Golem in the Gears

by Piers Anthony

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  The others were happy to go. They started back—and heard another rumbling. There was going to be another collapse!

  Suddenly Grundy recognized a pattern. “Chester—those are his heavy footfalls!” he exclaimed. “He’s trotting around up there, looking for us—and knocking the stones down! That’s why tunnels keep collapsing!”

  That did indeed seem to be the reason. “Chester, slow down!” Grundy called—but when he raised his voice, the sound echoed as if he were a giant, and dirt sifted down from the ceiling of the chamber. He could bring it down on himself!

  Silently, they hurried back. Chester’s erratic trotting continued to shake the chamber, making them increasingly nervous.

  They reached the point of the first cave-in. Now they had to figure a way around it, intersecting their original tunnel on the other side. That shouldn’t be difficult—but Grundy felt a tightening apprehension.

  He guided Snortimer to the left, hoping to cut back right. But though the passage soon forked, neither fork bore back the way they wanted. This was like the detour in the forest, that had refused to return to the magic path. The perversity of the inanimate! If he had Dor’s talent, he could simply ask the passages where to go, and they would answer. For that matter, he could have asked the metal thing what it was, and solved the mystery. But that of course was why Dor was rated a Magician, and was now King: his magic talent was more versatile than Grundy’s. Anyone could talk to living things, if he knew how; only Dor could talk to the inanimate.

  The tunnel forked again, and again neither fork went where they wanted it to go. Grundy was about to turn back and try the other direction—when there was another rumble, and the passage behind them collapsed.

  “Chester, you hoofbrained horse’s rump!” Grundy wailed impotently. “You’re destroying us down here!”

  Now they had to go on, and none of them knew the best way through this maze. They just had to keep going and guessing—

  Before long, Grundy knew they were lost. The passages went on and on, dividing and merging, and there was no way to tell which way was out, or whether any way remained open. They were trapped.

  Grundy thought of something else to try. “Maybe if we knock on the ceiling, they’ll hear us, and can come in from the other side.”

  Snortimer used one of his hairy hands to pick up a rock, scrambled up the side, and banged on the ceiling. Some pebbles were dislodged, but there was no collapse. He tapped in a pattern: KNOCK-KNOCK, KNOCK-KNOCK, KNOCK-KNOCK BANG!

  It worked! The earth shuddered as the centaur trotted over, orienting on the sound.

  In fact, it shuddered too much. “Another collapse!” Grundy screamed, and they dived out of the way as the ceiling sagged and then fell. They had almost brought disaster on themselves!

  They choked on the clouds of dust in the air, as the rocks settled. They would never get out this way!

  Then sharp-eyed Puck saw something. He neighed and started forward, scrambling over the rocks. “Watch out!” Grundy cried. “You’ll bring another fall down on your head!”

  “Yo!” Chester called. “You okay, down there?”

  The collapse had opened up a new way out! That was the night sky up there!

  Grundy mounted Snortimer again, and they scrambled nimbly up to the surface. It was a tremendous relief to be free!

  Once he was far from the hole in the ground, Grundy described his adventure, embellishing it only slightly, and showed them the metal spike Puck had brought out. “What do you think it is?” he asked.

  Neither Bink nor Chester had any idea. “Not treasure, certainly,” Bink concluded.

  “More like a tool,” Chester said. “But it has no handle.”

  They decided to camp one more day, then take the tunnel down into the Gap. Obviously the tunnel represented no trap, as long as they were careful not to trigger a collapse.

  But as the day brightened, Grundy remained unsatisfied. There were too many unanswered questions! Who—or what—had made all those tunnels, that network of passages surrounding the central chamber? What had happened to those creatures? Why had they left a treasure chest full of hollow metal spikes? He hated to remain in ignorance.

  At last he got up and walked alone to the entrance of the tunnel to the Gap. He stood there and stared at it. “If only I knew who made you!” he exclaimed.

  There was the rustle of leaves. A giant ancient acorn tree grew at the brink of the cleft; some of its roots had been exposed, but it had survived. “I can tell you that, golem,” it rustled.

  The tree! It had to be many centuries old! It had been here when the tunnel was new! “Tell me!” Grundy cried.

  “It was the voles,” the tree rustled.

  “The what?”

  “The voles. Human folk call them by other names, but they haven’t appreciated the real voles.”

  “What other names?” Grundy asked, perplexed.

  “Wiggles and squiggles and diggles.”

  “Wiggles!” Grundy exclaimed, appalled. “Are they swarming again?”

  “Of course not, golem,” the tree rustled, chuckling in its fashion. “But they’re related. The wiggles are the smallest and worst, and the diggles are the largest and best, and in between are the squiggles. They’re all related.”

  “I know that, barkface! What about the voles?”

  “The voles are the true name for that extensive family of tunnelers. They were once more common than they are now; you hardly see any of their family branches anymore. But the greatest of them were the civilized voles, bigger than the squiggles but just as tunnelsome. It was here they had their main camp, a thousand years ago. I was just a sprout when they left, but I remember.”

  “They departed a thousand years ago?” Grundy asked, amazed.

  “Give or take a century; I lose track. My memory rings aren’t what they used to be. Before the dominance of the goblins and harpies, anyway.”

  “The harpies and goblins haven’t been dominant since the days of King Roogna!”

  “Just so,” the tree agreed.

  “These voles—just what were they like?”

  “They were fairly big—bigger than the squiggles of today, but smaller than the diggles. Big enough to make these tunnels.”

  “Centaur-sized, then!” Grundy said.

  “Maybe a little smaller. They didn’t like to be crowded, so they made their tunnels with some clearance. It’s hard for me to judge, because I was so much smaller then.”

  “These voles—they were just big squiggles, just tunneling everywhere?”

  “They tunneled, but they weren’t just squiggles!” the tree rustled. “They did things, there underground. They had conventions, or something, they made plans—and then they went away.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “That I don’t know. They just went, leaving their tunnels behind.”

  So the tree really didn’t know much. But Grundy tried again: “We found some sort of metal thing, a chest full of them, like hollow spikes, only slightly curved. Do you know what those would be?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I saw those being used. They are artificial claws.”

  “What?”

  “The voles dug so much, they wore off their natural claws. So they put on artificial ones, made of metal, very strong. Then they could dig twice as fast, and not get as tired. Those claws were their most prized possession.”

  Of course! Hollow claws, put on over the natural ones, like gauntlets. That would greatly enhance the ability of a digging creature. Mystery solved.

  But as Grundy returned to the bed, he realized that the greater mystery remained. Where had those voles gone, and why? It was evident that nothing had hurt them, for there were no skeletons and there was no damage, other than that done by Chester’s hooves. They must have gone of their own volition—their own vole-ition—to some place of their choosing. Perhaps they were there today, digging even better labyrinths.

  But p
robably he would never know where or why. It was a frustrating frustration.

  5

  Stella Steamer

  In the evening they proceeded to the tunnel and entered it. The ghost horses, satisfied that all was well, did not accompany them; they preferred to graze on the surface. Again the dim illumination of the fungus helped them, without bothering Snortimer unduly; it was almost as if the voles had had Bed Monsters in mind. Or maybe such fungus was part of the natural habitat of nocturnal monsters. It was, at any rate, another fortunate coincidence.

  Grundy led the way, because Snortimer was most at home in a dark passage like this and was very sure-handed here. Chester and Bink had to be more careful, with their big clumsy feet. Once again Grundy appreciated the Good Magician’s wisdom in specifying this particular steed. Often Humfrey’s prescriptions made a good deal more sense than they seemed to at first.

  The tunnel wound down and around, tantalizing them with a seeming descent to the bottom, only to rise again. Obviously the voles had not considered directness to be a virtue! This was probably their scenic route, though all there was to see was round walls.

  Then an aperture appeared, into which a stray beam of moonlight probed. Snortimer shrunk away; moonlight wasn’t deadly to him, but he distrusted it on principle. Chester paused to peer out—and whistled. Grundy dismounted and went over to look, climbing up to the centaur’s shoulder in order to reach the elevation of the hole.

  Now he saw it. Above, the pale moon squatted on an unruly cloud. Below, the awesome precipice of the Chasm opened. Grundy felt suddenly dizzy, as if falling into that terrible Chasm. Chester’s big hand caught him before he fell. “You need all four feet on the ground before you lean out that window,” the centaur murmured.

  True words! Grundy scrambled back down and away from the hole; he had had more than enough of it!

  Travel resumed. Progress seemed swift enough, but was actually slower than it would have been on level ground, because they were constantly stepping over stones and clearing cobwebs from their way.

  Somewhere around midnight they heard something, and paused. It was a low whistling or moaning, coming from somewhere ahead, in the tunnel. “Something’s there!” Grundy exclaimed, horrified.

  “I’m sure it’s all right,” Bink said nonchalantly.

  “How can you be so sure things will be all right, all the time?” Grundy demanded.

  But Bink only smiled and shrugged. Obviously he knew something Grundy didn’t, and that annoyed Grundy inordinately.

  They waited, for there really was not much else they could do. The noises approached, and in due course a dark shape loomed in the tunnel. Grundy shrank back, and Chester drew his sword, but Bink remained unconcerned.

  It seemed to be an animal, smaller than the centaur, but massive. It had front feet with enormous claws. It moved along, and it was evident that there was not room for it to pass them in the narrow tunnel. Yet it did not pause; it just moved on at them.

  “Just let the vole pass,” Bink said. “It’s harmless.”

  “A vole?” Grundy asked.

  “The ghost of one,” Bink said.

  With that, the creature moved right through Chester, through Bink, and brushed by Grundy with no impact. It was indeed a ghost.

  It proceeded on up the tunnel, going its mysterious way, paying the living party no attention.

  “I daresay the civilized voles could be nervous about an apparition like that, just as we tend to be about human ghosts,” Bink remarked.

  Chester resheathed his sword. His hand was shaking. “I daresay they could,” the centaur agreed, relaxing.

  Grundy understood Chester’s embarrassment perfectly. He had been on the verge of terrified, yet obviously there had been no danger. Naturally voles had ghosts; every species did. But for a moment it had certainly seemed like a monster!

  They resumed their trek down. Grundy pondered again what he had learned about the civilized voles. It made sense that their ghosts could not accompany them; most ghosts were locked to the regions of their deaths. But where had the living voles gone, and why? There was still no answer.

  As dawn neared, they reached the bottom of the Chasm. They simply set up the bed in the comfortable darkness of the tunnel, then went out to forage for food. “But if you hear the dragon coming,” Chester warned Grundy, “get over to us quickly, because you’re the only one who can talk with it.”

  Grundy smiled. That was true enough; without him, there could be a most awkward misunderstanding! He felt more important.

  The bottom of the Gap Chasm was a fairly nice place, at least in this region. There were small trees and bushes, and fruits were abundant. The only thing that was missing was animal life. That was because the Gap Dragoness ate all of that.

  For a long time people had considered the Gap Dragon a terrible scourge, serving no useful purpose. Now it was known that the combination of Gap and Dragon served, historically, to protect Xanth from the worse scourges of the Mundane Waves of invasion. That had become clear when the so-called Nextwave (now the new Lastwave) surged through; the Gap had become a major line of defense. Grundy wondered how many other seemingly evil things of Xanth actually had good purposes, when understood. There was a lot more to Xanth than met the casual eye.

  They finished their meal and slept. Around noon the ground shuddered, somewhat the way it had when the invisible giant had stridden toward them but less so. This was the familiar whomp! whomp! of the Gap Dragon.

  Suddenly the whole party was alert. Grundy stood before the tunnel exit, ready to meet the dragon first. This was his moment of power.

  She whomped into view: a long, low, six-legged dragoness, moving with surprising velocity. Steam belched from her mouth and nostrils, adding to the splendor of her approach. There was hardly a more impressive figure than the Gap Dragon—or Dragoness—in full charge!

  “Halt!” Grundy cried, holding his little hand aloft. “We come in friendship!”

  The dragoness whomped on, her gaze fixed on Chester.

  “Hey!” Grundy said. “Slow down! I told you—”

  She steamed right by him, her jaws opening. Chester, no coward, had his sword in hand, ready to defend himself—but no ordinary centaur was a match for such a dragon, and Chester was no longer in his prime.

  Grundy realized that the dragoness was so intent on her presumed prey that she hadn’t heard him at all. Dragons generally had limited intellects, and could truly concentrate on only one thing at a time. How could he get through to her before disaster?

  He saw a shadow in the sky. A roc was wheeling, perhaps curious about the proceedings. Grundy had a notion.

  “Hey, brothers!” he squawked in roc-talk. “Let’s go down and haul on that dragon’s tail!”

  Stella Steamer skidded to a halt, blowing out a vast cloud of steam. “You try it, and you’ll get such a chomp—!” she hissed in dragon-language. Then she paused, for the rocs were nowhere close.

  “It’s me, Stella,” Grundy cried. “Grundy Golem! We’re here on business!”

  “I’m not Stella,” she steamed. “I’m Stacey!”

  Oops—he had forgotten. “Sorry. I misremembered.”

  “But I like Stella better,” she decided.

  “Anything you like,” he agreed, as one does when facing a dragon. Now at least he had her attention.

  “You’re not strays?” she growled.

  “Not strays,” he informed her firmly. “We came to see you about Stanley.”

  “Stanley! You found him?” She had of course been advised of the disappearance of the little dragon.

  “No. I’m on a Quest to find him. Bink and Chester helped me travel here. I must ride the Monster Under the Bed to the Ivory Tower. But I don’t know where the Ivory Tower is. I was hoping you had heard something.”

  “Nothing,” she said with deep regret, exhaling another cloud of steam. “Of course I don’t get much chance to talk to most passing creatures before I eat them, and the rocs won’t give me
the time of day.”

  “Of course not,” Grundy agreed. “They’ve got stone for brains.”

  “But even if Stanley wasn’t lost, he’d still be too young,” she growled, discouraged. She was patrolling the Gap only temporarily; it was normally Stanley’s job.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “There’s been a technological breakthrough. Reverse-wood and Youth Elixir. He can be any age, instantly.”

  “Any age!” she steamed, delighted. “We’ve got to find him!”

  “But if you have no notion, then—”

  “Maybe the Monster of the Sea would know!” she hissed eagerly. “He came from Mundania thousands of years ago, and knows an awful lot about the hiding places of monsters of all types. If anyone would know, where the Ivory Tower is, he would!”

  “I’ll be glad to ask him. Where is he?”

  “He skulks off the east coast, foraging up and down the length of Xanth, looking for maidens to eat, or something.” She licked her chops.

  “The east coast!” Grundy exclaimed. “My friends have to return home; we couldn’t possibly get that far in the time they have!”

  “I will take you there!” she said, animated by the prospect of finding and maturing Stanley.

  “You don’t understand, Stace—uh, Stella. I’m riding Snortimer, the Monster Under the Bed, and the centaur is carrying the bed.”

  She nodded. “Those Bed Monsters are sadly limited. Still, I could tote that bed, if that’s the only problem.”

  Grundy realized that this was another lucky break. He could go on without the man and the centaur!

  He switched to man-tongue and explained. “Good enough,” Bink agreed. “We were about to have to turn back anyway. It’s been a fine mini-adventure, but the wives—”

  “I’m never going to get married!” Grundy said. “Wives are a terror.”

  Chester waggled a warning finger at him. “You won’t have a choice, if some golem damsel sets her cap for you.”