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 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 figures 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. Almost.
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 Morris 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, remembering 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 fell naturally into place. This was a pleasant 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 significance 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, 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, refusing 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 anything 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 sluggish 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 jest!"
"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 answer. "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 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 dissipated 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 descended 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 s
heer anomaly of the bone-headed genius. Her interest would dissipate 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. Females 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 former ignorance.
A minute had passed and gone some distance beyond, and Chem had not backed out. In fact, she was trying to 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-return, 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 required 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 proceed." Instead, he had spouted the idiotic ditty in the ludicrous 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, fighting it. Something was definitely amiss. Even an idiot could tell that 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.
Second, 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 action 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 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 impetuous or thoughtless manner.
Now something else occurred to Smash. There were various kinds of magic springs in Xanth that trapped the unwary. 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 person 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 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 inducement. Instead of being an easy access path to a pleasant 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 merciless mercy? She needed to be rescued immediately!
"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 it, so that not only will we be able to orient more specifically 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 brightened. "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 intelligen
t. 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 animal 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, undeserved 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 perspectives 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 cruising 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 appeared 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 recorded 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!"
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