Smash knew why. It was the forget-spell laid on the Gap Chasm. These goblins lived too close to it, so suffered a peripheral effect.
"So my daughter Goldy Goblin must cross to another tribe," Gorbage grumbled. "But travel beyond our territory is now hazardous to the health. She needs a guard."
Tandy's face lighted with eventual comprehension. "You want us to take your daughter with us?"
"To the next goblin tribe, north of here. Beyond the dragons, in the midst of the five forbidden regions, near the firewall. Yes."
Five forbidden regions? Firewall? Smash wondered about that. It didn't sound like the sort of territory to take five or six delicate girls through.
"You will let us go if we do that?" Tandy asked.
"You and the ogre."
Tandy's face set. She was a very stubborn girl at times. "All of us."
The goblin leader wavered. "That's a lot to ask. We haven't had fresh meat in several days."
"I don't care if you never have fresh meat again!" the girl flared. "You can cook up zombies if you get hungry. I want all my friends."
"It's only one daughter you're taking north, after all."
"Remember the feminine wiles," the Siren murmured.
Tandy considered. "The ogre can't do all the guarding," she said reasonably. "When he fights off a big dragon or a tangle tree or something, he gets tired. Then he has to rest, and someone else stands guard, like the centaur. If we cross a lake, the Siren scouts it out first. We never know whose skill will be useful." She paused, then with an effort turned on extra charm, "it you really want your daughter to travel safely--"
Gorbage capitulated with bad grace. "Oh, very well. All of you go. It's a bad deal for me, but Goldy will slaughter me if I don't get her matched soon. She's a cussheaded lass, like all her kind."
Smash was amazed. Tandy had, with a little timely advice from the Siren, talked them out of disaster and gotten them all free passage through goblin-infested territory. Already his own strength was filtering back; all he needed was a little rest. But there was no longer any need for Violence.
Goldy Goblin turned out to be a petite, amazingly pretty lass. The goblin females were as lovely as the goblin males were ugly. "Thank you so much for taking me," she said politely. "Is there anything I can do in return?"
Tandy had the grace to take this seriously. "We have to stop by a fireoak tree in this vicinity. If you could show us the best route to it--"
"Certainly. There's only one fireoak hereabouts, with a resident hamadryad nymph--" Goldy paused, spying Fireoak. "Isn't that she?"
"Yes. She's trying to save her tree. We must get her back to it as soon as possible."
"I know the way. But the path to it goes by a hypnogourd patch. So you have to be careful."
"I don't want to go near the gourds!" Tandy cried, horrified.
But Smash remembered his contact with the coffin inside the other gourd. Was it possible that--? "I want a gourd," he said.
The Siren was perplexed. "Why would you want a terrible thing like that?"
"Something I may have forgotten in there." The Siren frowned but dropped the subject. They trekked on. Smash carrying the hamadryad. He tried not to show it, but his strength had returned only partially. Fireoak was light, the kind of burden he could normally balance on his little finger without effort, but now he had to control his breathing, lest he pant so loudly he call attention to himself. He would be no help at all if they happened on another dragon. Maybe he just needed a good meal and a night's sleep. Yet it had never before taken him so long to recover from exertion. He suspected something was wrong, but he didn't know what.
They came to the region of hypnogourds. The vines sprawled abundantly, and gourds were all about. Smash stared at them, half mesmerized. He had thought his soul lost when the Siren smashed the other gourd--but was it possible that the gourd had been a mere window on the otherworld reality? His Eye Queue was crazy enough to think this was so. Could he use another gourd to return to that world and fight for his soul?
He felt small hands on his arm. "What is it. Smash?" Tandy asked. "I'm deathly afraid of those things, but you seem fascinated. What's with you and those awful gourds?"
He answered, not fully conscious of his situation. "I must go fight the Night Stallion."
"A Dark Horse?"
"The ruler of the nightmares. He has a lien on my soul."
"Oh, no! Is that how you rescued my soul?"
Smash snapped out of it. He hadn't meant to say anything about the lien to Tandy. "I'm gibbering. Ignore it."
"So that's why you wanted another gourd," the Siren said. "You had unfinished business there! I didn't realize..."
Now the goblin girl approached. "The ogre's been into a gourd? I've seen that happen before. Some people escape unscathed; some lose their souls; some get only halfway free. We lost a lot of goblins before we caught on. Now we use those gourds as punishment. Thieves are set at a peephole for an hour; they usually escape with a bad scare and never thieve again. Murderers are set there for a day; they often lose their souls. It varies; some people are cleverer than others, and some luckier. The lien is like a delayed sentence; a month or two and it's all over."
"A lien!" the Siren said. "How long for you. Smash?"
"Three months," he replied glumly.
"And you said nothing!" she cried indignantly. "What kind of a creature are you?" But she answered herself immediately. "A self-sacrificing one. Smash, you should have told us."
"Yes," Tandy agreed faintly. "I never realized--"
"How can a person nullify such a lien?" the Siren asked, getting practical.
"He has to go back in and fight," Goldy said. "If he doesn't, he just gets weaker, bit by bit, as the Stallion calls in the soul. It's too late to fight, once the lien is due. He has to do it early, while he has most of his strength."
"But a person can redeem himself if he goes in early?" the Siren asked.
"Sometimes," the goblin girl said. "Maybe one out of ten. One of our old goblins is supposed to have done it a long time ago in his youth. We're not sure we believe him. He mumbles about trials of fear and pain and pride and such-like, making no sense at all. But it is theoretically possible to win."
"So that's why Smash has gotten so weak," the Siren said. "He was using his strength as if he had plenty to spare, but he has an illness of the soul."
"I know about that," Fireoak breathed.
"I didn't know!" Tandy said, clouding up. "Oh, it's all my fault! I never would have taken my soul back if--"
"I didn't know, either," the Siren said, calming her. "But I should have suspected. Maybe I did suspect; I just didn't pursue the thought fast enough. I forgot that Smash is no longer a simple-minded ogre; he has the devious Eye Queue contamination, making him react more like human folk."
"The curse of human intellect, replacing the primeval beastly innocence," Tandy agreed. "I, too, should have realized--"
"Tandy, we've got to help Smash destroy that lien!"
"Yes!" Tandy agreed emphatically. "We can't leave him to the law of the lien."
Smash almost smiled, despite the seriousness of the situation. During his travels with Prince Dor, he had encountered the law of the loin; was this related?
"I'll help," Goldy said.
The Siren frowned. "What is your interest? Your tribe was going to eat us all."
"How can I get to another goblin tribe if I don't have a strong ogre to clear the way? I do know a little bit about the matter."
"I suppose you do have a practical interest," the Siren agreed. "We all need the ogre, until we find our own individual situations. What do you know about the gourds that might help?"
"Our people have reported details of the gourd geography. It's the same for every gourd; they're all identical inside. But each person enters at a different place, and it's possible to get lost. So it is best to carry a line of string to mark the way."
"But a person is out the moment his contact with the peep
hole is broken! How can he get lost?"
"It's not that sort of lost," Goldy said. "There's a lot of territory in there, and some pretty strange effects. Some talk of graves, others of mirrors. A person always returns to the spot he left, and the time he left, no matter how long he's been away from it; a break in the sequence is only an interruption, not a change. If he's lost in gourdland, he's still lost when he returns there, even if he's been a long time out of his gourd. He doesn't know where he's going because he doesn't know where he's been. But if he strings the string, it'll mark where he's been, and he'll know the moment he crosses his trail. And that's the secret."
Smash was getting quite interested. He had been out of his gourd for some time, but apparently could still return. "What secret?"
"The Night Stallion is always in the last place a person looks, in the gourd," the goblin girl explained. "So all you have to do to reach him is always look in a new place--never in a place you've been before; that's a waste of time and effort. You are apt to get caught in an endless loop, and then you are really lost. You may never find him if you rehash your old route."
"You do know something about it!" Tandy agreed. "But suppose Smash threads the maze, finds the Night Stallion--and is too weak to fight him?"
"Oh, it's not that sort of strength he needs," the goblin girl said. "We've had physically strong goblins go in, and physically weak ones, and the weak ones do just as well. All kinds lose in the gourd. Physical strength may even be a liability. Destroying the facilities does not destroy the commitment. Only defeating the Stallion does that, on the Stallion's own terms."
"What are the Stallion's terms?"
Goldy shrugged. "No one knows. Our one surviving goblin refuses to tell, assuming he knows. He just sort of turns a little grayer. I think there is no way to find out except to face the creature."
"I think we have enough to go on," Tandy said. "Let's take a gourd along. We have to get to the fireoak tree before the lunatic-fringe-spell gives out." She went to harvest a gourd, her concern for Smash overriding her fear of the thing.
"I think the peephole is a lunatic fringe," the Siren muttered.
They moved on. Smash pondered what the goblin girl had said. If physical strength was not important in the struggle with the Night Stallion, why was it important to join this contest early, before weakness progressed too far? Was that a contradiction or merely a confusion? He concluded that it was the latter. There was weakness of the body and of the spirit; both might fade together, but they were not identical. Smash was physically weak now because he had overextended himself; otherwise it should have taken him three months to fade. His soul had probably suffered relatively little so far. But if he waited till the end of the lien term to meet the Stallion, then his soul would be weak, and he would lose the nonphysical contest. Yes, that seemed to make sense. Things didn't have to make sense, with magic, but it helped.
They arrived at a pleasant glade. Within it was a crazy sort of shimmer that made Smash feel a little crazy himself; he turned his eyes away.
"My tree!" the hamadryad cried, suddenly reviving. Smash set her down. "Where?"
"There! Behind the lunatic fringe!" She seemed to grow stronger instant by instant and in a moment pranced into the glade. Her body wavered and vanished.
"I guess the spell is still holding," Tandy said. She followed Fireoak, carrying the gourd, and disappeared similarly. The others went the same route.
When Smash contacted the fringe, he felt a momentary surge of dizziness; then he was through. There before him was the tree, a medium-large fireoak, its leaves blazing in the late afternoon sunlight. The hamadryad was hugging its trunk in ecstasy, her body almost indistinguishable from it, and her color was returning. She had rejoined her soul. The tree, too, seemed to be glowing, and leaves that had been wilting were now forging back into health. Evidently it had missed her also. There was something very touching about the love of nymph and tree for each other.
Tandy approached him, her blue eyes soulful. "Smash, if I had known--" She choked up. She shoved the gourd at him.
"We'll let you go into it until the lunatic fringe fades and the people attack this tree," the Siren said. "Maybe you'll have time to conquer the Night Stallion and regain your full strength." She produced a ball of string that the hamadryad must have had stored in her tree. "Use this so you won't get lost in there,"
"But first eat something," Chem said, bringing an armful of fruits. "And get a night's sleep."
"No. I want to settle this now," Smash said.
"Oh, please do at least eat something!" Tandy pleaded. "You can eat a lot in a hurry."
True words--and he was hungry. Ogres were usually hungry. So he crammed a bushel of whole fruits into his mouth and gulped them down, ogre-fashion, and drank a long pull of water from the spring at the base of the tree.
As the sun dropped down behind the forest, singeing the distant tips of trees. Smash took leave of the six females as if setting out on a long and hazardous trek. Then he settled down against the trunk of the tree, put the gourd in his lap, and applied his right eye to the peephole.
Instantly he was back in the gourd world. He stood before the crypt, having just gotten up from his snooze. Tandy was not there; for a moment he had feared that she would be locked into this adventure with him, since she had been here before, but of course she was free now.
A chill wind cut around the stonework, ruffling his fur. The landscape was bleak: all gravestones and dying weeds and dismal dark sky. "Beautiful!" he exclaimed. "I would like to stay here forever."
Then his Eye Queue, in its annoying fashion, forced him to amend his statement mentally. He would like to stay here forever after he rescued his soul from the lien and regained his full strength and saved the hamadryad's tree and had gotten Tandy and all the others to wherever they were going and found his Answer from the Good Magician. After these details, then this paradise of the gourd would be a nice retirement spot.
He had been afraid he would find himself somewhere else and be unable, after all, to pursue his quest to its close. Despite what the goblin girl had said, this was a different gourd, and might not know where his adventure in the last gourd had ended. Now he was reassured, and confident that he could locate the Night Stallion and abate the lien. After all, he was an ogre, wasn't he?
He held his ball of string, since he had willed it to accompany him, but again he had forgotten to bring his gauntlets or orange jacket. He backtracked to the back of the haunted house and anchored one end of the string to a post, then crossed the graveyard to the far gate, letting the string unravel behind. It was a good-sized ball, so he was confident he would have plenty to mark his way.
A skeleton came out to see what was going on; Smash made a horrendous face at it, and the thing fled so fast its bones rattled. Yes, the bone-folk remembered him here!
Beyond the gate was a broad, bleak, open plain illuminated by ghastly, pale white moonlight. Black, ugly clouds scudded horrendously across the dismal sky, forming dark picture-shapes that resembled trolls, goblins, and ogres. Naturally the other creatures were fleeing before the ogreshapes. Smash was delighted; this was an even better scene than the last! Whoever had set up this gourd world had had ogre tastes in mind.
Where should he go now? It was not his purpose to dally amidst the delights of the terrain, but to locate the Night Stallion. Yet he knew that he would have to cover a lot of territory before he reached the last place to look. So he had better move rapidly anywhere, getting the ground covered.
He tromped forth, straight across the beautifully barren plain. The cracked ground shuddered pleasantly under the impact of his feet. He was regaining his strength. Yet now he knew, thanks to the goblin girl, that physical strength was not necessarily what it took to prevail here. He had used it to cow the voice in the coffin, forcing it to release Tandy's soul--but had suffered the compromise of his own soul. Probably the coffin had given him nothing that had not already been allocated; he had fooled himself, thi
nking an ogre's power would scare the dead. The curse of the Eye Queue was making him see uncomfortable truths!
Yet perhaps he should not take this revelation on faith, either. He could go back and rattle the coffin some more, and determine just how much it feared his violence. After all, the skeletons now fled from him. No--that was a temptation to be avoided, for it would cause him to backtrack his own trail, the one thing he needed to avoid doing. Smash continued resolutely forward.
Black dots appeared on the bleak horizon. Quickly they expanded, racing toward him on beating hooves. The nightmares! This was where they stayed by day--here, where night was eternal.
The mares were handsome animals, absolutely black, with flaring manes, flying tails, and darkly glowing eyes. Their limbs were sleekly muscular, and they moved with the velocity of thought. In moments they surrounded him, galloping around him in a circle, squealing warningly. They did not want him going the way he was going. But since the Night Stallion did not seem to be among them, he had to proceed.
Smash ignored their warning. He tromped onward--and their circle stayed with him despite his speed. Experimentally he dodged to one side, and the circle remained centered on him. He leaped, and the circle leaped with him. Just as he had thought, these were magical creatures, orienting magically; the feet of a dream-horse had no essential connection with the ground. Prince Dor had once mentioned escaping the nightmares by sleeping on a cloud, beyond their reach, but probably Prince Dor had not had any bad dreams scheduled that night. The mares could go anywhere, and Smash could not escape their circle by running.
Not that he wanted to. He liked these fine, healthy animals. They were an ogre's type of creature. He remembered how one of them had given Tandy a ride to the Good Magician's castle--which had perhaps been a better destination for her than the one she had sought. The Good Magician had provided Tandy a home for a year, and a solution to her problem--maybe. Her father Crombie, the soldier at Castle Roogna, might not have been much help. Smash knew the man casually. Crombie was getting old, no longer the fighter he used to be. He was also a woman hater who might not have taken his daughter's problem seriously. But if he had taken it seriously--what could he have done, without leaving his post at Castle Roogna?