"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 Tandy'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 mermaid; 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. Farther to the north a forest fire raged, however, and periodically the wind shifted, bringing choking smoke and sprinkling 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 suffered 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 something to bum, they were safe for the moment.
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 intelligence 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 assume 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 Smash stepped forward again into another dying flame, panting in the stink of it, yet surviving unburned.
In this manner the party made its precarious and uncomfortable way through the fires, and came at last to the east firewall. They plunged through-and found themselves 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 demanded.
"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 awareness of each other's nature that males lacked. Maybe it was just that they were all interested in only one thing. "Anyway, 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 courtesy.
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 married!" she protested.
The goblin chief swung backhanded, catching the side of her head and knocking her down. "Not here you don't, foreign 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 gesture 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.
Smash sighed. He knew the rules of interspecies dealings. How goblins treated one another was their own business; 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 nymph-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 covenant: 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 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 widened his selection of options. "But still she must be punished. 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 risk! He bad to figure out the 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 operation 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, almost 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 destroyed 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 dealings 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 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 penalty 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 lieutenant
"Very well, ogre," the lieutenant said smugly. "Take the wand, experiment with it, while we place her on the island."
Goblins grabbed Tandy and hustled her into a small wooden boat. She struggled, but they moved her along anyway. 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 deliberation. 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 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 meaning of the more complicated term. "But when we tried it-nothing."
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