Well, that was the nature of ogres. He was thirsty in this heat; maybe the stun in the bottle was good to drink. Smash ripped off the seal and used his teeth to pop the cork. After all, he was uncertain how long it would be before he came across anything potable, here in the gourd. But mainly, his action was his Eye Queue's fault; because of it, he was curious.
As the cork blasted free, vapor surged out of the bottle. It swelled out voluminously. Too bad-this was neither edible nor potable, and it smelled of sulfur. Smash sneezed.
The vapor formed a big greenish cloud, swirling about but not dissipating into the air. In a moment, two muscular arms projected from it, and the remainder formed into the head and upper torso of a gaseous man-creature about Smash's own size.
"Who in the gourd are you?" Smash inquired. "Ho, ho, ho!" the creature boomed. "I be the ifrit of the bottle. Thou has freed me; as thy reward, I shall suffer thee to choose in what manner thou shalt die."
"Oh, one of those," Smash said, unimpressed. "A bottle imp." He now recognized, in retrospect, this creature as the figure on the joker card. He had taken it to be an ogre, but, of course, ogres had hairy legs and big flat feet, rather than trailing smoke.
"Dost thou mock me, thou excrescence of excrement?" the ifrit demanded, swelling angrily. " Beware, lest I squish thee into a nonentitious cube and make bouillon soup of thee!"
"Look, ifrit, I don't have time for this nonsense," Smash said, though the mention of the bouillon cube made him hungry. He had squished a bull into a bouillon cube once and made soup with it; he could use some of that now! "I just want to find the Night Stallion and vacate the lien on my soul. If you aren't going to help, get out of my way."
"Surely I shall destroy thee!" the ifrit raged, turning dusky purple. He reached for the ogre's throat with huge and taloned hands.
Smash grabbed the ifrit's limbs, knotted them together in much the way he had tied the extremities of the ghastlies, and jammed the creature headfirst back into the green bottle. "Oaf! Infidel!" the ifrit screamed, his words somewhat distorted since his mouth was squeezed through the bottle's neck. "What accursed mischief be this?"
"I warned you," Smash said, using a forefinger to tamp more of the ifrit into the container. "Don't mess with ogres. They have no sense of humor."
Struggle as he might, the ifrit could not prevail against Smash's power. "Ooo, ouch!" the voice came muffled from the glass. "OooOOoo!" For Smash's finger had rammed into the creature's gasous posterior.
Then a hand came back out of the bottle. It waved a white flag.
Smash knew that meant surrender. "Why should I pay attention to you?" he asked.
"Mmph of mum genuine free wish," the voice cried from the depths of the bottle.
That sounded promising. "But I don't need a wish about how I will die."
"Mmmph oomph!"
"Okay, ifrit. Give me one positive wish." Smash removed his finger.
The ifrit surged backward out of the bottle. "What is they wish, O horrendous one?" he asked, nibbing his rear.
"I want to know the way to the next world."
"I was about to send thee there!" the ifrit exclaimed, aggrieved.
"The next gourd scene. How do I get there?"
"Oh." The ifrit considered. "The closest be the mirror world. But that be no place for the like of thee.
Thy very visage would shatter that scene."
This creature was trying to lull him with flattery! "Tell me anyway."
"On thy fool head be it." The ifrit made a dramatic gesture. There was a blinding flash. "Thou wilt be-sorree!" the creature's voice came, fading away with descending pitch as if retreating at nearly the speed of sound.
Smash pawed his eyes, and gradually sight filtered back. He stood among a horrendous assortment of ogres. Some were much larger than he, some much smaller; some were obesely fat, some emaciatedly thin; some had ballooning heads and squat feet, others the other way around.
"What's this?" he asked, scratching his head, though it had no fleas now.
"This... this... this... this," the other ogres chorused in diminishing echo, each scratching his head.
The Eye Queue needed only that much data to formulate an educated hypothesis. "Mirrors!"
"Ors... ors... ors... ors," the echoes agreed. Smash walked among the mirrors, seeing himself pacing himself in multiple guises. The hall was straight, but after a while the images repeated. Suspicious, he used a horny fingernail to scratch a corner of one mirror, then walked farther down the hall, checking corners. Sure enough, he came across another mirror with a scratch on it, just where he had made his mark. It was the same one, surely. This hall was an endless reflection, like two mirrors facing each other. One of those endless loops he had been warned about. In fact, now he saw three lines of string: he had been retracing his course. He was trapped.
The ifrit had been right. This was no place for the like of him. Already he was hungrier, and there no food here. How could he get out?
He could smash through a mirror and through the wall behind it, of course-but would that accomplish anything? There were situations in which blind force was called for-but other situations, his Eye Queue curse reminded him obnoxiously, called for subtler negotiation. The trick was to tell them apart. One could not conquer a mirror by breaking it; one could only forfeit the game.
Smash stared into the scratched mirror, and his distorted image stared back. The image was almost as ugly as he was, but the distortion hampered it, making it less repulsive than it should have been.
Probably that was why it was snarling.
He turned and contemplated the three strands of string on the floor. He saw where the first one started: it came from another mirror. So he had entered here through a mirror. Surely that was also the way to leave. If he found some means to make another blinding flash, would he be able to step through, as before? But he had no flash-material.
Then he remembered what he had beard in the Gap Dragon's Ear. Could that relate? It had sounded like his voice, talking about a mirror. He decided to try it.
He positioned himself squarely before the mirror. He elevated his hamfist. "Mirror, mirror on the wall,"
he intoned, imitating his own voice as well as he could. "Pass this fist or take a fall." Then he punched forward.
His fist smashed through the glass and into the wall behind it. The mirror tinkled in pieces to the floor.
Smash leaned forward to peer through the hole in the wall. It opened on another hall of mirrors. Sure enough, there was no escape there; he was caught among the mirrors until he found the proper way out.
He tromped to the next mirror. He raised his fist again and spoke his rhyme. The he punched through, with the same result.
This did not seem to be working. But it was the only clue he had. Maybe when the other mirrors saw what was happening, they would capitulate. After all, this technique had been effective with the shocking doorknobs. The inanimate tended to be stupid, as Prince Dor had shown, but it did eventually learn what was good for it.
The change happened sooner than anticipated. His fist did not strike the third mirror; it passed through without resistance. His arm and body followed it, and he did a slow fall through the aperture.
He rolled on something soft and sat up. He sniffed. He looked. He salivated.
He sat on a huge bed of cake, replete with vanilla icing. Pastries and sweets were all about him, piled high: doughnuts, strudel, éclairs, tarts, cookies, creampuffs, gingerbread, and more intricate pastries.
Smash had been growing hungry before; it had been well over an hour since he had last filled up. Now he was ravenous. But again the damned curse of the Eye Queue made him pause. The purpose of these worlds inside the gourd seemed to be to make him unhappy. This food did not fit that purpose-unless there were something Wrong with it Could it be poisoned? Poison did not bother ogres much, but was best avoided.
One way to find out. Smash scooped up a glob of floor and crammed it in his big mouth. The cake was
excellent. Then he got up and explored the region, keeping himself busy while waiting for the poison to act. He had not eaten enough to cause real damage to the gross gut of an ogre, but if he felt discomfort, he would take warning.
He was in a large chamber completely filled with the pastries. There was no apparent exit. He punched experimentally through a wall of fruitcake, but the stuff seemed to have no end. He suspected he could punch forever and only tear up more cake. There appeared to be no reasonable limit to the worlds that fit inside the gourd. How, then, was he to escape this place?
His stomach suffered nothing but the ravages of increasing hunger, so he concluded the food was not poisoned. Still he hesitated. There had to be some trap, something to make him hurt. If not poison, what?
There seemed to be no threat, no spitball-shooting tanks, no ifrit, not even starvation from delay.
Well, suppose he fell to and ate his fill? Where would he be? Still here, with no way out. If he remained long enough, stuffing himself at will, he would lose his soul by default in three months. No point in that.
Yet, no sense in going hungry. He grabbed a bunk of angelcake and gulped it down. He felt angelic.
That was no mood for an ogre! He chomped some devilsfood, and felt devilish. That was more like it.
He gulped some dream pie, and dreamed of smiting the Night Stallion and recovering the lien on his soul.
Wait. He forced himself to stop eating, lest he sink immediately into the easy slough of indulgence.
Better to keep hungry and alert, his cursed taskmaster of an Eye Queue told him. What did the Eye Queue care about hunger? It didn't have to eat! But he went along with it for the moment, knowing it would give him no peace otherwise. He would reward himself only for making progress in solving this particular riddle. That was discipline no ordinary ogre could master, infuriating as it was.
Still, time was passing, and he had no idea how to proceed. There had to be something. After all, it wasn't as if he could simply eat his way out of here.
That thought made him pause. Why not eat out? Chew a hole in the wall until he ran out of edibles-which would be another world.
No. There would be too much cake for even an ogre to eat. Unless he knew exactly where a weak spot was-Weak spot Surely so. Something that differed from the rest of this stuff.
Smash started a survey course of eating, looking for the difference. All of it was excellent. A master pastry chef had baked this chamber.
Then he encountered a vein of licorice. That was one confection Smash didn't like; it reminded him of manure. True, some ogres could eat and like manure, but that just wasn't Smash's own taste. Naturally he avoided this vein.
Then his accursed, annoying, and objectionable Eye Queue began percolating again. The Eyes of the vine saw entirely too much, especially what wasn't necessarily there. Manure. What would leave manure in the form of a confection?
Answer: some creature in charge of a chamber of confections. The Night Stallion, perhaps. When the Stallion departed, he would leave his token of contempt. Big brown balls of sweet manure.
What exit would the Stallion use? How could that exit be found?
Answer: the trail of manure would show the way. Horses hardly cared where they left it, since it was behind them. They left it carelessly, thoughtlessly, often on the run.
Smash started digging out the licorice. But when he did, the foul stuff melted into other cake, transforming it into licorice, too. That obscured the trail. He had to do something about that.
He cast about, but came up with only the least pleasant solution. He would have to eat it. That was the only way to get rid of it. To consume the manure of the Stallion.
Fortunately, ogres didn't have much pride about what they ate. He nerved himself and bit in. The licorice-cake was awful, truly feculent, but he gulped it down anyway.
Now his gorge was rising violently inside him. Ogres were supposed never to get sick, no matter how rotten the stuff they ate. But this was manure! He ate on.
Smash came to a round hole in the material of the chamber. The dung had led him to it-since this was the exit the Stallion had taken. Smash scrambled through the passage, knowing that if he could just choke down his revolted, revolting stomach a little longer, he would win this contest, too.
He came to a drop-off and tumbled out, spinning and turning in air. Now he was falling through darkness.
That last jolt of weightlessness was too much. His stomach burst its constraints and heaved its awful contents violently out. The reaction sent him zooming backward through space. Smash puked, it seemed, for eons, and worked up a velocity to rival that of the brass spaceship. He hoped he didn't get lost in space beyond the stars.
Chapter 10. Fond Wand
He was retching into the gourd patch. Apparently he had jetted himself right out of the gourd! Chem was using the hardened rind of an empty gourd to scoop the vomit away, making room for more as it flowed voluminously from Smash's mouth.
As he realized where he was, his sickness abated. He looked about.
The girls were in a sorry state. All five of them were spattered. "We decided to get you out of the gourd before it got worse," Tandy said apologetically. "What happened?"
"I ate a lot of horse-er, manure," Smash said. "Instead of cake and pastry."
"Ogres do have unusual tastes," John remarked.
Smash chuckled weakly. "Where's some decent food? I don't want to eat any more gourds, and I'm going to be hungry as soon as I feel better."
"There'll be food at Goblinland," Goldy Goblin said.
"How far is that?"
Chem produced her map. "As I make it, we're close. From what Goldy tells me, the main tribe of goblins is not far from here, as the dragon flies. Just a few hours' walk, except that there's a mountain in the way, so we have to go around-across the Earth works. That complicates it. But I think the lava is cool enough now. We had better get over it before more comes."
"Like hot vomit," Goldy muttered.
Smash looked at the conic mountain. It steamed a little, but was generally quiescent. "Yes-let's cross quickly."
They started across. Goldy knew a little foot-cooling spell used by goblins and taught it to them. It wasn't real magic, but rather an accommodation to the local landscape. Smash's Eye Queue was cynical, suspecting that any benefit from the spell was simply illusion, the belief in cooler feet. Yet his feet did feel cooler.
They had to skirt the volcano's eastern slope. The cone rumbled, annoyed, but was in its off-phase and could not mount any real action.
The ground, however, was rested. It had energy to expend. It shook, making their travel difficult. The shaking became more violent, causing the hardened lava to craze, to crack, to break up, and to form fissures, exposing the red-hot rock down below.
"Hurry!" Chem cried, her hooves dancing on the shifting rocks. Smash remembered that insecure footing made her nervous. Now it made him nervous, too.
"Oh, I wish I could fly again!" John cried, terrified. She stumbled and started to fall into a widening crack.
Chem caught her. "Get on my back," she directed. The fairy scrambled gratefully aboard.
The ground shook again. A fragment turned under the Siren's foot, and she went down. Smash caught her, lifted her high, and saw that her ankle was twisted. He would have to carry her.
Now the volcano rumbled again. It might be in its off-phase, but it wasn't entirely helpless. A new fissure opened in its side, and bright red lava welled out, like fresh blood. It spilled down toward them, shifting channels to orient accurately.
"It's coming for us!" Tandy cried, alarmed. "This land doesn't like us!"
Smash looked northeast. The goblin territory was far across the treacherously shifting rocks. Already the lava plain was humping like a slow ocean swell, as if trying to break free of its cool crust. Smash knew that if much more fragmentation occurred, they would all fall through that crust into the liquid lava below.
"Too far!" Tandy cried despairing
ly. "We can't make it!"
"North!" Chem said. "It's better to the north!" They scrambled north, though that horizon looked like a wall of fire. The lava crust broke into big plates that, in turn, fragmented into platelets that slowly subsided under the weight of the party. Red lava squeezed up around the edges and leaked out onto the surface. Meanwhile, the fresh lava from the fissure flowed down to join the turbulent plain, further melting the platelets. There was now no retreat.
"Spread out!" Goldy cried. "Not too much weight on any one plate!"
They did it. The goblin girl was the most agile, so she led the way, finding the best plates and the best crossing places. Tandy followed, glancing nervously back at Smash as if afraid he would be too clumsy.
She did care for him; it was obvious, now that Biythe had given him the hint. But that was hardly worth worrying about at this moment. They might all soon perish.
Next in line was Chem, carrying John on her back, her hooves handling the maneuvering well. Then came Smash, holding the Siren in his arms. Her feet had converted back to the tail; evidently that alleviated the pain in her ankle. However, her tail form was also her bare-top form, and the sight of all that juggling flesh made him ravenous again. He hoped he never got so hungry that he forgot these were his friends.
The edges of the plates depressed alarmingly as they took Smash's weight, for it was concentrated in a smaller area than was the centaur's. Once a plate broke under his weight, becoming two saucers, and he had to scramble, dipping a toe in red lava; it hurt terribly, but he ran on.
"Your toe!" the Siren exclaimed. "It's scorched!"
"Better that than falling in," he grunted.
"In case we don't make it," she said, "I'd better tell you now. You're a lot of creature. Smash."
"Ogres are big," he agreed. "You're a fair morsel of creature yourself." Indeed, she had continued to grow more youthful, and was now a sight to madden men. Or so he judged, from his alien viewpoint.
"You're more than I think you know. You could have been where you're going by now if you hadn't let the rest of us impose."
"No. I agreed to take Tandy along, and the rest of you have helped. I'm not sure I could have handled the dragons alone, or gotten out of the gourd."
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