Ogre Ogre

Xanth Book 5

Chapter 1. Nightmare

Tandy tried to sleep, but it was difficult The demon had never actually entered her private bedroom, but she was afraid that one night he would. This night she was alone; therefore she worried.

Her father Crombie was a rough soldier who had no truck with demons. But he was away most of the time, guarding the King at Castle Roogna. Crombie was fun when he was home, but that was rare. He claimed to hate women, but had married a nymph, and tolerated no interference by other males. Tandy remained a child in his eyes; his hand would have hovered ominously near his sword if he even

suspected any demon was bothering her. If only he were here.

Her mother Jewel was on a late mission, planting orange sapphires in a stratum near the surface. It was a long way away, so she rode the Diggle-worm, who could tunnel through rock without leaving a hole.

They would be back after midnight. That meant several more hours, and Tandy was afraid.

She turned over, wrapped the candy-striped sheet about her in an uncomfortable tangle, and put the pink pillow over her head. It didn't help; she still feared the demon. His name was Fiant, and he could dematerialize at will. That meant he could walk through walls.

The more Tandy thought about that, the less she trusted the walls of her room. She was afraid that any unwatched wall would permit the demon to pass through. She rolled over, sat up, and peered at the walls. No demon.

She had met Fiant only a few Weeks ago, by accident. She had been playing with some large, round, blue rubies, rejects from her mother's barrel-rubies were supposed to be red-and one had rolled down a passage near the demons' rum works. She had run right into a rum wrap a demon was using, tearing it so that it became a bum wrap. She had been afraid the demon would be angry, but instead he had simply looked at her with a half-secret half-smile - and that had been worse. Thereafter that demon had shown up with disturbing frequency, always looking at her as if something demoniacally special was on his mind. She was not so naive as to be in doubt about the nature of his thought. A nymph would have been flattered-but Tandy was human. She sought no demon lover.

Tandy got up and went to the mirror. The magic lantern brightened as she approached, so that she could see herself. She was nineteen years old, but she looked like a child in her nightie and lady-slippers, her brown tresses mussed from constant squirming, her blue eyes peering out worriedly. She wished she looked more like her mother-but of course no human person could match the pretty faces and fantastic figures of nymphs. That was what nymphdom was all about-to attract men like Crombie who judged the distaff to be good for only one thing. Nymphs were good for that thing. Human girls could be good for it, too, but they really had to work at it; they fouled it up by assigning far more meaning to it than the nymphs did, so were unable to proceed with sheer delighted abandon. They were cursed by their

awareness of consequence.

She peered more closely at herself, brushing her tresses back with her hands, rearranging her nightie, standing straighten. She was no child, whatever her famer might choose to think. Yet she was not exactly buxom, either. Her human heritage had given her a good mind and a soul, at the expense of voluptuousness. She had a cute face, with a pert, upturned nose and full lips, she decided, but not enough of the rest of it. She couldn't make it as a nymph.

The demon Fiant obviously thought she would do, however. Maybe he didn't realize that her human component made her less of a good thing. Maybe he was slumming, looking for an intriguing change of pace from the dusky demonesses who could assume any form they chose, even animal forms. It was said that sometimes they would change to animal form in the middle of the act of-but no human girl was supposed to be able to imagine anything like that. Tandy couldn't change form, in or out of bed, and certainly she didn't want any demon's attention. If only she could convince him of that!

There was nothing to do but try to sleep again. The demon would come or he wouldn't; since she had no control over that, there was no sense worrying.

She lay down amidst the mess her bed had become and worried. She closed her eyes and remained still, as if sleeping, but remained tensely awake. Maybe after a while her body would be fooled into relaxing.

There was a flicker at the far wan. Tandy spied it through almost-closed eyes and kept her small body frozen. It was the demon; he really had come.

In a moment Fiant solidified inside the room. He was large, muscular, and fat, with squat horns sprouting from his forehead and a short, unkempt beard that made him look like a goat. His hind feet were hooflike, and he had a medium-length tail at his posterior, barbed at the tip. There was a dusky ambience about him that would have betrayed his demonic nature, no matter what form he took. His eyes were like smoky quartz shielding an internal lava flow, emitting a dull red light that brightened when his attention warmed to something. By diabolic standards, he was handsome enough, and many a nymph would have been deliriously happy to be in Tandy's place.

Tandy hoped Fiant would go away, after perceiving her asleep and disordered, but knew he wouldn't. He found her attractive, or at least available, and refused to be repulsed by her negative response. Demons expected rejections; they thrived on them. It was said that, given a choice between rape and seduction, they would always choose the rape. The females, too. Of course, it was impossible to rape that kind; she would simply dematerialize if she didn't like it. Which might be another explanation for Fiant's interest in Tandy; she couldn't dematerialize. Rape was possible.

Maybe if she were positive, welcoming him, that would turn him off. He was obviously tired of willing females. But Tandy couldn't bring herself to try that particular ploy. If it didn't work, where would she be?

Fiant approached the bed, grinning evilly. Tandy kept her eyes screwed almost shut. What would she do if he touched her? She was sure that screaming and fighting would only encourage him and make his eyes glow with preternatural lust-but what else was there?

Fiant paused, looming over her, his paunch protruding, the light from his eyes spearing down through slits. "Ah, you lovely little morsel," he murmured, a wisp of smoke curling from his mouth as he spoke.

"Be thrilled, you soft, human flesh. Your demon lover is here at last! Let me see more of you." And he snatched the sheet away.

Tandy hurled the pillow at him and bounced off the bed, her terror converting to anger. "Get out of here, foul spirit!" she screamed.

"Ah, the tender morsel wakes, cries welcome! Delightful!" The demon strode toward her, the blue tip of his forked tongue rasping over his thin lips. His tail flicked similarly.

Tandy backed away, her terror/anger intensifying. "I loathe you! Go away!"

"Presently," Fiant said, his tail stiffening as it elevated. "Hone your passion to its height, honey, for I will possess its depth." He reached for her, his horns brightening in the reflected glare of his eyes.

Desperate, Tandy wreaked her ultimate. She threw a tantrum. Her body stiffened, her face turned red, her eyes clenched shut, and she hurled that tantrum right at the demon's fat chest.

It struck with explosive impact. The demon sundered into fragments, his feet, hands, and head flying outward. His tail landed on the bed and lay twitching like a beheaded snake.

Tandy chewed her trembling lip. She really hadn't wanted to do that; her tantrums were devastating, and she wasn't supposed to throw them. Now she had destroyed the demon, and there would be hell to pay.

How could she answer to hell for murder?

The pieces of the demon dissolved into smoke. The cloud coalesced-and Fiant formed again, intact. He looked dazed. "Oh, that kiss was a beauty," he said, and staggered through the wall.

Tandy relaxed. Fiant wasn't dead after all, but he was gone. She had the best of both situations. Or did she? He surely would not stay gone-and now they both knew her tantrums would not stop him. She had only postponed her problem.

Nevertheless, now she was able to sleep. She knew there would be no more trouble this night, and her mother would be home the next few nights. Fiant, for all his boldness when he had his victim isolated, stayed clear when a responsible person was in the neighborhood.

Next day Tandy tried to talk to her mother, though she was pretty sure it wouldn't help. "Mother, you know that demon Fiant, who works at the rum refinery? He-"

"Oh, yes, the demons are such nice people," Jewel said, smelling of mildly toasted sulfur. That was her magic: her odor reflected her mood. "Especially Beauregard, doing his research paper-"

"Which he has been working on since before I was born. He's a nice demon, yes. But Fiant is another kind. He-"

"They never make any trouble for me when I have to set gems in their caves. The demons are such good neighbors." The sulfur was getting stronger, beginning to crinkle the nose; Jewel didn't like to hear criticisms.

"Most are. Mother." Naturally the demons didn't bother Jewel; without her, there would be no gems to find, and the demons were partial to such trinkets. "But this one's different. He-"

"Everyone's different, of course, dear. That's what makes Xanth so interesting." Now she smelled of freshly blooming orange roses.

"Maybe different isn't quite what I mean. He comes to my room at night-"

"Oh, he wouldn't do that! That wouldn't be right." The wrongness of such a thing showed in the smell of an overripe medicine ball; even immature medicine balls smelled unpleasantly of illness, and aging intensified the effect "But he did, last night-"

"You must have dreamed it, dear," Jewel said firmly. And the aroma of carrion of a moderately sated dragon showed how distasteful any such notion was to Jewel. "Sometimes those nightmares carry irresponsible dreams."

Tandy saw that her mother did not want to become aware of the truth. Jewel had been a nymph and retained many of her nymphal qualities despite the burden of experience that marriage and motherhood had imposed on her. She had no real understanding of evil. To her, all people and all creatures were basically good neighbors, including demons. And in truth, the demons had been tolerably well behaved, until Fiant had taken his interest in Tandy.

Her father Crombie would understand, though. Crombie was not only human, he was a man of war.

Well did he understand the ways of males. But he hardly ever had time off, and she had no way to advise him of her situation, so he couldn't help now.

As she thought of her father, Tandy abruptly realized that Jewel could not afford to lose her faith in people, because then she would have to question Crombie's fidelity. That could only disrupt her life.

Evidently Jewel's thoughts were to some extent parallel to Tandy's because now there was the disturbing odor of a burning field of wild oats.

So Tandy couldn't actually talk to her mother about this. It would have to be her father, in private. That meant she had to get to him, since he would not be home in time to deal with the demon. It was said that no man could stand against a demon in combat, but Crombie was more than a man: he was her father.

She had to reach him.

That was a problem in itself. Tandy had never been to Castle Roogna. She had never even been to the surface of Xanth. She would be lost in an instant if she ever left the caves. In fact, she was afraid to try.

How could she travel all the way to her father's place of employment, alone? She had no good answer.

The demon did not come the following night. The nightmares visited instead. Every time she slept, they trotted in, rearing over her bed, hooves flashing, ears fiat back, snorting the scary vapors that were the bad dreams they bore. She woke in justified terror, and they were gone-only to return as she slept again.

That was the way of such beasts.

Finally she became so desperate she threw a tantrum at one of them. The tantrum struck it on the flank.

The mare squealed with startled pain, her hindsection collapsing, and her companions fled.

Tandy was instantly sorry, as she generally was after throwing a tantrum; she knew the dark horse was only doing its duty and should not be punished. Tandy woke completely, tears in her eyes, determined to help the animal-but of course it was gone. It was almost impossible to catch a nightmare while awake.

She checked where the mare had stood. The floor was scuffled there, and there were a few drops of blood. Tandy hoped the mare had made it safely home; it would be several nights before this one was fit for dream-duty again. It was a terrible thing to lash out at an innocent creature like that, no matter how bothersome it might be, and Tandy resolved not to do that again.

Next time she slept, she watched for the nightmares, trying to identify the one she had hurt. But they were a long time in coming, as if they were now afraid of her, and she could hardly blame them for that.

But at last they came, for they were compelled to do their job even when it was dangerous to them.

Timidly they approached with their burdens of dreams, and these now related to the harming of equines.

They were making her pay for her crime! But she never saw the hurt one, and that made her feel increasingly guilty. She was sure that particular nightmare was forever wary of her, and would not come again. Maybe it was lying in a stall wherever such creatures went by day, suffering. If only she had held her temper! It was the job of nightmares to carry the unpleasant dreams that sleepers were scheduled to have, just as it was Jewel's job to place the gems people were destined to find. Since the dreams were ugly, they could not be trusted to voluntary participation. Thus nightmares had a bad reputation, in contrast with the invisible daymares who brought in pleasant daydreams. People tried to avoid nightmares, and this made the horses' job more difficult. Tandy wasn't sure what would happen if the bad dreams did not get delivered, but was sure there would be trouble. It was generally best not to interfere with the natural order. She wondered idly what dreams the nightmares themselves had when they slept.

A few days later, when Tandy was settling down, the demon Fiant came again. He walked right through the wall, a lascivious grin on his face. "Open up, cutie; I'm here to fulfill your fondest fancies and delve into your deepest desires." His tail was standing straight up, quivering.

For a moment Tandy froze, unable even to speak. She had been bothered by this creature before; now she was terrified. Staring-eyed, she watched his confident approach.

Fiant stood over her, as before, his eyes glowing like red stars. "Lie back, spread out, make yourself comfy," he gloated. "I shall exercise your extreme expectations." He reached for her with a long-nailed diabolic hand. Tandy screamed.

This night, Jewel was home; she rushed in to discover what was the matter. But the demon marched calmly out through the wall before Jewel arrived, and Tandy had to blame her scream on the nightmares.

That provided her with a fresh burden of guilt, for of course the mares were innocent.

Tandy knew she had to do something. Plant was getting bolder, and soon he would catch her alone-and that would be worse than any nightmare. He had proved he could survive one of her tantrums, so Tandy had no protection. She would have to go to her father Crombie-soon. But how?

Then she had an inspiration. Why not catch a nightmare and ride her to Castle Roogna? The creature would surely know the way, as the mares had the addresses of all people who slept.

But there were problems. Tandy had no experience riding horses; she had sometimes ridden the Diggle behind her mother, traveling to the far reaches of Xanth to place emeralds and opals and diamonds, but this was different. The Diggle moved slowly and evenly, phasing through the rock as long as someone

made a tune it liked. The nightmares, she was sure, moved swiftly and unevenly. How could she catch one-and how could she hold on?

Tandy was an agile girl. She had climbed all over the caverns, swinging across chasms on rope-vines, squeezing through tiny crevices-good thing she was small! - swimming the chill river channels, running fleetly across sloping rockslides, throwing chunks at the occasional goblins who pursued her. If a nightmare got close enough, she was confident she could leap onto its back and hang on to its flowing mane. It would not be a comfortable ride, but she could manage. So all she really had to worry about was the first step-catching her mare.

The problem was, the nightmares came only during a person's sleep. She might pretend sleep, but she doubted she would fool them-and if she grabbed one while awake, it would surely dissipate like demon-smoke, leaving her with nothing but a fading memory. Nightmares were, after all, a type of demon; they could dematerialize in much the way Fiant did. That was how they passed through walls to reach the most secure sleepers. In fact, she suspected they became material only in the presence of a sleeper.

She would have to ride the nightmare in her sleep. Only that would keep it material, or enable her to dematerialize with it.

Tandy set about her task with determination. It was not that she relished the prospect of such a ride, but that she knew what would happen to her at the hands-or whatever-of the demon if she did not ride. She set up a bolster on two chairs, and practiced on it, pretending it was the back of a horse. She lay on her bed, then abruptly bounced off it and leaped astride the bolster, - grabbing a tassle where the mane should be and squeezing with her legs. Over and over she did this, drilling the procedure into herself until it became fast and automatic. She got tired and her legs got sore, but she kept on, until she could do it in her sleep-she hoped.

This took several days. She practiced mostly when her mother was out setting jewels, so that there would be no awkward questions. The demon did not bother her by day, fortunately, so she was able to snatch some sleep then, too.

When she was satisfied, and also when she dared delay no longer, because of Fiant's boldness and her mother's upcoming overnight journey to set diamonds in a big kimberlite pipe-a complex job-she acted.

She wrote a note to her mother, explaining that she had gone to visit her father and not to worry.

Nymphs tended not to worry much anyway, so it should be all right. She gathered some sleeping pills from the recesses where they slept, put them in her pockets, and lay down. One pill was normally good for several hours before it woke, and she had several; they should keep her in their joint sleep all night.

But as the power of the pills took then- magic effect on her body, drawing her into their slumber, Tandy had an alarming thought: suppose no nightmares came tonight?

Suppose Fiant came instead-and she was locked in slumber, unable to resist him? That thought disturbed her so much that the first nightmare rushed to attend to her the moment she slept.

Tandy saw the creature clearly in her dream: a midnight-colored equine with faintly glowing eyes-there was the demon stigma!-set amidst a flaring forelock. The mane was glossy black, and the tail dark ebony; even the hooves were dusky. Yet she was a handsome animal, with fine features and good musculature. The black ears perked forward, the black nostrils flared, and the dark neck arched splendidly. Tandy knew this was an excellent representative of the species.

"I'm asleep," she reminded herself. "This is a dream." Indeed it was. A bad dream, full of deep undertow currents and grotesque surgings and fear and shame and horror, making her miserable. But she fought it back, nerved herself, and leaped for the dark horse.

She made it. Her tedious rehearsals had served her well. She landed on the nightmare's back, clutched the sleek mane, and clasped its powerful body with her legs.

For an instant the mare stood still, too surprised to move. Tandy knew that feeling. Then the creature took off. She galloped through the wall as if it were nothing - and indeed it felt like nothing, for they had dematerialized. The power of the nightmare extended to her rider, just as the sleeping power of the pills extended to their wearer. Tandy remained asleep, in the dream-state, fastened to her steed.

The ride was a terror. Walls shot by like shadows, and open spaces like daylight, as the mare galloped headlong and tailshort. Tandy hung on to the mane, though the strands of it cut cruelly into her hands, because she was afraid to let go. How hard would she fall, where would she be, if she lost purchase now? This was a worse dream than any before-and the sleeping pills prevented her from waking.

They were already far away from her mother's neat apartment. They cruised through rock and caverns, water and fire, and the lairs of large and small monsters. They galloped across the table where six demons were playing poker, and the demons paused a moment as if experiencing some chill doubt without quite seeing the nightmare. They zoomed by a secret conclave of goblins planning foul play, and these, too, hesitated momentarily as the ambience of bad visions touched them. The nightmare plowed through the deepest recess, where the Brain Coral stored the living artifacts of Xanth, and the artifacts stirred restlessly, too, not knowing what moved them. Tandy realized that when a nightmare passed a waking creature, she caused a brief bad thought. Only in sleep did those thoughts have full potency.

Now Tandy had another problem. She had to guide this steed-and she didn't know how. If she had known how, she still wouldn't have known the way to Castle Roogna. Why hadn't she thought of this before?

Well, this was a dream, and it didn't have to make sense. "Take me to Castle Roogna!" she cried. "Then I'll let you go!"

The nightmare neighed and changed course. Was that all there was to it? It occurred to Tandy that the steed was as frightened as Tandy herself was. Such horses weren't meant for riding! So maybe the mare would cooperate, just to be rid of her rider.

They burst out of the caverns and onto the upper surface of Xanth. Tandy was used to strange things in dreams, but was nevertheless awed. Her eyes were open-at least they seemed to be, though this could be merely part of the dream-and she saw the vastness of the surface night. There were spreading trees and huge empty spaces and rivers without cave-canyons, and above was a monstrous ceiling full of pinpoints of light in great patches. She realized that these were stars, which her father had told her about-and she had thought he was making it up, just as he made up tales of the heroic deeds of the men of legendary Xanth's past-and that where there were none was because of clouds. Clouds were like the vapor surrounding waterfalls, loosed to ascend to the heavens. Turn a cloud loose, and naturally it did whatever it wanted.

Then from behind, a cloud came a much larger light, surely the fabled sun, the golden ball that tracked across the sky, always in one direction. No, not the sun, for that chose to travel, for reasons of its own, only during the day.

Jewel had told her that, though Tandy wasn't sure Jewel herself had ever seen the sun. When Tandy had asked her father whether it was true, Crombie had just laughed, which she took to be affirmation of the orb's diurnal disposition. Of course things didn't need sensible reasons for what they did. Maybe the sun was merely afraid of the dark, so stayed clear of night

No, this must be the moon, which was an object of similar size but dimmer because it was made of green cheese that didn't glow so well. Evidently, high-flying dragons had eaten most of it, for only a crescent remained, the merest rind. Still, it was impressive.

The mare pounded on. Tandy's hands grew numb, but her hold was firm. Her body was bruised and

chafed by the bouncing; she would be sore for days! But at least she was getting there. Her bad dream slipped into oblivion for a while, as dreams tended to, fading in and out as me run continued.

Abruptly she woke. A dark castle loomed in the fading moonlight. They had arrived!

Barely in time, too, for now dawn was looming behind them. The nightmare could not enter the light of day. In fact, the mare was already fading out, for regardless of dawn, it was no longer bound when Tandy left the dreamstate. The sleeping pills must have finished their nap, and Tandy had finished hers with them. No-the stones were mostly gone; they must have bounced out one at a time in the course of the rough ride, and now only one was left, not enough to do the job.

In a moment the mare vanished entirely, freed by circumstance, and Tandy found herself sprawled on the ground, battered and wide-eyed.

She was stiff and sore and tired. It had not been a restful sleep at all. Her legs felt swollen and numb from thigh to ankle. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with the cold sweat of nocturnal fear. It had been a horrendous ordeal. But at least she was in sight of her destination.

She got painfully to her feet and staggered toward the edifice as the blinding sun hefted itself ambitiously above the trees. The Land of Xanth brightened about her, and the creatures of day began to stir. Dew sparkled. It was all strangely pretty.

But as she came to the moat and saw that there was the stirring of some awful creature within it, orienting on her, she had a horrible revelation. She knew what Castle Roogna looked like, from descriptions her father had made. He had told her wonderful stories about it, from the time she was a baby onward, about the orchard with its cherry-bomb trees, bearing cherries a person dared not eat, and shoes of all types growing on shoe trees, and all manner of other wonders too exaggerated to be believed. Only an idiot or a hopeless visionary would believe in the Land of Xanth, anyway! Yet she almost knew the individual monsters of the moat by name, and the same for the guardian zombies who rested in the graveyard, awaiting the day when Xanth needed defense. She knew the spires and turrets and all, and the ghosts who dwelt within them. She had a marvelously detailed mental map of Castle Roogna-and this present castle did not conform. This was the wrong castle.

Oh, woe! Tandy stood in dull, defeated amazement. All her effort, her last vestige of strength and hope, and her deviously laid plans to reach her father lay in ruins. What was she to do now? She was lost in Xanth, without food or water, so tired she could hardly move, with no way to return home. What would her mother think?

Something stirred within the castle. The drawbridge lowered, coming to rest across the small moat. A lovely woman walked out of the castle, subduing the reaching monster with a trifling gesture of her hand, her voluminous robe blowing in the morning breeze. She saw Tandy and came toward her-and Tandy ,saw with a new shock of horror that the woman had no face. Her hood contained a writhing mass of snakes, and emptiness where human features should have been. Surely the nightmare had saved the worst dream for last!

"Dear child," the faceless woman said. "Come with me. We have been expecting you."

Tandy stood frozen, unable even to muster the energy for a tantrum. What horrors lay within this dread castle? "It is all right," the snake-headed woman said reassuringly. "We consider that your phenomenal effort in catching and riding the nightmare constitutes sufficient challenge to reach this castle. You will not be subject to the usual riddles of admission."

They were going to take her inside! Tandy tried to run, but her strength was gone. She was a spunky girl, but she had been through too much this night. She fainted.

Chapter 2. Smash Ogre

Smash tromped through the blackboard jungle of Xanth, looking at the pictures on the blackboards because, like all his kind, he couldn't read the words. He was in a hurry because the foul weather he was enjoying showed signs of abating, and he wanted to get where be was going before it did. When he encountered a fallen beech tree across the path, he simply hurled it out of the way, letting the beech-sand fall in a minor sandstorm. When he discovered that an errant river had jumped its channel and was washing out the path and threatening to clean the grunge off his feet and make his toenails visible for the first time in weeks, he grabbed that stream by its tail and flexed it so hard that it splatted right back into its proper channel and lay there quivering and bubbling in fear. When an ornery bullhorn blocked the way, threatening to ram its horn most awkwardly into the posterior of anyone who distracted it. Smash did more than that. He picked it up by the horn and blew a horrendous blast that nearly turned the creature inside out. Never again would that bullhorn bother travelers on that path; it had been cowed.

This sort of thing was routine for Smash, for he was the most powerful and stupid of all Xanth's vaguely manlike creatures. The ground trembled nervously when he tromped, and the most ferocious monsters thought it prudent to catch errands elsewhere until he was gone. Naturally the errands fled with indecent haste, wanting no part of this. In fact, no creature with any wit at all wanted any part of this. For Smash was an ogre.

He was twice the height of an ordinary man, was broad in proportion, and his knots of hairy muscles stood out like the boles of tormented old trees. Some creatures might have considered him ugly, but these were the less imaginative individuals. Smash was not ugly; he was horrendous. By no stretch of imagination could any ogre be considered less than grotesque, and Smash was an appalling specimen of the breed. There had not been a more revolting creature on this path since a basilisk had crossed it Yet Smash, like most powerfully ugly creatures, had a rather sweet interior, hidden deep inside where it would not embarrass him. He had been raised among human beings, had gone on an adventure with

Prince Dor and Princess Irene, and had made friends with centaurs. He had, in short, been somewhat civilized by his environment, incredible as this might seem. Most people believed that no ogre was circled, decided the event must have been a fluke, and started to come in for another engagement. Ogres did not have a monopoly on stupidity!

Smash faced the lion-bodied bird. "Scram, ham!" he bellowed.

The blast of the bellow tore out half a dozen pinfeathers and two flight feathers, and sent the griffin spinning out of control. The creature righted itself again, but this time decided to seek its fortune elsewhere. Thus did it finally do something halfway smart, yielding the stupidity title to the ogre.

Smash took a flying leap into the center of the shoefly pie. Leatherlike pastry crust flew up. The ogre grabbed a big handful of the delicious mess and stuffed it into his maw. He slurped noisily on a boot, chewed the tongue in half, and masticated on a pleasantly tough heel. Oh, it was good! He grabbed two more handfuls, crunching soles and sucking on laces and spitting the metal eyelets out like seeds. Soon all the pie was gone. He burped up a few metal nails, well satisfied.

After gorging, he went to a stream and slurped a few gallons of shivering cool water. As he lifted his head, he heard a faint call. "Help! Help!"

Smash looked about, his ears rotating like those of the animal he was, to orient on the sound. It came from a nearby brambleberry bush. He parted the foliage with one gross finger and peered in. There was a tiny manlike creature. "Help, please!" it cried.

Ogres had excellent eyesight, but this person was so small that Smash had to focus carefully to see him.

Her. It was naked and had-well, it was a tiny female imp. "Who you?" he inquired politely, his breath almost knocking her down.

"I'm Quieta the Imp," she cried, rearranging her hair, which his breath had violently disarrayed. "Oh, ogre, ogre-my father's trapped and will surely perish if not rescued soon. Please, I beseech you most prettily, help him escape, and I will reward you in my fashion."

Smash did not care one way or another about imps; they were too small to eat; anyway, be was for the moment full. This one was hardly more massive than one of his fingers. He did, however, like rewards.

"Okay, dokay," he agreed.

"My name's Quieta, not Dokay," she said primly. She led him to a spot under a soapstone boulder. It was, of course, a very clean place, and the soap had been carved into interesting formations. There was her father-imp, caught in an alligator clamp. The alligator's jaws were slowly chewing off his little leg.

"This is my father Ortant," Quieta said, introducing them. "This is big ugly ogre."

"Pleased to meet you, Bigugly Ogre," Imp Ortant said as politely as the pain in his leg permitted.

Smash reached down, but his hamfingers were far too big and clumsy to pry open the tiny clamp.

"Queer ear," he told the imps, and obediently both covered their minuscule ears with miniature hands.

Smash let out a small roar. The alligator clamp yiped and let go, scrambling back to the farthest reach of its anchor-chain, where it cowered. The imp was free.

"Oh, thank you, thank you so much, ogre!" Quieta exclaimed. "Here is your reward." She held out a tiny disk.

Smash accepted it, balancing it on the tip of one finger, his gross brow furrowing like a newly plowed field.

"It's a disposable reflector," Quieta explained proudly. Then, seeing that he did not comprehend: "A mirror, made from a film of soap-bubble. That's what we imps do. We make pretty, iridescent bubbles for the fairies, and lenses for sunbeams, and sparkles for the morning dew. Each item works only once, so we are constantly busy, I can tell you. We call it planned obsolescence. So now you have a nice little mirror. But remember-you can use it only one time."

Smash tucked the mirror into his bag, vaguely disappointed. Somehow, for no good reason, he had expected more.

"Well, you saved my father only once," Quieta said defensively. "He's not very big, either. It's a perfect mirror, you know."

Smash nodded, realizing that small creatures gave small rewards. He wasn't quite sure what use the mirror would be to him, since ogres did not look at their own ugly faces very much, because their reflections tended to break mirrors and curdle the surfaces of calm lakes; in any event, this mirror was far too small and frail to sustain his image. Since it could be used only once, he would save it for an important occasion. Then he tromped to a pillow bush, pounded it almost flat and lumpy, and snored himself to sleep while the jungle trembled.

The weather was unconscionably fair the next day, but Smash tromped on regardless until he reached the castle of the Good Magician Humfrey. It was- not particularly imposing. There was a small moat he could wade through, and an outer wall he could bash through-practically an open invitation.

But Smash had learned at Castle Roogna that it was best to be polite around Magicians, and not to bash too carelessly into someone's castle. So he opened his bag of belongings and donned his finest apparel: an orange jacket and steely gauntlets, given to him four years ago by the centaurs of Centaur Isle. The jacket was invulnerable to penetration by a weapon, and the gauntlets protected his hamfists from the consequence of their own power. He had not worn these things before because he didn't want them to get dirty. They were special.

Now, properly dressed, he cupped his mug and bellowed politely: "Some creep asleep?" Just in case the Good Magician wasn't up yet.

There was no response. Smash tried again. "Me Smash. Me bash." That was letting the Magician know, delicately, that he was coming in.

Still no answer. It seemed Humfrey was not paying attention. Having exhausted his knowledge of the requirements of human etiquette as he understood them. Smash proceeded to act. He waded into the water of the moat with a great and satisfying splash. Washing was un-ogrish, but splashing wasn't. In a moment the spume dimmed the sunlight and caused the entire castle to shine with moisture.

A sea monster swam to intercept him. Mostly that kind did not frequent rivers or moats, but the Good Magician had an affinity for the unusual. "Hi, fly," Smash said affably, removing a gauntlet and raising a hairy hamfist in greeting. He generally got along all right with monsters, if they were ugly enough.

The monster stared cross-eyed for a moment at the huge fist under its snout, noting the calluses, scars, and barnaclelike encrustations of gristle. Then the creature turned tail and swam hastily away. Smash's greetings sometimes affected other creatures like that; he wasn't sure why.

He redonned the gauntlet and forged on out of the moat, reaching a brief embankment from which the wall rose. He lifted one gauntleted hamfist to bash a convenient hole - and spied something on the stone.

It was a small lizard, dingy blah in color, with medium sandpaper skin, inefficient legs, a truncated tail, and a pungent smell. Its mean little head swiveled around to fix on the ogre.

Smash's gauntleted hand snapped out, covering the lizard, blocking its head off from view. Ogres were stupid but not suicidal. This little monster was no ordinary lizard; it was a basilisk! Its direct glance was fatal, even to an ogre.

What was he to do? Soon the creature's poisonous body would corrode the metal of the gauntlet, and Smash would be in trouble. He couldn't remain this way!

He remembered that Prince Dor had had a problem with a basilisk that was a cockatrice. Dor had sent news of a baleful henatrice, and the cock-lizard had hurried off at a swift crawl to find her. But Smash had no such resource; he didn't know where a hen might be, and realized that this one might even be a henatrice. It was hard to look closely enough to ascertain the sexual status of such a creature without getting one's eyeballs stoned. And if he had happened to know where a basilisk of the opposite sex might be, how could he tell that news to this one? He didn't speak the language. For that he needed the assistance of his friend Grundy the Golem, who could speak any language at all.

Then he remembered the imp's disposable reflector. He fished in his bag with his left mitt and, after several clumsy tries, brought it out. He stuck it to the tip of his gauntleted finger and poked it toward the region where the basilisk's head should be.

Carefully he withdrew his right hand, averting his gaze. This was delicate work! If he aimed the mirror wrong, or if it fell off his finger, or if the basilisk didn't look-There was a plop on the ground at his feet. Oh, no! The mirror had fallen! Dismayed, he looked.

The basilisk lay stunned. It had seen its own reflection in the mirror and suffered the natural consequence. It would recover after a while-but by then Smash would be out of its range.

The mirror had not dropped. It had shattered under the impact of the basilisk's glare. But it had done its job. Quieta's little reward had proved worthwhile.

Smash scooped out a handful of dirt and dumped it over the body of the basilisk so that he would not accidentally look at it. As long as that mound was intact, he would know he was safe.

Now he hefted his right fist and smashed it into the stone wall. Sand fragments flew outward from the impact with satisfying force. This was sheer joy; only when exercising the prerogative of his name did Smash feel truly happy. Smash! Smash! Smash! Dust filled the air, and a pile of rubble formed about him as the hole deepened.

Soon he was inside the castle. There was a second wall, an arm's reach inside the first. Oh, goody! This one was a lattice of bars, not nearly as substantial as the first, but much better than nothing.

For variety. Smash used his left fist this time. After all, it needed fun and exercise, too. He smashed it into the bars.

The fist stopped short. Oooh, ouch! Only the gauntlet preserved it from injury, but it still smarted. This was much tougher stuff than stone or metal!

Smash took hold of the bars with both hands and heaved. His power should have launched the entire wall toward the clouds, but there was nary a budge. This was the strongest stuff he had encountered!

Smash paused to consider. What material could resist the might of an ogre?

Thinking was hard for his kind. His skull heated up uncomfortably, causing the resident fleas to jump off with hot feet. But in due course he concluded that there was only one thing as tough as an ogre, and that was another ogre. He peered at the bars. Sure enough-these were ogres' bones, lashed together with ogres' sinews. No wonder he had found them impervious!

This was a formidable barrier. He could not bash blithely through it-nor would he wish to, for the bones of ogres were sacred to ogres. Little else was.

Smash pondered some more. His brain was already sweating from the prior effort; now there was a scorched smell as the fur of his head grew hot. Ogres were creatures of action, not cerebration! But again his valiant and painful effort was rewarded; he rammed through a notion.

"Oh, ogres' bones," he said. "Me know zones of deep, deep ground where can't be found."

The wall of bones quivered. All bad ogres craved indecent burial after death; it was one of their occasional links with the species of man. The best interment was in a garbage dump or toxic landfill for the disposal of poisonous plants and animals, but ordinary ground would do if properly cursed and tromped down sufficiently hard.

"Me pound in mound with round of sound," Smash continued, arguing his case with extraordinary eloquence.

That did it. The wall collapsed into an expectant pile. Smash picked up a bone, set it endwise against the ground, and, with a single blow of his gaundeted fist, drove it so deep in the earth that it disappeared. He took another and did the same. "Me flail he nail," he grunted, invoking an ogrish ritual of disposal. He was nailing the ground.

Soon all the bones were gone. "Me fling he string," he said, poking the tendons down after the bones with his finger and scooping dirt over the holes. Then he stomped the mound, his big flat feet making the entire region reverberate boomingly. Stray stones fell from the walls of the castle, and the monster of the moat fled to the deepest muck.

At last it was time for the concluding benediction. "Bone dark as ink, me think he stink!" he roared, and there was a final swirl of dust and grit. The site had been cursed, and the burial was done.

But now a new hazard manifested. This was a kind of linear fountain, the orange liquid shooting up high and falling back to flow into a channel like a small moat. It was rather pretty-but when Smash started to push through it, he drew back his hand with a grunt. That was not water it was firewater!

He tried to walk around it, but the ring of fire surrounded the inner castle. He tried to jump over, but the flames leaped gleefully higher than he could, licking up to toast his fur. Ogres could not be hurt by much, but they did feel pain when burned. This was awkward.

He tried to pound out a tunnel under the fire, but the water flowed immediately into it and roasted him some more. It danced with flickering delight, with evilly glittering eyes forming within its substance, winking, mocking him, and fingers of flame elevating in obscene gestures. This was in fact a firewater elemental, one of the most formidable of spirits.

Smash pondered again. The effort gave him a splitting headache. He held his face together with his two paws, forcing the split back together, squeezing his skull until the bone fused firm, and hurried back to the moat to soak his head.

The cool shock of water not only got his head back together, it gave him an idea. Ideas were rare things for ogres, and not too valuable. But this one seemed good. Water not only cooled heads, it quenched fire. Maybe he could use the moat to break through the wall of fire.

He formed his paw into a flipper and scooped a splash through the hole in the outer wall toward the firewall. The splash scored-but the fire did not abate. It leaped higher, crackling mirthfully. He scooped again, wetting the whole region, but with no better effect The firewall danced unharmed, mocking him with foul-smelling noises.

Ogres were slow to anger, because they lacked the wit to know when they were being insulted. But Smash was getting there. He scooped harder, his paw moving like a crude paddle, hurling a steady stream of moatwater at the wall. Still the fire danced, though the water flooded the region. Smash labored yet harder, feeling the exhilaration of challenge and violence, until the level of the moat lowered and the entire cavity between the outer wall and the firewall surged with muddy fluid. The sea monster's tail was exposed by the draining water; it hastily squiggled deeper. Still the fire danced, humming a hymn of victory; it could not be quenched. Water was as much its element as fire. It merely flickered on the surface, spreading wider, reaching toward Smash. Was there no way to defeat it?

"Hooo!" Smash exclaimed, frustrated. But the blast of; his breath only made the flame bow concavely and leap yet higher. It liked hot air as well as cool water, Smash couldn't think of anything better to do, so he kept shoveling water. The flood level rose and backwater coursed out through the gap. Smash tried to dam it up with rubble, but the level was too high. The fire still flickered merrily on the surface, humming a tune about an old flame.

Then the ogre had one more smart notion, a prohibitively rare occurrence for his kind. He dived forward, spread his arms, and swam under the fire. It couldn't reach him below the moatwater. He came up beyond it, the last hurdle navigated.

"Ccurrssess!" the firewater hissed furiously, and flickered out.

Now Smash stood within a cluttered room. Books overflowed shelves and piled up on the floor. Bottles and boxes perched everywhere, interspersed with assorted statuettes and amulets and papers. In the middle of it all, like another item of clutter, hunched over a similarly crowded wooden desk, was a little gnome of a man. Smash recognized him-the Good Magician Humfrey, the man who knew everything.

Humfrey glanced up from his tome. "Don't drip on my books, Smash," he said.

Smash fidgeted, trying not to drip on the books. There was hardly room for him to stand upright, and hardly a spot without a book, volume, or tome. He started to drip on an amulet, but it crackled ominously and he edged away. "Me no stir. Magician sir," he mumbled, wondering how the Good Magician knew his name. Smash knew of Humfrey by description and reputation, but this was the first time the two had met.

"Well, out with it, ogre," the Magician snapped irritably. "What's your Question?"

Now Smash felt more awkward than ever. The truth was, he did not know what to ask. He had thought his life would be complete when he achieved his full growth, but somehow he found it Wasn't.

Something was missing-and he didn't know what. Yet he could not rest until the missing element was satisfied. So he had tromped to see the Good Magician, because that was what creatures with seemingly insoluble problems did-but he lacked the intellect to formulate the Question. He had hoped to work it out during the journey; but, with typical ogrish wit, he had forgotten all about it until this moment. There was no getting around it; there were some few occasions when an ogre was too stupid for his own good.

"No know," he confessed, standing on one of his own feet.

Humfrey scowled. He was a very old gnome, and it was quite a scowl. "You came here to serve a year's service for an Answer-and you don't have a Question?"

Smash had a Question, he was sure; he just didn't know how to formulate it. So he stood silent, dripping on stray artifacts, like the unsmart oaf he was.

Humfrey sighed. "Even if you asked it, it wouldn't be the right Question," he said. "People are forever asking the wrong Questions, and wasting their efforts. I remember not long ago a girl came to ask how to change her nature. Chameleon, her name was, except she wasn't called that then. Her nature was just fine; it was her attitude that needed changing." He shook his head.

As it happened. Smash knew Chameleon. She was Prince Dor's mother, and she changed constantly

from smart to stupid and from beautiful to ugly. Humfrey was right: her nature was just fine. Smash liked to talk with her when she was down at his own level of idiocy, and to look at her when she was at his level of ugliness. But the two never came together, unfortunately. Still, she was a fairly nice person, considering that she was human.

"Very well," Humfrey said in a not-very-well voice. "We are about to have a first: an Answer without a Question. Are you sure you wish to pay the fee?"

Smash wasn't sure, but did not know how to formulate that uncertainty, either. So he just nodded affirmatively, his shaggy face scaring a cuckoo bird that had been about to signal the hour. The bird signaled the hour with a terrified dropping instead of a song, and retreated into its cubby.

"So be it," the Magician said, shrugging. "You will discover what you need among the Ancestral Ogres."

Then he got up and marched to the door. "Come on; my effaced wife will see about your service."

Numbly, Smash followed. Now he had his Answer-and he didn't understand it.

They went downstairs-apparently, somehow, in a manner that might have been intelligible to a creature of greater wit, Smash had gotten upstairs in the process of swimming under the firewall and emerging in the Good Magician's study-where Humfrey's wife awaited them. This was the lovely, faceless Gorgon-faceless because if her face were allowed to show, it would turn men instantly to stone. Even faceless, she was said to have a somewhat petrifying effect. "Here he is," Humfrey said, as if delivering a bag of bad apples.

The Gorgon looked Smash up and down-or seemed to. Several of the little serpents that substituted for her hair hissed. "He certainly looks like an ogre," she remarked. "Is he housebroken?"

"Of course he's not housebroken!" Humfrey snapped. "He dripped all over my study! Where's the girl?"

"Tandy!" the Gorgon called.

A small girl appeared, rather pretty in a human way, with brown tresses and blue eyes and a spunky, turned-up nose. "Yes'm?"

"Tandy, you have completed your year's service this date," the Gorgon said. "Now you will have your Answer."

The little girl's eyes brightened like noontime patches of clear sky. She squiggled with excitement. "Oh, thank you, Gorgon. I'm almost sorry to leave, but I really should return home. My mother is getting tired of only seeing me in the magic mirror. What is my Answer?"

The Gorgon nudged Humfrey, her voluptuous body rippling as she moved. "The Answer, spouse."

"Oh. Yes," the Good Magician agreed, as if this had not before occurred to him. He cleared his throat, considering.

"Also say, what me pay," Smash said, not realizing that he was interrupting an important cogitation.

"The two of you travel together," Humfrey said.

Smash stared down at the tiny girl, and Tandy stared up at the hulking ogre. Each was more dismayed than the other. The ogre stood two and a half times the height of the girl, and that was the least of the contrast between them.

"But I didn't ask-" Tandy protested.

"What me task?" Smash said simultaneously. Had he been more alert, he might have thought to marvel that even this overlapping response rhymed.

The Gorgon seemed to smile. "Sometimes my husband's pronouncements need a little interpretation,"

she said. "He knows so much more than the rest of us, he fails to make proper allowance for our ignorance." She pinched Humfrey's cheek in a remarkably familiar manner. "He means this: the two of you. Smash and Tandy, are to travel through the wilds of Xanth together, fending off hazards together.

That is the ogre's service in lieu of a year's labor at this castle-protecting his companion. It is also the girl's Answer, for which she has already paid."

"That's exactly what I said," Humfrey grumped.

"You certainly did, dear," the Gorgon agreed, planting a faceless loss on the top of his head.

"But it doesn't make sense!" Tandy protested.

"It doesn't have to make sense," the Gorgon explained. "It's an Answer."

Oh. Now Smash understood, as far as he was able.

"May I go back to my tome?" the Good Magician asked petulantly.

"Why, of course you may," the Gorgon replied graciously, patting his backside as he turned. The Good Magician climbed back up toward his study. Smash knew the man had lost valuable working time, but somehow the Magician did not seem unhappy. Naturally the nuances of human interrelations were

beyond the comprehension of a mere ogre.

The Gorgon returned her attention to them. "He's such a darling," she remarked. "I really don't know how he survived a century without me." She focused, seemingly, on Tandy. "And you might, if you would, do me a favor on the way," the Gorgon said. "I used to live on an island near the Magic Dust Village, which I think is right on your route to Lake Ogre-Chobee. I fear I caused some mischief for that village in my youth; I know I am not welcome there. But my sister the Siren remains in the area, and if you would convey my greetings to her-"

"But how can I travel with an ogre?" Tandy protested. "That's not an Answer; that's a punishment 1 He'll gobble me up the first time he gets hungry!"

"Not necessarily so," the Gorgon demurred. "Smash is no ordinary ogre. He's honest and halfway civilized. He will perform his service correctly, to the best of his limited understanding. He will not permit any harm to come to you. In fact, you could hardly have a better guardian while traversing the jungles of Xanth."

"But how does this solve my problem, even if I'm not gobbled up?" Tandy persisted. Smash saw that her spunky nose was a correct indication of her character; she had a

fighting spirit despite her inadequate size. "Traveling won't solve a thing! There's nowhere I can go to-"

The Gorgon touched the girl's lips with a forefinger. "Let your problem be private for now, dear. Just accept my assurance. If my husband says traveling will solve your problem, then traveling will solve it.

Humfrey knew an ogre would be coming here at this time, and knew you needed that sort of protection, since you have so little familiarity with the outside world. Believe me, it will turn out for the best."

"But I don't have anywhere to go!"

"Yes, but Smash does. He is seeking the Ancestral Ogres."

"A whole tribe of ogres? I'm absolutely doomed!"

The Gorgon's expression was facelessly reproving. "Naturally you do not have to follow the advice you paid for, dear. But the Good Magician Humfrey really does know best."

"I think he's getting old," Tandy said rebelliously. "Maybe he doesn't know as much as he used to."

"He likes to claim that he's forgotten more than he ever knew," the Gorgon said. "Perhaps that is so. But do not underestimate him. And don't misjudge this ogre."

Tandy pouted. " Oh, all right! I'll go with the monster. But if he gobbles me up, you'll be responsible! I'll never speak to you again."

"I accept the responsibility," the Gorgon agreed. "Now Smash is hungry." She turned to him. "Come to the kitchen, ogre, for a peck or two of raw potatoes. They haven't been cleaned, and some have worms; you'll like them."

"You're joking!" Tandy said. Then she looked again at Smash, who was licking his chops. "You're not joking!"

"Well spoke; no joke," Smash agreed, hoping there would also be a few barrels of dirty dishwater to glug down with the potatoes. Tandy grimaced.

Chapter 3. Eye Queue

They traveled together, but it was no pleasure for either. Smash had to take tiny slow steps to enable the girl to keep up, and Tandy made it plain she considered the ogre to be a monstrous lout. She refused to let him carry her, as he could readily have done; despite the Gorgon's assurances, she was afraid of getting gobbled. She seemed to have a thing about monsters, and male monsters in particular; she hated them. So they wended their tedious way south toward Lake Ogre-Chobee-a journey that should have taken Smash alone a single day, but promised to take several days with Tandy. The Good Magician had certainly come up with a bad chore in lieu of his year's service for an Answer! And Smash still didn't know what Question had been answered.

The scenery was varied. At first they crossed rolling hills; it took some time for Tandy to get the hang of walking on a hill that rolled, and she took several tumbles. Fortunately, the hills were covered with soft, green turf, so that the girl could roll with the punches, head over feet without much damage. Smash did note, as a point of disinterest, that his companion was not the child she seemed. She was very small even for her kind, but in the course of her tumbles she displayed well-formed limbs and torso. She was a little woman, complete in every small detail. Smash knew about such details because he had once traveled to Mundania with Prince Dor and Princess Irene, and that girl Irene had somehow managed to show off every salient feature of her sex in the course of the adventure, all the while protesting that she wanted no one to see. Tandy had less of each, but was definitely of a similar overall configuration. And her exposures, it seemed, were genuinely unintentional, rather than artful. She evidently had no notion of what to wear on such a trip. In fact, she seemed amazingly ignorant of Xanth terrain. It was as if she had never been here before-which, of course, was nonsense. Every citizen of Xanth had lived in Xanth, as had even the zombies and ghosts, who no longer lived, but remained active.

After they passed the rolling hills they came to a more stable area, where a tangle tree held sway.

Tanglers were like dragons and ogres in this respect: no sensible creature tangled voluntarily with one.

Smash didn't even think about it; he just stepped around it, letting it sway alone.

But Tandy walked straight down the neat, clear path that always led to such trees, innocently sniffing the pleasant fragrance of the evil plant. She was almost within its quiveringly hungry embrace before Smash realized that she really didn't know what it was.

Smash dived for the girl, trying to snatch her out of the grasp of the twitching tentacles. "No go!" he bellowed.

Tandy saw him. "Eeek! The monster's going to gobble me!" she cried. But it was Smash she meant, not the real menace. She scooted on inside the canopy of the dread tree.

With a gleeful swish, the hanging tentacles pounced. Five of them caught her legs, arms, and head. The girl was hauled up and carried toward the slavering wooden orifice in the base of the trunk. She screamed foolishly, as was her kind's wont in such circumstances.

Smash took only a moment to assess the situation. Thought with his brain was tedious and fatiguing and none too effective, but thought with his muscles was swift and sure. He saw Tandy in midair, wearing a pretty red print dress and matching red slippers; tentacles were grabbing at these, assuming them to be edible portions. One tentacle was tugging at her hair, dislodging the red ribbon in it. In a moment the tree would realize that the red was only the wrapping, and would tear that away and get down to serious business.

Smash could handle a small tangler; he was, after all, an ogre. But this was a big tangler. It had a hundred or more pythonlike tentacles, and a personality to match its strength. There was no way to negotiate or to reason with it; Smash had to fight.

The ogre charged in. That wasn't hard; tanglers wanted creatures to enter their turf. It was the getting out again that was difficult. He grabbed the mass of tentacles that had wrapped around the terrified and struggling girl. "Tree let be," he grunted, hauling the works back away from the sap-drooling orifice.

Now, tanglers were ferocious, but not unduly stupid. This tree was full-sized-but so was the ogre. Very few things cared to cross an ogre. The tree hesitated, and its coils about the girl loosened.

Then the tree decided that it could, after all, handle this challenge and gain a respectable meal in the bargain. It attacked Smash with its remaining tentacles.

Smash had been wary of this, but was stuck for it. He grabbed a tentacle in each hand and yanked-but the material was flexible and stretchable, and moved with him. He lacked the leverage to rip the tentacles out. Meanwhile, Tandy was being carried back to the orifice, trailing torn swatches of red cloth.

Smash tried a new tactic: he squeezed. Now the tree keened in vegetable pain as its two tentacles were constricted into jelly, dripped and spurted juice, and finally were lopped off. But the thing expected to take some losses, and it could always grow new tentacles; Tandy was almost at the glistening maw. A limber fiber tongue was tasting the red fabric. By the time Smash could truncate all the tentacles, the girl would be long digested.

Smash hurled himself at the orifice. He smashed his gauntleted fists into it, breaking off the wooden teeth. Sap splashed, burning his fur where it struck. The tree roared with a sound like sundering timber, but the tentacles kept coming.

The ogre braced himself before the orifice, blocking the entry of the girl. She banged into him before the tree realized this, and he was able to grab a couple more tentacles and pinch them off. Now the tree could not consume her until it dealt with him-and he was turning out to be tougher than it had anticipated. In fact, he was turning out tougher than he had anticipated; he had thought the tree had the advantage, but he was faring pretty well.

It was a bad thing in Xanth when a predator misjudged its foe. The tree was now in trouble, but had to fight on. As new tentacles converged. Smash caught them, twisted several together, and tied their tips into a great raveled knot that he shoved into the orifice in the trunk. The maw closed automatically, squirting digestive sap-and the tree suffered a most unpleasant surprise. The keening of agony magnified piercingly.

During this distraction. Smash unwrapped the girl, squeezing each tentacle until it let go. Soon Tandy stood on the ground, disheveled, shaken, but intact. "So-go," Smash said, catching other questing tentacles to clear her escape.

The girl scooted out. She might be small and ignorant, but she didn't freeze long in a crisis! Now Smash retreated cautiously, glaring at hovering tentacles to discourage renewed attack. But the tree had had enough; the ogre had defeated it. There was no further aggression.

Smash stepped out, privately surprised. How was it he had been able to foil a tangler this size? He concentrated, with effort, and managed to come to a conclusion; he had grown since the last time he had tangled with a tangler. Before, he would not have been strong enough to handle it; now, with his larger mass and the gauntlets, he had the advantage. His self-image had not kept pace with his physical condition. He knew his father Crunch could have handled this tree; he, Smash, was now as powerful as that.

Tandy was waiting for him down the path. She was sadly bedraggled, her dress in tatters, and bruises on her body, but her spirit remained spunky. "I guess I have to apologize to you. Smash," she said. "I thought-never mind what I thought. You risked your life to save me from my folly. I was being childish; you were mature."

"Sure-mature," Smash agreed, uncertain what she was getting at. People did not apologize to ogres, so he had no basis for comprehension.

"Well, next time you tell me 'no go,' I'll pay better attention," she concluded.

He shrugged amenably. That would make things easier.

The day was getting on, and they were tired. Battling tangle trees tended to have that effect. Smash -

located a muffin bush with a number of fresh ripe muffins, and used his finger to punch a hole in a lime-soda tree so they could drink. Then he found a deserted harpy nest in a tree, long since weathered out, so that the filth and smell were gone. He harvested a blanket from a blanket bush and used it to line the nest. This was for Tandy to sleep in. It took her some time to catch on, but as darkness loomed across the land in the grim way it had in the wilderness, and the nocturnal noises began, she was glad enough to clamber to it scad curl up in it. He noted that she was good at climbing, though she hardly seemed to know what a tree was. He settled down below, on guard.

Tandy did not sleep immediately. Curled in her nest, she talked. Apparently this was a human trait. "You know, Smash, I've never been out on the surface of Xanth on foot before. I was raised in the caverns, and then I rode a nightmare to the Good Magician's castle. That was an accident;

I really wanted to go to Castle Roogna to see my father, Crombie. But dawn came too soon, and I was out of sleeping pills, and-well, I sort of had to ask a Question so as to have a nice place to stay until I figured out what to do. I spent a whole year working inside the castle; I never even set foot beyond the moat, because I was afraid a certain party would be lurking for me. So it's not surprising I don't know about things like rolling hills and tangle trees."

That explained a lot. Smash realized he would have to watch her more closely, to be sure she did not walk into a lethal trap. The Magician's rationale for having her travel with him was making more sense.

She certainly could not safely travel alone.

"I'm sorry I distrusted you. Smash," she continued in her talkative way. "You see, I was raised near demons, and in some ways you resemble a demon. Big and strong and dusky. I was prejudiced."

Smash grunted noncommittally. He had not met many demons, but doubted they could powder rock in the manner of ogres.

"I certainly have a lot to learn, don't I?" she continued ruefully. "I thought trees were sweet plants and ogres were bad brutes, and now I know they aren't."

Oops. "Ogre. No-grrr!" Smash exclaimed emphatically.

Tandy was quick to catch on; she had the ready intelligence of her kind. "You mean I shouldn't trust all ogres? That they really do gobble people?"

"Ogres prone to crunch bone," Smash agreed.

"But you didn't-I- mean-" she grew doubtful.

"Smash work hard, girl to guard."

"Oh, you mean because the Good Magician charged you with my protection," she said, relieved. "Your service for your Answer. So ogres do gobble people and crunch bones, but they also honor their obligations."

Smash didn't follow all of the vocabulary, but it sounded about right, so he grunted assent.

"Very well. Smash," she concluded. "I'll trust you, but will be wary of all other ogres. And all other things of Xanth, too, especially if they seem too nice to be true."

That was indeed best. They lapsed into sleep.

No one bothered them in the night. After all, the nightmares had to be wary of Tandy, after she had ridden one of them, and he wasn't sure whether the mares knew how to climb trees. As for himself-it was always the best policy to let a sleeping ogre lie.

They breakfasted on sugar sand and cocoa-nut milk. Tandy had never before- drunk cocoa and was intrigued by the novelty. She was also amazed by the way Smash literally shoveled the sugar into his mouth, hardly pausing to chew, and crunched up whole cocoa-nuts, husks and all. "You really are a monster," she said, half admiringly, and Smash grunted agreement, pleased.

Then they resumed their trek south, encountering only routine creatures. A toady was hopping north, looking for some important person to advise; when told that Castle Roogna was many days of hopping distant, it contorted its broad and warty mouth into a scowl. "I hope I don't croak before I get there," it said, and moved on. Croaking, it seemed, was bad form for toadies.

Then there was the quack, with a wide bill and webbed feet and a bag of special magic medicines. He skin, the kind that was made to be tormented by thorns.

There were neatly cleared paths through the brambles that Tandy was inclined to use, but Smash cautioned her against this. "Lion, ant, between plant."

Her small brow wrinkled. "I don't see anything."

Then an ant-lion appeared. It had the head of a lion and the body of an ant, and massed about as much as the girl did; it was, of course, ten times as ferocious as anything a nice girl could imagine. It roared when it spied her, striding forward aggressively.

Smash roared back. The ant-lion hastily reversed course; it had been so distracted by the luscious prey that it had not before seen the unluscious guardian. But Smash knew that soon many more would arrive and would swarm over the intruders. This was no safe place, even for the likes of himself.

"Now I understand," Tandy said, turning pale. "Smash, let's get out of here!"

But already there were rustlings behind them. The antlions had surrounded them. There would be no easy escape.

"Me know path, avoid ant wrath," Smash said, looking upward. How fortunate that he had been raised in this vicinity, so that useful details of geography were coming back to his slow memory!

"Oh, I couldn't swing from branch to branch through the trees the way I'm sure you can," Tandy said,

"I'm agile, but not that agile. I'd be sure to fall."

But the ant-lions were closing in, a full pride of them. Smash had to pick Tandy up to get her out of their reach. Thus burdened, he was unable to fight effectively. Realizing this, the ants grew bolder, closing in, growling and snapping. The situation was getting awkward.

Then Smash spied what he was looking for-the aereal path. "Take care. Go there," he said, boosting the girl up by her pert bottom.

"But it's sidewise!" she protested, peering at the path with dismay. "I'd fall off!"

"Stand tall. No fall," he insisted.

Tandy obviously didn't believe him. But an ant-lion leaped for her, jaws gaping, large front pincers snapping, so she reached up to grab for the high path.

Suddenly she landed on it-sidewise. "I'm level!" she cried, amazed. "The world has turned!" She stood up, or rather sidewise, her body parallel to the ground.

Smash didn't worry about it. He knew the properties of the path, having played on it as a cub. It was always level-to the person on it. He was now far too massive to use it himself, since the aereal path was getting old and brittle, but he didn't need to. He was now unencumbered, free to deal with the lions his own way.

The lions, angered at the escape of the lesser prey, pounced on the greater prey. That was foolish of them. Smash emitted a battle bellow that tore their whiskers back and clogged then- pincers with debris, then began stomping and pounding. Lions yowled as the gauntleted fists connected, and screeched as the hairy feet found flesh. Then Smash picked up two ants by their narrow waists and hurled them into the

nettles. He took a moment to rip a small hemlock tree out of the ground, shaking the locks from its hem, and bit off its top, forming a fair club from the remaining trunk. Soon the path was clear; the ant-lions, like the tangle tree, had learned new respect for ogres.

"You're really quite something. Smash!" Tandy called, clapping her hands. "You're a real terror when you get worked up. I'll bet there's nothing more formidable than an angry ogre!" She had an excellent view of the proceedings from the elevated path, dodging when an ant flew past. Ant-lions did not normally fly; this was a consequence of being hurled out of the way. Ants were now stuck in a number of the jungle trees.

"Me know who," Smash grunted, pleased. "Ogres two."

She laughed. "That figures. The only thing tougher than one ogre is two ogres." She was now standing inverted, her brown tresses hanging naturally about her shoulders as if she were upright. She looked about, from her vantage. "The ants aren't gone, just backed off. Smash," she reported. "Can you come up here?"

Smash shook his head no. But he wasn't worried. He could use the ant paths. If the ants wanted a little more ogre-type fun, he would gladly accommodate them.

They proceeded south, Tandy tilting with the orientation of the aereal path, sometimes upright, sometimes not, enjoying the experience. "There is nothing much in the caverns like this!" she commented.

Smash tromped along the ant highways, tearing through nettles when he needed to change paths. Soon the nettles and ants were left behind, but the high path continued, so Tandy stayed on it. Smash knew it terminated at the Magic Dust Village, and since they had to pass there anyway, this was convenient.

According to Castle Roogna information, the Magic Dusters had once had a population problem, not being able to hold on to their males, so they had constructed the skyway to encourage immigration. Now there were plenty of people at the village, so the path didn't matter, but no one had bothered to take it down. Smash and Tandy made excellent progress. Now they passed a region of hanging vines. They were twined, almost braided, like queues, and seemed to have eyes looking out from their recesses.

Smash distrusted unfamiliar things in general and dangling vines in particular, so he avoided the Eye Queues. They could be harmless, or they could be bloodsuckers. This was beyond the region of his cubhood familiarity, and anyway, things could have changed in the interim. One could never take magic for granted.

He also kept an eye on Tandy, above, to make sure she did not brush against any vines. As a result, he didn't pay close enough attention to his big feet-and stumbled over a minor boulder that was damming a streamlet, much to the streamlet's annoyance.

The boulder dam shattered, of course; it was only stone. The streamlet gladly flowed through, with a burble of thanks to its deliverer. But Smash suffered a momentary loss of balance, his feet sinking into the sodden riverbed, and he lurched headlong into a hanging vine.

The thing wrapped disgustingly around his head. He snatched at it, but already it was sinking into his fur and his flesh and hurting terribly when he tried to scrape it loose. Since an ogre's course was generally that of most resistance. Smash put both hands to his scalp and scraped-and the burgeoning agony made him reel.

"Stop, Smash, stop!" Tandy screamed from above. "You'll rip off your head!"

Smash stopped. "I concur. There is no sense in that."

Tandy stared down at him. "What did you say?"

"I said there is no sense in mortifying my flesh, since the queue does not appear to have seriously incapacitated me."

"Smash-you're not rhyming!"

"Why-so I am not!" he agreed, startled. "That must be the curse of the Eye Queue; it has disrupted my natural mechanism of communication."

"It's done more than that!" Tandy exclaimed. "Smash, you sound smart!"

"That must be a fallacious impression. No ogre is unduly intelligent."

"Well, you sure sound smart!" she insisted. "That Eye Queue, as you call it, must have added some brains to your head."

"That seems reasonable," he agreed, after cogitating momentarily without effort. "The effect manifested concurrently with my contact with that object. Probability suggests a causal connection. This, of course, is much worse than any purely physical attack would have been; it has temporarily un-ogred me. I must expunge it from my system!"

"Oh, no, don't do that," she protested. "It's sort of interesting, really. I don't mind you being smart.

Smash. It's much easier to talk with you."

"In any event, I seem unable for the moment to deactivate it," Smash said. "It seems I must tolerate this curse for the time being. But I assure you I shall be alert for an antidote."

"Okay," she said. "If that's the way you feel." "Indubitably."

They went on-and now Smash noted things that hadn't interested him before. He saw how erosion had caused rifts in the land, and how the forest stratified itself, with light-indifferent vegetation and fungi at the nether levels and bright, broad leaves above to catch the descending light of the sun. The entire jungle was a cohesive unit, functioning compatibly with its environment. All over Xanth, things were integrating-in his new awareness. How blind he had been to the wonders of magic, all his life!

As dusk closed, the aereal path descended to the ground, and they arrived at the Magic Dust Village. A troll came forth to meet them. "Ogre, do you come in peace or mayhem?" the creature inquired, standing poised for flight while other villagers hastily manned the fortifications and cleared children and the aged from the region.

"In peace!" Tandy said quickly. "I am Tandy; this is Smash, who is protecting me from monsters."

The troll's eyes gaped. This was an unusual expression, even for this type of creature. "Protecting you from-?" "Yes."

"Now, we have no prejudice against monsters here," the troll said, scratching his long and homely nose with a discolored claw. "I'm a monster myself, and some of my best friends are monsters. But only a fool trusts an ogre."

"Well, I'm a fool," Tandy said. "This ogre fought a tangle tree to save me."

"Are you sure you aren't a kidnap victim? You certainly do look good enough to eat."

Smash did not appreciate the implication, which would have passed him by had he not suffered the curse of the Eye Queue vine. "My father is Crunch, the vegetarian ogre," he said gruffly. "My family has not kidnapped anyone in years."

The troll looked at him, startled. "You certainly don't sound like an ogre! Did the Transformer-King transform you to this shape?"

"I was whelped an ogre!" Smash insisted, the first traces of roar coming into his voice.

Then the troll made a connection. "Ah, yes. Crunch married a curse-fiend actress. You have human lineage; that must account for your language."

"It must," Smash agreed drolly. He found he didn't care to advertise his misadventure with the vine. He would be laughed out of the village if its inhabitants learned he was intelligent. "But I should advise you, purely in the interest of amity, that I have been known to take exception to the appellation 'half-breed.' I am a true ogre." He picked up a nearby knot of green wood and squeezed it in one hand. The green juice dripped as the wood pulped, until at last there was a pool of green on the ground and the knot had become a lump of coal.

"Yes, indeed," the troll agreed hastily. "No one here would think of using that term. Welcome to our table for supper; you are surely hungry."

"We are only passing through," Tandy said. "We're going to Lake Ogre-Chobee."

"You can't get there from here," the troll said. "The Region of Madness intervenes."

"Madness?" Tandy asked, alarmed.

"From the airborne magic dust we process. Magic is very potent here, and too much of it leads to alarming effects. You will have to go around."

They did not argue the case. Smash's inordinate intelligence, coupled with his memories of this region, corroborated the information; he knew it would be impossible for him to protect Tandy in the Region of Madness. There were tales of the constellations of the night coming to life, and of reality changing dangerously. In Xanth, things were mostly what they seemed to be, so that illusion was often reality. But illusion could be taken too far in the heightened magic of the Madness. Smash was now too smart to risk it.

They joined the villagers' supper. Creatures of every type came forth to feed, all well behaved: elves, gnomes, goblins, a manticore, fauns, nymphs, fairies, human beings, centaurs, griffins, and assorted other creatures. The hostess was the troll's mate, Trolla. "It is much easier to arrive than to depart," she explained as she served up helpings of smashed potatoes and poured out goblets of mead. "We have never had opportunity to construct an exit ramp, and our work mining the source of magic is important, so we stay. You may choose to remain also: we labor hard, but it is by no means a bad life."

Smash exchanged a glance with Tandy, since it occurred to him that this might be the sort of situation she was looking for. But she was negative. "We have a message from the sister of a neighbor of yours.

We must get on and deliver it."

"A neighbor?" Trolla asked.

"She is called the Siren."

There was a sudden hush.

"You know," Tandy said. "The sister of the Gorgon."

"You are friend to the Gorgon?" Trolla asked coldly.

"I hardly know her," Smash said quickly, remembering that this village had suffered at the Gorgon's hands-or rather, her face, having had all the men turned to stone. Fortunately, that mischief had been undone at the time of the loss of magic, when all Xanth had become as drear as Mundania, briefly.

Numerous spells had been aborted in that period, changing Xanth in ways that were still unraveling. "I had to see Good Magician Humfrey, and she's his wife. She asked us to say hello to the Siren."

"Oh, I see." Trolla relaxed, and the others followed her example. There were murmurs of amazement and awe. "The Good Magician's wife! And she turned him to stone?"

"Not anywhere we could see," Tandy said, then blushed. "Uh, that is-"

Trolla smiled. "He's probably too old for such enchantment anyway, so the sight of her merely stiffens his spine, or whatever." She gulped a goblet of mead. "The Siren no longer lures people, since a smart centaur broke her magic dulcimer. She is not a bad neighbor, but we really don't associate with her."

They finished their repast, Smash happily consuming all the refuse left after the others were done. The villagers set them up with rooms for the night. Smash knew these were honest, well-meaning folk, so he didn't worry about Tandy's safety here.

As he lay on his pile of straw. Smash thought about the place of the Magic Dust Village in the scheme of Xanth. Stray references to it bubbled to the surface of his memory-things he had heard at different times in his life and thought nothing of, since ogres thought nothing of everything. From these suddenly assimilating fragments he was now able to piece together the role of this village, geologically. Here it was that the magic dust welled to the surface from the mysterious depths. The villagers pulverized it and employed a captive roc-bird to flap its wings and waft huge clouds of the dust into the air, where it caused madness close by, technicolor hailstorms farther distant, and magic for the rest of Xanth as it diluted to natural background intensity. If the villagers did not perform this service, the magic dust would tend to clump, and the magic would be unevenly distributed, causing all manner of problems.

Certainly the Magic Dusters believed all this, and labored most diligently to facilitate the proper and even spreading of the dust. Yet Smash's Eye Queue-infected brain obnoxiously conjured caveats, questioning the realities the villagers lived by.

If the magic really came from the dust, it should endure as long as the dust did, fading only slowly as the dust wore out. Yet at the Time of No Magic, all Xanth had been rendered Mundane instantly. That had happened just before Smash himself had been whelped, but his parents had told him all about it. They had considered it rather romantic, perhaps even a signal of their love. Crunch had lost his great strength in that time, but other creatures had been affected far more, and many had died. Then the magic had returned, as suddenly as it had departed, and Xanth had been as it was before. There had been no great movements of dust then, no dust storms. That suggested that the magic of Xanth was independent of the dust.

The dust came from below, and if it brought the magic, the nether regions must be more magical than the surface. Tandy had lived below, yet she seemed normal. She did not even appear to have a magic talent. So how could the magic be concentrated below?

But Smash decided not to raise these questions openly, as they would only make things awkward for the villagers. And perhaps the belief of the Dusters was right and his vine-sponsored objections were wrong.

After all, what could a Queue of Eyes understand of the basic nature of Xanth?

His thought turned to a bypath. A magic talent-that must be what Tandy was questing for! He, as an ogre, was fortunate; ogres had strength as their talent. When Smash had gone to Mundania, outside the magic, ambience of Xanth, he had lost his strength and his rhyme, distressingly. Now he had lost his rhymes and his naïveté, but not his strength.

Was the infliction of the curse of the Eye Queue really so bad? There were indeed pleasures in the insights this artificial intelligence afforded him. Yet ogres were supposed to be stupid; he felt sadly out of place.

Smash decided to keep quiet, most of the time, and let Tandy do the talking. He might no longer be a proper ogre in outlook, but at least he could seem like an ogre. If he generated an illusion of continuing stupidity, perhaps in time he would achieve it again. Certainly this was worth the hope. Meanwhile, his shame would remain mostly secret.

Chapter 4. Catastrophe

In the morning they walked along an old ground-bound path to the small lake that contained the Siren's isle. It was pretty country, with few immediate hazards, and so Smash found it dull, while Tandy liked it very well.

The Siren turned out to be a mature mermaid who had probably been stunning in her youth and was not too far from it even now. She evidently survived by fishing and seemed satisfied with her lot, or more correctly, her pond.

"We bring greetings from your sister the Gorgon," Tandy called as they crossed the path over the water to the island.

Immediately the mermaid was interested. She emerged from the water and changed to human form-her fish-tail simply split into two well-formed legs-and came to meet them, still changing. She had been nude in the water, but it hardly mattered since she was a fish below the waist. But as she dried, the scales that had covered her tail converted to a scale-sequin dress that nudged up to cover the upper portion of her torso. For a reason that had never been clear to Smash, it was all right for a mermaid to show her breasts, but not all right for a human woman to do the same. The finny part of her flukes became small shoes. It was minor but convenient magic; after all, Smash thought, she might otherwise get cold feet.

"My sister!" she exclaimed, her newly covered bosom heaving. "How is she doing?"

"Well, she's married to the Good Magician Humfrey-"

"Oh, yes, I had news of that! But how is she recently?"

"Recently?" Tandy's brow furrowed.

Smash caught on to the nature of the Siren's question. "She wants to know whether the Gorgon is pregnant," he murmured.

Tandy was startled. "Oh-I don't know about that. I don't think so. But she does seem happy, and so does the Magician."

The Siren frowned. "I'm so glad she found hers. I wish I had found mine." And Smash now perceived, from this dose range and the magnification of his interpretive intellect, that the Siren was not happy at all. She bad lost her compelling magic twenty years ago and had very little left

Such things had not before been concerns of Smash's. Ogres hardly cared about the nuances of the lifestyles of nymphal creatures. Now, thanks to the curse of the Eye Queue, Smash felt the Siren's problem, and felt the need to alleviate it. "We are going to Lake Ogre-Chobee. Perhaps if you went there, you would find yours."

The Siren brightened. "That's possible."

"But we are having trouble finding the way," he said. "The Madness intercedes."

"It's a nuisance," the' Siren agreed. "But there are ways around it"

"We would like to know of one."

"Well, there's the catapult. Yet you have to pay the cat's price."

"What is the cat's price?" Tandy asked warily. "If it's a kind of demon, we might not like it."

"It likes catnip-and that's not easy to get"

"Smash could get it," Tandy said brightly. "He fought a tangle tree and a pride of ant-lions."

"Well, he's an ogre," the Siren agreed matter-of-factly. "That sort of thing is routine for them."

"Why don't you come with us and show us where the catnip is?" Tandy suggested. "Then we can all go to the catapult and on to Lake Ogre-Chobee."

The Siren considered. "I admit I don't seem to be accomplishing much here. I never thought I'd travel with an ogre!" She faced Smash. "Are you tame? I've heard some bad things about ogres-"

"They're all true!" Smash agreed. " Ogres are the worst brutes on two legs. But I was raised in the environs of Castle Roogna, so am relatively civilized."

"He's really very nice, when you get to know him," Tandy said. "He doesn't crunch the bones of friends."

"I'll risk it," the Siren decided. "I'll lead you to the catnip." She adjusted her dress, packed a few fish for nibbling on the way, and set oft, leading them east of the lake.

The catnip grew in a section of the jungle separated by a fiercely flowing stream. They had to use a narrow catwalk past a cataract that was guarded by a catamount. "Don't fall into the water," the Siren warned. "It's a catalyst that will give you catarrh, catatonia, and catalepsy."

"I don't understand," Tandy said nervously. "Is that bad?"

"A catalyst is a substance that facilitates change," Smash explained, drawing on his new Eye Queue intellect. "In the case of our living flesh, this is likely to mean deterioration and decay such as catarrh, which is severe inflammation inside the nose, catatonia, which is stupor, and catalepsy, which is loss of motion and speechlessness. We had better stay out of this water; it is unlikely to be healthy."

"Yes, unlikely," Tandy agreed faintly. "But the catamount is on the catwalk! It will throw us off."

"Oh, I wouldn't be concerned about that," Smash said. He strode out on the catwalk. It dipped and swayed under his mass, but he had the sure balance of his primitive kind and proceeded with confidence.

"No violence!" Tandy pleaded.

The catamount was a large reddish feline with long whiskers and big paws. It snarled and stalked toward Smash, its tail swishing back and forth.

No violence?

A fright would have been fun, but Smash realized now that the girls would worry, so he used his intellect to ponder on a peaceful option. What about the one he had used on the moat-monster at the Good Magician's castle? "I want to show you something, kitty," he said. He leaned forward and held out his right hand. The catamount paused distrustfully.

Smash carefully closed his gauntleted hamfingers into a huge, gleaming fist. Shafts of sunlight struck down to elicit new gleams as Smash slowly rotated his fist. It was amazing how each shaft knew exactly where to go!

Smash nudged this metallic hamfist under the catamount's nose. "Now kitty," he said quietly, "if you do not vacate this path expeditiously, you are apt to have a closer encounter with this extremity. Does this eventuality meet with your approval?"

The feline's ears twitched as if it suffered indigestion; it seemed to have a problem with the vocabulary.

It considered the extremity. The fist sent another barrage of glints of reflected sunlight out, seeming to grow larger. The ogre stood perfectly balanced and at ease, muscles bulging only slightly, fur lying almost unruffled. After a moment, snarling ungraciously, the catamount decided not to dispute the path this time. It backed away.

Well, well. Smash thought. His bluff had worked-now that he had the wit to bluff. Of course, it would have been fun to hurl the catamount into the water below and see what happened to it, but that pleasure was not to be, this time.

A catbird sailed down out of the sky. It had the body of a crow and the head of a cat. "Meow!" it scolded the catamount, and issued a resounding catcall. Then it wheeled on Smash, claws extended cat-as-catch-can.

The ogre's mitt moved swiftly. The hamfingers caught the catbird, who screeched piteously. Smash brought it down, pulled out one large tailfeather, and lofted the creature away. The catbird flew awkwardly, its rudder malfunctioning. The fight had been taken out of it, along with much of the flight A catfish protested from below. It lifted its cat-head from the flowing water and yowled. Its voice had a nasal quality; the creature did indeed seem to be suffering from catarrh and perhaps catalepsy, though probably it had built up a certain immunity to the curses of the water. Smash hurled the feather down into its mouth. The catfish choked and sneezed, disappearing.

Now Smash, Tandy, and the Siren crossed without impediment. "Sometimes it's really handy having an ogre along," Tandy remarked. She seemed to have swung from absolute distrust to absolute support, and Smash was not displeased.

The path led through a field of cattails growing in catsup where cattle grazed, fattening up in case some cataclysm came. It terminated at a catacomb. "The catnip grows in there," the Siren said, pointing to the teeth of the comb that barred the entrance. "But it's dangerous to enter, because if the cataclysm comes, the cattle will stampede into it."

"Then I will go alone," Smash said. He brushed the comb aside and marched on down. The way soon became dark, but ogres had good night vision, so he wasn't much bothered.

"Don't invite catastrophe!" the Siren called after him.

"I certainly hope not," Smash called back, though in truth he wouldn't have minded a little of that to make things interesting. "I will be pusillanimously careful."

Deep inside the cave, he found a garden of pleasantly scented, mintlike plants with felinely furry leaves.

Each had a spike of blue flowers. These must be the catnips.

Smash took hold of one and pulled it up by the roots, being uncertain which part of the plant he needed, and stuffed it into his bag. The flowers nipped at him, but lacked the power even to be annoying. He grabbed and crammed more plants, until he felt he had enough.

He turned to depart-and spied a dimly glowing object It was set in the cave wall beside the exit, framed in stone set with yellow cat's-eye gems. It was a furry hump with a tail descending from it: evidently the posterior of some sort of feline. A pussy-willow? No, too large for that. Smash recalled reference to one of the barbarian customs of the Mundanes, in which they killed animals and mounted their heads on walls. That was stupid-perfectly edible heads going to waste! Someone must have done the same for this cat's rear.

Smash considered, then decided to take the trophy along. It certainly wasn't doing any good here in the dark. Perhaps the girls would like to see it. Smash realized that it was a measure of the degradation foisted on him by the Eye Queue that he even thought of showing something interesting to others, but he was stuck with it.

He reached out to grab the stone frame. The cats-eyes blinked warningly. The thing was firmly set, so he applied force. The frame ripped out of the wall-and the roof collapsed.

Puzzled, Smash put one fist up over his head. The rock fell on this and cracked apart, piling up on either side.

Smash climbed up through the rubble, toting his bag of plants, but was unable to bring the posterior-trophy. In a moment he reached daylight.

"Oh, you're all right!" Tandy cried. "I was so afraid-"

"Rockfalls can't hurt ogres," Smash said. "I tried to take a trophy, but the roof fell in." He dusted himself off.

"A trophy?" Tandy asked blankly.

"The rear end of some kind of cat, mounted in the wall."

"That was the catastrophe!" the Siren cried. "I told you not to invite it!"

Catastrophe-a trophy of the rear of a cat. Now Smash understood. He had not properly applied his new intelligence, and had done considerable damage to the catnip garden as a result. He would try to be more careful in the future. As long as he was cursed with intellect, he might as well use it.

"I had better clear the rocks out of the garden," Smash said. This, too, was an un-ogrish sentiment, but the Eye Queue and the presence of the girls seemed to have that effect on him.

"No, don't bother," the Siren said. "You wouldn't know how to set it right. The caterpillar will take care of that after we leave. It likes to push rocks around."

They crossed the catwalk past the cataract again and proceeded to the catapult. This was a feline creature the size of a small sphinx, crouched in a clearing. Its tail expanded into a kind of netting at the end, large enough for a boulder to rest on. There was a basket nearby, just that size.

The Siren approached the catapult. "Will you hurl us to Lake Ogre-Chobee, please?" she asked. "We have some catnip for you."

The cat brightened. It nodded its whiskered head. They laid the catnip plants down before it, then moved the basket to the expanded tail. The three of them climbed in and drew the wicker lid over, enclosing themselves.

The cat sniffed the catnip. Its tail stiffened ecstatically. Then it nipped the catnip. As the potent stuff took effect, the tail suddenly sprang up, carrying the basket along. Suddenly the party of three was flying.

They looked out between the slats. Xanth was cruising by beneath them, all green and blue and yellow.

There were scattered, low-hanging clouds around them, white below, all other colors above, where they couldn't be seen from the ground. Some were rainclouds, shaped like pools, brimming with water. Stray birds were taking baths in them, and flying fish were taking breathers there, too. The basket clipped the

edge of one of these rainclouds and tore a hole in it; the water poured out in a horrendous leak. There was an angry uproar from below as the unscheduled deluge splashed on the forest. But this was the Region of Madness anyway; no one would be able to prove the difference.

Now it occurred to Smash to wonder about their descent. They had risen smoothly enough, but the fall might be less comfortable.

Then some sort of material popped out of the lid of the basket. It spread into a huge canopy that caught the air magically and held back the basket. The descent became slow, and they landed by the shore of Lake Ogre-Chobee.

They opened the basket and stepped out. "That was fun!" Tandy exclaimed girlishly. "But how will the catapult get its basket back?"

An orange creature hurried up, vaguely catlike. "I'll take that," it said.

"Who are you?" Tandy asked.

"I am the agent of this region. It is my job to see that things get where they belong. The catapult has a contract for the return of its baskets."

"Oh. Then you had better take it. But I don't know how you'll be able to carry that big basket through that thick jungle, or past the Region of Madness."

"No problem. I'm half mad already." The orange agent picked up the basket and trotted north. The vegetation wilted and died in the creature's vicinity, making a clear path.

"Oh-that's its magic talent," Tandy said. "Agent Orange kills plants."

They turned to Lake Ogre-Chobee. It was a fine blue expanse of water with a whirlpool in the center.

"Don't go there," the Siren cautioned. "The curse-fiends live there."

"What is wrong with the curse-fiends?" Smash asked. "My mother was one."

The Siren turned her gaze on him, startled. "Oh-I understood you were an ogre. The/curse-fiends are of human derivation. I didn't mean to-"

"My mother is an actress. She had to play the part of an ogress in an adaptation of Prince Charming, a Mundane tale. Naturally she was the ingénue."

"Naturally," the Siren agreed faintly.

"But my father Crunch happened onto the set, innocently looking for bones to crunch, and spied her and was instantly smitten by her horribleness and carried her away. Naturally she married him."

"Yes, of course," the Siren agreed, looking wan. "I am jealous of her fortune. I'm of human derivation myself."

"The curse-fiends fired off a great curse that killed a huge forest," Smash continued. "But my parents escaped the curse by becoming vegetarians. Most ogres crunch bones, so this confused the curse and caused it to misfire."

"You were raised in a non-bone-crunching home!" Tandy exclaimed.

"I'm still an ogre," he said defensively.

"I'm glad it worked out so well," the Siren said. "But I think it would be wise to avoid the curse-fiends.

They might not appreciate your position."

"I suppose so," Smash admitted. "But they are excellent actors. No one ever confused my mother for a human being."

"I'm sure they didn't," the Siren agreed. "I saw one of the curse-fiends' plays once. It was very well done.

But it can be awkward associating with someone who throws a curse when aggravated."

Smash laughed. "It certainly can be! I acted un-ogrish once, letting a wyvem back me off from an emerald I had found-"

"My mother set that emerald in place!" Tandy exclaimed.

"And my mother threw a curse at me," he continued. "It scorched the ground at my feet and knocked me on my head. I never let any monster back me off again!"

"That was cruel," Tandy said. "She shouldn't have cursed you."

"Cruel? Of course not. It was ogre love, the only kind our kind understands. She cursed my father once, and it was two days before he recovered, and the smile never left his face."

"Well, I don't know," Tandy said, and she seemed unusually sober. Did she have some connection to the curse-fiends? Smash filed the notion for future reference.

They walked around a portion of Lake Ogre-Chobee, trying not to attract attention. There were no ogres in evidence, and no traces of their presence-no broken-off trees or fragmented boulders or flat-stomped ground.

There seemed to be no threats, either; the entire lake was girded, as far as they could see, by a pleasant little beach, and the water was clear and free of monsters. Evidently the curse-fiends had driven away anything dangerous.

"Look at the noses!" Tandy cried, pointing across the water. Smash looked. There were scores of nostrils swimming in pairs toward the shore, making little waves. As they drew near, he saw that the nostrils were the visible tips of more extensive snouts, which continued on into long reptilian bodies.

"Oh-the chobees," the Siren said, relaxing. "They're mostly harmless. Chobees aren't related to other kinds of bees; they don't sting. Once in a while one strays up to my lake."

"But what big teeth they have!" Tandy said.

"They're imitation, teeth, soft as pillows."

A chobee scrambled out onto the beach. It had short, fat, green legs and a green corrugated skin. The Siren petted it on the head, and the chobee grinned. She touched one of its teeth, and the tooth bent like rubber, snapping back into place when released.

But Smash had a nagging doubt. "I remember something my father said about the chobees. Most of them are innocent, but some-"

"Oh, yes, that's right," the Siren agreed. "A few, a very few, have real teeth. Those kind are dangerous."

"Let's stay away from the bad ones, then," Tandy said. "What do they look like?"

"I don't know," the Siren admitted.

"They look just like the nice ones," Smash said slowly, dredging his memory.

"But then any of these could be a bad one," Tandy said, alarmed.

"True," Smash agreed. "Unless the curse-fiends got rid of them."

"How could the curse-fiends tell the difference, if we can't?" Tandy asked.

"If a chobee eats a curse-fiend, it's probably a bad one," the Siren said, smiling obscurely.

"Do we need to tell the chobees apart the same way?" Tandy asked worriedly.

The Siren laughed musically. Her voice was only a shadow of what it must have been when she had her luring magic, but it remained evocative. "Of course not, dear. Let's avoid them all." That seemed easy enough to do, as the three of them could walk faster than the reptiles could. Soon the chobees gave up the chase and nosed back into the water, where they buzzed away toward the deeper portions of the lake.

Tandy watched the wakes their nostrils left with relief.

At one point the lake become irregular, branching out into a satellite lake that was especially pretty. A partial causeway crossed the narrow connection between the large and small lakes. "I'll wade across!"

Smash said, delighting in the chance to indulge in some splashing.

"I don't know," Tandy said. "The nice paths can be dangerous." She had learned from her experience with the tangler and the ant-lions; now she distrusted all the easy ways.

"I 'will explore the water," the Siren said. "I will be able to tell very quickly whether there are dangerous water creatures near. Besides, I'm hungry; I need to catch some fish." She slid into the small lake, her legs converting to the sleekly scaled tail, her dress fading out.

"If you find a monster, send it my way," Smash called. "I'm hungry, too!"

She smiled and dived below-the surface, a bare-breasted nymph swimming with marvelous facility. In a moment her head popped up, tresses glistening. "No monsters here!" she called. "Not even any chobees. I believe that causeway is safe; I find no pitfalls there."

That was all Smash needed. "Too bad," he muttered. He waded in, sending a huge splay of water to either side.

But Tandy remained hesitant. "I think I'll just walk around it," she said.

"Good enough!" Smash agreed, and forged on into deeper water. The causeway dropped lower, 'but never deeper than chest height on him. He conjectured that it might have been constructed by the cursefiends to prevent large sea monsters from passing; they preferred deep water and avoided shallows.

Maybe the smaller lake had been developed as a resort region. This suggested that there could be monsters in Lake Ogre-Chobee; they just happened to be elsewhere at the moment. Maybe they represented an additional protection for the fiends, converting the whole of the large lake into a kind of moat. It really didn't matter, since he had no business with the curse-fiends. After all, they had not let his mother go willingly to marry his father. She had had no further contact with her people after she had taken up with Crunch the Ogre, and it occurred to Smash that this could not have made her feel good. So his attitude toward the fiends was guarded; he would not try to avoid them, but neither would he try to seek them out. Neutrality was the watchword. He had never thought this out before-but he had not suffered the curse of the Eye Queue before, either. He still hoped to find some way to be rid of it, as these frequent efforts of thought were not conducive to proper ogrish behavior.

He glanced across the water of the little lake. Tandy was picking her way along the beach, looking very small. He felt un-ogrishly protective toward her-but, of course, this was his service to the Good Magician. Ogres were gross and violent, but they kept their word. Also, the Eye Queue curse lent him an additional perception of the virtue of an ethical standard. It was a bit like physical strength; the ideal was to be strong in all respects, ethical as well as physical. And Tandy certainly needed protection. Besides which, she was a nice girl. He wondered what she was looking for in life and how it related to his journey to seek the Ancestral Ogres. Had old Magician Humfrey finally lost his magic, and had to foist Tandy off on an ogre m lieu of a genuine Answer? Smash hoped not, but he had to entertain the possibility. Suppose there was in fact no Answer for Tandy-or for himself?

Smash had no ready answer for that, even with his unwanted new intelligence, so had to let the thought lapse. But it was disquieting. High intelligence, it seemed, posed as many questions as it answered; being smart was not necessarily any solution to life's problems. It was much easier to be strong and stupid, bashing things out of the way without concern for the consequences. Disquiet was no proper feeling for an ogre.

Now he got down in the water and splashed with all limbs. This was proper ogre fun! The spray went up in a great cloud, surrounding the sun and causing its light to fragment into a magic halo. The whole effect was so lovely that he continued splashing violently until pleasantly winded. When he stopped, he discovered that the water level of the small lake had dropped substantially, and the sun was hastening across the sky to get out of the way, severely dimmed by all the water that had splashed on it.

But his thorough washing did not clear the Eye Queue from the fur of his head. Somehow the Queue had sunk into his brain, and the braided Eyes were providing him new visions of many kinds. It would be hard indeed to get those Eyes out again.

At last he waded out at the far side. The Siren swam up, converted her tail to legs, and joined him on the warm beach. "You made quite a splash. Smash," she said. "Had I not known better, I would have supposed a thunderstorm was forming."

"That good!" he agreed, well satisfied. Of course it wasn't all good; he was now unconscionably clean.

But a few good rolls in the dirt would take care of that.

"That bad," the Siren said with a smile.

He studied her as she gleamed wetly, her scale-suit creeping up to cover the fullness of her front. She seemed to be turning younger, though this might be inconsequential illusion. "I think the swim was good for you, too, Siren. You look splendid." Privately, he was amazed at his words; she did look splendid, and her affinity to the voluptuous Gorgon was increasingly evident, but no ordinary ogre would have noticed, let alone complimented her in the fashion of a human being. The curse of the Queue was still spreading!

"I do feel better," she agreed. "But it's not just the swim. It's the companionship. I have lived alone for too long; now that I have company, however temporarily, my youth and health are returning."

So that explained it! People of human stock had need for the association of other people. This was one of the ways in which ogres differed from human beings. Ogres needed nobody, not even other ogres.

Except to marry.

He looked again at the Siren. Her nymphlike beauty would have dazzled a man and led him to thoughts of moonlight and gallivanting. Smash, however, was an ogre; full breasts and smoothly fleshed limbs appealed to him only aesthetically--and even that was a mere product of the Eye Queue. An uncursed ogre would simply have become hungry at the sight of such flesh.

Which reminded him-he needed something to eat. He checked around for edibles and spied some ripe banana peppers. He stuffed handfuls of them into his mouth.

Something nagged him as he chewed. Flesh-female-hunger-ah, now he had it. A girl in danger of being eaten. "Where's Tandy?" he asked.

"I haven't seen her, Smash," the Siren said, her fair brow furrowing. "She should be here by now, shouldn't she? We had better go look for her, in case-well, let's just see. I'll swim; you check the beach."

"Agreed." Smash crammed another double fistful of peppers into his face and started around the beach, concerned. He blamed himself now for his selfish carelessness. He knew that Tandy was unfamiliar with the surface of Xanth, liable to fall into the simplest trap. If something had happened to her-

"I find nothing here," the Siren called from the water. "Maybe she went off the beach for a matter of hygiene."

Good notion. Smash checked the tangled vines beyond the beach-and there, in due course, he found Tandy. "Hi-ho!" he called to her, waving a hamhand.

Tandy did not respond. She was kneeling on the turf, looking at something. "Are you all right?" Smash asked, worry building up like a sudden storm. But the girl neither moved nor answered.

The Siren came out of the water, dripping and changing in the effective way she had, and joined Smash.

"Oh-she's fallen prey to a hypnogourd."

A hypnogourd. Smash remembered encountering that fruit before. Anyone who peeked in the peephole of such a gourd remained mesmerized until some third party broke the connection. Naturally Tandy had not been aware of this. So she had peeked, being girlishly curious-and remained frozen there. Gently, the Siren removed the gourd, breaking the connection. Tandy blinked and shook her head. But her eyes did not quite focus. Her features coalesced into an expression of vacant, continuing horror.

"Hey, come out of it, dear," the Siren said. "The bad vision is over. It ended when you lost contact with the gourd. Everything's all right." Yet the girl seemed numb. The Siren shook her, but still Tandy did not respond.

"Maybe it's like the Eye Queue," Smash said. "It stays in the mind until removed."

"The gourds aren't usually that way," the Siren said, perplexed. "Of course, I have not had much personal experience with them, since I have lived alone; there's no one to break the trance for me, so I have stayed clear. But I met a man once, a Mundane, back when I was able to lure men with my music.

He said the gourds were like computer games-that seems to be something he knew about in Mundania, one of their forms of magic-only more compelling. He said some people got hooked worse than others."

"Tandy was raised in the caves. She has no experience with most of Xanth. She must be susceptible.

Whatever she saw in there maintains its grip on her mind."

"That must be it. Usually people have no memory of what they see inside, but maybe that varies also.

That same Mundane spoke of acidheads, which I think are creatures whose heads-well, I can't quite visualize that. But it seems they suffered flashbacks of their mad dreams after their heads were back in normal shape. Maybe Tandy is-"

"I'll go into that gourd and destroy whatever is bothering her," Smash said. "Then she'll be free."

"Smash, you may not have your body in there! I have never looked into a gourd, but I don't think the same rules apply as those we know. You could get caught there, too. It could be catastrophe."

"I will be more careful to avoid that trophy, this time," Smash said with an ogrish grimace. He applied his eye to the peephole.

He was in a world of black and white. He stood before a black wooden door set in a white house. There was no sound at all, and the air was chill. Faintly ominous vibrations wafted in from the near distance.

There was the diffuse odor of spoiling carrion.

Smash licked bis lips. Carrion always made him hungry. But he did not trust this situation. Tandy was not here, of course, and he saw nothing that could account for her condition. Nothing to frighten or horrify a person. He decided to leave.

However, he perceived no way out. He had arrived full-formed within this scene; there was no obvious exit. He was locked into this vision-unless he had entered through this door and turned about to face it without realizing, and could depart through it. Doors generally did lead from one place to another.

He took hold of the black metal doorknob. The thing zapped him with a small bolt of lightning. He tried to let go, but his hand was locked on. He wore no gauntlets; evidently he had left them behind. The electric pain pulsed through his fingers, locking the muscles clenched with its special magic. There was a wash of pain, literally; his black hand was now glowing with red color, in stark contrast with the monochrome of the rest of the scene.

Smash yanked hard on the knob. The entire door ripped off its hinges. The pain stopped, the red color faded, his fingers relaxed at last, and he hurled the door away behind him.

Before him was a long, blank hall penetrating the somber house. From the depths of it came a

horrendous groan. This did not seem to be the way out; he was sure he had not walked any great distance inside the gourd. But it did seem pleasant enough, and was the only way that offered. Smash stepped inside.

A chill draft rustled the fur on his legs. The odor of putrefaction intensified. The floor shuddered as it took his weight. There was another groan.

Smash strode forward, impatient to get out of this interestingly drear but pointless place, worried about Tandy. He needed to consult with the Siren, to work out some strategy by which he might find whatever had scared Tandy and deal with it. Otherwise he would have felt free to enjoy the further entertainments of this house. Had he realized what kind of scene was inside the gourd, he would have entered it years ago.

Something flickered before him. Smash squinted, and saw it was a ghost. "You trapped, too?" he asked sympathetically, and walked through it.

The ghost made an angry moan and flickered to his frontside again. "Boooooo!" it booooooed.

Smash paused. Was this creature trying to tell bun something? He had known very few ghosts, as they did not ordinarily associate with ogres. There were several at Castle Roogna, attending to routine hauntings. "Do I know you?" he asked. "Do we have any mutual acquaintances?"

"Yoowwelll" the ghost yowded, its hollow eyes flashing darkness,

"I'd help you if I could, but I'm lost myself," Smash said apologetically, and brushed on through it again.

The ghost, disgusted for some obscure reason, faded away.

The passage narrowed. This was no illusion; the walls were closing on either side, squeezing together.

Smash didn't like to be crowded, so he put one hamhand on each wall and pushed outward, exerting ogre force. Something snapped; then the walls slid apart and lay tilted at slightly odd angles. It would probably be a long time before they tried to push another ogre around!

At the end of the hall was a rickety staircase leading up. Smash pressed one hairy bare foot on the lowest step and shoved down, testing it. The step bowed and squeaked piteously, but supported his weight.

Smash took another step-and suddenly the entire stairway began to move, carrying him upward. Magic stairs! What would this enjoyable place think of next?

The stairs accelerated. Faster and faster they went, making the dank air breeze past Smash's face. At the top of the flight they ended abruptly, and he went sailing out into blank space.

Ogres liked lots of violent things, hut were not phenomenally partial to falling. However, they weren't unduly concerned about it, either. Smash stiffened his legs. In a moment he landed on hard concrete.

Naturally it fractured under the impact of his feet. He stepped out of the nibble and looked about.

He seemed to be in some sort of deep well, or oubliette. The circular wall narrowed above, making climbing out difficult. Then a shape appeared in silhouette, holding a big stone over its head. The figure had horns and looked like a demon. Smash was not especially partial to demons, but he greeted this one courteously enough. "Up yours, devil!" he called.

The demon dropped the stone down the well. Smash saw the dark shape looming, but had no room to step out of the way.

Then light flared. Smash blinked. It was broad daylight in the forest of Xanth. "Are you all right?" the Siren asked. "I didn't dare let you stay out too long."

"I am all right," Smash said. "How is Tandy?"

"Unchanged, I'm afraid. Smash, I don't think you can destroy what is bothering her, because the horror is now in her mind. We could smash the gourd and it still wouldn't help her."

Smash considered. His skull no longer heated up when he did that. "I believe you are correct. I saw nothing really alarming in there. Perhaps I should go into the gourd with her and show her that it's not so bad."

The Siren frowned. "I suspect ogres have different definitions of bad. Just what happened in there?"

"Only a haunted house. Shocking doorknob. Ghost. Squeezing walls-I suppose those could have been awkward for a human person. Moving stairs. A demon dropping a rock down a well."

"Why would a demon do that?"

"I don't know. I happened to be below at the time. Maybe it didn't like my greeting."

Tandy stirred. Her eyes swung loosely about. Her lips pursed flaccidly. She looked disturbingly like a ghost. "No, no house, no demon. A graveyard..." She lapsed into staring, her mouth beginning to drool.

"Evidently you had separate visions," the Siren said, using a puff from a puffball growing nearby to clean up the girl's face. "That complicates it."

"Maybe if we go in together, we'll share a vision," Smash conjectured.

"But there is only one peephole."

Smash poked his littlest hamfinger into the rind of the gourd. "Two, now."

"You ogres are so practical!"

They set the gourd before Tandy, who immediately peered into the first peephole. Then Smash squatted so that he could peer into the second.

He was back in the well. The rock was plunging at his head. Hastily he raised a fist, since he didn't want a headache. The rock shattered on the fist, falling around him in the form of fragments, pebbles, and gravel. So much for that. If the demon would just drop a few more stones down. Smash would soon have this well filled up with rubble and could step out.

But the demon did not reappear. Too bad. Smash looked around the gloom. Tandy was not with him. He was in the same vision he had left, picking it up in the same moment he had left it He was using a different peephole, but that didn't seem to matter. Probably Tandy was back in her original vision, at the

same point it had been interrupted, getting scared by whatever had scared her before. It seemed the gourd programmed each vision separately.

However, it was all the same gourd. Tandy had to be somewhere in here, and he intended to find her, rescue her from her horror, and smash that horror into a quivering pulp so it wouldn't bother her again.

All he had to do was make a sufficient search.

He took hold of a stone in the wall of the well and yanked it out. Three more stones fell out with it.

Smash took another; this time five more fell. This old well was not well constructed! He stood on these and drew out more stones. The well filled in beneath him steadily, and before long he was back at the surface. There was no sign whatsoever of the demon who had dropped the first rock on him. That was just as well, for Smash might have treated that demon a trifle unkindly, perhaps snapping its tail like a rubber band and launching the creature on a flight to the moon. The least that demon could have done was to stay around long enough to drop a few more useful boulders down the well.

Now he stood in a chamber surrounded by doors. He heard a faint, despairing scream. Tandy!

He went to the nearest door and grasped the knob. It shocked him, so he ripped the door out of its socket and threw it away. The room inside was a bare chamber: a false lead. He tried the next door, got shocked again, and ripped it out, too. Another bare chamber. He went to the third door-and it didn't shock him.

The doors were learning! He opened this one gently. But it led only to another decoy chamber.

Finally he opened one that showed an outdoor walk. He hurried down this, hurdling a square that he recognized as a covered pitfall-ogres naturally knew about such things, having had centuries of ancestral experience avoiding such traps set for them by foolish men-and emerged into a windy graveyard.

Battered gravestones were all around, marking sunken graves. Some stones tilted forward precariously, as if trying to peer into the cavities they demarked. It occurred to Smash that the buried bodies might have climbed out and gone elsewhere, accounting for the sunkenness of the graves and the suspicions of the headstones, but this was not his concern.

The odor of carrion was stronger out here. Maybe some of the corpses had not been buried deep enough.

A wind came up, cutting around the stone edges with dismal howling. Smash breathed deeply, appreciating it, then concentrated on the business at hand. Tandy!" he called. "Where are you?" For she had said she was in a graveyard, and this must be the place.

He heard a faint sobbing. Carefully he traced down the source. It was slow work, because the sound was carried by the wind, and the wind curved around the gravestones in cold blue streams, searching out the best edges for making moaning tunes. But at last he found the huddled figure, cowering behind a white stone crypt.

"Tandy!" he repeated. "It's I. Smash, the tame ogre. Let me take you away from all this."

She looked up, pale with fright, as if hardly daring to recognize him. Her mouth opened, but only drool came out.

He reached out to take her arm, to help her to her feet.

But she was as limp as a rag doll and would not rise. She just continued sobbing. She seemed little different from her Xanth self. Something was missing.

Smash considered. For once he was thankful for the Eye Queue, because now he could ponder without pain. What would account for the girl's lethargy and misery? He had thought it was fear, but now that he was here, she should have no further cause for that. It was as if she had lost something vital, like eyesight or-Or her soul. Suddenly Smash remembered how vulnerable souls could be, and knew that if anyone were likely to blunder into a soul-hazardous situation, Tandy was the one. She knew so little of the ways of Xanth! No wonder she was desolate and empty.

"Your soul, Tandy," he said, holding her so that she had to look into his face. "Where is it?"

Listlessly she nodded toward the crypt. Smash saw that it had a heavy, tight stone door. Scrape marks on the dank ground indicated it had recently been opened. She must have gone inside, perhaps trying to escape the graveyard - and had been ejected without her soul.

"I will recover it," he said.

Now she bestirred herself enough to react. "No, no," she moaned. "I am lost. Save yourself."

"I agreed to protect you," he reminded her. "I shall do it." He set her gently aside and addressed the crypt. The door had no handle, but he knew how to deal with that. He elevated his huge bare fist and smashed it brutally forward into the stone.

Ouch! Without his gauntlets, his hands were more tender. He could not safely apply his full force. But his blow had accomplished its purpose; the stone door had cracked marginally and jogged a smidgen outward. He applied his homy fingernails and hauled the door unwillingly open.

A dark hole faced him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a white outline. It was the skeleton of a man. It reached for him with bone-fingers.

Smash realized where the bodies in the sunken graves had gone. They had been recruited for guard duty and were walking about this crypt. But he was not in the mood for nuisance. He grabbed the skeleton by the bones of its arm and hauled it violently out of the crypt. The thing flew through the air and landed as a jumble of bones. The ogre proceeded on into the hole.

Other skeletons appeared, clustering about him, then - connections rattling. Smash treated them as he had the first, disconnecting their foot-bones from their leg-bones and other bones, causing the bonepile to grow rapidly. Soon the remaining skeletons reconsidered, not wishing to have him roll their bones, and left him alone.

Deep in the ground the ogre came to a dark coffin. The smell was mouth-wateringly awful; something really rotten was in there. Was Tandy's soul in there, too? He picked up the box and shook it.

"All right, all right!" a muffled voice came from the coffin. "You made your point, ogre. You aren't afraid of anything. What do you want?"

"Give back Tandy's soul," Smash said grimly.

"I can't do that, ogre," the box protested. "We made a deal. Her freedom for her soul. I let her out of this world; I keep her soul. That's the way we deal here; souls are the currency of this medium."

"The Siren let her out by removing the gourd," Smash argued. "She never had to pay."

"Coincidence. I permitted it, once the deal was struck. The negotiation is sealed."

Smash had lived and thought like an ogre a lot longer than he had lived and thought intelligently. Now he reverted to convenient old habits. He roared, picked up the coffin, and hurled it against the wall. The box fell to the floor, somewhat sprung, and several ceiling stones 'dropped on it. Nauseating goo dribbled from a crack in it. Dirt sifted down from the chamber wall to smooth the outlines.

"Maybe further negotiation is possible after all," the voice from the coffin said, somewhat shaken.

"Would you consider trading souls?"

Smash readied his hamfist again. "Wait!" the voice cried, alarmed. It evidently wasn't used to dealing with real brutes. "I merely collect souls; I don't have the authority to give them back. If you want the girl's soul now, your only option is to trade."

The ogre considered. He might smash the coffin and its occupant to pieces, but that would not necessarily recover the soul. If Tandy's soul were in there, it could get hurt in the battering. So maybe it was better to bargain. "Trade what?"

"Another soul, of course. How about yours?"

This box thought he was a typically stupid ogre. "No."

"Well, someone else's. What about that buxom mature nymph out in Xanth, with the sometime fish-tail?

She probably has a luscious, bouncy, juicy soul."

Smash considered again. He decided, with an un-ogrish precision of ethics, that he could not make any commitments on behalf of the Siren. "Not her soul. And not mine."

"Then the girl's soul must remain."

Smash got another whiff of the stench from the coffin and knew that Tandy's soul could not be allowed to rot there. He still did not consider the deal by which the coffin had gotten Tandy's soul to be valid. He stooped to pick up the battered coffin again.

"Wait!" the voice cried. "There is one other option. You could accede to a lien."

The ogre paused. "Explain."

"A lien is a claim on the property of another as security for a debt," the coffin explained. "A lien on your soul would mean that you agree to replace the girl's soul with another soul-and if you don't, then your own soul is forfeit. But you keep your soul in the interim, or most of it."

It did seem to make sense. "How long an interim?"

"Shall we say thirty days?"

"Six months," Smash said. "You think I'm stupid?"

"I did think that," the coffin confessed. "After all, you are an ogre, and it is well known that the brains of ogres are mostly in their muscles. In fact, their brains are mostly muscles."

"Not true," Smash said. "An ogre's skull is filled with bone, not muscle."

"I stand corrected. My skull is filled with necrosis. How about sixty days?"

"Four months."

"Split the difference: ninety days."

"Okay," Smash agreed. "But I don't agree you are entitled to keep any soul, just because you tricked an innocent girl into trading it off for nothing."

"Are you sure you're an ogre? You don't sound like one."

"I'm an ogre," Smash affirmed. "Would you like me to throw you around some more to prove it?"

"That won't be necessary," the coffin said quickly. "If you disagree with the assessment, you must deal with the boss: the Night Stallion. He makes decisions of policy."

"The Dark Horse?"

"Close enough; some do call him that. He governs the herd of nightmares."

It began to fall into place. "This is where the nightmares live? By day, when they're not out delivering bad dreams to sleepers?"

"Exactly. All the bad dreams are generated here in the gourd, from the raw material of people's fundamental fears-loss, pain, death, shame, and the unknown. The Stallion decides where the dreams go, and the mares take them there. Your girlfriend abused a mare, so it took a lien on her soul, and when she came here, that lien was called due. So her soul is forfeit, and now we have it, and only the Night Stallion can change that. Why don't we set you up for an appointment with the Stallion, and you can settle this directly with him?"

"An appointment? When?"

"Well, he has a full calendar. Bad dreams aren't light fancies, you know. There's a lot of evil in the world that needs recognition. It's a lot of work to craft each dream correctly and designate it for exactly the right person at the right time. So the Stallion is quite busy. The first opening is six months hence."

"But my lien expires in three months!"

"You're smarter than the average ogre, for sure! You might force an earlier audience, but you'd have to find the Stallion first. He certainly won't come to you within three months. I really wouldn't recommend the effort of locating him."

Smash considered again. It seemed to him that this coffin protested too profusely. Something was being concealed here. Time for the ogre act again. "Perhaps so," he said. "There is therefore no point in restraining my natural inclination for violence." He picked up a rock and crumpled it to chips and sand

with one hand. He eyed the coffin.

"But I'm sure you can find him!" the box said quickly. "All you have to do is seek the path of most resistance. That's all I can tell you, honest!"

Smash decided that he had gotten as much as he could from the coffin. "Good enough. Give me the girl's soul, and I'll leave my three-month lien and meet the Stallion when I find him."

"Do you think a soul is something you can just carry in your hand?" the coffin demanded derisively.

"Yes," Smash said. He contemplated his hand, slowly closing it into a brutishly ugly fist that hovered menacingly over the coffin.

"Quite," the coffin agreed nervously, sweating another blob of stinking goo. The soul floated up, a luminescent globe that passed right through the wood. Smash cupped it carefully in his hand and tromped from the gloomy chamber. Neither coffin nor skeletons opposed him.

Tandy sat where she had been, the picture of hopeless girlish misery. "Here is your soul," Smash said, and held out the glowing globe.

Unbelievingly, she reached for it. The globe expanded at her touch, becoming a ghost-shape that quickly overlapped her body and merged. For an instant her entire body glowed, right through the tattered red dress; then she was her normal self. "Oh, Smash, you did it!" she exclaimed. "I love you! You recovered my soul from that awful corpse!"

"I promised to protect you," he said gruffly.

"How can I reward you?" She was actually pinching herself, amazed by her restoration. Smash, too, was amazed; he had not before appreciated how much difference a person's soul made.

"No reward," he insisted. "It's part of my job, my service for my Answer."

She considered. "Yes, I suppose. But how ever did you do it? I thought there was no way-"

"I had to indulge my natural propensities slightly," he admitted, glancing at the pile of bones he had made. The bones shuddered and settled lower, eager to avoid his attention.

"Oh. I guess you were more terrible than the skeletons were," she said.

"Naturally. That. is the nature of ogres. We're worse than anything." Smash thought it best not to inform her of the actual nature of his deal. "Let's get out of here."

"Oh, yes! But how?"

That was another problem. He could bash through walls, but the force holding Tandy and himself inside the gourd was intangible. "I think we'll have to wait for the Siren to free us. All she has to do is move the gourd so we can't look into it any more, but she doesn't know when we'll be finished in here."

"Oh, I don't want to stay another minute in this horrible place! If I had known what would happen when I peeked into that funny little hole-"

"It's not a bad place, this," Smash said, trying to cheer her. "It can even be fun."

"Fun? In this awful graveyard?"

"Like this." Smash had spied a skeleton poking around a grave, perhaps looking for a new convert. He sneaked up behind it. Ogres didn't have to shake the earth when they walked; they did it because they enjoyed it. "B0001" he bellowed.

The skeleton leaped right out of its foot-bones and stumbled away, terrified. Tandy had to smile. "You're pretty scary, all right, Smash," she agreed.

They settled down against a large gravestone. Tandy huddled within the protection of the ogre's huge, hairy arm. It was the only place the poor little girl felt safe in this region.

Chapter 5. Prints of Wails

The Siren greeted them anxiously as they woke to the outer afternoon of Xanth. "I gave you an hour this time, Smash; I just didn't dare wait longer," she said. "Are you all right?"

"I have my soul back!" Tandy said brightly. "Smash got it for me!"

The Siren had been looking her age, for her human stock caused her to be less than immortal. Now relief was visibly restoring her youthfulness. "That's wonderful, dear," she said, hugging her. Then, looking at Smash, the Siren sobered again. "But usually souls can't be recovered without hell to pay-ah, that is, some sort of quid pro quo. Are you sure-"

"I've got mine," Smash said jovially. "Such as it is. Ogres do have souls, don't they?"

"As far as I know, only people of human derivation have souls," the Siren said. "But all of those do, even if their human ancestor was many generations ago, and so we three qualify. I'm sure yours is as good as any, Smash, and perhaps better than some."

"It must be stronger and stupider, anyway," he said.

"I'm so glad it's all right," the Siren said, seeming not entirely convinced. She evidently suspected something, but chose not to make an issue of it at this time. Older females tended to be less innocent than young ones, he realized, but also more discreet.

They considered their situation. There seemed to be no ogres and no merfolk at Lake Ogre-Chobee, despite its name.

"Now I remember," Smash said. "The curse-fiends drove the ogres away. They migrated north to the Ogre-fen-Ogre Fen. I don't know why I didn't think of that before!"

"Because you weren't cursed by the Eye Queue before, silly," Tandy said. "You weren't very smart. But that's all right; we'll just go up to the Ogre Fen and find your tribe."

"But that's the entire length of Xanth!" the Siren protested. "Who knows what horrors lie along the way?"

"Yes, fun," Smash said.

"Funny, the Good Magician didn't remind you about the ogres' change of residence," the Siren said.

"Well, there's certainly not much doing here. I would like to travel with you a little longer, if I may, at least until I find a lake inhabited by merfolk."

"Sure, come along, we like your company," Tandy said immediately, and Smash shrugged. It really made little difference to him. He was partially preoccupied by his problem with the lien on his soul. He would soon have to find a pretext to go back into the gourd to search for the Night Stallion and fight for his soul.

"But first, let's abolish this menace once and for all," the Siren said. She picked up the hypnogourd and lifted it high overhead, throwing it violently to the ground.

"No!" Smash cried. But before he could move, the gourd had smashed to earth. It fragmented into pinkish pulp, black seeds, and translucent juice. There was no sign of the world he and Tandy had toured within it; the magic was gone.

The ogre stood staring at the ruin. Now, how could he return to that world to settle his account?

Somehow he knew his lien had not been abated by the destruction of the gourd; his avenue to that world had merely been closed. It would take time to manifest, but he knew he was in very bad trouble.

"Is something wrong?" the Siren asked. "Did you leave something in there?"

"It doesn't matter," Smash said brusquely. After all, she had meant well, and there was nothing to be done now. No point in upsetting the girls, no matter how privately satisfying it might have been to rant and rave and stomp, ogre-style, until the whole forest and lake trembled and roiled with reaction to the violence.

They trekked north through the variegated jungle and tundra and intemperate zones of Xanth. Most of the local flora and fauna left the party alone, wisely not wishing to antagonize an ogre. Upon occasion, some gnarled old bull-spruce would paw the earth with a branch-hoof and poke a limb-horn into the way, but a short, sharp blow with Smash's gauntleted fist taught such trees manners. Progress was good.

They were just considering where to spend the night when they heard something. There was a thin, barely audible screaming, and a cacophony of ugly pantings, breathings, and raspings. "Something unpleasant is going on," the Siren said.

"I'll investigate," Smash said, glad for the chance for a little relaxing violence. He tromped toward the commotion.

A crowd of multilegged things was chasing a little fairy lass, who seemed to have hurt one of her gossamer wings. She was running this way and that, but wherever she went, creatures like squished caterpillars with tentacles moved to block the way, dribbling hungry drool. The fairy was screaming with fright and horror, and the pursuers were reveling in her discomfort, playing cruelly with her before closing for the kill.

"What's this? " Smash demanded.

One of the creatures turned toward him, though it was hard to tell which side was its front. "Stay out of what does not concern you, trashface," it said insolently.

Now, Smash normally did not involve himself in what did not concern him, but his recent experience with Tandy in the gourd had sensitized him to the plight of small, pretty females in distress. Also, he did not like being told to stay out, despite the compliment to his face. Therefore he reacted with polite force.

"Get out of here, you ghastly parody."

"Oho! the ghastly cried. "So the dumb brute needs a lesson, too!"

Immediately the creatures oriented on Smash. From a distance they were repulsive; from up close, they were worse. They launched purple spittle at him, belched obscenely all over their bodies, and scratched at him with dirty claws. But several still chased the hapless fairy lass.

Smash became moderately perturbed. Now it seemed the reputation of ogres was on the line. He picked up a ghastly. It defecated on his paw. He heaved it into the forest. It scurried back. He pounded another into the ground-but it merely squished flat, then rebounded. He tore one apart, but it just stretched impossibly, and snapped back to its normal shapelessness when he let go, leaving a slug of smelly slime on his fingers.

Now the fairy screamed louder. The ghastlies had almost caught her. Smash had to act quickly or he would be too late to help her. But what would stop these creatures? Fortunately, his new intelligence assisted. If throwing, pounding, and stretching didn't work, maybe tying would. He grabbed two ghastlies and squeezed and squished them together, tying a knot in their infinitely stretchable limbs.

Then he tied in a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Soon he had a huge ball of tied ghastlies, since they kept coming stupidly at him. Their rebounding and stretching didn't do them much good; it merely tightened the knots. In due course, all the ghastlies were balled together, spitting, hissing, scratching, and pooping on each other constantly.

Smash dropped the ball, wiped himself off on some towel-leaves, and checked on the fairy. She was as frightened of him as she had been of the ghastlies. He did not chase her; he had only wanted to make sure she was not too badly hurt.

When the fairy saw him stop, she stopped. She was a tiny thing, hardly half the height of Tandy, a nude girl form with sparldingly mussed hair and thin, iridescent wings with scenic patterns. "You aren't chasing me, ogre?"

"No. Go your way in peace, fairy."

"But why did you tie all the ghastlies in a knot, if you didn't want to gobble me up?"

"To help you escape."

She had difficulty assimilating this. "I thought you were an ogre, but you neither sound nor act like one."

"We all have our off days," Smash said apologetically.

Tandy and the Siren arrived. "He's a gentle ogre," the Siren explained. "He helps the helpless." She introduced the three of them.

"I'm John," the fairy said. Then, before they could react, she continued. "I know, I know it's not a proper name for the like of me, but my father was away when I was born, and the message got garbled, and I was stuck with it. So now I'm on a quest for my proper name. But I got tossed by a gust and hurt my wing, and then the ghastlies-"

"Why don't you travel with us?" Tandy asked. "Until your wing gets better. Monsters don't bother us much. We have one of our own." She gripped Smash's dangling hamhand possessively.

John considered, evidently uncertain about traveling with a monster. Then the ball of ghastlies began working loose, and she decided. "Yes, I will go with you. It should take only a day or so for my wing to mend."

Smash did not comment. He had not asked for any companions, but Tandy had been forced on him, and she had a propensity for inviting others. Perhaps it was because Xanth was so new to her that she felt the company of others who were more familiar with it would improve things. Maybe she was right; the Siren had certainly helped them get out of the gourd. It didn't really matter; Smash could travel with three as well as with one.

Now night came. Smash foraged for food and found a patch of spaghetti just ripening near a spice tree.

He harvested several great handfuls, shook the spice on them, and proffered this for their repast. The girls seemed a trifle doubtful at first, but all were hungry, and soon they were consuming the delicious, slippery stuff, ogre-style, by the handful and slurpful. Then they found a basket palm with enough stout hanging baskets for all, and spent a reasonably comfortable night.

But before they slept, the Siren questioned John about the kind of name she was looking for. "Why don't you just take any name you like and use it?"

"Oh, I couldn't," John said. "I can answer only to the name I was given. Since I was given the wrong one, I must keep it until I recover the right one."

"How can you be sure there is a right one? If your father was misinformed-"

"Oh, no, he knew who I was. He sent back a good name, but somehow it got lost, and the wrong name arrived instead. By the time he got home, it was too late to fix it."

Smash understood the Siren's perplexity. He, like her, had not been aware that names were so intricately tagged.

"Does that mean that someone else got your name?" the Siren asked.

"Of course. Some male fairy got my name, and must be as unhappy with it as I am with his. But if I find him, we can exchange them. Then everything will be just fine."

"I see," the Siren said. "I hope you find him soon."

In the morning they breakfasted on honeydew that had formed on the leaves of the basket tree, then resumed the trek north. John buzzed her healing wing every so often, and the pattern on it seemed to come alive in a three-dimensional image, like flowers blooming, but she could not yet fly. She had to be content to walk. She was a cheery little thing, good company, and full of cute anecdotes about life among the fairies. It seemed the Fairy Kingdom was a large one, with many principalities and interstate

commerce between groups, and internecine trade wars.

They started to climb. None of them was familiar with this section of Xanth, which was east of the Region of Madness, so they merely proceeded directly north. With luck, it wouldn't be too bad.

But it was bad. The mountain became so steep it was impossible to climb normally. They could not go around it, because the sides of the channel they traveled had risen even more steeply. They had either to proceed forward or to retreat all the way to the base and try another approach. None was willing to retreat.

Smash used his gauntleted fists to break out sections of rock, making crude steps for the others.

Fortunately, the really steep part was not extensive, and by noon they stood at the top.

It was a lake, hardly on the scale of Ogre-Chobee but impressive enough, brimful with sparkling water.

"This must be an old volcano," John said. "I have flown over similar ones, though not this big. We must beware; water dragons like such lakes, especially if they are hot on the bottom."

Smash grimaced. He didn't like water dragons, because they tended to be too much for an honest ogre to handle.

But he saw no sign of such a creature here. No droppings, no piles of bones, no discarded old scales or teeth.

"What are those?" Tandy inquired, pointing.

There were marks on the surface of the water. They were roughly circular indentations, with smaller indentations on one side of each large one. "They look like prints," the Siren said. "As if some creature walked on the water. Is that possible?"

Smash put one foot on the water. It sank through. The ripples moved across the prints, erasing them.

"Not possible," he decided.

Still, they decided to stay clear of the water until they knew more about it. Seemingly minor mysteries could be hazardous to their health in Xanth. They walked around the west side of the lake, following one of those suspiciously convenient paths because there was no other route between the deep water and the climike outer face of the mountain.

But as they bore north, following the curve of the cone, they encountered an outcropping of spongy rock. "Magma," Smash conjectured, forcing another subterranean memory to the surface, slightly heated.

"I don't care who it is, it's in our way," Tandy complained. Indeed, the rock blotted out the path, forcing them to attempt a hazardous scramble.

"I shall remove it," Smash decided. He readied his hamfist and pounded one good pound on the magma.

The rock responded with a deafening reverberation. They all clapped their hands over their ears while the mountain shook and the lake made waves. Finally the awful noise died away. "That magma comes loud!" the Siren said. "Magma cum laude," the ogre agreed, not hearing well yet.

"It sure is some sound," Tandy said, looking dizzy. The fairy agreed.

They decided they didn't like the sound of it, and would try the other side of the lake, where the way might be quieter. As they walked the path back, an awful moan slid across the water. "What is that?"

Tandy demanded anxiously.

"The wailing of whatever made the prints," the Siren conjectured.

"Oh. So these are the prints of wails."

"Close enough." The Siren grimaced. "I hope we don't meet the wail, though. I've had some experience with music on water, and this makes me nervous."

"Yes, you ought to know," Tandy agreed. "My father said you could bring any man to you from afar, if he heard you."

"Yes, when I had my magic," she said sadly. "Those days are gone, and perhaps it is just as well, but I do get lonely."

They approached the east side of the lake. But here they encountered more trouble. An ugly head lifted on a serpentine neck. It was not exactly a dragon's head, and not exactly a sea monster's head, but it had affinities with both. It was not large as monster heads went, but it hissed viciously enough.

Smash was tired of being balked. He did not mess with this minor monster; he reached out with one hand and caught the neck between gauntleted thumb and forefinger.

Immediately another head appeared, similar to the first and just as aggressive. Smash caught this one in his other glove.

Then a third came. This was getting awkward! Had he stumbled onto a whole nest of serpents? Hastily Smash smashed the first two heads together, crushing both, and reached for the third.

"They all connect!" the Siren exclaimed. "It's a many-headed serpent!"

Indeed it was! Four more heads rose up, making seven in all. Smash crushed two more, but had to move quickly to prevent the remaining three from burying their fangs in his limbs. He rose to the need, however, by catching one under his feet and the last two in his hands. In a moment all had been crushed, and he relaxed.

"Smash, look out!" Tandy cried. "More heads!"

Apparently a couple of the ones he had dealt with had not been completely destroyed, and had revived.

This was unusual; things seldom recovered from the impact of ogre force. He grabbed these-and

discovered they sprouted from the same neck. Their junction formed a neat Y. He was sure he hadn't encountered this configuration before.

"More heads!" Tandy screamed.

"Now there were six more, in three pairs. New heads were growing from the old ones!

"It's a hydra!" the Siren cried. "Each lost head generates two more! You can never get ahead of it!"

"I've got too many heads of it!" Smash muttered, stepping back. The hydra was generating a small forest of hissing heads, each lunging and snapping at anything in range. Two were squaring off at each other.

"You can't kill a hydra," the Siren continued. "Its essence is immortal. It draws its strength from the water."

"Then I shall remove the water," Smash said. "It will be easy to bash a hole in this rim and let the lake out."

"Oh, please don't do that!" the Siren protested. "I'm a creature of water, and I hate to see it mistreated.

You would ruin a perfectly lovely lake, and drown many innocent creatures below, and kill many innocent lake denizens. There is an entire ecology in any such body-"

Was the mermaid becoming the conscience of the group? Smash hesitated.

"That's true," John admitted. "Pretty lakes should be left alone. Most of them have much more good than evil in them."

Smash looked at Tandy. "I agree," she said. "We don't want to harm others, and this water is nice."

The ogre shrugged. He didn't want trouble with his friends. As he thought about it, with his amplified Eye Queue intelligence-which remained a nuisance-he realized they were right. Wanton destruction could only beget a deterioration of the environment of Xanth, and that would, in the long run, damage the prospects of ogres. "No harm to others," he agreed gruffly. If any other ogres ever heard of this, he would be in trouble! Imagine not destroying something!

"Oh, I could kiss you," Tandy said. "But I can't reach you."

Smash chuckled. "Good thing. Now we'll have to swim across the lake. Do all of you know how to swim?"

"Oh, I couldn't swim," John said. "My wings would break."

"Maybe you can fly now," the Siren suggested.

"Maybe." The fairy tried, buzzing her pretty wings, making the flower-pattern blossoms again. She seemed to lighten as the downdraft of air dusted dirt out from the ridge, but she did not quite take off.

Then she jumped. A gust of wind passed at that moment, carrying her out over the rim. She agitated her wings furiously, but could not sustain elevation and began to fall.

Smash reached out and caught her before she crashed into the rocky slope. She screamed, then realized he was helping her, not attacking her. He set her carefully back on the ledge, where she stood panting prettily and quivering with reaction.

"Not yet, it seems," the Siren said. "But you might sit on Smash's back while he swims."

"I suppose," the fairy agreed faintly. Her little bare bosom was heaving. It occurred to Smash that the loss of the ability to fly might be quite disturbing to a creature whose natural mode of travel was flight.

He might react similarly if he lost his ogre strength.

They entered the water. Tandy could swim well enough, and, of course, the Siren converted to mermaid form and was completely at home. John perched nervously on Smash's head and was so light he hardly felt her weight. He began stroking across the lake, careful not to splash enough to cause trouble, despite his pleasure in splashing. Some sacrifices were necessary when one traveled in company.

The Siren led the way, easily outdistancing the others. That creature certainly could swim; she was in her element.

Then something loomed from the north. It was huge and dark, like a low-flying thundercloud, scooting across the water. Simultaneously the awful wailing came again, and now Smash realized it came from the cloud-thing. There was also a pattering drumbeat punctuating the wails.

The Siren paused in place. "I don't like this," she said. "That thing is trotting on the surface of the water; I feel the vibrations of its footfalls. And it's headed for us. I could outdistance it, I think; but Tandy can't, and Smash can't do much without imperiling John. We had better get out of the water."

"It's coming too fast," John said. "It will catch us before we get back to shore."

She was right. The monster loomed rapidly onward, casting a dark shadow. It was not actually a cloud, but was composed of gray-blue foam, with a number of holes through which the wailing passed, and hundreds of little feet that touched the water. When it moved to one side, they saw the prints left on the surface, just like the ones they had seen before. The prints of wails.

"Oh, we are doomed!" John cried. "Save yourself, Smash; dive under the water, hide from it!"

An ogre hide from a monster? Little did the fairy grasp the magnitude of the insult she had innocently rendered. "No," Smash said. "I'll fight it."

"It's too big to fight!"

"It probably smothers its prey by surrounding it," Tandy said. She was being practical. She seemed much less afraid of things since having 'discovered the ultimate nature of fear inside the gourd. Monsters were only monsters, when one's soul was intact. "You can't fight fog or jelly."

Smash realized she was probably right. These assorted girls were making more sense than he would have thought before he came to know them. In the water, with a delicate and flightless fairy on his head, he could not fight efficiently anyway-and if there was nothing really solid to punch out, his fists would be of little use.' It galled him to concede that there were monsters that an ogre couldn't handle, but in this case it seemed to be so. Curse this Eye Queue that made him see reason!

"I'll lead it away!" the Siren cried. She was hovering in the water, her powerful tail elevating her body, so that it was as if she stood only waist-deep. She would have been a considerable sight, that way, for a human male. It seemed to Smash that she should have no trouble attracting a merman, at such time as she found one. "You swim on across the lake," the Siren continued. She set off toward the west, moving with amazing velocity. She was like a bird in flight across the surface of the lake.

When she was a fair distance away, she paused and began to sing. She had a beautiful voice, with an eerie quality, a little like the wailing of the monster. Perhaps she was deliberately imitating it.

The monster paused. Then it rotated grandly and ran toward the Siren, its little feet striking the water without splashing, leaving the prints. That mystery had been solved, though Smash did not understand how the prints remained after the wailing monster moved on. But, of course, the effects of magic did not need any explanation.

Once the monster had cleared the area, lured away by the Siren, Smash and Tandy swam on across. It was a fair distance, and Tandy tired, slowing them; it seemed there were not many lakes this big in the underworld. Finally Smash told her to grab hold of one of his feet so he could tow her. The truth was, he was getting tired himself; he would have preferred to wade, but the water was far too deep for that. It would have been un-ogrish to confess any weakness, however.

They made it safely to the north lip. They drew themselves out and rested, hoping the Siren was all right.

Soon she appeared, swimming deep below the surface. Her tail gave her a tremendous forward thrust, and she was a thing of genuine beauty as she slid through the water, her hair streaming back like bright seaweed, her body as sleek and glossy as that of a healthy fish. Then she came up, her head bursting the surface, her hands rising automatically to brush back her wet tresses, mermaidlike. "My, that was interesting!" she said, flipping out of the water to sit on the rim, her tail hidden in the water, so that now she most resembled a healthy nymph.

"The monster was friendly?" Tandy asked doubtfully.

"No, it tried to consume me. But it couldn't reach below the water because its magic prints keep it above.

It tried to lure me close, but I'm an experienced hand at luring creatures, and was too careful to be taken in."

"Then you were in real danger!" Tandy was now very sensitive to danger from monsters that lured their victims, whether by an easy access path or a convenient peephole.

"No danger for me," the Siren said, flinging her damp hair out as she changed to human legs and climbed the rest of the way from the water. "Few creatures can catch my kind in our element. Not that there are many quite like me; most merfolk can't make legs. That's my human heritage. Of course, my sister the Gorgon never was able to make a tail; it was her face that changed. Magical heredity is funny stuff! But I talked briefly with the monster. He considers himself a whale."

"A whale of a what?" Smash asked.

"Just a whale."

"Isn't that a Mundane monster?" John asked. It was generally known in Xanth that the worst monsters were Mundane, as were the worst people.

"Yes. But this one claims some whales migrated to Xanth, grew legs so they could cross to inland waters, and then kept the legs for lake-running. Some find small lakes; they're puddle-jumpers. Some find pools of rum; they're rum-runners. He says he's of the first water, a royal monster, a Prince of his kind."

"A Prince of Whales," Tandy said. "Is he really?"

"I don't think so. That's why he wails."

"Life is hard all over," Smash said without much sympathy. "Let's get down off this mountain."

Indeed, the sun was losing strength and starting to fall, as it did each day, never learning to conserve its energy so that it could stay aloft longer. They needed to get to a comfortable place before night.

Fortunately, the slope on this side was not as steep, so they were able to slide down it fairly readily.

As they neared the northern base, where the forest resumed, a nymph came out to meet them. She was a delicate brown in color, with green hair fringed with red. Her torso, though slender and full in the manner of her kind, was gently corrugated like the bark of a young tree, and her toes were rootlike. She approached Tandy, who was the most human of the group. "Please-do you know where Castle Roogna is?"

"I tried to reach Castle Roogna a year ago," Tandy said. "But I got lost. I think Smash knows, though."

"Oh, I wouldn't ask an ogre!" the nymph exclaimed.

"He's a halfway tame ogre," Tandy assured her. "He doesn't eat many nymphs."

Smash was getting used to these slights. He waited patiently for the nymph to gain confidence, then answered her question as well as he could. "I have been to Castle Roogna. But I'm not going there at the moment, and the way is difficult. It is roughly west of here."

"I'll find it somehow," the nymph said. "I've got to." She faced west.

"Now wait," Tandy protested, as Smash had suspected she would. The girl had sympathy enough to overflow all Xanth! "You can't get there alone! You could easily get lost or gobbled up. Why don't you travel with us until we find someone else who is going there?"

"But you're going north!" the nymph protested.

"Yes. But we travel safely, because of Smash." Tandy indicated him again. "Nobody bothers an ogre."

"There is that," the nymph agreed. "I don't want to bother him myself." She considered, seeming somewhat tired. "I could help you find food and water. I'm good at that sort of thing. I'm a hamadryad."

"Oh, a tree-nymph!" the Siren exclaimed. "I should have realized. What are you doing out of your tree?"

"It's a short story. Let me find you a place to eat and rest, and I will tell it."

The dryad kept her promise. Soon they were ensconced in a glade beside a large eggplant whose ripe eggs had been hard-boiled by the sun. Nearby was a sodapond that sparkled effervescently. They sat in a circle cracking open eggs, using the shells to dip out sodawater. Proper introductions were made, and the dryad turned out to be named Fireoak, after her tree.

She was, despite her seeming youth, over a century old. All her life had been spent with her fireoak tree, which had sprouted from a fireacom the year she came into being. She had grown with it, as hamadryads did, protecting it and being protected by it. Then a human village had set up nearby, and villagers had come out to cut down the tree to build a firehouse, Fireoak made fine fire-resistant wood, the dryad explained; its own appearance of burning was related to Saint Elmo's fire, an illusion of burning that made it stand out beautifully and discouraged predatory bugs except for fireants. In vain had the dryad protested that the cutting of the oak would kill both it and her; the villagers wanted the wood. So she had taken advantage of the full moon that night to weave a lunatic fringe that shrouded the tree, hiding it from them. .But that would last only a few days; when the moon shrank to a crescent, so would the fringe, betraying the tree's location. She had to accomplish her mission before then.

"But how can a trip to Castle Roogna help?" John asked. "They use wood there, too, don't they?"

"The King is there!" Fireoak replied. "I understand he is an environmentalist. He protects special trees."

"It is true," Smash agreed. "He protects rare monsters, too." Now for the first time he realized the probable basis for King Trent's tolerance of an ogre family near Castle Roogna: they were rare wilderness specimens. "He always looks for the solution of least ecological damage."

The dryad looked at him curiously. "You certainly don't talk like an ogre!"

"He blundered into an Eye Queue vine," Tandy explained. "It cursed him with smartness."

"How are you able to survive away from your tree?" the Siren asked. "I thought no hamadryad could leave for more than a moment."

"That's what I thought," Fireoak said. "But when death threatened my tree, desperation gave me extraordinary strength. For my tree I can do what I must. I feel terribly insecure, however. My soul is the tree."

Tandy and Smash jumped. The analogy was too close for comfort. It was no easy thing to be separated from one's soul.

"I know the feeling," the Siren said. "I lived all my life in one lake. But I suddenly realized that it had become a desolate place for a lone mermaid. So I am looking for a better lake. But I do miss my original lake, for it contains all my life's experience, and I wonder whether it misses me, too."

"How will you know the new lake won't be desolate for you, too?" Fireoak asked.

"It won't be if it has the right merman in it."

The dryad blushed, her face for an instant showing the color of the fire of her tree. "Oh."

"You're a hundred years old-and you have no experience with men?" Tandy asked.

"Well, I'm a dryad," Fireoak said defensively. "We just don't have much to do with men-only with trees."

"What sort of experience have you had?" the Siren asked Tandy.

"A demon-he-I'd rather not discuss it." It was Tandy's turn to blush. "Anyway, my father is a man."

"Most fathers are," the Siren said. "Mine isn't!" Smash protested. "My father is an ogre."

She ignored that. "I inherited my legs from my father, my tail from my mother. She was not a true woman, but he was a true man."

"You mean human men really do have, uh, dealings with mermaids?" Tandy asked.

"Human men have dealings with any maid they can catch," the Siren said with a wry smile. "I understand my mother wasn't hard to catch; my father was a very handsome man. But he had to leave when my sister the Gorgon was born."

After a pause, Fireoak resumed her story. "So if I can just talk to the King and get him to save my tree, everything will be all right."

"What about the other trees?" John asked.

Fireoak looked blank. "Other trees?"

"The other ones the villagers are cutting down. Maybe they don't have dryads to speak for them, but they don't deserve destruction."

"I never thought of that," Fireoak said. "I suppose I should put in a word at Castle Roogna for them, too.

It would be no bad thing to lobby for the trees."

They found good locations in the trees and settled down for the night. Smash spread himself out on the glade ground; no one would bother him. His head was near the liquidly flowing trunk of a water oak Fireoak had chosen; he overheard the hamadryad's muted sobbing. Evidently her separation from her beloved home tree was harder on her than she showed by day, and the threat to that tree was no distant concern. Smash hoped he could find a way to help her. If he had to, he could go and stand guard over her tree himself. But he didn't know how long that would take. He didn't want to delay his own mission too long, lest the time for the Good Magician's Answer should run out. There was also the matter of the gourd-coffin's lien on his soul; anything he had to do, he had better get done within three months.

Already he felt not quite up to snuff, as if part of his soul had been leached away, taking some of his strength with it.

Next day the five of them marched north. The land leveled out, but hazards remained. Tandy blundered into a chokecherry bush, and Smash had to rip the entire plant out of the ground before its vines stopped choking her. Farther along they encountered a power plant, whose branches swelled out into strange angular configurations and hummed with power; woe betide the creature who blundered into that!

Around midday they discovered a lovely vegetable tree, on whose branches grew cabbages, beans, carrots, tomatoes, and turnips, all in fine states of ripeness. Here were all the ingredients for an excellent salad! But as Smash approached it, Tandy grew nervous. "I smell a rat," she said, sniffing the air. "There are big rats down in the caves where I live; I know their odor well. They always mean trouble."

Smash sniffed. Sure enough, there was the faint aroma of rats. What were they doing here?

"I smell it, too," John said. "I hate rats. But where are they?"

The Siren was walking around the tree. "Somewhere in or near the vegetable tree," she announced. "I fear this plant is not entirely what it appears."

Fireoak approached it. "Let me check. I'm good with trees." She was showing no sign of the agony of her separation from her tree, but Smash knew it remained. Her night in a tree must have restored her somewhat, though of course it wasn't her tree.

The hamadryad stood close to the vegetable tree. Slowly she touched a leaf. "This is a normal leaf," she said. Then she touched a potato-and one of its eyes blinked. "Get away from here!" Fireoak screamed.

"It's a rat!"

Then the fruits and vegetables exploded into action. Each one sprouted legs, tail, and snout and dropped to the ground. A major swarm of rats had camouflaged itself by masquerading as vegetables, luring the unwary into contact-but the smell had given them away. Once a rat, always a rat, by the smell of it.

The Siren, Tandy, and John scurried back in time to avoid the first surge of the rat-race. But Fireoak stood too close. The beasties swarmed around her, biting at her legs, causing her to trip and fall.

Smash leaped across, swooping down with one hand to lift the hamadryad clear of the ground. Several rats came up with her, chewing savagely at her barklike skin. She screamed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tenaciously and bit at her hands.

Smash shook her, but hesitated to do it vigorously enough to fling away the rats, lest it hurt her. As it was, bits of bark and leaf were flying off. Smash had to pinch the rats off one by one, and their claws and teeth left scratches on the 'dryad's body. By the time the last was gone, she was in an awful state, oozing sap from several scrapes. The swarm of rats surrounded Smash and tried to bite his feet and climb his hairy legs.

Smash stomped ferociously, shaking the glade and crushing several rats with each stomp. But there were hundreds of the little monsters, coming at him from every direction, moving rapidly. They threatened to get on him no matter how fast he stomped. He didn't dare set the dryad down, lest the same fate befall her. His great strength hardly availed against these relatively puny enemies.

"Get away from him!" Tandy screamed from a safe distance. "Leave him alone, you rats!" She seemed really angry. It was almost as if she were trying to defend him from the enemy; that, of course, was a ludicrous reversal of their situation, yet it touched him oddly.

Smash stomped away from the tree, but the rats stayed with him. In order to run he would have to do two things: move the dryad back and forth as his arms pumped and flee a known danger. The one seemed physically hazardous to another person, while the other was emotionally distasteful. So he moved slowly, stamping, while the rats began climbing his legs.

Then Tandy's arm shot out as if hurling a rock. Her face was red, her teeth bared, her body rigid, as if she were in a state of absolute fury-but there was no rock in her hand. She was throwing nothing.

Something exploded at Smash's feet. He was knocked off them, barely catching his balance. All around him the rats turned belly-up, stunned.

He stared at the carnage, standing still because his legs were numb. He set down the hamadryad, who stepped daintily over the bodies. "What happened?"

Tandy sounded abashed. "I threw a tantrum."

Smash left the twitching rats and went to join her. His feet felt as if they were nothing but bones, with the flesh melted off, though this was not the case. "That's a spell?"

"That's bad temper, my talent," she said, eyes downcast. "When I get mad, I throw a tantrum. Sometimes it does a lot of damage. I'm sorry; I should have controlled my emotion."

"Sorry?" Smash said, bewildered, looking back at the rum of the rat-swarm. "That's a wonderful talent!"

"Oh, sure," she replied with irony.

"My mother had a similar talent. Of course, she was a curse-fiend; they all throw curses."

"Maybe I have curse-fiend ancestry," Tandy said sourly.

"My father Crombie came from a long line of soldiers, and they do get around quite a bit."

Now the others came up. "You did that, Tandy?" Fireoak asked. "You saved me a lot of misery! If Smash had put me down amidst those awful rats, or if they had climbed up him and gotten to me, as they were trying to-" She winced, feeling her wounds. She was obviously in considerable discomfort.

"That's an extremely useful talent for the jungles of Xanth," the Siren said.

"You really think so?" Tandy asked, brightening. "I always understood it wasn't nice to be destructive."

"It isn't?" Smash asked, surprised.

Then they all laughed. "Sometimes perhaps it is," the Siren concluded.

They found some genuine vegetables for lunch, then resumed the march. But soon they heard a

ferocious snuffling and snorting ahead, low to the ground. "Oh, that might be a dragon with a cold,"

John said worriedly. "I can't say I really like dragons; they're too hot."

"I will go see," Smash said. He discovered he was rather enjoying this journey. Violence was a natural part of his nature-but now he had people to protect, so there was a certain added justification to it. It was more meaningful to bash a dragon to save a collection of pretty little lasses than it was to do it merely for its own sake. The Eye Queue caused him to ponder the meaning of the things he did, and so it helped to have at least a little meaning present. At such time as he got free of the curse, he could forget about these inconvenient considerations.

He rounded a brush-bush and faced the snorting monster, hamfists at the ready-and paused, dismayed.

It was no dragon. It was a small oink, with a squared-off snout and a curled-up tail. But it snorted like a huge fire-breathing monster.

Smash sighed. He picked up the oink by the tail and tossed it into the brush. "All clear," he called.

The others appeared. "It's gone?" Tandy asked. "But we didn't hear any battle."

"It was only a short snort," the ogre said, disgusted. He had so looked forward to a good fight!

"Another person might have represented it as the most tremendous of dragons," the Siren said.

"Why?"

"To make it seem he had done a most valiant deed."

"Why do that?" Smash asked, perplexed.

She smiled. "Obviously you don't suffer from that syndrome."

"I suffer from the Eye Queue curse."

"Cheer up. Smash," Tandy said. "We're bound to encounter a real dragon sometime."

"Yes," the ogre agreed, cheering as directed. After all, the thing to do with disappointments was to rise above them. The Eye Queue told him that.

"Speaking of dragons," John said, "there is a story that circulates among fairies about dragons and their parts, and I've always wondered whether it was true."

"I've met some dragons," Smash said. "What's the story?"

"That if a dragon's ear is taken off, you can listen to it and hear wondrous things."

Smash scratched his head. Several fleas jumped off, startled. Since his skull no longer heated much when he tried to think, the fleas had no natural control. "I never tried that."

"It must be sort of hard to get a dragon's ear," Tandy remarked. "I doubt they part with them willingly."

Fireoak considered. "There are stories the mockingbirds tell, to mock the ignorant. They would nest in my tree sometimes and talk of marvelous things, and I never knew how much to believe. One did once mention such a quality of a dragon's ear. It said the ear would twitch when anything of interest to the holder was spoken anywhere, so one would know to listen. But often the news was not pleasant, for dragons have ears for bad news. And as Tandy says, dragons' ears are very hard for normal people to come by."

"Next dragon I slay, I will save an ear," Smash said, intrigued.

They continued north till dusk, with only minor adventures, avoiding tangle trees, clinging vines, and strangler figs, scaring off tiger lilies and dogwood, and ignoring the trickly illusions spawned by assorted other plants. Swarms of biting bugs converged, but Smash blew them away in his usual fashion with selected roars. By nightfall the party was close to something significant, but Smash couldn't remember what.

They located a forest of black, blue, and white ash trees whose shedding ashes covered the forest floor.

Any recent footprints showed; and, because each color of tree spread its ashes at a different hour, it was possible to know how recently any creature had passed. White prints were the most recent, blue prints were older and somehow more intricate, with maplike traceries on them, and black prints dated from the night. Some ashes had been hauled, but no dragons or other dangerous creatures had been here in the past few hours.

Amidst this forest was a handsome cottonwood that provided cotton for beds for them all. "I always thought camping out would be uncomfortable," Tandy remarked. "But this is getting to be fun. Now if only I knew where I was going!"

"You don't know?" the Siren asked, surprised.

"Good Magician Humfrey answered my Question by telling me to travel with Smash," Tandy said. "So I'm traveling. It's a pretty good trip, and I'm learning a lot and meeting nice new people, but that's not my Answer. Smash is looking for the Ancestral Ogres, but I doubt that's what I'm looking for."

"I understand the Good Magician is getting old," the Siren said.

"He's pretty old," Tandy agreed. "But he knows an awful lot, and your sister the Gorgon is making him young again."

"She would," the Siren said. "I am jealous of her power over men. In my heyday I used to summon men to my isle, but she always took them away, and, of course, they never looked at other women after she was through with them."

Because they had turned to stone. Smash knew. The fact was, the Gorgon had been as lonely as the Siren, despite her devastating power. The Gorgon had been smitten by the first man who could nullify her talent. Magician Humfrey, so she had gone to him with a Question: would i he marry her? He had made her serve a year as housemaid and guardian in his castle before giving her his Answer: he would.

Evidently that was the sort of man it required to capture the heart of the Gorgon. Smash understood that their wedding, officiated by Prince Dor when he was temporary King, had been the most remarkable occasion of the year, attended by all the best monsters. Smash's father Crunch had been there, and Tandy's mother Jewel. By all accounts, the marriage was a reasonably happy one, considering the special nature of its parties.

"I wonder what it is like to be with a man?" Fireoak said, in a half-wistful question. Her injuries of the day had fatigued her greatly, perhaps making her depressed. Evidently their conversation of the preceding night had remained on her mind.

"My friends always told me men were difficult to get along with," John said. "A girl can't live with them, and she can't live without them."

"Well, I've tried living without," the Siren said. "I'm ready to try with. Good and ready! At least it shouldn't be dull. First pool I find with an available merman, watch out!"

"Poor merman!" the fairy said.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll deserve whatever I give him. I don't think he'll have cause to complain, any more than Magician Humfrey has with my sister. We draw on similar lore."

"All girls do. But it seems terribly original to each innocent man." There was general laughing agreement.

"You speak as if no man is here," Tandy said, sounding faintly aggrieved.

"There's a man here, listening to our secrets?" Fireoak cried, alarmed.

"Smash."

There was another general titter. "Don't be silly," John said. "He's an ogre."

"Can't an ogre also be a man?"

The tittering subsided. "Yes, of course, dear," the Siren said reassuringly. "And a good one, too. We take Smash too much for granted. None of us could travel freely here without his formidable protection. We ought to thank him, instead of imposing on him."

Smash lay still. He had not intended to feign sleep, but thought it best not to join in this conversation. It was interesting enough without his participation. He had not known about this conspiracy of the females of Xanth, but now he could remember how he had seen it in action when Princess Irene snared Prince Dor, and even when his mother pacified his father. It did seem that the distaff knew things that the males did not and used them cleverly to achieve their desires.

"What's a lady ogre like?" Tandy asked.

"One passed my tree once," Fireoak said. "She was huge and hairy and had a face like a bowl of overcooked mush someone had sat on. I never saw anything so ugly in all my life."

"Well, she was an ogress," the Siren said. "They have different standards of beauty. You can bet they know what bull-ogres like, though! I suppose an ogre wants a wife who can knock down her own trees for firewood-no offense, Fireoak-and kill her own griffins for stew so he doesn't have to interrupt his dragon hunting for trifles."

They laughed again, and their chatter meandered across other femalish subjects, recipes, prettifying spells, jungle gossip, and such, until they all drifted off to sleep. But the images they had conjured enchanted Smash's imagination. An ogress who could knock down her own trees and slay her own griffins-what an ideal mate! And a face like squashed mush-what sheerest beauty! How wonderful it would be to encounter such a creature!

But the only ogress he had met was his mother-who wasn't really an ogress, but a curse-fiend acting the part. She acted very well, but when she forgot her makeup, her face no longer looked like mush. Smash had always pretended not to notice how distressingly fair her face and form became in those unguarded moments, so as not to embarrass her. The truth was, had his mother the actress chosen to pass among females like these Smash now traveled with, she could have done so without causing alarm. And, of course, as soon as she prepared herself, she was the complete ogress again, as brutish and mean as any ogre could ask for. Certainly his father Crunch loved her and would move mountains for her, despite her secret shame of an un-ogrish origin. One of those mountains had been moved to rest near their home so that she could climb it and look out across Xanth when the mood took her.

At last Smash slept. He still wasn't used to doing so much thinking, and it tired him despite the amplification the Eye Queue provided. He had never had to work things out so rationally before, or to see the interrelationships among diverse things. Well, one day he would win free of the curse and be a true brute of an ogre again. He slept.

Chapter 6. Dire Strait

Next morning they came up against the barrier Smash had been unable to remember. It was a huge crevice in the earth, a valley so deep and steep that they shrank back from it. It extended east and west; there seemed to be no end to it, no way around.

"How can we go north?" Tandy asked plaintively. "This awful cleft is impossible!"

"Now I remember it," Smash said. "It crosses all of Xanth. Down near Castle Roogna there are magic bridges."

"Castle Roogna?" Fireoak asked. She looked wan, as if she had not been eating well, though she had been provided with all she wanted. Smash suspected her absence from her beloved tree was like an ordinary person's need for water. She would have to return to it soon, or die. She was suffering from deprivation of soul, and would soon become as Tandy had been within the gourd, if not helped. Her rat wounds only aggravated the condition, hastening the process.

"That's right," Tandy said brightly. "If this crack passes near Castle Roogna, you can follow it there!

Your problem is solved."

"Yes, solved," the hamadryad agreed wanly.

Now the Siren noticed her condition. "Dear, are you well?"

"As well as I can be," the dryad replied gamely. "The rest of you must go on across the chasm; I will find my own way to Castle Roogna."

"I think you have been away from your tree too long," the Siren said. "You had better return to it, to restore your strength, before attempting the long trip to Castle Roogna."

"But there is not time!" Fireoak protested. "The moon is waning, night by night; soon the lunatic fringe will sunder, and my tree will be exposed."

"Yet if you perish on the way to see the King, you can do your tree no good," the Siren pointed out.

"It is indeed a dire strait," the dryad agreed, sinking to the ground.

The Siren looked at Smash. "Where is your tree, dear?" she asked Fireoak.

"North of the chasm. I had forgotten about-"

"But how did you cross?"

"A firebird helped me. Because I am associated with a fireoak. But the bird is long gone now."

"I think we must nevertheless cross over soon and return you to your tree," the Siren said. Again she looked meaningfully at Smash.

"We will go with you, to guard your tree," Smash said, catching on.

Tandy clapped her hands. "Oh, how wonderful to think of that. Smash! We can help her!"

Smash said nothing. The Siren had really thought of it, but he was amenable. They couldn't let Fireoak perish from neglect-and she surely would, otherwise. They could certainly guard her tree from harm; no one would come near an ogre.

But first they had to get to the tree-and that meant crossing the chasm-in a hurry. How were they going to do that?

"You chipped steps in the prints-of-wails mountain," Tandy suggested.

"But that was slow," the Siren said. "It could take several days. We must cross today."

They stared into the chasm, baffled. There seemed to be no way to cross it rapidly-yet they had to, somehow. For now all could see how the hamadryad was failing. Fireoak's surface had turned from lightly corrugated skin to deeply serrated bark, from young nymph to old tree trunk. Her green hair was wilting, and the tinge of red was turning black. Her fire would soon be out.

"There must be a path," John said. "If we just spread out and look, surely we'll find it."

That was a positive idea. They commenced their search for the path.

There was the sound of galloping hooves from the west. The group ran back together, and Smash faced the sound, ready for whatever might come.

Two centaurs appeared, moving rapidly. One was male, the other female. Centaurs could be good news or bad, depending. Smash was conscious of his orange jacket and steel gauntlets, gifts of the centaurs of Centaur Isle, but knew that there could be rogue centaurs in this wilderness. What were these two doing here?

Then Smash recognized them. "Chet! Chem!" he exclaimed.

The two drew up, panting, a light sheen of sweat on their human and equine portions. Smash embraced each in turn, then turned to make introductions. "These are friends of mine from the Castle Roogna region." He faced the other way. "And these are friends of mine from all over Xanth."

"Smash!" the filly centaur exclaimed. "What happened to your rhymes?"

"I'm cursed with intelligence, among other things."

"Yes, I can see the other things," Chet said, contemplating the assorted females. "I never knew you were interested."

"We sort of imposed on him," Tandy said.

"Yes, Smash is impose-able," Chem agreed. She was young, so lacked the imposing proportions of her mother; the last time Smash had seen her, she had been playing children's galloping games. In another year or so she would be looking for a mate. He wondered why she was not still in centaur-schooling, as her mother was very strict about education. "We came here to do the same."

"The same?" Smash asked. "We're traveling north."

"Yes," Chem said. "Good Magician Humfrey told me where to intercept you. You see, I'm doing a thesis on the geography of uncharted Xanth, completing my education, but my folks won't let me travel alone through that region, so-"

"And so I escorted my little sister this far," Chet finished. He was a handsome centaur, with noble features, a fine coat, and excellent muscles on both his human and equine portions. But a purple scar marred his left shoulder, where a wyvem had once bitten him, causing serious illness. "I know she'll be safe with you. Smash. You're a big ogre now."

"Safe? We're about to try to cross this gulf!" Smash protested. "And we don't know how."

"Oh, yes. The Gap Chasm. I brought you a rope." Chet presented a neat coil. "Humfrey said you would need it."

"A rope!" Suddenly their way down into the chasm was clear. Centaur rope was always strong enough for its purpose.

"I'll help get you down," Chet said. "But I'm not supposed to go myself. I have to return immediately to Castle Roogna with a message or two. What's the message?"

Smash's curse of intelligence enabled him to catch on. "A village is about to cut down a fireoak tree for timber. The tree's hamadryad will die. The King must save the tree."