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 inter-
ference 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.

2                       Ogre, Ogre

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 de-
mons' 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 wor-
riedly. 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, how-
ever. 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

Ogre, Ogre                       3

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 de-
mon 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 sleep-
ing, 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 hand-
some enough, and many a nymph would have been deli-
riously happy to be in Tandy's place.

Tandy hoped Fiant would go away, after perceiving her
alseep 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?

4                       Ogre, Ogro

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
spiriti" she screamed.

"Ah, the tender morsel wakes, cries welcome! Delight-
ful!" 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 be-
headed 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

Ogre, Ogre                        5

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 re-
sponsible 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 bom.
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 over-
ripe 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

6                        Ogre, Ogre

many of her nymphal qualities despite the burden of expe-
rience 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, be-
cause 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 night-
mares visited instead. Every time she slept, they trotted in,
rearing over her bed, hooves flashing, ears fiat back, snort-
ing 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

Ogre, Ogre                        7

completely, tears in her eyes, determined to help the ani-
mal—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 sev-
eral 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 night-
mare 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 reputa-
tion, 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 deep-
est desires." His tail was standing straight up, quivering.

For a moment Tandy froze, unable even to speak. She

8        .               Ogre, Ogre

had been bothered by this creature before; now she was
terrified. Staring-eyed, she watched his confident ap-
proach.

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 sur-
vive 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 rid-
ing horses; she had sometimes ridden the Diggle behind her
mother, traveling to the far reaches of Xanth to place em-
eralds 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 gob-
lins 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

Ogre, Ogre                        9

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 what-
ever—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 her-
self 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 up-
coming overnight journey to set diamonds in a big kimber-
lite 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?

10

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

II

Suppose Fiant came instead—and she was locked in slum-
ber, 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 repre-
sentative 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 wak-
ing.

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 Roognal" 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 riv-
ers without cave-canyons, and above was a monstrous ceil-
ing 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 legend-
ary Xanth's past—and that where there were none was be-
cause 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.

12

Ogre, Ogre

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 dispo-
sition. 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 simi-
lar 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 daysl 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 arrivedl

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 dream-
state. 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 cir-
cumstance, and Tandy found herself sprawled on the

ground, battered and wide-eyed.

She was stiff and sore and tired. It had not been a rest-
ful 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.

Ogre, Ogre                       13

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 marvel-
ously detailed mental map of Castle Roogna—and this pres-
ent 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 re-
turn home. What would her mother think?

Something stirred within the castle. The drawbridge low-
ered, 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 writh-
ing 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 reassur-
ingly. "We consider that your phenomenal effort in catch-
ing and riding the nightmare constitutes sufficient chal-

14                     Os1'®' "S""®
lenge 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 be-
cause, 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 omery bullhorn blocked the way, threaten-
ing 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 hom 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 pru-
dent to catch errands elsewhere until he was gone. Natu-
rally 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.

16

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

17

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 imagina-
tive 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 dvilizable, and that was certainly the safest belief
to hold.

Yet Smash was no ordinary ogre. This meant that he
usually did not strike without some faint reason and that
his natural passion for violence had been somewhat stifled.
This was a sad condition for an ogre, yet he had borne up
moderately well. Now he had a mission.

The bad weather cleared. The clouds drew their curtains
aside to let lovely shafts of sunlight slant down, making the
air sparkle prettily. Birds shook out their feathers and
trilled joyfully. Everything was turning clean and pleasant.

Smash snorted with disgust. How could he travel in this?
He would have to camp for the afternoon and night and
hope the morrow was a worse day.

He was hungry, for it took huge and wasteful quantities
of energy to sustain an ogre in proper arrogance. He cast
about for something edible and massive enough to sustain
him, such as a dead dragon or a vat of spoiling applesauce
or a mossy rock-candy boulder, but found nothing. This
region had already been scavenged out.

Then he heard the squawk of a contented griffin and he
sniffed the aroma of delicious pie. The perceptions of ogres
were a-cute rather than a-ugly, oddly; though the griffin
was some distance away, Smash located it precisely by
sound and odor. He tromped toward it. This must be the
creature that had cleaned out all the edibles of this region.

The griffin had captured a monstrous shoefly pie. The
winged shoes had been cooked to a turn, the juices of their
fine leather suffusing the pie, which massed about as
much as the griffin. This was an ideal meal for an ogre.

Smash marched up, not bothering to employ any stealth.
The griffin whirled, half spreading its wings, issuing a
warning squawk. Nobody in his right mind interfered with
a feeding griffin, except a sufficiently large and hungry
dragon.

But Smash was not in his right mind. No ogre ever was.
There was simply not enough mind there to be right. "Me
give he three, leave sight of me," he said. All ogres spoke
only in inane rhyme and lacked facility with pronouns,
which they took to be edible roots. But ogres generally
made themselves plain enough, in their brutish fashion.

The griffin had not had prior experience with an ogre.
That was its fortune. There were very few ogres in these
parts. The griffin opened its eagle beak wide and screeched
a warning challenge.

Smash's bluff had been called. That was unfortunate,
because no ogre was smart enough to bluff. With dimwit-
ted joy, he rose to the prospect of mayhem. "One," he said,
counting off on his smallest hamfinger. The griffin didn't
move.

"Two." After a brief search, he found another finger.
The griffin had had enough of this. It gave a raucous
battle cry and charged, which was just as well, for Smash
had lost count This sort of intellectual exercise was horren-
dously difficult for his kind; his. head hurt and his fingers
felt numb. But now he was released from the necessity of
counting all the way to three, and that was a great relief.

He grabbed the griffin by its bird beak and lion's tail,
whirled it around, and hurled it out over the forest in a
cloud of small feathers and fur. The griffin, startled by
this reception, spread its wings, oriented, 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, hami" he bel-
lowed.

The blast of the bellow tore out half a dozen pinfeathers
and two flight feathers, and sent the griffin spinning out of

18                      Ogre, Ogre

control. The creature righted itself again, but this time de-
cided 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 crea-
ture. "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 res-
cued 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.

19

Ogre, Ogre

"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 minature 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, ogrel" Quieta ex-
claimed. "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 disap-
pointed. Somehow, for no good reason, he had expected

more.

"Well, you saved my father only once," Quieta said de-
fensively. "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 mir-
rors 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.

Ogre, Ogre

20

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 im-
posing. 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 care-
lessly into someone's castle. So he opened his bag of belong-
ings and donned his finest apparel: an orange jacket and
steely gauntlets, given to him four years ago by the cen-
taurs of Centaur Isle. The jacket was invulnerable to pene-
tration by a weapon, and the gauntlets protected his ham-
fists 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 Magi-
cian 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 at-
tention. Having exhausted his knowledge of the require-
ments 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 sun-
light 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 affa-
bly, 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 bama-
clelike 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 th" wall rose. He

Ogre, Ogre                       21

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, ineffi-
cient 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 liz-
ard, 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 hap-
pened 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 exer-
cising the prerogative of his name did Smash feel truly
happy. Smashi Smash! Smashi 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 metall

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 un-
comfortably, 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 inde-
cent burial after death; it was one of their occasional links
with the species of man. The best interment was in a gar-
bage dump or toxic landfill for the disposal of poisonous
plants and animals, but ordinary ground would do if prop-
erly cursed and tromped down sufficiently hard.

"Me pound in mound with round of sound," Smash con-
tinued, 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 fin-
ger and scooping dirt over the holes. Then he stomped the
mound, his big flat feet making the entire region reverber-
ate 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 fall-
ing 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 sur-
rounded 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 glitter-
ing eyes forming within its substance, winking, mocking

24                     Ogre, Ogre                            .;

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,    t
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 to-
gether, it gave him an idea. Ideas were rare things for
ogres, and not too valuable. But this one seemed good. Wa-
ter 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 un-
harmed, 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 get-
ting 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 chal-
lenge 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 ex-
posed 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?

"Hoool" 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,               j

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.

Ogre, Ogre                       25

Then the ogre had one more smart notion, a prohibi-
tively 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 flick-
ered out.

Now Smash stood within a cluttered room. Books over-
flowed 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 an-
other item of clutter, hunched over a similarly crowded
wooden desk, was a little gnome of a man. Smash recog-
nized 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 Hum-
frey 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 miss-
ing 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 intel-
lect to formulate the Question. He had hoped to work it out
during the journey; but, with typical ogrish wit, he had for-
gotten 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

26                      O^fe, Ogre

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. Cha-
meleon, 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 afBrmatively,
his shaggy face scaring a cuckoo bird that had been about
to signal the hour. The bird signaled the hour with a terri-
fied dropping instead of a song, and retreated into its

cubby.

"So be it," the Magician said, shrugging. "You will dis-
cover 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 man-
ner 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

Ogre, Ogre                       27

to stone. Even faceless, she was said to have a somewhat
petrifying effect. "Here he is," Humfrey said, as if deliver-
ing 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 studyl 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, tumed-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 re-
turn 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 rip-
pling 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 Hum-
frey'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

28

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

29

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 gra-
ciously, patting his backside as he turned. The Good Magi-
cian climbed back up toward his study. Smash knew the
man had lost valuable working time, but somehow the Ma-
gician did not seem unhappy. Naturally the nuances of hu-
man 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 sur-
vived 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 hungryl"

"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 fa-
miliarity 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. "Nat-
urally 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 Gor-
gon'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 walk-
ing on a hill that rolled, and she took several tumbles. For-
tunately, 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 disin-
terest, 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

30

Ogre, Ogre                      31

less of each, but was definitely of a similar overall configu-
ration. And her exposures, it seemed, were genuinely unin-
tentional, 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 pleas-
ant 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 gol" 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 seri-
ous 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

32 Ogre, Ogre

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 ma-
terial 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 con-
stricted 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 dme 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 real-
ized 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.

Ogre, Ogre                       33

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 re-
newed 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 ad-
vantage. 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 at-
tention," 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

34

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

35

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 climb-
ing, 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 night-
mare 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 sleep-
ing 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 man-
ner 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 intelli-

gence 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 night-
mares 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 pol-
icy 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 liter-
ally 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 was, he ex-
plained, looking for a suitable practice, where his marvel-
ous remedies would be properly appreciated. Meanwhile,
did they happen to knew where Pete was? Pete was a bog,
very good for delving. Since Pete wasn't north, where

36 Ogre, Ogre

Tandy and Smash had come from, and probably wasn't
south, where the Magic Dust Village was supposed to be,
and wasn't west, where the quack had come from, it had to
be east, by elimination. The quack coughed and, his mind
jogged by the term, deposited some genuine fresh birdlime
on the ground. Flies instantly materialized, having a taste
for lime, and Smash and Tandy moved on.

By noon they were in rougher territory. Sweaters
swarmed about them, causing them to perspire, until
Smash got fed up and issued a bellowing roar that blew
them all away. Unfortunately, it also blew the leaves off
the nearest trees, and several more tatters from Tandy's
dress.

Then they encountered a region of curse-burrs—little
balls of irritation that clung tenaciously to any portion of
the body they encountered. Smash's face lit up in a horren-
dous smile. "Me remember here!" he cried. "Me whelped
near."

"You were born here? Amidst these awful burrs?"
Tandy smiled ruefully. "I should have known."

Smash laughed. It sounded like a rockslide in a canyon.
"Me sire Crunch, best of bunch." He looked avidly about,
whelphood memories filtering back into his thick skull. Lat-
er, his family had moved to the vicinity of Castle Roogna,
because his lovely mother, whose hair was like nettles and
whose face would make a zombie blush, had felt their cub
should have some slight exposure to civilization. Crunch,
the slave of love, had acceded to this un-ogrish notion; who
could resist the blandishments of such a mushface as
Smash's mother?

"Oh, this is awful!" Tandy protested. "These burrs are
getting in my hair." It seemed human girls were sensitive
to that sort of thing.

"Could be worse," Smash said helpfully. "She make
curse."

"Curse?" she asked blankly.

Smash demonstrated. "Burr—grrr!" he growled. A burr
dropped lifelessly off his gross nose.

"I don't think I can make such rhymes," Tandy said.
Then a burr stuck her finger. "Get away, you awful
thing!" she exploded.

The burr dropped off. Tandy looked at it, comprehend-

Ogre, Ogre                      37

ing. She was certainly intelligent! "Oh, I see. You just have
to curse them away!"

Even so, it was not easy, for Tandy had been raised as a
nice girl and did not know many curses. They hurried out
of the burr region.

Now they came to a dead forest. The trees stood gaunt,
petrified in place. "I'd like to know how that happened,"
Tandy remarked. Smash knew, but it was a long story in-
volving the romantic meeting of his parents, and it was
hard for him to formulate it properly, so he let it go..

In the afternoon they came to a region of brambles.
These were aggressive plants with glistening spikes. Smash
could wade through them imperviously, for his skin was so
tough he hardly felt the few thorns they dared to stick him
with. It was quite another matter for Tandy, who had deli-
cate and sweet-smelling 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, strid-
ing 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 ant-
lions 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 vi-
cinity, so that useful details of geography were coming
back to his slow memory!

"Oh, I couldn't swing from branch to branch through the

38 Ogre, Ogre

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. Realiz-
ing 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 offi"

"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 brit-
tle, 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 stomp-
ing and pounding. Lions yowled as the gauntleted fists con-
nected, 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

Ogre, Ogre                      39

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 oif. Smash," she re-
ported. "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, en-
joying the experience. "There is nothing much in the cav-
erns 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 con-
structed the skyway to encourage immigration. Now there
were plenty of people at the village, so the path didn't mat-
ter, 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 un-
familiar 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

40 Ogre, Ogre

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 mo-
mentarily without effort. "The effect manifested concur-
rently with my contact with that object. Probability sug-
gests 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 sys-
tem!"

"Oh, no, don't do that," she protested. "It's sort of inter-
esting, really. I don't mind you being smart. Smash. It's
much easier to talk with you."

Ogre, Ogre                       41

"In any event, I seem unable for the moment to deacti-
vate 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 may-
hem?" 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 homy nose with a discol-
ored 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 tan-
gle 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 any-
one 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?"

42 Ogre, Ogre

"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 Re-
gion 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 ef-
fects. You will have to go around."

They did not argue the case. Smash's inordinate intelli-
gence, coupled with his memories of this region, corrobor-
ated 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 height-
ened 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

Ogre, Ogre                       43

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 look-
ing for. But she was negative. "We have a message from
the sister of a neighbor of yours. We must get on and de-
liver 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 unrav-
eling. "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 enchant-
ment 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 Tan-
dy'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 mem-
ory—things he had heard at different times in his life and
thought nothing of, since ogres thought nothing of every-
thing. From these suddenly assimilating fragments he was
now able to piece together the role of this village, geologi-
cally. 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 la-
bored most diligently to facilitate the proper and even
spreading of the dust. Yet Smash's Eye Queue-infected
brain obnoxiously conjured caveats, questioning the reali-
ties 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 be-
fore Smash himself had been whelped, but his parents had
told him all about it. They had considered it rather ro-
mantic, 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 move-
ments 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, distress-
ingly. Now he had lost his rhymes and his naivete, 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 sup-
posed 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 se-
cret.

Ogre, Ogre                       47

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 ex-
claimed, her newly covered bosom heaving. "How is she
doing?"

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

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

"Recently?" Tandy's brow furrowed.

46

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 intel-
lect, 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 ac-
complishing much here. I never thought I'd travel with an
ogrel" She faced Smash. "Are you tame? I've beard 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."

48 Ogre, Ogre

"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 cat-
nip." 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 mflammation
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 cata-
mount 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 pon-
der 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 hamflngers into a
huge, gleaming fist. Shafts of sunlight struck down to elicit
new gleams as Smash slowly rotated his fist. It was amaz-
ing how each shaft knew exactly where to go!

Smash nudged this metallic hamfist under the cata-

Ogre, Ogre                       49

mount'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 consid-
ered 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, snarl-
ing 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 cata-
mount, 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 crea-
ture away. The catbird flew awkwardly, its rudder mal-
functioning. 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 imped-
iment. "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 cat-
sup where cattle grazed, fattening up in case some cata-
clysm came. It terminated at a catacomb. "The catnip

50

Ogre, Ogre

grows in there," the Siren said, pointing to the teeth of the
comb that barred the entrance. "But it's dangerous to en-
ter, 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. Per-
haps 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 in-
teresting to others, but he was stuck with it.

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

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

Ogre, Ogre                       51

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 intelli-
gence, 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 ex-
panded 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 bas-
ket 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. Sud-
denly 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

52 Ogre, Ogre

were scattered, low-hanging clouds around them, white be-
low, 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 oae 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 differ-
ence.

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
funi" Tandy exclaimed girlishly. "But how will the cata-
pult 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 Or-
ange 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 un-

Ogre, Ogre                       53

derstood 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 ingenue."

"Naturally," the Siren agreed faintly.

"But my father Crunch happened onto the set, inno-
cently 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 ex-
claimed.

"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

54

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

55

was two days before he recovered, and the smile never left
his face."

"Well, I don't know," Tandy said, and she seemed un-
usually 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 evi-
dence, 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. Evi-
dently the curse-fiends had driven away anything danger-
ous.

"Look at the noses!" Tandy cried, pointing across the
water. Smash looked. There were scores of nostrils swim-
ming 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 inno-
cent, 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 por-
tions 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 dan-
gerous." She had learned from her experience with the tan-
gler 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
memymph swimming with marvelous facility. In a mo-
ment 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.

56 Ogre, Ogre

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 curse-fiends to prevent
large sea monsters from passing; they preferred deep water
and avoided shallows. Maybe the smaller lake had been de-
veloped 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 addi-
tional 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 be-
fore—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 An-
swer for Tandy—or for himself?

Smash had no ready answer for that, even with his un-

Ogre, Ogre                       57

wanted 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 nec-
essarily any solution to life's problems. It was much easier
to be strong and stupid, bashing things out of the way with-
out 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
i ^   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 Gor-
gon 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

58 Ogre, Ogre Ogre, Ogre 59

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 be-
come 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, con-
cerned. 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-
hol" 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 re-
mained frozen there.

Gently, the Siren removed the gourd, breaking the con-
nection. Tandy blinked and shook her head. But her eyes
did not quite focus. Her features coalesced into an expres-
sion 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 expe-
rience 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 Mun-
dania, 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."

60 Ogre, Ogre

"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 vibra-
tions wafted in from the near distance. There was the dif-
fuse 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 con-
dition. 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; evi-
dently 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 som-
ber 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 inter-
estingly drear but pointless place, worried about Tandy. He

Ogre, Ogre                       61

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 sympa-
thetically, 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 some-
thing? He had known very few ghosts, as they did not ordi-
narily associate with vgres. 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 pit-
eously, but supported his weight. Smash took another
step—and suddenly the entire stairway began to move,
carrying him upward. Magic stairs! What would this enjoy-
able place think of next?

The stairs accelerated. Faster and faster they went, mak-
ing 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 phenome-
nally partial to falling. However, they weren't unduly con-
cerned about it, either. Smash stiffened his legs. In a mo-

62 Ogre, Ogre

ment 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 defi-
nitions of bad. Just what happened in there?"

"Only a haunted house. Shocking doorknob. Ghost.
Squeezing walls—I suppose those could have been awk-
ward for a human person. Moving stairs. A demon drop-
ping 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, us-
ing a puff from a puffball growing nearby to clean up the
girl's face. "That complicates it."

Ogre, Ogre                       63

"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 head-
ache. 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 rub-
ble 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 what-
soever 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.

64 Ogre, Ogre

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 leam-
ingi 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 howl-
ing. Smash breathed deeply, appreciating it, then concen-
trated 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.

Ogre, Ogre                       65

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 vulnera-
ble 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 ap-
plied 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 re-
verted 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 commit-
ments 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 for-
feit. 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 enti-
tled 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 cof-
fin 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 incli-
nation 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 cham-
ber. 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 her-
self, amazed by her restoration. Smash, too, was amazed;

he had not before appreciated how much difference a per-
son's soul made.

^ "No reward," he insisted. "It's part of my job, my ser-
vice 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 atten-
tion.

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

"Naturally. That. is the nature of ogres. We're worse

70 Ogre, Ogre

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 stum-
bled 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

I he 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 sob-
ered 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.

71

72 Ogre, Ogre

"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 be-
fore!"

"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 pro-
tested. "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 dif-
ference to him. He was partially preoccupied by his prob-
lem 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 satisfy-
ing it might have been to rant and rave and stomp, ogre-

Ogre, Ogre                       73

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-hom 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 audi-
ble screaming, and a cacophony of ugly pantings, breath-
ings, 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 par-
ody."

"Oho! the ghastly cried. "So the dumb brute needs a les-
son, 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 ob-

74 Ogre, Ogre

scenely 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, hiss-
ing, 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 fright-
ened 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.

Ogre, Ogre

75

"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 ham-
hand 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 com-
panions, 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 oth-
ers 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 har-
vested 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 reasona-
bly 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 in-
stead. 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 anec-
dotes about life among the fairies. It seemed the Fairy
Kingdom was a large one, with many principalities and in-
terstate 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 indenta-
tions 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 possi-
ble," 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 suspi-
ciously 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 subterra-
nean memory to the surface, slightly heated.

"I don't care who it is, it's in our way," Tandy com-
plained. 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.

78

Ogre, Ogre

"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 mu-
sic 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 serpen-
tine neck. It was not exactly a dragon's head, and not ex-
actly a sea monster's head, but it had affinities with both.
It was not large as monster heads went, but it hissed vi-
ciously 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 connecti" 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.

Ogre, Ogre                       79

"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, step-
ping back. The hydra was generating a small forest of hiss-
ing 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 es-
sence 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 inno-
cent 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 real-
ized 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

80 Ogre, Ogre

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 com-
pany.

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

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, cast-

Ogre, Ogre                       81

ing 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 effi-
ciently 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 mer-
man, 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 be-
gan to sing. She had a beautiful voice, with an eerie qual-
ity, 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

82 Ogre, Ogre

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 them-
selves 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 wa-
ter, 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 auto-
matically 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 crea-
tures, 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 heri-
tage. 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.

Ogre, Ogre

83

"Just a whale."

"Isn't that a Mundane monster?" John asked. It was gen-
erally known in Xanth that the worst monsters were Mun-
dane, 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 mon-
ster, 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 sympa-
thy. "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 com-
fortable 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 re-
sumed, a nymph came out to meet them. She was a deli-
cate 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 pa-
tiently 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

84

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Ogre, Ogra

85

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 spar-
kled effervescently. They sat in a circle cracking open
eggs, using the shells to dip out sodawater. Proper introduc-
tions 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, protect-
ing 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 ex-
plained. "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 experi-
ence 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 Tan-
dy's turn to blush. "Anyway, my father is a man."

"Most fathers are," the Siren said.

86 Ogre, Ogre

"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 hand-
some 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, every-
thing 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 lev-
eled out, but hazards remained. Tandy blundered into a

Ogre, Ogre                       87

chokecherry bush, and Smash had to rip the entire plant
out of the ground before its vines stopped choking her. Far-
ther along they encountered a power plant, whose branches
swelled out into strange angular configurations and
hummed with power; woe betide the creature who blun-
dered 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 ap-
proached 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 separa-
tion 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 con-
^ct—but the smell had given them away. Once a rat, al-
ways 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

88 Ogre, Ogre

up with her, chewing savagely at her barklike skin. She
screamed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tena-
ciously 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 crush-
ing 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 dis-
tance. "Leave him alone, you rats!" She seemed really an-
gry. 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 distaste-
ful. 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

Ogre, Ogre                       89

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 emo-
tion."

"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?" Fire-
oak 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 al-
ways 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 re-
sumed the march. But soon they heard a ferocious snuf-
fling 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 na-
ture—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.

90 Ogre, Ogre

He rounded a brush-bush and faced the snorting mon-
ster, 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 syn-
drome."

"I suffer from the Eye Queue curse."

"Cheer up. Smash," Tandy said. "We're bound to en-
counter 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 any-

Ogre, Ogre                       91

thing 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 adven-
tures, 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 re-
member 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 in-
tricate, 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 pro-
vided cotton for beds for them all. "I always thought camp-
ing 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 trav-
eling. 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 Si-
ren said.

"He's pretty old," Tandy agreed. "But he knows an aw-
ful lot, and your sister the Gorgon is making him young
again."

"She would," the Siren said. "I am jealous of her power

92 Ogre, Ogre

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 Hum-
frey, 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 tem-
porary 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, consid-
ering 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. Evi-
dently their conversation of the preceding night had re-
mained 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 Magi-
dan Humfrey has with my sister. We draw on similar
lore."

"All girls do. But it seems terribly original to each inno-
cent 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."

Ogre, Ogre                       93

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 inter-
esting 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 Prin-
cess 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 pre-
tended not to notice how distressingly fair her face and
form became in those unguarded moments, so as not to em-

94 Ogre, Ogre

barrass 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 com-
pleat 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 suffer-
ing 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 pro-
cess.

"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

95

96

Ogre, Ogre

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 mean-
ingfully 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 sev-
eral 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."

Ogre, Ogre                      97

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, de-
pending. 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. "Chetl Chem!" he ex-
claimed.

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, contemplat-
ing the assorted females. "I never knew you were inter-
ested."

"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 fin-
ished. He was a handsome centaur, with noble features, a
fine coat, and excellent muscles on both his human and

98 Ogre, Ogre

equine portions. But a purple scar marred his left shoulder,
where a wyvem had once bitten him, causing serious ill-
ness. "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 pro-
tested. "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 pur-
pose.

"I'll help get you down," Chet said. "But I'm not sup-
posed 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."

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

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

The hamadryad made a feeble motion with her hand.

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

The filly walked over to Fireoak. "Show me on my pic-
ture," she said.

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

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre                       99

then." He glanced about. "Was there any other message? It
seems there should be more than one."

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

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

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

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

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

The Siren went down next, having less trouble because
she had so much less mass. Then Tandy, followed by the
fairy, who fluttered her wings to make herself even lighter
than she was. Smash then made a harness out of the end of
the rope, set Fireoak in it, and stood on the brink to lower
her carefully to Chem's waiting arms.

Finally Smash himself descended, merely applying one
gauntlet to the rope and sliding rapidly down. Chet undid
the upper end from the steelwood tree and dropped it into
the chasm. They would need the rope again on the north
slope.

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

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

100                     Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

spell."

"What do you mean?" Tandy asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chem trotted east, while Smash lumbered west, since
these were the two fastest movers of the group. The girl,
Siren, and fairy spread out in between. They left the ha-
madryad in the shade of a bush, since she was now too
weak to walk.

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

Ogre, Ogre                      101

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

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

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

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

Now Smash remembered. The Gap Dragon ranged the
Gap Chasm, trapping and consuming any creatures foolish
enough to stray here. The forget-spell had deceived him
again. The monster really profited from that spell, since no
one remembered the danger. But it was coming back to
him now. This was a formidable menace.

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

Smash lumbered to the fray. He stood much taller than
the dragon, but it reached much longer than he. Thus they
did not come together with a satisfying crash. The dragon
scooted right under Smash, intent on the nymphlike morsel
before it.

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

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

But Smash's own mass was not inconsiderable. The

102

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

103

shock of his landing traveled along the body of the dragon
in a ripple. When the ripple passed a set of legs, they were
wrenched momentarily off the ground; when it arrived at
the head, the mouth snapped violently. The jaws, reaching
close to the desperately fleeing Siren, fell short.

Now Smash had the Gap Dragon's baleful attention. The
dragon let out a yowl of discomfort and whipped its head
around. Its tail, pinned under the ogre, thrashed about, so
that Smash had trouble regaining his feet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The monster was outdoing him. Petulantly, Smash bit   j
into a rock and spit out a stream of graveL The dragon's   :

teeth were pointed, so it could not match that. Instead, it
hoisted a petard of steam at him, the greasy ball of vapor
curling the hairs of his face and clogging his nostrils.

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

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

Then Smash boxed the dragon's right ear with his left
fist—and the ear squirted right off the skull and flew out
of sight. The dragon winced; that smarted! But the monster
hardly needed that ear, and came back with a blast of
steam that cooked the outer layer of the ogre's head.
Smash's thick skull stopped the heat from penetrating to
the Eye Queue-corrupted brain—more was the pity, he
thought.

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

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

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

All this was in slow motion, yet it was a race. Would
Smash rip the head apart first, or would the dragon
squeeze the juice out of him? The answer was uncertain.
Smash was having trouble breathing; he was beginning to

lose strength. It seemed to him that this should not be hap-
pening, or at least not this fast. But the dragon's jaws were
now quite far apart, and should soon break.

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

In the good old days before the Eye Queue vine had
fallen on him. Smash would not have wasted tedious
thought on such a thing; he would merely have bashed on
through, to kill and/or be killed, hardly caring which. Now
he was cursed with the notion of meaning. To what point
was this violence if neither participant survived?

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

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

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

It took the Gap Dragon a moment to catch on. Mean-
while, it chewed. It surely felt the bite, but did not yet
realize that this was its own doing, or that its teeth had not
contacted ogre flesh. It took a while for the difference in
taste to register. The dragon wrenched its supposed prey

upward, driving the teeth in deeper. The coil loosened, giv-
ing Smash half a gasp of breath.

Then at last the dragon realized what it was doing. Its
jaws began to open, to free itself from its own bite and to
emit a honk of sheer pain and frustration—but Smash's
two gauntleted hamhands came down on either side of it,
clasping the snout, pressing it firmly closed on the meat.
The jaw muscles were weaker this way; the dragon could
not release its bite. Still, the ogre could not use his hands
for further attack, for the moment he let go, the jaws
would open. It was another position of stalemate.

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

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

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

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

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

The dragon evidently had found the ogre to be stiffer

106 Ogre, Ogre

competition than anticipated. It made a feint at Smash, and
Smash raised a fist. Then the dragon dived abruptly back,
as if fleeing. Suspicious, Smash paused—then saw that the
dragon was going after Fireoak the Hamadryad, who was
still lying helplessly on the ground.

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

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

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

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

Smash exploded out of the ground, kicking dirt in the
dragon's snoot. He reached for the jaws, but this time the
dragon was wise enough to keep its mouth shut; it wanted
no more prying open! It drove at the ogre with sealed jaws,
trying to knock him down before taking a bite.

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

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

From the other side Tandy called, "I've found a ledge!

Ogre, Ogre                      107

It's out of reach of the dragon! We can use the rope to
climb to it while Smash destroys the dragon!"

She had boundless confidence in his prowess! Smash
knew he was in the toughest encounter of his life. But he
could proceed with greater confidence the moment he
knew the girls were safe. He looked where Tandy pointed
and saw the ledge, about halfway up the steep slope. There
was a pining tree on it, its mournful branches drooping
greenly, the sad needles hanging down. They would be able
to loop the rope about the trunk of this tree and haul them-
selves up to it.

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

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

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

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

But its body was flexible and compressible. When it had
been squeezed down to half its original diameter, Smash
could force it no farther without taking a new grip—and
the moment he released his present one, the body would

108 Ogre, Ogre

spring out again. His compression was not enough. The
dragon was in pain, but still able to function; now it was
again bringing its other claws into play. That would be
trouble, for the outsides of Smash's arms were exposed.
They could be clawed to pieces.

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

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

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

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

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

It was quite a smack. Smash was rocked back. But his
orange centaur jacket was made to protect him from physi-
cal attack and it withstood the lash of the sharp tail. Other-
wise Smash could have been badly gashed, or even cut in
half. The tail, at its extremity. Was long and thin, like a
whip, with edges like a feathered blade. Smash wanted no
more of that.

He spied a boulder half buried in the ground. He ripped
it from its mooring and hurled it at the dragon. The dragon
dodged, but Smash threw another, and a third. Eventually
he was bound to score, and the dragon knew it.

Ogre, Ogre                      109

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

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

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

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

Smash tried to turn, but the claws landed on his shoulder
and hauled him backward to the opening jaws. This time
he could not attack those jaws with his hands; he could not
reach them. He was abruptly doomed.

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

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

But Tandy's face was all twisted up in terror or horror
or anger; her eyes were squeezed almost shut, and her body
was stiff. She paid no attention to him. Then her arm
moved as she threw something invisible. Smash, realizing
» her intent almost too late, dropped to his knees, though the
talons dug cruelly into his shoulder.

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

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

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

no

Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Siren stirred. "What does it matter?" she asked dole-
fully.

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

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

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre                      111

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

112 Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now they were all down and safe—but unfortunately at
the bottom of the Gap Chasm. The Gap Dragon was still
twitching, trying to discover a way to free itself without
pulling out either its brains or its tail. Which was more
important wasn't clear.

John revived. "Oh, my, that was awful!" she exclaimed.
"Now I feel so much better, I could just fly!" And she took
off, flying in a loop.

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

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

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

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

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

"That ironwood tree."

"I could try."

Smash tied an end of the rope to a rock, then hurled the
rock up past the ironwood tree. John flew up and held the
rope at the tree. Now Smash walked over to the Gap
Dragon, which was still trying to free itself from the boul-
der without hurting its head or its tail in the process.
Smash knocked it on the head with a fist, and it quieted

Ogre, Ogre                      113

down; the dragon was no longer in fighting condition and
couldn't roll with the punch.

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

"Now drop that stone." he called.

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

John flew back to the ground while Smash hauled the
dragon up by the tail. But soon the weight was too much;

instead of hauling the dragon up. Smash found himself
dangling. This was a matter of mass, not strength.

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre

All these girls were pleasant to be close to, he realized as
the Eye Queue curse enabled him to think the matter
through. Each had her separate female fashion, sort of
rounded and soft, structured for holding. But it seemed
best not to let them know that he noticed. They allowed
themselves to get close to him only because they regarded
him as a woolly monster who had no perception of their
nonedible attributes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smash could handle that. He slid down the rope and

Ogre, Ogre                      115

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smash kept on hauling. He could go only so fast, since

116 Ogre, Ogre

he had to take a fresh grip each time and tense for the
renewed effort. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but
he was tiring more rapidly. What had become of his ogre
endurance?

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

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

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

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

The Siren leaped up. "I have a knife!" she cried. "I'll go
down and cut off the dragon's tail so it wiB drop to the
bottom of the chasm, out of reach!"

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

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

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

The Siren lay on the bank, her head over the cliff, look-
ing down. "The dragon's head is almost there," she re-
ported. "John is down near the tree. She's afraid of that
monster; I can tell by the way she skirts it. But she's ap-
proaching the tied tail. Now she's sawing on it with the
knife. She's not very strong, and those scales are tough.
The dragon doesn't see her; it's orienting on Chem. Oops—
now it sees John. That knife is beginning to hurt it as she
digs through the scales. It's slow work! The dragon is turn-
ing its head about, opening its jaws. Chem is slipping down
farther. She's kicking at the dragon's neck with her fore-
feet, trying to distract it. Now she's throwing dirt at it from
the chasm wall. John is still sawing at the tail. I think she's

r

Ogre, Ogre                      117

down to real flesh now. The dragon is really angry. It's
blasting out steam—Oh!" She paused, horrified.

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

"The steam—John—" The Siren took a ragged breath.
"The steam shriveled her wings, both of them. They're just
tatters. John's clinging to the tree trunk. Still sawing at the
tail. What awful courage she has! She must be in excruciat-
^ ing pain."

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

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

"What of John?" Tandy cried.

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

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

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

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

"Well, we crossed the chasm," Tandy said. She was not
happy. None of them was. One of their number had lost
her invaluable wings, another was too wasted to stand, and
Smash was too tired to move. If this was typical of the
hazards they faced, traversing central Xanth, how would
they ever make it the rest of the way?

118

Ogre, Ogre

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

goblins.

Goblins hated people of any type. The strait had become

yet more dire.

Chapter 7. Lunatic Fringe

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

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

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

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

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

The leader seemed fazed. "Who are you?"

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

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

"What of my friends?" Tandy asked suspiciously.

119

120 Ogre, Ogre

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

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

"If that's the way you want it," the goblin said indiffer-
ently.

"That's the way I want it."                    *

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

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

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

"But not in the pot!"

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

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

"Nonsense. Ogres don't use pots."

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

"Yes," Tandy agreed guardedly.           '

"How many others has he eaten?"

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

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

"He beat up the Gap Dragon!"

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

"What?" Tandy asked, bewildered.

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

Irnnw whv."

Ogre, Ogre                      121

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

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

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

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

Five forbidden regions? Firewall? Smash wondered
about that. It didn't sound like the sort of territory to take
five or six delicate girls through.

"You will let us go if we do that?" Tandy asked.
"You and the ogre."

Tandy's face set. She was a very stubborn girl at times.
"All of us."

The goblin leader wavered. "That's a lot to ask. We
haven't had fresh meat in several days."

"I don't care if you never have fresh meat again!" the
girl flared. "You can cook up zombies if you get hungry. I
want all my friends."

"It's only one daughter you're taking north, after all."
"Remember the feminine wiles," the Siren murmured.
Tandy considered. "The ogre can't do all the guarding,"
she said reasonably. "When he fights off a big dragon or a
tangle tree or something, he gets tired. Then he has to rest,
and someone else stands guard, like the centaur. If we
cross a lake, the Siren scouts it out first. We never know
whose skill will be useful." She paused, then with an effort
turned on extra charm, "it you really want your daughter
to travel safely—"

Gorbage capitulated with bad grace. "Oh, very well. All
of you go. It's a bad deal for me, but Goldy will slaughter
me if I don't get her matched soon. She's a cussheaded lass,
like all her kind."

Smash was amazed. Tandy had, with a little timely ad-
vice from the Siren, talked them out of disaster and gotten
them all free passage through goblin-infested territory. Al-
ready his own strength was filtering 'back; all he needed

122

Ogre, Ogre

was a little rest. But there was no longer any need for Vio-
lence.

Goldy Goblin turned out to be a petite, amazingly pretty

lass. The goblin females were as lovely as the goblin males
were ugly. "Thank you so much for taking me," she said
politely. "Is there anything I can do in return?"

Tandy had the grace to take this seriously. "We have to
stop by a fireoak tree in this vicinity. If you could show us

the best route to it—"
"Certainly. There's only one fireoak hereabouts, with a

resident hamadryad nymph—" Goldy paused, spying Fire-
oak. "Isn't that she?"

"Yes. She's trying to save her tree. We must get her back

to it as soon as possible."

"I know the way. But the path to it goes by a hypno-

gourd patch. So you have to be careful."

"I don't want to go near the gourds!" Tandy cried, horri-
fied.

But Smash remembered his contact with the coffin in-
side the other gourd. Was it possible that—? "I want a

gourd," he said.

The Siren was perplexed. "Why would you want a terri-
ble thing like that?"

"Something I may have forgotten in there."
The Siren frowned but dropped the subject.
They trekked on. Smash carrying the hamadryad. He
tried not to show it, but his strength had returned only par-
tially. Fireoak was light, the kind of burden he could nor-
mally balance on his little finger without effort, but now
he had to control his breathing, lest he pant so loudly he
call attention to himself. He would be no help at all if they
happened on another dragon. Maybe he just needed a good
meal and a night's sleep. Yet it had never before taken him
so long to recover from exertion. He suspected something

was wrong, but he didn't "know what.

They came to the region of hypnogourds. The vines
sprawled abundantly, and gourds were all about. Smash
stared at them, half mesmerized. He had thought his soul
lost when the Siren smashed the other gourd—but was it
possible that the gourd had been a mere window on the
otherworld reality? His Eye Queue was crazy enough to

Ogre, Ogre                      123

think this was so. Could he use another gourd to return to
that world and fight for his soul?

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

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

"A Dark Horse?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Three months," he replied glumly.

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

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

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

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

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

"Sometimes," the goblin girl said. "Maybe one out of
ten. One of our old goblins is supposed to have done it a

124 Ogre, Ogre

long time ago in his youth. We're not sure we believe him.
He mumbles about trials of fear and pain and pride and
such-like, making no sense at all. But it is theoretically pos-
sible to win."

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

"I know about that," Fireoak breathed.

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

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

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

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

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

Smash almost smiled, despite the seriousness of the situa-
tion. During his travels with Prince Dor, he had encoun-
tered the law of the loin; was this related?

"I'll help," Goldy said.

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

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

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre

125

"It's not that sort of lost," Goldy said. "There's a lot of
territory in there, and some pretty strange effects. Some
talk of graves, others of mirrors. A person always returns
to the spot he left, and the time he left, no matter how long
he's been away from it; a break in the sequence is only an
interruption, not a change. If he's lost in gourdland, he's
still lost when he returns there, even if he's been a long
time out of his gourd. He doesn't know where he's going
because he doesn't know where he's been. But if he strings
the string, it'll mark where he's been, and he'll know the
moment he crosses his trail. And that's the secret."

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

"The Night Stallion is always in the last place a person
looks, in the gourd," the goblin girl explained. "So all you
have to do to reach him is always look in a new place—
never in a place you've been before; that's a waste of time
and effort. You are apt to get caught in an endless loop,
and then you are really lost. You may never find him if
you rehash your old route."

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

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

"What are the Stallion's terms?"

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

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

126

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

127

"I think the peephole is a lunatic fringe," the Siren mut-
tered.

They moved on. Smash pondered what the goblin girl
had said. If physical strength was not important in the
struggle with the Night Stallion, why was it important to
join this contest early, before weakness progressed too far?
Was that a contradiction or merely a confusion? He con-
cluded that it was the latter. There was weakness of the
body and of the spirit; both might fade together, but they
were not identical. Smash was physically weak now be-
cause he had overextended himself; otherwise it should
have taken him three months to fade. His soul had proba-
bly suffered relatively little so far. But if he waited till the
end of the lien term to meet the Stallion, then his soul
would be weak, and he would lose the nonphysical contest.
Yes, that seemed to make sense.Things didn't have to make
sense, with magic, but it helped.

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

he turned his eyes away.

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

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

"I guess the spell is still holding," Tandy said. She fol-
lowed Fireoak, carrying the gourd, and disappeared simi-
larly. The others went the same route.

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

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

"We'll let you go into it until the lunatic fringe fades and
the people attack this tree," the Siren said. "Maybe you'll
have time to conquer the Night Stallion and regain your
full strength." She produced a ball of string that the ha-
madryad must have had stored in her tree. "Use this so you
won't get lost in there,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

like to stay here forever."

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

He had been afraid he would find himself somewhere
else and be unable, after all, to pursue his quest to its close.
Despite what the goblin girl had said, this was a different
gourd, and might not know where his adventure in the last

128 Ogre, Ogre

gourd had ended. Now he was reassured, and confident
that he could locate the Night Stallion and abate the lien.
After all, he was an ogre, wasn't he?

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

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

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

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

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

Yet perhaps he should not take this revelation on faith,
either. He could go back and rattle the coffin some more,
and determine just how much it feared his violence. After
all, the skeletons now fled from him. No—that was a
temptation to be avoided, for it would cause him to back-

Ogre, Ogre                      129

track his own trail, the one thing he needed to avoid doing.
Smash continued resolutely forward.

Black dots appeared on the bleak horizon. Quickly they
expanded, racing toward him on beating hooves. The night-
mares! This was where they stayed by day—here, where
night was eternal.

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

Smash ignored their warning. He tromped onward—and
their circle stayed with him despite his speed. Experimen-
tally he dodged to one side, and the circle remained cen-
tered on him. He leaped, and the circle leaped with him.
Just as he had thought, these were magical creatures, ori-
enting magically; the feet of a dream-horse had no essential
connection with the ground. Prince Dor had once men-
tioned escaping the nightmares by sleeping on a cloud, be-
yond their reach, but probably Prince Dor had not had any
bad dreams scheduled that night. The mares could go any-
where, and Smash could not escape their circle by running.

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

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

130 Ogre, Ogre

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

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

So far, Tandy had recruited fellow travelers with aban-
don, and now there were six females in the party. That was
probably as unlikely a group as existed at the moment in
Xanth. Normally such maidens fled ogres, and for good
reason—ogres consumed such morsels. Were it not for
Smash's commitment not to indulge his natural appetites
because of the service he owed the Good Magician—

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

Ogre, Ogre                      131

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

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

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

In a moment he had the answer. These were standard
nightmares, used to carry bad dreams to their proper dream-
ers. They had not been cursed with the Eye Queue; they
had no super-equine intelligence. They were giving him the
standard treatment, crowding him, trying to scare him—

Smash burst out laughing. Imagine anything scaring an
ogre!

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

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

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

132

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

133

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

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

The black ears perked forward. The mare remembered!

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

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

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

The mare's head lifted back, nostrils flaring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smash played the guessing game, but could not quite
come up with the correct item. All the other mares had

departed, and this one was fidgeting; he could not hold her
longer. "Well, if I find it, maybe I'll know it," Smash said.
"Maybe Tandy will know, and bring it with her, if she
comes. You keep in touch, okay?"

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

Alone again, he wondered whether he had been foolish.
What business did he have with nightmares? What would a
nightmare want from a person, that the mare could not
pick up for herself on her rounds? He was an ogre who
loved violence and horror, and he was here on a personal
mission. Yet somehow he felt it was best to get along with
any creature he could; perhaps something would come of
it.

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

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

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

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

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

He pondered, drawing on the full curse of the Eye

134                     Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

under the street.

Smash remembered the story his father Crunch had told
of entering a sleeping city and discovering the lovely mush-

Ogre, Ogre                      }35

faced ogress who had become Smash's mother. This city of
brass was pleasantly reminiscent of that. Was there an
ogress here for him? That was an exciting prospect, though
he hoped she wasn't made of brass.

He traversed the city, but found no entrance to any
building. If an ogress was sleeping here, she was locked
away where he couldn't reach her. Smash banged on a
wall, making it reverberate; but though the sound boomed
pleasantly throughout the city, no one stirred. He punched
harder, trying to break a hole in the wall. It was no good;

he was too weak, the brass was too strong, and he lacked
his protective gauntlets. His fist smarted, so he stuck it in
his mouth.

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

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

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

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

He was disappointed. There was only a brass button
there. Nothing to do except to press it: There might be
serious consequences, but no self-respecting ogre worried
about that sort of thing. He turned his big hamthumb down

136 Ogre, Ogre

and mashed the button. With luck, all hell would break
loose.

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

There was a pleasantly deafening klaxon alarm noise
that filled all this limited universe with vibrations. Then
the metal buildings began shifting about, moving along the
floor of the city, squeezing the streets and the court. In a
moment there would be no place remaining for him to
stand.

This was more like it! At first Smash planned to brace
himself and halt the encroaching buildings by brute ogre
strength. But he lacked his full power now, and anyway, it
was better to use his brain. Perhaps the Eye Queue was
gradually subverting him, causing him to endorse its na-
ture; already it seemed like less of a curse, and he knew—-
because, ironically, of the intelligence it provided him—
that this was a significant signal of corruption. Mental
power tended to corrupt, and absolute intelligence tended
to corrupt absolutely, until the victim eschewed violence
entirely in favor of smart solutions to stupid problems.
Smash hoped he could fight off the curse before it ever
ruined him to that extent! If he stopped being stupid, bru-
tal, and violent, he would no longer be a true ogre.

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

Ogre, Ogre                      137

Eye Queue informed him. He liked this city better than
ever.

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

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

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

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

Smash thought this was crazy. But already the brass was
moving, sounding off with its tune of compression, and he
had to act. He leaped into the pit as the blank metal face of
the building charged him.

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

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

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

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

138

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

139

He looked about—and spied an army of brass men and
women, each individual fully formed, complete with brass
facial features, hair, and clothing—the men fully clothed,
the women less so. But they were statues, erected on plat-
forms that, like the floor, moved with the building. Noth-
ing here was of interest to an ogre. He knew brass wasn't
good to eat.

Then he spied another brass button.

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

Instantly the brass statues animated. The metal people
spied the ogre and converged on him. And Smash—

Found himself leaning against the fireoak tree. Tandy
stood before him, holding the gourd. She had broken his
line of vision to the peephole. "Are you all right, Smash?"
she asked with her cute concern.

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

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

tree."

"Well, bring me back when they do," Smash said. "I

have metal men to fight inside."

"Metal men?"

"And women. Solid brass."

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

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

an ogre!"

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

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

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

nonsense at the moment. The brassies were almost on him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now a half-dozen brassies were grabbing at Smash's legs,
and he lacked the strength to throw them all off at once.
So he reached down to pluck them off one at a time—

He was under the tree again. He saw the problem imme-
diately. Half a dozen brassies—no, these were men and
women of the human village—were converging on the tree,
bearing wicked-looking axes. The hamadryad was scream-
ing.

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

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

The hamadryad dropped from her tree, her hair glowing
like fire, catching him about the neck. She was now a vi-

140

Ogre, Ogre

brant, healthy creature. "You great big wonderful brute of
a creature!" she exclaimed, kissing his furry ear. Smash
was oddly moved; as the centaur had noted, ogres were
seldom embraced or kissed by nymphs.

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

"Wake me at need," he said, noting that the shimmer of
the lunatic fringe was now almost gone. If trees had ogres to
protect them instead of cute but helpless hamadryads, very
few trees would be destroyed. Of course, ogres themselves
were prime destroyers of trees, using them to make tooth-
picks and such, so he was in no position to criticize. He
applied his left eye to the peephole this time, giving his
right orb a rest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The buildings reversed course and closed on him again.
They certainly wasted no time pondering questions! Smash

Ogre, Ogre                      141

ran back, his mind working. And suddenly it came to
him—he had switched eyes! His left eye was a little apart
from his right eye—and though that distance was small in
the real world of Xanth, it was larger in the tiny world of
the gourd. So there had been a shift, and a break in his
string.

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

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

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

He resumed plucking individual brass folk off. One of
them was the girl in the brassiere. "You again?" he in-
quired, holding her up by one finger, as he had done be-
fore. It was really the best place, since she was flailing all
her limbs wildly. "Do I have to drop you again?"

"Don't you dare drop me again!" she flashed, her brass
surface glinting with ire. She took an angry breath—which
almost dislodged her, for she had a full brassiere and his
purchase on it was slight. "I have a dent and three
scratches from the last time, you monster!" She pointed at
her arms. "There's a scratch. There's another. But I won't
show you the dent."

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

"I told you! We have to—"

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

"Put me down, you lunk!"

142 Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

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

"No!" several voices cried.

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

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

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

"Uh, miss—" the Siren said.

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

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

"Biyght," the girl corrected her brassily.

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

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

"Siren. Two syllables."

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

"You can change names at will?" John asked incredu-
lously.

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

"No," the fairy said enviously.

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

Ogre, Ogre                      143

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

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

They paused, taken aback. "Why?" one inquired.
"Because I accidentally took one of your number out of
the gourd, and if anything happens to me, she'll be forever
stranded there."

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

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

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

"Anything," the man said, his brass face tarnishing.
"Tell me how to get out of here, on my own."
"That's easy. Take the ship."
"The ship? But there's no water here!"
Several brassies smiled metallically. "It's not that kind of
ship. It's the Luna-fringe-shuttle. You catch it at the Luna
triptych building."

"Show me to it," Smash said.

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

Smash thanked them and stepped out. The buildings
were still moving, but now he had the experience and
confidence to travel by their retreating sides, avoiding colli-
sions. He glanced back at the building he had left and saw
the number 4 inscribed on the side, but there was no sign
of the door he had exited by. Apparently it was a one-way
door that didn't exist from this side.

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

144 Ogre, Ogre

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

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

The porthole clanged closed. A wheel spun itself about.
Air hissed. Straps rose up from the chair and wrapped
themselves around his body. A magic mirror lit up before
his face. An alarm klaxon sounded. The ship shuddered,
then launched upward like a shot from a catapult, punching
through the roof.

In moments the mirror showed clouds falling away
ahead. Then the moon came into view, growing larger and
brighter each moment. It was now a half-circle. Of
course—that was why the lunatic fringe no longer
shrouded the fireoak tree—not enough moon left to sustain
it. But the half that remained seemed solid enough, except
for the round holes in it. Of course, cheese did have holes;

that was its nature.

Now it occurred to him that the brassies might have mis-
construed his request. They had shown him the way out of
the City of Brass—but not out of the gourd. Well, nothing
to do now but carry this through. Maybe the ship could get
him back to the fireoak tree.

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

The moon veered out of the mirror-picture, and Smash
was flung about in his chair as if tossed by a storm. For-
tunately, the straps held him pretty much in place. He let
go of the sticks—and after a moment the moon swung back
into view. Evidently he had messed up the ship's program.
His Eye Queue curse caused him to ponder this, and he
concluded that the sticks controlled the ship. When they
were not in use, the ship sailed where it wanted, which was

Ogre, Ogre                      145

evidently a hole in the cheese of the moon. Maybe this
Luna shuttle was the mechanism by which the moon's
cheese was brought to Xanth, though he wasn't sure what
use metal people would have for cheese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smash pressed the button again, sending out another fist
of light. This one missed both blips and moon. But he was
getting the feel of it; he had to have his target in the very
center of the mirror, where there was a faint intersection of
lines like the center of a spider web. Funny place for a

146 Ogre, Ogre

spider to work; maybe it had been trying to catch stray
stars or blips or bits of blasted cheese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre

147

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

Chapter 8. Dragon's Ear

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

"That's all right," he said. "I've won another battle. I
feel stronger." And he did; he knew he was winning the
gourd campaign, getting closer to the Night Stallion, and
recovering physical strength in the process. It had been in
large part his former hopelessness that had weakened him.
He had believed his soul was doomed, until learning that
he could fight for it in another gourd.

Biythe Brassie was still here. Now he wondered—how
had she been carried out with him, when he had not been

physically in the gourd?

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

He would have to take the brass girl back. His curse not

148

Ogre, Ogre                      149

only forced intelligence on him, it forced un-ogrish moral
awareness. At the moment he wasn't even certain that such
awareness was a bad thing, inconvenient as it might be
when there was mayhem to be wreaked.

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

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

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

They hove into view. "Holey cow!" the Siren breathed.
That was exactly what it was—a cow as full of holes as
any big cheese. She had holes in her body every which way
through which daylight showed. She was worse than the
moon! A big one was in her head, about where her brain
should have been; evidently that didn't impede her much.
Even her horns and tail had little holes. Her legs were so
holey they seemed ready to collapse, yet she functioned
perfectly well.

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

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

"Prince Dor?" the Siren asked. "And his fiancee?"
"Yes, they are taking forever about working up to mar-
riage," Chem murmured with a certain equine snideness.
"It's been four years now . . ."

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

"We're your friends, too," Tandy said, nettled.
The party drew abreast of the fireoak tree. "What's
this?" the golem cried. "Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves?"

Ogre, Ogre                      151

Ogre, Ogre

150

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

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

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

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

courted."

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

"You never would set the date!" Dor retorted.

Her mouth opened in a pretty 0 of indignation. "You
never set the date! I've been trying to—"

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

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

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

"It's only a pretext to show oS her legs," Smash ex-
plained to the others.

"So I see," Tandy said enviously.

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

"You creatures are getting too smart," Irene complained.
Then she did a double take, turning to Smash. "What hap-
pened to your rhymes?"

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

"In a foop? Oh, you poor thing," she said sympatheti-
cally.

"Now that incorrigible ogre charm is working on Irene,

too," Prince Dor muttered.

"Of course it is, idiot," she retorted. "All women have a

secret passion for ogres." She turned to Smash. "Now you
had better introduce us all."

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

"Moooo!" lowed the holey cow, each 0 with a big round
hole in it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll consider it," Fireoak agreed.

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

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

152 Ogre, Ogre

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

"I need to go home," Biythe said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smash looked into the gourd's peephole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I think we interrupted something," Princess Irene re-
marked sardonically.

Biythe's complexion converted from brass to copper.
Smash suspected his own was doing much the same, as his
Eye Queue now made him conscious of un-ogrish propri-

Ogre, Ogre                       153

eties. The two disengaged, and Smash set the brass girl
down on the ground, where she sat and sobbed brass tears.
"We were crashing," Smash explained lamely.

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

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

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

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

But now dawn was coming, and other business was
pressing. They had to inform the local village of the pro-
tected status of the tree and its environs, and then Chet
and his party had to return to Castle Roogna. In addition,
Biythe was no longer so eager to jump into the gourd, with
or without the ogre. If she went alone, she might find her-
self crashing in the ship, and have no way to get back out-
side, since she was not an outside creature. It would be
better to send her back later, once things were more settled.

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

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

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

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

154 Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre                      155

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's what I said, twerp."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Perhaps," he agreed. "Or observant ones. But I do ob-
tain much useful information from the inanimate. Now we
must go talk with the villagers and head back to Castle
Roogna. It has been nice to meet all of you, and I hope you
all find what you wish."

There was a chorus of thank-yous. Prince Dor and

156 Ogre, Ogre

Princess Irene remounted the holey cow. Chet kissed Chem
good-bye, and Grundy the Golem scrambled onto his back.
"Get moving, horsetail!" Then Grundy paused thought-
fully, exactly as the rock had. They moved off toward the
village.

"Dor will make a fine King one day," the Siren re-
marked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At first they passed through normal Xanth country-
side—carnivorous grasses, teakettle serpents whose hisses
were worse than their fires, poisonous springs, tangle trees,
sundry spells, and the usual ravines, mountains, river rap-
ids, slow and quicksand bogs, illusions, and a few normally
foul-mouthed harpies, but nothing serious occurred. They
foraged along the way for edible things and took turns lis-
tening to the Gap Dragon's Ear, though it was not twitch-
ing; this became more helpful as they gradually learned to
interpret it. The Siren heard a kind of splashing, as of
someone swimming. She took this to be the merman she
wanted to find. Goldy heard the sounds of a goblin settle-

Ogre, Ogre                      157

ment in operation: where she was going. Smash heard the
rhyming grunts of ogres. Biythe, persuaded to try it,
jumped as the Ear twitched in her hands, and she actually
heard herself mentioned. The brassies missed her and
feared the ogre had betrayed their trust. "I must go back!"
she cried. "As soon as I recover enough of my courage. My
nerves aren't iron, you know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Flypaper," the fairy concluded.

Smash tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it stuck to
his other hand when he touched it. The more he worked at

158

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

159

it, the more places it adhered to. Soon he was covered with

the stuff.

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

She took him to the hotspring and washed him off, and
it did clean him up. Her hands were efficient yet gentle;

Smash discovered he liked having a female attend to him
this way. But of course he couldn't admit it; he was an
ogre. "Next time use a stick to poke through that paper,"

the centaur advised.

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

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

That didn't bother Smash; he normally ignored flies.
Biythe was also unworried; no fly could sting brass. But
Tandy, Chem, Goldy, John, and the Siren were concerned.
They didn't want stinging flies raising welts on their pretty
skins. "If only we had some repellent," Tandy said. "In the
caves there are some substances that drive them off—"

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

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

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

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

"We're sealed in," Tandy muttered.

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

They walked on, watching the flies. There were many
varieties, and some were beautiful with brightly colored,
patterned wings and furry bodies. John became very quiet;

obviously she missed her own patterned wings. There were
deerflies and horseflies and dragonflies, looking like
winged miniatures of their species; the deerflies nibbled
blades of grass, the horseflies kicked up their heels as they
galloped, and the dragonflies even jetted small lances of
fire. At one spot there was music; fiddler flies were play-
ing for damselflies to dance. It seemed to be a real fly ball.

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

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

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

They marched, and the swarms paced them, buzzing out

160 Ogre, Ogre

a tune that sounded like a requiem. Smash had not imag-
ined that so many flies existed in Xanth. They coated the
trees, they popped out of myriad holes in the ground, they
formed clouds in the sky that rained droppings.

The party arrived at a palace fashioned of flypaper
coated with fly ash. Here, surrounded by a cluster of fawn-
ing damselflies, perched the Lord of the Flies—a huge, de-
monic figure with multiple-faceted eyes. He was reading
the flyleaf of a book titled The Sting by Wasp.

"Bzzzzzz?" the Fly Lord inquired, looking up with sev-
eral facets.

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

"Bzzzzzz!" the Fly repeated angrily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ogre, Ogre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's it like to be eaten?" Biythe asked. Clothed in

162 Ogre, Ogre

paper, she looked just like the others, with hardly any of
her metal showing.

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

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

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

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

"Oh, you could try," John said. "When the first dragon
comes, you could volunteer to be the first eaten. But I
think you alone among us are secure from that fate."

"I wonder," the brassie said thoughtfully.

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

conk on its noggin.

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

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

And broke half a dozen teeth on her hard metal.

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

indignantly.

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

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

Ogre, Ogre                        163

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

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

"If you dumb dragons can't eat one little girl when she's
cooperating, what good are you?" Biythe demanded, dis-
gusted. She shook tooth fragments off her body, marched
up to one of the largest monsters, and yanked at a whisker.
"You—eat me or else!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was playing it cool! Nervously the others stood in
place while the dragon sent forth a cooler blast. Smash and
the girls stepped into it. The vapor was as hot as John
could stand, but since she had already lost her wings, it

164

Ogre, Ogre

didn't hurt her. The others had no trouble. All the flypaper
was steamed off.

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

too!

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

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

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

females?"

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

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

Smash scratched his hairy head as if confused. "Me crit-
icize buzzing flies."

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

of personality.

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

the Dragon Lady."

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

now, ignoramus."

Ignoramus? Smash smiled inwardly. Not while he re-
mained cursed with the Eye Queue! But he shuffled be-
hind the dragon, gesturing the girls to follow.

The Siren fell in beside Smash as they walked. "I've
been listening to the Ear," she murmured. "The voice that
talked about us before was the elf's; the Dragon Lady

Ogre, Ogre                      165

knows about us already. Now the Ear is roaring like a ter-
rible storm. I don't know what that means."

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

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

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

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

"Is it true you are impossible to eat?"

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

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

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

"Dragon-creatures rule Xanth," the elf retorted. "Drag-
ons tolerate other creatures only as prey." Nonetheless, the
Dragon Lady's growl was muted. Smash suspected that she
was not eager to incite a war with the Transformer-King of
the human folk.

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

Smash shrugged. "Me only distrust place where me
rust." Actually, neither his stainless steel gauntlets nor
Biythe's brass rusted; water was more likely to cause trou-
ble with the fires of the dragons. But he was mindful of

166

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

167

the Ear's storm-signal; if he could trick the Dragon Lady
into casting them into the storm, their chances should be
better than they were here.

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

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

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

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

Smash took the Ear and listened. "I hear the brass space-
ship," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

168

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

169

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sometimes," Tandy agreed.

They turned east. The ground shifted constantly beneath

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

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

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

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

"Save one! Save one!" Biythe cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

170

Ogre, Ogre

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

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

Chapter 9. Gourmet (zoyrd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes. But we don't know how long that will be—and it

172

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

173

will have to cool so we can walk over it. I guess we're here
in the melon patch for a while yet."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I understand," she said, somewhat distantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This time it worked. They were both in the brass build-
ing.
The brassies spied them and clustered around. There was

174 Ogre, Ogre

a flurry of welcomings. Biythe was certainly glad to be
home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biythe led him out a concealed door, into a smaller
chamber. Smash had to hunch over to fit in this one. Then
the room jerked and moved, causing him to bump into a
wall. 'This is an elevator," Biythe explained. "It leads to
the paper works, but it takes a little while."

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

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

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

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

"Where your dent is?"

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

"You know something about the Night Stallion?" he

asked, interested.

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

"Oh."

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

"And I like them," he admitted, voicing the un-ogrish
sentiment with a certain embarrassment. How was be ever

Ogre, Ogre                      175

going to find his Answer in life if he kept losing his iden-
tity? "They're nice people. So are you."

Again she coppered. "I like them, too. I never knew
flesh people before. But that's not what I mean. They—
they're not just friends to you. It's hard for me to say, be-
cause my own heart's made of brass. They're female;

you're male. So—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A playmate?"

"You could call it that. But Tandy didn't want to play. I
gather a demon is like an ifrit, not nice at all. She refused
to oblige him. But he pursued her and tried to rape her—"

"What is that?" Smash asked.
"Rape? You actually don't know?"

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

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

176                      Ogre, Ogre

"Of course not," he reassured her. "I'm an ogre."
"Well, the way of an ogre with an ogress?"
"Certainly." What was she getting at?
She paused. "I'm not sure we're communicating. Maybe
you'd better tell me what is the way of an ogre with an

ogress."

"He chases her down, screaming, catches her by a rope

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

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

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

"Well, it isn't the human mode of love."

"I know. Human beings are so gentle, it's a wonder they
even know what they're doing. Prince Dor and Princess
Irene have taken four years trying to get around to it. Now,
if they had a little more ogre heritage, four seconds might be

enough to—"

"Ah . . . yes," she agreed. "Well, this demon tried to—

to make ogre love to Tandy—"

"Oh, now I understand! Tandy wouldn't like that!"
"True. She's no ogress. So she left her home and sought

help. And the Good Magician told her to travel with you.

That way the demon can't get her."

"Sure. If she wants that demon smashed, I'll do it. That's

my name."

"That's not exactly what she wants. You see, she does

want to marry—someone other than the demon. And she
has a lot to offer the right male. So she hopes to find a

suitable husband on this journey. But—"

"That's wonderful!" Smash said in the best un-ogrish tra-
dition. "Maybe we'll find a nice human man, just right for

her."

"You didn't wait for my but. Smash."
"Your butt?" he asked, looking at her brass posterior.

"Where your dent is?"

"But, B U T," she clarified. "As in however."

"However has a dent?"
She paused briefly. "Forget the dent. However she likes

you."

Ogre, Ogre                      177

"Certainly, and I like her. So I will help her find herself
a man."

"I don't think you understand, Smash. She may not want
to go with her ideal human man, if she finds him, if she
likes you too well first."

He chortled. "Nobody likes an ogre too well!"

The brass girl shook her head doubtfully. "I'm not sure.
You are no ordinary ogre, they inform me. For one thing,
they told me you're much smarter than most of your kind."

"That's because of the curse of the Eye Queue. Once I
get rid of that, I'll be blissfully stupid again. Just like any
other ogre. Maybe more so."

"There is that," Biythe agreed. "I don't think Tandy
would like you to be just like any other ogre."

The room stopped moving, after a jolt that bounced her
off his knee. "Well, here we are at the paper world," she
said.

The elevator opened onto a literal world of paper.
Green-colored fragments of paper served for a lawn; brown
and green paper columns were trees; a flat paper sun hung
in the painted blue sky. At least this world had color, in
contrast with the monochrome of most of the rest of the
gourd.

"This is as far as I go," Biythe said as Smash stepped
out. "If it's any comfort, I think that in some ways you're
still pretty stupid, even with the Eye Queue."

"Thank you," Smash said, flattered.

" 'Bye, ogre." The door closed and she was gone. Smash
turned to the new adventure that surely awaited him.

Paper was everywhere. Smash saw a bird; idly he caught
it out of the air in a paw, not to hurt it but to look at it,
because it seemed strange. It turned out to be strange in-
deed; it, too, was made of paper, the wings corrugated, the
body a cylinder of paper, the beak a stiffened, painted trian-
gle of cardboard. He let it go and it flew away, peeping
with the rasp of stiff paper.

Curious, he caught a bug. It was only an intricate convo-
lution of paper, brightly painted. When he released it, the
paper reconvoluted and the bug buzzed away. There were
butterflies, also of paper. The bushes and stones and pud-
dles were all colored paper. It seemed harmless enough.

178

Ogre, Ogre

Then a little paper machine charged up. Smash had seen
machines during a visit to Mundania and didn't like them;

they were ornery mechanical things. This one was way too
small to bother him seriously, but it did bother him lightly.
It fired a paper spitball at him.

The spitball stung his knee. Smash smiled. The minia-
ture machine had a name printed on its side: TANK. It
was cute.

The ogre stomped on. The tank followed, firing another
damp paper ball. It stung Smash on the rump. He frowned.
The humor was wearing thin. He didn't care to have a dent
to match that of the brass girl.

He turned to warn the tank away—and its third shot

plastered his nose.

That did it. Smash lifted one brute foot and stomped
the obnoxious machine flat. It was only paper; it collapsed
readily. But an unexpended spitball stuck to the ogre's toe.

Smash tromped on, seeking whatever challenge this sec-
tion offered. But now three more of the paper tanks arrived.
Burp—burp—burp! Their spitballs spit in a volley at the
ogre, sticking to his belly like a line of damp buttons. He
stamped all three paper vehicles flat.

Yet more tanks arrived, and these were larger. Their
spitballs stung harder, and one just missed his eye. Smash
had to shield his face with one hand while he stomped

them.

He heard something behind. A tank was chewing up his
line of string! That would prevent him from knowing when
he crossed his own trail, and he could get lost. He strode
back and picked up the tank, looking closely at it.

The thing burped a huge splat of a spitball at him that
plugged a nostril. Smash sneezed—and the tank was blown
into a flat sheet of paper. Words were printed on it: GET
WITH IT, DOPE.

Funny—Smash had never learned how to read. No ogre
was smart enough for literacy. But he grasped this message
perfectly. This must be another facet of the curse of the
Eye Queue. He pretended he did not fathom the words.

He turned again—and saw a much bigger paper tank
charging down on him. He grabbed the tip of the card-
board cannon and pinched it closed just as the machine

Ogre, Ogre                      179

fired. The backpressure blew up the tank in a shower of
confetti.

But more, and yet larger, tanks were coming. This re-
gion seemed to have an inexhaustible supply! Smash cast
about for some way to stop them once and for all.

He had an idea. He bent to scoop through the paper-turf
ground. Sure enough, it turned to regular dirt below, with
rocks. He found a couple of nice quartz chunks and bashed
them together to make sparks. Soon he struck a fire. The
paper grass burned readily.

The tanks charged into the blaze—and quickly caught
fire themselves. Their magazines blew up in violent sprays
of spit. Colored bits of paper flew up in clouds, containing
pictures and ads for products and all the other crazy things
magazines filled their pages with. Soon all the tanks were
ashes.

Smash tromped on. A paper tiger charged from the pa-
per jungle, snarling and leaping. Smash caught it by the tail
and shook it into limp paper, the black and orange colors
running. He dipped this into a fringe of the fire and used
the resulting torch to discourage other paper animals. They
faded back before his bright-burning tiger, and he pro-
ceeded unhampered. Apparently there was nothing quite so
fearful as a burning tiger. If this had been a battle, he had
won it.

Now he came to a house of cards. Smash knew what
cards were; he had seen Prince Dor and Princess Irene
playing games with them at Castle Roogna, instead of get-
ting down to basics the way ogres would. Sometimes they
had constructed elaborate structures from the cards. This
was such a structure—but it was huge. Each card was the
height of Smash himself, with suit markings as big as his
head and almost as ugly.

He paused to consider these. At the near side was the
nine of hearts. He knew what hearts were: the symbol of
love. This reminded him irrelevantly of what the brass girl
had told him about Tandy. Could it be true that the tiny
human girl liked him more than was proper, considering
that ogres weren't supposed to be liked at all? If so, what
was his responsibility? Should he growl at her, to discourage
her? That did seem best.

180 Ogre, Ogre

He entered the house of cards, careful not to jostle it.
These structures collapsed very readily, and after all, this
might be the way out of the paper land. He felt he was
making good progress through the worlds of the gourd, and
he wanted to go on to the last station and meet the Dark
Horse.

The inner wall showed the two of clubs. Clubs were, of
course, the ogre's favorite suit. There was nothing like a
good, heavy club for refreshing violence! Then there was
the jack of diamonds, symbolizing the wealth of dragons.
His curse of intellect made symbolism quite clear now. He
remembered how many of the bright little stones the
Dragon Lady had had; this was probably her card. Then
there was the two of spades, with its shovel symbol. The
suit of farmers.

In the center of the house of cards was the joker. It de-
picted a handsomely brutish ogre with legs that trailed into
smoke. Of course! Smash pushed against it, assuming it to
be his door to the next world—and the whole structure col-
lapsed.

The cards were not heavy, of course, .and in a moment
Smash's head poked above the wreckage. He looked about.

The scene had changed. The paper was gone. The
painted sky and cardboard trees existed no longer. Now
there was a broad and sandy plain, like that of the night-
mares' realm, except that this one was in daylight, with the
sun beating down hotly.

He spied an object in the desert. It glinted prettily, but
not like a diamond. Curious, Smash stomped over to it. It
was a greenish bottle, half buried in the sand, fancily
corked. He found himself attracted to it; a bottle like that,
its base properly broken off, could make a fine weapon.

He picked it up. Inside the bottle was a hazy motion, as
of slowly swirling mist. The cork had a glossy metallic seal
with a word embossed: FOOL.

Well, that was the nature of ogres. He was thirsty in this
heat; maybe the stun in the bottle was good to drink.
Smash ripped off the seal and used his teeth to pop the
cork. After all, he was uncertain how long it would be be-
fore he came across anything potable, here in the gourd.
But mainly, his action was his Eye Queue's fault; because
of it, he was curious.

Ogre, Ogre

181

As the cork blasted free, vapor surged out of the bottle.
It swelled out voluminously. Too bad—this was neither edi-
ble nor potable, and it smelled of sulfur. Smash sneezed.

The vapor formed a big greenish cloud, swirling about
but not dissipating into the air. In a moment, two muscular
arms projected from it, and the remainder formed into the
head and upper torso of a gaseous man-creature about
Smash's own size.

"Who in the gourd are you?" Smash inquired.
"Ho, ho, ho!" the creature boomed. "I be the ifrit of the
bottle. Thou has freed me; as thy reward, I shall suffer
thee to choose in what manner thou shalt die."

"Oh, one of those," Smash said, unimpressed. "A bottle
imp." He now recognized, in retrospect, this creature as the
figure on the joker card. He had taken it to be an ogre,
but, of course, ogres had hairy legs and big flat feet, rather
than trailing smoke.

"Dost thou mock me, thou excrescence of excrement?"
the ifrit demanded, swelling angrily. "Beware, lest I squish

thee into a nonentitious cube and make bouillon soup of
thee!"

"Look, ifrit, I don't have time for this nonsense," Smash
said, though the mention of the bouillon cube made him
hungry. He had squished a bull into a bouillon cube once
and made soup with it; he could use some of that now! "I
just want to find the Night Stallion and vacate the lien on
my soul. If you aren't going to help, get out of my way."

"Surely I shall destroy thee!" the ifrit raged, turning
dusky purple. He reached for the ogre's throat with huge
and taloned hands.

Smash grabbed the ifrit's limbs, knotted them together in
much the way he had tied the extremities of the ghastlies,
and jammed the creature headfirst back into the green bot-
tle. "Oaf! Infidel!" the ifrit screamed, his words somewhat
distorted since his mouth was squeezed through the bottle's
neck. "What accursed mischief be this?"

"I warned you," Smash said, using a forefinger to tamp
more of the ifrit into the container. "Don't mess with ogres.
They have no sense of humor."

Struggle as he might, the ifrit could not prevail against
Smash's power. "Ooo, ouch!" the voice came muffled

182

Ogre, Ogre

from the glass. "OooOOoo!" For Smash's finger had
rammed into the creature's gasous posterior.

Then a hand came back out of the bottle. It waved a

white flag.

Smash knew that meant surrender. "Why should I pay

attention to you?" he asked.

"Mmph of mum genuine free wish," the voice cried

from the depths of the bottle.

That sounded promising. "But I don't need a wish about

how I will die."

"Mmmph oomph!"

"Okay, ifrit. Give me one positive wish." Smash re-
moved his finger.

The ifrit surged backward out of the bottle. "What is
they wish, 0 horrendous one?" he asked, nibbing his rear.

"I want to know the way to the next world."

"I was about to send thee there!" the ifrit exclaimed,

aggrieved.

"The next gourd scene. How do I get there?"
"Oh." The ifrit considered. "The closest be the mirror

world. But that be no place for the like of thee. Thy very

visage would shatter that scene."

This creature was trying to lull him with flattery! 'Tell

me anyway."

"On thy fool head be it." The ifrit made a dramatic

gesture. There was a blinding flash. "Thou wilt be-sorree!"
the creature's voice came, fading away with descending
pitch as if retreating at nearly the speed of sound.

Smash pawed his eyes, and gradually sight filtered back.
He stood among a horrendous assortment of ogres. Some
were much larger than he, some much smaller; some were
obesely fat, some emaciatedly thin; some had ballooning
heads and squat feet, others the other way around.

"What's this?" he asked, scratching his head, though it

had no fleas now.

"This . . . this . . . this . . . this," the other ogres

chorused in diminishing echo, each scratching his head.

The Eye Queue needed only that much data to formu-
late an educated hypothesis. "Mirrors!"

"Ors . . . ors . . . ors . . . ors," the echoes agreed.
Smash walked among the mirrors, seeing himself pacing
himself in multiple guises. The hall was straight, but after a

Ogre, Ogre                      183

while the images repeated. Suspicious, he used a horny fin-
gernail to scratch a corner of one mirror, then walked far-
ther down the hall, checking corners. Sure enough, he
came across another mirror with a scratch on it, just where
he had made his mark. It was the same one, surely. This
hall was an endless reflection, like two mirrors facing each
other. One of those endless loops he had been warned
about. In fact, now he saw three lines of string: he had
been retracing his course. He was trapped.

The ifrit had been right. This was no place for the like
of him. Already he was hungrier, and there no food here.
How could he get out?

He could smash through a mirror and through the wall
behind it, of course—but would that accomplish anything?
There were situations in which blind force was called for—
but other situations, his Eye Queue curse reminded him
obnoxiously, called for subtler negotiation. The trick was to
tell them apart. One could not conquer a mirror by break-
ing it; one could only forfeit the game.

Smash stared into the scratched mirror, and his distorted
image stared back. The image was almost as ugly as he
was, but the distortion hampered it, making it less repulsive
than it should have been. Probably that was why it was
snarling.

He turned and contemplated the three strands of string
on the floor. He saw where the first one started: it came
from another mirror. So he had entered here through a
mirror. Surely that was also the way to leave. If he found
some means to make another blinding flash, would he be
able to step through, as before? But he had no flash-
material.

Then he remembered what he had beard in the Gap
Dragon's Ear. Could that relate? It had sounded like his
voice, talking about a mirror. He decided to try it.

He positioned himself squarely before the mirror. He el-
evated his hamfist. "Mirror, mirror on the wall," he in-
toned, imitating his own voice as well as he could. "Pass
this fist or take a fall." Then he punched forward.

His fist smashed through the glass and into the wall be-
hind it. The mirror tinkled in pieces to the floor.

Smash leaned forward to peer through the hole in the
wall. It opened on another hall of mirrors. Sure enough,

184 Ogre, Ogre

there was no escape there; he was caught among the mir-
rors until he found the proper way out.

He tromped to the next mirror. He raised his fist again
and spoke his rhyme. The he punched through, with the
same result.

This did not seem to be working. But it was the only
clue he had. Maybe when the other mirrors saw what was
happening, they would capitulate. After all, this technique
had been effective with the shocking doorknobs. The inani-
mate tended to be stupid, as Prince Dor had shown, but it
did eventually leam what was good for it.

The change happened sooner than anticipated. His fist
did not strike the third mirror; it passed through without
resistance. His arm and body followed it, and he did a slow
fall through the aperture.

He rolled on something soft and sat up. He sniffed. He
looked. He salivated.

He sat on a huge bed of cake, replete with vanilla icing.
Pastries and sweets were all about him, piled high: dough-
nuts, strudel, eclairs, tarts, cookies, creampuffs, ginger-
bread, and more intricate pastries.

Smash had been growing hungry before; it had been well
over an hour since he had last filled up. Now he was rav-
enous. But again the damned curse of the Eye Queue made
him pause. The purpose of these worlds inside the gourd
seemed to be to make him unhappy. This food did not fit
that purpose—unless there were something Wrong with it
Could it be poisoned? Poison did not bother ogres much,
but was best avoided.

One way to find out. Smash scooped up a glob of floor
and crammed it in his big mouth. The cake was excellent.
Then he got up and explored the region, keeping himself
busy while waiting for the poison to act. He had not eaten
enough to cause real damage to the gross gut of an ogre,
but if he felt discomfort, he would take warning.

He was in a large chamber completely filled with the
pastries. There was no apparent exit. He punched experi-
mentally through a wall of fruitcake, but the stuff seemed
to have no end. He suspected he could punch forever and
only tear up more cake. There appeared to be no reason-
able limit to the worlds that fit inside the gourd. How, then,
was he to escape this place?

Ogre, Ogre                      185

His stomach suffered nothing but the ravages of increas-
ing hunger, so he concluded the food was not poisoned.
Still he hesitated. There had to be some trap, something to
make him hurt. If not poison, what? There seemed to be no
threat, no spitball-shooting tanks, no ifrit, not even starva-
tion from delay.

Well, suppose he fell to and ate his fill? Where would he
be? Still here, with no way out. If he remained long
enough, stuffing himself at will, he would lose his soul by
default in three months. No point in that.

Yet, no sense in going hungry. He grabbed a bunk of
angelcake and gulped it down. He felt angelic. That was no
mood for an ogre! He chomped some devilsfood, and felt
devilish. That was more like it. He gulped some dream pie,
and dreamed of smiting the Night Stallion and recovering
the lien on his soul.

Wait. He forced himself to stop eating, lest he sink im-
mediately into the easy slough of indulgence. Better to
keep hungry and alert, his cursed taskmaster of an Eye
Queue told him. What did the Eye Queue care about hun-
ger? It didn't have to eat! But he went along with it for the
moment, knowing it would give him no peace otherwise.
He would reward himself only for making progress in solv-
ing this particular riddle. That was discipline no ordinary
ogre could master, infuriating as it was.

Still, time was passing, and he had no idea how to pro-
ceed. There had to be something. After all, it wasn't as if
he could simply eat his way out of here.

That thought made him pause. Why not eat out? Chew a
hole in the wall until he ran out of edibles—which would
be another world.

No. There would be too much cake for even an ogre to
eat. Unless he knew exactly where a weak spot was—

Weak spot Surely so. Something that differed from the
rest of this stuff.

Smash started a survey course of eating, looking for the
difference. All of it was excellent. A master pastry chef
had baked this chamber.

Then he encountered a vein of licorice. That was one
confection Smash didn't like; it reminded him of manure.
True, some ogres could eat and like manure, but that just
wasn't Smash's own taste. Naturally he avoided this vein.

186 Ogre, Ogre

Then his accursed, annoying, and objectionable Eye
Queue began percolating again. The Eyes of the vine saw
entirely too much, especially what wasn't necessarily there.
Manure. What would leave manure in the form of a con-
fection?

Answer: some creature in charge of a chamber of con-
fections. The Night Stallion, perhaps. When the Stallion
departed, he would leave his token of contempt. Big brown
balls of sweet manure.

What exit would the Stallion use? How could that exit be

found?

Answer: the trail of manure would show the way.
Horses hardly cared where they left it, since it was behind
them. They left it carelessly, thoughtlessly, often on the

run.

Smash started digging out the licorice. But when he did,
the foul stuff melted into other cake, transforming it into
licorice, too. That obscured the trail. He had to do some-
thing about that.

He cast about, but came up with only the least pleasant
solution. He would have to eat it. That was the only way to
get rid of it. To consume the manure of the Stallion.

Fortunately, ogres didn't have much pride about what
they ate. He nerved himself and bit in. The licorice-cake
was awful, truly feculent, but he gulped it down anyway.

Now his gorge was rising violently inside him. Ogres
were supposed never to get sick, no matter how rotten the
stuff they ate. But this was manure! He ate on.

Smash came to a round hole in the material of the cham-
ber. The dung had led him to it—since this was the exit the
Stallion had taken. Smash scrambled through the passage,
knowing that if he could just choke down his revolted, re-
volting stomach a little longer, he would win this contest,

too.

He came to a drop-off and tumbled out, spinning and
turning in air. Now he was falling through darkness.

That last jolt of weightlessness was too much. His stom-
ach burst its constraints and heaved its awful contents vio-
lently out. The reaction sent him zooming backward
through space. Smash puked, it seemed, for eons, and
worked up a velocity to rival that of the brass spaceship.
He hoped he didn't get lost in space beyond the stars.

Chapter 10. Fond Wand

He was retching into the gourd patch. Apparent-
ly he had jetted himself right out of the gourd! Chem
was using the hardened rind of an empty gourd to scoop
the vomit away, making room for more as it flowed volu-
minously from Smash's mouth.

As he realized where he was, his sickness abated. He
looked about.

The girls were in a sorry state. All five of them were
spattered. "We decided to get you out of the gourd before it
got worse," Tandy said apologetically. "What happened?"

"I ate a lot of horse—er, manure," Smash said. "Instead
of cake and pastry."

"Ogres do have unusual tastes," John remarked.

Smash chuckled weakly. "Where's some decent food? I
don't want to eat any more gourds, and I'm going to be
hungry as soon as I feel better."

"There'll be food at Goblinland," Goldy Goblin said.

"How far is that?"

Chem produced her map. "As I make it, we're close.
From what Goldy tells me, the main tribe of goblins is not
far from here, as the dragon flies. Just a few hours' walk,
except that there's a mountain in the way, so we have to
go around—across the Earth works. That complicates it.
But I think the lava is cool enough now. We had better get
over it before more comes."

"Like hot vomit," Goldy muttered.

Smash looked at the conic mountain. It steamed a little,
but was generally quiescent. "Yes—let's cross quickly."

They started across. Goldy knew a little foot-cooling

187

188

Ogre, Ogre

spell used by goblins and taught it to them. It wasn't real
magic, but rather an accommodation to the local landscape.
Smash's Eye Queue was cynical, suspecting that any bene-
fit from the spell was simply illusion, the belief in cooler
feet. Yet his feet did feel cooler.

They had to skirt the volcano's eastern slope. The cone
rumbled, annoyed, but was in its off-phase and could not
mount any real action.

The ground, however, was rested. It had energy to ex-
pend. It shook, making their travel difficult. The shaking
became more violent, causing the hardened lava to craze,
to crack, to break up, and to form fissures, exposing the
red-hot rock down below.

"Hurry!" Chem cried, her hooves dancing on the shift-
ing rocks. Smash remembered that insecure footing made
her nervous. Now it made him nervous, too.

"Oh, I wish I coold fly again!" John cried, terrified. She
stumbled and started to fall into a widening crack.

Chem caught her. "Get on my back," she directed. The
fairy scrambled gratefully aboard.

The ground shook again. A fragment turned under the
Siren's foot, and she went down. Smash caught her, lifted
her high, and saw that her ankle was twisted. He would
have to carry her.

Now the volcano rumbled again. It might be in its off-
phase, but it wasn't entirely helpless. A new fissure opened
in its side, and bright red lava welled out, like fresh blood.
It spilled down toward them, shifting channels to orient ac-
curately.

"It's coming for us!" Tandy cried, alarmed. "This land

doesn't like us!"

Smash looked northeast. The goblin territory was far
across the treacherously shifting rocks. Already the lava
plain was humping like a slow ocean swell, as if trying to
break free of its cool crust. Smash knew that if much more
fragmentation occurred, they would all fall through that
crust into the liquid lava below.

"Too farl" Tandy cried despairingly. "We can't make

it!"

"North!" Chem said. "It's better to the north!"
They scrambled north, though that horizon looked like a

wall of fire. The lava crust broke into big plates that, in

Ogre, Ogre

189

turn, fragmented into platelets that slowly subsided under
the weight of the party. Red lava squeezed up around the
edges and leaked out onto the surface. Meanwhile, the
fresh lava from the fissure flowed down to join the turbu-
lent plain, further melting the platelets. There was now no
retreat.

"Spread out!" Goldy cried. "Not too much weight on
any one plate!"

They did it. The goblin girl was the most agile, so she
led the way, finding the best plates and the best crossing
places. Tandy followed, glancing nervously back at Smash
as if afraid he would be too clumsy. She did care for him;

it was obvious, now that Biythe had given him the hint.
But that was hardly worth worrying about at this moment.
They might all soon perish.

Next in line was Chem, carrying John on her back, her
hooves handling the maneuvering well. Then came Smash,
holding the Siren in his arms. Her feet had converted back
to the tail; evidently that alleviated the pain in her ankle.
However, her tail form was also her bare-top form, and the
sight of all that juggling flesh made him ravenous again.
He hoped he never got so hungry that he forgot these were
his friends.

The edges of the plates depressed alarmingly as they
took Smash's weight, for it was concentrated in a smaller
area than was the centaur's. Once a plate broke under his
weight, becoming two saucers, and he had to scramble, dip-
ping a toe in red lava; it hurt terribly, but he ran on.

"Your toe!" the Siren exclaimed. "It's scorched!"

"Better that than falling in," he grunted.

"In case we don't make it," she said, "I'd better tell you
now. You're a lot of creature. Smash."

"Ogres are big," he agreed. "You're a fair morsel of
creature yourself." Indeed, she had continued to grow more
youthful, and was now a sight to madden men. Or so he
judged, from his alien viewpoint.

"You're more than I think you know. You could have

been where you're going by now if you hadn't let the rest
of us impose."

"No. I agreed to take Tandy along, and the rest of you
have helped. I'm not sure I could have handled the dragons
alone, or gotten out of the gourd."

190 Ogre, Ogre

"You never would have gotten into the gourd alone," she
pointed out. "Then you could have avoided the dragons.
Would another ogre have taken Tandy along?"

He laughed. He did that a lot since the advent of the
Eye Queue, for things he wouldn't have noticed before now
evinced humorous aspects. "Another ogre would have eaten
the bunch of you!"

"I rest my case."

"Rest your tail, too, while you're at it. If I fall into the
lava, you'll have to walk alone."

It was her turn to laugh, somewhat faintly. "Or swim,"
she said, looking down at the lava cracks.

Now they were at the border. The wall of fire balked
them. Goldy stood on the plate nearest it, daunted. "I don't
know how much fire there is," she said. "Goblin legend
suggests the wall is thin, but—"

"We can't stay here," Tandy said. "I'll find out." And
she took a breath and plunged into the fire.

The others stood on separate plates, appalled. Then Tan-
dy's voice came back: "It's all right! Come on through!"

Smash closed his eyes and plunged toward her voice.
The flame singed his fur and the flowing hair of the mer-
maid; then he was on firm ground, coughing.

He stood on a burned-out field. Wisps of smoke rose
from lingering blazes, but mostly the ashes were cool. Far-
ther to the north a forest fire raged, however, and periodi-
cally the wind shifted, bringing choking smoke and sprin-
kling new ashes. To the west there seemed to be a lake of
fire, sending up occasional mushroom-shaped masses of
smoke. To the east there was something like a flashing
field of fire, with intermittent columns of flame.

Chem and John landed beside Smash. The fairy was
busy slapping out smolders in the centaur's mane. "This is
an improvement, but not much of one," Chem said. "Let's
get off this burn!"

"I second the motion," Tandy agreed. She, too, had suf-
fered during the crossing; parts of her brown hair had been .
scorched black. Goldy appeared, in similar condition. None
of the girls was as pretty as she bad been.

They moved east, paralleling the thin wall of fire. This
was the Region of Fire, but since fire had to have some-
thing to bum, they were safe for the moment.

Ogre, Ogre                      191

Then a column of white fire erupted just ahead of them.
The heat of it drove them back—only to be heated again
by another column to the side.

"Gas," the Siren said. "It puffs up from fumaroles, then
ignites and burns out. Can we tell where the next ones will
be?"

They watched for a few moments. "Only where they've
been," Chem said. "The pattern of eruption and ignition
seems completely random."

"That means well get scorched," the Siren said. "Unless
we go around."

But there was no way around, for the forest fire was
north and the lava flows were beyond the firewall to the
south.

Also, new foliage was sprouting through the ashes on
which they stood, emerging cracklingly dry; it would catch
fire and bum off again very soon. It seemed the ashes
were very rich fertilizer, but there was very little water for
the plants, so they grew dehydrated. Here in the Region of
Fire, there was no long escape from fire.

"How can we get through?" Tandy asked despairingly.
Smash put his Eye Queue curse to work yet again. He
was amazed at how much he seemed to need it, now that
he had it, when he had never needed it before, as if intelli-
gence were addictive; it kept generating new uses for itself.
He was also amazed at what his stupid bonemuscle ogre
brain could do when boosted by the Queue and cudgeled by
necessity. "Go only where they've been," he said."

The others didn't understand, so be showed the way.
"Follow me!" .He watched for a dying column, then
stepped near it as it flickered out. There would be a little
while before it built up enough new gas to fire again. He
waited in the diminishing shimmer of heat, watching the
other columns. When another died, next to his own, he
stepped into its vacated spot.

The other members of the party followed him. "I'll as-
sume this is wit instead of luck," the Siren murmured.
Smash was still carrying her, though now she had switched
back to legs and dress, in case he had to set her down.

As they moved to the third fumarole, the first fired
again. These flares did not dawdle long! Now they were in
the middle of the columns, unable to escape unscathed. But

192

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

193

Smash stepped forward again into another dying flame,
panting in the stink of it, yet surviving unbumed.

In this manner the party made its precarious and un-
comfortable way through the fires, and came at last to the
east firewall. They plunged through—and found them-
selves in the pleasant, rocky region of the goblins.

"What a relief!" Tandy exclaimed. "Nothing could be
worse than that, except maybe what's inside a gourd."

"You haven't met the local goblins yet," Goldy muttered.

There was a small stream paralleling the wall, cool and
clean. They all drank deeply, catching up from their long
engagement with the heat. Then they washed themselves
off and tended to their injuries. The Siren bound her ankle
with a bolt of gauze from a gauze-bush, and Tandy tended
to Smash's scorched toe.

"Goldy will find her husband here," Smash said as she
worked. "Soon we may find a human husband for you."
He hoped he was doing the right thing, bringing the matter

into the open.

She looked up at him sharply. "Who squealed?" she de-
manded.

"Biythe said you were looking for—"

"What does she know?" Tandy asked.

Smash shrugged awkwardly. This wasn't working out
very well. "Not much, perhaps."

"When the time comes. I'll make my own decision."

Smash could not argue with that. Maybe the brass girl had
been mistaken. Biythe's heart, as she had noted, was brass,
and perhaps she was not properly attuned to the hearts
made of flesh. But Smash had a nagging feeling that
wasn't it. These females seemed to have a common aware-
ness of each other's nature that males lacked. Maybe it was
just that they were all interested in only one thing. "Any-
way, we'll deliver Goldy soon."

They found no food, so they walked on along the river,
which curved eastward, north of the mountain range that
separated this land from that of the dragons. The goblins
had to be somewhere along here, perhaps occupying the
mountains themselves. Goblins did tend to favor dark holes
and deep recesses; few were seen in open Xanth, though
Smash understood that in historical times the goblins had
dominated the land. It seemed they had become less ugly

and violent over the centuries, and this led inevitably to a
diminution of their power. He had heard that some isolated
goblin tribes had become so peaceful and handsome that
they could hardly be distinguished from gnomes. That
would be like ogres becoming like small giants—
astonishing and faintly disgusting.

The river broadened and turned shallow, finally petering
out into a big dull bog. Brightly colored fins poked up
from the muck, and nostrils surmounting large teeth
quested through it. Obviously the main portions of these
creatures were hidden beneath the surface. It did not seem
wise to set foot within that bog. Especially not with a sore
toe.

They skirted it, walking along the slope at the base of
the mountain range. The day was getting late, and Smash
was dangerously hungry. Where were the goblins?

Then the goblins appeared. An army of a hundred or so
swarmed around the party. "What are you creeps doing
here?" the goblin chief demanded with typical goblin cour-
tesy.

Goldy stepped forward. "I am Goldy Goblin, daughter
of the leader of the Gap Chasm Goblins, Gorbage," she
announced regally.

"Never heard of them," the chief snapped. "Get out of
our territory, pasteface."

"What?" Goldy was taken aback. She was very fair for a
goblin, but it wasn't merely the name that put her at a loss.

"I said get out, or we'll cook you for supper."

"But I came here to get marriedl" she protested.

The goblin chief swung backhanded, catching the side of
her head and knocking her down. "Not here you don't, for-
eign stranger slut." He turned away, and the goblin troops
began to move off.

But Tandy acted. She was furious. "How dare you treat
Goldy like that?" she demanded. "She came all the way
here at great personal risk to get married to one of your
worthless louts, and you—you—"

The goblin chief swung his hand at her as he had at
Goldy, but Tandy moved faster. She made a hurling ges-
ture in the air, with her face red and her eyes squinched
almost shut. The goblin flipped feet over ears and landed,
stunned, on the ground. She had thrown a tantrum at him.

194

Ogre, Ogre

Smash sighed. He knew the rules of interspecies deal-
ings. How goblins treated one another was their own busi-
ness; that was why these goblins had left Smash and the
rest of his party alone. Their personal interplay was rough,
but they were not looking for trouble with ogres or centaurs
or human folk. Unlike the prior goblin tribe, this one
honored the conventions. But now Tandy had interfered,

and that made her fair game.

The goblin lieutenants closed on her immediately—and
Tandy, like an expended fumarole, had no second tantrum
to throw in self-defense. But Chem, John, and the Siren
closed about her. "You dare to attack human folk?" the
Siren demanded. She was limping on her bad ankle but was

ferocious in her wrath.

"You folk aren't human," a goblin lieutenant said.
"You're centaur, fairy, and memymph—and this other
looks to be part nymph, too, and she attacked our leader.
Her life is forfeit, by the rules of the jungle."

Smash had not chosen this conflict, but now he had to
intervene. "These three with me," he grunted, in his stress
reverting to his natural ogre mode. He indicated Tandy
with a hamfinger. "She, too, me do."

The lieutenant considered. Evidently the goblins were
hierarchically organized, and with the chief out of order, the.
lieutenant had discretionary power. Goblins were tough to
bluff or back off, once aroused, especially when they had
the advantage of numbers. Still, this goblin hesitated. Three
or four females were one thing; an ogre was another. A
hundred determined goblins could probably overcome one
ogre, but many of them would be smashed to pulp in the
process, and many more would find then- heads embedded
in the trunks of trees, and a few would find themselves
flying so high they might get stuck on the moon. Most of
the rest would be less fortunate. So this goblin negotiated,
while others hauled their unconscious leader away.

"This one must be punished." the lieutenant said. "If our
chief dies, she must die. So it is written in the verbal cove-
nant: an eyeball for an eyeball, a gizzard for a gizzard."

Smash knew how to negotiate with goblins. It was
merely a matter of speaking their language. He formed a
huge and gleaming metal fist. "She die, me vie."

The lieutenant understood him perfectly, but was in a

Ogre, Ogre                      195

difficult situation. It looked as if there would have to be a
fight.

Then the goblin chief stirred, perhaps because he was
uncomfortable being dragged by the ears over the rough
ground. He was recovering consciousness.

"He isn't dead," the lieutenant said, relieved. That wid-
ened his selection of options. "But still she must be pun-
ished. We shall isolate her on an island."

Isolation? That didn't seem too bad. Nevertheless, Smash
didn't trust it. "Me scratch," he said, scratching his flealess
head stupidly. "Where catch?"

The goblin studied him, evidently assessing Smash's
depth of stupidity. "The island sinks," he said. "You may
rescue her if you choose. But there are unpleasant things in
the bog."

Smash knew that. He didn't want to see Tandy put on a
sinking island in that bog. Yet he did not have his full
strength, and hunger was diminishing him further, and that
meant he could not afford to indulge in combat with the
goblins at this time. In addition, his Eye Queue reminded
him snidely, Tandy had attacked the goblin chief, and so
made herself liable to the goblins' judgment. The goblins, if
not exactly right, were also not exactly wrong.

The goblin lieutenant seemed to understand the struggle
going on in the ogre's mind. Goblins and ogres differed
from one another in size and intelligence, but were similar
in personality. Both sides preferred to avoid the mayhem
that would result if they fought. "We will give you a fair
chance to rescue her."

"Me dance," Smash said ironically, tapping the ground
with one foot, so that the terrain shuddered. "What
chance?"

"A magic wand." The lieutenant signaled, and a goblin
brought an elegant black wand.

"Me no fond of magic wand," Smash said dubiously. He
continued to use the ogre rhymes, having concluded that
stupidity, or the appearance of it, might be a net asset.

"All you have to do is figure out how to use it," the
goblin said. "Then you can draw on its magic to help the
girl. We don't know its secret, but do know it is magic. We
will help you figure it out, if you wish."

That was a considerable riski He bad to figure out the

196

Ogre, Ogre

operative mechanism of a wand that had so baffled the
goblins that they were willing to help him use it to defeat
their decree of punishment. They would have spent days,
months, or years on it; he might have minutes. What
chance would a smart man have, let alone a stupid ogre?
What person of even ordinary intelligence would agree to
such a deal?

Why would the goblins risk such a device in the hands of
a stranger, anyway? Suppose he did figure out the opera-
tion of the wand by some blind luck? He could be twice as
dangerous to them as he already was.

Ah, but there was the answer. An ogre was stupid, al-
most by definition. He could be far more readily conned
out of his advantage than could a smart person. Also, the
activated wand might be dangerous, acting against the user.
Of course they would help him solve its secret; if it de-
stroyed the user, no loss! Only an absolutely, idiotically,
calamitously stupid or desperate creature would take that
risk.

John sidled up to Smash. "Goblins are cunning
wretches," she whispered. "We fairies have had some deal-
ings with them, I think they mistreated Goldy deliberately,
to get you into this picklement."

"I'm sure of it," Goldy agreed. A bruise was showing on
her cheek, but she seemed otherwise all right. "My own
tribe is that way. My father threatened to eat you all, when
he doesn't even like ogre or centaur meat, just to force you
to take me here."

"It does seem to be an effective ploy," Smash whispered
back. "But we would have taken you anyway, had we
known you."

If brass girls could blush copper, goblin girls blushed tan.
"You mean you folk like me?"

"Certainly we do!" Tandy agreed. "And you helped us
cross the lava plates, leading the way. And you told us a
tremendous lot about the hypnogourds, so that Smash
knows how to save his soul."

"Well, goblins aren't too popular with other creatures,"
Goldy said, wiping an eye.

"Nor with their own kind, it seems," Tandy said.

"Because the chief hit me? Think nothing of it. Goblin

Ogre, Ogre

197

men are just a little bit like ogres in that respect. It makes
them think they run things."

"Ogres aren't too popular with other creatures, either,"
Smash said. "They beat up their wenches, too."

"This lesson in comparative romance is fascinating,"
John said. "Still, we're in trouble."

"Pick Tandy up and run out of here," Goldy advised.
"That's the only way to deal with our kind."

But Smash knew that the other girls would pay the pen-
alty for that. He had fallen into the goblins' trap; he would
have to climb out of it. His one advantage was that he was,.
thanks to the curse of the Eye Queue, considerably smarter
than the goblins thought. "Me try to spy," he told the lieu-
tenant

"Very well, ogre," the lieutenant said smugly. "Take the
wand, experiment with it, while we place her on the is-
land."

Goblins grabbed Tandy and hustled her into a small
wooden boat. She struggled, but they moved her along any-
way. She sent a betrayed look back at Smash, evidently
feeling with part of her mind that he should fight, and he
felt like a betrayer indeed. But he had the welfare of the
entire party in mind, so he had to act with un-ogrish delibera-
tion. This grated, but had to be. If the wand didn't work,
he would charge through the bog and rescue her, regardless
of the fins. Even if the fins proved to be too much for him,

he should be able to toss her to the safe bank before going
under.

They dumped her on an islet that seemed to be mostly
reeds. As her weight settled on it, the structure hissed and
bubbled from below, and slowly lowered toward the liquid
muck surface. A purple fin cruised in and circled the
pneumatically descending isle.

Smash concentrated on the wand while goblins and girls
watched silently. He waved it in a circle, bobbed it up and
down, poked it at imaginary balloons in the air, and shook
it. Nothing happened. "Go, schmoe!" he ordered it, but it
ignored even that command. He bent it between his hands;

it flexed, then sprang back into shape. It was supple and
well made, but evinced no magic property.
Meanwhile, Tandy's isle continued to sink. The purple

198

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

199

fin cruised in tighter circles. Tandy stood in the spongy
center, terrified.

But he couldn't watch her. He had to concentrate on the
Wand. It was evident that his random motions weren't
being successful. What was the key?

Eye Queue, find the clue! he thought emphatically. It
was high time he got some use from this curse when it
really counted.

The Queue went to work. It considered mental riddles a
challenge. It even enjoyed thinking.

Assume the wand was activated by motion, because that
was the nature of wands. They were made to wave about.
Assume that trial-and-error motion wouldn't do the trick,
because the goblins would have tried everything. Assume
that the key was nevertheless simple, so that the wand
could be readily used in an emergency. What motion was
both simple and subtle?

A signature-key, he decided. A particular motion no one
would guess, perhaps attuned to a particular person. But
how could he guess its nature?

Tandy's isle was almost down to muck level, and the
circling fin was almost within her reach, or vice versa.
Smash could not afford to ponder much longer!

"Goblin man, help if can," Smash called. After all, the
goblins wanted to know the secret, too.

"All we know, ogre, is that it worked for the crone we
stole it from," the lieutenant replied. "She would point it at
a person or thing, and the object would levitate. That is,
rise." The goblin thought Smash would not know the mean-
ing of the more complicated term. "But when we tried it—
nothing."

Levitation. That would certainly help Tandy 1 But he
needed to get it started in a hurry.
"Crone so smart, how she start?"
"She looped it in a series of loops," the goblin said. "But
when we made the same loops, nothing happened."

Tandy's feet were now disappearing into the muck. Only
the submerged mass of the isle balked the fin—for now.
"Give poop. What loop?" Smash demanded.
"Like this." The goblin described a partial circle with a
tuck in it.

"That looks like a G," John remarked. Apparently fair-
ies were literate, too.

G. A letter of the human alphabet? Suddenly Smash's
intellect pounced. What was a signature except a series of
letters? A written name? John's own case illustrated the
importance of a name; her entire mission was simply to
locate her correct one. One could not choose just any name,
because only the right one had power. This should apply
for wands as well as for fairies, here in Xanth. Maybe it
was different inside the gourd, where names could be
changed at will. "What name of dame?"

"Grungy Grool," the goblin answered. "She was a
witch."

A witch with the initials G G. Suppose the wand tuned
in to the signature of its holder? Smash described a big,
careful S.

Nothing happened. Holding his disappointment in check,
he described a matching 0. Smash Ogre—his initials.

Still nothing. The wand remained quiescent in his ham-
hand. What now?

Tandy screamed. Her isle was giving way, and she was
toppling into the muck.

Smash aimed the wand like an arrow, ready to hurl it at
the fin.

Tandy's fall stopped midway. She hung suspended at an
angle above the bog, right where Smash was pointing.

"The wand is working!" John cried, amazed and grati-
fied.

Slowly Smash tilted the wand up. Tandy floated, re-
maining in its power. Of course the activated wand had not
moved in his hand before; that wasn't the. way it worked.
Be had to move it—to make some other object respond.

"I'm flying!" Tandy cried.

"He made it work!" the goblin lieutenant exclaimed.

Smash guided Tandy carefully to land and .set her down.
Her feet were muddy and she was panting with reaction,
but she was otherwise unharmed. He knew a spunky little
girl like her would rebound quickly.

The goblin lieutenant rushed up. "Give me that wand,
ogre!"

"Don't do it!" John cried.

200 Ogre, Ogre

But Smash, ever the stupid ogre, blithely handed over
the wand. "It is goblin property," he murmured, forgetting
to rhyme.

The goblin snatched the wand, pointed it at Smash, and
lifted it. Smash did not rise into the air. The wand was not
attuned to the goblin. It remained useless to anyone else,
exactly as it had been when taken from its witch-owner.
Smash had suspected this would be the case.

"But you made it work!" the goblin protested angrily.

"And you tried to turn it against him!" Goldy cried.
"Do you call that goblin honor?"

"Well, he's just a stupid ogre," the goblin muttered.
"What does he know?"

"I'll tell you what he knows!" Goldy flashed. "He's a lot
smarter than—"

"Me smart, at heart," Smash said, interrupting her.

Goldy paused, then exchanged a glance of understanding
with him. "Smarter than the average ogre," she concluded.

The goblin lieutenant formed a crafty expression, too
subtle for the average ogre to fathom. "Very well, ogre.
Teach her how to work the wand, if it's not a fluke." He
gave the wand to Goldy.

So the goblins figured to get the secret from her. Smash
understood perfectly. But he smiled vacuously. "Happily,
me teach she."

"Me?" Goldy asked, surprised. "Smash, you don't really
want to—"

Smash put his huge mitt on her hand. "You have a mind
of your own, chiefs daughter," he murmured. "Use it."
Gently he moved her hand, making the wand ascribe the
letters G G, her initials. Then he stepped back.

"I don't understand," Goldy said, gesturing with the
wand.

Three goblins sailed into the air as the moving wand
pointed at them.

"She's got it!" the goblin lieutenant exclaimed. "Good
enough! Give it here, girl!" He advanced on her.

Goldy pointed the wand at him and lifted it. He rose up
to treetop height. "Give what where, dolt?" she inquired
sweetly.

The lieutenant scrambled with hands and feet, but

Ogre, Ogre                      201

merely made gestures in the air. "Get me down, wretch!"
he screamed.

She waved the wand carelessly, causing him to careen in
a high circle. "Do what, who?"

"Youll pay for this, you bi—" The goblin broke off as
he was pitched, upside down, just clear of the bog. A blue
fin cut across and began circling under his nose.

"Smash," Goldy said sweetly, "why don't you and your
friends have a good meal while I try to get the hang of this
wand? I might need some advice, to prevent me from acci-
dentally hurting someone." And the goblin lieutenant spun
crazily, just missing a tree.

"Feed them! Feed them!" the goblin cried. "This crazy
sl—young lady goblin will be the death of me!"

"I might, at that, if I don't learn to manage this thing
better," Goldy agreed innocently. The wand quivered in
her hand, and the goblin did a bone-rattling shake in the

air, almost dropping to within reach of the slavering blue
fin.

The goblins hastily brought out food. Smash stuffed
himself in excellent ogre fashion on strawberry-flavored
cavern mushrooms and curdled sea-cow milk while the
goblin girl experimented with the wand, lifting first one
goblin, then another.

"Let someone else try it!" a goblin suggested craftily.
Goldy glanced at Smash, who nodded. Then she handed
the wand to the first taker.

The wand went dead again. Several goblins tried it, with-
out result. It occurred to Smash that if one of them should
have the inititals G G, as was hardly beyond the reach of
coincidence, the wand might work—but that never hap-
pened. Probably it was not only the key, but the particular
person signing it. Another G G goblin would have to make

his own G G signature. That was a pretty sophisticated
instrument 1

"Give me that," Goldy said, taking it back. It still
worked for her. Once the wand was keyed to a particular
person, it stayed that way. Since the goblins were illiterate,
they never would catch on to the mechanism, most likely.

The meal concluded. Smash rubbed his belly and let out

a resounding belch that blew the leaves off the nearest
bush.

202 Ogre, Ogre

"Well, I can't say it hasn't been fun," Goldy said, offer-
ing the wand back to Smash.

Smash refused it, wordlessly.

"You mean I can keep it?" she asked, amazed.

"Keep it," the Siren said. "I think you will have no trou-
ble getting a suitable husband here now. Probably a chief.
Whatever you choose."

Goldy considered, contemplating the wand. "There is
that. Power is a language we goblins understand somewhat
too well." She faced Smash again. "Ogre, I don't know what
to say. No goblin would have done this for you."

"He's no ordinary ogre," Tandy said, giving Smash's
arm a squeeze. "Keep the wand. Use it well."

"I will," Goldy agreed, and there seemed to be an un-
goblinish tear in her eye. "If any of you folk ever have need
of goblin assistance—"

"Just in getting out of here," Chem said. "Any informa-
tion on the geography to the north would be appreciated."

Goldy gestured toward the lieutenant with the wand.
"Information?"

Hastily the goblins acquainted Chem with what they knew
of the reaches to the north, which wasn't much.

Well fed, the party set out as dusk fell, following the bog
to the river, and the river until it petered out. They camped
near the firewall, snacldng on some leftover mushroom tid-
bits Goldy had arranged to have packed. They would have
to cross the Region of Fire again to get where they were
going, as the goblins had assured them that it went right up
to the land of the griffins, which beasts were hostile to
travelers.

"That was a generous thing you did, Smash," the Siren
said. "You could so readily have kept the wand, especially
after they tried to trick you out of it and use it against
you."

"Goldy had better use for it," Smash said. "Why should
an ogre crave more power?"

"One thing I don't understand," John said. "You say you
were victimized by the Eye Queue vine. That makes you
smarter than an ordinary ogre, whose skull is filled with
bone."

"Correct," Smash agreed uncomfortably.

"But that does not account for your generosity, does it?

Ogre, Ogre

203

You have let the rest of us impose on you, and you did
something really nice for Goldy, and I don't think another
ogre would, not even a smart one. Goblins are like ogres,
only smaller and smarter, and they don't do anything for
anybody."

Smash scratched his head. Still no fleas. "Maybe I got
confused."

"Maybe so," the fairy replied thoughtfully. Tandy and
Chem and the Siren nodded, smiling with that certain fe-
male knowingness that was so annoying.

Chapter 1L Heat Wave

Jmash's Eye Queue would not leave well enough
alone; that was its most annoying trait. He greeted the next
morning with doubts. "How do we know the griffins are
unfriendly?" he asked. "Can we trust the information of
the goblins? We do know the fire is dangerous, on the other

hand."

"We certainly do!" John agreed. "My wings will never
grow back if I keep singeing them! But griffins are pretty
violent creatures and they do eat people."

"Let's travel near the firewall," the Siren suggested.
"That way we can cross over and risk the fire if the grif-
fins turn out to be too ferocious."

They did that. But soon the bog closed in, squeezing
them against the firewall. The colored fins paced them ea-
gerly.

Chem halted. "I think we have to make a decision," she

said as she updated her map-image.

"I'll check the other side," Smash said, setting down the
Siren. He stepped across the firewall.

He was at the edge of the fumaroles, amidst fresh ashes.
Not far north the forest fire continued to rage. There was

no safe passage here!

He saw a shape in the ashes. Curious, he uncovered it. It
was the burned-out remnant of a large tree trunk, still
smoldering. The fall of ashes had smothered it before it
finished its own burning. Smash wondered when a tree of
this size ever had a chance to grow here. Maybe it had
fallen across the firewall from the other side.

Then he bad a notion. He put his gloved hamhands on

204

Ogre, Ogra                      205

the charred log and heaved it back through the firewall.
Then he stepped through himself. "A boat," he announced.
"A boat!" Tandy exclaimed, delighted. "Of course!"
They went to work with a will, scraping out ashes and
burned-out fragments and splinters. Then they launched
the dugout craft in the muck. Smash ripped out a sapling
to use as a pole so he could shove their boat forward. He
remembered traveling similarly with Prince Dor. But this
was more challenging, because now he had responsibility
for the party.

The colored fins crowded in as the craft slid through the
bog. At length Smash became annoyed, and used the tip of
his pole to poke at the nearest fin. There was a chomp, and
the pole abruptly shortened.

Angry, Smash reached out with a gauntleted hand and
caught hold of the offending fin. He heaved it out of the
water.

The creature turned out to be flshlike, with strong
flukes and sharp teeth. "What are you?" Smash demanded,
shaking it. The thing was heavy, but Smash had over half
his ogre strength back now and was able; to control his cap-
tive.

"I'm a loan shark, idiot!" the fish responded, and Smash
did not have the wit, until his Eye Queue jogged him
snidely later, to marvel that a fish spoke human language.
"Want to borrow anything? Prompt service, easy terms."

"Don't do it!" John cried. "You borrow from one of
them, it'll take an arm and a leg in return. That's how they
live."

"You have already borrowed part of my pole," Smash
told the shark. "I figure you owe me. I'll take a fin and a
fluke."

"That's not the way it works!" the shark protested. "No
one skins sharks!"

"There is always a first time," Smash said. He had a
fundamental understanding of this kind of dealing. He put
his other hand on the thing's tail and began to pull.

The shark struggled and grunted, but could not free it-
self. "What do you want?" it screamed.
"I want to get out of this bog," Smash said.
"I'll get you out!" The shark was quite accommodating,
now that it was in a bad position. "Just let me go!"

206

Ogre, Ogre

"Don't trust it any farther than you can throw it," John

advised.

Smash was not about to. He used one finger to poke a
hole in the shark's green fin and passed Chem's rope
through it. Then he heaved the creature forward. It landed
with a dull muddy splash before the dugout, the rope pull-
ing taut. "That's as far as I can throw it," Smash said.

The shark tried to swim away, but as it moved, it hauled
the boat along behind. It was not trustworthy, but it seemed
to be seaworthy. Or bogworthy.

"Now you can swim anywhere you want to, Sharky,"
Smash called to it. "But I'll loose the rope only when we
reach the north edge of this bog."

"Help! Help me, brothersi" the shark called to the other
fins that circled near.

"Are you helpless?" one called back. "In that case, I'll be
happy to tear you apart."

"Sharks never help each other," John remarked. "That's
why they don't rule Xanth."

"Ogres don't help each other, either," Smash said. "The
same for most dragons." And he realized that he had suf-
fered another fundamental revelation about the nature of
power. Human beings helped each other, and thus had be-
come a power in Xanth far beyond anything that could be
accounted for by their size or individual magic.

Meanwhile, the loan shark got the message. It was living
on borrowed time, unless it moved. It thrust north, and the
bog fairly whizzed by. Soon they were at the north bank.

They climbed out, and Smash unthreaded the rope. The
shark vanished instantly. No one sympathized with it; it
had for once been treated as it treated others.

But now the griffins came. Probably another shark had
snitched, so the griffins had been alert for the party's ar-
rival. Since the creatures probably intended no good,
Smash stepped quickly across the firewall for a peek at
that situation. He found himself in the middle of the forest

fire. No hope therel

The great bird-headed, lion-bodied creatures lined up, in-
specting the motley group. The monsters were the color of

shoe polish. Then they charged.

Smash reacted automatically. He swung his pole, knock-
ing the first griffin back. Then he dived across the fire-

Ogre, Ogre                      207

wall, ripped a burning sapling out of the ground, dived
back, and hurled the flaming mass at the remaining grif-
fins. The sapling was of firewood, which burned even
when green; in a moment the wing feathers of the griffins
were burning.

The monsters squawked and hurled themselves into the
bog to douse the flames. The colored fins of the sharks
clustered close. "You're using our muck!" a shark cried.
"You owe us a wing and a paw!"

The griffins did not take kindly to this solicitation. A
battle erupted. Muck, feathers, and pieces of fin flew out-
ward, and the mud boiled.

Smash and the girls walked northwestward, following the
curve of the firewall, leaving the violence behind. The
landscape was turning nicer, with occasional fruit and nut
trees, so they could feed as they traveled.

The Siren, rested by her tour in the boat and periodic
dippings of her tail, found she could walk now. That light-
ened Smash's burden.

There were birds here, flitting among the trees, picking
at the trunks, scratching into the ground. The farther the
party went, the more there were. Now and then, flocks
darkened the sky. Not only were they becoming more nu-
merous, they were getting larger.

Then a flight of really large birds arrived—the fabulous
rocs. These birds were so big they could pick up a medium-
sized dragon and fly with it. Was their intent friendly or
hostile?

A talking parrot dropped down. "Ho, strangers!" it
hailed them "What melodies bring you to Birdland?"

Smash looked at the parrot. It was all green and red,
with a downcurving beak. "We only seek to pass through,"
he said. "We are going north."

"You are going west," the bird said.

So they were; the gradually curving firewall had turned
them about They reoriented, bearing north.

"Welcome to pass through Birdland," the parrot said.
"There will be a twenty per cent poll tax. One of your
number will have to stay here."

"That isn't fair!" Tandy protested. "Each of us has her
own business."

"We are not concerned with fairness," the poll replied,

208

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

209

while the horrendously huge rocs drifted lower, their enor-
mous talons dangling. "We are concerned with need. We
need people to cultivate our property so there will be more
seeds for us to eat. So we hold a reasonable share of those
who pass."

"A share—for slavery?" Tandy demanded, her spunky
spirit showing again.

"Call it what you will. One of you will stay—or all will
stay. The tax will be paid." And the rocs dropped lower
yet. "Poll your number to determine the one."

Smash knew it would be useless to fight. He might break
the claws of one roc, but another would carry away the
girls. The big birds had too much power. "We'll see," he
said.

Tandy turned on him. "We'll seel You mean you'll go
along with this abomination?"

"We don't have much choice," Smash said, his Eye
Queue once again dominating his better ogre nature. "We'll
just have to cross this land, then decide who will remain."

"You traitor!" Tandy flared. "You coward!"

The Siren tried to pacify her, but Tandy moved away,
her face red and body stiff, and hurled an invisible tan-
trum at Smash. It struck him on the chest, and its impact
was devastating. Smash staggered back, the wind knocked
out of him. No wonder the goblin chief had fallen; those
tantrums were potent!

His head gradually cleared. Smash found himself sitting
down, little clouds of confusion dissipating. Tandy was be-
side him, hugging him as well as she could with her small
arms. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Smash. I shouldn't have done that!
I know you're only trying to be reasonable."

"Ogres aren't reasonable," he muttered.

"It's just that—one of us—how can we ever callously
throw one to the wolves? To the birds, I mean. It just isn't
right!"

"I don't know," he said. "We'll have to work it out."

"I wish we had the wand," she said.

The Siren came to them. "We do have the Ear," she
reminded them.

"There is that," Tandy agreed. "Let me hear it." She
took the Gap Dragon's Ear and listened carefully. "Silent,"
she reported.

Smash took it from her and listened. For him, too, it was
silent. Chem had no better result. "I fear it has gone
dead—or we have no future," she said. "Nowhere to go."

John was the last to listen. Her face brightened. "I hear
something!" she exclaimed. "Singing—fairies singing. There
must be fairies nearby!"

"Well, that's what you're looking for," the Siren said.
"Let's see if they're within Birdland. Maybe we can get
some advice on how to proceed."

There seemed to be nothing better to do. Smash lurched
to his feet, amazed at the potency of Tandy's tantrum; he
still felt weak. An ogress could hardly have hit him harder!
Yet more than that, he marveled at her quick reversal of
mood. She had been almost savagely impetuous—then hu-
manly sorry. Too bad, he mused, she hadn't been bom an
ogress. That tantrum—it also reminded him a bit of one of
his mother's curses.

He shook his head. Foolish fantasy was pointless. He had
to clear his reeling noggin, and get moving, and find
Tandy a good human-type husband so the demon wouldn't
bother her any more. Good Magician Humfrey must have
known that there would be a suitable man for her some-
where in this wilderness, a man she would never encounter
unless she traveled here. Since Smash was passing this way
anyway, it had been easy enough to take her along. The
truth was, she was nice enough company, tiny and temper-
amental as she was. He had not had much company like
that before and was becoming acclimated to it. He knew
this was un-ogrish; maybe such ridiculous feelings would
pass when he got rid of the Eye Queue curse.

They proceeded on, following John, who used the Ear to
orient on the fairies. The rocs paced them; they would not
be able to depart Birdland without paying their poll toll.
One body . . .

Actually, Smash might have a way around that. If he
went back into the gourd and fought the Night Stallion and
lost, his soul would be forfeit pretty soon, and there would
be no point in proceeding north. So in that event, he might
as well stay here himself. The only problem was, how
Would the others survive without him? He had no confi-
dence that they were beyond the worst of the dangers of
central Xanth.

210 Ogre, Ogro

As they continued, they saw more and more birds. Some
were brightly plumed, some drab; some large, some small;

some ferocious of aspect with huge and knifelike beaks,
some meek with soft little feathers. There were bright blue-
birds, dull blackbirds, and brightly dull spotted birds. There
were fat round robins and thin pour-beakers.

They went on. There were ruffled grouse, angrily com-
plaining about things, godwits making profane jokes, sand-
pipers playing little fifes on the beach, black rails lying in
parallel rows on the ground, oven birds doing the morning
baking, mourning doves sobbing uncontrollably, goshawks
staring with amazement, a crane hauling up loads of
stones, and several big old red barn owls filled with hay.
Nearby were grazing cowbirds and cattle egrets, and a cat-
bird was stalking a titmouse, tail swishing.

"Birds are funny folk," the Siren murmured. "I never
realized there was so much variety."

In due course they came to the palace of the Kingbird.
"Better bow good and low," the parrot advised. "His High-
ness the Bird of a Feather, the ruler of Xanth, First on the
Pecking Order, doesn't appreciate disrespect from inferi-
ors."

"Ruler of Xanth!" Chem cried. "What about the cen-
taurs?"

"What about King Trent?" Tandy asked.

"Who?" the parrot asked.

"The human ruler of Xanth, in Castle Roogna."

"Never heard of him. The Kinglpird governs."

Smash realized that to the birds, the bird species domi-
nated Xanth. To the goblins, the goblins governed. The
same was probably true for the dragons, griffins, flies, and
other species. And who could say they were wrong? Each
species honored its own leaders. Smash, an ogre, was quite
ready to be objective about the matter. When in Birdland,
do as the birdbrains did.

He bowed to the Kingbird, as he would have done to the
human King of Xanth. To each his own mark of honor.

The Kingbird was reading a tome titled Avion Artifacts
by Omith O'Logy, and had no interest in the visitors. Soon
Smash's party was on its way again.

They came to a large field filled with pretty flowers.
"These are our birdseed plants," the parrot explained. "We

Ogre, Ogro                      211

have wormfarms and fishfarms and funnybonefarms, and
make periodic excursions to Flyland for game, but the bulk
of our food comes from fields like this. We are not apt at
cultivation—birdshot doesn't seem to do well for us—so we
draw on the abilities of lesser creatures like yourselves."

Indeed, Smash saw assorted creatures toiling in the field.
There were a few goblins, an elf, a brownie, a gremlin, a
nixie, and a sprite. They were obviously slaves, yet they
seemed cheerful and healthy enough, acclimated to their
lot.

Then Smash had a notion. "John, listen to the Ear
again."

The fairy did so. "The waterfall noise almost drowns it
out, but I think I hear the fairies close by." She oriented on
the sound, going in the direction it got louder, the others
following. They rounded a gentle hill, descended into a
waterfall-fed gully, and came across the fairies.

They were mending feathers. It seemed some of the
birds were too impatient to wait for new feathers to grow,
so they had the damaged ones repaired. Only fairies could
do such delicate work. Each had a little table with tiny
tools, so that the intricate work could be done. And most of
them had damaged wings.

"The birds—" Tandy said, appalled. "They crippled the
fairies so they can't fly away!"

"Not so," the parrot said. "We do not mutilate our work-
ers, because then they get depressed and do a poor job.
Rather, we offer sanctuary for those who are dissatisfied
elsewhere. Most of these fairies were cast out of Fairy-
land."

Tandy was suspicious. She approached the nearest work-
ing fairy. "Is this true?" she asked. "Do you like it here?"

The fairy was a male, finely featured in the manner of
his kind. He paused, looking up from his feather. "Oh, it's
a living," he said. "Since I lost my wings, I couldn't make
it in Fairyland. So I have to settle for what I can get. No
monsters attack me here, no one teases me for my wing
handicap, there's plenty of food, and the work is not ar-
duous. I'd rather be flying, of course—but let's be realistic.
Ill never fly again."

Smash saw one fairy down the line with undamaged

212

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

213

wings. "What about him?" he asked. "Why doesn't he fly

away?"

The fairy frowned. "He has a private complaint. Don't

bother him."

But Smash was in pursuit of his notion. "Would it relate

to his name?"

"Look," the fairy said, "we aren't trying to aggravate
your condition, so why do you bother us? Leave him

alone."

John had caught on. "Oh, Smash—I'm afraid to ask!"

"I'm an insensitive ogre," Smash said. "I'll ask." He
tromped over to the fairy in question. "Me claim he name,"
he said in his stupid fashion.

The fairy naturally assumed the ogre was as dull as he
was supposed to be. It was all right to tell secrets to stupid
folk, because they didn't know enough to laugh. "I am
called Joan," he said. "Now go away, monster."

Smash dropped his pretense. "That must be as embar-
rassing for you as intelligence is for an ogre," he said.

Joan's eyes widened and his wings trembled, causing the
cloud pattern on them to roil. "Yes," he agreed.

Smash signaled to John. Diffidently, she approached.
"Here is the one who got your name, or one letter of it,"
Smash said. "Trade him your H for his A, and both of you
will be restored."

The two fairies looked at each other. "Joan?" John
asked. "John?" Joan asked.

"I suspect the two of you are the same age, and took
delivery of your names by the same carrier," Smash said.
"Probably the Paste Orifice; it always gums things up. You
should compare notes."

Joan reached out and took John's hand. Smash was no
proper judge of fairy appearance, but it seemed to him that
Joan was quite a handsome young male of his kind, and
John was certainly pretty, except for her lost wings. Here
in Birdland that particular injury did not count for much.

The two of them seemed almost to glow as their hands

touched.

Chem and Tandy and the Siren had joined Smash.
"What is that?" Tandy asked. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Chem said. "I've read of this effect, but never
hoped to see it It's the glow of love at first touch."

"Then—" Smash said, in a burst of realization that he
had suppressed until this moment. "They were destined for
each other. That's why their names were confused. To
bring them eventually together."

"Yes!" the centaur agreed. "I think John—I suppose it's
Joan now—will be staying here in Birdland."

So the fairy's solution was the group's solution! One of
their number would remain—happily. How neatly it had
worked out. But of course that was the way of destiny,
which was never the coincidence it seemed.

They made their acknowledgments of parting and left
their fairy friend to her happy fate. The birds, satisfied, let
them go.

Their best route north, the parrot assured them, was
through the Water Wing. There were very few monsters
there, and the distance to the northern border of Xanth was
not great.

They agreed to that route. They had already encountered
more than enough monsters, and since the birds assured
them there were no fires or earthquakes in the Water
Wing, the trek should be easy enough. Besides, the Ear had
the sound of rainfall, which suggested their immediate fu-
ture.

John/Joan hurried up as they were about to cross the
border. "Here is a heat wave," she said. "My fiance had it for
when he left Birdland, but now he won't be needing it. Just
unwrap it when the time comes."

"Thank you," Smash said. He took the heat wave. It
seemed to be a wire curved in the shape of a wave, and
was sealed in a transparent envelope.

The girls hugged their friend good-bye, and Smash
extended his littlest hamfinger so the fairy could shake
hands with him Then they stepped across the border,
braced for anything.

Anything was what they got. They were in a drench-
pour. Not for nothing was this called the Water Wing by
the birds! There was ground underfoot, but it was hard to
see because of the ceaseless blast of rain.

Chem brought out her rope, and they tied themselves
together again—centaur, Tandy, Siren, and ogre, sloshing
north in a sloppy line. Smash had to breathe in through bis

214 Ogre, Ogre

clenched teeth to strain, the water out. Fortunately, the wa-
ter was not cold; this was a little like swimming.

After an hour, they slogged uphill. The rain thinned as
they climbed, but the air also cooled, so they did not gain
much comfort. In due course the water turned to sleet, and
then to snow.

The poor girls were turning blue with cold. It was time
for the heat wave. Smash unwrapped the wire. Immedi-
ately heat radiated out, suffusing the immediate region,
bringing comfort to each of them. The fairy's present had
been well considered, for all that it had been an accident of
circumstance.

Slowly the snow stopped falling, but the climb continued.
This was a mountain they were on, blanketed with snow.
By nightfall they still had not crested it, and had to camp
on the slope.

They were all hungry, and Smash was ravenous, so he
gave the Siren the heat wave and headed out into the snow
to forage. He found some flavored icicles in a crevice-cave
and chased a snow rabbit, but couldn't catch it. So he
headed back with the icicles; they were only a token, but
somewhat better than nothing. They would have to do.

It was colder out here then he had figured. His breath
fogged out before him, and the fog iced over and coated
him, making rum a creature of ice. His feet turned numb,
and his fingers, too. He hardly knew where his nose
stopped and the ice began; when he snorted, icicles flew
out like arrows.

Now he slowed, feeling lethargic. Wind came up, cutting
into his flesh, buffeting him about so that he stumbled. He
dropped cumbersomely to the ground, his fall cushioned by
the snow. He intended to get up, as it was now far downhill
to their camp, but it was more comfortable just to lie there
for a little longer. His Eye Queue cried warning, but after
a while that, too, faded out, and Smash slept.

He dreamed he saw Tandy's father, the soldier Crombie,
whirling around in his fashion and pointing his finger. The
finger stopped, pointing north. But what was it pointing to?
Smash remembered Crombie had said Tandy would lose
three things; that must be where it would happen.

Then Smash was being hauled awake. That was much
less comfortable than drifting to sleep bad been. His ex-

Ogre, Ogre                      215

tremities hurt, burning like fire and freezing like ice simul-
taneously; his head felt like thawed carrion, and his belly
Was roasting as if he were mounted on a spit over a fire.
He groaned horrendously, because that was what ogres did
when roasted on a spit over a fire.
"He's alive!" a voice cried joyfully.
As Smash recovered more fully, he learned what had
happened. He had frozen on the slope. Alarmed at his fail-
ure to return, the girls bad organized a search party and
located him. He was as stiff as ice, because that was what
he had become. They had feared him dead, but had put the
heat wave on his belly and thawed him. Ogres, it seemed,
were freeze-storable.

Now that he was awake, it was time to sleep. They set-
tled down around the heat wave, Tandy choosing to rest
her head against Smash's furry forearm. Ah, well, that was
harmless, probably. "I'm glad we got you thawed,
monster," she murmured. "I'm not letting you out alone
again!"

"Ogres do get into trouble," he agreed. It was strange to
imagine anyone watching out for him, and stranger yet to
imagine that he might need this attention, but it seemed he
did, on occasion.

In the night there was a horrendous roar. Smash, dream-
ing again—he tended to do that when asleep—thought it
was an ogress and smiled a huge grimace. But the three
girls bolted up, terrified.

"Wake up, Smash!" Tandy whispered urgently. "A
monster's coming!"

But Smash, in a dream-daze, hardly stirred. He had no
fear of the most horrendous ogress.

The monster stamped near, eyes glowing, teeth gleam-
ing, breath fogging out in dank, cold clouds. It was pure
white, and every hair seemed to be an icicle.

"Smash!" Tandy hissed. "It's an abom—abom—an awful
Snowman! Help!"

The Snowman looked over them, as pale as a snowstorm.
It reached out to grab the nearest edible thing. The girls
cowered behind Smash, who was mostly covered by a nice
snow blanket, so that little of him showed. This snow was
not nearly as cold as that of the rest of the mountain, be-
cause this was near the heat wave; he was comfortable

216 Ogre, Ogre

enough. But it deceived the Snowman, who -caught hold of
Smash's nose and yanked.

Ouch! Suddenly Smash woke up all the way. A truly
ogrish rage shook him. He reached up one huge, hairy arm
and grabbed the snow monster by the throat.

The Snowman was amazed. He had never encountered a
worse monster than himself before. He had not known any-
thing like that existed. He did not know how to deal with
this situation.

Fortunately, Smash knew how to deal with it. He stood
up, not letting go, and shook the hapless monster.
"Growrl" he growled, and dropped the creature on top of
the heat wave.

There was a bubbling and hissing as the Snowman's pos-
terior converted from ice to steam in one foop. The mon-
ster sailed into the ah- and shot out of there like a gust from
a gale. Smash didn't bother to pursue; he knew better than
to stray from the vicinity of the heat wave again. He was
no Snowmani

"It will be a long time before that creature bothers trav-
elers again," Chem remarked with private satisfaction.

"Yes, we have adverse monster on our side," Tandy said,
patting Smash's knee. She seemed to like the notion.

Smash was just glad he had enough of his strength back
to handle such things as snow monsters. But soon he would
have to meet the Night Stallion and put it all on the line.
He had better get the girls beyond these dangerous wilder-
ness regions of Xanth first, just in case.

Once more they settled down to sleep, grouping closely
around the heat wave. By morning it had melted them
deep into the snow, so that they were in a cylindrical well.
There seemed to be no bottom to this layer of snow; was
the whole mountain made of it? That could be, since this
was the Water Wing, and snow was solidified water.

Smash bashed out a ramp to the surface, and the party
resumed the trek. They were all hungry now, but had to be
satisfied with mouthfuls of snow.

As they entered the icy ridge of the mountain, the sun
melted the remaining clouds and bore down hard on the
snow. The snow began to melt. Smash put the heat wave
back in its envelope, but soon they were sloshing through
slush anyway.

Ogre, Ogre                      217

Then the slush turned to water, and the slope became a
river flowing over ice. They tried to keep to their feet, but
the entire mountain seemed to be dissolving. The treacher-
ous surface gave way beneath them and washed them all
helplessly along in the torrent.

Chem seemed to be able to handle herself satisfactorily
in the water; and, of course, the Siren assumed her mer-
maid form and swam like a fish. But Tandy was in trouble
because of the sheer rush of water. She could swim well
enough in level water, but this was a cataract.

Smash tried to swim to her, but got bogged down him-
self. He was not really a strong swimmer; he normally
waded or whomped through water. But right now he was
not at full strength and had been frozen and thawed. This
water was becoming too deep and violent for him.

Too much indeed! Smash gulped for air—and got water
instead. He coughed and gasped and sucked in a replace-
ment lungful—only to fill up the rest of the way with wa-
ter.

This was awful! He clawed at his throat, trying foolishly
to clear the water while his body struggled for air. But it
was no good. The torrent was all about him, finding excel-
lent purchase against his brute body, and he could not
breathe.

The agony of suffocation became unbearable. Then
something snapped, like the lid of his head, and half his
consciousness departed. Smash gave himself up for lost.
But it seemed to him that it had been more comfortable to
be frozen than to be drowned.

Then he was calm, accepting the inevitable. It was, after
all, halfway pleasant doing without air. Maybe this wasn't
really worse than freezing. He drifted with the slowing cur-
rent, relieved, feeling like loose seaweed. How nice just to
float forever free.

Then something was tugging fretfully at him. It was the
mermaid. She wrapped her arms about one of his and
threshed violently with her tail, drawing him forward. But
his mass was too much for her. Progress slowed; she needed
air herself, with all this exertion. She let him go, and Smash
sank blissfully to the depths while she shot up toward the
surface.

Slowly he became aware of more tugging, this time on

218 Ogre, Ogre

both arms. He tried to shake himself free, but his arms did
not respond. He watched himself being drawn upward
from the gloom to the light. There seemed to be two fig-
ures drawing him, one on each arm, each with a fish-tail—
but maybe he was seeing double.

Smash was not sure how long or far he was dragged;

time was compressed or dilated for him. But he became
aware that he was on a sandy beach, with a nightmare
tromping her hooves on his back. He was mistaken. It was
a filly centaur; Chem was treading the water out of his
body. The experience was almost as bad as vomiting out all
the Stallion manure, after that sequence in the gourd. Al-
most.

In due course Smash recovered enough to sit up. He
coughed another bucket or two of water out of his lungs.
"You rescued me," he accused the Siren.

"I tried," she said. "But you were too heavy—until Mor-
ris helped."

"Morris?"

"Hi, monster!" someone called from the water.

It was a triton. Now Smash understood why there had
seemed to be two merfolk hauling him along. The Siren
and Morris the Merman.

"We lost the Ear and the heat wave, but we saved you,"
the Siren said. "And Chem rescued Tandy."

Now Smash saw Tandy, who was lying face-down on the
sand. The centaur was now kneading her back, using hands
instead of hooves. "You breathed water, too?" Smash
asked.

Tandy raised her head. "Ungh," she agreed squishily.
"Did you—float?"

"When I sank," he answered. "If that's what dying is
like, it's not bad."

"Let's not talk about death," Chem said. "This is too
nice a place for that. I'm already upset about losing the
Ear."

"Not more upset about that than I am with me for losing
the heat wave," the Siren said.

"Maybe you should have thrown Smash and me back
and saved the magic items," Tandy said, forcing a watery
smile.

"It was fated that we lose them," Smash said, remember-

Ogre, Ogre

219

ing his dream. "Soldier Crombie said Tandy would lose
three things, and our loss is her loss."

"That's true!" Tandy agreed. "But what's the third
thing?"

Smash shrugged. "We don't have any third thing to lose.
Maybe two covers it."

"No, my father always points things out right. We've lost
something else, I'm sure. We just don't know what it is."

"Maybe one of you should stay and look for the lost
items," the merman said. He was a sturdy male of middle
age, roughly handsome. It was evident that he could not
make legs and walk on land the way the Siren could- he
Was a full triton.                                  '

"Maybe one of us should," the Siren said thoughtfully.
After that, it feU naturally into place. This was a pleas-
ant^ region on the fringe of the Water Wing, where the
drainage from the snow mountain became a lake that
spread into the mainstream wilderness of Xanth. There was
a colony of merfolk here, mostly older, scant of maids. It
looked very promising for the Siren.

Chapter 12. Visible Void

The three of them—Smash, Tandy, and Chem—
proceeded north to the border of the Void, the last of
the special regions of central Xanth. "There is great sig-
nificance to these five elemental regions," Chem said.
"Historically, the five elements—Air, Earth, Fire, Water,
and the Void—have always been mainstays of magic. So it
is fitting that they be represented in central Xanth, and I'm
extremely gratified to get them on my map."

"These have been good adventures," Smash agreed. "But
just what is the Void? The other elements make sense, but
I can't place that one."

"I don't know," the centaur admitted. "But I'm eager to
find out. I don't think this region has ever been mapped
before by anyone."

"Now is certainly the time," Tandy said. "I hope it's not
as extreme as the others were."

Chem brought out her rope. "Let's not gamble on that! I
should have tied us when the snow mountain turned to
slush, but it happened so fast—"

They linked themselves together as they approached the
line. It was abrupt. On the near side the pleasant terrain of
the merfolk's lake spread southward. On the far side was
nothing they could perceive.

"I'm the lightest," Tandy said. "I'll go first. Pull me
back if I fall into a hole." She smoothed back her slightly
scorched and tangled brown hair and stepped across the
formidable line.

Smash and Chem waited. The rope kept playing out,

220

Ogre, Ogre                      221

slowly; obviously Tandy was walking, not falling, and not
in any trouble. "Is it all right, Tandy?" the centaur called
rhetorically.

There was no answer. The rope continued to move. "Can
you hear me? Please answer," Chem called, her brow
wrinkling.

Now the slack went taut. Chem stood her ground, refus-
ing to be drawn across the line. Smash tried to peer into the
Void, but could see nothing except a vague swirl of fog,
from this side.

"I think I'd better pull her back," Chem said, swishing
her brown tail nervously. It, too, was somewhat bedraggled
as a result of then" recent adventures. "I'm not sure any-
thing is wrong; maybe she just doesn't hear me."

Chem hauled. There was resistance. She hesitated, not
wanting to apply unreasonable force. "What do you think,
Smash?"

Smash put his Eye Queue to work, but it seemed slug-
gish this time. His logic was fuzzy, his perception confused.
"I don't—seem to have much of an opinion," he confessed.

She glanced back at him, surprised. "No opinion? You,
with your un-ogrish intelligence? Surely you jesti"

"It best me jest," Smash agreed amicably.

She peered closely at him. "Smash—what happened to
your Eye Queue? I don't see the stigma on your head."

Smash touched the fur of his scalp. It was smooth; there
was no trace of roughness. "No on; it gone," he said.

"Oh, no! It must have been washed out when you
nearly drowned! That's the third thing we've lost—your
intelligence. That certainly affects Tandy's prospects here.
You're back to being stupid!"

Smash was appalled. Just when he needed intelligence,
he had lost it! What would he do now in a crisis?

The centaur was similarly concerned, but she had an an-
swer. "We'll have to use my intelligence for us both,
Smash. Are you willing to follow my lead, at least until we
get through the Void?"

That seemed to make sense to Smash. "She lead, me
accede."

"I'll try to haul her back." Chem drew harder on the
rope, and, of course, she had the mass to do it. Suddenly it

222 Ogre, Ogre

went slack, and the loose end of it slid back across the line.

"Oh, awful!" the centaur exclaimed, dismayed. She
switched her tail violently in vexation. "We've lost her!"

"Oh, awful," Smash echoed, since his originality had dis-
sipated with his intellect. What had happened to Tandy?

"I think I'd better step partway across so I can look
without committing myself," she decided. "You stay on this
side—and don't let me cross all the way. After a minute, if
I don't back out, you haul me out, slowly. Agreed?"

"Me agree, assuredly," he said. He was furious at the
Eye Queue for deserting him in his hour of need. Of course
he had intended to get rid of the curse—but not just yet.
Not at the brink of the Void. Now he was liable to do
something ogrishly idiotic, and cost his friends their lives.
Even his rhyming seemed ludicrous now; what was the
point in it? Not until the curse of the Eye Queue had de-
scended on him had he appreciated how stupid a typical
ogre seemed—just a hulking brute, too dull to do more
than smash things. Indeed, his very name.

The centaur poked her forepart cautiously through the
border. It disappeared into the swirl. Smash felt very much
alone, though her hindquarters remained with him. He
marveled that a human girl as smart and pretty as Tandy
could have any interest in him, even as an animal friend. It
must have been the Eye Queue that appealed to her, the
intelligence manifesting in the oddest of hosts, the sheer
anomaly of the bone-headed genius. Her interest would dis-
sipate the moment she discovered what had happened.
That, of course, was best; it would free her full attention
for her ideal human-type man, whoever and wherever he
might be. Yet Smash remained disquieted.

The fact was, he. realized now, the curse had had its
positive aspect. Like the curse of the moon that human
females labored under—one of the things that distinguished
them from nymphs—it was awkward and inconvenient,
but carried the potential for an entirely new horizon. Fe-
males could regenerate their kind; the Eye Queue enabled a
person to grasp far broader aspects of reality. Now, having
experienced such aspects, he would be returned to his for-
mer ignorance.

A minute had passed and gone some distance beyond,
and Chem had not backed out. In fact, she was trying to

Ogre, Ogra                      223

proceed the rest of the way across the line. Smash knew he
had to stop that; even if he was now too stupid to perceive
the danger in committing oneself to a potential course-of-
no-retum, he remembered the centaur's orders. "Me take
up slack, haul she back," he said, inwardly condemning his
ogrish crudity of expression. He might be stupid; did he
have to advertise it so blatantly?

That started another chain of thought. Part of the
vaunted dullness of ogres was not because of the fact, but
because they insisted on the distinguishing characteristic of
expression. He could have said, "Because my friend the
filly centaur, a decent and intelligent person with a useful
magic graphological talent, may be in difficulty, I am re-
quired to exert myself according to her expressed wish and
draw her gently but firmly back across the demarcation
between territories. Then we shall consider how best to pro-
ceed." Instead, he had spouted the idiotic ditty in the ludi-
crous manner of his kind. Surely the Eye Queue vine had
been as much of a curse in its untimely departure as in its
arrival!

There was resistance. Either Chem didn't want to come
back, or something was hauling her forward. Smash drew
harder on the rope, but the centaur braced forward, fight-
ing it. Something was definitely amiss. Even an idiot could
tell thati Smash was tempted to give one monstrous tug on
the rope and haul her back head over tail, as an ordinary
ogre would, but several things restrained him. First, her
mass was similar to his own; he might lose his footing and
yank himself across the line, in the wrong direction. Sec-
ond, the rope was bound about her humanoid waist, which
was delicately narrow; too harsh a force could hurt her.
Third, he was not at full strength, so he might not be able to
move her effectively even if properly anchored.

Then the rope went slack. Chem, too, was proceeding
unfettered into the Void.

Smash dived for her disappearing rump, his ogrish ac-
tion preceding his inadequate thought. He was too late. She
crossed the line. Only her tail flicked back momentarily, as
if flicking free a fly.

Smash caught the tail and worked his way along it, hand
over hand. Her forward impetus hauled him right up to the

224 Ogre, Ogre

line; then he got his balance, dug -his toes in, and brought
the centaur and himself to a halt.

Now he exerted what remained of his power and drew
her back. It sufficed; slowly her rump reappeared. When
he got her hind legs across, he shifted his grip carefully,
picked up her two feet, and wheelbarrowed her backward.
She could not effectively resist, with her feet off the
ground.

At last he got her all the way across. She was intact.
That relieved one concern. "Tell why she untie," he
grunted, not letting her go.

Chem seemed dazed, but soon reorganized herself. "It's
not what you think, Smash. It's beautiful in the Void! All
mist and fog and soft meadows, and herds of centaurs
grazing—"

Smash might be stupid, but not that stupid. "She still in
daze. Centaurs no graze."

Her eyes rounded, startled. "Why, that's right! Sea cows
graze. Water-horses graze. Black sheep graze. Centaurs eat
in human fashion. What am I thinking of?"

Perhaps she had seen a herd of grazing animals and
jumped to a conclusion. But that was of little moment at
the moment. "That is dandy. Where is Tandy?"

"Oh, Tandy! I didn't see her." Chem was chagrined. "I
crossed the line to seek her and was so distracted by the
beauty of the region that I forgot my mission. I'm not
usually that flighty!"

True enough. Chem was a filly with all four hooves on
the ground. She was less aggressive than her father Chester
and less imperious than her mother Cherie, but still had
qualities of determination and stability that were to be
commended. It was entirely unlike her to act in an impetu-
ous or thoughtless manner.

Now something else occurred to Smash. There were var-
ious kinds of magic springs in Xanth that trapped the un-
wary. Some caused a person to fall in love with the first
creature of the opposite sex he or she saw; that was how
the species of centaur had originated. Some caused a per-
son to turn into a fish. Some healed a person's wounds
instantly and cleanly, as if they had never been. Had the
group encountered one of those before, John the Fairy

Ogre, Ogre

225

would have been able to restore her lost wings. And some
springs caused a person to forget.

"She get wet, she forget?" he asked, wishing he could
voice his concern more eloquently. Damn his bonehead!

"Wet?" Chem was perplexed. "Oh—you mean as in a
lethe-spring? No, I didn't forget in that fashion, as you can
see, and I'm sure Tandy didn't. For one thing, there was no
spring nearby, certainly not within range of the rope. It's
something else. It's just such lovely land, so pleasant and
peaceful, I simply had to explore it. Nothing else seemed
important, somehow. I knew that farther in there would be
even more wonder, and—" She paused. "And I just
couldn't step back. I realize that was very foolish of me.
But I'm sure that place is safe. No monsters or natural
hazards, I mean."

Smash remained doubtful. Tandy was gone, and Chem
had almost been gone. It had been no simple distraction of
mind that kept her there; she had untied her safety rope
and resisted his pullback with all her might. Yet she
seemed to be in full possession of her faculties now.

Tandy must have been similarly seduced. She now was
wary of the easy paths leading to tanglers and ant-lion
lairs, but would not have experienced this particular in-
ducement. Instead of being an easy access path to a pleas-
ant retreat, this was an entire landscape that lured one in.
Was that why it was called the Void—because no one ever
returned from it, so that nothing was known about it?

If that were so, how could they leave Tandy to its merci-
less mercy? She needed to be rescued immediatelyl

"As I see it," Chem said, "we shall have to go in and
look for Tandy and try to bring her out. We risk getting
trapped ourselves—not, I think, by some monster, but by
the sheer delight of the region. We won't want to leave."
She flicked her tail, perturbed. "I realize this is a lot to ask
of you now. Smash, but do you have any opinion?"

How ironic! If the curse had stayed with him just a little
longer, he could have marshaled its formidable power and
expressed an eloquently cogent and relevant thought that
might completely clarify their troubled course. Something
like: "Chem, I suggest you employ your three-dimensional
holographic map-projection to chart the Void as we explore

226 Ogre, Ogre

it, so that not only will we be able to orient more specifi-
cally on Tandy's most likely course, we shall also have no
difficulty finding our way out again." But the curse had
left him, so that he had become too stupid to think of that,
let alone express it. All that actually came out was, "Make
map, leave trap."

"Map? Trap?" she asked, her brow furrowing. "I do
want to chart the Void, as I do everything, but I don't see
how—"

Sure enough, he had not gotten through. He tried again.
"Find way, no stay."

"Use my magic map to find our way out?" She bright-
ened. "Of course! We can't get lost if I keep it current. I'll
mark a dotted line; then we can follow it back if there is
any problem. That's a very good idea, Smash." She said it
comfortingly, as one would to a dull child. And, of course,
intellectually, that was what he was. What he had been
when infected by the weed of smartness was of no present
relevance; he had to accept the reality, depressing as it now
seemed. He was not, and never would be, inherently intelli-
gent. He was, after all, an ogre.

That would definitely solve one problem, he thought.
Tandy might have taken a certain girlish fancy to him—
but it had been the enhancement of his intellect provided
by the Eye Queue that appealed to her. Now that he was
back to normal, she would properly regard him as the ani-
mal he was. That was certainly best—though, somehow, he
was too stupid to appreciate the nicety of it fully. He had,
in fact, been somewhat puffed up by her attention, unde-
served as it was, and had rather enjoyed her company, the
flattery of her uncritical nearness. He did not relish the
prospect of going his way alone again. But of course he
had no choice. An ogre went the ogre's way.

"Let's try it," Chem said, coiling her rope. "Let's keep
each other in sight, and call out any special things we see.
Our object is to locate Tandy and then to bring us all out
on the north side of the Void. Do you agree?"

"Good stratagem, centaur femme," he agreed inanely.

She smiled briefly, and he saw how nervous she was.
She was afraid of what they were about to encounter in the
Void, pleasant though it seemed. She knew their perspec-

Ogre, Ogre                      ?27

fives would change the moment they crossed the line, and
that they might never return. "Wish us luck, monster."

"Luck, Chem, pro tern," he said.

They stepped across the line together.

Chem had been correct. The landscape was even,
slightly sloping down ahead, with low-hanging clouds cruis-
ing by. The ground was covered with lush turf that seemed
innocent and bad a fragrant odor, with pretty little flowers
speckled through it. Certainly there was no obvious danger.
And that, he feared, was the most obvious danger of all.

Now Chem generated her magic map. The image ap-
peared in the air by her head. But this time it expanded
enormously, rapidly overlapping the terrain they stood on,
so that the features of the Land of Xanth in image passed
by them both. Mountains, lakes, and the Gap Chasm—
apparently her map was not affected by the forget-spell on
the Gap, an item of possible significance—rushed by them.
Then trees and streams became large enough to be seen
individually, and even occasional animals, frozen as re-
corded yet seeming to move because of the expansion of
the map. "Hey, it's not supposed to do that!" she protested.
"It's turning life-size!"

Obviously the map was careering out of control. Smash
wondered why that should happen here. If only he had his
Eye Queue back, he would be able to realize that this was
surely no coincidence, and that it related in some funda-
mental way to the ultimate nature of the Void. He might
even conjecture that the things of the mind, whether ani-
mated in the form of a map or remaining inchoate, had
considerable impact on the landscape of the Void. Perhaps
the interaction between the two created a region of ani-
mated imagination that could be a lot of fun, but might
also pose considerable threats to sanity if it got out of con-
trol. Perhaps no purely physical menace lurked within the
Void, but rather, the state of mental chaos that might pre-
vail when no aspects of physical reality intruded upon or
limited the generation of fanciful imagery. But naturally a
mere stupid ogre could in no way appreciate the tiniest
portion of such a complex conjecture, so Smash was obli-
vious. He hoped this foolish oblivion would not have seri-
ous consequences. Ignorance was not necessarily bliss, as
any smart creature would know.

228 Ogre, Ogre

Chem, confused by her map's misbehavior, turned it off.
Then she tried it again, concentrating intently. This time it
expanded from its point source, then contracted to pinpoint
size, gyrating wildly, until it steadied down around the size
she wanted it. She was learning new control, and this was
just as well, for lack of discipline might be extraordinarily
troublesome here.

"See, there are the grazing centaurs," Chem said, point-
ing ahead.

Smash looked. He saw a tribe of grazing ogres. Again, if
only he had retained the curse of intelligence, he might
have comprehended that another highly significant aspect
of this region was manifesting. Chem perceived one non-
sensical thing, and he perceived another. That suggested
that the preconceptions of the viewer defined in large part
what that viewer saw; there was not necessarily any objec-
tive standard here. Reality, literally, was something else. In
this case, perhaps, a herd of irrelevant creatures was graz-
ing, neither centaurs nor ogres.

If this were so, he might have continued his thought,
how could they be certain that anything they saw here was
not a kind of illusion? Tandy could be lost in a world of
altered realities and not realize it. Since Chem and Smash
also were in altered states of perception, the problem of
locating Tandy might be immensely more complicated than
anticipated. But he, a dull ogre, would merely blunder on,
heedless of such potential complications.

"Something funny here," Chem said. "We know cen-
taurs don't graze."

"It seem a dream," Smash said, trying vainly to formu-
late the concept he knew he could not master without the
curse of intellect.

"Illusion!" Chem exclaimed. "Of course! We're seeing
other creatures that only look like centaurs." She was
smart, as all centaurs were; she caught on quickly.
'" But she didn't have it all yet. "Me no see centaur she,"
he said clumsily.

"You see something else? Not centaurs?" Again her
brow furrowed. "What do you see, Smash?"

Smash tapped his own chest.

"Oh, you see ogres. Yes, I suppose that makes sense. I

Ogre, Ogre                      229

see my kind, you see yours. But how can we see what is
really there?"

This was far too much for him to figure out. If only he
had his Eye Queue back, he might be able to formulate a
reversal of perspective that would cancel out the mind-
generated changes and leave only the undisturbed truth.
Perhaps a kind of cross-reference grid, contrasting Chem's
perceptions with his own, eliminating the differences. She
saw centaurs, he saw ogres—obviously each saw his own
kind, so that was suspect. Both saw a number of individu-
als, so there the perceptions aligned and were probably ac-
curate. Both saw the creatures grazing, which suggested
they were, in fact, grazing animals, equine, caprine, bovine,
or other. Further comparison on an organized basis, per-
haps mapping the distinctions on a variant of Chem's
magic map, would in due course yield a close approxima-
tion of the truth, whatever it might be.

Of course, it might be that there was nothing. That even
their points of agreement were merely common fancies, so
that the composite image would be that illusion that was
mutually compatible. It just might be, were the fundamen-
tal truth penetrated, that what remained in the Void was—
nothing. The absence of all physical reality. Creatures
thought, therefore they existed—yet perhaps even their
thinking was largely illusion. So maybe the thinkers them-
selves did not exist—and the moment they realized this,
they ceased to exist. The Void was—void.

But without his mental curse he wouldn't see any of
that, and perhaps this was just as well. If he were going to
imagine anything, he should start with the Eye Queue vine!
But he would have to use it cautiously, lest the full power
of his enhanced intellect succeed only in abolishing himself.
He needed to preserve the illusion of existence long enough
to rescue Tandy and get them out of the Void, so that their
seeming reality became actual. "Me need clue to find Eye
Queue," he said regretfully.

Chem took him literally, which was natural enough,
since she knew he now lacked the wit to speak figuratively.
"You think there are Eye Queue vines growing around
here? Maybe I can locate them on my map."

She concentrated, and the suspended map brightened.

Parts of it became greener than others. "I can't usually
place items I haven't actually seen," she murmured. "But
sometimes I can interpolate, extrapolate from experience
and intuition. I think there could be such vines—here." She
pointed to one spot on her map, and a marker-glow ap-
peared there. "Though they may be imaginary, just ordi-
nary plants that we happen to see as Eye Queues."

Smash was too stupid to appreciate the distinction. He
set off in the direction indicated by the map. The centaur
followed, keeping the map near him so he could refer to it
at need. In short order he was there—and there they were,
the dangling, braided eyeball vines, each waiting to curse
some blundering creature with its intelligence and percep-
tion.

He grabbed one and set it on his head. It writhed and
sank in immediately. How far had he sunk, to inflict so
eagerly this curse upon himself!

His intelligence expanded, much as the centaur's map
had. Now he grasped many of the same notions he had
wished to grasp before. He saw one critical flaw in the
technique of using a cross-reference grid to establish real-
ity: turned on his own present curse of intelligence, it
would probably reveal his smartness to be illusion. Since
Smash needed that intelligence to rescue Tandy, he elected
not to pursue that course. It would be better to use the
devices of perspective to locate Tandy first, then explore
their unreal mechanisms when the loss of such mechanisms
no longer mattered. It would also be wise not to ponder the
intricacies of his own personal existence.

What would be the best way to find her? If her foot-
prints glowed, it would be easy to track her. But he was
now far too smart to believe that anything so coincidentally
convenient could exist.

The centaur, however, might be deceivable. "I suspect
there could be some visible evidence of the passage of out-
siders," he remarked. "We carry foreign germs, alien sub-
stances from other magic regions. There could be interac-
tions, perhaps a small display of illumination—"

"Smash!" she exclaimed. "It worked! You're smart
again!"

"Yes, I thought it might."

"But it's illusion. The Eye Queue is only imaginary!
How can it have a real effect?"

"What can affect the senses can also affect the mind,"
Smash explained. She had seemed so smart a moment ago.
Now, from the lofty vantage of his restored intelligence,
she seemed a bit slow. Certainly it was stupid of her to
attempt to explain away his mental power, for that would
put them right back in the morass of incompetence. He had
to persuade her—before she persuaded him. "In Xanth,
things are mostly what they seem to be. For example,
Queen Iris's illusions of light enable her to see in the dark;

her illusion of distant vision enables her to see people who
are otherwise too far away. Here in the Void, in contrast,
things are what they seem not to be. It is possible to finesse
these appearances to our advantage, and to generate reali-
ties that serve our interests. Do you perceive the foot-
prints?"

She looked, dismayed by his confusing logic. "I—do,"
she said, surprised. "Mine are disks, yours are paw-prints.
Mine glow light brown, like my hide; yours glow black, like
yours." She looked up. "Am I making any sense at all?
How can a print glow black?"

"What other color befits an ogre?" he asked. He did not
see the prints, but did not remark on that "Now we must
cast about for Tandy's prints." He cracked the briefest
smile. "And hope they do not wail."

"Yes, of course," she agreed. "They must originate
where we crossed the line: that's the place to intercept
them." She started back—and paused. "That's funny."

"What's funny?" Smash was aware that the Void was
tricky and potentially dangerous. If Chem began to catch
on to its ultimate nature, he would have to divert her in a
hurry. Their very existence could depend on it.

"I seem to be up against a wall. It's intangible, but it
balks me."

A wall. That was all right; that was a physical obstacle,
not an intellectual one, therefore much less dangerous.
Much better to wrestle that sort of thing. Smash moved to
join her—and came up against the wall himself. It was in-
visible, as she had suggested, but as he groped at it he be-
gan to discern its rough stones. It seemed to be fashioned of

232 Ogre, Ogre

ogre-resistant stuff, or maybe his weakened condition pre-
vented him from demolishing it properly. Odd.

His Eye Queue had another thought, however. If things
in the Void were not what they seemed to be, perhaps this
was true of the wall. It might not exist at all; if he could
succeed in disbelieving in it, he could walk through it. Yet
if he succeeded in abolishing a wall this tangible by mental
effort, what then of the other things of the Void, such as
the Eye Queue? He might do best not to disbelieve.

"What do you perceive?" Chem asked.

"A firm stone wall," he said, deciding. "I fear we shall
find it difficult to depart the Void." He had thought that
intellectual dissolution, or the vacating of reality, might
cause the demise of intruders into the Void; perhaps it was,
after all, a more physical barrier. He would have to keep
his mind open so as not to be trapped by illusions about
these illusions.

"There must be a way," she said with a certain false
confidence. She suspected, as he did, that they could be in
worse trouble right now than they had been when the Gap
Dragon charged them or the volcano's lava flows began
breaking up under them. Mental and emotional equilibrium
was as important now as physical agility had been then.
"Our first job is to catch up with Tandy; then we can tack-
le the problem of departure."

At least she had her priorities in order. "Certainly, We
can intercept her footprints by proceeding sidewise. We
now have a notion why she did not return. This wall must
be pervious from the edge of the Void, impervious from the
interior. A little like a one-way path through the forest."

"Yes. I always liked those "one-way paths. I don't like
this wall quite as well." Chem proceeded sidewise, follow-
ing the wall. She did not see it or really feel it, yet it balked
her effectively. Meanwhile, Smash did not see the glowing
footprints, but knew they would lead the two of them to
Tandy. There seemed to be more substance to these illu-
sions than was true elsewhere. The illusions of Queen Iris
seemed very real, but one could walk right through them.
The illusions of the Void seemed unreal, yet prevented
penetration. Would they really all dissipate at such time as
he allowed himself to fathom the real nature of the Void?

Ogre, Ogre                      233

If nothing truly existed here, how could there be a wall to
block escape? He kept skirting the dangerous thoughts!

Soon Chem spied Tandy's footprints—bright red, she an-
nounced. The prints were headed north, deeper into the
Void.

They followed this new trail. Smash checked every so
often and discovered that the invisible wall paced them.
Any time he tried to step south, he could not. He could
only go north, or slide east or west. This disturbed him
more than it might have when he was ogrishly stupid. He
did not like traveling a one-way channel; this was too much
like the route into the lair of a hungry dragon. The mo-
ment he caught up to Tandy, he would find a way to go
back out of .the Void. Maybe he could break a hole in the
wall with a few hard ogre blows of his fist.

Yet again his Eye Queue, slanted across with an alter-
nate thought. Suppose the Void were like a big funnel, al-
lowing people to slide pleasantly toward its center and bar-
ring them from climbing out? Then the wall would not
necessarily be a wall at all, merely the outer rim of that
funnel. To smash it apart could be to break up the very
ground that supported them, and send them plunging in a
rockslide down into the deeper depth. No percentage there!

How could he arrange to escape the trap and take his
friends with him? If no one had escaped before to give
warning, that was a bad auspice for their own chances!
Well, he intended to be the first to emerge to tell the tale.

Could he locate a big bird, a roc, and get carried out by
air? Smash doubted it. He distrusted air travel, having had
a number of uncomfortable experiences with it, and he cer-
tainly distrusted birds as big as rocs. What did rocs eat,
anyway?

What else was there? Then he came up with a notion he
thought would work in the Void. This would use the proper-
ties of the Void against the Void itself, rather than fighting
those properties. He would try it—when the time came.

"There's something ahead," Chem said. "I don't know
what it is yet."

In a moment they caught up to it. It was an ogress—the
beefiest, fiercest, hairiest, ugliest monster he had ever seen,
with a face so mushy it was almost sickening. Lovely!
"What's another centaur doing here?" Chem asked.

234 Ogre, Ogre Ogre, Ogre 235

Instantly the Eye Queue analyzed the significance of her
observation. "That is another anonymous creature. We had
better proceed cautiously."

"Oh, I see what you mean! Do you think it could be a
monster?" The centaur, delicately, did not voice the ob-
vious fear—that the monster could have consumed Tandy.
After all, it stood astride her tracks.

"Perhaps we should approach it from opposite sides,
each ready to help the other in case it should attack." He
wasn't fully satisfied with this decision, but the thought of
harm to Tandy made the matter urgent.

"Yes," Chem agreed nervously. "As I become acclimated
to this region, I like it less. Maybe one of us can draw near
her and the other can hide, ready to act. We can't assume a.
sleek centaur filly like that is hostile."

Nor could they afford to assume the ugly ogress was not
hostile! They had to be ready for anything. "You hide; I
will approach in friendly fashion."

The centaur proceeded quietly to the west, and in a mo-
ment disappeared. Smash gave her time to get properly set-
tled, then stomped gently toward the stranger. "Hoi" he
called.

The hideous, wonderful ogress snapped about, spying
him. "Who you?" she grunted dulcetly, her voice like the
scratching of harpies' talons on dirty slate.

Smash, aware that she was not what she seemed, was
cautious. Names had a certain power in Xanth, and he was
already below strength; it was best to remain anonymous,
at least until he was sure of the nature of this creature. "I
am an inquiring stranger," he replied.

She tromped right up to him and stood snout to snout, in
the delightful way of an ogress. "Me gon' stir he monster,"
she husked in the fascinatingly unsubtle mode of her ap-
parent kind, and she clinked him in the puss with one
hairy paw.

The blow lacked physical force, but Smash did a polite
backflip as if knocked heels over head. What a romantic
come-on! He remembered how his mother knocked his fa-
ther about and stepped on his face, showing her intimidat-
ing love. How similar this ogre-she was!

Yet his Eye Queue cautioned caution, as was its wont.
This was not a real ogress; she might just be roughing him

up for a meal. She might not be nearly as friendly as she
seemed. So he did not reciprocate by smashing her vio-
lently into a tree. Besides, there was no suitable tree handy.

He used un-ogrish eloquence instead. "This is a remark-
ably friendly greeting for a stranger."

"No much danger," she said. "He nice stranger." And
she gave him a friendly kick.

Smash was becoming much intrigued. He was sure this
was no ogress, but she was one interesting person! Maybe
he should hit her back. He raised his hamfist.

Then a third party appeared. This was another ogress.
"Don't hit her. Smash!" she cried. "I just realized—"

"Smash?" the first ogress repeated questioningly. She
seemed amazed.

"We must all describe exactly what we see," the second
ogress said. She, too, was no true ogress, for her speech did
not conform—unless she bad blundered into some Eye
Queue vines—but that hardly seemed likely. "You first,
Smash."

Confused by this development, he obliged. "I see two at-
tractively brutal ogresses, each with a face mushier than
the other, each hunched so that her handpaws reach almost
down to her hindpaws. One is brown, the other red."

"And I see two centaurs," the second ogress said. "A
black stallion and a red mare."

Oho! That would be Chem, seeing her own kind. Once
she had separated from him, her own perceptions had
taken over, so that she saw him falsely.

"I see a handsome black human man and a pretty brown
human girl," the first ogress said.

"Then you are Tandy!" Chem exclaimed.

"Tandy!" Smash repeated, amazed.

"Of course I'm Tandy!" Tandy agreed. "I always was.
But why are you two dressed up like human people?"

"We each perceive our own kind," Chem explained.
"Each person instinctively generates his or her own reality
from the Void. Come—take hands and perhaps we can
break through to reality."

They took hands—and slowly the alternate images dissi-
pated, and Smash saw Chem in her ruffled brown coat and
Tandy in her tattered red dress.

"You were awful handsome as a man," Tandy said

236

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

237

sadly. "All garbed in black, like a dusky king, with silver
gloves." Smash realized that his orange jacket had become
so dirty it was now almost indistinguishable from his natu-
ral fur. "But why did you fall down when I tried to shake
your hand?"

The Eye Queue provided the insight to cause him em-
barrassment. "I misunderstood your intent," he confessed.
"I thought you were being friendly."

"I was being friendly!" she exclaimed indignantly. "You
were the first human being I was able to get close to in this
funny place. I thought you might know some way out. I
can't seem to go back myself; I bang into an invisible hedge
or something. So I wanted to be very positive, and not scare
you away. After all you might have been lost too."

"Yes, of course," Smash agreed weakly.

"But you acted as if I'd hit you, or somethingi" she con-
tinued indignantly.

"This is the way ogres show affection," Chem explained.

Tandy laughed. "Affection! That's how human beings
fight!"

Smash was silent, horribly embarrassed.

But Tandy would not let it go. "You big oaf! I'll show
you how human beings express affection!" And she
grabbed Smash's arm, pulling him toward her with small
human violence. Bemused, he yielded, until his head was
down near hers.

Tandy threw her arms around his furry neck and
planted a firm, long, hot-blooded kiss on his mouth, mov-
ing her lips against his.

Smash was so surprised he sat down. Tandy followed
him, still pressing close, locking his head to hers. He fell
all the way back on the ground, but she stayed with him,
her brown hair flopping forward to cover his wildly staring
eyes as she drove home the rest of the kiss.

At last she released him, as she needed a breath. "What
do you think of that, ogre?"

Smash lay where she had thrown him, unable to make
sense of the experience.

"He's overwhelmed," Chem said. "You gave him an aw-
fully stiff dose for his first such contact."

"Well, I've wanted to do it for a long time," Tandy said.
"He's been too stupid to catch on."

'Tandy, he's an ogre! They don't understand human
romance. You know that."

"He's an ogre with Eye Queue. He can darned well
learn."

"I'm afraid you're being unrealistic," the centaur said,
talking as if Smash were not present. Perhaps that was the
case, mentally. "You're a spunky, pretty human girl. He's a
hulking jungle brute. You can't afford to get emotionally
involved with a creature like that. He just isn't your type."

"And just what is my type?" Tandy flared defiantly. "A
damned demon intent on rape? Smash is the nicest male
creature I've met in Xanth!"

"How many male creatures have you met in Xanth?" the
centaur inquired.

Tandy was silent. Of course her experience had been
quite limited.

Smash at last essayed a remark. "You could visit a hu-
man village—"

"Shut up, ogre," Tandy snapped, "or I'll kiss you again!"

Smash shut up. She was not bluffing; she could do it.
She still had her arms looped around his neck, since she lay
half astride him, holding him down, as it were.

"You have to be realistic," Chem said. "The Good Magi-
cian sent you out with Smash so the ogre could protect you
while you searched for a husband. What good will it do you
to find the destined man, as John and the Siren and maybe
Goldy did, if you foolishly waste your love on an inappro-
priate object? You would be undermining the very thing
you seek."

"Oh, phooey!" Tandy exclaimed. "You're right, centaur,
I know you're right, centaurs are always right—but oh, it
hurts!" A couple of hot raindrops fell on Smash's nose,
burning him with an acid other than physical. She was
crying, and he found that even more confusing than the
kiss. "Ever since he rescued me from the gourd and got me
back my soul—"

"I'm not denying he's a good creature," Chem said. "I'm
just saying, realistically—"

• Tandy turned ferociously on Smash. "You monster! Why
couldn't you have been a man?"

"Because I'm an ogre," he said.

238 Ogre, Ogre

She wrenched one arm clear of him and made as if to
strike his face. But her hand did not touch him.

The Void spun about him, dimming. Smash realized she
had hit him with another tantrum. That, ironically, was
more like ogre love. Why couldn't she have been an ogress?

An ogress. Now, his mind shaken by the double
whammy of kiss and tantrum. Smash floated, half con-
scious, and realized what he had been missing. An ogress!
He, like every member of his party, could not exist alone.
He needed a mate. That was what had brought bun to
Good Magician Humfrey's castle. That had been his un-
asked Question. How could he find his ideal mate? Hum-
frey had known.

And of course there would be ogresses at the Ogre-fen-
Ogre Fen. That was why the Good Magician had sent him
to seek the Ancestral Ogres. He would be able to select one
who was right for him, knock her about in ogre fashion,
and live in brutal happiness ever after, exactly as his par-
ents had. It all did make sense.

He drifted slowly to earth as the horrendous impact of
the tantrum eased. "Now I understand—" he began.

"I warned you, oaf," Tandy said. She leaned over and
plastered another big kiss on him.

Smash was so dazed that he almost grasped the nature of
the kiss, this time. Perhaps it was the effect of the Void,
making things seem other than they were. It was as if she
were punching him in the snoot—and with that perception
she became much more alluring.

Then she broke, and the odd perspective ended. She be-
came a girl again, all soft and pretty and nice and wholly
inappropriate for romance. It was too bad.

"Oh, what's the use," Tandy said. "I'm a fool and I
know it. Come on, people; we have to get out of this
place."

"That may not be readily accomplished," Chem said.
"We can travel in deeper, or edge sideways, but we can't
back out. I'm sure it's like a whirlpool, drawing us ever
inward. What we shall find in the center, I hesitate to con-
jecture."

"Oblivion," Tandy said tightly. She, too, had caught on.

"A maw," Smash said, climbing unsteadily to his feet.

Ogre, Ogre                      239

"This land is carnivorous. It gives us respite only because it
doesn't need to consume us instantly. It has herds of graz-
ing creatures to eat first. When it gets hungry, it will take
us."

"I fear that is so," the centaur agreed. "Yet there must
be some way for smart or creative people to escape it.
There is so much illusion here, maybe we could fool it."

"So far, ifs been fooling us, not we it," Tandy said. "Un-
less we can wish away that wall—"

But Smash's Eye Queue had been cogitating on this
problem, and now it regurgitated a notion—the one he had
flirted with before. "If we could escape into another world,
one with different rules—"

"Such as what?" Chem asked, interested. "Have you got
something on your hairy mind?"

"The hypnogourd."

"I don't like the gourd!" Tandy said instantly.

"And the fact is, even if we all entered the gourd, our
bodies would remain right here," the centaur pointed out.
"The gourd is a trap itself—but if we did get out of it, we'd
still be in the Void. A trap within a trap."

"But the nightmares can go anywhere," Smash said.
"Even to Mundania—and back."

"That's true," Tandy agreed. "They can go right through
walls, and I think some can run on water. So I suppose
they could run through the Void, and out again. They're
not ordinary mares. But they're very hard to catch and
hard to ride, and the cost—" She smiled ruefully. "I hap-
pen to know."

"They would help us if the Night Stallion told them to,"
Smash said.

"Oh, I forgot!" Tandy exclaimed. "You still have to
fight the Night Stallion! You sacrificed your soul for me—"
She clouded up. "Oh, Smash, I owe you so much!"

The centaur nodded thoughtfully. "Smash placed his
soul in jeopardy for you, Tandy. I can appreciate how that
would affect you. But I'm not sure you interpret your debt
correctly."

"I was locked into that horror, deprived of my soul!"
Tandy said. "I had no hope at all. The lights had gone out
on my horizon. Then he came and fought the bones and

240 Ogre, Ogre

smashed things about and brought out my soul, and I lived
again. I owe my everything to him. I should give back my
soul—"

"No!" Smash cried, knowing that she could endure no
worse horror than the loss of her soul again. "I promised to
protect you, and I should have protected you from the
gourd, instead of splashing in the lake. I'll fight this
through myself."

Chem shook her head. "I do see the problem—for each
of you. I wish I perceived the answers as clearly."

"I have to meet the Stallion anyway," Smash said. "So
when I have conquered him, I'll ask him for some mares."

"That's so crazy it just might work!" Chem said. "But
there's one detail you may have overlooked. We have no
hypnogourds here."

"We'll use your map again," he said.

The centaur considered. "I must admit it worked for
your Eye Queue replacement vine, and our situation is des-
perate enough so that anything's worth trying. But—"

"Replacement?" Tandy demanded.

"Chem will explain it to you while I'm in the gourd,"
Smash said. "Right now, let's use the map to locate a gourd
patch."

The centaur projected her map and settled on a likely
place for gourds while Tandy watched skeptically. Then the
party went there, though the way took them deeper into the
Void.

And there they were—several nice fat hypnogourds with
ripe peepholes. Smash settled himself by the largest. "You
girls get some rest," he advised. "This may take a while.
Remember, I have to locate the Stallion first, then fight
him, then round up the mares."

Tandy grabbed his hamhand in her two delicate little
hands. "Oh, Smash—I wish I could help you, but I'm terri-
fied to go into a gourd—"

"Don't go in a gourd!" Smash exclaimed. "Just stay close
so you don't get walled off from me and can't bring me out
in an emergency," he said gruffly.

"I will! I will!" Tandy's eyes were tear-bright. "Oh,
Smash, are you strong enough? I shouldn't have hit you
with that tantrum—•"

Ogre, Ogra                      241

"I like your tantrums. You just rest, and wait for the
nightmares, by whatever route they come."

"I know I'll see nightmares," she said wanly.

Smash glanced at Chem. "Keep an eye on her," he said,
disengaging his hand from Tandy's.

"I will," the centaur agreed.

Then Smash put his eye to the peephole.

Ogre, Ogre

243

Chapter 13. Souls Alive

He found himself emerging from the cakewalk
onto a vast empty stage. He landed gently. There was no
vomit. There was a new scene.

The floor was metal-hard and highly polished; his feet
left smudge marks where they touched. The air was half lit
by a glow that seemed inherent. There was nothing else.

Smash peered about. It occurred to him that if the Night
Stallion were here, he could spend a long time looking, as
this place seemed infinitely extensive. He had to narrow its
compass, somehow.

Well, he knew how to do that. He started tromping, un-
reeling his string behind him. He would crisscross this re-
gion for as long and as far as it took him.

Smash advanced. The string became a long line, disap-
pearing in the distance behind. It divided the plain into two

sections.

This could take even more time than he had judged, he
realized. Since the girls were waiting outside the gourd in
the Void and would not be able to go in search of food or
water, he wanted to get on with it quickly. So he needed
some way to speed things up.

He cudgeled his Eye Queue again. How could he most
efficiently locate a creature that didn't want to be located?

Answer: what about following its trail?

He applied his eye to the floor. Now that he concen-
trated, he saw the hoofprints. They crossed his projected
line, coming from the right rear and proceeding to the left
front. There would be- no problem following that!

But his curse, in its annoying fashion, caused him to

242

question the simplicity of this procedure. The hoofprints
were suspiciously convenient, crossing his line just at the
point he thought to look, almost as if they were intended to
be seen. He knew that tracking a creature was not neces-
sarily simple, even when the prints were clear. The trail
could meander aimlessly, looping about, getting lost in bad
terrain. It could become dangerous if the quarry knew it
was being tracked—and the Dark Horse surely did know.
There could be tricks and ambushes.

No, there was no sense playing the game of the Night
Stallion. The trail was not to be trusted. It was something
set up to delude an ordinary ogre. Better to force the Stal-
lion to play Smash's game—and if the Horse did not know
of Smash's hidden asset of intelligence, that could be a
counter ambush. A smart ogre was quite different from a
stupid one.

Smash stomped on, following his straight line, halving
the territory. This should also restrict the range of the Stal-
lion, since it could not go any place Smash had already
looked—as he understood the rules of this quest—and
therefore could not cross the line.

Yet the territory still seemed to be infinitely large. He
might tromp forever and never come to the far side. For
that matter, he hadn't started at the near side, either; he
had simply appeared within the range and begun there. He
also realized that halving the total territory did not neces-
sarily cut the area remaining to be searched. Half of infin-
ity remained infinity. Also, unless he knew which half the
Stallion was in, he had gained nothing; he could spend all
his time searching in the wrong half, his failure guaran-
teed.

Smash pondered. His Eye Queue was really straining
now, and probably the eyeballs of it were getting hot in
their effort to see the way through infinity. One thing he
had to say for the curse: it certainly tried to help him. It
never really opposed its will to his own; it sought instead to
call his attention to new aspects of any situation encoun-
tered, and to provide more effective ways of dealing with
problems. He had discovered how useful that was when he
had tried to function without its aid. Now he needed it
again. How could he figure out a sure, fast way to pro-
ceed?

244

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

245

The vine came up with a notion.                 '•

Smash put the ball of string into his mouth and bit it in
half. He now had two balls, each smaller than the first but
magically complete. He took the first and rolled it violently
forward.

The ball zoomed straight on, unrolling, leaving its
straight line of string. Since it had an infinite length, it
would proceed to the infinite end of the plain. Infinity
could be compassed by infinity; even an ordinary ogre
might grasp that! This process would complete the halving
of the Stalliorfs range.

Now Smash set his ear to the floor and listened. Yes—
his keen ogre hearing heard a faint hoofbeat in the dis-
tance, to the forward right. The Stallion was up there
somewhere, moving clear of the rolling string. Now Smash
had the creature partially located. He had done something
unexpected, forced bis opponent to react, and gained a
small advantage.

Smash bit the remaining ball in half and shaped the
halves into new balls. He hurled one to the east, establish-
ing a pie-section configuration that trapped the Stallion in-
side. Then he listened again, determining in what quadrant
the creature lurked, and pitched another half-ball in a
curve. This wound grandly around behind the Stallion's es-
timated location, cutting off its retreat. For, though Smash
had not tromped personally wherever the string went, the
string remained his agent and surely counted. He was using
a sort of leverage, and the Horse could not cross his demar-
cation, lest the animal break its own rule of being only in
the last place Smash looked.

He put his ear to the floor again. The beat of hooves had
ceased. The Stallion had either gotten away or stopped run-
ning. Since the former meant a loss for Smash, he did the
expedient thing and decided on the latter. He had at last
confined his target!

Smash stomped into the string-defined quadrant. If the
Stallion were here, as he had to be, he would soon be
found.

In due course Smash spied a blotch on the horizon. He
stomped closer, alert for some ruse. The blotch grew as he
approached it, in the manner that distant objects did, since
they did not like to appear small from up close. It took the

form of an animal, perhaps a lion. A lion? Smash didn't
want that! He refused to have a mundane monster foisted
off on him in lieu of his object. "If it's a lion, it's a Stal-
lion!" he muttered—and of course as he said it, it was true.
A single, timely word could make a big difference.

It was a huge, standing, wingless horse, midnight black
of hide, with eyes that glinted black, too. This was surely
the Night Stallion—the creature he had come to settle
with, the ruler of the nightmare world.

Smash stomped to a halt before the creature. He stood
taller than it, but the animal was more massive. "I am
Smash the Ogre," he said. "Who are you?" For it was best
to be quite certain, in a case like this.

The creature merely stood there. Now Smash saw that
there was a plaque set up at its forefeet, and the plaque
said: TROJAN.

"Well, Trojan Horse," Smash said, "I have come to re-
deem the lien on my soul."

He had expected the animal to charge and attack, but it
did not move or respond. It might as well have been a
statue.

"How do I do this?" Smash demanded.

Still no response. Evidently the creature was sulking, an-
gry because he had caught it.

Smash peered more closely at the Stallion. It certainly
seemed frozen! He tromped forward and put out a ham-
hand to touch it.

The body was metal-cold and hard. It was indeed a
statue.

Had he, after all, located the wrong thing? That would
mean he had been deceived by a decoy and would have to
do his search all over again. Smash didn't like this notion, so
he rejected it.

He looked at the floor. Behind the statue were
hoofprints. The thing might be frozen now, but it had not
always been. Probably its present stasis was merely another
device to interfere with Smash's quest. This was one de-
vious beast!

Well, there was one way to take care of that. He stood
before the Stallion and hoisted a hamfist. "Deal with me,
animal, or I will break you into junk."

246                     Ogre, Ogre

The midnight orbs seemed to glitter ominously. Trojan
did not like being threatened!

Smash found himself alone, on a lofty, windy, rainswept
pinnacle.

He looked around. The top ledge was just about big
enough for him to stretch out on, but almost featureless.
The flat, slick rock terminated abruptly at the edge, plung-
ing straight down to a smashing ocean far below. There
were no plants, no food, no structures of any kind—just
the tug of the wind and the roar of the ocean beneath.

The Night Stallion had done this, of course. It had
spelled him to this desolate confinement, getting rid of
him. So much for fair combat.

The storm swirled closer. Storms really liked to get a
person stranded in a situation like this! A bolt of lightning
crackled down, striking the pinnacle. A section of rock
peeled off in a shower of sparks and collapsed, falling with
seeming slowness to the distant water.

Smash stood at the steaming brink and watched the tiny
splash. The rock had been a fair chunk, massive, yet from
this vantage it looked like a pebble.

This was a really nice vacation spot for an ogre. But he
didn't want a vacation; he wanted to fight Trojan. How
could he get back into the action?

Now his perch was too small to stretch out on. About a
quarter of it had fallen. The wind intensified, taking hold
of his fur, trying to move him off. He wanted to travel, but
not precisely this way! What kind of a splash would he
make?

Rain splatted in passing sheets, making the surface dou-
bly slick. The water coursed around his feet, digging under
his caUoused toes, trying to pry him from the rock so that
he would be carried with it as it flowed over the brink in a
troubled waterfall. Such a drop did not hurt water, but his
own flesh might be less fortunate.

A huge wave surged forward, below, taking dead aim at
the base of the rock column. The wave smashed in—and
the entire column trembled. More layers of stone peeled
and fell. For a moment Smash thought the whole thing was
coming down, but about half of it withstood the violence

Ogre, Ogre                     247

and held its form. However, it was obvious that this perch
would not endure much longer.

Smash considered. If he stood here, the column would
soon collapse, dropping him into the ravenous ocean. He
was an ogre, true, but he lacked his full strength; he would
probably be crushed between the tumbling rocks in the wa-
ter. If he tried to climb down, much of the same thing would
happen; the column would collapse before he got below.
Ogres were tough, but the forces of nature operating here
were overwhelming; he had no realistic chance.

He saw that the ocean waves developed only as they got
close to the tower. His Eye Queue concluded that this
meant the water was much deeper away from this struc-
ture, because deep water didn't like to rouse itself from its
stillness. That meant that region was safe to plunge into.

Good enough. He hated to leave this pleasant spire, but
discretion urged the move. He leaped off the brink, sailing
out in a clumsy swan dive toward the deep water.

Then he remembered he couldn't swim very well. In a
calm lake he was all right; in a raging torrent he tended to
drown.

He eyed the looming ocean, surging deep and dark. It
was no mere torrent; it was an elemental monster. He had
no chance at all. Too bad.

He faced the horse-statue. There was no tower, no
ocean. It had all been a magic vision. A test, perhaps, or a
warning. Obviously he had wiped out. He felt weak; he
must have lost a chunk of his soul.

But now he knew how it worked. The Night Stallion did
not fight physically; the creature simply threw turbulent
visions at him, the way Tandy threw tantrums and curse-
fiends threw curses. The ocean tower had been sort of fun.
So were those tantrums, he realized; when Tandy hit him
with one of them . . . But that was nothing to speculate
on right now.

"Try it again, horseface!" he grunted. "I still want my
soul back."

The Stallion's dark eyes flashed malignantly.

And Smash stood in the center of a den of Mundane
lions—real lions this time, not stal-lion or ant-lions. He felt

248

Ogre, Ogre

abruptly weaker; this must be a Mundane scene, beyond
the region of magic, so that his magic strength was gone.

The lions snarled like mammalian dragons, lashed their
tufted yellow tails, and stalked him. There were six of
them: a male, four females, and a cub. The females
seemed to be the most aggressive. They began sniffing
him, trying to determine how dangerous he might be and
how edible.

Ordinarily, Smash would have liked nothing better than
to mix with a new crowd of monsters in sublime mayhem.
Ogres lived for the joy of bloody battle. But two things
militated against his natural inclination—his Eye Queue
and his weakness. According to the pusillanimous counsel
of the first, it was best to avoid combat when the outcome
was uncertain; and according to the second, the outcome
was highly uncertain. He would do better, his cowardly
intelligence informed him, to flee immediately.

But two things were wrong with that course. There was
no place to flee to, because he was in a walled arena with
wire mesh over the top, so he could not escape, and the
lions had him surrounded anyway. He would have to fight,
unless he could bluff them.

He tried the bluff. He raised his hamfists, though they
were unprotected by his centaur gauntlets, and bellowed
defiance. This was a stance that would frighten almost any
creature of Xanth.

But the lions were not creatures of Xanth. They were
from Missouri, Mundania. They had to be shown. They
pounced.

Ordinarily, Smash would have been able to mince the
mere six monsters with so many blows of fists, feet, and
head. But with his strength reduced to Mundane normal,
all he could handle was one. While he was pulping that
one, the other five were chomping him.

In a moment they had bitten through the hamstring ten-
dons of his arms and legs, making his hamhands and ham-
feet useless. They chomped through the nerve channel of
his neck, making his head slightly less functional than be-
fore. He was now mostly helpless. He could feel, but could
not move.

Then they gnawed at him, taking their time, one female
on each extremity, the male clawing out his belly for the

Ogre, Ogre                      249

tasty guts. The pulped cub roused itself enough to com-
mence work on Smash's nose, biting off small bites so as not
to choke on its meal. It hurt horribly as the monsters chewed
off his hands and feet and delved for his kidneys, and it
, wasn't much fun when the cub scooped out an eyeball, but
Smash didn't scream. Noise seemed pointless at this point.
Anyway, it was hard to scream properly when his tongue
was gone and his lungs were being chewed out. He knew
that when the beasts got to his vital organs, sensation would
end, so he waited.

But the lions were sated before then, for Smash was a
lot of creature. They left him, delimbed and eviscerated,
and piled themselves up for a family snooze. Now the flies
appeared, settling in swarms, and every bite was a new ag-
ony. The sun shone down through the mesh, cooking him,
blazing into his other eye, which paralysis prevented him
from closing. Soon he was agonizingly blind. But he still
felt the flies crawling up his nose, looking for new places
to bite and lay their maggots. It was going, he knew, to be
an exceedingly long haul.

How had he gotten himself into this fix? By challenging
the Night Stallion to recover his soul and to obtain help to
rescue Tandy and Chem from the Void. Was it worth it?
No, because he had not succeeded. Would he try it again?
Yes, because he still wanted to help his friends, no matter
how much pain came.

He was back before Trojan, whole of limb and gut and
eye. It had been another test case, and obviously he had
lost that one, too. He should have found some way to de-
stroy the lions, instead of letting them destroy him. But it
seemed he still had most of his soul, and perhaps the third
trial would enable him to win the rest of it back.

"I'm still game, master of nightmares," he informed the
somber statue.

Again the eyes flashed cruelly. This creature of night
had no sympathy and no mercy!

Smash was standing at the base of a mountain of rocks.
"Help!" someone cried. It sounded like Tandy.
How had she gotten here? Had she disobeyed his instruc-
tion and entered the gourd, following his string to locate

250

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

251

him? Foolish girl! Smash looked about, but found no one.

"Help!" she cried again. "I'm under the mountain!"

Smash was horrified. He had to get her out! There was
no passage, so he started lifting and hurling away the boul-
ders. He had most of his strength now, despite his prior
losses, so this was easy enough.

But there were many boulders, and somehow Tandy's
voice always came from under the highest remaining pile.
Smash was making progress leveling the mountain, but still
had far to go. He was thing.

Gradually the pile of rocks behind him loomed higher
than the pile before, but the cries continued to come from
beneath. How had she gotten herself in so deep? He no
longer had the strength to hurl the boulders away, but had to
carry them with great effort. Then he could no longer lift
them, and had to roll them.

At last the mountain had been moved, and the ground
was level. But now the voice came from deep below. This
was, in fact, a pit the size of an inverted mountain, filled
with more boulders—and Tandy was at the bottom.

His body was numb with fatigue. It was a labor just to
move himself now. In this respect his agony was worse
than it had been in the lions' den, for there all he had to do
was lie still and wait. Now he had to cudgel his reluctant
muscles to perform, inflicting the torture of exertion on
himself. But he kept going, for the job remained to be
done. He shoved and heaved and slowly rolled the boulders
out.

The deeper he got, the worse the chore became, for now
he had to shove the boulders up out of the deepening pit.
Still her voice cried despairingly from below. Smash stag-
gered. A boulder slipped from his falling grasp and rolled
down to the lowest point. He lumbered after it, hearing her
faint sobs. She seemed to be fading as fast as he was!

But his strength had been exhausted. He could no longer
move the boulder far enough, strain as he might. Still
trying, he collapsed, and the big stone rolled over him.

Again he faced the Night Stallion, his strength miracu-
lously restored. He realized that Tandy had never been
there in the vision, only her voice, used to goad him into an
impossible effort.

"I'm still going to save my soul and my friends," Smash
said, though he dreaded whatever the Dark Horse would
throw at him next. Tandy might not have been literally
below that mountain of rocks, but his success in these en-
de'avors had a direct bearing on her fate, so it was the same
thing. "Trojan, do your worst."

The evil eyes flashed horrendously, darkening the entire
area.

Smash was in a compound with assorted other creatures.
It was a miserable place, stinking of poverty, doom, and
despair. Jets of bright fire shot from cracks in the ground,
preventing escape. Harpies and other carrion birds wheeled
above, watching for food.

"Slop time!" a guard called, and dumped a pail of gar-
bage into the compound. A gnome, an elf, and a wyvem
pounced on the foul refuse. But before they got more than
a few stinking scraps, the harpies swooped down in a
squadron and snatched it all away, leaving only a pile of
defecation in its place. The prisoners squabbled among
themselves in angry frustration. Smash saw that all were
emaciated; they had not been getting enough food. Small
wonder, with those harpies hovering!

What was to be his torture this time? For Smash realized
now that these scenes were supposed to be extremely un-
pleasant, even for an ogre; each was awful in a different
way. As he considered, the sun moved rapidly across the
pale sky, as if time were accelerating, for normally nothing
could prevail on the sun to hurry its pace one bit. Smash's
hunger accelerated, too; it took a lot of food to maintain a
healthy ogre.

"Slops!" the guard called, and dumped the pail. There
was another scramble, but the wyvem wasn't in it. That
noble little dragon was now too far gone to scramble. In
any event, the harpies got most of the slop again. Smash
felt a pang; even garbage looked good now, and he had
gotten none. Of course he wouldn't touch anything a harpy
had been near, anyway; they spoiled ten times as much as
they ate, coating their discards with poisonous refuse. Har-
pies were the world's dirtiest birds; in fact, real birds re-
fused to associate with these witch-headed monsters.

The wyvern belched out a feeble wisp of fire and col-

252

Ogre, Ogre

lapsed. Smash crossed over to it, moved by un-ogrish com-
passion. "Anything I can do for you?" he asked. After all,

it took one monster to understand another. But the wyvem
merely expired.

Immediately the other prisoners converged, working up
what slaver they could; dragon meat was a lot better than
starvation. Affronted by the notion of such a fine fighting
animal being consumed so indelicately. Smash hefted a fist,
ready to defend the body. But the vultures descended in a
swarm, gouging the corpse to pieces from every side so
swiftly that Smash could do nothing; in moments, nothing
but bones was left. His efforts, perhaps pointless from the
beginning, had been wasted. Smash returned to his place.

The sun plopped behind a distant mountain, throwing up
a small shower of debris that colored the clouds briefly in
that vicinity. It really ought, he thought, to be more careful
where it landedl The stars blinked on, some more alertly

than others. The nocturnal heavens spun by, making short
work of the night.

By morning Smash was ravenous. So were his surviving
companions. They eyed one another covertly, judging when
one or the other might be unable to defend himself from
consumption. When the guard came with the slops, the
gnome stumbled forward. "FoodI Food!" he croaked.

The guard paused, eying the gnome cynically. "Are you
ready to pay?"

"I'll pay! I'll pay!" the gnome agreed with uncomfort-
ably guilty eagerness.

The guard reached through the bars of fire and into the
gnome's body. He hauled out the gnome's struggling soul,
an emaciated and bedraggled thing that slowly coalesced
into a pallid sphere. The guard inspected it briefly to make
certain it was all there, then crammed it indifferently into
a dirty bag. Then he set the pail of slop down and waved
the hovering harpies away. They screamed epithets of pro-
test, but obeyed. One, however, so far lost control of herself
as to loop down close to the tantalizing garbage. The
guard's eyes glinted darkly, and the harpy screeched in    i
sudden terror and pumped back into the dingy sky, drop-
ping several greasy feathers in her haste. Smash wondered
what it was that had so cowed her, for harpies had little

Ogre, Ogre                      253

respect for anything and the guard was an ordinary human
being, or reasonable facsimile thereof.

The gnome plunged his head into the bucket and greed-
ily slurped the glop. He guzzled spoiled milk, gulped apple
and onion peels, and crunched on eggshells and coffee

grounds in a paroxysm of satiation. He had his food now;

he had paid for it.

The guard turned to gaze at Smash. There was a malig-
nant glitter in the man's eye. Smash realized that he was,

in fact, an aspect of the Night Stallion, on his rounds col-
lecting more souls.

Now Smash understood the nature of this trial. He re-
solved not to purchase his sustenance at that price. If he
lost his soul here, he lost it everywhere, and would not be
able to help Chem and Tandy escape. But he knew that
this would be the most difficult contest yet; each time the
Stallion came. Smash would be hungrier, and the pail of
slops would lure him more strongly. How could he be sure
he would hold out when starvation melted his muscles and
deprived him of willpower? This was not a single effort to
be made and settled one way or the other; this was a
dragging-out siege against his hunger—and the hunger of
an ogre was more terrible than his strength.

The sun shoved rapidly across the welkin, looking some-
what undernourished and irritated itself. It kicked innocent
clouds out of the way, burning one, so that the cloud lost
continence and watered on the ground below. It was an evil

day, and Smash's hunger intensified. He had to escape be-
fore he succumbed.

He got up, dusted off his bedraggled and filthy hide,
and approached the burning barrier. These jete were unlike
those of the firewall in Xanth or the jets of the Region of
Fire, for they were thicker and hotter than the first and

steadier than the second. But perhaps he could cross them.
Certainly he had to try.

He held his breath, closed his eyes and charged across
the barrier of flames. After all, he had done this in the real
world; he could survive a little additional scorching.

He felt the sudden, searing heat. His fur curled and friz-
zled. This was worse than he had anticipated; his hunger-
weakened body was more sensitive to pain, not less. Then

254

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

255

the fire passed. He screeched to a halt on singed toes and
opened his clenched eyelids.

He was in the prison chamber, the bars of flame behind
him. He had blackened stripes along his fur, and his skin
smarted—but it seemed he had gotten turned about. What
a mistake!

He turned, gulped more air, screwed his orbs shut again,
and leaped through the burning bars. Again the pain flared
awfully. This time he knew he hadn't turned; he had been
in midair as he crossed the flame.

But as he unscrewed his vision, blinking away the smoke
from his own eyelashes, he found himself still in the cell.
Apparently it was not all that easy to escape. He had to go
by the rules of the scene.

Nevertheless, he readied himself for a third try, because
an ogre never knew when to quit. But as he oriented on the
bars, he saw the guard standing just beyond them, with a
glittering gaze. Suddenly he did know when to quit; he
turned about and went back to his original spot in the com-
pound and squatted there like a good prisoner. He didn't
want to go near the Dark Horse until this struggle was
over.

The sun plunged. Another poor creature yielded his vital
soul to the Stallion in payment for food. Two mo're per-
ished of starvation. Smash's firewounds festered,- and his
fur fell out in stripes. His belly swelled as. his limbs shri-
veled. He became too weak to stand; he sat cross-legged,
head hanging forward, contemplating the tendons that
showed in high relief on his thighs where the hair had
fallen out. He did not ask for food, though he was now
being consumed by his own hunger. He knew the price.

Slowly, while the days and nights raced across the sky,
he starved. He realized, as he sank into the final stupor,
that when he died, the Stallion would have his •squl any-
way. Somehow he had misplayed this one, too.

Once more he stood before-the Stallion statue. Still he
had some of his soul, and would not yield. Apparently
there was a limit to how much of a soul could be taken 'as
penalty for each loss, and ogres were omery creatures. "I'll
fight for my soul as long as any of it remains to fight for,"
Smash declared. "Bring on your next horror, equine."

The eyes glinted. Then the Night Stallion moved, coming
alive. "You have fought well, ogre," it said, speaking with-
out difficulty through its horse's mouth. "You have won
every challenge."

This was completely unexpected. "But I died each

' time!"

"Without ever deviating from your purpose. You were
subjected to the challenge of fear, but you evinced no
fear—"

"Well, ogres don't know what that is," Smash said.

"And to the challenge of pain, but you did not capitu-
late—"

"Ogres don't know how," Smash admitted.
"And to the challenge of fatigue—"

"How could I stop when I thought my friend was
caught?"

"And to the challenge of hunger."

"That was a bad one," Smash acknowledged. "But the
price was too high." His Eye Queue curse had made him
aware of the significance of the price; otherwise he almost
certainly would have succumbed.

"And so you blundered through, allowing nothing to
sway you, and thus vacated the lien on four-fifths of your
soul. Only one more test remains—but on this one depends
all that you have gained so far. You will win your whole
soul here—or lose it."

"Send me to that test," Smash said resolutely.
The Stallion's eyes flickered intensely, but the scene did

not change. "Why did you accept the lien on your soul?"

the creature asked.

Smash's Eye Queue warned him that the eye-flicker
meant he had been projected to another vision and was
being tested. Since the scene had not changed, this must be
a different sort of test from the others. Beware!

"To save the soul of my friend, whom I had promised to
protect," Smash said carefully. "I thought you knew that. It
was your minion of the coffin who cheated her out of it."

"What kind of fool would place the welfare of another

before his own?" the Horse demanded, ignoring Smash's
remark.

Smash shrugged, embarrassed. "I never claimed to be
other than a fooL Ogres are very strong .and very stupid."

256

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

257

The Stallion snorted. "If you expect me to believe your
implication, you think I'm a fool! I know most ogres are
stupid, but you are not. Why is that?"

Unfortunately, ogres were not much given to lying; it
was part of their stupidity. Smash had been directly asked;

he would have to answer. "I am cursed with the Eye
Queue. The vine makes me much smarter than I should be
and imbues me with aspects of conscience, aesthetic aware-
ness, and human sensitivity. I would, rid myself of it it I
could, but I need the intelligence in order to help my
friends."

"Fool!" the Stallion roared. "The Eye •Que'ue curse is an
illusion!"                                 .'

"Everything in the gourd and in the Void is illusion of
one sort or another," Smash countered. "Much of Xanth is
illusion, and perhaps Mundania, too; It might be that if we
could only see the ultimate reality, Xanth itself would not
exist. But while I exist in it, or think I do, I will honor the
rules of illusion as I do those of reality, and draw on the
powers my illusory Eye Queue provides as I do on those
my real ogre strength provides."

The Stallion paused. "That was not precisely what I
meant, but perhaps it is a sufficient answer. Obviously
your own intelligence is no illusion. But were you not
aware that the effect of the Eye Queue vine is temporary?
That it wears off in a few hours at most,' and in many
cases provides, not true intelligence, but a vain illusion of it
that causes the recipient to make a genuine 'fool of himself,
the laughingstock of all who perceive his self-delusion?"

Smash realized that the creature was indeed testing him
another way—and an intellectual test was most treacherous
for an ogre. "I was not aware of that," he admitted. "Per-
haps my companions were too kind to think of me in that
way. But I believe my intelligence is real, for it has helped
me solve many problems no ordinary ogre could handle,
and has broadened my horizons immeasurably. If this be
illusion, it is tolerable. Certainly it lasted me many days
without fading. Perhaps it works better on ogres, who can _
hardly be rendered more foolish than they naturally are."

"You are quite correct. You are no ordinary ogre and
you are smart enough to give me a considerable challenge.
Most creatures who place their souls in peril 'do so for far

less charitable reasons. But, of course, you are only half-
ogre."

Naturally the Lord of Nightmares knew all about him!
Smash refused to lose his temper, for that surely was what
the Stallion wanted. Lose temper, lose soul! "I am what I
am. An ogre."

The Stallion nodded as if discovering a weakness in
Smash's armor. He was up to something; Smash could tell
by the way he swished his tail in the absence of flies. "An
ogre with the wit and conscience of a man. One who makes
the Eye Queue vine work beyond its capacities, and makes
it work again even when the vine itself is illusory. One who
maintains a loyalty to his responsibilities and associates that
others would fain define as entirely human."

"I also made the gourd work in the Void, when it was
illusory," Smash pointed out. "If you seek to undermine my
enhanced intelligence by pointing out that it has no basis,

you must also concede that your testing of me has no ba-
sis."

"That was not precisely my thrust. Similar situations
may have differing interpretations." He snorted, clearing
his long throat. "You have mastered the four challenges
without fault and are now entitled to assume the role of
Master of Challenges. I shall retire from the office; you
shall be the Night Ogre."

"The Night Ogre?" Smash, despite the Eye Queue, was
having trouble grasping this.

"You will send the bad images out with your night
ogresses and collect the souls of those who yield them. You

will be Master of the Gourd. The powers of the night will
be yours."

"I don't want the powers of the night!" Smash protested.
"I just want to rescue my friends."

"With the powers of the night, you can save them," the
Stallion pointed out. "You will be able to direct your night
creatures to bear them sleeping from the Void to the safety
of the ordinary Xanth jungle."

But Smash's Eye Queue, illusory though it might be, in-
terfered with this promising solution. "Would I get to re-
turn to the world of the day myself?"

"The Master of Night has no need to visit the day!"
"So you are prisoner of the night yourself," Smash said.

258 Ogre, Ogre

"You may capture the souls of others, but your own is hos-
tage."

"I can go to the day!" the Stallion protested.

Again the Eye Queue looked' the. horse's gift in the
mouth. It was full of dragon's teeth. "Only if you collect
enough souls to pay your way. How many does it take for
an hour of day? A dozen? A hundred?"

"There is another way," the Stallion said uncomfortably.

"Surely so. If you arrange a replacement for yourself,"
Smash said. "Someone steadfast enough to do the job ac-
cording to the rules, no matter how unpleasant or painful
or tedious it becomes. Someone whom power does not cor-
rupt."

The Dark Horse was silent.

"Why is it necessary to send bad dreams to people?"
Smash asked. "Is this only a means to jog them from their
souls?"

"It has a loftier rationale than that," the Stallion replied
somewhat stiffly. "If no one ever suffered the pangs of
conscience or regret, evil would prosper without hindrance
and eventually take over the world. Evil can be the sweet
sugar of the soul, temptingly pleasant in small doses, but
inevitably corrupting. The bad dreams are the realizations
of the consequence of evil, a timely warning that all think-
ing creatures require. The nightmares guard constantly
against spiritual degradation—that same corruption you
have withstood. Take the position, ogre; you have earned
it."

"I wish I could help you," Smash said. "But my life is
outside the gourd, in the jungles of Xanth. I am a simple
forest creature. I must help my friends survive the wilder-
ness in my own fashion, and not aspire to be more than
any ogre was ever destined to be."

The Stallion's eyes dimmed. "You have navigated the fi-
nal challenge. You have avoided the ultimate temptation of
power. You are free to return to Xanth with your soul in-
tact. The lien is voided."

Suddenly Smash felt completely strong again, his soul
restored. "But I need help," he said. "I must borrow three
of your nightmares to carry my party out of the Void."

"Nightmares are not beasts of burden!" the Stallion pro-
tested, scraping the ground with a forehoof. It seemed this

Ogre, Ogre

259

creature, if not actually piqued by Smash's refusal to take
over the proffered office, was still less cooperative than
he might have been. When one scorned an offer of any
nature, one had to bear the penalty.

"The nightmares alone can travel anywhere, even out of
-the Void," Smash said, knowing he had to find some way
to gain the assistance he needed. "Only they can help us."

"They could if they chose to," the Horse agreed. "But
their fee is half a soul for each person carried."

"Half my soul!" Smash exclaimed. "I don't have enough
for three!"

"Half a sou], not necessarily your own. But it is true you
do not have enough. Nightmare rides come steep."

Smash realized that he was right back in the dilemma he
thought he had escaped. He had placed his soul in jeopardy
to rescue Tandy from the gourd; now he would have to do
it again to rescue Tandy and Chem from the Void. But if
he rescued both, he himself would be lost, for the Eye
Queue informed him that two halves of a soul amounted to
the whole soul.

Of course, he could rescue only Tandy, the one he had
agreed to protect. But he could not see his way clear to
leave Chem in the Void. She was a nice creature with a
worthy mission. She did not deserve to be deserted. And he
had more or less agreed to protect her, too, when her
brother Chet had delivered her to him at the brink of the
Gap Chasm. "I will pay the price," he said, thinking of the
gnome begging for slops.

"Do you realize that you could rescue them and retain
your soul by becoming the Master of Night?" the Stallion
asked.

"I fear I must go to hell in my own fashion," Smash said
regretfully. The Horse obviously thought him a smart fool,
and his Eye Queue heartily endorsed the sentiment, but
somehow his fundamental ogre nature shied away from the
responsibility for damning others. Better to be one of the
damned.

"Even in sacrifice, you are ogrishly stupid," the Stallion
remarked with disgust. "You are obviously unfit for duty
here."

"Agreed," Smash agreed.
"Go negotiate directly with the mares," the Horse

260 Ogre, Ogre

snorted. "I'll have no part of this." His eyes flared with
their black light.

Then Smash found himself on the plain of the mares.
The dark herd charged toward him, circling him in mo-
ments, as was their wont. Then they recognized him and
hesitated.

"I need two of you to carry my friends to safety," he
said. "I know the price."

"Naaaay!" one cried. Smash recognized her as the one
he had tried to befriend, the one who had carried Tandy to
the Good Magician's castle. That had been involuntary,
without a fee—until the coffin had claimed a double fee
retroactively. Obviously none of that payment had gone to
the mare; it had been a gyp deal all around. But she cer-
tainly knew how to carry a person. He was sorry he had
not been able to figure out what she wanted from Xanth.

"I must rescue Tandy and Chem," Smash said. "I will
pay the fee. Who will make the deal?"

Two other mares volunteered. Smash wasn't sure what
use they would have for the halves of his soul, but that was
not much of his business. Maybe half souls were bartering
currency within the gourd, accounting for status in the
nightmare hierarchy. "S.O.D.," he said, cautioned by his
Eye Queue. "Soul on Delivery."

They nodded, agreeing. "Can you find them?" he asked.
When they nodded naaay, he realized he would have to go
with them, at least to where the girls were. "Well, we'd
better introduce ourselves," he said. "I am Smash the Ogre.
How shall I know the two of you?"

One of the two struck the ground with a forehoof. She
left a circular impression in the dirt, with little ridges, dark
spots, and pockmarks. Smash peered at it closely, struck by
a nagging familiarity. Where had he seen a configuration
like that before? Then he grasped it; this was like a map of
the moon, with the pocks like the cheese holes. One of the
dark areas was highlighted, and he saw that there was let-
tering on it: MARE CRISIUM.

"So you're the mare Crisium," he said, making the' con-
nection. "Mind if I call you Crisis?"

She shrugged acquiescently. Smash turned to the other.
"And who are you?"

Ogre, Ogre                      261

The other stomped a forehoof. Her moon-map was high-
lighted in another place: MARE VAPORUM.

"And you're the mare Vaporum," he said. "I'll call you
Vapor."

The befriended mare now came forward, nickering, of-
fering to carry him. "But I have no soul left over to pay
you," he protested. "Besides, you're far too small to handle
a monster like me."

She walked under him—and suddenly he found that he
had shrunk or she had grown, for now he was riding her

comfortably. It seemed nightmares had no firmly fixed

size.

"Then tell me your name, too," he said. "You are doing
me an unpaid favor, and I want to know you, in case I
should ever be able to repay it. I never did discover what
you wanted from Xanth, you know."

She stamped her hoof. He leaned down over her shoul-
der, hanging on to her slick black mane that flowed like a
waterfall, until he was able to read her map. It was high-
lighted at a large patch labeled: MARE IMBRIUM.

"You I will call hnbri," he decided. "Because I don't
know what your name means."

The three mares galloped across the plain, leaving the
herd behind. Little maps of the moon formed the trail
wherever their feet touched. It made him hungry to think

about it. Too bad the maps weren't real, with genuine

cheese! .

Soon they passed through a greenish wall and out into
the Void. It was the rind of the gourd, Smash realized.
They were large and the gourd was small—but somehow it
all related. He kept trying to forget that size and mass
hardly mattered when magic was involved.

They looped once around—and there was the brute ogre,
staring into the gourd's peephole. Until this moment,
Smash had not quite realized that his body had not accom-
panied him inside. He had known it, of course, but never
truly realized it. Even his Eye Queue had never come to

grips with the seeming paradox of being in two places at
the same time.

Then he spied Tandy and Chem. They were asleep; it

was night, of course, the only time the nightmares could go
abroad.

362 Ogre, Ogre

"We'll have to wake them," Smash said, then paused.
"No—a person has to be asleep to ride a nightmare; I re-
member now. Or disembodied, like me. I'm really asleep,
too. I'll put them on you asleep." He dismounted and went
to pick Tandy up.

But his hands passed right through her. He had no phys-
ical substance.

He pondered. "I'll have to wake myself up," he decided.
"Since my soul is forfeit anyway, I should be able to stay
near the nightmares. They aren't going to depart before
they get their payment." It was a rather painful kind of
security, however.

He went to his body. What a hulking, brutish thing it
was! The black fur was shaggy in some places, unkempt in
others, and singed from his experiences with the firewall in
yet others. The hamhands and hamfeet were huge and
clumsy-looking. The face was simultaneously gravelly and
mushy. No self-respecting creature would be attracted to
the physical appearance of an ogre—and, of course, the
monster's intellect was even worse. He was doing Tandy a
favor by removing himself from her picture.

"Come on, ogre, you have work to do," he grunted, put-
ting out a paw to shake his shoulder. But his hand passed
through himself, too, and the body ignored him, exactly
like the stupid thing it was.

"Enough of this nonsense, idioti" he rasped. He put a
hamflnger over the peephole. He might be insubstantial in
this form, but he was visible. The finger cut oS the view.
The effect was similar to the removal of the gourd.

Suddenly Smash was back in his body, awake. The phan-
tom self had vanished. It existed only when he peered into
the gourd, when his mental self was apart from his physi-
cal self.

The three mares stood watching him warily. Ordinarily,
they would have fled the presence of a waking person, but
they realized that this was a special situation. He was about
to become one of them.

"All right," he said quietly, so as not to wake the girls.
"I'll set one girl on each of you volunteers. You carry them
north, beyond the Void, and set them down safely. Then
you split my soul between you. Fair enough?"

The two mares nodded. Smash went to lift Chem, gently.

Ogre, Ogre                      263

She weighed as much as he, but he had his full strength
now and could readily handle her mass. He set her on Cri-
sis. Chem was bigger than the mare, but again the fit was
right, and the sleeping centaur straddled Crisis comfort-
ably.

He lifted Tandy next. She was so small he could have
raised her with one finger, as he had Biythe Brassie, but
he used both hands. With infinite care he set her on Vapor.

Then he mounted his own mare, Imbri, who had come
without the promise of payment. Again the fit was right;

anybody could ride any nightmare, if the mare permitted
it. "I wish I knew what you want from Xanth," he mur-
mured. Then he remembered that this was irrelevant; he
would not be returning to Xanth anyway, so could not
fetch her anything.

They moved on through the Void, traveling north. This
was the easy part, descending into the depths of the funnel,
and Smash saw that the center of the Void was a black
hole from which nothing returned, not even light. This the
mares skirted; there were, after all, limits.

They galloped as swiftly as thought itself, the mares as
dark as the awful dreams they fostered. Smash now had a
fair understanding of the origin and rationale of those
dreams; he did not envy the Dark Horse his job. If it was
bad to experience the dreams, how much worse was it to
manufacture them! The Stallion had the burden of the vi-
sion of evil for the whole world on his mind; no wonder he
wanted to retire! What use was infinite power when it
could be used only negatively?

They climbed the far slope of the funnel, leaving the
brink of the dread black hole behind, unobstructed by the
invisible wall, in whatever manner it existed. In another
moment they were out of the Void and into the night of
normal Xanth.

Smash felt a horrible weight departing his shoulders. He
had saved them; he had gotten them out of the Void at
last! How wonderful this normal Xanthian jungle seemed!
He looked eagerly at it, knowing he could not stay, that his
soul was now forfeit. The mares had delivered, and it was
now his turn. Perhaps he would be allowed to visit this
region on occasion, in bodiless form, just to renew the

264

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

265

awareness of what he had lost, and to see how his friends
were doing.

They halted safely beyond the line. Smash dismounted
and lifted Chem to the ground, where she continued sleep-
ing, feet curled under her, head lolling. She was a pretty
creature of her kind, not as well developed as she would be
at full maturity, but with a nice coat and delicate human
features. He was glad he had saved her from the Void.
Someday she would browbeat some male centaur into hap-
piness, exactly as her mother had done. Centaurs were
strong-willed creatures, but well worth knowing. "Farewell,
friend," he murmured. "I have seen you safely through the
worst of Xanth. I hope you are satisfied with your map."

Then he lifted Tandy. She was so small and delicate-
seeming in her sleep! Her brown hair fell about her face in
disarray, partly framing and partly concealing her features.
He deeply regretted his inability to see her through her ad-
venture. But he had made a commitment to the Good Ma-
gician Humfrey, and he was honoring that commitment in
the only fashion he knew. He had seen Tandy through dan-
ger, and trusted she could do all right now on her own. She
had fitted a lot of practical experience into this journey!

In a moment, he knew, he would not care about her at
all, for caring was impossible without a soul. But in this
instant he did care. He remembered how she had kissed
him, and he liked the memory. Human ways were not ogre
ways, of course, but perhaps they had a certain merit
Through her he had gleaned some faint inkling of an alter-
nate way of life, where violence was secondary to feeling.
It was no life for an ogre, of course—but somehow he
could not resist returning the favor of that kiss now. He
brought her to his face and touched her precious little lips
with his own big crude ones.

Tandy woke instantly. The two mares jumped away,
afraid of being seen by a waking person not of their do-
main. But they did not flee entirely, held by the incipient
promise of his soul.

"Oh, Smash!" Tandy cried. "You're back! I was so wor-
ried, you stayed in the gourd so long, and Chem said she
thought you weren't ready to be roused yet—"

Now he was in trouble. Yet he was obscurely glad. It
was better to explain things to her so that she would not

think he had deserted her. "You are free of the Void,
Tandy. But I must leave you."

"Oh, no. Smash!" she protested. "Don't ever leave me!"
This was becoming rapidly more difficult. Separating

from her was somewhat like departing the Void—subtly
' awkward. "The mares who carried you out of the Void, in

your sleep—they have to be paid."

Her brow furrowed, in the cute way it had. "Paid how?"
He was afraid she wouldn't like this. But ogres weren't
much for prevarication, even in a good cause. "My soul."
She screamed.

Chem bolted awake, snatching up the rope, and the
mares retreated farther, switching their tails nervously.
"What's the matter?"

"Smash sold his soul to free us!" Tandy cried, pointing
an accusing finger at the ogre.

"He can't do that!" the centaur protested. "He went to
the gourd to win back his soul!"

"It was the only way," Smash said. He gestured to the
two mares. "I think it is time." He looked behind him, lo-
cating Imbri. "And if you will kindly carry my body back

into the Void afterward, so it won't get in anyone's way out
here—"

The three mares came forward. Tandy screamed again
and threw her arms about Smash's neck. "No! No! Take
my soul instead!"

The mares paused, uncertain of the proprieties. They
meant no harm; they were only doing their job.

Tandy disengaged herself and dropped to the ground.
Her dander was up. "My soul's almost as good as his, isn't
it?" she said to the mares. "Take it and let him go." She
advanced on Crisis. "I can't let him be taken. I love him!"

She surely did, for this was the most extreme sacrifice
she could make. She was deathly afraid of the interior of
the gourd. Smash understood this perfectly; that was why
he couldn't let her go there. But if she refused to let him
go in peace, what was he to do?

Chem interceded. "Just exactly what was the deal you
made, Smash?"

"Half my soul for each person carried from the Void."
"But three were carried, weren't they?" the centaur

266

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre. Ogre

267

asked, her fine human mind percolating as the fog of sleep
dissipated. "That would mean one and a half souls."

"I am returning with the mares," Smash said. "I don't
count. Imbri carried me as a favor; she's the one who car-
ried Tandy to the Good Magician's castle a year ago. She's
a good creature."

"I know she is!" Tandy agreed. "But—"

"Imbri?" Chem asked. "Is that an equine name?"

"Mare Imbrium," he clarified. "The nightmares come
out only at night, so they never see the sun. They identify
with places on the moon."

"Mare Imbrium," she repeated. "The Sea of Rains.
Surely the raining of our tears."

So that was what the name meant; the education of the
centaur had clarified it. Certainly it was appropriate! Imbri
was reigning over, or reining in, the rain of tears. But it
could be said in her favor that she had not done anything
to cause those tears. She had charged no soul.

"Not my tears!" Tandy protested tearfully. "Smash, I
won't let you go!"

"I have to go," Smash said gently. "Ogres aren't very
pretty and they aren't very smart, but they do do what they
agree to do. I agreed to see the two of you safely through
the hazards of Xanth, and I agreed to parcel my soul be-
tween the two mares who delivered you from the Void."

"You have no right to sacrifice yourself again for us!"
Chem cried. "Anyway, it won't work; we'll perish alone in
the wilderness of northern Xanth."

"Well, it seemed better to get you to Xanth instead of
the Void," Smash said awkwardly. Somehow the right he
thought he was doing seemed less right, now. "Near the
edge of Xanth the magic begins to fade, so it's less danger-
ous."

"Ha!" Tandy exclaimed. "I've heard the Mundane mon-
sters are worse than the Xanth ones!"

"It may be less dangerous only if you accompany us,"
Chem said. She considered briefly. "But a deal's a deal;

the mares must be paid."

"I'll pay them!" Tandy offered.

"No!" Smash cried. "The gourd is not for the like of
you! It is better for the like of me."

"I don't think so," Chem said. "We have all had enough

of the gourd, regardless of whether we've been inside it.
But there are three of us. We can pay the mares and retain
half a soul each. Three fares, so Smash can be free, too."
"But neither of you has to give any part of her soul for
me!" Smash objected.

"You were doing it for us," the centaur said. "We can
get along on half souls if we're careful. I understand they
regenerate in time."

"Yes," Tandy said, grasping this notion as if being saved
from drowning. "Each person can pay her own way." She
turned to the nearest mare, who happened to be Crisis.
"Take half my soul," she said.

Chem faced the second, Imbri. "Take half of mine."

The mare of Rains hesitated, for she had not expected to
be rewarded, and she had not carried Chem.

"Take it!" the centaur insisted.

The mares, glad to have the matter resolved, galloped
past their respective donors. Smash saw two souls attenuate
between girls and mares; then each one tore in half, and
the mares were gone.

Smash was left standing by the third mare. Vapor. He
realized that he could not do less—and of course Vapor
was supposed to have a half soul. In fact, she had been
promised half of his. Now she would get it, though she had
not carried him. "Take half of mine," he said.

Vapor charged him. There was a wrenching and tearing;

then he stood reeling. Something awfully precious had been
taken from him—but not all of it.

Then he saw the two girls standing similarly bemused,
and he knew that something even more precious had been
salvaged.

Chapter 14. Ogre Fun

In the morning they woke, having suffered no
bad dreams. The nightmares were not about to venture
near them now, for that might give them the opportunity to
change their minds about their souls. Also, what dreams
could they be served, worse than what they had already
experienced?

Xanth was lovely. The green trees glistened in the fading
dew, and flowers opened. White clouds formed lazy pat-
terns around the sun, daring it to bum them off, but it
ignored their taunts. The air was fragrant. Mainly, it was a
joy to be alive and free. Much more joy than it had been
before Smash discovered that such things were by no
means guaranteed. He had died in a great dark ocean, un-
der the teeth of lions, under a rock he was too fatigued to
move, and of starvation in prison. He had won back his  |
soul, then given it up again. Now he was here with half his  I
soul and he really appreciated what he had.                 |

For some time they compared notes, each person need-
ing reassurance because of the lingering ache of separated
souls. But gradually they acclimated, finding that half a
soul was indeed much better than none.

Smash tested his strength—and found it at half-level. He
had to use both hands instead of one to crush a rock to
sand. Until the other half of his soul regenerated, he would
be only half an ogre in that respect. But this, too, seemed a
reasonable price to pay for his freedom.

"I think it is time for me to go my own way," Chem said
at last. "I think I have had about as much of this sort of
adventure as I can handle. I have it all mapped; my survey

268

Ogre, Ogre                      269

is done. Now I need to organize the data and try to make
sense of it."

"Magic doesn't have to make sense," Smash said rhetori-
cally.

"But where will you go?" Tandy asked.

The centaur filly generated her map, with all of north-
ern Xanth clearly laid out, their travel route neatly marked
in a dotted line. "It is safe for my kind around the fringes
of Xanth," she said. "Centaurs have traded all along the
coasts. I'll trot west to the isthmus, then south to Castle
Roogna. I'll have no trouble at all." Her projected route
dotted its way down the length of northern Xanth confi-
dently. She seemed to have forgotten her protestation of
last night about how they would perish without Smash's
protection, and Smash did not remind her of it. Obviously
it had been his welfare, not her own, she had been con-
cerned with.

"I suppose that's best," Tandy said reluctantly. "I really
liked the company of all you other creatures, but your mis-
sions are not my mission. Just remember, you're not as
strong as you should be."

"That's one reason I want to get on home," Chem said.
"I'd recommend the same for both of you, but I know
your destiny differs from mine. You have to go on to the
Ogre-fen-Ogre Fen, Smash, and take what you find there,
though I personally feel that's a mistake."

"Me make mistake?" Smash asked. The things of the
Void had faded in the night, since they had left it, and now
he found it easier to revert to his normal mode of speech.
There was no hypnogourd and no Eye Queue vine, so he
was not smart any more.

"Smash, you're half human," Chem said. "If you would
only give your human side a chance—"

"Me no man, me ogre clan," he said firmly. That faith
had brought him through the horrors of the gourd.

She sighed. "So you must be what you must be, and do
what you must do. Tandy—" Chem shook her head. "I
can't advise you. I hope you get what you want, somehow."

The two girls embraced tearfully. Then the centaur trot-
ted away to the west, her pretty brown tail flying at half-
mast as if reflecting the depressed state of her soul.

"I'm as foolish as you are," Tandy said, drying her eyes,

270

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

271

so that the blue emerged again like little patches of sky.
"Let's get on to the Fen before night, Smash."

They moved on. Smash, now so near his destination,
found himself strangely uneasy. The Good Magician had
told him he would find what he needed among the Ances-
tral Ogres; Humfrey had not said what that would be, or
whether Smash would like it.

Suppose he didn't like what he needed? Suppose he
hated it? Suppose it meant the denial of all that he had
experienced on this journey with the seven girls? The Eye
Queue had been a curse, and surely he was well rid of
it—yet there had been a certain covert satisfaction in ex-
pressing himself as lucidly as any human being could. Fa-
cility of expression was power, too, just as was strength of
muscle. The gourd had been a horror—yet that, too, had
had its fine moments of exhilarating violence and deep rev-
elation. These things were, of course, peripheral, no con-
cern of a true ogre—but he had felt something fundamen-
tally good in them.

He struggled through his annoying stupidity as he
tromped on toward the Ogre Fen. Exactly what had made
his journey so rewarding, despite its nuisances and prob-
lems? Not the violence, for he could have that any time by
challenging stray dragons. Not the intelligence, for that was
no part of an ogre's heritage. Not the exploration of the
central mysteries of Xanth, for ogres were not very curious
about geography. What, then?

As the day faded and the sun hurried down to the hori-
zon so as not to be caught by night. Smash finally broke
through to a conclusion. It wasn't a very original one, for
ogres weren't very original creatures, but it would do. He
had valued the camaraderie. The seven girls had needed
him, and had treated him like a person. His long associa-
tion with the human beings and centaurs of Castle Roogna
had acclimated him to company, but this time he had had
the wit to appreciate it more fully, because of the Eye
Queue curse. Now he was cursed with the memory of what
could not be again. Camaraderie was not the ogre way.

At dusk they reached the dismal fringe of the Ogre-fen-
Ogre Fen. The swampy marsh stretched out to the east and
north as far as the eyeball could peer, riddled with green

gators and brown possums and other half-fanciful denizens.
Were the Ancestral Ogres also here?

"Look!" Tandy cried, pointing.

Smash looked. There were three ironwood trees braided
together. That was a sure signal of the presence of ogres,
since no other creature could do such a thing.

"I guess you'll get what you want tomorrow," Tandy
said. "You'll meet your tribe." She seemed sad.

"Yes, me agree," he said, somehow not as overjoyed as
he thought he should be. His mission was about to termi-
nate; that was what he wanted, wasn't it?

He twisted a coppertree into the semblance of a shelter
for her and spread a large leaf from a table tree over it. In
the heyday of his strength he could have done better, but
this would have to do for tonight. But it didn't matter;

Tandy didn't use it. She curled up against his furry shoul-
der and slept.

What was her destiny? he wondered before he crashed
into his own heavy slumber. He now understood that she
was looking for a human husband and was destined to find
one on this journey—but time was running out for her, too.
He hoped whoever she found would be a good man who
would appreciate her spunky qualities and not be bothered
by her tantrum-talent. Smash himself rather liked her tan-
trums; they were a little like ogre love taps. Perhaps his
first inkling of liking for her had been when she threw a
tantrum at him. She wasn't really a bad-tempered girl; she
just tended to get overly excited under extreme stress.
There had been some of that on this journey!

Too bad, he thought again, that she couldn't have been
an ogress. But, of course, ogresses didn't have magic tricks
like tantrums, or cute little ways of expressing them-
selves—like kissing.

He shook his head. He was getting un-ogrishly maudlin 1
What could an ogre know of the refined raptures of human
love? Of the caring that went beyond the hungers of the
moment? Of the joy and sacrifice of helping the loved one
regardless of the cost to oneself? Certainly not himself!

Yet there was something about this foolish, passionate,
determined girl-human creature. She was so small she was
hardly a good morsel for a meal, yet she was precious be-

272

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

273

yond the comprehension of his dim ogre wit. She had shown
cunning and courage in catching and riding a nightmare to
escape her amorous demon, and other excellent qualities had
.manifested since. He would miss her when she found her
proper situation and left him, as had the other girls.

He thought to kiss her again, but the last time he had
tried that, she had awakened instantly and things had got-
ten complicated. He wanted her to complete her sleep in
peace this time, so he desisted. He had no business kissing
a human girl anyway—or kissing anything, for that matter.

A 'drop of rain spattered on her forehead. No, not rain,
for the night was calm and the nightmare of Rains was
nowhere near. It was a tear, similar to the ones she had
dropped on him when she had so angrily demonstrated how
human beings expressed affection. A tear from his own
eye. And this was strange, because no true ogre cried. Per-
haps it was her own tear, recycled through his system, re-
turning to her.

Carefully he wiped away the moisture with a hamfinger.
He had no right to soil her pretty little brow with such
contamination. She deserved much better. Better than an
ogre.

The tromp of enormous, clumsy feet woke them in the
morning. The ogres were coming!

Hastily Smash and Tandy got up. Smash felt a smidgen
stronger; perhaps his soul had grown back a little while he
slept. But he was nowhere near full strength yet. Knowing
the nature of his kind, he worried some about that.

The Ogres of the Fen arrived. Small creatures scurried
for cover, and trees angled their leaves away. No one
wanted trouble with ogres! There were eight of them—
three brutish males and five females.

Smash gazed at the ogresses in 'dim wonder. Two were
grizzled old crones, one was a stout cub, and two were ma-
ture creatures of his own generation. Huge and shaggy.
with muddy fur, reeking of sweat, and with faces whose
smiles would stun zombies and whose frowns would bum
wood, they were the most repulsive brutes imaginable.
Smash was entranced.

"Who he?" the biggest of the males demanded. His voice
was mainly a growl, unintelligible to ordinary folk; Smash

could understand him because he was another ogre. Smash
himself was unusual in that he could speak comprehensi-
bly; most ogres could communicate verbally only with other
ogres,

Suddenly Smash was fed up with the rhyming conven-
tion. What good was it, when no one who counted could
understand it anyway? "I am Smash, son of Crunch. I
come to seek my satisfaction among the Ancestral Ogres,
as it is destined."

"Half-breed!" the other ogre exclaimed. "No need!" For
Smash's ability to talk unrhymed betrayed his mixed par-
entage.

Smash had never liked being called a half-breed, but he
could not honestly refute it. "My mother is a curse-fiend,"
he admitted. "But my father is an ogre, and so am I."

One of the crones spoke up, wise beyond her years.
"Curse-fien", human bein'," she croaked.
"Half man!" the big male ogre grunted. "We ban!"
"Might fight," the child ogress said, eyes lighting.
It was true. An ogre could establish his place in a tribe by
fighting for it. The male grunted eagerly. "He, me!" He
naturally wanted to be the first to chastise the presump-
tuous half-breed.

"What are they saying?" Tandy asked, alarmed by the
increasingly aggressive stances of the Fen Ogres.

It occurred to Smash that she would not approve of a
physical fight. "They merely seek some ogre fun," he ex-
plained, not telling her that this was apt to be roughly simi-
lar to the fun the lions of the den had had with him. "Fun
in the Fen."

She was not fooled. "What ogres call fun, I call may-
hem! Smash, you can't afford any trouble; you're only at
half-strength."

There was that. Fighting was fun, but getting beaten to a
pulp was not as much fun as winning. If anything hap-
pened to him here, Tandy would be in trouble, for these
ogres were not halfway civilized, as Smash himself was. It
was galling, but he would have to pass up this opportunity.
"No comment," he said.

The ogres goggled incredulously. "Not hot?" the male

ogre demanded, his hamfists shuddering with eagerness to
pulverize.

274 Ogre, Ogre

Smash turned away. "I think what I want is elsewhere
after all," he told Tandy. "Let's get away from here." He
tried to keep the urgency suppressed; this could get diffi-
cult in a moment. At least he was not caged in, the way he
had been with the lions.

The male made a huge jump, landing directly before
Smash. He poked a hamfinger at Smash's soiled orange
centaur jacket. "What got?" he demanded. This was not
curiosity but insult; any creature in clothing was considered
effete, too weak to survive in the jungle.

Smash raged inwardly at the implication, but had to
avoid trouble. He stepped around the ogre and went on
north, toward the Fen.

But again the male leaped in front of him. He pointed at
Smash's steel gauntlets, making a crudely elaborate gesture
of pulling dainty feminine gloves on his own hairy meat
hooks. The humor of ogres was necessarily crude, but it
was effective on its level. Smash paused.

"Me swat he snot!" the ogre chortled, aiming a wood-
sundering blow at Smash's head. Smash lifted a gleaming
fist of his own, defensively.

"No!" Tandy screamed.

Again Smash had to avoid conflict. He ducked under
the blow in a gesture that completely surprised the ogre
and continued north, inwardly seething. It simply wasn't an
ogre's way to accept such taunts and duck away from a
fight.

Now one of the mature females barred his way. Her hair
was like the tentacular mass of a quarrelsome tangle tree
that had just lost a battle with a giant spider web. Her face
made the bubbling mud of the Fen seem like a clear mir-
ror. Her limbs were so gnarled she might readily pass for a
dead shagtree riddled by the droppings of a flock of har-
pies with indigestion. Smash had never before encountered
such a luscious mass of flesh.

"He cute, cheroot," she said.

That was a considerable come-on for an ogress. Since
there were more females than males in this tribe, there was
obviously a place for Smash here, if he wanted it. Good
Magician Humfrey had evidently known this, and known
that Smash needed to settle down with a good female of his
own kind. What the aging Magician had overlooked was

Ogre, Ogre                      275

the fact that Smash would arrive at half-strength, and that
Tandy would not yet have found her own situation. Thus
Smash could not afford to accept the offer, however
grossly tempting it might be, because he could not fight
well and could not afford to leave Tandy to the ogres' mer-
' cies. For a female went only to the winner of a fight be-
tween males. So once again he avoided interaction and con-
tinued on. north.

Then the male ogre bad an inspiration of genius for his
kind. "Me eat complete," he said, and grabbed for Tandy.

Smash's gauntleted fist shot forward and up, catching
the ogre smack in the snoot. The gauntlet made Smash's
fist harder than otherwise and increased the effect of its
impact. The creature rocked back, spitting out a yellow
tooth. "Delight!" he cried. "He fight!"

"No!" Tandy yelled again, despairingly. She knew as
well as Smash did that it was too late. Smash had struck
the ogre, and that committed him.

Quickly the other ogres circled him. Tandy scooted to a
beerbarrel tree, getting out of the way.

Smash had never before fought another ogre and wasn't
quite sure how to proceed. Were there conventions? Did
they take turns striking each other? Was anything barred?

The ogre gave him no chance to consider. He charged,
his right fist swinging in a windmill motion, back and up
and forward and down, aimed for Smash's head. Smash
wished he had the Eye Queue so that he could analyze the
meaning of this approach. But dull as he was now, he sim-
ply had to asisume that it meant anything went.

Smash dodged, ducked down, caught the ogre's feet, and
jerked them up to head height. Naturally the ogre flipped
back, his head smacking into the ground with a hollow
boom like thunder, denting a hole and shaking the bushes
in the neighborhood. The watching ogres nodded; it was a
good enough counter, starting things off. But Smash knew
that he had substituted guile for force, to a certain extent,
finding a maneuver that did not require his full strength;

he could not proceed indefinitely this way.

The ogre bounced off his head, somersaulted backward,
and twisted to his big, flat feet He roared a roar that
spooked a flock of buzzards from a buzzard bush and sent
low clouds scudding hastily away. He charged forward

276 Ogre, Ogre

again, grabbing for Smash with both heavy arms. But
Smash knew better than to wait for an ogre hug. His or-
ange jacket would protect him from most of its crushing
force, but he would not be able to initiate much himself.
He jumped high, stomping gently on the ogre's ugly head
in passing.

The stomp drove the ogre a small distance into the
ground. It was the first motion of the figure called the Nail.
The ogre had to extricate his feet one by one, leaving deep
prints. Now he was really angry. He turned, fists swinging.

Smash parried with one arm, using a technique he had
picked up at Castle Roogna, then sent his gauntleted fist
smashing into the ogre's gross mid-gut. It was like hitting
well-seasoned ironwood, in both places; his parrying arm
was bruised, and his striking fist felt as if it had been
clubbed. This ogre was stupid, so that his ploys were ob-
vious and easily avoided, but he was also tough. Smash had
held his own so far only because he was less stupid and had
the protection of his centaur clothing. If jacket and gaunt-
lets failed him—

The ogre caught Smash's parrying arm in a grip of iron
or steel and hauled him forward. Smash parried again by
placing his free fist against the ogre's snoot and shoving.
But he quickly became aware of his liability of half-
strength; the other ogre could readily outmuscle him.

Worse, the ogre also became aware of this. "Freak
weak," he grunted, and lifted Smash into the air. Smash
twisted trying to free himself, but could not. Now he was in
for it!

The ogre jammed him down on his feet, so hard it was
Smash's turn to sink into the ground. He shot a terrible
punch at Smash's chest—but now the jacket did protect
Smash from most of the effect. Centaur clothing was de-
signed to be impervious to all stones, arrows, pikes, teeth,
claws, and other weapons; an ogre's fist was, of course,
more than it was designed to withstand, but the jacket was
much better than nothing. Meanwhile, Smash countered
with another strike to the ogre's face, beautifying it by
knocking out another tooth. He had good defense and good
offense, thanks to "the centaurs—but otherwise he re-
mained treacherously weak.

The ogre windmilled his fist again, this time holding

Ogre, Ogre                 •    277

Smash in place so that he could not escape the blow. The
fist sledgehammered down on the top of his head, driving
Smash another notch lower. He tried to parry but could
not; the ogre countered his counter. Another hammer blow
landed on his noggin, driving him down yet more. This was
the Nail again—and this time Smash was the Nail.

"Don't hurt him!" Tandy screamed, coming down from
her tree. "Eat me if you must, but let Smash be!"

"No!" Smash cried, knee-deep in the ground. "Run,
Tandy! Ogres don't honor deals about food!"
"You mean he'll destroy you anyway, after—?"
"Yes! Flee while you can, while they're watching me!"
"I can't do that!" she protested. Then she screamed, for
the child ogress, larger than Tandy, had pounced on her.

Tandy threw a tantrum. Once more her eyes swelled up,
her face turned purple, and her hair stood out from her
head. The tantrum struck the little ogre, who fell, senseless,
to the ground. Tandy retreated to her tree, for it took her

some time to recharge a tantrum. She was now as helpless
as Smash.

The ogre had paused, watching this byplay. The typical
ogre was too stupid to pay attention to two things at once;

he could not watch Tandy while pounding Smash. Smash,
similarly, had been too dull to try to extricate himself while
watching Tandy, so had not taken advantage of his oppor-
tunity. Now the ogre resumed his effort, completing the
figure of the Nail. Smash had somehow left his arms by his
sides, and now they, too, were caught in the ground,
pinned. He knew he would never have allowed himself to
get into this situation if he had retained his Eye Queue!
Almost any fool would have known better.

Knocks on the head were not ordinarily harmful to
ogres, because there was very little of importance in an
ogre skull except bone. But the repeated impacts did serve
to jog loose a few stray thoughts, flighty fancies not nor-
mally discovered in such territory. Why had Tandy tried so
foolishly to help him? It would have made far more sense
for her to flee, and she was smart enough to have seen
that. Of course her loyalty was commendable—but was
largely wasted on an ogre. As it was, both would perish.
How did that jibe with the Good Magician's Answers? Two
people dead . . .

278 Ogre, Ogre

One answer was that the Magician had grown too old to
practice magic any more, had lost his accuracy of proph-
ecy, and had unwittingly sent them both to their doom. It
was also possible that the Magician was aware of his inade-
quacy and had sent them to the wilds of interior Xanth in
order to avoid giving real Answers. He could have sus-
pected, in his cunning senility, that they would never re-
turn to charge rum with malpractice.

No, Smash remained unwilling to believe that of Hum-
frey. The man might be old, but the Gorgon had invigo-
rated him somewhat, and he still might know what he was
doing. Smash hoped so.

Soon the ogre had him waist-deep in the ground, and
Smash could not retaliate. He lacked the strength. Yet if he
had not yielded up half his soul, someone would have had
to remain in the Void, and that might not have been much
of an improvement over the present situation.

Still the blows descended, until he was chest-deep, and
finally neck-deep. Then the ogre began to tire. Instead of
using his fist, he gave his big homy feet a turn. He
stomped on Smash's head until it, too, was buried in the
packed dirt.

The figure of the Nail was complete. Smash had been
driven, like a stake, full-length into the ground. He was
helpless.

Satisfied with his victory, the ogre stomped toward the
beerbarrel tree where Tandy hid. Smash heard her scream
in terror; then he heard a fist crash into the trunk of the
tree. He heard beer swish out from the punctured barrel
and smelled its fumes as it coursed across the ground to-
ward him. He was in a dent in the ground formed by the
ogre's pounding; he would soon be drowned in beer, if he
didn't manage to drink it all, and Tandy would be dipped
in beer and eaten by the victor.

Then he heard the patter of Tandy's feet coming toward
him. She was still being foolish; she would be much easier
to catch here. The earth about his face became moist as the
beer sank in, and he heard it splashing when her feet
struck it. He hoped her pretty red slippers didn't get soiled.
Meanwhile, the ground shuddered as the other ogre
tromped after her, enjoying the chase.

Then she was over Smash, scraping out the ground about

Ogre, Ogra                     279

his head with her feeble little human hands, uncovering his
buried eyes. Foaming beer from the tree swirled down,
blearing his vision but softening the dirt somewhat so she
could better excavate. But this was useless; she could never
hope to extricate him herself, and already the ogre was
looming over her, amused at the futility of her effort.

"Smash!" she cried. "Take my half soul!"

In Smash's dim, beer-sotted mind, something added up.
One half plus one half equaled something very much like
one. Two half souls together—

He saw her half soul dropping toward him, a hemisphere
like a half-eaten apple, bisected with fair precision. Then it
struck his head, bounced, and sank in, as the Eye Queue
had done. He became internally conscious of it as it spread
through him. It was a small, sweet, pretty, innocent but
spunky fillet of soul, exactly the kind that belonged to a
girl like her. Yet as it descended and joined with his big,
brutish, homely, leathery ogre half soul, it merged to make
a satisfying whole.

At this point, in the Night Stallion horror visions, this
would have been the end. But here in real life, with a full
soul pieced together, it just might be the beginning. Smash
felt his strength returning.

The ogre lifted Tandy into the air by her brown tresses.
He slavered. Smash's sunken orbs perceived it all from
their beer-sodden pit in the ground.

The girl tried to throw a tantrum, but she was mostly out
of the makings. She was terrified rather than angry, her
tantrum-energy had recently been expended, and she bad
no soul. Her effort only made the ogre blink. He opened
his ponderous and mottled jaw and swung her toward his
broken teeth.

Smash flexed. He had a full soul, of sorts, now; his
Strength was back. The ground buckled about him. One
hamhand rose up like the extremity of a zombie emerging
from a long-undisturbed grave, dripping beer-sodden dirt.
It caught the hairy ankle of the ogre.

Smash lifted. He was well anchored in the ground, so all
he needed was power. He had it. The ogre rose into the air,
surprised. But he did not let Tandy go. He continued to
bring her to his salivating maw. First things first, after all.

Smash brought the foot belonging to the ankle he held to

280

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Ogre, Ogre

281

his own mouth. He opened his own dirt-marbled jaws.
They closed on the ogre's horny toes. They crunched, hard.

Folklore had it that ogres were invulnerable to pain be-
cause they were too tough and stupid to feel it. Folklore
was in error. The ogre bellowed out a blast of pain that
shook the welkin, making the sun vibrate in place and
three clouds dump their water incontinently. He dropped
Tandy. Smash caught her with his other hand, after ripping
it free of the ground with a spray of dirt that was like a
small explosion. He set her gently down. "Find shelter," he
murmured. "It could become uncomfortable in this vicin-
ity."

She nodded mutely, then scooted away.

Smash spit out three toes, watching them bounce across
the dirt. He waved the ogre in the air. "Shall we begin,
toadsnoot?" he inquired politely.

The ogre was no coward. No ogre was, since an ogre's
brain was too obtuse to allow room for the circuitry of fear.
He was ready to begin.

The battle of ogre vs. ogre was the most savage encoun-
ter known in Xanth. The very land about them seemed to
tense expectantly, aware that when this was over, nothing
would be the same. Perhaps nothing would be, period. The
landscape of Xanth was dotted with the imposing remnants
of ancient ogre fights—water-filled calderas, stands of
petrified trees, mountains of rubble, and similar artifacts.

The ogre began without imagination, naturally enough.
He drove a hamfist down on Smash's head. This time
Smash met it with his open jaws. The fist disappeared into
his mouth, and his teeth crunched on the scarred wrist.

Again the ogre bellowed, and the sun shook in its orbit
and the clouds soaked indecorously. One downpour spilled
onto the sun itself, causing an awful sizzle.

The ogre wrenched his arm up—and popped Smash
right out of the ground in the process, for naturally Smash
had not let go. Beer-mud flew outward and rained down
on the watching ogres, who snapped at the blobs automati-
cally.

. The ogre slammed his two fists together hard. Since one
fist was inside Smash's mouth, this meant Smash's head
was getting doubly boxed. Vapor shot out of his ears. He

spit out the fist, since he was unable to chew it properly,
and freed his head.

Now the two combatants faced each other, two hulking
monsters, the one covered with dirt and reeking of beer,
the other minus two teeth and three toes. Both were an-
gry—and the anger of ogres was similar to that of volcan-
oes, tornadoes, avalanches, or other natural calamities—apt
to destroy the neighborhood indiscriminately.

"You called me half-breed," Smash said, driving a
gauntleted fist into the other's shoulder. This time the blow
had ogre force; the ogre was hurled sidewise into the trunk
of a small rock-maple tree. The tree snapped off, its top
section crashing down on the ogre's ugly head.

He shrugged it off, not even noticing the distraction.
"He go me toe," he said, naming his own grievance, though
unable to count beyond one. He fired his own fist at
Smash's shoulder. The blow hurled Smash sidewise into a
rock-candy boulder. The boulder shattered, and sugar
cubes flew out and descended like hailstones around them.

"You tried to eat my friend," Smash said, kicking the
ogre in the rear. The kick sent the monster sailing up in a
high arc, his posterior smoking. Then, to make sure the

ogre understood. Smash repeated it in ogrish: "He ea' me
she."

The ogre landed bottom-first in the Fen, and the water
bubbled and steamed about him. He picked himself up by
hauling with one hamhand on the shaggy nape of his neck,
then stomped the bog so that the mud flew outward like
debris from a meteoric impact and ripped a medium-sized
hickory tree from its mooring on an islet. The tree came
loose with an anguished "Hick!" and hicked again as the
ogre smashed, it down across Smash's head, breaking it
asunder. Smash felt sorry for the ruined tree, probably be-
cause of the influence of the sweet girl's half soul he had
borrowed.

The two ogres faced each other again, having now
wanned up. There was a scurrying and fluttering in the sur-
rounding jungle as the creatures of the wild who had re-
mained before now fled the scene of impending violence.
There were also ripples in the swamp and the beat of drag-
ons' wings, all departing hastily. None of them wanted any
part of this!

282

Ogre, Ogre

Now that Smash had his full strength and had interacted
with the other ogre, it was his judgment that he was the
stronger of the two and the smarter. He believed he could
beat this monster—and it was necessary that he do it to
protect Tandy. But a lot of battle remained before the issue
would be resolved.

Smash leaned forward, threw his arms around the ogre,
picked him up, and charged toward the dense, hard walls
of a big walnut tree. The ogre's head rammed right
through the wood and was buried inside the wall-trunk, his
body dangling outside.

Then there was a chomping sound. The ogre was chew-
ing his way out, despite his missing teeth. Soon his snout
broke through the far side of the wall, then chomped to the
left and right-He spit out wall-nuts as he went, and they
formed little walls around the tree where they fell. Then
the tree crashed to the ground, its trunk severed. The ogre
returned to the fray.

He ripped a medium rosewood tree from the ground and
hurled it at Smash. Smash threw up a fist to block it, but
the trunk splintered and showered him with splinter-roses.

Smash, in turn, swung a fist through a sandalwood
trunk, severing it. He grabbed the loose part and hurled it
at the ogre, who blocked it. This time there was a shower
of sandals and other footwear.

The ogre took hold of a fat yew tree, twisting it around
and around though it bleated like a female sheep, until the
trunk separated from the stump. "Me screw with yew," he
grunted, ramming the twisted trunk at Smash's face.

"That is un-ogrammatical," Smash said. "Ogres always
say he or she, not you." But he ripped off a trunk of syca-
more and used it to counter the thrust. "Syc 'em!" he cried,
bashing at the yew. "Syc 'em more!" he cried, bashing
again. And because this was the nature of that tree, it
sycked 'em more.

Both trunks shattered. Trunks were really better for con-
taining things than for fighting. Some trunks were used for
trumpeting. Still, these were the most convenient things to
use for this battle.

The ogre tromped into the deeper forest to the south,
where larger trees grew. He chopped with both fists at a
big redwood trunk. Smash stomped to a bigger bluewood

Ogre, Ogre

283

and began knocking chips out of it with his own fists. Soon

both trees came crashing down, and each ogre picked one
up.

The other ogre was the first to swing. Smash ducked,
and the redwood whistled over his head and cracked into a
sturdy beech tree. The encounter was horrendous. The red
was knocked right out of the redwood, and the sand flew
from the beech. A cloud of red-dyed sand formed, making
a brief but baleful sandstorm that swirled away in a series
of diminishing funnels, coating the other trees.

Now Smash swung his bluewood. The ogre ducked be-
hind a butternut tree. The trunk clobbered the tree. Blue
dye flew out, and butter squished out. Blue butter de-
scended in a gooky mass, coating everything the red sand
had missed, including a small pasture of milkweed plants.
Blue buttermilk formed. All the spectator ogres turned
from dry red to dripping blue. It did improve their appear-
ance. Anything was better than the natural hue of an ogre.

The ogre bent to rip out a boxwood tree. This time
Smash was faster. He sliced off a section of trunk from a
cork tree and rammed that at the exposed posterior. The
cork shoved the ogre right into the box, where he was stuck.
bottom-up, corked.

Now the ogre was really angry. He bellowed so hard the
box exploded and the cork shot up toward the sun with a
loud Bronx cheer. When it hit the sun it detonated, and a.
foul cloud eclipsed the orb, turning a clear day to the
smoggiest night ever to clog the noses of the jungle. Crea-
tures began coughing and choking all around, and a num-
ber of plants wilted as the stench spread out like goo.

In the cloying darkness, the ogre retreated. He had had
enough of Smash's full strength. But Smash was not
through with him. He pursued, following the ogre into the
deepest jungle by the sound of his tromping.

Something struck Smash's arm, temporarily numbing it.
It was an ironwood bar. In the dark the ogre had harvested
another tree and had hurled it from ambush. Some might
consider this to be a cowardly act, but ogres did not know
the meaning of cowardice, so it must have been some other

kind of act. Ogres did comprehend cunning, so perhaps
that was it.

Smash picked up the bar, started to twist it into a harm-

284 Ogre, Ogre

less knot, reconsidered and started to hurl it violently back,
reconsidered again, and hung on to it. It would make a
decent spear.

He listened, trying to locate the ogre. He heard the
sproing! as another ironwood sapling was harvested. He
charged that spot—and tripped over a fallen log. Naturally
the log splintered into a storm of toothpicks that shot out
like shrapnel, making pincushions of the surrounding vege-
tation. Smash lost his balance. He windmilled an arm and a
leg. .   •

Now the ogre knew Smash's location more accurately.
The other spear eame whistling at him as if it had not a
care in the world and caught his outflung foot. That
smarted! Smash rolled back, got his feet properly under
him, limped, and struck back where his keen ogre hearing
indicated the other ogre was.

Unfortunately, he had not realized that dirt remained in
his ears, from the time he was spiked into the ground. His
blow was countered, being off target, and the other bar
clonked him on the side of the head.

This turned out to be a serendipitous blessing, for the
clonk knocked out most of the dirt. Now he could hear
properly! He reoriented and swung hard and accurately at
the other—and missed, for the other was retreating.

The smog was beginning to clear. Smash pressed for-
ward, striking repeatedly at the dim shape before him. The
counterings grew fewer and weaker as the enemy retreated.
Smash accelerated—and the figure ducked aside, put out a
foot—and Smash tripped over it and stumbled headlong
into a drop-off.

In midair he realized he had been tricked. The ogre, fa-
miliar with the terrain while Smash was not, had led him
to the cliff. Smash should have been more suspicious of the
sudden, seeming weakness of his opponent. But of course,
without his Eye Queue, he was no smarter than any other
ogre.

He landed on a bed of sharp gravel. Something yiped.
Great yellow eyes opened. A jet of flame illuminated the
area. Smash got a clear view of his situation.

Oops! He had fallen directly into a dragon's nest! This
was the lair of a big surface dragon, open to the day be-
cause such a monster feared nothing, not even ogres. The

Ogre, Ogre                      285

dragon wasn't here at the moment, but its five cubs were.

In a moment all of them were up and alert. They were
large cubs, almost ready to depart the nest and start con-
suming people for themselves. They were all as massive as
Smash, with coppery snouts, green metal neck scales, and
manes of silvery steel. Their teeth glinted like stars, and
their tongues slurped about hungrily. As the light returned,

all recognized him as an enemy and as prey. What a trap
this was!

The ogre looked over the brink of the pit. "Ho ho ho
ho!" he roared thunderously, causing the nearby trees to
shake. "Me screw he blue!" For Smash stood on blue dia-
monds that made up the nest, which he had taken for
gravel. All dragons liked diamonds; they were pretty and
hard and highly resistant to heat. Because dragons hoarded
diamonds, the stones assumed unreasonable value, being
very rare elsewhere. Smash understood this extended even
to Mundania, though he wasn't sure how the dragons man-
aged to collect the stones from there.

Dragons were not much for ceremony. All five pounced,
blasting out little jets of flame that incinerated the vegeta-
tion around the nest and heated the diamonds at Smash's
feet, forcing him to jump.

Smash, angry at himself for his stupidity in falling into
this mess—imagine being outwitted by a dull ogre!—
reacted with inordinate, i.e., ogrish, fury. He just wasn't in
the mood to mess with little dragons!

He put out his two gauntleted hands and snatched the
first dragon out of the air. He whipped it about and used it
to strike the second in mid-pounce. Both dragons were
knocked instantly senseless. Weight for weight, no dragon
was a match for an ogre; only the advantage of size put the
big dragons ahead, and these lacked that.

Smash hurled both dragons at the other ogre, who stood
gloating, and grabbed for two more. In a moment both of

these were dragging, and the dragging dragons were hurled
up to drape about the ogre.

The fifth dragon, meanwhile, had fastened its jaws on
Smash's legs. They were pretty good jaws, with diamond-
hard teeth; they were beginning to hurt. Smash plunged his
fist down with such force that the skull caved in. He
ripped the body away and hurled it, too, at the other ogre.

286

Ogre, Ogre

The smog had largely cleared, perhaps abetted by the
breeze from Smash's own activity. Now an immense
shadow fell across them. Smash looked up. It was the
mother dragon, so huge her landbound bulk blocked off
the light of the sun" Not all big dragons were confined to
Dragonlandl It would take a whole tribe of ogres to fend
her off—and the tribe of the Ogre-Fen Ogres would cer-
tainly not do that. Smash had been tricked into this nest
because the other ogre knew it would be the end of him.

But Smash, having cursed the darkness of his witless-
ness, now suffered a flashback of dull genius. "Heee!" he
cried, pointing a hamfinger at the other ogre.

The dragoness looked. There stood the ogre, in mid-
gloat, with the five limp, little dragon cubs draped around
his body like so much apparel. He had been so pleased with
his success in framing Smash that he had not thought to
clear the debris from himself. The liability of the true ogre
had betrayed him—his inability to concentrate on more
than one thing at a time. Naturally the dragoness assumed
that he was the guilty creature.

With a roar so horrendous that it petrified the local trees
and caused a layer of rock on the cliff to shiver into dust,
several diamonds to craze and crack; and a blast of fire
that would have vaporized trees and cliff face, had the one
not just been converted from wood to stone and the other
not just powdered out, she went for the guilty ogre.

The ogre was dim, but not that dim, especially as a re-
fracted wash of fire frizzled his fur. While the dragoness
inhaled and oriented for a more accurate second shot, he
flung off the little dragons and dived into the nest-pit,
landing snoot-first in the diamonds. The contrast was con-
siderable—the sheer beauty of the stones versus the sheer
ugliness of the ogre. It looked as if he were trying to eat
them.

Smash hardly paused for thought. At the moment, the
dragoness was a greater threat to his health than the ogre.
He wrestled a boulder out of the pit wall and heaved it up
at the dragoness, while the other ogre struggled to his feet,
shedding white, red, green, blue, and polka-dot diamonds.
The dragoness turned, snapped at the boulder, found it in-
edible, and spit it out

Smash realized that the other ogre had disappeared. He

Ogre, Ogre                     287

checked, and saw a foot in a hole. The boulder he had
thrown had blocked a passage, and the ogre was crawling
down it, leaving Smash to face the fire alone. Smash didn't
appreciate that, so he grabbed the foot and hauled the ogre
back and out. Several more diamonds dropped from crev-
ices on the creature's hide—black,, yellow, purple, plaid,
and candy-striped. In a moment Smash had the ogre in the
air, swinging him around by the feet in a circle.

The dragoness was pumping up for a real burnout blast.
Such an exhalation could incinerate both ogres in a single
foop. She opened her maw, letting the first wisps of super-
heated steam emerge, and her belly rumbled with the gath-
ering holocaust.

Smash let go of the ogre, hurling him directly into the
gaping maw, headfirst.

The dragon choked on her own blocked fire, for the
ogre's body was just the right size to plug her gullet. The
ogre's feet, protruding slightly from the mouth, kicked mad-
ly. Then the ogre's broken teeth started working as he
chewed his way out. The dragoness looked startled, un-
certain how to deal with this complication.

Smash wasn't sure how this contest would turn out. The
dragoness' fire was bottled, and her own teeth could not
quite get purchase on the ogre in her throat, but she did
have a lot of power and might be able to clear the ogre by
either coughing him out or swallowing him the rest of the
way. On the other hand, the ogre could chew quite a dis-
tance in a short time. Smash decided to depart the premises
with judicious dispatch.

But where could he go? If he scrambled out of the nest,
the dragoness might chase after him, and he would be

more like a sitting duck than a running ogre, in the open.
If he remained—

"Hssst!" someone called. "Here!"

Smash looked. A little humanoid nymph stood within
the hole left by the boulder.

"I was raised in the underworld," she said. "I know tun-
nels. Cornel"

Smash looked back at the dragoness, who was swelling
with stifled pressure, and at the kicking ogre in her throat.
The former was about to fire the latter out like a missile.
He had sympathy for neither and was fed up with the

288 Ogre, Ogre

whole business. What did he want with ogres anyway? They
were dull creatures who crunched the bones of human folk.

Human folk. "Tandy!" he cried. "I must save her from
the ogres!"

The nymph was disgusted. "Idiot!" she cried. "I am
Tandy!"

'Smash peered closely at her. The nymph had brown
hair, blue eyes, and a spunky, upturned little nose. She was
indeed Tandy. Odd that he hadn't recognized her! Yet who
would have expected a nymph to turn out to be a person!

"Now get in here, you oaf!" she commanded. "Before
that monster pops her cork!"

He followed Tandy into the tunnel. She led him along a
curving route, deep down into the ground. The air here
turned cool, the wall clammy. "The dragon mines here for
'diamonds that my mother leaves," she explained. "There
would be terrible disruption in Xanth if it weren't for her
' work. The dragons would go on a rampage if their dia-
monds ran out, and so would the other creatures if they
couldn't get their own particular stones. It certainly is nice
to know my mother has been here! Of course, that could
have been a long time ago. There might even be an aper-
ture to my home netherworld here, though probably she
rode the Diggle and left no passage behind."

Smash just followed, more concerned about escaping the
dragon than about the girl's idle commentary.

There was a sound behind them, like a giant spike being
fired violently into bedrock. The dragoness had no doubt
disgorged the ogre from her craw and now was ready to
pursue the two of them here. Though the diameter of the
tunnel was not great, dragons were long, sinuous creatures,
particularly the wingless landbound ones, who could move
efficiently through small apertures. Or she could simply
send a blast of flame along, frying them. Worse yet, she
might do both, pursuing until she got close, then doing
some fiery target practice.

"Oh, I'm sure there's a way down, somewhere near,"
Tandy fussed. "The wall here is shallow; I can tell by the
way it resonates. I've had a lot of experience with this type
of formation. See—there's a fossil." She indicated a glow-
ing thing that resembled the skeleton of a fish, but it squig-
gled out of sight before Smash could examine it closely.

Ogre, Ogre                     289

Fossils were like that, he knew; they preferred to hide from
discovery. They were like zombies, except that they didn't
generally travel about much; they just rested for eons. He
had no idea what their purpose in life or death might be.
"But I can't find a hole!" Tandy finished, frustrated.

Smash knew they had to get out of this particular pas-
sage in a hurry. He aimed his fist and smashed a hole in
the wall. A new chamber opened up. He dropped through,
carefully lifting Tandy down.

"That's right!" she exclaimed. "I forgot about your ogre
strength! It's handy at times."

A rush of fire flowed along the tunnel they had quitted.
They had gotten out just in time!

"This is it!" Tandy cried. "The netherworld! I haven't
been in this section before, but I recognize the general con-
figuration. A few days' walk, and I'm home!" Then she
reconsidered. "No, there isn't any direct connection. The—

what's that thing that cuts Xanth in half? I can't remem-
ber—"

"The Gap Chasm," Smash said, dredging it out of his
own fading memory. In his ogre personality, he was too
stupid to forget things as readily as Tandy could.

"Yes. That. That would cut off this section from the
section I live in, I think. Still—"

She led him through a dark labyrinth, until the sounds of
the enraged dragon faded. They finally stood on a ledge

near cool water. "She'll never find us here. It would douse
her fire."

"I hope you'll be able to find our way out. I'm lost."
Ogres didn't care one way or the other about the depths of
the earth, but did like to be able to get around to forage for
food and violence.

"When the time is right," she said. "Maybe never."
"But what of our missions?" Smash demanded.
"What missions?" she asked innocently.
Then Smash remembered. She no longer cared about
seeking fulfillment. She had given up her soul.

Chapter 15. Point of View

But in a moment he realized this was not seri-
ous. "I have your half soul," he said. "Take it back." He
put his huge paw on his head and drew out the fillet. It
adhered to his own soul, with which it had temporarily
merged; evidently the two souls liked each other, different
as they were. At last her soul rested in his palm.

Then he moved the faintly luminous hemisphere to her
head and patted it in. The soul dissolved, flowing back into
her. "Oh, that feels so good!" she exclaimed. "Now I know
how much I missed my soul, even the half of it!"

Smash, back to his own half soul, suddenly felt tired. He
sank down on the rock where he was resting. It was dark
here, but he didn't mind; it was easy to rest in this place.

Tandy sank down beside him. "I think my soul feels
lonely," she said. "It was half, and then it was whole with
yours, and now it's half again, with maybe the better half
missing."

"Yours is the better half," he said. "It's cute and spunky
and sensitive, while mine is gross and stupid."

"But strong and loyal," she said. "They complement
each other. A full person needs strength and sensitivity."

"An ogre doesn't." But now he wondered.

She found his hamhand with her own. "Okay, Smash, I
remember our missions now. I wanted to find a good hus-
band, and you—"

"Wanted a good wife," Smash finished. "I didn't know
it, but the Good Magician evidently did. So he sent me
where I could find one. But somehow the notion of sharing

Ogre, Ogre                      29T

the rest of my life with an ogress no longer appeals. I don't
know why."

"Because true ogres and ogresses are brutes," she said.
"You really aren't that kind, Smash."

"Perhaps I wasn't when I had the Eye Queue curse. But
when I lost it, I reverted to my natural state."

"Are you sure your natural state is brutish?"

"I was raised to be able to smash ironwood trees with
single blows of my homy fist," he said. "To wrestle my
weight in 'dragons and pulverize them. To squeeze purple
bouillon juice from purple wood with my bare hands. To
chew rocks into sand. To—"

"That's impressive. Smash. And I've seen you do some
of those things. But are you sure you aren't confusing

strength with brutishness? You have always been very gen-
tle with me."

"You are special," he said, experiencing a surge of unfa-
miliar feeling.

"Chem told me something she~ learned from a Mundane
scholar. Chem and I talked a lot while you were in the
gourd, there in the Void, because we didn't know for sure
whether we would ever get free of that place. The scholar's
name was Ichabod, and he knew this little poem about a
Mundane monster resembling a tiger lily, only this one is ^
supposed to be an animal instead of a plant."

"I have fought tiger lilies," he said. "Even their roots
have claws. They're worse than dandy-lions."

"She couldn't remember the poem, exactly. So we played
with it, applying it to you. 'Ogre, ogre, burning bright—'"

"Ogre's don't bum!"

"They do when they're stepping across the firewall," she
said, "trying to fetch a boat so the rest of us can navigate
past the loan sharks. That's what reminded Chem of the
poem, she said. The flaming ogre. Anyway, the poem tells
how they go through the jungle in the night, the fiery
ogres, and are fearfully awful."

"Yes," Smash said, becoming pleased with the image.
"We had a good laugh. You aren't fearful at all, to us.

You're a big, wonderful, blundering ball of fur, and we

wouldn't trade you for anything."

"No matter how brightly I bum," Smash agreed ruefully.

292

Ogre, Ogra

Ogre, Ogre

293

He changed the subject. "How were you able to function
without your soul? When you lost it before, you were coma-
tose."

"Partly, before, it was the shock of loss," she said. "This
time I gave it away; I was braced, experienced."

"That shouldn't make much difference," he protested.
"A soul is a soul, and when you lose it—"

"It does make a difference. What a girl gives away may
make her feel good, while if the same thing is taken by
force, it can destroy her."

"But without a soul—"                       /

'True. That's only an analogy. I suppose I was thinking
more of love."

He remembered how the demon had tried to rape her.
Suddenly he hated that demon. "Yes, you need someone to
protect you. But we found no man along the route, and
now we are beyond the Good Magician's assignment with-
out an Answer for either of us."

"I'm not so sure," she said.

"We're drifting from the subject. How did you survive,
soulless? Your half soul made me strong enough to beat
another ogre; you had to have been so weak you would
collapse. Yet you didn't."

"Well, I'm half nymph," she said.

"Half nymph? You did seem like a nymph when—"

"I always thought of myself as human, just as you al-
ways thought of yourself as ogre. But my mother is Jewel
the Nymph. So by heredity I'm as much nymph as girl."

"What's the difference?" He knew there was a differ-
ence, but found himself unable to define it.

"Nymphs are eternally young and beautiful and usually
none too bright. They are unable to say no to a male for
anything. My mother is an exception; she had to be smart
and reliable to handle her job. She remains very pretty,
prettier than I am. But she's not as smart as I am."

"You are young and beautiful," Smash said. "But so is
Princess Irene, and she's a human girl."

"Yes. So that isn't definitive. Human girls in the flush
of their young prime do approach nymphs in appearance,
and have a number of nymphal qualities that men find
appealing. But Irene will age, while true nymphs won't,
She loves, while nymphs can't love."

"Can't love?" Smash was learning more than he had ever
expected to about nymphs.

"Well, my mother does love. But as I said, she's a very
special nymph. And my father Crombie used a love-spell
on her. So that doesn't count."

"But some human people don't love, so that is not defini-
tive, either."

'True. It can be very hard to distinguish a nymph from
a thoughtless human girl. But one thing is definitive.
Nymphs don't have souls."

"You have a soul! I am absolutely certain of that! It's a
very nice little soul, too."

He could feel her smile in the dark. Her body relaxed,
and she squeezed his paw. "Thank you. I rather like it my-
self. I have a soul because I'm half human. Just as you do,
for the same reason."

"I never thought of that!" Smash said. "It never oc-
curred to me that other ogres wouldn't have souls."

"They're brutes because they have no souls. Their
strength is all magic."

"I suppose so. My mother was a variety of human, so I
inherited my soul from her."

"And it gave you strength to make up for what you lost
by being only half ogre."

"Agreed. That answers a mystery I was never aware of
before. But you still haven't explained how you—"

"Functioned without a soul. Yes. It was simply a matter
of how I thought of it. You see, human beings have always
had souls; they have no experience living without them.
Other creatures never had souls, so they have learned to
cope. My mother copes quite well, though I suppose some
of my father's soul has rubbed off on her." Tandy sighed.
"She's such a good person, she certainly deserves a soul.
But she is a nymph, and I am half nymph. So I can func-
tion without a soul. All I had to do, once I realized that,

was to think of myself as a nymph. It made a fundamental
difference."

"But I think of myself as an ogre—yet I have a soul."
"Maybe you should try thinking of yourself as a man,
Smash." Her hand tightened on his.
"A man?" he asked blankly. "I'm an ogre!"
"And I'm a girl. But when I had to, I became a nymph.

294

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

295

So I was able to operate without sinking into the sort of
slough I did before, in the gourd. I was able to follow your
fight, and to step in when I needed to."

"A man!" he repeated incredulously.

"Please, Smash. I'm a half-breed, like you. Like a lot of
the creatures of Xanth. I won't laugh at you."

"It's impossible! How could I ever be a man?"

"Smash, you don't talk like an ogre any more. You're
not stupid like an ogre any more."

"The Eye Queue—"

"That vine faded a long time ago. Smash! And the one
you got in the Void—that never existed at all. It was sheer
illusion. Yet it made you smart again. Did you ever con-
sider how that could be?"

It was his turn to smile in the dark. "I was careful not to
think that one through, Tandy. It would have deprived me
of the very intelligence that enabled me to indulge in that
chain of thought, paradoxically."

"You believe in paradox?"

"It is an intriguing concept. I would say it is impossible
in Mundania, but possible in Xanth. I really must explore
the implications further, when I have leisure."

"I have another hypothesis," she said. "The Eye Queue
was illusion, but your intelligence was not."

"Isn't that a contradiction? It's illogical to attribute an
effect as significant as intelligence to an illusion."

"It certainly is. That's why I didn't do it. Smash, I don't
think you needed the Eye Queue vine at all, ever. Not the
illusory one or the original one. You always had the intelli-
gence. Because you're half human, and human beings are
smart."

"But I was never smart until the Eye Queue made me
so."

"You were smart enough to fool everyone into thinking
you were ogrishly stupid! Smash, Chem told me about the
Eye Queue vine. Its effect wears off in hours. Sometimes
its effect is only in self-perception. It makes creatures
think they're smart when they aren't, and they make colos-
sal fools of themselves without knowing it. Like people get-
ting drunk on the spillage from a beerbarrel tree, thinking
they're being great company when actually they are dis-
gusting clowns. My father used to tell me about that; he

said he'd made a clown of himself more than once. Only
it's worse with the vine."

"Was I doing that?" Smash asked, mortified.

"No! You really -were smart! And it didn't wear off, un-
til you lost the vine in the flood. And it came back the
moment you got a new vine, even though you only imag-
ined it. Doesn't that suggest something to you. Smash?"

He pondered. "It confirms that magic is marvelous and
not entirely logical."

"Or that you became smart only when you thought you
ought to be smart. Maybe the Eye Queue showed you how,
the first time. After that you could do it any time you
wanted to. Or when you forgot to be stupid."

"But I'm not smart now," he protested.

"You should listen to yourself. Smash! You've been dis-
coursing on the nuances of paradox and you've been talk-
ing in a literate fashion."

"Why, so I have," he agreed, surprised. "I forgot I had
lost the Eye Queue."

"Precisely. So where does your intelligence come from
now, ogre?"

"It must be from my human half, as you surmise. Like
my soul. I just never invoked it before, because—"

"Because you thought of yourself as an ogre, until you
saw what ogres really were like and started turning off
them. Now you are sliding toward your human heritage."

"You see it far more dearly than I do!"

"Because I'm more objective. I see you from the outside.
I appreciate your human qualities. And I think the Good
Magician Humfrey did, too. He's old, but he's still savvy. I
ought to know; I cleaned up his castle for a year."

"It didn't looked cleaned up to me. I could hardly find a
place to stand."

"You should have seen it before I cleaned it up!" But
she laughed. "Actually, I didn't touch his private den; even
the Gorgon leaves that alone. If anyone ever cleaned up in
there, no one would know where all his spells and books
and things were. He's had a century or so to leam their
locations. But the rest of the castle needs to be kept in
order, and they felt the Gorgon shouldn't have to do it,
since she's married to him now, so I did it. I cleaned off the
magic mirrors and things; some of them bad pretty smart

296 Ogra, Ogre

mouths, too! It wasn't bad. And in that year I came to
understand that behind the seeming absent-mindedness of
Humfrey there lies a remarkably alert mind. He just
doesn't like to show it. He knew all about you, for example,
before you approached the castle. He had you marked a
year in advance on his calendar, right to the day and hour
of your arrival. He watched every step of your progress.
He chortled when you came up against those ogre bones;

he'd gone to a lot of work to get those set up. That man
knows everything he wants to know. That's why he keeps
the Gorgon in thrall, instead of she him; she is in complete
awe of his knowledge."

"And I thought he was asleepi" Smash said ruefully.

"Everyone does. But he's the Magician of Information,
one of the most powerful men in Xanth. He knows every-
thing worth knowing. So he surely knew how much of a
mind you had and crafted his Answer accordingly. Now we
know he was correct."

"But our missions—neither is complete! He didn't know
we would fail, did he?"

She considered, then asked, "Smash, why did you fight
the other ogre?"

"He annoyed me. He insulted me."

"But you tried to avoid trouble."

"Because I was at half-strength and knew I'd lose."

"But then you slugged him. You knocked out a tooth."

"He was going to eat you. I couldn't allow that."

"Why not? It's what ogres do."

"I had agreed to protect you!"

"Did you think of that when you struck him?"

"No," Smash admitted. "I popped him instantly. There
was no time for thought."

"So there was some other reason you reacted."

"You're my friend!"

"Do ogres have friends?"

He considered again. "No. I'm the only ogre who ever
had friends—and they were mostly human friends. Most
ogres don't even like other ogres."

"Unsurprising," she said. "So, to protect me, twice you
risked your soul."

"Yes, of course." He wasn't certain of the point of her
comment.

Ogre, Ogre                      297

"Would any true ogre have done that?"

"No true ogre. Of course, since ogres don't have souls,
they would never be faced with the choice. But still, if they
did have souls, they wouldn't—"

"Smash, doesn't it seem, even to you, that you have more
human qualities than ogre qualities?"

"In this circumstance, perhaps. But in the jungle, alone,
it would be otherwise."
"Why did you leave the jungle, then?"

"I was dissatisfied. As I said before, I must have needed
a wife, only I didn't know it then."

"And you could have had a nice brute of an ogress, with
a face whose full glare would have made the moon rot, if

you'd reacted more like an ogre. Are you sorry you blew
it?"

Smash laughed, becoming more conscious of her hand
on his. "No."
"Do ogres laugh?"
"Only maliciously."
"So you've thrown away the Answer you worked so hard

for, you think. Are you going back to the lonely jungle
now?"

Strangely, that also did not appeal. The life he had been

satisfied with before seemed inadequate now. "What choice
do I have?"

"Why not try being a man? It's all in your viewpoint, I
think. The people at Castle Roogna would accept you, I'm

sure. They already do. Prince Dor treated you as an
equal."

"He treats everybody as an equal." But Smash won-
dered. Would Prince Dor have been the same with any of
the Ogre-Fen Ogres? This seemed questionable.

Then something else occurred to him. "You say I was
able to make the illusory Eye Queue vine work in the Void

because I always did have human intelligence, so there was
no paradox?"

"That's what I say," she said smugly.
"Then what about the gourd?"
"The gourd?" she asked family.

"That was illusory, too, in the Void, and it had noth-
ing to do with my human nature, yet it also worked."

298

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

299

"Yes, it did," she agreed. "Oh, Smash, I never thought
of thati But that means—"

"That illusion was real in the Void. That what we
thought was there really was there, once we thought it,
such as gourds and glowing footprints. So there is no proof
I'm smart without the vine."

"But—but—" She began to sniffle.

Smash sighed. He hated to see her unhappy. "Neverthe-
less, I admit to being smart enough now to find the flaws
in your logic, which, paradoxically, proves your case to
that extent. Probably we're both right. I have human
intelligence, and the Void makes illusion real." He paused,
yet again aware of her hand on his. What a sweet little
hand it wasi "I have never in my life thought of myself as
a man. I don't know what it could accomplish, but at least
it might be a diversion while we wait for the dragoness to
stop searching for us."

Her sniffles abated magically. "It might be more than
that. Smash," she said, sounding excited.

Smash concentrated. He imagined the way men were:

small and not very hairy and rather weak, but very smart.
They used clothing because their natural fur didn't cover
the essentials. They plucked shoes from shoe trees and
socks from hose vines. He had a jacket and gloves; that
was a start. They lived in houses, because wild creatures
could otherwise attack them in their sleep. They tended to
congregate in villages, liking one another's company. They
were, in fact, social creatures, seldom alone.

He imagined himself joining that company, walking like
a man instead of tromping like an ogre. Resting on a bed
instead of on the trunk of a tree. Eating delicately, one bite
at a time, chewing it sedately, instead of ripping raw flesh,
crunching bones, and using sheer muscle to cram in what-
ever didn't conveniently fit in his mouth. Shaking hands
instead of knocking for a loop. But the whole exercise was
ridiculous, because he knew he would always be a huge,
hairy, homely monster.

"It isn't working," he said with relief. "I just can't imag-
ine myself as—"

She set her other hand on his gross arm. Now he felt the
touch of her soul, her half soul, for he was attuned to it

after borrowing it. There seemed to be a current of soul
traveling along his arm between her two tiny hands. He
had rescued that soul from the gourd, and it had helped
rescue him from the ogres.

He also remembered how quick she had always been in
his defense. How she had kissed him. How she had stayed
with him, even when he went among the ogres, even when
she lacked her souL Suddenly he wanted very much to
please her.

And he began to get the point of view. He felt himself
shrinking, refining, turning polite and smart.

Suddenly it opened out His mind expanded to take in all
of Xanth, as it had when he first felt the curse of the Eye
Queue. This time it was no curse; it was self-realization. He
had become a man.

Tandy's hands remained on his arm and hand. Now he
turned to her in the dark. His eyes saw nothing, but his
mind more than made up the difference.

Tandy was a woman. She was beautiful in her special
fashion. She was smart. She was nice. She was loyal. She
had a wonderful soul.

And he—with the perspective of a man he saw her dif-
ferently. With the mind of a man he analyzed it. She had
been a companion, and he realized now how important that
had become to him. Ogres didn't need companions, but
men did. The six other girls had been companions, too, and
he had liked them, but Tandy was more.

"I don't want to go back to the jungle alone," he mur-
mured. His voice had lost much of the ogre guttural qual-
ity.

"I never thought you belonged there. Smash." Oh, how
sweet she sounded 1

"I want—" But the enormity of the notion balked Tiim.

It didn't balk Tandy, however. "Smash, I told you before
that I loved you."

"I have human perception at the moment," he said. "I
must caution you not to make statements that are subject to
misinterpretation."

"Misinterpretation, hell!" she flashed. "I knew my mind
long before you knew yours."

"Well, you must admit that an ogre and a nymph—"

300

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

301

"Or a man and a woman—"

"Half-breeds," he said, half bitterly. "Like the centaurs,
harpies, merfolk, fauns—"

"And what's wrong with half-breeds?" she flared. "In
Xanth, any species can mate with any other it wants to,
and some of the offspring are fine people. What's wrong
with Chem the Centaur? With the Siren?"

"Nothing," he said, impressed by her vehemence. Mo-
ment by moment, as she talked and his manhood infil-
trated the farthest reaches of his awareness, he was warm-
ing to her nature. She was small, but she was an awful lot
of smalL

"And the three-quarter breeds, almost identical to the
humans, like Goldy Goblin and Biythe Brassie and John
the Fairy—"

"And Fireoak the Hamadryad, whose soul is the tree,"
he finished. "All good people." But he wondered passingly
why, since nymphs were so nearly human, they didn't have
souls. Obviously there was more to learn about the matter.

"Consider Xanth," she continued hotly. "Divided into
myriad Kingdoms of people and animals and in-betweens.
We met the Lord of the Flies and the Prince of Whales and
the Dragon Lady and the Kingdoms of the goblins, birds,
griffins—"

"And the Ancestral Ogres of the Fen," he said. "All of
which believe they dominate Xanth."

"Yes." She took a breath. "How can Xanth be prevented
from fragmenting entirely, except by interaction and cross-
breeding? Smash, I think the very future of Xanth depends
on the half-breeds and quarter-breeds, the people like us
who share two or more views. In Mundania, no species
breeds with another—and look at Mundania! According to
my father's stories—"

"Awful," he agreed. "Mundania has no magic."

"So their species just keep drifting farther apart, maldng
that land more dreary year by year. Xanth is different;

Xanth can reunify. Smash, we owe it to Xanth to—"

"Now I understand what men object to in women,"
Smash said.

She was startled. "What?"

"They talk too much."

"It's to fill in for inactive men!" she flared.

Oh. He turned farther toward her in the dark, and she
met him halfway. This time there was no confusion at all
about the kiss. It was a small swatch of heaven.

At last they broke. "Ogre, ogre," she murmured breath-
lessly. "You certainly are a man now."

"You're right. The Good Magician knew," he said, cud-
dling her close to him. In the dark she did not seem tiny;

she seemed just right. As with riding the nightmares, things
were always compatible. He had known Tandy was very
feminine; now this quality assumed phenomenal new im-
portance. "He sent me to the ogres—to find you."

"And he sent me to find you—the one creature rough
enough to drive off the demon I fled, while still being gen-
tle enough for me to love."

Love. Smash mulled that concept over. "I cried for you
last night," he confessed.

"Silly," she teased him. "Ogres don't cry."

"Because I thought I would lose you. I did not know that
I loved you."

She melted. "Oh, Smash! You said it!"

He said it again. "I love you. That's why I fought for
you. That's why I bargained my soul for you."

She laughed, again teasingly. "I don't think you know
what love is."

He stiffened. "I don't?"

"But I'll show you."

"Show me," he said dubiously.

She showed him. There was no violence, no knocking of
heads against trees, no screaming or stomping. Yet it was
the most amazing and rewarding experience he had ever
had. By the time it was done. Smash knew he never
wanted to be anything but a man and never wanted any
woman but her.

They found another way out of the netherworld, avoid-
ing the lurking dragon, and trekked south along the east
coast of Xanth. Smash, by the light of day, was smaller
than he had been, and less hairy, and hardly ugly at all.
But he didn't really mind giving up his previous assets,
because the acquisition of Tandy more than made up for

302 Ogre, Ogre

them. She sewed him a pair of shorts, because men wore
them, and he did rather resemble a man now.

They traveled quietly, avoiding trouble. When this
threatened to rankle his suppressed ogre nature, Tandy
would take his hand, and smile up at him, and the rankle
dissipated.

The trip took several days, but that didn't matter, be-
cause it was sheer joy. Smash hardly noticed the routine
Xanth hazards, since most of his attention was on Tandy.
Somehow the hazards seemed diminished, anyway, for
news had spread among the griffins, birds, dragons, gob-
lins, and flies that Tandy's companion was best left alone,
even if he didn't look like much. It seemed that a certain
ogre of the Fen had staggered out of the jungle with a
headache, and though he had not given any details, it was
evident that he had been roughly treated by the stranger he
had fought. Even the crossing of the Gap, which Smash
had almost forgotten until he encountered it again, was
without event. The Gap Dragon, reputed to have a sore
tail, stayed clear.

At length, they drew near the entrance to Tandy's home
region. The route was through a chasm guarded by a tangle
tree. It was a big, aggressive tree, and Smash knew he
could not overcome it. So he drew on his human intelli-
gence and harvested a number of hypnogourds, intending
to roll them down to the tree. If it made the mistake of
looking in a single peephole—

But as they carried two gourds from the patch, a cloud
of smoke formed-before them. This coalesced into a dusky
demon.

"Well, my little human beauty," the demon said to
Tandy, switching his barbed tail about. "You were lost, but
now are found. I shall have my will of you forthwith." He
advanced on her, grinning lasciviously.

Tandy screamed and dropped her gourd, which shat-
tered on the ground. "Fianti"

So this was the demon who sought to rape her! Smash
set his own gourd down carefully and stepped forward.
"Depart, foul spirit!" he ordered.

The demon ignored him, addressing Tandy instead. "Ah,
you seem more luscious than ever, girl-creature! It will be
long before I tire of you."

Ogre, Ogre                     303

Tandy backed away. Smash saw that she was too fright-
ened even to throw a tantrum. The demon had come upon
her so suddenly she had not been able to brace emotionally
for the assault.

Smash interposed himself between demon and girl. "De-
sist, Fiant," he said.

The fat demon put out a band and shoved him. Smash
tripped on a stone and tumbled to the ground ignomi-
niously. The demon stepped on his stomach and advanced
on Tandy. "Pucker up, cutie; your time has come at last."

Smash was becoming perturbed. Tandy might believe in
crossbreeding as the hope of Xanth, but she had not chosen
to do it with the demon. As she had explained, there was a
considerable difference between what was given voluntar-
ily and what was forced. Smash scrambled to his feet and
hurried after Fiant, catching him on the shoulder.

The demon swung about almost carelessly, delivering a
brain-rattling slap across Smash's cheek. Smash fell back
again, reeling.

Now Fiant shot out a hand and caught Tandy by the
hair. She screamed, but could not pull away.

Smash charged back into the fray—only to be met with
a careless straight-arm that nearly staved in his teeth. Now
the demon deigned to notice him, momentarily. "Get lost,
lout, or I'll hurt you."

What was this? Fiant seemed to be stronger than Smash!

The demon drew Tandy in to him by the hair, reaching
with the clawed fingers of his other hand to rip off her
blouse.

Smash charged again, fists swinging. He caught the de-
mon on his pointed ear.

This time Fiant became annoyed. "You seem to be a
slow learner, creep." He loosed the girl, spun about, and
struck Smash with a lightning-fast one-two combination
punch on chin and stomach. Smash went down, head fog-
ging, gasping for breath. "No man can stand against a de-
mon," Fiant said arrogantly, and turned again to Tandy.

But the brief respite had given her a chance to work up
some spunk. She dived for Smash. "Take my soul!" she
cried, and he felt its wonderful enhancement infusing him,
He had forgotten how weak he was with only half a soul.

Then she was yanked away by the hair. Fiant held her

304

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

305

up, her feet dangling. "No more Mr. Nice Guy," he said.
"Off with your skirt." On the trip down, Tandy had re-
made the tatters of her red dress into a good skirt, and
completed her wardrobe and Smash's by sewing material
from cloth bushes.

Smash leaped up and tackled the demon. Now he had
his strength! But Fiant poked two fingers at his eyes. Pain-
fully blinded. Smash fell to the ground again. He had a full
soul again; why couldn't he prevail?

It was Tandy who came up with the answer. "Smash,
you're too much of a man now!" she cried from her dan-
gle. "Too gentle and polite. Try thinking of yourself as an
ogre!"

It was true. Smash had spent several days becoming
manishly civilized. As Fiant had said, no man was a match
for a demon.

But an ogre, now . . .

Smash thought of himself as an ogre. It wasn't hard. He
had spent his life indulging in just such thinking; the old
thought patterns were strong. He visualized the ground
trembling at his stomp, trees being ripped from their moor-
ings, boulders being crushed to sand by single blows of
horny fists.

Hair sprouted on his arms. Muscles bulged horrendously.
His height jumped. His orange jacket, which hung on him
loosely, abruptly became tight. His shorts split apart and
fell off. His hands swelled into hams. His bruised eyeballs
popped into awful ogre orbs. Ogre, ogre . . .

Smash put one hamfinger to the ground and lifted his
whole body into the air, then he flipped neatly to his rock-
calloused feet He roared—and the leaves of the nearest
trees swirled away. So, unfortunately, did Tandy's clothes,
such as remained; they were not constructed for hurricane
winds.

She swung in dainty nudity by her hair. "Go get him,
ogre!" she cried, and kicked the demon on the nose.

Fiant looked at Smash—and gaped. Suddenly he faced a
monster far worse than himself. He dropped the girl and
turned to flee.

Smash bent down, hooked his fingers in the turf, and
yanked. The turf came toward him in a rug, dumping the

demon on his homs. Smash took one tromp forward and
launched a mighty kick at Fiant's elevated rump. The kick
should have propelled the demon well toward the sun.

But Smash's foot passed right through Fiant. Smash,
thrown off balance by the missed kick, did a backward flip
and whomped on his head. That hardly mattered to an
ogre, but it gave the demon a chance to get organized.

Fiant realized that the ogre could not really hurt him,
thanks to his ability to dematerialize at will. This restored
his courage marvelously. Bullies always got brave when the
odds were loaded on their side. He got up, strode toward
Smash, and punched him in the gut. It was a good, hard
blow—but now Smash shrugged it off as the trifle it was
and countered with a sweep of his arm that was so swift
and fierce it caused a contrail behind it.

But this blow, too, passed through the demon without
effect.

"He's dematerializing!" Tandy cried. "You can't hit
him!"                         »

Unconvinced, Smash plunged his fist at the demon's
head from above. This blow should have driven the demon
halfway into the ground. Instead, it passed the entire length
of Piant's body without impediment and struck the bare
rock beneath, where the rug of turf had been removed. The
rock cracked apart and powdered into sand, naturally.
Then Smash rammed a straight punch at Fiant's belly—
and only succeeded in sundering the tree behind him.
Smash was tearing up the landscape to no avail.

But the demon could hit Smash, by rematerializing his
fists just before they struck. The blows didn't really hurt,
but Smash was annoyed. How could he pulverize a creature
who could not be hit back?

He tried to grab Fiant. This worked slightly better. The
demon's body was as diffuse as smoke to his touch, but
Smash's spread hamhands had more purchase, and he was
able to guide the smoke as long as he handled it carefully.
Unfortunately, the demon's fists remained material, and
they now beat a brutal tattoo on Smash's face. His nose and
eyes were hurting anew.

"Use your mind. Smash!" Tandy called.

Smash held the demon in place, enduring the facial bat-

tering while he put his natural Eye Queue intellect to work
What would deal with such a demon once and for all? It
would not be enough merely to drive Fiant off; he had to
fix it so the demon could never again bother Tandy. If
Tandy had a notion how he should proceed, why hadn't she
simply screamed it out?

Because if the demon heard, he would act to negate it.
Smash had to do whatever it was by surprise.

He glanced at Tandy—and saw her sitting on the gourd
he had carried. Suddenly he understood.

He snapped at the demon's fists, using his big ogre teeth.
"Oh, no, you don't, monster!" Fiant exclaimed. "You can't
get me that way!" Sure enough, he punched Smash on the
tongue, and when Smash's teeth closed on the fist, it dema-
terialized and withdrew unhurt.

But meanwhile, Smash was carrying the demon toward
the gourd. When he got there, he slowly tilted Fiant down
toward the peephole Tandy had been sitting on. The demon
was about to face the gourd. If Fiant saw it too soon, he
would strike it and shatter it, ruining the ploy.

Fiant, intent on punching Smash's snout into a pulp, did
not spy the gourd until he was abruptly face to face with it.
"No!" he cried, realizing what it was. He jammed his eyes
closed so he could not look, and dematerialized.

"Yes!" Smash grunted. He shoved the demon headfirst
at the gourd/Because Fiant was dematerialized, he passed
right through the peephole, headfirst. Suddenly Smash re-
membered the bottle ifrit inside this same gourd. Wasn't
the gourd another kind of container? "You want to force
your way into something? This is a good place." Smash fed
the rest of the demon through, arms, torso, legs, and feet,
until all of him was gone.

"Let him find his way out of thatV Tandy cried jubi-
lantly. "Oh, this really serves him right!"

Smash put his ear to the peephole. He heard a faint,
angry neighing, as of an aroused stallion, and a startled
scream. It seemed the demon could not dematerialize very
effectively in a world where everything was already imma-
terial. Then the beat of hooves faded away in the internal
distance.

Smash smiled. As Tandy had suggested, it would be long
before the demon found his way out of that situation!

He drew forth Tandy's fillet of soul and handed it back
to her. Suddenly he felt his full strength return, and saw
Tandy brightening similarly. Their two half souls had been

returned!

Smash realized what it was. The nightmares had made a
fair exchange for the two halves of Fiant.

Smash straightened up, keeping his eye averted from the
peephole. He squinted at Tandy, perceiving her disheveled
but pert nudity. "Ogre confess, like she dress," he said.

"Oh, you're a sight for sore eyes yourself!" Tandy said in
nurselike fashion, wiping Smash's battered face. "And sore
nose, too! But do you know something? I love you just as

much in the ogre view."

He kissed her then, using his sore lips, not caring what
point of view it might be. Love was, after all, blind,