggled more cautiously. Ogres were clumsy only when it suited them to be so; they could perform delicate tasks when no one was watching. The moon danced about but did not leave the screen. He experimented some more, and soon was able to steer the ship where he wanted and to make it go at any speed he wanted.

Fine-now he would take it back to Xanth and land beside the fireoak tree. Then he could turn it over to Biythe Brassie so she could fly back to her city and building.

Then blips appeared on the screen. They were shaped like little curse-burrs and were hurtling toward him. What did they want?

Then flashes of light came near him. The ship shook. The screen flared red for a moment, as if it had been knocked half silly. Smash understood this sort of thing. It was like getting knocked in the snoot by a fist and having stars and planets fly out from one's head. The entire night sky was filled with the stars flung out from people's heads in the course of prior fights, but Smash didn't care to have his own lights punched out. The thing to do was to hit back and destroy the enemy.

He checked the panel again, enjoying the prospect of a new type of violence. There was a big button he hadn't noticed before. Naturally he thumbed it.

A flash of light shot toward the blips, evidently from his own ship. It was throwing its sort of rocks when he told it to. Very well, in this strange gourd world, he could accept the notion of a fist made of light. But it wasn't aimed well, and missed the blips. It lanced on to blast a chunk of cheese out of the moon. Grated cheese puffed out into space in a diffuse cloud, where some of the blips went after it; no doubt they were hungry, too.

Smash pressed the button again, sending out another fist of light. This one missed both blips and moon.

But he was getting the feel of it; he had to have his target in the very center of the mirror, where there was a faint intersection of lines like the center of a spider web. Funny place for a spider to work; maybe it had been trying to catch stray stars or blips or bits of blasted cheese.

To center the target, he had to work the two sticks in a coordinated fashion. He did so, after glancing nervously about to make quite sure no one was near to see him being so well coordinated. Of course, it took more than strength to balance his whole body on a single hamfinger or to smash a rock into a particular grade of gravel with one blow, but that was an ogre secret. It was fashionable to appear clumsy.

When he had a blip centered, he pushed the button with his big left toe so he wouldn't have to stop maneuvering. This time his aim was good; the beam speared out and struck the blip, which exploded with lovely violence and pretty colors.

This was fun! Not as much fun as physical bashing would be, but excellent vicarious mayhem. Ogres could appreciate beauty, too-the splendor of bursting bodies or of blips flying apart, forming intricate and changing patterns in the sky. He oriented on another blip, but it took evasive action.

Meanwhile, all the other blips were nearer, and their light-fists were striking closer. He had to dodge them, and that interfered with his own strikes.

Well, he was not an ogre for nothing! He licked his chops, worked his sticks, looped about, oriented, fired, dodged, and oriented again. Two more blips exploded beautifully.

Then the fight intensified. But Smash loved combat of any kind and was good at it; he didn't have to use physical fists. He almost liked this form of fighting better, because it was less familiar and therefore more of a challenge. He knocked out blip after blip, and after a while the remaining blips turned tail and fled past the moon. He had won the battle of the Luna fringe!

He was tempted to pursue the blips, so as to continue the pleasure of the fight a little longer, but realized that if he wiped them all out at this time, they would not have a chance to regenerate and return for future battles. Better to let them go, for the sake of more fun on future days. Also, he had other business.

He turned the ship about and headed for Xanth which resembled a small disk from this vantage, like a greenish pie. That made him hungry again. Well, he would be careful not to miss it. He accelerated, zooming happily onward.

Chapter 8. Dragon's Ear

He was back in Xanth. "Smash, something else is coming!" Tandy cried.

"That's all right," he said. "I've won another battle. I feel stronger." And he did; he knew he was winning the gourd campaign, getting closer to the Night Stallion, and recovering physical strength in the process.

It had been in large part his former hopelessness that had weakened him. He had believed his soul was doomed, until learning that he could fight for it in another gourd.

Biythe Brassie was still here. Now he wondered-how had she been carried out with him, when he had not been physically in the gourd?

His Eye Queue curse provided him with the answer to a question any normal ogre would not even have thought of. Biythe was here in spirit, just as he had been inside the gourd in spirit. It was very hard to tell such spirit from reality, but each person knew his own reality and was not fooled. No doubt Biythe Spirit's real body remained in the gourd, in a trance-state; since the brassies spent much of their time as statues anyway, waiting for someone to come push their button, no one had noticed the difference. Or rather, they had noticed, and been alarmed because she remained a statue while they were animate. So they knew that her vital element, her soul, was elsewhere. Yes, it all made sense. Everything in Xanth made sense, once a person penetrated the seeming nonsense that masked it. Different things made different sorts of sense for different people.

He would have to take the brass girl back. His curse not only forced intelligence on him, it forced un-ogrish moral awareness. At the moment he wasn't even certain that such awareness was a bad thing, inconvenient as it might be when there was mayhem to be wreaked.

But the tree-chopping attack party was coming again. Smash oriented on the group as it galloped just beyond view. The villagers must have gotten reinforcements. The individuals were larger than basilisks-evidently Biythe had deposited the chickatrice safely elsewhere-but smaller than sphinxes. They were hoofed. In fact-

"That's my brother!" Chem exclaimed. "Now I recognize his hoofbeat. But there's something with him-not a centaur."

Smash braced himself for what could be a complicated situation. If some monster were riding herd on his friend Chet...

They hove into view. "Holey cow!" the Siren breathed. That was exactly what it was-a cow as full of holes as any big cheese. She had holes in her body every which way through which daylight showed.

She was worse than the moon! A big one was in her head, about where her brain should have been; evidently that didn't impede her much. Even her horns and tail had little holes. Her legs were so holey they seemed ready to collapse, yet she functioned perfectly well.

In fact, she carried two human riders who braced their hands and feet in her holes. She was a big cow, and her gait was bumpy, so these handholds and footholds were essential.

Now Smash recognized the riders. "Dor! Irene!" he cried happily.

"Prince Dor?" the Siren asked. "And his fiancée?"

"Yes, they are taking forever about working up to marriage," Chem murmured with a certain equine snideness.

"It's been four years now..."

"And Grundy the Golem!" Smash added, spying the tiny figure perched on the back of the centaur. "All my friends!"

"We're your friends, too," Tandy said, nettled. The party drew abreast of the fireoak tree. "What's this?"

the golem cried. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?"

Smash stood among the damsels, towering over them, not comprehending the reference. But the Eye Queue curse soon clarified it, obnoxiously. Some of the Mundane settlers in Xanth had a story by that title, and, compared with Smash the Ogre, the seven females were dwarvishly short, as was even Chem the Centaur.

"It seems you have a way with women. Smash," Prince Dor said, dismounting from the holey cow and coming to greet him. "What's your secret?"

"I only agreed not to eat them," Smash said.

"To think how much simpler my life would have been if I had known that," Dor said. "I thought girls had to be courted."

"You never courted me!" Princess Irene exclaimed. She was a striking beauty by human standards, nineteen years old. The other girls all took jealously deep breaths, watching her. "I courted you! But you never would marry me."

"You never would set the date!" Dor retorted. Her mouth opened in a pretty O of indignation. "You never set the date! I've been trying to-"

"They've been fighting about the date since before there was anything to date," Grundy remarked. "He doesn't even know what color her panties are."

"I don't think she knows herself," Dor retorted.

"I do, too!" Irene flashed. "They're-" She paused, then hiked up her skirt to look. "Green."

"It's only a pretext to show off her legs," Smash explained to the others.

"So I see," Tandy said enviously.

"And her panties," John said. She, like Fireoak, the Siren, and Chem, didn't wear panties, so couldn't show them off. Biythe's panties were copper-bottoms.

"You creatures are getting too smart," Irene complained. Then she did a double take, turning to Smash.

"What happened to your rhymes?"

"I got cursed by the vine," the ogre explained. "It deprived me of both rhyme and stupidity in one swell foop."

"In a foop? Oh, you poor thing," she said sympathetically.

"Now that incorrigible ogre charm is working on Irene, too," Prince Dor muttered.

"Of course it is, idiot," she retorted. "All women have a secret passion for ogres." She turned to Smash.

"Now you had better introduce us all."

Smash did so with dispatch. "Tandy, Siren, John, Fireoak, Chem, Goldy, and Biythe-these are Dor, Irene, Grundy, and Chet, and vice versa."

"Moooo!" lowed the holey cow, each o with a big round hole in it.

"And the Holey Cow," Smash amended. Satisfied, the bovine swished her tattered tail and began to graze. The cropped grass fell out the holes in her neck as fast as she swallowed it, but she didn't seem to mind.

"I delivered your message," Chet said. "King Trent has declared this tree a protected species, and all the other trees in sight of it, and sent Prince Dor to inform the village. There will be no more trouble about that."

"Oh, wonderful!" the hamadryad cried. "I'm so happy!" She danced a little jig in air, hanging by one hand from a branch. The tree's leaves seemed to catch fire, harmlessly. Both nymph and tree were fully recovered from the indisposition of their recent separation. "I could just kiss the King!"

"Kiss me instead," Dor said. "I'm the messenger."

"Oh, no, you don't!" Irene flashed, taking him firmly by the ear.

"Kiss me instead of Dor," Chet offered. "There's no shrew guarding me."

The hamadryad dropped from her branch, flung her arms about the centaur, and kissed him. "Maybe I have been missing something," she commented. "But I don't think there are any males of my species."

"You could take up with one of the woodland fauns," Princess Irene suggested. "You do have pretty hair." The hamadryad's hair, under its red fringe, was green-as was Irene's hair.

"I'll consider it," Fireoak agreed.

"How did you gather such a bevy?" Prince Dor asked Smash. "They certainly seem affectionate, unlike some I have known." He moved with agility to avoid Irene's swift kick.

"I just picked them up along the way," the ogre said. "Each has her mission. John needs her correct name, the Siren needs a better lake-"

"They all need men," the golem put in.

"I need to go home," Biythe said.

"Oh. I'll take you there now." Smash reached for the gourd.

"She's from a hypnogourd?" Princess Irene asked. "This should be interesting. I always wondered what was inside one of those things."

Smash hooked his finger into Biythe's brassiere and lifted her high.

"Well, that's one way to pick up a girl," Dor remarked. "I'll have to try that sometime."

"Won't work," Irene said. "I don't wear a-"

"Not even a green one?" Tandy asked, brightening.

Smash looked into the gourd's peephole.

The two of them were in the brass spaceship, descending rapidly toward Xanth.

"Oh!" Biythe exclaimed, terrified. She flung her brass arms about Smash. "I'll fall! I'll fall! Save me, ogre!"

"But I have to bring it down to return to your building," Smash said. He was having difficulty because there was hardly room for two. He grabbed for a control stick, jerked it around-and the brass girl jumped.

"What are you doing with my knee?" she cried.

Oh. Smash saw now that he had hold of the wrong thing. But it was almost impossible to operate the controls with her limbs in the way. The ship veered crazily, which set Biythe off again. Her nerves certainly were not made of steel! The more she kicked and screamed, the worse the ship spun, and the more frightened she became. They were now plunging precipitously toward ground.

Then they were back under the fireoak tree. "We thought you had enough time to drop her off," Tandy said. Then she paused, frowning.

Biythe was wrapped around Smash, her metal arms hugging his neck desperately, her legs clasping his side. He had firm hold of one of her knees.

"I think we interrupted something," Princess Irene remarked sardonically.

Biythe's complexion converted from brass to copper. Smash suspected his own was doing much the same, as his Eye Queue now made him conscious of un-ogrish proprieties. The two disengaged, and Smash set the brass girl down on the ground, where she sat and sobbed brass tears. "We were crashing,"

Smash explained lamely.

"Oh-Mundane slang," Chet said. "But I think she wasn't quite ready for it."

"It's really no business of ours what you call it," Grundy said, smirking.

"Oh, don't be cruel!" the Siren said. "This poor girl is terrified, and we know Smash wouldn't hurt her.

Something is wrong in the gourd."

In due course they worked it out. Smash would have to return to the brass building first, then come back for Biythe, who, it seemed, was afraid of interplanetary heights.

But now dawn was coming, and other business was pressing. They had to inform the local village of the protected status of the tree and its environs, and then Chet and his party had to return to Castle Roogna.

In addition, Biythe was no longer so eager to jump into the gourd, with or without the ogre. If she went alone, she might find herself crashing in the ship, and have no way to get back outside, since she was not an outside creature. It would be better to send her back later, once things were more settled.

"Oh," Chet said. "Almost forgot. I gave Tandy's message to Crombie, and he made a pointing-that's his talent, you know, pointing out things-and he concluded that if you went north, you'd face great danger and lose three things of value. But when he did a pointing back where you came from, there was something else you'd lose that was even more important. He couldn't figure out what any of the things were, but thought you'd better be advised. He says you're a spunky girl who will probably win through in the manner of your kind."

Tandy laughed. "That's my father, all right! He hates women, and he knows I'm growing up, so he's starting to hate me, too. But I'm glad to have his advice."

"What's back at your home that's worse than the jungle of Xanth?" Chet asked.

Tandy remembered the demon Fiant. "Never mind. I'm not going home until that danger is nullified. I'll just take my chances with the three things I'll lose in the jungle."

But she found the message disquieting. She had no things to lose-but she knew her father never made a mistake when he pointed something out.

Princess Irene's talent was growing plants. She grew a fine, big, mixed-fruit bush, and they dined on red, green, blue, yellow, and black berries, all juicy and luscious. Smash had always liked Irene, because no one remained hungry in her presence, and she did have excellent legs. Not that an ogre should notice, of course-yet it was hard not to imagine how delicious such firmly fleshed limbs would taste.

"Uh, before you go," the Siren said. "I understand you have a way with the inanimate, Prince Dor."

"Whatever gave you that idiotic notion, fish-tail?" a rock beside the Prince inquired. The Siren was sitting next to a bucket of water and was soaking her tail; she got uncomfortable when she spent too long out of the water.

"I picked up something, and I think it may be magical," the Siren continued. "But I'm not sure in what way, and don't want to experiment foolishly." She brought out a bedraggled, half-metallic thing.

"What are you?" Prince Dor asked the thing.

"I am the Gap Dragon's Ear," it answered. "The confounded ogre bashed me off the dragon's head."

Smash was surprised. "How did you get that?"

"I picked it up during the fight, then forgot about it, What with the pining tree and all," the Siren explained.

"The Gap Chasm does have a forgetful property," Irene said. "I understand that's Dor's fault."

"But the Gap's been forgotten for centuries, hasn't it?" the Siren asked. "We can only remember it now because we're still quite close to it; we'll forget it again when we go on north. How can Dor possibly be responsible?"

"Oh, he gets around," Irene said, giving the Prince a dark look. "He's been places none of us would believe. He even used to live with Millie, the sex-appeal maid."

"She was my governess when I was a child!" Dor protested. "Besides, she was eight hundred years old."

"And looked seventeen," Irene retorted. "You weren't conscious of that?"

Dor concentrated on the Ear. "What is your property?" he asked it.

"I hear anything relevant," it said. "I twitch when my possessor should listen. That's how the Gap Dragon always knew when prey was in the Gap. I heard it for him."

"Well, the Gap Dragon still has one ear to hear with," Dor said. "How can we hear what you hear?"

"Just listen to me, dummy!" the Ear said. "What else do you do with an ear?"

"That's a mighty impolite item," Tandy said, bothered.

"Can we test it?" the Siren asked. "Before you go, Prince Dor?"

"Oh, let me try," John said. She seemed much recovered, though her wings remained nubs. It would be long before she flew again, if ever.

The Siren gave her the Ear. John held it to her own tiny ear. She listened intently, her face showing puzzlement. "It's a rushing sound, maybe like water flowing," she reported. "Is that relevant?"

"Well, I didn't twitch," the Ear grumped. "You take your chances when there's nothing much on."

"How is that rushing noise relevant?" Dor asked the Ear.

"Obvious, stupid," the Ear said. "That's the sound of the waterfall where the fairy she wants is staying."

"It is?" John demanded, so excited that her wing-stubs fluttered. "The one with my name?"

"That's what I said, twerp."

"Do you tolerate insults from the inanimate?" the Siren asked the Prince.

"Only stupid things insult others gratuitously," Dor said.

"That's for sure, you moron," the rock agreed. Then it reconsidered. "Hey-"

The Siren laughed. "Now I understand. You have to consider the source."

Prince Dor smiled. " You resemble your sister. Of course, I've never seen her face."

"The rest will do," the Siren said, flattered. "Do only smart people compliment others gratuitously?"

"Perhaps," he agreed. "Or observant ones. But I do obtain much useful information from the inanimate.

Now we must go talk with the villagers and head back to Castle Roogna. It has been nice to meet all of you, and I hope you all find what you wish."

There was a chorus of thank-yous. Prince Dor and Princess Irene remounted the holey cow. Chet kissed Chem good-bye, and Grundy the Golem scrambled onto his back. "Get moving, horsetail!" Then Grundy paused thoughtfully, exactly as the rock had. They moved off toward the village.

"Dor will make a fine King one day," the Siren remarked.

"But Irene will run the show," Chem said. "I know them well."

"No harm in that," the Siren said, and the other girls laughed, agreeing.

"We'd better get started north," Tandy said. "Now that the tree is safe."

"How can I ever thank you?" Fireoak exclaimed. "You saved my life, my tree's life. Same thing."

"Some things are simply worth doing for themselves, dear," the Siren said. "I learned that when Chem's father Chester destroyed my dulcimer, so I couldn't lure men any more." Her sunshine hair clouded momentarily.

"My father did that?" Chem asked, surprised. "I didn't know!"

"It stopped me from being a menace to navigation," the Siren said. "I was doing a lot of damage, uncaringly. It was a necessary thing. Likewise it was necessary to save the fireoak tree."

"Yes," Chem agreed. But she seemed shaken.

They bade farewell to the hamadryad, promising to visit her any time any of them happened to be in the vicinity, and started north.

At first they passed through normal Xanth countryside-carnivorous grasses, teakettle serpents whose hisses were worse than their fires, poisonous springs, tangle trees, sundry spells, and the usual ravines, mountains, river rapids, slow and quicksand bogs, illusions, and a few normally foul-mouthed harpies, but nothing serious occurred. They foraged along the way for edible things and took turns listening to the Gap Dragon's Ear, though it was not twitching; this became more helpful as they gradually learned to interpret it. The Siren heard a kind of splashing, as of someone swimming. She took this to be the merman she wanted to find. Goldy heard the sounds of a goblin settlement in operation: where she was going. Smash heard the rhyming grunts of ogres. Biythe, persuaded to try it, jumped as the Ear twitched in her hands, and she actually heard herself mentioned. The brassies missed her and feared the ogre had betrayed their trust. "I must go back!" she cried. "As soon as I recover enough of my courage. My nerves aren't iron, you know."

But when Chem tried it, her face sobered. "It must be out of order. All I get is a faint buzzing."

The Siren took back the Ear. "That's funny. I get the buzzing, too, now."

They passed the Ear around. Everyone heard the same thing, and it twitched for none of them.

Smash applied his Eye Queue curse to the Ear. "Either it is malfunctioning," he decided, "or the buzzing is somehow relevant to all of us, without being specific to any of us. No one is talking about us, no one is lurking for us, so it is just something we should know about."

"Let's assume it's not malfunctioning," Tandy said. "The last thing we need is a glitching Ear, especially when my father says there is danger ahead. So we'd better watch out for something that buzzes. It seems to be getting louder as we go."

Indeed it was. Now there were variations in it, louder buzzes in front of background ones, an elevating and lowering of pitch. It was, in fact, a whole collection of buzzes, sounding three-dimensional, as some pitches became louder and clearer, while others faded back and some faded out entirely. What did it mean?

They came across a wall made from paper. It traveled roughly east/west and reached up to the top level of the trees, too high for Smash to surmount. It was opaque; he could not see through it at all.

However, a wall of paper could hardly impede an ogre. He readied a good punch.

"Careful!" John cried. "That looks like-"

Smash's fist punched through the wall. The paper separated readily, but glued itself to his arm.

"Flypaper," the fairy concluded.

Smash tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it stuck to his other hand when he touched it. The more he worked at it, the more places it adhered to. Soon he was covered with the stuff.

"Slow down. Smash," Chem said. "I'm sure hot water will clean that off. I saw a hotspring a short distance back."

She took him to the hotspring and washed him off, and it did clean him up. Her hands were efficient yet gentle; Smash discovered he liked having a female attend to him this way. But of course he couldn't admit it; he was an ogre. "Next time use a stick to poke through that paper," the centaur advised.

But when they returned to the wall, they found the others had already thought of that. They had poked and peeled a hole big enough for anyone to pass through. "But there's one thing," Tandy warned. "There are swarms of flies over there."

So that was what the Ear had warned them of. They were going to pass through a region of flies.

That didn't bother Smash; he normally ignored flies. Biythe was also unworried; no fly could sting brass.

But Tandy, Chem, Goldy, John, and the Siren were concerned. They didn't want stinging flies raising welts on their pretty skins. "If only we had some repellent," Tandy said. "In the caves there are some substances that drive them off-"

"Some repellent bushes do grow in these parts," Goldy said. "Let me look." She scouted about and soon located one. "The only problem is, they smell awful." She held out the leaves she had plucked.

She had not overstated the case. The stench was appalling. No wonder the flies stayed clear of it!

They discussed the matter and decided it was better to stink than to suffer too great a detour in their route north. They held their breath and rubbed the foul leaves over their bodies. Then, reeking of repellent, they stepped through the rent in the flypaper and proceeded north.

There was a sound behind them. Marching along the paper wall was a monstrous fly in coveralls, toting a cart. It stopped at the rent, unrolled a big patch of paper, and set it in place, sealing it over with stickum. Then the flypaper hanger moved on to the east, following the wall.

"We're sealed in," Tandy muttered.

A dense swarm of stingflies spotted them and zoomed in-only to bank off in dismay as the awful odor smote it. Good enough; Smash's nose was already acclimating or getting deadened to the smell, which wasn't much worse than that of another ogre, after all.

They walked on, watching the flies. There were many varieties, and some were beautiful with brightly colored, patterned wings and furry bodies. John became very quiet; obviously she missed her own patterned wings. There were deerflies and horseflies and dragonflies, looking like winged miniatures of their species; the deerflies nibbled blades of grass, the horseflies kicked up their heels as they galloped, and the dragonflies even jetted small lances of fire. At one spot there was music; fiddler flies were playing for damselflies to dance. It seemed to be a real fly ball.

This became a pleasant trip, since there seemed to be no dangerous creatures here; the flies had driven them all away. But then the sky clouded and rain fell. It was a light fall-but it washed away their repellent. Suddenly they were in trouble, having failed to take immediate shelter.

The first flies to discover this were sweat-gnats. Soon a cloud of them hovered about each person except Biythe, causing everyone to sweat uncomfortably. Smash inhaled deeply and blew the gnats away, but as soon as the turbulence ebbed, they were back worse than ever. Other flies saw the clouds and, in turn, converged. Some of these were itchers, causing intolerable itches; others were bleeders, causing blood to flow from painless bites. But the worst, as it turned out, were the fly-bys, because they flew by, observed, and carried the news of new prey to all corners of the Kingdom of the Flies. After that, the very sky was darkened by the mass of the converging swarms. There seemed to be no effective way to fight them, for there were far too many to swat or shoo away.

Then the swarms drew off a little, and a pair of shoeflies marched up. A formation of bowflies sent a fly arrow shooting in the direction Smash's party was supposed to go. It seemed better to obey, rather than fight, for there were sawflies and hammerflies and screwdriverflies that could be most awkward to fend off.

They marched, and the swarms paced them, buzzing out a tune that sounded like a requiem. Smash had not imagined that so many flies existed in Xanth. They coated the trees, they popped out of myriad holes in the ground, they formed clouds in the sky that rained droppings.

The party arrived at a palace fashioned of flypaper coated with fly ash. Here, surrounded by a cluster of fawning damselflies, perched the Lord of the Flies-a huge, demonic figure with multiple-faceted eyes.

He was reading the flyleaf of a book titled The Sting by Wasp.

"Bzzzzzz?" the Fly Lord inquired, looking up with several facets.

The query seemed to be directed at Smash, but he did not comprehend fly talk. He grunted noncommittally.

"Bzzzzzz!" the Fly repeated angrily.

Smash had an idea. He lifted the Gap Dragon's Ear to his own. Maybe that would provide a translation.

All he heard was the roaring and hissing of dragons. No help there.

The Fly buzzed again, angry light glinting from quite a number of facets. Giant guardflies swarmed up to grab the Ear. "Don't fight them, Smash!" Tandy cried, alarmed.

The ogre didn't like it, but realized they could all be bitten and stung to death if he made trouble. It was the curse of the Eye Queue again, making him react intelligently. He let the flies take the Ear.

They dragged it to the Fly Lord, who cocked his head in order to listen to it. And the Ear twitched, almost knocking the Fly off his perch. "Bzzzzzz!" he buzzed angrily, and there was a flutter of alarm among the damselflies. It seemed the Lord had used very strong language. But he got back up to listen.

"Bzzzzzz!" and the guardflies hovered in military readiness. "BZZZZZZ!" and the surrounding swarms retreated.

The Fly Lord angled a few facets at Smash, as if pondering a suitable action. Then he buzzed out another command. Instantly the guardflies closed on Smash's party again, and the bowflies fired off another arrow pointing the way.

"I don't know whether the Gap Dragon's Ear has provided us with doom or reprieve," Chem said. "But we'd better go along."

They went along. The arrows pointed them to the east. Soon they arrived at the flypaper wall. At this point a squadron of big spearflies charged, threatening to run every member of the party through.

They got the message. They all plunged through the wall. They got terribly stuck-up with flypaper, but the flies let them be. It seemed they had been banished from Flyland.

They staggered around, looking for another hotspring for washing. But before they found one, a small flying dragon spied them. It winged rapidly east.

"I fear this is dragon country," the Siren said. "Look at the dragonclaw marks on the trees."

Smash saw that all the trees were marked, and the scratches were definitely those of dragons. The largest and deepest scrapes were also the highest; the biggest monsters set the most imposing signatures. "We had better move," he said. In his present state he could not adequately protect this party against a pack of dragons, annoying as it was to admit that fact even privately.

But they couldn't move very well, tangled in flypaper. It was collecting dirt and leaves and stray bugs, making each member of the party resemble a harpy dipped in glue. Long before they found a hotspring, they heard the heavy tread of the feet of a land dragon.

"You know what?" the Siren said angrily. "The flies offered us up to the dragons!"

"And the Ear, too," John cried, spying the Gap Dragon's Ear on the ground.

"That's to frame us," Goldy said. "The dragons will think we killed one of their number, and they'll really chomp us."

Smash braced himself. "I'll try to hold them off."

"You haven't yet recovered enough strength," the Siren said. "And many big dragons are coming. Don't try to fight." She took the Ear from John and listened to it. It twitched in her hand. "Someone's talking about us! An ogre, a centaur, and five nymphs."

"That won't do us much good if the dragons eat us," Tandy muttered.

"What's it like to be eaten?" Biythe asked. Clothed in paper, she looked just like the others, with hardly any of her metal showing.

"That's right-you have had even less experience in regular Xanth than I have," Tandy said. "But I doubt you'll ever be eaten. Your body is brass."

"Well, everything is brass where I come from," Biythe replied. "My pet bird is brass, my sheep is brass, even my ass is brass. That's the way it is in the City of Brass. What does that have to do with being eaten?"

"Monsters don't eat brass here," Tandy explained.

"I can't be eaten?" Biythe asked, sounding disappointed.

"Oh, you could try," John said. "When the first dragon comes, you could volunteer to be the first eaten.

But I think you alone among us are secure from that fate."

"I wonder," the brassie said thoughtfully.

Already the first dragon was arriving. It was a huge eight-legged land rover, snorting smoke. Smash strode forward to meet it, knowing it would have been too much for him even when he had his full strength. It wasn't the dragon's size so much as its heat; it could roast him long before he hurt it. But the dragon would attack regardless of whether he fought, and it was an ogre's way to fight. Maybe he could hurl some boulders at it and score a lucky conk on its noggin.

Then Biythe ran past him, intercepting the dragon. The dragon exhaled, bathing her in flame, but brief heat could not hurt her. She continued right on up to its huge snout. "Eat me first, dragon!" she cried.

The dragon did not squat on ceremony. It opened its monstrous jaws and took her in in one bite.

And broke half a dozen teeth on her hard metal.

Biythe frowned amidst the smoke and piled fragments of teeth. "You can do better than that, dragon!" she urged indignantly.

The dragon tried again-and broke six more teeth. "Come on, creature!" Biythe taunted. "Show your mettle on my metal. I've received worse dents just from being dropped-but I won't say where."

Now several more dragons arrived. They paused, curious about the holdup. Another snatched Biythe away, crunching down hard on her body-and it, too, lost six teeth.

The brass girl was insulted. "Is that all there is to it? What kind of experience is that? Here I visit this great big, soft, slushy, living world at great inconvenience, and you monsters aren't doing a thing!"

Abashed, the dragons stared at her. She still looked like a clothed flesh person. Finally a third one tried-and lost its quota of teeth.

"If you dumb dragons can't eat one little girl when she's cooperating, what good are you?" Biythe demanded, disgusted. She shook tooth fragments off her body, marched up to one of the largest

monsters, and yanked at a whisker. "You-eat me or else!"

The dragon exhaled a horrendous belch of flame. It burned Biythe's remaining flypaper to ashes, but didn't hurt her. Seeing that, the monster backed off, dismayed. If a thing couldn't be chomped or scorched, it couldn't be handled.

"You know, I think we have had a stroke of luck," the Siren said. "The dragons naturally assume we are all like that."

"Luck?" John asked. "Biythe knows what she's doing! She knows she needs us to get her back to her world. She's helping us get out of a fix."

Smash's Eye Queue operated. "Maybe we can benefit further. We need a nice, steady stream of steam to melt off the flypaper."

"A steam bath," the Siren agreed. "But very gentle."

Biythe tried it. She approached a big steam-turbine dragon. "Bathe me, monster, or I'll make you eat me," she said imperiously.

Cowed, the dragon obeyed. It jetted out a wash of rich white steam and vapor. In a moment the brass girl stood shining clean, well polished, the fly ash all sogged off.

"Now my friends," Biythe ordered. "A little lower on the heat; they're tougher than I am and don't need so much."

She was playing it cool! Nervously the others stood in place while the dragon sent forth a cooler blast.

Smash and the girls stepped into it. The vapor was as hot as John could stand, but since she had already lost her wings, it didn't hurt her. The others had no trouble. All the flypaper was steamed off.

Smash also became aware that his .fleas were gone. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn't been scratching since entering the Kingdom of the Flies. Those fly-repellent leaves must have driven off the fleas, too!

Now a dragon approached with an elf on a leash. "Do any of you freaks speak human?" the elf asked.

Smash exchanged glances with the others. Biythe Brassie had been speaking to these monsters all along, and they had understood. Didn't this elf know that? Better to play it stupid. "Me freak, some speak," he said, emulating his former ogre mode.

The elf considered him. The little man's expression ran a brief gamut from fear of a monster to contempt for the monster's wit. "What are you doing here with these six females?"

"Me anticipate girls taste great," Smash said, slurping his tongue over his chops.

Again the fearful contempt. "I know ogres eat people. But what are you doing here in Dragonland?"

Smash scratched his hairy head as if confused. "Me criticize buzzing flies."

"Oh. They booted you." The elf made crude growls at his dragon, and Smash realized he was translating, much as Grundy the Golem did for the King of Xanth. Maybe Biythe had gotten through to the dragons mainly by force of personality.

The dragon growled back. "You'll have to check in with the Dragon Lady."

"Dragon Lady not afraidy?" Smash asked stupidly. The elf sneered. "Of the like of you? Hardly. Come on now, ignoramus."

Ignoramus? Smash smiled inwardly. Not while he remained cursed with the Eye Queue! But he shuffled behind the dragon, gesturing the girls to follow.

The Siren fell in beside Smash as they walked. "I've been listening to the Ear," she murmured. "The voice that talked about us before was the elf's; the Dragon Lady knows about us already. Now the Ear is roaring like a terrible storm. I don't know what that means."

"Maybe we have to get to that storm," Smash whispered. Then the elf turned, hearing him talk, and the conversation had to end.

They came to a huge tent fashioned of dragonet. Inside the net was the Dragon Lady-a scintillatingly regal Queen of her species. She reclined, half supine, in her huge nest of glittering diamonds; whenever she twitched, the precious stones turned up new facets, like the eyes of the Lord of the Flies, reflecting spots of light dazzlingly. She switched her barbed, blue tail about restlessly, growling, and arched her bright red neck. It was really quite impressive. She had been reading a book of Monster Comics, and seemed not too pleased to be interrupted.

"Her Majesty the Illustrious Dragon Lady demands further information, oaf," the elf said, becoming imperious in the reflected glory of his mistress.

Oaf, eh? Smash played stupider than ever. "Me slow, no know," he mumbled.

"Is it true you are impossible to eat?"

Smash held out a gauntleted fist. The Dragon Lady reached delicately forward with her snout and took a careful nip. The metal balked her gold-tinted teeth, and she quickly desisted. She growled.

"If you aren't edible, what use are you. Her Majesty wants to know?" the elf demanded.

"What a question!" Tandy cried indignantly. "People-creatures rule Xanth!"

"Dragon-creatures rule Xanth," the elf retorted. "Dragons tolerate other creatures only as prey."

Nonetheless, the Dragon Lady's growl was muted. Smash suspected that she was not eager to incite a war with the Transformer-King of the human folk.

In response to another growl from his mistress, the elf turned again to Smash. "What are we to do with you?" he demanded.

Smash shrugged. "Me only distrust place where me rust." Actually, neither his stainless steel gauntlets nor Biythe's brass rusted; water was more likely to cause trouble with the fires of the dragons. But he was mindful of the Ear's storm-signal; if he could trick the Dragon Lady into casting them into the storm, their chances should be better than they were here.

"Metal-rust," the elf mused as the Dragon Lady growled. "True, our iron-scaled dragons do have a problem in inclement weather." He glanced suspiciously at Smash. "I don't suppose you could be fooling us?" "Me ghoul, big fool," Smash said amiably. "Obviously," the elf agreed with open contempt. So the Dragon Lady ordered the inedible party dumped into the Region of Air, since the Region of Water did not border Dragonland. An abrupt demarcation established the border; the near side was green turf and trees, the far side a mass of roiling stormcloud. Smash didn't like this, for he knew the others could not endure as much punishment as he could. But now they were committed, and it did seem better than staying among the dragons. They took the precaution of roping themselves together with Chem's rope so that no one would blow away.

They stepped across the line. Instantly they were in the heart of the wind, choking on dust. It was a dust storm, not a rainstorm! The flying sand cut cruelly into their skins. Smash picked up several girls and hunched his gross body over them, protecting them somewhat as he staggered forward. Then he tripped, for he could not see his own flat feet in this blinding sand, and fell and rolled, holding himself rigid so as not to crush the girls.

He fetched up in a valley formed in the lee of a boulder. Chem thumped to a stop beside them. Here the sand by-passed the party, mostly, and it was possible for each person to pry open an eye or two. Thanks to the rope, all were present, though battered.

"What do we do now?" Tandy asked, frightened. The Siren sat up and put the Ear to her ear. "Nothing here," she reported. "But maybe the noise of this sandstorm is drowning it out."

Smash took the Ear and listened. "I hear the brass spaceship," he said.

Biythe took it. "I hear my own folk! They're playing the brass band! I must be ready to go home!" "Are you sure?" the Siren asked.

"Yes, I think I am now," the brass girl said. "I have experienced enough of your world to know I like mine better. You are all nice enough people, but you just aren't brass."

"All too true," the Siren agreed. "We must find another gourd so Smash can take you back. We might all prefer your world at this moment."

"Maybe that's the silence you heard," Tandy said. "A gourd."

"No, there's lots of noise in the gourd," Smash said. "It's an ogrishly fun place."

"Let's find that gourd!" Biythe exclaimed. She was hardly bothered by the sand; she was merely homesick.

"Not until this storm dies down," the Siren said firmly. "Gourds don't grow in this weather."

"But this is the Region of Air; the wind will never die," Biythe protested.

Chem nodded agreement. "I have, as you know, been mapping the inner wilds of Xanth; that's why I'm here. My preliminary research, augmented by certain references along the way, suggests that there are five major elemental regions in Unknown Xanth: those of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and the Void. This certainly seems to be Air-and probably the storm never stops here. Well just have to plow on out of it."

"I can plow!" Biythe said eagerly. She milled her brass hands and began tunneling through the mounded sand. In moments she had started a tunnel.

"Good idea!" Tandy exclaimed. "I'll help!" She shook sand out of her hair and fell in behind the brass girl, scooping the sand farther back. Soon the others were helping, too, for as the tunnel progressed, the sand had longer to go before it cleared.

Finally they were all doing it, in a line, with Smash at the tail end packing the sand into a lengthening passage behind. Progress was slow but relatively comfortable. Periodically Biythe would tunnel to the surface to verify that the storm was still there. When they came to a sheltering cliff, they emerged and made better time on the surface.

The landscape was bleak: all sand and more sand. There were dunes and valleys, but no vegetation and no water.

The wind was indefatigable. It howled and roared and whistled. It formed clouds and swirls and funnels, doing its peculiar sculpture in the sky. Every so often a funnel would swoop in near the cliff, trying to suck them into its circular maw, but it could not maintain itself so close to the stone. Smash was aware that this must be a great frustration to the funnels, which were rather like ogres in their way-all violence and brainlessness.

Then they came to another demarcation. As they stepped across it, the winds abruptly ceased. The air cleared miraculously. But this was no improvement, for the violence of the air was replaced by the violence of the land. The ground shuddered, and not by any ogre's tread. It was an earthquake!

"Oh, I don't like this!" Chem said. "I've always been accustomed to the firmness of ground beneath my hooves."

Smash glanced at her. The centaur girl was standing with her forelegs braced awkwardly in different directions, her brown coat dulled by the recent sand-scouring, her tail all atremble, and her human breasts dancing rather appealingly. "Maybe the ground is firmer farther north," he suggested.

They turned north-and encountered an active volcano. Red-hot lava boiled out of it and flowed down the slope toward them. "Oh, this is worse yet!" Chem complained, slapping at a spark that landed in her pretty tail. She was really shaken; this was just not her type of terrain.

The Siren listened to the Gap Dragon's Ear again. "Say!" she said. "The sounds differ, depending on which way I face!" She rotated, listening intently. "To the north, it's a horrendous crashing; that's the volcano we see. I can hear the sound as I see it belch. To the south, it's the roaring of winds. We've already been there. To the west, a sustained rumble-the main part of the earthquake. To the east-" She smiled beautifically. "A lovely, quiet, still silence."

"Graves are silent," Tandy said with a shudder.

"Better a graveyard than this," Chem said. "We can walk on through a cemetery."

"Sometimes," Tandy agreed.

They turned east. The ground shifted constantly beneath

them as if trying to prevent progress, but they were determined to get free of this region.

As the sun set tiredly beyond the volcano, fortunately not landing inside it, they reached another demarcation of zones. Just beyond it was a patch of hypnogourds. The silence was not of the grave, but of a garden area.

"I never thought I'd be glad to see a patch of those," Tandy said grimly.

"This is where we spend the night," the Siren said. "While we're at it, let's find out whether those gourds are edible."

"Save one! Save one!" Biythe cried.

"Of course, dear. Try this one." The Siren handed the brass girl a nice big gourd.

Biythe hesitated, then looked into the peephole. She looked back up. "There's nothing there," she said.

"Nothing there?" It had not occurred to Smash that any of the gourds could be inoperative. He took the gourd from Biythe and looked in.

And found himself in the spaceship, spinning toward the ground. Hastily he grabbed the controls and tilted it back to equilibrium. Without the brass girl entangling him, he could manage just fine.

In moments he brought the ship back to the City of Brass and to the launching building. He managed to turn it around and land fairly neatly. Then he got out and made his way through the moving buildings to the one where Biythe lived. Number Four, following his string back. He wondered idly whether he had left a trail of string strewn all over the sky, near the moon. He had lost that string in Xanth, but retained it here. Good enough.

The brassies clustered around him. "Where is Biyght?" they demanded. "We're rehearsing with our brass band, and we need her."

"Biythe. She changed her name. She'll be back as soon as I can fetch her. She heard you practicing, and said she would come back very soon. I had to find my way back here, because spaceships scare her."

"Of course; we are afraid of heights. We dent when we fall too far. Biyght already had a dent in her-"

"Don't speak of that to a stranger!" a brass girl told the male brassie.

"So give me some time," Smash said, "and I'll return her. Now I know how to do it."

They were not quite satisfied with this, but let him be. Smash settled down in a niche that moved with the wall, and snoozed.

Chapter 9. Gourmet Gourd

He woke in Xanth, where Tandy had taken away the gourd. "I never know how long to give you," she said. "I'm very nervous about leaving you in there." She lifted the Gap Dragon's Ear. "I kept listening in this, and when it got pretty quiet, I thought maybe it was time to bring you out. I wasn't sure it was you I was -listening to, but since your health is relevant to mine-"

Smash took the Ear. He heard a guttural voice, saying, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, pass this fist or take a fall," followed by a tinkling crash.

"It's not quiet now," Smash reported. "Sounds like me talking."

She smiled. "Talk all you want. Smash. You're my mainstay in this strange surface world. I do worry when you're gone."

Smash put his huge, hairy paw over her tiny human hand. "I appreciate that, Tandy. I know it would be bad for you if you got stranded alone in wilderness Xanth. But I am learning to handle things in the gourd, and I am getting stronger."

"I hope so," she said. "We all do need you, and not just for protection from monsters. Chem says there seems to be a mountain range to the north that we can't scale; the dragons are to the east, and the air storm to the south. So we'll have to veer west, back through the Region of Earth-and that volcano is still spewing hot lava."

"We shall just have to wait till the lava stops," Smash said.

"Yes. But we don't know how long that will be-and it will have to cool so we can walk over it. I guess we're here in the melon patch for a while yet."

"So be it," Smash said. He released her hand, lest the inordinate weight of his own damage it. "Did you say these gourds are edible?"

"Oh, yes, certainly. You can eat all you want. We're all full; they're very good, just so long as you don't look in the peephole. Funny thing is, there's no sign of any world in there, no graveyard or anything."

She handed him a gourd, peephole averted.

Smash took a huge bite. It was indeed good, very sweet and seedy and juicy. It did seem strange that something that could affect his consciousness could also be such good eating-but, of course, that was the nature of things other than gourds. A dragon could be a terrible enemy-but was also pretty good eating, once conquered.

"That gourd I just looked into-" Smash said between gulps. "Why didn't it return Biythe when she looked?"

"We discussed that while you were out," Tandy said. She was the only one of the girls who remained awake; the others were sleeping, including the brass girl. Smash wondered briefly why a person made of metal needed to sleep, then realized this was no more remarkable than a person of metal becoming animate at the punch of a button. "We concluded that she is merely a representation, like you when you're in the gourd. So she can't cross through by herself; she has to be taken by one of us. Then her pretend-body will vanish here, just as yours vanishes there."

"Makes sense," Smash agreed, consuming another gourd m a few bites. "Did she disappear when I took her aboard the Luna shuttle ship?"

"Yes. You remained, holding nothing. Then she reappeared when we took the gourd away, hugging you-"

"There was no room in that cockpit," Smash explained.

"I understand," she said, somewhat distantly.

"I'm out of the ship now, and back in her building. There won't be any trouble this time."

"That's nice. But please rest before you go back in there," Tandy said. "There is time, while we wait for the lava to stop. And-"

Smash glanced at her. She was mostly a silhouette in the wan moonlight, rather pretty in her pensiveness. "Yes?"

She shrugged. 'Take care of yourself, Smash." "Ogres do," he said, cracking a smile. It seemed to him that she had meant to say something more. But, of course, girls changed their minds readily, especially small girls, whose minds were small. Or whatever.

When he was comfortably stuffed, Smash stretched out among the gourds and slept. Tandy settled against his furry forearm and slept, too. He was aware of her despite his unconsciousness, and found he rather liked her cute little company. He was becoming distressingly un-ogrish at times; he would have to correct that.

As dawn brightened, the lava dulled. The volcano was quiescent. The Siren listened to the Ear and reported silence, which she took to mean that they should wait for further cooling. Periodically she tossed damp fragments of gourd on the nearest hardening lava flow; as long as it sizzled and steamed, the time was not yet right.

"Are you ready to go home, Biythe?" Smash asked the brass girl, knowing the answer. "I'm back in the building."

"Good and ready, ogre," she agreed with alacrity. She turned to the others. "No offense to you folk; I like you. But I don't understand this wide-open land. It's so much more secure in a brass building."

"I'm sure it is, dear," the Siren said, embracing her. "Maybe in due course the rest of us will find our own brass buildings."

"And the way you have to sleep here, instead of getting turned off by a button-that's strange."

"All creatures are strange in their own fashion," Chem said. "And we want to thank you for what you did with the dragons. You may have saved our hides."

"I took no risk," Biythe said. But she flushed copper, pleased.

Then Smash picked Biythe up by her brassiere. "And keep your hand off her knee!" Tandy warned.

Everyone laughed, and he looked into a delicious-seeming gourd.

This time it worked. They were both in the brass building.

The brassies spied them and clustered around. There was a flurry of welcomings. Biythe was certainly glad to be home.

"Now if you folk can tell me some other way out of here, I will depart," Smash said. "I don't want the spaceship; there must be some land route."

"Oh, there is!" Biythe said eagerly. "I'll show you."

"Haven't you had enough of me?" Smash asked.

"I feel I owe it to you to help you on your way," she said defensively. "I'll show you the way to the paper world."

"As you wish," Smash agreed. "But you helped us considerably, what with the tunneling and such."

Her face clouded, turning leaden. "The dragons wouldn't eat me!"

Smash did not argue the point. Evidently the brass girl had more than one motive for her scene with the dragons.

Biythe led him out a concealed door, into a smaller chamber. Smash had to hunch over to fit in this one.

Then the room jerked and moved, causing him to bump into a wall. 'This is an elevator," Biythe explained. "It leads to the paper works, but it takes a little while."

"I'll wait," Smash said, squatting down and leaning into a corner so he would not be bumped around too much."

Biythe sat on one of his knees. "Smash-"

He suffered déja vu. His Eye Queue insisted on running down the relevance immediately, instead of allowing it to be the pleasant mystery nature intended. Tandy had addressed him in much the same way last night. "Yes?"

"I wanted to talk to you a moment, alone," she confessed. "That's why I volunteered to show you the way. There's something you should know."

"Where your dent is?"

"I can't show you that; your knee's in the way. It's something else."

"You know something about the Night Stallion?" he asked, interested.

"No, not that," she said. "It's about Xanth."

"Oh."

"Smash, I'm not part of your world. But maybe I see something you don't. Those girls like you."

"And I like them," he admitted, voicing the un-ogrish sentiment with a certain embarrassment. How was be ever going to find his Answer in life if he kept losing his identity? "They're nice people. So are you."

Again she coppered. "I like them, too. I never knew flesh people before. But that's not what I mean.

They-they're not just friends to you. It's hard for me to say, because my own heart's made of brass.

They're female; you're male. So-"

"So I protect them," Smash agreed. "Because females aren't very good at surviving by themselves. I'll help as long as they are with me and need protection."

"That, too. But it's more than that. Tandy, especially-"

"Yes, she needs a lot of protection. She hardly knows more of Xanth than you do, and she's not made of metal."

The brass girl seemed frustrated, but she kept smiling. Her little teeth were brass, too. "We talked, some, while you were in the gourd-that's funny, to think of my whole world as a gourd!-and Tandy told us why she left home. I may be violating a confidence, but I really think you ought to know."

"Know what?" Smash asked. His Eye Queue informed him he was missing something significant; that was an annoying part of the curse. A true ogre wouldn't have worried!"

"Why she left home. You see, there was this demon, named Fiant, who was looking for a wife. Well, not a wife, exactly-you know."

"A playmate?"

"You could call it that. But Tandy didn't want to play. I gather a demon is like an ifrit, not nice at all.

She refused to oblige him. But he pursued her and tried to rape her-"

"What is that?" Smash asked.

"Rape? You actually don't know?"

"I'm not made of brass," he reminded her. "There's lots I don't know. There is a kind of plant in Xanth by that name that girls shy, away from-"

She sighed. "The Siren's right. You are hopelessly naive. Maybe all males worth knowing are. But, of course, that's why females exist; someone has to know what's what. Look, Smash-do you know the way of a man with a woman?" Her brass face was more coppery than ever, and he realized this was an awkward subject for her.

"Of course not," he reassured her. "I'm an ogre."

"Well, the way of an ogre with an ogress?"

"Certainly." What was she getting at?

She paused. "I'm not sure we're communicating. Maybe you'd better tell me what is the way of an ogre with an ogress."

"He chases her down, screaming, catches her by a rope of hair, hauls her up by one leg, bashes her head against a tree a few times, throws her down, sets a boulder on her face so she can't get away, then-"

"That's rape!" Biythe cried, appalled.

"That's fun," he countered. "Ogresses expect it, and give back little ogres. It's the ogre mode of love."

"Well, it isn't the human mode of love."

"I know. Human beings are so gentle, it's a wonder they even know what they're doing. Prince Dor and Princess Irene have taken four years trying to get around to it. Now, if they had a little more ogre heritage, four seconds might be enough to-"

"Ah... yes," she agreed. "Well, this demon tried to-to make ogre love to Tandy-"

"Oh, now I understand! Tandy wouldn't like that!" "True. She's no ogress. So she left her home and sought help. And the Good Magician told her to travel with you. That way the demon can't get her."

"Sure. If she wants that demon smashed, I'll do it. That's my name."

"That's not exactly what she wants. You see, she does want to marry-someone other than the demon.

And she has a lot to offer the right male. So she hopes to find a suitable husband on this journey. But-"

"That's wonderful!" Smash said in the best un-ogrish tradition. "Maybe we'll find a nice human man, just right for her."

"You didn't wait for my but. Smash."

"Your butt?" he asked, looking at her brass posterior.

"Where your dent is?"

"But, B U T," she clarified. "As in however."

"However has a dent?"

She paused briefly. "Forget the dent. However she likes you."

"Certainly, and I like her. So I will help her find herself a man."

"I don't think you understand, Smash. She may not want to go with her ideal human man, if she finds him, if she likes you too well first."

He chortled. "Nobody likes an ogre too well!"

The brass girl shook her head doubtfully. "I'm not sure. You are no ordinary ogre, they inform me. For one thing, they told me you're much smarter than most of your kind."

"That's because of the curse of the Eye Queue. Once I get rid of that, I'll be blissfully stupid again. Just like any other ogre. Maybe more so."

"There is that," Biythe agreed. "I don't think Tandy would like you to be just like any other ogre."

The room stopped moving, after a jolt that bounced her off his knee. "Well, here we are at the paper world," she said.

The elevator opened onto a literal world of paper. Green-colored fragments of paper served for a lawn; brown and green paper columns were trees; a flat paper sun hung in the painted blue sky. At least this world had color, in contrast with the monochrome of most of the rest of the gourd.

"This is as far as I go," Biythe said as Smash stepped out. "If it's any comfort, I think that in some ways you're still pretty stupid, even with the Eye Queue."

"Thank you," Smash said, flattered.

" 'Bye, ogre." The door closed and she was gone. Smash turned to the new adventure that surely awaited him.

Paper was everywhere. Smash saw a bird; idly he caught it out of the air in a paw, not to hurt it but to look at it, because it seemed strange. It turned out to be strange indeed; it, too, was made of paper, the wings corrugated, the body a cylinder of paper, the beak a stiffened, painted triangle of cardboard. He let it go and it flew away, peeping with the rasp of stiff paper.

Curious, he caught a bug. It was only an intricate convolution of paper, brightly painted. When he released it, the paper reconvoluted and the bug buzzed away. There were butterflies, also of paper. The bushes and stones and puddles were all colored paper. It seemed harmless enough.

Then a little paper machine charged up. Smash had seen machines during a visit to Mundania and didn't like them; they were ornery mechanical things. This one was way too small to bother him seriously, but it did bother him lightly. It fired a paper spitball at him.

The spitball stung his knee. Smash smiled. The miniature machine had a name printed on its side: TANK. It was cute.

The ogre stomped on. The tank followed, firing another damp paper ball. It stung Smash on the rump.

He frowned. The humor was wearing thin. He didn't care to have a dent to match that of the brass girl.

He turned to warn the tank away-and its third shot plastered his nose.

That did it. Smash lifted one brute foot and stomped the obnoxious machine flat. It was only paper; it collapsed readily. But an unexpended spitball stuck to the ogre's toe.

Smash tromped on, seeking whatever challenge this section offered. But now three more of the paper tanks arrived. Burp-burp-burp! Their spitballs spit in a volley at the ogre, sticking to his belly like a line of damp buttons. He stamped all three paper vehicles flat.

Yet more tanks arrived, and these were larger. Their spitballs stung harder, and one just missed his eye.

Smash had to shield his face with one hand while he stomped them.

He heard something behind. A tank was chewing up his line of string! That would prevent him from knowing when he crossed his own trail, and he could get lost. He strode back and picked up the tank, looking closely at it.

The thing burped a huge splat of a spitball at him that plugged a nostril. Smash sneezed-and the tank was blown into a flat sheet of paper. Words were printed on it: GET WITH IT, DOPE.

Funny-Smash had never learned how to read. No ogre was smart enough for literacy. But he grasped this message perfectly. This must be another facet of the curse of the Eye Queue. He pretended he did not fathom the words.

He turned again-and saw a much bigger paper tank charging down on him. He grabbed the tip of the cardboard cannon and pinched it closed just as the machine fired. The backpressure blew up the tank in a shower of confetti.

But more, and yet larger, tanks were coming. This region seemed to have an inexhaustible supply!

Smash cast about for some way to stop them once and for all.

He had an idea. He bent to scoop through the paper-turf ground. Sure enough, it turned to regular dirt below, with rocks. He found a couple of nice quartz chunks and bashed them together to make sparks.

Soon he struck a fire. The paper grass burned readily.

The tanks charged into the blaze-and quickly caught fire themselves. Their magazines blew up in violent sprays of spit. Colored bits of paper flew up in clouds, containing pictures and ads for products and all the other crazy things magazines filled their pages with. Soon all the tanks were ashes.

Smash tromped on. A paper tiger charged from the paper jungle, snarling and leaping. Smash caught it by the tail and shook it into limp paper, the black and orange colors running. He dipped this into a fringe of the fire and used the resulting torch to discourage other paper animals. They faded back before his bright-burning tiger, and he proceeded unhampered. Apparently there was nothing quite so fearful as a burning tiger. If this had been a battle, he had won it.

Now he came to a house of cards. Smash knew what cards were; he had seen Prince Dor and Princess Irene playing games with them at Castle Roogna, instead of getting down to basics the way ogres would.

Sometimes they had constructed elaborate structures from the cards. This was such a structure-but it was huge. Each card was the height of Smash himself, with suit markings as big as his head and almost as ugly.

He paused to consider these. At the near side was the nine of hearts. He knew what hearts were: the symbol of love. This reminded him irrelevantly of what the brass girl had told him about Tandy. Could it be true that the tiny human girl liked him more than was proper, considering that ogres weren't supposed to be liked at all? If so, what was his responsibility? Should he growl at her, to discourage her?

That did seem best.

He entered the house of cards, careful not to jostle it. These structures collapsed very readily, and after all, this might be the way out of the paper land. He felt he was making good progress through the worlds of the gourd, and he wanted to go on to the last station and meet the Dark Horse.

The inner wall showed the two of clubs. Clubs were, of course, the ogre's favorite suit. There was nothing like a good, heavy club for refreshing violence! Then there was the jack of diamonds, symbolizing the wealth of dragons. His curse of intellect made symbolism quite clear now. He remembered how many of the bright little stones the Dragon Lady had had; this was probably her card.

Then there was the two of spades, with its shovel symbol. The suit of farmers.

In the center of the house of cards was the joker. It depicted a handsomely brutish ogre with legs that trailed into smoke. Of course! Smash pushed against it, assuming it to be his door to the next world-and the whole structure collapsed.

The cards were not heavy, of course, .and in a moment Smash's head poked above the wreckage. He looked about.

The scene had changed. The paper was gone. The painted sky and cardboard trees existed no longer.

Now there was a broad and sandy plain, like that of the nightmares' realm, except that this one was in daylight, with the sun beating down hotly.

He spied an object in the desert. It glinted prettily, but not like a diamond. Curious, Smash stomped over to it. It was a greenish bottle, half buried in the sand, fancily corked. He found himself attracted to it; a bottle like that, its base properly broken off, could make a fine weapon.

He picked it up. Inside the bottle was a hazy motion, as of slowly swirling mist. The cork had a glossy metallic seal with a word embossed: FOOL.

Well, that was the nature of ogres. He was thirsty in this heat; maybe the stun in the bottle was good to drink. Smash ripped off the seal and used his teeth to pop the cork. After all, he was uncertain how long it would be before he came across anything potable, here in the gourd. But mainly, his action was his Eye Queue's fault; because of it, he was curious.

As the cork blasted free, vapor surged out of the bottle. It swelled out voluminously. Too bad-this was neither edible nor potable, and it smelled of sulfur. Smash sneezed.

The vapor formed a big greenish cloud, swirling about but not dissipating into the air. In a moment, two muscular arms projected from it, and the remainder formed into the head and upper torso of a gaseous man-creature about Smash's own size.

"Who in the gourd are you?" Smash inquired. "Ho, ho, ho!" the creature boomed. "I be the ifrit of the bottle. Thou has freed me; as thy reward, I shall suffer thee to choose in what manner thou shalt die."

"Oh, one of those," Smash said, unimpressed. "A bottle imp." He now recognized, in retrospect, this creature as the figure on the joker card. He had taken it to be an ogre, but, of course, ogres had hairy legs and big flat feet, rather than trailing smoke.

"Dost thou mock me, thou excrescence of excrement?" the ifrit demanded, swelling angrily. " Beware, lest I squish thee into a nonentitious cube and make bouillon soup of thee!"

"Look, ifrit, I don't have time for this nonsense," Smash said, though the mention of the bouillon cube made him hungry. He had squished a bull into a bouillon cube once and made soup with it; he could use some of that now! "I just want to find the Night Stallion and vacate the lien on my soul. If you aren't going to help, get out of my way."

"Surely I shall destroy thee!" the ifrit raged, turning dusky purple. He reached for the ogre's throat with huge and taloned hands.

Smash grabbed the ifrit's limbs, knotted them together in much the way he had tied the extremities of the ghastlies, and jammed the creature headfirst back into the green bottle. "Oaf! Infidel!" the ifrit screamed, his words somewhat distorted since his mouth was squeezed through the bottle's neck. "What accursed mischief be this?"

"I warned you," Smash said, using a forefinger to tamp more of the ifrit into the container. "Don't mess with ogres. They have no sense of humor."

Struggle as he might, the ifrit could not prevail against Smash's power. "Ooo, ouch!" the voice came muffled from the glass. "OooOOoo!" For Smash's finger had rammed into the creature's gasous posterior.

Then a hand came back out of the bottle. It waved a white flag.

Smash knew that meant surrender. "Why should I pay attention to you?" he asked.

"Mmph of mum genuine free wish," the voice cried from the depths of the bottle.

That sounded promising. "But I don't need a wish about how I will die."

"Mmmph oomph!"

"Okay, ifrit. Give me one positive wish." Smash removed his finger.

The ifrit surged backward out of the bottle. "What is they wish, O horrendous one?" he asked, nibbing his rear.

"I want to know the way to the next world."

"I was about to send thee there!" the ifrit exclaimed, aggrieved.

"The next gourd scene. How do I get there?"

"Oh." The ifrit considered. "The closest be the mirror world. But that be no place for the like of thee.

Thy very visage would shatter that scene."

This creature was trying to lull him with flattery! "Tell me anyway."

"On thy fool head be it." The ifrit made a dramatic gesture. There was a blinding flash. "Thou wilt be-sorree!" the creature's voice came, fading away with descending pitch as if retreating at nearly the speed of sound.

Smash pawed his eyes, and gradually sight filtered back. He stood among a horrendous assortment of ogres. Some were much larger than he, some much smaller; some were obesely fat, some emaciatedly thin; some had ballooning heads and squat feet, others the other way around.

"What's this?" he asked, scratching his head, though it had no fleas now.

"This... this... this... this," the other ogres chorused in diminishing echo, each scratching his head.

The Eye Queue needed only that much data to formulate an educated hypothesis. "Mirrors!"

"Ors... ors... ors... ors," the echoes agreed. Smash walked among the mirrors, seeing himself pacing himself in multiple guises. The hall was straight, but after a while the images repeated. Suspicious, he used a horny fingernail to scratch a corner of one mirror, then walked farther down the hall, checking corners. Sure enough, he came across another mirror with a scratch on it, just where he had made his mark. It was the same one, surely. This hall was an endless reflection, like two mirrors facing each other. One of those endless loops he had been warned about. In fact, now he saw three lines of string: he had been retracing his course. He was trapped.

The ifrit had been right. This was no place for the like of him. Already he was hungrier, and there no food here. How could he get out?

He could smash through a mirror and through the wall behind it, of course-but would that accomplish anything? There were situations in which blind force was called for-but other situations, his Eye Queue curse reminded him obnoxiously, called for subtler negotiation. The trick was to tell them apart. One could not conquer a mirror by breaking it; one could only forfeit the game.

Smash stared into the scratched mirror, and his distorted image stared back. The image was almost as ugly as he was, but the distortion hampered it, making it less repulsive than it should have been.

Probably that was why it was snarling.

He turned and contemplated the three strands of string on the floor. He saw where the first one started: it came from another mirror. So he had entered here through a mirror. Surely that was also the way to leave. If he found some means to make another blinding flash, would he be able to step through, as before? But he had no flash-material.

Then he remembered what he had beard in the Gap Dragon's Ear. Could that relate? It had sounded like his voice, talking about a mirror. He decided to try it.

He positioned himself squarely before the mirror. He elevated his hamfist. "Mirror, mirror on the wall,"

he intoned, imitating his own voice as well as he could. "Pass this fist or take a fall." Then he punched forward.

His fist smashed through the glass and into the wall behind it. The mirror tinkled in pieces to the floor.

Smash leaned forward to peer through the hole in the wall. It opened on another hall of mirrors. Sure enough, there was no escape there; he was caught among the mirrors until he found the proper way out.

He tromped to the next mirror. He raised his fist again and spoke his rhyme. The he punched through, with the same result.

This did not seem to be working. But it was the only clue he had. Maybe when the other mirrors saw what was happening, they would capitulate. After all, this technique had been effective with the shocking doorknobs. The inanimate tended to be stupid, as Prince Dor had shown, but it did eventually learn what was good for it.

The change happened sooner than anticipated. His fist did not strike the third mirror; it passed through without resistance. His arm and body followed it, and he did a slow fall through the aperture.

He rolled on something soft and sat up. He sniffed. He looked. He salivated.

He sat on a huge bed of cake, replete with vanilla icing. Pastries and sweets were all about him, piled high: doughnuts, strudel, éclairs, tarts, cookies, creampuffs, gingerbread, and more intricate pastries.

Smash had been growing hungry before; it had been well over an hour since he had last filled up. Now he was ravenous. But again the damned curse of the Eye Queue made him pause. The purpose of these worlds inside the gourd seemed to be to make him unhappy. This food did not fit that purpose-unless there were something Wrong with it Could it be poisoned? Poison did not bother ogres much, but was best avoided.

One way to find out. Smash scooped up a glob of floor and crammed it in his big mouth. The cake was excellent. Then he got up and explored the region, keeping himself busy while waiting for the poison to act. He had not eaten enough to cause real damage to the gross gut of an ogre, but if he felt discomfort, he would take warning.

He was in a large chamber completely filled with the pastries. There was no apparent exit. He punched experimentally through a wall of fruitcake, but the stuff seemed to have no end. He suspected he could punch forever and only tear up more cake. There appeared to be no reasonable limit to the worlds that fit inside the gourd. How, then, was he to escape this place?

His stomach suffered nothing but the ravages of increasing hunger, so he concluded the food was not poisoned. Still he hesitated. There had to be some trap, something to make him hurt. If not poison, what?

There seemed to be no threat, no spitball-shooting tanks, no ifrit, not even starvation from delay.

Well, suppose he fell to and ate his fill? Where would he be? Still here, with no way out. If he remained long enough, stuffing himself at will, he would lose his soul by default in three months. No point in that.

Yet, no sense in going hungry. He grabbed a bunk of angelcake and gulped it down. He felt angelic.

That was no mood for an ogre! He chomped some devilsfood, and felt devilish. That was more like it.

He gulped some dream pie, and dreamed of smiting the Night Stallion and recovering the lien on his soul.

Wait. He forced himself to stop eating, lest he sink immediately into the easy slough of indulgence.

Better to keep hungry and alert, his cursed taskmaster of an Eye Queue told him. What did the Eye Queue care about hunger? It didn't have to eat! But he went along with it for the moment, knowing it would give him no peace otherwise. He would reward himself only for making progress in solving this particular riddle. That was discipline no ordinary ogre could master, infuriating as it was.

Still, time was passing, and he had no idea how to proceed. There had to be something. After all, it wasn't as if he could simply eat his way out of here.

That thought made him pause. Why not eat out? Chew a hole in the wall until he ran out of edibles-which would be another world.

No. There would be too much cake for even an ogre to eat. Unless he knew exactly where a weak spot was-Weak spot Surely so. Something that differed from the rest of this stuff.

Smash started a survey course of eating, looking for the difference. All of it was excellent. A master pastry chef had baked this chamber.

Then he encountered a vein of licorice. That was one confection Smash didn't like; it reminded him of manure. True, some ogres could eat and like manure, but that just wasn't Smash's own taste. Naturally he avoided this vein.

Then his accursed, annoying, and objectionable Eye Queue began percolating again. The Eyes of the vine saw entirely too much, especially what wasn't necessarily there. Manure. What would leave manure in the form of a confection?

Answer: some creature in charge of a chamber of confections. The Night Stallion, perhaps. When the Stallion departed, he would leave his token of contempt. Big brown balls of sweet manure.

What exit would the Stallion use? How could that exit be found?

Answer: the trail of manure would show the way. Horses hardly cared where they left it, since it was behind them. They left it carelessly, thoughtlessly, often on the run.

Smash started digging out the licorice. But when he did, the foul stuff melted into other cake, transforming it into licorice, too. That obscured the trail. He had to do something about that.

He cast about, but came up with only the least pleasant solution. He would have to eat it. That was the only way to get rid of it. To consume the manure of the Stallion.

Fortunately, ogres didn't have much pride about what they ate. He nerved himself and bit in. The licorice-cake was awful, truly feculent, but he gulped it down anyway.

Now his gorge was rising violently inside him. Ogres were supposed never to get sick, no matter how rotten the stuff they ate. But this was manure! He ate on.

Smash came to a round hole in the material of the chamber. The dung had led him to it-since this was the exit the Stallion had taken. Smash scrambled through the passage, knowing that if he could just choke down his revolted, revolting stomach a little longer, he would win this contest, too.

He came to a drop-off and tumbled out, spinning and turning in air. Now he was falling through darkness.

That last jolt of weightlessness was too much. His stomach burst its constraints and heaved its awful contents violently out. The reaction sent him zooming backward through space. Smash puked, it seemed, for eons, and worked up a velocity to rival that of the brass spaceship. He hoped he didn't get lost in space beyond the stars.

Chapter 10. Fond Wand

He was retching into the gourd patch. Apparently he had jetted himself right out of the gourd! Chem was using the hardened rind of an empty gourd to scoop the vomit away, making room for more as it flowed voluminously from Smash's mouth.

As he realized where he was, his sickness abated. He looked about.

The girls were in a sorry state. All five of them were spattered. "We decided to get you out of the gourd before it got worse," Tandy said apologetically. "What happened?"

"I ate a lot of horse-er, manure," Smash said. "Instead of cake and pastry."

"Ogres do have unusual tastes," John remarked.

Smash chuckled weakly. "Where's some decent food? I don't want to eat any more gourds, and I'm going to be hungry as soon as I feel better."

"There'll be food at Goblinland," Goldy Goblin said.

"How far is that?"

Chem produced her map. "As I make it, we're close. From what Goldy tells me, the main tribe of goblins is not far from here, as the dragon flies. Just a few hours' walk, except that there's a mountain in the way, so we have to go around-across the Earth works. That complicates it. But I think the lava is cool enough now. We had better get over it before more comes."

"Like hot vomit," Goldy muttered.

Smash looked at the conic mountain. It steamed a little, but was generally quiescent. "Yes-let's cross quickly."

They started across. Goldy knew a little foot-cooling spell used by goblins and taught it to them. It wasn't real magic, but rather an accommodation to the local landscape. Smash's Eye Queue was cynical, suspecting that any benefit from the spell was simply illusion, the belief in cooler feet. Yet his feet did feel cooler.

They had to skirt the volcano's eastern slope. The cone rumbled, annoyed, but was in its off-phase and could not mount any real action.

The ground, however, was rested. It had energy to expend. It shook, making their travel difficult. The shaking became more violent, causing the hardened lava to craze, to crack, to break up, and to form fissures, exposing the red-hot rock down below.

"Hurry!" Chem cried, her hooves dancing on the shifting rocks. Smash remembered that insecure footing made her nervous. Now it made him nervous, too.

"Oh, I wish I could fly again!" John cried, terrified. She stumbled and started to fall into a widening crack.

Chem caught her. "Get on my back," she directed. The fairy scrambled gratefully aboard.

The ground shook again. A fragment turned under the Siren's foot, and she went down. Smash caught her, lifted her high, and saw that her ankle was twisted. He would have to carry her.

Now the volcano rumbled again. It might be in its off-phase, but it wasn't entirely helpless. A new fissure opened in its side, and bright red lava welled out, like fresh blood. It spilled down toward them, shifting channels to orient accurately.

"It's coming for us!" Tandy cried, alarmed. "This land doesn't like us!"

Smash looked northeast. The goblin territory was far across the treacherously shifting rocks. Already the lava plain was humping like a slow ocean swell, as if trying to break free of its cool crust. Smash knew that if much more fragmentation occurred, they would all fall through that crust into the liquid lava below.

"Too far!" Tandy cried despairingly. "We can't make it!"

"North!" Chem said. "It's better to the north!" They scrambled north, though that horizon looked like a wall of fire. The lava crust broke into big plates that, in turn, fragmented into platelets that slowly subsided under the weight of the party. Red lava squeezed up around the edges and leaked out onto the surface. Meanwhile, the fresh lava from the fissure flowed down to join the turbulent plain, further melting the platelets. There was now no retreat.

"Spread out!" Goldy cried. "Not too much weight on any one plate!"

They did it. The goblin girl was the most agile, so she led the way, finding the best plates and the best crossing places. Tandy followed, glancing nervously back at Smash as if afraid he would be too clumsy.

She did care for him; it was obvious, now that Biythe had given him the hint. But that was hardly worth worrying about at this moment. They might all soon perish.

Next in line was Chem, carrying John on her back, her hooves handling the maneuvering well. Then came Smash, holding the Siren in his arms. Her feet had converted back to the tail; evidently that alleviated the pain in her ankle. However, her tail form was also her bare-top form, and the sight of all that juggling flesh made him ravenous again. He hoped he never got so hungry that he forgot these were his friends.

The edges of the plates depressed alarmingly as they took Smash's weight, for it was concentrated in a smaller area than was the centaur's. Once a plate broke under his weight, becoming two saucers, and he had to scramble, dipping a toe in red lava; it hurt terribly, but he ran on.

"Your toe!" the Siren exclaimed. "It's scorched!"

"Better that than falling in," he grunted.

"In case we don't make it," she said, "I'd better tell you now. You're a lot of creature. Smash."

"Ogres are big," he agreed. "You're a fair morsel of creature yourself." Indeed, she had continued to grow more youthful, and was now a sight to madden men. Or so he judged, from his alien viewpoint.

"You're more than I think you know. You could have been where you're going by now if you hadn't let the rest of us impose."

"No. I agreed to take Tandy along, and the rest of you have helped. I'm not sure I could have handled the dragons alone, or gotten out of the gourd."

"You never would have gotten into the gourd alone," she pointed out. "Then you could have avoided the dragons. Would another ogre have taken Tandy along?"

He laughed. He did that a lot since the advent of the Eye Queue, for things he wouldn't have noticed before now evinced humorous aspects. "Another ogre would have eaten the bunch of you!"

"I rest my case."

"Rest your tail, too, while you're at it. If I fall into the lava, you'll have to walk alone."

It was her turn to laugh, somewhat faintly. "Or swim," she said, looking down at the lava cracks.

Now they were at the border. The wall of fire balked them. Goldy stood on the plate nearest it, daunted.

"I don't know how much fire there is," she said. "Goblin legend suggests the wall is thin, but-"

"We can't stay here," Tandy said. "I'll find out." And she took a breath and plunged into the fire.

The others stood on separate plates, appalled. Then Tandy's voice came back: "It's all right! Come on through!"

Smash closed his eyes and plunged toward her voice. The flame singed his fur and the flowing hair of the mermaid; then he was on firm ground, coughing.

He stood on a burned-out field. Wisps of smoke rose from lingering blazes, but mostly the ashes were cool. Farther to the north a forest fire raged, however, and periodically the wind shifted, bringing choking smoke and sprinkling new ashes. To the west there seemed to be a lake of fire, sending up occasional mushroom-shaped masses of smoke. To the east there was something like a flashing field of fire, with intermittent columns of flame.

Chem and John landed beside Smash. The fairy was busy slapping out smolders in the centaur's mane.

"This is an improvement, but not much of one," Chem said. "Let's get off this burn!"

"I second the motion," Tandy agreed. She, too, had suffered during the crossing; parts of her brown hair had been . scorched black. Goldy appeared, in similar condition. None of the girls was as pretty as she bad been.

They moved east, paralleling the thin wall of fire. This was the Region of Fire, but since fire had to have something to bum, they were safe for the moment.

Then a column of white fire erupted just ahead of them. The heat of it drove them back-only to be heated again by another column to the side.

"Gas," the Siren said. "It puffs up from fumaroles, then ignites and burns out. Can we tell where the next ones will be?"

They watched for a few moments. "Only where they've been," Chem said. "The pattern of eruption and ignition seems completely random."

"That means well get scorched," the Siren said. "Unless we go around."

But there was no way around, for the forest fire was north and the lava flows were beyond the firewall to the south.

Also, new foliage was sprouting through the ashes on which they stood, emerging cracklingly dry; it would catch fire and bum off again very soon. It seemed the ashes were very rich fertilizer, but there was very little water for the plants, so they grew dehydrated. Here in the Region of Fire, there was no long escape from fire.

"How can we get through?" Tandy asked despairingly. Smash put his Eye Queue curse to work yet again. He was amazed at how much he seemed to need it, now that he had it, when he had never needed it before, as if intelligence were addictive; it kept generating new uses for itself. He was also amazed at what his stupid bonemuscle ogre brain could do when boosted by the Queue and cudgeled by necessity.

"Go only where they've been," he said."

The others didn't understand, so be showed the way. "Follow me!" .He watched for a dying column, then stepped near it as it flickered out. There would be a little while before it built up enough new gas to fire again. He waited in the diminishing shimmer of heat, watching the other columns. When another died, next to his own, he stepped into its vacated spot. The other members of the party followed him. "I'll assume this is wit instead of luck," the Siren murmured. Smash was still carrying her, though now she had switched back to legs and dress, in case he had to set her down.

As they moved to the third fumarole, the first fired again. These flares did not dawdle long! Now they were in the middle of the columns, unable to escape unscathed. But Smash stepped forward again into another dying flame, panting in the stink of it, yet surviving unburned.

In this manner the party made its precarious and uncomfortable way through the fires, and came at last to the east firewall. They plunged through-and found themselves in the pleasant, rocky region of the goblins.

"What a relief!" Tandy exclaimed. "Nothing could be worse than that, except maybe what's inside a gourd."

"You haven't met the local goblins yet," Goldy muttered.

There was a small stream paralleling the wall, cool and clean. They all drank deeply, catching up from their long engagement with the heat. Then they washed themselves off and tended to their injuries. The Siren bound her ankle with a bolt of gauze from a gauze-bush, and Tandy tended to Smash's scorched toe.

"Goldy will find her husband here," Smash said as she worked. "Soon we may find a human husband for you." He hoped he was doing the right thing, bringing the matter into the open.

She looked up at him sharply. "Who squealed?" she demanded.

"Biythe said you were looking for-"

"What does she know?" Tandy asked.

Smash shrugged awkwardly. This wasn't working out very well. "Not much, perhaps."

"When the time comes. I'll make my own decision."

Smash could not argue with that. Maybe the brass girl had been mistaken. Biythe's heart, as she had noted, was brass, and perhaps she was not properly attuned to the hearts made of flesh. But Smash had a nagging feeling that wasn't it. These females seemed to have a common awareness of each other's nature that males lacked. Maybe it was just that they were all interested in only one thing. "Anyway, we'll deliver Goldy soon."

They found no food, so they walked on along the river, which curved eastward, north of the mountain range that separated this land from that of the dragons. The goblins had to be somewhere along here, perhaps occupying the mountains themselves. Goblins did tend to favor dark holes and deep recesses; few were seen in open Xanth, though Smash understood that in historical times the goblins had

dominated the land. It seemed they had become less ugly and violent over the centuries, and this led inevitably to a diminution of their power. He had heard that some isolated goblin tribes had become so peaceful and handsome that they could hardly be distinguished from gnomes. That would be like ogres becoming like small giants-astonishing and faintly disgusting.

The river broadened and turned shallow, finally petering out into a big dull bog. Brightly colored fins poked up from the muck, and nostrils surmounting large teeth quested through it. Obviously the main portions of these creatures were hidden beneath the surface. It did not seem wise to set foot within that bog. Especially not with a sore toe.

They skirted it, walking along the slope at the base of the mountain range. The day was getting late, and Smash was dangerously hungry. Where were the goblins?

Then the goblins appeared. An army of a hundred or so swarmed around the party. "What are you creeps doing here?" the goblin chief demanded with typical goblin courtesy.

Goldy stepped forward. "I am Goldy Goblin, daughter of the leader of the Gap Chasm Goblins, Gorbage," she announced regally.

"Never heard of them," the chief snapped. "Get out of our territory, pasteface."

"What?" Goldy was taken aback. She was very fair for a goblin, but it wasn't merely the name that put her at a loss.

"I said get out, or we'll cook you for supper."

"But I came here to get married!" she protested.

The goblin chief swung backhanded, catching the side of her head and knocking her down. "Not here you don't, foreign stranger slut." He turned away, and the goblin troops began to move off.

But Tandy acted. She was furious. "How dare you treat Goldy like that?" she demanded. "She came all the way here at great personal risk to get married to one of your worthless louts, and you-you-"

The goblin chief swung his hand at her as he had at Goldy, but Tandy moved faster. She made a hurling gesture in the air, with her face red and her eyes squinched almost shut. The goblin flipped feet over ears and landed, stunned, on the ground. She had thrown a tantrum at him.

Smash sighed. He knew the rules of interspecies dealings. How goblins treated one another was their own business; that was why these goblins had left Smash and the rest of his party alone. Their personal interplay was rough, but they were not looking for trouble with ogres or centaurs or human folk. Unlike the prior goblin tribe, this one honored the conventions. But now Tandy had interfered, and that made her fair game.

The goblin lieutenants closed on her immediately-and Tandy, like an expended fumarole, had no second tantrum to throw in self-defense. But Chem, John, and the Siren closed about her. "You dare to attack human folk?" the Siren demanded. She was limping on her bad ankle but was ferocious in her wrath.

"You folk aren't human," a goblin lieutenant said.

"You're centaur, fairy, and nymph-and this other looks to be part nymph, too, and she attacked our leader. Her life is forfeit, by the rules of the jungle."

Smash had not chosen this conflict, but now he had to intervene. "These three with me," he grunted, in his stress reverting to his natural ogre mode. He indicated Tandy with a hamfinger. "She, too, me do."

The lieutenant considered. Evidently the goblins were hierarchically organized, and with the chief out of order, the. lieutenant had discretionary power. Goblins were tough to bluff or back off, once aroused, especially when they had the advantage of numbers. Still, this goblin hesitated. Three or four females were one thing; an ogre was another. A hundred determined goblins could probably overcome one ogre, but many of them would be smashed to pulp in the process, and many more would find then- heads embedded in the trunks of trees, and a few would find themselves flying so high they might get stuck on the moon. Most of the rest would be less fortunate. So this goblin negotiated, while others hauled their unconscious leader away.