But they couldn't move very well, tangled in flypaper. It was collecting dirt and leaves and stray bugs, making each member of the party resemble a harpy dipped in glue. Long before they found a hotspring, they heard the heavy tread of the feet of a land dragon.
"You know what?" the Siren said angrily. "The flies offered us up to the dragons!"
"And the Ear, too," John cried, spying the Gap Dragon's Ear on the ground.
"That's to frame us," Goldy said. "The dragons will think we killed one of their number, and they'll really chomp us."
Smash braced himself. "I'll try to hold them off."
"You haven't yet recovered enough strength," the Siren said. "And many big dragons are coming. Don't try to fight." She took the Ear from John and listened to it. It twitched in her hand. "Someone's talking about us! An ogre, a centaur, and five nymphs."
"That won't do us much good if the dragons eat us," Tandy muttered.
"What's it like to be eaten?" Biythe asked. Clothed in paper, she looked just like the others, with hardly any of her metal showing.
"That's right-you have had even less experience in regular Xanth than I have," Tandy said. "But I doubt you'll ever be eaten. Your body is brass."
"Well, everything is brass where I come from," Biythe replied. "My pet bird is brass, my sheep is brass, even my ass is brass. That's the way it is in the City of Brass. What does that have to do with being eaten?"
"Monsters don't eat brass here," Tandy explained.
"I can't be eaten?" Biythe asked, sounding disappointed.
"Oh, you could try," John said. "When the first dragon comes, you could volunteer to be the first eaten.
But I think you alone among us are secure from that fate."
"I wonder," the brassie said thoughtfully.
Already the first dragon was arriving. It was a huge eight-legged land rover, snorting smoke. Smash strode forward to meet it, knowing it would have been too much for him even when he had his full strength. It wasn't the dragon's size so much as its heat; it could roast him long before he hurt it. But the dragon would attack regardless of whether he fought, and it was an ogre's way to fight. Maybe he could hurl some boulders at it and score a lucky conk on its noggin.
Then Biythe ran past him, intercepting the dragon. The dragon exhaled, bathing her in flame, but brief heat could not hurt her. She continued right on up to its huge snout. "Eat me first, dragon!" she cried.
The dragon did not squat on ceremony. It opened its monstrous jaws and took her in in one bite.
And broke half a dozen teeth on her hard metal.
Biythe frowned amidst the smoke and piled fragments of teeth. "You can do better than that, dragon!" she urged indignantly.
The dragon tried again-and broke six more teeth. "Come on, creature!" Biythe taunted. "Show your mettle on my metal. I've received worse dents just from being dropped-but I won't say where."
Now several more dragons arrived. They paused, curious about the holdup. Another snatched Biythe away, crunching down hard on her body-and it, too, lost six teeth.
The brass girl was insulted. "Is that all there is to it? What kind of experience is that? Here I visit this great big, soft, slushy, living world at great inconvenience, and you monsters aren't doing a thing!"
Abashed, the dragons stared at her. She still looked like a clothed flesh person. Finally a third one tried-and lost its quota of teeth.
"If you dumb dragons can't eat one little girl when she's cooperating, what good are you?" Biythe demanded, disgusted. She shook tooth fragments off her body, marched up to one of the largest
monsters, and yanked at a whisker. "You-eat me or else!"
The dragon exhaled a horrendous belch of flame. It burned Biythe's remaining flypaper to ashes, but didn't hurt her. Seeing that, the monster backed off, dismayed. If a thing couldn't be chomped or scorched, it couldn't be handled.
"You know, I think we have had a stroke of luck," the Siren said. "The dragons naturally assume we are all like that."
"Luck?" John asked. "Biythe knows what she's doing! She knows she needs us to get her back to her world. She's helping us get out of a fix."
Smash's Eye Queue operated. "Maybe we can benefit further. We need a nice, steady stream of steam to melt off the flypaper."
"A steam bath," the Siren agreed. "But very gentle."
Biythe tried it. She approached a big steam-turbine dragon. "Bathe me, monster, or I'll make you eat me," she said imperiously.
Cowed, the dragon obeyed. It jetted out a wash of rich white steam and vapor. In a moment the brass girl stood shining clean, well polished, the fly ash all sogged off.
"Now my friends," Biythe ordered. "A little lower on the heat; they're tougher than I am and don't need so much."
She was playing it cool! Nervously the others stood in place while the dragon sent forth a cooler blast.
Smash and the girls stepped into it. The vapor was as hot as John could stand, but since she had already lost her wings, it didn't hurt her. The others had no trouble. All the flypaper was steamed off.
Smash also became aware that his .fleas were gone. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn't been scratching since entering the Kingdom of the Flies. Those fly-repellent leaves must have driven off the fleas, too!
Now a dragon approached with an elf on a leash. "Do any of you freaks speak human?" the elf asked.
Smash exchanged glances with the others. Biythe Brassie had been speaking to these monsters all along, and they had understood. Didn't this elf know that? Better to play it stupid. "Me freak, some speak," he said, emulating his former ogre mode.
The elf considered him. The little man's expression ran a brief gamut from fear of a monster to contempt for the monster's wit. "What are you doing here with these six females?"
"Me anticipate girls taste great," Smash said, slurping his tongue over his chops.
Again the fearful contempt. "I know ogres eat people. But what are you doing here in Dragonland?"
Smash scratched his hairy head as if confused. "Me criticize buzzing flies."
"Oh. They booted you." The elf made crude growls at his dragon, and Smash realized he was translating, much as Grundy the Golem did for the King of Xanth. Maybe Biythe had gotten through to the dragons mainly by force of personality.
The dragon growled back. "You'll have to check in with the Dragon Lady."
"Dragon Lady not afraidy?" Smash asked stupidly. The elf sneered. "Of the like of you? Hardly. Come on now, ignoramus."
Ignoramus? Smash smiled inwardly. Not while he remained cursed with the Eye Queue! But he shuffled behind the dragon, gesturing the girls to follow.
The Siren fell in beside Smash as they walked. "I've been listening to the Ear," she murmured. "The voice that talked about us before was the elf's; the Dragon Lady knows about us already. Now the Ear is roaring like a terrible storm. I don't know what that means."
"Maybe we have to get to that storm," Smash whispered. Then the elf turned, hearing him talk, and the conversation had to end.
They came to a huge tent fashioned of dragonet. Inside the net was the Dragon Lady-a scintillatingly regal Queen of her species. She reclined, half supine, in her huge nest of glittering diamonds; whenever she twitched, the precious stones turned up new facets, like the eyes of the Lord of the Flies, reflecting spots of light dazzlingly. She switched her barbed, blue tail about restlessly, growling, and arched her bright red neck. It was really quite impressive. She had been reading a book of Monster Comics, and seemed not too pleased to be interrupted.
"Her Majesty the Illustrious Dragon Lady demands further information, oaf," the elf said, becoming imperious in the reflected glory of his mistress.
Oaf, eh? Smash played stupider than ever. "Me slow, no know," he mumbled.
"Is it true you are impossible to eat?"
Smash held out a gauntleted fist. The Dragon Lady reached delicately forward with her snout and took a careful nip. The metal balked her gold-tinted teeth, and
she quickly desisted. She growled.
"If you aren't edible, what use are you. Her Majesty wants to know?" the elf demanded.
"What a question!" Tandy cried indignantly. "People-creatures rule Xanth!"
"Dragon-creatures rule Xanth," the elf retorted. "Dragons tolerate other creatures only as prey."
Nonetheless, the Dragon Lady's growl was muted. Smash suspected that she was not eager to incite a war with the Transformer-King of the human folk.
In response to another growl from his mistress, the elf turned again to Smash. "What are we to do with you?" he demanded.
Smash shrugged. "Me only distrust place where me rust." Actually, neither his stainless steel gauntlets nor Biythe's brass rusted; water was more likely to cause trouble with the fires of the dragons. But he was mindful of the Ear's storm-signal; if he could trick the Dragon Lady into casting them into the storm, their chances should be better than they were here.
"Metal-rust," the elf mused as the Dragon Lady growled. "True, our iron-scaled dragons do have a problem in inclement weather." He glanced suspiciously at Smash. "I don't suppose you could be fooling us?" "Me ghoul, big fool," Smash said amiably. "Obviously," the elf agreed with open contempt. So the Dragon Lady ordered the inedible party dumped into the Region of Air, since the Region of Water did not border Dragonland. An abrupt demarcation established the border; the near side was green turf and trees, the far side a mass of roiling stormcloud. Smash didn't like this, for he knew the others could not endure as much punishment as he could. But now they were committed, and it did seem better than staying among the dragons. They took the precaution of roping themselves together with Chem's rope so that no one would blow away.
They stepped across the line. Instantly they were in the heart of the wind, choking on dust. It was a dust storm, not a rainstorm! The flying sand cut cruelly into their skins. Smash picked up several girls and hunched his gross body over them, protecting them somewhat as he staggered forward. Then he tripped, for he could not see his own flat feet in this blinding sand, and fell and rolled, holding himself rigid so as not to crush the girls.
He fetched up in a valley formed in the lee of a boulder. Chem thumped to a stop beside them. Here the sand by-passed the party, mostly, and it was possible for each person to pry open an eye or two. Thanks to the rope, all were present, though battered.
"What do we do now?" Tandy asked, frightened. The Siren sat up and put the Ear to her ear. "Nothing here," she reported. "But maybe the noise of this sandstorm is drowning it out."
Smash took the Ear and listened. "I hear the brass spaceship," he said.
Biythe took it. "I hear my own folk! They're playing the brass band! I must be ready to go home!" "Are you sure?" the Siren asked.
"Yes, I think I am now," the brass girl said. "I have experienced enough of your world to know I like mine better. You are all nice enough people, but you just aren't brass."
"All too true," the Siren agreed. "We must find another gourd so Smash can take you back. We might all prefer your world at this moment."
"Maybe that's the silence you heard," Tandy said. "A gourd."
"No, there's lots of noise in the gourd," Smash said. "It's an ogrishly fun place."
"Let's find that gourd!" Biythe exclaimed. She was hardly bothered by the sand; she was merely homesick.
"Not until this storm dies down," the Siren said firmly. "Gourds don't grow in this weather."
"But this is the Region of Air; the wind will never die," Biythe protested.
Chem nodded agreement. "I have, as you know, been mapping the inner wilds of Xanth; that's why I'm here. My preliminary research, augmented by certain references along the way, suggests that there are five major elemental regions in Unknown Xanth: those of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and the Void. This certainly seems to be Air-and probably the storm never stops here. Well just have to plow on out of it."
"I can plow!" Biythe said eagerly. She milled her brass hands and began tunneling through the mounded sand. In moments she had started a tunnel.
"Good idea!" Tandy exclaimed. "I'll help!" She shook sand out of her hair and fell in behind the brass girl, scooping the sand farther back. Soon the others were helping, too, for as the tunnel progressed, the sand had longer to go before it cleared.
Finally they were all doing it, in a line, with Smash at the tail end packing the sand into a lengthening passage behind. Progress was slow but relatively comfortable. Periodically Biythe would tunnel to the surface to verify that the storm was still there. When they came to a sheltering cliff, they emerged and made better time on the surface.
The landscape was bleak: all sand and more sand. There were dunes and valleys, but no vegetation and no water.
The wind was indefatigable. It howled and roared and whistled. It formed clouds and swirls and funnels, doing its peculiar sculpture in the sky. Every so often a funnel would swoop in near the cliff, trying to suck them into its circular maw, but it could not maintain itself so close to the stone. Smash was aware that this must be a great frustration to the funnels, which were rather like ogres in their way-all violence and brainlessness.
Then they came to another demarcation. As they stepped across it, the winds abruptly ceased. The air cleared miraculously. But this was no improvement, for the violence of the air was replaced by the violence of the land. The ground shuddered, and not by any ogre's tread. It was an earthquake!
"Oh, I don't like this!" Chem said. "I've always been accustomed to the firmness of ground beneath my hooves."
Smash glanced at her. The centaur girl was standing with her forelegs braced awkwardly in different directions, her brown coat dulled by the recent sand-scouring, her tail all atremble, and her human breasts dancing rather appealingly. "Maybe the ground is firmer farther north," he suggested.
They turned north-and encountered an active volcano. Red-hot lava boiled out of it and flowed down the slope toward them. "Oh, this is worse yet!" Chem complained, slapping at a spark that landed in her pretty tail. She was really shaken; this was just not her type of terrain.
The Siren listened to the Gap Dragon's Ear again. "Say!" she said. "The sounds differ, depending on which way I face!" She rotated, listening intently. "To the north, it's a horrendous crashing; that's the volcano we see. I can hear the sound as I see it belch. To the south, it's the roaring of winds. We've already been there. To the west, a sustained rumble-the main part of the earthquake. To the east-" She smiled beautifically. "A lovely, quiet, still silence."
"Graves are silent," Tandy said with a shudder.
"Better a graveyard than this," Chem said. "We can walk on through a cemetery."
"Sometimes," Tandy agreed.
They turned east. The ground shifted constantly beneath
them as if trying to prevent progress, but they were determined to get free of this region.
As the sun set tiredly beyond the volcano, fortunately not landing inside it, they reached another demarcation of zones. Just beyond it was a patch of hypnogourds. The silence was not of the grave, but of a garden area.
"I never thought I'd be glad to see a patch of those," Tandy said grimly.
"This is where we spend the night," the Siren said. "While we're at it, let's find out whether those gourds are edible."
"Save one! Save one!" Biythe cried.
"Of course, dear. Try this one." The Siren handed the brass girl a nice big gourd.
Biythe hesitated, then looked into the peephole. She looked back up. "There's nothing there," she said.
"Nothing there?" It had not occurred to Smash that any of the gourds could be inoperative. He took the gourd from Biythe and looked in.
And found himself in the spaceship, spinning toward the ground. Hastily he grabbed the controls and tilted it back to equilibrium. Without the brass girl entangling him, he could manage just fine.
In moments he brought the ship back to the City of Brass and to the launching building. He managed to turn it around and land fairly neatly. Then he got
out and made his way through the moving buildings to the one where Biythe lived. Number Four, following his string back. He wondered idly whether he had left a trail of string strewn all over the sky, near the moon. He had lost that string in Xanth, but retained it here. Good enough.
The brassies clustered around him. "Where is Biyght?" they demanded. "We're rehearsing with our brass band, and we need her."
"Biythe. She changed her name. She'll be back as soon as I can fetch her. She heard you practicing, and said she would come back very soon. I had to find my way back here, because spaceships scare her."
"Of course; we are afraid of heights. We dent when we fall too far. Biyght already had a dent in her-"
"Don't speak of that to a stranger!" a brass girl told the male brassie.
"So give me some time," Smash said, "and I'll return her. Now I know how to do it."
They were not quite satisfied with this, but let him be. Smash settled down in a niche that moved with the wall, and snoozed.
Chapter 9. Gourmet Gourd
He woke in Xanth, where Tandy had taken away the gourd. "I never know how long to give you," she said. "I'm very nervous about leaving you in there." She lifted the Gap Dragon's Ear. "I kept listening in this, and when it got pretty quiet, I thought maybe it was time to bring you out. I wasn't sure it was you I was -listening to, but since your health is relevant to mine-"
Smash took the Ear. He heard a guttural voice, saying, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, pass this fist or take a fall," followed by a tinkling crash.
"It's not quiet now," Smash reported. "Sounds like me talking."
She smiled. "Talk all you want. Smash. You're my mainstay in this strange surface world. I do worry when you're gone."
Smash put his huge, hairy paw over her tiny human hand. "I appreciate that, Tandy. I know it would be bad for you if you got stranded alone in wilderness Xanth. But I am learning to handle things in the gourd, and I am getting stronger."
"I hope so," she said. "We all do need you, and not just for protection from monsters. Chem says there seems to be a mountain range to the north that we can't scale; the dragons are to the east, and the air storm to the south. So we'll have to veer west, back through the Region of Earth-and that volcano is still spewing hot lava."
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