There were neatly cleared paths through the brambles that Tandy was inclined to use, but Smash cautioned her against this. "Lion, ant, between plant."
Her small brow wrinkled. "I don't see anything."
Then an ant-lion appeared. It had the head of a lion and the body of an ant, and massed about as much as the girl did; it was, of course, ten times as ferocious as anything a nice girl could imagine. It roared when it spied her, striding forward aggressively.
Smash roared back. The ant-lion hastily reversed course; it had been so distracted by the luscious prey that it had not before seen the unluscious guardian. But Smash knew that soon many more would arrive and would swarm over the intruders. This was no safe place, even for the likes of himself.
"Now I understand," Tandy said, turning pale. "Smash, let's get out of here!"
But already there were rustlings behind them. The ant-lions had surrounded them. There would be no easy escape.
"Me know path, avoid ant wrath," Smash said, looking upward. How fortunate that he had been raised in this vicinity, so that useful details of geography were coming back to his slow memory!
"Oh, I couldn't swing from branch to branch through the trees the way I'm sure you can," Tandy said, "I'm agile, but not that agile. I'd be sure to fall."
But the ant-lions were closing in, a full pride of them. Smash had to pick Tandy up to get her out of their reach. Thus burdened, he was unable to fight effectively. Realizing this, the ants grew bolder, closing in, growling and snapping. The situation was getting awkward.
Then Smash spied what he was looking for--the aerial path. "Take care. Go there," he said, boosting the girl up by her pert bottom.
"But it's sidewise!" she protested, peering at the path with dismay. "I'd fall off!"
"Stand tall. No fall," he insisted.
Tandy obviously didn't believe him. But an ant-lion leaped for her, jaws gaping, large front pincers snapping, so she reached up to grab for the high path.
Suddenly she landed on it--sidewise. "I'm level!" she cried, amazed. "The world has turned!" She stood up, or rather sidewise, her body parallel to the ground.
Smash didn't worry about it. He knew the properties of the path, having played on it as a cub. It was always level--to the person on it. He was now far too massive to use it himself, since the aerial path was getting old and brittle, but he didn't need to. He was now unencumbered, free to deal with the lions his own way.
The lions, angered at the escape of the lesser prey, pounced on the greater prey. That was foolish of them. Smash emitted a battle bellow that tore their whiskers back and clogged their pincers with debris, then began stomping and pounding. Lions yowled as the gauntleted fists connected, and screeched as the hairy feet found flesh. Then Smash picked up two ants by their narrow waists and hurled them into the nettles. He took a moment to rip a small hemlock tree out of the ground, shaking the locks from its hem, and bit off its top, forming a fair club from the remaining trunk. Soon the path was clear; the ant-lions, like the tangle tree, had learned new respect for ogres.
"You're really quite something. Smash!" Tandy called, clapping her hands. "You're a real terror when you get worked up. I'll bet there's nothing more formidable than an angry ogre!" She had an excellent view of the proceedings from the elevated path, dodging when an ant flew past. Ant-lions did not normally fly; this was a consequence of being hurled out of the way. Ants were now stuck in a number of the jungle trees.
"Me know who," Smash grunted, pleased. "Ogres two."
She laughed. "That figures. The only thing tougher than one ogre is two ogres." She was now standing inverted, her brown tresses hanging naturally about her shoulders as if she were upright. She looked about, from her vantage. "The ants aren't gone, just backed off. Smash," she reported. "Can you come up here?"
Smash shook his head no. But he wasn't worried. He could use the ant paths. If the ants wanted a little more ogre-type fun, he would gladly accommodate them.
They proceeded south, Tandy tilting with the orientation of the aerial path, sometimes upright, sometimes not, enjoying the experience. "There is nothing much in the caverns like this!" she commented.
Smash tromped along the ant highways, tearing through nettles when he needed to change paths. Soon the nettles and ants were left behind, but the high path continued, so Tandy stayed on it. Smash knew it terminated at the Magic Dust Village, and since they had to pass there anyway, this was convenient. According to Castle Roogna information, the Magic Dusters had once had a population problem, not being able to hold on to their males, so they had constructed the skyway to encourage immigration. Now there were plenty of people at the village, so the path didn't matter, but no one had bothered to take it down. Smash and Tandy made excellent progress.
Now they passed a region of hanging vines. They were twined, almost braided, like queues, and seemed to have eyes looking out from their recesses. Smash distrusted unfamiliar things in general and dangling vines in particular, so he avoided the Eye Queues. They could be harmless, or they could be bloodsuckers. This was beyond the region of his cubhood familiarity, and anyway, things could have changed in the interim. One could never take magic for granted.
He also kept an eye on Tandy, above, to make sure she did not brush against any vines. As a result, he didn't pay close enough attention to his big feet--and stumbled over a minor boulder that was damming a streamlet, much to the streamlet's annoyance.
The boulder dam shattered, of course; it was only stone. The streamlet gladly flowed through, with a burble of thanks to its deliverer. But Smash suffered a momentary loss of balance, his feet sinking into the sodden riverbed, and he lurched headlong into a hanging vine.
The thing wrapped disgustingly around his head. He snatched at it, but already it was sinking into his fur and his flesh and hurting terribly when he tried to scrape it loose. Since an ogre's course was generally that of most resistance. Smash put both hands to his scalp and scraped--and the burgeoning agony made him reel.
"Stop, Smash, stop!" Tandy screamed from above. "You'll rip off your head!"
Smash stopped. "I concur. There is no sense in that."
Tandy stared down at him. "What did you say?"
"I said there is no sense in mortifying my flesh, since the queue does not appear to have seriously incapacitated me."
"Smash--you're not rhyming!"
"Why--so I am not!" he agreed, startled. "That must be the curse of the Eye Queue; it has disrupted my natural mechanism of communication."
"It's done more than that!" Tandy exclaimed. "Smash, you sound smart!"
"That must be a fallacious impression. No ogre is unduly intelligent."
"Well, you sure sound smart!" she insisted. "That Eye Queue, as you call it, must have added some brains to your head."
"That seems reasonable," he agreed, after cogitating momentarily without effort. "The effect manifested concurrently with my contact with that object. Probability suggests a causal connection. This, of course, is much worse than any purely physical attack would have been; it has temporarily un-ogred me. I must expunge it from my system!"
"Oh, no, don't do that," she protested. "It's sort of interesting, really. I don't mind you being smart. Smash. It's much easier to talk with you."
"In any event, I seem unable for the moment to deactivate it," Smash said. "It seems I must tolerate this curse for the time being. But I assure you I shall be alert for an antidote."
"Okay," she said. "If that's the way you feel."
"Indubitably."
They went on--and now Smash noted things that hadn't interested him before. He saw how erosion had caused rifts in the land, and how the forest stratified itself, with light indifferent vegetation and fungi at the nether levels and bright, broad leaves above to catch the descending light of the sun. The entire jungle was a cohesive unit, functioning compatibly with its environment. All over Xanth, things were integrating--in his new awareness. How blind he had been to the wonders of magic, all his life
!
As dusk closed, the aerial path descended to the ground, and they arrived at the Magic Dust Village. A troll came forth to meet them. "Ogre, do you come in peace or mayhem?" the creature inquired, standing poised for flight while other villagers hastily manned the fortifications and cleared children and the aged from the region.
"In peace!" Tandy said quickly. "I am Tandy; this is Smash, who is protecting me from monsters."
The troll's eyes gaped. This was an unusual expression, even for this type of creature. "Protecting you from--?"
"Yes."
"Now, we have no prejudice against monsters here," the troll said, scratching his long and horny nose with a discolored claw. "I'm a monster myself, and some of my best friends are monsters. But only a fool trusts an ogre."
"Well, I'm a fool," Tandy said. "This ogre fought a tangle tree to save me."
"Are you sure you aren't a kidnap victim? You certainly do look good enough to eat."
Smash did not appreciate the implication, which would have passed him by had he not suffered the curse of the Eye Queue vine. "My father is Crunch, the vegetarian ogre," he said gruffly. "My family has not kidnapped anyone in years."
The troll looked at him, startled. "You certainly don't sound like an ogre! Did the Transformer-King transform you to this shape?"
"I was whelped an ogre!" Smash insisted, the first traces of roar coming into his voice.
Then the troll made a connection. "Ah, yes. Crunch married a curse-fiend actress. You have human lineage; that must account for your language."
"It must," Smash agreed drolly. He found he didn't care to advertise his misadventure with the vine. He would be laughed out of the village if its inhabitants learned he was intelligent. "But I should advise you, purely in the interest of amity, that I have been known to take exception to the appellation 'half-breed.' I am a true ogre." He picked up a nearby knot of green wood and squeezed it in one hand. The green juice dripped as the wood pulped, until at last there was a pool of green on the ground and the knot had become a lump of coal.
"Yes, indeed," the troll agreed hastily. "No one here would think of using that term. Welcome to our table for supper; you are surely hungry."
"We are only passing through," Tandy said. "We're going to Lake Ogre-Chobee."
"You can't get there from here," the troll said. "The Region of Madness intervenes."
"Madness?" Tandy asked, alarmed.
"From the airborne magic dust we process. Magic is very potent here, and too much of it leads to alarming effects. You will have to go around."
They did not argue the case. Smash's inordinate intelligence, coupled with his memories of this region, corroborated the information; he knew it would be impossible for him to protect Tandy in the Region of Madness. There were tales of the constellations of the night coming to life, and of reality changing dangerously. In Xanth, things were mostly what they seemed to be, so that illusion was often reality. But illusion could be taken too far in the heightened magic of the Madness. Smash was now too smart to risk it.
They joined the villagers' supper. Creatures of every type came forth to feed, all well behaved: elves, gnomes, goblins, a manticore, fauns, nymphs, fairies, human beings, centaurs, griffins, and assorted other creatures. The hostess was the troll's mate, Trolla. "It is much easier to arrive than to depart," she explained as she served up helpings of smashed potatoes and poured out goblets of mead. "We have never had opportunity to construct an exit ramp, and our work mining the source of magic is important, so we stay. You may choose to remain also: we labor hard, but it is by no means a bad life."
Smash exchanged a glance with Tandy, since it occurred to him that this might be the sort of situation she was looking for. But she was negative. "We have a message from the sister of a neighbor of yours. We must get on and deliver it."
"A neighbor?" Trolla asked.
"She is called the Siren."
There was a sudden hush.
"You know," Tandy said. "The sister of the Gorgon."
"You are friend to the Gorgon?" Trolla asked coldly.
"I hardly know her," Smash said quickly, remembering that this village had suffered at the Gorgon's hands--or rather, her face, having had all the men turned to stone. Fortunately, that mischief had been undone at the time of the loss of magic, when all Xanth had become as drear as Mundania, briefly. Numerous spells had been aborted in that period, changing Xanth in ways that were still unraveling. "I had to see Good Magician Humfrey, and she's his wife. She asked us to say hello to the Siren."
"Oh, I see." Trolla relaxed, and the others followed her example. There were murmurs of amazement and awe. "The Good Magician's wife! And she turned him to stone?"
"Not anywhere we could see," Tandy said, then blushed. "Uh, that is--"
Trolla smiled. "He's probably too old for such enchantment anyway, so the sight of her merely stiffens his spine, or whatever." She gulped a goblet of mead. "The Siren no longer lures people, since a smart centaur broke her magic dulcimer. She is not a bad neighbor, but we really don't associate with her."
They finished their repast, Smash happily consuming all the refuse left after the others were done. The villagers set them up with rooms for the night. Smash knew these were honest, well-meaning folk, so he didn't worry about Tandy's safety here.
As he lay on his pile of straw. Smash thought about the place of the Magic Dust Village in the scheme of Xanth. Stray references to it bubbled to the surface of his memory--things he had heard at different times in his life and thought nothing of, since ogres thought nothing of everything. From these suddenly assimilating fragments he was now able to piece together the role of this village, geologically. Here it was that the magic dust welled to the surface from the mysterious depths. The villagers pulverized it and employed a captive roc-bird to flap its wings and waft huge clouds of the dust into the air, where it caused madness close by, technicolor hailstorms farther distant, and magic for the rest of Xanth as it diluted to natural background intensity. If the villagers did not perform this service, the magic dust would tend to clump, and the magic would be unevenly distributed, causing all manner of problems.
Certainly the Magic Dusters believed all this, and labored most diligently to facilitate the proper and even spreading of the dust. Yet Smash's Eye Queue-infected brain obnoxiously conjured caveats, questioning the realities the villagers lived by.
If the magic really came from the dust, it should endure as long as the dust did, fading only slowly as the dust wore out. Yet at the Time of No Magic, all Xanth had been rendered Mundane instantly. That had happened just before Smash himself had been whelped, but his parents had told him all about it. They had considered it rather romantic, perhaps even a signal of their love. Crunch had lost his great strength in that time, but other creatures had been affected far more, and many had died. Then the magic had returned, as suddenly as it had departed, and Xanth had been as it was before. There had been no great movements of dust then, no dust storms. That suggested that the magic of Xanth was independent of the dust.
The dust came from below, and if it brought the magic, the nether regions must be more magical than the surface. Tandy had lived below, yet she seemed normal. She did not even appear to have a magic talent. So how could the magic be concentrated below?
But Smash decided not to raise these questions openly, as they would only make things awkward for the villagers. And perhaps the belief of the Dusters was right and his vine-sponsored objections were wrong. After all, what could a Queue of Eyes understand of the basic nature of Xanth?
His thought turned to a bypath. A magic talent--that must be what Tandy was questing for! He, as an ogre, was fortunate; ogres had strength as their talent. When Smash had gone to Mundania, outside the magic, ambience of Xanth, he had lost his strength and his rhyme, distressingly. Now he had lost his rhymes and his naivete, but not his strength.
Was the infliction of the curse of the Eye Queue really so bad? There were indeed pleasures in the i
nsights this artificial intelligence afforded him. Yet ogres were supposed to be stupid; he felt sadly out of place.
Smash decided to keep quiet, most of the time, and let Tandy do the talking. He might no longer be a proper ogre in outlook, but at least he could seem like an ogre. If he generated an illusion of continuing stupidity, perhaps in time he would achieve it again. Certainly this was worth the hope. Meanwhile, his shame would remain mostly secret.
Chapter 4
Catastrophe
In the morning they walked along an old ground bound path to the small lake that contained the Siren's isle. It was pretty country, with few immediate hazards, and so Smash found it dull, while Tandy liked it very well.
The Siren turned out to be a mature mermaid who had probably been stunning in her youth and was not too far from it even now. She evidently survived by fishing and seemed satisfied with her lot, or more correctly, her pond.
"We bring greetings from your sister the Gorgon," Tandy called as they crossed the path over the water to the island.
Immediately the mermaid was interested. She emerged from the water and changed to human form--her fish-tail simply split into two well-formed legs--and came to meet them, still changing. She had been nude in the water, but it hardly mattered since she was a fish below the waist. But as she dried, the scales that had covered her tail converted to a scale-sequin dress that nudged up to cover the upper portion of her torso. For a reason that had never been clear to Smash, it was all right for a mermaid to show her breasts, but not all right for a human woman to do the same. The finny part of her flukes became small shoes. It was minor but convenient magic; after all, Smash thought, she might otherwise get cold feet. "My sister!" she exclaimed, her newly covered bosom heaving. "How is she doing?"
"Well, she's married to the Good Magician Humfrey--"